Allison.She/Her. 32. Bi. A lot of fandom stuff, a little theatre, some history and social justice. Fandoms include The West Wing, MCU, Mercy Street, Twisters, Stranger Things, All Creatures Great and Small, Downton Abbey, and more.
Spin the folklore wheel for her birthday 🎂🎂 and tell me what you thought of the song you get when folklore first came out and what you think of it now?????
Ooooooooh. I LOVE this, honestly. And I feel like it stands a solid chance of either working out well, or absolutely crashing and burning. I think a lot of it depends on where they are in their sobriety journeys. An Amelia still actively using, and/or an Abby who has relapsed and is drinking again isn't going to work long-term (the same reason she and Carter didn't work, but I digress) But they also have a lot in common, they both have some family issues to work out, a little bit of a problem with authority, they both kick ass at their jobs. I think it could work, for sure, if they were both willing and able to put in the work! (Plus, it would be really hot, and I'm a simple creature, so...)
YOUR TAGS! Once again, gold. The idea of Andy being from Appalachia and the stigma of addiction there especially, I didn’t even think of that part! And there’s also the opioid epidemic that hit that region hard, though that’s more of a “modern problem” than TWW got to cover, but still, it certainly didn’t come from nowhere or *just* start 15 years ago! Oh, that adds such a rich layer to it, especially if Andy’s in recovery herself? I love it! (And LOL, we accept any and all sports posting here, even from Royals fans…I say even as the Royals nearly beat the Tigers last night…)
Thank you!!! The idea of Andy coming from Appalachia - and specifically Tennessee - has now been rattling around in my head for a while, and I'm loving it more and more! I'm now going to delve into some background lol, but Andy stuff in a minute I swear to god.
CW below the cut: lots about addiction, overdose, the opioid epidemic, and drugs. Some about death, relapse, all in the abstract.
That region has routinely been hit hardest by addition, and addicted Appalachians face a lot of challenges accessing Healthcare, and thus beginning recovery. (You can read more about this here, the Appalachian Regional Commission.)
Rural areas tend to struggle as communities with addiction, if you look at the maps for alcohol addiction by county in Kansas the rural counties have a significantly higher rate of alcoholism and alcohol overconsumption, and it's even more noticeable in Nebraska.
Appalachia has and has had for as long as they've been studying this phenomenon, one of the highest rates of opioid overdose death in the country, due to it having the longest average time to a hospital. Appalachia had one of the highest rates of prescription opioid addiction in the country, and it also had a disproportionately high number of opioid prescriptions. Drug abuse in the area has also been linked to untreated and undiagnosed mental health disorders. (You can read about all of this in a study done in 2019 in the NLM.)
It's a very tangible environment to exist in as an addict. We lived in rural Tennessee for only maybe almost six months a near decade ago, but as very much a Kansan I remember thinking that going about your day-to-day life felt like going about living in the Great Depression, and the Dust Bowl, that kind of despair. And in a constant state of mourning.
At the time counties in West Virginia were experiencing economic downturn and collapse, which sprang from and directly influenced the epidemic.
I think Andy probably feels that acutely, especially if she decides to go back while her kids are young. Just the weight of the region, the similarity, and the death.
I think even Andy flying down to rural Tennessee just a few weeks after Gaza could be so interesting. The possibility of relapse is strong.
I think as far as generational addiction trauma for Andy, and her having been in recovery during her childhood, this makes it all the more interesting!!
Andy's mother is either depression baby, a war baby, or with the headcanon of Andy having been a teen pregnancy, a baby boomer. Either way, the depression and wartime economies almost certainly deeply influence how she sees money, crisis, sobriety, and everything. Also thinking about the possibility of Andy's mom having moved to Maryland just for the postwar economic boom in the North East, while fearing that a second postwar economic crash was imminent for rural places.
Andy's mother having grown up steeped in generational and regional 'we don't talk about things like this' ideas, even if she was making sure to avoid that mindset, it's bound to have rubbed off on Andy, especially if Andy is her first kid and she's young and maybe newly or not yet sober.
