Nowlander

Mexican. If you are trying to write a mexican character or setting, I'll gladly answer any question

[soberscientistlife]

For the anti-vaxxers Fuck you

[nowlander]

Um you really should.vaccinate your children even if you are aalready vaccinated

Or maybe I'm not understanding something? Was the kid vaccine smaller and left no mark?

[geeoharee]

We eradicated smallpox.

[nowlander]

Yeah I was confused because another vaccine* applied in Mexico still leaves a mark and I always asumed it was still the smallpox one, which I also was mistaking with chickenpox.

*It's actually the bacillus calmette-guérin, against tuberculosis

[captainjonnitkessler]

So many political posts I hate boil down to "I don't want to organize and work with people I hate and fight for small, incremental victories, I just want to start a revolution where everyone magically becomes an automaton who acts exactly the way I think they should act"

Like damn man, I want that too. Unfortunately I live in reality though so we're stuck with the first thing.

[nowlander]

Pic says "to sell or trade for male calf"

[frontmansdefender]

[gallusrostromegalus]

Speaking of public health. What was the soul society reaction to the eradication of small pox like?

"You notice there's a lot less dead babies these days?" Iba asked in the middle of one morning's office work.

"Fewer dead babies." Komamura corrected without thinking. "Less is for things you measure by volume, fewer for things you count. We do not measure dead babies by volume."

"Oh. right." Iba nodded. "Yeah, that wouldn't be right."

After a moment, what his lieutenant actually said caught up with him. "Sorry- force of habit from living with a Librarian." Komamura shook his head and looked up from the monthly intake statistics analysis report, peering at Tetsuzaemon Iba through the narrow gap of his helmet. "What do you mean, fewer dead babies?"

"I dunno, it just occurred to me. When I started the academy in the 40's- right after the catastrophe- we did a student tour of the 7th division's recently deceased souls intake queue, remember?" Iba waved his hand leaning back in his chair, apparently uncertain of where he was going with this either, but articulating his thoughts.

"I believe so. I had just taken over from Captain Kotsubaki." Komamura nodded, patient. Chikane Iba was an excellent shinigami and had done a magnificent job running the third division, but she had a tendency to talk over and bulldoze her son, so Komamura had learned to be patient when the young man when he felt like he should share a thought.

"Yeah, yeah- Not gonna lie Boss, you scared the crap out of me back then." Tetsuzaemon laughed. "-But the thing that stuck out to me that day was just. The sheer number of Infants and little kids in the line. the guy giving us the tour- I think it was Old Ito, actually- He said that one in five babies in the living world didn't live to see their fifth birthday."

"An improvement even back then- it was one in three children when back when I started in the 1840s." Komamura nodded. "It's funny that I frightened you- Captain Aikawa apparently headhunted me for the 7th because Kaname told him about how the children at the library used to use me as playground equipment."

"Good grief." Iba blanched. "So, what, he threw you in the deep end with all the dead kids?"

"In Captain Aikawa's defense, I did volunteer to handle children's cases. As sad as a frightened infant is, it's infinitely preferable than dealing with the deceased who are angry."

Iba frowned, opened his mouth like he was about to object, reconsidered, closed it, considered further, rocking his head from side to side, and then nodded. "I- yeah, Yeah, that tracks."

"You were saying though?" Komamura laced his fingers in front of him, leaning forward to listen.

"Oh! Well- not as much these days but back then, every family had like seven and eight kids, you know? And I realized that, well- almost everyone I know has a dead sibling or two? Almost every mother lost a child- Gods know my mother's a basket case but even getting a cold could send her into fits. If something had happened to me when I was a tyke- I don't think she would have pulled through."

Komamura nodded enough for Iba to see his helmet tilt to indicate he as still listening.

"I- I don't actually know where I was going with this, but I was reading that report earlier and there's a note from Shita-san at the end that this is the first month we haven't had a kid under the age of five in the intake queue. Ever."

Komamura flipped though the pages of the report to read the hand-written note at the end. "That is excellent news!"

"Oh! Yeah! It's great!" Iba nodded enthusiastically. "It just- I don't know, I guess it just snuck up on me and I'm so used to hearing something went wrong I guess I don't quite know what to do with good news?" he shrugged.

Komamura pondered this for a moment. "Hm. Well. Take heart, to start. But I see what you mean- it's a tremendous achievement, but not one we contributed to, and a "No Dead Babies This Month" office party feels in poor taste at best."

