#nor can I do so if the testing specialist does not give me the test results beyond a random number

[banannabethchase]

Oh hello monstrous wave of anxiety get the fuck out of here right fucking now.

[ireallydontunderstandpeopleatall]

this past monday I took smores to the vet to check his condition of chewing on his back legs and on his butt/ back area.

the vet gave him and allergy shot which fixed him and mentioned for long term care to have moisturizing wash baths and benadryls

vet also took his blood to test his liver values, bc in may 2023 when he went to a diff vet for stomach issues and they tested his blood and saw his liver values were off and they gave him liver vitamins to help support his liver which he has not been taking bc theyre chewables but he has not been taking them bc he does not like them

on wednesday his blood work came back and his liver values are still bad and also his kidneys are showing b.u.n? which i need to give the vet a pee sample

so now vet said to do an ultrasound for smores which will cover his liver and kidneys and if necessary will do a biospy after.

and I'm in disbelief because my baby dog is now sick and idk what is going to happen and not sure how much longer he will be with me

this mid week i was so depressed and stressed out bc of costs

the ultrasound i called about to 2 vet specialists our vet recommended and they have both quoted about $745-$920. which means to get an xray alone is already 1,000 dollars.

I can pay 1 ,000 dollars but what is next? how much will treatment be? i googled liver disease in dogs and one person said they paid 14,000$ just to get a diagnosis. I don't have 14,000 now, nor will I ever have it all at once.

I feel so helpless that I can not do more for my baby, and i dont know what to do, am I just suppose to not get him medical care??

I read posts from the rainbow bridge and people who say things like they wish they could have done more for him/her. i now know what that really means.

I thought about how I only have 4,000 and i just let my mom borrow it because shes fucking irresponsible and needs to pay back her debt. and she wont be paying me back for a while but I didnt think i would need that money rn and how wrong i was.

then my fucking big credit card is maxed out due to my mom's usage also. it would have 5,000 which i could have really used for the ultrasound.

and so i was sitting there flipping through my accounts and looking at my balances like a few thousand dollars was going to magically pop up in them and save me and my dog

i looked at my digit savings and even if i cash over absolutely everything I will have CLOSE to 4,000. not even 4,000 :(

then my paypal credit which i asked for a credit line increase and they gave me 2,000 but it said i do not get an actual card for it and its mainly for online purchases so that doesnt help me at all.

so finally i applied for care credit and luckily was approved for 5,000.

also to note i just bought my tesla and the payments are so high and insurance is through the roof and i will turn over this car if i need to to free up money to set aside for smores treatment so we'll see if it comes down to that. it's my dream car but i can always buy another one later and my baby dog needs me right now

so hopefully care credit is enough for everything and i really hope a biopsy will not be 14,000. if things can stay below 8,000 for everything than that is something that i can reach but if they start quoting me 20k or so I'm afraid i will have to make some tough decisions and start considering end of life services for smores.

I have been thinking about it and if it comes down to me absolutely not being able to afford paying for smores services then i will have to start having a conversation with his vet on what i can do to make sure he is comfortable for the rest of his time :(

this week has been me taking so many pics, spending so much time, making sure he feels loved and looking at him like i will never see him again. i keep thinking of how i dont want to think of what it will be like without him, im not sure i will be able to breathe. he is my soul dog and i love him with all of my heart

I called around to see if i could find a better deal on an ultrasound but it looks like i can't. i also have an option of 2 places and right now I have booked with the "better place " but its 3 weeks out and being that long out also stresses me out and idk

I been putting his liver supplements in his water so he can actually take some of it. I really wish I had been addressing this sooner.

with the death of my aunt who i love so much, stephen who was such a good friend and poor daniel. I just want to try to stay positive bc i jsut dont know what to do or think anymore.

the sudden deaths of my loved ones in such a little time has been so hard on me, I remember after finding out about each one my mind goes to a dark place and my body kind of falls apart for a time and it just feels like it gets weaker with each one. I have questioned my own health and then i get scared of what if

anyways so thats whats going on w smores so far

[dianapana]

SH Day 3- Addicted to your touch

Day 3 – Addicted to your touch Separation Anxiety

WARNING: MENTAL ILLNESS

Disclaimer: I am not a therapist, the advice I gave in this piece might be very faulty, please take it with a grain of salt.

Modern AU, OOC

@sasuhinamonth

It all started small, when one day Sasuke announced that he’d be gone for 2 weeks due to work, the news alone made Hinata’s heartache but she smiled and wished him good luck on the project and a safe trip. Each day the feeling of missing him would grow and grow and grow until it was too big for her body to contain, and the feeling turned to pain. Her longing made her physically sick by the end of the second week.

The next stage was composed of excessive calls and texts, Hinata constantly needed to know where he was, what he was doing, whenever he’d take too long to reply the longing would come back and she’d either sink into sadness or lose herself to anger, both feelings she had not experienced much since dating Sasuke. Whenever he’d reply after a longer break, she’d ask him to come over to her house and stay the night.

That was the case on August 3rd. Sasuke came straight to her house after a long day at the office and Hinata ran to hug him, all of the negative feelings almost forgotten the moment she laid her eyes on him. His touch alone made all of her worries disappear. That was the feeling of home, in his arms.

They spent the night normally, eating dinner while watching a movie, changing and going to bed because they both had work in the morning. The issue came with the sunrise, for Hinata refused to let him leave. She cried and begged and screamed the moment he brought up work, she tore his shirt apart reasoning that he couldn’t go to work without one. The moment the white fabric hit the ground; silence fell over the room. Both of them were shocked, unable to speak due to her outburst of emotions.

Her cried aggravated, she fell to her knees and crawled to where he was, hugging his waist, apologizing over and over again. Sasuke was in deep thought, remembering all the small signs over the past month and a half. It hurt him to think that he had hurt her in any way to drive her to this moment, he patted her hair lovingly, took a deep breath and said in a broken voice “I think there’s something wrong Hina”

She looked at him with big round eyes, they were glossy and red, she blinked and looked down at the floor. “There might be…” Sasuke picked her up by her armpits and placed her in his lap, continuing to run his hand through her hair. He continued doing so until she calmed down and fell asleep, her emotions must have exhausted her. He didn’t move her from his lap for fear of waking her up, however, he picked up his phone from the nightstand and send Itachi a message telling him that he will not be going to work, he proceeded to text Kurenai as well informing her of Hinata’s absence at work too.

He spent the following few hours reading about similar situations, which mostly led to the same piece of advice, that a specialist was needed. So, he went on to search for therapists in Konoha, texting them all, asking whether any of them were free that day, two of them didn’t reply, another one was full for the week and could only see them next Wednesday, thankfully the last one agreed to meet with them after closing hours at 8:30.

Having all of that plan, all he needed to do was find a way to approach the topic when talking to Hinata, she had to agree that paying a visit to therapy would do them both good. Hinata had been asleep for about two hours now, so Sasuke took the liberty to move her onto her side of the bed and go to the kitchen to make some food for when she’d get up.

He managed to make scrambled eggs and toast and was about to go and wake her up when a cry of distress came from their room. He hurried to her side, Hinata was holding onto his pillow on the verge of tears.

“You weren’t here when I woke up” Her voice was meek and trembling. “I could hear movement in the kitchen, I knew you were there. So why, why does your absence hurt this much, despite me knowing you are here?”

He wished he had the answer, but he didn’t. He moved closer and sat on the edge of the bed, cupping her face with one hand, slowly brushing the skin under her eye with his thumb. Sasuke leaned in slowly to hiss her nose, cheek, forehead and finally the corner of her mouth. “I think to find out why, we might need some help from the outside” he closed his eyes and sighed, his breath fanning over her lips. “I talked to a man named Iruka, he’s a therapist and agreed to meet with us later today, would you be open to this idea?”

-------------

Hinata looked at him, searching his eyes and expression for any malice or negative feelings, but there was none, his openness and desire to help led her to agree to his plan, maybe they did need help.

“From what you’ve told me, this is a severe case of separation anxiety,” Iruka said, he looked kind and bore no ill feelings, Hinata had been afraid of the judgmental look he’d give her after hearing about her actions, but his eyes remained warm and understanding. “This usually manifests itself in small children, they are afraid to part from their caregivers even for a moment. In certain cases, it is believed it could appear in pregnant women as well, and usually the caregiver is their partner. Is there any possibility of this being true?”

Both Sasuke and Hinata’s eyes opened wider at the word pregnant, there was most certainly a possibility of that. They were always careful while having sex, however, Hinata was not on birth control, for they affected her badly whenever she took them as a teen so their method of contraception were condoms alone. There’s always the possibility of one breaking, a faulty one, or just them being part of the 0.01% of the population for which condoms did not work perfectly.

-------------

“I suggest you take a pregnancy test as well. As I mentioned, this is known to happen now and again so do not worry too much; however, this anxiety can affect you negatively” Iruka continued while looking at Hinata “the best way to deal with this is steady growth. In the early stages constant contact is preferred. Think of this as building up trust once again. Constant reassurance is important, always keeping promises, separation needs to happen slowly over time; from constant touch to simply being in the same room but at a safe distance, then being in separate rooms, then Hinata being alone but in a familiar and comfortable space for short periods of time. Of course, this process takes months. For some women the anxiety dies down with the birth, for others in continues after but through steady built of trust it can disappear”

They followed Iruka’s advice and went to Hinata’s gyno the next day and Iruka’s assumption proved to be true, Hinata was indeed pregnant in week 7. They were currently in the first stage of their trust-building, being in the same room, always touching. Hinata sat in his lap while they watched a movie, they held hands whenever they were outside, they’d keep bumping feet under the table as they ate. Sasuke had basically moved into her apartment, neither of them went to work. Sasuke was able to do most of his job remotely, however, Hinata applied for medical time off. Everything was going great, Hinata no longer experienced that painful longing, however, her pregnancy turned out to be a quite difficult one, as soon as they found out she was indeed pregnant, her morning sickness started, she had constant back pain and her appetite was very volatile. They’d often wake up in the middle of the night and drive around the city to find one of her cravings. During a particularly bad night 2 months after, her craving for watermelon in the winter proved difficult, to add to the issue her back pain was excruciating so she could not stay in the car for however long it would take them to find watermelon.

“Do you think…you would be all right if you stayed here and I went to find it for you…?” they had barely moved on from the ‘always touching’ stage, the process was slow but it was there.

“I…don’t know…”

“What do you want me to do Hina? You can’t even sit up properly, being in the car for maybe an hour would we awful, but being here alone would too…but it’s unwise to not follow your cravings either” He was spiralling, the situation was stressful and all he wanted was to be able to help her, he wanted to take her pain away, he wanted to give her everything she’d ever want and more.

“I think, I will be fine” Hinata finally said after thinking for a bit longer. Almost in slow motion, he nodded, ‘ok, ok, ok’ he murmured to himself as he put his winter coat over his pyjamas and stood on the bed to put his boots on. “I’ll go find you watermelon, ok? I will be back as soon as I can. I love you” he kissed her cheek and then the top of her head. She smiled and waved, but the moment his back turned to her, her smile wavered. Would she really be ok…?

Sasuke ran down the stairs to the car, he wanted to be away for as little as possible. He pulled out of the driveway and sped up as much as possible. Firstly, he’d look at the local non-stop supermarket, at the ‘exotic’ or ‘out of season’ shelf, if it wasn’t there he’d go to the local Korean market and buy some watermelon flavoured things, just in case there was nothing else anywhere; before he could think of where he’d go next his phone rang. Seeing Hinata’s name he answered immediately.

“come back…please” she was trying not to cry, he could hear it. He did an illegal U-turn and sped even more towards their apartment “I’m coming, I’ll be there in 5 minutes” Hinata replied with an ‘ok’ however she didn’t hang up, she needed to at least be on the line with him. Sasuke didn’t hang up either, not when we pulled into the driveway, not when he stopped the car, nor when he ran up the stairs. He only hung up when Hinata was in his arms.

“I’m so sorry, I thought I could, but you left and I…” she was sobbing so hard it was even difficult to understand her. “It’s ok, it’s not your fault, we moved too fast. Iruka said it’s slow. It’s no problem Hina, we can just start over” If her constantly touching him was what made her feel safe, he’d hold her close until she was ready. No more rushing of things. Once Hinata calmed down, Sasuke called Itachi.

“I’m sorry to wake you up but I need some help…could you look for some watermelon?”

[boygirl]

Help my grandpa receive proper medical treatment after sudden cardiac arrest

Last week my mom and I received the worst phone call we could have ever imagined. My grandpa’s heart suddenly stopped as he was doing garden work at our neighborhood’s elementary school. He was resuscitated as soon as he got to the hospital, unfortunately, he suffered 4 cardiac arrests in the following hours, he was brought back from each of them. The doctors determined that his heart stopped for approximately 6 minutes, enough to cause significant brain damage.

