#<- predictable opinion from the furry

[newgroundstier]

riptide xmas oneshot was fun :]

[interstellar-superdrive]

Random 2025 predictions

RFK Jr's brain is completely eaten by the worm in it

A random Depeche Mode song trends online

The yumeship community has a major drama and then implodes upon itself

Nickelodeon holds a huge event celebrating Avatar: The Last Airbender's 20th anniversary but it goes horribly wrong due to them using AI or other things Well, it kinda went wrong. They didn’t use AI, but around the 20th anniversary they announced a new Avatar show where the backstory is that Korra is "humanity's destroyer." The fandom is in shambles.

JKR will outright say that she thinks only white women can be really women

Nintendo officially changes Diddy Kong's name

Project 2025 is enacted and AO3 gets banned. Then people either try to start a new website or migrate to FF.net, only to be frustrated by the old and ugly UI on that site

For that matter, TikTok is banned as well

Chappell Roan sells out and guest stars in an animated kids show where she voices a literal pink pony.

American Dragon Jake Long undergoes a fandom renaissance, sparked by a popular crossover fanfic with Danny Phantom

Disney buys Sesame Street, under the condition that each new season have at least one episode dedicated to shilling Disney products. So there will be an episode where Elmo, Abby, and Cookie Monster watch the latest MCU movie.

Disney posts an official Nick Wilde thirst edit on TikTok.

Related to the above: The furry community has a war about whether Mr. Wolf from The Bad Guys or Nick is hotter.

Completely AI movies start being released by major companies

Hawk Tuah starts beef with another content creator

Elio somehow beats the HTTYD remake at the box office

The creator of Skibidi Toilet is sued by a parent for "inducing brainrot"

The Witch Hat Atelier fanbase proves to be even worse than Dungeon Meshi. Now you will see Coco pfps attached to the most asinine opinions of all time.

Ouran High School Host Club season 2 is finally announced, but they completely changed the art style into something more generic (most notably removing the characters' noses)

Netflix greenlights an animated series based on Chill Guy

Snyder fanboys try to boycott the new Superman movie, but fail.

Mr Beast gets into huge legal trouble.

Netflix shits out a true crime docuseries about Luigi Mangione.

[csolarstorm]

Yeah, I don't know what to post about the Pokemon Teraleak yet. There's just so much, I haven't sorted it out in my mind yet.

And to tell the truth, some of the big revelations about Gen 3 and 4 are just confirming things the Pokemon theorists already thought. Theorists already mapped the three trios in Gen 1-4 to the Arceus circle - it's just really neat to confirm that GameFreak intended it this way. And that there are Pokemon in the circle that we didn't know about, some that haven't been translated yet. And apparently the circle confirms the idea of psuedo-legendaries though, which is cool.

I think one thing it proves is that GameFreak developers can be a lot more hardcore and weird than the easily predictable, pattern-based company we've browbeaten each other into accepting for decades. The...um...furry fics...? Canalave "extended lore"?...proves that. And then there are the more monstrous Gen 3 concepts that I wouldn't even connect to Pokemon if not for the Unown rock monster (the first Regi?) and the Cacturne. I kinda hope this is the origin or Cacturne and Metagross, and they were just refined down to versions that fit the other art style.

That's what I'd like to think of each generation being: a collection of very different designs from different perspectives that they came together to brainstorm before refining them into one coherent artstyle.

I'd also like to think of the Unown rock monster as the first inspiration for the Regis, with the Unown evolving into the Braille used with the Regis in the final build.

I'm seeing a kind of synchronicity phenomenon here, where the vibe of the beta Pokemon is still communicated in the final build somehow. Not only do the betas reflect the style of their era, but because the fans are inspired by the games, their fakemon somehow synchronize with the vibes of the betas through the final build. I'm not sure how to explain it better than that? The fakemon that my friends and I worked on during Gen 3 and 4 resemble some of these Gen 3 betas. I think there was a style of the time, and I think that a lot of GameFreak's intentions for the design elements of the game are successfully implied through the experience, so fans tend to reconstitute that as their own headcanons. Does that make sense?

It's a miracle I got to sleep last night, after fiendishly tracking every leak I could from the afternoon to the early hours of the morning. I think I might be finally be ready to take a break from the leaks (besides sleeping). I mean, I thought I'd be one of those people to immediately post the leaks and my opinions about them as they came out, but for whatever reason I didn't feel like it, maybe because they haven't stopped coming out. So I'll get to sharing my opinions at some point.

Have fun with the leaks!

[unichrome]

AI and the value of labour (but only if it's yours)

Few of you have missed the whole AI/AI-art/ChatGPT-debate by now and even though few have the technical literacy to actually know what it is and its implementations, it hasn't stopped people from having opinions on it, and wow they sure are Opinions. It's mainly about how it's art-theft and will put already struggling artists out of business because now there's a chance that their dandelion found in a deviantart furry artwork they made using GIMP once will now be seen made sort of in the same style on a 250x250 pixel generated picture from a free online generator. And now I'm going to be snarky about it but also highlight a problem seen from the other end of this - the value of labour, and I'm not talking about the artists labour here.

But first let's look back a little bit for some well-needed perspective:

The logic for this is nothing we haven't seen before; you can't copy art and have it made available for just everyone to use like this! In the early 2000's it put musicians out of business and destroyed music forever with the introduction of napster. Pirate bay is why movies no longer are being made. It has destroyed art as we know it when people tauntingly right-clicked on a cryptobro's NFT and clicked "save as" (which I assume is also very problematic for the people who are vehemently against AI art? It's a literal 1-to-1 copy of your work). Media corporations are dying because intellectual properties are no longer protected under the copyright laws after 70 or so years. In the 90's there was even some video star who literally murdered a radio star. With the introduction of vinyl, it even killed live music forever.

So technology has been destroying just about all forms of art as we know it for a while now and each time it's the same doomsday predictions from the newly formed kind of art-christianity where some art has soul (Good, Skilled Laboured artists) and others hasn't (Evil, of course).

Now for the informative part of the post:

In the 1970's, computers as we know them today began forming, and with it, the value of a computer programmers skill and labour. Alongside with this, they saw a growing problem: Corporations owned everything they made, and corporations will also have the whole say about what will be present on a computer and the price of everything present on it.

This was not very appreciated by neither the programmers, and nor the customers (although few saw this growing problem coming). So in a weird twist of fate, programmers became one of the most left-wing labour-rights occupation you could find by forming Free Software Foundation, GNU, and essentially setting the stage for you to be able to use the free GIMP software instead of buying a staggering price for Adobe's Photoshop. It enabled you to download firefox instead of buying a copy of internet explorer. Because yes, before this kind of software activism formed, and the general environment of software development became to make it as freely available as possible - and having an outright despise for corporations like Novell and Microsoft for taking such huge amount of money to their own pockets instead of the developers, literally every piece of software cost money. A LOT of money.

This kind of 100% for free software usage we're used to has also led to us no longer being appreciative of the work and skill that goes behind keeping a software not only developed and updated continuously for decades, but also spending money on keeping it hosted and delivered to you for free. We even joke and scoff about the mere thought of having to pay 0.99 Euro for an app we'd use daily and a developer spent 2 years in the making. Meanwhile, when someone offers to pay someone merely 10 euro or so for a handmade blanket, there's an outrage about the value of labour and skill. And rightfully so! I support that, and so should you, even if it's labour that you weren't the one making.

And it doesn't end there either - we all know corporations has no trouble finding new ways to charge you money. Organisations like Free Software Foundation, various Linux projects and Mozilla have campaigned for a freer usage in general, leading to fair-use laws, campaigning for the right to repair your technology instead of having to buy new one all the time, as well as preventing corporations from banning every other piece of software on a computer that they don't want you to have (from a competitor or free alternative of their software).

I mentioned Adobe specifically, because in the wave of anti-AI-art outcry, artists are campaigning for a ban on making software that uses other peoples artistic similarities (not copies mind you, similarities, meaning making it a copyright infringement to have art that is similar to yours, since that's what AI-art algorithms create), and I'm sure right off the bat many of you can see the huge problem with that, but Adobe sure isn't. They're also gladly in on this, because that would mean that free alternatives of Photoshop like GIMP would also become a copyright infringement. So would a lot of our other free software we use daily and take for granted.

That's all I wanted to say about this I think. The TL;DR version is basically to value labour even if it isn't yours, and to not take it for granted. As a final part to remember about AI is that it is a tool, and like any tool it can be used for good or evil. AI is what made it possible for us to make sense of the large hadron collider data and made enormous leaps in scientific discovery in just a few years, that would otherwise had taken 500 years to sort through by humans, and with a much higher rate of error.

[skrunklowumbo64]

DISCLAIMER: Don't engage with a toxic user that's being called out, just block, report, ignore, & move one.

Remember when I made a public apology for making a callout tweet about a certain Tumblr group of IDW Sonic critics (a certain fox was one of them) on Twitter like roughly 2 years ago?

Yeah, I was in good terms afterwards, but a year later, when I randomly saw the edgy sadist fox man wishing death on a comic book writer showing up in my personal Twitter timeline, I took my apology back from him (plus some of his associates overtime) & gave my two cents about it.

