#he acted as almost an esa i guess

[tetrisfinished]

homework

on monday i had my appointment with my therapist.

i think this is not new news here - i'm pretty sure i've mentioned that i am seeking professional help in order to straighten out my life, my brain, how i deal with my life, etc.

if i haven't...well there it is.

anyway. she gave me some homework - she asked me to write down all the things that i can that would make my life "ideal".

so i thought i would do that. here. i guess i want to put it here almost as an archive benchmark of the place i'm in now and what i consider to be my ideal place and HOPEFULLY someday look back on it and think wow i've gotten it!

or alternatively someday look back on it and realize perhaps what i thought was my ideal would actually have been wrong or bad for me and....hindsight is of course, 20/20.

anyway so here it is: my ABSOLUTE ideal life would be....that i fall back in love with my husband. i fall back in love with him, i am able to respect him again, i am able to create a non-toxic home for my child who deserves to see his parents in a loving relationship.

that's my ideal.

in this ideal, i don't account for any changes that i want to see in yasir. it only accounts for me making a complete 180 and just developing the ability to let go of my anger and emotions and accept my sole responsibilities and maybe even be grateful for the morsels that yasir picks up and does along the way.

i guess, to be fair, this is only my ideal because i want to provide esa a home that's not broken or severed.

it's not my ideal because it actually is my ideal.

we'll call this "ideal" sabr.

my next ideal is....that both yasir and i change. god knows we both need to . i need to be able to let things go, take away my anger, regulate my emotions.

and yasir needs to understand his responsibilities, act like an adult, take part in the household, actively handle chores and work.

that's my ideal for me....i feel in my heart of hearts that now that is the only way that i will be able to open my heart to yasir. otherwise, we're just too far gone.

and oh, another part of this scenario would be that IDEALLY....i wouldn't have to teach yasir how to be an adult. because - if i've said it once, i'll say it a million times over - i am NOT his mother. i do not take or own the responsibility of raising this manchild. and if we're talking ideals anyway...well wouldn't that be just dandy that one day (with or without help) yasir wakes up and is a sensitive and caring and mature adult human being who willingly takes on domestic labour and parenting responsibilities and IS NOT a lazy fuck.

this ideal i think we'll call.....unattainable.

only because from yasir's words and his body language....he refuses to accept that he actually needs to change. and in his own perception he does more than enough of his part in our family unit.

obviously, i disagree.

my third ideal is...i guess i'll call it acceptance.

i accept that my relationship with yasir has more than expired.

i accept that yasir will not change and it will take only miraculous amounts of said change for me to even bat another eyelash at him.

i accept that i am parenting and working and own responsibility for 2 adults in my household.

and i MOVE THE FUCK ON. in this ideal, i explain to esa....that sometimes mamas and babas don't love each other anymore despite that they still love their esa's the ABSOLUTE FUCKING MOST. but for their own sanities and self respect....they have to separate.

and then we separate. and somehow i get to live and own my own home exclusively with my kid. i find a good babysitter. my kid is NEVER mad or upset with me for making this nasty tough decision. and the rest of the world just sort of....leaves me alone.

in this ideal...i would also LOVE it if every single person went out of their way to validate my decision to separate as well. and no one thought of me as villainous (despite that currently i do feel like i am being perceived as villain bahu in my susraal).

and we go on living. and perhaps in this ideal, i lose a shit ton of the weight i gained and it turns out it was the weight of the stress and the world and the overwhelm that i was carrying that's to my dysfuctional past life and shitty marriage.

and then i become beautiful and someone else beautiful (INSIDE ESPECIALLY) comes into my life and i am able to once again accept a man as my husband and this time....i start off better. but he also treats me right.

those are my scenarios.

i only named one of them unattainable but if i really critically look at them...they're all fucking unattainable.

i'm so done with marriage. and especially my own.

much love,

k

[luciehercndale]

42 with thomastair, if it's not a bother?

Hi! Thank you for this prompt bc it let me write domestic!Thomastair 💜😜😁 and sorry for the delay.

Couple/Characters: Thomastair, Thomas Lightwood and Alastair Carstairs Rating: T Prompt:  Distracting kisses from someone that are meant to stop the other person from finishing their work, and give them kisses instead.

The snow hadn’t stopped falling for hours. This might have been a problem to anyone who had ventured outside and desired to go home. Especially if they didn’t have a carriage to shelter them from the cold and the possibility of falling ill. 

The snow didn’t bother Alastair at all. On the other hand, it was the perfect excuse to pass more time in Thomas’ flat in Grosvenor Square. If it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have even bothered to go out in this weather, let alone extend his welcome past respectable visit hours. 

Thomas wasn’t anyone. He was his omr-am, his life.

Alastair turned. Thomas‘s eyes were fixed on a stack of papers, and they had been for hours. He snorted, passed a hand through his hair in frustration, and kept reading. Alastair knew how much his job meant to him. How proud he was when he got the position in the ranks of the Enclave. It wasn’t an important post, but Alastair had seen the accomplished and satisfied expression on Thomas’ face when he got it. He was aware that he wanted to prove to them that he was the right person for the job, and Alastair didn’t want to bother him while he processed all of those documents. 

Above Thomas’ head, the clock chimed midnight. Alastair didn’t remember how much time had passed since his partner had been dedicating himself to reading annoying archives, but he was certain it was enough to make one go crazy. He had distracted himself with a book, while Thomas attended to his duties. But he felt like Thomas needed a break, a longer break.

He crossed the room to Thomas’ desk. The noise of his socked feet didn’t make his partner turn, or even raise his head. Alastair cleared his throat, but nothing happened. Thomas didn’t distract easily, and sometimes, that was a problem. He didn’t know when to stop and not to push himself, when it came to doing things. He hated doing nothing.

“Hamsar-am,” Alastair murmured, trying not to raise his voice too much. 

“Mmmh,” Thomas replied. Alastair thought he was going to stop and acknowledge him, but he didn’t. He said another, “Mmmh,” instead.

“Take a break,” Alastair almost begged.

“I’m almost done,” he retorted, but his tone was tired, defeated. He needed to rest.

Words weren’t having the desired effect, thus Alastair decided it was time to act. Bring back Thomas on earth, so to speak. 

He moved behind him, and lowered his chin to the level of Thomas’ head. Alastair’s lips grazed Thomas’ neck slowly. First on the right, then on the left. He could feel Thomas shiver under his slight touch. He wiggled his shoulders and gasped, but his eyes were still glued on his desk. If there was a prize for the most determined and studious, perhaps Thomas would win it. 

Alastair thought he needed to be more convincing. He put his hand on Thomas’ arm and lowered himself towards his mouth, and kissed him. Thomas didn’t see it coming, because he widened his eyes when he saw him getting closer. But that was the intention. Taken by surprise, he didn’t reciprocate at first. Then his hand cupped the side of Alastair’s neck and deepened the kiss. 

Thomas licked his lips once they stopped, while Alastair smirked at him. “If this is your idea of a break,” Thomas said, “then I’m down.”

He moved the documents aside, careful not to mess them up, and stood up, facing Alastair, who was still behind his chair. He pushed it aside, sat down on the table, and grabbed Alastair by the side of his undone white shirt. They kissed again, in a turmoil of hands and lips that tried to taste every exposed area available. 

Alastair’s forehead touched Thomas’ when it was over. “I love how you took that literally,” he commented, moving his hands on his shoulders.

“It’s not my fault I’m tall, Alastair.” 

“Mercifully, everyone is the same height when they’re sitting down,” Alastair tilted his head, and they both laughed.

“Are you staying?” asked Thomas afterwards. There was hope in his voice. 

“Of course I am,” Alastair said. “Where am I supposed to go in this weather?” he said, glancing at the window briefly. The snow was still falling hard. The panes were stained with pale frost now, and it looked like it wouldn’t stop anytime soon.

Thomas raised an eyebrow, but he was grinning. “I guess it’s time to retreat to the other room,” he murmured.

“Definitely,” Alastair agreed, then took Thomas’ hand and turned the lights off.

Notes: omr-am means “my life”; hamsar-am means “my equal head/my equal partner”.

Taglist (if you want to be added or removed, send me a PM): @princesslucretia @kit-12 @immortal-enemies @lucian-evander @esa-emery @danieldyers @blackthorn-trash @rinadragomir @fortunesandfables @itsdaughterofthemoon @blxck-swxnn @thomastair3

#tsc #tlh #thomastair #alastair carstairs #thomas lightwood #the last hours #the shadowhunter chronicles #chain of gold #chain of iron #chain of thorns #tweety.writes #Anonymous #posta #Tweety.txt

[victorianwhitechapel]

⚫CHAPTER 288: SOME BODY MISSING 🔞⚫ The widow Powell had a very unpleasant surprise when she went that morning to the grave yard and saw her late husband's body missing... She started crying and couldn't breath. Minnie the flower seller went with her to the police station, and luckily she did, as Mrs Powell was almost to collapse. - My grave! - she was screaming -. It's been robbed!! My poor Anthony! - Excuse me, madam, can you explain what happened? - asked the police officer, with lots of patience. - He was recently buried, and now is gone! - Was he buried with goods, with...? - No, sir - she was adamant -. We're not rich. PC Michael heard it and went to talk to Byron, the coroner. - Maybe they wanted the body - Byron said, after thinking a while -, if he had a rare illness. - I thought bodies weren't snatched any more - said Michael -, that the Anathomy Act was to provide them all, to all doctors... - It is illegal, yeah, because the Act is not enough, sadly - said Byron -. My guess is that he had a rare condition and someone paid the grave diggers to retrieve the body for study. Michael had shivers down his spine. ▪️▪️ La víuda Powell tubo una desagradable sorpresa esa mañana al visitar la tumba de su fallecido marido, pues su cuerpo no estaba. Empezó a llorar y no podía respirar. Minnie la florista la acompañó a la comisaría, y suerte, porque la víuda se iba a desmayar. - Mi marido! - gritó -. Me lo han robado! Mi pobre Anthony! - Perdone, señora - dijo el oficial armado de paciencia -, me puede contar qué ha pasado? - Lo enteraré hace poco, y ya no está! - Lo enterraron con bienes, con...? - No, con nada - ella fue implacable -, no somos ricos, señor. El policía Michael lo escuchó y fue ha hablar con Byron, el forense. - Quizás querían el cuerpo - reflexionó Byron -, puede que tubiera una enfermedad rara. - Pensaba que no se robaban cuerpos ya - dijo Michael -, que la Ley de Anatomía ya era suficiente para los doctores... - Ya, es ilegal - dijo Byron -. La Ley no es suficiente, por desgracia. Creo que robaron el cuerpo para su estudio médico, seguro que tenía una condición rara. A Michael se le puso la piel de gallina. #victorianplaymo #victorian_playmo https://www.instagram.com/p/CY9PJ74sMt1/?utm_medium=tumblr

#victorianplaymo #victorian_playmo

[thepaperpanda]

A Dream || Sam Drake x Reader smut

Summary: How surprised Sam is when he meets you in the prison, and when it turns out you're the friend of Adler. Fortunately, Drake lets you play a little game with him.

Warnings: SMUT

Words: 2975

Authors: Cass & Rouge

♠

Sam sat in his prison cell, steering at the empty wall. What else he could do? He was completely closed off from the world. Only him, empty cell and sounds of the other prisoners outside.

It was a "normal" day until two guards opened the door to his cell. "¡Es tu día de suerte! Tienes un visitante! Buena esa. Levántate."

Sam blinked deeply confused. Who would visit him? Did Nate somehow find out that he was alive?

Sam didn't need any troubles, so he cooperated with guards. They pulled him out from the call and started to lead him down the corridor, until they stopped in front of a big door.

He heard about this room. It was a special private place where some of a more privileged prisoners could meet with their partners or whores. Before Sam could ask anything guards pushed him inside.

There was a nice looking girl, she was sitting on the bed and now was smiling at Sam.

"Can I help you... Miss?" Sam asked more confused than ever before.

"My name's Y/N," you introduced yourself briefly as you had gotten up and looked man in the eyes. "Let's say that someone's payed me to accompany you a little. Unless you're not Samuel Drake?," You put your hand to your left hip and sent him a feisty grin.

Sam frowned, looking at the lady if front of him. She was hella pretty, simply right in his taste but this all was odd.

"I am Samuel Drake and let me guess. Your "someone" is Rafe Adler, did he send you? Tell your asshole boss that I will not help him with tha treasure." He muttered, crossing arms over his chest.

You measured his features with interested glance. Drake, even taking the fact he wasn't that young anymore, was a handsome, tall man with brown thick hair and beautiful eyes.

"He didn't send me here for bargaining purposes," you explained shortly and reached to the bag you were having with yourself and which was placed on the bed. You pulled pack of cigarettes and lit one, then walked to the window with a view on an island and ocean. "Let's say that his only goal is to get back on good terms with you."

"Get back on good terms? By sending me a whore?" Sam asked, checking out your body.

It's not that Sam wasn't attracted to you, he was. The truth was that he would fuck any girl he could right away, but the fact that Rafe sent you bothered him.

Standing with your back to him, you had only smiled to yourself. "I'm not a whore," you said simply. "Let's say that I'm a close friend of Rafe that was bored enough with my loneliness so as soon as he asked me to visit you, I took this proposition without blink of an eye. He described you as a nice, rather humble man. He didn't only mention that you're fucking handsome...," The last sentence you almost whispered so he wouldn't hear.

You smoked half of the cigarette while watching the beautiful landscape outside of the window, and after that you had turned to face man once more. With the swing in your hips you walked to him slowly, and stopped only few inches from him.

"Want a cigarette?," You offered with a cocky smirk dancing on your lips. You put your palm to his chest, massaging his muscles slightly. "I have a real cigarettes, not such a shit they used to smoke here."

Sam's frown never disappeared, this everything was highly suspicious. He still didn't trust you at all, but he accepted the cigarette, Sam needed a real one. "Some fire, please?"

You gave him a lighter and slowly started to circle him. "Look at yourself, Drake. Rafe offered you freedom, you declined. It was your right to do so. And did he press on you more? No. He just wants you to realize that he is sorry for the misunderstanding between you two."

Sam sat down on the bed that was placed in the room for a visitors' comfort. The mattress was soft, overall this bed was much better than a regular bunk.

Sam lightened up the cigarette and looked up on you, letting out some of smoke trough his nostrils. This cig was a really good one. "More like 'between you three', girl. There was three of us here." Sam corrected you."I didn't expect such an asshole to have a friend like you."

You leant back against the solid, metal door and looked at man. "Even a person like Rafe can have amigos, as you see," you replied shortly. "Ah. Right. Your younger brother. What's his name? Neil? Nolan? Ah, Nathan! What a cute name for a boy," you giggled as you walked to Sam and stopped in front of him. "But I rather like Sam. It's a good name for a badass like you."

Sam chuckled, letting a big cloud of smoke escaped his lips. "You try to flatter me too hard, babe, and I am not confused by fact that asshole has a friend. I am more confused by fact that his friend isn't acting like a spoiled brat like he is."

You cocked your brow at his comment only. "Rafe did mention that you might be stubborn. I can see what did he mean by myself now," you informed the man.

Second later, you pulled your skirt a little up your thighs so it was comfortable for you to straddle his lap.

Sam watched you with slightly clouded gaze, those years of isolation and loneliness were getting to him and your present did not help him.

"Well, I am stubborn. That's my thing." He wrapped his arms around you, his hands found their way under your shirt. Sam let out a sigh at the feeling of a soft skin under his rough finger pads.

You bit your lower lip and chuckled darkly at his actions. The roughness of his hands on your skin turned you on so much. You leant towards him and nibbled onto his earlobe. "I'm not even going to argue, handsome," you whispered directly into man's ear.

One of your hands slipped between your bodies to rest onto his crotch. You smiled even more at the feeling of hardness of the bulge within his old jeans.

Sam looked at you with a soft smile, he took the cig out of his mouth. "You like what you feel? You can't blame a guy for being hard when he didn't see a single woman for years."

"Oh, poor thing!," You gave him a peck to his jawline and didn't forget about rocking your hips a little so you rubbed your pussy against his bulge. "Must be hard to fap alone, huh?," You teased him as you pulled the cigarette out of between his fingers. You inhaled fully and dropped the end of cigarette on the concrete floor. You cupped Samuel's face in your palms and slowly started kissing him while exhaling the smoke right into his mouth.

Taking the strong smoke wasn't now filtered, it was easy to get a little high by such an action.

You hummed at the end of the kiss, and wrapped arms around his nape.

Sam growled annoyed as soon as you pulled away, he didn't like fact the kiss ended so quickly.

"As much as I enjoy it... And as much as the tightness of my pants annoys me, I can't help but still feel suspicious about you." Sam said openly as his hand stroked your back. "Cute girl came to place like this... To meet with someone like me. Weren't you scared I will hurt you?"

"You? The infamous Samuel Drake hurting the girl? Nah, baby, ain't gonna happen," you told him and started to kiss his jawline, slowly yet constantly. "I can be dangerous as well so how do you know that you shouldn't be afraid of me?," You asked as your skilled fingers unbuckled his belt.

"Me? Being afraid of a little girl like you, ain't gonna happen." Sam placed you properly on his lap, his big hands grabbed your sides and moved up, uncovering your skin.

At this point Sam was gone, all he desired now was some of a physical contact he missed for years.

He removed your shirt and threw it on the floor, he looked at you fully. "Now... This is a nice view." Sam purred before slowly taking off your bra.

You licked your lips as your breasts were exposed to his sight. You felt some butterflies in your stomach and some knot building up in your abdomen. Oh, how much he was turning you on!

You slipped hands into his hair, and started rocking your hips as you held onto his neck, slowly scratching his skin there with your fingers.

"You like it, don't you?," You let out a quiet moan. "Oh, Samuel. Such an eager boy. Make out nicely with me and you'll get an award."

"Sweetheart, I am a treasure hunter. I don't get the reward, I find it and take it all by myself."

His lips wrapped around your nipple, he sucked and moved his tongue around it. One of his hand quickly found its way under your skirt and panties, he didn't waste time as his finger started to circle your clit.

He had gotten you. As much as you wished it wouldn't happen, you started to be turned on. Moaning louder and louder, you rolled head back and enjoyed his mouth on your nipples as well as his fingers rubbing onto your clit. "The treasure hunter, huh?," You moaned through parted lips and soon escaped his laps.

