#sorry this hits close to home for me

[boredomstrides]

Hi, so, I read both of these posts. It seems like your first source regarding Prediabetes came from a Lancet article back in 2012. Not necessarily saying this automatically disproves what you're talking about, but the fact of the matter is that 2012 was still a point in time when doctors and the general public were in agreement that the fault of Type 2 could at least relatively easily be put on the shoulders of - if nice, the food industry and how much everything around us has added sugars, and if not, the people who have Type 2 on account of bad dieting.

I'm not entirely certain this post is saying that "if you have impaired glucose tolerance you're kind of fucked ¯\_(ツ)_/¯," but it seems more on the lines of "don't guilt yourself into an eating disorder, if your doctor's not a piece of shit they'll walk you through what's going on."

I'm saying this from experience, I got told I had a high insulin resistance and high glucose levels, and I'm on some medicine right now to try and get my body to go down to safer levels before this causes me any major problems. My doctor recommended I try and aim for a low carb diet to help with the medicine, something I've been trying to do, but I've decided to relax on at least slightly after the first week where it ended with me blacking out from eating so little.

My being at risk has been known since I was a child, but all of my doctors back then, and my parents today, have tried to imply or directly tell me it is my fault and if I don't lose weight I'll have type-2 diabetes. Years I have been at risk. Years I've dealt with hypoglycemia without even knowing the name of it. Years my doctors saw all the signs, but never bothered to try and check my blood. Years my own parents insisted I must have narcolepsy, even though they also suffered signs of hypoglycemia.

It has only been this year that a doctor decided to actually check my blood levels to see what was happening instead of assuming they already knew. Posts like these with articles containing multiple sources are actually really important. Had I seen this when I was first given the medicine, I might not have malnourished myself, and I might not have been so angry with the world around me, and myself, for that first week.

I saw a comment on your blog that says 'the way you eat does not cause diabetes'...are you able to expand on that or provide a source I could read? I've been told by doctors that my pre-diabetes was due to weight gain because I get more hungry on my anti psychotics and I'd like to fact check what they've told me! Thank you so much!

Pre-diabetes was rejected as a diagnosis by the World Health Organization (although it is used by the US and UK) - the correct term for the condition is impaired glucose tolerance. Approximately 2% of people with "pre-diabetes" go on to develop diabetes per year. You heard that right - TWO PERCENT. Most diabetics actually skip the pre-diabetic phase.

There are currently no treatments for pre-diabetes besides intentional weight loss. (Hmm, that's convenient, right?) There has yet to be evidence that losing weight prevents progression from pre-diabetes to T2DM beyond a year. Interestingly, drug companies are trying to persuade the medical world to start treating patients earlier and earlier. They are using the term “pre-diabetes” to sell their drugs (including Wegovy, a weight-loss drug). Surgeons are using it to sell weight loss surgery. Everyone’s a winner, right? Not patients. Especially fat patients.

Check out these articles:

Prediabetes: The epidemic that never was, and shouldn’t be

The war on ‘prediabetes' could be a boon for pharma—but is it good medicine?

Also - I love what Dr. Asher Larmie @fatdoctorUK has to say about T2DM and insulin resistance, so here's one of their threads I pulled from Twitter:

1️⃣ You can't prevent insulin resistance. It's coded in your DNA. It may be impacted by your environment. Studies have shown it has nothing to do with your BMI.

2️⃣ The term "pre-diabetes" is a PR stunt. The correct term is impaired glucose tolerance (or impaired fasting glucose) which is sometimes referred to as intermittent hyperglycemia. It does not predict T2DM. It is best ignored and tested for every 3-5yrs.

3️⃣ there is no evidence that losing weight prevents diabetes. That's because you can't reverse insulin resistance. You can possibly postpone it by 2yrs? Furthermore there is evidence that those who are fat at the time of diagnosis fair much better than those who are thin.

4️⃣ Weight loss does not reverse diabetes in the VAST majority of people. Those that do reverse it are usually thinner with recent onset T2DM and a low A1c. Only a tiny minority can sustain that over 2yrs. Weight loss does not improve A1c levels beyond 2 yrs either.

5️⃣ Weight loss in T2DM does not improve macrovascular or microvascular health outcomes beyond 2 years. In fact, weight loss in diabetics is associated with increased mortality and morbidity (although it is not clear why). Weight cycling is known to impacts A1c levels.

