a defiant potato

"Fear is a strange soil. Mostly it grows obedience like corn, which comes up in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it sprouts the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground." - Terry Pratchett She/her, autistic, plays a lot of video games and reads a lot of books. My art: here My RP blogs: here My writing: here

[notapaladin]

anyway, regularly scheduled reminder you can hire me to write and/or edit things for you

Jessica Guarneri

Jessica Guarneri's proofreading & writing services

[anglaised]

Netanyahu being a war criminal isnt even like a hidden thing or whatever like it’s a bare minimum fact to state that but im fr like worried bout mamdani now that he made that vid like. very bare minimum for ana median politician its just worrying bc of how much trump keeps targeting him 4 being like a bare minimum decent politician here + the democratic party getting rlly mad at him as well it’s like ok mr mandani imma need u to step up the security fr, its nice that he turned down a pay raise bill publicly like very cool of u but u might need the money to beef up ur home security actually

[jupiterjames]

Did I just employ the "Treat Them Like You are A Kindergarten Teacher Again" method with my insurance company today? I surely did. Did it work? Probably better than intended because I made an actual doctor feel contrite.

So, my insurance has been trying to not cover my SNRI because it is new on the market and no generic available yet, so pricey.

I apply for a refill and the request gets locked for review. Again. For the 3rd time.

This time I call and immediately ask to speak to the actual doctor making these clinical decisions. Very politely. Must be a slow day because they allow it.

ME: [Teacher voice] I'm calling in regards to the SNRI you have placed a lock on. Why was this decision made?

DOC: Well, there are dozens of other medications on the market in that tier, and far cheaper for you and [insurer]. We have sent a request to your doctor to consider alternatives.

ME: I am aware of that. So, can you do me a HUGE favor and look up my prescription history really quickly and tell me how many SSRIs and SNRIs were only filled once in 2022 for me, showing they were poorly tolerated?

DOC: It looks like eight.

ME: Great job! Now, can you please look at my genetic test for psychiatric drug tolerance and tell me how many medications are listed in the safe category?

DOC: Two.

ME: Awesome! Now, can you tell me what type that other drug is that I'm not taking?

DOC: Yeah, totally, it's an MAOI.

ME: That's correct, you're really knowledgeable! Should I be taking something as dangerous as an MAOI with my other medications, or even just in general?

DOC: It's contraindicated for sure.

ME: It is! So true! So, last question since you've been incredibly smart and helpful. Is it less expensive for [insurer] to pay out for the medication knowing they already get a huge manufacturer discount anyway, or is it more expensive for them to pay for me to need potentially long-term inpatient psychiatric care?

DOC: I'll clear the code, ma'am and flag it as medically necessary. I'm sorry about this.

ME: I appreciate you SO MUCH. You have a great day now.

WALGREENS PHARMACY TECH WITH 5 NOSE RINGS AND PURPLE HAIR STARING AT ME: ........... OKAY! It'll be ready in five minutes. You wanna come work here?

[headspace-hotel]

Kill them with kindness

BUT KILL THEM

[hellenhighwater]

At last, I have invented a bag to let cats out of.

It's got catnip in the kitty faces and it's lined in crinkle plastic. They want to kill it so so bad

[wetdirtguy]

Me spending time with people: joy abounds, we are all connected and there is hope!

Me 1 day later: I need to be left alone to gather the pieces of Me together

Me 2 days later: there is something very rotten at my core and I will almost certainly die unloved

[anxeious]

[transandrogyny--turtlebug]

I still think pregnancy and childbirth should be degendered. we stopped talking about that and I need us to pick it back up pls

[fagdyke-fckry]

People in the notes arguing that this is about individual comfort and misgendering are missing a major piece of the puzzle, which is that programs made for mothers and pregnant women often by definition exclude anyone whose gender marker is not F on every form they’ve ever filled out.

Insurance agencies use M markers to deny coverage for pregnancy related healthcare. Doctors offices hang up on pregnant people trying to schedule pre- and post-natal appointments for themselves because their voices or their names aren’t feminine enough. And if they manage to make the appointment, they can get harassed out of the waiting rooms or face medical malpractice behind closed doors.

Charities and benefits made for pregnant or new mothers don’t accept pregnant/new fathers or non-gendered parents. The WIC fund is called women, infants, and children.

If we degender pregnancy and childbirth (and periods while we’re at it) we open up support for every trans and intersex person who needs it. We normalize pregnant people of other genders and sexes, leaving less room for harassment and malpractice and more accountability for those who decide to be assholes anyway.

