places dark and places strange

the issue I was running into with researching this a few weeks ago is that almost all of the scholarly writing on the content of people's forced-sex fantasies focuses solely on women's fantasies and starts with the research question of "why would women enjoy imagining such a horrible misogynistic thing?" despite surveys often showing that men have force-fantasies (where they are the one being forced) at very comparable rates to women. my hypothesis for a bit was "either men's fantasies are exactly the same as women's or they're completely different in [x] way," which was disproven interestingly when I did finally find something about men's force-fantasies: in content they are almost exactly the same as women's fantasies but the emotional motivations are often different in [y] way, which I hadn't expected. and [y] also super applies to my buddy ryland, perhaps even more than my original [x] hypothesis.

If a description of a characters attitude or aspect runs to the tune of, "they looked x, but were also y and z" part of that information has been transmitted to the other characters in the scene, and if well written those characters will behave according to an incomplete understanding of the real feelings of the character they're interacting with. But the rest of the information is between you, the reader, and the writer, choosing to convey if to inform your understanding of an interaction.

bestie boo, let me fill you in on something: if you're going to take any part of 'good grammar' and randomly assign it to She's A Witch! AI, you might as well give up. It's over. You're cooked. Anyone who has spent the last decade or more learning to type properly, anyone who has spent any time writing articles/papers/essays that require you to use 'good grammar' is going to fall into that 'oh no it might be AI' trap.

Source details and larger version.

but you deserve to give informed consent to that process.

the lies around pregnancy - that it's inherently safe, that it doesn't do you permanent damage, that it's only extremely rare for people to die of pregnancy complications, etc like

all of these are lies constructed so that more people will get pregnant w/o knowing all that

there needs to be more talk about the impact of miscarriages and how common they are, how different abortion processes are and how accessible they are

but also like. talking about how pregnancy fucks your body up should not be taboo

this is a process that permanently changes most people's bodies, and that's even if the pregnancy doesn't do them like. severe illness or injury

and i just think everybody should have a right to KNOW that

When I was pregnant I was in a million forums for pregnant people because (cough adhd hyperfixation) and I had something called SPD (Symphysis pubis dysfunction) (not Sensory Processing Disorder though I also have that) which is where your pubic bones separate early (more or less) because they get all loosey goosey as your body gets ready to crank that baby out.

Except my pubic bone got confused and got misaligned at like 3 months pregnant. I could barely walk. I couldn't roll over in bed. Doing something that required me to shift my weight from one foot to another like opening a door knob was like an excruciatingly painful knife being stabbed into my pubic bone, I can't express how intense and blinding it was.

So I am in one million baby forums like "am I dying what is happening why is there a knife in my pubic bone" and all these people are like "I have that too! my doctor says it's normal and not to worry because it doesn't hurt the baby. I just deal with it by laying in bed for months in excruciating pain and think about how lucky I am to be having a little miracle growing in my body."

So lol nope. I went to my midwife and they are like, "Oh squeeze a can between your knees look up a physical therapy youtube on SPD" and I did that can-squeeze thing and it CURED THE PROBLEM in ONE DAY. I had been SUFFERING, y'all, it felt miraculous.

And I was so full of rage (flames, flames on the side of my face) that people are being told "Oh, it's NORMAL just deal with it" "It doesn't hurt the baby." Like, look, yes it's NORMAL but it's 100% treatable!!! SPD (again, not Sensory processing disorder) affects 1 in 5 pregnant people.

I was lucky to have amazing midwives (need a gender neutral term for that profession, but they see pregnant men and women)(side note highly recommend midwives if you are gender nonconfirming/a man/etc) and I have DOZENS of examples of shit like this.

Some people in moderate car crashes are very lucky, and walk away with zero injury. Some are very unlucky, and die. But most people fall into the third category, where they'll be injured at the time, then heal, and then for the rest of their life they have some minor and liveable complication from the injury. Like a knee that lets you know when the rain is coming, or a back that doesn't like seats without lumbar support, or a shoulder that never quite gets its full range of motion back.

she's been suffering with this since she gave birth to me. I'm 38 years old. she had that surgery last week.

Granted, it still needs to be updated because not just women give birth.

Here is an etymologically equivalent but gender neutral term I just made: