HES SO HAPPY HE JUST LOVES FANS SO MUCH

Putting teaboot's tags here too because this joy for life needs to be shared I think

ALT

I’m thinking about like. The musical Waitress. I watched it recently with my dad. Because it was about a woman who’s unsure about wanting to become a mother but ultimately decides it’s what she wants, I was kind of hesitant. I had that knee-jerk reaction to the premise.

It’s done well though for the most part. Jenna is a complicated woman. She finds strength and liberation in motherhood but it doesn’t come out of nowhere. She doesn’t take the cliche ending of running away with the man she had an affair with and she doesn’t settle for “happy enough” and she leaves her abusive relationship.

While yes the default assumption being that a woman who’s unsure about motherhood will come around is not good, I think it’s equally bad to assume the opposite. Parenthood is a complicated thing to make decisions about and it comes with complicated feelings. Being a parent isn’t inherently fulfilling, nor is it inherently unfulfilling. It’s not inherently stifling or liberating. A woman finding purpose and strength in motherhood isn’t inherently a bad thing. It also shouldn’t be the default.

This isn’t just about Waitress. Waitress is just what got me thinking about this sort of thing. There’s a lot of tropes out there that are societally entwined with these negative forces that have been harming many of us for our entire lives, but they don’t have to be.

Like maybe as writers we don’t have to avoid these topics out of fear of perpetuating old ideas. Maybe we have the power to separate these real things that people experience from these old ideas. We can show them as they are and not as the cardboard cutouts that have been made for us.

I’m thinking about like. The musical Waitress. I watched it recently with my dad. Because it was about a woman who’s unsure about wanting to become a mother but ultimately decides it’s what she wants, I was kind of hesitant. I had that knee-jerk reaction to the premise.

It’s done well though for the most part. Jenna is a complicated woman. She finds strength and liberation in motherhood but it doesn’t come out of nowhere. She doesn’t take the cliche ending of running away with the man she had an affair with and she doesn’t settle for “happy enough” and she leaves her abusive relationship.

While yes the default assumption being that a woman who’s unsure about motherhood will come around is not good, I think it’s equally bad to assume the opposite. Parenthood is a complicated thing to make decisions about and it comes with complicated feelings. Being a parent isn’t inherently fulfilling, nor is it inherently unfulfilling. It’s not inherently stifling or liberating. A woman finding purpose and strength in motherhood isn’t inherently a bad thing. It also shouldn’t be the default.

This isn’t just about Waitress. Waitress is just what got me thinking about this sort of thing. There’s a lot of tropes out there that are societally entwined with these negative forces that have been harming many of us for our entire lives, but they don’t have to be.

Like maybe as writers we don’t have to avoid these topics out of fear of perpetuating old ideas. Maybe we have the power to separate these real things that people experience from these old ideas. We can show them as they are and not as the cardboard cutouts that have been made for us.

Btw if you’re like me and had listened to the song without context, She Used to be Mine is a song that Jenna is singing about her past self and not somebody else. The song hits harder when you have that context.

Other shit:

1. The crotch-and-chin destroying hell of a toddler’s carseat
2. How fucking scary stairs are when you JUST figured out walking. “You can stand up” nah fuck that these steps go up to my knees and I’m top-heavy I’m gonna scoot down on my ass thank you
3. Walking alongside fucking giants whose legs are bigger than your whole fucking body and trying to keep up
4. Not knowing how to blow your nose and everyone expecting you to just figure it out by holding a tissue and saying “blow” like WHAT DO YOU MEAN CLOSE MY THROAT? Just an absolute snot waterboarding
5. People describing how to make sounds with your mouth but you can’t see inside their mouth when they do it so you kind of just guess over and over while they tell you you still don’t got it
6. Not having a full grasp of language but fully understanding CONCEPTS so you say shit like “are we going to the park later?” When you mean TOMORROW but all you can come up with is shit like “the next time we have lunch, not today but after today, after that” like a fucked up game of verbal post-brain injury Pictionary where people won’t let you get mad about it
7. Just. Mucus. Mucus and chapped skin, all the time, chin and upper lip. And you’re not supposed to lick it cause the spit is the PROBLEM but it’s fucking OBNOXIOUS. “Just keep the skin dry” wow thanks I’ve been aware of this mechsuit for about ten minutes and still haven’t fully mastered not falling into the toilet but yeah I know how to stay on top of that, cool
8. FALLING INTO THE TOILET
9. Trying to eat at a table where the surface comes up to your chin but not being able to get high or close enough cause you can’t scoot your chair in and your hands still don’t coordinate good so you end up just spooning tomato sauce onto your lap like an asshole. Like yeah mom my bad, have you considered though that I ALSO don’t want me to be covered in sauce? Cool
10. Adults being WAY too excited about shit that straight up is not worth the hype
11. Carpet burn. Constant carpet burn. Crawling, tripping, shuffling between toys on the floor. So much goddamn carpet burn
12. Knowing exactly what you’re talking about and zero people understanding because they think you’re too dumb for what you’re trying to communicate
13. Being told to wave at or hug complete strangers. And they always smelled kinda weird but you weren’t supposed to say it
14. The feeling of meeting an older kid and they act like they’re your manager or something
15. Encyclopedic knowledge and name of every single person in your grade 1 class, and their interests
16. Stroller rides. You could zone out at the ground for hours I swear to god
17. Dropping something while buckled into a carseat or stroller and not being able to get it and just resigning yourself to a life in hell
18. Dropping something while you’re in a carseat and it goes UNDER YOUR ASS and you can’t fucking GET IT
19. Other children getting away with just absolute war crimes. Imagine if Sharon showed up to the office potluck and offered you a cookie and after you ate one revealed that she licked it. Imagine if Gord took your stapler and put it down his pants so you couldn’t get it back. Imagine if for no reason at all your coworker told you your dad was stupid and then put your laptop in the garbage
20. Not remembering what different foods are called and getting pressured into agreeing to food you were NOT FULLY AWARE OF. How the FUCK is a chicken wing different from a chicken strip you ask? “Well, one just has a bone in it!” You fool. You fucking idiot. They might as well be from different animals entirely. But now you gotta eat it cause we don’t waste food (hell)

