Autistic Cryptid

this post has a message that is overall true and is something that a lot of autistic people (which i’m assuming is the target audience since op uses the term infodumping specifically) could benefit from learning; that conversation is a two-way street and letting other people get a word in, and showing interest in their perspectives is helpful for social interaction.

however, i can’t get over how incredibly condescending, judgmental, and ableist the phrasing is, and — espcially considering the wording does read as if it specifically is aimed at autistic people who quite literally cannot help how their social cognition naturally functions — how that is completely unhelpful to fucking everyone. calling a behaviour that is literally inherent to many autistic people’s autistic traits “verbal masturbation” is disgusting bully behaviour, actually. not to mention that it reinforces extremly outdated psychiatric understandings of what autism fundamentally is (i.e. a disorder of extreme solipsism).

INFODUMPING is how we express our love and joy about something. We get so excited we are bursting to tell someone.

And to be told “I don’t care, shut up” is just a slap in the face.

And then they have the audacity to complain that we don’t converse. Well fuck you were tried!

- her parents didn't belive she was hearing "monsters" in the walls. it was 60,000 bees

- she is 3 years old

- her parents gave her a spray bottle to "spray away the monsters". it was 60,000 bees

- they didn't belive her for 8 minths

When my daughter was like two and a half years old she started getting anxious whenever we’d go to the front yard. She wanted to hold my hand, or she’d hesitate to go at all, and she kept demanding “what’s that noise?!?” All the time.

And I’m trying to be reassuring going “that’s a birdie singing to us’😊” or “yeah look at the air plane way up there!😊😊😊” and sometimes I wasn’t really sure what sound she meant but I mean I’m in a city so there’s always something so it’s a car, a motorcycle, whatever.

Meanwhile every time I answer she looks at me like 😒😒😒and she doesn’t get any less nervous.

Anyways after like a month of this she’s only more upset, and has started insisting there’s a ghost outside. I figure she’s been watching too many scary Halloween cartoons and double down on my reassurances.

Anyways long story short I needed hearing aids and this poor kid had been hearing the neighbors Halloween decorations cackling in a scary voice every time the wind hit it while her mom kept insisting it was birds or an airplane or whatever.

I figured out which decoration made the sound and let her poke it and see it was a noisy toy and after that she loved it and stopped being nervous and I apologized and explained to her what happened.

The article uses proper terminology and actually defines stimming, masking, and many other words that neurotypical people may or may not know (re autism)

The data that the article is based off of includes first hand accounts from autistic people who have gone through ABA. The researchers even used ASAN (autism self advocacy) as a resource! Actual autistic people shared their stories!!! And they believed us!!!!!

It explains WHY autistic people have a hard time with ABA, which is incredible. Not just the fact that it's akin to training a dog, but the psychology of it, and how it's overstimulating and degrading

There's a part that does quote from Auti$m $peaks spokespeople, BUT it's because they're leading into how neurotypical parents see ABA most often as a "saving grace" to get a "normal child" and then goes on to tell more about how autistic children perceive ABA, both during and after treatment

One family's story tells of how a mother noticed her autistic son would actually hide when she went to turn the computer on for ABA therapy (this was during COVID lockdown) and how she realized something was off because of that. She canceled ABA and found an alternative (called Floor Time) where the child actually directs the play, and the therapist/teacher goes along with what the kid wants/does!

There's a really cool bit on why ABA is usually the only thing available to parents, and the answer is Shitty American Healthcare/Insurance Companies!

It notes that ABA therapists don't really have strict training requirements. You can do a quick online course and become an ABA therapist. It does not require a college degree. That should horrify you.

There's another parallel study with its own data coming out in 2025

Honestly, this whole article is a gem. Remember, while "water is wet" studies seem trivial, we need them in order to get our side of the story taken seriously. Research with credible data that backs up what we've been saying is important!

TL; DR?

this is lara, a cisgender butch woman who was hate-crimed by other women for trying to use a “female-only space”. a space, by their logic, she should have been able to use and is apparently meant to be her safe space.

this is the result of terf transphobia. please remember lara and others like her next time terfs claim that they care about butch women or that you can “always tell”.

