#Welcome to Kodiak

[islandgirl37]

Surprise Stop at Kodiak, Alaska

Hi to all my long time followers, I hope to be able to get back to posting more often again. Thanks for sticking around!

[miadeardn]

DUDE I LOVE THE DARKNESS OUTSIDE US LITERALLY NO ONE'S READ IT YAY

IT'S SO INCREDIBLE!!! i read it for the first time literally a week ago and my brain has been consumed ever since. i love those guys so much. good lord.

[lemon-sugarcoats-nothing]

After weeks of TLC, I now present to you:

All characters are 18+ but please keep asks appropriate for audiences as young as 16. I do not know who all stumbles upon my blog, my target audience is in the young adult-adult range, but I'm sure there are mid-teens on my page as well. :]

Names and Emojis for all askable characters (as of March 25th 2024) are as follows;

Lemon Sugarcoat/Darkstone - 🍋 Kodiak Darkstone - 🐺 Sadi(e) Kokoro-Darkstone - 🦋or 🧡 Kai Darkstone - 💙 Nightshade/Shade Darkstone - 💖 Lucious Vespertilio - 💜 Alistor Sky - 📕

Mod Bee - 🐝

. . .

Note: If you would like to send us fanart, the ask box is set to allow media to be sent through, and a flat color image of the group picture is available upon request for all of your color picking needs.

Fanart is more than welcomed! As are questions about how I go about drawing these characters.

Thank you for reading!

-Mod Bee

💛💛💛Sister blog is @cinnavanillamelody, all characters exist in the same MLP AU as their characters. 💛💛💛

[huahualania]

HOWL | HE/ÉL | 22 Welcome to my fantroll blog! I've been in the community since 2010, but only recently made this blog for roleplaying. I'm semi-active between work and school, so if you've sent an ask and it hasn't been answered, I've probably just been busy!

Fantroll Select: (WIP!)

My Writing: (WIP!)

My Art: ramgodd (commissions: OPEN) - You can find most previous asks under #[character firstname] asks, and you can find their aesthetic tag under #[character firstname] things

ACTIVE MUSES:

Netoca Huacas: Rustblood tombraider with the ability to see into the past Haidri Hembra: Tealblood legislacerator and head of her precinct with an extensive familial* history in the fleet, has oneiromantic psionics Caurin Aquila: Blueblood unwilling legislacterator-in-training, chronic worrier and meddler, uses telepathic and truth-telling psionics Invidi Oedium: Blueblood therapist with a history in the fleet, uses teleportation psionics Kodiak Thycyn: Purpleblood ex-clown with an interest in the hemorebellion, uses necrotic psionics

Haidri's family includes her oldest twin brothers Aeryse "Durendal" Hembra, Abelle "Dainslif" Hembra, her older brother Tannin "Thyrfing" Hembra, and her ancestor Manasa "Suyilani" Hembra. feel free to ask her about them<3 (or even ask them questions?)

[barananduen]

Art Advice: How to Have a Positive Outlook

Welcome to the next Art Advice Article in the series! This time, we'll talk about tactics you can use to not feel discouraged when things don't turn out the way you want.

🌳It Happens to Everyone

If it gives you some consolation, know the fact that everyone screws up sometimes, even professionals. People just tend to not show their screw-ups, so it's easy to make the false assumption that everything they do is wonderful and they never mess up. Just because you didn't see it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Mistakes and work the artist doesn't like happen to everyone at all levels. It's completely normal!

🌳Changing Your Outlook about Mistakes

When we draw something that doesn't come out how we intended it, keeping these two things in mind will help you move forward. We'll introduce the ideas first and then expand on them below.

Mistakes are necessary for progress. Every time something doesn't come out "right," we get one step closer to getting to the point where it does come out just the way we want it (perhaps even better!). We just need to keep trying and not give up.

You can use humor to not let it get you down. Laugh at your own mistakes. You don't have to show them to others if you don't want to, but YOU can laugh at your own screw-ups. It will help you not feel bad about them.

🌱Expanding on #1: Mistakes are Necessary for Progress

Whenever something doesn't come out right, you will (should) work on fixing it, if not in that drawing, then in the next one(s). These are the stepping stones necessary for perfecting your craft. Think of it like defeating baddies in a video game: you can't level up without overcoming those obstacles.

I know people say it so much that it's almost become a cliche, but it's true: practicing is necessary to get to where you want to be. Art is like a sport: you're not going to become a goal-scoring machine without having first spent time standing in front of the goal shooting balls at it during training, and then doing it while moving and with other players in the way (add obstacles/change scenarios). When I used to go to conventions, I would see people sitting on the floor or wherever with their sketchbooks, drawing all the time; then the people in the artists' alley were always drawing while at their table.

🌱Expanding on #2: Using Humor

This is easier explained with a story, so I'll tell you of a time I wanted to learn how to draw panthers. I'd never drawn one before, so I drew a few.

One looked like Bart the bear, that big brown (Kodiak) bear that you used to get in all the movies.

So I LOLed at it and took a look at my bear cosplaying as a wannabe-panther and tried to figure out why it looked like a bear instead of a panther - aha! the lower jaw was too long. I made it shorter. Also, the eye was too round.

(Note: At the time, I didn't know I was going to use this for an article, so I didn't scan it before corrections; I've drawn over the scan to show what it originally looked like.)

I drew another, but it looked like a cute shiba-inu instead. I drew a bow on it and some blush; had another laugh. I looked at my shiba-inu cosplaying a hello-kitty panther and tried to find out what made it look like a shiba-inu instead of a panther. The jaw was STILL too long.

I left my shiba-inu/hello-kitty because it was funny and drew another one, this time with an even shorter lower jaw. Still not right. Made the lower jaw thicker from gum to chin.

Repeat, repeat, repeat drawing more panthers until I got one I liked. Then I drew it again. Then I drew it from another angle to make sure I'd gotten the hang of it.

🌳Closing

So, when you have something you don't like:

Remember that this happens to everyone.

Mistakes make progress.

Don't be harsh on yourself, laugh at it instead.

Look closely to see exactly what about it seems "off," then you can work on those bits.

Once you get it right, try again a couple more times to cement the knowledge.

Last, but very important: don't drown in your mistakes, always stop and appreciate what you did RIGHT! There is plenty of good stuff, but, in general, we, as humans, tend to overlook it and focus on the negative things. Don't. While it's important to learn from our mistakes, it's also important to recognize our successes so we can build on them. Do not neglect your strengths!

