Every day I’m still getting notes on an old post where I said that eating healthier costs more money and of course every so often is another health zealot swearing I’m wrong.

EXCEPT:

one dollar at dollar tree

one dollar at mcdonald’s

A fucking quarter almost everywhere

And what these bozos aren’t factoring in is that these foods, loaded with salts and fats and carbs and sugars, are FILLING for a shitload longer than whatever colon cleansing non-GMO avocado unicorn poop some thinspo blog is bragging about. The box of oatmeal creme cookies even lasts more than a day, just two of those things and I have no appetite again for hours.

Personally we are eating better and making more money currently but when I was a kid it was all the above shit and potatoes. Lots and fucking lots of potatoes.

STOP FUCKING TELLING POOR PEOPLE THEY’RE STUPID FOR NOT EATING LIKE YOUR HIPSTER ORGANIC CRAP

Another thing they’re forgetting is food waste. Fresh produce only lasts so long. So to regularly eat fresh you have to 1) go grocery shopping more often and 2) have your meals planned out ahead of time to use everything.

When you only have $50 or less for food for the month, it’s devastating to see $10 worth of fresh produce rot. Especially if it’s because you just don’t have time to cook it. (Poor people usually juggle multiple jobs, work overtime, or work jobs with inconsistent schedules like retail or food services.) They don’t have time to run to the grocery store 3+ times a week, especially if they have to hit up multiple stores to get the cheap prices. They don’t have time to spend 1+ hour every week doing a meal plan. And they probably don’t have that much time or energy to cook.

When I was severely poor (like, we determined which bill to pay each month by how close they were to being shut off. “We paid water last month, so they won’t turn it off until next month. It’s been two months of electricity though, so we should probably pay that before we get a cutoff.) we did not buy fresh. All our veggies were canned, because they don’t spoil. We had lots of ramen, just in case we ran out of money and couldn’t buy groceries for a while. We didn’t buy meat unless we knew we would cook it that day because we didn’t want to see it spoil. We ate a lot of boxed meals. And when I was working 60+ hours a week, you can bet your ass I ate a lot of cheap packaged shit like little debbie. Because I didn’t have time to cook before my 12 hour work day, I only got 4 hours of sleep and I wasn’t sacrificing 30 minutes for a hot breakfast, and I couldn’t afford to eat out.

Anyone who says shit like this has never been poor. When you’re poor it’s not just money you’re lacking, but time, and resources, and mother fucking energy. It’s rough. And I wouldn’t be so quick to judge them if I were you, because the poor have been through more than you could ever understand.

remember when i said veganism was clasist & not an option 4 most of society n they were all in my inbox actin like typical vegans…. well there u go

This goes doubly for chronically ill or disabled poor people. There really isn’t time and energy to make each meal especially if you’re working. It’s damn near impossible.

It’s great if eating vegan or all fresh products or what not works for you but keep in mind it won’t work for everyone.

I work at a daycare with infants.

One of our baby girls is fat, in the 99th percentile for her age. She is super cute and sweet. Lately, she has been sick with various breathing issues, so she has been reluctant to take her bottles. Normally, she’ll take 4 ounces of formula at lunch and 8 ounces in the afternoon. Today, I was lucky to get to her take 5 all day.

There was a substitute covering a lunch break in my classroom today. We emphasized to her that we need to keep trying to get the baby to drink her bottle until she finished it. She said, “Why are you guys so worried about taking her bottle?”

My coworker replied, “That’s where all her nutrients are. She needs the nutrients and the water.”

To which the substitute replied, “But she’s so fat. She doesn’t need it.”

Thin privilege is a small, pretty baby getting better childcare because the caretaker doesn’t think she’s too fat to be allowed to eat.

This reminds me of a cousin of mine who ended up with her kids being taken away from her by social services for a number of reasons but mostly for nearly killing her baby daughter. How?

By starving her. She insisted that her baby was ‘too fat’ and had an aim to remove any and all ‘chubbyness’ so her baby would be thin. She’d already been warned by her doctor about the baby not getting enough food, but insisted she knew best.

After several months of this her baby passed out cold one day and was rushed into hospital where the doctors found her to have severe malnutrition, a low body temperature and low pulse rate. They asked my cousin what she’d been feeding her daughter and she said “one bottle of skimmed milk a day. I don’t want her growing up fat.”

