#But either I have a really poor knowledge of human anatomy (possible)

[deer-hearted]

My Reader OC

SO as I decided to post here my Pyre drawings too, I found out that they mostly feature my own version of the Reader, and. Well. Maybe someone would want an explanation of what exactly she is??

Warning: a fuckton of text. I roleplayed as her a lot, and thus have a whole bunch of thoughts and headcanons.

So here she is, my Reader OC!

She's a young human female (she/her), and her name is Agnia ("pure", "holy", a name close to Agnes). She's born under the sign of Geminian ("Star of the First Empress. Those born under it seek knowledge and new experiences.") and has a wit almost as keen as she herself is stubborn. 

She has a very unhealthy pale skin, magenta hair (braided first, then cut to a shoulder-length) and light-green eyes. She’s not very feminine and can’t be considered beautiful by most people, as she has quite special facial traits. And most of the time she has either tired or a judging look. She likes to wear loose comfortable clothing and rarely accesorises. 

Biography: crippled scholar. She has a very rare marble bone disease (osteopetrosis) which is inborn and has resulted in anemia and thoracic scoliosis (right shoulder is higher than the left). Due to this fact she was a stranger to other kids in her childhood, as she couldn't play with them, she grew up pretty lonely but also attached to her parents and self-sufficient. She studied the world with the help of the books she inherited from her father and through her own experiments she conducted at home. When she was banished to the Downside, she broke her leg and had some more injuries and wasn't able to walk at first, but has recovered well since. And also I hc that all Readers experience mild headaches from time to time due to their expanding psychic abilities, but in her case they become severe migraines.

The reason for participation in Rites: she just wants to free her friends. Actually, as she didn't have friends or even close pals back in the Commonwealth, the Nightwings became her first and only friends, as well as other people Nightwings are friends with (the Fate, for example). She was kinda aloof at first, but the first trio (Hedwyn, Rukey and Jodi) has shown her kindness and she took faith in them. The only person she doesn't like is Volfred, because she sees him as the intruder in her "family", and as he's stiff with her, she's stiff with him back and doesn't really approve and/or want to participate in his revolution schemes. She also is quite neutral to Archjustice, though she finds him rather annoying and arrogant, and has a stable mutual respectful relationship with Oralech.

What she would want to do if she was free? She'd want to travel the world as much as possible and uncover every single one of its secrets. And she'd also like to attend a college, or maybe just a simple real school (she's self-taught, so she doesn't know what it's like). But she never got any of that. Nightwings lost to True Nightwings in the Liberation Rite, and when she called Oralech on a tet-a-tet talk to ease his relationship with Volfred and Nightwings (and because she liked him) he decided to throw his freedom on her - and she threw it back angrily. So Oralech returned to Commonwealth and she stayed. And when everybody decided to finally part ways, she stayed with Bertruda as an apprentice so she finally would be able to actually learn from her, study the special properties of the Downside and learn how to make talismans. She also tries to study Downside's night sky and create a star chart with predictions of when will the next cycle of Rites begin and how long will it be. Surely, as she stays, her anatomy changes into one of a demon, but it surprisingly eases her pain and her state and actually allows her to become healthier and live longer (but will her life be really happy or miserable? who knows).

Personality: she's a proud one, a smart one, and she also doesn't like it when others offer her a special treatment by any means (even if it's just because they care or like her a lot, she suspects that the cause is her disability). She likes to think that she can do everything by herself and is slowly learning the ways of teamwork. She also has a great deal of patience, but can snap at you pretty hard when she can't bear it anymore. It's pretty hard for her to relax because she's used to thinking that the world's all hard work and no play, and she prefers reading to any merrier activity, and humour is kind of an alien thing for her, but she's getting to it too, though she's still pretty introverted.

She takes the idea of someone being in position high enough to evaluate others and judge them quite painfully due to her own condition and other judging her her whole life (which made her an excile one day, duh). So she doesn't like to think of her as of the Leader of the Nightwings, more of a friendly advisor. So when the Rites are over, she silently blames herself for not being able to liberate everybody - and thus for making wrong choices. She has a horrible panic attack when she discovers she's probably supposed to become the next Archjustice and has repeating nightmares since. This is the one and only time she egoistically truly wants the Volfred's Plan to succeed. And, well, she's glad it did.

Love life: with all that she finds a soulmate in Oralech, a union that is pretty harsh in the beginning (though she never thinks of him badly even after his boldest of moves) but gets better at the end. They didn't talk much during the course of the game, but I believe they have a great mutual respect and are very polite and attentive to each other if they happen to have a short conversation before or after the Rites. When Oralech's gone, she realises that she actually likes him and would be glad to talk to him again sometime (at least). So they establish a connection through mail and send a ton of potentially love letters to each other when Oralech excels his writing skills. He even suggests to descend to the Downside to join her at some point, but she gets angry and tells him to embrace his freedom and that if he ever tries to do this she won't ever want to talk to him or see him again. And she means that.

( I like this pairing with my own life and got my girlfriend to roleplay it with me. Together we did a great job at writing some slowburn AU where both Oralech and the Reader unexpectedly find themselves in another universe after they parted ways. Together they explore the strange half-fantasy, half-scifi world, temporarily become pirates, servants to local gods and whatnot. And started a relationship, obviously. )

Also her favourite flower is magnolia (she saw the trees growing on the embankment and liked them a lot but never got close enough) and her favourite food is jam-stuffed buns (they were too expensive for her or her poor enough family to buy on a regular basis, but she enjoyed them nevertheless). :>

[wolffyluna]

TMA Liveblog: Up to Ep 57

NB: For the past few days, I have been travelling with minimal access to my laptop. I’m back home now, and so can actually type this on a keyboard! But I have an unusual amount of episodes to ‘liveblog,’ and it’s been an unusually long time since I listened to some of them. If there’s any really obvious things that I missed, that’s probably why.

Crusader: Another Gertrude episode! And another Archive, apparently? I’m not super confident about Jon’s assertion that there seems to be an unbroken chain of Archives. A thing in the 1100s and a thing in the 1800-2000s does not an unbroken chain make. (Though it does make me wonder about the geographical distribution of Archives. Like, is there one for the whole world, or are there more than one at once? How do oral cultures deal with the need for an Archive?)

A feeling of being watched seems to be linked/associated with Archives. So, that’s a bit worrying. Though maybe less worrying than it being attached to archivists, I guess?

I have mixed feelings about Gertrude blowing up the Alexandria Archive. On the one hand, all that knowledge, gone! It could have been useful! It could also have been infohazardous! (But there’s only one way to find out!)

Still Life: I really like the tax assessor. I simultaneously want him to show up again because I love his personality, and don’t want him to show up again, because I know what happens to recurring characters! But I like him. I have a soft spot for tax assessors in general, and I like how open minded he is.

The anglerfish showed up again! I wonder if it’s the same sort of thing as Not Sasha and The Anatomy Students*? All of those things mimic humans imperfectly.

Also, I’ve started to notice a pattern: people keep mentioning they should have run away, shouldn’t have investigated-- but they investigated anyway. And there’s two possible explanations. There’s the Doylist one, that a story where people ran away at the first hint of the supernatural would be boring. But there’s also the Watsonian one, where something is compelling them to investigate. I’m worried about the Watsonian one.

...why is Gertrude removing the eyes from her books? That’s a little concerning.

Pest Control: Poor Jon. I want to just let him debunk obviously false things forever.

I have a theory about the cosmology. So, Jane Prentiss and Amhurst are definitely very similar. Association with disease and vermin, go up like a torch, etc. But they are also obviously very different things. With Jane, the insects and disease go hand in hand in a way that is not true of Amhurst. I wonder if there’s some sort of aspect thing going on? Like, how Barbie-as-skater and Barbie-as-baby-doctor are both aspects of Barbie, I wonder if there if Disease-as-Jane-Prentiss and Disease-as-John-Amhurst is what’s going on here. (It’d also fit with some of what Michael said? ‘Michael is one aspect of a larger thing’ fits with a lot of his comments about hands not owning stomachs, etc.)

Also, Lightless Flame and Disease really do not get along, do they? Both on a ‘directly fighting each other’ and ‘metaphyisically opposed’** level. Also, I think the landlord was a cultist? Maybe? I’m lost.

Children of the Night: (Trevor describing his hunting of vampires like an addiction)(Me accidentally getting spoiled in ways I can’t describe, lest I spoil others, but in ways that give that statement Implications) Hmmm...

Also, there are people filled with spiders. For reasons. ?????

Jon’s blow up with Martin is... ouch. Ouch. At least it ended well, and It Isn’t Paranoia If They Are Actually Out To Get You... but ouch. I feel sorry for all involved***. (Also, I’m a little ??? at Elias’ hiring methods, because parapsychology sounds incredibly fake.)

Personal Space: So, making it so someone can’t perceive the Earth, and has food that never runs out is certainly... something different. I didn’t realise that was on the table, but apparently it is on the table.

And it was a Fairchilds (associated with Weird Infini-Spaces), Lukases (associated with... something? Human sacrifice, maybe?) and Optic Solutions co-production. Optic Solutions is especially concerning, because it’s definitely associated with Being Watched (a thing which I am now going to call Eyes McGee, because apparently everything is personified and the name amuses me), and Ny-Alesund, which I had pegged as associated with The Thing That Hates Lightbulbs. So either I haven’t pegged ‘who’ ‘owns’ what right, or that was at least a three way team up? Aaaaargh?

Not Sasha does not want to be recorded (wants to avoid people noticing the difference in the voices? Wants to avoid Jon sneakily doing the laptop-vs-tape validation trick? just doesn’t want her boss recording her like a creep?) and is messing with the Hilltop Road cases specifically. Messing with the Hilltop Road cases is giving me pause: the other statements she messed with had original Sasha’s voice on them, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case with Hilltop Road. Also, Not Sasha seems to be associated with Spiders (she came from the table, as far as I can tell?), but Hilltop appeared to be a Lightless Flame and Eyes McGee co-production? Why would she care? I’m confused.

*Would also be a good name for a band.

**I don’t know how to describe it coherently. But the fact that Prentiss and Amhurst went up like kindling seems important, you know? Like ‘holy things hurt vampires’ is important in other universes.

***I can’t quite tell which is worse, being Jon or being around Jon right now. And while in general, being is worse than being around, in this case it’s a close race, you know? It probably suck way worse to be Jon, but it also certainly sucks to have a boss that is probably stalking you and definitely erratically blowing up at you.

[raendown]

Plot bunny bit me so I popped out a second story for yesterday’s prompts.  @madatobiweek Day 2 prompt: Blind Tobirama

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 1835 Rated: G Summary: Madara helps Tobirama try something new and the results aren't at all what either of them expected.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header!

Love At A Glance

“Are you ready?”

“Is it possible for one to ready oneself for such an experience?”

He could feel Madara glaring at him just as the man always did and it added a flavor of normalcy that immediately calmed him, loosening the muscles he hadn’t realized were tensed in his shoulders. Surprisingly gentle hands brushed under the sides of his jaw and traced the edges of his tattoos where they disappeared under his collar.

“Don’t be snarky,” Madara scolded him. “I’m being very nice to you right now.”

“Noted. I suppose I shall be appropriately grateful afterwards – if you make a good showing of yourself.”

“Are you disparaging my skills?”

Tobirama snorted. “Let me experience them first; I’ll disparage them afterwards.”

He grinned at the sound of teeth grinding together in frustration. Even after several years together there was no better fun to be had than winding his husband up and listening to the many varied expressions of irritation. Madara was far and away the most expressive person he’d ever met other than his own brother. It was the freedom of those emotions that drew Tobirama to him initially, the way his outside perfectly reflected his inside where chakra always told the truth.

Most people thought it must be easy to lie to a blind man. Those people always seemed to forget Tobirama’s deep connection to the chakra networks running through every living thing, the way he could listen as no one else could because he didn’t have whole other source of input to confuse his idea of the truth. He loved his partner first for never trying to conceal his own emotions and second for the sheer beauty of how well he resonated with his own chakra. Lies will wear on a person, Tobirama had found, and after years and decades of lying as all shinobi do he found there were very few who maintained harmony with their own chakra as time marched on.

His husband would be a powerful man long after everyone else’s chakra began failing them, a symptom widely attributed to old age.

“Are you paying attention to me?” Madara demanded.

“No,” he admitted blandly. “I’m distracting myself with disgustingly sappy thoughts and a little bit of chakra theory.”

“Of course you are. Well stop. I need you to hear me.”

“Yes dear.”

Madara huffed but his fingers remained gentle in their hold. “It’s important that you don’t move because a single shift in the wrong direction could break the flow and I want the transition in and out to be as seamless as possible. What I’m giving you is no more than a memory so you won’t be able to interact or change anything. There will be movement but if you focus in the center–”

“You,” Tobirama interrupted him.

“Indeed, me. I will be in the center.”

Nodding slowly, Tobirama took a deep breath. “Anything else?”

“I think we’ve covered everything else a hundred times but if you forget everything else just remember that I can still hear you and I can stop anytime you want me to.”

“Okay.” The fingers cupping his jaw stroked him one more time and he smiled warmly.

“Ready?”

“Yes.”

It felt like an invasion, albeit a gentle and welcome one. By the descriptions he’d heard from many people he thought it might be compared to the sensation of having a genjutsu cast when you know it’s coming. Madara’s chakra poured out from where he knew the man’s eyes were, the Mangekyo Sharingan formation spinning wildly, and Tobirama experienced it only through his internal senses as waves of his husband’s presence sank in to his own ocular nerves and then-

And then.

He was going to be seasick. Tobirama squeezed his eyes shut tight but it made no difference, as Madara had promised it wouldn’t, for the vision around him did not stop moving. Nothing made sense. The world was a mix and all too much and he wasn’t sure whether the movement was the problem but he wanted it to stop.

More than that, though, he wanted it never to end. He understood so little but Tobirama forced his poor confused mind to focus and to memorize in a way he’d never had to before, as many details as possible filed away to keep as precious treasures from this day forward. This was a gift he could never possibly repay. Surely nothing he could ever dream of would mean as much as what Madara had offered so freely, an offhand idea over dinner one night now made glorious and terrible reality.

They had agreed beforehand on something short but a handful of seconds felt like forever in both the best and worst ways before finally Madara's voice whispered soothingly that it was all going away. Relief swept through him when the vision faded and his world returned to the same darkness he had lived in for more than thirty years, something bittersweet clinging to the edges of him as he fought to recall the details he didn’t even understand. Fingers combed through his hair and touched his face and he realized he was crying.

“Are you alright?” Madara asked. He nodded. “What was it like?”

“Terrifying,” he admitted.

Not the answer his partner was expecting, judging by the startled hum. “It wasn’t anything bad.”

“I didn’t understand it. My mind didn’t…doesn’t know how to process any of that. You know I was born blind so I’ve never seen color and I’ve never seen movement and I know–” Tobirama stopped the flow of words when he realized it wasn’t only his words that had begun to shake. His body was trembling like a leaf.

“Come here.” Madara gathered him close and continued to comb through his hair, waiting patiently until he was able to continue speaking.

“I know that it was you but I don’t…know…what that means. The shapes meant nothing because I’ve never seen a human with my eyes before. And it’s so bright! How do you concentrate when the world is so bright? With so many colors!” Tobirama forced himself to draw another breath. “Is that color? How many colors were there? W-what ones? Your hair…is…black?” He thought he could remember someone mentioning that once, something not many people would describe out loud when most could tell with a single glance.

A rustle and a brief kiss were his answer. “Yes, my hair is black. Can you guess what you were seeing or would you like me to tell you? I gave you a few hints when I decided on the memory but…”

“No, I wanted to guess. There was a lot of the same color I think. And it was moving. Another color through it? And I know that was you in the center so all of that color was…hair. Your hair. Were you brushing your hair?”

“Yes.” Only one word but it sounded like a floodgate. Madara's chakra wavered and suddenly Tobirama was aware that he wasn’t the only one overwhelmed with emotion.

Unsure of what else to say, he said the truth. “You’re beautiful.”