And remember to enjoy the process of what you're doing! 💖

Happy arting! ~B~

🌳More Art Advice Articles

You can find the index to all Art Advice Articles [here]

[vvalllerie]

intro post!

hi! i’m valerie/borealis, you can call me by either of those or if nicknames are more your style, you can call me val! you may NOT call me v because that name for me is used by someone else very close to my heart.

i’m agender and i use it/that/puppy pronouns! refer to me with the word creature. do not refer to me with person/human or anything like that.

i am in a QPR with my perfect, lovely, beautiful, handsome, pretty, ethereal, otherworldly, amazing partner @corvidae666! i love you so so so so so much you’re my whole heart and soul

i am a pet regressor! absolutely NO nsfw in regards to that. my petre and puppyspace is sfw ONLY.

i am nonhuman, otherhearted, fictionkin, objectkin, and dragonkin!

my ‘types are: utahraptor, maip macrothorax, asian water monitor, tokay gecko, african bush viper, megalania, ribbon eel; kodiak bear, arctix fox, peacock mantis shrimp; oikawa tooru (haikyuu), darkstalker (wings of fire), lady (lady and the tramp), red (the sea beast), nightmare moon (my little pony friendship is magic), an indoraptor (jurassic world fallen kingdom- species, not the specific character), clancy (twenty one pilots); lockheed martin f-22 raptor!

i am autistic, adhd, ocd, and bpd; i have depression, anxiety, and suspected pots. i have chronic pain and blood sugar/pressure problems, so i talk from experience.

i’m currently fixating on mouthwashing!

my special interests are dinosaurs (yes this includes the jurassic park franchise) and twenty one pilots!

i do art sometimes, it’s all tagged under #my art

i used to write haikyuu fanfiction, but it’s all discontinued now. feel free to check out my ao3

always looking for new friends and family so don’t be shy if you wanna talk to me!

18+ sideblog (not totally nsfw, just so i can keep this one safe! i’m still asexual i just want to be a freak!) @dinosaurfreak

welcome to my shitblog!

[tsibeyantiger]

It is time. Welcome, everyone, to my GrishaVerse wildlife analysis!

First of all some disclaimers. My comments are based on the books and since we are talking about a fictional world, not every rule from our universe must apply there. I remember a post about how it's stupid that Game of Thrones has got pumpkins because Westeros is European-themed and I call this bullshit. Westeros is inspired by Europe, but it IS not Europe, so pumpkins can be native there. Applying this logic, my assumptions about the GrishaVerse nature are limited. Just because Fjerda is inspired by Scandinavia, it doesn't necessarily have all the animals and plants that live there. But to make it easier, I will assume that Leigh Bardugo mentioned every animal she invented and everything else that lives there is a creature that exists in real life. And also, this is waaaaay too much stuff for just one post, so today, I will be only analysing Fjerda. The other countries will follow.

The Seawhip: Certainly the most spectacular animal, but actually kind of boring. It is unclear if dragons are a species in GrishaVerse or if the Seawhip is just one of a kind, just as the Firebird. Does it belong to the same species as Juris? Probably not, because they are pretty different. One must assume that there is only one Seawhip and this limits the influence it can have on an ecosystem. It uses to live in the Bone Road and preyed on probably anything. That's it.

Whales: There are at least two species of whales in the True Sea, but probably a lot more. They have dolphins that might even live as far north as Fjerda and are MAYBE hunted. But there's no doubt there is at least one big species of whales that is hunted by the Fjerdan and maybe also the Ravkan and Kaelish for probably centuries. A habitat as big as the True Sea allows much diversification and there will probably be whales that prefer deep waters as well whales that live close to the coast. These will have been the first one to be killed by humans, just as the right whales in our world, and they are probably already close to extinction during the time of the books. Hanne mentions whales in the bay of Djerholm. Whether they belong to the already rare species that lives close to the coast or to the one that usually prefers deep waters, they are probably unusual guests to Djerholm. The whales migrate, probably spend the winter somewhere south of Kerch, give birth and then swim north. The Bone Road carries ice even in summer, so it must be totally frozen in winter. This limits the range of the whales territory.

Bears: What kind of animals do live on the ice? Does the GrishaVerse have polar bears? We know that there are white bears in Tsibeya, but they probably aren't polar bears. They couldn't survive there. It is pretty likely that brown bears live in Fjerda, Ravka and Shu Han, with several subspecies. Ivan mentions a kodiak bear, probably from Tsibeya. Sankt Grigori also came across bears. The white bears might be a exceptionally bright subspecies of brown bears or there are two different species of bears in Tsibeya. If this is the case, it would be interesting to know the differences between their niches. Either way, it's safe to say Fjerda has got brown bears. Polar bears are more speculative, but I think they exist, too. There are many seals in the sea and something must prey on them.

Reindeers: It is canon that there are reindeers in Fjerda, and this totally fits to everything else we know about this country. The North of Fjerda must be tundra, it's too cold for trees. Reindeers migrate through the whole year, so they are probably roaming the tundra of Fjerda all the time. The sea must freeze in winter, so it's possible they spend the summer in Kenst Hjerte and move south as soon as the island is surrounded by ice. They are probably kept by the Hedjut, there isn't much else in the tundra a culture can subsist on. And THIS is really interesting, because you cannot force reindeers to stay at the same place all year. You must follow them. If they have got reindeers, the Hedjut are nomads.

Wolves: There are two subspecies of wolves in Fjerda. Grey wolves life in the south while polar wolves, the wild brothers of the Isenulf, follow the reindeers. The end of the forests probably marks the frontier where the land of the grey wolves ends and the land of the polar wolves begins.

Deers: How many species of deers can be found in Fjerda? The answer depends on Morozova's stag. The stag itself is apparently very old, but are the other deers also nearly immortal or are they just a population that survived since the days of Morozova? They are white, but they are no albinos. The one-million-kruge-question is: How do the other deers of Fjerda look like? Are they white, too, and this is just one population? Or are they brown and Morozova's herd is unique? Either way, there is at least one species of deer in Fjerda (wapitis?), maybe a second one, and they also have a lot of mooses. These might also be found in northern Ravka, or maybe Ravka had mooses, but they are extinct now. The deers do live in river valleys and light forests, but won't be found in the tundra, the Permafrost and Elbjen.

Seagulls: There are a lot of seagulls, probably more than one species.

