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tunedtostatic · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on Starship Iris 2.09 (and other audio drama stuff)

I have strongly negative thoughts about parts of the season finale, specifically the way PTSD and disability in general are handled. The stuff I have strongly negative thoughts about, though, is connected to common issues in audio drama, not limited to this podcast (which I love and don’t want to just dunk on). As a result, this turned into an essay half about TSCOSI and half about audio drama and fandom.

Blanket content warning for extended discussion of topics that come up in season two, a few paragraphs with other CWs flagged at their beginnings, and photos of food. (The images in this are kind of goofy, I’m just using them to avoid Wall Of Text.) Thank you to L for betaing this!

In the Starship Iris season two finale, when Brian tells Krejjh he can’t stay on Telemachus because he’s wiped from their last mission and needs a steady supply of oxygen, I was ready to cheer him on. Forcing yourself to do something painful and damaging when you don’t have to isn’t the move, and I was ready to be enthused about Brian making the right choice for himself, and his crew supporting him in doing that.

As the conversation continues, however, Brian says that he’d be a danger to Krejjh and the people they’re trying to help, asking what if they have to choose between getting him an oxygen tank and saving someone else. The way Brian’s hypothetical presence on the ship is reduced to the pros and cons of how his disability would potentially impact those around him is a viewpoint from which people with disabilities are often seen in fiction and in life. My least favorite science fiction narrative is the lifeboat story, the cousin of those ethics problems where you decide which people in a group are more worthy of the limited seats on a lifeboat. This process is usually assumed to require judging which skills—and needs—make people more valuable or more of a burden.

Audio dramas in general are not great at thoughtful representation of disability. Often, they seem stuck on the binary view of disability on a sliding axis from “More of a burden” to “Less of a burden.” Sometimes, they make it to the equally binary axis of “Degrees of advantage disability can confer.” Only rarely do they make it to a more three-dimensional view where not seeing disabled people as people already means losing everything, and non-negotiably seeing disabled people as people reveals the networked importance of accessibility and inclusion. (In this example, how might taking a step back and finding a way for Brian to travel safely with Krejjh in their aid work make it more likely that they and the ship will be ready to respond dynamically to the needs of disabled passengers?)

Stories are just stories, but it’s hard to feel like the audio drama community’s frequent way of viewing fictional disability is completely separate from the way it sees real audience members’ disabilities as a burden. The current norm of “Just throw your scripts on your website” renders necessary information (delivery, tone, meaning) inaccessible to people using transcripts, something I notice a lot as a sometimes listener/sometimes reader.

I have way too many thoughts about accessibility in audio drama, which I want to turn into a pretentious post of their own at some point, but there’s something else that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately that would be relevant to that post and is even more relevant to this one: the problem of indie fiction creators being more heavily criticized than mainstream fiction creators.

I do question, a little, the popular narrative that “Tumblr holds marginalized creators to a higher standard than mainstream creators.” (Like, have you seen the way people on Tumblr slag on the MCU while genuinely expecting it to improve? Tumblr slags on everyone.)

I mean, there’s totally some truth to that, but my bigger concern is always going to be the more functional half of the problem: the way indie creators, who have less resources and infrastructure than bigger creators usually do, are jammed together with fans in shared online spaces more closely than bigger creators usually are.

That definitely applies to audio drama. I’ve seen more podcasts with active official Tumblr accounts and more podcast creators active within their own Tumblr fandoms than I have for any other format of fictional media (maybe some webcomics?)

On top of less separation between creators and audience members, many podcast fandoms, including this one, are small and relatively tightknit. Anyone who regularly posts or consumes fancontent probably at least recognizes other fans’ URLs in passing.

There are obviously a lot of cool things that can come out of this, but a lot of complicated things, too. In a small fandom, whatever is shared by each individual person—which in the case of many podcast fandoms includes both fans and creators—has the power to bounce around and affect other people more than it would in a huge fandom, for the same reasons that f---ing everything that happens in other small social spaces (tightknit queer communities, religious communities, small towns) has the capacity to reverberate.

[Image Description: Cartoon illustration of a small town. End Description.] “I think Mrs. Smith was vagueing my friend’s mutual in the tags of that quote she reblogged this morning” – someone who lives here, probably

When Starship Iris episode 2.08 came out, the content warnings were missing several things that are commonly warned for, and I wrote a post of more detailed content warnings under a Read More in the show’s tag, figuring that that way people checking the tag to spoil themselves for trigger/anxiety reasons would run into it. A couple days later, one of the voice actors replied to the post to say that because I had posted about it in the tag the official content warnings had now been updated. In hindsight, this feels like a personal example of how creators and audience members being in a small fandom together can be complicated. It was terrific for additional content warnings to go up on Spotify and everywhere instead of being limited to the niche of people who might run into my post, but it would have been good to get a private heads up instead of the whole unexpected conversation and announcement being done publicly, since that meant I had to unexpectedly publicly figure out how to react (or not react).

If that’s an example of why I think audio drama could use more norms around how creators interact with content shared by fans, it also circles back to my worries about how fans interact with creators. One of the reasons that I was a little freaked out to discover that my post, which wasn’t intended to be discourse-ful but did have a grumpy tag about being annoyed at some of the content, had been unexpectedly used by some of the people who create the show was the same reason I’d created a post instead of contacting the official blog as was subsequently suggested—I know that audience members acting entitled to what content creators do is a widespread problem.

This is something else I’ve had on the brain this month and last, in part because of Emily VanDerWerff’s Vox article on Isabel Fall and Helicopter Story. [1] If you haven’t heard about the Helicopter Story situation, I’m a little jealous.

(CW transphobia, suicidality) In January 2020, a story titled after the transphobic meme “I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter” was published in the science fiction magazine Clarkesworld. Shortly afterward, there was a massive Twitter dogpile of people looking for the identity of the unknown author, Isabel Fall, and claiming that she must secretly be a rightwing troll, that she was definitely a cis man, or that she was definitely a cis woman. The author, a trans woman early in her transition, became suicidal, entered psychiatric hospitalization, and asked for the story to be taken down. Later, she retitled it Helicopter Story.

I was on the right side of history on this one, for a value of “right side of history” that includes running into discussion of it a few days after Clarkesworld had posted about a portion of the harm coming to the author and squinting Twitterless at a popular thread by a published author sanctimoniously sending well-wishes for healing to “the story’s author and those who have been harmed by this story,” while muttering “What the f--- is wrong with you people?”

[Image Description: Photo of a bluebird looking over its shoulder with an expression that could be anthropomorphized as “What the f---.” End Description.]

For the last few weeks since the Starship Iris season two finale aired and I Disliked It So Much, I’ve been thinking about VanDerWerff’s article in the context of writing podcast crit in a tightknit community. Although I’m not exactly worried that me stridently criticizing a podcast could have as negative an effect on its creators as a Twitter dogpile by people acting like absolute assholes, talking s--- in a small social space isn’t necessarily a harmless thing to do. Also, another reason I’ve been thinking about the article is because of some new-to-me terminology it introduced to me, paranoid and reparative readings.

‘“It’s very easy to do a paranoid reading on Twitter,” says Lee Mandelo, a PhD candidate at the University of Kentucky and an author and critic who writes for Tor.com. They were among the earliest advocates of “Attack Helicopter,” and they wrote a lengthy Twitter thread (collected as a blog post here [2]) about paranoid versus reparative readings of art, in response to Clarkesworld pulling the story.

‘The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader.

‘This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings.’

I’m not a fan of the way people choose to be on Twitter, and I hate the way that the subsection of SFFH Twitter from which that smarmy well-wishes tweet originated works under the assumption that fiction has a non-negotiable requirement to not be “harmful” or bad representation. But I’m not on the other “side” of that particular discourse either—as weird as it is to watch Twitter swing so far in one direction, watching fandom Tumblr swing the other way into “Not only should people write whatever they want regardless of context, people are taking consent too far in real life, too” is, uh, worse. Words that are published and shared with others, both critique and original work, have power. I think thoughtful criticism, professional or fandom, is important—which I know isn’t a particularly interesting or unusual position; I think most creators and audience members feel that way!

Along those lines, I’m assuming the Starship Iris creators who sometimes read the tag *waves awkwardly* don’t want their presence in the fandom to make people feel like they can’t gripe about stuff. I know most of my creative friends wouldn’t feel that way, and it seems like a matter of respect to assume the people who create this work don’t either!

(Awkward hi to any of you reading this! I certainly don’t mind you reading this, I’m obviously writing it knowing that you might, and, IDK, basically this post’s main intended audience is “people in the fandom”…I have a practical point related to fandom stuff I’m getting to, uh, eventually…so anyone who’s part of the fandom setting aside the time to read it is generous and appreciated, whether or not you’re also one of the people making the show. But I don’t want to make anyone who creates the show feel like they “should” read it, either. No-pressure USDA certified organic Tumblr rant.

P.S. I’m looking more at “Here are the ways podcast creators and fans being in the same fandom is complicated” in this post, but for what it’s worth, I think it is neat that y’all are involved! Thanks for reblogging my silly meta and stuff, it makes me smile every time :)

Disability in audio drama, the ways in which we conceptualize how works can be “harmful” or part of a harmful pattern, the access that podcast fandoms give creators and fans to each other and the lack of norms around that, and the nature of small fandoms all became bigger questions for me in these past few weeks since the season finale came out and I Disliked It So Much, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to balance them in this context.

[Image Description: The Untitled Goose Game goose with the caption “I think I will bury the lede on purpose.” End Description.] Okay, I guess it doesn’t count as burying the lede if it’s in the first sentence.

When the scene began where Arkady has a flashback and starts trying to strangle Krejjh, I had that punched in the gut, caving in on yourself feeling. If you’ve been in fandoms for a while, you’ve probably seen criticism about how portraying people with PTSD and other stigmatized mental health conditions as inherently dangerous is part of a harmful pattern that contributes to stigma and “justified” violence against people with mental illness, who are a vulnerable minority who, statistically speaking, more often become victims of violence than hurt others. I agree that this pattern of characters with stigmatized mental illnesses almost always being portrayed as dangerous causes harm, and that it’s inaccurate, since only a small percentage of disabled people ever become aggressive or violent. I’m also part of that small percentage. It isn’t that I think PTSD symptoms should never be portrayed as scary or dangerous; it’s seeing something painful and horrible reduced to an inaccurate, overused fifty-year-old trope.

‘Most of us are familiar with the classic movie trope — a character with PTSD doesn’t recognize that he’s no longer at war and violently lashes out at the people around him.