You simply knelt in front of the man and unzipped his jeans and its fly only to freed Sam's already half-erected cock. You gasped a little at his size and licked your lips while pumping your palm up and down his shaft covered with veins.

Sam chuckled. "No need to be so shocked, babe. I am just a decent man with a decent cock." He said moving hand into your soft hair, Sam let out a quiet purr at the nice feeling. He definitely needed that.

You smiled at man and simply wrapped your mouth around his tip. Then, slowly, you slipped his shaft further. You moaned at the same time. His skin tasted like a salt but you didn't mind it at all. In fact, you missed such an intimate moments with a man in a great while, since your ex boyfriend had left you for other woman. Dick.

At first, you were bobbing your head back and forth slowly, doing you best to make his shaft as slick as possible.

After few longer moments that seemed like an eternity to you, you pulled his thick cock out of your mouth only to spit on it and spread the saliva along his length with your palm. You raised your head to look him in the eyes.

Sam watched you the whole time, his hand played with your hair while other kept him from falling backwards.

"That's nice and all, babe, but I really need something else." He got up, and then effortlessly picked you up, pressing you against the wall. Who the hell needs bed, right?

You gasped at the unexpected behavior of the man but you moaned second later, in anticipation of his actions. Quickly and smoothly you slipped your lacy panties down and stepped out of them.

"Let's leave the skirt on, huh? It looks nice on you, Y/N." He smiled at you and then grabbed your legs, wrapping them around his waist.

Sam kissed you deeply, slowly easing himself inside of you, he gasped against your lips. The feeling of your tight, wet pussy around his cock was a blessing. "You're tight, babe. I can tell you aren't a virgin, some asshole didn't took a good care about you?" He purred into your ear as he started to move his hips.

One of your hands was instantly wrapped around his strong neck while the other one was playing with your breasts, pinching your nipples a little. "Fuck, right there," you shut your eyes and parted lips, so the soft hum left them. "So good, that feels so fucking hot," you prised him. "Tight only for you, Drake. Your cock's stretching me so fucking good, Sam," you kissed his jawline and whined loudly as you felt how his cock was moving in and out of your dripping wet pussy.

Sam smiled and started to move faster. His hand replaced yours on your breasts, playing with your nipples. "I hope that such a good girl is on some pills or different shit. Because I am not going to stop myself, sweetheart." He purred deeply and grabbed your chin, forcing you to look directly at him.

You rested the back of your head against cold wall and let out another grunt. "Just fuck me, I need your fucking cock to fuck this little cunt of mine," you begged him and soon wrapped both of your hands around his neck so he was holding you in air while tearing your cunt apart.

"Well, if you ask so nicely, babe." Sam chuckled and started to move you faster on his cock, placing a soft kisses on your shoulder and neck. "You feel so fucking good, Y/N. Look what you are doing to me." He growled, feeling himself getting closer.

"Let... Me... Ride you," you begged in shaking voice as you felt your juices slowly dripped down your thighs.

"Taking fact you ask so nicely." Sam moved away from the wall and lied on the bed. "Go on, little one." He purred as his hands started to massage your hips.

Resting your hands on his broad chest, you started to buck your hips back and forth, hardly, strongly. Your eyes never left his. You laid more onto his chest so his cock was leaving your pussy almost completely only to be slammed back in with a strong movement. You knew he was nearing his pick as his cock started throbbing, you felt how hard he was. "Fuck you, Drake. Oh, God, this is so fucking amazing, just like this and I'll fucking cum," you moaned and smiled to him as you leant forward to steal a kiss from his lips.

He pulled you closer and kissed you deeply, pushing his tongue into your mouth. Meanwhile his hand moved between your bodies to play with your clit.

Soon, Sam sat up a little and smiled. "You like it, don't you." He teased as his rough fingers rubbed your bundle of nerves harder.

You ached your back and let out nothing but a scream mixed with moan as the touched you that way.

You used all of your strengths to push him back on the bed and you rode him nicely and hardly. The bed was soon rocking back and forth, according to your strong, rapid movements.

Your mind was overwhelmed by your rapture and need of being appeased.

Your pussy finally started clenching rhythmically around his shaft and you rolled you head back. You hadn't stopped your movements even when you were reaching your peak, you decided to chase your orgasm as much as you were able to because you had wanted to get there with him...

Sam smiled seeing you struggling. The truth was he wanted to torture you until you will beg him for your realise, but your company was first in years, and Sam didn't dream about anything else.

He grabbed your hips and started to slam his ones into you harder than ever before. Soon ,he reached his climax, cumming deep inside of you. Sam was nuzzling to your shoulder trying to catch his breath. "I am getting too old for this." He joked, kissing your jaw.

You laid on his chest, still gasping for air. "Oh, God...," You whispered as you waited politely for your breathe to calm down. Rising your head a little, you looked him in the eyes and ran you fingers through his hair. You stole another kiss from his lips and stretched to sit on his lap properly, just you were doing while riding him. "It was a great fun but it's time for me," you informed him, looking around in attempt of finding your panties. His cock was still buried within your core.

Sam let out a deep sigh. "Here comes a sad part. Tell your pal that if you visit me one... No... Three more times than I will rethink the offer of him bailing me out." He said and slowly removed you from his cock to let you dress up.

You blinked and let out a little laughter. "C'mon! What was that even?!," You had gotten up to your feet only to realise that his sperm was dripping down inner parts of your things. You shivered and slipped hand between your legs to rub yourself, only to taste his cum from your fingers. You hummed as you did so, and then you quickly stepped in your lacy panties. "You taste bitter like espresso," you winked at him. "I like that."

As soon as your clothes were adjusted properly, and the bag was on your shoulder, you walked to the door and stopped only to turn your head to him. "Next time I come back here, you're going to leave with me as a free man."

As soon as Sam was prepared to leave he was dragged out from the room and taken back to his luxury cell.

"From haven to a gray reality." He muttered and lied down on his bunk. All that left for him now was a hope.

Hope that you weren't just a dream and that he will indeed leave this cursed place anytime soon.

Pandies🐼: @imidarogerson @grossograsso @thewildgardensstuff @leven-and-ashley @la-verdura @bearded-steve-rogers @atuckyismylife @krispyjellyfishzombie @personality-within @haseki-huricihan @choppedgardenwhispers @vroobelek @lattimelka @chris-beamz @purepearls @volcanoxxx @kastrup-sofie @mikkal-akasaki @withoutashadowofhope @radbluebirdeagle @smutloversblog @buquete @super-psycho-love69 @tanglesss @peter-sommer @baysidewest @vegemania @philip-stan @chodiusmmm @tykorclint @dagger-dragger @kurant @oxfordkipem @deliciousbouquet90 @tuptuptup @hellenna80 @karina-marina9 @latimeriaaa @bratko @wurld89 @scott-evans @kiss-me-rouge @ovonel-espaniol @dancing-tacco @ratugadhi @white-tiger-shangrila @axn69 @eternal-life-awaits @mrs-laura-harmon @gleeeeees @darkllaama @jatut @agawux @fuzzy-tigrrr @jrjohnsson2 @maaargoshaaa @einexx @nwmtagsb @secretlygrantaire @kyloren-supreme-ben​ @infinity-stones-seeker @thehappyspider @wings4life @huxyluxy @dontbeafraidchild​ @misafiryanki​ @electronicpatrolcollective​ @thisismysecrethappyplace​ @aulika​ @a-happy-wolf​ @creative-seahorse​ @biologyforliving​ @stareyedplanet​  

#Sam Drake #Samuel Drake #Sam Drake x reader #Sam Drake x reader smut #Sam Drake smut #Samuel Drake smut #uncharted 4 #uncharted 4 smut #uncharted smut #reader insert #smut story #steamy smut #sam Drake needs some love #drake brothers

[assim-eu-sou]

Bia 2:35-36

2:35

- Aw, some smiles… it’s been a while

- Give the boy a hug, dammit

- PLEASE not him trying to make her jealous and then making that silly face HAHA

- PAULA!!!! She’s driving the HECK out of that Carmilex ship

- Chiaraaaaaaaa

- I appreciate the honesty here at least

- HAHA I’m dead at the way Ana is just sleeping on the piano smiling

- Lmaoooo I love when the subs say Helena and someone has just said Ana

- Ana like I AM LOOKING AWAY

- Saudade….

- Aw them singing in Portuguese because they miss Brasil :’)

- Come onnnnn Pietro… Ana??? Thiago??? It’s obviously Zeta

- Uh oh…. How could Antonio forget about the grandmother

- Smh…. Marcos needs to chill

- Every once in a while I remember these people had to learn a whole other language for this show and ahhh… so talented….

- Portuguese Jazz! I love that style.

- Ayyyy esas miradas….

- Ana I am in LOVe with you bye no reason

- Ugh sometimes the subs just do not express the sentiment as deeply as they are meant to

- Like ik the phrase would sound a little odd in English but still

- Victor! Playing!

- Aw Alex is excited to see the guitar :’)

- I almost feel a nice feeling in his direction

- Is this… a nice moment?

- Wow… a nice moment with no BUT.

- YESSSS Bia the truth. At least.

- Awwwww Bia’s drawing of Chiara and Guillermo

- He is once again whipped

- Waiter!Manuel

- Oh Bia…. I see that look…

- And so does everyone else

- My babies stay in love

- Nah music styles from Brazil are so good

- The degrees in that room just shot up by like 100

- Knowing the context behind Ana and seeing this scene. boy….

- HELLO??????

- Nah I don’t wanna watch this. I’m just gonna sleep now actually. Because I don’t want to. Peace out.

- The way Ana’s face dropped. I need to take a walk.

- Flustered!Jandino

- Sigh….. leave Guillermo ALONE

- Omg Victor! Playing again!

- The guitar sounds kinda out of tune tho

- I love how he named the guitar Janice

- I love when Victor and Manuel gang up on Antonio

- Bilena my beloved

- I’m sure Ana is going through some shock rn hearing what Bia has to say about the tapes

- GUILLERMO COBRA? Well that complicates things

2:36

- Awwww I love Bia’s reaction to Ana telling her about Thiago <3

- Manuel is gonna feel like trash because Antonio has been fighting so hard to make sure no one knows they’re father and son. Poor baby.

- I wanna see some fraternal twin representation in TV.

- TwinMelody like…. these people are a little much

- HAHA Victor’s got him

- Odio ver la residencia y Thiago así :’(

- Thiago just looks on the verge of tears…

- Obligatory Alana is evil moment. How could she think to take moments like that away.

- Awwwww the way Manuel just spun Pixie

- La Residencia ——> el Fundom

- The way Thiago and Ana can still act married even after fighting… idk, couldn’t be me

- Chiara is very impressed with Bia’s mystery board

- The blame goes to Victor. Close, Bia, just keep going.

- Don’t tell me Aillén is onto Guillermo

- The trio and Grita :)

- Ah right, I didn’t think about Ana and being at the fundom

- Big cringe moment

- Hey Thiago, maybe let Ana speak? Perhaps? PLEASE? You’re being unreasonable.

- Mi Binuel <3

- Ayyyyyy Manuel…… ever the romantic

- Bia. What was your idea??!!

- Is Aillén calling Celeste??? What is she gonna say???

- Organizer Pixie

- Ok but tbh I would give anything to have a sleepover at the Fundom with the BeU kids.

- OH BOY not Bia saying she’s gonna invite ANA to stay at her house

- Guillermo….. come on…. You don’t need the cobra anymore.

- Kick him out kick him out, Antonio is useless to you, Paula.

- Dang this set of circumstances has really made me a Paula sympathizer… yikes

- Oooooooh so that’s what all the voice memos were for

- I wonder what Aillén has to gain from telling her this

- René….. music is NOT a waste of time :’(

- OMGGGGGG SHE REALLY JUST SAID THAT OMG I can’t wait to see what happens next

- Guillermo stays being whipped

- Chiara sounded great though

- Is he really gonna tell her???? Better now than later I guess. Well. We’ll see.

- No, this is too saddddd the empty residence, without all its charm…

- Someone please hug this man

- There we go, I knew I could count on Ana

- Something in my eye….. SOMETHING IN MY EYE

- OOP. Danger!

#bia liveblogs #bia liveblog #bia s2 #disney bia #bro I’m 🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲

[mmacabrera]

Opportunities we had lost || part 1

chapter 1: all those golden opportunities

summary: She was Goldie O’Gilt, she didn’t wait for opportunities anymore. She made them if it was necessary and she took them without letting go of even one bit. She could have this, if she didn’t have this when she was younger, maybe she could have this now. Goldie O’Gilt took what she wanted, this woman was no exception.

character/ships: m’ma cabrera/goldie o’gilt. only mentioned: scrooge mcduck/goldie o’gilt

word count: 4192

n/a: Reincarnation!AU, resolved unresolved sexual/romantic tension, making out, bamf adult ladies, made up backstories, some guns but they’re never used, visit my tumblr for the masterpost page of this fic

When Goldie was younger, thirteen years old at best, she met a foreign girl two years older than her that was part of a Spanish family that was looking for commercial anglings in Dawson. Goldie didn’t think too much about her at the start, except that she looked too serious to be so young and that even when she was incredibly beautiful, the air of calm and stubbornness surrounding her was her most attracting feature. Or at least, that was what she heard from the clients of the Blackjack.

In a place as boring as Dawson, the family converted themselves into the town’s new attraction in no time.

Funnily enough, three days after that, a scandal spread through town about them being “completely crazy” and “Spain probably is weird with people like that”. Goldie laughed hard when she finally heard the rumor, a teenager hitting a grown ass man with enough force to break his jaw because he touched her. Yeah, right, that couldn’t be true. And her parents didn’t scold her but encouraged her and not only that but they screamed at the man too? It sounded like a well made-up story to tell to naïve little girls about the power of love or some shit.

Until she saw Mr. McReed, a man known for his extreme horrible behavior towards young ladies who always got away with it, with his jaw broken and turning around scared every time a young woman passed by his side, it was then that Goldie knew she needed to meet this duck.

The opportunity came when the Flores Silva (someone kept talking about them in the saloon and spilled their family name) gave a visit to the Blackjack. Everybody whispered, everybody had something to say about them but the Flores Silva were oblivious or just didn’t give a fuck at all because they kept walking to the counter like nothing was going on around them. When they got to the counter, the adults demanded to talk to the owners for a business meeting. Their daughter seemed disinterested and kept looking around the saloon.

Goldie was working as hard as ever, always looking for the opportunity to approach the family when a man touched her waist weirdly. She let it past because it could have been an accident. Until the touch repeated and Goldie felt paralyzed.

The girls of the saloon told her it was normal, that men had the right to have whatever they wanted out of women because they were the ones that did all the hard work out there, they deserved it. It was the way of life.

Goldie didn’t like the so-called ‘way of life’ too much. But she couldn’t complain, because it would mean losing a client and making a fuss that maybe would make them lose even more clients, she couldn’t do that to her parents. They needed the money.

The man touched her again, this time she couldn’t suppress the indignant squeal that escaped her beak because he actually went directly to pull her tail, the man only laughed at her with his buddies. Goldie gripped her tray tighter, suppressing the need to scream in his face. She wouldn’t say something, it would cause trouble for her parents. She couldn’t-.

“I do not think the girl really likes what you are doing, maldito asqueroso. Let her go now, she is just a kid, are you stupid or just blind?”

Those words sounded ridiculously loud around the saloon even if she actually said then in a normal tone, but everybody was silent and the man that kept pestering her looked at the girl with the face of someone that didn’t know what ‘no’ meant. He stood up, towering the other girl easily with his muscles and height. Goldie held her breath along with the other clients of the Blackjack. Everybody waited for the explosion that supposedly should come with this foreign girl.

But she said nothing more than that, waiting for the man to talk.

“You think you can just say that to me, girl?”

“Let the kid go. Don’t make me lose my patience, man.”

Goldie indulged herself and took a good look at the girl while she was arguing with the bigger duck. She was, in fact, beautiful. A light brown duck with wavy darker brown hair that was long enough to get to her waist, she was slightly taller than Goldie, maybe one or two inches. She used some big jewelry too with a red dress that molded to her waist. It suited her, she thought. She was really attractive.

Then all hell broke loose. The man let go of Goldie and instead tried to grab the Spanish girl. She reacted fast, punching him in the gut with enough force to make him almost fell down before he could get to touch her. Screams were heard around the place but honestly, Goldie was mesmerized, she had never seen a woman fighting. The man, even more enraged now, sent a punch to the girl but she evaded it gracefully, the punch ended landing in an old owl that was just taking a beer, he got up and punched the duck on the face. His buddies got up to defend him.

Goldie, living in a saloon all her life, knew that this wasn’t going to end soon nor in a good way.

Goldie needed to act fast. Goldie took her hand and ran like a crazy into one of the dressers of the dancers and when she thought they were safe, she let her go and sighed. There were screams and the sound of things breaking outside the door.

“I guess that doesn’t happen in the country you came from.” She tried to make conversation.

The girl laughed. “Pfft, nada que ver. In Spain esa mierda happens too all the time. I really hate it. So I will never shut up about it until people understand that they can’t just accept that. Thanks for getting me out of there.”

Goldie put a wild strain in order, nervous out of nowhere. “Thanks for defending me.”

“What’s your name, anyway?”

“Golden O’Gilt. I’m the owners’ daughter, but everybody just calls me Goldie around here.”

“It’s a pleasure, Goldie. I’m Victoria del Valle Flores Silva, my parents call me Toya.”

“Toya?” It sounded weird in her tongue. Why would someone be called Toy-ia? Where did it come from? From Victoria? How?

“No, no. Oh por Dios, no.” Victoria laughed, snorting even. “To-Ya.” Goldie tried again but she didn’t seem to get it right. “Better drop it, just call me Victoria, it’s probably easier and my parents are the only ones that call me Toya anyways.”

Goldie felt curious. “How did you did that? I mean, fighting. I have never seen a woman fight like you before, I mean, except for slaps and pulling hair. You fought like a man out there.”

“I fought as people should fight, that was everything. Papá teach me how. I could show you, it’s not that hard.”

“For real?”

“Yeah, punch those nasty men into oblivion. Let the lady lead. Work for yourself!”

Goldie laughed immediately and when it subsided, she smiled at her. Victoria corresponded, and from then on, they decided they liked each other enough to keep a friendship.

It was a good one.

