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eddiesasspbrak · 5 years ago

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Forever and Always Ch. 1

Eddie is the only one of his friends to stay behind in Derry after high school, causing him to lose touch with some of them. Now 24, Eddie has heard rumors that his now famous, former best friend (aka love of his life) may be coming back to town. That won't be too awkward, right?

Ch. 2

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4k+ words

Most people who grew up in the town of Derry moved away as soon as they were able and never looked back. This was true for all six of Eddie’s best friends. After high school, one by one, they left Derry behind. Left Eddie behind. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t want to leave too. Of course, he did. None of their childhoods had been great. The only thing that made it bearable was having each other. When bullies came around there was power in numbers. Seven losers would always be more intimidating than three bullies who wanted to tear them down.

In fact, they’d met Mike and Ben while saving them from bullies. Individually they felt powerless, together they felt unstoppable. They could kill monsters as long as they stayed together. So, when they all left, Eddie found it harder and harder to leave his mom. He’d realized at a young age that most of his ailments were made up by her as a way of keeping him close. If he needed to be taken care of, then he would always need her. When he was older, he realized that it was her who needed to be taken care of. If he left, how would she survive? She was sick, needed to be needed. So, he stayed. He gave up his dreams of escaping Derry to stay by her side.

The community college wasn’t far outside of Derry, but Eddie found getting there without a car to be nearly impossible when there was no bus system within the town. His mom didn’t want him taking classes, so she refused to drive him or let him borrow the car. She hadn’t been happy that he had even gotten his license without her permission. She didn’t know about all the hours he’d spent in Richie’s truck, behind the wheel, bickering with the other boy while he tried to teach him to drive.

Richie. He’d begged Eddie to leave with him. To pack up everything they could carry in the back of his truck and just drive. Saying no was so painful. They’d both cried when he told him that he had to stay. He couldn’t abandon his mother. Richie had been angry, and he’d left like that. He left and he didn’t call Eddie to say he was ok like he’d promised he would. Watching him drive away had broken Eddie’s heart. He’d loved him in secret for years and he’d just thrown away his last chance to be with him. His last chance to be with the person who made him feel brave.

Eddie tried not to think about all the time they spent together in the cab of that old truck when he’d been looking at used cars. He’d gotten a job at the general store in town to help pay for a car, but even then, couldn’t afford one. He’d been texting Bill, distraught that he wouldn’t ever be able to go to college in any compacity, when he’d suggested online courses. It had crossed Eddie’s mind, but the old desktop in the corner of the living room wasn’t ideal. When his mom got mad at him, she changed the password. Never mind the fact that he was already nineteen by this point and getting too old to be grounded from the computer. If she found out he was trying to take online courses, she’d surely lock him out of the computer permanently, or get rid of it all together.

It was his sixteen-year-old coworker, who’d later left Derry as well, who listened to him complain and then offered him a ride to the nearest store selling laptops. It had hurt to spend the money on even the cheapest one, but $300 on a 14inch PC was easier on him than the cost of a car and insurance. And it was a lot easier to hide from his mom. It was on this laptop that he learned about financial aid, learned that at his age he couldn’t get it without her help. He was a ‘dependent’ apparently. He had to lie to her and tell her that his boss wanted him to take some courses as he was grooming him to take over the general store one day. It was a stupid lie, one that could unravel if she ever decided to talk to his boss, but it was worth the risk if she would let him take a few classes. She didn’t need to know what he was taking. So, she agreed, thinking that it would keep him in Derry with her for the rest of her, or his, life. He signed up for online classes and would occasionally let her see him work on something on the desktop so she wouldn’t know how much he was actually hiding. It was a little slice of freedom and it was exciting to have this little secret hidden away in the messenger bag he carried everywhere.

Since he had to keep most of what he was learning a secret from his mom, he only took one to two classes a semester so his workload would be small. If she knew that he was studying whatever he could get his hands on, she would think he was planning to leave her. Part of him thought that he was. He still didn’t think he could. What would happen to her if he just packed up one day and left? But the thought that he could, that he could use any of this new knowledge to find a job somewhere far away, was exhilarating. It began to feel even more like an option when he’d gotten a ride to campus to speak with an advisor and she’d suggested he transfer his credits to a state college to finish his bachelor’s degree. She told him it would open the door to more advanced courses and then open for more schooling if that’s what he chose.

It had taken some convincing and more lying to get his mom to help him do what he needed to transfer his credits and start at a state school, but eventually he made the move to their online system. Still, with the light course loads he took and his habitual divergence from prerequisites to explore other courses, by the time he was twenty-four he still didn’t have his bachelor’s degree. It didn’t help that he’d had to take a semester or two off when his mother had actually gotten sick and the guilt of all his secrets had been too much. She recovered and when everything was back to normal, that desire for an escape plan came back and he registered for classes once more.

He kept in touch with his friends through text and phone calls and social media. Not that he really used any form of social media regularly. Sometimes he’d check Facebook to see how Stan and Bill were doing, or he’d log into his practically nonexistent twitter to check on Mike and Richie. Bev’s Instagram was mostly pictures of her designs and her and Ben modeling them, while Ben’s was all pictures of them doing things together and their dog which he affectionally called their ‘fur-baby’. His friends all had lives and Eddie was in his mid-twenties, no degree, working in a small-town general store where he had to wear an apron, still sleeping in his childhood bedroom with no real life experiences. He felt pathetic. All seven of them had called themselves “The Loser Club” but now Eddie felt like the only real loser out of the bunch.

