Navia has been reserved!

in honor of until dawn's anniversary i thought i'd share the tattoo i got last fall and completely forgot to post here. congrats to this stupid game for keeping me in a chokehold for the last 8 (!) years of my life and probably the rest of my life as well. blackwood kids you'll be with me forever. literally

Alright. Fine. I'll make the Good Omens server myself.

Right, I’ve made an 18+ discord server specifically for witcher book/games fans�� but I’m currently in NYC for a few days, so I’m not gonna open it at all until I get home. Reply on this or send me a message if you’re interested tho so I can keep track.

It’s gonna be kinda a tight ship bc I’m old and tired and have no energy for bullshit, so be forewarned. As long as you’re down to be respectful and polite then we’ll get along fine👍🏼

mcfly july 2023 || day 16 Blue Hour

xvi.

The fuzzy shriek of a whistle permeated Marty’s lethargic cognizance. A ship’s horn replied. 

Marty felt Linda lift her head from his shoulder. He pried his numb eyelids apart and, against the deepest hue of astronomical twilight, made out the black hull and funnel of the Carpathia.

“Oars,” Officer Boxhall croaked. He cleared his throat and tried again, meeting Marty’s eyes with a marginally more robust, “Oars.”

Commanding painful dexterity of his hands, Marty wrapped his fingers around the oar with Linda, made sure his mom had hers in position, and rowed on Boxhall’s order.

He hoped Doc made it.

Hey join my discord server.

We've got holiday ⛄🎃 events, watch 🎟️ parties sometimes maybe, autism, updates on Kuro news 🖤📰 & Yana's twitter 🐦, and a few tumblr people that you 🫵 may know. Tell your friends and come talk about Grelle or post art or something 😉🫵💖💕💕😳❤️

Click here for a free iphone 4!

Wriothesley has been reserved!

Wriothesley has been reserved in Teyvampt! We are growing and want you to join the fun!

Invite!

JUST SAW YOUR ASK ON HELLSITE-GENETICS AND NEEDED TO SEND YOU AN ASK!! /POS

you are like literally the person i want to be with the bird stuff i absolutely LOVE belted kingfishers they are so pretty. they are also one of my favorite birds (i have too many favorites i cant just pick one) but birds are so smart and their feathers are so cool like omg i love birds

im currently a small senior in highschool/sophomore in college and want more people who like birds in my life :))

anyway whats your favorite thing to study about birds? mine is how smart they are but also like how bluejays have the feathers that reflect the sun to show the blue :))

[id: screenshot of two text messages that say "oh good i get to get [sic] explain this to you" / "you will regret this" followed by the ellipses of someone typing. end id]

FELLOW BIRD ENJOYER SPOTTED

(sad my ask to hellsite-genetics didn't get me a bird tho but i did get the added satisfaction of knowing the goofy goober song is a member of the genus i exalted in my ask so all in all it's a solid win)

let me preface all of this with saying that while a lot of my experience with birds and learning about birds has been in a classroom setting i've also spent *checks watch* three summers now (including this upcoming one) doing field work working almost exclusively with birds in the midwest united states, so honestly a lot of the things i've learned have been incidental knowledge i've obtained working in the field. i'm not an *expert*, i just have a BS in environmental science and a lot of birding experience.

full slapshod essay rant of me going on about birds (edit: i just reread it and good GOD i went on for a while) of me talking about birds below the cut bc i already know this is gonna be far too long but you asked about my favorite thing in the world so this is on you my friend (affectionate)

i'm definitely ENRAPTURED with how smart birds are. They're so fucking intelligent it's almost scary.

since you brought em up imma talk about bluejays first!! i did part of a project my last year of college on bluejays!!

blue jays will often mimic the calls of other birds, esp predators like red-tailed hawks, with such accuracy that even bird id apps like Merlin (shameless plug) will mistake a mimicking bluejay for a real red-tailed. when i was doing audio surveys for northern bobwhites we had to have a separate training day where the only thing we focused on was how to tell if a mockingbird / thrasher / blue jay was mimicking the distinct bobwhite call and how that wasn't to be counted as a sighting.

