#there’s one to two actually campaigned dogs in the breed a year

[theborzoiarebackintown]

The professional handler announcer straight up saying handlers don’t influence the judge’s choices is hilarious

[darkwood-sleddog]

Ok, this is a very genuine question, but could you please list out and maybe go in a bit detail on what's wrong with the whole AKC, and history? I've very curious with wanting to know when such a stress on looks and bloodline came to be, especially when older breeds were simply bred for a job.

The AKC and kennel clubs as a concept are not inherently a bad thing. I think registries are a GREAT thing, we should be keeping track of pedigrees and accepting registrations imo. What’s frustrating to me is the closing of stud books (meaning no new blood can enter breeds) and an unrealistic expectation/desire for perfection/uniformity and the attitude that surrounds that.

Dogs shows and kennel clubs came to be because people wanted a way to exhibit their breeding stock and compare them, so they could plan their breedings, they sprung up around cattle showing (and we can see the similarities to these two venues today). There’s a pretty nice article HERE. 

In the modern day, many people believe that a breeding is only reputable if the dog is both health tested AND titled to Championship. It was not always like this in the past, just go look at pedigrees from the early and mid century 1900s. Championship and often Grand Champion in the US have become expectations to prove ones reputability instead of proving the actual quality of the dog. Breeders that breed non-championed dogs can be ripped into by many people, believing that the dog has not proven itself to be breeding quality (often completely ignoring that the dog may bring other things to the breeder’s program like a good temperament, working attitude, genetic diversity, structural fixes etc).

The sport of showing, or taking conformation as a sport to excel in rather than what it is supposed to be (an evaluation of breeding quality in dogs) creates a competitive atmosphere which means that people will be acquiring or breeding a dog that meets what is most likely to win. This causes extreme uniformity (it is not unrealistic to expect breeds to be uniform and represent breed type across a spectrum in the breed, but for them to look clone like is, imo, not it). This competitive nature has gradually grown and grown over the years, as is natural (humans love to compete with each other). 

In addition, the show world is very “who you know” so judges are not necessarily impartial (and this is not a new thing in dog shows, the partiality of judges has been questioned since the beginning lmao) and well known judges may put up dogs related to their own lines or what they desire, creating a specific ring look. In a desire to win (be it conscious or not), many people will breed towards a ring trend and this is how many breeds have changed dramatically or subtly over time in addition to actual improvements and disprovements in structure and health that may happen over time with breeding programs. This creates an exclusive club that truly feels outing to those not on the “in” and the exclusive group of people will push their agenda, therefore forcing those with slightly differing dogs to look elsewhere (truly some of these people can be so nasty and the rise of social media has not helped this). This means that dogs that don’t fit the now very narrow view of the breed are pushed out of show circles or into non AKC show circles, effectively reducing the gene pool (because often AKC folks will look down on non AKC clubs in the US and not intermingle their dogs). In addition, in AKC dogs can be handled by a professional handler, somebody who makes money specifically off handling dogs in the show ring, creating further exclusivity (handlers can be expensive and is also connected very much to “who you know”), competitive nature, and includes a bit more capitalism. 

The extreme uniformity in many show dogs we see today is the result of closed stud books. When a stud book is closed you can’t add ANY new genetics, this makes it very easy to breed true to type (meaning when you breed a border collie to a border collie you will get more border collies for example), but as dogs are culled from that gene pool (perhaps they don’t fit the ring trend or have a minor flaw like a white marking), the dogs become very closely related. Especially when you are in show circles many of the dogs are even MORE closely related. This causes extreme uniformity because the show only people are unwilling to take dogs into their gene pools they deem “lesser” for being a bit different, but no less of the breed than their own. Now many breeders are aware of the dwindling genetic diversity in their breeds and conscious do things to help this, however it’s not enough of them imo.

To fix some of these issues Champion and Grand Champion need to be reserved for truly exceptional dogs and I think for working breeds a working test prior to championship being attained would be appropriate and for companion breeds, a companion temperament test. Currently if a dog is campaigned for a length of time and the judges they are shown under are chosen carefully, they can champion (dogs need 15 points and 3 major wins for CH in AKC). Which is not necessarily then a mark of quality, just a mark of how much money/time the owner/breeder had to put towards the dog achieving points). A less exceptional dog may be campaigned for a long amount of time and a truly wonderful example of a breed may campaigned for a short amount of time and they will both be Champions (and unless you know what went on with that specific dog and aren’t very educated in that specific breed then how will you know the quality of Dog 1 is different than that of Dog 2 when they are given an equal stamp of quality from the show ring?) 

A more expansive grading of the dog’s quality (E for Exceptional through P for poor for example vs just points/Champion and above) would allow a greater diversity in the ring and a more nuanced explanation of what that judge/club thinks of the dog’s breeding quality (The Norsk Kennel Club has a system similar to this). Reduce entry fees. Ban professional handlers (reduction of capitalistic intent in the show ring), make Champion a mark of a truly exceptional dog, understand that not every dog is exceptional, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t breeding quality. Make health tests on parents mandatory for the registration of litters. Open stud books. Make registrations more easily to looked up/at. If a marking or coloring occurs naturally/historically within the breed it should be fine to show (I’m looking at YOU white shepherds). Would that make showing more complicated? Heck yeah. Would any of these changes be likely to happen? Heck no...the AKC is pretty stuck in their ways.

This is a really complex question, not one I’m able to answer in 100% accuracy in terms of why and how, other than....dog people are privileged. And they operate the AKC as such. I recommend looking into the literature from decades past and comparing them with prevailing attitudes now to get a better feel for how your breed of choice may have changed for better or for worse. Old breed literature and looking at how that literature evolves over time is a great insight into the ever morphing attitudes in the AKC.

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

1. Persephone hasn’t finished a semester of school-wants to apply to law school. Makes sense right? Haha. 

2. WHY is cerberus so generic?? and he's not even a greek breed (or any of the other dogs)?? like was it really that hard to google some greek breeds? they have some big intimidating dogs too, but i guess thats asking too much in her GREEK MYTH comic. also he doesn't even have three heads most of the time? that's his one defining trait besides being scary and still rachel fucked that up. it's so annoying she can't even be bothered to keep basic things correct while still claiming to be an expert.

3. ngl im happy rachel cut out the erotes. just off her depiction of eros she still has very bad ideas about LGBT+ representation (seriously the gay best friend trope post 2013? with eros being obsessed with a woman and the only hint he's bi being a cut scene? wow) so her trying to cover the god of homosexual love, the god who was made via the love of two men, or the deity of intersex/being non gender conforming would be more than awful. they deserve to not be in this heterosexual mess.

4. webtoons promote anyone other than LO and give them the massive marketing campaigns, financial backing, and extra resources and deals RS gets challenge (Impossible)

5. tbh i dont think the height difference is particularly bad (ive shipped couples with even more of a difference) i think it's more the combination of how young she is (and how the comic keeps bringing up its weird but then being like ok now forget about it??), her childish personality ,and the overemphasis on hades' power and experience over her that it becomes an issue. if she was a confident, sexually liberated 700 year old goddess who knew her worth the height difference wouldnt matter, IMHO.

6. see the romance in LO is off because rachel cannot help but make HxP the most powerful, desired, amazing etc characters in the whole story, yet at the same time wants us to pity them and feel like he "deserves" they each other to be happy because she insists they're the "real underdogs" like??? neither LO H or P have any disadvantages, flaws, or conflicts to make them not be together so rachel insisting they're this tragic romance is just like no?? they're just not acting like normal people??

7. All this talk about Hera entering a relationship with Echo really shows how blind Rachel must be to problems in the ships she sets up. As some one mentioned earlier, it’s a rehash of a boss lusting over a worker. But like, Hera also pretty often talks about how lowly she think of nymphs. So not only would she be with a worker, but a worker from a race she actively believes is below her. If this was like a commentary on how Hera isn’t actually that different from Zeus then that’d actually be really interesting, but if she did this, it would only be to girlboss Hera. What a mess

8. i've seen some defenders say "oh there's only critique of LO now that it's popular" like?? no there were people calling it out when it was on discover and rachel was just some tumblr nobody. critique has only picked up more and more over the years because its just that more known and the issues are only getting worse and piling up, not some hate over popularity? im sure there is some critique over that but most of the critiques has been here for /years/, not only in the last few months.

9. ive actually seen some lo stans defend the age gap AS the modern aspect because "age gap relationships are more common now" which 1) no theyre not, and 2) what 19 year old is hooking up with a 2000+ year old man?? like MAYBE if he was actually 45 like he's "mentally" supposed to be then ok MAYBE they have a point, but he's not?? hes literally supposed to be thousands of years older than her in every regard? like literally the argument makes no sense??

10. I feel like Persephone being older would actually be a much stronger point to the story than her being 19/20, and not just bc of the weird age gap. She could still have the same characterization and plot, but it would be better to aide in her frustration of being sheltered/desire to be taken seriously as a goddess and want her freedom, and to actually hammer home demeter's controlling ways, because as it stands now she just looks like an overdramatic, spoiled child with no perspective.

[actuallyilya]

Black-Ops Characters I believe would have cats and/or dogs. Also, these are just the Campaign characters + some Warsaw pack characters!!

Dog Only

Lazar, Lazar gives off big cuddly dude vibes™ meaning he would want a pet he could bond with better. Dogs are (usually) very playful and loving. He also CONSTANTLY attracts dogs. I also think he would adopt a Golden Retriever. Idk. Vibes™

Sims, Sims seems like the type of guy who likes being outdoors. Parks, hiking, jogging, etc. So he would 100% rather have a buddy to do those hobbies with, rather than go alone. A bit into his childhood, he had another dog he grew up with from the age of 12 and up, but once he left for school/the CIA, he felt bad, and eventually, the dog died of old age :(. But I do think that he loved that dog very much and no dog would ever come close to the memories he had with him. I think he would adopt a Border Collie.

Woods, Look this mother fucker DISPISES cats. He thinks they're gremlins and refuses to ever pet one he hasn't had a bad experience, just doesn't like them, claims that 'they're satan's little bitches'. He also would rather have a pet that you can call do cuddle, rather than hope not to get scratched. He either would have a German Shepherd or Great Dane. He wants a dog that will make him seem cool 🥶😈 but everyone knows that man is a sweetheart.

Hudson, He is most definitely a dog person, He does not care about the dogs are better than cats argument. 'It's an idiotic argument, Besides, we all know dogs are better'. His dog is a family dog, she's very friendly to anyone who comes by Woods, Mason, etc and she loves his kids. At first, Hudson hated the idea of having a dog, it would be a liability, but he was the first person who genuinely fell in love with the dog. He would have a German Shepard, who is military trained because he wants to protect his family.

Knight, Look, with the very little of the information we know about him, I GENUINELY think this man would have a dog. We know he's a little on the bad side, but still, he needs some friends. Even if the friend is a dog. He would probably adopt a Kangel Shepard. Also, he loves to play with his dog very often and is super protective of the dog.

Okay, now to the people who would have cats!

Park, Look, Park is like those people who sit in front of a window with a computer/notes in front of her while her cat calmly sits in front of her sleeping or sunbathing. Okay? I love her to pieces and I know damn well she would get along better with cats than dogs. She has actually argued with Woods about it a lot. She would also have a Chartreux

"Suck it Park! Dogs are the best pets, they won't kill ya in your sleep!"

"Woods, Cats' cleanliness makes up for more than a few scratches here and there, unlike dogs who like to sit in their own filth."

Mason enjoys silence, dogs do not give silence, they are loud and he prefers cats overall, He has had his cat for a while, a few years before David joined the military, his home felt empty, He knew he had always been rough on Mason but the cat gave them a small bonding experience, Although he loved the cat, it caused an argument between him and woods (It wasn't an end-the-friendship argument but when they're drunk they definitely argue) He would have a Birman, he also heavily enjoys cuddling with a cat.

Wraith, She strikes me as those people who genuinely love working with cats or at shelters, maybe she had a cat growing up, maybe she worked at a shelter before she went all Warsaw pact. But regardless, knowing she can't stay in one place forever, she still tries to still somewhat work at shelters, she isn't open about it because it caused an agreement between her and Knight. However, he always had a friend tag along with her while going to the shelters. She wouldn't own any pets, but her favorite breed would be Burmese cats "their fur is a black as my soul"

Stitch, This guy just loves cats, As a young kid, he didn't really have many friends, he usually kept to himself, as a result, he would wander areas a lot, during one of his walks, he found an injured cat, He nursed the cat back to health and kind-of kept this side of himself a secret as his father was very 'men do the work while women stay at home' luckily it never rubbed off on him. However, Just like Wraith, he tagged along to the shelters, he didn't wear the gas mask, but a lot of his scars showed, but he found out the cats/kittens were less scared of him if he just showed his face. Although he has an edgy feel, he loves Maine coons, they are very gentle, friendly, and very intelligent (As you can see, you can tell who is my favorite Warsaw pact operator)

Who would have BOTH cats and dogs.