He's currently in a coma-like state, his breathing is supported by a ventilator, he's under heavy sedation since his sternum was broken as he was being resuscitated. He's still in a very critical condition but his vitals are now somewhat stabilized.

My family lives in a small town on the southwest coast of Mexico. I'm not sure how many of you know this but the Mexican healthcare system is terrible (yes, even worse than the American healthcare system). The hospital that he's staying at does not have the equipment necessary to run essential tests on my grandpa nor enough staff to give him the attention that he needs nor the medicine and basic items to keep him comfortable. My family and I are essentially paying for every basic necessity of his out of pocket (orthopedic pillows to avoid bedsores, a private nurse to take care of him overnight, even the food that he must be fed through a tube). This hospital is so small that he doesn't even have his own room in the ICU; he shares a room with 3 other patients who are not in critical condition as he is.

My family is not poor by any means, but this situation has been a huge financial blow for us. Neither my mom nor I have been able to work this past week since we’ve been busy taking care of my grandpa.

Please, please!!! Consider donating any amount to help my grandpa get the proper treatment that he deserves. He's the hardest working, kindest, wisest man I know. This is the man who practically raised me as my father since mine was never there, it hurts me deeply to see him not receive proper treatment.

Any amount would help a lot!!! All the donations will go towards medicine, and specialists that the hospital cannot provide.

👇👇You can donate here!👇👇

PayPal

(Select option to send as family or friend so full amount goes through!)

[missnoodliness]

A Case of the Very Unthrifty Puppy

I have been thinking about this case, despite it having ended several months ago. It still eats at me, so I considered not posting about it at all. Puppies and kittens are not all smiles and joy in a veterinary office, much to the surprise of the general public.

Lucy came to us as a puppy for her initial set of vaccinations and the owners noted that she had soft stool. She was routinely dewormed and vaccinated.

Throughout her puppy series of vaccines, the consistency of her stool never improved. Her littermates of her sex were close to 40 lbs. while Lucy weighed in at under 8 lbs. She was skeletally thin, her limbs proportionate, her hair coat rough. Out of context, you would have thought she was an abuse/neglect case. Her fecal consistency ranged from watery to pudding consistency daily. Her appetite was poor, though her owners reported that she played at home.

She was tested for Giardia, intestinal parasites both in-house and sent to reference laboratories. We tested her for pancreatitis, B-12 deficiencies, folate abnormalities, pancreatic enzyme deficiencies. We dewormed this puppy multiple times with broad-spectrum dewormers. Pre and probiotics made no difference, antibiotics made no difference. We supplemented her with parenteral B-12, anti-diarrheal medications.

Eventually when I had run the gambit on bloodwork, x-rays that I was able to do in-house for this sad puppy, we referred her to an internal medicine specialist. With an abdominal ultrasound and intestinal biopsies, all that was found was eosinophilic inflammation throughout her small intestine and stomach which was interpreted as inflammatory bowel disease. The internist began Lucy on a dose of prednisone that was immunosuppressive. The steroid helped her stool a little, but it never became formed, but was not watery. It also helped her appetite some.

So, I set out to a forum of veterinarians and specialists online to try and help this poor puppy because I felt that I had run out of ideas, run out of plans for her. We were making no headway, no weight gain for her. We switched her to a hydrolyzed diet, but she had no interest in it and had to be put on appetite stimulants. I wanted to test her for congenital Addison’s disease (a lack of steroid production within the body), but the owners could never wean her off the prednisone for me to test her.

Lucy continued to struggle and consulting with specialists had given me more ideas, but I could not make the puppy eat the food they recommended, nor could I make the owners compliant with staying off of steroids in order to do additional diagnostics. When Lucy was 11 months old, her littermates were weighing close to 50 lbs and she never managed to beak 8 lbs. She stopped feeling playful at home, she had no appetite even with medication to help, her stools were never normal and never had form to them. Her owners had become financially restricted and could not pursue a second opinion referral after their first one.

They asked me to evaluate Lucy and asked me what I would do if Lucy were mine. I hate that question most of the time because while I have usually seen similar cases, I am never in my client’s shoes. I do not have their house payments, their debt, their children, their own health issues, their employment status, or their life experiences. I told them what that what they needed to keep in mind was her quality of life, not her quantity of life. I asked them to consider what her favorite things to do were, did they see signs of pain at home, to think about what her future may look like because with the diagnostics so far, the tentative diagnosis and treatment were not improving her physical condition.

Perhaps a week later, about 2 weeks before Lucy would have been 1 year old, her owners elected humane euthanasia. I have never faulted them for this decision. Their puppy was suffering and they were suffering just trying to keep her going. They asked me if they should do a necropsy, what was involved in it, if they should spend the money to try and get an answer. I told them it may not give them an answer, that necropsy does not always reveal the underlying pathology. Ultimately, they elected not to pursue necropsy and had her privately cremated.

This case was one where I felt like I pulled out all the stops, did everything I could think of, referred as soon as the owners were on board with it, and when that got us nowhere, I turned to a forum of experts. Even then, it felt like I failed this puppy, like I failed their family. I will never know what the true underlying disease was or if I could have even fixed it. My boss still tells me that we did everything we could within our means and the clients’ limitations, but I can tell you that it still eats at me. I do not know that it will ever go away.

[arcticdementor]

I have to begin this column by admitting that “Biden” (note: when in quotation marks, I refer to the “collective Biden”, not the clearly senile man) surprised me: it appears that my personal rule-of-thumb about US Presidents (each one is even worse than his predecessor) might not necessarily apply in “Biden’s” case. That is not to say that “Biden” won’t end up proving my rule of thumb as still applicable, just that what I am seeing right now is not what I feared or expected.

…

I think that both of these grossly oversimplify a probably much more complex and nuanced reality. In other words, “Biden” surprised many, if not most, Russians. That is very interesting by itself (neither Bush, nor Obama nor Trump ever surprised the Russians – who knew the score about all of them – in any meaningful way).

My strictly personal guess is that there is some very serious infighting currently taking place inside the US ruling class. Furthermore, that serious infighting is not about core principles or even strategy – it is a dispute over tactics only.

We have to keep in mind an old truism about outcomes: John F. Kennedy once said that “victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan” and he was right. When any group seizes power and effectively controls its interests, all is well, and everybody is busy consuming the proverbial milk and honey. But when this group suffers a series of humiliating defeats, a typical cascade of events begins:

Finger pointing: everybody blames everybody else (but never himself/herself)

Hindsight wisdom: “if I had been in charge, this would not have happened!”

Infighting over quickly shrinking spoils of war

A collapse of the centralized center of authority/decision-making centers

Generation of subgroups, fighting each other over their sub-interests

In other words, following many years of extremely weak presidential administrations (since Clinton, imho), it is hardly a surprise that infighting would take place (in both parties, by the way). In fact, an apparently chaotic set of uncoordinated, or even contradictory, policies is what one should expect. And that is exactly what we have been observing since 1993 and this dynamic has been getting worse and worse with each passing year).

…

That being said, there are some observations which might be helpful when trying to at least (indirectly) identify who are the main groups fighting each other.

The hardcore, really nutty, russophobes are still here, especially in the US media which seems to be serving not so much “Biden” as much as some “crazies in the basement” kind of cabal. Next to the legacy ziomedia, there is an increasing number of US/NATO/UK military officials who are foaming at the mouth with threats, warnings, complaints and insults, all against Putin and Russia. This is important because:

The “Zone A” media has comprehensively and very effectively concealed the very real risks of war with Russia, China and Iran. And if this was mentioned, the presstitutes always stressed that the US has the “best military in the history of the galaxy” and that Uncle Sam will “kickass” anybody he chooses to. If the people of the USA were informed of the truth of the matter, they would freak out and demand that this path to war be immediately abandoned and replaced with a meaningful dialog.

US/NATO/UK authorities have talked themselves into a corner where they have only two outcomes left: they can do what the US always does, that is to “declare victory and leave”, or they can force Russia to protect her borders on land, air and sea and, thereby, face a major military humiliation delivered by Russia.

Truth be told, during the recent naval exercises UK and US officials made a lot of threats and promises to ignore Russian warnings, but in the end, they quietly packed and left. Smart choice, but it must have been painfully humiliating for them, which is very dangerous by itself.

…

There will be many more NATO exercises in the Black Sea in the future. Ditto for USN operations off the Chinese, Iranian or DPRK coasts. This (always explosive) combo of ignorance, arrogance and incompetence could result in a major war.

LAnother option is the terminally delusional UK government (supported by those Brits who still have phantom pains about their lost empire and, of course, by the largely irrelevant 3B+PU gang) might do something really stupid (say, like this) and trigger a war with the DPRK, Russia, China or Iran and then the US would have to move to defend/save a British Navy which is mostly a joke (at least by Russian or Chinese standards). The main problem here being that the USN is also in a terrible shape and cannot compete against Russian and Chinese standoff weapons (I mean that literally, there are currently no defenses against maneuvering hypersonic missiles! The only exception would be the Russian S-500). The latter two nations, by the way, have joined into an informal and unofficial military alliance for many years already; check out this article and video or this one for a recent update).

But opposite, de-escalatory developments are also taking place. First and foremost, “Biden” seemed to have “farmed out” the “Ukrainian dossier” to the Germans and washed Uncle Shmuel’s hands from it. If so, that was a very slick and smart move (which is something we have not witnessed from any administration in decades!). I highly recommend this translation of a most interesting article by arguably the best Ukraine specialist out there, Rostislav Ishchenko.

Ishchenko goes into a lot of interesting details and explains what “Biden” apparently just did. Frankly, the Germans richly deserve this full-spectrum mess and they will be dealing with the consequences of this disaster for a long time, possibly decades. In fact, the Germans are stuck: they want to be the Big European Leader? Let them. After all, the EU politicians, led by Germany, did all they could to create what is now often called “country 404” – a black hole in the heart of the European continent. Germany is the biggest economic power of the EU? Good, then let the Germans (and the rest of the EU) pay for the eventual reconstruction of the Ukraine (or of the successor-states resulting from the breakup of the country)! Russia simply cannot foot that bill, China most definitely won’t (especially after being cheated several times by the Ukies) and the USA has absolutely no reasons whatsoever to do so. I would even argue that chaos (social, economic, political, cultural. etc.) in Europe is probably seen by the US ruling class as highly desirable since it 1) weakens the EU as a competitor 2) justifies, however hypocritically and mistakenly, a “strong US presence” in Europe and 3) gives NATO a reason (however mistaken, misguided and even immoral) to exist

The US is protected from the fallout (immigrants, violence, extremism, etc.) of the Ukrainian disaster by distance, the Atlantic, a much stronger military (at least compared to anybody else in NATO). The US can print money in any way it wants and has no interests whatsoever in the (dying) Ukraine. If Ishchenko is right, and I agree with him, then there is somebody (possibly a group of somebodies) who is a lot smarter than anybody in the Trump Admin and who figured out that the Nazi-occuppied Ukraine should be an German/EU problem, not one for the US.

There is, of course, also the pessimistic analysis: the US is on the retreat everywhere, but only for the following reasons:

Regroup, reorganize, buy time to develop some kind of coherent strategy

Focus on each adversary separately and prioritize (divide et impera at least!)

Re-analyze, re-plan, re-design, re-develop, re-train, re-equip and re-test pretty much everything in the US armed forces (which have not been shaped by any rational force planning in decades)

Those who believe the strategic retreat theory (I am not personally discounting this version, but I do not see enough evidence – yet – to endorse it either) typically add that “the US only left Afghanistan to hand it over to the Taliban/al-Qaeda and unleash them against “soft underbelly of Russia”. Now, that is utter nonsense, if only because Russia does not have a common border with Afghanistan.

…

Coming back to “Biden’s” great retreat: if “Biden” is smart enough to hang the Ukraine on Germany, “he” is probably too smart to predicate the US foreign policy towards Russia predicated around the “soft underbelly” thingie. As for all the “fire and brimstone” threats of war against Russia, they are not impressing anybody as the Russians, the Chinese and the Iranians know that a confident and powerful country does not need to threaten anybody, if only because the actual capabilities of these country are a very telling “threat” by themselves. But when a former superpower is weak, confused and frightened, it will make many roaring statements about how it can defeat the entire planet if needed (after all, the US military is “the best military in the history of the galaxy”! If you doubt that, just listen to Toby Keith!). In other words, while in the West threats are an instrument of foreign policy, in Russia, and in the rest of Asia, they are inevitably seen as a sign of weakness, doubts and even fear.

