#birdhouse of horror

[friend-crow]

I have cat ghosts who visit me whenever my last cat dies. If I am away from home, or my cat is away from home, the ghosts stay away. I am not theirs, after all, I am claimed by my living cat, even if we are not in the same room or house or even country.

But when I'm truly catless, when my cat has died, I will feel a cat jump onto my bed in the middle of the night. They stalk across the blankets, lie down and sleep. I sleepily note where they are, so I don't accidentally kick them, and I sleep the better for the company.

I had always assumed they were the ghosts of my cats, one of the many who have lived and died in my care. But when Miss Cleo died eight years back, I did something I'd never done before. A ghost cat came...and I turned on the light.

A cat looked back at me, large and black, fur and ears showing a gentleman who had lived a little rough, friendly but a bit wary. And then he vanished.

The thing is, he wasn't Casey or Kaduku, nor Juggler. He obviously wasn't Jennie Baldrin or Tessa or Lady Sarah. He could have been Charlie Gray except for color, he had the size and attitude, but he was no cat I knew. He wasn't family, but he felt like family.

So I concluded that he must be my next cat.

Except then Lucy and JB fell into my life a few months later, a foster that failed so hard and so fast and so happily, and neither was that strange black cat. After JB died two years ago at the venerable age of 18, my bed again was visited by ghost cats, but I never turned on the lights. I adopted Cazador and Ceniza, but they weren't my rough gentleman either.

So maybe he's my last cat, my final cat, content I hope to wait many years.

.

[the-morphiend]

Is girlboss something you are or something you do?

[cdroloisms]

p!sam after ocean escape it's the only one who has some sort of morality the rest well....

yeah he's the c!dream apologist of the group 😔✊

the other guys well.they. they certainly. um yeah . um. 👍

[cyanicdoodle]

Hey Phil you doing okay?...where'd you go???

SO I posted these on Twitter and I wanted to continue talking about here. So the CROWBEAST PHILZA! YES! As days go by in the birdhouse he becomes more and more unstable until he goes nuts and just becomes a feral beast. His emerald acts like the gem that Eda had blacks out when he's in this form. I imagine Fit, tubbo and Etoiles rolling up to the birdhouse and seeing this huge figure in the corner, they all instantly charge at him thinking this must have kidnapped or done something to Phil. Until someone recognizes "oh my god that is Phil." Your friend has been eldridge horror and the only keeping him together is his children and friends.

[lakesbian]

it's the moment like 4 of you have been waiting for:

i finally rotated pact creature design in my brain enough to post about it. to all the people who sent me asks wanting to hear my thoughts explaining Why Pact Creatures Are So Good this ones for you.

the core of pact's monster design boils down to one very good fact about pact's worldbuilding: in the world of pact, the universe canonically loves a good story. magic literally runs on themes and ideas. subsequently, strong themes aren't the end result of pact's monster design so much as they are the most fundamental aspect of it--meaningful themes and narratives are such a textually important part of how pact monsters work that one bogeyman outright tries to start a conversation with blake by, upon noticing the birdhouse in his soul (tm), asking if birds are important to him.

what really seals the deal on this being fascinating is that pact monsters aren't invented wholesale--a lot of the book hinges on offering its own explanations for preexisting folklore or urban legend. pact takes a variety of common threads in the way cultural myths & monsters are presented, picks out the conceptions with compelling implications, and distills them into one design so thematically coherent and clarifying that it makes you go "ohhh, why aren't All ghosts/dragons/fae like this? this is Exactly What They're Supposed To Be."

like, we all know that ghosts are dead people, and oftentimes the appearance and/or behavior they're written as having is either implicitly or explicitly based on reenactments of their past life/how they died, and sometimes they're depicted as lucid but more often than not they're depicted more like broken or warped remnants of a person, and sometimes they make things colder/give off Bad Emotional Vibes/etc. those are generally true assertions about how ghosts are often culturally presented.

pact takes that and explicitly declares that ghosts are what happens when something so bad happens that an imprint of the resultant misery is left on the fabric of the universe. some ghosts appear horrifying because their appearance is warped and exaggerated beyond what's realistically possible to match how awful whatever happened to them felt. some ghosts are more lucid because their imprint is more recent, or has been strengthened and fed by human attention instead of left to decay. some ghosts are less lucid because they were forgotten. when ghosts make the atmosphere feel awful to be in, that's because the ghost isn't just the imprint of the person, it's an imprint of the awful thing itself. incredibly interesting! it feels so very much like the absolute heart of what ghost stories are about--about the grief and horror of being impacted by the ever-present echo of something terrible, about something so viscerally wretched happening that reality itself cannot forget it, about the emotionally powerful interactions between someone still-living and the memory of someone already long gone.

(pact also gives an aside that, in very rare scenarios, neutral or arguably even positive occasions which leave a sufficiently strong enough impression can also become ghosts. genuinely fascinating expansion.)

& the thing here is that pact does this for creatures like ghosts that are already richly thematic and iconic, but it Also does it for creatures with less obvious theming. how do dragons work? what's pact's underlying explanation for their position as immortal, powerful, regal, fire-breathing* fantasy monsters?

*&, depending on the media, sometimes ice-breathing or poisonous or whatever else

well, you see, dragons are recursive loops. "dragons are recursive loops" is perhaps one of the Top All Time sentences in the entire book, and the delightful thing is that, in addition to sounding excellent, it makes sense.

that's how they generate and spit out so much of whatever their element is. they're snarls. they're ouroboroses. they're something feeding into itself, self-sustaining for thousands of years, drowning anything which threatens it in torrents of whatever the self-feeding element is--fire, sometimes, but it could be poison, or ice, or whatever else, and that's why you've probably heard of ice dragons in addition to classic fire dragons. Dragons Are Recursive Loops. recursiveness is, after all, a form of immortality.

or, like, fae? we all know that faeries are incomprehensibly old/outright immortal Tricky Little Bitches who like to manipulate people while posing in an inhumanly/horrifically beautiful fashion and going "teehee." pact takes that to a fantastically surreal level of extreme artifice, one that's almost grotesque in its dreamlike nature--they have all lived for so very long that, to them, boredom is worse than death, and so they have complicated social games spanning centuries, and speak in the most practiced of misleading wordplay, and perfectly curate their forests so that even the smallest pebble is an intentionally-chosen setpiece for their play. they graduated from handjobs a couple dozens of millennia ago--now they're more into erotic-poetic descriptions of full-body degloving. you will not notice when a faerie steals and replaces your child, because you are very young and stupid compared to them, and playing-pretend at being your child is only the briefest of trifles in their unfathomably long lifespan.

the other good bit is that pact explicitly acknowledges that faeries run on what is colloquially deemed Bullshit--the universe likes a good story, and faeries have gotten very good at telling it a moving story. if a faerie tells a good enough story about having a sword that breaks the laws of physics, then that is what their sword will do. and so the way to combat faeries is not to out-bullshit them--because no one is out-bullshitting a being with thousands of years of bullshitting practice--but to say "no, that's fucking stupid and made up" until their implausibly long sword acts like a sword of that size actually should and shatters on the spot.

& all of these writing decisions feel so naturally truthful to what these creatures are Supposed to be--they're really not wholly new takes, they're a presentation of preexisting ideas in a way that gets why those ideas appeal to people and goes full-throttle on all the most thematically rich or otherwise narratively interesting parts. It's Good Writing. I Like It. you could spend an entire essay breaking down the presentation of literally any single one of pact's creatures, it's that compelling in its reflection and organization of Ideas About Creatures.

[fireflysummers]

My brain has been unfriendly, so I decided to draw some friendly friends: Wally Darling from @partycoffin's upcoming ARG Welcome Home and Ricky from the recently released indie game My Friendly Neighborhood.

I finished watching a let's play for MFN, and it was a solid game. No "installments by chapter," self-contained story without sequel bait, felt like a survival horror game without any significant horror, no real jumpscares.

And while I love mascot horror for the most part, I've didn't realize I was getting tired of how... mean spirited it is? And also how I'm tired of mean spirited. MFN felt very tributary, and as a true tribute, it didn't try to twist things designed for love and for children into something darker. (I would have rioted if they'd made a Dark Mister Rogers plot twist, really.) Despite the more distinctly horror themes of Welcome Home, there's very much a feeling of love that transcends "What if Elmo was Evil."

Anyways.

Commissions are Open

Image ID: Wally Darling (a muppet-type character with yellow skin, a red ascot, a blue blazer, and a blue pompadour) from the upcoming ARG "Welcome Home" sits leaning on a white wooden fence, with his lower half obscured. To his side is a birdhouse that looks like Wally's House, and from its door emerges the gray-and-red sock puppet Ricky, from the indie game My Friendly Neighborhood. They are enjoying sharing a conversation, although the speech bubbles surrounding them are blank, leaving it to the audience's imagination what they're talking about.

[dozyrogue]

Just a me thing but I kinda miss when we the audience didn't know much about the federation.

On top of that I miss the horror aspect of the island as a whole. Like cucurucho stalking people and if they got out of hand he hunts them down and fixes the problem himself. Tubbo, cellbit, philza theres more but u get my point.

Cellbit was doing to much so what did the feds do?? Trapped him in a long hallway and CHASED HIM WITH A CHAINSAW??

TRAPPEE PHIL IN A BIRDHOUSE WITH THE FISADE OF FINDING HIA CHILDREN. MAN LITERALLY LOST IT.

TUBBO?? TUBBBOOO??? THEY HATED THIS MAN CUCCURUCHO COULD NOT STAND HIM TO THE POINT HE WAS CONSTANTLY STALKING HIM. THERE WAS MULTIPLE TIMES WHERE THEY JUAT WENT FOR HIA NECK

ANOTHER ONE BAGHERA AND JAIDEN BEING HUMAN EXPERIMENTS???? THE CHILDHOOD ROOMS????

Like I miss knowing as much as the characters, don't get me wrong I also like knowing about the inside and outa of the federation like elana our queen. But i kinda miss being as lost as the characters. Then again like i said I miss when they were scary honestly.

Like bagi just infeltrated the federation office but for me it didn't hit right because I already know?? Lol like I don't know how to describe it?? I could have loved but I already knew it.

[fr-likes-chocolate]

People want crowbeast Phil and I am among them.

I wanna see tubbo, cellbit, Fit, and others walk into a giant birdhouse (already creepy) and a bunch of colorful birds flock past them, unharmed, but scared to be trapped with the thing still inside.

I want to see them examining the walls, riddled with scratches too large to be any mob they know.

I want tubbo to notice the thing in the rafters, then quietly tells the rest to look up.

I want their hearts to skip a bear when two glowing eyes stare back at them.

I want them to panic and run, prompting the monster to chase them, quickly gaining speed as it flies up into the air above them. It folds its wings down and pins Fit to the ground.

I want the beast to hesitate, seeing FitMC, a survivor of wastelands, with acceptance of death in his eyes. The beast is reminded of its own humanity.

I want fit to see who the monster really is as it hesitates, then tries to call out to Tubbo and Cellbit to not attack.

I want Tubbo and Cellbit to already be in the middle of their swings, unable to stop themselves from burying their weapons in the beast’s back, then watch in horror as the beast screams and trembles, then falls to the side.

I want them to watch as the feathers retract, leaving Phil on the ground, with horrible wounds in his back.

I want Cellbit, Fit, and Tubbo to realize that this is what the Federation does to good people,

They turn them into monsters.

[becauseplot]

Hi hello here with my daily (hourly) (minutely) caged qphil musing because I have insane amounts of brain rot---I wonder if ccphil is gonna keep consistent with the fact that his character was still in his mexican independence day outfit when he got caught.

And other people have pointed this out, but I can't stop thinking about it, because like, assuming he does get rescued, the first thing his rescuer(s) are gonna notice is his outfit, and seeing him still in his independence day outfit---they're immediately gonna clock the fact that he's been in there since last friday. Like, qphil probably won't know exactly how long he's been in the birdhouse (there's no clocks in there, no windows, nothing; that's a whole other post entirely, though) but the others are gonna know. Immediately.

And it's not just that he's been in there since friday, but since the end of the labyrinth fiasco. Because yes, everyone else went straight from the party to the labyrinth without changing outfits, but then everyone went home. Went to bed or kept hanging out. Changed into comfier clothes. Not phil, though. He went to the party, to the labyrinth, to his house, and then was immediately dragged here. They're going to look at him and think, God, he was probably in the middle of getting ready for bed when this happened! (He was.)

There's something deeply unsettling about it, I just can't quite put my finger on it. It's like in a horror movie when a victim is picked off at a party and their body is found still wearing their cute dress or fancy button down, hair still done up, makeup still on. The knowledge that this person was caught completely unaware. The knowledge that they were having a good time, or had just had a good time, when it happened.

Idk if this makes sense but. Man. I hope ccphil keeps his mexican independence day skin on for when he gets out. I hope it's all dusty and wrinkled and torn up around the cuffs. I hope the red neck bow is coming undone. I hope it still has all its little golden tassels on it.

[ofdarkestdesires]

Alright! So, now that we have the full line-up of the Level 10 Bell’s Hells artwork, I think it’s about time I sat down and gave my personal opinions that nobody asked for about everyone’s styles.

Chetney Pock'o'pea

While I appreciate the more active pose and visible armor as opposed to his more unassuming original design, I am very off-put that he completely abandoned his original color scheme and all shreds of his original aesthetic. I also think the tracksuit is a bit much—listen, I’m a fan of toeing the line of what fashion belongs in a fantasy setting, but I’m pretty sure this fully vaulted over the it and did a full backflip and three-point landing into ridiculous. 3/10

And unfortunately, the same must be said for his Lycan form. This artwork feels like a serious downgrade from the original Chetwolf, which honestly filled me with a shock of horror each time he popped up. The only reason it is higher than base-Chet is that Chetwolf is still a werewolf, and werewolves are badass. 4/10

Laudna

Laudna, on the otherhand, is a total glow-up from her original design. Everything about her design ties together and brings in perfectly her aesthetic and backstory, from the haunting tree embroidery on her dress (akin to the Sun Tree she was hung from) to the little Pate birdhouse backpack (an homage to the Baba Yaga forest witch imagery she picked up), all the while looking so much like the elegant and imposing Delilah Briarwood. Easy 10/10 for me.

Fresh Cut Grass (F.C.G.)

F.C.G.'s new art...isn't bad, but I'm not as wowed by it as some others on this list. Something has clearly changed here in the choice to include his new blue jacket, and I approve! I'm also a fan of the wires having more definition and appearing more purposefully stylized, as if he's taking better care of himself...but the pose and the style just feel a bit lacking to me. 5/10

Fearne Calloway

Honestly, my only gripe with this outfit is the upper-half of her bustier. It feels very cluttered and like there is a lot of fine detail that just ends up being all meshed together. That would be my other only other gripe, too—there's a lot of small, fine details here that makes her feel cluttered. Which, honestly, fits her as the sneaky little hoarder that she is! But yeah, I would've done something else, something cleaner, with the upper half of her bodice. Also, while I know she is a Druid, I don't think she needs the plant growth on her legs... 8/10

Imogen Temult

I would just like to point out that this outfit was unveiled to us as Imogen's choice for winter-wear while traveling through the Crystal Sands Tundra. Is it sexy? Definitely. Is it my personal taste? Mm, not really, but I can see the appeal. Am I upset that even after the semi-canonization of her needing glasses, this bitch is still not a sexy glasses-wearing nerd? Absolutely—but the biggest sin this outfit does is fail to be climate-accurate. -1/10 for improper environment protection, and 7/10 for the outfit itself.

Orym, Savior Blade of the Tempest

I am incredibly torn here. Because, when it comes down to the armor itself, this is a clear winner. Orym's new uniform is a perfect upgrade from his original more humble and simple apparel, becoming much more about function and protection, while still retaining his svelte and limber appearance. The noted upgrade to Seedling is also nice, though I wish it was a bit more pronounced. What pulls me back from really loving this design, though, is his proportions—I feel like his head is way too big, or his limbs are way too skinny. Over all, I have to give this an 8/10.

Ashton Greymoore

Remember at the start how I said I'm all for toeing the line of what fashion belongs in fantasy settings? Yeah, this fucks! From the first episode, we knew that Ashton was a punk, and this just picks that up and runs with it in such a cool, fun way. I legitimately want this entire outfit—fuck cosplay, I'd just wear this irl! It leans enough on his old design to be recognizable, but pops out as truly his own. And the hammer looks wild—I can't wait to see that thing really pop off like crazy in the next fight. Definitely a 10/10 from me!

[friend-crow]

From age 11-14, I lived in an old house. I loved that place...but there was one resident who scared the shit out of me. Also got me in trouble more than once.

1. When it rained, big muddy footsteps would appear at the base of the attic stairs leading to my sisters' room. They would also appear at the top. I was grounded if they were seen. Why? Because I was blamed for them. So I cleaned them up. Every fucking time. Summer was very wet in Nebraska.

2. No one wanted to come over for a slumber part after this: four friends come over, we're watching a movie, TV switches channels. We change them back. They change again. We put the remote on the coffee table and remove the batteries. Same thing. Unplug the TV. It won't turn off! We call in my parents, they think it's a joke, examine everything, put the TV in another room. It doesn't stop! All four friends leave and refuse to come over ever again. My parents put the TV outside overnight and still think it was some kind of glitch.

3. That house is why I refuse to have mirrors anywhere but the bathroom. No, not elaborating.

Before the house caught on fire, maybe a year prior, I'm chilling in the living room. Suddenly, both cats are away and growling at a spot in the room. The feeling of heavy and wrongness starts to fill the room. Then that spot growls thr most unnatural growl I have ever heard. Do I panic? No. "Your behavior is unacceptable and rude. Leave. Now. If you don't, I will make you leave. This is not a Christian household. This is a witch's home." Room lights up, feeling fades, room smells pleasant, it never shows up again. My cats then took a nap. I reinforced my wards after that. I will not be afraid in my own home. Ever. Again.

.

[cdroloisms]

p!Sam in the birdhouse it's the proof the Sam's can be good, he is kenough and i want to hug the poor sad man. You say to j!Sam, ff!Sam and why not p!Sam in awsamdad the word therapy they'll Say You need it for thinking they're wrong bc, having the guy You tortured/still torture under your total control and not letting him go and seeing him as a pet it's totally normal guys like what do You mean?

ocean escape sam :] he's tryingggg he's really trying in the worst of circumstances the poor guy. im too mean to him sometimes bc of pdroloisms among other things but he really does try in the birdhouse

[cringefaecompilation]

just realized that when laudna gets rid of delilah, she's going to get rid of pate, too...

i can already see it. pate flops lifeless out of her birdhouse backpack and laudna screams in horror. she's utterly bereft as she sobs and cradles the fuzzy lump to her chest and once she's finally calmed down she says "Oh Imogen We Simply Must Bury Him"

so bell's hells makes a ramshackle funeral area where they can send off the little bugger. FCG does the ceremony. laudna gives a big speech about how much pate meant to her and how he was such a good friend while the rest of the hells fight demons trying to find one positive thing to say about him. the closest is imogen who says "i'm glad he was there to keep her company until laudna could find some... people."

and then imogen uses her telekinesis to put the tiny hand carved wooden casket into the grave they dug out as mister tosses tiny little druidcrafted flowers on the top and fearne plays amazing grace on her pan flute and they all look absolutely fucking mental to any and all passersby but if it makes laudna happy it's okay

[icy-watch]

I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to adopt a fictional kid as much as I wanted to adopt Collie they’re just TOO gosh adorable. Pinging everything on the bingo board. Iirc someone wrote a whole thing on Luz making a connection to the isles being like making a connection to her dad again 🤔 or well, that it was king’s dad but it was a father figure and overcoming another evil that could take them away hence why Belos was all…that kind of metaphor at the end. And Collie represented herself before her dad died which is…yeah, with their innocence of death and playing in bizarre ways that nobody found acceptable. Something also about how the way Belos abused various people in this show is how trying to change people hurts them. One kid isn’t how you want them? You get a replacement kid. Horror story there. Isolation and fear of abandonment. Got that too. Forced conformity because of “sin” and “error.” Whole dang town. I’m missing a few bc I haven’t rewatched what isn’t readily available on youtube. But it’s all kind of an extension of how Luz could have felt if the think in the box camp went on for long. A death of the self to create a replacement that conforms to normalcy who is someone else’s ideas of perfection and self placed high standards but stifles the sense of joy and fun, but silencing doesn’t take away that part of you, just isolates it until you feel alone in a crowd and abandoned by someone you know now will never understand you. Luz helping so many people with those issues feels like reinforcing the fact there is nothing wrong with her being different until comes the day she can “choose herself.” Also I know the last minute is bc the episode is ending so they’re saying bye to the audience but I’m kinda ;-; because in universe they’re saying bye to Collie which is sweet and sad, I guess the kiddo drops by like once a light year from the distance. Since nobody is stabbing King for Titan’s blood it looks like they made that magic star swirl door we see in the birdhouse/hexside. That may imply Collie was in the human realm briefly for some redecorating lol, scary.

The Collector is absolutely 1 of the cutest characters out there. Completely don't blame you for adopting them.

Ooooooo, that's an interesting line of thought. And depressing. If anyone has a link to that, it'd be appreciated.

[alphabetatoes]

random jjk headcanons

a.n.: enjoy some hcs i have for the jjk characters aka im in my "i do whatever i want era" akaka these will prbly be ooc 🤝🫡

yuji and nobara's go-to karaoke song is "total eclipse of the heart" 🫶. every time they sing the "turn around" line (to megumi ofc), it gets increasingly more dramatic (megumi, in fact, does NOT turn around.)

megumi's is "if we were a movie" 🤭

gojo's is "hey daddy (daddy's home)

todo most definitely has a "do it for him" poster of yuji in his room

gojo knows jujutsu sorcery is stressful, and encourages his students to relieve this stress through some sort of hobby. megumi plays violin, nobara makes birdhouses, and yuji journals.

inumaki, nobara, n maki have a gc where they gossip in shit talk. it's the place to be, honestly.

panda collects snowglobes :). nice (and safe) lil trinkets from every place they've exorcised.

skincare king satoru gojo makes sure all his students are taking care of themselves, giving them top of the line products to help.

nanami and yuji do puzzles together!! they recently completed a 10,000 piece puzzle of a sunset

gojo makes the first years do one act plays as team buidling exercises 😭

megumi, nanami, and panda have a book club

things satoru gojo has bought as a result of his students showing even the slightest interest in it: a zoo (for the day), 2 skateboards, a silk dress set, 8 mm film from several classic horror films, and a historically accurate scale model of the flavian ampitheater.

[finnitesimal]

... im spiraling, theres so many ways to torture Phil while trapped in the birdhouse

you got the constant taunting with chayannes and tallulahs items. the probability of starvation depending on how long he's stuck there, how he might have to resort to eating the other birds to survive, how he might develop a gapple addiction cause its the only food he brought with him. how he might not be able to even see outside, losing the ability sleep properly. how he might start plucking his own feathers from stress.

the federation sees this and come to the decision to just cut off his wings, or what remains of them, part as another form of torture and part to break his spirit even more, keep him grounded for good.

when the rescue gang finally gets to him all they can see at first are black feathers and blood all over the place, when they finally find phil he's in a corner, absolutely unresponsive. they all watch in horror as the blood follows back to phil... but the feathers don't, his back way to close to the walls even if he was pressing his wings as close to his body as he could, the wood behind him is also smeared with blood.

the feds did the impossible, they broke the fucking angel of death, they put him in the one cage his friends wouldn't even dare to break- his own body.

.... imma read more goofy birdman breakout situations, I need balance. fluff and crack are so entertaining but angst is so juicyyy

(please feel free to yell at me for this, I also hurt myself with it)

-a rat

Unfortunately you overestimate how much I care on an emotional level about the bird man and underestimate how much I love narrative tension and parallels. One who makes a cage gets caged in turn. One, when in danger, who is the quickest to move to help has to sit and wait to be saved. Guy with one of the biggest contributions to stopping an addiction faced with some very tempting side effects in the only food source he has? Crunch crunch buddy boy