25 Fandom nerd. One Piece fan (if the 50 straw hats didn't clue you in already 😂). Avid fanfic, webtoon and romance reader. Got any recs for either? Feel free to send an ask! Marvel, DC, GoT, Apothecary Diaries and many more.
Had a bad fright collecting my prescription today. The pharmacy told me my benefit - ESA income support - is no more and has been replaced by universal credit.
But I'm not entitled to universal credit, because I have more than £16,000 in savings. Which sounds like a lot of money, but my rent alone is £15,000 a year, and it looks like I'm not gonna be well enough to work for a really long time, if ever.
At the moment, I get about £12,000 a year from PIP and ESA. The ESA is roughly half that. If it goes away I start hemorrhaging money a LOT faster.
After I looked it up. The pharmacy is half right. ESA income support is a 'legacy' benefit. It is being replaced by UC. They will write to me at some point about migrating over, but because I am not eligible for UC I won't be.
I can apply for something called a 'transitional benefit', but I'm not clear that I'll get it.
As far as the pharmacy is concerned, my benefit has been transferred over. But the future...
I get that having savings at all makes me better off than most.
But I'm not going to be able to work when the money runs out. And there's no one else to support me and Garlic. I will have to move to somewhere smaller.
And I have lived in the smaller places you have to live in when you can't afford anything better. I don't know if I can do it again. Especially not sick.
When the government says they are doing this to 'help people back into work', know that that is a lie.
They are doing it to drain every last penny out of disabled people and then let us die.
OK, Visible says I have been in my exertion zone for over an hour now because of this bullshit.
Write to your MPs. Buy something from my Redbubble shop, maybe.
Ro Smith is an independent artist creating amazing designs for great products such as t-shirts, stickers, posters, and phone cases.
Had a bad fright collecting my prescription today. The pharmacy told me my benefit - ESA income support - is no more and has been replaced by universal credit.
But I'm not entitled to universal credit, because I have more than £16,000 in savings. Which sounds like a lot of money, but my rent alone is £15,000 a year, and it looks like I'm not gonna be well enough to work for a really long time, if ever.
At the moment, I get about £12,000 a year from PIP and ESA. The ESA is roughly half that. If it goes away I start hemorrhaging money a LOT faster.
After I looked it up. The pharmacy is half right. ESA income support is a 'legacy' benefit. It is being replaced by UC. They will write to me at some point about migrating over, but because I am not eligible for UC I won't be.
I can apply for something called a 'transitional benefit', but I'm not clear that I'll get it.
As far as the pharmacy is concerned, my benefit has been transferred over. But the future...
I get that having savings at all makes me better off than most.
But I'm not going to be able to work when the money runs out. And there's no one else to support me and Garlic. I will have to move to somewhere smaller.
And I have lived in the smaller places you have to live in when you can't afford anything better. I don't know if I can do it again. Especially not sick.
When the government says they are doing this to 'help people back into work', know that that is a lie.
They are doing it to drain every last penny out of disabled people and then let us die.
OK, Visible says I have been in my exertion zone for over an hour now because of this bullshit.
Write to your MPs. Buy something from my Redbubble shop, maybe.
Ro Smith is an independent artist creating amazing designs for great products such as t-shirts, stickers, posters, and phone cases.
So I came home from work today and there was a kindle addressed to me that I did not remember ordering. I spent the afternoon trying to figure out how I accidentally purchased a kindle from Amazon, and when I came back from hanging out with Catherine, I told my parents, guys, you will not believe what I accidentally ordered for myself.
“Huh,” said Dad very casually. “Did you get charged for it?”
I spent the next five minutes checking my bank account and came back into the living room to announce, “No, I didn’t. Do you think it’s a mistake? But it has my name on it! what does this mean”
It was around the time that I started to sound panicked that Dad confessed to buying it for me (“I didn’t realize the mystery of it would be so terrifying”). Which was very, very sweet and slightly unfortunate because yesterday I purchased a replacement kindle for myself.
Me and Mom were talking about the kindle this morning, and she told me about how a few weeks ago, she got into her car only to discover that it had been mysteriously cleaned.
“But who would do this?” she said to my father who said he was sure he had no idea. “A student? A stranger? Someone who broke into my car to steal it but felt bad about how dirty it was? WHO??”
Eventually Dad was like, “Honey. It was clearly me.”
