Writer At Work

Presented without comment.

I have epilepsy, and if I read one note scene about people shoving things in the mouth of someone having a seizure, I may scream. That's how I broke one of my teeth, someone shoved a wallet in my mouth. Fucked up a molar bad enough it broke into THREE PIECES. Another resulted in the frequent replacing of a filling in my front left tooth.

You cannot choke on your tongue. You can, however, inhale the vomit that the object is preventing from escaping. Yeah, a lot of us vomit while we seize. We also chew tf outta our tongue and bleed and drool, and putting things in our mouth is a very good way to kill us.

Don't hold the seizing person down. That's how I nearly shredded my triceps and pulled several muscles. It's very bad! Roll them on their side, move things out if the way, support their head and put something under it for cushioning. If they're scratching their face up, cover the hands in loose fabric, like a shirt. I claw at my face and all that's needed is a gentle barrier between my face and hands.

Talking to those of us who live with these conditions will provide more insight than any doctor can give you. They have the science, we have the experience. We will not be insulted by you ASKING politely. We will be relieved.

last summer my friend who is an amazingly talented artist and i were in this super tall building, and she’s in a wheelchair and i’m pushing her around the room. it’s an art exhibit and some of her art was chosen to be showcased there and so it’s all fine and dandy until suddenly an alarm starts going off

a FIRE ALARM

everyone starts running for the stairs and my friend just looks at me with this forlorn look on her face

“i can’t go down the stairs”

but i’m a stubborn bitch “i’ll carry you”

“what about my chair? it’s too expensive for me to be able to get another one if i can’t get this one back”

“i’ll carry that too”

and i did. we went to the stairs (by then most people from our floor were gone) and i lifted her up in a fireman’s carry over my shoulder and then lifted her chair up and used the ridiculous amount of adrenaline that was coursing through my veins to make it down approximately 20 half-flights of stairs until we met some people exiting lower floors, one of which who kindly took the chair. I changed positions so i was holding my friend bridal-style which was, somehow, easier and the person who took her wheelchair (with her permission to handle it of course) accompanied me to the ground floor and then out the doors

basically there is no real protocol for people who can’t use the stairs in an emergency. it’s up to the people with them, if anyone, to help them or the person to somehow make it down the stairs alone, unassisted

thank fuck that it was just a faulty alarm system, because if i was unable to carry her down those stairs and the building was on fucking fire???? then i don’t know what would have happened to her, but i don’t think it would have been very good.

the fire marshal hemmed and hawed for a while and then said to take the elevator- you’re supposed to leave it free for the fire department to use and they want able-bodied people out fast not waiting for elevators. if the fire alarm has just gone off the building probably hasn’t suffered enough structural damage to make using the elevator dangerous, and modern elevator wells are heavily reinforced. many large and high-trafficked buildings on my campus have fire rated elevators that link in with the fire alarm system so they won’t let you off on a floor with a possible fire. 

if the elevator isn’t working, wait in the stairwell and call the fire department to let them know where you are. modern stairwells are also heavily reinforced- it might not be pleasant but modern building code usually requires fire-resistant stairwell doors in office and big residential buildings, also to help firefighters get in and out safely. older buildings’ stairwells may or may not be retrofitted with fire-resistant doors but a stairwell is generally the safest place to wait if you can’t get out. 

Understand that once you enter the elevator, you could POTENTIALLY be taking your life into your hands there.

It is NOT LIKELY, to be perfectly honest. It’s only in a pretty catastrophic scenario - think the Twin Towers, USA, on September 11th - that the elevators will be compromised and out of service. But there is a NOT ZERO PERCENT CHANCE and you need to understand that and accept it.

As for leaving the elevators free for the firefighters, okay, here’s the deal. Unless your nearest fire station is literally right next door? Your first on scene fire truck is NOT likely to be there on scene and needing that elevator before you get to the ground. It takes us TIME to find the address, gear up, and drive to the building. Then we need to hoof it into where the elevators even ARE, so YOU HAVE TIME to use the elevator to get down to the ground floor... BUT ONLY IF THERE’S NOT A RUSH ON THE ELEVATOR! And THAT is WHY we don’t tell people this shit. That’s WHY we tell people to NEVER USE THE ELEVATOR... because every self-entitled asshole will use it because they don’t feel like walking, and then put YOU in danger by delaying the elevator’s arrival to you.

IF, however, the elevator IS compromised, or you just can’t get it to come for you, or whatever, and you either don’t have anyone with you who has the adrenaline fueled BALLS to be able to toss you over their shoulder and hoof it down the stairs with you - because, let’s face it, that is RARE AS FUCK, then HERE IS WHAT YOU DO:

You call 911 and tell the call taker that you are in the building that has a fire alarm going off, and you are not able to evacuate because of a physical disability, and you tell them what floor you are on, and EXACTLY what stairwell you are waiting at. And the very FIRST thing that the firefighters are going to do once they arrive, if it is, indeed, a REAL emergency, and not a false alarm, is come get your ass and bring you down. Whether that means carrying you down the stairs, or whether that means locking out the elevators so that no one else can override them and coming to get you themselves, they WILL come get you FIRST THING if it is a real event. And if it is a false alarm? You will probably be the first person who is not involved with the building to know, because the call-taker is going to stay on the line with you until you are under someone’s care and out of danger, or until the scene has been sorted out as real or false, and you are out of danger that way.

These are pretty standard operations in the fire service throughout the United States. There may be some minor variations based on specific municipalities, but, for the most part, this is pretty typical: LIFE BEFORE PROPERTY. So, as long as SOMEONE knows where you are - hence why you call 911 - Firefighters will come get you. You are NOT alone, and you have NOT been abandoned. I PROMISE. It’s like, our whole reason for doing the shit we do: to save lives and to break shit. Sometimes, we get lucky enough to do both at the same time.

High rise fires suck ass, and I always hated them. But the very FIRST thing I asked anytime we got one was if we had “any entrapments” - which is what we call anyone who could not self-evacuate for ANY reason. We ain’t leaving you behind. And yes, your friend who doesn’t have the stamina to carry you down can stay with you, too. Because I would never ask that of someone, honestly. 

- your most sought-after goal

- a strongly-held belief or conviction

Good morning! I’m salty.

I think we, as a general community, need to start taking this little moment more seriously.

This, right here? This is asking for consent. It’s a legal necessity, yes, but it is also you, the reader, actively consenting to see adult content; and in doing so, saying that you are of an age to see it, and that you’re emotionally capable of handling it.

You find the content you find behind this warning disgusting, horrifying, upsetting, triggering? You consented. You said you could handle it, and you were able to back out at any time. You take responsibility for yourself when you click through this, and so long as the creator used warnings and tags correctly, you bear full responsibility for its impact on you.

“Children are going to lie about their age” is probably true, but that’s the problem of them and the people who are responsible for them, not the people that they lie to.

1) chosen to go onto AO3 in the first place

2) chosen the fandom you wish to read about

3) had the chance to filter for the things you do want to see like a specific pairing or a specific AU

4) had the chance to specifically filter out any tags you don’t want to see like, oh I don’t know, incest and non-con and dub-con and paedophilia

5) had the chance to set the rating level if you wish to remove any explicit content at all

6) have read the summary of the story, which aren’t always great but are the only indicator of what the story will be like writing wise so something about it was good enough for you to click on it.

7) have read the tags of the story which will tell you what is actually in the story. If you have used filters to remove stories with things you don’t want then there shouldn’t be anything in here that’s a shock to you but maybe there is. That’s why the tags are there for you to check for yourself.

8) Then you have to actually click on the story. You cannot see anything other than the summary or the tags without personally deciding that you are going to open and read this story.

9) Only here, at step number nine, do you get to the adult content warning pictured above. You have been through eight different steps, the last six of which have also been opportunities for you to see that this has adult content. And AO3 has *STILL* stopped you to ask one last time “are you sure you want to read this because it has things that only adults should see in it”.

If after this point you are reading incest and paedophilia then it’s probably because you specifically went looking for it.

The fact that not writing about things doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, that these arguments silence victims, that you have to go through 9 or 90 steps, etc. - those arguments don’t matter to the pro-censorship crowd. They really don’t.

I think probably a better question is:

Why aren’t the people who are so set on attacking fanfic writers over the content of their stories, locked away behind 900 steps, working on bringing awareness to & working against the public broadcast of materials they object to? The obvious example of Game of Thrones comes up, but (for further example) Beforeigners on HBO contains content in which a woman talks about having been raped at 12 by an adult man, and freaking Call the Midwife, of all things, shows an incestuous relationship in an episode in s1, maybe s2, and suicide in the same episode.

These are all FAR easier to find and accidentally consume than AO3 fic. So why aren’t there more pushes to get rid of these things?

