The Cat Lady

Prince Arslan

Prince Arslan

1) honeybees do not produce “extra honey.” And beekeepers don’t take some of the honey, they take all of it.

Because I am!

Beekeepers make sure hives are fed before there is pollen in the air, protected from predators and the elements, and have enough honey to sustain themselves. We don’t take all of it.

But overproduction of honey leads to stagnation in the hive. It puts stress on the queen to lay eggs, and when they inevitably fill up all their space with honey (instead of filling up the multiple empty, clean boxes of frames beekeepers might put on top of the main hive box), the queen can get so stressed she dies. If there’s a spike in the weather and the hive hasn’t prepared new queen brood, that’s it! The colony is dead. Because there wasn’t enough space for eggs and honey in the hive.

Beekeepers take excess honey. We are constantly monitoring the state of the hive, checking for parasites, analyzing the eggs for diseases, and making sure they are fed and healthy (usually with sugar water and pollen substitutes until they have made enough honey to sustain themselves in the early spring months). If a queen dies prematurely, we make every attempt to replace her to save the colony.

I know there’s an urge to patronize everyone who works in the farming industry, but try to understand the differences between small scale agriculture and industrial farming. There IS a difference. And stop spreading misinformation.

If you’re this passionate about ethical consumption, look into some of the ecofeminist research on non-hierarchal interspecies relationships (working on building animal-human relationships in a non exploitative way).

Yea Chickens are some of the most abused animals on big factory farms and I’ll be the first to admit it’s criminal and more needs to be done to regulate this.

Yes selective breeding over time has caused an increase in the ammount of eggs produced by chickens and factory farms have some messed up practices to get more eggs from them including forced moutling.

THIS IS WHY YOU SUPPORT LOCAL FARMERS AND THEIR EGGS

And backyard hens are often spoiled pets. They get fed rich, hearty, varied diets. Usually a staple chow and then extras like leafy greens, bugs, fruits, veggies. Often they get table scraps. I’ve seen countless people make warm oatmeal on cold mornings to give to Their Ladies. They make them chicken sweaters, and aprons, and diapers so they can visit inside the house for snuggles. Enrichment is increasing for them every day. Most people allow their birds to free range during the day when it’s nice out. They give them names.

They also lay eggs, often infertile ones but even the fertile ones aren’t “babies” like you’re thinking. They are absolutely inert without incubation for over 24 hours straight because chickens lay a clutch of 8-15 eggs and need them to hatch at all the same time so they don’t start incubation until the hen stops laying and sits on them. Brooding is just as hard if not harder on them than laying is, because they stop eating and drinking except once a day, and hold in their poop so they only poop once a day instead of eliminating waste every 15 minutes or so like they would normally. This can cause them to lose a lot of weight and some birds will sit on eggs until it seriously threatens their health. So normally you don’t WANT them to brood if you can prevent it, unless you know they have fertile eggs AND you want babies or know how you’re going to re-home them. It’s also not possible to safely fix a bird; anesthesia is an extremely dangerous risk that often leads to death and no vet in their right mind would risk it just so you can prevent a chicken hen from laying eggs.

IN SUMMARY: The eggs they naturally produce by existing and being well cared for are edible, nutritious, and taste good, you cannot safely prevent them from laying them, and leaving the eggs in with them can lead to negative health consequences.

So what would you have someone do? Throw away food just because your pet produced it instead of the dirt? That’s illogical and wasteful.

Meatbun has announced that she will be taking a social media hiatus on the recommendations of her doctor (link: https://twitter.com/wenbuxing/status/1287045740426964992?s=19) 

She has been receiving a barrage of hate over the last 2 years for her novels, culminating in physical illness and hospitalizations. Here is a translation of her explanation on Weibo: https://twitter.com/dreamvvalker/status/1287146553459855362?s=20

(I had to post the links like that because tumblr doesn’t allow posts with external links to show up in its main tags, unfortunately). 

You may ask: well, I’m not a CN fan, so what does this have to do with me?

For us non-CN speaking/Western fans, it’s just as important. 

The hate that Meatbun has gotten on weibo sounds VERY similar to the hate Meatbun receives from fandom puritans and entitled fandom brats in EN-speaking fandom. And Meatbun isn’t the first danmei author to go through this: notably, MXTX (author of SVSSS, MDZS, and TGCF) has, and other authors have as well, such as Tang Jiuqing (author of Nan Chan and Qiang Jin Jiu). Women and queer people, especially women and queer people from nonwestern countries, who create indie content for smaller audiences are constantly being raked over the coals and scrutinized. 

