Amadeaur

not sure of what exactly you meant by formal portraits, but i decided to go with a mural of them like the ones we see on the walls of the brightmoon castle.

it's a rough sketch, hope you like it anyway. here they are, the protectors of etheria:

i feel like adora as shera would have a mural on her own.

THIGHS!!!!

she's so scruncht

based off of this fun fun thing by @catcrumb

For those of us who have made a long careers in the sector, it can be easy to roll your eyes at this kind of thought process because many of the missions that we are engaged in are SO needed and SO complex that they don’t realistically have any kind of end coming in our lifetimes. For example, if you could work at a food bank for 50 years, bearing witness to only growing depths of poverty in your community, and because you exist in the wider context of the American economy, it can be very easy to become jaded about it as you see that it’s all getting WORSE in those 50 years, in terms of needs. Or if you’re like me, and you work in feminist related nonprofit work, and you see misogyny as string as ever, gender policing at an all time high, and the overturning of Roe versus Wade, you may also have an overwhelming sense of backsliding and battles lost some days.

Basically, more often than not, our work is so daunting that as much as we want to, and as much as we’re “supposed to,” we can’t conceive of a future where our agencies would actually shutter because the issues were working on, have gotten so much better.

And all of this whole ramble that I’m offering here is only just to say how beautiful it is to get a chance to see a mission that actually was able to be worked out out of existence in my lifetime.

Seriously, when it comes to the breakthroughs that we have made related to HIV and AIDS, this is a truly incredible moment as a people… We really should be celebrating this. Not necessarily the singular or shuttering of the organization here, but just the full story of how medicine has advanced to rise to the challenge of this particular virus, and persisting in doing so in the face of so much bigotry that comes with HIV. Despite all of these obstacles, we’re figuring out the fucking cure… Like we’re really doing it y’all. Well I’m not, but brilliant scientists are 😆

They try to be inclusive to trans people by saying ‘only sex is binary, gender isn’t!!’ Which simply isn’t true. Neither are binary.

I’m so disappointed in how intersex people are completely erased from conversations about sex.

In my sex ed unit last year, intersex people were completely left out of the conversation. Intersex people deserve to be able to be safe with their bodies just as much as anybody else does. Same thing when learning about sex characteristics in 8th grade science. The teacher said “there is only two sexes, male and female, XY and XX” which literally isn’t true??? Someone asked her if different chromosome types were possible and she said no. Genuinely how are you a science teacher.

"There is an urgent need to improve resources for intersex families and increase access to outside support. One place to start is schools. Multiple studies have suggested improvements for schools to become more inclusive, affirming, and supportive of intersex children (see Brömdal et al., 2021; Connor & Atkinson, 2022; Simons et al., 2020; Sperling, 2021). Additionally, many school-based sexuality education programs provide resources for caregivers so they can be prepared to answer their children’s questions. Providing these resources to caregivers with inclusive information on intersex variations, especially early on, could be a beneficial source of education and support for caregivers. This could also help caregivers who do not have (or know they have) an intersex child be more educated and more supportive of bodily diversity." "The majority of participants recommended that caregivers normalize diversity for their child. Participants wished they had been taught that intersex bodies are normal and part of natural variation in human sex development: “Present them with the fact that their body is a natural expression of having a body. You know, sex characteristics aren’t bimodal. There are people in the middle. And that’s just the way nature does things and always has” (Jay); “If that had been a part of [the sex talk] too, like, ‘You know, this is a penis, this is a vagina. And there’s also this array of other characteristics you can have,’ that would’ve made a huge difference to me” (Hestia Flynn)."

"I wish that there had been more acknowledgment that like sometimes your body will do things that don’t match up with what people say your body should do. I think that having intersex development be a part of sex ed would be like a really great change. And just an overall acknowledgment that like, if your body isn’t doing these things or it’s doing other things, that’s not actually a problem with your body, it’s just like the idea of being different being okay (Jay)."

"Our second theme centered on the advice that parents learn more about intersex topics so they can better educate their children and manage healthcare decisions more effectively. As intersex variations are relatively common (Blackless et al., 2000) and as most caregivers referenced in our sample knew little to nothing about intersex until, and often after their child received a diagnosis, all caregivers would benefit from learning more about intersex topics regardless of whether their child has an intersex variation or not. Further supported by our findings, intersex-inclusive and -affirming education for all caregivers, regardless of their child’s intersex status, is dire as caregivers communicate their own knowledge and beliefs to their children (Bandura, 1989), thereby shaping a child’s levels of understanding and acceptance of intersex individuals and bodies."

"Medical schools and training programs for healthcare professionals can also better support caregivers if they provide comprehensive intersex- and queer-inclusive education. Better training would help healthcare providers be more aware of the needs of their intersex patients (thereby improving mental health outcomes; Amos et al., 2023), which is especially necessary for caregivers as they are often responsible for medical decision-making for their children. Given their positions of authority, healthcare providers can help caregivers understand that sex, gender, and sexuality are not binary categories; provide alternative options to early genital surgery; and allow caregivers “time to grieve, to learn, to love their new baby” while evaluating treatment options (Roen, 2009, p. 25). Healthcare settings could also be a touch point for providing resources and connections for intersex families and enact policies that protect intersex individuals’ right to body autonomy (e.g., banning non-consensual surgeries until the child is old enough to participate meaningfully in the decision making process)."

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

That’s the problem here. These are irrevocable life changes. We have graduated-age-driver’s licensing, age limits on tattoos, and joining the military. All big life changes, and in the case of driving and military service, a heightened risk of irrevocable harm.

Is it really so wrong for the caring, supportive parent that I’d hope you are, to say:

“Wait, my love. Just wait ‘til you’re a legal adult. Every passing year means thousands of decisions, and this may be one of them you could regret.” These four or two or five years may seem like an eternity to you, but it’s not.”

So none of this condescending "These four or two or five years may seem like an eternity to you, but it’s not" bullshit. Those years are the years that puberty is taking place. If you wait until you're 18, the window for them to be fucking effective has ALREADY GONE?? horses and barn doors folks.

To the hundreds of trans youth and young adults we lose every year to this exact waiting game, it's so dreadful they choose to commit suicide instead of wait "just a few years".

This websites memory sucks. Leelah Alcorn was 17 when she deliberately killed herself because she missed her puberty blocker window and became convinced that she would never see real effects from feminizing HRT due to aging out. Every fucking blogger knew her name back then.

Puberty blockers aren't a change, they're a pause on change. They're a pause on hormonal changes like facial hair or breast growth so that you don't have to undo those things later with expensive surgery or laser etc. if you change your mind you can just stop taking them!

They give puberty blockers to precociously developing kids all the time so that a 7yo doesn't have to grow breasts and start having a period in year 2. That's considered compassionate care because growing breasts and having a period as a young child is awful and traumatic, and the puberty blockers just pause that until the developmentally appropriate time.

When they stop taking them, puberty continues as normal with little to no adverse effects. That's the whole point of them, and why they were developed.