‘In reality, however, neither psychosis nor aggression is a hallmark symptom of PTSD. In fact, the main symptoms associated with PTSD include:

‘Intrusive thoughts – Nightmares – Trouble concentrating – Avoiding thoughts, feelings, locations and people associated with the traumatic event – Flashbacks, or the sensation that the event is happening again – Hypervigilance – Irritability – Insomnia – Guilt – Inability to enjoy old hobbies – Isolation – Low mood

‘Although some studies have found that people with PTSD are more inclined toward violence than the general population, these effects were eliminated once the researchers examined confounding factors such as substance misuse and co-occurring psychiatric disorders. Even without taking these factors into account, however, the vast majority of people with PTSD are nonviolent — less than 8 percent of the PTSD community commits violent behavior.’

– 5 Myths About PTSD [3]

(For the record, the vast majority of people who experience psychosis—varying degrees of loss of touch with reality—as a symptom never do anything violent or aggressive, either. PTSD providers have a long history of throwing people who experience psychosis under the bus for being “the real crazy people, unlike people with PTSD who are sane but have experienced trauma,” against all common sense and despite how many people deal with both. I’m giving this writer the benefit of the doubt that he’s using the term in the functional sense of explaining that the equivalent of that trope transpiring in real life would have to result from a combination of loss of touch with reality + aggression, which rarely actually happens.)

When I looked up PTSD and violence to find citations for this post, other articles talked about this trope as well—how the belief that people with combat PTSD are dangerous time bombs who might snap at any time refuses to go away. You can feel everyone’s exhaustion with it. Arkady trying to kill Krejjh, then describing herself with apparent accuracy as a time bomb who will inevitably hurt the people she loves, is an overused half-century-old trope about combat PTSD that doesn’t match closely to reality.

In the last dozen years of my life, from all the people with PTSD in my orbit and the people in their orbits and so on, I’ve heard about only one instance of someone nearly committing fatal violence because they lost touch with reality during a flashback and believed a person was something else. Significant violence during flashbacks is rare enough that all the “PTSD & violence” educational materials I found while researching for this post were about violence due to anger, stress, or irritability.

Any kind of violence or aggression due to PTSD is rare—when looking it up, I found numbers between the above article’s 8% to percentages in the 30s, with the varitation coming from differences between studies and differences in definitions, like whether screaming at people was included. And, among the minority of people like me who have lost control and done something violent or aggressive, violence/aggression caused by anger, stress, or irritability are much more common than violence due to losing touch with reality during a flashback. For both anger/stress or a flashback, the violence/aggression is more likely to be screaming, throwing/hitting an inanimate object, or shoving or hitting someone who startles them or gets in their space—potentially-lethal violence is extremely rare.

Yet so often in fiction, people with PTSD are portrayed as normatively lethally dangerous.

I hadn’t expected that trope in this podcast, since it’s generally thoughtful and realistic about other serious real world topics, from other mental health conditions to characters’ LGBTQIA+ identities. There’s only one thing I sometimes give a heads up for when recommending the podcast to friends, Violet’s relief at Arkady killing that guy in 1.05/6 so that he wouldn’t live with the disabling injury she had inflicted on him. Speaking of nightmare ableist tropes—but the idea of “killing/letting a disabled person die as an act of mercy,” while horrific, is very present in our culture and something that a lot of people have never been put in a position to question, so it seemed like less an endorsement of “It’s better to be dead than disabled” and more of an example of you don’t know what you don’t know.

At the beginning of season two, Violet’s anxiety disorder continued to be portrayed in a realistic way, and Arkady’s sexual orientation was addressed thoughtfully. I assumed the podcast was setting up this storyline as a thoughtful portrayal of PTSD.

In a functional sense, portraying lethal violence as a normal part of PTSD and content-warning the lethal violence scene as a “PTSD episode” sits awkwardly alongside the more realistic portrayals of Violet’s anxiety disorder and Sana’s depression. It feels like the podcast’s realism around other serious real world topics loosely implies that its portrayal of PTSD is realistic, too. In a less definable sense, this scene being used as melodramatic entertainment in a work that doesn’t usually use similar heavy real world topics as melodramatic entertainment was a particular kind of “Ow” when I read it.

I want to add that by coincidence, I happened to read the scene at a particularly bad time for me personally, several years out from my own experiences with losing control and during a year when I’ve been under enough stress that I’ve had to worry seriously for the first time in a while about it happening again, all of which means that the strength of my negative feelings about the scene don’t reflect only on the work itself. One reason I chibbled away at this post over several weeks is because it would be neither fair nor super relevant for the degree to which the scene was a trauma trigger and deep dark fear for me to acutely impact how I discussed it on a fiction crit level. No content creators ever have the responsibility of magically making sure no audience member sees something they’ve created at a time that happens to be bad for them personally, and I think it’s important to untwine these different types of reactions from each other when reflecting on what warrants discussion in fiction crit.

Even trying to untwine and gently extricate from the discussion the threads of “Ow” that happened purely because the scene happened to be a trauma trigger for me, though, the experience of consuming fiction is by definition subjective and emotional, and my Super Official Fiction Crit Thoughts on the scene still come from how the scene was used in the emotional landscape of the story.

It wasn’t until after I had been working on this post for a couple weeks that I realized I hadn’t included the thing that was at the heart of it for me, what it felt like to read the beginning of the Arkady-Krejjh scene, go “Oh f---,” and then read the rest of it. I wrote overused trope that oversimplifies something rare and complicated and caving in on yourself feeling, but I don’t think that communicates the feeling of reading an inaccurate mockery of the category of thing that made up some of the worst moments of my life being used as other people’s recreational emotional gratification, in a work that had drawn a line against using other kinds of worst nightmares that way.

It feels like it was only the combination of these three things—the use as recreational emotional gratification, the scene taking place in a work that was generally respectful and realistic about other kinds of pain, and the inaccuracy—that created the visceral crappiness of reading the scene.

The use of a real thing I’d had to deal with as other people’s recreational emotional gratification, even combined with the inaccuracy, wouldn’t have been a problem to me. Other people’s mileage may vary, but I’m happy to read, for example, angsty whump fanfiction about heavy stuff that affects me in real life! But that type of writing coming out of left field in a podcast that didn’t often use other heavy real life stuff as that kind of entertainment felt viscerally crappy to read.

It would have felt frustrating, but still not as unpleasant to read, if this podcast that was generally accurate and respectful about other heavy stuff had portrayed PTSD in a way that was inaccurate, but not lovingly described for the audience’s entertainment the way this was.

Last but not least, back to angsty whump fanfiction, I wouldn’t have had a problem with 2.09 having a PTSD scene lovingly described for the audience’s entertainment, even in a work that was generally more tasteful about other mental health issues, if it wasn’t for that godforsaken inaccurate trope rearing its ugly head.

The Arkady strangling Krejjh part of the scene felt viscerally crappy to read, was a trauma trigger for me, and I disliked it (three different things). I’m not someone who advocates for creators being so careful about “avoiding ableist tropes” that every work is as interesting as a saltine. Mentally ill people enjoy twisty mental illness horror for a reason, babey! And I don’t want us to worry so much about “Not portraying people with mental illness as ableist stereotypes about being dangerous” that we ignore the fact that sometime some mental illnesses do cause people to act in ways that are dangerous or, sometimes, lethal, most often to themselves but sometimes to others as well. “Accuracy” and “tastefulness” aren’t important across the board. But I think the context of when accuracy or tastefulness are important matters.

I know firsthand that “My experience of the thing you created was painful” can be a f---ing painful kind of criticism to get, whether or not you even agree with the criticism itself, which is one reason I’m writing an oversized essay instead of griping offhand. I don’t think writing a massive essay is the only way to address something you dislike in a work of fiction, but I went the Everything Bagel route because of how much stuff I wanted to balance: the way I’m sure creating something dismissive of real world issues wasn’t the creators’ intention, the way questionable levels of attention being paid to thoughtful portrayals of disability is a common problem in audio drama that is certainly not limited to this podcast, and the ways we talk about how works can be part of a harmful pattern or “harmful.”

I wanted to take the Everything Bagel route because of all of these things in relation to the Arkady strangling Krejjh part of the scene, but especially because of the complexity of criticizing the second part of the scene, which gets into extra-sticky “How we talk about fiction” territory.

[Image Description: A tray of various bagels, a couple of which seem to be everything bagels. End Description.] The internet is surprisingly lacking in free use photos of everything bagels.

Because it’s such a heavy thing to say, I think that if you want to use The H Word in fiction criticism, it’s important to untangle the different things people can mean when they use it.

• “This was a trauma trigger for me.” Neutral, not a value judgement (and IMHO shouldn’t be used as one, @ Twitter)

• “This was a trauma trigger for me, and the content warnings, tags, &c were inaccurate, so I encountered it despite doing due diligence not to.” A more literal example of “harm,” though one that’s much less a function of the content of a story itself.

• “This story is part of a harmful pattern.” This is my main criticism of the Arkady strangling Krejjh scene. Especially in the context of a work that handles other mental health stuff in a more realistic way, this scene is part of longstanding pattern of fiction portraying PTSD as a condition that inherently turns people into violent time bombs; this pattern, as a whole, contributes to real life negative consequences for people with PTSD.

• “This story harmed me [by being published] [by my experience of reading/listening to it].” This is one I think is slung around a little much. Stuff like creative nonfiction that exploits real people or a roman a clef (“deserved” or otherwise) are examples of people being “harmed” by the publication of a story, but a work written by a stranger probably isn’t. Even here, there’s a grey area; I don’t want to imply that the experience of reading for example something horribly or deliberately bigoted against a group of people you belong to can never be conceptualized as “harm.” But it bothers me how people tweeted and retweeted that thread equating what they felt while voluntarily reading “Helicopter Story” to the actual harm coming to its author—I don’t think saying a work of fiction “harmed me/harmed readers” is often a fair, or harmless, thing to say.

• “This story on its own has the potential to cause harm.” This is the f---ing sticky one.

Like “harmed me [past tense],” it’s a really intense thing to say, and like “harmed me [past tense],” it gets slung around on fandom social media about any work people think is part of a harmful pattern.

I don’t think stories, even stories that repeat the worst kinds of dodgy information, have anything close to the power of real-world misinformation on the news or in a scientific journal to transmit information that impacts people’s ability to understand and react to real situations. But stories are one of the vectors through which people pick up information and ideas, and that’s true of some kinds of stories more than others.

I know that, harking back to Arkady’s lesser of two evils speech, RJ threatening to shoot Arkady was not being presented as a good thing, more of a “problematic but endearing way of showing they care about her” thing. But that being the successful resolution of the scene, especially in the context of Sana later praising RJ again for killing their friend in Episode 7, feels…not great. “People with PTSD might become lethally dangerous at any time, and a way to successfully solve that is to involve someone who can overpower them with a gun” is a not great combination.

I’ve been in and out of fandom spaces for years, I’ve seen waaay too much of Tumblr’s dumb anti versus anti-anti discourse, I’m an adult human and I’m aware that a thing happening in a story doesn’t mean people will act it out in reality in a 1:1 way. I don’t think one podcast scene is going to single-handedly influence someone to replicate it in reality. But I do think that a podcast that mostly portrays not only mental health conditions but also the consequences of various ways of dealing with them in a realistic way having a scene where someone using a gun to overpower someone with mental illness is a successful resolution is about as close as fiction can get to misinfo with the potential to cause harm.

