#king gets turned into a cat

[leletha-jann]

Headcanon to no particular purpose:

Editorial cartoons exist in the world of Girl Genius (we know newspapers do).

The Parisian newspaper cartoonists universally represent Gil as a wolf and Tarvek as a fox. Agatha is a lioness.

If they have more space for details, the imagery becomes winged wolf (control of the skies), crowned fox (authority and royalty), and lioness with a broken trilobite collar (power unchained).

[your-stranger-halfblood-things]

Edwin just trying to read a book but every time he turns a page, his face gets peppered with kisses from his three boyfriends

[cubbyhole-for-flea-bee]

Apologies

[pespillo]

silly doodles

[firefistjaigio]

OP social media headcanons (only some lol)

thinked too hard about what some OP characters social media use would be like

The Strawhats:

Luffy: avid IG reels and Youtube shorts user, they do not let his ass on tik tok. He posts random shit he sees on his IG story and also makes reels about beetles. He begs Usopp to help him make a YouTube channel but Usopp will do most of the work for it so he's not fully on board yet

Chopper: Gen Alpha realness he is crazy about Roblox, they don't really let him have his own account but he look at reels and shorts with Luffy

Zoro: Literally nothing but youtube to watch workout, sword, martial art, fitness, and like some eastern philosophy motivational content. Nami also downloaded a locator app on his phone so the strawhats can find him and stop him from wandering to another country. Oh and he tried google maps, fucking hated it

Sanji: He is sharing flowery good morning gifs on whatsapp and facebook all the time. He runs the account for the baratie on Instagram and it's actually pretty savvy but also real. Oh and he's on Snapchat for loser reasons

Nami: Gen Z legend, she is PROLIFIC. Makes really cool tik toks about navigation and is lowkey an educational influencer. Also is on Instagram and is somewhat villainous on Twitter with Usopp. Scams people on Discord

Usopp: Lord he is on everything. He will demolish you on Twitter, Nami helps, he has doxxed evil bitches with her help. He's evil in IG reel comment sections but not like that bad. Oh and he posts pretty cool stuff on tik tok and Ig reels about all the stuff he makes, everyone always hypes his art. Oh and like he's probably always just looking for tips on Reddit and sharing answers too

Robin: Tumblr most definitely, archeology and history blog on tumblr

Franky: Runs a facebook account and instagram account for his mechanic? woodworking, robotics just whatever the fuck shop, we love him for it.

Jinbei: Facebook mom, also shares dumb stuff he sees on facebook to the others on whatsapp

Brook: Also just nefarious on Facebook but Usopp helped him open an account to post music, has a following from people who were fans of him back in the day and also just music fans.

This isn't a me post if I don't talk about the ASL brothers sighs

So the brothers overall have a childhood youtube channel with vlogs they would post of their shenanigans, has a lot of of fun and crazy stuff on there. They kept it all out of fondness for the memories.

Sabo: Lord... he is on political twiter bullying THE FUCK out of right wingers. He is practically everywhere, he runs a tik tok account for political organizing and education that Koala also runs with him. He has used tumblr, but not really much. He has an Instagram he mostly neglects for being crazy and discussing theory on Twitter. He goes on Discord sometimes but the modern au version of the revolutionary army shed that for Signal I guess. Sabo is also on bluesky, idk what goes on there though.

Ace: mostly offline, justs uses Whatsapp to chat with his people yeah.

I'm gonna add Law to this post too because bye

Law: LinkedIn... ew... and twitter but like in a stressed way like he just scrolls on it and just tweets about his life.

[kingofanemptyworld]

I’m still thinking about Umemiya’s team as well as everyone else involved in the AU but! For now! Take our beloved blushy boy!

Current Team:

Absol (Partner Pokemon)

Riolu

Eevee

Togepi

Pichu

To address the obvious theme here: friendship. Yes, they’re also all adorable and Sakura deserves cute things, but primarily they’re a good representation of his canon-typical character growth — as in, you’re going to see these babies evolve at crucial moments during Sakura’s journey, and almost exclusively to show he’s opened his heart to another traveling companion.

And then there’s Absol, my personal favorite misunderstood Pokemon. A so-called harbinger of disaster who’s actually vital to preventing loss of life and resources. It’s my favorite pick for Sakura because it’s just so damn fitting for who he is and how his friends come to see him.

I’m leaving the last spot open for now but I’m leaning towards having him run into Type: Null at some point (don’t ask me how, this is all vibes and no plot at this point). It’s another friendship evolution so it’s especially good for this line-up, plus I appreciate that its in-game relevance lines up with Sakura’s canon themes again.

