vicious and carved out of stone

#repost @masterofdemons07 ・・・

Nonetheless, at least on paper,  Brazil has one of the most comprehensive and generous public health networks in the world. The Unified Health System, or SUS as it is widely known, is universal and free for everyone. It has notched up impressive achievements. Since the turn of the century, life expectancy is up from 68.8 to 74.5, infant mortality is estimated to have fallen to 14.4 per 1,000 live births from 17.6, and the government says 95% of children are now fully vaccinated. According to the World Bank, Brazil’s healthcare spending was 9.3% of GDP in 2012.

@ USA you can do it too! We believe in you!

Horses of Game of Thrones 1/?:

Tornado

Hungarian Warmblood Gelding - click for more information about the breed

Aang: I recall yes

Sokka: can I have it

Aang: …what?

Sokka: can I have his firebending. just for like ten minutes

Aang: what no

Sokka: why not I wanna prank zuko

Aang:

Aang:

Katara: you thought the avatar’s brother was a non-bender?

Zuko: … excuse me?

Aelin: * in the background trying to lick her own elbow *

Interstitial cystitis is a bladder and pelvic floor condition. It’s painful, exhausting, embarrassing, and complicated. It makes peeing painful. Makes sex painful. Even makes just sitting or laying down painful. You have frequent urination and utis, urinary retention, bladder spasms, and so many more horrible symptoms. I.C. patients are 90% women, 10% men.

Doctors can literally feel your pelvic muscles twitching and spasming all the time. Often the treatment is physical therapy where a therapist has to stick their fingers inside your vagina and press on the painful muscles until they release. The medicines prescribed for it are expensive and barely work.

Some women have it mild enough it barely affects their life once they make diet changes, for others nothing works and they have to insert catheters in them multiple times a day.

No one talks about interstitial cystitis. Many urologists don’t even know how to diagnose or treat it. I went to 4 urologists over 3 years and not one could diagnose it or spend more than 10 minutes on me. I was told to catheterize myself daily, to take pills constantly, I even was told that if I told my body to relax, it would fix my bladder spasms. Mind over matter. But it took a urogynocologist minutes to diagnose me by feeling the tense overly thickened muscles in my pelvic floor.

Even with a diagnosis, i.c. is still hard to live with and I struggle every day. Sex sets it into a flare. Not drinking enough sets it into a flare. Not peeing every three hours sets it into a flare. Sometimes nothing at all causes spasms and infections.

Look at that dialogue. “She thinks she knows.” He’s trying to get Mulaney to see his wife’s expertise as instead a weird misperception. He’s coaching him to undercut his wife’s confidence in the truth and her own abilities.

And Mulaney replies exactly the right way: “She does know.” He asserts not only that she’s perceiving the world accurately, but that she is an expert at something he’s not good at.

This is my new favorite genre of disappointed Trump voter. Meet the Trump voter taking it in the teeth at tax time.

(Same anon) also I can’t really love Azriel and Elain that much cause it’s going to take years for az to get over his feeling for mor cause he’s loved her for years, and I don’t think those feelings go away so soon. Ahhh to me that’s such an interesting story to play out!!

Answer:

I think you’re right in that it’s about him being fae, but it’s also about the bond being forced on them. In Acofas, when he comes to visit, Elain avoids him entirely, and when Feyre presses the issue this is their exchange:

“He brought you a present.”

“And that entitles him to my time, my affections?”

“No, but he is a good male…He cares for you.” 

“He doesn’t know me.” 

“I don’t want a mate. I don’t want a male.”

I think that for Elain, it’s both the combination of Lucien being a fae male, and also the idea of the bond in general. The idea that some random guy is somehow entitled to her “time” and “affections,” that he cares for her without even knowing her. I think for her, it’s not…genuine love. For her, genuine love was falling in love of her own free will. She’s already felt it, and she didn’t want it to end. It ended because Graysen couldn’t accept her as fae, and because she was turned in the first place. 

I just think it’s a bit more than she doesn’t like Lucien because he’s fae, I think it’s that she doesn’t like the idea of a mate, and she…is completely uninterested in building even a friendship with him, despite his and Feyre’s subtle pressing of the issue (he brings her a present, Feyre confronts her about it directly). 

With Azriel, imo, I think it’s about it being her choice? Or at the very least, it’s about the fact that he respects her privacy in a way that even Feyre doesn’t. Azriel doesn’t even spy on Lucien, because he feels that would betray Elain’s trust. I think she really values that everything in their relationship/friendship is up to her. 

I agree that Elucien could become really interesting, but I think Elriel has just as many difficulties: Elain will at some point feel the bond, so Elriel would have to deal with the fact that she’d be someone else’s mate. Does Azriel have a mate out there? Is he forgoing his mate to be with Elain? And what about his love for Mor? What might happen with that? I also think Elriel presents difficulties because of their personality types. I mean who would even make the first move? With Elucien, it’s clearly Lucien. With Elriel…I mean I can’t see Elain making a move, and I also can’t see Azriel being confident enough, or thinking he was being too impolite/that she wouldn’t want him. 

Tbh, Azriel is just as “other” to Elain as Lucien is: he’s got wings, and shadows, and all this killing power in his siphons. I feel like he should be stranger to Elain than any high fae, that dealing with him should be worse than dealing with Lucien, who just has ears (and the eye). Azriel is far more of a threat than Lucien, just based on raw power. We haven’t seen all the Lucien can do, but we know that the Illyrians, and especially Cass and Az, radiate killing power and strength. And yet…from the moment Elain and Az first interact, she asks him questions about himself, is genuinely interested in his abilities and flying. 

She…never shows that interest with Lucien. And it might be because of the bond and the ears but it also might just be that she vibes with Azriel’s personality more. 

Also—and I think this is my main point—if Elain doesn’t want Lucien because the bond feels like it isn’t her choice (and it’s literally not their choice) and even if they would maybe make a good couple, even if they could maybe fall in love, I still think that her choice, that her not wanting something that feels forced, is an important and valid enough reason to not want to get to know him. And to not want to grow any love between them. 

And I guess it’s that I’m not interested in reading a story, especially after Acofas, in which something and someone that wasn’t her choice, that she initially does not want eventually becomes something she does want—because ultimately it’s still a story of someone else, aka fate, making a choice for a woman and she gradually comes to accept it. And I’m tired of those stories.  

With Feyre, because she doesn’t know about the bond, and because it’s clear that she already has feelings for him that are deep (see: the cabin sex scene oh my god), I don’t mind the mating bond. I like it actually because they both fall for one another before knowing they are mates—Rhys has an inkling of it but the bond doesn’t snap into place until Feyre is high fae, and he has a connection with her before he knows she’s his mate (the dreams). And Rhys is never about making Feyre acknowledge the bond, he does everything in his power to make it her choice, he is okay with her getting married if it’s her choice even though it breaks his heart. But Elucien is already not on that path—Lucien told her about the bond, and I don’t fault him for it, but their relationship has always felt like an obligation for her, and not a choice. And I imagine it goes both ways. I don’t think Lucien is super jazzed about feeling all protective over this woman who doesn’t even want him, and who he doesn’t even know. 

And so I guess, I guess I want a story in which the woman’s rejection of the male figure is accepted, and isn’t changed because he woos her and pursues her. Her choice, and her first choice, the first time she says no, is listened to and is enough. And her mind doesn’t have to be changed, and she doesn’t have to participate in something that she doesn’t want just for the sake of love, because there’s other, bigger love out there that is bigger and better partly because she chooses it for herself.