#that article is so interesting cause it's like.

[dontforgetukraine]

TIFF: And so it continues...5 to ZFF

Aaand "Russians at War" is going to be at the Zurich Flim Festival. Because of course.

The Russian Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova met a soldier on home leave in Moscow's subway, accompanying him to the front lines, where she spent over a year filming unauthorized footage in a battalion near the Ukrainian border. In her film, she gives voice to soldiers who have no understanding of the war's causes and soon find themselves mourning comrades who have become Putin's cannon fodder. This harrowing and unique war documentary captures images you would never see in the news media. 'Who are the Russian soldiers who are fighting against Ukraine? What do they think of Putin? The documentary has them speak their minds. A film that revealed more to me about this conflict than 100 newspaper articles.' – Christian Jungen Anastasia Trofimova Anastasia Trofimova was born in Moscow and is a Russian-Canadian filmmaker. She first studied communications and political science and then international relations. Trofimova is a renowned filmmaker who has made a name for herself through her work in conflict zones such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Russia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In her films, she addresses social inequality and injustice. She has been honoured with the Canada Screen Award and has participated as a jury member at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards five times. RUSSIANS AT WAR (2024) / CONGO, MY PRECIOUS (2017) / VICTIMS OF ISIS (2015) / HER WAR: WOMEN VS. ISIS (2015)

No mention of RT in the director's bio of course. Same shit, different film festival.

Also, if this propaganda film reveals more to you about the war than 100 news articles, that's not shining praise for the film, but rather an indictment of the sorry state of our collective media landscape in Ukraine and the West.

The West obviously has a problem of not reporting on Ukraine as often anymore. It's not "fashionable". A lot of the reporting I've come across is superficial and there is rarely a deep dive into the Ukrainian civilian aspect of the war. It seems there always has to be either a grotesque catastrophic event due to Russian aggression (like the Okhmatdyt children's cancer hospital), or an interesting enough topic in order for something to be considered (like the Mykola Hryshko national botanical garden being in danger of losing its tropical plants due to the war causing electricity cuts.) There is a dearth of human interest stories, which is the core of understanding this war and the effects it has on Ukrainians.

When there is such a story, it falls into the situation of the "box-ticking approach", as described by Dr. Olesya Khromeychuk:

It is not enough to simply ‘do Ukraine’ by reviewing one book on the war, especially if it’s by a Western journalist rather than a Ukraine-based author. It’s not enough to host one exhibition, particularly if it is by an artist or photographer who only spent a few weeks in the country. Quickly putting together a panel on Russia’s war in response to a major development at the front and adding a sole Ukrainian voice at the last minute doesn’t cut it either. This box-ticking approach is unhelpful and insulting.

Most if not all of the quotes I pull from human-interest stories are from Ukrainian journalism. If you've been following me for the short time I've had this blog up, you'll notice I read a lot. At this point I've given up on looking up Western based English media, because the core stories that define the war are just not there. If there is an interesting article from the West, I'll usually see it pop up on my Twitter feed (like the botanical garden story) and I'll take a look then because its been recommended and has what I'm looking for.

And finally, Western media can't let go of having some Russian expert talk about Ukraine, instead of actually talking to Ukrainians.

Kate from Kharkiv: Ukrainian media, both in Ukrainian and English, must improve their regional reporting. They are increasingly resembling local Kyiv media, which limits global awareness of events across Ukraine. Consequently, international media rarely cover these regions unless we die en mass. But not too often, because if often it is not news anymore.

Like Kate from Kharkiv points out, mass-casualty events are no longer "fashionable". She further indicates the lack of essential reporting in specific regions where conditions are different from Kyiv. One such example is the Russians turning Kherson into a "human safari". Initially, only Zarina Zabrisky was reporting on how Russian drones pilots were deliberately targeting civilians, and she shouldn't have to be the only one reporting on this. While there are some Western news outlets that have reported on this situation now, it's still not enough. Zarina Zabrisky is still diligently doing the bulk of the work in reporting on this. I can only imagine what other stories in other regions are going untold because there is little to no coverage.

The other obstacle I've noticed is accessibility to news in Ukraine from a language perspective. There isn't enough English language coverage from Ukrainian media outlets. While I would love to be able to read Ukrainian confidently, I'm nowhere near there yet, and the West is collectively even further away. Google translate isn't a great substitute either for obvious reasons. The number of times I wanted to read/watch a news report, and there was no English supplement is a lot. It happens frequently with the English language Ukrainian news accounts I follow. They'll post a clip from a news report with no translated subtitles and say, "look at this!", but I can't extract the information they want to show because of this problem.

