#Two little guys from different worlds

[dirtgrubroy]

succsunny nation…. how can i possibly be normal about this

[cranberrymoons]

.

[garrettwrites]

People on this website will be like: "In a gay ship you don't need to have a feminine one and a masculine one! No need for sub/dom dynamics! No need for strict top/bottom sexual positions!"

And you think to yourself yes. Indeed. We are finally accepting that gay people are as varied as any other person because we're all human!

But then the bottom line of the post is something along the lines of "they can both be real men and masculine and muscular and hairy and do fart jokes and maybe have a beer belly" and you're just like oh. This is just one of those posts that doesn't view not-idealised men as men. You don't view "girly guys" as just guys. You're being progressive by saying men... get to be men. You're being progressive by getting mad at... men being depicted as feminine, rather than being progressive by just stating you don't need to enforce stereotypes onto a gay (fictional) couple.

Which btw I agree. Unfortunately it still needs to be said that gay men can be masculine. But there's a difference between that and you just being shocked at the notion that, idk, two guys who pass as women on a good day can be in love with each other and be, indeed, a gay couple and not lesbian lite.

[mayomkun]

Finally done with teen wolf rewatch. Phew

[rivilu]

ok you know. the Ellu in dav crossover au is very fun but i am a little bit enchanted by the concept of him AND Rynn at once. Best of both worlds in a sense.

[thedaythatwas]

what if I said arsonist’s lullaby by hozier was *the* akechi song? what if I also said it was *the* komaeda song? what then liberals?

[coridallasmultipass]

Halloween costume hint:

(The stitch marker and the word that describes this colour-pattern of yarn [or fabric] are 2 more hints.)

[inkats]

is it autism or is it a symptom of previous longterm social isolation and lack of agency ?

[peridots-pixiwolf]

[Start ID. A drawing of two scavengers from Rain World, one labelled Sanic and the other one Shrek. Sanic's fur is light brown, with darker extremities, a messy row of pale green spines down its back, and bright blue eyes. They sit contentedly, staring at the screen, with a couple grenades by its feet. Shrek has pale fur, a green head, hands, and feet, and brown eyes. It's facing to the right, with their arms splayed out and an explosive spear on their back. Beside each scavenger are a few woefully-compressed screencaps of their in-game appearance. End ID]

An ode to these silly beasts, who accompanied me on my second visits to Industrial and Chimney

[bitchfitch]

I am a homebody. I don't like leaving my place if I don't Have to. I can go on vacation for a single day and Still be immediately glad to go home and not want to leave it again for any reason at all whatsoever for At Least a few weeks.

That's the context for this. Nothing has ever made me want to get on a return trip to a locale faster than leaving NYC (70~°f) and then hearing the pilot announce it was 106° (even though the sun had already been down for a Bit) as we were landing in Dallas

[magpigment]

i think it’s so funny to be a writer with multiple stories that you flesh out and develop and world build and then never write.. like yes i have an incredibly intricate explanation for how this worlds religion works based on how each individual fantasy culture and race i made perceives the afterlife and deities of the world (that i also made up). yes there is deeply ingrained stigma even lasting into present day in my story that still impacts some of the characters more than others. yes it’s also a metaphor for modern day religious fanaticism and the way it others people for no discernible reason. yes there are also unicorn people and phoenix people and basilisk people and werewolves and vampires and necromancers and sirens and hydras and giants of all different varieties and yes i love this story dearly. no i won’t ever write it. why? reasons.

[transgaysex]

i like my ocs i dont talk abt them enough but i like them

[valeriehalla]

I am so utterly fascinated by “Saki”, the 18-year-running mahjong manga in which you, the reader, become gradually, frog-boilingly aware (over the course of nearly two decades’ worth of mahjong tournaments) that none of these girls are wearing underwear and most of their boobs are slowly expanding.

I need you to understand that I have, like, an anthropological level fascination with this comic. From the perspective of someone who is also a comic artist and writer, two things delight me about it:

the fact that I understand completely how an artist gets from “the fans can have a little hint of skirted asscheek” to “the pussy is completely out on center page” over the course of 18 years; and

the way in which the pussy being out is treated by the characters and diegesis as being utterly unremarkable.

Okay. Point 1. The frog-boiling.