"Oof, yeah- especially if next month there's an accident or something and there's a whole bunch in the queue." Iba nodded. He considered things for a moment.

"-What happened that there are le- fewer dead babies, actually?" Iba frowned. "-Whoever it is, it would be appropriate to toast them and make an offering in their name to the Gods of Good Fortune, I think. Also do more of whatever they did."

"That IS a good idea!" Komamura smiled under his helmet. Perhaps it was his training as a priest, but he did enjoy an offering of goodwill ceremony. Also, nobody would ask him to drink- just pour any alcohol he was offered on the statue of the relevant deity. "I think- It's probably in our statistics, if the tenth division doesn't have an idea already. Can you collect the cause of death data for young children for the last-"

He was interrupted by the thunderous footsteps of someone sprinting towards the office, immediately followed by a tall young woman with short white hair throwing the door open, red-faced and winded.

"THEY DID IT! THE MAD BASTARDS THEY DID IT!" She shouted with wild excitement.

"Isane-? Uh, Miss Kotetsu?" Iba flustered.

"Please keep your voice down-" Komamura said through gritted teeth, trying not to growl at being suddenly shouted at. "Who has-?"

He was interrupted by Miss Kotetsu bolting right up to his desk and shoving a newspaper into his face hard enough to actually wrap around his helmet in excitement.

"SMALLPOX! IT'S GONE!!" She shrieked with joy.

"-gone?" Iba asked, bewildered as Komamura gently took the newspaper from her and pulled it back to actually read it. It was a newspaper from the living world, dated that morning- someone had gone through some pains to get it back to the Seireitei at speed, but the news was worth it:

SMALLPOX IS DEAD!

"TOTALLY ERADICATED! EXTINCT! KAPUT! IT HAS CEASED TO BE!" She bounced excitedly. "IT IS AN EX-PANDEMIC!"

"So like. Nobody has it this year?" Iba tried.

"Nobody has it this year, or will ever have it again, if I'm reading this right." Komamura muttered in awe. "Thanks to an aggressive worldwide vaccination and disease protocol program, there have been no human cases of the disease for several years. Since there are no people infected, there is no way for the disease to come back..."

Both men stared into space, the news almost unbelievable.

"Well. That does explain the Less Dead Babies thing." Iba nodded.

"Fewer Dead Babies." Komamura and Isane corrected in unison.

"I mean yeah that sure is part of it because Smallpox was the number one killer of infants in the living world for a long time there, but there's a whole bunch of stuff that's really cut down on infant mortality in the last few decades in particular." Isane nodded.

"We were JUST Talking about that!" Iba said, excitedly. "-Good to know you guys in the fourth are keeping track of that, It was gonna take forever to pull out that data..."

"Oh, could you pull it out anyway Tetsu-kun?" She asked. "-That's most of why I came over- I mean, to share the good news first, but Unohana-Taicho is planning on using this to really push a widespread vaccination program in the Rukongai and having the numbers to back us up would be really helpful!"

"Oh! Uh, sure!" Iba blushed.

"...You know this young lady, Tetsu-Kun?" Komamura lightly teased.

Both of the young people twitched and bowed to him, pointing at each other and speaking at once.

"Oh! I'm sorry Sir, I'm fourth division third seat Isane Kotetsu, i just know Iba because we were in the same class at the academy-" She babbled.

"-this is Isane Kotetsu, she's the smartest person I know and she saved my life from a lizard one time!" He waved excitedly.

"...That lizard was not going to kill you." She sighed, covering her face in embarrassment. "-I mean, if you developed a sepsis infection from the contaminated wound it might have made you very ill but that would take weeks and we have antibiotics for that, the lizard itself wasn't all that dangerous."

"It was INSIDE my LEG!" Iba gestured to his right thigh.

Komamura slowly tilted his whole torso sideways at Iba, hoping that sentence might make more sense at a forty-five degree angle. "...How?"

"I. Uh." Iba stopped, realizing his story was maybe not one he should be telling his boss. "I was. um. Out camping with the lads back when I was in the 11th, and a lizard climbed into my cot and I was. not totally awake and thought someone was trying to cop a feel and well you know, that's behavior you respond to with force so I rolled over and tried to stab the intruder's hand and. Uh. Missed."

Komamura continued to stare at him blankly.

