#anyways trying to stick it out for a year so i can get a clinic or hospice job

[bisexualalienss]

yeah and i’m one of them

[saintsenara]

How has being a doctor influenced your writing or ig your viewpoints/person? Currently I’m a med student - haven’t really come across many doctors who also write ff (perhaps I’m not talking to the right people haha). Can you tell me a little more about what meds like for you?

thank you for the ask, anon - and i hope your training is going well.

i'm not going to talk about my speciality etc., for internet safety reasons, and i've received another ask which i will one day get around to answering on wizarding medicine as a science. but i will talk about how medicine has affected my experience in fandom and influenced my writing.

my writing process looks, i think, fairly ruthless from the outside. i’m not somebody who tends to agonise over things like word choice, i never have anything beta-read or seek advice on plot lines as i’m writing, i don’t need little routines or dedicated time to write (i’m a whenever and wherever girly), i hit publish and move on, and i’m generally good at not getting upset by criticism. and that decisiveness is undoubtedly a skill which has been honed by working in medicine, but, like other aspects of my personality which affect both my writing and my career - e.g. that i’m extremely good under pressure, someone with good intuition, able to hyperfocus, a lateral thinker, possessed of a very strong stomach, someone who doesn’t need to stick rigidly to a routine, and emotionally resilient - i’ve always been like this.

and i’ve also always been someone who has a preference for characters who aren’t the good guys.

my writing tends to favour the flawed, the lonely, the grieving, the furious, the self-destructive, and so on. i find the virtuous quite boring, and i really dislike the puritanical streak which a lot of fandom discourse (and, indeed, all media discourse) has developed in recent years. i think it’s incredibly dangerous that liking particular themes, tropes, or characters in fan-fiction has come to be equated with the reader’s real-world views and morals, and i think it’s equally dangerous for us to have any assumption that moral purity is possible from either fictional or real people.

that i think this is partially because i’m not fourteen - i remember well the righteousness of youth, and i’m glad that social media wasn’t anywhere near as pervasive then - and i am sympathetic to the fact that a lot of this purity discourse is just teens trying to self-actualise. but it’s also because it’s something that is completely impossible to do as a doctor if you’d like to be capable of doing your job properly. you will never have a perfect patient, you will never like a perfect character, you will treat them anyway.

when you’re training, i think it’s easy to end up with the assumption that your difficult patients will either have reasons for their difficulties which are so understandable that you can have compassion for them with ease (e.g. the nice young person being slowly locked-in by als who lashes out in grief and rage at how their life is being cut short) or so cartoonishly malicious that you will enter a state of clinical detachment and treat them with nothing more than cool professionalism (e.g. the elderly racist who refuses to be treated by a black doctor). and you certainly will have lots of patients who fit these extremes of the spectrum.

but you will mostly have people who are very messy and complicated and human. who will be incredibly unpleasant and yet will also tug at your heartstrings. who will be in pain and will be afraid and will be funny and interesting and grieving and who will also have done things in their lives which are horrifying.

your patients will be cruel. they will be sleazy. they will treat the nurses with contempt (do not be the sort of doctor who does the same). they will be bigoted. they will be rude. they will be annoying. they will be sly. they will lie to you. they will be malicious. the list is endless. you will treat them anyway.

your patients will make bad decisions again and again - the sixty-a-day smoker who needs oxygen to breathe is probably still going to light up the second they’re out of the building, the person who barely survived covid because they didn’t get the vaccine is going to continue to refuse to take precautions to protect themselves - and you will both be infuriated and you will understand how it’s never as simple as just not making that bad decision. you will treat them anyway.

your patients will choose to be and to remain ill-informed - they will tell you that vaccines can turn children trans, or that the pharmaceutical industry is suppressing the truth that homoeopathic remedies cure cancer - and you will both be infuriated and you will understand how it’s never as simple as just changing your worldview overnight. you will treat them anyway.

your patients will end up in hospital for reasons which are directly and incontrovertibly their own fault - they will be the eighteen-year-old who thought they’d be fine to drive after a couple of drinks and has now killed their friend and given themselves irreversible brain damage, they will be the drug dealer who got stabbed by a rival in a robbery-gone-wrong - and you will both be infuriated and you will understand how it’s never as simple as making a different choice when so much in life is a coin-toss. you will treat them anyway.

your patients will end up in hospital and also be bad people - they will be the child molestor brought in from prison in cardiac arrest, they will be the parents who went to the bar rather than watch their child in the pool and are now having to be told that all resuscitation attempts have failed - and you will both be infuriated and you will understand that even the very worst people in the world can be afraid and in pain. you will treat them anyway.

you will also learn a very important lesson: it is tremendously easy to kill someone. you will see one failure to check the mirrors while driving, one punch in a pub brawl, one bump of mdma offered to a friend on a night out, one instance of seeing red, one split-second decision which takes a life. and you will recognise that the killer probably thought of themselves as a good person, but that isn’t how this works. because, of course, the cold, hard truth is that you probably think of yourself as a good person. but you’re going to kill someone too.

not intentionally - i hope - but you are going to act too slowly to begin treatment, or be convinced that someone’s pain can’t be as bad as they say and triage them wrongly, or assume that a patient with dozens of instances on their records of trying to score opiates by claiming to have abdominal pain is lying again, or think that you know better than the patient and their family, or be misled by the charming demeanour of people who are abusing their children. you are going to make a mistake in surgery, or because the lab was backed up, or because you’re tired, or because a&e is at breaking point. and somebody is going to die because of it.

the only thing you can do to stave off that inevitability for as long as possible is to never believe yourself infallible. don’t think of yourself as flawless, or righteous, or moral, or a brilliant genius who works alone. question your expectations; examine your biases; listen to patients properly; be aware of the realities of medical misogyny, racism, and ableism and never think yourself incapable of them; show your unpleasant patients as much compassion as your nice ones; be good to the nurses - they will save your bacon - and be just as good to the porters and the cleaners and the people who work in the morgue; stay educated; inform yourself about the actual experience of people who have, for example, been sectioned, or otherwise treated without respect by the medical system; leave your own problems at the door when you step onto the ward; don’t keep silent if you think one of your colleagues is dangerous; get a second opinion whenever you need to; accept that failure is inevitable; keep trying. recognise that nothing and nobody is ever simple. treat them anyway.

so too in your life in fandom. never think that you alone have spotless interests, nor that your favourite characters are flawless. examine why tropes or interpretations of characters which allow them to be imperfect make you uncomfortable; examine your biases - is your slash heteronormative? is your portrayal of a non-white character stereotypical?; be nice to your commenters, and take as much as you can of what they say in good faith; remember that people writing fic are real and have complex motivations and experiences; regard it as your duty to confront portrayals of the violent and the cruel with as much compassion as you can; keep writing. recognise that nothing and nobody is ever simple. write them anyway.