6️⃣ Weight GAIN does NOT increase the risk of cardiovascular OR all causes mortality in diabetics. In fact, one might even go so far as to say that it's better to be fat and diabetic than to be thin and diabetic.

Dr. Larmie cites 18 peer reviewed journal articles (most from the last decade) that are included in their webinar on the subject, linked below.

[jesse-pinko]

Every other aspect of Jesse’s trauma makes me go oh no poor blorbo :( but his relationship w his parents and thinking ab it in the context of the series aftermath actually makes me unwell… they never even knew him they only ever saw the worst in him and now they’ve had that validated by his own actions and they’ll never know how sorry he is and that he was a good kid at heart and they didn’t imagine it and they still love him but how can they have loved him if they never even knew him and only ever saw the worst in him *flatlines*

[thatswhatsushesaid]

i should know better than to wade into any political discourse on reddit, but lately i just haven't been able to stop myself because it's so obvious that the various canadian subreddits are being overrun with paid actors and bots. so when i spot what looks like a genuine post from someone who is trying in good faith to find out information (usually about emigrating to canada), i try to chime in with my two cents as an american who's been living here for a decade now

i'm not going to waste any energy being shocked over how lots of terminally online canadian redditors are responding to americans immigrants right now (because it is absolutely nothing compared to the flaming vitriolic shitshow immigrants from india and china specifically have been dealing with for years [to say nothing of anti-indigenous racism]), but i do have to say this kind of shit is actually pretty funny to me

crucial context: OP of this post (a gay american man) was just asking whether fluency in french was required for getting a job in canada (it isn't)--and the vast majority of the responses were just a bunch of people angrily saying "no, if you're american, we don't want you." in a move that even i now recognize as being a huge waste of my time and energy, i remarked that OP should ignore all the dingdongs telling them not to come here, because by and large most canadians he'll encounter in his day to day life will be perfectly nice and kind and won't have a problem with him. and then there's just. these guys.

answer me, reddit user barneyblasto, before i have no choice but to share the follow-up response i have prepared for you with a niche subset of a single danmei fandom on tumblr dot com instead

[osamucide]

do we talk enough about how atsushi and the weretiger and his character overall are a great metaphor for healing from trauma, specifically through community? i mean we meet him as this scared young adult who believes himself to be incapable and worthless. he doesn't even realize the manifestation of vengeance inside him or the fact that it's already lashed out and hurt people - in fact, he thinks he's running from this exact thing that lashes out, without realizing it is in fact himself. memory loss is a common trauma response, and when he does learn he's the weretiger, he's frightened by it and its capacity for harm. it's dazai and the agency who give him the opportunity to use his willpower for selflessness and help him to understand that he's not bad, he's just hurt. throughout the story we're watching him move from uncertain, insecure, overly-polite and meek to strong, assured, determined, and unabashed in his protectiveness over others (see kyoka). we see him go from paralyzed by his flashbacks to determined to dispel those misconceptions about himself. when higuchi corners him and the tanizakis in the alley early in season one, he still doesn't know how to summon the tiger, but it comes out after akutagawa's words (and also, debatably, watching naomi 'die' - just the stressful situation overall, perhaps) trigger a flashback - a really sound metaphor as manifestation for his trauma (stressful/triggering event = fight response). and while his is certainly not the most common or relatable circumstance to understand and heal from trauma under, the weretiger is so powerful metaphorically because ultimately, he uses his harnesses this destructive, disruptive, terrifying power for good. sometimes healing your trauma feels like inching close to this big, scary animal until it trusts you enough to touch and when you finally do, you realize the big, scary animal was also once just a hurt cub who needed a figure to tell it hey, you're not any of those things you think about yourself. (the imagery in the manga/anime/official art of atsushi sitting with the tiger, cradling it, petting it, etc. is so powerful to me for this reason)

it's another reason why akutagawa is such a good thematic parallel for him. akutagawa was not given this grace as a hurt child, by dazai specifically, and thus grew up into a hurt adult - and this also speaks to how complex of a character dazai is. these characters just play so well with one another and demonstrate such complex reactions to trauma, how it is cyclical, how that cycle can be broken, etc. and i just think it's really beautiful and refreshing for a mainstream anime to deal with themes like this

[so-many-ocs]

hey! creating things is hard. creating things and feeling like nothing you make is good, or like no one will care, or like you'll always be a couple steps behind everyone else is hard, too. creating consistently when your physical and/or mental state isn't the best is (get this!) also very difficult. and if anyone who's reading this has felt that way or still feels that way, i want you to know that i'm proud of you, and the things you make matter because you matter, and it's okay to sometimes feel like garbage as a creative, but it will pass. take the time and space you need and remember that just by virtue of trying, you are doing so well.

