#too immunocompromised for that but a guy can hope? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

drdemonprince · 1 year ago

Note

Hi Devon,

this might not be a question you can answer, or maybe it is! idk. this is about covid & alike

for context on myself, i’m a white gendrfucky trans guy who’s also autistic & an immigrant (so some cultural context is probably lacking)

as we know, we’re in a 2nd highest surge & the pandemic never stopped and it increasingly dangerous and disabling to so many

i wear my kn95 everywhere i go now, and while i tried last semester, it was a lot easier to abandon masking because of

1. others’ around me negligence

2. some classrooms being IMPOSSIBLY hot and close to unbearable with a respirator on

3. attending crowded events where people needed to hear me

i’ve reevaluated and am rebuilding my practices now, but what i’m finding really difficult is to get people i have in my life to wear a mask again

i feel so lost. i share the informational posts, i talk to my people, i offer masks- what else is there to do?? i know the exhaustion i feel is absolutely incomparable to what disabled and immunocompromised people feel, especially when they’ve done the work for years!

i just don’t understand how i’m supposed to keep moving through life. i mean ofc i’ll keep doing what i’m already doing but it’s so incredibly isolating to be the only person masked in a meeting of 20,30,50 people.

i don’t know how to make people care. i don’t know how to have conversations with my friends in a way that will let our relationship evolve with this new understanding of care. i don’t know how to not polarize people into defensiveness when i talk about the powers wreaking atrocities in falasteen being the same ones shortening an isolation period to 1 day.

i don’t know how to be eloquent enough to be listened to and firm enough where people take what i say seriously. i don’t know how to not start screaming WEAR A MASK anytime it’s a crowded (or even not crowded) meeting indoors with no air filtration.

idk how people don’t realize the “cold” they’ve had for 3 weeks is either covid or direct aftermath of it. idk how they stand for seemingly the right things and then come to work sick & unmasked.

i don’t know how to engage with most people in a meaningful way & find connections because the delusion, the “it won’t happen to me”, the “i don’t care if i catch it and die”, the “this is just the way it is” seems to be a wall made of unbreakable cement and i don’t know what will melt it.

i feel insane for having compassion towards the world and seeing how it can be better. i feel insane for being angry people don’t mask & downplay this issue. i feel insane for even trying to talk sense into people.

i’ve recently been called a lying phony by an account that talks about masking bc a lot of my recent pictures show my face without a mask. i archived the posts since, apologized and reflected. but a lot of pictures i take are in my own room so i am unmasked. idk

i feel like the gap between me and most people i know is growing wider by the minute and with every reading i do about interdependent revolutionary practices, etc.

i know that when one understands something, it is their responsibility to make an impact on their bubble of the world and transform it with their knowledge. but i doubt i’m the only one doing the reading and knowing what’s going on, i just seem to be the only one masking.

i don’t know. i’m sorry it’s such a long ask & i’m sure you have your own stuff you’re dealing with. i just don’t know who else to ask that might understand. i’m sure there are people around me who might but so many are in survival mode and i currently don’t know anyone with the capacity to hold space for this.

i guess it’s bold to assume you do.

anyway, i hope your day goes alright today<3

You are placing wayyy too much responsibility upon yourself as one compassionate and informed individual here, and expecting far too much perfection of yourself in ways that do not help you and do not help the cause. You've done a lot to unpack the terrible individualism that has led to anti-mask sentiment being so rampant, but you are in a way still applying that logic to yourself and your situation by imagining that if you, one humble person with limited power were able to be adequately persuasive, you'd somehow change the actions of thousands. That is not how behavior change works.

Persuasion almost never happens logically or instantly, almost never through one person's remarks. Behavior is shaped by a vast array of economic, sociological, emotional, and ideological factors.

It's also not helpful in my opinion to worry about the opinion of someone who would shame you for not wearing a mask at home alone in your bedroom, either. Obsessing over the optics of our actions and wanting all people to morally approve of us at all times is yet another consequence of individualism and Puritanism. as you well know as someone who masks in a crowd of maskless people, sometimes we gotta do what we know is right and disregard others' opinions.

What you can do, in my opinion, is this: keep masking. Your behavior reminds people of the need for masks and models socially responsible behavior. Bring spare masks with you. Offer them to your family and friends and the people standing near you in public. If they refuse, and you have a good relationship with the person where they have shown they respect you and listen to you, then you can tell them why masking around you is important to you. You cannot change the opinion of someone who has never shown you any respect so don't expect that to ever work.

Even if you do have a good relationship with someone, persuasion is a long, hard process. Do not expect yourself to change their mind. If you can get some people to mask at least around you, that is a victory. Perfection is an unrealistic goal here to expect of yourself, and for public health in general. Any improvement you can inspire is a victory. Even if it's just making one or two friends mask more often when they are with you. That still lessens risk. That still sends a visible signal to everyone around you. You have no idea of the impact you truly have on other people in the long term. It is both more modest and far larger and longer-reaching than you as an individual will ever know.

Please be easy on yourself. You are just a person. An average person with very limited power. So is everyone else for the most part. When you stop burdening yourself with the unrealistic responsibility of changing thousands of people's behavior, you will feel less resentful toward others as well. When we resent other people it always means we are doing too much.

And when you feel less overwhelmed and overburdened, you will be more effective in the conversations you do have with people about COVID too. People do not respond well to (what they perceive to be) guilt or intensity or someone presuming to know better than them. What people do respond to well is to be asked genuine questions, listened to, validated in their feelings, given help where they are facing barriers to action, and being treated with compassionate gentleness.

But to do that you have to work on believing that people who are flawed in their response to COVID have reasons for doing so that make sense to them, and that they aren't all foolish and lacking in compassion. As my friend @kim-from-kansas says, people do not do things that do not make sense. If a person's actions do not make sense to you, it is because you are missing a piece of their context. The sad fact is people have many reasons to think that masking doesn't work or is hopeless. People have been very heavily propagandized and trauma also makes many people value life less.

Convincing people to take COVID more seriously is a tall, tall order, but if you wish to do so, you will need to be more than correct. You will have to put real work into not making people feel judged, and you will have to make peace with not always (or even usually) succeeding. It sucks but that's how it is. Best of luck!!

116 notes · View notes

ifwebefriends · 1 year ago

Note

dude . . . that post where you said you liked nagito not because he's a depressed uwu bad boy but a traumatized complex cancer patient . . . we are the same lmao i literally made a research paper on his overall condition. very interesting case study ngl

That’s so cool! I’d be interested in reading your paper if you’re comfortable sharing. It’s nice to see that not everyone boils Nagito down to a generic bad boy tumblr sexyman. I actually have a lot of feelings about him and how he affected me personally because I can relate to him in a weird kinda hyperbolic way.

Okay it’s trauma dump time now strap yourself in. (TW suicide, cancer, COVID-19, needles, medical treatment)

I’m actually a cancer survivor myself (stage 4 breast cancer diagnosed in July 2020) and because of COVID and cancer I took a gap year in my education (I had just graduated high school and was set to start college) to go through treatment, so I had a lot of time on my hands to play video games and watch TV shows. So I ended up playing Danganronpa 1 and 2 in like October through November of 2020 (I would have played V3 then too but I didn’t have access to it yet).

When I first started chemotherapy in August of that year I tried to stay optimistic, hopeful, and cheery about everything, I didn’t want people to worry and pity me (right after my diagnosis, the most painful part of it all was watching all my loved ones worry so much about me) and I was told that I would most likely survive it. But round after round of chemo along with the rampaging global pandemic that I was honestly more scared of (I was immunocompromised because of chemo and I live in a country that generally didn’t take mask-wearing or quarantine seriously) gradually wore down my spirit little by little. By November when my treatment plan got extended (at least two more rounds of chemo than initially expected) I was worn out, miserable, hopeless, and borderline suicidal. This was around when I played SDR2 for the first time.

When I first played through the game I thought that Nagito was kinda just a fun character who made the game more of a challenge since he was kinda working against you. I never hated him or anything (my first reaction to him was actually “OH MY GOD IT’S THE FINGERS IN HIS ASS GUY!!!!”). Then after I finished the game I read online that if you talk to him in his free time events (I later did the free time for all the characters myself in school mode) you eventually find out that he has cancer and dementia and that’s when my whole perception of him shifted. I felt a sense of comraderie and unity with him that I feel with other cancer patients/survivors. Also, due to my piss poor mental and emotional state at the time I found myself really relating to him in a way. I felt strangely seen and understood.

Needless to say, even in this dark time in my life, I wouldn’t even consider doing the things that Nagito did in SDR2. Nevertheless, I guess I related to him because he represented my specific agonies and pains to a hyperbolic degree. Due to cancer and the treatment related to it, I was angry, hopeless, frustrated, and at a severe disadvantage while the whole world was suffering as well. (Cough cough chapter 3 dispair disease cough cough)

I think generally that the emotional and mental health aspect of having cancer and the general dark parts of having cancer aren’t talked about enough. A lot of people like to make it this hopeful empowering thing and I think it’s fine to do that, it’s good to have hope and strength in times like that, but when one can’t stay strong and hopeful in those circumstances it doesn’t really hit well. And I think that’s what Nagito represents to me. He represents someone beaten down by his life circumstances that he had no control over, and while he puts up an optimistic front, he’s not the #strong #sobrave chronically ill person that seems to be really common in modern media. He represents the dark side and the brutally negative emotions that can come from chronic illness or just shitty life circumstances. He doesn’t care much about his own life or well-being, he’s basically given up. But he wants his short life to mean something good so desperately. In his own way he cares about the people around him and the world around him, he just thinks he can’t have a place in that world. He’s willing to hurt and kill people in order to, in his eyes, make the world a better place at the cost of himself. He’s like an antithesis or foil to other cancer patient characters I’ve seen who have a generally more positive saccharine outlook on their condition and their life (I.e. Augustus Waters from The Fault in Our Stars).

Thankfully I’m much happier and healthier these days, I’ve been done with chemo for over two years and while I’m still going through some treatment related to it (hormone suppression pills and shots since my cancer was ER+) but it pales in comparison to what chemo did to me. I may not relate as heavily to Nagito as I used to, but he still holds a special place in my heart. I see him now and still think of him as a flawed but sympathetic character who was a twisted mirror of my deep-seeded physical and emotional pains that I felt back during the most miserable time of my life. At that time, I couldn’t see the light, so he sat with me in the darkness.

Nagito’s story isn’t really a story about having or surviving cancer.

Thankfully my story has a happy ending as I survived cancer and am still in remission. I am much happier and healthier now and I have a new appreciation for life, how fragile it is, and the little joys that make it what it is. I don’t relate to Nagito as much now as I did back when I was going through cancer treatment, but when I look at him, I’m reminded of how he reflected the darkness inside of me during my worst times and how comforting he was to me.

