#it kinda feels like I got the severance procedure in a way….

[infamous-if]

watching severance s2 premiere

me: “this would be rlly good for coding lol I would love that”

partner: “…i fear you may have missed the point of the show”

[reneeluv154]

Waiting

Hope you like it!! 🤍🤍

In this imagine Jack finds you waiting for him outside his room but you’ve fallen asleep. He Carrie’s you to bed but you want him to stay with you. This is a sweet little imagine.

If you like this imagine I have a few more on my profile.🫶🏼

Jack had been busy, running around the hospital all day. He hadn't once glanced my way which was rather unusual. So here I sat, by his bedroom door waiting for him to arrive so I could have a quick chat with him, maybe steal a hug and a kiss. After waiting for another 30 minutes my eyelids started to gently close and my head rested on the cold wall, I was asleep.

I was woken by two strong arms carefully picking me up. “Shhh I’m here, I'm right here.” It was Jack. His voice was always different around me than around others. It was soft and gentle like a cool breeze on an october night or sweet and adoring like how I assume the moon looks at the stars. I slightly smiled resting my head on his shoulder, loving the way it felt to have him hold me. “Where are you taking me?” I whispered.

He chuckled “To bed darling, why did you not wait till tomorrow to see me? I come and get you every morning. I have to or you would never get out of bed.”

“You didn’t come get me this morning, I haven’t talked to you all day.” I lifted my head off his shoulder pouting at him. “I know, I’m sorry. I was rushed into a procedure. I couldn't come and get you. And then all day I was having to check on patients and do several more procedures.” He explained giving my lips a small peck. “Will you ever forgive me?” He asked, sounding like royalty while pushing open the door to my room. “I guess so.” I smiled as he laid me down on my bed tucking me in tightly, handing me my small stuffed animal.

“Thank you, Milady.” He bowed, making me giggle and him smile while sitting on the edge of my bed. “Your smiles the sweetest thing I've seen all day.” He looked deep into my eyes, his smile now small. One hand reached out, tucking a small piece of hair behind my ear stroking my cheek. “You get some sleep, okay?” I nodded, he tapped my nose wishing me a goodnight giving me a kiss before heading for the door. “Jack?” My voice was small and light but he still turned one arm holding the door open while his other hand was on the frame. “Can you lay down with me? I’m feeling kinda lonely.”

“Of course I can lay down with you sweetheart.” He closed my door stripping down into his undergarment. Something only I got to see, He crawled into bed cradling me in one arm gently toying with my hair, my head laying on his chest, my stuffed animal tight in my hand.

“I love you Jack Dawkins.” I mumbled drifting off.

“I love you y/n y/l/n” I heard him say with a soft kiss to my head before being enveloped by sweet dreams

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #371

It is day two of sinus, nasal, and tracheal discomfort. I have concluded that yes, I am very definitely sick. I feel sluggish, my nose is runny and congested and on fire at the same time. Mild headache all day. Scratchy throat. Fucken lame. Oh well.

Additionally, I managed to render my cellphone unusable. This morning, when my half-stupefied self woke to use the morning facilities, I managed to drop my phone. It fell from my clumsy, dyspraxic, half-asleep hands and crashed on the bathroom tile.

...Yeah. I was pretty bummed about it. And, given the number of folks who count on me, I can't really go without having a phone. But fortunately, I was already overdue for an upgrade, anyhow. So I put on a mask (to protect other people), and then M and I went and replaced it. It didn't take long.

I have a phone with a better camera now. So there's that, at least.

I spent the rest of the morning in and out of sleep, on and off the internet, and just generally feeling not great. Though I did remember that I made my famous (it's not really famous!) bone broth a while ago and stuck it in the freezer. I took a jar of it out and put it in the refrigerator to thaw:

The way I make it produces a bone broth that is both flavorful and nutritious. I'll probably drink it tomorrow. It'll give my body some strength to fight off whatever bullshit invaded it, no doubt.

Actually, come to think of it...

…!!!

Holy shit. Yes. I got sick with a mild case of the sniffles starting on the same exact day last year!

Yooooo, what the fuuuuuuuck. Hahahaha....

...Well, whatever. The procedure for any viral sickness is the same: eat good food, sleep a lot, hydrate frequently, take ibuprofen as needed, and wait for it to pass. There's really nothing else for it.

I thought I was gonna get soup today, but I did not, in fact, get soup today. That's because J went out, and when he came home, he brought some epic pizza with him:

We have, from left to right, a philly steak pizza, a chicken and mushroom marsala pizza, and a shrimp scampi pizza, from our favorite pizza place within reasonable driving distance!! I'm not really sure what that reddish-looking slice at the bottom is; maybe it's pepperoni? But that one was J's, anyhow.

...I wish I could get you some slices of pizza from this place. You won't find better within reasonable driving distance from my house. A few places come close, but... this one is definitely the best.

After eating the pizza, I changed over to the 8th set of braces for real. Here are some comparison pictures between the first set and the newest set; the newest set is on the right in all cases. Here's the top set:

...I really can't believe how far my very confused snaggletooth has moved! It's gonna be really weird to look in the mirror when it's finally in its proper place!

The other top teeth bow inward a little less than before, too:

...The set on the left is definitely a little bit more hourglass-shaped compared to the right. Wild.

Here's the bottom set:

The front teeth are WAAAY less crowded than before. And that other very confused tooth there is starting to fall in line.

That one on the left side of my mouth that used to point towards my tongue is now slowly starting to point straight upwards like it's supposed to, too!

...It's been kinda crazy, tracking the progress as the inside of my face rearranges itself. I wonder what you think. Isn't it cool???

I'm pleased to report, too, that set number 8 is a LOT less difficult now that I've switched to it when I was supposed to, instead of prematurely!! Hahaha!!

...I spent most of today resting, so I don't have a whole lot else to tell you about. I'm probably gonna start playing video games soon, though. So if you wanna come hang out with me, you'll find me here:

...Though, admittedly, I'd really much rather watch you learn how to play video games. I think that'd be a lot of fun. I have a number of them that I think you'd really like.

Well, I guess that's it. Don't forget that you're loved, okay? Because I love you. And lots of other people do, too; you just haven't met them yet. My world is chock full of people who would treat you like an actual human being (because that is what you are, no matter what any nasty-ass shit-goblin tries to tell you) instead of like a commodity to be exploited.

...Sephiroth. Come to my house and try it. Come to my house, and let the present moment be louder to you than your past. Come to my house, and let the voices of those who love you be louder to you than the voices of those who tried to control you. You've already tasted hell. Come see what heaven is like before you write yourself off, okay? I know you've witnessed more than a few mockeries of what loving, healthy relationships are supposed to look like, but...

...You'll have to replace “little girl” with “little one”, but... you get the idea, I'm sure. You're not done yet. Nothing is hopeless.

And... I'm here. I'm real. My house is here, and it is real. And its doors are open to you, ready to welcome you with joy and compassion, whenever you're ready. We'll keep calling out your name and waiting.

...This formerly beaten, broken, and silenced human is learning to shout your name into the void, just on the small chance that you might hear it and return to yourself, because you are worth overcoming terrifying conditioning for. You are worth it for me to try rising up from being enslaved by past memories for. You are worth doing all sorts of difficult, impossible things for.

Sephiroth. For once, there is a person right here, who, instead of asking you to do impossible things to prove your worth, is willing to do impossible things herself, just to prove to you that you are and always have been lovable and worthy, from the very moment you came into being.

I am no fanciful dream. I will always be here, ready, waiting, and overjoyed to shatter the illusions about the world that you were brutally conditioned into believing. I will continue to stand here in stark defiance of so-called "conventional wisdom", with my head held high, my gaze fixed upon you, and my hand outstretched in welcome.