Poor Dad just wants to be a man who expresses his love through silent actions, but his family consists of panicked, suspicious women who apparently are very sure that strangers will ominously do nice things for us
hello fellow artists. google has fallen. pinterest/duckduckgo AI filters don't work. do not despair; here is a list i made of places to find reference images without having to sift through piles of worthless garbage. (for future editing convenience i am just linking my blog post on dreamwidth.)
✨ good places to find art reference that are not full of AI trash 🌈
Credit card companies will TRY to saddle you with this kind of debt by the way - if ever a loved one dies and you are not co-signed on their credit card, do NOT agree to pay their debt unless you ask a lawyer first if you truly have to.
They will say “don’t you want them to go to the grave without debt”, they will try to guilt you, they will take advantage of your vulnerability.
Source: when my father died, he had some credit cards that my mom wasn’t on that she had no access to. The companies contacted her while she was sorting through the bills and getting a handle on how to run the house alone, badgering her with his credit card debt.
She wasn’t liable for any of it, but if she had ever agreed to pay before finding out that she didn’t need to, she would have been considered to have taken on his debt and would have HAD to pay it. It’s slimy, it’s predatory, and it’s entirely legal for them to do this.
Never accept the credit card company’s word about your obligation to pay anyone else’s debt, if you don’t have access to the card, ask a lawyer before agreeing to anything.
Get enough sleep get enough fiber get enough iron wear sunscreen every moment of every day dont get dehydrated don’t slouch brush perfectly floss too keep your tires full of air get your oil changed check your brakes and alignment get new tires get your yearly inspection get your yearly pelvic exam remember your flu and covid shot research the candidates for district attorney take your recycling to the curb on the right day try to limit red meat, alcohol, ultra processed food, sugar and sitting down don’t use screens before bed exercise constantly you’re not socializing or being touched enough meditate daily make sure your clothes are constantly acceptable wash your hair before there’s even a hint of grease don’t have any unsightly hair anywhere don’t drink foo much coffee or sugary drinks or carbonated drinks or anything with citric acid or your teeth will rot change your sheets every few days and your pillowcases daily and you should be also throwing out your pillows every year or two apparently don’t use any kind of cutting board due to the unique drawbacks of each available kind walk 15 min after every meal don’t eat right after brushing but also don’t brush thirty minutes after eating yet somehow brush your teeth every morning and be on time for work also and make sure you’re weight training and make sure you’re doing everything you can to prevent eventual osteoporosis and arthritis moisturize your skin every day keep your prescriptions filled try to avoid being stressed at all costs because it’s the silent killer prioritize your mental health but don’t let any of these habits slip and don’t lose your important documents and keep the batteries in your carbon monoxide detector fresh and deep clean your fridge often and clean your entire house often and exchange pleasantries with every acquaintance and keep yourself polished and presentable at work and stretch before bed every night and buy new kitchen sponges when they wear out and make sure you have laundry detergent and dish soap and olive oil and only eat healthy fats and make sure you’re doing everything to prevent the skyrocketing rates of colon cancer in young people and soak all your berries so that they actually get clean and wash all your produce and buy organic so you aren’t ingesting four million pesticides and avoid animal products but also eat a lot of lean meat and dairy for the protein and eat 30g of protein at every meal and prioritize whole grains and complex carbohydrates and moderate your sugar intake and replace your toothbrush every six months and your running shows every 90 miles clean your car out often and make sure no one smashes your tail light in the parking lot and keep a printout of your up to date proof of insurance in your glovebox even if you don’t own a printer and put a sizeable portion of each paycheck into retirement portfolio replace your windshield wipers and close your kitchen down every night and eat two servings of dark leafy greens per day and do all of this and still get enough rest so that you’re able to give the 40 hour workweek your all. And if you fail to do any of these things you’re a disgusting failure slob
okay. obviously people can only do what they can do. we have limited time and limited energy, and we have to prioritize what we can.
but almost everything on this list will materially improve your life. sleeping, eating fiber and iron, wearing sunscreen, drinking water, brushing and flossing, taking care of your car, doing maintenance care for your health, researching the people who will represent you in office, reducing your waste, EXERCISING, and trying to reduce foods and habits that are bad for you… all of those are good things! even some of the more mundane things on this list will just make you feel better (ex: you don’t know how much harder it is to sleep on pillowcases with weeks of dust, dry scalp, and oil until you’re sleeping on clean pillowcases)
it’s overwhelming to list it all out, but most of this can pretty easily become part of your routine. and even if you are dealing with severe depression or a physical illness that makes it difficult, doing even a few of these things will make you feel better. it is more pleasant to rot in a bed with clean hair. you will feel less miserable if your teeth are clean and your mouth doesn’t taste like morning breath.