But one day, the irrepressible desire to kiss Victoria came to Goldie like an avalanche after hanging out with her around town. Funnily enough, it came with the most simple of things, Victoria was just smiling with her lips glossed over for some berries juice they just ate, and her lips looked kissable. Goldie definitely wanted to do that. She didn’t do it at the moment but if she learned something from Victoria was that women could do as much as men in desires and wishes.

Goldie would just wait for her opportunity to do her wish.

They encountered themselves alone a lot of times after that, but it never seemed to be the correct moment for Goldie anyways, so she kept waiting. She kept waiting even when Victoria gave her flowers or when she kissed her cheek or when she held her hand around the town for all the world to see. Even when Victoria’s eyes flew to Goldie’s lips sometimes.

Goldie waited for her opportunity until the day of the deadline arrived.

Victoria needed to go back to Spain. Goldie felt like crying that day.

Goldie promised that she wouldn’t let anyone step down on her. That if men could have whatever they wanted, so could she. And that she would find a way to see her again. Victoria just smiled, she seemed to be amused by her naivety, but accepted anyways and kissed her cheek again before going to the cart and not coming back ever again.

Sadly enough, the last promise, she couldn’t keep it in time.

She fell in love again with another person anyway so it didn’t matter, Goldie thought with slightly less remorse that she should feel, she guessed. The image of a Scottish duck with proudness in his smile and hardworking hands touching her hips passing through her mind.

But the desire, her wish for Victoria, remained.

.

Goldie thought reincarnation was overrated.

“You have the right to remain silent…”

Goldie even thought it was bullshit.

“…Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”

She had lived for a long time and not once she had met a person that resembled her past.

“…You have the right to an attorney…”

Her parents? Dead. Her friends? Dead. Her employees in Blackjack? Very, Very Dead.

“…If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you…”

The only person in her past that remained the same was Scrooge and that was because he wasn’t, you know, dead. That was not the case anymore, apparently.

“Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”

“Victoria?” The name escaped her beak before she could think about it. The woman behind her putting the cuffs raised a brow and looked at her with a confused expression. This was not Victoria, this woman couldn’t be Victoria.

Her eyes were the same. Her hair was the same even if it was shorter. Her feathers were the same. Her posture was too. But this woman could not beVictoria.

Victoria was dead too.

“Find a good synonym for that and maybe you will hit the nail, ma’am. For now, you’re arrested.”

.

“Don’t make it harder than it needs to be, Miss…”

“Goldie O’Gilt.”

“Ms. O’Gilt. I’m going to ask again. What were your intentions in that casino with Mr. McQueen?”

“Well, now that’s embarrassing, one doesn’t go asking about people’s personal lives.”

“Ma’am, you drugged him.”

“Oh, I did? Now, that’s what you said. Maybe we were having a complicate foreplay and you’re just meddling.”

The woman sighed, she looked like she was just going to hit her head against the wall. Goldie wanted to laugh, but she needed to concentrate on getting out of these handcuffs first. Thanks to however invented hairclips. “Don’t make me lose my patience.”

“You never were really patient, anyways.”

“You keep talking like you know me and it’s freaking me out. Just stop.”

“Look, Victoria-.”

“I’m not Victoria, I don’t know who is that person but I can assure you that you’re confused, ma’am. Please, just answer the questions already.”

Goldie shrugged. Ok, maybe there was the tiny little possibility that this woman wasn’t really Victoria, even when she was identical. Or maybe she lost her memories about who she really was or was just fucking with her or changed her name or just downright forgot about Goldie. That last possibility left her heart aching.

Or maybe she was her reincarnation.

No, reincarnation was bullshit.

The officer sighed again and looked at her, and for a millisecond Goldie saw it. A spark of something that equal women and men and people, in general, looked in her at some point.

Attraction. Oh, yes, she could work with that.

The officer sat down, giving her just a look of her profile, an elbow leaning on the table and her hand massaging her temple. Her brows were furrowed, her eyes with dark circles closed and she looked terribly tired. Likely caused by a long day at work and probably because Goldie was not cooperating at all. All that translated to Goldie in a weaker state, she could hit that.

“You seem stressed, officer.”

“It’s hard not to be while working with such a difficult person, Ms. O’Gilt.”

“Maybe I could help with that.”

The woman seemed to react a little but laughed. “If I wanted that type of help, I would get it in a person that didn’t have the habit of drugging men to rob them or whatever the hell you were going to do with him. Thanks but no thanks.”

Great, an officer with good ethics at work. Exactly what she didn’t need.

“Please, stop going around in circles, Ms. O’Gilt. Tell me why you did it, it can’t get worse than you drugging a man in a casino.”

Goldie rolled her eyes. She decided to give her something at least before escaping in another way. “I just needed some money. Men can be idiots sometimes, a cute look and they think they have you at their mercy. Especially men that like casinos, beer, and prostitutes. I’m used to those.”

“Well, not gonna fight that logic. And now we’re getting somewhere. For what did you need the money, Ms. O’Gilt?” Now, she faced her, both elbows on the table, hands joined and leaning at her. The officer was regaining confidence. Goldie heard a little click from behind her and smiled to herself. It was such a tragedy that Goldie needed to take that confidence away.

“Oh, sorry, about that I can’t tell you. I really need to go now.”

“What?”

Goldie got up and jumped to the table to attack her, a hard clang from the handcuffs hitting the ground resound around the interrogation room. The officer reacted fast, getting up from the chair in record time and pulling her gun out, but Goldie kicked the gun out of her grasp and took it. The woman went immediately to grab something in her back but Goldie pointed the gun at her head.

“Don’t.” She stopped immediately, visible gulped and sweated, looking at Goldie in a conflicting way. A hand in her back and an angry stare. “We both know it’s going to get ugly if you get that second gun out, officer.”

“Maldición…”

Goldie laughed. “What, you thought that because I let my guard down back there when you catch me in the casino that I wasn’t a fighter?” The officer tsked, too aware of the gun pointing at her. “Empty your pockets and pass me that other gun too, officer. When you are done, put your hands where I can see them. You know, up, up.”

The woman grumbled but did as she was told. She threw on the ground her gun, her badge, two sets of keys, probably one from her house and the other for the interrogation room, and her wallet. Then put her hands up. She looked even madder.

Goldie took the wallet and started inspecting it. Her I.D. said “Gloria Cabrera” born in 19–, so this wasn’t Victoria. Maybe, it was just a duck that looked like her (or her reincarnation, a traitorous voice sang in the back of her mind). Goldie didn’t give up. She found a photo while looking for other things that maybe could mean that this was Victoria after all. She got it out, she thought maybe it was something that could prove her point.

Oh, how wrong she was.

“Is this your son?” Goldie felt incredulous. Victoria didn´t want children. Nothing of this made any sense (no, it did, because she was not Victoria).

“Yes, he is…the love of my life.” Her voice sounded so soft out of nowhere, all her “bad police” persona left her in a moment. She looked completely different in less than a second. A doting mother who loved her son and was scared of leaving him alone. “He is probably waiting for his mamá to come home. Please, don’t do this. I want to see my baby.”

Goldie knew what she was doing. Manipulation. Oh, how much she hated that it was actually working. She wasn’t lying, she could hear the adoration and love pouring from her words but she wasn’t saying those things out of the good of her heart. She was saying it so the criminal would feel sorry for her and let her go. It wasn’t like she was really going to shoot her but now she almost felt bad about this, for making her believe that she was going to do it for real. Fuck the police, honestly. Fuck this officer in specific.

Well, now that wasn’t a bad idea.

Goldie left the photo on the table and started to walk towards the woman. She looked defeated. No, that wasn’t true. She looked accepting, she didn’t move, she didn’t break eye contact either. The strong police officer she met earlier came back full force. She stood her ground even when her hands seemed to tremble slightly from the effort of leaving them up. If she was going to die, she would die prideful, her posture seemed to say. Goldie stopped walking when the gun touched the officer’s chest. She closed her eyes for a second but opened them rapidly, still looking at her, still waiting for Goldie to make her move.

Goldie knew what she wanted to do, but for the second time in her life, she felt kind of lost in the decision of doing it or not. She couldn’t have Victoria in her moment, a Victoria that looked and presented herself like this officer in front of her. Strong and stubborn, full of confidence but humble too, that loved so much that was kind of overbearing at times.

Maybe this was the opportunity her younger self had been waiting for.

And if it wasn’t, she didn’t give a damn.

She was Goldie O’Gilt, she didn’t wait for opportunities anymore. She made them if it was necessary and she took them without letting go of even one bit. She could have this, if she didn’t have it when she was younger, maybe she could have it now. Goldie O’Gilt took what she wanted, this woman was no exception.

Goldie dropped the gun and hold Gloria’s face into her hands and kissed her. The officer kept still without moving an inch, her eyes were wide open, surprised. Goldie decided to close her eyes and imagined Victoria with her glossed berry’s lips kissing her back.

She didn’t expect the officer to do it anyways.

“Maldita sea.” She heard a whisper mumbled into her beak and before she could process it, two hands gripped her hips and turned her into the wall, but where Goldie expected a fist fight, she found a body pressing her into the wall even harder and a beak kissing her like she was going to kiss her soul.

She hadn’t had a kiss like this since, well, the Klondike. A kiss that made her want friction, that made her hands look for support. A kiss that ate her inside out. She wanted to put her legs around her waist and sink her fingers into her shoulder blades. So, she did it. Gloria seemed to kiss her even harder when she did. Her hands moving from her hips to her waist but never outside of that range but Gloria obviously wanted to do more, she felt it when she would grip a little tighter when her hands seemed to go a little farther. Goldie wanted to tell her she could do more if she wanted.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t kiss someone like me?” She said instead. Goldie felt completely breathless, her breathing labored and difficult. A younger Goldie was almost having a party in her mind.

“I’m having a really stressful day and you had been particularly annoying about it.” She sounded enraged, completely done with the situation. She knew a man that sounded like that sometimes with her. Maybe she had a type after all.

I need to go out of this city before he knows I’m here, now that I think about it. That’s why I needed the money.

“Who is going to know? Did you try to scam other men apart from the one in the hotel?” Uh, oh, she said that out loud.

“Aw, don’t be jealous, Victoria, sweetie.”

“Look, you keep calling me that and I keep telling you. That. Is. Not. My. Name.”

“What’s your name then?”

“Gloria Cabrera.”

“Gloria, huh?”

She already knew it, but it was still amusing to know that this was not, in fact, Victoria. She was definitely dead. She didn’t change her name nor did she lost her memories. What a thing was this reincarnation business.

“Victoria-.”

“I just told you-!”

“I will see you around.”

“Wh-?”

Goldie kissed her again, a hand on Gloria’s neck pulling her into the kiss.

For Gloria, everything faded to black in an instant.

.

“Cabrera! Gloria, please, wake up!”

Gloria started to blink, the light of the ceiling hurting her eyes a little. “¿Que coño…?”

“Oh, she waked up.”

Her partner was looking at her relieved. Gloria sat up, her head hurt. Her hand went to her neck, the last place where she felt something before she blacked out. “What the hell happened?”

“Well, we would like to ask you that, because when we entered the room you were completely unconscious on the floor, all your things were there too. What happened?”

“What happened to Goldie?” she asked instead, not prepared to think about what happened in the room. She got up, walking outside the room to the hallway to see the damage that Goldie left behind.

Her partner in front of her pointed at the end of the hallway with a funny smile, Gloria followed the direction. A “¿qué carajos?” trespassed her lips when she saw one of the windows completely broken, someone had jumped out probably.

“How the fuck she did that?”

“No idea. When we went to see how the interrogation was going, the window was already broken and you were on the floor. But, seriously, what happened?”

“Yes, Cabrera, What happened?”

That was her boss. He didn’t look happy at all, not even to see her well and conscious.

“Uh…” she couldn’t say, ‘we kind of made out in the interrogation room and then she took the opportunity to knock me the fuck out.’ Yeah, no, it sounded pretty lame and extremely unethical. So, she said almost everything but left out the part where she almost ravaged Goldie O’Gilt on the table of the interrogation room. She felt happy that in a way that was 90% of the truth.

Her boss didn’t look so happy. Mierda. “Do you at least have her name, Cabrera?”

“Goldie O’Gilt, sir. That’s the name.”

Her boss paled. Well, that was an interesting reaction. “You did a good job, Cabrera. She could have done worse.”

“Wait, boss, what do you mean?”

“Goldie O’Gilt is a force to be reckoned with. I’m actually surprised that this disaster is the only thing she left behind. Look, kids, she is at least 140 years old, do you understand what I’m saying? 140 years of knowledge, that woman is impossible to get.”

“What the fuck?”

“¡Imposible!”

“Nah, there are rumors that said that Scrooge McDuck is the same. But well, I need to go to do some paperwork for that fucking window and for the “Glittering Goldie” archive. You did well, Cabrera. I’m glad you’re alive.” And he left just like that.

I’m glad you’re alive, that sounded horribly ominous.

“140 years old, can you believe that?”

“Yeah, sounds surreal.”

Well, yes, it sounded pretty fucking surreal that she made out with a woman that didn’t look older than 40 years but was at least 140 years old. At least, she repeated in her mind, trying to comprehend it. Maybe that was why she was such a good kisser. She decided she was going to go home at that moment and her partner just accepted it, telling her he would do the paperwork left. She thanked him with all her might, making her partner laugh at her.

She was so extremely tired.

The only thing she wanted to do now was to go home, cuddle with his son while watching Patito Feo and make some tea for the first time in her entire life.

She entered the interrogation room and took her things. She put her badge on, took both her guns, her house’s keys. Her wallet was intact, Goldie even put the photo of Fenton back.

She did leave a disaster behind her, she thought. Freaking woman.

Damn, she definitely needed a nap too after all this.

I just remembered I didn’t upload this fanfic to Tumblr (i actually have a lot of fanfics that I want to upload to tumblr lmao, im just lazy) so, now that i actually have the second and third part almost ready of this au i decided to do it now. Hope you like it! please reblog and comment smthing if you did (in the tags or in the notes whatever im not picky lol) HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

#ducktales #ducktales 2017 #cabroldie #m'ma cabrera #goldie o'gilt #toddy was here #toddy writes #reincarnation au

[kounfetti]

[Diabolik Lovers: Dark Fate] Subaru Sakamaki Dark Epilogue Translation/Traducción

Please no reposting onto other sites, just link back to this post-and ask me before translating this into other languages!—-Por favor no republiques y preguntame antés de traducir a otras idiomas.

English

Scene: Outside of the Sakamaki Mansion, Human World

Yui: (....We’re really back.)

Yui: (Here...in the human world, the eclipse has already ended.

Yui: Subaru, do you really feel better now?

Subaru: Yea, I feel relieved. What about it?

Yui: Well, when we left for the human world, we didn’t tell anyone. Aren’t you worried?

Subaru: Worried? About those guys? You know I’m not that type of guy. 

Subaru: Just worry about yourself. Let’s hurry.

Subaru: We didn’t need to tell Reiji, he’s smart enough to figure it out. So you shouldn’t worry.

Yui: (Surely, because it was Reiji who advised us that going to the human world would be best. Is it fine then...?)

Subaru: Oi, let’s go inside. 

Yui: Ah, Okay.

Scene Change: Sakamaki Mansion Living Room

Yui: This is....awful...

Yui: (While we were in the Demon World, someone broke in...and trashed everything.)

Subaru: It was the wolves. Judging from the claw and bite marks scattered around.

Yui: I wonder if they came here while we were fleeing...

Subaru: Probably. These marks aren’t from yesterday or today, so we should be fine.

Subaru: More importantly, do you feel better here? 

Yui: (Now that he mentions it...)

Yui: It feels like I can breath easier. 

Yui: (While being in the Demon World, the air felt heavy, and almost suffocating?)

Subaru:...I’m glad.

Yui: Thank you, Subaru.

Subaru: Haah? What’s with the thanks.

Yui: You thought of my well-being, and proposed coming here. And for that, thank you.

Subaru:..Are you an idiot? I only did this for myself...

Subaru: A-Anyways, we can check the damage later. For now, we should rest.

Scene Change: Yui’s Bedroom

Subaru: It looks like your room was untouched...

Yui: Looks like it.

Subaru: That’s good. You should sleep.

Yui: Eh? Already?

Subaru: I dont want to hear it...its fine----

Subaru gets closer

Subaru: Sleep.

Yui: (I’m being forced onto the bed...)

Subaru: If you dont rest, I dont know why we came back.

Subaru: If you dont go to sleep on your own, I’ll have to force you to. How does that sound?

Yui: You’re already forcing me to...!

Subaru: Do you want me to try more?

Yui: I understand! I’ll rest...

Yui: (I wont be able to rest in those conditions if its done like that.)

Subaru: I’ll be here until you wake up like always, so rest with ease. 

Yui: Ok...good night, Subaru.

Yui’s nightmare, sound of sparks and fire

-----I heard a sound. Sounds of crackling and maybe, burning.

-----I felt like I had a fever. Sounds of scorching, and of something burning.

When I opened my eyes, I saw an orange flame spreading.

The house I lived with everyone, fell to flames.

Yui: Haah, Haah....

Yui: (There’s no fire here...?)

Yui: (What happened, and, where’s Subaru...?)

Yui: Subaru....Where did you go...?

Yui: ..! Suba---

Yui:...!?

Ayato:.....

Yui: (Did you fall, Ayato...?...There’s blood all over you!?)

Yui: Ayato!?

Kanato:....

Laito:....

Yui: Kanato, Laito...!

Yui: (Why...isn’t anyone moving...?)

Yui: (Possibly...Subaru, too...?)

Yui: No, Subaru, not you....

Yui: Subaru!! Where are you!? Subaru...!!

???:----Oi!

???:----Oi, Yui!

The nightmare ends

Yui:....!!

Subaru: What happened to you...?

Yui: S-Subaru...?

Subaru: Are you alright? You looked hurt.

Yui: (....Just now...that was all a dream...?)

Subaru:...Did you have a nightmare?

Yui: Yea, it looks like it...

Subaru: What kind of dream?

Yui:...I dont want to talk about it.

Subaru: Haah?

Yui: I dont want to talk about it, because somehow, it’ll make it feel like reality....

Subaru:...I dont understand well, but, you’ve had a scary dream.

Yui: Yea...

Subaru:...You’re trembling, come over here.

