#so it was something just totally incompatible in the genetics somewhere

[stylishanachronism]

Unrelated to anything but a client was Extremely Weird about the concept of genetic testing earlier this week so now I can’t stop thinking about it, because on one hand I do see his point re: eugenics and slippery slopes, but on the other I’ve got something nasty enough in *my* woodshed when/if I have bio kids I need to get tested to ensure they, y’know, survive being born

[colossalsummer]

KOTLC book one READ ALONG part 2 of 5

I read the first Keeper of the Lost Cities book and annotated every page. Here are the highlights. (Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3/ Part 4/ Part 5)

Chapter 11

Tiergan: “I’ll see you Tuesday.” This is a weird thing to focus on, but… they have a seven day week like we do?

Soooo okay okay okay why are they giving her a top-level education gratis? Do they plan to use her once she graduates? Nothing in life is free.

Sophie: “What am I supposed to tell my family? They’re not going to let me disappear every day with no explanation.” Alden: “About that, Sophie. You and I need to have a talk.” OH-HO the truth come out

The sorrow in his eyes made her feel like she’d swallowed something slimy. Clearly, it wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation. Ah—so this is a kidnapping. Cool.

Her registry pendant, Della explained. Everyone had to wear one, so they could be easily found. Oh so a collar. I’ll be ditching that come time for the revolution

Sophie: “But… why does anyone work, then—if they already have money?” Della: “What else would we do with our time?” Sophie: “I don’t know. Something fun?” Della: “Work is fun.” Spoken like somebody who’s never worked retail on Black Friday. Some work is dangerous and boring. Who’s doing that stuff?

Chapter 12

Alden: “Now that the Council knows you exist, they’ve ordered that you move here. Effective immediately.” Oh, I see. A kidnapping.

She didn’t belong in the human world, and she was tired of pretending she did. It feels a little messed up for all these elves to keep insisting that she doesn’t belong with humans. She probably won’t feel like she totally belongs with elves, either, and then she won’t feel like she fits in anywhere. Y’all gonna give this child a complex.

Sophie: “You’re going to kill me off?” Alden: “As far as your family and the rest of the humans are concerned… yes.” IT IS A KIDNAPPING

Chapter 13

Sophie: “I drugged my family.” Fitz: “You did the right thing.” Sophie: “It doesn’t feel like the right thing.” HELLO *looking around fandom* ARE WE ALL SEEING THIS??

To be honest I don’t have a lot of notes for this chapter because it was just so heartbreaking and distressing. Like I have one note at the end of the chapter and all it says is “oof”

Someone protect this child

Chapter 14

Alden: “Fitz can help you get settled in here while we’re gone.” Sophie: “Here? I’ll be living here?” Sweetie, Fitz can’t be your step-brother ’cause then there won’t be a love triangle

Elwin: “Whoa, that is some serious damage. It’s not permanent… And it’s not your fault. Toxic food, toxic water, toxic air.” Fluoride, smallpox vaccinations, 5G…

Elwin: “Now, try not to let this worry you, but your body needs a major detox. We’ll start with these.” …My essential oils

Chapter 15

Alden: They run an animal preserve at Havenfield, so they always have all kinds of exciting things going on.” COOOL

“We’ve even had to collect endangered species—gorillas, lions, mammoths—”  YES THANK YOU SHANNON

“Grady and Edaline train the animals to be vegetarians by feeding them gnomish produce; that way they won’t hunt one another once they’re moved to the Sanctuary.” mmm good luck obligate carnivores

“Another roar interrupted their conversation. Whatever it was sounded like it wasn’t happy about its new diet plan.” It is dying slowly because it can’t produce its own taurine but OK

Hopefully elf veggies are different than earth veggies. That’s just what I’m going to keep telling myself.

