gdp's Comments

The Toast : Talking About Estrangement

Thu, 15 Jan 2015 00:15:49 +0000

Yeah, if your parent actually acted like a parent to you when you were younger it's different. Also, like, a parent like this is pretty much the crappiest friend ever, who takes and takes and rarely gives. If I tell my mom about anything going on in my life it turns into how Thing X that Sucks for Me is actually hurtful to her, rather than being supportive.

The Toast : Talking About Estrangement

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 22:19:05 +0000

For everyone reading this post I want to warn you away from watching Zach Braff's Wish I Was Here because it felt like a movie written by this lady, where the son who cuts himself off from his emotionally abusive father is told he must go to his death bed because otherwise selfish. Also because Zach Braff.

The Toast : Talking About Estrangement

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 22:16:59 +0000

My boomer (narcissist) mom was telling me about how she's going to some community meeting in her town where seniors can apply for property tax reduction based solely on age. I pointed out that that must negatively impact local schools and she shot back that it's not her concern, and why should she have to pay higher taxes when she's living solely on social security. Which will be gone by the time these kids are old enough to retire, of course. Lady used to go to peace protests. Can't believe how self absorbed their generation has become.

The Toast : Talking About Estrangement

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 22:08:12 +0000

I love this thread so much. My dad died when I was eight and my mother still talks about it like it's something that solely happened to her and had no impact on me or my sister. Like I would be forced to do all this emotional caretaking and would hug her all the time trying to comfort her and make her happy. Then I turned twelve and hormones started happening and I got mad and resentful and kicked holes in the walls and stuff (BECAUSE MY DAD WAS DEAD AND I WAS A CONFUSED, ANGRY KID) and my mother was like "HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME???!!!" Took a lot of therapy to untangle all of that, and it's still a process. My pregnancy was the worst. She couldn't handle the spotlight shining on someone else and spent nine months whining about her bunions. She told me she'd throw me a shower and when I showed up the night before she refused to decorate because it was too much work for her and she was in too much pain and I had to waddle myself up a ladder at eight months pregnant to put up streamers and how could I do this to her, this being the money she spent at the dollar store on decorations. Damn. Maybe it's time to go back to therapy.

The Toast : All the Posts on Every Third Trimester Message Board

Thu, 18 Dec 2014 04:50:10 +0000

It didn't hurt for me to pee, I just couldn't figure out how to do it. Like my muscles were all used to doing something else and were like "Pee? What is this basic bodily function I've been doing for 30 years?" But yeah, otherwise peri bottles are great.

The Toast : Terrifying Screenshots From Unassisted Childbirth Forums

Thu, 13 Nov 2014 19:40:17 +0000

SO so belated, but . . . I am a hippie homebirther; I pushed out a surprise posterior baby in the comfort of my own bed with a CNM in attendance. However, more than anything, I'm a believer in the midwifery model of care. The midwifery model DEPENDS on the ability of midwives to send some women to the hospital because they've risked out of midwifery care. The freebirth community exists in part because some women have had really traumatic hospital experiences. This is why I believe birth needs to be improved across the board, in all settings. Unassisted childbirth is damned scary. Traumatic childbirth is scary. All women deserve good care.

The Toast : In Which I Endorse an Online Community Other Than Our Own

Sat, 16 Aug 2014 05:43:23 +0000

Try reddit's /r/babybumps. It was pretty awesome during my pregnancy. Also, don't stress about the new moms groups! I was really worried it would be like high school but actually everyone at new mom's groups are super welcoming because WE'RE ALL IN THIS [EXHAUSTED] SHIT TOGETHER!

The Toast : Your Fandom Autobiography

Wed, 23 Jul 2014 12:24:46 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/Sword-Dancer-Tiger-Del-Jenn... They are actually pretty good if you like this type of thing!

The Toast : Your Fandom Autobiography

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 21:39:47 +0000

We all do, Mallory.

The Toast : Your Fandom Autobiography

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 21:32:52 +0000

I REMEMBER SILVER! This is why the toast is amazing.

The Toast : Your Fandom Autobiography

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 21:30:46 +0000

The best part is that we don't even need to make it up! McCaffrey comes right out and says it: http://books.google.com/books?id=WsEJw5pBMFwC&...

