I Love That Orym Declared "I'm Going To Kiss You Now" To Dorian Before Apparently Immediately Deciding

“I’ll never talk” ok that’s cool. didn’t really expect you to. I’m not gonna torture you for information—I have an elaborate espionage network for that. everyone knows torture is an unreliable means of extracting information and anything obtained from it is not to be trusted. I’m not an idiot. I’ve read all the torture science. if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s the foolish notion that torture serves a practical purpose. no, my torture dungeon exists for good, clean fun. it’s all about the love of the game. strap ’em to the rack, boys!

shoutout to the woman from my high school martial arts class who liked to get me in joint locks and then joke about how I was easy to catch. you cannot comprehend how psychosexually formative that was for me

I hate when people ask me about my preference but I don’t understand their preference level. Like yes I kinda want Chinese food 10% more than I want a sandwich but if you want a sandwich like 40% more than Chinese food then I would say it’s totally reasonable we get sandwiches.

I think one of the funniest things about kids is how they'll be very observant and lack context for anything. Like imagine someone having to explain their small kids that some other adult in the grocery store was acting absolutely horrid because some grownups aren't real adults, they're just kids in adult bodies trying to pretend to be grownups, and some of them are bad at it. Real grownups don't throw tantrums in grocery stores.

And three weeks later one of the kids sees a trainee at the daycare fuck up something that the other daycare workers have no problem doing, and observes "you're just a kid trying to pretend to be an adult, aren't you?" and this whole-ass young adult will have to process that they were just read for fucking filth by somebody who was born in 2021.

sorry, can't today. the narrative forces aren't aligned

Ok so if we did get what we all wanted, and V found Johnny's body and both of them were able to get out alive in the end, I love to imagine Kerry and Rogue's reaction to the Johnny who's been changed so much by V. Especially Rogue's reaction since her dialogue if V lets Johnny have their body in the end leads me to believe that she thinks Johnny minipulated V into letting him have their body and probably thinks that Johnny can never change.

But V changed Johnny so much. Kerry and Rogue would see a Johnny who is so incredibly determined not to fuck up what he has with V again. He knows he did once, and to his old choom's surprise he owns up to it but he won't be making that mistake again.

Even if he doesn't immediately change the way he treats everyone, Kerry and Rogue would see the difference in how he treats V. He's honest with V. He treats V with respect, never degrading them outside of friendly jabs and never trying to minipulated them. V would be the first person they'd ever seen Johnny treat with real dignity.

And he wouldn't just treat V with dignity, he'd treat himself with more dignity too. V didn't just give him a second chance on life when they put everything on the line to save him, V had given him an entirely new perspective on how his life should be lived. He's not constantly out of his mind drunk or high anymore, he has value in his life being lived consciously and doesn't want to just waste it away constantly chasing the next best high.

I feel like Kerry and Rogue would be genuinely shocked with who Johnny is after V. And they'd be shocked to see who Johnny is when he's around V. Johnny expresses how he's never been as close to someone as he is to V, by a long shot. It seems like he's the type who only lets anyone so close before putting up a wall and pushing them away. But with V, not only can he say one word to make them bust their ass laughing while he sits there with a shit eating grin but Johnny is also genuinely vulnerable with V. V knows pains of Johnny's that neither Rogue nor Kerry knew existed, and it's obvious to them that Johnny isn't afraid to lean on V's comfort if he needs it. He's never been that close to anyone.

Sure, Johnny would still have everything that makes him the corpo-hating smartass rockerboy they know and love but I genuinely think that his relationship with V would make him a whole new person in the eyes of Kerry and Rogue.

Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything is a DnD expansion with canon gay art, singular they, and a whole section on consent and respect at the table which is like... absolutely choice.

drdevonprice.substack.com

How Do I Become Less Obedient?

Autistic Advice#12: Noncompliance is a liberating social skill - but it must be developed.

