Taking Action – Gryphon's Aerie

Four Ways to Get an Emergency Medicine Stash

Back in the early days of COVID, ‘experts’ advised everyone to have two weeks of everything on hand — including medicine. That’s… a bit difficult to do with prescription meds. Many folks were frustrated with the advice and how useless it was to them.

I’m a small-scale prepper who has been working on getting a month’s worth of medicine on hand for a couple years now. The so-called experts were unreasonable to expect people to get two weeks of prescription meds right away. But with time, it is possible — and a good idea. So I decided to help folks out and wrote a quick thread on ways to get the recommended two weeks of medicine.

I decided it was time to turn that thread into something a little more accessible. So here you go. (This info is specific to the US, but some of it will be helpful to folks elsewhere.)

If you want to be able to have extra meds on hand for emergencies, here are some tips:

1. If you have a good doctor, talk to them.

A doctor can up your dosage for a couple months so you can ‘try’ the higher dose, then ‘decide it doesn’t work’. You squirrel away the extra from the higher dosage.

Your doctor can also call in refills early.

How well this works will depend on your insurance and pharmacy, but if your doctor calls in refills 5 days before they run out ‘to be sure you’re covered’ and you can get them right away, that’s five extra days of medicine you can save.

2. Do you have as-needed medication?

Those are the easiest to save. Every time you don’t need it, take it out of the bottle and put it with your emergency supplies.

3. Most of us aren’t good at taking our medication every day.

Some of us miss often, some only once a month or so. But it happens.

Get one of those weekly or monthly medicine things, or make one yourself.

At the end of the week/month, every dose that you forgot to take goes into emergency supplies.

4. Call your insurance.

Yeah, I’m serious. Many insurers have a policy that they will authorize an extra refill once every year to account for lost, stolen, etc. shit. This is also supposed to cover in case of a natural disaster — you can call and say, ‘My house got flooded, and I lost all my medicine!’ and they’ll get a refill authorized early.

So use that policy, call them, and ask if you can get your refills early. (This includes at least some controlled substances bc we were able to get Lozepam refilled this way once.) Our insurance doesn’t ask why; they check which medicines we want and remind us that we won’t be allowed to request extra refills for 365 days. Others may have different policies.
If you can get the extra refill, the medicines from your prior refill can go into emergency supplies.

Okay, that’s what I’ve got.

But there may be other things you can do.

If you can, talk with your doctor, pharmacist, or caseworker. Tell them you need help getting the recommended emergency supplies; they may have more ideas.
You probably won’t be able to get a supply of ALL your medicines, at least not quickly. But you can get started and get some of them.

The real pain is if your medicine schedule is still in flux. Don’t know how often I’ve finally gotten a month’s worth of one medicine, and then the dosage got changed or it got dropped.

But it can be done.

Good luck! And a final important tip from @gendertreyf@masto.jews.international :

Once you have an emergency supply of medications make sure you use them before they expire. I like to use the old bottle and put the new bottle into the emergency stash every month. That way the meds never get old.

Emergency Prep: Introduction to Go-Bags

I consider myself a small-scale prepper. By this, I mean that I am not interested in preparing for ‘the end of the world as we know it’ (TEOTWAWKI) or stocking up on weapons for the ‘inevitable civil war.’

But I absolutely am interested in having enough emergency supplies laid in for ‘predictable emergencies’ (plus a bit).

Predictable emergencies are things that can and often do happen. What counts as a predictable emergency depends on your circumstances and where you live. Wildfires are not a predictable emergency for me. ER visits are. So are snow storms that shut down local roads. So were (thankfully no longer) emergency ‘grab what you can carry and go’ moves when we were homeless.

I add ‘plus a bit’ because my predictable emergencies all tend to be short — a few days at most for a ‘regular’ bad storm. And I’d lived through enough /unpredictable/ emergencies to want to be prepared for them too.

So I have two baselines:

For emergencies we can sit out at home my baseline is the 2003 Northeast Blackout. Some areas were without electricity for up to two weeks.

For ‘get in the car and drive!’ emergencies, my baseline is a two-day cross-country trip on a Greyhound bus. Because I’ve done that w/ kids in tow, and it sucks.

