I walked out of the loading dock, through a cloud of rotting garbage, and into the alleyway behind the theater. A curtain of rain fell between me and my destination, a little over a block away. “Do you want to wait here, while I get you an umbrella?” Liz, the producer from Wizards of the Coast, asked me. “No,” I said, stepping into the rain, extending my arms outward and turning my palms and face…
I have a theory that the reason they have yet to have an official sequel announcement is because the scriptwriters are busy trying to slip in as many Mad Max references as possible past the censors.
The armor was different, his stance as well, but there was no mistaking that damned bald head.
“Solas!” she cried out.
He stiffened, then relaxed, turning to face her as she closed the distance between them.
“I suspect you have quest…”
His sentence was cut off as her fist connected with his jaw. She put her whole weight behind it, like Bull had shown her, and he staggered, tripping over a loose cobblestone and landing flat on his ass, face slack with shock.
Bull’s laughter roared out, almost covering up Varric’s snort. “Had that one coming, Chuckles,” said the dwarf.
“Oh, well done, my dear,” Vivienne chimed in.
El’adar said nothing, just glared down at Solas where he lay, fists still clenched. She was surprised when his laughter rang out as well.
“Still full of surprises, ma vhenan.” The endearment made El’adar raise her fists again, and he held up a hand in surrender. “Perhaps before you render me incapable of speech, you might let me explain?”
“Talk fast,” she growled, and he rose to his feet, graceful as ever.
Chalcedony skeleton hand on a rutilated quartz base by Harold Van Pelt. Each bone of the hand took months to carve with anatomical accuracy. The chalcedony agate resembles the color of real bones.
Because in addition to being ace spectrum, I’ve been alive long enough to remember what it was like when Viagra first came out, and long enough to know how this culture treats women who (for whatever reason) don’t want to have sex.
Because there’s no way a drug company that spent this much money to acquire this drug and get it approved will limit its marketing to the small population that actually needs it.
Because the next logical market segment is women who don’t necessarily want to have more sex, but who are EXPECTED to have more sex. Which is to say, women with whom men want to have sex. Do I need to explain how that can and will go horribly wrong?
Because this is already being pitched as a great thing for MEN because hey, suddenly it’s medically legit to pressure your(!) woman into taking a daily sedative so she’ll put out more. Less backtalk AND more fucking! Do we really think this isn’t going to be abused .2 seconds after it’s released?
Because this culture in general and medicine in particular values men’s desires and men’s voices over women’s, and if she says “No” and he says “Yes”, we know what usually happens next.
Because the more this drug is prescribed, the more money all parties make, and we all know what that means.
Because it makes my sexual orientation out to be a disease.
Because I will spend the rest of my life explaining, over and over, that no, I’m not like this because I’m “off my little pink pills”.
Because I will have to have The Conversation every time I switch doctors about how no, I’m not taking that fucking pill because I’m not fucking sick.
Because if I ever come out to my family as demi, the next thing out of their mouths will be about this fucking pill.
Because I am one person on a tiny budget and I can’t fight a pharm company spending millions of dollars to convince people I need to be drugged into sexual submission.
Because this drug, and the tsunami of bullshit marketing that will accompany it, will follow me around for the rest of my life (or until it turns out to have killed a large number of people, which is about the only way it’ll get withdrawn).
Because I’m a human being, with a complex biology and history and the inalienable right to choose what I do with my own body, and the people marketing this drug are now going to try very hard to make everyone in my life forget that.
In contrast, all my husband and I had to do was sign a form. Our competence to choose the outcome of our embryo was never questioned. There were no mandatory lectures on gestation, no requirement that I be explicitly told that personhood begins at conception or that I view a picture of a day-five embryo. There was no compulsory waiting period for me to reconsider my decision. In fact, no state imposes these restrictions — so common for abortion patients — on patients with frozen embryos. With rare exceptions, the government doesn’t interfere with an IVF patient’s choices except to resolve disagreements between couples. The disparity between how the law treats abortion patients and IVF patients reveals an ugly truth about abortion restrictions: that they are often less about protecting life than about controlling women’s bodies. Both IVF and abortion involve the destruction of fertilized eggs that could potentially develop into people. But only abortion concerns women who have had sex that they don’t want to lead to childbirth. Abortion restrictions use unwanted pregnancy as a punishment for “irresponsible sex” and remind women of the consequences of being unchaste: If you didn’t want to endure a mandatory vaginal ultrasound , you shouldn’t have had sex in the first place .
thew1ghtknight 