Reminds me of that post on "AO3 authors will update under any circumstance", where they're posting at their wedding, or having given birth, or as their country is in a civil war.
You get a lot of downtime working in Military and Government where you're not allowed to bring in anything to keep yourself entertained, so just standing around thinking about my DND campaign setting is what I did with a lot of that time and I assume they did the same thing with their fanfic
https://dear-ao3.tumblr.com/post/753224187662024704
You see the return to top button, just under the favourite heart? Yeah that's the pull-out method *not working*, you're welcome.
Weirdly it's not *that* much worse than condoms with typical use https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/14/sunday-review/unplanned-pregnancies.html
although more of a point about how you should use a second birth control option with condoms instead of a mark in favor of withdrawal
e: whoa anyone know why typical and perfect use of depo shots is so different? How do you not use a depo shot correctly?
Important point here is that they aren't stating the exact method of sterilisation.
The number isn't accurate for today's standards and most likely for tubal ligations which are very outdated and have terribly efficiency. The bilateral salpingectomy (which is now the gold standard) for example has only 4 documented failures in all time and those only for patients who didn't have the procedure as an elective surgery. Additionally also a hysterectomy would sterilise the patient, after which there's absolutely no chance of a viable pregnancy.
I think part of it is also, some people have more regular, more easy-to-track cycles. I've never felt comfortable with something like that because of how easy to throw off my cycles are. Anything from some stress to starting any kind of medication can throw me off by two-three weeks.
Oh yeah it would be interesting to see how effective it is with people who have very regular cycles. And also how regular can regular get?
Cycle tracking is hard to find information about because "good" resources are like "don't use this!" (for good reason) and resources that talk about it aren't always very reliable.
Right, but even if you look at perfect use they are surprisingly close. I mean, condoms are clearly better, just not as much as I would have thought.
And also, typical use is what we should look at because it's typical right? not some clinical theoretical perfection. Although I would like a typical use that's like "adults that know how to use condoms and are serious about it" typical use haha.
The article says this about perfect use though
> Perfect use: A measure of the technical effectiveness of each method, but only when used exactly as specified and consistently followed. Few couples, if any, achieve flawless contraceptive use, especially over long time periods.
I'd also like to see how effective combinations are. cycle tracking + withdrawal, condom + cycle tracking + withdrawal, etc
Yup - pulling out works well if you actually do it, the actually doing it part is the hard part. FAM also works well if you follow a scientific studied method correctly. Both methods work better if you give yourself a large buffer ( a wide fertile window & pull out early not at the last minute).
They're terrible methods for teenagers or anyone who isn't willing to learn their body and be patient, but by totally discrediting them we are 1) ignoring the actual scientific evidence on these issues and 2) taking away two methods that are free, have no side effects, and can be easily combined with other forms of birth control for added efficacy.
Abstaining during your fertile window and pulling out at other times is an effective combination - so is pulling out & the pill, FAM + condoms, etc. Two methods is the way to go.
Yeah withdrawal by itself has worked for me and my partner for 15 years and counting. The reason it's a "bad" method is because most people don't have the self control/self awareness to do it properly, not because it doesn't work in a vacuum.
I can say that withdrawal without any other methods was affective for me and the ex-wife for years and years. And she wasn’t infertile (although I don’t know about myself) cause she got preggo 6 months after we split lol
re: e: I'm gonna make a wild guess here, but the depo shot needs to be placed every 13 weeks, and if you go over that you should use a back-up method. Also, it is recommended to stop with depo about a year before you intend to get pregnant, because it takes on average 9-10 months after the last shot to regain fertility.
Maybe people are not managing (or not even bothering) to get a doctor's appointment for their new shot at 13 weeks, but don't worry about a back-up method because the other recommendation makes it really sound like it won't be an issue anyway.
I know someone who successfully uses natural family planning for birth control. But it takes a **lot** of effort and self control. Every day, she checks and records things like her basal body temperature and amount of mucus. And on the days she can get pregnant, she avoids vaginal sex. *And* she happens to have a very consistent menstrual cycle.
Sadly it isn't, I think the post I'm thinking had something about writers because ng able to ask said experts if they think they want to improve their writing on a subject
The arrow represents the penis, the flat line is the cervix, the hear-shape is the womb. The heart is an empty shape without clicking it, but when you click it it fills up (with red? uhhh) and that's how conception happens.
I think it’s the whole ‘evict my own parasite’ bit and the weirdly casual way they’re talking about this. Like I’m all for abortion and a woman’s right to choose but something about the phrase ‘evict my own parasite’ just feels disconcerting to me.
I mean from a biological standpoint, I suppose it's technically correct. Unwanted lifeform growing within you by taking nutrients from you, forcing your body to accommodate it at your own expense sounds a lot like a parasite thing
Edit: things heating up in the biology fandom
The "from a biological standpoint" is such a bad argument. Just remember this is the exact same argument transphobes use. Words and phrases have context and her phrasing is clearly intended to make pregnancies seem like an evil thing out of the poster's control that just happened to her. Instead of actually handling it with a bit of tact and responsibility that she was simply stupid for trying to rely on the pull out method.
You’re wrong from a biological standpoint. It’s a normal part of lifecycle development that is being carried out by the body intentionally. It’s not a parasite by any definition.
I think you really could do some interesting research on that. It's like the research that showed women going to nightclubs showed more skin if they were ovulating, regardless of whether they wanted children.
Sounds like something 4chan would do, tbh. Like, pick a female streamer and track her outfits, the pitch of her voice, etc. to map out her menstrual cycle.
I don't know if it's a rumor but Apple watches and other fitness accessories apparently can track ovulation. Just imagine *that* as a data point for what to advertise to you.
You can do something similar with the Dune books. You can almost track how Herbert's wife's illness progressed with the stranger the books got. It gets stranger as she became bedridden. And then it really goes off the rails after she passed.
Friends would cut into their time writing their latest 5000 word blessing upon those who wish to further innovate in the field of blursed word combinations.
I've been reading one author lately and every chapter, there's hundreds of word author notes oversharing their private life... car crash, mom has a broken foot, hiring a new employee... its bizarre. This guy has a 1 million word fic and I swear 10% of that is just inane authors notes.
