#ghostbird

[pnkrathian]

shadow puppets are effective tools of psychological warfare

[ghost-bxrd]

An important question about your user name; should I be picturing a ghost bird or a ghost bard?

And if a bird, are we talking dead bird spirit imprint, or a potoo?

Or

Pfpfpfpf valid question. I go by GhostBIRD. Somehow fitting for my Robin obsession I’ll admit, but coincidentally Batman or adjacent fandoms didn’t have anything to do with that choice in username.

I used to sketch a lot of skeletal/surreal animals (and birds) and was very into subtle horror. I ended up stumbling across a book (and later the movie) “Annihilation” by Jeff Vandermeer, where the main character had the nickname “Ghostbird” and… it stuck with me. Also it helped very much that when I googled GhostBird and found the very real bird, the Potoo, it ended up being a wonderfully silly looking bird that’s just perpetually screaming which… is very on brand ngl.

so yeah, that’s how my username was born. A combination of sketching literal ghost birds, a killer book (and movie), and a silly looking bird that looks like it had too many espressos (mood). 🦉

As for what to picture… I’d like to say please think of me as an eerie spirit bird but… the potoo is much closer to reality lol.

[gravesdotjpg]

Imgood at drawing normal & tonally appropriate southern reach trilogy fanart

[theblurbwitchproject]

Ghostbird by Carol Lovekin

Published: March 17, 2016 Publisher: Honno Press

The Author

In her own words Carol Lovekin writes “stories that touch on the Welsh Gothic and its most powerful motif: the ghost. They concern the nature of magic and how it threads through the fabric of our lives. I explore possibilities: the fine line between the everyday and the time-shifting world of enchantment. My books are also firmly rooted in reality. I write about family relationships: how people, women in particular, respond to loss and how they survive. I set my stories in Wales, where I’ve lived for several decades: a place whose legends and landscapes inform my writing.”

˗ˏˋ ´ˎ˗

The Story

Nothing hurts like not knowing who you are. Nobody will tell Cadi anything about her father and her sister. Her mother Violet believes she can only cope with the past by never talking about it. Lili, Cadi’s aunt, is stuck in the middle, bound by a promise she shouldn’t have made. But this summer, Cadi is determined to find out the truth.

In a world of hauntings and magic, in a village where it rains throughout August, as Cadi starts on her search, the secrets and the ghosts begin to wake up. None of the Hopkins women will be able to escape them.

˗ˏˋ ´ˎ˗

The Vibe: small welsh village, gossipy locals, magical realism, everyday magic, family secrets, small town, LGBTQ+ subplot

The Style: beautiful prose, standalone, multiple POVs, character driven, coming of age

Trigger Warnings: child neglect, child death, suicide, depression

˗ˏˋ ´ˎ˗

The Review

From the very first page Ghostbird captured my imagination. The prose is so beautifully crafted that it felt special from the start. As I said my my last review, I’m always looking for the next Practical Magic, and this novel is the closest to Alice Hoffman’s gorgeous writing style that I’ve yet come across. I highlighted so many quotes during my read through that it was hard to choose just three to include in this review.

The plot revolves around Cadi, a fourteen year old girl who desperately wants a deeper understanding of her past, and primarily of her father and sister who both died in circumstances that her mother refuses to disclose. Violet, Cadi’s mother, is very clearly depressed and a rather cold woman, so Cadi spends a lot of time at the house next door where her aunt Lilli, her father’s sister, lives in a gorgeous witchy cottage that has been in their family for generations. Violet has forbidden Lilli from sharing any details about the family history with Cadi, which all comes to a head over the course of the story. Living in a small Welsh village where gossip is rife doesn’t help matters; Cadi knows that everyone else is privy to her business and is further alienated by this fact. Lovekin’s prose envelopes us in this world, at times both magical and aching with loneliness.

“The rain whispered against the window. A shiver ran down Cadi’s back, and for a second she saw her ghost-face in the glass. This time it was made of meadowsweet and lavender, and a solitary tea towel left hanging on the washing line.”