“How can you say that when you just said you didn’t even really understand? You don’t have any comparisons!”

“I don’t need to understand.” And coming from him that was saying a lot. Tobirama reached up to brush at the hair he had just seen for the first time, the beloved face he’d never known until today. “It was you. That’s all I need. I don’t…I don’t think I want to do this again. If the only thing these eyes ever see is your face then I’m fine with that. Vision is a little terrifying when I’ve gone so long without it. It’s just not a part of my world.”

“Well there’s no need to be so sappy about it,” Madara grumbled and he gave a shaky laugh.

Out of all the many possible outcomes to having his husband’s unique Mangekyo pattern grant him a brief moment of sight in the form of a shared memory, he never would have expected to find himself so viscerally terrified. Now that he was taking a few moments to calm down he thought it was probably an instinctive reaction to his brain being inundated with so much information that it simply wasn’t trained or even equipped to process. He’d meant what he said, he didn’t think he would ever want to repeat this, but he was glad that they’d done it. Knowing Madara's face was an experience he could never regret.

And more than that it was something that would have stayed in the back of his mind for the rest of his days, a small niggling wonder forever pulling at his curiosity. What was it like to see? From the moment Madara mentioned that he thought his own Mangekyo could help Tobirama experience what the rest of the world lived with every day he was helpless to do anything but accept that gilded offer lest his own imagination spiral out of control.

“Thank you,” he said after a few minutes of simply holding each other.  

“Don’t thank me for scaring you,” Madara grunted.

“Would you prefer I be angry?”

“It would feel a bit more normal,” His husband admitted.

Tobirama couldn’t stop himself from chuckling. “Ah, right then. How dare you be the most important part of my life and make every day together a gift? I demand recompense.”

Listening to Madara splutter indignantly and shout at him for ‘doing anger wrong’ Tobirama breathed out the last of the tension in his body. In his mind he brought up the confusing image that had been granted to him for such a brief time and tried his best to recall the details. Not much about it made sense to him even if he did know intellectually which parts corresponded with his knowledge of human anatomy. He still tried his best because that was his husband. For the first time in his life he had a face for the name, so to speak, and Madara's face was the only one he had ever seen. Would ever see. That was special in ways he couldn’t hope to put in to words.

Doing his best to hold that image in his mind as he lifted his face more towards his partner’s, Tobirama decided that the room was indeed getting a little too sappy and, of course, the best way to break the tension would always be to get Madara riled up again. He’d known the man long enough to know how to do it with two simple sentences.

“I’m glad you didn’t insist on showing me my own face. I’d have gone doubly blind, I’m sure.”

Madara's enraged shrieking that he was beautiful and perfect and not allowed to saying anything against that was music to his ears. As long as he had his hearing and his sensing, able to feel the sincerity of his husband’s emotions, Tobirama was just fine with his lot in life.  

[worryinglyinnocent]

Star Force: A Guide To Rumplurians - Part Two of... Who Knows!

Part One, exploring the Rumplurian religion, can be found here

BEFORE WE BEGIN:

====

Rumplurians are a fictional race of aliens found in a fictional TV show, Star Force, as mentioned in my rumbelle fic Friendships and Fandoms, an AU in which the various Once Upon A Time characters were the cast and crew of this fictional TV show. Gold played the Rumplurian chief medical officer, Dr Stiltskin, and Belle was his make-up artist (and also stood in as Stiltskin’s human wife, Lacey, when the actress due to play her had to pull out).

Friendships and Fandoms can be read here and @licieoic and I also wrote a few Star Force screenplays which can be read here.

====

You can all blame @woodelf68 and @ripperblackstaff for this. Thanks to them, I spent a ridiculous amount of time thinking about alien anatomy and reproduction and now, well, this happened. 

I need to thank @hedwighood and licieoic for some of the headcanons herein. Licie, I dunno, this might be useful for future Star Force episodes?

Anyway...

Are you all excited to learn more about scaly alien dicks?

I’m gonna take that as a solid yes! Without further ado let’s begin our second lesson in Rumplurians... anatomy and reproduction! As you’ve probably guessed, this post is not safe for work!

Disclaimer: Before we begin I’d like to remind you that this is all completely made up. No similarity to any actual aliens (or any aliens from other franchises like Star Trek etc) is intended. 

I’d really love to illustrate this essay with some naked Rumplurians but 

a) I’m bad at drawing

b) I’m even worse at drawing scaly alien dicks

c) I don’t have a scanner to upload said terrible pictures of scaly alien dicks

So you’re going to have to settle for some suggestive gifs and using your imaginations. 

*puts on David Attenborough documentary style voice*

To all intents and purposes, the Rumplurian doesn’t look all that different to the human, with the exception of the scales. When you look a little bit closer however... 

(I’m sorry I’m having way too much fun with this.)

Rumplurians are scaled all over. Yes, all over. They have no body hair, apart from that on their heads. (And eyebrows, because no eyebrows just looks... weird. We’re not quite sure where the eyebrows and head hair came from, but we think it’s the result of intermarriage with hairy races earlier on in the evolution chain.)

Their scales are not the same texture all over. The scales are generally smooth but will give a slightly rougher texture if rubbed in the wrong direction, with much smoother scales on the palms and soles (necessary for grip) and genitalia (necessary for enjoyable sexual encounters). 

Like a lot of scaled creatures, Rumplurians do shed, generally once a year. They don’t shed their skin all at once like snakes, that would just be creepy.

[Sheesh, I now have visions of Stiltskin shedding his skin on board Aurora while they were stranded and hiding it somewhere for Hook to find and freak out. Onwards because that’s just gross!]

The scales flake off individually, usually a good scrub in the shower with a loofah will get them all off. Their scales get greyer when they’re about to shed and are very itchy, so most Rumplurians like to slough off the shedding scales as quickly as possible. The new scales beneath are very sensitive for the first day after shedding. On the Rumplurian homeworld, it was perfectly acceptable to take sick days when shedding. 

Lacey particularly enjoys having fun with Stiltskin when he’s shedding. Many a happy shower has been shared.

Rumplurian skin is tougher than human skin and it takes slightly more force to puncture it; they tend to heal from scrapes and abrasions slightly quicker. Likewise, Rumplurian finger and toenails are much harder and more claw like. They’re fast-growing and naturally grow into points, and need regular filing, but they don’t like paring them right down like humans do their fingernails because the claws are a part of them and due to the way the nerves work, it can be painful to cut them too short. Mostly they file the tips to make sure they’re not sharp. 

(As has been mentioned in previous Star Force smut fics, Stiltskin keeps his index and middle claws clipped short. This is both for practicality and hygiene when performing complex operations and for Lacey, whose soft human insidey bits would not enjoy being accidentally scratched, and whose soft human insidey bits he likes putting his fingers into...)

(No, Rumplurian women do not have scaly vaginas but their inner walls are a lot tougher.)

(I cannot believe I just wrote the phrase ‘scaly vaginas’. Twice.)

Ahem. Onwards!

Since we’ve already veered into incredibly not safe for work territory, let’s stay here in the gutter! 

Rumplurians have long tongues (not like, chameleon long and prehensile, but longer than a human’s and more dexterous) and are very enthusiastic givers and receivers of oral sex. 

They aren’t cold blooded, they don’t need to sit under heat lamps of a morning to get them going, but their internal thermostat is set lower than a human’s and they come from a very warm planet. If they get too cold, they get sluggish. Which is the opposite of most humans, who get lethargic when it’s too warm. 

Lower core body temperature means... Yes, Licie, Stiltskin has internal balls. Rumplurian testes are kept in a kind of pouch inside the body, nice and protected from being kicked by... anything that might want to kick a Rumplurian dude in the nackers. However, the balls do drop down out of the pouch and hang down beneath the scaly alien dick in a human-like fashion (although they tend to be smaller than humans’ balls) when said Rumplurian is sufficiently aroused. The balls think “aha! time to make baby Rumplurians! let’s get to work, fellas!” and are very eager to get in on the action. So if you really want to successfully kick a Rumplurian in the nackers, wait till he has an erection first. 

