#i'll be completely honest the timeline might be wrong but i'm fairly sure it was 2017

[caputvulpinum]

Would love to hear more about your rabid animal encounter!

It was in 2017 at the time and I was working out in the national forests of California. I came into work one day at my ranger's station and there was way more chaos than I expected--turns out that someone had reported a suspected rabid skunk overnight after it bit a dog in a nearby town and it'd been brought in for testing (which includes euthanasia).

I was super curious and had some free time before I needed to actually go out to do what I was assigned so I decided to watch some of the tests being done. I'd seen the vets take blood samples and such of wild animals in the station before--you use basically what amounts to a syringe at the end of a spear etc etc. But before it started getting messed with by us it still acted wrong.

First off: It was jittery and trembling. Wobbly is too cutesy a word--it was just slightly too intense to be wobbly. The wobbles were more twitchy and jerking, like it was constantly having to catch its balance, or it was constantly trying to react to every single minutiae of stimuli. It was also completely silent and utterly unafraid of any of us. This is one of the big markers of rabies: It fucks with an animal's brain to the extent that its fear receptors essentially rot away, because the virus wants the animal to come into contact with as many other animals as possible, and it can't do that if it's skittish. A nonrabid skunk SHOULD be huddled up in the farthest reach of the carrier curled up and scared out of its goddamned mind for being alien-kidnapped. This one just kinda ambled or stood wherever.

So anyway, we start taking blood samples, and by we I mean my coworkers because I am super unqualified for any medical treatment whatsoever of any animal.

The second the needle stuck into the skunk it stopped being a skunk and started being something else. It began writhing and jerking inside the carrier like it was trying to rip its own muscles and limbs apart to get away or get out, and the whole time it was shrieking and squealing so hard and constant that even outside the station it was loud. I've heard animals dying from predators before, I've heard skunks dying from predators before, they didn't scream like this one did. It screamed like it didn't know how to use its vocal chords or mouth, all it knew was pure unthinking noise.

Again, I'm sorry, but I really don't know how to describe the experience very well. The problem is that rabies doesn't make animals act like how they're supposed to. A nonrabid dog going absolutely apeshit is still going to recognizably act like a dog, just an absolutely apeshit one. A rabid dog going absolutely apeshit does NOT act the same. It acts with complete disregard and unawareness of both its surroundings and its own body. It isn't a living creature anymore, it's a breeding ground of rabies that has completely taken control over the dog and is now puppeting it around with the single purpose of spreading rabies everywhere it can. There's no fear, there's no thought, and I barely agree with calling what rabid animals experience as "aggression" because aggression in animals is a thing which fundamentally acts through motivation of stimuli and reaction. Aggression happens because the animal cares about what happens to the animal. Rabid aggression has absolutely no shits given about what happens to its host. It's awful.

[total-drama-brainrot]

Hello! About the fake dating!au, I was wondering how the episode Niagara brawls would play out if Alenoaheather was happening. Would Alejandro and heather still be paired up or would one of them be paired up with Noah?

Well, to be entirely honest, I haven't really thought too much on it yet. Mostly because it's still kind of up-in-the-air as to when Noah's elimination would take place in this AU. I think we've sort of settled on post-merge, so he would be present in the Niagara Falls challenges, but the timeline's still really vague so I personally haven't really invested any time in figuring out the semantics of how each episode would play out.

But since you asked, I might as well toss my hat into the ring! I'll just type out my thoughts as they come, so please excuse this response if it's a little all-over-the-place or formatted weirdly.

Off the bat, it's been fairly well established that the canon final four remains unchanged, so at the very least both Sierra and Cody are still present in this challenge; this is important, since in canon the only reason Heather ends up partnered with Alejandro is because Sierra is the one who rejects him as a husband first. I don't really see a reason to change the canonical play of events here, unless a brainstorming session later on down the line necessitates Noah being paired with either Heather or Alejandro for whatever reason. Mostly just because keeping as many "pre-written" plot points as possible lessens the workload on our shoulders (us, of course, being me and @perpetualexistence, and occasionally @ur-local-brown-multifandomist).

But that does leave the question of who Noah would be paired with.

And again, this would be super dependant on who's left in the competition at this point; since Noah's made it to the merge, we know someone has to have taken his place in the London elimination- just that small change could have potential consequences on all of the subsequent eliminations afterwards, so the merge cast might look almost completely different to World Tour's "official" line-up.

And this is also super dependant on whether or not it's Blaineley who wins the Aftermayhem challenge- I'm not sure if any of the others intend to swap her out for a more interesting/plot relevant contestant (which, as much as I do love Blaineley, she's just find of there with no real relevance to the story) like perhaps Lindsay, Leshawna or maybe even Beth- I assume it'd have to be a girl, since the show itself works to even out it's gender ratios, but it could hypothetically be anyone.

So Noah's partner could be... literally anyone, save for the Final Four (Alejandro, Heather, Sierra and Cody).

...Unless?

Now, don't judge me here, but I do kind of like the idea of Noah ending up with Heather as his partner. Maybe it's the vast potential of how their (entirely self-constructed, and self-indulgent) character dynamic could play out in this scenario, or maybe I just want the opportunity to write Noah trying and failing to pick up Heather, eventually leading to her being the one to carry him across the Falls tightrope like a pathetic, soggy kitten. Or maybe I'm just getting my Noaheather on- who knows?

