#But. in a hypothetical situation where . I don't know. some weird universe that I did not feel all of this

[kedreeva]

#we spoke of this a LOT at work after that one tech was murdered and hidden in a wall

hi!👋 hello! kedreeva! i’m going to need to ask you to explain this!!!!

So back in 2009, a lab student named Annie Le was murdered at Yale university. Cameras saw her going on into a building, but not out again and it was like, the eve of her wedding (or close to? I don't remember) so clearly she had places to be and people waiting for her so they immediately started looking and the next day (or so? Anyway on the day of her wedding) they found her body in a recess in a wall, down in the areas where the research animals were kept. It turns out, a tech had killed her, but since there were cameras like EVERYWHERE, he just, I guess, left her there. Well, hid the body where it was. I don't remember how they caught him, but they did. It was a horrifying story. It still is.

And it was a huge news story among the folks at my workplace because, at the time, I was working at a different university, as an animal husbandry technician. As you can imagine this was a kind of intense time to be in that situation. They started offering, like, I'm not gonna say counseling but it was "if you need to talk we would prefer you talk to us about something wrong rather than kill anyone about it" and as techs (even if we were not even the same kind of tech, the killer was a lab tech and we were husbandry techs but I think a lot of people assumed it had been a husbandry tech since she was in an animal area), we were kind of getting the side eye from lab people for weeks afterwards. Like they thought we were gonna go "wow that's a fantastic idea, you're next!" or something, idk. And I mean like, people would freeze when you were alone in a hallway, or turn and walk the other way, or duck into the nearest room and watch you walk past, and they were all being super nice/civil to us when they did have to interact. It was very atypical behavior for lab people. Like not all of them, some of them had always been nice and weren't worried, but some of the people who had been unbelievable dicks previously were walking on eggshells. And the people who had friends in other universities reported this was happening at their jobs, too.

And instead of talking to The Man (because all the higher ups were garbage at the time), we just. talked among ourselves. It was a lot of "I may say I feel like strangling lab people sometimes when they do things that drive me up a wall but I don't MEAN it you know that right" and it also led to group discussions of what would be a theoretical *better* solution to hiding a body than what happened, with clear disdain for doing things like hiding bodies in walls, which is a terrible idea and one we would never do (looking at the people who think we might have decided this was a great idea actually).

Which consequently led to a lot of supervisors and/or managers that happened to overhear us bringing us donuts or arranging pizza for lunch in like, some kind of bid to help us feel appreciated, I guess, so that we wouldn't murder anyone, even though none of us were going to do that anyway. But also none of us were in a position to turn down free donuts or pizza or whatever.

And then after a few weeks, maybe a month or so, people just kind of forgot and moved on and things went back to normal like fifty people hadn't spent every lunch hour for weeks talking quietly among themselves about how human bodies would definitely fit into a carcass disposal barrel or that you'd have to crush hip bones and/or skulls before incineration. Hypothetically.

Like I said, it was a VERY weird time to be at my job, and every time I remember it happening feels like a fever dream. I can't even imagine what it was like at Yale.

[135-film]

i want to talk about stupid stuff in my furry world even though i don't really think anyone's listening :)

this is really long so i'm sorry if you open it and realize you don't care lol...

EVOLUTION.

basically, evolution works the exact same way in my furry universe(s) as it does in real life. animal species come and go and most extinction events happened pretty much at the exact moments.

i haven't thought too much about how/when their bodies formed - and i don't care that much because it's really, really not that important to anything - but i imagine it's around the same time animals started walking on land but rapidly evolving a bipedal (and modern humanoid) body instead.