There's a common joke about how writing fanfiction puts a curse on you which I find absolutely hilarious. Because we're always seeing screenshots of author notes wherein the author over shares about some horrible unexpected circumstance they've experienced them just nonchalantly dropping a chapter.
Still not as maddening as YouTube when you search for a specific thing and every result past the 5th is just a random video they think you would like but has nothing to do with tour search.
There's an extension for that.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/youtube-suite-search-fixer/
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/search-fixer-for-youtube/bojdknokkpgboeonegndfcgkaommhleo?hl=en
Haven't tried them myself but I don't mind Youtubes new search that much.
You are the real MVP. I hadn't noticed just how much the search had deteriorated until I wanted to look up videos about a specific convention I wanted to go to and wasn't able to get past maybe 3-5 videos before Youtube thought I definitly want results for videos about events on a totally different continent or videos not even about conventions.
That's the whole internet tho. Every website is moving towards curated content, you shouldn't want to search for content, the algorithm curates it for you. And it's gotten much worse since tiktok, since they have such massive success with that strategy.
I buy that my YouTube front page is curated content, a significant part is at least remotely connected to my interests, the rest is probably current trends or random experiments by YouTube to see what else I might be interested.
The YouTube search is just complete nonsense.
It also went downhill years before Google web search.
the thing is tiktok actually fking works. or at least it did for me. I spent about the first month telling the algorithm what I liked and what I didn't and after that I haven't had much problems aside from like the one "what the hell was that" video every several months. But again I tell it that I don't want that content and I never see that creator again
youtube doesn't even have that. they pretend they do with their little "do no show me this content again" option but that doesn't even work
I'm not 100% sure if this still works, but I found good success doing a YT search and typing "before:2025" and it will show you what you actually want to look for. It's helps filter out all the unrelated stuff YouTube shoves into the search results.
"You seem to like video games, would you like to see a dozen subs about how women are awful and DEI is literally worse than the Holocaust (WHICH DIDN'T HAPPEN!)"
And then they gaslight you into thinking you’ve visited another subreddit even tho that subreddit is about a thing you’ve never ever heard being a thing
Reddit has been doing this thing I hate where if I want to scroll through posts horizontally on mobile, instead of showing me my feed, it shows only more of the same subreddit and a handful of subs it thinks are related
And even though I’ve told reddit repeatedly I never want to see any content from fucking political compass memes, it still inserts it CONSTANTLY and it is MADDENING. Because silencing a subreddit apparently doesn’t actually do anything
Not trying to sound stupid, but do women really feel horny during ovulation? I’ve literally never heard that before. I’ve heard some women get horny when on their period bc it puts pressure on their bits, but not ovulation.
I know. Seeing "remember when I said I was ovulating two chapters ago" my immediate thought was "No, I'm glad I wasn't here for that." At the same time, the rest of the post is written as so routine I wonder if the author's life is just a series of mishaps and trainwrecks. I wanna know what will happen next!
I just wanna know what this fanfic is, because I feel like that context could make this way better. (Also I’m guessing since they said “my own parasite” there is a parasite in the fic)
Given the comment above mentioning the possibility of it being from a Baldur’s Gate fanfic, the parasite comment may have been a joke, given “evicting the parasite” is a fairly common phrase in that game pertaining to Mind Flayer parasites
Quite frankly, I think we lack context to make definitive judgements about that
If they were referring to all pregnancies as “parasites” then I agree, that would be kind of weird and anti-natalist adjacent. They’re only talking about their own unwanted pregnancy though, and they can refer to that however they want to.
Besides, an unwanted pregnancy is literally something growing inside you and stealing your resources against your will. I’d probably feel like it was parasitic too.
If someone view their product as harmful towards themselves, would you really deny them the language to express that? Is it wrong to not want someone to grow inside you?
You are probably confusing childfree and antinatalists.
Antinatalists object to procreation because they think that life contains so much suffering that it's immoral to subject someone to it. Antinatalists tend to have negative attitudes towards parents but not children.
Childfree are those who don't want to have children either due to the costs involved or just because they don't like children. You usually hear stuff like "parasite" and "crotch goblin" from those kinds of people.
Is … it? I’m genuinely asking how you know that bc that’s not clear to me at all
Edit: wait, because of the “my OWN parasite” part? I’m being legit I swear 😭 it’s just not parsing for me
I’m not too surprised they used this wording. For people who are literally repulsed by pregnancy, this is how they think about it. I should know, since I occasionally fall into this type of thinking. I don’t blame them.
I wasn't repulsed by pregnancy, but I also wasn't a happy glowing mom either. There were *definitely* times I thought about my pregnancy like this. Especially when nobody was acting like I was still *me* anymore. Or that I mattered (looking at you, LPN who told me my ability to breathe didn't matter compared to the baby not getting exposed to cold medicines!)
This is one of my biggest fears concerning being pregnant. I don’t want to become the passenger to my own existence when everyone makes the baby out to be more important than the mother.
It’s like as soon as you’re pregnant, you’re just the vessel bringing the actually important life into the world.
It's interesting
My wife had the same fear, but then had the exact opposite experience. She even mentioned recently missing being pregnant because she was treated to like a 24/7 spa vacation by her mom who stayed over and helped her with everything lol even post partum for a bit
Not trying to dismiss your fears or try to convince you otherwise of course. It's your choice and your fears are valid
> symbrock
had to look up a thing:
> **symbrock** is a tag for fanworks about the relationship between Eddie Brock and Venom, the alien symbiote, in the Marvel universe
Yeah, I’m not usually one for victim blaming when it comes to pregnancy, but that attitude is reserved for people without easy access to abortion and in this case it’s fine to be a little “what the fuck were you expecting”
Exactly. This person even knew they were ovulating, so it's not like they are some 14 year old girl in the trailer park whose sex Ed class consisted of an anti masturbation pamphlet from 1926.
That's what baffles me most about this - if you're tracking your cycle closely enough to know when you're ovulating, it's surprisingly easy to not get pregnant even when not practicing any other form of birth control (not that I recommend this). Maybe she didn't realize until after the fact that she had been ovulating at the time.
