#thesilverstarling

[ask-a-vetblr]

Is it true that purebred dogs need more medical attention than mixed breeds? Why?

vet-and-wild here.

Not necessarily. We know that certain breeds are prone to certain diseases, and that some breeds are generally just not very healthy (i.e. brachycephalic breeds), and some are frequently overbred with no regard for health/temperament (i.e. Frenchies, doodles, GSDs...really anything popular). There's some breeds that when I see for their first puppy visit I really really push for them to get pet insurance on principle. But if someone walked in and said they had a mix of those particular breeds I would still say the same thing.

There's kind of a misunderstanding about crossbreeding and "hybrid vigor", and this assumption that crossbreeding automatically makes the resulting puppies healthier. While genetic diversity is a good thing for a population, breeding two unhealthy dogs just produces more unhealthy dogs, regardless of breed or how much they've been crossbred. I wouldn't say that I see more sick purebreds than mixed breeds, or that one particular group seems to outlive the others.

Except really old chihuahuas with no teeth and a raging heart murmur. They outlive everyone. (jk jk)

#vet med #thesilverstarling #dogs #dog breeding

[bedlamsbard]

What does your tag 'we are the ones who will never die young' mean?

That one is my Anakin and/or Obi-Wan tag, from my overcomplicated Star Wars tagging days.

#it's from a lori mckenna song #back in the day when my tags only had to make sense to me #we are all so lucky that my marvel tags are pretty straightforward with a couple of exceptions #thesilverstarling #bedlam replies

[chalkrub]

Question about your 3d shark biscuit--he looks good!! why did your professor fail you on the project?

I guess I lied by omission a little bit when I posted about him, but biscuit was merely a part of the project - I had to model a shark, a podracer (uni unethically forcing me to learn about star wars, against my will) and a table. maybe he was the best part and I unfairly dunked on him

as for what exactly I failed on - we may never know. I saw I failed and laughed very loudly, then I saw I had audio feedback for the assignment and made the executive decision not to listen to it. then I went the rest of my life blissfully unaware of what was on the cursed audio tape. it's still in my emails somewhere, I'll listen to it one day, when I'm like 35 and a BIG success who doesn't care about anything

here's something for all the evil 3d modelling people who asked me to show biscuit's wireframe - here he is. do NOT laugh he's very sick

maybe this can help understand why I failed. it looks FINE to me

#ask #thesilverstarling #okay. enough biscuit. I have art. to post. finally (i have been ILL and pulled into MANY shifts at work)

[imreallyloveleee]

Hi! Do you have any plans to write any more hunger games fics or to finish the some of the ones you've written (ex. I'd Fly The River)? I've had a lovely morning revisiting your fics so thought I'd ask 😊

Hiya! I'm so happy you're enjoying revisiting them!! 🥰🥰🥰 I don't have any plans to finish the unfinished ones, unfortunately.

(For anyone wondering, that's not the case for my Riverdale fics - I very much intend to finish several of those.)

#thesilverstarling #my fic

[essayofthoughts]

Wanda Maximoff

Oh, you're gonna drag me back, are you? HOKAY.

one aspect about them i love

I love Wanda's ability to acknowledge her own mistakes and move forwards from them, learning and improving as she goes. Unlike some characters I could think of.

one aspect i wish more people understood about them

Wanda. Is. Better. Than. Tony. Stark. Tony was a forty year old adult before he realised or cared that the weapons he sold killed and hurt people - and then only because it directly affected him. And he still made weapons for himself as though his hands were safe ones despite such an obvious point of ignorance and callousness.

Wanda has always known that weapons can hurt and kill people - and that, indeed, her powers can be a weapon - and we see her awareness of how much harm she has potentially done when Novi Grad is ripped into the sky by Ultron. You will note: she is very hesitant to use her mental powers from AOU onwards. She learns very rapidly from her mistakes and resolves not to repeat them. Unlike some.

