hey here's a website for downloading any video or image from any website.
works w/ youtube, soundcloud, twitch, twitter (gifs and videos), tumblr (video and audio), and most other websites you're probably lookin to download stuff off of.
for anyone wondering about privacy and whatnot, i'm happy to say that the developers are pretty committed to have 0 trackers and 0 data retention. you can read more in their "about" section, but here's the basic important stuff:
the “sexy lamp test” but for disabled folks: if you can replace your disabled character with a beloved pet dog that needs an expensive surgery to survive then you have to throw out your manuscript
once you realize how much everyone fucking loves age- and incest-play you'll go even more insane when they tell you to join their campaign to run transgender woman #487324 off the internet (where she gets her income) for her incest kink or whatever
it really is Our Righteous "pouting and throwing a cute tantrum at my partner to get what i want", "daddy/mommy", "old man yaoi", and a long etc v. their villainous "calling her partner 'little sis'" to encourage sexual abuse of children or smth
and not like it is important but since i sometimes see that thrown around: they love doing it in public too, and i don't mean in an obscure tumblr blog (theyre straight) but at. the store in front of 20 people. again, it is one of their main things.
i'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before but i'm just thinking about how common and rendered-invisible by normalization it is to see a straight couple where the woman playfully acts like a little girl sometimes for whatever reason and it's. fine. and i of course don't mean they should leave it in the bedroom or whatever i'm not christian, i'm saying it's so overt but of course it's fine when non-transmisogynized people do it. they have never harmed children in any way obviously.
i need data for a statistics project for school, so be my sample data, worms. i need thirty people minimum so if there aren't enough voters yet i'd love if you could help. thank you very much. worms.
take this test (https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd/), then come back here:
what's your JND?
.00030-.00099
.0010-.0017
.0017-.0024
.0024-.0031
.0031-.0038
.0038-.0045
.0045-.0052
.0052-.0059
.0059-.0066
.0066-.0073
.0073-.0080
.0080 or greater
Voting ended onMay 13
it doesnt have to be a good score, you dont have to take it multiple times, you dont have to get on a good screen, etcetera. just gimme your score please this is my final project grade :)
An IN NO WAY COMPREHENSIVE listing of what we can take away from the character sheets in City Council of Darkness so far.
Disclaimer: this time last week I did not know a goddamn thing about Vampire: the Masquerade, and I would be thrilled for someone with more grounding in the system to weigh in! However, as a firm believer in the fundamental eroticism of game mechanics, I have been speedrunning all the character building info I can find, and I think the amount of information I'm able to share is more than none!
Second Disclaimer: we all know these motherfuckers are not above outright lying on their public-facing character cards -- Van Chapman's secret warlock level says what -- and I am very nearly expecting someone to turn out to have, say, a dark secret that hasn't been disclosed yet.
Sources: Paradox Wikis, White Wolf Wiki, GhoulApp -- I have particularly been having a LOT of fun with GhoulApp and I really recommend it for getting a ground-up sense of how character creation works! -- and several friends who played in college.
The first thing to note is that all these characters, with the notable exception of LaVonte, are absolutely stacked with merits and discipline powers; this was explained in the second Adventuring Party when Lou mentioned that Brennan had given them a fairly high amount of XP to spend in character creation. (V:tM doesn't level in quite the same way as DND or DND-alikes; the XP you earn are basically a currency you can spend on buying upgrades for your character, which are priced according to their desirability. I actually really love this system!)
We also learned from that Adventuring Party that they're earning 2 XP per session and Lou noted that he didn't spend any of his in character creation and now has 19, so they had 15 to begin with. I'm absolutely not going to go through and confirm step by step that everyone's XP expenditure adds up, because we're not seeing the entire character sheet and I don't know what Brennan homebrewed or allowed bending of the rules for, but 15 XP is a reasonably high budget. Which makes sense, because these characters are really on their own in Purpee -- if they run into something they're not equipped for, they have basically no chance of getting useful help with it -- and Brennan doesn't like to keep players trapped at punitively low levels for longer than it takes to make a point.
ALL THAT BEING SAID! Breakdowns below the cut. This one got LONG.