The reason why he wished death on a comic book writer was because the satanically evil boogiestans were harassing & doxing his friend who had cancer. You know the old saying, 2 wrongs don't make it right. This isn't the only toxicity thing he has done & I got several evidence to show below.

CW/TW: Excessive Slurs, Bigotry, SH, & SA

(Uncompressed Image Link)

(Uncompressed Image Link)

BONUS EXAMPLES

Plus archived links to his Twitter & Tumblr accounts.

There are way more than what are shown in the images & I can't expect to find them all. Several or so of them are from a few years or nearly a decade ago, but it does prove that he's always been an heartless irredeemable sadist, even before IDW Sonic existed & before you pull that "years ago" defense card, his behavior hasn't changed for the better, like these for example (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13).

What do I think about him?

He's overly smugged, to a point of being arrogant.

He gets overly insecure whenever, for example, any Sonic game gets any criticism &/or negative opinions from people who're either fans of Sonic or not.

Most of his "critiques" are in bad faith.

He has extreme accusatory behavior (I.E. He accuses people of hating Sonic & not playing the games for daring to like anything non-game Sonic related, getting things about Sonic wrong, & making AU fan fics that differs from the games).

He has a habit of blocking anyone over the most pettiest things (I.E. Anyone using the term, Mobius, being told to calm down, people liking transgender Bridget, people liking SnapCube & Team 4 Star (he also wants them banned over it), etc.).

He constantly relies on ad-hominem attacks & vulgar insults whenever he talks to anyone he doesn't agree with, either directly or behind their backs by screenshotting their posts then posting them in his clique chamber to complain about it or both.

He's got this obnoxious Anti-WokeTuber vibes going on despite claiming to be against bigotry.

He gets easily butthurt over people enjoying any non-gaming media or anything in general of not just Sonic, but also Kirby, Castlevania, Dragon Ball, TMNT, & more as well.

He's a massive hypocrite, like for example, he hates anyone making & enjoying non-canon Sonic material while he's faving/making rule 34 fan art & fan fics involving sonic characters voring each other or any other fetishy things (which are also non-canon material).

etc.

If you're wondering if I'm aware about his certain questionable fan fics & favs, I knew already cuz I was the one that caused a chain-reaction on Twitter in the first place by randomly DMing some one rando about it & I honestly wish they shouldn't bring it up whenever they argue with said fox. If you want me to talk about what I think of this Dwai guy nowadays, maybe, but not right now.

How do you think I found out? I just googled the username, checkout their account on some furry site, & went to their profile from some controversial bunny site that's publicly shown on their profile bio out of morbid curiosity. Before you ask, I don't have an account on that controversial bunny site & never will.

My reaction to said content on there was disgust & uncomfortable. I hardly engage with those UCP addict types cuz they're not the most pleasant people to talk to & they're always predictable.

Did you know that he was banned on Twitter seven times, plus all tweets made before 2023 aren't searchable & apparently his first 6 bans had something to do with involvement with you know what? If you're morbidly curious about it, examples here. Remember, don't waste your time trying to argue about it.

The more I see toxicity from him, the more I having trust issues increased & regret making an apology to him, to a point where I think he's too FUBAR to deal with.

If he sees this, he's gonna be like, "TWEEGARD ZNOHVWEHK!", "MUH VWEE ZPEECH/VWEE KONTWEE!", "DOT TEEL MEE WAT 2 DOO!", "PEEOHWEETON!", "KOHTIZT!" "VWEEN/EYEDEEDUBBAHEW STAEN!", "CHUHZT SEH YOO HEHT SAWNIK GEHMZ & GOH!", "YOO HEHT MEE CUZ I KWEETESEYEZD VWEEN!", "CHUHZT PLEH DA GEHMZ!", "SWAENDOHAHR!", "STAHKR & HOHWAZZAHR!" the no you card, strawmanning, "At least I don't (Insert whatever bad thing the stans did)!", ad-hominem attacks, the "Stans are being mean to me!" sob stories, the whataboutisms, screenshotting then whine &/or being smugged about me in his clique-ish echo chamber, & more, guaranteed.

If you're saying I made this because of that one argument or whatever, I always had issues with him before it, not because of different opinions, but because he's the most insufferable individual to talk to due to his arrogant, nihilistic, cuss-happy, & creepy nature regardless if it's about Sonic or not.

For those who're about to ask me to make more callout posts about the people associated with him, I'm not interested & please don't beg me into making them.

If you also have issues with him, share your thoughts here, it also doesn't just have to be about IDW Sonic or Sonic general.

[iowacovid19tracker]

As Iowans learn to live with the COVID-19 pandemic, data and opinions have come at them from all directions. One of the leading voices in Iowa (leading because the Iowa press made it so) is Sara Anne Willette, otherwise known on Twitter as @/amethystarlight. She dubs herself the “chief data officer” of iowacovid19tracker.org, a website devoted to all sorts of pandemic data.

According to court documents, Willette completed her undergraduate training at the University of Iowa, which focused on medieval history, religious studies, and classical languages. She completed that undergraduate work in 2005, and her resume shows no work history until 2013, when she started working as a dog walker under the trade name of “Furry Friends Pet Care.”

Willette apparently abandoned her career as a dog walker in March 2020 for the new enterprise of being the “chief data officer” of her website iowacovid19tracker.org. She also started “IAC Tracker, Inc.” an Iowa non-profit corporation.

According to Iowa Secretary of State records, she filed articles of incorporation for IAC Tracker, Inc. on September 8, 2020, as the sole officer of the corporation. The stated business activity of the corporation is to provide “data transparency, education, outreach, and guidance regarding COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.” The articles also state that the corporation is intended to qualify as a tax-exempt organization as a 501(c)(3) with the IRS, which means that donations to the corporation are exempt from taxation.

But despite the claimed charitable purpose of her corporation, a search of the Internal Revenue Service’s database of tax-exempt organizations shows no record of the corporation having actually filed with the IRS for that status. Without such an IRS filing, IAC Tracker, Inc. cannot legally claim that it is operating as a 501(c)(3) charity.

Iowa Secretary of State documents show that IAC Tracker, Inc. was administratively dissolved on September 7, 2021. Because there is no record of the corporation having filed its annual report,so it seems likely that the corporation was dissolved for this reason.

Willette’s educational background and work history were revealed in an affidavit submitted in litigation challenging the Iowa legislature’s decision to prohibit school districts from requiring students, staff, and visitors from wearing masks. A parent from Council Bluffs has sued Governor Reynolds and several other state departments and their directors challenging that law. The affidavit included Willette’s resume:

UPDATE:

Friday, September 10th 3:02 pm CDT

After the publication of this article, Willette tweeted that she had been listed as the co-author of two academic articles. Both articles listed her husband, Iowa State University Associate Professor Auriel Willette as the primary author. One article, titled “Using machine learning to predict COVID-19 infection and severity risk among 4,510 aged adults: a UK Biobank cohort study” was published January 5, 2021. It listed Sara Willette’s academic affiliation as “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker, Ames, IA, USA.”:

The second article, from July 2021, was titled “Inflammation, negative affect, and amyloid burden in Alzheimer’s disease: Insights from the kynurenine pathway.” It listed Sara Willette’s academic affiliation as “Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.”:

But a review of that department’s website by Iowa Field Report does not list Sara Willette as a member of its staff or faculty. Iowa Field Report has submitted an inquiry with the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition to learn of Sara Willette’s affiliation with it. This story will be updated when we receive a response.

UPDATE: SEPTEMBER 13th

Iowa Field report reached out to ISU and the Interim Department Chair Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition to determine what if any, affiliation Ms. Willette has with Iowa State University.

The University replied with a single sentence:

Sara Willette is not a student or an employee with Iowa State University. Thank you

Read the full article:

[ran-orimoto]

[ Look, you have to thank @ teclajellymon if today I have remembered to post this here, because, like always, I forgot to do it yesterday at the same Ao3 publishing time and I would have probably forgotten about it forever.

Ehm, *cough*. Today I’m offering you another future Junzumi headcanon of mine in the shape of a very stupid, silly story. The essence of the matter is that I have given them a saluki hound, ok, or better, I have given Izumi a saluki hound who will eventually becomes Junpei’s as well, to his utter joy, I guess ahahah.

Why a saluki hound? Simply because they look like Izumi, I wanted an active, sportive dog for her and, most of all, they are called the singing hounds of the wind. Honestly, my first choice had been an afghan, because her appearance would have clashed even more with Junpei’s and they are the most stylish dogs I have ever seen, no lie about this ahahha. I’ve eventually found a good compromise, though, indeed, the perfect Junzumi dog because of that definition of theirs 🤣💕.

Context: We can place this story after the seamstress one, in spring. Izumi has moved in, has started her life in Venice along with Junpei, but she left a little… Furry problem behind in Japan. ]

• Liù •

People rarely claimed a man and their beloved partner were supposed to look similar, if not identical, -hell, it would have been such a scary world, if that had been true-, whereas when it came to men and their dogs, well, it was just a different story. He had heard and, recently, he had also started seeing all sorts of things, everywhere, and they wouldn’t disappear like mirages in the mist after obstinate rubs given to the lens of his sunglasses.

