Millions of Years of Immutable Evolutionary Law: “Cats shall have litters of many offspring at one time. Some will be weak or stricken with disease--they will perish to allow the stronger siblings to escape, and to satiate other predators in order to reduce competition and encourage the existence of more capable adults.”
I think about Azula shooters often and their common refrain of "if Azula hadn't had a mental breakdown, she would've won" and I'm here to tell you that no, she wouldn't have.
There is no universe in which Azula was winning that fight with Zuko (or Katara, for that matter).
Azula spent so much of Book 2 being built up as this deadly terrifying force against whom the heroes are badly outmatched that it can be difficult to catch exactly how quickly Zuko is advancing.
Back up a bit to Book One. For the fearsome exiled crown prince of the Fire Nation, Zuko's not that impressive a firebender. He's not bad by any stretch, and he's able to lay the untrained Sokka and Katara flat pretty easily. Then he gets in the ring with Aang, who is an airbending master, and the difference between a regular bender and a master becomes apparent when Aang literally puts his ass to bed:
People have attributed this to the fact that no one's fought an airbender in 100 years, but I think it's also worth noting that Aang (a 12 year old from a pacifist nation) has probably never fought anyone before. Like, ever. And yet the second Aang thinks "okay, I'll attack back", the fight's over.
Zuko's got the same genetic predisposition for firebending talent that Azula does, yet it never seems to manifest because of his mental blocks. At the beginning of the series, he's already so beat down that all he really has is conviction, pride, and anger, so even with training from Iroh (the firebending master, thank you very much), he struggles. Yet throughout Book 2, when he has no time to train because he's on the run, he actually seems to advance faster. The fact that his bending is literally tied to his character arc (as his morals become tangled and he has to fight off aforementioned mental blocks) is pretty brilliant. Like, by the time of the Crossroads of Destiny, Zuko getting his ass handed to him by Aang is a pretty consistent feature of the show--he just can't match wits with him.
Hell, at the beginning of the series, he and Iroh (again: the actual firebending master) launch a combined power surface-to-air attack...which Aang casually swats away into a nearby ice wall. Come the Crossroads of Destiny, however, and Zuko by himself launches this bigass fireball that blows through Aang's defenses.
Zuko advances so quickly that it's scary. That prodigious talent is in him even if it doesn't come through as cleanly as with Azula. Who, by the way, was busy about to get flattened by Katara some few dozen feet away, until Zuko took over and then effectively stalemated her himself.
All of this in retrospect makes it abundantly clear why Zuko's firebending seemed to skyrocket so much when he learned true firebending from the Sun Warriors: it was really the only thing left. He's hard a hard road learning how to fight waterbenders, earthbenders, and airbenders, and even if unconsciously, he's applying the philosophy Iroh taught him about augmenting his bending style with aspects of other styles (see also, the waterbending-like fire whips he uses in the above gif). Once he actually understands fire and how it works, he's got it mastered. Hence why any gap between him and Azula effectively disappears as soon as their next fight--before her friends have betrayed her and her stability goes out the window. There's no real sense of urgency to their fight at the Boiling Rock prison. True, Sokka's presence with the sword helps, but Zuko doesn't look remotely worried and he counters Azula's every attack perfectly.
All her life, Azula only ever learned fire. She was taught by the best people the fire nation can employ, so she knows all the cool tricks, but she's still poisoned by the corrupted firebending practiced in the modern ATLA timeline. Unlike Zuko, who managed to get the basics if nothing else from Iroh (fire comes from the breath, and can be used to survive as much as to kill), Azula has always used fire as a weapon and a means to hurt others. She has no true knowledge of the craft, meaning she's got the same weaknesses as Zhao, she's just better disciplined to the point she can make up for it.
