books & birds

I was inspired by the black-out poems made by @playing-with-colors and decided to apply it to the locked tomb series!

While drunkenly lamenting his inevitable loveless marriage later that night, Richard encounters Pen Creed, a young woman dressed as a boy fleeing to escape her own unwanted marriage.

Richard accompanies Pen on this cross-country flight (after fixing Pen’s haircut and cravat, of course), during which Pen, still dressed as a boy, says things such as, “I wish I were really a man.”

While drunkenly lamenting his inevitable loveless marriage later that night, Richard encounters Pen Creed, a young woman dressed as a boy fleeing to escape her own unwanted marriage.

Richard accompanies Pen on this cross-country flight (after fixing Pen’s haircut and cravat, of course), during which Pen, still dressed as a boy, says things such as, “I wish I were really a man.”

Obviously, the goal of this experiment is to grow the lobsters until they’re big enough to settle to the seabed and then release them, because they have a much higher likelihood of surviving to adulthood when they’re able to hide. Ideally, captive lobster hatcheries can boost the wild population and keep things stable, so we don’t have a major crash in a decade or two.

The first year we tried this was pretty bad. We had a lot of eggs, but very few babies. It turned out that the CO2 levels in the building spiked as more guests visited throughout the summer, and that settled into the water and threw off the pH and caused a chemical reaction that prevented a lot of the eggs from hatching. I think we ended up releasing three baby lobsters (which is still better than their wild survival rate but not great).

The second year was a little better. We added a de-gasser to the aquarium and got a ton of larval lobsters, but right as they were settling to the bottom we had a disease outbreak that killed most of them. We ended up releasing four babies at the end of the season.

But this year? Oh boy. We have so many lobsters that we had to release the first round early (usually we wait till September or October so guests can see them). We just released a total of FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE baby lobsters, and we still have over a hundred who haven’t settled to the bottom yet. I genuinely don’t even have words to explain how cool this is. OVER FIVE HUNDRED. We just added hundreds of lobsters to the wild population that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

their ceres (the white part of their beak) are larger than Canadian pigeons. not sure why. also, their bodies are sleeker and longer. this is probably because pigeons back home have to survive -35C winters, so only the hefty round ones survive.

I wonder if the smaller ceres in Canadian pigeons are also a cold adaptation? because it’s an exposed fleshy bit with lots of nerve ending for sensory purposes, so I can see frostbite being a problem. or maybe it’s just that different escaped breeds contributed to the population.

original image from the magazine:

And the bit where they’re HER roses? Almost a relief, but also sadder, as she will arrive at whatever event without them, or with them destroyed.

Do you think when the righteous anger and anxiety and annoyance fade, when she arrives at her destination- will her loved ones applaud her? Will she be proud? Will her hands shake? Will she walk home with company from then out, and for how long?

In this moment, she is provoked into anger. Anger is good- it appears strong. But look at his face. Would you put it past him to linger there after dark, in case she returns alone?

What story will HE tell, of ‘I was perfectly polite, but she didn’t even give me a chance- women like that, they’d swoon for a jerk in a heartbeat, but kind and flattering men like me?…”

Okay I see what you all were talking about when you said wait till you get to Mirror Dance. Omg.

Lord Mark Vorkosigan. What an icon. Mark who was built as a weapon while in captivity and becomes a tool on his very own initiative only needs four to seven people to care about him as a human before he remakes his entire self and becomes a goddamn hero. Mark figures out how to do Internal Family Systems therapy on himself while being tortured horribly for five days. Hobbies include personal finance, scheming, and responding "round is a shape" when Aral and Miles say to get in shape. By the end he's setting up to the the Mycroft to Miles' Sherlock.

Mark suffers so much abuse and makes So Many Bad Decisions with So Many Consequences and only to end up literally writhing on the floor in the Unprecedented Agony of Being Perceived and Loved. (This is the part that broke me… I saw it coming and was like: Oh noooo, this part is gonna break me. And then it did, and it was perfect.)

Also, the entire, pervasive, complete and total Cordelia-ness of this novel whether or not she's in the room or even on the planet. She gives Mark the assignment of figuring out how to be Mark and there we goooo. And even after Miles has died and gone amnesiac, there's Cordelia's voice: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YOUR BABY BROTHER?? This is the thing that gets the memory cascade going! It's Cordelia. And she's got Elena too: "But mostly because someday Countess Vorkosigan will ask me what I did for her son... Mark... she'll mean you." It's Cordelia All The Way Down and I am HERE for it.

I am also really... happy for Cordelia that Mark is here. Because Mark has Cordelia's number in a way that I'm not sure either Aral or Miles does, as deeply as they do know her and adore her. Until Mark, maybe Gregor is the only other person who can even begin to read her the way she reads everybody else (and Mark clocks that too!) and Gregor is way too busy being emperor to give Cordelia the runaround she deserves.

Necro/Cav relationships have more bearing on Dominicus society than gender relations (as seen by Harrow's conversation with Abigail and Magnus) and that coupled with the fact that there is a very complicated Dominicus social system Muir did not explain; being a necro, a cav or a normal citizen is basically akin to a secondary gender.

...and then going nope nope nope I want nothing more to do with this crazy story with giant alien animals that try to kill you, rogue secunits with their own agenda, corporate espionage, assassination attempts, alien contaminations that cause zombie apocalypses highly dangerous and irrational behavior, etc. and just... goes home after book one.