#and at least half of this paper is going to tackle medical abuse and the autism industrial complex | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jeans-ong-ong · 3 years

Note

Hi! I just wanted to say I adore your comic! The colours are so beautiful, your art style is lovely, and the care you put into this project is evident. With so many things to tackle, like using real life cultures, the effects of war on those in service and out of it, and mental health, How do you go about doing research for it?

Hello! Thank you for this wonderful ask - both for the compliments and the interesting questions. So, let’s dive right into it: apologies for the long answer, but when you ask a creator to talk about their projects, they love to do it.

I started planning Introspection of a Deserter right when I began attending my Bachelor course in Education and Pedagogy - I met a lot of philosophical concepts that tingled my creativity, and I had to read a lot of books, so I felt like I was in the right mental space to handle a project that was deep and complex. I was studying how people grow up and shape their life, and it felt relevant for me to write a fictional biography that hit a series of themes that were interesting for me. I was 19, and now I am 22, and in all honesty I don’t think I’ve done a good job on the needed research.

Cultures Well, this part was simplified by the show. I think the creators of Avatar did some decent research, especially aesthetic wise, but they didn’t really go for the authentic representation. The info I got by talking with some asian fans is that Avatar does not work according to determined social mechanics, for example, in Korea or Vietnam. From what I gather, it was felt closer by Asian Americans, due to the characters feeling quite american, but the aesthetic being non-western (in A:tla at least). Being pretentious as I am, I felt like I wanted to use a bit more authenticity, but I didn’t really get it right on several aspects. I watched some fantasy asian movies to get examples for the tone I wanted (fun fact: I’m working on a watchlist of 30 movies to find the root of the mood of Introspection), mostly chinese; I read some articles about daily lifestyles and so on. On a hindsight, I should have watched more documentaries. I actually planned a trip to Vietnam in the indefinite future to “feel” the vegetation more! Vegetation is one of those thing you tend to take for granted, but it gives an entirely different texture and feeling to the landscape. Take, for example, the webcomic Heart of Keol: I couldn’t do that just by watching some fantasy movies (the author is, indeed, Korean), I need to live it first. However, a lot of stuff was made up and conveniently placed there, and that ... that has some consequences. See, for example, the religion storyline. Now, this one is a sore spot for me, because I’m viscerally attached to it. I don’t actually plan to change it in the near future - even if I do have a pair of books about buddhism on my readlist. What I’m telling in the comic is fundamentally a story about pseudo-catholicism: the concept of sin doesn’t match the concept of karma, the “sinfulness” of homosexuality and the desire of redemption, that’s just something that does not make sense in the context of a Buddhist culture. Let’s not even get into reincarnation: I have not done the minimum amount of research necessary to get such a difficult concept. And yet, I feel like changing this side of the comic would distort it to an unrecognizable story, and if I want to keep drawing it, I believe I need to mantain a bond with it. Will I try to be more authentic nonetheless? Yes. The effect of war I must admit I am quite fashinated by war. There is actually a branch in Medical Anthropology that studies war! And not only in the Medical one. However, the academics that do that have a severely higher risk of getting shot so I’m... still considering it, yes? I started looking into it because of Introspection. I think reading stories is educational most of the time, if only for the spark of interest one might develop for certain themes. You create some basis neuronal connections that will make it easy to look into more reliable sources later. But what is even better for me is Writing Stories: perfectionism forces me to look into sources (and as I grow older, I get that more and more), and looking into those makes me wish to write a story in that setting. That being said, my personal connection to war has been pretty indirect so far. I’ve listened and read stories about people who have been in battles, soldiers, victims - and I’ve been reading a lot about colonization in the last 4 years; from the classics to current issues (think Palestine). I include this bit on colonization because it will/would be a very recurrent theme in the story, and yet I know I’m still not there yet, I need to be more informed. The interest started with the disciplined experience of being in the military as studied by Goffman, and later on by Foucault, but then came in the concept blood thirst, and how does one person manage to enjoy killing people? How does one’s conscience tolerate it? I still haven’t finished doing research for that, because that story line “has just started”, and I like to keep concepts fresh in my mind (probably a mistake. Artists: do the research before you start working on the story, not while you’re doing it - unless it’s a written piece, that you can rework and rework. I didn’t finish the script before starting to draw the comic, so uh ... that’s a consequence). Mental health This was probably the one I winged the most through experience and knowledge gathered over the years. I haven’t properly read a book about depression yet - but I’ve just got one pending in the reading list, and the same goes (spoilers!) for alcohol and drug addiction. I did read a lot of experiences told by those who have been there, and I’ve even done an internship (actually only half of it because of Covid-19) in a rehab center for alcohol and drug abuse. However I know depression a bit, I’ve had several people with a variation of it in my life, and part of this comic is a re-elaboration of what I and other people have gone through in a (not always) exaggerated way, and fictionalization. When I was in a very different mental place, I used to refer to this comic as my “self-therapy”. Just an example can be found in (planned) book 4, which will be an hypothesis of therapy for someone with serious suicidal thoughts. Never will the comic be about “complete healing!”, because that’s not something I believe in, however it will be used to experiment, and hope a bit for a better, if bittersweet, vision of life. As I got into doing the comic, some themes became more important than others because I felt more bound to them, and usually I do more research on those now. Academic paper reading, people who live them in first person experiences (through documentaries, autobiographies, or youtube videos), or even personal experiences are all sources I draw from in comic planning. This being said, I should either choose shorter stories or simpler subjects for my next comic. But will I? Who knows. Thank you for reading so far!

13 notes · View notes

macgyvermedical · 5 years

Text

This Year and Beyond- My Year in AmeriCorps NCCC

I will get things done for America.

To make our people safer, smarter, and healthier.

I will bring Americans together to strengthen communities.

Faced with apathy, I will take action.

Faced with conflict, I will seek common ground.

Faced with adversity, I will persevere.

I will carry this commitment with me, this year and beyond.