Therefore, he had started doing the opposite, embracing that irreparably odd reality with open arms and…And quickly regretting his choice.

Staring for too long, with too much intensity, too much curiosity . It wasn’t that ideal when it came to middle-aged women minding passers by’s business, drawn by the beauty of their dog, which, though, -better to highlight it not twice but three times!-, would never be as charming as their own.

That was objectively a bit of a stretch , in his opinion, because that Swiffer broom obediently sitting by her side wasn’t minimally comparable to his principessa . His …No, she was Izumi’s, what was he saying? It had just been a present from him and he hadn’t even been that fully convinced about her peculiar pick back then.

Whatever, in Piazza San Marco the reciprocal introduction of two furry friends, the proud echoes of refined names soon got replaced by very sharp noises. He should have glued his orbs onto the regal four-legged figure next to him, instead of focusing on the stranger’s long silhouette, on how it extraordinarily matched her pet’s.

The pigeons peacefully pecking at crumbs of bread thrown by some tourist immediately took flight at the sound of wood colliding with resistant coconut husk. He couldn’t really blame her, but he wished she hadn’t decided to use the handle of her umbrella to punish his naive irreverence. And then , icing on the cake, a chorus of annoying yapping and more powerful, -modestly speaking-, barks predictably joined the commotion, offering a musical base to a vivacious and incomprehensible ritual of curses.

This is so lovely, He had shaken his head in pain, This is so, so, so, lovely, And it really was, taken in account he hadn’t told Izumi about what he had been up to during that week off yet.

He was aware she had been too busy with her new restaurant adventure to be interested in discovering about that, about his new favourite game in which he was no one but a gentleman strolling through the streets of Venice, along with his elegant dog he didn’t share any resemblance with.

Now that he thought about it, though, every respectable detective owned a loyal companion scampering after them. Perhaps, she would look like him if he made her wear a baggy yellow raincoat.

__________________________________________

“I swear, you should have seen her. She had this enormous bob hardly covering her ears and it was so bloated, like a cloud. I don’t know why, but I think she might be a high school professor, even if she was speaking in a heavy dialect. I mean, a high school professor wouldn’t speak dialect like that. Especially in that way. But ok, this isn’t the point. She-“

He unwillingly arrested that blabbing of his only when Izumi placed a hand on his forehead.

“This is where it hurts?” She asked with a worried frown, her green eyes squeezed as the tips of her fingers touched the reddened spot.

“Yeah. And it hurts so much I could pass out, eh eh,” He had never been that skilled at hiding the pleasant and soothing effect any physical contact with her would provoke in every fiber of his being. Thus, his impetuous voice calmed down completely, the waves of chocolate in his eyes turned into a quiet swinging tide, his entire body abandoned itself to the miracle of her beauty…Until the gentle, impalpable wind started throwing sharp knives against him.

“Ouch!” He whined, taking some steps backwards and opening his mouth at that sudden change of mood. It had been so unpredictable and now seemed to be mirroring the shifting sky darkening outside. Her nails were so long and neatly-trimmed, so sleek, utterly perfect from the perspective of a lucky man who could hold those soft hands and observe them in bliss. However, they could also transform into the claws of an angry feline, a feral lynx and hurt without needing her to put that much effort. “What was that for?”

“ Ma io dico,” She hissed at him, her index and its minuscule weapon still raised in the air, near to the scratch they had just teased. They both were there, resting on the thumb that had helped them gain momentum. “What were you thinking…?! I have left you alone for a week, just a single week…!”

His lips protruded in a startled perplexity, he blinked twice before her scolding expression, not sure if he would find a point in coming up with a lie. Actually, there would never be one in her presence. Any attempt to hide something from her through the art of deception would get a vain result, would be an occasion to turn into a clown. It was fine to him, though, because he didn’t like the idea of telling her a fib.

“I was looking at her dachsund,” He explained with a pure externalization of sincerity and now her turn to goggle like he had before, but with even more confusion, arrived.

“At her…Dachsund?”

“Yes, her fur was all black just like her hair and she also had a very long mouth like her face. So, I was actually looking at both the dog and the woman, but I lingered on the latter for too long because, oh boy, I couldn’t believe it,” The more he talked the more it sounded like he was chatting with himself in a comical monologue, occasionally gluing his pupils to the wall of the kitchen or, -more fitting for the core of his spirit-, to a dish full of biscuits awaiting him on a drawer. He was so certain they were doing so, at least.

“Oh,” Izumi would have liked to fade at the sight of him approaching the furniture.

“And I’m still holding onto my theory it is nothing else but some weird urban legend that got way too much attention through centuries,” Only the contours of those patient delicacies finally took him to Earth and reminded him of his interlocutor. Still, Izumi understood she would be the one having to push him even more downwards, to the firm ground.

“It’s not still clear what we are exactly talking about, but what I am sure about is that I would rather have a boyfriend singing,” She managed to pull the dish away from his reach in time. “Than one barking,” And then she put it on the floor, to his puzzlement, bewilderment, utter bafflement.

“I have risked eating dog biscuits…” The realization hit home in a jiffy like a boulder fallen on him. His gaze got lost in a world where the kitchen had melted in a general nothingness. “Izumi, I have risked eating dog biscuits!” After an instant of shock, he brought himself to repeat that by adding his usual bizarre emphasis.

“Yes, you have,” She bursted in a breeze of giggles washing over his concerned expression but surpassing it, ignored. Their gusts failed at stealing his voice and chuckles through that powerful tenor register of his. “You wouldn’t have died, don’t worry. I’ve cooked them.”

“Eh…?” Joining her on the floor, he allowed his exaggerated worry to get replaced by a mixture of skepticism and soft surprise. “You can cook dog food too? You’re-“

“Don’t say that, please!” She promptly raised a palm in front of his nose, haughtily averting her gaze on purpose to make him roast on the grill. When she was sure her steak was ready, she winked at his slightly disappointed grimace. “Or better, don’t say it yet . This is my first attempt and I don’t know if she will like it. I’ve added some slices of strawberries here and there in the mixture because she adores them. Hm…” He instantly shrieked when Izumi reached out to put one of those biscuits in her mouth. Got so close to passing out when she picked another one and offered it to him, seriously proposing him to jump into her absurd sommelier experience. “Here. Taste it and tell me what you think. Is it wet or dry, in your opinion?”

“I-Izumi…! Don’t eat that stuff, c’mon,” He slipped on his backside far from her, near to biting his nails. If he had been a cat, his fur would have been rippled from his head to the tip of his tail. Observing that scene through a more entertained filter, he had to admit their interactions were really reminding him of the ones of a cat and a dog: weirdly, he was being the most reluctant, if not the most repulsed between them, whereas Izumi was the joyful dog…Doing certain kind of stuff without a care in the world.

“Aren’t you the one always telling people, My girlfriend is the most brilliant cook in the world. I would eat anything prepared by her: even, - guess,what-, dog food ?”

“I-I,” He didn’t know if he was stuttering because of her impeccable imitation of his gestures and tone or because it wasn’t her spinning fantasy that was speaking. Yes, he had, he seriously had: naively believing they would never turn up against him, he had pronounced those exact words in his confessions of endless love for her cooking. He had so many times, thousand and more. “Okay…I guess you won. There’s nothing I can do,” He sighed in defeat and extended his arm to her complacent smirk and the snack she was swinging back and forth. Next time he would have to be more careful about his hyperbolic compliments in her regards, -hyperbolic ones to the rest of the world but absolutely realistic to him-. “And after this”, He gave an uncertain glance at her before grabbing it. “Can I be the one calling her after this?”

“Hm, why not ? You two need to bond and I need to bond more with her too, after having…Abandoned her at Mamma’s and Papà’s for months…”

He knew she was still coping with persuading herself that had been the best choice she could ever do for her sake. He had tried reassuring her Liù would have suffered from a more drastic detachment from her usual life, if she had moved in at the same time Izumi had. She would have had lot of trouble adjusting without them around, spending her days alone in an unknown apartment while Izumi was too absorbed in finding her own place in the world of Venice, and he was drowning in rehearsals. It would have been kinda egoistical from their part, so Izumi’s parents had convinced her to leave Liù with them for a while, until they were ready to give her the house and family she really deserved. Now Izumi might be busy with the first weeks of her newborn restaurant, but she wasn’t fretting and rushing any more and could count on Junpei’s support, on the fact he was just at the beginning of another of his adventures at la Fenice theatre.

“Hey,” He chirped a bit too abruptly but with the sweetest intention to cheer her mood up, unnoticed. “Can I do it, now? Like, now, now, now?”

“What are you talking about?” She giggled as he got so close she risked to fall backwards.

“Can I call her now?”

“Oh, that ,” Her precarious pose propped up on an elbow, she pretended to be wanting to slither away from his grip. “Okay, but you need to follow my instructions,” She sneezed at some locks falling on her forehead as he brought her closer with an effortless pulling of his biceps.