*Worry has to go and take a break before she dies of either embarrassment and laughter.*

YES! ONWARDS! LET’S GET TO THE END OF THIS ESSAY BEFORE I DIE OF SHAME!  

Since we’ve got the lowdown on the downstairs bits, let’s move on to the act itself. Good grief, what am I writing here? *Worry takes a moment to question her life choices.*

Ahem. 

As you all know from my Star Force smutty fics (they’re on my masterlist somewhere), Rumplurian Baby Making is not all that different to Human Baby Making. Don’t worry, we’ll get onto the actual babies in a minute. Woodelf mentioned refactory periods and I spent way too much time thinking about them, so I’m going to talk about them. If a Rumplurian guy keeps receiving stimuli after having an orgasm he can be ready to go again fairly quickly - quicker than a human. However, if there’s kissing and cuddling and getting breath back time afterwards and his balls draw back up inside, then it will take him longer to get ready to go again - longer than a human. Rumplurian balls need time to recharge, dammit! 

And now for the Baby Making.

Rumplurian ladies don’t ovulate anywhere near as frequently as human women, generally only about twice or three times a year. They get super horny around this time because they don’t have as much opportunity for conception, but they don’t go mad, like animals in heat do. 

They also don’t menstruate because their womb is constructed differently. If conception is successful, then they’ll start to build up a shell like substance around the baby that grows with it. A full-blood Rumplurian pregnancy lasts five months, the babies are much smaller than human babies when born. When it’s time for birth, the shell shatters and the baby is born in a pretty much human way, although covered in pieces of shell. The rest of the broken shell is delivered as afterbirth, like a human placenta. 

Stiltskin can’t tell when Lacey ovulates, possibly because she doesn’t get as super horny as a Rumplurian lady would. He was amazed to find out that she does it once a month and to be frank he’s incredibly grateful for birth control methods. 

Half-Rumplurian babies are different and depend on DNA, each case is different. They follow gestation and pregnancy patterns of the mother carrying them, so Stiltskin and Lacey’s babies grew and were delivered in a human way, but a Rumplurian lady carrying a baby sired by a human father would have a five month shell pregnancy. 

Rumplurian ladies do breastfeed but their milk is very different to human breastmilk which can cause problems in mixed-race babies. Stiltskin and Lacey’s son Bae was fine with Lacey’s breast milk and it’s generally accepted that the human DNA in him is dominant. Their daughter Nim, however, rejected Lacey’s milk and also rejected Rumplurian formula. They tried a compromise whereby Lacey would express her milk and mix it with formula to create a mashup, but again that didn’t take and poor Lacey was frantic. 

Their Rumplurian friend, Dr Morgana, came up with the solution of giving Lacey some Rumplurian hormone supplements, which did the trick, giving her milk just enough Rumplurian hormones for Nim to be happy with, and my word, once she was happy with it, she was a greedy little girl. Lacey was so relieved!

The supplements made Lacey’s skin very dry and itchy as a side effect (since they’re designed for people with scales), but it was worth it for Nim, and Stiltskin helped by rubbing cream in all over... 

Right, I think I’ve exhausted my knowledge of Rumplurian Bits and Rumplurian Babies. If you have any questions, fire away! If you want to add your own headcanons, go ahead! If you want to write fic based on Star Force, feel free (just tag me in it because I wanna read it)!

If you think I should go away and think very hard about my life choices, don’t worry, I agree!

*Worry hits post and shakes her head*

[starsofmirkwood]

I would love to read your story about not being able to disappoint the sun, it sounds interesting :) Hope you have a wonderful day!

Thank you sweetie!!

I wrote this in my Junior year of high school, when I was taking a creative writing class. Our prompt was to write a story with an epiphany in it, so I decided to write mine about the idea of cosmic indifference, and how it could be perceived as comforting, from the perspective of an utterly miserable teenage boy. I don’t remember what I titled it, so… I’m open to suggestions! :)

…

It was drizzling. The sky was a frozen grey, and the wind came and went in halfhearted swirls. It was a lifeless day, a day to stay inside and avoid people. The kind that numbed you, made you feel just as dull as the thick clouds, as cold as the rain. Sam shut his eyes as he took a long breath.

He had never been a morning person. Not on mornings like these. Being awake was better than sleep, at this point. Third night in a row of restlessness. He didn’t feel tired. The air stinging his ears woke him up. He wished he had a hat, and maybe some coffee. He hated coffee. He tugged his jacket tighter around himself and tried dodging the rain as he shuffled to class.

Sam slung his backpack under his table and brushed the rain from his shoulders, shaking as he felt a drop of water run from his soaked hair down his forehead and into his eye. Blinking furiously, he pushed his hair out of his face. He was freezing.

Art class. He liked it a bit. He could draw well enough to capture the beauty in things. His classmates told him he was amazing. Ms. Earley said he had a gift. For him, it wasn’t good or bad. It was relaxing, watching his hand create things. It was a way of getting his feelings out without anyone knowing. A hiding place.

Today he painted. Ignoring the instructions to compose scenery, he sketched a face. Nobody he knew. Dark hair and a sharp nose. A man’s face. Intelligent eyes. The whole thing was done in watery shades of blues and greens. Sam was satisfied. He signed his name in ink, and turned it in. He got a frown from Ms. Earley for dismissing the assignment. He left the room 6 minutes early. He wouldn’t get in trouble. Never did. If anyone asked, Ms. Earley would tell them he was in the bathroom.

The hallway was quiet. Six minutes of peace. He did end up in the bathroom, grabbing a wad of paper towels to wipe some of the water from his hair. It was mostly dry now, but the clinging dampness felt stifling. Sam caught his reflection in the mirror. He looked pale. Was he sick? He needed sleep. Dark circles framed his eyes. His hair was wild, frizzy with moisture and curled into awkward waves in places. He looked a mess.

He smoothed his hair down with a yawn. He didn’t want to be here. Or anywhere. Restlessness crept back up. Always. God, he didn’t want to be here.

Splashing some water on his face, Sam took a long breath that came out dangerously close to a sob. He stared at his reflection. He didn’t recognize the stranger there. The clothes were his, but the boy wearing them… he looked defeated. Sam turned away. He was tired.

Next class was biology. It fascinated Sam, oddly. All the pretty miracles of nature and the cycles of everything. Ordered, yet chaotic. Not as nice as anatomy would be, but intriguing. Life and how it works. Death. It was all the same. Fascinating.

Watched a video in class. Something about the Sonoran Desert. Sam didn’t take notes. He doodled a saguaro cactus, thinking about humanity, and how it doesn’t matter how tall and strong you are, or how much you surround yourself in protection and spines, when a storm hits, man and cactus alike are capable of falling.

Literature class. Tolerable on good days. Today was not a good day. No days were. Sam endured it anyway, on the basis that it really was something worth learning. Many things were. Most things weren’t.

Sam picked up his copy of Lord of the Flies, opened it to a random page. He had loved the book. It was fast paced, gripping, more beast than boy. Spoke volumes about the human race without saying a word.

The corners of the paperback were getting bent, and one page was folded at an odd angle. He had dropped the book once, and it had landed in such a way that had damaged it. It was funny, in a demented sort of way.

Sam drummed his fingers on his keyboard. An essay about the theme of the book. Due next Tuesday. Sam didn’t know where to start. The theme. Which one? There were many possibilities. Good and evil, civilization and savagery, rules and discord, knowledge and fear and power and wisdom, Ralph and Jack and Simon and Roger and Piggy and it was overwhelming. Sam typed what he knew. Man is inherently evil. Every man. Primitive and unholy. He didn’t need the book to tell him. Jack Merridew. Anarchy and chaos. Order and laws keep people from savagery. That’s what the book said. Sam rather liked Jack. Something about his untamable aberrance appealed to him, reminded him, terrifyingly, thrillingly, of himself.

The printer whirred and beeped as his essay came through. It smelled like ink and stale paper. He proofread his work, for a third time, this time on a physical copy, and decided that his words were sufficiently eloquent and precise, he stapled the papers together with a twang, and tucked the essay into the folder on Mr. Tennyson’s desk.

