#politics is personal

[wanderingaldecaldo]

Hi, I'm WanderingAldecaldo, aka wash. 👋

I'm a longtime writer (AO3) , relatively new VPer and modder, and still crazy for Cyberpunk 2077, Mitch and Val (and Rosalind), and the City of Dreams.

About me & this blog

Mid-40s, she/her nonbinary bisexual, paid geek, married with cats. Recently diagnosed autistic and ADHD, like 18mo ago, which explains a lot about my life and relationships (especially the autism piece). Former sportsball player and band geek, forever a total nerd. I love video games and board games; writing more than reading these days; music; and still like (and play) some sportsball. Yes, I am the queer softballer stereotype. I strive for kindness over niceness, though I'm not always successful. I believe in ship and let ship, and don't like? don't interact.

On this blog you'll find video games like Cyberpunk, Bioware, RDR2; whatever TV I'm into currently (currently Severance, Ted Lasso, and Slow Horses); progressive politics, including anti-racism and anti-fascism; gender and sexuality; ADHD and autism; plus lots of writing memes. Also cars. I like cars.

A few things to keep in mind

Trans women are women and terfs can fuck off into the sun forever. Same with fascists.

I'm an adult and post things that are of an adult nature. If you're a minor, please take that under advisement. I don't block minors because long ago I was a minor myself, and I related more to adults than people my own age. But I'm not your parent and you are responsible for curating your own online experience. If you are uncomfortable with adult themes, please hit the back button.

I don't necessarily follow back; I like to keep a short, streamlined dash so please don't take offense if I don't. At the same time, I have become mutuals with longtime followers after checking out their blog again at a later date. 🤷

I love tag games! I am also not great at replying to them! I have over 100 archived emails going back to Nov. '23 that I haven't answered, but still think I might one day. 😅 I am much more likely to reply to writing/WIP tags since I always have a handful of WIPs at any given moment. Also music tags because I love music.

I love asks but hate chain mail — they stress me out because I hate when people feel excluded and I don't know who's received them and who hasn't, so I end up paralyzed and ignore them. Send at your own risk.

Speaking of asks, anons are off. I got one hateful anon about my ship and that was enough. Either say it with your chest or fuck off. If you absolutely must leave a hateful anon, @streetkid-named-desire has volunteered to field them for me. Go on, you'll make their day, I promise.

My ships, OCs and more after the cut.

My (Cyberpunk) ships

[Mitch+Val] Ship: Born to Run

Val and I both fell hard for the kind, handsome Nomad. The main tag includes all versions of their ship because I didn't know it would turn into a bunch of AUs. 😭 The Corpo AU has its own tag, and should be fairly comprehensive. The newer Streetkid AU isn't tagged yet, but so far it's just writing.

[main tag] [au: all that glitters] [random ship stuff tag]

[Ros+Val] aka The President's Merc AU

Their ship isn't named yet, so it's just a generic tag for now. There's also a Tower AU, but that doesn't have a separate tag yet.

[main tag] [random ship stuff tag]

[Mitch+Scorpion] Ship: Panzerboys

Do you think Mitch and Driss ever explored each other's bodies? 🤔

[main tag]

[Carol+Hilary] Carol + Hilary tag tbd

Uhhhh..... maybe it's time they got a real ship name?

[main tag]

[Corpo!Val+Richard Ripper] Ship: Business & Pleasure

Corpo!Val doesn't do relationships, but she does do Richard. She hires him as a high-end escort and eventually he becomes somewhat of a friend. During the course of events of the Corpo AU, he helps Val figure out her feelings for Mitch. Richard belongs to dearest @dustymagpie.

[main tag]

[SK!Val+Travis] Ship: Love Bites

A toxic ship featuring two streetkids with bad boundaries. They were bad for each other then, but maybe not so bad now? Nah, just kidding. They're still awful! In fact, they are so awful I have only taken one pic of them together!

[main tag]

My OCs

Valerie Vermilion (she/her)

LOML and main OC. The first character I've made for a game who stuck around and grew a personality. Streetkid!Val is the original, and Corpo!Val debuted a year later. What about Nomad!Val? I hear you ask. Don't worry, she's got a backstory already and is just biding her time.