HYBRIDIZATION.

i don't really like the term "hybridization" / "hybrid" for human analogous species, because of a lot of real world implications that could mean, but i'm a little at a loss for what else i should call them.

either way, the way (furry) species works is probably more simple in reality than it is in my head but essentially the viability of offspring depends on the parents family (classification), genus, and species. the further away it is from the species, the harder it is to reproduce BUT if they're in the same family, they can still produce offspring together.

for example: a tiger can breed with another tiger and will have a high success rate of offspring. or the tiger can move on to a lion, and will have a harder time at producing but will still produce offspring with some difficulty. OR the tiger can breed with a house cat and both can struggle at producing offspring - but it's not impossible. however, trying to have babies with a moose or a bear is genetically impossible and will never produce offspring.

subspecies and breeds do technically exist, but in-universe they do not have "names" for these really. and if they did, they wouldn't have any reason to talk about it.

FERAL ANIMALS.

i haven't actually settled on whether or not i want feral animals in my world, because i like the idea of my OCs having pets but the thought of "how" those animals exist and everything doesn't make sense to me.

my solution was initially going to be pet-sized insects, but unfortunately i also have anthro insects as well. so right now, none of my furries have pets or animals in their world.

CARNIVORE FOOD.

this one's particularly tricky for me, just kind of because i hadn't thought too much about it. so because of that, i'm going to say this as more of a hypothetical rather than a definitive.

i think it's primarily down to culture in what carnivores eat; in some places, it might be considered taboo to eat actual meat, but in other places it might be considered bad to eat meat substitutes.

in my head, my main story is in a culture where it's mixed - meat and meat substitutes are both okay to eat, and it just depends on the individual.

i imagine meat farms as relatively humane, though i can't currently think of a way to describe the process of humane meat farming (especially in a way that doesn't make me sound insane).

OTHER SOURCES OF FOOD.

i know some people get weirded out by this, but things like dairy (milk, eggs, cream), honey, and even non-food things like wool and the like are still definitely around and are actively farmed.

BIGOTRY.

there is no species/breed (whatever) related bigotry within my world whatsoever. primarily because i'm a little white boy from the US, so i don't think it's my place to really talk about and try to formulate a story around.

i bring this point up primarily because i think people kind of... expect furry stories that are in-depth to have this sort of thing - but i personally think it's best for me to avoid trying to do.

other forms of bigotry, specifically the ones i face/faced (homophobia, transphobia, etc.), DO exist in my world but it's small scale and also not particularly important to my stories outside of backstories, character development, and situational interactions.

ANATOMY.

all of my furry anatomy might change in the future but everything i say here applies to the way i draw them currently.

all furries have, generally, normal human proportions. there are some difference between groups of species, but majority are within the same proportions.

most furries have digitigrade legs (i know unguligrade is different, but for the sake of simplicity i'm going to call it digitigrade), though there are a few (though rare) exceptions that do not.

right now, birds have feather attachments to all their fingers except the thumb, and this goes down their entire arm (similar to a bunch of different dinosaurs). this reduces their range of motion on their wrists in-universe, but not so much that it's nearly impossible for them to do most normal activities.

i was thinking of changing them to have no wings, as i haven't been able to figure out how clothing works or things like that - but i'm bird autistic and really like drawing wings, so...stumped there! (i'm against back wings in most of my furry universes and dislike wings as hands.)

antlers and horns are considered ornamental and may be removed (typically a doctor or some sort of specialist would do this) if the person sees fit. velvet-shed antlers are still a "gorey" mess, and people who are going through that may request to stay home (though this is also dependent on the individual as well as the conditions around the individual - like if they work or something).

as mentioned previously, "hybrids" (actual name pending) do exist! their anatomy may be different than what they describe themselves as. example: my character dallas is a zebu cow mixed with african water buffalo (though this is not from his direct parents), but he still prefers to call himself a cow rather than a buffalo.

