His name is Death and he's really death. He's pretty quiet and just wants to live in peace with his chickens. Tries to interact with the town as little as possible but is really curious about them and how they live and is super satisfied to simply watch them - but as the new person it seems no one wants to let that happen.
It's common knowledge (...i think?) that's tortoiseshell cats are almost always females. (Here and everywhere else i use the word "tortoiseshell" in its broadest meaning: it includes all kind of calicos and torbies.) The reason of this is that the red color's gene is located on the X chromosome, so if a cat is both red and not red (in other words it's a tortie), it needs two different X chromosomes: one with the red (O), one with the black (o) allele.
Generally there are two ways to get a male tortoiseshell: he can be a chimera, or or he can have atypical number of sex chromosomes.
Chimeras are the fusion of two or more embryos thus they can have cells with different genotypes: they can be longhaired and shorthaired at the same time, have both diluted and undiluted area in their furs, or... be black and red in patches. They are generally fertile and pass the colors that their gonads (testicles or ovaries) carry, which is not necessirely the same as they show.
The normal number of sex chromosomes are two; for males an X and an Y. If a cat has two Xs and an Y, it'll be male, but it can carry both the O and the o alleles. Of course, an XXY male can easily have two red or two black alleles, and be a seemingly normal red or black cat. But they are typically infertile regardless of their color.
Let's see some male tortoiseshells!
Dawntreader Texas Calboy
Yeah, he's quite tumblr-famous, maybe you've seen that one post about him. He's a black tortoiseshell blotched tabby with white, a chimera and fertile; on his facebook page you can see several of his children. He has both black and red daughters, which means he can produces gametes from both of his cell lines.
Unfortunately I coudn't find his name, but in this picture the back right kitten is also a male tortoiseshell. Specifically, he's a black smoke karpati tortoiseshell with white and dominant blue eyes. (His breeder seems to like experimenting with new things.) More pictures and videos in his owner's facebook posts (it's possible that you have to join the group to see it): newborn kitten kitten young adult
Sherpa Cats Beyond Heaven
Beside red and black he also seems to mix pointed and not pointed. (Note the dark red cheeks and the light brown legs of a black colorpoint.) When tested, he consistently showed the results of multiple cats.
Ezra
He is red with a few black patches, and tufts of long hair. His owner tested him and the lab found both XX (female) and XY (male) cells, so he definitely is a chimera. I find his differently colored eyes especially cool!
Brady
Black tortoiseshell tabby with white, and for once not a chimera: according to the tests he has three sex chromosomes, XXY.
This is a scene from one of the wips living in my head where Azriel and Eris visit the Summer Court for diplomacy reasons (and also to look hot). Couldn't get it out of my head so I went to scream in @krem-does-stuff 's DM's about it anc commissioned her to paint Azriel for me.
And I. Am. OBSESSED. I've selfishly kept it to myself this past week but I think you should also all see this.
ILY KREM THANK YOU SO SO MUCH YOU HAVE OUTDONE YOURSELF
people who get mad over tone tags are so weird imo.. like nobody is putting a gun to your head to use them, why are you being whiny over people that do use them. its literally just a quick way to convey tone, especially when talking to a someone who may not know when you are being serious or joking or if you say something that might be misinterpreted. it isnt a big deal if somebody uses them and its weird how much shit they get, especially when theyre most used by autistic people/people who struggle with tone indication
not to be a boomer on main… but i think children should adequate to the online experience instead of every site having to shift and model themselves to whatever the fuck children consume the most
im sick and tired of everything nowadays being made “with kids in mind” because CEOs have figure out thats the demographic they can exploit and get the most money out of
today is the tiktokification of every social media site, tomorrow who fucking knows, we should fucking stop this
"This anon is so entitled" ok clearly you never had an OC drawn so clearly not of what they look like. Like say you have a OC that has long white hair with eyebrows that are different color(like black) and you explicitly make that clear on their page and yet the artist completely ignores that and makes the OC with all black hair and a pixie cut and added dog ears to the OC even tho the oc is completely human. Completely unrecognizable. Like how's it entitled to be upset?
it's literally just a silly little meme for OCs to be drawn badly, being done for free because the artist wanted to do it. Don't sit here and complain about gifted art being done for you because you don't like how it turned out - just say thanks and move on, we're all adults here and it really isn't that serious. Sending anons whining about it to the original artist and other artists who agree with them just kills the positive vibe we're trying to create here.
something tells me you see the artists on here more as content machines and not. y'know. actual people taking the time out of their day to be nice and gift things to their mutuals.
