#predate this blog by several years too

[grass-and-citrus]

Found these old graphics I made, still like ‘em so I thought I’d post them here! 

[molsno]

I don't think there's enough discussion of the transmisogynistic voyeurism that's extremely widespread in online spaces. it's definitely a problem offline too but it's become significantly more pervasive and inescapable online.

transmisogynistic voyeurism is an obsession with trans women's internal lives. while traditionally it's usually been focused on our bodies, hormones, sexualities, transitions, and other such aspects that portray us as exotic, artificial, hypersexual mimics of "real" women (this is still largely the case among conservatives), it's taken on a new form in the past several years as society's understanding of transness has slowly improved.

in more recent years, the fascination with trans women and transfemininity, particularly in purportedly progressive spaces, has shifted to focus on the "artificiality" of our womanhood from a sociocultural perspective, rather than from a biological and sexual perspective.

it's become common to see screenshots from 4chan and other similar communities of trans women or transfem eggs posting about their unusual kinks, often with racist or antisemitic undertones. screenshots of ostensibly closeted trans women being transphobic to openly trans people have become commonplace. whenever a trans woman is revealed to be racist or a sexual predator, she becomes the new topic du jour, where everyone has to weigh in and publicly disavow her actions.

you might be thinking, what's the problem with this? after all, shouldn't we be holding racists, antisemites, transphobes, and sexual predators accountable? and while the answer to that question is an unambiguous, resounding "yes!", the problem here is the unusual focus on trans women in particular, and the fact that what's happening doesn't even remotely resemble accountability.

bigotry is not a uniquely transfeminine trait. anyone can be a bigot. however, by and large, even supposed trans allies, people who put "trans women are women" and "terfs dni" in their bio, still secretly see trans women as fundamentally male, due to having been "male socialized" (a notion which very strongly contradicts our own lived experiences). thus, when they see post after post after post of trans women being bigoted, it reifies tme people's beliefs that we are all holders of male privilege who have never had to face oppression before coming out as trans.

this idea is problematic for a number of reasons. first, it denies the experiences of trans women who have been oppressed by other systems before coming out as trans. for example, multiple times in just the past few weeks, I've seen trans women of color accused of being racist, even against people of their own race; as if having to face racism all their lives wasn't bad enough, now they're assumed to be perpetrators of it. however, this idea also ignores the very real effect that transmisogyny has had in shaping our lives, even when we didn't know we were trans ourselves.

when we attempt to talk about this topic - the perception that tme people have of trans women being uniquely bigoted, we are by and large brushed off as seeking to "excuse the actions" of bigoted trans women so that we can be bigoted ourselves. this abject refusal to actually engage with what we are saying to instead paint us as the very people we're constantly made to publicly disavow lest we face social ostracization (even if we have no idea who said people even are) further reifies the stereotype of us as privileged men.

I want you to imagine for a moment if trans men were subjected to this kind of voyeurism instead. on an average day scrolling through tumblr, you'd see a post of a trans man's nsfw blog where he shares posts about how rape should be legal, right alongside his bloodplay and cannibalism kink posts, accusing trans men of normalizing rape and murder. another post would show a screenshot of the trans guy who proclaimed to have been hitler in a past life, accompanied by comments demanding trans men take responsibility by purging their community of people like him. you'd scroll down a little further and see a screenshot of a terf blog with "dysphoric female" in bio where they complain about how a trans man they know has been brainwashed by "gender ideology" with all of the comments hoping they figure out their gender identity but still vehemently disavowing them and asserting they would feel unsafe around such a person even after coming out.

the reason that doesn't happen is because biological essentialism runs rampant even in queer spaces. trans men, who were afab, are often presumed to be incapable of harm due to having been "female socialized". trans men don't have their kinks publicly shared to paint them as dangerous because they're generally assumed to be victims of sexual violence, not perpetrators. trans men aren't collectively held accountable for the actions of one trans man they don't even know because a trans man doing harm is believed to be an anomaly, and thus can be dealt with on an individual basis. that last example is especially laughable, because trans men who were formerly terfs are often lauded as heroes for sharing their stories and offered condolences for having been victims of "cult brainwashing".

the fact that this kind of voyeurism does happen to trans women is because, having been amab, we are presumed to be the perpetrators of harm rather than victims. that's not to say that trans women can't be bigoted or dangerous; clearly they can, or else this kind of voyeurism couldn't exist in the first place.

trans women can be racist, trans women can be antisemitic, trans women can be transphobic, trans women can be sexual predators, and so on. these things are all true. however, they are not more likely to be true of trans women than of other demographics. that's the point I'm trying to make here.

stop and consider for a moment, what accountability actually means. are racist, antisemitic trans women being held accountable when you share screenshots of the bigotry they post anonymously on 4chan? does that screenshot you reblogged of an assumed transfem egg being transphobic to an out trans person hold them responsible for their transphobia? is that racist trans woman who's a convicted sexual predator sentenced to prison being held accountable when you share detailed documentaries about her crimes? are they facing consequences for their actions because of you raising awareness about them?

in the vast majority of cases, the answer is no. what's really happening is that you're raising outrage about trans women, and demanding that all of us publicly disavow and distance ourselves from them, even when we have no idea who they are, so that you won't come after us next. you're upholding the idea that trans women hold a "male privilege debt" that we can never fully repay but must endlessly strive to repay regardless. this obsession with our perceived socially male traits has got to stop.

[olderthannetfic]

Sorry to ask this. I was going through a blog when I saw a callout post. I checked it out of curiosity. One of the things that was pointed out was : "when they were 31, they had sex with a 18 year old -they are a teenager!- and it's predatory! I (the writer of the callout) am 21 years old and even I don't have sex with 18 year olds because they are very young and it's very predatory!"

So, idk how to feel about that? Especially as someone who has never been in a relationship. I'm 20 years old, soon I'll be 21. Looking at myself at 18 and the future 21, I really didn't change that much? Physically or mentally. Yeah 18 is young but so is 21?? I don't think it's predatory, am I wrong?/serious question

And for the first part, yeah a 31 year old being with a 18 is weird for me, but aren't they both adults? They also said it's because 18 year olds lack experience, which can be true but that's assuming they have never been in a relationship before(with people their own age or similar). So, it can be weird but predatory? Is it?/serious question

I'm sorry if the questions are upsetting &/or weird but I really don't have anyone else to ask- parents are out of question, they literally think you should teach people about sex right before marriage- and I don't trust most online spaces. There's also zero books about such things in my country because "protect the children!!". So now we have an adult(me) who was raised to never ask question about these things and now is confused as hell. Hmm.....

--

It's all hogwash.

On average, I would assume that a 31-year-old having sex with an 18-year-old is a bit of a creep. However, it would depend entirely on the circumstances. Is this 18-year-old a naive high school student? Or are they someone who's been working a job for several years? Maybe the older person is their coworker whom they got to know.

A 21-year-old and an 18-year-old can be weird in the US if they only just met and one is a high school student while the other is a university student. But what if they met in some very different context where they're more in the same stage of life? Sure, I side-eye upperclassmen who start dating freshmen the first week of their freshman year, but what about later on in the year? What if both of these people aren't students at all and are, again, working a job together?

"You're mature for your age" is a line that creepers feed to younger people, but it can also be true. Some people just get along better with older partners.

We shouldn't be too draconian about any specific rule. You can only judge by the real circumstances of a specific set of people.

Predators are defined by their behavior, not ticky-box demographics. There is no absolute that lets you detect them and protect yourself. People wish there were because they would feel safer. That's what this kind of post is about.

[captain-kuppa]

Say ahoy to the cheerleader of deep seas:

Pom Pom Crab!

[Lybia Tessellata]

These crabs are known for their signature move of always carrying a small living sea anemone around, which helps them catch food and protect themselves from predators. And thas' where they get them name from!

They arr also called "Hawaiian Boxer Crabs"

They can live up to 6 years in a human-made, low competition environment.

Yes, it do shake them pom poms. If provoked or attacked by a predator, the pom-pom crab will threaten the aggressor by waving it’s anemones around, the tentacles armed with cnidocytes (stinging cells).

The Pom Pom Crab are very popular in nano tanks. But don't be keeping these wild hearties in a small cage! They belong in deep seas, not yer aquarium.

[ Fun Fact! This fellows Hawaiian name is kūmimi pua, meaning “inedible flower crab”. ]

Lybia tessellata is a small crab growing to a width of about 2.5 cm (1 in).

The females are sometimes seen with a large red egg mass on the lower part of the body. The eggs hatch and undergo several stages before settling down on the sea floor.

The chelipeds(entire claw) do not have the broad chelae (claws) typical of decapod crabs. Instead they are slim and each has a fine finger bearing eight or nine spines.

What a fit fo' the typical cheerleader gal stereotypa!

They be professional cleaners too! The sea anemone’s tentacles can be used like mops, gathering debris and food particles from the ground around the crab’s hiding place.

They be omnivores but apparently prefer animal matter to plant matter. The front claws are not used for feeding at all, and the first pair of working legs are used for feeding.

[1] | [2] | [3] || Kuppa sends big love to me human matey Fall fo' the new crab blog idea.

[coriander-candlesticks]

Introductions ✨✨

Hey! I'm Coriander. It's not what I go by in my other blogs on here but I want to keep things a bit more separate, at least at first. This is gonna be a long one (sorry) so I'm adding a cut.

I'm exploring Hellenic polytheism, and have only recently started, but it's something I've been considering, in a way, for over a year. I don't have a big, intense story that marks the beginning for me; I didn't necessarily feel a personal, spiritual connection to any of the deities from the time I was a young child in the way others describe, and I haven't had an intense experience that marked the beginning of my path.

I've always felt drawn to Greek mythology, though. I have a distinct memory of laying on my stomach on the floor of the school library in 3rd or 4th grade, reading a picture book about Hades and Persephone. It kept my attention the way others - even Egyptian mythology, another major interest - didn't. I, of course, had the classic queer kid experience of being super into the Percy Jackson series for a while, but my interest in it predated that. The specific deities I've been drawn to have changed somewhat as I've grown up, and they definitely shaped some of my interests. But delving into them again has helped me see connections that weren't explicitly connected to Greek mythology. I felt drawn to Athena growing up, for example, and my love of owls was definitely shaped by that. Even though that has settled into the background somewhat, that connection has persisted in things like my knitting and desires to dye yarn and learn how to weave (side note: I associate crochet more with Apollo, actually, despite it also being a fiber art). I felt connected to Artemis and Persephone as a kid, but that waned as I got older, discovered I was trans, and began my transition. I've felt connected to Hestia and her quiet hearth-keeping since I learned about her: I've always strived to make myself & my space safe and welcoming for others, and being told I succeeded in that is one of the best compliments I've received. But my interests in the morbid (ex Pompeii & the Paris catacombs), psychopomps, rocks & minerals, and keys weren't explicitly related to Hades. Some of the connections didn't click until I started to look into him more seriously about a year ago. I was an artist and had interests in writing, poetry, singing, and playing instruments long before it actually clicked that all of those fell into Apollo's domain, as I associated Athena far more with visual arts as a kid. I also didn't realize that he & Artemis cover diseases (another long-running interest) until very recently. The concept of xenia, too, was something I grew up with to some extent, even though no one called it that. My father modelled it to my siblings and I; I even learned about it within the context of ancient Greece at some point growing up and it stuck with me, despite not knowing the name.

I grew up Mormon, and was incredibly devout until college, when the pandemic forcibly separated me from that environment and I not only discovered that I was queer in several ways, but realized that the Church 1) wasn't safe to stay in and 2) wasn't actually true (which came later, when I started to get over my fear of reading "anti-Mormon literature"). During that period between those two realizations I got into tarot and using plants and crystals for their correspondences (two other interests growing up), as well as using rocks to ground myself. At that time, I considered myself a "liminal Mormon", and was reaching out to Heavenly Mother specifically via tarot. But as it set in that Mormonism specifically, and Christianity generally, wasn't for me, I got more and more interested in modern witchcraft separated from the belief system I was raised in.

It never quite felt right, though. The constant need for protections and doing something "the right way" lest things backfire and you invite the wrong thing into your home, or hurt yourself, or others, or or or, made my anxious & scrupulous brain go into overdrive. I wasn't even sure I believed in it spiritually, or if I was just interested in it from a mindfulness standpoint, and staring down the barrel of comically high piles of research without knowing where to start was exhausting. The concept of dual deities, the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine, put a bad taste in my mouth (which bled over into Persephone for a while because she and Hades are often used to symbolize those archetypes- sorry Persephone). But, not wanting to listen too much to my discomfort (since part of it may have been, and probably was, prior conditioning), I pushed ahead and actually completed one ritual that had all of the steps - cleansing, representations of the four elements and directions, etc. - and was very carefully designed to leave room for growth and change. It represented the start of my path. I still have the jar I made during the ritual, though I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it.

Around that time, I was considering whether or not to work with deities- specifically Hades, as that was who I felt the most drawn to at the time. The idea interested me, but I wasn't sure if it was from an academic or spiritual angle. I'd really only seen deity work from a modern witchcraft/neo-pagan perspective which, again, didn't sit right with me. On top of that, I wasn't quite ready to let go of Christianity even though I already functionally had, and was terrified of doing something "wrong" and getting, for lack of a better term, sent to (figurative) hell. I decided to do a simple "yes/no" tarot pull and got about the clearest "no" you can get: a reversed Ace of Swords. So I decided to let it rest and that, if I ever felt drawn to it again, I could re-approach the topic.

So, for over a year, I didn't touch it. Continuing with witchcraft after the ritual didn't feel right, either, so my altar collected dust while I tried to sort out my spirituality (or lack thereof). I settled on "I don't know and that's okay" and left it at that, trusting that when the time came, and I had more energy and mental space, that I would be able to start looking into things again.

I never truly stopped thinking about the idea of deity work/worship, though. It was always in the back of my mind. I figured it was because of the way I was raised and tried to sever my idea of spirituality from how I was conditioned while I worked through my religious trauma, got on anxiety medication, and learned more about myself and how I interacted with the world (including that I have both ADHD and autism, something that surprised no one).

Recently I talked with a witchy friend about my thoughts on divinity and what is or isn't out there (neither of us were sure but we both felt like there was something), and that conversation gave me the button I needed to start looking into paganism again. I realized at work a week or two later that I could just look up the different paths of paganism (a term I'd recently heard that hadn't clicked before then) and see if there was one that did fit. The first site I found not only had a clear, concise explanation for belief systems I hadn't knowingly come across before, but it touched on Hellenic polytheism and gave a recommendation for someone to watch to learn more about it. And unlike the sharp knot in my chest that warned me away from attending BYU, and going on a mission, and delving further into modern witchcraft as I'd been introduced to it, learning about Hellenic polytheism felt right. It was heavy and grounding and like home. Many of the issues I'd had with other neo-pagan systems - the constant vigilance & protections & concerns over trickster spirits, for example - simply didn't exist there, or were approached very differently. I still had a mental block about it, though, and realized it was because of that tarot pull a year prior. So I did another one, and got a clear "Yes, jump right in. We're waiting for you". And that's where I've been since which, granted, hasn't been for very long. I've felt especially connected to Apollo and Aphrodite recently, who I believe reached out in a different tarot pull recently - using the same card, actually - which is interesting because while I've appreciated different ways Aphrodite has been depicted, I haven't felt very connected to her in a way I realized was her until recently. It makes sense, though- I got into my first relationship around the same time I did that ritual, and not only are we still together a year later, but a trinket I used to ground myself during those first few months is also pretty directly associated with her. I'm planning on adding it to her altar/shrine area as soon as I find it (it's also still amongst the moving wreckage).

