#(I do have The Plague but I'm all up on my vaccinations and I'm taking my meds and I'll be alright | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whileyoureinschoolidothisallday · 3 months

Text

OKAY it has been a day of being sad and panicky. Time to move.

Yesterday, I made a post detailing the cdc announcement that there will no longer be an isolation requirement for covid. If you are one of the thousands of people rightfully raging in my notes, here's some steps to focus on.

We're not gonna give up. I've seen quite a few comments with things like 'what's the point', 'why should I even try anymore' etc etc and what we're not gonna do is give them what they want! It helps the eugenics cause to be apathetic and listless. We've made it this far, we will continue to make it. I know it's hard, but I am at least right here with you. Give yourself whatever time you need to grieve, and then I need you to get up.

If you have stopped masking for any reason, or you haven't upgraded to a respirator style mask, now is the time to change or start. From now on, we will be living in a country where you could assume there are multiple covid positive people in the room with you at all times. Surgical masks will not handle that load, and cloth masks will be even less effective at that point. Obviously, this is an unprecedented situation we're putting these masks in, and I'm not gonna sit here and pretend to be an expert that can tell you with certainty that even respirators will hold up with this amount of viral load for a long period of time, but it's the best and strongest tool we have. I'm considering using my p100 more, so that's always something to consider as well (and they make you look like a cool raver when you wear them!!!). You can buy all sorts of masks here, there's more links in the comments of my original post, and most states have their own mask blocs. To find them, go to Instagram and type "[your state] mask bloc". Here is a google doc of verified advocacy groups and mask blocs all across the country here is a diy fit test kit you can buy for $30 (unfortunately they are sold out right now. shocker.) PLEASE remember to take a layered response in these times. Masks are not the only tool in our arsenal. PLEASE for the love of God keep up with your vaccinations. Make a corsi-rosenthal box or buy a high quality air purifier if you can afford it--at the very least our homes can be safe havens (you can even put a hepa filter on your furnace!!!! And in your car too!!!!!). Use CPC Mouthwash, nasal irrigation, and nasal sprays like this one. Make it a routine: you come home, you shower, you brush your teeth, you rinse your nose, you change your clothes. And, like I said in another one of my posts, DO NOT TAKE OFF THE MASK.

3. If you would like an outlet for your rage and you're into calling your reps, feel free to calmly but firmly let the cdc have it at these numbers!!!!!

[alt text: a tweet by user silly_paulie that reads:

"Disdain for the CDC unites us all. Call today and demand isolation policies be returned to 10 days, and reducing it further to 1 day would be criminally dangerous. Call both:

404-639-7000 (press 8)

800-232-4636"

end text.]

4. If you need more outlets for your rage, I STRONGLY encourage you to get involved with your local union. Moreso than calling the CDC, tbh. I've seen multiple comments telling people just to lie about your symptoms to get more sick time off, but since there's no legal precedent to allow employees sick time for covid, all that's gonna do is get people fired. I truly believe in my lefty heart that the ONLY way we're getting anything close to mitigation is through labor rights. Even the standard for the fucking flu is 3 days, and that's nowhere near as contagious or disabling as covid. I say this as a high risk person with a neuromuscular disability: covid is an intersectional issue, but where we have the most leverage to get what we need is through labor rights.

It is NOT safe for workers to be working while ill with a Level 3 Biohazard (same as TB and the FUCKING PLAGUE. Seriously we have more regulations around fucking lice)

It is NOT safe to willfully EXPOSE your employees to a Level 3 Biohazard

It is NECESSARY for all employees to be allowed up to 10 days to recover fully from Covid-19, in order to avoid possible further injury from or hospitalization

You will NOT die or be disabled for the sake of the wealthy!!!!!

(and while you're at it, ask for better air filtration too!!!! At least 5 air changes an hour, MERV-13 air filters!! Then we won't have to constantly worry about virus bs and policy changes in the first place!!!!)

5. Closing statements. Nothing has changed with covid, this is just policy. Covid still isn't magic, she still has to get in you before she can do damage--mask up, arm your home with clean air, and don't let her. It's always worse toward the end. This is not the time to give up, it's time to dig in your heels and get to work. There are so many good things happening with covid. They are finding encouraging treatments for long covid. Finally, after years of nothing, a new prophylactic for the high risk was submitted for emergency use to the FDA, and it looks like this time it's built to last against new mutations. Covid is here to stay for the rest of our lives, but the real science hasn't given up on taking the worst of its teeth out. We WILL get to the point where the extreme fear of catching covid is nothing but a bad memory for EVERYONE. All I need you to do is commit to the belief that you're gonna survive long enough to be in that moment with the rest of us.

Now stay safe, and give em hell!!!!!

#covid 19 #covid safe #covid advocacy #covid is not over #mask up #danger days: truffula flu simulator #truffula flu survival guide

236 notes · View notes

annabelle--cane · 9 months

Note

at the risk of sounding Really Bad and with the caveat that I mean this in the most pro vaccine pro taking Covid extremely seriously way possible. I think conflating mental health/personal hobbies and habits with physical health and wellness in the time of a literal plague is actually part of why we are where we are. The example of opting out of treating a broken bone that you used is the perfect metaphor because that’s something that mostly effects the person with the broken bone. But if you’re treating every goddamn thing a person can do like it’s potentially viral it makes it easy to sound reasonable to advocate for a lot of vigilance against individual choice. Is this totally off base? do I sound like a reactionary dipshit conspiracy theorist right now? Just… there’s something here right??

even if that isn't the total root cause, I definitely think you're onto something. covid is literally a deadly and disabling viral disease, so the logic of "your actions regarding this impact others" makes total sense, but I think a lot of people took that language and framework and just ran with it, hoping that alluding to a deadly and disabling viral disease would lend credence to their arguments about mental health and personal decisions.

for example, I am constantly thinking about this take I saw on a post about drug decrim in december 2021. it's so special and dear to my heart, it makes no fucking sense at all. the only copy of the screenshot I still have saved is just the tail end of it and it has my annotations, so bear with me.

first, just for a moment, I love the complete breakdown of internal logic. we need to end the stigma around drug abuse but I think using heroin is exactly like being anti-vaxx. we should decriminalize all drugs but you'd have to be craaaazay to think that legalizing them is okay. wait until this person learns that some addiction treatment programs include prescribing opioids as a harm reduction measure.

second, using heroin is in no way like being anti-vaxx oh my god, and this person just can't tell. they are explicitly applying viral disease logic to mental illness* and choices about individual bodily autonomy. I don't want to minimize the pain and distress that can come from having a loved one with a substance use disorder, but in no world is it the same thing as refusing to go to cvs a few times to get a free vaccine against, once again, a deadly and disabling viral disease. groundbreaking leftist take: drug use makes you a hazard and drain on society and honestlyyyy you should think about the consequences of your actions before choosing to become an addict :/

I don't have screenshot for this next example, but I've also seen this language and mindset particularly come up a lot in discussions about "bimboism," makeup, and cosmetic surgery. I've seen several discussion threads where a woman finally just says "look, I'm adult, I've thought about this, I've interrogated myself, and ultimately I still want to do it and I can do what I want with my body" and the comeback to usually is "are you stupid? this isn't just about you, you're a member of a society who inherently expresses your ideology through your choices. the personal is political, stop being so individualistic. what will young girls think when they see you in a miniskirt calling yourself a slut?"

again, the final point that's meant to win the argument is that your choices about your body aren't fundamentally your own but Society's, because other people can look at your body and have feelings about it, they may even want to emulate it. for an added bonus, this one doesn't just use viral disease logic, but also borrows heavily and directly from the really basic conservative idea that women are less people and more living mannequins that you can dress up and use to show off the ideals of your social group. you can't wear that, men might see you and think you're a hussy and then it'll be your fault when they harass other women, little girls might see you and copy you like mindless drones.

*obligatory asides that plenty of people can recreationally use substances without being addicted and they're also fine + I know that classifying addiction as a mental illness is a hotly debated topic, especially in antipsych contexts, but that's a whole different can of worms to the topic at hand.

#answered #anons #id in alt text

83 notes · View notes

mllemaenad · 30 days

Text

So – Bethesda broke Fallout 4's script extender. Because of course they did. What better way to celebrate the release of your new TV show than to stall people's ongoing playthroughs? Excellent work. I don't even want an Enclave quest. It's Creation Club nonsense, so it won't actually be a proper quest anyway.

I want to finish my Sim Settlements 2 playthrough. Ugh.

So while I'm waiting for the dust to settle on that, I thought I'd give Fallout 76 another go. I am rebuilding my mod list for Fallout 3, but that's a work in progress. And Fallout 76 is right there.

I created a new character, because I haven't played this thing in ages and I know they've changed a bunch of the mechanics. And oh - ha. I mean, I had thought from the beginning that creating a game without NPCs was a terrible idea, because it's hard to invest in saving an empty world. But the addition of them makes playing the game's original main quest a distinctly bizarre experience.

I don't mean that I'm suddenly pro-empty world. Not at all. In general the presence of factions and personalities and people you can care about it a good thing.

But when they made this game, the writers and quest designers were given "empty world" as a parameter within which they had to work. And they did.

It's sort of an interesting, even bold, choice for a storyline because it does not allow you to feel good about yourself at all. Most Fallout games do. Oh, you can play evil if you want, sure, and there are a handful of side quests that are genuinely no win scenarios. But mostly? You can save the world. And you will probably have a better experience if you try to: there's more to do when you talk to the NPCs and deal with their problems rather than just murdering everyone and taking their stuff.

But Fallout 76 is just judging you.

I keep thinking about its promotional song – that really upbeat cover of Take Me Home, Country Roads, and all the imagery in the old trailer, about rebuilding and looking to the future. But all of that is functionally a lie, and the key lines in that song come towards the end:

I hear her voice in the mornin' hour, she calls me The radio reminds me of my home far away Drivin' down the road, I get a feelin' That I should've been home yesterday, yesterday – Take Me Home, Country Roads

You should have been home yesterday. You should have been home a thousand yesterdays ago. This story is all about the past, and a rebuilding effort you neglected to join. It hits you with the guilt straight away, as the very first place the game takes you is an old outpost of emergency service personnel who just kept on doing their jobs after the bombs fell. It's their notes and recordings that teach you how to survive.

Of course you encounter less pleasant people later: raiders and Enclave, and honestly I have little patience for any iteration of The Brotherhood of Steel. But even there, you can see that the misunderstandings and conflicts and general fuck ups might have been resolved with a competent mediator.

And that is exactly what you are. You're a Fallout protagonist. You don't have the time to spend ten years sitting in a lab, but you excel at travelling from town to town and dealing with whatever obstacle is stopping a faction from moving forward. Fallouts 1-4 and assorted spin offs have taught us all that.

Even in universe, Vault 76 is stated to be full of literal geniuses. It is packed with doctors and scientists and engineers: exactly the people the world needed to deal with a combination of plague and environmental crisis.

If you were there, you could have fixed this.

But you were not there. You were sitting comfortably in a vault, while other, better people tried to save the world.

And they were almost there. They had a vaccine. Even with everything, they had a vaccine. They did the work, they had a plan. As you play through this quest, you stand upon the shoulders of giants at almost every stage, implementing the very last step in a plan that really does work. Had they lived, even a few months longer ... but they didn't, and you did nothing to help them.

It wasn't even necessary to spend 25 years in that vault, as it is abundantly clear that the area around 76 has been habitable this whole time. Challenging, sure: I am in no way suggesting that it was an easy existence. But it was not instant irradiated death.

Every other Fallout protagonist steps out of their vault (or other entry scenario) in time to make things right. Maybe just in time, but nevertheless. They walk into a fractured world and get to work. But not you. You took the easy route.

How proud are you of that Best Dental Hygiene award now?

Given that it is set so close to the Great War, and deals with first generation survivors, it gives one of the best looks at the cynical cruelty of Vault-Tec: when they talk about rebuilding the world, it only means rebuilding for its own benefit and profit. Anyone not part of their plan is more than welcome to die in a hole.

It ties in very nicely with the television series, actually. Lucy laments that she was waiting to rebuild the world, but it all happened without her - and Vault-Tec actively tried to destroy that new world (and at least up to a point, seems to have succeeded). Her people waited over 200 years, but it didn't take that long. Twenty-five were quite enough.

But with the new version ... I mean, it really takes the sting out of it. It looks like everybody had a few rough years there, but it's all turned out fine. There's a burgeoning civilisation here, with homesteads and caravans and trade. I can't go two steps without an NPC asking to borrow a bobby pin, and even the raiders are more territorial than outright destructive (although – is nobody going to go up that completely safe little hill and give poor Miguel a funeral? Come on guys, clean up the damn corpses).

The tragedy of the whole thing, and the weight of your own inaction, is largely gone. You can't reshape the world and still make the same impact with that narrative.

I don't know, I guess I just can't quite get behind the whole multiplayer-ness of the thing. The world can't really change as you complete quests. You can't really rebuild. But likewise, if the world does change, it has to change for everyone at the same time, regardless of where they are in the story.

It could still work, I think, if you could play through that story and then see the caravans come over the hill, and start to rebuild the world.

Because that might feel a bit like redemption.

#fallout #fallout 76 #fallout tv series #fallout tv spoilers

20 notes · View notes

gazs-blue-hat · 10 months

Text

Injections and Ivermectin pt.2 (Small Town UA) Ghost X Reader (Tens)

AN: Continuing the small town UA! This is another chapter featuring our favorite veterinarian and broody SAS operator.

Word Count: 2,382

Summary: After an unfortunate encounter with a goat, Ghost manages to slice his arm open. Luckily you know how to fix it without messing up his sleeve of tattoos.

TW: Blood, Injury, Stitches, Canon typical language, Mention of a dog having puppies (Ethically). Briefly mentioned Bisexual reader (LMK if I missed any)

I DO NOT GIVE PERMISSION TO ANYBODY HERE OR ON ANOTHER SITE TO REPOST, COPY, TRANSLATE OR FEED MY WORK TO AN A.I OF ANY KIND.

The 141 had been on Lamb's farm for four weeks now and you had gotten into a pattern of seeing them. You often went over to help with her leg. Something had been really irritating it lately and she never would take care of it herself. (Stubborn bitch)

You were getting to know the men pretty well actually. MacTavish, or Soap practically followed lamb as closely as Nikon did. He knew a thing or two about livestock to Lamb logically trusted him with most tasks she would have done herself.

Garrick, or Gaz spent a lot of his time at Keys' place. She was in the middle of reorganizing and cataloging her library and she was very thankful for the help. Although, you wondered how much work was actually getting done. Gaz knew all about the series she liked so instead of working, the two were probably gushing over who kissed who and what was going to happen in the next book.

The Captain was no stranger to you (even if he avoided you like the plague). He would give simple head nods in your direction and calmly leave whatever room you had entered. You had no details about the meeting he had with Skip. But there was no broken glass or shattered doors when you and Lamb entered the house again.

The person you probably spent the most time with, however, was Ghost. Ghost was by far the most enigmatic of the group but he was also the most…genuine. You could see how his face would make invisible expressions under the mask and how he was incredibly expressive with his eyes. (That man could murder someone with a side-eye)

Whenever you would be at Lamb's house (Which was more often than you were at your own house), you always managed to be in proximity of the large man. Lamb often sent him over to help with whatever it was you were doing. You mostly came over to check on Moosie and her illness. The prognosis wasn't good and you had even walked in on Soap holding her as she cried into his shoulder.

Today though you were at the office, helping a sweet chocolate lab deliver her second litter of puppies. You watched closely as the lab huffed and grumbled in the large padded box next to you. You had decided to sit on the floor next to her so she would feel more comfortable. She held her head in your lap as you typed on your laptop, finishing up some documenting how many rabies vaccinations you would require for next year.

You turned your head as you heard the small yips of a newborn pup. You beamed down at the lab and pet her head softly.

"Atta girl. So proud of you." You whispered. The dog huffed again and got back to work. After checking on the puppy and documenting its health your receptionist stuck her head in the door.

"Lamb is calling you. Should I send the call in here or should I take it?" Maryanne asked softly. You really liked Maryanne and hired her on as your secretary a week ago. There wasn't much work she could do in town due to her health issues and you were more than happy to be accommodating for her.

"You can take the message, Maryanne. I'm gonna focus here with Debbie." You said while documenting the successful arrival of a second puppy. Maryanne nodded and you heard her wheelchair slotting back to the desk.

"She said someone named Ghost was coming over for some stitches. Said it was urgent." Maryanne called. You nodded and added him to your calendar. You wondered what Ghost could have done to himself that would cause a need for stitches so bad that he or Lamb couldn't do it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An hour or so later, you heard the little bell above the door of your office ring out.

"Hello, sir! How can I help you?" You heard the soft voice of Maryanne say from the front room. You stood from your seat on the floor and started to scrub up. You sanitized your hands and moved to the secondary room, gathering the materials you would need to do some serious stitching.

" 'm here to see Tens." A gruff voice said. Maryanne made a sound of affirmation and you heard the door to the first room office swing open. Debbie opened her eyes and huffed, only turning over so her six puppies could keep nursing.

"Over here!" You called while putting a layer of absorbent cloth down on the chair's arm. The chair you had in this room was not like one found in regular doctor's offices. This was a modified tattoo chair that you had gotten from an estate sale. Waste not, want not.

Ghost walked into the room holding a blood-stained towel over his left forearm. You winced and made a hissing sound.

"What happened to your lovely artwork?" You said kindly, gesturing to the seat. Ghost said nothing as he sat down, resting his arm on the chair's armrest.

"Was fixin' up the water toughs in the goat pens when this big bastard decided to use my side as ramming practice." He grumbled, making no sound of pain as you peeled away the towel.

"Jesus Christ on a bike." You mumble as you take in the extent of the damage. Six large lacerations dug deep in his forearm. Blood leaked from them and dripped down his arm, being absorbed by the towel.