Today’s Autistic character of the day is:

Nora from Leap!/Ballerina

===SAO Season 1=== 1x02 Beater - Sliced by boss, weak, low HP 1x03 Red Nosed Reindeer - Ambushed, watches friends die, traumatized, cries 1x06 Illusionary Avenger - Watches someone die 1x07 The Temperature of the Heart - Falls from great height twice, low HP 1x09 The Blue Eyed Demon - Intense boss battle, sliced multiple times, punched, sweating, extremely low HP, collapses, makes Asuna cry 1x10 Crimson Killing Intent - Duel, stabbed, talks about trauma, depressed/angry, paralyzed, stabbed multiple times, slowly impaled by psychopath, life flashes before his eyes, intense pain, extremely low HP, arm sliced off, collapses, emotional 1x12 Yui's Heart - Knocked down, unconscious, weak, angry 1x13 Edge of Hell's Abyss - Scared 1x14 The End of the World - Exhausted, intense confrontation, duel, sliced, sobbing, collapse, impaled, emotional, weak, depressed 1x15 Return - Nightmares, crying, depressed, difficulty adjusting, hit in the head, stumbles, shares PTSD with sister, sobs 1x16 Land of the Fairies - Logout PTSD 1x20 General of the Blazing Flame - Intense 1v1, sliced multiple times 1x22 Grand Quest - Outnumbered, died, emotional 1x23 Bonds - Intense battle 1x24 Gilded Hero - Emotional, paralyzed, straining, kicked around, impaled/tortured, pain absorber decreased, intense pain, emotional 1x25 The World Seed - Ambushed, stabbed irl, bleeding, falls, kicked multiple times

===SAO Season 2 (Gun Gale Online)=== 2x01 The World of Guns - Death gun/SAO PTSD 2x05 Guns and Swords - Grazed, exhausted, confrontation, PTSD 2x06 Showdown in the Wilderness - Intense laughing coffin battle, PTSD, panic attack, grazed multiple times 2x07 Crimson Memories - Guilt, emotional conversations about PTSD, sobs 2x12 Bullet of a Phantom - Death Gun confrentation, stabbed multiple times, heart racing/panic 2x13 Phantom Bullet - Risk of dehydration, faster heart rate (bp: 160), sliced multiple times, hug-grenade bomb, irl fight 2x14 One Little Step - Choked, punched multiple times irl, stabbed with poison syringe, panic, almost dies, bandaged 2x16 King of the Giants - Knocked down from blast, low HP, its a trap! or not? it is! help 2x17 Excalibur - Intense fight, punched to the ground 2x18 Forest House - Exhausted, died in a duel

===Sword Art Online: Alicization=== 3x01 Underworld - Shot in the chest, falls down, tackled 3x02 The Demon Tree - Amnesia, exhausted 3x04 Departure - Sliced, intense pain, kicked to the ground 3x05 Ocean Turtle - Attacked irl, injected with serum from GGO, unconscious, heart stopped, emergency surgery, possible brain damage 3x11 Central Cathedral - Imprisoned 3x15 The Relentless Knight - Literally back-stabbed, collapse, unconscious, dragged, thrown, 1v4, shot multiple times, falls, bleeding 3x16 The Osmanthus Knight - Bleeding, collapse, unconscious, falls down building 3x17 Truce - Hanging, pancaked 3x21 The 32nd Knight - Sliced multiple times, bleeding 3x22 Titan of the Sword - Intense fight, impaled, bleeding profusely, cries 3x23 Administrator - Emotional damage, collapse, emotionally paralyzed 3x24 My Hero - Sliced multiple times, arm cut off, bleeding, intense emotional heartbreak, crying, brain breakdown

no, it doesn't really matter if cartoons misrepresent dinosaurs. Almost like most people don't really spend their time critiquing them (I certainly don't, unless someone asks me to, and then it's cause they asked)

The representation of dinosaurs and the deep past actually does matter, because it completely disproves the founding myths of society that have lead to climate change and environmental destruction. I can explain why, but I'm trying to be brief.

If you really think that paleontologists who use social media - ie, all of them, because unfortunately online science communication is now a mandatory part of being a scientist - want to spend all their time critiquing dinosaur designs, you are very, very, very wrong

Thinking that living things matter more than dead things is so illogical (everything living one day becomes dead. the past matters) that it sounds like a twelve year old whining about studying for their bar mitzvah.

Misinformation of any kind is bad and you should be against it. Acting like some is okay while others aren't is just... picking and choosing favorites. Way to be consistent.

And in the case of the 2000 Disney movie Dinosaur, which is my favorite dinosaur story, yes, lemurs weren’t around at the same time as the dinosaurs. But also, the animal used for that story really has to be lemurs, because the lemurs are as close as you could get to dinosaur days and still illustrate the fallen glory that’s part of the story (as well as the feelings of a character who witnessed the glory but never really got to be a part of it even though the glory’s piece de resistance tried as hard as he could to make that lemur part of said glory because the piece de resistance, a dinosaur named Aladar, is a good ally, a lovable “crazy uncle” whose personality type is actually similar in some ways to that of certain known pack animals, and the protagonist of the story).

And besides, that story could have taken place in a hypothetical universe where the Chicxulub asteroid never hit, but either some disasters died later or else the dinosaurs in that story were simply suffering the slow, protracted extinction that might have happened anyway without that disaster. Because stories can take place in hypothetical universes.

And to be brutally honest, many of the worst offenders in terms of story misinformation are “based on a true story” things featuring humans whose inaccuracies are so glaring that they make Dinosaur look like a documentary next to them, and that’s not even to speak of the fact that you could make  movies featuring literal talking wolves that are based on actual true wolf stories and you would know that you aren’t lying when you say that (and that anyone over the age of maybe 5 or so is going to know that wolves don’t really speak English anyway).

That is, assuming you were not handwringing so much about anthropomorphism that you didn’t notice that the overall slant of this hypothetical talking wolf story was accurate and 100% confirmed by scientific reports and that the talking was the only truly fanciful part (and that it makes sense to assume emotions in animals because those didn’t come out of nowhere and there is no evidence that angels or a similar entity showed up one day and tinkered with our evolution so as to make us the only one that has feelings and no evidence that such an intervention could not possibly spill over to animals even if it did happen).

And these hypothetical talking wolf movies would be far more deserving of that “based on a true story” designation than some of these human stories (like the Blind Side, which was a total grift). Not to mention, talking could easily be used, especially in movies, as a narrative stand-in for the social signals that wolves actually use, much the way the language of the audience is used as a stand-in for the language characters actually speak, not because those social signals are technically or strictly speaking language, but because they probably communicate certain complex ideas in a way that they use social signals for, but we use language for.

The missing middle part was mosquitoes. Mosquitoes breed in standing water, and mosquitoes spread malaria.

I think this kind of thing would make a fun worldbuilding exercise. Have something in your world that does function the way people think it does, but they're completely wrong about why that happens. Or they've gotten the right connection, but backwards.

Nah, fam. It's not about "taking" criticism. It's about the fact that unless a writer asks for it specifically, it's a dick thing to do on a website that is rooted in community.

If a writer wants critique they will ask trusted friends or professional associates (in the relevant field). When a writer shares a fic on AO3 it's not necessarily with the aim of improving their craft (there are better places for that). It's about sharing joy.

Positive comments enhance that feeling of joy and community. Negative comments do not.

When you get a hand-made gift from someone, do you verbally rip it apart in front of them and point out every flaw or perceived flaw you can find? Congratulations, that person will never put the time, love and effort into making anything for you again, and they may question themselves so much they won't ever make anything for anyone else again, either. Well done, you've now deprived a whole community of art and an artist of their source of joy because you're an ungrateful walnut who can't say 'Thank you' and appreciate what you got for free.

Your opinion is not universal. Your tastes are not universal. Your preferred style is not universal. Authors can write whatever the fuck they want and unless you specifically commissioned a fic, you get no say in it.

These tags also highlight why, far as I’m concerned, with very few exceptions, criticisms based on the idea of the “overpowered character” are garbage. Most stories are NOT intended to be blow-by-blow performances in the vein of a pro wrestling match. Often the fights, or other acts (or heaven forbid, even the way things just end up magically fixed at the end of a story sometimes) are metaphors for other things.

There is one way in which this can be kind of justified, mind you, but that’s less to do with power or strength and more the idea of a character being pulled along too easily by the plot. And very often this kind of “overpowered” does NOT manifest itself in fights. Often it’s an unrealistic level of social finesse, or characters falling at the protagonist’s feet in ways that read as saccharine and like you’d expect some conflict or at the very least disagreement in a real relationship but here, it doesn’t happen. And I’d put the emphasis on saccharine here. Like it reads as some kind of promise. And said social finesse tends to extend to non-romantic encounters or else gets treated as the romantic equivalent of a celebrity idol in the flesh (or like the guy in fundamentalist Islam who gets the forty-two virgins as a reward for committing a terrorist act)

And even then, there are many ways in which things that look like this kind of overpowered-ness can be justified by the narrative. Like if it’s a comedy, or there are religious themes, or there is a good reason why multiple people might fall behind someone (this can happen if a character falls into a place which makes them a figurehead, which can happen to anyone, at least in theory, especially if they fall into a situation where people, or even one person, might be desperate for a savior). And sometimes the character might even attract something romantically akin to celebrity in the flesh because they really are a celebrity of a sort and that is clearly justified in the plot and they didn't just fall into that status without so much as a warning (and they may or may not take an actual lover or family).

