#Blue-headed Racket-Tail

[alonglistofbirds]

[1479/10977] Blue-headed Racket-Tail - Prioniturus platenae

Order: Psittaciformes (parrots) Superfamily: Psittacoidea (true parrots) Family: Psittaculidae (Asian and Australasian parrots) Subfamily: Psittaculinae

Photo credit: Jose Antonio (JJ) Sta Ana via Macaulay Library

[the-puffinry]

today's sketch is of a Blue-headed racket-tail/kinawihan (prioniturus platenae) parrot, maybe the most beautiful parrot I've ever seen -- their strange tailfeathers and green bellies remind me of luna moths or hummingbirds. They're endemic to the Palawan islands in the Philippines. Neocolor II wax pastels + marker 05/003/2023. :)

Here's a link to their entry on the ebird site.

Unfortunately they are threatened by habitat loss, and there are only an estimated 700-1500 of them left. Oil palm plantations and mining operations are rapidly destroying the forests in which they live.

There is a local organisation working to preserve the birds in this area (link to their general site), but their site looks straight out of 2000 and they haven't exactly made their donation link easy to find-- there really isn't an obvious one. You download a form to sponsor an aspiring warden on their cockatoo-specific site. It's a very oldfashioned kind of site, but they seem to be doing good work? If you click the bolded part of the text I copied on the actual site it downloads the contribution form. "The core project of the Philippine Cockatoo Conservation Programme is a wardens scheme to guard the cockatoos, particularly during the breeding season. Former poachers were recruited as wildlife wardens because of their profound knowledge of the species. They are indigenous people of Palawan: the Pala’wan from the south, the Tagbanua tribes and the Cuyunin from the northern part of the province. In return for their dedication and commitment to the project, KFI implements livelihood activities to augment their income. You too can help our wardens through sending their children to school."

[arulia108]

Day 25

[imiya]

Tilly & Finley Wild Manes Review

since i got a hold of these girlies lets investimigate- apologies for overexposure

first, individual pics of each of them. here's finley:

who is themed after a pool party, of course. when i bought her at target, the self checkout display called her Isla, which makes sense as a working name for her... island.

she is white with grey hooves and a muzzle. she has blue eyeshadow with green eyes and blonde eyebrows, matching her blonde hair with a purple streak.

i will color correct these photos for the wiki, but for now, here's the raw photo of her clothes

all of the clothes are unhemmed and simply printed-on fabric with two velcro connections. my finley also had a plastic tab keeping the front attatched (which i snipped so i could remove it). you can see her mermaid tail and flamingoes on her clothes. the clothing is very thin, i don't think it might fray any time soon, but it does seem lazy for a fashion horse toy. thankfully, the hair makes up for it, we'll get there later.

each of these horses came with a brush and a non-brush accessory. finley's is wearable! she has a visor made with this magenta translucent plastic. i didn't take any pictures of it on her, but it does indeed fit on her head.

she comes with this purple brush, which you can tell is hers because of the flamingo printed on it.

and now a quick tilly rundown...

she's a brown horse with a brown muzzle and hooves, red eyeshadow, yellow eyes, and blonde eyebrows. her hair is more of a dirty blonde than finley, and her color streak is described as "periwinkle". the self checkout register called her Serena, which... yeah, i can see why they may have changed that. a little on the nose.

as you can see by her brush's symbol, she's very clearly tennis-themed. her accessory is unfortunately not wearable, instead it's a water bottle with a tennis racket printed on

horse gotta hydrate

if that all wasn't clear enough, her outfit has a tennis racket on it, too! there is no hemming, the "collar" is printed on. her outfit looks like a blue polo and a teal skirt.

okay, now the part people actually wanted to see. what the heck the figures look like

it's gettin' hot in here, so take off all your clothes...

both finley and tilly have the same exact model! i assume the horses (ponies? horses. fillies?) all have the same bodies. i think i can feel a few spots where the plastic feels slightly more rubbery/pliable than the others, so i do fear we may see discoloration as time goes on.

all of the legs are articulated at the shoulder or "hip" (sorry horse fans, it's a knee or something?), but only the front left leg is articulated in multiple places.

thank you girls, finley has her leg fairly straightened out whereas tilly has it bent. i haven't noticed the joints being unusually difficult to maneuver or maintain position, which bodes well for pictures. i did have a little bit of trouble getting them to balance in my photobox (likely because the bottom bows inwards a bit), but the little extra range of motion is nice. you can also twist the joints a little bit, but not super extremely.

but can she sit?

sort of? i know horses don't really naturally "sit" very well, but she still looks goofy. her neck doesn't move forwards so it's not a very great-looking pose for her to hold, but she can balance like this on her own.

hey, look at me when i'm talkin to you

thanks. side view of her in that same pose.

her head can turn, it's on a ball join, i believe it's similar to the g4.5/g5 mlp joints but a little more restrictive. i intend to dismantle a finley for research, so ill be able to share that when the time comes. it can rotate and move up and down slightly.

more motion... one of the back legs is in a mid-walk position which made her a little awkward to balance. you can see the company name and "made in china" stamp on the inside of this leg.

it's not very clear in this image, but there's a stamp with numbers and letters on her stomach. i don't know what this means, as finley had the same code! you can also see the hooves have horseshoes with "WM" (wild manes) on them.

before we get into the manes of the wild manes, a quick little look at their eyes.

the paint looks great! it's not stippled like i've seen on a few other dolls recently. the eyes are also sculpted in, so we hopefully won't have wild misplacement like we do on the newer MLPs. they both have stars and two eye shines, and the eyelashes are the same. the only differences here are the colors.

okay. mane time.

the hair is SUPER soft. i agree with the replier who said it's Kiwi Nylon. i am very happy that the hair is so nice and hope that the others in this set are the same way! the way it's packaged in the box makes it so there are three or four rubber bands holding it in place, and it leaves the hair with the "memory" of that. i did wash and condition the hair in these photos, which also seemed to help with the small qualms i had with the hair right out of the box. it seemed a little oily and tilly had a doubled-over plug. finley didn't seem to have any rooting troubles!

all of the hair is a few rows up the back of the head with a section for bangs. you can see that they wove tilly's bangs with the longer hair that's part of her mane to hide the parting in her head, which is likely expected for a doll but a cool detail. her bangs are NOT gelled down!

here you can see five to six rows of hair on the back of the head. it's not a lot of surface area, but the hair seems thickly rooted for what it is!

here i've parted the mane on Finley so you can see the hair a little more clearly. it looks like the streaks of hair are only on the outside of the rooting.

i've been a little afraid to peel back finley's bangs lest they become unsalvagable, but here's finley's bangs peeled back.

there's still a few rows here. when i dismantle her, hopefully i can showcase her rooting pattern more clearly.

i think that's all the pictures i've taken of them so far... i got these girls at Target, and you can order them as well as Bailey and Cocoa off their site right now! i'll be updating the fandom wiki with pictures of the accessories and hopefully the rest of the girls are as high quality as these ones!

