#short term medical coding

[swathitransorze]

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[adripakoffee]

Thinking about Curly too because you mfs give him too much leeway!!! FUCK CURLY MAN!!

So like, obviously, what happened to him was tragic but he could've prevented the events of the game so easily. Firstly, he's the one who got Jimmy on the ship. Jimmy's not supposed to be there, he literally isn't even a freighter pilot. It's heavily implied the reason Jimmy is on the ship is that Curly was helping him run from the law.

This exhibits Curly's biggest problem in the game. He's Jimmy's friend first and his boss second. He puts Jimmy ahead of everything, so despite his past history of what we can presume to be violence, he puts him on a small ship with other people who are now vulnerable to his abuse. And he knows, he's aware that there's a chance these people could be victimized by Jimmy and says and does nothing. This next part is my personal theory, but I think he knew Daisuke was coming with them before he invited Jimmy, he just didn't say anything.

Curly's second big sin is what he does to Anya. He finds out what Jimmy's been doing to her and he says he'll do something, anything. But he doesn't. I said it earlier, but I think Anya thought that Curly would have Jim arrested on landing, but even then, there's some short term things he could've done. Here's a list actually because oh my god, there's so much he could have done.

Set up a bed for Anya in medical. Y'know, a door with an actual lock.

Put Jimmy in a cryopod as a holding cell.

Fire Jimmy, which seemingly wouldn't do much until you remember you need the captain to do half the shit on the ship.

Lockdown Jimmy, essentially lock down anything Jimmy could use as a weapon. The only two weapons on the ship are guarded by codes, but anyone could figure them out in a couple days. this goes hand in hand with the last one.

Literally just fucking kill him.

And before someone says "Oh, if Curly did anything, Jimmy would've acted out, he would've turned violent anyway." There are four other crew members and one Jimmy. If Jimmy had turned violent so early on, I fully believe Daisuke could've just bodied him. It wouldn't be that hard to pacify him if, say, he was ganged up on by three men.

The problem at the end of the day is that Curly is Curly, Jimmy's best friend before he's Captain Curly of the Tulpar. He cares more about Jimmy than the well-being of the people he's supposed to care about. He doesn't take Jimmy seriously when he is outwardly awful and pretty much straight up tells Curly he's gonna crash the ship. Like Curly does nothing because he doesn't think of Jimmy as a bad person. He can't even comprehend it until he's in a position where he's completely at Jimmy's mercy.

Now there's a couple of interpretations on the metaphor of what Curly's disability means and I'm gonna yap about at least 2, idk I'm just ranting.

The first one is that Curly is now Anya, or rather in her position. He's got no agency over his own body, he literally can't move, and he's forced to trust Jimmy with his life. He's in constant pain, he wants to die, and he can't. Anya cannot stand giving Curly his medicine so she lets Jimmy do it. She's putting a vulnerable person at Jimmy's mercy, just like Curly did, except this time he's on the receiving end. And whenever it's just Curly and Jimmy alone in the med bay, Jim is just beating the shit out of this guy for no reason. Like there is no need to be doing all that, but Jimmy is a violent person, and Curly just ignored it for too long.

The second interpretation that I also really like it that Curly is Anya's baby. Jimmy has done something heinous and it's left Anya caring for someone she can't feasibly support. Her ability to keep Curly alive for so long is a testament to how resilient and determined she is, but at the end of the day she can't take it. It's not just the fact that she has to care for Curly that drives her to take her life, it was a lot of things, but the stress of dealing with Curly was definitely part of that.

This next part isn't Curly's fault, it's Pony Express' but if he survives long enough to be found, he no longer has a future. He can't be a pilot anymore, he'll more than likely be forced to take responsibility for the deaths of the crew, the rehab process will take years and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars. He's cooked. This leans into the him becoming Anya thing, he's been put in a position where he can't work but is forced to deal with a heavy financial burden. The difference is, this is his own fault.

He could've prevented all of this if he hadn't ignored all the red flags. In the dead pixel scene he says the one pixel doesn't hinder his enjoyment of the whole image, he can ignore it. That's what he did. When he looks a the bigger picture or the grand scheme of things he can ignore a few dead pixels. The way he sees it, he's given Jimmy a whole year to pull himself out of a "struggle" so when he gets back to Earth things will be okay again. In his eyes, Jimmy's bound to have a few slip-ups and unfortunately, what he did to Anya was one of them. So that's just a pixel he can ignore.

LONG STORY SHORT, CURLY IS AN ENABLER AND LITERALLY THE ONLY WAY HE WAS GONNA LEARN WAS IF HE BECAME A VICTIM TOO!!!!

Apologies if any of this is worded weird, it's just brain vomit.

I also did an Anya rant

[rebirthgarments]

Disabled communities! Can we help Boshra raise enough funds to evacuate with her family? ❤️‍🔥

You can donate at bit.ly/boshrafund

Boshra is an 18 year-old with muscular dystrophy. Her condition has worsened due to the scarcity of resources during the genocide in Palestine, and because she was infected with Hepatitis A. Boshra’s father has deep vein thrombosis, a herniated disc, and other painful conditions. Boshra is living with her family of 20 in a tent in Rafah. The tent frequently flooded in the winter and is now incredibly hot due to the summer temperatures. The lack of clean water, food, housing, medical care, and everything makes these conditions intolerable for Boshra, who needs a special wheelchair and toilet for basic living.

She needs to evacuate ASAP, but cannot go alone. She needs the rest of her family with her. Boshra has raised enough money to register two people of the six she hopes to evacuate ASAP. She needs enough now for four more people, each at $5,000 USD. This means she needs at LEAST $20,000 USD more ASAP! This does not even account for the medical costs she will need for care after evacuation. We need donations now, any amount possible! 💵d

Please note that the fundraiser is in Canadian currency and the evacuation goal is in US dollars! You can use this converter to convert your intended donation to CAD before sending it in!

Please like, comment on, bookmark, and share this post to boost visibility! To access the QR code on a phone, screenshot the post, open the image in your photos, tap on the QR code, and go to the link it generates.

Image description (post 2): a young woman with a pink top and white hijab is shown against a pale yellow and blue background with navy blue text reading : "Help a disabled 18 year-old evacuate Gaza / Boshra needs support! Boshra has muscular dystrophy and is living in a tent in Rafah in horrible conditions. She needs immediate medical care. Her father is also disabled and needs urgent care. Her immediately family of six people need to evacuate ASAP together! SHORT-TERM GOAL: $20,000 USD bit.ly/boshrafund Please note that the GFM is in Canadian dollars. Convert the currency before donating!

[witchofthesouls]

I like thinking about humans-into-Cybertronians because of the weird, alien fuckery along with ex-humans making connections to certain things because it's the closest approximation they have.

Imagine if 'running on fumes' is a literal statement among Cybertronians. As their tanks run near empty, there's a petroleum-like taste that lingers in their sinuses and, if left long enough, cycles out of their vents. That's why Cybertronians typically don't like hanging around gas stations because it's a really stark reminder of long-term starvation. Meanwhile, you got an ex-human going like, "Man, I'm starting to taste gas, so I need gas. Huh, y'all have built-in reminders to feed yourself outside of hunger pains? That's neat."

As well as the ex-humans misdiagnosing themselves. Let's take Cybertronian carriage. Humans are used to a pregnancy that completes its course in a designated organ (aka womb), so finding out a mecha had straight up knocked them up that bypassed the initial spark-to-spark teether formation wouldn't freak them out in the ways that a lot of Cybertronians would be really concerned about. Especially the medics and said partner(s).

Ex-human crying over the sonogram because they got told it's a very high-risk pregnancy and all they see is the coming baby is very deformed since it's only a ball within a ball of green soup and silver tendrils. Partner is highly confused yet attempts comforting in varying levels of success.

Cybertronian medic needs to explain that the sparklet is healthy, but ex-human really needs to watch themselves because the entire process will be done within the gestational chamber and goes deep into explaining the complications that can happen.

Partner is absolutely riveted by all the gravity of the matter since the strain of having a full-carriage that initialized in the chamber can put the carrier in danger as there can be coding conflicting with priorities that rends said carrier unconscious or wrecks health complications, especially since there's a high-chance of the newspark not fully detaching from their carrier's spark as the dropping process ensures.

Ex-human that comes from a species where a pregnancy is like getting into a moderate crash, so damage varies each time is happy that they haven't fucked up badly yet and can plan a baby shower. "By the way, when's the due date?"

Medic: "Hard to say with the carriage combined, but it's more in the primary initialization stage. The sparklet's still has a visible, if a bit thin, teether to your spark, and a solid mass hasn't formed yet."

Ex-human: "Okay, so how long?"Medic says incomprehensible length of time for an Earth child and how it can vary.

*Confused ex-human noises over the several human lifetimes is the equivalent of a span to a Cybertronian carriage. And how multiple factors can impact the timeframe.*

*Confused Medic noises out of sheer concern over ex-human's family history, especially over the fact they have extremely and highly dangerously short carriages.*

*Confused partner noises on why their love wants to plan a bathtime for the newspark at this moment, and wonders if ex-human knows that water and infant Cybertronians do not mix.*

Or, another thing. What if the dropping process where the sparklet detaches from the carrier's spark to descend into the gestational chamber below to build its frame has very 'classic'** heart symptoms in a human body?

(** Quick heads up, much of human biology and modern medical understanding derives from male biology. Unfortunately, women usually see atypical symptoms that are more subtle, moderate rather than severe pain/discomfort, or pain in other other locations rather than the chest.)

Ex-human has sudden, excruciatingly chest pain, insides literally quivering and shifting in sync with the bursts. Meanwhile, everyone around them is calm, trying to soothe them, and they think they're honestly dying so fast because there's no rush to the nearby hospital, and everyone is pushing comfort-it's okay-we got you at them.

[lets-try-some-writing]

Just read what you wrote about autobots reacting to rain, and now I'm wondering what would happen if they saw the kids jump into a pool full of chemicals (chlorine and whatever else they use to maintain a pool).

Basically, on a hot summer day the kids were complaining about the heat, so agent fowler got a pool for them to cool down in. The bots saw what the people assembling the pool put in the pool, and they freak out when the kids jump in with no hesitation.

Ooooooooooooooooh boy.

━━━━━━ ⊙ ❖ ⊙ ━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⊙ ❖ ⊙

The bots do not like rain. On Cybertron, the stuff was acidic and capable of killing a mech through prolonged exposure. Even on Earth, they still aren't fond of it. Big bodies of water have received the same treatment. Not a spark likes them. Bumblebee may appreciate the rain and running in it off and on, but not a single Autobot enjoys any large body of water. Its wet, gets everywhere, and most notably, could hide any number of threats that they cannot see. Not to mention their very code demands they remain away from anything that even resembles and acid pool. Optimus is especially wary due to his time growing up in the wilds.

These fears were largely not an issue due to the bone dry nature of Jasper. But one hot summer day, the children decided it would be a grand idea to swim. The team knew in theory what the concept was. They had seen enough videos and were largely alright with the children swimming in purified water. If Ratchet could run scans and have them come back with nothing but majority H2O, the team could be content. As such when Agent Fowler finally caved in and got the children a pool for the base as well as all the necessary cleaning tools, the children were thrilled.

They constructed the pool in the training room just to make sure they didn't mess with any of Ratchet's stuff and promptly began filling it up. Bulkhead and Bumblebee were roped into getting buckets to help fill it up faster while the rest of the team hovered nearby to watch. Once the pool was ready, Miko threw in the filter and got the pool cleaning systems running before scurrying away with the others to get her suit on. The team didn't know what she had done but remained passive for a long moment until Ratchet got suspicious. He dipped a chemical tester into the pool water and scowled at it as he waited for the results. By the time he read them, the children had already canon balled into the water and begun laughing.

But of course that joy was short-lived as Ratchet all but screamed and demanded the team get the children out NOW. The medic hurried to try and do something but skidded on the water on the ground and promptly lost his balance. Upon reading the results of Ratchet's scan for themselves, the rest of the team lost their minds.

Smokescreen who had not wanted anything to do with the pool backed away screaming as the children splashed him. He scrubbed down his armor in terror and flew toward the washracks. Ultra Magnus, Wheeljack, and Bulkhead were too large to get near to the children and all three were similarly terrified of the "Contaminated' liquid. Bumblebee and Arcee were the only ones small enough to take one for the team and put a pede into the pool and carefully scoop up the children. They shrieked as the liquid seeped into their seams and both dropped to the ground as soon as the children were handed to Optimus. The Prime for his part mentally prepared himself to have mangled servos for the remainder of his functioning as he rushed to the nearest pure water source and sprayed down the children with the hose.

