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magpie-rat-king · 1 hour
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I love animals that are, like, the opposite of cryptids: we know for a fact they exist and have a clear idea of what they look like because we have photographs and individual specimens, but we haven’t the faintest idea where they’re coming from - they just keep showing up out of nowhere, and the locations of their actual population centres are a complete mystery.
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magpie-rat-king · 1 hour
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magpie-rat-king · 1 hour
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Because folks liked my latest pigeon comic so much, here's another pigeon piece!
I made this a couple years ago for a sadly now defunct publication called Pipe Wrench. I hope this piece helps spread more pigeon love.
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magpie-rat-king · 1 hour
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i think at the end of every war they should dump a cooler full of blood on the president
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magpie-rat-king · 1 hour
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At some point in your life, you were taught that being slightly annoying is an unforgivable sin. Maybe it was by your parents or a teacher or a friend or a bully or an older sibling. But someone taught you that being slightly annoying is a crime punishable by death.
You must unlearn this.
You must accept that all people will be annoying at some point or another in their lives, maybe all of their lives, and that this is okay. It is okay for strangers on the bus, it is okay for children in the grocery store, it is okay for people on social media, and it is okay for you.
If you ever want to truly love your fellow humans, if you ever want to truly love yourself, you must have forgiveness for being annoying.
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magpie-rat-king · 1 hour
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i too have a pressing question: why are straights like this
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magpie-rat-king · 23 hours
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A fawn curled up beside a fake deer which is used for target practice. 
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magpie-rat-king · 23 hours
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Also hey, cultural history time: The reason why cats are associated with women wasn't ultimately and originally about women as sly, cruel, or capricious creatures, but about cats as mothers to their kittens. And yes, sure, reducing womanhood to motherhood and a woman's worth to her fertility is Much Bad, but nonetheless I want to stress that the reason cats became the symbol animal of so many goddesses and were associated with women from thereon wasn't over some "cats and women are sly and selfish, dogs and men are straightforward and loyal uwu" dichtonomy.
It was about cats' tendency to go "I am 4kg of whoop-ass and if you try to touch my eight beautiful children I will fucking kill you."
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magpie-rat-king · 23 hours
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My favorite thing about Sweeney Todd is that Sweeney gets into the killing-and-baking people business because he’s a deeply broken man destroyed by an unjust and corrupt system that cost him his freedom and family and has been driven mad by revenge.
And Mrs Lovett does it because somthin wrong with her <3
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magpie-rat-king · 23 hours
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Hey btw please don't make jokes about being a "boring adult" or how adulthood is boring when you're around small kids. They'll believe you, and growing up with the idea that their final destination is as bleak as it is inevitable is not a healthy way to live. Even if they don't know it consciously, whenever they look at adults they are looking at their future. Like even if your life does suck, please don't frame it as just an inevitable part of being an adult.
If you know someone's kid whose interests and tastes are loud, shiny, sparkly and all over the place, and you're absolutely overwhelmed by being suddenly rapidly infodumped about a cartoon you had not heard of 30 seconds ago and about everything they've been getting into, and you're caught off-guard by them suddenly switching gears and askining you why you're still into the same things as you were a year ago, that aren't even that loud, sparkly and fun, please don't say something like
"Well when you're a boring adult you start to like boring things like that and then like those forever :)" Like don't fucking say that, they'll believe you. It doesn't make them feel fun and special to be told you think you're boring in comparison. They take their spark for granted and being told that they'll lose it one day is awful. And it's not even true!
It's far more truthful to tell them about how when you've been a grownup for long enough, you've had to the time to try all of the things and you know for sure which ones you like the most. And that's why it's so important that they also try everything, at least once, so that they'll know for sure whether they will or won't like it. Being a grownup isn't about giving up doing new fun things, it's about finding all the things you like so much that you never get bored of them.
Boldly claiming that you've done everything when you're not very worldly might seem dishonest, but a four-year-old can't tell the difference between a century and a decade. As far as they are concerned, their nearest neighbourhood is the whole universe, and you have been alive forever. Don't tell them the world is boring, and that being bored of it is inevitable.