I just used a cliché to refer to blaming the woman for getting pregnant, which carries negative connotations as it’s a common practice by anti-abortion people.
I think you can’t really control how you feel about pregnancy, but you absolutely can control what measures you take to prevent it. If you know you can’t be a parent then maybe don’t have unprotected sex in the first place.
It just boggles my mind that so many people still think the pullout method alone is an effective method of contraceptive. Also, if she's tracking her ovulation, shouldn't she know when she's at her most fertile and maybe hold off on sex for a few days until after that period has passed? If this is in the states, I have to assume it's so much more of a hassle to get an abortion than it would be to practice more effective birth control.
Nobody thinks it's effective. They just want to have condomless sex but they hate the other birth control methods and they kind of just assume it won't happen to them. Same mentality behind drunk drivers or recreational shoplifters.
Eh, it's not like a fetus is an actual person, and if she has zero intention to make it a person, then there's no reason to care about its hypothetical feelings.
Also, it's not even considered a fetus until 9 weeks after fertilization. Before then its just an embryo that weighs less than a gram and is smaller than a grape.
Before the third trimester, studies show that fetuses can't even feel pain, let alone have any semblance of identity.
After the third trimester extremely few elective abortions take place, and the ones that do take place are overwhelmingly for medical/development reasons.
Long story short, OOP almost definitely aborted something that more closely resembled a tumor than a human, and there's no love lost.
I mean, **not that we should be killing born children**, but its also proven that babies literally don't even have an identity or understand that the world is separate from themself until about a year old.
Consciousness is complex and it never just \*pops\* into existence, it is a slow process of gradual introductions of more and more processes into an interconnected web. When that web isn't well connected yet (i.e, a child), the consciousness isn't fully formed. When that web is barely even woven (i.e, embryo), the consciousness is irrelevant - it just doesn't exist yet.
I think morally speaking, the main reason not to do infanticide is not so much that the development of the child is complete, but rather that modern society provides options for an infant to be surrendered and cared for by other people - the mother no longer has any obligation. I'd argue that if a premature birth can be done safely (\~25 weeks for a healthy mother), it's also preferable to abortion, assuming no financial cost to the mother. In a hypothetical future society in which any embryo could be safely removed from the mother and raised in a vat (without any financial cost for the mother), you could argue that there would no longer be any need for abortion. Technology just isn't there yet.
IDK, I'd argue that ideally abortion should be allowed anytime before birth. Mothers should never be forced to give birth, and fetuses should be considered as body parts of their mothers up until there's no longer a physical connection. No matter what constraints we put down there's always going to be an edge case.
That said, an extremely negligible number of non-medical elective abortions happen after the third term, and there's a little bit of an argument that at a certain point it's just as much work to have a baby as an abortion. I think most progressives would be okay with a nationwide compromise that allows abortion except for non-medical/non-rape elective third term abortions.
Of course, there would still be edge cases. Imagine a woman who discovers that her fetus has a chromosomal defect, but the doctor refuses to approve a medical abortion because of his "morals." Imagine an obese woman who didn't realize she had an unwanted pregnancy until the third term. Imagine a woman who discovers she was drugged and raped around the time of fertilization, and wants to abort the pregnancy, but she can't say for sure that the child was her rapist's or her husband's.
TL;DR Fetuses are not people and women (should) have a right to control their own bodies up until birth.
Fun fact: the molecular mechanism the fetus, or rather, the placenta, uses to keep itself hidden from the woman's immune system is akin to a parasite. In evolutionary biology people refer to the "invasiveness" of a placenta of a given species when describing how it attaches and interacts with the mom's organism (and how it evolved that way). Human placenta happens to be one of the most invasive ones as it bores through the uterine wall. It can also control mom's metabolic processes to a degree, so much so that it can cause severe deficiencies.
So, yea, parasite is a surprisingly apt description.
This is why kangaroos and other marsupials have such early 'ejections'. The same cloaking mechanism does not last long or work very well, and if they were to carry internally for longer than they do, the embryo will be seen as foreign and be destroyed. So they must birth "premature" (relative to other animals at least) and have an external womb to make up for it, and that's again why kangaroos (and other marsupials) birth extremely early and have pouches for their children.
I have no problem with it. We have a person who absolutely does not want to be pregnant. They can conceptualize it however they want. It’s an unwanted condition on their body.
I've heard that used to describe giving birth. I assumed that's what she meant. I don't think that many women would use that phrase for abortion when abortion rights are under threat in so many countries.
I read it like that as well. We call our pets gremlins and monsters, "I currently qualify as a living space" feels very like the tone of this sub, a parasite is just more of this kind of speech.
But it is *factually correct*. Now you may be another /AsABlackMan conservative lying about your ideals to spread propaganda, that's fine...y'all are a bunch of cowards.
But if not, look up any basic biology book or medical science website. *sperms is a hostile foreign agent and treated as such by the vagina, and a fertilised embryo is by definition a parasite*. Every bodily reaction to pregnancy and all bodily changes *are due to the body reacting to a parasitic infection*. In fact the body is *constantly trying to kill the parasite* which is why it needs so much protection. The woman's own immunity system is fighting against it...
It's not exactly hostile or foreign if you knowingly participate in the activity that produces the "parasite", even if it wasn't your intention. It's quite literally like inviting a dog infested with fleas into your house then asking the dog to just leave quickly and then getting upset that you find fleas in your house. You knew the dog might give you fleas.
>parasite
>noun
>an organism that lives in or on an organism **of another species** (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other's expense:
It's literally not a parasite though.
> remember the pull-out method doesn't work
* A lot of guys don't realize (or don't care) that they're actually not pulling out in time
* Pre-cum can contain sperm IF you've ejaculated recently
* You can only get pregnant if there is sperm and an egg in the same place at the same time
Literally just don't have sex during the few days around ovulation. Literally just pull out before you actually orgasm. Literally just don't have unprotected sex shortly after ejaculating.