He’d often find himself confiding in Bill and Stan about how stuck he felt. They tried to encourage him to come out and visit them, but he never felt like he could. He’d been saving what little money he could for so long, the idea of spending it on a weekend trip felt frivolous. Mike had also tried to talk him into visiting. He tried to lure him with his proximity to Disney World, saying they could spend a day in the theme park. Eddie had reminded him who he was talking to. Yea, rides were fun, but had he read about the people who died because their safety belts malfunctioned? Or the rides that broke while in motion, hurting not only those aboard, but those on the ground as well? Mike conceded but he still believed he’d put up a valiant effort in their attempts to drag Eddie out of Derry, even for a visit.

Ben and Beverly had made the most tempting offer when she landed her first fashion show outside of school. It wasn’t anything major. Just a small line that was interested in buying some of her designs and wanted to see what she could do in a show setting. It was her dream to start her own line, but this was a foot in the door, and she couldn’t rationalize turning it down. They’d invited Eddie down to spend the weekend and attend the show. He wanted to go, wanted to support his friend. All of the other Losers were going to be there, and it would feel like a mini reunion. It would be the first time he’d seen any of them for a few years as they hadn’t been coming back for holidays for a while.

The biggest mistake he made was telling his mom the truth about the trip. She never liked his friends. Never liked the influence they had on her son. They were reckless, too willing to drag Eddie into dangerous situations where he was bound to get hurt. When he’d broken his arm at age thirteen, she had banned him from seeing them at all. He didn’t let that stop him though and eventually she stopped trying to keep them apart, though she did make it very difficult at times. She was glad when they all left, gave him a hard time when any of them came back to town for any reason and he’d run off to see them. So, when Eddie told her of his plans to fly to New York to see his friends, she mysteriously got sick and had to be hospitalized.

When she’d realized that she could no longer make him believe he was sick, she began faking her own illnesses to keep him close. He knew it was likely a lie, but he couldn’t in good conscience leave her in case it was real. He apologized to Bev, told her that he wished more than anything that he could be there. She had been disappointed, they all were, but they also understood and didn’t pressure him. A few days later, when his mother had, unsurprisingly, been released from the hospital with a clean bill of health, Eddie had been angry. He accused her of lying so he couldn’t go and see his friends and she’d cried and apologized. She had just been so afraid of him getting on a plane or something happening to him while he was in New York. He was a small-town boy; he couldn’t survive in the city. He knew that it was all bullshit, but he didn’t press the matter any further.

He’d received messages from all of his friends that weekend, telling him that they missed him and wished he was there. All but one sent him at least a few words. All, except Richie. It was no secret that their relationship had been strained ever since Eddie said no to escaping together. As Richie quickly found fame in New York and his schedule became busy, his texts to Eddie came even less frequently. When ever news would break about a new show Richie would be doing, Eddie would always send him a congratulatory text and only received a response about half the time. It hurt every time.

As much as he missed him, Eddie would never tell him how he followed his career from afar. He obsessively searched YouTube and twitter for clips of Richie’s live shows. He was just as stupidly charming as he had been when they were growing up. He could always make Eddie laugh, though sometimes he just annoyed the living daylights out of him. Richie told jokes of their childhood, Derry, and each of their friends. Every time he would tell a long drawn out embellished story about something they did together, Eddie would get a jolt of excitement knowing that he was on Richie’s mind in that moment. He rarely told jokes about Eddie. Sometimes he’d talk about his hypochondriac friend who would willing be the boy in the bubble and Eddie would smile in spite of himself.

Then there were the times when Richie would talk about his first love. He could never tell just who he was talking about. For a while he thought it might be Bev, but the stories didn’t fit her. He thought back to everyone they knew in middle school and high school but could never pinpoint just one person. Maybe he just created a first love for his stories made up of all the girls he’d had crushes on over the years. The list had been endless. Either way, Eddie hated those jokes. Sometimes he’d skip past them to avoid that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

There were rumors of Richie dating a girl from this TV show he’d guest starred on. Every time Eddie googled his name for any new news, he’d see the rumor sites pop up. He’d see her face, see the onscreen kiss they shared. When he entered ‘Richie Tozier’ in the search bar, her name would pop up as an autocomplete option and he hated it. He had nothing against her personally, it was just a kneejerk reaction when the man he’d loved since he was thirteen was possibly dating this person. It broke his heart to think of him happy with someone else. He knew it was an inevitability, but it didn’t make it any easier.

When the news that Richie was going to have his own Netflix special hit the web, Eddie just about choked on his water. He’d been at work when he read the headline. He’d never seen a complete show before, surviving on 3-minute clips on YouTube. Of course, they had a Netflix account, but he just knew what his mother’s reaction would be if she saw it on his watch history. Gerard, or ‘Gerry’, his teenage coworker, was also a fan of Richie’s and was always bragging about living in the same town as Richie Tozier online. He didn’t know that Eddie was friends with him. Or used to be friends with him was probably more accurate. He just thought he was another fan. Regardless, they had bonded over it.

“You ok there, Eddie?” Gerard asked, poking his head around from the aisle where he was stocking cereal.

