Scarlet Talks About Serious Things - Tumblr Posts

Literally so much of both human AND other animals’ physiology evolved to suit a world where for most of the earth’s entire history CONSTANT BRIGHT BLUE-SPECTRUM LIGHT WAS ONLY A DAYTIME OCCURENCE. Your whole circadian rythym, a lot about your brain chemistry, etc. gets so disoriented and confused by no longer having clear environmental distinctions between night and day.

This is so hard wired into our biology that some people literally develop symptoms of full blown clinical depression during the fall and winter because of the seasonal shift of daytime sunlight hours. Think about the absolutely terrifying rise in sleeping issues in industrialized nations to the point of 1 in 3 USA citizens admitting to some degree of constant sleep deprivation.

This is not just some arbitrary aesthetic preference, it’s an instinctual discomfort for something that screws with a lot of the body’s internal cycles and the chemical cues it relies on to regulate them. The practice of keeping urban areas under constant white light has existed for the blink of an eye compared to what we were doing for the majority of our species’ history.

At least bad screentime hygiene is something we can individually take some accountability and the full burden for, but city-wide light pollution is not just a human problem by any means. If we know SO MUCH about what this does to humans, imagine how disruptive this is to animals that rely on being able to identify the position of the moon or sun in order to navigate what direction to even move in. On nocturnal animals that have adapted for generations to hunt or find safety in the cover of night. To animals programmed to hit peak activity specifically at dawn and dusk hours. Second and third on what the above people said because these are ramifications I don’t see people talk about near enough.

perhaps some will disagree, but i think the world got worse when we changed the colour of the night

Honestly we need to please PLEASE further normalize comfort OCs, fan-inspired OCs, fan-AUs, OOC tags, etc.

I feel like what this becomes born of so often are people who get really latched onto some ideas and qualities they can project or add onto a canon inspiration, but they’re so darn afraid of distinguishing that extension as their own original creativity + the canon material. Of putting something out there that’s theirs and dear to them. They’re afraid of putting their own ideas out there without grasping at certain interpretations of [thing that is already popular] to somehow… validate it? And understandably there is an unfortunate sort of vulnerability that can come with that. But the double edge of that sword lends itself to the actual growth and self esteem development that can come from authenticity.

And in any sense, I’m all for mischaracterizing canon assets- in an honest and upfront way. Transformative art is still art in its own right and it’s a a common way for younger and inexperienced creatives to toy around with concepts or to try a hand at accentuating, deconstructing, or paying tribute to what traits of the source material they love.. or hate! Instead of clowning on the OP, hell, I’ll give them credit tbh for owning their personal divergence from the canon as exactly what it is without defensiveness, at least in that snapshot.

But honestly people on the large trend lately do severely overestimate the assumed originality of their blorbos themselves, and don’t often recognize that there’s both nothing usual about nor inherently “cringe” about building upon classical tropes. Same goes for inspired creations as long as you’re not like, legitimately committing intellectual property theft. But near all is fair in personal hobby and exploration.

That infinite chain of possibilities and freedom is a great deal of fiction and creation’s entire appeal as a concept, after all.

Yet at the same time, there’s merit and usefulness in not getting carried away to the point of changing the concrete material of the original works themselves. The enjoyment someone takes in media canon is neither above or below that someone can take in OOC concepts, so maybe it’s actually healthier and more fun for everyone involved to know which is which and where to find it.

And like maybe we can all stop being jerks to each other as well I think that’s a pretty awesome side objective.

Actually, it kinda is! Now, I'm less expert than you, but as far as I'm aware- throat soreness as per the cause of an ick bug kinda depends on the specific cause but for the MOST part it's just plain old inflammation. Same reason a healing ankle or eye giving an allergic response can be really sore. Inflammation is like the main item in the bod's toolbox for responding to stimuli it sees as harmful: injury, allergens, and pathogens. It's a really big, flawed hammer, ergo everything can be a nail. Inflammation's painful because it's literally tissues swelling up on the micro level and the process can push up against a lot of sensitive things. I had a long battle for a while with tendinitis (literally inflammation of the tendons) in the hands a couple years back, not fun. Makes you learn real quickly how little room there actually is in your joints for things to balloon up when you think about it. But yeah infections and physical damage just tend to trigger inflammation at the site no matter where in/on the body. Unless it's so bad that it's closing off an airway, it's usually a good thing in the sense that it's the body trying to rush extra bloodflow to the area to get more white blood cells and antibodies on the frontline against the cause of the problem. The tenderness is just an unfortunate side effect. Obvs I'm way simplifying all of this, but I hope I got the gist down. Evolution never made a perfectly comfortable machine, just one that stays alive a bit longer than the others.

