#I don’t know which option is better…

[faerunquest]

(disclaimer that i haven’t actually played ea, my impression of it is only based on what i’ve read/seen online) but i actually don’t think ea wyll would have been a more compelling character. we frankly did not need another brash character, or one that’s treading the line of power hungry. wyll did not need to be darker or more morally gray to be more interesting.

it may be because i actually find his kindness to be the most compelling aspect about him. he is a man that’s been stripped of his home, of his name, of his appearance and he’s clinging to that kindness and goodness as the last aspects of himself. he wants people to see him as the blade, because wyll is a memory of a memory (his lines). good or kind doesn’t mean easy and we see first hand what kind of punishments he faces for choosing to do the right thing but he’ll do it to keep his soul with whatever he has left. the very same soul that’s been given to a devil.

and he’s not above violence quite the opposite. he approves of going after the duergars when he hears they murdered the myconoid’s children. he says they should bathe gortash in his own blood. he has no mercy for vile individuals but he forgives like it’s breathing.

that’s not to say his writing wouldn’t have benefitted from care and attention that frankly was not given. or a few additional scenes that allow you to see behind the high charisma, the memory of a memory that’s struggling to carry it all.

but i don’t know i think that wyll, who might’ve once been naive but he hasn’t been for many many years. who saw the injustice of the world and got angry at everyone (mortal and gods) who wouldn’t help. who chooses to be kind exactly because the world isn’t. who keeps that choice, the only agency he has with a bloodied grip, and that’s something no one could take from him. it is that conscious choice to act despite the terrible situation he found himself in at only 17, that is the beating heart of his character.

good and moral or honourable is not necessarily boring. you may personally not wish to engage with it or find yourself gravitating towards, but it doesn’t make it less compelling by default.

i think one of the lines in the beginning about how he doesn’t remember much of the battle, but he remembers drying that boy’s tears, is the essence of all that above, and the kind of man wyll wishes to be (& actually is)

[mageknife]

Cole: His face in the stands, watching as I pass the test. So proud there's tears in his eyes.

Cole: Anything to make him happy, anything.

Cole: Why isn't that true anymore?

/

Dorian: He says we’re alike. Too much pride. Once I would have been overjoyed to hear him say that. Now I’m not certain.

/

Halward: This is not what I wanted.

Dorian: I'm never what you wanted, Father, or had you forgotten?

/

Nightmare: Greetings, Dorian… It is Dorian, isn’t it? For a moment, I mistook you for your father.

[starcrossedandstupid]

They would rather die and long for the other even in death than send each other a discord dm

[starbuck]

people will assign No Children to the most fuckass ships… like. man if they don’t want to kill themselves and each other, what are we even doing here?????????

[morticiankisser]

still trying to figure out if I wanna play with the idea of my kuro s/i getting murdered by her ex fiancé and beloved resurrecting her as a bizzare doll before her cinematic record can be collected or abandon the idea and have her interacting the the emerald witch arc like normal

[hoorayforboobiess]

oop

[bendover-productions]

Sorry if you've already been informed of this, but in case you haven't, I just want you to know that Sam still has the teal pom pom hat! He said on the podcast that he misplaced it almost immediately and thought he had lost it, but that he found it in his bag once he got back!

NO!!! no one told me!!! 😭😭 thank you so much, that teal hat is incredibly important to me and i am delighted he still has it

^^^sam in that hat. to me tbh <3

[solace-seekers]

screaming into the void <3

[hana-bobo-finch]

jørgan clan my beloved. you guys are so messed up

[floral-hex]

finally, after waiting since November, I got to see an endocrinologist today. didn’t go great. As soon as I said I was going through with surgery, he got this look on his face like I’d just told him I beat dogs with hammers. Kinda tried to scare me away from it and get me to just take meds, but he relented and said to just take the meds anyway. Listen, dude, I get you’re pissed I got my neurosurgery consult first, but that’s only because your office dragged their feet & wouldn’t see me for months. Did you think I would sit around, do nothing, and feel like shit bc I should have waited for you? You can’t show up to the end of the game and complain about how it’s played��. So anyway, I’m very grumpy today.

[ceiling-karasu]

Squirrel and Hedgehog Shipping Polls

I’m heading out to the Caribbean this weekend for a family vacation, so this poly ship should make for a warm discussion from the suggestions and prompts in the tags.

The captured Field Mouse from episode two, and his hedgehog Guards.

[ranger-danger]

Dnd people who hate rangers are so funny. Oh you love bards, but think rangers are useless in combat? That’s rich. Next you’ll tell me you love monks, but think rangers are too weak. What do you love sorcerers and think rangers suck?

