Whumpster Fire

For example on a post I made about leaving the way clear for people exiting elevators or public transportation instead of standing right in front of the door blocking it I got a few notes from people saying "haha yeah I always give someone a good body check if they do this and I love seeing the shocked and offended look on their face"

or on a post about leaving room for the flow of traffic I had people in the notes bragging about giving "body checks" to people in their way on a sidewalk or in a hallway.

Do. Not. Ever. Ever. EVER intentionally bump into people aka give them a "body check". Anyone who brags about this kind of behavior in my notes is getting blocked. You are literally physically assaulting someone and then bragging about it. Physically assaulting another person is actually a lot worse than accidentally being in someone's way, and I have no tolerance for it.

The times in my life where someone has intentionally "body checked" me have been when I was disassociating and/or about to pass out from low blood sugar, or quite literally was as far off to the side as possible (literally up against a wall or packed up against other people in a crowded area) and every time this has happened it has ended in me having a full blown panic attack that I need to take emergency meds to come down from due to my PTSD.

You never know why someone could be in your way. They could be visually impaired. They could be disassociating. They could be about to pass out from low blood sugar. They maybe just experienced a disturbing or traumatic event that's shut down their pre-frontal cortext. All sorts of things. So congrats I guess on physically assaulting someone who might be disabled or disassociating or about to faint from low blood sugar. You sure are showing them.

Not only that, but it's unsafe for you too. There are violent and unstable people in this world, and you might "body check" the wrong person one day. I had a friend in secondary school who would brag about this kind of behavior, and when I was talking to my aunt about it one day she said to me "one day your friend is going to do that to the wrong person and find herself cleaning herself up off the floor."

weight of rollator will depend on several factors , but 7 to 9 kg seem like fairly average guess . rollator users , naturally , can weigh 10 or ( many ) more times that . if balance of rollator user is thrown off , that rollator can easily glide ahead . given purpose as mobility aid , very likely for user to have at least one hand on rollator - which means that person will follow , and fall , and possibly get very hurt . this is true even with brakes on - brakes mean very little against full weight of person .

And yes, you are 100% correct, in the second or two you have to decide between those options, you might not notice a mobility aid, and if you go for option c for a mobility aid user you can seriously hurt them.

Also, not everyone who is physically disabled and at serious risk of being hurt from a "body check" uses a mobility aid. My mom really should be using a mobility aid, she has vertigo so badly she sometimes has to old onto my arm if we go anywhere together in public, and she has really bad arthritis in her feet that make it harder for her to walk at quicker than a shuffling pace. And yet because of her not wanting to look "too old" she refuses to use mobility aids, and insists on running errands by herself on days her vertigo isn't "too bad". But if someone were to get annoyed with my mother, who moves extremely slowly and often wobbles from side to side, and they decide to give her a "body check" due to their impatience, they could seriously hurt her.

Not everyone causing an inconvenient situation is being rude. Sometimes there's a reason they're just in the way like that, seemingly oblivious, and whatever is happening to them is beyond normal control.

But even if they WERE just being self-centered, that's no excuse to willfully become aggressive toward them. When you do, the only thing you prove is that you're a bully who cannot be trusted, which is far worse than simply being oblivious or self-absorbed.

It's on topic enough I think. I also prefer when people say excuse me instead of just staring at me. If I'm just standing there trying to decide on what brand of pasta sauce I'd rather someone say "excuse me" then stand there and stare at me. If nothing else because I find a stranger standing and staring at me to be unnerving and uncomfortable, but also it's just easier and gets it all over with quicker to just ask me to step aside for a second.

However, I understand that some people are non-verbal, so sometimes saying "excuse me" isn't a choice, which is why I don't recommend lashing out at someone for standing and staring instead of saying "excuse me". If you really want to say something, you can be polite about it. However, most people I know who do this are capable of verbalizing "excuse me", and if you are capable of saying "excuse me" I do recommend it because plenty of people find it unnerving and uncomfortable to be stared at by a stranger. Plus it saves you time to just say "excuse me" rather than spending all that time staring them down waiting for them to get the hint.