Or perhaps that’s too far out of reach. All right: why isn’t this energy being focused on, say, taking copies of Forever… by Judy Blume off of the shelf at their local library? A vulnerable person is FAR more likely to be exposed to the underage sex in that (written by an adult!) without proper warning than to properly-tagged fanfic!

The answer to this is twofold - 1) if they walked into their local library and demanded Forever be removed from the shelves, the librarian is very likely to laugh in their face because librarians get very spicy when you try to censor their libraries and 2) it’s much easier to just send nasty messages on Tumblr and harass bibabewitch83 from AO3 than it is to do… well, anything more strenuous.

So you have a group that solidly fails to even try to remove more accessible objectionable content from general circulation but spends their time targeting fanfic writers, who are not only close enough to hit and people they’re likely to get a reaction from, but also tend to be one or more of queer, disabled, assault survivors, marginalized genders (basically everything but cis men), neurodiverse/neuroexpansive, or otherwise marginalized. And on top of that, this group demands complete public declaration of being on “their side” or they brand you an enemy.

Let me be clear: I still am not involved in this Fandom debate. I am not involved in the particulars of this debate. I have been saying that I’m not in this discourse for at least eight years and setting boundaries about engagement, namely that I won’t answer asks or declare myself an anti or an anti-anti.

And I - and others in the same boat as me - are still enduring years of harassment: anon messages to random blogs declaring us pedophiles, people placing us on “sides,” putting words in our mouths, telling people we abuse our kids, etc.

So the combination of those things – the sole targeting of marginalized individuals and not television shows, movies, or even the local library, the demand for declaration and compliance, and the harassment and outright abuse of people who refuse to participate (and those close to them) – makes it clear that this isn’t about purity of fiction.

This is a pro-censorship group exhibiting frankly kinda culty behavior which focuses on bullying marginalized individuals. They hit the people close enough to punch, and they seem real eager to hear us say “ow”.

That’s it. That’s all. Arguing the logic of it all obit gives a false patina of discourse to an extended harassment and bullying campaign.

 That the Red Cross, following the FDA regulations, does not allow men who have had sex with another man in the past three months (refered to as MSM) to donate blood, even if you are monogamous. Even though they test for HIV/AIDS and other blood borne diseases in every single bag of blood they get. Even though it isnt the 80s and we are well aware that anyone can get HIV. Oh, but don’t worry, they aren’t trans exclusionary - if you are a trans male who has had sex with anyone who identifies as male in the past 3 months, you can’t donate blood either! But trans women and lesbains can because clearly AIDS is a gay men thing.

 And if your nonbinary or intersex? Sucks to be you, you need to pick male or female and they will keep pestering you until you pick one because they are allowed to “verbally confirm” answers. Don’t like this rule? Fine, you can appeal through an incredibly long process. 

But they are totally not homophobic, they swear they are working to fix it*! (*in certain cities, with a single study that will likely need to be repeated multiple times, and not to get rid of it entirely just to find “alternatives” and to see if a “time-based MAM deferral” instead of individual donor questionnaires). 

As an interesting fun fact they exclude literally 62% of the population from donated which, gasp, could be seriously decreased if they maybe let gay men donate blood and maybe then they wouldn’t be having such dangerous blood shortages! what an idea!!

Read More

A NOTE:

Because tumblr likes to twist things i’m going to make things really explicitly clear - THIS IS NOT A CALL TO BOYCOTT THE RED CROSS. This is NOT a call to harass the people drawing blood at your local donation event. This isnt even a call to harrass the Red Cross who are actually working to fix it, albiet very slowly, and have recognized the hurt it causes our LGBT community. The Red Cross is a great organization who are just trying to save lives and they need more donations desperately. Please, please go donate blood this month if you can. Taking 10 minutes out of your day to get a slight prick and a cookie could be the reason an infant lives, or a soldier gets to come home to his family, or a mother can see her kids grow up. I know this pandemic is making everyone have care fatigue but you can help someone without having to care or do anything difficult - for fucks sake just go for the cookies and juice, they are good cookies okay. 

This post is a call to petition, organize, hell harrass if you want, the FDA. They are at fault here, they are part of the reason that we are having such a massive blood shortage, the FDA and their homophobic regulations are the REASON PEOPLE ARE DYING. its more important than ever for these nonsensical rules to change. Because remember - these rules are stupid. these rules do nothing to protect blood donors or those who recieve it. All blood is tested. Anyone can get AIDS/HIV. This rule just hurts the LGBT community and hurts those who can’t get the blood transfusions they desperately need. THE FDA NEEDS TO CHANGE.