Even after nearly killing her daughter my cousin maintained her view that fat = bad and ended up with all her kids taken from her because she was starving them and neglecting them.

When your fatphobia leads you to starving your own children then you’ve got serious problems.

(Note. She still, to this day, maintains the view that she was right and the doctors were wrong. “They just want fat kids so they can keep employed treating them for all those diseases that being fat causes.” = her actual words.)

My mom had me dieting with her when I was eleven. She had me eating less than 600 calories a day because she was worried I was going to “get huge.” She even grounded me once because she found out my friends were bringing me lunches! I ended up passing out, going to the ER, and getting two IVs at once BC I was so goddamn dehydrated. Soooooo surprised they didn’t call child services… And looking back, this was the root of my anorexia. I’m nearly 22 and still fighting it. Please don’t starve your fucking children.

For fucks sake babies are SUPPOSED to be fat, what is wrong with people? It’s just stored energy, and growing children need stored energy - an 11 year old is just about to hit some major growing years. Damn. 

Fatphobia

Is

Real

and it kills

This is no joke. people will literally starve their own babies cause they don’t want them getting fat. A parent brought in their six month old baby who was having breathing issues and kept getting sick. the parent was asked if the baby was eating regularly and the parent straight up told the doctor that they only feed the baby once a day. ONCE A DAY. A FUCKING BABY. they even had the nerve to say because they didn’t want the baby to get fat. people like this are real. they would rather have a dead baby than a fat one.

My youngest son is a very big boy and has been since he was born. When he was 10 months old I took him for his well-baby check and vaccinations. The nurse noted his weight and said, quite casually, “He is in the 99th percentile for weight so he is at risk for obesity. You may want to keep an eye on that.” I said, “He is exclusively breastfed. He refuses to eat any solids yet.” What did she expect me to do? What would it mean to “keep an eye on” an exclusively breastfed baby’s weight? 

She backed off saying, ‘Well he looks fine!” – proving once again that weight bias is not truly about health – But I know many other parents who are not as informed as I am about weight science and size diversity would react to this interaction by policing their child’s food intake, if not as an infant, then when he was an older child. This is exactly the type of seemingly-inconsequential interaction that starts the ball rolling on a lifetime of dieting, disordered eating, negative body image, and weight-based abuse for too many fat people.

Years later when he was five, another doctor measured his weight and height and commented that he is off the charts on both, but “at least he is in proportion.” And if he was not “in proportion,” I am sure I would have been advised once again to “watch his weight.” 

I no longer allow healthcare providers to weight my children unless it is absolutely medically necessary. They are unable to control their weight talk, which is a known harm for children.

We need to completely eliminate weight talk from medicine, especially when it comes to children. Even the smallest exposure can have terrible consequences.

Wtf…

A friend from college had been going to the doctor because she was having trouble breathing. She was told to lose weight. Over the course of several years, she went back to the doctors time and time again, telling them that she’d been sticking to the diet but because of her breathing problems she had been unable to even walk for more than 20 minutes at a time. The doctor got her into an exercise programme and told her that she just needed to really try to lose weight because that was clearly the reason for her breathing problems. By the time they found the tumour on her lungs, it was inoperable. She only lived three months after diagnosis. She was 25. She’d had the tumour for over five years. The doctor was so focused on the fact that my friend was “fat”, that they refused to look for any underlying cause. They killed her.

Weight-first treatment KILLS. Fatphobia KILLS.

I have 2 scary stories to share about fatphobic doctors & parents harming their childs/patients’ health:

1. The 4 years old daughter of a friend of mine came to our house to spend the weekend. She gave me a letter from her mom that said that the child was in a glutenfree diet because she was getting ‘awfully fat’ when eating cookies or bread (my celiac ass; who gets dhiarrea and loses a scary amount of weight whenever I eat something with gluten was like ’???’).

You can bet that I went to the supermarket with the kid and told her ‘go & take whatever you feel like eating’ and the poor child came back smiling with her arms full of biscuits and cupcakes.

She didn’t got sick (as a celiac would get) and told me later that she hated the diet her mother made her follow; because her cousins didn’t had to pass through that.