Or sometimes (as in Sword Art Online everywhere except the Underworld which would be unusually primed to receive saviors) a character is just genuinely nice and happens to fall in with the right group of people and all those people like them but when other people are shown they don't like that person at a rate significantly higher than the average person would (and sometimes even some of the people who were part of the protagonist's group kind of brush them off initially). Or when there are crushes, they may not be connected to reality due to high stress situations.

Pretty much the only times you can reasonably say this kind of overpowered-ness is unjustified (with the reminder that genuine story overpowered-ness is usually socially based), without knowing the intent of the author, is if the story literally reads like some saccharine religious tract (as in, the character just falls into the situation and has their deepest desires granted with the same feel as Publishers Clearing House showing up to the door).

Or the other favorite of stories with overpowered protagonists, the “everyone clapped” kind of story. Which can be entertaining in its own right and might even have some good morals, but it’s for good reason that “everyone clapped” stories can be considered junk food entertainment (after all, usually every feat shown there is designed for maximum entertainment value and often doesn't speak to a deeper meaning).

As can their opposite, the psychological thriller, also junk food entertainment, in which characters are usually really underpowered, though sometimes they also take much longer to die than real people would in equivalent situations. Because those are really just designed to trigger vicarious fears, and even when people do add “depth” to those, it’s the barest amount, sometimes forced, and sometimes it doesn’t even come across and the characters feel like they exhibit a severe lack of intelligence that is not justified by an intellectual disability (I could go on about that, this is one of the types of stories I find most annoying and even the few of those I like I could easily imagine being disliked by others who share my personality but not my actual life experiences).

And I’d remind folks again that I’m talking about the obvious extremes here, because there really is a huge gray area, and I mean huge, between the extremes. And plenty of stories get accused of overpowering characters unjustifiably and most of the time it’s a metaphor. And even some of the ones that aren’t are merely logical extensions of magic systems which maybe didn’t take into consideration a believable character whose behaviors and/or coping mechanisms dovetail perfectly with that system.

On that last item, I’m looking at the Force here, mind you. Any issues that might come up re: Rey are really issues with the Force in general. You see, George Lucas never took into consideration what would happen if you took the Force and added to it a character whose primary coping mechanism is magical thinking, and he really should have, the number of characters who use magical thinking as a coping mechanism in fiction is truly staggering (for obvious reasons which are often justified given the nature of the art form).

And this issue can also apply to other poorly considered magic systems, which don’t take into account what might happen if a common type of coping mechanism was introduced, because sooner or later, if you create a diverse cast of characters and your system is poorly written, a character will come along who checks all the boxes and needs little to no training to master that system. and you know what? Even some well-written magic systems have characters who fly through all the progression with no training.

“Actually wolves don’t have hierarchies!  They live in family groups where the ‘alphas’ are mom and dad and the other wolves are their CHILDREN and offer their respect willingly! :D”

and I just have to say

how dare you try to make normative nuclear families out of wolves

Yes, a lot of the old “nature red in tooth and claw” stuff about wolves is nonsense. (Like anything from Jack London.) And anything ‘alpha’ you see sleazy men trying to relate to dating (yikes!) is especially nonsense.

But wolves are complex social creatures and they create complex social structures. Just as you can’t say “THIS is the way human society is structured. Just THIS single way and no other”, so too there is no single form for a wolf pack.  

Some packs are a mom wolf and a dad wolf and their wolf children.  Others are two small ragged packs that combine to form a large pack.  Others are packs where a lone wolf joins and eventually becomes a leader. Others are packs where a grown child-wolf has pushed their parent out of the leadership role.

Speaking of the latter, let’s look at the tale of Wolf 40 and Wolf 42.

Wolf 40, Wolf 41, and Wolf 42 were wild Yellowstone wolves, daughters of the alphas. Their father was illegally killed by hunters and shortly after ambitious Wolf 40 ousted her mother, driving her out of the pack.  Wolf 21 became the new alpha male, and 40′s mate.

Wolves have personalities, and Wolf 40′s personality was “volatile”.  Imagine Scar from The Lion King combined with the boss from Office Space, and you have Wolf 40.  She habitually bullied the other female wolves, attacking them until they expressed abject submission.  And the wolves that got the worst of it were her sisters, Wolves 41 and 42.

Wolf 41 got tired of the bullying and left.  Wolf 42 remained, perhaps because she was close to Wolf 21, the alpha male.  Despite that, Wolf 21 did not interfere when his mate harassed Wolf 42.

