A tale of two kitties who must move.
So in less than a month, the kitties and I will be moving to a new house. I’m very excited about the impending move! The kitties very much would not be, if they knew about it.
Those of you who’ve been following me since 2020 may remember the last time I tried to move my kitties (who were born feral and have never fully recovered). That attempt resulted in me spending the first day of covid lockdown getting emergency hand surgery after Bennet administered some truly epic bites.
I’ve known for some time that I was going to have to try again to move the cats eventually. Because a while ago, I bought a house on the same block as my polycule and started renovating it. And I hoped to someday finish those renovations and move in. But – the cats! Or, mostly: but – Bennet! (Winter can be picked up and put into a carrier with only mild trouble. And back when I thought I would be moving three kitties, we were sometimes able to capture Tico.)
I thought for a while that I’d come up with a clever solution. During renovations, I frequently had to hire a vet tech to come give Tico insulin injections when I wasn’t home. And I thought, “Oh good – all the cats will all get used to the vet tech, and then the vet tech can help me move all the cats, because she’s much better at catching and handling struggling animals than I am.”
One problem: the vet tech was never able to even catch sight of Bennet, no matter how much time she spent here.
I thought I had another solution. I bought big leather gloves. I started wearing them for long periods of time and trying to pet/brush/feed Bennet, so that she’d get used to them.
Turns out, though, that Bennet will not be in the same room as me if I’m wearing the gloves.
I did also try all the more standard advice – feeding them inside their carriers so that the carriers stop freaking them out, and giving them treats regularly inside the carriers.
But Bennet just giraffes her little calico neck way out whenever the food is in the carrier, and she eats without ever placing her feet inside.
Bennet is also the least food-motivated cat I’ve ever met, and she is highly suspicious of treats. This makes it extremely hard to mix sedatives into her food, because she simply won’t eat if anything tastes at all weird.
But she can only avoid food for so long (I presume).
So I’m going extreme: I’ve got out the Big Trap.
ALTIt’s a bit Looney Tunes, I know.
For now, it’s very solidly propped up. All their cat food will be inside this thing for the next couple weeks. Bennet will have to get used to going inside… and as the food moves further from the entrance, her giraffe-neck trick will only get her so far.
Sometime in the couple of days before the movers arrive, I will remove the extra props. I will hold a very long piece of string attached to the remaining leg that holds the trap up. I will wait for as many hours as necessary, until Bennet goes inside. And then – boom.
(What then? Well, then you throw a blanket over the drop trap, and you attach a separate carrier to the door on the side of the drop trap, and then you remove the door between the trap and the carrier. And supposedly most freaked out cats will run out of the blanket-covered drop trap and into the carrier, especially if you put one of their favorite towels inside the carrier, and treats, and such. Bennet is hardly Most Cats, so there remains some question in my mind about that part? I think I will add a hard surface underneath the trap and the food soon, and then worst case I may end up nailing the dropped trap to that board and loading the whole darn thing into the moving truck. But assuming I do manage to capture them, there is an easy-to-close-off room where the cats can stay until the rest of the move is finished, so at least that part is figured out.)
Right now, Winter is nervous but accepting – so long as I stay back in the living room. She’s been pretty far inside the trap a few times and has sniffed everything extensively, though she prefers to sit outside while she eats.
ALT(The feeders will be migrating to the back of the trap over time.)
Bennet, so far, is having none of it.
ALTBut she has to eat someday, right?
Coffeeshop AU where Mrs. Hudson is the owner and Sherlock is the obnoxious barista who won’t let people place orders because he deduces what they want and also embarrassing things about their personal lives but they usually come back grudgingly because the coffee he brews is just that amazing and John Watson is home from the war and sees the HELP WANTED sign (they always are looking for help because nobody can work with Sherlock for more than a few hours before quitting) and Sherlock hands John a complicated coffee drink he’s sure he doesn’t want and also tells him everything about his tour of service and how it ended and why he’s here all from watching the way he sips it and John says “Fantastic!” And Sherlock says, “The coffee,” And John says “No,” and then when Sherlock frowns hastily adds, “well, yes, but I meant you,” and Sherlock remarks how that isn’t what most people say and they stare at each other dreamily until Mrs. Hudson comes in and asks for their help with a murder but she means committing it in a way the police will never detect because she was always savvier than her husband at mob business and took over after he was executed (and yes it was her who got him executed with Sherlock’s help but after all he wasn’t a very nice man) and John joins them and they live an exciting life of crime and coffee.
sent a message
I stumbled upon this... Thing by what looks like an actual journalism outfit, or at least their infographics wing. Thoughts?
Sighhhhh. Thanks for sharing this link (and then waiting three months for a reply, lol). I happened to have seen this one near to when it came out, but I am always glad to have people share such things with me!
So I have complicated, but partly “ARGH,” thoughts about this article. And I ranted about it in some detail in Slack when I first read it. I initially didn’t reply to this ask because I was trying to go back through the logs to find some of my specific past complaints, but they were lost to the mists of the Slack paywall. But here is my main complaint, roughly approximating the way that I probably ranted in Slack, for your enjoyment/excess punctuation needs:
There’s so much data visualization here! And ship artwork, and interactivity, and more – so much time clearly went into this!! But it’s over-extrapolating!! from one data set!! of the top ships on onLY ONE FANDOM PLATFORM!!!! About which they gave no caveats or historical context when extrapolating to “what fans ship and why”!!!!!! When a bunch of fans have written about what fans ship and why, and in some cases gathered data about how platforms differ, and some other fandom journalists have cited that work!!!!!!! Why did these folks not do more research first before diving into all that data visualization, especially if they’re journalists???????? ARGH.
