Currently Stopped at Submas Brainrot Station

She/her, gray-ace lesbian. Fandoms may (and probably will) oscillate wildly. I have various writing projects going on that I may or may not post about. Icon credit @spectra-bear

[pokemonblack3white3]

Look the cresselia darkrai situation I have invented in my mind. Darkrai is so obsessed with martyring itself and the pain of never being able to get close to anybody but cresselia is different she directly counteracts darkrai's power she can't have nightmares. And darkrai will always fall in love with her. But in the end it hurts too much and darkrai is convinced that it is too much and will find uxie again to wipe the memories of all those bad dreams away and even then again it will always find its way back to cresselia unaware every time that they've met countless times before. And darkrai found a way to become cresselia's own reoccurring nightmare why is she never enough. But she'll always welcome darkrai back with open arms.

[stuckinapril]

when James Baldwin said I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive

[stuckinapril]

when James Baldwin said to be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So I am forced to be an optimist. I am forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive.

[commiefaggoth]

so embarrassing to watch yourself become obsessed with a character that feels tailor made for you specifically to become obsessed with. feels like i fell into a trap made just for me. like damn they got me. those are all the things i like and go crazy for

[lowerroad]

it's a good thing mensah is already married with kids by the start of all systems red because can you imagine trying to make a new longterm relationship work when you have to explain to potential partners that murderbot will be there. no not romantically or sexually. but it is there.

[kedreeva]

Kinda grim question... is failure to thrive in animals the same thing as failure to thrive in human children or is different? Or do we just... did we just decide culling babies is a bad thing?

Breeding livestock animals and selectively culling to improve stock or end suffering is completely different than practicing eugenics on humans, yes.

I don't know enough about human baby medical conditions to say if failure to thrive is caused by the same things as in quail, but it seems likely that there's at least some overlap.

With humans, we have advanced medical care to work to fix some problems (like organ transplants for organ failures) and the ability to reduce or eliminate suffering (like pain medication), as well as (eventually) the ability to explain the situation to the person experiencing it. None of these things are available to a 1 week old quail. Hard culling it IS the kindest treatment available, on top of being the most practical consideration for the improvement of the flock.

People having human babies are not doing so in an attempt to improve the stock of the human race, they're doing it to make a family. This is not the goal of raising livestock. Most livestock is being raised for food (or use, like riding horses or shearing sheep etc), and most humans don't participate in cannibalism, nor do most people feed their dead to animals. The cultures that do participate in these things still aren't raising humans specifically for this purpose.

Lastly, humans DO sometimes make the call to end a life before nature would, though we don't think of this as culling. Abortions do happen where something has gone very wrong with the fetus to where it won't survive, and a choice must be made, particularly in instances where the mother's life is in danger. Even a healthy fetus could endanger a mother's life and a worse choice must be made. Abortions happen for many other reasons, too, by the choice of the mother (or in situations where she may be unable to make the call, the other parent, a relative, or a doctor). We also have (in some places) protocols for allowing patients to end their own lives in hospital settings if they choose- DNRs are a thing, but we also have euthanasia cocktails that terminal patients can choose in order to take control of their own suffering and end. But these are almost always welfare considerations made for (and by) the people they concern (the mother, the patient) rather than a measure of selective breeding.

I was going to put this into the tags but it belongs in the post. Please do not attack Anon over this ask. This is actually a really common struggle people have when it comes to culling livestock, because they understand "we don't kill human babies for this" and they often believe pet animals aren't culled (many of them ARE, though you might not see that side of things, but the runts are often culled and pet animals experiencing severe medical problems are often euthanized for a variety of reasons), so they have a hard time compartmentalizing livestock from the similar situations they're familiar with already. This person has asked from the other side ("it makes sense when you say it for animals, why don't we do that for ourselves") but the conflict of information is the same. It's a normal consideration to go through, for some, and I prefer that people feel comfortable enough to ask me, rather than struggle or come to a conclusion that will bring harm (either "we should do this for humans" or "we shouldn't do this for animals"). This is also a COMMON tactic among ARA groups ("we wouldn't do this to humans, what gives us the right to do this to animals" welfare concerns the animal can't understand, next question), and one that's easy to fall prey to if you haven't learned better before encountering it. Asking is always better than ignorance.

[a-voltage]

Really well put. After following your posts about the quail, I'd been thinking over the same thing. I can see the logical steps that would lead people to doing horrific things. I knew it felt wrong, but I couldn't put a counter-argument into words.

The missing piece is just like that Terry Pratchett quote, " It starts with treating people like things". People are not livestock. I mean, obviously. But then that leads to the question of "why do we do this to animals then?"

As a city-slicker who hasn't had a huge amount to do with livestock, I really appreciate you speaking on the thought process that goes on as a breeder and carer.

As you say, I think that because humans are so social and wired to pack-bond with everything, there's definitely a tendency to assume that all other animals are just like us. It's easy to anthropomorphize instead of taking into account the animal's actual needs when you don't have as much first-hand experience.

[kedreeva]

Livestock are not things, either, but the management of them does absolutely fall into the "they're not humans, either" category. Anthropomorphizing is a HUGE PROBLEM when dealing with animals in general, but with livestock especially purely due to the numbers produced.

