#I need to compile a list of all the medical stuff I gotta get looked into

[just-let-me-see-accounts]

???

I spent ages agonising over how I would navigate my medical health before I became 18 (at which point I could schedule my own appointments. Like, I know that I could still do that as a minor with my parent(s) per.issuon but I thought there would still be restrictions, especially concerning money) but my mum is just gonna give me my medical card tomorrow after I briefly mentioned goodrx (which is only tangentially related??) and told me that everything would be free? What??

Like, I can just schedule anything. I could follow up on that proposed blood test to figure out the extent/cause of my anemia. I could go to the dentist. I could get regular check ups (insane. In the past 8-9 years I've only had two check ups).

I recently had an eye exam and am gonna receive two free glasses (plus a third cheap one my mum + grandpa bought for me), but like. I could get an eye exam regularly? Which is pretty damn good since I kinda fucked up with my left eye and when I was looking through that machine it was definitely blurrier in my left than in my right. Plus, obviously my eyes got worse over these past three years, so it'd be great to stay on top of any further changes.

This shit applies to mental health stuff as well. She specifically mentioned that, which I think is her signaling that she does not want to bein charge of keeping up with that. Damn. I could schedule my own appointments and shit. Wow.

Maybe I can buy medication? Obviously I'd have to talk to a psychiatrist to be prescribed anything, but my mum said she doesn't pay *anything* for prescribed medication. I promised myself not to rock the boat too much until I'm 18, though, since last time when I broached the possibility of me being ND and did that surface level test (used to determine if an in depth test is needed), she took me out of therapy (which I will be back in soon thank god! My intake is on the 3rd of October!).

And my mum has expressed that she doesn't want me on medication (she said it isn't safe for a minor. I wonder if her opinion would change once I become an adult. It must eventually, right? She takes medication herself.) so I'm afraid she might. Take away my access to medical stuff.

But like, if she gives me my card, can she even do anything? If she takes it, would I be able to order a new one or smth? She said that she could order a new one if I lose it. Am I entitled to it? I'll have to look into it more.

The possibility of this massive opportunity suddenly being taken away is why I didn't even consider further pursuing ND evaluation or getting a gender therapist. But like, if she can't do anything, I'll definitely do it. I guess that's a "maybe" thing.

Yooo I could get birth control and stop these blasted periods! Neat.

Even better yet, my siblings can get their cards as well and schedule their own stuff. I requested one of my siblings cards as well and she's willing to give me it. I can't make the appointment myself, as I am a minor (which means I can schedule appointments for them when I'm an adult yayyy), but I can help her make an appointment herself. She really needs to see the dentist.

Man. There's just. So many possibilities. I'm definitely gonna look at "common medical screenings/appointments" or whatever to see what I can get looked at for. Now that I have all this medical power I won't allow myself to deal with something I shouldn't have to!!

[weirdo-with-a-nametag]

Brain is tv static with random frames interspersed

Think I'm like. Really stressed and jumping between topics to try and find something that helps / feels good

Topics:

Anyone know a good health tracking app for adhd people? I want one that like pops up when you open your phone, maybe? But is unobtrusive. Like maybe you just rate your mood or whatever when you open your phone, and it closes, and you go about your business. I just hate every app and paper method I've tried but really want to track some stuff

Pigeon. ? Pigeon as pet?

Service animals re: cats, pigeons, my cat specifically, and then also ESAs and also what to use as treats while training my cat (he's pretty happy to learn behaviors with praise and pets as reinforcement, but treats would make everything move much faster, but I haven't found something I want to give him so we've just been y'know. Chillin)

Service animals re: what tasks can my pet potentially do that would help me? I don't really know a lot about service animals and there is a Huge range. If anyone has suggestions, or places to read about it, I'd appreciate it! Mostly thinking they may help with anxiety, sensory, and mobility/fatigue related stuff. Not much of a need for medical alerts.

Bioactive enclosures for my snakes, need to research their biomes and make progress on designs and equipment specifications

Also. Hit a seriously hard patch and haven't been handling them much at all this month so that's not great

Casting stuff. Saw jewelry today made of metal casts of claws, skulls, etc, and they were really well done and made me want to do that

Some taxidermy / vulture culture stuff I won't get into right now

Puzzles????

How to organize my room

Need a shower

Need to organize bathroom

So Much Schoolwork

Uhhhhh trying, but not making much headway, to figure out how I want to do my music collection. Also really need to clean my records..

Make?

Food??? Ew.

Dental hygiene ://

Plampts. So many. Houseplants need maintenance, many need repotting. Keep taking in people's problem plants and like, they're doing better, largely, after being trimmed and watered and whatnot, but need repotting. Also need to trim some aquarium plants.

Also need to put water in tanks. And spray nepenthes.

Laundry.

Gotta pick up trash in my room. There's so much. Everywhere. Why.

Schoolwork. I'm so behind. So, so stuck. Kind of feel like I'm dying.

Going on a picnic tomorrow. Have to figure out what still needs doing for that, probably need to go to the store.

Leo needs water. I'm so....ugh, I'm trying so hard, but it feels impossible. I do my best to take good care of my pets, and I think they live pretty good lives most of the time, but sometimes I get like This and completely drop off the face of the earth and then like, wake up or whatever and two weeks have passed by and I have not cleaned a water bowl! That's a serious problem!!!! I do not know how to combat that, really, besides more reminders. Having someone around who is willing to like, help, when things are especially hard, would be great, but I don't live with my partner right now and do not feel like I can ask anyone here for that. But I can't put my animals at risk. I check on them every day, and if their bowls are dirty I do take them out and clean them, but sometimes (like now) i cannot get myself to do it without a pressure like a dirty bowl, or a feeding day. And like, it's really important that they have clean water. I'm talking to myself here but like, if anyone has advice. Please. With the tank redesigns and upgrades, the bowls will be more accessible, which will help because one of them is very heavy at the angle I have to pick it up, and another requires moving a lot of branches and is best to take out while the snake is out (this is Leo) which is fine because I love my boy, but adds time to the process, and makes it harder to start, you know? Maybe if I just got more bowls - I could take the bowl out and immediately replace it, fill the new one, and replace the decor and snake, and then clean the bowl as a separate task? That would be easier for my brain. Currently I have a Specific bowl I prefer to use for each tank, and then everything else is Just In Case, but I mean. Acquiring extras is something I want to do anyway, and it may help with several problems, so. Yeah. I'll try that. But also, any other ideas, guys?