The path lead to a wide meadow, where gnomes were using thick ropes to lasso what looked like a giant lizard covered in neon green feathers. UNNH YES I DON’T DESERVE THIS

Also no wonder nobility work for fun, they got gnomes out here doin’ the dangerous jobs

I’m not going to bore you with my breakdown of this dinosaur reconstruction but as a person who worked in a museum as a paleontology educator these bits are the most exciting parts of the book for me. I rate this tyrannosaur 6/10 for scientific accuracy and 10/10 for handsomeness. Shannon Messenger gets 20/10 for popularizing feathered theropods.

…she couldn’t decide if he reminded her more of James Bond or Robin Hood—which felt wrong. He was so unlike her chubby, balding dad she wasn’t sure how to relate. Sophie, meet your new, hotter dad.

Chapter 16

At Sophie’s nod she conjured up a bowl of orange glop and a spoon. Why do elves eat so much goo? This whole time it’s been nothing but goo

Della: “Our world is ‘talent-based’.” AH-HA

Sophie: “Seems kind of unfair.” Yeah, who decides which talents matter and which don’t?

“Get ready to add the amarallitine, Dex.” Oh, I’ve heard of YOU

Grady: “I wouldn’t be surprised if he pushes for you to get transferred to Exillium—and let’s just say it’s somewhere you don’t want to go.” Oh, so there are BAD schools… it all comes together…

So if Edaline and Juline are sisters, is Dex like Sophie’s foster cousin?

Chapter 17

Dex: “The Leapmaster 500. You’re lucky. My parents aren’t nobility, so they’re only authorized to have the 250—it’s missing tons of cool places.” Like bad Netflix. I don’t love that this society limits where poor people can go.

Dame Alina: “First and foremost, whoever put the reekrod in my desk over the weekend will—It’s not funny!” *the camera slowly zooms in on Dex*

A spotlight focused on Sophie. Well, first day ruined. Only took fifteen minutes.

Her name hissed around the room like a viper’s nest. “Ssssssophie.” 

Stina: “You left it open, idiot. I guess remembering to close doors is too hard for the son of a bad match to remember.” Ah wonderful, eugenics. I love elf school

Chapter 18

“Mastering all the elements is one of the steps toward entering the nobility.” Everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked

“Dude.” Is this a human-obsessed thing or is there straight-up an elvish word for dude

Sophie: “What exactly is a ‘bad match’?” Marella: “A couple that was ruled genetically incompatible. Usually that means their kids will be inferior.” THERE ARE SCREENINGS??

Sophie: “What’s Exillium?” Marella: “The school where they send the hopeless cases.” Yep I want to go there

Chapter 19

Telepaths were in high demand. Once she’d proven trustworthy, she’d receive assignments from the Council. OH OKAY so they send her to wizard school and when she graduates they don’t miss a beat, just scoop her on up and enlist her

If a prodigy hadn’t manifested by Level Four, they might be expelled—and even if they stayed at Foxfire, they couldn’t take the elite levels, which meant they’d never be nobility. Most ended up working class.

But once again it didn’t escape her notice that Grady avoided telling her what his special ability was. It couldn’t be something bad. Could it? The man has dinosaurs so if he was going to do something bad I feel like he’d have done it already

Chapter 20

Sophie: “Prentice?” Marella: “Yeah. He was this supertalented Telepath, but he got exiled like twelve years ago.” Oh as old as I am hm how interesting go onnn…

Lady Galvin: “Don’t you know anything about alchemy?” FFFF that’s why I’m HERE you old BAG

Lady Galvin: “Dame Alina probably thinks this is funny, forcing me to teach such basic serums. Well, I won’t have it.” You know, you aren’t getting paid, you can quit. I don’t mind.

“I’m Keefe.” Will this bad boy help us lead the resistance?

Keefe: “Did you do any damage?” Sophie: “Only her cape.” Keefe: “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Do you have any idea how epic that is?” I really like this lil anarchist.

Keefe: “Destroyed Galvin’s cape.” Elwin: “Wish I could’ve seen that!” I’m recruiting this man for the rebellion. Keefe and Elwin get sorted in the Chaotic Good pile for the day of reckoning.

Stay tuned for Part 3.