"Bugger shoved me hard enough to cause my arm to hit the barbed wire next to the fence," he continued to explain. You nodded in understanding. You too had been headbutted by the 'big bastard' as Ghost had called him. He was a rather young goat with the fury of a thousand suns crammed in his tiny body. it didn't matter how big you were or how strong. He would always try his damnedest to knock you on your ass.

"I know how that goes. Frankie always was cantankerous." You say while donning a pair of gloves. These gloves were specially made for you by a medical friend of yours. He had molded them to your hands so they fit absolutely perfectly. It was almost like wearing no gloves at all.

"Oh, Lamb said to give this to you. Said that you deserved it?" Ghost said while handing you a folded note. You nodded and gestured for him to place it on the tray next to you. You didn't want to have to scrub everything again.

You began by cleaning the area of blood as best you could with some gauze. You then reached over for your saline bottle and opened the cap with your other hand.

"Okay, you probably know the drill but I'll go through it anyway. This is just saline, it will sting a bit but not nearly as much as Isopropyl or whisky." You say with a smile. You can notice his eyebrows raising slightly in surprise.

"I was a combat medic Ghost. We used what we could find." You say with a wink. You irrigate the wounds and watch as he flinches from the pain slightly. The cuts weren't actually as bad as you had thought and that made you smile.

"Do you by any chance have a reference image for what the tattoo looked like before all of this?" You ask while holding pressure on the wound with one hand and grabbing your suturing supplies with the other. Ghost shook his head and you frowned. You'd have to guess then.

"Why does it matter? You don't need a reference to do stitches." Ghost said calmly. You could tell he wasn't irritated, he was genuinely curious about your question.

"Well look at it! I don't want to butcher it with messy stitching!" You say while gesturing to the undamaged parts of the tattoo. It truly was amazing work. The level of detail that went into the ink honestly deserved an award.

"I don't even want to think about how much this cost or how long it took to do. That would be a slap in the face of the artist." You continued, shaking your head at the thought.

Ghost chuckled and you felt your stomach do a little flip thing.

'odd...' you thought to yourself.

"Never had a medic care so much about my tattoos before." he chuckled. You could practically hear the smile in his voice and it took great restraint not to melt into a puddle.

"Perhaps you've been hanging out with the wrong medics." You say softly. You really didn't mean to make it sound so...sultry. You numbed the surrounding skin with some cream and you got to work stitching. You did your best to line up the skin perfectly so the details of the tattoos would be spared.

"Who are the right medics then?" he asked softly. You almost didn't hear him and you looked up, only to meet his piercing eyes.

Oh God

You could have fallen into those eyes. A deep brown that reminded you of freshly tilled earth after a rain storm. They reminded you of the dark bark of a steady spruce tree, green throughout the cold winter. His eyebrows were perfectly molded to his face but just unkempt enough to give him a scruffy appearance.

When you died, would have to slap God for making a man so fine.

"Sorry, I didn't hear you properly. Could you repeat that?" You asked. He leaned over in the seat a bit, getting closer. You could feel your breath hitch in your chest. He smelled divine. Like work and pure man. He also smelled slightly of cigarettes and bourbon with a hint of Lamb's homemade soap.

How dare he smell delicious? How dare he make you salivate at work with his stupidly strong arms, thighs, chest, and-

"I asked, who are the right medics then?" he repeated. You swallowed and hoped he couldn't hear your heart pounding in your chest.

"The ones who give a shit about you I suppose." You manage to say without stuttering. Never had a patient made you react this way. Not even the one time that smoking hot petty officer had gotten a steam burn on her side, showing you plenty of side-boob as you bandaged her up.

He only hummed and sat back, closing his eyes as you worked. It took you about three hours to stitch the wounds up enough to your satisfaction. You gently wiped the area clean with more saline and you put some antibacterial cream on the stitches. You looked up to say something to him but a rough snore caught you off guard. He was sleeping.

Somehow this large man had fallen asleep while you were giving him stitches. You said nothing as you gently wrapped the wound with Tegaderm so he could watch the healing process and come back if there were any issues.

You simply draped a thin blanket over him and turned out the lights. You cleaned up from the procedure and grabbed your laptop from the other room. You didn't want him to be alone when he woke up since you knew how disorienting that could be.

You sat on the floor once more and continued typing your reports, ignoring how the sun had long since set.

--------

It was around midnight when Ghost blinked his eyes open. He was strangely comfortable in whatever seat he was sitting in. He looked around to see where he was and he furrowed his eyebrows when he figured it out.

He was in one of Tens' medical rooms, sitting in a tattoo chair with his arm all bandaged up. He examined the work and was incredibly pleased that you had done a perfect job. The lines of the tattoo were perfectly aligned and the stitches were so perfectly symmetrical that if there even was a scar, it would look like it belonged in the tattoo anyway. Absolutely incredible.

A soft snore alerted him that he was not alone in the room. You sat in the corner, your laptop still on and shining a dull white light on your face. You slept peacefully but not in the cute ways that movies or books would show. You slept with your head on your shoulder, your mouth open slightly and a small splotch of saliva pooling on your coat collar. You still had your coat on that was dotted with his blood. Your hands rested on the keys of the keyboard as if you had fallen asleep while typing.

Simon smiled down at your sleepy form. You had stayed in this office with him so he wouldn't be frightened when he woke up. You stayed way past closing time and even fell asleep on the floor to make him more comfortable.

He stood up, closed your laptop (but not before saving your work), and gently picked you up. He was careful of his stitches and he was shocked when he didn't feel pain as the skin pulled a bit. You had numbed him up, even if you knew he was well used to stitches without pain relief.

You mumbled a bit as you shifted in his grip, nuzzling into his chest. it was a cute action and Simon felt a bit of blood rushing to his cheeks. How long had it been since he actually blushed? he made his way to the other room where he had seen a bed. It was a medical bed sure, but a bed was a bed in his opinion.

"Don't forget to... wash your haaands." You mumbled while making the motion of rubbing hands together. Simon smiled softly under his mask as he set you down. You curled up a bit, shivering in the late autumn air. He returned to the room he had been in and grabbed the blanket you had placed over him. He draped it over you and closed the door behind him.

Returning to the room to pick up your laptop, he noticed the paper that Lamb had instructed he give to you unfolded on the floor. The words written upon it made his stomach flip in the strangest way

'Have fun with Skullface. Don't ever mock me again bitch.'

-Lamb

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

taglist: @plumteaa-remus @ghostlythots

(Lmk if you want to be added)

#simon ghost riley x reader #small town ua #to be linked

21 notes · View notes

hextechmaturgy · 2 years

Text

my thoughts on pathologic classic

finally finished the game all the way through, so here are my (not at all concise) thoughts

beware of spoilers and A LOT OF TEXT

NOTE: I do know quite a bit about pathologic 2, but seeing as I haven't played that game yet, I'll try to keep my ideas here separate and only focus on what I got from playing the classic version

Bachelor:

By far my favorite character, and if you say I'm biased cause we have similar degrees, you are absolutely right, but that's not why I love him. I got into pathologic by watching all the video essays I think everyone else watches, so coming into it I had a very specific idea of what Daniil would be like - rude, condescending, heartless, "the prickly prick who will bury us all" - and while I can definitely see where some of those are coming from sort of, after 80+ hours of playing this goddamn game I can safely say: Daniil is a good person who does good things and the hate he gets is largely undeserved. I'm a Daniil Dankovsky TRUTHER.

He's kind! He's surprisingly good with kids; when he does snap at them and threaten to put them in timeout or to call their parents, it's usually because they're breaking his quarantine rules and that's a REALLY BAD IDEA (after 2020, I feel we can all relate to that frustration). In one instance, Capella asks him to look for a kid in an infected district and, upon finding him, Daniil tells him to run off and leave testing the disease to him, earning a shmowder from the kid but also getting the plague. This is a side quest, it's up to you to decide if getting infected is worth the shmowder or not, but the fact of the matter is, Daniil doesn't have to care about this kid, he doesn't have to do this quest, but (at least in my save) he does. Forgetting about the kids though, Daniil is just a genuinely helpful guy. He's a fucking lifesaver when you're playing as the Haruspex, he clears your name completely on day 1 when he really doesn't have to. The two go on to collaborate pretty much until the end. When Daniil's solution begins to diverge from Artemy's, he explains that no, killing the polyhedron won't help Artemy actually, it's the only way to ensure Aglaya is sacrificed, which is the only way Artemy will be accepted by the kin, which he knows is important to him, it's his inheritance! Time and time again, Daniil gives it his all to protect the people of the town. He talks Peter down from suicide, he can try to do the same with Rubin, he kills a bunch of men to protect Andrey, at some point he has a mission to reunite a daughter with her father and he only fails that mission because Artemy kills her (because you asked him for an infected heart and Artemy chose hers). His best efforts are constantly thwarted or misunderstood. I'm not saying he's a saint, he still has plenty of awful dialogue lines to choose from, but? MAN, I've been a health professional during a pandemic, I understand frustration, the pure fucking rage felt at the people who don't quarantine or believe vaccines will help, the hatred that rises in your gut when you watch as politicians take advantage of the situation. I was only a student back then! Imagine being 1 out of FOUR (4!!) people who can do something!