[kissthebridee]

if i ever stop talking abt this movie just know im either dead or have been hacked because oh my god. genuinely the most gorgeous movie ive ever seen.

[blaithnne]

I think my one complaint about Anders is that I wish we’d seen him leave of his own accord at least once. Unfortunately I doubt that would be possible due to time constraints but, I think if we’d gotten to see how Hilda was affected by him actually leaving and not being fairynapped it would have better shown what kind of person he is, and been a really good representation of what a lot of real kids go through. That moment where Hilda finally realised her Father abandoned her is so heartbreaking, raw, and real, and the fact that it’s later revealed he didn’t kind of undermines that.

I’m not against Anders changing for the better - it’s a kids show, and it makes sense they’d want to give him a character arch instead of just introducing him to be a dick lol. It also makes sense for his character to have nearly losing his entire family forever be a wake up call for him. But I wish we’d gotten more time with him, and really seen the effects of him leaving for real. Without that, we can generally assume that it had the same effect as him being kidnapped did in canon, but it’s just not the same.

I’m of the opinion that introducing Hilda’s dad as a concept was a good decision, and I don’t think it undermines the shows found family. It gives Hilda a relatable and realistic aspect to her that I think is important for kids in similar situations to see. I am, however, very biased in that regard.

My biological father was an asshole who fucked off before I was born, but I’ve had no absence of family or fatherly role models - I’m very close with my adoptive dad and my grandad. But that didn’t mean I never had questions, or insecurities.

It’s easy to look at fictional tropes and say that found family is clearly superior and biology doesn’t mean shit, and that’s true! But when you’re living in that reality, when you’re young and coming to terms with it for the first time, it’s hard. Especially when you’re surrounded by people who all have blood relations with their families, and when the person you’re related to is regarded as a dick. it really makes you feel isolated and like there’s something wrong with you, like you’re an outsider — you’re different.

Real life people are messy and have insecurities that defy reason, you might logically know that biology doesn’t matter, but when you’re thirteen and insecure and full of inner turmoil, you can’t help but feel bad.

Personally, as I got older, I met people in similar situations and realised I wasn’t alone, that it was okay to have those feelings but it didn’t make them true. But at that age, having grown up in a rural community, I really was alone.

Hilda’s insecurities in season 3 are a great representation of that, she feels like she’s never had a proper family, this thing with Frida, David, Tontu, Alfur and Johanna and Astrid is all new to her. You can tell her Father’s absence has hurt her, how she’s felt different and alone and like something was missing. Hilda defines her worth through her relationships with others, how she can help them make them happy, it destroyed her when she felt like she failed Frida, imagine how she feels about her father.

What I think season 3 was missing was for Hilda to realise that she doesn’t need Anders, and that her happiness isn’t reliant on him being there, I wish she’d had a tad more agency in the relationship, yk? She wants him to be in her life, and he’s going to make an effort now to do that, but she has a support system in place and will be perfectly fine without him. I wish the show had properly acknowledged that just because this is how things ended up, it wasn’t the only option — with or without Anders, Hilda would still have been happy with her family in the end, the fact that he’s a part of it is a nice bonus, but not an essential one.

In general, I think Anders is the best they could do with the time they were given. Having him be a realistic shitty dad who loves his daughter but is just so bad at it is relatable and realistic, though I wish they’d better emphasised that just because he loves hers that doesn’t make his actions okay (perhaps by slightly altering Johanna’s moment with Hilda at the end of The Job), because it’s clear, I think, as a diehard fan, but might not be for more casual viewers.