“Yep.” Eddie said, coughing.

“Did someone send you an unsolicited dick pic again?”

Gerard was one of the only people who knew that Eddie was gay. He’d found out by accident when Eddie had taken an uber, something he hated to do, into the nearest city. He’d been to a bar before in town, but never to a gay bar. A small town like Derry didn’t really cater to people like him. He wanted to see what it was like, maybe get some experience under his belt. And it definitely wasn’t just after the rumor of Richie dating his costar first came out. He’d been nervous and wasn’t really enjoying himself. The music was too loud for conversation and, while there were plenty of attractive men, none of them did it for him the way Richie did.

He was ready to give up when he spotted a familiar mess of curly ginger hair amongst the other patrons. Sure he was mistaken, he decided to get a closer look just to be certain. He found Gerard sandwiched between a man and a woman grinding obscenely. Eddie forgot for a moment where he was and the big-brother-like bond he’d developed with the younger boy kicked in. Without thinking, he marched over and grabbed his wrist, pulling him from his dancing partners.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? How did you even get in here?” Eddie turned to look at the two he’d been dancing with. “He’s underaged! Did you know that he’s only sixteen?”

Gerard blinked up at him dumbly, and the two looked shocked and rightfully embarrassed as they both retreated into the crowd. Without missing a beat, Eddie dragged Gerard from the bar and out onto the street. It was quieter out there, but not by much with traffic and chatter from smokers leaning against the walls. He pulled his phone out and immediately opened the uber app with the intent of getting them a ride back to Derry. With their ride secured, he turned back to Gerard to lecture him.

“How did you even get in there?” He asked, exasperated.

“Me? What are you doing in a gay bar?” Gerard asked, more amused and surprised than upset it seemed.

“What?”

Everything finally caught up with Eddie and he realized what had just happened. He’d been so shocked to see Gerard there, he hadn’t even been tracking that he’d just let his coworker see him in a gay bar, successfully outing himself. The only person who had known about him until that moment was Beverly, and she only knew because they’d gotten drunk when they were seventeen and he’d started crying about his unrequited love. He never did tell her it was Richie, just that it was another boy.

“Did you not realize this was a gay bar?” Gerard asked, misunderstanding the look of surprise on Eddie’s face.

“No…I did...but wait, why were you in a gay bar?”

“Cause I’m pansexual and the only place to find someone who’s cool with it is someplace like this. Or the internet. And you?”

“I’m…” Eddie hadn’t said this out loud in years and the words stuck in his throat. “I’m gay.” The words came out hushed as he leaned in close for only him to hear.

“Wow, ok, I mean I should have guessed.”

“What? Why?”

“You’re the only person I know who’s as obsessed with Richie Tozier as I am and I’m crushing on him hard. I should have figured you had the hots for him too.”

“I do not…I’m not…ok…that’s beside the point. This is a bar. A twenty-one and over bar. How did you get in?”

“Fake ID.” Gerard said with a shrug.

He reached into his pocket for his wallet and pulled the ID out, holding it up for Eddie to see. Eddie squinted at it in the dim streetlights. Snatching it away, he got a closer look at it and scoffed.

“This worked? It doesn’t even look like you! I’m keeping this by the way.” Eddie stuffed the ID into his pocket.

“What? No, come on man. I need it.”

“No. You need to wait until you’re old enough instead of causing legal adults to break the law because you’re horny and look older than you actually are.”

“I never let it go too far. I’m a responsible delinquent.”

Eddie rolled his eyes and sighed a breath of relief when their uber pulled up. He opened the back door and pointed inside, ordering without words for Gerard to get in. He grumbled as he did as he was told and climbed into the backseat, Eddie following after him. They didn’t talk during the ride and Eddie had the driver drop them off outside of the general store. The last thing he needed was for Gerard’s parents to see him bringing him home after midnight, and Eddie’s mom didn’t need to see him getting out of a car with a child when he was supposed to be at a book club meeting.

Gerard was still grumpy when they got out of the car. He stood with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders raised, like he was waiting to be scolded again. Eddie sighed and leaned against the wall of the building.

“Look, I just don’t want you to get hurt, ok?” Eddie said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Ok. Whatever. It just sucks, you know? Being like me in a town like this.”

“Yea I know. I kind of lived it. Kind of still am.”

“Right…I mean I can pass as straight. I do like girls. It just gets boring only going for the straight cis girls around here. There’s only so many in a school with less than 800 students.”

“I get it. Just, try to wait two years so you’re at least of legal age and less likely to cause problems. And don’t try to drink at the bar until you’re twenty-one.”

“God, you’re so boring.”

“I thought you said you were a responsible delinquent.” Eddie couldn’t stop himself from smiling. He really couldn’t help looking at this boy like a little brother. He was the closest thing he had to a friend these days.

“Yea, yea. Ok. I won’t go back until I’m eighteen. You do realize I’ll still need a fake ID to get in though, right?” Gerard smiled sheepishly.

“I guess you’ll have to get a new one in two years then.” Eddie said, turning and heading toward home.

“You suck!” Gerard called after him.

“Go home and get some sleep, little boy!” Eddie called back, not bothering to stop.

That had happened about a month prior to Eddie nearly choking on his water and having a coughing fit at the register. Gerard had been a little crabby with him for a few days, but he got over it when Eddie showed him a rare clip of one of Richie’s shows that was hard to find online.