I want two weeks’ supplies on-hand in the house (blackout).

I want go-bags with the necessities for everyone so that in the case of emergency hospital trips, building fires, or (god forbid) another ‘we have less than 24 hours to load up whatever we can in the bus and find a new place to live’ I know we’ll be okay for at least a few days.

I know ‘prepper’ has a bad name, and there’s reason for that. But often, the most marginalized of us can most benefit from a bit of prep

Related to this:

Here’s my thread from early COVID on ways to get a hold of extra medicine. You may remember that common advice was to have ‘2 extra weeks medicine on hand in case of emergency.’ That’s been disaster prep advice for a while — but then insurance makes it nearly impossible to get:

https://wandering.shop/@jessmahler/103759270418875628

There’s a lot I could say about prep and prepping (which, yes, IS related to PrEP). But for now, I’m going to focus on go-bags.

Caveat — It should go without saying no advice applies everywhere to everyone. What I say here applies generally to most folks in the US and some folks internationally.

So What Goes in the Go-Bags?

Here’s a rough outline of what I try to have (emphasis on TRY, I’m never actually managed all this):

Personal go-bags

(one for each family member):

1 change of clothes
1 extra pair of underwear and socks
2-4 weeks daily meds
emergency blanket
$25
emergency letter w/ contact info and ‘I am autistic/PTSD/etc, here’s what it looks like when I have a panic attack, and here’s how to help’
book/toy/drawing supplies
fave high-energy snacks (usually granola bars and candy)
fave stuffed animal/comfort object
couple bottles of water

Family go-bag

(large duffel, first parent to the door is responsible for grabbing it):

2 changes of clothes each
emergency radio
3 days of food
water filters/sodium tablets
emergency tools
digital copies of important documents (driver’s licenses, insurance cards, etc)
paper copies of important documents
family emergency contact info
toys/games (Nintendo DS currently), books, etc
$100
hygiene stuff
extra glasses
flashlights
duct tape
2 tarps w/ rope for emergency shelter

There’s other stuff I’d LIKE to have in there — for instance, I’d LIKE to put a pre-paid phone in each individual go-bag. I’d LIKE extra pairs of shoes, and rain gear, and…

But basics first, ‘extras’ later (if/when there is money for them)

Okay, but why all this?

If you aren’t used to thinking in terms of emergency prep, all this can seem excessive. But once you have it together, you will find it tends to get used.

We hit our emergency supplies about a half dozen times a year. They get used for everything from ‘someone is going to the hospital’ to ‘food stamps ran out’ to ‘fuck, I wasn’t healthy enough to do laundry for three weeks.’

They’re also useful for kids having sleepovers or trips to visit family (you’re already packed for a weekend).

Which brings up an important point — there’s a reason they are called /go-bags/ and not ’emergency bags’. Calling them emergency bags gets you in the mindset of ‘is this /really/ an emergency?’

We are not gamers hoarding the epic-powerful magic item for the big boss at the end of the game. We are trying to make things easier on ourselves. If using the go-bags makes life easier, we use them.

Don’t be afraid to figure it out as you go.

A common thing you hear from folks is ‘I’d like to have a go-bag, but I’m not sure what to put in it!’

That’s okay!

But it’s also why you should plan on using those go-bags, not just saving them for ‘real’ emergencies.

See, if you try to figure out everything you’d need for a big emergency all at once — you will get overwhelmed and not know where to start.

If you try to figure out what to pack in an overnight bag… that’s a lot more doable, right?

So you pack your go-bag as an overnight bag with whatever you can think of, and then a thing happens — maybe you have an ER visit. Or your roof leaks and you need to stay at a friend’s. Or insurance screws up and your meds don’t refill.

And you grab your go-bag (or other on-hand supplies, but today we’re talking about go-bags).

Your bag may not have everything you need in it, but it got you started.

(When I went to the crisis residence last week, I took my go-bag but had to tweak things a bit. My personal go-bag didn’t have enough clothing for several days, and I couldn’t bring food with me. Took a fraction of the time it would have taken to pack from scratch.)

