im gonna start a fight; and, at the same time, i need you to take this in the most good-faith way possible, but:
videos that involve body-checking and intentionally (and uncritically) show a mealplan of an unhealthy number of calories are just a revamped version of pro-ana food diaries.
and yeah, i know there's arguments. i address some of them under the cut. but at the end of the day, we're just coming back to romanticizing mental illness; we've just found a better platform for it.
this is already something we've done. we knew it was wrong and tried to stop it. and tbh. it just wasn't enough.
there are people who argue "well, what if you have an eating disorder, you can't help it if you don't eat!" except that as someone with an ED; we are not infants. we know what we're doing. part of having an ED is that you are like, maybe too self-aware. even if we can't help our own food choices, we don't need to fucking romanticize the disorder - something we've been warning you about since 2013. there are hours of setup, filming, and editing that go into these videos. they do not happen to fall into place randomly. there is a reason they are pieced together to be beautiful, bright, inspiring.
there's this woman who pretty much only posts daily plans under a normal amount of calories, and everyone defends her saying but it's better than nothing! and i'm like. except she opens those with images of her showing off her body and provides no context in the video or caption that suggests that she believes what she's doing is unhealthy. she has hundreds of thousands of followers on a platform designed for young kids and teens. i refuse to believe that by accident her content just happens to be cheery advice on "healthy" versions of starving.
for any other symptom of mental illness, we would be incredibly enraged by this kind of placid acceptance of a "tips and tricks" fast-start guide. imagine if people posted pink & pretty videos saying "best places to cut yourself" as if it was a fucking storytime. we, as a society, are so fucking fatphobic that we would rather accept blatantly harmful displays of self harm than admit that we are obsessed with a hyper-thin body type.
i am not suggesting someone never talks about their disorder. i talk about mine. actually, it's a plot point in my book.
here's the difference: i recognize it's a fucking mental illness. i am very careful to never mention a specific weight, eating pattern, or calorie plan. i always make sure to position it as something that ruined my fucking life. i do not put cheery music in the background and hearts and sparkles over my worst moments. i do not film it in bright light. i do not start each passage with an image of a thin body followed by "here's how to look like her."
eating disorders should not be framed as aspirational. and the problem is that society worships the "after" image, so long as you don't get too sick. there is a reason so many people who quit being "influencers" will later admit - i wasn't eating well that whole time; an obsession with food was completely destroying my life.
we let any uncredited, uncertified person write the most backwards, fucked up shit about how to get the body you desire! because the underlying, secret belief is: well, at least they're thin! and the real thing that fucking gets me each time - they make fucking money off of it. their irresponsibility and societal harm literally pays off for them.
"why do you care so much." "don't like it don't look." "so what if people experiment with new ways of thinking of food?"
thank you for asking. we're about to get extremely personal. it's because when i was 18 i discovered "thinspiration"/"thinspo." and it absolutely influenced, shaped, and codified my pre-existing eating disorder. i went from having some troubling habits and traits to being incredibly unwell within what felt like a matter of days. there were actual pages designed to train me on how to have an ED correctly. it was all so suddenly easy. i was sick; and the nature of the illness meant - i wanted to be sicker.
it takes an average of 7 years for a person to fully recover. i know this personally - even now, 10 years from the worst of it, i still fucking struggle. i am so much happier now and i eat what i want and i literally don't think about food at all (19 year old me would shudder) and yet - i still fucking know the calories of plain toast with butter.
an eating disorder is one of the deadliest types of mental illness. over 1 in 4 people with an ED will attempt suicide.
and i'm sorry. i just do not see the exchange rate of "high rate of engagement" versus "the value of a human life."
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Almost finished reading Dungeon Meshi and I got an idea
So in Dungeon Meshi or Delicious in Dungeon, there are these... dungeons.
And from what I have gathered dungeons can be made naturally or artificially but both types have the same few things in common.
They are made to contain demons
They attract adventures
The dungeons have lords who manage/control the dungeon and are given the power to do so by the demons
I know that I'm skimming over some important bits, but long story short, the demons come from an alternate dimension called 'The Infinite Realm' and feed off of people's desires, the Lord of the Dungeon's specifically.
That being said... (incoming dp x dc prompt)
Beings from the Infinite Realms aren't ghosts but demons. And while they do still have obsessions, they lack desires. And so, they've become something they hunger for.
