I honestly don't understand the purpose of gendered bathrooms anyways. Like no judgment for people who get euphoria from being in the bathroom that aligns with your gender but like, gendered bathrooms are just kinda weird? I heavily prefer those bathrooms where it's just one person at a time in there, one room all to yourself with a locking door and no room for people to look in there at you. It feels a lot more private. I think the world would really benefit from all places having like 5 or 6 bathrooms like that that are all gender neutral

Here's what I don't understand about Gamer Bro mentality.

So they're transphobic, right? And they're misogynistic, right? So Ghost of Yotei comes out and they're already having a fit about it because it's about a woman this time even though the first game is a male protagonist.

Then Erika Ishii is announced to be the voice actor for the female protagonist. And then they have a tantrum because Ishii is nonbinary and uses all pronouns. And they claim it's too woke.

Ok. But. According to their own logic, Ishii is a woman. And she's playing a woman. Who- presumably- is cis, but I haven't played the game yet to actually verify that. So. Why are they having a fit? By their own logic this is a woman playing a woman. What exactly is too woke about that?

Is it just the fact that the studio hired a nonbinary person *at all*?

Is it the fact that they chose to focus on a woman's perspective this time?

Like she just looks like a Japanese woman to me. Is she not fuckable enough to them? We got plenty of scenes of Jin's naked backside during hot spring side quests, and one of the things these guys would mention is that it's only fair to get a shot of Atsu's as well... and apparently the game followed through and she sure does show back and crack when stepping into the water just like Jin.

It's just strange to me. Like. Why are you mad that the person you're calling a woman is playing a woman. Shouldn't you be happy about that since you refuse to acknowledge the depth of Ishii's nonbinary and genderqueer experience? You still get your fanservice nudity and it's a new game from a studio that really knocked it out of the park the first time around. What's the problem here?

The problem is that the denial of queer identities is only ever a weapon to hurt queer people, not an actual opinion. If transphobes were truly convinced that queer identities aren't real, they would not make as much of a fuss as they do. In reality there is no clear opinion on the nature of queer identities, other than that queer people are framed as whatever is convenient to hurt them.

Ishii is a woman to them in so far that they consider her a lesser person, a valid target for misogyny, but she is also definitely not a woman to them, if only because she isn't a willing target for misogyny (by openly identifying as genderqueer, but also otherwise). And both of these on their own are enough for these kinds of people to scream themselves into a rage.

Also, a cis women playing a cis women in a video is already too woke for these people. Usually the voice actor discussion doesn't actually happen, because the idea that a cis womam character would be voiced by a cis woman voice actor is presumed to be "the natural state of things". But people are very much already mad about female characters not being "female enough" in other ways (see people freaking out about HZD's Aloy having peach fuzz on her cheeks, or about how the female protagonist for GTA6 doesn't fullfill white, western, cishetero beauty stadards).

Women in most games are only tolerated as perfect sex objects to white, straight cis men specifically. Everything that moves a female character further from that ideal (agency, inner lives, body hair, being part of a racialized minority or anything that detracts from their ability to be sexualized under a cishetero male gaze) makes them unacceptable.

There is no voice actor pick that would have made that character more acceptable, only ones that would have given less or different ammunition to the people determined to hate everything that isn't made specifically for them to consume as a sexual object.

Or aging, as is the case with Ciri from the new Witcher game.

According to these Gamer Bros, this is a mannish, ugly, ancient woman. Because Ciri is no longer 19 like she was in Witcher 3, and is now approximately 30ish.

She just looks like a pretty white woman appximately my age to me. But it's not actually about her looks. It's about moving from centering Geralt, a male character, to centering Ciri, a female character. Which has baffled both the studio and also fans who are not Gamer Bros, as the series has always always ALWAYS been about Ciri and centering Ciri from the time of the books. Ciri is the main character by the end of the novels and Geralt is incredibly secondary to the plot. Honestly she's the main character approximately 3.5 books in, with less and less focus on Geralt as the story goes on, until the last book where he's in maybe 3 chapters.

But the games have been about Geralt! And since the games are about Geralt, the Gamer Bros are infuriated that they do not get their emotionally constipated stoic and badass representation of their Man Pain. Even though book Geralt is also... nothing like games Geralt.

Let's not forget that book!Geralt is a disabled man. Something that CDPR already removed because it would have been too much of a headache to mocap him limping, I guess. But let's face it, the Gamerbros would hate the books either way if they had actually read them, given they are very much feminist in their messaging, and queer inclusive, and a couple of other things that the gamer bros hate.