This is why I hold volunteer translators as some of the most valuable contributors in the information space, and I will always credit them.

It's a vicious cycle. If a large proportion of Ukrainian news media is inaccessible to Western media due to the language barrier, information has even less of a chance of being noticed and spreading. This is, in my opinion, the other side of the coin on issues in the information war.

[door-insurance]

So I played Life is Strange 2 for the first time ever

I didn’t wanna play it for a long time not cause it didn’t have Chloe or max (tbh I got sick of their asses around BtS they’re not even my faves)

By that point I was in college and had lost interest in the whole franchise but also I was very apprehensive of white creatives writing racism with no input from the group they’re portraying, they don’t usually do a good job

Sometimes they make it cartoony, sometimes they trivialize it, sometimes they romanticize it

So years later adulthood kicked my ass and I came back crawling to this franchise for some comfort, I finished True colors annnnd I finally started 2 after hesitating annnnd

^sketched this while playing

SPOILERS

I actually liked it

I liked Sean, the drawing segment he does- he was such a likable main guy, deserved better honestly.

I also liked Daniel, he was very adorable and I never got it when people called him annoying like no shit the 9 year old is gonna act like a 9 year old- just don’t be a jerk to him, I know he can be frustrating but that’s what taking care of a kid is like

And lis had always been about realistic complex characters, y’all can’t handle a traumatized nine year?

I have two younger siblings and two nieces plus I’ve been a bratty younger sibling to two older sisters

Maybe I’m just used to it?? But honestly Daniel wasn’t that bad

The racism portrayal in the first few episodes was not all that cartoony and it actually felt real at times, like I can check for American news rn and find stories similar to what you see in episodes 1-3 (minus the telekinesis)

Although the gas station racist hick spouting trump slogans was a bit on the nose, it’s more of dialogue thing

Some people thought the gas station detainment was egregious but it can happen unfortunately, especially to vulnerable people in rural areas and by someone of a higher systematic advantage

One other thing I did not like was the love interests, I thought Finn and Cassidy were alright characters on their own but why do we need romance in this game where the protagonists are always on the run?

I don’t like to compare lis 1 to 2 but when it comes to the romance the former did a better job as it spent more time establishing it, plus max stayed in the same place for the majority of the game- but you know what? Sean doesn’t have to be in a relationship right? It can be a one off thing, that’s fine

Which brings me to my next point

How old are Cassidy and Finn?

Cause Sean is still 16 and no, being on the road didn’t mentally age him- he’s not “mature” for his age

He is still a kid

So for some reason Dontnod never really specified their ages but some articles described them as teens (they look 30 to me) and they can be around 18 right? Their lives are hard stress ages you- it happens, we can with live that, it’s just a two years difference

But teens or not

why did they animate a whole knocking the boots scene???

Of all the games in the series, the only one that gets a sex scene is the one with the much younger protagonist and his ambiguously aged older looking love interest and I think it’s only with Cassidy you get to do it in the tent

Alex Chen was robbed of a on screen booty call from a beanie wearing lesbian with a sexy radio voice or a buff ass Adonis of a man who was Smokey the bear’s regional manager or something

Anyways I’m gonna move on I’m uncomfortable lmao

*im not hating on people who ship Sean with either Finn or Cassidy, I’m not even tagging your ship names- im just stating my personal preferences on my blog

One last thing I did not like about LiS 2 and it was the one thing that kept me from playing it for years

That one scene from episode 4

So at this point Sean Diaz went through the following:

-lost his father, had to abandoned his loved ones, education and home

-was accused of killing a cop

-had to take care of his little brother on his own while on the run, the same brother with telekinesis and none of them know how to control it

-was harassed, beaten then detained by a racist white man

-had to take refuge in an abandoned cabin with little resources

-the dog that they adopted at the gas station eventually gets mauled

-the one time they found solace at their grandparents house they had to leave abruptly cause the police was hot on their trail

-on their way out they can potentially witness the neighbors kid that they befriended get hit by the police car that’s chasing them

-they find shelter at a nomad campground but oh no they get involved with drug trafficking cause they barely have any other options to make money (unfortunately this happens a lot IRL this isnt egregious)