Eddie wiped the bit of water that had dribbled from his lips with the back of his hand while shaking his head no. He did a quick scan to make sure there was no one nearby who had heard Gerard. For someone who was trying to stay hidden, he talked about dick an awful lot while in public.

“No. I just…Richie’s getting a Netflix special.” He said, staring at his phone in disbelief.

“What?” Gerard dropped the boxes of cereal he was holding and ran over the counter.

He hopped up onto the counter and leaned in closely to Eddie’s phone. The article had a picture of Richie wearing a hideous shirt and smiling awkwardly. He was so stupidly handsome he was physically painful to look at. Eddie stared down at the face of the man he loved and thought of all the genuine smiles he’d seen over the years and how long it had been since then. His chest tightened painfully, and he was suddenly overcome with the nausea and breathlessness that usually accompanied a panic attack. He fished his inhaler from the pocket of his apron and put it to his lips, sucking in the medicine that would help him catch his breath.

“Damn, dude. I know he’s hot, but does he actually take your breath away?” Gerard asked, nudging him with his elbow.

“It’s the dust in here.” Eddie lied. “He’s not even that hot.”

“Yea, ok.” Gerard hopped back off the counter and made his way back to the cereal boxes. “I was going to offer you my Netflix login so you could watch it without mother dearest knowing. But I’m not sure that I can if you don’t think Richie’s hot.”

Eddie rolled his eyes but couldn’t ignore the burst of excitement he felt at the prospect of getting to watch it. He’d confided in Gerard a while back about how his mom hated Richie and would give him hell if she found out he watched his act. He’d given him a hard time saying, “Aren’t you like, 30?”

“Ok. Fine he’s hot. He’s just not my type.”

“He’s everyone’s type. But, fine. You admitted it so I’ll give you my login.” Gerard put the last boxes of cereal on the shelf and began breaking down the big cardboard box. “When is it supposed to come out?”

“I don’t know. Sometime this summer is all it says.”

“Ugh. I hate when they do that. Give us a month at least!”

Eddie nodded in agreement, still staring down at the picture of Richie. The nausea had eased a bit and was more like butterflies now. He opened his texts and took a deep breath as he typed out a text.

“Hey! Just saw the news about your Netflix special! Congrats!”

He stared down at the message, his thumb hovering over send. Were there too many exclamation points? Did he sound too giddy about it? Doubting himself, he erased the whole thing and tried again.

“Hey, Rich! Heard about your Netflix special. Sure it will be great.”

That sounded better but felt lacking. He tacked a little more onto the end, hoping to sound casual about it all.

“Hope your material is better than it used to be. No one thinks ‘your mom’ jokes are funny anymore.”

The butterflies took flight as he read that over again as a whole. This was the way they used to interact before things got all weird and distant between them. It felt normal, he just wasn’t sure if he should send it like that. His decision was made for him when Gerard appeared behind him and slapped him on the back, causing him to fumble his phone and hit send. He stared in horror as the word ‘delivered’ appeared below the blue bubble of text.

“What’s wrong with you? I’ve been calling your name for five minutes.” Gerard said, leaning back against the opposite counter.

“Sorry. I…it doesn’t matter. What’s up?”

“I was saying that Richie is the same age as you. You grew up here, right? So, did you know him?”

“No.” Eddie answered too quickly. “I mean, I knew who he was. I just didn’t really…know him.”

“That sucks. If you’d had any friends in high school, maybe you could have gotten us tickets to the show.”

“I had friends, Gerard.” Eddie finally put his phone away, sure that Richie wouldn’t respond anyway.

“Then where are they, huh? Or do you like hanging out with your coworkers that are fourteen years younger than you?”

“I’m twenty-four! That’s only like eight years!” Eddie said, throwing the towel they used to wipe the counter at him.

“That’s still a lot.”

“Go finish stocking the shelves you prepubescent asshole.”

Gerard threw the towel back at him and flipped him off but did what he was told. Alone again, Eddie pulled his phone back out to see that the text still said ‘delivered’. He didn’t even know if Richie had it set up so you could see when he read a message. Probably not. Easier to ignore people when they couldn’t tell you’d read their texts. He sighed and dropped his head down to the counter. He hadn’t seen Richie is six years, why was he still so in love with him? Whoever said absence makes the heart grow fonder was 100% abso-fucking-lutely correct.

#Reddie #it (2017)#it (2019)#richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #Ro writes

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applecherry108 · 6 years ago

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first of all hooooooooolyyyy shiitttt

FUCK tungle. it took like 30 tries to log in on desktop. admittedly, i was using the wrong password at first, BUT, even when i remembered the right one it kept giving me shit. This is what i get for being L337 i guess... -_-

anyways, im only on desktop so i can add a readmore to say:

i just,,,,,hate voltron. okay? It sucked. it fucking sucked. i watched the first season and it was like, okay yeah, this has potential. and then s2 was like, okay yeah not as good but maybe s3 will pick up...

s3 didn’t pick up. it was just one long death spiral by the same idiots who fucked up the atla sequel. i hate their writing, i hate their story plots, i hate how they butcher any good ideas they have, and i especially hate their inability to have good character AND plot development happen at the same time.

I got swept up in storm of klance and that’s about it. i have soft spots for other ships but at the end of the day i don’t care. i just don.t fucking,,, care???

the fandom is a mess, the crew was a mess, everything was a fucking mess from the get go.