So I wanted to touch upon some common talking points that a lot of you hold against her, because these are many of the things antis on weibo have been accusing her of, which has driven her off social media. Criticism is one thing, but if you go to the lengths that antis do, you’re a disgusting person. 

1. “She’s a fujoshi/mlm fetishist”. I don’t know why you read a danmei novel then? Danmei and BL have many similarities but they aren’t interchangeable, as one is Chinese and the other is Japanese. And many, many people by now have talked about how “fujoshi” has been misappropriated from Japanese pop culture to describe something that it’s not, which is rooted in both orientalism and misogyny. Moreover, there are plenty of gay male danmei authors (such as Fei Tian Ye Xiang, author of Dinghai Fusheng Records, Tian Bao Fu Yao Lu, Seizing Dreams, Luan Shi Wei Wang, and more), and none of them have said things like “my works aren’t for female readers”. Anyway, we could sit here and have a back and forth about what does and does not count as “mlm fetishization”. My point is this: if you think women writing and consuming sexual m/m content counts as fetishization, why are you reading a danmei novel? Why would you venture into a genre if it makes you uncomfortable? Moreover, the translators provided plenty of warning about the heavy themes and sexual content of the novel. Rynn has those warnings on every chapter’s doc and has them bolded in red. That was on you for reading the novel regardless of your discomfort. Instead of taking that discomfort out on Meatbun, either keep it to yourself, stop reading, or vent your feelings in a diary or a private social media account. Don’t harass Meatbun about it. 

2. “I’m LGBT and I don’t approve of this novel”. Go cry about it to your mother then. The idea that this novel is specifically meant to cater to Western LGBT fans and to Western LGBT identity politics and conventions is xenophobic and ethnocentric. This is, first and foremost, a Chinese work written by a Chinese woman about Chinese authors for a Chinese audience. We as Westerners are not the target demographic of this work, and so the publishing of this work does not and should not hinge upon our validation or approval. Assuming that the cultural products of nonwestern nations should be screened through a western gaze, no matter how “progressive”, is incredibly orientalist. And you’re not immune to being racist or orientalist just because you’re a white/western gay, I can promise you that. 

You may also think this kind of sexual m/m content is “homophobic” and “fetishistic” but you ignore the cultural context. LGBT content is heavily censored and policed in China. Why do you think all of these authors have to write under a penname? Why do you think many of these authors have either only written implied sexual content or have locked their chapters? Meatbun could get arrested for writing this content if her name was exposed. We as Westerners can sit in the comfort of our homes knowing that the western LGBT works we consume won’t lead to the author getting arrested, but that’s not true of Meatbun and all the other danmei authors. For that reason, if you claim that HYX will be better than 2ha because it’ll remove the sexual content in the same way dumbasses claimed CQL is better than MDZS, you’re a homophobe and you’re an ethnocentrist and no amount of woke posturing and flinging around of gay identity politics will change that.

Also, let’s be honest. You did not pay to read 2ha. Most of us haven’t purchased the chapters on JJWXC. Some of you don’t know what JJWXC is. Some of you don’t know how to navigate it. Others haven’t purchased it. Which is fine, but Meatbun is not a big name Western author like George R.R. Martin or J.K. Rowling. 2ha is not a large franchise like Game of Thrones or Star Wars or Marvel. 2ha is a Chinese web-novel. So Meatbun doesn’t owe you anything because you didn’t purchase her novel and compensate her for her labor, despite the enjoyment you derived from it and despite how you’re using it as a source of LGBT representation and self-projection regardless. Then, there is the fact that the translators are the ones who purchased the novels, painstakingly translated them, and then uploaded them onto digital platforms for FREE. So you not only get to access chapters without paying for them, but you get an entire translation for FREE! Have you thanked Rynn (the main translator) lately? Given them a ko-fi? Go do so if you haven’t, because Rynn and other translators deal with a lot of online hate as well. 

3. “This has very heavy and triggering themes and fiction affects reality”. Again, we could get into a debate about whether fiction affects reality or not. The point is that this is an ADULT work for ADULT readers. If you don’t have the maturity, reading comprehension, or psychological ability to differentiate between fiction and reality, don’t read material like 2ha. Moreover, Meatbun is writing a redemption narrative. This isn’t a Disney movie or a CW show. These characters are all nuanced, morally gray, and complicated. We get a gorgeous character arc for Mo Ran but in order to get one he had to do some truly terrible things to begin his character journey. Don’t like villains? Don’t like redemption narratives? Fine, but don’t read novels like 2ha then. You were repeatedly warned. Instead of making assumptions about Meatbun’s character, personality, or morality, go do something concrete for the world if you want to be a good person or an activist or a hero. Hating on a Chinese female author on social media isn’t activism, I can promise you that. You could read this novel and reflect on it and process how it shatters your previously held notions about morality and compassion and humanity (as I did), or you could close the tab and forget about it forever. Choose the healthy and rational option.