There are a number of references to character’s reflections in the story, a device which I found added to the introspective tone with a somewhat magical touch. Cadi feels like part of herself is missing; she doesn’t really know who she is, and frequently examines herself as a ghostly form in windows and screens, part-girl, part-background. She can’t be a fully realised person until she understands why her mother is so cold, how her father died and what happened to her sister.

Cadi’s aunt Lilli (short for Lilwen) desperately wants to help her niece understand her families’ past, but holds true to the promise she made to her sister in law and doesn’t spill the beans. Lilli is the witchiest character in the story, and also the most likeable. (Honestly, I found myself enjoying her subplot more than the main storyline.) Amongst Lilli’s overgrown witches’ garden, in Cadi’s lonely bedroom, and the mysterious lake that she is drawn to, the family history begins to unfold.

Lovekin really captures small internal moments that we all experience beautifully; “Light like bee pollen caught in the fine hairs on her bare arm.” I seriously can’t explain how gorgeous her prose is. She also utilises a literary device that I can’t help but love by making use of weather and nature to punctuate dramatic moments or plot points. Frequent unseen bird calls, and a silent barn owl (or ghost-bird), increase the mystery as Cadi begins seeing a ghostly little girl in and around her house.

“A place this old must surely be a few parts magic, and who knew what ancient charms clung to the brickwork? Old wisdom attached itself, collected in puddles, slipped under eaves and down chimneys. Wild magic loitered in lanes, cunning as magpies. If it danced by the door, the village knew the wisest move was to drop the latch. Myths were entwined with reality as tightly as the honeysuckle around the cottage doors.

One of my favourite features of Ghostbird was Lovekin’s use of Welsh phrases, like “cariad bach”, which translates as “little love”. I live pretty close to Wales myself but have very little knowledge of the language, so it was nice to learn some new words and phrases. I’m also obsessed with some of the Welsh names she included: Morwenna, Gwenllian, Pomona, Lilwen? So cute!

My one negative critique was Violet, and to a lesser extent Cadi’s, attitudes.  They both got a little grating as the book went on. Now, I get where Cadi is coming from and she is only 14 years old, but Violet is at points almost irredeemably selfish and overly dramatic. I actually don’t think I’ve disliked a book character more, and that’s saying something. I understand that her past was difficult, but many of the trigger warnings for this book revolve around Violet, and her terrible treatment of her daughter. I feel that the frequent arguments around Cadi wanting to understand her past and Violet refusing to tell her got a bit repetetive, but that was my only real issue with an otherwise beautiful story. I won’t reveal any more of the plot here; it wouldn’t do the book justice. All I can say is, if you like the sound of gentle meadowsweet scents and awaking to a bedroom covered in myserious feathers and leaves, this novel is for you.

“From the first day of August until the last, it rained at least once a day in the village. When the sun broke through, people caught their breath, marvelled at the glimmer turning raindrops to treasure.”

Lovekin’s writing is very special and this novel was a delight to read. I found myself scrolling her Goodreads profile and adding pretty much every other novel she’s written to my TBR list. If any of them are as magically written as Ghostbird, it will be well worth giving them a try.

Rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑

[Goodreads]

[varyingobsession]

their scratched out portrait made me too sad, so i had to pull out the digital painting/restoration abilities to fix it.............

and i gotta remind yall im not just a comic/cartooney character artist sometimes

painted over the original image of their portrait from the game, ill put the version with just the parts i painted under the cut:

in case ppl are interested, and bc i think its interesting and still pretty cool and pretty by itself

[mrs-n-uzumaki]

Hi, I’ve been watching Psych and greatly enjoying it, but I heard from yours truly that it goes downhill at the fourth season. Are the rest still worth watching, do you think? Thanks! (also you’re absolutely right, season one shawn is unbeatable)

Hello, my love!

Yeah, Psych never recovered after season 4. It’s up to you if you wanna sit through it the one time to feed your curiosity. I watched it as it aired at the time not knowing just how flanderised and ridiculous it gets (although Last Night Gus is quite entertaining). My rewatches consist of s1-3, some of s4. That’s mostly it. But yeah, if you want to continue, at least you have a heads up!