Ignoring the keyboard clicks and off-topic ramblings of his classmates, Sam spent the rest of the time reading a new book from the library. It was fiction, although Sam preferred fact, but it was entertaining enough to pass the time. About the future and space and war and all those useless distractions. A means of worthwhile escapism, rarely found.

Math was next. Well, Sam loved math. It was the one class he looked forward to, even though his excitement had been rather depleted lately. His teacher loved him. Called on him to solve problems, write out the answer on the board. It wasn’t a chore. Numbers and patterns spiraling to infinity filled his head, and were a thing of beauty to him. Fibonacci’s sequence, algorithms like Turing’s, number theories, abstractions and differentials made sense to him and connected in his head so perfectly, like universal strings inside his mind. A bit too complex for simple geometry, but he smugly enjoyed being smarter than his classmates. It made the loneliness easier to bear.

Today, Mr. Murphy’s lesson was on the area of cones and pyramids and frustums, and Sam already knew all this. He tried to pay attention anyway, because he sort of liked the old man, even if he was a bit too kind and gave the class far too much leniency. Sam personally rooted for him to grow a backbone and actually stand up for himself, but he never mentioned it, figuring a man who couldn’t even trim his ear hair probably wasn’t going to be teaching much longer anyway.

Mr. Murphy didn’t call on him that day, so Sam rotated between doing his homework and taking notes. He only bothered with either because he got a grade for it, and what little motivation he had left pushed him through it. It was just mathematics. Nothing unbearable, he told himself.

Study hall was the worst time of day. Hideously dull, eternally a waste of Sam’s time. He’d played at deductions for a while. Boring after the first three days. Nothing stimulating, nothing more than bland, unexceptional people. Some were less tedious than others.

There was Eliza, the awkward girl with acne on her forehead and thoroughly good intentions. She smiled at Sam occasionally, and probably would have sat with him from time to time if he didn’t make it abundantly clear that he didn’t care for company. She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t particularly smart either, but what she lacked in communicative aptitude she more than made up for in altruism and quiet observation.

Laurel was Eliza’s opposite in nearly every way, Sam had decided. Confident, charming, and brilliant, Sam admired her. She was shallow, but intimate. She wouldn’t say much that wasn’t entirely superficial, but the way she carried herself, the smiles she’d give out so freely, and the way she’d speak so softly you’d have to lean close to hear her, made it feel like she was a close friend, or a lover. But she was clever, and radiated femininity, and although Sam had never talked to her, he could sense her intelligence in the knowing depth her eyes held when her gaze met his.

A boy, Jeremy, had been in Sam’s history class last year. They’d been partners for a project. They weren’t friends, but the taller boy had been kind to Sam, although Sam had done most of the work for the project. They’d both received good grades, and hadn’t spoken since.

There were the typical workaholic kids, furiously scribbling words onto wrinkled lined paper, textbooks open and creased from use. Other kids cared much less, a category Sam was tempted to fall into, but he made good grades regardless. Music blared from one back corner of the room, where a group of assholes refused to put in headphones and valued their short-lived, unsatisfying pleasure over the needs of other people who wanted nothing more than to finish the assignment they hadn’t had time to do last night.

Sam occupied himself with looking out a window. It was raining harder now, and the dimness outside gave way to a ghostly, barely-there reflection on the pane of glass, and Sam stared into the poor imitation of his eyes. He blinked tiredly and tried not to think. He distracted himself from his thoughts with other thoughts. It was bitter and funny, how that played out. It never worked.

Sam dodged and wove his way through the whirling chaos of students in a too-small hallway, shifting and ducking when those prone to being inconsiderate made sudden stops or decided to walk slowly, and in groups.

He still had one class left, but the unsated, miserable part of himself, the foremost part, couldn’t take it. Thinking about any more pressure in his day made his eyes water in anxiety, and his fingers shook a bit. He ducked into the bathroom for a second time in the day, and was surprised that he wasn’t alone.

He coughed as he stumbled into the hazy air, blinking smoke from his eyes and clutching a sleeved fist over his mouth and nose. Another boy was standing by the sink, flicking ash onto the counter carelessly. He had thick hair that fell across his eyes, high eyebrows, and long, bony arms. He turned his noble head lazily to watch Sam, and he must have sensed that Sam was on the verge of breaking down, because he smiled at him. It wasn’t a kind smile, and didn’t reach his eyes. It was akin to sympathy. Pitying. But he reached into his pocket and fished out his box of cigarettes and held it out to Sam anyway.

Sam looked from his eyes to the box and back. He’d never smoked, and never intended to, but when the boy shook the box, threatening to put it away, Sam grabbed one and stuck it between his teeth. Without a word, the boy lit it for him, and Sam took a long breath, and barely managed to swallow his coughing fit. He exhaled in a thick grey puff that made his eyes sting and his throat hurt. He loved it.

A few minutes passed in blissful silence as the two smoked. A time came when Sam turned his head and found the other boy was gone. He didn’t know how long it had been. A smoke alarm went off in a piercing wail, and Sam realized why the boy had left. He took his still burning cigarette and held it against the wood of the counter until it burned a small black spot, growing bigger and bigger until it caught fire, and the fire spread. Sam slipped out of the bathroom door soundlessly and unnoticed, smooth as the cloud of smoke that trailed with him.

…

The night was quiet. Once everyone had gotten over the hype and the hysteria of the school’s fire had died out, it was like the silence after a thunderstorm subsides. The school hadn’t been badly damaged. They had put the fire out before it could spread farther than the bathroom, and no one had been injured. Sam wanted to be glad about that, but he found himself unable to fully care.

Time ticked on in slow hours, and Sam spent it sitting out on his rooftop. It was cool outside. Not so cold as to be painful, but enough that Sam’s breath fogged in front of his mouth, and the slight wind had stolen the color and feeling from his cheeks and fingers. It had stopped raining, and only a few thin wisps of clouds hung in the sky, trailing across the softly glowing moon.

He’d climbed out his bedroom window, wrapping himself in a thick blanket to fight the clinging dampness. From there, facing away from the small road that ran by his house, he had an unmarred view of the sky that stretched above the the trees with leaves clinging to the topmost branches, above the houses that dotted the gentle slope of the land, above everything.

The stars seemed so small, and so far away, like tiny specks of light against a shadow-painted sky. They had always been beautiful to Sam, lovely in their cold, wavering light, but always shining.

Sam thought about how the stars were perhaps the only thing that remained constant. Even though they were constantly changing and drifting and burning away into oblivion, to a human perspective, they were immortal. They were untouchable, throughout time, and while the planet would spin on and on in chaos and entropy, the stars would never die.

The stars were a vast reminder to Sam that while there are limits on life, the universe does not care about people or pain or the trivialities of existence. It didn’t care care about English essays or loneliness or boys who smoked in school bathrooms. In the grand play of everything, Sam didn’t matter. He was small among that which was infinite, and when he was gone, the universe would not miss him.

Sam felt a stillness come over him, and he was calm. He closed his eyes for what seemed to be forever, and when he opened them, he smiled. He was at ease for the first time in a long while, and the tumult in his mind had subsided, at least for a moment, and it was freeing, and Sam felt as though he would be alright.

[cutefruitundies]

I Get Paid to Have Pelvic Exams So Yours Will Be Better

By Alithea Howes Originally printed on Rewire.News

My pelvic exam proceeds as normal. Well, sort of. I use a small mirror to watch the doctor’s hands as she examines me. I give her the speculum and squirt it with lube I brought from home. When she finishes, I thank her and smile. Then I get ready for the next one.

“How was that?” The instructor proctoring her test asks me.

“Pretty good,” I say. “She needs to put more posterior pressure on the speculum when she opens it. That’ll be a bit more comfortable for the patient.”

I go to the OB-GYN like it’s my job—because it is.

As a gynecological teaching associate (GTA), my job is to teach medical students, registered nurses, and sexual assault nurse examiners (who collect evidence and care for survivors) how to conduct breast and pelvic exams in the most comfortable and empowering way possible. I act as the patient, but also a teacher, so a student can practice and get feedback in real time.