Like, most of the gamer bros in the end are just tourists who run around looking for games to get angry about. I mean, just look at how they went onto it about Dragon Age Veilguard. Dragon Age, the series that was invented by a queer man, that included queerness from the start. A series where the game that released in 2014 already had a prominent trans male character among the cast. But 2014 was before Gamer Gate. It was before the right wingers realized that they could make grifter money from being angry about anything that was not a white cishet male main character.

notably as someone who has played the witcher 3 a very small amount (I've watched my sister play more than I've played myself, though I do enjoy it) it's pretty obvious that Geralt is disabled from a narrative standpoint. Didn't know specifically that he had a limp in the books, but it is made very clear through the story that there are continuous physical consequences to being a witcher akin to chronic illness. also i personally kinda assumed he had reduced vision due to the bigass scar over his eye, that doesn't look like something an eyeball comes out unscathed from

So, in the books it is like this: In one of the short stories that happen fairly early in the timeline, he gets almost killed, and while he gets cured with time and magic, he has chronic pain from this and a slight limb, which gets worse during the winter time usually (something that I can say as someone physically disabled is quite true to reality). He has trouble riding sometimes. Usually he obviously still does and has to, but it is very painful to him.

Obviously, this is additionally to him being infertile, due to being a witcher, and generally being considered marginalized within the world. Ironically the thing that still bugs me the most about the games is the way they depict the sexuality. Like, yeah, sure, Geralt, like most allosexual men, likes sex. But he relates very differently to sexuality in the books, as he gets objectified a lot by women, because he is a witcher. It is a very sexist world, obviously, so women get abused. But witchers, due to being marginalized, generally stand beneath human women in the way society views them. And due to him being infertile, he is a very safe target in that regard.

Like, there are several times in the books where he is kinda put into the same situation that the games put women in. Which is so weird. Because in the games (especially the first one) sex exist to titulate a male player - and... it is literally kinda the opposite of how sex functions in the books.

It's not during a short story but rather one of the main conflicts early on and pretty much the pivotal moment the books stop being about Geralt and start being about Ciri. He's beaten badly with an iron staff, within an inch of his life, and has a broken femur as well as a broken arm and several broken ribs. It then plagues him for the entirety of the rest of the story, various moments where his leg gives out under him as he tries to fight or carry someone or even ride his horse. Multiple doctors and healers pretty much tell him there's nothing they can do to help, and when he's hurting he's usually in a pretty shitty mood and is snapping at everyone over little things. Which, having chronic knee pain myself that doctors have just kind of gone 🤷‍♂️ about, I feel that.

Considering he is [redacted] by the end of the books and the games magically undo all of that, my assumption was always that they magically all-better'd his leg as well. A couple NPCs mention it in the first two games. It's very missable in Wild Hunt, however, but he does complain about his leg if you take fall damage and survive. Maybe that's why you die when falling more than 3 feet in the game. God knows I want to die if I hit the ground too hard with my leg in the shape it's in, and it was never broken.

He doesn't have any vision problems despite the scar, though. While Witchers do as a demographic have tons of scars due to the violent nature of their profession, they heal really rapidly and so his eye is fine. Ironically this rapid healing may have a hand in why his leg hurts so much, as it's implied there's only so much magic could do and that it's healed "wrong" to the point where even re-breaking to correct the set will only make it worse. Regis says something about it being mostly nerve pain and the nerves misfiring to make him feel the pain in his knee even though the bone broke in the center. Narcotics will dull the pain but they're also addictive and Geralt needs to be sharp, so they're not an option either.

Ciri also has a pretty gnarly scar on her face by this time, worse than what they have in the games as the books say she is "disfigured" and "nearly unrecognizable" with it. She took a pretty nasty blow to the face that then wasn't allowed to be stitched or heal properly for weeks, and also nearly died from infection due to it, but they prettied her up for the games. It covers most of that side of her face and multiple people reel back in shock when they see it. It's just a little line on her cheek in the games but it's way more than that in the books.