Danny learns this the hard way when he accidentally eats his parents' desire to hunt 'ghosts'.
When the endless, all-consuming hunger, that had been growing inside himself became just a bit satisfied by the action, he got scared. He ran to Clockwork, who immediately explained everything to him.
From there he became terrified. He didn't want to eat people's desires, especially considering that he had some of his own. But CW explained that while other demons will most likely never be satisfied no matter how many desires they consume, because of Danny's halfa status he may be able to. (Also it would be a bad thing if the baby starves itself. No one wants the baby to starve!)
To test out this theory, CW pulls (more than) a couple of strings, and soon his dungeon was set up in Gotham City in the DC universe.
He felt a bit bad since he had to set up shop in another ghost's/demon's territory, but Lady Gotham seemed to have taken a liking to him.
Danny takes his time searching for the most desperate person he can find, (Lady Gotham is leading him to some of the most desperate people in her city, aka the Batfam.), and appears to one of them as a fawn (signifying his hunger and current 'lack' of power). He then looks deep into their mind and offers them the power to fulfill all their desires.
The Batfam? They should be better than this, but damn they were in a tight spot and the city is going to shit because the rouges have been more active than ever, and their family is on the verge of crumbling!... And the answer to fix it all was right there, just within their reach.
They held the fawn in their arms gently. Its ivory wings, coat of starlight, and piercing Lazurus green eyes. Gotham began to change.
A few years later, some members of the JL and the JLD are once again trying their hand at clearing the dungeon but are a bit discouraged because last time their team was wiped out completely.
It was inconvenient how their powers were nullified whenever they were inside the dungeon, but they had yet to find a spell to counteract it.
In an attempt to get past the third floor, they teamed with a team called Team Phantom, which comprised two young adult siblings, their 12-year-old sister, and a few teenagers.
Morally, they were against this. No one this young should be trying to clear the dungeon! But on the other hand, this team was the closest to getting to the fourth floor.
Sucking it up, they teamed up with the young dungeon dwellers and quickly found out why they were so close to getting to the third floor.
These kids were skilled. These kids were powerful. These kids were trained. On top of that, they didn't care about their lives! Because these kids? They wouldn't- no! They couldn't die, and they were using it to their advantage.
The JL/JLD now had much more to worry about than clearing the dungeon.
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I know Brennan described Steel once as furious that a D&D game is happening, and it's funny on the surface, but man did he make us feel what that means this episode. She's right: over a hundred people who had no idea why the kudzu was growing out of control and were just trying to stop it from overtaking the city died unnecessarily. Port Talon has undergone the equivalent of several natural disasters while already harboring refugees from the surrounding countryside. Any one of the three PCs could have died and all nearly did. Ame is currently in a coma from fucking around with the curse. Like, yeah, actually, extremely valid of her to be exhausted and upset with the PCs, even though from the perspective of the listener, obviously the story is way better with the PCs fucking around and finding out rather than obediently waiting.
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Hellooooo kiddos… if you’re feeling up to it, you should talk all about what your lives were like before… everything. With the presumed drastic change from then to now, I hope you treat yourselves with excessive kindness! It’s certainly deserved.
(Also, if you please, let Ralph know that I’m proud of him. I simply think he needs to hear it.)
“Oh- We don’t mind at all! It’s a little hard to recall everything since things have been a little blurred with all that’s happened. We spent a lot of time at school and didn’t see our parents much, since we really didn’t want to have to fill out the papers.”
“yeah, the papers were always such a difficulty to go through. But it really didn’t bother us much not seeing our parents, since it gave us more time to work on learning. we actually did quite well in school.”
“and we enjoyed our classes quite a bit! we were both in the orchestra, since our parents thought it to be beneficial to us.”
“I played the Violin and eric was on percussion. (i was second chair😁). we didn’t really see much of the boys in the island while in school, mostly just maurice and harold, since they shared a few classes with us.”
“Oh- and thank you so so much for what you said. we really try our best and we’re glad to hear that- though our best isn’t always too beneficial to others- still, grateful nonetheless!!”
“we also told ralph what you said and he appreciated it greatly! he even teared up a bit. he’s been dealing with the whole ordeal a little strange, but he’s been getting better lately.”
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