The thing I didn't mention, and something that people rarely consider from this perspective, is that nature culls. In the wild, FTT animals will suffer and die slowly. They might be lucky enough to be caught by a predator and ended violently but swiftly. Animals not suited for their environment will suffer and die off at some point. Sick animals will suffer until their body gives out and they die. Injured animals will suffer, often rotting on their feet, before succumbing to the injury. If they make it, they may recover fully or they may be lame in a way that causes them to suffer hunger or pain for the rest of their lives with no way to abate it. It will probably mean their (slow, painful) death at some point. Predators may assist with swifter but violent ends. Even healthy animals may die to accidents, predators, etc. Survival of the fittest and all that. This is natural, sure, but also horrific. The two are not mutually exclusive. And it's necessary, for this balance to exist, or animals would overwhelm their environments and none of them would get to live.

In an artificial environment (ie, domestically-kept animals), humans are acting as nature, and I feel it cannot be stated enough that we are far far far FAR kinder about it all than nature will ever be. Well-kept domestic animals experience a life of luxury that their wild ancestors could never hope to have dreamed of. They get rich foods, endless clean water, a safe place to live and sleep, health care as needed, and a swift, gentle end. Their progeny will produce progeny which will produce progeny which will produce progeny, into time everlasting as far as they're concerned. For creatures whose goal in life is to pass on their genes, that's a pretty damn successful life

But the other side of that is that the domestic animals (as a whole) ARE wildly more successful at reproducing, and those offspring are wildly more successful at surviving, which means there are far more of them than would exist in nature. Humans must act as nature in this case; and this means that responsible keeping involves pruning the animals not suited for the environment they are in (in order to make animals that do not suffer in this environment), gently putting to rest the animals that are suffering (particularly in ways that cannot be healed), and, yes, pruning the excess to feed ourselves, in return.

Humans keeping domestic animals is mutualism. They gain a comfy, stress-free life, success in passing on their genes, and a kind end, and we get food (or company, or in some cases, work). The question "why do we do this to animals" seems a lot sillier a question when you actually consider the animals as the animals they are and what "nature" actually means, and look at what good, responsible breeders are doing, and realize that they usually aren't doing anything "to" animals, but rather "with" them.

[bomberqueen17]

And as kind of a side note, a thing I think that doesn't get said enough about eugenics in humans is that it doesn't work. It seems logical: you can breed a better cow, you should be able to breed a better human.

But the logic breaks down because what makes a human better is impossible to define. A better livestock animal is bred for a small handful of characteristics: more efficient conversion of feed to meat, larger frame, docile temperament, etc. (And most of those are compromises at best.) A better human??? You can breed for height or coloring or muscle mass/body composition. You can even ostensibly breed for temperament but human temperaments are much harder to anticipate. You can't breed for intelligence, for compassion, for moral certitude, for ability to endure stress. None of the things that make humans human are purely heritable traits.

And yet so many people still have this idle belief in the backs of their minds that eugenics is real but it's just immoral for some reason. No it just literally doesn't work.

[greelin]

[GUY WHO HAS THE MANNERISMS OF A NEUROTIC PREY ANIMAL VOICE] yeah i really believe that i am always a pretty calm person. cool. Collected, even

[my-dailydreams]

[rozzed]

why not have the reader re-read a sentence now and then? it won't hurt him....

[derangedrhythms]

To be eaten and to be married to the god might not be so different.

C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

[alivingtypo]

you can pry starting sentences with 'and' or 'but' out of my cold, dead hands

[today-till-tomorrow]

op how does it feel to be the most correct person on earth

[headspacedad]

learn the rules

so that you can break them properly

[angelicdewdrop]

[canonkiller]

but you can't keep holding on like this.

[anistarrose]

It's still cracking me up how they offhandedly confirmed immortal (or immortal-adjacent) Volo in the Pokémon game about fucked-up immortal-adjacent guys, but just, like. About different immortal guys. Completely Volo-unaffiliated immortal guys. There's a very specific and plot-relevant device that granted near-immortality to two (2) guys and one (1) Pokémon... and then, there's also Volo. Yeah, he's also immortal. No, we really don't know why. He just heard Lumiose was the hot new spot for immortals to hang out, and swung by recently. Do the other immortal guys know about him? Unclear. He's just Volo. He's just also there. It's one of the funniest things that GameFreak has ever done.

[millenianthemums]

AU where Akari texts Arceus back

(also please don’t add spoilers i just started playing)

[goldensunset]

i know in my heart of hearts that within the pokémon universe it’s all the really cute popular marketable pokémon that have the most irresponsible trainers. small dog syndrome ramped up to a whole new level. that is not a toy that is a lifelong commitment. ma’am please keep your untrained sylveon in its pokéball inside the store. no that is not a service pokémon it wouldn’t be using moonblast on everything if it was

[goldensunset]

sir! sir!!! your pikachu is decimating the ducklett population at the pond and you aren’t even looking! you are NOT ash ketchum you are NOT gonna catch ‘em all because that involves trade evolutions and you have NO friends!!!

[goldensunset]

ok literally. that palafinstagram mom who posts pictures of her rowlet not understanding it’s displaying distress behaviors making fun of the cool person whose best friend is a solosis or rellor or unown letter f

[warrior-kitty]

if one more middle aged mom tells me that i should’ve kept my raichu a pikachu because ‘she’s much cuter that way’ i’m sending out my full team and throwing hands right there in the starbucks

[dykeferatu]

now i don’t know enough about omegaverse to say anything definitively but from what i have seen it certainly looks like it emulates insects much more than wolves.

[dykeferatu]

like if you’re looking for an animal with strictly defined castes and extensive use of pheromones you are looking for ants i think

[yeehawpim]

I can be the ship and its sailors