"There was. screaming. lotta flailing, blood, general mayhem sort of thing. And in the confusion the Lizard.... climbed. inside the hole. In my leg. Sir." Iba explained, slowly crumpling behind his desk.

Komamura sighed deeply.

"-but Miss Isane was right there and actually kicked Ikkaku halfway across the camp because he was trying to lure it out with a Banana and generally being useless and she just grabbed that sucker and ripped him right outta there and had the wound packed and sealed in less than a minute and I even got to finish doing boot camp!" He rallied, cheerfully waving at Isane in hopes of distracting his captain with how cool she was.

"...What happened to the lizard?" Komamura asked, warily eyeing her through the gap in his helmet.

"Oh! He was really, really human acclimated and sneaked into my medkit rather than go back into the wild, so Harry lives a very spoiled lizard life in a terrarium in my room at home! Though it's actually my sister's room now but he still gets all the mango and smashed beetles he can eat!" Isane nodded cheerfully.

"You named a lizard. Harry?" Komamura asked slowly.

"...Iba-san named him, actually." She blushed.

"Ironically!" Iba protested. "I'm only mostly stupid, sir."

Komamura sighed deeply and once again regretted that his disguise would not let him rub his face as needed. "Alright. Thank you for the announcement, Miss Kotetsu. We will get that data to you in a timely manner- was there anything else you needed"

"Oh gosh, there was something else, what was it-?" She tapped her chin, trying to remember.

There was the distant sound of explosives, and all three of them turned to see what looked like midday fireworks going off at the 4th.

"Oh Right! Unohana-taicho requests your presence at the 4th as. Um. 'Designated Non-Drinker and Unarmed Combat Specialist' because the party was getting kind of wild when I left actually-"

Komamura sighed, and picked up Tenken from his stand and started tying the zanpaktou to his belt anyway.

---

The following morning, a small party arrived at the local shrines to The Gods Of Good Fortune, bearing offerings on behalf of the living world's World Health Organization and the handful of names they'd been able to glean from the living world newspapers, and nursing varying degrees of of hangover.

Komamura lead the party, having gotten them up at a slightly malicious 5AM to be there first thing in the morning. Tetsuzaemon and his friends from the 11th he insisted come along and 'suffer with me, as my sworn brothers' were quite pained but doing their best to hold it together.

Shunsui was a veteran of this nonsense and was hiding the pain very well behind his longtime party companions, Ukitake and Unohana, who seemed so extraordinarily cheerful that Komamura had to conclude that they were both still significantly chemically altered. He couldn't fault Unohana- they were faint and only visible on the rare occasions she let her hair down, but just below her left ear there was still the faint divot scars from surviving her own infection.

Isane had celebrated just as hard as the 11th Division lads, but had also had the good sense to alternate beer and water and take both aspirin and some sort of horrible pink goop that apparently relieved nausea before passing out under a table and had woken up only slightly groggy.

Komamura's new friend Harry the Lizard- a remarkably loquacious and quick-witted reptile -had taken up residence inside his helmet, lightly intoxicated on the cocktail fruits people had kept feeding him, and was politely nestled in the thick fur of his neck to ward off the morning cold.

The rituals of gratitude for this miracle, and asking the Gods to bless those who had worked so hard went smoothly, and Komamura couldn't help but notice when he turned around that Miss Kotetsu had opted to lean on the shoulder of 'Tetsu-kun'.

It was not often Komamura started the day with the feeling that everything would turn out alright, but as he watched Tetsuzaemon cautiously but gracelessly take Isane's hand and her squeeze it back on the way back down from the shrine, he felt like the feeling might stay this time.

[sphinxofgrease]

the word “sabotage” is p much short for “fucking shit up with a wooden shoe”

[futzingbarton]

what

[sphinxofgrease]

fucking shit up with a wooden shoe

[futzingbarton]

oh my god

[genderhasnobearingonability-blog]

well wooden shoe look at that

[nerdismyhobby]

I’M FUCKING CRYING AT THAT PUN BE MY FRIEND PLEASE 

[best-buffy-lines]

The Prom, 3.20

[valtsv]

tired: mermaids are all women

wired: much like elves, merfolk are mistaken by sailors for being all women because they have long hair and are very pretty

[valtsv]

inspired: merfolk actually have very different concepts of gender to humans because they’re an entirely different species with their own unique culture

[valtsv]

marine scientist: what’s your gender?

merperson: what’s a gender

marine scientist: like, are you a man or a woman?

merperson: i’m merfolk

marine scientist: no, like, what’s in your pants?

merperson: i don’t… wear any? i don’t have legs?