FASHION.

clothes are typically the same as they are for human, though some may be modified to accommodate for different species. it is also considerably less taboo to go nude, but most still prefer to wear clothes.

despite what a lot of people think, tailors still aren't as terribly common in this world - and, honestly, i think a lot of furries would know a lot about taking care of modifying/fixing themselves as well (though full making clothes, i don't know).

shoes are seen as more fashion than function, but steel-toed boots and such are definitely still around. horse shoes also fit into this category.

an extremely common type of fashion, just like our world, is body modification. ear cropping, tail docking, declawing, feather plucking, and so on are pretty common. (i don't think i need to say this - but i'm not an advocate for those things, please don't do these to animals unless absolutely necessary like in sheep and stuff.) there's even more than what i just listed.

tattoos are also common, though the word "tatoo" in this case has three different meanings - branding (typically freeze branding), general scarification, or needle tattooing.

freeze branding and scarification are basically the same thing as they are in real life and are the more painful of the processes, while needle tattooing is more tedious.

needle tattooing is shaving down the fur to get to the skin (full bald, not even little hairs are allowed in the area), and then tattooed as one would in our world but with special inks and dyes that show in the fur pattern and not just on the skin. while this sounds like the easiest process, it is highly repetitive and prone to failure if not up-kept and consistently tattooed for once a week for a month.

fur clipping (like real world camels and horses and dogs, not like humans) is also a popular fashion choice.

fur dyes are another popular choice, but are not recommended for full body use. this does not really stop people.

BODY LANGUAGE.

there is a lot of body language that i COULD cover, but most of it boils down to real world body language in animals just translated on humans.

but there's a lot of different readable tail languages as well - most people are generally aware of what their tail is doing during conversations or on public transport, things like that.

[diaryoftheunidropout]

THE BEGINNING

I have been fantasizing about making this post for days now. Perhaps, subconsciously, for years.

I will be dropping out of university. It's very likely that in a couple of hours I'll be sending the administration an email saying "it's over".

I still speak as if all of this was hypothetical because I am scared. Scared of making such a life-changing decision, and scared of making a mistake. I feel like an impostor for dropping out. It is quite simple: the second I decided to drop out, I felt immense relief. Except that, since, my brain has been trying to convince me that this "relief" only proves I am well enough to keep going to university. When really, this very relief comes from not going to university any longer. Weird, I know. Are you still following?

Maybe you deserve to know a little more about me, after all. Hi. I'm 18 and I moved to Paris, well, today. Literally today. I used to live in a town very close to Paris, to which I moved in September 2022, so, 6 months ago. Before that, I lived in the French countryside, where I grew up. I came to Paris because 1) it was one of my biggest dreams considering I love this city with my whole heart, and 2) for my studies at university. I'd chosen a degree I was sure I was going to love, something that would be a perfect balance between my two favorite school subjects: foreign languages, and economics. I knew with deep certainty I was finally going to be happy, after spending two out of my three high school years deep in depression and struggling almost every single day.

At first, I loved going to uni. I woke up happy every single day, the days were passing by so fast because of how interested I was in all of my classes. And after a month, in the span of 24 hours, it's like these first few weeks had been some kind of dream or hallucination, and I was left seeing a very grim and dark reality: I really wasn't happy. I could be a lot happier. This wasn't my path.

I dismissed the feeling at first, hoping it would pass. But it never did. Instead, it just got worse and worse. The semester ended and soon enough, I found out that I was top of my class. I spent my entire days on my phone, not paying any attention to the classes. And still, I got better grades than all of the hard-working students around me. I have no idea how I did it. And I know most would think that "it's such a shame" if putting so little effort into uni has still given me such good results.

But is all of this worth suffering and feeling miserable almost non-stop? Do I not deserve to listen to my own voice and put my health before my studies for the first time in my life? These past few weeks, I've been sinking deeper and deeper. I skipped a whole week of university, while in high school I hadn't skipped a single day (if you don't count the part of the story where my father dies, and that one time the government made me go to some kind of compulsory patriotic class, of course).

I know I'm progressively losing myself. I can't bear to remain in a situation where I harm myself in all kinds of ways and where I never give myself a chance to just be happy.

I want to believe I deserve some peace. Maybe even some happiness. But right now, all I feel is a terrible guilt for putting myself first. And perhaps some fear too.

Today, I want to save myself. I want to be my own savior.

"A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because its trust is not in the branch, but in its own wings."

