snarbs

my beautiful pinned post

I am snarbs (or maxwell if you are so inclined)

29 years old, peculiar she/her

from the sexy part of canada (maritimes)

this is my blog where I post some art

outside here, not particularly active on public social media

mostly just sharing fanart here; I am a bit precious about posting my original stuff. for the foreseeable that fanart is mostly pjsk 🙂‍↕️

#vivid bird squad <- look at my AU about VBS as hardcore birders (here is the intro). thank you

commissions by quote only, message me if interested

I like to chat and meet people! please feel free to send me asks, etc. if it's about something I enjoy / have talked about I will probably draw something in response.

If even one person sees my birdsquad drawings and looks a little more closely at a bird the next time they go outside, then my work here is done 😤 it's such a wonderful hobby / lifestyle / way of connecting with the world and appreciating where you are... everyone should have at least one naturalist interest and learn some names of who we share the earth with 🙂‍↕️ be that birds or insects or reptiles or plants or anything else.

huge text wall of an ask but i do ☝️ have questions: how close to canon do you see the storyline of this AU being, and do you have bird-related variations on the major plot points (an being torn up about kohane. seeing more birds than her…….?) also, do they have favourite birds & are these favourites different from their spark birds?

hi hi! thank you for your message :] one of the wonderful things about birds imo is that anywhere you go, any time of year, there are usually birds who literally prefer to be there... everyone should go to ebird.org/explore > explore regions and see their local birds (once you're on a region's page I recommend "Illustrated Checklist" from the left-hand panel).

you got it, actually - a lot of the emotional beats I imagine for the birding au timeline are purposefully directly parallel to the tone and dynamics of the canonical story... i think biggest difference out the gate is that because it's all based around a big year - a year long road trip to tally as many birds as possible in the contiguous US, basically - this is what bird!RADder (BIRDder?) Also Did. instead of the lightning-in-a-bottle legendary presence of RAD WEEKEND, An and Akito's ambitions are here catalyzed by the extended mythological absence of Ken et al.. which has some implications for their characterization and relationship that radiate out to how all 4 members of vbs relate to each other. an and akito are kind of orbiting each other for that year being messy and so fucking 15 years old its painful. i have a lot i've thought about with that actually but there is an illustration i need to do to go with it so i'll share when I can 🙂‍↕️

for An and Kohane's issues... Kohane of course has her thing of learning at a remarkable pace. going birding 1-on-1 with Taiga she does see more birds than An at times, but I think the insecurity would arise less from the number of birds and more from an ability to locate and identify them on her own. Like hearing a bird singing somewhere in a line of shrub and Kohane is the one who manages to get eyes on it first and point it out... Sometimes people with fancy cameras also get more recognition in birding spaces since there's this obvious visual impact of their photos. It's this idea of Kohane becoming a known player - you know, rolling up to a stakeout and other birders there whom she's never met before are all, "oh, you're Kohane! i've seen your name around", maybe they bring up a bird she and An saw together but theyre only really speaking to Kohane. It should be gratifying to An, that kohane cares about this world now and had been welcomed into it as someone with something to offer, but something feels complicated about it....

favourite birds <3 I think it's pretty common that people's spark birds differ from their favourite birds! I love gulls the most but my spark bird is the long-tailed duck, for example.

Kohane... I think she really likes Black Phoebes, which are very common, charismatic, and charming (and in general I can see her with a soft spot for the flycatchers). She also enjoys Lesser Goldfinches, which travel in groups and are always chattering like they're having intelligent little conversations with each other. I always imagined her liking House Sparrows for being cute and widespread and comfortable around people, which would make Akito roll his eyes lol. I'm still trying to pick a spark bird for her, but it's one she sees with An some time into their endeavours that makes things "click" for her and solidifies that she really loves this for herself, too. The bird she first finds that's mentioned here is a Northern Parula, though.

An really likes Steller's Jays... A lot of people around vivid street have associated her with them for a long time (because of her hair and personality and love of making funny bird noises) so she has a familial fondness for them. they are like cousins to her. similarly she holds affection for some of the large waders like American Avocets and Black-necked Stilts, which are iconic avian inhabitants of vivid street (black-necked stilt is even the logo for the "Friends of Vivid Street", the nonprofit that advocates for the habitat there). as established, she doesn't have a specific spark bird, since she's been birding since she could hold binoculars. she's lately also been into Bushtits...