Thankfully I beat cancer and I am much happier and healthy now, but I still look at Nagito and remember the dark comfort he gave me through my worst of times.

14 notes · View notes

jeneelestrange · 7 months ago

Text

Yo so like…I’m an immunocompromised spoonie working in medical(laughs…and laughs…and laughs) and I think the best way to understand why things are the way they are is remember that doctors are still human people, the human body is RIDICULOUSLY INSANELY COMPLEX, and school still be school and always remember if you’re in America that insurance is….a hellscape we all just sort of suffer around.

There used to barely be specialists back then in comparison to today, any old-timer will tell you they just went to “the doctor” WHICH IS INSANE TO ME. As annoying as it is for all of us to have myriads of specialists….being a general practitioner is sort of like being a “computer specialist” and people just expecting you to code an app, do deep penetration testing, and also get the malware off their computer. THAT’S INSANE. If your general practitioner refers you to a specialist, dear god do not fight them, they’re doing it for a good reason. I really think that’s a part of why I got diagnosed vs my “crazy” female ancestors on my mother’s side languished without a diagnosis.

Even the lower levels of medical training like EMT feel like you’re being crushed with biology and medical knowledge, you barely have time to do life-sustaining activities with the amount of reading you have to do. Now I want you to remember how you and your classmates were as students. Sure, there’s gonna be people who don’t take it serious enough and flunk out, and people who read every bit of material and are angry at not getting an A+. And you would think medical people are SLIGHTLY in general more motivated than high school students. But there’s statistically going to be people who have had a hard week, had things come up in their life, and have to make tough choices of WHICH chapter to fully read and which to just skim and read the notes, etc. And chances are they’re going to make that choice based on how likely they are to encounter it—I’d be an idiot to spend as much studying time on diving pressure effects as I did on diabetes. You’ve been a student—you know. I tried to push myself as much as possible because damn, been there and what if that rare thing was me l, but diving pressure come on

And because I guess I’m a glutton for punishment, I used to be a teacher(and didn’t know I was immunocompromised, I know right), the school system does not implement knowledge immediately—which is for good reason too. A) It takes lots and lots of time and work to implement changes to curriculum WELL(notice I said WELL) so it’s just not POSSIBLE to pivot, B) Swift change without thoughtful implementation and looking at all the data risks implementing some bullshit that’s popular but hasn’t been tested as well as it should be. And believe me, that can still happen with old data that’s been overlooked for way too long(looking at you ZIMBARDO), we still need to be asking What’s the data backing it up? How can we teach it best? Etc. (doesn’t stop k-12 education from giving money to any start-up motivational program for political reasons though but that’s ANOTHER STORY)

And sometimes it is implemented, it’s just….its a sentence for general practitioners. Hope they were paying attention! And for specialists, they go much more into detail, because that’s their specialty is that particular thing. I went to a very well known for being good general practitioner, but even she was basically like, “Woah this is some weird shit going on here, have you seen an allergist/immunologist? I’d want to refer you.” And that’s who’s making me feel better. Have you guys ever tried to read stuff on immunology? It’s another level. Again, I work tangentially in medical, I have some medical training, I can read some pretty dense shit…..that shit’s like trying to read an ancient grimoire.

Really really good practitioners seem like they’re genuinely interested in the human body as a subject and like learning more……and there’s always, always more. Because for what some people would expect, for a general practitioner to basically multiclass this much, they’d have to keep abreast of research OUTSIDE of what they learned in school(even then with certain specialties like said immunology, not certain it’s possible to do WELL tbh, seems mad hard). And let me tell you about this system….there’s ALWAYS demands on practitioner time, it’s fucking ridiculous. That’s why their schedules are packed, they had emergency cases, etc. The entire concept insurance companies came up with of “peer-to-peer” where a doctor and ONLY the doctor and none of his trained staff he hired for this purpose has to wait on the phone with insurance to get a treatment approved when oftentimes they’ve already skipped lunch is the most evil fucking shit, but if we say no, the insurance companies can make it look like the office is just being assholes is just :))))))) something!!!

So yeah, as far as I can tell that’s why our system is the way it is and yeah it may take a few years to get diagnosed(which sucks!!! I know!!!) but that’s vs my mother and grandmother’s generation of being eternally stuck with a GP only and none of them being able to recognize the obscure evil lurking in my genetic code from a hole in the ground. And a lot of them you don’t even need a referral anymore, I already had called and gotten my allergy/immunology appt before she suggested it!!! As for our insurance system, we have that because god has abandoned us

Hi, welcome to "Why am I learning this [insert medical thing here] from a Tumblr blogger better known for vampire nipples instead of my doctor?"

I'll unfortunately be your guide because apparently no one else is fucking bothering*.

5K notes · View notes

yourdeepestfathoms · 2 years ago

Note

So I have a head cold at the moment, I’m immunocompromised, may we get some sick chaos choir headcannons pretty please with a few sprinkles on top?

-✨

of course! hope you feel better, anon! 💕

Okay, so we all know Ocean basically has no immune system and Always Gets Sick

But Penny has an immune system of pure IRON

Homegirl NEVER gets sick

Nobody knows what the hell kind of vitamins and CBD oils she was being given at Elysium Farm, but she’s like a Barbarian that chose Totem Warrior as its sub-class. Immune to basically EVERYTHING (except Psychic damage lol)

Also, Ricky has a weak immune system

He and Ocean are sick buddies!

Noel is the overdramatic sick person

Noel: I’m dying!

Constance: You have a cold

Ocean 🤝 Noel - Not wanting to ever blow their nose because it’s embarrassing

Meanwhile, Mischa will, no fear. And he sounds like a goddamn TRUMPET

“And this is why I refuse to blow my nose in front of you people” -Noel (with Ocean nodding at his side)

Constance will make soup for people who get sick!!

And that soup is like it’s made by ANGELS

If God is real, some of his holy essence is in that soup

That soup will make Noel religious

It’s just really good okay

Once when Constance got sick, the others decided that they would make HER soup!

It, uh

Well

It certainly was a liquid-based food that they made

So none of them knew the recipe (it’s a secret), so they tried to wing it

That didn’t work

They used Way Too Much chicken broth, so it tasted kinda chemically for some reason (based on when I attempted to make egg drop soup, used too much chicken broth, and it tasted like a chicken marinated in cleaning chemicals…with eggs)

They didn’t have the noodles Constance usually used, so they used spaghetti noodles 😭

Halfway through, they were like “this isn’t gonna work,” ditched the soup (didn’t throw it away, though, because that would be a waste), and decided to make something else

Mischa suggested porridge!

Easy peasy!

Except it was not easy, and it was not, in fact, peasy

Constance can hear the choir’s shouts of dismay from her bedroom

Noel and Penny had to rush to interfere with her when she came out of her room to see what’s going on

“No, no, everything is fine!” “Yeah, everything is fine! Go back to bed! We got it all under control!” “OW, I JUST BURNED MY FREAKING HAND!!”

It was a mess (literally)

Okay, okay, away from that!

Other various headcanons for the choir while sick!

So we all know that Ocean will REFUSE to rest when she’s sick until she’s either forced to rest or passes out

Mischa is kinda the same way, but not as severe

He just doesn’t like being seen as “weak” because of his whole Tough Guy persona

He doesn’t mind the other kids taking care of him, though! However, he WILL roll his eyes and act like he doesn’t care (he cares immensely)

Meanwhile, Noel will tuck himself in bed like a sickly Victorian child when he just has a little fever

Ocean will do the choir’s work if they’re too sick to do it themselves (she doesn’t mind, it gives her something to do)

Constance encourages everyone to get a lot of rest when they’re sick!

On the other hand, Penny will message the sick person wanting to play Pool on Game Pigeon to keep them busy

#ask #enjoy!#ride the cyclone headcanons #rtc headcanons #rtc #ride the cyclone #ocean o’connell rosenberg #noel gruber #mischa bachinski #penny lamb #jane doe #ricky potts #constance blackwood #✨ anon

96 notes · View notes

thewomaninlilywhite · 2 years ago

Text

J'ai publié 5 625 fois en 2022

C'est 2 044 billets de plus qu'en 2021 !

388 billets créés (7%)

5 237 billets reblogués (93%)

Les blogs que j'ai le plus reblogués :

@quinnick

@swinging-stars-from-satellites

@zelds-spellman

@sorry-i-panicked

@youremysputnik

J'ai étiqueté 1 682 billets en 2022

#let's chat - 328 billets

#jillian rants - 214 billets

#figure skating - 206 billets

#falling for something new - 113 billets

#this winter's archive tag - 110 billets

#very wonderful things can happen - 81 billets

#speak to your head - 59 billets

#ignore me - 51 billets

#dd - 36 billets

#st4 vol2 - 30 billets

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#'why do you still wear a mask at work ???' well covid's still a thing so jot that down but like i also compulsively talk to myself so 👀👀👀

Mes billets vedette en 2022 :

n°5

guys what is happening

78 notes - publié le 14 janvier 2022

n°4

now's a great time to remember that Yuzu is immunocompromised*

103 notes - publié le 4 février 2022

n°3

when the faves are all olys confirmed 😩✌🏻

145 notes - publié le 9 janvier 2022

n°2

If anyone is confused why people are upset about yuzu's scores (and/or why the scoring system is an absolute joke), watch his free skate from 2017 worlds.

He scored over 223 in that program, back when the highest goe was 3... it's now 5 and it only took two falls for him to score 188*, and his components have only improved since then (not that his pcs reflects that).

*that's a 35 point difference. 4a & 4s with perfect GOEs would have been worth less than 32 points (in the 5-point system!!!), and he actually only lost out on 22 of those; which, even with his 2 deductions in Tento and his extra jumping pass in Hope (which he got 13.76 for) doesn’t add up when taking into account the higher GOE’s. (note: yes, I know the BV’s were lowered for the 5-point system, but this just proves that that decision was bs)

just an example: he scored virtually the same for his 3F at both events (6.80 in 2017 and 6.81 in 2022), but relatively speaking, the 3F in H&L was scored higher.

note: a perfect 3F in either comp would have resulted in +2.65 because you can’t earn more than half the jump’s base value.

