#you don’t do it by claiming it’s not a disability either it is for plenty of fucking autistics

[enbycrip]

Seriously, if your idea of ​​"destigmatising autism” is “it isn't an intellectual/learning disability", you are part of the fucking problem.

No, it isn't, but *many* autistic folks are intellectually/learning disabled due to co-occurring conditions and they are just as much a necessary, valuable and important part of the autistic community as any other autistic person. You do not "destigmatise" any disability by distancing it from a historically marginalised and Othered disability. That's just shifting *more* stigma to the most marginalised disability, throwing the *most* marginalised and abused people in the autistic community under the bus as you do so, and *that* is disableist as all hell.

We do *not* promote #AutisticAcceptance by buying into a disableist worldview that devalues ​​disabled people, especially those who have historically suffered the most abuse and the most marginalisation. We promote autistic acceptance by accepting and taking pride in the broad diversity of our autistic community, with all of our needs, our co-occurring conditions and how that intersects with our other marginalisations, and by working for disabled liberation, accessibility and the end of disableism.

(Sorry, but it’s been one *fuck* of a long April already, and we’re not even halfway through yet).

[sugarmaplewings-fics]

Helping Their S/O Recover From Surgery

Pairing: BNHA Boys x reader

Warnings: Reader is in the hospital (obviously), several mentions of food and eating, medication mention, that should be it

Characters: Midoriya, Bakugou, Todoroki, Amajiki

A/N:

Wow, I actually completed a request in a timely fashion 😳

I hope this isn’t too terrible. My dad was disabled, so he had a lot of surgeries (maybe one every year or two). Ergo, I’ve had some experience being in hospitals, if not exactly in the position of the patient ヽ(；▽；)ノ It’s been some time tho, so idk, I might still be missing something.

Anyway, I hope you get well soon, @ure-a-sunflower! Thanks for the request, I’m really flattered that you think of me like this 😊 And never feel shy about sending me a hug! I love hugs :3

Enjoy!

-Sugar

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Midoriya:

● Midoriya is the type of guy who'll sit in the waiting room the entire time you're under

● He's a little worried about you, but he trusts that you'll make it through okay

● Trust me, he has plenty of experience being in hospitals (stop breaking ur bones >:()

● He'll be right at your bedside as soon as he's allowed to, whether you're awake or not

● As soon as you're awake and he's able to, he'll give you a nice hug (gently). He doesn't care if you're still in bed, he just wants to know you're okay

● He'll spend a lot of time with you while you recover, sitting in the chair by your bed

● Please please tell this boy it's okay for him to talk. He'll tell you everything he knows about heroes for hours and whether you care about what he's saying or not, it's totally worth it just to see the big smile on his face

● Either way, he'll talk to you almost the whole time. He's actually really fun to have a conversation with! You can talk to him about anything and he'll listen

● Will also play board games with you to pass the time, or any kind of small game he can find that you can both do on your bedside table

● He'll get you anything else you might want as well :)

● Once you're discharged, he'll stick around and help you out

● Again, if you need anything, he's got you

● Need someone to cook for you? If he can't do it himself, he'll ask his mom for help (pls, she cooks the best meals and she loves you so much)

● Will remind you to take your meds

● He'll take naps with you 🥺 He knows you're probably still tired out, so he's making sure you get plenty of rest

● Helps you with any wound care you might need, whether it's cleaning it or dressing it, he'll help out if you let him

● Just very much a sweet boi, 10/10 boyfriend

____________

Bakugou:

● He is very much concerned about you the whole time, he's just really good at hiding it

● As soon as he's allowed to visit you, he's there

● He'll come in quietly, scowling at the floor

● He has a bag with him that's got a container of food in it. He put a lot of effort into making it just for you, just the way you like, but it's likely he'll brush it off and claim it's leftovers

● Katsuki isn't exactly the best hospital buddy, but he'll try

● The thing is, he's not very talkative. He refuses to leave your room for too long, but he's more the type to just sit in the chair by the window (probably looking at his phone)

● You may think he's not paying you any attention, but he's spending time reading up on what condition you're in and how to make sure you recover properly

● He's there if you need him

●Will yell at the nurse / doctor if they're not taking care of you right

● Makes a comment at least once about how much he hates the smell (it's not you, it's the general hospital smell)

● Tries his best to cook for you as often as he can so you don't have to eat the hospital food there (might even give up trying to brush off how much he does for you)

● Gets you anything you need when you ask. As I said, he's not keen on leaving you in your room by yourself, but he won't say anything if you ask for something

● When it's time for you to go home, he'll just get even more clingy

● But not necessarily affectionate, oh no

● He was there when the doctor gave you guidelines for what to do during your recovery period, and he did his research

● You're not getting out of following it to the letter

● If you're supposed to stay in bed and rest, he'll make sure you're not getting up unless you absolutely have to. Also he'll do any kind of heavy lifting for you, just to be safe (and it’s totally not a bonus chance to lowkey show off how strong he is)

● If you need to incorporate more activity into your day, he'll be at your side. It's like a little date, taking a nice slow walk in the park

● He's also keeping tabs on how much water you're drinking. He always encourages you to drink plenty of water, but now he's even more on top of his game to remind you

● He'll also remind you to take your meds (aggressively but with love) :)

● And he'll drive you to your follow up visits with your doctor

● Bakugou will encourage you the best way he knows. He may come off harsh at times, but he just wants your healing process to go as smoothly as possible. He's not good with feelings and stuff, but this is how he shows you he cares

____________

Todoroki:

● Another sweet boi

● He knows what it's like to visit people in the hospital (ahem, his mom), so it wouldn't be too weird for him (not that it’s all that weird for any of them)

● He'd come and see you every day, and he'll bring you a little something each time, whether it's a snack, some flowers, a game or coloring book he thought you'd like, or even a little stuffed bear (or whatever your favorite animal is)

● His visits can be weirdly short though? Like, he doesn't know what to say, so he kind of just . . . leaves? Like wait come back

● He likes it when he can get you talking. He's not much of a talker himself, so it's easier if you can lead conversations

● But if you want him to, he will just keep you company in silence

● Master at staring off into space for long periods of time

● But every time he looks over at you, he gets this soft smile on his face and he's so cute

● He's trying his best

● He'll also help remind you of things when you're back home

● He's not the best at cooking, so he'll order you anything you want and eat it with you

● I'll state the obligatory "he provides that hot/cold treatment for any pain you might have" because he does and it works

● He'll go out with you to walk around, and just generally get you back into living your life

● Yeah, he's just really glad to see that you're healthy and he’s happy to help you out so your recovery is quick and easy

____________

Amajiki:

● Not gonna lie, he was a little nervous while you were having the surgery

● Not too bad, just some pacing around the waiting room, but he feels so much better once everything's over with

● Big on sitting next to your hospital bed and just holding your hand the whole time he's visiting

● Hates checking in every day (because ew, people, and also ew, walking through strange halls full of people and equipment and the lighting is funky and everything smells like hand sanitizer and—)

● But he does it for you, because you're the most important thing to him 🥺

● Oh, and he also gets really really quiet whenever the nurse comes in to check up on you and just kind of pretends like he doesn't exist for a moment while they do their thing

● He'll do something where he gets himself a boxed lunch or takeout and eat with you in your room at meal times

● Honestly though, he'll be happy when you're finally able to go back home

● He's a very sweet and doting boyfriend, and he'll make sure you're getting everything you need

● He'll do his best to help you readjust after everything, and he'll even stay by your side when you go for follow up appointments :]

● (His anxiety has that loophole where if you're ever anxious about doing something, he's able to take charge and help you out)

● Pls, I love him

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Taglist: @aahilovetheatre @basicalyrandom @hyunmin-1404 @kqtsukii @nabo39 @pyrofanatic @rainy-skys-and-bright-stars​ @sendhelpimstupid​ @xoxopam4​

[neproxrezi]

Are you participating in the proposed dbd boycott to get them to do a game health update?

yeah, i wasn't sure at first caus "dont play the video game for a brief period" isn't going to work but "this company has put all its eggs in one basket and they are frankly quite neglectful of said basket, everyone stop buying anything ingame for 3 months" has me interested

more than 'fix the bugs' or anything else like that what i want to see out of the game is them being less god damn stingy with cosmetics (you should not have to pay $10 for ONE FUCKING COSMETIC) and addressing the grind. holy shit the grind in this game is so rough and it could be fixed fairly simply (i'm in favour of removing perk tiers, to cut a long post short)

hold on im gonna complain about dbd under a cut caus itll get long, i love this game so much but oh boy it has issues

it's been said a million times already but dbd's grind made more sense when there were like 4 or 5 characters per side, there are now over 20 and each new one introduces 3 perks to each side

I want to write about the grind in this game for a moment. There are 95 survivor perks in DBD. Every perk has three tiers. Some of them are great, and many are kind of pointless. Realistically, I'd bet you're only going to see about 15 of those perks in action in most of your games. However, if you unlock a perk to be taught to other survivors (which I tend to do even if I don't particularly want it, out of a mix of completionism and a 'may as well get it out of the way' kind of thing), you can't get rid of it. It's in your bloodwebs forever. 95 perks. 285 perk tiers. Let's talk about how long that takes to claim.

You buy a new character in the next chapter. You have every teachable perk unlocked. The new chapter really excited you, and you want to claim every perk on the new character (who I am going to name... Doug), so you saved a lot of bloodpoints in advance. In fact, you played for days and days and saved the cap, which is a million bloodpoints. You buy Doug, after much excited testing him out in the PTB. You spend all million points on Doug. Doug is now about level 35 to 40, out of 50. Hm. Well, time to keep playing. The bloodwebs kind of gave you a bunch of crap stuff on Doug, and you don't feel like running Power Struggle, Ace in the Hole, Babysitter and Breakdown, so you can't play Doug yet. You go play someone else.

Solo queuing as survivor is a mixed bag, and your games range from getting 10,000 bloodpoints (pretty rough game where everyone got wiped) to 27,000 (a great match, maybe with a bloodpoint offering). You save enough to get Doug to level 50. In the later levels, you start being able to get two perks a level instead of one. Let's say from level 1 to 50, you collect a total of 65 perks, because I don't remember exactly when it starts offering 2 per level. Okay, there are 220 perk levels left. Because of the game's propensity for giving you the same perk over and over to get you lots of perks at level 2 out of 3, of those 65 perk tiers you've probably got something like 20 to 25 actual perks. You're missing like, 70. Best case scenario, the ones you picked up include a lot of what you want. Most likely, you've got like half a good build and some gimmicky crap to slot in alongside it. Worst case scenario, which has happened to me plenty of times, you have like maybe one good perk and a pile of gimmicky crap. So. How long is it going to take you to get what you want?

There are 220 perk levels to go. After level 50, the webs are all the same size. It costs about 50,000 points to level up, and you get two perk levels per bloodweb. That's going to be 110 webs to get everything for Doug. Which is 5.5 million bloodpoints. Oh no. How many points were you earning per game again?

If you play with friends, you're probably going to do better. I find this to be true even if me and my friends are playing without voice comms or anything, because I just sort of know these people a bit better. I know my friend who mains Lisa Garland is a hook-diving bastard, so I don't need to go rescue anyone. Ace, god bless him, makes batshit altruistic plays, so I certainly don't need to go protect my teammates when he's out there doing things like this. I think I'm just going to sit on generators in the distance, think about our final gen spread, and try get us out of here. I'd say if I'm playing well, and accounting for offerings and WGLF stacks, with friends I average 30,000 a match and by myself I average 20,000. Playing killer I average more like 60,000, but playing killer is a bit stressful sometimes and I'm very indecisive about actually queuing up for it, so I probably actually get bp faster as survivor. I'm going to call the average per match across everything 25,000, because for every good game there are plenty where you underperform, or things just go drastically wrong. To earn 5.5 million points like that, you're going to have to play 220 matches. A game, including queue times and whatnot, can take ten to twenty minutes. That's... that's going to take a while. And that's ONE CHARACTER.

Now, on the survivor side you only really need to do this once. They're all just reskins of the same gameplay loop. On the killer side, you need to re-earn those perks for every new character you want to try out, because they're all different. Miiiiillions and millions of points. Hundreds of games. I have no problem with the game having a grind, but at this point it's absolute insanity.

In my opinion, removing perk tiers would cut the grind down to a reasonable level. There'd still be a grind, which I'm completely comfortable with existing, but it wouldn't be excruciatingly long, and you wouldn't have to spend as long dealing with bad perks.

HOWEVER, on top of that is the fact that they just. Holy shit the game updates slowly. I don't want to blame them for that in a way of like "these developers are incompetent and lazy", I really do love DBD to bits and I'm sure they do work very hard on it. That said, its update cycle is really slow. Reeaally slow. I wish they either had a bigger team, made balance updates faster (a handful of perk adjustments once every six weeks is... very very slow) or something to just try make the changes faster. Even when things do change it always feels so anxious and tentative, I wish they'd experiment more often. The time they disabled bloodlust to see what happened was really cool!

Yeah in short I just hope the grind gets addressed more than anything else, caus that's the part I actually think there's a relatively straightforward solution to. Also, I never got to play the older events where you could do shit like earn cosmetics, but they sounded way fucking cooler than the new ones. The halloween one last year was absolute shit, it's weird that their special events would get worse over time rather than better.

Buuut I agree with Scott Jund that the Resident Evil chapter was bad news for DBD's long term health because the one thing that would really give BHVR a kick up the ass is competition, and every time they land an amazing licensed chapter they become harder to compete with. They have an absolute monopoly on asymmetrical horror, and I honestly think the game would be in a better state right now if they had some competition >:[

[eathumane]

cannibal cafes?? wait like, dispensaries for human meat? or like, more of a casual serendipi-tea type place w cucumber liver sandwiches? god i just realized the potential safe-haven this creates for human trafficking and body disposal, theft of remains too. if parts are being sold then historical/protected remains likely won’t be illegal to sell anymore, meaning ppl could get away with grave-robbing and desecration much more easily.

in saying that people would voluntarily donate(?) their limbs and organs cause why not: surgery is extremely dangerous. and expensive, like super fucking expensive. w all the tech too. like you would need surgeons to perform unnecessary and potentially life-threatening surgery. with that goes the potentials of prosthetics, physical therapy to relearn everything again, nerve damage, phantom + pain, inaccessible spaces cos ablism, dialysis, scarring, and a huge recovery period where it’s not likely they’d be able to work/go to school/support their own needs. then they have to live with that disability for the rest of their life. i don’t know what you mean by the partial meat harvest thing, could you explain that?

also how would disability claims work if you willingly chopped off your leg and can no longer work, either due to inaccessibility or health complications ? technically it’s a voluntary unnecessary surgery, so would they be held liable? what if they donate an arm but die on the table, would the whole corpse be a snack then?

I mean, it would be kind of like. Hair donations? Like you show up to have your hair cut, you don't show up with a bag of human hair. You'd have to know the source and that it was given freely. Obviously, my main concern is with this being ethical- trafficking, murder, and body desecration would all still be illegal in the ideal scenario here.

As for just wanting to, plenty of people have body dysmorphic disorder and may actually desire to have part of their body removed for any reason. Of course, if they're an adult and they're well informed of what's going to happen as a result of removing a body part, I trust them to make that decision for themselves. It's largely about bodily autonomy in that case. But also, people will do all kind of physically risky and expensive things- I've personally considered getting a tongue piercing, and just reading into the care for that... it's a lot just to have a piece of metal in your tongue.

Partial meat harvesting is meat harvesting in part and not whole, to about any non fatal amount. It could be as little as a sliver off the arm, or the entire left leg. It's completely up to the person who's having the part(s) removed.

I don't know how to think about the disability thing actually. I mean, disability shouldn't be like a "poor you, here's some money for your tragedy" it should be "here's the help you need to live a healthy life". And regardless of whether or not that disability was willingly walked into, I do still think they deserve disability assistance.

