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seen from Netherlands
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@paper-revenant
fun fact!! it turns out that now when u make a new blog, tumblr forces you to follow 3-4 people before you can change your icon or modify your blog in any way!! this, of course, means that, yes, some of the "potential bots" many of us have been automatically blocking could have possibly been genuine new users who were only just seconds in to having an account!!! tumblr is literally screwing new users over!!!!
that is the face of a man worried he will be next
Good news, he was not next! In fact, she accepted him as her mate, he learned the crane mating dance and now every year, he artificially inseminates her with crane semen to expand the very endangered crane population. True story.
Sorry, he WHAT? Imagine being this man's boss and having to sit him down like. Listen. Brian. We need you to fuck the bird. You have to act like you're excited about it.
crane husband.....
this is the diametric opposite of all those awful swan wife stories and i love it.
(WalWaPo makes you jump through like three separate hoops before you can read the article, so I will share some of the highlights:
Walnut was born in a species-recovery breeding program in the 1980′s. The program had crane chicks hand-raised by human volunteers, and at that time they did not fully understand the measures necessary make sure that the chicks do not imprint on humans and retain their identity as cranes.
As a result, her keepers believe, Walnut does not recognize other cranes as members of her own species.
It has not been proven that Walnut killed her previous suitors; however, there is a persistent rumor in the white-naped-crane-conservation community that she did.
Because this species is highly endangered, and the gene pool of the captive population is small, it’s pretty important for the survival of her species that Walnut A) mate, and B) not kill a bunch of other cranes.
The actual name of the keeper is Chris Crowe.
They both arrived at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in 2004.
Walnut immediately began paying special attention to Chris--and ignoring the eligible male crane in a nearby enclosure.
Walnut initiated their courtship, performing the opening moves of a mating dance.
Chris realized that if he reciprocated the mating dance, it might be possible to artificially inseminate Walnut with her participation and consent. (The process normally involves restraining the bird.)
It worked!
Chris and Walnut have had five children, who were raised by other crane couples at the facility--sometimes the biological dad and his mate--both because it’s unclear whether Walnut would accept the chicks as her own, and because Chris is not equipped to be a Crane Dad.
However, the Institute provides her with artificial eggs to sit on, and Chris takes his turn looking after them. (This would not work with real eggs because he can’t sit on them properly, but Walnut seems to feel that he is on the job if he just stands over them.)
Chris accepts that he is pretty much married to this bird. White-naped cranes live to be about 60, and they mate for life, so he knows he can’t retire while Walnut is alive. (At the time of the article, Walnut was 36, and Chris 42.)
Legit cannot pick the funniest part of this
she has not been PROVEN to have killed her exes, but there is a PERSISTENT RUMOR (really officers she's simply DEVASTATED, she sobs, wearing a new feather boa unfortunately resembling her most recent deceased husband)
His name is Chris CROWE. (Mrs. Walnut Crane-Crowe?)
the mental images of a whole human man learning and performing the crane mating dance, and "sitting" on artificial eggs so she thinks he's performing his duties as a husband and father (and apparently OBJECTS if he does not?)
"chris, buddy, you gotta marry the possibly-murderous crane lady for the GOOD OF THE SPECIES." (alternately: "chris, my man! good news! we found you a very interested lady! She's 36, she's very spirited and independent, she holds a very important and rare status in her society! ...Is there a downside? WELL...")
chris sits any potential human partners down, like "my love, you must understand before we wed,,, i am already... Attached" (camera drifts wistfully to the above photo) "Lady Walnut and I have an,, Understanding... the relationship is open, but very committed"
just had to explain this post to my father bc he thought my stifled laughter was a signal of illness.
well done, everyone, good game. hit the showers.
Not only is he 'married' to walnut, this has apparently happened SEVERAL times, so he has MULTIPLE crane wives, none of which know about any of his other crane wives. This man is, for some unknown reason, irresistible to cranes
the “this content has been removed for violating Tumblr’s Community Guidelines” notice really adds a lot of flavor to this post and somehow makes it MORE obscene than whatever that actually was
World Heritage Post
cuddling
oh hey that’s me!! if you want to read the paper it’s Osvath & Sima 2014 and focuses on ravens. also yes they are holding feetsies :)
Do you ever find a song with 94 views on youtube that is so fucking good you want to cry because you'll never find another song exactly like it
Goddamn that's good. Also "the cycle of life as a love story" is a rad song concept.
It's available on Bandcamp here if anyone wants to get it there (as well as being on the services linked in the video)!
Please please PLEASE watch this Christmas spot we got in Spain
[video description:
View of a town skyline at dusk in the winter, with the J&B Blended Scotch Whiskey logo superimposed on the picture. A flock of sheep walks from left to right, making baaa sounds, their bells jangling. Some Christmas lights with a star are strung along some telephone poles on the left side of the frame.