But anyway, hi! If you read this far thank you for taking the time out of your day to do so. If anyone has recommendations for books or other educational resources, or discord servers/other online forum-esque communities, please feel free to share. I've been enjoying looking through the tags and getting a feel for the community here, too; hopefully I'm here to stay.

[darklinaforever]

Yes of course... The show favors TB and Aegon II is not a rapist at all in the book ! This is something he will never do ! 🤪

The Greens trailer is longer than the TB one for fucking sake !

The TG is whitewashed to death in the series. It's just a fact. What good side of the Greens in the fucking book ?! How can you tell me you haven't read the book without telling me you haven't read the book, moron.

Alicent becomes a teenager pimped by her father to marry the king Viserys. Whereas in the book she is 18 years old and wanted to be queen !

Otto pretends to care about the kingdom like the big hypocrite he is with stupid pseudo phrases of wisdom !

Criston commits killing people by accident /loss of control now, instead of during a normal tournament or voluntarily !

Aemond is the victim of harassment, even though he is the harasser in the book !

Aegon II the rapist, has insecurities related to mom and dad !!!

The Greens / Alicent usurp a stupid fucking misunderstanding.

But apparently, no, they are not highlighted positively in the show...

And women are reduced to victim roles regardless of teams in general.

I know for a fact that Rhaenyra is the one who ordered Vaemond's death in the book, I even got excited about this change in several posts ! In the show, not just Rhaenyra, but all the female characters adapted suffer huge changes from their book counterparts to give the impression that they are kinder and wiser than the men.

Once again, the Rhaenyra case with Vaemond, or Alicent who wanted to be queen, and Rhaenys who was the one who wanted to make war with the Dragons and not basic Daemon. Thanks, I read the book. Maybe before coming to complain that I haven't read it you should find out about my publications on Fire and Blood in general ! No ? Before speaking without knowing. Dumbass.

I know that Aegon II did not rape a handmaiden named Dyana in the book. But you really believe that a man who groped the servants without their consent and slept with an 11 / 12 year old girl, therefore seen as a child in the GRRM universe, is not a rapist masked by pro Greens propaganda of text ?! Learn to fucking read !

Clearly this person should go fuck themselves. I'm tired of always having idiots coming to my inbox or my comments /reblogs !

I didn't even bother to respond to this person. I just blocked her. And what will await anyone who reblogs my posts to say this type of stupidity or sends me anonymous requests or comments.

Honestly, I don't give a damn about being polite anymore. Pro TG, anti TB, anti Daemon, anti Rhaenyra, anti Daemyra, all fuck off my blog.

@kittenfangirl20 @nrilliree @lizzie-queenofmeigas

[stay-with-wonder]

Manta Rays

Manta rays are magnificent creatures that roam the ocean with elegance. These gentle giants belong to the family Mobulidae and are closely related to sharks. In this blog post, I will explore the fascinating world of manta rays, including their characteristics, behavior, and conservation status.

Manta rays are known for their distinctive appearance and impressive size. Here are some characteristics of these magnificent animals:

Size and Shape:

Coloration:

Fins:

Manta rays possess two large, triangular pectoral fins on either side of their body, which they use to “fly”  through the water. These fins are one of their more distinctive features.

Manta rays are filter feeders, using a specialized structure called cephalic lobes to direct water into their mouths while they swim. They primarily feed on plankton, small fish, and crustaceans.

Behavior and Habitat:

Manta rays are predominantly found in tropical and subtropical waters across the globe. Here are some notable aspects of their behavior and habitat.

Manta rays are known to undertake long-distance migrations, traveling between different feeding and breeding grounds. These migrations can cover hundreds or even thousands of miles.

Social Behavior:

Manta rays are generally solitary creatures, but they occasionally form groups when feeding or during mating season. These groups can grow to dozens.

Species and Distribution:

There are two recognized species of manta rays: the reef Manta Ray(Manta alfredi) and the giant manta ray(Manta birostris). The reef manta ray is found in warmer coastal waters like coral reefs and lagoons, while the Giant Manta Ray inhabits both coastal and open oceans.

Lifespan:

Manta rays have a relatively long lifespan compared to other fish species. They can live up to 40 years old and more, depending on various factors such as environmental conditions and predation risks.

Manta rays exhibit intriguing behaviors that add to their allure. They are known for their acrobatic leaps out of the water, which is called breaching. This act is believed to serve various purposes like communication, courtship displays, and parasite removal.

Cultural Significance:

The manta ray holds cultural significance in several regions they are found in. They are celebrated in local folklore, art, and traditional ceremonies. (Manta rays have rich mythological significance in various cultures. In Hawaiian mythology, the manta ray is known as "Hōlua" and is considered a guardian spirit. It is believed to possess great wisdom and is seen as a protector of the ocean and its creatures. In some African cultures, manta rays are associated with ancestral spirits and are believed to be messengers between the human and spirit worlds. They are revered as wise and powerful beings, embodying the connection between the physical and spiritual realms.)

Conservation Status and Importance:

Manta rays face numerous threats including overfishing, bycatch, habitat degradation, and pollution. These factors have led to a decline in the manta ray population worldwide. Recognizing their ecological significance, efforts are being made to protect and conserve these magnificent creatures. Some key conservation initiatives include:

International Protection:

Manta rays are protected by international organizations and conventions, such as CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) and the CMS. (Convention of Migratory Species.)

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs):

Establishing MPAs and protected marine reserves serve as breeding grounds, and essential feeding areas and help safeguard their habitat. (Not just manta rays but for other marine species too)

Manta rays are truly remarkable creatures that continue to fascinate researchers, scientists, and me:) By appreciating their beauty, studying their behavior and actively working to preserve their species, we can ensure a brighter future for these gentle giants. And with that, this blogger bids you goodbye,Stay With Wonder!

[egg-emperor]

Whatever happened to the days of people simply blocking a person for producing art/writing they don't like instead of slandering them and accusing of terrible crimes? In my day when someone created a ship/headcanon/whatever that made us uncomfortable, we just blocked them and moved on with our day. We didn't comb through their blog for the tiniest bit of evidence that can be used to paint them as a monster/predator. Nor did we fling around serious felonies like confetti.

I know right? I hate this whole "if I don't like them nobody else can" thing in fandom and how they can't just personally dislike or be uncomfortable with someone or something, they always have to treat it like as a legitimate threat and accuse it of any serious immoral thing they can twist it into, to attack someone publicly and get them kicked out of public spaces while claiming they're doing the morally good thing in smearing their name.

In this situation I was upset to suddenly be dropped by people I'd known for years over a misunderstanding without a chance to explain but had they left it at that, it would've been frustrating but I could've moved on easily and in peace. But it becomes especially harmful and absolutely malicious when they drag me through the mud for months beyond their circle and turn anyone against me they can, who weren't involved in the slightest.

If someone isn't actively intentionally harming others with proof, it should be down to what the individual person thinks and if they choose whether to block or not for comfort, based on their personal experience and judgement. The second someone goes out their way to slander someone to make others agree with them and their own personal feelings, they become far more harmful than anything they claim their target to be doing.

This is one of the most harmful things that frustrates me most too. It does a lot more damage beyond my reputation as it risks others and even themselves not being taken seriously in times it'll be true and necessary to warn people because of false claims like this. They put all their energy into slandering instead of warning people about genuinely dangerous people and supporting anyone hurt. It shows how fake, performative, and manipulative it is.

They can only cry wolf for so long and one day they'll regret it when it's really needed and it's not treated with the severity and seriousness it needs. Or in many cases they were actually projecting or hypocritical in it too, so it's only a matter of time before it's revealed that they're not perfect either and someone gives them a taste of their own medicine with the exact type of slander they encouraged. Then they'll finally realize how harmful this is.

