#but my main boss and the supervisor for my area quit and everything sucks way more now that hes gone so. even less worth working here | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

deiliamedlini · 3 years

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WIP Wednesday

I wrote this last night and really don’t know where I’m going with it because I wrote another section of this that’s completely different from this first part, but I’m having too much fun so this might become a long oneshot or like a two/three chapter short fic eventually. I signed into my Guild Wars account for the first time in forever to watch the chat and apparently Lion’s Arch isn’t as interesting as it used to be. Not that any of that is really relevant.

This is Zelda and the Champions as internet friends playing a MMORPG video game called Hyrule Warriors.

Zelda Harkinian loved Fridays. Not that it was a rare thing to be obsessed with the weekend, but she maybe loved it a little too much. After a week of lesson plans, and cleaning the classrooms, and sneezing students, and emails asking for an extension on a paper that wasn’t even due yet, she relished the escape the weekend provided. Granted, she still had to grade about a hundred tests, but that was a problem for Sunday or even Monday.

Smiling down at her roommate, a kitten she’d raised when she found it in the street all alone, Zelda fed her girl—whom she’d named Duchess because she had every intent of treating her like royalty—and played with her for a bit before throwing down her bag in her room and then grabbed a water and a granola bar before heading to her desk. She flipped her laptop open and booting up Hyrule Warriors, her favorite open world MMORPG.

Her internet sucked, so she grabbed her phone to aimlessly scroll to see if there was any news or updates. But it was pretty dull.

Instead, she thought back to how this whole weekend ritual began.

She’d been in a cavern just off of Death Mountain for about three days killing fire keese, lizalfos, and beamos. As a mage, her AOE skills made short work of the larger groups, hitting them all at once. It was especially useful here because her main specialties were water and light, but she struggled when boss fights came out. The NPCs weren’t great teammates, and she constantly found herself resurrecting far from the boss, only to make a long run with a health penalty that ended with her getting killed again, until her heath penalty was maxed out and she had to restart for any hope of succeeding. As a mage, her light armor made her vulnerable to physical attacks, and this boss was very physical.

Zelda didn’t like interacting with people in this game. It was massively popular, and the chat was always running. Sometimes, she’d just sit at an outpost and watch people talk. Her favorite interactions were often the random ones. She’d begun to look up the acronyms everyone used in chat just to understand them better. WTS= want to sell.

Indigo2421: WTS: Guardian Short Sword 4k rupees

Indigo2421WTS: Guardian Short Sword 4k rupees

Britneigh4Horses: WTS My mother. 1 rupee. Will pay postage fee.

But after her days of suffering in the lonely caverns in Death Mountain, she relented.

A quick search had her hands shaking, but she typed quickly so she couldn’t back out after she’d hit enter.

xPrincessZx: LFG Dodongo’s Cavern

Holding her breath, she’d waited in the hopes of a private message being sent to her.

One did.

(PM): ThunderstruckQueen: What missin are doing there?

(PM): ThunderstruckQueen: Mission*

(PM): xPrincessZx: I have to kill the Dodongo boss for the main story

ThunderstruckQueen would like to join your party.

Biting her nails, she’d accepted.

(PM): RockRoast12345: Still need someone?

(PM): xPrincessZx: Yes! That would be great! Thanks!

RockRoast12345 would like to join your party.

That had been how it started: A goron warrior with a Warhammer and some serious defensive moves joined as the tank to take as much damage for the team as he could stand, and a Gerudo Paladin had joined her party. Zelda was jealous of the purchase-only red hairstyle the Gerudo had for her character. She had a sword and shield, but her body flickered with elemental lightening magic. In-game purchase effects.

They’d defeated Dodongo with ease, and had gone on several missions together that day, taking down their storylines with relative ease. But they couldn’t function with the NPC healer who barely functioned at all.

So, ThunderstruckQueen had taken to the map chat and put out a request.

ThunderstruckQueen: I found someone. She’s a Zora Cleric. Level 40

RockRoast12345: Let her in! I want to get this one over with

Rutella Zoran IV would like to join your party.

After that, the four of them realized they worked so well together that they’d formed a guild. The Champions. ThunderstruckQueen paid the guild fee, bought a hall, and began decorating it with merchants, and chests. Zelda still shuddered, wondering what she did to have so many rupees ready to go. Needless to say, she made herself the leader.

Some days, they didn’t play together. Other times, only two of them were on. But on weekends, they all came together.