-Sean now has to deal with the trafficking, making sure that Daniel doesn’t get into any trouble with his powers while fake ass giancarlo esposito is breathing down his neck

-and guess what happens next… Daniel gets robbed into pulling a heist on temu gus fring and it goes badly, Sean can potentially lose a love interest/friend in Finn

-Sean gets hurt, Daniel goes so mad that he blows the whole place up; a shard glass flies into Sean’s eye and he ends up losing it

- Sean wakes up from a coma and learns that his brother is missing and he’s about to be taken to jail

- the one thing that consistently brought him joy during this trip was his art and because of the missing eye he can’t even do it the same anymore cause it hurts now

- Sean has to escape the hospital with a hot wired car, little money and has to drive across two states just to get to his brother

-on the way he dreams of his father, he wants him back he wants his old life back but that’s not gonna happen so he has to move forward

Im not listing all this as examples of bad story telling, a lot of these are real life experiences of homeless people. im just painting a picture of the shit that Sean had went through so far

Cause right after the dream sequence, Dontnod didn’t think all that was enough no you had to see Sean get hate crimed by two lifetime movie, sitcom special of the week racists- be made to either sing or suffer a brutal beating

It added nothing to the plot, it didn’t need a choice system either- it’s a hate crime, you’re not asking Joyce for fucking pancakes or eggs n bacon at the whales diner or hosing down Lisa the fckin plant.

This to me went straight to trauma p*rn category, it’s wheelchair Chloe all over again

I hated it then in LiS 1 and I hated now in LiS 2, this is why I don’t dick ride Dontnod that often

They always had this tendency right before the end they single out a particular character and mentally whip them, they become the writing teams punching bag- they think we didn’t get it the first time that this character is going through it, they just hammer it in with the subtlety of a heart attack and I hate it

“Yeah but it’s there to show Sean’s resolve to find Daniel-“

HE ESCAPED FROM THE HOSPITAL AND THE FEDS, HE HOT WIRED A CAR TO DRIVE ACROSS TWO STATES

He’s starving, dehydrated, suffering from chronic pain

That’s enough

Let the character breathe

You ask why not a lot of people wanna play this game and I’m gonna tell you, as much I enjoyed it myself it’s not an easy game to play- it gets brutal, especially right around the end

I’m not against bleakness or extreme conflict, I’m into that but sometimes that doesn’t translate well to any gaming format- especially a choices matter game that’s meant to be replayed

Some people have asinine reasons not to play LiS 2 like it dealing with racism and those people suck, lis had always dealt with progressive themes like calling out objectification, cyberbullying and sl*tshaming

Racism shouldn’t be the exemption

but misuse of racial trauma and not knowing when it’s appropriate to invoke it is a huge turn off and hella triggering to a lot of non white players and I remember when LiS 2 dropped I’ve seen (mostly white) lis fans at the time proclaiming that not wanting to play it meant that you were racist

Like I said there were probably racists who didn’t wanna touch the games cause of the main characters skin but there were people like me who were apprehensive of the “Let’s go to the mosh pit Shaka brah” people handling racism

This is the same studio that had Ms Grant (one of the few black characters from LiS 1) claim that the white settlers peacefully shared the stolen land with the native Americans

I find that shit harder to believe than the time traveling powers

And they were doing alright in the first episodes they covered stuff like unconscious biases slipping through, dog whistles, polite racism from the grandparents segment, police brutality, racial profiling and being targeted/othered- some of these things I went through when I visited western countries

Then they did the bullshit I feared theyd do…

I really don’t blame myself for being hyper vigilant at the time and honestly I was going through a lot then, even if I wanted to I wouldn’t have touched LiS 2 cause it’s a very heavy tasking game to play

I know I kinda made it seem like I didn’t like this game but I did, its the best one in terms of the choice system

It had more weight to it, seeing Daniel internalizing what you say to him or how you act around him was so cool

Also what the second game has over the first one aside from the choices system is the ending selection- I never liked picking the endings for max, I wanted her to pick the ending or her coding/script to do that

Its definitely more fleshed out technically even though LiS 1 has a special place in my heart it’s always gonna be no. 1- but im also glad that I got to experience the 2nd game for the first time, I liked it

Personal lis ranking

1: Lis 1

2: Lis 2

3: True colors

Discount bin: BtS

My personal fave moments from LiS 2:

- beating up the racist bully and giving him a concussion

-mushroom (rip icon)

- victorias letter

-winning that that bear from that claw machine

-gorillaz song that was not feel good inc

-Brody pointing at a fucked up looking arcadia bay yelling “that’s the past!”- that was hilarious

-Sean paying tribute to Arcadia bay in his sketchbook (this fucking kid man, he’s so sweet he deserves the world- what did he do to make DONTNOD mad at him)

- the wolf animation and the story that plays before every chapter

-this was the worst hate crime in the whole game

[actualhumansunshine]

Have you been following the recent talk about how an increasing number of artists have had to cancel tours both because of financial and wellbeing reasons? Vulture did a really good article about how the live music industry is in an existential crisis and more and more artists are also posting about how it’s getting harder and harder for them to make a living from touring, which is where they used to earn the majority of their money.

I still believe that Niall aims to tour as soon as it’s possible for him and he is obviously in a privileged position, but I also get it if he is hesitant to make any promises about touring next year before he is 100% sure that it will go ahead, especially after the difficult decisions he had to make with the last tour.

yeah and i think that's kind of been the thing for him the past couple of years as well? no point in really pushing to get music out quickly if major aspects of what he loves about it—touring, promoting, etc—weren't really viable options at the time. and like we've discussed around here plenty of times before, once it gets to a point where those DO start to become viable options and he IS looking at putting out music in the relatively near future, putting together the single/album rollout plan takes time, putting together a tour takes time, even putting an album on vinyl takes time, so there's always going to be a gap between the moment where they decide 'ok we can do this now' and actually doing it, and right now there's probably a much larger gap than there was pre-covid.

that article is interesting tho cause i feel like while it does maybe raise some interesting points, i don't feel like it really applies to niall all that much tbh? i'd assume that he's not really in a place where he's strapped for cash and would be struggling to justify the expenses of a tour like a lot of smaller artists might be yk? whether he's paying for it himself or the label pays or however it is that works, there IS money backing him so i'd assume that aspect isn't as much of an issue for him.

and then when it comes to these bigger artists that are cancelling shows and tours for personal wellbeing reasons, that feels to me more like an artist-specific issue rather than some sort of industry-wide problem? we've known for a while now that artists like shawn or justin or demi have struggled not just with the pressures of touring specifically, but also with the pressures of being in the public eye in general. and so because of where they might be at mentally, emotionally, physically, etc, touring might not be something that's for them, but i don't think that means touring is bad for everyone. touring IS an extremely hard lifestyle and it's definitely NOT for everyone, especially with the added pressure and struggles that "post-pandemic life" bring to it, but niall's always been someone that's been very vocal about how much he loves touring and being on the road and playing to different people in different places and all that. and i think especially if he takes what he learned from the flicker world tour in terms of giving himself plenty of downtime between shows and between legs, i don't see why he wouldn't enjoy it just as much as he always has yk?

[reineydraws]

had to draw this to understand the way i feel about him now that the manga's ended. 🥲 on that note: if you like hawks and his ending, maybe don't read my tags lol. it's not bashing (imo) but they're not v nice. 😅

bg + unobstructed pose under the cut!

his expression's a lil different 'cuz i only changed the merged layer, all the lighting effects already flattened onto it. 💀 alas.

[tabithatwo]

(x)

(this is a pls stop blaming juliette lewis for nat’s arc and death post <3)

[yellow-yarrow]

have you perhaps a list of readings you would recommend to understand better disco elysium/sacred and terrible air? i wouldn't know where to start and your posts are interesting so worth trying to ask :)

aw thank you! Well, I feel like I’m not really that well-read, and the order I read philosophy/history/etc is all over the place lol

If I had to recommend some reading, there is this essay about the pale, that I think is essential to understanding Elysium. :

https://ghelgheli.substack.com/p/introductory-entroponetics

as for books, I would say Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher could be a good starting point. And I think it would be worth to read something about these topics:

neoliberalism, capitalism

communism - marxism, history of socialist countries

russian nihilism

christianity - dispensationalism

The devs have said that they were influenced by Hegel, Marx, Slavoj Žižek, Lenin, & they also said they used to be anarchists so I would say reading some anarchist text could be interesting too if you want to really dive into it (idk, Emma Goldmann for example)

You can find a lot of these writings on these websites:

https://www.marxists.org/

https://theanarchistlibrary.org

[katyspersonal]

