#Functional defects

[venacoeurva]

Ah it's getting to be that time of year where it's Flea and Tick time, which includes the fun hobbies such as:

Wrangling your pets to put flea and tick meds on them and trying to actually find those in stock at stores

Avoiding tall grass and not being very happy about your neighbors who don't mow their lawns if they have one

Wearing pants tucked into socks no matter how sweaty you get

Small black specks on the floor triggering fight or flight

Being paranoid every time you itch or feel a small prick of pain on your legs or arms!

[ddagent]

Me, Yesterday: I should write a '5 times Margo and Sergei went to bed together (g-rated)' story. Nah. No one wants to read just domestic fluff.

Y'all, commenting on Convenience today...

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

I am returned! Crazy things happened on hiatus, and here is a play-by-play:

Spent the bulk of September with our dogs at my great-aunt's lake cottage (which is a 15-hr drive from here), due to the abundance of birthdays this month.

Shortly after arriving, I got a cold from my sister, which as per usual, turned into bronchitis, which lasted the entirety of the vacation (I still have the cough).

Around midnight on the eve of our departure, I had a gallbladder attack (first one since early spring).

Except it was way worse. Like, I couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, couldn't even cry.

Called 911, got in the ambulance, and the pain suddenly vanished in the space of a minute.

The wee mountain hospital didn't have imaging equipment beyond a CT scan and the Dr. was like "If the pain is gone, you shouldn't expose yourself to that much radiation" (which I appreciated)

My labs were normal, so we conclude this must've been the passing of the gallstone. Big, if true.

I take hydrocodone and we all go to sleep.

In the morning, my mom and sister pack my stuff for me and my parents and I drive the 15 hours back home so that dad can make it to a job interview the next day.

During the last 45 minutes of the journey, my mom's very very old & frail chihuahua experiences a sharp decline in his already poor constitution.

I'm knocked out on hydrocodone, but my dad is up all night with the dog, and in the morning, he takes him to the vet to be put down.

My mom is devastated, this dog was adopted to be her bedside companion during chemo twelve years ago.

My dad's interview goes well.

I still have bronchitis.

Two days later, my sister (who stayed longer at the lake house to clean up) drives back to her home in Southern GA, but for hurricane Helene reasons, the highway is closed and she gets lost.

She finally makes it home to find her power is out, for hurricane Helene reasons (it's still out)

Three days later (last night), I have another brutally painful attack (clearly I'd NOT passed the stone), so my parents drive me to the ER.

Am able to get an ultrasound there, which confirms I still have either many gallstones or one huge one, but my labs are still normal.

Unfortunately, this makes sense because I underwent some rapid drastic weight loss after my attack in the spring.

ER Dr. thinks my pain is instead being caused by gastritis for genetic reasons (which reminded my mom that as a teenager she passed out at work from gastritis).

He prescribes me a trio of gastritis drugs.

I'll be going to a trusted functional medicine doctor next month because my dad got the job (an amazingly good job, praise God) and we can afford it at last. My hope is that this Dr. can point to causes beyond genetics for the gastritis and also get rid of the stones once and for all, even if that means going on Ursodiol.

My dad's new job requires him to move to the Middle East in three weeks.

Oh, and my personal Instagram account (which was about to become the cornerstone of my small business) was inexplicably terminated during my hiatus and I have no means of getting it back besides writing to the state Attorney General.

[starleska]

Just wanted to say that your whimsy and unironic enjoyment of things continues to be a passive inspiration for me: at one point today I thought "Damn I should really learn to calm down about this character. Shame I can never be as enthusiastic as I am about some of the characters I like because it's probably considered weird or cringe to like them." And immediately afterwards I went "No. Tumblr user Starleska doesn't live their life with 100% unrestrained enthusiasm and love for characters just for me to be a chicken." askdjhkjadkjdh