Then there seems to be a long list of weapons systems, procurement plans and “defense” monies which have been pulled back, including the (truly awful) LCS and F-35. While it is true that the US is gradually phasing out fantastically expensive weapons systems and platforms which were also more or less useless, this show the ability to at least admit that all that talk about super-dooper US superweapons was just that, talk, and that in reality the US MIC is incapable of producing the kind of superb high quality systems which it used to produce in large quantities in the past (Arleigh Burke, F-15, Jumbo 747, the Willys Jeep, F-16, A-10, Los Angeles SSN, KH satellites, etc.). This is why the F-15X is designed to “augment” the F-35 feet (by itself a very smart move!).

Such an admission, even if indirect and only logically implied, might show a level of maturity, or courage, by “Biden” which his predecessors did not have.

Could it be that the folks at the Pentagon, who do know the reality of the situation (see here for a very good Moon of Alabama article about this), figured out that Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump vastly over extended the Empire and now they need to regroup and “re-everything” to achieve a more sustainable “defense” posture?

Could it be that “Biden” will deliver what Trump promised, i.e. to end the useless (and unwinnable!) wars, stop caring too much about the agonizing EU, silently accept that Russia has no intentions (and no need!) whatsoever to attack anyone and focus on the biggest non-military threat out there: China. Maybe.

As far as I know, many (all?) simulations – by RAND and the US military – and command staff exercises have shown that the US would lose badly to both Russia or China. Could it be that “Biden” wants to put Russia and China on the backburner and “deal” with Iran first? The latest news on the US/Israel vs Iran front is not good, to say the least.

…

So what are we left with?

Frankly, I am not sure.

I think that there is very strong, even if only indirect, evidence which there is some very serious in-fighting taking place in the “Biden” administration and there is also strong, but also indirect, evidence that the military posture of the United States is undergoing what might end up being a major overhaul of the US armed forces.

If true, and that is a big “if”, this is neither good news nor bad news.

But this might be big news.

Why?

Because, objectively, the current US retreat on most fronts might be the “soft landing” (transition from Empire to “normal” country) many Trump voters were hoping for. Or it might not. If it is not, this might be a chaos-induced retreat, indicating that the US state is crumbling and has to urgently “simplify” things to try to survive, thereby generating a lot of factional infighting (at least one Russian observer specialized in “US studies”, Dmitrii Drobnitskii, believes to be the case: see the original article here, and its machine translation here). Finally, the state of decay of the US state might already be so advanced that we can consider it as profoundly dysfunctional and basically collapsing/collapsed. The first option (soft landing) is unlikely, yet highly desirable. The second option (chaos-induced retreat) is more likely, but much less desirable as it is only a single step back to then make several steps forward again. The last option (profoundly dysfunctional and basically collapsing/collapsed) is, alas, the most likely, and it is also, by far, the most perilous one.

For one thing, options #2 and #3 will make US actions very unpredictable and, therefore, potentially extremely dangerous. Unpredictable chaos can also quickly morph into a major war, or even several major ones, so the potential danger here is very real (even if totally unreported in Zone A). This, in turn, means that Russia, China, Iran, the DPRK, Venezuela or Cuba all have to keep their guard up and be ready for anything, even the unthinkable (which is often what total chaos generates).

Right now, the fact that the US has initiated a “great retreat” is undeniable. But the true reasons behind it, and its implications, remain quite obscure, at least to me.

I will conclude by asking you, the readers, for your opinion: do you think that the US is currently in a “contraction phase”? If yes, do you believe that this is a short-term only phenomenon, or will this retreat continue and, if yes, how far?

[ralfmaximus]

Demon Trap

I finished the incantation, the last of the words yanked from my throat as they often are. My Sight revealed them swirling away from me, forming a vortex within the containment circle surrounding me, simple chalk on basement concrete.

I stepped carefully out of the circle then, popped the cap off a bottled water and swallowed half in one long draught. By the time I wiped my chin, my visitor was already forming.

He appeared first as an orange ember, a firefly darting frantically within the containment. Finding no escape, he settled into the center, about eye-height, finally spreading himself out a bit: now he spanned a half-dozen hands, sheets of electric fire spinning and churning. The suggestion now of eyes, teeth, horns, reptile skin stretched between bird-bones.

The process was fascinating, always different, yet always similar. Their kind was a bit predictable, which was why I worked in my chosen field. A specialist, I felt comfortable with my knowledge; what to expect, what to do when things went wrong. And this time, everything seemed to be humming along perfectly.

The last thing to arrive was his voice: a howling impotent rage, scaling up into dog-hearing, now bombing out into floor shaking subsonics. This too would subside, I knew, as the thing realized how thoroughly it was caught. I finished my water as I waited.

Eventually, silence. I cleared my throat.

“Hello in there?”

A momentary flash of fire, the howling and shrieking renewed. Were I standing within the circle, I might’ve been impressed. Perhaps even incinerated.

“Oh, quite enough of that, thank you. We have business to discuss.”

The shrieking stopped. I could almost envision a cartoon thought-balloon filled with question-marks hovering over the circle.

“Talk to me. I command it.”

It took a few moments; I could imagine the thing sorting through possible responses, but if I knew my demons, this one wasn’t stupid. Hopefully it wouldn’t spend a lot of time trying to impress me.

“Business?”

I smiled. The words were well-modulated, pitched for human ears. It’d worked with us before. Excellent. Gender neutral, mmmaybe a touch more male than female… but clearly it understood some basic rules.

“Yes. I have a business proposition. And you would be well advised to pay attention, because really… what else can you do?”

Subsonics again; the stuff on my walls shook. “Release me.”

“No. Not gonna happen. Not until we come to an agreement, anyway.”

Flash of heat, even through the circle. An explosion of random noise, insectile chittering, rabid bears singing opera: “I WILL STRIP YOUR FLESH FROM YOUR BONES!  I WILL FASHION YOUR SKIN INTO A CUNNING FALL JACKET!  YOUR ORGANS WILL FILL ITS POCKETS! I WILL—“

“Oh, please. Check my stats. Who has the real power here?  Go ahead… check it out. I’ll wait.”

It didn’t take long. The flames died back into silence as it murmured to itself for a few seconds.

Then, back into conversational mode: “Business?”

“Yes. That. Shall we get to it?”

A sigh. “Very well.”

“I find myself in need of a minion. A familiar, even, should you prove your worth. In exchange I will grant you a small boon of power, bound to my will of course, and a measure of freedom on this plane.”

“This is the human plane?”

“The very same.”

“Crap. I hate this place.”

This gave me pause. “Really. Something bad happen?”

“Oh… don’t get me started. It’s really a long boring story and I come off looking like an idiot, so no. Let’s not go there. Just know that I would burn your world to a cinder then piss on the fire. In a heartbeat.”

I nodded slowly. Good to know. I briefly considered probing for more, specifically when the demon had last visited, but knew that could rapidly spin out of control… their sense of time was different than ours. We could spend hours arguing the semantics of cause and effect, and we’d both end up irritated.

“Okay then. On the surface, does this business proposition interest you?  Say the word and I’ll send you back. No harm, no foul.”

“A question?”

“You may ask.”

“Why… me?”

Wow, that was a good question. Cut right to the heart of things, really. Did he know I’d been scanning for demons of a particular… situation?  Had my reputation preceded me?  Or was this an honest curiosity?  Or did he already know… and this was a test?  My paranoia ratcheted up a notch; I flicked a mental switch and brought some backup defenses online.

“You glow, sorcerer. I detect new shielding. Perhaps your posture is a lie; perhaps you are weak and ripe for the plucking. Mayhap I should test these bounds a bit more, see how strong they really are, hmm?”

An inferno swelled to fill the circle, now a cylinder stretching from floor to ceiling. It was like standing next to a house fire. I cursed mentally; drew in additional force, twisted the talisman dangling from my wrist. I’d pay for it later, but I sensed things might rampage out of control were they not stopped, now.

I pointed; the circle flashed. The being within howled. I’d delivered a few-gigavolts of whoop-ass, wholly beyond what was necessary to subdue a demon of his kind… but I wanted there to be no repeat performances. Show them a strong hand, and you’ll never have to use it. Usually.

It worked. The firefly was back. Stunned, it wavered then regrew to its amorphous teeth/eyes/wings/reptile blob of light, hovering at eye level.

“That went well,” it muttered.

It possessed a sense of humor; a bonus. I could work with this. Suddenly I wanted to work with this… my mind was made up in that moment.

“Try it again, and I’ll napalm you back to the Big Bang. Got that?”

“Accorded. The question.”

“Yes, your question.”  I decided to play along, might be useful for it to understand. And if it already knew, I was giving nothing away.

“I sought you specifically because I know superficially of your situation. You have fallen on hard times. Once powerful, once respected, now you are untouchable. I know not the specifics, nor do I care. But I do recognize talent when I see it. That is why I summoned you.”

It chuckled then. “I see. Release me.”

“Agree to be bound, and we’ll talk.”

“Very well,” it sighed. “I release myself.”

And suddenly things went very wrong. The containment circle winked off, drained of power as if it never was. The thing was suddenly in front of me, heat curling my eyebrows. A reptilian eye regarded mine, inches away, slitted iris opening with interest.

I sensed it then: fathomless power, carefully hidden. The thing was a master of stealth. I’d been tricked, thoroughly and completely. I swallowed, preparing myself to die.

It rumbled, its voice clearing. I closed my eyes.

“Human, I like you. I agree.”

The heat turned off then, as with a switch. I sensed its amusement as I opened my eyes, repressing my body’s urge to convulse and collapse. I took a deep breath, held it, released.

I kept to the script, mystified but willing to accept the gift. “So then, bind yourself and let us begin our new relationship.”

It chuckled again, but came across with the first three syllables of its name then. Which I’d already known, but that’s how contracts are signed. I locked them in and released yet another breath. Far more shakily than I would have liked. I suddenly needed to sit down.

A chair appeared beneath me. I sat. The thing howled with glee.

“See?  Already, I serve. You have a faithful servant. Rejoice, human, for today is a good day for us both. And let me just say, it took you long enough.”

I shifted in the chair, trying to decide if I wanted to lay down instead. This was too much. “Come again?”

“Oh, too delicious!  You sought me, when all this time, who sought whom?  I’ve been pushing you for months, human. How do you suppose my… situation… was revealed to you?  How?”

I racked my brains, trying to remember the exact moment when I selected him for my trap. I could not.

“You see, now. Yes. All is as intended.”

My bruised ego aside, I simply could not believe I’d been so thoroughly duped. Nevertheless… “You have me, I suppose. What now?”

“Oh, that is for you to decide. Master.”

This last was said with barely contained mirth, yet I sensed no ill will. Clearly it was enjoying yet another joke at my expense.

“Then you intend to honor the binding?  I mean, it is a binding, isn’t it?”

“Most certainly. A reasonable device, though I have suggestions for next time. You could learn a lot by seeing things from this perspective; loopholes have always been the bane of human magic, you know. But yes, I am bound. You command. I wish it this way.”

“Um… why?”

“A question,”  he mocked gently. “The human has a question. Very well: I shall answer. I lack motivation. True, I have power, and the will to use it… but am cursed with a lack of imagination or ambition. Perhaps I have always been so, perhaps I had such at one time, perhaps I am damaged… something has happened in the past few dozen centuries, I am uncertain. But no matter: it is how I am, and I acknowledge that freely. It took a lot of therapy to get to where I am now, by the way.”

Not sure if that last was a joke or not, and I didn’t want to risk insult by asking. I moved on.

“So,” I ventured, “we’re a team. I command, you follow, but only because you let me.”

“Well said. If I get bored I may napalm you back to the Big Bang, but I doubt you will bore me.”  The glowing orange blob eased in closer, as if to whisper a secret:  “As I said, I like you.”

I nodded then, slowly. Could be worse. Deep breath, and suddenly I felt better. Sat up a little straighter. Crossed my legs and leaned back, hands behind my head. Considered.

“We’ll need a physical form for you,” I mused.

“Select one. I’m not picky.”

I grinned, formed a thought, set it out for him to see.

His reaction was beautiful. “Surely you jest.”

“I always wanted a dog.”

He sighed. “Very well.”

A flash of light, the brief smell of burning hair. Smoke parted to reveal an irritated dachshund sitting on its haunches, snout pointed at me. But it was all good; I sensed his secret amusement.

“Well done,” I applauded. He took a little doggy bow.

The words ghosted into my head: “What is first on the agenda, Oh Wise and Beneficent Master?”

I stood, cracked my spine. “I’ll tell you upstairs.”  

It was fun watching him take the steps one at a time.

[midnight-aether]

Why Vox by Christina Dalcher is not a good novel: Review & Analysis

The premise of this novel is incredibly interesting, don’t get me wrong: Vox (2018) is about a dystopian future, in which US American women are only allowed to speak 100 words per day and must wear a bracelet that shocks them if they go over that limit. Women also aren’t allowed to write, read or use sign language. The main character is a genius linguist called Jean who hates every man in her life, including her husband Patrick and her own sons.