Now health complications are a different thing. If the procedure doesn't go as expected, I'd say you're liable to be compensated for damages by the medical staff that took the meat from you. And if someone dies as a result of an arm donation let's say, then their arm can be harvested as that's what they gave permission for, but the rest of the body cannot.

[bi-dazai]

okay while we're on the subject of eating healthy and exercising, I want to vent/talk about weight loss. This is gonna be a rly controversial, very personal and extremely long post but I do want to make a point. I'm not going to discuss every fucking nuance of haes or my EDs. But for clarity, know that my eds are complicated and were mostly osfeds - minor anorexia osfed in high school and bed osfed when I was 18-19. after i realised how fat i was the minor anorexia came back and over the pandemic it became full scale anorexia nervosa.

I'm 5'3. The healthy weight range I should be in is in the high 40s-low 50s. I went up to TWICE that by the time I was just nineteen years old. It wasn't fun being fat. I consumed as much fat acceptance, fat activism content as I could, I pretended I was confident and happy even when I was fat. But I wasn't. Because people don't just get obese accidentally. A little overweight, yes. But obese? No. You get obese from depression, from giving up. You don't want to move so you don't. You're sad all the time, and the body positivity circles say eat comfort food, whatever and as much as it makes you feel better!! Do you know what that is? That's encouragement of BED. Do not say that. Because I did that. I ate sugar and junk food, I was still depressed.

I was reading these posts that were claiming fat people shouldn't be weighed at the doctor, that your weight shouldn't count, that BMI is incorrect and doesn't matter, etc etc. There were posts saying that they got "perfect bloodwork" (what even is that? I knew that was wrong, I've had chronic iron deficiency for a decade!) even though they were fat, so they had to be healthy, right? I got shown pictures of obese ballerinas and obese weightlifters blah blah blah. And I grew and grew, and I got to almost 85kg on the fast track to 100kg before reality smacked me in the face and I realised I was shortening my lifespan by decades.

Here's what it was like being obese!

- joint pain, constantly

- could barely walk anywhere without feeling out of breath

- couldn't find any fashionable, good quality clothes (plus size stores either carry unfashionable clothing, or fashionable but cheap quality clothing. I don't like to waste money on cheap clothes)

- more acne than I'd had in years

- oily skin

- more difficulty feeling "full"

- JOINT FUCKING PAIN

- rashes from skin rubbing against skin!

- even larger chest, making me MORE dysphoric

- back pain!!

- snoring - this is not just embarrassing. This is potentially deadly.

- DYSPHORIA

- KNEES. JOINT PAIN.

- DYSPHORIA

this was just things I felt physically, noticeably! The things that my fat was doing on the inside was even worse. Fat isn't just this layer of packing peanuts that appears on top of you. It coats your organs. It gets everywhere. It makes your entire body run worse.

Fat also makes it much more likely for you to not just GET cancer, but it it also makes it harder to FIGHT cancer. Being obese makes almost every single goddamn sickness on the planet worse because when you have THAT MUCH fat tissue the hormones and shit it secretes fucks EVERYTHING up.

Yes there are obese bodybuilders. Yes there are obese ballerinas. Let's talk about those two.

There are plenty of drs and dieticians who have pointed out the obvious - if an obese person was really, actually eating healthily and exercising every day, they would not stay obese forever. Its not magic, it's thermodynamics. CICO done right works for everyone. If you are eating healthy, appropriate portions for weight loss at your TDEE and exercising it would literally be IMPOSSIBLE for you not to lose weight!! Even more the heavier you are because when you exercise you carry around a lot more weight.

Obese weightlifters are still obese. They are not proof you can be obese and healthy. They are still going to die younger if they do not lose weight.

Let's talk about fat ballerinas. The only ones I've seen are trainee ballerinas, not professional ones. And their performance looks impressive at first, until you look closer. You notice their balance is never quite perfect, their control can be amazing and the best ever but they'll still be off. Why? Because fat moves around with your movement, and it displaces your balance and your line of movement. It's simply not possible to do something like ballet dancing as a fat person without risking major injury as well. En pointe is already stupid dangerous for the skinniest ballerina. Going en pointe at anything above 60kg is going to get progressively suckier the heavier you go. And god help your ankles because falling down will always end in a major injury.

I'm so fucking done with "fat acceptance". I'm tired of "body positivity" being a movement about obese middle-upper class white women and not about scars and disabilities etc like it was focused on in the start. I have no problems with Health at Every Size - every person should feel happy to workout, to eat healthy. I have no problem raising issue with people bullying others for their weight as well. That's wrong. But pretending that it's Healthy at Every Size is a fucking lie, and it's one that could've sentenced me to an early death. Healthy at Every Size said I was condemned to joint pain and oily skin and depression and exhaustion for the rest of my life based on cherrypicked sentences from studies that didn't agree with them. That "95% of diets fail" sentence in particular drives me up the wall. You don't need a diet to lose weight, you need healthy CICO, you need to eat below your TDEE, you need to eat healthy, and you need to exercise. All you have to do at first is go on a 10-20 minute walk, whatever pace you like, a few times a week.

You can BE fit, you CAN lose weight! You are not sentenced to having joint pain and an increased risk for cancer and a less effective COVID vaccine for life. You can change your body in incredibly ways. You have no idea what you are capable of.

There's this myth that weight loss takes keto and shakes and diet pills and crash diets etc. It doesn't. All it is is making sure you eat less than your TDEE, eating HEALTHY calories, and getting your heartrate up by exercising at least 175 minutes a week.

The human body is not meant to be obese. There's no such thing as a set point weight. There's CICO, there's nutrition, there's making sure your muscles dont atrophy. Weight loss and fitness isn't some magic thing that youre just born able to do. I was lazy throughout my entire teens. I thought fitness was something the popular girls did. It's not. It's for everyone. and everyone, especially in places with an obesity epidemic such as the US, UK, and Australia, should make use of it. It's a good thing. Walking is one of the best things you can do for your body, and it's incredibly rewarding in every way. Eating healthy and not eating until you feel like you're going to burst is rewarding in every way. And it's not like you can't ever have junk food again, you just have to limit it to a treat, a once or twice per week thing. And honestly, it makes it much more enjoyable that way.

Now I want to talk a little about my anorexia. My weight loss journey came to anorexia. This is because it was an eating disorder I'd had for a long time. I did not see a trainer or dietician, and I consciously decided to push myself too far. I consciously decide to eat less and exercise more when I am starving. This is not something that just happens because someone is eating at 1200cals. It happens because you have an eating disorder which you are born with. Saying people who eat 1200cals of healthy food a day and exercise right are "anorexic" is so fucking insulting to everyone involved. It's ableist and ignorant. 1200cals is also a pretty generous amount for anorexic ppl to eat. That's close to a binge in ED standards, so that should give you a reference for how offbase saying 1200cals is "anorexic" is.

My anorexia is healthy habits pushed into eating disorder territory. I eat healthy, yes, but I don't eat enough. I exercise, yes, but I often push myself too far when I'm already lacking energy. The advice I give people for health is correct, and I'm never going to go around saying "eat less than 1200cals" as weightloss advice. Eat less, sure, but there's a limit. Calorie counting is a good thing to do, tracking your macros and nutrients is good. But I do it too much.

I know what's healthy, a lot of ppl with restrictive and purgative EDs do. People with EDs can give some awesome health advice, we just can't follow it because we have a mental disorder. Believe it or not people with EDs discussing their EDs are not "pro-ana", pointing out that anorexia and people with anorexia are real and not some boogeyman you use to justify not losing weight and eating healthy is not pro-ana. Anorexia existing is not pro-ana and anorexics being anorexic has nothing to do with fatphobia.

this post is a rambling mess but i rly had to get some stuff clear on how I feel abt this stuff because it's getting concerning how much unhealthy shit, and then straight up ableist shit, that the fat acceptance crowd spews out.

A little exercise won't kill you, eating healthy won't kill you. You are not sentenced to ugly plus size fashion and joint pain and being out of breath for the rest of your life. Leave the Healthy at Every Size death cult and join the Health at Every Size movement. Let the doctor take your weight (it IS medically necessary). acknowledge that you are obese and it is affecting your health. It's scary but it can be the start of a new, healthy beginning. It was for me.

Losing 15kg has been the best thing in my life. Sure, the anorexia is there enjoying it for one reason. But the reason I truly enjoy it is because I've discovered what a healthier body feels like. I've discovered the joys of exercise, I've discovered the joys of eating healthy. I can fit nice clothes now. And I'm still overweight! I'm 66kg, that's 4kg away from the barest minimum acceptable healthy bmi. But I feel so so much better. I look better. I have a jawline! Good skin! Energy! It didn't fix me but it sure made me a hell of a lot better.

Please please try and eat healthy, eat an appropriate amount, go for walks. It's so so good, and if you do it right you WILL lose weight. You'll live past 50. You'll get to explore the world in a way you couldn't when going up stairs had you out of breath. You'll fit into that nice skirt you've been looking at. Your skin will clear up. You'll have energy and your mental health will improve.

It's so so fucking worth it to put effort into your health, like I cannot emphasise this enough. Please do it, I wish I could tell myself this when I was binging on junk because the FA crowd told me it was valid to comfort eat until I hurt.

[kyber-crystal]

Maybe It’s Meant To Be

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Words: ~3.7k

Summary: Sometimes, love finds people in unexpected ways. In this case, fate has extra special plans for America’s golden boy and one of SHIELD’s best agents in history. And you know there’s no running away from fate once she’s set out your futures for you. 

Warnings: mentions of violence and blood, angst, and once again, soft steve :)

A/N: I haven’t attempted a soulmate AU in over a year. this is one of my fav works but it’s really poorly written rip. The age gap between you and Steve is ~3 years. 2017 AU where they made up after the Accords :) Steve’s back with his WS look bc that suit was hot af

Tags: @pies-writes-and-more​ this is for you! THANK YOU FOR ALWAYS BEING SO ACTIVE ON MY BLOG AND FOR YOUR SWEET AND SUPER ENCOURAGING WORDS. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH. AND @marvelsswansong BECAUSE YOU'RE MY IDOL AND I LOOK UP TO YOU YOU'RE AMAZING

Soulmates.

You'd heard plenty about them growing up. Seeing your parents' perfect relationship blossom over the years piqued your interest, and for the longest time, your only wish was to find someone who could love you with their whole heart and soul and mind, like the way your Mom and Dad loved each other.

Unfortunately, as all stories must come to an end, love stories had to find their ending. And not all of them ended on a high note.

Their jobs should've kept them apart from the beginning. Your mother was head surgeon at one of the best hospitals in Brooklyn, and your father was head of SHIELD's navy division. Constantly out and about, they were rarely granted any time to rest. Yet they still found a way to make things work; and it all started because of a run-in at a café around the corner.

Then when you were fifteen, you got word that your father had been deployed overseas again, but this time, he wasn't coming back.

You had to stand there and watch your mother slowly fall apart, breaking down a little more each day until she fell gravely ill. A mere week after her diagnosis of cardiomyopathy, she passed away in her sleep.

A person's soulmark didn't appear at a specific time. It could show up at any point in their lives, when the Gods believed the time was right for them. When those Gods felt the time was right for you to find out who it was, you'd feel a slight tingle where the mark was etched into your skin.

Some people didn't receive the soulmark at all. Along with this came a sense of freedom to fall in love with whoever they pleased, but often times it would end in a loveless relationship. But they were additionally granted the ability of being able to carry on by themselves.

If your soulmate got injured in any way, you would feel the same pain that they endured. And if they died, you would carry a weight around with you for the rest of your life that slowly progressed into a disease. So ultimately, those left in the world without their soulmate would also die in the end, further proving the claim of humans being unable to live without love.

One by one, you watched your friends find their match. They would excited come up to you, goofy grins on their faces as they showed you their marks. You were happy for them in the beginning, of course. But as years went by, and you passed adulthood with still no sign of your designated soulmark, you slowly began losing hope. There was no point in looking forward to the future when you watched one fall apart before your very eyes.

Maybe it was because of your job. None of the Avengers had received their soulmarks either, asides from Tony and Pepper. But they were an exception. Everyone could see it coming from the day they first met, judging by the way they lovingly gazed at each other from across the room. It was a match made in heaven.

You believed that maybe, just maybe, you were destined to be alone. So when you woke up one morning with the burn mark on your wrist, you were taken completely by surprise.

"Hey, Tony? Bruce?" you asked, walking into the lab with a frown. "I need to ask you guys a quick question."

"Ask away, Killer," Tony nodded, using the nickname he'd given you years ago when you first joined the initiative. "What's on your mind?"

"So, um..." you fiddled with the sleeve of your sweatshirt for a moment, before pulling it up to reveal the mark, "this happened."

"That's a soulmark," he stated.

"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock," you rolled your eyes. "But why would it appear now? I don't see any sign of me meeting them anytime soon."

"When did it appear?"

"I don't know. I woke up this morning and saw it."

"Let me take a look at that," Bruce carefully took ahold of your wrist, squinting as he adjusted his glasses to peer at the mark, "huh. So it appeared last night...have you felt any side-effects?"

"Not that I know of yet, no..."

"If you start feeling any severe symptoms, I can prescribe you some medication to deal with the pain, though I doubt that's going to happen. In the meantime, we need to figure out who this could be."

"Imagine if it was someone who already died, and I'm slowly dying right now," you joked.

"No, if that were to be true, you'd be lying in a hospital bed right now."

"Does the symbol have any specific meaning?"

"That I'm not so sure about," Tony shrugged.

Bruce was silent as he began typing away for a bit, before turning the screen over to you.

"I've checked out over a dozen different sites about this, and..."

"And what?"

"Well...once both people discover their mark, they have a week to find each other before both of them disappear off the face of the earth, forever."

"Sounds like a damn time bomb to me," you muttered. "What the hell? I thought that the point of this whole thing was the gods trying to push us with someone else! Not the other way around!"

"I don't know, Y/N," Bruce sighed. "Feel free to do your own research, but everything I've read up on so far says the same thing."

"So basically, what you're telling me is I'm gonna die if I don't find out who the hell has this same mark as I do," you repeated.

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Well, I'll have to worry about that later. Got a briefing with Cap, Bucky, and Wilson in five. Fury's gonna kill me if I'm late again," you breathed out as you tugged your hoodie's sleeve back down. "See ya."

"Agent Y/N," Nick Fury gave you a curt nod as you burst into the meeting room, breathless. "I hope you slept well last night."

"Of course."

"I need you four to track down a weapons dealer in Skagway," he explained as he handed Steve a black manila file folder, "shut down the base, download the intel onto the flashdrive. You’ll be staying at a safe house in Juneau afterwards for about a week to keep things on the down-low in case something goes wrong. Simple in-and-out job."

"When are we leaving?" Sam questioned.

"You're taking off in half an hour. Suit up."

You sighed. Finding your soulmate would just have to wait, then.

...

"Y/N, look out!"

You quickly whipped around and narrowly missed a bullet whizzing past you, as Steve tugged you around the corner, an arm wrapped firmly around your torso as he hid you both behind his shield.

You gasped as you felt a sharp pain in your chest, and Steve immediately pulled away from you in alarm, gripping your shoulders worriedly. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” you panted, trying to steady your rapid breathing, “I’m fine. But we’re gonna have to split up from here if we wanna get the job done faster.”

“Y/N, I can’t-”

“Steve,” you interrupted, the firm tone of voice making him immediately shut up. “I can handle myself just fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure! Go find Sam and Bucky, and I’ll meet you guys by the rendezvous point as soon as I’m done. Okay?”

“Alright.” He looked around for a moment before stepping away, as if he was hesitant to leave you on your own.

Ignoring the slight ache in your chest, you parted ways, darting down the hall with your guns up and ears alert. 