The children were not pleased at all to say the least. However as they watched the team huddle around staring at them and their own frames in horror, their anger faded quickly. They instead felt guilty as Smokescreen began wailing about how he was too young to end up like a mech called Kup. The entire team was lamenting their fates as Ratchet checked them all, the medic having already come to terms with the possible mutilation of his back if the "contaminated" liquid was as bad as he initially thought. Miko fussed over her Wreckers, Jack went to Arcee and tried to comfort her as she looked at her leg sadly, and Rafael did his best to explain.

It was only after the team had quite a while to realize that they were not about to be mutilated for life that they looked over the children and came to the conclusion that, like rain, the water wasn't going to kill them.

Rafael: "What your scans picked up were just some cleaning chemicals. Chlorine and a few other things."

Ratchet: "Those are dangerous aren't they?"

Rafael: "Well they can be in large quantities and some people's skin don't handle it well, but it won't kill a person unless they eat it or something."

Smokescreen: "So... we aren't about to die?"

Jack: "Well I think you would be dead already if that were the case."

Yet another instance of the team nearly losing their minds over a simple thing. The Wreckers almost passed out from relief and while Optimus will never admit it, he was genuinely terrified of losing his servos. Bumblebee and Arcee looked at each other with completely deadpan expressions, both murmuring about how they "should have expected this". Ratchet merely grumbled and shakily stopped planning how to tell June and Fowler that the children died from being turned into sludge under his supervision. At the same time Smokescreen had to hastily wipe his face to try and act as though he weren't two seconds from a breakdown.

The team never spoke of the incident again and collectively acted as though nothing happened whenever the children brought it up. It was agitating to the children, but they got back at the team once they were allowed back into the pool again. There was always a bot there to watch them just in case they started melting or something, and whoever the poor bot on duty was, they got splashed. Most flinched or stepped away, but Smokescreen always. screamed.

The children find it hilarious to this day.

[andhumanslovedstories]

Hi dear. I saw your post about pain management - thank you so much for it, it was an inspiring read, also it made it so obvious that you are truly passionate about being a nurse or rather, helping people and being present for those who need it the most. I wanted to ask - do you feel your job as a nurse affects the care you give in your interpersonal relationships and if yes, then how? rather negatively or positively? this is something I think about a lot bc my husband would love to study to become a nurse because he has a heart full of love and care, I knew he would be so good at it, but we are also having our firstborn soon and I just worry that being a nurse might be so draining that what if there is no energy for me and the baby. I really want to support my husband and I know this might be a silly question, but having read how you think I would so much love to hear your thoughts on this topic!

My big disclaimer for this is that I'm currently on medical leave for depression that wasn't CAUSED by my work but was definitely exacerbated by it and definitely worse when I was on shift. I've also been dealing with depression for a long time, and it's always interfered with my jobs at some point. The main problem is that it's a lot worse to have brain fog at a hospital than it is at an ice cream shop. I consider nursing to be a protective factor for my mental health SOMETIMES. It is work that I find meaning in and makes me proud. It can be an exhausting job but also a rewarding one. Extra compassion is also a double-edged sword: it can make you a better nurse, and it can also drain you that much faster because you get invested. Self-care is a part of the nursing code of ethics because the job in part because compassion fatigue is so easy to get if you aren't careful with your limits.

It is a draining job. I've begged off lot of things due to my schedule and feeling exhausted (but I am a homebody hermit). It's also a job a lot of people balance with raising children. My mom (who was already a nurse when I was born) liked the flexibility of the schedule. I work with dozens of nurses who have children. Many are mothers who are still breastfeeding infants. Some actively participate in their family life, some don't, and I don't know how much that has to do with their specific job. You know your husband. Does he already struggle to balance work/school/responsibilities and personal life? That's an issue with any career, but I do think healthcare is a profession where it can get even harder.

oops another nursing essay under the cut

(Plus, in terms of timing in with your newborn, congrats btw, your husband will have to go through nursing school first if he decides on this track, and minimum that will take like 15 months if he has all the pre-reqs and gets into an accelerated program. When it comes to dealing with a newborn, schooling might be more of a stumbling block than the job itself. I know a lot of people who consider nursing school to be one of the worst times of their lives. He might be able to do LPN [licensed practical nurse] instead of RN [registered nurse]. RN requires a bachelors and has a larger scope of practice and generally higher pay. I know almost nothing about getting your LPN license so he'll have to investigate that himself. I'll say the hospital systems that I've been in not only prefer RNs but often have requirements that people without a certain amount of experience MUST get their bachelors after X amount of time.)

I would also say not all nursing jobs are created equal in terms of labor, emotional and otherwise. My first job was in home health which got me somewhat emotionally enmeshed with the family I primarily worked with, but it also wasn't emotionally distressing. Nurses on our oncology floors and the ICU have a different experience than nurses who work in elective short-stay surgery. And different people find different things draining. I find working with end-of-life patients to be energizing in my work; a lot of people don't. My aunt worked pediatrics because she found working with children must less distressing than working with a geriatric population. Some people thrive in the chaos and speed of the emergency room, while I find it to be a tremendously depressing place that I hate floating to.

I think you'd have to ask my loved ones if really if it affects how much I care for them. Speaking personally for myself: I think it is overall positive for my relationships. I like the rhythm of nursing, I like the philosophy of nursing, I like who nursing makes me be. I like that nursing work is impossible to bring home. You can bring the emotions home, but you leave the patients at the hospital. It's simple for a bedside nurse to keep a strong division between their work self and their home self, but it's not necessarily easy. And again, I'm off work right now and probably will be for a bit longer so. yknow. He should make sure he's got a good support system in place.

Also some states and cities are far, far better than others when it comes to nursing regulations. Are there legally mandated staff ratios where you work? How many hospitals are in the area? Are any of them union? What does the compensation look like? What is the turnover rate? Nursing could be a great profession in general, but it might not be great in your particular location.

My last point would be that working in healthcare can make you feel...disconnected, I guess, from people who don't. Healthcare is such a culture unto itself. Sometimes I'd be like that meme of guy at party hanging out in the corner thinking, "they don't know yesterday I took care of a patient in a situation so fucked and depressing that it's now an ethics case." Or on the other hand, "they don't know that a patient called me their guardian angel and cried while they thanked me." The fact that healthcare is a different world is neither a pro nor a con, but something to consider. Depending on how you spend your days, his life might start to have parts that look very different from yours. I loved having a nurse as a mother and listening to her stories. My father banned all anecdotes involving poop and gore from his presence.

I hope you and your husband figure out the best way possible for him to use that compassion, which might be nursing or might not be. Either way, good luck to you guys!

[kalpeavaris]

MD: Echo Info Post #1 (Character Edition)

So I reblogged this image about wanting to (over) share about OCs... and then I got a mysterious message telling me to speak about my OCs... 👀(*cough* @inkyprince I said I'd tag you hehe *cough*)

So I've decided to just do it, lmao. I love sharing stuff about my OCs, stories and whatnot and this is my blog, imma do what I want!

Gotta lay out some trivia & information about my Murder Drones AU, Echo! Wether it be characters or concepts, because maybe it'll get some people interested :D All of the info is below the cut, and for the first iteration of this I've chosen Kira, aka "ZWEI", for this!

Kira - "ZWEI" - White Witch

A lot of her information can also be viewed on her ToyHouse Profile (logged in user only, sorry!)

Playlist - Pinterest - Voice Claim - Theme Song

Content Warnings: Mentions of self-harm, suicidal thoughts (non-explicit), chronic (terminal) illness (in... robot-terms?)

(older art, but it does the trick lmao)

Kira was one of the Drones that were tested and infected with the Absolute Solver code back in the 3040s and 50s in the Cabin Fever Lab Cathedral with her number being 24.

As a Communication Drone the Solver's abilities affected her in a different way than her fellow Worker Drones, causing the humans to become aware of certain powers that she exhibited which weren't displayed in other Drones.

Her "exorcism" (or, well, patch) was botched as Kira's OS wasn't capable of adapting to the patch version, causing it to corrupt and allow for a vunerability that lead to Echo (a mutated version of the AS) planting it's own code inside of Kira's, which jump-started Echo's influence on Communication Drones.

Kira's Solver is always active - that's why her eye doesn't return to normal and only ever displays the emblem. She overheats extremely easily all the time and is prone to physical pain and tinnitus due to her being unable to block out inbound signals if she picks them up.

This has her health deteriorating quickly over the course of the MD: Echo story, slowly succumbing from it, though she keeps on pushing forward to stop ECHO and it's hosts. She needs actual medication to keep the pain at bay and constantly consumes Oil at a high rate to stop overheating. If her Solver was to deactivate she'd most likely pass away within a few days.

Her secondary name, "ZWEI" means "Two" (or could also be interpreted as "the second") in German. It is a reference to her part in the story, as well as her connection to ECHO. (won't be spoilered for now 8D) She associates alot of trauma with it and doesn't like being referred by it.

Personality wise Kira seems fairly withdrawn from everyone around her except her friends and partner/family. If she's in a good headspace she's fairly open and confident, almost fierce in the way she appears to others. Kira's keen on keeping up a strong facade to not show strangers her weaknesses or true condition.

"But what are Communication Drones?"

I'm glad you asked! Communication Drones look like normal Workers, though the one thing that sets them apart are the two antennas on their head which can vary in size & style depending on their desired function (short-range, long-range, ground signals, air signals etc.)

These antennas function as ears for them, so if they're removed, their hearing is damaged (not entirely deaf, but definitely worsened). So if a "normal" CD loses their antennas they're having a harder time adapting as their intake of sound is greatly reduced.

As an AS user/host, Kira's able to pick up on stronger signals from far away or even sending out signals to stun/manipulate others around her in a short radius. This effect doesn't stay though, it'll wear off over time and actively consume energy from the Drone using it.

Disassembly Drones can also have the subtype of a Communication Drone as shown in the sketch below (left DD) - their antennas are usually shorter and made for short-range and aerial signals as they're capable of flight, too.

(I almost made them a polycule not going to lie they all hot as fuck) wish that was me-)

--

(Kira on her way to cast 'gun, prepare to meet god' in the face of a fucking angel-robot-AI that believes to be god itself)

Kira plays a big part in the MD: Echo universe next to some minor characters & canon characters. Her main motivation is to help stop Echo, as it also tries to infect her via the unstable Solver code in her OS.

--

Crucifix Symbolism

(the power of christ compels you!)

Something very important to Kira is her botched patch / "exorcism". She's obsessed with crucifix looking symbolism which continues to haunt her almost 30 years later during MD: Echo's timeline.

She's desperate to break free from this, but cannot help herself. She compulsively collects cross-shaped imagery and in the first few months after her escape from the Lab she actively built crosses from all sorts of materials.

It's mainly coming from her OS being overwhelmed by the botched patch and the crucifix imagery of the USB burning itself in her memory files as some sort of "salvation" she has yet to achieve. Luckily, this started to fade out over the years, especially after meeting T who helped her to overcome the trauma of the incident.

--

(CW: Mentions of Self-Harm)

After being infected by the Absolute Solver, Kira desperatly tried more than once to remove her antennas to keep the voices from appearing. It talked to her from the inside, but she didn't realize this yet. Like almost all other AS Users however she kept on regenerating, unable to escape the inner turmoil of the Solver's possession and Echo trying to get inside of her OS as well.

--

Effects of the AS on her psyche

(holy shit have you ever seen a centipede that big? what is this? australia?)

Haunted by visions of the Solver, it's communications with the other Drones and later on the landing pods of the Disassembly Drones Kira had a hard time to tune out these visions she got from time to time. Similar to Nori in that regard Kira wrote everything down she heard through these intercepted signals, amassing hundreds of pages of logs she was able to get.

--

Meeting her partner

("Girl I swear I have normal hands too don't be distracted by my sexy claws")

In the 3060s, she stumbled upon one of the Disassembly Drone squads outside of the colony's Outpost she was seeking shelter in. She had intercepted their landing pods signals and was "curious" to seek out whoever had arrived, trying to solve the mystery of whatever the Solver had her experience.

