#I'm insurance posting

[milkwizard]

Spoiler yes it was

[dovesndecay]

Feeling the disabled despair mixed with some kind of rage today. I've been sick for a month, and I don't fucking want to go to the ER just for them to reinflate me and send me on my way, with zero ideas of what exactly is wrong with me AGAIN.

[omg-snakes]

Do you know if there are ways to know if a snake from a pet shop has been properly taken care of or not? Asking since i've been visiting some and i saw one with a boa that had some kind of sinking or deformity on his tail, so i'm kinda wary now.

Hello, friend! I'm sorry to tell you that there is not.

I've worked in multiple areas of the pet industry and I've met the full gamut of types of shop owners, and while I don't consider all of them wicked people, some certainly are. Even the best of them have a bottom line to consider. This means that they won't divulge where their animals are coming from so that you can look into a breeder before making a choice, and they're likely buying animals from backyard breeders or bulk importers. This also means that it's unlikely that the animals they're selling will have established health histories.

Having worked at one of if not The biggest reptile chain in Northern California, I saw some horrors that scarred me for life. Among the lesser sins that took place there:

Folks who bred reptiles but didn't have incubators set up could bring their eggs in for incubation services, the price of which was half of the clutch, and the store owner would then sell the resulting babies as "born on-site," which was technically true! But we didn't know the parentage or health potential of any of these animals. We didn't sell incubators in the store for this specific reason.

Surrenders came in regularly from owners who didn't have the time or resources to care for their pets any longer. They went on the sales floor with a price tag the second the previous owner walked out the door. No veterinary care, no health evaluation, no observation period, nothing. If they looked okay they were priced at regular retail price and we were explicitly told to never admit that they had been surrendered. 100% profit.

Any animal that was injured or sickly, no matter where it came from or how it got injured, was tagged as a "surrender" that we would claim was dropped off by a bad former owner and we'd had them cleared by a vet so that we could rehome them. This was a lie. None of them ever got veterinary care, ever.

Enclosures were cleaned regularly but were never properly sterilized between animals. We sold veterinary-grade cleaner in the store but we were not allowed to use it because it was too expensive. We used diluted Lysol!

Again, this is a large reptile chain with multiple stores and mostly positive online reviews* and I wouldn't trust them with a pet rock, let alone anything breathing.

You're much better off getting a snake from a reputable breeder, or at least someone who can answer reasonable questions about feeding, parentage, genetics, any possible health issues, etc.

*the owner actually reported negative reviews and would have employees write good ones while I was there.

[fully-caulked-wagon]

D'you think if you stuck an apple in Zoro's mouth he'd grow roots and return to the soil? Drew this just over two weeks ago. Didn't post it becauseeeeee uhhhhhh- Every time I draw Sanji his hair just gets bigger. It's out of control istg. Next time I draw him he's going to be 9 parts hair 1 part face.

[captainmvf]

☀️I'm having a short summer sale!!☀️

I have jaw surgery in a month so everything I make during this month will help cover the cost 😅 Summed up, it's weird wisdom teeth stuff. Most of my inventory is Starlight Express and Fossil Fighters!

🔗https://www.etsy.com/shop/CaptainMVF

Fun side note: I also do lil doodles for each order I send out!

[thesaintofnevergettingitright]

I find myself funny and I’m making it everyone else’s problem.

[lady-harrowhark]

listing stuff for resale online and i'm just... so tired of taking pictures. cropping pictures. taking measurements. weighing out postage. finding boxes. writing descriptions. i'm so tired.

[shirogane-oushirou]

hi hi hi :3c i'm aaaaaaalmost caught up on my dash after a couple of weeks of spotty appearances and a couple of weeks of being Straight Up Offline, and then i'll catch up on peoples' art and fics!! i miss being on here!! hi hi hi hi hi!!!!! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻

(also i have been Pondering over a ren sentient a.i desktop buddy AU while i've been gone bc. i'm a sucker for that shit. dunno if it'll go anywhere but for now i'm playing touys and it's fun hehehe if you see a new tag at some point then that means i'm keeping him sjndfkn)

[mokutone]

your art makes me wanna start testosterone

i can't read tone well, so this is either an incredibly touching ask, or an extremely funny one, and in the absence of confirmation: both!

i'm in a chatty mood, so i'll share some thoughts about testosterone and my art.

i liked being on testosterone a lot. i had an IM injection every two weeks (on tuesdays!) and because that's a sizeable dose every 14 days that slowly disperses, it can cause some mood fluctuations (every other friday i would have a crisis about not feeling like the world had a place for me in it) but even those were far more manageable than the ones that would come with my previous and current monthly hormone cycle (every month i spend a solid week thinking the world will never have a place for me in it)

It gave me a patchy little bit of scruff on my chin and a whispy mustache under my nose that still struggles on, despite adversity!