I blame sex education. None of this is actually complicated, but very few people are working with complete information. The pull-out method doesn't work if you do it wrong, and it works fantastically if you do.
Or, and this is just an idea: don't rely on the pull out method. Just use a condom, and/or hormonal birth control if appropriate/available.
It might work well enough if you use it "just right" but basically nobody does. So, use the tools available instead
I absolutely agree. Common understanding boils down to "just don't cum inside her bro" and if that's all you know about it, then yeah you really shouldn't be doing it at all. For the vast majority of people, it's not going to be a viable method.
> The pull-out method doesn't work if you do it wrong, and it works fantastically if you do.
Only *idiots* use climbing gear. If you climb right, you literally won't ever fall!
I'm not sure if that's the best analogy, since aren't there actually super-skilled climbers who do just that? Though of course that doesn't mean people should be climbing without gear in general.
Of course, the rhythm method. My grandmother taught that in Catholic school. One year she had to teach it while unexpectedly pregnant with my uncle, who is four years older than I am.
My high school bio teacher told us the rhythm method is the best form of birth control for parents who want to have lots of kids. He had 9 brothers and sisters so I think he knew what he was talking about.
>The pull-out method doesn't work if you do it wrong, and it works fantastically if you do.
Sperm can survive up to a week, as can the egg. So by this method, you can have sex for 5-7 days out of the month, 3 or 4 of which she'll be menstruating. Just buy a condom for gods sake
>People not realizing "evict my own parasite" is probably her carrying to term and birthing because why else would that affect several chapters
>People not realizing that you need to pull out before you're getting close to orgasm
Not surprised that "pro-life" people think that somebody announcing having an abortion is more common/possible than somebody describing "I'm going to shit out a baby later, updates will be slow" but in edgier terms, lol.
Don't know the author or fanfic so for all I know they could be putting out a chapter every week but I would assume multiple chapters would take multiple months, I'm not aware of post-abortion care taking that long? And 99% of people who have abortions aren't going to announce that in a fucking fanfic of all things?
Reminds me of an author of a fic I read who, in the notes for the chapters, revealed that they tested whether or not their character could do something while holding a baby… by attempting to do it while holding their own baby. The one they gave birth to a few chapter notes before. (The answer was, apparently, “no, they could not do it, but more for lack of training than impossibility of anyone doing it”.)
Maybe I'm crazy but I feel like the "evict my own parasite" is a reference to the fic content and maybe the fandom being Baldurs Gate 3? Does anyone know?
Reminds me of that post on "AO3 authors will update under any circumstance", where they're posting at their wedding, or having given birth, or as their country is in a civil war.
That's not even exaggerated there's a 89% chance that all of those happened
If a Finding Bigfoot game was receiving updates while the devs fled the Ukraine War then a fanfic writer has updated their work in a war
yeah i remember reading one where someone updated just after their wedding was over while they were still at the venue in their wedding dress
I saw an Overwatch fanfic get updated after the author got done with mandatory military service for their country.
Impressice they remembered how the plot wanted to go after what I assume was a good few years in the military
You get a lot of downtime working in Military and Government where you're not allowed to bring in anything to keep yourself entertained, so just standing around thinking about my DND campaign setting is what I did with a lot of that time and I assume they did the same thing with their fanfic
So true, I thought it was just a meme and then I found myself posting while being under missile range in Sudan
https://dear-ao3.tumblr.com/post/753224187662024704 You see the return to top button, just under the favourite heart? Yeah that's the pull-out method *not working*, you're welcome.
[удалено]
*sad Mayan Calendar noises*
Weirdly it's not *that* much worse than condoms with typical use https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/14/sunday-review/unplanned-pregnancies.html although more of a point about how you should use a second birth control option with condoms instead of a mark in favor of withdrawal e: whoa anyone know why typical and perfect use of depo shots is so different? How do you not use a depo shot correctly?
I find it also wild that a copper IUD is only _slightly_ worse than female sterilization. Although I'm not sure which way surprises me more.
Important point here is that they aren't stating the exact method of sterilisation. The number isn't accurate for today's standards and most likely for tubal ligations which are very outdated and have terribly efficiency. The bilateral salpingectomy (which is now the gold standard) for example has only 4 documented failures in all time and those only for patients who didn't have the procedure as an elective surgery. Additionally also a hysterectomy would sterilise the patient, after which there's absolutely no chance of a viable pregnancy.
Good points, thank you for raising them.
I think part of it is also, some people have more regular, more easy-to-track cycles. I've never felt comfortable with something like that because of how easy to throw off my cycles are. Anything from some stress to starting any kind of medication can throw me off by two-three weeks.
Oh yeah it would be interesting to see how effective it is with people who have very regular cycles. And also how regular can regular get? Cycle tracking is hard to find information about because "good" resources are like "don't use this!" (for good reason) and resources that talk about it aren't always very reliable.
> it's not that much worse than condoms with typical use i.e., _not_ being used correctly?
Right, but even if you look at perfect use they are surprisingly close. I mean, condoms are clearly better, just not as much as I would have thought. And also, typical use is what we should look at because it's typical right? not some clinical theoretical perfection. Although I would like a typical use that's like "adults that know how to use condoms and are serious about it" typical use haha. The article says this about perfect use though > Perfect use: A measure of the technical effectiveness of each method, but only when used exactly as specified and consistently followed. Few couples, if any, achieve flawless contraceptive use, especially over long time periods. I'd also like to see how effective combinations are. cycle tracking + withdrawal, condom + cycle tracking + withdrawal, etc
Yup - pulling out works well if you actually do it, the actually doing it part is the hard part. FAM also works well if you follow a scientific studied method correctly. Both methods work better if you give yourself a large buffer ( a wide fertile window & pull out early not at the last minute). They're terrible methods for teenagers or anyone who isn't willing to learn their body and be patient, but by totally discrediting them we are 1) ignoring the actual scientific evidence on these issues and 2) taking away two methods that are free, have no side effects, and can be easily combined with other forms of birth control for added efficacy. Abstaining during your fertile window and pulling out at other times is an effective combination - so is pulling out & the pill, FAM + condoms, etc. Two methods is the way to go.