Anxiety: can't stop picking at my face, skin, nails, cuticles, scalp, pretty much everywhere with callouses, also scratched a mole off my face, which is something I've been trying Not to do for a while, so that's...not great. Can't find my earmuffs, and also all of my headphones are painful? Ears are really sensitive lately.

Been playing a lot of Moth Game (flutter: starlight if you wanna be friends say hey I don't know how to do it but would enjoy talking about moths if nothing else. The game is just like, an idle ish collecting game with cutesy versions of different species, and very little actual information, but it's still fun, and if anyone else is on there and also Into Moths like I am, hiiiii) and like it's fun and cute but also greatly impacting my productivity, and raises my stress levels during events, which is most days, so the game has. Not been helping. But I can't stop because then I'll miss Exclusive Moths.

Anyway. Had baklava and two mugs of Thai tea today and the sugar has made me nauseous.

Trying to journal. Hurts to write. Also takes too long. Also my handwriting is very bad. But typing is..not as good

Want to draw. Thinking about drawing cats

Plants again! Want to make seed bombs, have seeds, have most of the other ingredients, just need to put em together, basically.

Really sad :(

Or am I?

Weird noise coming from dining room?

Birds. Spent half an hour at least on the deck tonight listening to a hundred different bird calls (literally) to identify one I was hearing, it was a pine siskin, which I checked early on but the recording was bad and I didn't realize which call was identified. Anyway, cool to put a name to a face, so to speak.

Need to practice for ASL

So much.....to do...

Only had like >3 hours of work this week which was not great because money, but also like I'm really feeling those 3 hours....

My cat is basically refusing to come into my room? Which is very strange and I'm worried something is Off but cannot figure out what. Also means less cuddles which means I'm sad.

It feels strange whenever people follow me, the attention is nice but I have no idea what content y'all are here for. So to everyone: hi, enjoy, hope my random personal posts aren't a surprise to anyone who followed for like. News reblogs and informational stuff.

Do I even have it in me to..be successful in school? Should I drop out of college? I'm struggling really hard and do not feel like I'm building on the skills I need to continue, so like. Uh.

My dad is being. Abrasive.

Mom and grandma are very angry lately

Housemate is also angry, about things i thought we were on good terms about, so I am stressed because like,, are we okay?

Can't find my eye mask :(

Yoga? Like...restorative yoga? Need to track down my PT stuff. And. Do it.

Need to put the stickers on my license plates....oops...

Still haven't found my antidepressants! Yay!

Do I want to store my stuff in open bins, or with lids? Which stuff needs spill protection and stacking capability and which stuff needs easy access?

How to earn money without..chaos

Gotta go to the pet store tomorrow. Have to compile my list of pet store items i need. Uhhhhhhhhhh

Also I have an essay due tomorrow that I've barely started. So. Wooooooo

Kt tape for supporting arches / inner ankles? I keep messing up my ankles, and part of it is walking wrong because I don't have the energy to engage the muscles in my feet/legs right to like, avoid injury, and part of it is I just need new shoes inserts. But i wear slippers a lot and they do not have arch support and it hurts. PT to help with this also but Where Is It

Family can't seem to get dish soap I can use, so I've just been having to avoid washing anything by hand, or being in the general kitchen area while anyone uses the stuff, which has led to more of my dishes sitting out, and more conflict over dishes. Lovely.

How hard is it for parents to learn they have to respect boundaries? Very hard, apparently. And you're supposed to just sort of remind people, and explain, over and over and over but like at this point my self worth is actually pretty good and the lifetime of proof that they do not want to listen? That's making me want to stop trying. Like, if you're not going to respect my boundaries I'm just not going to involve you in my life. I'm not talking to my dad right now because of this. Maybe I'll decide to lay things out to him, again and again and again again, maybe not. And I'm comfortable saying that's on him.

How to drink water

Am I dehydrated or are my hands just completely callous now. My fingertips have such hard skin. Why? It's uncomfortable. This is part of why I've been biting them.

Also testosterone. Been having a lot of trouble doing my shots, because anxiety and physical freakouts, but also not feeling super urgent about it. Which I'm realizing may be a sign i need to look at the effects so far and the possible effects of continuing, and see what they make me feel. It's possible I'm where I want to be as far as T, and don't really want to stay on it. A big thing for me is a deeper voice, so it seems time to take a look at whether I like my voice where it is or want to see if it'll drop any more. Etc etc

Miss my lil sisters

Saw a lot of cool rocks today. Huge (like hand sized) ammonite for $28. May go back and buy one because. Wow.

Want to plant food plants

Also my natives. Whole garden plot standing empty with a bunch of stuff waiting in nursery pots, needing to go in the ground. Because I can't get out of bed. Love that. Stuff is dying out there, I'm dying in here, there's a poetry to it and I do not want to romanticize suffering so I will say this: I brought a Bucket full of moss home a month ago and planted it and now go outside sometimes to drench my moss and it is very rewarding because the stuff is just so green. Incredible. When the rest of my plants are finally in the ground, that feeling will only intensify. But, for now, the moss is very nice.

Made a glow in the dark bead lizard from memory during therapy yesterday, and I love him. Also, still struggling with bringing up autism and psychosis topics with my therapist. Still very worried about. Things. Would like to get a new person? But sometimes she is helpful? And we have a routine. It's very hard to break the routine. Maybe I can set some time aside during the summer, to figure out what to do there.