La Contesse Madelaine d'Artois
We have her clan confirmed as Toreador, which I have been informed was EXTREMELY SUPER OBVIOUS long before anyone said it. (I am... very intrigued by the decision to not list clans on character cards; more on that later!) sidebar: the Toreador bane in VtM 5e is incredible and I was shrieking with laughter when it actually came up onscreen. MECHANICAL PENALTIES FROM THE AIRBNB JUST BEING UGLY. Oh my god. I need to play one.
We also have it confirmed that her predator type is Siren, which was... also extremely super obvious before Brennan said it in the second AP! This makes her mechanically hot and gives her a potential complication to the tune of an obsessed ex.
Her disciplines are all totally in line with her clan and predator type, nothing needing to be explained there: two Auspex, one Celerity, three totally unsurprising Presence. I think Awe and Premonition are the only discipline powers she's mentioned using, but I could be wrong. (Note that there was the opportunity to diversify into Fortitude from her predator type, which would have been nice for her survivability -- Madelaine is a squish -- but Siobhan obviously knows what this character is about.)
Fun merits and flaws! The two things screaming for my attention are Enduring Bond (READ THE BLOOD BOND PAGE IF YOU HAVEN'T) and Stigmata; so she's really good at enthralling people by feeding them her blood, and also she's going to start bleeding from the hands, feet, and forehead when she hits Hunger 4. I am so normal about both of these facts and can be trusted to know them.
Ingénue -- SHE IS SO YOUNG AND SMALL 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺
Mawla 2 -- she's either got two vampiric sugar daddies or one slightly noteworthy one. I believe she's mentioned calling her sire a few times, so that's going to be fun when that happens!
Prestation Debts -- she owes somebody a meaningful favor.
Side Hustler, Check the Trunk -- just useful to have, I think.
ETA: and I hit post immediately before realizing something fucking HUGE, because of course I did -- Madelaine physically cannot eat blood from outside her preferred prey group, which is the motherfucking VENTRUE bane. I think this is Inherited Bane. I think Siobhan has some HUGE off-public-character-sheet secrets. Again.
Mitch "Darkness Man" Frederick
Clan: Nosferatu, helpfully stated by Murph right up front; this is where the Repulsive flaw is coming from, just straight off the bat.
We can also determine that his predator type is definitely Alleycat, based on his access to Celerity and Criminal Contacts -- it's interesting to me that they're not displaying the Humanity tracker on anyone's sheet, actually, but he starts out with an automatic penalty there. Which, you're already throwing all your ability to pass and your non-Intimidation social rolls out the window by going Nosferatu, might as well?
Disciplines are straightforward -- Obfuscate and Potence from his clan, Celerity from his predator style. Has he used any powers? I don't think he has -- someone correct me if I'm wrong! It doesn't look like he invested super heavily there, either; I'm sure Murph spent all his XP, but I'm wondering whether we're seeing everything he spent it on? Or maybe he's saving up for something?
Tempered Will -- and, I mean, also, clearly he spent some of it on THE MOST MURPH ABILITY EVER.
Zealotry -- this might immediately be one of my favorite merits in the game? It's so hilarious.
Shunned -- well, HELLO, backstory hook! This is not just "generally unliked," this is "truly and genuinely fucking pissed off a specific sect and now they're trying to GET you." Which... seems very plausible tbqh.
Also Side Hustler and Check the Trunk, just like Madelaine -- we're really steering into the Idiot Batman thing here. (That single, solitary dot in Intelligence. My god.)
HJ Wingstreet
Clan: Ventrue, confirmed and also SUPER SUPER OBVIOUS.
Predator type: okay, so that "Dark Secret: Masquerade Breacher" flew by fast enough on first viewing for me to have had him down as scene queen, but hold onto your fucking butts: I think Masquerade Breacher + Prey Exclusion = consensualist. Which also absolutely fits with what we've seen him doing, actually, and... man, there are some FUN potential fracture lines in this group!
Disciplines: the Ventrue/consensualist-compliant spread of Dominate, Fortitude, Presence, and then the TREMENDOUS GODDAMN MYSTERY that is those two dots in Protean. Where is he getting Protean? I am reasonably sure it's possible for Beardsley to have bought that with their XP, but I am also reasonably sure that out-of-clan disciplines are pricey and there's a lot of other stuff here that also looks expensive? I'm just blatantly speculating here, but I'm not exactly going to have a heart attack from surprise if "Dark Secret: Diablerie" pops up on his sheet at some point... I also legitimately can't remember if we've seen him use any powers, because episode 1 was a fever dream, so get in the comments I guess.