Cut to the inside of a house where an older man with white hair is sitting in an armchair reading a paper. His wife comes in and puts her handbag on the side table. She’s on the phone, and quickly moves into another room. A lipstick rolls out of the bag. The older man surreptitiously picks up the lipstick, then sneaks into the bathroom, locks the door, and attempts to apply the lipstick. He is not pleased with the results. He wipes off the lipstick and hides it in a small makeup bag on top of the bathroom mirror cabinet.
Elvis Costello’s song “She” begins to play when the wife walks in, and it plays throughout the video. The first line of the song is “She may be the face I can’t forget,” and as the video goes on we learn why this song is significant to the story being told by the ad.
The older man goes to a small store and buys more makeup. The female shopkeeper gives him an unfriendly glare when he pays for his purchase.
The old man looks at a magazine in his home. He tears out a page about makeup and goes back into the bathroom to experiment with the eyeshadow he bought earlier. He tries the lipstick again and adds some rouge. The result is better, but he’s not quite satisfied.
The man goes to a bus stop. Inside the bus shelter, he minutely examines the eye makeup on the model in an ad on the shelter wall. He jumps away from the ad when another man enters the shelter and sits down. The other man doesn’t seem to have noticed what the older man was doing.
Back in the bathroom, the man experiments with mascara. He likes the result. He puts the lipstick on again, and likes this too. Someone knocks on the door, so he hurriedly wipes off the makeup and hides the makeup bag again.
Scene cuts to the living room, where the man sits in his chair reading the newspaper. He looks over at some family photos. One of them shows the man with his arm around a teenager with short, dark hair.
Scene then cuts to the man’s bedroom. It’s nighttime, and he’s in bed with his sleeping wife. The man sneaks out of bed and back into the bathroom. He puts on all the kinds of makeup he bought: lipstick, rouge, mascara, eyeshadow. He looks at himself in the mirror, all made up, and smiles. Now he’s got it right.
The next day, the man is in his living room, where he hears a car honk outside. He goes and looks out the window. Outside is a group of people greeting each other in the driveway; they are an extended family, and apparently have just arrived at the older man’s house. One of the family members is a young man with short, dark hair. Text superimposed on the screen reads “Alvaro, 26 años,” indicating the name and age of the young man. The scene cuts back inside, where the older man comes away from the window, looking thoughtful.
The family sets the table for Christmas dinner, putting out plates and silverware and lighting candles. The older man goes to Alvaro and gestures with his head. “Come with me.” They go into the bathroom. The older man locks the door, then proceeds to put the makeup on Alvaro with much love and tenderness. The older man is happy with the way Alvaro looks. Alvaro is pleased, too.
Cut back to the dining room, where the rest of the family is laughing and talking together. Conversation suddenly stops and people look up, surprised. The grandfather ushers his grandchild out of the bathroom. She stands nervously in front of her family, her face beautifully done. The family pause, then start to smile. The camera goes close on a man with greying hair and beard. He seems overcome with happy emotion, and seems to be the grandchild’s father.
The camera goes back close on the grandchild, who looks shyly at her family. The name and age superimposed now read “Ana, 26 años.”
A woman with greying short hair stands up and goes to Ana. This apparently is Ana’s mom. She gives Ana a big hug. The mom is crying with happiness and love, and smiles at the grandfather through her tears. The grandfather blinks and seems shy but pleased.
The camera pulls back to show everyone at the table again. The grandfather is standing and leading a toast. Superimposed text reads “La magia no solo está en la Navidad. También está en nosotros.” (The magic isn’t only in Christmas. It’s also in us.)
A series of short close shots. Ana happily raises her glass with everyone else. The grandfather takes his wife’s hand and kisses it. Ana’s dad takes a sip of his whiskey, then Ana’s grandmother goes over and gives Ana a big hug.
There’s a brief shot of a bottle of J&B whiskey, which is on the table with the other dinner things, then the scene cuts to show the grandfather looking at Ana and raising his glass to her, smiling. Ana raises her glass to her grandfather and smiles at him.
Final shot is the J&B logo on a black background with the text “de celebrarnos” (to celebrate us).
/end description]
I cannot actually believe we now live in a world where a whisky company thinks it’s commercially viable to make this ad, and to make it about a grandfather who makes Christmas dinner with a family of very “ordinary looking people into a happy, loving affair, by doing this.
I do not know how to explain how fucking impossible that would have seemed to me twenty years ago when I just realized that possibly, maybe, I wasn’t straight. I cannot explain to you how amazing this is, and how beautiful it is.
