Feb 15, 2025
When the desire to transition outweighs the severe risks of self-medicating
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When the desire to transition outweighs the severe risks of self-medicating
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Alistair has spent his whole life hating himself for the things he wants. Zevran is just looking for a fun way to pass the time. What could possibly go wrong when someone who has no experience with sex gets into a D/s relationship with someone who has no experience with healthy relationships?
Or: Alistair and Zevran serve as a case study on how to do (almost) everything wrong but still end up in the right place (eventually).
It’s done. And I feel really strange now. Kind of sad. Kind of happy. Kind of not sure at all what the hell my brain is doing.
But it’s done, and re-ordered, and the most glaring continuity errors smoothed over. Thank you to everyone who’s kept me company, and given me prompts that took me in unexpected directions, and sent me messages telling me what this series meant to them. <3
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Alistair/Zevran Arainai Characters: Alistair (Dragon Age), Zevran Arainai Additional Tags: Communication, Trust, Past Rape/Non-con, Dom/sub, Masochism, ok that's kind of a weird collection of tags, but they all apply?, I'm Bad At Tagging, Rope Bondage, Subspace, Forced Orgasm, Emotional Baggage, i could save time and just tag every story in this series with that one, Navel-Gazing, maybe too much, oh well Series: Part 9 of Off Label Summary:
The night before the fight with the archdemon. Nothing like the threat of imminent death to make people sort through their emotional baggage.
(Probably not the place to start for this series. You could make a drinking game out of all the callbacks in this story to the rest.)
I re-ordered the series (at last!) so nobody get excited when they see the link for the next story in the series. :P I did make some edits to “Now” but nothing major.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Alistair/Zevran Arainai Characters: Alistair (Dragon Age), Zevran Arainai Additional Tags: Fluff, Declarations Of Love, declarations of love as only zevran would do it Series: Part 10 of Off Label Summary:
For an anon on tumblr who wanted post-coronation fluff for these two. I hope this fills the need!
Another one for the fic auction. God I love writing these two.
A Review of the Year - Writing Meme 2016
I was tagged by @earlgreyer1. Here we go!
Total number of completed stories: This is surprisingly hard to pin down. Do I count stories started in 2015 but finished in 2016? What about tumblr ficlets? And when I do prompt fills, I actually don't track them separately, I just lump them all together in my spreadsheet, like "Tumblr bits: fluffy 2017." That's eight stories but one entry on my spreadsheet. Urk.
Let's go with 35, because it's somewhere in the middle of all the various numbers.
Total word count: 320,196 (wow, that seems way too high, but I'm pretty careful about tracking words written...and it was 453,064 in 2015...so I guess it's right...)
Fandoms written in: almost exclusively Dragon Age, with a tiny bit of original fiction and an equally tiny bit of MCU
Looking back, did you expect to write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected?
Given that I'm completely floored by my own word count, I'd say I wrote way more than I expected. For a shitty year, and given that I barely wrote anything for almost two months, I actually did better than I thought.
What’s your own favorite story of the year?
It doesn't have a title, because it was a prompt fill on tumblr that never made it to AO3, but it's here. The prompt was for Bull x Cullen, "things you said while we were driving."
Did you take any writing risks this year?
I participated in the Black Emporium Rare Pair Exchange (you should totally go check it out if you haven’t already), and there were times when that made me stretch. Writing pairings I'd never considered at all, let alone considered writing, was hard at times, but I'm glad I did it. By default, I tend to write the characters that I feel are most like me, so learning to write from other perspectives was great.
Do you have any fanfic or profit goals for the new year?
Fanfic goals? FINISH POWER OF TWO. Oh god do I need to finish it, for my own sanity if nothing else.
As for profit goals...I guess I do, sort of? I've been thinking about revising some stories to make them less obviously fanfic and then making them available for anyone who wants to download them. Then I would steal an idea I've seen used a couple places, where people can pay whatever they want (or can afford). I keep hesitating, though, because it feels weird to ask for money for something I'm making available for free. I dunno. Still thinking about it.
Best story of the year?
Not sure what defines best, especially since "my favorite" and "most popular" are covered elsewhere. Anybody want to vote?
Most popular story of the year?
