-Belief-

When I said it was birdseed she just went “oh- can they actually eat that? Is that safe?”

I didnt know how to respond like, at all, so I just pointed at the duck and said “bird”

“Mean girls all go into social work!”

“The mean girl to teacher pipeline!”

Y’all, these are just pink collar jobs. The reason you think there’s so many “mean girls” in these fields is because they’re all like 97% women. Of course some of them are gonna be assholes. There’s assholes everywhere.

While those are all “helper” professions and they very much are pink collar (and are underpaid, that’s not an incompatible idea), they’re also ones that involve power over vulnerable people’s lives. (And I’ve only encountered it as a comparison to, say, male bullies becoming cops, it’s not like men aren’t being mentioned here.)

Secretaries/administrative assistants aren’t on that list for a reason. Flight attendants aren’t on that list. Housecleaners aren’t on that list. Receptionists. Customer service representatives. Dental hygienists. The people who style hair or do nails. That’s not a list of pink collar jobs. It’s specifically (pink collar) positions where if you want to abuse people you’re relatively likely to get away with it.

It can both be true that “nurses who care for disabled people need better pay” and “nurses who care for disabled people have a lot of opportunities to abuse their power and that’s something worth talking about.”

Women aren’t immune from treating people badly because they’re women, or because women are underpaid. They’re sure not immune from specifically seeking out jobs that will allow them to be cruel without any consequences to them, if they get personal satisfaction out of being cruel.

There have been a lot of studies about hazing and abuse in nursing communities and even murder!

My mother is a nurse, her co-workers sit around laughing about the people who fall out of their wheel chairs, about the nurses who do cry when someone dies, my mother has ignored patients crying out in pain in order to drink her coffee.

My mother has intentionally let elderly patients at her nursing home die. She has abused them and she has laughed about it. She has left people suffering and has caused that suffering.

Nurses are underpaid and they are disrespected as medical professionals who aren’t a doctor. That’s true and we should talk about that, but we can not ignore the fact that violent women seek out these jobs with God Complexes and the intent to do harm.

Sure, that harm might be because they are bitter, over-worked, and disrespected. None the less, it is no different than when a male doctor causes purposeful harm to his patient.

Nurses contribute to eugenics, to patient abuse, elder abuse, and yeah even child abuse (my mother was proficient in all of them!)

Here are some important articles to read:

Nurses Eat Their Young An article about hazing and bullying among nurses. The title comes from a common saying in medical circles, the first time I heard it, it was in reference to my mother’s best friend who had poured coffee over the hands of a new nurse who had reported another nurse to a superior for abusing a patient.

Bullying in Nursing – Why The Hazing is Getting Worse A brief article on forms of hazing.

Nurse hazing: a costly reality

Why do nurses abuse patients? Reflections from South African obstetric services

Patients’ lives being left at mercy of abusive nurses

But.

Teachers also have a lot of power over the children under their care, and some teachers are extremely eager to abuse that power. Some from the start, and some I think get that way when they grow disillusioned and cynical and start taking it out on the students - because, y'know, can’t take it out on the people that pay you. If you are the sort of person who would want to abuse a child, teaching would be an attractive career path. Even if you don’t want to abuse children specifically, if you’re the sort of person who wants control over other people and freedom from consequences if that control is abused (the system lets things fall through the cracks all the time! victims who likely won’t speak up or be believed if they do! a societal belief that no one who goes into your profession could possibly be a bad person!), teaching is attractive for many of the same reasons nursing is.

2) Many vapes contain diacetyl, which, when inhaled causes popcorn lung, or scarring of the lung

3) Ultrafine particles, when being inhaled, can be lodged in the trachea (not good!)

4) Ultrafine particles can also constrict the arteries in the lungs potentially causing A HEART ATTACK

I just have to share this again. A beautiful, devastating animation set to the song 'Burn' from the Hamilton musical, exploring spawn Tav and Ascended Astarion's relationship sometime after BG3. I bawl my eyes out every. single. time. And I love it.

The movie is captivating, but the book is twenty kinds of terrifying, even now, ten years after I first read it. As disturbing as the movie may have been to some, the things Selick added really serve to cushion just how horrific the story really is.

First of all, the character of Wybie does not exist in the book. Coraline is facing all of this nearly alone, with her only help coming from the sly comments of the cat, a warning from the circus mice, and the stone given to her by her neighbor, presented with no comment but that it “makes the unseen seen.”

Second, the Other Parents are never quite as warm (and, dare I say, normal) as they are in the gifs above. They’re described as having paper-white skin and the Other Mother’s hair is said to move on its own, and her long, red, claw-like nails don’t ease any uncertainty that she is absolutely, positively up to no good. The first time Coraline meets them, they (and the rest of the Others) seem to be playing roles (for whatever reason, Coraline does not seem to pick up on this), like they all know what to say and what to do and are simply waiting for Coraline to make her move in their terrifying play world. This is shown to be partly true when the Other Parents tell her they know she’ll be back soon after she refuses the buttons - this time, to stay.

Third, the Other Mother commits atrocities that really should not have been in a book for anyone not fully grown up. She physically deforms the world around Coraline to slow her progress in their game beyond any mild traps the movie portrays, and, instead of turning the Other Father into the wandering pumpkin-thing seen in the film, she simply ceases to use him and throws his body away in the cellar, leaving him to rot with whatever bit of sentience he has left. She begins to lose her touch, as Coraline gains the upper hand. Her world doesn’t just become a nightmare - it falls apart completely. No creepy but oddly cool bug furniture here, just the house that now appears to be a child’s drawing. Whatever the Other Mother is (a beldame, but something tells me she’s much more ancient and powerful than that), she does not give half a hump about what she has to do to ensnare Coraline. Destroy the supporting characters of her twisted creation? Done. Allow herself to be dismembered to ruin Coraline’s life in the normal world? Not even gonna bat an eyelash.

On a final, personal note, imagine eight year-old me, ignored by my parents, absorbed in the story and identifying with Coraline from the start. Imagine me finishing this bloodcurdling book and immediately thinking of my basement, where there is still a locked door that my grandmother swears up and down is nothing more than a storage room, but has not once in my (or my mother’s) lifetime unlocked.

A decade later, at the Opening Night of the Coraline musical, I was sitting next to Morgan, Merilee’s youngest daughter, and told her how her not being scared had made the book happen. And she said “I was terrified. But I needed to find out what happened next. So nobody knew.”