[herpsandbirds]

Palawan or Blue-headed Racket-tail (Prioniturus platenae), family Psittaculidae, Palawan, Philippines

photograph by Henrick Tan

[piratefishmama]

Crossing the line | Part 10

Even with the plugs in his ears filtering the harshest of sounds, Steve could feel the music when it began, could feel the vibration of the guitars, the bang of the drums, he felt more than he heard.

Felt it right through to his soul.

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the stage as it lit up, revealing the full band, Eddie at the front, guitar in skilled hands he welcomed the audience with a loud,

“ARE WE READY TO ROCK THIS PLACE TO THE GROUND?!”

The riotous uproar of approval from the crowd as their response, Robin beside him adding her own voice to the crowd. Not him. He was just there. Soaking it in. Lost in his own mind as he stared at the front man, unable to tear his eyes away.

It wasn’t like the coffee shop. The Eddie on stage didn’t look a single thing like the tired minimum wage employee who’d eventually served him his coffee, dressed in browns, in an apron, his hair tied back, this was a wild animal. All blacks, chains, rings, and leather. His mane of dark curls free and wild to be tossed along to the beat.

It wasn’t Steve’s scene by any means, but he could easily find himself lost in it, find himself lost in a song Eddie introduced as “Into the Underdark.” Like laying there in his living room the music washed over him, loud, and all consuming, fast, and rough, no room to think, barely room to breathe. Robin had joined the collective metalhead version of dance, jumping on the spot hands raised high, Steve didn’t even realise he’d joined in too until Robins hand found his to hold like sea otters scared of drifting apart in open waters.

Even for someone who claimed dislike of the front man, she was happy to bounce around to the racket he made as long as she could hold onto Steve as she did it.

All Steve knew was that he was completely one hundred percent fucked over this man and the crooked grin he wore. Over the flex of taut muscle beneath slender arms from lifting band equipment and excessive movement on stage, over the glint of chains, the dark shade of smudged kohl around his huge chocolate Bambi eyes, and the rough gravel tone of his voice.

Even if Robin never grew to like him, which even though she’d never make him choose, would suck, he wanted this ridiculous metal head for himself. Robin would simply have to get used to him.

They were mid-way through a Metallica cover that Steve did vaguely recognise, something about sandmen (it was one of the many his fans put forward to be covered by himself) when Robin decided she was parched. Keeping her hold on his hand she pulled him through the masses toward the bar, it was easy. Nobody recognised him there, there was no recognition in the bartenders eyes, especially since the pretty blonde with the blue eyeshadow seemed to be focusing entirely on Robin’s mouth.

Could have been to try and read her lips over the music, but Robin had more natural game than she liked to think she did. She was beautiful, and the babbling was adorable, so of course, a cute blonde would be struck stupid by her. And Steve doubted she was reading those lips too, cause it took her three attempts to hear what Robin was saying.

Could be the music, but Steve doubted it with the way she was laughing, with the cute little twirl of her pony tailed hair, he leaned in, a grin on his lips as he got close to her ear to talk over the music “Robbie I’m gonna get closer to the stage okay? You know my drink order right?”

“Huh? Oh! Yeah—yeah! I’ll find you!” Steve was absolutely never getting that drink. Not unless he flagged down the other bartender, but that was fine, he was happy to leave Robin to it, happy to weave his way through the masses to somewhere on the side, not in the middle where the ‘pit’ had slowly begun to form as if one could in such a limited space, happy to get a little closer to ogle the lead guitarist.

It wasn’t like in the movies either, when the band member looked up from their instrument and caught sight of that one person in the crowd, none of that. Eddie was focused, focused on his music, the lyrics, lost in pure magic and Steve was so deeply gone over it.

He knew that feeling, could appreciate it, being lost in making music, in the crowds dancing, the beat, the noise drowning everything and everyone else in the world out. Eddie was a goddamn rockstar confined to a dive bar, Corroded Coffin were metal legends in the making who just needed a foot in the door, and maybe… even if Eddie wound up not wanting him, maybe he could at least help them with that. Get that foot in the door for them or shove them in the direction of where to start shoving their own damn feet.

What they were, what they could be… he wanted to see it happen. Be there for it, support Eddie, and his band through it, a feeling only intensified by the smile seemingly fixed on Eddie’s lips as he sang, the joy he put into those lyrics whether they were joyful or not. He loved this.

This was what he was born to do.

“You found him!” A voice broke him out of his thoughts midway through the third song, one that just managed to make it over the music, forcing him to turn and look toward its source to one curly haired young lady with big blue eyes and a strong jaw line, dressed up just like he was for the evening, only she looked like she actually fit in there. She looked comfortable, and she recognised him.

“Him?”

“Eddie, you found him! He told me you stopped by the shop! You still came to the gig anyway?!”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world!” He was going to go anyway, regardless of whether or not Eddie had agreed to a date with him, he wanted to go to the gig, that was the whole point of being there. He wanted to hear Eddie play something other than video game tracks, wanted to see what he looked like up on a stage where he clearly belonged.

“I’m Nancy! Eddie’s friend!”

“Oh shit!! The reporter! Robin told me about you! That’s how she found him, through you!” Nancy’s eyes widened in alarm, “Don’t feel bad! Robin’s scarily good at hunting people down on the internet and Eddie had one of your stories on his Instagram feed! Definitely not your fault!”

