In which I don't grow up or get over myself

[Originally posted at Slacktivist (page 3).]

To recap, the generation known as millennials was brought up, I happen to be a part of this generation (which surprised me because I thought it referred to the generation after me.)  It was originally brought up in the context of the evangelical church but pretty soon afterwards people indicated that, basically, the generation is being counted on to fix everything.  I responded to that, saying that what I find really problematic is that I'm being told this while I have untreated depression, others in my generation are tied to bad jobs they can't leave because they need healthcare, and generally speaking cleaning up the previous generations' messes would be easier if we weren't expected to do it while sick.

That got this response:

Which is exactly why so many despair of the Millennials changing the world - your priority isn't changing the world, it's getting something for yourself.  Somehow, the world has changed radically without the preconditions you insist one... So the problems aren't in your stars Horatio, it's in yourself.  Grow up and get over yourself. 

And I responded to that thus:

Ok, first off, fuck you.

Second, that line isn't from Hamlet, it's from Julius Caesar.  "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves..." the speaker is Cassius.  Think about that for a moment, do you really want to be comparing yourself to that?

Are you seriously asking that the millennials get together and decide that the fault "is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings"?  Because if you're asking us to change our status as underlings by means of brutal murder, maybe you're not the best person to be giving advice.

Also I note that things didn't work out too well for Brutus or Cassius.  Octavian took the empire, they were killed as traitors.  The republic was destroyed.

When I say that they were killed as traitors I oversimplify somewhat.  Cassius, the person you cast yourself as, ordered his slave to kill him after losing a battle.  Brutus, in whose role you have cast me, killed himself later on also after losing a battle.  Both died in disgrace.

So why, in hell, would I want to take that advice?

If you're going to glibly quote a literary reference then do it right.  Because right now, you kind of suck at it.

Third, if you honestly think that depression is something you can grow up and get over then you know even less about that than you do about Shakespeare.  If you're not a medical professional, perhaps you shouldn't be giving treatment advice.  If you are a medical professional, quit now.  You took an oath to do no harm and you are failing, quite badly.

For anyone else who might be interested, I'm somehow guessing Derek_L isn't, I did my best to do a write up on my experience a while back, and other resources can be found around the internet, one example of a different, more hopeful, experience with depression I have encountered is at hyperbole and a half.

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And that was what happened over at Slacktivist.  While it might be nice to act like I had a point in posting this, I really don't except to say a couple of things.  The first thing is that I don't even like Shakespeare (though some of the sonnets I don't mind) if someone knows less about Shakespeare than I do they shouldn't be trying to quote it.  This is a minor point but it is important.

The second thing is that the response I got is probably as close to a textbook example of how not to respond to someone with depression as you'll ever see in the wild.  "Grow up and get over yourself," is a way to say that depression is the depressed person's fault.  Because when you're dealing with depression what you really need to hear is that you're at fault.  Surely telling someone that they're what's wrong with their life is a great way to deal with depression, right?

But it goes deeper than that, I'm not just responsible for everything bad with me, I'm also responsible for my entire generation being looked down on.  Bonus points for that.  It's not quite the worst thing like that I've seen, once my French uncle told my mother she made him ashamed of the entire human race (in French) because she'd had the audacity to send a card to his daughter.  (I think it was for her birthday.)

Still, even if it doesn't make top marks, I am apparently a stain on my entire generation.  I'm bringing them all down.  Great thing to say to someone dealing with depression.

And then we have the interesting dichotomy set up: your priority isn't changing the world, it's getting something for yourself.  You see, apparently that's either-or.  Either I can try to change the world, or I can get treatment for depression.  If I try to get treatment I'm being selfish.  If I want to be a good person then I have to forego treatment.  There's no hint that maybe I'd be able to do more good if I got treatment first and then tried to change the world.  There's no allowance that maybe doing both is possible or even preferable.  Instead it's set up as two things in opposition.  If you want to be healthy that's getting something for yourself when you should be trying to change the world.

So in a few short sentences we have the idea that depression is my fault, the idea that I'm a disgrace to my entire generation, and the idea that seeking treatment is being selfish.

If you should ever be writing a textbook on the subject, I really think that would be a great bit to include in examples of what not to say.

Also, who the hell confuses Horatio and Brutus?

What I said to be told, "Grow up and get over yourself."

[Originally posted at Slacktivist.]

[Normally I wouldn't repost a non-story post here, but this time I'm doing it because it for a couple of reasons, mostly because it ties into how not to respond to depression.]

[For some context, "Millennials" refers to a generation, definitions of it vary somewhat, some people say it starts with people born in the mid 1970s and ends with people born in the mid 1990s, the other extreme states that it starts with those born in 1982 and ends with those born in 2001.  Regardless I'm in it.]