From there, it was easy to fall into your usual routine. Keep all eyes and ears open; don’t hesitate, shoot on sight unless ordered otherwise. If necessary, engage powers but if not, use your fists or bullets. The mantra repeated itself over and over in your head as you followed through with your job.

You hid behind a tower of wooden crates, back pressed up against the steel walls. “Sam. Status update?”

“Controls room with Barnes, disabling all security systems. Steve’s retrieving intel from the north wing. You?”

“Outside on standby,” you murmured, keeping a finger pressed to your ear. Three technicians were loading equipment onto crates as the other six stood guard several yards away. “I make nine hostiles on the load dock straight ahead at twelve o’clock. Three dozen in total scattered around the area. Most likely preparing for an overseas arms trade. We’ll have to stop them.”

“And...done. We’re heading your way,” Bucky reported. “Be there in three.”

“Roger that.”

Exactly three minutes and two seconds later Bucky showed up, with Steve and Sam in tow. You came out from your hiding spot and began making your way towards the loading dock where the agents were stationed. They were quick to stop what they were doing and noticed the four of you approaching, whipping their snipers out and proceeding to open fire.

...

Your breath came out in white wisps of fog as you got caught in between a fistfight with one of the three dozen men on the docks, the freezing cold slowing all your movements and making them feel more sluggish than usual. If it weren’t for the thick material of your suit and your enhancements, you would’ve succumbed to the harsh weather hours ago.

The man captured you into a tight headlock with his thick arm but despite your frostbite you were too fast; you quickly whipped around and grabbed his wrist, twisting it to the side. His eyes widened slightly as he cried out in pain, the sickening crunch of bone echoing through the frigid Alaskan air as you swiftly dodged each one of moves as he attempted to come at you, countering with a sharp right hook to his jaw. 

His body slumped to the ground with a thump. 

“Why the hell do you even carry around a sniper if your fists do all the work for you?” Sam yelled over the cacophony as he released Redwing, swooping down from the rooftops. “Seriously, you don’t need guns! You’re strong enough as it is!”

“I prefer versatility in fights, Wilson!” you yelled back, grunting as you dodged a blow to the stomach, sweeping out your attacker’s feet from underneath him as his head smacked against the wall, before sliding down to the ground with a dull thud. 

“Y/N, look out-” Bucky called out, but it was too late. You didn’t get to hear his warning in time before you felt something cold and hard hit your lower abdomen. A yell of pain ripped through your throat as you felt a sticky warmth spread across your skin, your knees hitting the ground as you clutched the wound.

At that exact moment, Steve felt a sharp pain flare up his side as well. “Shit,” he cursed to himself, “Buck, cover me so I can get to her.”

You were barely clinging on to life by the time he reached you. Your breathing was heavy and labored, your eyes beginning to roll back as you struggled to stay awake. Everything hurt. Your arms and legs felt like they were weighed down with bricks. You couldn’t move. You couldn’t open your mouth to scream, either - you had no energy left to do so.

“Come on, Y/N, stay with me, please stay with me,” he muttered as he began carefully applying pressure to your wound. You let out a hiss of pain at the same time he did. “Just hang in there for me, please. Sam’s getting the Quinjet ready. We’re gonna get out of here in just a few minutes, okay? Please don’t die on me.”

“Look, if I don’t make it-”

“Don’t say that,” he spoke in between clenched teeth while fighting back tears of his own, “you’re not going to die. Not today, not tomorrow, and certainly not on my watch.”

“Steve…” you croaked out, the stinging from the wound almost becoming impossible to bear. Your eyes were becoming heavier by the second, your body throbbing painfully now that all the adrenaline had worn off. It was a struggle just to take in a single breath and to stay awake. "I'm so tired, I can't do this anymore..."

He disappeared from your line of sight as your began seeing spots at the edges of your vision momentarily, before reappearing and pulling you into his lap, trying to put pressure on the area of injury again in an attempt to stem the bleeding. But it didn’t seem to work. There was so much blood. So much of it, coming out so fast. There was no way you’d last out here for longer than ten minutes before bleeding to death.

"Stay with me..." he murmured as he looked up around him. "Hang in there for a few more minutes, please…Damn it, Sam, how much longer is this gonna take? Y/N’s down. We gotta get her to the safe house as soon as we can. She’s bleeding out.”

"Three minutes, tops. I’m circling the perimeter as an extra precaution," Sam replied. "You guys hang tight for a sec."

"We don't have time!" he raised his voice. "Just hurry the hell over here."

"I'm so sorry," you choked out before going into a coughing fit, blood dripping down your lips and chin much to Steve’s alarm. "I'm sorry for everything, I'm sorry for being reckless and not keeping a look ou—"

"Shhh, it's okay," he soothed, "There’s nothing to be sorry about. Just save your energy for later, okay? You're gonna be just fine."

"Hold my hand," you begged hoarsely.

"I already am," the super-soldier answered, but his look shifted to that of an alarmed one when he realized you couldn't feel it. "Y/N—"

"I'm cold," you said weakly, already feeling your limbs grow heavy and numb and your vision growing blurrier with each passing second. "I'm so tired, Cap, I just wanna sleep—"

"No no no, please don't leave me," he pleaded as he felt his head begin to spin as well. Where had the sudden wave of dizziness come from? "Hang in there for a little longer, please, I l—"

You didn’t get to hear the rest of his sentence before your eyes fluttered shut and everything went dark.

...

When you came to, your throat felt dry and raw, the metallic taste of dried blood around your lips and chin overwhelming your senses as you adjusted your eyes to the harsh bright lights streaming into the room. It looked like you were in some sort of antique coastal house, strangely void of belongings with the only decoration being a plain floral calendar hung on the wall opposite you, above the fireplace.

You were still in your suit, but your wound had been treated and wrapped up in a thick set of bandages. The couch you were on was old but extremely comfortable, so you found yourself not wanting to sit up at the same time you wanted to get up and look around.

The blinds were drawn shut, but the sunlight still managed to shine through. It was light outside, but you  weren’t sure what time it really was. The walls were a dull grey, and if you listened hard enough you could hear the faint ticking of a nearby clock and probably Bucky or Sam talking on the phone upstairs with someone in hushed whispers.

You finally pulled yourself up into a sitting position, glancing around at your surroundings. Someone quietly entered the living room and you looked up to see Steve. His shoulders sagged in relief upon seeing that you were awake.

“Hey,” his voice came out so softly it took both of you by surprise. You moved over slightly to make room for him to sit. “How are you feeling?”

“Like crap,” you groaned lightly, feeling a dull ache in your stomach where you’d been hit. “But other than that, I’m fine. What about you? Did you get hurt anywhere?”

“Body aches that come and go, but I’m fine. It isn’t your place to be worrying about me right now though, Y/N. You got shot.”

The curtains fluttered and a cool breeze rushed in, making you shiver. Steve took notice and stood up to go light up the fireplace, then sat back down and wrapped the fleece blanket around your body. You let out a small sigh of contentment. “Thanks.”

“Are you sure you’re alright? You knocked out for over twenty-six hours .”

“I’m fine, Steve, just tired...hey, how’s Bucky and Sam?”

“Sam’s upstairs radioing Fury on the mission status. Bucky’s taking a nap in the guest room.”

“Oh. Okay. So, I-” you were interrupted by a sharp stabbing sensation in your wrist. “Ow. Fuck.”

“Language,” he joked lightly, but when he saw the obvious pained expression on your face, his face fell. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just...I get those random pains from time to time. I don’t know why, but...they’ve gotten worse since we took off for Skagway and then came here...”

“I’m so sorry,” he apologized, eyes glassy with unshed tears, “I should’ve kept a closer watch over you. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s mine...I should’ve watched my own back better.”

You both fell into an awkward silence for several minutes before he spoke up again, the realization finally dawning on him. 

"Y/N."

"What?"

"Your wrist."

Your brows furrowed in confusion as you looked down and saw the star glowing brightly, sending a white-hot pain down your arm. "What about it?"

Steve pulled at his shirt's sleeve for a few seconds before lifting it up to reveal the same exact symbol.

"We're soulmates," you breathed out, the realization hitting you like a flash flood.

"Yeah, I guess we are, huh," he smiled softly.

“W-when did yours appear?”

“Monday afternoon.”

“Mine appeared in the morning...I showed it to Tony and Bruce and they said I had a week to find who it was or both me and my soulmate would die. So I guess we got lucky, huh? Only four more days, then...”

“Yeah, we did,” he exhaled. “I’m glad you’re the one. I can’t imagine living out the rest of my life with anyone else.”

“But Peggy...”

“She found her soulmate decades ago,” he explained, “which explained why our relationship was so short-lived. I didn’t expect to find mine...especially not after coming out of the ice. Maybe I had this coming from the get-go, I’d wonder...”

“Then how come they’d appear now?” Your brows furrowed together in confusion. “I don’t get it. We’ve known each other for years.”

“Because it was only this year that I accepted it.”

“Accepted what?”

“That I’d fallen in love with you, and I kept that inside for far too long.”

“You...what?” You were officially rendered speechless. 

“Yeah,” he chuckled lightly, face breaking into a gorgeous, million-dollar grin before turning serious again, lowering his voice. “Y/N, I’m in love with you. You are my infinity and I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you. You’re my present and my future, and I hate that I couldn’t see that sooner. I should’ve known from the start that Peggy and I wouldn’t work out, but I never understood why...until I met you. I didn’t believe in the concept of soulmates because I felt I was undeserving of that love, but then you came along...and I started hoping and praying I’d find someone who’d love me as much as I love you. So now that I know for sure it’s you, that it always has been and always will be...I couldn’t be more happier that you’re my soulmate.”

You didn’t realize you were crying until he reached forward to brush your hair away from your face and wipe the stray tears that fell, before wrapping an arm around you and gently pulling you towards him.

“God, I made you cry, I’m so sorry,” he choked on a sob of his own. “I’m the worst.”

“I’m not mad at you, Steve,” you sniffed as you wiped your nose with your sleeve, and looked up and cracked a small grin. “You’re just so cheesy.”

“Can I kiss you?” he whispered, so quiet you almost didn’t catch what he said. 

“You can kiss me any day, Captain,” you smiled.

“I love you more than you know.”

“I know. I love you too.”

He then brought a hand up to cup your face, allowing his thumb to lightly skim against your cheek, his warm breath fanning against your skin.

When his lips met yours, it was like you were turning back the clock. Everything in the world stopped and held its breath,  and all the hurt, all the sadness and heartache and pain bottled up inside your body, washed away.

...

BONUS

“HOLY SHIT, Y’ALL ARE SOULMATES?”

The sound of Sam’s screeching made you finally break apart for air. You could’ve been like that for two minutes, two hours, or two weeks, you weren’t sure.

You blushed and quickly averted your gaze. 

Steve’s face was as red as a tomato. “Yeah. We are.”

“I KNEW IT! I KNEW SOMETHING WAS GONNA HAPPEN BETWEEN THEM SOON! PAY UP, BARNES! YOU OWE ME TWENTY BUCKS.”

“Come on, man,” Bucky groaned, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. “We’re gonna head back home soon, anyways! And you’re not even poor.”

“A bet’s a bet, Barnes.”

“Of course you two bet on it,” you groaned. “Classic Sambucky activity.”

...

NINE MONTHS LATER

“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride, Captain Rogers,” Fury announced, a rare smile gracing his normally stoic features. 

Steve did his best not to break down sobbing as he slid the ring onto your finger. With the backdrop of the waves gently crashing against the shore and the sun slowly sinking lower and lower into the horizon, he leaned down and cupped your face in his hands, passionately pressing his lips to yours. Your soulmarks glowed brightly in tandem, lighting up in a brilliant gold hue. 

Needless to say, there wasn’t a single dry eye in the house. 

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Why is it that people seem to always support trans women more than trans men?

 Lee says:

If you’re part of an online forum community that is primarily transfeminine, for example, then there’s going to be a lot of resources for transfeminine people.

But if you’re part of an online forum community that is primarily transmasculine, for example, then there’s going to be a lot of resources for transmasculine people. 

And just as there are particular online spaces and communities that tend to be predominated by a certain group, there are also IRL ones that are primarily transmasculine or primarily transfeminine even if they are not explicitly defined as such. 

If you feel like you aren’t being supported enough in the space you’re currently in, see if you can find a community that does focus around the resources you’re looking for! 

As an example- you may have noticed that the transmasculine post-op community on Tumblr is pretty small. There definitely are multiple bloggers out there, and I think I actually follow all of them, but this isn’t really a thriving hub of phalloplasty information or support, or a large community of transmasculine folks who are post-op and post-transition (Thanks, Tumblr NSFW ban!).

So instead, I seek out the spaces where the community I want to be a part of actually is gathering. Now I’m part of many different transmasculine lower surgery groups on Facebook (over 20 of em lol), I’ve attended IRL transmasculine lower surgery support group meetings in person, and now I’m in two different Zoom-based transmasculine bottom surgery support groups. 

I also believe that if you want to see more of a particular thing, you should be a part of putting that thing out there! So I still maintain my transition sideblog here on Tumblr, where I will eventually document my phallo when I get stage 1 in May. And that’s how I support the transmasculine community, in my own way. So if you want to see more supportive posts for transmasculine folks, start typing!

We also have to remember that uplifting transfeminine doesn’t automatically occur at the expense of support for transmasculine people. We aren’t trying to tear each other down, so being resentful of the transfeminine community for the people who support them isn’t a good look. Transfeminine people can never have “too much” support!

I do think that there are certain spaces online that tend to focus on positivity and support for transfeminine folks, and there’s nothing wrong with that- again, yes, transfeminine people do deserve support! Transfeminine people often face the brunt of society’s violent transphobia, and it’s important that we recognize the way that trans women specifically are targeted more than other groups are. 

Trans women are often hypervisible and a lot of transphobic movements are aimed at them as a result; bathroom bills because transphobes don’t want “men” in women’s bathrooms, banning trans athletes because transphobes don’t want “men” to take over women’s teams, trans people being banned from gendered homeless shelters because transphobes don’t want “men” to sleep in the same room as women, and so on. When you listen to any of these politicians who support these gross things, you’ll hear them constantly talk about the “danger” that trans women pose (while insisting on gendering them as “men” and refusing to recognize that they’re even women). Trans men aren’t even an afterthought.

Being culturally hypervisible in the media means you’re the target of a lot of hate and the recipient of a lot of support, which is all happening at the same time. On the other hand, the transmasculine community at large is less visible in the media which means we often slip under the radar as a community which of course does tie into the erasure of the community. Transmasculine people more often slip under the radar on a personal level too, because many transmasculine people are able to pass by at least 5 years on testosterone and many choose to go stealth as soon as they’re able to.

That doesn’t mean that all transmasculine people can pass or want to pass, or that transmasculine people don’t face transphobia and violence either, or that the vitriol targeting trans women doesn’t invalidate us as well or affect our rights too, or that we shouldn’t get to share our experiences or ask for support. 

We can and should talk about transmasculine people’s experiences as well, and transmasculine voices shouldn’t be erased. Studies have shown that suicide attempt rate for trans boys is approximately 20.9% higher than it is for trans girls, for example, and there are many similar statistics showing that trans men struggle in many ways and face a lot of discrimination, which of course deserves acknowledgement.

Experiencing discrimination and subsequent mental health struggles isn’t something that should be glossed over, yet there are many pseduo-progressive folks in the LGBTQ/feminist communities whose posts can sometimes come across as “men are bad and trans men are men so they’re bad!” When you point out that there are plenty of marginalized men out there who need support, people are quick to say “Well, I’ll support you for being trans but I don’t need to support you because you’re a man since men have privilege and therefore perpetuate oppression!” But in the case of trans men, supporting someone for being trans is the same thing as supporting them in being a man, you can’t separate the two.