“Oh god! What an idiot!”

“Right?!” Steve laughed

“Where is Robin?! I thought she’d have come with you!”

“She did!! Over by the bar flirting with the cute blonde!”

“Chrissy?! Hah! She’ll have to play nice with Eddie if she wants a shot, those two are thick as thieves! He’s known her longer than me!” Well shit, good luck Robin. “He got her the job here!”

“Well shit! I’m sure she’ll love that!” So far being antagonistic towards the worlds least threatening wet cat seemed to be Robin’s favourite pastime. “How long do these gigs usually last!?”

“Getting bored?!”

“No! I just—I wanna… y’know!” Have his attention on him. Wanted to let Eddie know he was there. Nancy laughed, not unkindly but, it still had him ducking his head in bashful embarrassment.

“You’re so cute! They have one more song after this then a break for ten minutes! But it’s definitely not over yet! Want me to take you back stage so you can grab him early?!” Or be grabbed by him?

“Please!” It’d been a long time since he’d last felt ashamed of how eager he could be. He was Steve Goddamn Harrington, he refused to hide his excitement.

Which was how he wound up in a back room, the walls lined with photos of past performances, bands, and solo acts, each one up there, captured for the sake of history. There were couches in there, clearly not new but they looked plush enough to be comfortable. There were cases, Eddie’s own guitar case there, shaped like a coffin and lined with a deep red long-pile velvet, because of course it was. A mini fridge stocked with waters and a few bottles of beer, just enough for the band to have one free one each. Fair, it was a small venue.

Nancy had assured him that she’d tell Robin where he was, and there wasn’t a migraine in sight.

He grabbed himself a water out of the mini fridge, downing half the damn bottle in one go very quickly realising he really had needed that drink. Not that he blamed Robin, the blonde had been very cute.

He was so caught up in his perusal of the room that he didn’t even notice when the music stopped. Didn’t notice until the door opened, and four guys piled in, all stopping dead at the sight of him stood there.

“Holy shit he’s really here.” One of them, the one who’d been on base blurted out.

“Huh” the other guitarist laughed “Eddie wasn’t bullshitting…”

“Alright lads, get your drinks, we’ll chill out back for ten, I need a smoke anyway” the drummer grabbed the other two, gently pushing them through “don’t mind uuuss~” grabbing drinks on their way to the far door, an emergency fire exit. Eddie just stood there, wide eyed, staring at him like a doe in headlights.

Only when that door closed shut did Eddie snap out of it, but only to blink, open his mouth, then close it again, and then open it again to say “You—you’re here…”

“I’m here… not gonna throw something at me again are you? You really only have your guitar there and she’s far too pretty to throw.” Eddie’s head snapped around to look over his shoulder at this guitar, a disbelieving sort of laugh bubbling from him, Steve called her pretty, while stood there looking like every poor queer metal heads wet dream.

Fuck. He looked back to Steve.

“W-Where’s Robin? Thought she was like, attached to your hip.”

“Flirting with a bartender, or being flirted with, I wasn’t sure, didn’t stick around long enough to see. Do you really care about where Robin is right now?”

“No.”

“Thought not.”

Part 12

[dromeoraptor]

Birds-of-Paradise feel like some speculative evolution project. Once upon a time, a bird found itself on an isolated island continent (most of them live in New Guinea, but some live on Australia, and New Guinea was connected to Australia during glacial periods), and it evolved into a whole family of birds with crazy sexual displays. But not just crazy, but with multiple genera all crazy in different ways. It really does feel like someone wanted to make a spec evo project showing off how sexual selection and display structures can be, but it's real!

This is far from a comprehensive list, but we have:

The one with a trombone windpipe: Curl-Crested Manucode

This is a bird that looks pretty normal, it's from the first branch to split off from the others so it's still monogamous unlike the more extravagant ones. It has a cool sound, but not something you'd expect to need crazy internal workings.

But it does have crazy internal workings, with this super long trachea (windpipe) that bends 4 times before finally getting to the mouth. I'm honestly not sure why it has this windpipe, it's not particularly loud or anything as far as I know.

The "King of the Dance": Western Parotia

Parotias already have complex dances for birds-of-paradise, but the Western Parotia is the one with the most complex of them all. Each Parotia's dance has multiple steps, in a specific order. This one has 6 steps.

Perch Pivot- the male pivots back and forth on a horizontal branch above the display court, a little patch of forest floor that he's cleared out

Head Tilt- the male goes up to a female on the branch and flops his head from side to side.

Court Hop- The male hops across the court, (not one big hop, multiple smaller ones like a sparrow or kangaroo), pauses, and then hops the other way.

Swaying Bounce- The male bounces up and down and side to side as he flutters his wings, moving his head in an infinity sign. He also has a variation on this where it closes its wings and bounces more vigorously

Ballerina Dance- has four parts to it. He does a bow, he walks a bit, he pauses, and then he moves flares those shiny neck feathers while hopping side to side.

The one with wires coming out of its head: the King-of-Saxony

This one has two really weird feathers called "head wires". Twice as long as the bird's body, and he can point them backwards, to the side, or even forwards! They're not just long too, their structure's all weird with the barbs fused into these plasticy tabs.

The one that likes it rough: the Greater Bird-of-Paradise

While showy for a bird, they're nothing too special for a bird of paradise. The main special thing is their big plume of feathers on their back, and their display is basically just running along the branches showing off their plumes and making a racket.

But once he's got the female's attention, he shows the underside of that plume on his back, and then he starts flapping his wings and basically hopping backwards and touching her with his rear end.

Then he starts clapping her with his wings, and kinda pecking at her head. I don't think he open his mouth but he's not exactly being gentle with that beak. And then comes the sex, both seconds of it. Well 2.5 seconds is what I counted in the video, but yeah. Bird sex in general is really short with few exceptions.

The bald one with a Yoshi saddle: Wilson's Bird-of-Paradise

For these birds, the height of male sexiness is a bald head, it seems.

Wrinkly, pale blue bald skin on the head.

Even the females get in on the bald action, it seems.

There's also this thing on his back that he can open and close, this time made of feathers and not bald skin, that I think looks like a Yoshi saddle thing. Also that bib thingy is green, but only at a certain angle.