Daniil's condescension is another one of those things where... I see it, but I don't. Yes, his latin is tacky and he does have lines calling people dumb as shit compared to him, a genius mastermind, but one thing that we have to take into account is that Daniil is, by all accounts, a genius mastermind. The mysticism of the town goes completely over his head (it's SO fucking funny to me that Daniil has 0 knowledge that the Rat Prophet even exists), but this is because it's not something one can easily prove 1) it exists and 2) can be repeated and reproduced, both of which are VERY important in scientific experimentation. Meanwhile, in the Capital, Daniil is a famous scientist known for his experiments surrounding death; he's so good he's earned himself a following, and if the rumors on the street are to be believed, Daniil has even successfully brought someone back from the dead! I think he gets to flex his smarts, maybe. He doesn't need to be rude about it, sure, but it's not like the people would respect him if he didn't flex it. He's told from the start that he just doesn't get it, will never get it, "you're smart but you're not" type of conversation time and time again, since he's not attuned to ~miracles~ like some of the others are. Again, as an atheist myself, I can see why that would get frustrating. There is also an instance where Daniil "mansplains" antibodies to Artemy? Artemy, a fellow doctor sort of, can reply with something along the lines of "don't make fun of me" and Daniil's response is a genuine "i wasn't making fun of you, i was only explaining a concept". To the fellow mentally ill person reading this, ain't that the most relatable thing ever? Talking about something you're passionate about with a person that you like, wanting to make sure they understand the concept because you love it and understand it, but just coming off as obnoxious?

Daniil is GAY AS HELL. Those videos don't prepare you for how gay this man is. I started getting into the fandom telling myself "wow people ship these two huh, I can't imagine why" and then I played the fucking thing and you can't not ship them. It's not even subtext at this point, this is how Daniil introduces himself to Artemy:

He has two women thirsting over him (I don't know if Maria's feelings are genuine of if the Mistress magic within her just recognizes that he's her path to victory) and he barely reacts to them inviting him to their bed or saying "I love you" to his face. He can flirt back, but I feel like Daniil is just a charming guy as it is, he's from the Capital, he was friends with Andrey so you KNOW he did drugs in university and he has to know about the orgies already. He does care about Eva, but who wouldn't? In the runs you don't control him he often refers to her as "my Eva", but I always read it as platonic I'll be honest. Her death hits him hard, she's a sweetheart who only ever tried to help him, she housed him barely knowing who he was for fuck's sake, and Daniil's last conversation with her in the Cathedral shows he feels awful because he thinks she did it for him. I like to think that Daniil took a liking to Eva's kind and free spirit and often looked to her for comfort. Do I think he was in love with her? Absolutely not <3

Finally, let's talk about his ending, shall we? I feel like this is often used to demonstrate just how heartless Daniil is, and I will admit that, to me, his ending felt weirdly cruel and sudden while I was playing him. Hilariously, though, when I was playing as Artemy and spoke to Daniil about his solution, I thought Daniil had way better reasons to keep the polyhedron when I wasn't controlling him, and he explains his views better too. Daniil sees that the town is basically destroyed already, so many have died, so many more are infected and will soon die, they have a panacea but lack the materials with which to make enough to go around. The tower is aseptic, children have managed to live in it for the entirety of the plague without getting sick; it would be the perfect isolation ward for the survivors, a controlled space where they would be able to be vaccinated and monitored. Daniil does show frustration with the town, I think he even has some less than kind lines calling it backwards and doomed, but when his mind is clear and he's just talking about his plan, he says that he wouldn't mind saving the town, but he knows Block has to shoot something, and the polyhedron is worth preserving. I feel like his reasons are mostly empirical, a real science man's choice, but I'm also not one of those people who believes that Daniil represents hard, cold logic. The only reason he's searching for a way to defeat death is because he wants humans to die on their own terms, at peace. He follows facts but he interprets them with the mind of a bright eyed idealist. He writes the most dramatic letters in the world. He wears his heart of his sleeve! By the end of the game, he has seen evidence that the Kains are as magical as they claim to be. Maria's prophecies have come true, and he's literally spoken to the spirits of Nina and Simon. He sees the marvel of architecture that his twin friends managed to build, he admires it for what it is even without the mysticism on top, but then he actually learns that the mysticism is real, and he's naturally enthralled by it. Going into the polyhedron, hearing that music and seeing those lights, watching the kids play without a worry or care in the world. The future could be immortality and comfort, peace equal to that of a child who doesn't know pain, wouldn't that be wonderful? Adding to the mix the fact that he feels used by Aglaya (gonna be real here chief, either she played me super well or I was just not paying enough attention cause no matter which protagonist I was, I only ever loved Aglaya, this one is on him xoxo), while knowing she will die only if the town falls + knowing Artemy needs her dead or his prophecy won't be realized and his people won't accept him....... When talking to Clara about her ending, all she says is that she can't explain her miracle, a miracle requires faith, and yeah! If you were to meet God and he told you exactly how or why he stayed silent and hidden from you all your life, believing God exists and has power over the world would become fact, not a belief. There are too many "what ifs" in Clara's ending, at the cost of blood sacrifice one might add. Idk, I hate to see the town die and I do still think this ending is a bit cruel, but I get it. Daniil would think keeping the Polyhedron alive is the best choice, I can't fault him for it.

Side note, I would like to add that, although Daniil doesn't understand magic, as I've mentioned, he is the first person to defend it when he finds proof for it, and this doesn't just apply to the Kains. He admits he was wrong about the people and practices of the Steppe; they do work, he doesn't know how, but they are very much real and they do absolutely work, Artemy even gives him a panacea, a cure for the epidemic made from ancient, sacred blood. How can he go on claiming they're dumb superstitions? When you play as the Changeling, Daniil doesn't believe what he's heard about you at first, good or bad, but then he witness one of your miracles and from that point forth he's on your side. He defends her from Aglaya, once again rectifying the reputation of a perceived scoundrel simply because he can and he thinks they deserve it.

Haruspex:

This man makes me feral, I want to hug him so bad. His casual playfulness gets to me, the fact that his bound are children means that he often has to deal with them, and he really is good with them. A lot is said about his first mission being a testament to how hard the game and, indeed, his whole run is: one of your bound, a kid, asks you to kill another kid for betraying him or whatever. The reward is a shmowder, a cure to the plague, but you obviously lose reputation for going through with it. And see, if making this decision really was as crucial as some people make it out to be, I would get it, but it's really not. Letting the kid leave with his life means you don't get a shmowder, sure, but that doesn't matter cause you're playing the guy who invents the fucking cure. Notkin, the kid who "hired" you, thanks you for letting him live because he no longer felt so angry he wanted him dead once you left his hideout. TO ADD EVEN MORE REASONS TO WHY YOU SHOULD BE A DECENT HUMAN BEING, that kid you let escape comes back on day 9 and helps you get the Bachelor out of prison, no questions asked. Saving that kid and getting rep for it is so much more important than getting a single cure, especially because, if you're role-playing as Artemy in that moment, he probably doesn't even know what the shmowders do. Don't make your life harder. Play Artemy as the nice, moral man he is, protect the kid, protect all the children of the town, and you'll be rewarded with their friendship and all the things they can do for you. Murky alone provides the ingredients you need to make 2 fucking cures, and the price you pay for that is "go on a nice stroll through the steppe looking for her missing doll".

Related to my last point, Artemy will only really be hunted down by the masses for his crimes if he goes around town killing innocent people for no reason. You don't need to do that!!! If you must kill (and I do understand you kinda do in order to make your awesome potions), killing criminals at night raises reputation and, surprise bro, they also have organs: steal 'em, cook 'em, thrive. Artemy is portrayed as a brutish, scary man who will spill blood, and just like how it is with Daniil, this is all true in places. Despite what his model in 2 might suggest, I always envision him as a tall, large and imposing figure, the giant with the heart of gold archetype and all. People in the streets see that man, they hear about his crimes and his alleged crimes and they think the worst of him. I do believe part of the confusion also comes from the racist views of the people of the town, who go on and on about how freaky the worms and the brides are. Artemy's prophecy that he will spill blood is true for his ending, that's how he gains access to the ingredients he needs to make the cures, but it's also just a part of his occupation. Not to be a filthy solasmancer on main, but there's a character I really like in dragon age who says "the healer has the bloodiest hands" and to me that's Artemy in a nutshell. Daniil is more scientist than doctor imo, he deals with antigens and antibodies, proteins seen only through a microscope, a modern invention. He injects his solution with aseptic, hypodermic needles, and it seems to me that he mostly dealt with corpses in his previous job. Artemy's role in his society requires him to get his hands dirty to make sure that whoever is still living but hurting can recuperate and go on living. I think both positions are admirable and, to me, Artemy's is downright beautiful. As the devs have said, his story is about love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HIS ENDING FUCKED ME UP, MAN. I really spent the entire game thinking I would go for his designated solution no matter what. Nothing else made sense to me, I was looking forward to seeing how Daniil would explain his side to convince Artemy into choosing ANYTHING over the town, his town. Then I found out about Oyun who told me about Aglaya, Daniil told me that, if Artemy destroyed the polyhedron, the ancient blood would indeed flow, but the kin would not allow him to use it because, by choosing to not take his sacrifice when he needed to, he would not be accepted by them. Aglaya x Artemy is the only romance with the protagonists that I'm willing to believe, besides Daniil x Artemy ofc. Aglaya is enamored by Artemy (or possibly manipulating him because) she sees how he lives his life independent of the Powers That Bed. So what if my decisions are preordained? They're helping the ones I love. She's hoping his independence will rub off on her, and indeed his ending is the only way she lives. If you care about Aglaya, which I certainly do, choosing an ending as Artemy is torture.