And you can spend all day talking about in what situations transmasculine people have access to male privilege and in what conditions the privilege applies and so on, but that is a separate conversation from the point here, which is everyone deserves support and that includes trans men (and gay men, and disabled men, and Black men, and Indigenous men, and Asian men, and so on). 

Things like body-shaming men for having neckbeards or small penises is seen as okay even though body-shaming women for having body hair or having small breasts is recognized as misogynistic. Sometimes folks respond by saying something like “you can’t oppress your oppressor” which... makes no sense in this context. Making people feel that their bodies are bad goes against the whole body-positive feminist movement, and that’s true no matter which people you think you’re targeting. 

It’s also pretty obvious that being a man doesn’t inherently make you a bad person, but a lot of the hate and anger directed at men (whether it’s posted as a joke or said seriously by someone who went through trauma) can make it difficult for trans men to recognize that they’re men because they don’t want to become the thing everyone hates. 

So how do we navigate allowing marginalized people to vent about groups who have privilege without causing collateral damage to other oppressed people? 

Some people have tried to solve it by saying “I hate only cis men, not trans men!” but then of course you’ve created a new issue which is the arbitrary distinguishment between a cis man and a trans man. A trans man can be just as misogynistic as a cis man, and being trans doesn’t mean anything about who you are as a person, all it says is something about the gender you were assigned when you were born.

When you say that you only hate cis men, you’re implying that you don’t hate trans men because you think they’re different than cis men in some way in their thoughts/behavior/actions which is a transphobic assumption. 

Or you’re saying you know that trans men and cis men can be identical in their thoughts/behavior/actions because they’re all men, so the reason you don’t hate trans men is ... ?? because they had certain genitals at birth (which they may not have anymore) ?? And that’s also transphobic because it’s saying you hate people solely because of their bodies which they can’t always control or change and implies having a particular type of body is morally wrong somehow or that your body makes you a bad person.

When someone makes a point of telling a trans man that they hate men, it’s sometimes a deliberate transphobic tactic used to make the person feel like having a male gender identity is inherently bad and makes you bad because it’s who you are, so the only way to become a good person is to not be a man which means not being transgender. And this is some how TERFs try and convince trans teens who were AFAB to re-identify as women instead of embracing being men. It’s hard to embrace being something that people have told you is problematic so people try to repress their feelings and ignore who they are.

Yet folks who don’t say “I hate all men” and instead say “the patriarchy sucks but it’s okay to be a man and not all men are bad” have found that statement controversial too. 

Even that phrase, “not all men,” is a red flag because it’s primarily used by the “men’s rights” folks who try and defend their misogyny and push their anti-feminist agenda while denying the ways that they personally benefit from the system. All men benefit from the system of patriarchy if they are recognized as men by the system, but that doesn’t mean every individual man is personally responsible for actively perpetuating oppression or that every man is a bad person.

So when someone points out the ways that men are taught to hate themselves by people who are constantly bashing on men in hurtful ways, or the struggles that men face (even if they aren’t struggles unique to men), there are people who just freak out because they think that acknowledging this is in some way trying to say that men can’t be oppressors, or that pointing it out is somehow delegitimizing women’s experiences or part of a pushback against women’s rights because the MRAs have tried to stake a claim over the entire topic.

So any nuanced conversation about ways that we actually can support men and break down oppression and uplift marginalized folks has been silenced because this toxic group has dominated the conversation and nobody wants to accidentally seem like they support those things, so they don’t support anything that focuses on men at all.

Similarly, when someone posts about something that affects trans men people (usually cis people TBH) often will respond with “trans women have it worse with that issue, and everything else too!” which isn’t a helpful response because while it’s important to recognize the way that trans women face multiple axes of oppression, uplifting trans women in a way that makes it impossible for another marginalized group to have a conversation doesn’t help anyone. It’s okay for some posts to not be about or for trans women without starting to play the Oppression Olympics games because transmasculine people also need support and space and allowing transmasculine people to talk about their experiences doesn’t mean that transfeminine people are being ignored.

All that being said, I would argue that people definitely don’t always support trans women more than trans men, and I wouldn’t even say that people usually do so. It very much depends on the space you’re in. While I do believe that there are a lot of positivity/supportive posts about trans women on Tumblr, this is, in many ways, a direct reaction to counter the large volume of hate that’s also actively being directed at trans women on Tumblr. And while there are plenty of “love trans women!” posts, there is also an issue with the lack of practical resources and material support for trans women because most of the content does not go beyond the surface level heart-emoji type post.

So in what I’ve noticed on Tumblr specifically (as this varies depending on the platform you’re using and the space you’re in), there can be more vocal (aka performative) support for trans women but it mostly tends to focus on their identities saying they’re valid women and so on but doesn’t give them much information or material support or anything else that I would deem a useful resource, whereas there might be less support for trans men in terms of “gender identity positivity for being male” but there’s more practical resources and information that they can use to aid in their transition.

Again, whatever you do, don’t complain that transfeminine people have too much support- that’s not the same thing as saying that you’d like more support for trans men struggling with X issue.

And yes, while we do have many things in common, there are some differences in the struggles the community faces and the experiences we have, and it’s okay to want to talk with other folks who are going through the same thing. That doesn’t mean that you don’t care about transfeminine people or that you think they should have a smaller platform or something, it just means you’d like support for your identity and transition (which is wholly unrelated to how much support there is or isn’t available for them).

So if you are looking for more support for trans men and feel like you aren’t getting what you need in the online or IRL spaces you’re currently moving in, you should try finding the spaces that are meant to be supportive communities for trans men and join them, whether they’re specific blogs, Facebook groups, Discord servers, or in-person/on-Zoom support groups, and also do what you can to create the support you want to see for your community!

[radicallyreidentified]

Nazi go home and stop hating the lgbtq+

This will be the only hate anon that I’ll reply to because I keep seeing radfems being compared to nazis so I want to break down why people who do this are wrong. So here’s your clout lol anon 😌 hope you felt better after sending that 🤷‍♀️

https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/the-nazi-rise-to-power/the-early-years-of-the-nazi-party/what-were-hitlers-ideas/

I’ll use this link for reference.

“[...] the Nazi Party held extremely nationalist, racist and antisemitic views.”

na·tion·al·ist

/ˈnaSH(ə)nələst/

noun

a person who strongly identifies with their own nation and vigorously supports its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.

First off, radfems aren’t a nation. Did you know that radfems come from ALL OVER THE WORLD. Also radfems hold different beliefs and you can’t identify which interest is “vigorously supported”. Radfems are for women only. Yet, they don’t support every women and her decisions so nope on that either. Radfems may disagree with the trans rights movement and exclude trans women. HOWEVER, wanting to female-only spaces is NOT the same as trying to eradicate every other nation and trying to kill those who disagree. There is no evidence that supports radfems are violent enough to kill anyone.

Racist

Now there are definitely some racist radfems no doubt. But also fun fact, a MAJORITY of the radfem movement is from people of different ethnicities that are not just white!! Most South Korean feminists are radfems. We have plenty of Jewish radfems (who you’re also calling nazis btw). We have many black radfems and the list goes on. I personally am a white radfem so I don’t want to speak over black radfems who may want to add to this but radical feminism in itself is not racist because it has nothing to do with race. And, most radfems agree that racism+sexism is much harder to deal with.

Antisemetic

Did I mention there were Jewish radfems? Oh yeah, I guess I did. Also did you know that fun fact, a good majority of radfems, like myself, don’t hate Jewish people. We do not think they’re the typical stereotypes hitler encouraged. A majority of radfems do not wish hostility or have prejudices against Jewish people.

“Hitler had a racist world view. He believed that people could be separated into a hierarchy of different races, where some races were superior and others were inferior.”

Now, radfems also don’t believe in a hierarchy of different races, religions or even sexuality. A majority of radfems don’t believe in any type of hierarchy as a matter of fact. If we did, it would then prove in some shape or form that men are better than women or vice versa. It, at its core, goes against radfem beliefs.

“Hitler also wanted to rid Germany of the disabled, homosexuals, Roma and Sinti, and other minorities that did not fit in to his idea of an Aryan race.”

Oh yeah, did you know that there are probably millions of radfems that are homosexual women? Or at the very least, same sex attracted? I know I myself am a lesbian. So to say I hate the “lgbtq+” is funny because I’m actually a part of it and I grew to accept myself and support other female homosexuals. I also used to be transgender and I suffer from dysphoria and actually went through some medical transitioning. Hitler would have KILLED ME. The nazi party (that you claim I’m a part of) would deem me “not fit for the aryan race”.

There are also plenty of disabled radfems. And they also talk a lot about these things. Hands down, the nazi party would kill most of the radfems here.

There’s more but this post is getting long enough and I think I made my point. Calling me a nazi because I am critical of the transgender movement and the MOGAI community is not the same as being a nazi.

So if you’re looking to insult me at least pick one that isn’t racist or antisemetic. Because you’re spitting on the faces of 6 million people who have suffered and died in horrible ways.

[tenebriscollective]

A Response

First, before we do this, we’re going to take the liberty of posting your entire response to our review that we left. However, I do hope you are aware that we could absolutely tell that you didn’t bother reading through the whole thing. As a lot of what you say in this response is already denied in the review you were responding to. For the sake of those who don’t like long posts, however, we will be putting everything beyond this point under a read more.

The link to the site, so that you can read our original review: https://disboard.org/server/213915266554396672

This is The Megane System’s response, in full. Which we will be taking parts of to go through for our response piece by piece. One can’t say we cut context when we provide the full response and the link back to the server page to show the original review, hm?

The response: 

Posting words here instead of talking to me directly like an adult is why I'm not the dangerous one. Really don't care or want anything to do with any of you who value publicly airing dirty laundry as opposed to just talking to me so you can feed your ego feeling like a 'good person'. Sprinkling it with words that sound like understanding mean nothing when you shut down normal communication methods. This kind of cancel culture is emotionally manipulative, predatory and has endangered lives. Life isn't clean and squeaky, neither are you and neither am I. If you can't get your head out your ass long enough to realise this then enjoy your delusions of purity but I assure you everyone you have ever met and ever will meet has had dark thoughts of violence, disturbing imagery and vile emotions. It's part of life, denying that is denying life. I've never 'defended someone sexualising a little alter in the server' and I'm still baffled where the hell that came from?? Everything else was scraped out of personal DMs and my personal spaces I used to manage my BPD away from public spaces and only where people I thought I could trust could see (obviously I couldn't lol) but that I have zero recollection of I think you guys are just having fun giving me horns and trying to deny me any consideration of changing or improving. Because that's what this thinking does. It labels people permanently as 'BAD PEOPLE', and they can't ever grow beyond that. It makes their lives feel worthless, and they themselves beyond saving, and so they end up repeating the same mistakes, because no one expects anything more from them. I know this because I've always tried to break this in how I run my server. With the belief that anyone can become something better, that anyone who believes anything, holds any views can be helped to grow and function better among others. That's why I allow people with 'bad views' around me. That's why I talk to them, that's why I actually spend time treating people as people and not punching bags like you do. You do not help the problems in the world, you merely cement them, so I will never run my server how you want me to, because it is wrong and I won't cave to a bunch of bullies.

We are going to start off to state first addressing the very start of this. But put simply, Megane System (we will be referring to you collectively, since we have a system member who is also called Reiji, and don’t want people to get mixed up), we were never under any obligation to contact you directly. Framing it as if we’re the dangerous one because we didn’t do that is quite manipulative, and honestly quite ironic. Given you never gave us even a seconds moment to communicate before evicting us out of the server when we were still a staff member. We were trying to communicate, but were simply being ignored. The fact that you try now to weaponize this lack of communication as a method to somehow disprove and dismiss our review is honestly hilarious.

Really don't care or want anything to do with any of you who value publicly airing dirty laundry as opposed to just talking to me so you can feed your ego feeling like a 'good person'.

Airing dirty laundry implies that the accusations we outlined in that review weren’t the degree of seriousness that they were. This is honestly also the worst attempt at downplaying what we said we’ve ever seen, but it does show that you clearly didn’t read our review in its entirety, despite there being parts at the end specifically addressed to you and Alec.

Sprinkling it with words that sound like understanding mean nothing when you shut down normal communication methods. This kind of cancel culture is emotionally manipulative, predatory and has endangered lives.

Again, we were under no obligation to use normal communication methods, especially when normal communication methods in the staff room were completely shut down while you maligned everyone in the staff because we didn’t like that you had returned so suddenly and without warning, and knew that the sudden return would not mean good things for those you hurt, who were, at the time, on the server. And honestly, I think it’s emotionally manipulative that you continuously deflected questions while we were in the server about your drama and tried to frame it as something incredibly small, inconsequential, and petty. 

Life isn't clean and squeaky, neither are you and neither am I.

We and anyone who has ever called you out never claimed to be. You made this assumption because we called out your behavior which crossed lines that should never have been crossed in the first place.

If you can't get your head out your ass long enough to realise this then enjoy your delusions of purity but I assure you everyone you have ever met and ever will meet has had dark thoughts of violence, disturbing imagery and vile emotions. It's part of life, denying that is denying life.

We are well aware and do not have our head in our ass. But I have never met anyone but you and other awful people who would not only have, but vocalize in detail those thoughts to other people, whether those people were the target of those thoughts or not. I’ve met plenty who write journals irl to get it out, who draw to get it out, or write whump and angst fanfics in order to vent it out in a manner that doesn’t emotionally hurt anyone or suddenly shove those thoughts onto individuals who may not be mentally or emotionally prepared to hear it, even if they have them too or have similarly aligned ones. Again, there was no context that you could ever assign to the screenshot being talked about in this part that would make what you said in anyway ever acceptable, even to those who have intrusive or dark thoughts of violence, disturbing imagery, or vile emotions.

I've never 'defended someone sexualising a little alter in the server' and I'm still baffled where the hell that came from??

We have screenshots and logs that prove the opposite, and I’m sure the person we received them from would not be all that fussed if we asked for them a second time and gave them to either of the blogs that currently have callouts circulating about you. Because you did do this, you may not have recollection of it, but the non-little alters of that system and the one who tried to step in and were stopped by you certainly do.

Everything else was scraped out of personal DMs and my personal spaces I used to manage my BPD away from public spaces and only where people I thought I could trust could see (obviously I couldn't lol) but that I have zero recollection of

And as we stated in our original review, your BPD, your (suspected, but not formally diagnosed) autism, or any other mental illness diagnoses or disorder you may have does not absolve you of the fact that many of the things you did were not okay. Your continued use of “but I have [x mental illness/disability] and was managing it” or “it was personal” will not change our minds on that. We are formally and professionally diagnosed as Autistic, we know  you have attempted to excuse your behavior before by saying you might be autistic yourself. Thereby you were attempting to excuse your shitty behavior with being possibly autistic, and excuse your shitty behavior because you have BPD does not fly. Many of the people with callouts against you or who don’t like you either know someone with, or also have BPD/Autism or whatever other mental illness or disability you’re going to try excusing it with next time.

I think you guys are just having fun giving me horns and trying to deny me any consideration of changing or improving.

Another sign you did not fully read our review, or just plain didn’t believe us due to your own assumptions. As we state in the last part that is specifically addressed to you that we hope you are able to change and improve, that you are able to recognize what you did hurt people and was wrong, and that you rectify and show through your actions that you do that. But downplaying all of this as you are as just drama, or just a facet of “cancel culture”, or whatever other thing that makes it sound less significant does not prove that. And so, as of right now, as we respond to this and surely as you continue with your server and trying to twist things to fit your narrative, you have not shown that you have changed or improved.

Because that's what this thinking does. It labels people permanently as 'BAD PEOPLE', and they can't ever grow beyond that. It makes their lives feel worthless, and they themselves beyond saving, and so they end up repeating the same mistakes, because no one expects anything more from them. I know this because I've always tried to break this in how I run my server. With the belief that anyone can become something better, that anyone who believes anything, holds any views can be helped to grow and function better among others. That's why I allow people with 'bad views' around me. That's why I talk to them, that's why I actually spend time treating people as people and not punching bags like you do.

