#it was a whole thing that this new version isn't.

[draconicred]

Experiences in the Alterhuman Community (and Beyond) as a Fictive

It's a weird experience being a fictional character, especially dealing with fandom, the fact that your source is fictional, and interactions with people based on that--including some of the dehumanisation that's so common toward fictionfolk. I'm gonna go into that here because I need somwhere to collect my thoughts, so this might get long. I'll be talking about my experiences as a fictive, but this could very well apply to anyone who identifies as a fictional being--fictionkin, fictionlinkers, etc.

So, I see the version of me on the screen as an AU version of me, in short. I mean, I'm me, and I don't think I even looked exactly 1:1 with my canon self--so naturally, even though events line up pretty closely, I see my source as... Almost like a fanfic of my life? Like sure, that's decidedly me, and decidedly a lot of the things that happened to me and my friends, but also not me. I'm not that guy on the screen, he's what represents me.

Even though I fully believe I got here by dying in a literal past life, my source media here is absolutely fictional to me and I just... Don't look at it in really any other way. Which I guess makes sense if you put it into my perspective--what else would it be? It really is like reading a fanfic based on your life though, or reading an article about yourself in the news. A bit of a shock, a bit of "why did they include THAT?" sprinkled in here and there, a bit awkward sometimes, and it does tend to resurface bad feelings. But overall, it's not that personal to me. I'm largely fine with it existing.

On the other hand, what is shocking is that people see me as fictional. I'm a fictional introject, from a fictional source, from the perspectives of a lot of people here. But I look at my source and I go well... Yeah, that's fiction of course, but my life is an actual thing that happened to me. Realistically I know that not everyone has spiritual beliefs and not everyone even accepts fictional identities as something "real", but man is it weird to just... Have it be spun in such a way?

I'm used to being in the media, I'm used to having cameras on me and being in the public eye. I'm used to articles and stories and posts on the internet. I'm used to fans even! But this isn't your regular, run-of-the-mill experience of people wanting to know you because you're a hero. This is people who see your life and experiences as a fun story they saw in a book or on TV, coming up to you with the idea that you're their favourite character, and not... A whole entire person. It's so damn weird.

There's still that level of disrespect that comes from people who are a little parasocial with you, but it almost hits deeper here because a lot of the time, you know they're not seeing a hero or the things you've literally done in your memories. They're seeing that guy on the screen they think is cool, and while he represents you, he's not you. And they're treating you like a celebrity because of that weird fanfic version of you on the TV or in that book.

There's usually little acknowledgement of your life or experiences as "real". When you're presenting as your fictional identity around others, you tend to get put into one of a few camps:

Cool Character from Media who I love and adore and want to talk to (and will probably get fanperson excited about it). I will probably get dispraportionally upset if Character tells me to back off a bit because I don't want my blorbo to be mad at me.

Character from Media I'm in love with and will immediately start asking invasive questions to or outright flirting with. Could get real gross real quick.

Problematic Character or Guy From Problematic Media that I instantly dislike because that's so Problematic how dare you show your face. I'm reporting you for being Character, you should change your identity if you want to exist so bad.

Character from Media who is disabled/queer/mentally ill/has any soft personality trait ever and I will now be treating you like a sweet little babyboy cinnamon roll who could not hurt a fly.

Person who identifies as Character? How interesting! I'm going to really pry and question everything from your actions in-source (to get unique perspectives from Character) and question literally everything else. Because this is Science and I'll get mad if you don't tell me everything, you need to tell me everything or you're rude.

Of course there's nuance and there's absolutely times where you'll be treated as a normal person, but the above are... So damn common. I've been here for a few months and I've already had some weird stuff happen to me simply because I'm Kirishima and people feel entitled to give me cutesy nicknames or whatever. Even without knowing me or my system at all beforehand. It's just.. So different from anything I've experienced before? Being treated like a celebrity is dehumanising enough, but being treated like a character.ai bot or just generally a form of free entertainment and not a person is so perplexing to me.

There's also that if you're from a popular source, you see stuff about yourself everywhere. Posters, plushies, advertisements, posts on social media--all of it. Some of that I'm used to already, but it's kind of weird when you're mentally aware that this is all for that twisted-mirror version of yourself and not you. And if you get a little uncomfortable at some fanart showing up out of the blue, or someone making a source related joke... You're kind of just expected to brush it off. Which yeah, I get it! It's about the source, not me, but it's still just... A weird feeling. A feeling of not being allowed to be upset because it's about the source and not literal you.