Subaru: Let’s stay like this for a while. 

Yui: (In Subaru’s hold, I feel relieved. Even though he doesn’t have any body heat, I know that I’m alive....)

Yui: (...I want to be alive...)

Subaru: Crying because of a scary dream, you seem kind of childlike. 

Yui: Because...that dream scared me.

Yui: (The thought of Subaru being gone....)

Subaru:...I should’ve been in that dream.

Subaru: If I were, I’d be able to protect you.

Yui: Subaru...

Subaru: I dont know what happened in that dream, but forget about it...

Yui:.....

Subaru:....Yui....

Subaru:....In whatever dream you dont want to see, you only need to look for me...

Subaru: And then, you wont be scared anymore.

Yui:...It was you I couldn’t see....

Subaru:....Hey, dont say things like that...

Subaru:...I wont stop.

Yui: Its okay...whether you kiss me or bite me, because I love you, Subaru.

Yui: This feeling...gives me anxiousness.

Subaru:...Because I dont know how you’re feeling right now, lets not talk about this again. 

Subaru bites her

Subaru:.....!

Subaru:.......

Yui:....

Subaru: Haah...Yui....

Subaru:...You’ll be by my side.

Subaru: I’ll keep you near me at all times, so I can protect you....A close neough distance so that I’ll be able to hug you like this....  

Screen goes black

Yui: (I want to be by your side.)

Yui: (The thought of Subaru not being around...I dont want to have thoughts like those....)

Subaru:....

Yui: (....Seems like Subaru fell asleep.)

Subaru:...nn....

Scene Change: Sakamaki Mansion Bathroom

Yui: Haah....

Yui: (Because of all these thoughts fogging my mind, maybe a shower would clear them up.)

Yui: (...Subaru was really nice to me, he hugged for a long time.)

Yui: (We cuddled and kissed for a while to reassure me...)

Yui: (....I’ll forget about the dream from earlier, now that I know Subaru is safe.)

Yui: !?

Yui: (What was that loud sound, what...!? Perhaps, its the wolves----!)

Yui: K-Kyaaaa!!

Subaru: Yui!!

Yui: Eh, S-Subaru!?

Yui: (Why did he come in person...! Cause right now, my clothes....!)

Subaru:....!? Your appearance.....!

Subaru: Y-Y-You’re wrong! Not like this...!! I didn’t want to entrude on you!!

Subaru: G-Get some clothes!! I can’t look at you like this!

Yui: Y-Yea!

Subaru:....Are you wearing something?

Yui: Y-Yea, its fine.

Subaru: Hah...

Yui: What’s wrong, Subaru? You suddenly came in....

Subaru: Dont ask me that! I woke up and saw you weren’t there...

Subaru: I guess, I was worried...

Yui: S-Sorry...

Subaru: Dont just go somewhere impatiently, at least speak up. Shit....

Yui: Where you that sound just now, Subaru...?

Subaru:..I hit the door.

Yui: (That was the sound that made me panic...)

Subaru: Why are you quiet?

Yui: I slept well...and I thought it would be bad to wake you....

Subaru: It would’ve been a smaller inconvenience compared to this.

Subaru:You too, If you had a dream where I no longer existed...how would you feel?

Yui:...I’d hate it.

Subaru: So, dont leave me.

Subaru: I never want to lose you...It would be my greatest regret.

Yui: Subaru....I’m sorry.

Subaru:...You need to take a bath, right?

Subaru: I’ll be in the bedroom. When you’re done come back in a proper state.

Yui: (....He really surprised me when he came in...)

Yui: (But...recently, Subaru has been acting different.)

Yui: (It’s not like him to think of something like that happening..)

Yui: (Perhaps, Subaru had a nightmare as well...)

Dark 10 ♥ Maniac Prologue

Español

Escenario: Afuera de la Casa de los Sakamaki en el Mundo Humano

Yui: (...Realmente estamos devuelta.)

Yui: (Aquí...en el mundo de los humanos...el eclipse ya ha terminado.)

Yui: Subaru, realmente te sientes mejor?

Subaru: Si, estoy aliviado. Que?

Yui: Pues, cuando huímos al mundo humano no dijimos a nadien. No te preocupas un poco por eso?

Subaru: Preocuparme? De ellos? Ya sabes que no soy así.

Subaru: Solo preocupaté de tí misma. Apuraté. 

Subaru: No era necessario dijir a Reiji, sú percepción le ayudará en encontrarnos. No te preocupes.

Yui: (Seguramente, Reiji lo notariá porque fue el quien mencionó ír al mundo humano. Estará bien así?)

Subaru: Oi, entremos la casa. 

Yui: Ah, Sí.

Cambio de Escenario: Sala de la Casa Sakamaki

Yui: Que...horrible...

Yui: (Mientras estabamos en el Mundo de los Demoños, alguien destrozó la casa...)

Subaru: Fue los lobos. Juzgando por las garras y mordidas.

Yui: Quizas entrarón cuando huímos al Mundo de los Demoños...

Subaru: Probablemente. Estas marcas no fuerón de ayer ó hoy así que, debermos estar a salvo.

Subaru: Deste llegar aquí, te sientes mejor? 

Yui: (Ahora que lo menciona...)

Yui: Ahora que lo dices, siento que puedo respirar mejor.

Yui: (En el Mundo de los Demoños, sentiá que el airé me pesaba?)

Subaru:...Me da gusto.

Yui: Gracias, Subaru. 

Subaru: Haah? Gracias por que?

Yui: Preocupasté sobré mí salúd, y tubiste la ideá de regresar aquí. Y por eso, gracias.

Subaru:..Eres tarada? Solo lo hice por mi mismo...

Subaru: Hablemos de esto despues, por ahora, debemos descansar.

Cambio de Escenario: Recamera de Yui

Subaru: Parece...que tú recamera esta a salvo.

Yui: Parece que sí.

Subaru: Bueno. Debes dormir.

Yui: Eh? Ya?

Subaru: No quiero oír objeciónes. Bueno---

Subaru se acerca

Subaru: Duermeté.

Yui: (Por fuerza, estoy sobre la cama...)

Subaru: No sé porque volvimos esí no vas a descansar.

Subaru: Esí no te duermes por voluntad, usaré fuerza. 

Yui: Ya me estas forzando...!

Subaru: Quieres que usé más fuerza?

Yui: Entiendo! Descansaré,,,

Yui: (No voy a poder descansar en esas condiciones.)

Subaru: Estaré aquí hasta que despiertes como siempre, a si que no te preocupes.

Yui: Si...buenas noches, Subaru.

Pesadilla de Yui, sonidos de chispas y fuego

-----Oí algo. Sonidos de chispas, y de quizas, algo quemandozé.

-----Sentiá una fiebre. Sonidos de combustión, y quemadurá.

Cuando abrí los ojos, Ví una llama naranja enfrente de mí.

La casa que viví con todos, calló a las llamas.

Yui: Haah, Haah....

Yui: (No hay fuego por aquí...?)

Yui: (Que sucedió, y Subaru...?)

Yui: Subaru....Á donde te fuisté...?

Yui: ..! Suba---

Yui:...!?

Ayato:.....

Yui: (Caísté? Tienes sangré por todas partes!?)

Yui: Ayato!?

Kanato:.....

Laito:.....

Yui: Kanato, Laito...!

Yui: (Por que...no sé mueven..?)

Yui: (Quizas....Subaru...tambien...?)

Yui: Nó! Subaru, tú nó.....

Yui: Subaru!! Donde estas!? Subaru...!!

???:-----Oi!

???:-----Oi, Yui!

Termina la Pesadilla

Yui:....!!

Subaru: Que te paso...?

Yui: S-Subaru...?

Subaru: Estas bien? Pareces adolorída.

Yui: (....Lo de hace rato...fue un sueño...?)

Subaru:...Tenisté una pesadilla?

Yui: Si, parece que sí....

Yui: Que tipo de sueño?

Yui:...No quiero hablar de el.

Subaru: Hah?

Yui: No quiero hablar de el porque no quiero que seá realidad...

Subaru: No lo entiendo bien, pero tubiste un sueño disagradable.

Yui: Sí...

Subaru: Estas tremblando, venga aquí.

Subaru: Mantemos así por ún rato.

Yui: (En los brazos de Subaru, siento aliviada. Sú cuerpo no tiene calor, pero, siento que estoy vivá...)

Yui: (...Quiero vivir...)

Subaru: Llorando por una pesadilla, pareces una niña.

Yui: Pues...realmente me dió miedo.

Yui: (El piensamiento que algún día Subaru no estariá conmigo...)

Subaru:....

Subaru:...Estaba en la pesadilla, yo?

Subaru: Si lo fuera, en la pesadilla te protejariá.

Yui: Subaru....

Subaru: No sé que sucedió en tú sueño, pero olvidalo...

Yui:....

Subaru:....Yui....

Subaru:...En cual quier sueño, debes mirar solo a mí....

Subaru: De esa manera, no tendras miedo. 

Yui:...Era tú quien no pudé encontrar...

Subaru:...No digas cosas así...

Subaru:...No voy a parar...

Yui: No importa esí me besas ó si tomas mí sangre, te dejare porque, te quiero, Subaru.

Yui: Me da ansiedad...esta sensación.

Subaru:...No sé tús pensamientos, a si que no vamos a hablar de nuevo.

Subaru la muerde

Subaru:.....!

Subaru:.......

Yui:....

Subaru: Haah...Yui....

Subaru:...Estaras cerca mí lado.

Subaru: Siempre te protejaré, y nunca estaras lejos de mi. Una distancia en que podré abrazarté en esta manera. 

Pantalla negra

Yui: (Quiero estar a tú lado.)

Yui: (Cual quier pensamiento que Subaru no este a mí lado, no quiero tener.)

Subaru:....

Yui: (....Parece que Subaru tubó sueño.)

Subaru:...nn....

Cambio de Escenario: Baño

Yui: Haah...

Yui: (Con todos los pensamientos en mi mente, ún baño en la ducha me aclarerá los pensamientos.)

Yui: (...Subaru fue tan bueno conmigo, me abrazo por ún rato.)

Yui: (Me abrazo y beso por ún rato para asegurarmé....)

Yui: (....Olvidaré el sueño que tubé, ya que sé Subaru esta a salvo.)

Yui: !?

Yui: (Que fue ese sonido..!? Quizas, los lobos----!)

Yui: K-Kyaaaa!!

Subaru: Yui!!

Yui: Eh, S-Subaru!?

Yui: (Porque vinó el mismo, quiero decir, ahorita, my ropa esta...!)

Subaru:....!? Tú aparencia.....!

Subaru: N-N-No es lo que piensas! A si no...!! No era mi intención verté a sí!!

Subaru: P-Pongaté ropa!! No puedo verte a sí!!

Yui: O-Ok!

Subaru:....Te pusisté algo?

Yui: S-Si, esta bien.

Subaru: Hah...

Yui: Que pasa, Subaru? Entraste de repente....

Subaru: No me preguntes eso! Desperté y ví que no estabas aí...

Subaru: Estaba preocupado, supongo...

Yui: P-Perdon...

Subaru: Tenga paciencia antes de írte a ún lugar de repente. Maldición...

Yui: Fuíste ese sonido hace rato, Subaru...?

Subaru:..Golpé la puerta.

Yui: (Era el sonido que mi dió panico...)

Subaru: Why are you quiet?

Yui: Amanecí bien... y pensé que seriá malo despertarté....

Subaru: Seriá una inconvenenciá menor que esta.

Subaru: Y tu tambien, si tubiste ún sueño donde yo no existiriá...como te sentirías?

Yui:...Lo odiariá. 

Subaru: No me dejes.

Subaru: Nunca quiero perderté...seriá mi peor lamentimiento.

Yui: Subaru....perdon.

Subaru:...Necesitas bañarté, no?

Subaru: Estaré en la recamera. Cuando terminés, venga apropiadamente. 

Yui: (....Me sorprendió...cuando entró Subaru.)

Yui: (Pero...recientamente, Subaru tiene conportamientos raros.)

Yui: (No es normal que Subaru tenga miedo de algo a sí ocurriendo...)

Yui: (Quizas, Subaru tubó una pesadilla tambien...)

Dark 10 ♥ Maniac Prologue

#diabolik lovers #diabolik lovers dark fate #dark fate #subaru sakamaki #subaru sakamaki translation #diabolik lovers translation #diabolik lovers en español #kaetraduce #kaetranslates #subaru sakamaki traduccion #im deceased wow subaru breaking into bathrooms #tsundere goodness

[nihilisticism]

sábado gigante

Sometimes I think it’s hard to look at the women on TV in the bright orange bikinis with the dark brown beads spinning wild like suns out of orbit. There’s something about Univisión, I don’t know, everything on the channel is very saturated – the colors, the bad acting, the dirty jokes.

Corona in hand, smelling of wet paint, Pipo is singing along to the rhythm of clanging dishes being washed in the kitchen.

My grandmother’s voice cuts through the cover of a song I am hearing for the first time.

“Estás mirando las mujeres esas bailando en cueras con las tetas afuera? Take that shit off. You’re going to turn her into a slut or, worse, a lesbian.”

 “En esta casa, we don’t say that word.”

“Do what you want. I’m not watching you ruin another girl.”

I can’t imagine my grandfather ruining any girl, but he doesn’t have anything else to say. Mima storms out and I follow her out to the marble steps I grew up on, watching her breathe smoke into the humid night. I can smell the tar build up in both of our lungs, but I like it, somehow. I’m pretty sure the only time Mima isn’t talking was when she had a cigarette in her mouth.

 “Don’t ever pick up a cigar,” she says, flicking the ash off the end of her cigarette. “It’s the beginning of the end. You’re turning ten in a month, right? I started smoking when I was just a little older than you are, and I’ve been dying ever since.”

I watch as the smoke swirls off like a dragon in the distance, and I listen for years.

  “But things were different,” she says, and I am twelve. “I started working when I was younger than you, had a family to support. I’ve never not been anxious. You watch out for that. It’s swirling in your blood, mi princesa. And the moment you give in to it, it’s over.”

I don’t like the idea of anything swirling in my blood. I shudder.

  “You’re telling me you’ve never thought a single boy in your class is cute? No te creo. But, I guess, you’ll have time to fall in love.”

Mami said not to tell her about how Rocío stayed the night last week, and especially not that she stayed in my bed. I don’t tell anyone that the first dream I had when I turned fifteen was about the curve of her legs against mine.

  “You’re better off without him,” she said when I broke up with my boyfriend. I never told her why. She’s traded her cigarette for a doctor’s note, threatening her with another hospitalization if she keeps smoking. “You’ll find a better man in college, one who deserves you, you’ll see.”

  My phone lights up in my hand, buzzes.

“Who’s that?”

“Una amiga.” I turn off the screen before she notices the kiss emojis that trail after a pretty stranger’s name.

Something aches inside me, something I have only recently been able to name. Phantom pains of an aunt I will never know, forgotten on the island my family fled, a curse of that ruined woman whispered behind my back for years, la mujer esa con la novia, don’t talk about her in front of la nena, are you crazy? There are enough lesbians in this family.

Without ever knowing her, without ever knowing of her, I wonder if she is happy.

  Right on schedule, la vieja de la calle passes by. We hear her before we see her, screaming profanity in English in the middle of the sideroad that separates our yard from the public park. She is a fact of life, and my grandmother, as she does with all facts of life, pulls me aside and starts gossiping about her under her breath.

              “Pobrecita, la loca esa, do you think she’s homeless? She’s too clean to be but still, here she is, screaming at the people on the street como si fuera nada.”

Though there is no way for the woman to know I am here, almost a half-block away, she seems to turn to me. Her eyes lock with mine and see nothing. “I can smell the lesbian on you,” she says. “It reeks like a fucking disease.”

              And my grandmother is screaming, screaming in a language the woman cannot understand, “Lesbian? Lesbian? No one calls mi princesa a lesbian, who do you think you are?” And I try to think it’s sweet, I really do, but it is easier to laugh at a stranger’s mechanical recitation of homophobic rhetoric than to think about how the worst insult imaginable to my grandmother is the idea that I may not marry a man.

“Go inside, mi amor. Let me handle this.”

#nf #homophobia -

[lodelss]

Rachel Nuwer | Longreads | March 2020 | 28 minutes (7,033 words)

You can listen to our four-part “Cat People” podcast series on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It’s a gloomy April afternoon in rural Oklahoma, and I’m sitting on the floor of a fluorescent-lit room at a roadside zoo with Nova, a 12-week-old tiliger. She looks like a tiger cub, but she’s actually a crossbreed, an unnatural combination of a tiger father and a mother born of a tiger and a lion. That unique genetic makeup places a higher price tag on cubs like Nova, and makes it easier, legally speaking, to abuse and exploit them. Endangered species protections don’t apply to artificial breeds such as tiligers. Hybridization, however, has done nothing to quell Nova’s predatory instincts. For the umpteenth time during the past six minutes, she lunges at my face, claws splayed and mouth ajar — only to be halted mid-leap as her handler jerks her harness. Unphased, Nova gets right back to pouncing.

With her dusty blue eyes, sherbet-colored paws, and prominent black stripes, Nova is adorable. But she also weighs 30 pounds and has teeth like a Doberman’s and claws the size of jumbo shrimp. Nova’s handler, a woman with long brown hair who tells me she recently retired from her IT job at a South Dakota bank to live out her dream of working with exotic cats, scolds the rambunctious tiliger in a goo-goo-ga-ga voice: “Nooooo, nooooo, you calms down!” Nova is teething, the handler explains, so she just wants something to chew on. The handler reaches for one of the tatty stuffed animals strewn around the room — a substitute, I guess, for my limbs. In that moment of distraction, Nova lunges. She lands her mark, chomping into the bicep of my producer, Graham Lee Brewer.

“Ooo, she got me!” Lee Brewer grimaces as he attempts to pull away from the determined predator. Nova’s handler has to pry the tiliger’s jaws open to detach her. After the incident, the woman conveniently checks her watch: “OK, you guys, time is up!”

I paid $80 for the pleasure of spending 12 minutes with Nova, but I’m glad the experience, billed as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, is over. On our way out, we pass more than a dozen adult tigers yowling and pacing cages the size of small classrooms. Nearby signs solicit donations. You are their only hope. Sponsor a cabin or compound today! In the safety of our car, Lee Brewer rolls up his sleeve, exposing a swollen red welt. “Look at my gnarly tiger bite,” he chuckles. “I tried to play it off but I was like, this fuckin’ hurts!”

