#Ferret Chronicles

[the-book-ferret]

The Little Witch's Oracle Deck

[leslutdepointedulac]

I miss Louis. It's been a full half second since I last thought about him

[faeriegutz]

okay seriously classics kids are some of the most interesting people you will ever meet. i do not know any teenager who says kindness coyote on a weekly basis but. we do in classics club.

[amphetifreak]

uhhh, what's up. haven't had a tumblr blog for years because i grew out of the cringe but i, have, unfortunately, run back.

my name's sean joyce, i'm 28, and my pronouns are he/it/nova. i'm puerto rican and canadian, but spanish is my second language because of how little english my dad spoke. i'm fluent, so. ya.

my bitchass older sister can be found over on @autumn-joyce, so if you found me through her, i thoroughly apologize.

uhh, some stuff about me is that i'm trans and have had my legal name be sean since i was like, 17. i'm pan with a heavy male lean, and i Might be polyamorous but idk cause i'm too stupid to tell!

i work as a cashier at my dad's store while i go to school for my teaching degree.

i'm also 3 years sober off meth. so, yippee.

idk. that's all. see ya.

oh. uhm. i have a daughter now. her name is lola.

MOD STUFF

hi!! my name is kei, and my pronouns are he/havoc/star :3c (use they/them or she/her and i will block /srs)

this blog will touch on topics of suicide, addiction, drugs, and sex, so if that bothers you, please move on!

below are the full references of sean! (one is on paper and i dont have the proper skin color so 💀)

tags are:

#🔩 oh worm? - ask tag

#dead man speaking - regular post tag

#rui the ferret - for talk about his albino ferret named rui. all photos are stolen from pinterest

#intimate secrets ♡ - general nsfw tag

#new dad chronicles - general parenting things

i'll add more when i get to it 💀

[barry-j-blupjeans]

"You can't just ask me questions and expect me not to ask them back!" Merle said, scooting his chair in. They were sitting around the circular meeting table. The meeting itself had ended about an hour ago, but this room wasn't booked for another two hours.

Originally, they were all supposed to stay, but Taako and Lup had made up some bullshit excuse (Lucretia wanted to doubt the existence of a live cooking themed around Fantasy Hocus Pocus, but with how insistent they had been on its existence, she wasn't sure anymore). Davenport did actually have another meeting to go to. Barry, at least, seemed to tell the truth when he said he was going to go home and nap. Magnus's had obviously been a lie, unless "going to walk my fish" was a euphemism that Lucretia didn't know about.

So here she was with Merle.

"I think I can," Lucretia said, pulling her journal closer to her.

"It's team building," Merle said. "Y'know, with the whole team." He gestured around to the empty table.

"Sure," Lucretia said.

"Fine, fine," Merle said. "I'll come up with a different question." Merle leaned back in his chair, squinting his eyes up to the ceiling as he thought. Lucretia finished writing down Merle's answer to the last question. Then, "alright. I've got one."

"Hit me," Lucretia said.

"What's your biggest fear?"

"That's.... so much deeper than what I've asked you," Lucretia said.

"First you want me to make a new question, then ya don't want my question-!"

"No, no!" Lucretia said. "I mean, I'll answer it. But that's a pretty deep cut, Merle."

"That's just how I role, baby."

"Never call me that again."

"Right. Right, gotcha."

Lucretia tried to think. Her biggest fear? She was scared of lots of things. One of her family members dying. Her dying. Ferrets. The big filing cabinet Davenport had next to his desk, the one that wobbled every time someone went near it. But her biggest fear?

"Forgetting who I am," Lucretia said, before she could really even think about it more. "Forgetting where- where I came from and just- everything about me. Not knowing who I am and not being able to remember."

"Oh," Merle said. "Wowza."

"You asked," Lucretia said, laying her journal flat. She had started to bring it up to her chest as she thought.

"Wowza like, that's deep!" Merle said, "not like, that's bad. Is that- I mean, d'you think that's why you, uh, chronicle so much? So you remember stuff? Or am I just pullin' at straws here?"

"The writing is... a part of it," Lucretia said. "But I- to be honest, Merle, I try not to think about it too much, considering it's my biggest fear. Maybe the journalling is part of it, maybe not, but it's not the main reason I write, no."

"Gotcha," Merle said.

"Now to throw it back at you-" Merle groaned and Lucretia cracked a little grin. "What's your biggest fear, Merle?"

"Fantasy Kool-Aid Man," Merle said, no hesitation.

[jade-of-mourning]

hi lychee :)) it’s your favorite snailon again. I don’t have anything the offer today (checks notes)

actually I do. I was lying. what are your thoughts on momboss and detectiveson. if you have those. and since you also believe mako should’ve been a girl,,, momboss and daughtercop,,, they’re so silly I need them in a box

and before I checked my notes and remembered to ask my silly question I just wanted to lyk that I check your blog every day like it’s the newspaper. I don’t know anything abt brotherband chronicles (<-referencing your last reblog) but I’m always so happy to see u post :)

with love

🐌

hey snailon wtf i'm so flattered that my blog is like the newspaper to you fhjbdhgkfdhs <3

OKAY SO LIN BEIFONG & MAKO. i'm not gonna lie i'm genuinely pretty sure that reading fic of the two of them was what enthralled me with mako three years ago.

just the fact that they perform the same functional role to their younger siblings and are basically foils of one another with the same hardass exterior but so much adamantly repressed feeling inside. because what else are you supposed to do when your little sibling is sick and you're the only one they have and you're just trying to make them stop crying? no one ever prepared you for this task but you're the only one you can, because absence of adults made you this way, and you grew up too soon for it. the two of them were the loneliest children in the world. they were the kids who stood to the side with their eyes fixed to the ground as their sibling got doted on by everyone around them, and they'd rather not have pinched cheeks but at the same time it's like being cast aside. they longed for their mothers and they chased an approval that they would never receive, by way of death or blindness, and it hurt so they learned to stop hurting. it's easier this way but it means you've learned to stop letting yourself love easily when all the world does is remind you why you shouldn't.

they're driven by duty and devotion, the intangible things that have defined them their whole lives in this city that has spilled their blood more than most. they know the alleys and the broken lampposts like no one else and they know how the people go perhaps more than they do themselves. they're sacrifice, anything for the few people they have the space to care for and anything for the awful-beautiful city that never particularly cared for them. they learn to love again over time and to open their hearts to the brighter things, but it'll never erase who they had to be when they were younger. lin sees herself in this kid who's had so much taken from him and her heart wants to deny any affection because that's what it's been trained to do, but it happens before she knows it and suddenly she can be to someone like herself what her mother never was to her — the person she always wished to chase after. she's not nice and she never exactly will be but she is good hearted and she thinks he'd prefer it that way too.

anything this goes for them as canon but also mako as a girl would really just narratively finish off the shift of the beifong mother-daughter trauma cycle tbh. yet ANOTHER reason as to why mako should've been a girl! *adds to my unwritten essay's bullet point divisions*

(also funny note on the newspaper mention, i actually really want to do a stupid series of rc "newspaper clipping" of The Fire Ferrets just because conceptually that is actually peak but i'm too lazy to think too hard about what i would actually write into it lmfao)

nyway until next time, snailon!

[braveclementine]

Introductions

Warnings: None

Copyright: I do not own any Twilight characters or locations. I do own Davina Mikelson and Marcel. I also own the backstory for my OC. I do not condone any copying of this.

Davina P.O.V.

I looked up at the small, light pink Victorian house that stood in front of me. It looked rather large from the front, what with the. . . gazebo. . .looking thing. . . I don't know what it's called- house attachment to the side and the tower where my bedroom resided, but in reality, it was very small on the inside. It didn't extend very far back.

It was probably the one day out of the year that it wasn't raining in Forks, and for that I was grateful. The sunlight made the house look even more welcoming, the light shining through the glass of the windows.

I didn't really dread the house, though it had been some years since I had been here. More than ten.

Forks, Washington. Named after a common eating utensil. Population- not enough for people not to notice me.

Not that people wouldn't have noticed me anyways.

For one thing, my name was Davina Michaelson. And the only thing I could say about it was that I was glad my last name wasn't spelled Mikelson, because the teasing was bad enough already.

My mother had been ecstatic when she married my father. She had been determined to name me Elijah or Kol or Niklaus or Rebekah when I was born. She was a huge Vampire Diary fan and as a consequence, so was I. Luckily, I got named Davina instead because of my dark brown, almost black, hair and being a girl.

For another thing, I was a complete geek. My favorite things to say were lines from Harry Potter, when conversing about politics I quoted Tom MacDonald, and whenever someone asked if I knew an interesting fact, it was always about animals and usually something sexual.

Did you know that if Female Ferrets don't have sex when they go into heat they die?

I couldn't read enough books. Kane Chronicles, Percy Jackson, Spirit Animals, Red Queen, Hunger Games, Maze Runner, anything fictional, fantasy, and mystical.

Not to mention, reading said books had given me a non-existent romantic life as all of my standards had been lifted by Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, Elijah Mikelson (basically all the Mikelsons minus Finn), Damon Salvatore, Alaric Saltzman, Enzo, Marcel, Newt, Minho, Gale, etc.

And then, there's my favorite app- Wattpad.

Sorry, I get it, it's a notorious fanfiction app, but still, that's why I read it. It's basically the only way for me to feel like an actual character in Harry Potter marrying Severus Snape or The Originals marrying Damon Salvatore.

AND SMUT! Except I really hate authors that rob you of reading that juicy part of the book. I mean, if you're going to put the mature label on your book, you might as well write in deep detail, right?

Basically I was on Wattpad 24-7.

But I mean, there's something about older men that's absolutely. . . enticing. Of course, completely illegal but you know, Hollywood made all the older guys hot so we're all fucked up.

Anyways, what was I saying?

Oh right, yes, sticking out in Forks.

So let's see, girl who moved away and came back, nineteen year old going to high school, complete geek. . . missing anything?

My looks I guess.

I'm average. Not slender, not fat. Not extremely beautiful, not entirely ugly either. Average. Someone who normally could've blended in if she had lived here her entire life. Plus I had green and blue streaks in my hair, and I couldn't imagine anyone else in this town having streaks. Not that I had many streaks, and with my dark hair, they barely stood out.

Any more details?