I am an AmeriCorps Member, and I will GET THINGS DONE!

-The AmeriCorps Pledge

My name is Ross.

I’m a 25 year old Registered Nurse, EMT-B, and Wilderness and Remote First Aid Instructor from northeast Ohio. On January 9th, 2018, approximately 316 days ago, I left my family, my apartment, my job, and very close to all my personal belongings to fly 602 miles to a small town I’d never heard of, with people I’d never met, to do work I didn’t choose, manage people who didn’t like to be managed, learn and grow more than I ever thought possible, make friends I’ll never forget, and become the person I’d always seen myself becoming.

I want to underline the hubris with which I embarked on this journey.

I graduated nursing school less than 2 years prior to entering the program. While there and in my first year as a nurse, I transitioned from female to male, was an RA for 2 years, survived a 3-year abusive relationship and 4 horror-story level roommates, and struggled with picking, hair pulling, compulsive lying, and generalized anxiety.

I thought, nothing could be more difficult than what I’d just gone through. This was going to be a break. I’d go, develop my leadership skill, meet some cool people, serve my country, and come back ready to tackle whatever came next.

Heh. Heheh... it didn’t exactly go like that.

First, some background. If you’ve never been in the AmeriCorps NCCC world before, it’s a pretty foreign place. You hear about military life a lot as part of popular culture, and Peace Corps is at least a household name. But I’d be willing to bet that unless you know someone who’s served, you probably don’t know much about (or possibly haven’t even heard of) the National Civilian Community Corps...

(Note- this is a really long post, something like 5,000 words. But its also pretty cool if you’ve got the time, or are interested in AmeriCorps NCCC. Also, there’s definitely some triggery stuff in here, so you may want to skip it if mental health, suicide mention, and anything along those lines doesn’t sit well with you.)

To avoid some confusion, AmeriCorps and NCCC are not synonymous- AmeriCorps is a larger organization that oversees several different civilian national service programs, including Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), State and National (which is itself many, many programs), and the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC, pronounced N-Triple-C).

NCCC is the program I was in. I don’t have proof of this, but having lived it, NCCC is likely one of the most intense domestic national service experiences one can have. It’s often billed as a “team based, residential national service program for young people aged 18-24.” And it is, but that doesn’t really capture the intensity of the experience.

For one thing, when they say the service is “team based” they mean it- Not only do Members work 40+-hour weeks together, but they truly act as a team- you live (sometimes all in the same room) with the team, train with them, eat with them, work out with them, have mandatory meetings, reflections, and team building activities, participate in 1:1 meetings, grocery and other shopping trips, and share one 15-passenger van for all transportation needs.

You live in a residence hall while on campus, but while away on project (called “SPIKE”), housing could be anything- cots in an office building or church basement, a cabin at a summer camp, the classroom floor of a Boys and Girls Club or YMCA, a school gym, a local college residence hall, the semi-completed portion of a house you’re actively building, or basically anywhere vaguely flat and dry enough to put a mat and sleeping bag.

Personal belongings- or, more accurately, space for personal belongings, is also at a premium. For SPIKE, you get a “red bag” with enough space for uniforms, underwear, a couple of sets of personal clothing, toiletries, and your personal protective equipment. You also get your sleeping bag/bedding bag (a space life saver, you can stuff any small belongings that didn’t make it into your red bag in here), and a personal backpack. You’re given a military style duffle (your “green bag”) to store out of season clothing, bedding, and other personal belongings on campus while you’re away. But that’s it. You learn to say no to free stuff pretty quickly.

There’s also TONS of rules, most of which are related to safety or reputation. We like to say “Someone did something stupid 5 years ago, and now we have to wear hard hats while gardening.” It’s funny, but its so close to true, it hurts. In context, it makes sense- NCCC is a government organization, and when you join, the government assumes total responsibility for your wellbeing. They pay for your food, your medical care, your housing, and your transportation.

In return, you do anything that might pose a risk to any of the above on their terms- even if you would never wear safety goggles while painting or make a passenger get out and ground guide you into a parking space at home, you do here, because they’d have to pay for it if you got paint in your eye or ran into a pole, and they reeeeeally don’t want to. NCCC, being a government-funded service organization, also can’t afford to do anything that could jeopardize their funding situation or reputation- so if you’re wearing “the A” (uniform items that have the AmeriCorps logo on them), swearing, drinking, jaywalking, and really any other unwholesome activities are expressly forbidden.

On the more logistical end of things, the 10-11 month “service year” is split into training (a month of team leader training (TLT) and a month of combined corps member and team leader training (Corps Training Institute, or CTI)), and 4 distinct, 6-8 week “Rounds” of (1-2) projects with week-long prep/training segments in between. There’s a week-long midyear break and a long weekend at some other point where you can go home or chill on personal expense, and 3 personal days that can be taken throughout. Otherwise, you’re either on SPIKE working, or at campus training.

Projects can be a lot of different things. Most common projects at my campus were working with environmental groups removing invasive species and building/maintaining trails, working with neighborhood revitalization organizations and police departments improving the look and condition of neighborhood buildings and empty lots, providing supplemental staff at non-profit summer camps, Boys and Girls Clubs, and YMCAs, and building houses for low-income families. Other projects might include tutoring children, general maintenance at non-profit or government facilities, building or maintaining parks or schools, entering data, conducting surveys, mucking and gutting disaster-affected homes, staffing shelters, creating lesson plans, piloting community events, and other tasks organizations need completed, but don’t have the reliable manpower to do themselves.

Before each project, you research the area and work and present a “briefing” to your unit leader, assistant program director, and unit support team leader (team leaders who live and work on campus supporting staff and teams in the field, and who act as a reservoir if field team leaders drop or need to go on extended medical or other leave). When you return from a project, you prepare and present a “debrief” and “portfolio” documenting your work and its impact. The briefings and debriefs take about a half hour each, and portfolios are 12-25 page papers on your project work, which will be used to justify the continued presence of the NCCC.