Unlike 40, Wolf 42 got along well with the other female wolves, spending time grooming them and relaxing with them. Wolf 40 could have followed her sister’s example and built up positive social bonds. But she didn’t.

One day, Wolf 40 went out on an important task.  She was going to kill another litter of her sister’s pups–having done the same in two previous years.  This isn’t uncommon wolf behavior (but is not universal, as we will see.)  Typically only the alphas breed.

However, Wolf 40 never returned from her important task because Wolf 42–who previously had submitted to her alpha and sister, who had allowed the killing of two previous litters of pups–had had enough.  She fought back.

And the other female wolves jumped to aid her.

Collectively, they killed Wolf 40. Because “alpha” isn’t a magic cloak of protection, it doesn’t even mean “strongest wolf”, it’s just a job title.

The next day Wolf 42 carried her pups, one by one, to her sister’s den.  She set her children among the pups of her dead sister and raised both litters together. And when another wolf in the pack had pups, Wolf 42 carried them to the den to be communally raised as well.  She was the alpha female now and she made the rules, and the first rule was “we don’t hurt pups here.”

As for Wolf 21, he became the mate of Wolf 42.  Maybe he understood that Wolf 40 had been riding for a fall. 

As alpha female, Wolf 42 continued to be supportive and kind towards the other pack members.  Wolves who had been nervous wrecks under Wolf 40 began to relax and come into their own; one of the former omega wolves gained self-confidence and became one of the best hunters.

“Alpha”, for wolves, just means leader.  They might be good leaders, whom you respect, or they might be bad leaders, who fill you with dread.  They might be your parents, or they might not.  Even if they are your mother or father, wolves don’t contextualize those relationships the same way humans do.

But one thing wolves have in common with humans is that they have individual personalities and experiences, and their actions derive from those.  There is no “typical wolf pack.” And I think that’s beautiful.

If you want to learn more about wild wolf dynamics, I recommend reading the annual Yellowstone Wolf Project Reports.  Which are FASCINATING.  There are also some good wildlife specials out there.

Here’s the thing - actual wolf scientists (like Dr. L. David Mech himself,) are saying “please don’t call them alpha/beta/omega as those terms have been debunked.” It doesn’t ‘woobify’ (I assume you mean anthropomorphize) wolves to say that their families are much like ours. They are generally led by a mom and a dad (or breeding female and breeding male, if you prefer,) with the rest of the pack made up by siblings/littermates of the main mated pair, pups and older family (grandpa or grandma may even be present although not usually due to dispersal.) And just like human families some of them are screwed up and murder happens.

The reason the term 'alpha’ is so bothersome and misleading is because it makes some people believe that wolves have military societies, like the alpha wolf is some cold heartless general or something who fought his way to the top, beating the crap out of every other wolf to get there then ruling their pack and keeping their position at the top of it through fear, ruling with an iron paw. In truth, wolves care about each other - they look after their injured/elderly, instruct their pups how to hunt (wolves possess generational knowledge which is evidence of their intelligence,) play together, groom, and they have even been known to mourn their dead. And yes sometimes they kill each other and are extremely territorial because life is hard and they only have finite super dangerous prey on their pretty finite land which can only be as large as that family of wolves can defend. You can’t afford some stranger poking in your pantry.

And yeah, I’d kill my sister too if she was coming to kill my babies, that’s what good moms do.

Photo by Blair Dudeck.

Another good example of wolf family structure and dynamics is in the Netflix documentary Island of the Sea Wolves, which I thoroughly recommend watching. It has a similar tale of two mama wolves but it was filmed on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island which boasts a genetically distinct subspecies of C. lupus, the sea wolf.

Again, the term 'alpha wolf’ has negative connotations because it makes them seem militant and to some people who hate wolves, reinforces that these animals are Other, or Not Like Us, not deserving of our sympathy or protection. It is important to point out how wolf families are like human families because this makes them more sympathetic to the masses, who instead might think “Hey maybe we shouldn’t kill these wild doggos, they’re really not doing any harm and are in fact highly beneficial to the environment.”

The terms alpha, beta, omega sound like army ranks and are from outdated research of captive wolves - which means not relevant to wild ones. Animals behave differently in captivity than they do in the wild, away from human interference.