[hematomes]

I could definitely see momoe being intersex! It definitely happens to where ppl dont even know about it or realize it! I like this headcanon for her, a little light in the darkness. ☺️

My thoughts on the show though...oh man. They are very negative so I'm sorry. 😫 You don't have to read it all if you don't want to. Warnings ahead for mentions of child abuse and suicide:

In a nutshell it's some kind of preachy anti-suicide propaganda piece, and it goes about its message in such a weirdly perverse and victim-blamey way. It's also sexually charged in a rly low-key way where it's romanticizing the way these children are crushing on and/or being abused by adult men. Ah I can't articulate it properly but it comes off as so sinister in its intention and it's easy to miss, *especially* for the target audience of, well, 14-year-old girls.

The end was so nonsensical that I can barely even remember what happened, but by that time I was already so upset about Frill and realizing what the show's message truly was that I don't think I was even registering what little plot that show had to give.

Also, as a trans boy myself, I have mixed feelings about Kaoru, but I don't think I'll ever watch the show a second time to let those thoughts fully form.

i just finished the last episode (without the extras) and im gonna be real with u i didn't understand it at all 💀

i see your point and i agree, especially with the last wonder egg & the whole thing with ai's/koito's teacher. i got the ick really quickly but the 1st real nail was the fact that he painted an "adult" version of ai and called it beautiful/gorgeous etc (and said she'd look like her mother, WITH WHOM HE IS IN A RELATIONSHIP......) and i thought it would be addressed later on, but they just. dropped that and then made it worse by saying that in a parallel universe she confessed to him and that he was her first love. without it being weird somehow idk. not to mention how breezily they hypothetized that he could've abused koito hello..... however ill give them the benefit of the doubt for that since it was a discussion between 4 teen girls and one of them did step up. even tho she just stepped up to defend her uncle. oh well.

i think i see their point in the way that teenagers sometimes get attached to their teachers, but it's the teachers' responsibility to draw a FIRM boundary and that guy clearly didn't with neither ai nor koito. im also quite unsatisfied about how his relationship with koito remained vague till the end of the main show (can't say abt the extras)

overall i still enjoyed watching it and got attached to the girls, but it really went sideways with the episodes 10-12. not really sure how i feel about the frill situation which frustrates me to NO END bc i literally started watching it for her </3 anyway

kaoru is... an extremely unimportant character, barely one episode etc and his trauma (and the trauma of all the wonder eggs tbh) was basically overlooked, which is also why im desperately clinging to the queer momoe hc. also disappointed bc he really deserved. so much more.

ANYWAY i was 0% ready for the last 3 episodes, and idk if ill watch the extras bc that was really weird and rushed. i feel like they should've explored some stuff way more, specifically around frill and how she's linked to what's happening. plus her motives etc, bc at the end of the day it's up to interpretation but like so vague i can't even really think of smth that would fully make sense

so, yea. imo amazing start but some very important things were left out (which sucks bc as u said the target audience is teenagers) and glazed over when it could've been an opportunity to point out how fucking WEIRD and dangerous some teachers are and the end was kinda fucked.

in conclusion. hoshiai no sora is better

[nehts]

So fucking normal tonight. I'm realising that I could absolutely fool my beloved wife into seeing the Voryn ball post again because I sent her discord messages about another post entirely - so she has reason to check her tumblr DMs .

I won't. but the temptation is killing me right now

[kreekey]

examples of people being racist toward yoko unintentionally: 1- calling her a weird stalker when they glorify/don't mind the many white fangirls who used to stalk the Beatles. 2- spreading misinformation that she lost custody of her daughter when in fact she'd won against her white crazy ex despite everything NOT in favour of her 3- bashing her for using John's glasses on the album cover she worked with John on, when they would've praised the artistry and bold statement if she was a white woman

Hey sorry I got around to answering your ask so late! You make a lot of really interesting points and I rarely hear people consider that. 