...And I'm not going anywhere. Even if by some misfortune I am prematurely ripped from this body, you know what's gonna happen? I'm gonna choose another "fucked up" and "upsetting" life to be born to so that by the time I'm strong enough to weave it into something beautiful and kaleidoscopic, I'll understand you well enough to reach my hand to you in hope and compassion once more. And maybe next time I reach for you, I'll live in a less genetically fucked up body, and therefore be able to do a better job of it.

I will continue to exist joyfully, gratefully, and lovingly, in stark defiance of those people who think that lives like yours and lives like mine are so "fucked up" and "upsetting" that we "shouldn't have been born in the first place". I will continue to weave rainbows from the darkness I was given, no matter which bitter-hearted, nihilistic people insist that it can't be done.

Come stand next to me and do the same. Because I know for a fact that you'd be able to do it even more spectacularly than I can, no matter who the fuck thinks otherwise.

Please stay safe. I'll write again tomorrow.

Your friend, Lumine

[ionfusionpunk]

hello, what’s this about awake craniotomies and clone chip removal? (I don’t follow you, I just saw your note in the reblogs and went “oooo this seems interesting!”)

Heyo! Of all the things I've commented on a post, I think this is exactly the one I expected to hear about the least lolol. I'm warning you, this is... a long post. It got away from me, I'm so sorry T-T (It's heckin long. I'm really sorry. I'll summarize at the top and you can read more beneath the break if you want.)

Long story short, I hyper fixated on this tiny little detail that really doesn't actually affect anything within the SW universe lmao.

TL;DR: The clones should be awake for their chip removal procedures with the exception of extenuating circumstances. Also, disclaimer, I'm not in the medical field, I just love research. If I get anything wrong, anyone is free to correct me :)

If you have any questions, please ask, I'm not very good at explaining things in way others understand at first. So it all makes sense to me, but you might not follow my leaps in logic 😅

Longer story: I was reading a fic this morning, and the clones involved got their chip removed. The text said something about 'waiting for them to wake up from the surgery', and it just kinda... idk, hit me that I have never ever read any fic where the clone doesn't have to wake up from being completely sedated for brain surgery.

Now, look. Write what you wanna write, like I said, it's not a big thing. But one of my neurodivergent quirks is that inaccuracy/misinformation/ignorance (willful or innocent) kinda bugs me? I like knowing that other people know things - know correct things. It brings me satisfaction and helps me sleep at night. So I kinda notice trends in what people seem to not/know.

My first thought when I realized the trend of complete sedation for brain surgery/chip removal led to me to draw two conclusions: a) As happens in fandom, most everyone just writes clones completely sedated for this procedure bc everyone else does. No biggie. It's easier, and again, doesn't really matter. b) Most everyone is working off misinformation pulled from inaccurate medical dramas and the assumptions made by the average fic writer. Again, not an issue. It's fiction. I just like... accuracy. So my brain took this and went ham.

Kay. So, there's this really cool thing about the brain that I'm starting to think isn't common knowledge? I'm kinda a nerd for weird medical things, and it's been a long time since my high school biology class where I first learned about this, so maybe it's just me. The brain doesn't have any pain receptors. None. Like, if you had just a living brain in the palm of your hand and you stabbed it or punched it or whatever, it wouldn't feel pain. Pressure maybe, since it still has touch receptors, but no pain whatsoever. The only pain receptors present around the vicinity of the brain are the ones around the brain.

This little fact led to a really cool and helpful medical advancement several years ago: this thing called awake craniotomies, or brain surgery where the patient is still conscious. The benefit is that it allows the surgical team to engage the patient and actively monitor cognitive function; this is a far step from waiting for the patient to wake up in order to determine if the surgeon done effed up and turned the patient into a vegetable - if they woke up at all, that is.

Originally this was practiced on epileptic patients bc, yanno, epilepsy. It's a really finicky condition, after all. Since then however we've managed to find other treatment options for epilepsy and other related conditions, so awake craniotomies (or conscious craniotomies as I call them, since it alliterates lol), so we've moved away from brain surgery there. Instead, awake craniotomies are now most often performed when removing or recessing a brain tumor. Again, it's a really finicky process, and the surgeon and their team really like being able to check on the patient during the whole process.

Before anyone freaks out about the pain receptors around the brain, there's an answer for that, too. A local anesthetic is used to completely numb the skull and scalp. Think of an epidural; it's the same idea.

Now, you may ask, how this all relates back to SW? Well, that's a great question lmaoooo. Now, in all of canon SW, there are only... seven (maybe eight) instances of a clone getting their chip removed. Tup, Fives, Rex, Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, and Omega (and Crosshair if his chip actually was removed like he said, I haven't watched TBBS2 yet). Actually, did Kix? I don't remember. Anyway.

I'm operating off the assumption that SW medical knowledge/tech is about equal to our own - i.e. that they still use many of the same procedures/practices/techniques for most things bar canonical exceptions. My friend in the server however pointed out that they weren't sure any clone medic could perform a complex brain surgery. Now, that's a fair point. The Kaminoans wouldn't care to teach the medics how to perform those surgeries on each other; they're products, they can be replaced, so what's the point?

But. Here are my counterpoints to that.

First. In the event of an emergency, it would only make sense that a clone medic be prepared to perform any sort of necessary procedure on a natborn officer or even their Jedi general/commander in the event they could not make it to a medical station or a proper surgeon in time. If there were natborn medics trained in complicated procedures and stationed on the ships, then there's always the chance there would be far more clone medics than them, and thus if they die, the clone medics would need to be able to step up in their place. So. Clone medics can probably perform brain surgery.

Second. With Fives, Rex, and CF99 (minus Crosshair), they remove their chips via surgical droid/machine. In fact, both Rex and CF99 do so on a GAR class ship. This shows that not only did the clones have access to the necessary technology, but it could also be easily operated. And not only that, but the only thing they needed was a program to locate and remove the chip. I think the importance of the program is that the machine itself can't perform a Level 5 Atomic Scan, so the program is needed to triangulate the position of the chip for the surgical machine itself.

Now. As to why an awake craniotomy is the way to go. Again, it allows the team to actively monitor cognitive function. Only in extenuating circumstances will the patient be completely sedated. This could be preference on the patient's part or due to certain circumstances.

Look at Tup, for example. His chip was rotting in his skull, and it's treated like a tumor (technically it is). Keeping him awake risked damage to himself and others. In light of this, it was safer for him to remain fully sedated. Additionally, he probably couldn't be revived completely either due to the already existent brain damage. This is an extenuating circumstance. Note however that there was still a qualified individual present for the surgery: the AZI droid maybe Nale Se, maybe Fives, I legit don't remember I'm so sorry). Now, there is another side to Tup's case: the Kaminoans. Nale Se wouldn't have cared for Tup's continued functionality; she only wanted his chip. She would have kept him sedated out of convenience, because the intent was always to have him decommissioned anyway.

Now for Fives. Fives learned about the chips. He had his removed. Who helped him? AZI. However, my theory here is that it isn't actually AZI performing the surgeries. I think he just... holds the programs for various surgeries and programs the surgical machine. We don't see anything of Fives' actual chip removal procedure, only the aftermath. I hypothesize that Fives was awake in the machine however, just properly anesthetized by AZI - who, as a medical assistant droid, would most likely be programmed as an anesthesiologist - and also observed by AZI. What I'm saying is that AZI probably was monitoring Fives' cognitive functions while he underwent an awake craniotomy to remove the chip in his head.

Rex. We know nothing about that procedure, just that it happened (unless we do, idk). Either another clone medic helped him and was there to monitor cognitive function, or Rex involved the help of another droid in order to be properly anesthetized for the process. Given the intense nature of the circumstances, he wouldn't have wanted to be fully sedated for the process in case he had to respond quickly to the chaos - which he did, leading ultimately to him and Ahsoka escaping with their lives. So, he wouldn't have been monitored (except maybe by a droid), but he definitely wouldn't have been fully sedated, either.