i think the shame that’s recently been attached to not being “clean” or not being “healthy” is so unfortunate, because shame is a terrible motivator and makes people avoid the things that Are Good For Them! and i also feel like people feel like if they can’t do an aesthetic version of something it’s the same as failing. if you have trouble with your joints, do a sit down stretch at home! if you genuinely hate vegetables, get your nutrients by eating fruit, or even fries! you don’t have to be a “clean girl” but not taking care of yourself bc you can’t do it in the way the internet approved of hurts nobody but you
i’m sure this post is just a rant about feeling overwhelmed, and i don’t want to come at op at all. it’s just as somebody who put up so many barriers for why i couldn’t take care of myself, and then saw immediate improvements in my life when i took those barriers down, this kind of sentiment always stresses me out. you don’t have to take of yourself perfectly! but your life will get better if you try
I just want to like, reiterate why ADHD is a disability.
Because 'it can become part of your routine' is not a thing that is easy or even *possible* for some people. There are no 'habits'.
Yes, each one of these things individually can help you feel better or do better, but with every. single. one. there comes an executive function tax that makes every. single. one. materially harder and less functionally rewarding.
The shame doesn't help but for a lot of folks, the shame is ancillary to the uphill both ways walking through drying cement exhaustion of just trying to remember what half of these even are.
Make this list 3-4 times bigger by adding 'remember how to', and 'motivate self to start doing' each and every one of these, and remembering that these exhausting steps never get easier for folks that don't have a real executive function.
Which doesn't mean don't do'em when you can! But it does mean patience with yourself, patience with folks who've got the issues.
Hi no I'm pissed off about the age verification laws and bills again. So many grown adults out there going, "The internet should be safe for my children," with all the brazenness of someone walking into a bar and saying, "You need to stop serving alcoholic drinks because I want to drop my children off here all day while I'm at work." Except at the same time they're also demanding that arsenic be added to all the drinks, including the ones being served to children
I know the world is burning, but sadly I still have to pay bills and feed my cats.🥲 Soo here is a mini advertisement, sorry!
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is creating Comics and Art
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I am so utterly fascinated by “Saki”, the 18-year-running mahjong manga in which you, the reader, become gradually, frog-boilingly aware (over the course of nearly two decades’ worth of mahjong tournaments) that none of these girls are wearing underwear and most of their boobs are slowly expanding.
I need you to understand that I have, like, an anthropological level fascination with this comic. From the perspective of someone who is also a comic artist and writer, two things delight me about it:
the fact that I understand completely how an artist gets from “the fans can have a little hint of skirted asscheek” to “the pussy is completely out on center page” over the course of 18 years; and
the way in which the pussy being out is treated by the characters and diegesis as being utterly unremarkable.
Okay. Point 1. The frog-boiling.
Let me put this in perspective for you. There was already a meme about how the characters in “Saki” don’t wear underwear when I was in middle school. I am thirty now. Okay? And it’s still going.
In the time since, this has stopped being a joke. It is now indisputable canon. This is not because anyone outright says it at any point. It’s because the underwear ran out of places to hide. I’m obsessed with this thought: somewhere in the over 20 volumes of “Saki”, there is a panel in which underwear was objectively deconfirmed. And it would be so hard to figure out where that panel actually is. Maybe the artist didn’t even realize it when she drew it! The frog? Boiling!!
And of course there is also the breast expansion. I don’t know how to put a spin on this. They are just expanding. Like, this happens a lot with artists: you define a character as being, in your mind, “the one with the big boobs”, and over the years you emphasize that trait further and further so that the signal doesn’t get lost in the noise. It’s just that normally—in like a wildly popular manga series about mahjong published by literally Square Enix, for example—normally there would be a point at which the boobs stopped getting bigger. Like, an editor would step in or something. Or you would get to the point where you cannot draw the character in the same panel as her mahjong tiles without her breasts spilling over the tiles, and you’d go, “Well, this is now untenable.”
That did not happen. There is no ceiling. The frog is soup.
Point 2. The complete and utter mundanity of all of this.