[grundyscribbling]

I saw a long post about this somewhere, asked the question but got no answer: if other elves did marry other humans, and had children, but weren’t known, would the children be long lived, or immortal? Would they get the choice or was that solely given to Earendil, Dior etc?

Going to preface this by saying that pretty much everything about my answer is not canon, so if you asked anyone else you would probably get a different answer. The only evidence we have in canon of elf-human pairings producing children is Luthien-Beren (Dior), Idril-Tuor (Eärendil), and Mithrellas-Imrazor (Galador and Gilmith)*. That’s a pretty small sample size. Canon also asserts that these were the only Man-Elf pairings.

That said, it seems unlikely to me that those were the only only mixed pairings in the history of Middle Earth. Setting aside all questions of how reliable such an assertion is given the in-world authorship/narrator, Elves and Men interacted freely for several hundred years in Beleriand before any ruling had been handed down on the fate of half-elves. They then had varying levels of opportunity to interact for six thousand+ years during the Second and Third Ages. Both kindreds are social and curious by nature. To imagine that no one else in all that time at least indulged their curiosity, much less that no children came of it, strains credulity** even if we accept LaCE as ironclad and elves as having complete control over when they beget children. (And before anyone gets bent out of shape about this, I would point out that throughout human history, no matter how steep the penalties for ‘fraternizing’ with another group were, it still happened. Regardless of risks to either party, ‘enemy’ status, religion/ethnicity, etc.)

Since any other children of mixed unions weren’t born to prominent parents, their fates went unnoticed and unrecorded in the histories. And once the Valar making Elros and Elrond choose their fate became known, why would they pipe up? Especially if it was also public knowledge that at least some Valar were in favor of treating them all as mortals - if you’re a child of mixed parentage who has been ‘passing’ as elven, would you want to draw attention to yourself after that?  

But just because I think it probably happened is not to say that such pairs would be common. It’s clear the elves had serious concerns about such relationships. Look at Aegnor and Andreth, or even just use common sense - without knowing if the children born of such parents will be mortal or immortal, it’s a double or nothing gamble for the elven parent. Mithrellas is a good example - it’s clear from how events played out that at least one if not both of her children were mortal. But I think particularly in the First Age, there would likely have been at least a handful of children of mixed parentage running around. 

Why the First Age in particular? The First Age and early Second Age are when Men and Elves are shown to interact the most, with another burst of sustained interaction around the time of the Last Alliance. The First Age is also when Elves are at their height population wise. By the early Second Age, their numbers have been drastically winnowed by casualties and sailing West. By the late Third Age, the elves have largely withdrawn to their own enclaves and interactions between the two kindreds have dwindled to the point that Boromir and Faramir (of the Gondorian ruling class and Numenorian blood) know nothing of Rivendell until their loremaster father tells them, and Eomer (a prince of Rohan) has heard of neighboring Lothlorien as the realm of a witch and seems to more than halfway believe it. Also, not only are the opportunities for mixed relationships greatest in the First Age, I imagine that after the First Age, elves remaining in Middle Earth would face social pressure/expectations that they should look for love/relationships/children among their own kindred.

Also, after the Choice of the Halfelven, if the Choice were to apply to any subsequent half-elven children, I suspect most elves would draw back from the idea of begetting children who would face such a terrible choice. The child is essentially being asked to pick which parent to sunder themselves from forever.  

Whether or not the Choice of the Halfelven is imposed on all half-elven children begotten after the end of the First Age or not is something I haven’t made up my mind about - I could see it going either way. Option A: it applies to all of them, because the Valar like to have everything clearly categorized. Option B: the Valar didn’t expect it would come up again, so they didn’t say that it applied to all of them. Given that I don’t think the Valar really understand the Children, I could go for Option B. But Manwë and Namo both seem to prefer these things be clear, so I feel like they would argue for Option A. Ulmo might be against, because he’s open to loopholes. So ultimately I can’t make up my mind and I’m going to punt on this particular point.