Then for CF99. For these procedures, we see Tech program the machine and then stand watch as they go in. They aren't sedated, with the technical exception of Wrecker (iirc, he was stunned unconscious). It's not just caution or paranoia that makes him observe, and not even just his knowledge of what's happening: it's procedure. He's there, as the only one who would know how to check, monitoring the cognitive function of his family.

Now, the conclusion, lol.

I mentioned my two hypotheses earlier about why fandom as a whole writes the clones being completely sedated. After going through all of this, I'm leaning more towards a simple abundance of misinformation. It's technically and tactically safer and more correct for the clones to be awake for their chip removals, and in fact seems to be subtly portrayed in canon (though it's really written in a way that can be interpreted either way).

The moral of this story is that TV medical dramas are shit and should never be taken at face value. Honestly. No one wakes up after CPR. They remain unconscious for a while. Defibrillation doesn't wake a person up, either. If you're hit hard enough to be knocked unconscious, you have a concussion. It takes seven minutes to kill a person by choking them, not seven seconds, but you can make them pass out in seven seconds if you apply pressure to the write spots on their neck in order to cut blood flow to the brain. Stuff like that. Oh, and yeah: awake craniotomies are a thing and are the safe way to remove a clone's chip.

[stevetonyweekly]

SteveTony Weekly - March 24 - Week 12

Happy Sunday, my friends! Check out this week’s five recs, and be sure to kudos and comment on the ones you enjoy! 

non functional requirements by lazywriter7

“Morning Tony.” Someone greets from close to the front row. Gwen, who’s waiting for her Macbook to complete its primeval, laborious booting up procedure, feels her shoulders sag even further down. God, not this shit again.

“Did your coffee machine explode again?”

“Implode, and no.” The lecturer – Tony – cracks a brief smile. The band t-shirt he’s got on is mostly just wrinkles, his hair flattened straight down the sides like it hasn’t been washed in a couple days. Really gives Gwen such an inspiring picture to look up to for her own prospective career in academia. “And just for that not-so-subtle commentary on my opening salvo today, I’m gonna teach this entire lecture using a metaphor.”

~

Gwen Stacy isn't having the greatest day, and that's before her System Designs Engineering professor starts explaining the material through the lens of his strained-sounding relationship. With his boyfriend in the audience.

arei’s thoughts: I really loved this. It’s outsider POV, and Steve is the ‘bad’ boyfriend in this, but they’re both trying--sometimes failing--to make things work. The way they lean into each other and learn from their mistakes is lovely. 

An Educational Experience (The Good Things Come To Those Who Wait Remix) by valdomarx 

Ults Tony has a nice day.

aka Tony talks Steve through sucking his cock.

arei’s thoughts: it’s no secret that I adore Ults and this one is so lovely, Steve is so grumpy and pining so damn bad if he’d get out of his own way, he could be SO HAPPY. And then it’s just hot. Check it out. 

take a long line by ShanaStoryteller

Steve knows that Tony Stark is going to be a problem from the first line in his file.

Designation: Alpha

arei’s thoughts: I love the a/b/o dynamics in this. The way that Steve kind of fumbled them on account of his coming from a different time, and the way Tony was so anxious to care for EVERYONE around him. The scene where he tries to feed Steve a sandwich is quite possibly the cutest thing I’ve read in months. 

Even the Score by Sineala 

After Tony risks his own life to save Steve from the deadly Bloodwash gas, he's in bad shape, and he needs immediate treatment. Thanks to the treatment, he doesn't quite remember what's going on, but he does remember that people have been trying to kill him and that he can't trust the government. Since the Secretary of Defense did try to murder both of them today, Steve can't exactly tell Tony he's wrong about either of those things -- but, unfortunately, Tony doesn't remember who Steve is. And, even more unfortunately, Steve taught Tony to fight.

arei’s thoughts: I love this fic. It’s a very simple plot and premise pulled from the comics but it’s just so well done, and I love seeing Tony competent and dangerous even without the suit. Sine’s characterization in this--on both Steve and Tony’s parts--is just so lovely and well done. 

pretty baited trap by Areiton

The first time Tony walks into the Trisk, he’s following Tiberius, his eyes downcast, a perfect five steps behind his Alpha. He’s wearing a suit, cut in traditional omega style, because he’s an asset, a part of the display of wealth and power as much as the car they arrived in and the expensive watch Ty is wearing, the deliberate slight of being late and the bottle of wine that hangs from three fingers, careless, like it’s not worth several thousand dollars.

It’s the same display Ty has put on a dozen and more times since they Bonded. The only thing that changes is the location, the Alpha that Ty is trying to impress.

Where Tony ends up. His role in the evening’s proceedings. Those are already determined. This is a business deal and he is the pretty baited trap.

arei’s thoughts: well, I wrote this one but. I’m adding it to the list because I kinda love it. It’s very soft, and a little dark, but the devotion that grows between Steve and Tony is…lovely. 

[extasiswings]

As someone who never watched bones, the bones blueprint???

What is the Bones blueprint? WELL, LET ME TELL YOU. So Bones is the show with one of, if not THE hetero slow burn ship of classic Fox procedural shows in the mid-2000s-early 2010s. (Pretty much every main network had at least one major procedural slow burn at a time. Fox had X-files, then Bones. ABC had Castle. CBS had NCIS and The Mentalist…you get it). So, let me set the stage with our characters:

Seeley Booth, played by David Boreanaz. Booth is an FBI Agent and former Army Ranger (with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart and a certain amount of PTSD that he doesn’t like to discuss). Catholic. Complicated relationship with his family. More than a little repressed. Definitely needs therapy (and gets it eventually—at first when he’s required to go, and voluntarily in later seasons). Good at and devoted to his job. Single Dad who feels like he missed out on a lot of the early years of his son’s life and worries about being a good father (he asked his ex to marry him when she got pregnant, but she turned him down even though she loved him—at least early on in the series even though they aren’t together it’s discussed that they have a tendency to fall into bed not infrequently) [I swear I’m not making this up]. Anyway, you get the picture.

And behind Curtain No. 2, we have:

Temperance Brennan (Bones), played by Emily Deschanel. Brennan is a forensic anthropologist. Super smart, super scientific, doesn’t have great social skills, but definitely has the whole “perceived as cold but actually feels things very deeply” thing going on. Tragic backstory. She’s also a novelist.

So! Booth and Brennan. They work together, they’re partners, they solve murders. And, naturally, they have the whole opposites thing that works for them—she’s very book smart, he’s very street smart, she believes in facts and science and logic, he believes in intuition and gut feelings and faith, etc. etc. As is often the case with the aesthetic of the crime procedural slowburn ship, they start out sort of reluctantly working together, but eventually develop a real partnership built on trust and friendship (and love!).

Early on, she has some things in her past with her family that she asks for his help investigating so that she can get answers. There’s also a time in the second season where Brennan gets kidnapped by a serial killer and buried alive while Booth is stuck trying to find her, which in addition to still being just An Episode(™) remains one of the great, classic, early-in-the-slowburn “I almost lost you and it made me feel Some Kinda Way, but no no we’re just friends really, nothing to see here” defining arcs, especially since Brennan starts dating someone not too long after. The same serial killer returns in season four and snatches Booth that time, and then it’s Brennan’s turn to find him (with the help of Booth’s younger brother). Anyway, classic slow burn—there’s a lot of Implication that you could read into if you wanted throughout the first several seasons, but not necessarily super concrete (although they get caught under the mistletoe once), and there are several rounds of saving each other in various ways as over the years they just become closer and closer until they’re Partners(™) in every way (even when they’re dating other people).

