Soemtimes I’m like hmm normal then sometimes, The Slut™ takes over

So in the past few years I’ve seen so many videos / posts that are like:

“Actually wolves don’t have hierarchies!  They live in family groups where the ‘alphas’ are mom and dad and the other wolves are their CHILDREN and offer their respect willingly! :D”

and I just have to say

how dare you try to make normative nuclear families out of wolves

Yes, a lot of the old “nature red in tooth and claw” stuff about wolves is nonsense. (Like anything from Jack London.) And anything ‘alpha’ you see sleazy men trying to relate to dating (yikes!) is especially nonsense.

But wolves are complex social creatures and they create complex social structures. Just as you can’t say “THIS is the way human society is structured. Just THIS single way and no other”, so too there is no single form for a wolf pack.  

Some packs are a mom wolf and a dad wolf and their wolf children.  Others are two small ragged packs that combine to form a large pack.  Others are packs where a lone wolf joins and eventually becomes a leader. Others are packs where a grown child-wolf has pushed their parent out of the leadership role.

Speaking of the latter, let’s look at the tale of Wolf 40 and Wolf 42.

Wolf 40, Wolf 41, and Wolf 42 were wild Yellowstone wolves, daughters of the alphas. Their father was illegally killed by hunters and shortly after ambitious Wolf 40 ousted her mother, driving her out of the pack.  Wolf 21 became the new alpha male, and 40′s mate.

Wolves have personalities, and Wolf 40′s personality was “volatile”.  Imagine Scar from The Lion King combined with the boss from Office Space, and you have Wolf 40.  She habitually bullied the other female wolves, attacking them until they expressed abject submission.  And the wolves that got the worst of it were her sisters, Wolves 41 and 42.

Wolf 41 got tired of the bullying and left.  Wolf 42 remained, perhaps because she was close to Wolf 21, the alpha male.  Despite that, Wolf 21 did not interfere when his mate harassed Wolf 42.

Unlike 40, Wolf 42 got along well with the other female wolves, spending time grooming them and relaxing with them. Wolf 40 could have followed her sister’s example and built up positive social bonds. But she didn’t.

One day, Wolf 40 went out on an important task.  She was going to kill another litter of her sister’s pups–having done the same in two previous years.  This isn’t uncommon wolf behavior (but is not universal, as we will see.)  Typically only the alphas breed.

However, Wolf 40 never returned from her important task because Wolf 42–who previously had submitted to her alpha and sister, who had allowed the killing of two previous litters of pups–had had enough.  She fought back.

And the other female wolves jumped to aid her.

Collectively, they killed Wolf 40. Because “alpha” isn’t a magic cloak of protection, it doesn’t even mean “strongest wolf”, it’s just a job title.

The next day Wolf 42 carried her pups, one by one, to her sister’s den.  She set her children among the pups of her dead sister and raised both litters together. And when another wolf in the pack had pups, Wolf 42 carried them to the den to be communally raised as well.  She was the alpha female now and she made the rules, and the first rule was “we don’t hurt pups here.”

As for Wolf 21, he became the mate of Wolf 42.  Maybe he understood that Wolf 40 had been riding for a fall. 

As alpha female, Wolf 42 continued to be supportive and kind towards the other pack members.  Wolves who had been nervous wrecks under Wolf 40 began to relax and come into their own; one of the former omega wolves gained self-confidence and became one of the best hunters.

“Alpha”, for wolves, just means leader.  They might be good leaders, whom you respect, or they might be bad leaders, who fill you with dread.  They might be your parents, or they might not.  Even if they are your mother or father, wolves don’t contextualize those relationships the same way humans do.

But one thing wolves have in common with humans is that they have individual personalities and experiences, and their actions derive from those.  There is no “typical wolf pack.” And I think that’s beautiful.

If you want to learn more about wild wolf dynamics, I recommend reading the annual Yellowstone Wolf Project Reports.  Which are FASCINATING.  There are also some good wildlife specials out there.

Wolves are my favorite animal. <3  It pains me to see them misunderstood as crazed bloodthirsty brutes, but it also pains me to see them woobified.  They deserve better than that.

