#so they also heavily related over that

[necro-hamster]

liam and jackie's relationship is so important 2 me because you have to understand. liam hates himself. he does. he's insanely self conscious and feels unlovable and unimpressive and annoying and ugly. he HATES himself. and when he met jackie (which happened years before 2077 in my canon bc i do what i want; they were both like 19-21) he was at one of his lowest points. he'd just moved out for the first time because he felt like he was unwanted at home, he was a nervous wreck half the time and a shadow of a person the other half. he didn't have any friends. they'd all drifted apart after high school or moved on to other people and places.

so you can imagine how insane it was for him to be invited over for dinner by a guy who'd held a gun to his head only 20 minutes prior. he was exhausted and depressed and beaten black and blue. nothing had gone well for him in months. years, probably. he half expected jackie to follow through and kill him once they were isolated. but he didn't!!! liam was sat down and given more food than he'd had all week by someone who barely even knew him. he was spoken to like a real human being instead of a rat in the gutter. they sent him home with a plastic container of leftovers and a jacket from the closet because it was raining out. and then jackie just never went away! liam expected jackie to get sick of him eventually but it just wouldn't happen. jackie actively liked being around him and would talk him up and help him out and treat him with actual respect.

liam had literally never had a real friend before jackie. he'd always been bullied and put aside and ignored. and suddenly here comes the coolest mf he's ever met going "yeah we're best friends!" like that shit blew his mind. he literally was allowed to come out of his shell for the first time in YEARS. there are so many things he would've never had the confidence to do without jackie. he loved him! he really did.

without jackie he would've never met misty and viktor, never would've started really connecting with heywood's community after a lifetime of being wary of his own neighbors. he feels like he owes so much to jackie but every time he's said that jackie insisted that he didn't owe him anything because they were friends. jackie met liam's family! he would come over for dinner and stuff! liam never had friends who did that past early childhood. jackie was a person who showed up uninvited to his life and threw him a lifesaver.

so yknow. you can imagine how liam felt in that car after the heist.

[constarlations]

Pokémon Timeskip Series: Champion Dawn 🌸❄️

Known as Sinnoh’s Ice Queen, Dawn is best known for her intimidating yet caring nature. She’s fierce and calculating, never leaving any room for error especially when it comes to battling. On her off days you can find her in the contest hall, a hobby she picked up from her mother, or in the Battle Frontier/Pokémon Lab to catch up with her best friends. It is said she was recently engaged to a certain johto boy (Ethan. It’s Ethan.) however they will not publicly revealed their plans for the wedding as of yet

Made a timeskip adult champion Dawn design a while back! It’s still my favorite of my timeskip series hehehe I hope you enjoy!

Twitter link

[sesamenom]

Reverse Gondolin Tyelpe!

outfit inspired by this post by @thelien-art

[spectrum-color]

Note: in this case “favorite” means “most interesting/I would like to learn more about” rather than the stan definition where you think they’re personally awesome

[halfusek]

i drew my minecraft oc and my friend’s @waruihoshi technically an oc more like an npc on the minecraft server she roleplays as fnjkfdfd in the style of cult of the lamb because my oc runs a cult of the pink sheep :]

[darknesspervades]

listen. there's someone in my class who also likes the hunger games but man, it's slightly annoying.

because she's not the feral analysis sort, she just thinks they're cool and keeps completely missing the point when discussing them.

which, ok, valid. but sometimes i realise that non tumblr girlies do not think about that series in the same way i do. like, wdym those are mainstream books? no they're not, they're for me and my 10 followers to overanalyse.

[sunnixsunshine]

Hetalia au where its 2009 and their interests are based on the childhood I barely remember lmao

More under cut :)

Lorenzo took up skateboarding because Alfred likes it. I think what makes em start dating isn’t the skateboarding, its the fact they both religiously love Taylor Swift— but thats not until they’re in the 10th grade! He lives with his grandpa, so does Feliciano, but he often stays over at uncle Antonio’s because he has an xbox lol

If you’ve ever watched Clarence thats the energy I imagine Feliciano to have. Just the hyper weird kid. I imagine he’s that kid who was always moved around in the classroom for disrupting the lesson. He’s got a cute silly crush on Ludwig! But I don’t think they’d date until maybe after highschool, probably in college idk.

Alfred is obsessed with skating! His mom made him join the hockey team when he still lived with her, and from there it evolved into skateboarding. His brother Matthew still lives with mom, even took their new step dad’s name. Doesn’t really talk to Matt anymore since mom remarried and moved to Toronto. Might reconnect in their early 20s.