I think there needs to be a line, maybe. Not saying that fictives should be putting a stop to any media or fandom ever, just.. That maybe respect toward us for being uncomfortable with fan content due to being a fictive or fictionkin should be more normalised. It should be more okay to say "hey, I'm Character, please don't joke like that" to a friend, or "don't send me fanart of this thing, I'm Character and that's weird"--which it normally is! But there does tend to be a sort of layer of "Oh, it's because you're Character. You know that's not you, right? You shouldn't be upset, you need to source separate more."--when if most other people were to set a boundary like that, it would usually be respected. Source separation can be great, but if someone hasn't separated or doesn't want to, why is it okay to still send them material they're uncomfortable with--or at least, why do people tend to argue that the fictive should "just separate from source" instead? It... Just boils down to alterhumisia toward fictionfolk, honestly. It sucks.

There's a lot of problems with basic respect toward fictionfolk of all kinds--hell, even in the alterhuman community where it's meant to be safe. I don't know if this rant is entirely coherent or not, I don't know if there's anything noteworthy to take from it--but if you do take something from it, let it be that fictionfolk want to be treated like people. Source separated, not source separated, canon divergent or compliant, hearted, linker, 'kin or 'tive--we're people. Don't let our identities change the way you instinctually treat us. Let us be openly us, and treat us as you would anyone else.

[angel-dustspo]

Hi there! I recently came across your blog and was truly inspired with your dedication to making the best version of yourself so I decided to make my own daily log too!

I've only done it for 2 days so far but I was wondering...what do you do instead of going on your phone😭? Rn it's holidays for me so my screen time has been really bad and I'm looking for ways to improve it. 🙏

Hiii, thank you so so so much for your kind words, they mean so much to me!!! I'm so glad I was able to inspire you and make you wish to become better everyday, that's the whole point of my blog and I'm so glad I get to help people through it!!

I always say in my posts that my screen time isn't high, but by screen time I only mean how much time I spend on social media. Scrolling is out of the question and I don't do that at all anymore, so it's just chatting what I log on here. But that's not all, because my screen time is high every day too. I use my phone for so many more reasons, and I also end up spending most of my free time on it, it's just that I don't use it for scrolling or wasting my time (mostly, not always). I post on here, I do my school work or research, I watch a movie or a youtube video and all sorts of things like that, and the screen time could add up to 5-7 hours on a school day and like 10 on holidays. Nobody has it all figured out, so please don't pressure yourself into completely not using your phone because it's not going to end well.

To be honest, I don't even know what I do besides using my phone hahah. My main hobby is my blog and that takes a lot of my time usually, but I also do my Duolingo and watch inspiring videos and anything like that, so I'm probably always using it (for doing something productive or helpful).

When I don't use my phone, I mostly do school work bcs I'm in my final year and I have to study a lot for my exams. My favourite hobby is reading, and when I don't have homework to do I can read up to 200 pages a day (like 3-4 hours), but I also love listening to music, painting, playing video games (which I actually do everyday haha), baking and cooking. I also spend a lot of my time doing sport and walking and just that alone can take me multiple hours of a day.

Other ideas are journaling or scrapbooking, cleaning your room, redecorating, writing posts on here, learning an instrument/a language, researching, learning how to crochet, going shopping or thrifting, picking up a type of exercise classes or a sport, hanging out with friends, and again learning how to cook for yourself is such a game changer and everybody should practice that.

I hope you got some new ideas about spending your time now and that I was able to help you! Good luck on your self improvement journey, I know you got this and I'm so extremely proud of you!!!! <333

[useless-catalanfacts]

Hola!

I know that inclusive grammar is oftentimes not set in stones.

From quick research, I understand that “elli” is one suggested gender neutral pronoun in Català. Is there an accepted inclusive definite article like “el,” “la,” outside of the confusing to speak suggestions with “x”.

It is an earnest ask as I don’t see any info online in the places I am looking.

Thank you in advance and thank you for sharing your knowledge on Catalan culture.

Hello! Thank you :D

Yes, there is. Every word (determinants, adjectives, nouns, pronouns, etc) are turned into non-binary grammatical gender by taking the feminine version and changing the gender marker -a for -i (in the case of singular) or -es for -is (in the case of plurals). Thus, the article is "li" (singular) or "lis" (plural).

I would also like to clear up a couple of minor things from the ask, I'll add the whole answer under a cut because it's a bit long.