That's when she found Serial Designation T - the navigator of the squad, who at first attempted to kill her like he'd been tasked to do. After all, Kira was a Solver Host that couldn't be fully mind-controlled anymore. But in the middle of him attacking her T's code was halted by Cyn herself, deactivating his executive task to kill the Host he had infront of him. He himself didn't know why exactly the Solver did this, but in hindsight it was due to the fact that Kira was still able to be of use to it later on.

(POV: you deleted system32 from your PC because some random kid on roblox told you to)

Now neutral, T got curious about Kira whom he tried to speak to with her Kira (driven by curiosity on why he had stopped being aggressive all of a sudden, being able to intercept the communication he had with Cyn) staying to talk to him.

Over the following weeks the two grew acustomed with each other, slowly building a friendship that later on evolved into a more romantic nature. Kira hid him in the Outpost and brought in food for the two of them as she constantly needed oil as well.

[librarycards]

asking this not as a gotcha, but genuinely for perspective, as i respect how much you've read and wrote about antipsychiatry. so, i was committed in a psych ward as a teen, and the help i received there inspired me to pursue becoming a pediatric psych np. there's a lot about the system that angered me, but the good nurses i met there had an impact on me. i've also had a rough time finding the right prescribers for meds as an adult, and i've considered working primarily in medication management- to be the attentive resource that i wish i had years ago. i see you've answered someone who aspired to be a therapist- but would my goal be more likely to hurt than help, in this system? i intend to be critical, and not spout shit like ODD as a legit diagnosis; rather, my main goal would be to recognize how a kid's home is affecting them, as having that safer space away from my own home helped me realize the context of why i was that way. but plenty of people claim to have the best intentions, and then become abusive once in these positions of power, so perspective would be very appreciated. thank you

hey anon - thanks for this message. i've answered similar ones a few times before (1) (2) (3), but here are a few thoughts:

honestly, most good/good-intentioned people don't last very long in highly abusive institutional environments. my current therapist started out in a residential ed treatment place, and left to start a private practice because she couldn't stomach the abuse she faced from her superiors, nor the abuse she was expected to inflict upon residents. i have disabled/Mad friends who have gone into social work and/or psych-focused medicine. i do not know of any who have stuck around in psych ward/other high-control settings. it's a painful, demoralizing job even for people without lived experience, never mind for those of us who have been through it as patients.

the ones that stay often harden. there are always exceptions - there were a couple of staff in each of the places i was that were truly special people, not because of the institution but in spite of it - but most of the staff i encountered, from psych nurses to house parents to psychiatrists to social workers - were sharp and cold. maybe you won't become this, but either way, you'll have to put up with it.

and that's the fundamental problem, imo. even if you preserve your own code of ethics, you will not only be structurally limited by the regulations and demands of wherever you work, but you will also be in an atmosphere at best apathetic and at worst actively hostile to the autonomy and well-being of patients as such. you will have to choose between standing by at times of injustice/violence, or risking your job. we both know what happens behind those locked doors.

at the same time: these units will not close if you choose not to work there. people will not stop needing medication management; kids will not stop needing support amid abusive family/home situations. at the same time, it is in practice extremely difficult to effect real change for kids experiencing abuse - hard to get kids out of abusive homes permanently, hard to find non-abusive foster families, impossible to effectively support traumatized young people in these times of transition given the piss poor systems we have.

whether you'd be "hurting more than helping," while a fair question, is beside the point. i'm not entirely sure it's possible for anyone within these institutional strictures to 'help' in a long term sense at all. BUT, you would certainly make peoples' lives/stays in the hospital less painful in the short-term, even if you're pulling your hair out with frustration at the intransigence and needless cruelty of your colleagues. while you're considering what to do in career terms, i think it's also worth considering leadership positions where you can be a safe, supportive adult for young people without the expectations of the institution - a scout leader, coach, theater director, etc. (these are also not mutually exclusive with actual careers ofc) if you wanted to focus on the medical space, patient advocacy is also an option.

overall, i don't want to uniformly tell you "don't ever go into that", because, as i said, the position will exist regardless and i would prefer Mad kids to have as much access to compassion as humanly possible in a profoundly cruel system. but i also want to make clear that the violence attendant to that system will not be escapable for you, nor will you be able to move through it without perpetuating some of your own. think carefully about what you're able to tolerate.

[lancelotslair]

"Get This One Right And You'll Win A BRAAAND NEW ALT MOOOODE!" - Windsheer, mid-surgery, the Decepticons most annoying medic haha hehe transformer oc. He's a technically VERY skilled medic but he haas this oneeeee little flaw: he considers himself to be truly gifted and destined to be a glorious glorious Game Show Host. Few willingly play his games but hey short term kidnappings/using your patients while they're stuck under your control is always a good idea! Not shown here is his LOVELY assistant (in medical (mal)practice and show business) Showboat a triple changer whose alts are a Boat and Car grand prize yea he's a helicopter and has a dragonfly vibe goin on :) hes not intentionally malicious just annoying and a loosey goosey moral code also: this bit v

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam! I’m really interested in what you said about taking an adderall before socializing so that you don’t have to spend the next several days agonizing about the awkward shit you said. I’ve never heard anyone talk about that as a benefit before.

Is it because taking it makes you less likely to say the awkward shit at all? Or because it just makes you less likely to fixate on it later? I mean, either way sounds pretty good, I’m just curious and intrigued.

Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. I'm going to try to put this in coherent order but there is a lot going on here, so let's start with the disclaimer that a lot of this is anecdotal or based in casual research, so I don't have sources to cite, but you should be able to google and explore for yourself.

SHORT VERSION: Adderall doesn't alter my behavior, at least as far as I can tell; it might somewhat inhibit my bad habit of interrupting, but that’s not why I take it. I take it because it prevents me from reacting emotionally to awkward moments in a social situation or remembering those moments later. The result is that instead of thinking "Oh, that thing I did was super awkward" and obsessing over it, when it probably wasn't awkward and if it was nobody remembers it anyway, I just don't have any strong emotion attached to it so I don't remember and feel bad about it later.

It's like if the color red constantly burned your eyes, and you could take a drug that would turn down the saturation. You still see the color, but now you see it the way everyone else sees it, and it doesn't hurt anymore.

The long version is...more complex, but I'm including it because I want to talk about why this maybe happens.

The reason I have such fraught emotions surrounding socializing is that I have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which is a common aspect of ADHD. It's not the only reason one might obsessively relive embarrassing moments, but if you have ADHD, RSD is the likely cause. RSD is linked to poor emotional regulation which derives from a deficiency in executive function. So this whole family of ADHD symptoms -- poor focus, poor short-term memory, time blindness -- all come from a basic failure of executive function, and so does RSD. And luckily for me, my poor executive function can be treated with stimulants (some people, even people with ADHD, don’t respond well to them). 

Even though RSD seems dissimilar to other aspects of ADHD, because the stimulant addresses a neurological root cause, anything stemming from that cause is, to some degree, alleviated by the medication. 

RSD can manifest in various ways. I'm generally fine when I'm present in a social situation, but I struggle to resolve shame and anxiety around past behavior. I have spent a lot of time worrying that people who, let's be clear, I know love and respect me, have finally had enough of me and something I said or did was the last straw. I know intellectually this is not the case and I have spent my adult life striving to remind myself of that so that I don’t come off as a needy creep who constantly has to be reassured of other peoples’ affections. Emotionally, however, I was incapable of reconciling these memories. They just hung around in my brain, causing me a lot of pain and regret.

So there’s a chain reaction of saying something, realizing it may have been somewhere between "slightly weird" and "deeply upsetting", and encoding it in my memory with strong emotions of shame and fear attached to it. I then involuntarily relive those memories and the emotions attached to them afterward -- usually only for a few days, but depending on the event, sometimes off and on for years. I suspect this derives from our very early ancestors, who had to hard-code dangerous situations into their memories so if they encountered them again they'd recognize them as dangerous. My brain simply encodes every social interaction as having a fairly high level of danger. This situation is fucking life-threatening, don't go near one again or you'll feel like this forever. Except in my case "this situation" is not dangerous, it's just a dinner party with friends or a meeting with a colleague or a first date. 

It seems that the Adderall switches off that instinct to categorize social interaction as inherently dangerous by allowing me to regulate my emotions. If I’m not feeling fear in the moment -- because there’s no reason to be afraid! -- then my brain doesn’t categorize the moment as dangerous, and won’t remember it negatively later. I won’t really remember it at all. So my memories go from “A dinner party where I said three terrible things that I feel shame over” to “A dinner party where I had some really nice conversations.” Do I remember the conversations? Not in detail, and that’s fine. That’s how memory is supposed to work. 

And now, because I know if I take an Adderall half an hour before a party starts I won’t feel shame or fear after the party ends, I’m even more capable of relaxing and enjoying myself, meaning I’m even less likely to feel negative emotions that would cause me to remember things with shame later. I just thought shame was a price you paid for socializing; I knew the amount I felt wasn’t right, but I thought everyone else just put up with some amount of it. But no, it turns out when your brain isn’t constantly looking for a fucking lion trying to eat you in the middle of cocktail hour, the reason people go out and socialize is that it’s...fun to do. And it turns out when I’m not subconsciously terrified that I’m about to be drowned in quicksand, I actually form fond and positive memories of things. 

Which is a little wild to be experiencing for the first time at the age of 43, but better late than never. And it means that while I still struggle a great deal with emotional intimacy, I’m much, much more capable of maintaining social contacts and deepening friendships because my friends can see and talk to me face-to-face and I can enjoy my time with them more. 

[omegaversetheory]

I was wondering about alphas, betas, and omegas's height and weight range in your AU. Since in some stories the height/weight difference between the three secondary genders are minimal (like regular humans), but in other stories the size differences are very...wattpadish (ya know, alphas being literally Hulk, omegas being Oompa Loompas and betas...just being in between lol)

Along with that, I also have some related questions:

-If the Alpha/omega size difference is massive, can procreation/pregnancies be actually viable? Or could it come with some complications/need medical intervention?

-Even thought Alphas are the big ones and omegas the small ones, it is possible for an alpha to suffer dwarfism or for an omega to suffer gigantism? Or just in general is possible for an alpha to be small and an omega to be tall for whatever reason? (Genetic disorders, physcall malformation, bad nutrition during childhood/teen years etc)

-How bad is the height/size stigma in the society? For example, omegas thinking that the unknown alpha walking behind them will hurt them cuz its bigger and more intimidating, or alphas not trusting omegas doing strenght related activities or defending themeselves due being very small and less muscular, but i imagine that it depends on how traditional is the society we are talking about

Hello!

Love the term "wattpadish" totally adopting it now. Lol. But no, I like to keep things pretty simple in my au- anyone can come in any height-weight range. Alphas tend to be a bit larger, and omegas a bit smaller but not outlandishly. See averages below

alpha male - 71 inches, 180 cm

alpha female - 66 inches, 167 cm

beta male - 69.8 inches, 177 cm

beta female - 65 inches, 165 cm

omega male - 68 inches, 172 cm

omega female - 64 inches, 162 cm

There aren't often massive size difference related issues - no more than a tall human and a short human may face. But for writers who prefer to lean into the "fantasy" and extremism might want to think a bit differently - and not just for smutty scenes either. How would their home be set up? The height of doorframes, counter-tops, chairs, other furniture and cabinets should be considered. Also other things that we currently consider to be sort of one size - like transportation might need to come in more variations than we currently have today.

Even in a fantasy omegaverse, people can still exist as outliers in their spectrums. So yes, giantism and dwarfism are possibilities for all dynamics across all omegaverse variations.

Size stigma, like dynamic stigma is most likely to be found in traditional omegaverses that rely heavily on rigid codes of conduct and social norms. As the culture becomes more progressive, these things will begin to fade away, and in fact are most often the catalysts of change - women's rights, beta/omega rights, etc.. Feeling fearful about a stranger walking behind you is pretty normal, not trusting an omega to do physical activities is not. The latter would be seen as very conservative as both culture and science evolved and proved it wasn't so.

[swathitransorze]

What’s the job market demand for certified medical coders?

Firstly, the needs of certified medical coders are seeing great continuity in steady increases in the healthcare industry, and it is indeed encouraging in myths on this career path. The need for professionals that can perform proper coding for medical diagnoses and procedures into standardized codes became vital as the healthcare sector expands and medical billing becomes more complicated. These codes serve as the basis for insurance billing, compliance with regulations, and accurate record-keeping, so good medical coding is one area where its existence as an integral part of healthcare operations thrives.