[onyourowndaisymae]

blog update

hi! it's been awhile since i've posted anything substantial. some of you might have noticed that progress for the "when they fall in love" series has halted, that only little drabbles or shitposts have been posted as of late, etc etc-- i want to say my peace and get it all out there.

to make a long story short, blog posts will be slowing way down to accommodate for my declining health, but i am still looking to post drabbles and such until i am healthier. kink/flufftober prompts will be pushed back to a do-over kink/flufftober when i have the energy to do so. my "personal" blog is @oopsiedaisymae and that's where i'll be moving most of my reblogs, likes, mutual following, etc etc so follow there if you want to see my nonsense. this blog will not be shutting down. y'all are stuck with me.

to make a long story long... (cw for chronic illness, nausea, unintentional disordered eating, american nonsense)

last year, during finals season in college, i got sick as fuck with a stomach infection. since then, i have quite literally never been the same. i went from being a normal student to being plagued with abdominal pain, constant nausea (and i'm emetophobic so that sucked SO much ass) and being unable to leave the house some days. i've had ups and downs with my health since-- some days i can eat semi-normal, other days i'd be completely unable to stomach anything solid. as of now, we're on the worse end of that spectrum.

also around this time, i lost my health insurance. so the entirety of this calendar year i haven't had insurance, and although my primary care clinic is cheap, my issues are beyond what a primary care clinic can provide. because i'm in america, an uninsured trip to the ER would quite literally bankrupt me. so i've been waiting on insurance to get said proper medical care. i'm hoping that'll come sooner rather than later-- my birthday is next month and i'd like to not be in the hospital when it comes around!

with all of this, i have (understandably) not been eating well and have lost a significant amount of weight. eating hurts, and trying to eat a healthy amount makes me incredibly nauseated and in pain. the question every day is: do i want to not be in pain but be unable to think, or do i suffer physically to have some mental capacity for the day? it's a lose-lose situation.

this has really upset me bc writing has always been a place to escape to as my life falls apart, but now even stringing together words is hard. i want to write. before this most recent batch of hell i was stringing together a masterlist for kinktober, but i can't even finish the pieces i was already working on bc i can't think. shit sucks.

anyways. all this to say: once i get proper medical care, it's over for you hoes. i will start posting full-length fics again once i am able. in the mean time, expect little drabbles here and there. i will be hosting my do-over kinktober and flufftober events when i am able, even if that shit means i'm posting in may or something. i will be dicking around on @oopsiedaisymae, my personal blog, in the mean time. oh, and i'm into twisted wonderland now, too. so expect content for that when i come back in full swing.

i think that's everything. if i have anything else to say, i'm sure i'll mention it. in the mean time, feel free to explore my blog or my mutuals' blogs to get your writing content fill. thanks for sticking around :) mwah.

[jellyjays]

MK1 Whiplash AU

yeah, i'll think of anything, won't i....

anyways yes i'm talking about the whiplash with jk simmons. the jazz movie. the parallels between andrew / fletcher and reiko / shao was too much for my brain to handle.

to be truthful, the thought that led to this AU was "reiko would be a fucking incredible jazz drummer i feel it in my soul" and then i thought about whiplash and then i exploded.

so uh. more under the cut?

so to outline this AU:

reiko was orphaned at like 8/9. the foster system is kinda fucked, and he lashes out constantly at the foster parents who try to help him, scared and alone and traumatized from seeing his parents' death. he gets placed in a halfway house for 'behavioral issues' and it just so happens that this halfway house has an old drumkit in the basement. it's somewhat rudimentary, but it has everything you might need.

reiko, with no other option, sits at the thing one night and picks up a pair of sticks laying around. and from then on, that's his outlet. he relies... heavily on it. it's every waking moment that he's not in school or sleeping or eating. he's at the drumset, practicing. playing over the songs in the vinyl collection, playing over the songs in his ipod. every bit of music he can get his hands on, he's playing over it, mimicking what the drummers he can hear do.

the vinyls in the basement are all old jazz. a wide arrangement of it, from blues to latin to bossa nova to new orleans parade, but it's all jazz. that's what he grow up with, on, that's his formative influence. buddy rich, jo jones, art blakely, tony williams-- the drummers on these old vinyls are his heroes.

by the time he's in high school, his 'behavioral issues' have toned down massively-- he is largely fine. as long as you don't separate him from the drumset. he hasn't moved from the halfway house-- protested STRONGLY at being separated from both his drumset and the vinyls. by protested strongly i mean he nearly attacked some people over it.

when he's in high school, he joins the jazz band freshman year. he's in it every year until graduation.

this story starts, though, when a guest clinician-- dr shao kohn-- shows up to work with the band in reiko's sophomore year.

dr kohn teaches at the local community college, but is highly regarded across the country. he's professor of jazz studies and director of the highly prestigious auditioned jazz ensemble at this community college.

upon seeing the INCREDIBLE talent and potential of reiko during that clinic at the high school, shao invites reiko to come join the jazz ensemble at the college. he's young, but if he can make time in his schedule for it next school year, he'd get the chance to really challenge and prove himself.

reiko does. and starting 1st of august that year, he's giving his early mornings and late evenings to rehearsals with this ensemble and individual lessons with dr kohn. he's giving everything he fucking has to this band, and it shows. he's improving at rates he never had before, he's better than most college players doing this for a career.

and shao keeps pushing for more. and reiko keeps striving to fucking give. more, more, better, better.

to be truthful, he would probably be failing all his classes if it weren't for raiden, the only kid other than maybe kung lao who'll put up with him at school. raiden tutors him in the subjects he's falling behind in (all of them really) so he doesn't get held back or something.

all the while, shao pushes reiko for more, better. he's never satisfied, and that is not acceptable in reiko's eyes. he's never had someone he wanted to impress before, an adult he actually cares for the opinion of. and fuck, does he find he cares. he cares a lot. he's trying so hard to meet expectations, he's falling apart at the seams.

i don't know how i'd want this whole thing to end, but. i hate shao and i like happy endings so. shrug.

[clatterbane]

I had another routine endocrinology check-in appointment the other day, this time with a different specialist nurse. The doctor I had been seeing here left and apparently moved back to Cyprus (I knew she was going not long after my last appointment), so I apparently got shuffled over to a different team. The next appointment up, whenever that is, will evidently be with that other doctor. At least they are assigning one per case there, instead of "you'll see whoever is available on the day, and better act suitably grateful for it". It's still a crapshoot, but at least not a fresh one every single time you go in.

Anyway, as always I went in halfway expecting a bitch-out session. Crammed full of weird assumptions about everything that I must be Doing Wrong as a substitute for actual help, however divorced from reality those assumptions might be. (Not least, by just being a lazy fat whiny American. I mean, I am very obviously American.)

Note: This has never actually happened at this clinic, to date. Thankfully, they did not ruin that record at this appointment. I was also going in without much for anyone else to complain about.

What I actually got: Surprise at how unexpectedly good all my numbers were looking, now that I am getting appropriate treatment. With a quick review to make sure I had all the prescriptions I needed until they want me back, and to make sure I didn't have any particular questions. Went away in maybe 15 minutes (5 of that spent waiting for a quick in-office HbA1c finger stick test), with a sadly gratifying"You're doing great! Don't change anything!"

Funny how that works when you're actually getting the tools you need to manage things, eh? 🙄

(I was unsurprised that the quick A1c came back at 4.3 / 23, which was actually the highest so far over the past few years of regular testing but still well into the "unexpectedly low even for a nondiabetic" range. My CGM data has been estimating it at a more plausible 5.5-5.6 based on blood sugar readings, which is still in "nondiabetic levels of control" territory. There has consistently been something screwy going on there since I was initially dx'ed 15+ years ago, with implausibly low A1c numbers the whole time. They have been trying to figure out what might be affecting my red blood cell/hemoglobin turnover here--thus, some of the extra blood tests the last endo kept running. Still haven't figured it out, since there are so many things that can possibly influence that in one direction or the other. My best guess is that at least part of it is related to the Gilbert's, with the naturally high bilirubin. Anemia probably hasn't been doing that much good, either. Though I think that has improved with the iron supplements the endo actually gave me. Whatever might be behind the hemoglobin weirdness, it's been going on for many years and hasn't killed me yet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Anyway, I was more relieved than I should have ever needed to be at how that appointment went. Here's hoping that the different doctor they've assigned me to won't be a complete dick either.

