#i HAVE however given up on making eye contact forever <3 idk how and ill never know how 💖

[so-very-small]

need a giant who’s chill with my nonverbal autistic rizz. i want to be able to walk on the kitchen table, not make a single sound, stare at the cereal like 👁️👁️, and have the giant hand me some and send me on my way. like ‘yeah the little guy in my house can’t make eye contact and only speaks every two weeks, but they’re chill’.

[lifeinthegladhouse]

long personal post apologies to anyone on mobile, just...scroll on by...

---

There’s so many things............I wanted to achieve in 2020, which is I’m sure what everyone has said. Somehow I still think 2017 was worse, but .... I don’t know. I was really alone then. I almost lost both my parents, this year I was safe with a better job, good partner, and only lost one (at least I got to see her once in a decade to say goodbye)....ultimately this brought me to heathenism in a weird and roundabout way. It’s hard to know she was really walking around with this poorly depicted Viking nonsense ‘false odin’ with cerberus (why?) going on, lord, she would’ve hated left heathens BUT ALSO wasn’t even a pagan to begin with (so she says, but being a pentecostal and having psychosis, while this does not a pagan make, made for a quite magickal and brutal experience). my mother was a trickster entity in living flesh. at first, i learned into having guides for the first time. i wondered if it was a coping mechanism, but i shrugged, because it was not my intention to see the numbers repeating, or the ‘loki’ every..single..day..for a week... in the weirdest fucking places... it was not my intention to lose my best friends in this city (which is not my final destination, ha) because they were too busy having poly drama, to, idk, support their friend, and then ghosted me, or came up with some weird passive aggressive bullshit. it totally dominated my 2020 - the pandemic, then mom dying, then the deities, then the loss. my card of the year was the hermit, i thought that was such a joke considering the pandemic. how could that then apply to me more personally? I haven’t had time or space mentally to recount the beautiful parts of the year because we’ve been stuck inside, inside during riots, inside during west coast smoke hell, inside where the spiders are. astoria was beautiful. it was god given. i knew what was real was real that day. it’s been seven months since mom passed, and i know her spirit has contacted me. it has brought me closer to my own spirituality which was accidentally rampant chaos magick that i was unaware of - introduced to me by ten years of tricksters who I never quite recognized. at the altar, id pull cards, i began to learn runes, and id ask, “were you always there? was that the presence that was always there?” I don’t know, much of the paranoid presence I felt my whole life ended when mom died. so much ended. i still want to write about it. again and again. because i forget that it happened, i compressed it so far back. everyone walked away and all that remained was my partner and the unseen. i would get straight answers on the altar, but never for that question. i never understood, and still hardly do, why loki came - was it to console me after the passing of my mother? somehow a veil had been lifted and my already wack ass intuition became 25% greater, somehow i felt seen and heard by others. at first, i was scared... i had always gravitated unknowingly towards tricksters and mercurial beings, loki came during the week of L*ghnasadh, after I’d been reading abt the ACTUAL “mercury”/hermes.... it was as if to be like, oh, you’re looking to NAME US FINALLY? THIS ENERGY, HERE _______. I was a little sheepish of Odin because of the association..... and I never quite got an answer. Sometimes still, I am struggling to understand this deity, however many a time loud and clear he and Loki have responded within the half-hour, be it some really weird ultra-specific shit to crop up, flickering shit, popping, knocking over. I turn to him frequently as, the more I read, the more I trust... this understanding of inarticulatable parts of myself - when I read about odr I was thinking of what this could mean for me, especially as a trans person, and it moved me. when I think about knowledge, and loss... when I think of the underdog vying that Odin (and of course Loki) represent, it is always with grace and honor that I am glad to be In It. I struggle tho, cos no matter how viscerally real my experiences have been, and no matter how little I would ever wish to disrespect them by denying faith, as a human who has run far from christianity and is skeptical of everything, every day, I’m like, ‘how much can I lean into this? is this ‘weird’ or delusional? am i acting like a child?” but, ..... I have learned from many smart and creative folks of the same ilk that we are not alone and the passage of time cannot destroy old gods so easily, and I am honored to be called to that. 2020.....that is.....to me, the year of death and rebirth. it was the only parting gift mom could give me. as she died, I told her I knew the lord had brought me there. I knew we had made it JUST in time, by many many strokes of good ‘luck’, to see her off. the last day we saw her was the last day she’d ever seen both her children together in her life. of course, she probably hardly recognized me. and she loved my brother more. had spent less time with him. oh lord, she did look at me with burning eyes of distrust and hatred, but that was not her fault. she was so ill. god she was so ill. dad joked, after she died, ‘maybe she’ll finally be in valhalla’, he didnt know what that meant. mom was a ‘devout’ christian woman of “god”. she was no pagan. she did not serve odin. but 2 months later when I discovered them, I heard his words ringing in my head, and I had to laugh. It’s been so hard...losing the queer comrades I had with me because of ? what ? exactly ? I still dn’t know, watching someone I spent 3 years being ‘close’ to basically patronize me that she always had reservations about us, never let me in, or get closer, like real friends, .... id cry and cry thinking, why, did i lose the one figure who brought me into this world, who i never had, for ten years, who abandoned me and hated every ounce of my being, and to confront this NOW in the middle of a pandemic, where i have zero way to the outside world to cope, and then to be left behind AGAIN by SO MANY PEOPLE, i felt Loki’s comforting presence. I’m trying to focus on the future again, that’s what 2021 is giving me. the “year” label, “when mom died” is over. even if that event forever changed my life far beyond that of a normal passing (?) I mean, it’s never normal when a mom dies, much less a woman like her, have mercy, it’s over. 2021 is the “year when we move to los angeles” its the “year when i start a REAL band again instead of be a side piece for a woman who cant get real with herself and her drum machine”, the “year when maybe ill take my adhd meds and hrt” we’re suspended in a stasis, there are big ups and downs. in two weeks i quit my med of 2 years, because it’s causing harm and i actually dont technically need to be on it anymore. im scared and excited. i need the change. i need the CHOICE. 