“I don’t need those, Izumi. I have got my own method,” Once ensured she was safely sitting upright, he grinned at her sending a shivering hunch down her spine. “Look. No, listen, listen.”

“Junpei, I’m not…” She petrified with her hand opening and closing in the tense silence he created. She was blatantly aware about what was about to happen, but she found herself stuck before the view of a familiar routine of actions, with the exception of that scary ending phase in which he sent his hands next to the corners of his mouth, well splayed.

Oh no…

“Jun-!”

“Liù? Liù?” Junpei improvised a silly melody she thanked Heavens it wasn’t being chanted in his usual rumbling projection.

“Junpei…!”

“Liù, don’t you want your pappa? Liù ? Where is the bimba? The sweetest bimba ? Liù-Chan?”

His grin didn’t vanish under the might of her irritation. He only hopped on the spot, all of a sudden, having got startled by the glasses of the window being shaken by the howling mistral. To think it was almost spring!

“Liù hates noises and, most of all, hates noisy people,” Not stunned due to his loud song in the slightest, he could easily tell she wanted to slap him. Yet, some unknown force he thanked from the depths of his heart kept her from doing that. “She’s a lady and she needs to be treated as such. Are you listening to me? This is a serious matter.”

“I know it is, but I don’t think she hates noisy people that much,” He dared to shrug and the naughty shimmer challenging her anger gradually tiptoed to his right, accelerating when it felt it was being chased by her glare.

Izumi emitted a gasp, “But…Liù…!”

Silently, on her slender legs, Liù had stepped into the kitchen and closer to the dish. Scompering in that skinny body of hers, structured like a sleek curve culminating in the slope of a luscious tail, she had approached them ,unnoticed, and had sat down in front of the two humans like a well-mannered medieval damsel. Now she was obediently staring at them from her statuesque pose, blatantly trying holding her excitement in her bony bosom but being betrayed by her dashing heartbeat, which was making her ribs expand and contract; by her blonde ears; by her humid nose unstoppably sniffing in the relatively new environment.

In Junpei’s opinion, Liù was the most perfect specimen of female saluki existing in the world, -and also the first one he had ever seen-.

“Maybe she hates people not singing well, I guess?” He sniggered with too much confidence and Izumi gave him a harsh nudge right under his sternum.

“Have you already done this in the past?”

“Of course, I have,” He took a while to recover from the pain she had provoked him, but managed to reply her sooner than both had expected. “I know you had said I needed to learn one thing or two before starting feeding her. And I also remember you had told me she has got her own schedule, but, I mean, Izumi, I was sitting at the table, eating my pasta ai piselli and she was there, looking at me with those deer eyes… What kind of cold-hearted man would do something similar?”

“You fed her with pasta ai piselli ?! “His pupils almost got out of his orbits, noticing the futher point her more vicious elbow was going to take off from.

“No, of course, I haven’t! I searched for her food bags and I poured some food in her bowl. My pasta ai piselli was so full of water, my peas were soaking in a puddle. How could I give her that without making a mess?”

“Do you realize you are implying you would have given my dog pasta ai piselli if you had been a decent cook? !”

He would have started fiddling with his thumbs like a scolded kid, if Liù hadn’t tried catching their attention with a bark, as timid as a polite woman forcing a cough to make someone turn to her.

“You’re right, bimba,” He cracked a large smile at her. Then, he unfolded his stiff legs and clumsily crouched up to talk to the animal at her same height level. “You can eat. Buon appetito .”

“No, she can’t eat yet!” She gave a slap on his broad shoulder, but she eventually gave one onto her forehead as well, a bit disconsolate. At his jovial command, the saluki had gladly plunged her muzzle in her biscuits and she hadn’t been able to do anything about it. “She was supposed to stay. That is useful to teach her how to control impulses.”

“If you ask me, it’s so cruel,” He put his tongue on display, standing up to let the dog have her own meal in peace. She got back on her feet too after having thrown the snack she had been holding into the dish. “Wouldn’t you feel tortured if I told you to sit still in front of a dish of spaghetti alla San Giovanna ? My poor bimba !”

“I-“ What kind of conversation was even that?

“Imagine,” He insisted, dropping a whole jar of theatricality on his tongue, each finger of his flying up and down in an undulating choreography. “The smell of olives and tomato sauce spreading in your nostrils…”

“Oh, let me imagine…” She closed her orbs, mocking his silly game by making him believe she was actually thinking over it. By the time she opened them, he had already disappeared behind her, fumbling with her skein of spikes. “That’s what I already do as a cook. I can’t eat what I prepare. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do…” He mumbled, pensive, caressing her strands in awe, as if he was contemplating some prestigious manufacture sewn by a God. “You know, I think I will get used to this dog owner life, after all. Maybe a maltese dog would have been boring.”

“Oh please…” Her eyelid twitched at the mere memory from the year before, from back when he had announced he wanted to give her a candid ball of fur as birthday gift. She had acted promptly, had taken the reins of the situation by herself by dragging him into an adventure on her motorbike, without revealing him where they were going. From Naples to Pisa, Junpei had let her take him to that mysterious destination up through the peninsula, though he had just come from an exhausting train journey. “Don’t remind me of that ,” She playfully begged and pinched his puffy cheeks peeping out from her golden curtain.

“I know, I know. Besides, a maltese wouldn’t have looked like me, either. So it would have been the same thing. At least, though, when I take Liù out for a stroll,” He gently let some precious threads slip on the back of hs hand and pushed them forward, at the sides of her smooth neck, down her shoulders. “It’s a bit like if I’m going out with another beautiful blonde lady,” At the beginning, he had just intended to play with her, tenderly highlight about how keeping her hair like that, like a frame of gilded waves, would really make her look like a long-eared dog. Afterwards, however, after some seconds spent holding that silky fabric, he had fallen in love with its enchantment and , now hypnotized, he couldn’t just help indulging in his joke. He kept on going on and on, even in a more affectionate way when a cloud passed by her relaxed contentment. She should have been smiling , in his opinion: Liù had greatly appreciated her hand-made biscuits, hadn’t showed any sign of resentment towards her once more. What was she still tormenting herself over? It seemed like if she was fighting against so many forces coming to attack her in unison and he felt the urge to shine over her again.

“Hey, Izumi, do you want to hear a funny thing?”

“It’s not an offence, but you always say funny things. Otherwise you wouldn’t be Junpei, wouldn’t you?”

“But this is truly funny. Funnier than usual, if you prefer putting it like that!”

He tossed her tresses off his head and marched back to Liù, his lumbering steps sounding lighter despite the clumsy landing of his hops.

The dog had just finished eating her breakfast and was calmly cleaning her coat with her tongue. She didn’t seem bothered by the two humans barging into her quiet morning for a second time. Indeed, judging by the shy hints of a swishing tail, she was actually happy to see them again on a full belly.

“Liù, Liù, Liù, la bambina mia che sei tu ,” Junpei’s unique call made her stand on alert with excitement. Rhythmic claps and tappings against the tiles of the floor contributed to elicit even more trepidation in her active muscles. She didn’t take too long before beginning doing the same with her paws, the butterfly-shaped metallic medal of her collar dangling and jingling in the flow of her dance.

Once the right mood had been set, once he was certain Liù would follow him wherever he would go, he beckoned to the saluki to head for the living room. In the contagious heat of the fragment, he bumped into an agape Izumi who was witnessing the exchange between the man and the dog with incredulity.

“No, don’t tell me it is what I think it is,” Stuck in a frozen loop at the door of the kitchen, Junpei took advantage of that absent state of hers to involve her in a fleeting, improvised dance, her limp arms obeying to his eccentric desire, her hands falling in his without resistance and her hips spinning along with his like if they were a couple pirouetting in a carillon.

“No, like I said, it’s much, much better than whatever you think it might be.”

“I don’t think so. At all,” She told him straight into his sunny eyes in a firm whisper. “Your neighbors know well who she belongs to. They won’t come yelling at you if they hear her doing that .”

“Oh, so you know she can do that,” He wasn’t surprised in the least, but it was nice to make her blush in embarrassment once in a while, turn the tables for the life-span of an afternoon nap. “All those stories about her being a proper lady…About her not liking loud people!”

“H-Hey,” She wiggled, oscillated, opened and closed her legs, raised her fists: whatever it took to escape from his tickling trap. “ Being a lady and loving singing are two interconnected qualities. They are not enemies. As far as concerns about those loud people, instead…”

“Instead…?” He prompted, his fingers flitting around her, ready for another round.

“Your opera singing is loud, but it’s a nice loud. I’ll give you that, ok ? And a dog named after the main character of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly can’t be immune to it, I guess,” He saw her nervously cracking a grin at Liù who had hopped on the sofa and was resting on a pillow. Waiting .

“Hey!” Without prior warning, he let her go to her displeasure, no matter if his tickling was more than unbearable. That would be, -to use his own words-, much better than whatever he wanted to do, sitting at his piano and lifting the fallboard with a thud. “You don’t really want to play piano right now, at eight in the morning?!”