But it had been a Monday when Zelda played, and she’d been alone. Having already tossed her tissue box across her room in frustration, she debated making a new character with more defense, but she sucked it up and went into the Castle Town map, ready to ask for help. She couldn’t wait until she could get to be a higher level. As it was, she’d only gotten to these level 40 areas as a 32 because of Rutella.

Suddenly, a random Hylian man in green with a fancy sword and shield ran up to her and bowed. Zelda scoffed at her computer screen, unsure if she was supposed to respond.

She didn’t need to.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: Hey Princess

(PM): xPrincessZx: Hello?

(PM): WildKnightOut2: Jst wondering if u have a spare flower crown from yesterday’s festival. Missed it. Will pay

Zelda pulled up her inventory, forgetting she was still wearing her flower crown from the Flower Fest. It must have been what tipped him off. In fact, she had four spares.

(PM): zPrincessZx: Yeah, I do. Come to the chest and I’ll trade.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: Thx

She’d never done a trade with anyone who wasn’t in her guild, so she’d felt nervous running to grab it.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: How much u want?

(PM): xPrincessZx: Actually, I’ll give it to you free if you’re willing to help me with a quest? Or 10k.

WildKnightOut2 would like to join your party.

She accepted and watched his character appear in the corner of her screen.

WildKnightOut2: That’s a rip off, btw. Crowns are with 15k at least. Don’t undersell

xPrincessZx: Thanks. I didn’t realize. I’m still kind of new.

WildKnightOut2: Howd u get out here then?

xPrincessZx: I had a run from a friend in my guild.

WildKnightOut2: Got room for a warrior in there?

Zelda introduced him to the other Champions when they’d signed back on, and after a few weeks, Zelda had leveled up enough that she didn’t need to constantly rely on a teammate. But still. She liked Wild the best after ThunderstruckQueen.

They’d brought in a Rito Ranger named TheBestYouveNeverMet, which immediately set Wild off.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: should I aggro a group over so he has to fight them for us?

(PM): xPrincessZx: No! Don’t do that! I’ll get sent over to deal with them!

(PM): xPrincessZx: HEY! I SEE YOU ON THE MAP!

(PM): xPrincessZx: WILD GET BACK TO THE GROUP

On the mini-map, she saw a hoard of red coming at them and rolled her eyes before joining TheBest to kill them with area attacks. Rutella stayed back to heal them, but Thunder and Rock both continued on, unfazed.

ThunderstruckQueen: Wild you’re an idiot

But that was then. This was now.

They’d been together for months as a guild, and now, the six of them knew how the others worked.

If Wild or TheBest took off on their own, no one would follow. They’d both been killed numerous times in an attempt to piss the other off. Zelda had learned to stay with Thunder and Rock. Rutella flitted between running back to revive the idiots, or sticking with the smarter members while letting them heal on their own.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: u wound me

Zelda chuckled, but he wasn’t done.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: After all ive done for u

(PM): WildKnightOut2: u leave me to die

(PM): xPrincessZx: Don’t run off next time

It was a Wednesday when she and Wild were playing alone, so they freely used party chat for ease. She’d surpassed his level, and towered as a 93 while he was an 87.

WildKnightOut2: Hang on. Fuzzball wants food

Zelda stared at his character on her screen, wondering if he looked anything like that avatar. Blonde hair, muscular, piercing blue eyes. She’d made her character look like herself, so it wasn’t hard to imagine others had. Plus, he was the only Hylian. She highly doubted that RockRoast12345 was actually a giant rock-man, or that Rutella Zoran IV was a short fish lady.

She knew everything about these people except their names, faces, and voices.

She knew that ThunderstruckQueen was a single mother who called her daughter Ri on chat. She was a chief of police, and had a few hundred of her force to look out for. Still, she wanted to quit soon to join the military reserve forces now that her daughter was getting older. Devoted and loyal, Thunder occasionally snapped when everyone would start fighting with each other, though it was usually directed at TheBest and Wild, the annoyance sometimes extended out to others.

She knew that RockRoast12345 was older than all of them and had a young grandson. He’d bonded with Thunder over their children at first, and then, without meaning to, they became the parents of the group. Recently, Rock had retired from working as a supervisor in a mine, and gaming had become his way of relieving some of that boredom. But he told the best stories when they were idling around, just stories about anything, and they were always captivating. Also, he was afraid of dogs.

She knew that Rutella Zoran IV was the daughter of a politician. She cared for her little brother like he was her own, and sometimes, he took control of her character, proudly revealing that his real name was Sidon. She was in school to be a doctor, and that made her family prouder than anything. She lived and breathed for her family.