It’s not the first time I’ve seen this world up-close; I spent the better part of eight years investigating wildlife trafficking around the world. During my travels, I visited farms in China and Laos where tigers are raised like pigs, examined traditional medicine in Vietnam, ate what I was told was tiger bone “cake,” and tracked some of the world’s last remaining wild tigers in India. Almost everywhere I went, tigers were suffering and their numbers were on the decline because of human behavior. Until recently, though, I had no idea the United States was part of the problem.

Within a few weeks of my visit, Nova will be far too big and dangerous for overpriced playtime sessions. Cats like her are most likely confined to one of those cramped cages my producer and I passed leaving the zoo, where they spend the rest of their life being speed-bred to crank out more adorable cubs. Or Nova might be sold to another breeder, or to someone who wants to keep her as a pet. Although no one tracks big cat ownership in the U.S., it’s estimated that there are likely more pet tigers in America than there are left in the wild. What’s more, depending on the species of cat, federal oversight is either limited or nonexistent. In some states, it’s easier to buy a lion — a 400-pound predatory killer — than it is to get a dog.

Animal rights activists have been pushing for decades to curb big cat ownership in this country, arguing that the industry is cruel, dangerous, and detrimental to conservation of cats in the wild. Now, reform appears within reach. The movement owes its momentum to, of all things, a murder-for-hire plot gone terribly awry. You might have seen the headlines in the Washington Post and New York magazine: Joe Exotic, a self-described “gay, gun-carrying redneck with a mullet,” among the largest tiger owners and breeders in the U.S., charged with conspiring to commit murder for hire. At its height, Joe’s zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, which is where I visited Nova, housed more than 200 big cats, including lion-tiger hybrids, as well as about 60 other species, everything from lemurs to owls to giraffes. Joe even acquired a pair of alligators he claimed were once owned by Michael Jackson. Still, as one local told me, “The animals weren’t the entertainment. Joe was the entertainment.”

Last year, an Oklahoma City jury convicted Joe, whose legal name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, of the murder-for-hire plots against a Florida activist and sanctuary owner named Carole Baskin. For Joe, Baskin had become something of an arch tiger rival. The news coverage mostly focused on Joe’s outlandish personality and the details of his decade-long feud with Baskin. But the jury also found Joe guilty of 17 wildlife crimes, including illegally killing five tigers and trafficking tigers across state lines — marking the first significant conviction of a tiger criminal in an American courtroom. “This verdict sends a shot across the bow to other roadside zoos who are playing fast and loose with federal regulations,” said Carney Anne Nasser, director of the animal welfare clinic at Michigan State University College of Law.

In other words, the bad boy of the big cat world might have inadvertently contributed to cleaning up the dirty industry he helped build and then exploited for much of his adult life.

Simba, a Bengal tiger, was sent to an animal sanctuary, Big Cat Rescue, in Tampa, Florida. (Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald via AP)

* * *

Big cats are easier to find than you might think. I recently struck up a conversation with the chef at my favorite sushi joint in New York City. He asked what I’d been working on, and I filled him in on a bit of the Joe Exotic story and the big cat trade. To my surprise, he nodded along knowingly: “Oh yeah, a buddy of mine just got a serval!” Celebrity culture is another hot spot for exotic animal ownership. This past fall, Justin Bieber reportedly spent $35,000 on two savannah cats and created a dedicated Instagram page that quickly amassed more than 500,000 followers. When PETA criticized Bieber’s new pet choice, he posted a statement on his Instagram story telling the nonprofit group to “suck it” and “focus on real problems.”

Shopping for an unconventional animal used to mean scanning the classified sections of newspapers or fliers on the cluttered billboards at grocery stores and gas stations. But those analog methods of sale have long since given way to people hawking large cats in ways that are now more traditionally modern: closed Facebook groups and exotic pet websites. Getting an ocelot or a cheetah can be as easy as sending a DM or text, agreeing on a price, and setting a pick-up date. Depending on what state you live in, owning one of these animals might be entirely legal. And even if it’s not, there’s almost always a way to sidestep the rules, which can be confusing and are rarely enforced.

Save for a handful of regulations pertaining to animals listed in the Endangered Species Act (ESA), there’s almost no oversight of big cat ownership by the federal government. The Animal Welfare Act is supposed to ensure humane treatment of big cats and other captive animals, but the inspectors are overworked and many of the rules are weak, vague, or both. Although the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) does technically require a permit to sell endangered species such as tigers, lions, leopards, or jaguars across state lines, unscrupulous sellers and buyers often don’t want to bother with permits and deal in untraceable cash payments. At trial, one buyer even testified to participating in sales marked as “donations.” Joe Exotic used this tactic for years to evade the gaze of law enforcement. He wasn’t the only one. At Joe’s trial, that same tiger owner testified: “Everybody marks donation.”

Same goes for regulations at the state level: Loopholes abound in the legislative patchwork governing big cat ownership. “There’s lots of ways tigers have been technically regulated on paper but in practice, not so much,” Nasser said. Roughly two thirds of states have some sort of regulations prohibiting private big cat ownership as pets. In 10 states, anyone can own a lion or tiger as long as they pay as little as $30 for a license from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Four states — North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Oklahoma — have no laws on the books at all.

Rules aside, very few people, no matter how well-intentioned, are prepared to own one of the world’s largest, deadliest predators. “Everybody wants a tiger cub, but nobody wants a tiger,” said Tim Harrison, a retired Ohio police officer and first responder who specialized in exotic creatures. These days, Harrison runs Outreach for Animals, a nonprofit that advocates responsible exotic pet ownership and trains emergency personnel to safely deal with animal-related crises. Harrison used to be a big cat owner himself, before realizing his mistake. “I was on the dark side,” he said, “thinking I was doing the right thing.”

Many big cat owners are subjected to what Harrison describes as a “baptism in reality,” learning firsthand that these adult cats are expensive and dangerous. “A big cat is like a walking, thinking IED,” he said. “You don’t know when that thing’s going to go off.” One of the most famous incidents took place in 2003 at a live performance by the popular entertainment act Siegfried and Roy. One of the duo’s iconic white tigers, Mantacore, knocked down Roy Horn, grabbed him by the neck, and dragged him awayo. First responders rushed Horn to the hospital in critical condition. He survived but only returned to the stage once more years later. Defenders of the popular act contended that Horn suffered a stroke mid-act and Mantacore was just trying to help him, but Harrison disagreed. He argued on national television that Mantacore had intended to kill Roy, and that Roy had brought this upon himself: He’d disrespected the largest predatory cat in the world by forcing the animal to do magic tricks.

No agency tracks the number of people attacked and killed by captive big cats. According to a database of incidents compiled by the Humane Society of the United States, 24 people have died and 294 have been injured in the U.S. since 1990. Those figures likely only represent a fraction of the real numbers. Not every case makes the news, and the people involved in these incidents don’t always divulge the true cause of injury. In 1999, when a family’s pet tiger killed a 10-year-old girl in Texas, the victim’s mother initially told emergency dispatchers that her daughter had cut her neck by falling off a fence.  (She’d later testify she did not recall making the phone call.) In 2003, a man in New York City visited the hospital for a severe wound on his arm and leg; he claimed to have been bitten by a pit bull — not by Ming, the 400-pound tiger he had holed up in his Harlem apartment.

Big cats can threaten more than just their owners. The most infamous example occurred in 2011, when exotic animal owner Terry Thompson opened the doors to almost all of his pets’ cages before shooting himself. In what came to be known as the Zanesville massacre, law enforcement officers had to hunt and kill 18 tigers, 17 lions, and three mountain lions, as well as bears, a baboon, and wolves. “It was like Jumanji in real life,” said Harrison, who was one of the two dozen or so officers who responded to the incident. Many of the people who responded to the call that day suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, Harrison claimed. They had no choice but to kill the animals, then they faced virulent public backlash for doing so.

Zanesville is an extreme example, but it’s not the only case of exotics turned loose. One problem is there’s a lack of places equipped to take in these animals — even zoos don’t want them. Since starring in a 2011 documentary The Elephant in the Living Room, about exotic cat ownership, Harrison gets about 30 calls a year from people desperate to find a new home for their lions or tigers. With few options, some people donate their cats to shady facilities that use them for breeding. Others abandon them. The New York Times recently reported that a woman looking for a place to smoke a joint stumbled upon a caged tiger in a vacant home in Houston. Unsurprisingly, the owner did not immediately come forward to claim the tiger, but she was later arrested and charged with one misdemeanor count of cruelty to a nonlivestock animal.

A sign warning motorists that exotic animals are on the loose rests on I-70 Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011, near Zanesville, Ohio. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

* * *

As a boy, Joe Exotic raised pigeons and captured porcupines, racoons, and baby antelope at his childhood homes in Kansas and rural Wyoming. But it was the death of his older brother, Garold Wayne, in a car accident in 1997, that precipitated Joe’s entrance into the tiger business: Joe convinced his parents to use the roughly $140,000 settlement they received to open a wildlife rescue center.

Before Joe and his parents had completed the first cages at the GW Exotic Animal Memorial Foundation in 1999, someone dropped off an unwanted mountain lion and black bear. Soon after, they received a call about two tigers, a black leopard, and a mountain lion found in a backyard. Joe set out with a horse trailer and tranquilizers to collect the animals, which were skinny and malnourished. When Joe spoke to me this spring on the phone from a county jail in Oklahoma, he told me there was an excitement about the uncertainty and possibility of those early days. “I had no intention of being Joe Exotic or the Tiger King or anything like that,��� said Joe, who came up with the “Tiger King” moniker because people struggled to pronounce his original surname, Schreibvogel. “But I never said no to a rescue.”

Pretty soon, Joe started breeding his own tigers. He bred some 400 big cats over the years. He sold the animals to buyers on both coasts for as much as $5,000 each. By the mid-2000s, Joe had become one of the largest exotic animal operators in the country. He owned dozens of species and put together a traveling magic show. Although Joe had been “about the animals” in the beginning, as time passed, according to Joe’s ex-boyfriend John Finlay, fame and profit monopolized his thinking. Joe’s niece, Chealsi Putman, who helped out at the zoo for years, noticed the same evolution. “It’s like he’s seen dollar signs,” Putman told me. “He figured out a way to make money and ran with it.”

Not all big cat owners are similarly motivated. For some, it’s a grossly misplaced desire to help an endangered species — not realizing that big cats bred in the U.S. are hybridized mutts that have no genetic worth for wild tiger conservation. For others, like 54-year-old Deborah Pierce, the motivation is something more akin to love, or infatuation. Pierce started small, rehabbing injured wildlife at her house and volunteering and working at a local veterinary clinic and zoo after she graduated from high school. But helping lion keepers wasn’t enough to satisfy Pierce. “I wanted one of my own to just spend time with,” she said.

Pierce was encouraged when she learned that at the time her home state of South Carolina had no laws preventing her from owning a big cat. She talked her husband into helping her construct a double-fenced pen on their secluded, wooded property. She easily found a dealer on the internet selling lion cubs for $1,500 — like Nova, “picture babies” that were too large for cub petting by the time of sale — and arranged to purchase a female cub. “I could afford her easier than I could afford a new bulldog,” Pierce said. She named the lion Elsa, and a few months later, she got Charlie, a baby cougar, to keep Elsa company.

That was 12 years ago. Pierce’s perspective has since changed. She’s emptied her savings account on her cats. They eat $5,000 worth of meat a year and the veterinary bills run around $10,000 annually. Last year, the county hit her with an $1,100 fine for not having the proper paperwork. (South Carolina started regulating big cats in 2018.) Pierce no longer has time to ride horses, her other great love, and her husband left her in 2016, breaking not only her heart, she said, but also Charlie and Elsa’s. She’s put a dream of moving out to Arizona on hold as well. State laws there strictly regulate private ownership of big cats, and finding a sanctuary where Elsa and Charlie could stay has proven too difficult. “They’re my best friends,” Pierce said, “but if I had it all to go over again, I wouldn’t have gotten them.”

At this point, Pierce has resigned herself to the long haul, perhaps as many as another eight years given the lifespan of captive big cats. “I just want to be able to give Elsa and Charlie a happy life,” she said. “Their happiness is more important than mine, in my eyes.”

A month after I visited Pierce, she emailed with bad news. Charlie had died in surgery. “His heart was still beating, but he wouldn’t breathe when the oxygen came off,” she wrote. “So, we let him slip away.” Elsa, she says, has been inconsolable, and Deb blames herself for not bringing Charlie to the vet earlier. The bill for Charlie’s last visit, which totaled $4,800, even after the vet gave Pierce a significant discount, has only added to her stress. “I just hope nothing happens to Elsa before money is available again,” she says. “That’s my number one worry right now.”

  * * *

  The modern exotic animal craze traces back to the ’70s and ’80s and a phenomenon called zoo babies. Each spring, interstate signs and TV commercials featured photos of blue-eyed, squealing balls of fuzz debuting at major zoos around the country, an irresistible marketing lure for families that turned out to snap photos and cuddle the newest arrivals. Zoo babies were among the industry’s number one moneymaking programs, and tigers were always the biggest draw. As an added bonus, zoos advertised these activities under the guise of conservation. “You’d get your T-shirt, get your picture taken, and you’d walk away feeling like you’ve saved the world — you’ve saved tigers,” Harrison said.

But there was a problem, and Harrison, who worked as an exotic animal veterinary assistant as a teenager in Ohio, noticed it. There were lots of zoo babies but no zoo adolescents. When Harrison eventually began asking the staff about what had happened to last year’s tiger cubs, he’d get vague answers about the animals being traded off to different zoos. To Harrison, that math didn’t add up: Even the largest zoos around the country had only two or three adult tigers. But zoos annually paraded hundreds of babies out for pictures and play sessions.

Jack Hanna holds two Bengal Tiger cubs that were born and bred in captivity during a groundbreaking ceremony at the Dallas Zoo in 1998. (AP Photo/Tim Sharp)

Harrison eventually learned the dark truth: After the cubs reached a certain age they became “zoo surplus” and were sold at exotic animal auctions to private buyers. These auctions were raucous events, attended mostly by veteran wildlife keepers and professional breeders that zoos relied on to supply their collections. Harrison attended a few and noticed the same employees who weeks earlier had been talking up the conservation value of the zoo’s tiger babies, holding cub after cub up by their armpits to sell to the highest buyer. The whole scene was commonplace at the time. “No one thought anything of it,” Harrison said.

The zoo baby phenomenon led to a surge in private big cat ownership. In the 1990s, according to Harrison, wildlife-related television spread the idea of owning a pet tiger to a much wider audience. Jack Hanna types bottle-fed cubs and paraded tigers on leashes on talk shows. The predators appeared no more dangerous than a golden retriever. “It was like somebody flipped a switch on,” Harrison said. At the time, Harrison was the lone police officer in Ohio who could handle big cat emergencies; he suddenly went from getting a couple calls a year to getting more than 100. After removing an unruly pet from someone’s property, he’d ask people why they thought it was a good idea to own a lion or tiger. Many responded it was because they’d seen it on TV. Harrison started calling it the Steve Irwin syndrome.

That turns out to be an apt diagnosis. According to research conducted by scientists at Duke University, seeing a wild animal in an unnatural, human setting — a chimpanzee drinking out of a baby bottle or sitting through a talk show interview — makes people less likely to donate to a conservation organization that aids that species and more likely to think the creature in question would make a great pet. According to Kara Walker, now a behavioral ecologist at North Carolina State University and lead author of the research, published in 2011 in the journal PLOS One, this also extends to people’s thought process after an encounter with a cub, which might go something like: Look at this cuddly tiger! I got to pet it for 20 minutes and it licked my hand and now I can have a tiger, too!

Enterprising private exotic animal owners capitalized on the moment. They realized they could make a killing holding their own cub petting events at malls, fairs, and roadside zoos, which compounded an already vicious breeding pattern. “I call it the breed and dump cycle,” said Nasser, the Michigan State law professor. That cycle is largely responsible for the proliferation of tigers throughout the U.S., and by the middle of the last decade, the most notorious of all the breed-and-dump outfits belonged to Joe Exotic.

But cub-petting events weren’t enough for Joe. Concerned with fame and fortune, he plotted ways to grow his online following and commercialize the business. He started selling Tiger King–branded candy, apparel, and condoms. He also kept zoo costs down by euthanizing sterile or defective tigers and turned donated animals that weren’t moneymakers — especially emus — into cat food. During regular inspections of Joe’s zoo, the USDA cited hundreds of American Welfare Act violations. The agency conducted four investigations, including one that looked into the deaths of 23 tiger cubs from 2009 to 2010. (As an endangered species, tigers cannot be killed unless there is a legitimate reason, such as ending the life of a sick tiger.) Animal rights groups such as PETA conducted their own covert investigations, revealing what they claimed was gross abuse — dead and dying animals, extremely crowded cages lacking basic necessities such as water, and untrained staff who routinely abused animals. In retaliation, Joe launched social media attacks and filed dozens of contrived police reports claiming his accusers were the ones who were breaking the law.

For years, Joe’s strategy worked: Profit off cubs. Evade his enemies. Skirt the law. It probably would’ve continued to work had Joe’s path not collided, as he once put it, with “some bitch down there in Florida.”

* * *

Carole Baskin in 2017 walking the property at Big Cat Rescue, a nonprofit sanctuary committed to humane treatment of rescued animals, often coming from exploitive for-profit operations. (Loren Elliott/Tampa Bay Times via AP)

Vultures circle overhead as Carole Baskin and I make our way along a secluded stretch of the Upper Tampa Bay Trail, about 15 miles outside of downtown Tampa. A spring breeze flutters her waist-length blond hair and blows through the thick surrounding brush of oaks and palmettos. Despite the blue sky and sunshine, the trail is empty. The only sound is the rustle of leaves and crunch of Baskin’s leopard-print boots on the pavement. It was this trail, Baskin explained to me, on which she regularly bikes to work, that a hitman had identified as a place to take her out.

Baskin is arguably the most well-known activist in the country campaigning against big cat ownership. She also takes in unwanted exotic cats at Big Cat Rescue, her sanctuary in Tampa, which currently houses 66 cats belonging to 11 different species. It’s one of the few places in the U.S. capable of providing these animals with a safe, reasonably good life in captivity.