[jackdawsfavorite]

On Symbolic vs Factual Beliefs

“The Truthers, in short, maintained that the government had gone to extreme measures, including killing thousands of its own citizens, in order to carry out and cover up a conspiracy. And yet the same Truthers advertised the conference online and met in a place where they could easily be surveilled. Speakers’ names were posted on the Internet along with videos, photographs, and short bios. The organizers created a publicly accessible forum to discuss next steps, and a couple of attendees spoke to a reporter from the Times, despite the mainstream media’s ostensible complicity in the coverup. By the logic of their own theories, the Truthers were setting themselves up for assassination.

“Their behavior demonstrates a paradox of belief. Action is supposed to follow belief, and yet beliefs, even fervently espoused ones, sometimes exist in their own cognitive cage, with little influence over behavior.”

[skitskatdacat63]

Ah yes, "Monaco resident", Nico Rosberg

[mythicalcoolkid]

After too many years here I've final what hornets' nests I am not brave enough to kick

[violentviolette]

"telling someone incorrect information about a media franchise will never have the same potential for harm the way telling someone incorrect information about their mental health or illness or their loved ones murder will and i think its important to keep that perspective in these discussions. especially because i think the blurred line between media and real world topics, and people consuming real world topics the same way they do media, and treating them like they're essentially the same and approach researching them in the same way is a big part of this problem." I've been saying this for ages you are so real for this. It's genuinely a big issue that people have grown the tendency to compare every form of media that they consume to real life issues, which then desensitizes them to said real life issues. It's a big issue that people compare content relating to fictional characters who do not exist and are not sentient as on the same level as real, living and breathing people. Is it annoying when people mix fanon with canon to the point that the entire message behind a media has lost itself ? Yes, it very much is. But does that loss harm anyone on a physical, mental, emotional or psychological level ? Nowhere close. This technological age makes me so uneasy because of the ever increasing comparison of media to real life events, and the continuous belief that "fiction affects reality" + "fiction = reality." If fiction *does* genuinely affect reality, then that would mean violent video games inherently make someone violent and horror movies inherently make someone a murderer. I say that: if you already struggle with anger issues, exposing yourself to more violent forms of media without critical consumption will obviously worsen the symptoms, along with horror movies giving you ideas on how to kill that one relative you've fantasized killing for the past half decade—the only thing that affects reality are idiots who lack critical thinking. A comparison I can think of that people bring up to debate that "fiction affects reality" are the trends of fictional cats and rabbits consuming milk and carrots respectively. It's so silly because if you're planning to become a parent to an animal, it is your JOB to do research into that animal's diet, livelihood, habitat, body language etcetera. Why are you trusting the livelihood of a talking cartoon character ? Sorry for the long ask, but what you said is so important and I hope people adopt that mindset more, especially with this growing technological social media age.

no apologies neccessary anon u are absolutely correct and u should say it

media should not be where people are getting actual real life applicaple information. *no one* should look at a work of fiction in any form and just assume that whats being said or done is accurate information that they can just apply to their real life. and the same goes the other way around. when u want to research mental health topics or world history or a science, no one should be approaching it the same way as digging through their favorite shows wiki.

but there's been this huge kind of like. fandomification of social justice and social science and other topics like this where instead of understanding the critical nuance of these things and approaching them with a research minded perspective and an understanding of the nuance needed because so many things in real life are contradictory and complex and have eons of context, people approach them like tv shows. they think if they just read enough information and consume enough of the "content" surrounding it then they'll be able to fully understand and grasp them and then be able to educate others about them as some kind of authority and it just makes me want to scream from the rooftops that *thats not how any of this works*

the desensitization thing is also so real. u genuinely cannot have a single conversation about a real world topic without someone bringing up media and i dont know how else to nicely tell people that that is in no way relevent and actually actively harmful. trying to relate everything in life back to media and not being able to talk about a topic without including media will genuinely rot ur brain because it completely desensitizes u to the issue of harm. being wrong about media will never ever have the same impact that being wrong about mental health or physical health or animal welfare or public wellbeing will

[waluigisgaybf]

MY GREAT GRANDMA WHO WAS MURDERED BEFORE I WAS EVEN I THOUGHTS KILLER WAS CAUGHT BABEY!!!!!!!!!!!

