Rohanrider3

then I looked in the notes and y’know.

some people seems confused.

Why a shopping cart with stained glass? 

or This would be cool to shop with

or something about religion and NO

NO

THIS. Is about HOMES.

That style stained glass? Those diamonds? They speak to me, and they say “Townhouse”. and FANCY townhouse, at that. They say “City home, old home, a home that is RICH, a shelter from the storm and a safe place for a family”.

But on! a! shopping cart!

That evokes - to me - Homelessness.

The person on the street who had no other choice but to steal the best cart they could from a store’s corral just to have a way to transport the meager belongings that are all they fucking have in this world. And it’s NOT a home or a safe place or a shelter but it’s all you fucking have!

And this piece goes and puts them fucking together! AND NAMES IT.

I don't want to derail a post specifically about being neurdivergent, so I'm going to go ahead and make this its own post. But, I have been having a lot of thoughts lately on how the same thing can be said of being a survivor of abuse makes you vulnerable to more bullying and abuse.

I've lurked in subreddits for bullying victims to talk about their experiences, and there's almost always comments saying things to the victims like "bullies probably always sniff you out because you're quiet and withdrawn and act afraid of other people" "bullies sniff you out because when they raise their voice to you or say something mean you flinch and freeze up instead of standing up for yourself" "bullies sniff you out because they can tell from your body language that you have low self esteem and low self worth so they take that as you being an easy target"

Gee, I wonder what sort of life experience could make someone withdrawn, afraid of other people, flinching and freezing when someone is mean or raises their voice at them, and also lowers this person's self esteem and self worth 🤔🤔🤔

Just like in the last post I reblogged where they said it's unlikely for a bully to come right out and say "I picked this victim because they're autistic", instead they'd say "it's because this person is weird and eccentric", if you were to ask a bully who is targeting a survivor of domestic violence why they picked that target it's unlikely they'd come right out and say "I'm bullying them for being a victim of domestic violence", they would deny that much and probably don't even realize (or care) that their victim is a survivor of abuse. But that doesn't change the fact that they were drawn to this particular target because of traits the victim acquired as a result of enduring abuse.

being the victim of parental control was considered embarrassing, and lowered one's social standing considerably. one boy who was hated was scorned for having "his mother chose his clothes for him". my mother also decided daily on what i would wear as well as over my hygiene (when i was allowed to shower, to shave, etc). most people that age had certain liberties to chose their dress (within limits, as their parents also would disallow some things), over their hygiene, and so forth, and a child that had less control of this than them was socially lesser.

when i was in the middle grades, a teacher organised a special group activity on bullying with specifically my case in mind, and i remember a child explaining their dislike and rejection of me with: [their] parents are really weird and don't allow [them] to do anything! i also well remember arriving at school the day after a conflict with a semi-friend who greeted me loudly with "so did your mother give you a trashing yesterday!!!", again as declaration of my patheticness which was, of course, meant to embarrass me.

it's interesting to think on, how little class solidarity so to speak there is among children over the issue of parental control and violence. i suppose everybody that was at conditional liberty to chose their clothing, to decide on some of their activities, that wasn't beaten much at home, etc, must have, on some level, been aware that they were lucky to not have to endure this much, that, as children, had they been saddled with more uncool, more embarrassing parents, there would have been little they could've done about it. probably their parents were in many ways uncool, embarassing, restrictive and occasionally violent, but one can always punch down onto those that are controlled and abused worse.

Still, victim blamers like to feel a smug and unearned sense of accomplishment over not being a victim themselves, as if they did something right and victims must have done something wrong to warrant their abuse. Nevermind that again, it often comes down to circumstances you have no control over such as what family you're born into.

Or, even if you're abused as a teen or adult by a partner or someone else you let into your life, we've all hit low spots in our life where we're emotionally vulnerable, so it also often comes down to luck of the draw over who you're surrounded by when you've hit a low and you're in a vulnerable place.