Hope and Legacy (Worlds 2017):

Score tally:

lowest (1) -- one judge (dropped*)

middle (2) -- six judges

highest (3) -- two judges (one dropped*)

*the highest and lowest grades are dropped before an average is taken

**a lot of people thought him underscored during this skate too, but that’s something to unpack a different day.

Voir l'intégralité du billet

181 notes - publié le 10 février 2022

Mon billet n°1 en 2022

guys we did it

2 136 notes - publié le 26 novembre 2022

Obtenez votre année 2022 en revue sur Tumblr →

tumblr wrapped out here reminding me i left Boyang off my 'faves confirmed for the olys' post 😩

#damn never forget when i momentarily blew up on fstumblr during the olys because i actually understand skating scores #tumblr2022 #année en revue #mon année tumblr 2022 en revue #votre année tumblr en revue #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

4 notes · View notes

gutsfics · 2 years ago

Text

so like. im kind of a sucker for Meeting Each Other Before You're Supposed To And Then Not Realizing It At First When You Meet Again type tropes & i was kind of zoned out thinking about it all day & ive kind of just added to my oph mc's canon bc of it?

this isnt a fic or anything just me rambling. idk if i can actually write a whole fic out rn so im just putting out what i can lmao lol better this than nothing

tw for Child With Mysterious Illness That May Kill Them (except its like. the mc. so obviously they dont die)

so. Baxter was always sick as a child. they had some genetic autoimmune disease that made it so every time they got sick, their body would sort of. shut down and attack itself? bc it couldnt tell The Sick apart from Their Body. so they were constantly in and out of hospitals because of it. unfortunatley though, bc of how immunocompromised they were it meant that while they were in the hospital they couldn't really leave their hospital room

also worth mentioning that their parents were The Original CEO Of Panacea Before Charlotte + His Administrative Assistant & they were kind of a little bit used as a guinea pig to find a cure for their autoimmune disease (good intentions only on their part, but they really fucking dropped the ball so hard there. didnt even come close to catching it. and by good intentions i mean they were doing this for their kid and their kid only- any cure to come out of it would cost millions)

Ethan, after blowing up his neighbor's garden shed in retaliation for them smashing his cello, ended up having to do community service hours to make up for it. he chose to volunteer time in the children's ward of a hospital. i'd say he's about 16, Baxter is 9 or 10

after a few weeks of spending time in the children's ward, he realizes that there's this one room that's always got a patient in it but he's never actually seen said patient. out of curiosity, he sneaks in when no one is paying attention & meets the kid. they're sweet, and very obviously haven't had any human contact outside of doctors and nurses and their own parents. they tell him that they've been in that room for some time, & they just want to go outside, just once

so. yknow. naturally.

Ethan breaks them out of the hospital.

not like breaks them out breaks them out, but he takes them to the park right across the street and they get to sit in the sunshine for a bit before he takes them back

he gets in huge trouble for it and is asked not to finish his community service hours in the hospital

Baxter does get sick from it, but them getting to be outside, even for just half an hour, meant everything to them. their world went from their tiny hospital room and what they could see of the hallway from their door + what was out the window to something so much bigger. and it kind of gave them hope? it gave them the energy to actually want to overcome their sickness, bc it might mean that they could go to that park again

they do, however, eventually end up assuming that it was a fever dream that they had due to being super sick & watching Peter Pan too much (guy w red hair + green shirt whisks them away on an adventure-- they did always want to be wendy darling) and they kind of forget the details (it doesn't help that their mom insists that they had a guardian angel who helped them recover)

Ethan just kind of assumes that they died-- they transferred hospitals shortly after & no one would tell him anything when he tried to visit

they almost meet again when Ethan punches Declan Nash- Baxter was there and they did see the punch happen, but they didn't get to interact with Ethan at all

neither of them realize this until Baxter is stuck in quarantine after the biological attack (Baxter didn't name themself Baxter until they were in college, their deadname was some normal boring biblical name so Ethan wouldn't recognize them from that). they're sick as hell and should be resting, but they refuse to lie down and get rest. they insist they made a promise to someone that if they ever ended up hospitalized again, they would never get so weak that they couldn't walk, but that they can't remember who it was, just that it was their "fever dream guardian angel"

when Ethan finally gets them to lie back down, they tell him about what happened when they were a kid, that they weren't sure if it actually happened or not, but that they had thought about it so often that they had eventually decided that if they ever met him again and he was a real person, they would kiss him about it as thanks for helping them

and then they both Realize.

#gutsfics.txt #open heart #ethan ramsey x mc #long post #oc: Dr Baxter Lucafont

3 notes · View notes

mymedlife · 3 years ago

Text

Guys, the pandemic has broken me. Every time we seem to be making any progress I feel like we get set back again.

Sorry for the long rant ahead, but I feel like I need to get it out of my head.

Back in the beginning, last March or so, when the state I'm living in shut down, I felt like I could do it. Daycare shut down for almost 3 months to prevent spread.

My husband's job changed his hours to 10a to 8p since everyone was working remotely so they could all be working on the same time zone.

My cofellows were generous enough to switch shifts so I could work all nights and weekends and watch my kiddo during the day. Which kind of sucked, because she doesn't play independently for very long, o was tired, hubby wanted it quiet, and everything was closed so there wasn't anywhere to go to break up the monotony.

Work was filled with frequent changes around what protective equipment we have and what is required to be worn where. I got fitted for 3 different N95s because we kept running out, despite having to check them out and have them sterilized between uses.

I had frequent discussions about how COVID is real with families who refused testing. Parents lied about their symptoms to be allowed into the hospital with their kids, including one who collapsed mid visit due to respiratory failure. Several people ended up having to quarantine because they weren't wearing their N95s during the resuscitation as it was unexpected (at the time we were only wearing N95s during aerosolizing procedures including bagging). This lead to a new rule on not stopping in to help until you have the proper equipment on (which makes sense, but but is so hard).

Early on I spent some time volunteering for the COVID hotline for my state. Most of the questions I got were people upset that things were closing. There were very few health calls.

My aunt died. My sister, a psychologist, argued with her boss she should get a raise for being a frontline worker. My other sister, who is immunocompromised, was mad that all her friends continued to party guilt free and we kept telling her to stay home. My husband began to enjoy his new schedule to the point that he would stay up until 3am playing games after work (the kid was asleep and I was working) and sleep until he had to work at 10 am. My friends talked about their new lock down hobbies, including my co fellow who spent her time creating a new lecture series for the residents. I felt like I was trending water, I started getting behind on fellowship things and I was so tired. My kiddo was happy that I was spending more time with her, and it all was temporary, right?

Eventually things started opening up again. Daycare returned. Two days later my husband was fired. Thankfully he found a job within a few months, but during that time was quick to anger and his staying up all night playing games and sleeping most of the day got worse. He dismissed anything I had to say about it and frequently promised to sleep earlier, later saying he had to stay up because the kid had a nightmare that I slept through.

During this time, many of my pediatrician friends were called to see adults due to high patient volumes and doctor shortages. Luckily I only had to see kids, but there was still a lot of mystery surrounding symptoms and the discovery of the multi system inflammatory syndrome.

My kiddo got sent home a few times from daycare for vague symptoms that necessitated a COVID test, and at one point she was at home with me for 2 weeks due to a COVID positive exposure in class. My husband's job was new so he couldn't take off time to help. At some point things shifted so I was now doing all the daycare pickup and drop-off as well as all the bedtimes (unless I was physically at work).

Following Breonna Taylor and George Floyd there were large scale protests around the downtown area, where my hospital is located. I wholeheartedly support the movement, but someone told my kid it was dangerous to go downtown, and she became fearful of me going to work. This combined with the break in at our home lead to sleep refusal. Something I had to help he with, leading to bedtime taking hours, because my husband would yell at her. Most nights I was too tired after getting her to bed to do much, which lead to more work piling up.

Job hunting was not as fun as I had hoped it would had been. I had one in person interview, everything else was virtual. Thinking about working at a place I've never seen was terrifying.

Many places simply ghosted me. Lots weren't hiring. A few went on a hiring freeze after my interview.

Every interview asked what hobby I developed during lockdown. I admittedly could have answered this question better, and explained that I survived the lockdown with a toddler and that was an accomplishment.

My home institution decided to go with my co fellow over me. When I asked my mentor why she said they felt she had more to contribute to medical education than I do. I'm convinced that in part this has to do with all the lectures she wrote during lockdown.

I was able to get a job, but it's at a smaller community ED where we have a few beds in an adult ED. I mentioned to my associated program director I was a little disappointed, and suddenly everyone is telling me to be thankful for what I have.

I can be thankful and disappointed at the same time.

I think the biggest thing is a fear that if I hate this job I wont ever be able to find another one.

I also kind of resent my kid and husband, if I had more support or time to focus on fellowship things may have been different.

But life goes on. The vaccine was created, things opened up, and now those who aren't vaccinated can stop masking.

The my body my choice people who previously refused to mask are pleased, and now there are barely any masks when I go out (despite a not great vaccination rate in my area).

My kid is 3 and cant get the vaccine, so we still wear them. She loves to whine about how the others don't wear their masks. "It's not fair."

No, it really isn't.

Masks are still required in the hospital, which parents complain about daily. Recently every time I recommend a COVID test it has been refused. The pandemic is over. Kids can't get COVID. And other nonsense.

Kids as young as 12 can get vaccinated. However there is real concern about post vaccine myocarditis. Now everyone who comes in with chest pain wants to complain, even if they are unvaccinated.

Things have been stressful, and my kid is picking up on that. She still has trouble sleeping and has started having tantrums. We recently had a meeting with daycare and they want us to have seen by psych to get her evaluated.

I've found that I've lost interest in most of my hobbies, not that I have a lot of time for them. Fellowship finished and I have the next two weeks off before starting my new job. I was planning on spending it sleeping, cleaning the house, getting out the baby stuff as we are expecting a new little one in a couple of months, and rediscovering my hobbies.

Today I had an awful migraine. I cant take the meds I usually take because of the pregnancy, and my OB wont prescribe anything because he is worried about masking signs of preeclampsia. My husband refused to get up to watch the kid because he was tired, so I pushed through until he was ready to get up.

I lay down to try to get a nap and I get a call that there has been a case of COVID at daycare, and they will be closing for 2 weeks. They will open up the day I start my new job.

And this my friends is what has broken me.

I was so looking forward to finally have time for self care, and now I get to play stay at home mom again with my kid who is in isolation.

After that call I got up and left the house. I'm sitting in my car at the park writing this, and while I know I will go back home eventually, I'm tempted to drive off and let my husband deal with this for a change.

38 notes · View notes

junkyardlynx · 4 years ago

Text

Hey guys, stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Sorry to repost this so soon, but I forgot that Tumblr really, really hates links in posts. Which sucks. Because. What the hell, man? Anyway.

I’m Spencer, I’m an immunocompromised writer trying to scrape out a living in the inhospitable alien wasteland known as Midwest America during the COVID-19 pandemic. I currently have a modest collection of dark poetry available on Gumroad, titled Unblinking. I can’t post the link here, obviously, because Tumblr sucks. Not having luck with Zelda, either. But if you go to gumroad’s site and search “Unblinking” it’s the only result. I like to stand out, I know, it’s a problem.

I don’t want to give you a sad sap story or anything, but I am struggling to make my way. I don’t have any family to fall back on, as my father died a few years ago. Other than that, I’ve been slowly trying to recover from extreme poverty and sepsis the last few years. This is my only real source of income, so I’m just trying to strut a little and get my work out there for you wonderful witches and warlocks to see. I’m awful at this sort of thing, if you couldn’t tell. Bet you could, you’re an observant little person, aren’t you?

My main goal right now other than “continue to not die and also have an apartment, maybe with some sort of food item too” is to begin writing this novel I’ve been outlining for a bit.

The broad premise is that someone invites their friend group out deep into the forests on a proposed camping trip but hey, guess what? They want to kill their friends. You know who thinks that isn’t cool? The local woodland shapeshifter who likes pranking campers for a laugh. So when the shapeshifter witnesses the instigator murdering the uh, living daylights out of one of the campers, what do they do? They show up back at the camp, wearing the dead person’s face. Horror hijinks ensue as the villain completely wigs out since hey, dummy, you’re supposed to be dead.

If you’ve previously purchased my book or have no penchant for poetry and self-promotion, perhaps you could perform a perfunctory act of payment and patronize me via my paypal. Or you could patronize me the other way, y’know, condescending and all.

My Paypal Me thing is /punishedlynx.

Anyway. I’m just doing my best to keep my head up, get the word out there and start on this new writing project in earnest. I don’t know what the future holds but I’m hoping I can keep hanging on and doing what I love.

Love you guys, sorry.

#writers #writing #my writing #poetry #my poetry #self promotion #self publishing #help needed #gumroad #paypal #ugughghghghagohagohghg #that's an acceptable tag to put right

64 notes · View notes

snowe-zolynn-rogers · 3 years ago

Text

Pairings: None

Word Count: 1,544 Words

Summary: Twin trouble and the bakusquad plans to take Touya out shopping.

Warnings: Child Abuse Mention, Death Mention, Homophobia Mentions, Cursing, Injury Mention, Immunocompromised Character, let me know if I should tag anything else.

Notes: Touya’s clothes include links to what they look like.

Hair Dye Buddies: Chapter 3

Learning the basics with his new quirk took to him instantly as he used ways he'd used to watch their father train Shoto with his quirks. The snow felt so calm under his fingertips, the naturality of it far better than the fire that he was born with.

By the end of the class, several snowmen and snow angels had been made and he was very proud with his quick advancement. Everyone seemed happy with his quirk and it made him so eager to please them.

"Tomorrow's training will be more fighting with quirks. I need to get you all ready for the upcoming licensing exam." Aizawa told them on their walk back to class. "Yes, you will be included, Touya. I've spoken to Nezu and all you'll need to do is catch yourself up in your studies and your quirk training, which should be no problem given you take to things so easily. Though yours would be temporary." Aizawa told him.

"This doesn't mean you all will be hurrying to spar with each other tonight, I will put you in detention if you do. Touya, you're allowed to tinker around with your quirk under teacher supervision if you want since, even if you've taken hold of it quickly, it's still brand new to you." Aizawa told him.

Of course, Sir." He nodded, trailing with Shoto.

"So you're officially a UA student, Touya." He was giddy, he'd always wanted to attend UA but father forced him into a no-name school with barely any accountability for their students and had even listed him under their mother's maiden name to keep him away.

"How are Fuyumi and Natsuo?" Touya asked abruptly. Shoto looked bewildered at the sudden conversation shift. Then he realized it might be because Shoto was never allowed around them. He might not know their names, even.

"Sorry, I know you're not even that close to them, us three were so clumped together and you were so much later we never actually bonded together as siblings or anything and you were probably forced away once I was gone so you probably never even knew them." Touya sighed.

"Actually, we're pretty close now. I guess we all realized losing you meant we needed to stick together as much as possible. We even have a group chat without dad. We call it the Endeavor Hate Chat." Shoto smiled and Touya laughed.

"Oh, now you have to show me how much you bash the old man. How old's he now, 45, 46?"

"46. Just turned it like two months ago." Touya gave a chuckle.

"Wow, talk about the timing of that stupid deaging. It's the same time in the year too. I'm starting to think someone put a spell on me like Sleeping Beauty. Come back the same age five years later to torment my little brother." Touya teased.

"I'm not so little anymore. I'm a week older than you." Shoto teased back.

"Oh come on, it's not by much!" Touya exclaimed, getting the class to snicker at their petty argument of age.

"Anyway, how are Natsu and Yumi? You never answered." Touya reminded him.

"Well, Fuyumi's a kindergarten teacher's aid, she's got a secret girlfriend or two and a secret boyfriend too. That woman is pulling too many people at this point. I really have tried to get her to talk to a therapist about her mommy and daddy issues but it isn't really working as you can tell. Natsuo is in college still, becoming a nurse. He has a husband now, they eloped not this summer but the summer before. He's really happy. Both are doing okay. Yumi says she wants kids in the future still and I'm hoping Dad doesn't latch onto it and try to pick her a husband or something to keep 'good quirks' in the family."

Touya smiled knowing his now-older siblings were happy in life. It was all he'd hoped they'd get when he was younger, he couldn't believe they got their happy endings despite his lack of involvement.

"Me, though, I'm going to be a hero just to save people. Unlike his goals for me, I want to be a hero that's a good person as well as a good hero so he won't be giving me the title of Number One, he'll be handing his mantle to part of the next generation he didn't make, likely. And he has a rude awakening if he thinks he'll get his grandchildren to succeed him." Shoto smiled deviously.

"Why?" Touya asked.

"Because he doesn't know I'm gay yet and I won't be giving him biological grandchildren. I plan to adopt kids in need instead. The only children he'll have are Fuyumi's and yours." Shoto proudly stated.

"You say this like I'm not gay too. I'm not having kids." Touya cackled.

"Yumi's got a whole next family generation on her hands then. All the boys can now wipe their hands clean of the reproduction process." Shoto was trying hard not to laugh, so was Touya.

"I ain't never seen four straight siblings. Always three of 'em gotta be gay." Midoriya announced, bursting the whole class into laughter besides the grape-looking gremlin.

"Ew, gays!" The juice gremlin exclaimed, interrupting everyone's fun.

"Shut the fuck up, Mineta." Aizawa instructed the grape gremlin.

"Yes, sir." Mineta agreed.

"I'm glad you ended up bonding with them. I remember being so worried when you were born because the three of us had each other and you were five years younger than us. I was always worried you'd never bond with us."

"Well, you guys were triplets. It's a different bond, I guess." Shoto sighed. "I just know that they were devastated when they heard you disappeared. We all thought you'd run away because the old man never said anything about kicking you out. We thought you'd died on the streets. You have a tombstone in Mom's garden still." Shoto told him.

"They always did joke about burying me in the yard." Touya laughed.

"I'm so glad you get another chance at life. Once we're able to tell Natsuo and Fuyumi, they'll be overjoyed." Shoto butted his shoulder with his own.

"I hope they'll be happy." Touya smiled a bit.

The day was easy after that. He wasn't all that behind in his studies, even excelled a English. During a hero lesson, he got sent to Recovery Girl, who tried to figure out the quirk that caused this and how it worked.

They'd ultimately ended up that this was more than likely permanent now that things had changed from how his life had originally went, especially once he told her of Ryuu and the quirk change. Then she forcefully healed the cuts and burns on his hands and arms from Ryuu and sent him back to class for Math.

The school day was over before he knew it and he was following Bakugou back to the dorms and he went to his own room, it was still bare, just a bed and a desk and a television set up in the corner.

"Hey, Cotton Candy, we're going out, you wanna come?" Bakugou asked.

"I'd be in my school uniform. Aren't we not supposed to wear them when we're not on campus?" He asked.

"We're the same size, just take some clothes. Mina wants to go clothes shopping anyway." Bakugou told him.

"Okay, but I don't have any money." Touya reminded him.

"IcyHot already agreed to let you take your dad's credit card. We're buying you clothes whether you like it or not." Bakugou told him, shoving some clothes at him and he fumbled a second but held them while Bakugou closed his door. "Get dressed! We're leaving in like twenty minutes once Pikachu does his makeup."

Touya was grateful Bakugou had handed him black jeans with cuts on the knees and a baggy black sweater with a skull on it, the comfort of it was astronomical. He put back on the black boots he'd shown up to UA in last night and headed out to Mina in the men's hallway, wolf whistling at him and Sero laughing telling him he fit right in.

"Question, does anyone have a mask I can borrow? My immune system is pretty weak, I got a lot of the weaker genetics in the family so I get sick pretty easy."

"Yeah, man, Shoji has a ton of extra masks." Sero told him. Kirishima was already knocking on Shoji's door for him.

"Hey, man, can Touya borrow a mask, his immune system sucks and we're taking him out shopping."

"Sure, I have some smaller ones my sister sent me a while back that don't fit me." Shoji rummaged a moment and then handed Kirishima a few masks with Halloween themed patterns on them. "Have fun out in the world, Touya." Shoji reminded him.

"I will, thank you, Shoji!" Touya smiled brightly at him as he put on the black mask with the orange and yellow jack'o'lantern pattern.

Being handed Endeavor's credit card by Shoto and told to go wild at the mall was like a fever dream when he used to have to ask and beg for months for new things and then he was made to work himself to the bone for it.

Taglist: @lgbtforeverything @rin-tanaka @everythingisstardust

7 notes · View notes

chi-chi-mcroberts · 5 years ago

Text

Cecil could use a wheelchair! I wanted to be really transparent about what chair I want and why.

There are cheaper wheelchairs that exist but none that suit all of my needs (at least not that I have yet found). This chair is lightweight (27 kg/60 lbs is lightweight for a power wheelchair!) so it can be carried by my family members which is going to be necessary because I live on the second floor of my apartment building and the chances of me living in wheelchair accessible housing anytime soon are pretty much nill. It folds up small and can fit in our current car so we don’t have to ask for even more money to buy a car with a wheelchair lift. It is a power chair so I can use it even when my whole body gives out as it has a tendency to do.

I have an undiagnosed condition which I strongly suspect is ME/CFS but I don’t know for certain. I am bedbound most of the time because my symptoms are so severe. Although nothing is wrong with my legs, when I try to stand or walk I begin to experience heart palpitations, muscle weakness, dizziness, shortness of breath, blurred vision, confusion, and am prone to collapse. I have a rollator walker that I have been using but it is not enough as I often do not have the energy to even stand long enough to walk to the bathroom. I have fallen repeatedly while trying to use my walker, have fallen out of my walker while scooting around in it as a makeshift wheelchair (which is dangerous and explicitly warned against by the manufacturer but I often don’t have a choice), and regularly have to be dragged to the bathroom and assisted by a family member. It is humiliating and unsafe.

