Heracleum Mantegazzianum

Someone asked F1nn why it was that on her larger branded social media accounts she still listed herself as a femboy in some places while in more intracommunity spaces she more readily and comfortably identified as transfem.

Now, depending on who you ask that kind of question to you'll probably get a meandering answer on the complexities of how one defines their own identity. But instead F1nn gave a very quick and simple answer.

Because people were asking, I start with a pencil drawing that has the shadows and highlights blocked out. I shade the shadows in first, and go around the borders of the highlight shapes so theyre just negative space. Its mostly vertical hatching with a tiny bit of outlining for definition.

So today I tripped. Fell flat on my face, it was awful but ultimately harmless. My service dog, however, is trained to go get an adult if I have a seizure, and he assumed this was a seizure (were training him to do more to care for me, but we didn’t learn I had epilepsy until a year after we got him)

I went after him after I had dusten off my jeans and my ego, and I found him trying to get the attention of a very annoyed woman. She was swatting him away and telling him to go away. So I feel like I need to make this heads up

If a service dog without a person approaches you, it means the person is down and in need of help

We’re trying to decide which of these is a better option:

or

Thirty-three states have banded together to sue Meta, alleging that the company was exploiting its young users on Instagram and Facebook for profit, including by collecting data from children without parental consent. Four of those states—California, New Jersey, Colorado and Kentucky—also claim that the company misled consumers about the addictive design features on the platforms, thereby causing mental health problems in children who got hooked from an early age. The damages requested by those four states add up to a whopping $1.4 trillion, Meta said in a recent court filing, a figure that would allegedly go even higher with the other penalties the attorneys general seek to add. The number is high by many standards but especially when compared to the company’s market capitalization, which is just above $1.5 trillion.

Obviously, this isn’t true, and the folks who actually wrote that episode have explained how the retcon came about (they needed a second act twist and didn’t think about the implications). But as someone who worked on the earlier seasons of the show, with the usual assortment of inconsistencies that most shows of that era would have, episode to episode, do you have any thoughts on:

A) how well it does or doesn’t gel with things like Bashir’s ever-changing story of why he decided to become a doctor, or why he didn’t finish first in his class, or why he decided to seek a post on the “frontier” instead of somewhere more prestigious, and also

B) on how well the show incorporated Bashir’s unique status as an openly genetically engineered Starfleet officer going forward? (I think that all that was after your era and I would never encourage you to talk smack about your fellow writers, but I’m still curious about your thoughts as a writer if you have any you’d like to share.)

(Personally I think as a retcon, it works amazingly well with all of the said minor inconsistencies in Bashir’s appearances on the show, but it does seem like that was more of a happy byproduct than anything else—one of those glorious accidents writers sometimes trip and fall into without planning it.)

Yeah, totally a retcon. That said....

A) I think it fit pretty well. It gives a solid reason for him tanking his exam, motivates his profession, and explains his occasional arrogance, especially early on.

B) Can't really speak to that because, as you said, I wasn't on staff for Season 6 and 7.

(Addendum): I agree!