reading progressive sex ed caricatures with accurate and detailed and realistic diagrams of sexual organs + shows their variation, but all i can think about is how there is no discussion of what srs is besides the fact that it exists
this one has been passed around recently from the mayo clinic and that actually makes me so happy because how many of transfeminine people are aware of what their options even look like?
there’s a diagram for phallo and meta from springer link(i believe) and. honestly i’d never seen these before and i dont think i’ve ever seen any diagrams. i know vaguely because of reading papers or listening to people talk about their experience but i’ve never seen it, yk? it makes me more confident in my choice to get meta when i’m older
There’s a website called Transbucket that has a whole archive of before and after photos, surgery costs, surgeon names and locations, and general feedback on complications, sensation, everything. It’s been around for at least a decade, and there are photos of some folks five or eight years down the line. It’s organized by procedure, and it’s very comprehensive. It’s NSFW of course but it’s an amazing resource!!!
Are you considering or have had transition care? | Transbucket.com
you know that trope where it’s princess + knight, but they’ve both been captured by the bad guys and the princess is now gripped by the jaw by the villain, receiving a thin cut to her cheek while remaining completely still with a defiant look in her eyes even as a droplet of blood begins to trickle out of the wound, all while 3 people AT THE VERY LEAST need to have their hands locked on the knight because he’s thrashing around like a wild animal, trying so so so desperately, violently, to get to her?
there’s absolutely something to be said about ‘booktok’ books being largely wattpad quality written erotica i’m certainly not reading them however having seen a guy on tiktok make a video like ‘all the women in your life are READING PORN’ about a book he picked up and read in his FEMALE FRIEND’S HOUSE in a tone of scandalised horror and disgust i actually don’t think men should be making those criticisms. he said he picked it up expecting a romance and was horrified it was GOONER SHIT he said specifically like ‘who are you getting your pussy wet FOR??’ in a tone of revulsion. idk man im not sure shes the weird one. i kind of wish you were dead
"a lot of books that are successful on booktok are not very good" and "people can read what they want and we need to stop being so fucking weird about women enjoying erotica" are both correct statements
absolute perfection in a single paragraph. From this, we can see:
Grace has a warped self-perception. He insists he's not a "people person" but gets along with majority of the crew, is a literal middle school teacher who the kids love
he's so sassy bro. "I seem friendly only bcuz I stood next to Stratt"
also establishes why so many ppl thought Grace was second-in-command, like he's usually always standing next to Stratt
Grace just does not know how important he is to the project lol
Also consider: this behaviour continues when he's on Erid.
Like Grace is sitting there going "man it's kinda crazy the Eridians are being so nice to me. I know Rocky probably bullied them into helping the weird human but I still appreciate it. Hope they don't think the effort is a waste when I die in 40 years! :)"
And meanwhile the Eridians are like This Alien Rocketed Into Our Lives And Saved Our Whole Species From Annihilation And Then Gave Us Unfathomable Knowledge From The Stars. And Also He's So Nice We Love Him. Fights were breaking out left and right over who would get to work on the dome. Adrian won because of nepotism and sheer intimidation factor.
just saw a post talking about the misogynistic phenomenon of men frequently offloading household tasks to women & expecting us to do them... and describing it as "learned helplessness"
Learned helplessness is the behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control. In humans, learned helplessness is related to the concept of self-efficacy, the individual's belief in their innate ability to achieve goals.
literal first paragraph of the wikipedia article for learned helplessness. this is a depression symptom. it is frequently caused by lifelong abuse from controlling authority figures. it is the exact OPPOSITE of an abuse tactic and would most likely be displayed by the WOMEN in that kind of scenario!!
the actual relevant term for what the man is doing is probably "weaponized incompetence" which is an abuse tactic. please for the love of fuck do not conflate the two
Adding "learned helplessness" to the list with "trauma bonding" of words people heard once and never looked up because they thought the meaning was obvious from context, but it's not.
I would actually go as far as to say that MOST abuse is unintentional. I think most people will go through their lives without ever experiencing intentional abuse. People are abusive because they're selfish, because they're stressed, because they care more about what society thinks they should do than the impacts of their actions on their children and partners, because they think what they're doing is correct, because they've made it make sense in their own heads, because they think they can fix their victims, they think they can fix their relationships, they think they can stop you from leaving, they think they can make you a better partner to them, they think that means you need to do what they want. We've sort of constructed mental illness in a way that doing this shit to other people counts as a form of mental illness because it is anti social behavior in the literal sense— it is behavior that causes social harm.
I don't say any of this to excuse it. I think everyone needs to be more aware of this because if you think abuse has to be intentional you will never realize you are capable of abusive behavior. You will never realize you are being shitty to the people you love, because YOU know what you mean, YOU know you don't mean any harm. But you're doing harm. You need to pay attention to the impact you have on other people, and you need to do it all the time, Especially when you feel least capable of doing so. Sorry! You live in a society. Get your head out of your ass.
Maybe it's naive of me, but whenever I see portraits like this, with just a father and daughter, it restores my faith in humanity a little. Because people seem to love this idea that fathers never loved their daughters in the past and only saw them as bargaining chips for marriage or whatever, but look at the guy in the first portrait on the left, he loves that little girl! And the dad trying to do his work while his daughter bothers him with an Old Timey Barbie. The man teaching his daughter geography, his expression is so soft! The way the man in the last portrait holds the little girl's hand! And none of these are incidental, these aren't photographs, someone (probably the father) paid good money and sat down for hours so that they could have a painting of themselves and their daughter. Probably because they loved their daughter.
From left to right: 1795 Michał Jerzy Mniszech with his daughter Elżbieta - Marcello Bacciarelli; Christopher Anstey and his daughter Mary Ann by William Hoare 1776; A Musician and His Daughter by Thomas de Keyser 1629; The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur G. and His Daughter), 1812; Jean-baptiste Isabey And His Daughter; Portrait of a Young Girl and Older Man by William Harrison Scarborough
(this is probably somewhat related to my other favourite genre of painting, Husband With Multiple Kids Making Come Hither Eyes At His Wife)
oh I love those! People being people is one of my favourite kinds of paintings and an important reminder that people in past times were not all that different. There were dads who loved their daughters fiercely. There were fathers who happily looked after their babies too. The German reformer Philip Melanchton for example had a cradle in his office. His wife was busy organising a household for 20 people- she was out and about, he mostly worked in his office, it made sense for him to look after their babies too babies while she dropped by at snack time.
in fact often if it was kind of safe dads had the babies in their workshops for just that reason as we can see in these paintings:
The left is “the busy father” by Theodore Weber, the right one is “At the china repairer’s “ by Wenzel Tornoe. All dads who are actively involved in childcare and a painter who thought it was a cute topic rather than anything ridiculous.
I’m not going to tag any of the original PHM posts I’ve seen across various platforms with this take bc (1) they seem to be mainly informed by a movie-only perspective, and (2) I don’t respect Andy Weir enough as an author to insist that reading his work is vital to understanding this story. But I’ve seen various posts going around to the effect that “Ryland Grace loved his life and loved Earth so much, and this is why being forced onto the mission was such a Great Tragedy (TM)” when that’s…not really???? True???? At ALL??? Of Ryland Grace????
The ENTIRE POINT of Grace’s arc is that he is a Coward, with a capital C. He is a coward not only in his refusal of the Hail Mary mission, but in the way he lives his life before the Petrova Line was ever discovered. Grace has no close friends or coworkers, no pets or hobbies, no partners (short or long term), no family that we know of. His two main drives in life are (1) being a Cool Teacher to his students, and (2) nursing a grudge over getting kicked out of academia for proposing wild theories about life forms not based on water. As Stratt ACCURATELY points out, both of these things have large self-serving components. Grace genuinely loves his students and is good at teaching, but it’s at least partially because his classroom allows him to demand respect and attention without returning emotional vulnerability in the same way a peer relationship would. His academic theories were also largely motivated by a desire to be The Specialest Boy - and while Grace DOES prove himself very smart and capable, his pet theory wasn’t supported by his work with astrophage. Grace doesn’t jump at the chance to work with Stratt when she first approaches him, and he isn’t out there Living LIfe to the Fullest every day. He ADMITS to himself and to Stratt that he IS a coward, both for the way he’s lived up to PHM and for refusing to go on the mission when the timeline made it clear that there wasn’t enough time to bring another candidate up to speed and have the same odds of success. He straight up tells Stratt that he’ll sabotage Project Hail Mary if she tries to force him, DESPITE HIM KNOWING that Earth is headed for a literal apocalyptic Ice Age, and that everyone on the planet - including his beloved students!- has a pretty good chance of DYING if the mission doesn’t succeed! Stratt has to give him a coma cocktail that induces mild amnesia, and bet on him being at least good Enough (TM) not to kill the whole planet because he hated her for doing this to him.
(Also no hate for Eva Stratt, I love her and I will SUPPORT THIS WOMAN’S WRONGS until my dying day, she committed so many crimes and I cheered the whole way)
Despite Ryan Gosling’s very pretty Sad Boi eyes and sweaters, Ryland Grace is NOT a manic pixie dream scientist in love with Earth and its life and cultures. He just ISN’T. And if he WERE, then. Well. He certainly didn’t love Earth enough to fully embrace it while he was here, OR to volunteer to save it when he had the chance. This IS one of those situations where the distinction between “I love life” and “I don’t want to die” is a meaningful one. Does this make Grace a Cancelled Villain of All Time? No - it makes him a coward, but that doesn’t mean he inherently deserved to die. Does it ethically or morally justify forcing him onto a suicide mission while he fought and pleaded not to go? No! It makes Grace ORDINARY. Just some average fucking guy, not evil but not valiant, either. It’s like trying to claim Laika was the top search and rescue dog in the city when she got put into the pod. You don’t NEED to give Ryland Grace all these Tender Tragic Qualities of “loving Earth/Life” to have empathy for this poor dude who got launched into space.
In fact, Grace’s arc DEPENDS on him STARTING from that place of “I don’t really have a reason to be here” to “I have EVERY reason to turn my back on survival and do this act!” Grace wakes up on the Hail Mary, and has no context for why he’s on the ship but assumes that he was a Heroic Volunteer, like Yao and Ilyukhina. He sees their personal effects and Reasons Why They Volunteered, and keeps searching for his own Reason Why until he remembers that he didn’t HAVE a “reason why.” He was never a heroic volunteer. He comes to terms with the fact that he’s going to die, and IS. IN FACT. AS STRATT PREDICTED. A GOOD ENOUGH man to want to save the earth anyway rather than die alone without even trying to figure out the Petrova Problem out of spite. And he can do some pretty neat science along the way, which has always been one of his life motivations! At least he can do that before he dies, in the absence of anything else!
But the thing that Grace ACTUALLY loves enough to die for is ROCKY. The one in a million friend! Who saved his life and opened up his entire view of the universe! Grace’s core trait was NEVER “loving the Earth,” or “loving life.” The WHOLE FUCKING EARTH wasn’t enough to get Grace willingly onboard the Hail Mary! What made him turn the ship around was his GOTDAM SINGING ROCK FRIEND. The whole point is the change! Humanity’s capacity for massive apathetic cowardice and also astonishing bravery and hopefulness in connection. Andy Weir has his head in his ass about politics in his work, but you see?!?! You see, right!?!?!?!
And hey. If you really want protagonists who loved the Earth and life? Yao. Ilyukhina. Dubois. The original crew of Project Hail Mary. THEY loved the Earth. THEIR sacrifice was tragic in the specific narrow way that the “Grace loved life” posts want Grace’s to be. Dubois, who started a relationship with Annie even though he knew one or both of them was sure to die because why waste any time? Why not enjoy what they had in this moment? Ilyukhina, who had the absolute darkest sense of humor and packed a giant bag of vodka, who asked to go out via the most pleasurable cocktail of drugs imaginable bc why not enjoy herself after living such a straight edged life? Yao, who volunteered to go last after both Dubois and Ilyukhina were gone, just so he could make sure they didn’t suffer, who carried a picture of his family and never lost courage. THEY were the ones full of love for Earth and life, while the whole point of Grace is that he never really was, and he found it in space when he’d already left Earth behind.
Eating when I need food (body hungry, requesting nutrients) and I want it: FUCK yeah this ROCKS
Eating when I don’t need food but I want it: This is okay I’m probably having some small delectable treat. As long as I’m not overeating to discomfort this will be enjoyable.
Eating when I don’t need food and I don’t want it: *This is something that some misled parents and caregivers impose and doesn’t apply to me as an abled adult*
Eating when I need food but I don’t want it (maybe sick/nauseous/menstruating, body signals confused, exhausted, waited too long to eat, preferred foods not available, etc.): The Trials and Tribulations of Maintaining This Mortal Flesh Could Never be Comprehended by Any Machine. I Am Burdened with the Unsought for and Unending Task of Providing for a Creature of Meat for my Comprehension to Inhabit. and actually after that banana I am feeling a little better.
calling ppl "larpers" to insinuate theyre fake fans of smth/poorly pretending to be smth is so fucking stupid cuz. tell me u have never met a real LARPer without saying u have never met a real LARPer. those guys care. they are fucking locked in dude. like LARP is a lifestyle its a commitment they care so much. they're not fake nerds either like fake nerds just repost LOTR gifsets and talk about how nerdy they are for being into like, fucking batman and stuff. LARPers know their shit. they read the whole Silmarillion. they know who Ambush Bug is. like get LARP's name out of your fucking mouth
When a student copies an essay online instead of writing it and then painstakingly changes every word to a synonym until the text no longer makes any sense...
I've been meaning to make a post talking about my stroke because y'all got bits and pieces of the recovery but I never actually told the story of HOW it went down and the thing is the type of stroke I had is usually the type young people have and since having mine i've now heard multiple stories of people under 40 having very similar strokes and the scary thing is, is that they didn't get help right away. Because you're young and healthy and sure you feel weird but it'll pass right? but it doesn't, and it gets worse, and by the time you get to the hospital (some people literally take days to go) the deficits are worse and recovery is harder.
so here's a super long post about strokes in general, and mine in particular/what I went through.
So for strokes the signs are abbreviated BE FAST. Balance loss, Eyesight changes, Face drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, -> Time to call 911.
Had I known those MAYBE I would have figured it out but my symptoms were a little mixed. I was reading (fanfic!) in bed because it was a sunday morning and i had nothing pressing to do and suddenly got dizzy. I put my laptop aside because my eyes were blurring (Eyesight changes - symptom #1), and laid down, thinking it would pass, it didn't, it's a little vague how it progressed because I'd been having headaches and neckpain for about 3 weeks leading up to it so I was like 'idk is this a migraine?' (headaches can be a stroke symptom so symptom #2) but i got nauseous and eventually got up and to my utmost surprise I immediately fell over as if I was the drunkest of frat bros. The room literally spun before my eyes as I fell to the floor (Balance loss - symptom #3). I have had some Nights and I had never been that unsteady before. I crawled my way to the bathroom, threw up (nausea - not a common stroke symptom) , took 800mg of ibuprofen, and crawled back to bed.
if you know anything about ibuprofen you might know it's a mild blood thinner and that's a high dose. I may have inadvertently helped myself with that one. I was just feeling like shit and thinking 'idk this might help'
At this point I still thought we were still in Normal Land. Sure, it was a weird morning, but Surely There Was A Reason. (Yes There Was) Anyway, as I'm lying there willing my body to stop suffering I realize my arm is going numb (stroke symptom #4) and I switch positions, because weird, but it doesn't go away, and I gave it a good little while. I'm on a medication that can make my limbs tingle but it usually just does it to my fingers and it dissipates quickly but this wasn't dissipating, and then I realized one of my legs was also going numb. Then one side of my face is going numb.
(at the time I did not look in the mirror but I had a drooping eyelid - symptom #5)
Those all seem bad. I grab my computer and google 'when to go to the hospital for dizzyness' as that felt like the worst of my problems. and indeed the list I found highlighted that if you are also experiencing loss of balance, blurred vision, nausea, and limb numbness, you should see a doctor. That seems like far too many symptoms to be having all to be listed. I grab my phone (thankfully plugged in and by my bed), and start layering on more clothing because it's about 10 degrees out and i'm in a pajama dress. The very nice man at 911 talks with me and sends an ambulance, I tell him I don't think I can get out the front door of my building on my own and he asks if I can get to MY apartment door to which I say yes and he assures me that's fine they will have keys to my building.
(I have been since informed they love to chop down doors but no, I could get that far)
I wait by my door laying down on the ground and they arrive pretty quickly. They see to me in the hallway, which is more of a lobby in my building and the only place with room for me to lie down (I cannot stand unassisted at this point) they ask me a bunch of questions, take vitals, and ask me where I would like to be taken. Me, having never had to go to the fucking hospital in an emergency before, simply go 'wherever is close' because I again, I am having a stroke and do not have the wherewithal to think through these things.
A big firefighter helps me down the stairs (it's only a half flight and I still almost did not make it) and we get underway.
At the hospital they wheel me into triage and I mostly lie there gratefully and answer some questions and respond to some tests (grip strength, following a pen with my eyes, that sort of thing) and then I hear what is great when you've been at urgent care for two hours but what is Very Bad when you just arrived in an ambulance and that's 'She's next'. I jumped the line for a CT scan and an MRI. I was there less than ten minutes before I was actively being scanned. honestly closer to five.
my active symptoms seem to have been worse than some of the stories I've heard, not being able to walk AT ALL in particular, although some other are pretty equal (Footless Jo on youtube had a stroke around the same time I did of the same type and has discussed hers, she delayed going in despite the severity for a variety of reasons and it sounds like her recovery has been difficult) My recovery was pretty easy because i was actively being cared for and on blood thinners right away. I was pretty out of it in the beginning, but I was only in the hospital for 6 days and then in a rehab for another 4 to relearn how to walk and balance, then i was released unto the world and just spent time going to physical therapy and recovering for awhile. I was out of work for about 8 weeks total. I basically had the best outcome for a stroke. I recovered almost fully back to 100% (I'm about 2% less sure footed than I used to be, but it's rarely noticeable), my face still feels a little weird but has markedly improved so I live in hope it will eventually get back to normal. It massively sucked. But strokes can fuck you up for life and I came out a weird medical story to tell and have to take some extra medication now/precautions to take (i cannot do certain types of yoga, no weightlifting, no push ups, no going on rollercoasters.... things that could strain my neck essentially) but overall I escaped very lucky.
