I could think of no better way to share the news than this!
So when I was 17, my cat went missing and I'd given up hope of ever seeing him again.
Until on Monday, 27th of May, 2024, my friend sent me a FB post asking 'isn't that your mother?' about the person named on the microchip.
Here he is! 16 years old, and found safe, twelve whole years after he went missing!
Yesterday (Tuesday the 28th of May, 2024) I went to the rescue that had him, and I reclaimed my boy, renaming him Artie! (He'd originally been called 'Cat' because my mother and I couldn't decide on a name)
He's home safe with me now, currently inhabiting my bathroom and purring up a storm every time someone goes in there!
I'll be doing slow introductions between him and my current cat to give them the best possible chance of living in harmony!
Here's some pictures of Artie once we let him out of the carrier:
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feb 2, elle emerson (@transsextual)
text description under the cut!
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utah bans gender affirming care for people under 18. / south carolina is following suit and worse. / i'd cry but i can't anymore, not like i used to. / my girlfriend tells me they're so tired but she doesn't know why – / "i wasn't even doing anything today" / our anniversary is this month. / i feel like a puppy when i see her. / i get high and rearrange my friend's fridge magnets / queer sentences cover the freezer door. / "eat the skin and hearts of men it attracts dykes" / "i kiss fags" / "feel it up partner" / "you may do it but use condom" - / we laugh about that one. we watch star trek. / their roommate calls me cool; we grew up on the same books. / another friend of mine is taking a gap year to go to brazil, relearn portugese. / the boy i dated who is now my best friend is coming up with my family in a few weeks. / we're going thrifting together on the weekend, and i / am going to try to get an extension on my paper. / dance rehearsal on sundays. / my roommates want to go to ikea. /
my uber driver mentioned his husband when i asked about his day. / i thanked him for it at the end of the ride, and he laughed and pointed out the trans flag sticker on the dash. / on my way into the clinic i think i saw him crying. / i introduced myself to the lab tech and she asked me to say my real name. / she took six vials of my blood. /
so many of my friends are named after gods. / this has to be for something.
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I put it to you that Scaphiophryne marmorata is peak frog.
Why?
Well first, it's pretty round, which is key.
Now get a load of those fingers.
Big, expanded discs at the end, ideal for climbing.
But what's happening back there with those toes? No discs there. Those are good for walking and hopping around on the ground.
Now, let's gently turn them over
First, excellent tum, 17 out of 10, no notes.
But what's that at the base of the foot? Those big projections? Yep, those are spades. This climbing, hopping frog is an excellent digger!
I like to think of these Scaphiophryne as all-terrain frogs. They're basically good at everything. They defy our categorical labels of 'arboreal', 'terrestrial', or 'fossorial', and say 'por qué no los tres?'—but in Malagasy, so 'nahoana no tsy izy telo?'
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it frankly pisses me off that what is essentially “rapists and abusers should be depicted as monstrous caricatures because humanizing them is inappropriate” is considered a very moral and enlightened position to have on art by so many people. a rapist can feel pain, have moments of vulnerability, be amiable and charming, express remorse and compassion at times, be a victim themselves, and so on in real life. they are even capable of doing good things. they can have different sides to them and have individuals in their lives that they are kind to or have a decent relationship with. they will be a human being, and that fact encompasses a lot. conflating that with the claim that they are entitled to and deserve forgiveness or absolution is an issue. nurturing a mindset that believes they need to be one note and uncomplicated to be a correct and tasteful depiction of a rapist inadvertently falls in line with the logic of “how could they have possibly raped you? they are so normal and kind to me. they did all these good things here and there.” ok that doesn’t change that they are a rapist.
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“Crowley is still an angel deep down” “Crowley is more of an angel than any of the archangels” “Crowley was only cast out because he needed to play his part in Armageddon, he's not a real demon” “Aziraphale wants to rebuild Heaven to be more like Crowley because he’s what an angel should be” no. Stop it. This is exactly where Aziraphale went wrong.