1 - reminds me of a Tumblr post I saw about an obsessive Beatlemaniac stalker and people were like “me” or “bless her” haha. Definitely different when they can interpret Yoko’s actions as “stalking”. And your point also reminds me of this quote, which isn’t about fangirls but still somewhat kinda related.

“Like Yoko when she met John, Linda was a divorced woman with a daughter when she met Paul mere months later.  There are stories similar to those about Yoko of her “scheming” to meet and marry Paul.  In the same way that Yoko is said to have joked prior to meeting him that she was “going to marry John Lennon,” Linda joked like any woman with a celebrity crush about how she was “going to marry Paul McCartney.”  (Bob Spitz notes both in his book The Beatles.  Guess which one he thought was conniving, and which one he thought was adorable.)... Was it the lucky fact that Linda got the scene a few months later than Yoko, or was it her whiteness?“ 

X

And I don’t have the answer if it was Yoko’s race that made her such a target, but it’s something interesting to consider and note. [And I’ll clarify this, I'm pretty sure Yoko didn't know about the Beatles until she became face to face with one, like she wasn't a fan who got lucky enough to meet her idol. In the David Frost interview and the 1971 Rolling Stone interview, John noted that Yoko didn't know him when they met, and Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies by Neil Beram says this on their meeting: "She was about as familiar with John's work as he was with hers. "I was an underground person, and such an artistic snob," she said later. "I knew about The Beatles, of course... but I wasn't interested in them." Just about the only thing she could recall about them was the drummer Ringo Starr's first name, because ringo means "apple" in Japanese.”] Also, and this definitely wasn’t stalking, but I posted a quote from Bob Spitz’ biography where he writes along the lines of

“[Linda] always insisted that she was going to marry Paul McCartney,” [Nat Weiss] recalls, “even before she met him”... It was no accident that Linda Eastman veered into his aura. She’d taken a few polite shots of Ringo and George before “zeroing in on Paul,”... Linda had come dressed to kill. Most days she played the typical rock chick, decked out in rumpled jeans and a T-shirt, with little or no makeup and unwashed hair. But today her hair had been carefully blow-dried so that it fell perfectly forward in wing points at her chin. And she was dressed in an expensive double-breasted striped barbershop jacket arranged just so over a sheer black sweater, with a miniskirt that flattered her gorgeous legs. When she squatted down – not so subtly, in what must have been a rehearsed gesture – in front of Paul for an intimate chat, he had trouble keeping his eyes from wandering below-decks...

, and some people commented that it appeared kinda predatory/pre-planned (reminds me of some criticism of Francie Schwartz’s meeting with Paul), but overall cute and everything. At the time I wondered how people would react if Yoko did that to John lol. No way of knowing, just a thought. And also, I know Yoko sent him Grapefruit and little instructions often, I think that’s usually what people cite as the stalking, that she tried to ensnare him with it. Again quoting Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies, 

For a time Yoko kept in touch with John by mailing him daily instructions-she called this Dance Event-that said things like "Dance" and "Watch all the lights until dawn" and "I'm a cloud. Watch for me in the sky." John found the instructions as perplexing as he found them intriguing.

And quoting this interview (in which she also asserts that “each and every occasion she visited John at Kenwood, it was at his invitation.”),

Despite the popular theory that Yoko was frantically inventing schemes to snare the wealthy Beatle, she was struggling with problems in her marriage [with Tony Cox] and also working hard to establish her career in the UK. Arriving in London in September 1966 to perform at the ‘Destruction In Art Symposium’, Yoko was already respected as an avant-garde artist and performer in New York, where she was allied to the Fluxus movement. She had a trained musical background, and had recently been involved in the improvisational music favoured by her peer group. She had also compiled a book of conceptual and instructional pieces called Grapefruit, and printed up a limited edition.

Yoko distributed copies to a number of influential people during 1966-’67. And John Lennon was one of the recipients. This has since been interpreted as one of various ruses on Yoko’s part to enchant Lennon.