[brunchbitch]

thought i would do an update since it's been a while!

9/27/23

things are going well with settling in to seattle! i'm doing lots of wedding stuff - got measured for my dress and had a makeup trial last week so it's starting to feel real! 10 months from today! next steps are sending out save the dates and deciding on catering, which will be fun bc we get to taste test everything.

a is doing well! he is taking a creative writing course that starts this week, and hockey starts this week as well. the seattle kraken have an adult league with over 100 teams (!!). he had tryouts (i almost wrote auditions lol) a couple weeks ago and got placed in the second highest division! i'm excited to go see some games, but the first one is tomorrow night at 10:45!!!! so if that's any indication of average game times, maybe i won't make it lol.

it has been raining every day for about five days now... it's reminding me of one of the hardest parts of living in seattle. i need to invest in a happy lamp and get some vitamin d.

as for the job front, i'm feeling frustrated and, before calling the DOH this morning, very confused about my path towards being a licensed independent clinical social worker (licsw). the requirements are pretty different in seattle. you start out getting licensed as a social worker associate advanced (lswaa), which basically means i have the necessary education but haven't gotten required post grad supervision to apply for the next level, which is a licensed advanced social worker (lasw). i'm required to obtain 3200 hours of supervised experience under an licsw which, full time, would be about a year and a half. then i apply to be an lasw, and once i'm approved i can take my sw generalist exam. THEN to become an licsw, i need 4000 additional supervised hours (~2 years full time). so 3.5 years working full time before i can get my licsw, and then have to take the clinical exam. in ma, it would've taken 2 years to get my licsw. i'm not sure why wa state requires so much more, but it explains why the pay ranges have been higher than what i expected.

i've been studying for the exam, bc that's what would be the next step in boston. so that was wasted time lol. hopefully some of it will stick in my brain so i'm not starting from square one when i start studying again in ~a year and a half. so now i really need to just focus on getting a job. i've had one interview and they never even got back to me. i probably would've turned down the job anyway (not exactly what i was looking for - a lot of independent time and not much of an ability to collaborate with other social workers, which i think is important being a new grad), but it still would've been nice to be offered the job lol. i've been getting so discouraged but trying to remind myself that something will work out eventually. even if i hate the job, i can stick it out until i get my supervised hours at least. and then i can look elsewhere.

i have a screening today for a job that is pretty close by my house. it's a primary care center that serves a lot of people who have high resource needs. i was hoping for a more acute setting (like inpatient hospital), but it does seem some of the patients would be pretty acute. so we'll see how the screening goes.

mental health is good - i've really appreciated being able to see L again. still smoking a shit ton, which concerns her, but trying to do better this week.

luna and lia are good - they've definitely adjusted. lia is sleeping on top of her cat tree right now hehe. unfortunately luna is getting a dental done at the vet right now and she had to have two tooth extractions :(. she's had several extractions before due to resorptive lesions, but the last few years her teeth have been good so i was hoping they wouldn't have to take any out. so she'll be on pain medication for a few days, but she's been through that before. i'm going to shower her with love when she gets home!

[popculturebuffet]

Monthly Muppets Madness: The Land of Gorch (Comissioned by WeirdKev27)

It's Monthly Muppet Madness with our special review topic, The Land of Gorch, yayyyyyyy! Courtsey of viewers like you and WeirdKev27.

I give Kev full credit for the idea of this one: after my previous looks at the muppets earliest days, Kev was curious about this odd chapter in their history and having wanted to watch these shorts at some point anyway, I was more than happy to oblige.

For those less familiar, the Land of Gorch was a recurring sketch on Saturday Night LIve during it's first season, just before the Muppet Show's own first season. Yes folks the muppets were live from new york every saturday night for most of it's first season but a combination of the muppet show finally taking off and the writers actively resenting the Land of Gorch's very existance sunk it. So what was this weird experiment and how did it become a milestone in muppet history but a footnote in snls? Join me under the cut to find out!

From the Bubbling Tarpits to the Sulfurous Wasteland…

Henson came to SNL from a place of desperation. What jim had feared from doing Seasame Street was coming true as most in hollywood had no intrest in a show for kids AND adults from the muppets and wrote him off as "kids stuff"

Thankfully Jim had backup from Bernie Brillstien, his agent who looked for more adult venues.. and Bernie just happened to also be the agent for one Lorne MIcheals , as well as Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Gilda Radner, and loving the idea of performing to an adult audience and the chance to shake the Seasame Stigma, Henson jumped to it, getting Frank Oz and Micheal K Frith's help crafting the characters. And Lorne Micheals genuinely loved the idea and was convinced it'd be a massive hit, as he should be: the set design was marvelous, creating a horrifying otherworldly swamp and the muppets were awesomely detailed.

So with all that going for it, what went wrong? Why aren't we seeing a land of Gorch Series on peacock or convention halls filled iwth gorchheads? Simple: the writing. See Jim wasn't ALLOWED to actually write the sketches, as WGA rules meant the SNL staff had to. And their response?

The SNL staff were in clinical terms, snotty little dicks about having to write for the muppets, drawing straws for the job and with Writer MIcheal O'Donahuge being paticuarly childish saying "I don't write for felt" and calling them "Mucking fuppets" and "hairy facecloths" in an interview. Or to sum it up in a line

It was that 'i'm an adult" sensiblity that was at the heart of the conflict: you had in one corner a bunch of 20 year olds who, having read the book Live From New York it's Saturday Night, I can confirm were powered by cocaine to get through the crazy deadlines (somethign that thankfully stopped after the tragedy of JOhn Belushi), and were likely focused on trying to be the most clever and a bunch of more settled middle aged men (jim had FIVE kids by then. Holy shit), who knew what they wanted but couldn't actually execute it. It likely didn't help Jim was exact about what scripts he wanted and thus struggled to find a writer who actually gave a damn. Neither side was bad at what they did, iv'e seen a few early snl sketches, it's not bad stuff and the muppets speak for themselves.. it's just they didn't mesh creatively AT ALL. You can't make good work forcing someone to do something they don't want to do. It's why while i'll review just about anything on comission I will talk to my clients if I feel I just can't give a good review of something. I'd rather change gears and see what else they want than push something out i'm not proud of and I suspect the throw it at the wall and see what sticks nature of SNL, a part of it tha'ts essential, just didn't mesh with the well prepared and throughly thought out muppets. The Land of Gorch only lasted for season 1, with a combo of these issues and Jim FINALLY getting the Muppet Show Greenlit ending it, though they returned for one sketch in season 2 to see the characters off. Despite not really ever taking off though and the Gorch muppets only showing up in cameos after this, it ended up being an important piece of muppet history: Henson may not have made many friends in the writers room, but he made plenty of show biz contacts with at least 7 muppet show guest stars having also appeared during the time LOG was on SNL. He also realized he liked creating a weird fantasy world without humans around, and took the grungy creative part of LOG to create the Dark Crystal.