It’s like this, okay: there’s no shortage of trashy ecchi manga out there. There’s a million other comics doing wildly bawdier things with wildly more improbable bishoujos.
The vibe with “Saki” is different.
It’s hard to explain this, but it feels like the world of the comic is fundamentally uninterested in the fanservice happening on the page. I cannot describe it as “leering”, because I cannot conceive of a person in the story from whose point of view one would leer. I think the artist is probably into it—I can’t imagine anyone is making her do this—but “Saki” the comic has no opinion on the matter.
There are essentially no male characters in “Saki”. Like, there was one guy? Kind of? At the very beginning? But he is gone now. They put him back in the toybox. He does not exist. It appears to be some level of canonical that in the world of “Saki”, almost all humans are women. Those women are sometimes romantically into each other. According to comments the artist has made on Twitter (which I cannot source), they have lesbian baby technology, so it’s no problem. It’s so much not a problem that the story is about mahjong, instead of any of that.
So, like, the fiction here appears to be this: this is the, like, meta-narrative of the fanservice of “Saki”, right: it’s just normal that they don’t wear underwear and their boobs are arbitrarily big. It’s been normal. It was normal before the story of the manga began. It’s just how things are. Nobody bats an eye about it, and if they do, it’s in sort of a lesbian kind of way so like what’s the problem, we love lesbians here. This is literally normal for girls.
The fanservice simply diffuses into this all-encompassing aura of disembodied, ambient sluttiness. The framing of the panels demands you acknowledge it, and the story demands you already be over it, because it’s mahjong time now, and we’re playing mahjong.
Do you get??? why I’m so fascinated??? Are you not a little enraptured???
Anyway, I have no idea how to end this weird post. I guess the conclusion is that women stay winning????
I have so many questions... How does one SUSPECT a manga character isn't wearing underwear? Like, sure, boobs are front and center amd you can see them get bigger panel by panel but how does this work for panties? Are there just that many upskirt shots?
Also how do you keep a manga about Mahjong going for 18 years, what??
California is phasing in a program to give free diapers to new parents over the first few weeks of their baby’s life so on the off chance anyone has a new family member coming in soon and lives in California you might wanna see if your hospital is one of the first ones on the program. I think there’s 25 participating right now and they’re looking to expand it to almost every birthing center in the state in the next few years.
"Just look at him. Maomao is over there writing prose of his appearance in her POV for a reason. 👀"
"I need to see Jinshi pregnant because this man is the perfect androgynous twink, even his female love interest imagines him with men as often as she does women. The best part is that Maomao would be endlessly fascinated by the situation and study the phenomenon extensively. What's more is that she's completely capable of providing care throughout the whole experience. Jinshi would be the most likely to fall pregnant as he is not only the most beautiful person in the land, but also exudes sex appeal at every turn. I'm also very interested in seeing a f/m mpreg relationship as most of the ones I've seen are always m/m."
Jinshi propaganda from last season
[Lestat]
"he had a go at having a kid and fucked up BAD but i need him to be pregnant for real this time. he already behaves like a hormonal diva all the time he'd be sooooo annoying about it. don't get me wrong he'd still be an awful parent and probably give the kid whatever the vampire equivalent of FAS is but he wants an offspring sooo bad let him be a prissy controlling cigarette mom. again."
"Baby trapping Louis is the entire plot of the first book, I think it would be funny if that just became his MO."
"Just look at him. Maomao is over there writing prose of his appearance in her POV for a reason. 👀"
"I need to see Jinshi pregnant because this man is the perfect androgynous twink, even his female love interest imagines him with men as often as she does women. The best part is that Maomao would be endlessly fascinated by the situation and study the phenomenon extensively. What's more is that she's completely capable of providing care throughout the whole experience. Jinshi would be the most likely to fall pregnant as he is not only the most beautiful person in the land, but also exudes sex appeal at every turn. I'm also very interested in seeing a f/m mpreg relationship as most of the ones I've seen are always m/m."
Jinshi propaganda from last season
[Lestat]
"he had a go at having a kid and fucked up BAD but i need him to be pregnant for real this time. he already behaves like a hormonal diva all the time he'd be sooooo annoying about it. don't get me wrong he'd still be an awful parent and probably give the kid whatever the vampire equivalent of FAS is but he wants an offspring sooo bad let him be a prissy controlling cigarette mom. again."
"Baby trapping Louis is the entire plot of the first book, I think it would be funny if that just became his MO."