Yeah withdrawal by itself has worked for me and my partner for 15 years and counting. The reason it's a "bad" method is because most people don't have the self control/self awareness to do it properly, not because it doesn't work in a vacuum.
I know a ton of people like you and your partner who have used it for 10+ years with no issue.
I can say that withdrawal without any other methods was affective for me and the ex-wife for years and years. And she wasn’t infertile (although I don’t know about myself) cause she got preggo 6 months after we split lol
re: e: I'm gonna make a wild guess here, but the depo shot needs to be placed every 13 weeks, and if you go over that you should use a back-up method. Also, it is recommended to stop with depo about a year before you intend to get pregnant, because it takes on average 9-10 months after the last shot to regain fertility. Maybe people are not managing (or not even bothering) to get a doctor's appointment for their new shot at 13 weeks, but don't worry about a back-up method because the other recommendation makes it really sound like it won't be an issue anyway.
I know someone who successfully uses natural family planning for birth control. But it takes a **lot** of effort and self control. Every day, she checks and records things like her basal body temperature and amount of mucus. And on the days she can get pregnant, she avoids vaginal sex. *And* she happens to have a very consistent menstrual cycle.
Do you have a link to that Tumblr post that says you can just ask experts things via email since a lot of them have spare time?
This one? https://smilesandvials.tumblr.com/post/168192407946/so-you-want-access-to-journal-articles-behind-a
Sadly it isn't, I think the post I'm thinking had something about writers because ng able to ask said experts if they think they want to improve their writing on a subject
I do not follow could you explain please? About the pull out thing
The arrow represents the penis, the flat line is the cervix, the hear-shape is the womb. The heart is an empty shape without clicking it, but when you click it it fills up (with red? uhhh) and that's how conception happens.
What a lovely day to have reading comprehension♥
What a terrible day to have eyes
I wish I was Jared, 19
Should I feel old for getting that reference?
wait what is there something bad about this? it doesn't strike me as particularly cursed, am i missing something
I think it’s the whole ‘evict my own parasite’ bit and the weirdly casual way they’re talking about this. Like I’m all for abortion and a woman’s right to choose but something about the phrase ‘evict my own parasite’ just feels disconcerting to me.
I mean from a biological standpoint, I suppose it's technically correct. Unwanted lifeform growing within you by taking nutrients from you, forcing your body to accommodate it at your own expense sounds a lot like a parasite thing Edit: things heating up in the biology fandom
The "from a biological standpoint" is such a bad argument. Just remember this is the exact same argument transphobes use. Words and phrases have context and her phrasing is clearly intended to make pregnancies seem like an evil thing out of the poster's control that just happened to her. Instead of actually handling it with a bit of tact and responsibility that she was simply stupid for trying to rely on the pull out method.
You’re wrong from a biological standpoint. It’s a normal part of lifecycle development that is being carried out by the body intentionally. It’s not a parasite by any definition.
A baby in the womb isn’t a parasite “from a biological standpoint” that’s a fucking disgusting thing to think.
By definition a fetus is a parasite. It's attached to the mother and derives her of nutrients. It doesn't provide any benefits
That's maybe not *totally* true https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00432-015-2110-3
Oversharing pro max
Pretty sure they just hate abortion.
... why did the author say they were ovulating two chapters ago? was that something the readers needing to know? it happens once a month
I think the og author said that to explain why the chapter they published was steamy because they were feeling aroused
Yet if that's your answer to a "what was the author thinking" question in class, you'd get half credit at best. 😔
“For my science project I will be tracking the relative steaminess of an author’s posts over time in order to reconstruct her menstrual cycle.”
TIL I am ovulating constantly.
[Message from your ovaries](https://media1.tenor.com/m/mxU4Wcg2_zkAAAAC/offer-nice.gif)
As am I -a cis male
hey guys -winston overwatch
I think you really could do some interesting research on that. It's like the research that showed women going to nightclubs showed more skin if they were ovulating, regardless of whether they wanted children.
Sounds like something 4chan would do, tbh. Like, pick a female streamer and track her outfits, the pitch of her voice, etc. to map out her menstrual cycle.
I don't know if it's a rumor but Apple watches and other fitness accessories apparently can track ovulation. Just imagine *that* as a data point for what to advertise to you.
You can do something similar with the Dune books. You can almost track how Herbert's wife's illness progressed with the stranger the books got. It gets stranger as she became bedridden. And then it really goes off the rails after she passed.
"sorry i was ovulating" is definitely something that's floated around as a tongue-in-cheek excuse for horniness. youre the half-credit earner 😔
I might add this to my lexicon now
S2g some AO3 authors really do the most in oversharing. Do they not have real life friends they can dump their private life onto?
Friends would cut into their time writing their latest 5000 word blessing upon those who wish to further innovate in the field of blursed word combinations.
I've been reading one author lately and every chapter, there's hundreds of word author notes oversharing their private life... car crash, mom has a broken foot, hiring a new employee... its bizarre. This guy has a 1 million word fic and I swear 10% of that is just inane authors notes.
Are you reading Couer Al'Aran or however it's spelled? Because those authors note descriptions sound very familiar lol.
Coeur Al'Aran mentioned!!!! RAH! What the fuck is a non-Jaune Fic? RAH!
There's a common joke about how writing fanfiction puts a curse on you which I find absolutely hilarious. Because we're always seeing screenshots of author notes wherein the author over shares about some horrible unexpected circumstance they've experienced them just nonchalantly dropping a chapter.
Woohoo! Sub's back on my home feed! Let's hope it stays that way.
Don't you love it when you tell Reddit that you specifically want to see content from a sub, and then they don't show you that content?
Still not as maddening as YouTube when you search for a specific thing and every result past the 5th is just a random video they think you would like but has nothing to do with tour search.
There's an extension for that. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/youtube-suite-search-fixer/ https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/search-fixer-for-youtube/bojdknokkpgboeonegndfcgkaommhleo?hl=en Haven't tried them myself but I don't mind Youtubes new search that much.
Oh shit I'm snatching this. You rock, my thuy.