4. “It’s too smutty which makes the plot suck”. Look, if you have some fair criticisms of 2ha that’s one thing. But a lot of you say openly vile things about Meatbun. Why? Because she had one plot point you didn’t like? Because you wanted her to expand on the side characters, minor characters, or female characters? Because there’s smut and kink? Just shut the fuck up, honestly. How entitled can you people be? You sit on the internet with NO work and ZERO credibility and act like kings. Meatbun wrote a 311 chapter novel, a beautiful narrative with a very intriguing world and amazing characters and a gorgeous romance. And yes, it includes smut. But honestly, if this novel didn’t have dynamic characters and a suspenseful, gripping, poignant, and thought-provoking plot, then not even smut would’ve been enough to carry it. I’ve read novels that are purely smutty and have no substance and trust me, 2ha is far from that. 2ha hooks so many of us because of the characters and their nuances, because of how relatable and multidimensional they are, because of how fascinating the world they live in is, because Ranwan’s romance is so compelling and tragic and aching and passionate. You can come back with all your criticisms when you’ve put yourself out there and written a 311 chapter novel. Some light criticism is one thing, but I’ve seen people ON TUMBLR say things like “Meatbun gets too much praise” and worse things from people who don’t have fics up or anything, so it’s getting ridiculous. Meatbun owes you nothing, especially if you have nothing to back up your own vaunted literary criticism and in particular because you did not pay Meatbun for her labor. 

If you didn’t like how Meatbun handled Taxian-Jun, Hua Binan, and the flower of hatred, if you wanted her to give Rong Jiu or Song Qiutong a happier ending, if you wanted a less bittersweet ending for Shi Mei 2.0, if you didn’t want Taxian-Jun to appear post-canon, and if you think the plots in book 3 were confusing, that’s fine. That’s your opinion. However, the English translation has only reached chapter 131. You all are basing those opinions on the MTL. MTL =/= A PROPER TRANSLATION. As it is, the beauty of the original novel will never fully be translated because there are things English cannot convey due to linguistic constraints. But even so, we aren’t going to fully understand how these plots worked based solely on the MTL! So at least reserve your judgments about how Meatbun executed the ending plot until Rynn gets to the last arc! And regardless, again, I’d like to see you write a novel with this kind of plot and how you’d execute it from that high horse.

5. “Meatbun hates women”. For god’s sake, MXTX got this same criticism and now Meatbun. THIS IS DANMEI. DANMEI FOCUSES ON M/M RELATIONSHIPS. You want to read about women? Go read f/f or m/f novels! Go read FGEP and JWQS, two lesbian novels by a lesbian author who has other works as well! Don’t read from an m/m-focused genre if you’re one of those “women!!1!!!!!” types of fandom “activists”. I love female characters (my blog is literally dedicated to one), but acting like Meatbun is a misogynist because 2ha is male dominated is so pathetic. Most danmei novels are male dominated. If you think that makes danmei misogynistic, fine, but don’t read danmei works. Or choose the danmei works that have strong supporting female characters. Moreover, many of the Western gay novels a lot of you read lack female characters as well. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller is one of my favorite Western LGBT novels, and yet most of the female characters in it are incredibly minor. Meatbun has given us interesting female characters like Ye Wangsi and Madam Wang. I do wish they’d get more screentime, but I also wish Briseis had gotten more screentime in TSOA as well. Yet I don’t see anyone calling Madeline Miller a misogynist? Which I would hope they don’t because Madeline Miller is an amazing author and she wrote Circe, which focuses entirely on a female character. Anyway, point being, if you want to read a feminist work or a female-focused work, there are plenty to choose from. We’re not living in an era in which only books about men exist. Yes, all danmei can benefit from more female characters, but that’s a criticism of literature as a whole, across the globe, and so to randomly hold that against Meatbun, MXTX, or other danmei authors is ridiculous, especially considering that most of them are female creators and you lot are using this as an excuse to be violently misogynistic. 

I made more because you seemed to like the others (and because I wanted to)

Disclaimer: This is just some lighthearted fun, I love all of these characters very much! (except sect leader yao, he can choke lol I had to look at his ugly beard so you do too)

Bonus bc I made myself laugh with this during the drawing process:

OH NO MY HEART :’)

The truth is that horses see what they think are nether beings, I guess. They have a perfect storm of sensory perception that, useful for prey beings, marks false positives on mortal danger all the time. Which is advantageous to a flight-based prey species: running from danger when you’re super fast is much ‘cheaper’ than fighting, so you waste almost nothing from running from a threat that’s not there. Versus, you blow everything if you don’t see a threat that is there.