And what’s the scariest thing about this story? Her mother was a NURSE. A fucking nurse who didn’t have a clue of the harm that she was doing to her daughter’s body!

2. My little sister started to feel fatigued and dizzy at 9 years old. She felt nauseated at the sight of food and had abdominal pain that increased with physical activity.

Mom got her to the ER and the doctor dismissed it saying: ‘she’s fat and probably is feeling ill after eating too much burgers, get her to make some exercise and she will be better in no time’.My mom didn’t felt ok with the diagnosis and took my sister with a second doctor who also told her that ‘the child was just fat’.

My sister’s skin was starting to get yellow as the days passed and the abdominal pain was getting awful so my mom (heaven bless her!) got her to the ER for the third time:

SHE HAD STAGE 4 HEPATITIS AND WAS ABOUT TO DIE.

She survived after a long and painful recovery who involved being in bed for a whole year (remember that we’re speaking of a 9 years old child). Luckily they saved her liver and she didn’t went through a transplant… but let this sink:

If it weren’t for my mother, fatphobia would have killed her. Fatphobia kills kids and teenagers, fatphobia kills inocent people everyday. It treats human beings as lesser than others and hurts them in their most vulnerable times.

It’s a real shame that we all have so much stories to share about this issue. A REAL SHAME.

I had a doctor actually tell me that I had carpal tunnel because i was fat and not because I draw for hours and hours. I also had a doctor laugh when I told her that I thought I had thyroid problems and heard her in the hallway laughing about how i’m just fat to her nurses. well it turns out I have very bad thyroid problems and need medication and monthly checks. I’ve also had therapists try and tell me my self esteem problems were because i’m fat. I’m too afraid to get a sleep study done because i’m afraid they’ll just say i’m fat and that’s why i can’t breathe at night. doctors are awful and i have panic attacks when I have to go to one. I’ve only ever had one doctor out of many who never said anything about my weight.

Knowledge to be armed with: There is only ONE study that EVER claimed to show a causative link between fat and sleep apnea and it was found and admitted to having been completely falsified. The author retracted the study and accepted censure. There IS a correlation between fatness and sleep apnea… and plenty of evidence that poor sleep can disturb the metabolism and cause weight gain.

-MG

On the note of ugly Good Omens covers, I present to you: the Japanese edition of Good Omens, featuring our beloved characters, octopus and lobster.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen these before. Good lord.

Just slightly related, but these covers remind me of something.

Have you ever seen the first Indonesian cover of Neverwhere? It’s literally my favourite book cover of all time. I have to take a photo of my own dog-eared copy because I can’t find a good picture of it anywhere on the internet. This is actually my second copy because I lost my first one. I’m lucky that I still got this cover because later prints got a much more minimalistic and much less interesting cover, which is a shame. This cover was the thing that made me buy the book and introduced me to Neil Gaiman in the first place.

So many covers all over the world.

A huge and ancient dragon loses her clutch of eggs.  She decides to adopt an office building full of employees as her children.  But to keep them safe, she doesn’t want to let any of them leave.

“Mighty Opiess, Destroyer of Kingdoms, pl-”

“Mom.”

“Uhh…..right. Mom. Um, so I have to get back home. I’ve got three kids who need dinner and I really think I should..go….back………why are you crying?”

“Grandbabies!!”

her business children earn money and she is very proud of all of them

Yo, @gnomerino

@bairnsidhe

Adding it to my list @quadradaz.

honestly kingdom hearts plays like a dnd game that got really outta hand

dm: im gonna let yall visit disney worlds in this homebrew.

player: can we use final fantasy too??

dm: i mean i guess?

player: I want to be goofy

dm: i mean, strange request but i guess i can homebrew up a race sheet for goofy. is he a dog? i mean-

other player: I WANT TO BE DONALD DUCK BUT LIKE, A WIZARD, AND NO PANTS

other 3 players: create serious rpg characters with linked backstories and shared motivations based on their home island

dm: what the fuck guys

Really, though. If your response to Nazi’s marching is to blame the left, or blame minority groups, or anything other than Nazi’s and those who embolden them, then stay the fuck away from me.

