What Does it Matter?

Everyone please look at this amazing art drawn by @/coffee-scrub of a scene from my fic Dulcet Boy, Grant Me Your Heart!

This thing has been out of print for like, 26 years and some of us want to make chubby classic pikachu so uh... I figure it's okay to share bc it's kinda hard to get your hands on the remaining physical copies.

Bonus points: Aelith made some embroidery/applique files for it too

Leafpool's long con, and its accidental 2x combo.

Of course you do, they’re fantastic. They come in two models, one with tan head stripes and one with white head stripes. But the gene that controls stripe color also has a bunch of other effects! It’s a supergene!

To briefly sum up a grueling amount of fieldwork by people who were probably not getting paid nearly enough, basically the tan-stripes are nurturers and the white-stripes are fighters, across both males and females. White-stripes chase away intruders more, tan-stripes bring more food to the nest. Tan-stripe females bring more bugs to their chicks than white-stripes, white-stripe females are more aggressive and sing more.

There is a reason Jordan Peterson picked lobsters, not sparrows, to get all MRA about, because the sparrow ladies are ALL about the tan-striped males. Sexy nurturing tan-stripe males are immediately grabbed up by the more aggressive white-stripe females (who are also dead sexy if you’re a sparrow.) Then the remaining birds pair off, so you get tan and white couples reproducing in virtually all cases—nurturing male with aggressive female, hyper-aggressive male with hyper-nurturing female.*

And this is good!** Because it turns out that they can have a tough time if they don’t mate across stripes—white x white sparrows often come out undersized if they come out at all. There was some cool recent genetic sequencing and one particular chromosome is way funky, inverted, and scrambled in the white-stripes. So now every white-stripe has a funky chromosome and a normal one, and every tan-stripe has two normal ones.***

This is all really unique and means that white-throated sparrows effectively have four sexes, because they now only reproduce with a member of the opposite stripe and sex chromosome, and their offspring may be any one of the four sexes. The stripes have essentially become a second sex chromosome.

The geneticists involved think the funky chromosome probably showed up as a weird import from somebody gettin’ jiggy with another sparrow species. Presumably this created a hypersexy female whose white head stripes brought all the boys to the yard, and very unusually, that bred true.

Is that cool or what?!

*No word on whether there is a resulting sparrow tradwife media genre.

**Leaving aside the impact on the emotional health of the non-sexy sparrows.

First of all, look at it.

That’s a male ruff, specifically. You can see how they get their name. The females don’t have that fancy collar. They just look like sandpipers, which is what they are.

Like other sandpipers, these are wading birds, but they live in wet meadows and marshes instead of by the seashore. During the breeding season they gather together and the males hold territories, called leks, in which they display to attract females.

At least, some of them do.

Some male ruffs do not display in leks. They have plainer, often white, neck ruffs, and they sort of wander around the display grounds courting the females wherever. The interesting thing is that the territorial males tolerate this. Research suggests it’s because females are more interested in a display ground that has both kinds of males. The ladies like variety, it seems.

But it gets even more complicated. In 2006, a third male form was discovered. This form is extremely rare, and doesn’t have male display plumage at all. It looks just like a female ruff in the field. The other birds, however, can tell the difference, judging by their behavior. These female mimics travel with other males when the sexes split for the winter, and during homosexual mountings (which are common, as they are in many other animals), they often top.

What’s really interesting about these ‘cryptic males’, or faeders, is that they are apparently super sexy. Seriously. Females and males both prefer mating with them. And it’s believed that, like the satellite males, the presence of a faeder attracts more females to the area, which benefits all three forms.

More late Halloween-meme stuff..

Another funny scene from Animorphs 24: The Suspicion! 😂

I just want to enjoy things. I don’t want to have to play a game of Artist-Race that seems to be afoot lately.

Ya’ll eat up fandoms, leave artists and writers bone dry and then move on so fucking quickly then fucking wonder where all the Good Fandom Stuff is.

Idk Maybe cherish some things for longer. Reblog stuff. Interact with people. Comment and share.

House Bolton: “Our Blades Are Sharp”

solid but workmanlike house words. good implicit threat. could have been a bit more poetic, but then again, so could most of the Boltons 7/10

House Greyjoy: “We Do Not Sow”

really just a sentence that deserves a polite “oh?” in response 3/10

House Lannister: “Hear Me Roar!”

a good and fearsome lion image, but undercut by the exclamation point which frankly by lannister standards is trying too hard. if you asked tywin lannister about this, he would tell you with quiet irritation that the exclamation point was not his doing 9/10

House Arryn: “As High as Honor”

very poetic and elegant, and a nice reference to the Eyrie. clearly means to instill admiration rather than fear, and it works. unfortunately, also invites humorous drug-related double entendres 8/10

House Tyrell: “Growing Strong”

needs serious reconsideration! implies that house tyrell is not already strong! all for the sake of a weak pastoral pun! 2/10

House Stark: “Winter is Coming”

unbelievably goth. not only promises the destruction of you and all your loved ones but also possibly of the starks and all their loved ones. the ultimate buckle the fuck up house words 11/10

House Tarly: “First in Battle”

nicely aggressive! but ambiguous. does this mean house tarly is first onto the field, or first numerically when the winners are ranked, because that’s not really how battles work. it must also be said that these house words sound like a high school superlative. 6/10

House Targaryen: “Fire and Blood”

good use of dramatic standalone nouns. very threatening, if a tad unhinged, which is a decent summation of house targaryen. at least they’re honest about it 8/10

House Martell: “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken”

are you tho. 9/10 if read alone but 5/10 when read with the cruel dramatic irony of the series

House Tully: “Family, Duty, Honor”

the worse of the two mottos separated by two commas. unlike “Fire and Blood,” none of these nouns is romantic or exciting enough to inspire my loyalty. sounds vaguely like a westerosi sequel to eat pray love 4/10

House Baratheon: “Ours is the Fury”

the perfect house words. confident, dynamic, and unifying. also thrillingly catchy and filled with the thirst of war itself. would be so satisfying to scream before riding onto a battlefield 10/10 

House Wode: “Touch Me Not”