Shuck's Blog

I would like to hear the opinions of your group and people with cleft lip about this, to me it seems questionable cause its connected to the animal aspect. What if it is incidental? Or if it is better for the animal-themed characters to avoid it altogether?

Thank you for reading!

Hello, we don't currently have any mods with a cleft lip, so I will open this to the followers who do.

In my opinion the choice of the animal makes some difference, and who is making the character makes most of the difference. I've seen some artists with cleft lip draw *themselves* or their characters with it with some cat features because the :3 cat face can be interpreted as a cleft lip. On the other hand, the hare connotation ("hare lip") was invented by doctors whose main hobby is comparing disabled people to wild animals, and is derogatory*. They have different contexts.

*- there's always someone who doesn't believe me that it's considered pejorative, so here's a PubMed article that literally says it's offensive as the first thing.

I'm personally suspicious of anyone who doesn't have a cleft lip but "just so happens" to have animalistic characters with cleft lips, but that's me. There's barely any characters with a cleft lip, there's barely any characters that are specifically hares in one way or another, but somehow they have an intriguing amount of overlap. I wonder why.

Followers with cleft lip are more than welcome to give their thoughts on this.

I think it's important to acknowledge in this conversation that we can't possibly know the intentions of every single artist ever who includes cleft lips in their art. That said, I worry a bit about the exoticization of a physical feature of my body, especially a facial difference, in terms of thinking it's "quirky" or "cute" when it is a very real, lived reality people like me deal with.

Many cis women (and afab people who no longer identify as women) have accounts of growing up in households where perceived feminine traits (liking pink, playing with dolls and stuffed animals, etc) were punished while perceived masculine traits were rewarded. This is a common experience under patriarchy.

Advice

And it's that thing where you mentally place yourself as the second, auxiliary party to someone else that you consider to be "In Charge" of whatever space or occupation or responsibility you are assigned to

And when you are IN that mindset, it *feels* like you're being responsible. It *feels* like you're being respectful, and helpful, and contributing to the load.

But what you don't SEE- because it *feels* like deference- is that the other person who you're seeing as The Authority you report to- by being assigned that role, has also been assigned the invisible load of BEING YOUR MANAGER.

This is by FAR most commonly seen in husband-and-wife relationships, where the man says, "just tell me what I can do to HELP- you don't have to do it all by yourself, but it's like you won't even tell me when you NEED help. You just do everything and then get mad at me for not doing it first. I can help clean. I can help with the kids. I can help"

But I also see it- and am guilty myself of doing it- at work, at school, in public- that mental, "this is THEIR space, and i will be respectful and helpful to THEM"- without realizing that subservience in this manner isn't actually a good thing. That it actually shifts the burden of responsibility to the other person. That aspect was totally invisible to me.

I didn't understand that when I was told, "if you see something that needs to be done, just DO it", or, "take the initiative", what they ACTUALLY meant was, "I am not above you", or "you have equal say in what kind of environment you want to live or work in", or "I do not want full control over what happens here, I do not want to order you around, I do not want to be in charge, what I WANT is to co-command WITH you"

Being in The Assigned Authority position NOW, that is all so much clearer.

I am the senior member of my team at work, and now, every time I train a newbie, every time I finish catching them up to speed and giving them a list of everything that needs to be done, my next big hurdle seems to always be, "now take pride in the space when I'm not around". "Now don't assume I'll tell you when something is due or what orders to plan things in".

Now, having been on both sides of the struggle, I can appreciate the sticking points here

TO THE PERSON "IN CHARGE": The person deferring to you doesn't understand the invisible labor you're doing. They genuinely believe you know more, you WANT more, you see things they don't, and that they are being respectful and good by staying out of your way and waiting on your orders. THAT is the bit that's not clicking.

TO THE PERSON "WANTING TO HELP": "Help" implies that you are providing assistance to a problem that belongs to somebody else. Stop thinking like that. Understand that the problem belongs to BOTH of you equally, and consider what kind of shared space you BOTH want. What is your SHARED GOAL? Not THEIR goal, but a goal that belongs to you too. Own your space.

This is not a Commander-Lieutenant problem. This is a Partnership problem.

Part 1:

Part 2 of 2

Or go watch the whole thing on TikTok if you want

Part 1

Part 2:

See the whole thing on tiktok if you want

omg....... ur welcome.... zephyr is definitely an archetype of girl that is very cutes to me and many others T_T thank u for telling me this is heartwarming 2 know she is special to u..