And you’ll find that as you use the bag, you’ll figure out what things you want to add. (Found a rip in my skirt while at crisis, so I’m wrangling up a mini sewing kit for my bag for the future.) Or things you want to take out. (The kids went a bit overboard packing books — too much for them to carry. Had to cull a good bit.)

I’ve seen many folks get caught up on the esoteric aspects of emergency prep — water purification, and what kind of multi-tool, and papermaps with compass and… 99% of the time, you aren’t preparing for a cross-country trek. You are preparing for (at worst) a night camped out in a parking lot or the sports stadium serving as the local evac shelter.

Start with the basics that you’ll need for a variety of situations. Get the special/fancy stuff later.

Go-Bags need some TLC

You don’t need to constantly fuss with your go-bag if you don’t want to. That defeats the purpose. But once in a while you do need to go in and give your bag some TLC. I try to go through our bags in the Spring and Fall. This way, I can make any seasonally-necessary changes while doing other standard maintenance.

Make sure any clothing still fits and isn’t going musty
Make sure all the food is still good
Make sure none of the liquids have sprung leaks (very important!!!)
Change out/update medication, reading material, other

For five bags (four personal and one family) I usually take it in steps.

Step 1, remove everything that needs to come out of the bag and make a note of anything that the bag needs. (Half an hour.)

Step 2, gather everything (may include shopping trips, laundry runs, other) (up to a week)

Step 3, put everything I gathered in the bags (15 min)

Now, because I do this twice a year, I don’t stress about re-packing the bags after they get used. If I have the time/energy after the hospital trip/overnight visit/food stamps refill/whatever, I’ll get right on it.

But if I don’t? If I forget?

It’s okay because I’ll get around to it in a few months. Already on my calendar.

Planned forgetfulness

For me, one of the keys to successful go-bag use is a kind of planned forgetfulness. I never forget that we have the go-bags (they are hanging in the front closet next to the coats, so I see them several times a week anyway.)

But I do cultivate a… fuzziness on what exactly is in them. I don’t want to be thinking ‘man, pizza sounds good right now’ and have my impulse issues lead me to pull money from the go-bags on a whim.

What I do want is /when/ I think ‘fuck, we’re both sick as shit and can’t cook tonight, what can we do for dinner,’ to remember, ‘hey, I should check the go-bags. There might be something in there that can help.’ (Which may mean pulling the cash to order pizza or may mean peanut butter crack sandwich packs for dinner, with jerky and candy for dessert.)

Everybody’s brain works differently and what works for me might not work for you. But the point is that for the bags to be effective you need to have them in a mental slot where you aren’t pulling stuff out of them because ‘hey, I haven’t worn that shirt in a while, it’ll go great with these pants!’ but /remember/ to pull them out when ‘I’m behind on laundry and don’t have anything to wear. fuck!’

Which. for us neurodivergent folks with impulse control problems /can/ be a challenge.

Obviously, not everyone can put together supplies like this.

Hell, I can’t do this, and it’s my plan! We have never had full paper copies of emergency documents, or $100, or a tarp w/ ropes in the family go-bag.

I THINK I’ll finally be able to manage some of that this year. Hopefully.

But most folks can manage something.

Most folks can stick a change of clothes in an old bookbag or purse.

Most folks can find a handful of bandaids to squirrel away or a bottle of aspirin.

Most folks can stick a bit of candy or nuts in a hideaway for a high-calorie emergency snack. (Pro-tip, avoid chocolate or anything that can melt.)

As is often the case, doing something, even if it’s ‘not enough,’ is better than waiting until the ‘right’ time to do everything you want.

(Note to self — add a roll of toilet paper to go bags. Cheap, easy to get and replace (usually), and has a wide variety of uses from tissues to first aid to… well, you know.)

Tips from other folks:

Ether @queer_of_swords
something that I want to do and isn’t doing, on top of that, is keeping a digital copy of all important records, both on an HDD in the emergency bag AND a cloud solution. Things like old payslips, blood test results, etc.