In real life, there are very few absolutes when it comes to handling a situation where someone’s mental illness is causing them to act in a way that is dangerous to themself or others.

In my own life, there have been times when I chose to call 911. In addition to how often disabled people are killed by police, in my current city emergency medical responders sometimes kill people or use unnecessary sedatives or force against them, too, sometimes because police tell them to, sometimes on their own. (Widely publicized, not conspiracy theory, I’ve seen it in person, &c.) But sometimes calling 911 is still necessary, or it’s the least-bad option.

There have been times when I’ve chosen to try to help and deal with the situation myself. (Speaking of good and bad examples, seriously be careful in deciding to do this. It isn’t just a question of risking your own safety; intervening without knowing what you’re doing can be harmful to the other person’s safety. It might still be the least-bad option! But.)

And there have been times when I chose to neither call 911 nor intervene myself, because that seemed like the safest option for the other people involved and myself.

I’m not someone who is going to tell anyone “Never call 911”—sometimes calling 911 is necessary, or is the least-bad option.

But more than fifty percent of people who are killed by police in the US have a disability. Given the number of people harmed and killed by police during mental health crises, I do know for sure that we need to stop automatically seeing “Involve people with guns” as being the “safest” choice.

I’m still grappling with all the times I’ve made each of these choices for others, and with my own experience standing in the kitchen at night unexpectedly giving a statement to the cops after my then friend called them on me. I don’t think one podcast episode is going to 1:1 influence someone to unnecessarily do to someone else what that person did to me, but it isn’t a story I’m ever going to be able to see as devoid of the potential to cause harm.

One of the reasons I wanted to write something long, instead of a shorter post, was that if I wanted to talk honestly about what I disliked about the second part of that scene, it would include “potential to spread harmful misinfo” rather than just “part of a harmful pattern.” And that’s a f---ing intense thing to say! I do think it’s worth pointing out when scenes in fiction include this stuff, and I don’t want to imply that no one should ever talk about them without writing a massive essay, either. (I’m kind of hoping I’ll see a “Yikes!” or two from someone who isn’t me bubble up in the Starship Iris fandom sooner or later, and the last thing I want is to seem judgmental toward anyone who spends less than, uh, four weeks writing one.) But given everything discussed in this post, this part of the scene wasn’t something I wanted to talk about without explicit acknowledgement that it isn’t likely to cause harm in a 1:1 way, and of the complexity of it all.

[Image Description: An image of the Orion Nebula, which appears purple with a white glow in the middle, surrounded by stars and space. End Description.] The Orion Nebula doesn’t have to do with anything, but this seemed like a good time for a nebula break.

At this point, I think I’ve talked about every possible reason I Disliked This Scene So Much (and then some). Time to loop back to audience members and creators and fandom?

When I read the season two finale, I wanted to figure out how to talk about the things I disliked about it without hurting or annoying anyone else, which is a weirdly metatextual thing to need to weigh when writing about a story about people with disabilities being a burden or dangerous to other people. I know there are a lot of people on the internet who would condemn me doing so at all. In fact, I’ve never seen a Tumblr discussion of being in internet fandoms when you have triggers, intense emotions, or life circumstances that make it harder to react to things in a balanced and appropriate way that wasn’t a perfunctory and condemnatory “If you’re that negatively affected by it, you should leave for your own good and that of others. It isn’t safe or fair to other people for you to be in fandom.”

Is there a safe and kind “How to be a person in fandom when you have triggers, intense emotions, or life circumstances that make it harder to react to things in a balanced and appropriate way” that isn’t “Leave, for everyone’s good” or “Completely avoid engaging with the things within the fandom that you feel negatively about, for everyone’s good”? I think (hope) that there is.

IMHO, the problem underpinning How To Small Fandom???? is that there are these two groups of people, indie creators and fans, existing in the same social spaces without much infrastructure or guidelines around how to handle boundaries and other complicated small-fandom stuff. Both of these groups have the power to negatively impact each other, and both are, for better and for worse, held to a higher standard than creators and fans of large commercial media properties are. Also, indie creators, including those in the audio drama community, have fewer resources for everything, including dealing with social media and fandom.

But the audio drama community also has a major advantage! which is! that we are very cool and better than everyone else.

Joking, mostly, but seriously: The audio drama community, at least the slice of it I’m familiar with, is so cool. You can’t throw a tape recorder without hitting a resourceful, thoughtful person. We have a lot of compassion and imagination, not to mention a spirit of putting together resources and finding ways to problem solve. I think we need to stop seeing indie fiction community problems as all the responsibility of creators or all the responsibility of fans, and start seeing it as a shared need for infrastructure and norms that can be created by all of us together.

How can creators and fans in audio drama create infrastructure and norms for being thoughtful, respectful, and safe to each other? This wants to be a pretentious post of its own—I wrote starter lists of “How to create and or be in fandom without negatively impacting other people too much,” and now I want to turn this into its own post (if anyone has actually read this far in this post and would be interested, or wants to collab, let me know? I’d love for there to be more conversations about “How we can Audio Drama Fandom better,” but I’m one ignorant twentysomething who’s never been an audio professional or been engaged in audio drama fandom in any especially active way, and I don’t want to put my foot in my mouth in some obvious way.)

For now, I tragically edited my list attempts into bullet points (what if not including two million words of context means someone misunderstands what I’m saying! what if that, I ask you!)

[Image Description: Four stock image style humanoids standing beside each other, each holding an object: a question mark, gears, a lightbulb, and an exclamation point. End Description.] Indie creators For making more inclusive content: • Authenticity readers if possible, extra research if not • Multiple authenticity readers if possible, since “No group is a monolith” is true of not only opinions but experiences • If only researching, maybe one strategy would be [relevant keyword] + “myths” “clichés” “-ism in fiction” “stereotypes.” Being aware of incessant myths and stereotypes > being aware of subtle stuff only certain authenticity readers could catch • Aiming for similar levels of research, realism, and respect for each important topic in the work, or if not, being deliberate about what you’re doing and why • Inclusiveness first and foremost is about making content more accessible, including more complete transcripts, more standardized content warnings, better tech, &c, each of which are each their own ongoing conversations (or should be)

For fandom infrastructure: • Thinking through boundaries and policies for social media for a production • Coming up with plans for eventualities you want to have a plan for, like harassment • Not necessarily coming up with “answers” or plans for everything—just reflecting on what the questions even are • Specific to Tumblr: I remember author Ann Leckie having a note on her Tumblr to tag things “#Not for AL” when posting them her books’ tags if you didn’t want her to see them—could production crews use a blacklist tag like this?

Audience • If you’re feeling strong emotions about a fandom thing, journaling about it ◦ I know, I know, embarrassing, but listen: fandoms are just one other kind of social and creative space. Having emotions about shenanigans therein isn’t inherently cringier than having emotions about other social spaces. ◦ Embarrassing but successful me!example: After Starship Iris season two got bleaker and the content warning shenanigans happened, I decided to journal a little before reading the season finale (#JustNormalPersonThings). When I wrote down what I was worrying about, I realized it was less about potential trauma triggers themselves and more social stuff like “What if something in it is upsetting enough that I need to leave a fandom I enjoy to avoid it? What if something annoys me and I shoot my mouth off and hurt or annoy someone else?” When the finale did have content that was more upsetting than expected, I had a head start on thinking about how to avert the things I was actually worried about. • If you feel emotional about something and want to post on the internet about it, considering having a predetermined timeframe before posting, whether two hours or two weeks • Remember that it is always okay to leave a fandom space temporarily or permanently if you do want to, nor do you owe anyone an explanation • “Does it need to be said, does it need to be said by you, does it need to be said by you now?” I think we associate that one with the implied subtext “It doesn’t,” but it’s actually a f---ing fantastic diagnostic tool when used non-rhetorically. ◦ When deciding whether to write this post, I decided it wouldn’t actually be a bad thing for it to be written, and I wasn’t necessarily the wrong person to write it, but that it didn’t need to be posted “now” [four weeks ago].

(CW abuse) Owning and dealing with your anger or annoyance, which gets its own paragraphs because it’s a fraught thing to advise in the context of “as opposed to emphasizing how hurt you are.” SARAH SCHULM@N’S BOOK IS BAD AND HER ADVICE ON ABUSE AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS DANGEROUS and I sure wish I hadn’t dipped into SFFH Twitter again the other week and seen that people are reading that s--- of all things in response to the Helicopter Story articles, but of course they are because TWITTER IS A PARODY OF ITSELF—ahem, sorry, had something in my throat for a second there. I’m annoyed the phrase “overstating harm” has been co-opted by Certain People who are straight-up abuse apologists, but I do think it’s healthier for fandom to turn the dial toward noticing and owning our anger and annoyance—even if it makes you feel like an jerk—in situations where anger or annoyance are among our primary reactions, and dealing with them as themselves rather than letting them sneak through unclaimed in the ways in which we discuss our hurt. (This, obviously, is in relation to people who are hesitant to own our anger. If you unironically think being aggressive on Twitter is justified, congrats, you’re being an asshole.)

(CW victim blaming) It’s fraught as f--- to discuss this, since it can get into victim blaming territory real fast. We don’t want the default response to someone bringing up their pain to be to call them manipulative. I don’t think bringing up your own pain is manipulative. And then there’s the safety thing.

(CW transphobia [and ableism, though obviously I haven’t been flagging that beyond the blanket CW]) It doesn’t surprise me for social spaces where many disabled/trans/queer people hang out to end up with f---d up dynamics around owning anger and annoyance. From what I (cis, disabled) have seen, starting from the time anything about your disability or gender expression/identity becomes apparent to others, many of the messages you receive are that the way you exist is “hurting people.” You’re making things harder for the people around you, you’re causing your family distress, can’t you just stop?

(CW transphobia) The feeling of needing to make yourself unthreatening because your body itself is seen as a vector of harm…yeah, that’s going to get in your head. And the ease with which people justify harming you, all the more so if you ever express an emotion that isn’t friendly and compliant…if you’re going to bring up a problem at all, safer to stick with “This hurt me” than to add “and made me angry.”

Now we’re all in fandom spaces together. Not only do most of us want to avoid hurting others as we have been hurt, many of us are wired to fear being seen as angry or confrontational, and I think that can contribute to the pattern of people venting anger at strangers’ creative choices without acknowledging that it’s anger that we’re venting. None of which means that talking about the negative impact of a creative work, like I’m doing in this post, is inherently bad, or that fiction crit that addresses personal impact shouldn’t exist. Just: it’s complicated.

[Image Description: Salad vegetables with an artistic splash of water. End Description.]

