beater syndrome or: "why people misunderstand vriska and kirito for the same reason"

so a little while ago i made a random shitpost that ended me up with this image

^cursed entity

and it's come back to haunt me with ungogly revelations which i will now share because i have to it feels important

screw it this is gonna be my pinned post from now on

up all night posters delight... wake in the morn wish you werent born

sea of-

... uh oh

kenzie, please, don't. don't open a gate into shardspace that's gonna go horribly. girl please. defiant is actually right in this im pretty sure

also the further into ward i get the more im getting alarmed by how fucking high kenzie's tinker ranking is

like she's gotta be at least a tinker 8, given how insane the stuff she's been making with limited time as an 11y old...

I've been fed, walked and watered and I've slept enough and been out of the internet and I'm doing crafts.

Why am I still angry.

I walked right into this one like a blind horse into a revolving door.

If I were an evil emperor in a fantasy world, I would have a an enormous aviary full of exotic birds that are exceptionally well cared for. They would be from a distant enough land that there would be very few people in my kingdom that knew much about them, they would be a friendly but not overly territorial species, and moderately intelligent. Like puffins. They would not, crucially, be able to imitate sounds and 'speak', but they would be very trainable and curious. Occasionally importing new birds for my aviary would be the Big Frivolous Indulgence that my political enemies make fun of.

I will also have a sorceror in my employ. When a hero or a renegade or a political rival is in a situation where I can safely kill them, they will instead be turned into a bird and added to my aviary. I would not brag about this; it would be a complete secret, known only to me and my sorceror. In situations where I capture multiple people working together, only one would go in the aviary;the others can be imprisoned or killed or whatever. If they escape and I reacquire them later, another one can go in the aviary. The point here is that nobody going in the aviary can safely assume that another bird in there is their teammate.

Because I would be trickling real birds in there, too. And I would train some of them to do 'intelligent' things like tap out prime numbers or scratch shapes into the dirt with their beaks. I would train some of them to pick at the locks and bars as if they were trying to escape. I would not train them all the same way, or train many of them at all.

Sometimes, a new bird goes into the aviary -- fellow revolutionary? Or just a bird? Is it trying to communicate to you that it's human, or just being friendly and imitating you because that's what smart friendly birds do? People would develop opinions and theories over time. They'd amass in a group of the smartest ones, pretty sure that they're closest four or five friends are humans, are using their invented little language of wing-flaps and trills with a human mind behind it... but can they ever really be sure?

Most people, when going into the aviary, would assume that all of the birds are captured enemies. So why are some of them hard to have ongoing communication with, to learn about, to plan with? Are these the natural communication barriers of someone in a bird body, or does being a bird make them stupider over time? Will that happen to them also?

Sometimes, if I capture a pair, I'll imprison them separately, then turn one into a bird and put them in the aviary at the same time as a real bird that's trained to have a couple of their partner's mannerisms.

When I interact with the birds, even in private, I won't secretly mock them or make clever veiled references to their past or act at all like I remember that they were once human. They are my birds, that I imported at great expense. And I've brought a treat for them; some fresh fruit, and another friend to share it with! A new bird!

Or is it?

Hey Derin what the fuck

girl help my azdarchid dragon mourning post is blowing up again

some people have such dogshit takes on it too

"oh but big cats" those are land-based ambush predators, that's the fucking dromeosaur niche, you're completely missing my point

"oh what about *animal in completely different niche*"

now some fucker apparently thought i thought pterosaurs are the ancestors of birds (??????????????) (no they're an entirely different branch of archosauria you dolt, you think i don't know this?!)

and then they had the AUDACITY to say the words "nothing has a reason to evolve like that now"

WDYM "doesn't have a reason?????" what does that even mean???

you think being a big predator with a ridiculous range and extremely efficient long-distance locomotion wouldn't be an incredibly effective strategy now???? are you fucking stupid???? the only reason there's no equivalent is that none of the bodyplans that survived the kpg have the right groundwork for it to evolve in a reasonable timeframe! it's pure chance! it always is!

im going to start killing

anyway: blocked

"the air was different then so now flying animals can't get that big anymore"

??????????

girl you're thinking about the carboniferous and giant arthropods. and even that got disproven a while ago.

but the way they phrased it was as if the actual density of the atmosphere was different enough for flight mechanics to be meaningfully different in the cretaceous, which is utterly nonsensical

that post has truly become a magnet for the confidently incorrect

dead end dot com / convers8