The one that sings like a cricket: The Black Sicklebill

Crickets sing with their wings, and so does this bird. One of the things he does is rub his wings either against each other or the base of the tail (we're not sure), and it makes this knocking or "distant machine-gun" sound.

The one that sounds like a Machine Gun: The Brown Sickebill

His display is impressive, I showed off his relative's display in the images of the previous part. But the more interesting thing to me is that he sounds like he's imitating some sorta rapid-fire ray gun. I don't know how true this is, but supposedly, during WW2, Japanese soldiers mistook their songs for gunfire.

Credit to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's YouTube channel being my main source for this post!

[proton-wobbler]

Duplicate Submissions

Alright, here is the list of duplicate birds that were submitted to this poll:

American Robin, Canada Goose, Dovekie, Eurasian Jay, Hoatzin, Blue-bellied Roller, Smew, Hoopoe, Dark-eyed Junco, Painted Bunting, Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Rifleman (Titipoumano), Archeopterix, Hooded Crow, Roseate Spoonbill, Northern Lapwing, European Starling, Steller's Jay, Great Auk, Eclectus Parrot, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Spotted Towhee, Resplendent Quetzal, Vermilion Flycatcher, Kaua'i O'o, Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Hooded Pitohui, Rainbow Bee-eater, Long-tailed Tit (Shima Enaga), Sunbittern, Varied Thrush, Pied Currawong, Rock Pigeon, Domestic Chicken, Northern Gannet, Diederik Cuckoo, Yellow-headed Picathartes, Temminck's Tragopan, Greater Lophorina, Parotia, Grey Butcherbird, Green Jay, Horned Screamer, Magnificent Frigatebird, Spinifex Pigeon, Gorgeted Puffleg, Zebra Dove, Common House Martin, Swordbill Hummingbird, Greater Roadrunner, Rufous-crested Coquette, Wallcreeper, Racket-tailed Roller, Himalayan Monal, Crested Pigeon, Inaccessible Island Rail, Brown Creeper, Tufted Titmouse, White Wagtail, Bobolink, Shoebill Stork, Australian Brushturkey, black-throated magpie-jay, Greater Blue-eared Starling, spangled cotinga

This list will continue to be updated, but I'm not going to pin it to the top since technically these guys are not the focus of the poll (I just think they're neat :3). The tag placed on pics of these birds is ELIMINATED, as someone asked about tagging them and I figured out how to use the Mass Post Editor >:3

[doctorhouse5343]

Hob Gadling is a bard that loves good food, wine, company and adores to travel wherever the wind takes him, singing away his joy to whoever might be close enough to hear it...which leads to many fun adventures. His music fill the hearts of the tavern goers with warmth whenever he plays for them, though they are some moments where fights and brawls break out, stopping his little show abruptly, resulting in his traveling companion, a powerful wizard named Dream, to pull him out of that situation swiftly.

Despite their differences, the two have grown inseparable and consider one another close friends, though Dream really wished that the bard would stop getting himself in dangerous situations for the hell of it. The wizard was certain that Hob was doing it on purpose, proven to be correct by all the times the human bard would thank him with those big brown eyes twinkling with admiration and love, which made him roll his eyes a few times (he would never admit outloud that he loved it when the other acted like this, he didn't want to encourage it) as they would both head out to their next location.

On one beautiful sunny day, Hob came up with the brilliant idea to visit the home of a dragon whose existence scared the locals : every bad thing that befell them, they would pin it on him and beg brave adventurers to take him down , though it always ended in failure. So it was with the promise of getting rid of the dragon that the pair head off to the forest to meet the dragon known as Hobo Heart. While Dream prepared a spell to deal with the terrifying creature, the bard had the 'brilliant' idea to serenade the dragon, which he did. Soon after, the angry skull-faced humanoid dragon ;who just happened to have been sleeping and had now woke up; stomped out of his cave, his tail swishing behind him as he crossed his arms, demanding them to stop all that racket. As he kept stomping his little foot down, his blue eyes glowing in anger, the bard couldn't help but feel drawn to the scaled male, going as far to beg him to come with them, stating that he wouldn't leave without the little cutie

angry, stompy, pouting Dragon! Hobo Heart is what I need right now the other drabble will be done better, prommy, I just need something cute and fluffy that is full of shenanigans, sheer chaos and stupidity to write about 🥹😭

[bethdehart]

Griffin Taur

LOVE this one from stream!! She came out so cool! Was gonna go for a classic griffin combo but ended up with a seagull lol.

[ID: A sketch of a furry griffin taur. She is leaping towards a tennis ball with her arm outstretched, holding a tennis racket. Her feathers are off-white, with her forelimbs and arms being bird-like and bright yellow, with her lion part being tan and furred. She’s wearing an athletic tank top with a red box of fries on it, labeled with an ‘W’. She’s wearing a set of pink and blue pastel sweatbands on her limbs, head, and tail.]

[the-puffinry]

and that concludes my 7 days of sketching mostly parrots all from the Philippines! Already posted separately but I'm happy I managed to stick to it throughout my encounter with covid so here they are all together. I hadn't really tried Neocolor II and markers before and I think there was some progress: though I'm really fond of the Guaiaberos I did the first day.

from left to right, top to bottom: flame-breasted fruit dove, blue-naped parrot, red-vented cockatoo, mindanao lorikeets, blue-headed racket-tail, guaiabero, philippine hanging parrot. The bottom ones are the earliest attempts, as you might guess!

[bluejadedragon]

More Sneak Peaks to WIPS (because I haven't finished any and I really need to)

1. Mermay? Sharpagne? More likely than you'd think.

His eyes snapped up, his first thought being another employee had found him and was going to start harassing him. Nobody was running up the beach though, instead a frothing disturbance a few hundred metres away drew his gaze. With a furrowed brow, he fixed his bookmark before leaving his book on the rock, standing to approach the racket. 

An angry snarl threatened to escape as his closer inspection revealed something trapped in a discarded fishing net. It was large, and shimmering bluish scales shone as a thick tail smacked against the bank, distressed trills filling the air above the splashing. Champagne sighed quietly, approaching slowly as he called out.