Another interesting account of wolf culture is the wonderful old book In the Shadow of a Rainbow by Robert Franklin Leslie which tells the remarkable story of a very large wolf pack that lived before wolves got super persecuted in British Columbia from the eyes of an indigenous man who managed to befriend its leader. It gives a heartwrenching account of the culture that wolves once had - back in the days when very big complex packs with multiple breeding pairs did still exist in places other than Yellowstone. (In general, our environment is no longer vibrant enough to support the great populations of prey needed to support such packs.) To quote wolf expert Oliver Starr, it’s like wolves are a civilization that suffered genocide. And wolves did and still are suffering literal genocide.

To me, it sounds like you are defending these outdated 'rank’ terms because you just really like them. That’s okay that you like them - I used to really like them too - but these terms are falling out of scientific use because they unfortunately fuel/spread innaccurate perceptions of wolves. Just look at the (very fictional*) animated movie series Alpha & Omega, where the alpha wolves are portrayed almost as a ruling class with the omegas being dumb hippies. (Omega wolves don’t exist, by the way.) Wolf scientists don’t like these terms for the same reason why shark scientists no longer like the name 'great white shark,’ instead simply calling those animals 'white sharks.’ Removing the 'great’ from the common species name drops the negative connotation brought on by Jaws (as well as Discovery’s blasphemous trashfire Shark Week,) and makes white sharks seem less scary. (And they should be perceived this way because even mighty white sharks pose extremely little risk to humans.)

So please stop using the term 'alpha’ - it hurts real wild wolves. There is a growing trend in science to recognize the ways that some animals are like us. For the longest time the scientific community was extremely against anthropomorphizing animals and indeed there is still an element of wrongness to anthropomorphizing animals, particularly when it comes to domesticated species like dogs (please let your chihuahua walk on its own four paws,) but there is also a wrongness to ignoring the miriad ways that some animal species are legitemately very much like us. Recognizing these things that these imperilled wild creatures share in common with us humanizes them, which helps more people like them and speak up against those barbaric humans who still think that the only good wolf is a dead one, that they like to, quote, “smoke a pack a day.”

*Precious few fictional depictions of wolves have any basis whatsoever in what these animals are actually like. Most are wildly inaccurate with the so-called 'wolves’ bearing very little resemblance in appearance or behaviour to real wolves.

The main difference is that human emotions can be shaped by a narrative, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t make said human emotions more intense per se so much as it can sometimes “sculpt” those emotions into a specific shape, if you will. And many times humans actually suppress the intensity of their emotions anyway, so if anything human emotions might often be less raw than those of other mammals (and while we do have crying tears and other animals don’t, not to the same extent, those animals do have other forms of expression, like keening, which, if need be, can also be used by humans whose trauma damaged their ability to cry).

“Actually wolves don’t have hierarchies!  They live in family groups where the ‘alphas’ are mom and dad and the other wolves are their CHILDREN and offer their respect willingly! :D”

and I just have to say

how dare you try to make normative nuclear families out of wolves

Yes, a lot of the old “nature red in tooth and claw” stuff about wolves is nonsense. (Like anything from Jack London.) And anything ‘alpha’ you see sleazy men trying to relate to dating (yikes!) is especially nonsense.

But wolves are complex social creatures and they create complex social structures. Just as you can’t say “THIS is the way human society is structured. Just THIS single way and no other”, so too there is no single form for a wolf pack.  

Some packs are a mom wolf and a dad wolf and their wolf children.  Others are two small ragged packs that combine to form a large pack.  Others are packs where a lone wolf joins and eventually becomes a leader. Others are packs where a grown child-wolf has pushed their parent out of the leadership role.

Speaking of the latter, let’s look at the tale of Wolf 40 and Wolf 42.

Wolf 40, Wolf 41, and Wolf 42 were wild Yellowstone wolves, daughters of the alphas. Their father was illegally killed by hunters and shortly after ambitious Wolf 40 ousted her mother, driving her out of the pack.  Wolf 21 became the new alpha male, and 40′s mate.

Wolves have personalities, and Wolf 40′s personality was “volatile”.  Imagine Scar from The Lion King combined with the boss from Office Space, and you have Wolf 40.  She habitually bullied the other female wolves, attacking them until they expressed abject submission.  And the wolves that got the worst of it were her sisters, Wolves 41 and 42.

Wolf 41 got tired of the bullying and left.  Wolf 42 remained, perhaps because she was close to Wolf 21, the alpha male.  Despite that, Wolf 21 did not interfere when his mate harassed Wolf 42.

Unlike 40, Wolf 42 got along well with the other female wolves, spending time grooming them and relaxing with them. Wolf 40 could have followed her sister’s example and built up positive social bonds. But she didn’t.