buddy!!!! you're going to make me cry, thank you so much 😭😭😭💖💖💖 i'm honoured to hear that!! y'know, over the past...ten? years or so, my goals in life have shifted a lot, as have the things i value. i realised at some point that i may never be able to achieve the kind of success most "gifted" (undiagnosed) kids envision for themselves...but i can always make things a little happier for myself and other people. being unapologetically enthusiastic about things is something i've always valued in other people, and it's a gift i want to pass on 🫡 my question for you is: what will you achieve by calming down about the things you love? the approval of some ignorant folks who equate enthusiasm with a lack of restraint, intelligence, or fake cool points? bro, who wants validation from people like that anyway 😂 and you never know when you yelling about the things you love might spark that same love in other people!! isn't that what fandom has always been about? 💖

[elmstreetxsurvivor]

I feel like I'm the only person who HATES Owen Hunt and thinks he's a misogynistic pig who acts like because he's a "dude" his opinion should be the only valid one in a "relationship." I also don't get why Cristina would have kept on with him-he wasn't going to change his mind about what he wanted in life (and again it was HIS WAY OR NO WAY) and she wasn't going to change about what she wanted in life SO...why? Just why? UGH the show should have just made him and Teddy endgame from the go BUT NOPE let's put at least three (Cristina, Emma and Amelia-idk if there are more but these I remember)women in this bastard's path and have them wrecked by this fucking pig before deciding "well we're on season 18 may as well let him end up with the person he was always meant to be with!"

[randomnameless]

I appreciate that at least they stayed consistent with the Sword of the Creator being Crest of Flames-exclusive and, as such, Byleth can no longer use it post-CF and is shown using a normal sword instead in their solo and S-Supported Jeritza ending pictures; makes it all the more baffling that they're still alive despite their heart being destroyed and that the Sothis S-Support exists in that route, but i'll give them credit where it's due for keeping the SOTC's lore consistent.

Post Tru Piss, there's no Crest Stone left for the SoC!

So I'd say it's not that it's CoF exclusice, but rather something like without a crest stone, a relic, even the SoC, doesn't "work" anymore.

Adding insult to the injury though, Post!Tru Piss Billy uses Rhea's sword, aka, a Holy Weapon that could be used by everyone (human and nabatean!) and even heal non-crested people : Billy uses at the end of the "we will make a world for humans!" route a sword that conveyed coexistence between humans and nabateans...

Sothis' S-support in this route really felt odd, because she acknowledges Rhea at least, but has no words for her passing when Rhea died crying for her.

Some people tried to theorise that this Sothis isn't the one Rhea remembers so she wouldn't have feelings about her... but idk, it still feels dead wrong, especially since Sothis remembered feelings of joy and sadness in Zanado, and ultimately remembers how Rhea is a her kid thanks to the lullaby (and in SS when she "talks" to her).

If Sothis was a better written character and not accidently written to be the most toxic parent in the FE series, I'd maybe write something about her feeling so bad that, again, she was used to slaughter one of her own children (Nemesis first in Zanado, and now Billy in Tailtean) but as canon!Sothis is, I'm not really motivated to do something like this.

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

Meds that need to be taken with food are the worst invention ever. I'm already going through the hassle of taking meds and now I have to prepare a little snack too? Damn meds are too high maintenance

[miss-floral-thief]

Gel Deodorant works at least tho the twisting for some reason didn’t release without squeezing it

[communistkenobi]

A newborn baby girl will have to go through life with the wrong sex on her birth certificate after a registrar’s error, which her parents have been told they cannot change. Grace Bingham and her partner, Ewan Murray, were excited to register their first child at the Sutton-in-Ashfield Registration Office in Nottinghamshire last week. But, after nights of broken sleep, they failed to notice the registrar had written the wrong sex on the birth certificate until after it had been submitted. “We were horrified but assumed that, as we saw the mistake just a few seconds after it had happened, correcting it would be an easy matter,” said Murray. “But although the registrar apologised for her mistake – and the area manager also apologised – it turns out that birth certificates can’t be changed.”