Term ends in a couple weeks. The task of catching up, of passing, seems impossible. I really need to pass my courses. I'm on academic warning, because my GPA is lower than it should be, and if I can pass all of my classes this term I can get off academic warning but otherwise I'm not sure what will happen to my financial aid.

My phone is playing the same 50-100 songs on shuffle and I don't even particularly like most of them and it is very strange

Got my face wipes! Hooray, i can wash my face again

Been eating too much sugar in general. It's making my joints hurt more, and the nausea

Pet a dog the other day. I miss that. It would be really nice to have a dog in the house again. The exuberance, the cuddles, the tail wagging, the walks... I'd really like that. Maybe once I'm out in my room, tanks and catio built and everyone is situated, I'll look into getting a dog instead of a cat next. Was planning on holding off in case I'm not physically able to take them out on walks and such, but I've been pretty successful at doing this job, and I think that my main hurdle for walking really is motivation. Dog walking is a strong motivator for me. Best to start by fostering, or just do Wag, for a while though. I'm feeling overwhelmed with my current responsibilities, and here I am talking about getting a dog. Good job, me

How do you get wax off of somewhat water soluble rocks? My housemate broke my lava lamp on some of my rock collection and I am not sure how to get some of them clean without damage.

I am...pretty sure there are collared doves nesting over my room but it seems they're less common around here than I thought? But they are..pretty distinctive. Like if I'm wrong, what are those birds. Some very distinctly colored feral pigeons? Who are nesting here, in a tree, without their flock, and who happen to have pretty much the exact same pattern?

Probably should go to the dollar store and get some bins for organizing

Been wanting to keep a bin by the door and stock it with stim/fidget stuff people can just .have ..like extras of some of my favorites and other things i can get ahold of, to offer to my friends who haven't really had the chance to explore the world of stim toys

Hands are really just not doing great the last several weeks. Arthritis type pain cropping up more and more in all the little joints, making it hurt more to write, type, or just use them for whatever. Coordination isn't great because of that distraction, and because my hands/arms are slow to respond and kinda weak. Most people would say I'm not using them enough but I've been doing 15ish hours of manual labor per week, so maybe it's the other direction? More water would help. If only it wasn't so heavy.

I haven't taken a single shower since I started my job. Which was March 29th. That's not great.

Practiced parallel parking today. 10/10 still very bad at it.

Having anxiety that my friends think I'm lying about things, faking, and are watching me to see if I'll slip up. So that sucks. Can either talk about that directly or indirectly, or just shut up about those things until I can get my brain under control again. I'm not sure right now if the reassurance would work as a reality check or make me believe it more, right now, so might hold off on the talking bit for a little while.

Saw, smelled, picked a couple pretty roses. Good times

At this point I'm just trying to list all my thoughts so that maybe I'll be able to sleep and not worry I'll forget

My mom has put her spider plant on the deck, and it has maybe five living leaves. I have no idea how she killed such a well established spider plant, the last time I saw it it was so happy. Did she stick it in a corner and forget to water it? Whatever happened, it is now in the Plant ER, so hopefully I'll be able to...help get it on the up and up again

Leo is such a pretty noodle. He's so pretty. He's posing. Hi, baby boy.

Oh, he saw me moving around and decided to come say hi. Sorry little man, i did not mean to disturb you. Please resume lounging. I can't bring you out right now, I'm trying to sleep.

Also, terrariums. Water features. Need to ask. Someone. The one who was making that super cool garter snake enclosure and blogging the progress? With the lazy river and pool? About maintenance on that kind of setup. My milk snake really enjoys water, and I'd love to put a water feature in his tank. But I'm unclear on how to keep it clean, or honestly where to start. Don't want any huge falls or anything, though it actually may not make the humidity too high if I did maybe a small drip wall into the pool? That seems like something he would enjoy, and a good way to support different types of plants. But like, that's the thing, it's bioactive and I haven't done that before and no amount of research is ever enough.

Oh, Shogun has a dirt hat. How cute. I love when they do that

See, this is the thing. My snakes make me so happy. All three of them are actually hanging out where I can see them from my bed right now, and it's really nice. I want their lives to be the best possible, and I think I have the resources to do that. Which is so exciting. Now if only my brain and body would cooperate. It would hurt quite a lot to have to re-home any of them, but the most important thing is their health and quality of life, you know? If I can't get my act together somewhat, it may be that one or all of them would be better off with another keeper. I don't know. It's just, i talk about all these tank ideas and all this husbandry standards stuff but how much of it actually gets applied to my own animals whose lives are in my hands? How well am I caring for them, really?

Oh!!! My red thread! I thought that was gone forever.

Anyway, please do not worry. My snakes are healthy. I pay attention, and watch for signs of illness, and they're okay. There will always be places to improve, and the water is a big one, but most of the time i change their water out frequently, I'm just worried because of bad depression and fatigue times, you know? I'm working on making the most self sustaining systems i can, in part so that I am sure they'll be okay if I mess up sometimes. Just saying this because I hope you guys don't feel like you need to worry about the welfare of my pets. They're okay, i just always want better for them, is all.

Anyway, the sun is coming up and I should probably go to sleep. So uh, thanks for reading, if you read all of this randomness, and if anyone has thoughts or advice on anything in this post, i would welcome it! Good night!

[nitewrighter]

Villains Want A Valkyrie Pt. 3

Previous Chapters: 1, 2

Read it on AO3 Here.

----

The heart monitor beeped steadily as Gabriel Reyes stared at Mercy in the Talon medical wing. She stared right back, frozen in the doorway. Mercy felt Moira looming close behind, those heterochromatic eyes flicking over Gabriel’s figure, trying to parse what was the latest thing going wrong. Mauga had dropped off a while back to attend to some enforcers, but honestly the threat of another biotic grip from Moira was enough to keep Mercy relatively compliant. Still running any possible escape scenario she could through her head, but compliant. 