sore throats might be the stupidest response to illness i've ever experienced. oh you want to eat? drink?? breathe air??? TEN THOUSAND KNIVES ATTACK

Keeper inexperience and lack of research is often so much more punishing to exotics than it is to truly domesticated animals. Canine experts and breeders rightfully spend so much time begging first time (and sometimes longtime) owners to understand the unique needs and expectations of their type of dog before committing, because the difference between some pure breeds is literally night and day regarding everything from activity levels, grooming requirements, health risks, to general temperament, etc. And this is just for different breeds within the same species. Imagine the catching up one has to do to familizarize themselves with what to expect from not just a completely different species, different family, but whole different phylum than the majority of people are familiar with. Caring for Old world tarantulas vs. New world tarantulas are completely different games to sign up for. Same with tarantulas generally vs jumping spiders, even more so for arachnids vs. mantids vs. whip scorpions. All of the above times 500 for arthropods vs anything like a guinea pig.

This exact thing is also what makes me nervous from time to time keeping an ear to the reptile community. Leopard and crested geckos are frequently touted as beginner friendly introductions to herp keeping. I’ve known children who had leos. “Beginner friendly” in pet husbandry means relatively easy/cheap to keep alive and healthy. It says NOTHING about the general tolerance of the animal to human handling or the amount of dedicated time and care you have to put in to desensitize said animal to human contact if your provider didn’t. These things will literally amputate their tails if startled too badly or handled wrong once, and tolerance to handling is not something anyone should be taking for granted from a new reptile. Times 500 again for athropods. There’s a huge reason that near every video of a smart keeper handling a defensive arachnid is preceded by moments of them testing where the line is with a pencil/stick and what sort of mood their pet is in before human hands come anywhere near it. You think owning cats is a strict lesson in respecting boundaries? Try and see how little leeway for harassment you’ll be granted from a cornered arachnid. That’s the thing- they’ll always be the one in a corner if they feel threatened, and their instincts are not unjustified to remind them of that. In terms of size alone, you’re basically Cthulhu in comparison to them.

It’s amazing and awesome to see enthusiasm for invertebrate keeping on a rise, but first and foremost as long as that enthusiasm is matched by a willingness to treat them with no less respect and humility than any other exotic. Loving invertebrates means loving them for what they really are instead of some anthropomorphized ideal of them. It’s part of what makes them truly unique and in their own category of experience, and maybe that’s not for everyone and okay! You can still find them cute without needing them to be cuddly.

I am somewhat happy that jumping spiders are becoming popular as pets and even people who normally don't like spiders seem to find them cute, but people have GOT to stop acting like they are miniature mammals who want love and affection and pets and want to hang out with you.

I have seen countless posts in jumper groups from people asking why their jumper tries to escape when they're holding it or seems skittish or threat poses at them. It's because you are a giant predator and they want to get away from you. They don't get any happy chemicals from handling like mammals would.

I'm starting to see this in millipede groups as well. "Why is my millipede secreting this liquid on me?" Because it does not want to be handled. It's stressful for the animal, and stress can kill them.

Not only does it stress them, but often taking them out of their enclosure is dangerous for them - I have seen a lot of posts from people whose spider escaped and was injured or was crushed in the door of the enclosure because they were taking it in and out frequently. Drops can also be harmful, especially for larger invertebrates like tarantulas and bigger millipedes.

In general, invertebrate pets are not going to be a good option if you want to handle something frequently. There are definitely some species and individuals who tolerate it more, and if you're an experienced keeper, you can learn the signs of a stressed animal and only handle ones that are chill about it. But the majority of the time, they should be left alone and observed only.

Been wanting to brain myself with a hamer over some completely nothingburger vague nebulous internet drama, as ya do, so I’m starting to become really radical about the grasspill lately.

I couldn’t force myself to just stay off of social media entirely even though I knew I was in a place mentally that warranted a break, so I promised myself and my friends that the next time I saw anything in my feeds that annoyed the shit out of me, I’d get dressed, walk straight outside and pick up that trash by the treeline that I’d occasionally been complaining about seeing outside my window for the last few days. Didn’t matter what website it came from, the rules were set.