“Easy there, buddy, you’re gonna get hurt if you keep thrashing like that.”

To his disappointment, that only seemed to make the creature more distressed, the trills cutting off as the tail slammed painfully against the sand and rope. Champagne winced as he noted a small trickle of red spilling between iridescent scales. If they kept this up, they could get seriously hurt- a severed fin or worse.

“Easy there, easy, let’s get that off you, ey?”

He reached forward, grabbing the net and pulling slightly to get the creature fully onto the wet sand dividing the beach and ocean. He tugged a tattered cover off the old net with a wrinkled nose, turning back to continue freeing the creature before freezing. 

Blue-green eyes that matched the shimmering tail stared back at him.

Champagne swallowed thickly. A mer. He was freeing a- a mer. Okay. Wow.

“Hi there.” He said softly, reaching to slowly start untangling the rope from around the large blue-green tail. The mer didn’t respond, watching him intently with wide, wide eyes, hands curling into sand, body tense.

2. Losing Ourselves on the Interstate

The kid fell asleep sometime before the border cross into Pennsylvania. Benny didn’t mind, happy to let the kid rest as long as they needed. The dark bags under their eyes certainly suggested they needed it. They blinked awake as Benny turned off to a pit stop. He didn’t plan to stay long, a few hours of sleep maybe, but the look in the kid’s eyes as they stopped at a slightly shabby carpark made him hesitate.

“Hey, Astra? Do you want to keep moving? We don’t have to stay.” Look, don’t judge, he tries, okay? He never claimed to be the best when it came to people, but even he could tell something was off with the kid.

“No.” They breathed. Their eyes were fixed on the wildflowers growing by the toilet block.

“You sure?”

“Yes.” The bite is back, but it has no real heat to it. “Bathroom.”

And then they’re gone, disappeared into the dark. Benny let out a soft sigh, then grabbed his favoured green blanket, climbed into the back and curled up to catch a few hours of shut eye. With the van off, the sounds of wildlife drifted through the metal plating to reach his ears. Tiredly, he rolled over, pillowed his head on his arm, and sunk into the depth of sleep.

A door opening caused him to stir in his sleep, but a quiet, “you can keep sleeping” stopped him from waking completely. 

It was only when the sun began to rise nearly six hours after he initially fell asleep that Benny properly woke. With a grunt, he pushed himself up and into the front seat. He kicked the door open, stepped out and stretched, watching the sky transform as he leaned against the van’s front. He glanced over as Astra rounded the bonnet to sit above the number plate. In their hand was a thermos that they offered Benny.

“Coffee.” They said by way of explanation at Benny’s odd look. It was decent coffee. Once he was feeling more awake, Benny hopped back into his seat and warmed up the engine.

“Come on kid. Let's go get some real breakfast.”

Astra nodded.

“Can we pick up some crickets from a pet store too?”

Benny frowned and turned to ask before pausing. His gaze flicked from the creature on his dash to the kid next to him.

“Where did you get that.” He asked flatly. Astra scooped the critter up and placed it in a small container.

“Behind the toilets. I don’t know how long they were there for. I don’t know if they’ll live, but they were an abandoned pet. Have to be. Leachie’s aren’t native here. And this one’s just a baby.”

Benny elected not to question the seemingly random reptile trivia, instead sighing and not trying too hard to hide his smirk. “Alright kid. Let’s get all three of us fed up, ‘ey?” Astra looked up at him with something like hope in their eyes, before looking down at the critter -leachie- with a small smile.

“Yeah.”

3. Sneak Peak to Chapter 11 of LttS

Jake muttered his goodbyes, mind a mess he was trying to clean as he kicked off the side of the building. The other’s had gotten used to his odd form of travel, only offering calls to be careful now instead of the shocked gasps he’d heard the first time they’d seen him fly. The wind whipped his hair about his face and he closed his eyes, imagining his worries being blown off his back. Unfortunately, it was this relaxation that allowed him to pick up on the sounds of yelping.

His eyes snapped open and he was diving before he could think, goop covering his eyes to protect against the wind. He barely had time to process where he was going before he found his target. 

He felt his blood boil.

“HEY!” He yelled, dust flicking around him and condensing in his goo as he landed, skin pricking with anger. The group jumped before turning on him.The ringmaster glared at him, but Jake wasn’t looking at him. Instead, he was staring daggers into the teen a few steps behind the leader. A very familiar teen who he’d seen only a few weeks ago in a dark alley. 

“What do you think you’re-” “Two options.” Jake cut off, voice pitched low and dangerous. “Either you can step away from that fine woman there, or I can make you.”

He grinned at that, all teeth and no spark, before flicking a small orb to land straight between the leader’s eyes. “So, what’ll it be?” 

The group charged.

- - - - - - -

Annie was beginning to wonder if her new friend was the cause of her series of unfortunate events.

[apprehensiveacorn]

Guys, I’ve written a thingie for my warrior cats au. Hell is deep and hot as creation.

Anyways, I tried writing it in past tense like the books are, but I think I’d actually kill someone if I had to do that, so present tense it is! Like, seriously, someone could hold a gun to my head and say “write your fic in past tense” and I’d literally shoot myself, with my own gun. That is how great my shame is, here

ANYWHO X2, I wrote an Owen & Rasbi interaction! Meetin’ at the border at midnight to talk w/ your homeboy abt life and stuff, sweet sweet fluff, no angst here!

My secret past as a Warrior Cats kid is being revealed. I used to write so much fucking warrior cats, y’all have no idea. I was OBSESSED

Names

Owen - Fernspark

Rasbi - Monarchwing

Apo - Minnowbark (Mentioned)

Quick Rundown

Lake territories <3

Leaf-bare is the cat word for Winter

Moon is the cat word for month

Starclan is Cat Heaven

Halfclan relationships? BAD

Close halfclan friendships? BAD

Halfclan kits in your clan? OSTRACIZE THEM

Words: 1,356

Holemabier - The Arcadian Wild

Fernspark, carefully, noses along Thunderclan’s river border, watching the trees for any sight of his friend. He’s careful with his paws, and makes sure his tail isn’t brushing against the ground and making a racket. The soft moonlight filters down from the sky, streaming through trees and falling freely on the moors. He can see his breath in the late leaf-bare air.