MxFraud @mxfraud@tabletop.social
some small card games and a few dice

(I also carry a few pen a spare A4 sheets of paper with me usually, but for people that do not, having a few different pen type including a sharpie is something I would say is pretty useful)

Elena “of Valhalla” @valhalla@social.gl-como.it
since for weekend trips and the like I already have to bring a pair of house shoes, I’m looking in the general direction of having something that can also work as emergency outdoors shoes (and can be washed afterwards to go back to being indoors only).

I’m thinking espadrille-shaped, but with rubber soles, but something like hiking sandals would also work.

Of course that’s based on the assumption that one already needs house shoes for travel.

Jennifer Johnson @SimplyJennifer@zirk.us
I might add that once you’ve got two weeks’ worth of short-term preparedness, consider 2-6 months worth of your basic staples. My stash is running low right now, but it’s saved my bacon, and my parents’, during times of job loss or extended illness.

I work that right into the cupboards – what’s a couple more canisters of rice? It’s easier to rotate that way.

Where to Buy Books Other than Amazon

A few years back I had a habit of every six months or so doing a thread on Fedi about options for getting books other than Amazon. Eventually it finally occurred to me that I could write it once, put it up on website, and update as needed, rather than constantly reinventing the wheel.

Here’s the updated version for the new site.

Couple of notes before we get started:

This is geared towards US book sellers. I just don’t know much about book sellers in other countries. If you know any others please leave them in the comments.

Many folks aren’t aware that Goodreads is owned by Amazon (as, of course, is Audible, and anything with ‘Kindle’ in the branding). The focus here is ebooks, but we’ll also talk a bit about audio books, Goodreads alternatives, and anything else I can squeeze in.

Ebooks:

Authors website — some authors have a webstore where you can buy their books. Bonus: Author gets more money

Publishers website — ditto, without the bonus

Smashwords — support indie authors!

Your Local Bookstore — some indie book stores have ebook sales. (Don’t know any local book stores? Find one on Indie Bound)

Someone’s Local Bookstore — if your local book store doesn’t, you can find a list of other local book stores that do through Indiebound (downside, must use the My Must Reads app)

DriveThruFiction — lots of indie and oddball stuff

Kobo — will give a percentage to your local book store (or someone else’s local bookstore) downside: DRM-locked books can only be read in app or the Kobo e-reader, some books now readable in browser

Google books — yeah, it’s Google. But when it comes to books, google is the lesser of two evils. Many of the same problems as Kobo, but all DRM-locked books can be read in browser

Avoid

Barnes & Noble — their DRM thing won’t let you read your books if you don’t have an active credit card on file

Amazon (of course)

Pulp Books:

Your Local Bookstore

Authors website — some authors have a webstore where you can buy their books. Bonus: Author gets more money

Publishers website — ditto, without the bonus

Someone’s Local Bookstore — Book Bound will let you pick a local store to shop from

Thrift Books — great for used books of all types

Avoid

ABEBooks (It’s owned by Amazon)

Amazon (of course)

Walmart (it’s Walmart)

Audio Books

Librevox — free audio versions of books in the public domain

Libro.fm — subscription service similar to Audible, but you can download actual MP3 files

Chirp — really good sales

Avoid

Audible (owned by Amazon)

KU Alternatives

Everand — monthly subscription to thousands of ebooks, audio books, magazines, and more. BONUS! Many KU ebooks are available on Everand as audiobooks so you can leave KU and still read stuff from some of your fave authors.

Your Local Library — Go old fashioned! Paper books, ebooks, and audio books for free!

Kobo Plus

24Symbols

Goodreads Alternatives

(Yeah, Amazon owns Goodreads)

Storygraph

Bookwyrm

LibraryThing (better for institutions than individuals, but some folks make it work)

Where I Buy Books

My book buying priorities are:

I want DRM free ebooks in .epub format

I want the author to be paid as much as possible

So the first place I look is on the authors website.

Many authors have their on webstores these days. Those webstores almost always offer DRM free epub, and if I’m buying from the website I know that the ‘retailers cut’ on an sale is ALSO going to the author.

My next stop is the publishers webstore (if there is a publisher who has a webstore. Most of them don’t, but a few do.)