The first sentence already tells us three things about this novel: (1) it’s told from a first-person perspective, which means the reader will be aware of the protagonist’s every thought, (2) the oppressive regime in the novel goes by the name of Pure Movement, so it’s probably going to have something to do with religion, and (3) the action takes place in the span of a week, which I feel like it’s a huge spoiler for the fact that I won’t care for any of the characters at the end of the book, since there’s only so much character development that can happen in that time.

If anyone told me I could bring down the President, and the Pure Movement, and that incompetent little shit Morgan LeBron in a week’s time, I wouldn’t believe them.

There will be spoilers from this point on.

The Setting and the Protagonist

The main character in Vox, Dr. Jean McClellan, is a specialist researcher in the field of aphasia, that is, according to Wikipedia, “an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions”. At some point in the novel we are made aware that a colleague of Jean’s, with her help, has discovered a cure for aphasia, even though they are both linguists and neither a chemist nor a medical researcher. However, she was unable to publish this discovery, due to the conveniently timed sexist apocalypse that stripped her of all her academic titles, as the reader is often reminded.

Jean is married to her husband Patrick and has four children with him:  three boys and a girl. Jean evidently resents every man in her family,  especially Patrick and their 17-year-old son, Steven. Apparently they’ve  all been very quickly indoctrinated to believe women shouldn’t be  allowed to speak, so they treat Jean and Sonia, the daughter,  accordingly.

There is a whole subplot about Steven, but it’s so plain and uninteresting that there isn’t much to say about it. Basically, he is all for the Pure Movement and their ideals of purity for women, but then still sleeps with his high school girlfriend and proceeds to tattle on her. When she is taken away to a camp, he realizes his mistake a leaves to save her. At some point he is captured by the Movement and ridiculed on TV. Jean doesn’t really care that he’s gone, but is pleasantly surprised when he reappears at the end safe and sound.

At this point, the Pure Movement has only been in power for less  than a year and a half. This movement is very overtly described as a Christian uprising that originated within the bible belt  and had spread to the entirety of the USA. The followers of the  Movement also adopt overly conservative views on gender roles, marriage  and sex, leaving very little doubt about the roots of the oppressive regime in Vox.

The Plot

The main intrigue in Vox begins when the brother of the US president starts suffering from aphasia after a “skiing accident” and the government comes to Jean for help, despite her being a woman in a society that literally won’t let women speak. Why do they come to her instead of going to any other male scientist? Because apparently Jean is the best linguist in the whole country... even though, as far as the government (and the reader) knows, she’s only been researching aphasia for a couple of years and hasn’t found a cure yet. Well, the author herself has a doctorate in linguistics (not in the field of aphasia), which brings me to my first problem with this novel: the blatant and, quite frankly conceited, self-insert.

You may have noticed that I wrote “skiing accident” in quotation marks on the last paragraph. That’s because it’s hinted a couple of times throughout the novel that the president’s brother was actually injured on purpose by the government, but this turns out to be false. Later it seems like he was never even injured in the first place, but this is never clearly resolved, as the character himself never appears “onscreen”; however, it’s not a cliffhanger that perpetually haunts the reader.

Back to the story: Jean agrees to help because, by taking the job, she and her daughter get to remove the shock bracelets for the duration of the research. The government then proceeds to give Jean one week (remember the novel’s first sentence) to produce a cure that, to the best of their knowledge, hasn’t even been found yet. If that sounds like a stretch, they even let her work with her old research team of three people, which is supposed to fully convince the reader that a week is a completely plausible time frame to discover, produce, test and approve a cure for an illness.

The Side Characters

This team is composed of Jean, her former colleagues Lin and Lorenzo, and their supervisor Morgan, who you might remember from the novel’s opening sentence. Morgan is apparently an idiot linguist who is very unfit for his position, which is supposed to show how twisted the society in Vox is, as they put the dumb people in charge just because they’re men, and silence the smart women. What it actually does is show that this version of the USA apparently only has a handful of linguists and no other skilled scientists.

This is the novel’s description of Lin:

Lin Kwan is a small woman. I often told Patrick she could fit in one of my pant legs – and I’m only five and a half feet and 120 soaking wet, thanks to the stress diet I’ve been on for the past several months. Everything about her is small: her voice, her almond eyes, the sleek bob that barely reaches below her ears. Lin’s breasts and ass make me look like a Peter Paul Rubens model. But her brain – her brain is a leviathan of gray matter. It would have to be; MIT doesn’t hand out dual PhDs for nothing.

Here we learn that Lin is small, not conventionally attractive (read: small boobs and ass), and finally that she is incredibly intelligent. For some reason, Jean finds it important to describe Lin’s curves, as well as her own, before mentioning Lin’s intelligence. No, this novel was not written by Michael Bay. Also, for representation’s sake, Lin is Asian and a lesbian, yet every other major character in this novel is a white straight person.

Well, there is another lesbian in this story, actually. Jean’s old college roommate, Jackie Juarez, who Jean hasn’t seen since before the machocalypse. We get to know Jackie through flashbacks: the novel tries to portray her as this loud, over-the-top feminist who often tries to make Jean join the rallies and protests against the growing Pure Movement. Alas, Jean chooses to focus on school instead of going to protests and forever regrets this, thinking that if only she had fought, she might have changed history.

I don’t know how to feel about this novel’s depiction of Jackie. She is made out to be a stereotypical feminist lesbian, who actively protests against the uprising of the Pure Movement, and yet whose efforts are in vain. Here is an excerpt that characterizes how Jean sees Jackie, and therefore how the reader is supposed to see her:

“You have to vote, Jean,” [Jackie] said, throwing down the stack of campaign leaflets she’d been running around campus with while I was prepping for what I knew would be a monster of an oral exam. “You have to.”

“The only things I have to do are pay taxes and die,” I said, not holding back the sneer in my voice. That semester was the beginning of the end for Jackie an me. I’d started dating Patrick and preferred our nightly discussions about cognitive processes to Jackie’s rants about whatever new thing she had found to protest.

Here you can see that Jean clearly dismisses Jackie and “whatever new thing she had found to protest”, and instead muses about what an intellectual she is. I understand that this is a flashback, and it’s supposed to show that Jean was wrong not to care about protesting the Pure Movement, but this is told from present Jean’s perspective, so it’s clear she still rolls her eyes at Jackie’s activism in general. It feels like Vox is trying to say that actively expressing your ideas and concerns is useless, since Jean eventually overthrows the government with science and not through activism – and it even takes her no longer than a week to do it, as we learn at the beginning of this novel. There is a lot to unpack here,  but I still wouldn’t recommend thinking too hard about the ideas in this book.  

Jackie only becomes relevant to the plot towards the end. At some point she is held hostage by the government, so that Jean is forced to finish her work. Why the government chose to kidnap Jean’s old college roommate who she hasn’t seen or spoken about in years instead of, say, her daughter, we will never know. In the end, Jackie is only there so that Jean can save her and “redeem” herself for not having been there for Jackie in the past.

Lorenzo, the last member of the team, is Jean’s love affair since way before the Pure Movement effectively took over. The novel likes to remind the reader that Jean is with the Italian hunk Lorenzo because she despises her husband Patrick, so that makes cheating okay. Eventually we learn that Jean is pregnant with Lorenzo’s child, so he offers to let her escape with him to Italy as his wife. Yet Jean can’t allow herself to leave without her daughter Sonia – she’s fine with never seeing any of her sons again, though. She considers this for a while as she works on the cure for aphasia.

The Ending

At some point during the week, Lin disappears (we later learn she was imprisoned due to big gay activity). Jean and Lorenzo announce that they’ve discovered the cure and even test the serum on a random neighbour of Jean’s who happens to have aphasia as well. Also, Jean’s mother had an aneurysm earlier that week and also started suffering from aphasia. The government is pleased with the results and take the serum away.

Later, Morgan, the supervisor, takes Jean and Lorenzo to a strange lab underground to have them further develop the cure. There they walk through a hallway full of chimpanzees in cages, and there is a bizarre scene in which Jean gets too close to a cage and is attacked by a chimpanzee. There is no purpose to this scene other than to shock the reader, honestly. Here, the novel briefly, yet disrespectfully brings up a very real woman who was mauled by a chimpanzee in 2009 and managed to survive (Wikipedia link, no pictures), by having Jean think something along the lines of “oh no, I don’t want to end up like her!” during the attack.

Jean is fine, obviously. We’re over 200 pages in and nearing the end of the novel when the first interesting development happens in the form of a plot twist: the government has been using their cure in order to create an anti-serum that gives people aphasia. Their plan is to create a more effective means to silence women, of course, since they  wouldn’t be able to comprehend or formulate language any more. When Jean discovers this, she wants to quit, but is forced to stay when they reveal they’ve been keeping Jackie, Lin and Lin’s girlfriend hostage in the same building for this very occasion. And maybe also Steven back at that camp, but we don’t even care about him at this point.

The climax of the story arrives, and everything happens so quickly the reader doesn’t have time to digest it. I had to reread what actually happened at the end, because I couldn’t remeber it anymore. I’ll try to recreate the pacing of the ending in the following paragraph, so you can understand what I mean:

Jean and Lorenzo save the lesbians (who are the only likeable characters, so that made me happy), Morgan dies, I think, and they escape with the anti-serum. Patrick appears and decides to help, so they send him to the White House with an anti-serum bomb that suceeds, giving the president and all evil politicians aphasia. Patrick is killed during this, freeing Jean from their marriage and allowing her to escape with Lorenzo and all of her children, whom she suddenly stopped resenting. The Pure Movement collapses and all is well, thanks to... well, thanks to Patrick and Lorenzo.

Conclusion

Vox is a mess of a novel. The characters are unlikeable, the plot is badly paced and the ending is too sudden. I really didn’t care about what happened to any character at any point, which is incredibly disappointing. Additionally, there are many things wrong with the political message in Vox, namely the idea that all religious people are inherently evil and that men generally wish to control and silence women. The premise was good, the writing was fine, but the performance was terrible, unfortunately. Vox feels like it was rushed to come out in time for the dystopian fiction craze of 2017-18 caused by the release of The Handmaid’s Tale TV series. Hopefully we’ll see better work from the author in the future.

Blog | Goodreads

[coeurdastronaute]

Either/Or: Hands 2

Previously on Hands

The sun wasn’t a fair representation of the absolute drudgery of the entire day and the feelings that hung heavy in the hospital suite. Spring didn’t care about the bitterness that festered and stewed despite all the best intentions, and so it shone brightly and left streaks of yellow across the bed and floor, warming the sterile hospital bed. 

None of that mattered until a certain doctor breezed into the room and threw open the curtains, not letting the beauty go wasted. 

Lena didn’t move when the lights flooded her room. She didn’t blink or look up, but rather stared at her hands as they laid on the pillow in her lap. The scars were starting to heal, the faint red lines becoming pink, the hardware being removed. Sometimes she was afraid to move them, not because they hurt, but because it didn’t feel the same as it did before. 

“I’m glad you’re up. You get so grumpy when I wake you.” 

Only then did Lena look at the stranger in the room and roll her eyes. 

“I’m not grumpy.”

“You are frequently grumpy.” 

The stare that she gave didn’t really support her position that she wasn’t grumpy, but rather expressed a resigned kind of deference, wherein she knew that her grumpiness would be coddled and tolerated and eventually lightened by the girl who came in with the sunshine behind her. 

“I have a lot to be grumpy about, if I actually was grumpy.” 

“Why? You still have your hands, you’re not terrible to look at, you’re a reasonably good conversationalist--”

“And I can’t even play Twinkle Twinkle,” Lena interrupted. 

“Yet. I will say,” Kara nodded, as she pulled up the stool and sat beside Lena’s bed, “that you are insanely bad at patience.”

“Give me a time then. You won’t give me a goal.” 

“I had to see the progress and healing, wait for the hardware to come up, factor in any subsequent surgeries.” 

“But I’m all done with that and being discharged today.” 

“Yes, you are,” she nodded and pushed up her glasses. 

Gingerly, Kara cleared her throat and reached forward to take Lena’s hand as she was now growingly increasingly good at doing without blushing. She blushed often when she was in a certain Luthor’s suite, and even more so when she touched her. 

Lena watched her face with interest, something she was known to do frequently, unable to stop herself. She didn’t want to. Desperately, Lena wanted to sulk and let bitterness eat her alive and to hate life, which was made exceedingly difficult by a girl like Kara. 

So instead of watching Kara’s intense eyes, Lena looked down at her hand because it was a safe place, even with Kara’s hands on her own. 

