#making crow friends

[patchwork-crow-writes]

CROW UPDATE

Last week, I made a post about going for a walk, taking some seeds and nuts with me, and giving some to a crow friend I met along the path.

Well, they returned. (at least, I think they did? To my shame, I cannot tell crows apart by sight lol - some corvid I presume to be!)

Anyhow, not far from where we had our first encounter, there's a bench. I sat there for a moment to take in the weather and the lovely nature, and this crow flies along the path and lands just a few meters in front of me.

No hesitation. They walk up to me, bold as brass, cocking their little head and pinning me down with their beady black eye. So, I reach into my pocket full of seed and raisins and other goodies, and cast one a small distance between us.

The crow skitters forward, eyes me for just a split second to make sure I'm not gonna lunge for them, then darts forward and plucks the food from the floor. Then they look at me again. Clearly that was not enough to sate my new companion.

I try them with different foods. Raisins are gobbled up, pumpkin seeds devoured, and even a half-hazelnut proves no challenge - my feathered accquaintance pins it down with one talon and busts it to pieces with a precise peck, before scarfing down the little bits of hazelnutty shrapnel.

And as I'm doing this, peolple walk and cycle past, and the crow skips away a small distance, waits for the interruption to pass, then returns right back to their meal. Which leads me to assume that either they are very bold, or are familiar enough with humans to know that 99.5% of them aren't going to try anything. Either way, it was rather touching to see :)

Eventually I'm out of food, and I wait to see what the crow will do. They don't seem too pertubed, and start pecking at the floor for scraps, so I take my leave.

But as I look back towards the bench, I see that they have flown up and are now perched right where I was sat just a moment ago. And perhaps they thought that more food would have fallen out of me like some sentient pinata, but I like to think that perhaps they were occupying the space I had inhabited out of some strange cross-species camaraderie or something. There again, we shouldn't anthropomorphise too much, should we?

So, it would seem that some kind of precident has been set. I'll have to return there in a day or two and see if they approach again, or if it was just a fluke.

I'll let you all know how it goes :)

[bluedietcoke]

book quotes that i will never recover from

"he is half of my soul, as the poets say. " - song of achilles

"write me a letter telling me how to live the rest of my life without you." - how to make friends with the dark

"they were my birthday presents." - shatter me

"she had realized that she had forgotten the precise blue of his eyes and the depth of his laugh." - clockwork princess

"my name is sam cortland... and i will not be afraid." - assassin's blade

"you chose me four years ago. would you choose me still?" - these violent delights

"we were all supposed to make it." - crooked kingdom

"i remember everything." - the invisible life of addie larue

"come home and shout at me. come home and fight with me. come home and break my heart, if you must. just come home." - cruel prince

"i wasted all those yesterdays and am completely out of tomorrows." - they both die at the end

"you hated the idea of me." - the final gambit

"bob says hello." - house of hades

"abuse can feel like love. starving people will eat anything." - nightfall

"i missed you only with an ocean between us. but if death was separating us... i would find you." - queen of shadows

"i loved him. i love him. as best i could." - we were liars

"i'm the villain, even in my own story. but you were supposed to play a different role." - finale

"i will find you again in the next world—the next life. and we will have that time. i promise." - a court of wings and ruin

"i spent half of my time loving her and the other half hiding how much i loved her." - the seven husbands of evelyn hugo

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Inej: First he told me he liked how I looked, and then we had a little…

Nina: *excited*

Inej: Eye contact

Nina: … eye contact?

Inej: mmhmm

Nina: Well, I hope you were using protection

[aroaceleovaldez]

i think a lot about how Leo didn't use his cabin on the Argo II, and instead just always slept in the engine room or on deck (or let's be real, probably in the walls once or twice). And how Nico and Reyna never even got cabins on the Argo II, since they were unexpected passengers and so probably had to just sleep in the sickbay (if they slept at all, which they probably insisted they didn't need to - or fell asleep in odd spots around the ship) and so were forced to be roommates for a little bit before their quest, or shared a room with someone else on the ship.

[gayleafpool]

i think a big thing people get wrong w leafpool’s character is thinking her passivity comes from like fear or insecurity or being shy or something when really it comes from like. defeat. she’s been burned so many times so now she just accepts it there’s no point in fighting back

[adarkermiserablecrow]

911 s6/House MD crossover (timelines be damned) where House tells Eddie something like 'you coparent your son with a man and still refuse to admit you're gay' and then goes to bother wilson like a hypocrite

[crowliphale]

proving to each other that romance is boring

[exotic-dinostuff]

Have my silly bird pictures

I'm throwing my bird addiction at you

More bird

[sweet-potato-42]

Not the admins fault but I beg they learn that this was the worst way to handle the misunderstanding

To call out and low-key make fun of the cc who who's neurodivergent over a misunderstanding is like asking to have people be ableist

Like it was a misunderstanding on both sides and I'm sure the admin gets that but the comments don't express that

It should have been done in private

[puppyeared]

37

37: share a secret

send me a number!! 💌

[six-of-cringe]

I think that one of the reasons why people misinterpret Wylan's character and arc, among others, is because they misinterpret the relationship between him and Kaz. This post has kind of mitosised off from the BFWP (Big Fucking Wylan Post) I'm writing because it's a bit of a different focus and constitutes its own post.