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have about this character

Wanda has intermittent but chronic pain in her hands - if she overexerts her powers it causes inflamation in the joints of her hands for the next couple of days, due in equal parts to how she has to gesture and strain against herself to direct her powers and because of the powers themselves.

one character i love seeing them interact with

PIETRO. I love the Maximoff twins, I love their messy codependency. In his absence, I love Wanda and Vision's interactions, slowly learning what they are becoming through each other, and supporting each other in their differences. It's very gentle and very good.

one character i wish they would interact with/interact with more

I feel like Wanda and Bucky could have some interesting conversations about being manipulated/lied to or otherwise used by Hydra, and their respective grief over losing the people who most matter to them.

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have that involve them and one other character

The twins are used to sleeping in close proximity and would often sleep back-to-back or clasping hands growing up, especially after the bombs. It's a reassurance that the other is there and present and safe. With Pietro dead, Wanda doesn't sleep very well for a long time.

#wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff defense squad #thesilverstarling #ask games #ask

[springatito-moved]

when did McKenna grace say she was a dnfer??

i forget the context but something she posted on tiktok made ppl think that.

#at the very least shes a dream stan which. slay ! #if i can find the clip of connor talking abt it ill rb it #thesilverstarling #💌

[cosettepontmercys]

What were your thoughts on Yellowface?

i honestly have no idea how i feel about it! i haven't rated it on goodreads, or in my personal reading tracker because i just don't know what i'd give it star-rating wise. i've been waiting for some friends to read their ARCs so i have some more people to talk to about it / so i can better work out my thoughts. here are some goodreads reviews that i agreed with/resonated with me to some extent: x, x, x, x

i haven't read the poppy war, and most likely won't, but i did really really love babel and so i was super excited for yellowface. i think r.f. kuang is a brilliant writer, and it was really nice to see a different side of her writing/her style. i think yellowface fell flat for me in the execution though — great in concept, but reading it was just ... an interesting experience. it definitely made me uncomfortable and frustrated (as intended), but i think it needed to be longer, and it just didn't exactly deliver in the way i wanted it to? i thought we were going somewhere in the last ~ 20% of the book and then ... we weren't. i think the weaknesses i noticed with r.f. kuang's writing in babel were also more prominent in yellowface. overall just like, an interesting, fast-paced read, that i don't find myself rereading or revisiting.

#post: answered #thesilverstarling #thank you!

[saintsenara]

Thoughts on Ron and Hermione as a ship?

thank you very much for the ask, @thesilverstarling!

i’ll state my position straight away: book ron and hermione are the best of the canon couples.

they will have a long and extremely happy marriage made rich by great and stalwart love, lust, fun, and faithfulness, rather than held together by duty and couples’ therapy like so many readers and authors (including jkr, who seems to have decided to spend the years since the conclusion of the series failing to understand anything about her own characters) tend to think.

i will state another position straight away: lest i seem like i’m just a fan with blinkers on, i think this even though hermione is, by far, my least favourite member of the trio. if she were real i would detest her, and i dislike how she is treated by the narrative as always justified in her negative characteristics. i like fanon hermione - perfect and preternaturally good - even less.

as a result, i think that it’s ridiculous that jkr has said that she thought ron needed to ‘become worthy’ of hermione. they belong together as equals - which is what they’re set up in the narrative as being from the off - and i hate seeing that undermined.

because ronald weasley? he’s an icon. and he doesn’t get anywhere near the respect he deserves in fandom.

there are multiple reasons for this - ron’s narrative purpose is to be the everyman sidekick, and so he is able to be less special than harry or hermione (the helper-figure); the amount of aristocracy wank in this fandom means that the weasleys’ ordinariness is less appealing to writers than making harry have twenty different lordships and call himself hadrian; the narrative interrogates ron’s flaws - especially his capacity for jealousy - much more intensively than it interrogates either hermione’s (cruel, inflexible, meddling) or harry’s (reckless, self-absorbed, judgemental) - but one i feel is particularly significant is that ron is such a british character that many of his traits are not understood as intended by non-british readers.