It’s not a-fucking-bout comfort. It’s about safety and survival. This can literally be the difference between life and death for some people.

[thehaydinpanda]

Did you know that in some states children get taken away from parents who didn't do prenatal visits? Yes, this about poor people and people of color but it's also about the gnc and transmasc pregnant people avoiding prenatal care because of the hostility they encounter. It's about them trying to make appointments and being turned away because only women can get pregnant. It's about them not affording prenatal care that's not covered. These people are being punished by having their kids taken away. If we manage to survive pregnancy and childbirth we may have our kids taken away from the same system that had us fighting for our lives.

[magickastiel]

V E S U V I A  |  the arcana

[mousegirlheart]

um actually there's nothing wrong with letting cats be outdoor pets. your cat is depressed locked inside forever. it's animal abuse. let it outside. more cats should be let outside more often. especially overnight.

[amiguruineapig]

[lycanycteris]

[hippy-craic]

[girlcodedhamlet]

also shoutout to the time someone told me the satanic panic had nothing to do with media literacy, because it was religious. like. okay. right. i forgot media literacy was only about tv shows, and not, like, propaganda, and the news,

[girlcodedhamlet]

like i had classes on media literacy in 7th grade where we read articles and were asked to explain what those articles were telling us, why they were written, what they were about, how they may be biased, and how we could figure out if that information was true or false. understanding when you are being fearmongered to absolutely involves your media literacy skills. Especially when you are being asked to believe outrageous things about outgroups you know very little about.

[holographic-duality]

i wish my parents had those skills

[becherdireinen]

why is sleeping at night so hard but sleeping in the morning is like drifting away on a soft fluffy cloud while adele sings you a lullaby?

[bizarro-report-deactivated20171]

[catwithaknife]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzqpd9/heres-an-insane-story-about-a-rogue-music-teacher-cutting-a-kids-hair

[snailbutch]

what the fuck

[guu]

i’m just gonna take this post for a moment so i can rant but like

i Hate how entitled adults can feel over a child’s hair!

it started when i was young myself, i wanted a mohawk, but my dad didn’t approve of that look on a “girl”, and insisted i’d regret such a bold cut. at 16 i was finally given full autonomy over my own head.

but then i have a son and everyone around us is trying to keep his hair short. when we finally moved out just me my partner and him, i told him he doesn’t need to get any haircuts he doesn’t want.

so he starts growing it out, it’s still short but coming on mid-length. his teacher makes a point to tell me it’s getting long as if i don’t have eyes. i hear her walking out with him one day talking to him about haircuts, as if to coax him into one. eventually i get child services called on me for ‘forcing a transgender lifestyle’ over what i can only assume is from a combination of me drawing cute ponies on his valentine box and letting him go to school in a ponytail.

he kept it short for awhile after but told me he wanted to grow it out again, so i let him of course. he comes home one day after getting a haircut at his grandpa’s and tells me he didn’t Want the haircut.

i ask why he got it then and learned he was bribed with a promise of a surprise IF he cut his hair.

tl;dr people need to back the hell up off of children and let them have owership of what’s on THEIR body! /rant

[e-v-roslyn]

Same thing about getting a child to curl or straighten their hair. Or do anything with it. Just let kids have control over their bodies.

[captainroxythefoxy]

This happened to me when I was little too!! Growing up I had naturally tight Shirley Temple curls. The only problem was that you can’t get a hair brush through it if your life depended on it until it grew out over a few years.

but This One Lady from church decided that leaving my hair messy and curly was child abuse and threatened to call social services on my family every damn time she saw me until one day she was the designated kid watcher and ho boy my momma tells me i came out with tears in my eyes and greasy slicked down hair and that’s where she ends the story because i think my mother beat her ass but yeah.

Leave kids hair alone.

[disease-danger-darkness-silence]

I’m going to be honest, parents who are super-controlling of their children’s hair creep me the fuck out and I’m not entirely certain why except that I get a vague feeling they kind of relegate them to, “annoying talking doll” status.

[pretentioussongtitle]

I loved my daughter’s long blond hair. It was thick and wavy and beautiful but when she told me she wanted it cut short ‘like a boy’(she was four)  I took her to the salon and let her whack it off. 

The stylist was skeptical, ‘are you sure?” and the thing is, she said this to me, not my daughter. So I asked my girl ‘are you sure you want it cut short?’ She was. The hair went. The stylist acted nervous most of the way through like she was waiting for one of us to burst into tears, but it looked cute! And my daughter loved it! (And it’s been short ever since.)