I heard about this job at a storytelling show. Most of the GTAs I work with have some medical training, mostly as doulas. I had no medical background, but I wasn’t afraid of public speaking or being naked in front of strangers, so I decided to look into it. I took a month-long training course that consisted of learning the techniques ourselves and a script about the best ways to interact with and educate patients. Soon I was on the road, teaching students all over New Jersey and New York.

A class usually has three to five students. I talk through each procedure, then the students practice on me. If it’s a more complicated or sensitive procedure, like any part of the pelvic component, I talk them through it as they go, watching their progress in a hand mirror. The students watch each other practice the exam so they can see and hear the instructions as each student goes through it. The visual and aural repetition, combined with the actual practice, helps the student retain the knowledge.

Sometimes a school will have GTAs come back a month or so later and act as patients to test the students on what they’ve learned. In those sessions, we save our feedback for after the exam, only stopping the students if they’re about to hurt us.

The teacher writes down my comments on the test, and we wait for the next student to be ready.

“I wish we’d had you guys back when I was a student,” he says to make small talk.

“Yeah, it’s still not as common a program as I’d like,” I admit. A 2016 survey of almost 100 medical schools found that more than 70 percent of those institutions used GTAs to teach pelvic or breast exams. “I don’t know how you would teach this without a GTA.”

“Usually we just practice on patients who are unconscious after surgery.” He says it so casually. Like it’s not the creepiest thing I have ever heard. I wonder how often this happens. There is not good data on this practice, but some medical schools have stopped doing exams on people who aren’t awake or without specific prior consent.

When I manage to speak again, I ask, “Do they get the patient’s consent for that?!”

“I’m sure it’s in the paperwork somewhere,” he says, shrugging. Never before have I been so compelled to read the fine print.

It’s not clear why GTA programs aren’t used in every school. But one reason is likely cost: Hiring someone and paying them per student is certainly more expensive than the alternatives. An anesthetized patient costs nothing. Some schools encourage their female students to let their peers practice on them, again at no cost to the school. But performing exams on unconscious patients or asking students to volunteer their bodies is ethically questionable.

Some medical schools take other approaches. Cadavers are useful for a large number of lessons across different medical specialities, so many schools use dead bodies. The practice of using corpses for teaching future doctors goes back to the earliest days of medicine. That demand once fueled the rise of “resurrection men,” who robbed graves for bodies (often those of poor or marginalized people) during the 19th century.

Today, latex models are also an option. In theory, a latex model is a one-time expense—a good investment. But in practice, the models are not as elastic as an actual vagina and tend to break if you insert a speculum correctly. So the student either breaks the model (incurring more costs) or learns to insert a speculum in a way that is painful for an actual person. So if you’re wondering why your gynecologist keeps hurting you, it may be because they’ve never heard someone say “ouch” before. Or they’ve never had someone tell them that this exam isn’t painful if done correctly.

There’s also a stigma around paying women for doing work with their bodies. Some people have argued that GTAs are sex workers (in previous times, sex workers were used to teach exams) and therefore should not be hired by medical institutions. Sex work can mean a lot of things, but the barebones definition of sex work is making money by actively working to turn someone on. I’m in a hospital gown under fluorescent lights. I usually don’t even brush my hair or wear makeup. I’m using clinical terms. If someone is getting turned on, it’s through no fault of mine. And even if you want to ignore my experience and say that this is sex work, what does that say about using unpaid students or unconscious patients?

Becoming a GTA has taught me a lot about my body. I learned that when I’m having sex and it feels like I’m getting hit in the belly, my partner is hitting my cervix and I should probably change positions if I want that to stop. I’ve learned where my urethra is and that I don’t want anything to come into contact with it.

But what matters to me more is the information I can give my students. I’ve taught countless women—medical professionals themselves—what Kegel muscles are and why you need to exercise them regularly. No one has admitted to this, but I’m quite sure I’ve shown a great many people where a clitoris is and how to find it. (Hint: Just push back the clitoral hood. It’s that easy.)

Most importantly, I’ve reminded my students that their patients are human, have feelings and histories, and want to know what’s going on with their body. Too many times, I’ve been to a doctor and had them judge my life choices or make me feel bad for being sick. Or they’ve written me a prescription without telling me what was wrong with me or how I could prevent it from happening again.

When I teach my students, I tell them how to talk to their patients. I tell them what words to avoid so that they don’t accidentally make their patients uncomfortable (for example, no one wants to hear “spread your legs” in this context.) I tell them how to educate their patients about their bodies so they can know what everything looks and feels like when it’s healthy and better identify problems when they arise.

And your health-care providers need this instruction. In many cases, practicing with a GTA is the first time they’ve done this procedure with a live patient. Medical students—often nervous, overworked, and exhausted—sometimes pass out during a GTA session.

Luckily, the only student to faint during my “exam” was uninjured; she just needed to sit down for a while and have some water. After the class, she stayed behind to thank me for the work I was doing.

“I had a really bad experience when I was a teenager,” she explained.

“That’s why I had to leave the room. I don’t know what the doctor did wrong, but it hurt so much, I’ve never been back. I know it’s important for my health,” she said. Her voice trailed off in shame. This was a future doctor who was afraid to go to the doctor.

“Well, would you like to take home a speculum?” I offered, grabbing my bag of disposables. “That way, you can practice it at home when you’re comfortable. And maybe that can take some of the fear away.”

“I can’t.” Her voice faltered, but she forced the words out. “I’ve never …  touched myself. Down there. I was so worried I would hurt myself like the doctor did.”

I was horrified into silence for a moment. One moment of negligence, something her doctor probably didn’t even remember, had affected this woman so negatively that she was afraid to touch her own body. I finally managed to say, “During an exam, most discomfort comes from making contact with the urethra, so make sure to avoid that.”

“I wasn’t here when you showed us where everything is.” She seemed scared, but asked, “Could you show me?”

I got back on the table. I showed her where she could find the clitoris, urethra, and the entrance to the vagina. I told her that the urethra is sensitive to pressure and probably the source of the pain she felt during her exam. I suggested she give herself some time with a hand mirror to get to know her body.

I will never forget the relief she showed just seeing and understanding actual female anatomy. Moments like that are the main reason that I do my job. Though students are learning, they’re usually very attentive and want to follow instructions to the letter. The work is physically demanding, but not as much as you may think. I only average about two classes a week, and having a job that helps people is worth a little soreness to me. As part-time jobs go, that’s pretty great.

I teach hundreds of medical professionals a year, and that helps the countless people they will see in their careers. The students I’ve met in my years of work have been so kind. They are so concerned with hurting me, so afraid of doing something wrong. I can’t imagine how nerve-racking it would be to try to perform a pelvic exam on an actual patient, having only seen a video of how to do it or only practiced on a disembodied latex vagina. My students are all so grateful for the opportunity to learn from me and to practice on an actual person. And I am incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to teach them.

I hope that someday every university will realize that it needs a GTA program. And that if you’re going to learn about the human body, it’s often best to learn on an actual human body. Preferably one that’s alive.

Original article:

https://rewire.news/article/2017/08/21/get-paid-pelvic-exams/

[omfgthursday-blog1]

Contacts - What Are They Really ?