Now, what I really really hate is something I've seen people in my notes call "the German shuffle", except people in Iceland do it too (so presumably in other parts of northern / western Europe) and I cannot emphasize how much I hate it and how rude I think it is. It's where if someone wants to get something you're standing in front of they just slowly shuffle closer and closer to you to basically try to intimidate you away. I hate hate hate standing in the grocery store, trying to decide what kind of bread I want, and suddenly I can feel a perfect stranger's breath on the side of my face because they decided slowly shuffling closer and closer to me is the best method of getting me to move so they can grab whatever I'm standing in front of.

ART and Murderbot are excellent partners in mutual administrative assistance precisely because the features of their thinking, their existence as themselves, mesh so well together. They are not connecting despite their neurodivergences, but are enabled to support each other’s strengths and cover for each other’s weaknesses because of it.

ART’s overbearing processing power and huge knowledge base make it powerful tactical and medical support on Murderbot’s missions. Where ART gets caught up in detail and proving unknowns, Murderbot can take decisive, competent action with incomplete data. ART can speak up assertively, even aggressively, for Murderbot’s benefit when Murderbot’s anxiety prevents it from standing up for itself. ART might have difficulty with empathy, such as with processing the full emotional context of human media or intimidating every bot it meets, but Murderbot can provide that empathetic filter and act as intermediary. And the mutual extreme lengths that they will go to for each other are irrefutable evidence of the care they have for each other (proof of being loved which Murderbot’s anxiety and fear of abandonment cannot so easily dismiss).

I'm breaking character here, so don't tell anyone, but it was never actually in the book. the real sentence was "Claws the size of bananas shot toward me."

and then this was the edit note:

it's just that when I saw the edit note, my first impulse was to come up with an even worse banana sentence, and........ you all saw the bloodbath that followed.

here's the final line that made it into the book:

Then when bisexuals spoke up and were like "hey we actually do experience homophobia because we are often perceived as queer. Also I'm really uncomfortable with how I'm being treated in my own community" but I responded by spouting statistics about corrective rape and violence against lesbians (despite the fact they never denied the suffering of lesbians), while ignoring their actual objection, we could agree that would be a horrible and biphobic thing to do?

That header image made me suspicious so I reverse image searched it and sure enough:

BONUS ROUND: Oh look a pro-Russia simp too.

"Ambiguously brown" - frankly that's just lazy, that could be anywhere. Just say "brown" if you really have to.

"Ambiguously African" - okay you have a vague guess of a continent

"Ambiguously Central Asian" - plausible to narrow down on sight if you're very familiar with people from around this region

"Ambiguously Baltic" - this mf is either Latvian or Lithuanian, and I am intrigued by the fact that your estimate is this precise but you still aren't confident enough in your assessment to guess which one

reader: "so wait, was he white? black? hispanic? Samoan?"

it’s not about it being a tamper-proof seals. they’re both tamper-proof seals. there’s also.

...jesus christ Suzanne Collins. Yeah, this series was just as brutal I remembered it.

So I was originally thinking that a canon divergent Twitchtip rescue mission could happen at some point during Marks of Secret or early in Code Of Claw with the Bane's army more or less trying to force Twitchtip to give them intel but at some point Gregor gets inadvertently close enough that she notices him and tries to really sabotage the army, and then he finds her about to be executed. But man, Gregor just doesn't get a break the entirety of those books. Every single time he leaves Regalia he's rescuing or trying to rescue someone else, and whenever he's in Regalia he's either recovering from injuries, in prison, being kept under armed guard so he and Ares can't pull any more unauthorized missions, and so on. There's never an opportunity to take an extra person back to Regalia. So I've had to change my mind on this.

...Twitchtip Lives AU is still awesome but I think the best way for it to happen is if Lapblood's rebellion finds her while trying to free some other prisoners who they actually knew about, and somebody decided that on the off chance she recovers enough to be able to help the human alliance it would be better for the main gnawer army to not know this is a possibility, so when either one of the other prisoners or an interrogated guard tells them the code they send off a message telling the Bane's forces that the scentseer died of her injuries. Having no idea the humans had broken the code.