[kintatsujo]

Autonomy over your hair is bodily autonomy and we as a culture need to start holding bodily autonomy as sacred

[mdzhb]

there is a reason that so many of us who’ve experienced trauma will reclaim control over our bodies and our selves by cutting and dying our hair. it’s part of us. it’s part of our expression. that’s vitally important to people, especially kids, who are still early in the process of learning how they fit into the world around them.

[theconcealedweapon]

For some reason, “stop enforcing your gender identity and sexual orientation on children” never applies to cis-het people who are the only ones actually enforcing it.

[naamahdarling]

About this:

Some reasons, not exhaustive:

Parents tightly controlling this shit is damaging and super often indicative of sexism or queerphobia they will begin imposing or are already imposing on the child.

Early form of indoctrination into boys vs. girls behavior; it begins super young when the child is very malleable. Sets the stage for strict gender roles.

A parent who does not respect their child’s autonomy over something as trivial as their hair is absolutely not going to defend their child from other assaults on their autonomy, unless those assaults are property crimes that challenge or might lead their child to challenge their ownership of the child’s body.

It’s disgusting.

It also goes for life partners. Controlling someone’s appearance either directly, or indirectly through repeated “hints” and shit-talking people who don’t meet their standards is at the very least toxic, and sometimes it is downright abusive. There’s a reason “woman cuts her hair in a way that she knows you don’t like” is seen as a “warning sign” that your wife might “leave you.” The hold is breaking. I did it, progressively, as things spiraled down. It wasn’t rebellion. It was reclamation. (Also me realizing that I really didn’t like having long hair. This is way better.

By the way, cutting someone’s hair without consent is assault, same as punching them, and in many places it is legally recognized as such. Get their asses.

[dykepuffs]

I have a solid theory that at least in the UK, where it’s common for small children being raised into boyhood to get their hair buzzed at the barbers once every six weeks or so, and to just have it washed in the interim, and for small children being raised into girlhood to likewise have the haircuts and washing but ALSO before they’re old enough to manage their long hair themselves, to be forced to sit still for daily or twice-daily brushing/combing/plaiting/tying/twisting/braiding/sectioning etc, all of which can be painful or at least uncomfortable on a sensitive scalp - That the entire point is that it trains those children into accepting regular, painful, intimate touch on their bodies that they aren’t allowed to say ‘no’ to, and where saying ‘no’ is treated as a sign of laziness, selfishness, childishness etc. Got to get up early and take longer than your brothers, to get appropriately Ready, and if you don’t, you’re dirty.

They’re also disciplined in the interim too - The hair is used as a reason why they can’t do things the children-being-boyed do: Can’t go in the sea, your hair will get tangled and it’ll be cold on your back all day. Can’t play in the bushes, your hair will be a mess. Can’t lie down on the grass or do tumbles, your hair…

And then the child-being-girled who wants to cut the hair off so that they CAN do all those things… God help them.

[luna-azzurra]

Something neuroscience-y that helps with prose: attention is selective. A character will not notice everything in a room. They will notice what matters to their goal, fear, desire, training, wound, or obsession. A jealous character notices hands. a hungry character notices food. A soldier notices exits. A lonely character notices pairs. Description becomes character when attention has a bias.

[malaikoftadraws]

[initiala]

As much as I think it would be fun to have emotive anthropomorphic ears, I also recognize I can barely control my facial expressions. Like hell can I keep from Angry Ears-ing during meetings

[initiala]

This is who you’re having a meeting with, by the way.

[dizzyghoast]

every so often i remember how awesome the modern interconnected multicultural world is. i grew up getting to hear fairy tales from all over the world. africa, asia, europe, america. everywhere in between. i can have bagels for breakfast, curry for lunch, and ramen for dinner without even leaving the city limits. music and art and philosophy and technology that originated thousands of miles and years apart from eachother have come together and interwoven into something greater than the sum of its parts. its hard not fall into despair when thinking about the horrors but god. god the wonders.

[dizzyghoast]

you can have friends on the other side of the planet! neither of you even has to travel!!!!! you can just talk to them whenever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[desinteresse]

Men who talk shit about gold diggers underestimate the grit it takes to put up with an insufferable man, even when money is involved. We should be thanking them for their service like they are veterans.

[little-trash-ghost]

Can't leave this in the tags..