In an arbitrary spot, a spot that would rise no alarm to any other cat, he crosses a shallow portion of the river, as quick as his paws can take him. On the other side, he shakes himself off, staring at his soaked paws in distaste.

The purr Monarchwing starts up at his misery is as loud as thunder, the cat padding out from a thicker bush, her movements mildly disturbing the thinner layer of snow resting on top.

“The river fun this moon?” They tease, giving a friendly touch of their nose to Fernspark’s cheek.

Playfully, Fernspark bares his teeth, lazily swiping at her shoulder with sheathed claws. The Thunderclan warrior escapes his reach fast, stepping away to bare her own teeth in jest as well. “I feel like I’ve fought one too many wars to get caught so easy by a Windclan cat,” she goads, tail waving lazily, fur flat and still keeping up that steady purr. Unthreatened, not angry.

Exasperated, Fernspark tries to groom his wet fur, a low purr in his chest as he grumbles, “If I get sick because of this, Monarchwing, and I happen to die first, I’m going to haunt you in Starclan.”

“Oh, no,” Monarchwing dispairs, “What would I do without you bothering me?”

“Oh, that’s it.” Fernspark pounces on them, playfully bowling them over into the forest, starting a play fight, as if they were two apprentices having fun after a long day of training. As Fernspark nips and backs away and steps over foliage, he is reminded that, under normal circumstances—if Windclan and Thunderclan had never been at war—he, as a Windclan cat, would be tripping over vines and breaking sticks and running through thorn bushes, because in no world should a cat who lives in the moors be so comfortable with playing in the forest, and in no world should a cat who lives in the forest be so good at avoiding rabbit burrows and messing with tunnels, unless they had to, for one reason or another. He shouldn’t be good at this. But there was a war.

It ends when Monarchwing gets Fernspark on his back. Fernspark had been backed against a tree, and he almost turned and tried to climb, before he forced himself still, because this was not a real battle, just a mock one.

“I concede,” He breathes, tail tip twitching happily.

“I win,” Monarchwing sing-songs, stepping off of him to groom her snow-covered fur, leaf-bare thick as it is. Fernspark got to his feet and shook himself off, tapping his tail tip against Monarchwing’s flank playfully.

Thankfully, they’d had the mind to keep their tussle confined, and quiet.

“You seem to like fighting,” she said, randomly, out of the blue. Not unkindly, and with a caring tone to their voice, almost teasing.

“Not really, and not as much as my father did,” Fernspark sighs, giving up with himself and starting to help Monarchwing with her fur. He swears he pulls a twig or something out of it every time they meet.

He has to admit, it’s almost refreshing to have someone talk about his father. His clanmates don’t mention the old leader around Fernspark, much less try to insinuate they’re similar, not after Fernspark had gotten tired of it and shouted at them.

He didn’t like yelling much. Despite his father's bloodlust, he hadn’t either.

The sting there is still at home, when he thinks of the cat his father had been, but it is less painful, a little more fond now that there is no more blood spilt in the old leader’s name.

When Monarchwing is content enough with their fur, they touch their nose to Fernspark’s shoulder, leading them under a cloistered group of bushes, where the ground is cold and free of the thin layer of snow fallen around the lake, where they curl up together like kits in a nursery. And secretly, Fernspark thinks that, if his actual sister had survived long after birth, she’d be a little like Monarchwing.

“Should our next meeting be near the outer edge of our territories?” Fernspark asks. “Or should we go by the lake, so Minnowbark can join.”

“Hmm,” Monarchwing contemplates, resting their jaw on Fernspark’s flank. “Yeah, I’d— I’d like to hang out with Minnowbark next time. We could speak with him next gathering to let him know.”

“Yeah. Usual spot by the lake, then?”

Their usual spot by the lake was a sheltered spot of sand in Thunderclan territory, only safe to stay dry in during low tide. It would be warmer next time the three meet, so it’d work. No snow, at least.

Monarchwing nods, “Yeah.”

Suddenly, after a moment of silence, Monarchwing says, tail twitching anxiously, “I feel like… I feel like Aldercloud is hiding something from me.”

Fernspark blinks. “Really? Your sister?”

“I— yeah. I’m trying not to pry but I—... I’m real worried for her, you know? She’s jumpy and scared and,” she barely stops to breathe as she rambles, “she just, isn’t like that. I am, I guess, but she’s never been.”

Fernspark’s tail twitches apprehensively. “I’d be worried, too,” he says. “But I’m sure she’ll be okay. She can take care of herself, can’t she? Maybe you should have a little more faith in her.”

“Maybe, yeah,” the Thunderclan warrior concedes. “I’m still worried, though.”

Fernspark takes a moment to think, watching as his breath mists over. “Try to help her, but don’t push too hard if she doesn’t actually need it, maybe?” he offers.

Monarchwing, after a moment of hesitation, nods, relaxing only a bit. Fernspark isn’t surprised, Monarchwing always worries. He’s content to bask in the silence, starting to groom his friend’s fur comfortingly.

He tries to keep track of how long they’ve been here, starting to worry about returning to their respective camps. It can wait a little longer, though, for just a little more time with one of his best friends.

Monarchwing buries her cold nose into Fernspark’s leaf-bare coat. “Thanks,” they mumble, eyes starting to, inexplicably, droop.

Fernspark whacks them with his tail to wake them up, purring as she jolts. “No problem,” is what he says in reply.

Normally, friendships between cats of different clans are restricted to passing moments at gatherings or border patrols, and in the beginning, Fernspark had meant to keep it that way. But after spending so long knowing Monarchwing and Minnowbark, he realized how much he trusted them. He realized how much he enjoyed their presence, their words, their reassurance, and one day he’d asked to meet Minnowbark by the border one day, because Minnowbark had been hurt and Fernspark had been worried, and Minnowbark had agreed, and had actually been there.

He had realized it was an option.

And really, they weren’t exchanging secrets.

Still, they know what they've gotten themselves into. All three of them. It’s worth it, to them.

So when they finally have to leave, Fernspark crosses the same stretch of river he came from, hopping into his old pawsteps and continuing on, downwards towards the lake, now in hunt, carrying through the large, looping pattern he’d started when he embarked.