in particular - as is outlined in this excellent meta by @whinlatter - ron’s sense of humour isn’t indicative of immaturity or a lack of seriousness, but is, in fact, evidence that he’s the most emotionally aware of the trio.

ron is shown throughout the series to understand how both harry and hermione need to have their emotions approached - and i think there is no piece of writing which says this better than crocodile heart by @floreatcastellumposts:

That was what she liked most about Ron, she thought vaguely. He was very good at being suitably outraged on your behalf. For Harry, for her, for Neville. That sort of thing mattered, when you were hurt or embarrassed or wronged in some way. You needed to have someone else on your side, to be as emotional as you felt, maybe even more so, so that you might feel a bit more normal. It was very decent of him, and she was not sure he realised he did it.

ron’s inherent emotional awareness is an enormous source of comfort to other people. he does the work which isn’t flashy or special - he makes tea and tells jokes and is just there - but which is needed in healthy human relationships far more frequently than a willingness to fight to the death for the other person.

[as an aside, this normality - even though i think it is assumed rather than justified by the text - is also what ginny provides for harry. if you believe that hinny are a good couple but romione aren’t… i can’t help you.]

but let’s look at some specific reasons why ron and hermione belong together:

their communication styles mesh perfectly. ron is the only person hermione knows who feeds her love of being challenged and debated, and who is able to engage in this way of communicating without becoming irate when she refuses to back down. ron is good at picking his battles, but he’s also good at recognising that hermione’s tendency to argue isn’t intended to be confrontational a lot of the time - it’s just the way she works through feelings and problems. he’s far more easy-going about her tendency to nag, interrupt, try to provoke arguments, or speak condescendingly than he’s given credit for - and hermione evidently respects this, since when he does tell her not to push a situation (above all, when she’s trying to needle harry into talking about sirius), she listens to him.

that ron and hermione’s tendency to bicker is taken by fans to be a bad thing is because it’s something harry - from whose perspective the narrative is written - doesn’t understand. harry is extremely conflict-avoidant - he tends to take being pushed on views and opinions he has to be insulting; and he has a tendency to assume that he is right which is just as profound as hermione’s. he and ginny communicate not by debating, but by ginny having no time for his rigidity and refusing to indulge it - but ron and hermione bickering about everything is not a negative thing within their specific emotional dynamic.

[as another aside, this glaring chasm in communication styles is why harry and hermione would be a disaster as a couple.]

they each provide validation the other needs. it’s clear - reading between the lines - that hermione is a tremendously lonely person. the friendlessness of her initial few weeks at hogwarts seems to be a continuation of her experience as a child, and - outside of ron and harry - that friendlessness endures through her schooldays. i’m always struck, for example, by the fact that, when she falls out with ron in prisoner of azkaban, she has no-one else to spend time with, and that this is only avoided in half-blood prince because harry decides not to freeze her out. i don’t think her friendship with ginny is anywhere near as close as fanon seems to imply (ginny has no interest in being nagged either), nor do i think that she’s anywhere near as close to neville (not least because she is so condescending to him) as she’s often written to be.

and this loneliness seems to stretch beyond hogwarts. the absence of hermione’s parents’ from the narrative is - in a doylist sense - clearly just a device to maximise time with the trio all together, but the watsonian reading is that she doesn’t have a particularly good relationship with them. hermione’s obviously upper-middle-class background - the name! the skiing! the holidays in the south of france! - can be presumed, i think, to come with a series of expectations from her parents which she feels constantly that she’s not entirely meeting, particularly expectations attached to academic success.