[lakesandquarries]

i could make one of those cute interactive threads on twitter just with stuff from my own life and the thought is making me feel really good about myself lol

[vampiremourning]

My car is parked in the street & covered in sap, meaning it needs a wash. Unfortunately this sap has also attracted a legion of Wasps to just hang out on it so. That’s what’s stressing me out today.

[misterbaritone]

Y’know if Guilty Gear, for whatever reason, decided to suddenly change genres (again), I wouldn’t mind seeing the series take a stab at being a Hack n Slash.

And I mean a proper hack n slash not that RTS/MOBA bullshit we got in Overture.

[gingersnapwolves]

So today I want to talk about puberty blockers for transgender kids, because despite being cisgender, this is a subject I’m actually well-versed in. Specifically, I want to talk about how far backwards things have gone.

This story starts almost 20 years ago, and it’s kind of long, but I think it’s important to give you the full history. At the time, I was working as an administrative assistant for a pediatric endocrinologist in a red state. Not a deep deep red state like Alabama, we had a little bit of a purple trend, but still very much red. (I don’t want to say the state at the risk of doxxing myself.) And I took a phone call from a woman who said, “My son is transgender. Does your doctor do hormone therapy?”

I said, “Good question! Let me find out.”

I went into the back and found the doctor playing Solitaire on his computer and said, “Do you do hormone therapy for transgender kids?” It had literally never come up before. He had opened his practice there in the early 2000s. This was roughly 2006, and the first time someone asked. Without looking up from his game of Solitaire, the doctor said, “I’ve never done it before, but I know how it works, so sure.”

I got back on the phone and told the mom, who was overjoyed, and scheduled an appointment for her son. He was the first transgender child we treated with puberty blockers. But not, by far, the first child we treated with puberty blockers, period. Because puberty blockers are used very commonly for children with precocious puberty (early-onset puberty). I would say about twenty percent of the kids our doctor treated were for precocious puberty and were on puberty blockers. They have been well studied and are widely used, safe, and effective.

Well. It turned out, the doctor I worked for was the only doctor in the state who was willing to do this. And word spread pretty fast in the tight-knit community of ‘parents of transgender children in a red state’. We started seeing more kids. A better drug came out. We saw some kids who were at the age where they were past puberty, and prescribed them estrogen or testosterone. Our doctor became, I’m fairly sure, a small folk hero to this community. 

Insurance coverage was a struggle. I remember copying articles and pages out of the Endocrine Society Manual to submit with prior authorization requests for the medications. Insurance coverage was a struggle for a lot of what we did, though. Growth hormone for kids with severe idiopathic short stature. Insulin pumps, which weren’t as common at the time, and then continuous glucose monitoring, when that came out. Insurance struggles were just part and parcel of the job.

I remember vividly when CVS Caremark, a pharmaceutical management company, changed their criteria and included gender dysphoria as a covered diagnosis for puberty blockers. I thought they had put the option on the questionnaire to trigger an automatic denial. But no - it triggered an approval. Medicaid started to cover it. I got so good at getting approvals with my by then tidy packet of articles and documentation that I actually had people in other states calling me to see what I was submitting (the pharmaceutical rep gave them my number because they wanted more people on their drug, which, shady, but sure. He did ask me if it was okay first).

And here’s the key point of this story:

At no point, during any of this, did it ever even occur to any of us that we might have to worry about whether or not what we were doing was legal.

It just never even came up. It was the medically recommended treatment so we did it. And seeing what’s happening in the UK and certain states in America is both terrifying and genuinely shocking to me, as someone who did this for almost fifteen years, without ever even wondering about the legality of it.

The doctor retired some years ago, at which point there were two other doctors in the state who were willing to prescribe the medications for transgender kids. I truly think that he would still be working if nobody else had been willing to take those kids on as patients. He was, by the way, a white cisgender heterosexual Boomer. I remember when he was introduced to the concept of ‘genderfluid’ because one of our patients on HRT wanted to go off. He said ‘that’s so interesting!’ and immediately went to Google to learn more about it. 

I watched these kids transform. I saw them come into the office the first time, sometimes anxious and uncertain, sometimes sullen and angry. I saw them come in the subsequent times, once they were on hormone therapy, how they gradually became happy and confident in themselves. I saw the smiles on their faces when I gave them a gender marker letter for the DMV. I heard them cheer when I called to tell them I’d gotten HRT approved by insurance and we were calling in a prescription. It was honestly amazing and I will always consider the work I did in that red state with those kids to be something I am incredibly proud of. I was honored to be a part of it.

When I see all this transgender backlash, it’s horrifying, because it was well on the way to become standard and accepted treatment. Insurances started to cover it. Other doctors were learning to prescribe it. And now … it’s fucking illegal? Like what the actual fuck. We have gone so far backwards that it makes me want to cry. I don’t know how to stop this slide. But I wrote this so people would understand exactly how steep the slide is.