#and that other factors ARE in play

[kasumingo]

Got blocked by the OP of the diabetes post by saying that sugar IS considered one of the factors in type 2 diabetes 🥴

And it is super important to take it into consideration because eating refined sugar freely and drinking high fructose syrups and syrup-spiced drinks WILL fuck you up and potentially lead to life-threatening conditions in the long run

And that doesn’t mean cutting off sugar completely but be mindful what you put in your body lmao - you *do* need carbohydrates but carbohydrates do not mean white sugar and corn syrup - and your body can convert them from other sources AND healthier sugars

Feed yourself the best quality foods just like you’d your pets and loved ones

[blueskittlesart]

Hello hi I hope you know the "aigis earnestly asking for lesbian sex" post saga lives rent free in my mind. Internalized homophobia speedrun kotone%. Also your art is so pretty

this is fr what playing the end of aigis's route for the first time felt like. I was losing my mind the entire time

[stuckinapril]

megan thee stallion is the perfect example of unbothered energy. nicki has repeatedly vagueposted about her, gone on unhinged rants about her, gone so far as to mention her dead mother (such a classless low blow), threatened her on live, and has now released the tackiest diss track in history. and what has megan done? literally nothing. she straight up ignored her, aside from that one ig story where she posted herself laughing (which was perfect btw). she is the epitome of “i will not dignify that w a response.” i love it.

[official-linguistics-post]

somebody left this on the grammatical gender post so here are some timely reminders:

i run this blog for fun in my spare time. when i don't have the bandwidth, asks get turned off - which is what i did like 4 days before this post even emerged from the queue.

for fuck's sake, i'm nonbinary. will strangers please stop accusing me of transphobia for ever mentioning the misalignment between grammar and social gender.

[doloneia]

i have many thoughts about them

[nattikay]

a random curiosity I had while trying to fall asleep last night:

[please note that “multiple types” options mean more than one of the TYPES of pets listed here (such as a cat and a dog or two significantly-differently-sized dogs), not multiple individuals the same type (such as two cats or two dogs within the same size category)]

(if you have a different type of pet or multiple types, feel free to elaborate in the tags!)

I’ll leave the exact parameters for what counts as a small vs mid-size vs large dog up to voter discretion

edit: for extra clarification, the “depends on the pet” button means stuff like I have both a cat and a dog but the cat is allowed on the bed and the dog isn’t, etc. (again feel free to elaborate in the tags)

[bonefall]

Is a cat transitioning to being a gib social or do they take steps to display some physical traits associated with meewa-ness (like dying xeir fur grey)? Are there cases where there's hostility to it because other cats think xey aren't wise enough to fit that role?

Most transition between the genders is social, but yes, overall there's more pressure for transitioning into a gib. In comparison, going from molly to tom or tom to molly is much easier.

For one it's a lot MORE social than the other two genders. It's a little hard to explain, but meewa-gender is associated with a sort of charisma which is difficult to "learn" if you don't already have it. It's the aura of drawing people to you, having a tone, posture, and inflection like your words have weight or come from beyond you.

So when you don't have this arbitrary "energy," other cats in the Clan can become pretty hostile towards the idea of a trans-meewa cat in a way they usually aren't with someone who's trans to one of the other genders. It's that same feeling you get when someone's being smug, or some idiot is acting like a know-it-all and you want to see them get humbled and corrected.

This flavor of transphobia is more passive-aggressive than outright aggressive, though.

I feel like Berrynose actually vibes with being meewa, but knows very well that he's not seen as wise and magnanimous in the way a meewa should be. So he gave up the idea a long time back.

BB!Finleap also got some tweaks, and xey're multigender now. Fin also has issues with other cats feeling like xey don't fit what's commonly expected of a meewa, but Fin simply doesn't care. Berrynose probably massively resents this, I can see the two of them fighting a lot.

So because being meewa has more pressure than the other two genders, there's also more of an incentive to physically transition as well. Rosemary is used for cats with estrogen-heavy systems, and Lycopus is used for cats with testosterone-heavy systems. Generally a meewa-cat is trying to do these things with their transition;

Suppress their scent Some "perfumes" can help, but the goal is to reduce smell, not cover it. Smelling like herbs is associated with ShadowClan, the only Clan that takes baths. (yes i will cover shadowclan baths soon)

Reduce secondary sexual characteristics Such as stud jowls in toms, having a higher voice in mollies.