Like who tf is this show written for?? it has to be for like, 8-10 year olds. It has to be. Everything is just so....stupid. Nothing is ever properly explained, motivations never really given, everyone is just a 2 dimensional cardboard cutout of a trope. And that pisses me off so much bc like??? other shows aimed at young kids can still have great world building. they can have good world building and characters and overall story and still be cheesy and a lil dumb. cheesy and a lil dumb is completely fine!! but voltron is just so...godammn... BORING!! it’s like i WANT to like the characters but its just so goddamn hard when everybody is so fucking flat. by all rights, i should want to marry allura. shes everything i loved when i was little, from her color pallet to her princesshood to her white fucking hair!! i should LOVE allura but i don’t!! i kind of hate her. why?? i don’t know!! shes so...boring! and flat! and fucking PASSIVE! everything in this show lands so fucking flat holy shit.

pidge at matts “grave”? yikes, that was second hand hard to watch for like.... “oooh this is so serious!” but the buildup wasnt there...it was kind of funny tbh... and HELLA awkward...

don’t get me started on lance and hunk. bolin was my favorite look character for the first few episodes and then he got knocked to Comic Relief and had maybe two (2) importantish moments. he/they may be part of the main cast but they’re not main characters. they feel like background props to the Actual Main characters.

which brings me to keith.

FUCK keith.

that’s my reaction after every! new! season!! is just,, FUCK keith. god the show functioned SO WELL without him. he’s just so...idk. i also don’t care. what was his character arc anyway? it SHOULD have been about learning to love and trust others but we only get that in lip service and speed run character development (i hate the quantum abyss...so much... like yeah, who cares about SHOWING our characters mature, let’s just tell that it happened in afucking montage.) if keith were a properly developed character he shouldve remained PASSIONATE and idk, run support?? that boy SHOULD have piloted red, end of story. period. keith doesn’t need to lead he needs to learn to TRUST others and that insludes trusting other WITH HIS LIFE. i won’t rant about how we should have had black paladin lance, but keith should have never ever been black paladin. even after he “matures” he still sucks at. he’s this awful,,little,, Shiro 2.0. and I hate it. i ahte it and i hate shiro just a little bit. even though he was arguably the most likeable character, he shouldve stayed dead. or missing. or whatever. he didn’t need to come back and they didnt need to make keith a little offbrand clone of him. i ESPECIALLY hate that they aged keith up 2 years for no goddamn reason other than to make him the Adult (tm). keith’s dedication to others was gre4at, but it should have, and im failing for this word here so forgive me, climaxed? cresscendo’d? whatever. /resulted/ in him playing support. not leader. lone wolf keith doesn’t need how to lead his pack, he needed to learn to HELP his pack. to be a TEAM PLAYER. he didn’t want the responsibility of leading bc guess what?? some people hate leading!! there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be support! keith’s entire arc is a huge mess of missed opportunities and a grand illustration that he is lm’s and jds’ favorite, just like fucking mako.

i won’t rant about mako, but just know i fucking hate him and the special treatment he gets, and good LORD does keith take over mako. keith isn’t space zuko he’s space mako and it fucking SHOWS.

okay, i’m losing steam here, but like.... so apple, why tf where u voltron 24/7 if you hated it so much? because homestuck was over and i needed a new hyperfixation. and i really had to force it for vld tbh. and at the end of the day, it wasn’t so much about the show itself as the potential of klance (or sheith, up until s3). between the interviews, the coding, the fucking EVERYTHING--it really felt like it could be canon. i knew in my heart it was queer baiting but i had HOPE dammit. hope that this could be killer representation, hope that these characters would delvelopment into something incredible. again, there was so much POTENTIAL. and all of it was wasted. everything really came to a head during the fucking game show episode. it was like lm and lds giving everyone who likes lance the middle finger, really driving home that “no no, he IS just stupid. he’s the comic releif. there’s nothing deeper about him and no one will stand up for him bc they all think of him as such.” and that just....broke my heart. we were so...SO close to lance actually mattering but nope! bolin’d again! and what was his purpose in s8? why to be an accessory to allura of course!

i’ve seen a lot of people really divorce themselves from canon and live solely for fanon, esp fanon klance but like.... i can’t. i just can’t. it’s so fucking hard to work with these cardboard characters. you can only draw so much depth onto them, you know? until the very last moments they had potential, but then it all got snuffed out. but who cares about canon? why bother with it? because! we don’t have a solid consistent fanon version of them! no one sat down and delivered the ten commandments of “here’s what we agree k and l are actually like” it’s stupid and it sucks because everyone has their own little differences and its so so tiring to basically be interacting with minutely different ocs all the goddamn time. canon matters bc it gives everyone the same base to work with. like a cooking showing with the same basket ingredients, but now it’s like.... ya’ll don’t wanna use the mandatory ingredients (and why would you? those canon ingredients are like, a century egg and spoiled sardines, they’re awful.)