[for example, the grangers - were she a muggle child - would undoubtedly have ambitions for her to attend an elite university and then go into a prestigious career. tertiary education of the type that they’re familiar with doesn’t seem to exist in the wizarding world - most careers seem to be taught by apprenticeship - and this, alongside all the other divides between the magical and muggle worlds which contribute to the distance between them, would be one very obvious area in which she felt the need to prove herself to them.]

ron, too, has quite a difficult relationship with his position in the family - voldemort’s locket is not wrong to point out that he seems to receive considerably less of his mother’s emotional attention than ginny or the rest of his brothers - and he too is constrained by expectations which he doesn’t know how to explain he has no interest in - above all, molly’s desire for her sons to achieve top grades and go into the ministry.

he also suffers while at hogwarts from being ‘harry potter’s best friend’, something which harry never appreciates. but hermione does. she recognises ron’s jealousy and never allows harry to minimise it (and she and ron are very much aligned on having no respect for harry’s saviour and martyr complexes). she appreciates ron’s strengths - above all his kindness and his sense of humour - and makes him feel as though he’s achieved things with them. and ron does the same for her; he is hugely observant when it comes to her, and he challenges and defends her.

the two of them clearly spend a lot of time together one-on-one while harry’s involved in his various shenanigans (including outside of school - hermione has often arrived at the burrow days or even weeks before harry, and they seem to write to each other frequently when apart). they do this within a relationship which is fundamentally equal. one issue with hinny is that, post-war, harry is going to have to get used to seeing ginny as a peer, rather than as someone he has to protect. but ron and hermione never have that issue - equality is baked into their relationship from the off.

because, to be quite frank, fandom overstates the role that jealousy plays in their relationship. it’s true that ron certainly doesn’t acquit himself brilliantly when it comes to hermione’s relationship with viktor krum (it’s because he’s bi and doesn’t know it yet), and a tendency to externalise his insecurity into trying to make others also feel insecure is one of his primary negative traits (hermione does this too, via her patented lofty voice when she’s trying to condescend to people). but this is often taken as the initial red flag for how the relationship would crash and burn, and ron’s toxic jealousy is often used in fan-fiction as the trigger for emotional and physical violence towards hermione which, frequently, seems to drive her into the arms of either draco malfoy or severus snape… who are, of course, the first people we think of when we hear the words ‘not prone to jealousy’...

but i think it’s important to point out several things in defence of ron’s jealousy over krum. firstly, hermione evidently regards his jealousy as ridiculous - she’s upset by it, yes, but her upset must be understood as being caused by the fact that she wanted him to ask her out. she doesn’t think he’s being possessive, she thinks he’s being stupid. secondly, hermione is equally as jealous over ron’s crush on fleur delacour and relationship with lavender brown. she behaves just as cruelly when it comes to lavender as ron does when it comes to krum - and the narrative only treats her actions as more sympathetic or justified both because harry dislikes lavender too, and because, by that point in the series, jkr has dispensed with any inclination to ever criticise her.

but, outside of this teenage pettiness, ron is never jealous of hermione over things which matter. he is never jealous of her intelligence or competence or ambition or success (indeed, he defends her constantly from attacks designed to undermine her in these areas). for someone who struggles with being overshadowed by harry, he is never upset at being overshadowed by her. he is clearly going to be happy to support her in any of the career ambitions she can be written as having post-war.

and, on this point, i think it’s worth interrogating why so many readers still seem to feel uncomfortable with the idea of ron and hermione having a dynamic where she is the more ‘powerful’ one. [it’s always a bit trite to say ‘but what if the genders were reversed?’, but actually that’s not irrelevant here]. if hermione ends up taking the ministry by storm and ron becomes a stay-at-home father or has a job which is just to pay the bills, what, precisely, is wrong with that? why, precisely, should hermione regard ron making that choice for himself as a negative thing? hermione so often seems to leave ron in fan-fiction because of a lack of ambition - something which seems to be particularly common in dramione - but, in canon, she is shown to not particularly care if ron and harry do the bare minimum when it comes to studying etc. she nags them to do their work so they don’t get in trouble. she doesn’t nag them to do it to the same standard that she would.

and, actually, i think that ron being less ambitious than hermione is something which is key to how well they work. because ron provides not only emotional support, but emotional clarity.