The soaring popularity of EHR and the transition towards ICD-10 coding systems have vastly increased demand for trained medical coders, further validating a bright future in the field. Employing professionals in medical coding with training and certification has been the trend with healthcare providers who now pick candidates with skills in data accuracy and bill compliance. The certification is an assurance of codes working through complex medical records to eliminate faults, as their continuous application increases the efficiency of the healthcare system.

For others wishing to pursue a career in this field, enrolling in a medical coding course in Perinthalmanna can be the ultimate foundation in the inherent areas of medical coding. Aspiring coders will learn the fundamentals of anatomy, medical terminology, and coding systems like ICD-10, CPT, and HCPCS. Completing a course through a reputed Medical Coding center in Perinthalmanna ensures quality training by which a student is prepared to the employers' extent. With the huge demand for trained coders ever-increasing, this training guarantees that a rewarding and secure career in healthcare is on the line.

[butterflyhiptattoo]

Emerging From the Magazines: Bob Mizer's Athletic Models Guild

When twenty-four-year-old Bob Mizer began marketing photographs of men in posing straps in 1946, he was already on a crusade.

He was tired of police harassment in Pershing Square – a well-known meeting spot for gay men in downtown Los Angeles where he socialized with friends nearly every day during high school. They gossiped about their fellow Pershing Square regulars – the effeminate belles, the butch trade, and some in between. But in 1940 he wrote in his diary of a crackdown: "vice clean up is tightening Lillie is really serious about cleaning up the city," using a slang term common in gay circles for the police.

He also made weekly visits to the nearby Los Angeles Central Library and was tired of reading psychology books on the danger posed by "sexual variants" such as himself and his friends. "Anything you could read anywhere showed how pernicious a thing this was... [how] you would deteriorate into a mass of trembling flesh if you did these things," he later complained.

He was also tired of arguing with his Mormon mother, who vociferously objected to his transgender friend Rodney-later known as Daisy -who was bullied at school for wearing pink girls' slacks and having plucked eyebrows. Delia Mizer called Rodney a "pansy" and labeled his sexual proclivities "against all the laws of nature." Her son responded angrily, using a very different vocabulary, one that drew on notions of legal equality and civil rights: "Most people are just obeying their impulses," he retorted. "Should they be denied the right to fulfill their instincts?"

As a young man, Mizer had already identified the many ways society looked down on "temperamental people" like him and his circle of Pershing Square friends. More important, he was also clearly determined to do something about it to confront the legal, medical, and religious prejudices that so viscerally affected his life.

One Sunday night in March 1940 he was on the telephone listening to Rodney describe his sexual exploits from the night before. Someone else on his party line was also listening in a common occurrence at a time when only the rich had private telephone lines. Using vulgar lan-guage, the eavesdropper expressed his contempt for such people. Mizer had had enough. He channeled his anger into his diary that night: "My aim in life will be to create tolerance among mankind and especially to vindicate the decent, spiritual Urning," using a nineteenth-century term for men attracted to other men. He was beginning to articulate the sense of defiance that had been building up inside him. Soon his rudimentary efforts to create tolerance made it into print. "This week I made my column risqué," he noted of his writing in the Polytechnic High School newspaper. "All of my gay friends are included." Even as an eighteen-year-old high school student, Mizer demonstrated a willingness to defy convention and assert his desires. He had also developed the ability to publicly affirm his gay friends if in a coded way that perhaps only they would understand.

Mizer's ambition was to be an author. He was not just a columnist but an editor of his high school's award-winning newspaper – considered one of the top ten in the country by the Columbia University School of Journalism. He had begun creative writing in grammar school and published several short stories. He was also a voracious reader, checking out popular psychology and sexology books like Out-witting Our Nerves and Sexual Power on his weekly runs to the Los Angeles Public Library. He so identified with Boris Barisol's biography of writer Oscar Wilde, subtitled The Man, the Artist, the Martyr, that he labeled his own 1940 diary "Bob Mizer: The Man, the Thinker, the ?" One of his teachers suggested that his skills at writing, shorthand, and typing would easily land him a steady job as a court reporter. But Mizer wanted to write his own book. He would call it "How You Can Help the Homosexualists" and would target younger gay men whose worldview had not yet formed.

Although he never published such a book, writing would occupy much of his life, as he penned hundreds of feisty editorials denouncing censorship, puritanism, and prejudice for his magazine Physique Pictorial, which he published for over twenty years. Not unlike the book he hoped to write, Physique Pictorial offered help and comfort to tens of thousands of gay men in Cold War America. As the editor of the first large-circulation American magazine targeting gay men, Mizer found a way to help the community he had found at Pershing Square. In the pages of his path-breaking magazine, Mizer honed the skills he first tried out in his high school newspaper-thumbing his nose at the authorities while speaking up for his friends.

In postwar America, a commercial network of gay physique photographers and magazine publishers emerged from the contests and magazines surrounding the physical culture movement. Bob Mizer was neither the first nor the only gay man to capitalize on his community's interest in physique photography. But he became the center of a network that served to connect, inspire, and politicize that subculture. He drew on an older tradition of gay photographers marketing their products through an underground market or in the back pages of mainstream fitness magazines. But with the founding of Physique Pictorial in 1951, he opened this tradition to public scrutiny and a new level of visual and discursive engagement. He was joined by Irv Johnson, the owner of a gym in Chicago, who began publishing Tomorrow's Man in 1952, and by Randolph Benson and John Bullock, a gay couple who met at the University of Virginia, who began publishing Grecian Guild Pictorial in 1955. Together they created a new genre of small magazines that would help serve and unite gay men throughout the country. 

The social world Mizer constructed with his gay high school friends at Pershing Square was central to his budding role as a pioneering gay entrepreneur. "The number of faggots cruising around here is legion," remembered the writer Hart Crane. But the number of available sexual partners was only part of the appeal. "Here are little fairies who can quote Rimbaud before they are eighteen," he observed, suggesting how the space also offered an education in gay cultural codes. It was through connections made there that Mizer not only discovered a sense of community and a sense of oppression but also learned about a central feature of gay male culture: photography of the nude male.

While still in high school, Mizer went to a party at his friend Sydney Phillip's place, where three gay friends posed in the nude for "artistic studies" that the host photographed. "It was terribly cute to see them rush to hide in the bathroom whenever a knock was heard at the door," Mizer noted of the models' skittishness. Featured in one of the first entries in his 1940 diary, the night clearly made an impression. A few months later Mizer himself posed for another gay photographer and became "enthused about barbell exercising."3

Weightlifting led Mizer to another formative influence: Strength & Health, the preeminent physical culture magazine published by Bob Hoffman in York, Pennsylvania. Mizer began reading the magazine in high school when he started lifting weights – he purchased his barbells through its back pages. He enjoyed the bodybuilding photos and articles but was particularly intrigued by the monthly "S & H Leaguers' Page," a pen-pal service for those who wanted to exchange letters and photographs. Members often described their hobbies and interests, which included not only bodybuilding and physique photographs but often music, ballet, and theater. In April 1945 Mizer placed the following notice, hoping to connect with other leaguers; he included his home address, which would become the legendary home of his physique studio: "Bob Mizer, 1834 West 11th St., Los Angeles, Cal. is interested in photography and creative writing, and promises an immediate answer and exchange of photos to all who write. He uses a York barbell and other training appliances and hopes that we will allot more space to the league notes, as he enjoys reading this department and writing to other leaguers. "

The response was overwhelming – Mizer received over three hundred letters from fellow S & H Leaguers, some of whom remained life-long friends. Other leaguers reported similar responses from their no- tices. One received such a flood of mail-but to the wrong address – that the Post Office requested he issue a correction immediately. Mizer later praised this service for allowing "lonely bodybuilders and others" not only to correspond but also to form "long-lasting and fruitful" friendships. His positive experience with the S & H Leaguers' Page offered a pivotal lesson, demonstrating to Mizer the desire of men who enjoyed physique photography to connect with each other.

After high school graduation he worked as an office clerk and typist for the Texas & Fort Worth Railroad, but in his spare time he also began to help out at various Los Angeles photography studios, learning how to pose models, position lighting, and develop film. In the summer of 1945, during the final days of World War II, Mizer was full of excitement as he made plans over the establishment of what he was already calling "my business." He was honing his craft by apprenticing at Fred- erick Kovert's Hollywood studio. "I am helping him in my spare time in order to decide whether or not to come into the studio to work." Kovert was a former silent movie actor who had become one of the more daring and well-known photographers of nude men. Mizer was one of numerous young men working for Kovert, doing much of the photography that bore his name. Mizer often brought models there, used his darkroom, and even posed himself. He could do none of this at home, since his mother, who ran a rooming house, did not approve of his interest in photographing nearly naked men. Still, he found Kovert to be controlling and difficult to work with.

Soon he bought his own camera and started to frequent Muscle Beach and bodybuilding competitions to find models. Muscle Beach in Santa Monica-not far from the home he shared with his mother near downtown Los Angeles was the center of the postwar interest in bodybuilding and beefcake. It was the perfect place to meet bodybuilders who were anxious to be photographed. "I modeled for Bob Mizer in 1947, '48," Ben Sorensen remembered. "Bob came down to Muscle Beach and just talked to people, you know? He invites us up. Of course everybody's interested, when they're bodybuilding, in getting some free pictures." It was Bob McCune, another bodybuilding champion Mizer photographed, who convinced Mizer to submit his photos to Strength & Health. Editor John Grimek, himself a well-known bodybuilding champion, encouraged Mizer to submit more work. "Yours are as good as others," Grimek told the budding photographer when they met at one of the bodybuilding competitions in Los Angeles. 

Mizer called his business the Athletic Model Guild (AMG) and offered his first advertisements in Strength & Health in 1946, where they competed for attention with similar advertisements from other gay photographers, such as Alfonso Hanagan, known as "Lon of New York." Hanagan had first become interested in physique photography when he became enthralled with images of bodybuilder Tony Sansone, who marketed his own photographs. After moving to New York in 1936 to pursue a career in music, he met Sansone and began to socialize with and photograph him and his friends. By the 1940s his physique photographs were being featured on the cover of Strength & Health and bodybuilders began seeking him out, hoping to appear on magazine cover. As payment, the magazine gave him free ad space in the back of the magazine. It was this mutually profitable world of photographers, bodybuilders, and magazine publishers that Mizer would enter, then help to transform.

When Mizer began marketing physique photography to a gay audience, he joined a field with deep roots in gay culture. The taking, sharing, and selling of such images had been central to gay culture for well over a half century by the time Mizer discovered it. Wilhelm von Gloeden began selling photographs of nude young men he posed in classical staging in Taormina, Sicily, in the 1890s. He developed a large following in cosmopolitan circles, especially among cultivated gay men. Some of his more restrained images appeared in European journals that were popular within the Aesthetic movement, while his nudes circulated through an underground market. Oscar Wilde and other gay notables made pilgrimages to his studio.

In addition to such high art, images of nearly nude men circulated in the context of the physical culture movement, starting with images of Eugene Sandow in the 1890s. By the 1920s nude photos were widely marketed in the back of both art and physical culture magazines. Physical culturist John Hernic offered nude photos in the back of Art Magazine in the 1920s and Strength & Health in the 1930s. "These photos will be a source of inspiration to you in your training for a well developed body," Hernic's ad promised, providing a small image of a muscled and oiled young man with a prominent posing strap a pouch hanging off a string that covered only the genitals, the most revealing item of clothing a model could wear.

Collector Robert Mainardi identifies Hernic as a "mail-order pioneer," but his Apollo Art Studios was soon joined by others. To earn a living during the Depression, brothers Fred and William Ritter photographed themselves and their fellow physical culturists who trained at a New York City YMCA. They developed their own photos and sold high-quality images for $1 apiece. Film historian Thomas Waugh labels them "the first gay generation of physique photographers. "10

Nude figure studies were only one of the many items available for sale in the back pages of these magazines. There were advertisements for barbells, food supplements, clothing, figure studies, and more. Indeed, most magazines were simply vehicles to sell products. Bob Hoffman founded the York Barbell Company a year before he founded his magazine Strength & Health and admitted the periodical was really a means to sell equipment. Both Hoffman and his main competitor Joe Weider distributed their fitness magazines at a loss, seeing them as a way to sell more barbells. Some of the first famous bodybuilders were similarly engaged in marketing products. Eugene Sandow – considered the world's most perfect man – performed on the vaudeville circuit, published books on physical culture techniques, and marketed postcards of his own image. As much a brand name as a bodybuilder, Sandow opened a chain of vegetarian restaurants, sanatoriums, and hotels that by the 1920s made him a millionaire. Bodybuilding promoter Bernarr Macfadden also constructed a commercial empire around the sport that included health retreats, restaurants, beauty contests, book sales, lectures, and mail-order fitness courses. Right from the start, bodybuilding was a lucrative business, the centerpiece of a network of consumer items.