The chair itself costs $1,899 USD and shipping is free. If I get $20 over that goal then I would like to get a cup holder accessory for it but obviously that is much less of a priority.

I am unable to work due to my condition, I cannot even sit upright or type for too long before I experience symptoms and pain. My girlfriend has been out of work since the pandemic hit as she is immunocompromised and working outside the home would be potentially deadly for her. She has been looking for work from home jobs but they are rare and she hadn’t had any luck yet. We are currently being supported by my sister but she does not have enough money to just drop nearly $2000 right now. So I am hoping that with the support of friends I will be able to make this happen.

This is a really uncomfortable thing of me to ask. I have never done anything like this and I am really embarrassed to have to do this but my life would be significantly improved if I had more mobility. I have even been putting off doctors appointments because I cannot cope with the pain it will take to get to them. If you have money and you are able to I would really appreciate a donation.

Things like PayPal and GoFundMe take money so we are asking that you send it to my girlfriend’s @skyegraves21 CashApp

$skyegraves21

If you guys don’t have a CashApp, it’s easy to set up and use. If you use my code we’ll each get $5 (After you’ve sent money with it the first time).

JVMRWWJ

If you are outside the US you can also donate to my girlfriend’s Ko-Fi

#shut up cecil #me #help #begpost #disabled #wheelchair #fundraising #donating #money #me/cfs #queer #idk how to tag this #i feel like a monster for asking and want to yeet myself into hell #donate or share #if you want to #aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa #long post //

230 notes · View notes

renaroo · 5 years ago

Note

Cass Cain vs the Bat Family for the last slice of Alfred's pie. "Is that a challenge?"

A/N: This became a more Batfam entirety kind of story and then a commentary on the madness of quarantine in my own family using Uno as a proxy. Regardless it was a lot of fun to do.

Four Walls and Attitude

Oracle places her hand against the map behind her. What was once a black and white scaled model of Gotham is now glowing a radioactive green with shades of green depending on the island, the neighborhood, and even the street.

Everyone, including Batman, stares in awe of the projection.

“In other words,” Oracle says, looking sharply over her glasses, “there is absolutely no way we can operate like normal without causing things getting worse.”

Silence spreads quickly throughout the cave. Most of them don’t even know what to make of the information.

Finally, giving voice to the general shock, Nightwing finally says, “Wow. Corona killed Batman.”

“It did not, the rest of you are staying in the manor,” Batman concludes, leading to an eruption of disagreement.

“Did you not pay attention to what I just said?” Oracle demands. “It goes for you, too, Bruce. No one in this cave can leave without it causing a major public health challenge. We patrol too many areas, cross-contaminate with each other too often, and, worst of all, we have immunocompromised family members of our own to worry about.”

It was an intentionally vague statement, but it doesn’t stop the meaningful glances toward Alfred and Red Robin.

Red Robin crosses his arms angrily. “I resent that statement.”

“Maybe keep better track of your spleen,” Red Hood snorts.

Black Bat is uncertain, shifting on her heels. “What do we do?”

“Social distance and adapt,” Oracle answers easily, straightening her glasses. “It’s possible to fight crime without punching people, you realize. That’s my entire M.O.”

The other vigilantes look at each other warily.

***

The size of the manor was enough reason on its own for them to make it their main base of quarantine. There are obviously more than enough supplies, more rooms than any of them could use independently, and access to equipment and the cave should emergencies arise.

Not to mention, the vast majority of them live there already.

Stephanie calls her mom, Barbara messages the Birds of Prey, and they all find solo activities for the first day, only really intersecting at the library, the kitchen, and the entertainment room during chance encounters.

That seemed to be a good call. And when there is a need for some social interaction, it’s almost always in their usual social groups however they naturally lie.

No one sees Bruce but that seems pretty par for the course.

It isn’t until the third day that things get slightly more challenging.

Stephanie, Duke, and Cassandra enter the mini-theater room with a giant tub of popcorn. The lights are off, but the projector is running and the main couch is occupied by Dick and Damian.

“Oh, didn’t realize you guys were in here,” Duke says sheepishly.

“SHH!” Damian hisses at them.

Dick arches back enough to look at the trio over his shoulder. “No problem, we’re watching Planet Earth. Want to join?”

Stephanie and Duke look at each other with mirrored grimaces.

Cassandra squints at the screen. “No,” she answers for them. “How long?”

“We’re marathoning,” Dick shrugs. “Started about an hour ago—“

“SHH!” Damian snarls at them again.

“We were hoping to watch a movie,” Steph says. Her gaze falls more on Damian than Dick, since he is no doubt the one to appeal to. “The Breakfast Club, it’s a classic. You’d like it.”

Duke looks at them all skeptically. “He would? Really?”

“Cass, you know there’s a different television set,” Dick says, pointing to the floor below.

“Tim’s playing,” Cass says in response, her hands holding up an invisible controller as she mimes Tim’s thumb movements.

“There’s a million places you can set up a laptop,” Dick continues to plea.

That earns a crossed look from Stephanie. “So? What do we need to do? Start putting signup sheets in all the rooms? Just share the projector with us after Planet Earth switches episodes.”

“No,” Dick and Damian say in unison.

The trio leaves the room angrily and, within the hour, clipboards with signup sheets begin being mysteriously adhered to all of the main rooms.

***

Jason has made it a point, nearly every day, to remind everyone that he will be the easiest adjusted to quarantine because he is the only true introvert.

The number of times the words introvert and isolated have left his mouth climb so high that, in secret, everyone is beginning to doubt the truth to them. If he is an introvert to the exponential extremes that he professes, surely he would not need to keep finding where everyone else is hiding to let them know it.

He has an alternating list of Zoom calls he is on each day. Hangouts he makes himself, making a point to inform the others quarantined to the manor than they are not invited to it.

The list of who is invited to it seems to grow by the day.

Kyle Rayner, Donna Troy, Ryan Choi. Then Roy Harper, Koriand'r, and Jade Nguyen. Then Artemis, Bizarro, and Miguel Barragan. Out of nowhere Duela Dent, Rose Wilson, and Suzie Su.

It’s halfway into the second week and Jason has the audacity to come into Tim’s room, pull off his headphones, and ask him if he’s bored.

“You know what I think,” Tim says, more than a little irritated. “I think you’re actually not an introvert. I think you’re not an introvert and you’re taking out your need for social contact out on the rest of us.”

Jason considers his comment, then breaks the expensive Beats in half before walking out the door.

***

Alfred begins making many desserts.

It starts with requests. Of course he will make whatever meal or whatever treat is asked of him, because it is nice to have all his loved ones safe, secure, and in the same location for once. Many of the desserts aren’t even difficult.

Then, somehow, they morph into bribes.

Despite the fact that Alfred has remained tight-lipped about his exact age for all these years, the quote-unquote children insist that he is too old to venture out of quarantine. Thus he must stay in the manor and rely on them to stock the pantry.

This doesn’t seem altogether terrible until it becomes obvious to Alfred that whoever he sends out will only get the foodstuffs they desire and not any of the important staples Alfred puts on the list.

Thus, the trades begin.

He can’t make his famous flan without evaporated milk. He positively will not make ginger layer cake without wine poached pears. And how can they snack on peach and pistachio tarts without honey?

Before Alfred has realized it, he has created monsters. Sugar craved, bored little monsters.

He puts a limit on the sweets he will cook in hopes of focusing instead on cooking favorite meals, but it’s too late.

Even Bruce is checking in on the kitchen at odd hours, looking curiously under the cake plate.

And cutting back the number of sweets Alfred is producing through the week also leads to another unforeseen circumstance.

They begin competing for what sweets are left.

***

Bruce looks in disbelief at the screen. Then he looks at the others. Then back to the screen.

“I distinctly remember us being on episode four,” Bruce says in a voice that edges on Batman.

“Last night, yeah,” Duke agrees, helping Alfred with everyone’s drinks.

No one else seems to find fault with the statement and are waiting for Bruce to continue. They pick at their independent devices lazily, only half attentive to any one thing.

It’s very dissatisfying considering the huge inconsistency that Bruce is detecting on their streaming service.

“Why is it saying that we’ve watched all the episodes already?” Bruce demands, voice sounding more hurt than he meant to let on.

Dick and Barbara simultaneously look up from their phones, toward each other, then back down. The others don’t even bother breaking their concentrations.

“You finished the entire series without me?” Bruce presses.

“Father,” Damian finally speaks up, sounding exasperated, “it is impossible to properly view things with you.”

Bruce squints at his youngest. “What does that mean?”

“It’s not just you, Bruce,” Stephanie says quickly, trying to smooth things over. “I can’t watch shows with my mom either.”

“Boomers just don’t know how to binge-watch,” Tim cuts with the final blow, not even looking up from his laptop.

Leaving the room in spite of protests, Bruce decides he is never going to watch the end of the show out of spite.

***

Cassandra has apparently made it a habit to not let others see her walk through doorways. As a result, she seemingly appears in rooms more than she enters them. Or, at the very least, she acts as though she just always has been and it is the other party who is intruding on her space.

As a result, it’s not altogether shocking when Duke looks up from his newly prepared plate and is met by his sister.

She is staring at his plate more than him.

“Oh, hey, Sis,” he offers her all the same. Then, instinctively, he shifts his shoulders to somewhat create a barrier between his plate and her. “What’s up?”

“Apple pie,” Cass announces as if it answers everything.

“Mmhmm,” Duke replies cautiously.

“Last piece?” she asks, her eyes gleaming.

“I’m sure Alfred will make another,” Duke says, then, slowly adding, “eventually.”

“Mine,” she snaps.

“No, you don’t even eat yours with vanilla ice cream!” Duke argues back, almost turning his back on her completely. “Just eat some of the cookies.”

“No!” Cass says, quickly shifting to be more aligned with the treat. “You eat them.”

“Cass, I got here first!” Duke snaps back, hooking afoot around the leg of the nearest chair. “Fair and square.”

“It was my pie,” Cass hisses. “I’ll take it back!”

“Is that a challenge?” Duke asks.

He sees her lunging and immediately kicks out the leg of the chair as he flips over it.

Cassandra is quick as ever and easily somersaults off of the falling chair to land over Duke’s shoulders. Her force is enough to send Duke’s body tumbling forward, but his body has proper instincts. He holds up the plate of pie above all else while using his free hand to find new ground, twirl his body out, and roll his head forward. Cass tumbles off his shoulders.