HARK !!! I SEE HER !! RIGHT IN THE CENTER OF POST !! RAISE THEM MEN FROM THEIR SLUMBER WE'VE A BEAST TO SLAY

Hey y'all. With the Writer's Guild of America on strike, you might be hearing a lot more about something called "residuals," which are payments that the writers get for the studios continuing to air their work on reruns and such. Already I'm seeing people trying to frame the union trying to bargain for better residuals as greedy and unreasonable, so I just wanted to give you guys a peek into my dad's full, 100% real residual payments for writing some of the most watched episodes of American late night television.

Yeah lol. If u hear anyone trying to frame the conversation around residuals as writers being greedy, please do me a favor and punch them straight in the face ❤️🙃🙃

The last time I saw any real money from film and TV was in 2008, when I got a substantial cheque from the WGA (who administer residuals and such) for my share as cowriter of the Beowulf DVD. And then DVDs were done and became a niche market.

These days residuals are... well, something you can take a friend to dinner with. Not something you could pay a monthly mortgage or the rent with.

(And I'm fine. My TV work over the last 5 years has been subsidised by my book and comics work.)

But I just got one even smaller than the one cent residuals...

But I just got one

even smaller than the one

cent residuals…

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

sitting on this one for a little while but... bibically accurate body horror fractal sunflower

list of favorite things as a fanfic author:

all of this, but also

If you answer, please reblog for reach! (If your answer is any version of "no, I haven't watched it", refer here.)

So the results of this poll are in...

If you answered "Yes!"/"Yes, multiple times," PLEASE FOLLOW ME SO WE CAN TALK, THANK YOU!

If you answered "No..."/"No, but I want to!"/"What?", did you click the link? It is imperative to me that you click the link.

If you haven't finished it, GO FINISH IT!! And then FOLLOW ME!!

the thing about carrying tension in your jaw is that once you've started it's really fucking hard to stop

reblog to make your followers unclench their jaws and be painfully aware of the fact that they’re actively unclenching thier jaws

please make this post go viral i need it to show up constantly in my activity feed thereby reminding me to relax my jaw

joan crawford as hamlet in 1929

oh

A little tutorial about how to draw pecs! 

Many asked me in the past so I hope it can help many! 

Saddest thing ever is reading an academic paper about a threatened or declining species where you can tell the author is really trying to come up with ways the animal could hypothetically be useful to humans in a desperate attempt to get someone to care. Nobody gives a shit about the animals that “don’t affect” us and it seriously breaks my heart

“No I can’t come out tonight I’m sobbing about this entomologist’s heartfelt plea for someone to care about an endangered moth”

This is how I learn there's a moth whose tiny caterpillars live exclusively off the old shells of dead tortoises.

[Image description: text from a section titled On Being Endangered: An Afterthought that says:

Realizing that a species is imperiled has broad connotations, given that it tells us something about the plight of nature itself. It reminds us of the need to implement conservation measures and to protect the region of which the species is a part. But aside form the broader picture, species have intrinsic worth and are deserving of preservation. Surely an oddity such as C. vicinella cannot simply be allowed to vanish.

We should speak up on behalf of this little moth, not only because by so doing we would bolster conservation efforts now underway in Florida, [highlighting begins] but because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing. [end highlighting]

But is quaintness all that can be said on behalf of this moth? Does this insect not have hidden value beyond its overt appeal? Does not its silk and glue add, potentially, to its worth? Could these products not be unique in ways that could ultimately prove applicable?

End image description]

because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing

I was so inspired by this I made it into a piece of art for a final in one of my courses for storytelling in conservation

some paintings i made to de-stress

Everyone get in trouble.

Now that the post is over 10k and my notes are straight-up unusable...

One thing I wish I'd spelled out more explicitly in the original post because I see this point getting lost on a lot of rebloggers who don't understand why the healthcare thing was such a big deal is like

The subtext I thought would be understood bc I lived back then but apparently has been lost today is that making sure queer employees and their partners had healthcare in the early 90s meant Disney was paying for a lot of AIDS treatment.