Ludwig hasn’t figured out he’s trans yet, probably will in late highschool. He spends the school year with his dad Gilbert and grandpa, while in the summer he heads back to his mom’s. This is how its been since he was a baby. His parents never married, mom says it was just a dumb mistake she made when she came across Gilbert in that club. Gilbert says it was the best mistake only because he got an awesome kid out of it. He lives next door to the Vargas boys.

[akkivee]

despite not quite sharing the same pink-gold-dark palette that otome and ichijiku’s speakers have, i think it’s kiiiiinda crazy kuukou and jyushi’s speakers match theirs in style better than nemu’s lol

[zayadriancas]

“It’s just…everybody leaves me. You, Tristan, Tori…maybe one day I won’t get left behind.”

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

thinking about nora again

[wildtornado-o]

Book Bridgens my BELOVED.... he's so good guys.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

having a lot of thoughts about how people use 'normalize' when they mean 'destigmatize' or 'make the nature of into common knowledge,' and how they conflate 'the perception of this thing as normal' with the thing actually being a normal occurrence, and how it is in fact incredibly harmful to try to convince people that an ideal situation is normal when that does not map onto their lived reality or the dangers they need to be aware of to avoid. it is 3:33am though so writing up an actual poast about it will have to wait for later

[t0kyo-l1ghts]

in arknights i went from being a broke ass who consistently has around 236 lmd from leveling units to being financially stable with over 600k lmd and its all thanks to the wolfgirl yaoi event

[artemismatchalatte]

I didn't go online at all yesterday. I self-designated a reading day and finished a book for class (The Good Solider) and one book on my owned TBR (Convenience Store Woman). It bothered me that I didn't have any books done yet for this year. I'm in the middle of three others, with a mind to start maybe one or two more, but still, it feels like very slow going.

[gilbir-t]

Some Fiddlestan

Now I actually have a lot to say about this ship or at least what my interpretation of it is. Stan and Fiddleford would meet right after Ford gets pushed into the portal. And Stan is looking for answers and Fiddleford helps him. This would be around the time Fiddleford is starting to lose it and is newly traumatized. They could bond over their shared experiences with Ford. Both of them could relate to people having low expectations of them (Stan being the “dumb” twin and Fiddleford being the first McGucket to go to college/generally how he was raised). I personally think their relationship would be healthier than Fiddauthor. Ford is wrapped up with Bill and (in my hc) doesn’t return the feelings. Ford also kinda develops a superiority complex and ends up not treating Fidd very well anyway, so I feel like being with Stan would be a breath of fresh air. The desire is actually mutual. Stan’s probably been in a lot of quick relationships and Fidd (another hc) has been in maybe a few but definitely not with another man. After being married to Emma-May (she divorced him at this point) and having to conform to a heteronormative roles/religious standards of intimacy, being in a relationship where you are heavily desired would be really freeing. Stan being Stan and Fiddleford being desperate, their relationship would probably be mainly physical. They’d care about each other but it’s not a deep love. There would be kinda toxic undertones to the whole thing though, mainly Fidd still being in love with Ford and using Stan as a replacement. And also Stan would struggle to be emotionally vulnerable and use physicality to distract from his emotions. These problems could be why they broke it off and stopped being friends. That or Fidd going crazy and running a cult.

No I don’t know why I wrote a whole paragraph about a Gravity Falls ship

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Folk were really into the post I made about Tandie, the zoo lion with a (then) undergrown mane due a period of time on testosterone blockers. He's having quite the glow up this summer.

But!

Did you know that manes are hormone dependent in both sexes of lion?

Let's talk about maned lionesses!

To recap the previous post quickly: the existence of a mane, and it's color, appear to be pretty heavily androgen-dependent. Neutered males or males put on testosterone blockers, like Tandie was, will drop their manes - but like Tandie, if taken off the meds, it will generally grow it back. Darker manes are indicative of higher testosterone levels, and long/lush manes are generally a good signal of a male's fitness and mate quality. Females seem to show a preference for males with longer, darker manes and other males will preferentially avoid scuffles with them. (Yes, as many comments have pointed out, that means Scar was actually a hunk. Do with that as you will.)

The fascinating thing about androgens being linked to manes in lions is that it goes both ways - females with higher levels will also grow manes!