(in my experience a lot of it has to do with pitch, repetition, and completion of what's considered the 'full song' of the NOBO, since a lot of mimids won't do the 'full song' and will just handpick bits to weave into the rest of their noises. bluejays especially will do this. mockingbirds will sometimes do the full song, but NOBOs have a pretty measurable repetition gap between their songs, at least in the areas we were doing surveys).

i remembered learning in a class that some bluejays will find bird feeders and spy on them, then mimic red-tailed and red-shouldered hawk calls to get the other birds to scatter, so they can then fly down and eat without having to fight for the tastiest bits.

when i was working with birds over the summer, one of the things we did was setting ground traps for mourning doves so they could be banded and then tracked for hunter take (they're a game species in my state). there were always blue jays in those traps. they're so fascinating to see up close, with their heavy bills and tough little feet and they're so full of rage. and they're loud.

also the thing about their FEATHERS - YES. it fucked me up to learn blue jays are naturally brown. iirc it has to do with the way the barbs on their feathers are put together with modified cells, which scatter the light in a special way to make them appear blue. If you get a bluejay feather in your hand it's only blue at certain angles and the undersides are almost usually completely brown unless you hold them in the light just so.

blue jays are part of the family Corvidae so it makes sense why they're so smart, in the family with other birds like ravens and crows.

well i didn't mean to go on for so long about blue jays. they are wonderful tho aren't they?? <3

my favorite thing to study about birds??? hoooooo boy what a question. everything?? is everything an option??

habitat effects on population size and habitat selection at the individual level is fascinating. i've done a lot of work with population studies, basically doing audio-visual surveys (point counts) of how many of x and y and z target species live in this area at a given point in time, then using that data to extrapolate potential population numbers in an area as narrow as a few square miles and as wide as the whole state (i worked for the state department of natural resources so we were focused only on our state obv).

in that effort, using that information to both directly and indirectly learn what environmental factors affect which bird species and how was so so interesting to me, and some of them are things so small we don't even think about them sometimes!! if there's as few as a handful of pine/cedar/evergreen trees in a field or grassland, you're far more likely to find cedar waxwings and indigo buntings, and you rarely see them in areas dominated by deciduous trees. red-winged blackbirds love wetlands, and while they aren't (iirc) specifically wetland-dependent, something as small as a single pond is enough to attract them in droves.

behavior is also such a cool topic to me, which i've learned more and more about just by birdwatching and attending bird-related conferences and working with wildlife biologists.

birds like the brown creeper are bark foragers that almost exclusively move upwards along a tree. they'll start at the bottom and move up, and once they reach a point they deem 'too high', they'll fly to the bottom of the next tree and move up. conversely, birds like nuthatches, still bark foragers, almost exclusively move down trees in the same way - they'll start at the top, forage downwards, and when they reach the bottom, they'll fly back to the top and do it again.

the yellow-bellied sapsucker (woodpecker family), as the name implies, eats a lot of sap, so they drill holes into a tree, like woodpeckers do, but they lay them down in 'bands' that run horizontally around the tree, often with multiple rows on top of each other, leading to a grid-like pattern of shallow holes only an inch or two apart from each other. that's often the best way to figure out where to look for sapsuckers when you're birding!! (apart from actually seeing or hearing the little guy, obv.)

incidentally, i learned that it's really really hard to put backpack trackers on henslow's sparrows, not bc they're so small and hard to catch, but because they're smart enough to realize there's a thing on their back and will, somehow, pull the backpack around to their front and completely mangle it beyond repair, and that's before they chew it off.

god i could go on forever. kestrels. ospreys. owls. nightjars. songbirds. fisherbirds. albatrosses. puffins. kinglets. sparrows. starlings. they're all so good and perfect and wonderful and fascinating and if i could learn everything about all of them forever i would.

in an extremely roundabout way of answering your question, if you're still reading and haven't run for the hills yet, i can't pick just one thing to call my favorite to learn about birds. everything about them is so interesting and makes me so excited to learn and see and talk about.

belted kingfisher lovers unite!

edit: I DIDN'T EVEN TALK ABOUT TURKEYS EITHER I'M DOING TURKEY RESEARCH TOO -

coping by pretending that everyone who has responded to the newest chapter by going “my poor boy!” is talking about nene they just hc her as transmasc

A piece of paper is folded on the console. On the outside is written [Good Morning!] On the inside is the following note.

[Bur Cucurucho! Welcome back!

If you’re reading this, it means I couldn’t manage to be here when you woke up. You weren’t alone, though! I’ve been visiting you every day since I found you, making sure you were okay.

Your replacement is a real piece of work, so we’re gonna have to be careful with how you come back. If you have an idea of how to do it safely already, good! If not, I’ve been in here between 1 and 3 PM. Depending on when you wake up, I might see you soon, and we can discuss some strategies.

We You I really

I am very glad to have you back.

