Twenty-one was “remarkably gentle” with the members of his pack, says Rick. Immediately after making a kill, he would often walk away to urinate or lie down and nap, allowing family members who’d had nothing to do with the hunt to eat their fill.
One of Twenty-one’s favorite things was to wrestle with little pups. “And what he really loved to do,” Rick adds, “was to pretend to lose. He just got a huge kick out of it.” Here was this great big male wolf. And he’d let some little wolf jump on him and bite his fur. “He’d just fall on his back with his paws in the air,” Rick half-mimes. “And the triumphant-looking little one would be standing over him with his tail wagging.”
“The ability to pretend,” Rick adds, “shows that you understand how your actions are perceived by others. It indicates high intelligence. I’m sure the pups knew what was going on, but it was a way for them to learn how it feels to conquer something much bigger than you. And that kind of confidence is what wolves need every day of their hunting lives.”
In Twenty-one’s life, there was a particular male, a sort of roving Casanova, a continual annoyance. He was strikingly good-looking, had a big personality, and was always doing something interesting. “The single best word is ‘charisma,’” says Rick. “Female wolves were happy to mate with him. People loved him. His irresponsibility and infidelity – it didn’t matter.”
One day, Twenty-one discovered this Casanova among his daughters. Twenty-one ran in, caught him, and began biting and pinning him to the ground. Various pack members piled in, beating Casanova up.
“Casanova was also big,” Rick says, “but he was a bad fighter. Now he was totally overwhelmed and the pack was finally killing him. Suddenly Twenty-one steps back. Everything stops. The pack members are looking at Twenty-one as if saying, ‘Why has Dad stopped?’” The Casanova wolf jumped up and — as always in such situations — ran away.
But Casanova kept causing problems for Twenty-one. Why didn’t Twenty-one just kill him so he wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore? It didn’t make sense — until years later.
Fast-forward to after Twenty-one’s death. Casanova briefly became the Druid pack’s alpha male. But he wasn’t effective, Rick recalls. He didn’t know what to do, “just not a leader personality.” and although it’s very rare for a younger brother to depose an older one, that’s what happened to him. Casanova didn’t mind; it meant he was free to wander and meet other females.
Eventually Casanova, along with several Druid males, met some females, and they all formed another pack. “With them,” Rick remembers, “he finally became the model of a responsible alpha male and a great father.” Meanwhile, the mighty Druids were ravaged and weakened by mange and diminished by interpack fighting; the last Druid was shot near Butte, Montana, in 2010. Casanova, though he’d been averse to fighting, died in a fight with a rival pack. But everyone in his pack remained uninjured — including grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Twenty-one.
Wolves can’t foresee such plot twists any more than people can. But evolution does. I’s calculus integrates long averages. By sparing the Casanova wolf, Twenty-one actually helped assure himself more surviving descendants. And in evolution, surviving descendants are the only currency that matters.
So in strictly survivalist terms, “should” a wolf let his rival go free? Is restraint an effective strategy for accumulating benefits? I think the answer is yes, if you can afford it, because sometimes your enemy today becomes, tomorrow, a vehicle for your legacy. What Rick saw play out over those years might be just the kinds of events that are the basis for magnanimity in wolves, and at the heart of mercy in men.
Early on, when Twenty-one was young and still living with his mother and adoptive father, one of their new pups was not acting normal. The other pups were a bit afraid of him and wouldn’t play with him. One day, Twenty-one brought back some food for the small pups, and after feeding them, he just stood there, looking around for something. Soon he started wagging his tail. “He’d been looking for the sickly little pup,” Rick says, “and finding him, he just went over to hang out with him for a while.”
Rick suddenly seems to be searching inside himself for something deeper he wants to express. Then he looks at me, saying simply, “Of all the stories I have about Twenty-one, that’s my favorite.” Strength impresses us. But what we remember is kindness.
The majority of wolves die violently. Despite a violent, eventful life even by wolf standards, Twenty-one distinguished himself to the very end: He was a black wolf who grayed with the years and became one of the few Yellowstone wolves to die of old age.