Reaper was seated on an examination table, not looking very much like Reaper at all, hunched in a well-worn black hoodie and dark gray elastic cuff sweatpants with pristinely well-kept red and white sneakers. Mercy remembered Volskaya--shooting the bone-white mask off of his face, and the chilling shock that pulsed through her body at seeing the man she thought was dead for the past 5 years. He seemed smaller now--which was no easy feat considering the bulk of his figure thanks to the SEP serum. Little ashen bits were flaking off of the skin of his face and falling upward in a stream of black smoke. It seemed so terrifying when she had first seen it in that dark factory, but looking at it now under the bright lights of the medical lab, she felt like she was looking at him as a doctor and not an opponent. He was sick. He was clearly sick. In pain, even, but doing his best to remain composed in the midst of that.

 The eyes were still unnerving. Black sclera, red irises, but the expression on his face seemed to disarm them, slightly. He had aged enough in his years of Overwatch for the scars and laughlines to shift and betray his own fear that he was tamping down. Maybe that was why he embraced the mask so easily . Years ago he had respected her, depended on her, then after Zurich she was another name on his list: the woman who condemned him to a living death just by trying to keep him alive.

“You can come in,” said Reaper, “I won’t bite.”

Mercy took a hesitant step into the room.

“You’re looking well,” said Reaper.

Mercy kept up a steady glare.

“This is awkward,” said Reaper.

“Last time we met you nearly killed me,” said Mercy, “And now you threatened innocent civilians to drag me here and ask me to save your life so you can keep killing. That’s well past awkward.”

Reaper gave a glance to Moira past Mercy’s shoulder, who gave him a slight ‘I told you so’ head tilt with an ‘It’s not too late to shoot her’ eyebrow raise.

“I know,” said Reaper, “I don’t have to tell you we’re in a war, Doc. I know you want to stay alive. You have to do everything you can to keep your work from falling into the wrong hands--and obviously your team would suffer from your absence. At this point, you’re free falling. Hoping your team can pull off another one of their crazy stunts to swoop in and catch you and save the day, because god knows you’ve had to do that over and over again for them. So you keep a cool head. You buy time. That’s fair.”

“Is this the ‘you have no hope of escaping’ speech? Because I don’t think anyone here has time for that,” said Mercy.

“I don’t like that you’re here, Doc. I really wish we didn’t have to bring you in, but I think we can help each other with this,” Reaper pulled back the sleeve of his hoodie.

“Gabriel--” Moira started in warning, but it was too late. Mercy winced back at the sight of visible bone and necrotizing flesh falling up and off his arm.

“I know you want to fix this,” said Reaper, slipping the sleeve back over his arm, “If not for my sake, then at least for fixing what’s been done to your tech’s sake. At least for the sake of knowing it can be undone.”

Reaper made brief eye contact with Moira and Moira’s face pinched slightly, but she seemed to remember what Reaper had said earlier about Mercy not being able to walk away from this. Mercy’s own expression was tense, her arms folded tight across herself, looking at Reaper’s arm with a combination of revulsion, regret, and curiosity.

“Just need you to patch me up one last time, Doc,” said Reaper.

“I’ve heard that before,” said Mercy, her brow furrowing.

“Yeah except you’re not bleeding out this time,” said Reaper, “Let’s keep it that way, right?”

-----

“Huh... I was wondering how all your comms data managed not to be split wide open by Talon cyber attacks,” said Lynx Seventeen in a vidcom window as a dizzing amount of data streamed down Athena’s screens, “I must say, your encryption algorithms are poetry--”

“Oh--” Athena made a noise that sounded like a tittering chuckle, “Well thank you. I do my best.”

“Can we please stay focused?” said Genji, pacing back and forth.

“Hey, this stuff’s just as much an art as a science, and doing it remotely like this takes time,” said Lynx.

“We should be going now, and figuring out which building in Venice she’s being held in is on the way.”

“This is educated guesswork at best!” said Lynx, their metal ears twitching with irritation, “I’m just compiling data gathered from Antonio’s complex combined with the logistical data of Talon’s movements during the Venice Incident. Even if I cross reference blueprints and building restoration records to compile a rough estimate of the most likely site Doctor Ziegler might be held in, you’d still be flying in blind with no knowledge of the building’s interior.”

“I’ve gone in with less,” said Genji.

“And missions where you’ve gone in with less have ended like Venice,” said Winston, frowning over a holographic map of agent locations, “Like McCree said, we’re spread thin.”

“I can go alone then--” said Genji, “Fewer variables, I’m harder to detect than a team---”

“Genji, we’re all as worried about her as you are--” McCree started.

“Are you!?” said Genji. 

“But we can’t afford to be emotional about this. We’ve barely had the resources to keep Talon in check. Taking the fight to them is a whole other ball game.”

“Her medical knowledge has to be the primary explanation as to why Talon would snatch her up while still keeping her conscious,” said Jack, “She has time. And she’s smart, she can probably buy even more for herself.”

“You’ve seen what Reaper has done to her before,” said Genji, folding his arms tight across himself, “I can’t--I can’t go through that again. We can’t let that happen to her again. She’s been keeping us alive. We owe this to her. And every second we spend deliberating here--”

“We aren’t deliberating--we’re planning as best we can how to get her back,” said Jack, “And you are going to be on the rescue team. I promise you that. You and McCree have had experience in Venice before. But I’m going to need you to keep calm and let Lynx and Athena work.”

Genji’s shoulders bunched up. “I’m calm.”

“You’re really not,” said McCree.

“Take a walk,” said Jack.

“We’ll page you when we’ve drawn up an itinerary for the rescue mission,” said Winston.

“Come on,” said McCree, putting a hand on his shoulder and leading him out of the room.

They walked down the hallway a ways.

“Y’know you still gotta debrief from that last mission,” suggested McCree.

“Ana and Tracer should cover it sufficiently,” said Genji.

“Genji, I don’t need to be able to see your face to tell when you’re going down a black hole. I’m scared for the doc, too! Terrified! But if we fuck this up she could end up dead.”

Genji visibly winced at McCree’s words.

“Your hacker said you were flying blind,” a voice spoke up from just up the hal and Genji and McCree both stopped and looked to see Hanzo leaning against the wall.