When I tried to speak out about a real serious situation of someone extremely dangerous who was reported to authorities, many didn't believe and victim blamed as they were so used to expecting it to be fake. So it's another reason I'm passionately angry because I've now been on both ends of not being believed in serious situations and being slandered in false ones. It hurts that people lying about me has been believed over me.

[helluva-world-innit]

Not entirely happy with how this turned out but my skill level is what it is right now and I did say I wanted to keep this blog somewhat active so here's a drawing I colored today of my depiction of Wrath.

So, I'm working on art of the Rings to try and get a feel for drawing them ahead of time and I'm going to explain how things work in each Ring too. Buckle up, it's a long post under the cut.

In my version of the story, Wrath is the first ring of Hell, top-down. It is represented by the color red but, as you can see here, there is a lot of orange and yellow as well. Now, I liked the concept of Wrath being hot and having lots of lava flowing through it but not the idea of it being the agricultural center of the realm. It should be mostly about fucking shit up and bloodshed. Making Sinners hurt for entertainment purposes. Oh, that's a thing too: Sinners can move between the Rings in my version. In fact, there is no one Ring they all come into Hell through. Upon death, a Sinner drops into whatever sin was closest to their heart when they died. E.g. Someone who was killed while pulling a heist goes to Greed. Someone who died of a drug overdose goes to Gluttony, etc. Lots of Sinners end up in Wrath and Envy Rings. Not because that's the first time they've sinned, but just that's the strongest one for them at the time.

So, Wrath is pretty unbearable, heat-wise and denizen-wise. Lots of toxic and ambush predator animals along with a thriving headhunting trade among the local imps. The main draw for the Hellborn and some ambitious and fearless Sinners is the arena: Satan's Jaws (or just The Jaws; everyone knows which ones you mean here). Black sands and no sun. The whole Ring is basically a massive cave-like structure with large stalactites hanging from high above. And yes, they do often fall and impale anyone unfortunate enough to be underneath them when they do. The flying things are dragons. They roam wild in Wrath and cause plenty of problems when they move into one of the few densely populated areas. They're also good eatin' if you can manage to kill them before they kill you.

Satan's Jaws is where battles are fought to entertain the Ringmaster herself, Satan. If she's impressed enough, the winner might get to "live" to fight again next week. If she hated it bad enough, she'll just punish and "kill" you herself. See, Sinners don't die by traditional methods. Only way to truly end them is with holy weapons or holy fire. The torment can last indefinitely as holy weapons are taken off any angel that strays into Hell and kept only where Ringmaster Leviathan of the Envy Ring knows and it ain't talkin'.

That's the other thing about Wrath: on the border, between Hell, Earth, and Heaven a perpetual battle is fought by the soldiers of Hell and of Heaven. Called a "skirmish" by some and an "excuse to invade and conquer" by others, it has been going on since the last war between the realms. To feed the never ending conflict's need for powerful bodies, every demon with rank is encouraged to produce as many children as possible. Some are incapable of this task, again, thanks to the War of the Fallen where the angels who rebelled against Heaven were cast down into Hell to remain and made sterile on top of that. Some demons, however produce enough offspring for several armies. Satan is one such being. All of the imps in Hell are descended from her, if removed by several millennia. she hasn't felt the need to produce more children since around the fall of the Roman Empire.

Sinners are often conscripted to fight on the border or in The Jaws either as a torture method or with the promise of being initiated by a Ringmaster to the rank of Overseer if they show great skill or strength. Hellborns don't survive the process of initiation but enjoy putting Sinners and angels "in their place" and volunteer to do so in droves.

The Circus is also held here once every year. A Hell-wide event that is meant to encourage inter-Ring unity and is basically where some of the worst behavior Hell has to offer goes down including, but not limited to: larceny, kidnapping, murder (Hellborns can and do die if killed while in Hell), hard drug abuse, sexual misconduct of all varieties (both consensual and not; it is Hell and it does happen. i will not be depicting it, but it does happen), drunken and wanton destruction of anything not bolted down (hence why The Jaws are the chosen locale), and cannibalism. It's like if Burning Man was arranged by Jeff Dalmer, okay? Just all around madness and debauchery fueled by a need to mentally escape Hell and also prove you're the worst of the worst. There is also a competition held. A series of tests the Ringmasters issue to the newest Overseer hopefuls. Last one standing gets endorsed and initiated by the Ringmaster who chose them to participate.

Notable characters from this Ring are Millie/her family, Striker, and as yet to be revealed Overseers of the Ring. Also planning on doing a map view of this Ring later so I can paint a better picture of where everything is in relation to each other.

Up next: Gluttony Ring!

[thornsent]

2023 is the year I just go insane and start naming fucking names. stop putting these people on my dash.

Jacket "Richard" babylonbirdmeat and I lived together for about 8 months and those were legitimately the most traumatic 8 months of my life. I went from believing that I was safe, accepted, and finally had a family to fearing for my life to the point that I would barricade my door and sleep with an axe under my pillow in case I had to defend myself. This is in part because of the other person we shared the apartment with, who I would eventually go on to date, but at least he doesn't seem to have a blog (or at least any degree of reach) anymore!

@thegreylodge-warning goes into a fair amount of detail. jacket is also a child predator + the fact that I still see them interact with teenagers on here makes me feel utterly sick to my stomach.

when I moved in I was under the impression that jacket had a diagnosis of DID because of how he spoke about it and how cagey he was about the condition that enabled him to be on SSI. turns out he wasn't diagnosed, I don't know if he's ever even fucking been to any mental health professional, it's for physical conditions that are irrelevant to what I'm talking about. but despite this he still used the terminology of a fucking trauma disorder for his larping horseshit. I was gullible and because this website's whole thing around "no system gatekeeping! believe people when they say they have a disorder!" I literally just shut off my brain because I didn't want to offend

full fucking offense, you cannot become multiple on purpose. you cannot astral project into a fictional universe and bring your favorite character back with you, because they are not real. Either you are severely schizophrenic (he was not) if you believe that or you are full of shit and trying to make a cult of three, which is exactly what jacket did. I was lovebombed, and then I was isolated, but by the time I was having doubts it was already way too late and the only reason I even managed to escape was because shit penultimately hit the fan at the start of the pandemic, so when the stimulus checks came in I was able to pay for a flight out of there.

[qonqr]

QONQR 4.0

Greetings Players

It has been a very long time since my last formal update. I’ve been struggling with some tough decisions regarding QONQR over the past few years. The TL;DR; is that I’m working on QONQR again. I’m making efforts to keep it alive. The details follow. Warning: it is a lot of doom and gloom, but there is positivity at the end.

Some background and history

Version 2 and 3 of QONQR were written using a coding technology called Xamarin. It allowed us to write code once and run it on iPhone, Android and previously Windows Phone.  For a small company like ours, it wasn’t feasible to write the application 3 times for 3 different platforms. Xamarin was written on top of Microsoft’s technology, and Microsoft purchased Xamarin several years ago to make it the core of its cross-platform developer solution.

Several years ago, QONQR simply couldn’t pay my salary anymore. I started a new application with another entrepreneur and that project was also a cross-platform application, written in Xamarin, this time for PC and Mac. I’ll refer to this app as “NOTQONQR”.  For the past 10 years, I have worked in Xamarin on Android, iOS, MacOs, and Windows (and Windows Phone). Building cross platform software has become one of the most frustrating and unfulfilling career decisions I’ve made. I realized it wasn’t phone apps or gaming that was making me miserable. It was everything cross-platform and the dependency on multiple companies to make a good product so that I could in turn make a good product.

While things started out “OK”, building software in Xamarin over the past decade has destroyed my passion for building software. I, along with the developers I have worked with, had the attitude for years that the issues were the result of being on the cutting edge and early days of cross platform development. I lost that opinion years ago.  To this day, the outstanding bug list for Xamarin is thousands deep. Many of these bugs have been on the list for years, and now they will never be fixed.