We don’t treat people like punching bags, no matter their views. We treat people as people, even if we disagree, but if those people do not treat us as people in return, it’s harder to feel empathy when they have consequences slap them in the face. I know you’re referring to our rewritten rules here, and I’m sure you’ve trashed them to make your own again, and stopped cracking down so hard on all the usage of slurs in the server once again. And if cracking down on that and keeping to our word about not allowing those on the server is what you see as treating people not as people, then I don’t know what to tell you. Slurs come inherently from bigotry, no amount of “opposing views” erases that those words come from that. Let alone that there are some views that are simply bigotry dressed up in a political hat.

We did talk to those people, we had debates, and we stepped in when people were getting too heated between each other to be considered a debate. Anyone can become better and improve, anyone can make a change to do so. But you can only do that if you put in the effort, and so far, you haven’t done that. You’re all talk, but you haven’t actually walked the walk.

You do not help the problems in the world, you merely cement them, so I will never run my server how you want me to, because it is wrong and I won't cave to a bunch of bullies.

You mean how we want you to run the server in a way that makes sure it’s not a place that lacks solace and allows bigotry to fester under the guise of different views? Or how we want you to make sure that any system littles currently in that server, if they haven’t left already, are protected so that they aren’t sexualized and that you don’t defend the people sexualizing those littles? Because from how we see it, none of those things particularly make us “bullies” like you claim, they just make us considered a decent person who has proper boundaries on what they will and won’t allow, and someone who’s willing to actually enforce them so that members don’t feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

Anyway, as before, we doubt you’ll read all of this, but if you do, here’s a big notice, right in big big italicized letters:

We won’t be responding again, flail all you want, make a fuss, throw a tantrum that we aren’t going to give you the time of day. Because we honestly don’t care. Because we don’t and never have owed you any of our time.

[deafaq]

Does the Deaf community typically view itself as a subset of the disabled community? I did some googling and saw a lot of discussion of how "Deaf folks don't consider themselves broken or in need of being fixed, and thus aren't disabled." But as a disabled person, I know that many disabled folks don't view themselves as broken either (the social model of disability etc). How does the Deaf community differ from, for example, wheelchair users in this respect?

Hello,

Depends. Its not that every single Deaf individual consider themselves not “disabled”. It very much varies and the opinions are very mixed on this topic.

I myself consider myself disabled and deaf. I do know people who think same and I know people who reject “disability” label.

I will get to the “whys” later, but first - does Deaf community differs from other disabled communities? And the answer is yes. Deaf community differs because we have our own unique language(s). 

Lot of other disabled comunities do have alternative modes of communication which differ from what majority uses to communicate - but these alternative modes of communication are either based on spoken/written language (for example Braille - its a writing system, but you need to know English or some other language to use it) or are not languages at all, but aides/tools. (like using pictures to communicate needs)

However, sign languages are languages with their own grammar, vocabulary, etc and are not connected to spoken languages. Therefore, Deaf people are not only a minority in the sense of disability, but also a linguistic minority. 

And not only language - Deaf people have also a specific culture. While lets say a wheelchair user from birth usually does have a different outlook on life compared to non-disabled person, and different needs re:accomodation, they do share the culture of the non-disabled majority. They use the same greetings, consider similar things polite or not polite, have similar moral values, same cultural background, etc. This doesn’t apply to Deaf people - they consider different things important, use different greetings, have their own stories, jokes, way of conduct. In that sense, Deaf culture is closer to many ethic minorities than to disabled communities. 

As such, there are basically two layers to being deaf - the cultural/linguistic layer and the medical layer. You can be deaf in the medical sense but not in the cultural sense - this happens when someone becomes deaf later in life and/or was brought up in hearing culture. And you can be just “deaf” in the cultural way - this pretty specific issue crops up when Deaf parents have a hearing child. The child doesn’t have hearing loss, yet uses the language and has the culture of deafness. (also faces discrimination based on it)

That’s why the distinction of “deaf” and “Deaf” was created - people who are “deaf” with small d are just people with medical hearing loss. “Deaf” with capital D do have hearing loss, but also their language and culture and differ more from hearing majority. (CODA is a term for someone born into Deaf culture who doesn’t have hearing loss)

So we circle back to the disabled issue. Why do some Deaf people reject it?

For lot of them, the culture and language aspect is much more important than the medical aspect. They never felt they lacked anything or that they were impaired. 

Basically, they subscribed to ableist mindset of the majority - that the “disabled” means lesser, worse, broken. Which they don’t feel like applies to them, because of course they aren’t that, therefore they aren’t disabled. 

Its definitely true that lof of other disabled people don’t subscribe to that either, but the issue kinda is, most Deaf people don’t know that. Because of the language issue, Deaf community is always a bit apart from other disability advocacy, but also events, groups, etc. Most of other disabled people can’t talk to Deaf people and vice versa. And there is also lack of information in their own language - I mean, I chatted to plenty of disabled people on the internet who knew what social model of disability was. I know like, 10 Deaf people out of hundred who would even grasp what that means. (not because they don’t have the inteligence, but because such information isn’t available in their native language)

And you will ran into such fun situations like Deaf person saying they definitely aren’t disabled, but also taking disability benefits and being grumpy when they don’t get a discount at cineman/museum/event because disability.  ¯\_(ツ)_/ ¯

In the end, it doesn’t really matter that much anyway. “Disabled” is a label which comes from the non-disabled majority and they are the arbiter of it. And Deaf people are often the ones who get mentioned first by society as absolute “monsters” for not wanting to be cured. Problem is, if Deaf people are cured, it doesn’t just destroy the medical layer - but also the whole culture and the language. (just look at the whole Cochlear implants controversy and how many deaf kids are not taugh sign language nowadays) In that way, claiming to be not disabled is also a defense - that way, we can protect our language and culture from exctinction. Is it a good defense? Perhaps, perhaps not. But its another explanation I can offer.

Hope this makes sense,

Mod T

[featherwriter]

<< Read from the beginning! >>

Sylvanni woke up, back in her cell, which in and of itself was an odd experience. Not a resurrection back up out of death, not the horrific torture room, just a normal awakening from unconsciousness. A sharp scent hit her nose as she breathed in and she quickly reached up to pull the now-spent sedative rag from her face. She couldn’t fully remember having been brought back to life or what had happened after her ‘show of loyalty.’ Whatever they’d given her to knock her out must have clouded her memory. 

Out of some vain, foolish sense of hope, she held her hand out and tried to call her Ghost to it. But of course, he didn’t come. Was I really expecting that to work? 

She slowly pushed herself into a sitting position and was surprised when something pinched at her lower chest. Frowning, she looked down, noticing that her garments were different. Rather than the undershirt and soft pants that she had been wearing during her captivity up to this point—the same things she normally wore beneath her armor in the field—she had now been dressed in something distinctly more Fallen.

A rough-spun garments of loose brown fabric tied tightly with marigold wraps acted as a makeshift sleeveless shirt and trousers, though the rigged contraption of cloth pulled in strange places when she moved. She half-feared the whole thing would come untied and fall off if she pulled it the wrong way. Over top of the awkwardly assembled clothing was a more presentable long tunic in the House Kings golden color, painted with the white House symbol at the knee-length ends. Upon closer look, she realized it was fully open on both sides, more of a tabard than a tunic. 

Securing this tabard—uniform? livery?—was a strange contraption wrapped around her lower chest and upper waist, and the source of the pinching discomfort she’d noticed. It appeared to be one solid band of a bronze-colored metal, bent and warped to completely encircle her body. It had been fitted to the narrowest part of her waist, and therefore dug in sharply at her lower chest and at the top of her hips, ill-fitting on both sides. 

Reaching behind, she felt around at the back of the flat plate, trying to find a joining mechanism, some kind of lock or a clasp. Instead, the metal felt crumpled where the two ends met, almost as though it had been wrenched into place by force. This thing, whatever it was, wouldn’t be removed by normal means, she realized with some discomfort. At the very least, the pain from the poor fit of it was nothing compared to the tortures she’d been through. She could deal with an over-tight wrap of metal if it meant no one was killing her in slow, creative ways anymore.

She pushed herself back to lean against the rough stone wall of her cell, pulling her knees up in front of her and trying not to think about being drugged unconscious while her Fallen captors stripped and redressed her in their colors. The thought of Eliksni claws on her skin made her nauseous, despite the endless other violations they’d inflicted upon her already.

Lowest of House, Erxaris had said. Kings Slave. And Sylvanni had promised to serve, hadn’t she? Paid their price in blood by her own hand, even. Not that the empty words about “loyalty” held any kind of weight after what House Kings had put her through, but if it would mean an end to the ceaseless cycle of pain and death, she could play the role. She could duck her head, let her captors believe they’d tamed a Guardian into something docile and obedient, endure whatever other humiliations they had in store for her. She didn’t have shame left, after all that. 

That is, after all, what I’ve always been good at, isn’t it? Following orders. Doing what I’m told. She’d bide her time as long as she needed to. 

“Well, well, Duv. I thought for a moment there that we’d lost you.” Uldren’s face appeared in the barred gap between their cells, clearly wondering where she’d been. His eyebrows raised when he saw her. “You’ve clearly found yourself something like a promotion. New clothes, even a cot to sleep on. What’d you have to give them for that?”

Sylvanni glanced beneath her, not having even noticed the rough bundle of a cot she’d been lying on. It wasn’t by any means comfortable, but it was technically softer than the floor. She sensed the hook in his question, trying to goad her into giving him an answer. He wanted to know if they’d broken her, if she’d given in to their demands. After everything that had happened, though, Uldren Sov’s needling barely registered. Nothing mattered anymore, not him, not the Fallen, not anything.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said blankly. She just kept staring forward at an unfocused spot between her knees.

He cocked his head, eyes narrowing. “Don’t I? You couldn’t have been gone for more than a week and then you come back wearing their colors, offered even a meager bit of comfort. Is this the measure of the Traveler’s chosen?”

“Maybe it is, then. What do you care?” She could hear that same empty tone in her voice, the words feeling as though they’re spoken by another person entirely.

He scoffed. “One week, that’s all it takes to break a Guardian, then. I’d have thought one with centuries of war and blood behind her would have greater fortitude than that. After all, I’ve been here longer than you, and yet, somehow they didn’t break me.”

“You have no right to judge me,” she snarled, a hot anger flashing within her unexpectedly. She started to lean forward toward him and then winced when that awkward band cuts into her again. “You couldn’t fathom what I have endured, Sov, because you’re still alive. Whatever you think they’ve done to you, it couldn’t even begin to come close. Do not speak to me of fortitude!”

He smiled then, but it wasn’t the hard smirk she was used to from the stuck-up prince, but something softer. Sympathetic. She thought the torture must have made her delirious, the expression was so inexplicable. “There she is,” he said gently. “Keep that spirit up, Duv. We’re both going to need it.”

Her face twisted, realizing what he’d done, how intentional the goading had been. She curled inward again, feeling a terrible vulnerability in how easily she was manipulated right now, even if it was ostensibly for her benefit. “For all you claim you haven’t broken,” she said with a quiet bitterness, “you seem to have been plenty loose-lipped with secrets about me.”

The statement seemed to catch him off guard, and he pulled back from the bars a bit. “What are you talking about?”

She laughed once, an empty sound again. “You’d deny it? House Kings all of a sudden knows things like how much sedative it takes to knock out a Guardian, knows how to disable Ghosts? You’re the only person I’ve ever met who could do that. How convenient that the Kings’ Splicers can do it too, now that you’re here. But no, just a coincidence. You haven’t broken under the pressure, right?”

“I….” He paused, eyeing her more closely. “What is around your waist?”

She almost snapped at him again, knowing he was trying to change the topic, but the knowing tone in his voice stopped her. She changed her sitting position to make it more visible, looking down again. “I don’t know what it is. I woke up with it. Some kind of… decorative armor, maybe.”

“Would you look at that,” he said cryptically, making her seethe again. “They must have needed to make it custom for you.”

“I know you only talk like that just to taunt that you know things that I don’t,” she says. “And I don’t appreciate it.”

Uldren didn’t answer that accusation either. “If you wish to know if I could identify it, you only need to ask.” As she opened her mouth to do just that, he cut her off with the answer. “It’s a prisoner’s stay, I believe. I’ve not seen one used before, but I’ve heard descriptions before. Curious that they would place one on you.”

“That isn’t exactly descriptive, Sov.” Her patience with his toying responses was wearing very thin. 

“By all means, Guardian, allow me to elucidate.” He leaned back, settling into a more comfortable position as he started to talk. “When a House takes prisoners, as you are no doubt already aware, standard practice is to dock their lower arms, a demotion to drekh.”

She rolled her eyes at his clearly Eliksni pronunciation on the last word, but didn’t interrupt. Show off.

“For higher ranked prisoners, however—Barons, Archons, possibly a Captain if they troublesome enough—docking arms on its own isn’t sufficient. Large Eliksni like that have such ether-rich blood that their arms would simply grow back after docking; it’s the starvation rations of a drekh that keep them from regrowing theirs. So, after docking a powerful prisoner, the stumps are wrapped in a stay like that to forcibly keep them from regenerating until their ether levels have dropped to a much weaker state.”

She put a hand to the side of her waist, trying in vain to adjust the uncomfortable tightness of the stay. “That doesn’t make sense. I don’t have an extra pair of arms under here to regrow. And even if I did, Guardian healing on its own doesn’t regrow limbs the way the Fallen can. You need a resurrection to fix something like that. They… specifically tested that.”

Uldren made an interested noise at that, like it was a fact he was tucking away for later use, then continued. “Well, as you might guess, a stay is more than just a practical restraint. It is also a symbol. It’s a status symbol for the capturing House, to have taken a prisoner powerful enough to need one. They’re usually constructed of bright metals like yours, to draw the eye to the docking, a way of shaming a once-great foe. It is a simultaneous humiliation of the prisoner and a trophy for the captor. In truth, Guardian, you ought to be flattered, I think.”

“Flattered, to be paraded about as a powerful enemy laid low,” she said bitterly. “Somehow I don’t see that as a compliment.”

He chuckled. “To each their own. Being a prisoner of status is still some kind of status. I say use whatever advantages you can get your hands on down here. I doubt we’ll have much chance of getting out of here if you don’t.”

She gave him a very long and hard look at that phrasing. “We, Sov? What makes you think I’d break you out if I was escaping? I feel like I’ve learned my lesson about what happens to people who try to rescue you.”

He feigned hurt, an insincere little pout on his face. “After all we’ve been through together down here, you’re still hung up about the tiny disagreement we had on Mars? You wouldn’t really leave me behind in here when you make your grand Guardian break out, would you?”

“You tell yourself that, Your Highness. See if I don’t leave your royal ass to rot.”

That got another smirk out of him. He always seemed most pleased when she was being snappish back to him. “You’d miss my sparkling sense of companionship in your travels.”

“I think we should resume that language practice we were working on, actually. Can you tell me how you’d say ‘Go fuck yourself’ in Eliksni?”

He laughed, and then to her surprise, chattered and clicked an Eliksni phrase back to her, which her vague grasp of grammatical markers let her deduce was probably exactly what she’d asked. “You should note,” he said mock-seriously, “that the phrase in our language may be an imperative, but in Eliksni, it is interrogative. Technically, it’s a suggestion grammatically. In case you were confused about the conjugation.”

“I’m sure it would have kept me up at night wondering,” she said, rolling her eyes. 

“In fact, if you want to be really vulgar about it in Eliksni, you should actually put the phrase in the most formal register, which would be–” Another set of clicked words followed, similar enough in sound for Sylvanni to recognize that they were the same phrase, if slightly tweaked. She tried to repeat the sounds softly to herself, trying to figure out where the word breaks were, what order they were appearing in. This might have started out as a way to insult him, but she did have a lot of learning to do still. 