So now we've seen the messy road to it's creation let's see the messy results!

Episode Guide!

Nothing But Flowers

There aren't any offical titles for these sketches, so i'm just making up my own. You've been warned. If your curious you can find all but one on THIS FACEBOOK PAGE. You can also find them if you have peacock but given i'm on the tier with ads, it was just easier to use the facebook apart from the one episode they didn't have. I"ll mention it when we get here.

So the first episode is….

It introduces most of the cast: King Ploobis (Jim himself), the tyranical ruler of the land and selfish bastard, his nagging wife Queen Peuta (Alice Tweedle), his creepy assitant/viser/wife fucker Scred (Jerry Nelson), his mistress Vazh (Ronda Handsome here, Fran Brill after0 and the Mighty Favog, their god they go to once an episode for advice (Frank Oz). It's easily the slowest paced muppet production i've seen, mostly just stopping to introduce someone else then moving on. It only really gets funny once we get to the Mighty Favog. Oz does a terrific job as usual and the puppet for favog is weirdly expressive despite it's size and the fozzy voice fits a huckster god really well, helped by it sounding just deep enough from fozzy. I just love the concept of him: a god who really offers no helpful advice but will gladly take your money now, with the great catchphrases of "talk to me" and "it'll cost ya". He feels like the only character to actually have a personality, as well as fit BOTH crews style well.

It's the Money or Stop

The kingdom is broke and our heroes need money. Ploobis sells Scred to Favog by shoving him down his hole. I"m not doing the phrasing or goodnight everybody gags here on the grounds that they knew exactly what they were doing. i'm 95% sure scred was into it.

Sunshine Supermuppet

We meet Wiss, Ploobis stoner son played by Richard Hunt. He's high.

So is Favog. That's also the joke. NEXT

Eat It

This one's a bit funnier as Ploobis has eaten his faviorite food to extnction. It's ideas like this I feel got later filtered into the concept for Dinosaurs, another one on my to do list. Maybe later this year. But the idea works well enough as does the solution: Favog asks for a Glig as his payment and then give sit back when he's told the actual problem.

Out of My Headache

Ploobis has a headache. If your wondreing why these are so short it's that most of the cast is REALLY thin. Favog is your standard asshole, Peuta is his nagging wife, Vazh fanservice etc. While Scred isn't much deeper, Nelson really gives the little shit a lot of character and Ploobis annoyance with him and frequent homer simpson esque stranglings are a delight. But otherwise there just isn't a lot to latch onto in these early sketches, which likely didn't help either sides agrivation.

I Got You Babe

This one feels like night and day from the others non favog scenes as it has an interesting premise: Scred has a crush on lily tomlin and has gone to see her: Ploobis and Peuta going thorugh his stuff is fun, and we get a nice rendition of I got you babe from the two. Weirdly Tomlin never did Muppet Show, though she did do seasame street a few times, but she's great at this. She still is: Just look at Grace and Frankie. She's a fucking national treasure. It's also a sign things DO get better.

Everybody's Drunk

This one is fun even if it's VERY low effort: basically Ploobis gets very drunk, forces Scred to get very junk and they go to the Mighty Favog absolutely shitfaced. That's the episode. But unlike the others where I didn't have a lot to say the performances of the two are so hilarious and the sight of a muppet absolutely blotto so rare it carries the episode. It helps this is one of the shorter ones so the thin premise dosen't outstay it's welcome: it's just pure fun.

Christmas Time (Do Let the Bells End)

Another highlight of the series, as King Ploobis throws a Christmas party no one goes to as everyone's at the Killer Bee's party. Fun Fact: I've never seen Killer Bee's sketch. So there's that. It's fun enough especially with the sketch ending with Skred and guest Candice Bergen ditching the party for the Bee's party. It helps these sketches start to zero in more on what worked, i.e. the main duo of ploobis and skred, and their simple but effective act of Ploobis doing the setups, Skred saying something funny, and ploobis threatening to murder him for it.

Sex Lawz

So as set up in a previous episode, Skred is having an affair with the queen who after a few decades of this has decided to have Skred come clean before they get dirty again. Ploobis being who he is is a hypocrite and plans to murder anyone who sleeps with his wife, while Peuta is laso a hypocrite as she's mad her husband's cheating on her while she's doing the same. What i'ms aying is Skred is the most likeable person in the cast next to Favog, who advises Skred to exercise self love.. preferably with some magazines. THere's also a nice joy of sex runner.

Buy Me Toys Skred buys Peuta a sex toy. He struggles to put it together. The episode mercifully ends after it blows up. You know with what Jim can do with his imagination I expected WAY more and way weirder from a muppet sex toy. When I heard the premise of this one I was excited.. which says a lot about me I haven't fully processed, but this one's fully on Jim and Co for not making a better prop.

Honey Queen

A shorter sketcha nd the beginging of the end. For this last batch, the bits get experimental and thankfully get to a place where BOTH creative teams thrive: backstage shenangians. You can see a lot of the muppet show wraparoudns in these bits as the land of gorch muppets, mostly skred, try to get back on the sohw. In this case, Skred shows up as a bee to be in a sketch, only for Gilda Radner to tell him it was canceled. Gilda plays off him VERY well and it's no shock she went on to be on the muppet show. She's great at playing off them. It's also clear alongside Favog Skred was the breakout, and thus gets the most to do in this last stretch. It likely helps his puppet was easier to work in.

Look What I Did To My Id

This one is just .. bad. It's chevy chase dicking around with his hands because ostensibly our heroes are at the grammys. It's clear he didn't really respect what they did. The IDEA isn't bad, having an episode done just with hands, but instead of having Chevy act out a sketch or a parody, he just.. renacts a porn about the milkman because he and the writers coudln't be assed ot come up with actual jokes.

Eeee Eeee Eee Eeeeee DUN DUN DUN DUN dooo.. do do.. do do..

Is this question me and my dad, or Skred and Anthony Perkins? The World will never know

Anthony Perkins, aka Norman Bates, shows up and he's REALLY good. I had no idea he was this funny. He also wrote a murder mystery film, the last of shiela based on parties he threw. Yes really. YOur life is better for knowing that. And this sketch is one of the best, if not my faviorite as the muppets beg for work, with Anthony understandably annoyed as he dosen't actually run the show so he can't help. Skred also cratshes the ensuing sketch, with a great entrance. Easily the highlight.

Don't Start Now

Raquel Welch rebuffs Skred and Plobis hitting on her because there's nothing bellow the waste, possibly the first muppet dick joke and certainly not the last. I also got paid good money to type "muppet dick joke"

Chevy shoes them away then tells Raquel to take her shirt off.

Can't Buy Me Love

Another high point. It's clear these show biz bits just fit better. Favog claims to know the beetles and tries to bullshit our heroes way back onto the show. Not much else to sya, which is a habit here: the sketches can be funny but there just.. isn't a lot to disect. The good oens are just fast paced comedy and the not so good ones are just

Don't Leave Me This Way The ending sketch is my second favioroite and a good exit. The Land of Gorch Crew finds themselves in storage, beomaning how their jobless and how the muppet show has started without them. Lily Tomlin TRIES to find them work, but it's ultaimtely fruitless. IT's kind of a sad ending, but the fun of seeing them LITERALLY ins torage and coming out of cabinets (inclduing Ploobis shoving his way out despite his wife's discomfort given she's just bellow him), and the fact most of them aren't tha tlikeable help. And the muppets all TRYING to whistle is just.. comedy gold. It's clear Jim likely wrote this one or at least got to help more since he was on his way out.