It redistributed my fat a little bit, but that's long since gone back to pre-T shape.

it lowered my voice! that hasn't changed :^)! even if i never go back on t, that won't change. it was the thing i most wanted, and its the one i'm most grateful for. Pre-T, I didn't speak much. I'm getting better and better at talking and getting more and more comfortable communicating with people because of it.

having been off t now for 3 years, i don't pass anymore—not as a cis man, or a cis woman, certainly not as anything approximating straight. if people look at me and see anything, i'd hazard a guess that they see me as A Queer (the noun—for all it's complicated connotations).

i'm not surprised that my art might make somebody want to start testosterone! a lot of my art was made out of the aching grief that came with being kicked off of testosterone, and how neatly that loss of autonomy over my own body knits in with yamato's loss of autonomy over his own.

how my body started doing things i disliked, how i didn't have the support necessary to access the healthcare i needed—how my inability to give myself what i needed made me feel as though i were trapped inside of myself and abandoned (by both myself and the world at large)

when i write comics about yamato as a trans man, i don't take away his testosterone, because that hits a little too close to home for me. for Ninja War Town Reasons, he has plenty of access to all the HRT he could ever need and nobody questions his need for it—instead, i project my own horrors onto the way Danzō defined his identity for him as a child, the way that Kabuto and Obito dehumanize him as an adult in their war efforts, and reduce him to the thing his body holds (the Mokuton). I give him a kneejerk compulsion to dehumanize himself (out of a feeling that he has a duty to his community to do so) and I give him a slow-growing resistance to that impulse (which comes out of a feeling that the people he loves would frown upon seeing him reduce himself like that)

it's dysphoria! it's not gender dysphoria, but it's a loss of self, and a need to reclaim it. it's a war between the hollow shell of a thing he thinks he has to be, and the vibrant and messy person beneath it that he is. it's a desperate need to say "this is who i am—only i can say it"

I enjoyed HRT a lot. it was a really useful tool in helping me feel like my body was my own, that i didn't have to fight it, that we were the same entity. It's not the only tool, but it was a really good one, and one day I hope to use it again.

(as for the being off of it—it's unpleasant, but i'm enduring! being somebody who now doesn't really pass as anything has put me in a weird and interesting position, where I'm constantly having to declare myself to people, because nobody knows what to make of me on any front. they don't know if i'm a man, a woman, nonbinary, nor even what age i am (Augh!!!!) it forces me to be brave and vulnerable more than I'm comfortable with—if I tell somebody I'm a man, there's no way that they will believe I'm cis, but I'm not about to recloset myself—and I don't think I could at this point anyway.)

(there's something fascinating about the position i find myself in, and while i'd leap back on t the moment that an opportunity presented itself to do so, i do feel like i'm experiencing something interesting and important in this weird zone i find myself in)

[parme-san]

i am so fucking frustrated with myself right now

[neathbound-fiends]

;w; had my top surgery consultation today and it went so well!! I'm so excited, genuinely, and v optimistic about how it'll go!!!

[yardsards]

living in america is literally just like. yeah i could probably benefit from inpatient mental health services but honestly the resulting medical bills would just make me want to kill myself even more

[plushchimera]

I'm trying to play rdr2 to live out my horse girl fantasies

after a few days of tinkering with settings it finally doesn't run like shit, and after a few days of battling controls I finally changed key binds to stop punching my horse accidentally (and yes I had to reload every time that happened because I couldn't live with the world-state where I just punched my horse)

[taibhsearachd]

Threw up at a doctor appointment today because I was too anxious and it got too hot in the room.

Asked the nurse who I talked to first to wear a mask and it took her several minutes to even find one. (Once they realized we had had COVID recently, suddenly they were very worried about it. For the record, my wife and I were both wearing masks - the only people in the office who were - and I don't think we're infectious, but it's honestly so insulting that they're happy to potentially infect us - and I did catch COVID from one of the labs in the same hospital - but very reluctant to take measures to protect us, and suddenly very stressed if it becomes clear THEY could be infected.)

And I need an X-ray on my ankle, which I will have to clear with my insurance after I manage to switch it to my wife's in October, because I may have a stress fracture that I've just been living with and walking on for a year.

Not enjoying the day I've been having. At all. But hopefully tomorrow I will have new anxiety meds to help me sleep... and ADHD meds if I'm very lucky.

[i-eat-deodorant]

starting an actual job soon and between the paperwork and stress i've had little to no time to actually do fandom stuff waoops sorry to all those whose asks i haven't answered

maybe i'll come back when things have settled down irl

[syrenki]

my family was just robbed of two thousands and my grandmother was denied a permanent residence card despite her daughter and grandchildren having lived here for 20 years and despite her being 80, so she can only spend a total of 90 days here in the next 5 years, and we can't visit her because we'll be arrested as soon as we cross the border, all this together meaning she will probably die alone there. and how are the rest of you all doing