just found out Scarlet and Violet are rerunning the Walking Wake and Iron Leaves raids AGAIN soon
first off, here are the times for anyone who still hasn’t caught them, hope you can get them this time :3
but also since it’s clear they care about making these two accessible (surprisingly) given that this is the second time they’ve redone this event, why the hell weren’t they made natively available in Indigo Disk? you could’ve just added them to base game Area Zero with the update, problem solved, wouldn’t that have been easier 😭
Thinking about an AU where 18-year-old Sam on the verge of leaving comes home to her mother screaming at her little sister. Sam's still high, the shouts ringing in her ears but the words formless. She's about to intervene when a slap cuts through it all. Her sister's on the floor and in the blink of an eye Sam has a hand wrapped around her mother's throat, slamming her against the wall.
Tara's climbing to her feet, eyes wide with fear at the scene. Sam doesn't look away from her mother as she says "Tara, go upstairs and pack a bag." Her sister doesn't move, so Sam turns away to look at her and repeats herself. Tara must see something in her wild eyes, because she runs up the stairs.
By the time Sam escorts her downstairs half an hour later, their mother is nowhere to be seen. Tara's led through the packing and into the car in silence. The what's happening?, the where are we going?, the are you ok? sits on the tip of her tongue, choked back by uncertainty and confusion.
Sam drives out of Woodsboro and doesn't look back.
OR
Sam, 19-years-old, long since kicked out of the house and on her way out of Woodsboro. She just has one stop to make, a goodbye she has to give first.
She sneaks into the house. The door is unlocked, she doesn't even need the key Tara hid outside for her, and it enrages her. Her baby sister is upstairs sleeping and anyone can just walk in.
Her mother is passed out on the floor leaning against the couch, snoring away and a bottle still in her lap. She creeps past her and up the stairs.
Sam perches herself on the edge of Tara's bed. Her sister is sprawled out on the mattress, the covers kicked off, and it makes her smile. She brushes Tara's hair back from her face and the smile falls from her face.
Her fingers trail down to the shadow around her neck. Sam reaches over to turn on the bedside lamp, catching sight of Tara's wrist at the same time. These are bruises. She wakes her sister up and demands answers from her. She doesn't like the answers she eventually coaxes from her. She likes Tara's attempt to lie to her even less.
She makes her pack, tells her to wait out front, that she'll be out in a minute. She kicks her mother awake, tells her she's leaving for good, and that she's not leaving alone. She tells her that she will never have the chance to hurt them again, and if she tries, well, she'll learn exactly how much like her father she can be,
A fantasy worldbuilding thing I made that would also make sense in Urban Fantasy & I might use it more often:
Context: One of my fantasy characters has a bag that can magically hold more than its physical volume on the inside (ik it's rlly common but that's bc it's damn convenient in fantasy settings & I have them exist in all of my fantasy worlds lol), and the character who has that bag is also an ambulatory wheelchair user who also uses a cane depending on what she needs. In a fantasy adventure setting, it made perfect sense that she can put these in her magic bag.
Then I noticed the difficulty that would be getting it through the bag's opening (especially for the wheelchair). So I made it so that she could shrink and enlarge her mobility aids for easy storage when she isn't using them (like shrinking smn to put in a bag of holding in D&D).
And I realized that would be AMAZING for an urban fantasy setting!! Is your ambulatory-mobility-aid-user-character travelling without collapsible/travel-size mobility aids? Or just going somewhere and worrying about needing a different kind of aid than they were using when they left? Magic shrink & enlarge, bring them all with you! Dealing with inaccessible architecture, getting the wheelchair over the turnstile will be much easier & less annoying. The big one that made me realize this would be perfect for urban fantasy: they wouldn't need to worry about airports fucking up their wheelchair (for those who don't know, traveling by plane with a wheelchair can be a nightmare bc it's very likely the staff will end up breaking the rules & therefore breaking the chair).
how long do you think it would take to read all of htb in total? (i wanna read it so bad but im also a major procrastinator… im still gonna read it either way of how long it is though !)
Depends on how you pace yourself, I think! It's taken some people a couple of weeks by reading a chapter every other day, but I've also had people set aside a whole weekend to read all the way through it.
Yeah, I think the length of the AU already is a bit daunting for some new readers, especially because I've found that a lot of other TMC AUs are in a comic format so they come out in steady and smaller parts which are a bit more accessible and easier to consume. HTB is pretty much a series of novels at this point huh 😅
But yeah, I think it could take you a weekend if you wanted to dedicate a solid amount of time to it! The next chapter isn't going to be up until mid to late February due to moving and work so there's time to catch up before it comes out!