Adler, look this motherfucker does not want to admit that he loves both cats or dogs. He easily gets attached to animals, cats, dogs, the whole sha-bang. So either/or, He loves dogs because he enjoys working with them, such as training, jogging, etc. (Sims stopped going running with him after Sims adopted his dog, but Adler knew he couldn't be responsible for a dog knowing he's always out on missions). But he also loves cats, he loves how majestic they are, when they purr, kneed, etc. He loves it. He occasionally invites himself to Park's house to spend time with her cat, not even with her. Park doesn't mind as she knows she now has a free cat-sitter. If Adler could, He would have a Great Dane and for a cat, he would have a Bengal Cat

Naga, Over the course of his life, Naga has worked with tons of dogs. He had always appreciated them helping him in his line of work. Whether they helped him weed out a rat amongst his men, or helped make sure no one was stealing profit, I think he heavily enjoys their company. Naga has always been a little intimidating, But with a cat by his side, even more, on his lap, on his desk, such a tiny animal had so much subtle power. If the cat had a problem with you, he had a problem with you, He even decided he enjoyed having a dog so much, he adopted a dog, luckily, after a few months of trying, they both got along and peacefully sit in his office. He would defiantly adopt a Donskoy Sphynx, and for a dog, he would adopt a Cane Corso, mostly for weather reasons.

Perseus, owns both a cat and a dog, rarely going out for rough missions, he can have two pets in his life and properly take care of them, His current dog, a Siberian Huskey (perfect for the current climate) he's had for five years, his cat, a Korat, he's had for three years. He occasionally takes them both into his office as to not have lonely days, on the days he has to either a) leave fast such as for safety, Stitch, Wraith, and Knight were made responsible as they are his trustable people.

Finally, Bell. Bell loves both of them and never really owned any animals, while working for the CIA, they had a knack for attracting animals while going for walks, they usually arrived with one or two animals, even birds! Mostly kittens and puppies, but even the impossible is possible for them. Woods and Mason found this hilarious and tried not to fall in love with the animals (even if they were there for a short amount of time) Adler or Park always had to be the one to take the animal out of their hands because he knew no work would get done and a rule had to be implemented so it wouldn't happen again (news flash, it did happen, very often)

Solovetsky Ending: let's just say Adler didn't shoot Bell, Adler would take Bell to shelters and would even go with them to save stray (injured) animals. The two actually grew very close and it sort of became a hobby. Adler got his taste of animals and Bell go to feel happy for a few hours, they both learned a lot. After one night of dinner, they found a stray kitten with no family around, they waited an hour to try and see if the mom would come back since It didn't, They took in the kitten, it was an off-day for the workers, so they nursed the kitten for like four days before having to give it up to the shelter.

Duga Ending: After Perseus took Bell in, let's just say the same thing happened, they weren't allowed to be on the field because they weren't mentally able to handle war and risk of being kidnapped so they kind of stuck around the area, although it was rare, abandoned animals did sometimes appear. The first time it happened. Bell was wearing a large coat and returned freezing with only a t-shirt on. Perseus was at the front gate, waiting for some of the operators to come back, but instead, they returned, freezing, a small fluff ball was in their hands while they were slowly developing hypothermia.

"Bell?! What the hell are you doing without a coat?!"

"I-I know, B-But I-I saved a dog."

[lorspolairepeluche]

Character superlatives: 8, 15, 18, 19, 32, 34, 44 and 45!

WHO...

8. ...is the tallest? the shortest?

Tallest is Dovekie, coming in at a respectable firbolgish 8 feet. Shortest is Tilvy, at a perfectly halfling two feet and eleven inches.

15. [answered here!]

18. needs the most therapy?

HAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAAaaaaa.... Well, Siggri's got some serious trauma to work out that I can't detail here because every other member of that campaign follows me. Ri also has just a ton of baggage that she is struggling to carry on her skinny 15-year-old shoulders. Kind of like her dad's sword which she has used ONCE and that was immediately after he was killed in front of her, so. Yeah, some therapy would be nice there.

19. would be the best therapist?

Noa, because she has therapy animals and also tea and weed.

32. is the most likely to be a twitch streamer?

Dring. I just have the image of that one tiktok of different dog breeds (as played by a human) reacting to a burglar and the samoyed playing video games yelling "OOOOOHHHHHHHH!! GET SAAAUCED!!!" Dring wouldn't actually speak on stream, but they'd have a massive soundboard of movie quotes and sound effects as reactions to almost anything.

34. would have the most fun playing a ttrpg?

Daga would go HAM. Daga and Sammy playing ttrpgs together would be inseparable and unstoppable. Chaos Cousins.

44. is the most like you?

Oof..........even split: Cohr, Daga, Siggri. Cohr for anger issues and know-it-all-ness (and being in love with Nothing (@bladeverbena)), Daga for naivete and just. Utter Obnoxiousness, and Siggri for anxiety battling with the urge to Be Nice and Do Good. also we're all cute and powerful!

45. is the least like you?

Halla. Flirting incessantly, very very slow to actually open up. Also tall and flat-chested and drop-dead gorgeous. And Dovekie, kinda, the way I'm playing them in my dad's campaign. Also tall, also playing it close to the chest, but dueling instincts of This Wasn't In My Job Description/You're Not Paying Me Enough For This vs. Protect.

character superlatives

[bansheeoftheforest]

OC Masterlist

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Welcome to my OC masterlist! I have a lot of ocs! I hoard them like a goblin and I will never stop! SO!!! OCS!!!! So far we got two collections of OCS; The O’Jekylls, which is Dr. Jekyll’s fam, and my very own DND character who I turned into a Lodger! <3

All OCS can be found under the tag #Banshees OCS!

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               --Lodgers--

——————Humans——————

Cederic Beumont

Cederic Beumont is a French artist (and prostitute) turned mad scientist throughout multiple events happening in his early adulthood. He is the oldest twin out of him and his sister, Cassandra, and the two of them were raised by their single father in a small village in France. After the death of their father by the age of twenty, Cederic and his sister travel around Europe until they move to America, where they lived for five years. During those five years, Cederic and Cassandra-- previously inseparable-- have a falling out which ends in Cederic storming out and leaving Cassandra to run the hotel they had set up on the coast of Florida. The falling out, combined with a lot of other stressful and dramatic things happening around him, manages to make Cederic’s mental health crumble until he practically goes insane. Previously an artist, Cederic turns to science in hopes of being able to achieve something that would make him “more” than his sister, who always has been the “smarter” one out of the two of them, which ends up in him studying Frankenstein’s life like the Holy Bible. He gets obsessed with the study of lightning and he gets obsessed with the idea to one-up God, as he previously had been born and raised Catholic, and he feels like he would be able to do everything that Frankenstein failed to do (take care of Creature, own up to the responsibilities, keep the innocent safe, etc) despite having no proof of him being able to do everything differently.

With the help of his boyfriend, Wilhelm, and Wilhelm's biology studying friends, he manages to continue his experiments. He moves between calling himself a Fulminologic Necromancer and a Necromantic Fulminologist, depending on the people he surrounds himself with, as he studies lightning as a whole and applies the knowledge to necromancy. His early experiments involves reviving dead animals with the use of electricity, although he does dabble in alchemy and chemistry when it’s needed.

Around the time he is 30 years old, he hears the word upon the street about the Society For Arcane Sciences in London, England. His boyfriend helps him scrap in enough money for a one-way ticket to London on the promise that they will still hold contact, to which Cederic immediately agrees. He travels to London by ship and marvels over how fantastically dirty and gross the entire city is, there is slums everywhere! So many animals and mythical creatures!! The moment he is within the city walls, he manages to find Sergeant Enoch Brokenshire and pleads for him to show Cederic the way to the Society. Brokenshire is, of course, very put off by this hyper-energetic bastard he can barely hear over his (normally trained away) french accent, but Brokenshire does not get paid enough to care. He basically just grabs Cederic by the collar and drags him like a stray cat over to the Society and to Dr. Henry Jekyll’s office, to which he basically dumps him on the doorstep and leaves. As Jekyll practically collects scientists, and as they already have a necromancer in the Society, Jekyll welcomes Cederic with open arms and shows him around, unaware how Cederic... is an actual mad scientist, not just using that word as a moniker.

Cederic quickly becomes friends with Sinnett and Luckett, all three of them having a knack to blow things up and play with fire. Cederic also loves to harass Tanis, the local necromancer, as he loves that they practically study the same thing and did you know this and that and wouldn’t it be cool to blow up a corpse? You know Moreau might actually have been onto something with the animals and yadeyadeyada-- Tanis does not like Cederic. Cederic thinks that they are best friends.

Cederic joins the Society sometime before the events of TGS, however, immediately jumps all over both Jasper and Frankenstein like a yappy dog excited to have new friends. He is absolutely in love with Frankenstein, much like everyone else, but quickly has a change of heart as he feels she is a wimp, because he could do this and that so much better and why would you do x y and z when you could have done a b c instead. He has a massive ‘R.I.P to them but I’m different’ complex and feels like Frankenstein can’t own up to her work and her legendary image like she should. He thinks he can one-up her, and basically tries to snatch her stuff and studies when she isn’t looking. Creature would very much like to bonk him over the head with a frying pan.

Cederic also has a pet ghost cat-- or more or less spirit cat as she has never actually been alive-- that he has had since he was a baby. He named her Adelaide-Antoinette because he is french and extra like that, and the two of them are actually inseparable, as Adelaide is connected to Cederic through a bunch of magical hijinx. Adelaide can talk to Cederic, however, no one else can hear or see her, making most people think that Cederic is genuinely insane as he is not afraid to walk around talking to himself. The only one who knows about Adelaide is Maijabi, who saw her in one of his ghost mirrors one time, but he thinks its fun to see the other Lodgers thinking that Cederic is insane, so he doesn’t say anything.

Random Trivia: Cederic is originally my DND character, played in a specific type of campaign called Scion. It takes place in the real life world, and our campaign is set during the 1960′s if WW2 had never ended. Cederic and Cassandra were originally forced to flee by the outbreak of the war and the invasions of France. Scion is also based on mythologies, were the player characters (the Scions) are children of the ancient gods. Cassandra and Cederic are children of the egyptian god Bastet, ergo, the ghost cats.

Tags: #Banshees Cederic

Art of Cederic / Original Info dump on Lodger!Cederic

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——————Animals——————

Adelaide-Antoinette

Adelaide-Antoinette is a spirit and companion cat connected to Cederic. She has been by Cederic’s side for as long as he can remember and her, her sass, and her snobbishness were many of the core influences that shaped Cederic into the person he was before his mental breakdown he is today.

Adelaide is a Birman and lives up to the snobbish reputations of such breeds. When she is particularly feisty, she likes to sit on top of Cederic’s head and use him as her steed, and also loves to call him a peasant. She is also very territorial, and very protective of Cederic too. She is basically the epitome of “No one is allowed to bully him but me”. She is also very vocal and loves to have Cederic seem like he is talking to himself. Cederic has a knack to recite Hamlet and other Shakespeare plays to her, and while it’s fun for him, Adelaide wish she could bite his tongue off after the 10th recitation. After so many years, the recites might be up in the thousands.

Adelaide also did not like all the other creatures in the Society immediately, but quickly realized that it was either them or Cederic forever, to which she quickly began to force herself to warm up to them. Her favourite is Jasper’s unicorn, who most likely share her snobbishness, but a close second is Zosi and Griffin’s cat. When she is particularly mad at Cederic, as he tends to neglect her a little once he gets caught up in his work, she likes to hang around Maijabi as he is the only other living person who can see her. Cederic also uses her to spy on the others sometimes, as she can go through walls and can’t be seen.

Tags: -

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        --The O’Jekylls--

——————Humans——————

Collin O’Jekyll

Collin O’Jekyll is Henry Jekyll’s “paternal uncle” and also his make-shift father. Collin and Henry loved each other from day one and the two of them often spend most of their free time in the pastures with Collin’s horses. Collin is an artist, who dabbles in both writing and art, but mainly breeds and sells horses for income, despite not really needing it due to his inheritance. He has always been supportive of Henry’s scientific interests and was the one to take him out to all of the scientific plays that Henry watched as a child, as his parents were less than supportive of the boy’s interests.  While mainly breeding and raising horses, Collin also buys and takes care of every animal he can get his hands on. One of his oldest pets is a male calico Maine Coon named Paddington, who got dumped by his breeder for being male. All of Collin’s animals seem to hate everyone but him, and of course, Henry. Collin also bred and gifted Henry his own horse once he turned 15; a dapple grey Clydesdale named Mayhem, named after her fiery temper. Much like Paddington, she hates everyone but her owner.

Random Trivia: Collin has a very weak immune system and therefore always wears a scarf, no matter the season or weather. He also knows how to sword fight and taught Henry a few tricks before he left Scotland. He is mainly a very cheerful and optimistic guy but won’t hesitate to throw hands if you try to hurt those he loves.

Tags: #Banshees Collin, #Collin O’Jekyll

Art of Collin / Art of Collin and Paddington

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Douglas O’Jekyll

Douglas O’Jekyll is Henry’s “biological” father and Collin’s older brother, but dislikes his role as both father and brother. He is a policeman and known for his ruthlessness and hatred for those he deems have done wrong, and he also has a massive superiority complex. He has always disliked Collin greatly and the two of them have always had a rivalry between them, however, that rivalry got to it’s boiling point when Douglas and Collin were in an accident as kids, mainly caused by Collin unintentionally during a riding trip in the Highlands, which made Douglas earn some of his scars and bred the resentment between the two of them even more. Douglas has always been disapproving of Henry’s... Well, he has always been majorly disapproving with anything that comes to Henry. He dislikes Henry’s love for his uncle, his scientific interests, Henry’s friends, his wish to become a doctor... Douglas dislikes pretty much everything with Henry, which might have its grounds in Henry looking like and taking after a lot from his uncle. As Henry grows older, Douglas’ dislike for both him and Collin grows stronger, and Douglas starts getting outspoken of his hatred for Henry. He also gets physical every once in a while, which was one of the reasons for why Henry left Scotland completely despite Collin doing his best to protect him.

Random Trivia: His scars are either from the Accident, from his work as a policeman and also from many of Collin’s animals. He has a family pedant made out of emerald with a ‘J’ for Jekyll in it, as he is the first born and the heir of the family. He has always felt like Collin was the favourite with everything, both by their parents and by the fact that Douglas’ own son and wife likes Collin more than him, which just bred his resentment for his younger brother even more.

Tags: #Banshees Douglas, #Douglas O’Jekyll.

Digital art of Douglas / Traditional art of Douglas

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Abigail O’Jekyll (Née O’Haggins)

Abigail is Henry’s mother and Douglas’ wife. She comes from a long line of Scottish non-aristocratic nobles and she is the oldest out of six sisters, making her the main heir of the O’Haggins as she has no brothers. In her youth, she was very sought after by many bachelors, and met the O’Jekyll brothers during a ball hosted by her parents. She immediately took a liking to Collin and during the dances, they fell quite in love. However, as the first born, she was forced to marry Douglas instead due to pressuring from her parents who deemed Douglas more worthy than Collin, but she and Collin continued their relationship in secret. Both Douglas and Abigail knows that neither really loves the other all that much but they play their parts due to societal expectations, even if that doesn’t make Douglas any happier when the suspicion of Abigail’s and Collin’s relationships arise. Abigail is, too, not very supportive of Henry’s scientific interests due to all of its stigma and consequences that it can bear, not to mention that she is quite afraid of Douglas’ reactions to Henry’s continuous love for science, but she allows Henry to pursue non-harmful studies in secret to keep him happy, as his happiness is the most important thing for her. She does her best to be a good mother and succeeds in that, although everyone has their bad moments. Random Trivia: While Henry looks more like Douglas and Collin, Hyde takes after Abigail’s side of the family. She wears a locket with an ‘A’ on it with a picture of Collin and Henry inside, which needs a lock to be opened (mostly to keep Douglas from discovering the photo). While she is indifferent to most animals, she loves cats (that are well behaved, which rules out all of Collin’s cats) and she likes horses, although she will never, ever ride one ever again after she fell into a hay bail when Collin tried to get her to ride one of his horses. Tags: #Banshees Abigail, #Abigail O’Haggins.  Old Art of Abigail / Updated Art of Abigail

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——————Animals——————

Paddington

Paddington is one of Collin’s most beloved cats. He is a male, calico coated Maine Coon that got dumped by his breeder for being a male calico (therefore, sterile). He lived in the streets for a while until Collin found and adopted him, to which Paddington immediately became a little diva who hates everyone but Collin and Henry. He is the cause of some of Douglas’ scars and have torn more than one of Abigail’s dresses, but is as good as gold to Collin and Henry.

Tags: #Banshees Paddington

Art of Collin and Paddington / Written description of Paddington

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Mayhem

Mayhem is Henry’s own horse that Collin bred and helped Henry to raise. She is a dapple grey Clydesdale named after her fiery temper and knack for chaos, much like most animals that Collin has been responsible for. She is quite spoiled but very well behaved when needed to be, and she often thinks that she is the mother of those she likes, such as Henry, Paddington, Zosi and Collin. Once Henry left Scotland, she was one of the few things he took with him, and he still owns her to this day; allowing her to live her best, destruction-bringing life in London, striking terror in every stable boy in the entire city.

Tags: #Banshees Mayhem.

Written description of Mayhem

[doberbutts]

Are you against adopting? Or just against the “adopt don’t shop” mentality? (Fuck that mentality, by the way)

Neither, really, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

I have nothing against rescuing pets in need and in fact two of the three dogs I’ve had since turning 18 were rescues.

Neither of those dogs lived for more than 6 months after rescue due to various health and behavioral concerns they had before I even got them.

Skoll I knew was a fear biter but his full history was not disclosed to his foster mom, who handled his adoption and transported him across Canada and into the US to meet me at the border in Buffalo NY. I euthanized him after two months because he was not a stable or trustworthy dog at all and had bitten me rather severely on the hand for the sin of petting him, something he had asked for dozens of times. I was advised to euthanize by the trainer I’d enlisted for him, his foster mom, and his foster mom’s trainer she’d enlisted for him during his stay with her. I found out later the scope of the horror that dog had lived through and the actual bite record he’d obtained before being tossed out like trash. He should have been euthanized long before he ever got to my house.

Tiki I was told was healthy and active, the woman was just going into hospice care and couldn’t take the dog- I’m not sure if the second part was a lie, but the first definitely was as she rattled and coughed on the way home from getting her and was never fully healthy. I euthanized her after five months because she had repeated health crashes where she literally could not breathe and the specialist vet I’d enlisted told me there was no hope for her to fully recover and she was genetically born wrong. Her tentative diagnosis was a malformation within her sinus causing her to overproduce mucous and then aspirate it, an immune disorder which caused her not to be able to fight off the bacteria pooling in her lungs from aspiration, and hydrocephalus. The hydro alone would have been reason enough to euthanize as that is a death sentence in dogs 99% of the time and very expensive to treat and fight for the slim chance that the dog actually survives. Her vet records were falsified by the previous owner and they disappeared into the aether once they handed her over to me.

Creed on the other hand is my first and only dog from a responsible breeder and he is 6 years old and counting and honestly the best dog I’ve ever had so fuck it I’m breeder only at this point. I’ll take the DCM devil I know over the rescue roulette because I’ve shot twice and been hurt both times.

Likewise I have no problem telling people that if they are not choosey about their dogs, they should consider rescue first. There are plenty of nice, healthy dogs who need homes and those should not be discounted just because “want puppy”. I do have a problem with telling people that buying from a breeder is a bad choice, because there are perfectly legitimate reasons why someone would want a dog from a breeder rather than a rescue, and that should never be something anyone else gets on their case about.

Similarly, I have a problem with rescues that are hypocrites or have ridiculous stringent rules but then when push comes to shove they’re no better than what they claim to be against. Rescues that import sick or aggressive animals and then adopt them out to unsuspecting homes. Rescues that buy animals from mills to then sell to people. Rescues that make up fake origin stories for pity or money. Rescues that spend resources on hard-to-keep animals while allowing easy adoption animals to remain in kill shelters to die. Rescues that falsify vet records. Rescues that falsify the age of the dog. Rescues that breed their own animals. Rescues that won’t adopt to people for the most idiotic of reasons while also complaining that no one wants to adopt their animals. Rescues that lie about breed to gain more interest. Rescues that charge more for purebred animals than mixed breeds. Rescues that steal dogs. Rescues that trap people into being forced to give up their dogs. Rescues that campaign fundraisers “for the animals” and then use that money for their own bank accounts. Rescues that push to legislate owners with happy animals out of existence because the owners were not loving their animals “the right way”. Rescues that lie about a dog’s history so it gets adopted, even when the dog is known to be aggressive and unstable. Rescues with a control problem where they require you to be okay with surprise drop-in visits at any point so they can check your home and possibly take back the dog that never stopped being “theirs”. Rescues that will not work with people who have dogs from breeders/are breeders when a dog gets loose and picked up by rescue, because they don’t want the dog to go back to the breeder/person and continue to be intact and be shown/bred. Rescues that abandon their dogs and adoptees when the going gets tough because they don’t want to deal with it.

Dog rescue is not some holy ground where nothing bad ever happens and no bad people are ever involved, just like dog breeding. They are both run and founded by people, and being that people can be good or bad or a mix of both it’s not hard to see why these things happen. I have no patience for that and will not support it.

Adopt OR shop, as long as one does so ethically, and as long as it fits your lifestyle.

[vincenthousman]

All the dogs are just as guilty.

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[lol-jackles]

You've picqued my curiosity- why were you deplatformed by twitter after the 2015 Oscars? Second question- why the hell is Biden polling better than Trump, and are you as terrified as I am by the possibility that the Dems might end up in control of the Presidency, House, and Senate? I'm literally losing sleep over it, because I fear the total evisceration of all of the constitutional rights bestowed on us in our magnificent Constitution.

I used clerk at the Malibu courthouse in the late 80s and while celebrities’ drug addictions kept us occupied, Sean Penn and Madonna kept us busy on a weekly basis.  What you heard about Sean hitting Madonna with a baseball bat or breaking into her house and tying her up for several hours are only a fraction of the number of altercations between them.  Anyways, Sean owned two dogs that he only fed raw meat, between the inappropriate diet and how the dogs were treated, the dogs were not right in the heads.  One day a neighbor was walking his dog near or in front of the Penn estate.  Sean’s dogs got loose, attacked the neighbor’s dog, killed it and ate the dog infront of the poor neighbor.  The neighbor tried suing and that’s the only reason why we knew about the incident.

Fast foward 26 years and Sean Penn was closing out the 2015 Academy Award with a green card joke and everybody was tweeting their opinions and piling on Sean.  Another former clerk and I were shooting off our mouths on twitter about the dog-eat-dog nature of twitterverse and how it literally applied to Sean Penn because of what happened decades earlier.  The Malibu courthouse closed down two years earlier so we were freely reminiscing for hours about the criminals that tried to figure out our work scedules, discovering an identity theft scam being carried out in the courthouse, arguing over  what breeds were Sean’s dogs and why he should or shouldn’t be banned from owning dogs.  Yeah, we probably shouldn’t have tagged at the Oscar or hashtagged Sean Penn because by morning both our accounts were deactivated without explaination.

“why the hell is Biden polling better than Trump“

The “polls” flip flop between the two depending on who is running it and Joe Biden is doing the same trick as Obama did in the final year of his presidency, as long as he stays out of the public view, the public will have better opinion of him through their own projection.  It’s like Biden  is a groundhog that came up out of his basement, saw Trump's shadow, and said "no more campaigning for five months".

“are you as terrified as I am by the possibility that the Dems might end up in control of the Presidency,”

Every two weeks I say, “Man, I don’t know what else the Democrats could do to try and improve Trump’s hand going into this election year.”  And then the Russian collusion hoax happened, and then impeachment farce happened, and then Obamagate happened, and then General Flynn entrapment hapened, and then actively encouraging rioters happened, and the final nail in the coffin is “Defund the police” the worst possible slogan to try to build your coaltion around.  It reminds me of the old song Clowns to the left of me; jokers to the right…   

So.... do the Democrats actually want Trump to win?  And why?  If you’ve been reading my blog you know I’m “follow the money” guy.  Look at Democratic fundraising in 2016-2020 compared to previous years, maybe they absolutely want Trump to win so they can continue The Grift and keep rolling in the dough.

“I fear the total evisceration of all of the constitutional rights bestowed on us in our magnificent Constitution.”

Trump’s twitter is like a laser pointer to distract the media and SJWs while he appoints record number of constitutionalist federal judges.  Activist judges suck so for this I’m glad Trump has done this to uphold the Constitution.

[yasbxxgie]

Why Octavia E Butler’s novels are so relevant today

It’s campaign season in the US, and a charismatic dark horse is running with the slogan ‘make America great again’. According to his opponent, he’s a demagogue; a rabble-rouser; a hypocrite. When his supporters form mobs and burn people to death, he condemns their violence “in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear”. He accuses, without grounds, whole groups of people of being rapists and drug dealers. How much of this rhetoric he actually believes and how much he spouts “just because he knows the value of dividing in order to conquer and to rule” is at once debatable, and increasingly beside the point, as he strives to return the country to a “simpler” bygone era that never actually existed.

More like this:

-        The 1968 novel that predicted today

-        The fiction that predicted space travel

-        The story of cannibalism that came true

You might think he sounds familiar – but the character in question is Texas Senator Andrew Steele Jarret, the fictional presidential candidate who storms to victory in a dystopian science-fiction novel titled Parable of the Talents. Written by Octavia E Butler, it was published in 1998, two decades before the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States.

Like much of her writing, Butler’s book was a warning about where the US and humanity in general might be heading. In some respects, we’ve beaten her to it: a sequel to 1993’s Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents is set in what is still the future, 2032. While its vision is extreme, there is plenty that feels within the bounds of possibility: resources are increasingly scarce, the planet is boiling, religious fundamentalism is rife, the middle classes live in walled-off enclaves. The novel’s protagonist, a black woman like the author herself, fears that Jarret’s authoritarianism will only worsen matters.

Fourteen years after her early death, Butler’s reputation is soaring. Her predictions about the direction that US politics would take, and the slogan that would help speed it there, are certainly uncanny. But that wasn’t all she foresaw. She challenged traditional gender identity, telling a story about a pregnant man in Bloodchild and envisaging shape-shifting, sex-changing characters in Wild Seed. Her interest in hybridity and the adaptation of the human race, which she explored in her Xenogenesis trilogy, anticipated non-fiction works by the likes of Yuval Noah Harari. Concerns about topics including climate change and the pharmaceutical industry resonate even more powerfully now than when she wove them into her work.