Having him be redeemable and stick around to do better is a good conclusion for his arch, it’s a happy ending all around and makes sense for the story - it could’ve been weird if they just had him show up and then immediately leave with zero resolution to his character, unless they made him an all out irredeemable abuser, which I think would’ve been worse than what we got. Portraying abusers as unforgivable and cartoonish villains only makes it harder for real life victims to recognise their situations, so if it couldn’t be portrayed properly (which thanks to time constraints and the overall narrative I don’t believe it could be) I’m glad they went with something else.

What we’ve got is, and I know I’ve said this many times lol, a realistic depiction of a crappy, absentee father, that young viewers can recognise and relate to. On that end, the biggest issues are Hilda’s lack of agency within their storyline, since she has no control in the resolution of their relationship, young people looking to this show for ways to cope with their own situations might be discouraged by the end resolution of “he decided to stick around”, since that resolution rests on his decision, not Hilda’s, if that makes sense.

TLDR; Overall, I think Anders’ was a good character and the best that could’ve been done with what the team was given, but,

A) I wish we’d gotten to see him leave of his own accord at least once, so that Hilda’s final realisation that he left her on purpose has more impact and doesn’t loose its meaning in retrospect, and,

B) That Hilda had more agency in the final resolution of their dynamic, that their happily ever after wasn’t entirely reliant on Anders swearing he won’t leave. An alternative solution, maybe presented earlier on in the season when he first left, that provided her with a coping mechanism/outlet in case he does, so that her happiness and mental health isn’t in his hands, would’ve been pretty neat.

[thetrinitytest]

huge shoutout to Big Finish and GDL for tearing my heart out through my throat and wringing it out like a towel

[kyouka-supremacy]

That fic from Akutagawa's pov that remarked how although Dazai had left a bomb under Chuuya's car, at least that showed he had thought about him before going, while he never cared enough to spare a thought for Akutagawa.

[blenselche]

requests are closed cuz my posts have taken a nosedive in engagement and if im gonna be demotivated im gonna be demotivated over stuff i want to draw organically ty

[katyspersonal]

Marika & Messmer are fascists but not the hornsent who chop people to small pieces and put them inside jars to achieve divinity because they believe they're "chosen" people and therefore superior to other races? Have you considered the possibility that sometimes both sides of a war can suck? This is why frenzied flame is the way🙏

Anon, I am going to scold you before I get to the topic because "have you considered [thing]" here should be reserved for a problem when someone is ignorant and in a bad, poor-taste way! Which I was not because obviously I "considered" this! You are referring to a silly post of me liveblogging how I got to Messmer, and so of course I addressed Messmer! I should not add long disclaimer about every other lore-relevant thing when I make a basically liveblog-ish remark to "demonstrate" that I do not let other culprits in the story "get away" either! 😣 For example recently I've been focusing on Fire Knights to express my hatred for religious purism, but later in another post about story of Abyssal Woods I've instead focused my vitriol on Hornsent Inquisitors! There is its own post and time for everything!

Okay back to the LORE with light heart now!! This is true of course that both sides are atrocious; the Hornsent basically pulled a mad cult crusade on the shamans, and very ironically long time after their folks were victims of also a religion-driven crusade! This is basically playing extermination ping-pong for generations and regardless of who "started it", none of the innocent people (children, those who disagree and simply belong to [race], distant descendants that did not DO anything etc) deserved to be exterminated by association.

To get more elaborate, one has to take into consideration just how long the conflict has been going on for, and everything else Marika has done besides the Crusade. The people being killed by Messmer's army are most likely generations apart from the people who hurt Marika's! I've mentioned that earlier where I questioned how Grandam and Hornsent (NPC) seem to not even know why Marika/Messmer went with war at them at ALL. Like, both are/were barbaric in their own way, but there's clearly a side that has suffered enough now. Like, this was such a disgusting conflict that even Marika, who was the one who had it ordered in the first place, felt the need to distance herself from it because it WAS the battle without glory or honor. There were the Hornsent, likely a cult or something, who murdered and mutilated the Shamans back in their time, but Marika was the one who started the war and kept it going even after it was clear that the Hornsent had lost, and ruined the lives of many people that weren't even part of the war in resistance like the Hornsent NPC! (One more nitpick about it is that her/Messmer's war was that of exterminating of all who have no Grace, as opposed to some insane idea on how to force them to be reborn to "join" her type of people hfhhhbhf)

Correct me here if I am wrong, but so far we can't know if ALL Hornsent accepted the practices of Bonny Village and their higher religious institution. The Greater Potentate Cookbooks that we find relating to hefty pots describe the author as having been "haunted by the grotesque practice of his village of birth". This guy didn't sound like he was very proud of what his people were doing, and it's coming from someone who was raised there! There's likely a lot of other Hornsent who found the practice just as disgusting, especially amongst those that didn't do it themselves, but we don't know that because most of them are dead and the ones who remain are understandably upset and distrustful of "our" kind!

