Mimi

S1E1: The Dragon's Call

I’m a trans man in the UK, I’ve been on the waiting list to be diagnosed for just over 2 years now, and am expected to wait around another 2 years before I get my first appointment (if the wait time doesn’t increase). I will then wait around 2 more years (at the very least) for my second appointment, and if I’m very lucky and am diagnosed in that appointment (which is not guaranteed in the slightest), I’ll enter another waiting list to access healthcare. The service I’m in is considered around average. There are people waiting 6 years for their first appointment in other services, so I am incredibly lucky with my supportive family (in that I haven’t been kicked out or abused, parents still don’t respect pronouns or name) and I have good friends who respect me, as well as only waiting 4 years for a first appointment.

Maybe you could go private if you had the money, right? Go a similar route to trans people in the US? A diagnosis from a private practice can be rejected by your General Practitioner, and any referral you get for hormones or surgery can be completely dismissed, because you weren’t diagnosed by an NHS practice. You would likely have to go entirely private, which is not possible for thousands of trans people who rely on the NHS. This is an issue within the NHS and a completely lack of funding and training for trans healthcare, resulting in horrifically long wait time and difficult to access help, especially given doctors and surgeons have and are having their practices shut down because they aren’t considered proper by the NHS, despite being one of very very few who commit to this kind of work.

by getting married, a disabled person can lose their income, benefits, and health insurance.

if a disabled person marries an able bodied person, and combined their assets are $3000 or over they will lose all benefits, including medicaid (health insurance).

if a disabled person marries a disabled person, their assistance is lowered 25%.

we don’t have marriage equality until all disabled marriages are equal.

as an adult, i am a child trapped in an adult life.

i lived my 30s before i lived my 8s.

from a child who were “too mature for her age”, i couldn’t be more scared of aging now. i don’t want to grow up, i want to go back.

- athena (myself).

Authors can see your bookmarks as a default. You have to mark them as private if you don't want authors to see them. There is an argument that bookmarks are a reader's space, but if you don't want authors to see what you are saying, make the bookmark private.

There is no algorithm on AO3. Seriously. It does not exist. Sorting by kudos, comments, length, etc. is the closest thing you will get. It is very much a curate your experience situation. Embrace it because you never know what gems you'll find if you give less popular fics a chance.

Depending on who you ask, kudos are not a good metric to judge a fic on anymore. As to if they ever were is, again, depending on who you ask. There is a spider/web crawler (we call it the kudos bot) who gives a bunch of guest kudos to fics. We cannot summon it and we cannot remove the kudos. At best, we can set our fics to private. So, if you see a fic with way more kudos than views, that's why. Many of us do not want these kudos, but we have to live with them.

Concrit (constructive criticism) is divisive because this is a hobby for many people. There is a culture on AO3 for concrit to be opt-in instead of opt-out, but not everyone subscribes to that. If you do not see an author's note saying concrit is OK, you can ask if it's OK. If they don't say anything, take it as a 'no'. If the author is cool with concrit, great. Concrit away.

Asking for updates is also divisive. Some people want/need that encouragement and some don't. Leaving a polite 'can't wait for the next chapter' is totally fine. If you ask for an update and the author asks you not to, please respect their wishes. You don't know what else is going on behind that screen. We all use fic for our own reasons and it's impossible to tell if that was someone's project to forget about things that they don't want to deal with.

There is a difference between A/B and A&B. A/B is for shipping and A&B is for non-shipping relationships (such as platonic and familial relationships or bullying or work situations). Please tag accordingly and please do not accuse people of writing shippy fic when they tagged it A&B.

Comment totals on AO3 count author responses. It doesn't make a distinction between a response and a new comment thread. Comment thread counts are in the author's stats page only available to them. Authors are not inflating their comment counts by responding to get more views. They are just trying to interact with people who support them.

Not all authors respond to comments. For many older fans, this can be due to years of harassment in fandom, witnessing friends being harassed, not having time, etc. etc. Their reasons are their own and it does not mean you are a bad person or said something wrong if they don't respond to you nor does it say anything about them. Authors do not owe you interaction just as you do not owe them comments. It's your prerogative if you only want to leave comments on fics where the author answers back, but it does not mean the author isn't grateful or doesn't care. You do not know what else is going on.

You cannot take a kudos back. Seriously. It's permanent. If that means you want to wait until a fic is finished to leave a kudos, that's totally fine. To authors, if you see a bunch of comments and views, but few kudos, this is probably the reason. It does not mean your fic is bad; it just means readers are holding kudos back until the fic is finished, which is perfectly legitimate.

Please read author's notes at the beginning and end of chapter updates. This is where authors are The Most Likely to tell you if there has been a change in their update schedule, if they made changes to previous chapters, explained a certain choice they made, etc. Same with checking the tags thoroughly before reading a fic. Most authors take tagging and warning/updating readers very seriously and the spaces they can do it in are the author's notes and the tags.

Because there are so many people from so many cultures on AO3, the categorizing of fics may not be totally even across the board. Tagging might have discrepancies. For instance: some people might view smut as M and not E depending on the level of detail; some might even view it as T. Please exercise caution and look at tags carefully when clicking on a fic. If you come across something you do not like, the back button is always an option.