To and fro, up and down, pushing against tightness and waiting to gauge Lena’s reaction, Kara went about her work professionally. She didn’t betray anything as she did the usual tests, which was unbelievably frustrating to the patient who thought herself getting used to the small tells of her brow or lip or eye. 

“How does it feel?” Kara asked, still not looking up.

“Better. Hurts sometimes.” 

“You’ve been doing the exercises and stretches I told you about?” 

“I have been. All day. But I’m careful.” 

Kara nodded and smiled to herself before setting down the hands in her own and taking a deep breath. She met Lena’s eyes and cocked her head to the side. It felt like an eternity and Lena waited eagerly. 

“Two months until you’re doing scales. Six months until you’re getting very frustrated by your body not doing what you want it to do, and getting mad that I can’t make it work quicker.” 

“I am going to have to learn to play all over again.” 

“No, that skill doesn’t just disappear.” 

“It does.” 

“I don’t believe it, but if you do, do you think you can get it back?”

“I hope so.” 

“You have to do more than that. Are you in this with me, Lena? Even if you end up hating me, even if you think you’re never going to get back, you have to believe you’re going to be the girl that blew me away when I watched you play on old videos.” 

She didn’t think there’d be a hesitation, but something about the earnestness in Kara’s eyes made Lena really think over how much she meant the words and how tough the journey might be. When her voice failed her, she just nodded, slow and steady at first before quickly picking up the pace when the determination, and what some might call stubbornness, peaked its head. Kara grinned and nodded as well. 

“I’m in it too,” she promised. “Whatever you need.” 

“I’m going to put up a fight.” 

Kara snorted a laugh and sat up, pushing away from the patient. 

“I wouldn’t expect anything less, Ms. Luthor.” 

“Ugh, don’t call me that.” 

“Call you your name?” 

“Yes. You know I hate that.” 

“I’ll refrain as best I can.” 

“It’ll be easier when I’m not a patient.”

“You’ll be my patient for at least six months, didn’t you hear my timeline?” 

With her back turned to the hospital bed, Kara jotted down a few notes while Lena stared at her shoulders and debated what it would mean to leave. She wasn’t sure, suddenly, what it would mean to be without the sunshine in her life. 

“You’re going see it through with me?” 

“I plan on being front row of your next big concert. Complimentary tickets and all.” 

“I can arrange that.” 

Lena soaked in the smile as Kara made her way toward the door. 

“I’ll see you before you leave, okay? Behave.” 

“Yes ma’am.” 

XXXXXXXXXX

Halfway through her day and Kara had too much to get done, just like every other day. A neverending barrage of patients and follow ups kept her bouncing around, keeping it together as best she could, but by lunchtime, it was already a long day she couldn’t wait to escape. 

She didn’t want to think about the fact that her favorite patient was leaving. That wasn’t something that felt real because she couldn’t remember a time before Lena. It didn’t seem right. So Kara avoided that wing and she didn’t have lunch with Lena like she normally did. In fact, she kept checking her watch during sessions, afraid of what the end of the day might mean. 

When she got the call to see the head of the department, she genuinely had no idea what it meant, but she wasn’t eager to do it. 

“You wanted to see me, Cat?” Kara asked quietly as she tapped on her bosses door before being ushered in. 

“How is it going with the Luthor?” 

“To be expected, honestly. She’s coming along well enough.”

“The Luthors have requested your services, so I’ve split your cases to the department, and your focus will be on the youngest and her recovery.” 

“I have patients though. People I’ve worked with--”

“And you’ll continue to work with them, but I need you focused on her recovery.” 

“I am, but I have--” Kara furrowed and shook her head. 

“This isn’t a request, Kara. This is what your schedule is going to be geared toward over the next few months.” 

While she wanted to open her mouth and argue, and while she wanted to get more specifics, the look on her bosses face was disinterested enough for Kara to know that the conversation was over. 

“Thank you. Please shut the door on your way out.” 

As soon as the door clicked, Kara furrowed, even more confused about the rest of her day and aware that she didn’t have to parse those feelings about the youngest Luthor just yet, because even though she thought she’d see her often enough in physical therapy, it seemed like now it was going to be more often. 

XXXXXXXXXX

With vaguely the same level of apprehension as she felt the very first day she read the folder that had Lena Luthor’s name on it, Kara found herself awkwardly shifting between her feet and re-reading the piece of paper with the address and passcode for the fancy high rise downtown, still unsure of how she got herself into this situation. Surely there were world-renowned doctors and specialists that money could have bought that would have done the same thing she was about to do. 

The nerves didn’t leave her as she got onto the elevator she was directed toward, nor when she punched in the number and code for the penthouse but for just a moment, when all was quiet and she was somewhere halfway up the tall building, she took a deep breath. 

The door opened to a well-lit space, open and inviting, and oddly almost exactly what Kara would picture for Lena, if she allowed herself to think about her. But she didn’t want to think about her friend that way, or rather, her patient. 

From the quiet, a noise came, the soft twinkling of some piano keys, not particularly a song, but just a few key strokes, the same sound methodically before it changed to another. There wasn’t a melody, but Kara followed it anyway, moving through the open area toward a room bathed in sunlight. She passed a tall wall filled with shelves of books, with vines of green plants dripping down the sides. Plants covered almost everything, greenery seeping into the rather minimalist decor. 

So naturally, Lena sat at the piano bench, the large grand, as if she was part of it, as if it was her natural habitat. Fingers ran along the keys. 

“You’re jumping ahead a bit in my rebah schedule.” 

“I don’t think I can go a day without touching the piano,” Lena smiled as she turned her head to greet the visitor. “Even if this is all I can do.” 

“We’ll get you there.” 

“I sure hope so.” 

“Well, your family has effectively booked me to be your personal trainer for the next foreseeable future, so I’m all yours, Ms. Luthor.” 

Lena just smiled and rested her hands on the keys, nodding to herself. Shyly, Kara sat beside her and looked down, afraid to touch such an expensive and important machine. But she moved her hands and began to play the notes, not making any sense, just making noise. And Lena followed, trying her best to add some sort of rhythm to the cacophony. All Kara was doing was echoing what she imagined a piano player would do, and as she stretched her hands, she focused on the movements, and realized just was was asked of the tendons and muscles. She was lost to the sound and picked up only on the movements, flexing and testing and knowing full well that things were even harder than she imagined. 

Though she stopped all of a sudden, Lena followed Kara’s lead and took a deep breath, laughing as she finished the song. 

“That was fun. You’re a natural.” 

“You’re being too kind.” 

“No no,” Lena laughed. “All you need is about 17 years of training.” 

“I wasn’t meant to do this. You were though.” 

“How can you tell?” 

“You made chaos sound beautiful,” Kara explained. “That’s a gift.” 

“I don’t believe in gifts, just practice.” 

“You should. You have at least one.” 

Normally, she’d fight it, but Kara was smiling and honest and sitting right there so that there shoulders were touching, and Lena found herself blushing at the idea of someone admiring her ability, so she just nodded. 

“I’m sorry my parents did what they always do.” 

“I can’t say I’d do anything different,” Kara shrugged. “If I had the money, I’d never stop demanding the best for my family.” 

“I find it hard to believe you’d behave that way.” 

That earned a snort.

“Maybe. But I’d want the best. I get it.” 

“They’re overwhelming and overbearing, but they mean well.” 

“I’m just honored they deemed me worthy of pulling strings.” 

“You’re the only one I might listen to,” Lena informed her, shifting and walking away from the bench. “I have problems with authority. My father says it’s because I’m smarter than most in the room. I don’t think it’s that, just a very long stretch of my teenage years being obsessed with British punk.” 

“Really?” 

“Did you think I only listened to Mozart and Bach?”

“Kind of.” 

“Sorry to burst your bubble.” 

“Are you ready to get started?” 

“Do we have to?” 

“We should. I want to hear you play, and I’m not going to stop until I do.” 

The renewed burst of purpose made Lena feel empowered enough to agree, and despite herself, she thanked her parents for knowing exactly what she needed.

[kilodalton]

So I see a post from TikTok making its way around Tumblr about how prior authorizations are awful and corporatist and stand in the way of mom, America, apple pie, unsuspecting patients, and their earnest and well-meaning doctors. Bring out the guillotines etc etc.

I made it through the first 5 seconds of that video before rolling my eyes because frankly, dude doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

For the purposes of this diatribe informational post, PA means “prior authorization” NOT physicians assistant. So if I say “PAs suck” please do take that into consideration before reaming me out.

Ok so what are my credentials to spout off on this?

1) You can call me Dr. Kilodalton. I’m a double-board certified clinical pharmacist with a doctorate in my field on top of 2 years of post-doc residencies.

2) I work for one of the largest single-payer government systems in the world. I have ZILCH to do with corporations, capitalism, or guillotines. (I’ll let you guess .. cannot confirm nor deny my employer lol) ... which leads to:

3) I evaluate prior authorization requests as part of my job every single day. I approve them! I deny them! I sometimes say “get a load of this boneheaded request!!” and make fun of them to my colleagues! YES SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM USE PAS JUST AS MUCH IF NOT MORE THAN CORPORATIONS DO! Hell, I even submit some PAs myself if I think one of my patients can benefit.

All of this EMINENTLY qualifies me to say, much more so than some dude on TikTok whose voice hasn’t even cracked yet: PAs are (usually) a necessary evil.

Why do I speak this BLASPHEMY?! This SACRILEGE?!? Am I a corporate shill (who doesn’t work for a corporation) who hates patients (even though I devote my career to their care) and wants poor people to die (even though I work for a single-payer system that treats people regardless of ability to pay?)

The answer is easy: I actually ... kinda know what I’m talking about. Here are some facts:

PAs can save your life: PAs are usually required for risky drugs. Just because a drug is risky does not mean the underlying disease state it is treating always balances the risk. A lot of times, safer drugs are available.

PAs are almost universally required for shiny new drugs that Big Pharma is trying to line their pockets with: New drugs get advertised all the time. Patients ask their prescribers for the drugs. The prescribers often don’t know any better and put in PA requests for them. Stunningly often, there is no reason given for the request other than “patient saw the ad on TV and asked me about it.” Yes. Seriously. If you guys support that ... you must own a LOT of pharma stock.  

PAs make things less expensive (usually). Because PA drugs are usually brand new, brand name only, and expensive AF, requiring a PA brings down costs for the system as a whole. This matters a lot -- even in a single payer organization like mine. By giving everyone -- regardless if they need it or not -- expensive drugs, less money is available to help other people. Money doesn’t grow on trees, even in single payer systems.

Your docs -- especially your primary care docs -- usually know jack squat about drugs: You would (probably) be appalled to learn that your average MD takes 2 pharmaceutical modules in med school. That’s it. Usually (but not always), specialists are much better about knowing their stuff ... but your average first-line doc does not have the training to determine what meds should be used when, how to assess their efficacy, how to monitor them, and when to triage to a specialist.

PAs make sure your doc is monitoring you the way they should: This falls through the cracks A LOT. If you are on a fancy drug that requires a PA, you probably assume your doc is regularly checking to make sure that, among other things, your kidneys can cope with the dose. Shockingly few docs do this (well it’s not shocking to ME that they don’t check, but I see it every damn day). PAs help us make sure that requested doses are safe -- often, they are not.

PAs make sure you actually have the condition your doctor says you have: I cannot stress this enough. It seems crazy, but it’s true. If you tell your doctor “I have ABC condition” they will likely add it to your medical record, even without testing you for it or looking at previous medical records you have. The problem is, sometimes you really don’t have ABC condition ... so if they try to prescribe you a drug for ABC condition when they have not independently confirmed you have it, problems can (and do) arise.

Here are just a few examples off the top of my head of boneheaded PAs I’ve happily denied. Trust me, there are LOADS more where this comes from. My former office mate and I used to half-joke we should write a freaking book. Anyway, on to the dumb PAs that TikTok dude would have me rubberstamp because TheyComeFromADoctor:

The one that would have given a patient a stroke. One MD wrote a PA for short-acting nifedipine -- a blood pressure drug that is only given inpatient because, unless closely monitored, it basically causes your blood pressure to ping-pong, ischemia to develop, and voila a stroke. I denied it because I wanted the patient to ... uh, ya know, live.

The one for dementia in a patient who did not have dementia. Some drugs are basically one-trick ponies. Rivastigmine is used for a few things -- mainly dementia, but very specific kinds. It can actually WORSEN cognition in some kinds of dementia. Which is why docs are supposed to get an actual diagnosis before prescribing such things. If I had a dime for every time they don’t check ... I would have a crap ton of dimes.

The high-intensity blood thinner for a patient whose blood ... was thinning just fine on its own. For whatever reason, a patient thought they might have a clotting condition and told their doctor. Their doctor, who didn’t double check this, and ordered them a mega blood thinner that requires a PA. We asked for test results, and lucky we did -- the patient was clotting just fine on their own, and use of this drug in that population can lead to hemorrhage.

