This Month's #BirdWhisperer Was The Common Pigeon!

I was about to write: I love the fact that Katniss‘ first reaction to Haymitch‘s absolutely traumatising story is „You need some goose eggs. Goose eggs will help.“

And then I realised… She‘s mimicking Peeta. Peeta comes back to 12 and the first thing he does is plant primroses. And somehow… that helped her. So she‘s doing the same thing for Haymitch.

The Reluctant Victor, inspired by The Reluctant Bride by Auguste Toulmouche - I just thought that this painting was SO perfect for Katniss and I had to draw it!

Okay but it’s fucking brilliant that one of the themes of the book was about the distortion of history.

Usually prequels are a dangerous thing to write because unless they’re planned out well in advance, they risk contradicting lore in the main series. Even still, we knew barely anything about Haymitch’s games. They were the perfect stomping ground for new information, with a rough series of events but without a close temporal connection to the main books.

But though she had this freedom and safety net, while she could have just written a story that aligned with what we knew, Collins leaned into the idea of contradicting past lore head on and made it the damn thesis of the book; that yeah, actually, it did play out entirely differently from how the characters saw it, and yes that contradicts what you were told, that’s the point.

We didn’t really know what happened in the 50th games until we read it from Haymitch’s perspective, because what little information we did have was spliced up and edited. The video evidence was processed through the Capital, and twisted to serve their purposes.

Tackling that idea of history being written by those in power with a notoriously inconsistent medium? Goddamn, writer that you are, Suzanne Collins.

I've had a hard time articulating to people just how fundamental spinning used to be in people's lives, and how eerie it is that it's vanished so entirely. It occurred to me today that it's a bit like if in the future all food was made by machine, and people forgot what farming and cooking were. Not just that they forgot how to do it; they had never heard of it.

When they use phrases like "spinning yarns" for telling stories or "heckling a performer" without understanding where they come from, I imagine a scene in the future where someone uses the phrase "stir the pot" to mean "cause a disagreement" and I say, did you know a pot used to be a container for heating food, and stirring was a way of combining different components of food together? "Wow, you're full of weird facts! How do you even know that?"

When I say I spin and people say "What, like you do exercise bikes? Is that a kind of dancing? What's drafting? What's a hackle?" it's like if I started talking about my cooking hobby and my friend asked "What's salt? Also, what's cooking?" Well, you see, there are a lot of stages to food preparation, starting with planting crops, and cooking is one of the later stages. Salt is a chemical used in cooking which mostly alters the flavor of the food but can also be used for other things, like drawing out moisture...

"Wow, that sounds so complicated. You must have done a lot of research. You're so good at cooking!" I'm really not. In the past, children started learning about cooking as early as age five ("Isn't that child labor?"), and many people cooked every day their whole lives ("Man, people worked so hard back then."). And that's just an average person, not to mention people called "chefs" who did it professionally. I go to the historic preservation center to use their stove once or twice a week, and I started learning a couple years ago. So what I know is less sophisticated than what some children could do back in the day.

"Can you make me a snickers bar?" No, that would be pretty hard. I just make sandwiches mostly. Sometimes I do scrambled eggs. "Oh, I would've thought a snickers bar would be way more basic than eggs. They seem so simple!"

Haven't you ever wondered where food comes from? I ask them. When you were a kid, did you ever pick apart the different colored bits in your food and wonder what it was made of? "No, I never really thought about it." Did you know rice balls are called that because they're made from part of a plant called rice? "Oh haha, that's so weird. I thought 'rice' was just an adjective for anything that was soft and white."

People always ask me why I took up spinning. Isn't it weird that there are things we take so much for granted that we don't even notice when they're gone? Isn't it strange that something which has been part of humanity all across the planet since the Neanderthals is being forgotten in our generation? Isn't it funny that when knowledge dies, it leaves behind a ghost, just like a person? Don't you want to commune with it?

Speechless

today's warm up: Known as the wandering gate, the one who holds the maddened plane in their mind. Their mother knew them as Saine.

“and while lenore dove will forever be my true love, louella is my one and only sweetheart.”

that line hits so hard when you realize how quickly he was calling katniss sweetheart. through katniss’ eyes, it seemed insincere at first, almost like haymitch was mocking her. but now we truly know haymitch wouldn’t just throw that around. he truly cared for her from the start.

I’m ok, I’m fine, I’ve been handling Sunrise on the Reaping very well -I’ve been crying non stop.

Some closeups of the best graffiti I've ever seen

cop pulls me over little does he know my drivers license is written in elf hieroglyphics & blinds anyone who reads it