So this is a totally useless rant, but as a skinny girl, I’m getting extra, extra tired of fat-shaming.
I work for a corsetier at a Renaissance Faire. We sell corsets. Not flimsy bullshit costume corsets; like real, durable, waist-training corsets. Today a woman came in with her boyfriend, so I helped her pick out a corset and try it on. While her boyfriend—who was decidedly enthused about the whole corset thing—sat watching me lace her in, he told me, grinning, “Of all the good jobs at the Renaissance Faire, I think you have the best.”
I shrugged in agreement. “I touch butts and reach down cleavage all day; I mean…” Because we like to be a bit rakish at the Faire, and, y’know, it’s true. Tying people into corsets pretty much invariably requires getting handsy.
The couple laughed at that, and the boyfriend said, “That’s the job I would want!” But then he chuckled again and said, offhand, “Or maybe not; while we were looking at the racks, there were some pretty big sizes on there!”
Our sizes are all done in inches, and the biggest we make is a 46. And you’d better believe our large sizes sell. For a second I wasn’t sure what to say to the guy’s comment, but I answered him casually. “We get a lot of beautiful big ladies in here.” Because we do. “We make corsets for real women, not Barbie dolls,” I added. Wasn’t trying to be smart, just kind of tossed it out there because that’s the line we like to use when people ask about larger sizes, and because, again, we do.
The boyfriend went quiet at that; I didn’t think anything of it, I just kept on lacing. A moment later, he said, a little awkwardly (but sincerely enough), “Didn’t mean to be offensive.”
I quickly smiled and brushed it off, said he wasn’t, said I was just saying. (Don’t want to make the customers uncomfortable, you know?) And that was the end of it. His comment had rubbed me the wrong way, but it wasn’t a big deal. Now, I wear a 20-inch corset. I’m a few cup sizes short of being one of the Barbie dolls. Like his girlfriend, I’m one of the “hot chicks”; he doesn’t have to worry about offending me by implying that I wouldn’t be fun to poke and pull at.
Honestly though, of all the people I fit sexy technically-undergarments to in a day, fat girls are maybe my favorite people to lace up. Because they are just so damn happy that we have stuff that fits them. They are so damn happy that the corsets we make in their sizes are all the same pretty, shiny colors and cool flower/dragon/skull/etc. prints that the smaller corsets are, not ugly beige and boring “granny” colors. They are so goddamn happy that at least one (of several on the grounds) corset shop carries things that they can wear, that they actually want to wear, and that they look fucking awesome in. This is only my second season working, and we’ve fit 60+ inch waists and double-K busts. The only people we’ve ever had to tell sorry, we don’t have anything that fits them, are twelve-year-old kids.
It’s half-wonderful, half-heartbreaking how excited those women get. Women who say with sad smiles, when we ask if they want to get fitted, “Oh, no, you don’t have anything that fits me,” and then are stunned when we’re 300% confident that yes we do, and we have options. Women who can’t stop smiling and looking at themselves in the mirror after we’ve got them laced in.
I had a lady last week whose waist I measured (cinching the tape tight, as per procedure) at 41 inches—honestly not all that big. So she picked out a 41-inch corset to try on. I could tell halfway through getting her laced that it was going to be a bit big for her, so I mentioned it and said she might do better to try a smaller size. She started crying on the spot. She was so overwhelmed; she couldn’t believe someone had just told her that a 41 was too big. She told me about how hard clothes shopping was for her, how her mother would tell her she needed an XXXL instead of an XXL, how she had recently lost weight but still couldn’t wear certain colors because they didn’t fit or she wasn’t confident enough.
She did end up getting her corset, and after I checked her out she asked if she could give me a hug, so we ended up standing there hugging each other for a minute. While we did, I told her, “Do not ever let anyone tell you any bullshit. You are gorgeous.” She said, “I have a new boyfriend and he keeps telling me that.” I told her he was right, and to just keep telling herself she’s gorgeous; it was okay if she didn’t always believe it, but to keep telling herself anyway. (That’s how I talked myself through shit when I had bad anxiety.)
We all know fat-shaming is bad. The stupidity, fatphobia, and misogyny of it has pissed me off since I first became aware of it. But working with clothing, especially as figure-hugging and precise as corsets, has given me a new perspective on it—how much it affects people and just how shitty it is. Like, what does it say that I had a grown, only average-big woman crying into my shoulder because she was so overjoyed not to be the uppermost extremity of what a manufacturer can clothe?