For any half-elven children not given the Choice of the Halfelven, I think it would be luck of the genetic draw which parent’s fate a child inherited, both in terms of mortality/immortality, and growth/aging.  So you could have not only children who seemed fully mortal or fully elven, but a mortal child who aged noticably slower than normal by mortal standards, or an child who matured abnormally quickly by elven standards but was still immortal. (I don’t think that you can have immortals who continue to age in the Mannish way past maturity, showing signs of old age like wrinkles, body parts giving out, etc. I’m going with those genes are incompatible/mutually exclusive.) Lifespan for mortal children might be what we think of as a normal Mannish span, or extended in the manner of the Numenorians.  It would also be possible for siblings to end up with completely different fates - one taking after the human parent, the other after the elven parent. 

*I’d argue that Arwen-Aragorn is not an elf-human pairing in the same sense as these ones, given that Aragorn set the condition that she choose mortality to marry him - her children would only ever be mortal. Also, Luthien is a special case, given that she’s half-elven herself - and her other half is maia.

**Given the list of things we know humans have tried to have sex with, including inanimate objects, the idea that no Man ever convinced an Elf to try it at least once is absolutely and totally unbelievable to me. As for the having children part, I’m pretty sure that Terry Pratchett was onto something when he wrote Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ‘End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry.

[machsabre]

Transformers Aligned Perspectives

So this is a Transformers theory I've had floating around in my head for a few years now. I figured I'd take this time to flesh it out into words a bit. Now if someone else has come up with the same idea or one that's official, that's fine. But I wanted to get this out there.

First, let's talk about the Aligned Universe. Yes, we all know that it originally was planned to be one giant cohesive universe with War for Cybertron, Transformers Prime and whatever else they threw at us. And yes, it didn't work too well due to clashing visions. That happens. And of course, there's tons of complainers on the internet who will not let the fact that this didn't work out, go. And whenever someone mentioned "Aligned Universe", someone has to snark up, like they're passing fire down from Olympus and declare "There is no Aligned Continuity!" Because Dark Energon acts differently in the game and show, or Grimlock and Grimlock are totally different characters, and just… Whatever. Seriously, there was more continuity gaffs in Generation One's cartoon, and that was done by the same creative team. But whatever they say or claim… Transformers: Prime, Rescue Bots and Robots in Disguise are in the same universe. So while the Aligned Universe may not be what was originally planned, there IS a universe.

Now broad strokes was something that had been mentioned many times by Hasbro when defining the Aligned Universe, so for me, the timeline is somewhat like this: Something similar (but not exact) to the War for Cybertron/Fall of Cybertron happened. Not exactly, but close enough. (Proven by the flashbacks shown in TF: Prime and the mentioning that Starscream reverted to his "original body" in Robots in Disguise. Then the timeline of what happened is something similar (but still, not exact) to the events of the old G1 Cartoon Show. (They crashed in Mt. Saint Hillary, there was an original Ark crew that Bumblebee and Prime were part of, and possibly Jazz.) It's left vague, but it's also not as important as the continuity nerd in me would like to think. Basically it's a case of "Just go with it."

But one thing that's been brought up dozens of times, and just overlooked was just how different the characters look from incarnation to incarnation. I mean, this is Bumblebee from TF: Prime, Rescue Bots and Robots in Disguise.

And outside of his reverse color scheme in season three of TF: Prime (I really like that color scheme for him) it's been shown in all the shows that this is NOT a body upgrade or modification… But how he's looked this entire time. Now of course, we all know the reason why is because they're all different shows by different artists and creative minds. But that's not good enough for me. I want a reason. So here's my theory:

It's the children.

The events of each of the shows happen, but the severity and intensity of each varies because each of them are told by the perspective of the children.

In Transformers: Prime, all three of the kids, Jack, Miko and Raf are all teenagers. (With exception of Raf, but he's RIGHT on the border, and I'm sure he's aged that six months during the timeframe of the series.) Being teenagers, with Jack being the centralized one… Especially out in the middle of boring Nowhere, Nevada… They saw the Transformers similar to how the live-action movies saw them. Giant, detailed, scary war machines. And because unlike the others, they were front and center to some unnerving stuff, like Jack being sent to Cybertron alone or being threatened to be murdered by Decepticons or just generally things you don't want to happen to you as a teenager. So to them, the Transformers were mature and just… Darker.