So now that I've been, apparently, tasked with saving the world I have something I'd like to say.  Things would be a lot easier if you guys had a least provided some decent healthcare.
It's not the need to fix the infrastructure, and the tax code, and the schools, and the banks (good God, the banks), and campaign finance, and politics as a whole, and poverty, and hunger (which will probably be tied up with fixing poverty at least somewhat), and the environment, and various forms of bigotry (good work on several of those by the way), or the fact that child labor is now seriously back on the table, or ... you know: the entire economic system in which we live, or any of a thousand other things in need of fixing that gets to me.

It's that I'm here reading that my generation will need to fix all this while I have untreated depression.

My sister is with the local Occupy at the moment, she's actually been meeting with the Mayor (so if things go badly blame her), before that she touched base with Boston, New York, and DC.  (If you look at the Barn-thing DC put up you'll see an IWW cat painted on the side, she painted it.)  She's currently very active in trying to change things.

She would have been trying to make things better long before, but she was busy holding down a soul crushing job at an anti-union company.  She didn't have a choice, she needed the healthcare.  (Right now I'm pretty sure she's doing without at the moment and hoping for the best, that's not a sustainable plan.)

We aren't exactly isolated cases.  Healthcare is a pretty major concern for a lot of us millennials. What pisses me off isn't so much the fact that previous generations seemed to want to party at the expense of the welfare of the country and let us clean up the mess (I say staring disdainfully at the ghost of Ronald Wilson Reagan) it's that we were expected to clean it up while sick.


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Ok, so there you have my post.  I didn't say that I wouldn't save the world.  It's just a lot of work do when you're sick.  I'm pretty sure that a lot of people would be pissed off with just the whole, "Your ran this country, and indeed much of this planet, into the ground and now you want us to fix it?" thing in itself.

And here's the response, with the formatting cleaned up because the guy couldn't post very well:

It's that I'm here reading that my generation will need to fix all this while I have untreated depression. 

What pisses me off isn't so much the fact that previous generations seemed to want to party at the expense of the welfare of the country and let us clean up the mess (I say staring disdainfully at the ghost of Ronald Wilson Reagan) it's that we were expected to clean it up while sick. 

Which is exactly why so many despair of the Millennials changing the world - your priority isn't changing the world, it's getting something for yourself.  Somehow, the world has changed radically without the preconditions you insist one... So the problems aren't in your stars Horatio, it's in yourself.  Grow up and get over yourself.

I'll be sticking my response to that into a later post.

Edith and Ben - Bloodtyping

[Originally posted at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.]

"I'm not going to class today," she said, looking at the bottlecap.

"Why not?"

"Blood typing," Edith said. And suddenly I flashed back to outside the van. Edith taking charge as soon as she saw the crowd, making sure that people didn't move Tricia until EMTs who could safely move her arrived, and then, after she took one look at Tricia, having to spend the rest of the time several feet away looking in the opposite direction while she talked me through basic first aid.

I shook the uncomfortable images from my head, and focused on the only part of it that mattered: Edith does not do well with blood. "Yeah. I ... I forgot. It's too bad you know, you'd make a good doctor."

"I just picked up some stuff from my mother." I hadn't even thought of that. "You'd better go or you'll be late."

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Ms. Banner mentioned that a blood drive would be happening soon, she called the mobile blood getting station a bloodmobile, which is an interesting name if ever there was one. She demonstrated what we'd be doing on herself, and soon it was time to do it. I was ready, until the smell hit me.

I've never been bothered by the smell of blood before. Hell, I don't eve know if I've ever noticed it before, but once I did I was having flashbacks to finding Tricia in the van. The most vivid memory I'd ever had. It was like what happened at lunch but a thousand times worse. All I could think of was seeing her there scraped up and covered in blood.

I couldn't get it out of my head. I put my head in my hands and ... and I didn't have a plan for what to do next. I just stayed there. I'm not sure how long I was there, but then there was a hand on my shoulder and I heard my name said. I looked up to see Ms. Banner.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

I considered all kinds of answers, as I often do. I considered trying to say that I was feeling sick for unrelated reasons, I considered explaining that this had never happened before and that's what I hadn't opted out of the class, I considered claiming I was fine but I was just tired, I considered any number of lies and half truths and various true things as well. Finally I said, "No." And then, for no apparent reason, I started to cry. I mentioned Tricia and the van. Ms. Banner said that it was ok. She asked me if I could walk, I could, she sent me to the nurse.

Before I left she called Angel over and told him to walk with me. I think she was afraid he might make fun of me, though by this time I'd dried my eyes and I thought I looked fine, because she warned him that if he wasn't nice that would make her angry, "And you wouldn't like me when I'm angry," I smiled, it was the first Incredible Hulk joke I'd ever heard her make. She said, "That's better," in response to my smile, and then sent us off.