Heart shaped face, doe eyes, brown eyes that matched my hair, not extremely pale skin, but not overly tan either considering I had moved here from Kentucky. Slap in the mild ADHD and OCD and you have me!

Mild meaning I'm not overly ADHD or OCD, mild enough that most people don't notice it if they don't know me well, and even if they do, I'm pretty good at hiding it.

So, what exactly brought me to Forks?

Hmm, good question, be sorry you asked.

I had lived in Forks as a young girl, my best friend being Sam Uley- should see how he's doing now that I'm here- and my parents lived here for a while.

Dad had been in the military and we'd resided in Forks for a few years while he was on leave with his new son- who had the unfortunate luck of being called Kol. I think mom found it funny. Davina and Kol. Now that I've watched the show, I think it's rather disturbing.

But when I was about eight, we moved away to Fort Knox, Kentucky. For the majority of my life, I lived on the base. So I was well trained in martial arts, military tactics, and how to use different guns. I mean, not like they actually taught me, but when I got bored of school, I left, and would sneak into the training room, crouching down in a corner, behind a blind spot of a camera, and look out through the mats.

Mom had signed me up for Tae Kwon Do and Gymnastics when I asked. Everything else I learned from sneaking around and spying.

Anyways, when I turned seventeen, there was a big. . . to-do in the camp. Someone betrayed the soldiers and the camp was destroyed. My parents and brother died. I was one of the very few survivors.

School was put to a stop, I was shifted into foster care while I waited for some relative to come and get me. No relatives showed, I spent year eighteen working and saving money to buy a plane ticket- not even a car- so that I could get here, to Forks, where our home was.

And once I was in Forks, I had access to all the money that mom and dad left me in their will so that was fantastic. I'd still have to work though if I wanted to keep the house.

But it also meant that I could go back to school and get my high school diploma. . . how embarrassing. But no one had to know. No one was going to know.

I carefully fit the bronze key into the locked door, giving it a turn, and then pushing in, turning it. I had never been good with keys and locks, and this house was old.

Luckily, it gave and the door opened. I wrinkled my nose. Well, I was going to have to open all the windows and let the breeze in.

I set the suitcases down by the door, inside, flipping the light switch on. It took a minute for the lights to respond before the house lit up.

I moved around the house, opening all the windows- the ones that would open at least- before moving back downstairs to take care of the furniture.

When we'd left, we'd covered all the furniture with plastic. Now, I took a pocket knife- one I had carved myself with my limited artistic ability- and started working on undoing the plastic carefully, releasing the furniture from its suffocation.

Then there was the cleaning, washing windows, wiping down counters, sweeping the wooden floors, vacuuming the carpeted floors, taking out dishes to wash and then put back away, and unpack my suitcases before finally declaring myself done for the day.

I closed all the windows- just in time as the rain decided it wanted to greet me too- and then headed upstairs, flopped on the bed, and fell asleep without even bothering to look around.

[When you look up circular bedrooms to help get inspiration and they just show you circular beds instead  😑 ]

I woke up, stretching, trying to remember what day it was and if I had anything important I was supposed to be doing. I slid out of bed, taking a look around the slightly familiar bedroom. My bed was built into the wall, and there were two of them as mom had been expecting twins with me- the other not making it.

Across from the beds was my desk, white, clean so far as I hadn't had a chance to do any homework there, along with a pink chair. The bean bag was in the middle of the room, my purse hanging on the door handle.

Adjacent to the beds, across from the window of the tower, was my closet. Because of the circular shape of the room, it was a walk in closet. Shirts and pants hung on one side, bathing suits, dresses, and seasonal clothes were on the other side. I had about three pairs of shoes- sneakers, combat boots, and one pair of heels that were probably too small for me.

By the closet doors was a small bookcase, holding only my favorite books. Hanging above the bookcase was a Harry Potter calendar for eleven years ago. I would have to get a new one.

(minus all the shoes)

I pulled out my phone to check what day it was and sighed in disappointment.

The day I got to start school.

Wonderful.

Grumbling, I headed to the closet, pulling on skinny, light-blue jeans, a long-sleeved olive-green shirt, and my black combat boots. I also grabbed the leather jacket, sliding it over my arms. I grabbed my old backpack, a Hufflepuff themed one with all sorts of pins from every world possible, slinging it over my shoulder and heading downstairs.

As I had no food in the house, my main priority for now was figuring out how I was going to get to school.

I really needed a car.

On a habit whim, I grabbed one of my books, shoving it into my bag, making my way out the front door.

The rain was holding off, but the sky was gray, the air was moist, and I just knew it was going to at least drizzle.

So I grabbed my blue butterfly decorated umbrella too.

My stomach growled with protests as I locked the door, making my way down the empty driveway and then I paused, glancing at the garage. Oh dear.

Hesitantly, both hopeful and not hopeful, I pushed the garage door up. My heart sank and soared at the same time.

I was wrong- I did have a vehicle.

Dad's old Harley Motorcycle sat in the garage. It was a beautiful machine that I had always loved as a kid and my mom had detested calling it 'a death trap'. It was a beautiful shiny teal colour with two large silver containers on the sides that held whatever you wanted to put in there. It would fit two people on the black leather seats.