What’s making me yell and scream today though, is: the S4 finale and S5. In the S4 finale, Booth is in a coma after having brain surgery. He has a wild coma dream where he and Brennan are married and they run a nightclub, but there still ends up being a murder—ANYWAY, irl Brennan basically spends the whole time he’s in a coma at his bedside, but then he wakes up and he has no memory of who she is. Pivot to S5, Booth remembers her again, and also feels like he might have romantic feelings for her, but (in part because of some third party commentary) questions whether they’re real or just a side-effect of the surgery. He sort of tells her anyway, but flubs it massively. Later in the season, we get Booth’s son being concerned that his dad doesn’t have a girlfriend, both Booth and Brennan separately getting relationship advice from third parties, and Brennan getting asked out by a new guy. And then! The 100th episode.

The 100th episode, which reveals the start of the series wasn’t their first case, they worked together once before and kissed and almost slept together, but hadn’t ended up going all the way. And after they’re done telling their story, Booth finally stops and kisses her and gets to give his big damn love confession, lays it all on the line, tells her he’s always known she was the one and wants to really try…and she freaks out and cries and turns him down, and he accepts it but says he has to move on. And then they both date other people before fully running away from each other for many months (Brennan on an anthropological dig, Booth back to Afghanistan for the military). (And then, when they come back, she’s ready to put on her big girl pants and give it a shot, except that he went and got a girlfriend who he seems happy with so we all get to suffer through a season of angst and pining while he proposes to someone who isn’t Brennan etc while everyone else is like “you’re still in love with her though” but they do sleep together by the end of S6 and ultimately get married and have two more kids (not in that order)).

So, yeah—the blueprint! Making me especially crazy because here we are with Buddie on a Fox procedural, 4 seasons since they really started trying it seems to make Buddie something potentially real, and Buck is heading into a coma where he's about to hallucinate another life, and the 100th episode is coming up near the beginning of next season (and I really hope Fox learned from Bones that there's such a thing as dragging out the slow burn too much and just lets them be happy after the big damn feelings reveal but XD).

[darkx-the-dragon-kn1ght]

Pokémon Reborn Screenshot Let's Play: Chapter 32

Well, here I am again, now with several less wisdom teeth. But honestly, this chapter didn’t get delayed as much as I was worried it would be. It probably helps that I specifically planned to do the actual play session before the procedure, so that way all I’d have to worry about would be writing and post-making. Which honesty, is was less taxing during recovery compared to actual gameplay stuff and all the strategizing I tend to do during battles.

Another slight delay came in the form of a message I received, in which someone brought to my attention that my method of tagging every post of this Let's Play is kinda clogging up Tumblr's tagging system with regards to Pokémon Reborn? I didn't know, I don't check the Reborn tag in order to avoid spoilers, but I'm glad someone who does check it told me about it, I probably wouldn't have known otherwise. So, I spent a few hours going through the past sections, removing all the tags besides content warnings and Porygon Appreciation™, so if you notice any differences in the tags all of a sudden- that's why. From now on, I'll only be maintagging the actual main chapter posts (like this one)- hopefully that'll clean the tags up.

Anyways, I felt it was especially important to ensure I'm at my best both physically and mentally this time around, because here we are, on our way to deal with yet another PULSE! Yes, it's the culmination of this entire Apophyll Academy story arc, and I have no idea what to expect besides more Team Meteor hijinks. But I do have a feeling it’s gonna be big and dramatic in some way, like- we haven’t had a Rhodochrine Jungle moment in a while, so I feel like we’re due for something like that, right? Am I overthinking stuff?

Well, regardless of if I’m overthinking future plot developments or not, I still need to recap what happened last time to give proper context to how we got here. So, let’s take care of that!

Thanks to the tip from Lettie, Xera takes Amaria’s boat to Azurine Island, a swampy island in the middle of Azurine Lake, in order to investigate Team Meteor’s activities there.

Shortly after arrival, Xera finds an earring in a puddle- one belonging to the still-missing Cain, an indicator of his presence on the island.

While exploring the island, Xera is ambushed by Aster and Eclipse. After confirming Cain is held captive on the island, Eclipse remarks that Xera is on her own to deal with the two of them for once, and is eager for the opportunity to take care of the trespasser.

Despite being outnumbered 2 to 1, Xera is able to defeat Aster and Eclipse. At this moment, Aster lets it slip that Team Meteor has a secret lab on the island, to Eclipse’s chagrin.

Eclipse soon admits she feels sympathetic to the plight of Apophyll Academy. She knows about Kiki’s terminal illness and hates the idea of “kicking someone while they’re down”, given her own father’s issues. However, there is little she can do as a Team Meteor Private, so she instead gives Xera a hint to the lab’s location before retreating with Aster.

Xera is able to locate the secret lab inside an innocuous building at the heart of the island. Inside, Xera finds Taka contacting someone as well as Cain and a Camerupt inside prison cells.

According to Taka, Azurine Island used to be the center of the effort to breed Pokémon and repopulate the Reborn region- before Team Meteor shut down the project. Additionally, the Camerupt is the key to Team Meteor’s plans for Apophyll: they will use a PULSE on it to allow it to amplify enough reactive energy to erupt Pyrous Mountain, thus wiping out Apophyll Academy.

After informing Xera of this plan, Taka sends out his Pokémon to battle her- a challenge that Xera accepts.

Xera defeats Taka, who takes the loss in stride, not-so-subtly implying Xera should come to Pyrous Mountain to stop Team Meteor. Taka and his Grunts retreat with the Camerupt, leaving Xera free to open Cain’s cell.

Cain is initially eager to return to Apophyll to stop the eruption, only to realize the Grunts left something behind: a seemingly important package meant to be given to Commander Sirius. Cain opens the package, seeing nothing but a brooch with an emerald gem; with no clue as to its significance, he takes the item, just so Team Meteor doesn’t have it.

With Cain freed and the mysterious Emerald Brooch in their possession, he and Xera quickly take the boat back to Apophyll Academy. There, they join up with Victoria and quickly make their way to Pyrous Mountain to put a stop to Team Meteor’s plans.

So yeah, Chekhov’s Volcano is real and it’s about to blow up right on top of Apophyll Academy! And we can’t have that! Team Meteor’s done enough damage with just plants and water, you really think we’re gonna let them- hey wait. The PULSE Tangrowths messed with plants, PULSE Muk messed with water, and now PULSE Camerupt is gonna mess with a volcano- fire. Grass, water, fire…like the three starter types. Was that intentional?

Uuuuh…that tangent aside, let’s get started here! Let’s climb that volcano at long last!

*CW: minor gore, death

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13*

Part 14

Part 15

Part 16

Part 17

Part 18

Part 19

[aita-blorbos]

WIBTA for running away with my soulless, potentially dangerous future self? [OCs]

[OOC: tw for fictional medical procedures without consent, fictional self-harm, implied mental health issues, implied ableism, child endangerment/potential child harm, souls being treated in a way that might be taken as religiously insensitive]

I (14F in human years) have been living with my older brother (equivalent of 25M) as a guardian, because we got interdimensionally lost together several years ago and have been trying to make lives for ourselves in the human world. It hasn’t been easy, but recently my successful future self (equivalent of 40sF) showed up and offered to help us out! She’s a scientific genius and is kinda stuck here in the past because her work on time travel didn’t go the way she hoped (maybe with her help I could do even better someday!)