In Rescue Bots, Cody was the youngest of them all, probably around ten years old. At least three years passed during the time span, so that currently puts him at a young teen about 13 years old. (This is an estimate. He may be older or younger.) Either way, this is a kid who spent his life around rescuers and scientific oddities and wonders. Morocco and the Morbots is the most scariest non-disaster threat he's faced personally, and let's face it… Morocco is awesome, but he's not exactly Knock Out talking about dissecting Silas while still alive. So to him, the Transformers comes across as bright, colorful and fun to him. He's used to technology, so it's all almost second nature to him. His perspective is that they're fun.

And then there's Russell and Denny Clay. Russell is right on that line between the innocent eyes of Cody and the jaded viewpoint of Jack and the gang. So they're a little more mature than the Rescue Bots, but not as dark as Team Prime. And the fact that his father is a forever man-child, he's probably a little more excited about giant robots running around than his kid is! It's a little more of an adventurous perspective. I mean, they hang around a friendly talking T-Rex and racing in fast cars around to various places on the globe, fighting animal themed robots… That's pretty much the definition of adventure.

So their differences are pretty much perspective. So by that theory, somewhere is a *true* version of Bumblebee. But what it is, I do not know.

You know, let's tackle that while we're here: Transformers Go.  

It's generally assumed that it's non-canon from the rest, as it's incompatible and stuff… Well, I don't think it is.

All right, the reasons it's considered incompatible is that at the beginning of the series, Optimus is still alive and now leading the Swordbots. But here's the thing though. If you've seen that show, you know that Optimus never moved. He was just a still frame. In fact, I think there was just two frames of him in there. Details were often left very vague in that series, often forcing us to fill in the blanks. It was never quite clear if he was contacting from Cybertron or… You know… The Realm of the Primes. He shows up at the end of Go in a new powered up body, just out of nowhere… Much like he often did before his permanent return in Robots in Disguise. We've established that Optimus often had other teams than just Team Prime. He had the Rescue Bots and the Bee Team… What's one more team? And It's established that the Predacons from Prime were clones. Well, where did the source genetic material for Predaking come from? Dragotron and his Oni Generals?

And lastly, going by the rules of perspective here, that means that ALL the Optimus Prime bodies were the same one all along. (Aside from the Forge Upgrade in Beast Hunters) and it's all just a narrative perspective. (WIth Go being the perspective of Isami and Tobio.) So yeah, that means somewhere in there, Robots in Disguise Optimus Prime turns into a T-Rex… And a dragon train.

Hey dude, I've heard stupider theories.

[gaiatheorist]

“Male role model.”

I allowed the ex to make me angry again yesterday, I need to stop letting that happen, letting him push my buttons and pull my strings, I need to ‘find and fix’ the filters I managed to put on my emotional responses, because his behaviour is entirely predictable. He mentioned one of his nephews, who had ‘played up’ at school, but now seemed to be settling, and stated with absolute confidence “It’s because he didn’t have a male role model.” I contested, that it was a combination of genetics, adolescence and wider socialisation, but the ex was having none of it. “No, his Dad was never there, no male role model.” I’d made my point, and the ex had dismissed it, repeating his original assertion. There are hundreds of possible reasons that the boy in question was behaviourally challenging at school, I used to work in ‘additional needs’ in a secondary school, but the ex must have heard the phrase ‘male role model’ somewhere, and parroted it at me, trying to prove himself right. 