While this sounds like a Xamarin issue, it is an industry issue. Look around at other cross platform solutions, and you’ll be hard pressed to find one that doesn’t have many hundreds or thousands of outstanding bugs on their public bug trackers. Building apps is a nightmare, it has been from the start. I have spent most of my development time on both projects the past 5 years fixing issues caused by big companies or governments. I can’t count how many times I spent my days fixing something that worked just fine 6 months ago, but now is broken because Apple, Google or Microsoft decided to do the exact same thing a different way, and now a rewrite is needed.  Governments around the world have passed laws making it harder for developers to build apps. Privacy laws have made it nearly impossible to keep predators, would-be hackers and toxic people out of an app. Governments and consumer advocacy groups are suing and fining Apple and Google at every opportunity. As a result, Apple and Google are making changes that satisfy the mob, but hurt developers like me. No smart developer would build a game like QONQR today. The things we did before to ensure the GPS coordinates were legitimate, people were actual people, and gameplay was fair have nearly all been removed from my toolkit, making it very hard to protect my good players from bad people.

To further the opinion that this is an industry problem, a friend of mine who is a well-known Android podcaster, author of several android developer books, and speaker and many large developer conferences recently made a blog post about the state of app development. He mentioned that he is seeing burn out in both Android and iOS camps. Developers are tired of fighting the issues and are leaving to become web developers or leaving all together. He even admitted that he thinks his days as a mobile developer are numbered, despite being an internationally known and industry respected mobile dev. Too many developers are exhausted from the continual churn of fixing things that shouldn’t need to be fixed.

My mental status the last few years

I frequently receive support emails berating me for allowing cheaters to cheat, including two emails last week from a long-time player demanding I either “fix my shitty app or shut it down.” Sadly, most of the perceived cheating isn't actually happening, and the small number issues that we are blocked from addressing are the result of Apple and Google, and many of them are in direct response to new laws and regulations that protect everyone, including criminals and predators, but not developers.

In the first 5 years of QONQR, I would regularly work from 7am to 2am multiple days a week. However, for the last 5 years I have been in a developer depression of sorts. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I would sit at my computer for hours, sometimes an entire day and struggle to write 10 lines of code. I’d find any excuse not to code. Everything I looked at was broken. Internet searches showed me never ending bug reports in Xamarin, Android and iOS, that went unfixed, and workarounds that must have worked at some point, but no longer work today. I hated the profession I had chosen, the technology stack I had invested my career in, and felt trapped by being tied to two applications that I had ownership of, and from which I couldn’t just quit and find a new job. My wife would ask me frequently to consider finding a career I thought I would enjoy and just give up software all together. Unfortunately, I simply didn’t have passion for anything outside of my volunteering as a high school robotics coach. That is a retirement, not a career move.

The technology situation today

Xamarin was declared “dead” by Microsoft a couple years ago. It was replaced by a technology called MAUI. In nearly all respect, MAUI is identical to Xamarin, but of course different enough. My fellow developer and I started migrating NOTQONQR from Xamarin to MAUI about 3 months ago. Early indications are that MAUI will have better performance and stability than Xamarin had. It seems to be slightly or moderately better in most cases.

For the developers reading this, I’ll get into some technical details in this paragraph, skip to the next if you aren’t a developer. We built the UI for both apps using code. XAML markup wasn’t even an option for years when QONQR staring using Xamarin. You needed to build your pages one element at a time using code. No markup, no layout tools. Many/most developers who have been using Xamarin for more than 5 years, probably built their UI using code, rather than markup, even after XAML became an option. For the NOTQONQR app, I spent a week in June and completely converted the code from the Xamarin framework to the MAUI framework. It was pretty easy to get to a point everything would compile. I was able to get tens of thousands of lines of UI code to compile in the new framework in a few days. When the app would run, we found lots of minor issues with layout. Things didn’t align quite right or wouldn’t become visible when they should have been shown. We came to the realization that we needed to completely rewire the UI in XAML, and could no longer draw our pages using code. The rendering engine was built for pre-compiling your page layout and it was clear Microsoft had not put much emphasis or testing on generating UI on the fly. It makes sense. Given the timelines the Microsoft developers were under, it was the right choice. Unfortunately, it took a few weeks migration and made it into a few months for those of us who started with Xamarin a decade ago. The effort to get to MAUI even though it is basically the same as Xamarin is a huge lift due to the age of our code.

I attempted to migrate QONQR to MAUI two years ago when Xamarin was declared “dead” and MAUI the new successor. At the time, MAUI could not play sounds, did not have notifications, and could not make an in-app purchase. The product was “ready for production” and completely unusable. I was stuck. There was no way I could migrate QONQR to MAUI and given my mental state, I just couldn’t force myself to push through the issues like I had in the past. That was a stopping point for me and QONQR. I’m sure all the players noticed nothing new was happening.

Fast forward two years, NOTQONQR must migrate. I wasn’t the only owner of the app and my partner company needed to make it work. We were looking at a complete rewrite of the app in a new language, or push through a MAUI migration.  So we revisited MAUI. Things are much better two years later.

When I started working in MAUI for the NOTQONQR app, it felt like home. I spent years working in XAML markup before Xamarin. MAUI made sense and seemed to work well. Yes there are still thousands of bugs on the backlog. This is frustrating but not new.

My attitude got better. I have spent several days in the past month working past midnight in MAUI. I’ve spent my weekends writing code. It has been a significant change from being unable to force myself to write code, to looking forward to it again. I can’t say that I love writing code again, but I do feel productive.

The future for QONQR

I’m up against a big deadline. Apps written in Xamarin have an end of the year deadline to be migrated to something else or stop working. I am getting notices that maps will stop working in the next version of iOS if I don’t update my controls, and an update isn’t possible in Xamarin. It is very possible the current version of QONQR will not work on the new iPhone or when everyone updates iOS.

I had planned to try and work on QONQR over the summer, but having a summer intern at NOTQONQR I needed to manage and that MAUI migration taking months more than planned took all my time away. Now that intern has returned to college, and the NOTQONQR migration can be wrapped up by the other developer on that team, I have told the owner of the NOTQONQR company I’m taking a month off work. I’ll be avoiding my other job to focus on QONQR.

Sadly, the first two weeks of the QONQR migration have been painful and slow. After two weeks of long days and weekends, I have the Welcome page, login and map working including the Android Anti-hacker security checks. That’s it. Some of the simple pages may work as is, with the basic migration, but all of the complicated pages (which is a lot of the app) will need a fresh start. For example, the launch page draws everything in the middle of the screen stacked on top of each other. Very little can be salvaged, I need to start over and build the screen from scratch. I think many of our pages may be this way.

Admittedly, I spent much of my time the past two weeks just trying to get the core of the app to work. A lot of the system stuff like local storage, notifications, sounds, colors, fonts, images, etc all had to be setup differently. I had to start with a completely new map. Animations never really worked well in Xamarin and they aren’t any better in MAUI. I’m taking them out everywhere I can since they have always been the source of most crashes. Today I have a running app in MAUI, but it doesn’t do much yet. The past two weeks have shown me this looks possible to complete before the end of the year.

Beta release of QONQR 4.0.

Distribution: If/when I get to that point, the beta would be available through Google Play and Apple App Store and you would need to opt-in to the beta program. I previously had been using Microsoft’s App Center for pre-release versions of the app for player testing. That has been shut down. The only good option available is to release through the stores, which requires official (and long) app reviews on Apple, even for a test release. You won’t be able to run the beta side by side with QONQR 3.X

Barebones: Registration may have to be done online in the early releases. Upgrades and ordnances may also have to be purchased one the web portal. Probably no notifications.

No Chat: Right now, I am planning to remove chat from the app. The US Senate passed a bill in July that would make me responsible for anything posted in my app by a user. While this bill is unlikely to become law, it is a sign of further punishing app developers, but not giving us the tools to keep bad people out of our apps. I will replace chat with a link to the “Unofficial Community Discord”.  It is unclear how this potential law may impact the forums should something similar become law in the future.