The good part about the motorcycle was that I now have a vehicle to get myself back and forth to school. The bad part was the 24-7-365 schedule for rain.

I pursed my lips. I could walk or I could ride the motorcycle and put a tarp over it during the day to keep it dry. I could also stash sets of dry clothes in the carriers so that if I had to change my clothes, I could. My bag could easily go in the other one. Along with the umbrella and anything else I needed, which was never much.

I started to grin, feeling lighter now that all of my problems were starting to disappear.

Oh, today was going to be fun.

[motheatenscarf]

So, I have a fun family game of D&D with my brother and my sibling-in-law and a couple pals that my brother DMs. I've talked about it before, Almenor D&D. Well, we just started a new campaign this last Wednesday! This one's gonna be tagged #Mistbound D&D, since it takes place not on the mainland of Almenor, but in the Mistbound Isles of the same world, set 100 years after our last campaign.

We've been promised a spooky fun time and I'm already really digging it, but I don't think I'll be keeping as many updates here about it, mainly because as the party notetaker, I'm in charge of the recap, and I've gotten permission this time around to share the recap document!

I go pretty thoroughly into detail trying to chronicle the session beats for posterity's sake, but we've also got a new player who wasn't in our last campaign, so everything's already being written for a fresh set of eyes where no context from the last huge 3 year campaign will be necessary. My SIL is an artist and also did character portraits for us!

Behold!

Kaash'ka: human (??) warlock, blood patron, just a sweet lil bean trying to get rid of his horrible curse (the ferret is named Pancake)

Talia: human (??????) paladin, oath of vengeance, horse girl first, endless font of wrath with hands second

Nudi Ecrudi, yes that is his name: halfling barbarian, berserker, the tiniest, drunkest, OLDEST, angriest little pirate there ever was

Eddy Shortcake: dwarf rogue, thief, the goodest boy with great manners but poor impulse control and a sweet tooth

So if you want to follow the adventures of these idiots and read my terrible writing to approximate what happens and see all the cool art Ash draws and the sick maps Jake makes for his spooky campaign, HERE YA GO!

[licncourt]

Hey! I just got into the vampire chronicles(show and book) and I came across your page and just wanna say thank you!!!! Your breakdowns of everything are so thoughtful and mind provoking!! Also we need more Louis love. So Yh thanks! Really appreciate you and your page 💕

Thank you and welcome!! I'm so glad you enjoyed them and that they were helpful! I will always fight for book Louis justice, he's my special gross baby. He is very nasty BUT everyone needs to hate him for the right reasons only and also understand that he's a very compelling wet evil ferret creature if you let him into your heart.

[the-book-ferret]

Juneteenth is the smell of brisket filling the air. Juneteenth is the sounds of music, dancing, and cheering ringing from the parade outside. It is love. It is prayer. It is friends and relatives coming together to commemorate freedom, hope for tomorrow, and one another.

[leslutdepointedulac]

For your consideration: Louis as ferrets ~

The look you get when you deliberately ignored being warned against switching bodies with an infamous body thief

This is the last thing you see before being eaten

When your husband burns your house down

When you try to leave your husband but he whips out your new child together

When you move half-way across the world to go and live in your husband's chateau

And now, for Louis as ferrets in sweaters ~

When you just finished trauma dumping, and the guy you were talking to said he wants a turn

When your daughter tells you that your new boyfriend is going to kill her

When you're trying to read but people are literally killing each other in the background

When your husband and your boyfriend won't stop arguing with each other

When you're forced to look nice for once and socialise, instead of rotting away in moth-eaten sweaters and hiding away in your hovel

[persimmonteas]

hi shay! if you're doing them, i'd love to hear about Thethuthinnang, Clover, and Bluebell for the watership down book asks!

Thethuthinnang: What book do you want to recommend to everyone you meet?

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou about the now-defunct medical startup Theranos is a wild ride.

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks is a vivid recounting of the author's experiences with academia and schizophrenia.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty is written by a mortician and will make you think about death and mortality differently.

Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style by W. David Marx is just a super fascinating book about a niche topic.

I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life by Anne Bogel is a fun book for readers about readers.

The Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare revived my hope in historical romance books. If you like romance, read it!

How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis should be required reading for anybody who is neurodiverse.

Clover: What book has fundamentally changed you?

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen is a beautiful collection of poems.

It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood is a graphic memoir and was relatable as a fellow creative who was depressed through her early 20s. This Is How I Disappear by Mirion Malle made me sob.

Death Wins a Goldfish: Reflections from a Grim Reaper's Yearlong Sabbatical by Brian Rea is thoughtful, amusing, and charming.

A Common Table: 80 Recipes and Stories from My Shared Cultures: A Cookbook by Cynthia Chen McTernan is one of my favorite Asian cuisine cookbooks.

In the Small Kitchen by Phoebe Lapine and Cara Eisenpress is a fun cookbook that chronicles their 20s.

Bluebell: Have you ever laughed out loud while reading?

The Hidden Legacy series by Ilona Andrews made me giggle a lot (two words: ferret heist). I'm also partial to the Innkeeper series.

The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today by Hitsuzi Yamada is a manga series that is very totoro x way of the house husband. I too would like a giant cat butler.