Tags: [ALL] [StreetKid] [Corpo] [Nomad???] Random: [val things] [streetkid val things] [corpo val things] Asks+lore: [val lore]

Hilary Navarro (she/her)

An Aldecaldo OC introduced for five minutes in my Mitch + Val longfic NOGLY. She's the family's best netrunner; has a sharp sense of humor and loves puns; and is playful in general, just like her bubblegum hair. Just don't piss her off because she does not forgive. She's also one of Val's first friends in the family.

[Tag]

Travis Murphy (he/him)

Trash man. Babygirl. The worst being ever. Dated Streetkid!Val when they were teens and recruited her to join 6th Street. Always lying, cheating, or stealing. He'll get to redeem himself in the NOGLY sequel.

Fun fact: Travis didn't have a last name, so I used the tag #travis needs a tag i guess for quite a while until someone *cough*Imaginary*cough* shamed me into giving him a last name.

[Tag] [Random]

Antonio Varga (he/him)

A proud son of Heywood. Best friend of Jackie growing up but they fought when he left the gang. Tony wishes he'd made up with him before everything else....

[Tag]

Gabriella Varga (she/her)

The Flower of Heywood. A friend to everyone, always ready to lend a hand, an ear, a shoulder — or an eddie. Just don't cross her or her family, or you'll see just how mean she can get. Older sister to Tony and childhood crush of Jackie.

[Tag]

Vamika (she/her)

A solo merc who Corpo!Val employed during her time at Arasaka. After she takes over the Afterlife from Rogue, she will reestablish that relationship. A reliable, professional mercenary, Vamika has never botched a gig, at least not in Night City.... Sadly most of the pics I took of her were never shared before the HDD accident.

[Tag]

Lynx Lyons (they/them)

A scout/outrider for the Bright/Palmer family who debuted in my fluffy oneshot Cut Your Hair. They are older than they seem, and definitely too old for camp bullshit. They'd rather be on the highway on their own listening to tunes, instead of listening to the same stories told night after night around the fire.

[Tag]

Séverine (she/her)

A member of the Voodoo Boys in Dogtown, she is much more comfortable with guns than soft. I haven't figured out where she fits into Val's story yet; maybe she's out for revenge for Slider.

[Tag]

Resoures I Use

An incomplete list of things I've used:

FontSpace

Unsplash

Mods I Use: An Eternal WIP; asks open if you have a specific question about a mod you've seen

[i-3at-s0ap]

Elon Musk isn't a sociopath Trump isn't a narcissist Jeff Bezos isn't a psycho they are terrible racist bigoted assholes but I'm begging y'all to fucking give a shit about people with personality disorders. PLEASE.

[gingersnapwolves]

So today I want to talk about puberty blockers for transgender kids, because despite being cisgender, this is a subject I’m actually well-versed in. Specifically, I want to talk about how far backwards things have gone.

This story starts almost 20 years ago, and it’s kind of long, but I think it’s important to give you the full history. At the time, I was working as an administrative assistant for a pediatric endocrinologist in a red state. Not a deep deep red state like Alabama, we had a little bit of a purple trend, but still very much red. (I don’t want to say the state at the risk of doxxing myself.) And I took a phone call from a woman who said, “My son is transgender. Does your doctor do hormone therapy?”

I said, “Good question! Let me find out.”

I went into the back and found the doctor playing Solitaire on his computer and said, “Do you do hormone therapy for transgender kids?” It had literally never come up before. He had opened his practice there in the early 2000s. This was roughly 2006, and the first time someone asked. Without looking up from his game of Solitaire, the doctor said, “I’ve never done it before, but I know how it works, so sure.”

I got back on the phone and told the mom, who was overjoyed, and scheduled an appointment for her son. He was the first transgender child we treated with puberty blockers. But not, by far, the first child we treated with puberty blockers, period. Because puberty blockers are used very commonly for children with precocious puberty (early-onset puberty). I would say about twenty percent of the kids our doctor treated were for precocious puberty and were on puberty blockers. They have been well studied and are widely used, safe, and effective.

Well. It turned out, the doctor I worked for was the only doctor in the state who was willing to do this. And word spread pretty fast in the tight-knit community of ‘parents of transgender children in a red state’. We started seeing more kids. A better drug came out. We saw some kids who were at the age where they were past puberty, and prescribed them estrogen or testosterone. Our doctor became, I’m fairly sure, a small folk hero to this community. 

Insurance coverage was a struggle. I remember copying articles and pages out of the Endocrine Society Manual to submit with prior authorization requests for the medications. Insurance coverage was a struggle for a lot of what we did, though. Growth hormone for kids with severe idiopathic short stature. Insulin pumps, which weren’t as common at the time, and then continuous glucose monitoring, when that came out. Insurance struggles were just part and parcel of the job.

I remember vividly when CVS Caremark, a pharmaceutical management company, changed their criteria and included gender dysphoria as a covered diagnosis for puberty blockers. I thought they had put the option on the questionnaire to trigger an automatic denial. But no - it triggered an approval. Medicaid started to cover it. I got so good at getting approvals with my by then tidy packet of articles and documentation that I actually had people in other states calling me to see what I was submitting (the pharmaceutical rep gave them my number because they wanted more people on their drug, which, shady, but sure. He did ask me if it was okay first).

And here’s the key point of this story:

At no point, during any of this, did it ever even occur to any of us that we might have to worry about whether or not what we were doing was legal.

It just never even came up. It was the medically recommended treatment so we did it. And seeing what’s happening in the UK and certain states in America is both terrifying and genuinely shocking to me, as someone who did this for almost fifteen years, without ever even wondering about the legality of it.

The doctor retired some years ago, at which point there were two other doctors in the state who were willing to prescribe the medications for transgender kids. I truly think that he would still be working if nobody else had been willing to take those kids on as patients. He was, by the way, a white cisgender heterosexual Boomer. I remember when he was introduced to the concept of ‘genderfluid’ because one of our patients on HRT wanted to go off. He said ‘that’s so interesting!’ and immediately went to Google to learn more about it. 

I watched these kids transform. I saw them come into the office the first time, sometimes anxious and uncertain, sometimes sullen and angry. I saw them come in the subsequent times, once they were on hormone therapy, how they gradually became happy and confident in themselves. I saw the smiles on their faces when I gave them a gender marker letter for the DMV. I heard them cheer when I called to tell them I’d gotten HRT approved by insurance and we were calling in a prescription. It was honestly amazing and I will always consider the work I did in that red state with those kids to be something I am incredibly proud of. I was honored to be a part of it.

When I see all this transgender backlash, it’s horrifying, because it was well on the way to become standard and accepted treatment. Insurances started to cover it. Other doctors were learning to prescribe it. And now … it’s fucking illegal? Like what the actual fuck. We have gone so far backwards that it makes me want to cry. I don’t know how to stop this slide. But I wrote this so people would understand exactly how steep the slide is.

[yrrtyrrtwhenihrrthrrt]

In light of Brian Thompson being shot dead on my birthday (🎉🥳🎂) I'd like to share a personal story about UnitedHealthcare.

During the peak of COVID, my family all got sick. I couldn't be on my parents' insurance because they were both older and on Medicare. So, I had insurance through my University: UnitedHealthcare.

For some reason, rather than roll-over each year, I got a new plan each year that ended after May and didn't start until August, so I was uninsured for the summer months, but it was a weird situation that the university denied, and told us we were supposed to be insured year-round, it was messy.

Both of my parents went to the hospital, and I got sick too. I had to take care of my pets, and myself, and try to stay alive and keep my pets alive when I was so weak I could hardly move. When my parents came home, my condition got dramatically worse (I think my body knew it couldn't give out, because there was nobody to take care of me, so once my parents were okay, it completely crashed and failed.)

I started experiencing emergency symptoms. It was a bit hard to breathe, my chest hurt, and I was extremely delirious. I wanted to call my insurance to see if I was covered (this was during the summer) and I was connected to some nice person, probably making minimum wage, who told me with caution in her voice that my plan was expired. I had no active insurance, but she urged me to go to an emergency room. I remember saying something to the effect of "You just told me I don't have insurance, I can't go to the hospital, I can't afford it."

She sounded so genuinely worried and scared. I remember she said "You really don't sound good, you sound really sick, please call 9-1-1" and I think I just said "I can't afford it without insurance, don't worry, I think I'll be okay."

And she paused and said "I don't want to hang up the phone with you like this." And it sounded like she was holding back tears. And I don't remember what I said, I think that I would be okay, and I hung up.