When I was in middle school, we learned “How to write a letter of complaint.” The example letter was someone writing to a fast food chain about being given her food in bags too small to keep it warm and the checkout person REFUSING (shock! horror!) to repackage them.

There is, as they say, a lot to unpack here. But I’ve been thinking about the way that example letter started with a paragraph on the writer being a frequent customer and enjoying the company’s new line of salads.

In fandom spaces, I think we have an urge when criticizing something to emphasize our fondness or investment in it, but the purpose of doing that can be a little murky. On the face of it, if you appreciate something, it seems polite to mention that in an otherwise negative post. It makes a certain amount of sense to delineate the relevancy of your criticism from that of a blatant troll, too. But I think it can also dip into a kind of entitlement: I care about this, therefore I have a stake in this, therefore you owe me your attention and larger to-go bags.

For the sake of some levity I’m gonna call this the Inverse Salad Principle: I love this podcast and its fandom, but I decided not to start my post by talking about that.

I do love this podcast! At this point I think I’ve recommended it to almost everyone I know who likes science fiction or podcasts. The other morning I caught myself standing in my kitchen grinning evilly into space thinking about how juicy some of the season one worldbuilding is and how much a certain friend is going to love it. (On the small chance this post escapes fandom containment and you’re reading it without having checked out the show yet, I’m recommending it to you too! It is very good.)

Because of how thoughtful the show generally is about thoughtful representation, I shared season one with an older family member who knows very little about the issues faced by people different from him and isn’t super well-equipped to learn about them quickly, but is very open to learning and loves science fiction. It was our first phone conversation about Starship Iris that led to us talking for the first time about gender and nonbinary pronouns. This season, I loved a lot of things about the PTSD storyline, too—if Starship Iris was a TV show, I’d be spending next week making edits of Violet and Arkady looking soulfully at each other with “I can do it” “I think you can’t” splashed across them in suitably artistic font.

But me loving the show doesn’t mean that the changes I wish it would make to how it handles PTSD are owed to me somehow. One reason I want to write and read crit about tropes that are part of harmful patterns is in the hope that the creative communities I’m part of will increase our thoughtfulness (and, where relevant, accuracy) when we write about complex topics. But no specific work or fandom is ever going to owe fans any specific adjustment to its handling of a given topic just because those fans care about the work. Regardless of whether what is being asked for has to do with inclusivity or would generally be considered a “good thing,” changes still aren’t owed to any fans, invested or not.

Of course, when it comes to writing about topics that affect fans on a personal level, you get into the more stressful neighbor of inverse salad principle: the pressure creators can feel when fans who are legitimately struggling in their own lives talk about how they use the creators’ work to feel better or cope. Even as “just” a fanfic writer back in college, I’ve been uncomfortably close to the creator side of that, and there’s a quote in this article on podcasting and parasocial relationships [4] that talks about it in podcast fandom:

‘From an anonymous podcaster

‘We’ve met a few of our fans in person and they’ve all been lovely, and we’ve had social media rapport with a good number more without issue so far. The “exception,” if you could call it that, is a fan [of our lighthearted comedy podcast] who started messaging us telling us that they were isolated and depressed, and they felt like we were their lifeline to other people “like them” because they lived in a small, regressive town. Ultimately, nothing dramatic happened, but I remember feeling a sudden kind of panic of responsibility. What could we do to help them, a virtual stranger? What if they felt like we, too, were pulling away? What if we skipped a week and it really affected their mindset and they hurt themselves?’

The vast majority of the time, no one intends harm by doing stuff like that—it’s a combination of legitimate distress and issues with boundaries. But stepping on people’s boundaries isn’t okay even without harmful intent, and that “panic of responsibility” feeling isn’t something anyone should have to take on when publishing their creative work.

There are gradations to talking about something being meaningful to us or helping us cope with hard life stuff. In its more benign forms that don’t involve directly contacting content creators, I think “This work of fiction helps me during my struggle with [relevant topic]” posts can be a meaningful, positive part of fandom. Hell, depending on context, that kind of thing can even be okay to direct at creators if it’s one-time thing, tasteful and appropriate to the social context, &c. But it’s something to be really, really careful about—like, mixing chemicals careful—when combining it with criticism.

In my example, I did assume the show would handle its plotlines about PTSD and physical disability more thoughtfully, and it did hit me at a bad time for the story to dive into ableist tropes and the fandom to start echoing them. But flinging my personal hurt about this in anyone’s faces—fans or creators—as a form of fiction criticism is Not Cool, and not, like, an accurate assessment of responsibility, either.

I wouldn’t be writing about the things I wrote about in this post if I didn’t think content creators writing in certain contexts...not so much have but can choose to take on a general responsibility to avoid or deconstruct harmful tropes and misinfo. But there isn’t a direct channel of responsibility between content creators and audience members if audience members are reading/listening to their work as a way of coping with hard things. I love this podcast and the fandom has been a friendly and welcoming creative space during a grim year, so I want to hang on to this fandom with my dumb little creature hands, but that doesn’t mean I want to make anyone feel that “panic of responsibility” feeling, or that the podcast or its fandom owe audience members like me a change in how they handle these topics.

[Image Description: A crowd of stock image style humanoids talking with each other in multicolored speech bubbles. End Description.]

But that does not mean I will not ask nicely!

A few million words ago, I said I had a concrete fandom-related reason for posting. One of the more unpleasant parts of my experience reading the Arkady strangling Krejjh and RJ overpowering Arkady scenes was the realization that sticking around in the fandom would mean seeing people taking “PTSD inherently makes people lethally violent,” “Arkady having PTSD makes her a time bomb and it isn’t safe to be around her,” and “RJ threatening to shoot her to get her under control makes sense and is endearing” at face value in fanfic and meta.

If you’re reading this thinking “Yeah! And I can write whatever I want, it’s a free internet!” I’m not here to argue with you. It is, and you can!

But if you’re in the Starship Iris fandom and are thinking “Huh, it sounds like it will be more difficult for some people with PTSD to engage with this fandom now. I’d like to help make that less the case,” I have some suggestions :)

Disclaimer: Of course I can’t speak for everyone with PTSD, but I think these might be helpful to other people too.

Personally I have no desire to be prescriptive of how people choose to engage with those scenes. Instead, these are the things I would suggest if you want to be thoughtful about making those choices.

1. To be functionally aware that (to recap): • The scene where Arkady tries to kill Krejjh, and describes herself with apparent accuracy as a time bomb who will inevitably hurt the people she loves, is an overused half-century-old trope about combat PTSD that doesn’t match closely to reality, where only a minority of people with PTSD will become violent/aggressive. • Violence/aggressive actions due to anger, stress, and irritability are much more common than violence/aggressive actions due to losing touch with reality during a flashback. For both anger or a flashback, the violence/aggression is more likely to be someone screaming, throwing/hitting an inanimate object, or shoving or hitting someone who startles them or gets in their space. Lethal violence due to someone losing touch with reality and thinking they’re somewhere else or a person is someone/something else is possible but extremely rare. • “Mental health crisis” and “Someone else has a gun” is a very risky combination, and there are a lot of real life tragedies resulting from people assuming it’s a good combination.

2. I almost universally see people in the Starship Iris fandom treat things like biphobia, Violet’s anxiety disorder, dysphoria, and misgendering with an awareness that these are real things other audience members are dealing with in real life, so my other “Thing that would be helpful” suggestion would be to consider doing the same for this.

(“What would that look like?” Different for different people, I think! A few options I can think of: • Engaging with how dangerous RJ’s response was • Not recreating that half-century-old trope when writing about Arkady’s PTSD (in the “Ignore canon at will” tradition of fandom everywhere) • Or writing about it in a thoughtful researched way • If you really want to just write melodramatic angst with it, I’m thinking of how people will say “The medical parts of this are totally fake” or “Disclaimer: I made up the science” when posting inaccurate fic for fun and hoping people might come at this from a similar angle But I don’t think those are the only four ways of dealing with it in a thoughtful way.)

Last week, I was waffling on whether to post this post or recategorize it as personal journaling, when I had a brain turning over moment. I’d been assuming posting would come across as an entitled, adversarial way of trying to ruin other people’s fun. But, as a fan, I want to know if content I’m engaging with has massive baggage I didn’t know about! As a corollary to “It feels like part of respecting podcast crews to assume in good faith that they wouldn’t want their reading their show’s Tumblr tag to discourage people from posting anything negative,” it feels like part of respecting other people in this fandom is realizing some of y’all would want to read about the complicated context of something you might be writing about, too.

I don’t have a perfect way to wrap up a complicated post about complicated things in a community I think is awesome. Maybe what I wish most is for all of us to take a little more care with people and things, whether they’re things we already know a lot about or things we don’t, people who seem to have more power than us or people who don’t, people we know or people we don’t. And, as best we can, to include ourselves in “people.” So that’s what I’ve got for now.

Tumblr still isn’t allowing links so we’re doing this book report bib style

[1] vox dot com, /the-highlight/22543858/isabel-fall-attack-helicopter

[2] leemandelo dot com, /f/that-twitter-thread-on-criticism

[3] psychologytoday dot com, /us/blog/the-truisms-wellness/201610/5-myths-about-ptsd Psychology Today has some really questionable articles, but the content I quoted for this post matches the other sources I found (used this one because it was the most succinct).

[4] wilwilliams dot reviews, /2019/01/04/podcasters-are-people-the-intimacy-of-medium-vs-parasocial-relationships/

#tscosi #the strange case of starship iris #edit: this is fine to reblog BTW #(if it isn’t apparent from everything about how I wrote it I don’t mean that in the passive aggressive you should reblog sense)#two weeks in and the void has given it ten likes and one nice anon #I was telling L beta extraordinaire that that’s both kind and better than worst case scenario venom #but I was hoping I (and nice anon) wouldn't be the only person in the void who wanted to talk about it #and then I was like mm maybe people thought my focus on not wanting to start gnarly discourse meant I didn’t want to talk about it at all #which it does not. like even if you disagree I’d be more interested to know why for future ref than wonder

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surveys-at-your-service · 4 years ago

