Kelsier: "I am the survivor of Hathsin! I returned when none thought I would! I will become more than a sliver of adonalsium and become corporeal again! And I will bend this Cosmere to my will!"
Kaladin: "Seems like a lot of work. Have you tried having supportive friends?"
Kelsier:"...what?"
Kaladin: "I mean, I just refused to die each time that something tried to kill me. And then I found inner peace and I'm helping others to find theirs."
Kelsier: "..."
Kaladin: "And I keep coming back from the dead, man. And I mean, this time I literally died. There's a body and everything. And you can bet that Bridge 4 is 100% certain I'm still coming back. They're definitely going to start a religion or something anticipating my return. Those guys have way too much faith in me."
Kelsier: "..."
Kaladin: "Anyway, I've found that working through my own issues and helping other work through theirs is much more fulfilling work than trying to amass power. So I'm gonna be hanging with some quasi-dieties doing group therapy for a while. If you're not busy with anything...?"
Still mad about Eshonai. One of my favorite Cosmere characters. I love that the Stormfather was kind to her at the end, but it makes up for nothing. She deserved better. 😭
Gotta be honest i wasn't expecting the blame for this Return to bounce from the singers, to Gavilar, to Odium, to the radiants, to Taln, to the Heralds, to Tanavast, to the unfairness of the cosmere, to land on storming Shallan and Chana Davar
This is so very true. I had to sit and chew on it. Every time I think about eternal therapy for the sunshine mind, this pops up. Mostly I keep thinking about how Taln NEVER broke.
the most helpful thing i have ever seen from neurodivergent internet spaces is “THERE ARE OTHER TIMES OF DAY TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH”. this has genuinely saved me from executive dysfunction spirals so many times.
I have a "missed Rx" bottle. Any time I forget to take my meds (and realize it), I put the pills I should have taken into this bottle. I treat these like they don't exist, which is why I don't leave them in the original bottle (yay for adhd object impermanence). This helps prompt me to get my refills on time.
THIS IS NOW MY EMERGENCY STOCKPILE of medication - particularly for my Adderrall.
If I don't/can't get my refill in time, if there's a shortage, if there's some kind of weather event or other emergency that prevents me from accessing a refill, etc, I have this. For controlled substances prescriptions, there's no other way to have a backup that I know of.
I occasionally swap the "forgotten" pills out 1:1 with new pills so they don't expire - I try to do it when I pick up my new prescription.
----------------
The rest of this became my personal manifesto regarding access to ADHD stimulant medications. Sorry, not sorry.
Anyone with ADHD who is lucky enough to be medicated knows that suddenly being unmedicated can be life destroying. And that's not an exaggeration - life-threatening accidents go up, risk of being fired for ADHD-related performance issues go up, interpersonal/telationship conflicts increase, etc, not to mention the increase in anxiety and depression for many while it feels like the very structure of our lives is decaying, and it's ALL OUR FAULT.
So, needless to say, med compliance is really important for stability. But getting med refills can be a chronic problem for people with ADHD.
Most ADHD medications are controlled substances, so we need a new script every month. For various regulatory, legal and ethical reasons, the onus is on the patient to initiate a refill with their doctor rather than the doctor's office being able to provide any kind of proactive support. In a lot of cases, we need an appointment every month, and at a minimum we have to remember to contact our prescriber to ask them for the refill. It's hard to remember to do that, especially to do it in advance so that they can submit the refill in time so we do not miss days. It's particularly hard to do it in advance vbecause we can't request the refill too soon because they're on guard to ensure we only have exactly the number of pills we need and not a single one more. Because we all must be abusing our medication.
In addition, pharmacists can only fill our new prescription the date they show we will run out based on the pick-up date and not a minute earlier. Sometimes a day in advance if we're lucky. Because, again, thw system assumes we must be abusing these medications.
To say the least, the timing of getting a refill is very exacting - for people who literally struggle with exactly this kind of challenge.
On top of all of this, there have been amphetamine supply shortages over the last few years. This is because the DEA restricts the amphetamine market for pharmaceutical companies, but does it in a way that leads to hoarding, exporting, and other market inefficiencies. The DEA will determine that there's enough of the ingredient available to meet patient demands, and won't give pharmaceutical companies additional allotments, even though the companies actually manufacturing the medications don't have the ingredient they need to meet demand. While this has improved since The Year We All Ran out of Pills, the issue is chronic and systemic so shortages still pop up occasionally.
Thus, even if we do everything perfectly to get the prescription, our pharmacy may not be able to fill it when it's time. This can often happen the day before we're going to run out (see above re timing of refills), often the evening before, in fact, because a large number of folks pick up their meds after work.