Yes I’ve talked about this before and yes I’m going to talk about it again because every single person on earth should be fully and viscerally aware that being a kid feels like every description I’ve ever read of recovering from a stroke and we all grow up and forget and talk about childhood like it was magic.

Yeah some of it was fun and all but don’t you remember FALLING DOWN CONSTANTLY? You don’t remember needing help putting a shirt on cause you got your arm stuck and couldn’t get out and panicked so bad you started crying? You DON’T remember being just CONSTANTLY STICKY? Ohhh my good, pissing yourself. Pissing yourself was the worst. Christ alive, and being put in the playpen with a weird kid

Why were you falling into the toilet?

I WAS LIKE TWO FEET TALL

Are you serious that most people don't remeber being that young?

Frankly, I don't remember a year ago

I don't remember a day before 11, and I don't mean that, as, like, hyperbole, I mean, I have, at best, maybe the sensation of a sight and sound or two and the sharp broken glass of some very awful days and nights, mayhaps a handful out of the hundreds of days of my existence that I cannot ever pull to the front of my mine ever again.

Near and as far as I can tell, my current mental record of my entire existence starts at age 12 in South Carolina, crying on a stool in the public clubhouse, and that's the entirety of my childhood.

There's a weird kind of grief in losing your own library of Alexandria.

Real question tho. since they are editing the genes with compatible dire wolf pieces, and it at least seems like they intend to set up a breeding program for their creations, could these things end up being somewhat like a direwolf subspecies if the gray wolf genes are eventually filtered out as much as possible? Or would they wind up being a unique species of their own?

I guess... at what point does something change enough to clearly define it is no longer part of the parent species it originated from?

Furthermore when I was watching their video on how they did it, seemed like they only had 2 viable direwolf specimens to extract any DNA from, is that even enough diversity to propagate the species? Does it still count as inbreeding when the genes are modified but from the same source on one side?

also, my 2 cents about this in general...
I don't see it as a scam as much as a marketing tactic. getting a good public image like this and hyping people up is how they're gonna attract tons of investors to fund more research and facilities. Sure, a bit of john hammond, but less for stupid reasons - for now, anyway. that could easily change. if they stick to their goals, it could potentially lead to actual de-extinction of some (likely much more recent) species or significantly help boost endangered ones. if they do it right. but they 1000000% need some big time investors to realize this "dream" of theirs.
this is essentially like an early release alpha demo game. showing proof of concept. giving the public something that will keep them talking and relevant. showing the people with fat wallets they can deliver on a product. appealing to the scientists across the genetics field or attracting new ones fresh out of graduating to come lend their skills and knowledge.
and even if they don't reach those goals, this work would undoubtedly further the field of genetics and can serve as a research hotbed for endangered and threatened species. that's being optimistic of course. but the potential is there.
idk, just came off way more markety imo. is it actually dire wolf? no, but they aren't hiding that it isn't either. it's like when rayon fabric is marketed as bamboo. it's not a secret how rayon is made if you just take 20 seconds to look into it, but the public doesn't really care.