[sforzesco]

Do you think Cassius haunts Caesar's line ?

yeah, the escalating paranoia about conspiracies is really revealing (especially when you reach Caligula and the Cassius Incident) but I also think Cassius and his legacy haunts any tyrant. Caesar just happened to be the guy who climbed his way to the top in a place where Cassius could do something about it

Plutarch, Brutus (trans. Scott-Kilvert)

[wings-of-flying]

FUCKKK THIS STRAIGHT SHIP GOES HARD

[icefang111]

Binged the dungeon meshi anime today and gotta say... was not nearly as fucked as everyone was implying???

Was really good, don't get me wrong but like, what's a little blood magic between friends ya know? It's chill, like bearly a 6 on the fucked scale. I was expecting more :/

[meganechan05]

Always wanted to draw Rita as a cat because they have black cat energy 😂😂

(And a bonus YanGira because I would find it fcking hilarious if Yanma was also turned into a cat.)

[visionkept]

There's still so much to learn about Tomoya, but there's at least one thing Honey knows for certain: they have a weakness for adorable, fluffy little creatures... and, recently, she thinks she heard them mumbling something about bunnies. That's easy enough to work with!

Usagi manju, presented with several flavors to err on the side of caution: strawberry and white chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, and matcha. Surely they'll be fond of at least one of the flavors presented, she reasons... and cuteness can make up for the rest... but, of course, there's one extra way to hedge her bets, and she happily takes it.

Nestled in amongst the batch of manju is a second, separate container: a clear round bubble containing one of those trendy, jiggly little milk-pudding kitties. just like their kitty cat!

Beneath a plum blossom tree, guarded from the late winter sunlight by the projected shadow, the ronin rests quietly so immersed in their own thoughts. Never did the current date crossed their mind nor did the sweetness in the air raise suspicion. For Tomoya this day was no different from the rest with nothing to give and nothing to get. A direct consequence of SOLITUDE they wrongfully have considered an advantage ( which, of course, ISN'T despite their stubbornness in the matter ). Again, THIS DAY was EXPECTED to BE and FEEL ORDINARY, and it would have gone that way if it wasn't because of a certain SOMEBODY.

❝ Honey, is there something you want to show me ? ❞ It hadn't taken them much to learn how to read the fellow blond like an open book. Her giddiness gave her away regularly and paired up with the fact that she had been gone for hours - one could effortlessly deduct that the fae was up to something.

What exactly ? It doesn't take a genius to know when she got the profile of someone that would INDULGE in the present festivities. Wouldn't be so out of character for her to go around giving gifts to everyone in the city; To friends, family ( a BUNNY family if their hypothesis was correct ), and a partner if she even had one. Honestly, everything about her pointed out that a celebration like this would be her favorite. So if Honey had been in the urban side of town while they were asleep, it meant that something HAD happened. Tomoya plays with the stick of hay in their mouth upon her arrival, standing fully up when the other giggled. ❝ C'mon, I already know you got something behind your back. Were you gifted something special ? ❞ They will let her show off, take it as part of the included services as her part-time samurai.

She pulls from behind her a gift worth of admiration ( and jealousy ) for those with a sweet spot for the cute and fluffy. Three different manjus shaped like bunnies spread across the dish. The shape made them arch an eyebrow, looking down at the woman. Was this another proof ? PERHAPS. They might take it as such. But going back to the dessert, each was of a different flavour and by the colors of it, they could deduce what they were about; First, white chocolate, not exactly their favorite considering how sweet it could get after the third bite ( little did they know that it had strawberries to mix it up, that's certainly an improvement ). Second, chocolate. Not so sure if it contained dark or semi-sweet but either would be better than the previous. Yes, Tomoya prefered their sweets mild. And third, MATCHA, a blessing to their PALATE. The kind of natural sweetness with a piece of bitterness, sometimes a bit grassy. THAT ONE had to be their favorite by far ( plus to imagine a viridescent rabbit got them chuckling ).

Round, cute and they could assume that undoubtedly delicious. If they had thought it couldn't get better then they were ABSOLUTELY wrong. The crown of this piece resided in that container and when Tomo gave it a closer look, a wiggly pudding cat-like treat presents before them. It is in this instant of realization that they let out a gasp as their violet hues widen up. This treat looking all so similar to the little miss sleeping in the branches of the tree. When Honey wiggles the plate with caution, the pudding moves - for a second looking as if it was dancing. This. . . THIS WAS PERFECT. The dot eyes, a white coating similar to her fur and those small jiggling from one side to another. The flavour didn't matter ( unless it was mint ) when something so cute could be possible ! Gods, it was embarrassing just how easy this could make them smile, even wider than hers to everyone's surprise.