“I don’t recall you being invited to that meeting,” said McCree, folding his arms.

Hanzo held up what appeared to be a semi-deconstructed tip of a sonar arrow. “I don’t like being kept out of the loop,” he said, pocketing the tip.

“How much of the watchpoint have you bugged?” said McCree.

“That’s not important right now.”

“Oh I think it’s pretty imp---” McCree started.

“What are your thoughts, Hanzo?” said Genji.

“I... “ Hanzo straightened himself up slightly, “I have a contact who might be able to help us.”

“...you have contacts in Talon,” said McCree.

“Former Talon,” said Hanzo, “And he’s a medic as well. With Angela in Talon’s custody, I believe he’s the best person we can bring in.”

McCree gave a wary glance to Genji. “I don’t know how I feel about going behind Winston and Jack’s back about this...”

“Can you get in contact with him?” asked Genji.

Hanzo gave a single nod.

---

Just being in Moira’s lab made Mercy’s skin crawl. It had virtually no natural light and the entire room was cast in a sickly yellow glow that rippled with watery shadows from the massive biotic tank at the center of the room. She kept it clean, as any scientist worth their salt would, 

“It’s a threefold problem,” said Moira as she brought up a projection of Reaper’s cells on a large holographic screen.

“The primary problem being your modifications to Reaper’s cellular structure,” said Mercy, leaning forward at the projection.

“There is nothing wrong with my modifications,” said Moira, “The variables presented by the SEP program and your little Lazarus stunt back in Zurich on the other hand...”

“Nothing wrong with your modifications?” said Mercy, glancing at Moira’s withered hand.

“This is trial and error,” said Moira, running a thumb over one of the silvery veins on her hand, “I took the first risks with rabbits and myself to make sure I got it right,” she turned her attention back to the screen. “As I was saying. Threefold.”

“The nanites, the SEP serum, and the resurrection,” said Mercy.

“Indeed.”

“Moira--” Mercy folded her arms across herself, “If Gabriel is going to survive this, I’m going to need to understand more about your nanites.”

“Because of course only you can save him,” said Moira with an eye roll, “Our guardian angel.”

“I’m more than happy to get out of this lab and leave Reaper in your capable hands,” Mercy said tensely.

“And I wish we could kill you, plastinate your brain, use it as a paperweight, and be done with it but I’m afraid we’re both stuck here and unhappy until Gabriel starts dying less,” said Moira, not even looking away from the screen.

“The nanites,” said Mercy, 

“They’re modified from the nanobots of biotics to assimilate into human tissue and then allow that tissue to re-assimilate itself to their own abilities. What about them?”

“There’s more to it than that. I doubt you just woke up one morning and said, ‘Oh you know what will help the world? Turning people into energy-sapping smoke monsters.’”

Moira scoffed. “Your first error is assuming science is about altruism. The point of science is understanding. We must find out everything we can about ourselves and the universe we live in. Whether that’s to our benefit is irrelevant.”

“I’m sure anyone under your care as a medic is thrilled to hear that,” said Mercy.

Moira just scoffed. “The greatest leaps in evolution were shifts on a cellular level and massive expansions in biodiversity. I saw the world within an evolutionary funnel... in the midst of our own anthropocentric mass extinction event, and a severe reduction in human biodiversity from the severe population drop from the Omnic crisis. We needed an edge. A cellular edge. I thought, what if our form as multicellular organisms wasn’t static? What if we could move beyond the movements of our bodies as dictated by our own somatotopy? What might we be able to do with the neuro-cellular capabilities of a cephalopod while still maintaining our highly advanced abstract reasoning capabilities? What if we could push that cellular control even further than that?”

“Cephalo--You wanted us to be like octopuses?” Mercy’s voice pitched up.

“Well in terms of balancing abstract problem solving and extremely refined control of the physical body...” said Moira. She made eye contact with Mercy. “Oh don’t give me that look.”

“I highly doubt Reyes would agree to a trial of your treatments because he wanted to be more like an octopus,” said Mercy, flatly.

“He wouldn’t,” said Moira, “He turned to me because other members of the SEP program--surviving members of the SEP program-- were dying.”

Mercy blinked several times, “No, the US government--”

“Had blacked out all history of the SEP program for fear of other country’s replicating it... but that couldn’t stop its effects,” said Moira, “The adaptability of nanites would mean Gabriel would be capable of producing NK cells at will to fight any cancerous incursions---he’s not just a ‘Smoke monster’ Angela. The nanites function close to stem cells--in fact they’re even more adaptable. They were going to be his best defense against any potential cancers or organ failure from the SEP serum.”

“...so the current state of necrosis in his body--” Mercy started.

“Has essentially metastasized throughout his body because of the nanites and more and more organic components of his body are being destroyed by nanites because the sick cells are recognized as threats to the whole, yes, I know,” said Moira, “You’re all caught up. Happy?”

“I--well... that’s a start,” said Mercy.

A long pause passed between them.

“He got it for Jack’s sake, too, didn’t he?” said Mercy, watching a nanite cell attack a sickly organic cell on the screen, “He’d test it out on himself first so that if the SEP serum ever started negatively affecting Jack...”

“That goes without saying,” said Moira, stiffly.

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” said Mercy, “Watching people you care about... collapse despite everything you--”

“I don’t give a damn about your bedside manner or your pathetic attempts to build a rapport,” said Moira, “I’ve heard all your cute little speeches at the UN long enough to know that you’re a parking boot on the wheels of progress, so stop wasting Gabriel’s time and just do what you were brought here to do.”

“This is really upsetting you, isn’t it?” said Mercy.

“If it is, we had bloody well better fix it, shouldn’t we?” said Moira, her withered hand flexing at her side.

Mercy bit the inside of her lip, realizing she wouldn’t be able to buy herself too much time deliberating with Moira. And pushing Moira would probably just end up with her in another biotic grip or worse.