One day, Wolf 40 went out on an important task.  She was going to kill another litter of her sister’s pups–having done the same in two previous years.  This isn’t uncommon wolf behavior (but is not universal, as we will see.)  Typically only the alphas breed.

However, Wolf 40 never returned from her important task because Wolf 42–who previously had submitted to her alpha and sister, who had allowed the killing of two previous litters of pups–had had enough.  She fought back.

And the other female wolves jumped to aid her.

Collectively, they killed Wolf 40. Because “alpha” isn’t a magic cloak of protection, it doesn’t even mean “strongest wolf”, it’s just a job title.

The next day Wolf 42 carried her pups, one by one, to her sister’s den.  She set her children among the pups of her dead sister and raised both litters together. And when another wolf in the pack had pups, Wolf 42 carried them to the den to be communally raised as well.  She was the alpha female now and she made the rules, and the first rule was “we don’t hurt pups here.”

As for Wolf 21, he became the mate of Wolf 42.  Maybe he understood that Wolf 40 had been riding for a fall. 

As alpha female, Wolf 42 continued to be supportive and kind towards the other pack members.  Wolves who had been nervous wrecks under Wolf 40 began to relax and come into their own; one of the former omega wolves gained self-confidence and became one of the best hunters.

“Alpha”, for wolves, just means leader.  They might be good leaders, whom you respect, or they might be bad leaders, who fill you with dread.  They might be your parents, or they might not.  Even if they are your mother or father, wolves don’t contextualize those relationships the same way humans do.

But one thing wolves have in common with humans is that they have individual personalities and experiences, and their actions derive from those.  There is no “typical wolf pack.” And I think that’s beautiful.

If you want to learn more about wild wolf dynamics, I recommend reading the annual Yellowstone Wolf Project Reports.  Which are FASCINATING.  There are also some good wildlife specials out there.

“Actually wolves don’t have hierarchies!  They live in family groups where the ‘alphas’ are mom and dad and the other wolves are their CHILDREN and offer their respect willingly! :D”

and I just have to say

how dare you try to make normative nuclear families out of wolves

Yes, a lot of the old “nature red in tooth and claw” stuff about wolves is nonsense. (Like anything from Jack London.) And anything ‘alpha’ you see sleazy men trying to relate to dating (yikes!) is especially nonsense.

But wolves are complex social creatures and they create complex social structures. Just as you can’t say “THIS is the way human society is structured. Just THIS single way and no other”, so too there is no single form for a wolf pack.  

Some packs are a mom wolf and a dad wolf and their wolf children.  Others are two small ragged packs that combine to form a large pack.  Others are packs where a lone wolf joins and eventually becomes a leader. Others are packs where a grown child-wolf has pushed their parent out of the leadership role.

Speaking of the latter, let’s look at the tale of Wolf 40 and Wolf 42.

Wolf 40, Wolf 41, and Wolf 42 were wild Yellowstone wolves, daughters of the alphas. Their father was illegally killed by hunters and shortly after ambitious Wolf 40 ousted her mother, driving her out of the pack.  Wolf 21 became the new alpha male, and 40′s mate.

Wolves have personalities, and Wolf 40′s personality was “volatile”.  Imagine Scar from The Lion King combined with the boss from Office Space, and you have Wolf 40.  She habitually bullied the other female wolves, attacking them until they expressed abject submission.  And the wolves that got the worst of it were her sisters, Wolves 41 and 42.

Wolf 41 got tired of the bullying and left.  Wolf 42 remained, perhaps because she was close to Wolf 21, the alpha male.  Despite that, Wolf 21 did not interfere when his mate harassed Wolf 42.

Unlike 40, Wolf 42 got along well with the other female wolves, spending time grooming them and relaxing with them. Wolf 40 could have followed her sister’s example and built up positive social bonds. But she didn’t.

One day, Wolf 40 went out on an important task.  She was going to kill another litter of her sister’s pups–having done the same in two previous years.  This isn’t uncommon wolf behavior (but is not universal, as we will see.)  Typically only the alphas breed.

However, Wolf 40 never returned from her important task because Wolf 42–who previously had submitted to her alpha and sister, who had allowed the killing of two previous litters of pups–had had enough.  She fought back.

And the other female wolves jumped to aid her.

Collectively, they killed Wolf 40. Because “alpha” isn’t a magic cloak of protection, it doesn’t even mean “strongest wolf”, it’s just a job title.

The next day Wolf 42 carried her pups, one by one, to her sister’s den.  She set her children among the pups of her dead sister and raised both litters together. And when another wolf in the pack had pups, Wolf 42 carried them to the den to be communally raised as well.  She was the alpha female now and she made the rules, and the first rule was “we don’t hurt pups here.”