A lot of book fans have complained about the way the game series treats sex and I won't rehash outside of to say that the very first Witcher game opens with Triss raping Geralt by deception and treats it like it's a good thing, while the rest of the games really fumble how that affects everything else. This is not particularly out of character for Triss (who in the books rapes Geralt by drugging him repeatedly) or for Geralt (whose attraction to Triss existed prior to being drugged and has very uncomfortable and complicated feelings about the whole thing), but is treated by other characters as though it's his fault for trusting her and sleeping with her while he was vulnerable rather than rebuke her for her part (which does happen in the books- Yennefer very clearly is aware and angry towards Triss about it even though she's not much better tbh, whereas in the games Yen is furious with Geralt for... the same situation?).

He's also seen trading sexual favors for information or assistance in his plotline with women who lust after him. He's not particularly unhappy about the arrangement, but it's interesting to see a man put in the position where he offers sexual services to a woman he needs help from, something that most of the fantasy genre put exclusively in a female character's skillset. In Season of Storms, he also needs to beat up a man he's jailed with for trying to rape him, but is then seen as friendly and accepting to other gay and bi men later in the book.

But the books also have a lot of "girls are just as good as boys at doing things" and "a woman's reproductive choices are hers and hers alone to make" and "if you rape someone you're a monster and deserve to be hunted down and killed" and "some people are gay Harold" that these Gamer Bros would consider too woke, despite being written before white people knew the damn word, so I always have a hard time believing any of them have actually read the source material. Considering I got a lot of guff for mentioning that despite being canonically bi according to Sapkowski, within the text Ciri's vocally fairly uninterested in men outside of some childish curiosity when she's like 12. I wonder how the studio will handle this since she is now an adult woman. I do hope they at least have the option for Ciri to romance a woman, instead of only men.

Here's what I don't understand about Gamer Bro mentality.

So they're transphobic, right? And they're misogynistic, right? So Ghost of Yotei comes out and they're already having a fit about it because it's about a woman this time even though the first game is a male protagonist.

Then Erika Ishii is announced to be the voice actor for the female protagonist. And then they have a tantrum because Ishii is nonbinary and uses all pronouns. And they claim it's too woke.

Ok. But. According to their own logic, Ishii is a woman. And she's playing a woman. Who- presumably- is cis, but I haven't played the game yet to actually verify that. So. Why are they having a fit? By their own logic this is a woman playing a woman. What exactly is too woke about that?

Is it just the fact that the studio hired a nonbinary person *at all*?

Is it the fact that they chose to focus on a woman's perspective this time?

Like she just looks like a Japanese woman to me. Is she not fuckable enough to them? We got plenty of scenes of Jin's naked backside during hot spring side quests, and one of the things these guys would mention is that it's only fair to get a shot of Atsu's as well... and apparently the game followed through and she sure does show back and crack when stepping into the water just like Jin.

It's just strange to me. Like. Why are you mad that the person you're calling a woman is playing a woman. Shouldn't you be happy about that since you refuse to acknowledge the depth of Ishii's nonbinary and genderqueer experience? You still get your fanservice nudity and it's a new game from a studio that really knocked it out of the park the first time around. What's the problem here?

The problem is that the denial of queer identities is only ever a weapon to hurt queer people, not an actual opinion. If transphobes were truly convinced that queer identities aren't real, they would not make as much of a fuss as they do. In reality there is no clear opinion on the nature of queer identities, other than that queer people are framed as whatever is convenient to hurt them.

Ishii is a woman to them in so far that they consider her a lesser person, a valid target for misogyny, but she is also definitely not a woman to them, if only because she isn't a willing target for misogyny (by openly identifying as genderqueer, but also otherwise). And both of these on their own are enough for these kinds of people to scream themselves into a rage.

Also, a cis women playing a cis women in a video is already too woke for these people. Usually the voice actor discussion doesn't actually happen, because the idea that a cis womam character would be voiced by a cis woman voice actor is presumed to be "the natural state of things". But people are very much already mad about female characters not being "female enough" in other ways (see people freaking out about HZD's Aloy having peach fuzz on her cheeks, or about how the female protagonist for GTA6 doesn't fullfill white, western, cishetero beauty stadards).

Women in most games are only tolerated as perfect sex objects to white, straight cis men specifically. Everything that moves a female character further from that ideal (agency, inner lives, body hair, being part of a racialized minority or anything that detracts from their ability to be sexualized under a cishetero male gaze) makes them unacceptable.

There is no voice actor pick that would have made that character more acceptable, only ones that would have given less or different ammunition to the people determined to hate everything that isn't made specifically for them to consume as a sexual object.

Or aging, as is the case with Ciri from the new Witcher game.