A legend has developed that Mizer's first business plan was to serve as a referral service between models and the studios that required their services. According to this legend, the talent agency model failed, but Mizer díscovered, as if by accident, that the photographs were more lucrative than the modeling connections. This unsubstantiated story implies that his idea of marketing photos to gay men was sui generis. It cuts Mizer off from the long tradition of gay men taking, exchanging, and purchasing such photographs, beginning in the late nineteenth century. One of the sources of the legend was Wayne Stanley, a Mizer protégé who inherited Mizer's business and who self-servingly asserted that AMG was "the first photographic studio of the young male physique, ignoring Von Gloeden, Hernic, the Ritter Brothers, Lon of New York, Kovert, and many others. Mizer's diaries suggest that photography was key from the beginning and that he considered himself to be part of a field of physique photographers from at least 1946. While a pioneer in many ways, Mizer did not create the genre. 

Although the selling of physique-type photographs was not new, in the post-World War II era such imagery was becoming a much more visible component of American culture. Men had only recently started appearing shirtless in public. While European men had begun going topless on beaches soon after World War I, one-piece men's bathing suits emerged in the United States only in the 1930s. Some called them "Depression suits," suggesting that the shirt disappeared owing to lack of funds. As more and more proud male bathers defied convention by exposing their chests, the media began to talk of a "no shirt movement." Some beach communities such as Atlantic City, New Jersey, pushed back and banned topless male bathing. Responding to the changing beach regulations, clothing manufacturers offered detachable tops for their swimsuits. Representing the shifting cultural sands, their advertisements often featured one shirtless male and another with trunks and a tank top. According to David Chapman, by 1937 the controversy was settled, as most of the nation's beaches allowed men to appear shirtless.

World War II brought images of shirtless sailors and soldiers into American homes and theaters. In covering the war, New York magazines and Hollywood films soon reflected the trend toward displays of the male chest. A cover of Look magazine in 1942 featured a shirtless image of Muscle Beach denizen John Kornoff, the U.S. Army's first physical trainer. Cannon Towel advertisements in Life featured soldiers bathing in the South Pacific wearing nothing but one of its products. Within a year of the war's end, as Mizer started marketing his photo albums, Sidney Skolsky, sitting across town in Swab's drugstore writing his nationally syndicated gossip column, coined "beefcake" to refer to Hollywood's liberal use of Guy Madison's physique. Madison had been discovered by gay Hollywood agent Henry Willson, who also named and popularized gay actors Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson. Skolsky dubbed the bevy of male actors posing in bathing suits a "beefcake brigade," and this new term for displays of young, pulchritudinous male flesh took hold. Willson was a frequent client of physique photographer Lon of New York but was now bringing that same look to Hollywood. So the popularization of "beefcake" imagery and terminology, from their very origins, had a gay inflection.

But if male torsos could increasingly be seen on American beaches and in popular periodicals after World War II, they were still considered taboo in town. Men would continue to be subject to arrest for appearing shirtless on many city streets and in parks into the early 1960s. They were particularly vulnerable to such arrest if they did so in a known gay cruising area, reflecting the tensions in American culture over male nudity and its homoerotic implications. A seventeen year-old Harvey Milk remembered being charged with indecent exposure in the summer of 1947 for baring his chest in a secluded gay cruising area of Central Park, even as men with families did exactly the same on the more public grassy lawns. Being grouped among "the men without their shirts" was one of Milk's first visceral experiences of antigay oppression. 

As interest in the male physique increased during the postwar period, Mizer's Physique Pictorial would catch the beginnings of a cultural wave. Yet he would also feel the wrath of law enforcement that tried to shut his business down, even before it was formally on its feet. He and his magazine would be caught up in legal disputes over the sexual meaning of such displays of male flesh. For the next two decades, Mizer would place himself at the center of this battle.

POSTAL INSPECTOR VISIT

On July 23, 1945, Mizer had his first of many encounters with federal law enforcement authorities. After leaving work as usual at the Texas & Fort Worth Railroad and bicycling by the library on Pershing Square to exchange some books, Mizer arrived home to find postal inspectors waiting for him. They searched his room, found "dirty pictures," and took him to their offices for questioning. Mizer somehow escaped arrest, but a few months later Kovert's studio was also raided, resulting in headlines in the Los Angeles Examiner. Intimately involved in the resulting legal drama, Mizer attended court with Kovert, who pleaded guilty to possession of obscene materials, and drafted a letter for Kovert's customers seeking their support. Not even the intimidating tactics of the Post Office and the court system seem to have deterred the twenty-three-year-old Mizer. "Spent evening on [Athletic Model] Guild calls and letters," he wrote in his diary, just two days after being what he described as "probed" by postal inspectors. Rather than serve as a deterrent, Mizer's encounter with federal postal authorities seemed to increase his resolve and suggests how his struggle with the forces of censorship formed a central component of his business. Mizer would face arrest again in 1947 and 1954 in connection with his business, each encounter with the authorities sharpening his sense of outrage.

Mizer began his business in 1946 by producing and distributing mimeographed "albums" to sell his beefcake photographs, copying the standard operating procedure followed by Kovert of Hollywood, Lon of New York, and many other such photographers.17 He would send customers who responded to his advertisements in Strength & Health a one-page sample of photo albums, from which they could select the models and images they wanted to purchase. However, Mizer's early albums went beyond providing the necessary marketing information. Mizer peppered his albums with news and commentary on the physique world-biographies of models, bodybuilding contest results, and warnings about Post Office crackdowns. As with his earlier writings in high school and his later editorials in Physique Pictorial, Mizer constructed a narrative that drew customers and models into the same enlightened circle of upstanding physique enthusiasts and supporters of free speech, while casting public censors and moralists into the darkness.

Starting with Forrester Millard in 1946 -- the first featured model in his premier "Album A" – Mizer constructed a fantasy narrative about his models that encouraged a sense of identification between them and his target audience of middle-class gay men. At the same time, he cleaned up the description of his interactions to avoid any hint of illegality. Although Mizer would print on almost every mailing and magazine he produced that he neither took nor sold nude photographs, he took nudes of Millard and of most every subsequent model. A native of New Mexico, Millard was only sixteen at the time Mizer photographed him, though Mizer fudged his date of birth to make him seventeen.

Publicly, Mizer lauded Millard as the ideal model who had control of every muscle due to hours posing before a circle of mirrors. Privately, Mizer complained that Millard was narcissistic to the point of being "completely entranced with his own physical beauty." Vanity had led Millard to quit school and be supported by his mother and a girlfriend. "In the album bulletins I try to be truthful – but naturally I must show jurisprudence in what truth I tell," Mizer wrote a correspondent at the time. "I would doom a model's popularity if I announced he was married with two kids.... Most of my models over 23 are married or are permanently shacking up with their common-law wives."

So the biography Mizer constructed for Millard centered on discipline, Horatio Alger upward mobility, and a hint of homosexual camaraderie. "Laughed at because he was skinny, Forrester rapidly developed a magnificently defined body which became the envy of his former tormentors," Mizer wrote. Mizer replaced mention of his real-life girlfriend with "training companion" John Miller, who had won top honors at a recent AAU contest. They posed for Mizer's first duos, a homoerotic format that set Mizer and other gay physique photographers apart from their mainstream colleagues. Dark-featured Millard and blonde Miller looked like the perfect gay couple. They hoped to open a gym together, Mizer told his clients suggestively. The image of Millard and Miller on a settee with overlapping arms, hands touching, appeared in Strength & Health and became a signature AMG photo. Millard was later called "almost the touchtone for AMG's fame".

To counter the perception of both gay men and bodybuilders as degenerates, Mizer's biographical notes gave his models middle-class respectability, highlighting not only their physical attributes but also their alleged intellectual and professional ambitions. Not only was model Johnny Murphy tops in the "muscle game," but his business courses at Woodbury College were preparing him to become a business executive. "In anything he does, he will not content himself with being just average, he must be the best," Mizer gushed.

From the feedback he received to his many customer questionnaires, Mizer had a keen sense of what his audience liked and the "psychological effect" of his photos. As he told a colleague, "A picture is rarely unpopular if the model looks directly into the lens (and hence seems to be looking at the person observing the picture) as naturally they feel identification with him." Not only in his lighting and posing but also in his editorial content, Mizer made sure that his largely middle-class audience could identify with the models he was offering them, assuring them that they were "from upper-level homes." While seeking to bond models and customers in a circle of mutual camaraderie and respectability – what he called "the few... who demand freedom of expression" – Mizer also used his albums to make a detailed and careful analysis of censorship efforts by people he derided as "philistines," "moralists," and "unaesthetic law enforcement officers. " Mizer had gotten nowhere in his attempts to reason with censorship authorities. He and his fellow Los Angeles area physique photographers petitioned the Post Office to allow the use of the mail for nude photography. Postal authorities responded that they were forced to forbid such mail by local civic organizations and church groups that feared such products would fall into the hands of children. Mizer offered a clever countersuggestion: photographers could send nude photographs care of the local postmaster in every city, where they could then be claimed by the recipient with proper proof of age. His proposal went unheeded.

Mizer had been in business less than a year when he was first arrested, but it was not for sending nudes through the mail. Mindful of postal inspectors, he had sold nudes only to walk-in customers at his studio near downtown Los Angeles-what amounted to just 10 percent of his business. But when one of those customers, thirty six-year-old Mexican-born Texan Pasquel Barron, became embroiled in a Post Office obscenity investigation, he admitted to obtaining nudes from Mizer, and the Post Office quickly forwarded the information to the local district attorney. Mizer was arrested in 1947 for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, James Maynor, one of his first models, a seventeen-year-old. The district attorney uncovered a network of teenage bodybuilders centered on Muscle Beach, many of whom had been brought to Mizer's studio by William Petty, a physical education instructor employed by the city of Santa Monica to organize athletic activities and performances. Petty and another photographer were also arrested.

Unable to afford an attorney, Mizer was convinced by a public defender to plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge he admitted to photographing Maynor in the nude. But in his plea to avoid prison and receive probation, Mizer insisted that he operated a legitimate business. He stipulated that he had consulted with attorneys and obtained signed release statements from his models or their parents. To distinguish his from previous such enterprises that operated underground, Mizer granted the court access to his meticulous records concerning both customers and models. He freely admitted to being a homosexual and to "attend[ing] several meetings of other types of such individuals in Lafayette Park" a possible reference to gay social or fraternal organizations. Friends and neighbors testified to his good conduct and character – they described him as a photographer and artist who never smoked, drank, or got entangled in the law. The district attorney countered that Mizer's business was "pandering only to the tastes of lustful homosexuals." Several of his models, including John Miller, featured in AMG's early advertisements, confessed to engaging in oral sex with Mizer.

In denying his request, the probation officer emphasized that Mizer showed no remorse for his activities and was an admitted homosexual. He labeled his business of photographing teenage boys in the nude "a vicious and deliberate crime." Mizer was sentenced to six months at a work farm in Saugus, California. As with his interrogation by postal inspectors in 1945, the time he spent in Saugus seemed to steel his will. He felt abused by a legal system that was persecuting him for his lack of shame in being gay and operating a business that catered to his fellow homosexuals. He would later caution his readers to remain silent if arrested and never admit to any guilt, lest they find themselves "rail-roaded to prison" like he felt he was. As he wrote to his mother from Saugus, "I feel more strength now than ever before, but this strength, this driving energy, shall be carefully bridled and directed with wisdom.... ambition is everything." Mizer's tone and focus on the forces of censorship turned darker after his 1947 arrest. By 1950 he reported on a "witch hunt" at Muscle Beach, where one Sunday all the photographers were arrested and further photography forbidden. "Los Angeles and California is in a stage of sex hysteria," he warned, with the state legislature passing sex laws "which only stop short of outlawing the double bed." He chastised "those too stupid and prurient-minded" to understand and appreciate the need for nude art. "These same philistines are mischievously at work to undermine other basic rights of the individual," he wrote. He recommended that readers join the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) or the American Sunbathing and Health Association, a nudist organization. "The only successful way to fight these frustrated reactionaries is through national organization." Fighting the forces of censorship through collective action was clearly on Mizer's mind.