Let me put this in perspective for you. There was already a meme about how the characters in “Saki” don’t wear underwear when I was in middle school. I am thirty now. Okay? And it’s still going.

In the time since, this has stopped being a joke. It is now indisputable canon. This is not because anyone outright says it at any point. It’s because the underwear ran out of places to hide. I’m obsessed with this thought: somewhere in the over 20 volumes of “Saki”, there is a panel in which underwear was objectively deconfirmed. And it would be so hard to figure out where that panel actually is. Maybe the artist didn’t even realize it when she drew it! The frog? Boiling!!

And of course there is also the breast expansion. I don’t know how to put a spin on this. They are just expanding. Like, this happens a lot with artists: you define a character as being, in your mind, “the one with the big boobs”, and over the years you emphasize that trait further and further so that the signal doesn’t get lost in the noise. It’s just that normally—in like a wildly popular manga series about mahjong published by literally Square Enix, for example—normally there would be a point at which the boobs stopped getting bigger. Like, an editor would step in or something. Or you would get to the point where you cannot draw the character in the same panel as her mahjong tiles without her breasts spilling over the tiles, and you’d go, “Well, this is now untenable.”

That did not happen. There is no ceiling. The frog is soup.

Point 2. The complete and utter mundanity of all of this.

It’s like this, okay: there’s no shortage of trashy ecchi manga out there. There’s a million other comics doing wildly bawdier things with wildly more improbable bishoujos.

The vibe with “Saki” is different.

It’s hard to explain this, but it feels like the world of the comic is fundamentally uninterested in the fanservice happening on the page. I cannot describe it as “leering”, because I cannot conceive of a person in the story from whose point of view one would leer. I think the artist is probably into it—I can’t imagine anyone is making her do this—but “Saki” the comic has no opinion on the matter.

There are essentially no male characters in “Saki”. Like, there was one guy? Kind of? At the very beginning? But he is gone now. They put him back in the toybox. He does not exist. It appears to be some level of canonical that in the world of “Saki”, almost all humans are women. Those women are sometimes romantically into each other. According to comments the artist has made on Twitter (which I cannot source), they have lesbian baby technology, so it’s no problem. It’s so much not a problem that the story is about mahjong, instead of any of that.

So, like, the fiction here appears to be this: this is the, like, meta-narrative of the fanservice of “Saki”, right: it’s just normal that they don’t wear underwear and their boobs are arbitrarily big. It’s been normal. It was normal before the story of the manga began. It’s just how things are. Nobody bats an eye about it, and if they do, it’s in sort of a lesbian kind of way so like what’s the problem, we love lesbians here. This is literally normal for girls.

The fanservice simply diffuses into this all-encompassing aura of disembodied, ambient sluttiness. The framing of the panels demands you acknowledge it, and the story demands you already be over it, because it’s mahjong time now, and we’re playing mahjong.

Do you get??? why I’m so fascinated??? Are you not a little enraptured???

Anyway, I have no idea how to end this weird post. I guess the conclusion is that women stay winning????

[chososrightnipple]

❝𝗷𝗷𝗸 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 + 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀❞

a/n: i'm going insane guys anyway love u all mwah <333333 afab body but no gendered language btw!

part two.

── დ ──

. *. ⋆ GOJO SATORU

▸ creampies. please just let this man cum inside of you omg he'll go insane. seeing the way his release leaks out of you afterward has him ready for another round almost immediately.

▸ dacryphilia. "you crying'?" says it all right there. he'll coo, a bit mocking, and wipe at the tears running down your cheeks.

▸ size difference. he's so big compared to you. his height, his hands, his dick. he gets off on it so hard seeing you have to look up at him :(

▸ praise (giving + receiving). he'll charm your panties off if you really want, just make sure to let him know how good he's fucking you, too.

▸ overstimulation. hand in hand with dacryphilia. he's not done with you until he's shooting blanks and you're a weeping mess below him.

▸ breeding. listen.. he needs an heir for the gojo clan. he'll fuck you into the mattress for hours on end- he just wants to make sure his baby takes, that's all.

▸ orgasm denial. he's a cocky man, and he knows it. he loves the exhilaration he gets controlling your orgasm, making you beg for it before he gives you any satisfaction.

▸ pussy/thigh/boob jobs. he wants to put good use to all of your body.