My job rocks and it’s really rewarding, but sometimes it highlights some of the ugliest shit about society. I’m so glad I work at a shop that’s not bullshit about body types and operates with more people in mind than just scrawny white chicks like me. The fat women I work with are a ton of fun to lace up, and they’re so much more than their size—they’re cool, they’re smart, they’re funny, they’re sweet, they’re great to talk to, and yes, they’re hot. I’m so damn done with them getting short-changed and shamed by petty fucks who refuse to make them nice clothes, who refuse to even try to work for them, who refuse to consider them pretty. This whole rant was useless and won’t get read, but I had to vent because it’s been driving me nuts.
So actually, screw you, random dude. Fat girls are the highlight of my job.
If my reblogs start showing up with swear replacements in brackets, please forgive me. Eldest has gotten good enough at reading that he now comes up behind me and reads Tumblr over my shoulder. So I’m censoring it.
I don’t know why this is surprising, I mean if the young adult genre can sell thousands and thousands of the exact same girl-meets-vampire story, then I can definitely spend fifteen years reading basically the same hurt/comfort Sirius/Remus fic over and over again, FOR FREE.
One of the greatest gift authours can offer to fandom:
Coming in late, when the early excitement has died down, and writing the exact same plot with NEW WORDS. Fans are dying, by that point. We’ve reread our favourites a dozen times. We’ve even read the mediocre fic a time or two. It feels like our fandom is dying. And then someone comes in and lets us read our favourites again FOR THE FIRST TIME!
So like, in the Incredibles universe we know that baby supers begin displaying powers at an extremely young age, hence why Jack-Jack is a literal baby and is a “late bloomer”. And like I think people have already thought of the obvious comedy of Dash as a baby, but imagine Violet.
You’re first time parents and your baby just /disappears/ sometimes.
Your baby puts force fields around herself to avoid eating vegetables.
Obviously her clothes don’t turn invisible, but seeing as kids have a biological urge to strip naked in public places anyway, your toddler quickly learns if she takes her clothes off she is 100% undetectable.
And then when you find her, you still have a naked child.
Imagine turning around to a pile of clothes on the floor and your child /gone/
Anyways, Violet must have been the perfect chaotic nightmare child and I love her with all my heart.
Well! My story “The Thing in the Walls Wants Your Small Change” made it only the Nebula reading list! This has never happened to me before, I am amaze.
This is amazing! Tears in my ears and bouncy with joy, right now. I love that little comic/picture, but the things you did with it! The way you built a whole set of characters out of the littlest interactions! The worldbuilding!
that is. a question guaranteed to start at least three nasty fights at any herpetology conference, but gila monsters and mexican beaded lizards are closely related and truly venomous.
there’s a lot of contention about the monitor lizard family, which seems to have some venom also but. there is debate.
Ah yes, SO MUCH ARGUING. In the 20 years I’ve been in love with komodos, scientists have changed their minds SO MANY times.
I am excited to see the new Previous Scientists Are Idiots articles, Bunjy! As of 2009, they’d gone back to “We Have PROVEN There Is Venom!” I hadn’t heard that they’d disproved it a second (third? nth?) time!
We Think It’s Bacteria That They Share With Eachother! – 2010 Journal Paper
you asked for it, so have this entire open can of worms! (yuck!) most of the sources I used for this article were reactions to the 2009 study by the rest of the herpetology community. STAND BY FOR SCIENCE SLAPFIGHTS, A LOT OF PEOPLE WITH DOCTORATES ARE GOING TO CALL EACH OTHER NAMES.
personally, I’m more inclined to go with the “it just mauls you to death, stupid.” crowd, as Komodo Dragons are not known to bite prey and wait for it to die like a venomous animal does. instead, they just violently maul it to death it in one go like a lion or a wolf. the actual animal’s behavior just doesn’t match up with the venom thing at all.
I was in charge of feeding the prisoners. This had been my task since the Queen had taken me and 2 dozen other Murania as hostages. The others had not survived long, but I adapted. Obeyed.
The Queen had taken a human. A rare being this far into the Deep, but one feared from one end of the galaxy to the other. According to the Encyclopedia of Sentient Beings Capable of Space Travel, humans needed a diet of roughly 2000 calories a sol served in traditional 3 portions a sol. Which meant that I had to approach the human three times a sol. I could not fail my duties.
The first attempt at feeding the large being ended with a tray thrown at my head with enough force that it would have caved my skull if I had not ducked in time. The human was raging, slamming their entire body against the containment bars with enough force to shake the floor and… and roaring. I cleaned the mess of nutrient paste as fast as I could and fled.
But five hours later found me trembling in front of the human’s cage with another tray of nutrient paste. The human had calmed and was glaring at me intently. I knew they did not speak Murania, but still I spoke my native language as I offered the food again. I did not get to speak it often and missed the sound. “Guria?”
The human tilted their head and to my shock, repeated the word, then repeated it again until they mimicked the sound perfectly, even with the slight whistle at the end.
I offered the tray. “Guria.”
They eyed it suspiciously so I tasted it, showing it to be safe. “Guria.”
They held their hand out and I gave them the tray, scuttling to a safe corner before they could attack me with it again.
They tilted their head again and scowled, then spoke in broken Common. “I thank”
I fled, claws scratching against the shiny floor.
Another five hours passed all too soon and I was back at the human’s cage with the final meal of the sol. They were moving slowly around the cage with their ear pressed to the wall, tapping with their knuckles. I watched them for a moment, confused at the erratic behaviour, but only managed a few seconds of observation before their head swiveled directly towards me and they stopped to face me.
I walked closer and offered the tray. “Guria.”
They took it. “How talk thank in you mouth talk?”
“Meesh Meesh.”
They opened their mouth and let out a loud, short bark, a laugh according to the ESBCST. (I studied it dutifully when they were brought aboard.) “Meesh Meesh!” They pointed to themselves. “Michael.”
My wings ruffled, the sound was so similar! I pointed to myself, “Mikel”
The human shook their head and pointed to themselves. “Me Michael.”
I jerked my head in an upward motion called a nod. “Yes, you,’ I pointed to them, “Michael.” I pointed to myself. “I, Mikel.”
They laughed again. “Michael, Mikel. Much same.”
I chittered. “Very similar, yes.”
Their eyes narrowed. “You work here?”
I bobbed sideways, a bit noncommittal, “As I must.”
“Must work?”
I searched for the simplest way to translate what I meant across the language barrier. “No work, in there.” I pointed to their cage. “Work, out here.” I hopped encouragingly. “You work soon, yes?”
The human bared their teeth and snarled. “No work. Fight.”
My wings flattened against my spine and I fled. Humans were so aggressive.
The next sol I completed my first duties and then found myself lingering outside the containment hall. I was apprehensive about what mood I would find the human in this time. I fluffed my wings out to convey confidence and clicked in with the human’s first meal.
“Mikel! Guria?” They were bouncing on the front part of their feet, hopping up and touching the ceiling, then dropping to the floor and pushing themselves up with their arms repeatedly.
“Yes. What are you doing?” I slid the tray to where they could reach and backed to a… well not safe but safer, distance.
“Work body. Stay strong.” They flopped over onto their back and turned their head to look at me. “Meesh Meesh.”
“Zuan.” I bobbed sideways before deciding to ask them the question I had been mulling over. “You’re Nice, mean, nice, mean.”
Michael laughed. “Yeah. Head bad.” They hooked their fingers like claws and shook them around their head. “Scare, tired, Fight.” They gestured to the bars and glared. “Not like.”
I nodded. “I know that feeling.” A chime sounded, signaling the Queen’s approach. I flattened myself to the floor and made way.
The Queen slithered in, her scaled body scraping against the floor with a sound that made my feathers stand up. She reared to her full two meter height and flicked her tongue out to taste the air.
“Human. You are mine now, you will serve the glory of me.”
Michael looked her up and down and whistled lowly then pronounced in exact Common. “Ugly. Mother. Fucker.”
I gaped at them in horror. They dared insult the Queen to her face?
The Queen hissed, but smugly coiled. “You will serve me, human. I know your kind. You are loyal. I feed you, I provide you shelter. I give you safety. You will love me.”
The human backed up, crouching into a fighting stance. “No love, mother fucker.”
The Queen wiggled and slid towards the exit. “You will serve me.” They paused to pat me on the head. “You have duties, tiny one.”
The next several sols passed in the same manner. I did my duties, I fed the human, we exchanged words. At night I tended my secret garden grown in glasses of water and composted nutrient paste from seeds and cuttings I snuck from the Queen’s hoard. The human was learning not only Common but Murania at a breathtaking pace. We could hold whole conversations now and I was no longer… completely apprehensive about approaching their cage. Michael had not acted aggressive towards me at all since the Queen’s visit.