This then means people with executive dysfunction need to call around for a pharmacy with available pills, and we have to do it RIGHT AWAY because we are going to run out of pills today/tomorrow. Quite often, though, we have to do this while unmedicated, because in the moment we may not have time for the process (and it takes time - I've spent an hour on the phone with pharmacies before) or the pharmacies may not be open. And that assumes we're lucky enough to have access to an alternate pharmacy. Then, even if/when we can find a pharmacy that can help, there's another hurdle: pharmacies often can't transfer prescriptions for controlled substances (even from store to store within the same chain/company), so now we have to coordinate getting a NEW refill from our doctor (and don't get me started on the mess that is partial refills of controlled substances). Fingers crossed that it's our doctor's office's business hours (it never is).
Because forgeting tasks and difficulty with motivation due to executive disfunction are KEY SYMPTOMS of ADHD, this can trigger a (sometimes long) period of without medication, which can be dangerous (see above). AND SO, I have my baby emergency stockpile of pills.
There's not a lot of sympathy for the problems this causes for people with ADHD, which means getting support through this process is challenging. In fact, there's still a lot of stigma. I've personally been treated with suspicion and doubt by a pharmacy assistant while panic-crying because I couldn't get a refill. I've heard comments about how people trying to get refills act like drug addicts. I have thick skin and a supportive community, so those experiences didn't stop me from pushing for what i needed, but I know there are people who would give up after an encounter like that.
There is no political will to improve the system. In fact, there's more political will behind increasing restrictions on and further limiting access to stimulant medications. This comes from the narratives that 1) ADHD isn't real ("everyone forgets things" "everyone gets distracted" "it's trendy to have adhd" "stop making excuses"), 2) ADHD is overdiagnosed and/or overmedicated ("you should just try harder" "why are you so lazy" "have you tried using a planner" "o knew someone who..."), and 3) ADHD medications are being widely abused recreationally.
During the pandemic, the FDA started allowing doctors to prescribe controlled substances via telemedicine, which has increased access to treatment and improved patient ability to actually attend appointments (from decreased time commitment, lack of need for transportation, lack of need for much advance planning/remebering, etc). Add to this the increase in adult diagnoses, particularly for women who went undiagnosed/untreated as a result of systemic social issues when we were children, and the result is a general and not insignificant increase in patients being effectively treated for ADHD, including being prescribed ADHD medication. However, if you doubt ADHD or the effectiveness/importance of medication in treating ADHD to begin with, the increase in stimulant prescriptions is an indication of drug abuse, over diagnosis and over medication, NOT better access to care and decrease in missed diagnoses due to bias. Nevermind pretty solid science around the prevalence of untreated ADHD, medication being the single most effective and life-improving treatment for ADHD, and the very reasonable conclusion that telemedicine improved both access to healthcare as well as ADHD patient appointment attendance.
Which is to say, the FDA keeps pushing to revive the requirement for in person appointments in order to received prescriptions for controlled substances, like stimulants.
"kevin day doesnt see more than the exy court" is such a blatant lie. kevin day i saw ur emo ass crying in the middle of the court telling neil to run away so he wouldnt be hurt. i saw u telling jeremy knox to be careful with jean moreau. i saw ur ass keeping the letter that said wymack was ur father. faker! u care! and u see so much and everyone writes u off as some psycho athlete but ur a lover boy! i see u, kevin day!
Kevin is the perfect example of being able to read everyone's motivations and interactions but also stay entirely disengaged because *hypervigilance* and *freeze* and a complete *avoidance of non-exy conflict* are his trauma responses. They kept him safe in the Nest and sometimes kept people he cared about (Jean) safe or at least less hurt.
So, of course, he knows about Neil and Andrew before they did and was entirely unsurprised in Baltimore. But he ain't saying shit now.
[ID: an 8 panel digital art comic titled "Book Bans", showing the following true story.
1: a girl and her mom are in a library and smiling. Narration begins: "A 10-year-old in Delaware was visiting her local library with her mother."
2: the girl picks a book off a shelf. Narrator: "While searching the shelves, she picked up the book "It's perfectly normal" by Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley."
3: the girl holds the book in the car with her mom. Narrator: "The book is about sex education and is one of the most banned books of the past two decades. The little girl took it home."
4: the girl points at herself while the mom is shocked. Narrator: "Later that day, the little girl showed her mom the chapter on sexual abuse and said: "This is me.""
5: the mom looks worried. Narrator: "Her father was abusing her, and it was the first time she'd spoken about it."
5: a fat black old judge in a courtroom. Narrator: "The father was convicted, and the judge said: "There were two heroes in this case. One was the child, and the other was the book.""
6: the author, an old white woman with short hair speaking. Narrator: "In an interview, the author, Robie H. Harris, said..."
"I have been called a pornographer, a child abuser — every name in the book, as the saying goes. But whenever I am called one of those names, I think of that ten-year-old girl. I wish we never had to talk with kids about any of these aberrant behaviors. But we have to do so because they already know about them to some extent and because kids have a right to have the accurate information that can keep them healthy and safe. They need to know how to get help to make any abusive behavior stop."