Mizer closely followed and reported on the legal struggles of other physique photographers, even though raising such issues threaten to scare away more timid customers. Whenever possible, he noted what he saw as rays of hope, such as a "progressive Federal Judge" in Chicago who ruled in 1947 that photographs of nude males by Al Urban were not obscene. He noted that most magazines and photographers "in the field" had almost always beaten their prosecutions, but "only at damaging expense." These small victories failed to establish a clear national legal precedent, nor did they silence the local churches, parent teacher organizations, and other "moralist groups" behind censorship efforts. Mizer quickly identified the pattern of obscenity prosecution that would continue for the next twenty years: censors won at the local or lower-level courts but then lost on appeal. Physique photographers would have to work together to establish a large war chest to fight the censors and establish a national precedent.

PHYSIQUE PICTORIAL

So when Mizer began publishing Physique Pictorial in 1951, he envisioned it as a collective effort – a catalog of merchandise from a variety of gay photographers and other vendors facing exclusion from mainstream fitness magazines. The first few issues were "advertising booklets," offered to subscribers for free – a "gift" underwritten by participating businesses. Like the mainstream fitness magazines, Mizer figured that photograph sales would more than pay for the magazine, as barbell sales financed mainstream fitness magazines. He wanted to bring gay physique photographers into closer alliance and thereby more effectively fight the forces of censorship. First called Physique Photo News, it would take advertisements from the back of Strength & Health and give them a new, safer, and more prominent home of their own.

Under pressure from postal authorities, mainstream fitness magazines were beginning to refuse ads for undraped nudes. Warning that "queers" had "obtained a particularly vicious hold on our bodybuilding game," Iron Man instituted a policy refusing ads with models wearing anything less than swim trunks and threatened even stricter rules in the future. Strength & Health had faced censorship efforts over a cover image that had been taken in the nude and later retouched with a posing strap. The managing editor of Strength & Health warned Mizer that his advertisement photos were becoming "less athletic and more risqué" and threatened to bar him from the magazine. While Mizer pledged to cooperate, he saw the writing on the wall. "We are anxious to get our own magazine strong enough that in a few years time we can thumb our noses at the physique magazines," he wrote to a trusted adviser.

The first issue represented the combined effort of six physique photography studios, but most of the others soon opted out. "Bruce [Bellas] was so frightened that he decided not to be represented in the next issue," Mizer recalled. To avoid postal inspectors, Bellas preferred to travel from city to city selling his images in person to select clients. Russ Warner also demurred, having already been summoned to Washington for an arduous hearing before postal inspectors over his nude photos with inked-in pouches. "The only people who would want photos of men were gay people," the postal inspectors confided to him, and their threat to "get every one of them" left him skittish. Even Mizer feared repercussions since "it will look dangerously like an organization which might effectively resist the postal distaste for physique work." Postal authorities may not have viewed it as a threat, but such organizational power was clearly at the forefront of Mizer's thinking.

Mizer's efforts at consolidation drew inspiration from the most prominent scholar and writer on the subject of sex in America. Like other early activists for gay rights, Mizer had read Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and considered it pivotal for his understanding of homosexuality as a naturally and frequently occurring variation of human activity. "Dr. Kinsey's first book was the most important one in my whole life," Mizer wrote to a colleague, "and for it I owe him a debt I could probably never repay. "

As an avid collector of materials to document American sexual culture, Kinsey became a regular Mizer customer, and the two quickly established an active correspondence that lasted nearly until Kinsey's death in 1956. On his many visits to Los Angeles, Kinsey met with Mizer and conducted sexual histories of his fellow physique photographers and models. Mizer even forwarded his frequent customer questionnaires to Kinsey for tabulation, thereby offering him indirect access to his customer base. In return, Kinsey offered strategic advice about how best to combat postal authorities.

Because of his own struggles with postal and customs authorities over shipments of erotic materials to his institute at Indiana University, Kinsey had developed relationships with prestigious law firms specializing in the First Amendment. It was he who suggested that physique publishers could win at the appellate level if they could find a way to sustain and finance their legal cases. "I have suggested before that all of you photographers should band together and employ the very best attorney that you can in the L.A. area to advise you and to handle individual cases," Kinsey wrote to Mizer in 1951, just as Mizer was establishing Physique Pictorial. Kinsey suggested that photographers of female nudes had tried to do this but never succeeded at forming a united group. While Mizer never formally organized his fellow physique photographers, he and his magazine served as a de facto central bureau of information, connecting customers, photographers, and publishers.

Tapping into an underserved gay market, Mizer's business flourished. As Mizer later remembered, "there was not such a thing at the time as a magazine that showed a variety of young, youthful models – not supermen – which is what most people wanted." Through his customer questionnaires, Mizer knew what his clients wanted: less information on weightlifting and exercise and more models. One twenty- two-year-old customer from Winchester, Massachusetts, remarked how Mizer's models were becoming "more youthful, slimmer and more suggestively posed" and encouraged him to be upfront about it – not to "hide all this under the general category of art photography," a common claim of photographers offering undraped nudes. As he wrote to Mizer, "It appears to me that by the constant polls you all seem to be taking so that you may satisfy your customers, you are catering more and more to the homosexual trade." Models, too, knew what Mizer was up to. "I think Bob was, um, interested more in the gay magazines than the bodybuilding ones," remembered model Ben Sorensen. "I'm straight, but that didn't bother me at all. Everybody at the gym knew what they were doing with the photos."

Within a year of establishing AMG, Mizer reported a gross monthly income of $700-annualized, this amounted to nearly three times the average family income of 1947. Mizer had hired his brother as a full-time employee and had nearly $2,000 in savings. His mailing list already contained customers from "practically every country in the world," according to the district attorney who prosecuted his case. "It grew like Topsy – a little bit each time," Mizer remembered.33 He soon began offering a "Nickle Plan," similar to a monthly book club, where customers would regularly receive photographs from each new AMG album. Wishing to respond to the particular desires of his customers, he allowed them to specify what types of models and photographs they preferred not to receive: "models over or under ages, races, slender or very heavy weights, poses with girls, models in clothing or part clothing such as Levis, models in trunks, portraits." Mizer was already engaging in specialization, acknowledging the particular sexual desires, fetishes, and prejudices of his customers.

Although Physique Pictorial could increasingly be found on select newsstands, Mizer's initial sense of it as a catalog of merchandise for subscribers endured. He recalled that although magazine wholesaler Lou Elson began to distribute it in New York after a year or two on the market, newsstand sales did not substantially increase total circulation. "Its circulation was horrible. It was very hard to get. Most newsstands didn't carry it," remembered Chuck Renslow, then a fellow physique photographer in Chicago. Mizer himself called his newsstand circulation "quiet select." Continually struggling to find a newsstand distribution network, he mostly sold Physique Pictorial by subscription. But he was proud of his independence – unwilling to bow and scrape to distributors or advertisers. In addition to working with a few wholesalers, Mizer sent copies himself to select newsstands. "Tell your dealer about this and give him our address," he suggested to readers, trying to get them actively involved in increasing circulation. When Physique Pictorial did manage to appear on newsstands, it sold out almost immediately.

In 1963 AMG tried to diversify and modernize by offering a large format, color magazine called Young Adonis to supplement the black-and-white Physique Pictorial. It was a sell-out wherever it was sold, but again Mizer had trouble getting it on newsstands. The distributor wrote Mizer a two-page letter describing the magazine's "sins." Although Mizer promised future issues would feature new offerings, including a fashion section handled by model Mark Nixon, it was the only issue Mizer offered.

FROM GUILD TO NETWORK

Mizer's choice of the term "guild" to refer to his business started a trend among physique photography studios. Don Whitman founded the Western Photography Guild in Colorado in 1947 and soon had advertisements next to AMG's in the back of Strength & Health. In Metairie, Louisiana, a group of physique photographers and artists launched the Southern Guild. And in Portsmouth, Virginia, George U. Lyon and Charles E. Smith started Underwood Photographic Guild. The word "guild" could refer to any association of people with a common goal but historically referred to a group of craftsmen or merchants who exerted some control over their trade. As an avid reader, Mizer was probably well aware that medieval guilds were famous for regulating entry into a profession and often exerted considerable power in city government. His choice of words suggests his aspirations to unite, protect, and empower those involved in the physique field. It was the same term Harry Hay would use as he began organizing the Mattachine Society as a gay political group across town a few years later.

In keeping with the spirit of a guild, Mizer cooperated with and promoted the work of other photographers. He would share or sell mailing lists to competitors and alert readers when new physique magazines were launched or studios opened. "Physique Pictorial is not a closed enterprise and any legitimate studio can be represented in it," he promised. By 1954 he regularly included a directory of photographers, artists, and models selling merchandise, a custom followed by many later physique magazines. He was happy to note when individual models offered their own photos directly to readers. When he had a disagreement with a physique artist, he let readers know that the artist's work could now be found in a competing magazine. 

As the number of physique studios catering to gay men proliferated, Mizer's magazine functioned like a Better Business Bureau. Mizer barred advertisements from studios who were known to be unreliable, gave bad service, or sold illegal material (although he included photos with "inked" pouches, indicating the original photograph was in the nude.) He threatened to publicly denounce photographers who were territorial and unwelcoming to new talent in their area, and he was quick to publicly reprimand photographers who did not reciprocate his courtesies. Mizer also warned readers of offers from the "get-rich- quick boys" promising special pictures available only to a few "intimate friends." Given the Post Office's vigilance, he knew that studios selling nudes would not last long. "Every mailing list is peppered with postal inspectors and their collaborators," he cautioned. After sending in an exorbitant fee, the customer might receive nothing. He encouraged readers to confess their stories of being victimized by such schemes.40 Envisioning a constantly widening network of producers and consumers, Mizer sought to place himself at its fulcrum. Soon he was offering a host of consumer items – artwork, slides, viewers, and "garments for athletes" including jeans, T-shirts, bathing suits, and the ubiquitous posing straps. Physique Pictorial functioned as a nexus for finding, producing, selling, and admiring male photos. Other studios described AMG as a one-stop shopping experience: "one of the largest photo guilds in the country and supplies about everything a photo collector or bodybuilder wants: movies, garments, thousands of all sizes of photos, color slides, and many other works of art." 

The network grew increasingly international as Mizer featured photographs by Arax of Paris and models wearing trunks from Vince of London. He soon had agents in Belgium, France, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Japan. By 1962 Mizer sponsored European tours for physique enthusiasts, "to photograph local athletes, and to visit famous clubs of special interest."

Mizer encouraged not only other physique photographers but a new and growing group of physique artists in his magazine. AMG became a generative center that showcased the work of talented young painters and sketch artists who then developed their own followings that often eclipsed Mizer's own popularity. In 1957 he introduced an unknown artist who "depicts the healthy robust youth of the forests of Finland," who would later reach international renown as "Tom of Finland." But it was an artist from Virginia, George Quaintance, who created what Mizer called a "vogue" that was widely imitated.

Quaintance had begun taking photographs and drawing sketches of male nudes under the tutelage of Lon of New York. He had worked drawing bodybuilding champions for the cover of Joe Weider's Your Physique, but it was when he started painting for Bob Mizer's new magazine that his career took off. Set either at a dude ranch in Arizona, where he lived, or at a bath in ancient Greece, Quaintance's paintings created the kind of playful environment of easy male camaraderie that Mizer sought to foster through his magazine. And like Mizer, Quaintance considered his homoerotic artwork to be "a crusade for the rights of the feelings" of his customers. "I too feel that I crusade in my attempt to supply, or satisfy, a deep emotional hunger in the inner lives of my customers," he explained to a homophile leader. Soon his mailing list of ten thousand active buyers around the world surpassed that of Mizer. He offered not only physique paintings but prints, photographs, and sculptures, expanding his business to a four-man operation. "It grew too fast.... I'm trying to adjust myself to all the confusion," he wrote at the time. Those who met him as he toured the country selling his artwork describe a flamboyant artist who loved wearing western gear, turquoise jewelry, and showing off his young Mexican American lover and frequent model, Eduardo.