Rodents: There a small rodents in the woods, probably mice and rats, also squirrels, because Fjerda's conifers offer them a lot of food. I'd also expect lemmings. There are also muskrats. Fjerda is also a great place for beavers, though we don't know if they actually live there, as well as groundhogs.

Fishes: The northern sea is very eutrophic and this isn't only appreciated by the whales and seals, but also by tons of fishes, squids, mussels and clams. Fish plays a huge role in the Fjerdan society. They've got herrings, squids, oysters, codfish, pollacks, salmons, haddocks and devilfish and perches, eels and sturgeons from the rivers. But apparently, they also eat narrow-banded mackerels, which is interesting, because these fish prefer warm water. So either there are warm currents in the True Sea or they import the fish or Fjerdan fishtrawlers navigate as far as the southern seas.

They must have owls and also birds that feed on fir cones such as red crossbills. There are probably eagles in Elbjen and maybe also in the west.

There are a lot of foxes in Ravka and they will probably also live in Fjerda. Maybe arctic foxes in the tundra. There is also certainly at least one small predator, such as a marten. Elbjen is a good place for chamois, ibex or mountain goats. We know there are lynx in Ravka, so they probably can also be found in Fjerda. As long as there are no very big predatory fish, there must be otters in the rivers.

The Fjerdan have got honey, so there must be bees. Fjerda cannot be a frozen country for the whole year. In spring, there are a lot of flowering plants blooming. It is canon that Fjerda has got lilies and I also expect lupines. Much of the landscape must look like a meadow in Sweden or Canada. There are mountains in the east and the northwest and in the North we have nothing but the tundra, but especially the area between Djerholm and Halmhend is probably pretty mild and has got a lot of agriculture.

The forrests are coniferous with a few broadleaf trees and include firs, larks and pines, but also willows, birchs and of course Djel's sacred ash.

And finally, since the Fjerdan use wool, there must be sheep. Fjerda doesn't offer particularly amazing meadows for sheep, but it could be a good place for moorland sheep or something.

A big thank you to everyone who kept on reading! Next time, I'm gonna analyse Shu Han.

[brandoandthebears]

How do you feel about kodiak bears? Ik you have a dni for brown bears. But what about kodiak bears?

kodiak bears are on thin fucking ice. Brown bears need to realize they have been overstepping their boundaries into the grizzly bear community. Im sorry but you need to realize just because our species are both Ursus arctos doesn't mean out sub species are. Stay out of grizzly bear spaces. You arent welcome. Kodiak bears experience the same struggles at the hand of brown bears as grizzly bears. BUT their diet and temperament can differ. So on thin ice. As long as you don't try and talk over grizzly bears when we talk about things you can stay on this page.

[mariacallous]

This story originally appeared in Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems, and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was published in collaboration with Earth Island Journal.

The floatplane bobs at the dock, its wing tips leaking fuel. I try not to take that as a sign that my trip to Chirikof Island is ill-fated. Bad weather, rough seas, geographical isolation—visiting Chirikof is forever an iffy adventure.

A remote island in the Gulf of Alaska, Chirikof is about the size of two Manhattans. It lies roughly 130 kilometers southwest of Kodiak Island, where I am waiting in the largest town, technically a city, named Kodiak. The city is a hub for fishing and hunting, and for tourists who’ve come to see one of the world’s largest land carnivores, the omnivorous brown bears that roam the archipelago. Chirikof has no bears or people, though; it has cattle.

At last count, over 2,000 cows and bulls roam Chirikof, one of many islands within a US wildlife refuge. Depending on whom you ask, the cattle are everything from unwelcome invasive megafauna to rightful heirs of a place this domesticated species has inhabited for 200 years, perhaps more. Whether they stay or go probably comes down to human emotions, not evidence.

Russians brought cattle to Chirikof and other islands in the Kodiak Archipelago to establish an agricultural colony, leaving cows and bulls behind when they sold Alaska to the United States in 1867. But the progenitor of cattle ranching in the archipelago is Jack McCord, an Iowa farm boy and consummate salesman who struck gold in Alaska and landed on Kodiak in the 1920s. He heard about feral cattle grazing Chirikof and other islands, and sensed an opportunity. But once he’d bought the Chirikof herd from a company that held rights to it, he got wind that the federal government was going to declare the cattle wild and assume control of them. McCord went into overdrive.

In 1927, he successfully lobbied the US Congress—with help from politicians in the American West—to create legislation that enshrined the right of privately owned livestock to graze public lands. What McCord set in motion reverberates in US cattle country today, where conflicts over land use have led to armed standoffs and death.

McCord introduced new bulls to balance the herd and inject fresh genes into the pool, but he soon lost control of his cattle. By early 1939, he still had 1,500 feral cattle—too many for him to handle and far too many bulls. Stormy, unpredictable weather deterred most of the hunters McCord turned to for help thinning the herd, though he eventually wrangled five men foolhardy enough to bet against the weather gods. They lost. The expedition failed, precipitated one of McCord’s divorces, and almost killed him. In 1950, he gave up. But his story played out on Chirikof over and over for the next half-century, with various actors making similarly irrational decisions, caught up in the delusion that the frontier would make them rich.

By 1980, the government had created the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge (Alaska Maritime for short), a federally protected area roughly the size of New Jersey, and charged the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) with managing it. This meant preserving the natural habitat and dealing with the introduced and invasive species. Foxes? Practically annihilated. Bunnies? Gone. But when it came to cattle?

Alaskans became emotional. “Let’s leave one island in Alaska for the cattle,” Governor Frank Murkowski said in 2003. Thirteen years later, at the behest of his daughter, Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, the US Congress directed the USFWS to leave the cattle alone.

So I’d been wondering: What are those cattle up to on Chirikof?

On the surface, Alaska as a whole appears an odd choice for cattle: mountainous, snowy, far from lucrative markets. But we’re here in June, summer solstice 2022, at “peak green,” when the archipelago oozes a lushness I associate with coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. The islands rest closer to the gentle climate of those coasts than to the northern outposts they skirt. So, in the aspirational culture that Alaska has always embraced, why not cattle?

“Why not cattle” is perhaps the mantra of every rancher everywhere, to the detriment of native plants and animals. But Chirikof, in some ways, was more rational rangeland than where many of McCord’s ranching comrades grazed their herds—on Kodiak Island, where cattle provided the gift of brisket to the Kodiak brown bear. Ranchers battled the bears for decades in a one-sided war. From 1953 to 1963, they killed about 200 bears, often from the air with rifles fixed to the top of a plane, sometimes shooting bears far from ranches in areas where cattle roamed unfenced.