According to these Gamer Bros, this is a mannish, ugly, ancient woman. Because Ciri is no longer 19 like she was in Witcher 3, and is now approximately 30ish.

She just looks like a pretty white woman appximately my age to me. But it's not actually about her looks. It's about moving from centering Geralt, a male character, to centering Ciri, a female character. Which has baffled both the studio and also fans who are not Gamer Bros, as the series has always always ALWAYS been about Ciri and centering Ciri from the time of the books. Ciri is the main character by the end of the novels and Geralt is incredibly secondary to the plot. Honestly she's the main character approximately 3.5 books in, with less and less focus on Geralt as the story goes on, until the last book where he's in maybe 3 chapters.

But the games have been about Geralt! And since the games are about Geralt, the Gamer Bros are infuriated that they do not get their emotionally constipated stoic and badass representation of their Man Pain. Even though book Geralt is also... nothing like games Geralt.

Let's not forget that book!Geralt is a disabled man. Something that CDPR already removed because it would have been too much of a headache to mocap him limping, I guess. But let's face it, the Gamerbros would hate the books either way if they had actually read them, given they are very much feminist in their messaging, and queer inclusive, and a couple of other things that the gamer bros hate.

Like, most of the gamer bros in the end are just tourists who run around looking for games to get angry about. I mean, just look at how they went onto it about Dragon Age Veilguard. Dragon Age, the series that was invented by a queer man, that included queerness from the start. A series where the game that released in 2014 already had a prominent trans male character among the cast. But 2014 was before Gamer Gate. It was before the right wingers realized that they could make grifter money from being angry about anything that was not a white cishet male main character.

notably as someone who has played the witcher 3 a very small amount (I've watched my sister play more than I've played myself, though I do enjoy it) it's pretty obvious that Geralt is disabled from a narrative standpoint. Didn't know specifically that he had a limp in the books, but it is made very clear through the story that there are continuous physical consequences to being a witcher akin to chronic illness. also i personally kinda assumed he had reduced vision due to the bigass scar over his eye, that doesn't look like something an eyeball comes out unscathed from

So, in the books it is like this: In one of the short stories that happen fairly early in the timeline, he gets almost killed, and while he gets cured with time and magic, he has chronic pain from this and a slight limb, which gets worse during the winter time usually (something that I can say as someone physically disabled is quite true to reality). He has trouble riding sometimes. Usually he obviously still does and has to, but it is very painful to him.

Obviously, this is additionally to him being infertile, due to being a witcher, and generally being considered marginalized within the world. Ironically the thing that still bugs me the most about the games is the way they depict the sexuality. Like, yeah, sure, Geralt, like most allosexual men, likes sex. But he relates very differently to sexuality in the books, as he gets objectified a lot by women, because he is a witcher. It is a very sexist world, obviously, so women get abused. But witchers, due to being marginalized, generally stand beneath human women in the way society views them. And due to him being infertile, he is a very safe target in that regard.

Like, there are several times in the books where he is kinda put into the same situation that the games put women in. Which is so weird. Because in the games (especially the first one) sex exist to titulate a male player - and... it is literally kinda the opposite of how sex functions in the books.

oh that is FASCINATING. i felt like the games kinda hinted at something to the effect of geralt being in like a weirdly vulnerable position in relationships but didn't really commit, and with that context it makes so much more sense.

i need pepple to understand that in the first place leather has always been made from the byproducts of butchering animals for meat, otherwise the skin is just tossed and unused. there were some companies farming for leather for a while, particuarly alligator leather, but those were not the norm. peta did so much harm in their campaigns against leather as a concept (its not unethical. yoi get the skin when an animal dies. thats why most leather clothes in the usa are cow leather, bc thats the biggest meat animal here) that its almost impossible to buy anything "leather" that isnt made of plastic that it so fragile and shitty that the very Thread Holding It Together rips the fibers apart. it will last for maybe a year two if youre lucky, and wont biodegrade and was made out of something that isnt naturally occurring in the first place and is one of the biggest causes of pollution globally

i do not care if you personally think nobody should slaughter or eat animals, it is Going to happen anyway. you cannot be so obtuse thst you think making more plastic that causes pollution endless damage to the animals you claim to care about so much is better than omnivorous human beings eating other animals and using their bodies completely.

Here's what I don't understand about Gamer Bro mentality.

So they're transphobic, right? And they're misogynistic, right? So Ghost of Yotei comes out and they're already having a fit about it because it's about a woman this time even though the first game is a male protagonist.

Then Erika Ishii is announced to be the voice actor for the female protagonist. And then they have a tantrum because Ishii is nonbinary and uses all pronouns. And they claim it's too woke.

Ok. But. According to their own logic, Ishii is a woman. And she's playing a woman. Who- presumably- is cis, but I haven't played the game yet to actually verify that. So. Why are they having a fit? By their own logic this is a woman playing a woman. What exactly is too woke about that?

Is it just the fact that the studio hired a nonbinary person *at all*?

Is it the fact that they chose to focus on a woman's perspective this time?

Like she just looks like a Japanese woman to me. Is she not fuckable enough to them? We got plenty of scenes of Jin's naked backside during hot spring side quests, and one of the things these guys would mention is that it's only fair to get a shot of Atsu's as well... and apparently the game followed through and she sure does show back and crack when stepping into the water just like Jin.

It's just strange to me. Like. Why are you mad that the person you're calling a woman is playing a woman. Shouldn't you be happy about that since you refuse to acknowledge the depth of Ishii's nonbinary and genderqueer experience? You still get your fanservice nudity and it's a new game from a studio that really knocked it out of the park the first time around. What's the problem here?

The problem is that the denial of queer identities is only ever a weapon to hurt queer people, not an actual opinion. If transphobes were truly convinced that queer identities aren't real, they would not make as much of a fuss as they do. In reality there is no clear opinion on the nature of queer identities, other than that queer people are framed as whatever is convenient to hurt them.

Ishii is a woman to them in so far that they consider her a lesser person, a valid target for misogyny, but she is also definitely not a woman to them, if only because she isn't a willing target for misogyny (by openly identifying as genderqueer, but also otherwise). And both of these on their own are enough for these kinds of people to scream themselves into a rage.

Also, a cis women playing a cis women in a video is already too woke for these people. Usually the voice actor discussion doesn't actually happen, because the idea that a cis womam character would be voiced by a cis woman voice actor is presumed to be "the natural state of things". But people are very much already mad about female characters not being "female enough" in other ways (see people freaking out about HZD's Aloy having peach fuzz on her cheeks, or about how the female protagonist for GTA6 doesn't fullfill white, western, cishetero beauty stadards).

Women in most games are only tolerated as perfect sex objects to white, straight cis men specifically. Everything that moves a female character further from that ideal (agency, inner lives, body hair, being part of a racialized minority or anything that detracts from their ability to be sexualized under a cishetero male gaze) makes them unacceptable.

There is no voice actor pick that would have made that character more acceptable, only ones that would have given less or different ammunition to the people determined to hate everything that isn't made specifically for them to consume as a sexual object.

Or aging, as is the case with Ciri from the new Witcher game.

According to these Gamer Bros, this is a mannish, ugly, ancient woman. Because Ciri is no longer 19 like she was in Witcher 3, and is now approximately 30ish.

She just looks like a pretty white woman appximately my age to me. But it's not actually about her looks. It's about moving from centering Geralt, a male character, to centering Ciri, a female character. Which has baffled both the studio and also fans who are not Gamer Bros, as the series has always always ALWAYS been about Ciri and centering Ciri from the time of the books. Ciri is the main character by the end of the novels and Geralt is incredibly secondary to the plot. Honestly she's the main character approximately 3.5 books in, with less and less focus on Geralt as the story goes on, until the last book where he's in maybe 3 chapters.

But the games have been about Geralt! And since the games are about Geralt, the Gamer Bros are infuriated that they do not get their emotionally constipated stoic and badass representation of their Man Pain. Even though book Geralt is also... nothing like games Geralt.

Let's not forget that book!Geralt is a disabled man. Something that CDPR already removed because it would have been too much of a headache to mocap him limping, I guess. But let's face it, the Gamerbros would hate the books either way if they had actually read them, given they are very much feminist in their messaging, and queer inclusive, and a couple of other things that the gamer bros hate.