He does that. It’s partly his own insecurity that makes him feel the need to belittle other people, he’s always surrounded himself with misfits, and weakened people, so he can be king-of-everything. It’s also partly the way he was raised, little prince, he was ‘better’ than his sister, because she was just a girl, he was used to being praised, and adored, and right-about-everything. (Uncharitable side-chuckle, there, he was going to be a superstar, she was ‘just’ going to work in a shop, and pop out babies, but she was the one who appeared on Top of the Pops, not him.) I’ve always claimed that I was relieved to have had a son instead of a daughter because I wouldn’t have wanted to produce another creature as fucked-up as me. Thinking back, I wouldn’t have been able to tolerate the way the ex’s family treated girls, either. I confused them, because I didn’t like flowers, or shopping, or soap operas, I had a sort-of career, rather than a job-in-a-shop, their-girls wanted to be admired, I wanted to be respected. Their-girls panicked if they broke a fingernail, I walked around with a broken bone in my hand for weeks. Their-girls would phone the Father-in-law to come and change light-bulbs, or plug-fuses, I fix my own issues, ‘Bob the Builder with Boobs.’ 

It was a conscious choice for me, not to play the traditional ‘female’ role, I never saw any reason why I should, I’m an anomaly to my generation, and abhorrent to the ones before. My half-sisters do the hair and make-up things that never appealed to me, and I damned-well will ‘answer back’ to my father and step-father, kowtowing isn’t in my nature, they’re not ‘alpha’ or better. 

I witter on a lot about how girls and boys are conditioned differently, and I did what I could to break that cycle with my son, to give him an option other-than tits-and-football. (I did also tell him, when he was about 15, “Not all women are like me.”, after he’d witnessed yet another instance of his Dad throwing a tantrum over nothing, and me totally ignoring the stomping man-baby.) Of course, he still had the tits-and-football, from his Dad and Granddad, but I gave him an alternative, and space to express his emotions. I didn’t treat him as ‘a boy’, and I didn’t behave like ‘a girl’, we’re both just humans. (Playing right into the “Women talk about feelings, men don’t.” stereotype, there.) 

Feelings, emotions, I’m not a particularly ‘emotional’ creature, stimuli cause chemical changes in the body, which map-out a range of possible actions, from the most basic “That’s hot, stop touching it.”, to the utterly intangible “I wonder if I’ve upset so-and-so?” At work, we went through a phase of focusing on Emotional Literacy, before Ofsted decided on the next focus. (I’ve had that Bernard Cribbins ‘Digging a Hole’ song on a loop in my head for days, Ofsted were very much ‘The bloke in the bowler hat’, with their ever-shifting targets.) Some of the students had no emotional literacy at all, some had learning disabilities that impacted on their ability to articulate, and some had never been allowed to acknowledge their emotions. I’ve lost count of the number of students I worked with who only had ‘OK’ or ‘mad’ in their emotional vocabulary. Mostly boys, but not entirely because girls are conditioned to be more open about discussing emotions, it was more the case that the boys ‘acted out’, whereas the girls tended to internalise issues. By the time a female student started appearing on the behaviour-radar, the issues were usually highly complex, and deeply embedded. Social conditioning, again, the boys would have an argument with a mate at morning break, throw a couple of punches, and walk home together at the end of the day, all-done. The girls, Gods, they were more difficult, not just the insidious whisper-campaigns, and battles for status causing no end of staff time taken up trying to repair fragile friendships. You’d never really want to intervene in a girl-fight, either, boys were easier to split up than girls, girls just kept on going. 

That lack of emotional literacy was reflected in an article I read earlier this morning, about an ‘All Male Retreat’, there was a section on acknowledging emotions, and the writer pointed out that all some-men have is “I’m pissed off.” (Like the ex’s frequent outbursts of “I’m not happy!”) Are you ‘pissed off’? Is that really it? What are you pissed off about? Why is it pissing you off? Is there anything you can do to address it? Is there anything I can help you with? The ex was raised very much in the style of boys-don’t-cry, stiff-upper-lip, man-up. His male role model didn’t acknowledge emotions, any stress or distress was brushed off with “Worse things happen at sea!”, and attempts at distraction were made, with sweeties, or ice-cream. That repressive-regressive approach led to the ex only being able to identify two emotional states, we had King-shit-of-turd-mountain, when he was being praised and adored, and “I’m not happy!” when he wasn’t the centre of attention, oh, and he did cry. He mainly responded to our son displaying any kind of emotion by running away, quite quickly, possibly afraid it might be infectious. (Also unable to name that uncertain-anxiety, that there was something he wasn’t able to ‘fix’ by jangling his car-keys, or buying a Cornetto.) I didn’t want to replicate that in our son.

