Look, a Quarter

THOU ART LISTENING TO

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102.3

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REAL WIZARDS FM

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WHERE WE PLAYETH NOTHING BUT CHANTS, CHANTS, AND MORE CHANTS

*wololo*

THIS ART NOT THINE ELDER MATRIARCH'S STATION

To be fair, I know some younger millennials who have been calling it 'dad rock' for the last twenty years.

The real psychological damage for me was hearing a teenager call My Chemical Romance "Dad Rock."

An unidentifiable bird call

A butterfly that’s slightly off-color

An opossum with its head stuck in a yogurt tub

BUT. but the thing is. you how selkies/seal women was a pretty common variation of this? another really popular one was swans.

i just want you to think about that for a moment. swans. like…I get it, they’re pretty, graceful birds, certainly it’s easy to imagine them magically becoming pretty graceful ladies? but have you ever fought a swan. swans are awful. swans are the devil’s geese. imagine seeing a pretty magic lady and being absolutely enchanted by her, and stealing her magic feather cloak, and then you go up and say ‘hey i’m in love with you, let me make you my queen, it will be great, we’ll be so happy’ and she just looks at you for a moment and…

finally one day, a swan comes up to her and says ‘why don’t you come and swim with us? you always sigh so wistfully to see us on the water, and you would be most welcome to join our company, for you have always been a true friend to our kind’

and the woman says, ‘i can’t swim’

and the swan says, ‘we’ll teach you’

and the woman says, ‘literally i can’t swim, my husband stole my sealskin and should i venture into deep water i would surely drown’ 

and the swan says ‘your husband fucking WHAT’

the next morning the woman’s front yard looks like this. 

Also? Swans don’t have a lot of obvious physical markings that divide the males from females. So some idiot might be like, “damn, that’s a sexy bird, I wanna marry her” and then like. It’s a dude swan. You just transformed thirty pounds of angry aggressive bird into 200+ pounds of angry aggressive adult man, who will totally kick your butt. (Also I’m pretty sure that if you turned a lady swan into a human, you would not get a willowy little 5′0″ girl. You’d probably have a 6-foot amazon with biceps the size of your head. Swans are heavy birds and it takes a LOT of muscle to get them into the air. They are among the baddest bitches in the bird kingdom)

Choosing.

And now it’s time.

“That one,” he tells the two men he hired earlier this morning, pointing one long, ring-adorned finger at the most beautiful swan. “Bring her to me.”

The henchmen don’t ask questions. He paid them specifically so they wouldn’t ask questions.

Even so, henchmen A glances at henchman B from the corner of his eye.

“Dude,” he says when they’re far enough way from the cackling sorcerer that they won’t be overheard, “why the hell does he want a swan?”

Henchman B shrugs. “What do these sorcerer types ever want?”

They near the water’s edge. “Okay, but,” Henchman A says, “he’s not going to try and fuck it, right? Because I’m sort of uncomfortable with beastiality–”

“Oh my god,” henchman B groans. “Just grab the swan.”

It takes a bit of cursing, flailing, and begrudging team work to grab the swan. When they finally manage to tuck her wings against her sides and grab hold of her neck to prevent her from biting she goes limp, making the strangest, saddest sound that the henchmen have ever heard.

“It’s okay,” Henchman A tells her bracingly, feet squelching as they haul her from the muddy lake’s edge to the sorcerer. “He’s probably not into beastiality. Very few people are.”

Henchmen B coughs and averts his eyes. “Uh, yeah. Right. Hey, you don’t think this was too easy? I mean, the other swans are just…watching. Us.”

Henchman A glances over his shoulder. Sure enough, floating on the lake are about two dozen swans, all curving their elegant necks so they can watch the fate of the swan hanging in between them. Rather than seeming alarmed, they seem…amused?

Henchman A looks away. “Nah, I’m sure it’s fine.”

The sorcerer jumps from foot to foot when they approach, clapping his hands together. “Good, good! Now just hold her there, hold her!”

The henchmen watch as the sorcerer visibly reigns himself in, breathing deeply. He begins to mutter in tongues for a very long time, an awkwardly long time. The henchmen glance at each other with their eyebrows raised. Sorcerers, man.

Suddenly the sorcerer’s head snaps up, eyes glowing a blazing black. He points his bejeweled finger at the swan who has remained suspiciously limp between them and hisses a short, ominous phrase.

Henchman A fights not to scream as a bolt of blue lightning flies at them. Henchman B drops his side of the swan and Henchman A follows suit just in time. The bolt strikes the swan and there’s a blinding flash as the sorcerer begins to cackle again.

“Behold!” he screams to the sky. “My bride!”

The spots clear from the henchmen’s eyes and they gape at the swan. Or rather where the swan should be. Instead there’s a woman there, crumpled on the ground, in a white, soft dress that’s already muddy.

She slowly lifts her head, her face pointed towards Henchman A. Her eyes snap open to reveal a swan’s eyes, a deep unending black that looks… not right on a human.

“Oh what the fuck,” Henchman A says.