You mentioned an "accepted" article. Accepted by who? Do you mean widely accepted by speakers, or accepted by the official institutions that regulate the standard and make dictionaries? Because those are very different questions.

Being used and understood by speakers comes first, and only after it is widespread do the academies incorporate it in their standards, dictionaries and lists. A dictionary is never a place to propose new words, only to compile the ones already part of the language. That's why academies that make dictionaries and regulate the standard, regardless of how much they want to, just can't add new things so quickly, they must wait to see if a trend really ends up becoming part of the language of if it's a short-lived trend that leaves and never takes root.

The third grammatical gender is still a recent proposal which many speakers haven't heard of, don't know how to use and don't understand (in fact, they would understand a different thing if they heard it*). For this reason, it's too soon to talk about being included by language academies. But yes, the -i ending (including elli) is the most used and most widely accepted proposal of third grammatical gender.

*replacing the vowels for the vowel "i" has always been used as a way to ridiculize a sentence, way before the -i got proposed for a non-binary grammatical gender, so people who are not familiar with this new proposal will likely interpret it as a joke.

So from now on I will answer assuming we mean what is the most widely used or socially accepted (which is what I assume you meant anyway), because as we've established it's too early to talk about being or not being accepted by official academies.

2. We are talking about third grammatical gender or non-binary grammatical gender, not gender-neutral.

In English, the singular "they" is used as a gender-neutral pronoun when we don't know the gender of the person we're talking about, but Catalan and most other Romance languages don't have this. The idea that has been proposed is a new, third grammatical gender which is neither male nor female. This third grammatical gender is used by non-binary people who prefer to use neither male nor female. But if it were gender-neutral we would use it to talk about people who aren't non-binary or for mixed grammatical genders (remember that grammatical gender does not equal human gender, the word is only a coincidence and in many cases it could be better translated as "type", "class" or "genre"), for example "there they are, the dishes and the mugs" = "allà els tenim, els plats i les tasses". We use the unmarked/masculine for that, but there's some people who also have other proposals but that's a whole other very, very long conversation.

Same goes for people, we don't use the third grammatical gender when we don't know someone's gender, unlike English this isn't part of our language. We simply tend to add the multiple options. Until now it was 2 (male and female), now it should be 3. In some other occasions, people might use the unmarked/masculine or write in reference to "person" (can be an elliptical construction that simply looks like a feminine sentence).

3. The -x.

You also mention the confusing -x. Luckily the -x is not commonly used here. It's not very useful because it's very online-only (it can't be pronounced, so it can never become part of the language more than just virtue-signaling in written form).

It's normal to have to try out different forms before finding out what will work, but we're lucky that this one never really took root because it will be easier to teach directly the new one (-i) to the broader public who isn't as invested in this.

That being said, going back to your question:

"Elli" is the personal neopronoun (equivalent to ell and ella), as you said, and the -i termination is the proposed new grammatical gender. It must be the -i because it's the only vowel in Catalan that isn't directly associated with one of the two other existing grammatical genders: -a is used for the singular feminine, -e is used for the plural feminine (as well as singular feminine in some accents), -o and -u are used for the plural unmarked/masculine. The singular unmarked/masculine grammatical gender in Catalan doesn't have an ending, so it can end in any letter (including -i). Thus, only -i is (most times) left, even though it's already used as an end in some pronouns (like "hi", meaning "there", "-li" meaning "to him" or "to her", etc). So the rule is this: for every gendered word (nouns, adjectives, pronouns, etc) just take the feminine form and in singular change the -a for -i, or in plural change the -es for -is.

The article would work the same way: li. For example:

♂️: El mestre és alt. Els mestres són alts.

♀️: La mestra és alta. Les mestres són altes.

Neo: Li mestri és alti. Lis mestris són altis.

If you want to know more details about this new proposal, there's a book called Guia gramatical de llenguatge no-binari that explains everything.

I hope this answers your question! And thank you very much for your interest.

[twistofstory]

(Context) Irbis. Oh, my dear Irbis. This AU made me fall in love with her enough to bring her back from the dead for the main story... Well, that's not exactly true, I just like to joke about it, but it isn't false either.