I allowed him to cry, I taught him that always-OK isn’t an achievable state, that there are names for these feelings, and reasons behind them. (I probably didn’t help very much by rarely outwardly-displaying emotions myself, by the time the boy was old enough to have a conversation with, I’d already started concealing my emotions, refusing to give the ex the response he was trying to elicit.) The ex’s side of the family carried on with the “Don’t cry, have a biscuit!” nonsense, his Dad and Granddad were misogynistic, girls-were-weak, and displaying emotion was ‘girly.’ He’d come back home, to his ‘Concrete Bear’ of a mother, who wasn’t weak-or-girly, and the tears that weren’t allowed at Granddad’s house would flow. (I’m really good at passing people tissues, I’ve been in enough complex-stressful meetings where everyone else avoids eye-contact with an irrational or distressed person to know that the eye-contact acknowledgement matters.) I allowed him to express, and then I’d offer an explanation, as he matured, we evolved from “Yes, that dinner-lady is treating you unfairly, speak to one of the others instead.” to more in-depth discussions of brain chemistry, and the complexity of interpersonal relationships. My kitchen was a safe-place for him, neither of us ‘had to’ behave in a specified way because of our biology. 

The ex’s idea of a ‘Male role model’ is skewed by his own experience. The nephew in question had a father who was largely absent, he wasn’t particularly involved with the child, he was distant, physically and emotionally. The boy’s mother spent a lot of time at the in-laws’ house, so the boy had the ‘male role model’ of Granddad, who taught him to play cricket, and kick a football, and not-cry. They skipped a generation, the boy was being part-raised by a man who didn’t believe in anti-perspirant or hair-products ‘for boys’, and was completely detached from the reality of the world the boy inhabited, computers, mobile phones, and the experience of being an adolescent in these times were totally alien to him. Going through the chemical maelstrom of puberty, the boy started to ‘play up’ at school. The ex wants to hang the blame for that on the absent-father, but Granddad is in part responsible, for instilling ideologies in the boy that are incompatible with his lived experience. The ‘absent’ father wouldn’t have made a particularly good role model in any case, but, in conditioning the boy to the ‘traditional’ view of masculinity, Granddad hampered his emotional development.

The world-view of gendered roles is changing, albeit slowly, females aren’t ‘naturally’ any more expressive than males, it’s social conditioning, not a left-brain/right-brain difference that encourages boys to behave differently to girls. Toxic masculinity is being challenged, there really is no place for ‘Man up!’, it kills. While-ever parents, and society in general continue to perpetuate these assumed differences, boys will be taught to suppress emotions, and they will grow into men who can’t articulate feelings. Five years ago, we were still using the phrase ‘positive male role model’ at work, I don’t think that’s right, and the few male staff we had in the female-heavy external services were over-subscribed. We’d have been strung from the rafters if we’d suggested a pairing based on ethnicity, or religion, but that reductionist approach based on gender was still seen as acceptable. 

I don’t think we need ‘male role models’, against the hundreds of referrals we made for a ‘male role model’, I can’t think of more than a couple where we specified ‘female role model’. We didn’t say ‘female role model’ at all, it was usually more the case that a female student had reoccurring head-lice, matted hair, or wasn’t managing her menstrual hygiene. While we look for ‘male role models’, however excellent they might be, we’re continuing to feed into the myth that ‘Boys do THIS, and girls do THAT.’ We need human role models.  