[9lunarseas6-deactivated20240914]

It’s a biological fact that fish do indeed change their sex to keep the male/female ratio balanced in their school population. So this fluidity actually makes more sense from a scientific standpoint than the silly idea that merfolk are born with a strictly assigned sex like humans.

[witchcraft-in-wonderland]

Merfolk are all canonically genderfluid and we love them for that

[anonymous-lizard]

Human: (invites merfolk friend to a boat party with their friends)

Merfolk: oh man, there are a lot of women here. Haha don’t worry guys, I got this :) *changes into a man to keep a balance because that’s culturally polite for merfolk*

Human: (spits drink) what the FUCK

[sexy-necromancing-bird]

OH MY GOD

[kingfisher-colours]

So in the presence of a ship with an entirely or mostly male crew, nearby mermaids would become female to keep the balance.

[ace-aussie-asshole]

That’s it. We figured out why everyone thinks merfolk are all women. Get a boat of fems out there and let’s see what they report.

[biglawbear]

Where's that post that's like "I can't buy expensive things like plane tickets on my phone, I have to use my laptop, big purchases are for the big screen"

Because apparently this is a literal actual thing that retailers hate cuz you think more before spending a lot of money, they want you to spend a lot without thinking about it so much

Source

Keep buying Big Things on the Big Screen, it's healthy for you financially to think before spending a lot of money!

[minnow-doodle-doo]

its hard for Bruce to be human.

[josephbrassey]

“Haha remember when murder-hornets were gonna be a thing? What a nothingburger.”

Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.

“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”

Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.

“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”

You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?

One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.

The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.

And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.

And I refuse to let the cynics own a chunk of my heart.

[gudamor]

Happy Smallpox Eradication Day

[dduane]

Just enjoying this accidental shot, as the glow is NOT artificial, but is light from the declining Sun seen through the Bregenz Art Museum's glass cornices. The magic of being in the right place at the right time, with (as @petermorwood would say) "any damn camera in your hand..."

[nami-00m]

Severus’s existence challenges this perfect image the marauders fandom has for the marauders which is why they always mischaracterize him in the worst way possible🫩🫩

Like Severus was not called diff versions of faggot only for you to headcanon him as homophobic.

He wasn’t shown to have lived in poverty only for you to headcanon him as some rich snob.

He is not an incel or obsessed or a stalker. In fact between James and Severus only one of them told Lily they’ll leave their friend alone if they went out with them (hint: it wasn’t Severus)

[lilithofpenandbook]

What's weird to me is that they apparently can rewrite everything... But they HAVE to keep in Snape and the Marauders as enemies, just switching the positions each party took. It's not like they haven't had characters who became DEs as friends with the Marauders. It's specifically Snape they insist on villainizing... as if they couldn't just erase the conflict in the first place.

[merinnan]

[rockelyn]

[pinketine]

When the topic becomes about racism between children you very quickly realise children of colour aren't seen as children but as some other thing that should just take the abuse and then forgive the Real White Children because they didn't know better. They don't understand it but children of colour can and will very early in their youth.

[carnadelions-deactivated2024010]

absolutely love it when people are like why do you like this fictional character so much look at all their bad qualities. my brothersister in christ their bad qualities are why i like them

[carnadelions-deactivated2024010]

"what do you see in them" only the very worst. i hope this helps

[angelrecipe-deactivated20180602]

Give me a heartwarming Christmas movie about Satan traveling around the world every Christmas to deliver presents to all the young kids and kids with learning disorders and disabilities who misspell “Santa” on their Christmas letters every year

[eccentricmisseclectic]

And Santa’s all like, “You know, I can handle a few spelling mistakes, I got this,” and Lucifer is like “They’re addressed to me, fuck off, I’m doing it.”

[incurablenecromantic]

Lucifer being protective of his fanmail is ceaselessly entertaining.

[pretentious-git]

Lucifer: hey big guy I need your list because I don’t know what these kids want for christmas and you’ve got all the info. Santa: this isn’t your holiday Lucifer: yeah well james here doesn’t fucking know that so give me the list, he asked for Satan