Bears and cattle cannot coexist. It was either protect bears or lose them, and on Kodiak, bear advocates pushed hard. Cattle are, in part, the reason the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge exists. Big, charismatic bears outshone the cows and bulls; bear protection prevailed. Likewise, one of the reasons the Alaska Maritime exists—sweeping from the Inside Passage to the Aleutian chain and on up to the islands in the Chukchi Sea—is to protect seabirds and other migratory birds. A cattle-free Chirikof, with its generally flat topography and lack of predators, would offer more quality habitat for burrow-nesting tufted puffins, storm petrels, and other seabirds. And yet, on Chirikof, and a few other islands, cows apparently outshine birds.

The remoteness, physically good for birds, works against them, too: Most people can picture a Ferdinand the Bull frolicking through the cotton grass, but not birds building nests. Chirikof is so far from other islands in the archipelago that it’s usually included as an inset on paper maps. A sample sentence for those learning the Alutiiq language states the obvious: Ukamuk (Chirikof) yaqsigtuq (is far from here). At least one Chirikof rancher recommended the island as a penal colony for juvenile delinquents. To get to Chirikof from Kodiak, you need a ship or a floatplane carrying extra fuel for the four-hour round trip. It’s a wonder anyone thought grazing cattle on pasture at the outer edge of a floatplane’s fuel supply was a good idea.

Patrick Saltonstall, a cheerful, fit 57-year-old with a head of tousled gray curls, is an archaeologist with the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak. He’s accompanying photographer Shanna Baker and me to Chirikof—but he’s left us on the dock while he checks in at the veterinarian’s where he has taken his sick dog, a lab named Brewster.

The owners of the floatplane, Jo Murphy and her husband, pilot Rolan Ruoss, are debating next steps, using buckets to catch the fuel seeping from both wing tips. Weather is the variable I had feared; in the North it’s a capricious god, swinging from affable to irascible for reasons unpredictable and unknowable. But the weather is perfect this morning. Now, I’m fearing O-rings.

Our 8 am departure ticks by. Baker and I grab empty red plastic jerrycans from a pickup truck and haul them to the dock. The crew empties the fuel from the buckets into the red jugs. This will take a while.

A fuel leak, plus a sick dog: Are these omens? But such things are emotional and irrational. I channel my inner engineer: Failing O-rings are a common problem, and we’re not in the air, so it’s all good.

Saltonstall returns, minus his usual smile: Brewster has died.

Dammit.

He sighs, shakes his head, and mumbles his bewilderment and sadness. Brewster’s death apparently mystified the vet, too. Baker and I murmur our condolences. We wait in silence awhile, gazing at distant snowy peaks and the occasional seal peeking its head above water. Eventually, we distract Saltonstall by getting him talking about Chirikof.

Cattle alone on an island can ruin it, he says. They’re “pretty much hell on archaeological sites,” grazing vegetation down to nubs, digging into the dirt with their hooves, and, as creatures of habit, stomping along familiar routes, fissuring shorelines so that the earth falls away into the sea. Saltonstall falls silent. Brewster is foremost on his mind. He eventually wanders over to see what’s up with the plane.

I lie on a picnic table in the sun, double-check my pack, think about birds. There is no baseline data for Chirikof prior to the introduction of cattle and foxes. But based on the reality of other islands in the refuge, it has a mix of good bird habitats. Catherine West, an archaeologist at Boston University in Massachusetts, studies Chirikof’s animal life from before the introduction of cows and foxes; she has been telling me that the island was likely once habitat for far more birds than we see today: murres, auklets, puffins, kittiwakes and other gulls, along with ducks and geese.

I flip through my notes to what I scrawled while walking a Kodiak Island trail through Sitka spruce with retired wildlife biologist Larry Van Daele. Van Daele worked for the State of Alaska for 34 years, and once retired, sat for five years on the Alaska Board of Game, which gave him plenty of time to sit through raucous town hall meetings pitting Kodiak locals against USFWS officials. Culling ungulates—reindeer and cattle—from islands in the refuge has never gone down well with locals. But change is possible. Van Daele also witnessed the massive cultural shift regarding the bear—from “If it’s brown, it’s down” to it being an economic icon of the island. Now, ursine primacy is on display on the cover of the official visitor guide for the archipelago: a photo of a mother bear, her feet planted in a muddy riverbank, water droplets clinging to her fur, fish blood smearing her nose.

But Chirikof, remember, is different. No bears. Van Daele visited several times for assessments before the refuge eradicated foxes. His first trip, in 1999, followed a long, cold winter. His aerial census counted 600 to 800 live cattle and 200 to 250 dead, their hair and hide in place and less than 30 percent of them scavenged. “The foxes were really looking fat,” he told me, adding that some foxes were living inside the carcasses. The cattle had likely died of starvation. Without predators, they rise and fall with good winters and bad.

The shape of the island summarizes the controversy, Van Daele likes to say—a T-bone steak to ranchers and a teardrop to bird biologists and Indigenous people who once claimed the island. In 2013, when refuge officials began soliciting public input over what to do with feral animals in the Alaska Maritime, locals reacted negatively during the three-year process. They resentfully recalled animal culls elsewhere and argued to preserve the genetic heritage of the Chirikof cattle. Van Daele, who has been described as “pro-cow,” seems to me, more than anything, resistant to top-down edicts. As a wildlife biologist, he sees the cattle as probably invasive and acknowledges that living free as a cow is costly. An unmanaged herd has too many bulls. Trappers on Chirikof have witnessed up to a dozen bulls at a time pursuing and mounting cows, causing injury, exhaustion, and death, especially to heifers. It’s not unreasonable to imagine a 1,000-kilogram bull crushing a heifer weighing less than half that.

But, as an Alaskan and a former member of the state’s Board of Game, Van Daele chafes at the federal government’s control. Senator Murkowski, after all, was following the lead of her constituents, at least the most vocal of them, when she pushed to leave the cattle free to roam. Once Congress acted, Van Daele told me, “why not find the money, spend the money, and manage the herd in a way that allows them to continue to be a unique variety, whatever it is?” “Whatever it is” turns out to be not much at all.

Finally, Ruoss beckons us to the plane, a de Havilland Canada Beaver, a heroically hard-working animal, well adapted for wandering the bush of a remote coast. He has solved the leaking problem by carrying extra fuel onboard in jerrycans, leaving the wing tips empty. At 12:36 pm, we take off for Chirikof.

Imagine Fred Rogers as a bush pilot in Alaska. That’s Ruoss: reassuring, unflappable, and keen to share his archipelago neighborhood. By the time we’re angling up off the water, my angst—over portents of dead dog and dripping fuel—has evaporated.

A transplant from Seattle, Washington, Ruoss was a herring spotter as a young pilot in 1979. Today, he mostly transports hunters, bear-viewers, and scientists conducting fieldwork. He takes goat hunters to remote clifftops, for example, sussing out the terrain and counting to around seven as he flies over a lake at 100 miles per hour (160 kilometers per hour) to determine if the watery landing strip is long enough for the Beaver.

From above, our world is equal parts land and water. We fly over carpets of lupine and pushki (cow parsnip), and, on Sitkinak Island, only 15 kilometers south of Kodiak Island, a cattle herd managed by a private company with a grazing lease. Ruoss and Saltonstall point out landmarks: Refuge Rock, where Alutiiq people once waited out raids by neighboring tribes but couldn’t repel an attack from Russian cannons; a 4,500-year-old archaeology site with long slate bayonets; kilns where Russians baked bricks for export to California; an estuary where a tsunami destroyed a cannery; the village of Russian Harbor, abandoned in the 1930s. “People were [living] in every bay” in the archipelago, Ruoss says. He pulls a book about local plant life from under his seat and flips through it before handing it over the seat to me.

Today, the only people we see are in boats, fishing for Dungeness crab and salmon. We fly over Tugidak Island, where Ruoss and Murphy have a cabin. The next landmass will be Chirikof. We have another 25 minutes to go, with only whitecaps below.

For thousands of years, the Alutiiq routinely navigated this rough sea around their home on Chirikof, where they wove beach rye and collected amber and hunted sea lions, paddling qayat—kayaks. Fog was a hazard; it descends rapidly here, like a ghostly footstep. When Alutiiq paddlers set off from Chirikof, they would tie a bull kelp rope to shore as a guide back to safety if mist suddenly blocked their vision.

As we angle toward Chirikof, sure enough, a mist begins to form. But like the leaking fuel or Brewster’s death, it foreshadows nothing. Below us, as the haze dissipates, the island gleams green, a swath of velveteen shaped, to my mind, like nothing more symbolic than the webbed foot of a goose. A bunch of spooked cows gallop before us as we descend over the northeast side. Ruoss lands on a lake plenty long for a taxiing Beaver.

We toss out our gear and he’s off. We’re the only humans on what appears to be a storybook island—until you kick up fecal dust from a dry cow pie, and then more, and more, and you find yourself stumbling over bovid femurs, ribs, and skulls. Cattle prefer grazing a flat landscape, so stick to the coastline and to the even terrain inland. We tromp northward, flushing sandpipers from the verdant carpet. A peppery bouquet floats on the still air. A cabbagey scent of yarrow dominates whiffs of sedges and grasses, wild geraniums and flag irises, buttercups and chocolate lilies.

Since the end of the last ice age, Chirikof has been mostly tundra-like: no trees, sparse low brush, tall grasses, and boggy. Until the cattle arrived, the island never had large terrestrial mammals, the kind of grazers and browsers that mold a landscape—mammoths, mastodons, deer, caribou. But bovids have fashioned a pastoral landscape that a hiker would recognize in crossing northern England, a place that cows and sheep have kept clear for centuries. The going is easy, but Baker and I struggle to keep pace with the galloping Saltonstall, and we can’t help but stop to gape at bull and cow skeletons splayed across the grasses. We skirt a ground nest with three speckled eggs, barely hidden by the low scrub. We cut across a beach muddled with plastics—ropes, bottles, floats—and reach a giant puddle with indefinable edges, its water meandering toward the sea. “We call it the river Styx,” Saltonstall says. “The one you cross into hell.”

Compared with the Emerald City behind us, the underworld across the Styx is a Kansas dust bowl, a sandy mess that looks as if it could swallow us. Saltonstall tells us about a previous trip when he and his colleagues pulled a cow out of quicksand. Twice. “It charged us—and we’d saved its life!”

Hoof prints scatter from the river. At one time, the river Styx probably supported a small pink salmon run. A team of biologists reported in 2016 that several Chirikof streams host pink and coho, with cameo appearances of rainbow trout and steelhead. This stream is likely fish-free, the erosion too corrosive, a habitat routinely trampled.

Two raptors—jaegers—cavort above us. A smaller bird’s entrails unspool at our feet. On a sandy bluff, Saltonstall pauses to look for artifacts while Baker and I climb down to a beach where hungry cattle probably eat seaweed in winter. We follow a ground squirrel’s tracks up the bluff to its burrow, and at the top meet Saltonstall, who holds out his hands: stone tools. Artifacts sprinkle the surface as if someone has shaken out a tablecloth laden with forks, knives, spoons, and plates—an archaeological site with context ajumble. A lone bovid’s track crosses the sand, winding through shoulder blades, ribs, and the femoral belongings of relatives.

After four hours of hiking, we turn toward the lake where we left our gear. So far on this hike, dead cattle outnumber live ones, dozens to zero. But wait! What’s that? A bull appears on a rise, across a welcome mat of cotton grass. Curious, he jogs down. Baker and Saltonstall peer through viewfinders and click off images. The bull stops several meters away; we stare at each other. He wins. We turn and walk away. When I look back, he’s still paused, watching us, or—I glance around—watching a distant herd running at us.

Again, my calm comrades-in-arms lift their cameras. I lift my iPhone, which shakes because I’m scared. Should I have my hands on the pepper spray I borrowed from Ruoss and Murphy? Closer, closer, closer they thunder, until I can’t tell the difference between my pounding heart and their pounding feet. Then, in sync, the herd turns 90 degrees and gallops out of the frame. The bull lollops away to join them. Their cattle plans take them elsewhere. Saltonstall has surveyed archaeology sites three times on Chirikof. The first time, in 2005, he carried a gun to hunt the cattle, but his colleagues were also apprehensive about the feral beasts. At least one person I talked to suggested we bring a gun. But Saltonstall says he learned that cattle are cowards: Stand your ground, clap, and cows and bulls will run away. But to me, big domesticated herbivores are terrifying. Horses kick and bite, cattle can crush you. The rules of bears—happier without humans around—are easier to parse. I’ve never come close to pepper spraying a bear, but I’m hot on the trigger when it comes to cattle.

The next morning, we set out for the Old Ranch, one of the two homesteads built decades ago on the island and about a three-hour amble one way. Ruoss won’t be picking us up till 3 pm, so we have plenty of time. The cattle path we’re following crosses a field bejeweled with floral ambers, opals, rubies, sapphires, amethysts, and shades of jade. It’s alive with least sandpipers, a shorebird that breeds in northern North America, with the males arriving early, establishing their territories, and building nests for their mates. The least sandpiper population, in general, is in good shape—they certainly flourish here. High-pitched, sped-up laughs split the air. They slice the wind and rush across the velvet expanse. Their flapping wings look impossibly short for supporting flights from their southern wintering grounds, sometimes as far away as Mexico, over 3,000 kilometers distant. They flutter into a tangle of green and vanish.

From a small rise, we spot cattle paths meandering into the distance, forking again and again. Saltonstall announces the presence of the only other mammal on the island. “A battery killer,” he says, raising his camera at an Arctic ground squirrel, and he’s right. They are adorable. They stand on two legs and hold their food in their hands. To us humans, that makes them cute. Pretty soon, we’re all running down the batteries on our cameras and smartphones.

Qanganaq is Alutiiq for ground squirrel. An Alutiiq tailor needed around 100 ground squirrels for one parka, more precious than a sea otter cloak. Some evidence suggests the Alutiiq introduced ground squirrels to Chirikof at least 2,000 years ago, apparently a more rational investment than cattle. Squirrels were easily transported, and the market for skins was local. Still, they were fancy dress, Dehrich Chya, the Alutiiq Museum’s Alutiiq language and living culture manager, told me. Creating a parka—from hunting to sewing to wearing—was an homage to the animals that offered their lives to the Alutiiq. Archaeologist Catherine West and her crew have collected over 20,000 squirrel bones from Chirikof middens, a few marked by tool use and many burned.

Chirikof has been occupied and abandoned periodically—the Alutiiq quit the island, perhaps triggered by a volcanic eruption 4,000 years ago, then came people more related to the Aleuts from the west, then the Alutiiq again. Then, Russian colonizers arrived. The Russians lasted not much longer than the American cattle ranchers who would succeed them. That last, doomed culture crumbled in less than 100 years, pegged to an animal hard to transport, with a market far, far away.

Whether ground squirrels, some populations definitely introduced, should be in the Alaska Maritime is rarely discussed. One reason, probably, is that they are small and cute and easy to anthropomorphize. There is a great body of literature on why we anthropomorphize. Evolutionarily, cognitive archaeologists would argue that once we could anthropomorphize—by at least 40,000 years ago—we became better hunters and eventually herders. We better understood our prey and the animals we domesticated. Whatever the reason, researchers tend to agree that to anthropomorphize is a universal human behavior with profound implications for how we treat animals. We attribute humanness based on animals’ appearance, familiarity, and non-physical traits, such as agreeability and sociality—all factors that will vary somewhat across cultures—and we favor those we humanize.

Ungulates, in general, come across favorably. Add a layer of domestication, and cattle become even more familiar. Cows, especially dairy cows named Daisy, can be sweet and agreeable. Steve Ebbert, a retired USFWS wildlife biologist living on the Alaska mainland outside Homer, eradicated foxes, as well as rabbits and marmots, from islands in the refuge. Few objected to eliminating foxes—or even the rabbits and marmots, he told me. Cattle are more complicated. Humans are supposed to take care of them, he said, not shoot them or let them starve and die: they’re for food—and of course, they’re large, and they’re in a lot of storybooks, and they have big eyes. Alaskans, like many US westerners, are also protective of the state’s ranching legacy—cattle ranchers transformed the landscape to a more familiar place for colonizers and created an American story of triumph, leaving out the messy bits.

We spot a herd of mostly cows and calves, picture-book perfect, with chestnut coats and white faces and socks. We edge closer, but they’re wary. They trot away.

Saltonstall, always a few leaps and bounds ahead, spots the Old Ranch—or part of it. A couple of bulls are hanging out near the sagging, severed rooms that cling to a cliff above the sea, refusing their fate. Ghostly fence posts march from the beach across a rolling landscape.

Close by is a wire exclosure, one of five Ebbert and his colleagues set up in 2016. The exclosure—big enough to park a quad—keeps out cattle, allowing an unaggravated patch of land to regenerate. Beach rye taller than cows soars within the fencing. This is what the island looks like without cattle: a haven for ground-nesting birds. The Alutiiq relied on beach rye, weaving the fiber into house thatching, baskets, socks, and other textiles; if they introduced ground squirrels, they knew what they were doing, since the rodents didn’t drastically alter the vegetation the way cattle do.

Saltonstall approaches a shed set back from the eroding cliff.

“Holy cow!” he hollers. No irony. He is peering into the shed.

On the floor, a cow’s head resembles a Halloween mask, horns up, eye sockets facing the door, snout resting close to what looks like a rusted engine. Half the head is bone, half is covered with hide and keratin. Femurs and ribs and backbone scatter the floor, amid bits and bobs of machinery. One day, for reasons unknown, this cow wedged herself into an old shed and died.

Cattle loom large in death, their bodies lingering. Their suffering—whether or not by human hands—is tangible. Through size, domestication, and ubiquity, they take up a disproportionate amount of space physically, and through anthropomorphism, they grab a disproportionate amount of human imagination and emotion. When Frank Murkowski said Alaska should leave one island to the cattle, he probably pictured a happy herd rambling a vast, unfenced pasture—not an island full of bones or heifer-buckling bulls.

Birds are free, but they’re different. They vanish. We rarely witness their suffering, especially the birds we never see at backyard feeders—shorebirds and seabirds. We witness their freedom in fleeting moments, if at all, and when we do see them—gliding across a beach, sipping slime from an intertidal mudflat, resting on a boat rail far from shore—can we name the species? As popular as birding is, the world is full of non-birders. And so, we mistreat them. On Chirikof, where there should be storm petrels, puffins, and terns, there are cattle hoof prints, cattle plops, and cattle bones.