Akito, hmm... I think he likes warblers. Whereas we enjoy normal warbler migration in the east, in the west warbler season is a rush to hunt down the scattered eastern vagrants that show up far from home. for some reason i also have in my mind that he has affection for the icterids (blackbirds including orioles, etc). his favourite places however are the hot deserts of the southwest (mojave + sonoran + chihuahuan) and while he enjoys the warbler game, he loves the desert specialist birds like roadrunners, thrashers, phainopepla, etc. his spark bird is the Western Tanager, which is a relatively common bird in LA, but one you might not see unless you're paying attention.

Toya is most obvious - he has a special interest in gulls, especially the "large white-headed gulls" (Larus). their ubiquity, tenacity, grace, and the infinitely deep identification challenges they pose all appeal to him. he also dabbles in shorebirds, particularly the Calidris genus (small sandpipers which are colloquially called "peeps" - very cute) for many of the same reasons. He seems to appreciate birds that are often frustrating and overlooked as a result. his spark bird is the Brandt's Cormorant (another story for another time), so totally different, but another coastal bird.

initially i thought it was abt some apocalyptic shit, but then i read some more and realized that that wasn’t the case… vbs didn’t look to be in any danger at first glance so that should’ve been my first clue. so the kids r fine!! they’re fine!!

anyway, i found this au really interesting and i learned some new things thanks to you! plus, the art is rlly amazing and an’s design speaks to me. girl why are you so cute even

the apocalypse 😭 hahahaha i get it they're really sooo geared up. but nope they're just locking in to look at this thing:

the kids are fine... as fine as anyone who has decided to be a birder can ever be, I suppose. I'm super happy you could learn anything! i like birding so much and it's lots of fun to share that with others… i have some more silly primer things (in the vein of that little dictionary from the original post) i might do on other Birding Culture Stuff with VBS later, so stick around for that ig.

and pleased you like my Ans too <3 she is so special to me… one of the first things I had to do for this AU was try to figure out how to keep the cute charm of her hair while putting it in a style that is at least somewhat more practical for traipsing at length through the wilderness hahaha. steal her look

the Big Year is a truly bizarre phenomenon within the already bizarre world of birding, but it is indeed real! Not that common at its most extreme (since you need the time and money to fuck around for a whole year), but enough so that I have personally crossed crossed paths irl with a few people doing them. You can also do a big month, a big day, or anything more reasonable like that.

for anyone who's curious, I'll leave some more media recommendations about Big Years below!

thank you!! I love them too!!!!! here's how i think they would carry binoculars.

THANK YOU!! it is never too late to get into birding. honestly most people get into birding at like 50+ so you probably could get a pretty good head start (unless youre 50, in which case, power to you)

here is my collection of dumb images from ebird_memes I assigned to vbs characters while drawing everything.

i was thinking! since kohane has count pearl in canon and seems to ramble about her a bit, would her interest in snakes carry over? ik north america has quite a lot of snakes in areas (jealous) so whilst they’re exploring do you think she’d go peeping under wood and leaves to find them just out of curiosity and enjoyment? if they’re camping she goes off for a while and then comes back to show them her photos of snakes. maybe akito and an are still grossed out by it lol

i also would like to know their opinions on lawns. just plain trimmed grass. particularly akito’s i can imagine a wildlife-loving akito going on an incensed rant every time they drive past a neatly trimmed lawn LMAOO. and since i imagine toya’s family, if you are keeping close to his canon backstory, are very much Lawn People based on what their house looks like would one of his points of contention with his dad just be. turning their lawn into an actually inhabitable place. i think it’s funny. toya tossing wildflower seeds off his balcony

you mentioned they’re a little older than in canon, did you have any thoughts on what they’d be doing in terms of education/work? college and stuff and also that equipment is expensive as shit so are they working to fund stuff? or do they rely on Bird Nepotism which made me laugh really hard btw

apologies for the long ask!!!! as i said birds aren’t really my usual niche but seeing my favourite characters in any form of wildlife watching made me really happy and now i want to return to the vbs go bat watching fic. i hope that you are having an awesome day and see many birds. also yes ena should be angsting it up whilst akito plots out birding trails its funny

Yayyy hi thank you for your kind words! 🥺🥺 people’s response has been soooo nice and unexpected and I have had such a great time reading everyone’s tags.… I was truly making this for myself and as a love letter to my friends and our wacky lifestyle, so I’m happy other people can enjoy it as well!

I'll put a cut here for everyone's sake 😌

au where instead of trying to surpass rad weekend, vbs are birders trying to beat a big year record. vivid bird squad

additional thoughts and context and such below the cut for the interested ✌️🐦🔭