#they went on a road trip together

[gayofthefae]

Do you ever think about how for El this scene came right after we saw her listing all of Brenner's atrocities and when she thought of the mind flayer she thought of Will and part of her anger at him was on her behalf and others but also on his for being victimized and how this is the first time she's seen him since thinking about that?

"How dare you do that to me? How dare you do that to them? How dare you do that to HIM? How dare you do that to us?" -> Willel reunion

[asclexe]

hilson goes to key west. need i say more.

[isa-ah]

crick is a few years older than isaiah... what if he had very faint i was a little boy memories of isaiahs mom before she died oxo

[andsotheuniverseended]

yknow i heard one (1) conversation between Hayward and Carpenter in season one and thought to myself "wow they have good chemistry i hope they hang out more" and season 3 got me feeling SO validated

[quietwingsinthesky]

2012 me watching spn needs to apologize to Zachariah rn, I hated him so much and for what. He’s just doing his cult job. He’s funny. He beats up Dean because Dean’s so annoying. Tells the Winchesters he wants to fuck their mom right in front of them. Literally a perfect character, no notes.

[faggotwalkwithme]

qaughhhhxhdhbebrrh

[reineyday]

just watched bnha world heroes mission and wow they really packed a whole bunch of my favourite tropes into rody soul huh

[paintingraves]

sometimes I'm fine then I think about the House MD series finale and start foaming at the mouth

[inutaffy]

"i didn't want to talk in front of archie and the others .... as it turns out, peabody had a lot to say. the bounty on your pal Archie, it's not just on him. it's on anyone who's with him or is helping him. which means there is a target on your back now too jughead. it's the same if he goes back to riverdale. archie's dad, archie's friends, everyone is at risk. which is why you got to cut him loose."

"im not just gonna ditch archie, mom! he's my best friend."

here's how j/archie can still win

[like-sands-of-time]

Season eight was a steaming dumpster of plots and quick character building activities while setting up the "then they lived happily ever after" but they truly truly did House and Wilson's relationship justice in the end I will say that.

I was so mad at how the writers of the show clearly wanted to go one way with House and Cuddy's relationship, while the producers and actors disagreed on actually getting there, and that will be a loss to the show really. Even if they didn't last they deserved a more heartfelt attempt at a relationship after six seasons and two decades of apparent history. Alas!

House finally finally changed and became the man he wanted to be, because of Wilson's death. Nothing before that, or perhaps everything before that, prepared him for who he was meant to be. He gave of himself willingly for Wilson's benefit and not his own repeatedly. And when Wilson is gone he has no life, no job, but he knows he'll be ok. Despite this being the one thing that hurts the most. Because in the end all his subconscious people were wrong. He doesn't still need the puzzle or the meds or anything.

He's not going to lose it and kill himself when Wilson does eventually die. He's going to grieve like he's seen patients families do, and then he's going to live for Wilson for as long as he's got left of his own clock.

He's got no money and he can't get in trouble with the law lest he blow his cover but he'll pass the time. Who knows... Maybe he just goes from town to town helping people with their simple ailments like he knows Wilson enjoyed. No puzzles no excitement just fixing people up and moving along.

[ilostyou]

9? 💗

9. best month this year - probably july?? thinking back on it i was super busy doing a bunch of fun things with people i love but i also had time to myself which i really enjoyed too :)

end of year asks!

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

I promised you some lions! Let's talk about manes, males, and management.

This is Tandie, the current male lion at the Woodland Park Zoo.

Notice anything odd about him? He's got one of those hilarious awkward teenager manes. Except... this cat is nine years old.

I was, of course, immediately curious.

Manes serve a lot of purposes for male lions, including being an indicator of health and fitness - it's actually a sexually selected trait and a social signal. Mane texture / hair quality / length is dependent on nutrition and the body having energy to grow (and carry around!) that much hair! The color is also a signal: males with darker manes have been found to have higher testosterone levels.

