Shouting Into The Void

But the one thing they never say,

The one things that is definitely true

Is that Tony Stark is the Poster boy for never giving up.

That pita is now challah

So is this laffah

A baguette will work too

Half of the humanfuckers are like, "ok, but they symbolize the pressure to homogenize, bc almost all of their differentiating traits are internal, while ours can't be hidden, which makes it a very common and understandable fantasy," and they're right. And the other half is like, "they're so delightfully squishy and fragile and their parts are weird," and they're right.

I LOVE birds. Adore them. Obsessed with them. I see a vulture on the side of the road and I squeal because they’re so COOL. I plant honeysuckle outside my window to watch hummingbirds. I spend hours looking at bird photos for this blog. In some circles my name is “Auntie Birdie” and in others “Bird Lady.”

And I am strongly against parrots as pets… even though I own one.

She is a rescue, whose previous owners thought it would be fun and cute. When she was a baby, they adored her. Then she started to grow up, and so did her demands. They couldn’t keep up with having jobs and coming home to a screaming toddler every day, knowing that this was the next 40+ years.

So now I own her, but honestly she owns me. I lament every day that she wasn’t born in the wild with a flock. I am twisted into a pretzel trying to keep her engaged and happy, and it’s a full-time job, and it’s never enough. I love her with every beat of my heart, but I would still rather see her living in the wild where she belongs.

There are some days when she’s using her “oh no I’m lost my flock isn’t here” scream intended to travel through the rainforest… Inside my home… When I’m just a room away… I just think about the average person who wants a parrot, and I wish they knew.

They aren’t pets. They aren’t cute little cuddle things that talk. They aren’t the funny, silly things on YouTube.

They are wild animals that are meant to be flying free and foraging in trees and making nests and screaming as loud as they want as much as they want.

I wholly recognize that there are lots of people like me who dedicate much of their life, time, energy, and money to keeping their parrot happy.

But I also know, for a fact, how many parrots suffer. How many rip out their feathers from anxiety and depression and from being unable to cope with the stress of captivity; instead of a flock and an entire forest or plains or mountain, they now depend on you, in your home.

How many parrots are snatched from the wild to be sold as pets. To be forced to live and breed in small cages so their young can be sold as pets.

How many breeders see them as high value items, a market good. There are good breeders, but there are also breeding mills. There are parrots kept in a garage for the sole purpose of breeding. There are parrots who don’t get to fly, to play, to run around.

So if you really want a parrot, ask yourself this.

Are you ready to have a toddler for the rest of your life? Are you ready to be a parent whose child never grows up, never matures? Are you ready to have a pet that you can’t easily board when you go on vacation?

Are you ready to try to be a substitute for an entire flock, to be a substitute for the wonders of the natural world?

There are so many that are suffering. So many surrendered to rescues. Too many. Way, way too many.

(gets violently shoved aside)

Rebecca Sugar and the crewniverse risked the entire show getting flat-out cancelled in order to show that wedding, only for people to say it "wasn't progressive enough" and was "giving in to stereotypes" to put Ruby in a wedding dress. Never mind that Ruby kept getting dubbed over as a guy in localization, Sapphire was unmistakably feminine in every version, and putting Ruby in the dress was a flagrant way to say, "fuck you, you can't pretend this is a straight couple; this is a queer couple and a queer wedding."

Dana Terrace has said that The Owl House only exists with its intended queerness because of what Rebecca Sugar and her team accomplished with Steven Universe. Hell, there are multiple members of the Steven Universe team who went on to work on the other shows mentioned in the OP--Steven Sugar, for example, who is Rebecca Sugar's brother and inspiration for SU in the first place (as well a background artist on the show), is currently an artist on The Owl House. There are people who got their start on Steven Universe who now only have the opportunity to tell more queer stories because of Steven Universe's success.

I'm not even 30 years old yet and I'm still old enough to remember when being gay was fully illegal in the United States. Not gay marriage, but literally just BEING GAY. It wasn't that long ago, and the fact that today in 2021 I can turn on the TV and watch gay cartoons intended for children? I never thought I'd see it. Fucking ever.

My first cartoon queer couple, in 1999, were turned into "cousins."

I didn't watch Legend of Korra, but when I heard about the ending scene, I looked it up and then burst into tears.

When I heard about the one Pearl song, I think it's called "It's Over Isn't It," I looked it up and just sat there breathless.

Stop fucking shitting on what had to come before so that what comes now could be.