But also…
At the same time, this is it’s so close to just being really cool! There is some nifty analysis in here, including about things like canonicity and changes over time! I want more of this kind of deep dive out there, and more analysis, and more visualization! And there are some cool links to both scholarly and journalistic writing about fandom, in addition to citing/making use of Lulu’s demographically detailed AO3 ship stats. So it’s an interesting meaty read, if you keep in mind the limitations.
@olderthannetfic and I co-presented at GeekGirlCon 2019 about differences among some popular fandom platforms (among other things). Here is one of the most relevant graphs for caveating the Pudding article about shipping and “what fandom ships”:
Franzi has also gathered a bunch of other data on differences between AO3 and FFN, and her earlier work on platform differences inspired some of my cross-platform comparisons about shipping, genres, languages. (@olderthannetfic please chime in with other relevant links if you want to, especially if you have more recent data!)
One of the things the Pudding shared that I found interesting was their comparison between the most common tags in M/M, F/M, and F/F:
[x] Nice to see more than just the top 10 tags, and interesting to see them categorized. I have gathered some related data about common AO3 tags in each of these categories, but I have to finish writing that up and sharing it. (That’s one of my WIP resolutions for this year.) But I did share some data about the differences in the relative amount of use of smutty and kinky tags on AO3 between the three shipping categories:
(A commenter recently reminded me of one of my conclusions: “Everyone has butts, but only pairs of dudes seem very likely to touch or lick or fuck them.” XD )
I find it interesting that F/M fic is most likely to tag Rough Sex and D/s! But of course, tagging behavior is not the same as what’s being written about. And this is just AO3 data, and sometimes relatively low numbers of it, so definitely not representative of fandom at large. :)
(…this all this reminds me how much I want to get back to this work and look more at other differences between the shipping categories!)
ANYWAY. That was possibly a longer answer than you wanted, and several months later than you were probably expecting. XD But I appreciate you sharing the link and asking!
sent a message
Hi! You made another (absolutely fascinating) post about commenting trends in fandom over time, and that got me thinking about another thing I’m curious about: differences in comment culture across fandoms. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed several fandoms (the Silmarillion and The Murderbot Diaries come to mind) that seem to get proportionally more / more detailed comments than other fandoms I’ve been in. I have no idea if this is backed up by evidence or if it’s possible to analyze that kind of thing with actual data, but I think it’s interesting!
Hey! Sorry this took ages to respond to – I believe you were probably referring to this post or the original of that thread, if you or anyone else wants a refresher on the context. :)
That’s really interesting, and matches with my own anecdotal experience when I’ve observed when I’ve dipped my toes into fandoms that were smaller but had at least a handful of people posting. I would bet that communities are more likely to form in smaller groups – you keep recognizing and interacting with a smaller group of people, and you feel more motivated to be thoughtful about their fanworks. Which I suspect then encourages even folks outside the tight-knit core community to leave longer comments.
But I have no relevant data yet – that’s all anecdotal/speculation on my part. I hope to get back to working on my ao3 comments soon and to keep looking at comment trends over time, though. And you’ve helped inspire me to think about analyzing comment length and to compare different fandoms, as part of that! :)
I’d also love to hear if anyone else has relevant data, or feel free to share your relevant experiences and/or hypotheses!
My partner’s household regularly has a bunch of easygoing/indecisive people trying to make dinner plans, choose a movie to watch, etc. When there are strong opinions and/or clear reasons to choose one thing over another, those prevail (it’s rarely the case that there are conflicting strong opinions). But to deal with the vast majority of cases where everyone says, “I’m fine with whatever,” there is a rotating dictator.
The dictator changes every week and is listed on the shared household calendar. The dictator has the job of making the decision whenever decision-making stalls. Because the household is so easygoing, the dictator is more of a dreaded position than a desired one. But someone has to have the responsibility for making things actually happen, and that’s a fair way to distribute the burden. XD
As a result of this, in other indecisive groups, I will sometimes say, “I’m willing to be dictator if nobody has a strong opinion.” (I get weird looks sometimes, so if I don’t have time to explain about the rotating dictators system, I will just say, “I’m willing to make an arbitrary decision” instead.) I almost never have a strong opinion, but worst case I can always flip a coin – and if anyone DOES have a preference, that often surfaces it.
I’ve just discovered the AO3 tag Please Enjoy Each Sentence Of This Fic Equally, and I’m laughing. XD
ALTApologies to all those in Seoul/nearby with the proper cultural context for this sculpture… but spotting it without such context caught me off guard, and I must admit I snorted.
ALTAchievement unlocked: visited a giant 3D calico cat billboard in Tokyo!!!
Sorry for the poorer quality of this gif, but I also have to share the kitty knocking things off a ledge:
ALTALTAchievement unlocked: visited a giant 3D calico cat billboard in Tokyo!!!
ALT
Toastystats: F/F stats (Feb 2025)
Happy Femslash February! <3 I have new stats about big F/F ships and F/F-heavy fandoms on AO3. For explanations, clarifications, and corrections, please click through to AO3.
Edit: note that “foreground” as used here means “works that are nearly guaranteed to be mostly about F/F, because the other largest shipping categories (F/M and M/M) are filtered out.” That definition reasonably demotes some F/F ships that are mostly background ships, but it also overly demotes some ships like Catradora that have common F/M or M/M background ships. I’ve edited the post to add graphs of the fandoms and ships with the most F/F works overall, in addition to the those with the most foreground F/F. Click through to AO3 for longer versions of all these lists, as well as for more explanations.