- Pato]

Cucurucho pulls out a wire from the back of its head. It follows the trail, holding and feeling the thin, yet fragile, string of copper and rubber up to the other end of the cable.

A computer tower— a lower form of the machine that Cucurucho considers itself to be.

Cucurucho still considers itself to be lower.

Green light reflects in its black visors. 100%. Complete. Reboot. System...

...

Wait.

What.

Someone didn't let it die. It was supposed to, but someone didn't want it to, but who—?

A note. There was a note.

Cucurucho's paws furl and cusp the note, treating it carefully even though it is a piece of paper. Its eyes scan the front, then the inside. It keeps rereading it over and over, to the point its memorized it word for word.

Someone came for it. Someone went through the effort of finding and preserving something as low and unworthy as Cucurucho.

Someone found it.

And Cucurucho wanted to find him too.

Ngl the reason I don't join more writeblr discords is—well, firstly, I'm already in enough of them—but more importantly, because people get inflated egos over being mods way, way too often. And for no real good reason, either, given they're shit moderators. And I don't have enough energy in me to constantly parse out whether a mod is on an ego trip anymore tbh.

Alhaitham has been reserved!

Vent under cut fjqjsjq sorry I am just a certified mess rn

I've been doing so so good not crying since Wednesday, almost cried I wanna say 3 times? Once when dropping a friend off, once when I left my sister's (she lives 9 hours away from me), and once while I was driving home. But it's like all crashing on me now since I can finally properly rest and there is just an overwhelming urge to cry cause I miss the people I care about, especially when some of them I only get to see once a year. I'm getting so fucking lucky and I get to see my sister in person twice. I miss my friends. I miss my sister. I miss them so fucking much. I miss my sister so fucking much. I miss my big sister. It's no fair. I wanna see her more often but work and school schedules suck. I got lucky that my sister could skip working her second job so I could go see her when I was doing my 14 hours drive home. This is the person who kept me as safe as she could a sacrificed so fucking much when one of our parents was being an asshole and making our lives and our mom's life hell. It's not fair I don't get to see her every day. I know we're both adults and it's not like we don't call and text everyday but it's not the same as being able to run and hug her whenever I want or to be able to poke my head into her room and ask if she's awake because I don't wanna be alone. When I was leaving her house she hit me with "If I hug you, that means goodbye and I don't want to" and honestly it broke me but I didn't wanna cry in front of her cause I knew she'd start crying too so I forced myself to stay strong and keep smiling. And god I miss my friends so much I had literally one of the best weeks of my life being able to hang out with some of the people I care about the most and not having to worry about work or school or monet and just have fun with them. Walking away back to my car to start driving home was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but I knew if I started crying that I'd be exhausted after and not awake enough to drive, so I didn't.

I'm just so tired and I don't wanna cry because it's obviously not the last time I'll see all of them, but it still fucking hurts knowing I can't see them whenever I want because of distance and it just makes me feel so alone that a good handful of the people I care about the most are so physically out of reach. It fucking sucks.

Invitation to bring your main later for a Hexenzirkel tea party photoshoot seven hours from now!

And if my internet isn't shit, we can do a genocide run to kill everything that exists in my world! If someone has to go, you can join in to occupy an empty slot!

thsc fans made me a kinder person wowie

Updated Taken Characters List!

Venti: Vampite: subtype Sprite

Diluc: Dhampire, subtype warm, Hunter, thought he was human for most of his life

Scaramouche|Wanderer: Vampire subtype Unseelie

Dainslief: Vampire; Subtype Common.

Fischl; Vampire; Subtype Common

Dottore: Vampire; Subtype Shattered

Tighnari: Vampire; Subtype Legacy

Cyno: Vampire; Subtype Devoted

Tartaglia|Childe: Vampire; Subtype Shattered

Zhongli: Subtype; Arch

Sucrose: Dhampire; Subtype none

Albedo: Vampire; Subtype Shattered

Lisa: Human, Witch

Klee: Human

Yelan: Human, Hunter

Arlecchino: Vampire; Subtype Unseelie

Kaeya: Dhampire: subtype second gen

Kaveh: TBD

Baizhu: Sprite

Itto: Subtype; Oni

Nuevillette: Subtype; Arch

Yae Miko: Subtype; Sprite

Collei: Dhampyre

Ei|Raiden: Arch

Freminet: common

Lyney

Lynette

The Tsaritsa

Pantalone

Lumine

Nahida

Yunjin

Reserved Characters

Dehya

Signora