. *. ⋆ GETO SUGURU

▸ choking. the feeling of you swallowing as his large hands cusp at your neck is like a drug to him.

▸ begging. seeing you so compliant under him as you plead and cry for his touch... those pretty little eyes and wobbling lip. it's mean, he knows that. he just couldn't care less.

▸ sense deprivation. tying you up and blindfolding you, giving him all that power? he goes crazy for it.

▸ degradation. you wanna be fucked like a slut, he's gonna treat you like one.

▸ edging. when he's feeling really mean, he'll edge you for hours. until you're shaking and whining and the only word you can get out is a broken moan of his name.

▸ impact play. he loves waking up and seeing the red imprint of his hand on your ass oh my godddd don't get him started.

▸ hair pulling (receiving). he wants you to tug at his hair, card your fingers through it, pull it as you're riding his face!!!

▸ sadism. pretty much hand in hand with everything above. he's such a mean boyfriend but he knows how much you love it.

. *. ⋆ CHOSO KAMO

▸ biting. your shoulders, neck, and thighs are full of his teeth marks, almost perpetually. and of course he's not gonna complain if you leave a few bites, too.

▸ begging. show him how much you want him, how badly you need him, and he'll fuck you as much as you want. you just gotta put in a little work first.

▸ worship (giving + receiving). seriously this man worships the ground you walk on from the moment you wake up to the second you fall asleep. he just asks you worship his cock the same

▸ overstimulation. he's fuckin you until his legs are giving out from under him and you're nothing but a fucked out, drooling mess being pressed into the bed.

▸ blood play. i mean... i think this is a given.. will purposefully bite down too hard just to lick the blood clean as an apology.

▸ orgasm denial. he knows once you cum, it's over, and he just wants to stay sat in your pretty pussy a little bit longer- you understand that, right?

▸ somnophilia. his favorite breakfast is in between your thighs. besides, you don't think there's any better way to wake up, anyway.

▸ voyeurism. pleaseeee pleaseee pleaseee let him watch you masturbate it's all he needs in this world !!!!!

. *. ⋆ SUKUNA RYOMEN

▸ anal. he needs to claim every hole your body has to offer. plus true form sukuna is a slut for his double penetration just saying

▸ choking. hearing your choked gasps as he squeezes your throat could make him cum on the damn spot. watching your eyes roll into the back of your head as each second passes on.

▸ exhibitionism. no, he doesn't care that there are other curses around and no, he doesn't care if they can see. you're his, and he'll fuck you anywhere he wants to.

▸ extreme bondage. watching your poor, writhing little human body tug at your restraints uselessly is something he'll never get tired of.

▸ collaring. he'll even get his name custom engraved, just so everyone who looks at you know exactly who you belong to.

▸ degradation. he's a mean thing, but you seem to enjoy that for some reason. he savors in the way you clench around him every time he calls you a whore.

▸ edging. you're not allowed to cum until he's says so, and anything before that? you're in for one hell of a night.

▸ predator/prey. let him chase you through the woods as foreplay. he'll inevitably catch up, of course, but seeing you attempt to get away is so cute to him. especially when he's had enough of the teasing and is pinning you against the nearest tree.

[freckleslikestars]

The kids I teach think I’m magic because I have a puzzle ring that falls apart when I take it off but stays together when I wear it. It’s just very sweet.

[kaijutegu]

Alligator Body Language and You, or: How To Know When An Alligator On Social Media is Being Stressed for Views

Alligators are wild animals. Despite the idiotic claims of animal abusers like Jay Brewer, they cannot be domesticated, which means they are always going to react on the same natural instincts they've had for millions of years. Habituated, yes. Tamed, yes. Trained, definitely. Crocodilians can form bonds with people- they're social and quite intelligent. They can solve problems, use tools, and they're actually quite playful. Alligators are also really good at communicating how they're feeling, but to somebody who doesn't spend much time around them, their body language can be a bit mystifying. And it doesn't help when social media influencers are saying shit like this:

That is not what a happy gator looks like.

That's a terrified, furious gator who isn't attacking because the ogre handling her has her in a chokehold. She's doing everything she can to express her displeasure, and he's lying about it because he knows his audience doesn't even know how to think critically about what he's doing. He knows that because his audience doesn't know anything about these animals, he can get away with it. This I think is why I hate him so much- he deliberately miseducates his audience. He knows what he's doing is factually inaccurate, he just doesn't care because attention means more to him than anything else in the world.

Let's change that! Here are two really important lessons for understanding alligator body language on social media.

Lesson 1: Alligators Don't Smile (in fact, most animals don't)

So what's going on in this video? Jay Brewer is aggressively choking his white alligator Coconut while scrubbing algae off of her with a toothbrush. And make no mistake, he is digging into the creature's throat while she is visibly distressed. He claims she's happy- but she's not. He is willfully misrepresenting what this animal is feeling. That's a problem, because people... well, we actually kind of suck at reading other species' body language. The reason for this is that we tend to overlay our own responses on their physical cues, and that's a problem. For example, let's look at an animal with a really similar face to ours, the chimpanzee. Check out Ama's toothy grin!

Wait, no. That's not a happy smile. That's a threat display. When a chimpanzee "smiles," it's either terrified and doing a fear grimace, or it's showing you its teeth because it intends on using them in your face.

How about a dog? Look at my smiling, happy puppy!

Oh wait no, this is a picture of Ryder when he was super overwhelmed by noise and people during a holiday party. He'd hopped up in my sister's lap to get away from stuff that was happening on the floor and was panting quite heavily. See the tension in the corners of his mouth and his eyes? A lot of the time when a dog "smiles," the smile isn't happy. It's stress! Why Animals Do The Thing has a nice writeup about that, but the point is, our body language is not the same as other species. And for reptiles, body language is wildly different.

For instance, look at these two alligators. Pretty cute, right? Look at 'em, they're posing for a Christmas card or something! How do you think they're feeling?

Well, I'll tell you how the normal one is feeling. He's annoyed! Why is he annoyed? Because the albino just rolled up, pushed another gator off the platform, and is trying to push this guy, too. I know this because I actually saw it happen. It was pretty funny, not gonna lie. He's not gaping all the way, but he was hissing- you can actually see him getting annoyed in the sequence I took right before this shot. Look at him in this first shot here- he's just relaxing, and you can see he isn't gaping even a little bit.

By the end, he's expressing displeasure, but not enough to actually do anything about it. He's annoyed, but he's comfy and that's where one of the best basking areas is, so he'll put up with it.

Reptiles open their mouths wide for a lot of reasons, but never because they are actively enjoying a sensation. Unless they're eating. No reptile smiles- they can't. They don't even have moveable lips. If a reptile is gaping, it's doing so because:

It is doing a threat display.

It is making certain vocalizations, all of which are threats. Alligators are one of the rare reptiles that do regularly vocalize, but most of their calls aren't made with a wide open mouth.

It is about to bite something delicious or somebody stupid. Check out this video- virtually all of the gaping here is anticipatory because these trained gators know darn well that the bowl is full of delicious snacks. (I have some issues with Florida's Wildest, but the man knows how to train a gator AND he is honest about explaining what they're doing and why, and all of his animals are healthy and well-cared for, and he doesn't put the public or his staff at risk- just himself.)

It's too hot and it has opened its mouth to vent some of that heat and thermoregulate. This is the main reason why alligators will often have their mouths part of the way open, but sometimes they'll open all the way for thermoregulation. This is what a thermoregulatory gape looks like- usually it's not all the way open, kinda more like < rather than V, but you can't say that 100% of the time. Additionally, a thermoregulatory gape... typically happens when it's hot out. If they're inside, maybe they've been under their basking light for too long. Heat's the dominant factor, is what I'm getting at.

There is another reason that a captive crocodilian might be gaping, and that's because it's doing so on command. Some places have their gators trained to gape on cue, like St. Augustine Alligator Farm and other good zoos. They have the animals do this in presentations that are genuinely educational. They ask the animals to open their mouths so that they can show off their teeth and demonstrate how their tongues seal off the back of their mouth. They'll also do it as part of routine healthcare, because looking at their teeth is important.

In this case, the animals aren't gaping because they're stressed, they're gaping because they know they're gonna get a piece of chicken or fish if they do it. And what's more, they're doing it on cue. They have a specific command or signal that tells them to open wide. It's not an instinctive response to a situation. It's trained. If the animal provides the behavior after a cue, the situation is much less likely to be negatively impactful.