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Survey #462

i am way too tired to mentally flip through lyrics to put here, rip

Who in your family has been married the longest? (and how long?) I have zero idea. When did you last travel alone? Where were you going? The last time I visited Sara in Illinois. Do you take your shoes off when you come inside? Yes. What was the first color you ever dyed your hair? I think I got purple highlights? What was the first social media site you ever used? MySpace. Do you have any exes you really regret dating? One. Of all your friends & family, who has the most nicely-decorated home? Sara's house is lovely. Have you ever been catcalled? No. Are you allergic to any dogs? I might be. Have you ever touched a plant and had hives shoot up your arm? No. Do you think dragonflies are cool? Absolutely! What’s your favorite thing to draw? Meerkats!! Did you toss your hat in the air at graduation? Not high. I wanted to keep it. Do you like fudge? I CAN FUCKING DESTROY SOME FUDGE. Are you an affectionate person? Very. Name something you have to do today: Girt and I are hangin', making fun of bad Netflix anime and going to Buffalo Wild Wings. :^) Would you ever write to a death row inmate? No. People don't get on death row for no reason. I ain't got shit to say to them. Do you reckon online friendships are real? No fucking shit. Most of my most genuine friendships began online. Do you like Slipknot? Yep. Can we talk about how fuckin BADASS Corey's new mask is btw?????????? What do you think of Gorillaz? I like "Feel Good Inc." and one other song I can't remember the name of. Bow ties on guys, dorky or adorable? BOTH!!!!! :') What is the cutest Halloween costume for a baby to wear? GUYS I recently saw a picture of a little baby dressed up as a Little Oogie Boogie and it made my ovaries cry. Which of your friends is the tallest? Which of them is the shortest? Jesus, Girt is a giant. I don't know about my shortest... If you could re-paint your bedroom, what color would you choose? Pastel pink. :') What has been the best night of your life so far? Why? Probably something sexual so let's keep it on the down low lmfaooo Would you ever even think about taking part in a wet t-shirt contest? Uh, no. Even if I WAS confident in my body. Is you hair color the same as it was when you were a baby? No. It was dirty blonde. Have you ever been in trouble for being too loud? Ha, yeah, at school with friends. Not big trouble or anything, we were just hushed. Did you ever attend a wedding that was a complete disaster? No. What is something that you were surprised you were able to do? Hm. What is the most bullshit-sounding true fact that you know? Male cats have spiked penises lkasdjfal;kje;kjwr it's something to do with preventing other tomcats from mating with her. What Oreo flavor is your favorite? Gimme that Double Stuffed, friend. Sour gummy worms or plain gummy worms? SOUR. Ever been in a talent show? How many times? What did you do? Nope. Ever try out for the talent show and not make it? Did you cry? Nope. What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever cried about? Y'all when I was a very little kid, during my older sister's b-day party, I sobbed because I couldn't pin the tail properly on the donkey lmaoooo How do you feel about the use of nuclear weapons? Absolutely fucking barbaric. What song has the most meaning to you? "Life Won't Wait" by Ozzy Osbourne. What is your favourite dinosaur? Spinosaurus!!!! :') Have you ever made bread? No. Has anything ever fallen asleep on you? Pets, a baby I was watching after, and Jason. Ever been dominated in a game you were/are really good at? yep alskdjfla;jwej Have you ever decided to set fire to something out of anger? No. Would you rather be a house pet or a wild animal? Wild animal, I guess? Have you ever listened to a group of chanting monks? I haven't. If you had to get a portrait tattoo, who would it be of? Probably of Teddy. I've still yet to decide on the total design of his tribute tat I'm getting. Do you like the smell of men’s colognes better than woman’s perfumes? I think so, yeah. How mad would you be if someone copied your original work (story, poem)? I'd be pretty fuckin pissed. Have you ever blown something up in science class? Ha, no. Have you ever gotten a serious wound from shaving? Not serious, no. Have you invented anything, only to find out it actually exists? I feel like I have? Ever realize you never truly LOVED your first love? Absolutely not. I loved him. Would you want a Bachelor/Bachelorette party before you get married? Sure, sounds fun. Do you prefer pads, tampons or something else? As of very recently, I returned to using pads. I used tampons for most of my maturity, but I got annoyed with them for TMI reasons and resorted back to pads, even though I don't like them either. Have you ever dated a model? No. What is your ultimate goal in life? To die happy with my life and what I (hopefully) accomplished. What colour are the socks you’re wearing today? I’m not wearing any. Who was the last person you sent a Facebook message to and what did you say? Girt. It was something regarding how I once considered doing the suicide mission at BWW where you eat a select number of their hottest wings, but I didn't wanna die via chicken. :^) Are you tall, short or average? Would you change this? I'm average in height. I wouldn't change it, nah. Especially now that Girt and I are together the ridiculous height difference is hilarious but also cute lmao. Have you ever worked in a store while someone shoplifted there? Like, while I was there? No. Have you ever had casual sex? Nahhhh. What’s your favourite flavour of frosting? Chocolate. @_@ When you think of your childhood, are the memories mostly happy or sad? Mostly happy, I guess. What is it like being you? Is it enjoyable? It's very boring with few sources of joy. What are your thoughts on the cause of homosexuality? I would *assume* it's a genetic mutation. Reason being, having a romantic partnership without the ability to reproduce defies the motives of science. There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, wrong with said (and hypothetical) genetic mutation, though. Mutations are just another part of science. They occur naturally. What subjects did you find most interesting in school? Least? Most interesting: literature/English (especially reading like, old mythology and epics and stuff like that), LOTS of branches of science (but primarily genetics), art, and I looooved my four semesters of German. Least: ANY and ALL math, history, economics, social studies... that kind of stuff. Which do you enjoy more–hot or cold beverages? Cold, for sure. What were some of your favorite bands from childhood? Green Day was one. Would you be more afraid of drowning or being buried alive? Buried alive, for sure. It would be much, much slower. Should you really be doing something more productive right now? Well, I SHOULD be sleeping. Today's going to be a long day, because when Girt comes over, he has a tendency to not leave until like fuckin midnight or later alksdjfl;waje Have you ever lived out of your car? No. Does your family own more than two houses? HUNNY we r poor. A relative just committed a very serious crime, do you turn them in? It depends on the exact crime, but odds are, yes. If you're endangering others, byyyyeeee. You’re in the woods, alone, at night…are you honestly not afraid? Bitch I'm terrified. I have zero survival skills. You are on life support, what would you want a loved one to do about it? For the love of god, please kill me. Your child has only a while to live, do you still enroll them in school? That would be up to them. Also, define "a while." How would you feel if you met your idol and they ended up being rude? WELP I have a tattoo in his honor so that would suck ass lmao According to the tale, was Eve wrong for eating and sharing the apple? "God was wrong for even setting up an apple tree and making up rules in the first place." <<<< There ya go. And the punishment was fucking ludicrously extreme. Are you working on any goals? Yes. I'm currently going to the gym regularly to try and better my physical health and then find a job. I know that being connected sounds odd, but trust me: I can barely carry out very simple tasks just because I have absolutely ZERO stamina to do almost anything. I need energy and endurance. I'm also working towards developing some self-love. Which parent named you? I wanna say my mom. Are you currently frustrated with someone? I mean, myself. Aforementioned self-love is hard. I'm just annoyed my head is so reluctant to accept that I'm not a piece of shit for a million reasons. Why have most of your past relationships ended? They all ended for different reasons, really. Are you having any online conversations, currently? I'm not. What’s on your mind? I'm just tired and going back to bed real soon. Have you ever had an argument with a teacher? No.

#survey #surveys #random questions

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randomfandomfamily · 6 years ago

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Alright, here’s the other story I did a few weeks ago. It takes place during Season 2 Episode 4, so… yeah. Good times. Anyways, I just got done editing the crap out of it, so I’ma post it now and get to work on some of those requests ✌

“GARY!!” Little Cato panicked. Pushing himself off the ceiling, he tried to chase Gary into the translucent pink void. He slammed into it, unable to pass, watching Gary disappearing behind a wall of solidified time. “NO!!”

He beat his fists against the wall. “Gary?! Gary, can you hear me?! Gary!” The power flickered back on, gravity reactivating, and Little Cato fell unceremoniously to the floor. “Hang on, Gary, I’m coming!” He pulled his blaster off his side and fired it at the wall. “Come on, come on, come on!”

The gun wasn’t working, so he holstered it and took off running. “Guys! Gary’s trapped on the other side, we gotta get him back!” He couldn’t hear anyone, and he assumed the worst. Had all been injured in the crash. Or maybe they- “Nightfall! HUE! Ash, Fox, anybody! Hello?!”

Every hallway was empty. Giving a frustrated shout, Little Cato went back and checked every room. Twice. “Empty, empty… AVA where are they?!” He paused, realizing the ship’s AI hadn’t answered. “AVA, too? What is going on?!”

He looped back around to the control room. “Guys, this isn’t funny! We have to help Gary, he’s trapped on the-!”

Then he remembered. He and Gary were the only ones in the control room when it hit. Everyone else was…

“On the other side…” Little Cato whispered. “I’m on the other side.” He felt his heart sink with the realization. “I’m trapped.”

Between the slowly increasing despair and suffocating fear of never getting back to his friends, Little Cato spent the next couple of days throwing anything and everything at the pink wall that kept them separated. Eventually he realized that he simply didn’t have the resources to break solid time.

So he decided to be a little more productive with his time. He spent the next couple of days doing some repairs. There wasn’t much he could do, but he knew how to use the welding tools, so that’s what he took care of first.

After about four days of making absolutely sure he welded together every piece of the ship he could (it took longer than expected without AVA to tell him where to go and what to fix), Little Cato ended up back in the control room, tapping his fingers anxiously against the arm of the chair.

The controls weren’t working. Nothing was working. And that stupid wall of pure pink frustration still wouldn’t budge no matter what he hit it with.

“Think…” Little Cato crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Gary and the others are gonna try and find a way through from their side, and they’ve probably still got AVA. Maybe the best thing I can do is wait. I mean, the ship’s still connected, right? I could seriously mess stuff up if I start messing with wires.”

Rocking back and forth, he reconsidered. “Then again, this is a time shard. Maybe normal laws of physics don’t apply here.” He paused. “Does this fall under physics? Whatever, it’s some kind of science.”

He stood and cracked his knuckles. “Well, it’s been a week and nothing’s happened. If nothing over there has affected anything over here, then I guess I can mess with some stuff if I need to.”

The only real problem was that Little Cato wasn’t sure what to do. He could do surface repairs. He understood the basics of spacecraft engineering. He knew how to hack into someone else’s mainframe. He could lightfold, jump a dead craft, hotwire someone’s ship (that last one was strictly emergencies only), but the Crimson Light was an advanced shipt. And when it came to redirecting power and trying to keep track of the important wires that needed to not be cut, it was completely beyond him.

He was a hacker and builder, but he was not equipped for this.

Fortunately, he found a manual that outlined the ships wiring and circuits and whatever else was in this complex monster of a ship. Unfortunately, it was huge and full of words he didn’t understand. But, on the plus side, he had plenty of time to read through it and even understand most of it.

Which also meant… that meant his friends still hadn’t come for him.

But they were coming, Little Cato was sure of it. Even as weeks and weeks passed, he knew that they were going to come, even if it was taking a while.

The more he studied, the more clear it became that he wouldn’t be able to move the ship. He would have to redirect power to the engine, and he didn’t have access to it. He tried to see if he could do it indirectly from the controls but, as he suspected, the time shard was preventing any correlation between the split sides of the ship.

He couldn’t get power to the engine, but he could redirect it to the parts of the ship he did have access to. In order to make sure he had as much power as possible, he shut off most of the lights and redirected it to oxygen, gravity, and other essential parts to his survival on the ship.