One June day when Twenty-one was 9 years old, his family was lying bedded down when an elk came by. Everyone jumped up to give chase. He jumped up, too, but just stood watching the action and then lay down again. Later, when the pack headed up toward the den site, Twenty-one crossed the valley in the opposite direction, traveling purposefully somewhere, alone.
Sometime later, a visitor who’d been way up high in the backcountry reported having seen something very unusual: a dead wolf. Rick got a horse and rode up to investigate.
The last day, it seems, Twenty-one knew his time had come. He used the last of his energy to go up to the top of a high mountain. In a favorite family rendezvous site, where he’d been with his pups year after year, amid high summer grass and mountain wildflowers, Twenty-one curled up in the shade of a big tree. And on his own terms, he went to sleep for the last time.
[END IMAGE TRANSCRIPTION]
the story above was taken from this article, and the whole thing is really worth a read.
do the newer night vale fans even know about cecil baldwin and dylan marron recreating the arby’s scene
this image is worth a billion dollars to me
[ID: A photograph of actors Cecil Baldwin and Dylan Marron sitting on the hood of a car at night, parked beneath an Arby’s restaurant sign. Cecil has an arm around Dylan’s shoulder, and points up at the sky. Dylan smiles, with an arm around Cecil’s waist. End ID]
WIBTA for sabotaging my boyfriend's hookup with his girlfriend by filling his sex playlist with DJ Crazytimes
I (28NB, they/he) have known my boyfriend (call him C, 29M, he/him) for some 15ish years now. As long as I've known him, he has been on and off again with his girlfriend (call him T, 29NB, he/him). Respectfully, and with love, C and T are two of the worst and most annoying people I know. I want to marry them both specifically so that I can study them under a microscope like a parasitic virus.
Technically they're monogamous, but they're both hooking up with other people (myself included), usually the same people, because they have the same taste in lovers (bad). I have suggested that they give actual polyamory a try, and they reject the idea wholeheartedly. I think they get off on their dynamic, and far be it from me to try more than the bare minimum to dissuade them from it.
A couple months back, they got into a fight and broke up (again) because T (who was unemployed at the time) stole $50 from C (who works at GameStop) so that he could pay for a tank of gas (using C's car) to go hook up with another guy a couple states over. C was not upset that T was hooking up with another guy (because he was Also hooking up with that guy and knew he would not have a leg to stand on), but because of the stolen money + car.
C and I currently live together, because you can't afford an apartment on a GameStop salary, and also, like I said, he's my boyfriend. I'm making carnitas tacos next Friday, and T is coming over, because despite everything, he has nothing else to do on a Friday night. I know that C and T are going to get into a huge fight, and I know that it's probably either going to end with them getting back together out of spite or with someone's vehicle getting keyed--I'm betting on both.
Here's where I think I might be the asshole. I would really like to get inbetween them. Not in a "I don't want you to date each other" kind of way, but in a "holy shit you are both so insufferable i would like to get in on that" kind of way. I currently have my thing with C, and I've hooked up with T once in the past, but I would really like to make it official with him as well.
My plan is as follows: C and T are going to be in the same space again next Friday. They're going to fight, then hook up, then get back together again. C is one of those cybersexual "i built my own computer and run it on Linux" people, which is to say, he thinks tiktok and youtube are evil, and he he thinks spotify premium is supporting megacorporations. So, his sex playlist for T (we do not have our own sex playlist) is just an actual folder of mp3 files.
While C is at work, I'm going to log into his computer and change several of those mp3 files to DJ Crazytimes' Planet of the Bass, which I play often, and he is frequently annoyed by. My hope is that he'll realize it was me, he'll come and yell at me for ruining their hookup, T will take my side to piss him off, and the tension will get to the point where they let me join their hookup, and I can ask to date both of them after that.
To be clear, I recognize that I'm also Incredibly Toxic for enabling and encouraging this behavior. That said, I feel like I'm justified in this scenario considering C and T are both Also toxic, and furthermore, it is a known fact that I'm dating C right now, so for them to hook up, C would technically be cheating on me. I asked C's sister (a childhood friend of mine) for her take on whether it would be funny or just annoying, and she just told me that we all deserve each other, so I think I should be good. Am I being uniquely shitty here?