Omitting Power of Two, since it isn't finished, because otherwise it would be the top on all of these...
By hits: "Talk is Cheap"
By kudos: same
By comment threads: "Jump In" (aka the tumblr WIP)
By bookmarks: "Jump In," though "Talk is Cheap" and "A Favor for a Friend" are very close behind
Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
Probably "All Hawke's Fault." It's femslash and about obscure characters, so I understand why it doesn't appeal to most people, but it was interesting to explore what Kirkwall would have been like in the first few weeks after Hawke disappears. And of course the Jennies!
Most fun story to write:
That's easy: "Something That's Good For Me." Complete and utter crack-fic (and NSFW). I kept giggling to myself as I wrote it.
Story with the single sexiest moment:
Hmmm.
Hmmmmmm.
This one's so subjective. Sexy is in the eye of the beholder, and I'd probably answer this differently if you asked me again in a week, but for today, I'm going with "Names", which is part of the Off Label series (NSFW link, in case that needs to be said).
Most sweet story:
Really anything I wrote for the Fluffy New Year thing. That was kind of the point. :)
“Holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you!” story:
I feel like this question treads the line on kink-shaming, but I guess "Knight-Commander" (NSFW)? It's not the kind of story I normally write, but it was fun to explore the idea. And it prompted an idea for a longer story that I'm now toying with. We'll see if anything happens there.
Most unintentionally telling story:
Another one I never posted to AO3, though oddly enough, it actually has a title: "Tomorrow."
Hardest story to write:
Hard in terms of what? Most emotionally demanding? Farthest outside my comfort zone?
Honestly, I think the hardest ones are the ones that aren't done yet, and that will probably always be my answer. Another question where I'd have a different answer if you asked me again in a couple weeks. They're always harder when they're not done.
In terms of stories y'all have seen...Power of Two is probably the hardest, just because I can't wrap it up. I've also been working on a new Off Label story called "Drifting Roads" that just won't cooperate. A piece of it is here, which will give you a clue how cheerful it is.
The Fairy Tales Christmas epilogue is also kicking my ass. Been working on that for over a year now, so it's almost as bad as P2.
Oh, and how could I forget "Dance with Me"? The plotless smut that missed the memo on plotless. That's coming up on the one-year mark, god help me.
Biggest disappointment:
Not finishing more stuff, particularly Power of Two. I want to finish it so much, but it just keeps getting longer and longer. Zeno's paradox for writers...
Biggest surprise:
The way the story ideas just keep coming. I mean, I've written more than 750,000 words of Dragon Age fanfic in two years, and I keep waiting to run out of ideas. That's a lot of words, all in one fandom. But the ideas aren't stopping, so I guess I'll keep writing!
As for tagging other people...I’m always terrible at this part. If you want to play, feel free to say I tagged you!
A bill lawmakers assert is about "personal freedoms" strips pharmacists of the ability to deny certain medications for off-label use in a state of emergency
Petition urges the FDA to take action to protect vulnerable children from the use of off-label puberty blocker drugs
By: Bernard Lane
Published: Sep 6, 2023
America’s drug regulator, the FDA, has been asked to take urgent action on the unapproved use of hormone suppression drugs to block the natural but unwanted puberty of transgender-identifying children.
“Although this use has not been approved by the [Food and Drug Administration], the FDA must not turn its back on the potential harm to children,” says a citizen petition filed with the agency.
“Despite the widespread—and rapidly growing—use of these drugs in this population [of children with the distress of gender dysphoria], and despite serious known and potential risks from these drugs, this use has never been evaluated for safety and effectiveness by the FDA.”
The petitioners include child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Miriam Grossman, paediatric endorcinologist Dr Quentin van Meter and the groups Genspect, Detrans Help, FAIR in Medicine and the Gender Dysphoria Alliance.
The webpage hosting the petition is open to public comment. The FDA acknowledged receipt of the petition on September 5.
