Jo|she/her|writer|fangirl|Fandom Old™

they perform as well as expensive HEPA air cleaners, and are comparatively VERY inexpensive. all you need is a box fan, 4 air filters, a piece of cardboard, and some duct tape!!!!

They released an album too! I don't think this song is on it but the rest of their stuff is SO GOOD !!

Married the love of my life at 50.

Got my Class A CDL at 59.

You've got time.

in 2019 the FDA approved a drug called trikafta (which is really three drugs in one) for cystic fibrosis treatment. what it essentially does is patch up the malfunctioning proteins that cause the extra sticky mucus. trikafta is effective on about 90% of cystic fibrosis patients.

people who had spent their entire lives in and out of hospitals, on and off of ventilators, suffering from pneumonia and sometimes treated through painful procedures like intubation took this drug, got out of bed, coughed up an entire lifetimes worth of mucus out of their lungs over the course of a few hours, breathed clearly for perhaps the first time in their lives, and now go on to live well into their seventies.

My ward is the respiratory ward - CF is one of the things we specialize in.

Since this med came out we haven't had a SINGLE CF admission to the ward

There used to always be a CF patient spending a couple of months with us at a time

There's a man who is 23 years old who I was sure would not survive his next admission (aim saturations 85% is end stage lung disease)

There's a set of the local frequent flyers that we all know so well

Except

No we don't

On the CF specialist ward (with reasonable staff turnover)

Half the staff have probably never even seen a CF patient

Additionally, it should be noted that metrics like life expectancy are in no way a guarantee of... Anything. There are significant outlier CF patients who are at an advanced age now despite the odds due to a variety of different factors, having lived the majority of their lives before the development of modulators.

That is per month with the most common coupon people are likely to use.

But don't worry, there's grants and patient assistance programs you can apply for. 🤞🫠 Most people in high income countries like the USA can get it "covered" through insurance for fewer thousands of dollars. Or even less if your insurance is good or the manufacturer likes how poor and/or on Medicaid you are! A good social worker will help you with the process, and make sure your yearly reapplications and PAs are done a little early so they have time to think about it before you run out. Jesus Christ.

“Who are you?”

The stranger cocked his head: a slight forward and sideways tilt of his head, eyebrows lifting to create folds on his forehead. That look was telling Dunk that he was expecting something from him and again that feeling of being perceived as stupid resurfaced. “Take a guess.”

That makes one, Dunk started his count, as he did with every new person he met. It was a horrible habit he’d developed before he met Ser Arlan, when Rafe had figured out he was cursed by mere happenstance. “You poor fool,” she’d said with rarely shown sincerity. “Ain’t none of us that care to mind our words, ‘specially not here. Should be payin’ more attention to how much people tell you what to do. You can’t be lettin’ people take advantage of you more’n you already fucking do.”

I can’t help it, he wanted to say but couldn’t because the damned curse never let him open his mouth about it. He said nothing instead, letting it do its work on him at Rafe’s words. He was of a mind to call her out on her own slip, but he didn’t much feel like upsetting her anymore than he already did. But he held her words close to his heart, and his grip on them turned viselike when she was gone.

The curse steered him into looking at the stranger again: he saw the same person as before. He looked and looked, and things started to connect. The regal air, the dark skin and hair. That violet eye, the one that had tickled something at the back of his mind earlier. He remembered then the stories he’d heard, about the colour of Targaryen eyes, dragon eyes, and their hair like gold-spun silver. But this man had no such hair nor was he of their pale complexion, which damned him in the eyes of the noble houses. They spoke of the Prince of Dragonstone with barely contained disdain, claiming that his Dornish blood would one day be the ruin of the realm.

Look, fuck AI, I wish so hard it didn't exist, but there is no foolproof way to tell if fic used AI short of someone leaving a prompt in or them admitting it. Especially when you're not an expert which you fucking aren't! Any 'tell' you spot could very easily have some perfectly innocent explanation.

If you have your suspicions, then stop engaging with that work, that fan, whatever. But the callouts and the dog piles are going to hurt actual fan creators way way more than they should, because it should hurt them ZERO!!! no actual fan creator should have to defend themselves against an AI accusation because that shit is slippery as he'll. HOW would you like them to prove to your satisfaction that they did not use AI? should they be submitting drafts to you? would you like a screen recording of their workflow?

you are going to strangle fandoms in their cribs.

you are going to crush new fans.

you are the asshole.

STOP!

There are going to be days (or weeks, or months) where you sit down to write and feel... disconnected. From your voice, from your characters, from your ideas. Like the person who used to write your stories just packed up and left.

They didn't. They're just tired. Here's how to keep writing anyway:

Lower the bar (Until it's on the floor) You are not here to write something brilliant. You are here to write something. A paragraph. A sentence. A single line of dialogue. Movement matters way more than quality.

Write around the story Don't force it. If you can't write the scene, try: ⋆ A character ramble / journal entry ⋆ A conversation that won't be included in the final draft ⋆ A list of things the character would never admit out loud ⋆ A messy summary of what should happen Engage with the story from a different angle.

Borrow a voice until yours comes back No, not with AI. Read something that feels close to what you want to write, or watch a scene that captures the tone, then write immediately after. Not to copy, to reignite your instincts.

Write the emotion, not the plot. What is your character feeling in this moment? What are they afraid of? What do they want but won't say? What's being kept from them? The emotion leads, the plot catches up later.

Stop trying to "feel like a writer" first. You don't write when you feel like a writer. You feel like a writer because you write.

For me, opening a new doc and placing it side-by-side against what I've written, and then transcribing what's already been done (and editing in the process) helps ground me in the scene/chapter/voice/characters and helps me discover ways to get unstuck (maybe I didn't explore an emotion earlier that needed to be dug into. Maybe they should not have left that room when they did and lingered longer. Maybe the conversation needed to get cut off before the character made the statement that derails everything). Starting from the beginning is like re-tracing your steps and editing at the same time, and most times it really helps get the brain closer to where it needs to be.