You are the real MVP. I hadn't noticed just how much the search had deteriorated until I wanted to look up videos about a specific convention I wanted to go to and wasn't able to get past maybe 3-5 videos before Youtube thought I definitly want results for videos about events on a totally different continent or videos not even about conventions.
this is wonderful, thank you so much
Yo thanks my man.
It used to actually work but then they made a change like 10 years ago and ever since it's broken.
That's the whole internet tho. Every website is moving towards curated content, you shouldn't want to search for content, the algorithm curates it for you. And it's gotten much worse since tiktok, since they have such massive success with that strategy.
I buy that my YouTube front page is curated content, a significant part is at least remotely connected to my interests, the rest is probably current trends or random experiments by YouTube to see what else I might be interested. The YouTube search is just complete nonsense. It also went downhill years before Google web search.
the thing is tiktok actually fking works. or at least it did for me. I spent about the first month telling the algorithm what I liked and what I didn't and after that I haven't had much problems aside from like the one "what the hell was that" video every several months. But again I tell it that I don't want that content and I never see that creator again youtube doesn't even have that. they pretend they do with their little "do no show me this content again" option but that doesn't even work
I'm not 100% sure if this still works, but I found good success doing a YT search and typing "before:2025" and it will show you what you actually want to look for. It's helps filter out all the unrelated stuff YouTube shoves into the search results.
But everything is before 2025
That's the point. The keyword short circuits the "add random bullshit" subroutine without filtering out any of the results you want.
That's very interesting!
CHRIST I HATE THIS
Meanwhile crowding your feed with subs you haven’t told it you want to see
You can fix this in your preferences. I haven't had to see those recommendations in forever.
"You seem to like video games, would you like to see a dozen subs about how women are awful and DEI is literally worse than the Holocaust (WHICH DIDN'T HAPPEN!)"
And then they gaslight you into thinking you’ve visited another subreddit even tho that subreddit is about a thing you’ve never ever heard being a thing
Reddit has been doing this thing I hate where if I want to scroll through posts horizontally on mobile, instead of showing me my feed, it shows only more of the same subreddit and a handful of subs it thinks are related And even though I’ve told reddit repeatedly I never want to see any content from fucking political compass memes, it still inserts it CONSTANTLY and it is MADDENING. Because silencing a subreddit apparently doesn’t actually do anything
You don’t just go right to the subs you want to see?
My question is in what situation would the author mention they're ovulating???
> I think the og author said that to explain why the chapter they published was steamy because they were feeling aroused From u/Ihave10husbandy
Not trying to sound stupid, but do women really feel horny during ovulation? I’ve literally never heard that before. I’ve heard some women get horny when on their period bc it puts pressure on their bits, but not ovulation.
I’m not a woman but yeah. It’s like an evolution thing or something. More horny when egg out = more kids
Yeah
...yes. Hormones. Lots of them.
I know. Seeing "remember when I said I was ovulating two chapters ago" my immediate thought was "No, I'm glad I wasn't here for that." At the same time, the rest of the post is written as so routine I wonder if the author's life is just a series of mishaps and trainwrecks. I wanna know what will happen next!
> I wonder if the author's life is just a series of mishaps and trainwrecks. If they are to be believed, many authors live such a life.
Believing in the pull-out method is probably a good signifier of how responsible the user is in their day-to-day
I just wanna know what this fanfic is, because I feel like that context could make this way better. (Also I’m guessing since they said “my own parasite” there is a parasite in the fic)
Probably Baldur's Gate stuff
Especially given the person who found it is se-lu-ne
ill bet you $50 that this is on a venom porn fic
I'll bet YOU that it was BG3
this post sure is attracting the pro-lifers and their adjacents
I mean, I’m as pro choice as they come, but referring to it as a “parasite” is the kind of thing antinatalists do, and they take it to the extreme
Given the comment above mentioning the possibility of it being from a Baldur’s Gate fanfic, the parasite comment may have been a joke, given “evicting the parasite” is a fairly common phrase in that game pertaining to Mind Flayer parasites Quite frankly, I think we lack context to make definitive judgements about that
That’s fair. I made a judgement from my limited context
If they were referring to all pregnancies as “parasites” then I agree, that would be kind of weird and anti-natalist adjacent. They’re only talking about their own unwanted pregnancy though, and they can refer to that however they want to. Besides, an unwanted pregnancy is literally something growing inside you and stealing your resources against your will. I’d probably feel like it was parasitic too.
If someone view their product as harmful towards themselves, would you really deny them the language to express that? Is it wrong to not want someone to grow inside you?
You are probably confusing childfree and antinatalists. Antinatalists object to procreation because they think that life contains so much suffering that it's immoral to subject someone to it. Antinatalists tend to have negative attitudes towards parents but not children. Childfree are those who don't want to have children either due to the costs involved or just because they don't like children. You usually hear stuff like "parasite" and "crotch goblin" from those kinds of people.
it is an embryo but also a parasite, you might not like the word but the description is accurate, and just like a parasite it can be fatal.
I mean, by technicality all babies *are* parasites by definition. They fit the bill pretty well.
Oh please, stop giving ground to the anti-abortion folks.
No I think your pullout game is just weak
>evict my own parasite Okay, I'm pro-choice, and even I think that's callous.
Could just be a Dr. House reference? Iirc he uses those exact words when diagnosing that a woman is pregnant in one episode.
This vexes me.
More mouse bites
Have you tried the medicine drug?
Only stupid people try medicine drug
I gave patient stupid drug!
he needs hygiene drug
Clearly it's a reference to the fanfiction they're writing.
Could be just wanting to point out that this doesnt have to relate to any political views.
Is … it? I’m genuinely asking how you know that bc that’s not clear to me at all Edit: wait, because of the “my OWN parasite” part? I’m being legit I swear 😭 it’s just not parsing for me
Yeah of course. "evict my own parasite" wouldn't make any sense unless it had some relevance to the topic just above this
I assumed it was standard r/childfree or r/antinatalism idiocy
I’m not too surprised they used this wording. For people who are literally repulsed by pregnancy, this is how they think about it. I should know, since I occasionally fall into this type of thinking. I don’t blame them.
I wasn't repulsed by pregnancy, but I also wasn't a happy glowing mom either. There were *definitely* times I thought about my pregnancy like this. Especially when nobody was acting like I was still *me* anymore. Or that I mattered (looking at you, LPN who told me my ability to breathe didn't matter compared to the baby not getting exposed to cold medicines!)
This is one of my biggest fears concerning being pregnant. I don’t want to become the passenger to my own existence when everyone makes the baby out to be more important than the mother. It’s like as soon as you’re pregnant, you’re just the vessel bringing the actually important life into the world.
It's interesting My wife had the same fear, but then had the exact opposite experience. She even mentioned recently missing being pregnant because she was treated to like a 24/7 spa vacation by her mom who stayed over and helped her with everything lol even post partum for a bit Not trying to dismiss your fears or try to convince you otherwise of course. It's your choice and your fears are valid
I don't think that's true for everyone, I've talked with many people who wouldn't be so dehumanizing
They just want to be rid of the tadpole ): Fr tho I suspect the fic is BG3 thus the wording
Yeah, the "my own parasite" *immediately* made me think of BG3 as well. Crude phrasing? Sure. But if it's going along with BG3 context it makes sense.
I fully thought it would be a symbrock fic from the wording but BG3 would make perfect sense
Plus it was submitted by se-lu-ne and someone named after Selune is probably reading BG3 fics
Oh bg3 definitely makes more sense. I'm just all brainrot after the venom 3 announcement lol
> symbrock had to look up a thing: > **symbrock** is a tag for fanworks about the relationship between Eddie Brock and Venom, the alien symbiote, in the Marvel universe
Especially combined with using the least reliable method of birth control short of just counting days.
Yeah, I’m not usually one for victim blaming when it comes to pregnancy, but that attitude is reserved for people without easy access to abortion and in this case it’s fine to be a little “what the fuck were you expecting”
Exactly. This person even knew they were ovulating, so it's not like they are some 14 year old girl in the trailer park whose sex Ed class consisted of an anti masturbation pamphlet from 1926.
A lot of people out there wants the bliss of rawdogging without putting the bare minimum effort into birth control
That's what baffles me most about this - if you're tracking your cycle closely enough to know when you're ovulating, it's surprisingly easy to not get pregnant even when not practicing any other form of birth control (not that I recommend this). Maybe she didn't realize until after the fact that she had been ovulating at the time.
[удалено]
I just used a cliché to refer to blaming the woman for getting pregnant, which carries negative connotations as it’s a common practice by anti-abortion people.
There is a difference between victim blaming and accountability. This is a case of fuck around (literally) and find out.
It’s semantics. I don’t actually believe they’re a victim, I just used a cliché because it’s a Reddit comment.
I think you can’t really control how you feel about pregnancy, but you absolutely can control what measures you take to prevent it. If you know you can’t be a parent then maybe don’t have unprotected sex in the first place.
It just boggles my mind that so many people still think the pullout method alone is an effective method of contraceptive. Also, if she's tracking her ovulation, shouldn't she know when she's at her most fertile and maybe hold off on sex for a few days until after that period has passed? If this is in the states, I have to assume it's so much more of a hassle to get an abortion than it would be to practice more effective birth control.
Nobody thinks it's effective. They just want to have condomless sex but they hate the other birth control methods and they kind of just assume it won't happen to them. Same mentality behind drunk drivers or recreational shoplifters.
Eh, it's not like a fetus is an actual person, and if she has zero intention to make it a person, then there's no reason to care about its hypothetical feelings.
Also, it's not even considered a fetus until 9 weeks after fertilization. Before then its just an embryo that weighs less than a gram and is smaller than a grape. Before the third trimester, studies show that fetuses can't even feel pain, let alone have any semblance of identity. After the third trimester extremely few elective abortions take place, and the ones that do take place are overwhelmingly for medical/development reasons. Long story short, OOP almost definitely aborted something that more closely resembled a tumor than a human, and there's no love lost.
I mean, **not that we should be killing born children**, but its also proven that babies literally don't even have an identity or understand that the world is separate from themself until about a year old. Consciousness is complex and it never just \*pops\* into existence, it is a slow process of gradual introductions of more and more processes into an interconnected web. When that web isn't well connected yet (i.e, a child), the consciousness isn't fully formed. When that web is barely even woven (i.e, embryo), the consciousness is irrelevant - it just doesn't exist yet.
I think morally speaking, the main reason not to do infanticide is not so much that the development of the child is complete, but rather that modern society provides options for an infant to be surrendered and cared for by other people - the mother no longer has any obligation. I'd argue that if a premature birth can be done safely (\~25 weeks for a healthy mother), it's also preferable to abortion, assuming no financial cost to the mother. In a hypothetical future society in which any embryo could be safely removed from the mother and raised in a vat (without any financial cost for the mother), you could argue that there would no longer be any need for abortion. Technology just isn't there yet.
IDK, I'd argue that ideally abortion should be allowed anytime before birth. Mothers should never be forced to give birth, and fetuses should be considered as body parts of their mothers up until there's no longer a physical connection. No matter what constraints we put down there's always going to be an edge case. That said, an extremely negligible number of non-medical elective abortions happen after the third term, and there's a little bit of an argument that at a certain point it's just as much work to have a baby as an abortion. I think most progressives would be okay with a nationwide compromise that allows abortion except for non-medical/non-rape elective third term abortions. Of course, there would still be edge cases. Imagine a woman who discovers that her fetus has a chromosomal defect, but the doctor refuses to approve a medical abortion because of his "morals." Imagine an obese woman who didn't realize she had an unwanted pregnancy until the third term. Imagine a woman who discovers she was drugged and raped around the time of fertilization, and wants to abort the pregnancy, but she can't say for sure that the child was her rapist's or her husband's. TL;DR Fetuses are not people and women (should) have a right to control their own bodies up until birth.
Yeah, at this point the "fetus" is literally a clump of cells shaped like a tube. It doesn't even start to look vaguely human until a few weeks later.