If neither the author nor publisher have a webstore, my next stops (in order) are:

Smashwords

Google Books

Kobo

Used bookstores for paper copies

I prefer to buy ebooks because they are cheaper and I’m less likely to lose them if my family becomes homeless again. The cheaper is not the biggest factor these days, which is why used bookstore is the last spot on the list. Authors don’t get a percentage when I buy used books, and I want them to get paid. So even though used books are cheaper than ebooks, I go for ebooks first.

I also have an Everand account and (of course) Overdrive through my library.

Community Suggestions

Stuff other folks have suggested that will be added to the main article in the next update:

Bookshop.org

Waterstones – UK

Blackwell’s – UK w/ international shipping

Better World Books – Used

eBay – Used

Pluto Press – UK

Kenny’s Bookshop — Ireland

Standard Ebooks — public domain ebooks

Project Gutenberg — public domain ebooks

Alibris — US and UK with international shipping

Breaking Free of Kindle Unlimited

Kindle Unlimited is an author trap. It is a very successful author trap, in part because when you sign up it doesn’t look like a trap.

I’m not the first to say this, and I won’t be the last. Many indie authors have been realizing they are trapped on KU but don’t know how to escape.

The good news: escape is absolutely possible.

The bad news: fast, easy, or painless — you can’t have all three. Often, you can only have one.

A Bit of Background

The trap that Amazon sets is an old one. I first ran into it as a kid.

My grandfather ran the family business. He’d started it when my dad was a kid and ran it successfully for many years. After he retired, my dad and uncle tried to take over, but they struggled with it. Lots of reasons.

Eventually, they got an offer from a long-time client. The client, rather than handling each project individually and going around to different businesses to see who was available, wanted to contract with the family business to do all their projects.

My dad was ecstatic. This was huge! This contract alone would bring in 80% of the company’s income for the year. They wouldn’t need to constantly stress about finding the next job or the next client. It was wonderful.

Until the contract ended, and the client said they’d only re-up at 75% of what they had been paying.

And my dad and uncle had a choice. They could take the new terms, losing a large chunk of income while doing the same amount of work — or they could lose 80% of their work and income in one go.

If you read about the history of early capitalism in England, you’ll find fabric crafters got caught in the same trap. After centuries of crafters owning the loom/spindle/fibre and selling a finished product to merchants or other crafters, a new practice started. Folks who didn’t have their own tools could use tools belonging to a merchant. But then, they could only sell to that merchant. And if they wanted to stop selling to that merchant or sell to someone else… they lost the tools of their trade.

It was one of the first steps in turning crafters into employees.

For indie authors, Amazon is like those merchants. If you don’t have the tools or know how to format and publish your own books, Amazon will give you the tools. You just need to sell your books through Amazon.
Want to stop selling through Amazon? Then you lose the tools to publish.

KU takes the next step. With KU, you don’t need to actively market your book so hard. It automatically goes to the top of the ‘new releases’ list for a captive audience. KU subscribers are always going to look for KU books first. It’s a relatively easy way to build an audience — an audience that is controlled by Amazon. Amazon can set whatever new rules they want, they can change the contract any which way. And you’re stuck because you can’t end the relationship without losing your audience and income.

So Now You’re Trapped

No shade. It’s hard to recognize these traps if you haven’t seen them before. I came damn close to getting sucked in by KU early on. (They DID get me sucked in as a reader for a long while, which is a different kind of trap…)

But how do you get out of the trap?

Well, I’ve got three options for you, but first —

Important Publishing PSAs

1) Once in a while, I see an author who has their books only on Amazon — but NOT on KU.

This is the worst of both worlds. If you are switching away from KU but still publishing through Amazon, make sure to go into your KDP dashboard and add all your non-KU books to ‘other sales channels.’

2) Highly recommend doing mixed-platform publishing.

That is — publish on both Amazon AND other eBook publishing sites (D2D, LuLu, etc.). Two reasons for this. First, no publishing site publishes to all the same retailers. So publishing through multiple sites gives you more reach.

Second, being dependent on a single publisher isn’t nearly as bad as being dependent on a single sales channel — worst comes to worst, you can switch publishers and not lose more than a month or two of income. BUT having only a single publisher is still letting one company control all of your income.