Zuko's victory was a given considering Azula's complete loss of control by the time of Sozin's comet, but even had she been in a perfect mental state, she'd have lost, because in many ways Zuko is simply the better firebender.
actually the craziest impact animorphs has had on me is that i never really got an urge to eat cinnamon buns from reading them BUT the phrase "the refreshing beverage known as vinegar" has forced its way into my head every other week for years to try and convince me it would be a good idea to chug a whole glass of it
Vinegar is what we used to use as the acid in our sodas before we switched to Carbonated Water in the 19th century, and vinegar-based sodas trace their roots all the way back to the Bronze Age Meditteranean! The Romans called it Posca! The Ottomans adopted it from the Romans and called it Sharab, which means "Drink", and then American colonists acquired the recipe from the Ottomans in the 17th century and changed the name to Shrub!
There's a famous example of Posca that most people misremember because we don't drink Vinegar much anymore. If you're familiar with the Crucifixion of Jesus in the Bible, you probably remember the bit about the Roman soldier offering Jesus a sponge full of vinegar to drink. Most people think the Roman dude was mocking Jesus, but that's wrong. That was a sponge full of Posca. The Roman dude was like "Well this sucks. Want a Sprite?"
...Fun fact, I know this because the phrase "Refreshing Beverage known as Vinegar" got stuck in my head one night at work, and I started googling "Does anybody drink vinegar". I had to know. It turns out the answer is yes! And you can still find vinegar-based soft drinks today! Switchel is a vinegar-and-ginger drink you can find at some bars in the US, and it goes back to pre-carbonated soft drinks.
Also, I know several people who drink pickle juice regularly, and white vinegar is a key component of pickle juice! So that's also where vinegar as a drink can pop up in your day to day life.
There's also a trendy New Age beverage called fire cider that's literally just vinegar, cinnamon, spice, and pretensions. RIP Ax, you would've loved the fire cider craze.
Alright so one of my past jobs was working at an on tap place called Oil and Vinegar store. It’s supposed to be for salad dressings and stuff. People would bring in their bottles and we’d fill them up.
Vinegar is basically just made from fruit sugars so we had. The most. Amazing vinegars. There’s this one made with mango pulp that I straight up would have just drunk but if you add it to soda water it was truly the most decadent beverage imaginable. So there’s like passion fruit, raspberry, elderflower- just every wonderful sharp flavor imaginable.
We had pregnant ladies who’d buy several bottles at a time because it’s really great for nausea.
What I’m saying here is that Ax wasn’t wrong at all, that dude knew what was up even if he was probably chugging boring household white vinegar.
This post led me to reminisce on the nature of cat’s meowing, and I have a funny story
I befriended a feral cat once who had spent her life in the forest without human interaction. I was worried about her because she had a paw damaged from an old injury and was emaciated but obviously nursing kittens that were hidden away somewhere. It took me weeks of putting out food and sitting across the yard every evening for her to trust me even a little and when she decided we were friends and she expected dinner every night she started coming to my door and trying to call for me in the evening, but she didn’t meow. Why would she? Cats only meow naturally as kittens when their vocal chords/ears aren’t fully developed, adult cats communicate with vocalizations that aren’t audible to humans. She probably tried making noises I couldn’t hear to call me but ended up sticking to the one I always responded to- a horrible yowling growl that she had made at me when we first encountered each other in the forest. Except once we were friends she would make this noise while purring and rubbing affectionately against a nearby tree or the porch railing (because she didn’t want to touch me yet). This understandably freaked my family members out but I was touched that she had taken the time to find a way to basically yell FUCK OFF in an affectionate way.