So that was the land of gorch. and it's just kinda there. It has cool loooking muppets, but the clash between both creative teams and the lack of direction leave us with a series of shorts that's mostly filler and then Favog shows up. The last few are pretty damn great and really feel like they came right out of the muppet show, so it's clear Jim was getting his groove.. but it just wasn't built to last. SNL's side bits are better when they have a creative force behind it like Mr. Bill being indy films (with the writer being hired later), or the lovely chaos I need to explore at some point of saturday tv funhouse. and later groups like The Lonely Island and Please Do Not Destroy being built in house, still creatively experimenting, but in a way that fit sthe style of the show more. As it stands the Land of Gorch is just a weird evolutionarly step for the muppets that didn't quite land. Like the wartortle to Muppet Show and Dark Crystla's Blastoise: kinda there but not really.

Next Month: For the first time since I started this BRAND. NEW. MUPPETS. CONTENT. It's Muppets Mayhem baby! Need I say more?

[connie-rubirosa]

I guess you can call me the 3am Mike cutter anon and I’m aware of like his seasons so idm spoilers.

I was going to ramble in the tags of a gif set you did for innocence because I had some Thoughts about the episode but decided against it. My main problem with Emily was that how. How did she NOT tell Mike that he was missing some credits?? Like? That’s so,,,I mean it’s understandable that some credits will fall through because Mike transferred from 3 colleges and different colleges have different standards (I went through that when I transferred to my uni from community college. Good god my uni didn’t have the foreign language I took. Anyway) but like it should be on her to tell Mike. And to use it against him,,,tbf he did kinda bring it on himself for supeona’ing student records and sure use any means necessary but I felt like that was. Going a bit too far. Was he going after the intergreity of Emily’s clinic? Yeah but with good reason (pretty sure a student bribed that witness with money + booze can impair one’s judgement). Did Emily had to bring in Mike’s law license into this? No not rlly. Idk at least Mike kept his law license but 😬😬 god.

hey 3am mike cutter anon! sorry that it's taken me so long to respond but boy am i glad to see you back in my asks again! :)

spoilers for l&o S20E16 "innocence" under the cut:

i am 100% with you on this—i've said it before and i'll say it again, in that episode MIKE DID NOTHING WRONG. sure, like you said, he arguably gets too aggressive going after the clinic with the subpeona. BUT, let's remember the context—emily ryan was trying to overturn a legitimate trial verdict, all of the potentially exculpatory leads were investigated (by lupo and bernard—we see this in the first half of the episode after ryan's first challenge), and there's good reason to believe, as you mentioned, that the "exculpatory" witness was unreliable/bribed. Grade inflation is a potential motive for that behavior, so even though you could argue it's still a bad look for mike, it's not mike's job to play nice if it means putting a homophobic murderer out on the street.

even if you do think mike was going too far, it was absolutely unnecessary for emily ryan to try to tank his career over it. everyone keeps accusing mike of making it personal, when it's emily who made it personal to begin with. she's the first one to make a direct comment to him about "proving" that he still has his chops, to try to "beat" her. she essentially attempts to blackmail mike out of subpeonaing the records, and when he doesn't back down, she punishes him just to show that she can. on top of it all, in the scene at rikers at the end of the episode, she gaslights him by insisting that he was the one who started it. (oh really, emily? she literally says "now let's see if you really did learn something from me" when her first retrial request is granted!!!!!!!)

she's the one who treats it like a competition from the start, and does so until the very end, trying to negotiate a plea deal for a guy she clearly doesn't even believe is innocent (don't get me wrong—i know the whole job of a defense attorney is to be a tireless advocate for whomever they represent, even if they're guilty—but by the end of the episode, she's entirely forgotten the point of the innocence coalition, which is to challenge wrongful convictions, and i truly don't believe she thinks Stuber's conviction was wrongful by the end).

i know credit mishaps happen all the time (like what happened to you, and hell, my mom was missing half a credit when she was supposed to graduate from high school and her counselor just approved her anyway bc it was dumb to make her repeat a year over half a credit), but as his advisor, that was literally her responsibility to him, to make sure everything was in order, and if not, to give him time to fix it. then to hold onto that information to save it for a "rainy day", when she needed to stick it to him..... it's just evil. maybe she was envious of mike's talent in college, maybe she just genuinely fucked up and didn't want anyone to know that she had fucked up, and then saw an opportunity, i don't know. but i do think that in any case, she was mean and vindictive in a way that i don't think mike is (and i definitely think in a way that he evolved a bit away from by that point in the show).

on the bright side, ryan doing that did do two things: one, it meant that mike no longer had that secret hanging over his head anymore and no one else can use it against him (his convictions were upheld and he only got a reprimand from the bar), and two, it proved that he actually does believe in justice over winning or making himself look good. we see in the final scene that he's willing to give up everything—including his law license—to make sure this hate murderer goes to prison for what he did ("you can have my license! it'll free me up to testify about the hate speech your client just spewed in here."). that's something that i don't believe emily ryan ever had the guts to do.

ANYWAY, once again, mike cutter did nothing wrong, and i would like to fight emily ryan in a chili's parking lot.

thanks for dropping by again, 3am mike cutter anon! feel free to send me any more 3am mike cutter thoughts in the future! :)

[ladyzee-oddityhunter]

[Musharna Mail!! (TW for Unreality) Though this one particularly seems like it's being filtered through a haze of static. Sounds feel like they buzz just a little longer than they should all throughout this dream, and somehow just being here feels, for a minute, disorienting. But you are there, sitting among a bunch of faceless people in front of a large, white room. The lighting is harsh, clinical, like a spotlight that threatens both to reveal too much of you to the world and yet refuses to lend you any help in discerning any features of the faces around you.

None of them will look at you. But they're all speaking about you. You can tell that, even though you can't make out any of the words they're saying. They tingle in your ears, their laughter like spines that stick in the back of your neck.

One finally turns to you. And at once you're moving forward. You look through the doorway that once led into the barren white room and now it instead looks like a stretch of forest.

An endless stretch of trees, meticulously, eerily spaced an even number of paces apart.

"Wait!" You shout, "I'm not going back! I can't do it again!"

You try to shout it anyway. But the words don't even seem to reach your ears. Sound, it seems, hardly carries here. As if nothing truly moves in here. The doorway grows closer. You try to break away but they grab your arms and shove you forward. You try to shout, and thrash, and break away. It sounds like static in your ears. But they're in lock step with you. There's no turning back as they toss you forward and...

And you wake up. Only you're not in your home. That same forest now stretches around you on either side, an empty, black, unfeeling sky above. This scene no longer feels like it is being filtered through a haze of static. It is crisp and clear. Your body feels feverish, weak and trembling.

You can't possibly move any more.

How... long has it been? Clearly over 300,000 minutes. Seven months. And a day passes in a little over twenty minutes. In that time, fourty years would have passed.

Is there even a reason... to try to get back now? They're gone, and you know they're gone. It's been fourty years, they aren't still looking. And you're still trapped.

You'll always be trapped.]

((Offscreen))

It’s the lack of air and twist of pain in her chest that rips her from sleep. Sucking in a desperate breath, she wakes up on her side, fingers clenched hard into the front of her nightgown.