I still think about her. I wonder if that phone call haunted her, or if she had dozens of calls like that a day. I wonder if she thinks about it at all, if she wonders if I died after she told me I didn't have insurance and therefore couldn't go to the hospital without incurring a tremendous financial burden. I wonder if she feels guilt or blame-- of course she shouldn't, it wouldn't have been her fault if anything had happened to me. Maybe it's self-centered to wonder if she thinks about it. I'm not the main character and it was just her job. But, still.

I think about how evil it was that we were put in that situation. Because offering year-long continuous coverage through the university plan would maybe cut into profits, maybe not benefit shareholders enough, maybe cut into Thompson's $10 million salary. While his minimum wage administrators have to feel afraid to hang up the phone, because on the other line someone might be dying, and they wouldn't know. While his patients hang up and decide to take their chances rather than put their family through that trauma.

This is UnitedHealthcare. This is Brian Thompson's legacy. This is why, understandably, an entire nation is jubilant that he was gunned down like the vermin he was. I don't care about his widow. I feel pity for his children, despite the fact that they will inherit millions, but I feel more pity for the children of his victims patients who are gone because they didn't want THEIR children to inherit crippling debt. Brian Thompson got what he fucking deserved. I pray that he not be the only one. I pray for continued safety, peace , and anonymity for his killer.

American healthcare is a disease.

[wanderingaldecaldo]

The greatest con conservatives pulled was convincing poor people that one day, they too could be rich.

I guess friendly reminder that you can't actually judge someone's socioeconomic status based on what they own and the classic republican "they can't be poor they own a smart phone/computer" argument doesn't suddenly stop being complete out of touch nonsense when a poor person makes it.

Anyway insert "y'all can't be trusted to eat the rich bcs you'll target taco bell shift leaders and people with playstations instead of actual billionaires" post here.

[captainjonnitkessler]

Sometimes I wish we would start calling out the performative radicalism on this site for the poser bullshit it is. "Remember, it's always morally correct to kill a cop!" "Don't forget to firebomb your local government office!" "Wow, it sure would be a shame if these instructions on how to make a molotov cocktail got spread around!"

Okay. But you're not killing cops or firebombing government offices. You are posting on a dying microblogging website to a carefully-curated echo chamber that has radicalized itself into thinking that taking the absolute most extreme position on any subject is praxis but that anyone discussing the most practical way to effect actual change is your sworn enemy. You do not have the street cred OR the activist cred to be talking about killing cops, babe.

[seraphimfall]

there is an insane amount of antisemitism floating around right now.

i just want to say:

this blog loves and supports jewish people.

this blog does NOT conflate the israeli government, or the atrocities it commits, with jewish people.

this blog is disgusted with those who use or express antisemitism.

this blog knows that if someone needs to invoke antisemitism, they do not actually care about helping palestine or the palestinian people.

this blog will do its best to ensure that it remains a safe space for all.

[wanderingaldecaldo]

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” - James Baldwin

[batcavescolony]

Non-Americans please look away, this is private family matter.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

"top shortage" "bottom shortage" babe im EXHAUSTED

[emotional-moss]

sorry for resorting to a meme about this but people are making me mad 👍

[wanderingaldecaldo]

Calling the cops on a Black person is sentencing them to death.

Ryan Gainer was a 15 year old Autistic Black boy who was shot and killed by police in California.

Ryan seemed to have been having a meltdown, he was holding a gardening tool, police were called to the house but they are refusing to release any body cam footage of the shooting and refusing to state how many times Ryan was shot, they failed to help him before the paramedics arrived.

After shooting him Ryan's family was then forced out of their home while the police rummaged through their house looking for any justifiable cause for shooting Ryan.

This is hardly the first time the San Bernardino police department has attacked or killed people having a mental health crisis.

Rest in Power Ryan.

STOP CALLING THE POLICE ON DISABLED AND MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE!

[salamispots]

didn't get to boopin everyone but it was fun haha

[apomaro-mellow]

Link to the article

Just in case anyone needed some good news today. There are already people in the system pushing back.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Perhaps a controversial take, but I don't think the phrase "make nazis afraid again" actually reflects what often happened in real life both in history and in the current day. I've seen way too many comfortable, celebrated nazis who were and are nothing but unafraid and emboldened.

I feel a more accurate slogan would be "make nazis afraid."