In the first version of The Scavengers, her main role was to be “an example”, so she died in the then chapter 4 (out of 15-chapters-story that focused exclusively on Salamander). I won't dwell into details, the point is it progressed the plot. Then I felt bad about making a character so important to other Morticians this blank, so I made her fun. She acquired better backstory and character, now she had an influence outside dying tragically. And I had a cool idea for her in the AU! I liked her a lot now, but her role didn't change, so I made peace with it by making her haunt the narrative. And then I had a loong period of working on Newt's/Center's storyline, which changed so much about the story as a whole — and completely broke Sal's plot by making the gang NOT hostile. Mind you, the AU got even bigger, and I grew to love the thrill-seeker version of Irbis. At this point, I wanted to bring Irb back into the main story very badly, even figuring out how to progress the plot without killing her off. Still, she didn't add a lot, so I settled with her living in the AU.

So, the setting. Making the story completely mine gave me an opportunity to look at it from a fresh perspective, and, with Sal's story rewrite on the way, it finally clicked! So I cut some characters (sorry Racer), and now Irbis has an important role to play! Design note: I like her new design a lot, although it still needs some work. Her avatar look is pretty fun! I was greatly inspired by a character from one TMA episode calling a Hunt avatar “sharp” lol. Also, I made her look far more monstrous mainly for two reasons: 1) I wanted to make her fun to draw, 2) It's a metaphorical thing (she feels very at home in her avatarship and doesn't hide her true nature + other's outlook on her + it limits places she can go). She's a big teethy thing and I love her.

[outboundskelliebros]

Also, adding on to how the heats, suppressants and Monster baby formation works in my headcanon cause it's just a thing that's important but probably not important enough to come up in any other form. Just a 'oh by the way, this is how this works'. The explanation isn't any more graphic than how Underlust as a whole is but caution for discussing this topic in general.

Okay so, basically, my headcanon for how monster babies are made are, you guessed it, soul bonding. So if two parent monsters truly want a child, their souls bond and when enough magic is pulled from both souls along with that intent to have a child, a new monster baby begins to develop.

HOWEVER monster heats are kind of just a more guaranteed way to have the extra magic to form the baby and intimate acts are a way to 100% open yourself up to your partner so it's encouraged to soul bond during that intimacy during heats so monster baby reproduction works out.

In my version of Underlust, I'd imagine monsters were experiencing a magic shortage from being in the Underground and starting to lack hope for a better future that made it much harder to have the extra magic to fully form monster babies to completion. Hence the dire need for a solution and the need to inject the LUST trait in them (even if it was an accident it resulted in a 24/7 state of heat).

While it did help with the fertility of the monsters, the constant state of heat eventually just became more of an issue than a solution since it made continuing regular life very difficult while working around it.

So in Lustlust, Alphys works hard to create and perfect a suppresent to put a lid on heats and yay it works! No more suffering from the feelings of it! HOWEVER they still produce that extra magic that was supposed to be worked through during their heats. If they keep taking suppressants without regulated periods off of it... just imagine filling a water balloon with water till it eventually pops.

Basically, not good.

So, instead of always being in heat, the monsters were 90% of the time in a state that's pretty much like how life used to be for them, even if they are less energetic and gung ho and more lax about life. Still much more preferable than the heats.

Then they get to control when they have to work through that 10% of time where they need to take regulated time off the suppressant and wash out that extra magic production.

Toots and Popie do have those periods of time but I'd doubt I'd ever explicitly talk about it on the blog. Just for anyone who wanted more information on this cause I've been thinking about them more lately lol.

Introducing a pair of skellies from the Omega Timeline, Toots and Popie!

Summary, a Sans and Papyrus that the Outbound bros are friends with in the Omega Timeline. More detailed explanation of them and their relationship with the bros under the cut.

They're from a Lustlust universe, at least I'm calling it that but... it's just Underlust but Alphys managed to create a suppressant that... Heavily clamps down on the LUST trait the adult monsters had been injected with.

Since the feeling of Lust can extend to general passion, vigour, all those feelings, it has the side effect of making all the monsters given the suppressant really relaxed and easy going so the Underground became pretty mellow once it started to roll out. Not really that much of a change for Sans but way more noticeable with Papyrus.

Unfortunately, the creator had only written out all the important points for all the important characters, designed Sans and Papyrus and kinda left the AU there so Toots and Popie have like a weird mix of memories with the other characters, knowing things happened but actually remembering how they all looked like or even their underground is suuuuper foggy and distant.

Once they were brought to the Omega Timeline, it was super awkward since (I'd imagine) some people are a little wary of characters from Lust universes. Toots did manage to work with the scientists in the OT to recreate the suppressant so they can take it regularly so they're good on that front. Didn't help much with them integrating with everyone (at first, they eventually do).