What do you know it didn’t even take 12 hours before I hit another “anime forehead vein bulge” moment over some YouTube comment shit and instead of wasting my keyboard warrior breath I got shoes on, put a podcast into my headphones, and literally just picked up litter out of the stormwater section of my neighborhood until staying that angry finally started to seem ridiculous. I got two garbage bags full of styrofoam, plastic, etc out of the woods and I’m actually feeling pretty damn good about it and surprisingly, not regretful of focusing my limited time and energy on something other than doomscrolling or bickering with strangers on the interwebs about esoteric niche ass discourse. I even found four more cicada husks for my collection (super cool)

I’m so not regretful of that that it’s probably going to become a running policy of mine now that the weather’s getting better here. Dumb bullshit pisses me off too much, I’m grabbing my net and I’m gonna go look for critters and scavenger hunt down more styrofoam packing peanuts I might have missed by the creek. Hell, maybe I’ll bring the dog too if I feel like it. Ending point is only the reminder for a LOT of you on the interwebs to consider just, anything spontaneous and outside of the box that seems literally designed to keep you chained here by your anger instead of your joy. In any game where once you start to introspect, you find out that you are more the ball for algorithms and trolls to score points with than you are a player, sometimes the healthiest option is to play something else for a change. Come back when it does something for you, on your own terms, by your own choice. Chase health over harm. Feed passion over despair.

Extremely important to increase awareness that often large herbivores are even MORE dangerous to you than the majority of carnivores. We don’t have natural predators anymore. We actually look very inherently intimidating and unnerving to most animals because of our body language and build. There are incredibly few species, few and far between, that may opportunistically try and see if we are a potential food source, usually desperate and exotic predators our most vulnerable are severely unlikely to ever encounter.

If something that eats meat is attacking you, incredible odds are that it is defending itself, its resources, or its young against you as a last resort. If they come out of a fight with a disabling injury, they are practically already dead. Their ability to fight starvation is so determined on keeping themselves in fit shape. They might not be able to go without food long enough for a broken leg to heal or at all if their sight is damaged enough. Even if they are trying to test out if you are good prey, most predators will somewhat reliably give up the attempt as soon as you can prove you are more more trouble than you are worth the calories spent trying to subdue.

To prey animals, you are the predator they have to dissuade or terminate in order to save their own lives if they have decided you are threatening them. The options they have to survive you in their mind are fight or flight. And if they did not evolve to primarily flee, watch out. Any scuffle they start with you they have started with the full expectation that either you or them may not make it out alive. Megafauna like moose are literally evolved to stomp opportunistic wolves to death (why they attack sled dogs) and beat grizzly bears back just to earn another day of browsing greenery. Hippos are 3,000 pounds of fresh meat surrounded by half a dozen infamous large predators. Do the math and it will be obvious why they are the most aggressive beasts in Africa. Why they have to be to stay alive.

The nutshell at the end of the day, and what I think is a much more bumper sticker worthy piece of wildlife advice we all would love to beam into the heads of average people is this:

If it does not fear humans, humans SHOULD fear it.

Any entirely wild animal that doesn’t react to your presence by trying to leave the area is not something laymen should want to interact with. Ever ever. If it is approaching you, back away. If it is holding its ground, back away. If it is in fact trying to get away from you, ffs, don’t chase after and corner it. Not adhering to this one idea I really really feel is the number one reason preventable wild animal attacks happen at all. We need less of whatever everybody calls the Disney princess mentality and more immediate suspicion when animals don’t treat you like they treat any other unpredictable predator. Because when it comes to something like foxes or skunks, this is literally a potential red flag for rabies. When it comes to black bears, you might be about to become a victim of some idiot who’s been feeding them. And when it comes to moose, and it’s too late to get away from them, you need to be ready to respect some very hard boundaries, put the animal down, or play dead and pray to whatever higher authority may or may not be.

There is a ton to enjoy about wildlife, and it is unironically really majestic and wonderous and all that jazz. This is never meant as encouragement to lose that awe and wonder for the world, only as another reminder that it serves everyone in the long run when you channel that into loving and respecting the wild for what it actually is. 

If there was one animal literacy thing I could change with a wave of a wand, it would be increasing people's understanding of how dangerous megafauna are. I think that in the US (and probably other Western countries too), we're so removed from wildlife and even large domesticated animals that people really have no perspective on how much a big animal can fuck you up. Even if they're "gentle."

This is a discussion going on on Twitter, too, the last few days: there was a thing where an Iditarod musher shot a moose to protect their team, and a lot of people are confused as to why that needed to happen. Apparently this moose had been hanging around the course for quite a while and was becoming quite dangerous to the sled dog teams. Moose are territorial and not to be fucked with. Everyone from Alaska or areas with moose are like "yup, that's just reality."

Same thing with the bison birth I watched last year. Folk really thought the staff should be in the habitat on the ground with the bison herd, helping with the birth. Sure, that's what we do with cows if we have to, but... bison are definitely not cows and, again, will squish you.

People tend to get it more with the predators. Few people will argue that a cougar or an alligator or a bear isn't dangerous. I think people kinda go both ways on wild pigs / boars depending on their experience. But herbivores or things that don't look traditionally pointy... it just kinda doesn't click.

Any large animal is probably stronger than you think and more likely to hurt you than you realize. Be it a dolphin, an elk, a sea lion, or even an emperor penguin... just don't go near them, buds.