“I’ll need samples,” said Mercy, “Blood, urine, spinal fluid if you have it--” she perked up, “Marrow! His-”

“His bone wasn’t decomposing as fast as the rest of him,” said Moira, her head lifting up,” she furrowed her brow slightly, “An unpleasant procedure, but he should be stable enough for it. I have his blood and spinal fluid on ice and it shouldn’t take too long to get the urine but.. a marrow sample might provide new data.”

“Good,” said Mercy, looking back at the screen, “That’s good.” Another long silence passed between them as Moira stooped over her lab terminal and typed in a few commands to begin preparations for the marrow extraction procedure. “I--Just so you know, despite... despite all the horrible things he’s done, all the horrible things he’s letting you do, I do want to help him,” said Mercy.

“Oh I know you do. You always did. See where that got him,” said Moira.

[vroenis]

Circa 2009 - 2019

Lede with a picture, righto...

In true style, that’s going to deter the lot, but gotta stay on brand.

To have this discussion, we’re going to need a list. A musical timeline of sorts with the exception of four key events;

2002 Balance 003 (compiled and mixed by Bill Hamel) 2008 Jóhann Jóhannsson, Fordlandia 2009 Telefon Tel Aviv,  Immolate Yourself 22nd January - Charles Cooper dies Tosca, No Hassle Hildur Guðnadóttir, Without Sinking

2010 Jóhann Jóhannsson,  And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound Of Bees 2011 Bon Iver, self titled 2012 Bat For Lashes, The Haunted Man 2013 13th January - Kentucky Route Zero Act I is first released Andrew Bayer, If It Were You, We'd Never Leave Darkside, Psychic The Haxan Cloak, Excavation 2014 Siavash Amini, Til Human Voices Wake Us 2015 Björk, Vulnicura Siavash Amini, Subsiding Jóhann Jóhannsson, Sicario (original soundtrack)

2016 The 1975, I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It 2017 Björk, Utopia Siavash Amini, TAR 2018 9th February - Jóhann Jóhannsson dies 29th June - Bill Hamel dies Andrew Bayer, In My Last Life The 1975, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships Siavash Amini, FORAS Skee Mask, Compro 2019 Siavash Amini, SERUS Apparat, LP5 Telefon Tel Aviv, Dreams Are Not Enough

While I’ve added a precursor of two albums to give context to two of the events that happen in the timeline, it is effectively book-ended by the two most recent albums from Telefon Tel Aviv. These albums form a frame in which so many things have happened - in my life, and seemingly in the lives of others. Some clearly in the events so evident and unavoidable, painfully so and still lingering in the minds and emotions of those they directly affect and us in the periphery who only have the most faintest of contact yet still seem to perceive ourselves significantly touched. By this I mean the death of Charles Cooper - if I feel devastated, having only ever been had an impression of his character via the channel of his art, there isn’t a universe in which I can possibly imagine what Joshua Eustis’ daily experience is, so I can’t and won’t speak to it.

And I guess that’s where the story begins.

In 2009 my best friend who remains so to this day plays me Immolate Yourself for the first time - bearing in mind they and I are slightly different people, probably me more-so than they. Our tastes in music have always been fairly broad. We’ve never been haters of pop-music at all, they’ve always embraced pop more than I but I’ve always appreciated pop. In by brief stint industry-side when I was professionally working, I did form an appreciation for the labour, but in general I still maintain a high appreciation for the craft. In any industry there will always be a valuable critique of culture and bad culture exists everywhere. We must always work to protect the vulnerable at all times, no excuses, and erode imbalances of power.

Back to 2009. The album blows us both away and I’m fairly confident in speaking for us both, changes us forever. We both have immense music libraries having purchased music constantly from young ages, but no matter what we cycle through or have in rotation, Immolate Yourself has always been evergreen. Not to say it’s in daily rotation constantly - it’s not exactly that kind of album. It’s highly emotionally charged and a demanding listen, and sometimes I am listening to it once a day for a given period, but it certainly is highly mood-dependent - more-so than some of the other music in my collection which is completely fine in that not all art has to be hitting at that level.

I remember our conversations about Charles, how shattered we were, our conversations about suicide, mental health - please be aware that at the time, it was rumoured Charles Cooper’s death was due to suicide but later several reports ruled that it wasn’t. That’s that. The purpose of bringing it up is to give context to R and my discussions. Some years prior I had my own mental health diagnosis clarified and had seen some improvements on and off with my personal management, but the rigours of life still presented challenges significant enough to cause extreme frustration, anger and anxiety. I’d say these days, in the year of our Synth Lordz 2020, I’m doing much better and on better medication management and that would still be true.

I don’t go looking for articles or interviews with Joshua Eustis about what his life has been life at all or how things are for him now. I do follow him on twitter and we’ve had a few great, unrelated exchanges. When I bought and had my first listen-through of Dreams Are Not Enough last year, I told him I wanted to delete the rest of my music collection which of-course is hyperbole and he knows that, but as I’ve mentioned elsewhere (this almost always means Instagram), I always want to have these extreme responses to art. It doesn’t have to be all the time, but it has to be at regular intervals, even if they’re separated by long periods of time. Art is so important to me. Sometimes I joke - love you don’t have to work to receive,  but art takes labour. Maybe I’m not joking (typical artist wank :P )

Apparat (Sascha Ring) was one of those artists I never bought back in 2009 but he was always in the playlists, always at the festivals. Maybe he did remixes? Or his music was being remixed. I dug his stuff, it was pretty cool, but back then he was probably in the periphery for me. He, like many for me, faded into the background. Because I follow Joshua/Telefon on Twitter, I randomly see a retweet or an exchange between him and Apparat, probably about software or plugins etc., and think far-out, Apparat’s still around... and he released an album in March (2019). I’m going to go have a bit of a listen and if it’s good HOLY SHIT...