Launch: I’m going to do my best to get something like the old launch screen working, but it may be just the simple launch screen to start. Whatever I come up with, I hope it will be temporary. A big challenge with QONQR is hackers attempting to automate launching. While I have some ways of stopping that after a few hours the current “are you human”, takes hours to have an impact. I’d like to redo this screen so that it requires more than just tapping in the same spot over and over to launch. No one likes change, but I hope you like cheaters less. I’ll do my best to come up with something players will tolerate but is harder to automate.

Messaging: Player to Player messaging may eliminate the use of the custom emoji packs we have sold. This will simplify the complexity of this screen and message passing. If you purchased one of these emoji packs, you will receive a bundle of cubes as compensation. I won’t know for sure if we are removing the packs until I get in there and attempt to migrate.

Sync Lock Mini Game: This unfortunately needs to stay as our only reasonable way to combat multi-scoping. I am well aware this still hurts families, but I don’t have an alternative giving the privacy laws the EU and US have enacted that prevent me from taking better measures. This is a very complex UI and I’m concerned about the effort it will take to migrate.

No music: I don’t think I’m going to migrate the background music. I think it is time to let this go. Background audio is hard and inconsistent.

Skins: This seems unlikely. The library I used in Xamarin to tint images doesn’t work on Maui. I don’t have plans to work on a replacement until everything else is working.

New features: None are planned yet, but the largest roadblock to new features in the past 3 years was the knowledge that anything we built was being built on a dead coding platform. If the migration succeeds, that roadblock will be gone.

Can developers help?

Many have asked me if they can help or if I can make QONQR open source. Sadly, I don’t think this is a viable path forward. Exposing all of the code would make it a trivial matter for a hacker to bypass all the protections in the app and automate and manipulate everything except buying cubes. Even if I went to the effort to pull out the secret code that stops hacking the app, any developer who worked on the code would be perceived a cheater. There are too many instances in the past where a player I asked for advice or tips, claimed to be a QONQR developer and claimed to have a special build and/or free cubes. This has never been true, but if people think their opponent is cheating they stop playing or stop spending money that is needed to keep the servers alive. The past has shown that letting anyone have even a little access never ends well.

Even today, with as hard as it is to stop hackers and cheaters the impact is much smaller than most people believe. Yes, some players are probably cheating their location, but they are put into overheat penalty on their scope when they do. They can deploy in two locations, but deploy fewer bots than if they stayed in one spot. I get many emails with “proof” that someone is cheating. Most of the claims don’t hold up when investigated. There are certainly limits on what I can do, but the perception of people cheating is much much higher than actual instances we have uncovered. Every day, I receive dozens of automated notices where QONQR code blocked devices that had a hacked version of the game, attempts to steel cubes, GPS spoofing penalized, too many failed launch verification, and players switching devices too frequently. There are many many cheater detections in place and they are working. For the most part, the biggest problem with cheating isn’t that it is happening, but that players think it is happening much more often than it really is. Giving anyone access to even part of the code would only make this problem worse.

In Reflection

Next week, it will be 14 years since the name “QONQR” came out of Justin’s mouth at a Starup Weekend competition. So much has happened in that time. There was a time when I felt like it was going to be time to turn off the servers because profits had gone negative. Then Gmenman goes and gets a huge damned Legion tattoo. There was no way it could be shut down in the months after that. A while later, profits got a little better and the servers were safe again. A few years ago, I posted a fairly negative blog post about how things were going, hinting that things may finally be coming to an end. The next day I received a heartfelt thank you message from a player who had shared that she struggled in her real life and QONQR was the first place where people accepted her as the person she was, and didn’t judge her as they did in the real world. She thanked me for making a safe place for her to be her true self. There was no way I was going to take that away from her, so I kept the servers up. TotallyGomer and YellerCukes both shared with me their appreciation for QONQR as a way to stay in touch with their friends and the outside world before their passings. This will forever be something I’m proud to have provided. Together we have grieved the untimely losses of several players, and the memorials show how much they are missed. Players have been through so many challenges in their lives, with QONQR friends supporting them along the way.

The necessity to either rewrite QONQR or shut it down has been looming over me for months. It doesn’t make financial sense for me to stop working at my other job and spend months rewriting the QONQR app to keep this going. The smart thing would be to shut it down and move on. Focus on something new and leave behind all the issues of mobile gaming, government regulations, and abusive mobile marketplaces.  But…  the smart decision has been the wrong decision too many times before.

QONQR is too much of who I am, who you are, who we are. I’m going to try. QONQR may be always full of issues. It may have fewer features than in the past, but I’m going to try and keep the heart of what QONQR has always been in the new version. I can’t promise it will be done soon and can’t even tell you it will keep working on your current or new device in the coming months. However, I’m here today to tell you, QONQR is too important to let go, and I’m working on keeping it going until I find it just isn’t possible. I now believe I can make it work. I ask for your understanding and patience as the 4.0 beta moves forward.

For those that continue to buy cubes, thanks for keeping the servers alive.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[undeaddyingheartz]

(none of this is directed at you, 1nk, purely at "bailzi-pisses-on-radqueers")

"YOURE ENABLING PRO C PARAPHILES TO INTERACT WITH ME (A MINOR) AND SEND ME GRAPHIC DEATH THREATS AS WELL"

Whilst I fully understand why you have that boundary, and fully condemn those harassing you, you're the one going into discourse spaces. You (a 14 year old) are either baiting radqueers into interacting with you, or actively going and interacting with them.

And you're fully within your right to have an anti-rq blog and not want to interact with antis, but you're not doing that. You are replying to them, arguing with them and actively posting in radqueer and anti-radqueer tags.

It is very painfully clear from your posts and responses ("THIS IS THE MOST INTERACTION THIS ACCOUNT HAS GOTTEN SO FAR YIPPEEEE I SHOULD PISS PEOPLE OFF MORE OFTEN, THE BITCHES LOVE ME /SILLY" / "EVERYDAY I FIGHT THE URGE TO MAKE MILLIONS OF POSTS.. IF I EVER CLOG UP YOUR DASHBOARD ONE DAY DUE TO ME NEVER SHUTTING THE FUCK UP, THEN I AM SEVERELY SORRY AND APOLOGISING IN ADVANCE.") that you are doing this for attention, not any moral standing.

You are too young to be engaging in discourse with (who you perceive are) predators and you clearly have some deeper issues going on that need to be addressed.

Tldr; U can't punch a hornets nest and act surprised when you get stung.

@bailzi-pisses-on-radqueers

[thislittlekumquat]

"majority of the fandom is sebaciel shippers or sebaciel agnostics"

God I wish :/ That might have been true a decade or so ago around the time of S1/S2 when we were very early in the manga, but I think the majority of the fandom (or at least, those active online) is antis these days, honestly. A lot of the previously popular creators for the ship were harassed off of tumblr entirely ages ago, and several that left the fandom entirely rather than continue to suffer harassment. There are a few blogs still around that are (or at least a few years ago, were) extremely rabid antis that regularly sent hate and death threats that are still very popular. TBH the twitter/reddit community looks even more skewed. Kinda unfortunate, since there's tons of other fanwork for this show that I love that isn't Sebaciel, that I'd interact with a lot more if I could. I genuinely don't care if people don't ship it like I do (and honestly, I even love content where they straight up hate each other lmao, enemies to super angsty lovers is my bread and butter so that actually heightens the appeal for me personally?) but I definitely care if they openly call me a pedophile predator for it or interact with people that do. Maybe I've spent too much time in the trenches, so to speak, but I think I have probably half the fandom blocked at this point.