The rare human plant called a “green bean” plant had fruited after several months of care and pollinating with the tip of my own feather. I was ecstatic over the first fruits of my secret labor and I felt that Michael would appreciate my excitement and maybe a taste of his home planet. Humans were said to be incredibly empathetic and sentimental.
That morning I secreted a pair of bean pods in my uniform and headed for Micheal’s cage. They seemed to notice something was different right away, peering at me with concern. “All okay, Mikel?”
I nodded and nervously whispered. “Secret, right?”
They lowered their voice and moved closer to the bars. “Yeah, secret.”
I showed him the beans. “I grew these. It’s the first harvest from the plant! It’s a huge secret, but I wanted you to have them.”
Michael stared at the beans with an expression I didn’t recognize for a long time before whispering, their voice strangely rough. “You get trouble for these?”
I nodded and tried to shove the beans into their hands. “Yes, a lot of trouble. Take them!”
They took them and smiled. “Meesh Meesh, Mikel. This…. This mean lot to me. I can’t say enough. Meesh Meesh.” They bit into one and grinned, crunching happily. “Very good! You do good!”
I chittered and ruffled my wings, pleased with the praise. “Zuan, Michael.” I gave them their tray of nutrient paste and fled.
The next day (human word for sol) I found a broken something in the Queen’s trash bin. It was silvery and had a lot of moving parts and made me think of Michael. I shoved it into my uniform and snuck it to Michael. They were overjoyed and immediately began fiddling (another human word I find pleasant to use) with it.
I found I enjoyed making Michael happy and kept my eyes out for things to gift them. A broken flute, a torn book, a shiny rock shard, a discarded pipe, a bit of string. It all was random junk, but Michael was still so happy for each item. It… was a pleasant feeling, almost like being back with my brood mates.
Then… Then the alarms sounded one morning and the ship rocked with an explosion. Frightened, I grabbed my precious green bean plant and rushed instinctively towards Michael’s cage.
Only to find they weren’t there. The bars were broken, bent outward and a piece of the wall was torn open, exposing sparking wires and smashed circuits. The lights were flickering and I could hear screaming. I decided to run for the escape pods and hoped that the Queen died in that explosion.
I had barely skittered into the hallway when I found Michael. They were fighting with a guard twice their size, but easily leaped around it’s bulk and stabbed it in the base of the skull with some sort of spear. A primitive weapon, but still deadly in the hands of the human. Michael rode the body of the guard down to the ground and leaped off, brandishing the spear at me.
Frozen in fear, I distantly realized the weapon was made from the shiny rock tied to a piece of pipe. I was to die from a weapon I provided then.
Except, Michael lowered the weapon and smiled. “Mikel! I find you! Come on! We get out of here!”
“Out… Escape?”
“Yeah! C’mon, I stole codes for ship!”
I followed them numbly, too scared and shocked to process that not only had a single human escaped a 1st class prison cell with just bits of junk, but had also destroyed the Pirate Queen’s ship, and was taking me with them.
It wasn’t until we were flying fast and far from the wreckage, headed towards a Trading Station, that I found my voice. “Why… Why would you save me? I…” I didn’t know how to express the fact that I was nothing, tiny, worth only for cleaning while the human was strong, big, and apparently a fearsome and brilliant warrior.
Michael glanced at me from the corner of their eyes. “We friends, Mikel. Friends no leave friends. Also, you trapped like me. On other side of bars, but trapped same.”
“Friends? But Queen provided for you, you were supposed to bond with her?!”
The human looked at me incredulously before laughing long and loud, his head thrown back with the effort of it. “No Bond with Queen, she put me in cage. You! You give me food, you talk, teach, you bring me presents. You good friend. Queen Piece of Shit.”
“Oh.” Michael had bonded with me. And.. I with them it seemed. And we were free. “Meesh meesh, Michael. You’re a good friend too.” I hugged my green bean plant. “What now?”
“I thinking I turn in Queen head for bounty, use money buy good ship again. After, you want go home or you want explore?”
My wings flared in excitement. “Can I have a garden room on our ship?”