Hustling back to meet the seaplane, we skirt an area thick with cotton grass and ringed by small hills. In 2013, an ornithologist recorded six Aleutian terns and identified one nest with two eggs. In the United States, Aleutian tern populations have crashed by 80 percent in the past few decades. The tern is probably the most imperiled seabird in Alaska. But eradicating foxes, which ate birds’ eggs and babies, probably helped Chirikof’s avian citizens, perhaps most notably the terns. From a distance, we count dozens of birds, shooting up from the grass, swirling around the sky, and fluttering back down to their nests.

Terns may be dipping their webbed toes into a bad situation, but consider the other seabirds shooting their little bodies through the atmosphere, spotting specks of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to raise their young, and yet it’s unsafe for them on this big, lovely island. The outcry over a few hundred feral cattle—a loss that would have absolutely no effect on the species worldwide—seems completely irrational. Emotional. A case of maladaptive anthropomorphism. If a species’ purpose is to proliferate, cattle took advantage of their association with humans and won the genetic lottery.

Back at camp, we haul our gear to the lake. Ruoss arrives slightly early, and while he’s emptying red jerrycans of fuel into the Beaver, we grab tents and packs and haul them into the pontoons. Visibility today is even better than yesterday. I watch the teardrop-shaped island recede, thinking of what more than one scientist told me: when you’re on Chirikof, it’s so isolated, surrounded by whitecaps, that you hope only to get home. But as soon as you leave, you want to go back.

Chirikof cattle are one of many herds people have sprinkled around the world in surprising and questionable places. And cattle have a tendency to go feral. On uninhabited Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean, the French deposited a herd that performed an evolutionary trick in response to the constraints of island living: the size of individuals shrank in the course of 117 years, squashing albatross colonies in the process. In Hong Kong, feral cattle plunder vegetable plots, disturb traffic, and trample the landscape. During the colonization of the Americas and the Caribbean, cattle came to occupy spaces violently emptied of Indigenous people. Herds ran wild—on small islands like Puerto Rico and across expanses in Texas and Panama—pulverizing landscapes that had been cultivated for thousands of years. No question: cattle are problem animals.

A few genetic studies explore the uniqueness of Chirikof cattle. Like freedom, “unique” is a vague word. I sent the studies to a scientist who researches the genetics of hybrid species to confirm my takeaway: the cattle are hybrids, perhaps unusual hybrids, some Brown Swiss ancestry but mostly British Hereford and Russian Yakutian, an endangered breed. The latter are cold tolerant, but no study shows selective forces at play. The cattle are not genetically distinct; they’re a mix of breeds, the way a labradoodle is a mix of a Labrador and a poodle.

Feral cattle graze unusual niches all over the world, and maybe some are precious genetic outliers. But the argument touted by livestock conservancies and locals that we need Chirikof cattle genes as a safeguard against some future fatal cattle disease rings hollow. And if we did, we might plan and prepare: freeze some eggs and sperm.

Cattle live feral lives elsewhere in the Alaska Maritime, too, on islands shared by the refuge and Indigenous owners or, in the case of Sitkinak Island, where a meat company grazes cattle. Why Frank Murkowski singled out Chirikof is puzzling: Alaska will probably always have feral cattle. Chirikof cattle, of use to practically no one, fully residing within a wildlife refuge a federal agency is charged with protecting for birds, with no concept of the human drama swirling around their presence, have their own agenda for keeping themselves alive. Unwittingly, humans are part of the plan.

We created cattle by manipulating their wild cousins, aurochs, in Europe, Asia, and the Sahara beginning over 10,000 years ago. Unlike Frankenstein’s monster, who could never find a place in human society, cattle trotted into societies around the world, making themselves at home on most ranges they encountered. Rosa Ficek, an anthropologist at the University of Puerto Rico who has studied feral cattle, says they generally find their niche. Christopher Columbus brought them on his second voyage to the Caribbean in 1493, and they proliferated, like the kudzu of the feral animal world. “[Cattle are] never fully under the control of human projects,” she says. They’re not “taking orders the way military guys are … They have their own cattle plans.”

The larger question is, Why are we so nervous about losing cattle? In terms of sheer numbers, they’re a successful species. There is just over one cow or bull for every eight people in the world. If numbers translate to likes, we like cows and bulls more than dogs. If estimates are right, the world has 1.5 billion cattle and 700 million dogs. Imagine all the domesticated animals that would become feral if some apocalypse took out humans.

I could say something here about how vital seabirds—as opposed to cattle—are to marine ecosystems and the overall health of the planet. They spread their poop around the oceans, nurturing plankton, coral reefs, and seagrasses, which nurture small plankton-eating fishes, which are eaten by bigger fishes, and so on. Between 1950 and 2010, the world lost some 230 million seabirds, a decline of around 70 percent.

But maybe it’s better to end with conjuring the exquisiteness of seabirds like the Aleutian terns in their breeding plumage, with their white foreheads, black bars that run from black bill to black-capped heads, feathers in shades of grays, white rump and tail, and black legs. Flashy? No. Their breeding plumage is more timeless monochromatic, with the clean, classic lines of a vintage Givenchy design. The Audrey Hepburn of seabirds. They’re so pretty, so elegant, so difficult to appreciate as they flit across a cotton grass meadow. Their dainty bodies aren’t much longer than a typical ruler, from bill to tail, but their wingspans are over double that, and plenty strong to propel them, in spring, from their winter homes in Southeast Asia to Alaska and Siberia.

A good nesting experience, watching their eggs hatch and their chicks fledge, with plenty of fish to eat, will pull Aleutian terns back to the same places again and again and again—like a vacationing family, drawn back to a special island, a place so infused with good memories, they return again and again and again. That’s called fidelity.

Humans understand home, hard work, and family. So, for a moment, think about how Aleutian terns might feel after soaring over the Pacific Ocean for 16,000 kilometers with their compatriots, making pit stops to feed, and finally spotting a familiar place, a place we call Chirikof. They have plans, to breed and nest and lay eggs. The special place? The grassy cover is okay. But, safe nesting spots are hard to find: Massive creatures lumber about, and the terns have memories of loss, of squashed eggs, and kicked chicks. It’s sad, isn’t it?

This story was made possible in part by the Fund for Environmental Journalism and the Society of Environmental Journalists and was published in collaboration with Earth Island Journal.

[liz-thinks-too-much]

Can I be petty for a second?

So, I finished reading The Darkness Outside Us, and as I was looking for some video essays on it, I found one where someone didn't like a specific scene of the book, so here are my two cents about it.

The scene this video references is the one right after Ambrose and Kodiak have sex for the first time and they talk about top and bottom dynamics, and how they got into the ship thinking they were tops (because that's the only role they ever played), but now they're okay with the idea of being verse.