She retorts: “There was a myth that I sent Grapefruit to him… how I wanted to trap him. It was a printed, published book. I had an orange carton of them, a lot of it. I would be giving it to critics. It was that sort of thing. He wasn’t the only one who got it.”

X

And by then, John had already eagerly offered to sponsor one of her shows, I think he was genuinely interested in her work. I don’t think John was actually threatened by these notes or felt he was harassed, especially since he made the jump to invite her over while his wife was away (and Yoko just thought it was a party!). He once referred to Yoko “someone that could turn me on to a million things” in the Lennon Remembers interview, he admired her art. And I know he said to Cyn that the letters were just junk from another one of those weird artists, but c’mon, what do you think John would say to his wife regarding the woman he’s romantically interested in? I don’t think it would’ve been fully truthful IMO, especially considering when John said that he nearly invited Yoko to India around that time because he liked her so.

2 is very true. Tony himself tried to make it seem like Yoko and John were crazy heroin druggies, and that's the case he tried to make (and that’s what he tried to tell Kyoko, that he was “saving” her from drug obsessed occultists). But, Yoko had gone “cold turkey” (ala the song) off heroin in 1969. This was 2 years before she won full custody in 1971. 

Although neither parent had been awarded sole custody of the child, Mr. Cox became increasingly reluctant to let Yoko and her new husband spend time with Kyoko, and finally refused to permit it at all. For a year before the Lennons came to America, they had been chasing Mr. Cox and Kyoko around Europe. In Majorca, Spain, the Lennons caught up with them and spirited Kyoko off to their hotel; but Mr. Cox called the police, and a Spanish court gave the child back to him. The incident added to his fear that the Lennons wanted to take her away from him for good.

Soon after the Lennons arrived in New York, they went to the United States Virgin Islands, to the same court where Yoko had been divorced, and that court awarded her permanent custody of her daughter.

X

But, Tony then took Kyoko to Texas (hiding/kidnapping her) which was in violation of that court order. Then more custody battle due to Tony’s stubbornness and evasiveness, but yes, Yoko did win custody then despite everything (even though John was very threatened by Tony lol, to the point he disallowed Yoko to visit him alone in order to discuss co-parenting when that was an option and suggested kidnapping Kyoko. But then again Tony was also kinda crazy. Seriously though IMO Yoko really tried gallantly to have Kyoko in her life, and the loss hurt her. To hear people try to spin it as Yoko being the monster in the situation through misinformation is unfortunate.)

3 is hypothetical, but I do speculate that if Yoko was white, the attitude toward her would’ve been different. Sean said, “It’s intense how racist the world is. If my mother had looked like Debbie Harry, I really think the reaction would have been different.” (X) Yoko’s former partner, Sam Havadtoy, also touched on this in an interview from 1990:

Q: ...No matter what Yoko does, she’s frequently the victim of a bad press. Any idea why?

Havadtoy: After John’s death, newspapers wrote that Yoko was this selfish person hoarding John’s memory, controlling it, not willing to share it with his fans. So after two years, she puts out 200 hours of film footage and a record and they say she’s exploiting John’s memory. She can’t win.

Q: Why not?

Havadtoy: Racism. If she were blond-haired and blue-eyed, nobody would have blamed her for breaking up the Beatles. They were the darlings of the universe; she was an outsider, an Oriental, an avant-garde artist--easy to pick on. When John married Yoko, the British press wrote: “At least he will have clean laundry.” And it’s still happening. America is infatuated with Japan-bashing. 

X

And I do think Season Of Glass was a memory thing, I posted about it here: X. 

And yes, I think that much of Yoko’s criticism/legacy was rooted in that initial reaction, which was pretty sexist and racist. But I think that influence can still be felt today, in ways that aren’t obvious. And like you said, unintentional. (Before anyone gets mad, if you dislike or hate Yoko that doesn't automatically make you racist lol. But the narrative built around her might’ve influenced your opinion of her, and the narrative was kinda rooted in a racist mentality. So that’s why and re-interpreting her in a fresh light is necessary).