This is one reason fundie Christians were so upset and queer employees were so grateful. It's one reason why it was such a controversial decision. It was a major talking point amongst my family, who believed back then that AIDS was a punishment from God.

(Some still do, I think. We don't talk.)

I keep seeing people saying that Disney only chose that option "because of their bottom line" and it's like??? Were you listening??? Disney has been paying for that decision for literally decades, but they've stood by it.

Like... the 90s weren't like now! It wasn't profitable to cater to the queer population of the country back then. They weren't raking in money with this.

It's in no way a perfect company but I fully believe in criticizing people for the specific things they do wrong and praising them for the specific things they do right. Disney has fucked copyright, monopoly, and labor laws and I'm not about to defend that. But they are well known in FL for being friendly to both queer people and disabled people, and that is unambiguously a good thing.

(Like side note, I could talk about Disney and accessibility for days. I have traveled extensively while disabled and no one does it like Disney.)

I've had people reblogging the post like "I straight-up don't believe Disney is an industry leader in equal protections for queer employees" and it's like ??? do you think I just pulled this out of my ass? If you want more information, go look it up! You'll see that this is well-established history. It's not my fault y'all don't read! :|

We’re all goin here right

Imagine if play was something encouraged in adults, places to run and jump and climb because it's fun

I never know what the machines do at the gym, but i will clamber to the top of the tower to slide into a ball pit

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So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

For anyone curious to read up on the loooong and complicated relationship Disney has had with the queer community historically, I wholeheartedly recommend Tinker Belles and Evil Queens by Sean Griffin. It's wonderfully written, exhaustive, well-researched and it comes from a personal place of a gay Disney fan. It touches on the equal benefits for same-sex partners thing and so, so much more.

Web cam quality = bad

Online oral exam = in less than half an hour

My nerves = everywhere

GOT AN A

I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M GONNA HAVE AS IN BUSINESS ECONOMY, OPERATING SYSTEMS AND COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE!!! SOME OF MY HARDEST CLASSES! AND LIKELY BS IN MATH TWO AND APPLIED PHYSICS!!!!!

Me: studying computing

Also me: *gets an A+ and a 100/100 in Business Economy, the subject that has the least to do with my major because I loved it*

Front camera selfies to celebrate my A

Been in a meeting for over 2 hours now

What are you majoring in?? Like I see your classes and I’m just like uhhhhh computer aided design maybe?

Multimedia computing!

Ma'am you are so intelligent and funny and beautiful and I would absolutely die for you

Thank you, but I want you to live for me instead!

One thing that MASSIVELY pisses me off is how fainting is shown in media. It’s always the person sways a little, collapses in one movement, and then is unconscious for like… fucking ages??? They wake up hours later tucked under a blanket and it’s acted like that’s normal. It’s NOT. A person that’s fainted should be back with you pretty quickly, actually:

(From NHS website)

I had an experience in my last work place where I fainted, but because it looks so different to how it’s shown in film and TV my managers had no idea what had happened. Here’s a comparison of usual media vs my actual fainting that they were all confused by-

Films, TV shows, plays etc:

1) Person goes “oh goodness” or something similar whilst holding hand to chest

2) eyes roll back, gracefully falls to the floor

3) nearby people see the poor fainted person, pick them up, put them on a bed or sofa

4) person comes to hours or even days later with no idea what happened and everyone else is just like “oh good you’ve woken up 🙂”

My usual fainting experience:

1) Everything starts spinning. Incapable of making words as my sole focus is on trying to get myself to the ground ASAP

2) Stumble to floor/chair/ anything I can lean against

3) Quick violent slump as actual faint occurs. There is no dainty falling- the whole body has hit shut down. Usually smack my head on the floor if I haven’t managed to get myself somewhere soft

4) Aware of surroundings almost immediately, but takes a few seconds to fully come back round

5) Carefully sit back up and explain to everyone going “what the fuck happened” that I fainted, and no, I do not need smelling salts actually.

This is like the heart attack discourse...  much needed.

100% how fainting looks and feels, from both sides.

Unconsciousness longer than 1 minute from any cause is an emergency. If that occurs, you need to call for an ambulance.