Changing body function patterns There's no eloquent way to put this. Toms and mollies have different scent-marking behaviors, which is actually caused by their hormones. Molly-to-Meewa cats are trying to go on long border patrols more often, Tom-to-Meewa cats are trying to do it less. (This CAN be done without the need of HRT, but HRT will make their body do it naturally instead of timing their drinking schedules or anything else)

[lollytea]

I need to watch Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure to reach my final conclusion on if she's even attracted to men

[hermesmoly]

An underrated Kronides dynamic we don't often talk about is Hestia & Poseidon, or more rather Poseidon's one-sided proposal towards her:

Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite 18 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th - 4th B.C.) :

"Nor yet does the pure maiden Histia (Hestia) love Aphrodite's works. She was the first-born child of wily Kronos (Cronus) and youngest too, by will of Zeus who holds the aigis,--a queenly maid whom both Poseidon and Apollon sought to wed. But she was wholly unwilling, nay, stubbornly refused; and touching the head of father Zeus who holds the aigis, she, that fair goddess, sware a great oath which has in truth been fulfilled, that she would be a maiden all her days. So Zeus the Father gave her a high honour instead of marriage, and she has her place in the midst of the house and has the richest portion. In all the temples of the gods she has a share of honour, and among all mortal men she is chief of the goddesses. Of these three Aphrodite cannot bend or ensnare the hearts."

First of all good move on Zeus to respect his elder sister's wishes (regardless of the type of ruler you see him as he was very fair in this situation), second it's interesting seeing the word sought, like it was a stubborn request on Poseidon's (and Apollo's) part up until Zeus gave his verdict. Also interesting is the supposed timing of these proposals, considering Apollo is his fellow rival it implies Apollo was an adult/old enough to seek Hestia out. If they sought Hestia at the same time, does that mean that a.) Poseidon wasn't married to Amphitrite yet? (In one way that's logically impossible if Triton's daughter Pallas is Athena's childhood friend, which implies Amphitrite and Poseidon married early enough to have Triton to be old enough to have Pallas) Or b.) that he was already married but would be willing to divorce Amphitrite if Hestia had said yes?

I like to think that Apollo and Poseidon's proposals happened in different time periods, Poseidon during or after the Titanomachy (in which Hestia just said no/would think about it and just never responded) and during Apollo's proposal is when Hestia asks Zeus to let her be a virgin goddess. (It just seems weird to me if a Poseidon- especially a married Poseidon- would just seek Hestia's hand out of the blue with no hint of intentions before, unless he specifically did that to compete with Apollo though that seems unlikely.)

It leaves me just asking why Poseidon wanted to marry Hestia. I personally think he wanted to marry her because he had a crush on her (the same way a kid would have a crush on an older girl in movies) and that he was a littleee bit jealous that Zeus and Hera were lovers/married and wanted a sister-wife for himself (which yes, incest is ew but this is greek mythology we HAVE to abandon the "incest is bad" metric when it comes to gods. Most of the gods during the Titan era married their sibling/cousin so Poseidon may have had a similar mindset).

Also kinda interesting that Poseidon loved Hestia and Demeter and was able to respect Hestia's wishes but not Demeter's. Smh bro.

[aplpaca]

i think the popularity of anime means that books could get so much weirder and do fine if publishers werent fucking cowards like. one of the most popular recent animes has a main character who fused with his demon dog and now his head and arms turn into fucking chainsaws. soul eater was fucking huge and just look it it. the grim reapers son has 2 guns that are a pair of shapeshifting sisters and thats only a tiny fraction of whats going on in that series. we need more of this energy in english-language sff books. im begging major publishing to Get Weirder

[moeblob]

Look, I just think it's VERY funny and on brand that I thought of an entire premise of colorful characters for half the cast and immediately drew the only one void of color.

[dancingcapybaras]

who was going to tell me the magnus archives was 200 EPISODES⁉️

[thomas-jefferson-miku-binder]

I firmly believe Mel isn't dead. I think that theory kinda lost credence overall in the fandom space as we get ever closer to season 2's release due to what the Arcane promotional team chose to release (and what they did not). Dead Mel isn't really a feasible concept to me anymore (at least not permanently dead Mel).