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At the duration of time, beverages have achieved more in comparison to quenched that the appetite; they've already been utilised since stock markets, drugs, and in addition to at spiritual rites. they've functioned since symbols together with riches in addition to power, in addition to tools in order to appease that the poor in addition to down trodden. Wine, another drink from the publication, played a main role from the thriving Greek in addition to Roman civilizations. As wine did not originate from the Mediterranean, the Greek's appetite with this beverage opened at club penguin vast sea borne commerce, which disperse their own idea, politicsand mathematics in addition to literature anyplace, also still underpins current Western concept. A Background from the World indoors 6 rebounds facets outside how those advancements originated in addition to climbed throughout formal Greek sipping parties, branded symposia. The Romans, that consumed much of Greek manner of life, lasted that the strong utilization of wine. For why publication finds, if somebody follow that the wine-drinking examples of the entire world to get a map, you will locate you consist of traced that the Roman empire throughout its own degrees. Thankfully, A Background from the World indoors 6 rebounds simply by Tom Standage succeeds whereby the others consist of failed. Standage's ebook will not which by forfeiting the width of this potential subject to get a celebrated thickness in addition to focus. As an alternative using trying in completion that the total history with person, this ebook spot lights one issue, S O beverages, and takes that the reader to get a travel via period to look at the way his topic interweaves yesteryear from. Standage can be that a beautiful author, blending his light-hearted personality using out standing historical informed perhaps not on the niche of food and beverage, but at the duration of. Key Phrases: A Background from the World indoors 6 rebounds makes it eventually become clear history together with humanity can be that a history together with our ingestion. Whether were drinking "liquid bread" indoors Mesopotamia, considering R Evolution at a coffee house inside Paris, or pitching java leafs into the sea interior Boston, those drinks have experienced a deep influence on that were. Since Standage says from the debut to become in a position to his ebook "They live on your domiciles in these times as existing reminders together with contemporary eras, fluid testaments into the forces that'll shaped present-day world. Learn their own roots, and you will not appraise your favorite beverage interior very comparable manner once more. " MY SPOUSE AND I'm exceptionally urge this ebook into everybody else thirsty meant for knowledge in regards to the world all round these...in addition to if they truly are only thirsty to get a good take. 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Tom Standage's different publication invites you personally see the ground at that a complete new light: throughout that the glass of a beverage. Starting whilst using the sunrise using culture, also acquiring us through modern afternoon "beverage globalization" this publication is ordinarily an exemplary refresher training class on globe history utilizing page instantly after page using Details into the individual comprehension. Mankind's earliest civilizations where started onto un-wanted cereal output, substantially that has been brewed. Historical evening beers were high indoors vitamin-B, that the vitamin sooner just reached through steak. This enabled individuals into concentrate their own daily diet efforts much more on cereals, effortlessly ushering from the transition during huntergatherers in order to farmers. Additionally, because first beers were boiled (to shift more peppers to sugars), that the beer become somewhat safer into consume than waters. This considerable advancement within Life Style "Free-D an Inferior percent from the inhabitants from the requirement to succeed in that the areas, and awarded the success of technical priest, supervisors, scribes, in Addition to craftsmen. " maybe not alone did ale nourish humanity's earliest civilizations, but at a excellent number of manners, made them possible. 1168 Novel Check: a Brief History from the World interior 6 Contacts or Glasses Wine, another drink from the publication, played a main role from the thriving Greek in addition to Roman civilizations. As wine did not originate from the Mediterranean, the Greek's appetite with this beverage opened at club penguin vast sea borne commerce, which disperse their own idea, politicsand mathematics in addition to literature anyplace, also still underpins current Western concept. A Background from the World indoors 6 rebounds facets outside how those advancements originated in addition to climbed throughout formal Greek sipping parties, branded symposia. The Romans, that consumed much of Greek manner of life, lasted that the strong utilization of wine. For why publication finds, if somebody follow that the wine-drinking examples of the entire world to get a map, you will locate you consist of traced that the Roman empire throughout its own degrees. Nevertheless, within a take to and bypass which Arab monopoly, European monarchs started gigantic fleets into the sea. U S A Colonies, which "they played with an crucial variable role from the establishment of the state. " World History can be that a long in addition to complex theme. Wells consist of attempted in order to condense history to some only ebook, very couple of've} triumphed. There is merely overly a lot of it. Efforts in order to boil the previous 10, 000 years have led in either shallow novels with maybe not much thickness, or exemplary text-book exactly like tombs manner overly inaccessible into the casual audience. Thankfully, A Background from the World indoors 6 rebounds simply by Tom Standage succeeds whereby the others consist of failed. Standage's ebook will not which by forfeiting the width of this potential subject to get a celebrated thickness in addition to focus. As an alternative using trying in completion that the total history with person, this ebook spot lights one issue, S O beverages, and takes that the reader to get a travel via period to look at the way his topic interweaves yesteryear from. Standage can be that a beautiful author, blending his light-hearted personality using out standing historical informed perhaps not on the niche of food and beverage, but at the duration of. Much like just about most the drinks reviewed at A Background from the World interior 6 rebounds, cocacola become originally invented such as a medi cal ingest. being an alternate to psychologist to the struggle, cocacola proceeded on full good thing about this rough times the theory found yet again in, obtaining earth from the melancholy, and travel along side our troops to WWII, becoming a world phenomenon. in accord with this ebook, cocacola still makes up about "around 40 percentage away liquid ingestion" in these times. Despite my private today constructive opinion of this publication, I have to acknowledge that while I original found A Background from the World interior 6 rebounds, used to do not expect to enjoy it. Perhaps not only'm} MY SPOUSE AND I'm cynical together with some ebook promising in completion that the antiquity together with man interior 300 pages or fewer, but MY SPOUSE AND I myself usually do not beverage any from the 6 drinks this ebook discusses. this manner, learning that the history worth-mentioning drinks neglected to sound promptly appealing. As that the publication facets outside from the launch, after just in order to atmosphere, liquid could be your many crucial substance in order to person's strategic. Even the availableness of plain water in addition to other drinking places have "restricted in addition to guided human kind's advancement" in addition to "have ongoing into state history". At the duration of time, beverages have achieved more in comparison to quenched that the appetite; they've already been utilised since stock markets, drugs, and in addition to at spiritual rites. they've functioned since symbols together with riches in addition to power, in addition to tools in order to appease that the poor in addition to down trodden. though that the release of teas back plenty of years, it neglected to carry store upon developed civilization before this mid-seventeenth 100 years. Once put up since England's national beverage, the importing with tea through earliest China and India reasoned in commerce in addition to industrialization on an unparalleled scope. This asymmetry of energy had a sizable, far reaching influence on British money policy, also finally led into the liberty of the state. Your fourth beverage presented this a publication is going to undoubtedly be java. Due to its anabolic influence on the thoughts, java readily became that the beverage together with intelligence in addition to industry. Replacing taverns for why complex assembly location, the Coffee House "headed into the institution together with scientific societies along with loan firms, the foundation together with papers, in Addition to supplied abundant surface to get advanced notion, especially at Italy. " A Background from the World indoors 6 rebounds keeps growing to recount that the complicated sway coffee houses had on Victorian manner of life, moving so far as to devote that a complete chapter in order to exactly what that the publication calls or message "The coffee-house Internet". Key Phrases: Article Entire Human Anatomy:}

[emulatingrizal-blog]

Why Schools Need Sex Education

by: DERILO, Mary Abigail - 2015-03180

Following the significant rise in the number of teenage pregnancies in Western countries in the 1960s and the outbreak of AIDS/HIV epidemic in Africa, public health practitioners deemed it fit that the whole subject of reproduction should be taught to students in order to alleviate the aforementioned health issues. Sex education specifically tackles on sexual anatomy, reproduction, reproductive health, sexual activity, reproductive rights, contraception, and even sexual abstinence. It also promotes a judgement-free and mature avenue for students to learn and talk about sex. Unfortunately, ever since the conceptualization of the idea that sex education should be included in the school curricula, it has spurred a great deal of criticisms. It was no surprise that it came from concerned parents especially the conservatives, who are not all necessarily bound by religion. These people still think that sex education only talks about intercourse itself and that doing so encourages it, which is not the case.

In an online article entitled “Why Schools Don’t Need Sex Ed” by Yoni Goldstein of The Huffington Post Canada, 1 he presents a different argument.  From his own background of being educated in private religious schools that did not offer classes for sex ed., he writes that he found about sex anyway without having anyone else explain it to him. Kids learn about sex anyway through their peers in school or through the internet (which includes pornography) or through other means, so having a subject that talks specifically about sex is just unnecessary. He adds that the lack of education about sex “will hardly matter at all with regards to the crux of sex—which relates to emotion, not anatomy, and so cannot be taught but must be experienced.” He also points out that it should be the parents’ job to educate their children about the birds and the bees accordingly to their beliefs; the parents are the only people who are reasonably qualified to have this conversation with their own kids.