Fast forward to when she finally trusts me enough to bring her hidden kittens out of the forest to me, long story short I gained their trust and put them in this big pen, that I had previously used to keep chickens in, so they’d be safe and to keep her from having another litter. Except she was already secretly pregnant again! (Fix your pets, guys, they make SO many babies) and ended up having her new babies in this pen. I kept my distance, sitting on the outside once they were born until she seemed comfortable enough to let me come inside. The kittens were a bit wild, hissing viscously at me as soon as they opened their eyes, but they warmed up to me. There were four of them and soon they all wanted to be the center of attention during the twice daily play sessions. I’d be playing with one and another would meow insistently behind me and I’d immediately answer them and give them love, teaching them that humans could be friends that answer their needs- making them adoptable once they were weaned. Mama cat (Artie) would just watch me play with them, and I guess she was doing some thinking because one day when they were about a month old I was playing with them and one meowed behind me. I was confused because I hadn’t realized there was a kitten behind me and when I turned, there wasn’t. The only cat there was Artie looking at me really intensely. I turned back around to the kittens and I heard the meow again, I turned back to Artie and responded in the way I always did with the kittens “yes baby?” And she meowed again in an exact imitation of her kittens! After that she would.not.shut.up. It was like she had cracked some kind of code, meowing for attention and snacks and just to say hi. Her two older kittens, the ones she’d had in the forest, had never meowed at me either but started to once they saw how I responded to their mom. and I find it endlessly fascinating because before that it had never occurred to me that cats only meow at humans because they were taught by other cats to keep meowing past kittenhood because that’s the best way to get a human’s attention.
Imagine befriending some weird giant with the wrong number of legs that you met in the forest who seems nice enough but doesn’t seem to be able to hear you, until your friend explains that all they can understand is fuck off! And I’m a baby give me love!
A cat is a small creature in the middle of the food chain that is fully aware that you are a very large thing that could stomp its head in at any moment and yet it chooses to rest its tiny little head on your leg for a nap and spreads out on the floor near you exposing its belly and its most sensitive organs. It brings dead mice and bugs to you to share food.
Don’t you get it? This tiny thing trusts you. It wants to help you too. It licks your leg thinking that it’s helping. It kneads on you to find comfort. It shares its body warmth with you in the cold and gives you your space in the heat. It hisses at other mammals it sees outside including other cats in an effort to protect its family.
Cats love you so so much. But they will keep trying to eat plastic.
Random old finnish folklore I recall reading: The reason you have to close someone's eyes after they die, or cover their eyes with a cloth if you can't, is because the spirit of the newly passed is still in the body and even though it can't move the eyes anymore, it can still see. You must avoid making eye contact with the dead body, because the soul of the newly dead is scared to go alone, and is looking for someone to come with them. If you lock eyes with the corpse, you will be the next to die.
Well, fuck me sideways. Connections have been made.
My girlfriend has this specific gesture she does sometimes, a very particular way of turning her wrist around and locking her fingers in one specific grip. Fast or slow, the angle of her wrist and the rhythm of the movement are always exactly the same, and at this point I've learned to recognize the motion well enough that she could do it with her back towards me and I know she's doing it.
The first time I saw her do it I thought she was putting something into her pocket, but once I noticed her making it more often I started making connections. I saw her doing it unconsciously when some situation in the house is getting tense - not during the casual sparring arguments with my other housemates, but the serious fights where shit is about to actually get fucking real - and I figured that it's a nervous thing, she doesn't like where this is going and it's scaring her. So that became my cue that it's time to back down.
I don't know when she noticed that I noticed her doing it. We've never talked about it, but at some point she started doing it on purpose, as her way of telling me that I should stop causing problems. Rotating her hand slowly means she's seeing a problem brewing and it's better that I watch myself before I start escalating it, and a quick flick and snap means whatever I was just about to say or do, I should cut that shit out right this fucking second. It works for some reason, so I've respected that.
My girlfriend does some volunteering favors for the neighbors here sometimes. Today she asked if I wanted to come along to walk this one old couple's dog, and I was feeling up for it so I went along. My father was terrified of dogs so I'm not familiar with them, but her family has always had them.
So we were walking, talking about something else, enjoying the nice weather for once, when my girlfriend saw another dog walker approaching. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, but the other dog walker started pulling the dog back with this roller leash thing whatever the fuck they're called. And then the old couples' dog started growling.
With the familiarity of someone who's been handling dogs all her life my girlfriend grabbed the little fucker's leash, wrapping it around the width of her palm and gripping it to pull the dog closer a second before it could bolt to attack. A move she's probably done countless times in her life, that she could do in her sleep, by instinct, without ever even thinking about it. A gesture I've learned to fucking spot from across the room from the corner of my eye. That exact same fucking twirl and grip. I have no idea if she noticed me noticing it or making the connection.