The “both sides are wrong” shit doesn’t fly here.

Stop acting like Nazis are a reaction to minorities sticking up for themselves, stop pretending racism is a new thing.

in wake of the Charlottesville nazi shit, if you think that white people are superior even by just a little bit go ahead and hit that unfollow button.

“you’re an art model does that mean you’re NAKED?” “yeah” “whoa….those lucky artists ;)”

…buddy.

idk who started the idea that life drawing classes have anything sexy going on like. there’s at least ten people in the room and we’re all tired and covered in charcoal.

the dude in front who’s staring at my boobs has been trying to get the shading right for 10 minutes. he’s almost out of paint. he is crying.

#this ain’t some avant-garde titanic poly romance it’s a bunch of individual sinking ships and one uncaring human-shaped ice burg

The ice burg being frozen solid because there are NEVER ENOUGH SPACE HEATERS.

I was an artist’s model in uni since it paid better than any other student work position. Did a life drawing class one semester, despite it being an unheated old building in the winter evenings, because the instructor was a decent fellow who always had extra space heaters. So there I am one evening, exhausted from my team’s afternoon practice, but I’m in a comfortable position on a padded stool, ready to hold the position for like fifteen minutes. Space heaters all around me, spotlights on me to get shadows in interesting places.

Beyond the red glow of the heaters and the hot-white of the spotlights, the massive drafty room is dark and quiet, broken only by the instructor’s whispers and the scratch of charcoal on paper. Me, I’m just dozing, ‘cause my ancient dorm was heated with creaky old steampipes that never really got warm, and with the new extra-powered space heater alongside the others, that night was the warmest I’d been in a month. I dozed, basking in the glorious warmth.

And then I fell asleep.

And then I fell off the stool.

I woke up rather abruptly on the cold wooden platform, and looked up to see an entire ring of terrified and worried faces around me. Everyone had their hands up, ready to help me up, except no one had touched me. Naked chick laid out face-down on the floor, and all the men and women were suddenly acutely aware they couldn’t just grab a half-asleep dazed naked chick.

Fortunately someone had the bright idea to tear the sheet down from the backdrop, lay it over me as a wrap, and then everyone was quick to help me up.

After that, the instructor and students got used to taking turns talking to me, just to make sure I wasn’t dozing off. Which was weird, at first, because I’d done two semesters just being a silent prop, and now I was interacting. It gave the class a vibe completely unlike any other I’d modeled for, and it ended up one of my favorite modeling experiences. 

postscript: months later, walking on campus with someone who’d eventually become my spouse, we passed some guys on the main path. One of them stopped, peered at me, and then said hello, excitedly, saying, “sorry, I didn’t recognize you, I’ve never seen you with your clothes on!”

This is honestly so delightful and accurate 

The only situation where saying “I’ve never seen you with your clothes on” is a completely normal thing to say.

Yuuri & Victor wearing Cowboy Bebop shirts commission for @purpleravenlily :) Available on Redbubble

How a real President responds

Take Your Gatekeeping and Shove It.

So, this past weekend, I took my 11-year-old daughter to SuperCon to meet her favorite actor (and favorite Doctor), Peter Capaldi.

She wore a little blue TARDIS-decorated dress and some Doctor Who pins, and she nearly cried with joy when Capaldi greeted her for the photo op. He was a consummate gentleman and such a sweet and enthusiastic person.

An hour or so after the wonderful photo op experience, she and I were sitting at a table in the food court area.

A burly, older man plopped down nearby.  He looked at my little girl’s outfit, smiled, and said, “Do you even KNOW anything about Doctor Who?”

WTF, dude?

I was too stunned for a second to even respond, so he started right in with the ‘quizzing.’

“Who are the Doctor’s biggest enemies, and what planet does he come from?” this stranger asked.

Now I had moved past shocked and right into indignant/angry/protective mode.

“I don’t want her to be quizzed on something she loves, because I don’t want her thinking she has to prove ANYthing in order to be a fan,“ I told him.

Looking at my daughter, I said “You don’t owe strangers explanations or information, ok?“  She said OK and looked relieved.

Still he pressed on, patronizing grin and all: “Oh, I just want to be sure parents are raising their kids right.” Then he turned to my daughter again and asked “Who was the first Doctor, then?”