And of course, by virtue of her gender and ethnicity, she was striving to smash genre assumptions about writers – and readers – so ingrained that in 1987, her publisher still insisted on putting two white women on the jacket of her novel Dawn, whose main character is black. She also helped reshape fantasy and sci-fi, bringing to them naturalism as well as characters like herself. And when she won the prestigious MacArthur ‘genius’ grant in 1995, it was a first for any science-fiction writer.

Octavia Estelle Butler was born on 22 June 1947. Her father, a shoeshiner, died when she was very young, and she was raised by her mother, a maid, in Pasadena, California. As an only child, Butler began entertaining herself by telling stories when she was just four. Later, tall for her age and painfully shy, growing up in an era of segregation and conformity, that same storytelling urge became an escape route. She read, too, hungrily and in spite of her dyslexia. Her mother – who herself had been allowed only a scant few years of schooling – took her to get a library card, and would bring back cast-off books from the homes she cleaned.

An alternate future

Through fiction, Butler learnt to imagine an alternate future to the drab-seeming life that was envisioned for her: wife, mother, secretary. “I fantasised living impossible, but interesting lives – magical lives in which I could fly like Superman, communicate with animals, control people’s minds”, she wrote in 1999. She was 12 when she discovered science fiction, the genre that would draw her most powerfully as a writer. “It appealed to me more, even, than fantasy because it required more thought, more research into things that fascinated me,” she explained. Even as a young girl, those sources of fascination ranged from botany and palaeontology to astronomy. She wasn’t a particularly good student, she said, but she was “an avid one”.

After high school, Butler went on to graduate from Pasadena City College with an Associates of Arts degree in 1968. Throughout the 1970s, she honed her craft as a writer, finding, through a class with the Screen Writers’ Guild Open Door Program, a mentor in sci-fi veteran Harlan Ellison, and then selling her first story while attending the Clarion Science Fiction Writer’s Workshop. Supporting herself variously as a dishwasher, telemarketer and inspector at a crisp factory, she would wake at 2am to write. After five years of rejection slips, she sold her first novel, Patternmaster, in 1975, and when it was published the following year, critics praised its well-built plot and refreshingly progressive heroine. It imagines a distant future in which humanity has evolved into three distinct genetic groups, the dominant one telepathic, and introduces themes of hierarchy and community that would come to define her work. It also spawned a series, with two more books, Mind of My Mind and Survivor, following before the decade’s end.

With the $1,750 advance that Survivor earnt her, Butler took a trip east to Maryland, the setting for a novel she wanted to write about a young black woman who travels back in time to the Deep South of 19th-Century America. Having lived her entire life on the West Coast, she travelled by cross-country bus, and it was during a three-hour wait at a bus station that she wrote the first and last chapters of what would become Kindred. It was published in 1979 and remains her best-known book.

The 1980s would bring a string of awards, including two Hugos, the science-fiction awards first established in 1953. They also saw the publication of her Xenogenesis trilogy, which was spurred by talk of ‘winnable nuclear war’ during the arms race, and probes the idea that humanity’s hierarchical nature is a fatal flaw.The books also respond to debates about human genetic engineering and captive breeding programs for endangered species.

In her author photos, Butler appears a serious woman with an exceptionally penetrating gaze. At a talk she gave in Washington DC in 1991, later reported in the radical feminist periodical, Off Our Backs, she offered a fuller description of herself: “comfortably asocial – a hermit in the middle of Los Angeles – a pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, certainty and drive”.

That certainty and drive can be seen in papers from her archive, now housed at the Huntington Library. In 1998, some motivational notes written on the back of a ring-bound writing pad begin “I shall be a bestselling writer!” She goes on: “I will find the way to do this! So be it! See to it!” Elsewhere, she’s to be found urging herself to “tell stories filled with facts. Make people touch and taste and know. Make people feel! Feel! Feel!”

Butler died in 2006, following a fall near her home in Washington state. Though she had begun suffering from writer’s block and depression, caused in part by medication for her high blood pressure, she’d continued to teach, and in 2005, had been inducted into Chicago State University’s international black writers hall of fame. She published a novel that year, too, Fledgling, whose vampire heroine must avenge a vicious attack, and rebuild her life and family. By then, her books had been translated into 10 languages, selling more than 1 million copies altogether.

In the years since, her fanbase has only grown. It turns out that she didn’t invent the campaign slogan beloved by Trump. It was used by Ronald Reagan in his 1980 presidential campaign, and later by Bill Clinton, although later he described the phrase as a “racist dog whistle to white southerners”. Nevertheless, as Tarshia L Stanley, dean of the school of humanities, arts and sciences at St Catherine University, notes, when readers spotted during the 2016 US election that Butler had chosen the slogan for Jarret, it “jarred people into recognising that she’s been doing this work all along. She’d been trying to tell us that if we do not make changes, this is what’s going to happen. She constantly gave that message: this is the logical conclusion if we keep treading down this path. I think when people saw that phrase, it started a whole new group of people reading her work.”

Butler’s work is today the subject of fan fiction, television adaptations (there are at least two in the works), and lively attention on college campuses, where it’s read from perspectives as varied as critical race theory, Afrofuturism, black feminism, queer theory and disability studies. Stanley, who last year edited the essay collection Approaches to Teaching the Works of Octavia E Butler, is also president of a society dedicated to the author. Its membership is broad, she says, but the most gratifying surprise is how many young people Butler’s work is engaging. At the inaugural conference, there was even a panel of high-school kids.

What would Butler have made of the present political moment in the US? “I don’t think she would have been surprised”, Stanley says. She puts Butler’s ability to envisage our future down to a deep understanding of human nature – knowledge gained from having the role of outsider foisted on her in girlhood. This she backed up with research, reading journals including Scientific American, listening to lectures, travelling as far as the Amazon. For Stanley, the one lesson to take from Butler’s work is hope. “World building is huge in her canon, and so there is always hope that since we built this world, we can build another one.”

There’s a scene in Parable of the Sower when the best friend of heroine Lauren Olamina insists “Books aren’t going to save us”. Lauren replies: “Use your imagination,” telling her to search her family’s bookshelves for anything that might come in handy. “Any kind of survival information from encyclopedias, biographies, anything that helps you learn,” she goes on. "Even some fiction might be useful".

Butler’s novels are just that kind of fiction. The child who began writing as a means of escape, ended up crafting potent calls to socio-political action that seem ever more pertinent to our survival as a species.

Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, and other books by Octavia Butler are published by Headline.

[fmr]

[momtemplative]

Saturday Afternoon, MACRO and MICRO

Definition of Macro: large-scale; overall. ie., THE FOREST.

Definition of Micro:  extremely small. ie., THE TREES. Definition of Macro, here: The wild world at large.

Definition of Micro, here:  The tiny home we inhabit, where we “shelter in place.”

MICRO—I sit here in our tiny RV that is parked in the driveway. It’s where I “go to write”, a creative parlor with wheels and a view of our magnificent choke cherry out the window that is just starting to think about blooming. (I don’t blame it for being hesitant.) 

Months back, Opal and her friend pretended this RV was a rescue vehicle for dogs—all dogs but mostly pit bulls, a breed Opal feels is highly misrepresented. From where I sit, in the passenger seat swiveled to face the rear, there are four black-and-white photocopies of gorgeous dog portraits staring at me. One pit bull in particular looks straight through me.

I’ve purposefully resisted straight-up news, aside from my nightly installment of “Good News Network” and NPR’s weekly “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” radio quiz show. But living without allowing for the outside to seep in feels unhealthy in its own right. Selectively permeable would be the proper thing to practice now. 

So I crack open my computer and dip my toes in the NY Times live coverage of the Coronavirus.

I can hear Jesse’s future voice in my head: How was writing?

Me: Good, but I’m feeling a tad suicidal now.

Him: Why?

Me: I read the news.

Him: Now why would you go and do that??

MACRO—“With President Trump having undercut the new guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by immediately declaring that he would not wear a mask himself, it was far from clear how many Americans would ultimately embrace the recommendation.”

MICRO— I return from the RV to find a house party of three people in my living room. Thankfully, my family did not get the memo that in this moment, life on the outside is complex and backwards. Ruth is on Jesse’s shoulders, no pants, shit-eating grin and fresh-cut bangs in her eyes. She shakes like a puppy with over-large ears and Opal twirls in her No ProbLLama nightgown to the Imagine Dragons song, Zero. Inside our little bubble, things are bumping! The sun floods the living room and even the anti-social cat seems obliged to hang out—from an appropriate distance.

MACRO—Governor Andrew Cuomo warns that, as infections passed 113,700 and deaths 3,500, New York State would reach the worst point of the coronavirus crisis within a week or so. He also said the state was using the machines for coronavirus patients at a rate that would exhaust its stockpile in just six days.

MICRO—Three boxes are stacked one atop the other in front of our door like a cairn. One box is for Jesse’s birthday next weekend, the others are for Ruth. 

It’s looking like COVID-19 will spit us out the other end proficient in at least one new talent—Opal’s is roller skating. She insisted on using my skates, which she found while foraging for activities in the garage like a squirrel for food. After a few days of wearing those up and down the down-stairs hallway, and back and forth on the sidewalk out front, I was certain the future for her ankles was bleak and we ordered her a pair on Amazon that were her size.

Ruth observed all this unfolding and with no intention of leaving empty-handed. Unfortunately, toddler-sized skates are much harder to come by. So, many weeks into the future, Ruthy finally got her own skates that go over her shoes and are, frankly, awesome. She also picked out the tackiest Olaf helmet—with a carrot-nose that actually protrudes—after instructing me to “search on Amazon for Olaf now please.” 

Each of those treasured items are contained in the boxes on our porch. I jump into our current porch-sanitizing routine (bleach wipes and spray lined up on the porch without apology)—wipe box, open, wipe down package inside, wash hands thoroughly. 

You can practically hear Ruth buzzing as suits up for a jolly, though quick to be exhausting, skate around the block. Her uniform killed, and would have worked as well for Halloween, Burning Man, a rave and a roller derby—mixed patterns for shirt and pants, knee pads and skates from Trolls, Olaf helmet. When she velcroes her final skate, I hear a faint, prayer-like utterance from Jesse: dear god. She is an eye-full that could save a life.

MACRO—Trump is getting help with the November election. His campaign just rolled out a new ad, titled “Hope,” featuring appreciative quotes from Gov. Cuomo and Gov. Newsom of California. With the lives of their constituents at stake, they’ve given him the made-for-TV sound bites he was never able to extract from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

MICRO— Thank god for these kids. If I were being force-fed the news then led to an empty house with, maybe, a roommate-peer who is also stressed and bloated with sad information, or if perhaps I were old and alone, I’d be struggling in an entirely different way. Sure, I have my moments of fantasizing about what it would have been like if COVID and shelter-in-place came at a time before or children, during a time when I could have relished cleaning and reading and making a weeks-long retreat out of an unsavory situation. But the fact is, these kids keep the scales level.

Not to mention the fact that affection is built-in. Even though Ruth is less interested in snuggling than she is in building block-towers or submerging every toy she owns in water, we seem to be touching constantly, in this or that way. Hugs from Opal and Jesse, snuggling on the couch for a show, holding hands on our walks around the block—it’s all-inclusive. The fact that this is not the case for everyone is something I am well aware of.

MACRO—Jared Kushner has embedded his own people in the Federal Emergency Management Agency; a senior official described them to The Times as “a ‘frat party’ that descended from a U.F.O. and invaded the federal government.” As The Washington Post reported, Kushner’s team added “another layer of confusion and conflicting signals within the White House’s disjointed response to the crisis.”

Kushner, you can’t shatter us.  Young girls in roller skates win every goddam time.

MICRO— Our block continues to be paradise. Any interest we had six months ago in selling this house has been waylaid and, thus, we are appreciating our home base in a truly different way. 

As we make our way down the block with two girls on their respective wheels, we holler at our beloved across-the-street neighbors, friends of 14 years. They sit, mysteriously, at a card table in their front yard, as if they are having an invisible garage sale. We exchange a boisterous, level-12-volume conversation from across the street, talking over each other and at the same time, expressing everything we possibly can in the tiny window we have while the girls scoot away on their skates. 

The corner that turns on to the bike path and is covered with ancient ponderosa pines smells musty and earthy and perfect. Like every camping trip ever taken. Every hike through the woods. A momentary dose of equilibrium.

When we circle back, our neighbors are still outside.  

One of them asks, “Hey, have you guys been wearing masks outside?”

“No, Governor Polis just suggests it for any public place—grocery, whatever.”

“We saw a few people driving by with them on.”

“Yea, so did we, we saw a few people out walking with them on, just outside.”

I guess the point is, if it’s not gonna hurt, you might as well do it. Hell, if we are in this far—as is shelter-in-place—then we might as well take it all the way. To pick up the slack for people who aren’t doing what they should be doing. (We are actually yelling all this in conversation across the street.) The idea that some people would still not be doing what they are supposed to be doing is ludicrous.  I’ve vented my rage at the college students of America over St. Patty’s Day, but they are all home by now, are they not? So who are we talking about here?

Fact is, as I just learned today, there are still five states that are not mandatory shelter-in-place. (I’m sorry, what??)

MACRO—“I can’t lock the state down,” said Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, which has recorded more than 600 confirmed cases and at least 11 deaths. “People also have to be responsible for themselves.”