While Goldstein made fair points in his article, it cannot be ignored that they were baseless and not inclusive. Firstly, he thinks that sex education only tackles the process of intercourse itself. It is not a surprising first thought for someone who was not educated in the terms of it. But yes, as I’ve said, sex education is more than sex. Also, I can relate to him about being educated in a private religious institution, and he is telling the truth about sex not being talked about within the four walls of the classroom. I still found out about what happens in sex through other means, but it took me a long time to figure out the truths and myths behind it. Unfortunately, there are people out there who are not fortunate enough to have found out about these things before they actually engaged in sex. I have had professors tell us of teenage mothers in public hospitals who thought that if they had sex in a standing position they would not get pregnant, and the culprit of this is lack of education about the anatomy of the reproductive system, which should have been discussed in detail either in human biology or sex ed. Another point I’d like to make is how he completely downplayed the idea that one can learn about sex merely through the internet or through peers. It’s true that one can gather information from such sources, but I think we can all agree that not everyone has access to the internet and misinformation can happen in conversations among friends.

Goldstein also mentioned that it should be the parents’ job to discuss such delicate matters with their children, and I agree with him. But are parents really doing something about it? And are teenagers asking them about it? In a multi-site study in the United States among African American mothers and their 9- to 12-year-old children found that over 70% of mothers reported talking to their child about sex topics.2 The findings are promising, and it seems like parents are doing their jobs educating their progeny about sex after all, but such is not the case for all communities and countries.  In a cross-sectional community study in Singapore in 2012, however, researchers tried to find out if parents really do talk to their children about sexual health. The findings showed that a majority (>80%) of the respondents answered that they have considered talking about it with their kids but only about 60% felt comfortable in doing so, which led to a lower frequency of caregiver-child sexuality communication (>50%).3 In a similar study conducted in Africa, only 27% of adolescents reported having had parent-child sexuality communication.4 In the Philippines, a country bound by Catholicism from its roots, parents do not generally talk about sex with their children because it’s considered taboo. From my personal experience, my parents never talked to me about sexual health when I was younger, and to be honest I no longer see it fit that I attempt to open the conversation now that I’m well-versed in reproductive health. I have also asked my peers if they experienced that same thing with their parents, and they all said yes. It cannot be denied that there are still countries and communities out there that still live in the illusion that the topic of sex is better left in the dark. Setting aside the fact that some parents don’t ever talk about sex with their children, let’s move on to the parents who do. While it is a great feat and all, it cannot be determined if the information they are imparting is always true unless they are involved in the health sciences. Moreover, they could be missing out on telling their kids important things such as consent, which could easily be covered by sex education.

The second issue I’d like to address is the discussion and the incorporation of human anatomy into sexual health. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2009 in India where the researchers attempted to identify the reproductive health issues of adolescents.5 Both male and female respondents were asked about the changes boys and girls undergo as they hit puberty such as facial hair growth and increase in height among men, and growth in breasts and hip circumference among women. A majority of the respondents were able to answer correctly about the body changes of their own and the opposite sex, which indicates that the students there are aware and are well-educated of their reproductive health. In a separate study in the Philippines, however, less than one-quarter (23%) of adolescent women correctly identified a woman’s fertile period.6 The subject of knowing the woman’s fertile period is crucial whether she is planning to conceive or not, and the lack of such knowledge often results in accidental pregnancies, which is common among teenage pregnancies. Therefore, proper education of the human anatomy in sex education can help reduce teenage pregnancies. It can also avoid misinformation, which breeds sexist ideas. An example is when a guy named Ryan Williams posted online that tampons are a “luxury item” and said if a woman "cannot hold in her period until she gets to a toilet" then it is her problem, not the taxpayers’.7   

Contraception is another topic that is important in the discussion of sexual health. In the Philippines where the concept is still very much delicate, contraceptive methods are discouraged by the Church because it downplays the sacredness of sex, and it gives the idea that people can have sex all the time without thinking the consequences of their actions. In my experience in my Catholic high school, contraception was heavily demonized as it was considered “immoral”. But that is not the case in the medical field; contraception is encouraged to let people have sex safely without spreading diseases and to prevent accidental pregnancies. Unfortunately some people are still uninformed of contraception. In the study conducted in the Vadodara district in India, only 31% of the males and 33% of the female subjects mentioned they heard of contraception, which is pretty low.8 But with the implementation of comprehensive sex education, contraception can be discussed in full detail, as well as other methods besides the usage of condoms. It can also help end the stigma surrounding contraception, which can help countries in making contraceptives more accessible.Lastly, sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) need to be discussed in connection with contraception in order to prevent its further spread. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 1 million STIs are acquired everyday worldwide, and one of the effective interventions to this health issue is comprehensive sexual education.9 While there are some areas in the world that are more afflicted with STIs, the key to prevent the rise of an epidemic is to educate people about the truths about it, and it can only be possible through sex ed. In a research article conducted among secondary school students in South Western Nigeria, researchers found that only 6.9% of the respondents had good knowledge about STIs; the rest of the subjects only had fair to poor knowledge.10 In a similar study in Malaysia where a considerable number of the respondents were sexually active, not more than 16.1% of them could name a common STI nor give its signs and symptoms.11 From these studies it is evident that sex education is needed to aid these problems so that people can be more aware and be encouraged to engage in safe sex.           

While opposing sex education stems from the concern that morality and values will be lost in the process, promoting it can actually save lives. With its implementation in schools, students will be correctly informed about their reproductive systems, contraception, and STIs, and in the long run health issues regarding sexuality can be reduced. Additionally, it can aid in the proper implementation of health laws that will gain the support of a population that would have been properly educated. So why oppose it if it’s only going to be for the betterment of the rest of the world?

Bibliography

1.      Goldstein, Yoni. “Why Schools Don't Need Sex Ed.” HuffPost Canada, HuffPost, 14 Nov. 2012, www.huffingtonpost.ca/yoni-goldstein/sex-ed-school_b_1882841.html.

2.      Miller, Kim S., et al. “Barriers and Facilitators to Maternal Communication with Preadolescents about Age-Relevant Sexual Topics.” AIDS and Behavior, vol. 13, no. 2, June 2007, pp. 365–374., doi:10.1007/s10461-007-9324-6.

3.      Hu, Yun, et al. “Do Parents Talk to Their Adolescent Children about Sex?—Findings from a Community Survey in Singapore.” Annals, Academy of Medicine, Singapore, vol. 41, no. 6, June 2012, pp. 46–239., www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22821244.

4.      Kawai, K, et al. “Parents' and teachers' communication about HIV and sex in relation to the timing of sexual initiation among young adolescents in Tanzania.” Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, vol. 36, no. 8, Nov. 2008, pp. 88–879.,doi: 10.1177/1403494808094243.

5.      Kotecha, P V, et al. “Reproductive health awareness among urban school going adolescents in Vadodara city.” Indian Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 54, no. 4, Oct. 2012, pp. 344–348., doi:10.4103/0019-5545.104821.

6.      “Sexual and Reproductive Health of Young Women in the Philippines: 2013 Data Update.” Guttmacher Institute, 27 July 2016, www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/sexual-and-reproductive-health-young-women-philippines-2013-data-update#2.

7.      Reader, Kim, and Rachel Bishop. “Pro-Tampon Tax 'meninist' says women should "control their bladders".” Mirror, 19 Oct. 2016, www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/teenage-meninist-sparks-fury-anti-9067035.

8.      Kotecha, P V, et al. “Reproductive health awareness among rural school going adolescents of Vadodara district.” Indian Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS, vol. 30, no. 2, July 2009, pp. 94–99., doi:10.4103/0253-7184.62765.

9.     “Sexually transmitted infections (STIs).” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs110/en/.

10.     E. O. Amu and P. T. Adegun, “Awareness and Knowledge of Sexually Transmitted Infections among Secondary School Adolescents in Ado Ekiti, South Western Nigeria,” Hindawi Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, vol. 2015, Article ID 260126, 7 pages., doi:10.1155/2015/2601262.     

11.     Anwar, Mudassir et al. “Awareness of School Students on Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and Their Sexual Behavior: A Cross-Sectional Study Conducted in Pulau Pinang, Malaysia.” BMC Public Health 10 (2010): 47. PMC. Web. 5 Nov. 2017.