The Outbound bros then came in while both sets of bros were relatively new to the OT and instantly noticed each other's ectobodies and had to talk to each other. They all quickly bonded and could relate with more things than they expected. Hopefully I'll get to draw them interacting cause I'm realising I'm bad at describing things until I actually have an example of them.

[torgawl]

everyone here was soooo excited because a national channel was going to bring back this iconic tv series, directed specifically to the youth, from our childhood and adolescence that we are so nostalgic about after 11 years for them to disappoint us all with the trailer because it looks like elite 2.0

[sysig]

It’s hard to put on a bright face, in spite of everything (Patreon)

[ruvviks]

toying with the idea of making yancey's friends not real. would that be too evil

[aberooski]

I love my gx winx au and I love that it's just bits and pieces of me being like oh that's fun and not having any semblance of lore or plot. It's purely contained to the character designs I've drawn for the girls.

[the-golden-ghost]

1,500 words babey

[krawdad]

I didn't know there was a (long defunct) different mr toad ride built for Disney world that I'd never heard of before

It's bizarre it manages to feel like an even cheaper version of an already dangerously archaic plywood-with-blacklight-paint-and-jumpscares type dark ride

[iamthedukeofurl]

Scott Pilgrim is, I think, the best example I can think of for establishing a setting's Nonsense Limit. The setting's Nonsense Limit isn't quite "How high-fantasy is this". It's mostly a question of presentation, to what degree does the audience feel that they know the rules the world operates by, such that they are primed to accept a random new element being introduced. A setting with a Nonsense Limit of 0 is, like, an everyday story. Something larger than life, but theoretically taking place in our world, like your standard spy thriller action movie has a limit of 1. Some sort of hidden world urban fantasy with wizards and stuff operating in secret has a nonsense limit around 3 or 4. A Superhero setting, presenting an alternate version of our world, is a 5 or 6. High fantasy comes in around a 7 or so, "Oh yeah, Wizards exist and they can do crazy stuff" is pretty commonly accepted. Scott Pilgrim comes in at a 10. If you read the Scott Pilgrim book, it starts off looking like a purely mundane slice of life. The first hint at the fantastical is Ramona appearing repeatedly in Scott's Dreams, and then later showing up in real life. When we finally get an explanation, it's this:

Apparently Subspace Highways are a thing? And they go through people's heads? And Ramona treats this like it's obscure, but not secret knowledge. Ramona doesn't think she's doing anything weird here. At this point, it's not clear if Scott is accepting Ramona's explanation or not, things kind of move on as mundane as ever until their Date, when Ramona takes Scott through subspace, and he doesn't act like his world was just blown open or anything, although I guess that could have been a metaphor. there's a couple other moments, but everything with Ramona could be a metaphor, or Scott not recognizing what's going on. Maybe Ramona is uniquely fantastical in this otherwise normal world. And then, this happens

Suddenly, a fantastical element (A shitty local indie band finishing their set with a song that knocks out most of the audience) is introduced unrelated to Ramona, and undeniably literal. We see the crowd knocked out by Crash and The Boys. but the story doesn't linger on the implications of that, the whole point of that sequence is to raise the Nonsense Level, such that you accept it when This happens

Matthew Patel comes flying down onto the stage, Scott, who until this point is presented as a terrible person and a loser, but otherwise is extremely ordinary, proceeds to flawlessly block and counter him before doing a 64-hit air juggle combo. Scott's friends treat this like Scott is showing off a mildly interesting party trick, like being really good at darts. The establish that Scott is the "Best Fighter in the Province", not only are street-fighter battles a thing, Scott is Very Good at it, but they're so unimportant that being the best fighter in the province doesn't make Scott NOT a loser. So when Matthew Patel shows off his magic powers and then explodes into a pile of coins, we've established "Oh, this is how silly the setting gets". It's not about establishing the RULES of the setting so much as it is about establishing a lack of rules. Scott's skill at street-fighter battles doesn't translate to any sort of social prestige. Ramona can access Subspace Highways and she uses it to do a basic delivery job. It doesn't make sense and it's clear that it's not supposed to. So later on, when Todd Ingram starts throwing around telekinesis, and the explanation we're given is "He's a Vegan" , you're already so primed by the mixture of weirdness and mundanity that rather than trying to incorporate this new knowledge into any sort of coherent setting ruleset, you just go "Ah, yeah, Vegans".