She's fucking learned to pull my fucking leash back when I'm about to start shit.
I am watching a mouse make a series of what I can only describe as Fuck Around Choices, and the Find Out is VERY excited to continue this little experiment.
I'm watching my parent's dog Arwen up at their house.
Arwen (Kelpie, 60lbs) is 15(ish?) now and while she has a high prey drive and history of successful hunts, she's also 15 and doesn't give many fucks.
I also have my dogs.
Charleston (Sighthound/pointer mix, 50lbs) is 10 and another proactive carnivore, but he's also JUST finished making his Perfect Couch Nest and doesn't want to get up.
...Herschel (Corgi, 40lbs and extremely tube-shaped) is 5 and has no Prey Drive, but he does have a PLAY Drive, which i found out last time I was up here and found him, having cornered a baby bunny, play-bowing and shaking his ass at it because he just had a Great Time chasing it, now it was the bunny's turn to chase HIM!
Even though all three of these assholes spent all day dragging me hither and yon through the rockies, he still has the endurance of an athenian messenger and still looking for a reason to careen around the house at Mach Fuck.
A Reason has Arrived.
My parent's house is the median age of a US senator, and every year about this time, the local mice start experimenting with sneaking into the house for warmth and snacks.
At 11:14 PM, I noticed a single gray mouse had entered, and was exploring the far side of the living room, which is fully accessible to the dogs, but not in their immediate line of sight.
About a minute in, Charleston notices, but his sole reaction is to look at it, then make very pointed eye contact with me as if to say "Are You Seeing This Shit? Disrespectful." and then curl deeper into his couch nest.
Arwen is very asleep, snoring and farting.
Shortly after that, Herschel noticed The Mouse, mostly because it had meandered into the main part of the living room, possibly lured in by the kibble-heavy scent of Dog Farts.
It had, actually, wandered to within two feet of where Herschel was splooted on the floor, dozing, directly in front of his nose.
Now, I don't now much about Mouse vision, but on average, Herschel is very nearly the same color as my parent's carpet, and does very much resemble a faux-fur throw pillow in shape and texture. Perhaps he is well-camoflaged. Perhaps it is full of tiny rodent hubris.
It is very quiet- quiet as a mouse, even- but it must still smell of one, because the first thing I see is Herschel's nose twitch.
His eyes slowly crack open
Cross to focus
Then very quickly open as he recognizes the shape as A Potential New Friend!
His Nubbin begins to wag
One hind foot goes up
The the other
and he slowly rises to a mere half inch above his previous elevation, and begins to slowly play-stock the mouse.
This is not the subtle maneuver of a camouflaged predator, but the hyper-visible way that Corgi and other herding dogs go "I'm Gonna Getchya! I'm Gonna Getchya!" at sheep and cattle and birthday parties full of toddlers in an attempt to get thin to break into a run so The Chasey Game can begin.
The Mouse noticed that it had been Noticed (TM) but to it's credit, it did not run, but instead was very casually search-ambling back to whence it came, it's ears pointed directly behind it, listening to The Find Out.
Props to the mouse, even though Herschel had significantly closed the distance between them, it was maintaining it's facade well.
...but it has now made the peculiar descision to shelter inside the Wobbler Kong, a hard plastic and heavy toy that is in fact exceptionally bite-proof and may have kibbles in it.
The reason there may be Kibbles in it is that I feed Herschel all his meals in the Wobbler to keep him from bolting his food and/or choking himself, because in order the get the kibbles back out, he must do smack the shit out of the wobbler like so:
He's currently standing, staring at the wobbler, waiting for his New Bestie to come out, but I can see the gears of impatience turning and he may decide to accelerate the mouse's descision-making process.
The reason I am allowing this to happen is that The Mouse is unlikely to come to any harm beyond some environmentally-adaptive trauma, and I am Hoping it hauls ass back to the compost bin where most of them live and tells the colony that there's a very large fucked up little man in the house, fuck that shit, let's stay out here.