[transcriptroopers]

TranscripTrooper’s FAQ

I finally started getting enough repeats that I felt vindicated adding a FAQ. If you’ve asked me one of these questions in the past, don’t sweat it! All that means is that you helped alert me to a common concern that needs to be addressed. 

Why join the army if it's not the highest paid, the most prestigious, or the most well treated? For many people, it's a family tradition. You'd be incredibly surprised how much loyalty a person can have to any given branch strictly based on their familial relations. For others, it seems to be the most direct service when it comes to helping people, probably courtesy of seeing the National Guard being so prominent. Civilians have no idea how the military works; they think the navy just sails around, the air force just flies around, and the Marines just...idk...do whatever Marines do. Plus people think the army is just the Default Military. It's like the army is the “generic brand,” you know, like someone saying “Q-Tip” when they mean “cotton swab.” Others, quite frankly, couldn't join the other forces. You'd be surprised; I knew many people who originally wanted to join another branch but either weren't smart enough or weren't physically fit enough. I distinctly remember someone in basic saying he originally was going AF, but when he brought his ASVAB scores to their recruiter office they literally told him “the army recruiters are down the hall.” What does this piece of jargon mean/do soldiers actually use this jargon? See this post and if you still have questions be sure to send me a clarified ask. My soldier character received a(n) ______ wound from combat. Would this get him discharged?

To clarify, wounds both combat and non combat can get a soldier discharged, so your soldier doesn't have to be in combat to be wounded severely enough to warrant a medboard.