But just the work is not enough- each corps member has one or more “rep roles” or jobs that support the campus or team. “Official” rep roles include the Project Outreach Liaison (present to and try to get organizations to apply for NCCC teams), Recruiter (present to and try to get people to apply to be members and team leaders), Service Learning Initiator (responsible for facilitating team reflections and secure learning opportunities for the team), Media Rep (coordinates media coverage, writes press releases and articles about projects, creates social media posts), and Yearbook Rep (who creates a yearbook page and/or team video for each Round). “Team” Roles include Assistant Team Leader, PT Coordinator (organizes workout times, places, and activities), Food Point of Contact (creates shopping list, manages food inventory and budget), Cleaning Point of Contact (makes sure housing is ready for weekly inspection), and Team Builder (puts together activities and outings for recreation and team building/bonding).

The program is set up to be an immersive and intense experience. Teams of between 6 and 14 members travel throughout one of 4 assigned regions (Southern, North Central, Southwest, and Pacific) for SPIKE projects. They are led by a team leader, who mentors members, coordinates work assignments and tasks at the job site, does paperwork, responds to emergencies, and pretty much just makes sure all required things get done. Teams are organized into units, which have between 8 and 12 teams. Team leaders report to unit leaders, who remain on campus for the majority of the year.

Okay, so that was maybe a lot of background. But I think it is important to provide that information- unless you read the blogs or know someone, there’s not a ton of depth officially available as to what to expect.

But here’s my reflection on the year-

It started in Team Leader Training. I remember arriving with a lot of expectations. I’d come for the purpose of honing my leadership skills, getting some experience in disaster work (NCCC teams can be pulled off projects to respond to declared emergencies), and taking some time away from being a nurse before I settled down into my forever life. I’d read all the blogs and news articles, corresponded with a unit leader, and talked to people online. I felt I knew everything there was to know about NCCC despite never having met someone in it. I felt so ready.

Team Leader Training was amazing. It was everything I could have ever wanted. I was learning how to do a job I’d fantasized about since I was 17- how to manage members, work with site supervisors and sponsors, coordinate team roles, do necessary paperwork, mediate conflict, drive a 15p van, foster team bonding, balance a budget, etc… It was some of the coolest training I’d ever done. We got up at 5:30 for PT, trained until 5PM, and did homework and hung out in the evenings. By the third and fourth weeks, especially during our training “mini-SPIKE,” tensions among the TLs rose somewhat, but looking back, it wasn’t anything horrible. We were all pretty competent and like-minded people, doing something we loved and creating a network of support that would carry us through the year. I’d never been more comfortable with a group of people in my life. We didn’t get a ton of time off, but it was interesting enough and important enough that we didn’t care.

Then, February 13th, everything changed. Suddenly, where there had been 32 TLs learning to interact with each other, now there were 31 TLs (one went home) and 190 Corps Members. The place was swarming, and each TL was in charge of 8 or 9 CMs they had to mold into something they barely understood themselves. I remember totally flopping on my first meeting with my CMs. I already felt like I was drowning.

We now got up at 5:15 for PT, had “Muster” (morning meeting) at 6:45, trained and conducted trainings/meetings until 5, had team dinners, team meetings, and then were up until 9 or 10 at night submitting daily behavior logs for each member, preparing other paperwork, and preparing for the next day. It was utter and complete chaos. If yours was the team on duty that night, you probably didn’t get to sleep until 1 or 2 in the morning.

Then, suddenly, it was March 9th- departure day. My team, Cedar 2, drove a mere 2 hours to Wapello, IA, but it might as well have been to a foreign country. My campus-based support of other team leaders and staff was suddenly pulled out from under me. My Unit Leader was available by phone, but I struggled hard to find the time to talk to her. The team took the transition to SPIKE life hard, pushing back on the norms and expectations- PT, food shopping, team dinners, team meetings, etc…- as much as possible, making sure I knew how stupid every decision I made and action I took was. I kept it up the best I could, but I quickly became tired and depressed. Every day was a struggle to get people to follow rules, to get them to come to dinner and do their work. They complained, loudly, about everything, said extremely mean things to my face and behind my back.

I remember after a long day of of some pretty scathing 1:1s, sitting in the middle of a field away from my team and sobbing to my mom on the phone and begging her to give me some reason to stay in the program. I was sick with a stomach bug for over a week, and my CMs called me a hypocrite and a lier for taking a few hours out of the day to go to an urgent care. I felt for sure I wouldn’t be able to make it through the year. I began thinking of hurting myself. I contacted an old counselor to see if she did phone sessions. She didn’t, and I didn’t know where else to turn. I thought, hey, If I got caught, maybe I would get kicked out. The idea seemed almost nice.

We started the year with a “split round” project, meaning we spent 3 weeks in Wapello, IA doing trail work, and then 4 weeks in West Branch, MI doing construction at a summer camp. In between, Cedar 2 spent 3 days back on campus, which helped reset the team. We had many meetings with our unit leader, remade our team charter, and came up with a lot of plans to improve our dynamic. I felt like maybe things were looking up, that maybe Wapello would just be that dark time we would look back on and then never speak of again.

When we got to West Branch, things were better, but not good by any stretch. The team had lost a member and had turned somewhat on each other, forming 2 cliques. There was bullying against one of the members that I noticed and felt horrible about, but also powerless to stop. I went almost 2 weeks without more than an hour or two of sleep a night during this project, and my only contact with the outside world was a landline telephone in the (public) camp office and 1 bar of service if I walked to the edge of the parking lot. We had WiFi the first few days, but only rarely after that. We got snowed in for weeks. I got cussed out and screamed at by a CM when I asked him to put on safety glasses while operating a tile saw (I did successfully maintain calm and talk him down, which was a particularly shining moment during this time). I had problems with CMs not doing work that I didn’t know how to address without it becoming a much bigger problem.

I was still kind of a wreck, but I had figured out at least one thing I wanted to do- recruiting for nurses in the US Public Health Service was starting in May, and I couldn’t wait to start that process. By the time I graduated from NCCC in November, I could have a position with them.

It was an interesting project though, and due to our reset, we now did everything exactly by the rules. 3 PTs a week, 3 official team dinners with someone cooking 5 days a week, everyone wore their PPE or suffered the consequences, participated(ish) in team meetings, turned in their weekly reports, and we left with glowing reviews from the sponsor and site supervisor. Attitudes were still objectively bad, they might have hated it, they might have grumbled, but it was an expectation now, and they did it without being overly hellish towards me.

During this project, we also gained a new member who was very competent, polite, but who I couldn’t really read. He’d come from a sister program of NCCC called FEMA Corps (similar in structure to NCCC, but the only projects they do are through the Federal Emergency Management Agency) after failing a background check. I was a little concerned about his integrating into the team, but he seemed okay, and would talk to me at the job site when I talked to him, and actively tried to boost team morale, which was more than anyone else did and something I greatly appreciated.

We went back to Vinton for “1st transition” (the week of training between first and second rounds), presented our debriefs and portfolios, and prepared our briefing. It was the first time I’d seen “Team Green” (the NCCC name for the team leaders collectively in reference to our uniform shirts being green instead of the grey CM shirts) since the end of CTI. Some TLs had had a blast on their first rounds, while others, like me, looked positively gaunt. You could absolutely tell who’d been through hell their first round, and who, like me, hadn’t been able to communicate that until now. We swapped horror stories while training for our next projects, and I finally felt some hope for making it through the year.

The USPHS had unfortunately decided not to open recruiting for nurses after all, but I’d come up with another plan for LAA (Life After AmeriCorps)- I was going to graduate school instead. I had a plan to start applying early in our next round.

Our next SPIKE was a 7-week project in Yankton, SD doing a particularly extensive number of projects. We worked at a Boys and Girls Club, cleaned and packaged artifacts at a museum for a move to a new facility, painted a residence hall and did interior demolition on some bathrooms at a local college, and taught archery classes to children. I felt like a soccer mom, shuttling my CMs from project to project, and trying to spend at least a couple of hours at each site each day. I still dreaded 1:1 days and had to deal with some members’ poor life choices now that they were in a town, but the sun was out, the days were warmer, and due to the nature of the project, everyone was getting quality time away from each other. Thank heavens.

Despite this, I was personally still having some issues. I spent a lot of time hiding from my team after work. It was the only way I could see myself getting through the 7 weeks until midyear. I went for long walks and admired the architecture, hid with my computer watching TV, and leading DnD type medical adventures on Discord. Cedar 2 totally avoided our problems and it was exactly what needed to happen to get us through the round. Nothing got resolved, but people did what they were supposed to do, got great work experience, and no one got (seriously) hurt.

And I got accepted into a program at Kent State for Environmental Health Science! Woot!

And something else was on the horizon. We would return to campus for half of a transition, then enjoy midyear break, then return to… A brand new team! Staff had told us at the beginning of the year that there would be a midyear team switch, but hadn’t told us exactly what that would look like. But finally it had been confirmed. Everyone’s team would be shuffled, and new teams created, with no TL getting any of their former members on their new teams. I was extremely hopeful the next team would be better than the last, and I’d get to use what I’d learned from the first 6 months I’d endured.

The Cedar unit was also disbanding, and Cedar 2 would be absorbed into the Oak unit. When I returned, I would become the TL for the brand new Oak 11.

And holy crap, Oak 11 was awesome. Unique people who said good morning and cleaned up their mess, sat and talked after dinner, wanted to cook for the team (and were great cooks), planned great outings, participated in team meetings and team builders, and were pretty consistent about their work ethic and dedication to the team. Everything wasn’t perfect, but it was so much better than it had been on Cedar 2, and I was thrilled- it wasn’t all me that had screwed it up after all. I’d gotten a team who just brought out the worst in itself.

But I found, to my dismay, that even though the team was great and our project (Erie, PA doing neighborhood revitalization work) and housing and location were all awesome, I was still having problems. Thoughts of self harm were coming back and I was even sliding somewhat into suicidal thinking with graphic intrusive thoughts. I knew the team was working hard and doing what needed done, but I constantly mistrusted them. I would misinterpret situations and respond inappropriately to them, which significantly hindered my ability to lead the team. I leaned heavily on exact execution of the many, many rules of NCCC, but had no energy to enforce them and therefore just felt terrible about my abilities as a leader. I felt I was useless and not at all what the team or anyone deserved to have to deal with. My new unit leader was great, but he wasn’t the touchy feely type and I didn’t think I could get much support from him.

I tried again to contact my counselor, and she agreed to start seeing me over the phone. It was nice to have someone to talk to, even if that meant I had to pace in a public park while talking about very personal things in order to have some privacy from my new CMs, but it also didn’t help a lot. I would hash out the same situations over and over, and my counselor would point out my reactions were exaggerated, and I was convinced she just didn’t understand how intense the program was. After a few sessions, we talked about me quitting the program to get some more intensive help, and about me going on medication. And, if I was going to stay in the program, I had to start checking in with a friend every day, and my mom three times a week.

At this point, I wanted to stay in the program more than anything, and I didn’t want to feel like I was giving up. I had been very against medication from the first time I’d started seeing a counselor 6 years prior, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it through the last 3 months in the program if nothing changed, and I’d rather do something of my own volition than end up hurt or fired. I ended up taking 2 personal days- the first 2 I’d taken all year- to travel home to Cleveland and see a doctor about the mental health issues and a chance of getting a hysterectomy when I got home in November.

I ended up going on medication. The transition onto it was a little rough, but fortunately I was going into fall break (a long weekend) and then a transition week, and by the time we were on project again (Willow River, MN, doing maintenance at an environmental education center), I felt a lot better. Suddenly, I was functional again. I could lead a team and do what needed done. I still had some issues, but for the first time I was completely confident I would make it to graduation. My CMs noticed the change. I’d decided not to tell them about the mental health stuff in anything but extremely vague terms, or about going on medication, but it made me happy to hear other people noticed how much better I felt, and how much more I could do now that I could trust my perceptions of situations and didn’t feel like crap all the time.

The team went through a couple of hard weeks in the latter half of the project- including one day when every single person on the team asked to take a mental health day on the same day (mental health days are expressly not allowed in the Corps, but you can get around this with creative paperwork). Instead of doing PT that morning, we sat in the living room and talked out some things. It didn’t resolve much, but it did help people feel that they weren’t the only ones having problems. Only one person ended up staying back from work that day, and I looked at it as proof I was getting better- I had looked at a situation and instead of following the rules to the letter, I had bent them in a way that was absolutely helpful to the team.

The project felt like it was at once the fastest and the slowest project we’d done. We drove back to campus with a feeling of finality. This was it. We weren’t prepping for another project. Once we finished these last two weeks, we were going home for real.

A lot of my CMs struggled with that concept. Some had homes to go to, some had homes they wanted to get out of as fast as possible, some were successfully setting up jobs, some were planning to wing it when they got off the plane. Overall, going home would be a change for everyone in the Corps- people who were now very used to the schedule and the rules associated with NCCC life.

The day after I returned to campus I finalized my LAA plans too- my insurance had gone through and I would be having a hysterectomy in December! Woot!

Then it was just the long haul. Closure felt like CTI again except waaaaaay more relaxed. We did a couple of trainings or teambuilding things a day, but usually just hung out or did end of round paperwork and caught up with everyone we hadn’t seen all round.

We had an awards ceremony and a nice graduation that was streamed to Facebook so family living hundreds of miles away could watch. Less than an hour later, we drove our teams to the airport. Oak 11 stopped by a fast food place on the way and had one last team meal together before parting.

When we returned, the campus was empty. As 25 TLs, we scrubbed and returned our vans, and then each got assigned a staff member who put us to work preparing things for the next class.

The night before the TLs left, the night I’m writing this, we went out to the one mexican restaurant in Vinton and hung out for the last time. Some people went out to the bar after, but I hung back and wandered the halls of campus for the last time.

I walked past the gym where Rob Levis led PT at 5:45 on freezing January mornings. I washed my hands in the sink where Silvia shaved my head a few days into TLT. I wandered the classrooms where I’d trained and the kitchens where I’d cooked (and where the vent exploded that one time). I looked at all the rooms I’d stayed in on campus, sat on the couch where I’d stayed up way too late processing my first set of end of round paperwork after Wapello. I stuck my head in the room where I’d done team building for the first time with both of my teams (I didn’t stay long, there was a FEMA Corps team having a meeting). I walked the tunnels, the lounges, said goodbye.

Tomorrow morning at 9am, I will load my green bag and 2 backpacks into a 15 passenger van and ride to the airport. At noon, I will begin the journey back to Ohio.

The year has been so incredibly growth-inducing for me that I don’t know how I ever could have gotten to this point in who I am without it. Like thousands before me, I owe so much to the NCCC.

Even though it sounds corny, I will carry this experience with me, this year and beyond. I am an AmeriCorps Member, and man, did I get things done.

[Patreon] [Ko-Fi]

#AmeriCorps #NCCC #personal #reflection #tw: suicide mention #tw: self harm mention #tw: mental health

15 notes · View notes

raybyanothername · 4 years

Link

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: DCU Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd Characters: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Alfred Pennyworth Additional Tags: Fuck Or Die, Morning After, Anal Sex, Rimming, Blow Jobs, Porn With Plot Summary:

A post Fuck or Die situation.

Dick has to deal with the after affects of a night with Jason in which they were both drugged by some crazy doctor, which includes some memories, and eventually, finding Jason.

Non-Stop

Dick entered the Batcave limping. Sneaking around with said limp would have been difficult, but Bruce and Tim would still be out on patrol. His big fear was Damian. If he was in bed like he was suppose to be, the cave would be empty.

But that was a pretty big if…

"Master Richard," Alfred's voice sent a jolt of fear through Dick's body and he...well, he froze. Thankfully, it was just Alfred and no one would ever know.

"Hey~ Alfred!" Dick's voice cracked as he tried to remain calm. He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. It was a mistake. The touch had his finger colliding with the bruises on his neck and back. Dick's flinch just brought Alfred closer.

"To the infirmary," Alfred stared him down and Dick slunk towards the medical bay. He didn't bother trying to hide his limp. It was Alfred. Nothing got by Alfred. "I was under the impression you and Jason had dropped your 'perp' off at Arkham several hours ago."

Dick swallowed, jaw clenched. He wished he could control the heat rising up his neck, "Yeah, we did."

"Did you run in to trouble on patrol afterwards?" Alfred raised a brow as he helped Dick peel off his uniform. There were claw marks on his back, and bruises. The biggest issue was the bite impressions. "Did you and Jason get in to some sort of fight with one another?"

Alfred's voice was firm, and clipped. He'd never approved of inter-family fighting. Dick hadn't hear that specific disappointed tone in many years.

"It wasn't a fight, per se…" Dick's face was red as he shoved the rest of his uniform down to his ankles. Alfred's brow raised further.

"No. Not a fight." Alfred turned away from the bites and bruises on Dick's inner thighs to grab a vial from the cabinets. "Should I question you further or are you going to explain?"

Dick looked at the vial in Alfred's hand with wide, hopeful eyes. It was some weird pain drug that Bruce stock piled for emergencies. Quick healing, pain free, that could make Superman jealous. Or…well, at least Wonder Woman, maybe?

"The creepy, crazy doctor we were after?" Dick offered with a dark chuckle. He blinked away a few tears, "Specialized in pheromones and fertility drugs. We got dosed in the lab, didn't realize till after we did the drop at Arkham."

"Ah," Alfred prepared a syringe. Dick cringed as the needle plunged into the vial. "And how was Jason when you left him?"

Alfred tapped the syringe a few times, the bubbles rose to the top and were quickly dealt with. He approached Dick, brows and syringe raised high.

Dick sighed, "He left first actually. After…well, I don't think either of us felt like talking."

"You'll need to sort that out in the morning then," Alfred ordered as the needle pierce Dick's skin. A tingling feel spread over his body and Dick agreed in a quiet murmur.

When he woke up in his old bedroom Dick's only hope was that Bruce hadn't been the one to carry him to bed. The bruises on his neck were faint now, but they'd have been bright and obvious the night before.

Luckily, Dick still had some concealer in his bathroom.

"Grayson!" Damian sprang on him the second Dick exited his room. The difference between a hug and a tackle were still something they were working on. Damian's not-technically-a-smile was still a happy sight for 8am.

"Shouldn't you be at school Little D?" Dick ruffled Damian's hair as they walked down the stairs. He snarled at the gesture, but didn't stop Dick's hand when he proceeded to fix Damian's hair with a quick finger brush.

"Drake is running late and refuses to let me drive," Damian huffed, nose in the air. Tim was sat at the counter, a large bowl with a handle on it nestled in his hands.

Tim hummed around his coffee, "Not my fault you don't have a license, Demon Brat."

"Tim~" Dick warned, ruffling his hair too as he walked by towards the cereal, "You know Dami doesn't like it when you call him that."

"That is also not my problem." Tim smirked as Damian glowered at him from the other side of the counter.

Dick chose to ignore their bickering. Mostly because Tim had used Jason's nickname for Damian and his brain was currently info dumping a lot of images he didn't want top of mind with Tim and Damian in the room.

"It will be your problem should Master Damian miss his first period," Alfred said as he breezed into the room with paper bags on a tray. "Now, take your lunches and off you go."

Tim groused. Damian cackled. And then Dick was left alone with the one person besides Jason who knew that he and Jason had…

"I believe you have some place to be this morning as well," Alfred set a paper bag in front of him as well. Dick glanced inside to see a small medical pack.

With a curt nod and an expectant eyebrow raise, Alfred directed him out the door. Dick got in to the driver's seat of one of the cars in the garage and immediately cringed.

"Guess that's not fully healed either…" Dick puckered his lips and fidgeted in his seat till he found a comfortable position. He really needed to talk to Bruce about getting a car with some cushier seats.

It took him three hours and twice as many safe houses to find Jason. The man was sprawled out on his stomach atop a bed. The Red Hood gear he'd worn the night before littered the floor, which spoke volumes considering how neat Jason was usually.

Dick would have been concerned, but he was a little busy being distracted by Jason's bare ass. There was a very clear bite mark on one cheek and purpling handprints on both his hips and thighs.

-.-.-

"Fuck!" Jason cried out as Dick bite into his ass, chewing absently as his tongue moved over the reddening skin. Jason's face was shoved into the crappiest pillow to ever grace a safe house and his legs were spread wide, held tight in Dick's grip.

Dick licked at his hole, tongue darting in and out as Jason whined. Every few licks his tongue would deviate. Dick's mouthed traveled over sensitive skin to lather his tongue over the underside of Jason's cock. Just enough to keep the man on edge and not enough to let him come.

"Will you just fuck me again already?!" Jason gasped out as his dick ached around Dick's soft, wet attention. As if waiting for the command, Dick entered him in one swift stoke. Jason called out.

"Want it fast…" Dick grunted in to Jason's ear as he gripped Jason's hip to hold him still. He thrust wildly, angling himself to hit at Jason's prostate. He paused when he heard Jason's breath start to come raggedly. Dick pulled himself out to rest the head of his cock against Jason's rim before pushing back in, "…or slow?"

Jason growled at the shift in pace and Dick tightened his hold on Jason's hips. He didn't allow Jason to thrust backwards against him. Dick enjoyed the slow whine that his tantalizing thrust produced, especially as he rotated his hips.

-.-.-

Dick gulped and forced his gaze upwards to Jason's face. The fact that he was still asleep when Dick approached the side of the bed told him Jason was either very relaxed, or very tired. And the pinched expression on Jason's face did not give Dick much hope for the former.

"Uh, Jaybird," Dick lay a hand on Jason's bare shoulder. He didn't shake him. His eye caught sight of another bruise, another handprint, this one on Jason's bicep. It was just below where he'd laid his hand.

-.-.-

Dick gripped Jason's arms as he crossed his ankles behind the other man's neck. Jason didn't slow as he pounded into him. Dick's back arched off against the wall as Jason's thick cock forced him wider.

-.-.-

"What're you doing here?" Jason's voice was gravely as his eyes opened just enough to glare at Dick.

Dick cleared his throat and removed his hand. His fingers flexed and fidgeted as he avoided eye contact, "I just came to check on you."

"Uh-huh." Jason didn't shift even an inch. His eyes remained glossy even as he kept them narrowed on Dick. They flickered over him before landing on the bag in his hand.

"Oh!" Dick pulled the medical pack from the paper sack Alfred had given him, "I brought Bat-level pain drugs."

"You mean the creepy one with Supes blood in it?" Jason snorted when Dick nearly dropped the pack. Jason turned over, "I think I'll pass."

Dick stared at the little vial held inside the zipper pouch by some elastic and stiff cushioning. He really shouldn't be shocked by it's ingredients…

"How do you kn-" Dick cut himself off abruptly when he looked back at Jason. He was lying on his back now, head tossed to the side to reveal his long neck. The hickeys were distracting, but not nearly as much as the half-hard dick resting against Jason's stomach.

A groan from Jason went straight down to Dick's cock. Jason raised an arm to toss it over his eyes, "You keep staring like that Dickie, I'm gonna have to do something about it."

Dick flushed, hand moving to his face to hide the blush taking over his face. Between his fingers he couldn't help but see Jason take himself in hand. A rock formed in Dick's throat and he breathed around it in time with Jason's pumping hand.

"You're killing me, Dick," Jason chuckled and it broke off into a low moan as his cock stiffened to full attention.

A repeat of the night before was not something he'd expected when he came here. Dick's asshole actually fluttered, aching as it remembered the abused he'd put it through.

"Last night we got rough," Dick cleared his throat, he ran a hand through his hair, "We really shouldn't…"

Jason gasped as he ran his thumb over the head of his cock, "You're welcome to just watch, Dickie Bird." Dick's mouth went dry as he watched pre-cum drip over the shaft. Jason's fingers ran through it in slow motions.

"You're a tease," Dick groaned as he approached the bed. He knelt on the edge, licking his lips as he lowered his head over Jason. Fingers curled into Dick's hair.

-.-.-

Jason's grip in his hair was ruthless, fingers digging into Dick's scalp as his own head fell back against the mattress.

"Harder," Jason gasped out as Dick thrust into him. Dick bit into his throat, pulling a moan from Jason. The fingers tightened their grip. As did his ass as Dick's cock slammed into his prostate.

-.-.-

"Don't stop," Jason's fingers ran through Dick's hair, combing it back against his neck. Dick swallowed around the shaft. His thumbs stroked over Jason's hip bones. The head of Jason's dick rubbed against the back of his throat.

Dick wasn't planning on stopping any time soon.

-.-.-

If you liked this fic and are feeling generous: https://ko-fi.com/raybyanothername

#jaydicksummerexchange2020 #ray writes #fanfiction #dcu fanfic #jaydick #jaydick smut

0 notes

viralhottopics · 7 years

Text

India’s Aadhaar with biometric details of its billion citizens is making experts uncomfortable

Image: Ongrid

“Indians in general have yet to understand the meaning and essence of privacy,” says Member of Parliament, Tathagata Satpathy.

But on Feb. 3, privacy was the hot topic of debate among many in India, thanks to a tweet that showed random people being identified on the street via Aadhaar, India’s ubiquitous database that has biometric information of more than a billion Indians.

That’s how India Stack, the infrastructure built by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), welcomed OnGrid, a privately owned company that is going to tap on the world’s largest biometrics system, conjuring images of Minority Report style surveillance.

SEE ALSO: Inside India’s plan to substitute cash with its citizen’s fingerprints

But how did India get here?

Aadhaar’s foundation

Not long ago, there were more people in India without a birth or school certificate than those with one (PDF). They had no means to prove their identity. This also contributed to what is more popularly known as leakage in the government subsidy fundings. The funds werent reaching the right people, in some instances, and much of it was being siphoned off by middlemen.

Nearly a decade ago, the government began scrambling for ways to tackle these issues. Could technology come to the rescue? The government dialled techies, people like Nandan Nilekani, a founder of India’s mammoth IT firm Infosys, for help.

In 2008, they formulated Aadhaar, an audacious project “destined” to change the prospects of Indians. It was similar to Social Security number that US residents are assigned, but its implications were further reaching.

Image: Adhikary/Epa/REX/Shutterstock

At the time, the government said it will primarily use this optional program to help the poor who are in need of services such as grocery and other household items at subsidized rates.

Eight years later, Aadhar, which stores identity information such as a photo, name, address, fingerprints and iris scans of its citizens and also assigns them with a unique 12-digit number, has become the world’s largest biometrics based identity system.

According to the Indian government, over 1.11 billion people of the country’s roughly 1.3 billion citizens have enrolled themselves in the biometrics system. About 99 percent of all adults in India have an Aadhaar card, it said last month.

Today, the significance of Aadhaar, which on paper remains an optional program, is undeniable in the country. The government says Aadhaar has already saved it as much as $5 billion.

But that’s not it.

Image: SCREENGRAB VIA FACEBOOK

There’s a bit of Aadhaar in everyone’s life

Aadhaar (Hindi for foundation) has long moved beyond helping the poor. The UPI (Unified Payment Interface), another project by the Indian government that uses Aadhaar, is helping the country’s much unbanked population to avail financial services for the first time. Nilekani calls it a “WhatsApp moment” in the Indian financial sector.

In December last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched BHIM, a UPI-based payments app that aims to get millions of Indians to do online money transactions for the first time, irrespective of which bank they had their accounts with. With BHIM, transferring money is as simple as sending a text message. People can also scan QR codes and pay merchants for their purchases.

“This app is destined to replace all cash transactions,” Modi said at the launch event. “BHIM app will revolutionize India and force people worldwide to take notice,” he added.

The next phase, called Aadhaar Enabled Payments System will do away with smartphones. People will be able to make payments by swiping their finger on special terminals equipped with fingerprint sensors rather than swiping cards.

Last year, the government said people could store their driver license documents in an app called DigiLocker, should they want to be relieved from the burden of carrying paper documents. DigiLocker is a digital cloud service that any citizen in India can avail using their Aadhaar information.

The government also plans to hand out “health cards” to senior citizens, mapped to their Aadhaar number, which will store their medical records, which doctors will be able to access.

Aadhaar is an instrument for good governance. Aadhaar is the mode to reach the poor without the middlemen, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Indias IT minister said in a press conference last year.

But despite all the ways Aadhaar is making meaningful impact in millions of lives, some people are very skeptical about it. And for them, the scale at which Aadhaar operates now is only making things worse.

A security nightmare

There have been multiple reports suggesting bogus and fake entries in Aadhaar database. Instances of animals such as dogs and cows having their own Aadhaar identification numbers have been widely reported. In one instance, even Hindu god Hanuman was found to have an Aadhaar card.

The problem, it appears, is Aadhaar database has never been verified or audited, according to multiple security experts, privacy advocates, lawyers, and politicians who spoke to Mashable India this month.

Image: scroll

There are two fundamental flaws in Aadhaar: it is poorly designed, and it is being poorly verified, Member of Parliament and privacy advocate, Rajeev Chandrasekhar told Mashable India. Aadhaar isnt foolproof, and this has resulted in fake data get into the system. This in turn opens new gateways for money launderers, he added.

Another issue with Aadhaar is, Chandrasekhar explains, there is no firm legislation to safeguard the privacy and rights of the billion people who have enrolled into the system. Theres little a person whose Aadhaar data has been compromised could do. Citizens who have voluntarily given their data to Aadhaar authority, as of result of this, are at risk, he added.

Rahul Narayan, a lawyer who is counselling several petitioners challenging the Aadhaar project, echoed similar sentiments. Theres no concrete regulation in place, he told Mashable India. The scope for abuses in Aadhaar is very vast, he added.

But regulation or its lack thereof is only one of the many challenges, experts say. Sunil Abraham, the executive director of Bangalore-based research organisation the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), says the security concerns around Aadhaar are alarming.

Aadhaar is remote, covert, and non-consensual, he told Mashable India, adding the existence of a central database of any kind, but especially in the context of the Aadhaar, and at the scale it is working is appalling.

Abraham said fingerprint and iris data of a person can be stolen with little effort a gummy bear which sells for a few cents, can store ones fingerprint, while a high resolution camera can capture ones iris data.

Aadhaar doesnt use basic principles of cryptography, and much of its security is not known.

Aadhaar is also irrevocable, which strands a person, whose data has been compromised, with no choice but to get on with life, Abraham said, adding that these vulnerabilities could have been averted had the government chosen smart cards instead of biometrics.

On top of this, he added, that Aadhaar doesnt use basic principles of cryptography, and much of the security defences it uses are not known.

Had the government open sourced Aadhaar code to the public (a common practice in the tech community), security analysts could have evaluated the strengths of Aadhaar. But this too isnt happening.

At CIS, Sunil and his colleagues have written over half-a-dozen open letters to the UIDAI (the authority that governs Aadhaar project) raising questions and pointing holes in the system. But much of their feedback has not returned any response, Abraham told Mashable India.

India Stack: A goldmine for everyone

As part of its push to make Aadhaar more useful, the UIDAI created what is called India Stack, an infrastructure through which government bodies as well as private entities could leverage Aadhaar’s database of individual identities. This is what sparked the initial debate about privacy when India Stack tweeted the controversial photo.

Speaking to Mashable India, Piyush Peshwani, a founder of OnGrid, however dismissed the concerns, clarifying that the picture was for representation purposes only. He said OnGrid is building a trust platform, through which it aims to make it easier for recruiters to do background check on their potential employees after getting their consent.

India Stack and OnGrid have since taken down the picture from their Twitter accounts. “OnGrid, much like other 200 companies working with UIDAI, can only retrieve information of users after receiving their prior consent,” he said.

The lack of information from the UIDAI and India Stack is becoming a real challenge for citizens, many feel. There also appears to be a conflict of interest between the privately held companies and those who helped design the framework of Aadhaar.

As Rohin Dharmakumar, a Bangalore-based journalist pointed out, Peshwani was part of the core team member of Aadhaar project. A lawyer, who requested to be not identified, told Mashable India that there is a chance that these people could be familiar with Aadhaars roadmap and use the information for business advantage, to say the least.

Most people Mashable India spoke to are questioning the way these third-party companies are handling Aadhaar data. There is no regulation in place to prevent these companies from storing peoples data or even creating a parallel database of their own a view echoed by Abraham, Narayan, and Chandrasekhar.

Not mandatory only on paper

Image: Nv/EPA/REX/Shutterstock

But for many, the biggest concern with Aadhaar remains just how aggressively it is being implemented into various systems. For instance, in the past one month alone, students in most Indians states who want to apply for NEET, a national level medical entrance test, were told by the education board CBSE that they will have to provide their Aadhaar number.

A few months ago, Aadhaar was also made mandatory for students who wanted to appear in JEE, an all India common engineering entrance examination conducted for admission to various engineering colleges in the country.

The apex Supreme Court of India recently asked the central government to register the phone number of all mobile subscribers in India (there are about one billion of those in India) to their respective Aadhaar cards. Telecom carriers are already enabling new connections to get activated by verifying users with Aadhaar database.

A prominent journalist who focuses on privacy and laws in India questioned the motive. When they kickstarted UIDAI, people were told that this an optional biometrics system. But since then the government has been rather tight-lipped on why it is aggressively pushing Aadhaar into so many areas, he told Mashable India, requesting not to be identified.

“It is especially difficult to explain why privacy is necessary for a society to advance when taken in the context of Aadhaar.”

It is especially difficult to explain why privacy is necessary for a society to advance when taken in the context of Aadhaar. The Aadhaar card is being offered to people in need, especially the poor, by making them believe that services and subsidies provided by the government will be held back from them unless they register, Satpathy told Mashable India.

The central government said last week Aadhaar number would be mandatory for availing food grains through the Public Distribution System under the National Food Security Act. In October last year, the government made Aadhaar mandatory for those who wanted to avail cooking gas at subsidized prices.

No matter how many laws are made about not making Aadhaar mandatory, ultimately it depends on the last mile person who is offering any service to inform citizens about their rights, Satpathy added.

These last-mile service providers are companies who would benefit from collecting and bartering big data for profit. They would be least interested to inform citizens about their rights and about the not mandatory status of Aadhaar.

As Aadhaar percolates more and is used by more government and private services, the citizen will start assuming it’s a part of their life. This card is already being misunderstood as if it is essential like a passport, he added.

My worry is that this data will be used by government for mass surveillance, ethnic cleansing and other insidious purposes, Satpathy said. Once you have information about every citizen, the powerful will not refrain from misusing it and for retention of power. The use of big data for psycho-profiling is not unknown to the world anymore.

Mashable India reached out to UIDAI on Feb. 8 for comment on the privacy and security concerns made in this report. At the time of publication, the authority hadn’t responded to our queries.

BONUS: Facebook’s new Privacy Basics