If you’ve never been all that disobedient before, you can and should start really, really small. For example, you can wear the slightly revealing or gloriously trashy-looking garment that makes your mom roll her eyes and sigh despondently every time she sees you put it on. You will feel judged and disapproved of when you put it on, but that is fine. Your goal is to sit with the uncomfortable feelings and continue with your desired behavior anyway.  Saunter down the steps in that highlighter-yellow Garfield crop top with your chest hair flowing over the neckline, and harness as much courage as you can muster. It’s okay if you feel like a beacon of sin. Just keep it moving. Your emotions are not the target here. Your behavior is. You can feel however you are feeling in the moment so long as you keep acting like you’re free.  Do you have a favorite TV show that a partner or roommate vocally hates? Try watching that show around them without apologizing or defensively joining them in mocking the program. At first, you probably won’t be able to enjoy the show while in their presence. You’ll feel self-conscious about everything they find annoying or cringe-inducing about the show, and so focused on their reactions that you can’t relax. That’s okay. Allow those feelings of embarrassment and guilt to exist and pass through you without giving up. In time, you will be able to ignore these reactions more, and enjoy the activity.  You want to see the needle of discomfort moving down just a little, like Link’s body temperature meter in Tears of the Kingdom when he puts on a breathable outfit in a hot climate. You’re not gonna go from roiling hot to frosty cold in an instant. But after a certain point, you won’t be actively in pain anymore. Things are just gonna slowly suck less, bit by bit, until they are finally okay. That’s true of most major life adjustments, I find.  Probably the best way to develop self-advocacy skills while growing in your distress tolerance is simply by telling other people no. Do this without explanation or hedging. Nitpicky aunt wants to hear all about your dating life? “No, I don’t want to talk about that.” Unreliable ex-friend wants you to do them the tiny favor of moving their entire home gymnasium into a new third story walk-up? “No, I’m not available.” Manipulative shift supervisor wants to cajole you into sticking around for another three hours to close? “No.”  As many advice columnists smarter than me have already intoned, “no” is a complete sentence. “No” requires no explanation. “No” is not subject to debate. “No” can be repeated over and over like a broken record if a disrespectful person acts like they can’t hear it. And you can walk away at any time to make your “no” physical and impossible to argue with, when someone has proven they don’t respect your boundaries. 

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It’s crazy that countries on the edge of the Sahara desert are reversing desertification by just digging half circles

My favorite detail about Jurassic Park is that it has a baked-in justification for any and all retcons it might need to make due to paleontology advancing forwards.

Because there is not a single dinosaur that has ever appeared in Jurassic Park.

Not one. Not in the books. Not in the movies. Not ever.

"Now what John Hammond and InGen did at Jurassic Park was to create genetically engineered theme park monsters." ~Alan Grant

Grant says that in a moment of cynicism. It's part of his arc for the film. But it's not inaccurate. What Jurassic Park has, what it's always had since the very first novel, are "Mostly Dinosaurs".

"And since the DNA is so old, it's full of holes! Now, that's where our geneticists take over!" ~Mr. DNA

It's impossible to recover a fully intact gene sequence from an ancient amber mosquito. Cloning a pure dinosaur would have been completely impossible, and so the park filled in the gene sequence with whatever works. Frog. Lizard. Bird. Whatever they need to get the result they are trying to get.

Every single dinosaur is a chimeric beast made up of mostly dinosaur and a bunch of other stuff that some scientists thought would achieve the appropriate dinosaur-like result.

"Nothing in Jurassic World is natural! We have always filled gaps in the genome with the DNA of other animals. And if the genetic code was pure, many of them would look quite different." ~Dr. Henry Wu

Which, from a writing perspective, is fucking genius. Because now you have a preset excuse for each and every plot hole your movie has.

Like. Why don't the raptors have feathers? Because of the chimera DNA.

Why do dilophosaurs spit venom? Because of the chimera DNA.

Why do T-Rexes have movement based vision? Oh, they don't. But Rexy does. Because of her chimera DNA.

Why is the Spinosaurus so fucking big? Because of the chimera DNA.

Why are the velociraptors mislabeled? Because Hammond's a dipshit.

Like. I've always marveled at the way Jurassic Park started out by giving itself a blanket excuse to be wrong about every single thing it ever said about the central attraction of its franchise. It's honestly beautiful, and allows the series a degree of immortality well into the era where we know better about its animals.