If you are someone who freezes, fawns, or just in general has difficulty speaking up for yourself people will hate you for that, brand you a coward, say it makes you weak, and say that any abuse or bullying that happens to you is your fault for being too weak to do anything about it. (The catch 22 is that people also hate people who assert their boundaries and speak up for themselves, you really can't win!)

But again, freezing, fawning, flinching at mean/rude behavior instead of speaking back, these behaviors can become so heavily ingrained in you after years of abuse, and can be so, so hard to untrain yourself to even years after you've escaped the abuse.

That's because our brains and bodies are hardwired to do what it takes for us to survive any given situation. When you're trapped in an abusive situation, you probably did try fighting back and standing up for yourself at some point. Maybe dozens of times. Maybe even hundreds of times. And chances are every single time, or almost every single time, that you tried standing up for yourself and fighting back this just made the abuser dial up the abuse even more, so fighting back only put you in more danger. And at some point, in a pavlovian manner, a very primal part of your brain began to understand that fighting back and standing up for yourself was only putting you in more danger, endangering your safety, possibly even endangering your life. So your brain, which is evolved to keep you safe and more importantly alive, changed its wiring down to the very primal core to make you do what it would take to keep you safe during abuse, which often is freezing or fawning, but certainly not trying to fight back or stand up for yourself (after that only put you in more danger the first 10 or 50 or 100 times). Freezing and/or fawning is often the only reaction that will please an abuser who's actively lashing out at you, and get them to calm down and back off, or at least not hurt you more than they were already planning to.

So as a survival mechanism, these behaviors become very, very hardwired into you, because they were the only things keeping you safe, possibly even alive, for many years. That's why once you leave the abuse you can't just switch off these behaviors. The more severe the abuse, the more hardwired these are. That's why it can take years working with a therapist, preferably one who specializes in trauma recovery, to hopefully re-wire your brain a little bit. But not everyone has access to a therapist specializing in trauma recovery.

When I see someone who freezes, fawns, has trouble speaking up, who flinches and backs down when someone raises their voice, I don't see a coward. I see someone whose brain was re-wired to keep them safe and alive in a very horrible situation.

And yet, people are so quick to judge these behaviors as "weak" "cowardly" and "pathetic" because society hates abuse survivors so much, and surviving abuse is still so heavily stigmatized.

As a defense mechanism, they believe they aren't just lucky but somehow better than the people they see suffering. If people are poor because they're lazy and I'm not lazy, I don't have to fear poverty. If I've never been disabled or killed in a car crash, it's because I'm a good driver and therefore I can ignore the possibility that it could happen to me. Because I'm not like them, I won't suffer like them.

Not only does it justify cruelty by saying only the deserving suffer (and so they also deserve your cruelty and you don't have to feel bad) it creates an incentive to alienate and avoid anyone who's suffering. If you get close to them, you might start to like them. You might start to wonder if they really deserve it. You might learn they did nothing wrong, were just like you...and they still got unlucky.

That is rightfully terrifying. It's true and accepting it will not only give you more reason to be kind but also prepare you better for your own bad luck and make you a bit harder to manipulate. Knowing the risks won't save you but it will improve your odds.

This is mostly speaking from my experience, but when I was a child, my fear response used to be Fight. I would stand up to my father when he was screaming at me. I would tell him when his reasoning didn’t make sense and when I thought he was being unjust. I would defend my mother when she and my father fought, because he screamed and she did not, so I thought she felt alone and vulnerable so I felt like it was my duty to protect her. I would defend myself when I was being bullied, even if that only resulted in more bullying. I remember myself being ‘brave’. But like was said before, fighting didn’t help. It only made things worse. So I learned to Fawn. I learned to hide myself, and that instinct to hide got so bad that it was directly interfering with my ability to function in society. But the anger isn’t gone. I still feel indignant when I believe a situation to be unjust, I just can no longer act on those feelings.