She hits the counters, but not before kicking off her shoe and sending it flying for Duke’s face.

He twists enough to lighten some of the impact, but the well-aimed shoe sends Duke into a tailspin.

The pie hits the floor with a sickening thud.

The siblings look crestfallen toward the prize, then each other.

Then they get angry.

By the time Barbara and Alfred burst onto the scene to break things up, the fight has utterly devolved and grown to the size of five Wayne heirs, three of which had no idea what the initial fight was even over.

Jason filmed it and sent it to everyone in his extended Zoom call list.

***

They are at each other’s throats. It turns out the Manor doesn’t have enough rooms.

Even Alfred’s treats are not enough to soothe the tensions anymore. Any little thing can set them off. So they spend the rest of the week finding solitary activities, barely communicating with words anymore.

Finally, some wounds begin to heal when Stephanie speaks to a room of others on their Switches.

“Hey, does anybody have an island with cherries?”

They play in harmony again, comparing villagers in hushed tones and sharing patterns for clothes.

Momentarily, there is hope that the peace will last forever, to the rhythm of island music and Blathers’ gibberish words.

It gives them twenty-seven hours of peace and nothing more.

***

“This absolutely will not work,” Barbara sputters as she pulls up to the table.

The others look at her with mild surprise, but they’re already seated. Jason is shuffling in preparation to deal. The arrangement from his left on is Stephanie, Cassandra, Barbara herself, Dick, Duke, Tim, and then Damian.

Damian is flanked by Jason and Tim. And only Barbara sees what the problem with this is.

“I am looking at a public safety hazard,” Barbara presses. “Dick, seriously, you’re going to let them do this?”

He thinks about it. “It’s a learning experience,” he determines.

“You dealing in or nah, Red?” Jason pushes.

She glares at them all, certain this is purposeful on at least some of their behalves, but she crosses her arms. “Okay, fine,” she says.

Jason deals out seven to everyone. Once he puts the deck in the middle, he turns over the first Uno card — green three — and with his free hand reaches in his jacket pocket for cigarettes. The others are already playing while Jason looks slightly miffed if not panicked when he can’t find the pack.

Under the table, Barbara can feel the shuffle of a pack of cigarettes being passed between other members of the table.

Shockingly enough, Jason doesn’t say anything verbally, but his eyes are already glaring at Damian as the pickpocket.

Stephanie puts down green nine.

Cassandra green Draw Two.

Barbara draws two.

Dick puts down a yellow Draw Two.

“No fair,” Duke chuckles.

Tim puts down a yellow Reverse.

Damian narrows his eyes. “You think you’re clever, don’t you, Drake?”

Duke yellow eight.

Yellow four.

Yellow two.

Blue two.

Blue three.

Blue Reverse.

Damian glares at Jason. “Is this planned?”

“How can they plan Uno, Dami?” Steph asks. Blue one.

Blue seven.

Barbara looks over her glasses at the table. She’s lost track of the cigarettes. “Don’t underestimate these people, Stephanie,” she warns as the ends up drawing five cards before finally laying down green seven.

Green nine.

Wild Card. “Let’s go with,” Duke looks through his hand cautiously, “Yellow again.”

There is a suspicious twitch to Tim’s lips as he puts down a Draw Four. “Let’s go back to red.”

Damian releases an explosion of expletives and leaps to stand on his chair.

“Ah, it was a mistake, my bad,” Dick says, rubbing a hand down his face.

***

Bruce is stone-faced at dinner, strangely fixated on his plate.

It’s not overly concerning, Bruce tends to be in quiet contemplation on most days regardless.

He finally looks up, though, and glares at them all.

“I finished it on my own,” he informs them.

They all stare back.

“Tiger King,” he clarifies. “They’re all guilty. But also. What the hell.”

Everyone collectively loses their minds again.

Alfred sighs and begins drafting a rotation for getting them all out of the manor more.

#Cassandra Cain #Alfred Pennyworth #Dick Grayson #Stephanie Brown #Jason Todd #Tim Drake #Duke Thomas #Barbara Gordon #Damian Wayne #Bruce Wayne #bafic #writing #crim bat #ask and you shall receive

57 notes · View notes

route22ny · 4 years ago

Photo

I grew up in the Bay Area at the height of AIDS panic, and all of that era’s sex paranoia remains burned into my brain, repurposed for Covid-19 and the act of commingling wet breath. A few weeks into this crisis, I found myself having a ten-foot-distant conversation with my neighbor Patty, both of us incredulous at people who still tried to talk to us in-tight face-to-face, like we weren't all suddenly barebacking reality with everyone they'd chit-chatted with that day and everyone in their lives, etc. Patty allowed that she should be able to strike people she considered a threat. I mentioned Florida's attitude toward this legal principle and firearms. I suggested she become militant. I tell that to a lot of people, but I attenuate the humor of it for the audience. I tell every teacher I know to strike.

There are more sirens now. It's hard to tell, because unlike New York, everything isn't quiet. Cars are out on the road—fewer, but enough that hearing a siren can still be vehicular idiocy and not a more sinister house call. But I still hear more of them.

I don’t know why Luke asked me to write about Coronavirus in Florida. I mostly stopped writing last year when a good friend dropped dead in front of his family. (Subscribe to my Substack—we don't update regularly!) Before that, I felt increasingly overborne by events. Things ground to a halt in 2019, but the machine began to break down long before. I ended the 2016 campaign periodically sitting under my desk, high, feeling secure because I wasn't writing anything stupid and feeling good because I was appropriately afraid of everything, but people thought I was exaggerating when I mentioned it.

I wish I could say my seriousness about the novel coronavirus stems solely from believing in science and peer review and that I would take it seriously regardless, but my spouse is immunocompromised, and my father, who lives out in the Bay Area, had Covid-19, back in March or early April. He didn't tell us kids until he was out of the woods, but for days he had fevers over 103º. My stepmom, a former emergency room nurse, couldn't get him admitted anywhere, because he wasn't having respiratory problems. He woke up the same every day: It felt like someone had parked a Volkswagen on him.

We're supposed to say he's out of the woods. I'll believe that when he dies of old age, or something more reasonable that kills men in my family, like colon cancer or car accidents. Sometimes I think about him dropping dead like my friend, only from whatever post-Covid-19 effect triggers the brain’s forgetting to tell the lungs to breathe—or from the one that leads to storms of strokes, like a brain's blood vessels recreating the burning energies depicted on a CRISS ANGEL MINDFREAK poster. Then I wonder how I would die, or my wife, or my friend in Atlanta, or my brother. I think about drowning in open air, alone in a hissing world, and being incapable of saying the overdue apologies I ran out of time for.

After a while I realized that basically all Luke wanted was to hear from a coward living in the mismanaged kleptocracy of Florida, and the thing is, I can do that! I’m frightened right now!

I considered opening with, Every day I wake up frightened, to throw a fucking jolt into a piece about facing down a pandemic in a place where they have a paradise just for the cheeseburgers. But the joke is, I'm not wastin' away here in Coronaville. Sometimes I wake up and just have to pee, on the rare days when I don't wake up from the sensation of my son elbow-dropping my head because—how rude of me—it's 6:45 already.

In this respect, I am serene: My son and I exercise outside to burn off his energy, so I'm out in the sun for hours a day. I'm tanner, I've lost weight, and my phlegm feels looser. I grew a lushly indifferent goatee. My haircut looks like something that belongs on the gatefold cover of a concept album about a form of locomotion by a band named after geography. While the term "Lebowski Phase" has been applied to my appearance and to the fact that my leg injury and medical-marijuana prescription have collided with the reality of never having to drive anywhere again, I must insist that in many respects I have come to look like Jesus Christ. I am pro life and take no pleasure in reporting this.

As I have said, I am frequently awakened by my son, whose full name is My Beautiful Five-Year-Old Son Maitland. He is a treasure who spends quarantine within earshot of 24-hour news, regurgitating West Wing Democrat observations of mine with five-year-old precocity to harvest follows for Instagram. Maitland is an influencer already on record as supporting L’Oréal, opposing Medicare For All, and, when I first read him the shaggy start to this piece, he said, "Not a good look." He's a natural.

Waking up is violent but easy. The problem is everything after that. By the time I close my eyes, I'm not sure what I felt most on any given day—anger, sadness, impotence, a resentful churning need for vengeance, despair. Any one can seem like a day's dominant emotional dysfunction and then suddenly be overwhelmed by the dread that suffuses prolonged thought about the world outside.

I am one of the people who is Taking It Seriously. Seriously Taking It Seriously, though—not the people who say they're taking it seriously and then tell you about:

• Going to a recent indoor birthday party.

• Having a multi-course dinner at a fancy restaurant, "But it was okay because it was [extremely not-worth-a-life celebration]!"

• A full-contact playdate their kid had recently with two other children.

I abhor these people. I have an existential loathing of these people, and a granular scientific indictment. I enjoy reading new articles to learn new ways in which they are a danger to me. My apprehension is rich and exquisite. May their friends shun them, and may they be abandoned by their gods.

Sooner or later, every day, I think of the threats arrayed against me and my family. Each day, I see the most recent thing said by my governor, Ronald Fuckface DeSantis, in which he explicitly endorses and declares his intent to pursue actions that all available data say will kill Floridians by the thousands. Each day, I think about how, if I do so much as suggest fostering a free exchange of ideas about the proportional value of using every means to stop him, I will be arrested.

Every day, I bounce the "Evil or Moronic?" debate around my brain. I check in with an alumna buddy in Atlanta to see whose governor has shown more recent determination to murder his citizens. I gotta give Brian Kemp credit, because he's really holding his own. Naturally, this leads to wondering if either of them have a natural or acculturated advantage in terms of idiocy and malevolence. DeSantis' enrollment at Yale and Harvard and service in the military problematizes the idiocy narrative only for as long as it takes to remember all the people you've met who've gone to any of them and were dumber than dogshit. It would seem like fate to be murdered by an oaf, but I don't know that it's not merciful to at least be murdered purposefully rather than contemptuously and indolently.

Eventually, this leads to spending some time thinking about DeSantis as a kind of lethal bro angel. It's hard not to see his shitchyeah, brah, people are dyin', it's classic! expression and recognize that the state's chief executive resembles a lout you don't want to run into walking alone at FSU after a home loss. I prefer my jokes about the governor, but my friend David Roth nailed it when he said that DeSantis seemed like a person who would describe himself as “kind of a DUI guy.”

I know there's supposedly a culture war out there. There's a truck in my neighborhood with a Q sticker, and another with a Three-Percenter sticker, and there are more than a few neighbors of the "easily victimized white dude who owns a $50,000 truck he rarely takes off the pavement and who becomes physically belligerent when you correct him" variety, but there's a reason why you really only see “war” shit on YouTube. Few Americans are hostile to general safety protocols, and even fewer act out against them. I live where hate groups and old fashioned unaffiliated redneck trash drive in from the county to make a show of rebel flags, rolling coal and honking to intimidate protests, but people line up six feet apart at Home Depot, wear masks at Publix and get takeout at the pizza place outside without insisting on barging in. Most wars don’t need one side of them to be this manufactured.

Most of my friends and colleagues from this gig live in New York, so I've already sat through weeks of descriptions of streets silent except for ambulances, and I’ve already woken for weeks to the half-twilight of nightmares where friends died in a spare white hallway. There aren't a lot of surprises in store for Florida, and no images I can describe that would make you want to turn back now. It's like we're waiting for the rolling premiere of a franchise blockbuster. The dead won't really start packing them in for a few more weeks, but all the scariest shit hit YouTube when it opened in New York a thousand years ago. The coronavirus as an image, what it functionally is, as a horror, feels as familiar as the Scream mask, and the context that makes that scary as hell already feels dangerously been-and-gone, like an apprehension that Florida had for too long before the actual scare came.

There's a hope that all this will come to little again. Despite Governor DeSantis' refusal to take the initiative on shutting down the state until the last dollar was wrung from the last snowbird, the original shellacking never came. The Tampa Bay Times sampled smartphone data and concluded that Floridians overwhelmingly took the initiative to stay home, and they were aided in their quarantine process by the fact that Florida is car-dependent and atomized.

The heartbreaking realization, as you gradually run across more people who are Not Taking It Seriously or are Expressing Moronic Skepticism, is that for a month there about 80 percent of America was on board with doing the right thing. We, a people who suck at doing the right thing even for the wrong reasons, stood on the side of doing the harder thing if it helped people who weren't even us.

I really can't tell if I feel more anger than sadness at the fact that those who were meant to encourage us in safety, to serve us by offering difficult guidance, wasted our sacrifice and our trust. They squandered the patience given by a beggared and exhausted people. All they had to do was the right thing, and if they weren't sure what that was, they could have erred on the side of saving people’s lives and hoping it counted, and they failed.

Instead, more people will die, and we'll be shut down again, and we will realize we are fundamentally unequipped for life with Covid-19. Florida is built on enclosed air-conditioned spaces: It's dependent on divorcing yourself from Florida as a climate and place. Asking Floridians to generate a public life under the unshielded rage of God’s angriest sun and baked from beneath by a sprawling pave-ocalypse requires asking them to rebel against everything their infrastructure has taught them for as long as they can remember. It is a car culture to the flesh and bone, and a restaurant relocating indoor tables to a road patio would park its diners inches away from eternity.

A picnic day like that is months off, again. It's time to go back inside and resume Inside Time. Inside Time melts away. I saw a headline around the Fourth of July, from the New York Times, that read, "In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both," and I remember seeing colleagues tweet, mmmm, so true, and, gets at something crucial we aren't talking about, and shit like that, and I was like, "Buddy, let's get in the DeLorean and visit March." I have nowhere to go, anyway, and all life is timeless.

We have no family in the area and have had no break. It's the three of us, like No Exit, but if most of the dialogue was the word "no" and a lot of stuff about poop and butts and farts, good guys and bad guys, and what Lego Star Wars would do, but with a lot of excruciated pleading for silence because Mom and Dad Are Working Right Now and We Love You Very Much but Jesus Christ Please Stop for the Love of God I Will Give You a Dollar If You Go in Your Room and Be Quiet and Play That Kindle App That Teaches You to Read That You Pay Attention to More Than Us Even Though I Would Read You a Fucking Novel If You'd Just Shut Up and Sit Still.

I'm resigned to staying in here until 2022. I’m screaming, but I will do it. I'm lucky in that I have access to a community pool and a neighborhood where my son and I can roam around on bikes and romp and look at water and birds and turtles. When we're lazy, we have a porch where we can feel nature without feeling exposed. We have a dependable (ok!!! haha!!!) income, and I can do irregularly scheduled work that allows me to be Parent rather than Employee. Exercise, meals and stories take up enough hours that I might as well lean into it.

But we’re lucky. We have a house and prescription mood-altering drugs and one thousand years of undersleep, but we are in less immediate danger than most. The state, almost reflexively, reaches out to open more doors even as Covid-19 blows past reopening benchmark after reopening benchmark.

The inexorable march for commerce doesn’t even come from malice in many cases; people in charge just don’t know how to do anything else but extort and scold people into working under any conditions, so long as it devours most of their time. All the exploitive principles are expected to work the same even if the world they built is fraudulent. We feed meat and the virus into the machines, irrespective of what the data says, and pray for rain. Watching Florida government on the state and local level is like watching two parents bring an alcoholic home after he got kicked out of rehab and deciding that the best course of action is leaving him with $5,000 in an apartment up the street from a dive bar and then going to Cancun for the week. It was on the calendar already, there wasn’t any choice, he looked very healthy at the time!

We have friends who are teachers, and we are scared for their spouses and kids. I don't know what Florida's plan for its teachers is other than to murder them. Again, I don't know if DeSantis is an idiot for flirting with giving enormous bipartisan sympathy to arguably the most effective labor group in the state, or a genius for flirting with finally eliminating a lobbying obstacle to conservative governance by simply liquidating its members as a class.

I worry if I start listing all the things I'm scared of, they'll never stop, but every day I see my son reach for something he should be able to reach for, and I either have a low-grade panic response and stifle it, or I have the panic response and yelp at him to get his attention and tell him to stop, startle him, and add another layer of gun-shy haunting to his day. I'm afraid he'll eventually become an animal in a Skinner Box in which all the buttons and levers are electrocuted, and there are no prizes.

I'm afraid that my son will always be emotionally arrested at two years behind the development of people the same age who had siblings in their house, or who, like many kids in my neighborhood, had parents who thought kids were invincible to Covid-19 and let them play with whomever they wanted. I worry that he may pay a price year after year even into adulthood because other kids got to practice socializing as we rode past. They got to hang out with people their own age and run around and do vitally stupid shit and say "butts" a lot, and he got look at me heartbroken and knowing empirically and epidemiologically that he couldn't play with his friends anymore but still needing to know why, and knowing that I couldn't tell him anything more sophisticated and anything less terrifying than, "So we don't get sick."

The other day he started crying and then screaming, "I hate the sickness! I hate the sickness!" repeating it in a higher and higher register, until he was up even past that piercing birdlike screech that prepubescent boys make whenever trying to sound like lasers or dinosaurs or squealing brakes. Every day I worry that I see another little bit of his capacity for happiness is dying—that the same awkward process of terror that took me from happy little kid to profoundly unhappy teen to scarred adult is even more rapidly at work, and each day another sparkling and joyous little light of childhood winks out in him, replaced by fear as a necessity of life.

I know that there is no plan for us. Conservatives don't want to be taxed or have their businesses lose money, so people are being kicked off unemployment and sent back to work with no test and trace protocols, irregular access to PPE, overwhelmed hospitals and often limited access to any care. We're doing all this as Florida blooms scarlet like paint being spilled into a mold shaped like the state. We're sending the men in the gasoline suits right at the heart of the fire.

It's a cruelly lazy little culling genocide of the working class, a Wall Street gamble that the blow to the labor force won't be more than a blip on the Dow and, a little recession aside, the One Percent will come out ten years later owning an even greater percentage of the United States. To the extent that there is a plan, that's the plan, and whether you land on the dead or the living part of any of those exchanges is more of a Your Problem than a Their Problem.

For now, it's enough to be hermits and hope the rest of Florida goes on strike by going inside and staying there and writing letters to representatives threatening to never come out. Cooking the same things, getting the same exercise in the same places, having the same awkward conversations on VOIP delay, and living every moment outside like we're three drinks in so we’re ready to get belligerent with anyone who is getting too close. Living every moment with some low-level neurasthenia that grows spine-deep and for the rest of our lives sends shuddering disequilibrium at the thought of air that never seems to move, hallways that lengthen without exits, and objects that seem both unavoidable and unclean. It’s fine. We’re all fine, here, now. How are you?

I feel a sudden Git Offa Mah Land thing about my son, a resolute commitment to homeschooling for the foreseeable future and to keeping the gummymint away. It sucks so much. I was so happy to send him to the public school just a few blocks away, instead of the shitty little charter schools nearby, but now that it’s Plague or Parents, he’s got his parents. Between us, he'll have access to 1.5 first-class educations. I still have my grandpa's service weapons from WWII, the last time America was in a war with fascism, when we took the opposing side. I'll empty a couple magazines into anyone who comes onto my property and tries to stop me from teaching my son critical race theory, Howard Zinn, and Leonard Levy's Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side. I refuse to turn my back on the heritage of my youth, of watching thousands of hours of MASH, by refusing to wear a mask outside or in fact any time I am doing anything other than drinking gin that I made in a tent.

Outside, records fall and progress rolls on. A governor whose go-to pejorative for opponents of all ages and sexes is very likely still “queef” watches as even the president concedes that a Republican National Convention here would be too lethal, as the state repeatedly sets records for daily deaths, beats out all of Europe in terms of new daily cases, leads the nation in cases per day, then tries to set them again. And then, every day, our governor makes his ahegao-but-for-ethnic-cleansing face and psychotically clangs a bell indicating that Florida just became the 15,000 customer at Leadshoe Larry’s Kicked-in-the-Dick, and it’s time for all us lucky winners to line up and drop our pants.

Florida’s lethality is so tacky that it’s almost camp, but there is no satisfaction in being right about how wrong everything is. Nobody gets a prize for correctly guessing the surplus death toll. All you have to do is look someone else in the eye working in life under Covid.

I’m old now, so I have Humiliating Injury Syndrome (HIS), and somehow in the month between the Super Bowl and the pandemic, I tore a rotator cuff, a labrum, or both, by throwing a (mini!!!) football with friends. After four months, I broke down and went to get an MRI. I skulked down corridors and lurked in a corner of a waiting room, like playing spies with an opponent who was the air. Even the clean and modern fixtures felt miasmic and corrupted, like they were a parking garage in an Alan Pakula film.

Eventually a nurse emerged from an office, crinkled her brown eyes, waved and surprised me by asking after my family by name. She lives three blocks away from me and had hosted me at a party once. Later that day, as my car coasted down the approach to my house, I saw a garage door open and my neighbor’s son walk out on his way to his shift at the same grocery store that I treat emotionally like a Superfund site.

I thought about how much I unconsciously held my breath where they work, and how I unconsciously associate those places with poor choices. The danger of the world outside is so massive that I reflexively need to cordon off the threat into areas of blame and blamelessness. In a moment of crisis, years of conservative rhetorical conditioning in the discourse have taught me to reflexively pathologize those in harm’s way. There is less chaos if someone is at least responsible for something. There is less risk to me, if it turns out someone else’s epidemic is someone else’s fault.