I wish Artemy had stronger ties to the town. His father is dead when the game starts and all of the kids he's put in charge of are strangers. He does have an old friend there, Rubin, but he mostly contacts him through letters telling him he's out to kill him, and if I'm remembering correctly, later they meet once so Rubin can apologize and then he never comes back? My memory is bad, but that feels right. Anyway, the kin do seem to remember him, they do certainly recognize his name if not, but they don't respect him until Artemy proves himself to them. I won't get into pathologic 2, I said I wouldn't, but I know this alienation was tweaked in that game and I'm glad for him. Having Grief and Lara as extra childhood friends only adds to Artemy's connection with the town and the people living in it. Wanting to keep his childhood friends safe, who are all bound to Clara, would give him even more reasons to agonize over his ending. Imagine if, after falling down Oyun's hole (oops!) and speaking to the Changeling, Artemy had to choose one of those three women to die knowing one of his oldest friends was among them! Delicious drama, I say.

Oh yeah, Artemy is also gay as shit. I'm sorry, but if a stranger from the big city came to me and asked me for a still beating infected heart which I might have to lose reputation to get, I would at least think to tell them "maybe" if not "go fuck yourself". I won't go into this ship again, but the way they're both always so willing to help each other, even though it would be easier not to.........

Changeling:

Getting into this game, I had quite a bit of information on Daniil and Artemy, but very little on Clara. I knew the basics: she's the plague, but she isn't! She has a twin but she doesn't! How is that possible? Fuck you! That being said, I was probably looking forward to her route the most because I felt like this was the character I had the most to learn about, and I was right. Clara deserves more love, her character is truly incredible. But.... where to start, oh my god................

Okay, so Clara is the personification of the plague, we learn this super early on; in the Haruspex route, she asks Artemy to talk to the Rat Prophet about who she is and what her purpose is. Artemy can be nice and tell her she's a holy healer who can only do good, or he can tell her the truth, which terrifies her. She is spit by the Earth (wakes up in a hole with no memories) and arrives in town on the day the plague starts. While Daniil and Artemy have to pay everyday for updated maps showing the different infected districts, Clara sees her "twin" in dreams who tells her where she'll go next, so she always just Knows where the plague's spreading. She has to convince her mirror self to leave an infected district to prevent it from staying infected until the end of the game. It's obvious that she holds power over the plague, the how is what gets most people. How can she both have and not have a twin? How is she a deadly disease but also a holy healer? The answer, in the end, is quite simple. Clara is the personification of the plague, but she is also a bright 13 year old girl with an imagination. In this world we're invited to play in, which is actually the invention of two very traumatized children and, beyond that, a group of indie game developers with a passion for what they do, having an avid imagination is what makes Clara unique, it's the source of all her magic and goodness, even if it cannot completely erase her wickedness. Clara believes she can heal people and find a solution that doesn't require Block to shoot anything, and in doing so, those options become real. When Clara said she had a twin sister, she spoke another Clara into being. It's truly fascinating and also tragic, I think, to tell the story of a young girl who believes she can cure all of Humanity's ailments, not realizing (or perhaps living in denial of the fact) she's the reason those ailments exist in the first place.

I'm gonna break the mold a bit and talk about her ending already, because I feel like it flows well coming from that last point. Clara's ending, the miracle that keeps both the polyhedron and the town, can only be achieved by keeping her bound alive and healthy until the end of the game, which is harder as Clara than it is as the other two. With Daniil and Artemy, if you manage your time correctly, you will keep all your bound healthy, but Clara's daily missions require her to meet her bound and learn how awful they are (well, some of them) and then she has to lie about their true nature to those who could punish them for it, just as Clara lies about herself. She detests trickery, but if we ourselves are to suffer deception, our hands are no longer tied. When you know the truth about something, you are compelled to form a just opinion on it, but if you are lied to or deceived in some way, any decision you make may yet be forgiven because you just didn't know all the facts. Clara lives in make believe land in the most figurative but also literal sense possible. The sins of her bound don't hit her as hard because they have been deceived into believing they're real people, so she's inclined to forgive them, especially cause she's certain they can still be useful to her. In many ways, Clara is lying to herself about her true nature so she can navigate the world without concerns. Lying to her dad about the "goodness" of her bound and taking the reputation loss because of it is kind of poetic; her dad made the wrong choice by believing her and not arresting those people, but he's been freed from his crimes by her lies. Later, when Clara turns to her bound and asks them to make the ultimate sacrifice to power the miracle, they go in peace. Most say they're glad they get to die like "a real human" with a blood like Simon's.

Clara's route is really fun, but later on it does get as repetitive as everyone says, you can tell she was rushed. The missions "find your sister and banish her" and "find the bachelor and the haruspex so they won't kill each other" do get annoying, especially because they don't even have different dialogue prompts and every time you get into one of those houses to talk to them you just get the shit beat out of you, or you get the plague. There's also like... NO mention of Eva's death in her route? She's alive in the Haruspex's so I though she would be too in the Changeling's or, if she did die, I thought there would be a really cool conversation between them, seeing as the Changeling sends Daniil a letter taunting him with Eva's suicide. But no, Eva just stops showing up at her house and that's it. Huge waste of potential there. I also don't get why some of her bound are those people? Anna Angel, Bad Grief and Aspity are the fucking most in this game, so those I get. Oyun is out to kill the Burakhs, so yeah I read him on the bad vibes scale too. Katerina is a failed Mistress who only ever gave me bad instructions, so I GUESS she counts, and Alexander is a cop so fuck him too. I could make a case for Rubin? Kind of? But for Lara and Yulia, I am truly out of ideas. Clara's bound is made up of all these complex liars and cheats, corrupt politicians and the like, and then there's the lady who's too nice to shoot even her father's murderer and the math lesbian who....????? I'm gonna be real here, I never know what the fuck Yulia is talking about, I could not tell you if I like her or not because I simply do not understand what her purpose is. She's a fatalist who believes in the predetermination of fate and, as far as I can tell, that's it. Cool look, though.

I love that she gets to meet the Powers That Be twice and that they're spooked she got to them earlier than the other two. I also like the detail that this whole Clara dichotomy exists because the kids can't decide between one another if she should save or kill everyone.

One thing I forgot to say in the section about her ending: I love the implication that her ending will only reach peak effectiveness if the healers learn to work together. Clara will transform the blood of those who volunteer to die "like Simon"; this blood is what will allow Artemy to make the cures to all of those who get infected; this blood is also what allowed Daniil and Rubin to make a vaccine that can prevent the disease from coming back for as long as they can. Note: Awesome world building detail, adding in that Simon's blood was old and that was why it could only be used to make vaccines, not panaceas. It makes me think about how older folk tend to hold wisdom of past generations that allow the younger ones to avoid unnecessary pain (Daniil is older than the other two healers, not by a lot but still....... curious). This suggest that, when catastrophe does hit, the younger folks can return the favor by protecting them to the best of their ability, and then, when the bad days pass, we can look to the children and recognize that the future we build afterwards is for them. Allowing humans to exist within a loving community is Clara's miracle. It's so fucking nice to be alive, you guys.

anyway play pathologic, it's not as hard as it seems, and if it is just cheat, i won't tell anyone

#pathologic #don't look at me i have many thoughts so i'm dumping them here #edit: I FORGOT TO MENTION THAT IN THE CHANGELING ROUTE IT'S IMPLIED THAT DANIIL AND ARTEMY FOUGHT EACH OTHER IN THE RING NEAR THE TERMITARY #clearly none of them won. how fucking funny is that #i'm having plague thoughts (BEWARE)

92 notes · View notes

hayheadd · 1 year

Text

I am incredibly autistic. I have gotten the flu vaccine for 10 years in a row. Autism flows through my blood. Anyways, here's a list of Lemon Demon Spirit Phone songs that I imagine Pathologic animatics to.

