Fistfights and Spades

"You'll wake up, thinkin' you have an XBox, but you won't have shee-yit."

So begins another hand of Spades at my job, as a patient informs me not to trust the patient sitting across from him. He continues to enlighten me that the second patient is a no-good snake in the grass, and the second patient responds by telling him in no uncertain terms that it is his belief that the first patient's genitals are of questionable size and effectiveness. Once again, I find myself telling both of these gentlemen to kindly shut their faces and play the game. Once again, I have averted the apocalypse- though I'm already preparing myself to do it again, as I'm fairly certain the first patient is cheating.

I'm even more certain that the second patient is on to his tricks. Three minutes later, my suspicions are verified, and I calm them down again.

This is a fairly calm night at my hospital. There've been a lot of easy nights recently; we haven't had to break up any big fights and nobody's tried to sever their fingers in a door jam. The staff and I are thankful for this lull, even though we're always half-cocked for the other shoe to drop. That comes with the territory of working at a state psychiatric hospital- you have to establish a good rapport with your clients while always being ready to dodge a punch or an errant flying chair.

People have asked me how someone can work in an environment such as this. I get the feeling that they view psychiatric hospitals as so

mething akin to, well... this:

I understand their trepidation. It is not an exaggeration that the guys I work with are quite literally too violent for other hospitals and/or too crazy for prison (though more often than not, they're just a bunch of lambs... at least, for us). But equally concerning to my companions is how I manage to deal with all their emotional baggage. And there is a lot of baggage to deal with; without a doubt, the men in my hospital have some of the worst life stories I've ever heard. So how do I keep from playing bellhop, and taking all their baggage home with me?

The answer is my litmus test for whether someone should pursue a career in mental health. There isn't anything I do to keep their issues out of my personal life; I just naturally and automatically compartmentalize work and home. I can intellectually think about their cases while I'm hanging out around the house (not that I would, but I could) without it ever effecting me. And that's not because I have any awesome command of self-discipline... I just don't give a shit about patient drama, once I leave the hospital parking lot.

Its rare for someone to start out with that capacity, especially in my field; I remember quite clearly feeling compelled to hit the bars in grad school specifically to dull the pain of what I'd heard that day in my internship. I was frequently joined by my classmates. But, you could tell the people who were "supposed" to be in the field from those who were not by who kept hitting the bar to forget after the first month or so. Those who were cut out for the field adapted, and their skin hardened on its own. Those who didn't adapt usually dropped out of school.

So, I post this not as a beating of my own drum, but as a roundabout answer to the question of "How do you deal with all that pain?".

You deal with it the way an umbrella deals with the rain. You get rained on a lot but you let it roll off of you.

And you learn to play a lot of Spades.

Running Tests on Seashells

I finished Mass Effect 3, yesterday. If you haven't played this, don't read on. Here lie spoilers.

I've played both Mass Effect titles previous to this one, and I did so knowing that my choices would effect my game play later down the line. Even way back when the original came out, I saved the Rachni Queen so that she could come thundering back and kick some Reaper ass for me. I reprogramed the Geth dissidents because they seemed like a misunderstood bunch, because the Quarians seems kinda shifty in their explanations regarding the Geth, and because Legion is just a monstrous badass. I turned down Miranda, Tali, Liara and Jack so that Sheppard would get back together with Ashley; I was in this game for the long haul, and I played this way expecting to be rewarded. I expected that, as a result of my long-term planning, I'd be able to kick the Reapers up and down this galaxy and right back to whatever shithole they were sleeping in.

And then...

Mass Effect 3 happened, and I see that all my work was essentially for nothing.

But y'know, it isn't even so much that the three endings of ME3 were garbage in and of themselves by virtue of how wholly unsatisfying they all were- its that they didn't even do the player the benefit of making basic sense.

Allow me to explain.

This entire time, the point of the Mass Effect series has been a sci-fi, contemporary American spin on a more traditional Lovecraftian theme; that there are forces beyond our control, that we are utterly powerless against, and that fighting them will do us no good. Enter Sheppard, this personification of willpower, chance, and a sheer refusal to die. He alone threatens to upend a galactic cycle that has gone on uninterrupted for millions of years; somehow, out of all the myriad races and individuals that came before him, he (or she) alone has that special something that makes the impossible, possible. He is the antithesis of everything the Reapers stand for; where they are inexorable order, he is improbable chaos. Where they are crushing despair, he is impossible hope. Where they seed distrust and suspicion, he brings cooperation and unity. That's the Sheppard we've been playing, be (s)he Paragon or Renegade. That's what the message of the Mass Effect story has been- as we see our own world becoming seemingly darker and darker, just as the ME universe sees theirs, there are people who absolutely refuse to give in to odds that should have ground them to dust years ago. And, that it is these people that we should aspire to emulate.

It's a powerful narrative, to be sure. And while it is in the form of a video game, remember that non-traditional forms of media such as games and graphic novels have really stepped up their storytelling in recent years. Sure, pretty pictures and being able to pilot tanks helps sell copies of the comic or game, but a lot more energy is devoted into the storyline of games, these days. And Mass Effect's story was one of the best in the business.

So. Here we have that level of immersion, that quality of setting and storytelling. Here, we finally had Sheppard poised to make the galaxy safe once again for Mom, Baseball, and Apple Pie. We'd sunk another 30-40 hours searching every star system, collecting every last ounce of war material. We had every fleet and all our old surviving friends signed on. We shot the shit out of the Reapers orbiting Earth, we made it through the ruins of London and into the Citadel, and...!

...The game's plot suddenly 180's and makes becomes all about whether or not organic and synthetic life can life together?

Uh...

...

What?

Never mind that the three endings were garbage, each one just a different-hued version of the others. Never mind that there isn't any explanation about what the hell happens immediately afterwards to the galaxy at large- such as, how do the various races deal with the fact that they're trapped in Earth orbit with no Mass Relays to get them home? Or just where in God's name did Joker crash-land the Normandy?

Never mind any of that- those issues are their own cans of bullshit.

The biggest failing of the Mass Effect franchise was that its ending missed the point of the game. It took the theme of despair versus hope and changed it into inter-species relations. It changed philosophy into politics.

And they didn't even show us a worth-a-damn picture of Tali's face.

The fuck.