MICRO— Opal has been loving her evening ritual of putting Ruth to bed. She says it’s one of her most ‘special times of the day,’ though it happens only a few times a week. She takes her little sister down by the hand, gets her jammies on and teeth brushed, reads to her, the whole precious nine yards. She does that tonight, leaving Jesse and I to the quiet of ourselves and our space-sans-kids in the family room. 

Jesse promptly dozes off in the rocking chair. I lie on the floor with eyes closed in star-pose, taking up some glorious space. These days are taking a toll. But it’s also true that I laughed so hard on four different occasions this afternoon that I buckled over twice, slapped a knee and wet myself. 

So much is going well in our tiny Microcosm that sometimes it’s easy to forget the Big Picture Macro. Ignorance is indeed not far from a certain cheap kind of bliss. It makes sense why people do it, why people feel the need to avoid discomfort. But, ultimately, the mind knows when it is missing something. The soul knows when it is being cut-off. Our beings can feel when humanity is suffering, whether or not we choose to admit it to ourselves in so many words.

“Mom!” Opal whisper-yells from down the hall. “Ready!” Meaning, she’s ready for me to come and finish Ruth’s bedtime with a song. But by the time I get to Ruth’s snug and utterly safe kid-room, she is fast asleep.

4/4/20

(all quotes in italics come from the NY Times live coverage of the coronavirus from the previous week.) 

[lepetitraccoon]

73 Questions with Eliott Demaury

Note : inspired by Vogue’s 73 Question videos

“where Eliott is a famous Elite model who lives with his boyfriend, Lucas”

The long awaiting knock on the door was heard and Eliott jumped on his feet, answering the door with a smile on his face.

“Hey Eliott, so excited to finally be here and asking you the 73 questions very quickly.”

“Yeah, come on in” said Eliott as he led the cameraman to the living room.

“Here we are on the beautiful penthouse on the heart of Paris. How long you’ve lived here?”

“A year and a half. Please have a seat.”

“Thank you. What were you doing before I came in?”

“Waiting for you to come.”

“What do you do on your day off?”

“Mostly resting and practicing my acting.”

“I watched your debut film, Polaris, and it was amazing. How did you come up with this acting gig?”

“I’ve been interested on acting and my agency has been very supportive with my plan from the beginning. They told me to take acting classes and helped me landing a role. That’s how I get my part in Polaris.”

“What’s the most memorable thing from Polaris?”

“Hmm.. it would be the scene when they finally see each other for the first time. We shot it on autumn so it was cold already and it was a raining scene. We were wet and cold so we both like let’s get this right in one take and we did!”

“That sounds awful. Thank God it was done right away.”

“Haha, but that’s what make it unforgettable.”

“You are right. Are you currently working on another film project?”

“No. But I was offered a role for a TV series which I have agreed to take. I can’t talk much about it as they want to keep everything under the cover for now but I’m excited for this new project. Interesting plot, crazy cast, it’s going to be awesome.”

“Wow, I can’t wait for it to be on TV. I’m 100% going to watch it.”

“Please anticipate.”

“After doing both modelling and acting, which one do you like better?”

“Modelling.”

“Why?”

“Because it takes the less preparation. I enjoy walking on catwalk, posing in front the camera. It comes out of me naturally but with acting, it doesn’t. There is a long process of getting to know the character, bonding with the other casts and crews. But I have to admit that when it’s done and I get to see the result, acting gives more satisfaction than modeling.”

“What’s your first modelling gig?”

“A campus event, don’t remember the name.”

“What’s the latest?”

“Bally campaign.”

“Looking at the success of Polaris, you must have gained a lot of new fans. How do you feel about that?”

“Yeah, I can feel it. I gained a huge number of followers on instagram. And people start to recognise me on the street. There is both pros and cons and I’m still adapting.”

“What is the downside of it?”

“Privacy breach. I had followed by some people the other day and I hope it won’t happen again.”

“That’s scary. People shouldn’t do that. What about the good part?”

“More offers for photoshoots, commercial campaigns.”

“Oh, right. You’re the new face of Cartier, aren’t you?”

“Yes, it feels like dream comes true! I love the brand so much. Their designs are just what I am. So to finally work with them feels incredible.”

“What’s your favourite accessories or jewelry?”

“Rings. All the time.” Eliott said as he held up both of his hands.

“Any other brand do you wish to be the ambassador?”

“Coach. And probably beers, must be nice to get free beers. Oh, can I get you something to drink?”

“Yes, please.”

“Come on, let’s go to the kitchen.” Eliott got on his feet and led the way to the kitchen.

“I have coffee, tea, and orange juice.”

“Tea would be nice. Thank you. Which of those do you prefer?”

“None of them. I prefer beer. But coffee if you insist. Here is your tea.”

“Thanks. Breakfast or brunch?”

“Breakfast.”

“What do you usually have for breakfast?”

“Coffee and whatever my boyfriend cook for me.”

“Speaking of your boyfriend, mind to introduce him a little?”

“His name is Lucas. And uhm...” Eliott stuttered a little, not sure of what he should say next.

“When did you first meet him?”

“Second year of high school.”

“When did you start dating him?”

“Also second year of high school.”

The sound of someone knocking on the door interrupted them.

“Seems like he’s home.” Eliott made his way to the door. “Salut!”

“Salut.” Lucas gave him a peck on the lips and stepped inside.

“Hi, you must be Lucas.”

“Hello... Vogue?” Lucas turned to Eliott who gave him a nod.

“Is it okay with you?” Eliott asked back to which Lucas nod in approval.

“Eliott, tell me your first impression of Lucas”

Eliott looked back at Lucas and put an arm around his shoulder. “When I first saw him, I just saw him. At that moment, I couldn’t see anyone but him.” Eliott said while they headed back to the kitchen.

“What’s your first impression of Eliott?”

“Weird” Lucas replied casually as he poured himself a glass of water.

“Who cooks the most?”

“Lucas.”

“Eliott is banned from this area” Lucas pointed to the counter area. “He is only allowed to access the dinner table and fridge.”

“Why?”

“He is bad at cooking. He once gave me a stomachache.”

“What’s your favourite food, Eliott?”

“Everything Lucas make.” That earned him another kiss on the lips before Lucas left them to mind his own business.

“Who spend most time at home?”

“Lucas.”

“How often do you travel for work?”

“Almost 2-3 days every week for the past couple of months.”

“How many countries have you visited for work?”

“New York, Spain, Germany, Hungary and South Korea.”

“Which one do you like the most?”

“New York.”

“Which one you stayed the longest?”

“South Korea. Two months.”

“What’s the best part of the travel?”

“The culture, the people, and the job itself. It’s brand new experience, working on each country. It’s fun.”

“What’s the worst part?”

“Jetlag and homesick, especially when I went to South Korea.”

“Any country you’d like to visit sometimes?”

“That would be a long list. I’d like to see as many countries as possible.”

“How often do you go overseas that is not for work?”

“A couple of times. I went to Barcelona for a music festival recently.”

“Who did you go with?”

“A friend of mine.”

“What’s your must bring item during travels?”

“Phone and Airpods”

“What’s the one you forget to bring?”

“I never forget anything that I should bring. Lucas is helping me packing all the time and he is very thorough.”

“What do you miss the most about home when you’re away?”

“Lucas and my vynil collection.”

“You have an impressive vynil collections, could you show us?”

“Sure”

Eliott took the man to where he kept his vynil collection. “Since when did you start collecting?”

“I can’t remember. It was way back at school.”

“What genre of music are you into?”

“Dubstep.”

“The genre you like the least?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“Do you play instruments?” The man pointed to the piano on the corner of the room.

“Yeah, I play piano and a little bit of guitar.”

“Who taught you to play them?”

“I learnt piano from my mom when I was a kid. And I learnt guitar from a friend.”

“What was the first song you learnt to play on piano?”

“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

“The last song you learnt?”

“Star Wars theme song.”

“How often do you play?”

“I rarely play ever since Polaris happen but my boyfriend plays it a lot.”

“What’s your favourite piece to play?”

“Fur elise.”

“Does it mean Lucas play it the most for you?”

“No. He can do many pieces, he’s good but I like it the most when he plays I Love You by Riopy.”

“Can he play the guitar?”

“Nope.”

“Who’s better at piano, you or Lucas?”

“Me.”

“I doubt that since you haven’t touched it for a long time.” Lucas said as he passed them by with some snacks and a bottle of beer.

“Who is in charge of the groceries?”

“Lucas. Because he’s home most of the time.”

“We used to take turns on groceries or did it together but now that he is an actor too, grocery shopping has become my responsibility.”

“How do you feel on the success of Polaris?”

“No comment” said Lucas as he stormed off, making Eliott laugh.

“He is too still adapting with the changes that come from the success of the film. He’s happy that I do well and very supportive of my career but my busy schedule and the travels make him feel lonely sometimes.”

“Have you considered taking him with you?”

“I don’t think it’s possible for him and his job.”

“What do you think of having pets?”

“Lucas and I are considering a dog. He is a dog lover but we haven’t decided yet. I want a snake actually. But Lucas hates it.”

“What about cats?”

“I like cats too.”

“What would you name your pet if you have one?”

“Brian! I’d like to call my snake Brian.”

“If you get a dog, would you name your dog Brian?”

“No. It would be Ouba, Lucas’ idea.”

“Cute name. What breed would it be?”

“We’re thinking of Pomeranian.”

“Why?”

“It’s easier to walk small dogs.”

“Where would you take it out for a walk?”

“Around the neighborhood. There is a park nearby where the resident head to for a jog or a walk.”

“Do you work out regularly?”

“Yes”

“Do you prefer to work out on your own or with a personal trainer?”

“I get a personal trainer from my agency but sometimes I do it on my own.”

“Jogging or gym?”

“Jogging”

“Basketball or football?”

“Basketball maybe.”

“Did you ever join a sport team?”

“Never. I played for fun not really good at it.”

“Last sport match you saw?”

“Tennis match.”

“What’s your favourite brand for sports wear?”

“Nike.”

“Have you ever done photoshoot for sportswear?”

“Nope, never.”

“Do you wish to do one someday?”

“Absolutely.”

“Alright, last question, could you play Fur Elise for us?”

“Okay,” Eliott took a seat and played the tune he had known very well.

“Wow, that’s beautiful. Thanks for having us. Good bye.” The man turned off his camera and they chatted a little before he left.

Eliott made his way to the bedroom, knowing Lucas would be there.

“He is gone?”

Lucas was sitting on the bed with a bag of potato chip on his hand, watching Noddy on TV.

“Yeah.” Eliott joined him on the bed.

“Did he ask about your amazing boyfriend?”

“A little.”

“Did you tell him how awesome your boyfriend is?”

“Nope.”

Lucas gave a look.

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know... maybe I want to keep it to myself?” Eliott shrugged but saw Lucas smiling a little bit. “You’re cute when you’re mad.” He whispered as he kissed Lucas on the lips.

[furbyfubar]

How's Sweden? 🇪🇺🇸🇪❤️

In what context? Do you mean for the country as a whole or what? Big question...

Never mind, I get few enough asks here that I can give you a more comprehensive answer. I'll use it as an excuse to take stock of my personal trends against those of my country? Sorry not sorry for the incoming wall of text. Note, this is why you shouldn't say "How do you do?" to anyone from Sweden; we're tragically likely to give you an honest answer!

Weather for Sweden: You're UK based, so lets go by stereotypes and start with talking about the weather I suppose? It's winter, so the weather here is *usually* quickly summed up as "dark". Right now Sweden has between ~7 hours 15 minutes of time between sun up and sun down in the far south of Sweden, and "fuck you" minutes of sun on the far north, where it's currently polar night until about two weeks into January. On top the normal lack of sun, Sweden got an early Autumn this year and had less actually sunny days than usual in October and November due to clouds. So yeah, vitamin D deficiency for about 25% of the population according to my doctor. And many of the ones avoiding a deficiency are doing it by eating supplements. On a longer time scale, ”climate” not “weather”... Yeah, we’ve been having heat records broken and all that shit here the past few years as as well while having some winters be worse due to the Gulf stream being messed up..

Rating: 3.5/10  – It sucks, but it's not much worse than the expected level of suckiness?Weather for me personally: I'm based in Stockholm and we're currently at 6½h of sun up time per day, but like I said, it’s been cloudy. Not so cold so far though. The problem for me personally is that when the sun goes down at 14:52 I often miss out on the sun completely due to my fucked up sleeping patterns. Or the sun is up but covered while I’m going to work and that's it for sunlight that day. I'd likely suffer from winter depression if only I could separate it from my normal depression. We’ve had some snow that stays on the ground, but we’re somewhat surprisingly not in the hell that is streets filled with snow-water slosh yet.

Rating: 3.5/10 – I don’t think the weather sucks more or less for me than it does for the country on average. (Places north of the polar circle excluded; I would really no be able to stand months of polar night.)

Health for Sweden: Sweden made #6 on the Bloomberg 2019 Healthiest Country Index, up two positions from 2017. Up from a score of 88.92 to 90.24 out of 100, so apparently it's not just other countries having worse health, things have gotten a bit better here.Rating: 9.24/10 – Well, Bloomberg hopefully put a lot more effort into their score than I’ll ever do, so I’ll just re-scale and steal it. 

Health for me personally: I had to basically skip a year due depression and exhaustion. Not being able to work due to a non-functioning brain obviously sucks, but to bring this back to how Sweden is: Being able to be on sick leave for almost a year and thus being able to focus on getting medication that works for me and not being worried about getting evicted for not making rent is a blessing. I'm back to working part time since October while still on sick leave for 50%, trying to ease me back in to the productive work force. So far going well. If I’d been forced to somehow work or starve, or live off my parents or something instead, I’m pretty sure I’d either be much deeper in depression right now, or be dead. I’ve still not really found meds that work great for me, but I'm feeling much better than I was a year ago.

Rating: 3/10 – I'm as optimistic as a clinically depressed person gets to be.

Status politically for Sweden (as I see it personally): It's getting more fucked by the day. The Moderate party just broke their campaign promise to not cooperate with the Sweden Democrats, a party born from neo-Nazi and white power movements. For UK context, think of the British National Party. Now imagine them going from a fringe group in the '90s to getting 20% of the votes in recent polls. They've been doing this all while having a whole bunch of scandals that would've hurt or killed the credibility of any non-fascist party. They're racist, homo- and transphobic, and operate their own alternative media that have ties to Russian disinformation efforts. So yeah, as a gay guy who's seen the inside of a few history books: Outlook not great.

Rating: 2/10 – If only because it can still get worse. Think first act of Cabaret.

Love life for Sweden: Hmm, check in on satwcomic.com I suppose?

Love life for me personally: Yes please? I've been single for longer than I'm willing to admit. I've barely dated anyone for ages due to my aforementioned depression making me not feel like someone worth dating. Also, there's some types of vitamin D deficiencies that eating supplements won't cure...

Rating: I really don't want to put a number on this so I won’t. Honestly, graphing out my love life numerically doesn't sound all that productive. But somewhere at the edge of the Bell curve is the guy for me?

Economically for Sweden: Sweden's been in a upward business cycle since 2016, but it's ebbing out and is expected to be balanced sometime next real. Ie, things have been good, but things aren't quite yet bad. Rating: 5.5/10 – I suppose? Not really my area of expertise.

Economically for me personally: Not complaining at all on this front. I got an IT job four years ago after having worked part time in retail for a bunch of years and having been a student before that. I've managed to not raise my monthly expenses even nearly as much as my pay went up. So while I’m not wealthy, I'm still surprised by being able to have a savings account that grows steadily and still having more spending money over each month.

My rating: 8/10 – This quote by Charles Dickens comes to mind: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.” 

Social life in Sweden: According to this article I just Googled up from half remembering reading in 2015, “The expat quality of life survey" published by HSBC, Sweden was the worst country for the category "Making friends". Looking at the data on HSBC's website we're apparently no longer dead last as a place to be making friends, we're now 31st out of the 33 countries listed, with Japan at 32nd place and Saudi Arabia last at 33rd. The United Kingdom is at 29th.

It is close to impossible to make friends here by talking to random strangers in most situations, as only weird people talk to strangers. Of course that mentality is self-fulfilling since if you assume any stranger talking to you is weird, drunk, or high, you will not want to make friends with strangers that talk to you, and you won't want to talk to strangers more than you have to or risk being branded weird. Even striking up random conversations at a pub will be more difficult here. 

But don’t despair, there’s a trick! Find the few social situations where Swedes want to talk to people they don't know: This is done by joining some organization or club of some sort. It doesn't really matter if it's a board gaming group, a student group, doing volunteer work for the local Pride or some other NPO or if it's a club for people who really like a certain breed of dogs. Once we've decided that we're among our own kind of people (and I don't mean "other Swedes") we'll happily talk to strangers, and not only about subjects related to that specific organization. Step two is converting them to be your friends and not just some randos you can talk to at some club meeting. I’m sad to say that traditionally this is done with alcohol, either by dragging people along to a pub/bar, or by inviting them or being invited by them to some sort of party. Without alcohol the fallback is fika. If the organization you’ve joined is something that you will naturally be spending time doing outside of the organization or club meetings that’s also ideal. Once you’ve invited or been invited to a few things outside of the organization it’s not strange to invite them to other social things than what the organization cares about.

For fairness to anyone reading this that didn’t read the article: I should probably also mention that the same HSBC study had Sweden as the top country in Europe for “overall quality of life” for expats here. And third best in the world, just behind Singapore and New Zealand in the same category. "Swedes make great friends but terrible strangers”.

My rating for making friends in Sweden is : 3/10 - Join a club, any club.

Social life for me personally: I have a few great close friends and a bunch more not quite as close friends who are also great. Come to think of it, many of them I've met through one of the three different organizations I've been most active in, and most of the rest I met through those friends. I'm really thankful for having friends who are still around even after I've spent way too much time feeling too bad to be very social or friendly at all.

My rating of my friends: 10/10 - No, I'm not biased.OK, so let’s average those numbers up and pretend the averages mean something!

Sweden: 5.81Me:  6.63Wait what? I’m winning?

[orcinus-ocean]

Endangered Felines, part 1

Tiger, Panthera tigris

Without a doubt one of the most iconic and recognizable animals on Earth, the tiger was voted the world’s favorite animal in 2004, with the domestic dog coming in second, and dolphins third.

I was planning on splitting tigers into one post per subspecies, but since there are sadly so many cat species that are endangered, this series will be long enough already, and it gives a better overview to have them all in one post.

And just as I was researching for this post, it turns out that in 2017, the tiger was reduced to a mere two subspecies - the mainland (P. t. tigris), and the Sunda Island (P. t. sondaica) populations - but this is disputed, as there are morphological and genetic differences between these populations. In this post, I will treat them all as their own subspecies.

While at first I was a bit skeptical about the switch to now only having two tiger subspecies when I think about it more, it's actually great for tiger conservation, because that means we don't have to be "subspecies purists" anymore. This means we can repopulate areas with another population easier, without claims of "it's an invasive/foreign animal".

While I will try to keep each topic brief, this will still be a lengthy and exhaustive post, as you can’t simply brush over things in the most beloved and famous endangered animal on Earth.

This is the historic range of all tigers. From the far northeast of Russia to the east of the Black Sea, by Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, all the way to the far southern islands of Java and Bali.

Today, they have been extirpated from most of their range, with three of the nine former subspecies extinct. By 2017, there were just under 4000 tigers in the wild combined, and that is after a recent rise in numbers, for the first time in over a century. A couple of hundred years ago, there were at least 40 000 tigers in India alone.

They are estimated globally to have numbered around 100 000 in the year 1900, meaning 97% of tigers were lost in a century.

Occasionally hunted throughout history, either because of fear, sport among the wealthy or for their parts, tiger hunts took on a new dimension when Europeans colonized India and other parts of South Asia, with "gentlemen sports hunters" proudly subduing nature. And later in the 20th and 21st centuries, mainly poaching for body parts used in "traditional medicine".

An Indian tiger hunt carried out by Lord Reding, Viceroy of India, likely in the mid-1920s.

Direct hunting is not the only threat against tigers, as the human population in Southeast Asia has exploded over the past century, and today, there is nowhere left for wildlife to go.

The tiger has been listed as endangered under the IUCN, consistently since its first assessment in 1986.

Bengal tiger, Panthera tigris tigris

The Bengal is without a doubt the most well-known of all tiger subspecies, not the least due to our strong association of tigers with Indian culture. They are also the most numerous tiger population today.

They are 90-110 cm tall at the shoulders and weigh up to 325 kg, with males averaging 235 kg, and females ranging from 116-164 kg.

Given a separate assessment by the IUCN in 2008, the Bengal tiger is considered endangered. Today, they number around 2300 animals in the wild, 1700 of which are in India, 440 in Bangladesh, 200 in Nepal, and 75-100 in Bhutan.

The population is severely fragmented, and no subpopulation contains more than 250 animals. Despite cautiously optimistic news a couple of years ago, they are still considered "decreasing".

If 40 000 was the original number of tigers in India, today, there are only 4% left, and it is still the biggest stronghold of wild tigers anywhere.

Amur tiger, P. t. altaica

More famously known as Siberian tiger, this name is inaccurate as they don't live anywhere near Siberia, which is a large chunk of eastern Russia, having no eastern coastline. While the tiger lives in the very far southeast, near Korea. They are also known as the Manchurian, Ussurian and Korean tiger.

As can be seen on the map above however, they did have a far larger range before widespread hunting nearly wiped them out.

The largest cat on Earth today (after the extinction of the Caspian tiger), they are the second most numerous tiger population, at around 500 animals in the wild (in 2005, they were estimated at 360). They were saved on the brink of extinction, as only a couple of dozen animals remained when they were finally protected.

Despite this vast increase however, the effective population size is only equivalent to around 30 animals, which is close to the total world population when they were saved from extinction. This is due to inbreeding from a smaller and smaller population that then had only a handful of already related animals to rebound from.

It was in the early 20th century that the Amur tiger was nearly wiped out, due to the massive societal change that was going on in Russia at the time. Armies on both sides of the civil war based in Vladivostok made it their mission to kill as many tigers as they could.

Tigers were extirpated from the Korean peninsula by the Japanese in the same period, when Japan occupied Korea. Today, South Korea is working on once again creating a home for the Amur tiger in their lands.

The Soviet Union finally banned tiger hunting in 1947, after which anti-poaching control was very strict. Cubs kept being live-caught well into the 1960s however.

In the middle of the 1900s, deer populations fell in the Amur tiger's range, leaving them no choice but to find other prey. Bizarrely, more than 30 cases of tigers attacking bears were recorded, and bear hair was found in tiger droppings.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent economic and societal collapse, people were free to poach tigers again, with some doing it to sell to the Chinese market. Today however, the population is stable, but vulnerable.

In 1965, it was given the listing of "status inadequately known", and this was not changed until 1996, when they were assessed as "critically endangered". This laster until 2008, when they were moved to endangered.

At present, there are about as many Amur tigers in human care as there are in the wild, totalling about 1000 Amur tigers on the planet. The zoological population has a higher genetic diversity than wild tigers, as the foundation stock was largely caught when tigers were more numerous in the wild.

Sumatran tiger, P. t. sumatrae

The Sumatran is the one tiger that I personally can recognize easily, due to their striking and bold facial pattern. They are among the smallest tigers alive today, with males reaching only 140 kg - this is a size similar to jaguars. They are also the only Indonesian or Sunda island tiger still in existence.

The Sumatran tiger has been consistently listed as critically endangered since their first assessment in 1996.

They number approximately 500-600 animals, not including ones in zoos and other collections.

Their threats are mainly a shrinking habitat due to palm oil and Acacia plantations leading to a depletion of prey, as well as poaching for their body parts.

Malayan tiger, P. t. jacksoni

Although recent research has discovered that there is no real difference between this and the Indochinese tiger, it was considered its own subspecies since a DNA analysis in 2004, until the recent merge where all mainland tigers are considered P. t. tigris.

Subspecies or subpopulation, the Malayan tiger was listed as “endangered” in 2008, and in 2014, it was reassessed under its current listing as critically endangered.

This was because they had declined by 25% in only one generation (7 years).

In the 1950s, there were about 3000 Malayan tigers. In the 1990s, there were 500, and in 2013, they were estimated at 250-340 animals. This gives an estimate of only around 100 breeding adults in the wild.

The total number in human care is difficult to get to, but apparently in 2011, there were 54 Malayan tigers in American zoos alone, spread across 25 facilities.

The Malayan tiger's habitat has shrunk from nearly 100 000 square kilometers before 1970s, to less than 45 000 square kilometers in 2014. Aside from this threat, is of course poaching for body parts for a Chinese market. Between the years 2000-2013, body parts equating to 1425 tigers had been seized, 94 of these being Malayan tigers.

The Global Tiger Recovery Program, made up of 13 countries where tigers live, set a goal in 2010 to double their tiger populations by 2022. Malaysia had made a similar promise before this agreement, in 2009, with their National Tiger Conservation Action Plan setting to doubling Malaysia's tiger population by 2020.

With the new population estimate of 250-340 adult Tigers and diminishing prey base and natural forests, it is biologically impossible to reach the NTCAP target by 2020.

Indochinese tiger, P. t. corbetti

The Indochinese tiger lives in Southeast Asia, and is viewed as the ancestor of all tigers, the other subspecies diverging around 72 000-108 000 years ago.

They are functionally extinct in Vietnam, Cambodia and possibly China, and number around 300-400 animals in total, the largest population being in Thailand.

They have been listed as endangered since 2008.

They are the least represented in zoos out of all tiger subspecies, and no coordinated breeding program exists. Approximately 14 zoo tigers have been discovered to be Indochinese after DNA analysis of 105 animals in 14 countries.

South China tiger, P. t. amoyensis

This is the most threatened tiger subspecies as they are believed to be extinct in the wild, since the last time one was live-caught in the 1970s.

Only 20 years earlier, they numbered more than 4000 animals, but then came Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward", when all wildlife stood in the way of "progress" (remember the Baiji).

Large-scale government anti-pest campaigns took off, and tigers were massacred, mercilessly. This was made worse by deforestation, heavy settling of the countryside from the cities (as part of the GLF) and over-hunting of their prey.

By 1973, they were partially protected, and by 1977, hunting was completely prohibited.