But it is someone else’s fault. And it’s not some poor fucker doomed to sit in a box somewhere and accept paper money and hand metal money back and point at where toilets are, because that’s how he keeps the lights on. It’s not the person consigned to some life-sucking task that, on the best of days, is too humiliating and cruelly impoverished of purpose to ever be a reason why someone should die. It’s not the person around whom you hold your breath because you don’t know where they’ve been. It’s the person and people who put us all in position to suddenly feel like we’re suffocating together.

I hate that I sometimes unconsciously hold my breath around strangers, and I hate that they have heard it. I think of my neighbors, and of the workers on whom we’re dependent, and the permanent uncertain shortness of breath I feel, and I want every moment of their anxiety and mine gathered up and then rained on those who shepherded it into being, those who nurtured it and feasted on it, those who profited from it and were indifferent toward it. Those who consider themselves DUI guys and those who pay to elect them and give them sinecures and who are simply too rich to be arrested for boating under the influence anymore.

I think of how I hold my breath near good people and near vulnerable people in places I am wary of and that we all need to share, and I wonder if we will simply hold our breath for the rest of the year, and if we’ve bargained for standing near each other and holding it for all of the next. And I wish so eagerly that all our suspended futures and the air between us might catch at the throats of those who put us here. That justice for a man like Ron DeSantis might be a permanent and sucking terror: stuck always in an involuntary startled gasp at the sight of responsibility, afraid at the approach of every stranger, incapable of drawing a full and restful breath, and never knowing peace again.

Jeb Lund used to write about politics for Rolling Stone, The Guardian and Gawker, and a bunch of other places, and was the Spectacle of Trump Editor at 50 States of Blue. He and David Roth have a podcast about Hallmark original movies that is mostly funny and exasperated and not unkind, and it's not ultimately about the movies anyway. It's fine and people enjoy it. Don't make it weird. He also has a podcast where he watches every Dennis Quaid movie in a row. That is also completely normal.

Ok here’s me again with a couple more things.

You’ll want to read this in the New York Times today about a forthcoming documentary on ICE. After it was completed the filmmakers were apparently threatened with legal action by the agency over the inclusion of parts that made ICE look even worse than they already look doing literally everything else they do.

Some of the contentious scenes include ICE officers lying to immigrants to gain access to their homes and mocking them after taking them into custody. One shows an officer illegally picking the lock to an apartment building during a raid.

At town hall meetings captured on camera, agency spokesmen reassured the public that the organization’s focus was on arresting and deporting immigrants who had committed serious crimes. But the filmmakers observed numerous occasions in which officers expressed satisfaction after being told by supervisors to arrest as many people as possible, even those without criminal records.

“Start taking collaterals, man,” a supervisor in New York said over a speakerphone to an officer who was making street arrests as the filmmakers listened in. “I don’t care what you do, but bring at least two people,” he said.

Here’s one disgusting detail among many.

They followed Border Patrol tactical agents who took pride in rescuing migrants from deadly dehydration even as the agents acknowledged that their tactics were pushing the migrants further into harm’s way. They showed how the government had at times evaluated the success of its border policies based not only on the number of migrants apprehended, but on the number who died while crossing.

***

source:

https://luke.substack.com/p/all-they-had-to-do-was-the-right?utm_source=Brooklyn+Today&utm_campaign=dd6f63665c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_28_01_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1ba554d7d5-dd6f63665c-125128182

#long reads #florida #covid #genocidal dystopia #Jeb Lund

13 notes · View notes

theexistentiallyqueer · 5 years ago

Text

I developed a dry cough this weekend. It started out as what could just have been a sinus cough on Friday, but it’s persisted through yesterday and today as a more frequent dry cough. I’m also having some stomach issues that may be business as usual or may be symptomatic. I’m immunocompromised, I have Crohn’s disease, and I have hypertension. I reached out to my doctor today to let him know what symptoms I’m experiencing and to ask if he wants me to get tested.

As I’m currently not feverish he said he doesn’t recommend testing at the moment, but he told me to let him know immediately if I develop a fever and to stay home. We’re projected to see a sharp spike in COVID-19 cases this week. Fortunately I’m in Ohio and DeWine has been taking the most stringent measures out of any state governor to crack down on the spread, up to closing down bars and restaurants to public access effective tonight at 9 PM.

Fortunately I have three weeks of PTO in my bank, but I’m hoping I can get work to let me trial work from home even if they’re not ready to roll it out right away. I’m going to call in tomorrow and talk to one of the managers and see.

I’m taking care and staying safe. You guys take care and stay safe too. ❤️️

#teq talks

18 notes · View notes

etherealwaifgoddess · 5 years ago

Text

More Time - Chpt.1

Summary: Steve’s health takes a turn for the worse prompting Bruce to suggest an unexpected solution.

Warnings: Some sad feels

Word Count: 1.1k

Author’s Note: Hello lovelies! I’m going to try and post this fic daily until it’s done. Don’t know how feasible that’s going to be (I’m up for a promotion at work and have two kids at home, life is hectic) but I’m going to do my best! This is a shorty chapter but let’s at least get the ball rolling....

ICYMI: the prologue can be found HERE, and the master list is HERE.

Chapter One

Steve woke to a coughing fit for the third time that night. The red numbers glared at him from the alarm clock, 2:32am. His chest clenched as he wheezed and he begrudgingly used the inhaler he had on standby since he’d gotten a summer cold three weeks ago. “Immunocompromised” Bruce had called it, and Steve bristled at the term as much as he had at the word “elderly”.

“Hey, you okay?” Bucky mumbled, half awake but aware enough to reach out and rub a strong hand against Steve’s back in a comforting gesture.

Steve nodded in the dark, not quite able to speak as his lungs calmed back down. “Yeah, I’ll be okay.” He said after a minute.

Steve woke up two more times before the sun did and Bucky decided sometime around 4am that Steve no longer had the option to refuse medical care. He text Bruce telling him he was bringing Steve in to see him and Helen Cho around nine whether Steve liked it or not. Bucky remembered the signs like it was yesterday and not eighty years ago. Steve had contracted pneumonia enough times that it was unmistakable to him even now. He’d been worried sick for the last week and a half and Steve’s health was deteriorating rapidly every day.

“I’m fine.” Steve grumbled over the cup of coffee he barely had enough strength to hold. He had drug himself out of bed around seven, giving up on the illusion of sleep.

“The hell you are, punk. Bruce and Helen will be waiting for us at the compound around nine. You need to get checked out again, it’s too risky at your age to let it keep going like this.”

Steve shot him a glare, he knew damn well how old he was and was tired of everyone reminding him of it. “Technically you’re still a year older than me, jerk.”

“Yeah but I spent most of the last eighty years getting my beauty rest.”

“Jerk.”

“Punk.”

They exchanged equally exasperated smiles but Steve knew he wasn’t winning this fight and went to get changed out of his pajamas.

Bruce and Helen took a full few body scans as well as a series of x-rays and a vial of blood which they assured him would be incinerated as soon as the lab results were back. Steve was exhausted to the point where his hands trembled in his lap while he and Bucky sat together in the sitting room outside the lab waiting for the results. It was damn hard being old, Steve thought. His mind was still sharp but his body was failing whether he liked it or not. It was almost like things were before the serum but not quite as bad since this was the result of a long life lived well and not an unlucky roll of the dice at birth.

Helen looked heartbroken when she rejoined them in the room outside the lab. Bruce trailed in a minute later, concentrating on the Starkpad in his hand, a conflicted expression etched on his face. He looked up at Helen and nodded.

“It’s pneumonia.” Helen said plainly. She was a good doctor and Steve respected the way she didn’t bother sugar coating things. “It’s normally treatable but your test results are concerning. We’re going to do everything modern medical science can do for you but you need to know that at your age the odds are not great.”

Bucky tensed almost imperceptibly next to Steve, his training keeping him stock still when all he wanted to do was breakdown and scream.

“I’ve lived a long life, doc. I know you’ll do what you can.” Steve assured her.

Bucky felt bile rising in his throat, of course Steve would try to reassure the woman who just said he was dying. He felt like every fiber of his body was being torn apart at the idea of Steve’s death. It wasn’t that he couldn't imagine a world without Steve in it, he just didn’t want to be part of it.

“There is another option.” Bruce told them. “It’s a long shot but I think we could make it work.”

“What is it?” Bucky asked quickly. He didn’t care how slim of a chance it was, if it could possibly save Steve’s life it was worth trying.

“We could try and give a tiny boost to the serum to help fight off the infection. I have a formula I’ve been working on, in theory, obviously, and I think we could give him just enough of a boost so that the serum would help his immune system fight off the infection like it would in a healthy person.”

“Bruce, I appreciate what you’re doing but-” Steve started but was cut off by a very pissed off former assassin.

“Guys, will you give Steve and I a minute alone please?” Bucky bit out.

Both Helen and Bruce left quietly and Steve sighed, waiting for Bucky to start in on him. After a moment when no verbal tirade came Steve looked over to see tears streaming down Bucky’s face.

“Buck, I…” Steve gasped, completely unexpected for this reaction.

“No,” Bucky told him, voice breaking, “Don’t you dare try to be brave or noble or any of that bullshit right now.” Bucky took a few steadying breaths before he continued. “I know you and I know what you’re thinking but just stop it, okay? This could buy us more time, Stevie. I knew we wouldn’t have a lifetime together but at least let Bruce try this and give me a little more time with you. I’m not ready to lose you.” Bucky let out a sob and Steve forced his aching bones to sit up tall enough that he could wrap his arms around Bucky and pull him in close to his chest.

“I’m not ready to lose you either.” Steve said quietly into Bucky’s hair as he held him tightly. “I’m not too keen on messing with the serum, but I trust Bruce.”

“I expected more of a fight from you on this.” Bucky chuckled.

“Maybe I got smarter in my old age.” Steve quipped, “Go get Bruce so we can do whatever it is he thinks will fix this.”

Bucky smiled up at Steve, so thankful for the sliver of hope they’d been given, and left to find the pair of doctors.

Tag list lovelies: @godofplumsandthunder @remilupin22 @supraveng @hiddles-rose

If anyone wants added or removed please lmk!

#more time #stucky fanfic #stucky fanfiction #stucky #steve rogers #old steve rogers #preserum steve rogers #post winter soldier bucky barnes #shrinkyclinks #marvel #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #marvel endgame #endgame fix it #post endgame #endgame fixit #stucky x original character #stucky x original female character #stucky x ofc

20 notes · View notes