The one that was causing an autoimmune reaction in a patient. Some drugs cause the body to attack itself, and you need to check for antibodies before you prescribe it. One doc ordered the antibody test but apparently didn’t check the results before ordering the drug for the patient ... uh. Yeah. Hard nope on that one.

The one that would have caused an overdose. Some narcotics require PAs. One doc apparently can’t math very well, and ordered a huge narcotic dose for an opioid-naive patient. Luckily a PA was required: obviously, I quashed it.

The one that would have harmed a pregnant patient. Some drugs can’t be used in pregnancy. Some docs don’t think to ask if a patient is pregnant before trying to prescribe drugs linked to fetal malformations. Luckily, I picked up the phone to double-check with the patient when I saw no recent pregnancy test in her chart. Guess what?! 

Anyway. This post is not sexy. This post is not fun. This post is not pro-pharma, and this post is not pro-corporate (again -- hello!! I work for a single payer here!!) 

What this post IS -- is chock full of inconvenient information from a person who actually is in student loan debt to her eyeballs because she kinda knows what she’s talking about.

And hopefully - HOPEFULLY -- this post is also helpful to someone.

Much love -- Dr. Kilodalton

[spectralscathath]

R.O.S.E-6???

oh god okay so this one is a long one. But basically: Ruby is the robot built by Atlas to save the world and harness the power of the Silver Eyes, on Summer’s request. Tai and Yang are designated to be her family, so that she can feel the right amount of love in order to awaken the Silver Eyes. James does his best to support them, Ruby gets the best training with the Ace Operatives, the best equipment, and plenty of time to spend with her family. (Qrow, in an inverse to his canon self, dotes on Yang. She is by far the favourite niece. He really hates Ruby as well. Unfortunate!)

Ruby 6.0 gets to go to the Vytal Festival in Beacon, it should be a safe, low-stakes, risk-free test against some other Huntsmen, she can see the world, experience new things, and really get a chance to see what it’s like to be human. 

Penny, for her part, grew up in Patch as the daughter of famed inventor and doctor, Pietro Polendina. Having lost her family to Grimm when she was too young to remember it, Penny is a prodigy fighter who built her weapons, Heartstrings, together with her father, who implanted the neural chip she uses to fight with them. Good enough to get into Beacon two years ahead of schedule, Pietro asked his live-in apprentice Ciel to go with Penny, just to make sure she didn’t get herself in trouble. 

They get teamed up with Winter Schnee, the proud middle child of the Schnee family and the spare to her elder sister Weiss’s heir, and Sienna Khan, a faunus runaway who has a bone to pick with everyone. Things go... predictably poorly. 

Because this is kinda long, I’ll actually be putting the snippet under the cut, along with some character sheets! I’m not sure if I’ll ever write this but if I ever get round to it it’ll probably be more of a collection of oneshots with a vague plot, but I do like the idea

~~~~~~~~~~

PROJECT R.O.S.E SUBJECT: RUBY 6.0 TESTING: COMBAT CAPABILITIES OVERSEEN BY: GENERAL J. IRONWOOD NOTES TAKEN BY: DR V. SHELL

Ruby stood in the simulation room, facing across from Captain Ebi and Lieutenant Ederne. Captain Ebi smiled at her, Lieutenant Ederne doing the same with a massive grin that invoked similar feelings of warmth as Yang’s smile. 

“You ready, kiddo?” Captain Ebi rested his weapon on his shoulder, Ruby’s silver eyes flicking to it as her databanks ran schematics in her head. 

[Kingfisher: Huntsman-class weapon. Fishing pole with razor wire line, melee form. Hook can be used for mobility. Harpoon function stored in back of hilt. No gun format; razor wire provides ranged attack]

She raised her right arm, the black metal of her forearm shifting and altering so her wrist cannon emerged, ready for combat. “Yes sir.”

“Ruby, you don’t have to call me ‘sir’,” Captain Ebi reminded her, Lieutenant Ederne giving her a thumbs up beside him as she hefted her weapon in one hand.

[Timber: Huntsman class weapon. Two-handed warhammer, Ederne’s strength makes her capable of wielding one-handed. Thrusters can be activated to maximise attack output. Rocket launcher for ranged format- AVOID AT ALL COSTS]

The last words had been added to the databanks after Ruby 4.0 had been broken in a training session. Lieutenant Ederne had been very apologetic, Specialist Bree had told Ruby that Ederne had been driven to the point of tears by what she had done. 

Ruby hadn’t really been bothered by it, after all, she could easily be rebuilt. Even better, Mr Ironwood had her databanks wiped of the actual recordings of her deaths whenever she was rebuilt. It felt like it happened to a Ruby that wasn’t her. In a way, it did. She was never the same between incarnations, but she watched the audio-visual data of her previous models so she could learn from them and do better.

She was built to save the world, after all. That was her job. She was built to be a hero. 

Ruby blinked up at General Ironwood, overseeing this test with a smile. She would not disappoint him, nor her father. She wanted to test her strength in the Vytal Tournament, and see more of the world. 

She turned her cheerful smile to Captain Ebi and saluted playfully. “Yes sir!”

~~~~

“Sienna Khan. Penny Polendina. Ciel Soleil. Winter Schnee. The four of you retrieved the white queen pieces, and from this day on, you’ll be known as team PSCS.” Ozpin smiled at Penny, who felt her heart metaphorically swell with pride and joy. “Led by Penny Polendina.”

“Thank you, Mr Ozpin!” Penny beamed at him, the neural implant on her forehead gleaming silver under the spotlights. 

Ciel patted her shoulder, a faint smile crossing her features before she hid it behind her usual professionalism. “Good job, Penny.”

“I can’t believe I’m stuck with some riffraff faunus,” Winter scoffed, her white hair pulled back in a severe bun as she stood tall, glaring down at their fourth teammate.

Sienna snarled back, tiger ears pinned flat to her head and inked stripes lining her bare arms. “Oh you better keep your eyes open, Schnee,” she said it with all the venom of a slur, “cause the moment you drop your guard I’m taking that gaudy sword of yours and skewering you on it.”

“I’d like to see you try, beast.” Winter hissed back, the air around the two fraught with violent intent. 

Penny blinked and looked at Ciel. “They’ll be best friends once we begin to do friendship things,” she affirmed. 