“Of course, I want to. I’m not supposed to make a proper lady wait, am I not?” Liù had apparently got used to that term, to the many occasions she had acknowledged humans would look at her while pronouncing it. Therefore, feeling like Junpei had just called her into question, she abandoned the comforts of her pillow and reached him. She licked his hand and gladly accepted the caresses coming in response. Then, on her haunches, she put her paws on black wood and stared at him in fibrillating expectation. “Eh eh, may I introduce you to my new soprano partner? She’s also the Great Detective Shibayama’s assistant, though, mind you! Let’s say this is just the lamest side of our life as ordinary citizens.”

”Ah…Don’t use my instructions howsoever you please, Junpei Shibayama. Honestly…” At the first row of notes propagating in the hall, she sat on the sofa and aimed the bud of a glad smile at the window.

In her soul, she was just so happy he had come to quickly find out it had never been a matter of superficial likeness.

__________________________________________

Italian notes:

Principessa: princess

Ma io dico: literally, it means “But I say…”. Still it is just some form of interaction to express disbelief (in a negative way).

Pappa: It’s a terms we use while speaking to babies and animals. It means food, technically.

Bimba and bambina: synonym for “little girl” but we use them in affectionate contexts as well. It’s a bit like “baby” I guess. I became affectionate to bimba thanks to italian dub of Lady and the Tramp. It did stick with me in the sweetest way as possible.

Pasta ai piselli: It’s pasta and peas ahaha

Spaghetti alla San Giovanna: In my family it has always been spaghetti, tomato sauce and olives. Such has to remain to them, please.

Liù, Liù, la bambina mia che sei tu: Liù, Liù, the baby you are to me. Our structures are really not that easy to translate in english sometimes? We can be free in the order of our words, in our dispositio verborum, so we it’s not always easy to translate everything. Yet, it’s just supposed to be one of those silly tunes you sing to your dog.

[cringelordofchaos]

(for"sendacharacterandilllist"askgame) DREWWWWWWWWWWWWW

YAYYAYAYAYAYA SOMEONE ASKED ME

ok so drew !!!

favorite thing about them

everything. But if I had to choose then maybe his attachment issues or those little spiky strane of hair above one of his ears

least favorite thing about them

just the fact that his backstory is not revealed yet. Like I hope the whole "he has family issues and feels detached from them making him have a complicated and toxic view kn relationships as well as attachment issues" headcanon ks revealed to be canon otherwise, if he's acting the way he is just bc he does, then he makes for a pretty boring character no matter how "realistic" it would be (which it kinda wouldn't but whatever that's a separate discussion). so yeah like the lack of traits rather than the traits themselves ig. Though rosyclozy said season 2 is druffering 2 so I am EXCITED

brOTP

dria. draisy. dracy. idfk which I should pick. endless possibilities. and they all parallel each other in one way or another and I fucking love them platonically but I'm not interested in them romantically if I'm gonna be honest. they'd all fix him

OTP

this is so unfathomably predictive and obvious of me but Drake/PlumPeach like come on a) I relate to Drew's "I'm in love with my best friend but they can't know and they're in love with someone else" situation heavily,there are endless analyses to be made and written, endless fic potential, SO MANY songs about breakups that just Fit Them, they make each other worse and also interesting characters. Someone once called me an abuse apologist that should never date anyone because I shipped them? LMAO. that was like 3/2 years ago though. without drake drew just like... wouldnt have character. Which says a lot. Second OTP is HOT TAKE droey. I made a whole fucking post abt them please don't @ me o can explain themselves - also droey angst. Also they're complicated af as well. But they are also pretty annoying so I'm not sure lmao. Dria rules too but prefer it platonic

nOTP

Idk drelliot .?? It's so unfathomably cliche and stereotypical toxic yaoi material and I hate it but I also think it's funny so idk I don't really have notps unless it's siblings or bad age gaps cuz they make me uncomfortable

random headcanon

do I have to share only one? I want more so I'll do more. I think he's Filipino, he had one of those glow in the dark shoes in elementary school and flexed them HARD, he has major depressive disorder and maybe borderline personality disorder, he hyperfixates on video games, listens to mostly emo rap, spends most of his time inside during summer, gets a new iphone every year, cyberbullies little kids on roblox, also still plays roblox, gets expensive watches just to flex and also bc he measures his worth by wealth his parents give him bc that's the only love they show him LMAO, and thinks furries and weebs are cringe, and also i love him

unpopular opinion

he actually loved/loves zoey

song I associate with them

ok how about I drop my whole playlist for them instead

Alex G - Nintendo 64

Amy Winehouse - Back To Black

Annika Bennett - Boy Who Has Everything

Billie Eilish - Wish U Were Gay

BoyWithUke - Toxic

Conan Gray - Heather

DoshVO - Dear Jake

DoshVO - Do You Wanna Bully Hailey?

DoshVO - Like a Six "Zoey Diss"

DoshVO - Move Along

ElyOtto - SugarCrash!

Fran Vasilić - eyes blue or brown can't remember

5 Seconds Of Summer - Teeth

Gotye - Somebody That I Used To Know

Jack Stauber - Cupid

Kaden Mackay - Don't You Dare (Make Me Fall In Love With You)

Kali Uchis - Just A Stranger

Laufey - From The Start

Laufey - Promise

Laufey - Second Best

Liana Flores - papercut

Mitski - Old Friend

Olivia Rodrigo - drivers license

Olivia Rodrigo - traitor

Olivia Rodrigo - vampire

Regina Spektor - Two Birds On A Wire

Rex Orange County - Best Friend

Rex Orange County - Sunflower

Rex Orange County - Television / So Far So Good

Steven Universe - It's Over Isn't It

The Front Bottoms - Be Nice To Me

The Vaccines - Heartbreak Kid

The Walters - I Love You So

...wow. I really thought I had more - whatever, more to be added w time, dw

Also the song "you better move on" I have no idea who made it ???????? I just listened to the cover by Frank Wattkinson lmao

favorite picture of them

ooof this one's heard. I mean hard. shut up

ok ok so I like this one .

cuz he's just done with him. looks angry but probably suppressing his years so fucking much. leaving Jake behind after such struggle and effort to keep him... dam (and it also shows their height difference lmfao)

Or one of these !!

Another ones from the finale, he's just laughing and smiling from the sheer pain he's in and the utter irony that is his friendship with Jake and he's so hurt but he's probably doing this to keep himself from crying but he's also probably just laughing at how pathetic he is for trusting Jake or believing that they really had something when it all turned out to be a huge lie and he just can't believe in himself or anyone anymore

ahahaha

this one's just him being jelly like eurgj. 😠😒

this one's a funny reaction image concept

and I also love this one cuz like, first of all lol at his eyebags he's either been crying or not getting any sleep or BOTH, he'd also in a call with Zoey trying to get him back and he's just looking at the side like he's mad at her and he's hurt by her but he also looks like he's trying so hard to resist idk how to explain it man he can't deal with her but he can't deal without her yknow what I mean

Thank you for asking !!!!!!

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Doctor Who: The Star Beast- A Reasonably Watchable Mess

You may have noticed that, despite desperately positive, brittle reviews in the mainstream media, the last few years of Doctor Who went down like a lead balloon with actual fans and ordinary viewers. Turns out that a patronising gender-flip that served no plot purpose followed by a series of episodes in which the Doctor shilled for Space Amazon, murdered innocent giant spiders and delivered completely unearned straight-to-camera speeches like a fucking after-school special weren’t popular moves. The show’s viewing figures plummetted (despite contrary claims from the BBC that turned out, very simply, to be lies) and its review score aggregate on Rotten Tomatoes plunged, at one point, to literally 0%. Hilariously, the review aggregate from the mainstream media was around 90% at the time, once again demonstrating that the average critic can be bought for less than I spend assuring the silence of my past victims (the joke is that all my past victims are dead and I don’t spend a fucking thing on their silence). The abject failure of the Whitaker/Chibnall era was inevitable and any normal person could have predicted it. The BBC, however, didn’t and had a bit of a panic when they realised just how fucked their ratings were. Not that they admitted that, of course, but the fact they brought back the dream-team of showrunner Russell ‘The’ Davies and David Tennant for the 60th Anniversary Specials instead of letting the current incumbents stick around until after the anniversary kinda speaks volumes. So, now we’re getting three Anniversary specials, starring Tennant and helmed by Davies. The first one’s out, and it falls on me to review it as fairly as possible. So… how is it?