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[Edith and Ben Index]

Averting ones own doomsday prophecy, a summary of an unwritten work

[Originally posted at Slacktivist]

I've occasionally considered a story where a group of people who had received a doomsday prophecy then found out that it wasn't quite set in stone, but they were the only ones who could stop it.

This after living their lives with no thought towards the future and almost nothing in the way of savings (and no jobs, and nothing but a small commune that wasn't designed to last.)

The story would be a rather light story though, and one of the characters could see the future, and said character didn't feel right about telling everyone they didn't have to save for the future and then putting them in a position where the lack of savings would hurt them, and did I mention said character could see the future?  His explanation for his actions would be, "It's not gambling if you know the outcome," and they'd all live happily ever after.  Financially secure and content in knowing that they saved the world.

Like I said, rather light.

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[Original Work Index]

Why are you doing this? A theological question in Left Behind

[Originally posted at Slackitivist (page 2) and the Slacktiverse.]
[I know of the thing which this references only through osmosis.  I gather it is too depressing for my tastes.]

“Why are doing this?” Michael asked.

God responded, “In a moment, the huddled masses will look up and say:” God gestured to the the earth, a car stuck in traffic in Chicago.

“It’s the end of the world,” Chloe whispered. “God help us.”

“And now,” God said, “I will look down and say..”

A disembodied voice reverberated through the car, and the city, and the country and the continent, and the world. It resonated through the universe, stirring gasses in distant nebulae, shaking suns, and throwing pulsars from their rhythms. It spoke but one word, “No.”

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[Left Behind Index]

Will Wildman has no patience for me

Spoilers for Doctor Who, but only things that are now years out of date.
Trigger warnings for personality and memory erasing, and hopefully that's about it.

The last episode of Doctor Who I ever saw featured the utter destruction of Donna Noble. Part of me wants to pull out an Ancient Greek word that means “utterly destroyed” because that is a single word in Ancient Greek and it would serve as a nice contrast to the completely different word that means killed. The problem is that when used of people the utterly destroyed word means “killed” and if Donna had been killed I wouldn't be writing this post. As such, it would probably confuse the issue.

Anyway, once upon a time there was an episode of Doctor Who in which the character Donna Noble was utterly destroyed, though her body and a select few parts of her brain went on living in a way that vaguely resembles what happens to those bitten in zombie fiction but was about a million times more disturbing. (One million, seventy five thousand, three hundred twenty, and eleven sixteenths times more disturbing, to be exact.)

You see what happened is they erased her personality. Memories too, which I find truly disturbing in itself, but that is as nothing compared to what was done to her personality. It was necessary, you see, if she ever slips into her old personality, even a little, her brain will fry.

One might say that Donna was returned to the person she was before she met the Doctor, but that person was someone capable of becoming who she was with the Doctor, and if Donna even approaches being such a person again, her brain will fry. She is not the person she had been because the person she had been was one who had it within her to be the person that she was, and she doesn't have that in her anymore expect, perhaps, as a path to a truly messy form of accidental suicide.

One might say that she's the person she would have been if she'd never met the Doctor, but that isn't true because we met that person as well (she saved the universe) and if present Donna even approaches that person, her brain will fry.

We know that it isn't just about memory, if it were her personality would not have ripped out of her skull and discarded like ... like something you discard. What would one discard? Rotten fish perhaps? No, they'd be used for fertilizer I suppose. What is treated with even less respect than rotten fish? Whatever it is, like that.

People can lose memories while maintaining broad strokes of their personalities, but that isn't what we see with Donna, her personality is yanked out and the warning is given that if she flashes back to even part of what she was even once, boom. Brain is fried.

So we're left with the question of Donna, what did happen to her, and how should we feel about it. She grew more in a few years than some people will in a lifetime. She went from someone completely wasting her potential, apparently unaware that that potential even existed, to someone who surpassed it. Someone who did the impossible and saved not just one universe in the process, but all universes.

But the problem with the impossible, apparently, is that it bites back hard. Which is odd, because the first season finale actually involved Rose completely escaping the effects of said biting, the Doctor simply took them on himself and regenerated.

So she was left in an interesting state. Memories and personality erased. Reset. With the rule being that if she ever grew or changed or improved, her brain would explode.

We can introduce some exceptions in there. I don't think there's anything preventing her from becoming a great chess player as long as she isn't brave or compassionate or ambitious or curious, or anything like that. What she can't do is recapture any of the things that made Donna Donna. So imagine a list of all the things that make you exceptional. Not even all of the things that do right now, all of the things that could if you were given the chance to thrive. Now imagine that your brain, and soul should you have one, were reset to how they were back when most of your present personality didn't exist. This is going to have to be more extreme than just the time Donna is losing because she's grown more in that time than most people do in a decade or two. Our best bet for comparison is probably just to take you as when you were a child. So say when you were twelve. Or five.

Everything about you is reset to the way it was when you were five. Your memories since then are gone. Any growth you've had since then is undone. At first this might not sound that horrific, given some of the things that are faced in Doctor Who, but remember the catch. You're never allowed to so much as approach the person you are today. Which is where we return to the list you made above of everything exceptional about you. The defining characteristics of youness. If personality-stripped you ever starts going near those things, boom, he or she is dead.

If you're courageous, then being Donnaed would mean having that stripped away and the laws of biology determining that if you're ever courageous again, boom you're dead. If you're ambitious then being Donnaed would mean having that stripped away and the laws of biology determining that if you're ever ambitious again: boom, you're dead. If you're interested in learning then being Donnaed would mean having that stripped away and the laws of biology determining that if you're ever curious again, Boom. You are dead. And if you're Hufflepuff then you're pretty well screwed, because that means that if you ever approach self improvement again you're as dead as a demonstration spider.

And that's probably the most Harry Potter you will ever see me put here.

So, that's the last Doctor Who I ever saw. Donna was Donnaed. An amazing and impressive character had all of her growth and strength ripped from her very psyche, along with her memories, and was left on earth as an incurious vapid individual while her family was warned that if she ever grew into even a hint of a shadow of her former self that growth would kill her. And do it in a hurry.

And then the channel I watched Doctor Who on stopped carrying it. I haven't seen anything since Donna was destroyed.

I agree with Will about something. He writes, “it hurt more than if she had really died,” and he's right about that. If Donna had simply been killed, instead of being Donnaed, I very much doubt that you'd be seeing anything remotely resembling this. I did hurt more. She was robbed of the chance to even be herself.

Imagine a story where it was just some totalitarian government trying to drag Donna and others off to the mind control center (where the exact same thing would have happened to her) while the Doctor and others tried to stop it and then in the end she died in the attempted getaway. It would have been heartbreaking, and she'd probably have had some silly last line like, “At least I die as me,” but it would have been so much better in terms of not feeling like you have to curl up into a ball and be depressed about it for the next six months.

Where I disagree with Will is in the next clause of his sentence, and the explanation offered for that clause in the sentence after that, “which is why I have no patience for people who complain about what happened to her. It was supposed to hurt.”

Plenty of things are supposed to hurt. Remember the woman on the satellite in the first season finale, the one that the Doctor promised to save. The one who died a pointless death when the Doctor failed to keep his word? That was supposed to hurt, and it did hurt, and it left a lasting impression. Remember the destruction of Pompeii? Remember watching as the earth was exterminated, or as an entire universe was wiped from existence just so Donna could get back to the original timeline and save the Doctor like she was supposed to? Remember the fish-likething who Martha helped only to have him die on the planet's surface in the episode with Jenny only for us to discover that the entire bloody conflict was the result of a days old dispute about who should be making managerial decisions? Remember any episode other than, “Just this once, everybody lives!”

Or, for that matter, return to Will's own point. If Donna had simply died, that would have been something that was supposed to hurt. It would have succeeded in hurting.

There's plenty of space for things that are supposed to hurt, and plenty of range of hurt available. The way in and quantity with which things hurt is a valid place for criticism. There would have been all kinds of things that could have been done to Donna that I'm pretty sure even Will would agree went too far. Those things will go unmentioned partly because I don't want to load the post with trigger warnings, but mostly because I don't want to think about them.

If any of those unspoken things had been done, criticism would have been valid even though it was supposed to hurt. Criticism is valid now, even though it was supposed to hurt.

Writers sometimes want to hit the audience with a blow to the gut so hard as to leave the audience weeping on the floor, that intent doesn't mean that those who don't like the way it was executed are wrong.

It was supposed to hurt. It did. That's not the end of the discussion. It's more complicated than that.

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[And then, just like that, it occured to me that I should probably link to Will's blog and the post that contained the two sentences I'm responding to, which is actually almost entirely unrelated to what I say here.]

I'm not ashamed to admit I'm a vampire...

[Originally posted at Slacktivist (page 2).]

[Inspired by an ad from candidate for the Republican nomination for president named Rick Perry.]

I'm not ashamed to admit I'm a vampire, but you don't have to sparkle in the sunlight to know that there's something wrong with this country when werewolves can live openly on their reservation* but I can't be painfully hostile to a depressed girl without someone making a deconstruction of it.

As overlord I will make sure everyone knows I'm better than them. And I'll fight against liberal attacks on misogyny and racism.

Blood sucking parasitism made this country strong. It can make America strong again.

I'm Edward Cullen, and I approve this message.

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* Note that they don't openly serve in the military, but I bet the military would love to have them.

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[Twilight Index]