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Tempting...

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Raider Bear

The Raider Bear's person has been asking me to post his story, and it's finally his turn! I figured the middle of football season was probably a good time for him. :-)

So, Raider Bear's person wrote asking for help with their teddy bear. Here are the diagnosis photos.

As you can see, his fabric was thinning to the point that his person was afraid to clean him... and honestly, I wouldn't recommend putting any bear in the washing machine, but Raider Bear's surface was reaching the point where even hugs could cause damage.

It was important to keep his outside as close to original as possible, so we agreed the best course of treatment would be a spa, and then lining him and stitching his wounds shut to the lining, as well as scar minimization and a bit more touchup.

Here's Raider Bear in his bubble bath:

And here are a couple of photos of him inside out, fully lined (not everyone wants to see that, so I'll leave a few lines blank so you can skip it if you want, then return for the rest of the story):

Next, he was turned rightside out, wounds were repaired, and he was restuffed. Of course he got a small heart with a bit of his original stuffing -- color matched to himself:

Next was chubbiness approval. Here were the first photos of a healthy Raider Bear:

A bit too plump, said his person. So a small stuffingectomy later, here is his next photo shoot:

That works! was the response. So he got closed up and was picked up by his person (another Bay Area resident) the next day.

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When you look up gender affirming surgery it says 'a broad range of procedures that help transgender and non-binary people transition to their gender identity'.

Seems 97% had the same procedure.

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reminder that this is far enough to scroll your dash today. there's nothing better coming. go outside. go practice your stretches. make a meal. do your laundry. log off.

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The Female Protagonist

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This is a list of people who have reached out to me asking for help donating and sharing their fundraisers.

Please donate to any of these families if you able to and if you are unable to donate right now please share these fundraisers as much as you can! Every share could lead to a donation to help these families in dire need. Thank you <3

Fundraiser here for Maria and her family, their campaign is vetted by association. Currently they have $10,746 CAD raised of the $30,000 goal. @maria-gaza1

Fundraiser here for Aseel and her family, their campaign is vetted here. Currently they have $54,220 USD raised of their $100,000 target. @aseelo680

Fundraiser here for Safaa and her family, their campaign is number 135 on this list of vetted fundraisers. Currently they have €31,731 raised of their €35,000 goal. @safaakhatib

Fundraiser here for Youssef and his wife and child, their campaign is vetted here. Currently they have €23,156 raised of the €30,000 goal. @girlquee @youseffamily

Fundraiser here for Lama and her husband, their campaign is vetted by association. Currently they have $6,349 USD raised of the $10,000 goal. @lamahourani7

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WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS

WHO IS USING THIS

AN APP??? THEY HAVE A FUNCTIONING WEBSITE

THE LAST FUNCTIONING WEBSITE

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when i tell u i would die for mei-chan from the toba aquarium….

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character misses their shot and the villain goes "ha! you missed." and the main character goes "did i?" and then shoots the villain again while they're frantically looking around the room for what the hero could possibly have aiming for instead

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A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

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“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” - John Ehrlichman, (Richard Nixon domestic policy chief, 1968)

it wasn't about drugs.

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Omens of change

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school-bullying is one of those things where it's horrifying how normal it is and how we just accept it as a part of kids' lives. It's just one of those things that is considered entirely normal and we see it in media and sure, there's anti-bullying programmes and you do some seminars when you study to be a teacher - but that the fundamental core of it, it is entirely normal and expected that kids go through or witness severe physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in their 'workplace' and even if this is known and documented and on the record, it is not uncommon that they still have to work with their abusers and spend several hours every day in the same room with them, go on trips with them etc. And yes, bullying also exists in adult workplaces, obviously, but I don't think it is normalised to the same degree (a lot of people don't believe it exists for adults - meanwhile, think how basically every school movie features bullying as some aspect of every day school life). I just think it's up there with corporal punishment as one of those things people expect aren't that bad or serious when it happens to 'just children'.

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The Princess Diaries is one of my absolute favourite movies of all time but I still believe with wmy whole entire heart that Princess Mia Thermopolis should have had beautiful curly hair post-makeover

She also should have kept her glasses but that's a different conversation

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he made all of these