If someone else is being abused by their boss? They must've done something to deserve it. No need for unions to actually hold corporations accountable. Someone disabled in a workplace accident? Must've been their fault, they'd best not sue, and if anyone speaks up for them their livelihoods are potentially on the line. People are encouraged to compete with each other, and discouraged to cooperate and help each other. From the very beginning in school, from a young age, you are set against your peers in competition- not cooperation. Those who do well will get better opportunities, be able to apply to be accepted into colleges, ect. Students that suffer from abuse and bullying will obviously do worse than students who don't. People like me lost years if not over a decade of their lives to the abuse, and the bullies not only get off scott-free, they go on to become successful and are in-charge of workplaces like managers. US society has been structured to reward some of the worst among us for half a century, and it has really come home to roost this past decade.

Stimming is not an Autism Only Behavior. Not only does it show up for ADHD, but also OCD and most Anxiety Disorders. Including PTSD something that survivors of abuse famously have a high rate of.

In fact, overstimulation is also something that shows up in both autism and PTSD (and schizophrenia). There is an uncomfortable overlap in PTSD and ASD symptoms, and I've even seen the theory that it because the official ASD symptoms aren't actually the base autistic neurotype, but the Traumatized version.

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

OP also invented armsocks.

So today I tripped. Fell flat on my face, it was awful but ultimately harmless. My service dog, however, is trained to go get an adult if I have a seizure, and he assumed this was a seizure (were training him to do more to care for me, but we didn’t learn I had epilepsy until a year after we got him)

I went after him after I had dusten off my jeans and my ego, and I found him trying to get the attention of a very annoyed woman. She was swatting him away and telling him to go away. So I feel like I need to make this heads up

If a service dog without a person approaches you, it means the person is down and in need of help

that being said. can we not erase the fact the entire conversation began with disabled people talking about being medically abused pretty please. & also, iirc the post that first really blew up about "mean girl nurses" never said "ALL nurses are evil bitches who hate everyone and they deserve to be mistreated" it was saying "women who sought power over other people in high school go into careers where they can wield power over other people, same as men, and there are women who go into nursing and present themselves as kind and caring and maternal, who are motivated by a desire to have unquestioned authority over other people's bodies to make themselves feel powerful, again, same as men who do the same things in masculinized careers." & i just find it "interesting" how all that has been reduced down to "all nurses are mean girls")

i think nuance is always important & doctors and nurses do need better treatment and society frequently praises them while also supporting their abuse. and yet they are also universally recognized as vital important members of society & empowered to have immense control over the lives of people who are systemically vulnerable and seen as leeches who add nothing to society. and yet who has to deal with the impacts of their stress and their trauma and their anger and their burnout? the disabled people under their care.

again. Nuance! but i just cannot help but Side Eye In Cripple some things people say on this topic. it can both be true that nurses (& doctors) experience horrible working conditions and that, in my opinion, that any conversation about burnout and abuse of medical professionals needs to also criticize the authoritarianism of the medical field and how widespread medical neglect and abuse is, lest we simply fall back into "the poor beleagured doctor who is Jesus Christ On The Cross Himself, all-wise and all-knowing and forced to tolerate all these entitled know-it-all ungrateful patients!" which changes nothing for anyone.

like. look at this article. the actual context for the "mean girl to nurse pipeline" (that some women seek out power over people to control them and make themselves feel bigger, and women are likely to do this through caretaking in the role of nurse, teacher, mother, etc.) is not brought up at all. the fixation is entirely on "its mean to call nurses mean girls! they experience a lot of bullying! you don't REALLY know any mean nurses, just poor tired bullied ones!"

First, the phrase itself is unfair to women. Although nursing is a female-dominated field, this phrase focuses on women as being the “mean” ones to worry about.

like. do youuuu fucking see the erasure of medical abuse. the actual bullshit nurses do to real living human beings, which goes massively under-reported. & not just disabled people but people of color as well. god fucking forbid medical professionals are treated as anything but literal saints descended from heaven. god forbid white cisgender women are recognized to have the ability to be cruel and power-hungry and to hurt other people through traditionally feminine roles based on caretaking. like I genuinely do understand that nurses are subject to immense stress, bullying, and violence, and that providing better working conditions for nurses is vital to improving medical treatment for all patients.

but when the actual neglect and abuse nurses can do to their patients is ignored and drops out of the conversation entirely, in the name of complaining about nurses being called "mean"? sorry but it pisses me the fuck off.

