disabled ppl we need to start lying to nosy people okay? you tell me i'm too young to need a cane and i will tell you point blank that maybe you should tell that to the guy who ran me over. you don't get an explanation of my health issues you get lies and depending on how much of an asshole i want to be that lie will be anything from a humble car crash to a 1 billion lions attack. mind yr business.
"i could never live like that" well maybe you'll have to because this happened overnight. yeah you heard me i was the most able bodied man in the world but then one morning bam i woke up disabled. yeah you could have that too. there's no cure either you'll just wake up one morning and now you have to live like me
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It's certainly kinda bitter that "there's no singular right age to do something" is for, like, 40 yo people who want to become writers, and not 10 yo people who want to drop out of school.
For about two decades we are telling people there's a rigid timeline of what they should be like year by year. And then suddenly, somehow, everything becomes okay to do at any age. Is it really surprising nobody is actually ready for that?
@igottafindawaytostopitstopit child labor laws are a whole different topic, and I'm not sure what simply pausing education has to do with starting work.
I also want to point out that you can't have long term consequences or making it in society if you're dead. And very often death is what's at stake in such conversations.
People genuinely do not understand that these are life and death requests from children.
If an adult says, "I no longer want to go to the government institution where I am tortured for 8 hours a day," people will for the most part be horrified that happened at all.
But because of the survivorship bias of those who weren't being tortured to death, people refuse to believe it until it happens to their own child.
By which point, they've invested enormous amounts of mental effort into justifying the child torture apparatus. Best case, they realize they fucked up but now they will have their child stolen by so called protective services if they help their child rest and recover, due to MANDATORY SCHOOLING LAWS having no mechanism for health or safety related pauses.
More likely?
They deny the reality of their child's suffering and home becomes as much a danger as school.
I'm thinking about how life-changing it would be for disabled, chronically ill, and otherwise marginalized youth to be able to drop out of school.
I dropped out of school when I was 17. I spent some of the worst years of my life trying to stay in school after having a major surgery that left me in chronic pain (and I was highly depressed, anxious, and chronically ill in general).
If I'd dropped out of school right after the surgery, I would have been able to get my GED early and go to college. Instead, I spent those 4 years being harassed and hated by ableist teachers, bullied by homophobic peers, and learning the material at home on my own anyway.
I dreaded going to school to the point it made me feel physically sick. I know other people who have similar stories, and I don't think it's a coincidence that they're all either queer people, people of color, disabled people, abuse survivors, or some combination.
If you were able to get through the school system unharmed and graduate, that's a privilege. Every youth should have the right to decide for themselves if they want to stay in school.
I've been meaning to make a post talking about my stroke because y'all got bits and pieces of the recovery but I never actually told the story of HOW it went down and the thing is the type of stroke I had is usually the type young people have and since having mine i've now heard multiple stories of people under 40 having very similar strokes and the scary thing is, is that they didn't get help right away. Because you're young and healthy and sure you feel weird but it'll pass right? but it doesn't, and it gets worse, and by the time you get to the hospital (some people literally take days to go) the deficits are worse and recovery is harder.
so here's a super long post about strokes in general, and mine in particular/what I went through.
So for strokes the signs are abbreviated BE FAST. Balance loss, Eyesight changes, Face drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, -> Time to call 911.
Had I known those MAYBE I would have figured it out but my symptoms were a little mixed. I was reading (fanfic!) in bed because it was a sunday morning and i had nothing pressing to do and suddenly got dizzy. I put my laptop aside because my eyes were blurring (Eyesight changes - symptom #1), and laid down, thinking it would pass, it didn't, it's a little vague how it progressed because I'd been having headaches and neckpain for about 3 weeks leading up to it so I was like 'idk is this a migraine?' (headaches can be a stroke symptom so symptom #2) but i got nauseous and eventually got up and to my utmost surprise I immediately fell over as if I was the drunkest of frat bros. The room literally spun before my eyes as I fell to the floor (Balance loss - symptom #3). I have had some Nights and I had never been that unsteady before. I crawled my way to the bathroom, threw up (nausea - not a common stroke symptom) , took 800mg of ibuprofen, and crawled back to bed.
if you know anything about ibuprofen you might know it's a mild blood thinner and that's a high dose. I may have inadvertently helped myself with that one. I was just feeling like shit and thinking 'idk this might help'
At this point I still thought we were still in Normal Land. Sure, it was a weird morning, but Surely There Was A Reason. (Yes There Was) Anyway, as I'm lying there willing my body to stop suffering I realize my arm is going numb (stroke symptom #4) and I switch positions, because weird, but it doesn't go away, and I gave it a good little while. I'm on a medication that can make my limbs tingle but it usually just does it to my fingers and it dissipates quickly but this wasn't dissipating, and then I realized one of my legs was also going numb. Then one side of my face is going numb.
(at the time I did not look in the mirror but I had a drooping eyelid - symptom #5)
Those all seem bad. I grab my computer and google 'when to go to the hospital for dizzyness' as that felt like the worst of my problems. and indeed the list I found highlighted that if you are also experiencing loss of balance, blurred vision, nausea, and limb numbness, you should see a doctor. That seems like far too many symptoms to be having all to be listed. I grab my phone (thankfully plugged in and by my bed), and start layering on more clothing because it's about 10 degrees out and i'm in a pajama dress. The very nice man at 911 talks with me and sends an ambulance, I tell him I don't think I can get out the front door of my building on my own and he asks if I can get to MY apartment door to which I say yes and he assures me that's fine they will have keys to my building.
(I have been since informed they love to chop down doors but no, I could get that far)
I wait by my door laying down on the ground and they arrive pretty quickly. They see to me in the hallway, which is more of a lobby in my building and the only place with room for me to lie down (I cannot stand unassisted at this point) they ask me a bunch of questions, take vitals, and ask me where I would like to be taken. Me, having never had to go to the fucking hospital in an emergency before, simply go 'wherever is close' because I again, I am having a stroke and do not have the wherewithal to think through these things.
A big firefighter helps me down the stairs (it's only a half flight and I still almost did not make it) and we get underway.
At the hospital they wheel me into triage and I mostly lie there gratefully and answer some questions and respond to some tests (grip strength, following a pen with my eyes, that sort of thing) and then I hear what is great when you've been at urgent care for two hours but what is Very Bad when you just arrived in an ambulance and that's 'She's next'. I jumped the line for a CT scan and an MRI. I was there less than ten minutes before I was actively being scanned. honestly closer to five.
my active symptoms seem to have been worse than some of the stories I've heard, not being able to walk AT ALL in particular, although some other are pretty equal (Footless Jo on youtube had a stroke around the same time I did of the same type and has discussed hers, she delayed going in despite the severity for a variety of reasons and it sounds like her recovery has been difficult) My recovery was pretty easy because i was actively being cared for and on blood thinners right away. I was pretty out of it in the beginning, but I was only in the hospital for 6 days and then in a rehab for another 4 to relearn how to walk and balance, then i was released unto the world and just spent time going to physical therapy and recovering for awhile. I was out of work for about 8 weeks total. I basically had the best outcome for a stroke. I recovered almost fully back to 100% (I'm about 2% less sure footed than I used to be, but it's rarely noticeable), my face still feels a little weird but has markedly improved so I live in hope it will eventually get back to normal. It massively sucked. But strokes can fuck you up for life and I came out a weird medical story to tell and have to take some extra medication now/precautions to take (i cannot do certain types of yoga, no weightlifting, no push ups, no going on rollercoasters.... things that could strain my neck essentially) but overall I escaped very lucky.
For the record, i'm unsure that taking a blood thinner of any kind if you suspect a stroke is a good idea - about 1 in 5 strokes are haemorrhagic strokes, that is, they're caused by a brain bleed, not a bloot clot. A blood thinner will make that worse. I'm unsure if these numbers apply to strokes in younger people.
But thank you for sharing - even if one does know BE FAST (or, even more if one knows only the older FAST) - it can be really difficult to recognise these sorts of things when you're actually having an odd experience, 'cause you knew it as abstract and outwardly-observable facts? So sharing a description of what it could actually feel like is really important. Thank you.