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

average United States contains 1000s of pet tigers in backyards" factoid actualy [sic] just statistical error. average person has 0 tigers on property. Activist Georg, who lives the U.S. Capitol & makes up over 10,000 each day, has purposefully been spreading disinformation adn [sic] should not have been counted

I have a big mad today, folks. It's a really frustrating one, because years worth of work has been validated... but the reason for that fucking sucks.

For almost a decade, I've been trying to fact-check the claim that there "are 10,000 to 20,000 pet tigers/big cats in backyards in the United States." I talked to zoo, sanctuary, and private cat people; I looked at legislation, regulation, attack/death/escape incident rates; I read everything I could get my hands on. None of it made sense. None of it lined up. I couldn't find data supporting anything like the population of pet cats being alleged to exist. Some of you might remember the series I published on those findings from 2018 or so under the hashtag #CrouchingTigerHiddenData. I've continued to work on it in the six years since, including publishing a peer reviewed study that counted all the non-pet big cats in the US (because even though they're regulated, apparently nobody bothered to keep track of those either).

I spent years of my life obsessing over that statistic because it was being used to push for new federal legislation that, while well intentioned, contained language that would, and has, created real problems for ethical facilities that have big cats. I wrote a comprehensive - 35 page! - analysis of the issues with the then-current version of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2020. When the bill was first introduced to Congress in 2013, a lot of groups promoted it by fear mongering: there's so many pet tigers! they could be hidden around every corner! they could escape and attack you! they could come out of nowhere and eat your children!! Tiger King exposed the masses to the idea of "thousands of abused backyard big cats": as a result the messaging around the bill shifted to being welfare-focused, and the law passed in 2022.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act created a registry, and anyone who owned a private cat and wanted to keep it had to join. If they did, they could keep the animal until it passed, as long as they followed certain strictures (no getting more, no public contact, etc). Don’t register and get caught? Cat is seized and major punishment for you. Registering is therefore highly incentivized. That registry closed in June of 2023, and you can now get that registration data via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Guess how many pet big cats were registered in the whole country?

97.

Not tens of thousands. Not thousands. Not even triple digits. 97.

And that isn't even the right number! Ten USDA licensed facilities registered erroneously. That accounts for 55 of 97 animals. Which leaves us with 42 pet big cats, of all species, in the entire country.

Now, I know that not everyone may have registered. There's probably someone living deep in the woods somewhere with their illegal pet cougar, and there's been at least one random person in Texas arrested for trying to sell a cub since the law passed. But - and here's the big thing - even if there are ten times as many hidden cats than people who registered them - that's nowhere near ten thousand animals. Obviously, I had some questions.

Guess what? Turns out, this is because it was never real. That huge number never had data behind it, wasn't likely to be accurate, and the advocacy groups using that statistic to fearmonger and drive their agenda knew it... and didn't see a problem with that.

Allow me to introduce you to an article published last week.

This article is good. (Full disclose, I'm quoted in it). It's comprehensive and fairly written, and they did their due diligence reporting and fact-checking the piece. They talked to a lot of people on all sides of the story.

But thing that really gets me?

Multiple representatives from major advocacy organizations who worked on the Big Cat Publix Safety Act told the reporter that they knew the statistics they were quoting weren't real. And that they don't care. The end justifies the means, the good guys won over the bad guys, that's just how lobbying works after all. They're so blase about it, it makes my stomach hurt. Let me pull some excerpts from the quotes.

"Whatever the true number, nearly everyone in the debate acknowledges a disparity between the actual census and the figures cited by lawmakers. “The 20,000 number is not real,” said Bill Nimmo, founder of Tigers in America. (...) For his part, Nimmo at Tigers in America sees the exaggerated figure as part of the political process. Prior to the passage of the bill, he said, businesses that exhibited and bred big cats juiced the numbers, too. (...) “I’m not justifying the hyperbolic 20,000,” Nimmo said. “In the world of comparing hyperbole, the good guys won this one.”

"Michelle Sinnott, director and counsel for captive animal law enforcement at the PETA Foundation, emphasized that the law accomplished what it was set out to do. (...) Specific numbers are not what really matter, she said: “Whether there’s one big cat in a private home or whether there’s 10,000 big cats in a private home, the underlying problem of industry is still there.”"

I have no problem with a law ending the private ownership of big cats, and with ending cub petting practices. What I do have a problem with is that these organizations purposefully spread disinformation for years in order to push for it. By their own admission, they repeatedly and intentionally promoted false statistics within Congress. For a decade.