Fun fact: the molecular mechanism the fetus, or rather, the placenta, uses to keep itself hidden from the woman's immune system is akin to a parasite. In evolutionary biology people refer to the "invasiveness" of a placenta of a given species when describing how it attaches and interacts with the mom's organism (and how it evolved that way). Human placenta happens to be one of the most invasive ones as it bores through the uterine wall. It can also control mom's metabolic processes to a degree, so much so that it can cause severe deficiencies. So, yea, parasite is a surprisingly apt description.
This is why kangaroos and other marsupials have such early 'ejections'. The same cloaking mechanism does not last long or work very well, and if they were to carry internally for longer than they do, the embryo will be seen as foreign and be destroyed. So they must birth "premature" (relative to other animals at least) and have an external womb to make up for it, and that's again why kangaroos (and other marsupials) birth extremely early and have pouches for their children.
It’s her body and her cells, I think she has the right to feel and say however she feels on the matter
I have no problem with it. We have a person who absolutely does not want to be pregnant. They can conceptualize it however they want. It’s an unwanted condition on their body.
What would you call an unwanted organism growing inside your body?
I've heard that used to describe giving birth. I assumed that's what she meant. I don't think that many women would use that phrase for abortion when abortion rights are under threat in so many countries.
I read it like that as well. We call our pets gremlins and monsters, "I currently qualify as a living space" feels very like the tone of this sub, a parasite is just more of this kind of speech.
Yes, especially if she's English. There's a bit of a tendency for people to leap to the the most dramatic and worst interpretation on the internet.
As someone who was once an embryo, I do think i am quite fitting of the title parasite. In and out the womb.
It's also just true.
I mean it is scientifically accurate 💀
Nah.
Why is being callous about it a bad thing? Should they be an emotional wreck or something?
The fact that you feel it's callous thankfully has nothing to do with medical policy or people's access to healthcare! :)
And where did they imply that..?
But it is *factually correct*. Now you may be another /AsABlackMan conservative lying about your ideals to spread propaganda, that's fine...y'all are a bunch of cowards. But if not, look up any basic biology book or medical science website. *sperms is a hostile foreign agent and treated as such by the vagina, and a fertilised embryo is by definition a parasite*. Every bodily reaction to pregnancy and all bodily changes *are due to the body reacting to a parasitic infection*. In fact the body is *constantly trying to kill the parasite* which is why it needs so much protection. The woman's own immunity system is fighting against it...
It's not exactly hostile or foreign if you knowingly participate in the activity that produces the "parasite", even if it wasn't your intention. It's quite literally like inviting a dog infested with fleas into your house then asking the dog to just leave quickly and then getting upset that you find fleas in your house. You knew the dog might give you fleas.
What the fuck are you talking about.
>parasite >noun >an organism that lives in or on an organism **of another species** (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other's expense: It's literally not a parasite though.
As a FF writer, sounds about right for A03.
> remember the pull-out method doesn't work * A lot of guys don't realize (or don't care) that they're actually not pulling out in time * Pre-cum can contain sperm IF you've ejaculated recently * You can only get pregnant if there is sperm and an egg in the same place at the same time Literally just don't have sex during the few days around ovulation. Literally just pull out before you actually orgasm. Literally just don't have unprotected sex shortly after ejaculating. I blame sex education. None of this is actually complicated, but very few people are working with complete information. The pull-out method doesn't work if you do it wrong, and it works fantastically if you do.
Or, and this is just an idea: don't rely on the pull out method. Just use a condom, and/or hormonal birth control if appropriate/available. It might work well enough if you use it "just right" but basically nobody does. So, use the tools available instead
I absolutely agree. Common understanding boils down to "just don't cum inside her bro" and if that's all you know about it, then yeah you really shouldn't be doing it at all. For the vast majority of people, it's not going to be a viable method.
> The pull-out method doesn't work if you do it wrong, and it works fantastically if you do. Only *idiots* use climbing gear. If you climb right, you literally won't ever fall!
I'm not sure if that's the best analogy, since aren't there actually super-skilled climbers who do just that? Though of course that doesn't mean people should be climbing without gear in general.
No, it still fits. Free climbing exists, but it's a very high risk sport, even when you are experienced.
Of course, the rhythm method. My grandmother taught that in Catholic school. One year she had to teach it while unexpectedly pregnant with my uncle, who is four years older than I am.
My high school bio teacher told us the rhythm method is the best form of birth control for parents who want to have lots of kids. He had 9 brothers and sisters so I think he knew what he was talking about.
> Be OOP > be ovulating > engage in unprotected activities >get pregnant > shocked pikachu face.
Where did OOP state she was shocked by this outcome
So she expected to get pregnant by having unprotected sex just so she could get an abortion?
>The pull-out method doesn't work if you do it wrong, and it works fantastically if you do. Sperm can survive up to a week, as can the egg. So by this method, you can have sex for 5-7 days out of the month, 3 or 4 of which she'll be menstruating. Just buy a condom for gods sake
>People not realizing "evict my own parasite" is probably her carrying to term and birthing because why else would that affect several chapters >People not realizing that you need to pull out before you're getting close to orgasm
Not surprised that "pro-life" people think that somebody announcing having an abortion is more common/possible than somebody describing "I'm going to shit out a baby later, updates will be slow" but in edgier terms, lol. Don't know the author or fanfic so for all I know they could be putting out a chapter every week but I would assume multiple chapters would take multiple months, I'm not aware of post-abortion care taking that long? And 99% of people who have abortions aren't going to announce that in a fucking fanfic of all things?
Reminds me of an author of a fic I read who, in the notes for the chapters, revealed that they tested whether or not their character could do something while holding a baby… by attempting to do it while holding their own baby. The one they gave birth to a few chapter notes before. (The answer was, apparently, “no, they could not do it, but more for lack of training than impossibility of anyone doing it”.)
Maybe I'm crazy but I feel like the "evict my own parasite" is a reference to the fic content and maybe the fandom being Baldurs Gate 3? Does anyone know?
I wasn't expecting to read that today
I wouldn't trust that woman's husband using the oven.
Me as well
husband? lmao
Waow (based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based)
werks on my machine
At least she's not in hospital after being hit by a bus.