The swan woman levers herself up. And up. And up. And up until she towers over them. There are thick cords of muscle at eye level, thick arms and a broad chest that lead to a very strong neck . Most of her body is hidden by her dress, but it doesn’t take a genius to guess that she’s built like a fucking tank.

She is very, very swan-like, henchman A realizes.

“Oh what the fuck,” henchman B says.

The woman smiles, showing off white, small teeth. “Welcome to the thunderdome, gentleman.”

Her fist feels like steel when it connects with Henchman A’s face and he thinks he hears his cheek break. He falls to the ground hard and doesn’t even try to stay conscious after a hit like that. The last thing he hears is what sounds like laughter from the direction of the lake.

Henchman B tries to run, but the swan woman is fast. She grabs the back of his collar and slings him to the ground, hissing and spitting. She hikes up her dress, showing built calves, and brings her heel slicing down onto his stomach. He reaches and chokes at the same time, moving belatedly to cover his head.

He needn’t bother. The swan woman seems to be done with him.

The sorcerer’s still standing in the spot from which he cast the spell, mouth agape. “B-but, you– you’re a swan? Wha–”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the swan woman says. Her voice is scratchy and growls like she’s swallowed glass. It sounds a bit like the hissing merriment happening on the lake. “I’m not a swan. I’m your wife.” She cracks her knuckles. “And it’s time for our honeymoon.”

The sorcerer picks up his robes and flees into the forest. The swan woman is fine with that. The swan who’d had to deal with this last week said that its more fun when they run.

So what does the wizard do when a swan comes to him wanting to be turned into a human? Does he summon his daughters to help her dress and makeup? Does his wife give her tips on seducing men? Cu.z heaven help her if she gets advice from a giant nerd like a wizard “But I thought wizards were supposed to know everything!” the swan woman protested. “Nope!” The wizard replied cheerfully. “We get a pass on all the humanities at Uni so we aren’t distracted by unnecessary human interaction. The best I can tell you is that usually when I send folks off to get something they have to kill a dragon or save a princess or something. So go impress the object of your affections with grand deeds I guess!”

she may be the greyest character in existence but boy is she fun to draw?? 🌺🌺🌺🌺 [ID: Art of Rose Quartz. She is drawn in shadow, holding a sword and a finger to her lips. Rose is a fat pale person with long pink ringlets and a long white dress, both of which are streaming out behind her. In the background are thorns wrapping around a pink diamond shape and breaking it apart.   ID description by @theatricuddles, thank you!]

Imagine you are dead. And then you are RIPPED from the embrace of decay into the world of the living again. Your memories are hazy and you don't recognize any of these people, but they act like they're close to you? Like they love you? So you try to get your memories back, to act like you belong here, but everybody tries to forget you died. And you can't. It is omnipresent. And just trying to grapple with that fact pushes the people who "love" you away, and they're incapable of understanding, and they're so confused, what's wrong N̶̄̀O̶͛͗T̷̉́ ̷͋͝Y̴̎̌Ȍ̴̈U̸̓R NÄM̴̃͑E̵̾̇? And you just need them to understand, you aren't that person! You aren't! You don't know who that person is! You don't know why any of this is happening, but they're unwilling to bend, they keep insisting you are that person, your memories will come back, everything will be normal again, and you want to scream and cry and claw yourself open to show them you're different. Your existence as a being wholly separate from whoever you "used to be" is a sin unto itself. All you can do is scrabble for life and to them, you're killing whoever they loved to do it.

So I've done my first aid + CPR a few times. And every single time I try and bring up scenarios for fat folks

Specifically like 'what if someone is too large for me to wrap my arms around then to do the heimleich'

And its incredibly rare I get a decent answer.

How absolutely insane is it that me, as a fat person, is asking how to have MY life saved or to save ANOTHER life, is an impossible feat if someone is fat.

Most of the time they tell me to 'just try anyways uwu'

The heimleich is scientifically as effective as slapping someone VERY hard on the back. The only reason it's so well taught is the man that invented it did a lot of great PR for himself. It's also a bit easier for smaller framed people to get the necessary force in, because people are often extremely scared to hurt people, even in life threatening situations.

With larger bodied people, whether they be fat, tall, muscular, etc. If you cannot get your arms around them, literally just slap the shit out of their shoulders. You want hard, open palmed slaps right in the center of the shoulders or slightly below.

If they are too tall for you to reach that high, guide them to lean over the back of a chair, and then slap slap slap slap slap.

It's been proven to be just as effective through many studies. It just doesn't have a trademarked name and a dramatic effect in film.

If you have to do CPR on a larger bodied person, again, fat, body builder, tall and broad, whoever, the trick to finding where you want to put your hands if going to be to take your hand and shove it in their armpit. No seriously. Put your hand in their armpit, then drag it in a straight line towards yourself until you're in the center of the chest, then put your other hand beneath that one. This is where you push. Then you are going to move the arm closest to you out of the way so you can get closer to them, and get the leverage you need to press down for compressions. The more of your body weight that is over your hands, the better the compression will be. Act like you are trying desperately to pack the last of your clothes in a suitcase, and just slam down hard on their chest.

They will make *horrible* noises. You might even break ribs.

But a broken rib is better than being dead.