All I'm saying is, they'd be giving a lot of Connecticut Clark and Malfina vibes and I'm so here for it.

And maybe I just want to see something new; there's so many explorations of how an Alenoah Niagara Brawls challenge would play out (and they're all wonderful, don't get me wrong!) so it's time to give some other pairings the spotlight!

Plus, this particular scenario would not only allow the contestants to see Heather and Noah acting like the "fake" couple they're supposed to be, but Alejandro could also play it as either a double-breach of his trust (since he's also supposed to be "fake" dating Noah, at least, and he has his whole romantic rivalry with Heather) or take advantage of his position and try to charm whoever he's partnered up with and either secure a valuable ally for later on down the road, or beguile his next elimination target into a false sense of security- since a huge part of Alejandro's character is his conniving flirtatiousness, and I don't want to completely negate that.

Now that I'm thinking about it, Alejandro's flirty nature could be a conflict point between himself and his partners. That's a thought for another time, though.

But, again, it's still very up-in-the-air and I don't really think I can give a definitive answer until a proper elimination order has been established- or, at the very least, the elimination order pre-merge. So, uh, sorry for the lack of a definitive answer!

[peppertaemint]

hey! on the army/shawol drama –

i am a shawol and an army (or well... i am a bts fan lol i don't like associating with armys if i can help it) and to be completely honest i did see a level of nastiness coming from shawols this time around that i hadn't seen in a long long time. the accounts with the more inflammatory tweets seem to have either deleted or gone private for now except for this one: https://twitter.com/arcticminkey/status/1628075402156552215 / https://twitter.com/arcticminkey/status/1628111485078470678 ("didn't even change the spelling" 😭 of a four-letter word?!)

those tweets in particular annoyed me because they use the same rhetoric armys love to use (and which i loathe) – accusing other artists of "ripping off" their faves instead of acknowledging their autonomy, creativity and even humanity.

now i don't know if sm fans were already on edge because of the sm/hybe acquisition (understandably) and decided to take their frustration out on this – or if it was because the shinee plagiarism series holds a special meaning for many people – i think all of those things combined + the usual fan war logic might explain the overreaction. but yeah, i don't think shawols were all that innocent this time around. there WERE a lot of nice shawols who also shut that shit down fast, as expected, but i thought the loud minority was loud and especially nasty.

obviously armys were ten times as vile in response – WAY disproportionate, like you said, and like it tends to be. they make not knowing anything about kpop their personality and then have the nerve to call artists "flops" when they don't know them. just absolute fucking twats. lol if i may.

(apparently some of the louder elements on the shawol side turned out to be ex-armys, which sort of supports a pattern i have been noticing for a while. armys are fucking annoying and call these people "leftovers", acting like they hold a grudge against bts specifically, but – to me at least – the issue is that while they move away from bts they do not unlearn the superiority complex, bullishness, and overall nastiness that they practiced as armys, and bring it with them wherever they go. genuinely when i say armys have made fan culture worse as a whole i mean it. this is based on my impression of things and not any hard data though lol so i concede i might be way off.)

anyway! the whole thing was ridiculous. any plagiarism accusations over common phrases are ridiculous. i concur with the last anon who is asking for jimin on nolto. MAXIMISING THEIR JOINT SLAY etc.

also re: shinee contracts: if i'm not mistaken their contract extensions are usually 3 years long. they renewed their original 7-year contract in 2015 for 3 more years, then again in 2018 for 3 more years. contracts are frozen during enlistment, so if my calculations are correct they should be renegotiating fairly soon, once taemin is out. not sure what that means in the grand scheme of the hybe/sm takeover but i believe that's the timeline. (i agree with your take on the situation btw – i really don't think groups and solo artists like shinee will be affected creatively, and they'll retain their usual freedom in that regard, but i do worry that if hybe stays obsessed with targeting the US then artists who are "only" popular domestically might see their promotional activities take a backseat. i hope i'm wrong. we'll see!)

sorry this was so long! appreciate your blog :)

Hi! Thank you for sending this in for more balance.

I have that account on mute, which is why I never saw that crap. And I'll be controversial (but also agree with you) - ex army are spreading gross behaviours. But shippers are also at the route of a lot of shitty behaviour. I say that as someone who likes shipping for fun so I see it. I've seen a lot of weird stuff from MinKey shippers in the last year. And no surprise the account you mention is in that category. Other ship accounts are problematic too but MinKeyers have been the worst lately. They just get way too comfortable speaking on things they shouldn't. They had a whole thing about MinKey bringing gay marriage to Korea.... yeah. Read that again. If you're a fan of Key or SHINee, it should be pretty fucking obvious why that's a really bizarre and just grossly insensitive way to go.

But anyway. There will always be nastiness and as SHINee World keeps growing, it will be harder to keep up our behaviour standards. But I think we have to. The fact that most people deleted is positive. Minho said we're a reflection of them so I hope shawols will keep taking that seriously.

Thanks for your Ask!