Well, put it this way: it’s not terrible, but it’s not the confident, unapologetic return to form I was hoping for either. It concerns a minor villain from the old DW comics called Beep the Meep who poses as a cute, furry critter while secretly plotting the genocide of the entire universe, a reunion with Catherine Tate’s always-delightful Donna Noble and a resolution to the Human/Time Lord meta-crisis that nearly straight-up killed her last time she was on-screen. And, in fairness, the stuff that works works pretty well. The jokes are funny, Tennant and Tate are excellent in their respective roles, the Meep is gloriously fucking psychotic (though the voice actor does sound like they’re phoning it in a bit) and Yasmin Finney, playing Donna’s trans daughter, is a lot less insufferable than she would have been if Chibnall had written her lines. I actually thought the bit where Donna threatens to “descend” on some kids who dead-name her in the street was well-handled and pretty accurately captured the protective instincts of a parent with a trans daughter. Mainly, she’s just there for the representation, though, and does the square root of bugger all to advance the plot. That’s probably a mercy, since I suspect the show would have had a hard time disguising the fact that this fifteen year old kid is being played by a twenty year old woman (who seems to have borrowed David Bowie’s cheekbones) if her part was any more prominent. But yeah- it’s a fun, knockabout adventure that doesn’t overstay its welcome and doesn’t try to outdo the entire show up to that point just because its been a completely arbitrary 60 years since the first episode. It’s basically fun and basically fine. It’s destined to be lauded to ludicrous excess by a mainstream media who are terrified of offering a proper critique because it’s got a trans person in it, while simultaneously being shat upon by online reviewers who know they can win easy points with the fans by challenging the suffocating ubiquity of the Standard Approved Opinion. In truth, though, it’s neither great nor awful- it’s just an hour of television that’s worth watching once but only once. It contains some good stuff… and some shite stuff.

Ah yes, the shite. That’s what you came to read about, isn’t it? Nobody in their right mind shows up at my blog-step for kind words and understanding: you come here because you know I have the pithiest insults and pissiest hot-takes. And yes: there’s some real fucking garbage to dunk on here. First of all, the Human/Time Lord meta-crisis gets resolved in the dumbest fucking way possible. For those of you who don’t remember, the ending of Modern Season 4 of DW was one of the most heartbreaking things ever attempted in a show designed for family viewing. Donna took on the consciousness of a Time Lord in order to save the universe but nearly burnt out her synapses in the processes. The Doctor wiped her mind to save her life, and then had to leave, because if she ever remembered him or the adventures they’d shared together, the crisis would reassert itself and her brain would overload, killing her. And the way they get around this, initially, is alright. Because Donna had a child, part of the meta-crisis got passed onto her, allowing two minds to take a strain that would kill just one. It’s a sweet and perfectly acceptable way of sorting a complex problem and something that legitimately wouldn’t have occurred to the Doctor at the time, because he had to come up with a solution that would work in the moment, not something that would require a nine month gestation period. But then, for some stupid fucking reason, they took it one step further and had Donna and her daughter simply relinquish the power of the meta-crisis, handwaving the obvious bullshit-ness of this move by claiming it just wouldn’t have occurred to a male-presenting Time Lord. The Doctor’s not an idiot. If that was an option, it would have occurred to him. Fuck, it did occur to him that one time Rose Tyler absorbed the Time Vortex and he had her give it up, channelling it into him to save her life at the cost of forcing a regeneration. It’s simultaneously contrived and slap-dash- a hasty right-on girl-power moment that fails miserably to play by the rules and cheapens the original story of the meta-crisis retroactively. It also brings us, neatly, to the phrase ‘male-presenting Time Lord’.

There’s a line in the excellent It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia wherein Charlie describes himself as “a straight man who poops transgender”. The phrase ‘male-presenting Time Lord’ sounds weirdly similar to me. It’s too specific and technical, while also including a wildly silly element (‘Time Lord’ is a vaguely ethereal, grandiose title that doesn’t gel with earthly, human discussions of gender identity). People just don’t talk like that. Sometimes people write like that, seeking an economy of phrasing that looks good on the page… but nobody actually talks like that. I mean, the context in which it’s used is stupid, but the phrasing itself is stupider. It’s also emblematic of a problem with the script as a whole. It feels like a first draught.

What do I mean by that? Well, there’s just a lot of instances where conversations feel slightly stilted or opportunities are missed. Case in point, there’s a bit where Donna’s discussing her kid growing up with her own mum, and it feels like it was meant to be a poignant discussion of the trials and tribulations of raising a child and then realising that they’re not what you were expecting but their own, completely separate person. What we get is just a placeholder where a couple of jokes occur but nothing of import is really said. Similarly, there’s a line where the Doctor muses that he doesn’t know who he is any more, which feels like it was meant to be developed into a meditation on his sense of identity after so many regenerations, metatextually addressing the show’s loss of a coherent, inter-regenerational identity for its lead character. Absolutely fucking nothing comes of it. There’s even a bit where a UNIT scientific advisor in a wheelchair encounters a flight of stairs and the way it’s shot makes it feel like there should have been a joke there. Maybe there could have been a really slow lift that she has to use while her soldiers rush up the stairs, or maybe she could have made one of them carry her. I’d have taken a lazy, low-hanging quip like “stairs…. My old nemesis” to be honest. But all we get is “sorry about the stairs,” and that’s it. My point is that there’s a superficiality to a lot of the scenes and lines that yells ‘PLACEHOLDER’, and areas that desperately need polish.

Speaking of polish: London is once again too fucking clean. I wish TV shows would stop doing that- making London look like the MCU’s version of fucking New York- all glass skyscrapers and clean streets. The real London is a bizarre, dystopian mix of impersonal steel monuments to capital, crumbling baroque architecture from the middling-glorious past and slumping, poverty-stricken housing from a fucking Dickens novel. The city has a really specific, slightly nightmarish character that most telly shows and films fail miserably to capture. It’s inexcusable in this case, because Doctor Who actually used to do a pretty good job of showing London as it is. Which is mental, since it used to be filmed in Swansea in cocking Wales.

But I digress. My final major issue is that the message of the show’s text is wildly at odds with the metatextual message of the specials’ mere existence. The whole reason the BBC re-hired Tennant and Davies onto the show was to announce a return of the Who everyone loved; a tacit admission than the last few years of lazy virtue-signalling and shoddy script-work had been a mistake that they were keen to move on from. There is literally no other reason to take such an obvious backward step in the show’s development. Yet the episode The Star Beast keeps bringing up Whitaker’s tenure as the Doctor as though it’s something to be celebrated. We get lines like “The Doctor’s a man and a woman. And both. And neither. And more,” (again, nobody fucking talks like that) that feel like an attempt to fold the previous three years into the acceptable canon, when the whole reason the specials are happening is to renounce them and leave them in the cold. Then again, that’s the Beeb for you- it's amazing if the left hand knows what the left hand's doing. If someone's bothered to inform the right hand, it's so surprising as to be frankly suspicious. Add to that the extra layer of complexity that comes from getting Disney to part-fund the show and you’re bound to end up with a confused mess. Also, why did they bother getting Disney to part-fund this? The Special Effects look like something a fourteen year-old could whip up in his bedroom. Which is fine- I never mind the sets wobbling in Who: I just can’t figure out where all the fucking money went.

I think the root problem is two-fold. First, as much as I loved Russell T. Davies’ original time as showrunner, it’s really obvious he’s gotten old. It’s only been fifteen years since his time in charge ended, but sometimes, the ageing process kicks a guy’s arse really suddenly (ask me about waking up one day to discover I now have man-boobs sometime). There’s this interview he did recently about how Davros represents an offensive portrayal of wheelchair users, and it’s clearly just the ramblings of a confused old man. Nobody looks at Davros, creator of the Daleks, and thinks ‘yup- there goes a typical wheelchair user’. Part of the point of his character is that he’s kind of admirable on paper, overcoming age and sickness to achieve the impossible… but he perverts and subverts those expectations by doing something fucking appalling. It’s a nuanced, complex take on the way pain and suffering can make a person sympathetic without necessarily redeeming them. And Russel T. Davies, a once-talented writer who should understand this stuff, just doesn’t get it any more. He’s well-meaning, but he’s clearly just not up to the job any more. I mean, he still has talent- his renewed tenure will be better than Chibnall’s… but maybe it would have been a better idea to let the poor schmuck retire on a high note.

The other problem is deeper and more intractable. The world has changed since Doctor Who was the best thing on television, and it might be that it just can’t work any more. The modern era of Who was born from a place of hope yet, also, a place of marginalisation. It was 2005. The government of the day had dome some pretty fucked up things, but they were nowhere near as evil as the governments who were to succeed them. Sci-fi was still a niche thing allowing for experimentation and weirdness. There were definite good guys and bad guys on the world stage and in domestic politics: there were genuine victims on one side and hateful bigots on the other, and it seemed like it might actually be possible for the underdogs to win for a change. 2023 is a different world. We’ve seen the worst UK governments since Thatcher in the 80s (and people kept voting for them) and the worst US President in history (a Savaloy-orange freak with the hair of a sexually-confused Nazi). On the cultural level, the lines between victims and villains have blurred, with the arrival of the never-ending Oppression Olympics birthing a generation of dead-eyed bullies who hide behind nominal ‘oppressed’ status in order to tear down genuinely nice people (like that time a load of wankers piled onto a scientist who landed a probe on a moving comet FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY because he did while wearing a T-shirt with a stylised naked lady on it). Identity has replaced solidarity as the go-to discussion in progressive (or allegedly progressive) circles. The sci-fi genre itself has become popular- meaning it’s infested with normies who don’t understand it but do want to own it. Doctor Who was never built for this world. The change in culture and society over the last just-under-twenty years is more significant, in some ways, than the changes that occurred between its original outing in the 60s and its reboot in 2005, and I don’t know if it can survive those changes. We inhabit a world where actual heroism and even basic decency seem less important than the performance of those qualities in ways that a mass audience can understand and where nuanced solutions, informed by kindness, are verboten because everyone’s supposed to pick a side. There’s no room for a genteel, British/Alien gadabout with two hearts and a silly sonic screwdriver in a world where the battle-lines are drawn and performative virtue has become a universal aspiration. In order to fit our tawdry world, Doctor Who would have to stop being Doctor Who. And, to be blunt, our culture doesn’t really deserve any form of Doctor Who at the moment.