High Functioning Addict -- really, this and the fact that mechanically defined levels of hotness exist just tell you SO much about this game.
Ugly -- SPEAKING OF WHICH.
Stalkers -- oh, this is going to be a good time. This is going to be SUCH a good time.
Fame 1 -- Beardsley out here making very big choices with this character.
Mask 2 -- it definitely came up that he's passing as his own grandson, so that makes sense.
Resources 3 -- I mean, at least someone brought cash, MADELAINE.
LaVonte Worthy
Clan: also Ventrue, confirmed, unless I'm absolutely losing my marbles (which I don't think I am but work has been nuts today).
Predator type: I think also consensualist, which is absolutely fucking nuts, but does fully make sense with what we've seen so far.
Disciplines -- okay, someone needs to sit Lou down and double check his work, I think, because even at basic character creation he should have at least one more dot than this from his predator type? But otherwise, standard Ventrue stuff, I don't believe he's used any powers, but... again, fever dream.
Minor Boon -- interesting!!! (Did Brennan give everyone a backstory hook for free? What the fuck.)
Prestation Debts -- interesting chain of owing and being owed being implied here, actually! Ditto for Retainer 1.
Eat Food -- this is SUCH an interesting choice and I don't know specifically why Lou picked it, but I'm intrigued.
Risk Taker -- ... I'm sure Lou Wilson being mechanically incentivized to do insane shit is going to go super normal and fine. I'm sure that will not create any problems whatsoever.
Resources 3 -- wow, is there very possibly a serious power differential baked into this group right now, actually, if HJ and LaVonte ever have a reason to want to hold the line against the other four.
Note also that Lou is sitting on an INSANE number of unspent XP, so I would look for a huge power jump from him next episode!
Zaeth Bondana
Clan -- Brujah, confirmed. Man! Everyone's clans are so clear and kind of obvious at first sight so far! I'm sure that will definitely continue!
Predator type -- okay, cats and kittens, this is where it gets fucking juicy, this is like half the reason I wanted to do this post, because it's right there on his fucking flaw list and Mr. Zac Oyama made a CHOICE with this one. Like. Goddamn. (This is also obviously where he's getting Herd 2.)
Disciplines: Celerity and Presence from Brujah, Animalism from Cleaver. I know we've seen him also use Awe, and I don't think there's been anything else.
I am absolutely positive that he should not have Zeroed without having Mask 2, which unless I blinked at the wrong minute he has not got; I think this is one of two instances of Brennan just letting people take things they don't have the prereqs for but that do kind of make sense.
It's also a wild combination with Fame 1, but I think that's referring specifically to fame within the vampire community.
Also mechanically hot! And illiterate. Again, the CHOICES being made here.
Resources and Retainer are also hilarious things for him to have; I feel like Zac DID specifically choose to just build Daddy's specialest little psychopath here, and that's incredible.
Vesper "Bat Child" Childers
Clan: well, I can't say for certain, but absolutely positively not a fucking Nosferatu. No. Legitimately. There's no way: she doesn't have Repulsive, and her discipline loadout straight doesn't fit. My best guess is that she's an extremely against-type Lasombra? An extremelyagainst-type Hecata is still just about on the table, though, or I think she could potentially also be a caitiff, or this is homebrew bullshit; but she is absolutely, definitively not a Nos. She just looks like that. Because Emily Axford. And I think this is why they actually made the decision to keep clan information off the character cards, because I sense a HUGE shoe about to drop here.
Predator type -- Iron Gullet plus Enemy is saying bagger to me. (This is also, I think, the argument for her being a Hecata -- rules as written, she could have gotten that third dot in Oblivion from being a bagger if she's a Hecata. I don't think she actually is, though, which makes me a little sad, because I am informed no one plays Hecata and I do kind of dig their vibe.)
Disciplines -- so, setting aside caitiff and homebrew bullshit for the moment, she's either a Lasombra who sank XP into Fortitude or a Hecata who sank XP into Potence. And because this is Emily Axford, she's used a SHITLOAD of powers compared to everyone else -- Shadow Cloak, which was kind of a gimme for her, and I believe also Binding Fetter. And Maw of Ahriman, which... I can only assume Brennan thought (CORRECTLY) that it would be hilarious.
Custodian of History: Zoology -- so either Brennan bent the rules to let her take this (almost definitely the case) or that shoe that's about to drop is a motherfucker.
Knowledge Hungry: Zoology -- she's mechanically weak to fun animal facts and I love her.
Folkloric Block: Bells -- this is so cute and funny and I am certain Emily is definitely not planning to destroy us with it.
Ingénue -- it is so funny to me that she and Madelaine both have this. I want to see them both try to roll to blame each other for something.
Linguistics -- makes sense.
Machine Shop -- is this another thing she shouldn't have? I don't see any Haven dots. Weird.
I could not get a screenshot of Zealotry 2, but she has Zealotry 2. She gets to do that TWICE. Amazing. Incredible. No notes. I think I love this game.
happy 20 year anniversary of Neil banging out the tunes!
though every rat is special, it's a wonderful and unusual thing for their accomplishments to be remembered and cherished by so many people so many years later. we're all so fortunate to know about the rat who banged out the tunes!
thank you to all the people who sent me reference photos of their beloved rats for this piece!!! credits under the cut!
@joe-spookyy Ben and Socrates
@gooseontheinternet Chamomile and Beefy
@runawayy-rat Bartholomäus and Emo
@theunholystromboli Macrogryphosaurus, Xenoceratops, and Graciliraptor
@techlecticwtch Solas and Dorian
@merlyn-bane Roslyn and Rizzoli
@logictoinsanity Luna and Buttercup
@hagsthehag Orphie, Psyche, Calypso, Ariadne, and Eury
he’s made more than one of these and they’re making me insane because for two days i haven’t been able to stop saying ‘i knew it! he’s a vampire! i knew it! i knew it! he’s a vampire! i knew it! he’s’ (x)
Funniest thing u could do is make Danny come out twice like mom...dad... I'm a ghost and his parents being like oh it's okay we still love u at least ur not evil and fucked up like phantom and Danny is like haha..yeah! Yup! Alright. And chickens out of fully coming out until he's forced to actually reveal he's phantom and then blue screens his parents. Peak fiction to me
somewhere out there is a short piece of fanwork (THAT I CANNOT FIND AND HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO FIND NO MATTER HOW HARD I LOOK) where Danny comes out/is outed as a half-ghost and people are pretty ok with it and he's thinking he's in the clear as people decide its fine, probably.
And then the school gets attacked and he turns into Phantom and back again.
Everyone is looking at him funny and he has to be all "what did you think being a half-ghost means?"
Kinger mentions Scratch having a brain tumor and then the next line is about Scratch wanting to build something but Kinger not remembering what.
In this same episode we get car imagery associated with Jax and Gangle again, Gangles being the ending of her personalized torture scene.
I wonder if this is a nod to the idea that maybe Scratch’s intention with AI was to build something like the circus for people’s minds to go if they’re terminally ill/dying. Car accidents are a pretty common cause of death all things considered, so it wouldn’t be a reach to say Jax and Gangle each got hurt in one (Jax was driving, Gangle was walking and got hit (possible suicide attempts on either end as well))
Ragatha seems like she was with other people when she put the headset on, and given her family’s wealth it’s possible that they paid for her to participate in this expensive treatment.
And then everyone’s minds are either currently in the circus with their bodies being cared for at hospitals (and abstraction is them possibly dying irl), or the characters we see are copies of their minds (and they’re bodies are already dead.)
good to see something, at least, but the phrasing of the rollback announcement is hardly reassuring. i honestly don't care too much what they do, though, so long as they do not hide any interactions from the OP. that was the catastrophically bad element of this and if they do all the other silly bullshit without that the site will b salvageable
make sure everything 'downstream' of you still shows up in your notifs
add an 'all replies/all reblogs' view in the notes
fix all the obviously idiotic oversights like breaking blocks and reblog control
three steps that are a prerequisite for making whatever change some exec is clearly pushing for without annihilating this site's good qualities @staff @changes
even before i lived in a place with a massive population of feral cats decimating the wildlife i had read the studies and knew the data said that TNR did not work and we need to be trapping and euthanizing feral cats but now that i’ve lived in a place where there are an enormous number of feral cats it’s like, inconceivable to me that anyone supports TNR, not just for the health of the world but for the sake of the fucking cats
nobody will even acknowledge it not even in most conservation circles. We have a solution to a massive, massive problem that is more humane, cheaper, easier, takes less time, prevents animal suffering, and saves valuable members of our disappearing ecosystem. And nobody is even willing to theoretically acknowledge that it exists outside of a few very small circles.
it works. It works. It is better for the cats. It’s better for the cats. Living in a place where you cannot drive 10 minutes without seeing a new roadkill cat almost every single day really makes you think about how much suffering could have been prevented if we just dealt with the problem we have created. It’s not a pleasant way to go, being hit by a car. Or being ripped apart by a predator, or eating a poison, or starving to death, of dying of an infection, or an illness, or any of the hundred thousand ways an animal in the wild passes without human intervention. Euthanasia is simply falling asleep. It is fucking wild to me that saying you think we should take responsibility for our mistakes and ensure that cats fall asleep peacefully instead of capturing them and then hurling them back out into the world SPECIFICALLY in order to allow them to die in agony makes people treat you like a fucking serial killer.
And if you don’t care about cats dying in agony do you care about the world around you? There’s a species of bird we only know ever existed because someone’s cat brought home our only example. That’s horrific. We’ve lost so much biodiversity because we simply won’t listen to the research, which again, has proven that TNR is not effective.
https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/UW468 “How Effective and Humane Is Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) for Feral Cats?”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6523511/ “A Case of Letting the Cat out of The Bag—Why Trap-Neuter-Return Is Not an Ethical Solution for Stray Cat (Felis catus) Management” (also has a thousand references attached that are handy)
Not a reference so much as the human society actively admitting that TNR does nothing to decrease population, actively contributes to harming wildlife, and doesn’t actually help the cats in any way, just reduces some of the nuisance behavior that people complain about: https://www.animalhumanesociety.org/resource/real-impacts-trap-neuter-return
Unscientific from here on out as i don’t feel like trying to find the studies i read in like January of last year:
https://hahf.org/awake/the-trouble-with-trap-vaccinate-neuter-return/ “The Trouble With Trap-Neuter-Re (Abandon!) from the hillsborough animal health foundation, articles also link to studies
https://abcbirds.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-Evidence-Against-TNR.pdf from the american bird conservancy, has scientific articles quoted.
Even More Sources on TNR being non-viable and ways that cats are impacting the world from birds to *hawai’i’s monk seals*
Animal Emergency and Referral Center of Minnesota. (2022, October 26). Indoor cats vs. outdoor cats. Animal Emergency & Referral Center of Minnesota. https://aercmn.com/indoor-cats-vs-outdoor-cats/
Campbell, V. (2017, January 25). The Obituary of the Stephens Island Wren. All About Birds. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/the-obituary-of-the-stephens-island-wren/
Castillo, D., & Clarke, A. L. (2003). Trap/neuter/release methods ineffective in controlling domestic cat “colonies” on public lands. Natural Areas Journal, 23(3).
Coe, S. T., Elmore, J. A., Elizondo, E. C., & Loss, S. R. (2021). Free-ranging domestic cat abundance and sterilization percentage following five years of a trap–neuter–return program. Wildlife Biology, 2021(1). https://doi.org/10.2981/wlb.00799
del Hoyo, J., Collar, N., Kirwan, G. M., & Sharpe, C. J. (2022, October 25). Guadalupe storm-petrel (Hydrobates Macrodactylus), version 1.2. Birds of the World. https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/guspet/cur/introduction
Dickman, C. R., & Newsome, T. M. (2015). Individual hunting behaviour and prey specialisation in the house cat Felis catus: Implications for conservation and management. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 173, 76–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2014.09.021
Edge. (2019, June 19). Guadalupe storm-petrel. EDGE of Existence. https://www.edgeofexistence.org/species/guadalupe-storm-petrel/
Galbreath, R., & Brown, D. (2004). The tale of the lighthouse-keeper’s cat: Discovery and extinction of the Stephens Island wren (Traversia lyalli). Notornis, 51(4).
Hawai’i Department of Land and Natural Resources. (2025). Feral cats. Feral Cats. https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-profiles/feral-cats/#:~:text=Feral%20cats%20on%20islands%20have,kill%20approximately%202.4%20billion%20birds.
Loss, S. R., Will, T., & Marra, P. P. (2013). The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States. Nature Communications, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2380
McGregor, H., Legge, S., Jones, M. E., & Johnson, C. N. (2015). Feral cats are better killers in open habitats, revealed by animal-borne video. PLOS ONE, 10(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133915
Medina, F. M., Bonnaud, E., Vidal, E., Tershy, B. R., Zavaleta, E. S., Josh Donlan, C., Keitt, B. S., Corre, M., Horwath, S. V., & Nogales, M. (2011). A global review of the impacts of invasive cats on Island Endangered Vertebrates. Global Change Biology, 17(11), 3503–3510. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02464.x
National Research Council. (1992, January 1). Scientific Bases for the Preservation of the Hawaiian Crow. U.S. National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235935/
NOAA. (2024, August 29). Toxoplasmosis and its effects on Hawaiʻi Marine Wildlife. NOAA Fisheries. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/pacific-islands/endangered-species-conservation/toxoplasmosis-and-its-effects-hawaii-marine
Read, J. L., Dickman, C. R., Boardman, W. S., & Lepczyk, C. A. (2020). Reply to Wolf et al.: Why trap-neuter-return (TNR) is not an ethical solution for Stray Cat Management. Animals, 10(9), 1525. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10091525
Reed, L. (2022). The effects of free-roaming cats on native wildlife populations. Wildlife Rehabilitation Bulletin, 40(1), 17–21. https://doi.org/10.53607/wrb.v40.250
Salano, E. (2024, October 5). Eliciting the effect free roaming cats have on Native Hawaiian wildlife using stable isotope analysis. UKnowledge. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/biology_etds/103/
Steele, J. H., Thorpe, S. A., & Turekian, K. K. (2009). Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences. Academic Press.
science says it’s long past time to stop prolonging the suffering of feral cats, for the sake of the people, the native wildlife, and the goddamn cats themselves.
I was at a friend's house to check on carcasses I had macerating in his yard. A little grey cat ran up to me, yelling her head off in friendliness and wanting nothing more than to be pet. I had nothing to give her but let my friend know he should catch her since she was so friendly. I am ashamed to admit I didn't give her much thought beyond that, finishing my work and giving her a last pet before going home.
My friend told me how he'd seen her before but she always vanished before he could catch her. He works far too many hours and is always tired so he couldn't prioritize catching this cat.
Three months pass with no sign of her. I go back with my partner to check on carcasses and this same little grey cat appears. This time, however, a tooth has been snapped off and her tongue is so badly cut that she can't keep it in her mouth. She was thin and dirty and screaming to please be given some food.
This time I couldn't look away. I asked my friend's girlfriend if I could borrow a cat carrier. She loaned me one and a tin of wet food that the grey cat willingly followed into the carrier. She didn't care at all about being put into the carrier - all she wanted was a hand on her. She'd arch up against the top just so my hand would rest on her back for a moment.
We drove through rush hour traffic to the only shelter still open. We knew we couldn't keep her and I couldn't stand the thought of putting her back out on the streets to die slowly.
The shelter couldn't take her. Her ear was clipped so she was a "community cat" and outside their ability to help. They tried desperately to offer alternatives to me as I cried over her carrier, knowing I couldn't take her home but also that if I didn't I couldn't live with the thought of her back on the streets.
I made a Hail Mary call to a local friend who is very connected in our city. They didn't have my number saved but answered all the same to hear me sobbing about a cat I'd found and to please help me find a place for her. Please. If I don't find something then she'll be alone on the streets again to die.
My friend came through. I could keep the cat in their garage overnight and in the morning my friend would be back in the city and could find someone to help the cat.
The shelter folk gave me a crate and some food - their hands were tied but they didn't want to leave me with nothing. They were good people doing the best they could in their own system. Community cats were ones they weren't allowed to "waste" resources on. Ostensibly they'd been dealt with and their fate decided. There was nothing the shelter folks were allowed to do for them.
I took the cat to my friend's garage. She was settled into a crate on towels, happy as a clam to be warm and safe. This was a cat made to be loved and to love, as she immediately began trying to groom one of my friend's roommates. He stayed in the garage with her, giving her food and water and in exchange having no say on whether she was in his lap or not. She was always in his lap.
Nobby Nobbs (so named for the only other character known to man that is as scrungly as she is) was then formally adopted by my friend. Her tongue has healed, her fur remains scrungly, and she's every bit the rabid love bug I suspected her to be when she came to me yelling to be pet.
She's a TNR cat. Someone thought they were doing her a kindness in that and if nothing else she didn't add kittens to the world but that doesn't negate the pain she suffered before I found her - the broken teeth, the lacerated tongue, the ulcerated cheeks, the flea-bald patchiness of her coat.
I say this as someone who adores this cat and has the privilege to see her loved and cherished: I wish she'd never had to suffer what she did. I wish people were alright making the harder call that leads to less misery on the side of the cats.
TNR is a polite fiction, nothing more. Just so the humans can pretend they've done right by the same cats they're letting loose to die miserably somewhere else. As long as the humans don't see it it's fine.
The shelter folks told me she's a community cat and that I could take her home and release her by my house. Then I could feed her myself and keep up with her and know where she was! I could still keep her, after a fashion.
I am not proud of how I snarled back that I would never exchange a quick death for a slow one. I would be giving her a different funeral plot, not giving her a life. Even near me she'd be just as vulnerable to the innumerable predators that find cats quite delicious, let alone cars and poisons and the other cruelties humans practice on stray cats.
She's the second stray cat I've met that when I held them the cat melted in my arms, purring and so desperately wanting to be loved. The first cat I was able to trap and take to a local shelter only to find when I called to check on him a day later that his health had been so terrible, so beyond help, that he'd been put down. All the love in that tiny body lost because the people I lived beside didn't care enough to trap the cats they had.
My partner was asleep. I woke her up to crawl into her arms and sob, my heart breaking for the stupidity of the humans who hadn't cared enough to grant this poor little cat the chance to be either an indoor cat, loved and cared for, or to grant him a quick death long before I met him. I've other stories of the cats they kept around, essentially feeding the poor souls to the predatory birds and wandering dogs that frequented our area.
TNR doesn't work. It is a lie humans tell ourselves so we can pretend we haven't failed these animals on a massive scale. Cats are invasive and cause massive harm in their turn. It is humanity who needs to deal with this crisis, this horror we've made, and I pray one day we look it square in the face and vow to make it right.
“My favourite thing was a bunch of people made a giant sign that said “How am I going to be an octopus about this?” and held it up during Pompeii at all the right times and it distracted me enough to sing “octopus” instead by accident.”
combining multiple recent fixations I think it'd be really cute to take a girlthing that's normally really proper and reserved and put it in a chuuni type outfit. like goth dress, eyepatch, horns and/or cat ears headband, edgy makeup, and then as many accessories as you can find. and also, give it a long list of chuuni lines and phrases (possibly on a flashcard) and then whenever it says any of them (or does anything sufficiently chuuni) give it a reward. be sure to follow a proper variable schedule with randomized decreasing chance of candy. and then go out and do errands or a walk with it like this with the chuuni phrase routine running and see how long before it accidentally says something really chuuni to a stranger. I think this would be very cute and good.
Also like to point out that when her mother says “I was your mother much upon these years that you are now a maid,” (translation: I had you when I was your age) you have to remember her father’s words: “earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she,” (translation: all the other children died.) The whole plot point of Juliet being an only child is explained by her mother being a Margaret Beaufort type who had her first child too young and it damaged her past the point of being able to bear more children.
Margaret Beaufort died in 1509. She was a major player in the Wars of the Roses, the swirling on-again-off-again civil wars that consumed England from 1455-1487. Romeo and Juliet was written and first performed in the early 1590s. Your average English person of Shakespeare’s day would probably have had at least a vague understanding of who she was and what happened to her, because she was a key figure in recent history and was still getting passed around as a cautionary tale.
There are two great problems with what happened to Margaret (and that her parents are trying to do to Juliet). One is easy for modern people to spot (but was also a common response back in her own day). And that’s the moral implications of what was done to her. She was too young to be married, and it was horrifying that she was forced into it so young. Every one of the adults around her either acted immorally or failed to protect her. They were wrong. This is what modern people see, and it’s important to remember that people back in her day mostly agreed with it. You’re supposed to think it’s fucked up! When girls were married that young (and it didn’t happen often!) it was a formality 99% of the time. It was for dynastic or financial reasons (the girl has lots of money and/or land and/or a title that her husband wants), but the “couple” don’t consummate their marriage for years. And it’s not just that they would have separate bedrooms. They might not even live in the same country until the girl was in her late teens and physically and mentally mature enough to bear and raise kids. Hell, a lot of times they didn’t even meet until the girl was older! They had this thing called “proxy marriage” where you would have two separate ceremonies, in two separate places, with each party saying their vows separately, one in one city and the other in a different one. So, yeah, sure, the girl was technically married at 12, but she didn’t actually meet her “husband” in person until she was 17 and they didn’t start sleeping together until she was 20. That was a thing they did.
The other problem, the one that modern people don’t notice, is dynastic. See, marriage wasn’t generally because you loved someone. It was because you had the resources to support a family, and you or your family wanted to pool those resources with someone. It’s about “our family has these resources, and we want that to continue.” It’s about continuity across generations. It’s about making sure that your children and grandchildren have the best possible resources to survive and thrive, whether those resources are land or a trade or a title or money or whatever. In order for this to work, you have to have kids! The family and the family’s resources depend on the married couple having children. If the couple doesn’t have children, the marriage is a failure. And that failure affects not only the couple, but both families. This is a really big problem. And you can’t have just one kid to pass on the family name, because half of all kids die in early childhood. If you want to be safe, you need several kids, to be sure at least one will survive to adulthood (when they can marry and pass on the family name and resources.
You know what happens when a girl has her first pregnancy too young? She is very likely to either die in childbirth, or have complications that destroy her future fertility. Just like Margaret Beaufort. Just like Juliet’s mother. In other words, the marriage is a failure, not just for her, but also for her family, and her husband (who can’t divorce her, it’s not allowed except in extremely rare circumstances), and her husband’s family. So even the people who didn’t have a moral problem with adult men having sex with pubescent girls had a practical problem with girls married too young because you are very likely to destroy the entire purpose of the marriage by doing it. As Shakespeare reminds us in the play through Juliet’s mother having been married too young and only having one child.
Shakespeare is telling us “yeah, this is fucked up. but even if you’re the kind of awful person who doesn’t think girls marrying too young is morally wrong, it’s also a problem for practical and dynastic reasons, don’t forget that by doing this wrong thing you are very likely to destroy what you most want out of it.”
another thing i noticed, the year my local community shakespeare theater did r&j, and i made the costumes so i got to watch the show every night: part of why capulet is telling paris, take your time, get to know each other, no rush, is that he still has his nephew tybalt as his heir. as long as tybalt is in the picture, there is no pressure on juliet to go further with paris, than get acquainted. once tybalt is killed, then suddenly capulet needs an heir, he needs a husband for juliet, now, this week. (the role of capulet is best given to the actor in the company that can do over the top apoplexy, you need to believe his urgency comes at least in part by how clearly he could drop dead any moment from giving himself a stroke)
i feel like this play is often taught in middle schools as if it was somehow relevant to, or about, teen hormone storms. really it's got more to do with the social structures around family and inheritance. leaving that context out makes it confusing, why is capulet suddenly flipping from nice dad to evil dad?
I've been thinking about this play a lot lately. I really wanna highlight that Lord Capulet asks Paris to wait and get to know her, and to woo her, while Tybalt lives. While Tybalt is alive, Juliet has something of a reprieve, and her wellbeing as his only child matters more to Capulet. But once Tybalt has died, the gloves come off. Lord Capulet was worried about his daughter's wellbeing when he felt he had the space to care, but as soon as his dynasty is at stake, as soon as this becomes larger than Juliet's happiness, his consideration for her health and mental wellbeing get thrown away. Which also is due in part to the fact that Capulet's family is implicated in a brawl that has left several dead after the Prince's family EXPLICITLY told the Capulets and Montagues to stop fighting or face dire consequences, AND Capulet is trying to align himself with the Prince's family by marrying Juliet off to County Paris, a relative of the Prince. So to Lord Capulet, it is now less important that Juliet is happy, and more important than he reminds the Prince of his loyalty via this marriage and aligns his family with the Prince's before it's too late. And he believes this must be done, at any cost...until Juliet kills herself. And that's when he realises the devastating cost of treating his family as chess pieces. He realises his wrongdoing far too late.
Seriously Romeo and Juliet is HEAVY on the dynastic politics, and I think you can't fully understand the play without understanding how that all works, especially because the impact of dynastic marriages on women and girls is like. THE POINT of the play
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