[trans-leek-cookie]

Looking up Japanese floral design and now I know now that agarwood isn't just wood from a specific tree, it's wood from a specific tree infected with a parasitic fungus that leads the tree to secrete resin to try and fight it

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Folk were really into the post I made about Tandie, the zoo lion with a (then) undergrown mane due a period of time on testosterone blockers. He's having quite the glow up this summer.

But!

Did you know that manes are hormone dependent in both sexes of lion?

Let's talk about maned lionesses!

To recap the previous post quickly: the existence of a mane, and it's color, appear to be pretty heavily androgen-dependent. Neutered males or males put on testosterone blockers, like Tandie was, will drop their manes - but like Tandie, if taken off the meds, it will generally grow it back. Darker manes are indicative of higher testosterone levels, and long/lush manes are generally a good signal of a male's fitness and mate quality. Females seem to show a preference for males with longer, darker manes and other males will preferentially avoid scuffles with them. (Yes, as many comments have pointed out, that means Scar was actually a hunk. Do with that as you will.)

The fascinating thing about androgens being linked to manes in lions is that it goes both ways - females with higher levels will also grow manes!

Mane growth in females lions is most commonly seen with elderly animals who have stopped cycling and are basically in lion menopause. And they have to get pretty old for it to happen - captive lions generally only live into their late teens and early second decade, and most of the maned ladies I know about started growing manes around like, seventeen.

Not all old female lions grow manes, but some of the career cat people I've talked to said it happened to about a quarter of the females they've worked with over the years. Which... is an interesting contrast to the news articles about Zuri, who we'll meet in a bit, that breathlessly reported in 2022 that her mane growth "left scientists baffled."

Old lady lion manes are just... precious. They grow in first at the chest and then around the sides or on the back of the head, but they don’t normally get the length, density, and connectivity seen in the mane of an adult male. It leaves the lionesses manes kind of awkward, in the way I associate with very young males, and they're absolutely adorable. Prepare yourself for the photo spam.

I have to start with Daisy, because she's the only maned lioness I've had the privilege to meet in person.

I don't know exactly when she started growing her mane, but she was over 20 years old when she passed in 2019 with these luscious locks.

Here's another female at the same facility, named Adeena. On the left is a photo of her from 2021, on the right is from this spring (I think she's mid-sneeze in the photo). She turns 20 in October.

If you've heard about maned lionesses before, it’s probably because of Zuri, at Topeka. She’s the most recent one to get media coverage and she went a little viral.

(Just a side note here, but I have some strong feelings about knowledge loss in the exotic animal management world due to political/philosophical schisms. This is one of those topics where it's clear: Topeka told a reporter that the zoo had “never" heard of this happening before, but it's common enough to be well known as a thing in other sectors of the exotic cat world. There's so much expertise and knowledge being lost due to infighting between accrediting groups, and it drives me up a wall).

Anyway. Zuri had one of the best manes I've seen on an elderly lioness. It grew long and lush and she totally could have done shampoo commercials. I mean, look at this.

Zuri lived with her sister, who didn't grow a mane in her old age. Here's the two of them together, Zuri on the left, Asante on the right.

We don't completely know what's going on with these golden girls to cause them to grow manes. It's theorized to be related to the end of estrus and higher levels of androgenic hormones, although it's not clear if that's just due to lower levels of other hormones during "meownopause" or if there's something else also going on.

There was some speculation with Zuri's mane growth that it was caused by the death of the male she lived with, in some biological need to "take over the role." The zoo dismissed that idea pretty quickly, and it makes sense, although there is one other instance where I've heard of that happening before.

The cat people I've talked to say that older lionesses who grow manes don't tend to act differently - they're not taking over new social roles in their prides or anything. Sometimes they can be less active, or be a little more nervous around males, and want to be left alone more, but it was emphasized to me that those behaviors could also just be associated with the fact that manes tends to develop in elderly lionesses.

The mane growth can happen pretty quickly, as we saw in the photos I've posted of Tandie over the last year. Here's Bridget, from the Oklahoma Zoo. The left photo was taken in March of 2017 and the right in November - look how much hair she gained over six months!

The zoo did some research into what might have cause Bridget's mane growth, and found that she had elevated levels of androstenedione, which is a hormone that can be converted by the body into either testosterone or estrogen, depending. In AFAB people, it's known to have a masculinizing effect. The zoo theorized that this was the cause of her mane growth, and that the elevated levels might have been caused by a benign tumor. Fascinatingly, though, blood draws revealed that her testosterone levels were the same as her mane-less sister, Tia.