She takes three deep breaths, inhaling each for a count of six, then exhaling to the same count.

She’s warm. The blankets are soft. It feels like her bed. It smells like her bed.

Not trapped. Safe. Real. This is real.

Right?

Her hand fumbles at her side in pursuit of her lover’s sturdy form. The bed is empty beside her.

Real. Not trapped. Not alone.

She sits bolt upright and searches her surroundings. These are her clothes. These are her books, her shoes, her bag, her blankets, her bed. It’s not a forest. It’s her bedroom in full clarity. But she’s alone.

Not alone.

Not alone.

Please.

Terror presses her like a beast’s paw, shivering claws sinking under her skin and letting in the chill. The floor rises to meet her as she scrambles from bed, crashing full force to her numbed knees. She yells for her housemate. She prays for an answer.

((End offscreen))

My darlings, I’ve made some good progress in my recovery recently, but these recent nightmares have… Troubled me. I’m usually very accustomed to unpleasant dreams, so I hope they’re not disrupting my sleep too badly. I’m going to need that to heal.

This one felt almost familiar. Like I’ve seen it, but. Well. It’s late, I’ll think about it more tomorrow.

[lucysweatslove]

Met with my PMHNP, and it went a lot better than I was gearing myself up for.

She read through the neuropsych’s report and has similar thoughts that I had- the Conner’s was “markedly atypical,” I met DSM criteria, and though my history has significant depression and some anxiety components, those were essentially ruled out with the PAI and diagnostic interview, so like, what else could it reasonably be other than ADHD? And she also thought calling the WAIS invalid was silly since it had likely been over 5 years since I took any portion of the WAIS. So anyway, she isn’t going to try to find somebody to refer me to for TOVA or any other testing and we are gonna just go ahead on treatment.

I mentioned the tachycardia to her (+ that I had withheld my Strattera today to check in with her about it before continuing), and she was a little concerned (like I was/am) about what this might mean for my side effects on stimulants. But she didn’t say no to stimulants ever. She did, however, recommend that we do stick with the Strattera for another week if tolerated to a) see if the side effects reduce over time (as they did with the lower dose) and b) to reach 4 weeks and see if I notice any improvement in focus. If I don’t, we can reconsider, but literature says it can take 4-6 weeks,

I’m still concerned about the Vyvanse. Like, I do think it’s likely the best option for me, but getting it approved will be difficult, as they will likely want me to first trial methylphenidate AND a mixed amphetamine like Adderall. I doubt I will have good results with a methylphenidate (inhibits both norepi and dopamine reuptake, but doesn’t actually stimulate dopamine release) vs something like Adderall which DOES stimulate dopamine too (personally I think I’m very sensitive to norepi changes and need more dopamine). But the Adderall shortages may mean I can’t even get that to trial it. Often insurances don’t give a flying fck about the Adderall shortages and won’t even approve brand-name Adderall vs the generic (as it’s the generics, not the brand name, having supply issues… probs because insurances won’t pay for brand name).

Anyway, I guess that’s future me’s problem. I’m just grateful rn that I’m home and NOT at that rural clinic, and also that i don’t have to jump through more hoops.

[everythingcanadian]

Fairytails Have Nothing On This

Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/Greg Lestrade/John Watson

Rating: G

No Warnings

Summary:

Sherlock wakes up on an October morning. Seeing his two lovers in bed with him gives him a bit of retrospection. Day 28-1 of promptober: Awaken

AO3 Portal

There was no 'one day' that settled everything that had happened. It came in small bursts or lazy waves just making it to shore. Their routines were haphazard but there for formalities. The different starts to their separate days became a beloved pattern. 

A scramble for an alarm setting. 

An ease of folding the covers down.

A pull on a pillow to put over a head.

The groans and huffs of aching joints or stiff muscles. 

The need for a quick kiss or a small 'I love you' answered.

(In Sherlock's case on a light affection day, an easy touch or two. Nothing more. On a heavier day, a stroke through his curls, a thorough kiss, and soft pets anywhere the other two pleased.)

On a Sunday in the middle of October, with all three of them home, it finally shook awake in Sherlock, the realisation that his relationship with John and Greg had finally fallen on stable footing. He should have known it ages ago but- he didn't and it blindsided him in a good way. 

He was awake exactly 5 minutes before 7:30am, when the first alarm on John's phone goes off on weekdays. A habit he had picked up about a month after they started waking up in the same bed. It’s still wonderfully dark out and won’t be bright for a little while yet. He’s happy Greg turned the heat on before they piled into bed after a long Saturday. Hunches being batted away and sifted through within an inch of their worth. Otherwise the room would have been ice cold and they all would suffer the consequences of trying to get out of a warm bed into the frigid air.

He turns his head on the pillow towards his two lovers, his two boyfriends, his two partners. Years ago, when John had asked him a few leading questions while they were first learning of each other as roommates, Sherlock never could have imagined he’d be here.

He lets his open eyes roam over the pair.  

The slackness of Greg's face is wonderful. The lines of worry and anger and disappointment are gone from between his eyebrows and his forehead. The sad twist of his mouth that is usually there on a case is wiped away while in sleep. Silvered hair that's growing out from another tight cut is sticking up stiff at odd angles on the one side. Chances are it's flat to his skull on the other. Sherlock won't tell him outright, at least not sober, but it's sweet and sexy. The Silver Fox look is something Sherlock has come to love over the years he’s known Greg Lestrade. He's pretty sure he caused most of the greys there anyway. 

Paired with deep doe brown eyes and a solid body, Greg is every bit of a fantasy as Sherlock had panted after when he first had known the D.I.. Said fantasy loves him dearly and would do almost anything for him. Sherlock can see the crusted sleep in the corners of those closed eyes. Knows there’s a high chance for a little dried line of drool down his cheek.

Sherlock smiles softly to himself. He loves to observe and commit things to memory. This is one of the best images to do that with.

He drags his eyes toward his first love, the one he had fallen so fast for that it took his breath away. He won’t admit it. And he won't admit that having John tinker and operate on Sherlock’s dormant heart gave way for Sherlock to see he was in love with both John and Greg. It took a while for him to settle that issue within himself. 

John is between them, curled away from Sherlock and huddled under the covers for warmth. The quilt pulled up high to his ear. He got in late from the clinic on Friday night, an emergency he needed to follow through on, which had delayed him a few hours. The thick jumper he wore over his button up and tie didn't do much to keep him warm in the evening. He didn't expect to be caught out in the bitter cold though, only the cooling air after a warm afternoon. 

He has been chilled to the bone since then, and both Greg and Sherlock have tried to warm him up in many ways. For now however, he sleeps on, tucked in tight between Sherlock on his back and Greg on his side facing towards the Doctor. The light grey-blond, but mostly grey, hair was softer than Greg's and was plastered to John's head from him rolling around in sleep. Sherlock knows that John's mouth is open because he's snoring softly into the edge of the pillow he shared with Sherlock. 

Carefully he shuffled onto his own side and pressed up close to John’s back, infusing his own warmth into the warm skin pressed against him. He leans in to kiss the starburst of a scar on John’s shoulder, breathing against it and nuzzling the tender skin there. 

He’s woken up into a life he never thought he’d have. Something like stability. A strong bond between the three of them. A little girl snoring away in what was ‘John’s Room’ with the monitor on Sherlock’s bedside table. He was the one most likely to be awake and notice if something was wrong. He had developed a sense for Rosie and her whims or whoa or wonder. 