What I do think happened is that she is incapacitated in some way or form because of injuries sustained from Jinx's attack. This is both what will prompt Ambessa to move as fiercely as she's shown to and what will allow her to do that—with Mel out of the picture, she is free to do whatever she wants. Injured Mel serves as both a justification and a permit for what's to come.

Another option is that, well, Mel does die, but not forever. If the mysterious figure shown in the trailer is indeed related to the Black Rose (which, come on, it's gotta be), then that could either be Leblanc or a newly resurrected Mel. I'm not sure which theory I believe is the strongest, but if the Black Rose is involved in any way, I'm fairly certain Mel will not be coming back intact from the ordeal.

[bitsbug]

Getting myself weirdly worked up about the common misconception that 'purpose' is a thing that exists with regards to evolution.

Like, I get it, niches can very well seem like some designed role, crafted to further along the Divine Machine of Nature. When confronted with an organism you don't like, the first question is "What purpose does it serve? Is it insignificant enough to be eradicated?"

But this very much isn't how the natural world works; evolution isn't a planned process. It's a bit more like.. y'know those videos of an algorithm being trained how to walk through trial and error? It's like that, but with a million more variables. And much like the algorithm, there is no forethought involved in evolution - it's only the immediate ''reaction'' to (aka whatever works to survive against) environment circumstances. There's not even the "goal" of survival, it's just that things which don't survive are unable to pass on whatever made them not survive, while things that did survive do.

Now imagine this process happening billions of times in parallel, all interacting with eachother, and all changing themselves in response.

The conditions a population experiences most, and the other populations it interacts with most, will inevitably affect its 'algorithm' for continuing to exist. This friction will pressure it to become more specific in how it functions, and it will come to rely upon how the things around it function. In turn, its environment starts to rely upon how it functions, however indirect that may be. It's all separate systems pressed against eachother, morphing so they align in a way that fits.

So, you can see how this can be so easily mistaken for a purpose. But the distinction is very important, because a species' entire *being* is the thing its ecosystem has molded to, not just one aspect of its lifestyle. Fleas and mosquitoes both take blood from larger animals, but they absolutely aren't interchangeable - their method of feeding, prey choices, life stages, and even movement are completely different, and something else in their respective ecosystems WILL rely on these traits for its own survival. Removing even that one thing will daisy-chain across the system, hindering the survival of everything involved.

That's why vying for killing entire species willy nilly is a bad thing, even if evolution is a morally neutral process with no true meaning behind it! And also why 'purpose' is a bogus concept to apply to this extremely complex system!

[silviakundera]

more Li Rong/Pei Wenxuan/Su Ronqing dynamic thoughts...

Ep 18, Su Rongqing: "Don't forget that if it wasn't for His Majesty's fear of the imperial relatives, you wouldn't have even been able to get close to Her Highness in your life. Not to mention to be with Her Highness."

imo it's key that SRQ is from a super prestigious land-holding family, whose wealth and power are old & deeply entrenched. He's your modern day chaebol nepo baby, smart & educated & ready to inherit his family's slice of the empire.

Because he's every insecurity PWX has, tied up in a bow and sneering dismissively at him lol. PWX whose family worked hard to get out of the countryside and entered officialdom just in his dad's generation, and who doesn't even have the backing of that family. He has had to work 40x as hard and without being the princess consort he would never in his lifetime have achieved the stuff that's just handed to SRQ.

Part of PWX being determined to fight for Li Rong and not letting SRQ get in his head is that he needs to internalize that she sincerely thinks PWX is valueable and has never thought he was inferior to SRQ. None of their problems were ever about that. She saved SRQ for her moral conscience. Then she settled for him because her husband couldn't let go of his childhood engagement crush (plus his own acknowledged pride issues about a marriage arranged by the throne). He never actively tried to repair the marriage - his insecurities overtook him and he gave up. SRQ didn't "win". There was never any contest.

But though Pei Wenxuan tells himself this and tells Su Rongqing that she'll never say yes to him.... we gotta know that it's not that easy to defeat all your inner demons. That's why I think he gets a bit erratic and overblown in his romantic moves in the succeeding episodes - subconsciously anxious to tie Li Rong further to him.

[spocks-kaathyra]

just pinned into it to figure out where I want to attach the white ruffle but look! she's coming together!