Eye: if there is permanent vision damage that drops the eyes below the standards associated with Army Regulation 40-501 paragraph 3-16e, which for reference is: (1) Vision that cannot be corrected with ordinary spectacle lenses (contact lenses or other special corrective devices (telescopic lenses, etc.) are unacceptable) to at least:

20/60 in one eye and 20/60 in the other eye, or

20/50 in one eye and 20/80 in the other eye, or

20/40 in one eye and 20/100 in the other eye, or

20/20 in one eye and 20/800 in the other eye; or

(2) An eye has been enucleated. (removed) Ergo it's up to you if your soldiers meets those standards after an eye injury. If your question is, “if he goes blind in one/two eyes” then the answer is “yes.” If your soldier is “legally blind” in one eye but it is correctable with lenses/surgery, the army covers that and actually allows active duty soldiers to get corrective lens surgery even without eye injury, so barring an unreasonably long recovery time I don't see why that wouldn't apply.

Ear: harder question. If your hearing is damaged enough, (”enough” being a subjective term) your soldier might at the very least face a mandatory reclass, which means the army will assign them a new MOS and they will not only have to go back to school for training in that MOS but they won't be able to do their current job any more. If the hearing loss is more severe, they may be medboarded instead. The exact numbers of acceptable hearing are probably not of interest to you but suffice it to say it's up to you whether the soldier's hearing is bad enough to warrant a discharge. I will say that soldiers being slightly hard of hearing isn't unheard of and it's also not unheard of for soldiers to be able to pass the hearing test but still have poor hearing in the field.

Limb: if the limb is amputated or otherwise non functional, it is grounds for a medboard. However, some soldiers have successfully been able to return to active duty with missing parts, although the vast majority of these numbers are those who've lost hands/fingers. Whole arms, toe, foot, and below-the-knee amputees are much less likely to return to active duty, although it's not impossible. IOW unlikely but up to you. Other: unless the wound or a mental illness would otherwise disable the soldier, there would be no medboard.

tl;dr: do you WANT it to be enough to get them discharged??  Also read this post about aftereffects of being medboarded via combat wounds.

I'm writing a fantasy/sci-fi story and I have to make up ranks. How do you suggest I start?/I have a soldier whose duties include X, Y, and Z. What rank would he be? Read these posts about ranks and if your question still isn’t answered then send a more detailed post explaining what you need. I will not help you come up with imaginary ranks. Enlisted Ranks Officer Ranks Rank Purpose Multiple branches working together What would a soldier with PTSD act like? You should consider reading @scriptshrink‘s post on PTSD. It’s a clinical assessment but it contains valuable information I consider nigh essential for writing PTSD characters. Other than that, I don’t have PTSD, (or at least PTSD associated with combat) so I don’t feel entirely right answering this question. I can tell you with some confidence that while their medical needs would be met by the army as far as medication goes and officially mental health is considered a priority, unofficially the military’s stance on mental illness is “you’re fucking weak.” How long are soldiers in combat? Generally? They aren’t often even IN combat, at least not in the current war. It’s absolutely a falsehood that most soldiers will see combat. Having said that, a firefight might last a few seconds to a few days, although with our current enemies I’d lean more towards seconds/minutes. Our biggest concern atm is actually IEDs.  What are the fraternization rules regarding soldiers/is fraternization really that strict? Officially you can read about this here An expanded-upon answer can be found here. Information about holiday events here. Fraternization across branches here. Short answer yes, the army does tend to take fraternization that seriously, but as with most rules it’s often dependent on the chain of command when it comes to just HOW seriously they take it. There might be demotions, article 15s, verbal and written counselling, changes of station, and there might be, you know...nothing. Personally I think the rules were a lot more strict when I was at home than when I was deployed. During deployment I think people can get away with pretty much anything because in a lot of cases it’d be significantly more detrimental to the unit if they punish the soldier than if they just let it go on until it becomes a problem.  Are women really called “females” in military environments? Yes, as are men called “males.” Calling female service members ladies, women, or girls is considered rude/derogatory. The only exception is female officers, who are called “ladies” as male officers are called “gentlemen.” It’s also now unacceptable in the military to disparage troops by using “girls/ladies/women” as insults. How much money does _____ make? The answer depends not only on the soldier’s rank but also their marital status, deployment status, and their Time in Service (TiS). You can read a good article about it here, but you can always just google “this year’s military pay chart” and something basic will come up. Be sure to take into account whether they have kids or take care of a parent! Where do soldiers get medical care? We normally get seen at the TMC, or Troop Medical Clinic. It can be as small as a trailer or as big as a multi-story hospital. If more intense care is needed, we might be sent to an actual hospital. But soldiers can also just get medical care at any location that offers medical care, whether civilian hospitals or clinics. They won’t be expected to foot the bill as long as they present proof that they’re active duty. Your leadership should be informed if you use civilian health care and if you acquire any medicine from them, and this is considered a sort of “no other option” choice so it shouldn’t be done willy-nilly. Does not (typically) apply to dental or mental health.