What distinguished Quaintance's artwork was not just the invitation to view nearly naked men but the excitement of seeing them looking at each other, as Michael Bronski has argued. One of Quaintance's first cover images for Physique Pictorial demonstrates how groundbreaking those gazes were. "Morning in the Desert" featured four ranch hands around an outdoor bath dressing and preparing for work. One naked bather is standing, his genitals covered only by soapsuds. Another naked man lies below him in a tub of water, looking directly up at the other's body. But for the cover of the magazine, to pass postal censors, Quaintance shifted the man's head to the left, so his gaze no longer fell longingly on his fellow naked male bather. Like his better-known successor, Tom of Finland, Quaintance constructed a "network of looks" that included and invited those of the viewer, furthering the sense of homoerotic identification.

Mizer's growing network of photographers, artists, and other physique-related businesses used a language of friendship and camaraderie that further encouraged a sense of community. Seattle physique artist William MacLean set up a studio and invited new and emerging physique artists to market their work through him. This offer featured a photograph of the very handsome artist hanging images in his exhibit space, noting suggestively that he was "a very eligible bachelor" and therefore "his studio is a gathering place for the young social set and many a party is hosted there." London model Clive Jones sold his images directly and promised to handle orders personally. "Clive would like to hear from his many friends in America" and promised to send a catalog of images of himself and his "buddies" in London.

Mizer offered slides of physique models intended to be projected on a wall or screen for group viewing. One of MacLean's more reproduced drawings showed a group of men admiring AMG slides and imitating the poses of the models. When Mizer began making physique film shorts, he called for readers to submit script ideas, giving members yet another way to participate. He offered suggestions on where to buy a good, inexpensive projector and soon began renting the films at a quarter of the price of purchasing one. In words and images, he encouraged readers to share the experience of watching physique films. "Imagine what a hit these films would be at your next party or gathering of friends who are physical culture enthusiasts!" Indeed, much of the allure of participating in this network, whether as a producer or as a consumer, was the sense of community it offered.

Mizer's own rhetoric helped to solidify that sense of community. Boasting that his magazine lacked "mass appeal," he explicitly signaled his targeting of a minority population, what he called "the limited aesthetic group" who appreciated the male body. Mizer was borrowing a gay discourse developed in the late nineteenth century, a period he knew well from his reading of Boris Brasol's biography of Oscar Wilde. As art historian Christopher Reed argues, "The Wilde trials seemed to reveal homosexuality as the secret behind the enigmatic passions of the Aesthetes, tainting the entire movement, all of its products, and even the idea of aesthetic sensitivity." 

Indeed, the modern identities of "the homosexual" and "the artist" – both considered manifestations of innate predispositions – developed nearly simultaneously in the nineteenth century, as both creating art and committing sodomy moved from activities to ways of being. "Artistic" quickly became euphemistic slang for "queer." Painter Paul Cadmus remembered how the association had transferred to the American scene by the 1930s. "The word homosexual was never used," he remembered. "They just said, 'He's an artist." American psychiatrists, too, described men suspected of homosexuality as "aesthetic in temperament." Thus when Mizer adopted this language, praising Quaintance for his "neo-aestheticism" and imagining his audience as "the limited aesthetic group," he was signaling to and helping to construct a distinct gay identity among his readers.

"THE TV SHOW THAT MADE AMERICA GASP!"

Physique Pictorial's increasing circulation came with its own risks. Its presence on Los Angeles newsstands soon caught the attention of Paul Coates, a conservative columnist for the afternoon tabloid the Los Ange- les Mirror, known for exposing what he considered to be the seamier side of life in Southern California – prostitutes, repo men, drug addicts, and shoplifters. In 1954 Coates used his local television program Confidential File on KTTV to alert his audience to the "unpleasant fact" of homosexuality in Los Angeles. It was the first prime-time television program to broach the topic and helped propel Coates's show into national syndication. Coates featured footage of a Mattachine Society meeting with well-dressed men and women drinking coffee and eating cookies. He also gave his audience a glimpse inside a gay bar. But he ended the show by holding up a copy of Physique Pictorial as a shocking example on city newsstands of the publications catering to homosexuals. According to one tabloid, it was "the TV show that made America gasp!" Working closely with the local Parent Teacher Association (PTA), Coates couched his programming as a crusade to warn families of the dangers homosexuals posed to children. He followed up with three newspaper columns devoted exclusively to the presence of gay maga-zines on the city's newsstands. Although concerned about the homophile magazine ONE, which billed itself as "The Homosexual Magazine," he noted that its editors at least made an effort to avoid the lurid. Physique Pictorial, however, was "thinly veiled pornography" that appealed to sex criminals and sadists. Coates claimed that this "Esquire for men who wish they weren't" featured images of men in chains being beaten and stabbed – a sensational reading of Mizer's photographs with swords and chains as props. He highlighted the case of one of Mizer's teenage models from Muscle Beach-an active church member engaged to be married, he noted-who complained of unwanted homosexual solicitations after his photo appeared in Physique Pictorial. There were dozens of such dangerous photographers, Coates warned. "It's big business in our town."

Leveraging his connections to the powerful Chandler media family, Coates orchestrated an all-out assault on Mizer's business. After Coates's columns appeared, a phalanx of local government officials descended on Mizer's business. Police began to intimidate newsstands where his magazine appeared. City regulators inspected his home, and health officials tested his pet monkeys for diseases. The former model featured in Coates's column sued Mizer for invasion of privacy.

Most ominously, the story brought a plainclothes Los Angeles Police Department vice officer to his door asking to buy nudes. Mizer demurred, offering him only his usual catalogs of men in posing straps. Undeterred, Detective Philip Barnes asked who of the many other photographers featured in his magazine might offer nudes. Mizer again demurred, but Barnes had already visited the studio of Lyle Frisby, a young, up-and-coming Mizer protégé whose images Mizer often included in his magazine. More accommodating, Frisby sold him "inked" nude photos, where the posing straps could be easily rubbed off.

Coates proudly covered the sting operation in a subsequent column. To again sensationalize the threat posed to children, he noted ominously that Frisby's Los Angeles studio was located just 250 yards from an elementary school. Both Frisby and Mizer were promptly arrested for possessing and distributing lewd photographs – a violation of the Los Angeles municipal code allowing Coates's newspaper series to end on a note of civic triumph.

Frisby was easily convicted and spent time in prison. The prosecution of Mizer, however, was more complicated, since the focus of the charge was "aiding and abetting" the sale of lewd pictures. Detective Barnes testified that Mizer told him he could obtain nudes from any of his advertisers, but he failed to note this in his initial report. Mizer denied the claim, testifying that he told detective Barnes that nudes were illegal and unavailable in Los Angeles and that he personally advised all photographers not to deal in nudes. Either way, there was little evidence to link Mizer directly with Frisby's nude photos. Seeing the weakness of the "aiding and abetting" argument, the prosecutor argued that Mizer's own photos were obscene because they displayed both "scenes of brutality and torture" and "the uncovered rump." Mizer's lawyer, Herbert Selwyn from the ACLU, argued that Mizer's posing-strap images were no more lewd than those in classical statuary or in movies such as Garden of Eden, a film set in a nudist colony then screening in area theaters. He called it "the first uncovered rump case" in memory.

But as in almost all trials of physique photographers, the real issue was less the explicitness of the photos than the sexual orientation of their audience. Displaying his real concern, the judge told Selwyn, "These are nothing but pin-up pictures for homosexuals." To feed the judge's suspicions, the prosecutor displayed a copy of Confidential mag- azine at trial with the blaring headline "America on Guard! Homosexuals, Inc." Trying to further associate Mizer with the homosexual cause, he concluded his cross-examination by asking, "Do you also publish the magazine known as ONE?" The judge sustained Selwyn's objection but enjoyed a "hearty chuckle." He found Mizer guilty and sentenced him to ninety days in prison.

Mizer appealed his conviction, telling Kinsey he was willing to put a substantial dent in his bank account and solicit help from nudist and other groups. He convinced a British magazine to publicize the case. "It is odd that when I am one of the few physique photographers who does not deal in nudes that I should be picked out as the one who must fight for their legality," he complained to Kinsey, who thought he was singled out because of the size of his business. Mizer was the aggressive entrepreneur who took the physique business from the back pages of fitness magazines to the cover of his own magazine, openly challenging postal inspectors. Predictably, Mizer's conviction was overturned on appeal. "You have done very well to stand up for your legal rights," Kinsey congratulated him. But Mizer, concerned about the effect such news might have on the field of physique photography, did not gloat. "I am keeping news of our victory quiet because I think some of the photographers in our field need a bit of a deterrent to keep them in line."

Mizer and Barnes squared off again a year later, this time in a televised congressional hearing. Mizer and Frisby became fodder for Senator Estes Kefauver's traveling hearings on the alleged problem of juvenile delinquency in America, part of his bid to enhance his presidential aspirations. Kefauver got Benjamin Karpman, the chief psychotherapist at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., to testify that exposure to pornography at an early age could turn someone gay. Barnes described how he had confiscated pornographic materials from major national distributors Edward Mishkin and Irving Klaw. Some of the material was on display in posters lining the walls of the hearing room.

"Have you had any occasion to investigate cases wherein the use of male models might be used?" Kefauver asked, a delicate way to invoke homosexual erotica. Barnes outlined the case of Frisby and Mizer, pointing out that Mizer happened to be in the audience. Exaggerating the success of his efforts, he claimed he had confiscated $10,000 worth of materials from Frisby, that both men had been convicted of obscenity, and that Mizer's sentence had been overturned only because of a technicality. He highlighted the danger they posed to the public by noting the proximity of the school and the youth of the models.

Kefauver commended Barnes's efforts and noted what a difficult job he had, given how the courts and the legislatures continually failed to provide the tools he needed. Barnes impressed on the committee the need for a national agency to coordinate the efforts of local law enforcement to stamp out pornography. At the conclusion of the hearing, Senator Kefauver offered anyone who had been named the opportunity to correct inaccuracies. Detective Barnes looked squarely at Mizer, egging him on. Mizer contemplated speaking up but, aware of the presence of journalists and television cameras, decided instead to offer a written statement, his preferred form of communication.

In the pages of Physique Pictorial, Mizer denounced the hearings as "the grossest obscenity of public trust" he had ever witnessed. He accused Barnes of perjuring himself in his claims about Mizer's case. Within a year, however, Mizer enjoyed some schadenfreude when he revealed that Barnes was sent to prison for molesting his stepdaughter. He was also delighted to tell readers that Kefauver's chief counsel, James Bobo, was forced to resign after admitting to hosting private screenings of stag films for a Memphis fraternity. It all reinforced Mizer's conviction that the legal system was corrupt and that those who were most obsessed with fighting prurience were hypocrites.

Like many self-appointed guardians of American morality, Coates viewed both the Mattachine Society and the Athletic Model Guild as threats. But the reactions of the two organizations differed markedly. In 1953 Coates gave the Mattachine Society its first negative press coverage by suggesting that it had ties to communism. Coates's accusation caused a crisis in the organization, which led to the resignation of the original founders, many of whom had been members of the Communist Party USA. The organization was restructured and membership fell off. Historian John D'Emilio called it a "retreat to respectability," a turn away from political activism toward internal self-help tactics.

Coates's assault on Mizer was even more aggressive – involving the Los Angeles Police Department, a powerful U.S. senator, and backstage efforts to influence his obscenity trial – yet Mizer changed his operating procedures only slightly. He decided to tone down the "brutality" aspect of his images, eliminating props such as whips or chains. But on the issue of the "uncovered rump," Mizer stood his ground. "Bob has defied them," Kinsey noted of Mizer's refusal to succumb to a Post Office ultimatum barring nudes seen from behind. He also continued his feisty editorials, despite Kinsey's suggestion that he tone them down. "Certain principles I will not back down on," Mizer defiantly told Kinsey. 

Each of Mizer's encounters with law enforcement politicized him, and he, in turn, sought to politicize his readers. To supplement his personal experience, he read widely in popular and scholarly texts on censorship and sought to convey that knowledge to his readers. He noted that those who were opposed to physique magazines were organized into groups such as the National Organization for Decent Literature and had the ear of local and national politicians. He pointed out how local newspapers pressured newsstands and magazine distributors to discontinue all physique magazines. He urged readers to organize. When one reader suggested ignoring the censors, Mizer compared him to the Jews in Germany who "ignored the menace of Hitler."