In this video the person says this scene is contraproductive, not normbreaking and fetishization. They're disappointed that both of them are tops and that Ambrose, which is the smaller, softer one, was the first one to bottom, saying that it falls into a norm. And honestly? I don't see a problem with that. The whole deal of having the freedom to express your sexuality is so that you can decide if you want to have vanilla sex or not, and if you end up falling into an unharmful stereotype, that's okay as long as it's safe and both you and your partner are okay with it.

I don't see people getting disappointed with straight romance because the woman didn't peg her partner to prove she's not lesser than him, so why are we expecting a queer author to make a statement out of queer sex? Ambrose and Kodiak entered the ship as two fuckboys who always topped, but as soon as they fall in love, have sex and open up to each other they both say that they're okay with bottoming sometimes, even Kodiak says so! You know, the super masculine guy who came from a very conservative place that would make fun of him for wanting to bottom? Yeah, even him is comfortable enough to explore new things with his boyfriend, so how can you say that this scene is not normbreaking?

And what if the softer one was exclusively a bottom and the muscular one was exclusively a top? Queer people don't need to make a revolutionary take on sex every time they fuck, existing in a queer relationship is already a political statement by itself!

I would have a problem with this scene if Kodiak or Ambrose made fun of/humiliated each other for wanting to bottom, but that never happens, they actually are very supportive and happy to discover these things together in the future.

The youtuber also say this scene is fetishization because it's only purpose it's to ease the mind of people who think they're entitled to know who is the top and bottom of the relationship, and though I agree this is disgusting behavior, I don't think this was the purpose of this scene. Through the whole book we see Ambrose talking about how horny he is for Kodiak, because he's a teenager, so it's no surprise for them to be open about their sexual history with each other after falling in love and realizing they're in danger. They use intimacy as a way to ground each other in this stressful situation.

The purpose is to show how comfortable they are to build intimacy, to communicate their needs and try to build a dynamic that works for them. It's about growth, love, and most of all, it's supposed to be funny. From Federation's stupid "donating" and "welcoming" terminology, to them turning their aftercare into a political debate about the power dynamics and heteronormativity of sex roles, to the "two tops go to space" joke, to Kodiak saying they should make a schedule so they could fuck five times a day: It was so fucking stupid and funny, and I absolutely loved it!

But honestly, that's just my personal take, so no hate to the youtuber or anyone who disagrees, you do you, babes!

[beforus-for-real-justice]

My name is Kodiak Varian. My sign is caprimini, I'm a derse dreamer and I'm a maid of doom. I'm also a purple blood.

(Masking quirk for anon)

WELCOME TO DOXX CITY

[kakayamaweek2023]

Currents

This will be the final prompt discussion post, as KakaYama Week starts in a week and a day.

There are at least as many ways to interpret each prompt as there are people reading it, and we want to encourage all of them. Prompts can be combined on their days, across multiple days, or over the course of the entire week, or they can be done on their own. We encourage everyone to discuss the prompts in replies or reblogs and to bounce ideas off each other here or wherever you have fun batting fic concepts around.

We do ask that all nsfw or difficult subject matter be tagged appropriately.

As always, let us know what you think! Feel free to brainstorm in the comments, tags, or reblogs. 

Ocean currents, electric currents, and current events would all be welcome takes on this prompt. As would reflections on letting the current carry you, or speculation on who is currently coming after our boys for nefarious purposes.

We’re looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with! Whether that’s raikiri related, or air associated, or your currently undecided feel free to chat up the replies and reblogs with whatever you’re thinking.

-R

A current makes me think of something and moving strongly, like the riptide or a surge of electricity. Maybe there is a current that runs through Kakashi and Tenzou that makes their relationship like a mighty force of nature, for good or for bad. 

I also think of “current” as something that’s happening in the moment. This might be a good time to try a present-tense fic if you’ve never written one before, or a modern AU about the current times (for better or for worse lol). 

-Kodiak

[stereorebel]

welcome, welcome to my hoard, i'm an enby name hoarder with no cares for androgyny, masculinity, or femininity, feel free to steal the shit out of these (listed from most used to least used)-

weasel

vermilion

symphony/sy

sedona

archie

kodiak/kodi

beau

alcie (yes, alcie, not alice)

fritillary

[kodiakoutback]

The first Spooky Stories Outback is now Live! Catch The Hand Part 2 on Oct 4th, 2023 and like and subscribe for more scary story shorts and a new Paranormal Investigation Every Friday this October!

[heybaetae]

ah I'm so happy my food suggestions were helpful 😊🫶 yeah I struggle with eating protein sometimes too bc I don't really like plain eggs that much or yogurt or whatever so that's why I started eating some of those things with protein added! those brands that I mentioned have been the best for me so far bc they don't have that weird protein powdery taste that some stuff does. also mac and cheese and the baked goods or frozen stuff is good for storing to always have something easy on hand! both Goodles and Kodiak should be available at target or I get it at a regular Vons (Safeway) grocery store. for the Kodiak stuff I'd say it tastes a little different from regular but not so much that it's Gross and I eat it with other stuff anyways (like syrup on the waffles or ice cream on the brownies) and that makes it so I personally can't even tell the difference. another thing I've been liking for breakfast is chia seed pudding! i can give you a recipe for that if you want it <3

YOU’RE SO HELPFUL!!! any recipes are welcomed here, thank you!!

[allthevoicesx]

welcome to allthevoicesx!

the blog

this blog is a |||| low activity |||| multi-muse blog with muses from a wide array of fandoms including but not limited to the onechicago franchise, supernatural, bones, ncis, and hannibal. i also have a handful of fandom floating original characters; while i work out a muse page with bios, i have added a section of my muse list with their names, occupations and faceclaims. if you have questions about any of my muses, canon or not, don't hesitate to reach out.

the mun

my name is kodiak. i also answer to kodi. i am a 25+ male writer who lives in the american midwest. i am a stay at home parent currently, and this is what i do with my free time, so i do apologize if i take stretches to answer sometimes. that's why the blog is labled as low activity. i have discord and other socials i am happy to share with mutuals i have conversed with.

important things

as of right now, i don't have bios up, but i do have a muse list, and it's marked with the dates it was last updated. feel free to read through and pick your favorites. i will link it below, along with my rules.

MUSE LIST (updated 12.23.24)

PAGE RULES (updated 5.29.23)