Because (a) this is traumatic for Twitchtip. Imagine if she was being held prisoner somewhere behind the front for that first massive battle near the start of Code Of Claw. She smelled the whole tunnel full of oil trap coming literally a mile away and decided not to inform her captors of this, then claimed that all the volcanic ash in the air was interfering with her senses. She knew Gregor and Ripred were there, but had no way of getting to them or calling for help. This gets her beaten and thrown in a pit to die, but not killed immediately because Twirltongue still wants to keep her alive as a backup plan.

I also really love the idea of Pearlpelt's army forcing her to use her powers for reconnaissance purposes. I think it would be very in keeping with the themes of the series to have a character we care about who broke under torture and gave up seriously important, dangerous information because no actually you can't just resist and never give in if you're brave that's not how it works.

And (b) the parallel between Gregor trying to cope with hearing about Twitchtip's death by telling himself nothing can hurt her anymore, and the way he tries to cope with his own prophesized death, is so painfully good, and I actually think having him find out that she's alive but having a horrible time, at roughly the same time as Ripred's pep talk about not believing in Sandwich's prophecies and telling Gregor to actually try to survive the fight with the Bane, would still work really well.

(c) Gregor having intrusive thoughts about wanting to pet Lapblood's head and thinking better of it because that is a grown woman, with adolescent children, who are right there, and it would be weird and creepy, is kind of just brushed over in all the other tension of the situation. However, consider: Twitchtip limping into the tunnel like a minute later, and Gregor being so shocked he forgets about it being weird or even about his scent being offensive, and when he does remember, it doesn't register until he tries to apologize and pull away that not only did she not make any attempt to avoid being hugged but the rat is clinging to him as tightly as when he pulled her out of the whirlpool, and is shivering just as violently.

(d) Hey, wouldn't it be fucked up if after the fight with the Bane, instead of Gregor being found by the fireflies, Twitchtip has to argue with the human+bat team she's helping with Search and Rescue / triage that Gregor is alive and they need to find him and get him medical attention right now, because they're just assuming he's dead because of the prophecy. He is alive, he is bleeding severely, he is half a mile that direction in another cavern next to the corpses of the Bane, Ares, and Twirltongue, yes she can tell from this far away, and no it doesn't matter what the stupid prophecy says, Sandwich has been dead for 400 years and this is LITERALLY THE EXACT REASON WHY SHE IS HERE. (Howard would not be this stupid but Howard is at the actual hospital)

(e) Wait wait wait I can make it worse. The fireflies chewing Ares's claw off because Gregor wouldn't let go of it is already pretty messed up, but, like, the fireflies don't really care enough to be emotionally impacted by it. Imagine Twitchtip having to do that, knowing what this is going to do to Gregor. Like, even if she wasn't particularly close to Ares she has witnessed what grief from losing his bond did to Howard. (the fireflies were also there for that, but they also proceeded to bail on everyone and sell them out almost immediately)

(f) Twitchtip would probably ruin Ripred's dramatic entrance if she were present at the meeting, but I kind of doubt she'd have the energy to subject herself to it even after a couple weeks.

#tuc#the underland chronicles#twitchtip#your honor i love her#being stuck serving the rebellion#still being used for her nose#finally#Finally#getting some peace after the war#ripred is her guard dog when she wants to be alone

I don't really think of it as being stuck serving the rebellion or being used, at least beyond the physical reality of needing to help the people who are trying to get her to safety by warning them if there's a patrol coming their way or something so they don't all get killed. She was kind of on their side already since there was a standing offer to let her join Ripred's group, and by the time of COC everyone she knows or cares about is fighting on the human side of the war, her only future if that said doesn't win is being imprisoned or killed, and she'd probably feel horrible guilt over anything she was forced to do that might have aided the Bane's forces. So I think she'd be willing to help.