There is a hard limit of 75 tags on fics, so not all characters that appear in a fic are likely to be tagged. For many of us, we only tag major players, major ships/&-relationships, and background relationships as a courtesy and save the rest of our tags for known triggers and making it easier for people to find our fics by tagging the tropes we use and certain parts of the content (such as 'AU where A loses their voice').

If you hate a character or a ship or a certain trope or have certain triggers, there is nothing wrong with asking a fandom friend for recommendations. If anything, we probably should bring back fic rec lists and you could be doing an amazing service for fandom if you start making one based on your preferences. Don't rely purely on other platforms to lead you to amazing fics; you never know how that person is finding fics and they could be missing out on some really amazing ones.

AO3 currently does not have a messaging system and many users prefer it that way. I am not positive what the future holds, but if any author wants you to get in contact, they will probably leave other socials in their notes or on their profile. They might even tell you to contact them in a comment response. You can absolutely respond to them on other social media platforms and talk fics or art or fandom. The AO3 lack of messaging is a comfort for many people because of previous experiences regarding harassment and, for some, that's the closest thing to a social media that they have. Some fandoms are more than 40 years old and not all of it has been positive for everyone.

Please do not leave 'placeholder' ideas in the fic tags. By this I mean, 'here's an idea I plan to write. Let me know if you like it!' and there's one or two sentences but no actual fic. AO3 is not social media. You can be reported for this and the post taken down as per AO3's guidelines. Fic, meta, and art are welcome on AO3. A plan to write a fic is not.

So like, the metamorphosis process in amphibians is a whole complex thing but its initiation and progress is pretty straightforwardly reliant on two hormones, thyroxin and prolactin; the first pushing metamorphosis and the second opposing it. As the relative levels change through the tadpole stage, different tissues are affected, hence why tadpoles develop limbs etc. in a specific order.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that if a tadpole has a thyroid hormone deficiency (can be genetic, environmental or a result of physical injury), its body never gets the signal to do things like "grow legs" or "turn into a whole frog". One of the scientists who studied it noted that it's developmental level is basically as if it'd hatched very recently, except that it's huge, so basically it got just past the external gills phase and then just...stopped changing (except in size).

This is probably the most upsetting post I’ve seen on Reddit today. Choosing not to have a second child just because they might have special needs? Just because one has special needs doesn’t mean the other child will. And even if they do, be loving and understanding. Like every parent should.

I understand if she feels like it’s too much to deal with. But not choosing to have children solely because of the chance of being neurodivergent/special needs? I think that’s a bit messed up. And remind me of eugenics and ableism…

Listen, and listen carefully!

Parents have NOT talked about stuff like this in forever, and mostly because of reactions like this.

Knowing your limits has nothing - absolutely nothing! - to do with eugenics!

Parents like me have fought SO HARD to even be able to say things like this without being shamed, so you stop it right there and back a bit off!

Is it sad, that people say they don't want (more) kids because of [reason]? Yes.

But it is NOT up to YOU to decide wether it's messed up!

These fears are real! And they are VALID! Too many parents get absolutely no help AT ALL! And I'm not just talking financially. They are burnt out and they have absolutely no one to support them. Their kids? Yes! There's help for the disabled!

But their parents? Siblings? Far too often, they don't ever get anything.

And you know who suffers from that, too? Those kids.

If a parent has found the courage (!) and words to talk about their fear, then you don't get to tell them their way of thinking sounds like eugenics, because it does NOT! Eugenics would be "if it is disabled, I'll just have an abortion and try again". Eugenics would be to neglect the baby until it dies.

Not having another kid because you fear to not meet their needs and yours is not mean or bad or anything! It is very valid!

I will never have another kid because pregnancy was hell. Because birth was hell. Because being a single mum without support is hell.

And the fights I had to fight to even vocalize that without shame!

I know you have no bad temper. You're a kind spirit, @autism-adhd-information-blog, and I don't mean to sound angry at [you]. Because I am not (well, not really). But I have had to listen to people telling me that I am sick for not wanting another child (for any reason!) for far too long to not stand up when I hear another mother getting bashed for the same.

Who stands up for the burnt out parents? Who helps those parents who are so deeply traumatized that they would never ever again go down that road?

No one.

All people do is shame a mother who will speak her heart. And then they wonder about neglected children.

Let me tell you this, because I had to learn it the hard way:

I tend to sound angrier than I am, for the sole reason that I want the message to get out to those parents. I want them to know that there are people who will call them out, but there are also people who will defend them.

So, really, I have no issue with you. 🙂

Also, I do understand that you felt hurt by this persons words. It is upsetting to hear that one is perceived as a "burden". It hurts. I know that.

Important thing is: everyone's a burden to someone. And having that weight down on you won't change anything.

My advice? Start being inconvenient by "choice". Be a pain in people's ass.

I've gained so much freedom when I chose to actively NOT care about wether people think I'm a burden or something. (Okay, my RSD is still messing with that, but I'm on the way.)

🙂 we're good, you and I.

And I hope you will not have albad day/night because of me. I hope you find your inner peace again and can still enjoy today.