7: the top of a bookshelf with a ceiling. Narrator: "When right-wing groups petition and protest to get sex education books off the shelves of schools and public libraries, it stops the most vulnerable people from accessing the tools and language that can help them. It helps to shield and hide abusers. It communicates to children suffering from abuse that they are shameful and that it's not safe or polite to speak out about. Sex ed books don't "groom" kids and teens. They protect them." On the right lower corner is the source: https://bookriot.com/sex-ed-books-protect-kids/ . End of ID.]
Ignorance is a tool of repression - it protects the status quo and those in power. Censorship is a favorite tool of the authoritarian, who wants to control all information. Because if they can erase knowledge, then they can gaslight everyone in their power. Because how can something be happening if we all agree it's not real by silence or affirmation And who is more in the power of those around them than children?
The other Wind and Truth thing that won't stop rotating in my mind is that
No one knows Kaladin is fine, actually.
There's only 1 source for what happened in Shinovar - Szeth. Who doesn't know about the reforging of the Oathpact to protect the spren. He thinks Kaladin is dead. I mean, he BURIED the guy!
I can guess at some point communication gets restored, because the in-universe Knights of Wind and Truth book was written 6 years later AND references its part of a multi-author work and that Jasnah provided information about Kaladin.
When word gets out about what happened, literally everyone who ever cared about him or looked up to him is going to be distraught. On top of everything that's happened - you've lost one of the biggest inspirations for those that resisted Odium. One of the first Radiants. The mythical Stormblessed. Dead.
Meanwhile he's actually just leading a beach therapy retreat and might turn up again one day.....
I'm very curious if The Wind and Stone will be busy during the next 10 years. Because The Wind is the third witness to what happened in Shinovar - and she knows what happened to Kal.
Like, are the Wind and Stone Spren-Spren? Because they both predate Honor and Cultivation and are more like little bits of Adolnasium. They couldn't be eaten up/claimed by Retribution as some regathering of Honor's splinters like was going to happen to the rest of the spren.
But also, how the eff did THIS oathpact work in re the spren/Retribution? Is it just that Honor won't let Retribution break such a powerful oath?
PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin or that Babel was too heavy-handed just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here
Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn
Gladly! The pieces on this list aren’t limited to specifically anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy, but they do center related and relevant topics, themes, etc.
Anything by NK Jemisin. She is the best speculative fiction writer of her generation and probably the best speculative fiction writer alive. She is easily one of the best writers working right now, across all genres. That’s not hyperbole. She deserves all the hype.
Anything by Octavia Butler. She needs no introduction. Her short fiction is incredible; “Bloodchild” is one of the pieces that inspired me to write.
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. Excellent. Just read it.
The Radiant Emperor duology by Shelley P. Chan. It broke my heart and it'll break yours.
Babel by RF Kuang. You’ve probably already heard of this book because Harper Voyager marketed the shit out of it and was right to do so. It’s very, very good. Kuang writes a compulsively readable story, that’s for sure.
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo.
So Long Been Dreaming: Post-Colonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.
Severely underhyped books of assorted speculative genres:
The Blood Trials by NE Davenport. Given the current chokehold romantasy has on the public it’s insane to me that this book hasn’t sold a billion copies.
The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez. It’ll change you.
The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera.
The Lesson by Caldwell Turnbull.
Read widely. Read diversely. People of the Caucasian persuasion need to stop getting pissy when the story doesn’t immediately center them and they don’t automatically relate to everything the character says and does and is. Just let yourself get swept in the story—even if it touches on (gasp!) racism—and maybe, just maybe, it’ll reveal something to you.
Or maybe not! Marginalized sff authors do not have to and should not have to educate their readers. But if I see one more white person complain about how Black characters are fundamentally annoying because they complain too much I’m going to fling myself into the sun
Thanks for coming to my ted talk I didn’t want to do it but here I am
Oh! Please read EVERYTHING EVER WRITTEN by P. Djèlí Clark y'all! but start with this book first!
This is the epitome of Black Steampunk. It so refreshing to see science fiction written and just beautifully and authentic displaying of black culture(locations, language, practices, belie, ect) like black culture is extremely relevant and refreshingly written in this story. It even has some thrill of historical/ancestors revenge, along with messages of life and healing in it. It has all kinds of Black diaspora and queer rep in it too!
Rereading Rhythm of War and realizing that Kaladin did go to Braize ala Odium nightmares. So he can relate directly, at least in a tiny way, to the Heralds' oathpact trauma. Wonder when in the group therapy someone will put that together???
Just, Ash asking, "Uh, Kal, can you describe those nightmares again...?"
Also, do you think he had any clue THAT was what he was risking if sunshine Spiritual Realm uber-fix didn't work?
"immortal therapy retreat land" and "the only place on the planet left with sunshine" are funny places for "born-unto-eternity" and "born-unto-light" to end up in for sure
The official design of the carapace shield is so much more horrifying than what I had imagined… I know they had to do it but if I was Rlain I would have killed everyone in Bridge 4 with a gun
”Neil’s Mother might have been awful and violent at times, but she was fiercely devoted to him. They were two halves of a miserable whole, inseparable co-conspirators”.