Putting the issue in the context of human rights, Mizer called for a collective and activist opposition. "The censor is a bully and will back down if we all stand up to him." It was a theme he returned to frequently, asserting that putting one's head in the sand would not make the problem go away. He repeatedly implored customers to join the ACLU. "It's Your America," he reminded readers, and politicians and police were "your servants." He implored readers to write their representatives and local newspapers to defend freedom of expression. Otherwise, he warned, a state-controlled media will emerge that would be the envy of Hitler. According to his alarmist rhetoric, the ACLU was the only thing standing between the status quo and totalitarianism.

Mizer's editorials on censorship even seeped into model descriptions. He described Sonny Star, a lean model lounging by the pool, as being from Fargo, North Dakota, where a federal censorship trial was taking place. He railed against police corruption and governmental injustice so often that readers tired of his many editorials – one counted eight in a thirty-two-page issue and complained of all this "doomsday talk." Many just wanted information on where to purchase forbidden materials.

IRON MAN BETRAYAL

As Physique Pictorial and other physique magazines that emphasized the "aesthetic approach" flourished, they increasingly came into conflict with what Mizer called " 'hard-core' muscle magazines" or "old-school muscle books" that had fallen on hard times. He knew that their harsh critique of new magazines like his had alienated "the great bulk" of their readership. But he still encouraged readers to support these magazines and their veteran writers. "We cannot afford to lose them from the field," he generously noted.60 Mizer had gotten his start through the support of these editors and was not prone to burn bridges.

Mizer had an especially close relationship with Iron Man, founded by weightlifter Peary Rader in Nebraska in 1933. Mizer had contributed enough photographs to be listed as one of Iron Man's "staff photographers" in 1949. Some of Mizer's first catalog advertisements appeared in its back pages, and Rader had even printed the first issue of Physique Pictorial. But under pressure from the Post Office, Rader refused to print subsequent issues. Fearing the loss of his second-class mailing privileges, he then stopped running physique photography advertisements. And in 1956 he published a scathing editorial denouncing the "homosexual element" that had infiltrated bodybuilding and ruined its reputation. He called for a comprehensive "crusade" to clean up the sport, including a ban on nude or G-string photographs, fewer body-building contests, and more manly poses. He attributed the immorality that had seeped into bodybuilding to increasing "commercialism," emphasizing that his concerns were not only moral but also financial. Mizer felt sorry for Iron Man. "I doubt if many copies would be sold to those solely interested in the weightlifting results."

This attack from his former supporter and printer caused Mizer to pen his first editorial on "Homosexuality and Bodybuilding." Claiming to have less familiarity with the subject than the editors of Iron Man and others who seemed so preoccupied with it, Mizer first resorted to a version of the schoolyard taunt, "It takes one to know one." He did so by quoting one of the most famous closeted homosexuals in 1950s America. A London reporter had recently asked Liberace in the midst of a legal struggle with a tabloid that had outed him "Is your sex life normal?" Fully composed, Liberace hastily replied, "Yes, is yours?"

In many ways, Liberace and Mizer were in parallel situations. Both offered the public fairly open representations of gay life, but without the label. But because of their popularity, they had caught the attention of the media and were being tarred with the sin of homosexuality. But Mizer went beyond Liberace's taunt to frame the question in terms of civil rights. "We wonder if really good people show prejudice against any minority group," he wrote, comparing such prejudice to that against a particular religion, race, or political party. This effectively made Peary Rader the one guilty of immorality and repositioned the debate on homosexuality within the realm of minority rights. Most important, he referred readers to the homophile groups Mattachine Society and ONE for more factual information.

Mizer's mailbox must have been full after this unusually frank editorial. He noted that readers clamored for him to reprint letters, demonstrating their desire to connect to each other, to see who else was out there reading Physique Pictorial. Mizer printed only four responses. One called Mizer "naïve" for not realizing that all bodybuilders are in some way homosexual, since they are so obsessed with the male body. Another expressed the opposite view, that such "he-men" could not possibly be sissies. But the most unusual letter came from the mother of four male bodybuilders-three of them married with children, the youngest openly gay. She described his difficult coming-out process, psychiatric consultations, and much anguish. But she then painted the picture of a happy, healthy gay domesticity. "John lives with another young man who shares his interests, both are highly successful in films, are 'accepted' everywhere." She thanked Mizer for his sympathetic attitude.

Mizer could not print any letters from openly gay readers for fear of confirming the concerns of censors. But he gave readers clues that he received many such letters. He noted that many had written in anonymously to "unburden [their] frustrations" and "project [their] own motives to us." Although such personal, confessional letters could not be shared, Mizer assured readers that he would send them to a "psychological research group for study," a probable reference to the Kinsey Institute. While Mizer had to be cautious about the content of his magazine to appease censors, his readers were often more explicit. Mizer considered many of the letters he received to be so salacious or incriminating that he did not want to keep them in his home in the event of a "purge" by authorities.

Art historians have documented the lasting impact that Bob Mizer's physique photography had on Western visual culture, influencing the work of such artists as Francis Bacon, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Andy Warhol. British painter David Hockney famously said, "I came to Los Angeles for two reasons: The first was a photo by Julius Shulman of Case Study House #21, and the other was AMG's Physique Pictorial." Dozens of high-end coffee table books attest to the lasting appeal of the artistic vision of Bob Mizer and his fellow gay physique photographers. But Mizer's business model was as generative as his photography. His business acted as a key catalyst for a gay consumer culture network, encouraging and popularizing many other gay mail-order businesses.

Although often portrayed as something of a bumbling loner, Mizer was at the center of an increasingly sophisticated gay network and came to be a leader of an effort to unite and defend the rights of gay men. It was a dream shared with early gay activist Manuel boy Frank, who, through his involvement in an early underground gay pen-pal club, had seen the potential power in gay men's interest in physique photography. Mizer, too, had an early sense of the depth of a gay market, through his work with Kovert's studio and his classified advertising in Strength & Health. He also had a great sense of the dangers involved. Each time Mizer had come under attack, he had come back more determined and open about his intentions. Neither the Post Office, nor the local vice police, nor vigilante journalists, nor mainstream muscle magazines deterred him. Over the course of his career he tried various tactics: reasoning with authorities, cautioning his fellow photographers, fanning the flames of outrage, and encouraging collective action. He had been on a crusade since high school to stand up and make the world a better place for his fellow homosexualists, and Physique Pictorial was his vehicle.

Mizer saw Alfred Kinsey as a hero and collaborator in this crusade because he saw Kinsey's scientific work as a vehicle for increasing tolerance. "One of the greatest values of your present work will be to allow at least the ones who read it to realize they are not uniquely perverse because of either their overt or desired behavior," he wrote to Kinsey. "Many a man will be able to hold his head a little higher and square back his shoulders and know he is not disgustingly 'abnormal' merely because he is gifted with more healthy, vital sex powers than his sanctimonious moral condemner." But what Mizer wrote so admiringly of Kinsey also applied to his own life's work. Mizer took inspiration from his academic friend and advisor, offering the same message of healthy normality in a more visually accessible format, reaching a much wider audience. He provided images to substantiate Kinsey's scientific treatise.

Like his mentor, Mizer was something of a workaholic, shooting still or moving film nearly every day of his life. But his ambitions were not monetary. Although by the end of his life he had expanded his home-studio property in Los Angeles to include several adjoining homes and a pool, it was never lavish. It became a sort of dormitory or homeless shelter for wayward models. Friends remember him in later years wearing glasses held together with tape and string. After his death in 1992, friends found hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash stuffed in film cans-proceeds never invested, or given much thought. Mizer's ambitions had not changed from the time he was in high school. He took pride in knowing his readers considered the arrival of his magazine like "a visit from an old friend." And since that old friend "always brings new friends with him," he hoped it offered his readers the sense that they were part of a large, welcoming community similar to the one he had discovered in Pershing Square. As he told his readers, he hoped all who read his magazine carefully – who "take the trouble to study" it – would take away a message of "hope and inspiration."

Hope was the message that Noel Gillespie found in Physique Pictorial when he discovered it as a teenager. He remembered it as "a gay-oriented oasis" in a Cold War desert of prudery and macho conformity. He considered Mizer less a salesman than "an old friend and confidante" because of all his "chatty remarks" among the model images. Gillespie praised Mizer's editorials on the "anti-nudity, anti-gay, anti-free speech attitudes" of the period. He recalls how he eagerly antici- pated each new issue for both Mizer's "latest fresh-faced discoveries and his candid and for the period, courageous commentaries." Beyond this special bond with Mizer, he also felt linked to his fellow subscribers through their occasional letters to the editor, which he thought made Physique Pictorial "more a friendly resource than a mere sales catalogue."

Hope was exactly the message that a young David Hurles understood when he encountered Physique Pictorial on newsstands in Cincinnati in 1957. "I came face to face with the awesome and wonderful knowledge of a place somewhere different from any place I yet knew," Hurles later wrote. He remembered following Mizer's exploits closely, noticing when he put in a swimming pool in 1956. "His pictures, magazines and films turned us on. But more than that, they gave us hope," Hurles eulogized at the time of Mizer's death in 1992. Hurles later became a Mizer protégé and went on to produce his own magazine. "Bob revealed the evidence which made us certain that what we desired and needed did, in fact, exist."

-- from David K. Johnson's Buying Gay.

[contentment-of-cats]

Side gig shenanigans

"So are you going to have an open call?"

"Probably this September. We hire a lot of college students. Once they're out of the house and write porn without worrying about their parents."

"You should be recruiting their parents, because you can bet that Mom's been on Usenet, FF.net, and LJ. She probably also used to run an archive on Geocities or Angelfire before getting an A03 code."

I said I had people in mind.

The latest fiasco was not entire 50,000 word novels, but collections of short stories. Each book was to have ten stories of between 3,000 and 5,000 words. You guessed it - they tried the AI with results as before. Apparently there's a whole-ass market for porn targeted at people with short attention spans. I just had to fix one story. I jokingly pitched a collection of drabbles (100 words) and ficlets (1000 words). I should have kept my mouth shut because I am now tasked with writing ten drabbles and one ficlet. It was a wrangle over pay - never do free work and keep your pitch short - but the editor liked the idea because drabbles can be a form of erotic poetry.

In terms of medical bills, this check blasted a chunk out of the balance, a full fridge and pantry, and a chance to relax a little. I have a backlog of fic reading in one folder and backlog of writing in the other. The past month has been... well, you guys who know that I've gone through cancer and am in remission for 16 months know how it's affected me. During the last month, the insomnia and medical-oriented nightmares have been hard.

I'm doing okay, y'all. Thanks for listening.

[moss-petal]

Help yes I am asking you about your human warriors medic outfits 👀

Ok ok breakdown time.

Important to note! In my human WC AU the clans are loosely color coded. They have some shared traditions in terms of dress especially for important roles like leader and medic.

Medics all wear a green coat over a clan color coded tunic layer to make them easily identifiable and signify the level of neutrality they have in terms of being able to cross clan borders etc.

Layer 1 is flexible and varies from clan to clan and medic to medic but it is typically simple and colors that can easily be cleaned like white and gray. A white turtleneck style top is traditionally standard.

Medic apprentices do not wear the tunic component

On hair: they generally try to keep it up and out of the way for safety and hygiene reasons. Traditionally it would either be cropped very short or wrapped in a scarf (also helps with the visual indicator thing), and many medics still do this at least some of the time, but it isn’t necessarily a requirement by the time we’re getting to tpb.

[skeletinmoss]

Code red au: What Is going feral for mutiens? Is it different for each mutant?also whats stage two?

Ok. So there is three stages: calm, on guard and feral. Calm stage is how they look most of the time without triggers ( very easy to mistake for regular human)

Stage two triggered by individual things: for Patton it's sadness, for Remus it's food, for Virgil it's anxiety. Contact with trigger leads to some appearance change: hair and skin color, eyes, Patton becomes more see-through and glows in more places, Remus' rainbow patterns swap color with his regular skin. Virgil's raccoon circles become yellow. Mutants still act as themselves in this stage

Stage three (or feral mode) can start if trigger has too big of an impact or if triggering is going on for a long period of time. In this stage mutants have no control over themselves, they have one simple desire - to hunt. Each mutant has individual hunt pattern. Mostly mutants use animal hunt strategies, they don't use tools like humans and loose ability to communicate ( except then speaking is a hunt strategy). Mutants can't end this stage without medical help, they also possess short term memory loss about the hunt

Stage 1 and 2 act the same but look differently. Stage 2 and 3 look the same but act differently