By the early 1980s, they were estimated at 150-200 animals, though not one tiger has been seen since the early 70s.

They are considered critically endangered, possibly extinct in the wild, but there is hope there still are a handful of tigers holding on in the wilds of China. For example, in 2007, a bear and a cow were killed by what was most likely a tiger.

In 2005, the entire zoological population numbered 57 animals descended from only six tigers. Despite being inbred and suffering poor breeding success as a result, DNA tests showed many aren’t pure South China tigers anyway. Another estimate (made difficult by crossbreeding) in 2007 put the global zoological population at 72 animals.

Bali tiger, P. t. balica

The Bali tiger, formerly inhabiting only the island of Bali since 12 000 - 13 000 years back, was the smallest of all tigers, with males only reaching up to 100 kg and females 80 kg, putting this tiger around the same size as a jaguar or cougar.

They were only listed as extinct by the IUCN as late as 2008, but the last one probably died just after the second world war, with the last known tigers recorded in the 1930s.

The Bali tiger was killed off through a lethal cocktail of environmental destruction (palm plantations and rice fields) and sports hunting by the Dutch colonizers. The West Bali National Park was established in 1941, but it came too late to save the tiger.

This animal was never filmed alive nor held in zoos (though it seems the Ringling Bros Circus had one), and it is very difficult to even find photos of live animals.

Javan tiger, P. t. sondaica

The Javan tiger was small, but just larger than the Bali, and similar in size to the still living Sumatran. They were notable in appearance by often having very sparse stripes around the front legs and shoulders.

This population was pronounced extinct by the IUCN in 2003, but the last confirmed sighting was recorded as far back as 1976. Several accounts of alleged sightings exist however, even within the last ten years, including a person supposedly being killed by a tiger in 2008.

In 2017, a blurry image surfaced of what was supposedly a Javan tiger. It was however most likely a Javan leopard, also a critically endangered cat.

We can always hope at least some of these alleged sightings were of tigers, but there is always the possibility that the animals witnessed were actually leopards.

At the turn of the last century, 28 million people lived on Java, while today, it is a jaw-dropping 145 million (resulting in a mind-blowing population density of 1.121 people per square kilometer - in comparison, the state of New York has a population denity of 416 people per square kilometer).

By the middle of the 1800s, people considered tigers a plague, and by the turn of the century, 150% more land had to be cleared for agriculture in only 15 years. By 1975, only 8% of the island's forests remained.

These tigers were poisoned, hunted, their main prey nearly died out, and the forests were cleared for lumber and agriculture.

To make things even worse, World War 2 happened, so the few that were kept in zoos were lost. After the war, it was easier to obtain Sumatran tigers, so none were taken from Java.

A funny thing to note is how the Javan people’s fear of the tiger led them to always referring to it as “Mr. Tiger”. They thought that if they spoke of it in a casual way, the tiger might hear them and take revenge.

Caspian tiger, P. t. virgata

Like the Javan tiger, the Caspian was pronounced extinct by the IUCN in 2003, but the last record was in the early 1970s, and it died out some time during this decade.

It was possibly the largest cat in the world during recorded human history, after the ice age extinction of the cave lion.

It lived across parts of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, eastern Turkey, northern Iran, parts of Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, even well into western China.

The last tiger in Georgia was shot in 1922, they were last recorded in Kazakhstan in 1948, one of the last in Iran was shot in 1953, the last in Turkmenistan was killed in 1954.

Tigers were killed both for sport and as pest control, including by the Soviet army. Up until World War 1, about a hundred tigers were killed in a forest area of the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border - every year. To make matters worse, their natural prey (pigs) declined heavily in the early 1900s due to overhunting and disease, and agriculture destroyed much of the tiger's natural habitat.

While this unique population is gone forever, there are plans to perhaps one day restock the area with Amur tigers, the closest living analogue to the Caspian tiger.

In a day when habitats are shrinking, other habitats may open up, and this could give the Amur tiger a greater hope to continue into the future.

The “there are more tigers in people’s backyards / basements than in the wild”-myth

More of a misrepresentation than a myth, it is true that there are more tigers in human care across the globe than there are in the wild. This is nothing strange for such an endangered animal.

The Scimitar-horned oryx, for example, was up until a couple of years ago extinct in the wild. There are now a few dozen roaming completely wild, while there are up to 11 000 of the antelopes in Texas alone.

The Eastern Bongo numbers around 400 animals in American collections alone, four times the population remaining in the wild!

The Przewalski's horse numbers around 2000 animals, and although many live in free-ranging reserves, only around 400 are considered truly wild and living in their native habitat, after reintroduction programs.

The Père David’s deer was extinct in the wild until some animals escaped and formed a population now some 700 strong, but it's still far outnumbered by the zoological population.

The blue-throated macaw numbers only around 300 animals in the wild, and the World Parrot Trust previously said there were "up to a thousand" in cages.

The Spix’s macaw numbers around 130 birds in human care, and was considered extinct in the wild since the last known bird disappeared in 2000, until one was discovered in 2016. If there are more in the wild, it is only a handful of scattered individuals.

The Hawaiian crow is extinct in the wild since 2002, with just over 100 birds in human care.

The Socorro dove has been extinct in the wild since 1972, with 150 birds alive today, all in cages.

The Guam rail is extinct in the wild since 1987, with some 160 birds alive in zoological facilities.

The orange-bellied parrot numbers around 340 in human care, with less than 20 in the wild.

It is however not true that there are more tigers in America than in the wild, let alone "in people's basements".

That claim is completely absurd, and while sometimes tigers are abused and neglected as with all animal species, that is extremely rare and would be far more common in their native Asia than in America.

According to the Feline Conservation Federation, the United States held just under 2900 tigers in 2011. In contrast, a decade ago in China, there were over 4000 tigers in human care in that country alone. The IUCN states (unknown date) that there are some 6000 tigers in China, mainly farmed for body parts.

We can debate the ethics of these various tiger facilities, but a large number also live in zoos and conservation centers. There is no such thing as several thousand "pet tigers" living in people's living rooms, backyards, or basements.

Privately owned tigers in America, courtesy of the Feline Conservation Federation.

But what the popular media likes to do, other than misrepresent the numbers (and say there are "10 000 pet tigers in American backyards" or some such nonsense), they also like to say that it's this vast number in human care ("captivity") that is the problem!

When people hear for example that there are 3000 tigers in the wild and 5000 or something in America, they seem to think America "stole" those tigers from the wild, and they must be put back! While in reality, tigers in the west have spent decades and generations on the continent, in zoos, circuses, and private collections.

And if you could take America's 2900 tigers and release them all, say hypothetically that it was allowed (many are not "pure") and that they could all survive in the wild. The threats on tigers in the wild, from poaching and habitat destruction, is still nowhere near gone.

So then we could have 5900 tigers for a while, and then a decade or two later, we'd be right back at 3000 again, with NOT ONE tiger alive in American breeding programs. Now who would that help?

That there are more tigers in human care than in the wild is a tragedy of the wild, not of "captivity".

In conclusion

Tigers are the most beloved endangered animal on the planet, and given both their popularity as well as their comparatively vast numbers in human care, the species stands a good chance at surviving indefinitely.

Whether that will only be in zoos, farms and other collections for the foreseeable future, or whether our children and grandchildren will have a chance to see tigers roaming freely in their natural habitats, free from persecution, is another question.

http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/15955/0

https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-on-the-edge-of-extinction-a-the-tiger-panthera-tigris?page=17

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/dec/06/davidward

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/9/prweb8805806.htm

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/9/prweb8840075.htm

https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2015/02/21/is-extinct-forever-central-asias-caspian-tiger-traverses-the-comeback-trail/

https://www.inverse.com/article/26481-caspian-tigers-extinct-central-asia-amur-kazakstan

https://asiancorrespondent.com/2018/04/south-korea-to-open-asias-largest-tiger-forest/

[theonyxpath]

With tails wagging and tongue’s lolling, we are racing towards the last days of the Fetch Quest Kickstarter campaign! If you haven’t yet checked it out, please take a look at this easy to learn, cooperative, deck-building card game for all ages. The KS page has reviews and how to play links, and as a backer you can download a print’n’play version of your own and start having fun right now! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/fetch-quest-a-deck-building-game-in-the-realms-of/description

And once you do, let us know what you think! Card games aren’t our usual thing, so the more feedback we get on the game or the way the Fetch Quest Kickstarter is set up, the better we can do the next ones!

    Changeling: The Lost 2nd art by Ken Meyer, Jr

    Here are a few more bite-sized treats selected from what we talked about in the Monday Meeting today:

Our sales partners at IPR‘s sale on prestige edition Chronicles of Darkness books (Demon: The Descent, Mummy: The Curse, Dark Eras, Beast: The Primordial) and their Screens ends June 24th. These are the remaining books from their respective Kickstarters, and are traditional printed and bound, with bookmarks and embossed and varnished covers printed over metallic paper. They’re gorgeous and on sale. http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

Fantasy Grounds has added Shelzar: City of Sins from Scarred Lands to their online store, so that their Virtual Tabletop community can now explore the most wicked city in the Scarred Lands. We’re very happy that our SL presence in VTT is starting to build with our friends at Fantasy Grounds!

Our plans for Gen Con 2018 are rolling forward – just check out the projects Mirthful Mike is working on right now – and we’re going to be waving at Paizo again on our front, and across the aisle sideways at White Wolf this year. So we’ll have a ring-side seat at the explosion of gamers coming for V5 this year. Meanwhile, we’ll have our good friends from the Wrecking Crew demoing again this year outside the exhibit hall in their own room, and at least one demo table at our booth going at all times. Expect us to announce some pretty wild projects this year!

Lots of folks working on lots of exciting books – just peruse the First Draft part of the Progress Report below! We still have some very important core books to deliver, and then a smorgasbord of different projects of all game lines and sizes are on their way.

Last Friday’s Onyx Pathcast that featured an overview and behind-the-scenes of Vampire: The Requiem 2nd has garnered a ton of fantastic comments all over the place, and rightfully so considering the Terribly Terrific Trio (or the Terrifically Terrible Trio) were really firing on all cylinders with this one. If you want to hear more of these project or game-line oriented Pathcasts, then join the crowd and let us know! This Friday, at least two thirds of the gang will be interviewing the amazing up-and-coming writer and developer, Steffie de Vaan.

      Changeling: The Lost 2nd art by Brian LeBlanc

    And now, as a change of pace, and as sort of an illustration equivalent to the Developer/Writer viewpoints in last Friday’s Onyx Pathcast, I thought I’d do a bit of a walk-through showing the steps Mirthful Mike and I go through as an art director when one of us commissions an artist to create an illustration for one of our books.

The developer should have provided the art notes for the pieces they know they need. Some devs will write out very detailed, multi-page, descriptions that specify every aspect of what the piece should contain, others will give very brief descriptions and leave the decisions as to what looks good to the artist.

As an art director, I’m looking for a bit of a middle zone where the developer includes descriptions or reference links for accuracy – character appearance, the location, etc – and very specifically what they need to see happen in the illustration. If the point is to show a power being used, we do need to know what that power does. If the point is to show our cool protagonist in a run-down bar, then a brief description of what sort of attitude is being expressed is important.

In the end, we prefer to give the artist just enough info so that they can run with a piece and show off their abilities while still holding to the subject matter we hired them to illustrate. We also like to have a good idea of which pieces are going to which illustrator so that we can fine tune the notes based on how they are most comfortable working.

Some artists like having as much info as possible in addition to the art notes, like the whole text or at least their chapter, while others find all that reading too much to deal with while trying to get to grips with their specific assignments. No wrong answer there, and we try and work with them to allow them to make their best work.

For example, here’s a link to the art notes for the full page pieces for Wraith 20th that we sent to Ken Meyer, Jr. For this project, Ken was illustrating all the full-page pieces and they needed to contain the various player-character types. Since we’ve been hiring Ken for longer than any of us care to be reminded about, RichD was able to keep the info pretty minimal for the actual fulls, while stressing the overall specific feel of Wr20 (as opposed to any of our many other game lines Ken has done his beautiful illustrations for). Here’s a link to those art notes: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B57iDF62OjtPaV9ySDZ3QlZtbEJqdW8yb2V4ZFVRZDdjRGVZ

Here’s the specific full-page description (in case you don’t want to read the PDF of the full art notes):

Chapter Nine – Drama Chanteur – Petite wraith with an electric violin and a headset mike, playing the violin like it’s a weapon. Because it is.

As per our illustration process, Ken then sent in a sketch worked up in pencil and based on a series of emails with Mirthful Mike that went over any questions that Ken might have:

Depending on the project, Mike may loop in the developer, me, or a licensing partner like White Wolf, for commentary and to see if the subject matter is being handled as needed. Most of the time, Mike handles this stage himself – particularly when you consider that different artists sketch with different kinds of completeness. Some artists like to create very tight sketches and then use the final stages to take that tight sketch into the finished medium. Others like to have less detailed sketches and work out the details in their finish.

So an art director gets to know how to “read” the sketches of their different artists and respond appropriately.

In this particular case, the communication worked the way we like it to, because here’s the fantastic final piece:

Now figure that we go through those steps, and often have redos or tweaks at each stage, for every piece of art you see in every book and project we make. An art director’s job is never done, especially when they are keeping an eye on all the styles and subject matters we have in all our projects which span:

Many Worlds, One Path!