TheBestYouveNeverMet was a pilot. His schedule was the most hectic out of everyone’s because of the flights, but he was sarcastic to the core, and sometimes, the sarcasm was simply rude and definitely didn’t translate well over chat. He was superior, and since he’d been playing the game longest, he thought it entitled him to make more decisions. But Zelda knew from her private conversations with him that deep down, he was sweet and caring. He’d always be the first to ask her how her day was, and he’d learned some of her students’ names to ask if they’d been nuisances.

But Zelda spent the most time talking to WildKnightOut2, so she knew the most about him. At first, they’d bonded over the fact that they both had cats. His was called Fuzzball, an orange, fat cat that needed to exercise more. He’d tried to leash him, but Fuzz wasn’t interested. Sometimes, Fuzz would crawl over the keys, send Wild running, and send chat a long stream of letters.

He was funny and made comments in her private chat while they were playing that had her roaring at times.

He was a rock-climbing instructor and in his free time, he was a free solo climber. When she’d looked it up, she’d been horrified to see that he basically climbed mountains without a harness or ropes, and a fall could kill him. She’d asked if he was good at it, or just did it for fun, and his answer had been an ambiguous “yes.”

She knew about his family. He didn’t live near them, but he kept in contact with his grandparents, his father, and his little sister.

WildKnightOut2: k back. Where we going princess?

xPrincessZx: I need to farm for new armor out in the Haunted Wasteland. Do you need to do anything?

WildKnightOut2: I need to help u farm in the haunted wasteland. What do you need?

xPrincessZx: 10 Rubies

WildKnightOut2: damn ok I have 2 u can have so u only need 8

xPrincessZx: Thanks. How’d that party go last night?

WildKnightOut2: Sucked

xPrincessZx: Cool details

WildKnightOut2: If ud been there, ud have hated it

xPrincessZx: Why?

WildKnightOut2: Bunch of self-absorbed idiots. Like TheBest is

xPrincessZx: Lol. He’s not that bad.

WildKnightOut2: if u say so

They headed into the Wasteland looking for red poes that had rare drops for rubies. She and Wild took out a few groups before they started to struggle. Neither could play and talk at the same time fast enough to warn the other that something was happening, and they both ended up at the shrine of resurrection more times than they cared to admit.

xPrincessZx: Hey Wild. This might sound weird, but do you have that gaming app where we could just maybe voice chat?

xPrincessZx: Unless you’re not comfortable with that. We can invite the others, and when we play together, and it would probably make life a thousand times easier

xPrincessZx: But it’s okay if you don’t want to

WildKnightOut2: yeah I have it

Oh, Zelda thought to herself. That was easy.

xPrincessZx: Do you want to add me? I have the same name

She watched her phone like it was food in the microwave, only occasionally glancing at her computer to see if Wild had sent her another message. She drummed her fingers and her leg started to bounce until her screen lit up.

WildKnight has sent you a friend request.

She hastily hit accept and grabbed her headphones from the drawer before typing into her phone.

xPrincessZx: Your name is missing a few things here.

WildKnight: Yeah HW already had someone with this name so I added on

xPrincessZx: The meaning completely changes

WildKnight: which do you like better?

Zelda froze, unable to make her fingers type. Was he flirting? Was that how people flirted online? She was really good at reading body language cues, and that was always how she knew someone was flirting. But this? There was no context! How was she supposed to know?

xPrincessZx: Which fits your personality more?

That was a safe way of getting out of answering while still sounding maybe like she was flirting. Right?

WildKnight: this one

Zelda’s face warmed up and she put her head in her hands, unsure how to respond. How does she respond to that? What if he wasn’t flirting? What if he was.

#wip wednesday #legend of zelda #LoZ AU #modern au #video games #link #zelda #zelink #daruk #mipha #revali #urbosa #writing #not proofread #zelda is a professor because I was too lazy to look up any job other than my own

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saphinc · 4 years

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a guide to working in a group home !!

i absolutely love my job and the things i’ve learned from it. if you’re looking for a unique job for your next character , try this! it could also help if your character is living in / has lived in a group home! but take it with a grain of salt , because this is one house , in one company , in one state in one country! and lastly , my inbox is always open for questions! because there’s a lot i couldn’t fit in here.

terminology !