The Toast : Your Fandom Autobiography

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 21:25:44 +0000

Ah, I think I was in ANOTHER Pern rip-off that almost got sued. (The girl in charge was named Quarla? That's all I remember, pretty much.) I love the fact that there were multiple Pern rip-off clubs that almost got sued. Somehow I didn't get into Sailor Moon until grad school which is clearly a tragedy.

The Toast : Your Fandom Autobiography

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 21:18:12 +0000

There's no righteous justice like the righteous justice of 14 year old girls.

The Toast : Your Fandom Autobiography

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 21:16:54 +0000

Hey I was too! That almost went in this but then it didn't fit with the general gist. Which one?

The Toast : Your Fandom Autobiography

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 21:16:32 +0000

Yes oh god, I think it was somewhere around Masterharper where I realized that the rape stuff is kind of weird?

The Toast : Your Fandom Autobiography

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 21:15:47 +0000

<3 thank you I mean clearly I did some practice cheating too. I actually think copying is a fine way to learn, it's hiding it and like claiming the work is your own while you get praised for it that's weird for me. (And yet I still feel guilty admitting I traced some of my fan art! So!)

The Toast : Becoming Three: The Myth of Instant Family

Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:56:14 +0000

You're right. It's so hard--I miss my husband too (including physically; at five months post partum and I only just had some healing issues resolve). At the same time, I feel very much like a dyad now--with my daughter. I write my love letters to her now. It's scary, sometimes, how consuming it is. But then I see him with her and realize he's feeling the same thing, and that we're together in that. She'll grow and individuate and become her own person and roll her eyes at our love for her, but he won't, because he knows and feels it, too.

http://theyakitten.blogspot.com/ : Ellen Oh and Negative Reviews: How Much Can Authors Say?

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 05:35:41 +0000

Hey darlin', Just commenting (belatedly) to say that the pressure for me was entirely self-imposed. No one asked me to stop reviewing and I want to make that clear--my editor and my agent have always been incredibly supportive of everything I wanted to do. I haven't talked about it much in public in part because it was such a personal decision. A huge component was that after four years of reviewing, I started to feel wrung-out by the workload. My negative reviews felt formulaic to me, and (more than a year ago), I'd grown tired of reading things to pan them. I was DNFing a lot more books, reading more selectively, so my numerical ratings were skewing up anyway. I've always had mixed feelings about star ratings--because sometimes I'd rate things highly initially and like them less in retrospect, or vice versa--and it seemed like a good time to break myself of the habit, since I was stepping away from posting long reviews anyway. I was going to stick with some ratings but these days I'm just not rating anything. In my experience, it all evolves with your career, and in surprising ways, too. I never would have imagined that I'd just get kind of tired of posting a good, one-star, skewering. (I still post negative reviews up at Strange Horizons, for what it's worth. But that's a professional venue and so justifies the workload.) There were other factors, too--that I'm better connected than I once was, doing more beta reading for other pro authors, and so I feel less able to speak as objectively as I once did. And during the process of requesting blurbs, I realized that if *I* was ever successful enough to be asked to blurb, it would be a conflict of interest to review a book I've received for blurbing. Ironically, I received my first blurb request like two weeks after making this decision. Heh. In my experience, wearing both hats isn't as doom and gloom as people make it out to be. I'm glad I was a reviewer and my experiences reviewing directly led me to many great opportunities within publishing (and ironically, without my 3-star Divergent review, I would have never gotten to know Veronica Roth. She blurbed Starglass, and we critique one another's work now and it's generally great and take that, writers who say you have to be nice or face ruination). But I was REALLY over-extended last year. Blogging and reviewing became stressful work and so I wanted to give myself a chance to just be an author (and a reader again, too.) Which is why I love bloggers so much. I know the work they put into EVERYTHING. It's amazeballs.

Poisoned Rationality : Books I\'m Looking Forward to in 2013

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:01:58 +0000

This was posted on my birthday, and it makes me super happy that YOU know what Alien Nation is! <3 Hope you enjoy Starglass. July can't come soon enough.

Phoebe North : Vlog on Blogging Pet Peeves Up at WriteOnCon!

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 21:13:05 +0000

Thanks for the invite, Lenore! I really enjoyed doing it (& you rock too <3!)