By the time he had studied all the materials and mastered the intricacies of the ship, there was an estimated sixty-seven years or so before he ran out of power. Not that he would ever need that much power because Gary would definitely find him long before then.

The three years he had already spent there were nothing, really. He had already spent that long in the Lord Commander’s care, and that was way more terrifying.

There was only one thing that he had from the other side, and that was the hologram he had built of his father. It was kind of the only thing that kept him motivated. When in doubt, Avocato was always there to say that he believed in Little Cato’s abilities.

Or at least that’s what Little Cato could program him to say. The real Avocato had never even said ‘I love you’, much less ‘I’m proud’ but, hey, a kid could dream. Besides, who else would know? Fox was his roommate, and he didn’t even know.

Three years doubled, then tripled, and suddenly twenty years had gone by. Little Cato had stopped carving lines into the wall. There were too many to count.

Except that he had counted all of them. Several times. Because he didn’t have much else to do.

All he could do was wait. Wait and survive. Fix the ship, maintain the ship, wait for Gary, survive until the next day.

Being thirty-four was weird. Little Cato around Gary’s age… though Gary would actually be in his early fifties by now.

Little Cato often wondered if the others were stuck just like he was. Could they have possibly found a way to detach the Crimson Light from the shard? Or maybe they had called for help and gotten on a different ship?

Gary did have universe-saving to do… dimensional keys to find… it would make sense if they had all left. Little Cato wouldn’t blame them, really. Two decades was a long time to wait.

“You bet it’s a long time,” a voice laughed, “I’ve been hopping timelines for a while now. Twenty years is no joke.”

Little Cato whirled around. “Nightfall?” But of course there was no one there. He shook his head. “Get it together, Little Cato. You haven’t been here that long.” The tally marks on the wall seemed to laugh at him. “Well… not long enough to go crazy, anyway.”

He hesitated. “But hypothetically speaking… what would Nightfall say if she were here? She knows more about time than I do…”

“The best thing you can do is remember is to stay calm.” Nightfall’s voice said gently. “It doesn’t matter how much you know or how much you learn, it’s useless if you are too scared to act.”

Little Cato smiled. “Right… stay calm.” He smiled to himself while he worked. “And you know who was always pretty good at keeping people calm? Mooncake.” He grinned. “Mooncake always gave the best face hugs.”

“Chookity-pok?”

“Well, probably Gary because he has, you know, arms. But you and your little poddles totally win in the face-hug department.”

“Chookity.”

Little Cato chuckled. “Yeah, well-” He dropped wrench he was holding. “What the heck am I doing? Am I seriously talking to myself?! Get a grip, man!”

And he had a grip… for another two years or so. Then he figured, what’s the harm in pretending he had Nightfall and Mooncake back? As long as he remembered that it wasn’t real, everything would be fine. It was really no different than the hologram he had of his father.

He just couldn’t imagine Gary. Only Nightfall and Mooncake.

Though after a while it seemed kind of wrong not to include HUE. And things were just too quiet in his room without Fox around to bicker with, and if Fox was there of course Ash had to be there.

Clarence got to be there to for some reason, but Little Cato didn’t remember when he showed up. Or Tribore. They both just sort of appeared.

Somehow he managed to fix AVA. Though he wasn’t sure if he had actually fixed AVA, or if that was just one more thing he had created in his slowly deteriorating mind, but she and HUE seemed to be getting along either way.

And KVN was there… but he hated KVN. There’s no way he would have imagined KVN there with them. Maybe he had been there the whole time… that had to be it. Of course that was it. KVN was just always there.

The only one who wasn’t there was Gary. Tribore asked about it once, where Gary was, and all Little Cato could do was tell him the truth: Gary was on the other side. They had to get back. No matter how long it took.

But then awful things started to happen. Fox and Ash died, Nightfall slowly started to go blind, things that Little Cato wouldn’t wish upon his friends in a million years were becoming reality all around him. Part of him started to wonder if ever really imagined them.

Forty-five years on the other side of the time shard, and Little Cato had completely forgotten he was ever alone.

Little Cato had forgotten that he was the trapped one. He had forgotten that the friends he had conjured were only meant for emotional support. Everything was real to him. Sixty years of trying to break through the time shard to find Gary was so so real…

He didn’t remember that he forgot until he was saved.

It wasn’t until he saw Gary staring down at him that he remembered where he had really been for the past sixty years. When he had his ghostly friends to keep him company, he forgot that he had been alone, his mind twisting his memories so that he never remembered.

But being back… being young and back in his time… he remembered. Every memory came flooding back: every torturous night, every haunting day, every moment of crippling loneliness came back with a crushing vengeance.

“I was alone for so long…” Little Cato stood, trying not to show how hard it was to reorient himself. “For sixty years…”

Gary blanched. “Wait, are you saying you remember? You remember what happened in there?”

“Ugh.” His own insanity flashed through his mind. “Yeah… all of it.” He couldn’t stop thinking about how twisted everything had gotten. All he had wanted was the reassuring memories of his friends. Something to call on when he didn’t know what to do.

How did things get so out of hand? Why did they get so out of hand? Maybe trying to create a person out of memories wasn’t all that… healthy.

An image of a gray box prodded at the back of his mind. There was something he had to do.

“Dang. Loneliness is the worst, man. I’m just glad you’re okay.” Gary looked at him, concerning tugging his features into a worried frown. “You are okay… right?”

The answer was no. But he couldn’t tell Gary that. He also couldn’t lie and say yes. So he just said, “Thank you, guys. For not giving up on me.”

And then he left. It was going to be a long, long time before he was ready to talk about what happened in the time shard. But there was one thing he definitely wouldn’t be telling this to.

It was time to put that hologram away. For good this time.

#final space #little cato #look #i didn't say this was gonna be a happy fic #random disaster writes

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geejaysmith · 6 years ago

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"Would You Fuck an Alien?" The Goddard Futuristics Approach to Party Comp

beep beep guess what time it is, it's Kat and Gill's Wolf 359 Discord Shitposts time!

Kat [09/23/2019] we've done the 'would you fuck your clone' thing but I feel like before you go to space the question of 'are you an alien fucker' comes up Eiffel: has jokingly said he'd fuck an alien, is now less enthused Minkowski: said she would not fuck an alien, is now conflicted Lovelace: is an alien now. unsure if that means liking humans makes you an alien fucker Maxwell: came here to try to fuck aliens, discovering them has only encouraged her

Gill [09/23/2019] Rachel, during Lovelace's polygraph test: Are you an alien? Lovelace: Uh, no? Rachel: Would you fuck an alien? Lovelace: alternatively "the ethics of extraterrestrial contact" is a self-paced packet they give you during the training process it looks official and stuff but then there's a section in the back titled "So you want to fuck an alien"

Per Kat: “Goddard ensures there is at least one alien fucker and one person who errs on the side of shooting first and asking questions later on each ship, it's standard party comp”

During training/job orientation the on-boarding questions include: "thoughts on alien fucking?"

a) Aliens are an existential threat to humankind and so I would not fuck them.

b) Aliens are an existential threat to humankind and so the best solution is to fuck them.

c) I thought this was a Wendy's interview, can I leave

d) Aliens aren't real stop being stupid

It's standard protocol to have a balance of each

Gill: “if you select C you are automatically relocated to the Wendy's AU”

Answered “A”: Hilbert, Kepler B: Eiffel, Maxwell D: Minkowski, Jacobi

Eiffel and Minkowski later have second thoughts about their choices for completely opposite reasons

Kat: “Jacobi also answered D and when he's complaining post bolero that 'I didn't know what I was getting into' they're like 'the form DID specifically mention aliens Daniel' 'It also asked if we'd committed any war crimes and if so to list the really cool ones, I thought it was just Goddard being Like That'”

Lovelace's first crew had two of each, a full set for the science team and the operational team.

A: Lambert, Selberg B: Fisher, Hui D: Lovelace, Fourier

Kat: “Given Lambert's extreme readiness in the simulation to take down Lovecraftian monsters, I feel like he has been preparing for potential alien invasion his entire life”

Gill: “I find it fun to imagine Lambert answered A but deep, deep down inside he's a B and isn't ready to confront that part of himself”

Based on how Lovelace made fun of Lambert for taking his job seriously we settled on her answering D, though I personally think it likely she might also have put down B as a joke, a la Eiffel (per Kat: “how the tables have tabled”).

Based on how she’s not familiar with Lovecraft, Fourier likely isn’t much of a sci-fi person, but is level-headed enough to know that life elsewhere in the universe is a "when" question, not an "if". That said, she likely didn’t feel adventurous enough to put down B as her answer.

Fisher answered B, although he’s choosing to interpret “ the best solution is to fuck them” very... liberally. Sure, making genuine connections with any new community you find yourself meeting is the best way to co-exist peacefully.

ANGST BONUS: Gill: “Lovelace 2.0 trying not to overthink these answers (bc you know it came up at dinner at some point) in relation to the ‘how would the crew react if they met me now’ question” Kat: “selberg would've killed her while she was human #equality”

Full chat transcript below the cut:

Kat [09/23/2019] Goddard ensures there is at least one alien fucker and one person who errs on the side of shooting first and asking questions later on each ship It's standard party comp onboarding questions like: thoughts on alien fucking a) Aliens are an existential threat to humankind and so I would not fuck them. b) Aliens are an existential threat to humankind and so the best solution is to fuck them. c) I thought this was a Wendy's interview, can I leave

Gill [09/23/2019] if you select C you are automatically relocated to the Wendy's AU

Kat [09/23/2019] d) Aliens aren't real stop being stupid Hilbert Eiffel and Minkowski answered a b and d Eiffel like can I change my answer now that I’m taking this seriously

Gill [09/23/2019] Minkowski, initially: I would not have sex with an alien, why is that even an option for your initial concerns in the event of contact with an extra-terrestrial intelligence?? Minkowski, later, making sure Lovelace is out of earshot: So I might be, hypothetically, interested in aliens, but I'd need to discuss it with my husband first.