I'm so sorry that you've had to watch the fandom wither like that. I have been in a totally different part of fandom for the last decade so I didn't witness it firsthand, but the bummer is that I am not surprised in the slightest to hear that it happened. Like to me it's always made sense that people shipped them - it doesn't capture my interest but it's something I tooootally see how you'd arrive there from the canon. As you say, that antagonism is THERE! And like, people ship all sorts of fucked up shit in other series, and the source material is all sorts of fucked up in a ton of other ways, it's sort of like. THIS is the thing yall are worried about? Really???? Not the fact that Ciel is CANONICALLY DOOMED BY THE NARRATIVE? Or that Ciel and Lizzie are cousins? Also like so many of us stan Grell who IS CANONICALLY JACK THE RIPPER, FOR GOD'S SAKE. They're all cartoon characters, who cares!!! Idk my entire point with the post was that I genuinely think the anti attitude is the problem here. And I hope that came across! I very casually block people now for having silly opinions which doesn't bother me EXCEPT as you've pointed out, you realize that it's hard to find other chill folks sometimes 🫠🫠🫠 anyways thanks for sharing your experience, I hope you find a little bit of fandom joy this week for your troubles 🫂

[nancypullen]

Yikes!

Okay, it’s almost 9pm and I haven’t put a word on this blog yet!  I promised I’d be back today with product endorsements and a couple recipes - so I’ll try to make this fast.  I got a bit sidetracked because we went out to Adkins Arboretum today for Forest Music. The arboretum partnered with Chestertown’s National Music Festival and some wonderful young musicians set up at various spots along the walking trails and played their hearts out.  It was beautiful - walking through the forest in dappled sunlight, wind blowing through the tree tops, and hearing strains of Vivaldi and Mozart drifting throughout. Lovely! It was about 4 o’clock when we returned home and the mister had to get ready to run off to Bad Albert’s restaurant in Chestertown for a photo club meeting.  I was here sealing those rocks that I painted yesterday, then I made a little dinner, and while I ate dinner I watched a murder show...and one murder led to another...and now it’s almost nine!  Oops.  Anywayyyyy, two products I love. THIS, every morning.

Hyaluronic acid from The Ordinary.  It’s eight dollars and change, you can find it at Sephora, Ulta, and I think even Amazon.  You can order straight from The Ordinary website too.  I started using this in early April and I’ve seen a big difference in my old lady face.  Do I look twenty?  Nope. Does it give me the best fifty-nine year old skin I can have? Pretty close. Here’s what The Ordinary says:

                                              They ain’t lyin’. I apply this in the morning after washing my face, whether I’m wearing makeup that day or not.  It soaks in quickly, doesn’t leave residue, and those crinkly lines around my eyes are reduced.  They’re not gone, I mean, I’m almost sixty - but they’ve gone from looking like a zillion little lines to a few.  The hydration is locked in which keeps the skin plump and less crepey. I’m a fan. The second product I like is in the same category.  I’ve actually used this one for several months and I’m crazy about it.  I received a sample from Sephora, tried it, liked it, and bought it.  No regrets.  This one is more expensive, but my bottle is maybe ten months old and I still have about 1/8 of the bottle left. Definitely worth the $34.

Pardon my bathroom photo.

Biossance Squalane Oil!  This stuff is the bomb diggity. I apply this at night, after washing my face and brushing my teeth. One pump, patted all over my face, down my neck and décolleté, and the remainder massaged into my hands has been a game-changer.  It’s lightweight, it’s fabulous, and I love it.  This is also available at Sephora and Ulta. Try it!  Remember, both places will take it back if you don’t like it, no questions asked.   Here’s what Biossance says about their squalane oil:

Formulation: Lightweight Oil Highlighted Ingredients: - Sugarcane-Derived Squalane 100%: Visibly reduces redness, hydrates, maintains hydration, and leaves skin feeling exceptionally soft. Ingredient Callouts: This product is vegan and cruelty-free. What Else You Need to Know: 100% Sugarcane Squalane Oil, the powerhouse ingredient at the heart of every Biossance formula, is bioidentical to the moisture found in human skin. Weightless, rapidly absorbed, and perfect for use all over the body, this oil is derived from sustainable sugarcane, yielding a purer, vegan, and more ethical and effective version than other forms of squalane. And since it reduces the need for similar moisture taken from the livers of sharks, it saves two million of these critical apex predators per year. Clinical Results: In a 28-day consumer study of 84 female subjects (ages 18 to 54), after twice daily use: Immediately: - 95% agreed skin felt instantly hydrated After 2 weeks: - 93% agreed skin was more nourished and hydrated In a 5-week clinical study of 35 subjects (ages 18 to 54), after twice daily use: - 100% showed an increase in cell-renewal rate

I have to admit, the fact that it saves sharks isn’t all that important to me.  If it was saving kittens I’d buy a bottle a month. What is important to me is that it works beautifully.  My skin is so picky, so sensitive, gets very dramatic over ingredients it doesn’t like (what’s more fun than a zit when you’re 59?), so I’m always thrilled to find pure formulas that do what they promise.  These two do that and I don’t even use them twice daily as recommended.  If I did I imagine that men would be pounding on my door and begging me to run away with them - so really, I’m doing the world a favor by not using each of them twice daily. I hope you read that with the same sarcasm I used while writing it.   Anyway, if you are in the market for something lovely to revive and retain the moisture in your skin, plump it up, and erase some of the mileage - give either or both of those a try.  Sephora is great about providing a sample upon request. They’ll pour or pump some into a little container and let you try a few days worth.  The Ordinary is an effective and very inexpensive line (I mean, less than nine bucks!!!) with lots of bang for your buck.  Biossance is a wonderful, clean line that is a bit pricier but again, great results.  That $34 bottle has lasted months and months and is less than a pizza dinner.  Invest in your skin. All the paint (makeup) in the world won’t matter if the canvas is a mess. Okay, the mister came home, talked and talked, and it’s now past ten o’clock...so those recipes will be posted tomorrow.  I doubt anyone was waiting with bated breath for my spin on fajitas or crockpot chicken teriyaki, so 24 hours won’t hurt. I’ll meet you back here on Friday! Until then stay safe, stay well, and treat yo’self! XOXO- Nancy

[kariachi]

Assuming Slowpoke’s tail makes up about a fifth of it’s body weight (which doesn’t seem a bad assumption given the images of Slowpoke we have) and that not all of the tail falls off, the harvested tail of a Slowpoke could be estimated to weigh about 10-12 lbs (4.5-5.4 kg).

The pokedex states these tails often fall off and can be easily found lying around, it also states that their tails grow back. Lizard tails seem to take about nine weeks to grow back, and since these tails just fall off and can be found laying around- while if they’re taken by predators they’re more likely to be, ya know, eaten- presumably this isn’t a matter tied to trauma but more to a natural cycle. Why, I don’t know, why do Veluza filet themselves to gain speed, pokemon are weird.  For our purposes we’re going to put in on level with molting- just a thing critters do when a part wears out. Maybe their tails get calloused and can’t do that ‘lure fish’ thing anymore so they toss them and start over. They’re not an active species and do everything extremely slowly, so their food requirements should be lower anyway. This supposedly happens ‘often’ so probably a few times a year.

So, let’s say they shed twice a year, which would mean they spend about a third of the year without a tail if we go with lizard numbers. While they do fish for their food using their tails, we also know that they’re omnivorous, that they will also actively hunt fish, and that they live in groups (thanks to Galarian Slowpoke, unsourced information from Bulbapedia likely determined from the ability to catch Slowpoke with a fishing rod yourself, and via the anime respectively). These combined their lower food requirements can probably account for them not starving over the several months they’re functionally tailless.

Now most of the weight of that tail probably isn’t meat, since it’s the end of the tail your mostly getting. Probably most is fat and bone. But that doesn’t make too big a difference in edibility- you can’t eat bone, but fat is free game and there is definitely meat there to play with. Say a third of it is probably meat, by weight, giving us 3.3-4 lbs (1.4-1.8 kg) of meat per tail. That means enough to feed 6-8 people if you’re cooking it for one meal where the meat’s the main focus. So, at least 14 meals per Slowpoke per year.