Lifetime Achievement Award - The Kains trying to revive Simon while Rubin takes him apart into the vaccine

Touch Tone Telephone - At first it's Aspity explaining to Clara what they both are (brand new species. Big cat. Space nazis. Robert Sack.) and then it's Clara trying to call everyone (Aglaya, Block, Saburovs) to explain her blood cult and convince everyone that it's a great idea

Cabinet Man - Polyhedron (Simon Kain's soul in it?) playing games with the the kids until Aglaya bombs it (very important to include a shot where her dead body is looking very triumphant)

No Eyed Girl - Simon Kain and Isidor obsessing over the plague. They decide to dig it up and kill everyone (they would do it all again)

When he died - Bachelor arriving to town to discover Simon Kain's dead (very important to include a shot of him coming back to Eva's and screaming into a pillow), later Artemy finding out Isidor is dead (and all the wacky circumstances).

Sweet Bod - My favourite. Starts with Artemy brewing his meat soup and taking organs out of people. He proceeds to go graverobbing with the kids. A dude hears about all this and tells the Bachelor. When the gang comes back (after a quick stop at Shekhen), Artemy finds out how to make panacea (it's started rumors of mason jars of sweetness). Everyone is super happy about this and they throw a panacea party in the lair with all the termites and Artemy's friends where they're all drinking twyre brews. Bachelor knocks on the the door, and Burakh greets him (Good god I'm glad to see you) (won't you be my panacea). Daniil gets dragged into the party and is incredibly uncomfortable. He tries to wake up Stakh, who is sleeping on the operating table so he can ask him what the fuck is going on. The animatic finishes off with a big dance off.

Eight Wonder - it's about Murky (extra clever earth bound spirit)! She has hands and she has feet! She follows Burakh around, being all quiet and Murky-like (thou will never know what I am) (she's the eight wonder). Suddenly switches to a shot of the Crowstone scene, Burakh terrified as he understands that the plague is going to take Murky (when you see me, you're paralyzed). Then it shows her backstory, how she lost her family to the plague, and this is compared to how Artemy took in the plague to protect her. I imagine this makes her feel really guilty. The thing is that Murky doesn't talk a lot, but this is how I interpret this part of her story. BUT THEN it's Evil Clara aka possibly plague herself (who tricked her) singing about how SHE'S the eight wonder. And Clara and Murky dance in the void

Ancient Aliens - Clara singing about her nature again. About Worms, Brides, Albinos, Aspity and the plague also (strange things happen).

Soft Fuzzy Man - actually it's really weird that I don't imagine much to this one since it's an absolute banger, but I guess it's Clara with her cult again.

As Your Father I Expressly Forbid It - Artemy forbidding Murky from playing with her friend (Plague) (in an untoxic way).

I Earn My Life - Stakh Rubin anthem. He's overworking, not sleeping for days. At "I'm losing all my hair" his bald head becomes even BALDER. "I learned it from my father and my father never lied" is literally something Stakh would say about Isidor. "I wouldn't be so worried if I wasn't always right". At the end he takes a nice long rest in the grave (Artemy didn't finish his panacea quest) (sad ending)

Man Made Object - Peter imagining, planning and building the Polyhedron (towering over all). I've always imagined if Peter had dream sequences, they would be in purple and orange, like the insides of the Polyhedron.

Spiral of Ants - About the Kin's hivemind. Artemy gets dragged into the Kin's circle and they all dance, create a hurricane, do the Nocturnal ending and decolonise the town.

You're at the party - (this one is really weird) The Marble Nest basically. Daniil can't fall asleep because of all the infected people screaming outside. He's having fever dreams, super tired. A crow is shown looking into his window, when the plague lichen or moss looking thing gets into the house he's in. He freaks out, runs up to the window and gets grabbed by a skeletal hand and dragged into some weird dimension, where he wakes up in a coffin (It's a place you've seen before you were born). Eventually he gets into a trance, and just starts vibing out with the tragedians that are there. Meanwhile, in the real world, Sticky walks into Daniil's room and sees that he's uncontious and really really infected. The partying is broken up at "Wake up!" and "Too late!" with shots of Sticky and the kids trying to shake him awake and give him medicine. Suddenly Daniil wakes up. He's sitting on his bed, but the kids aren't there. The crow that was looking in earlier flew in and is dead on the floor, surrounded by executor masks (sun's not rising and the birds are dead). For some reason there's a vial of panacea sitting near the sink, which Daniil runs up to, but accidentally breaks it (half empty bottles in the sink, down the drain). It starts raining, and Dankovsky just realises he can take his face off (your face begins to change), which he does, revealing a tragedian mask under it. Behind him appears a executor, and he finds himself at the start of that night again (Marble Nest time loop). There's clock and handwatch imagery present throughout this whole thing.

Redesign Your Logo - Peter and the Kains designing the Polyhedron AGAIN, this time in a style that kind of makes the whole thing look like blueprints. I don't have much on this one, but when Neil Cicieriga says "Interracial couples" - show Dankovsky and Burakh holding hands. And likewise have a character for every single line in that segment where he lists potential customers. There's also a lot of pathological symbolism to be done here (everything's connected 😲)

(I AM not intending the censor myself on this. This is strictly informational.)

#pathologic #pathologic 2

15 notes · View notes

bitchesgetriches · 2 years

Note

hellooooo my friends. asking for some PTO advice here. I am a healthy individual working at an agency with what are considered good benefits. this year, I got COVID (mildly) and took off a few days sick, and I had a few dentist appointments I needed to attend. I got normal-sick a couple weeks ago, and I took off a decent amount of time because i was feverish and needed to rest. But I worked on-and-off while i was recovering, so didn't take full sick days off except for one or two days, I just used some hours to "patch" the day when I was too ill/tired to work. SO..... i just went to enter my hours for this week..... and i have 1.75 hours of sick leave left for the entire year of 2022, BEFORE subtracting the sick time from this week (which will put me in the negatives). IT'S AUGUST! we are encouraged to use our "Health and Wellness PTO" for illness, dentist/eye/doctor/anything appointments, therapy and mindful/mental health breaks, covid vaccinations, taking care of loved ones, taking care of pet health needs, etc.... but we have 10 days for all of that over a 365 day year. how is it possible for a person to be human and not go over that sick time limit? what do you recommend that i do in this situation? last year i went over my sick time by a few days because I was using some for a recurring therapy appointment... I asked my manager about it, and my manager asked HR about it, and HR said I had to give up vacation days to pay for it (but they generously took one day off of my "debt"). So I was working until the day before Christmas Eve. After that, I learned to work an hour late on therapy days instead of using any of my "Wellness Time" to attend mental health appointments.... but now I've gone over my wellness time without any recurring appointments, just from being sick.

If no one brought HR's attention to this, I don't think it would be an issue - I think the year would pass with no discipline. But my manager can be micro-manage-y, and last week when I was sick he told me I should check my PTO to make sure that I'm not going over. I'm worried that he's going to essentially narc on me in the interest of "doing things right", even if HR wouldn't normally bring it to anyone's attention or get me "in trouble" for it, just because I made the mistake of asking him about it last year and put it on his radar. heelllppppp i hate this situation and i don't even know how to do my time entry for this week 😭😭😭 thank you very much for your time and advice <3

File this one under "reasons why unlimited PTO is the only humane way to run a business," kiddo.

This really sucks. It's fucking dire. But it's not the end of the world. First, I recommend you get ahead of your micromanaging manager on this. Go to him FIRST to explain your situation. It'll look way better for you at HR if he doesn't "narc" on you.

Next, let's get creative. It sounds like working an extra hour outside normal work hours has been an option in the past. So bring that to your manager and HR as a solution! You can't help getting sick, and in these times of A LITERAL PLAGUE, they should be thanking you for not coming in while sick. So frame it like that and the least they can do is let you make up the time you missed so you're not cutting into your PTO.

Next... update that resume and keep looking for a new job, sweet pea. There's always somewhere better. Find that place without a narc of a boss and a rigid HR department.

Should You Trust Your Human Resources Department?

Workplace Benefits and Other Cool Side Effects of Employment

25 notes · View notes

noandpickles · 1 year

Text

I think I finally figured out how to succinctly summarize an idea that's central to a lot of my views on superstition, and that is that truth matters in a utilitarian sense.

(Now for the non-succinct explanation of what exactly I mean by that.)

I'm pretty much exclusively utilitarian in my personal morality, so I've never liked arguments that the truth has inherent value. And the most common utilitarian framing of the concept I've seen is that truth has value because we derive pleasure and meaning and satisfaction from the pursuit of truth. But that puts truth on the same level with anything else that humans feel good about, including most superstition.

But truth has utilitarian value (and I believe significant utilitarian value) beyond that. When we make decisions, either individually or collectively, in an effort to achieve the best possible outcomes for ourselves and others, the validity of the information we're acting on is a huge predictor of how effective our decision-making will be.

An example I like to use is tackling someone out of the way of a runaway truck. They break their arm in the fall to the sidewalk, but they aren't killed by the truck as they would be if you didn't act. A broken arm is generally preferable to death, so tackling them is a good thing to do.

But this exact same action, motivated by the exact same belief, is very obviously a bad choice if the belief is false. If there is no truck, but you believe there is, you still tackle the person, you still break their arm, but you aren't saving them from anything. The two potential outcomes are a broken arm or nothing, and in this case you've taken the worse one, not because you acted out of malice, or because your belief was somehow insincere, but simply because your belief was factually incorrect.

Almost none of the ways in which the utilitarian value of truth is demonstrated in our day to day lives are as clear cut as that example. Generally, the effects of inaccurate information are most pronounced in collective decision making. We need to protect ourselves from a virulent plague, but a large group of people think they can cure all diseases with herbal remedies, or that vaccines are bad for you. We need to take action on climate change, but a large group of people believe the end of the world is inevitable and will bring a better world after, or just that the divine creator of the world wouldn't let it get too messed up. We need to make the world a more welcoming place for queer people, but a large group of people believe that doing so will result in millions of people being tortured eternally after death.

Truth matters. It matters that we have it on an individual basis and a collective one. For any future we want to build, we'll do a better job of building it if our decisions are solidly grounded in reality.

#atheism

2 notes · View notes

tarriecat · 1 year

Text

I don't know how coherent this will be, bear with me, I'm writing while stricken with the plague and all.

So I'm sitting here with a thankfully mild case of covid and because I soothe my anxiety with information, especially my medical anxiety, I've been doing a lot of googling about like, how to take care of yourself while you have covid, details about this variant, all that stuff. And I've come to this conclusion that's very sad and kind of interesting. (Please note that I'm dealing with the English-speaking mainstream internet as a white American, so any generalizations in this post are through that lens.)

All our instructions for how to care for ourselves seem to stop after "don't die."

I've found lots of articles, especially from earlier in the pandemic, that say about what you'd expect. A lot of isolation guidelines and encouragement to get your vaccines, and very little "hey this is what over the counter cold med might make you less miserable" or "this kind of juice is best for a sore throat." And it matters that they're mostly from early in the pandemic, I think. They're all aimed at "here's how not to die and how to help other people not die." Which, please don't get me wrong, is fucking important. Please do isolate and wear your damn masks and get your damn vaccines.

But like...why do we stop there? (I know why, it's capitalism and the calvinist work ethic, it's a rhetorical question.) Wouldn't it be nice to talk about prevention of disease and amelioration of symptoms even when they're NOT fatal? Why is that our line?

Earlier this year my husband got a norovirus. It sucked. And I had already resigned myself to "oh, we're in the same house, it's inevitable I'm going to get it too" when we thought, hey what if we actually looked up how it spreads and if we can do things to minimize it? And we did, and I didn't get sick. That was nice! We're a pair of well-educated thirtysomethings from middle class backgrounds, how did it take us this long?

It feels like, culturally, we treat minor illness like an inevitability and an inconvenience. We push ourselves through migraines and go to school with full boxes of tissues instead of staying home with "just a cold." Which is awful for two reasons. First of all, it puts the immunocompromised at risk of ACTUALLY DYING, please fucking care about that.

Second of all, how sad is it that the standard of comfort we aspire to is "not dead"? That the standard for not calling out of work is "standing up and not vomiting"? I'm unlikely to get seriously ill from my current covid infection, just like I wouldn't have been sick more than a couple days if I'd caught that norovirus. But it still sucks! I don't want to be stuck in my bedroom coughing and wondering if I'm going to miss Christmas! I don't want to inflict that on anyone else either! I want articles telling me about how to make this week not suck, and I want a cultural narrative that cares about protecting people from feeling bad!

And yes I know some parts of our society it's a hard enough fight getting them to care about the not-dying, not-killing-people part. But I still want us to strive for better than that.

#tw covid #cw covid #it's all capitalism's fault #and calvinism #stop the idolization and acceptance of suffering as noble and necessary 2022

1 note · View note

the-crafting-gremlin · 2 years

Text

If the plague ever makes a comeback, I'm locking my grandmother in her bedroom. Not for her safety, but for everyone else's. How she managed to avoid contracting covid before now I will never know, but she did get it recently and ended up in the hospital because of it.

I live with her. I had to be the one to pick her up from the hospital when she was released. The moment she got into my car was the moment she began refusing to wear a mask again even though she was told she needed to wear one around other people for a few days. Because she 'couldn't breathe' and it was 'too hot' and 'too uncomfortable'. And rather than stay in her room to avoid spreading it around the house, she wanted to be in the living room because the recliner was more comfortable for her to read in.

Despite the fact that I opted to wear a mask around the house, wore one in the car with her, minimized contact with her, and was taking as many precautions as a I could (like regularly wiping surfaces down with Clorox wipes because she's terrible about washing her hands and sneezes/coughs into them, instead of her elbow) since she refused to be careful...I managed to contract covid.

Thankfully I'm vaccinated so it didn't hit me as hard as it did her, but I still had to miss a few days of work and I spent two days with a fever that hovered between 102 and 103 degrees F. My grandmother doesn't understand why I'm upset with her, either. I tried to lay it out as nicely as I could but she just acted like I was picking on her for pointing out that she dismissed her doctor's orders and got me sick because she wouldn't be careful.

Today is my first day back at work and omg I haven't been this happy to be at work in years. (I have to wear a mask at work for the rest of the week even though I have little to no contact with other people, thanks to our work areas being spaced out. Definitely gonna be running my fan all week because wearing a mask is hot, but I'm following every single guideline I'm given. Because I don't want to get anyone else sick or give anyone here a reason to send me home.)

In other news, I did finish the sweater for my coworker's daughter! I finished it right before I got covid. Ends are all woven in, but it still needs to be blocked; I didn't want to handle it while I was sick so I'll block that this weekend once I'm in the clear. (I want to be especially cautious since the little girl has had some health scares this year. I think her immune system is fine, and she wouldn't be getting the sweater for at least another month anyway, but I would so much rather be careful. Her family has dealt with enough medical stuff this year.)

I ended up starting on a knitted blanket while I was sick, once the fever broke. Because I needed another WIP. I just really wasn't feeling like crocheting--which is what my sister's blanket is--or assembling a sweater, and all of my other WIPs are on tiny needles with light-weight yarn. I was not up for handling small stitches or knitting in the round. Or anything complicated since I kept dozing off.

But I've had some super bulky alpaca/polyester blend sitting in my stash for the last six years that really needs to get used up. I had originally gotten it to make a sweater but it's just scratchy enough that it would drive me nuts to wear it, and also I do not live in a climate where a sweater that bulky makes sense. There is, however, enough to make a nice knitted blanket out of it that I can gift my eternally freezing mother for Christmas this year. (There will not be money for gift-buying this year thanks to medical bills and a long overdue holiday visit to friends and family I haven't seen in thirteen years. But I have time, excessive amounts of yarn and fabric and other craft stuff, and the skills to make those things into thoughtful gifts.)

So I now also have a bulky blanket on needles. It's looking really good so far, and the pattern isn't hard at all. There are cables, but it's thick yarn, thick needles, and just simple front or back held cables. It's going to be the perfect project for late nights when I'm exhausted but insomnia/restless leg/my brain won't let me sleep.

I've also started on the mitts again. Well, a different pattern. I was planning on making two sets of fingerless gloves and this is the other pattern since I can use the same yarn I used on the sweater and hopefully finish off the ball (or at least use up the majority of what's left; the original skein was about 1000 yards and I know the sweater only used about a third of that).

Its definitely crafting crunch time for me if I want to get something done for everyone on my list for the holidays.

#personal #knitting #cw: illness #my wips

0 notes

thecarnivorousmuffinmeta · 2 years

Note

How do you think the vampire world (read: the volturi and the cullens) would react to the Covid-19 pandemic? Would they be like "oh shit our prey is dying?" and try to help or would they not care/notice?

Would Carlisle invent the vaccine? Do you think Resume could catch it? (I'm sorry that was a lot of questions)

Are the Vampires Panicking?

No.

The vampire world survived the black death with the Volturi putting those down who thought the rat plague meant free lunch. As bad as COVID 19 is (and understand it is truly very very very bad and) the black death wiped out a third of the population of Europe. That means one out of three people you know would be dead. It was insane.

The vampire world has seen pandemics: they've seen the Spanish Flu, smallpox, the black death, etc.

They just might be working a little overtime as some punk out there thinks that COVID 19 means free lunch.

As for the Cullens, Carlisle's lived through some of these events himself already, and is probably just pissed he's not allowed to work overtime at the hospital (if he can work in hospitals at all in this modern internet infested age). The Cullen children are just glad they don't have to go to high school for once.

Would Carlisle Invent the Vaccine?

No.

First, there are several vaccines that have been invented and are in the process of being developed. It's not that we humans don't know how to invent these vaccines, it's that it takes time, money, and resources to do so.

Carlisle may have the money but he doesn't have the resources.

And in this case, the humans have got this.

In an incredibly short amount of time (thanks in part to closely related diseases having cropped up only a few years ago), we've developed incredibly effective vaccines and produced them on a mass scale.

There's nothing Carlisle could do to speed that up or mass produce and distribute it himself.

He's out of the game.

Would Renesmee Catch COVID?