I cut him off right there. “No. I don’t want her quizzed. At all.”

Dude blinked in disbelief, sighed, and left about a minute later.

“Thanks,” my daughter said. “He was making me feel awkward.”

I held her hand and looked into her eyes. “Some men think they can have power over you by making you prove yourself. You never have to do it. They’re just insecure and pitiful, so they want to make you feel like it, too.  It’s not only about fan stuff, and it’s not always just men, but be careful not to fall into that trap, ok?”

That crap isn’t harmless fun. It sets up a pattern of approval-seeking, self-justification, self-doubt, and fear of exclusion that is very dangerous for children (particularly girls).

Fuck that.

TL;DR:  Do NOT come at me, my little girl, or anyone in my vicinity with your condescending, gatekeeping bullshit.

The next time, I won’t make the mistake of even TRYING to be polite.

Fuck fandom gatekeepers.

thoughts on the friendzone

when i was 5 years old my best friend was a boy named kyle who didn’t know how to knock on doors so he made dinosaur noises outside my window to wake me up in the summer until i demonstrated how to ball his fists and slam them against my doors.  we collected caterpillars in my trailer park and built them houses while we traded pokemon cards.  he wasn’t the only one.  there was ben, and mitch, and noah—but kyle’s the only one who hurt me, because when he tried to kiss me and i asked him why, he told me “because you’re a girl and i’m a boy, shouldn’t we like each other?”

i missed him so much and i wondered why he couldn’t just be my friend like he always was

in the first grade there was rich and joseph and i got sent to detention with them almost every day with a smile on my face.  we built block towers and sang to my teacher’s lion king soundtracks when she’d turn the lights off during lunch time.  one day they got in a fist fight over me at recess, and i wondered why they felt they needed to share my friendship, like it was something they owned.

in the second grade zach and i played yu gi oh under our desks during free time and i got moved for talking to him constantly.  everyone in the class would tease him and i for talking, asking when we were going to date already, asking him if he’d kissed me, and he stopped being my friend.

when i was 11 i met a chubby boy with the name of a colour who wore puffy vests and unwashed t-shirts, with greasy hair and bright blue eyes and a smile that hid hurt behind it.  people didn’t like him because he was silly, but i liked him, because i was also silly.  he became my friend the day he bought me 5 giant roses and asked me to be his girlfriend, and i politely declined but promised him i’d be his best friend because i’d always wanted a best guy friend that stuck around. we burnt our feet on the concrete during the summer and walked home with the sunset silhouetting us.  he talked often about how he loved me, but never blamed me for being me, even though he refused to move on. that boy dyed his hair jet black and sat on the end of my bed playing songs to me on guitar, and all that pent up rage from before didn’t show until the first time he slapped me across the face and called me a dumb cunt.

in the 7th grade there was a boy named ryan who sat next to me on the bus and talked to me about manga.  he’d ask me personal invasive questions but i didn’t mind because it was attention and i liked attention.  i was dating another guitarist with curly brown hair, one who was much more kind-tempered than the other, and ryan mentioned how much of an asshole he was every day.  i wondered, why, why does he think the love of my life is an asshole?  but whenever i asked him, he just told me, “girls only date assholes.  there’s no room for nice guys like me.”

i wondered, if he was so nice, why did he say such mean things?

he never stopped with me, taking me to movies, hanging out with me, you know.  being friendly.  i thought we were friends.  but then, how many times had i thought that before?

how many times had i bonded with a boy, thought they got me, only for them to ask me if i wanted to make out?

how come when i told ryan i was coming out as a lesbian, he stopped being my friend, and said “damnit, the one girl i really want to pound into a mattress, and she’s only interested in chicks!”

there was a boy my junior year who stayed up all night with me until the sun rose, talking about life, past loves, hopes, dreams.  beneath a million twinkling stars spanning forever, he brushed long brown hair out of his eyes and listened to me talk about the history that made me. then he asked me if i’d ever consider dating a guy, and complained about how he’d never get laid.

when i told him no a couple hundred times, he found new girls to listen to.

i would sit on the couch and play zelda with dakota, and he’d talk about all my favourite games with me.  he was the closest thing to support i had, and the letters and poems he wrote me were always so kind and friendly.  but he’d put his arms around me on the couch, and no matter how many times i told him i was uncomfortable, he’d still come over every day and do it.