I love this. Everyone here, including OP, is the worst person to ever exist. I’d say there’s no way this is true except for the fact that I know people exactly like this. All of you deserve each other. How are you calling someone who’s monogamously dating someone else your boyfriend. How are you hooking up with both of them and they are also against polyamory. This is already just polyamory but with like 15 extra steps.
Also, interesting note on Lucy’s condition. Stoker is actually subverting what was a common trope in that time period.
It was a common for characters in novels to fall ill, often from tuberculosis, which had similar symptoms as what Lucy is experiencing- paleness, loss of energy, difficulty breathing. A victorian reader would quickly recognise these symptoms, and the trope they are suggesting.
But in this case, nope, it’s not that rascally consumption this time, Lucy’s got a case of the vampires, lads.
There’s a user called Erika Horn (@erikahorn.art) on tiktok who made a “duet me” challenge so technically impressive that all of the duets are exactly like this LMAO
DND HAT/Bridgerton crossover AU in which Forge is there to present his foster daughter to high society (but really it’s a con, he’s there to rob Queen Charlotte) and Xenk is there to be a rake avowed bachelor too dedicated to his studies to take a wife (but secretly he’s gay and refuses to live a lie). He’s a little appalled that a fourteen-year-old is being presented to the marriage market, especially since it’s clear that her warden transparently cares more about the benefit to himself than Kira’s well-being. As such he kind of reluctantly starts to “court” the girl, while making it very clear to her that he’s got no actual interest. She’s pretty grateful for the protection and goes along with the ruse.
In walks Edgin, who’s presented his, uhhhhhh, ‘foster daughter’ Doric! Doric looks about ready to rip the ridiculous feather off her head. They’re there to rob Forge and rescue Kira.
Misunderstandings abound. Xenk absorbs Kira’s misguided anger towards her father for abandoning her and treats Edgin with disdain. Edgin, meanwhile, is about two seconds away from straight-up strangling this ADULT MAN who is courting his FOURTEEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER YOU ASSHOLE I WILL KILL YOU WITH MY BRAIN AND THIS FORK except Regency so they do so with polite smiles and Regency era niceties.
Then Xenk wakes up in the middle of the night to Holga, covered in mud, in his room, swinging a hatchet at his head. Because Holga does not have time for Regency era niceties.
i vote that next year instead of reading Dracula we do a Jeeves & Wooster Book Club. those two never got the rabid tumblr shipping fandom they deserved (disqualified for the sheer technicality of being published a century too soon). we must correct this injustice
We all know what a blorbo is, but have you ever wondered what the weirdest one out there is? If so, this bracket is for you. From forgotten side-characters to historical figures to real life boats, this poll aims to find the oddest most obscure object of obsession. The winner of this poll will be the strangest fave on the Strange Fave website, and submissions are open HERE.
Rules:
Blorbo is a flexible term, but usually applies to sentient characters. The key here is that you love them & adore them & would call them “poor little meow meow” and other such terms of affection. If you want to scrunch them like an accordion, put them in a salad spinner, tenderly care for their wounds, or wring them out like a washcloth, you’re on the right track.
Blorbo does not have to be from your shows. They can be from your books, your videogames, your history books, or really anything you can think of.
Real people are allowed BUT only if they are ALREADY PUBLIC/HISTORICAL FIGURES & NOT ON THIS WEBSITE. I am not putting Neil Gaiman or whoever in here without their express permission.
No Harry Potter or MCYT.
None of marvel’s avengers, unless you’re getting REAL weird with it.
The more obscure the character is, OR the less blorbo’d they are, the more likely they are to be included! There are shows with millions of viewers a week, but because their target audience is extremely mainstream, not many people feel this way about them. If you want to put the guy from Grand Designs in a shoebox like an injured baby bird, you’re in the right place.
Bonus points for being funny.
I will be submitting a couple mod bias picks, but I’m not saying who they are to make things fairer.
No OCs/AUs otherwise we’d be here all day.
this is an sfw bracket. You can submit characters you think are hot n sexy and whatever, but please don’t make me look at anything explicit!
Rounds will last a week, looking forward to seeing your little guys!