Who knows, but my money's on no. For all her human exterior, Renesmee is very inhuman (that wrong number of chromosomes is very telling). Her cells are not human cells.

A virus doesn't automatically transfer from one species to another. It has to mutate to do so (i.e. from bats to human). Frankly, given that I'm not even sure Renesmee's a mammal, and given there's so few of her kind, I would be very dubious of her being infected by any human virus, including COVID 19.

#twilight #twilight meta #twilight headcanon #twilight renaissance #the volturi #the cullens #carlisle cullen #renesmee cullen #vampire biology #twilight hybrids #meta #headcanon #opinion

68 notes · View notes

renthony · 3 years

Text

My county is listed as "high risk" on every covid information website, including the CDC's.

You wouldn't know that based on how many of my friends have gone back to normal activity, though. 🙃

I'm fully vaccinated, but haven't yet got the booster shot that was recommended by a friend in the medical field. I live with immunocompromised people and am terrified to risk their health. I haven't left the house for anything non-essential in ages. The only people I see are my partners and my kids.

Online events are petering out. Nobody wants to go to the trouble of accommodating those of us still at home. Not now that it's old and boring and not a fun novelty anymore.

People eager to get back to normal are accusing people still staying home of being "science deniers" and "anti-vaccine" when the truth is that we have no way of knowing who around us had actually gotten THEIR vaccine, versus who still has plague germs to breathe all over us.

"Why don't you trust the science? Why don't you trust your vaccine?"

I do.

But I don't trust my neighbors. My supposed community. Every single friend I have seen complaining about wearing a mask, who resents having to take basic steps to keep my disabled family safe. It's THEM I don't trust.

I feel like I'm fully insane, and I legitimately don't know what's reasonable caution versus paranoia anymore. I don't feel like I can trust anyone outside my household, and every day I wake up and think that I'm probably going to wither away and die in this apartment before anything gets better.

I don't know how to cope with this shit anymore. I deleted Facebook because it was an endless stream of "look, life is moving on without you." Someone inevitably got pissy at me every time I posted a status about covid and how shitty I feel about being left to rot while the world goes back to normal. Only a few people even noticed I left and, of those, only one has reached out to me to ask if I'm okay and safe. I feel isolated and miserable and alone.

I'm going fucking nuts, y'all. Covid wrecked EVERYTHING and I have!!! No!!! Coping mechanisms!!!!!

I don't even know if I have FRIENDS anymore.

#original post

131 notes · View notes

unindoctrinated125 · 3 years

Text

The new "Charge of the Light Brigade"

This is something that I am going to work on and try to rewrite.

The idea entered my mind as I have watched people I once trusted become fools of this corrupt government and tools of this corrupt media, and the line jumped into my head "Theirs is not to reason why. Theirs is but to do and die." This is a line from Tennyson's poem Charge of the Light Brigade, and this very line explains the function of the useful idiot.

"Give up your freedom, give up your rights, trust the experts not your own sight." Into the valley of death were led the tens of thousands. "It's for the greater good" he said as forward they pushed the tens of thousands into the valley of death.

"Onward!" was the media cry, "Put on your mask, Take the vaccination. Get your working papers" to the tens of thousands. Were they at all dismayed? Has a mistake been made? Was liberty at stake? Not the noble tens of thousands. Onward to the valley of the dead marched tens of thousands not realizing they were led.

History on the left, evidence on the right, danger ahead was there in plain sight. Stormed at with warning they marched straight ahead. Straight ahead into the valley of the dead. Marched the tens of thousands so easily led. Straight into the valley of the dead.

From moments of truth some of them fell. Pneumonia and the vaccines took others as well. The civil war they longed for soon started and turned to hell. Onward marched the tens of thousands, but it was no longer tens of thousands.

The handful remaining did not ask why. Theirs was but to do and die. The elite they protected still hungry for power remained unmolested at this critical hour. Yet as thousands more die, their lives they gave up, give testimony that we must ask why. Why the foolishness of the tens of thousands? Why willingly die with a mind out of control. Liberty lost, a people without soul. Theirs was not to reason why. Theirs was but, "to do and die."

Someday when I'm not so sleepy I will revisit this and see where it can be improved. Please feel free to put your spin on it. Add lines, correct lines that don't flow, but understand the intent of writing this. We are living in a time when tens of thousands of people are going to die. Most will never understand that we are in a war. They will not accept that their handlers call them useful idiots. They will think that there is nobility in their compliance and ultimate death.

Please remember that I am shadow banned and cannot open my messages because the cute Tumblr line "Something went screwy" continues to plague my page. I will find what you say in the reposting of this, and thank you for taking the time to read it.

This will be a repair the wall post. You can find more of my writing with the #repair the wall.

I'm pulling for you and

God bless America.

#repair the wall #not my president #2020 election #upsidedown flag #covid-1984 #responsibility #up side down flag

75 notes · View notes

clatterbane · 2 years

Text

As mentioned in another post the other day, I've pretty much been down with some weird virusy bullshit for a little while now.

Which, in spite of one negative rapid antigen test so far? Seems pretty likely to have been a(nother) round with the ongoing plague. Most likely picked up whatever crud on the last trip to the university medical center. Though I did start feeling off within a day or two afterward, which seems pretty quick if I did catch it there.

Mr. C also felt under the weather for a couple days after that, with some sudden digestive symptoms mostly one night. Which I thankfully didn't get. But, with the timing he was also figuring that these were likely connected anyway.

Back to this post, from the end of January:

But yeah, BA.2 has very specifically been running through Denmark. Northern Europe in general, but with particularly high rates there. Somehow I doubt that's been been heeding official borders and staying on the other side of the bridge, when we are basically in Greater Copenhagen here.

One decent summary, btw:

Also, from Yale?

Early reports from South Africa indicated that most cases were mild—and that symptoms for this variant seemed to be different. “The reports show that patients in South Africa—many of whom were young—have had severe fatigue, but no loss of taste or smell,” says Lauren Ferrante, MD, a Yale Medicine pulmonologist.

Whatever this shit is, it didn't actually hit my respiratory system to even "normal" cold levels. (Just like that previous suspected-Omicron episode which helped complicate getting moved into this place.) I have mostly been getting a runny nose and a little congestion, and have needed to pull out the rescue inhaler a couple of times--for the first time in ages. Though, it is also prime tree pollen season, which is infamous for fucking with my breathing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Haven't really been seeing any maples locally, at least.

But, that has at least been a big relief, with the truly unpleasant history of frequent bouts of ridiculously unrecognized/misdiagnosed asthma "asthmatic bronchitis" from even the usual run of colds. *knock wood*

No, way more trouble (again) with nasty headaches, sore throat, and feeling feverish. With side orders of gross night sweats, dizziness, and flu-level body aches and muscle spasms which have also been sending some of the nerve pain into overdrive. 😬 All of which does kinda fit the reported BA.2 pattern, yeah.

Most of that has been more on a "meh, whatever, I've seen a lot worse" level, and I do seem to be coming out from under the worst of that garbage.

(Including my blood sugar going screwy and wanting to run high, as is common with any sort of illness. That also seems to be behaving better, and thankfully it never got that OTT with this crap. For that matter, viruses often help trigger autoimmune diabetes, to begin with--and this pandemic is looking particularly bad for that.)

The most concerning part, though? The damned fatigue and weakness/shakiness. 😵 To the point that I can't help but be glad that I am using a wheelchair now, and not trying to walk around between the rubbery whole body effect and lightheadedness. I'm just sitting here vaguely sweaty and shaky, and feeling like that is taking some serious effort right now. Will probably go lie down after I manage to get some food in, and probably fall asleep again whether I want to or not.

I mean, over the years I have dealt with a fair few viruses. And this shit has been dragging me out worse than any but a couple of them that I recall. So far, it's been giving that bout with suspected mononucleosis a run for its money. 😵

Which, again, would be more "meh, this sucks but whatever, guess my body just really needs to sleep this crap off"--if it didn't seem to be dragging on at such a level for longer than expected with something like this. The whole thing has been feeling just plain weird, in a rather worrying way.

I mean, I have been glad at the further illustration of how unusual the sick-fatigue is these days, now that the diabetes is finally being treated properly. It's been so good, not feeling like I've got the damned flu all the time with energy levels/stamina.

But, I really don't want to go back there! If not worse in some ways, which it kinda is right now. The muscle spasm/nerve pain screwiness also seems to want to hang around and keep it company.

It is early days yet, but I still cannot help but get more than a little concerned. NOBODY wants strange post-viral bullshit. But, I was just getting used to feeling much healthier again, in spite of some ongoing medical complications.

We'll just have to see, of course. But, it's honestly hard not to worry.

Not fishing for sympathy here, btw! It is what it is. But, that's why I have barely been around for a while. And I thought I should share the symptom info.

#personal #long post #plague time #covid-19 #covid 666 #omicron #ba.2 variant #ba.2 omicron sub lineage #fatigue #t1 diabetes #type 1 diabetes #illness #deltacron #AY.4/BA.1 recombinant #AY.4/BA.1

11 notes · View notes