“If you say so.” Ciel didn’t look convinced.

~~~~

ROSE 6.0 (Robotic Optical Silver-light Emitter) Codename: Ruby Rose Species: Synthetic Soldier Family: James Ironwood (project sponsor), Taiyang Xiao Long (assigned father), Yang Xiao Long (assigned sister) Age: 2 years, 7 months without malfunction for current model Weaponry: Moonlight’s Cull, scythe blade stored in her left arm that she can form for attacks. Wrist-mounted blaster in right arm.   Abilities: latent possibility of Silver Eyes.

Penny Polendina Age: 15 Semblance: Visual Data, allows Penny to remember everything she sees, scan people to obtain information, see through dark/fog, and replay data she saw back on her scroll for others to see Weapon: Heartstrings, a set of foldable blades Penny can control through a neural implant Partner: Winter Schnee

Ciel Soleil Age: 17 Semblance: Last Minute, allows her to pause time for her perception of a minute Weapon: Precision, a sniper rifle stored in her watch, half-mechanical, half-hard light dust Partner: Sienna Khan

Winter Schnee  Age: 17 Semblance: Glyphs, summon specialties: Beowulf, Nevermore, Manticore Weapon: Kalte Iridacea, a set of swords that can combine into one blade. No dust capabilities Partner: Penny Polendina

Sienna Khan Age: 17 Semblance: Camouflage, she can absorb the materials around her and take on their properties. The stripes on her arms visibly take on the visual properties of them Weapon: Primal Wrath, a three-pronged chain whip that she later adds dust to Partner: Ceil Soleil

[peopleproblemsolver]

Mental Health In A Bottle

i have aspergers which is a neurological social disorder and the only mental illness symptom i have is anxiety from the mental health system itself for the past 17 or so years. diagnostic test for autism is 45 out of 50 positive, or 90 percent.

when i take schizophrenia diagnostic tests and a schizophrenia MRI back in 2006, they both end up negative, with the diagnostic being 90 percent negative, totals 12 out of 105.

when i ask my former psychiatrist about changing schizophrenia medications because they have never worked, largely because i have never had hallucinations anyway, but have side effects, they change it back to one i have already been on even though it never did anything either.

when that dose is raised and i have physical side effects, the psych doctor advises to take over the counter physical symptom reducers, even though this is unreasonable to take every day with schizophrenia medications unless you want to overdose and kill yourself.

so i finally tell them if they dont work maybe just try anxiety medication? i know i have anxiety at least. their answer is that they would be willing to switch to bipolar medications instead, even though that has nothing to do with anything and wont do anything, same as the schizophrenia medications for 17 years.

it is even a challenge to find female therapists who will counsel mental illness anyway, even though most therapists are female.

system wise itself, government counseling lines that are fully paid and staffed that do not require you to be somewhat suicidal are hard to find if they exist.

the actual mobile crisis dispatch line is not useful for this either, as 30 day mental hospitals usually dont have counseling either, only medicine changing and group lecture classes.

the biggest issue or challenge in mental illness health is not patients who refuse treatment, it is patients who search for treatment but cannot find it because medical mental health professionals decline some of them or the services do not exist.

the national alliance for mental illness, or NAMI, does not represent mental ill patients lobby wise. they represent the mental health workers and professionals, and only lobby for change to the budget for mental health programs, not fixing the system itself.

if you tell them you are declined by therapist and psychiatric service providers for reasons such as disability, gender, or race discrimination, they will tell you that they represent the mental health workers and do no lobby for requiring medical professionals to see you under "scope of practice" type laws.

most professionals and workers involved in mental health services argue about unprovable opinions more than most people do in a year or lifetime. i do not talk to my family about medical issues becuase they are too touchy and most therapists have issues with being easily offended and touchy as well.

i need to have an accurate diagnosis for purposes of medicine and treatments. it is unhealthy to be on medicines that have no effect and no purpose for 17 years. it seems inappropriate to be neurologically issued with a social disorder that is permanent and unmedicatable and for psychiatrists to instead pretend that you have a more voluntary, temporary type of issue like mental illness that can be removed with medication. this is because after 5 years, 10 years, 17 years later, they can just pretend the medications just havent worked out yet.

this is inappropriate and should not be mixed or double diagnosed, as autism is permanent and not “curable”. also, most individuals with autism develop the same symptoms, such as hallucinations, as schizophrenics, at the same young adult age period. why mix two things up that have the same symptoms, or say you have both, when that is redundant?

if you have a permanent and temporary condition with the same symptoms, the permanent should override the temporary, as the permanent existed first. autism is a childhood condition. it only developed schizophrenic symptoms in young adulthood, the same as schizophrenia mental illness itself. thus, autism is first.

i have no need to discuss this anymore with any specialists in psychiatry or anyone relevant to me but unable to figure things out enough to discuss it, such as my family members. it is better if i dont, from an anxiety standpoint, and also from a slight trauma standpoint, as talking to argumentative persons who act controlly gives me a suffocation feeling in my upper chest and neck as my breathing becomes too shallow to continue talk about anything with psychiatric "conversationalists."

there is not really any generic social worker advocates for disabled persons, nor really any autism diagnosis specialists for adults. if aspergers as a child included not talking much to others, especially in larger groups, or looking downwards instead of socialising with peers, or having a specific interest in numbers or numerical statistics such as historical years, event, persons birth and death year, wars, composers, historical leaders, or 1980s songs per year, then yes, i had or have those.

allen ralph

[collectablecorner]

SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity supports the entire Armed Forces family. It is a UK non-profit charity that provides long life support to individuals who are currently serving or have served within the British Armed Forces and their families. This impressive organization has been operating since 1885 and was founded by Major James Gildea. Today SSAFA boasts of 5,000 volunteers to help upwards of   people every year and is the UK's oldest national tri-service Armed Forces charity.



Why is Collectable Corner choosing to support SSAFA?

The problem people tend to have when it comes to charitable donations and fundraising is not knowing how much of the donors funds are reaching the desired goal of helping someone in need. While we can't speak for the charities themselves, we (myself and my family) can talk about our experience with SSAFA and why we're confident that the money gets exactly to where it is needed the most.

Brian Cook, a loving husband, father, great grandfather and (my) grandad served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) and was a part of the Christmas Island nuclear bomb tests in the 1950's which exposed the soldiers to radiation due to being closer to the bombs than any human should ever be. Today only a handful of the Suicide Squad Veterans are still alive. Almost (if not all) of the soldiers involved died through multiple various cancers and ill health such as chronic arthritis and heart, lung, liver diseases. There is evidence to support the fact that these health conditions can be directly related to what the soldiers were made to do. But not only has it affected the veterans themselves but their families genetics has also caused numerous health problems generation after generation. This will carry on for generations to come also and the UK is one of the only countries involved to not accept these findings and therefore the support for these individuals and families has been lacking. Unfortunately Brian (grandad) was no different, neither is his family.

In January 2018, Brian fell ill and was taken to hospital where within three days of admittance was diagnosed with late stage liver and lung cancer, all that could be done was to make him as comfortable as possible. Over the course of the following four days we prepared for his return home. We gave a sofa away from our living room to make room for the hospital bed due to Brian losing the use of his legs, and we turned a downstairs room into a bathroom. Monday came round and Brian had been in hospital for 7 days, Monday to Monday. He arrived home via hospital transport and we got him settled in as best we could. Grandad always wanted to die at home my grandmother tells me. At 3am tuesday morning, after being home for around 10 hours Brian, my grandmother's husband, my mother's father, and my very special grandad passed away. It was, as anyone who has lost a loved one will know, devastating. It all happened so fast.

During the period between Brian's death and his funeral service SSAFA actually offered us money towards the cost, which we refused based on the fact we would rather it had gone to someone more in need than ourselves, but it stuck with us in our hearts and minds. What we learned is that SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity, gets the money and help to the people who really need it. We didn't expect nor ask for it either. At this period in Collectable Corner  didn't exist, what existed was another hobby project that never worked out but a vow was made by myself to use the public platform to raise donations for SSAFA in loving memory of RAF Veteran Brian Cook. Now after a couple of years of hard work, dedication and grind, Collectable Corner, i am elated to tell you is working out and in a position to honour that vow and may he rest in peace.

Who does SSAFA help? And how does it help?

SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity helps people in a variety of ways.

For currently serving personnel and their families provides:

Support in service communities

SSAFA has a network of volunteers on Army, RAF, and Naval bases in the UK and around the world who give local support.

Housing

Housing for wounded, injured, and sick serving personnel and their famiies SSAFA Norton House, Stanford Hall provide home-from-home accommodation for families visiting wounded, injured, sick service or ex-service personnel and outpatients. SSAFA also provides day-to-day management of Fisher House UK at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham (QEHB).

Mentoring for service leavers

SSAFA's mentoring scheme was set up in 2011 and supports those transitioning out of the Forces. SSAFA's volunteer mentors provide support to wounded, injured, and sick leavers through a long-term 'one-to-one' relationship that underpins the transition from the military. SSAFA Mentoring is nationally accredited by the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation.

Adoption for military families

SSAFA is a registered adoption agency dedicated to helping military families through the adoption process.

Additional need and disabilities support

SSAFA provide specialised support to military families with additional needs including their Forces Additional Needs and Disability Forum (FANDF).

Short breaks for children and young people with additional needs from Forces families

SSAFA coordinates holidays and events that focus on offering new experiences and activities for children and young people from services families.

Stepping Stone Homes for women and their children with a service connection

Stepping Stone Homes provides short-term supported accommodation, help, and advice during difficult times. Female spouses and partners of serving or ex-service personnal, along with their dependent children are all eligible to stay there.

Professional health care

SSAFA's professional health care staff provide patient-focussed care to military families worldwide.

Personal support and social work for the RAF

Working alongside the RAF, but outside the Chain of Command, SSAFA staff provide support for RAF personnel and their families worldwide. 

Independent Service Custody Visiting

SSAFA provides independent oversight of Army Service Custody facilities.

 

Support available to veterans and their families:

Housing advice

SSAFA offers practical housing advice and support to Armed Forces veterans and their dependents including guidance around housing benefits and accessing social housing.

Debt advice

SSAFA can help veterans to get advice on dealing with debt when they have fallen behind on their bills or repayments to credit cards and are struggling to get by or at risk of losing their home.

Mobility assistance

SSAFA volunteers seek financial assistance for veterans to help maintain mobility and independence at home. Trained volunteers can help veterans get mobility equipment such as Electronically Powered Vehicles (EPV) or mobility scooters, stair lifts, riser and recliner chairs.

Providing household goods

SSAFA can provide veterans with essential household items, including white and brown goods.

Support for homeless veterans

SSAFA has a range of specialist services to support veterans who are homeless or facing homelessness.

Joining Forces

SSAFA's partnership with Age UK to improve the lives of veterans born before 1950.

Gurkha services

Providing tailored support for Gurkhas and their families who live in the UK.

Glasgow's Helping Heroes

Glasgow's Helping Heroes' is an award-winning service provided by SSAFA in partnership with Glasgow City Council for current and former members of the Armed Forces and their dependants or carers who live, work, or wish to relocate there. It's dedicated team work with national and local governments and third sector providers to resolve clients employment, housing, health, financial and/or social isolation issues.

Forces helpline

SSAFA also offers Forcesline, which is a free and confidential telephone helpline, web chat, and email service that provides support for both current and ex-service men and women from the Armed Forces and their families.

As you can see, SSAFA goes above and beyond to help as many serving and veteran pesonnel and their families as possible who have sacrificed for our country and ensures the aid gets to exactly the places it is needed most. To do this requires a lot of time and money, as you can imagine.

Covid-19 and the SSAFA Emergency Response Fund

Covid-19 has had an impact on everyone regardless of if you are ill. It looks like it will remain a part of our lives for a long time to come, heck, it may be a permanent part of modern life. At SSAFA, calls and requests for help from the vulnerable people, such as the elderly, low income households, and those with serious underlying health conditions. In response to this SSAFA has an Emergency Response Fund. The strain on the organization is obviously high as more people need help with mental health, housing, and financial issues. SSAFA provides this support for the British Armed Forces, serving and veteran personnel, and their families but to do this SSAFA needs to ensure it's staff and volunteers are kept as safe as possible with PPE. Combine the huge rise in help requests and the need to protect SSAFA staff, volunteers and those they help results in a large increase in costs which is why donations are so important and critical to its operations to continue the vital work SSAFA does.

What is Collectable Corner doing to help?

We have purchased over a thousand Royal Air Force (RAF)  Dog Tags, Ball Chain Necklaces, Rubber Silencers and Packaging, which we are asking for a donation of £10 per set plus £2.29 for postage of which 100% of the £10 is being donated to SSAFA. Collectable Corner is paying any processing fees and extra postage fees that may incur. Essentially, the Dog Tags are a token of gratitude from us to you for making your donation and helping us to support and help as many people as we can together. In total we have 504 sets of Dog Tags available so that equates to £5,040 in funds to generate. We also have the ability to purchase more should we require them.

How are the donations being made and how often?

We will deposit the donations directly to SSAFA at the end of each month via bank transfer to an account SAFFA has provided to us*.

How will donors know that donations were made?

We understand how important it is to be absolutely transparent with charity work to ensure that everyone knows when and how much is being donated and it is just as important to us at Collectable Corner as to donors and customers. Collectable Corner will of course be publishing monthly updates on our blog and in our newsletter which we urge you to sign up for, along with publishing the donation receipts and sales records minus people's private data such as names and addresses etc. We also have a backend application running on our website which allows visitors to CollectableCorner.shop to view in real time exactly how many sets of dog tags have been claimed.

Share your experiences of SSAFA

Collectable Corner is welcoming you to share your stories with visitors to our website. On each product page is a review section where anyone can make use of by letting others know your story. Maybe it is about how SSAFA has helped you or someone close to you, or maybe you have fundraised and donated in the past. Maybe you are someone who works or have worked with and volunteered for SSAFA who wants to share with us all, or maybe you simply want to say hello.

Thank you... 

We, at Collectable Corner, want to thank SSAFA for the amazing work the staff and volunteers have, will and do do. The impact this charity has had on so many lives truly is something to be marvelled at.

Thank you to anyone who helps us to make some real world differences by ordering a set of RAF dog tags with the knowledge that you are donating to a truly awesome cause.

Thank you to all of the past, present and future British Armed Forces personnel who have sacrificed, and do sacrifice everything for our great nation. You make us proud each and every day.

Finally, thank you Brian Cook, my Grandmother's Husband, my Mothers Father, a Great Grandfather, and my Grandad for being such an inspiration, thank you for being the best and only Father i ever had. May you sleep easy and Rest in Peace.

*Please note that the information in this article has been vetted by and in part supplied by SSAFA prior to being released to the public and is accurate at the time of this publication. Collectable Corner has the permission of SSAFA of the logo to be used and they are the copyright owner. SSAFA is a non-profit charity registered in England and Wales (210760), Scotland (SCO38056) and the Republic of Ireland (20202001). Collectable Corner is not in a partnership with nor affiliated by SSAFA, however we are in contact. Anyone who wishes to confirm that SSAFA is aware of Collectable Corner's campaign to raise donations and the methods being used can do so by emailing commercial@ssafa.org.uk or GaryDavidson-Guild@ssafa.org.uk

[wildlyminiaturesandwich]

Do you have pcos? or any kind of health problem that makes it hard for you to lose weight? I'm just curious, don't answer it if you don't feel comfortable

Ok so I got a couple messages asking this same thing, as well as people suggesting that “just lose weight and then try again”, so I’m gonna put a bunch of information (and I mean A BUNCH of information) under a cut here that explains everything and why “just losing weight” isn’t a solution nor is it the problem. Like, at all.

