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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Pocket Monsters SPECIAL | Pokemon Adventures Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sakaki | Giovanni & Silver, Sakaki | Giovanni/Original Female Character(s), Female Pokedex Holder Blue | Green & Silver (Pokemon Adventures) Characters: Sakaki | Giovanni, Silver (Pokemon), Female Pokedex Holder Blue | Green (Pokemon Adventures), Original Female Character(s) Additional Tags: injuries, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Team Rocket (Pokemon) Summary:

Phone calls from the hospital are not a rare thing in the Sakaki household.

Sometimes they're for Giovanni, because some idiot got mauled in the forest, and he has to go pretend to care, and to not think that maybe in some cases, natural selection is a good thing.

Usually they're for Grace, at ungodly hours in the morning, to go rush off to do her job, and come home smelling like a mixture of blood, disinfectants, and coffee.

So the phone ringing wasn't a surprise.

The little boy with red hair, silver eyes, and a terrible fever was though.

#trainer silver #rival silver #giovanni #boss giovanni #pokefic #ive had poor grace rattling around as an oc for like 6 years time to do something with her i guess #my writting #if you saw me fuck up and post this as a oneshot no you didn't

docholligay

Possibly my spiciest take is that it's actually good to have people you respect and like that have some dogshit takes.

I think part of what is making young people lonelier, in discussing why they're increasingly isolated, is that they're so afraid of meeting someone who doesn't hold their same beliefs, and instead of being just core beliefs it is kinda ancillary shit.

It's actually okay to disagree even on social topics! Even on some political ones! But I mean, online you can start with "i love this mutual but they have a really bad/uninformed opinion about x media"

I know this is IMMEDIATELY going to be taken in bad faith, and yes babygirl, you are so right, I DO want you to go make best friends with both the KKK grand wizard AND your nearest nazi leader.

But seriously, as someone who has spent two decades doing community organization: finding ways to connect with different people is so so so important. There are people i follow here who ate 80% smart and their brain falls out of their head 20% of the time and that is GOOD FOR MY MENTAL ECOSYSTEM AND GOOD FOR LEARNING HOW TO BE A PERSON

LET'S ALL GO PISS ON THE POOR

mikkeneko

ninfias-deactivated1234-deactiv

tm73-deleted-deactivated2015022

you got this shit plusle man

cryptic-curation

This sick bleach shirt I made. Something to showcase my undying love for prehistoric cave art.

Some of the bleach burned thru the shirt bc this was my first time bleaching anything ever, but it kinda adds to it.

special-agent-dale-gooper

uncle-beanbag-mojave

We would fully accept any Japanese buckaroo

theconstitutionisgayculture

Foreigners will never understand how someone like Rawhide Kobayashi would immediately become a beloved local fixture in whatever small American town he ended up in.

brazenautomaton

every single time someone pulls the "How would you AMERICANS like it if someone came to AMERICA and" reversal, the answer is always "we'd fucking love it"

not-so-innocent-bi-sander

@kurtwagnermorelikekurtwagnerd

Your tags summed up the exact feeling I had about this

tikkunolamorgtfo

I just Googled the Swedish-Japanese guy in the OP, and according to this interview, his Japanese name was given to him by the master gardener he was apprenticed under:

“The family name ‘Murasame’ was given to me by my master. The given name ‘Tatsumasa’ is a combination of ‘dragon’ (tatsu), the [zodiac] year when I was born, and one character from my master’s name,” says Murasame."

So I think maybe it's less like naming yourself 'Brandon McFreedom' and more like moving to the states to work under a veteran car mechanic named Bud McLean, and then having him turn to you after a few years on the job, and say "Son, it's time for you to become an American so you can open up your shop. And when that day comes, I think the world should know you by a new name: McLeo GM Corvette."

teaboot

Named by his superior by conventions one would apply to a super chill stray cat

cobaltspartan

fascinated by jeff the killer tbh. everyone in that creepypasta has generic white usamerican names (jeff, keith, barbara, billy, etc.) except for jeff the killer's doe eyed little brother liu. why is he liu. is liu chinese? it's okay if he's chinese. is jeff also chinese? has jeff the killer been chinese this whole time? am I a bad person?

rhiatargoed

@pxgsy

animahub

The Fairly OddParents S1E02 “Power Mad!”

naomisramblings

guy who’s never studied either organised religions or cults: there’s basically no difference between organised religions and cults

exhuastedpigeon

Having "a lot" of followers on tumblr is funny because probably 80% of them are ghost blogs who haven't been on here in like a decade.

It's like, no no, those aren't my followers, that's a graveyard! I'm the caretaker of a thousands of tombs. I love them, but they've been dead for seven years.

importantcatpics

wildehacked

things in fic I'm used to people kind of faking their way through writing about:

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

what french toast is

headspace-hotel

read through the notes on this one trust me

kiragecko

Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

#no ones having sex while riding horses #the logistics of that do not work #great way to end up in the hospital tho #also im never ever ever getting over the fic where a character “pushed the baby back up” because the other character went into labor at a #bad time #like it was presented as a bad idea but the author way clearly under the impression that #labor takes like an hour tops and there were no other options #as well as it being physically possible in the first place

smol-blue-bird

all STEM students should have to take humanities courses, and all humanities students should have to take STEM courses

smol-blue-bird

@caesarsaladinn I had a whole discussion with a history major who was extremely confident that smallpox is a “common childhood illness” with a very low death rate. Therefore, she believed that historical smallpox outbreaks were either massively exaggerated or used as a cover-up for something else (since “smallpox isn’t that bad.”) I eventually asked if she was possibly confusing smallpox with chickenpox, at which point she said, “aren’t they the same thing?”

the-grey-tribe

The English language really whiffed on that one. Should have called it largepox or at least regularsizepox.

myfootyrthroat

The whole "-pox" making system could use some work. Are we doing sizes? Animals? Get it together.

imjustusingthistolikeartists

One of the less deadly variants of smallpox was called cowpox, and the fact that dairy maids who contracted it tended to avoid the worst affects of smallpox is part of the development of vaccination

smol-blue-bird

Cowpox is actually a separate (but very similar!) virus!

There's a lot of confusion about different "poxes" in this post (which wasn't my intention, and now I feel bad), so here's a general overview (also, obligatory apology for messiness, this was written at like 1 AM):

Smallpox:

Smallpox, caused by variola virus, was a massive problem historically. It existed in the Western hemisphere for thousands of years (genetic evidence of smallpox has been found in Egyptian mummies from ≈1500 BCE, but it was probably around long before then), and it was introduced to the New World during the Columbian exchange, which had devastating consequences for indigenous populations (which were already suffering from colonialist violence, which made epidemics much worse than they already would've been). Historically, smallpox had a case fatality rate between 30-50%, and survivors were often left disfigured or permanently disabled (you've probably seen pictures of smallpox scars, but smallpox can also cause blindness and other complications). Importantly, smallpox only affects humans—it has no animal hosts—which is why it's one of the few infectious diseases to have been completely eradicated. As of May 8, 1980, it officially no longer exists outside of certain designated American and Russian laboratories. (There are, however, concerns that it could be used as a bioweapon, which is why the government still stockpiles smallpox vaccines and antivirals. I wrote my bioethics term paper on this exact issue, and incidentally, it's one of the major reasons why I believe that STEM majors should take ethics courses!)

There were two strains of variola virus: variola major and variola minor. Variola major was much more dangerous, with a much higher mortality rate; variola minor typically didn't cause severe disease. Fortunately, infection with one strain conferred immunity against the other. Both strains are now eradicated. (People sometimes confuse variola minor with other viruses like cowpox and horsepox, but they're different things.)

There were four clinical forms of smallpox: ordinary (classic smallpox, associated with the rash you usually see in pictures), modified (less severe, often occurred in vaccinated people who got infected anyway), malignant (caused a flat rash instead of the usual pustules, associated with immune dysfunction, almost always fatal), and hemorrhagic (caused severe bleeding, and also near-universally fatal.) All of the non-ordinary forms could be difficult to diagnose because they looked so different from typical smallpox. The less serious "modified" form was often confused with chickenpox, and the hemorrhagic form was sometimes assumed to be a completely different disease. Occasionally, historical sources will refer to hemorrhagic smallpox as "black pox," with or without an understanding that it's caused by the same virus as ordinary smallpox.

Other relevant viruses:

Cowpox, caused by cowpox virus (an orthopoxvirus similar to smallpox) causes mild disease in cows, humans, and several other animals. Infection with cowpox virus confers immunity to variola—Edward Jenner noticed this relationship and used material from cowpox lesions to inoculate people against smallpox.

Vaccinia virus, another orthopoxvirus, is the source of the modern smallpox vaccine. It's closely related to both cowpox and horsepox (weirdly, it's actually closer to horsepox), but it's distinct enough to be its own species. Infection usually causes mild symptoms, and, of course, confers immunity to smallpox.

Chickenpox is an entirely different thing. It's caused by the varicella-zoster virus, which is a herpesvirus, not a poxvirus at all! Infection with varicella-zoster does not confer immunity to smallpox or any other poxvirus—chickenpox is from a totally different family.

So why are the names so weird and confusing? Why is everything about all of this so weird and confusing?

There are multiple reasons for this, so bear with me.

Historically, a "pox" was any disease that caused a bumpy rash of pustles/blisters. Chickenpox, smallpox, and the other "poxes" all cause superficially similar rashes—thus the similar names. (Even though we know now that chickenpox comes from a completely different family, this wouldn't have been apparent before the dawn of modern medicine.)

Smallpox was given that name to differentiate it from syphilis, which was known as the "great pox" when it first appeared in Europe. (Fun[?] microbiology fact: There are debates about the origins of syphilis, but the most common theory holds that it originated in the New World, and Christopher Columbus brought it back to Spain. In that way, it's kind of the inverse of smallpox.) Historically, smallpox was also known by a variety of other names in different European, Asian, and African cultures. Again, this gets murky, because historical physicians sometimes struggled to distinguish between similar-looking-but-different diseases.

Other poxviruses are often named after the animals in which they were first identified. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, though, and it can sometimes be misleading (for example, monkeypox virus was first discovered in laboratory monkeys, but it more often affects rodents and other small mammals. The disease formerly known as "monkeypox" was recently renamed "mpox" because the name wasn't accurate.) Also, some poxviruses aren't named after animals at all! It's a weird and inconsistent system (but a lot of virus names are kinda weird and inconsistent).

Related to the above: We don't even know where the name "chickenpox" comes from. I mean, we know it was called a "pox" because it causes a pox-y rash, but we don't know where the "chicken" part originated. There are multiple theories about this, none of which are definitive. The disease itself has nothing to do with chickens.

Basically, a lot of the weirdness is a result of historical naming practices—people identified and named these diseases before modern virology existed, and those names stuck, so now we have similar names for superficially-similar-but-ultimately-different viruses, and names whose origins have been completely lost to time. Later, virologists muddied the waters further by naming newly-discovered poxviruses after the animals in which they were first seen, even when these animals aren't natural hosts or reservoirs of those viruses. It's a mess! And, again, all of this is complicated by the fact that some of these diseases were very hard to diagnose (or distinguish from one another) before modern medicine existed. Now, we can sequence viral DNA and figure out what's actually going on—which viruses caused which symptoms, whether those viruses were closely related, and whether being infected with one disease conferred immunity to another—but historical doctors and scientists didn't have those tools, so they were doing they best they could with very limited information, and that led to a lot of weirdness in terms of how these viruses were named and classified. Our current system inherited some of that weirdness, so here we are.

TL;DR: Poxvirus names are messy. Smallpox is caused by variola virus, which has two strains: variola major (the more severe one) and variola minor (less severe). Cowpox and vaccinia are different viruses in the same family, and being infected with one of them confers immunity to smallpox. Chickenpox isn't a poxvirus at all, but a herpesvirus—it just happens to cause a pockmark-y rash that looks superficially similar to smallpox pustules (and mild forms of smallpox were historically confused with chickenpox).

(P.S. none of this is super relevant to the average person, so don't feel bad if you didn't know any of it. Unless you are a history major inventing new conspiracies about smallpox, in which case you definitely should feel bad.)

Sources & further reading under the cut!