Like, most of the gamer bros in the end are just tourists who run around looking for games to get angry about. I mean, just look at how they went onto it about Dragon Age Veilguard. Dragon Age, the series that was invented by a queer man, that included queerness from the start. A series where the game that released in 2014 already had a prominent trans male character among the cast. But 2014 was before Gamer Gate. It was before the right wingers realized that they could make grifter money from being angry about anything that was not a white cishet male main character.

notably as someone who has played the witcher 3 a very small amount (I've watched my sister play more than I've played myself, though I do enjoy it) it's pretty obvious that Geralt is disabled from a narrative standpoint. Didn't know specifically that he had a limp in the books, but it is made very clear through the story that there are continuous physical consequences to being a witcher akin to chronic illness. also i personally kinda assumed he had reduced vision due to the bigass scar over his eye, that doesn't look like something an eyeball comes out unscathed from

money is such an underrated accessibility option.

like people want to think any disabled person who is after money is morally suspect some way, because they're not asking for "treatments" or "accommodations" like a lot of our issues can be fixed way more easily with money. can't drive? paying for a taxi is often one of the more accessible alternatives. can't cook? you can pay more to have prepared food delivered to you. food restrictions? that food straight up costs more money. can't clean? you can pay for someone to do that. house inaccessible? having (lots) of money can help with that, you get the gist.

having money won't make us abled. it also won't stop our symptoms from being distressing, painful, or debilitating. but there's a huge gap in experience between the average poor disabled person and someone who's actually wealthy. you can buy your way out of some of the difficult situations most disabled people are left to rot in. wanting money, needing money, asking for money is pretty natural when it's such a useful tool. why get so weird about disabled people wanting money like i'm pretty sure everyone wants money anyway

Also if you already have money and you're disabled, governments will spend twice as much on you via "tax credits" than they would ever give a disabled person who simply needed money up-front.

Because our entire economic system is insanely backwards and nobody understands how "tax credits" are still an expenditure.

money is such an underrated accessibility option.

like people want to think any disabled person who is after money is morally suspect some way, because they're not asking for "treatments" or "accommodations" like a lot of our issues can be fixed way more easily with money. can't drive? paying for a taxi is often one of the more accessible alternatives. can't cook? you can pay more to have prepared food delivered to you. food restrictions? that food straight up costs more money. can't clean? you can pay for someone to do that. house inaccessible? having (lots) of money can help with that, you get the gist.

having money won't make us abled. it also won't stop our symptoms from being distressing, painful, or debilitating. but there's a huge gap in experience between the average poor disabled person and someone who's actually wealthy. you can buy your way out of some of the difficult situations most disabled people are left to rot in. wanting money, needing money, asking for money is pretty natural when it's such a useful tool. why get so weird about disabled people wanting money like i'm pretty sure everyone wants money anyway

The ehlers danlos syndrome person to historical costumer pipeline is or will be a thing and I shall explain why.

At some point one discovers that some sort of supportive structure around your torso feels incredibly comfortable and gives your tired muscles a rest. What’s the coolest and most non obtrusive torso bracing garment? A corset. Believe me when I say that when your torso has the structural integrity of a wet sack of jello, a tightly laced corset makes you feel like a god.

And because historical corsets tend to be more comfortable and are usually made with regular wear in mind, they are the natural choice.

Then you have the shoes. What shoes is someone with unstable ankles supposed to wear, you ask?Lace up boots, for stability. And due to their middle of the heel heel placement, historical lace up boots tend to be way more comfortable than the modern variety.Even the non healed ones, really. Couple that with the fact that Edwardian and Victorian boots are really really pretty…

And after the boots and the corset, it’s a very slippery slope.

Pretty soon you’ll be wondering how to hide your corset under your clothes for when an outer corset is not the vibe, and you’ll be buying yourself a corset cover. Or making one yourself. They’re a great starter project. But that looks weird with a fitted top so cool flowy blouse it is.

Then you realize wearing this with a skirt makes you feel intensely powerful but you don’t want to keep tripping over it so you add petticoats.

And then you realize your neck isn’t so great at holding up your head so you really need to find a hairstyle where your hair sits on top of your head instead of to the sides or to the back so that it’s balanced and you don’t get a neck ache. A high bun it is. Not too tightly, because your scalp is sensitive, but a high bun still works if you bobby-pin it in place.

And then one day, you look in the mirror and you’re dressed like Anne of Green Gables.

And you’ve never looked cooler.

It bothers me so much that the healthcare system relies so much on the patient's ability to advocate for themselves, organize their history, and be so persistent against every medical “professional” who says there’s nothing wrong/they can do. But so many struggle with fatigue, brain fog, and face such ingrained systemic barriers, that the people who need and deserve help and support can’t access it.