Like Harrison, Baskin used to be part of the problem. A pivot from big cat owner to big cat conservationist is a common story among advocates in the field. Baskin stumbled into owning an exotic cat in the early 1990s at the age of 31. She and her ex-husband, Don, worked together in the real estate business. They used llamas to mitigate the brush on the Florida properties they sold, and the easiest place to get a llama was at an exotic animal auction. At one memorable event, a man seated next to Baskin bid on a baby bobcat. Baskin couldn’t help but lean over and whisper: “When that cat grows up, she is going to tear your face off.”

“I’m a taxidermist,” the man replied. “I’m just gonna club her in the head in the parking lot and make her into a den ornament.”

Baskin was horrified. Don outbid the man and they brought home the 6-month-old kitten, which Baskin named Windsong. As Windsong grew, the bobcat terrorized Baskin’s daughter and the family’s German shepherd. The solution, Baskin decided, was to get Windsong a playmate. Don found a guy in Minnesota who agreed to sell them a bobcat kitten. Turned out, the man was a fur farmer; Baskin and Don came back from that trip with 56 bobcat and lynx kittens — everything the farmer had for sale. The following year, they returned to rescue the 28 adult cats, too.

With their home overrun by exotic cats, Baskin and Don transformed a nearby 40-acre property they owned into a sanctuary, albeit with misguided tourism and breeding components. They called it Wildlife on Easy Street. They amassed a collection of at least 150 exotic cats of 17 species. For $75 a night, visitors could share a small cabin with a bobcat, cougar, or serval. Baskin started breeding half a dozen big cat species, including ocelots and leopards. Pre-internet, all Baskin’s information came from breeders and dealers, who had their own motivations. “They were saying, ‘Oh, you should breed these animals because they’re endangered and the zoos don’t know what they’re doing and they’re going to disappear from the wild,’” Baskin said. “So, we thought, well, that’s something we could definitely do to help save the cats.”

But people who bought kittens from Baskin often returned the cats after they grew up. Once, a Siberian lynx — an animal Baskin swore she recognized from when it was young — showed up at auctions. People started donating cats to Baskin’s sanctuary by the dozens. Some years, she turned away hundreds of animals due to a lack of space. Around the same time, Baskin started attending conferences held by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, where she learned a few hard truths. None of these cats had any conservation value for their species. In fact, Baskin realized big cats had no business being bred and kept as pets at all.

In 1997, Baskin pulled a 180. She stopped breeding and began spaying and neutering all of her animals. She started enforcing a new rule in 2003: Big Cat Rescue, her rebranded sanctuary, would take any unwanted tiger, lion, savannah, or whatever else, but in return the owner had to sign a contract forfeiting their right to own a big cat. “We’re the only place that absolutely insists that if you’re going to dump an animal here, you are never going to own another exotic cat,” Baskin said.

The contracts were a good start, but Carole had an even bigger goal in mind: ending all big cat ownership. Critical to realizing that vision is Howard Baskin, a businessman from Poughkeepsie, New York, who Carole met at an event at the Florida aquarium in 2002. (Baskin’s previous husband walked out the door one day and was never seen or heard from again — though she was questioned, no evidence was ever found linking Baskin to his disappearance.) A lifelong bachelor with a Harvard MBA and a law degree from the University of Miami, Howard appears in many ways Carole’s opposite. Carole dresses like a Woodstock attendee and carries herself with the breezy grace of a dancer. Howard trundles along, turtle-like, in dad-style khakis with a cell phone holster. But they make a good team. Howard handles the administrative and legal duties and Carole focuses on advocacy. “On our honeymoon, we wrote a 25-year plan to stop the big cat abuses that bad guys hold dear,” Carole said.

Carole and Howard started by setting up a Google alert for cub-petting events around the country. Baskin would email the venues explaining the downsides of cub petting and asking them to cancel the event, and if they did not respond, she would then direct her hundreds of thousands of social media followers to flood the venues with emails explaining the downsides of cub petting. One by one, malls began to call off the events. (Fairs proved more impervious to the bad PR.) Baskin homed in on the primary players in the exotic cat world and publicized her findings on 911animalabuse.com, a website she created. One individual stood out among all the breeders: a guy with a dozen different aliases, but whose cub petting photos always included the same motley group of heavily tattooed, pierced, longhaired workers. It was Joe Exotic’s crew.

* * *

Joseph Maldonado in 2013, answering a question during an interview at the zoo he then ran in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

As Baskin ramped up her efforts, Joe’s profits plummeted. In retaliation, he launched a smear campaign against Baskin’s nonprofit. He renamed his cub-petting show Big Cat Rescue Entertainment and designed a near-identical copy of Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue logo. The Baskins sued Joe in 2011 for copyright infringement. Joe countersued, but those claims were tossed out by a judge. Joe eventually agreed to a consent judgement north of $1 million, which he had no intention of paying. He did everything he could to obscure his money, changing the name of his zoo and transferring assets to an account in his mother’s name. Joe also made a series of increasingly unhinged videos posted on social media threatening Baskin’s life. One featured an effigy of Baskin. Another depicted Baskin’s head in a jar, Silence of the Lambs–style.

In 2015, Baskin got a call from a woman who said Joe had inquired with her then-husband, who she said was a former military sharpshooter, about hiring her husband to kill Baskin. Nearly two years later, Baskin received a similar warning from a woman named Ashley Webster, an aspiring wildlife biologist from Colorado who had just started working at Joe’s park. In a deposition, Webster recalled Joe saying “something along the lines of he’d give me a few thousand dollars to go to Florida and put a bullet in [Baskin’s] head.” Carole and Howard reported the incidents to police, but nothing seemed to come of it.

Unbeknownst to the Baskins, the FWS had launched an investigation of Joe and his zoo in 2016 for potential animal trafficking violations. The saga, which has been detailed at length in various news reports, involved an FWS agent convincing a man named James Garretson, who’d done big cat business with Joe in the past, to become a government informant. Garretson agreed to attempt to arrange a meeting between Joe and an undercover FBI agent posing as a hitman. At the outset, what the feds learned was that Joe already had his own scheme in the works: He planned to hire Allen Glover, a man from South Carolina who’d been convicted of assault, for the job.

Glover was a longtime associate of a man named Jeff Lowe, who’d done business with Joe and shortly after started hanging around the Tiger King and his world. Joe, who was under the impression that Lowe was wealthy, made his new friend the co-owner of the zoo’s land, along with his mother. In exchange, Lowe, according to a deposition, said he would pay a portion of Joe’s mounting bills at the zoo and let Joe run the park as usual. “The whole thing was to put the zoo in his name so Carole couldn’t get it,” Joe told me. But Lowe had other plans. In a May 2018 deposition, Lowe admitted that he was interested in the zoo for himself.

According to Glover, who testified at Joe’s trial, he and Joe settled on a $5,000 down payment for the hit on Baskin and discussed other details such as what weapon to use. Glover said that Joe eventually gave him $3,000 cash and a cell phone loaded with pictures of Baskin. But during his two days on the stand, Glover claimed he’d always intended to take the money and run. For his part, Joe denies giving Glover the phone, and said that Lowe was the one who instructed him to pay Glover. (Lowe declined multiple interview requests for this story.) Glover did travel east, but in court he said he only made it as far as an unknown beach in Florida, where he partied most of the money away in a single night. Glover claimed that it was not his intention to kill Baskin in Florida, but rather to warn her that Joe wanted her dead.

Meanwhile, in December 2017, Joe agreed to Garretson’s proposed meeting with the undercover FBI agent. The agent quoted Joe a $10,000 fee for the hit. The two agreed to a rough outline of a deal, but Joe never followed through. Instead, in June, without notice, Joe and his new husband, Dillon Passage, loaded up four dogs, two baby tigers, and a baby white camel, and took off. (Joe’s previous husband, Travis Maldonado, accidentally shot and killed himself in October 2017.) “Joe Exotic, as far as I was concerned, was dead,” Joe told me. He was going to create a new life with Passage.

Joe and Passage left Oklahoma and headed east, eventually landing in Gulf Breeze, Florida. On a sunny September morning, Joe pulled up to the local hospital. He planned to walk in and apply for a job. Instead, unmarked cars surrounded him. U.S. marshals jumped out, guns pointed, yelling at Joe to get on the ground.

Lowe had indeed been working with federal agents since as early as June. Less than a month before Joe’s arrest, Lowe bragged on Facebook that he’d been “setting [Joe’s] ass up for almost a year.” And it seems Lowe got what he wanted. He and his wife, Lauren, now run Joe’s old zoo, where they continue to churn out cubs for playtimes. The nursery lineup recently featured Nova, the rambunctious tiliger who bit my producer.

Jeff Lowe and Lauren Dropla with Faith the liliger at their home in 2016 inside the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. (Ruaridh Connellan/BarcroftImages / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

* * *

This past March, journalists from around the country descended on downtown Oklahoma City for Joe Exotic’s trial. Garretson and Glover testified against Joe. Joe’s ex-boyfriend John Finlay testified too. Joe took the stand at the end of the seven-day affair. He said he never intended for anyone to kill Carole Baskin and claimed to have known that Garretson, Glover, and Lowe were conspiring to take him down. He said he played along to better understand their plan and gather evidence he could use against them. The jury deliberated for less than three hours, then found Joe guilty on all charges, including illegally killing five tigers and illegally transporting endangered species across state lines. In January, a judge sentenced Joe to 22 years in federal prison. In a Facebook post, Joe maintained his innocence and said he plans to appeal.

Nasser hopes that Joe’s conviction triggers the beginning of what she calls “a long-overdue Blackfish moment for captive tigers,” referring to the popular documentary that exposed problems with the sea-park business’ treatment of orcas and led to numerous SeaWorld boycotts. Pending any appeals, the Baskins and other activists believe the Tiger King’s downfall could topple the industry. They hope to use the momentum and notoriety of Joe’s case to usher in sweeping legal reform of big cat ownership in the U.S.

Baskin has been pushing for this type of reform since 1998, when she began working on what’s called the Captive Wildlife Safety Act, a federal bill unanimously voted into law in 2003 that barred the sale of big cats as pets across state lines. Loopholes in the law, however, have rendered it largely ineffective. She and Howard — along with major nonprofit groups such as the Humane Society and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) — have been pushing a new bill, the Big Cat Public Safety Act. First introduced in 2012, the legislation would ban all public contact with big cats, including cub petting, and would require all big cat owners to register their animals. Howard hired a top Republican lobbying firm in 2014 to work with Harrison to champion the bill — not for its conservation clou, but on its pubic safety merits. Senator Susan Collins signed on to the bill last November, the first republican cosponsor. Three other Republican senators, including Richard Burr of North Carolina, have since joined Collins. The registrations would provide officials with valuable insight into who owns what and where — potentially life-saving information in the event of, say, a tornado blowing through a tiger park. The ban on cub petting, though, is the most important part of the bill, as proponents believe it would disincentivize the breeding of big cats.

Last year, the bill made it out of the Committee on Natural Resources in a bipartisan vote and could soon head to the House floor, where it has broad support. “Law enforcement has enough problems trying to protect the public without having to run into a house where there might be a tiger,” said Harrison. Dozens of Republican lawmakers support it — a party full of politicians, who, Harrison said, for the most part “don’t give a crap about cats.”

For now, though, cub petting remains a lucrative industry. According to data compiled by a team of New York University researchers in 2016, at least 77 facilities across the country allowed interactions with exotic animals (about a quarter of those were with big cats). In a follow-up study in 2019, which focused specifically on tiger petting, those same zoos were still open. One operation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, run by Bhagavan “Doc” Antle, charges up to $339 per person for tours and cub-petting sessions. Supporters of the Big Cat Public Safety Act believe that ending cub petting would go a long way toward stopping the trade of big cats altogether. “Without ending public contact, you’re not going to have sufficient incentive for all the fly-by-night exhibitors to stop breeding,” said Nasser.

The new protections would extend to smaller species such as jaguars and even unnatural hybrids like Nova. They’d also apply to accredited zoos. While the zoo baby phenomenon is no longer as rabid as it once was, not all zoos have ended the practice of animal meet-and-greets. The Nashville Zoo provides clouded leopard cubs for zoo fundraisers and media events (zoo officials say that play and petting sessions are not allowed), and the Dallas Zoo recently held a cheetah photo op session for the Dallas Stars (zoo officials point out none of the Stars were able to pet the cheetah, however).

Limiting and eventually banning big cat ownership in the U.S. would almost certainly be a boon for the species worldwide. Fewer than 4,000 tigers survive in the wild today. But they are farmed by the thousands in China, Laos, and other Southeast Asian countries where big cat parts are sought after as erroneous medicinal remedies and status-touting commodities. Tiger bone wine, in particular, is considered a cure-all tonic, a virility booster for men, and a coveted, favor-winning gift for superiors, elders, and relatives.

Tiger bone is banned in China, and it’s illegal to trade big cats and their parts in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. But there’s a robust black market for tiger bones, skin, teeth, and claws — and farmed tiger parts keep demand for these items alive, perpetuating poaching. The U.S. government considers closing tiger farms integral to saving wild tigers, but when State Department officials try to negotiate this point with foreign diplomats — especially those from China — they’re often told to clean up their own mess first. “When I talk to government leaders about tiger farming in many of the Asian countries, quite often they ask me, ‘What about tigers in the U.S.? What role do the tigers in private backyards in the U.S. contribute to wild tiger conservation?’” said Grace Ge Gabriel, IFAW’s Asia regional director. “Literally, I am speechless. I don’t have an answer.”

A tiger named Seth rests above a pond at Big Cat Rescue in 2017. (Loren Elliott/Tampa Bay Times via AP)

* * *

After I first contacted Joe following his trial, we spoke several times over the next few months. He liked to talk, only cutting off our calls if another person in the prison needed to use the phone. Joe never admitted any wrongdoing when it came to Baskin; rather, he was eager to defend his innocence. Multiple times he told me, “That whole mess was nothing but a setup.”

Joe did cop to something else, though. He said being locked up in jail had made him realize he’d mistreated the animals all those years, depriving them of their freedom and robbing them of their dignity by keeping them behind bars. Joe told me he regretted having done that. “Now that I have nothing to do besides sit in a cell with no TV, no radio, no nothing, I know exactly what I did to those [animals],” he said. “We can all be drove crazy by doing nothing.”

To make amends, Joe told me he plans to create a new zoo when he gets out. This one without any cages. Just tigers roaming free.

* * *

You can listen to our four-part “Cat People” podcast series on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Rachel Nuwer is an award-winning freelance journalist who reports about science, travel, food and adventure for the New York Times, National Geographic, BBC Future and more. Her multi-award winning first book, Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking, was published in September 2018 with Da Capo Press.

Editors: Mike Dang and Chris Outcalt Illustrator: Zoë van Dijk Fact checker: Matt Giles Copy editor: Jacob Gross

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[cyndiwhitakerwannabequeen-blog]

Why Do Women think because I have a vagina, I need protection from a very selective group of dickheads?Seriously fuck gamergate, a lot of shit that came out of their leader’s mouth is fucking inaccurate as fuck

I hate to be political but hear me out, when I was in college, I wanted to go for my phD to teach classes on Progression of Feminism in Video Games. So you can get the idea I'm not a fan of this video. I have a bachelor’s degree in Media Studies, where one of my senior projects was about violence in videogames made it clear Sega wasn’t even responsible for the rating systems. Oh God Sega was so “mean” and “sexist” because of Night Trap. Night Trap was produced by Hasbro for their video game system, which they scrapped. Oh and Senator Lieberman over reacted big time. When you censor something mid 80′s mid 90′s sales of that forbidden product sky rocketed, Look at heavy metal in the 80′s , those little Mature stickers increased sales. In the 90′s a majority of systems my mother own where produced by Sega, omg a mom in the 90′s own a sexist gaming console. No not everything Sega produced who had a sexist over tone. The Console Wars made it clear, they wanted to be for the mature gamer, so their targeted audience was mostly male adults. 

So that nbc think piece had me pissed off, have you've seen the last few games in the last few weeks,months, years. I can name five video game characters that are women and I know teenage boys who love those characters. (Max Caulfield from Life is Strange, Alex from Oxenfree, Clementine from The Walking Dead Series, Reynn from World of Final Fantasy, A majority female characters from Overwatch, who varies in ages, shapes, sexuality and race) My brother is eleven years younger than me and his friends loved characters such as Chloe Price (Life is Strange) and Clementine. (Telltale's The Walking Dead Series). Why do they love them, because their badass attitudes and the ability to take care of themselves. In Life is Strange while I may not be a fan of Chloe Price and do not like her actions, it is clear it is done in a need of self-defense and protection of her and ones around her. In the Walking Dead Season 2, Clementine is a mere child who acts as an adult throughout the game and defends herself better than a majority of the adults surrounding her.

Not all men who play video games are dickheads. Shocking I know. *eye roll* I play with a chill dude almost everyday in competitive, and if we lose, he doesn't blame our team, he just goes good game, and if they were bad we move on and hope for a few wins. God, I really only been playing, Overwatch since March and guess what, I've only come across two idiots once who were mad because I was a "gamer girl". Do you think I let two teenage boys bother me? No absolutely not, and if this sexist #gamergatenarrative continues their sexists behavior will as well. So please stop saying I need protection from bad words, when it's just a selective group of women . Almost quoting Sylvibot "I don't need a protection because I'm a vagina gamer" (But I don't know if she's a mercy main, I used to be but was targeted immediately and no it's Not because she's a fucking woman, it's because she is a Healer Who CAN REVIVE DEAD TEAMMATES)

You idiots! Girls and Women do play video games, the average of age of a gamer is 35 and not all of us support racism. A majority of us are not racist or sexist! So stfu please.

Here are some statistics

Male Gamers make up 52% of the gamer community and 48% of the community is Female. It is quite balanced. This is of as 2014. (https://venturebeat.com/…/gaming-advocacy-group-the-averag…/)

Age of Gamers : 35 & older makes up 72 % , 18-34 makes up 31% and 18 and under makes up 18% as of 2016 (http://www.theesa.com/about-esa/industry-facts/)

So let that skin in I’m supposed to believe that 72% of adults are racist and sexist fucks? From a logical stand point absolutely not, damn and 18% are kids that don’t know better yeah. Omg you think I haven’t said nasty things while playing a game. Ex. “Get your ass on the payload” Ex2. “Don’t teabag that guy you dumb fuck.” I am woman and I said shit like that sometimes, okay? It’s not subjective to only men. Sometimes anger of losing makes up said dumb shit but most of the time it doesn’t happen. Rarely do I have a douchebag yelling in my ear, and if I do. I mute the fucking loser. I sometimes mute my friends because they whined to much. How come we don’t talk about the fact we can mute those we don’t want to hear?