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magpie-rat-king · 23 hours
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“Lord Byron gets up at two. I get up, quite contrary to my usual custom … at 12. After breakfast we sit talking till six. From six to eight we gallop through the pine forest which divide Ravenna from the sea; we then come home and dine, and sit up gossiping till six in the morning. I don’t suppose this will kill me in a week or fortnight, but I shall not try it longer. Lord B.’s establishment consists, besides servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it… . [P.S.] I find that my enumeration of the animals in this Circean Palace was defective … . I have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks, two guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane. I wonder who all these animals were before they were changed into these shapes.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley on the lifestyle of Lord Byron (via timemarauder)
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magpie-rat-king · 24 hours
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There should be more books that have chapter titles, and then a little summary of the chapter below them. You don't have to be boring with them, or spoil the whole chapter by telling what happens - you could make it vague, like a prophecy of something you know is going to happen, but you don't know how, or with what results.
Having one-sentence summaries like "Chapter 12 - where the Queen's hound makes a fatal mistake" and you're like oh shit does this refer to the queen's actual hunting dog, or the guy that's mockingly called her lapdog? "Chapter 24 - where justice finds a thief, and a thief finds justice" and you're like ooooh shit the cute little pickpocket is going to get caught, and then it turns out that shit, she does get caught, but by someone who actually agrees that she's right to steal to help feed her family, and gets her help instead, which is justice.
You already know what's going to happen, but not how.
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magpie-rat-king · 24 hours
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You don't have to insist that any of your weird shit rituals you like doing are some sort of a remnant of ancient pre-christian pagan traditions that trace back thousands of years. You can just do weird pagan shit right now. Every time I'm home alone and I hear a noise that could be a ghost, I say out loud: "fuck off or start paying rent." And whatever caused that noise is gone.
My last ancestor who didn't know what christianity was probably didn't know what rent was, either.
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magpie-rat-king · 2 days
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Another random idea that's either already a thing, or then there's some super obvious logistical reason why it isn't a thing: Scheduled mail service.
Some place where you can send any mail you want to send someone beforehand, and then they store it for you for the desired amount of time before sending it to whoever you wanted to receive it. So that you could write your christmas cards in february, send them to Scheduled Mail, and then they store it for 8-9 months in their facility before sending them just in time to have them arrive to your loved ones by christmas.
You could buy birthday gifts for people at random times of the year, wrap them, and then send them to be stored at the service facilities until the desired date so the gift arrives for their birthday. Never having to worry about getting something into the mail at the exact right time, just remember to do that at some point and the service gets them there at the right time.
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magpie-rat-king · 2 days
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magpie-rat-king · 2 days
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Suddenly hit with the vivid memory of when a cat had kittens and I was maybe four years old, and an older kid (I think a cousin?) kept saying with disgust and horror that she was "eating the afterbirth" (as mammals do), but I didn't know what that meant and started asking, only to be ignored or dismissed by the adults, who also wouldn't let me see no matter how FRANTIC I got with my questions, even when I started bawling my eyes out. Because, see, my interpretation of that sentence was that she was eating the kittens. What else would you conclude if you don't know the word "afterbirth," you're too little to know anything else comes out with the babies, and everyone is acting like it's something too nasty to explain to you in words? I don't remember when I figured out that they meant something else but I remember four-year-old me being devastated all day and terrified the next morning that all the kittens would be gone. All they had to say was "it's yucky stuff that was on the kittens, so she's cleaning up!" but no they could evidently not come up with anything more creative than just "it's nothing!" And worse yet my questions made them laugh. They LAUGHED at the unfathomable violence I was sure had happened in that cardboard box. Can you even imagine how demented I thought these people were. I was four years old already thinking I was the only rational compassionate being in a house full of sick sadists. Please try to entertain the questions of children, especially if they seem upset. You never know when they just think you're a fucked up asshole hiding a kitten massacre.
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magpie-rat-king · 2 days
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