hermione is shown throughout canon to - just as harry does - have a tendency to become obsessive to the detriment of her own health. she is also often - as harry is - emotionally or intellectually inflexible, and finds it hard to move on when what she feels or believes is proven to be wrong. both she and harry are micro-thinkers, who lean towards knee-jerk assumptions and stubborn convictions (and, indeed, hermione has a remarkably hagrid-ish tendency towards blind loyalty).

ron is none of these things. ron is a big-picture thinker (it’s why he’s so good at chess). he’s a pragmatist. he’s the least righteous of the three. he understands that faith and loyalty are choices, and that sometimes these choices will lead to outcomes which are bad or hard. he is the one of the three most willing to own up to having made mistakes. he is the one least likely to act on gut instinct (and, therefore, the hardest to fool - i think it’s worth emphasising that he clocks that tom riddle is tricking harry immediately, the only one of the trio to do so). he understands that things are a marathon, not a sprint. he is the least obsessive.

and these traits contribute to aspects of his character which are underappreciated. ron worries about hermione making herself ill during exams, or when she is using the time-turner, and makes an effort to get her to set healthy boundaries and redirect her anxiety. ron stands on a broken leg in front of sirius or goes into the forest to fight aragog not out of righteousness, but out of choice. ron takes over the burden of preparing buckbeak’s defence when it is clear that hermione is approaching burnout. ron is completely right that harry hasn’t done any long-term planning for the horcrux hunt, and his anger does force harry to tighten up after he leaves the trio. ron has a clear head in the middle of battle. ron makes harry and hermione laugh. ron is unafraid of human emotion. ron arrests harry’s tendency to brood over the little things by looking at the bigger picture. ron will always come back.

ron is bringing his politician wife regular cups of tea and making sure she doesn’t work all night. he is helping his lawyer wife to feel less upset over losing one case by reminding her that she’s won ten others. he is noticing stress creeping in and whirling her off for a dirty weekend, or even just a takeaway on the sofa. he is teaching his daughter to be proud of her ambition and his son to treat women as equals and both of his children that all you can do when you fuck up is apologise and try to do better. he is making hermione smile on the worst days of her life. he is helping her strategise her long-term goals when she gets stuck on the short-term ones. he is telling her straight when she needs to get it together. he is seeing a misogynistic head of department call hermione a ‘silly little girl’ and choosing to tell him exactly what he thinks of that.

ron is the ultimate wife guy. hermione is a very, very lucky lady.

#asks answered #asenora's opinions on ships #romione #ron weasley #hermione granger #ron is a wife guy #also may i be clear #ron is evidently unbelievably hot #the text says he looks like bill #who is so fit that harry can barely see when in his company #hermione you lucky thing

[brutal-out-here]

Get to Know Game, Pt II

Thank you for the tag @thesilverstarling once more!

Don’t really have anyone specific to tag so if anyone wants to do this go ahead!

Three Ships

1. Percabeth (Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase)

2. Kanej (Kaz Brekker and Inej Ghafa)

3. Wandavision (Wanda Maximoff and Vision)

First Ever Ship

As far as I can remember the first time I ever rooted for a couple to stay together forever was Percabeth

Last Song

Still have no idea lol

Stuck in my Head

Still currently Monster by Lady Gaga

Last Movie

Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse

Currently Reading

Magnus Chase: The Ship of the Dead (tho I haven’t touch it in months because I keep forgetting oops)

Currently Watching

About to start season 2 episode 3 of Doctor Who

Currently Consuming

Just ate fries from Dairy Queen lol

Currently Craving

Nothing at the moment

Favorite Color

Red and blue

Favorite Foods

this is what I call “say that you’re from the south without actually saying you’re from the south”: fried shrimp/fried chicken/fried fish/pecan pie/breaded pork chops lol

Dream Trip

Anywhere in Europe really

#raineyrambles #tag game

[benchtrio-updates]

Do you know why Tommy renamed some of his vlogs? Ex. "The world's most insane paintball match" is now "the funniest paintballing video ever"

Nope! Unless he's spoken about it on some stream that I don't know of. He likely changed them to appeal to the algorithm more!