(links to some sources on patient abuse under the cut since this is long enough as is)

#m.#reminds me of how the pitt has several scenes i remember being like.#whyyyy are we making so many jokes about drug addicts and mentally ill people and their distress guys 😀#like that one fucking scene of the one doctor berating a drug user for no goddamn reason but it portrays her as#righteous because He Lied For Drugs (literally no way for him to be honest with you)#lying to HIM about giving him a drug that CAN MAKE YOU GO INTO WITHDRAWAL IF YOU TAKE ANY OTHER OPIATES WITH IT (suboxone i think)#WITHOUT TELLING HIM!!!!!!!!!! MASSIVE massive violation of patient autonomy and SAFETY. since she LIED about what drug it was#and the man HIMSELF clearly wanted opiates so he wouldnt be in withdrawal for his daughters wedding#and then she. berates him? for not caring about his daughter???????#and no one seems to be annoyed at this scene but me a fucking pparently#because it was the sweet nice doctor and its her fucking character development to be cruel towards a drug user for doing literally nothing#except trying to seek the care he needed to live his life in the way he knew how#and ofc they presented it as ''well maybe when hes ready he'll get clean now that you were a jerk to him :)''#she shouldve been fucking berated for that. they shouldve had a whole scene telling her how big of a fuckup that was#but nooooo its her cute little character development moment#idc get that poor man some methadone and TELL HIM HOW IT WORKS

It is shocking how recent the idea that "people have the right to decide what medical care they do or don't want" is. The whole modern medical system in the US, for example, was built with the presupposition that doctors give instructions to nurses and patients, nurses follow those instructions and give instructions to patients, and patients do exactly what they're told and be thankful for it. Hell, the Tuskegee "Experiment" didn't officially end until 1972 and the ADA was only passed in 1990. The present day system is the culmination of literal centuries of medical abuse of vulnerable people, and the ways in which the system has improved has been through the ongoing struggles against it by those it abuses. And this is not unique to the US by any measure, just the one whose history I know best.

Lying to patients? It's for their own good.

Giving them a medication without telling them what it is? It's for their own good.

Having a patient imprisoned committed institutionalized against their will? It's for their own good.

Berating a fat patient for existing? Drug users for using drugs? Patients with disabilities needing (legally mandated) accommodations? It's for their own good.

We're only just now starting to grapple with the vast number of people who have been traumatized by the medical system. The last estimates I saw we're around 12% of patients exhibit symptoms consistent with PTSD related to experiences with the medical system, and that number rises sharply for patients of color (especially black patients), disabled and chronically ill patients, fat patients, LGBTQ+ patients, and basically any other marginalized group. Some doctors and nurses have worked intentionally to try to address and mitigate their biases, in many places the number of medical professionals who are themselves members of these groups has been increasing, but the vast majority just never even consider that they could be harming their patients. Like, for fucks sakes, it's 2026 and research is still finding that a substantial portion of graduating medical students still believe that black people have thicker skin and higher pain tolerance (or even can't experience pain at all!?!) and that women are more likely to exaggerate their pain and other symptoms.

The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.

Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.

I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so go drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.

Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.

"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."

"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."

"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"

Open IbisPaint go to a canvas (any canvas, or make. a new one)

Select the font tool (if you don’t know what or where that is, press the tool icon (normally a paint brush or eraser) and press the T button

From there you should be able to create a text box (writing is not important…). Find the font button and add a new font. I can’t remember what it’s called but you’ll know when you see it

It’ll automatically search for you “free fonts.” Do not follow this. Your app is misdirecting you. Instead search up whatever it is you’re looking for in the search bar, and that should work

NEW PATTERN ✨

This one was outta my comfort zone, but MAN was it fun to stitch.