Nightfox

This is really just a rant but I keep seeing this and it really honks me off. There are two places in particular that this issue keeps popping up.

First, I am a happy member of merlin_finders. I love getting recs from other people's searches and I like being able to help out if I can find something for someone else. All in all, it's a great comm. However, I really, really hate when someone takes the time to emphatically specify, NO SLASH. Really? You have to just spew it out like that? Not, "I prefer gen fic" or "I'm looking for het pairings"?

I mean, I understand that slash isn't for everyone and you are certainly within your rights to read what you want to read but there really is something about the way that phrase reads that just screams homophobia to me.

I find it amazing the amount of intolerance you can cram into two small words. The disgust and disdain that pours off that simple statement is astonishing.

On FF.net, authors show their hate with the same phrase or the slight variant of Not Slash and they often take the time to put in bold, italics or ALL CAPS just to be sure you got the message. Slash is nasty and you won't find it in my pristine little fic!

This has been building in me for a while now. I used to just shrug and keep on going but the more I see it, the more it bothers me. I have to be honest, I don't care how good your story might be, if you label yourself as a homophobe at the very top of the damned thing, I sure as hell am not going to read any further. It's not that I'm exclusively looking to read slash either. I'll take well written het and gen fic any day. But I'll be double dipped in dog shit before I support the work of an intolerant prick!

Same thing goes for searches on merlin_finders. If you say NO SLASH, you get NO FIC from me. I may have exactly what you are looking for in my hot little hands but you have just shown yourself unworthy of my help. Take your shriveled little hating heart and be on your way.

OK, that's it for now. Time for me to go fall on my nose and sleep for a few hours!

I don't normally inflict my issues on everyone else but I'm feeling so odd about the news I got today. For anyone who doesn't know I was involved in a rather terrible auto accident in Sept of 2009. As a result of the accident I sustained quite a few injuries but the worst damage was to my cervical spine. I've undergone several procedures to fix everything that was broken/injured. The last surgery, just over a year ago was a two level discectomy/laminectomy with spinal fusion. I had known at 6 mos post surgery that one of the fusions was still unstable but my MD was of the opinion it would continue to heal. Now it's safe to say it hasn't and isn't going to. So today I got to see the lovely gap where the donor bone they used failed to calcify and left me with an open area in the space where my disc used to be.

Needless to say, I've been in a lot of pain. I'm not sure whether or not I should be happy that I have to undergo the knife again. Finding out that my fusion didn't heal means that there is still hope to fix it and potentially reduce my pain because if he'd found today that it was healed that meant I would have had no hope of anything in my future but drugs drugs and more freakin drugs. On the other hand, it's more surgery on my spine and a more painful procedure at that. I can't say that makes me happy. Also I'd been hoping to go back to work at the end of the month and well, clearly that's not going to happen.

So here I sit, not quite sure how to feel about all this. Is it completely pathetic of me to just wish for it all to go away? I just want my life back.