Currently it is quiet. An enveloping quiet that settled Sherlock’s inner workings as he settled in to a cuddle with his partners. He closed his eyes and listened to the world around him. He could hear cars faintly through the door to their bedroom and the front windows. He heard a bus break a bit up the street. The soft snores of John. The light and somewhat uneven breaths of Greg that no longer worried either Doctor Watson or Medically Curious Sherlock. And he finally heard the soft huffs of an awakening little girl through the monitor. 

Sherlock kissed John’s scar again and slowly shuffled out from the covers, tucking them in close so neither John nor Greg would get cold with him leaving. His duty to a princess was calling.

[wyrdify]

A bit of an explanation for the stronger depression because I’m an info-dumper, and this shift is boring as fuck right now anyway. Plus, I know it affects my ability to write, and, well, I haven’t done that in a while, which is what most of y’all follow my blogs for.

---

We’re gonna break it down into parts:

Seasonal depression. Winter tends to increase my depression overall due to less sunlight, colder temperatures, and more time indoors. This is something to check on for yourselves, by the way. 

Apartment bound. Save for the one night a week when I get to go to trivia, I am basically stuck in my apartment 24/7. We are working to get my car fixed to help remedy this problem, but I have not driven in over a year, and we’re entering the winter season in New England.

My soul-sucking job. I cannot emphasize this one enough. My hours just got cut again for the week of 12/11 when I was promised they wouldn’t be, and I’m going to have to scrounge around to get them back up to 28.75. That’s all I’m allowed to work, and that’s for $12.75/hour (minimum wage). Management is poor and retaliatory, coworkers/assistant managers micromanage me to death, I don’t get recognition or praise for the work I do---the list goes on. But, because I can’t drive myself anywhere, and other work-at-home jobs that aren’t strictly customer service are hard to come by, I have to stick with it.

December in general. It’s a hard month for my family. Eleven years ago this Christmas Eve is when my paternal grandmother passed away (maternal passed away last year in late November, and I wasn’t as close to her for various reasons). While the wound isn’t as fresh as it was when I was 21, it still fucking hurts, and I still have trauma related to this whole Christmas season that I’ve been trying to deal with. When your grandmother was the center of your family, and she was the one who made Christmas a big deal at her house, the holidays lose a lot of their cheer. 

I have bipolar depression (bipolar II). If you want to learn more about what that means, Mayo Clinic does a decent breakdown here about bipolar in general. I’ve had this since I was at least in my teen years---that’s when I remember the depression getting worse, at least---but I wasn’t diagnosed until a couple of months ago. It means that when I hit a low, I hit a low, and I can stay in it for days to weeks at a time. Hypomania? Lasts maybe a few days if I’m lucky. Then there are the mixed episodes, also known as depression with the energy to act on it (for me, at least).

I’m not out to my in-laws. Because these are the holidays, I’m spending more time around them. I love my in-laws, but they are staunch conservative Catholics, and I’m not out to them as nonbinary. I get misgendered (not intentionally) a lot when I’m around them, and it’s hard. I’m sure a lot of my gender-nonconforming friends here can relate.

---

What I’m doing about each of these things:

Seasonal depression: Being aware of it, turning lights on, and staying on top of my diet.

Apartment bound: Working on getting my car fixed (husband is researching tires), finding opportunities to get out when possible.

My soul-sucking job: Just taking it one day at a time, venting here and there, keeping my head down, doing the bare minimum work wise*, focusing on what I can control, continuing to look for other jobs, working on a loan repayment plan to get my FAFSA done to get college restarted so I can work on an MLIS, not responding to work emails or slack messages while not on shift.

*paying minimum wage = minimum effort

December in general: Acknowledging the grief, communicating about it and when it’s hitting harder, not pushing myself too much. Also going to try and decorate the apartment for Christmas to get some of that holiday cheer in.

Bipolar II: Educating myself on my disorder, therapy, medication (and working with my med manager), tracking my sleep, journaling, writing poetry, tracking my moods.

Not Out to my In-Laws: Husband and I need to find a time to talk to his mom alone about it, and that’s probably not gonna happen for a bit. So, I’m tabling it for now.

---

Doing all of these things doesn’t change that the depressive episode is still hitting hard right now. It was super bad yesterday, and I’m sort of crawling out of it just now. I’m still going to isolate for the time being, especially since I have the Bioshock collection to distract me for a bit (started yesterday, and whoo boy it’s a trip so far). 

I’ll respond to discord messages when I get the energy, and my brain stops being snappy. That’s one part of depression no one likes, and it’s one reason I isolate: I can be mean, and I don’t want to be mean to my friends. My brain goes “Lol no one’s listening to/they’re ignoring you anyway, so go isolate.” You know, that leftover toxic thinking from being raised by abusive parents where I had to scream for even slight acknowledgment. Super fun. I’m working on challenging it, but, in the meantime, I just step away and not talk so I don’t say something mean. 

Anyway, this got longer than I thought it would, and I got distracted several times by work. Thanks for reading if you did. Have Vincent sitting on the internet as a reward.

[viksalos]

I believe in the importance of choice as well i just feel the traumas of the past are too great and impossible to move on from and be functional.

It's just suffocating knowing it never goes away

and i don't know since the depression has been over (At least the diagnosis), my life hasn't been all that different or even better i just became more functional and learned coping,

I still feel lonely, unlovable, and still don't want to be around. I can choose to move past this and I'm trying but sometimes just the mere memory of having reached a point where I was intent on not being around just resets all the progress

(referring, I think, to this post)

Hi anon. I hope you are well today. That comic panel and my tag commentary got through my queue while I was asleep, so I'm answering this while I eat breakfast. My apologies for the delay.

To clarify, I do think the idea that one can "choose not to be depressed" is an oversimplification, which I alluded to in my tags. It should also be noted that I had also just read the entire comic (which I recommend), and to me, Metronome's *whole character arc* read like someone recovering from depression. At the end of the comic Obelisk and Metronome are still two unchanging objects, but Metronome seems to be in a better place mentally--the one panel I reblogged is mostly just a snapshot of their character dynamic.

But that brings me to what I want to say, and it'll probably sound corny but I mean it: I'm proud of you for improving your functionality and learning coping strategies. It may seem like you're not changing, but that *is* a significant difference. I get what you mean though, I really do--I've been dealing with major clinical depression off and on for at least 13 years, and last night I probably had the worst bout of suicidal ideation I've had in a while. When I was younger I definitely would've self harmed or started making more serious plans, but I didn't this time. I was able to use my own coping strategies to self-regulate. It's disheartening to still be experiencing ideation after 13 years, I won't lie, but getting better at dealing with it means I have the capacity to write this answer for you this morning instead of being in the throes of it still.

But also: in the past 13 years, I've improved my life *a lot.* The depression did (and does) make it a lot slower and more difficult than I think it would've been otherwise, and I feel like I started behind other people in many regards. But improving my life required choices on my part--for example, 13 years ago I absolutely felt unlovable like you do now, but I'm currently in a relationship when I could've chosen instead to close myself off to new connections, and when I could've said a thousand times "actually you don't want me around, I'm too much to deal with" and left, but I didn't.