this article is interesting because it demonstrates that cis people can very easily apply structural thinking to sex assignment - this couple immediately identifies that their daughter, having mistakenly been assigned male at birth by the registrar, will have administrative problems in employment, education, travel, and so on. they pretty adeptly identify the foundational role that sex assignment plays in the administrative and civil functions of a state, and how incorrect sex markers effectively produce a ‘rational’ reason for discrimination within these administrative and civil arenas:

The General Register Office (GRO), which is responsible for administering all civil registration in England and Wales, and the Home Office have both confirmed that Lilah’s birth certificate cannot be reissued, although an amendment can be made in the margin of the original document. But Bingham said this is not enough. “People reading a birth certificate might easily miss a tiny note in the margin – which means that Lilah could be regarded as male when she applies for school, her passport, for jobs – for everything that she needs a full birth certificate for.”

And given that this was published in The Guardian, this article makes zero mention as to why it’s impossible for this couple to receive an updated birth certificate with correct information (something the author notes was possible to do a year ago), but the reason is obviously transphobia. 

Now one might ask why there’s no exception for cis people whose birth certificates were recorded incorrectly at birth, but this reveals the instability of cissexualism. How would you determine who is a cis person with a mistaken birth certificate, versus a trans person who wants to change their mistaken sex assignment record? Sure, you could say well, this is an infant, of course she’s “really” “biologically” female (something the parents argue in the article as grounds for having their child’s birth certificate re-issued), but 1) that certainly can’t be argued for in all cases, 2) 'biological sex' is understood by medical doctors as alterable through hormones and surgery, which trans people are often required to undergo in order to change their records, and 3) binary sex assignment is already imprecise and discretionary, particularly if infants have sex characteristics that don’t conform to binary F/M assignment standards (which is part of how the category of intersex emerges, framing this failure to conform to state census categories as a biological defect - and in fact, many intersex people do not discover they are intersex until the onset of puberty or later, at which point they are even less in luck if they want to change their sex assignment - and if they don’t, if they are cis but have sex characteristics that do not conform to cis standards, they will be discriminated against anyway). 

Even setting aside the issue of transgender and intersex people for a moment, states fuck up all the time in administration! you've probably either experienced this directly or know someone who's had some kind of record fucked up by the government at some point in their life. If you get married they could fuck up changing your last name, fuck up your disability status, record your social insurance number wrong, print the wrong address on your driver’s license, fail to acknowledge you as a dependent when filing taxes, incorrectly mark you as having graduated when you’re still a student, fuck up your immigration paperwork, record your name wrong during immigration, etc etc into infinity, and this is not even getting into errors that occur when different levels of government pass information between one another. This level of administrative rigidity is purely to punish people who fail to perform cissexualism correctly, and in the case of this couple's child, the administrative error of the state is imputed to them as a personal failure that she and her parents will now have to deal with for the rest of their lives. 

I think the ultimate analysis is not that transphobia will become less precise and hit more "wrong" targets as it expands its reach, but that this is the exact same operational logic as all other liberal state measures - if you encounter a systemic issue, it’s your fault for not avoiding it, fuck you, go away. You’re poor because you’re lazy, you’re unhoused because you’re lazy, you’re disabled because you’re lazy, and your daughter is now administratively transsexual because you’re lazy. In this case, we don’t even need to assume the intentions of the state - they outright say it:

The family complained to the GRO but was told the mistake was their responsibility and could not be fully rectified. “The duty to ensure that information recorded in any particular entry is true is the responsibility of the person providing the information and not of the registrar general or the registrar recording the birth,” the GRO said.

[ourceliumnetwork]

the list of traumas i need to unpack still and my coping mechanisms (or, more frequently, lack-thereof) keeps getting longer and i'm not sure i like that. I think i like less how much i already know they're hangups before they become a problem i have to actively work on, too.

[cornsobsessions]

i love calling customer service lines <3 i almost always get a better solution to my problem than any of the online options and chat bots provide me

[sofusgirl]

Ugh.

Was actually starting to look forward to playing Dragon Age: the Veilguard.