No wonder it never made sense. No wonder no matter where I looked, I couldn't figure out how any of these groups got those numbers, why there was never any data to back any of the claims up, why everything I learned seemed to actively contradict it. It was never real. These people decided the truth didn't matter. They knew they had no proof, couldn't verify their shocking numbers... and they decided that was fine, if it achieved the end they wanted.

So members of the public - probably like you, reading this - and legislators who care about big cats and want to see legislation exist to protect them? They got played, got fed false information through a TV show designed to tug at heartstrings, and it got a law through Congress that's causing real problems for ethical captive big cat management. The 20,000 pet cat number was too sexy - too much of a crisis - for anyone to want to look past it and check that the language of the law wouldn't mess things up up for good zoos and sanctuaries. Whoops! At least the "bad guys" lost, right? (The problems are covered somewhat in the article linked, and I'll go into more details in a future post. You can also read my analysis from 2020, linked up top.)

Now, I know. Something something something facts don't matter this much in our post-truth era, stop caring so much, that's just how politics work, etc. I’m sorry, but no. Absolutely not.

Laws that will impact the welfare of living animals must be crafted carefully, thoughtfully, and precisely in order to ensure they achieve their goals without accidental negative impacts. We have a duty of care to ensure that. And in this case, the law also impacts reservoir populations for critically endangered species! We can't get those back if we mess them up. So maybe, just maybe, if legislators hadn't been so focused on all those alleged pet cats, the bill could have been written narrowly and precisely.

But the minutiae of regulatory impacts aren't sexy, and tiger abuse and TV shows about terrible people are. We all got misled, and now we're here, and the animals in good facilities are already paying for it.

I don't have a conclusion. I'm just mad. The public deserves to know the truth about animal legislation they're voting for, and I hope we all call on our legislators in the future to be far more critical of the data they get fed.

[bluebeads-art]

As the flash hits your eye, you feel something crashing into you from all directions. Below you is obvious, Bonbon situated themself to bump into you while the picture was taken. You look to your right, and Mirabelle’s cheek is pressed up to yours. On your left, Isabeau’s sheepishly hugged you to his side. There’s a hand in your hair, too, and it feels like Madame Odile. [...] “We need a souvenir of this trip,” Mirabelle adds. She rushes to the ground to pick up the picture and snort-laughs as she looks at it. “Oh no, Siffrin looks like we’re holding him hostage!” — Curtain Call, Chapter 9, by @openphrase123 (Link in the replies)

2024 October 22nd

Fanfic fanart fanfic fanart!! When I read the "hostage" line, it invoked such a clear image in my head of Siffrin tensed up like a startled prey animal that it got added to my list of things to maybe draw immediately.

Dooon't think about the words 'left' and 'right' in that quote too hard. I know how to read I prommy. :) (I did Not process those words and lost the coin flip in the composition phase...)

Close-up and ramblings about the cans of worms I unleashed upon myself under the cut

Time taken on this was [head in hands] 48 hours and 37 minutes.... That bloated number has two culprits:

1) I got a new tablet! My old one was 10 years old. Its plastic was melting and the electronics had ghosts in 'em, so it needed the sweet release of retirement. However, I had just gotten to the line art phase when the switch happened. Clumsily getting used to the new one during the most precise phase of the process did devastating things to my perfectionism.

2) I made a GRAVE mistake with how I chose to color this. I wanted to keep the grayscale layers for accuracy instead of just slapping a B&W filter over the colored version, so all the colors come from gradient maps, color balance layers, overlay layers, and raster layers clipped to other layers. Listen. I'm used to working with lots of layers. I like keeping things separate so I can edit them more easily. But this is the worst layer system I have ever created. Going from color to B&W requires toggling exactly 20 layers & folders on or off. There are 87 visible layers total. This file lags when you edit it. I've never wanted CSP v1.13 to have layer comps more in my life.

Not helping matters was Isabeau. I said he was the easiest to draw in my last post, but he took that as a challenge, apparently. It's a simple fist-on-hip pose, why was that so hard!?! His face gave me grief too.

Odile's lil' wave got added at the end of the line art phase. I've never added to a sketch that late in the game before, but I felt bad about how little screen area she got, haha. Girl, I tried, but this composition was not kind to you.