“don’t you know how it feels to love someone and not have them love you back?  don’t you know what it feels like to be friendzoned?”

when i meet guys who talk about the friendzone, who talk about the girls who don’t give “nice guys” like them i chance, i always want to just say

when i was 10 years old i met a girl whose brown hair fell across her shoulders and whos eyes sparkled when the sunlight hit them, whose voice was like velvet and whose scent was like mountain smoke, who made me dizzier than a fly climbing a sugar hill.  and i’m 18 years old, and i still love her, and she knows, and she doesn’t love me.

but my first thoughts upon hearing her rejection were not “what a bitch,” were not “she just wants a douchebag and not a nice girl like me!” were not “im going to keep pushing her until she dates me,”

they were

“she is the best friend i have ever had, and i am the best she’s ever had, and i would hate to take that away from her.”

so before you play the victim, mr. Nice Guy, before you angrily throw your fedora on the ground and blame the girl you claim to adore so much:

put yourself in the shoes of a girl who thought she made a wonderful friend, only to find out that he just wanted her for sex.  that he just wanted her for a relationship.  a girl who was just an object to win, a prize.  a girl who’s trust you’ve just shattered.

maybe she friendzoned you.  but you girlfriendzoned her, first.

I am clapping for this, you just can’t see it.

okay honestly wow I’m oh my god just

GIRLFRIENDZONED!! OH MY GOD YES

a quick reminder, not that there are many people who’ll see this:

sometimes someone won’t reblog a post that says something like “reblog if X matters to you” or “if you won’t reblog this bc it doesn’t fit your blog, unfollow me” or similar posts because the post is guilt tripping and they know that sort of thing either a) sets off their own anxiety, or b) sets off the anxiety of people following them.  Or because it’s a social media post that they are actually under no obligation to share even if they agree with it.

obviously there are certain issues, like when someone reblogs a lot of social justice stuff from you but never anything about one particular topic (i see this a lot with posts about antisemitism, from a lot of the jumblr people i follow), but in general, don’t assume someone is taking some sort of stance just because they didn’t reblog one particular post.

this psa brought to you by i don’t mind when the blogs i follow reblog stuff like that, but i almost never will bc i know it sets off people’s anxiety and i disagree with the guilt tripping tone most of them take.

The only time I will even CONSIDER reblogging a post that guilt trips the reader to do so is if it has especially useful information that I have verified and that isn't readily available to blog from another source...but then I'll probably just write my own if I can. Guilt trip posts are not ok.

How to Kill a Campaign Before It Starts

 (Not actually one that happened to me, but being submitted with the blessing of a player involved who doesn’t get online much (Player 2, in this case).  This was the character generation session for a D&D 3.5 campaign.  This was back around 2004 or so, so there’ll probably be a bit of paraphrasing.)

Player 1:  *After rolling stats.*  Do you allow mulligans at all?

DM:  Nope.  What you roll is what you get.

Player 1:  Normally I have no problem with that, but you may want to make an exception, here.  *Shows rolls to DM.*

DM:  *Looks at rolls, shrugs.*  That’ll suck.

Player 1:  *Puts sheet with his rolls in the middle of the table, collects his dice, and stands.*  Well, maybe I’ll get to play with y’all some other time, hopefully under a DM who’s more reasonable.  *Walks out.*

Player 2:  *Picks up sheet, jaw drops.*  Dude, his highest roll was a nine!

DM:  Yeah, your point?

Player 2:  You know what, fuck this.  I’m not dealing this kind of bullshit.  *Stands.*

Player 3:  If [Player 2]’s out, I’m out.  He’s my ride, he’s the only way I can get here.

Player 4:  *While Players 2 and 3 collect their gaming equipment.*  Fuck no!  I am not soloing this shit!

 (The DM just sort of stared and sputtered while all four players walked out before even getting as far as picking out feats or skills.  From what I’ve been told, he still thinks the players were being unreasonable.)

Patty Jenkins, on including Steve Trevor in a Wonder Woman film (via hohomylad)