[ntrending]

This fungus has over 23,000 sexes and no qualms about it

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/this-fungus-has-over-23000-sexes-and-no-qualms-about-it/

This fungus has over 23,000 sexes and no qualms about it

Fungi don’t abide by gender constructs. They live uninhibited (albeit unconscious) lives, mating freely with almost any other member of their species. In short, they’re wonderful.

One particularly promiscuous mushroom, known scientifically as Schizophyllum commune (and affectionately as “schizo”), looks deceptively mundane. It’s a form of wood rot that lives in parts of the East Indies, Thailand, India, Madagascar, and Nigeria, where plenty of people eat it—despite many Western guidebooks classifying the shroom as “inedible.” Apparently the tough, rubbery texture isn’t a turn off for other cultures. It’s used medicinally, too, since—like many fungi—it has antiviral and antifungal properties to keep it safe in the wild. And if you knew nothing about mycology, you’d never expect a humble white wood rot to have tens of thousands of sexual variations.

S. commune has an unusually high number of sexes, but having many variants isn’t actually uncommon in the fungal world. Most animals are pretty limited in their biological sex options, because reproductive compatibility often depends on anatomical compatibility. Or, to be more crude about it, some kind of penis generally has to fit into some kind of vagina. There are animals that fertilize eggs externally, but even those species usually have one organism that lays the eggs and another that fertilizes them. Some hermaphrodites use more of an egalitarian stabbing mechanism, as do plenty of insects, but there’s still a phallic object being thrust into another being. It’s not fun, but it’s true.

Fungi aren’t limited by the same anatomical constraints. They still have to physically merge in order to procreate, but these relatively simple organisms (not that simple—they’re more closely related to animals than to plants, and are generally all sorts of weird) can recombine genetic material in a more straightforward way. After all, mating is really just getting two cells to merge into one such that their DNA can combine. Fungi don’t have to go through the whole ejaculation process to get there—they produce similar sex cells to humans, then mix their DNA through direct cellular transfer. They essentially combine by creating a so-called “clamp connection,” which allows the fungi to transfer nuclei from one cell to another. Animals and plants have to do the same thing with some kind of vehicle for the male and female cells—whether it be sperm or pollen—but fungi just sidle up against each other and let the fun begin.

All of this is controlled by a set of two genes on two different chromosomes. And in keeping with the straightforward nature of mycology, those genetic locations are called A and B. Each of these genes also has two alleles, or alternative forms, named alpha and beta. So in total, that makes four distinct spots in the S. commune genome where variation can occur: A-alpha, A-beta, B-alpha, and B-beta.

Here’s where it gets more complicated. Each of those four locations can have multiple variants, which are all slightly different versions of the same set of proteins. A-beta has approximately 32 possible specificities, and the rest have about nine. So to sex an S. commune fungus (yes, “sex” is the scientific word for determining an organism’s sex), you’d have to genetically sequence it to come up with something like A-alpha-1, A-beta-8, B-alpha-3, B-beta-5.

For two S. communes to mate, they have to have different variants somewhere on A and somewhere on B. So two fungi that have A-alpha-1 and B-beta-5, but have different A-betas and B-alphas, can reproduce. But if they have matching A-alphas and A-betas, they can’t. This has to do with what the A and B genes do when reproduction takes place. They’re basically both controlling pheromones and pheromone receptors—pheromones are smelly chemicals that organisms use to influence one another’s behavior—which is how fungi communicate sexually. Compatible sets of pheromones and receptors are able to touch base and mate, whereas incompatible sets simply can’t initiate the process.

It’s still not really clear how the alpha and beta components affect compatibility, but we do know that certain genetic types recombine more frequently than others, and that in general S. commune can mate with the vast majority of its own population.

This is actually a great strategy for preserving sexual diversity. S. commune literally has to mate with a genetically distinct individual, so it’s constantly increasing the number of sexual variations that exist in a population. And because there are so many ways for the sex to vary, you end up with over 23,000 of them. This kind of four-locus mating system is common amongst fungi, it’s just uncommon to have so many variations. So the next time you eat a mushroom, remember that it probably had a more complicated sex life than you do.

Written By Sara Chodosh