And Monarchwing walks back and forth, dragging their tail across the snow, overwhelming Fernspark’s Windclan scent with her own Thunderclan one as much as possible, mildly reinforcing the boundary markers around their hangout. And he knows that, as they have agreed, she’ll hunt for however long it takes to bury a few pieces of prey somewhere Fernspark has stood, to not make Monarchwing’s extended presence suspicious.

And, it’s always the night after the half moon, so if all else fails, the scent of Windclan on Thunderclan’s border could be written off as the medicine cats, goofing around, and taking a second to talk.

[plungermusic]

The Girl With The Golden Larynx… and why not?

“Welcome to Film74 with me, Barry Norman. Tonight’s show focuses exclusively on To Shoot Another Day, the latest major emotion feature from Essex auteur (or should that be ‘auteuse’?) Rosalie Cunningham.

Cunningham demonstrates an unquestionable dramatic flair for the cinematic, right from the opening moments with the boldly Bond-evoking (both the Monty Norman/John Barry original and Wings’ West Coastiana remake) To Shoot Another Day, and there’s another nod to the great one too in the John-Barry-meets-Roy-Budd-in-a-Soho-porno-theatre Heavy Pencil which mashes up Carmen Miranda-style latin rhythms and vibes with VDGG/Focus flute-and-organ… and, somehow, pulls it off with aplomb.

More celluloid slinkiness colours In The Shade Of The Shadows, a walk-these-mean-streets-alone torch song with a gothic chorus-line erm, chorus, and a surprise detour to a New Orleans dive-cum-Tattooine cantina (which is clever, as that doesn’t happen for three years yet) for a bit of furry, extemporising saxophone; and the instrumental Smut Peddler - a moody, suspense-filled ‘George Carter tailing a suspect on a crowded street’ acoustic-led cue that explodes into a meaty electric version of same (at the point of discovery and subsequent headlong chase, one presumes) culminating in a nicely ‘blow to the head and loss of consciousness’ chaotic breakdown close.

Tinsel Town trimmings come late in Stepped Out Of Time: an anaesthesia-induced hazy out-of-body waltzing weepie that meanders from minor to major and back again (a regular feature throughout, in fact) that tugs at the heartstrings with Cunningham's silky childlike voice building to passionate Piaf-y vibrato, but all the time maintaining a cut-glass diction Celia Johnson would be proud of. A rather trippy rising maelstrom culminates in some highly Spaghetti Western mariachi brass in the dramatic finale.

So far, so Hollywood… but like Gaumont, the Archers or Messrs Waters & Gilmour, Cunningham’s essential Englishness shows through, particularly in the flashes of Edwardian musical hall psychedelia: the barrelling rocker Timothy Martin’s Conditioning School is a prime example, as are Denim Eyes (a 'Wish You Were Here in Strawberry Fields' reverie complete with vintage mellotron), Good To Be Damned which, although rather worryingly ‘blues’ is filtered through a Spectoresque wall of reverb and is ornamented with impassioned vocal acrobatics scaling ecstatic peaks and plumbing soul searing lows, with touches of whimsical Arnold Laynery, McCartneyisms (and, my producer wanted me to say, a hint of Roobarb & Custard), and the “One of these days I’m going to cut you into Jimmy Page’ portentous-riffer Spook Racket, which exudes an air of Glam menace tailor-made for a 70s football hooliganism-based Play For Today.

Appropriately (or is that ironically) enough, To Shoot Another Day closes with The Premiere, another dramatic, cinematic Bond-flavoured epic shot through with snare-rolls and operatic tutti ‘stabs’ to accompany the rolling credits.

Or not, if you have the ‘directors cut’ CD rather than the download or vinyl: in which case you can stay in your seats to polish off the last of your Payne's Poppets and enjoy the bonus features of Return Of The Ellington, an urgent 6/8 evocation of the early, funnier work of the continental colossi van Leer and Akkerman and includes some very Jobson-like electric violin, and the playfully Lovin’ Spoonful-opening quirky Home, full of more of that particularly English fairground / vaudeville / music hall Edwardian whimsy..

Cunningham is ably backed by a cast of supporting artists (more of which later) and her co-producer, co-director, and co-wriiter on four of the ten (or five of the twelve, if you’d rather) tracks here, Rosco Wilson: who, beyond his normal Technicolor guitar skills, also shows his drumming chops on several tracks - a Renaissance man, no less. That being said, To Shoot Another Day appears to be very much one woman’s vision - as you’d expect from an auteuse - and her strikingly lithe, thrilling and vivacious vocal is the golden thread that binds it all together.

Rather impressively, the creation of To Shoot Another Day was entirely a two-hander production of independent British outfit, Mushy Room Studio, which, truth be told, is the duo’s home in Southend, Essex. So, it’s all credit to them that they have combined all the gloss and glamour of the Hollywood ‘big players’ with the intrigue and depth of Art House output, spiced with bags of English eccentricity for that unmistakeable stamp of authenticity.

To sum up then, To Shoot Another Day is the perfect entertainment for any discerning cineaste, and you can’t say fairer than that..”

To Shoot Another Day is released on Friday, November 1st 2024 and is available for download from Rosalie Cunningham’s Bandcamp site, here: https://rosaliecunningham.bandcamp.com/album/to-shoot-another-day

Also on the Bandcamp site are links to pre-order the CD and Vinyl versions of the album.