I am also supposed to believe that almost half the gamer community of women are sexist too? Gtfoh.

Why did they only use the clips of women being killed in Friday the 13th. Which hate to tell you, it's an over hype version of cat and mouse. I love that game but it's true. How come they don't mention the women in that game have the power to stunned Jason and get him kill. Yeah if you're a woman character in the game grab Jason's mom sweaters which stuns Jason and if Tommy is with you, he can kill Jason. So of course women are the first target in the game, because they hold a huge power in the game, if the sweater fit the men, men would be targeted first. If I'm Jason and see Tommy, he must die first. Oh wait I get it, that’s like when talking about Grand Theft Auto, let’s just say men kill women, but no it’s not the case, my friends kill everyone in that game and mostly want to steal the city bus.

I'm a member of discord should I be worry about being a accusing of supporting sexist and irrational behavior?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN1P6UA7pvM

[lodelss]

The Strange and Dangerous World of America’s Big Cat People

Rachel Nuwer | Longreads | March 2020 | 28 minutes (7,033 words)

You can listen to our four-part “Cat People” podcast series on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It’s a gloomy April afternoon in rural Oklahoma, and I’m sitting on the floor of a fluorescent-lit room at a roadside zoo with Nova, a 12-week-old tiliger. She looks like a tiger cub, but she’s actually a crossbreed, an unnatural combination of a tiger father and a mother born of a tiger and a lion. That unique genetic makeup places a higher price tag on cubs like Nova, and makes it easier, legally speaking, to abuse and exploit them. Endangered species protections don’t apply to artificial breeds such as tiligers. Hybridization, however, has done nothing to quell Nova’s predatory instincts. For the umpteenth time during the past six minutes, she lunges at my face, claws splayed and mouth ajar — only to be halted mid-leap as her handler jerks her harness. Unphased, Nova gets right back to pouncing.

With her dusty blue eyes, sherbet-colored paws, and prominent black stripes, Nova is adorable. But she also weighs 30 pounds and has teeth like a Doberman’s and claws the size of jumbo shrimp. Nova’s handler, a woman with long brown hair who tells me she recently retired from her IT job at a South Dakota bank to live out her dream of working with exotic cats, scolds the rambunctious tiliger in a goo-goo-ga-ga voice: “Nooooo, nooooo, you calms down!” Nova is teething, the handler explains, so she just wants something to chew on. The handler reaches for one of the tatty stuffed animals strewn around the room — a substitute, I guess, for my limbs. In that moment of distraction, Nova lunges. She lands her mark, chomping into the bicep of my producer, Graham Lee Brewer.

“Ooo, she got me!” Lee Brewer grimaces as he attempts to pull away from the determined predator. Nova’s handler has to pry the tiliger’s jaws open to detach her. After the incident, the woman conveniently checks her watch: “OK, you guys, time is up!”

I paid $80 for the pleasure of spending 12 minutes with Nova, but I’m glad the experience, billed as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, is over. On our way out, we pass more than a dozen adult tigers yowling and pacing cages the size of small classrooms. Nearby signs solicit donations. You are their only hope. Sponsor a cabin or compound today! In the safety of our car, Lee Brewer rolls up his sleeve, exposing a swollen red welt. “Look at my gnarly tiger bite,” he chuckles. “I tried to play it off but I was like, this fuckin’ hurts!”

It’s not the first time I’ve seen this world up-close; I spent the better part of eight years investigating wildlife trafficking around the world. During my travels, I visited farms in China and Laos where tigers are raised like pigs, examined traditional medicine in Vietnam, ate what I was told was tiger bone “cake,” and tracked some of the world’s last remaining wild tigers in India. Almost everywhere I went, tigers were suffering and their numbers were on the decline because of human behavior. Until recently, though, I had no idea the United States was part of the problem.

Within a few weeks of my visit, Nova will be far too big and dangerous for overpriced playtime sessions. Cats like her are most likely confined to one of those cramped cages my producer and I passed leaving the zoo, where they spend the rest of their life being speed-bred to crank out more adorable cubs. Or Nova might be sold to another breeder, or to someone who wants to keep her as a pet. Although no one tracks big cat ownership in the U.S., it’s estimated that there are likely more pet tigers in America than there are left in the wild. What’s more, depending on the species of cat, federal oversight is either limited or nonexistent. In some states, it’s easier to buy a lion — a 400-pound predatory killer — than it is to get a dog.

Animal rights activists have been pushing for decades to curb big cat ownership in this country, arguing that the industry is cruel, dangerous, and detrimental to conservation of cats in the wild. Now, reform appears within reach. The movement owes its momentum to, of all things, a murder-for-hire plot gone terribly awry. You might have seen the headlines in the Washington Post and New York magazine: Joe Exotic, a self-described “gay, gun-carrying redneck with a mullet,” among the largest tiger owners and breeders in the U.S., charged with conspiring to commit murder for hire. At its height, Joe’s zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, which is where I visited Nova, housed more than 200 big cats, including lion-tiger hybrids, as well as about 60 other species, everything from lemurs to owls to giraffes. Joe even acquired a pair of alligators he claimed were once owned by Michael Jackson. Still, as one local told me, “The animals weren’t the entertainment. Joe was the entertainment.”

Last year, an Oklahoma City jury convicted Joe, whose legal name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, of the murder-for-hire plots against a Florida activist and sanctuary owner named Carole Baskin. For Joe, Baskin had become something of an arch tiger rival. The news coverage mostly focused on Joe’s outlandish personality and the details of his decade-long feud with Baskin. But the jury also found Joe guilty of 17 wildlife crimes, including illegally killing five tigers and trafficking tigers across state lines — marking the first significant conviction of a tiger criminal in an American courtroom. “This verdict sends a shot across the bow to other roadside zoos who are playing fast and loose with federal regulations,” said Carney Anne Nasser, director of the animal welfare clinic at Michigan State University College of Law.

In other words, the bad boy of the big cat world might have inadvertently contributed to cleaning up the dirty industry he helped build and then exploited for much of his adult life.

Simba, a Bengal tiger, was sent to an animal sanctuary, Big Cat Rescue, in Tampa, Florida. (Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald via AP)

* * *

Big cats are easier to find than you might think. I recently struck up a conversation with the chef at my favorite sushi joint in New York City. He asked what I’d been working on, and I filled him in on a bit of the Joe Exotic story and the big cat trade. To my surprise, he nodded along knowingly: “Oh yeah, a buddy of mine just got a serval!” Celebrity culture is another hot spot for exotic animal ownership. This past fall, Justin Bieber reportedly spent $35,000 on two savannah cats and created a dedicated Instagram page that quickly amassed more than 500,000 followers. When PETA criticized Bieber’s new pet choice, he posted a statement on his Instagram story telling the nonprofit group to “suck it” and “focus on real problems.”

Shopping for an unconventional animal used to mean scanning the classified sections of newspapers or fliers on the cluttered billboards at grocery stores and gas stations. But those analog methods of sale have long since given way to people hawking large cats in ways that are now more traditionally modern: closed Facebook groups and exotic pet websites. Getting an ocelot or a cheetah can be as easy as sending a DM or text, agreeing on a price, and setting a pick-up date. Depending on what state you live in, owning one of these animals might be entirely legal. And even if it’s not, there’s almost always a way to sidestep the rules, which can be confusing and are rarely enforced.

Save for a handful of regulations pertaining to animals listed in the Endangered Species Act (ESA), there’s almost no oversight of big cat ownership by the federal government. The Animal Welfare Act is supposed to ensure humane treatment of big cats and other captive animals, but the inspectors are overworked and many of the rules are weak, vague, or both. Although the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) does technically require a permit to sell endangered species such as tigers, lions, leopards, or jaguars across state lines, unscrupulous sellers and buyers often don’t want to bother with permits and deal in untraceable cash payments. At trial, one buyer even testified to participating in sales marked as “donations.” Joe Exotic used this tactic for years to evade the gaze of law enforcement. He wasn’t the only one. At Joe’s trial, that same tiger owner testified: “Everybody marks donation.”

Same goes for regulations at the state level: Loopholes abound in the legislative patchwork governing big cat ownership. “There’s lots of ways tigers have been technically regulated on paper but in practice, not so much,” Nasser said. Roughly two thirds of states have some sort of regulations prohibiting private big cat ownership as pets. In 10 states, anyone can own a lion or tiger as long as they pay as little as $30 for a license from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Four states — North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Oklahoma — have no laws on the books at all.

Rules aside, very few people, no matter how well-intentioned, are prepared to own one of the world’s largest, deadliest predators. “Everybody wants a tiger cub, but nobody wants a tiger,” said Tim Harrison, a retired Ohio police officer and first responder who specialized in exotic creatures. These days, Harrison runs Outreach for Animals, a nonprofit that advocates responsible exotic pet ownership and trains emergency personnel to safely deal with animal-related crises. Harrison used to be a big cat owner himself, before realizing his mistake. “I was on the dark side,” he said, “thinking I was doing the right thing.”

Many big cat owners are subjected to what Harrison describes as a “baptism in reality,” learning firsthand that these adult cats are expensive and dangerous. “A big cat is like a walking, thinking IED,” he said. “You don’t know when that thing’s going to go off.” One of the most famous incidents took place in 2003 at a live performance by the popular entertainment act Siegfried and Roy. One of the duo’s iconic white tigers, Mantacore, knocked down Roy Horn, grabbed him by the neck, and dragged him awayo. First responders rushed Horn to the hospital in critical condition. He survived but only returned to the stage once more years later. Defenders of the popular act contended that Horn suffered a stroke mid-act and Mantacore was just trying to help him, but Harrison disagreed. He argued on national television that Mantacore had intended to kill Roy, and that Roy had brought this upon himself: He’d disrespected the largest predatory cat in the world by forcing the animal to do magic tricks.

No agency tracks the number of people attacked and killed by captive big cats. According to a database of incidents compiled by the Humane Society of the United States, 24 people have died and 294 have been injured in the U.S. since 1990. Those figures likely only represent a fraction of the real numbers. Not every case makes the news, and the people involved in these incidents don’t always divulge the true cause of injury. In 1999, when a family’s pet tiger killed a 10-year-old girl in Texas, the victim’s mother initially told emergency dispatchers that her daughter had cut her neck by falling off a fence.  (She’d later testify she did not recall making the phone call.) In 2003, a man in New York City visited the hospital for a severe wound on his arm and leg; he claimed to have been bitten by a pit bull — not by Ming, the 400-pound tiger he had holed up in his Harlem apartment.

Big cats can threaten more than just their owners. The most infamous example occurred in 2011, when exotic animal owner Terry Thompson opened the doors to almost all of his pets’ cages before shooting himself. In what came to be known as the Zanesville massacre, law enforcement officers had to hunt and kill 18 tigers, 17 lions, and three mountain lions, as well as bears, a baboon, and wolves. “It was like Jumanji in real life,” said Harrison, who was one of the two dozen or so officers who responded to the incident. Many of the people who responded to the call that day suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, Harrison claimed. They had no choice but to kill the animals, then they faced virulent public backlash for doing so.

Zanesville is an extreme example, but it’s not the only case of exotics turned loose. One problem is there’s a lack of places equipped to take in these animals — even zoos don’t want them. Since starring in a 2011 documentary The Elephant in the Living Room, about exotic cat ownership, Harrison gets about 30 calls a year from people desperate to find a new home for their lions or tigers. With few options, some people donate their cats to shady facilities that use them for breeding. Others abandon them. The New York Times recently reported that a woman looking for a place to smoke a joint stumbled upon a caged tiger in a vacant home in Houston. Unsurprisingly, the owner did not immediately come forward to claim the tiger, but she was later arrested and charged with one misdemeanor count of cruelty to a nonlivestock animal.

A sign warning motorists that exotic animals are on the loose rests on I-70 Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011, near Zanesville, Ohio. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

* * *

As a boy, Joe Exotic raised pigeons and captured porcupines, racoons, and baby antelope at his childhood homes in Kansas and rural Wyoming. But it was the death of his older brother, Garold Wayne, in a car accident in 1997, that precipitated Joe’s entrance into the tiger business: Joe convinced his parents to use the roughly $140,000 settlement they received to open a wildlife rescue center.

Before Joe and his parents had completed the first cages at the GW Exotic Animal Memorial Foundation in 1999, someone dropped off an unwanted mountain lion and black bear. Soon after, they received a call about two tigers, a black leopard, and a mountain lion found in a backyard. Joe set out with a horse trailer and tranquilizers to collect the animals, which were skinny and malnourished. When Joe spoke to me this spring on the phone from a county jail in Oklahoma, he told me there was an excitement about the uncertainty and possibility of those early days. “I had no intention of being Joe Exotic or the Tiger King or anything like that,” said Joe, who came up with the “Tiger King” moniker because people struggled to pronounce his original surname, Schreibvogel. “But I never said no to a rescue.”

Pretty soon, Joe started breeding his own tigers. He bred some 400 big cats over the years. He sold the animals to buyers on both coasts for as much as $5,000 each. By the mid-2000s, Joe had become one of the largest exotic animal operators in the country. He owned dozens of species and put together a traveling magic show. Although Joe had been “about the animals” in the beginning, as time passed, according to Joe’s ex-boyfriend John Finlay, fame and profit monopolized his thinking. Joe’s niece, Chealsi Putman, who helped out at the zoo for years, noticed the same evolution. “It’s like he’s seen dollar signs,” Putman told me. “He figured out a way to make money and ran with it.”

Not all big cat owners are similarly motivated. For some, it’s a grossly misplaced desire to help an endangered species — not realizing that big cats bred in the U.S. are hybridized mutts that have no genetic worth for wild tiger conservation. For others, like 54-year-old Deborah Pierce, the motivation is something more akin to love, or infatuation. Pierce started small, rehabbing injured wildlife at her house and volunteering and working at a local veterinary clinic and zoo after she graduated from high school. But helping lion keepers wasn’t enough to satisfy Pierce. “I wanted one of my own to just spend time with,” she said.

Pierce was encouraged when she learned that at the time her home state of South Carolina had no laws preventing her from owning a big cat. She talked her husband into helping her construct a double-fenced pen on their secluded, wooded property. She easily found a dealer on the internet selling lion cubs for $1,500 — like Nova, “picture babies” that were too large for cub petting by the time of sale — and arranged to purchase a female cub. “I could afford her easier than I could afford a new bulldog,” Pierce said. She named the lion Elsa, and a few months later, she got Charlie, a baby cougar, to keep Elsa company.

That was 12 years ago. Pierce’s perspective has since changed. She’s emptied her savings account on her cats. They eat $5,000 worth of meat a year and the veterinary bills run around $10,000 annually. Last year, the county hit her with an $1,100 fine for not having the proper paperwork. (South Carolina started regulating big cats in 2018.) Pierce no longer has time to ride horses, her other great love, and her husband left her in 2016, breaking not only her heart, she said, but also Charlie and Elsa’s. She’s put a dream of moving out to Arizona on hold as well. State laws there strictly regulate private ownership of big cats, and finding a sanctuary where Elsa and Charlie could stay has proven too difficult. “They’re my best friends,” Pierce said, “but if I had it all to go over again, I wouldn’t have gotten them.”

At this point, Pierce has resigned herself to the long haul, perhaps as many as another eight years given the lifespan of captive big cats. “I just want to be able to give Elsa and Charlie a happy life,” she said. “Their happiness is more important than mine, in my eyes.”

A month after I visited Pierce, she emailed with bad news. Charlie had died in surgery. “His heart was still beating, but he wouldn’t breathe when the oxygen came off,” she wrote. “So, we let him slip away.” Elsa, she says, has been inconsolable, and Deb blames herself for not bringing Charlie to the vet earlier. The bill for Charlie’s last visit, which totaled $4,800, even after the vet gave Pierce a significant discount, has only added to her stress. “I just hope nothing happens to Elsa before money is available again,” she says. “That’s my number one worry right now.”

  * * *

  The modern exotic animal craze traces back to the ’70s and ’80s and a phenomenon called zoo babies. Each spring, interstate signs and TV commercials featured photos of blue-eyed, squealing balls of fuzz debuting at major zoos around the country, an irresistible marketing lure for families that turned out to snap photos and cuddle the newest arrivals. Zoo babies were among the industry’s number one moneymaking programs, and tigers were always the biggest draw. As an added bonus, zoos advertised these activities under the guise of conservation. “You’d get your T-shirt, get your picture taken, and you’d walk away feeling like you’ve saved the world — you’ve saved tigers,” Harrison said.

But there was a problem, and Harrison, who worked as an exotic animal veterinary assistant as a teenager in Ohio, noticed it. There were lots of zoo babies but no zoo adolescents. When Harrison eventually began asking the staff about what had happened to last year’s tiger cubs, he’d get vague answers about the animals being traded off to different zoos. To Harrison, that math didn’t add up: Even the largest zoos around the country had only two or three adult tigers. But zoos annually paraded hundreds of babies out for pictures and play sessions.

Jack Hanna holds two Bengal Tiger cubs that were born and bred in captivity during a groundbreaking ceremony at the Dallas Zoo in 1998. (AP Photo/Tim Sharp)

Harrison eventually learned the dark truth: After the cubs reached a certain age they became “zoo surplus” and were sold at exotic animal auctions to private buyers. These auctions were raucous events, attended mostly by veteran wildlife keepers and professional breeders that zoos relied on to supply their collections. Harrison attended a few and noticed the same employees who weeks earlier had been talking up the conservation value of the zoo’s tiger babies, holding cub after cub up by their armpits to sell to the highest buyer. The whole scene was commonplace at the time. “No one thought anything of it,” Harrison said.