Full Sack: Thanksgiving Erotica by Layla Fae is so ridiculous and so charming at the same time lol.

Bookish asks

[kammartinez]

By Keziah Weir

Frieda Hughes and I are an hour into our conversation when Wyddfa the snowy owl enters the chat. With some coaxing, he has hopped down the hallway, lined with woven rugs, to perch next to Hughes in her high-ceilinged kitchen. The pair of them, framed by a Zoom square, are in their home in Wales, where they live with 12 other owls, plus “five chinchillas,” Hughes says, “one aging ferret, a python called Shirley, and the two rescue huskies.” By publication of this piece, she has added a fourteenth owl.

Wyddfa, who is so dapper that he immediately elicits very silly comments from this interviewer—Hello, sir! He’s a little gentleman!—joined the household in 2016 after a zoo could no longer care for him because of a damaged wing; another of the owls has “wonky feet.” All of them have an avian forebear, without whom the parliament might never have found their way into Hughes’s care: an orphaned fledgling, now the eponymous subject of her new book, George: A Magpie Memoir (Avid Reader Press). The book chronicles the five months in 2007 during which Hughes hand-raised the magpie after finding it tossed from a nest in her garden. “I had no idea how much I was going to fall in love with that bird,” Hughes tells me. “Oh, dear.”

London-born Hughes, a painter and poet, describes her growing up as peripatetic. “I felt as if the ground on which I stood was constantly changing and shifting,” she writes in the introduction to George, “because, following the suicide of my mother, Sylvia Plath, on 11 February 1963, my father, Ted Hughes, found it difficult to settle.” Her parents play a small role on the memoir’s pages, though the reverberations of their loss are felt throughout; most explicitly, Hughes notes the surreal feeling of strangers knowing, or believing to know, the intimacies of her personal history. (In the early aughts, the filmmakers behind the 2003 Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle Sylvia requested that Hughes grant them the right to use Plath’s poems. The film, Hughes wrote in her own poem, “My Mother,” would be “for anyone lacking the ability / To imagine the body, head in oven, / Orphaning children.” Needless to say, she did not grant the request.)

As a child, the ability to keep animals became an elusive sign of permanence—“if I had a pet it should mean that I’d have found a home in which to be stationary,” she writes—something she says she has finally found. 

During the five months of George, Hughes was grappling with the impending dissolution of a marriage—she and her husband had, three years earlier, moved together from his native Australia to Wales and he longed to return home—and her own chronic fatigue. An incessantly needy and increasingly tricksy young magpie proved to be a consuming diversion for Hughes, though not everyone was as charmed by his penchant for stealing food off plates or landing on heads. “Oh, there’s a magpie on the sofa,” Hughes quotes one visitor saying “with an offhand sort of grimace.” As a reader, it’s hard not to fall a little in love with him, an attachment aided by Hughes’s illustrations of him that run throughout the text.

Hughes has long been attracted to what she describes as “the wounded and the limping.” As a child, she says, “there were lots of little tragedies because I wanted to save everything, and couldn’t”—a theme that continues in her memoir. “If only I could have found it before the cat and the fly eggs,” she writes of another orphaned bird that died in her care, “if only I had a magic wand.” Still, as much as she acknowledges the difficult inevitability of death, she clocks lifeforce all around too. Of the wiggly garden creatures she collects to feed to baby George: “If worms had only a single thought in their little nematode bodies, it was that they wanted to LIVE.”

Before our interview, Hughes had been riding around the countryside on her motorbike when it broke down, stranding her, but she seems unbothered by the hiccup outside of apologizing that it had made her late for the call. There’s a forward momentum to her, a sort of indefatigable sense of thrust. One accepts difficulty, and moves forward. “He’s stuck on the ground,” she says fondly of Wyddfa, before we say goodbye—but “he makes the most of it.” 

Here, we discuss George, learning to open up after years of secrecy, and how to love despite the promise of loss.

Vanity Fair: I’m always interested in the why now of memoir. What made you want to revisit this time with George?

Frieda Hughes: Well, actually, I wrote it as George happened. A year later, I turned it into a book and then I tried to get it published. I had a publisher who was interested and then, I'll be perfectly frank, my brother committed suicide, and I thought I can't actually cope with the book and dealing with my brother's death at the same time, and so I put it on the back burner.

When, finally, my brother's affairs were all sorted out, and everything else, I thought, okay, I can revisit the book, I can get back to my art, I can get back to my painting and my poetry. I think I probably rewrote the book over the following years. Then I wrote an article about keeping owls for the Financial Times, and Cecil Gayford, my editor, saw this article and said to my agent, would Frieda consider writing about her love for birds, and she said, well, she already has. 

I have a new appreciation for magpies after reading the book—I had always really loved crows and ravens, but I hadn't thought so much about magpies. 

Where I live in the country, magpies are not regarded with great affection. They're regarded as pests and killers of baby birds. They get an awful lot of bad press, but in fact, all corvids are more interested in clearing up dead things. Ravens are apparently the supreme intelligence of the corvids; crows are very serious—so smart, so clever, but very, very serious. Magpies are complete imps, absolutely mischievous, curious. Honestly, I swear they have a sense of humor.