Bought the physical disc version for my ps5, bc it's cheaper than digital by like 20-30 dollars or so. And even splurged on an ssd unit to increase storage on my ps5.

Installing the ssd: fine, easy peasy.

Playing my new game: problem.

my disc drive is fucked.

It refuses to read any disc. No error or anything, no "unable to read disc". It just takes the disc, I hear it spin a little, then nothing. Nothing happens.

When this happened with a movie (dvd) i tried a few weeks ago I assumed it was bc the dvd was old as heck and really worn down. But this game is brand new. No scratches, no dust.

I tested it with BG3 as well, since I've already played that, so I know that disc is fine, and if that works it's the game disc that is defective, but no. "Insert disc to play" when I try starting BG3, when the disc has already been inserted.

So it's off to get repaired, hopefully. We'll see.

[bisquid]

My body is the thing I have to remember to keep feeding and cleaning and medicating and hydrating (endlessly, endlessly hydrating) so I can do things like 'watch the birds' and 'come up with terrible puns' and 'hug my loved ones'

I don't love it, I tolerate it's existence as the price to pay for existing in the world, in a similar way to how I tolerate cooking in order to have lunch

you have seen, many times, the phrase love your body! and every time, like rainwater, it glides off you. not because you cannot love it - you mostly, like, tolerate it - but because of the word "your".

is this your body? when you were 11 you had to start shaving your legs because other girls found it gross you were hairy. when you were 12, you had to stop wearing v-necks because of your chest - people were staring. your mother didn't let you dye your hair. your first boyfriend makes you dress up in skimpy clothes for him, then hates when other people covet you. what you wear and how you present determine whether or not people find you funny or annoying or arrogant. other people get to determine if you are pretty, a court of opinion so loud it blots any good intent.

when is the body yours? magazines and instagram and tiktok endlessly advising you to "take care of" (starve) your body as if it is a weed. you must hack and slash at it, defend yourself from its wanton desires. it is a shameful, greedy thing. it is more like an art piece. you are keeping it or being kept-in-it.

you try to language it to your therapist - it's not that you don't recognize yourself in the mirror, it's more just that the thing that is in the mirror - it isn't you. that's why it's so easy to take apart: you're vaguely aware of the shape, but it feels like you are an animal hiding in the back of this cavern, snarling.

obviously you're like stuck in it. it often hurts a lot, buzzes with pain and a strange numbness. so it is your body when it's painful. that makes sense. otherwise - how many times have you been told to save yourself (your body) for marriage. for someone else. you are just borrowing it.

love your body! is so funny. somehow, without meaning to, the phrase reminds you - it isn't you. you're just inside it.

[cumplane-forever]

imagine, shen qingqiu is found out to be a 'body stealer' and a special peak lord meeting is called to deal with the news. yqy explains the situation and very desperately wants shen yuan banished from the sect(he's not thinking straight and is also one thought away from yeeting xuan su off the mountain) liu qingge is wrestling between his inner sense of justice and feelings for sqq(because he was told that sy couldn't tell them he replaced shen jiu so is it really a betrayal etc etc) so while every other peak lord processes this information, shang qinghua pulls out a detailed chart on how exactly cang qiong sect will function without its an ding peak lord. it will be exactly like when he defected to mbj except this time he won't come back. so cang qiong sect can go to ruin<3

it doesn't matter if the peak lords were considering letting him stay or not! shang qinghua is now explaining how the demon realm has much better working conditions and pay than his current job, and yes, he does have to stand by whatever soul is in sqq's body. poor yqy, hit with the double whammy of losing both the love of his life and his secretary :( (bonus points if sqh's bullshitted explanation accidentally implies that cumplane are soulmates)

[ace-disgrace-on-the-case]

Robot girl who’s defective. She was built for a Function, but despite her best efforts she just can’t fulfill it.

She has a community now. It’s hard, but she’s learning, just maybe, she doesn’t have to have a Function to be worth keeping around. She doesn’t deserve the scrapyard.

Robot girl who is enough.