In one research report, wild males were much more likely to avoid a lion decoy when it had a longer or darker mane - but the girls really loved a dark mane. It's thought this is because a long, dark mane is an indicator of mate quality. Males with longer, darker manes have higher testosterone and were pretty healthy: meaning they had more energy for fighting, had a better chance of recovering if they got injured, and generally had a higher rate of offspring survival. Manes matter!

So, back to Tandie. He was actually born at the Woodland Park Zoo in 2014 alongside two brothers, to dad Xerxes and mother Adia.

This was Xerxes (rip).

Obviously, a very large, dark, lush mane on Xerxes here. So where did these blond muttonchops come from on his son?

I asked the zoo docents and got an answer that didn't make a lot of sense. They told me that after the three cubs grew into adolescents, they were moved to the Oakland Zoo together. But living together suppressed his testosterone, and he never grew a mane.

Hmmmm.

Here's a photo from 2016, when the brothers debuted at Oakland. They're a year and a half old in this photo.

(Photo Credit: Oakland Zoo)

And here's from an announcement for their third birthday.

(Photo credit: Oakland Zoo)

Okay, so these dudes obviously all were growing manes as of 2017. I think Tandie is the one on the left in the first photo, and laying down in the middle on the second. What happened?

I was just in the Bay Area for a zoo road trip, of course I went to Oakland and tracked down a docent to ask some questions.

It turns out that shortly after the brothers turned three, they started acting like adult male lions: they started scuffling regularly. It's a normal social thing for male lions to live in groups, called coalitions, but according to my lion experts there's generally a baseline level of some social jostling within them. It wasn't quite clear from what the docent said if they couldn't manage the boys together, or if they just wanted to avoid the scratches and small wounds that result from normal lion behavior. Regardless, they put all three of the boys on testosterone blockers in order to be able to keep them together as a social group.

Now, I don't know a lot about the use of hormone alteration as a form of captive animal management, except in the case of birth control. I don't think it's something that's unethical - there was just a webinar on it that I saw go by - but I don't think it's commonly done with big cats. Lions have kind of complicated reproductive cycles, and for instance, we've been learning that female lions can take much longer to come into estrus again than expected after coming off hormonal birth control.

In males, testosterone blockers (or being neutered) means they lose their manes. This is why a lot of rescues will do a vasectomy on their males instead of a neuter - it allows them to keep their mane and the social signals that accompany it.

Tandie returned home to Woodland Park Zoo after Xerxes passed in early 2022, and the docent told me all of the lions had been off their blockers "for while." I'd guess those things happened around the same time, since bringing the trio down to a duo at Oakland would reduce some of the social tensions.

Hormones are such interesting things, though. One of Tandie's brothers has a full mane again, and the other is still totally mane-less.

As for Tandie, his mane is growing back in, and it looks like he might rival his dad for length and coloration.

He started here, in February:

Yesterday:

What a difference four months (and maybe proximity to a girl) makes!

[gibbearish]

thinking abt when we were in costa rica and we visited a place that let you feed the local spider monkey troupe + they would climb on you to do so, and the guides were very clear about hey do not fucking leave anything loose on you. ESPECIALLY glasses of any kind they are SO shiny and SO grabbable by a monkey sitting on your shoulder directly next to your head. put your glasses in your bag i am so fucking serious. and then this random ass rich girl just Ignored All Of That Entirely and left her glasses on, monkeys snagged them and ran away to the treetops with them and at first she was like "haha thats so cute!!!" then after a couple minutes turns to the guide and is like "ok how do i get them back" and hes like "😐...you dont. theyre wild monkeys. i told you to keep that stuff out of their reach" so she starts throwing a fit like "what do you mean i dont, they were expensive and i need those", and then not even a minute later the monkey chucks the two snapped halves of her glasses to the forest floor

[mari-animates]

Have you guys ever had to pee in the woods/bush/behind a tree before?

[pettydisco]

I'm not ready for it to be september again. I haven't done enough.

[chaoticace2005]

Let’s be honest… if these assholes went on a road trip together SOMEONE (probably Angel) is gonna die.