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pet peeve that happens more often than you would both think and want
[image description: a four panel comic of a blank grey person, a blank blue person, and the artist's sona, doc, an axolotl with glasses. in panel 1, doc and the grey person are looking at the blue person, who is saying "hi i am male character with a complex about my identity. i am miserable and forcing myself to be something i'm not. transgender imagery keeps being associated with me especially in scenes where i'm most sad and/or angry about my identity, which is male. even if i hate it. even if it's painful." in panel 2, doc is thinking of an egg over a trans flag while the grey person says "omg transmasc king". in panel 3, doc's thought bubble pops as he quickly looks over at the grey person with a baffled expression. in panel 4, doc, still baffled, looks back over to the blue person, who is saying "i cannot stress enough that i am so unhappy with who i currently am and who i currently am is male". end id]
[image description: three drawings of doc wearing an oversized shirt. in the first, he is showing the front of the shirt, which says "i did not nor have i ever said that you specifically are not allowed to ever headcanon any male character as transmasc and the fact that so many of you assumed that says more about you than it does me". in the second, he is showing the back of the shirt, which says "lots of you could benefit from taking a second to assess why you feel so threatened by the idea of a character that you enjoy being transfem and also consider how one's biases can bleed into all aspects of one's life including how they enjoy and engage with media". in the third, he is lifting up the shirt to show off short shorts that say "some of you are just misogynists though". end id]
i made this as an engine/algorithm test for a deduction game i am working on, spawned out of some random puzzle-solver algorithm tests for solipcyst. the full game will not be called tarotle and is more of a run-based "you are a fortune teller" air quotes deckbuilder. you will use sleight of hand, gimmicked cards, various tzotchkes, decorations, and cold reading to deduce "what does this client want, and, more importantly, what do they need?", and then deliver it to them in the form of a tarot reading. your goal, as in most run-based deckbuilders, is to pay your rent.
tarotle has none of that.
tarotle is a pure deduction puzzle based around assigning three out of a hand of five tarot cards to a series of ambiguous-but-true statements in order to tell the querent what they need to hear. if you like tarot, you may enjoy it. if you like zebra puzzles and formal logic riddles, you will almost certainly enjoy it. more features will be added slowly as i work on them between bouts of depressive anhedonia.
tarotle, like wordle, has a new, static puzzle each day, as well as an easy way to share your scores with others. every puzzle has at least one guaranteed path to 100%, but the combination space is large enough that brute forcing is not really a viable strategy.
please try tarotle at your leisure and feel free to let me know your score. someone in a rush will take 1-2 minutes. someone with a notebook and pen and paper will take anywhere from 5-15 minutes, if not more, and have a much better time, in my opinion.
every single conversation abt ip on here devolves into a bunch of people being really anxious that someone is going to take away their hypothetical income from them for their creativity and like, that is already happening. that is literally happening. how do you think publishers like penguin, harper collins, macmillan et al got big and stay big? how do you think publishers like elsevier et al maintain such a stranglehold and charge such amounts? do you even know how individual IP rights operate these days, especially when you're licensing them to a company? have you read a contract ever in your life? have you had to work on preparing a contract ever in your life? do you think your much vaunted, precious authors have the rights to reprint their books whenever if they realise their publishers are fucking them over? don't make me fucking laugh. at the very least please pull your heads out of your asses and read helen dewitt's extensive chronicling of her run-ins with the publishing industry as is. god knows you can pick up the biography or collected/published letters of almost any author* across time and encounter a section with their run-ins and struggles with their publishers, either because they're not being given enough royalties, or because they're writing to contract and need to give their publishers a book by a specific deadline, or a specific kind of book, even when circumstances & health issues are conspiring against them. do you think copyright gives them any control over their lives, or any sort of creative control? don't be so naive - and nevermind the fact that it is basically impossible to have a career in writing these days and that the rare few who do are writing extremely formulaic genre fiction written to, again, insane deadlines that are punishing for any sort of creative work. stop being naive!!!! take an actual look and reckon at what the actual circumstances and conditions are for producing art! it is not good! copyright is not going to save you! it is panacea at best! you will literally do better campaigning for universal basic income over championing the cause of copyright!
*off the top of my head just based on the biographies & other primary sources i've read: agatha christie, aldous huxley, jrr tolkien, georgette heyer
mind you, this is only in publishing/writing. the conditions are not that much better in other domains. music? most artists are being fucked over by their record companies cutting deals with spotify that leave them getting very little revenue while not actually owning their own masters. visual arts? a handful of artists will break through each year and it depends heavily on your ability to network and attend extremely expensive art events, from what i know of. but maybe you can get lucky working in highly exploitative conditions in a well-known artist's studio where you produce works that are sold under their name :) can't say i know much about television or film, but my impression is that its not that much better (perhaps the greatest evidence in favour of this is the way the number of working working class actors in the uk has nearly dropped completely off and nearly all of them are privately educated in one way or the other). so genuinely who do you think the so called ip law is protecting right now? bc right now from where i'm sitting, it is protecting literally those with the greatest amount of money and purchasing power, on both sides of the cultural production and cultural distribution divides. which as you might imagine is anathema to any kind of genuine creative culture.