It's also important to remember that there's a difference between a partially open mouth and a gape! As discussed above, alligators will often have their mouths a little bit open just to maintain temperature homeostasis. It helps them stay comfy, temperature-wise. These guys are all doing thermoregulatory open-mouthed behavior- that slight open and relaxed body posture is a dead giveaway. (That and it's the hottest spot in the enclosure.)

Lesson 2: A Happy Gator Is A Chill Gator

So if alligators don't smile or have facial expressions other than the :V that typically signifies distress, how else can you tell how they're feeling? One way is stillness. See, alligators subscribe to the philosophy of if it sucks... hit da bricks.

Basically, if they hate it, they'll leave. Unless, y'know, somebody has their meaty claws digging into their throat or is otherwise restraining them. (Restraint isn't always bad, btw. Sometimes the animal is going through a medical thing or needs to be restrained for their safety- which a responsible educator will explain.)

Let's look at a very similar scenario, in which a captive alligator is getting his back scrubbed.

As you can see, it's quite different. First, he's not being restrained at all. Second, look at how relaxed he is! He's just chilling there vibing! He could simply get up and leave if he wanted to, because he's not being held. Towards the end of the video, as he lifts his head, you can see that his respiratory rate is very even as his throat flutters a bit. I'm not sure what this facility is, so I can't comment on care/general ethics, but like. In this specific case, this is an alligator enjoying being scrubbed! And you can tell because he's not doing anything. A happy gator is content to be doing what they're doing.

Why Should I Listen To You?

Now, you should ask yourself, why should you listen to me? Why should you trust me, who does not own an alligator, versus Jay Brewer, who owns several?

Well, first off, there's no profit for me in telling you that what you're seeing on social media is in fact not what you're being told you're seeing. I'm not getting paid to do this. That's the thing with people who make social media content. The big names aren't doing it just for fun. They're doing it for money. Whether that's profit through partnerships or sponsorships, or getting more people to visit their facilities, or ad revenue, you can't ignore the factor of money. And this is NOT a bad thing, because it allows educators to do what they're passionate about! People deserve to be paid for the work that they do!

But the problem starts when you chase the algorithm instead of actually educating. A "smiling" alligator gets the views, and if people don't know enough to know better, it keeps getting the views. People love unconventional animal stories and they want those animals to be happy- but the inability to even know where to start with critically evaluating these posts really hinders the ability to spread real information. Like, this post will probably get a couple hundred notes, but that video of Coconut being scrubbed had almost 400,000 likes when I took that screenshot. Think about how many eyeballs that's reached by now. What I'm saying here is that it's just... really important to think critically about who you're getting your information from. What do dissenters say in the comments? What do other professionals say? You won't find a single herpetologist that has anything good to say about Prehistoric Pets, I can tell you that right now.

Another reason you can trust me is that my sources are not "just trust me bro," or "years of experience pretending my pet shop where animals come to die is a real zoo." Instead, here are my primary sources for my information on alligator behavior:

Dragon Songs: Love and Adventure among Crocodiles, Alligators, and Other Dinosaur Relations- Vladimir Dinets

The Secret Social Lives of Reptiles- J. Sean Doody, Vladimir Dinets, Gordon M. Burghardt

Social Behavior Deficiencies in Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Z Walsh, H Olson, M Clendening, A Rycyk

Social Displays of the American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)- Kent Vliet

Social Signals and Behaviors of Adult Alligators and Crocodiles- Leslie Garrick, Jeffery Lang

Never smile at a crocodile: Gaping behaviour in the Nile crocodile at Ndumo Game Reserve, South Africa- Cormac Price, Mohamed Ezat, Céline Hanzen, Colleen Downs (this one's Nile crocs, not American alligators, but it's really useful for modeling an understanding of gape behaviors and proximity)

Thermoregulatory Behavior of Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Cheryl S. Asa, Gary D. London, Ronald R. Goellner, Norman Haskell, Glenn Roberts, Crispen Wilson

Unprovoked Mouth Gaping Behavior in Extant Crocodylia- Noah J. Carl, Heather A. Stewart, Jenny S. Paul

Thank you for reading! Here's a very happy wild alligator from Sanibel for your trouble.