Horses also have their eyes positioned on the sides of their heads, which gives them an incredible range of peripheral vision almost around their entire body with only a few blind spots you can sneak up on them in. But this comes at the cost of binocular vision; they can only judge distance for things straight ahead of them. Super useful for preventing predators sneaking up from the sides or behind, but useless for recognizing familiar shapes with the precision we can.

Basically we now have a walking couch with anxiety its going to get attacked at any second, that can see almost everything, but mostly only out of the corner of its eye. It has a few blind spots and anything that suddenly appears out of them is terrifying to it. Combine that with that it actually has far superior low-light vision than us, and that its ears can swivel in any directions like radar dishes, and you’ve basically given a nervous wreck a highly accurate but imprecise danger-dar.

To be concise: all horses, even the most chill horses, on some level believe they are living in a survival horror.

This means that you could approach it in a flapping poncho and if it can’t recognize your shape as human, they mistake you for SATAN… or you could pass this one broken down tractor you’ve passed 100 times on a trail ride, but today is the day it will ATTACK… or your horse could feel a horsefly bite from its blind spot and MAMA, I’VE BEEN HIT!!!… or you could both approach a fallen log in the woods but in the low light your horse is going to see the tree rings as THE EYE OF MORDOR.

However, they actually have kind of a cool compensation for this– they are social animals, and instinctively look towards leadership. In the wild or out at pasture, this is their most willful, pushy, decisive leader horse who decides where to go and where it’s safe. But humans often take this role both as riders and on the ground. They are always watching and feeling for human reactions to things. This is why moving in a calm, decisive way and always giving clear commands is key to working with this kind of animal. Confusing commands, screaming, panic, visible distress, and chaos will signal to a horse that you, brave leader are freaked out… so it should freak out too!

On one hand, you’ll get horses that will decide that they are the leader and you are not, so getting them to listen to you can be tough– requiring patience and skill more than force. On the other hand, a good enough rider and a well-trained horse (or a horse with specialized training) can venture into dangerous situations, loud and scary environments, etc. calmly and confidently.

Horses can’t see your hand, they smell the treat (and use very sensitive skin/whiskers to feel.) Some horses are garbage at doing this gently, just absolutely awful, but remember - they can’t see what they’re doing.

Horses also have partial color vision - they see horse relevant colors. Blue, yellow and therefore green. No red derived colors. If you want to see an anxious couch have a bad trip, ride it in an arena with alternating sections of purple and yellow seating. Grey grey YELLOW YELLOW HOLY SHIIIIIIIT. Every single horse would walk past the purple seats and go OH MY FUCK at the yellow ones. This is why the bright red (grey) bucket isn’t a problem, but oH my FfffffffffSHIttTTTT do they notice a stray yellow plastic grocery bag.

“15 Men React To The Idea Of Taking Their Wife’s Last Name After Marriage”

Tap-tap-tap

Lan Wangji takes out one earbud and frowns in the direction of his closed door. There is a long pause during which no sound is heard and Lan Wangji is about to put his earbuds back in when it starts again.

Taptap-tap-tap

Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap…

Irritated, he storms over and yanks the door open, ready to snap at the offender, only to come face-to-face with…nothing. He blinks, confused, and moves to close the door again when he hears giggling from somewhere near the ground. He frowns.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

Wei Wuxian grins up at him from where he is splayed out on his stomach in the doorway across the hall and waves. His other hand is holding onto a long contraption made of a jumble of stationery haphazardly taped together that spans the entire width of the corridor, the end of which stops just short of Lan Wangji’s leg.

“Hiya, Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian chirps. “I’d come closer but we’re not allowed.”

Lan Wangji feels a headache already starting to develop in between his eyes. He pinches the bridge of his nose to ward it off and sighs.

“What do you want, Wei Ying?” he asks. “I’m busy.”

Wei Wuxian sits up on his knees with a wide grin.

“Can I borrow a pen?” He shrugs. “I seem to have used up all my spares.”

Lan Wangji stares at him, and then down at the long pole of taped stationery still lying on the ground by their feet. The throbbing in his head grows louder, more insistent. He has lectures to listen to, notes to take, and he needs to practice. He doesn’t have time to entertain Wei Wuxian and his flights of fancy.