when the hot new thing in a year or two is calling trans* people who haven't begun medical transition and/or don't want to medically transition "cissexual" regardless of social transition or lack thereof i will be accepting my right-about-everything plaque, thank you
Do you want a spicy, queer, kinky book with canonical intersex characters and cougars and a plot that will keep you on edge? Well, i have the perfect book for you! The 120 Days of Sodom is a page-turner that will keep you on the edge of your seat,
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tumblr automatically changing - > into -> is so good. honestly the best thing about this website. makes me disappointed and angry whenever i type it outside of tumblr and it remains the ugly caricature of itself instead. -> beloved
thanks. thanks for being around. thanks for knowing me. thanks for liking me. thanks for holding your hand out & saying here's a place you can be. thanks for another night
thanks for staying. thanks for taking care of yourself. thanks for making me feel safer. thanks for enjoying the things that i enjoy. thanks for being kind. thanks for putting warmth in my chest when it gets tight. thanks for sharing your world with me. thanks for having a sense of humor. thanks for proving the worth of a human being where i've doubted it. thanks for leaving nice messages. thanks for your time
a small thing i learned from my sister dying is that i really would rather the people i love be a burden than be whatever the hell else they'd be if they weren't. yes even if it's messy and not always fair and hard completely inconvenient for everyone involved. even if it's weird. even if i'm rolling my eyes a bit inside sometimes. i just want you to bother me. please always bother me
like "it's rotten work" "not to me not if it's you" actually sometimes it's still rotten work. even if it's you. and i'd still do it a million times over
been seeing a lot of people locked into trans discourse express disdain that "ugh the trans unity people want us to all hold hands and pretend there is no beef" and it demonstrates such an inability to see a bigger picture.
I'm nonbinary, and in recent years the people who have been the most exorsexist to me have been binary trans people. Binary trans folks, yall piss me off every damn day on this website. And if I was unable to see past short-sighted ideas that prioritized comfort above autonomy, safety, liberation, authenticity, I could conclude that binary trans people are my biggest enemy. But they aren't. Not even close.
It's not trans people following you into bathrooms, it's not trans people shouting shit when you walk past, it's not trans people killing us. If we want to play oppression olympics, I've got more reason to hate you guys than you do to hate each other, but it's such a cowardly position to take. It's so inauthentic.
Not because trans people aren't doing harm in this shit storm, the race to acceptance and assimilation comes with a body count, but the crabs in your bucket are not the ones who put us here.
This is WHY I am critical of ideology and not of groups. Reactionary movements are an attempt to take back power as a powerless group, but it only empowers you to violence over other powerless people, because your power is granted BY the oppressors. We must build power as a collective against them.
Trans unity is not a fake-smile-we-all-love-each-other bullshitfest, it is a recognition that we are not each other's enemies, even when we are not each other's friends. The shittiest trans woman deserves the things I am fighting for, the most vile trans guy MUST have access to what we are dreaming of. That is the point. And my unity extends to cis people, not just because i do not want to be another barrier to the closeted trans person finding people who will take them in, but because the gendered liberation of cis people is tied to my liberation too.
We are on lists, we are struggling to afford our care, we are abused by people and systems beyond our control, and fighting against a massive machine for our right to live. Of course it makes sense that bullying someone you think is doing transness wrong makes you feel big. Of course it makes sense that you think policing hard borders stops people from getting what you are afraid of losing. But it doesn't work like that. We are too intertwined that cutting each other off is like cutting off our own arm out of spite. Our oppressors LOVE that you have one less arm to fight them with--it doesn't do shit to them!
But it feels like control. It feels like action. When you feel stuck and hopeless, doing something, often especially out of anger FEELS like progress--like movement.
We do not preach "loving" our fellow trans people out of a naive belief that we could all just get along, but because the only way to survive is to survive together. The only way to thrive is to celebrate the wins of others. The only way to move forward is with all of us.
Because if you whittle and whittle away at "threats" and cut down on your circle until only those you can "really" trust who "fully" understands you inherently--rather than meet them and build collective understanding--eventually the only one who will be left is you, and if other trans people are your enemy, how do you think it goes when it's just you vs yourself in the end?
don't isolate no matter how fucking broken you feel even if every attempt at connection proves futile do not stop reaching out to someone something somewhere please
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