behaviors : problematic / unhealthy things that individuals do (ex: stealing, verbally abusing others, isolating )

skills : healthy things we encourage them to do , that they have expressed / signed off as something they want to work on (ex: cooking, walking, eating )

dbt : stands for dialectical behavioral therapy. this is group therapy where therapists teach individuals coping skills and distress tolerance. every client we have has to graduate dbt class and be in individual therapy , it’s in the contract.

charting : when members of the staff team write out a complete summary of each client during / at the end of their shift.

s.o. house : mental health group home for sex offenders. two of the three homes in my cluster are s.o. homes. they aren’t allowed to be around my clients.

dsp / ps / pd : direct support professional / program supervisor / program director ( more on these later ).

elope : when a client runs away or sneaks out and we don’t know where they are.

cluster : the group of houses under a pd’s direction. usually 3-5 houses.

prn : as needed medication , something that is not prescribed such as tylenol.

some quick etiquette : we call the people living in our group home with mental health, clients or individuals when we’re referring to them. when speaking to them or amongst each other we’ll call them by their initials.

general info !

when i say group home , it is literally a house. in the middle of a normal neighborhood. we’re the only group home on our block.

there are so many types ok. i work at a home for vulnerable adults with mental health. some of my co-workers come from homes with only nonverbal clients , from hospice homes , from homes with individuals with traumatic brain injuries or physical disabilities working to recover or having no one else to help them.

i have four clients that live in my group home. that is the max for my house ; others can hold more. they filter in and out. one of my clients has been in this group home for seven years. one just moved in last december.

they each have their own bedroom. they get to choose the paint for their walls and can decorate it however they want.

funding sucks. the pay sucks , most of our furniture & appliances are outdated. we have to buy the cheapest food possible to meet our budget , and the house is not in great condition. we get by , but the mental health field doesn’t have a lot of money.

our goal overall , for each client , is to get them out of here. we support them when they can’t support themselves , lift them up , help them learn coping skills & life skills until they’re equipped for independence and can move out.

my home is a 24 hour awake group home. we have to have a staff there , awake , 24 hours a day. other houses in our cluster have staff there all times of the day, but they can sleep during that time ( they pay is different of course ).

job structure !

alright , i can’t repeat it enough: this is just my company. i don’t know what the structure is like in others!

i’m at the lowest level , the least paid , but the most interaction and contact with clients : the direct support professional / mental health caretaker! i love it and wouldn’t want to take on any of the other jobs.

some of my jobs include : cooking for clients , cleaning the home , driving them places , sitting in on their therapy , mediating conflicts , teaching them coping skills , talking them through stressful times , helping them find resources. i am with them every second of my shift. they know me and the other dsps the best.

technically , there are SUPPOSED to be two dsps in the house at all times , but my house is really understaffed so we have three dsps , one for each shift , and the program supervisor is on sight with one of the dsps most of the time. the ps does: anything involving our clients’ finances , cleaning up biohazard things ,

above me, my boss, is the program supervisor. my direct boss. i don’t know how it works in other group homes but i work very closely with my ps. like i said , it might just because we’re understaffed and she’s with us all day everyday.

above them is the program director. my boss’s boss. i highly do not recommend this job. if your character has it , they are probably a very grumpy and broke person with no life outside of work. my pd is on call 24 hours a day and gets paid on salary. so , yeah. 0/10.

next is the area director , the ad. they are the boss of all the pds in a particular area. i’m not positive but i think there are four pds with their own clusters , under my area director. they usually do the hiring and communicate with the pd to negotiate , mediate and give permission for certain things.

and finally , the regional director. the regional director is in charge of 3-5 different area directors. they’re busy. we RARELY see them or hear from them. not quite sure what they do to be honest.

i do NOT know if there’s anything between this position and ceo. i have met the regional director only twice. and that’s just because the area director was on maternity leave + our house is high behavioral / violent.

the job !

we go through TONS of training. primarily first aid , self defense / holds / , 4-8 hour seminars on each disorder in our homes and de-escalation. we get certifications of this and every year we have to renew them and go through the entire trainings again..

my job is to mediate , caretake and entertain but i also have to track. u need an EXCELLENT memory for this job. and hey , i have a horrible memory so i use about half a stack of post it notes per day. it’s possible!

that being said , we track everything. the more descriptive the better. we write down notable things they said , what they were doing at what times , what prns they take during shift , what their mood is , what they eat. everything. we write it down and track it in the computer. the pd review the notes everyday.

individuals !

ok so my clients mainly come from two places: the hospital or jail. usually they are admitted into a group home program as a last resort because their families can’t take care of them or understand them.

