A Writer Reads

Also again, addicts are just as every bit as complicated and human as you are and often have trauma around drug use themselves.

to be fair, neither could Rasputin. Alexei very much continued to have haemophilia.

Based on the available historical evidence, the most likely sequence of events is as follows:

The conspirators attempt to kill Rasputin with poison-laced cakes, but fail; it’s unknown whether this is because de Lazovert fucked up the poison, because Rasputin – who had a well-known dislike of sweets – didn’t go in on the cakes as heavily as they expected, or just because a poisoned cake is a really stupid idea.  

Seeing that the poison has failed, Yusupov gets Rasputin alone for a moment and shoots him once in the chest, causing him to fall senseless to the floor. Because he’s a useless nerd who thinks he knows how murder works because he read a book, Yusupov is unaware that a single handgun shot is very unlikely to be immediately fatal, and neglects to finish Rasputin off, instead leaving the room to confer with his fellow conspirators.  

When the conspirators return to retrieve Rasputin’s body, he recovers from the shock of the initial gunshot and attacks them. Following some general panic, a third conspirator, Vladimir Purishkevich, opens up guns blazing; Purishkevich manages to miss several times in spite of being at point-blank range, but eventually strikes Rasputin in the head, killing him instantly.  

The conspirators beat the shit out of Rasputin’s body just to be sure, then proceed to make a complete clownshow out of disposing of the corpse; the remainder of Rasputin’s injuries are sustained postmortem.

Pretty much everything else about Rasputin’s miraculous invincibility is invented whole cloth, much of it by Yusupov himself in order to build himself up in his own published memoirs.

………..

But the answer, it turns out, is I was doing something. Riding in a car jars your body in many directions and requires constant microadjustments of your muscles just to stay in place and hold your normal posture. Because you're inside the car, inside the situation, it's easy not to notice all the extra work you're doing just to maintain the status quo.

There's all sorts of work that we think of as "free" that require spending energy: concentrating, making decisions, managing anxiety, maintaining hypervigilance in an unfriendly environment, dealing with stereotype threat, processing a lot of sensory input, repairing skin cells damaged by sun exposure, trying to stay warm in a cold room.

It is not cowardly to stay in the closet. Full stop. You do not owe anyone any part of yourself you aren't ready to share

If you unable to come out because you fear for your safety or well-being or because you know it will cause you substantial discomfort, that is not a defect in you. It's a failure of the society in which you live and the community surrounding you.

Aang: y'know what the hardest part of being born 100 years ago is?

Zuko, who just woke up after getting an arrow bonked against his head, seeing Aang is clearly twelve: ?????

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Aang: this is what monk gyatso always taught me

Zuko, having done extensive research on the air nomads, knowing this is impossible bc Gyatso died in the temple raids: what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck wh-

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Sokka: yea and then Aang entered the spirit world for the very first time trying to save me

Zuko, who up until this point thought Aang time traveled through the spirit world somehow: .......... interesting.

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Actress Katara: it looks like someone stuck in an iceberg!

Actor Sokka: but who? Who is the boy in the iceberg?