I don't know if Psyops work on mice but I feel like it's worth a shot.
After a few minutes of waiting for the mouse to come out, Herschel was getting concerned (bored) and stood up all the way, little paw raised, ready to smack the fun back into this poor creature.
"Ah!" I told him.
As much crime Herschel commits, he's actually quite biddable, and stopped, little paw raised, staring at me before slowly lowering it.
"Good job!" I tell him, and he wiggles with joy. "Figure it out!"
Herschel returns his attention to the wobble, circling and sniffing it with small boofs of excitement, looking bac at me for approval eery so often, before giving the bottom of Wobble the smallest, gentlest push with his nose, which doesn't make it rock, but does scoot it along the carpet.
"Okay!" I tell him, and for the last few minutes he has been slowly scooting the mouse inside the wobble across the living room floor an inch at a time.
This has, however, made charlie actually sit up and watch, so I may need to intervene soon.
I mean my whole life is a funny story but in this particular case, it's funny because while I do not have a broken ankle, I do have a pretty severe sprain, and a new appreciation for the horrors of Wordle.
I'll get there.
Anyway, when we last left off, Herschel was doing the Canine equivalent of Playing Cars with the wobble, scooting it around the living room with his nose, which was enough to wake up both Charlie and Arwen, who were squinting at him with matching expressions of "What is the Ginger Idiot up to now?"
Eventually, Herschel got distracted and paused to get a drink, and I started to get up to rescue the mouse, but before I could walk over to the far side of the Living Room, the mouse made the first move, and stuck it's face out of the treat hole to see if the coast was clear.
...in full view of Charleston, and in the following millisecond, I watched his body and Soul become possessed with the millennia-old instincts of his sighthound ancestors, and the more recent instruction of the cats who raised him, and in a beautifully fluid motion that inspired the poets of old, launched himself out of his decadent nest of couch pillows and quilts, up over the coffee table and about 15 feet across the living room to POUNCE on the Wobble and Mouse.
Fortunately, for the mouse, the Wobble isn't the easiest thing to grab, even if you have opposable thumbs, and instead of acquiring a late-night snack, Charlie instead pressure-launched the wobble across the living room and into the kitchen, where it proceeded to pinball around between the cabinets and dinner table.
Herschel, who loves activities and is also a jealous little brat who hates it when Charlie so much as looks at his toys, retaliated by taking a flying leap onto Charlie's face and the two began to wrassle aggressively while Knocking the wobble and everything else in the kitchen around, including me as I tried to grab the wobble from between them.
Charlie broke away from his brother via the complex tactical strategy of "Use limb superiority to smack him repeatedly in the face", and sprinted out of the kitchen across the house with the look of an animal In Hot Pursuit, Herschel and myself on his heels. When Charlie came to a halt at the back door, there was no mouse to be found, much to everyone's bafflement.
I hear jingling back in the living room.
I return to find Arwen has gotten up, walked the seven and a half feet to where the Wobble is in the hall now, and laid back down, both big Puppy Crime paws on either of the Wobble.
I am walking back, because usually she just wants to lick kibble dust and the occasional forgotten green bean out of it, and am fairly sure the Wobble is Devoid of Mouse, who has escaped to relay news of the modern wolf pack inside the house.
Instead, Arwen opens her mouth wide, turns her entire head sideways, clamps onto the top of the wobble, and twists her neck.
She's learned how to unscrew it.
I sprint back and manage to grab the wobble from her and the other two canines now Baying for Rodent Blood at my feet, and carefully peek inside.
The Mouse is still within the Wobble, plastered to the far side of the container, extraordinarily flat, as though trying to become one with the hard plastic walls. Deciding that it was Traumatized Enough, I taped a paper towel over the opening to trap it but not create an airtight seal and took it out to the yard.