okay, and im at work and just came back to this and dont remember my train of thought so like... what really threw all this into sharp clarity was the recent steven universe episodes. they were so...GOOD. so fucking good. so much plot and foreshadowing coming to a head. it was such a wonderfully satisfying payoff that it made me remember what a GOOD show is like, how vld is so very very /bad/. the difference is fucking striking. where one is an intricately woven tale with excellent character development and clear story AND character arcs, that can progress AT THE SAME TIME, one is a hacked together flaming dumpster firing that constantly falls flat and doesn’t know where its going or why. and it s so BORING! like fight scenes can be amazing! they can be well coreographed and tense! and we as the audience can be anxious about the outcome! and vld just wasn’t that! it was boring repetetive action in the least exciting way. and where su set up a lot of potential, holy shit they DELIVERED on that potential. not just for rep, but for characters! for story! for plain ol simple character interactions! and then, again, two dimensional cardboard cutouts.

and now with this difference in good vs bad show so very clearly highlighted for me, i just.... i can’t, anymore, with vld. it sucks. it sucked and i can’t pretend or force a fixation with it that just isn’t there, and truthfully, probably never was. maybe that’s why i’ve been struggling to finish my fic, struggling ever since i posted the last chapter, ever since s7, which, again, that game show was really the nail in the coffin as far as holding onto any hope that this tire fire would ever pick up. like a physically feel ill trying to finishing this stupid fic bc i don’t care so hard. i don’t care and i just... really want to be over it. im sick of seeing it everywhere, im sick of the drama, of the Discourse. like all fandoms have their issues, but hold fuck does vld fandom have a massive Purity problem. like, god, let people ship whatever. who cares. die mad about it.

like homestuck, idk if i’ll ever fully ween myself off vld but i want to move on. i want to enjoy Other Things without having this lackluster weight on my shoulders. and more than anything, i want to stop feeling like im obligated to like the same shit as i did two years ago, or last year, or hell, last week! feel free to unfollow, but yeah i just.... really needed to let this out in a proper post and not in the misc tags somewhere.

#behold my loathe letter to vld #if you actually enjoyed the show and don't wanna read all my bitching then like...probably pass this post up lmao #apple talks #to the tune of spam

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nancygduarteus · 7 years ago

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The Burnout Crisis in American Medicine

During a recent evening on call in the hospital, I was asked to see an elderly woman with a failing kidney. She’d come in feeling weak and short of breath and had been admitted to the cardiology service because it seemed her heart wasn’t working right. Among other tests, she had been scheduled for a heart-imaging procedure the following morning; her doctors were worried that the vessels in her heart might be dangerously narrowed. But then they discovered that one of her kidneys wasn’t working, either. The ureter, a tube that drains urine from the kidney to the bladder, was blocked, and relieving the blockage would require minor surgery. This presented a dilemma. Her planned heart-imaging test would require contrast dye, which could only be given if her kidney function was restored—but surgery with a damaged heart was risky.

I went to the patient’s room, where I found her sitting alone in a reclining chair by the window, hands folded in her lap under a blanket. She smiled faintly when I walked in, but the creasing of her face was the only movement I detected. She didn’t look like someone who could bounce back from even a small misstep in care. The risks of surgery, and by extension the timing of it, would need to be considered carefully.

I called the anesthesiologist in charge of the operating room schedule to ask about availability. If the cardiology department cleared her for surgery, he said, he could fit her in the following morning. I then called the on-call cardiologist to ask whether it would be safe to proceed. He hesitated. “I’m just covering,” he said. “I don’t know her well enough to say one way or the other.” He offered to pass on the question to her regular cardiologist.

A while later, he called back: The regular cardiologist had given her blessing. After some more calls, the preparations were made. My work was done, I thought. But then the phone rang: It was the anesthesiologist, apologetic. “The computer system,” he said. “It’s not letting me book the surgery.” Her appointment for heart imaging, which had been made before her kidney problems were discovered, was still slated for the following morning; the system wouldn’t allow another procedure at the same time. So I called the cardiologist yet again, this time asking him to reschedule the heart study. But doctors weren’t allowed to change the schedule, he told me, and the administrators with access to it wouldn’t be reachable until morning.

I felt deflated. For hours, my attention had been consumed by challenges of coordination rather than actual patient care. And still the patient was at risk of experiencing delays for both of the things she needed—not for any medical reason, but simply because of an inflexible computer system and a poor workflow.

Situations like this are not rare, and they are vexing in part because they expose the widening gap between the ideal and reality of medicine. Doctors become doctors because they want to take care of patients. Their decade-long training focuses almost entirely on the substance of medicine—on diagnosing and treating illness. In practice, though, many of their challenges relate to the operations of medicine—managing a growing number of patients, coordinating care across multiple providers, documenting it all. Regulations governing the use of electronic medical records (EMRs), first introduced in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act in 2009, have gotten more and more demanding, while expanded insurance coverage from the Affordable Care Act may have contributed to an uptrend in patient volume at many health centers. These changes are taking a toll on physicians: There’s some evidence that the administrative burden of medicine—and with it, the proportion of burned-out doctors—is on the rise. A study published last year in Health Affairs reported that from 2011 to 2014, physicians spent progressively more time on “desktop medicine” and less on face-to-face patient care. Another study found that the percentage of physicians reporting burnout increased over the same period; by 2014, more than half said they were affected.

To understand how burnout arises, imagine a young chef. At the restaurant where she works, Bistro Med, older chefs are retiring faster than new ones can be trained, and the customer base is growing, which means she has to cook more food in less time without compromising quality. This tall order is made taller by various ancillary tasks on her plate: bussing tables, washing dishes, coordinating with other chefs so orders aren’t missed, even calling the credit-card company when cards get declined.

Then the owners announce that to get paid for her work, this chef must document everything she cooks in an electronic record. The requirement sounds reasonable at first but proves to be a hassle of bewildering proportions. She can practically make eggs Benedict in her sleep, but enter “egg” into the computer system? Good luck. There are separate entries for white and brown eggs; egg whites, yolks, or both; cage-free and non-cage-free; small, medium, large, and jumbo. To log every ingredient, she ends up spending more time documenting her preparation than actually preparing the dish. And all the while, the owners are pressuring her to produce more and produce faster.

It wouldn’t be surprising if, at some point, the chef decided to quit. Or maybe she doesn’t quit—after all, she spent all those years in training—but her declining morale inevitably affects the quality of her work.

In medicine, burned-out doctors are more likely to make medical errors, work less efficiently, and refer their patients to other providers, increasing the overall complexity (and with it, the cost) of care. They’re also at high risk of attrition: A survey of nearly 7,000 U.S. physicians, published last year in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, reported that one in 50 planned to leave medicine altogether in the next two years, while one in five planned to reduce clinical hours over the next year. Physicians who self-identified as burned out were more likely to follow through on their plans to quit.

What makes the burnout crisis especially serious is that it is hitting us right as the gap between the supply and demand for health care is widening: A quarter of U.S. physicians are expected to retire over the next decade, while the number of older Americans, who tend to need more health care, is expected to double by 2040. While it might be tempting to point to the historically competitive rates of medical-school admissions as proof that the talent pipeline for physicians won’t run dry, there is no guarantee. Last year, for the first time in at least a decade, the volume of medical school applications dropped—by nearly 14,000, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges. By the association’s projections, we may be short 100,000 physicians or more by 2030.

Some are trying to address the projected deficiency by increasing the number of practicing doctors. The Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act, legislation introduced last year in Congress, would add 15,000 residency spots over a five-year period. Certain medical schools have reduced their duration, and some residency programs are offering opportunities for earlier specialization, effectively putting trainees to work sooner. But these efforts are unlikely to be sufficient. A second strategy becomes vital: namely, improving the workflow of medicine so that physicians are empowered to do their job well and derive satisfaction from it.

Just as chefs are most valuable when cooking, doctors are most valuable when doing what they were trained to do—treating patients. Likewise, non-physicians are better suited to accomplish many of the tasks that currently fall upon physicians. The use of medical scribes during clinic visits, for instance, not only frees doctors to talk with their patients but also potentially yields better documentation. A study published last month in the World Journal of Urology reported that the introduction of scribes in a urology practice significantly increased physician efficiency, work satisfaction, and revenue.

Meanwhile, there’s evidence that patients are more satisfied with their care when nurse practitioners or physician assistants provide some of it. This may be because these non-physicians spend more time than doctors on counseling patients and answering questions. In a perfectly efficient division of labor, physicians might focus on formulating diagnoses and treatment plans, with non-physicians overseeing routine health maintenance, discussing lifestyle changes, and educating patients on their medical conditions and treatment needs. Fortunately, over the next decade, employment of nurse practitioners and physician assistants in the United States is expected to grow by more than 30 percent; that compares with overall expected job growth of just 7 percent.

Yet the solution to health care’s labor problem isn’t simply to hire more staff; if not done right, that could make coordination even more cumbersome. A health-care organization’s success, in the years ahead, will depend on its success at delegating responsibilities among physicians and non-physicians, training the non-physicians to do their work independently, and empowering everyone—not just doctors—to shape a patient’s care and be accountable for the results.

Technology can make doctors’ lives easier, but also a lot harder. Consider the internet: It’s made information infinitely more attainable, but it takes time to find what one needs and to filter the accurate material from the inaccurate. The same goes for medicine. Technologies such as telemedicine, which allows for online doctor visits, can make health care more accessible and effective. But the use of EMRs, which is now federally mandated, is frequently cited as one of the main contributors to burnout. EMRs are often designed with billing rather than patient care in mind, and they can be frustrating and time-consuming to navigate. One attending doctor I know, tired of wading through a morass of irrelevant information, writes notes in the electronic chart but in parallel keeps summaries of his patients’ medical histories on hand-written index cards.

One can imagine a better EMR system, built around what health-care providers need. Today, in the absence of more effective tools, medical colleagues rely on email to coordinate patient care—or phone, as in the case of my kidney patient. But email chains can get buried in an inbox, and phone calls are rarely practical for coordinating between more than two people at a time. Neither mode of communication gets linked to a patient’s record, which means work is at risk of either getting lost or being replicated. But what if we were to integrate a tool into the electronic record that made clear what a patient’s active medical issues were, assigned responsibility to providers for overseeing those issues, and helped them to coordinate with each other? A dynamic EMR that didn’t just give physicians more information, but also helped them to prioritize, share, and act upon that information, would be far more useful than what currently exists.