when clients move out, it is usually to two places: the hospital or their own place. you can work with a client for months and they’ll end up losing it & being kicked out of the program / arrested. we like the other option better.

there are such a wide variety of disorders in the homes. my clients range from a constant state of psychosis from their schizophrenia , to an autistic epileptic with an intellectual disability , to a narcissistic kleptomaniac.

my clients have done terrible things in the past. when you learn of these things , you might look at them differently. a lot of staff quit after finding certain things out ( clients’ past crimes or traumas ) or seeing certain behaviors ( violence , eloping ). but here’s the thing: they are sick. there’s a reason they’re with us / in the hospital instead of jail. they did these things when their state of mind was NOT right. it is so important to separate them from what they’ve done or endured. we can’t be biased in this profession.

dynamics !

there’s drama between clients. oh , there is. i have two clients who are very close. they team up on the other clients by intimidating them or straight up bullying them. we as staff have to interfere with this behavior and protect the clients from each other. but yeah. there’s drama.

they’ll hurt each other. they hurt us. my boss was shanked once. it happens.

i mentioned this earlier but we don’t ( and can’t ) hold this against them. we can’t hold grudges because it is their mental health that makes them act out and that’s why they are receiving our help.

we do get compensated for injuries and broken property ( glasses, etc )

we can and do call the police on our clients. they can and do call the police on us. one time a client called the cops on us because we were making fish for dinner. the police are very familiar with our house.

there are very strict boundaries between staff and clients , but some of us are with them all day every day. it’s natural that connections will form. but technically , we are not supposed to. but it always hurts when one of them graduates or leaves the program. it’s a really emotionally draining job in that way.

health !

we’re the first to get hit with pandemics. those long-term housing facilities you hear about getting covid ? yeah. that’s us.

group homes have lost their minds over the virus. i could write a whole guide on that alone , and the differences in another. what you should know is we take health risks VERY seriously. these are vulnerable adults. they will be the first to die of these diseases.

i won’t sugarcoat it ; most of my clients are not clean. they do not take care of themselves in terms of grooming or hygeine. this is for a couple reasons

the main being that this is their mental health. they either can’t / won’t get out of bed , are paranoid / afraid of it , or just hate us as staff and refuse to do anything we suggest no matter how good it might be for them.

the second ? we can’t drag them into the bathroom and make them wash their hands or shower. they do what they want , all we can do is make frequent suggestions for their health. we cannot force them to do ANYTHING. more on this later.

there are group homes that need to do toileting and bathing for their clients. we don’t at mine because we’re not a home for disabilities , but that means it stinks all the time and we go through a lot of febreeze.

laws !

it’s their house, not staff’s. we get to the house , clock in, start our shift and leave when it’s over. we do the cleaning , the cooking , the shopping. but it is their house. they are paying rent for it.

we can’t force them to do anything. we can’t make them eat , we can’t make them take their meds , we can’t make them go anywhere. they have the right to refuse anything they want. and some of them will push our buttons just to see what will happen. the truth is ? we don’t care. we get to go home at the end of the day. it doesn’t affect us if they do or don’t do something , they’ll reap the consequences ( ie. getting fired if they stop going to work , being visited by the doctor if they refuse meds etc )

they have more rights than us. part of the reason tracking is so important is to save our own asses. if my client gets sunburned while i’m working and i don’t note that i offered sunscreen and they refused? i can get in HUGE trouble because that is neglect. we’ve lost many employees this way.

some clients have more restrictions than others. one of my clients has phone restrictions due to impulsive behavior, so we have to monitor her calls. the others can take the phone into their rooms and be private no problem.

writing !

if you’re writing a character who works in a group home , there is one absolutely essentially trait that they need to have to be successful in their job at a group home: patience. mental health clients can be vindictive , manipulative and downright bullies but we can by NO means retaliate , lose our temper with them , or hold grudges in anyway. we are de-escalating and talking calmly , every moment of our shift. that is SUPER important.

i touched on this a bit earlier , but this job is draining. you got pushed around & treated like crap by your clients everyday , cook & clean for them , etc. the pay sucks and the hours are long. if your character works here ? they are probably very tired. it’s hard not to bring the work home. you really do get attached.

#rpc #rph #writing guide #this is an absolute mess in terms of #organization BUT #i'm still happy with it.#the graphic ?!?!?! not so much shut up #exhales #mine.#character guide.#group homes.#occupation guide.

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