So yes, The Star Beast is pretty good. It’s a nice slice of television that fails on many fronts, but still manages to entertain. But what next? Where can we possibly go from here? Personally, I intend to watch the specials and- if they’re okay- Ncuti Gatwa’s era after that. Then I think I’m done. By rights, the show should face cancellation while it’s still strong enough to bow out gracefully, but if that doesn’t happen, I’ll still have to pick a point to stop watching. Sooner or later, all good things must come to an end, and if the BBC isn’t big enough to admit that, at least I am. I suggest you pick somewhere to draw a line, too.

[bryonieamber]

i dont really want to think too much about ai but it's shoving itself in my face absolutely everywhere i go i cant just not have an opinion about it.

when i was a piglet, everyone always talked about "ai taking jobs" as like a joke. a silly hypothetical, that we all believed was no more likely to affect us than robot overlords, or teleporter malfunctions.

"ai" is still no more advanced than predictive text, and its nowhere near as scary as the thing we jokingly pretended to be frightened of as children. but it's already done that thing we were all joking about years ago.

ive never made much money from my work. the kind of art i specialize in is all freelance these days, full of competitors more skilled than me, and not nearly as marketable as 3d animation or graphic design, like my peers were smart enough to major in. and i never realized until i graduated college how much i hate freelancing.

and when this ai craze first started getting big, and concerns were being raised about copyright, and artists getting laid off, i was in agreement with other artists that this COULD make my art career harder. that people COULD be at risk of losing ownership of their work.

some time last year, i was walking from point A to point B, at the store where i work, where my actual job is, because i've never been a successful enough artist to do this full-time like i wish i could. and i saw some jigsaw puzzles we were selling.

and i noticed all the art on these jigsaw puzzles were ai generated.

and i think that was the moment it really hit me that the robots had already taken my job.

i'll always be appreciative and grateful to people who pay artists for their labor, but those people are in short supply. and now that the logo design, and furry porn markets are pivoting to ai, there's less and less room for artists like me who have to compete in a market with a growing number of thousands of other starving artists.

i can't compete with the skill of other humans, or the cheapness of computers.

i guess i've known for a while i'd never make a career out of art anyway, not like the masters of old, who got to work at disney before they kicked all the 2d animators out. so i realize i'm lamenting a future i never really had. and maybe ai isn't entirely to blame. but when fewer people can afford to be artists, we'll all have less art.

its not all bad, though. i guess. there is something i like about not marketing my art. about not making my whole thing a "brand". i like that i can draw whatever i like, and that i can not draw, if i don't feel like it.

but i also haven't really felt like drawing for a long time. and i think, somehow, the jigsaw puzzle has something to do with that.

[wolfwillowisp]

As a therian, teratophile, and adult artist who draws mostly nonhumans I often look at a lot of furry porn. Like a lot. Partly because, well. It’s pornography but also bc it’s genuinely fun art. Like I will look up NSFW furry fandom content for completely non horny reasons, just cause I think it’s fun. This has the odd side effect of developing opinions on kinks&fetishes that are common in the fandom that I don’t have.

For instance, “hyper” proportions. (If you don’t know what that means, you should be able to pick up on it from the context of the rest of this post but if not I guess it’s kinda an iykyk situation.) I’m. Not the biggest fan of hyper*, I’ll take it if it’s included in with something I am interested in but it’s not typically something I’m looking for outside of like. Curiosity I suppose. That being said. There is one instance in which I actually quite enjoy it, if in a mostly chaste manner on my end(whatever that even means in this circumstance). And that’s when a little goblin of a critter. A scrambling little bastard. Has a disproportionately massive penis. I don’t know why, but I feel like it just FITS. It feels natural to look at someone’s sneaky weasel oc and see that she’s like 40% penis by volume. Every time a furry draws a dnd type kobold with a dick longer than its tail something is right with the world. Like this isn’t even really all that much of a sex thing for me it just feels correct. Like yeah scrappy scrawny tricky bastard creatures should be obscenely and unrealistically hung. That’s just factually right. I could not explain this opinion if I tried. To bring it back around to a character of the scampering shithead variety I’m familiar with, logically, ULTRAKILL’s v1 would not have a penis. It is a murder robot. If it did have one, I think it would be rather small. But in my heart. In my soul.

I know in my heart that this thing is four foot five inches and has a stainless steel plated silicone battering ram with the dimensions of two liter soda bottle stashed away in its little hip armor pieces. I know that doesn’t make any sense, it’s so dumb, but that doesn’t make it any less right to me. To me.

*the exception being, predictably, what is referred to as “hyper pregnancy”. No surprises there, I imagine.

[joyfulobjecttree]

Pet Wellness Plans: Are They Worth It? Insights from Local Vets

Introduction

When it comes to our furry companions, ensuring their health and happiness is paramount. Pet owners often find themselves weighing various options to maintain their pet's well-being, and one increasingly popular choice is the pet wellness plan. But are these plans truly worth the investment? In this comprehensive guide, we will delve deep into the ins and outs of pet wellness plans, seeking insights from local veterinarians who know pets best. So grab a cup of coffee, settle in with your favorite pet, and let’s uncover what you need to know about keeping your beloved critter healthy.

Pet Wellness Plans: Are They Worth It? Insights from Local Vets

At the heart of every pet wellness plan lies a commitment to preventive care. But how do these plans stack up against traditional veterinary services? Local vets have varying opinions based on their experiences with clients and patients alike.

Veterinarians commonly emphasize that wellness plans can help spread out the cost of routine care over a longer period, making it more manageable for pet owners. For instance, rather than paying for an annual visit all at once, these plans allow you to budget for monthly payments that cover essential health checks, vaccinations, and other preventive services.

What Is Included in Pet Wellness Plans?

A typical pet wellness plan http://martinsjxa650.fotosdefrases.com/vet-spotlight-interview-with-a-local-veterinarian-on-animal-care-trends-1 might include:

Annual Health Exam: A thorough check-up by your vet to catch any potential issues early. Vaccinations: Regular shots necessary for keeping your pet safe from diseases. Parasite Control: Treatments for fleas, ticks, and worms. Dental Care: Professional cleanings to maintain oral health. Discounts on Additional Services: Such as surgeries or emergency visits.

Each vet clinic may customize its offerings based on local needs and clientele preferences.

The Importance of Preventive Care in Pets

Preventive care is akin to giving your pet a fighting chance against various ailments. By investing in regular check-ups and vaccinations through a wellness plan, you’re not just saving money; you’re potentially prolonging your pet's life. Many local vets advocate for preventive measures since they can lead to early detection of diseases like diabetes or kidney failure.

How Do Wellness Plans Save You Money?

You might be wondering how these plans can actually help your wallet in the long run. Here's how:

Budgeting: Instead of hefty bills during emergencies or annual visits, spreading costs monthly keeps finances predictable. Discounts on Services: Most plans offer reduced rates on additional treatments or services. Early Detection: Catching problems early can save expensive treatments later on. Are There Different Types of Pet Wellness Plans Available?

Absolutely! Pet wellness plans vary widely based on what you need for your specific furry friend. Here are some common types:

Basic Wellness Plans: Cover essential check-ups and vaccinations. Comprehensive Plans: Include advanced diagnostics and specialty services.

[sunder-the-gold]

Arknights: Mr. Lee is also a model man

Previously I said that Mountain “did everything”, but that was a little bit of an exaggeration. Mountain certainly fulfills all of the basic qualifications of manhood, but Mr. Lee takes that even further with his capacities as a leader and a father-figure.

So does Hellagur, whom I actually wanted to cover next (if only to have an example to show to those who have hang-ups about furries), but Mr. Lee’s appearances are fresher in my mind and he also serves as a greater illustrative contrast to Mountain, which can show what manhood is and isn’t.

Like Mountain, Mr. Lee learned how to be dangerous and also how to be gentle, and Mr. Lee also seeks peaceful solutions before resorting to violence. But where Mountain excels at violence, Mr. Lee excels at avoiding and defusing violence.

That’s a vital skill, for a private investigator. Mr. Lee has to maintain positive relations with both legitimized government institutions, organized criminal families, corporate interests, and the common working people, all while taking care not to nettle the pride of those who esteem themselves too highly.

This strength does trend towards a character fault, as Mr. Lee learned to lie as easily as he breathes. He doesn’t go so far as to pretend truth and honesty don’t matter, but he’s not above playing the part of an exorcist to convince someone with more superstition than business sense to move their company out of a location where they’ll find no customers.

Naturally, Mr. Lee lies without shame about his own fighting strength, as he finds his line of work much easier when as many people as possible underestimate him as much as possible. To that end, he will surrender without pride when he can and shamelessly flee when he cannot.