Mane growth in females lions is most commonly seen with elderly animals who have stopped cycling and are basically in lion menopause. And they have to get pretty old for it to happen - captive lions generally only live into their late teens and early second decade, and most of the maned ladies I know about started growing manes around like, seventeen.

Not all old female lions grow manes, but some of the career cat people I've talked to said it happened to about a quarter of the females they've worked with over the years. Which... is an interesting contrast to the news articles about Zuri, who we'll meet in a bit, that breathlessly reported in 2022 that her mane growth "left scientists baffled."

Old lady lion manes are just... precious. They grow in first at the chest and then around the sides or on the back of the head, but they don’t normally get the length, density, and connectivity seen in the mane of an adult male. It leaves the lionesses manes kind of awkward, in the way I associate with very young males, and they're absolutely adorable. Prepare yourself for the photo spam.

I have to start with Daisy, because she's the only maned lioness I've had the privilege to meet in person.

I don't know exactly when she started growing her mane, but she was over 20 years old when she passed in 2019 with these luscious locks.

Here's another female at the same facility, named Adeena. On the left is a photo of her from 2021, on the right is from this spring (I think she's mid-sneeze in the photo). She turns 20 in October.

If you've heard about maned lionesses before, it’s probably because of Zuri, at Topeka. She’s the most recent one to get media coverage and she went a little viral.

(Just a side note here, but I have some strong feelings about knowledge loss in the exotic animal management world due to political/philosophical schisms. This is one of those topics where it's clear: Topeka told a reporter that the zoo had “never" heard of this happening before, but it's common enough to be well known as a thing in other sectors of the exotic cat world. There's so much expertise and knowledge being lost due to infighting between accrediting groups, and it drives me up a wall).

Anyway. Zuri had one of the best manes I've seen on an elderly lioness. It grew long and lush and she totally could have done shampoo commercials. I mean, look at this.

Zuri lived with her sister, who didn't grow a mane in her old age. Here's the two of them together, Zuri on the left, Asante on the right.

We don't completely know what's going on with these golden girls to cause them to grow manes. It's theorized to be related to the end of estrus and higher levels of androgenic hormones, although it's not clear if that's just due to lower levels of other hormones during "meownopause" or if there's something else also going on.

There was some speculation with Zuri's mane growth that it was caused by the death of the male she lived with, in some biological need to "take over the role." The zoo dismissed that idea pretty quickly, and it makes sense, although there is one other instance where I've heard of that happening before.

The cat people I've talked to say that older lionesses who grow manes don't tend to act differently - they're not taking over new social roles in their prides or anything. Sometimes they can be less active, or be a little more nervous around males, and want to be left alone more, but it was emphasized to me that those behaviors could also just be associated with the fact that manes tends to develop in elderly lionesses.

The mane growth can happen pretty quickly, as we saw in the photos I've posted of Tandie over the last year. Here's Bridget, from the Oklahoma Zoo. The left photo was taken in March of 2017 and the right in November - look how much hair she gained over six months!

The zoo did some research into what might have cause Bridget's mane growth, and found that she had elevated levels of androstenedione, which is a hormone that can be converted by the body into either testosterone or estrogen, depending. In AFAB people, it's known to have a masculinizing effect. The zoo theorized that this was the cause of her mane growth, and that the elevated levels might have been caused by a benign tumor. Fascinatingly, though, blood draws revealed that her testosterone levels were the same as her mane-less sister, Tia.

Tia is on the left in the photo below, Bridget and the beginnings of her mane are on the right. Bridget was 17 when her mane started growing in.

I don't think there's any formal hypothesis that there might be a genetic component to lionesses growing manes in old age, but it's interesting to note that one of Tia's daughters, Zari, also grew a mane. (And she grew it young! It started around age 13, interestingly, also right after their male died). She's on the left in the photo below.

And to circle back around to where we began: Tandie is related to a number of maned ladies! His father, Xerxes, was Bridget's son; Zari was Xerxes' half-sister.

Here's a few more beautiful maned ladies to leave you with. In order, Ngala, Pepper, Skye, and Dandy Lion.

Next up, and last in this lion mane series, is the story of five younger lionesses in Botswana who not only have manes but also express a range of masculine behaviors.

.

.

.

A huge thanks to all the folk who shared photos of and stories about their golden girls for this post: M. Townsen, S.W. Simpson, E. Day, S. Cook, M. Stinner, M. Paul, K. Vanaman, D. O'Halloran, R. Simpson, D. Souffrant.