🤔 It is also because of this why it's more reasonable to call the two leading figures of a cleansing war fascists than an entire race, because we can't just assume that ALL Hornsent are fascists just because their religious order and justice system is fucked up. We just don't have a key leader figure to redirect such sentiments towards, unlike with the Golden Order! Basically confirmed fascists are Marika, Messmer + Fire Knights + Black Knights + troops, various warriors and perfumers and what not who agreed to participate @ the Hornsent who are doing the potting, the Hornsent who did slaughter Marika's village, and remaining corrupt clerics leaders of the religion!

(On a side note, Frenzied Flame is definitely the answer but y'all shouldn't tell Melina on me hfjjchjgdh)

________

UPDATE 1 from July 4th that I wanted to add in the OG post instead:

I have nothing to add here, all of these are rather fair points! I am a little late with adding these screenshots but you've probably seen some more speculation on the Hornsent Inquisitors these couple of days by me and @val-of-the-north in my blog! Here if you missed these: ( x ) ( x ) The gist of it is that seems like Inquisitors are hunting their fellow Hornsent as heretics for serving the "impure" nobles, but regardless of whether it happened before Marika's mentioned "betrayal" or after, it is STILL horrible to harm people for association with those that didn't even do anything wrong :^)

Still applies that calling the whole race fascist doesn't work (heck, the Hornsent who choose to stand with Midra and Nanaya are confirmation of strong exceptions!), but the sentiment is certainly very strongly rooted culturally.

Sigh.. I am pretty sure there are people somewhere in the fandom that would fall into "hornsent deserved it" pit over this, too. Like "hey, even currently Hornsent culture is a rich soil for Shaman Villages 2.0 and 3.0 and 4.0 and so on to happen, so why not preventively exterminate an inherently dangerous culture?" (..if anyone here really thinks along these lines, please know that this is a dangerous line of thinking and you'll get ideologically groomed into excusing genocides before you know if you don't question what you're implying here) What they needed was more communication with other cultures and adopting more tolerant and humane principles. Seeing that various horn-ness species are just like them rather than sitting in the "we divine they filth" bubble if it is THAT bad. Maybe Marika even HAD the power to provide such change and bridge the gap while she was still a trusted figure to them during her "infiltration", and yet instead of putting and end to terrible traditions with careful planning and diplomacy, she chose the path of revenge..

Genuinely a depressing point to think about. And yes, absolutely doesn't do her a honor to choose ruin and hate.

________

UPDATE 2 from July 11th:

I also completely forgot to back it up that the fellow Hornsent were also facing execution through being stuffed in jars!

Yeah nah, definitely their people in power were so dangerous that should someone protest against the murder of Shamans and alike, they'd meet the same fate.. Having to swallow what your insane authorities do, with your own life in the line, is also something very real. This situation obscures the number of people who are against it from the superficial look.

I myself live in the country where people can't protest against the government unless they want to go to prison or face other dire consequences, so having to sit quietly for the sake of yourself and your own families for the outside world LOOKS like we don't care and ""'"agree""". :)))) Fun stuff. :') Here, anyone who would ask why Hornsent that disagree with their leaders don't express it would technically be in their right to do so, but most people will protect their own life first, especially if sacrificing it won't really avail anything. Again, Elden Ring is incredibly real with these topics. :')

[telesodalite]

Been thinking about idw1's outliers lately, and how sort of wild the whole concept is from a worldbuilding standpoint, and it struck me that most confirmed outlier abilities tend to be really useful, or flashy, or powerfully dangerous, and few to none tend to be like, really boring, or totally impractical, or even entirely useless? Which, doesn't really make sense when considering the fact that outlier abilities are seemingly random.

Surely not everyone who's born an outlier gets something useful?

And I don't mean like, "good" useful, but any sort of useful, even if that means you can kill people with your voice, or give a power boost by exploding yourself, those are still "useful".

