Hi, I’m lailah. You can find me at @lailah_tov on AO3 and Dreamwidth. I don't really use social media, so the best way to get in touch is to DM me on Discord at @lailah_tov or to email ashmoretbalailah at the googley mail. Tumblr asks will do in a pinch.
If you like my “Royals Having a Nice Time” series, drop me a note and I’ll invite you to the small, friendly Discord where fans hang out, encourage one another to make fan works, and get sneak peeks of upcoming stories. Join us!
If you left kudos on any of my stories, please know I'm sending you lots of heart emoji; if you left kudos on more than three of them, DM me and let's be friends.
like logically ofc i know my sleep disorder is indeed a disorder but it's still crazy to me that i have been taking my sleep meds every single night without fail for 3 months now, and as a result i have been sleeping by midnight and THROUGH the night every single night without fail for three months. but tonight i forgot to take it on time and now it's almost 3 am and i'm awake. it doesn't matter how long i stick to a rhythm, i will no magically become a healthy sleeper. these meds are genuinely life saving.
absolutely bonkers and actually MADDENING thinking about spending nearly three DECCAAAAADESSSS of my life believing i could just "fix" my schedule and get my sleep "on track." LMAO. i was up at 4 am when i was 6 years old sneaking downstairs to watch TV in misery bc i couldn't sleep and then i was still 32 YEARSSSS old like "no everyone listen THIS week i'm gonna avoid naps and go to bed on time and then i'll sleep normal from now on. for real this time."
AJVBJAS SHUT UP!!!! NO YOU WEREN'T BABY!!!!!!!!! YOU WERE NEVER GONNA BE ABLE TO DO THAT!!!!!!
i went to my doctor in march and i was like "man you gotta help me. i haven't slept in 75 hours. and i know sometimes people say that but they really mean they've only slept 2 or 3 hours a night for several nights, which is awful of course, but i mean quite literally i haven't slept in 75 hours. and i keep waiting to finally 'crash' but i don't."
and he was like, "has this ever happened to you before?"
and i said, "oh yeah loads of times, since i was a toddler."
and he said, "why are you just now getting help?"
and i said, "well recently when i hit the 60 hour mark i've started hallucinating birds. and that's new."
and he said, "what do you mean, birds?"
and i said, "i don't know, i think they're house sparrows"
and he said, "i didn't mean what kind of birds"
(true that's not what he said but it was hard to parse the nuances of the conversation because there were a bunch of house sparrows in the room)
Thanks, this post reminded me to ask my doctor about things that might help me sleep through the night, because menopause disrupted sleep on top of delayed sleep phase syndrome is a fucker, and the phobia of sedation means I can't take most sleep meds. Last night I took supplements that have helped me sleep in the past, and instead I woke up repeatedly in a panic that someone had drugged me. *facepalm* Yes, self, someone did, it was me.
Not sure about anyone else, but I re-read all my favourite AO3 comments when I’ve had a rough day, so if you’ve ever taken the time to write a deep, funny, or just kind comment, thank-you.
"What do you mean you don't have them? You can't just not have them!"
"Well, we have them, we just send them away."
"SEND THEM AWAY? HOW? TO WHERE?"
"Settle down, it's very straightforward. When someone starts getting their period they go to the local witch or wizard or necromancer or whatever's nearby and get a spell placed on them. All the blood gets sent straight to the throne of the Blood King. Which is nice because he loves blood and isn't too picky about where it comes from. This way he's not running around starting wars for his blood. He gets it free and on a regular basis."
"But what about period cramps?"
"Oh, we send those away too. Off to the orcs of the Screaming Mountains."
"That seems like it could cause problems. Aren't you worried they'll retaliate?"
"Well, no. The orcs....kind of like it? They apparently like pain about as much as the Blood King likes blood. So as long as we keep sending the period cramps, they leave us be."
"huh, I wonder why more kingdoms haven't tried this."
"Probably because those other kingdoms have normal neighbors."
there is this really specific thing that very Online women of a certain age (mostly older millennials and younger gen x in my experience) who are married to a man will do where they will refer to their husbands as "Mr. (Part of My Username)"
so like if the username is something like "dancingwithbears" they'll refer to their husband as "Mr. Bears"
It sounds like you're younger than people that age (my age), so you missed the equally charming era when we were teens/young adults and referred to our parents this way. Someone out there still calls dancingwithbears' mother "bearsmom" to this day.
From the Nashville Zoo’s fb page! Here’s the petition, please please please take a moment to add your name (even if you’re not from Nashville!). If you are from Tennessee, contact your representatives and make it clear that the people do not want this data center. This is an AZA accredited zoo which is home to several species of critically endangered animals, we NEED to protect it. Make your voice heard!
Data centers have been recorded creating constant noise at a frequency outside the human range of hearing but which still causes severe issues. This could be even worse with animals that have more sensitive hearing than humans do.
We don't need to wait years to find out these things cause real harm to the communities near them, we have proof already.
i think one of the greatest things i ever internalized for myself as a non-binary person is that i don't have to be androgynous. non-binary doesn't necessarily mean 3rd category of 'in-between man and woman' - it just means "fuck that shit, i'm outside of the boxes entirely". i don't need to look androgynous unless i want to - i can literally just be me.
Oh wow, three weeks ago I made this gimmick blog with the idea of focusing on the joy of being queer. Our community is hurting right now, in so many ways, and it is easy to get lost in the news, and in the doomscrolling. So I wanted to start this blog as a breath of fresh air, a light in the gloom. A place where we can see that there is also joy, always joy!
And now, three weeks later, there is 500 of you who are following this joy! wow! So I guess I wanted to do a short introduction of sorts.
I would love for this to be a community project, so please, if you have some joy you would love to share, send an ask! If you see something in the wild (on the dash), tag us! Help us spread queer joy, and love, and resilience.
There's not really a queue yet, perhaps in the future. For now, I reblog what I find, and on days when I can, go out of my way to search for it.
As for me, you can call me Q. I love you all, and wish you a joyous and very queer day!
With ao3 ship stats (my beloathed) going around once again, the subject of how "no one writes femslash" is once again floating around. I have thoughts. Possibly too many thoughts.
1) Lots of people DO write femslash, but many of the complainers never seek it out or comment on it or participate in any way in femslash fandom. The people I know who read and/or write mostly femslash are nowhere near as likely to say this as the people who mostly read m/m, in my experience. A lot of people who mainly read m/m seem to feel like they need justifications for not reading f/f, and this is a perennial favorite. (Right up there with "no one writes dark femalash" or "no one writes non explicit femslash" or "no one writes smutty femslash", all of which are equally false). It's a knee-jerk response and while I understand m/m fans have their own reasons for defensiveness... it's really shitty to be on the other end of all the time!!! (Inevitably someone is going to say they like both m/m and f/f but a femslash fan or a handful of femslash fans were mean to them once. In which case: I'm sorry that happened to you, but wank and -phobias are not solely the domain of femslash fandom, and you should maybe think about why you are so quick to paint all f/f fans with the same brush while extending grace to primarily m/m fans when plenty of m/m fandom spaces are also shitty.)
2) Some of this is because there are more male characters on the whole... but I've seen many well-written/interesting female characters get sidelined in fandom for male characters with less screentime and less to their characters. In transformative fandom spaces, m/m is treated as default-- or *sometimes* m/f, depending on the space and the fandom. I think most people in fandom would agree that it's problematic when media from a male pov is treated as universal, but media from a female pov is treated as being For Women. Fandom doesn't actually do much to transform this dynamic, except that sometimes the male characters are gay now. Men's stories and struggles are treated as universal, and if you aren't interested in centering male characters, *you're* the weird one. Why would you be here if not for the male characters? This man is just like a woman, if you think about it! It's an m/m ship, so it must be beloved and relatable by anyone who's *really* queer! Oh, there *are* lesbians in this, I swear-- never mind that they're only present to facilitate the m/m ship or to provide emotional support and have no inferiority or plot or... anything.
Which brings us to 3) femslash is often... ghettoized, for lack of a better word. It gets treated as by lesbians and for lesbians. And while I personally resemble that remark, it's pretty fucked up that people seem to act like the only reason to write f/f is that you want to fuck the characters! M/M fandom has somewhat moved past this, but even people who vehemently defend women's right to write m/m get all uncomfortable at the suggestion that a dude might be writing f/f... as if gender or sexuality dictates how well you can write a ship. But the end result is that f/f is treated as something Other. As something that must be written Seriously and Correctly, or not at all. And if you want to see those women bleed or go through terrible things or just have a fucking plot, then there must be something wrong with you (never mind that *I* would argue it's much more misogynistic to put female characters on a pedestal and/or never let them do anything...)
(I haven't touched the subject of race in this, but non-white characters are often subject to similar phenomena.)
I'm not saying that any individual person Must be into f/f or female characters. But I do think a whole fucking lot of people are happy with replicating misogynistic trends of society as a whole, as long as it's gay. And also that maybe if you *are* including f/f and female characters in your works, you should consider whether you are also replicating those trends.
But also, maybe consider reading some femslash fic? It's out there, I promise, and you might enjoy it
So as a follow-up to the mid-July post: (1) The new glasses continue to work in nicely. ...NGL, though: my Eye Lady is adamant that I need to go see a specialist ASAP. (This is something to worry about in a few weeks, as right now there's a convention appearance in the way.) I strongly suspect that my right eye is developing a cataract, and I may also need a vitreous transplant: we'll soon find out. So in brief: on top of the right-ear hearing problem, a significant percentage of my sensorium is something of a dumpster fire right now. (shrug) Entropy, right? It's a fecking nuisance. :/
Anyway: the other unexpected health junk that had been behaving itself during the spring continues to kick up cranky. (eyeroll) I don't want to get into more detail than necessary about this (my mom used to refer to such behavior as "the Organ Recital"), but it's an outgrowth of the internal problems that have forced me to give up long-distance travel. The MRIs and other diagnostics aren't always something the Irish national health service pays for (depending on who referred you or recommended it). So over the last couple of months I've had no choice but to drop a four-figure amount of cash on this, and as a result I've fallen behind on my rent.
My landlord is still being easygoing about the situation, understanding what I'm going through. But I really want to get caught up on this before it gets any worse. (As being behind this way, I'm finding, is increasingly interfering with my work... especially as that's now become so much easier to get to grips with due to the new glasses.)
So it seems like this is a good time to remind folks that we're repeating the Summer Reading Sale over at Ebooks Direct!
...I imagine lots of people here know the drill by now. Everything's cheap, and the ebook bundles are all being held at their lowest price points for the duration (meaning specifically the "All The Wizardry" bundle, the Middle Kingdoms series bundle, the LGBTQ Pride collection, and the Feline Wizardry bundle—Even our "Give Me Everything You've Got" collection, which is the whole ebook store in one package, has had a bit knocked off.
So could I get folks to reblog this post so that those who might not have caught one of these sales before can do so now if they want to? Please & thank you!
And additionally: for those who're already up to their necks in ebooks and don't need any more, but still want to help out with the rent situation—if you'd like instead to drop something into my Ko-Fi, it'd be very welcome. And if you feel like doing this, I thank you very much in advance! 🙂
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In advance of whatever happens: thanks again, everybody. You're all stars. 🙂