His similar tendency to flee from responsibility is another character flaw stemming from a strength, as Mr. Lee is the sort of person who embodies “working smarter rather than harder."

Mr. Lee prefers to take a slow pace and keep a watchful eye out at all times, observing the stage and its actors, so that he can better notice foreshadowing moments and thus predict the coming plot twists. He’s most comfortable with long periods of inactivity to organize his thoughts, plan his next steps, and otherwise keep his head clear enough to avoid making hasty mistakes.

As a consequence, he doesn’t have the patience and stamina for menial, tedious, repetitive labor, or else he could have taken his amazing culinary skills and opened a restaurant. Furthermore, his experiences as a young man disillusioned him to the ways in which his peers chased after fame and fortune. At the end of the day, he wanted to make a positive difference in the world and help people (of any station in life) more than he wanted to climb the ladder either in the world of private business or governmental bureaucracy.

What makes Mr. Lee a model man despite his flaws, in my opinion, is how he never allows his flawed strengths to become regrets. He strikes the balance.

When others would come to harm, he stands and fights so that they might flee to safety.

When his childhood friend abandons his daughter to go off on a quest to prove his Kung Fu, Mr. Lee will practically adopt her, make sure she gets through college, hire her after graduation, and even travel across the ass-end of an empire looking for her deadbeat dad before anyone needs to worry about who is going to walk her down the aisle of her future wedding. (And Mr. Lee will do it himself if he must.)

When his other childhood friend reaches out to him after ten years without any word between them, and asks for help, Mr. Lee walks out the door and picks a fight with any man or god who gets in the way of doing his buddy a favor.

Mr. Lee knows what matters most in life, and he doesn’t run away from those responsibilities.

[beevean]

My biggest gripe with Prime so far is it's narrative insisting that Sonic is somehow a person who took his friends for granted and that he needs to go on some kind of self-discovering journey because of it, despite nothing Sonic has really done so far actually reflecting it. The catalyst for the show happening in the first place is Sonic getting pissed at Eggman shit talking Tails; doesn't seem like someone who took his friends for granted. Hell, if anything, Sonic won't shut the hell about the Powar of Friendship. The show's synopsis made it sound like he's his Fleetway counterpart, when at worst he's just kinda dumb because there wouldn't be a conflict otherwise, and the so-called bad selfish things he's done are honest to God mistakes and things no one could have predicted.

This in turn has the unintended effect of not only making Sonic's friends from his primary universe look like ones who hold him to standards that are impossible to meet, but the alternate dimension versions of them too. Especially Nine Tails, who in my personal opinion, has been kind of insufferable so far. Even with taking his differing background into consideration, at best he comes off as someone with the biggest stick jammed up his ass, and at worst he just seems like one of those try-hard whiny Punk-Emo kids who think they're being edgy and non-conformist. He just seems like someone using the two people in the past who made fun of his birth defect as an excuse to be as abrasive and stand-offish as possible to everyone, even when someone hasn't given him an actual reason to. I also don't like the implication that without Sonic in their lives, they either end up like Nine Tails, you just never get anything done, or you're just too dumb to function.

Wouldn't have a problem with all of this if they weren't insisting that this is totally canon to the main game one, instead of just being it's own thing like every other Sonic adaptation in the past has been, despite there already being several things that contradict the game canon beyond just matters concerning characterization.

Didn't a similar thing happen with Rise of Lyric? I remember that most of the descriptions of the game pre-release mentioned that Boom Sonic was a loner who'd have to learn about the Super Power of Teamwork. Game comes out, and uhhh he's actually pretty chill with his friends, a few cutscenes notwithstanding.

I don't know which is worse: thinking that Sonic needs to learn how to accept his friends, or not even delivering on your premise. Both are bad writing :V except that everyone and their mother gleefully shat on Boom and everything related to it, but Prime has a Sonic that Is Just Like Me Fr Fr (And Is Also Gay For Shadow), so it's all A-okay :^)

Prime to me honestly feels like a Boom that takes itself seriously. Boom (the show, I mean) had no pretenses: like it or not, it knew that it was nothing more than a funny sitcom featuring AU versions of Sonic & co. So I don't mind that Sonic was grumpier, or that Knuckles was basically a furry Kronk, or that Eggman had a crush on Sonic was little more than a manchild with mommy issues. But if you show not only want to have a more serious storyline with dimension hopping and protagonists screwing up and having to live with the consequences, but you even want to be considered canon... well, I expect more.

[kaythefloppa]

Season 7 Promo Art from the WK website:

Potential spoilers because this reveals some of the new suits we'll be seeing in the marathon: It's promo art from the official Wild Kratts site, (not to be confused with the website at PBS Kids.org) so it's not in the show's style [I'm hoping that it's just promo art and that it won't be the new animation style, but again, I'm just going to spoiler tag it anyways for anyone who didn't plan on seeing this, so read at your own risk]

We finally have a photo of the canon Fox Power Suit from the premiere episode and the new Owl Power Suit from Owl Odyssey.

I'm 99% sure that's a Barn Owl Suit since there's a Barn Owl in the promo art [I'm kinda salty that my prediction on Jimmy using the Owl Suit is kinda going to shit rn but whatevs]. Barn Owls are pretty cool predators and they, like most owls, live on almost every continent.

I wonder if they're gonna do the same thing they did with the Puffin Suit or the Mantid Suit and have the [Barn] Owl Suit be maximized to giant size so that Chris can carry everyone home. I feel like that would be like, horrifying yet awesome to see.

This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion but the fox power suit actually looks good. I especially like the nose feature and the white patch of fur on it. The episode's going to feature the Sniff-Tracking machine and I think that invention will be the inspiration for the Fox Suit.

There are a lot of furry jokes I can make at the Fox Power Suit, too many to compile into one post, too many that people have already made towards the show as a whole during its run, so I'm probably gonna pass on this one [and for the record, I am /pos with all of this].

Anyways, only 53 days until the hiatus is over. Continue setting your timers!

[ariel-seagull-wings]

FICTIONAL CHARACTER ASK: BIG MEAN CARL

Asked by @nuggetaubrey

@princesssarisa @softlytowardthesun @angelixgutz @amalthea9 @the-blue-fairie @themousefromfantasyland @faintingheroine @parxsisburning @gravedangerahead @grimoireoffolkloreandfairytales @lioness--hart @lord-antihero @giuliettaluce @silverfoxstole​ @professorlehnsherr-almashy​ @captain-dad​

Favorite Thing About Them: A voracious monsters who cares for nothing else than eathing wathever is in front of him (be it actual cooked food, a sapient living being, or a machine), Big Mean Carl landed several roles troughout the Muppets Tonight series, be it playing a Big Mean Bunny who eats cute rabbits and pups when the contestant got an answer wrong at the game show Swift Wits, a psychic who predicted he would eat you, making bubbles come out of his head after eating Bill the Bubble Guy, smashing talking pumpkins, or eating the tape machine, all the while treating what he did as a big performance that he would always finish with a big “Thank you” to the audiences. Is he good, or is he bad? He probably will say that he doesn’t care. The only thing that matters to Carl is that is always hungry. Than he returned to the Muppets viral Youtube videos and later landed a role as a desk receptionist in the 2015 ABC series, and thankfully kept the Chaotic Neutral energy that made him such an interesting character.

Least Favorite Thing About Them: Is confusing that both his mother and his sister are named Big Mean Carla. How does he know wich Big Mean Carla people are talking about?

Three Things I Have In Common With Them:

*Like he did in the 2015 ABC series, I work as a receptionist at a desk (tough of a library instead of a TV channel);

*I sometimes talk in a high voice tone without noticing;

*I also love the performance arts;

Three Things I Don’t Have In Common With Them:

*I am more of a pick eater than he is;

*I am not a giant furry monster;

*I am more likely to take sides in a dispute (at least private) in comparison to his neutrality;

Favorite Line:

From the Heather Locklear episode of Muppets Tonight:

“Ooh, I love this, biscotti.  Ooh, I hate these chimichangas!  And I love this biscotti!  And I hate these chimichangas! Ooh, and I love this lamp! Ooh, I hate this alarm clock! Thank you. Thank you.”

From the Hostile Makeover episode of ABC’s the muppets.:

“I take messages. I DON'T JUDGE TONE!”

brOTP: Mean Mama, Doglion, Sweetums, Bad Polly the Lobster, Clueless Morgan, Bill the Bubble Guy, Bobo the Bear, Dr. Phil Van Neuter, Seymour the Elephant, Pepe the King Prawn, Rizzo the Rat, Yolanda the Rat.

OTP: Angel Marie.

nOTP: His mother or sister Big Mean Carla.

Random Headcanon: Considering the documentarist cut an interview where he was talking in a hostile way about his father, I assume that Big Mean Carl ate him.

Unpopular Opinion: Like a lot of Muppet characters that were created in the nineties, I believe Big Mean Carl is very underrated and needs more love from the Muppet fandom.

Song I Associate With Them:

Bohemian Rhapsody

Stand by Me

Favorite Picture of Them: