(no subject)

A number of years back, I wrote a Highlander story set in an imaginary future, in which Duncan, trapped in a vicious rekindled Balkan war, ended up choosing to do something seemingly hideous, in the cause of mercy, and was afterwards torn with guilt. At the time I wrote and posted it, I thought to myself, Self, you are really being *way* over-the-top and highly implausible with the scenario you've posited here. Some people wrote me back saying, in effect, "Duncan would never do anything this horrid! Plus, this is an awfully damn unlikely scenario!" My reply to the first part was along the lines of "Mercy can take some strange forms"; I didn't really have a reply for the latter part, because I kind of agreed with them.

And then just now I read this.

Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals. ...one New Orleans doctor told how she 'prayed for God to have mercy on her soul' after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save. ... One emergency official, William 'Forest' McQueen, said: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die."

I am ... pretty much speechless. Heart breaking all over again, for everyone involved.

(no subject)

Watched the House season opener (which was a weird and gut-twisty experience after reading the story I linked earlier this evening), and I have only one non-spoilery comment to make:

The compulsion to vid to Hallelujah is apparently one of those things that transcends the bounds of fandom.