I saw something recently that resonated with me: “Access shouldn't depend on who has the energy to fight for it.” And I’ve never agreed with anything more.

my body is a machine that turns normal situations into psychological horror

How is drunk uncle dancing so universal? Any time I see random videos of weddings or other celebrations anywhere in the world, they dance in the exact same way. And in places where people don't drink, they just do that sober.

There are no places where people don't drink. Drinking may be illegal in some countries, but people, especially dancing uncles, still drink.

Well, there are places where people would be insulted if I implied they were drinking. Nobody was doing heroin out in the open at my cousin's wedding, as that would be considered inappropriate behaviour in the culture we were raised in, so even if someone was shooting it up in one of the bathrooms or something, it would still be polite, even if it weren't accurate, to claim that nobody was doing heroin.

I mean I've never actually been to, say, a muslim wedding, so I don't know what their parties are like, but if they say they don't drink, I'm going to take that at face value for the sake of politeness.

I agree that you're not supposed to accuse anybody of doing anything illegal in order to be polite, especially when it comes to substance abuse. Usually friends and relatives just gossip about it and it's an open secret.

I mean I don't really give a shit about the law, laws are written for people who don't have any manners. But accusing people of shit they'd be mortified to be accused of (right or wrong) is rude.

There are actually people that just don't drink. You wouldn't have alcohol at a Muslim wedding, as OP referenced. Some Quackers, Hindus, & Buddhists don't drink for religious reasons and would not have alcohol at their weddings. There are also people who just don't drink who might not have alcohol at their weddings.

I know alcohol is so ingrained in our culture that it's hard to believe, but there are groups of people that just didn't drink. And even the dancing uncles drink, they probably aren't going to do it at a wedding unless they really hate the couple.

Don’t like people pointing out that it no longer makes sense in modern society to pretend a banana is a telephone

my bioengineering team is working on a rectangular-slab-shaped banana variant to address this very issue

i raise you: graham cracker

zero patience for "irreversible damage" rhetoric because like... parents are allowed to do all kinds of other irreversible body modification to their kids and nobody gives a fuck. you can pierce your kid's ears, you can sign them up for a sport that will injure them for life, you can provide or withhold medical care like vaccines according to whatever whims you like. i've mentioned this before but my mom forced me to get laser hair removal done on my legs when i was a teenager because my body wasn't mine, the way i chose to upkeep it was a reflection on her. "irreversible damage" is very much part and parcel of the broader belief that parents own their children's bodies.

What they actually tend to mean when they say "irreversible damage" is literally just "something I don't like" which is fucking bullshit. One person should not decide what anyone and can't do with their body just because it makes them feel weird, it doesn't matter who they are, no one should be able to make choices for you regarding *your* body, ever, under any circumstances. If someone wants to get a tattoo, or transition, or have an abortion or do literally anything to their body, that is not your choice, it's theirs.

The US is bombing my home country Venezuela.

Venezuela has been in a dictatorship as long as I have been alive. Since 1998. My parents are happy about a coup and hope Maduro dies or gets arrested, which yes. Fuck Maduro, fuck Chavismo. But I've read way too much about the history of US dipping their hands into South America, installing puppet states, fucking everything up and this is not a win. Even if Maduro dies or gets arrested, the US just wants the country's resources without more pretense of negotiations, they are not magically going to fix everything, there is a corrupt reason for this to be happening that is yet to unfold and I'm so tired. Fuck Trump.

I wish I could find better words to explain this to non-venezuelans, or Venezuelans of an older generation who are just tired of failed "socialism" and beelined straight to far right borderline extremism as if that was better. For now my family back home is safe and I wish every person in Caracas the same.

Rest in Peace to Renee Good. ICE shooting an innocent 37 year old mother attempting to protect her neighbors is not an accident or an act of self defense, it is an act of terror designed to dissuade other people from stepping in, documenting ICE violence and reminding immigrants of their rights. Her son is now an orphan and the president of the United States is calling her a ‘professional agitator’ on social media.

The head of ICE is calling her a violent terrorist and claimed her attempt to back her car away was actually an effort to murder the ICE officers present.

There’s a reason that the Right have all rallied so quickly behind this narrative: it’s happened before, with ICE’s approval.

Renee is the ninth person to have been shot by ICE since last September; and in all of those shootings the victim was in a vehicle and the agents claimed that the vehicle was “a threat”/trying to “run them down.” One other shooting, that of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, was also lethal.

This is pretty clearly a sanctioned tactic being used by ICE repeatedly with an eye towards using the vehicle-as-weapon excuse later.