I was about to release it when I looked back to see all three dogs at the door, watching every motion with a laser focus, and realized that they'd scent-trail it back to the main colony. I decided I didn't really feel like dealing with the consequences of Arwen and Charlie teaching Herschel that pinkie mice are made of meat, and opted instead to take the mouse to my car, and drive it a few miles up the road to the nearest meadow for release.
It's a lovely October Night. Temperature in the low 50's, full moon, and the wind blowing through the turning leaves when I get to the meadow, and I take my time going down the embankment from the gravel parking lot of the city park, a bit into the tall grass near the creek that cuts through the meadow, and carefully unscrew the wobble. The mouse is still braced to the inside, so I set the pieces down and wait for it to cautiously start sniffing and delicately step out of the toy, stare up at me for a moment, and then scamper off into the grass.
I look up at the big yellow moon, and for a moment, all is well with the universe.
then there is not quite a noise, and not quite a motion but more of a Disturbance In The Force on the edge of my peripheral vision, and I slowly turn to look.
Also enjoying the Lovely October Night and the associated seasonal changes to its anatomy is one of the last true Megafauna of the Ice Age, which have been making a big comeback in Colorado of late, but I had not realized they'd come out of the mountains and into city limits:
The Bull Moose is maybe 60 feet away from me, and still making up its mind about how it's going to respond to this invasion of it's personal space.
Slowly, I back up the way I came.
The Moose chooses violence, as is it's right, and charges.
I am possessed by ancient instincts much like Charlie was and scramble back up the embankment, into the parking lot, and sprint for the car, which has already endured one moose attack and lived.
Unfortunately, just before I get to the car, I eat shit on the loose gravel, roll, ans slam my ankle into a granite boulder at the edge of the lot with considerable force.
Adrenaline carries me through, and I get back up, run the remaining five very painful steps to the car, and get inside. I start it up, through the brights on to dazzle the moose, and prepare to make a very inadvisable reversal out of the lot.
The moose is only halfway up the embankment, staring with a dull disappointment into my brights, having concluded from my spectacular lack of coordination that I am no threat to it, and it turns back down the small hill.
It's my left ankle, so I can still drive, but I still spend two hours in the Urgent Care to get it looked at and braced, because there are people having Much Worse nights ahead of me, and decide to be grateful that for all my other problems, I am not having their problems, even if there is no Wifi.
I get home, all three dogs stomp as hard as they can on my boot to make sure it's good and sturdy, and I pass out in the recliner like my Dad for a solid five hours, and then got woken up again because Herschel and Arwen were having an argument about who was going to sleep on my leg to fix it next.
Charlie has won.
---
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So I had to go back and get the Wobble so Herschel could have breakfast, and while poking around in the grass, my sister texted me.
Sister: So I saw the mouse story???
Me: oh god don't tell mom.
Sister: oh no, they'd worry too much.
Sister: ok but if I tell you something you can't tell them, okay?
Me: now what
Sister: were you up at North Shields Pond? The one with the turtle sign?
Me: yeah?
Sister: okay that's just spooky.
Sister: so you know that huge dent in the back of Beyond? (my car, formerly her car)
Me: Yes, it's how I find it in parking lots?
Sister: never tell mom but I didn't back into a Ballard.
Me: oh my God.
Sister: I think it was like 2019, but Arwen had cornered a mouse that climbed into her old puzzle ball so I took it out to the meadow there to release it, and it was suuuuper late at night so I didn't see the moose either...
Me: what the fuck
Sister: I mean I didn't eat shit and fuck up my ankle but that thing hit the car harder than that time I got hit by that pickup.
Me: what the fuck kind of Bethesda-ass glitchy specific trigger videogame cutscene bullshit is this?
Sister: I DON'T KNOW???? MAYBE THE MICE ALL HAVE A TELEPATHIC LINK TO THAT MOOSE SPECIFICALLY??
I think about that post with the guy who said “as a Croatian I found a job inland processing uranium” and everybody was like “Croatia isn’t inland and it doesn’t produce uranium” and someone posted an article about the discovery of an illegal uranium refinery in the inland part of Croatia a year after the original reblog on a daily basis
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