“You should repeat it back louder,” Uldren suggested when he noticed her mumbling. “If you’re wanting an instructor’s corrections, that is. You’ll never learn just talking to yourself.”

She looked him dead on, then with as much precision as she could muster, she told him to go fuck himself in Eliksni. With a grin, he corrected her vowels, to which she quipped that vowels in Eliksni should hardly count since there were so few of them. From there, it was easy to slip into simply another lesson, and though Sylvanni would never admit it, she was unspeakably grateful for the distraction it lent. 

For all Uldren Sov’s flaws and their thorny history, he was the only ally in this place that she had.

<< Previous || Masterpost || Next >>

[lizallanapologist]

The problematic behavior of Tomdaya stans; a thread

Some of you might not be aware of the stalkerish problematic stuff tomdaya stans have done with Tom and Zendaya’s life but it’s gotten to the point where Tom’s own brothers protect with big scrutiny every single female in Tom’s life because they fear they’re going to get bullied or harassed. This is not OK and this has to stop so we’re exposing their toxic behavior. 

This is only to bring awareness and we do not condom any hate or death threats, don’t send hate to tomdaya accounts, either block them or report them but don’t bully them. Many of them might need professional help dealing with the fact that Tom and Z are not together due to the fact that they created an illusion in their heads for a long time but that doesn’t mean some of them aren’t plenty manipulative and love to get away with bullying and harassment. 

If you don’t know, Tom was recently seen with another woman on his instagram, not going to say the name and please don’t try to find out about her, the relevant information is in this post and all of the private information regarding her is being protected for the same reasons. Many stans decided to apply the same treatment to her as they did to Olivia. If you don’t know what happened last year, all information is here. The fact that this kind of bullying and harassment got overlooked is horrifying. 

This specific behavior doesn’t apply to all of the stans but the vast majority is on the same page. 

A big thanks to all the blogs who contributed with information and their writing in this post.

STALKING 

1. Tomdaya stans have made an entire thread/timeline of events in Tom and Zendaya's life that they manipulated so it can be seen as proof of them dating. They stalk every single part of their lives, from paying stalkerish apps to review their instagram activities daily to having a constant GPS to know their exact locations everyday. They ask twitter accs, owners of restaurants/stores, people close to them information about their whereabouts/the things they buy or eat/who they were with, etc.

They order their ‘’interactions’’ with specific dates and they even know information you shouldn’t know about them. 

They pay for apps that helps them stalk their every move. That’s right, they take every like as proof of them being together. 

They hide behind the pretext that they're celebrities and this is what they've signed up for but neither Tom nor Zendaya have signed up for constant daily harassment of their partners in life. 

HARASSMENT OF PARTNERS

Tom was seen last year with a blonde girl called Olivia, everyone speculated that was his girlfriend and that was something everyone should’ve respected since it’s Tom’s life and he’s in control of it, instead, many fans including Tom H. crazy fans and tomdaya stans, decided to stalk and harass Olivia to the point she had to make her account private. They started bullying her by publicly calling her names like ‘’Olive Oil’’, ‘’Ugly old woman’’, ‘’Ugly fake bitch’’ among other names. They continuously compare her with Zendaya and write on her friends and family members’ social media and ask them to tell Olivia nasty things. You really think this is ok? 

Same is happening with the girl Tom was seen with. Tom’s own brothers asked several people to take down and delete the video because they were disrupting her privacy. Many stans didn’t care and started all over again harassing the girl. (I’m not posting images or the identity of this new girl in hopes that this helps maintain a little big of privacy for her.) 

However here are some examples of them harassing Olivia:

’’I saw a troubling post on twitter about this fan dming another fan saying that they’d kill her (Olivia). That they’d find a way. So that “the fans can have him all to ourselves” - source

MANIPULATING THE NARRATIVE

Tomdaya stans and some Tom Holland crazy stans love to harass Tom Holland to the point that they tag family members and friends only because he decided to go out in public with Olivia. They call him cheater, manipulator, a dumbass, made fun of him because Tom is dyslexic calling him an illiterate, mocked him and tried to cancel him in every opportunity given by manipulating everyone into thinking some of these ‘’facts’’ are true. 

Many fans don’t know better and go to social media to frame Tom as a scumbag because many tomdaya stans have convinced the public of this.

This same issue occurs with Zendaya. Her known boyfriend; Jacob Elordi, is frequently called a cheater and is being investigated every five seconds on every social media, candid, interaction ever. Many fans are already calling him cheater, telling everyone Zendaya’s changed her behavior thanks to Jacob and that she needs help. 

Source

BULLYING

The definition of cyberbullying according to Stopbullying.gov:

“Cyberbullying is bullying that takes place over digital devices like cell phones, computers, and tablets. Cyberbullying can occur through SMS, Text, and apps, or online in social media, forums, or gaming where people can view, participate in, or share content. Cyberbullying includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else. It can include sharing personal or private information about someone else causing embarrassment or humiliation. Some cyberbullying crosses the line into unlawful or criminal behavior. “

Examples of cyberbullying on Tumblr from good ole Toutdesuite360:

https://toutdesuite360.tumblr.com/post/190572803098/faces-haha-ive-heard-this-has-been-memed-when

Making fun of Jacob Elordi’s wealth… but that isn’t that only thing that the Tomdaya stans have done.

She basically implied that Olivia looked like an elderly lady, and she permitted her followers to humiliate her.

Funny, that a middle aged woman who has never revealed her face on her blog is bullying a young woman.

(She may have deleted the link to save her a** on the post with the Cher pictures, but thankfully @crazypeopleonfandom​ took screenshots of this post; I got most of my photos from them)

The next aren’t pertaining to the ‘innocent’ Toutdesuite360, just some random jerks from Twitter/Instagram. If you have the time, you can read through them.

See the pictures above and below for reference.

Labelling Zendya, Jacob E., Tom, and Olivia as cheaters, when there was no confirmed relationship between Tom and Z, and Jacob broke up with Cari already is plain disrespectful. These are type of claims are considered slander, and I’m surprised that the people who own these accounts haven’t been rightfully sued.

And remember when I talked about the repetition of people tagging Tom and Z’s family for their ‘thoughts’? Why are you tagging Nikki in your post?

Calling Olivia, once again, a vulgar word that shouldn’t be used for any woman.

This person and many other tomdayas are harassing Zendaya and Tom by tagging them repeatedly. Now we know why Tom stopped using Twitter, and why he may be taking breaks from social media.

And, as pointed out in another point on the thread: Tom has dyslexia! I easily ignore the posts that tease him about his lips, but when it comes to his disability, that crosses the line. It is unacceptable to bully someone just because your fantasy relationship doesn’t seem so real now.

Before I finish this point, I just want to remind people that celebrities are humans too. Everyone has feelings, and even if they haven’t seen these posts, it is still harmful to post this kind of information on your account. Fans who are young (or naive) may see these posts, thus making them believe that Tom actually cheated on Z, and that Z is really with Jacob as ‘payback’ to Tom. Bullying is still an ongoing issue, and maybe you should stop harassing/humiliating people on your platform.

DEATH THREATS

Olivia, Tom and his family, friends, Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, etc. They were sent death threats as a result of a fictional ship. This is truly upsetting and we’ve shown some proof of that above and it’s truly sickening how many of them really want to attack Olivia in public only because of a few photographs. 

DEBUNKING EVIDENCE

While we don’t know anything for sure, we need to trust and respect what Tom and Zendaya have said several times: they were never together and they were just friends. This is a topic that makes them feel uncomfortable and tomdaya stans decide to twist their words every time they want to clarify the situation, saying they’re hiding their relationship and that they’ve been hiding it for over 3 years. 

Stop believing everything SpideyParker on YouTube says, that person desperately wants them together so they’ll do anything in their power to make it seem like that they’re ’’still together’’. All of their evidence is also nothing but scraps. I can also make a video cropping out certain individuals from the frame to make it look like Tom is with someone or I can also investigate every tiny detail to a borderline degree to make it seem like Zendaya is dating someone. It’s really easy to manipulate the truth, so don’t fall for these things so easily. Check with the real sources, Tom and Zendaya. Trust and respect what they say it’s not your job to investigate and figure their lives out.

Their evidence of the relationship is ridiculous, stuff like them wearing the same clothes,

because obviously there’s no way this jacket is in any random store in the world...This is a unique jacket, made by Tom and Z specifically...And it’s not even the same jacket. If we’re going by their logic, then

More, more, more and more.

Source

Robert Downey Jr. and Tom have been in a relationship for a long time...

Angourie, Remy and Tom wearing the same jacket.

I have no idea what’s going on with the freaking necklace you swear with blood that Zendaya gave him but that’s hardly something special:

Matching necklace with Olivia.

Avengers necklace.

He likes necklaces, nothing special here.

'’Tom only goes to Zendaya’s home, and only goes out with her!’’

Tom Holland went to RDJ's house to watch Black Panther with him.

Tom and RDJ facetime daily.

Obviously, his only friend is Zendaya...

Look at him and Zendaya there, wow.

‘‘Tom looks at her with heart eyes and in a very special way!’‘

Excuse me, what is he supposed to do? Ignore Zendaya and look somewhere else every time she talks?  

MORE

He literally looks at everyone the same way.

‘‘He only does Spider-Man because he wants to be the Peter Parker to his Mary Jane, one of the most romantic comic book couples!’‘

I can’t believe I once read this as proof but I haven’t forgotten about it.

Interview with Tom and Laura:

“Is Zendaya’s character Mary Jane Watson?’’

Tom Holland: “No, no! This is one of those rumours, that like, we’ve all said it’s not true.

Laura Harrier: It’s not true!

Tom Holland: Like, we keep on… You guys keep building yourselves up for disappointment.

Laura Harrier: Unless we don’t know how this started? Because you guys are gonna see this movie and be like “…Ugh.” She’s Michelle!

Tom Holland: She’s a character called Michelle.

Laura Harrier: She’s playing Michelle.

Tom Holland: 100%. Hands down. Her character’s called Michelle. And she’s sort of this weird, quirky one in the friendship group that Peter has. She’s funny, but she’s super strange.

Laura Harrier: Yeah, super dry humour.

Tom Holland: She’s 100% not Mary Jane. It’s funny, everyone’s like “Is she Mary Jane?” and I’m like NO, I’M TELLING YOU! SHE’S NOT MARY JANE!

Source

‘‘He did the Will Smith thing with her, he loves her!’‘

‘’He only ever talks about her! He only praises her!’’

Angourie Rice.

Robert Downey Jr, 2, 3

Laura Harrier, 2

Elizabeth Olsen.

Jacob Batalon.

Chris Hemsworth.

Jake Gyllenhaal.

And the list goes on and on.

‘‘He always goes to her special events only! He only goes to her parties! He only goes to hospitals with her! He was on the set of Euphoria with her!’‘

How about, he goes out with her and everyone else in group and individually? He goes out with Harrison alone, with Jacob alone, with Laura alone, etc. I love how many of them love to leave out certain people to make everyone believe it’s only the two of them. And he doesn’t only goes to hospitals with her, he’s gone with many other people and he does it because he’s a good person, not because he’s on a date with Zendaya. 

Tom AND Jacob visit Zendaya on the set of the Greatest Showman.

Tom and friends celebrating Harrison’s birthday party.

Tom on a double date.

Tom going to Joe Russo’s restaurant to get an exclusive cooking lesson from Jessica Largey.

Tom on birthday parties.

Tom, Laura, Harrison and Harry out for dinner in Brazil.

Tom, Brie Larson, Tessa Thompson, and Zachary Levi in a club in Brazil.

Tom, Laura, Jacob, Harrison in a pool party.

RDJ & Tom Holland visit Jon’s restaurant and participate on his show.

Tom Holland visits Doctor Strange’s set.

Tom Holland, Ciara Bravo, Joe Russo visit haunted attraction.

He’s a good person and loves supporting his friends.

‘‘He only has chemistry with her!’‘

Tom and RDJ’s extraordinary chemistry.

Tom and Jake’s chemistry.

Tom and Jacob’s chemistry.

Tom and Laura’s chemistry.

Tom and Daisy’s chemistry.

Tom and Chris Pratt’s chemistry.

Also Will Smith, Chris Hemsworth, etc. 

Look below for Ciara and Tom’s chemistry.

Like I said before, maybe he’s a good actor and that’s it? 

‘‘Their FFH kiss was too real and magical!’‘

Spoiler alert for Cherry

Fan about witnessing Tom’s kiss with Ciara Bravo:

His reaction about kissing Laura Harrier:

‘‘He LOVES touching her’‘

I’m sorry, is he supposed to be scared of touching people?

This is it. This is the big touch they always talk about and the only times they’ve ever held hands is in manips or in FFH, but that doesn’t count, those are fictional characters. Well...

Maybe he’s a touchy person. Consider that.

’’She’s the only one that knows him well!’’

How well do Zendaya, Jacob, & Laura know Tom?

I’m sure Harrison, RDJ, his friends and others know him pretty well too. 

And only because he knows she likes ice cream doesn't mean she’s his ultimate soulmate or something blown out of proportion.

‘‘He’s only a gentleman with her!’‘

Tom saves Gina Rodriguez

Tom rescues fan

Karen Gillan

‘‘He looked way too in love with MJ to be fake’‘

Nope.

Nope 2

Nope 3

It’s called acting, pretty sure you guys know by now he’s good.

‘’They’re inseparable!’‘

Jacob, Tom and Harrison 

Also, why is it that every female in his life is his cousin, aunt, close childhood friend or ‘’he probably hates her’’ for you? 

They’ve said this multiple times but:

In an interview with Elle, Tom said he is not involved with anyone at the moment but is "definitely a relationship person." And when addressing the rumors, he says it’s uncomfortable and annoying when people ship him and Zendaya together. 

Zendaya also denied the claims, telling Variety Magazine that she and Tom were simply ‘just friends’. 

You can ship them if you want, as a bromance or cute chemistry, but not at the expense of someone else. Not when you violate their privacy, their lives and specially not when you bully, harass and stalk every detail of their lives.

Zendaya is clearly very happy with Jacob Elordi:

Let her have that. No, she doesn’t look miserable with him, no, he didn’t change her style or her personality. No, she doesn’t dress differently because of him. She is the same as always, she looks even happier. Let her be. This is good for her. She has every right to go out in public with her boyfriend. And for the love of god, stop commenting on her instagram posts ‘’warning’’ her that Jacob is going to cheat on her. Hopefully that won’t happen ever. 

And no, they’re not going to magically ’’get back together’’ when Spider-Man 3 starts filming, stop wishing bad luck on Zendaya and Jacob’s relationship. Tom is not going to magically realize how ‘’wrong’’ he was for ‘’leaving’’ Zendaya. He never left her, he’s her friend. 

All of this have gotten to the point where Tom can’t have a friendship with a female and he has to ‘’protect’’ them every time he wants to interact with them. Do you guys seriously think this is ok? Are you really a fan of his if this is how you want him to live? Controlling him all the time? 

Do you realize how wrong and unfair it is for the other partner every time you comment in every single picture on instagram, twitter, etc about how ‘’cute’’ Tom and Zendaya are? About how ‘’ugly’’ Olivia is? How about when you compare Zendaya and Olivia, or every single female in Tom’s life? Or when you comment on Zendaya’s instagram telling her she is different now and that you don’t like her now because she’s changed for Jacob? Telling her that Jacob is going to cheat on her? Stop sending death threats to the partners, stop tagging their families in your ‘’evidence/proof’’ posts/tweets. Just because they don’t voice these things doesn’t mean they don’t read them. 

Being sincere, if you all, as a collective; really, genuinely cared about Tom, this is the last thing you would wanna pull. In your endless obsession with thinking you have a right to dictate the life of a man simply because he's famous; actually stopped once to consider how this is possibly making Tom and Zendaya feel?? You are basically sending the message that nobody is enough, that him being happy isn't enough, that he won't ever be allowed to be happy until he gets with the person YOU think is best for him. Fucking abhorrent, how they don't have a choice on who they choose to fucking love. This is how you make a celebrity jaded. THIS is how you make a celebrity hate you. And he will, unless you stop your bullshit, and treat him; and whoever he decides to be with, like human beings.

When you focus only on two people it’s easy to believe anything, try and see the bigger picture. Allow Zendaya and Tom to enjoy their lives without harassing them and their partners.

[pokefarm-q]

firewolf1117 refuckingceipts (it's all been removed now but people archived it)

this bitch:

When you say “All Cops are”, here’s what you’re really saying:

All Blacks are Criminals All Mexicans are Illegal All Americans are stupid, fat, and lazy All Rape Victims are liars All Suicide Posters are Attention Seekers All Muslims are Terrorists All LGBT deserve to die

Are you outraged yet? GOOD.It means I touched a nerve.

You would never, ever, EVER say those things about those groups of people because you KNOW that it’s not true, even in the slightest. There are so very very FEW Cops who are actually corrupt and using their power and position inappropriately.

So what gives you the right to say the same about cops? COPS! Who are practically SOLDIERS! EVERY DAY their family lives with the fear that they won’t return. EVERY DAY they put their lives in danger to PROTECT you! They, as a whole, deserve your RESPECT!!! MOST ALL “Brutality” cases are from the CRIMINAL fighting, disrespecting, grabbing a weapon, etc. If you’d just COOPERATE AND BE RESPECTFUL you’d be treated FAIRLY!! Cops don’t have the time to sort things out. Their snap second decisions PROTECT them AND nearby Civilians. You can’t possibly understand the FEAR AND TERROR they hold EVERY SECOND of EVERY DAY! So don’t you DARE judge them for mistakes.

and here’s the response of one brave user, this legend, this badass mofo, who replied to their bullshittery and got banned for a day for posting in the whiny crybaby bitch’s journal without permission:

Replying to this, because FireWolf1117 is intentionally spreading misinformation and hate. I don’t care if the staff is going to tell me off for this — for once, I care a little more about setting this right than following the Journal rule.

First of all, United States cops are legally not required to save civilians. It’s not considered unconstitutional, according to the case Warren v. District of Columbia (444 A.2d. 1, D.C. Ct. of Ap. 1981). To keep it short, cops can literally see crimes being committed and decide not to intervene if they feel like it. This has been quite common among police departments if you (objectively) compare the police’s actions during BLM protests and anti-lockdown protests.

Anyways, let’s get to your generalizing logic. I have to agree with you on one thing: generalizing is bad. No group should be generalized because of some rotten apples. However, this doesn’t count for cops. Here’s why not:

The police force isn’t a marginalized group. A police officer is a profession. A job. Cops are public servants. They work for the state, for the civilians. And that’s why they need to be held accountable for any misconduct they commit. Which is, unfortunately, is objectively not the case. According to statistics from https://mappingpoliceviolence.org, 99% of United States cops who have killed citizens have not been criminally charged, because police departments literally protect officers from getting tried. Of the 750+ shootings done by police this year, only four cops are getting tried. So much for “there are only a few corrupt ones”. Black people are also way less likely to carry a weapon compared to White people, while Black people get shot by cops thrice as likely.

What’s more, because the police force is a profession, people can quit being a police officer. This doesn’t count for most of the groups you mentioned: Black people can’t stop being Black, Mexican people can’t stop being Mexican, Americans can’t stop being American (also you including Americans kinda makes you look embarrassing lol no offense), rape victims can’t be ‘unraped’, Muslims (or even just Arabs in general) can’t stop being perceived as Muslims (even Sikhs get seen as Muslims nowadays…) and LGBTI+ people can’t stop being LGBTI+ (unless they discover they’re not). Police officers can literally take their uniform off and be perceived as normal human beings. As soon as they are on duty and take on their uniform, a huge responsibility awaits them. A responsibility that has been abused by them to the point that marginalized people will hesitate before calling the police, fearing that the police will either come too late or escalate the situation. Cops aren’t endangering their own lives. They’re endangering the lives of those they’re supposed to protect. No good person would shoot a man in his back SEVEN times for being 'aggressive’. No good person who claims to protect and serve would kneel on someone’s neck for eight minutes while that person was cooperating with them. No good person would shoot a completely innocent woman in her sleep because they raided the wrong house. (BTW, Breonna Taylor’s murderers are still walking free as if nothing happened.) No good person would shoot a 12-year-old kid for having a toy gun. No good person would kill a man in his car for… picking up his ID to show it to the cop. Just because you cooperate, doesn’t mean that you’re safe.

Your logic is clearly flawed, because you judge cops on their personality, and not on the bigger picture. All cops are “bastards” not because we see all of them are evil killing machines that shoot people on sight — it’s because they contribute to an oppressive system, whether it’s directly or indirectly. It’s more than 'just a few cops’: the government wants bad laws to be enforced, the prison system is getting used as a business model, minorities are forced to live in poor socioeconomic areas on purpose BY the government, gentrification exists, multi billionnaires are exploiting low-class working people even more, there’s a damn pandemic that’s not being taken seriously… And guess who’s at the front of keeping the fragile capitalist system intact? Right. The police. The face of the government, that’s laughing at Black people, people of color, disabled people, LGBTI+ people… No good cop exists, even if they’re nice to everyone. Good cops who speak out against the abuse of other cops get fired, because the police departments don’t want the truth to be exposed. If you truly want to be someone who saves people’s lives, then stop being a cop and get a better job, like a firefighter, an EMT, a psychologist… Anything that isn’t completely corrupted.

Even during the recent BLM protests, cops are showing off their power. They escalate situations without provocation more times than BLM protesters start shit. Also cops are committing literal war crimes by using tear gas and other chemicals against civilians (IT GOES AGAINST THE GENEVA CONVENTION FOR FUCK’S SAKE). Not so protective now, aren’t they? The only thing BLM protesters have hurt are cops’ ego. Trust me, protesters being a little mean to cops won’t ever be as bad as all the innocent lives cops have taken and covered up.

I want to go on forever, because I have a lot more to say (such as why “All Lives Matter” is reactionary and racist, how the police force was formed in the first place, how the effects of slavery and colonialism are still being felt by Black people to this day, how and why 'riots’ can be 'justified’), but I’ll leave it at this. At least I got to give counterarguments to your points. Take care and educate yourself! (Tip: stop watching FOX News and Infowars if you do that, you’re going to develop brainrot! ;__;)

ladies and gentleman of the jury, as you can see, this user not only came into this argument prepared, but they were civil and had links (that aren’t links now oop soz). they gave this bitch plenty of opportunity to learn and grow from this without attacking her.

but your bet your ASS the poor little white girl went crying to her daddy about people ATTACKING HER and BULLYING HER FOR HER OPINIONS!!!! she uses her anxiety as a get out of jail free card CONSTANTLY, bitching and moaning about how, and these are directly quoting from HER own journal:

MAY 29, 2020

I log in to this game to have fun and escape the stresses and problems of real life. I do NOT want to be going about my business, and see “BLM” in someone’s Trainer Card, and have to deal with a surge of overwhelming emotions (whether positive or negative). I simply cannot handle the Anxiety that results.

This is a GAME site. NOT a place to share your political, racial or other stances. PLEASE keep ALL such topics OFF this site. I understand you want to talk about them, and that’s fine. But out of respect for people like me, can you please do so in private with the people you know WANT to see and discuss it?

just admit you’re racist dude.

She uses CSS. SHE CAN FUCKING HIDE OTHER PEOPLE’S FUCKING CARDS. PEOPLE CAN TALK ABOUT WHATEVER THEY DAMN WELL PLEASE ON THEIR OWN DAMN PAGES. THE WORLD DOES NOT REVOLVE AROUND YOU.

Also! You know she only put “whether positive or negative” to quell any hate she might’ve gotten because ANXIETY is usually not a positive emotion. There’s not even a positive CONNOTATION. and she hopes to be published by the end of the year lmfao yeah right.

and then, on JUNE 16, 2020:

I WAS going to make a post in response to the most recent announcement, but now I’m just too frazzled and upset about it. Still making a post. I’ll just be posting it off site so I can say things how I want to say them, and so I don’t have any in game repercussions.

Honestly, though. I log onto this site to ESCAPE reality. I do NOT want to see ANY stance on ANY “cause” ANYWHERE. NONE OF IT BELONGS HERE. NONE!!!! Because of this “decision”, I’m going to make one of my own. I am gone from this site until current affairs are resolved. Heck. Perhaps even after. I will NOT be a part of a site that allows…Ugh. NOT going to get into this here.

but like… she came back a month later lmao

OH AND!! Earlier this month on AUGUST 6, 2020 she posted this!

It really breaks my heart seeing derogatory remarks against Cops in people’s Trainer Cards. It’s upsetting that you feel that way, and even more so that you make your hatred so vehemently known.

Personally, I don’t know why any of those Cop comments are allowed. If someone had something in their Trainer Card against Religion, LGBT, or POC, I guarantee that statement would be removed. So why is it alright for people to make hateful, vile, disgusting remarks against Cops? Despite it being someone’s personal opinion, it’s still Hate Speech, and shouldn’t be allowed.

this bitch is part of the lgbt+ community. she’s part of a marginalized group.

The “"derogatory remarks”“ she’s talking about? #AllCopsAreComplicit #CopsStinky #AllCopsSuck

which brings us back to Exhibit A, ladies and gentlemen! Her equating #AllCopsAreComplicit and #CopsSTINKY to "All LGBT deserve to die” and a Shitton of other stereotypes. Well fucking done.

Despite bitching and moaning about I DONT WANNA SEE ANYTHING, despite there being ways she can fucking hide it HER DAMN SELF she chooses instead to bitch piss moan bitch piss moan bitch piss and fucking moan and then when someone calls her out on her genuinely harmful bullshit, pulls the wounded gazelle gambit, claims she’s being attacked, and puts in her Card that “anxiety attack! again! waaaah!” like anyone has a shred of sympathy left for her ugly ass. She can’t handle looking like the bad guy so she plays the anxiety card. She bitches about never having any friends, only depression and anxiety, and it’s like bitch no fucking wonder.

Both the top posts have been taken down, but the user who responded to her has gotten nothing but love for her mad courage in saying something when no one else dared.

Firefurrywolf made a halfassed apology (August 30, 2020) which I won’t go into but there is one line that sticks out to me because it’s such a goddamn lie:

When I state my opinion, I usually do so with grace and eloquence. I did not think about my actions this time.

… do you?

This is a GAME site. NOT a place to share your political, racial or other stances. PLEASE keep ALL such topics OFF this site.

Do you… really?

I log onto this site to ESCAPE reality. I do NOT want to see ANY stance on ANY “cause” ANYWHERE. NONE OF IT BELONGS HERE. NONE!!!!

I don’t think so. You vile, disgusting, manipulative, obnoxious, PRETENTIOUS, racist, terfy bitch.

Oh, before I forget, yeah. Terf. She looks like one too. All over her insta. Gross.

NOVEMBER 19, 2019

My response to a LGBT post in one of my writing groups.

I don’t know most of these terms within the community. Don’t really care to know either, cause your preferences won’t change my feelings about who you are. I probably should, though, cause the Its and Xes really confuse me.

I knew I was a Demi-Ace for a few years. I’ve also known that I was Poly since I was early teens. But I’m also attracted to beauty and care more about who you are as a person than your preferences, so apparently I’m Panaesthetic as well?

Also firm believer of “True Love Knows NO Bounds”

Her journal got moved to 18+ because there was a post talking about sex. Might’ve even been alluding to rape. On a CHILDREN’S SITE. In her CHILD-FRIENDLY journal. It sat there for at least two months. TWO MONTHS. But I will not be posting that here, but it’s still there if anyone wants to snoop. All of this is public. Well, it was. But at least minors won’t be exposed to this histrionic little whiny whitey who is absolutely drowning in her white privilege.

Just because she changed her pfp from her face to a shitty drawing she did doesn’t hide the fact that she’s white, and the worst kind of person with little to no actual coping skills.

She claims to be an artist, a writer, all this, blah blah, but then why doesn’t she channel any of it into her work so she can get fucking better at them? She says she’s working on losing weight, so do that. Instead of shrieking and stomping your fucking feet like a toddler at the peak of their terrible two’s, throwing tantrum after fucking tantrum on a CHILDREN’S SITE about your shitty stances, go for a fucking walk. Punch a fucking punching bag. Literally anything else. You’ll feel better, you’ll lose weight faster, you’d be keeping your vitriol to your damn self and no one will “attack” you.

“Are you ourtraged yet? GOOD. It means I touched a nerve!”

She fucking wanted a reaction. But couldn’t handle it when she actually got one. I’m so embarrassed. Grow some fucking thicker skin, you’re older than I am. Grow a pair and shut the goddamn FUCK up.

For now, the evil is defeated, and I rest my fucking case.

[howtowhumpyourhiccup]

Only Fun If You Get A Scar Out Of It

Summary: Post-THW. (but diverges before the ending) "Yeah, it's only fun if you get a scar out of it." Astrid vaguely remembered making this statement years ago as a response to something the Thorston twins once said. Watching her husband struggle with the loss of his leg eight years after his amputation, she feels like a fool.

Rating: Teen and up

Words: 1 644

Author’s Notes: For the whump prompt "Chronic pain" from the Httyd whump Discord, a prompt I was very excited to do. I like to headcanon that Hiccup's amputation lead to him suffering from chronic pain as a result.

Constructive criticism is appreciated and I do not own How to Train Your Dragon.

Enjoy!

Also, I still don't know how to properly use the word "had".

AO3

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It is late in the afternoon when Hiccup and Astrid return home after a flight taken over New Berk together.

Pushing the door open, Astrid helped Hiccup inside. His arm rested on her shoulder and he leaned on her as he limped.

"Easy," Astrid told him, keeping him steady. Toothless warbled something behind them as he followed them inside while Stormfly remained outside, too big to fit through the door.

Hiccup gasped and cringed as a particularly bad pain ran up from his stump and through his hip. Astrid paused to allow him to breathe through it, giving him a moment.

"Chair or bed?" She asked when the pain seemed to subside enough for him to move again and Hiccup needed to think for a moment.

Would he take the easy way and sit only to possibly be in more pain later when he needed to get back up? Or would he take the extra time and energy required to walk all the way to bed in a different room?

Ah well, at least he didn't need to do stairs. Their house was built in a way to have everything on the same floor and it was built that way just for him. So he might as well go directly to bed.

"Bed." He decided and Astrid nodded before supporting him all the way there. Toothless already shoved things aside to clear a path for them. Hiccup didn't need to maneuver around or over the furniture or the mess they hadn't had the time to clean yet.

"Thanks, Bud." Hiccup told him and patted him on the nose on the way to their bedroom. Toothless purred as his Rider passed him by and then left for the kitchen.

Astrid helped him inside and lowered him onto the furs. Hiccup groaned out loud as he moved to sit down and Astrid kneeled to help him remove his prosthetic. It was an action that caused him great discomfort, but would help relieve him in time.

Standing and walking brought him nothing besides pain, but sitting down somehow made it even worse with the pressure no longer on his stump. Hiccup once again needed to breathe through the hurt. Astrid fumbling with his prosthetic to remove it didn't help much either. She tried to be careful, but her efforts amounted to very little.

Once it was off, Hiccup sucked air in through his teeth and lied down on his side, arms crossing and head on his pillow. He was plagued by the chill and that was partially due to how exhausted he was.

"Not planning on removing your vest?" Astrid asked as she stood and he shook his head with a no.