CREDITS: Rosalie Cunningham 

Songwriter, producer  / Vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards & percussion 

Rosco Wilson 

Co-producer / Co-writer of tracks 4, 5, 8 &10 / Guitar, drums on 6, additional drums on 7 

SUPPORTING CAST 

Raphael Mura: drums 

David Woodcock: piano on 1, 4, 5, 7 & 9; Hammond on 4 

Ian East: flute, clarinet and sax on 3; sax on 5 

Itamar Rubinger: drums on 1 

Barkley Woodcock: bark on 7 

Recorded & mixed at Mushy Room Studio by Rosalie & Rosco 

Drums and piano on track 1 recorded at SS2 Studios & engineered by Rees Broomfield 

Mastered by Jon Astley

Photography: Rob Blackham

* We know ‘girl’ might be considered dismissive when Rosalie is a fully-grown, independent, modern woman, but it scans better, and what’s more keeps the headline shorter, OK? Apologies if you’ve been offended, but it is 1974 after all…

[ryannbosetti]

Joyas Voladoras

By Brian Doyle | June 12, 2012

*this was sent to me following a transcendental haircut hour with poet Marie Howe who initially read the essay out loud to me while I pushed her curls into a flow, misty eyes for both of us

Consider the hummingbird for a long moment. A hummingbird’s heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird’s heart is the size of a pencil eraser. A hummingbird’s heart is a lot of the hummingbird. Joyas voladoras, flying jewels, the first white explorers in the Americas called them, and the white men had never seen such creatures, for hummingbirds came into the world only in the Americas, nowhere else in the universe, more than three hundred species of them whirring and zooming and nectaring in hummer time zones nine times removed from ours, their hearts hammering faster than we could clearly hear if we pressed our elephantine ears to their infinitesimal chests.

Each one visits a thousand flowers a day. They can dive at sixty miles an hour. They can fly backwards. They can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest. But when they rest they come close to death: on frigid nights, or when they are starving, they retreat into torpor, their metabolic rate slowing to a fifteenth of their normal sleep rate, their hearts sludging nearly to a halt, barely beating, and if they are not soon warmed, if they do not soon find that which is sweet, their hearts grow cold, and they cease to be. Consider for a moment those hummingbirds who did not open their eyes again today, this very day, in the Americas: bearded helmet-crests and booted racket-tails, violet-tailed sylphs and violet-capped woodnymphs, crimson topazes and purple-crowned fairies, red-tailed comets and amethyst woodstars, rainbow-bearded thornbills and glittering-bellied emeralds, velvet-purple coronets and golden-bellied star-frontlets, fiery-tailed awlbills and Andean hillstars, spatuletails and pufflegs, each the most amazing thing you have never seen, each thunderous wild heart the size of an infant’s fingernail, each mad heart silent, a brilliant music stilled.

Hummingbirds, like all flying birds but more so, have incredible enormous immense ferocious metabolisms. To drive those metabolisms they have race-car hearts that eat oxygen at an eye-popping rate. Their hearts are built of thinner, leaner fibers than ours. Their arteries are stiffer and more taut. They have more mitochondria in their heart muscles—anything to gulp more oxygen. Their hearts are stripped to the skin for the war against gravity and inertia, the mad search for food, the insane idea of flight. The price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature. It’s expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine. Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.

The biggest heart in the world is inside the blue whale. It weighs more than seven tons. It’s as big as a room. It is a room, with four chambers. A child could walk around it, head high, bending only to step through the valves. The valves are as big as the swinging doors in a saloon. This house of a heart drives a creature a hundred feet long. When this creature is born it is twenty feet long and weighs four tons. It is waaaaay bigger than your car. It drinks a hundred gallons of milk from its mama every day and gains two hundred pounds a day, and when it is seven or eight years old it endures an unimaginable puberty and then it essentially disappears from human ken, for next to nothing is known of the the mating habits, travel patterns, diet, social life, language, social structure, diseases, spirituality, wars, stories, despairs and arts of the blue whale. There are perhaps ten thousand blue whales in the world, living in every ocean on earth, and of the largest animal who ever lived we know nearly nothing. But we know this: the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles.

Mammals and birds have hearts with four chambers. Reptiles and turtles have hearts with three chambers. Fish have hearts with two chambers. Insects and mollusks have hearts with one chamber. Worms have hearts with one chamber, although they may have as many as eleven single-chambered hearts. Unicellular bacteria have no hearts at all; but even they have fluid eternally in motion, washing from one side of the cell to the other, swirling and whirling. No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.

So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one in the end—not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.

———

[thetoaddaddy]

It was hardly more than a few more scratches. Yet whatever Sasori had done this time had left Jiraiya with a raging headache for days. The brat wouldn’t stop jabbering, stabbing, and raking that metal tail across the bars like he was begging for change. It was a racket that began to pound in his head.

Alas he began to feel it. A growing… offness? Something felt weird. Like a sense of the clock was running out. They’re going to kill him soon surely. If Konoha hasn’t figured out he’s MIA yet then they won’t negotiate for his freedom. Sure he’s ensured his survival with a tidbit or two. Nothing substantial enough that would be worth checking out. A possible hidden passage in a forest full of paths that look intentional or not. A false waterfall in a land that had a handful of beautiful rivers and falls. Caves of mysterious origins. Yeah have fun.

He looks up from his blank staring to hopefully resume his mocking of the puppet again alas… his breathing paused for a moment. His cheeks grew warm. It’s the pretty boy again.

Jiraiya sat up slowly as he kept his eyes on the blond… and his bucket. The way the other was clinging to it one would think it owed him money. Jiraiya barely caught a glimpse or two from that pretty blue eye.

“How you feeling? Your puppet friend told me you were sick.” He asks as he looks over the criminal. “You don’t look sick….” Well it should probably just be said. “I don’t care that you gave me a handy. It’s only weird if you make it weird.”

Confusion struck Jiraiya dumb when Deidara retreated. His mouth hung open unsure what to say. He’s used to being equal. He was happy to give back after getting it. It’s only fair. He didn’t want Deidara to suffer from the need.

Jiraiya inhales a long deep sigh before slowly letting it out. Right now he felt a bit of the blues that came after well… cumming. Usually that feeling can be ignored when he’s in the company of someone who needs a reach around.

His hope fluttered for only a moment when the door opened. It’s followed by disappointment seeing the puppet again. He’d rather the pretty one than this hag. One thing he’s learned is Sasori is an immature brat. One that throws tantrums over not getting his way.

His brows raise hearing the comment. He looks down at the floor. It’s clear to those who well… have lived that it’s a bodily fluid. It smells like sex in here. Puppets can’t smell then, huh? It’s obvious with all the senses in tact what happened. But if Sasori was too daft to pick up on the rest of the context clues then Jiraiya wasn’t going to fess up either. He fixes himself before trotting back over to his gross mattress and plunking down on it.