To help me characterise what I hear when I listen to LP5, I’ve included a very important album from Tosca, interestingly released at the beginning of our bookend; No Hassle. I don’t really know what the zeitgeist is on this album, but my completely uninformed instinct is to say it’s not popular. For me, tho, No Hassle is absolutely divine. It’s an astonishing listen because it’s in some ways *unexciting* - it’s a severely sober listen. There’s next to no energy in it at all, even when Richard and Rupert dare to tilt into a major key, they’re still listlessly meandering along as if they got up too late or are still sitting in an old sofa or are just happy enough to be strolling and the conversation is good enough at a moderate level before we head back down as the sun sets and the night swallows everything up. It’s an album I listen to almost exclusively in the car during night drives, or in either my house or in hotels, airports, any other environment but always when it’s dark. Cheesily I call these works “Midnight Albums”, and I tend to characterise them as serious listening, when I’m feeling meditative, pensive, neutral, dead-sticking, however you may wish to describe the sensation.

LP5 is along very similar veins for me and it strikes me as extremely interesting. Sascha didn’t exactly disappear for 10 years, his wiki page lists two other albums in 2011 and 2013 respectively as well as other collaborations and work, but to me, just the sound of this album strikes me as particularly unique to being distinct from the years gone by. That sounds like a redundant statement - that might be true of everything altho with art I often don’t think that’s the case at all, but when I first heard LP5, I thought Sascha - shit’s happened to you. I don’t know what it is, but then I figure...

Shit’s happened to us all.

Anyone well inducted into the Anjunabeats cult (lol it’s a joke, you can laugh - I’m a fellow cultist) of trance will be familiar with Andrew Bayer. A good thing the Anjuna label seems to be doing and more of of late, is funnelling some of their phat stacks of cash to their talent so they can actually record full albums if they wish, a venture which I’m sure isn’t profitable for them in any way unless they go on tour, contingent of-course on the material being shoppable. I’m sure that makes Spencer Brown a darling - not having a go at him, I love both his albums to death, they’re amazing, but I genuinely don’t think there’s any pressure on the artist to produce tourable music. I feel Andrew has the latitude to do whatever he wants, and he works at the shoppable remixes because it’s fun for him and they have a wonderful community of talent in constant contact with one another so the opportunities are there.

In 2013, Andrew Bayer releases his album which upon hearing I instantly buy. It’s a pretty neat departure from all things trance - it’s beaty, synthy, broken samples and pushing at ambient at times. Then I get to the amazing last track titled “Closing Act”. This is 100% without question inspired by and styled after the music of Jóhann Jóhannsson.

On the 9th of February, 2018, Jóhann Jóhannsson dies.

I’ve just come back from stepping away from this writing for about two hours. I appreciate people interact with art, artists, performers and people of varying level of exposure (read: celebrities) in different ways so let’s just bypass any discussion of how other people behave. It’s fine. As for me, I try to maintain what I believe to be a healthy sense of distance from people of cultural note. They’re still people; human beings, and I don’t know them. Actors and musicians had died before, artists I’d “grown up with”, admired etc., but Jóhann‘s death struck me with force. It still haunts me.

Why?

I don’t know him. I never knew him. For all I know, he may have been an arsehole to everyone around him. I had to and still interrogate my emotional response and I very much do it with the greatest of intent. Is it stupendously capitalist? Am I so entrenched in my lust for his music? His product? That is literally all I can say I know of him; what he produced - what he gave, what he offered. Is it because I want more? No - not really. There are artists still alive who have chosen not to offer more and I have no problem accepting this. There are artists who have more to offer and aren’t able to due to the economics of power and the power of economics and I’m certainly angry about that while they’re alive. I grieved for Jóhann. I was so upset. I shut myself in my studio and cried.

In some way, regardless of not knowing anything at all about the circumstances of his death, I felt that we had all failed.

Knowing even in the smallest element that mental health was a contributing factor to his life and death leads me to make assumptions about the kind of world he may have existed in, what his experience may have been. Regardless of whatever differences there might be between his experiences, now finite, and my own, I still believe there is justification to draw parallels. Not because he’s semi-famous, but because we are both humans, and that it is known he struggled with mental health. It is as much about known, documented and shared stories of services, medications and social experiences as it is about everything that is unspoken that all people with mental health concerns know. We may not know to what degree we might have commonalities, but the one thing we may have in common is that there are so many things we cannot share - speak, or expose, and there are things at times we feel we must not expose in order to survive. It is at this point I must emphasise that health professionals will always dispense such advise as “You’re never alone/you never have to carry burdens alone” etcetera etcetera and I value the intention in such actions. I’m here to appreciate the goodwill behind such advice, but purely by nature of existence, we are each of us alone - this is not an emotional fact, this is simply reality. You cannot inhabit our bodies and minds and live our lives for us - nor can you overcome our physiological concerns internally on our behalf. You can offer us medications but it is still we who have to bear the process of evaluating whether we can endure the experience of synthesising them. 

Professionals need to always respect that fact and never forget it.

This is key when I interrogate my emotional response and reaction to Jóhann Jóhannsson‘s death. I don’t know what treatments he may have been receiving but I also don’t know what his life experience was, because treatment in and of itself is less than one half of the equation, perhaps not even a third. The total texture of a human’s experience is woven from so many fibres; and one of them is the cultural response of the people surrounding them, from the immediate individuals to generalised language in use within earshot to advertising unwillingly overheard to adopted via accepted use over time to idioms adopted when people have literally no idea what words mean and what they can mean and how they can directly affect others.

Am I blaming this nebulous spectre of Society? Of-course not. Am I wanting to focus a microscope on the microcosm of communities within this idea of Society or induce guilt on individuals? Also no. But there is still a sensation of endemic guilt and carelessness that we do not make better attempts, perhaps not even to approach a comprehensive understanding of mental health, but at least to triage some of the casual damage we do by being completely careless with it with poor cultural practice. It’s such a difficult thing to speak to because the terms are at one moment so specific and yet the next so generalised. What are we to do? How can we improve when it’s no-one’s fault and yet everyone’s fault? How can we be effective if we want to discard useless, terrible and outdated ideas like blame and backwards accountability and yet we haven’t even begun to understand how the shape of our behaviour is having such devastating effects?