I remember a couple of girlfriends coming to visit and one of them was taking loads of photographs, and George was performing for them. He sat on my head, he nibbled my eyelashes, which is a bit unnerving because I could feel his beak against my eyeball, but he was adorable, and afterwards, my friend contacted me and said, "Frieda, I took all these photos and you can hardly see him. He's just a little bird." The thing is, we can't photograph the personality, can we, and that's what's so frustrating. His personality was extraordinary, and one of the things that really hooked its way into my heart was the fact that he related to me. The dogs would come up for a pet or a stroke or a snack, but George would look at what I was doing and play with it. When I was doing sketches of him, he would come and sit on the paper and try and pull the lines off the paper. 

He was probably only a couple of days old when you found him. I wondered how you think that played into the attachment that you had to George, that you had rescued him and that he needed you.

Hugely, because the more needy and desperate an animal or bird is, the higher up the priority list they come. George really needed feeding. He had the droopy wing, I didn't even know if he would ever learn to feed himself. It wasn't until I was working in the garden and I would uncover, on more than one occasion, a dead mouse, and George would be watching and suddenly, he appears and grabs the mouse and flies off and I thought, you know what? I think George is going to be fine. 

It is such a different project to raise an animal with the hope that they will be able to return to the wild. I think that's something that most people don't experience. Usually, you're raising an animal who you hope will be with you till the very end. In some ways, your experience seems almost much more like child-rearing where the goal is for children to grow up and take care of themselves.

In George's case, I was very, very torn. Part of me wanted him to stay, desperately. But it doesn't matter how much we love people or animals. At some point, we are going to have to let go, if we don't die first. They are going to go off to a new life; children grow up and leave home. Some parents are really happy about that, other parents, less so.

It's the same with partners. Sometimes we die, sometimes we fall out of love. We only borrow people. I believe in making the most of it, but also I believe in not ever keeping anything or anyone prisoner of one's own affectionate imposition. There are people I love, but if they feel that they need to go, I ain't going to be the one to stop them. I would only wish them wings, as it were. Loving people and animals so that you can let them go when you need to, if you ever need to, I think that is the best—difficult, but the best.

In the book, you wrote about your now ex-husband. There was a mirroring going on—him wanting to go back to where he was from, and dealing with that in the relationship as you were also dealing with the fact that your bird was wanting to go back to the wild, where he was from.

Yes, very much. He had said that he wanted to move back when he got old, only he wasn't able to tell me what old meant. He was 14 years older than me, so he was 14 years ahead of where my head was. He, too, ultimately needed his freedom. One might make all the effort one could to make things nice, but if somebody wants to go, they want to go—and also, quite often, by the time they want to go, we are quite glad for them to go.

In George's case, not. But having said that, he was complicated by these bad habits he developed, like the one of jumping on heads, which scared my elderly neighbor to the point where she wouldn't go out of the house if there were magpies in the garden. Hence the aviary, that enormous aviary, now populated by six very large Eurasian eagle owls.

They are alluded to at the very end of the book. I want to hear about who you have right now.

The first owl was Arthur, with the broken wing. Three of the owls that I have were given to me by other people who could no longer look after them; one had an operation on his shoulder, and another one was just incredibly sick and had diabetes, and so I got these owls and they came with two eggs. So I bought an incubator and hatched Charlie and Mac in 2015, and then two years later came Eddie, and they are fabulous. They're very, very handleable. They come in the house for a couple of hours at night just to play around in the kitchen

In the time period of the book you were working on a collection of autobiographical poems, which seemed to take a lot out of you emotionally. Over the years, how have you juggled a desire for a certain amount of privacy, but then also wanting to draw from your life and feelings in your writing? 

I'm working on balancing it all the time, because the answer is I'm not sure how to balance it. When I was younger and my father was still alive, the wish to be private on his behalf, not to say... I'll give you an example. The other kids would come back from a weekend and say, we did this and we did that and we did the other. I wasn't ever sure what I could give away or not give away, what would be okay.

In my first book of poems, it became really difficult because that's where we start, with our innermost emotions and feelings. I had all these poems boiling away. For years, I wrote poetry and never told anybody. Ultimately, I worked up to showing my dad my poems. He'd have criticism, and finally one day—I think I must have been about 15, 16, 17—I said, "Daddy, don't you have anything good to say?" He looked at me in complete surprise and he said, "But I thought you knew they were very good. I was only mentioning the bits that need pushing.” From then on, he would say, “Okay, this bit's brilliant and that works really well.” He was a very good teacher, but at the same time, I was trying not to read any of his poetry or my mother's poetry because I didn't want to be influenced.

My first book I wrote while I had chronic fatigue. I wanted to be autobiographical and I didn't dare. I'd trained myself so seriously to be private for the family's sake. So allegory became my best friend. And then in 2007, I set myself certain parameters for the autobiographical poetry book, 45. One was that I could be open about myself. When you say it must have been emotionally taxing or challenging, it was, because it was like stripping my skin off because I wasn't used to it. I hadn't had that practice.

In the end, as I get older, I think, does it matter? I'm getting older. One day, we're going to die. If I was publishing my autobiography at the age of 96, I wouldn't care much about what I put in it. I'd just put everything in it, but I'd have to be 96 because then I know I was probably on the way out. So I don't know. I'm working on it. 

