Approximately Three Crows In A Victorian Dress

It can be a "we" problem

Or why ART no longer lets Three out without a chaperone.

Sophie: Why not? Second mom already stole a sec unit.

Murderbot: Hey, guys.

Farai: No, she didn't. Sec Unit is a person. It can do whatever it wants.

(Aurora and Borealis as I first imagined them. Where are their visible skywing genes? I lost them somewhere along the way to making this post… sorry. Just kidding! I interpret that Aurora takes most after her sky-side with the pink, and both have curlier spikes. not much skywing scale coloring is visible.)

anyways, I just started part 3 of the hybrid prince and I’d like to share any/all of my thoughts with you guys! Spoilers for parts 1 + 2, obviously! I will present these as they come to me, in the form of an unorganized list.

I am so in love with the aesthetic of the Dunegon isle AND the court. everything felt mildly cultish, mildly dreamlike and mildly surreal. Obviously this kind of falls apart as things get less confusing/the lore explains itself, but that’s okay. I do wish the palace looked a little more like the castle in labyrinth, but I wish that about everyone because I Love labyrinth.

IF I WAS UMBER AND I FOUND OUT MY CRUSH KNOWINGLY LED ME TO A PRISON TO BE STUCK THERE FOREVER, IT WOULD TAKE ME WAY MORE THAN THREE SENTENCES TO FORGIVE HIM? HELLO???

So cheese, wine, clocks and capybaras are canon now. And Aurora. The ancient nightwing queen had wine - do modern dragons still have wine or was it lost?

We’re all imagining Aurora as real life Aurora right. Right? I like to think she’s canon in every universe like Mike and that’s why she’s also in Sky cotl.

the dragon accords are really interesting to me and I hope they explain how/why those fell away, because they don’t show up at all in Darkstalker which is 1000 years later (right?) (I think so.)

skywing animus. Am I hurt? Yes. I really like their take on animus magic, and I guess I assumed it went all the way back to the beginning. It IS interesting that the skywings must’ve only sworn off of magic after the summer palace massacre in darkstalker. I know the skywing queen (presumably) kills Precipie, but did her bloodline die off before darkstalker? Or did Queen Summit also slime out her relatives?

The way things are going, MY guess is the next POV(s) will probably be Mulberry or Platypus? I guess it could be Quokka too, but Platypus just seems more involved out of the two of them.

I’m disappointed by how little we see Sora in this book. She’s relevant in the first part but it kind of just reads like she’s more of a plot device for Umber, especially considering a lot of her character points (ptsd) just aren’t really mentioned anymore after they arrive in the isle. I mean Umber LITERALLY seems to sleep off her entire character healing arc. Maybe this will change in the last part of the book? I hope so. It’s not like I expected her to be the main side character but… come on….

Book 16 definitely did not escape the WoF curse of fast romances…

I see a lot of critique about the wildwings not looking like WoF dragons, and I also see a lot of people getting REALLY upset about that critique (kind of how it always goes with this fandom. Ex: the graphic novel artstyle war.) I do agree that the fullbody spikes are more than a little out-of-place right now, but the books probably plan on explaining this. Umber makes a remark on lizards sharing the spikes, so it could easily just be a teaser for another tribe to be seen later down the line. After all, dragons from EVERYWHERE are coming here. Trust the process..?

Sharpwings grew on me a lot more than I expected them too. So did Dugong. I fucking love you Dugong I will give my life for you I don’t EVEN CARE WHAT ANYONE SAYS. don’t tell me if he betrays everyone in part 3. I don’t want to know. I don’t usually get so attached to any character like this but… dugong… you gotta fight back bro. Don’t let people lock you in your room for FOUR DAYS. GET BETTER FRIENDS OMG DUGONG. Dugong. :(

Seeing ancient technology/advancement is always fun because it just reinforces how BAD Darkstalker fucked everyone up!!

Farai: Go fuck them up already.

Murderbot:

Your wife is a wonderful, caring planetary leader and scientist <3

She goes on what's meant to be a mundane planetary survey expedition

this turns into a corporate death trap she and her team just barely escape with their lives

after the death trap she gets kidnapped by the corporation that made the death trap due to them not wanting to pay damages

again. she and her team miraculously escape with their lives

after what easily had to be 6+ months she finally arrives home

Your wife is traumatized, unwilling to talk about or address this trauma, and now has a co-dependent relationship with a rogue SecUnit

You and the family are really trying not to hold the 'rogue SecUnit' thing against the Rogue SecUnit. Not its fault. But it is sarcastic and glares a lot and is non-social and has installed literal spydrones everywhere. It's willing to kill anyone who hurts your wife or her extended family. This is, to put it bluntly, a bit of an Adjustment for everyone.

Your wife decides to retire from being a planetary leader. One one hand, you think it's a good idea for her to take the time to focus on her mental health and be with her loved ones. On the other hand, it's concerning all of this has made her give up one of her passions.

One of your older children is going on her first off-planetary survey. This is good, obviously :) It's just. you are all still stressing from the trauma of your last family member's planetary survey.

It's fine. It's going to be fine. Your brother-in-law is going to be with her, and a bunch of your wife's long-standing colleagues, and-- you have complex feelings about this-- the SecUnit. it will be fine.

It is not fine.

The SecUnit and your brother-in-law and your daughter have all been kidnapped by a mysterious force for mysterious reasons.

Now your wife-- who is meant to be on indefinite mental health leave-- is off to save them.

You and your third partner want to go with her. You want to. But you have no skills for this, and family at home you need to care for. So you stay on the sidelines, waiting, waiting, waiting.

THEY'RE OKAY EVERYONE IS OKAY

thank fuck. phew. okay. now they're going to come home and--

what do you meant they're not coming home

what do you mean your child has decided to go to university off world at the school that kidnapped her

what do you mean your wife, instead of retiring, has decided to become some sort of anti-corporate activist

Yeah okay. This is not a conversation to have over the feed with a 2+ month time delay. You need to have an in-person conversation. You'll make a family trip of it; Nana and Sofia will come with. This is a good, normal, family visit

soulseek - peer to peer downloading program, has most music you'd want. there's "rules" to it though and the UI is a little confusing, but you can figure it out. there's tutorials. i believe in you

cobalt.tools, ytiz.xyz, yt-dlp - mp3 downloaders, for the songs that you can't find on soulseek

musicbee - music player, extremely customiseable. reminds me of when i used itunes back in the day. has a lot of good features, including syncing music over to your phone

lastfm & listenbrainz - sites that keep track of your listening stats. i'd recommend this even if you still choose to use a music streaming service

syncedlyrics - cmd thing that gets you timed song lyrics, like the ones spotify has. there's no UI but it's easy enough to use. just grab the lyrics and timestamps it spits out and paste it into musicbee

music presence - program that shows what song you're listening to in your discord status, in case you use discord and enjoy the thought of other people seeing what you're listening to, which i do for some reason

MusicBrainz Picard - named after Starfleet's esteemed bald man, a program for all your tagging and renaming needs.

“Is he a mafia boss?”

“N-no.”

“Why does he have a prosthetic arm?”

“Because he got injured-“

“Can he come in and tell us how?!”

“I uh….will have to ask.”

design by 1cyfeathers with major changes by me

now that i'm back to creating dragon art i'm kinda happy with, i might actually finish things and open commissions soon.