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bro it was so good im going insane, I'm so delighted.

im just going to repost some thoughts here:

Doctors are to black women what police officers are to black men. That may seem controversial but I believe it to be true and I speak from personal experience.

If you've seen this TikTok you know that a 2016 study showed that 50% of medical students and residents thought that black people couldn't feel pain the same as white people.

And we learned from this video that because of a 1999 study, to this day, there's a black correction factor for the creatinin levels in black people's kidneys, meaning we're less likely to recieve a kidney transplant if needed.

So if you go to a doctor, feel you aren't getting proper treatment or they refuse the treatment you've requested, say to them the following:

If you weren’t already going to spread this advice because black women are at risk, then spread it because it’s applicable to everyone else as well, including you reading this.

The absolutely pervasive mentality that unwanted criticism or critique shouldn't be given and should be ignored is why fans of color don't stay in fan spaces.

And I am not going to mince words here:

A lot of you are racist. A lot of your fan works are racist.

That might have been difficult to hear. And if it was, you should probably reflect on why that was.

"Fandom etiquette" has created a space where fans of color either bite our tongues and eventually leave or say something, get dogged on, and then eventually leave.

If I say "I am uncomfortable with fandom's tendency to write trans men as feminine and submissive" I do not mean "I think every person who writes feminine submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I don't even mean "any cis-person who writes feminine or submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I mean "I would like writers to seriously think about why this is so common, why they write that, and if it fairly and genuinely engages with what it means to be a trans man, or if they just think it's hot when submissive people have vaginas and didn't want to write omegaverse of m/f".

Similarly, when people say "fandom is systemically less interested in black characters, less willing to give flat black characters rich fanon than flat white characters, and less interested in black characters in ships", the response is not to explain why you, personally, just happen to like popular white guy in that fanon. Your job is to look at yourself and ask if you tend to "just happen to be more interested" in the popular white guy across fandoms, be honest, and start unpacking that. Sometimes it's easier to love the flat character who's already getting 10,000 fics with headcanons and art and meta.

If somebody says "I wish there were more gluten free options at the potluck. I hate always showing up and not finding anything I can eat*", they are not asking you to throw your cake in the trash and weep. They do not want to hear your long speech about how actually this is your grandmother's recipe, and you've tried it with rice flour actually, but it just didn't work. You think about what you can do, and you listen to how they feel.

hi I’m the pal. web and I were talking about how it’s both uncomfortable whenever the vampires’ higher tier appearance changes are romanticized AND when they’re demonized

the cult and sausage are constantly ooh-ing and aah-ing each other’s “upgrades” and focused on conventional attractiveness and clothing changes. this romanticization serves to draw attention away from the horror of having your body irrevocably altered beyond your control, instead praising how “cool” everyone looks. it’s bread and circuses, a gilded cage

meanwhile, characters like ren often overly criticize the later tier appearances of the vampires, dehumanizing them and considering their changes repulsive. this frame serves to portray the vampires’ uncontrollable changes as worthy of scorn which they. can’t really control. it’s disheartening to hear from (for apo and cleo) someone who’s supposed to be an ally or even a friend

Azune Nayar is someone whose childhood and youth were marked by adults who, faced with bad choices, made the less-worse one because they cared about him.

His parents starved themselves to give him and his sister the chance of being recruited as child soldiers by a mercenary group, because that was the only way to protect him from starvation.

Thjazi Fang saw a child abandoned by the roadside, desperately, determinedly, and implausibly claiming he could fight. Thazi Fang was in the middle of waging a rebellion against the powers of Araman. That rebellion wasn’t the best place for a child of twelve. But it was a better place than abandoned by the roadside or picked up by another mercenary group, and Thjazi cared, so Thjazi took him in and assigned him to noncombat work away from the front lines.

By 15 Azune was fighting on the front lines. (In an earlier war, the same was true of Thazi at that age.)

Thjazi’s rebellion failed. He asked his brother Hal to look out for the teenage Azune. Hal did so, treating Azune as part of his family. Hal did the same for other people who needed it. Being like family wasn’t the same as being Hal’s kid.

The tragedy of Azune isn’t that he was failed or abandoned or uncared for or used. The tragedy of Azune is that the best that people who cared about him could give him still wasn’t the same as what he needed, because being an adult doesn’t make you all-powerful. Azune’s problems weren’t created by those who loved him. They were created by the world he lives in.

Azune lived his adult life for the Torn Banner because it was the life he knew; or out of loyalty; or because they were the ones trying to change that world into something different.

He offers understanding and empathy to enemies (Julien) and strangers (Vaelus). He learned that somewhere.

For example is Tim getting stuck outside in weather and having to be wrapped in a blanket

this is a dangerous question. one time i spent an hour-long car ride describing a tim pear wiggler scenario to fey and when we parked i was like “so anyway that’s the prologue. then in part one—” and fey was like mercy, please

(my favorite pear wiggler scenarios are the ones where the pangs require complicated and internally consistent worldbuilding. it’s like 90% worldbuilding and then a series of pangs. gotta get up the chairlift before you can ski down. or something)

lately i’ve been kicking one around in my head that’s simultaneously a tim-joins-the-family-early au and also a tim-joins-the-bats-late au, with the interim time being as much pear wiggling as possible. it’s set during jason’s robin era, while bruce is working to adopt jason but running into some official red tape (possibly due to the revelation, in an adoption process functioning 1% more above-board this time, that catherine wasn’t jason’s birth mother). meanwhile, in this world tim’s mom dies and his dad is in a coma early, and due to the high-profile nature of the situation, bruce wayne (who has the means and established personal security/team of media lawyers) is considered the best foster placement for 12 y/o tim drake.

(see what i mean about needing a whole setup? i’m trying to be so brief here, and yet.)

anyway. the thing is, bruce doesn’t exactly WANT to take in another kid right now. nothing against this kid personally, but he’s in the middle of an adoption process, and also, you know, the secret night job. but he has to keep up appearances for the aforementioned adoption process. and meanwhile jason, who has not been officially adopted yet and is still settling into the wayne family, feels incredibly insecure about this little polished rich kid coming to stay with them. like, some part of jason is a bit convinced that bruce will realize it would be so much easier to have a kid like tim instead of a kid like jason.

tim, meanwhile, is quietly grieving and quietly starstruck and quietly just like. Going Through It. especially because he’s been getting targeted/bullied at school (by other kids, by a tennis coach, a few options here). he doesn’t tell anyone, but it’s getting worse, and it puts him on edge around everyone at the manor, too.

bruce, during this time, can sense the tension in the household; one night jason’s irritation boils over and bruce sees jason snap at tim over something. when bruce talks to jason about it—the two of them in the study—he reminds jason that they need to keep the foster situation drama-free because of the adoption process. also tim is a kid who just lost his parents, but—no, jason, he’s not here to replace you. he’s not a better model. jason. we couldn’t say no, do you understand? i want to keep you. this is how i get to keep you.

and of course: tim is outside the study to hear this. he had been hovering, finally working up the courage to tell bruce about the harassment at school. but he hears this, and realizes: 1) he’s already an unwanted obligation. and 2) telling anyone would be the opposite of drama-free. it might interfere with his placement, or even jason’s placement. (and whoever is targeting tim knows this, too. they’re banking on him being afraid of it. maybe they’ve even implied that they’ll get jason in trouble if tim tells anyone. so.)

tim takes matters into his own hands and comes up with a solution for everyone: he asks bruce to send him to boarding school. and for the next few years that’s where tim is—as jason’s adoption finalizes, as bruce reconciles with dick, as life goes on for the wayne family. tim is conveniently out of the way, finding excuses not to accept bruce’s invites back for school breaks. (on more than one occasion he fakes a school trip or an invite skiing with friends, and spends his spring break or winter holidays eating cereal in his dorm room, learning how to hack most gotham databases. on other occasions he actually does go on a trip, but not the school-sanctioned summer programs he’s supposed to be on. somehow he ends up with lady shiva for a summer, anyway.)

a few years later a new vigilante enters the gotham scene—almost entirely out of sight, mostly slipping the bats intel and never directly engaging. (tim. obviously.) and, around that time, damian shows back up in gotham, and ends up being the catalyst for tim coming back to the family as tim, too.

the more he respects or admires or loves a person, the more i think he falls in the mistake of trying to present himself as who he thinks they'd like him to see. for thjazi he was the useful asset, for members of the torn banner he wants them to see a grown reliable soldier after all these years. he was very focused on protecting hal now that thjazi isn't there to keep him out of this anymore, and luis has mentioned on multiple accounts that he tries to keep a lot of the person he was for thjazi hidden. he keeps bringing up to murray, who has very strong morals and convictions, that this, who he's pretending to be, isn't him.

comparing it to vaelus, who they had a very important scene together but don't really know each other. he shared that this was the language of his people. or bolaire, who at best they knew each other in passing prior to the schemers arc. he gets his questioning about people and things. his more philosophical questions in general. he gets the correct pronunciation of his name. the less he feels like there are expectations, in a way, of him the more he expresses himself more easily.

his way of attempting to gain julien's trust i think is very telling on his attempt to maintain trust with everyone. 'i will tell the story you chose to tell.' he rarely corrects or contradicts people. he's suppressed his individuality for a myriad of reasons. he is to be useful always, what people need of him. and it shows why his relationships are either so fractured or distant. he does have a hand in creating that distance without realising it.

Body Horror: Things that cannot happen in real life. EX: The Thing, stomach mouths, eyes on hands, etc

Gore: Fresh injuries, often severe. EX: Severed leg, gutspill, deep gashes, etc

NEITHER: Healed injuries and burns, congenital differences, missing appendages, etc. If I could theoretically go to the store and see that character browsing the isles- It isn't body horror or gore. That's just a person. *AND the amount of people that tag, not just fictional characters, but real human beings as body horror is staggering. Its not solely a fandom issue, ableism and bigotry against anyone that looks sufficiently "different" is prevalent in real life and has devastating consequences.