The zoo baby phenomenon led to a surge in private big cat ownership. In the 1990s, according to Harrison, wildlife-related television spread the idea of owning a pet tiger to a much wider audience. Jack Hanna types bottle-fed cubs and paraded tigers on leashes on talk shows. The predators appeared no more dangerous than a golden retriever. “It was like somebody flipped a switch on,” Harrison said. At the time, Harrison was the lone police officer in Ohio who could handle big cat emergencies; he suddenly went from getting a couple calls a year to getting more than 100. After removing an unruly pet from someone’s property, he’d ask people why they thought it was a good idea to own a lion or tiger. Many responded it was because they’d seen it on TV. Harrison started calling it the Steve Irwin syndrome.

That turns out to be an apt diagnosis. According to research conducted by scientists at Duke University, seeing a wild animal in an unnatural, human setting — a chimpanzee drinking out of a baby bottle or sitting through a talk show interview — makes people less likely to donate to a conservation organization that aids that species and more likely to think the creature in question would make a great pet. According to Kara Walker, now a behavioral ecologist at North Carolina State University and lead author of the research, published in 2011 in the journal PLOS One, this also extends to people’s thought process after an encounter with a cub, which might go something like: Look at this cuddly tiger! I got to pet it for 20 minutes and it licked my hand and now I can have a tiger, too!

Enterprising private exotic animal owners capitalized on the moment. They realized they could make a killing holding their own cub petting events at malls, fairs, and roadside zoos, which compounded an already vicious breeding pattern. “I call it the breed and dump cycle,” said Nasser, the Michigan State law professor. That cycle is largely responsible for the proliferation of tigers throughout the U.S., and by the middle of the last decade, the most notorious of all the breed-and-dump outfits belonged to Joe Exotic.

But cub-petting events weren’t enough for Joe. Concerned with fame and fortune, he plotted ways to grow his online following and commercialize the business. He started selling Tiger King–branded candy, apparel, and condoms. He also kept zoo costs down by euthanizing sterile or defective tigers and turned donated animals that weren’t moneymakers — especially emus — into cat food. During regular inspections of Joe’s zoo, the USDA cited hundreds of American Welfare Act violations. The agency conducted four investigations, including one that looked into the deaths of 23 tiger cubs from 2009 to 2010. (As an endangered species, tigers cannot be killed unless there is a legitimate reason, such as ending the life of a sick tiger.) Animal rights groups such as PETA conducted their own covert investigations, revealing what they claimed was gross abuse — dead and dying animals, extremely crowded cages lacking basic necessities such as water, and untrained staff who routinely abused animals. In retaliation, Joe launched social media attacks and filed dozens of contrived police reports claiming his accusers were the ones who were breaking the law.

For years, Joe’s strategy worked: Profit off cubs. Evade his enemies. Skirt the law. It probably would’ve continued to work had Joe’s path not collided, as he once put it, with “some bitch down there in Florida.”

* * *

Carole Baskin in 2017 walking the property at Big Cat Rescue, a nonprofit sanctuary committed to humane treatment of rescued animals, often coming from exploitive for-profit operations. (Loren Elliott/Tampa Bay Times via AP)

Vultures circle overhead as Carole Baskin and I make our way along a secluded stretch of the Upper Tampa Bay Trail, about 15 miles outside of downtown Tampa. A spring breeze flutters her waist-length blond hair and blows through the thick surrounding brush of oaks and palmettos. Despite the blue sky and sunshine, the trail is empty. The only sound is the rustle of leaves and crunch of Baskin’s leopard-print boots on the pavement. It was this trail, Baskin explained to me, on which she regularly bikes to work, that a hitman had identified as a place to take her out.

Baskin is arguably the most well-known activist in the country campaigning against big cat ownership. She also takes in unwanted exotic cats at Big Cat Rescue, her sanctuary in Tampa, which currently houses 66 cats belonging to 11 different species. It’s one of the few places in the U.S. capable of providing these animals with a safe, reasonably good life in captivity.

Like Harrison, Baskin used to be part of the problem. A pivot from big cat owner to big cat conservationist is a common story among advocates in the field. Baskin stumbled into owning an exotic cat in the early 1990s at the age of 31. She and her ex-husband, Don, worked together in the real estate business. They used llamas to mitigate the brush on the Florida properties they sold, and the easiest place to get a llama was at an exotic animal auction. At one memorable event, a man seated next to Baskin bid on a baby bobcat. Baskin couldn’t help but lean over and whisper: “When that cat grows up, she is going to tear your face off.”

“I’m a taxidermist,” the man replied. “I’m just gonna club her in the head in the parking lot and make her into a den ornament.”

Baskin was horrified. Don outbid the man and they brought home the 6-month-old kitten, which Baskin named Windsong. As Windsong grew, the bobcat terrorized Baskin’s daughter and the family’s German shepherd. The solution, Baskin decided, was to get Windsong a playmate. Don found a guy in Minnesota who agreed to sell them a bobcat kitten. Turned out, the man was a fur farmer; Baskin and Don came back from that trip with 56 bobcat and lynx kittens — everything the farmer had for sale. The following year, they returned to rescue the 28 adult cats, too.

With their home overrun by exotic cats, Baskin and Don transformed a nearby 40-acre property they owned into a sanctuary, albeit with misguided tourism and breeding components. They called it Wildlife on Easy Street. They amassed a collection of at least 150 exotic cats of 17 species. For $75 a night, visitors could share a small cabin with a bobcat, cougar, or serval. Baskin started breeding half a dozen big cat species, including ocelots and leopards. Pre-internet, all Baskin’s information came from breeders and dealers, who had their own motivations. “They were saying, ‘Oh, you should breed these animals because they’re endangered and the zoos don’t know what they’re doing and they’re going to disappear from the wild,’” Baskin said. “So, we thought, well, that’s something we could definitely do to help save the cats.”

But people who bought kittens from Baskin often returned the cats after they grew up. Once, a Siberian lynx — an animal Baskin swore she recognized from when it was young — showed up at auctions. People started donating cats to Baskin’s sanctuary by the dozens. Some years, she turned away hundreds of animals due to a lack of space. Around the same time, Baskin started attending conferences held by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, where she learned a few hard truths. None of these cats had any conservation value for their species. In fact, Baskin realized big cats had no business being bred and kept as pets at all.

In 1997, Baskin pulled a 180. She stopped breeding and began spaying and neutering all of her animals. She started enforcing a new rule in 2003: Big Cat Rescue, her rebranded sanctuary, would take any unwanted tiger, lion, savannah, or whatever else, but in return the owner had to sign a contract forfeiting their right to own a big cat. “We’re the only place that absolutely insists that if you’re going to dump an animal here, you are never going to own another exotic cat,” Baskin said.

The contracts were a good start, but Carole had an even bigger goal in mind: ending all big cat ownership. Critical to realizing that vision is Howard Baskin, a businessman from Poughkeepsie, New York, who Carole met at an event at the Florida aquarium in 2002. (Baskin’s previous husband walked out the door one day and was never seen or heard from again — though she was questioned, no evidence was ever found linking Baskin to his disappearance.) A lifelong bachelor with a Harvard MBA and a law degree from the University of Miami, Howard appears in many ways Carole’s opposite. Carole dresses like a Woodstock attendee and carries herself with the breezy grace of a dancer. Howard trundles along, turtle-like, in dad-style khakis with a cell phone holster. But they make a good team. Howard handles the administrative and legal duties and Carole focuses on advocacy. “On our honeymoon, we wrote a 25-year plan to stop the big cat abuses that bad guys hold dear,” Carole said.

Carole and Howard started by setting up a Google alert for cub-petting events around the country. Baskin would email the venues explaining the downsides of cub petting and asking them to cancel the event, and if they did not respond, she would then direct her hundreds of thousands of social media followers to flood the venues with emails explaining the downsides of cub petting. One by one, malls began to call off the events. (Fairs proved more impervious to the bad PR.) Baskin homed in on the primary players in the exotic cat world and publicized her findings on 911animalabuse.com, a website she created. One individual stood out among all the breeders: a guy with a dozen different aliases, but whose cub petting photos always included the same motley group of heavily tattooed, pierced, longhaired workers. It was Joe Exotic’s crew.

* * *

Joseph Maldonado in 2013, answering a question during an interview at the zoo he then ran in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

As Baskin ramped up her efforts, Joe’s profits plummeted. In retaliation, he launched a smear campaign against Baskin’s nonprofit. He renamed his cub-petting show Big Cat Rescue Entertainment and designed a near-identical copy of Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue logo. The Baskins sued Joe in 2011 for copyright infringement. Joe countersued, but those claims were tossed out by a judge. Joe eventually agreed to a consent judgement north of $1 million, which he had no intention of paying. He did everything he could to obscure his money, changing the name of his zoo and transferring assets to an account in his mother’s name. Joe also made a series of increasingly unhinged videos posted on social media threatening Baskin’s life. One featured an effigy of Baskin. Another depicted Baskin’s head in a jar, Silence of the Lambs–style.

In 2015, Baskin got a call from a woman who said Joe had inquired with her then-husband, who she said was a former military sharpshooter, about hiring her husband to kill Baskin. Nearly two years later, Baskin received a similar warning from a woman named Ashley Webster, an aspiring wildlife biologist from Colorado who had just started working at Joe’s park. In a deposition, Webster recalled Joe saying “something along the lines of he’d give me a few thousand dollars to go to Florida and put a bullet in [Baskin’s] head.” Carole and Howard reported the incidents to police, but nothing seemed to come of it.

Unbeknownst to the Baskins, the FWS had launched an investigation of Joe and his zoo in 2016 for potential animal trafficking violations. The saga, which has been detailed at length in various news reports, involved an FWS agent convincing a man named James Garretson, who’d done big cat business with Joe in the past, to become a government informant. Garretson agreed to attempt to arrange a meeting between Joe and an undercover FBI agent posing as a hitman. At the outset, what the feds learned was that Joe already had his own scheme in the works: He planned to hire Allen Glover, a man from South Carolina who’d been convicted of assault, for the job.

Glover was a longtime associate of a man named Jeff Lowe, who’d done business with Joe and shortly after started hanging around the Tiger King and his world. Joe, who was under the impression that Lowe was wealthy, made his new friend the co-owner of the zoo’s land, along with his mother. In exchange, Lowe, according to a deposition, said he would pay a portion of Joe’s mounting bills at the zoo and let Joe run the park as usual. “The whole thing was to put the zoo in his name so Carole couldn’t get it,” Joe told me. But Lowe had other plans. In a May 2018 deposition, Lowe admitted that he was interested in the zoo for himself.

According to Glover, who testified at Joe’s trial, he and Joe settled on a $5,000 down payment for the hit on Baskin and discussed other details such as what weapon to use. Glover said that Joe eventually gave him $3,000 cash and a cell phone loaded with pictures of Baskin. But during his two days on the stand, Glover claimed he’d always intended to take the money and run. For his part, Joe denies giving Glover the phone, and said that Lowe was the one who instructed him to pay Glover. (Lowe declined multiple interview requests for this story.) Glover did travel east, but in court he said he only made it as far as an unknown beach in Florida, where he partied most of the money away in a single night. Glover claimed that it was not his intention to kill Baskin in Florida, but rather to warn her that Joe wanted her dead.

Meanwhile, in December 2017, Joe agreed to Garretson’s proposed meeting with the undercover FBI agent. The agent quoted Joe a $10,000 fee for the hit. The two agreed to a rough outline of a deal, but Joe never followed through. Instead, in June, without notice, Joe and his new husband, Dillon Passage, loaded up four dogs, two baby tigers, and a baby white camel, and took off. (Joe’s previous husband, Travis Maldonado, accidentally shot and killed himself in October 2017.) “Joe Exotic, as far as I was concerned, was dead,” Joe told me. He was going to create a new life with Passage.

Joe and Passage left Oklahoma and headed east, eventually landing in Gulf Breeze, Florida. On a sunny September morning, Joe pulled up to the local hospital. He planned to walk in and apply for a job. Instead, unmarked cars surrounded him. U.S. marshals jumped out, guns pointed, yelling at Joe to get on the ground.

Lowe had indeed been working with federal agents since as early as June. Less than a month before Joe’s arrest, Lowe bragged on Facebook that he’d been “setting [Joe’s] ass up for almost a year.” And it seems Lowe got what he wanted. He and his wife, Lauren, now run Joe’s old zoo, where they continue to churn out cubs for playtimes. The nursery lineup recently featured Nova, the rambunctious tiliger who bit my producer.

Jeff Lowe and Lauren Dropla with Faith the liliger at their home in 2016 inside the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. (Ruaridh Connellan/BarcroftImages / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

* * *

This past March, journalists from around the country descended on downtown Oklahoma City for Joe Exotic’s trial. Garretson and Glover testified against Joe. Joe’s ex-boyfriend John Finlay testified too. Joe took the stand at the end of the seven-day affair. He said he never intended for anyone to kill Carole Baskin and claimed to have known that Garretson, Glover, and Lowe were conspiring to take him down. He said he played along to better understand their plan and gather evidence he could use against them. The jury deliberated for less than three hours, then found Joe guilty on all charges, including illegally killing five tigers and illegally transporting endangered species across state lines. In January, a judge sentenced Joe to 22 years in federal prison. In a Facebook post, Joe maintained his innocence and said he plans to appeal.

Nasser hopes that Joe’s conviction triggers the beginning of what she calls “a long-overdue Blackfish moment for captive tigers,” referring to the popular documentary that exposed problems with the sea-park business’ treatment of orcas and led to numerous SeaWorld boycotts. Pending any appeals, the Baskins and other activists believe the Tiger King’s downfall could topple the industry. They hope to use the momentum and notoriety of Joe’s case to usher in sweeping legal reform of big cat ownership in the U.S.

Baskin has been pushing for this type of reform since 1998, when she began working on what’s called the Captive Wildlife Safety Act, a federal bill unanimously voted into law in 2003 that barred the sale of big cats as pets across state lines. Loopholes in the law, however, have rendered it largely ineffective. She and Howard — along with major nonprofit groups such as the Humane Society and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) — have been pushing a new bill, the Big Cat Public Safety Act. First introduced in 2012, the legislation would ban all public contact with big cats, including cub petting, and would require all big cat owners to register their animals. Howard hired a top Republican lobbying firm in 2014 to work with Harrison to champion the bill — not for its conservation clou, but on its pubic safety merits. Senator Susan Collins signed on to the bill last November, the first republican cosponsor. Three other Republican senators, including Richard Burr of North Carolina, have since joined Collins. The registrations would provide officials with valuable insight into who owns what and where — potentially life-saving information in the event of, say, a tornado blowing through a tiger park. The ban on cub petting, though, is the most important part of the bill, as proponents believe it would disincentivize the breeding of big cats.

Last year, the bill made it out of the Committee on Natural Resources in a bipartisan vote and could soon head to the House floor, where it has broad support. “Law enforcement has enough problems trying to protect the public without having to run into a house where there might be a tiger,” said Harrison. Dozens of Republican lawmakers support it — a party full of politicians, who, Harrison said, for the most part “don’t give a crap about cats.”

For now, though, cub petting remains a lucrative industry. According to data compiled by a team of New York University researchers in 2016, at least 77 facilities across the country allowed interactions with exotic animals (about a quarter of those were with big cats). In a follow-up study in 2019, which focused specifically on tiger petting, those same zoos were still open. One operation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, run by Bhagavan “Doc” Antle, charges up to $339 per person for tours and cub-petting sessions. Supporters of the Big Cat Public Safety Act believe that ending cub petting would go a long way toward stopping the trade of big cats altogether. “Without ending public contact, you’re not going to have sufficient incentive for all the fly-by-night exhibitors to stop breeding,” said Nasser.

The new protections would extend to smaller species such as jaguars and even unnatural hybrids like Nova. They’d also apply to accredited zoos. While the zoo baby phenomenon is no longer as rabid as it once was, not all zoos have ended the practice of animal meet-and-greets. The Nashville Zoo provides clouded leopard cubs for zoo fundraisers and media events (zoo officials say that play and petting sessions are not allowed), and the Dallas Zoo recently held a cheetah photo op session for the Dallas Stars (zoo officials point out none of the Stars were able to pet the cheetah, however).

Limiting and eventually banning big cat ownership in the U.S. would almost certainly be a boon for the species worldwide. Fewer than 4,000 tigers survive in the wild today. But they are farmed by the thousands in China, Laos, and other Southeast Asian countries where big cat parts are sought after as erroneous medicinal remedies and status-touting commodities. Tiger bone wine, in particular, is considered a cure-all tonic, a virility booster for men, and a coveted, favor-winning gift for superiors, elders, and relatives.

Tiger bone is banned in China, and it’s illegal to trade big cats and their parts in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. But there’s a robust black market for tiger bones, skin, teeth, and claws — and farmed tiger parts keep demand for these items alive, perpetuating poaching. The U.S. government considers closing tiger farms integral to saving wild tigers, but when State Department officials try to negotiate this point with foreign diplomats — especially those from China — they’re often told to clean up their own mess first. “When I talk to government leaders about tiger farming in many of the Asian countries, quite often they ask me, ‘What about tigers in the U.S.? What role do the tigers in private backyards in the U.S. contribute to wild tiger conservation?’” said Grace Ge Gabriel, IFAW’s Asia regional director. “Literally, I am speechless. I don’t have an answer.”

A tiger named Seth rests above a pond at Big Cat Rescue in 2017. (Loren Elliott/Tampa Bay Times via AP)

* * *

After I first contacted Joe following his trial, we spoke several times over the next few months. He liked to talk, only cutting off our calls if another person in the prison needed to use the phone. Joe never admitted any wrongdoing when it came to Baskin; rather, he was eager to defend his innocence. Multiple times he told me, “That whole mess was nothing but a setup.”

Joe did cop to something else, though. He said being locked up in jail had made him realize he’d mistreated the animals all those years, depriving them of their freedom and robbing them of their dignity by keeping them behind bars. Joe told me he regretted having done that. “Now that I have nothing to do besides sit in a cell with no TV, no radio, no nothing, I know exactly what I did to those [animals],” he said. “We can all be drove crazy by doing nothing.”

To make amends, Joe told me he plans to create a new zoo when he gets out. This one without any cages. Just tigers roaming free.

* * *

You can listen to our four-part “Cat People” podcast series on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Rachel Nuwer is an award-winning freelance journalist who reports about science, travel, food and adventure for the New York Times, National Geographic, BBC Future and more. Her multi-award winning first book, Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking, was published in September 2018 with Da Capo Press.

Editors: Mike Dang and Chris Outcalt Illustrator: Zoë van Dijk Fact checker: Matt Giles Copy editor: Jacob Gross

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