But surely there had to be some with abilities that were totally impractical, or nonbeneficial, or at the very least just insignificant or purely aesthetic and pointless?

[calronhunt]

I'm really inspired by how you write complicated characters, so I was wondering if you have any advice you could share?

I make characters with the intention that I want to make comics with them, and I always find myself getting stuck on the worry that they will be misinterpreted by other people, which leads to me leaning further away from making the characters complicated and messy but then they are less enjoyable for me to write

A big one I'm stuck on right now is one of my characters who is used as an attack dog for another character essentially, and I know you have a few characters who have a similar thing going on, but I worry about the fact that some people might reduce it down to a "murder is bad" thing and not understand what I'm trying to get across with the character, especially with wanting his arc to be learning that he deserves a better life then that

But complicated characters in general are something I struggle to have confidence in writing, so if you have any advice in general for how you go about writing characters I would be interested in hearing

well Number One, you gotta not worry about how other people will perceive your character. no matter what you do, even if you, for lack of a better phrase, "dumb it down," people are going to misunderstand your character and what you're getting across. When you're writing the main audience you should be concerned with is yourself. Do you like how this character's arc goes? okay then go with that. Don't care about how you think others will perceive it. That often just makes you more petrified and scared to actually create anything and writing for a perceived backlash/misunderstanding is never a good thing. (and also anecdotally, I've found it harder to get across that "violence and murder is bad and fucks you up permanently" to my audience then the opposite lmaooo)

BUT yeah writing complicated characters is my favorite thing on the planet. What I often like to do is give character a mix of sympathetic traits and Objectively Bad Actions but with reasons to back up WHY they did that tie back into the sympathetic trait.

Ariel is a bad person. She's an awful mother, an awful partner to her wife, and self pitying as can all be. She's not abusive in any verbal or physical way, she's passive. She's neglectful. She's sad. She doesn't want to rock the status quo of the royal family at all. and she feels bad about all of this but she can't stop doing it. However, all of these aspects can be tied back to Ariel witnessing the assassination of her parents at 18, how young she had to take the throne, and all of the responsibilities she had pushed onto her. She married young and had children young bc the importance of continuing her line was pushed on her. She cheated on her wife bc she liked the small bit of freedom the man she saw offered her from all the things keeping her trapped in royalty. She neglects Raphael, the cheat child, bc she hates how much he looks like her and how he reminds her of all the mistakes in her life.

None of this is an excuse for Ariel's actions obviously. but it offers an explanation as to why she's made these choices. and that's kinda the core for complicated characters for me.

There are several characters that I have that are bad people, people who do objectively bad things, people who hurt others, characters who dig deeper and deeper into being a terrible person bc it's all they know how to do. But then I sit back and I think about their circumstances and their life and I think "Would I be any better if I was in their place." My characters like Mariner, Lain, Ericka, Lionel, Fate and Dry really hit that sweet spot for me.

[guujikaroko]

So Hoyoverse is just making characters based on me now, huh. They got Neuvillette out there crying for days on end and constantly apologizing and trying to be helpful and not understanding how people work or how should he talk to them but still genuinely wanting to, huh.

[mayrine]

If I see another person saying that Leo’s a girl I’m gonna start stabbing shit

I have seen so many “qsmp girls night💕” that included Leo BUT HES NOT A FUCKING GIRL ANDKAMWNSMSM

for anyone that somehow forgot or doesn’t know Leo uses she/he/they pronouns

They aren’t a girl for fucks sake

It genuinely makes me so man when people are like “the qsmp has such great representation!!” then just misgender Leo to hell

If you want to do a “girls night” drawing and you also want to include Leo you can I’m not saying it’s illegal. But PLEASE at least also add the other eggs that don’t go just by he/him pronouns

Again, for everyone that doesn’t know or forgot there are the eggs that go by multiple pronouns:

Leonarda/Leonardo- he/she/they

Dapper- any pronouns

Richarlyson- any pronouns

Tilin- they/he/she

HELL even Cucurucho goes by any pronouns

Btw all of the eggs and cc pronouns are on the wiki if you want to check for yourself

SO PLEASE I BEG YOU STOP SAYING THAT LEO IS A GIRL PLEASE

[gumy-shark]

oh yeah btw hey guys im back from hamilton i had fun at the hamilton