This did not just happen, and yes there are people everywhere fighting to take it away but I cannot explain you the change in the overall culture of everything, everywhere that makes this possible.
did you ever consider becoming a literary writer rather than a fantasy writer? w
I don’t think I ever wanted to be anything more than a storyteller and a writer. Other people can decide where the books get shelved.
@eurphrasie That felt rude. Since when is fantasy not literature?!
You know, It’s kind of fitting that It was Sir Terry Pratchett himself who answered this question in an interview, just going to paste this up real fast:
O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?
Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.
O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.
P: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.
O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.
P: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.
Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.
(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.
Have to say I agree with the man.
It’s the casual death threat for me
Rude ass interviewer who also doesn’t know what they’re talking about: “I mean, you’re obviously a clever man, so why bother with this lowly fantasy drivel.”
Sir Terry Pratchett: “I’ll break you in half like a stick.”
@vaysh11 <3
this should be written somewhere in eighty-foot-tall letters of fire, or possibly in very tiny letters on a business-card-sized bit of paper one can hand to someone when they ask that question. Here’s your bit of paper, go away.
That was Our Ter at his best. :)
Comparing the rotations of objects in the Solar System. Just look at them lol.✨🪐
To everyone that's confused, the planet Venus rotates very very slowly, with a single revolution taking about 243 Earth days, and Mercury rotates slowly, but not as slow as Venus.
For the people who are out there “fighting the good fight” and “trying to make fandom a better place,” I have two important questions for you:
1. Is the author dead? x
2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x
What do I mean by those things? Let’s start with #1. The Death of the Author is a type of literary criticism, the extreme cliff notes version of which is that art exists outside of the creator’s life, personal background, and even intentions. I’m using it slightly differently than Barthes intended, but that’s okay, because the author is dead and I’m interpreting his work through my own lens.
In fandom, the author is dead. In fact, the author was never alive in the first place, not really. The author has only ever been the idea of a person, because unlike published fiction, the only thing we know about a fanfic author is that which they choose to tell us about themselves.
Why is that important?
Because it might not be true. Hell, that happens in real life with published authors, who have SSN’s on file with their publishers, who pay taxes on the works they create and have researchable pasts. If the author of A Million Little Pieces could fake everything, why can’t I? Why can’t you? Why can’t the writer of your favorite fic in the whole wide world?
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “you can only write about [sensitive subject] if [sensitive subject] has happened to you personally, otherwise you’re a disgusting monster that deserves to die!!” Or maybe “you can only write [x racial or ethnic group] characters if you’re [x racial or ethnic group] otherwise you’re racist/fetishizing/colonizing!”
You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. I’ve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.
Now, I could tell you that I’m a white-passing Latina whose grandmother was an anchor baby. I could tell you that I speak only English because my family never taught me to speak Spanish, something which I’ve been told is common in the Cuban community, though I only know my own lived experience. I could tell you that I’m mostly neurotypical. I could tell you that I’m covered in surgical scars. I could tell you lots of things.
Are any of these true? Maybe! I could tell you that my brother has severe mental development problems, so uncommon that they’ve never been properly diagnosed, and that he will live the rest of his life in a group home with 24-hour care. Is that true? Am I allowed to write about families struggling with America’s piss-poor services for the handicapped now?
Am I allowed to write about being Cuban? After all, I did just say that I’m Cuban. But is it true? Can I instead write a character that’s Panamanian? Maybe I really am Panamanian, not Cuban. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. Maybe I’m really French Canadian. Should we require people to post regular selfies? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me speaking Arabic, and I’ve been told that I look Syrian. What’s stopping me from making a blog that claims that I am Syrian? Can you even really tell someone’s race and ethnicity from a photo?
Am I allowed to write about being a teenager? Am I allowed to write about being a college student? Am I allowed to write about being an “adulty” adult? Can I write a character who’s 40? 50? 60? How old am I?
All of this is to say: you can’t base what someone is or is not “allowed” to write about on a background that may or may not be real. No matter how good your intentions. And I get it - this usually comes from a place of well-meaning. You’re trying to protect marginalized groups by stopping privileged people from trampling all over experiences that they haven’t suffered. I get that. It’s a very noble thought. But you can’t require a background check for every fic that you don’t like.
If you say “you can only write about rape if you’re a rape victim,” then one of three things will happen:
Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment
Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences
People who aren’t survivors will say “yeah sure this happened to me” just to get people to shut up
Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??
So now let’s get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?
If your intention is to protect marginalized people from being trampled upon, stop and assess if your boot is the one that’s now stamping on their face. Find your baby! Is your baby in the bathwater? Which is to say: find the goal that you’re advocating for. Now assess. Are you making the problem worse for the people you’re trying to protect? Does that rape victim really feel better, now that you’ve harassed and stalked them in the name of making rape victims feel safe?