“Ridiculous,” he says, and slams the door shut.

it’s HIGHLY contagious, as a matter of fact it’s more than two times more contagious than the flu;

its incubation period is 14 days, which means you could be already infected and only start to show symptoms in two weeks which, in turn, means that you have two full weeks time to infect everyone you come in contact with;

we don’t have a vaccine or specific treatment yet;

it is potentially mortal for older people, people with pre-existing conditions, and immunocompromised people BUT it’s also very dangerous for everyone else too–a lot of younger people have died;

it attacks the lungs, which means a lot of patients will need respiratory aid, which means hospitals get full really fast and if there’s a shortage of machineries (which, there is), doctors might even have to choose to save a patient over another;

that 2% fatality rate is not confirmed, it was an initial hypothesis. if you look at the numbers of Italy the percentage is much higher. as of right now the number of infected in Italy is 12462, the number of victims is 827: now i’m no mathematician, but i’m pretty sure that’s more like 6,6%; (while i’m on the subject, you may want to double check how your country is counting victims: a lot of countries are only counting people who died OF coronavirus, while the more accurate way of counting would be to consider those who died WITH coronavirus);

a lot of countries aren’t even testing properly yet, which means the numbers are highly debatable.

we all initially underestimated the situation here in Italy and now look at us. we’re all stuck at home–we can’t leave unless strictly necessary. no school, no uni, no cinema, no theatre, no weddings, no funerals. we’re queuing to enter supermarkets and pharmacies. our hospitals are full and our doctors are exhausted. we’re all doing this not because we’re overly dramatic or something, we’re doing this because it’s the only way to prevent the virus from spreading (as the news from Wuhan show) and therefore to safeguard everyone and keep the hospitals going.  

COVID-19, specifically the new coronavirus responsible for this mass panic, is equally as contagious as influenza, in that it’s transmitted by droplet and fomites, meaning the SAME precautions are required for both [x]

The word you’re looking for is ‘fatal’, not ‘mortal’. 

Influenza is contagious within the first few days of an individual becoming sick, however can be transmittable up to 7-10 days afterwards. This means Influenza can spread faster than COVID-19 [x]

The prevention for both diseases is the same: cough etiquette, good hand hygiene and containment if unwell. The treatment is the same: rest, symptomatic management, and supportive measures in the case of severe disease. 

Death toll: the overall mortality rate for COVID-19 is 3.4% [x]. As of posting, it’s March 12, so that number is likely to change with each day that the situation evolves. It’s likely we will see the number decrease as the virus spreads and the ratio of recovered people to people who have died evolves. This number is highly changeable and it’s impossible to provide an accurate reflection of it given the rapidly changing nature of the knowledge we have.

Of these deaths, 14% have been people over the age of 80 (reflecting comorbidities such as lung or heart disease), as opposed to 0.4 of 40-50′s and 0.2% in people aged 10-39. So no, not ‘a lot of young people have died’. [x] Only one known case of someone under the age of 19 has died in China [x].

By comparison, this flu season, 136 paediatric patients have died with influenza associated pneumonia in the USA alone [x]. Influenza is far less discriminatory in who it infects and who is susceptible to severe illness, with several. strains targeting young, healthy and otherwise fit individuals in particular. 

Doctors never choose to save one life over another. If they do, they should not be a doctor, and you have a lawsuit on your hands. If a hospital is overwhelmed with equipment shortages, they will find a way to treat the patient anyway. My hospital for example has the capacity to look after up to five patients requiring intubation (a machine doing the breathing for you). In the case where we have had people needing ICU  and our ICU is full (which has happened the last few flu seasons), we have treated the patient anyway in the ER and then transferred the patient to a hospital capable of continuing their care. I’m so gobsmacked that you’d even make a remark like this that I’m honestly wondering whether or not i should be offended. 

As of march 10, over 66 thousand people have recovered from the disease. That is more than half of those infected. 

I understand being afraid and uncertain because this is a new virus and the response to it is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before with other pandemics (Hello SARS, hello MERS, hello Swine Flu, hello HIV/AIDS! A few notable mentions since the 00′s). But for everyone using this website, the OP of the tweet posted is right: you probably won’t die from it. At most, you’ll feel like you’ve had the worst cold of your entire life and be stuck in bed for a few days. 

Take precautions! Wash your hands! Isolate yourself for 14 days if you’ve been in contact with someone who has the virus. 

But please stop spreading misinformation about the virus because it is doing NO one any favours and it is only contributing to irrational fear that is putting MORE burden on health systems that are already struggling enough.

I did more of those “CQL!Wei Wuxian with the Yiling Laozu haircut” edits, and the more I do them, the more I think we were definitely robbed of that look in the drama.