Personally, I publish most of my stuff to both Amazon (published ONLY to Amazon sales channels) and D2D/Smashwords (published everywhere else).

(While I see definite advantages in the D2D/Smash merger in terms of creating real competition for Amazon, the effective duopoly it threatens to create isn’t much better than Amazon’s current effective monopoly. Keep your eye on the status of the industry, and try to have a third option in your back pocket.)

3 Ways Off of KU

Leap of Faith

I recommend this for folks who don’t have much/any income from KU yet. If getting off KU only means less ‘fun money’ next month, get off now before you become reliant on it.

Just… walk away. Pull all your stuff off KU, post an announcement on your website and social media, update your buy links, and move on.

If Amazon moves against you, as has happened to many writers over the years, it may be your only option. But you’re probably here because you want to avoid this option.

At a Jog

Most folks who’ve been on KU a while aren’t fully trapped yet, but have enough income that just taking the leap will hurt.

If that’s you, and you want off KU sooner rather than later, this may be the best option.

Leave all your existing stuff on KU. If you have already announced an upcoming book as being on KU, publish it to KU.

After that, put everything else up as non-KU. Send out announcements and such as you feel appropriate, and make sure folks know what you are doing. Once you are comfortable with your off-KU reader base/income stream, start moving your earlier stuff off of KU as well.

Note: This does not work as well if all your books are series that don’t work as standalones. Folks who don’t buy books from Amazon will not be able to read your earlier books in the series and so will have no incentive to read the later books. Folks who only read KU books won’t buy your new releases unless they’re serious fans.

If most of your catalog is not able to be read standalone, then you probably need the next option:

Ease Into It

If I was trapped on KU and had a large enough income stream that getting off KU would threaten my financial stability, this is the route I’d take. The first thing I would do is start a new series of short stories/novellas.

Short (and consequently cheaper) stories are one of the better ways to pick up readers off of KU. Possibly include an author’s note saying that you are moving off of KU and readers interested in your future stuff should follow you on x estore/subscribe to your newsletter/etc.

Any existing series, I’d continue to put on KU, but with an author’s note somewhere “For (reasons), I’m going to be shifting my writing off of KU. New stuff in this series will continue to be on KU for at least (your estimated timeline). But new stuff that isn’t connected to existing series will not be on KU.”

Once the short stories/novellas are getting some attention, I’d start splitting my book publishing in half. Half (my most popular series, every other standalone, whatever worked best) would continue to go up on KU. The other half would be non-KU.

As you get comfortable/build a following off of KU, up your non-KU publishing until everything new if off KU — including existing/prior series off of KU.

At the same time, if you have any older KU books that aren’t getting read much, this is a good step to start moving them off KU. They’ll be ‘new’ to many non-KU readers, and moving them won’t hurt your existing income much.

The final step (which should take you at least a year, preferably several) is to start moving your newer/popular KU stuff off of KU. Again, keep your readers informed. Add updated author notes in your old stuff, “This is going to be moving off KU soon.” Or send out newsletters. Or write a blog post. (or all three.)

Again, don’t make the jump all at once. Go one book or one series at a time. (Remember that Amazon kinda/sorta counts collections as separate books, so maybe leave your ‘box sets’ or whatever up on KU until last or something.)

I wouldn’t move more than one book a month — both for time management and easing-readers-into-it reasons.

Depending on how many books you have, this whole process can easily take 5+ years. That’s okay! The point here is to take it slow.

Be aware — you will likely lose KU readers no matter how careful you are. I speak from experience when I say that KU becomes a reader trap — I don’t know how many times I looked at a book and said, “I want to read it, but it isn’t on KU.”

But making a gradual transition like this encourages as many KU readers as possible to follow you off of KU, gives you time to (figure out how to) build a following off of KU, and lets your KU books act as a lead-in to your new not-KU books. It maximizes your chances of getting new readers and keeping old ones.

This process isn’t a ‘get out of jail free’ card. You will need to rebuild your reader base and develop new marketing avenues. But you can do it a bit at a time without destroying your existing income or tossing yourself into new marketing stuff ‘sink or swim.’

Just Remember:

Very often, doing the ‘wrong’ thing is better than doing nothing. If you are trapped on KU, the longer you don’t do anything, the tighter the trap will be.

If you want out of the KU trap, you need to start steps as soon as possible. Even if they are just small steps. Even if you aren’t sure they are the best steps. There’s a military saying: “The best is the enemy of the good.”

Take a few days, maybe a week, to pick a place to start. That’s just good sense. But don’t spend weeks or months coming up with the ‘best’ or ‘perfect’ plan to get off KU.

Just take a deep breath, and start moving.

The ‘Good King’ Makes a Good Fantasy

Painting of King Arthur by Charles Ernest Butler

A young white man with wavy blond hair wearing plate armor and a bright red cloak raises a crown above his head.

The idea is endemic to Western civilization. From the Christ-myth to King Arthur and King Richard to Aragorn the Fair… it repeats. In our myths, our fiction, our movies. It’s the same story, though it takes two versions.

In one version — the version that makes for the /best/ stories — there is evil in the land. And there is, somewhere, a good king. The good king is lost, or imprisoned, or off on crusade. Evil sweeps over the land. Some fall into despair, others hold out hope for the Return of the King.

Often, the king /does/ return. He smites the evildoers and raises up the loyal and the righteous, and all the land lives in peace and happiness. He is /such/ a good king that he manages not only to train his heir to be a good ruler but also to prevent succession disputes for at least three generations.

Truly, a /good/ king.

The second version of a good king puts the king in the background. They don’t need to fight for the throne (not publicly, anyway). They simply /are/ the king. They magically manage to hold the throne, keep the feuding nobles happy, ensure the safety of the common people, and make everything so wonderful that unicorns farting rainbows practically dance down the street. They are rarely the center of the tales, but tales happen around them. Good Queen Bess, /le bon roi/ Henri, Jonathon of Tortall, and others both real and fictional.

In both versions of this story, the ruler (it’s usually a king, but it could be a queen, a noble, a president, or a prime minister) attains mythic proportions and the ability to fix everything, for everyone, simply from their own inherent goodness. Or something like that.

What’s Wrong with the “Good King”?

Kept to its proper place — the pages of novels and frames of movies — it’s not necessarily a bad thing. A bit of escapism does us all good sometimes. But we need to remember that it /is/ escapism.

We don’t. We bring it into our lives, our choices, our politics. To different people in the US, Bernie, Biden, and Trump have all been ‘the good King’. Before Trump, it was Obama, hailed as the one who would bring change and fix everything. It’s the new principal hired to right the failing school. The new boss or CEO. A ‘real world government’ to replace the UN or any number of other people or ideas that will magically ‘fix’ everything. Sometimes it’s us.

The Good King presents us with two options. Maybe three. We can cast ourselves as the good king, the savior who will fix everything — from our local theater group to our relationships to the entire damn world. Or we can cast ourselves as one of the grateful subjects content to play out our small adventure or romance or coming-of-age tale. We don’t need to worry about the big picture or the people around us because ‘the good king’ will take care of it. In some versions, we can cast ourselves as the good king’s loyal companions, fighting with him to win the ballot box, the funds for the renovation, etc.

It’s a great story. A very seductive story. One where, no matter what role we play, we don’t need to take responsibility. If we are the good king, whatever we do is good by virtue of our being the king: the one who will make everything right. The Good King doesn’t fail his subjects or screw over his contractors — or if he does, it’s ‘good business sense’ and therefore good. Or we let the king take care of it all and not worry. Or we let the good king tell us what to do and know that as long as we follow orders we are on the side of ‘right’ and it will end in ‘happily ever after.’

The Good King makes a good fantasy. In real life, no one person will bring/maintain peace and prosperity and unicorns in the streets. In real life, we must all take responsibility for building and maintaining a society which is just, which is peaceful, which is free, which is accountable. And all the other things that a good society should offer (and most don’t).

Check yourself. Especially in election years, but also all the time. If you think you meet the Good King, send them off to weed the garden and get back to work.

And maybe find some new fiction to read and myths to enjoy. Getting some variety in your mental diet can be a huge boon to your mental processes.