Let’s say you read a fic that contains explicit sex between a 16 year old and a 17 year old. Is this okay? Would it be okay if the writer was 15? 16? 17? Should teenagers be barred from writing about their own lives, and should teenagers be banned from exploring sexuality in a fictional bubble, instead of hookup culture? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about their experiences as a teenager? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about being raped at a party as a teenager? Is it okay for a 30 year old? How about a 40 year old? Is it okay so long as it isn’t titillating? Is it okay if taking control of the narrative allows the writer to re-conceptualize their trauma as something they have control over? Is it okay if their therapist told them that writing is a safe creative outlet?
Is your author dead?
Is your baby in the bathwater?
Now let’s take a hardline approach: no fanfiction with characters who are under 18 years old. None. Is the 16 year old who really loves Harry Potter and wants to read/write about characters their own age better off? Should they be banned from writing? Should they be forced to exclusively read and write (adult) experiences that they haven’t lived? Will they write about teens anyway? Should they have to share it in secret? Should 16 year olds be ashamed of themselves? Should we just throw in with the evangelicals and say that the only answer is abstinence, both real and fictional?
Let’s say that no rape is allowed in fiction, at all. None. What happens to all the hurt/comfort fics where a character is raped and then receives the support and love that they deserve, slowly heal, and by the end have found themselves again? Are you helping rape victims by banning these stories? Are you helping rape victims by stripping their agency away, by telling them that their wants and their consent doesn’t matter?
Is your baby in the bathwater?
Fandom is currently being split in two: on one side, the people who want to make fandom a “safer” place by any means necessary, even if that means throwing out all of the marginalized groups they say they want to protect - and on the other, people who are saying “if you throw out that bathwater, you’re throwing the baby out too.”
The whole point of fandom is to be able to explore all kinds of ideas from the safety and comfort of a computer screen. You can read/write things that fascinate you, disgust you, titillate you, or make your heart feel warm. This is true of all fiction. People who want to read about rape and incest and extreme violence and torture can go pick up a copy of Game of Thrones from the bookstore whenever they want. Sanitizing fandom just means holding a community of people who are primarily not male, not straight, not cis, or some combination of those three, to higher and stricter standards than straight white cis male authors and creators all over the world.
There is nothing you can find on AO3 that you can’t find in a bookstore. Any teenager can go check out Lolita, or ASOIAF, or Flowers in the Attic, or Stephen King’s It, or Speak, or hundreds of other books that have adult themes or gratuitous violence or graphic sex. The difference is that AO3 has warnings and tags and allows people to interact only with the types of work that they want to, and allows people to curate their experiences.
Are these themes eligible to be explored, but only in the setting of something produced/published? Books, movies, television, studio art, music - all of these fields have huge barriers to entry, and they’re largely controlled by wealthy cishet white men. Is it better to say that only those who have the right connections to “make it” in these industries should be allowed to explore violence or sexuality or any other so-called “adult” theme?
Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?
Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?
Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if he’s a trans man? What if they’re NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male character’s perspective because she’s grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the trans men who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadn’t yet realized about themselves?
How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?
Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?
Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?
Have you killed your author?
Have you thrown out your baby with the bathwater?
Unmute !
So I’ve heard that deer & horses will gnaw on bikes for the calcium. And I know that deer lose their antlers. Do they ever just like, gnaw on their antlers?
not really, but OTHER animals sure do!
the shed antlers of deer provide an important source of calcium for the North American ecosystem that many other creatures rely on for going into winter!
and the deer don't need it anymore, since they just got RID of the damn things. but come spring when the males start growing antlers again, deer will start acting the fool and chewing on any calcium source that's close to hoof, so to speak.
(bones, it's usually bones.)
There's an exception in the Scottish Highlands, where red deer stags do chew old antlers when they fall off because the soil in the Highlands is apparently low in calcium.
Mission Accomplished, We Got Him.
"IDONTIDONTGITIT!"
I enjoy themes and narratives and nuance and men fucking each other
This is genuinely one of my favourite videos on the fucking planet.
why must reductress hurt me in this way
ok a) lmao me too girl, and
b) once burnout hits you CANNOT work that hard, by your standards, so odds are it actually hit a while ago and you just “powered through” because that’s what you’re used to doing. So now, every day, you’re hitting your limit and thinking “wtf man i used to be able to do this, i used to be competent, clever, diligent” and like yeah. you were. and that burns glucose. welcome to the dumb bitch zone.
and c), lmao, me too girl
fuck b) came for me harder than the first post did god damn
This was in Sioux Falls South Dakota! The green sky is caused by large hail stones within the storm refracting back green light to the observer.
More pics from that day