Season one Shawn is absolute B A E

He was just cool. Still a complete clown, but he had an edge.

[c-kiddo]

finished scavengers reign s1 .

[callmearcturus]

Question for you- have you seen the original x-men movies? (1,2, and last stand) and if you have, what’s your opinion on wolverine? I know he was a big part of dofp but he got a cameo in first class and nothing else in the other two. Oh also, if you haven’t seen the 2013 movie The Wolverine…do not.

I saw them when they originally came out. Punct and I literally have XMFC on right now and I was just saying how fucking wild that I think the first fucking depiction of the Holocaust came from that astounding cold open of the original 2000 movie. It's visceral and brutal and really conveys the gravity of what is happening. I think my mother had to explain what it meant...

I don't really have strong memories of the originals. It's bits and pieces. The tactility of Rogue and Logan meeting and bonding, the jaw-droppingly good makeup and prosthetic work on Mystique and Nightcrawler, "People like you were the reason I was afraid to go to school as a child," and... that one moment when Kurt has to bamf into a space he hasn't seen and he starts praying.

I also remember how fucking stupid it was when they just killed Scott off with zero gravity. At least DP let him be a character.

I've seen Wolverine Origins. I don't think I saw The Wolverine. I saw Logan, like, opening day in theatres with madre and we used all the crinkly napkins as tissues because we were bawling.

[12thbiologist]

i never see your username before reading your tags and it always makes me so happy like omg someone else relates everything back to ghostbird?? soooo real

if theres one thing true about me is that at all times my brain is doing pattern recognition for anything even halfway relatable to the biologist. shes everywhere to me

[planet4546b]

THE STRANGERS INSTRUMENT IS VOCALS!!!!!!!!!!!! THE ONLY ACTIVELY ANTAGONISTIC PEOPLE IN THE GAME AND THE MOST HUMAN POSSIBLE INSTRUMENT THE LITERAL HUMAN VOICE!!!!!!! THEY ONLY WANT TO GO HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FUCK!!!!!!

[88foliose]

oh shane (stardew valley) my beloved ft. my freaky farmer ghostbird :3

bah!!! go shane go!

[ghost-bxrd]

Ao3 is down and now I’m just like— staring at the ceiling. Wondering how people existed before Ao3 was a thing.

[clownhavoc]

Art dump of art that I made recently (from a week ago to today) (if you saw that I posted them all separately at first, no you didn't)

[looketha]

This Thursday 6pm come check out the group art show, “Spectral Musings”, at Never Ending Books in New Haven. I got some new birdies involved. 🐓🕊🦤 Fun brought to you by @ursa.gallery #groupartshow #acrylicpainting #ghostbirds #makinmonsters #bptartist #🐁 #looketha (at Never Ending Books) https://www.instagram.com/p/CkKUbY7M0AA/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[sleepyseals]

[Image Description: A digital painting of one of the hand devices in the simulation. In the foreground a ghostbird is grabbing the protagonist's outstretched arm as they try to flee. Both their arms and the hand device are illuminated in the light of their artifact. The image is at an upwards angle so the hand is looming against the starry sky and the characters' hands cast a shadow over the center/palm of the device. End Image Description.]

speedpaint link here!

[erodingsinner]

was tagged by @buckxtommy ty ❤️‍🩹

favorite color: green or black

last song: a million memories — Dead Butterflies

currently reading: nothing, but I'll start reading A Feast for Crows soon. I'm taking my time reading the series since we're not getting twow until 2030 at least ( grrm please.... )

currently watching: 911: lone star & interview with the vampire

currently craving: some sleep lol

coffee or tea: tea, unless it's a barely caffeinated cappuccino

tagging: @whodoesnataliehave @ghostbird-7 @nival-kenival @saintfaulkners @buckevantommy @bugmuncher3000 @julesnichols & anyone who wants to do it !