A lot of people talk about Wylan's character and development as though it's meant to match Kaz's - starting out as a nice kid who the city forces to become amoral, indifferent to violence, and well-versed in crime. These qualities are usually talked about with a weird reverence as an irrefutable symbol of "badassery", as though it's always a positive development for any character regardless of the story's narrative, which annoys me but is not the topic of this post. That's part of the BFWP's job.

Following Kaz's exact development is not the point of Wylan's character. The point is that Kaz and Wylan narrative foils - very similar in many ways, but with a fundamental difference that creates the "broken mirror" effect/shows how they could have turned out if they'd chosen differently. I think that difference is how they respond when they climb out of the harbor after their respective betrayals. Narratively, Ketterdam represents a very harsh system that presents the people struggling there with very few options. You can either choose to ditch decency, play by the Barrel's rules, and live, or you can hold on to decency and die.

When Kaz returns to the streets after Jordie's death, he chooses the first option. He copes with what happened through ideas of revenge, and to survive long enough to see it he quickly turns to thievery and violence. He thinks to himself after he robs a kid for money and food that it was much easier to survive when you've left decency behind. He survived through violence, creating the Dirtyhands persona around himself for protection.

When Wylan has to fend for himself, he choses the second option. He finds "honest work" at the tannery, where they exploit workers and expose them to toxins. He wonders if he'll live long enough to use his savings to leave the city, or if the chemicals would kill him first. He was smart enough to steal and survive, but he chose decency, and with it, he chose death. There are a number of reasons why he chose differently than Kaz despite their similarities - his older age and thus more developed moral code, having no one to avenge but himself when he believed himself worthless, his more privileged upbringing, and his relatively low drive to live. Alone, he would have died.

Then Kaz steps in. Kaz's role in all the crow's lives is that, intentionally or not, his ruthless rule of the Barrel creates a sort of haven that allows them to survive where they would have died had they stayed alone. Wylan is a really clear example of this, and though Kaz's intentions were at least partly self-serving, his involvement both kept Wylan from dying of exposure or street violence as well as prevented him from needing to do the more terrible things that it takes to survive in the Barrel. Throughout the books, we see Kaz kind of taking the brunt of enacting violence in Wylan's place - traumatizing Smeet's daughter, killing the clerk on the lighthouse. Wylan could get by making explosives in the workshop rather than having to shoot or stab or beat the life out of people. And at the end of the series, Kaz sees to it that he never will have to. Of course Wylan did bad stuff to survive when working with the Dregs, it's the Barrel. But the extent is greatly lessened because of Kaz's involvement.

Wylan's arc was never about becoming comfortable with violence, or becoming just like Kaz - the way people characterize him as some sort of ruthless murder mastermind is inaccurate and redundant with Kaz's character. He isn't nonchalant or celebratory about crime or death or violence by the end of the book. He doesn't HAVE to become like Kaz, because Kaz himself gave him the space to continue being decent, intentionally or otherwise. Understanding that dynamic is important to understanding what Wylan is like as a character and as a person. If you assume Wylan's trajectory is to become "Kaz 2.0", then you're going to mischaracterize him. I've seen posts about how Kaz was the Jordie that he didn't have to Wylan, and I think that makes a lot more sense. Because Kaz is willing to do the horrible things in his stead, Wylan has the third option otherwise impossible in the Barrel - maintaining his decency and surviving.

[bennythe1980spaceman]

Not a single day goes by where I don't think about Kaz accidentally saying Jordie instead of Jesper in the fight in Crooked Kingdom.

[personostient]

Seeing Vulture made me wonder how MEGA FAUNA relationships work. Can they be friends, enemies, rivals? Maybe even something more.... romantic?

『 Comrades maybe, Coworkers mostly… 』

[drieddpetals]

the crows as random out of context things me and my friends have said

pt. 4 (mostly wesper) (also it's kinda short but idc)

wylan: "drove for the first time saturday, only cried once!"

wylan: "you look gobsmacked"

jesper: "what smacked?? 😏🤨"

jesper: *coughs*

wylan: "you know, your cough kind of sounds like a bomb going off"

jesper: "what 😭😭"

wylan: "it's like... two quick coughs in rapid succession"

jesper: "...in rapid succession??"

wylan: "yeah... no offense to your cough, it's a great cough, but you know"

jesper: "...sure"

wylan: "is that lignite?"

jesper: "LIGNITE MY BALLS!!!!"

wylan: 😐

nina: "i was speaking german you racist little bitch"

jesper: *about to take a test* "should i pray to God, Jesus, or Albert Einstein?"

wylan: "all of the above"

[squuote]

“ This is the story of a man named Stanley. ”

X X X | X 🔘 X | X X X

[asthecrowrambles]

IM GOING TO SEE QUEERPLATONIC BOYFRIEND AND MY FRIEND IN TWO DAYS WHAT THE FUCK. 😳😩💥💥💥💥💥