The cost is literally human life.

The interrogation goes further. Why only Jóhann? Why don’t I mourn every death? At the risk of diverting to whataboutism, it’s still worth asking, because it’s clear I valued his life because of his art, and it can’t be avoided that I list Bill Hamel for the same reason. Balance 003 is for me the best collection of minimal trance in history and there has never been another since, the genre has evolved and as yet has not been revisited. Bill himself joined with some friends to work on some more upbeat and detailed music but then himself died in June of 2018, but I wasn’t to find out for months and again, was shattered. I didn’t know Bill either but there were more anecdotal accounts of his personality available online, and they certainly were glowing and positive, and that’s how I think of him - fondly, regardless of not knowing him.

Later in 2018 Andrew Bayer released his next album. It’s a collection of vocal pieces, and the final song is titled End Of All Things. Eerily but welcomed, many of its musical stylings begin to resemble Jóhann Jóhannsson‘s, and Alison May lends her voice to lyrics that include the following;

Roll down the aisle You were bold to go first With a fist to the earth

I don’t like to quote a lot of lyrics, and you can look the rest of them up if you want, but if you do, like me, you might interpret the song to be about death. I don’t know if Andrew Bayer wrote this for Jóhann Jóhannsson, or only for him or at all. He probably wrote it for someone else entirely, probably someone he actually personally knew. Maybe he just wrote it about death in general. It doesn’t matter because for me it was the first catalyst in musical form for processing Jóhann Jóhannsson‘s death in some dimension. It wouldn’t be until much later, when Justin/Telefon Tel Aviv retweeted Siavash Amini that I’d find art as powerful as  Jóhann's and Andrew’s and of-course Justin’s own, but each artist is their own texture and I listen to them all in different ways when in different moods.

2019 - Dreams Are Not Enough

There is so much more writing I can do with this short list of albums. I’m at 2800+ words and I’ve barely scratched the surface. That first, dull image at the top of the piece is the directory structure of my music collection, replicated on the hard-drive that goes into my car and on my personal music player - I don’t use my phone for music. While I do listen to music from every directory over time, of late I’m gravitating more and more to two main folders; Ultimate and Survival, and almost all of the music from the list in this piece comes from those two directories with only one or two exceptions.

I’m a bit miffed I didn’t get to write about The 1975, there’s some great stuff to be said about their work and I’ve written about them before, but I have so much more to say, especially culminating with Love It If We Made It as a generational, cultural proclamation. We’re on the verge of the new album tho (time of writing is 29th February 2020) so who knows, maybe I’ll get the opportunity to be topical with that but knowing me, I’ll still bury it behind a wall of text but that will be for the better, I’m sure.

I need to close on Dreams Are Not Enough, tho, and also Kentucky Route Zero. I think I’ve mentioned it before - completing Kentucky Route Zero was the catalyst for me to start writing again, and it’s there in the timeline that the first act released in January of 2013. Last tumblr entry, I briefly touched on being in a holding pattern until KRZ was completed by its developer, Cardboard Computer, and since completing it, I’ve gone off socials which means I’ve greatly diminished my activity on social media and returned to long-format writing. This entry and the last on tumblr are very much evidence of that. Way back in 2013 when I first completed that first act, Kentucky Route Zero was one of those seminal experiences I felt was made just for me. After years of playing all sorts of traditional video games, I’d grown tired of their play dynamics in many senses. I still liked traditional games, and in some ways still do now, but I will always hunger for boundaries to be pushed, for greater things to be said, for things to be said and done in conjunction and in parallel; in layers and simultaneously; artfully, with complexity and subtlety, or with simplicity but with great humanity and maturity. I remember watching Serial Experiments: Lain, the first episode and feeling like it was made just for me, and then that feeling being amplified a million times over with Haibane Renmei and Texhnolyze. There are reasons these works are so rare and so unpopular. Again - I’ll reaffirm I still love a lot of pop and there’s nothing wrong with generalised and widely celebrated art at all, a lot of it’s cool. But when you find something so unique that speaks so much to your experience in a way that’s powerful to the point of dialect...

That is what Kentucky Route Zero and Porpentine’s Howling Dogs are to me.

That’s what these albums are to me, and Telefon Tel Aviv’s albums somehow have book-ended this period in my life. Each album captures a facet of turbulence, of emotion, probably a little bit of joy, or chaos and a healthy dose of hedonism too, but I have other music for that and I tend not to talk about it much. I’m sure joy and euphoria can be complicated for others and that’s cool, but it’s not something I feel drawn to discuss.

All of this art, this Art Worth Dying For, seems to be the only thing I can engage with at the moment, in the wake of completing Kentucky Route Zero. I have shooty shooty games sitting on the Playstation that I once did really enjoy and probably will again, I don’t know. But right now I can’t bear the thought of booting them up. I think about some of the films I was keen to see some months ago and right now they look like noise, indistinct, boring to the point of textureless, falvourless null-space. I don’t mean to insult these works in any way at all, I’m not trying to diminish their value by saying by comparison to KRZ, they’re bad. Not at all. I don’t seem to be able to process them. The closest thing I can describe is the kind of mood disorders, dysthymia being one of them, doctors used to try and diagnose me with before they knew I was bipolar; a literal chemical barrier that’s preventing me from comprehending and interpreting the data I’m being presented with. I’ve lost hold of the cultural frame I’m supposed to have to understand how to place these objects in reference to my sense of entertainment and engagement.

So instead I come here and talk to myself with barely an objective in mind, other than to perhaps share my thoughts with you. And some music that I’m hoping you’ll buy. I know I’m a pain in the arse for that, and I know buying music is an immensely privileged thing to be able to do - I get it. You don’t have to buy everything right away, but if you want me to make a case for it, let me know and I will, I’ll even make a case for small steps i.e., even when you can’t afford much and how to spend a really tiny amount. Otherwise proceed as normal and click onto the next visual diary, nothing to see here.