I'd also imagine that when Lapblood's band found her she was obviously not in any condition to fight and Lapblood's original plan was to drop her off when they met up with Ripred and the humans so they could get her to a hospital. But then the city turned out to be less safe and more overrun with casualties than expected due to the mole attack, and Twitchtip was in good enough shape to, like, keep tabs on the enemy's general positions from a safe distance, and help the field medics locate people and sort out the injured from the dead from the dying and too far gone to save.

If you are a doctor or nurse or work in the medical field at all, I do recommend that you read it, because I desperately wish there was awareness among care providers that experiences like mine even exist.

I used to have a lot of angst over "whether everyone secretly feels this way and I'm just worse at handling it," but I think fanfiction helped confirm this as not true. Even in a literary environment where exploring the feelings related to rape and bodily violation were accepted, medical stuff was not a major nexus for this anxiety.

I am working through the idea that my level of distress was not normal and not something I should have felt guilty about or felt forced to tolerate.

The medical fear (which, as I said, was mostly a fear of being sexually touched/violated without my consent) was a major contributor of my feeling of "the world being an evil place/the nature of the universe being fundamentally bad." This weighed on me relentlessly through my entire life

The medical fear also was a big part of the sense of a Bad Something in my head all the time that I was actively holding back/trying to distract myself from. I mentioned in another post that I couldn't just sit still and think to myself "I exist, and I am okay, in this moment" without the feeling of something evil and nasty immediately leaking in.

I still don't know exactly what I wish was different.

I remember when I was 10-12, I had severe panic attacks (like, a few years later I couldn't even reconstruct in my head how awful they were, the feeling of utter utter helplessness and terror) and it was usually triggered by me thinking I had some kind of symptom that would mean I would have to go to the hospital

I had persistent fears of having all sorts of illnesses and conditions to the point where I "Knew" that I had something medically wrong with me and it wasn't several years afterward for me to realize that wasn't necessarily true.

But looking back, the things I was scared of were often things that were completely treatable. It was *going to the hospital* that scared me, not the illness itself.

And I was so scared of going to the hospital that I literally could not think about it. I could not picture what would happen there or what I was afraid would happen, and the notion never visited my mind that there would be something "after" i went to the hospital. I could not imagine life after Having Gone To The Hospital, on a level that was so total it didn't even occur to me that "after" could exist.

It doesn't seem necessary for me to feel that way. I can imagine a universe where the fact that doctors exist could have been a comfort to little me, the knowledge that if I became sick, there were people who could help me to feel better.

But instead, I was trapped in this horribly isolating state where going to the doctor was the worst thing I could imagine, so if something was wrong in my body, I would just have to die.

I literally have "sexual health" blacklisted on tumblr. i can't look at Scarleteen because how they talked about medical exams when i first read their stuff triggers the absolute fuck out of me

There needs to be a sexual health resource that includes some kind of discussion of the following things:

What it means to feel safe with a health care provider. The fact that feeling safe with a health care provider is possible.

Consent exists in medical settings. No one should be touching your body without your consent or against your will. It's okay to be upset about that because it's wrong.

maybe some kind of indication that "nervousness" is fairly normal but if you feel crushing dread and guilt and disgusting horror and violent rage that is not the same emotion as "nervousness," that is in fact a different emotion

and does NOT include

writing off anxiety or apprehension about medical situations as "embarrassment" or "nervousness" that will magically Disappear as soon as you walk in the doctor's office when you realize the doctor is Literally Nice :)

any kind of mocking or belittling people's fears

any phrasing like "it sucks and everyone hates it but you have to suck it up"

any phrasing that comes off as placing "fault" upon the reader for getting cancer/illness if they don't Suck It Up

i wish there were health resources in general that had 1 milligram of sympathy and compassion in them.

As far as I can remember nothing truly bad or traumatic has ever happened to me, and I couldn't explain where this fear was coming from. But actually, I think what caused it is the media - and specifically, seeing comedy movies repeatedly treat things like prostate exams and other doctor-touches-your-private parts procedures on men as a joke. (for context, I'm a cis guy). And not just dumb middle school humor about the things itself, but the characters feeling violated by it being the subject of mockery. And... yeah. What I internalized was not only "You will be raped, over and over, forever," but "And no one, not one single person, will care."