Tia is on the left in the photo below, Bridget and the beginnings of her mane are on the right. Bridget was 17 when her mane started growing in.

I don't think there's any formal hypothesis that there might be a genetic component to lionesses growing manes in old age, but it's interesting to note that one of Tia's daughters, Zari, also grew a mane. (And she grew it young! It started around age 13, interestingly, also right after their male died). She's on the left in the photo below.

And to circle back around to where we began: Tandie is related to a number of maned ladies! His father, Xerxes, was Bridget's son; Zari was Xerxes' half-sister.

Here's a few more beautiful maned ladies to leave you with. In order, Ngala, Pepper, Skye, and Dandy Lion.

Next up, and last in this lion mane series, is the story of five younger lionesses in Botswana who not only have manes but also express a range of masculine behaviors.

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.

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A huge thanks to all the folk who shared photos of and stories about their golden girls for this post: M. Townsen, S.W. Simpson, E. Day, S. Cook, M. Stinner, M. Paul, K. Vanaman, D. O'Halloran, R. Simpson, D. Souffrant.

[fluffylino]

pussy agenda with hyunjin

-contains mature themes

he can't keep his hands to himself.

doesn't really have to be sexual. but likes to shove his hand down your pants to cup your mound with his hand.

it could be at any time of the day.

regardless of whether you were sitting on the couch. or standing in the kitchen. or doing anything really.

you've gotten so used to it, it doesn't even bother you.

its so casual.

like you'd be telling him about how you read some weirdly interesting article. and he'd lazily walk over to you. listening and acknowledging everything you said.

but his hand had a mind of its own. slipping in your pants, to feel your warm cunt. middle finger running along your slit. before he takes his hand out and continues talking.

there are days when he'll purposely tease you. digging his fingers just a bit in. a small smile on his face when he feels you throb. making you make a startled noise. leaving you wet and swollen.

especially after he gets home from practice. hooking his chin on your shoulder. his left hand kneading your boob and his right hand in your pants.

.

shaving as well.

once, you had forgotten to lock the bathroom door. not like you even had to. the two of you were more than comfortable.

neck aching as you made sure you didn't miss any spots. your leg raised up on the sink counter. razor still in your hand while you shaved.

you had finished with your legs and arms. and now, (as hyunjin would say) your most delicate part remained.

you groaned. jumping a bit as your eyes met with a nonchalant hyunjin. who was leaning against the door frame, hand still resting on the door knob.

"need help?"

your cheeks flushing at his outrageous question. not to mention you were half naked. you needed help. and you trusted him. but it was more because your legs ached.

"i'll help you shave" he admitted, walking in. closing the door behind him.

and he indeed did.

"you don't need to shave by the way" he reassured.

"i'd eat your precious cunt regardless" such a casual statement to make. while keeping your legs open.

"careful" you mumbled, eyes cast down to where he was kneeling down. spreading your pussy lips apart.

as if he was inspecting your folds. gentle with each stroke of the razor.

"i know. baby's delicate pussy is very sensitive" hyunjin muttered, biting his lip as he concentrated on the task at hand. eyes fixed on your pussy. it made you feel very...exposed and maybe a bit turned on. his warm breath making you feel even hotter.

and after he's done.

he kisses it. working his way up.

"gonna have my fun with you later"  pressing his cushioney lips to your freshly shaven pussy. it was almost like he was letting your pussy know well in advance.

and pulling away with accomplishment written all over his face.

cause now you were getting wet.

.

or if he's driving. (like in the recent skz code). he'd be holding the steering wheel with his left hand. his right hand intertwined with yours.

slowly getting carried away.

till his fingers are teasing your slit. rubbing against it and pressing the pads of his index into your pussy. and pulling out. and doing it all over again.

never actually pushing all the way in.

keeping his finger pressed between your folds. almost like he's having his own fun while you're squirming and closing your legs around his hand.

he's focused on driving, reading the sign boards. even asking you if you're hungry. acting normal as though his hand isn't shoved down your panties. but as i mentioned. his fingers are on auto pilot.

in conclusion,

hyunjin would do anything for your pussy. even if that includes fleeting touches.

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.

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did you like it ehe.......

[iceyrukia]

very interesting ( full article)