But she also acts really creepy and weird, and I found out that it’s because she removed her own soul somehow? Apparently the procedure was one of her discoveries, and in her time it became some sort of therapy for emotional issues because it basically gets rid of all your emotions. She almost tried to do the same to me after I freaked out about it, but luckily I managed to convince her otherwise, and I’m pretty sure she’s started listening to me now and taking getting stuck in the past as a chance to make sure I don’t end up making the same mistakes she did. But my brother doesn’t trust her one bit and refuses to let me contact her anymore. I feel like I’m the only one she’s willing to listen to because she thinks a lot of herself (I mean, from how she tells it she made major breakthroughs in several scientific fields) and I’m basically the same person as far as she sees it. It feels like I’m the only one who can make sure she doesn’t do something that changes the world for the worse like she did in her timeline. So I’m thinking of working with her, but after the incident where she was going to take my soul, my brother thinks it’d be way too dangerous for me to contact her again because she might try to take my soul again or trick me into helping her with something bad. However, I think she’d listen to me like she did before, and I could learn so much from her, keep her from causing problems, and maybe change the world for the better with her help on technical stuff and knowing what not to do! 

Would I (current me, I know future me is kind of an asshole but I don’t really blame her for it) be the asshole if I disobeyed my brother and ran away after my mad scientist future self?

[windingpathways]

hey i just wanted to say another massive thank you to y'all and let you know how i'm doing after everything

the procedure itself went well! recovery day 1 was kinda touch and go 'cause i spent the day riiiight on the edge of hemorrhaging, wondering if i was gonna need to go to the ER, but luckily i slowed down and started feeling better.

then i slept ALL day today and woke up feeling better than i have in MONTHS!! no nausea, way less pain, able to get up and move around for decent chunks of time (i've barely been able to make it to the bathroom or microwave most days since early february but today i actually cleaned my room a little, holy shit), able to eat and keep down REAL FOOD!!!!!!!

to be honest, i really want to be a parent. i would have loved to keep the pregnancy if it had been at all financially or physically realistic for me to do so. it was a devastating choice to have to make for the sake of my health and future and i am eternally grateful to you all for supporting my autonomy and coming through for me like you did.

i am still accepting donations via cashapp/venmo ($wanderingivy for both) as i was unable to work 2 of my 3 jobs at all the last few weeks, and the third very little. i need another grocery order that's heavy on red meat, as I'm pretty severely anemic from the ordeal, i just broke my phone beyond repair and have to replace that, and i have some bills due soon that will be tough to cover-- but the primary crisis has passed and i got through it thanks to yall!!

to those of you who reached out with sweet little messages checking in, you especially mean the world. i love you and i hope you find $20 on the ground this week.

thanks for everything,

ivy <3

[csa-survivor-confessions]

(?) First off, thank you admins for taking the time to run this blog- the resources and comfort y’all provide means so much. I’m on mobile so sorry for writing a poorly formatted novel length ask lol

I have unique trauma, and I never see it discussed anywhere else so in the interest of possibly helping someone who hasn’t put the pieces together yet I wanted to talk about it.

When I was around 3, I got a UTI (im a cis woman). My doctor wanted to make sure I didn’t have kidney reflux, so they ordered a test called a VCUG. In short, what they do is put a catheter in you with no sedative/topical anesthetic, pump your bladder full of radiocontrast fluid until it literally backs up to your kidney (incredibly painful), and then you’re supposed to piss it out on the table or into a towel. I read a study (Goodman et al 1990, can send a link if y’all are interested) researching the validity of children’s testimony in court about CSA trauma (like how accurately they could remember the incident), and the “test” they used is the VCUG because it has every characteristic of a rape, but it’s a medical procedure (direct, painful genital contact and penetration with a foreign object by a stranger while a parent watches). I had it done twice in 6 month, and when my doctor ordered a third test “just to see” my mom put her foot down and said no.

It was my first memory, but for 23 years of my life I believed it was an exaggerated or false memory because it seemed cartoonishly traumatic and I didn’t believe it was a real medical procedure. I thought that it was just an ultrasound and because I was so young and scared I constructed that memory. But it WAS real. I found my medical record and put the pieces together myself as an adult. my first memory is of strangers undressing me, touching me, my mother helping the nurses restrain me, them “taking photos” of me with ultrasound and X-ray equipment, being denied autonomy over my own body and being treated like a science experiment. My entire life, I’ve been so confused, not knowing why I can’t set boundaries or have normal relationships, or why I gravitate towards people who have severe trauma, and why I understood how they felt. I always felt guilty because I didn’t have a “story” like they did. I believed I was just Incredibly Fucked Up For No Reason because I grew up in a stable home (for the most part), and I felt like I didn’t “deserve” to have those feelings because I didn’t think anything happened to me. But it did, and it /severely/ traumatized me. Because it’s my first memory, it’s a cornerstone of my personality, for better or for worse.

So my question is- now that I know what happened, how do I cope with feeling like a victim if there is no true perpetrator? There is no face attached to my trauma, nobody to blame. I was a toddler, the doctors and nurses were just doing their job, and if my mom didn’t follow their advice she’d be accused of medically neglecting her child. I guess I can be mad at the for profit medical system and the fact that doctors are financially incentivized to order those tests, but I feel like I can’t get complete closure from that. I want to tell some of my friends who have opened up to me about their own csa trauma, but I feel inadequate. Like on one hand, I didn’t get raped. It wasn’t like a family member I trusted was coming into my room every night. But on the other hand, it’s more extreme in a way? Like a medical bdsm gang rape while my mom watched. It’s dehumanizing in a different way because I wasn’t even seen as an object of attraction, I was like a lab rat. I have all of the same problems, the disassociation, the identity issues, the sexual problems, addiction, and self harm in the form of an eating disorder. I know that its not fair or healthy to compare my trauma to anyone else’s, but I’m just anxious about the reaction I might get from my friends whose experiences were more “textbook” abuse. So I’m kinda testing the waters here, if y’all have any advice for me I’d appreciate it.

This is more of a confession than a question, but I also have a memory gap from ages 7-9, and my therapist thinks something else was happening because losing two entire years like that is Not Normal. I can’t even recognize myself in photos from that time period. It’s a pretty disturbing feeling. I was already showing hypersexual behavior around 6- is it bad to hope that I do find out someone hurt me, so I can have a face to my trauma? So that I can find someone to blame other than myself and externalize the pain?

thank you again for reading my novel again I’m so sorry for the formatting 💕

Hello,

I think it could be good to understand it as a medical trauma along with sexual aspects. It sounds like you had a doctor who didn't know what he was doing or had incentives to put you through unnecessary testing which could count as medical malpractice.

Medical trauma rather from necessary procedures or unnecessary is something that feels like a violation of bodily integrity. Because you are having things in your body that are not a part of you. It's not gang rape, but it is a group of people treating you not like a person and putting your body through extreme physical and emotional stress. That is extremely traumatic and will have huge effects on anyone, especially children.

I personally have gone through a lot of medical trauma along with my CSA and psychological abuse. I have nightmares, body memories and flashbacks to medical events.

You are not alone in having gone through rare medical procedures and experiencing medical trauma from them. It might feel like you have extremely unique trauma, but other people have experienced rare medical procedures that caused trauma reactions or feel like sexual assault. Many tests and medical equipment go into the body (all kinds of feeding tubes, ostomy bags, catheters, tracheal tubes etc) and can feel like our bodily integrity has been broken.

Even if there isn't one huge perpetrator because the people were doing their job, that doesn't make you to blame for what you are going through. You can blame the doctor I suppose for ordering a test you didn't need, but you can also blame no one. No one had to be "evil" for the trauma to be real. Medica trauma is extremely real and no one is always in the wrong, it's just extreme stress on the brain so you experience trauma being held in the body.

I think when you get thoughts about your trauma not being valid because there is not one perpetrator, try and counter that thought. Maybe something like medical trauma is real, and so are my feelings. You can also practice journaling or making art about your trauma as this will help externalize your story and organize thoughts and emotions.

Many coping skills and trauma processing therapies (examples: somatic experiencing or EMDR) that work for CSA will also work for you. There are nuances to every trauma type but many skills overlap. [Resources-Info & Coping Skills]

Your trauma is valid, important and discerning to be heard and respected. Because you were put through something that hurt you and that's important. You are important and so is your story.

I wouldn't tell your friends your trauma is worse, as I don't think it is going to go over well with them I would also say knowing your abuser found you sexy isn't a protective factor against becoming traumatized.

I think telling your friends could be good, maybe don't frame it as "I experienced the same thing you did" or "I went through some more unique so it's worse" but instead frame it closer to "I experienced extreme medical trauma that had similar effects to sexual trauma. I could use some support in dealing with it." I think that framing will get you the best outcomes. Because you deserve to have the way it affected your sexuality respected, but framing your abuse in competition with there's might cause bad results.

Wanting our abuse to look like what trauma is generally shaped as, looking for a perpetrator or wanting the trauma to be "worse" is all totally normal. You are not a bad person. Also please be careful with recovering memories trying to force it can hurt.

I hope some of this helps,

-Admin 1

[ellies-cycling-notes]

Day 17: Findley State Park to Van Buren State Park

Distance Covered: 81.27 miles

Total Time (including rests): 7:10 (8:03am-3:13pm)

Time spent riding: 6:22

Average Speed: 12.8 mph

Apples Eaten: 4 (fuji - 7/10, fuji - 6/10, fuji - 7/10, fuji - 5/10)

Today's ride was another boring, yet alright, one. It was basically 80 miles straight West from one State Park to another, only going North or South to switch to less busy roads. The entire ride was on various state roads and side roads, most of which had rather good pavement. I made rather good time for a few reasons. There was the good pavement as mentioned, and then also I had a tailwind for most of the ride, and thirdly, this ride was really flat. I barely had to switch gears at all, and when I did, it was more likely to be because of a sudden change in wind making the ride too hard or too easy, rather than because of going up or down a hill. The weather was also really nice, barely getting above 70 Fahrenheit, and oftentimes cloudy for miles on end.

I stopped twice on the ride, once about half-way through, and once only 10 miles from my campsite. I wanted to not take that second stop at all, but I was getting really hungry and didn't want to hold off on lunch.

Today's ride's main focus was on conserving the battery on my phone. One of my power banks is dead, and I think I might have to use my laptop as a power bank to get my phone fully charged for tomorrow. Because of that, I took various measures on the ride to extend my phone's power. For one, the fewer number of stops meant I spent less time just sitting looking at my phone (of course, that didn't really matter in the end because it meant I arrived at my campsite earlier, and this would have more time reading stuff on my phone). I also kept my phone's brightness as low as I could, and even turned off my maps whenever I was about to be on a straightaway for several miles, only turning it back on again when I believed myself to be close to the next turn.

I saw a few interesting birds on today's ride. In addition to the normal ones, I also saw a peacock on a front porch, a vulture by a field, a bird I think was a hummingbird (it was moving too quickly for me to be sure), and what I think was pheasants in a yard. Apart from those, today's ride didn't really have anything that stood out, which is kinda what I expected, biking across rural Ohio.

Design Notes

Today's notes are probably going to be short (I don't actually know, I have a few key points that I wrote down during the ride, but most of the substance has yet to be written).

I've been thinking about character stats/ability scores. This train of thought comes from 2 places.

1) Yesterday's ruminations on Procedural Generation got me thinking about Characters, Inc. again, in which each character has 6 (maybe 5, I can't remember) stats that affect how well they do in a dungeon. I'll go more into detail later in this section, because I spent a lot of time specifically thinking about Characters, Inc.

2) I've been reading LitRPGs, which are a fantasy sub-genre where the fantasy world has game-like elements, often including ability scores.

Ability Scores

I understand the necessity of ability scores in games in order to simplify complex systems of the world, but there's always something about them that feels awkward. There's always too much overlap between certain abilities, or cases where it doesn't make much sense for you to automatically become better at multiple unrelated things. For example, bench pressing should increase your Strength, but in most games that would also increase your leg power, even though they're different muscles. With that being said, I do enjoy the use of ability scores as measures of characters that aren't directly controlled by players, because then those abilities end up being used in more broad stroke ways, and so it makes more sense. For example, if you have a character with high dexterity, you can't guarantee that they'll succeed at a certain parkour move, but if you give them an entire parkour course, they'll probably complete it more quickly than someone with a lower dexterity score. That brings me to my discussion of Characters, inc.

In Characters Inc, you the player send a party of characters out on a quest, and only receive the results of said quest. As such, this is the perfect place to make use of ability scores, as they can be used to broadly define a character's strengths. Here are the ability scores as I remember them in Characters, Inc. I will describe the ability and what it used to do, if I can remember, as well as what I would have them do if I was to remake the game.

Strength (STR) - Every quest in Characters, Inc has a hidden power level the party has to beat in order to complete the quest. STR contributes directly to meeting that power level. In addition, when distributing damage amongst the party, characters with more STR will have been targeted more by enemies, and so will receive a larger portion of the damage.

Agility (AGI) - I don't remember what this does in the original version of the game. If I was to remake it, it would have 2 main effects: it would influence how long it takes for a party to complete a quest, and it would act as a buffer relative to one's STR such that they are targeted less if they have high AGI.

Endurance (END) - Endurance directly impacts how much health a character has.

Toughness or Defense (TOU) - After getting assigned damage, TOU reduces the amount of damage that a character takes. If I remake the game, it might also increase the amount that the chosen character is targeted, because otherwise a high TOU character is useless without high STR.

Magic (MAG) - Similar to STR, this directly contributes to the power level of the quest. It also increases the chance the character is targeted, but at a much lower rate than STR. Thus, it pairs well with characters that have lower END or TOU.

Luck (LUCK) - Increase the rewards characters receive from the quest. Every quest has guaranteed rewards, but this stat increases the chance for additional gold and/or item rewards. In the original version, each character's luck was used independently to figure out additional gold and items, such that you could get at most +1 item per character. If I was to remake it, I'd probably have it that the character with the highest luck is taken as a base, and each other character's luck is added on to that, but not to the full amount.

That's all. There's no pics today, as the ride was rather bland and boring. Tomorrow I'm headed straight North to Ann Arbor. I hope the wind will've calmed down a bit by then, because I'd rather not ride 80+ miles with a headwind.

Previous -- Next

[kael-writ]

CW: sexual violence and medical trauma

yknow, I wanted so badly to be able to entirely blame myself for bolting from the gyny yesterday. If it was just a problem with me, I can have total control of it.

but I dont think the way they handled it was ok. I had a crying panic attack about a vaginal exam and said "well it seems like I dont have a choice". They also knew I hadnt been to a gyny in 20 years. I barely looked at them. I hugged my body. It was really obvious I was very uncomfortable and scared and upset.

I think it would have helped a lot if they had done things to help me trust them - like say it was my choice, I could take breaks if I needed, and talked more about the procedure. Talked to me more about making me comfortable.

Also, I dont know that this procedure even WAS necessary when they were just "seeing for themselves" what the ER had already found.

Instead they just kinda said, we need to do this, and not much else- and then with two complete strangers staring at me, ordered me to undress from the waist down. Just like that, right there in front of them. They couldnt offer me a gown, to undress in private, or something? My last gyny was that long ago but I swear that's what she did then.

I panicked and bolted. And yes, I could have acted differently. Im not saying I dont have ANY responsibility or way to make the situation better. Im just saying, I think gynys ought to change how they deal with people who may be severely uncomfortable.

After talking to two female friends, BOTH of them mentioned feeling panic of the gyny. I bet this is really common, especially with young people.

When I was in the ER, and at Planned Parenthood, they did a lot more to make me comfortable and feel safe. I refused a pelvic at PP, and the lady did just kinda assume I was having a pelvic instead of asking, but they didnt push me to do it.

In the ER they presented it as my choice, they talked about taking breaks, they talked me through it, they offered breaks, they offered aftercare when I was crying and working on my breathing to prevent a panic attack. I felt safe, understood, and respected.

I was supposed to get my surgery from that hospital, where I had built trust, that week, and then insurance got declined. And that made me have to start all over. And this is hard.

It hurt to have to feel like I am not allowed access to a great care team because Im too poor, and being poor in part because of medical disabilities that include mental and physical chronic illness. What a sick joke. American healthcare.

I didnt even really go through any major sexual trauma, nothing that happened to me in terms of actual sex was even entirely non-consensual, just kinda not having my full consent fully respected the whole time and stuff like that. And stuff like getting groped at parties or whatever, frankly really normal stuff. I also do have some history of being mistreated by medical people in the past, mostly due to being queer and mentally ill. but nothing really major. I cant imagine what this would be like for someone who had survived something much more extreme. 

The last person I trusted with my body I knew for a year, and he scared me very badly (trigger warning for this, but - he expressed a fantasy of killing me, during sex, out of nowhere. /TW). So why should I trust a woman I JUST met?

I want to survive, I dont want to suffer, I dont wanna get more disabled, I dont wanna lose my job. I am worried and scared, sad, exhausted, ashamed, lots of big feelings, I need help and support, and it falls on me to do this. I have therapy in a few hours, and I will come up with a plan. but I would like to not be the only one who learns from my experience. I would like some doctor somewhere to hear my story some day and learn.

[underthehedge]

Hello, it is I again, and I kinda know (part of) the answer to this one. Sorry this got so long. Any neurophsychs etc. who see this, blease feel free to jump in and clarify or correct everything I've got wrong.

tl;dr: Memory is not One Thing. There's several different types of memory and one of the things with ADHD is that some forms are supercharged and others are uh, hot garbage. They work different ways and use different parts of the brain and may be recalled through different processes. Read on at your own peril.

E.g. working memory, the memory that's a bit like computer RAM, where you hold current information you're using. I'm not a neuroscientist, and the gist I've got from neuroscientists is that brains are "nightmarishly complicated", buuuut: a lot of the stuff with working memory function is based on dopamine receptors in the prefrontal cortex...y'know, that area of the ADHD brain where dopamine regulation is absolutely fucked?

And I suspect that's why ADHDers all know the thing of "I need to do A, then B, then leave the house". So you do A and then leave the house like, job done! B? Never heard of her. Long term memory will review this in about 10 minutes and make you go "Oh fuck! B!".

Short-term memory is different to working memory and long-term memory; generally speaking it's stored "acoustically". As in, if someone says a string of words to me I remember them short term as the actual sounds. It fades quickly and it's also why when I don't parse what someone says I say "what?" and then immediately reply because actually I can just replay the noises I heard. Fun fact: some of the evidence for this comes from the fact that people can remember a sequence like "A B Q F" for longer in short-term memory than "E B P D" because the letters sound different.

Long-term memory is conceptual rather than acoustic; it's abstracted rather than a recording. And I think this is why my memory can be both amazing and utter dogshite. It's made up of like declarative and procedural memory. Declarative is things from personal life experiences, procedural is more like tasks you've learned. Declarative is further split into episodic and semantic memory. Procedural is how to ride a bike, semantic is knowing what a bike is and episodic is that one time you crashed a bike into a fence.

Fugue states are an interesting example of how these are kinda separate, being like a block on episodic memory but with access to semantic and procedural. So a person may not know who they are or have any memory of their life...but they still know what things are and how to do stuff.

Anyway, recalling memories is the tricky bit, because pulling all the details relies on linkages. ADHD folk seem to be very good at like, conceptual linkages, and we can often pull semantic memory with ease because we create wider links between more distantly related bits of information. Episodic memory though is often tied to time cues, and uh, yeah. Sense of time is totally borked in ADHD folk.

So, "do X at time Y": yeah I'm not getting that link to trigger X.

"Remember what you were doing at time Y?": I do not, for you see, I have no idea what a "time" is, let alone which specific one was "Y".

I see the shape of a leaf and the colour of a flower: "Caltha palustris" says my brain as it pulls on the thread linking these semantic memories. And from that I can remember the time I saw one, but it's not linked to time.

And I think that's part of why I struggle to remember dates. Because they don't have a neat conceptual meaning other than time. Which I fucking suck at.

movies where someone hears an important message only once and retains all the details….

girl if that were me, we’d be fucked. I have to reread emails like 4 times.

[collected-times]

06.02.2024

After I went to the psychiatric clinics I was staying at home for like 3 months. When I left I was very unstable and felt sad and depressed and I had issues with my friends. They left me a few months ago and now I am in contact with new friends who are very kind to me. I did some theraphy outside of the clinic but I still stood at home for months.

In October 2023 I had a severe mental breakdown and had to go to the emergency room and get some emergency medication for psychotic situations and sleeping since I was awake for several days. I went to my sister's apartment and slept for 7 days straight.

After that incident I slowly got better. I started to read again and met my friends and talked a lot. I kinda found a peaceful way of living. It was still hard but I got better. I also started taking the 5th antidepressant in a row and this one actually worked. It works for me since I don't feel depressed anymore - there is not a big range of emotions but at least I can live peacefully.

In December, my sister got sick. She had to go through procedures and was in a lot of pain. Since I was involved in helping her and the holidays were quite near, I got really stressed out. When Christmas was over and my sister was healing, I went to sleep. And I slept for 3 weeks straight. Idk, it was really some kind of winter hibernation.

In January I had some stage presence with my dance team and got socially active. It's a lot of fun and we're still doing this. I also wrote my first application for a new education. So life is getting slowly but for sure a little bit better.

I survived my last severe episode, I didn't feel depressed for months now and I got through the winter. One month from now, spring is coming. I'm continuing my therapy and it works. I'm single right now and this is for the better.

See y'all🤍

[godesssiri]

Remember how I was bitching about our old RN? We had a Ministry of Health spot audit today. It was expected - kinda - we knew it would be soon but we didn't know exactly when, the whole point is that that they could walk in the door any time in a 6 month period so you better have your i's dotted and your t's crossed. When the auditors go through everything you can get attains, partial attains and fails. Partial attains you'll get a time period to fix it and provide proof that you've fixed it - the time period you have depends on how serious it is, you might have to fix it within a week, you might get up to 3 months. We've never had a fail but if you ever hear about a rest home getting shut down it's because they've had an audit and they've failed something important, or several somethings. Our last audit we got 1 single partial attain and it was literally we had a document on file but we didn't have it in the folder they thought we should have it in so all we had to do was photocopy the document and put it in the folder they wanted.

The auditor gave us 10 partials today. And we're pretty sure she went easy on us because she could tell we had just gotten rid of a really bad RN and were still just discovering all the ways she screwed us. She had a whole pile of gentle suggestions that didn't make it into her report and there were a whole bunch of times she said 'can produce this specific form for me before I leave today?' and basically gave us time to scurry off and fix the problem so she didn't have to include it in her report. In a way it was good because now we know exactly what our previous RN was doing wrong and what we need to do to fix it, before it was like stumbling across landmines, we never knew when we'd find some process of procedure she hadn't bothered to follow.

Our new RN was really happy with the care plans I typed up. For the most part I was straight up copying but I also fixed anything egregious, like when the plan was for a man and the old RN used female pronouns for half of it, or when she put a whole pile of stuff about the family in the continence/elimination section. I'm not clinical but even I know that a resident's family relationships are not relevant to their pooping and that stuff belongs in the psycho-social section. Anything I didn't feel confident fixing I put a note for our new RN saying 'take a closer look at this section, it looks hinky'. She's feeling a lot better because she was staring down the barrel of a whole pile of work to fix what our old RN had done and she never knew when she was going to go to do a part of her job only to find she'd have to fix the old RNs bad work first. Now she knows exactly what needs to be fixed, both from what I've pointed out and the auditor's findings.