What are the most common injuries soldiers face? In combat we most frequently see extremity injuries, (52% of all injuries) and usually from explosives (75%). TBIs are also a common problem. When a soldier is hurt in combat we usually use the word “wounded” over the word “injured.” For the general army, I’d probably say sprained/twisted ankles. In most of the TMCs I went to, you don’t even get examined if you just walk in and say “I twisted my ankle.” They’d just throw you some ACE bandages, some ibuprofen, and the recommendation to ice it. It’s just such a mundane and boring injury, but it’s woefully common not only because of our level of physical exertion, but because the army won’t let you keep off your feet and you’ll be forced to keep working on that bad ankle so that you’ll continue to have problems with it forever.

What kinds of medical conditions disqualify you from service? I’ve gone into more depth/information about it here, but basically any chronic illness will be scrutinized by the military before you join. Mental illness included. If you’ve had bronchitis before, or an invasive surgery, (especially one involving pins or other foreign entities) that might be a DQ. Most allergies are a DQ, although it’s possible to get a waiver for less severe ones. IBS, diabetes, anemia and other similar chronic illnesses are an auto DQ. Even acid reflux is taken into account.  If you develop a chronic illness while enlisted, depending on the severity and how manageable it is, you might be permitted to stay in or you might be medboarded. There are active duty service members with diabetes for example, but if it becomes too much for the army/you to handle, separation might be initiated. So as is so often the case, if you want your soldier to develop a chronic illness, you’ll have to decide just how manageable the illness is. The army will allot time for medical care and give any necessary medication to the soldier.

What is the proper way to capitalize ranks and branches of service?

If you’re listing the rank itself, it’s not capitalized. If you’re using the rank as a title, it is capitalized. ”As the colonel trailed off, the sergeant left without saying a word.” ”As Colonel Vaughn trailed off, Sergeant Torres left without saying a word.” Similarly, if you’re directly saying “the U.S. Army,” it’s capitalized, but if you just say “the army,” it’s not. This is as far as grammar is concerned. As far as the inner workings of the actual military are concerned, these words are often capitalized regardless of their actual practical application. So while I recommend you write the story with the above rules, anything written by a service member will probably vary.

Didn’t you used to be part of the Script Family/are you still scriptsoldier?

Yes! I left Script Family due to my inability to keep this blog on topic, so I’m no longer affiliated, though I have left Medic’s credit up on my blog since I did start this blog because of her hard work and informative posts! I am not shy about sharing my political opinions on this blog, namely because I feel that the military is inherently political due to its chain of command ending directly with the president of the united states. 

What kind of opinions?

I am a leftist and an anarcho-communist. I I think it is reprehensible to join the military for any reason. Those are usually enough lol but there’s more!

Well then, why did you join the army?

Fair, no excuses. But for for context, I was a poor gay loner welfare kid from an abusive home and was targeted by military recruiters who hung around my high school from freshman year until after I graduated. I was convinced that I had no other options and that I would never make it otherwise. I did four years and got out as soon as I could. 

--

That’s all for now! I’ve probably forgotten at least one common question, so do check back now and then to see if I’ve updated the post. Please feel free to ask me any questions that aren’t covered by this post, or to ask for clarifications on things brought up in this post! -Kingsley

I no longer run a Patreon, but if you’ve found my blog helpful, consider buying me a coffee?