"Okay." She whispered and, while still holding onto his metal replacement leg, decided to take a seat on the edge of their bed and gaze at him.

Hiccup lied facing away from her, his eyes already closed. If his pain allowed him to sleep, he would've dozed right off.

But if the rummaging in the kitchen was any indication, Toothless was searching the place for willow bark.

In their shared bedroom, it stayed quiet for a couple of moments as Astrid kept her gaze on her husband. If it wasn't for his deep frown, she would've thought him asleep already. Knowing this, she decided to speak up.

"That wasn't one of my best ideas, was it?" She spoke, referring to the afternoon flight they had taken with just the two of them and their dragons.

Hiccup opened his eyes again to look up at her. He didn't answer her, which said enough.

Hiccup had told her his leg was especially bad that morning and still she had insisted on taking to the sky. He let her convince him, albeit because of the assumption he wouldn't need to worry for about half an hour or so. He missed being in the air for hours.

They got to taste the freedom of the sky for not even ten minutes when his leg started hurting so bad he feared he and Toothless would crash.

Flying back and landing had each been a horrendous experience for his burning leg, but getting the prosthetic loose from its stirrup had been a completely different kind of nightmare. The pain in his stump had traveled up to his knee before it continued to his hip. He would've cried if his pride hadn't kept him from doing so.

Astrid would've carried him inside, but with worried and pitying gazes already on him, Hiccup had stubbornly decided to walk inside himself.

He looked back in front of him again and Astrid released a quiet sigh, feeling guilty.

"I thought it'd be nice." She admitted, speaking of her idea to go flying.

"Well, it wasn't. What would've actually been nice would be a day without pain." Hiccup replied, perhaps a bit angrier than he meant it to be. Astrid stared at him in sympathy, she could hear his frustration.

Briefly glancing at her, Hiccup quickly apologized.

"I didn't mean to snap." He added, but Astrid was already running her fingers through his hair reassuringly.

"You call that snapping, Babe? You've "snapped" worse." She told him, remembering a particularly bad moment in their lives when the late Stoick the Vast lied on his death bed and Hiccup blamed himself for putting him there.

She wished he wasn't hurting so much.

This wasn't phantom limb pain, though he had plenty of those days, too, here in the far North. This was a pain he has felt nearly every single day for the past eight years, ever since the day he lost his leg.

He had good days, the very rare pain-free days, and then there were days like these. When he woke up hurting and went to sleep still hurting.

It was draining. On days like these, Hiccup would be exhausted by the time midday arrived and it seemed to be getting worse with each passing year and he was only twenty-three years of age.

In the three years after his amputation, it had been fairly easy for him to hide his discomforts and simply shrug them away. The Dragon Riders only knew of them when that year spent on the Edge forced Hiccup to come clean when he collapsed because his leg refused to cooperate after a battle with Viggo Grimborn and his men.

He'd hated every minute of it, but this sentiment was shared with the Riders. Hearing that your best friend suffered on a near-daily basis behind that mask of smiles, high energy, and sass had been hard on all of them. That the only reason Hiccup came clean was because he wasn't given any other choice and not because he wanted to had made his confession more difficult to bear.

Two years earlier than that, Stoick made Hiccup go for a visit with Gothi after Gobber happened to mention that this kind of pain was quiet unusual and Gothi diagnosed his pain as being chronic.

Chronic and growing worse.

As Chief, he wasn't exactly allowed to just sit his days out either. Not that someone as fidgety as Hiccup could ever sit still for long.

Moving, Astrid gently pulled on his pant leg to reveal his stump to her. The scarring there wasn't irritated at least, one worry less.

"How do you feel?" She asked, her gaze still trained on his leg.

"Like it would be really nice if Toothless found that willow bark." In response, the Night Fury could be heard grumbling in the kitchen. He was big and the space he searched was quite small in comparison.

"I'll go help him search and after that, you can get some sleep. I'll wake you for dinner. It's Fishlegs' turn tonight." Astrid got up from the bed. When Hiccup nodded and closed his eyes again, she decided to take her leave.

As she closed the door to their bedroom, one last glance at Hiccup before he vanished from view, she couldn't help but think of a certain claim she'd made so many years ago as she stood there.

"Only fun if you get a scar out of it, huh?" She asked herself, as if the old fifteen-year-old girl she used to be could hear her. They were foolish words spoken by a child who wanted to sound tough in a world where being soft was seen as a weakness and a detriment.

She had to admit, though her scars were exciting tales she would proudly tell their future children and Berk's, Hiccup's was one that has brought him pain and misery for years and would do so for many more.

It was required of him as a Chief, and her as a Chieftess, to have heirs. With the pain he was in so often, Hiccup wasn't even sure he wanted them, afraid his disability would affect them somehow.

At least his lightning scar simply looked cool and gave him no further troubles, though it was quite sensitive to the touch.

Astrid wondered if her fifteen-year-old self could see the kind of suffering her future husband was to go through for saving Berk and ending a near four-hundred-year-old war, if she would still see having scars as fun as it once did.

She remembered witnessing his amputation. Hiccup hadn't been conscious for that, fortunately, but she had wanted to help her new, and already dear, friend. It was a memory that stayed with her still. At least ever since that event, scars weren't as much the ultimate achievement every warrior strived to reach as they once appeared to be.

No use fretting over it now. She promised Hiccup to help Toothless find and prepare that willow bark. His one way to soothe his pain, if it worked. Turning away from the bedroom door, she made her way over to join Toothless in the kitchen.

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

I just can’t get over the fact that you call yourself a Christian and claim to care about the least and most marginalized among us, and yet you support, even promote, abortion. You don’t even qualify it with “only in extreme cases” or that it should be avoided if possible, you just think it’s totally fine to kill a baby if the mother decides they don’t want it. I just think it’s really sad and that you’re steering all your followers who look up to you down a bad path.

Hey there, anon. i hope you’re doing well, and that you’ll give this response a read since i’ve spent a whole evening writing it out haha. After all, if you are going to call my identity as a Christian into question it seems only fair to genuinely listen to my defense. 

What would “promoting” abortion look like? …telling people to “hurry, go get pregnant just so you can get an abortion!”? (this is a genuine question, i’m not trying to be snarky – it’s just a confusing word choice to me.) 

Seeing as, according to a quick search of my blog, i haven’t so much as mentioned or reblogged a post mentioning the word “abortion” since May 11 (so, over 3 months ago), and after over 5 whole years of running this blog only have 5 posts in my #abortion tag (only 2 being original posts), it seems a little hyperbolic to claim that i’m “promoting” abortion. 

To the contrary of “promoting” abortion, i actually don’t think i’ve made my stance clear enough in the past. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify my stance now: 

i am pro choice, i am in favor of safe, affordable (ideally free, i am a socialist), legal abortions for anyone who wants one – without them having to explain or justify their reason. 

______

i am pro real choice – meaning i don’t want anyone to feel like either remaining pregnant or getting an abortion is the only choice available to them. It should truly be their choice – not a choice made due to outside pressure, or poverty, or guilt or shame, or fear, or prejudice, or lack of education. 

Being pro-choice for me means not only being pro abortion but also being anti-eugenics; and anti forced sterilizations (of indigenous persons and other POC, of trans persons, of intersex persons, of disabled persons, of poor persons). It means making sure no one feels pressured to abort a pregnancy they’d otherwise have wanted just because the fetus is disabled. 

Being pro-choice for me means getting resources to people who do want to keep their pregnancy so that they have the means to raise a child. 

i am pro educated, well-informed choice – getting all necessary information to people so they know the pros and cons of maintaining a pregnancy or aborting it – and so they know how to keep themselves safe during sex to avoid unwanted pregnancies where possible.

_________

Anon, i understand why it’s hard to fathom a Christian who worships a God who cares for the most marginalized among us being pro-choice/pro-abortion. i was pro-life all through high school because i was raised Catholic and i was taught, as you word it, that being pro-choice means “you just think it’s totally fine to kill a baby.” That intentionally graphic language is pretty hard to argue against! So for years i also could not understand how anyone could be pro-abortion. But i assure you, most pro-choice Christians have put a lot of thought into their stance. 

Scientifically and theologically/biblically, there just is not enough evidence to declare that a fetus “has a soul” or that life “begins at conception” (and if it does, what does that mean?). Maybe the fetus has a soul, maybe it does not – i don’t claim to be the holder of that knowledge. Meanwhile, there is plenty of evidence that human beings are harmed when abortion is not safe, legal, and de-stigmatized – when compelled to find dangerous alternatives; when forced to raise a child they have no resources for; when shamed and ostracized for their choices, and so on. 

There is evidence that outlawing abortion leads to unsafe abortions with complications, and that people without access to abortion often attempt suicide. 

There is also evidence that the anti-abortion / pro-life movement began not because of a long-held concern for unborn babies but because of racism and a desire to uphold segregation and prevent interracial children. 

I’m going to end by linking a couple articles by Christians who are pro-choice – not in an attempt to necessarily change your viewpoint, anon, but perhaps to help you understand how a Christian could be pro-choice. I hope that you will read them and see that we are just as Christian as you, just as concerned for the marginalized – we have simply come to a different conclusion about who the marginalized are. For me, i stand with the people who are most negatively affected by a lack of safe and legal abortion, who include among them impoverished persons, people of color, LGBTQ+ persons, and minors. 

Here’s a short article on being pro-choice and Christian

And a longer one that goes through the history of abortion, what the Bible “says” (and doesn’t say) about abortion, and ends with a discussion on finding common ground between pro-life and pro-choice Christians, which I think you might appreciate, anon. 

i’ll wrap up by saying that i hope i never steer my followers to unquestionably adopt my own beliefs – i mean hey, uh, y’all? i’m just some random person on the internet! i don’t have a secret access to God’s Truths; i would never claim that every belief i have is 100% right (in fact, i can guarantee that, limited human that i am, i most certainly do not have everything right). i’m just doing my best to share what i’ve uncovered in my studies and my contemplation, and do my best to humbly remain open to the Spirit’s guidance towards a change of mind and heart whenever i need it. i hope that each of my followers will do their own research, their own discerning, and come up with their own beliefs around abortion and every other “issue.” 

[acti-veg]

“Are there people who can’t go vegan?”

The question of people who cannot go vegan is usually raised in one of two contexts. It is either asked by vegans as a genuine question as to what sort of circumstances might prevent a person from going vegan, or it is raised as a “gotcha” by those who consume animals as a criticism of veganism as a movement. In either case, the answer is a little more complex than you might expect.

It is first necessary to define what it actually means to be vegan. Veganism is defined by The Vegan Society as “a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.” It should be obvious that under this definition, anyone can be vegan. Anyone can seek to avoid animal exploitation as far as is possible or practicable for them, regardless of their living situation, finances or disabilities. Built into the very definition of what it means to be vegan is the acknowledgement that it is not we cannot expect perfection, all that can be expected of vegans is the honest effort to do their very best to avoid all animal exploitation as far as they are able to. So long as you are doing that then according to The Vegan Society’s own definition, you are vegan.

However, this is not usually what people mean when they say the word vegan. A word’s founding definition and it’s common usage are often different things entirely, and that is very much the case with the word vegan. Both vegans and carnists use the word interchangeably with being completely animal product free, and particularly with consuming a 100% plant based diet. This definition prescribes not only a philosophy or the striving for an ideal, but something we actually achieve, in that we need to be 100% plant based to be able to use it. Under this limited definition of veganism, it has to be acknowledged that while there is no vitamin, nutrient or mineral which cannot be obtained on a vegan diet, there are some people for whom it is not possible at this stage in their lives to live a completely vegan lifestyle.

The reasons for this are diverse, and summing them all up here would be impractical, but so I will instead choose a few select examples. While no one has ever been able to name me a physical health issue which makes going vegan impossible, there are a myriad of other health problems which can present significant and sometimes insurmountable barriers to going vegan. The most common of these is probably those in recovery from or currently suffering from eating disorders. While many people find veganism hugely helpful for recovery in that it redefines food as a positive thing, others find the restriction, ingredient checking and general conscious focus on food, which is such an inherent part of especially early veganism, to be highly triggering. Many people worry, quite understandably, that this will cause them to relapse back into unhealthy eating or purging behaviours. It would be inadvisable for some of these people to attempt a transition to eating 100% plant based, and instead it would be better for them to focus on recovery until they are in a better position to make the decision to go vegan a little later in life.

Similarly, there are certain food sensitivity issues which can make veganism very difficult if not completely inaccessible. This is not usually the case with ordinary allergies, but some people do have extreme aversions to certain food types and will consistently eat the exact same food over and over. This can be the result of being autistic, of extreme intolerance and allergies, and while it is far from healthy to live this way, pressuring these people to further restrict their options would be irresponsible, again this may change later in life, but it a genuine issue which can prevent someone from eating entirely plant based. Plant based options come in a very wide variety of textures and most vegetables score very low on the allergen scale, so there issues may be rare, but they are legitimate and should be taken into account when advocating.

A different but related reason why someone may claim they cannot go vegan is that they rely on medication which contains animal products or is tested on animals. This is the case for most prescribed medicines due to drug safety laws in most countries, so it is pretty much unavoidable. These people usually fail to appreciate that there is a general consensus among vegans that nothing you don’t have a choice about makes you any less vegan, especially when it is required for your health. No good vegan will ever shame someone for the medicine they have to take in order to look after their physical or mental health, plenty of vegans take non-vegan medications so this is a non-issue.

Claims are often made about physical health issues preventing people from going vegan, people often reference “certain diseases” but almost no one ever wants to be specific. Taking these claims on good faith, it is likely that many people are told by their doctor that their disorder or condition means they cannot go vegan, when this may not quite be the case. General practitioners receive startlingly little training on nutrition, something medical students frequently raise as a concern. This means that a doctor is not much more likely than the general population to know anything about nutrition, this won’t come as a surprise for many vegans, since most of us can recall occasions of doctors blaming completely unrelated health issues on veganism, even when they actually pre-date our adoption of the diet. Some conditions commonly named are the likes of anaemia and diabetes, but neither of these in any way require the consumption of animal products, in fact many report an improvement of their symptoms after going vegan. It is important to realise however, that just because a physical health issue doesn’t make going vegan impossible it can still make it more difficult, so these concerns should always be treated seriously and help offered to work around it.

In others cases, someone can be physically and mentally capable of living a vegan lifestyle, but is unable to due to their living situation. If someone is living with a parent, guardian or carer who they are financially dependent on, it is likely this person controls what foods are available in the household, and if they are not supportive of veganism it just may not be an option. The compromise in this situation is usually to eat vegan whenever there is an option to do so, especially when eating out or buying your own food. Similarly, in areas of food deserts or indigenous sustenance hunting communities, the availability of plant based options at reasonable prices can be extremely poor, making a fully vegan diet unobtainable for some.

None of this means that we shouldn’t be advocating veganism widely and consistently, or that we need to put disclaimers on the bottom of every post about going vegan that we aren’t talking to people who can’t. But developing an understanding of some of these situations is important for effective activism, since offering to find ways to help someone be as vegan as they can be is far more likely to encourage someone to try than calling them a liar or asking them to prove their disability to you. I find it is always best to give people the benefit of the doubt, and work with the existing limitations they have given you. No one should be required to prove a disability or health issue to you, take people at their word and work with the limitations they have given you, it is seldom the case that there isn’t something which can be done to help someone move closer to a vegan lifestyle, even if they can’t avoid all animal products just yet.

The key is to challenge this all or nothing mentality which people tend to have when it comes to veganism, that if you can’t do it 100% then there is no point in trying. We need to emphasise the fact that none of us are perfect, that veganism is about doing your best, and that no one will shame you for falling short if you are genuinely doing all that you possibly can. Being inclusive in our activism means that these people will feel much more able to come to us for support on how to approach veganism within their means, rather than simply dismissing the lifestyle as unobtainable.