Also now I'm thinking about Andy going to Berkeley in the 80s and oh it's so painful for child to be in the heart of a epidemic, and her grandkids are going to grow up during a epidemic and then become adults during a pandemic?? God. And Andy's mom having grown up during the great depression and come of age during a war? There is so much there to consider.
But I definitely think in the 2000s Andy would know, or think she knows, Exactly what people are thinking when her sight accent slips in a bit. Especially as an addict herself she has a very prevalent thought that somehow this was inevitable, or that's what people will think. That she was somehow unable to escape this fault that was her mother's, may well be her kid's, and no the whole country sees it as the fault of a whole collection of states.
I think perhaps it's also a cause she feels guilty about being unable to be vocal about. She hasn't lost so many people to the epidemic, but she knows people that have. Childhood friends and cousins from summers spent in Tennessee, their classmates, partners, children, neighbors. People she, as an addict, associates more with that word than herself.
And she feels so guilty about not being able to be a better advocate, evening she's doing what she can to fund hospitals, schools, and housing projects. But it hits too close to a home Andy doesn't want to think about, in the end I think.
(A purple ribbon represents the crisis and solidarity with families impacted. Andy's rainbow remains unfinished.)
This was a treat to come home to! This will be disjointed and messy because my brain is pretty fried, but I love that you metaed about this AND that you come armed with facts and studies (librarians/archivists for the WIN)
Andy knew the deck was stacked against her the moment she set her sights on Congress, but really, she knew it was stacked against her from the beginning. Her mom "got out" of Appalachia, moved to the much more affluent Maryland (though of course MD has poverty like every other state, it's so much more systemic in Appalachia. Even as a teen, her mom saw the writing on the wall and knew that the coal boom wouldn't last, that the work would dry up, and that she wanted to get her family out of there. Not everyone in her family was supportive of it. Andy still has cousins in eastern Tennessee who resent her. And when she started school, it only took a few comments about being a hillbilly or a redneck for her to learn to hide the twang of the hills and hollers that she still visited every summer. She had Appalachian dirt and coal dust under her shoes, but she learned to hide it well, because some people will take one look at you and where your family comes from and decide who you are in a split second. Decide that you're stupid, uneducated, dirt poor, going to amount to nothing.
(Also if you're not humming "Coal Miner's Daughter" under your breath by this point, you should be.)
You pointing out that if Andy went to Berkeley, she's going to be there in the height of an epidemic and then deal with the opioid epidemic and her kids become adults during Covid gave me chills. I hadn't even thought about that, but oh. Lucy tried so hard to give her babies the best she possibly could, and she did so well, but she can't control these things, no one can, and it's a painful realization.
OH Andy returning to Tennessee after Gaza and the possibility of relapse!! That hurts my heart in the best way, there's so much to explore there!
(I also didn't realize the opioid epidemic was already in full swing during the TWW era, I thought it was more mid-2000s onward, but it makes sense that that's more when I started hearing about it)
I think 60 Minutes did a story about a community in West Virginia that was heavily impacted by the opioid crisis, a few years ago, and it truly looked bleak and like you had walked back in time to the Depression. Andy has older relatives (that she's not close to) that only got electricity in their homes during Andy's lifetime.
Sometimes when she comes back to Tennessee, it's for a funeral, and she thinks of all the funerals she's attended, relatives, friends during the AIDS epidemic, and now, people who fell into opioid use and weren't able to come out of it, and it hurts. And her being in recovery herself adds another rich layer to it! Your line about her rainbow remaining unfinished shot an arrow right through my heart.
Area woman agrees to take on more responsibilities at work despite knowing it will come with neither additional compensation nor hours. Area woman will learn nothing from this experience, film at 11.
Now that summer is halfway through, we wanted to remind you of something to look forward to this fall. Sapphic September will be back this year, and we're excited to have the prompts out to you soon. See you then!
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