As for Wolf 21, he became the mate of Wolf 42.  Maybe he understood that Wolf 40 had been riding for a fall. 

As alpha female, Wolf 42 continued to be supportive and kind towards the other pack members.  Wolves who had been nervous wrecks under Wolf 40 began to relax and come into their own; one of the former omega wolves gained self-confidence and became one of the best hunters.

“Alpha”, for wolves, just means leader.  They might be good leaders, whom you respect, or they might be bad leaders, who fill you with dread.  They might be your parents, or they might not.  Even if they are your mother or father, wolves don’t contextualize those relationships the same way humans do.

But one thing wolves have in common with humans is that they have individual personalities and experiences, and their actions derive from those.  There is no “typical wolf pack.” And I think that’s beautiful.

If you want to learn more about wild wolf dynamics, I recommend reading the annual Yellowstone Wolf Project Reports.  Which are FASCINATING.  There are also some good wildlife specials out there.

 "The most improper job of any man … is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.“

I don’t think it was even 6 months later that he contracted trench fever and was sent home. 

His entire command was wiped out in one charge shortly after, the majority of a whole countryside’s youths slaughtered while he survived. Youths who were brave and steadfast, but thought of as lesser than their superior officers while still being the ones carrying the actual battle. Youths who deserved fellowship, respect, and above all to go home and dance with their own Rosie.

But there is a soldier in Lord of the Rings who does not come back, and I don’t mean Boromir.

I mean the being who was a common hobbit, but who became corrupted by darkness and poison, who’s face is described in ways reminiscent of a gas mask.

The soldier who doesn’t come home, who is poisoned by gas and stress and insanity.

Aragorn’s entire arc isn’t to be the steadfast hero saving the day, it’s to hold the line in terror and horror and blood while the overlooked folk are the people who save the world. And then, what makes him a king, is not his skill in battle, but his healing hands.

Which then ties into both Eowyn and Faramir’s arcs. Eowyn goes into healing not because she’s a weak and meek woman, but because war is horrible and saving lives is better than taking them. Aragorn is glorified within the text for his healing, and so is Eowyn.

Also, tying into the common man thing, in the movies it’s Faramir but in the books it’s SAMWISE who questions what brings a man so far from home to fight in a war and if he is really so different.

LOTR is anti-war propaganda.

And this happens even though Sword Art Online is more explicitly anti-authoritarian in its messaging than Lord of the Rings is, and is equally anti-war, though with added messaging against things that aren’t technically war but are as bad as if not worse than war in their own way. And there are several girls featured in that story who do not end up as ladylike people because they were never particularly ladylike in the first place. Including one girl, Sinon, with the same personality as the series’ male protagonist, Kirito (in which Kirito’s gender expression is actually somewhat more stereotypically feminine than that of Sinon, the girl who shares his personality).

 Not to mention that there are other parts of Sword Art Online that speak out against the subjugation of women far more explicitly than LOTR does (yes, including in some of the parts of Asuna Yuuki’s arc that get bashed as anti-feminist, like when they basically remind people why we fought against arranged marriages in the first place and paint it as not okay when it’s a woman doing the marriage arranging for someone else either). It’s purity testing, plain and simple, when people bash decisions like these. Like every character who starts out outwardly strong better stay that way or else the narrative gets bashed as anti-feminist even when it clearly isn’t.

And woe betide someone even portray sexual assault in a clearly negative way akin to how Frollo’s behavior is portrayed in Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, because they will be seen as having a weird fetish, never mind that there really might be no discernible fetish in that portrayal and the only reason it feels like a fetish is other people’s fetishes make your skin crawl and so do portrayals intentionally designed to make your skin crawl.

Try to comprehend that there are fully functional, high capacity boats passing through the waters in front of an area full of survivors who are stranded and in need of supplies, refusing to help. They are hosting snorkeling tours.

Really think about, try your best to actually picture over two thousand people unhoused and in need of shelter, with nothing but the clothes on their backs and nothing to return to. Understand that the island, stolen land, is littered with hotels full of air conditioned of rooms with beds and showers and toilets, each fully equipped to host hundreds of families for weeks, turning these people away because they're booked up with tourists who refuse to leave.

And understand that these tourists were offered free transport to return home or be hosted on other islands. Free. Courtesy of local tax dollars. 4,000 wealthy tourists were offered free flights shelter on Oahu and begged to leave the island, BEFORE the survivors were given shelter.