You wrote in the book about the strange ways that either people react to you once they realize who your parents are.

It's very odd because until they bring it up, I labor under the illusion that I'm the only person standing where I'm standing. The moment they bring it up, I feel the spot on where I'm standing is now quite crowded with all three of us.

In your poem “Mother,” you’re writing about the strange idea that there are people who are portraying your parents in different ways and dramatizing, or writing biographies or making movies. Is that something that has gotten easier, emotionally, as you have dealt with it over the course of your life?

One of the difficulties is when people make up whole sentences and relationships and ways of speaking and there's nothing to support it. I've been very determined to make a home in which I feel safe, and create my own support and not look at those things because there's no point. I could rant and rave. I'm not going to change anything. 

So poetry is where I put things I feel very, very strongly about, and reading a poem like that on stage, you feel as though you're delivering it as a killer blow. It might only be for one moment in the ether, but it's something. When people reinvent my parents, it'd be like anybody reinventing yours or anybody else's parents. It's wounding and it takes them away. 

When articles or books have come out that depict negative versions of your parents’ relationship, do you just try to steer clear of that as well?

Well, they're rehashing it. It's been written about a lot. There was the very good recent biography by Heather Clark, Red Comet, very thorough. I had to read that for permissions, and I thought it was a really masterful piece of work. It didn't impose judgment and it didn't guess at anything. Everything was backed by research and reading, and for that reason, I found it really impressive. 

You have this rule, you wrote, to live each day the best you can no matter what—having experienced significant and public loss, and then also dealing with chronic health problems, how have you kept that up?

I can't believe I was in such pain when I was looking after George. I still get back pains, I still have problems with it, but I'm so much better. I work out at the gym three times a week, I do the gardening. I'm actually in better nick than I was then, and although they say that we never get rid of chronic fatigue, it's like a little warning sign; if I ever feel that coming, I now know, hey, I'm doing something wrong

A journalist actually asked me after my brother died, "Do you now want to kill yourself?" Part of me wanted to slam the phone down on her, but I thought, I actually think I know where that question's coming from. Because it would be what's in everybody's mind, or certainly a lot of people's mind, she just spoke it, she just put it out there. I'm the only one left in my little family. Somebody has to live life like it matters. My attitude is very much that I need, for my sake and for theirs, to make my life matter. 

[pepperf]

Ah, full article:

AN Abergavenny man who went on an illegal wild boar hunt with pals in the Forest of Dean, claims that there is a ‘necromancer’ living in the woods.

Semi-professional long-distance runner Johnny Turnip explained, “We stumbled across the necromancer’s lair after a white deer caused Big Tony to crash his Bedford Rascal.

“The ugly albino creature just appeared out of nowhere and stood in the middle of the road staring at us like we were the ones naked and running through the woods without any purpose.

“Now while Big Tony has got the blood of a lot of furry things on his hands and has no aversion to killing innocent animals, he’s very particular when it comes to his vehicle. The last thing he wanted was Bambi’s brains all over his windscreen and so he swerved to avoid the dumb animal.”

Turnip explained that they missed the deer but left the road and clipped a tree stump which caused the van to crash.

“It was a bit A-Team!” Recalled Turnip. “The band went flying about 20 feet in the air and flipped a full 360. Luckily it landed on its wheels, in a sort of clearing. However, whether in panic or instinct, Big Tony pressed down on the accelerator and we we went flying along this forest trail for about 30 feet before I heard him scream, ‘Gertcha! Brakes knackered! Jump boys, jump!’ We opened the doors and bailed just before the Bedford Rascal smacked headfirst into one of the biggest oak trees I’ve ever seen.

“Fair play the way we jumped from the van and rolled effortlessly on the ground must have looked pretty spectacular. It’s not something any of us have had to do since our early twenties but we’ve still got the old magic. Any bystanders would have probably thought we were the S.A.S on manoeuvres rather than just former car thieves.”

Turnip added, “Me and Puerto Rico Paul were a bit dazed from the ordeal at first and just laid on our backs looking at the darkening sky as if to say, ‘What next you bastard?’ However, we’re not millennials and don’t do self-pity. We were soon pulling one another to their feet and wondering if Big Tony had packed plenty of beer when we heard the wailing.”

Turnip recalled, “It still gives me goosebumps to think about it even now. It was a primal cry of absolute grief that could turn a man’s bowels to water. Worse! It was coming from Big Tony. He was on his knees next to his van with his head in his hands. He just looked at us with tears in his days and said, “She’s gone boys. It’s the end of the road for Saucy Lil.

“Now while it was news to us that Big Tony had given his van a name and a female one at that, we both knew the affection he had for his motor. It was slightly perverted to my mind but Tone’s always been a bit on the spectrum when it comes to his relationship with anything with wheels. He was the same with his first BMX. Anyhow, we may have made fun of his weird obsessions, but we respected Tone’s grief, and when Puerto Rico Paul whispered in my ear, ‘Perhaps we should do the right thing and cremate the old bitch?’ I ignored his dark sarcasm. It didn’t come from a good place and right now Tone needed time to mourn his loss.”

Turnip explained that after a few hours of being left alone with Saucy Lil, Big Tony rejoined his friends who were using the last of the power on their phones to play Wordle. He simply announced, “Long may she ride! Let’s unload the old bird one last time and butcher us some boar!”

Turnip said, “They were his last words on his lost love and we didn’t pry. It was sad for us all to see the old van bust up and mangled, but the Forest of Dean was as good a place as any for a vehicle to rust in eternity. Hopefully, it would one day become home to a family of ferrets.”

=Turnip told the Chronicle that after unloading the two crates of lager, four bottles of whiskey, six pouches of tobacco, and ten cans of beans from the van. He was a bit concerned about how they would survive a few nights in the forest.

“I said to Tone, ‘Is this going to be enough?’ He just looked at me funny and said, ‘How much do you plan on drinking JT?’ ’No!’ I said. ‘I’m thinking more of what we’re going to eat?’ ‘We’re going to chow down on some hog, boss,’ he said in a weird American accent. To which I replied, ‘And how the hell are we going to hunt it?’ Paul tapped me on the shoulder and as I turned he pointed a shotgun at me and smiled like a child on Christmas morning. The game was on and the whiskey was in the jar!”

Turnip added, “We had the booze, the smokes, and the gun needed for a successful pig hunt! Admittedly, we didn’t have any water, but there was bound to be a stream nearby. The lack of a tent, sleeping bags, and complete ignorance of exactly where we were could present a few problems further down the line but we were masters of our destiny, born to woman but belonging to the wilderness. We were like a pack of coyotes and no tame dogs were stealing our bone. We decided to set up camp for the night and get drunk. Killing pigs could wait until dawn!

“Big Tony siphoned some petrol from the van and we made a fire. It nearly got out of hand but after a few whiskies, we were joking about accidentally burning the entire forest down. We carried on drinking to the early hours and arguing about who would win in a fight between a crocodile and a bear when the old man of the woods turned up and warned us all about the necromancer.”

To be continued…..

[It's from here, The Abergavenny Chronicle, and seems to be a regular bit.]

big things happening in england

[grungepoetica]

new year, new intro post

Hi everyone! I'm Mandarin/Grungepo/Ferret and this is my corner of the internet for goofy ramblings! I'm a bit all over the place (perks of being neurodivergent lol), but I'll try to keep this as brief as possible:

GENERAL STUFF

I'm a black autistic transmasc dyke in my mid-20s

I'm a published poet; slowly getting back into writing prose

No specific blog theme but I post a lot about writing, media, politics, and whatever random jokes pop into my head

My music taste is all over the place but most of it falls in the pop-punk and punk-adjacent range. (think Death, X-Ray Spex, or Fall Out Boy depending on the day.)

Most of what I read is sci-fi/fantasy but you'll probably see me talking a lot about fanfic as well

I occasionally post nsfw stuff, usually in a trans/queer context.

I'm not a super careful tagger. If you want something specific tagged, let me know.

I don't have a strict dni. Just don't be a jackass and we'll probably get along fine. (I reserve the right to block you though)

If I accidentally violate your dni, please let me know and/or block me.

My askbox is open - feel free to come say hi!

FANDOM STUFF

Main fandoms at the moment are Fall Out Boy (with a ~special fixation~ on the YBC) and Transformers; secondary fandoms are Minecraft/MCYT and Arcane

All of the MCYT posts are contained on my sideblog @swagferret

Will probably post about Lost, Scavengers Reign, and DS9 in the future, once I get off my ass and watch them lol

I also have an ao3 account - it's currently empty but hopefully I'll work up the nerve to post some stuff there within the next few months

I'm currently working on a YBC/Transformers fusion AU with my girlfriend - tentative title is Energon Chronicles, no promises on when it'll be 100% ready to share but I'm looking forward to doing so :)

TAGS YOU'LL PROBABLY SEE A LOT (non-exhaustive list)

#grungepo thoughts - original posts. (also the sub-tags #grungepo faves, #grungepo rants, #grungepo asks, and #grungepo updates)

#grungepo writes - rambling about my writing

#grungepo's gender adventure / #grungepo does drag - Living While Trans and stories from my life as a drag king

#just queer things / #just trans things - lgbtq stuff

#food for thought - wordy stuff i find interesting

#tumblr is a functioning website - meta commentary on the hellsite

#fall out whatever / #ybc - Fall Out Boy / Youngblood Chronicles

#league of legendary pain - Arcane

#g note me why don't you - My Chemical Romance

[don't have a dedicated Transformers tag yet because I'm new to the fandom but you best believe there will be one soon lol]

#cw [topic name] - anything with a trigger (again, not super careful about this)

Okay, that's all for now! Thanks for stopping by ^_^

[w1ll14m-4ft0n]

KINTYPE LIST

(line dividers by @cafekitsune)

theriotypes:

• australian shepherd

• raccoon

• shark cladotherian

• millipede

• pallas cat

• ferret

fictotypes:

• eric draven (the crow)

• lestat de lioncourt (the vampire chronicles- books, movie (except queen of the damned) and show versions)

• will graham (nbc hannibal)

• my fursona, glimmer

• the mimic (fnaf)

misc. 'types:

• vampire (permashift + physical kintype)

• ikea aftonsparv plushie