The other hands it to her and the first they do is to give it a quick shake, getting once again that same wiggle. ❝ Honey this is- ! ❞ Whoever had gifted her this had an amazing taste. It's as if this was targeted to them, as if this was meant to no one other than . . .

❝ Wait. . . . IS THIS FOR ME ? ! ❞

Who is the smartest between the two ? At this point, no idea. It took them this much to FIGURE IT OUT by themselves. Their mouth suddenly felt dried and a burning sensation grows in their features. Their gaze shifts from her then back to the treat and again, to HER. Honey didn't have to do any of this yet she did . . . Could it be that she planned this all along ? Was that the reason she told them to wait here ? It does make sense now . . .THAT CLEVER LITTLE RABBIT ( not a rabbit ) ! ! !

They don't know how to reply to this. It's no secret that they aren't USED TO receiving gifts. But the words that came out first felt right to say. Although impossible to keep it for long, they will make every bite count the effort she put in it. ❝ This. . . this is LOVELY. . . THANK YOU. ❞

[misery-businez]

ouchie this song hurts

[oreana-galena]

Fuck me, I guess. XD

[fancy-rock-dove]

today in defenses of boromir that no one asked for: tired of reading that boromir’s death was in vain because he failed to save merry & pippin from the uruk-hai.  the fact that this clearly important warrior was willing to die to protect those two is what convinced the urukhai that they had indeed captured the halfing who carried whatever important thing saruman wanted.  they took the hobbits to isengard (to isengard gard) because they thought they had the right ones!  boromir didn’t succeed in preventing their capture but he did in fact keep them alive by making them seem valuable.  furthermore, he actually also saves frodo in this way: because the orcs and uruk-hai think they have what they came for, they stop looking and turn back: if they had not, they might have ultimately found and captured frodo or at least raised the alarm that a hobbit with an Important Thing was on the loose, setting others searching.  which is the very heart of tolkien’s worldview - that you do the right thing because it is right, and doing the right thing is never in vain. 

to conclude this essay boromir died a hero and saved not just merry and pippin but also frodo and sam - and in doing so also saved himself from the ring’s attempt to twist him to its own ends

[bluedrake121]

Just found out one of my favorite games as a child was bootleg diablo.

So when I was younger my father had a lot of games on the household computer that was from some weird company that made things like polar golfing and elf bowling as well as weird puzzle games, but one of my favorite game series that was made by them was called "Fate" and it had 3 instalments, "Fate" some other second middle child and "Fate the Cursed King" and I have been coming to the slow realization over the last week~ish that all of the Fate series was just about a 1-1 ripoff of the Diablo series except in my opinion the Fate series was worse in most cases. They were both rpgs where you got gear that went into certain body slots, (both had the exact same arrangement of gear slots) some items had gem slots for gems you could get of varying qualities, there were scrolls of identifying and scrolls of town portals as well as books of identifying and books of town portal that worked in the exact same way, there were keys that stacked in the inventory as well. I'm realizing it will be better for me to list the things so far that aren't the same between the games. Fate did not have a "Class" system, all characters started effectively the same besides some "racial" modifications that were relatively minor. Fate did not have "class abilities" that unlocked, instead there were spell scrolls you could sometimes find in the dungeon that let you learn new spells/abilities (though they were all just spells, not really abilities) In Fate you got a pet that could fight a little bit. Fate has fishing (I don't know if later Diablo games have it but so far I've not seen it) Fate had a second set of points you would get with levels that helped you define your class as the points would do amazing /sar things such as +10% attack speed while dual wielding, and +10% damage with fire spells. Fate also had Deeper dungeons that went down for like 100 levels before the main quest and kept going after that if you wanted for some reason (this may actually be a positive) and had generative side quests for you on the way down instead of certain hand picked/crafted ones. (this may also be a positive depending on how you feel about it) I legitimately can't think of any other significant differences between the games besides that and in my opinion almost everything else that Fate did it did worse than the old diablo games. The books only have room for 10 scrolls, there's more inventory clutter sense there were spell scrolls and fish to worry about, and they even had a "gambling" market that works pretty much the same as the one in diablo, so over all, huh, guess I'm playing diablo now till it falls off. (I think it falls off at some point unless I'm misremembering what I've heard about it) TLDR: Just read the title again.

[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.