Crowley is 100% a demon. He's not actually a bit of an angel, and he's not cosmically better than any of the other demons we see in the series. He's much less vicious than most of them, yeah, but he's also much less vicious than most of the angels, because how “nice” a celestial being is has nothing to do with which side they're technically on. Crowley's kindness comes from him doing his best to help people despite the hurt he's suffered himself, not any sort of inherent residual or earned holiness. He was cast out just like the rest of the demons, and that's an important part of his history that shouldn't be minimized, excused, or, critically, 'corrected.'
Being angelic is not a positive or negative trait in the Good Omens universe. It's a species descriptor. Saying that Crowley is still an angel deep down because he helps people is an in-character thing for Aziraphale to think, certainly--Job and the final fifteen showed that in the worst possible way--but it's not something Crowley would ever react well to, and it's the main source of conflict in the entire "appoint you to be an angel" fiasco.
We know that Aziraphale thinks Crowley's fall was an injustice, but why? Well, because Crowley is actually Good, which means his fall was a mistake, or a test, or a regrettable error in judgment, or…something. Ineffable. Etc. The point is, he’s special, much better than those other demons, and if they can fix him and make him an angel again, everything will be fine! (So once Job's trials are over, everything will be restored to him? Praise be!) Aziraphale has to believe that Crowley's better traits come from traces of the angel he used to know and not the demon he's known for 6,000 years, because that’s how he can rationalize his incorrect view of Heaven as The Source Of Truth And Light And Good with his complicated feelings about Crowley's fall.
But Crowley's fall was not an injustice because he's actually a Good Person who didn't deserve it. Crowley's fall was an injustice because the entire system of dividing people into Good (obedient) and Bad (rebellious) is bullshit. Crowley is not an unfortunate exception to God's benevolence, he is a particularly sympathetic example of God's cruelty.
And really, Crowley doesn't behave at all like an angel, especially when he's at his best. All of the things that he's done that we as the audience consider Good are things that Heaven has directly opposed. (See: saving the goats and children in defiance of God in S2E2, convincing Aziraphale to give money to Elspeth despite Heaven's views on the "virtues of poverty" in S2E3, speaking out against the flood and the crucifixion in S1E3, tempting Aziraphale to enjoy earthly pleasures because he thinks they'll make him happy, stopping Armageddon.)
Heaven as an institution has never been about helping humanity. And that's not an issue of leadership, as Aziraphale seems to think--it's by design. Aziraphale's first official act as an angel toward humanity was to literally throw them to the lions. Giving them the sword wasn't him acting like an angel, it was just him being himself. Heaven doesn't care about humans. It's not supposed to. It's supposed to win the war against Hell, with humans as chess pieces at best and collateral damage at worst.
Yes, it's easier to think that there are forces that are supposed to be fundamentally good. It's easier to think that Aziraphale is going to show those mean archangels and the Metatron what’s coming to them and reform Heaven into what it "should" be, and that God is actually super chill and watching all of this while shipping ineffable husbands and cheering for them the whole way. And of course it's easier to take Crowley, who Aziraphale (and the audience) adores, and say that he deserves to be on the Good team much more than all those angels and demons that we don’t like. But that's not how it works. People are more complicated than that, even celestial beings.
Crowley is a demon, and the tragedy of his character is not that he's secretly a good guy who is being forced to be evil; the tragedy is that he's lived his whole life stuck between two institutional forces that are both equally hostile to the love he feels for the universe and the beings in it. There are no good and bad guys. There are no "right people." Every angel, demon, and human is capable of hurting or helping others based on their choices. That is, in fact, the entire fucking point.
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it’s been almost a year now… is the bg3 fandom finally ready to talk about how gale’s “hubris” is the sole product of actively feeding his insecurities further and straight up denying him help & guidance when he was at his lowest and needed it most. it’s not one of his core traits and never was. he isn’t some closeted power hungry monster that is just waiting to be enabled. what he wants is admiration, recognition and acceptance. which is also what he sought from mystra before the orb disaster happened. he had no desire whatsoever to become a god himself or challenge her rule, he simply wanted to be seen as sufficient in her eyes (“to serve her better”). to be as equal as he could possibly be in a relationship with a literal deity. he has a deep passion for magic and knowledge that affects almost all areas of his life and enjoys the display thereof. he wants to be the smartest person in the room and enjoys when his work is recognized. he may be perceived as arrogant when it comes to his skill, but he IS NOT hubristic. it truly takes so little for him to be wholly content.
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