    BLURBS!

KICKSTARTER:

Fetch Quest, the adventure card game set in the Realms of Pugmire is down to its last days and we’d love to have you join us!

And if you’ve already pledged, this is definitely a game that needs to be spread by word of mouth, so please let your friends and family know about this game of good dogs (and cats!) out to fetch what Man has left behind!

Next up, Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition Kickstarter…starting sooner than you might expect…

    ELECTRONIC GAMING:

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is now live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is both rolling and rocking!

Here are the links for the Apple and Android versions:

http://theappstore.site/app/1296692067/onyx-dice

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onyxpathpublishing.onyxdice&hl=en

Three different screenshots, above.

    ON AMAZON AND BARNES & NOBLE:

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue you bought it from. Reviews really, really help us with getting folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

Vampire: The Masquerade: The Endless Ages Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Rites of Renown: When Will You Rage II (Kindle, Nook)

Mage: The Ascension: Truth Beyond Paradox (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: The God-Machine Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Mummy: The Curse: Curse of the Blue Nile (Kindle, Nook)

Beast: The Primordial: The Primordial Feast Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Masquerade: Of Predators and Prey: The Hunters Hunted II Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The Poison Tree (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Songs of the Sun and Moon: Tales of the Changing Breeds (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Requiem: The Strix Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Forsaken: The Idigam Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Mage: The Awakening: The Fallen World Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Masquerade: The Beast Within Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: W20 Cookbook (Kindle, Nook)

Exalted: Tales from the Age of Sorrows (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: Tales of the Dark Eras (Kindle, Nook)

Promethean: The Created: The Firestorm Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Demon: The Descent: Demon: Interface (Kindle, Nook)

Scarred Lands: Death in the Walled Warren (Kindle, Nook)

V20 Dark Ages: Cainite Conspiracies (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: Strangeness in the Proportion (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Requiem: Silent Knife (Kindle, Nook)

Mummy: The Curse: Dawn of Heresies (Kindle, Nook)

      OUR SALES PARTNERS:

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the Screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there!

https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

    Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

Here’s the link to the press release we put out about how Onyx Path is now selling through Indie Press Revolution: http://theonyxpath.com/press-release-onyx-path-limited-editions-now-available-through-indie-press-revolution/

And you can now order Pugmire: the book, the screen, and the dice! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=296

IPR is holding a 40% sale on the Chronicles of Darkness prestige edition core books that we have remaining until June 24th!

    DRIVETHRURPG.COM:

  This Wednesday the PDF and physical book PoD versions of C20 Kithbook: Boggans go on sale on DTRPG.com!

Sometimes it’s the little things that make the biggest differences in life, and nowhere is this more evident than the boggan kith. Although they have preferred to let others glory in the spotlight, this industrious kith has worked its own subtle and patient magic over the centuries, drawing power from dreams of hearth and comfort and becoming no less than the bedrock of Kithain society. Even heroes need homes to return to, after all.

For the first time ever, the secrets and gossip of the boggan kith are being shared with outsiders. So pull your chair closer to the fire, take up a fresh cup of tea, and listen carefully, because the real truth about these unsung heroes is finally coming to light.

Kithbook: Boggans features:

• A history of this unassuming yet vital kith, and how they’ve subtly shaped the Dreaming.

• Insight into boggan nature combined with advice for bringing boggan characters to life.

• Ready-made characters for quick play, and profiles of famous boggans past and present.

• New Treasures, Merits, and Flaws for boggan characters.

          CONVENTIONS!

Prep is seriously underway for Gen Con 2018 in the first week of August, which takes place in Indianapolis. In addition to our booth presence, be sure to check out the games and panels in the Gen Con Event Schedule.

From Fast Eddy Webb, we have these:

Eddy will be speaking at Broadleaf Writers Conference (September 22-23) in Decatur, GA. He’ll be there to talk about writing for interactive fiction, and hanging out with other writers who have far more illustrious careers. http://broadleafwriters.com/3rd-annual-broadleaf-writers-conference/3rd-annual-broadleaf-writers-conference-speakers/

Eddy will also be a featured guest at Save Against Fear (October 12-14) in Harrisburg, PA. He’ll be running some Pugmire games, be available for autographs, and will sometimes accept free drinks. http://www.thebodhanagroup.org/about-the-convention

If you are going and want to meet up, let us know!

    And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM FAST EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

M20 Book of the Fallen (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

C20 Novel (Jackie Cassada) (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

CofD Dark Eras 2 (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Tales of Excellent Cats (Monarchies of Mau)

Adventures for Curious Cats (Monarchies of Mau)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Changeling: The Lost 2nd Jumpstart (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Witch-Queen of the Shadowed Citadel (Cavaliers of Mars)

  Redlines

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Spilled Blood (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)

Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon (Werewolf: The Forsaken 2nd Edition)

In Media Res (Trinity Continuum: Core)

Wr20 Book of Oblivion (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

C20 Players’ Guide (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

Dog and Cat Ready Made Characters (Monarchies of Mau)

Aeon Aexpansion (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

  Second Draft

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

  Development

Signs of Sorcery (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Hunter: the Vigil 2e core (Hunter: the Vigil 2nd Edition)

Fetch Quest (Pugmire)

They Came From Beneath the Sea! Rulebook (TCFBtS!)

CofD Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

  Manuscript Approval:

Dystopia Rising: Evolution (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

  Editing:

Guide to the Night (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)

  Post-Editing Development:

Scion: Hero (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)

Trinity Continuum: Aeon Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)

Ex Novel 2 (Aaron Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)

GtS Geist 2e core (Geist: the Sin-Eaters Second Edition)

M20 Gods and Monsters (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Night Horrors: The Tormented (Promethean: The Created 2nd Edition)

  Indexing:

Wraith 20

Cavaliers of Mars

Monarchies of Mau (Monarchies of Mau)

    ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE:

In Art Direction

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Scion Hero – Stuff is progressing…

Trinity Continuum 

Geist 2e – KS artwork continues.

The Realm

M20 Gods and Monsters

Ex3 Dragon Blooded – More sketches coming in.

Promethean Night Horrors: The Tormented

  Marketing Stuff

Posters and Displays

Gen Con Cards

  In Layout

Fetch Quest – Prepping new playtest decks for Gen Con.

  Proofing

Scion Origin – Onyx review.

Changeling: the Lost 2 – Corrections to Josh.

Wraith 20 Screen – At WW.

Storyteller System Brochure

GenCon Brochure

  At Press

V20 Beckett’s Jyhad Diary & Beckett Screen & V20 Dice – At fulfillment shipper, prepping for KS ship-out.

Scion Dice – At fulfillment shipper.

Boggans – PDF and PoDs on sale this Wednesday.

Monarchies of Mau – In Indexing.

Monarchies of Mau Screen – Getting ready to send to press.

Cavaliers of Mars Screen – Getting ready to send to press.

Wr20 Guide for Newly Departed – Creating PoD files.

Gen Con Buttons – At press.

WoD and CofD reroll cards – At press.

FQ and PG Gen Con cards – At press.

  TODAY’S REASON TO CELEBRATE: Today is the birthday of J. Michael Straczynski, 1954 – celebrated writer of comics and TV, specifically of Babylon 5. Fun fact: B5 was a real pioneer in structure for television with free-standing episodes that were part of story-arcs that worked as seasons that had specific season-long stories and finishes, and so it was a huge influence on the limited-series concept for our games. Specifically in pitching Orpheus back in the day, I referenced B5‘s use of structure.

[lubbuthedigitalnomad]

Stupaville Don’t Crack By Doug Ten Rose

There is a popular expression in Black America that goes, “Black don’t crack.” The concept, of course, is that after suffering centuries of every imaginable brutal abuse, in a country they physically built but were never allowed to feel at home in, Black folks as a unit has developed an unbreakable resiliency.

The great comedienne Wanda Sykes recently produced a line that gave us a laugh but is actually too true to be called a joke. Speaking of the president who has fanned the flames of race-related tragedies and so many other American disasters during the past few years, she said, “I can’t believe this motherfucker cracked black! That’s not supposed to happen! He actually cracked black!”

The situation in Nepal is at least as bad, economically, and medically, as it is everywhere else. But Stupaville still don’t crack! This roughly ten square block neighborhood that I live in contains at least five large monasteries housing well over a thousand monks and nuns, as well as one of the holiest structures in the Eastern hemisphere. There are a whole lot more Buddhist monks, nuns, and monasteries, as well as Hindu Temples and holy people, in the surrounding city and mountains.

I’m guessing there are about two thousand or so people that aren’t monks or nuns who live in this Boudha Stupa section of Kathmandu, Nepal. They go to work or school every morning like the rest of us. But they all have a bit of happiness and decorum about them that the monks, nuns, and overall cultural influences here are responsible for.

Some of these people have lost their jobs and homes as well as loved ones. Many businesses are closed permanently and for sale. The main income for most businesses in this relatively affluent neighborhood has previously come from the tourist traffic. That tourist traffic has been nonexistent for almost a year.

It is amazing how many local people still walk around with the kind of internally generated happiness that can only come from a deep faith in the inevitable. They also maintain a strong sense of cooperative community among themselves and are more grateful for their remaining advantages than they are grieved about those advantages they have lost.

This ability to not crack in the face of severe adversity is even more amazing when you consider the circumstances. Nepal has been a fourth world country for a long time — way before the economic, social, and political manipulation of the coronavirus was even a twinkle in Pfizer’s eye. A vast majority of the folks here live without heat all winter in concrete buildings that could easily function as meat lockers. Lack of refrigeration and a less than consistent electrical service are widespread, so the people are often chilled much more thoroughly than the meat they will be eating. Many folks were malnourished for a long time before this recent crisis, in spite of the fact that food prices are a fraction of what they are in the Western world. Tuberculosis and many other very unpleasant diseases are by no means a rarity, and the air pollution in Kathmandu is among the worst in the world.

But there is a strong sense of community in Stupaville and, I am told, throughout Nepal. This is an incredible accomplishment considering the history of the area and the diversity of the native population. There are many different sects stemming from the various kingdoms that used to occupy the Kathmandu Valley, as well as the surrounding hills, many centuries ago. These kingdoms often made brutal war as they conquered each other in the olden days. Now, most of the descendants of these various small kingdoms keep up with their historical cultural heritages while coexisting peacefully with the descendants of the other tribes.

Although the country is Hindu by a very large majority, other groups are made to feel at home. There is also an exiled Tibetan Buddhist community (much of it here in Stupaville), a healthy representation of Christians, and some Muslim devotees. There seems to be another New Year’s Day celebration here every other month! Each culture has its own. But there is no apparent friction, and a good deal of very visible mutual respect between the tribes these days. People of all sects greet each other with a “Namaste” and the palms of both hands joined in front of their chests. The popular translation of the word Namaste is “I recognize the Divine within you.”

There is no need for any of these groups to have a ____ Lives Matter campaign. Police brutality is relatively infrequent and equally distributed among all the people when it does happen. Beggars work several streets in Stupaville. Some are in real need of food. Others just want to get drunk again. Several are scamming to pay the mortgage on a condo in India. Some can be aggressive and follow a potential contributor for blocks, hoping to break him or her down. In previous seasons, when tourists jammed every street, a beggar could make a lot of money by employing this annoying persistence.

Not everyone contributes to them, but I haven’t heard anyone yelling “Leave me alone and get a job, you bum” even once during the near year that I’ve been here. The folks with homes and jobs are polite, if not helpful, to their beggars as well as to each other. Folks here seem to universally recognize that the divine lives in all creatures, no matter how well disguised it may be at times.

The world seems to be changing more rapidly and severely than ever before. It is certainly changing more rapidly and severely than it ever has during our little lifetimes. Whether the Boudha Stupa neighborhood will ever become a Wanda Sykes joke is an ongoing question. But life here in Stupaville, at least for the time being, is still a celebration that stays strong enough to carry around joy in the present and a sweet hope for the future.

I hope it is where you are.

About the Author

Doug “Ten” Rose may be the biggest smartass as well as one of the most entertaining survivors of the hitchhiking adventurers that used to cover America’s highways. He is the author of the books Fearless Puppy on American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense, has survived heroin addiction and death, and is a graduate of over a hundred thousand miles of travel without ever driving a car, owning a phone, or having a bank account.

Ten Rose and his work are a vibrant part of the present and future as well as an essential remnant of a vanishing breed.

If you missed the Introduction to the book that will be titled Temple Dog Soldier and contains the above chapter or would like to see several other chapters that are available for free online, go to the Fearless Puppy Website Blog section. This is a book in progress. You are reading it as it is being created! Just like you, I don’t know what the next chapter is going to be about until it is written. As the Intro will tell you, this is a totally true story — and probably the only book ever written by and about a corpse making a complete journey around the world!

The books Fearless Puppy On American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense by this same author are also available through the website or Amazon. (See all the 5* reviews there!) There are also sample chapters from both books on the website.

Very entertaining tv/radio interviews with, and newspaper articles about, the author is also available there. There is no charge for anything but the complete books! All author profits from book sales will be donated to help sponsor an increase in the number of wisdom professionals on Earth, beginning with but certainly not limited to Buddhist monks and nuns.

Follow him on Facebook, Doug Ten Rose

Travel Adventure Books can be an excellent gift to your friends and family, buy from Amazon.com