“Puberty blockers, or gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists, are a class of drugs that are FDA-approved for treating certain cancers, endometriosis, and, in pediatric populations, central precocious puberty. Brand name puberty blockers include Lupron Depot-PED, Supprelin LA, Fensolvi, Synarel, and Triptodur. These drugs suppress the release of sex-specific hormones—testosterone in males and estrogen in females. When given to children in the early stages of puberty, they delay sex-related changes normal to adolescent development, such as deepening voice in males and breast development in females.”—citizen’s petition to the FDA, September 2023
The petitioners urge the FDA to—
• commission the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to undertake a transparent and unbiased systematic review of the evidence for trans puberty blocker drugs • issue requests for long-term registry studies of the children given trans puberty blockers, given that long-term data “is critically important and sorely missing” • create a webpage disclosing the known and potential risks of off-label puberty blockade to “help to counter widespread confusion and misinformation about this use”
“Many in the medical profession and the media continue to represent the off-label use of puberty blockers as ‘well established’ and ‘lifesaving’,” the petition says.
“While the FDA has taken an aggressive stance against medical misinformation in other contexts, it has done nothing to counter these misrepresentations.
“What is most concerning is that, because puberty blockers are not FDA-approved in children with gender dysphoria, there is no demonstrated benefit of the drugs to justify these risks.
“This is why Sweden, Finland, the UK, Norway and other countries have all turned against the use of puberty blockers and other medical interventions as a front-line treatment of gender dysphoria, recognizing this use as experimental.
“The [American] public deserves the truth from its government about the potential harms of these drugs and the lack of established benefit.”
Puberty blockers are used off-label for gender dysphoria internationally, although brand names may vary from country to country.
Misinformation
“The FDA can address the misinformation surrounding the off-label use of puberty blockers in children by commissioning a systematic review of existing peer-reviewed studies by NASEM with the goal of developing an authoritative assessment of the evidence,” the petition says.
The citizen’s petition says the gender-affirmative treatment model used in the United States lacks the safeguards imposed by the Amsterdam gender clinic which in the late 1990s pioneered the use of puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones and surgery.
“Because of the prevalence of the affirmative model in the US, the number of children with gender dysphoria receiving puberty blockers has also risen sharply, more than doubling between 2017 and 2021,” the petition says.
“These drugs are known to interfere with bone development and fertility (when followed by cross-sex hormones) and serious concerns exist about their effect on long-term bone health and neurocognitive development.
“What is most concerning is that this [poorly understood] safety profile is currently tolerated in drugs prescribed to children for which the benefit is highly uncertain.”
The petition notes the vulnerability of dysphoric children, who have “higher rates of other psychological and developmental conditions, including autism, eating disorders and depression.”
“US District Court judges have been asked to compel the FDA to reveal what it knows about the off-label use of puberty blocker drugs by gender clinicians.”—news report, Gender Clinic News, 16 March 2023
This week’s citizen petition also calls upon the FDA to warn drug companies and health providers of the consequences of unlawful promotion of puberty blockers for children with dysphoria.
“Puberty blockers have been marketed directly to teenagers with promotions that characterize the drugs as a safe way to ‘put puberty on hold,’ without disclosing any of the required risk information,” the petition says.
“For example, a Planned Parenthood ad that first aired in 2022 depicts two cartoon teenagers speaking directly to potential users, stating—
‘[p]uberty blockers are safe and can give you more time to figure out what feels right for you, your body, and your gender identity,’ and ‘[y]our gender identity is real. You should be the one to decide what changes you want to make to your body’
The petition says, “Pharmaceutical companies that promote their drugs for off-label uses have paid multi-million-dollar settlements to avoid civil and criminal judgments.
“But the potential for harm to users doesn’t depend on who runs the ad: off-label promotions by practitioners that oversell the benefits of an off-label use and fail to disclose the risks have the same potential to deceive consumers.”
GCN has contacted the FDA for comment
==
Hopefully sanity will prevail.
Hydroxychloroquine Efficacy Against Corona Virus
Hydroxychloroquine Efficacy Against Corona Virus
Challenge, Re-challenge Evidence for Hydroxychloroquine Efficacy Against Corona Virus
by Jeffrey Dach MD
Although the Randomized Double Blind Placebo Controlled Trial is considered the gold standard for FDA drug approval, this type of drug trial is not practical for off label drugs and natural substances which can not be patented. The reason patent protection is required is the cost involved in…
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