One of the auditor's quiet suggestions is that we talk to the GP who wanted to talk or old RN to the nurses council and to the Nurse Gerontology Specialist at the District Health Board who help us get her updated education and get her out of the doctor's crosshairs and tell them all the auditors findings and ask if they do want to talk to the nursing council about her because the auditor got the impression, just from looking at the paperwork she left, that she is very arrogant and quite careless and actually not safe and she should not be allowed to work in a situation where she is the sole RN again.

[hms-no-fun]

this is like the first Big Transfem Question (whether your egg cracked because someone asked "if you could press a button and be always born a girl right now would you," or whether you just came out to someone for the first time and they asked "omg so are you gonna get/have you gotten The Surgery?") and everyone has their own answers, and their answers often change over time.

i know when i first came out i was pretty firmly disinterested in bottom surgery. part of this was a consequence of having tomboy gender and not really having much bottom dysphoria after HRT made unwanted erections a thing of the past. i felt deeply conflicted about the expectation that as a trans woman obviously i wanted to pursue Traditional Femininity. it quickly grew apparent to me that the pathway to the kind of polished acceptable transness you see in media is a lot of expensive procedures and surgeries and training, and as a lifelong broke bitch i resented that. especially when a trans youtuber made a jab at a clocky transfem earning her transmisogynistic harassment by essentially not trying hard enough to be a woman, that's when it really crystallized for me that i wanted nothing to do with this kind of post-drag-race bitchy high femme gender superiority. it's one thing to say that it's hard work to pass in public as a tall clocky trans girl; it's another thing entirely to act like it's her fault that she's clocky when there are real material and structural roadblocks to her reaching the standard of femininity you're expecting (to say nothing of whether or not she even WANTS to be that kind of feminine). so for me, surgery and laser and vocal training all got wrapped up in this tangle of resentful obligation that i neglected out of spite. i wanted to be a woman in a queer way, not in an assimilationist way.

but like, i did and kinda still do have that baby-trans feeling of like... well, if i could go back in the oven right this second and just sorta swap out for a vagina, i'd do it. this distinction felt important to me because i read a lot of posts about how sex for post-op trans women didn't feel the way they hoped it would, that the sensations were number and the recovery times were terrible and having to dilate was immensely painful and came with huge complications if you didn't maintain it. like there's that awful blaire white clip where she just straight up calls her vaginoplasty "an open wound" that's always trying to heal, and even as you know that's bullshit you kinda can't help but see gruesome post-surgery pics and recovery timelines and be like... well damn idk if i want to put myself through that!

what i've come to understand is that so so so so much of this perception discourse is colored by self selection bias. people don't post when they're pussy is working correctly. people don't post when the sex is good. i mean, maybe they do, but they don't post it in the same places they'd post recovery pics and ask for transition advice. someone who avidly posts through their post-op recovery probably stops posting once their new situation starts feeling normal. you can create the impression for yourself reading this stuff that the gauzy bloody swollen recovery phase lasts forever and is basically the entire experience. on top of that you can convince yourself that the end result never looks like a "real" vagina, because even after the gross part is over and done with it still takes months to a year or more for it to settle into its final shape. so there's ten million pictures of obvious post-op pussies because people post through it when they're sad, then time passes and you learn the rhythm of your new anatomy as it grows into itself, and the whole thing stops feeling like a such big deal. none of which is visible in the posts.

i've now had several friends go through various forms of gender affirming surgery, and the biggest surprise to me has been that it really doesn't seem THAT bad? somehow i got it in my head that these recovery timelines could stretch out for aaaaaaaages, but a friend of mine got the cadillac of bottom surgeries that used a bit of stomach tissue for the interior (paid for with medicaid) and she was back up on her feet in, like, two months-- albeit with serious restrictions on vigorous motion. sure, it seemed uncomfortable, but nowhere NEAR the level i was expecting. dilating is just free time for her to watch anime. same for top surgery, same for an orchi-- there's like a brief window of time where it's an inconvenience, and maybe complications can arise but generally? it kinda just seems like not a big deal. it's not this horribly traumatic invasive disgusting painful process-- it can be some of those things, probably it will be at least one of them for some amount of time, but very likely not all of them and not all at once and rarely to the extreme that we're sometimes led to believe.

honestly, the most annoying, invasive, violating part of surgery is getting the surgery approved. which is fucking hilarious considering the conservative firestorm against trans people is like 80% predicated on the assertion that trans people have too easy access to surgery. are you kidding me??? every trans person i know who has gotten any procedure, afab or amab, has had to get multiple letters from doctors/psychologists, gone through the assessment steps with a healthcare provider and surgeon, then had the whole approval process drag on long enough that their letters expired (a thing letters can do, apparently) which meant having to get new ones which meant pushing back the timeline again. like the level of pathologization and infantalization around essentially medically means-testing these procedures is fucking gonzo. it is a demeaning, demoralizing process ESPECIALLY if you have medicaid, where a parade of medical professionals take turns debating whether or not you're one of the crazy ones who's just doing it for kink and will immediately sue for malpractice afterwards (a cohort that definitely exists in real life), and it can go on for YEARS! if you're a working class trans woman who has to constantly prove her poverty to stay on food stamps, or maintain disability payouts, or just access any social program at all your free time is already dominated by these insanely accusatory administrative burdens that are constantly on the lookout for any excuse to cut you off because you're presumed to be an aspiring welfare queen. so to add the dehumanizing rigmarole of getting gender affirming surgery on the pile as an expected step of transition, at a time when even the nominally left party in the united states wants to make accessing such care even harder, is genuinely so fucking cruel on so many levels it defies my ability to discuss them without going into a frothy-mouthed rage (not very feminine of me, i know).

but the upshot of this is, i've now seen that despite all these burdens, surgery is worth it. most every trans person i know who's gotten one has come away feeling, in some sense, better than they expected. i don't want to oversell it as this like magically perfect experience, it's not, and obviously i haven't gotten surgery myself so i can only speak to what others have told me. but like someone i know got an orchi a couple months ago, and she went in worried about retaining sexual function only to come out after a few weeks of recovery feeling hornier than ever. her bottomwear fit better and made her feel less dysphoric. and somehow, psychologically, it was like a weight lifted off her mind. she felt different, truer to herself in some way. i've seen first hand the nuclear explosion of euphoria the first time a trans girl can really BOUNCE her post-op breasts. conversely i've witnessed the astonishing transformation of a trans man after top surgery, how his entire wardrobe and physical presence completely turned on its head and suddenly he just exuded self-ness. and all of these are trans people who spent years on waiting lists, struggling through letter expiries and clinic closures and staff changes and policy updates and inconsistent insurance requirements. all of them went through a period of recovery, and while some had complications that made their recovery difficult, nobody i know regrets it.

so, yeah, idk. i'm still on the fence about surgery for myself-- i think i'd like an orchi? or perhaps one of those really experimental surgeries where you get a bit of both. i'm certainly still intimidated by a lot of aspects of the process, but it's not scary to me the way it seemed when i first started transitioning. i guess if there's any message to this post it's that this is why having IRL queer community is so important. you might not feel brave enough to get surgery yourself, but someone else is, and maybe by being friends with them through the process (maybe by taking care of their cats while they're stuck in the hospital) you can slowly demystify it and realize that maybe you had the wrong impression all along.

A question for transfems, pick the option that matches the closest to you:

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Option for nontransfems that want to click buttons: here.