Uknightedwestand

“that’s got so much sugar, it’ll give you diabetes!” 

first of all THATS NOT HOW ANY TYPE OF DIABETES WORKS. 

Second of all, even if it was, and people ‘gave diabetes to themselves’, it’s just not funny! Who gave you the right to make fun of a literal disabled person just because you think they deserve it because they ‘brought this onto themselves’? that’s fucked up! All types of diabetes have a genetic component, and specifically for type 2 diabetes, you don’t know that person’s circumstances. Recent studies are showing links between type 2 diabetes and poverty, as sugary overprocessed food like fast food is cheaper and sometimes more accessible. And once again, there’s still a genetic component. 

[image description: A chipper character wearing a red and deep blue plaid shirt and newsperson’s cap. They hold a bottle in their right hand and point at it with their left. The classic symbols for ‘Male’, ‘Female’, are entwined with a question mark — these symbols appear to be spinning differently on the bottle front than on its neck. Inside the thin golden bezel cameo oval that may (or may not) be shifting its orientation is an impressionist mix of magenta and blue. outside it, five colored horizontal stripes  — Pink, White, Magenta, Black, and Blue.Text reads, “201, RIVER ALGOOD, the small god of the Gender Fluid”]

• • • • •

“Okay, kid, so you found the bar.  Good on you.  That means you need to be here.  No, there’s no cover charge, and we don’t care how old you are—think of it as a public house or an inn as much as it’s a tavern.  Or hell, go with coffee shop.  That’s a modern way of saying ‘gathering place with drinks and plenty of chairs, where you can be yourself with other people who are also being themselves, and not need to worry about anybody seeing you.’  This idea that bars are only about the alcohol is a lot more recent.  But then again, so is clean water.

“Huh?  Yeah, I do talk about it like I was there, because kid, I always have been.  Go all the way back to the creation, to the first people we’d recognize as humans, standing there all hairy and muddy and naked, and there were always the ones who felt like they were one thing when people said they were something else, or who were something different today than they were yesterday, than they’d be tomorrow.  You’re nothing new.

“Honey, you don’t gotta look so scared.  You’re here.  That tells me you belong here, and that tells me you’re one of mine.  If you weren’t, you’d never have found the doors.  I’m not going to judge anything except that nail polish—it looks like you didn’t use a base coat, and it’s going to stain your cuticles.  But you’re young, you’ll learn how to do your nails without dyeing your skin at the same time.  Unless ‘necrosis’ is the look you’re going for.  In that case, you’ve got a lead on the competition.

“Anyway, you’re nothing new, and you’re something valid, and no one gets to tell you who or what or why you are except for you.  All those choices are yours to make, all those futures belong to you, and I’m just the lucky god who gets to guide you along the way.

“My pronouns?  Kid, I’ll take any pronouns you’ve got.  I keep ‘em in a bucket in the back.  Some of them can get kinda frisky sometimes, but they’re all good.  If you need new ones, you can fish ‘em out of the bucket.

“Oh, which ones am I currently using?  I find that ‘divine/divinity’ works pretty well for me.  If that’s too much of a mouthful, you can use my name—River—or ‘they/them’ is almost never entirely wrong.  But really, anything’s good by me.

“I am the god of the changing and the questioning, the malleable and the multiple, the ones who don’t conform, and the ones who won’t, or can’t.  I belong to all of them, all of you, and I will keep you as safe as I can.  It’s not easy.

“Nothing important ever is.

“So you found the bar.  That’s the first step.  Now here’s the question of the hour: what are your pronouns?  Speak, and we can know each other better.”

• • • • •

Join Lee Moyer (Icon) and Seanan McGuire (Story) Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a guide to the many small deities who manage our modern world:

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(ʘ‿ʘ✿) “what you say ‘bout me”

the original post

because like……….so does mine? at a certain point each day Grim decides she wants out, and until that happens she a) follows me about SCREAMING, and b) sits atop whatever I’m doing and bites my hands. this is not an exageration

wanna know what I do? I take her out. either supervised in my backyard or on leash in the front

she naps in the sunlight, eats copious amounts of grass, rolls in dirt, and murders butterflies. after 15-30 minutes (equivalent to the time you’d spend on a neighbourhood dog walk) I take Grim back in, and she happily sleeps/plays/cuddles indoors for the remainder of the day

the UK literally had so many pet cats killed by cars and dismembered by wildlife between 2014 – 2018 that the country thought there was a cat serial killer on the loose.  

and that wasn’t the first time, either – the EXACT same situation played out in the UK in 1990 because so many pet cats were dying in “safe neighbourhoods”

you want more information on your “culture”? cats kill 55 million birds per year in the UK.

What I’d give for one of the Cinderella remakes to go into how when you’re in an isolated and abusive situation, sometimes you need to be saved and you’re not weak if you can’t escape by yourself

She’s impossibly wealthy. The dress isn’t a fabric he can recognize, but it’s beaded with cut diamonds, faintly milky opals that shimmer with a rainbow, little pale aquamarines, and somewhere are little bells gently ringing with each step - he’s a Prince and he can’t afford to dress like that. The slippers ring too … there is nothing like that crafted by the hands of humans. That’s fairy stuff. She has an in with them that eclipses royal politics. She is powerful in the Old Ways.

All this wraps around the poorest woman he’s ever seen in his entire life, and he’s seen some very, very, poor people in his time.

Poor in money, but poor in “oh you poor thing!” as well. This is someone who has been robbed blind. This is someone who carried themselves waiting for the lash, for a browbeating, for harsh, cruel, abrupt, punishment.

He expects her to be haughty, or hard, or meek or… something else… but she’s just nice. She’s just … nice.

The rigid posture comes out of his back, his tongue unsticks. She’s like sitting by the embers of a low, calm, fire. He feels warmed and rested simply speaking to her. He wonders if it’s magic, and it might be, but if it is it is magic that is her own.

And that terrifies him, because he’s trained to see these things and he knows someone with a cruel hand is waiting to douse her, and snuff her, and beat the last glimmer out of her shining eyes - eyes that put that dress to shame and and and and… she’s gone.

Oh god, she’s gone. It will be all over her sweet, kind, warm face that she transgressed and … oh god they’ll kill her, whoever they are. This will embarrass them and if there’s anything he knows, it’s that you don’t humiliate someone who has power over you and walk away unscathed.

And all he has is a fairy slipper that will only ever fit her foot (it’s not merely shoe size, it’s a kind of spiritual fit as well), and the vain hope that he can keep such a bright light from burning out. It doesn’t even touch his heart that what he’s feeling is a kind of pure philia, not until it enraptures him soul to bones, all at once. Oh god, oh no, oh shit… he’s reached well above his station, but…he can try to be good and worthy.