Kat [09/23/2019] Minkowski on day 3 of the mission: Did you get that alien question? Ridiculous, right? Eiffel: yeah lol I answered b Minkowski: They put the guy who said he would fuck aliens in the role of trying to contact them? Eiffel: I take my booty call job seriously

Gill [09/23/2019] Eiffel, on day 200 of scanning the void of empty static for alien signals: yup, just like my teenage love life

Kat [09/23/2019] Jacobi also answered D and when he's complaining post bolero that 'I didn't know what I was getting into' they're like 'the form DID specifically mention aliens Daniel' 'It also asked if we'd committed any war crimes and if so to list the really cool ones, I thought it was just Goddard being Like That'

Gill [09/23/2019] he knows how Kepler would answer so he's like, "Ok, Eiffel, you answered B, right? Would you be down to clown with my alien doppelganger?" any amount of time Eiffel spends thinking over his answer is too much

Kat [09/23/2019] Every ship gets an A B and D them's the rules gotta balance the party was lambert an A or a D... he DID take his job seriously so I guess A

Gill [09/23/2019] Eiffel: ...now, before I explain my thought process, keep in mind I have put a lot of things in my body I'm not terribly proud of. the pre-scratch crew had double the amount of people, plus Rhea, so it makes sense you'd have two of each Hilbert's still an A, so there's gotta be one other A-answer on Lovelace's team

Kat [09/23/2019] Given Lambert's extreme readiness in the simulation to take down Lovecraftian monsters, I feel like he has been preparing for potential alien invasion his entire life they're mentioned as a possibility in the rulebook, he will be prepared Hui is one of the Bs

Gill [09/23/2019] Lambert is probably it, although I find it fun to imagine he answered A but deep, deep down inside he's a B and isn't ready to confront that part of himself oh yes Hui is a B for certain Lovelace I can see answering B as a joke bc she's not taking it that seriously when she could kinda go either way

Kat [09/23/2019] she doesn't seem to believe in them considering her mocking Lambert for doing his job how the tables have tabled

Gill [09/23/2019] Ok, so that's one D Leaving Fisher and Fourier as our remaining B and D Whichever way around that falls

Kat [09/23/2019] feel like that's a tossup Fourier's unfamiliar with lovecraft so maybe she's not a scifi person

Gill [09/23/2019] Both of them are level-headed enough, I feel, to know that life elsewhere in the universe is a "when" question, not "if", but it's such a big place that the odds of finding life at all are incredibly remote, never mind sentient life that's technologically advanced enough to make contact And Fourier doesn't strike me as being quite that adventurous, so D Fisher is enough of a peace-and-love kinda dude that, sure, he'll answer B, even if he's choosing to interpret "the only solution is to fuck the aliens" as "forming relationships with the aliens as one would with members of any new community you may happen to meet" Also; this way it breaks down so that you have an even mix among both the science team and the operational team (w/e you want to collectively call navigations/commanding officer + communications + engineer)

Kat [09/23/2019] 'I would not be opposed in theory but I'm in a stable monogamous relationship’

Gill [09/23/2019] bonus points: Lovelace 2.0 trying not to overthink these answers (bc you know it came up at dinner at some point) in relation to the "how would the crew react if they met me now" question

Kat [09/23/2019] selberg would've killed her while she was human #equality

#wolf 359 #conversations with kat #deliverusfromsburb #long post

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lebibish · 6 years ago

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Dear Yuletide Author 2019,

Happy fall! (Or winter, which it feels like here!) The Yuletide fic exchange is one of my favorite times of year and I am always amazed with the wonderful and lovely stories that come out of it. I absolutely promise—I will love whatever you write because you have put time and effort into one of these fandoms which I adore and which deserve so much more love. So thank you!

(This...got rather long...)

Things I am generally interested in:

- World building – both cultural shenanigans and language and how does this actually work and let’s dig into the stuff that was handwaved—did I say both? I obviously meant everything)

- Family feels – found family, kidfic, good sibling relationships, comfort, people you would fight to live for, snarky banter, deep understanding of someone else. Also, I love kidfic. Also, good parenting.

- Competence – I really, really enjoy watching/reading about/listening to people being really, really good at something.

- Magic – fairy tale magic, magical realism, that whole social media thread about people having small everyday magics, hidden magical realm, magic school, I love it all.

Squicks, or things I am not interested in: For Yuletide, I prefer not to have unhappy endings. Bittersweet I can handle. Not a fan of cheating in relationships (consensual polyamory, on the other hand, is VERY GOOD.), grim!dark cynicism, unlikable heroes, angry-teenage-boy angst (this does not just apply to teenage boy characters btw, just saying I lost a lot of interest in Harry Potter after book 5. It was good characterization, he had all the reasons to feel that way! I’m just not that interested in reading from his point of view at that point).

That got long, sorry!

Specifics:

Fandom: Horror Movie Daycare (CollegeHumor)

What I like about this fandom: I love kidfic. I love people taking care of kids, being good with kids (even if they’re nervous and unsure of what they’re doing—genuine interest and care goes a long way), and the subversion of expectations in this.

What I would love to see (optional details are optional! Tell me a story you’re interested in and I’ll love it!): I am torn between wanting to know Ms. Katherine Daisy’s background (where did she come from? Why is she like this? How does she keep getting these creepy jobs? IS SHE FROM NIGHTVALE?) and wanting her to remain a mystery (particularly, seeing her from an outsider’s perspective—what do the families of her kids think of her? How did they find this daycare? Does she have any coworkers? Neighbors? Family? What do think of her and her job? Do any of the kids she takes care of grow up and come back to visit her?)

Fandom: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (game)

What I like about this fandom: What do I not like about this fandom? I play as Kassandra—she is pansexual, always down for sex, not great at emotions, totally motivated by family, kind of protective, kind of an asshole, and I head-canon her main relationship being Roxana BECAUSE THAT RELATIONSHIP IS ADORABLE. But I’m more than happy to read other people’s versions of Kassandra too! I love the attention to detail in the culture, I love the connections to Greek mythology, I love Kassandra’s relationships throughout the game (families, friends, lovers…)

What I would love to see (optional details are optional! Tell me a story you’re interested in and I’ll love it!): Kassandra in different time periods—they opened up so much room for amazing stories in that plot. Kassandra in the middle ages, messing with the patriarchy. Kassandra hanging out with the all the queer Classics majors at Oxford, (OMFG I just pictured Kassandra meeting Miss Fisher and having sexy, sexy adventures solving murders together), Kassandra in YOUR favorite historical period being her awkwardly kind, aggressively violent self. But also, that opens up so much angst? Because this woman has spent so much time separated from her family and has fought so hard to find them and now she is going to outlive literally everyone? (sort of spoiler warning: Phoebe in the DLC makes me cry so hard and if you want to make that a real thing and bring other people too I WOULD BE SO HAPPY). How does Kassandra cope? I kind of imagine she basically just keeps building families around her over and over again, but I could also see her retreating from getting close to people. ALTERNATIVELY. Kassandra growing up—why does she stay on Kephallonia so long? What is she like as an awkward teen? Kassandra being a big sister to Phoibe. Or. After the main story, I made Alexios one of the crew members on the boat and that was consistently hilarious. I also got the entire family together for that dinner scene—including awkward, angry step-brother together and the family shenanigans of two awkward, angry brothers and AWKWARD AGGRESSIVE Kassandra somehow being the reasonable human sibling is AMAZING.

Fandom: Sinbad (TV)

What I like about this fandom: I ask for this fandom every year because: people with different cultures and languages coming together and forming a functional group/found family/deep friendships, real mythology being played with, magic hiding in the world as science becomes more prevalent…it’s all amazing.

What I would love to see (optional details are optional! Tell me a story you’re interested in and I’ll love it!): Sinbad’s original curse—not being able to stay on land for more than a day and what that would mean if they had succeeded in being traders; the possibility that Cook has something strange going on with his own refusal to leave the ship; and post-series what these people end up doing and how they interact. Any and all back-stories are love, any and all myths, legends or monsters entering the story are brilliant.

Fandom: Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare)

What I like about this fandom: Beatrice/Benedict – snark. So much snark. Smart, competent people who are confident, but also insecure in some really specific ways. NOT a fan of Claudio.

What I would love to see (optional details are optional! Tell me a story you’re interested in and I’ll love it!): Ok, so, I love the original play and I love it’s various incarnations (the David Tennant and Catherine Tate one is amaaazing) but my first introduction and the one I always imagine is the Kenneth Branaugh version. Beatrice/Benedict is my OTP…except. Except. The speech where Beatrice and Don Pedro are talking and he asks if she’d have him and she says no unless she could have another for working days…I want that story. Beatrice/Benedict and their home together becoming a place where Don Pedro goes to rest and hide from the demands of the world (romantic polyamory OT3, platonic friendship, it could play out in so many ways). Or, Beatrice/Benedict going with the Prince. Beatrice having adventures and charming and outraging people everywhere and Benedict and Don Pedro amused and indulgent and jumping in to troll people left and right.

Fandom: The Pirates of Darkwater

What I like about this fandom: SO MUCH WORLD-BUILDING. All the islands and the magic and the ship (see also, any of the details for Sinbad…). Grumpy thieves and mercenaries who are secretly good people but have bad impulses/habits.

What I would love to see (optional details are optional! Tell me a story you’re interested in and I’ll love it!): Since the series was never finished—HOW DOES IT END? Does Ren become a King? Do the islands come together in a diplomatic alliance? Do they save the day and sail off into the sunset? OR Ren growing up. Living with his old guardian in an ancient lighthouse and entertaining himself by being a gymnast—but also, how do you raise a secret heir to a kingdom without letting him know he’s a secret heir to a kingdom? Shove a lot of books at him and cross your fingers? Teach good governance through a series of ridiculous hypotheticals and then hem and haw whenever he says “When will I ever need to know this?”. OR pick an island and explore it . Look, magic, pirates, adventure, mysterious islands with a variety of civilizations...you can't really go wrong here.

Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)

What I like about this fandom: Aha. Ha ha. Ok, seriously—time travel, magic, SO GAY, teams, SO COMPETANT, the constant jostling for who gets to sacrifice themselves for someone else this time, other worlds, WEIRD AF worldbuilding (magic? Aliens? Energy beings that are totally not ghosts because the censors don’t like superstition?), TIME TRAVEL, cats, shape-shifters, I will Wait for you, two cultures colliding, hurt/comfort everywhere

What I would love to see (optional details are optional! Tell me a story you’re interested in and I’ll love it!): Fix it fic. FIX IT FIC. Reincarnation? Not actually dead? Someone, something rational and reasonable steps in before tragedy becomes inevitable? PEOPLE GET THERAPY? I don’t care. Fiiiiix iiiiit. AND/OR Shen Wei waking up and negotiating a brand new world—new Dixing and new Haixing. I…kind of prefer that happening much longer than the show makes it seem in the end? Like, I have unreasonable feelings about him waiting 10,000 years to see the love of his life—but I also kind of like the idea of him waking up and being incredibly confused by the culture that has built up in Dixing. Also—more of the actual culture that has built up in Dixing so that it’s not just the desperate poor neighbor but a functional, interesting society that has it’s own traditions and families and no sense of seasons or time but what they designate for themselves (does the lantern change that?) AND/OR I’ve been haunted lately by the idea of the original Kun Lan who we never meet…actually being reincarnated as Zhao Yun Lan?

ALL MY LOVE AND GRATITUDE! YOU ARE AWESOME! I really hope you enjoy this Yuletide!