-scene

#asks #mod scene #thesilverstarling

[dear-ao3]

so i finally made that shoutout post for everyone that commented on ao3 fics like a month late whoops

@crash-the-mode

@thesilverstarling

@hoochieblues

@lordtraco

@teatertots

@ladyblogger-margie

@warlocks-are-attacking

@lilly-of-the-damned

@penelopelanefanfiction

@ilovebhna

@purplemoon153

@edgeworthsimplol

@crypticalwitch

@just-an-angel-and-his-demon

@thenerd10

@mandbpresents

@prtwell

@lothloriien

@miii-chaaan

@ace-din-djarin

#not a tag #from saph

[baritant]

When they finish eating, they sit side-by-side at the hill’s edge, observing the twilight and watching the first mobs spawn quietly in the dark. Dream quietly nudges a drowsy George, and after sharing a smile they set up their beds

Hey! Im part of the @dsmp-bigbang where I got to work with @ditzypopheartt and @thesilverstarling (our amazing writter)

you can read it here link and give it some love! there still more chapters and art to it!

#dnf #dreamnotfound #georgenotfound #dreamwastaken #dsmp #fic rec #dsmp big bang #this was so fun

[saintsenara]

Favorite Ron Weasley fics?

thank you very much for the ask @thesilverstarling! my king's birthday seemed like the perfect time to drop this...

six ron-centric fic recs

[for the best sixth son in literature]

envy by @floreatcastellumposts

harry potter & ron weasley teen | 8.6k words

why i recommend it:

ron's capacity for jealousy is something which generates a lot of fandom discourse - especially the role it plays in his relationship with hermione. this fic is a look at one of the canon moments which foreground this trait - ron's falling out with harry when his best pal's name comes out of the goblet of fire - and it does a wonderful job of exploring ron's less pleasant characteristics without bashing him.

like a brother would by @wolfpants

harry potter/ron weasley explicit | 5.2k words

why i recommend it:

i have a real weakness for ronarry - largely because i love how ron would give anything in the world to get to take care of his bestie. this fic takes that urge to its natural conclusion...

the english opening by lordrowantree

fleur delacour/ron weasley teen | 55k words

why i recommend it:

because it respects ron’s canonical rizz and asks the very important question: what would happen if fleur said yes when he asked her to the yule ball?

and, in doing so, it also respects all the rest of ron’s canonical traits - his intelligence, his kindness, his big-picture thinking, his sense of daring - and uses them to offer an exploration of fleur’s character which is considerably kinder and more nuanced than the one she receives in canon.

plus, it’ll teach you something about chess, which is a bonus.

ghouls in the attic by speechwriter

tom riddle/ron weasley general | 8.9k

why i recommend it:

because - as the author correctly notes - i have seen your heart and it is mine is an outrageously romantic thing for the horcrux to say to ron [especially because it happens just before voldemort canonically suggests that hermione is mid].

collateral damage by @danpuff-ao3

draco malfoy/ron weasley explicit | 16k words

why i recommend it:

i also have a weakness for dron - above all because the two of them are narrative mirrors, defined by their relationships to their families and their relationships to harry, brought into conflict by their polar differences [draco's wealth versus ron's lack of it, etc.], and possessed of similar personality traits [a desire to be recognised as important and be the centre of attention; a capacity for jealousy]. this fics plays with those similarities - and also with ron and draco's more positive shared traits - in a really striking way. i ship these two losers. i hope they're happy.

some i love who are dead by brightened

hermione granger/ron weasley teen | 2.2k words

why i recommend it:

because it's a lovely, bittersweet look at ron's character from the perspective of hermione's old age - thinking about the man he became and the husband and father he was.

#asenora fic recs #ron weasley #ronarry #romione #ronmort #dron #flon... i guess