Michael grinned and tossed his arm (gently) around my shoulders. “Yes, you have garden room. Grow lots plant in space. Explore! Garden! New Planet! New Seed!”
that is. a question guaranteed to start at least three nasty fights at any herpetology conference, but gila monsters and mexican beaded lizards are closely related and truly venomous.
there’s a lot of contention about the monitor lizard family, which seems to have some venom also but. there is debate.
Ah yes, SO MUCH ARGUING. In the 20 years I’ve been in love with komodos, scientists have changed their minds SO MANY times.
I am excited to see the new Previous Scientists Are Idiots articles, Bunjy! As of 2009, they’d gone back to “We Have PROVEN There Is Venom!” I hadn’t heard that they’d disproved it a second (third? nth?) time!
In 2012, North Carolina’s Coastal Resources Commission studied the
question of sea-level rise and the likelihood that coastal areas would
be inundated by severe weather, concluding that the seas were likely to
rise by 39" over the century; the Republican legislature, backed by
property developers building in low-lying coastal regions, passed a bill
prohibiting any such research and decreeing that the seas would rise at
the same rate that they had through history, without regard to any
science about accelerating rates fueled by climate change.
Today, the regions that were greenlit for development by the move are
square in the path of Hurricane Florence and stand to be some of the
hardest-hit in the nation, thanks to sea-level rises that outstripped
the legally decreed limits on what the ocean was allowed to do.
sea-level rises that outstripped the legally decreed limits on what the ocean was allowed to do
And King Canute, late in his years and full of the memory of defeats and victories, took his courtiers with him down to the sea, and there placed a chair within the surf, and sat upon it, crying aloud, “I command the tide to halt!” But the tide did not halt, and it rose about him. Then he rose from his chair, and turned to his courtiers, and said, “You see, now, the limits of my authority. There are some things even a king cannot do.”
And up from the ranks of the courtiers spake a North Carolina Republican, saying, “Hold mine ale and watch thusly.”
Writer’s block is an affliction I know well. I’ve answered similar asks about ithereand here. I recommend reading through the replies and reblogs if you have the time.
That said, let’s see what new advice we can get from the blog. Ideas anyone?
Write 500 words a day. Doesn’t matter if it’s crap or even if it is for your story or not. Shoot for content, not quality. Look up prompt lists and write whatever you immediately think of. And good or not, keep doing it. Eventually the creative juices will start flowing. Granted, this is the hard, unpleasant way but it has worked for every writer I know. Hope that helps.
I don’t want to say following the suggestion above is wrong, because for many it’s absolutely solid advice, but I know for sure that it really doesn’t work for everyone. I tried doing it so many times, and every time I did it I ended up giving up on writing for years. It turns out I have ADHD, and committing to a daily word limit simply isn’t something I can do; forcing myself to do so when I can’t concentrate is futile and discouraging and turns something that should be enjoyable into nothing more than a hated chore. I have had to learn to recognise when I have the presence of mind to be able to write and only THEN making myself sit down to do it. I am at the point where I can sprint between 2-6k words in one session, which can happen anywhere from daily to once a month – but I started off with 50 words a week. My regularity and word count are naturally increasing with time.
I suggest you do this: write down every single idea you have, no matter where you are. Text them to yourself if you have to. Compile all these ideas in one place. When you feel like writing, you have a whole bunch of ideas at your disposal – but if you have no ideas, just open a doc and start writing down literally every thought that crosses your mind. Ponder what you should make for dinner, if you have to; talk to yourself about how frustrated you are to be stuck; leave dumb jokes for yourself. Eventually something will come along that you could write about. And, above all, be kind to yourself! Celebrate your successes, even if it’s writing 50 words on an idea. You’ll improve with time.
Get together a mental group of related interests/tasks. I combine academic and fandom interests into one clump in my brain, for example. That group gets your time for a certain amount each week.†
Now focus on one of those tasks.
Not feeling inspired to write fanfic? Focus on a work project, or art you’re doing, or something else that uses similar brain function. Get passionate about it, ignore fic for now. Allow another interest to take over when it’s ready. Don’t force it. If you enjoy (or at some pointed enjoyed) writing, there’s a good chance that you’ll get a mood. When you do, dive in!
Instead of feeling guilty that you’re not doing every one of those things, all the time, this lets you build work ethic without forcing your brain into a box. Doing anything in your mental group counts as accomplishing your goal!
*Junebugging is being used in the neurodivergent-executive-function-aid sense here, not the sex slang. Everything is a sex term, there are no pure words
kiragecko 