This is what I originally meant by my tags with respect to the role of choice in depression: you can't choose not to be depressed, but you can choose to stick around, you can choose to make incremental changes that make your life easier or more pleasant, you can choose to open yourself up to new connections and new experiences that can enrich your life and give you more reasons to live. All these things make it easier when depression rears its ugly head again, they help your existing coping strategies work better, and they give you new coping strategies to work with.

Anyways I hope that helps, and if it didn't, I hope at least that getting your thoughts out did. Sometimes I find that's enough. 💛

[bonesandthebees]

10, 17, 23, and 41 for the ask game!

10. How do you decide what to write?

well, I'm someone who always has a million ideas buzzing around in her head at once. if I'm actually going to sit down and write something, I gotta set some criteria to make sure it's something I actually want to take the time to write out. like if I'm trying to decide what my next longfic is going to be (ie: clinic, world forgetting, stars) the criteria I have is meant to help me figure out if this is a project I'll stick with for months on end. these criteria are: do i have an ending already in mind for it? do I have multiple scenes floating around my head that I know won't come till later in the story, but the excitement about eventually writing them will keep me going? do I think this is a concept others will enjoy reading? will this take at least 90-100k words to tell this story if not more? if the answer is yes to all of those, boom, I have a potential longfic

for shorter stuff my criteria is a little different. it's mostly just me asking myself if the story interests me enough to write the entire thing out or if it's just something I'd rather leave in the brain microwave lol

17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it?

oh man this is just me staring at a list of movie aus i've never cared enough about to write but would love to read. give me an au of the 2009 movie push with chris evans it's such a dumb movie but the concept is so fun. you have this very done with life 20 something guy who tries to cheat at gambling with his psychic powers but he never practices them so he's shit. then you have a random 13-14 year old that just bursts into his life and can see the future so the kid is just like "alright we're working together on this i've already seen it and if you listen to me we'll get rich" and he's like who are you and why the fuck are you in my apartment. it's sooo crimeboys i want it so bad

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to?

answered this in more detail in the previous ask but soulmate au!!

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

I mean I love anything written by roxy, but their fic ritual purposes just hits me so hard in such a weird way?? not weird bad, it's just strange how much i connect with it for no specific reason? there's just so many little things about the writing that suck me in. like i think there's one line where phil rests a hand on tommy's back and the writing mentions that his shirt is warm from standing in the sun for so long and idk why that little detail just felt so insanely real to me. all the tiny domestic moments in it are filled with those types of details and it makes me go insane i love it so much. (the archaeology aspect is soooo cool too it's so fun to read about that stuff) anyway I'd love to be able to write like that, just with all those super small details that make it feel so much more real

ty for this!!! these were fun!

ask game!

[carolineslife]

Journal Entry, October 12, 2023: First Blog Post and Recovering from Covid (originally published 10-12-23)

Dear Internet,

Right now as I'm starting this first post, I'm recovering from having Covid for the first time. I went through the entire pandemic (over three and a half years now) without catching it, but I finally caught it. I work in customer service, so I'm assuming I caught it from a customer at my job, especially since I don't tend to go anywhere else. I don't have much of a life outside of working and coming home.

Even at home, I don't do much. I do most of the cooking and cleaning as my boyfriend works long hours at his job, but other than that I mainly crochet, read, watch TV, and write fiction stories and poetry. I'm also a practicing Christian witch. Maybe I'll share some of that on here.

Mainly I'm starting this blog to share bits and pieces of my life. I've tried to start blogs before, but I'm not very good at sticking to just one subject at a time. I get way too into the planning process and wanting everything about a blog to be perfect, and when it doesn't turn out perfect, I get discouraged and quit. Having an online diary just seems like a good way to combine all the hobbies I enjoy without having to worry about it being perfect, as nothing in life is. I might still do planned posts, but I really just want a place online that'll let me pour out a stream of consciousness without having to think too much about what exactly I'm doing.

With having Covid, I've been off work for several days and stuck in the house and it's driving me crazy!! I've done a lot of crocheting (right now I'm learning how to do Tunisian crochet) and watched a lot of Gilmore Girls, which I'm watching for the first time. But mainly I've just been tired. With being sick, I've been sleeping a lot more than usual. I try to go to bed at a normal time, at least for me anyway (I'm a night owl), so I go to bed somewhere between 1 and 2 am, but then sleep until about 3 or 4 pm the next day, and repeat the same process that night.

[picture of the scarf I'm currently working on]

I've been pretty stressed with how messy my apartment is right now, but I simply haven't had the energy to do any real cleaning. Today, though, I did have just enough energy to wash dishes, clean up my kitchen, and make some Hamburger Helper for supper. Hopefully since I've been off all week, I'll feel better by the time I go back to work. I actually have to go to a walk-in clinic tomorrow to get checked so they can clear me to go back to work soon.

Peace and Love,

Caroline

[firespirited]

I gave the heads up to mum that I'd brought up the touchy subject of missing memories with sis and how I hadn't wanted to catalogue any of it, other than taking note that she's in pain (wondering if i made it worse) and maybe that subject is something that i need to work on (cue deep dives and extensive personal re-examination) because she's a grown woman who's asked for independence in all things medical and got *herself* a therapist. I contribute when she has clues for me ("1st day of period or minipill withdrawal = very dark time" led to pmdd or pme. Two years ago I realised that her insomnia meant she was constantly stopping and starting a medicine cold turkey when it's one that requires slow uppage/downage - we've had to taper down over 18 months to get to a half dose) so there is a certain amount of collab work as she knows me well too and can better remember how long I've had this stupid earache for example. I was able to say that I do not want to be backed up if sis needs mum on her side, I don't care about being right and can cope with being hurt as it's an expression of anguish what matters is that we help her pinpoint whatever's causing this so she can choose how to proceed. I might need help with dates and times though as my memory is swiss cheese. Ultimately i'd rather drop it entirely if it's a sticking point, it doesn't happen often anyway... so she can focus on other symptoms of hormonal inbalance.

Finding the balance is hard but getting better between wanting to protect my (not so little anymore) sister from everything and respect her autonomy... I trust her and asked if she wanted to know first and that any notes taken would be available because it's a diagnostic tool nothing more.

Mum's like "yes she's in pain and that's the sole issue so i try to ignore anything that seemed out of character as just meaningless self defense 'make it stop' words." (man alive, I wish i could attain that level of chill) and she goes "Oh and i have plenty of recorded timestamped moments as she has those paranoid arguments with me on WhatsApp." 👀 hokay. Of Note: i mentioned to mum that sept to nov 2021 i vague posted a lot and apparently that when sis was off the pill.

So yeah i got myself all worked up for both conversations and both went fine. We won't mention so much as mood swings unless it aligns with the dates and sis *wants* to mention it.

And after my benzo/ssri withdrawal after surgery where I became utterly convinced mum hated me and basically got a taxi driver to sneak me out of hospital and lately my very rude troglodyte grunts to 'get out, get lost' when I get sleep deprived, they've promised to always keep me fully accountable too.

Today's dr visit is going to be interesting, the ultrasound dude last week refused to scan sis' lipedema which insults both the endocrinologist and our doctor who prescribed it together. The tech hinted there's some sort of drama going on between the local xray, ultrasound clinic techs and the local doctors. Our dr is tuned in to all the feuds, she'll tell you to remove prof Ys papers from your file before showing it to prof X because he has beef with prof Y (usually some old funding or tenure grudge)