As the world changes—as populations grow and technology advances—it is becoming essential that the workflow of medicine change alongside it. Fortunately for the patient with the failing kidney, the anesthesiologist was willing to get creative. Despite being unable to book the surgery, he unofficially reserved a slot for her and made the rest of his staff aware. The patient underwent the procedure the next morning, followed by her previously planned heart study. Everything worked out in the end. But I couldn’t help thinking: It shouldn’t be this hard to do the right thing.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/05/the-burnout-crisis-in-health-care/559880/?utm_source=feed

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ionecoffman · 7 years ago

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The Burnout Crisis in American Medicine

Article source here:The Atlantic

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mobilelegendsh4ck-blog · 7 years ago

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type2diabetestreatments-blog · 8 years ago

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Design Challenge Judge Daniel Crowe: One Cool Diabetologist Living with Type 1

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/design-challenge-judge-daniel-crowe-one-cool-diabetologist-living-with-type-1/

Design Challenge Judge Daniel Crowe: One Cool Diabetologist Living with Type 1

Please welcome a brand new judge this year in the 2011 DiabetesMine Design Challenge, Dr. Daniel Crowe. He is Medical Director of the Diabetes Program at Southboro Medical Group in Massachusetts, and a long-time type 1 himself.

As a diabetologist who wears his very own insulin pump and CGM, Dan brings a unique perspective to this contest and the prospects of innovative diabetes tools:

DM) First off, can you tell us what it's like to be a type 1 patient AND a diabetes doctor?

DC) Every day patients have the opportunity to learn that I too have diabetes, and they usually really sit back and say, "Wow, you understand!" That's almost always what they say.

We also have a team of diabetics. My nurse practitioner is a type 1 on a pump, and her nurse is, too!

So when we have patients who are new to us and not sure if they want a pump, we say, "Do you want to meet some pump patients?" Then the three of us come in the room, and it's really powerful.

What are your thoughts about being involved in this competition?

I keep switching hats, as I'm trying to understand it from a patient and a clinical world viewpoint.

As a patient, I'm very familiar with the daily frustrations with technologies not meeting the challenge. I'm excited to see some really innovative people coming up with things that will actually 'shift the paradigm.'

As a physician, the issue everyone's worried about as we get more and more data coming across our desktops is that at some point, we're going to get saturated. We need something else!

From the patient side, how could better-designed gadgets and programs potentially improve your own life?

If we judge design by how easy it is to use (level of complexity), functionality (does it interface well with current diabetes technology?), and reliability (accuracy, precision, does it break down often, is there good customer service?), then design is critically important, and a well-designed innovation would potentially have a significant impact.

We definitely agree that complex data logging alone is not the Holy Grail...

We doctors already are inundated with data that's presented in ways to try to "one-up" the competition but most still miss the mark. What's missing is information from the patient that allows much wiser interpretation.

For example, teleheath communication is being used for congestive heart patients, so cardiologists are getting loads of data too. There's a tremendous potential for overwhelming the system. It's all good stuff, but who's gonna look at it?

With diabetes you have so many data points. If you download a whole month of data from an insulin pump, it's overwhelming. If you then throw in patient-entered information like 'I forgot a shot,' 'I exercised for 2 hours,' — it's just so much!

Also, patients don't want to take the extra time to enter detailed diary-type information.

If data overload is the problem, then what characteristics do you think would make a "killer app" for diabetes care?

I like to think about different types of variation in terms of common cause — common things we do that can cause common variables.

"Diabetes Personal Calculator" - anyone tried it?

If someone can think about a way to create statistical analysis that allows the interpreter to determine if BG variation is due to "common cause variation" — (carb counting errors, changes in physical activity, stress, sleep variation, etc.) versus "special cause variation" (insulin was exposed to excesses of temperature, incorrect code on meter, expired strips, illness, vacation, etc.), that would be incredibly helpful.

To date, 'smart meters' and pumps still are not used adequately by enough patients to allow these day-to-day variations to be categorized in ways useful for better data interpretation.

So... an app that was really easy to use that allowed both glucose/ insulin/ medication/ carb intake data entry along with fun ways to prompt for things that might fall under either 'common cause' or 'special cause' variation which then would analyze and interpret the data based on these variations would be phenomenal!

It could look for patterns that would prompt questions like "did you forget your glipizide/Novolog?" or "check to make sure strip codes and expiration dates are OK?" or "you may be consuming too many carbs at meals," etc.

Is there any cool technology that you're using in your practice?

I'm awaiting arrival of my new iPad 2 — though that's not about the exam room chuckles But I was at a meeting at Brigham Women's Hospital where they're using it with patients while they're in the waiting room while waiting for a physician to come in. These are COPD patients, and they answer a questionnaire on the iPad that helps the doctor decide whether they need a certain kind of test. That saves a lot of time...

There are gonna be all kinds of ways to incorporate this technology into the clinic. In a few years, it'll be common practice for patients to use smart tablets of some sort during their wait time. This will be a very helpful way for clinicians to do initial screening.

But you know, the medical world is often one of the stragglers in terms of technology.

How do you define "success" for yourself and other patients living with diabetes?

Good clinical control (good, safe A1c plus low variability) plus a happy patient who feels they are in control (the diabetes doesn't control them) without breaking the patient's or the medical group's budget.

We're thrilled to have you as one of our this year. Again as both healthcare professional and patient yourself, what would you most like to see materialize out of this contest?

I think something that challenges the industry to change a paradigm would be great.

Thank you, Dan. We hope you know that doctors like you are game-changers too!

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

Type 2 Diabetes Treatment Type 2 Diabetes Diet Diabetes Destroyer Reviews Original Article

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