Its Actually Appalling How Few Pet Owners Have Safety, Evacuation And Rescue Training And Plans In Place

Its actually appalling how few pet owners have safety, evacuation and rescue training and plans in place for their pets.

I very vividly remember in 2020, being told by this one person who began controlling our fandom rp server, that we had to turn our rp blogs into places where we had to reblog every horrific thing happening during blm. and that he "better not catch us trying to rp". he also was against tagging it because then "white people would ignore it". i remember forcing myself to watch videos of police brutalizing black men and women, real people dying in the streets, and trying to convince myself that if I looked away, I was part of the problem. He'd also convinced me that I lucked out in getting my job, only because I was white, and that I was taking this job from a much more qualified black person. the only reason i got away from him is because I started feeling like i should kill myself, because one less whitey. and that was when i snapped to attention and did whatever i could to get out of there, even though it cost me my reputation being slandered by him.

it's been 4 years, and I'm doing my best to heal, but apparently he's still at it. pulling this same kind of controlling bs that I'm seeing echoed in some of those reblogs.

don't traumatize yourself for the sake of proving you're a good person.

Please feel free to name and shame. That kind of behavior is abusive, predatory and could very well drive someone to kill themselves as you almost did. Him continuing to have a platform and unchallenged reach is outright dangerous.

If you are ever in a situation like this, please, clock the early signs and leave. Your health and wellbeing are far more important than your forced activism. If someone is ever:

Making you feel guilty over something like not reblogging a post, being a certain ethnicity/gender/race/sexuality.

Accusing you of contributing to or being the core problem in a much, much broader issue.

Trying to manipulate you and others by "tattling" on you for not doing something or not doing enough.

Threatening you in order to pressure you into doing things.

Screenshot all of the conversations, block them, and leave.

Things like this are why I will always give call out posts which do not contain blatant and corroborating evidence the benefit of the doubt. Its all too easy for people to join in almost automatically on dogpiles against people being accused of something like being racist or being passive/dismissive about world events.

(E.g; in the 911 fandom literal Latino artists and authors were being harassed over being "racist" re; their depictions of Eddie Diaz only for the people dogpiling them to scramble to retract and apologise once they realized the person wasn't actually an Evil Terrible White Person.)

I'm so proud of you for having the courage to get yourself away from your abuser.

Re: pet evacuation

I don't know how you'd do it with other creatures since I've never had any, but I've always trained my dogs to come find me immediately when they hear the fire alarm. Not too hard with food motivated creatures; give them a tasty treat whenever they hear a fire alarm and they'll learn to search you out real damn fast when they hear it. You start out more often so they learn what to do and what everything means, but now I just reinforce it every once in a while.

Sending this ask bc so many people are so daunted by how to approach this type of training that they just never do it; maybe it'll help take away some of the "holy shit how the fuck do I even do that" panic

Pretty much any animal can be trained via food. Animals are extremely motived by food due to the instinctual drive to eat to survive and eat what they can, when they can.

Training an animal just takes time, effort and consistency. In the future I'll probably compile a list of resources for people who are interested in training their animals with emergency protocols and desensitization.

Training your dog to come to you or go to the front door in emergencies is a good place to start

tbh all the people complaining about "i NEED to vent in non-vent spaces" reek of selfishness and narcissism. there's a server i'm in with two vent spaces. one is 18+ because there's an 18+ section. legit watched one person vent about another who couldn't see the 18+ section. using it to deliberately hide from them. despite the fact. yknow. DMs with other people exist. small group chats can be made at any time. nope! have to vent in this subsection where the members who can see both vent chats can report me for it.

Yeah, internal member conflict is another reason why honestly things like venting channels and negativity spaces in open-access things like Discord servers are just.... Not a good idea, no matter how therapeutic or helpful or easy to ignore you think they are.

Allowing members to just spew out negativity and complaints and toxic thoughts just allows other people to respond to them. I've lost count of how many times I've seen someone venting and someone else has started commenting lashing out at the original person or accusing them of bad behavior or blaming them for what happened. Then other members pile in to agree or disagree and before you know it half the server is at verbal war.

Its just not healthy for anyone involved. If you try to outlet your emotions and get shut down, its going to impact you worse in the long run. It is absolutely more beneficial to privately release your thoughts and use those public spaces in order to farm more positive outlets and distractions.

E.g; keep a diary. Write down all your bad shit then go to the Discord server and say hey, I've had a bad day, spam me with fun shit to cheer me up. Find something worthwhile to engage with. Have a fun, dynamic conversation with other people.

I think far too many people think the only proper way to process and move on from negativity is to involve other people and actively dissect it and honestly, it really isn't. Especially when other people already have their owns shares of misery and suffering.

I ran into a similar problem as anon with BLM. My father did it. He deliberately showed me videos of dead bodies and flood victims. He showed me burning cars. I asked him to stop. But he wouldn't listen. I was a minor. I didn't become kinder to people. I didn't get more empathetic. I got anxiety and nightmares. When I see my dad with a phone in his hand and hear a video I tense up. I'm afraid he might come up to me and show me dead bodies. I used to know about death and I used to know about the victims of the elements. I was a more sympathetic person. I used to read a lot of relevant literature. I used to know what to do during natural and man-made disasters. I used to be a more calm person. Now I am an adult. Now I only feel anxious. Watching videos of destruction and other people's deaths will not help you.

I'm sorry you went through that. Especially from your own parent.

If you haven't considered or tried it already, I do recommend therapy to help you process that anxiety and grief. Not so you're able to be more invested in activism again; but so you can hopefully live with less of those emotions weighing you down.

I wish you the best future.

Antis try to argue that fiction affects reality saying that representation matters, but they're contradicting themselves. Most fanfiction has some kind of representation (mostly queer) but they don't count them as actual representation, because they know it doesn't have the same reach as, say, a movie or TV series, and yet they argue that fanfic portraying something bad will have a huge impact??? I swear, they don't even think before talking

My favorite thing is when people try to argue that fiction absolutely does reflect reality but every single example they give is when reality is affecting fiction. Reality dictating what is depicted in fiction, and not the other way around.

That or when their only go-to example of fiction actually affecting reality is Jaws.