Which then leaves us with the question- can you farm these little bastards? Well, yeah presumably you can, can you farm them cost-effectively and humanely? Like, you could feed a family of 3 a weekly Slowpoke meal off 13 Slowpoke, but would the cost of care overwhelm the worth of the meat? Is this something where you have to get it in the wild to remain cost effective? The existence of them as an item you can purchase in Sword and Shield would imply that they’re collected en masse, but given it’s one of the most expensive ingredients available that may imply that they’re either farmed in low numbers or wild gathered. Or it may simply be in relation to the size of the items (the hard-boiled egg is large enough to have clearly come from a Chansey or Blissey, the cheese is a full wheel of soft cheese, the fruit bunch isn’t especially big but is clearly supposed to have been imported and have more variety than just the bananas shown). For a piece of prepared, bone-in meat that size the price may in fact be reasonable.

Hm... Okay, we poke at math. Typically, when I’m converting numbers from pokemon to the real world (though I try not to, I like math far less than this blog would attest) I normally put a decimal before the last two digits to convert to American, then adjust depending on how reasonable the number seems. That would place smoked Slowpoke tails at $22 a tail. Smoked goods seem to cost about a third again more than non-smoked, based on the meat I’m looking at, which would bring the market cost for a fresh Slowpoke tail down to $17. Which seems real fucking cheap for something considered a delicacy, but this is in a region where they’re eaten by children in trail curries so, maybe they’ve got a better set-up. Moving on. That brings the money raised per Slowpoke per year to $34. My earliest estimated cost of living for my shit put the average for a single adult at ~$23,000 a year. So to cover your cost of living (not business costs, just cost of living) you would need around 650 Slowpoke.

Seems like a bit much. More likely, assuming the pricing is accurate, Slowpoke are farmed as a supplemental critter. The equivalent of keeping a couple hives of bees and selling honey and wax while your main business is in fruit trees or something. And they would have to be farmed to some degree, you can’t get prices that low on what’s functionally a cross between game meat and foragables.

[cookiecrumbles52palace]

I wanted to hop on this little bandwagon because I've been working very hard on the lore of the Octonauts world for a while now. If you want to understand a bit more there is a link below to my Octonauts Au Sub Blog. The pinned post explains it in simpler and more poetic terms than the actual science behind it which I wanted to go over in this reblog.

(I apologize for how long this is, I've been working on these ideas since the beginning of last year so there's a lot I haven't been able to show through my art just yet. I also suggest looking at the extra info I gave for Prof. Inkling's lore. And I promise there's an actual answer to the villain thing, but I have to explain my reasonings first.)

The A.S.A.

To really answer the question, however . . .

In worlds like this, I never consider humans as possibilities, it's just like any other Anthropomorphic world like Kung Fu Panda, or Zootopia. The evolution of humans just never happened, so I treat it more as an alternate reality/dimension/etc., as in our worlds work exactly the same but evolution was changed so something else dominated the earth. The Butterfly Effect basically.

To add to that I've seen the "radiation" / "alien" jargon all before, and the only reason I don't implement it is because it makes me uncomfortable. My brain works in ways of fantasy and alternate worlds, science (yada yada). Where things can just be different and we don't need to complicate it with "Humanity offed itself cause lol we stupid."

For me that's just a lazy daisy answer, like "Hey Godzilla roams the earth only 'cause humans were too scared to be his roommates" (I promise I'm mostly joking with that one, that's a ref to Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters if anyone was wondering why the left field)

For me, in this world the creatures of the Earth made two different choices, either stay as they are and let nature take its course, or evolve themselves. And thus certain species did in fact evolve while some didn't.

I'm currently working on several villains that are prime examples of coevolution. Same species that have gone both ways. Some chose to stick with nature while others changed, but both working together to bring unity.

Example:

Black Tack, is one of my main antagonists. He's the leader of an extremely influential organization that is against all of the government's attempts to bring peace to the world. He's supposed to be this big scary guy so I decided to make him a walrus. A very powerful creature who, if they could stand, would be massive. I mean they're cool right? And for me as an artist it's great for character design.

But as the Octonauts world has already presented walruses, as we know them, aren't evolved in that way. So that's where I diverge in my AU.

Think of it in the way of tribes and families, everyone can take on education, skills, and talents, but they are the ones to choose which ones to actually learn and use (*Cough Cough* Prof. Inkling) in their own lives. Over time those families split apart and made their own colonies or groups and then civilizations began to form.

In the AU that I created, I decided to make a peace organization to help cultivate land and politics better. But some would rather lean into their more territorial/instinctual tendencies, or in better terms their hunting/tribal rituals. While most have been able to live off the land and come to certain agreements over the years, others feel that it is oppressing their true nature. That's where I bring poaching and black market trades into the story.

(Obviously I'm taking a darker turn with it but I don't go much into detail other than mentioning it within the story because its a big problem. It's also canon if you remember what Ranger Marsh said in the episode "The Great Swamp Search" about animals being taken on as pets)

That then brings up the issue of predators, I mean how do they eat? And for me I see it more as traditions, and culture. If they had the technology and resources I believe all of these animals would start using those "colonies" and put into effect certain policies and laws into place that benefit everyone. Of course, it's always complicated especially if you consider what they did for Zootopia in terms of building cities and all that.

A good example would be Penguins and Polar Bears (in Octonauts and IRL) going out and having hunting traditions. It's something akin to the Inuit people where they are the only ones who can hunt for seals up north, because that's how they survive and that's apart of their culture/traditions. And for some it really is that matter of finding other ways to find the protein if they are unable to hunt (or it makes them uncomfortable, as more of a personal thing) as their ancestors did.

In Conclusion:

I'll wrap this up by saying what I have put in place for this world to really make sense and give more of a scientific/storytelling background to it. ( Of course, this is my ✨Alternate Universe✨ so you are welcome to dismiss it or be INSPIRED by it in some way. )

To begin . . .

There is a big peace organization called the Animal Salvation Association AKA the "A.S.A." - In a sense, it's more like the UN, where they diverge into organized branches so they can individually put in the hundreds of hours of "man" power (if need be) to make sure that everyone can live together without constant war and pollution, and all that. (Don't get me started on the pollution and natural disasters or we'll be here all day)

Where we as the human race differ from this idea, humanity has already claimed that we aren't apart of nature anymore because we believe we're above that, it doesn't "affect" us. But in this world it does. Because all of these creatures are sentient life forms. So you can't just go around willy nilly and do whatever you want because it effects the entire eco system and then you have a whole colony of whales, or birds, or what have you, at your front door step asking why you dumped a truck load of garbage into their home.

If you want to add villains to a story like this you have to consider the biology and all that. Why would there be a need for an antagonist? Why would there be conflict? Is everyone happy living this way?

For me I only put mine in place to show how perfect systems can still have flaws even if they were created for a greater good. It's like any Dystopian story you've ever heard of. Even if the government is there to actually help and protect you, they can't do everything that would just be problematic!

If you want to make a villain for Octonauts, give them a cause. Give them a reason to start something. And if you do it right you've got a very good story on your hands.

Anywho, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk (If you have questions about my theories just tag me or pop by my Octonauts Sub Blog, I try to check it every day because I post weekly content and I wanna make sure I don't miss anything going on in the community. Also stayed tuned because EVENTUALLY I will get to actually drawing all of my villains so hopefully you won't want to miss that, because I already have everyone's bio's written down I just gotta commit to the characters already)

Thank you @cacartoon for this massive question because otherwise I wouldn't be up at 4:35am ranting about a silly hyperfixation 😉💙

To my Octonaut fans out there, genuine question.

We all know there isn’t really a villain in Octonauts. Like, there’s no one with evil motives or ulterior motives.

BUT

IF there was a villain or villains, what or who exactly would you imagine it’d be?

I think it’d be kinda fun to see everyone’s crack fiction of alternative realities.