#yuletide #dear yuletide author #yuletide letter #challenge prompts

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bernardobrophy3-blog · 7 years ago

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Supplements and also vitamins

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braindamageforbeginners · 8 years ago

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Campbell’s “The Highwayman”

So. I'm starting treatment tomorrow. Which means this might be my very last post. Sort of.I should point out that, although I'm afraid of dying (that's hardly unique), that's never been my chief fear. Don't get me wrong, I'm very scared of that possibility (and it's still one of the likelier options), but, far and away, the greater fear has always been that I'll suffer some sort of severe, permanent brain damage resulting in noticeable neurocognitive defects. Or, to make that less cerebral (as, indeed, my oncologists will make me - literally), I'm worried that treatment will make me dumber. Or mess up my memory abilities. Or steal my scientific literacy. Or steal my literacy. Or just make me less... well, me. I'm not great at being myself; I think I'd be hilariously bad at being someone else.

I've written elsewhere about how neat and strange individuality is - just on a biological and biochemical level (I’ll be repeating and/or paraphrasing some stuff I’ve written elsewhere, so forgive me if you’ve read this). To help me out this time (because I no longer have enough time to be direct), I thought I'd use Zeno's Paradox. Zeno was an ancient philosopher, who came up with the following hypothetical, and I've updated it for the modern reader (you're welcome). Let's put LeBron James in a race against a tortoise; however, that's hardly fair, so we'll give the tortoise a 20 ft (6 m, to my communist friends) head-start. LeBron will never even reach the tortoise, because, before he can overtake the tortoise, he has to cross half of those 20 feet (10 feet); before he gets there, he has to cross half of 10 feet (5 feet), and so on. The numbers get ridiculously small, but you get the idea - you have to cross infinity to get anywhere (which is also what it feels like convincing the insurance company to pay for radiation treatment, but that’s a different topic for a different time). The fact that people walk didn’t deter or invalidate Zeno’s hypothesis (philosophy, while fascinating, has very little practical application); then, many centuries later, in one of those moments I live for, science and math overtook philosophy and invalidated it. In this case, it came in the form of calculus, which takes all those infinite little fractions and adds them together to get a real, usable number (unlike philosophy, mathematics is enormously helpful, albeit sometimes in highly specific situations). The biological punchline of all this is that you are the end-product of countless interactions, collisions, mistakes, and encounters, from the sub-atomic level to the moon’s gravitational force on Earth (the tides are important for life on this planet). Human beings are very similar; it takes a lifetime of small, slight, random encounters, interactions, and collisions to make you who you are; perfectly formed by countless infinitesimal incidents that we can’t recreate.

The second part of this concept requires a little help from you, dear reader (I know, homework; I’m sure there are a few of you would switch places with me to get out of it)(also, if that swap were possible, I guarantee you that I would take it, no questions asked). Make a list of things that make you who you are - in excruciating detail, and including the most minute and irrelevant details; from the stuff that barely counts (”has a weird recurring dream about Godzilla”)(I can’t be the only person that happens to) to the big stuff (”loves spouse/kids/dog”). To connect this to Zeno; this is an endlessly long list. You want to write a lot of assorted details (”fully remembers details from Thanksgiving 2010″) and random quirks. Now, you’re going to hand that list to a random stranger and ask them to cross off five items on this list; those things are no longer a part of you. According to Zeno (and my oncologists), those things probably aren’t important in the grand scheme of things, and you will still be you. But will you, really? Will you know who you are? Will you know what’s missing from that list? And can you get it back, or is it gone forever, or is it not worth it to recover what’s missing? And when do you stop being “you?” Obviously, there are a few big-ticket items that would permanently - and terribly - alter you (see that “loves spouse/kids/dog” one), but, if you look at that list, it’s not a dozen major things that define you, it’s the countless, tiny, unimportant things (I realize there’s some overlap with the Theseus’ Ship, but I like math). Again, according to Zeno and my oncologists, these probably aren’t worth fretting over, but it’s not them on the chopping block.

The concept that we’re working toward is a working understanding/empathy of what it’s like to live with brain damage/neurocognitive impairment/neurodegenerative disease, so I’ll be a little more blunt. Imagine a life in which you are unable to remember where you put your keys, phone, and wallet. The minute you set them down, bam, they’re gone from your mind, even if you leave them in the exact same place you always leave them. If you want to leave the house, you have to physically look for them until you find these items. You’ll still experience the same aggravation and frustration as anyone else, the only difference is, you’re usually unaware that there was a time - very recently - when this wasn’t a real problem. Those are the good days - the ones when you’re smart enough to observe these sorts of deficits. Other days - and these constitute at least 75% of your time - are when you don’t have that frame of reference; you’re just aggravated and upset that leaving the house now takes 45 extra minutes. And tired. And, a philosophical question that I can answer; what’s worse than being dumb? Being not-quite smart enough. Imagine a world where you’re intelligent enough to be ambitious - but not intelligent enough to accomplish those ambitions. That’s the fun little parting gift from neurosurgery #1. This is why I’m get a little paranoid whenever a clinician admits that there will be some brain damage - it’s like statisticians using the word “dismal,” it’s got to be really bad if they’re going to warn you about it prior to starting treatment. And there are still no guarantees that this will work, or even that it’ll buy me anything more than a few months, and that’s just a few months of my heart beating. What if this is as good as I will ever feel, for the rest of my life? I’m not feeling great right now, but the thought that this is as good as it gets is, to say the least, exceptionally unpleasant (on Thursday, in the final pre-serum screening, I was given three words to remember - “truck,” “apple,” and “blue” - and I couldn’t remember them at the end of a ten-minute interview. Not exactly hopeful, since I haven’t even started treatment, but the stress and lack of sleep is definitely a factor to consider). And that’s definitely not going to get better in the near future, unless my doctors start prescribing me more powerful drugs (with my luck, I come down with a horrible disease the minute the medical establishment starts getting paranoid about opiate precriptions)(but, hey, thinking positively, marijuana will be legal here in a few weeks)(I mean, uh, drugs are bad and you should never take them, kids)(unless they’re nearly-fatal drugs prescribed by a licensed doctor to, uh, kill very specific pieces of you)(yes, that’s how this medieval cancer treatment monkey-business works).

I’ve also thought a lot about the stages of grief, like you do when you’re mostly just waiting to either die or the treatment to work (and this sort of horrible uncertainty is - far and away - the most unpleasant emotional situation I’ve ever experienced), however, no one seems to have informed my limbic system, because I’m hitting all five of those simultaneously. Sort of, I’m still stuck in “bargaining,” I still can’t escape the idea that, maybe, with the right treatment and doctors, I’ll make it past this one - of course, the basic mathematic probability that I’ll almost certainly die within the next decade hasn’t really sunk in, but that’s also because I’m so exhausted and scared all the time that basic planning beyond a 72-hour window is completely beyond me (this might be some sort of self-preservation thing).

This is not to say that I’m automatically opposed to change, but the potential for dramatic and immediate neurocognitive change is dangerously high. Imagine the sorts of personality and emotional changes that occur just due to hormones, or antidepressants, or other drugs, and you can imagine the changes that can occur by dramatically altering my anatomy. Sort of; this is more like slowly stripping out pieces of me, and potentially who I am. Which is unpleasant enough, but, because I’m still tumbling down the rabbit hole, I recently learned something just as problematic: you only get one radiotherapy course per organ per lifetime. Which means I am pretty much all in on this gamble, and if this disease ever returns (spoilers; this is the second time I’ve come developed a malignant (or potentially malignant) glioma), thanks for playing. I will probably, thanks to my lab rat connections, be in line for whatever crazy new, experimental treatments that science can concoct, which is a good thing. But, how many AIDS patients died waiting for science to catch up to them? And, since we’re cutting funding for health insurance and medical research, is that realistically a good gamble? These things bother me in an abstract sense, but that 72-hour planning window is helpful in this situation.

This blog exists to painstakingly document my path so that the next person in my position might have an idea of what to do (or not to do), but, more importantly (to me, anyway), I’m doing this for the exact reason any human has ever done anything - from making the great pyramids to having children (although I realize the stated rationale at the time might be slightly different) - that there might be some small scrap of me that remains in the world, if the battle goes ill. It’s sort of like scribbling “Kilroy was here” in wet cement (and blog sites owned by Yahoo will last forever, right?). I’m not going to leave any grand legacy for the ages, unless everything goes much, much better than expected and, even then, I’m not likely to change the world (for all you future generations that might be reading this, your self-confidence decreases dramatically when faced with a grisly ending). This blog is also, if everything goes right, a baseline, a form of self-reflection for me to figure out a way to get back here, if everything goes well (again, even if everything goes flawlessly and better-than-expected, there are still going to be some neurocognitive changes). I don’t know who will be writing this thing in 24 hours, or in several weeks (major side-effects and problems are expected to start showing around Week #3), hopefully that guy won’t be too different from the person typing all this, and, if that’s the case, hopefully this will be some sort of guide to get back to normal (well, “normal” for me). And maybe someone else can get similar use out of this thing.

Obviously, there are going to be some days where I don’t feel like writing (if I go weeks without checking in, you can start to panic), or I’m too busy (if, God forbid, you develop cancer, you’ll spend many, many happy hours in the hospital), so I thought I’d just give a quick run-down, starting with height and weight (I realize those are mostly-irrelevant, and I won’t mention my height again, unless that changes). Hopefully, that won’t be too hard to keep up with over the coming weeks. HEIGHT: 6′ (183 cm) WEIGHT: about 210 lb (95-ish kilos) CONCENTRATION: Good, though I’m somewhat distracted; ability to start and focus on tasks is great, although completion isn’t always guaranteed (I still haven’t finished watching the latest episode of “Happy,” for example). Basic tasks are still pretty easy, but you don’t get many points for that outside of a psych researcher’s office. MEMORY: Not good, for me (I usually have close-to-eidetic memory), but still better than the average person’s. Still, using myself as a baseline, there’s been some noticeable-but-not-significant deterioration in that area, but, again, I’m not getting much sleep and I’m super-stressed. Still, I’m not forgetting the important stuff, yet. APPETITE: Good. I’m still eating as much as I usually do, which is a lot. ACTIVITY LEVEL: Good. I didn’t go to the gym today or yesterday, but since I went to the gym four or five times over the last week, I’m not going to beat myself up too much for it. SLEEP QUALITY: Nowhere near good, but much better than it was two weeks ago (but that’s not saying much, since I’ve gotten about 2-6 hours of sleep, on average, over the last month). Still, I’ve never slept very well (and I’m probably never going to sleep well again, not counting general anaesthesia), so it’s a little hard to gauge that. COORDINATION/DEXTERITY: Much, much, much better than it was this time a month ago, but my whole left side is still about 5-15% below-normal. I’m readily completing basic two-handed tasks, but I’m not going to be a concert pianist any time soon. Or in the next life, come to that (assuming there is a next life).

Tune in soon for the continuation of the reality-TV remake of “Flowers for Algernon.” And a very merry fuckin’ Christmas.

#brain cancer #brain tumor #brain damage #chemotherapy

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