Giving Isa, Odile, and Siffrin skin colors felt cursed. Well... "color" is maybe a stretch for Sif. The pallor from being affection-jumpscared isn't helping. In the dev's nose reveal post, they said that Siffrin isn't white but is white-passing, so BOOM albinism headcanon. Like c'mon, they wear a big hat and have most of their skin covered because the sun is a deadly laser when you have little to no melanin and idk if sunblock exists in-universe. Heck, maybe most Islanders have it, their whole religion is about the night sky so maybe they're nocturnal. This makes perfect sense. :)

[ghosted-jazz]

Did Cosmo and Wanda have a fairy Timmy back in the day? I hadn't watched A New Wish yet but iirc their relationship was strained by Timmy, I think because of the whole "no one aged for 50 years" thing in Timmy's Secret Wish. So would that mean Timmy messed up their marriage?

Yep! Timmy was Cosmo and Wanda's first fairy!

Cosmo and Wanda were newly weds with no support systems thus miserable enough to get their own fairy!

For the first few years, the three of them were perfect but Timmy overstayed his welcome, none of them wanting to lose this new family they created. Timmy used his magic to try and force a magic solution to make Cosmo and Wanda happy again, to varying levels of success.

New fairy management notices that Cosmo and Wanda seem to be getting more miserable despite having Timmy, so they get assigned a new fairy:

Chloe is here to fix all of Timmy's mistakes. But their happy little family isn't going to be separated so instead of being replaced, Timmy and Chloe end up as coworkers.

But even with two fairies, Cosmo and Wanda keep getting more miserable. With a fresh new set of eyes and someone to talk to, Timmy finally admits that the Fairywinkle-Cosmas might be better off without him since most of their conflict does seem to revolve around magic. So both Chloe and Timmy resign, erasing Cosmo's, Wanda's, Poof's Peri's and Sparky's memories of magic.

That day, the Fairywinkle-Cosma's pet goldfish, the one they got when they got their first house, dies. The whole family is very torn up about it, crying even though they don't know why they feel so strongly about losing this goldfish.

As for the whole 50 year time loop thing:

After granting that accidental wish, Timmy does not come clean about it for 50 years in fear of getting into trouble. A swap version of Timmy's Secret Wish does happen and undoes the time loop but yep, that wish absolutely contributed in the decline of their marriage. Not that Cosmo and Wanda would remember it anyways

[tabata188]

I find it really interesting how Bill reiterates that he saw Ford as "a human pet" and a tool for him to use in his plans, but in the end the closest he has ever come to telling the truth to SOMEONE about what happened in Euclydia is to him of all people.

In the Book of Bill in the part about his past where all the redacted stuff is (where it is pretty much confirmed that he in fact, killed or is responsible for everyone dying) Bill himself tells the reader:

"The important thing is, I freed myself from my suffocating world, and freed everyone else too, and everyone loved me for it, and everyone was fine! And that's all there is to say about that! "

And well, it clearly is a lie to us, the readers, who just saw the previous paragraph full of people apparently screaming, seeing lots of blood, and being "the last one breathing". Bill also adds how every time he tries to talk about that day he starts hearing a loud buzzing as well as black outs for half a minute which is a super normal response when you are just freeing people and stuff(/j) . Things is tho, this version where everyone " was freed" Seems to be the official version, the one that Bill tells everyone. This is seen in the new webpage where by putting "tantrum" you see a scene where Time Baby straight up calls Bill out on killing everyone and Bill's henchmen are surprised by it as they were told by him that "he liberated the people of his dimension".

Even when he first met Ford, he says "I went no contact with my home dimension and I don't regret it", which implies that he was ready to feed him that version initially. But THEN later on you get the Scene™. It's not until after some time has passed between them when Bill tells him about how his entire home dimension was destroyed... By a monster, all while looking uncharacteristically distant. And sure one could argue that it was a play on Ford's emotions, to try to win him over and manipulate him further but it's too touchy of a subject for even his henchmen to know. The same interview on the webpage where he talks about manipulating Ford, preying on his insecurities and him being a human pet, ends with the interviewer asking "Let's talk about your parents" And Bill automatically shutting it down altogether. When he gets drunk after him and Ford part ways he calls for "a Sixer" And in the same scene starts calling out to his mom.

In the end the closest he has ever come to owning up to it to anyone that isn't himself (and even then, seems like he's forced to by the voices that keep weighting on his conscience as seen in the webpage) is to Ford. And he won absolutely nothing from it.

As another fun detail, in the webpage if you type "Lies" You get a whole page of Bill talking about lying and it ends with a graphic that says "Lie until you aren't lying anymore".

And what's the input used to get the interview where Bill talks about Ford and calls him a human pet and a tool?

"Evenhisliesarelies".