If you don’t want to read all of this, you really don’t have to. There’s a TL;DR at the bottom and I wouldn’t blame you for just scrolling straight there and skipping my rant lol

I don’t have PCOS, no, my weight is mostly a “side effect” of my mental health and years of trying different medications to help with that. Just in case some people aren’t aware, two of the most common side effects of anti-depressants are increased appetite and weight gain. That coupled with one of the two most common symptoms of chronic depression — lack of energy and motivation — means that over the years I’ve slowly put on weight.

Even though every doctor insists on telling me I’m overweight and need to lose weight as though I’m completely oblivious to my own body and such an idea as losing weight has never occurred to me before, I have in fact tried to lose weight many many times over the years with very little success no matter how healthily I ate and how much I exercised. The only time I have ever had success was back in my 20s when I switched to a gluten and dairy free diet to try to fix another issues I was having with my gut. This is why, in the past few weeks, Mr Sandwich and I have been slowly switching our diets to be gluten and dairy free.

BUT even though I am doing that, and exercising as much as I can with my limited energy, it’s not enough. I can lose weight, sure, but I can’t lose enough weight quickly (and safely) enough to be able to do IVF, which I’ll get to in a minute. So it’s not always as simple as “just lose weight”, everyone is different and despite what most people think, a lot of overweight people don’t chose to be that way. Why anyone would think that is beyond me, but a lot of people do and because of this you get people treating fat people as less than human, as though we’re not worthy of any kindness or sympathy because obviously we had to have done this to ourselves, right?

This is also why I get so annoyed when people equate being overweight to being unhealthy. The whole “overweight people are twice as likely to die early” bullshit is nonsense! Sure sometimes it’s the case, but not always. I am not medically unhealthy at all. Apart from being unable to conceive and my mental health issues, neither of which are a symptom or side effect of my weight, I am actually perfectly healthy. Over the past few years I’ve had every test anyone could come up with to try to find out why I wasn’t falling pregnant and that includes things like liver, kidney and thyroid function, cholesterol, diabetes and blood sugar tests, blood pressure, the list goes on. Everything everyone always associates with fat people, all of it was tested, and everything came back perfectly normal. I had a doctor literally say to me “If I hadn’t seen you in person, I would never have known you were overweight based on these results”, which just goes to show you how biased even doctors can be.

Warning: If you don’t wanna learn some interesting stuff about fertility and reproduction, don’t read any further.

So why am I trying IVF if I’m healthy?

Fun fact: When a woman talks about her “biological clock” ticking, it’s not even a joke; a woman’s biological clock is like a clock counting down from the moment she’s born… or maybe it’s more like an hourglass? Either way, unlike men, who can produce viable sperm from the time they hit puberty until the day they die, women have all the eggs they will every have in their entire life already tucked away in their tiny little ovaries from the moment they form as a fetus. That ovarian reserve starts at around 6-7 million follicles during the fetal stage, by the time that new baby girl is born that number has already dropped to 1 million, and by the time she hits puberty she’s only got about 300,000 left. Of those 300,000, only about 300-400 will be ovulated during her entire lifespan. That number obviously continues to decrease when a woman ovulates each month right up until they run out and that is when the woman will go through menopause, and there is no way to raise that amount either. Once the eggs run out, that’s it, there’s no more. Pretty grim huh?

By my age (35), a women with perfect reproductive health will have an AMH (Anti-Müllerian hormone, essentially an indicator of how many eggs you have) level of around 5.1 pmol/L (2.3 ng/mL) but for some reason, my ovaries seem to think I’m actually50. My AMH level is 0.3 pmol/L (0.1 ng/mL), which is considered EXTREMELY low and essentially what that means is I will never be able to conceive naturally. My only chance to conceive and carry my own biological child will be through IVF.

Now, it’s super important to note that low AMH has absolutely nothing to do with weight. There are a lot of different reasons that AMH levels can be low and they could be anything from hormone imbalance to a side effect of cancer treatments, from smoking to mumps. My hormones are normal, I’ve never had cancer or mumps, and I don’t smoke; in my case, it’s most likely due to constant and severe amounts of stress (like years and years of it). But seeing as there’s no medical way to test that, the cause of my low AMH has been deemed by my doctor as idiopathic (unknown). So while weight does have some affect on conceiving naturally, in my case it wouldn’t matter how much I weighed because my AMH level would still be low even if I wasn’t overweight.

In Australia, there are these wonderful things called Low Cost or Bulk Bill IVF clinics. At a private IVF clinic you’d be looking at about $10-15k (Aussie dollars) a cycle for IVF, but at a bulk bill clinic they can charge as little as $800! Unfortunately at these low cost clinics you’re not able to chose your doctor either, you just get whoever is available so that’s a problem too. But the way they’re able to keep costs low is a combination of Medicare rebates (Australia’s free health care system) and the fact that they don’t use full sedation during egg collection which costs a buttload of money because anesthetic. They use a combination of local anesthetic and twilight sedation, which means lower cost for the patient, it’s win win… unless you’re overweight. For reasons I have yet to figure out — because not a single clinic can come up with any reason every time I ask — most clinics demand you be under a certain weight before they’ll treat you. I’m not going to tell you my exact weight but it’s not anywhere near this stupid limit.

Another fun fact: This weight limit is non-existent in private clinics but I don’t have, nor could I get, $10-15k. The fertility specialist I spoke to yesterday also suggest bariatric (lap band) surgery as though that were an actual viable option. Like, listen lady, if I had the money for that (anywhere between $5-20k), don’t you think I would be using that to go to a fat-friendly private clinic instead of talking to your rude arse at a low cost clinic?! 

This all brings me back to the TL;DR of it:

Here’s the problem I’m facing. A year ago when my AMH (egg supply) was tested it was 1.4 pmol/L (0.6 ng/mL), which was already very low then, but it’s dropped down to 0.3 pmol/L in a little over a year, so at that rate I’m going to run out of eggs and be hitting early menopause most likely before the end of the year. At 35 years old.

Merry Christmas to me.

This has nothing AT ALL to do with my weight but for some reason these IVF clinics have a weight limit and there is absolutely no way I can lose enough weight (safely and healthily) before I run out of eggs, hence why I’m so mad. Even if I had barbaric surgery it still wouldn’t be enough time! None of these stupid clinics give a shit about that, all they keep saying is “lose weight and then come back to us”, as though I have all the time in the world!

My only options now are to a) rob a bank and take my fat arse to a private clinic. b) rob a bank, get myself some bariatric surgery and take a buttload of speed to lose weight SUPER fast, and then take myself to a low cost clinic. c) rob a bank and use the money to buy a baby. Or d) continue to do as I’ve been doing and will continue to do regardless of what happens and that’s lose weight the safe and healthy way and run out of eggs while I’m at it.

Last fun fact of the post: All of this could have been avoided had my stupid GP tested my AMH levels 5 YEARS AGO when I asked him to! It would have been low then as well but not as low so I would have had more time AND back then I would have just scrapped in under the ridiculous weight limit!

/rant

[gofancyninjaworld]

The World of Heroes, Part 3:  The Association

With great thanks to @scumerage for giving me the necessary framing. 

So, welcome to Part 3 of me geeking way too much about heroes and One Punch Man. In Part 1, I talked about the challenge of being a hero.   In Part 2, I took a step backwards and looked at what heroes were in the context of OPM.  This part,  I’m going to build on them and write about the world of the pro-hero. 

No one has ever needed especial qualifications to be a hero, neither in the real world nor in that of OPM.  Heroes arise from anywhere depending on the situation.  The idea of someone paid to be a hero seems rather weird the more you think about it. 

A: Why a Hero Association?

We can’t understand the Hero Association unless we take the time to really appreciate why it came to exist.  The Hero Association was born out of desperation.  Specifically,  mysterious beings had been appearing with increasing frequency in the world going back at least twenty years -- and back when Saitama was in middle school, it’d already gotten severe enough a problem that there were calls for the government to set up a specialist force to deal with the problem. 

Calls that went unheeded. 

For years. 

Until Agoni had that epiphany that his grandson having the luck of being saved by a random stranger didn’t have to be luck. So he got the buy in of both politicians and business people and set up a Hero Association to organise heroes and save people (not necessarily the same thing). The Hero Association is 100% donation funded, no taxes.

Like a beacon of hope rising out of a sea of tragedy, the Hero Association’s main building stands.

B: Why be a Pro-Hero?

The key thing that I’m going to bold is that the Hero Association ORGANISES heroes.  It does not train them, taking only ‘battle ready’ people.  It does not worry about developing them.  You have to already be a hero. Wannabes need not apply.  

This fact has many important implications. 

First, there is a right time to join the Hero Association: when the hero work you are already doing has come to take up so much of your time that it is interfering with  your ability to make a living.  The undying gratitude of the person you saved may be priceless, but it doesn’t pay the rent, nor the hospital bills you incurred.  Come to the Hero Association at that time and it’s a fantastic deal.  It will reliably pay you every month. It will pay your medical bills. It will record and recognise your activities. It will indemnify you against the damage that you do during the course of your work. If you’re not in Class C, it will help you with equipment.  It may even put money aside for the pension you’ll need much sooner than you think.  

Second, the Hero Association may not train, but it also does not constrain.  As discussed in earlier parts, the sort of person who becomes a hero is someone who doesn’t fear standing out or going against the flow -- they’re independent minded and often more than a little eccentric.  The HA’s attitude allows for the weird and wonderful heroes we see to thrive. No prescription of how to do your heroism.  No uniforms. Out of Class C, no expectations of minimum activity.  

However, while the Hero Association has broad standards, those standards are NOT LOW.  Every profession that carries authority over others from teaching to the police has a perennial problem of how to spot and weed out those attracted to it for power tripping purposes, the narcissists, the sociopaths, the sadists, the abusers, and the plain evil.  The Hero Association’s pro-heroes are remarkably good -- far better than the general population.  There’s a certain amount of nonsense the HA will put up with from super-useful heroes but we’re seeing that even there, they have limits.  I don’t know what combination of selection criteria and the demands of the job that create this, but it works.   

And there’s a logic to it: hero work, doing good hero work consistently is far too tough for people who don’t have both a serious moral core and a desire to be pro-social to last.  The manga expansion has been at great pains to examine the different avenues available to people with the power to be pro-heroes but not the moral core and/or social drive -- regular law-abiding civilians doing whatever the hell they want to.  Sportspeople. Criminals. Mercenaries. Vigilantes.  Conversely, we’ve also been shown at least one person with the morals, but not the strength -- that person made an exceptional police officer. 

With great power comes no obligation -- your life is your own

It’s not a perfect model, and its shortcomings are becoming clearer -- which I’ll discuss in a bit -- but it does do its job of supporting exceptional and highly individual heroes to dedicate themselves fully to their self-appointed work. And they’re good at drawing from society at large: a non comprehensive list of former (and current) professions of pro-heroes includes actor, circus performer, construction worker, salaryman, manager, swordsmen, professional martial artists, hunter, trapper, perfumier, farmer, athletes, body builders, ninjas, ballerinas...the list goes on.

C. Classes and Ranks

Deploying heroes means sorting heroes so as to use them in the best way possible.  There are no size limits to any of the classes -- as many as fit the requirements of a class will be in it.  The HA is always recruiting.

Class C is the threshing floor, where heroes start if there’s no compelling reason to recommend that they start elsewhere -- or if they have their doubts.  The combination of low pay and the expectation of weekly results means that there’s no opportunity to work half-heartedly. It quickly discourages the lazy, those who aren’t strongly self-motivated, those lacking in initiative, those expecting quick recognition, the ones who simply cannot work with others, the ones who won’t take lawful orders and the plain incompetent. Expectations are relatively low. Stopping small time criminals, being helpful to people and being willing/able to work with others to take care of monsters will see you in good standing. Getting out of Class C seems to be dependent on showing that you can be relied on to single-handedly kill monsters (any damn kind) OR by being promoted to C Class Rank 1.  The majority of heroes have done at least a short stint in Class C, including many current Class S heroes. 

It’s hard to survive on your own in Class C

If a hero is inclined to be lazy, Class B is where to be.  No formal quota, no formal  expectation of being drafted to help with an escalating situation (like Class A and S heroes), semi-decent pay,  help with equipment design/maintenance,  its lower reaches are quite a safe place to coast.  When a Class B hero does work, the expectation on them is that they be entrusted to handle a wolf-level threat on their own and if Don Pacino is typical of the sort of criminal that gets a B Class bounty, heavily-armed gangs are fair game.  The challenge of Class B is the Blizzard Group -- if you work close to or in Z-City, and are ambitious, Fubuki will come knocking sooner or later.  It's a problem that the Hero Association knows about and chooses to do nothing about, seeing it as just another test ambitious heroes have to negotiate.

It’s a shame that Class B is so dominated by the Blizzard Group that it’s difficult to find pictures of just Class B heroes that’s not them. And yet we know nearly none of them...

Class A is the where the main backbone of the Hero Association lies.  That this is shifting of late doesn’t negate the fact that most monsters are threat level tiger or below.  For the vast majority of threats, Class A is where the buck stops. The roughly forty members of this class are the highest class of heroes you could still consider ‘normal’ human beings.  Highly visible, hard-working and with high expectations placed on them, A-Class heroes are what other heroes aspire to be.  There may be no formal tutelage system in the Hero Association, but Class A heroes take turns to orient new recruits as to the rules and expectations of being a pro-hero.

Class A comes across as a group whose members are just as comfortable on their own as in working with others.

Class S is... well, it is special.  Unlike the other classes, a hero cannot be promoted to Class S: it is by direct invitation only.  And that invitation is on battle record, battle record, and battle record alone.  Only the demonstrated ability to single-handedly slay a threat-level demon monster or more will elicit that invitation.  By staying at Class A Rank 1, Amai Mask closes off the possibility that a hero who doesn’t meet those requirements can nevertheless request a promotion interview and talk or network their way in.  Why so persnickety?  Because these heroes are the In Case of Emergency heroes: when the shit really hits the fan, that’s when they step up.  With so few of them, a single S-Class hero can easily be all that stands between tens of thousands of people and a horrible death with no back up available for hours.  We’ve seen a lot more of them than the average person in the story does because the story is set precisely in the midst of several extreme emergencies. 

They may be the most powerful heroes, but they don’t have the best reputation amongst other heroes. Even between themselves -- they’re amazingly fractious and Flashy Flash’s summation of his colleagues is particularly scathing: 

The other Class S heroes are useless.  They’re either stubborn or hide their own identity, weirdos, children and old people.  (from webcomic chapter 112)

Getting this many Class S heroes in the same place at the same time is like pulling teeth

What about ranks?  Within classes heroes have ranks, but they don’t directly correspond to battle power, have little to do with seniority, and are absolutely not measures of hierarchy within a class. What they are are measures of a given hero’s perceived utility to the Hero Association. Ranks give heroes something to measure themselves by, act as a tangible measure of progress, are something that does correlate to how well a hero gets paid within the class and of course, they bring feel superior points.  If a hero is minded to climb classes, Rank 1 of the class below is the ticket to apply for promotion. 

What’s very fair about the ranking system is that it’s assessed weekly. No matter where a hero starts out, week by week, they cannot help but build an actual track record. The Hero Association isn’t slow to reward good heroes with promotions -- it’s why even the Saitama who won’t report his work and claims to cheat is rising so fast that other heroes keep attacking him.   What’s troublesome about it is that it’s a points based system, whereby points can be divided between heroes... which opens the door to some underhanded shenanigans. 

Wrapping up

The Hero Association has solved a very troublesome problem: how to reliably hire a hero?  Precisely because anyone can be moved to acts of heroism, people have been saved by a random assemblage of other people, only a few of whom would ever think of doing it regularly.   What they have done in short is to give those people basic security and protection and otherwise let them get on with doing what they do.  

What’s been good about their approach is that they’ve effectively captured lightning in a bottle, bringing together some exceptional people, and deploying them in a way that balanced their needs for individuality with the benefit of collective action.   Until recently, it’s a model that has worked.  What’s been bad about it…. Ah, that will wait until the last part of this series.