u/hooosegow

feel free to make suggestions for large wide cages (need something that is off the floor)

anyways, wanted to give our caique's cage an upgrade and have been looking at the A & E Company Double Flight cage.

it's high off the ground to avoid drafts and the cat if she feels nosey (no comments about her please, they've lived together for over 5 years and she's geriatric - no advice required), and i just don't like him near the floor in general.

it's also very wide so he can do all his shenanigans, and i can implement some bowl-less feeding options and move his food around so he has to play 'find it' rather than just have everything in easy eyeshot.

does anyone have any experience using this cage? reviews are almost entirely great (4.5 to 5 stars) but there are a couple notes that make me a bit worried:

tension doors that can pop open (could probably just zip-tie these, we already have snap-hooks on every door of every cage we own cuz he's an escape artist lol)

the gap where a divider would go being a tad wide. someone said they put the dowel perches that came with the cage in there to keep their budgies in. someone else posted a pic of 2 conures (about caique size) and by comparison it didn't seem TOO wide.

there was one review (don't know if its true) where the person claimed the cage came apart and her bird didn't survive. which seems like either a one-off issue or they just didn't put it together right.

in any case, hoping for some outside input! and as i said, cage suggestions are welcome too!

thanks in advance!

every now and again i'm reminded of the fact that there's a chance i'm going to outlive my feathered son, and the worst kind of pain imaginable is waiting for me. the vet thinks he'll live about 30 years (he's already 8), but caiques can live anywhere between 27 and 40 years. god willing, i'll still be alive and have to say goodbye one day (although the thought of going before him is also heartbreaking for a different reason). why did i do this to myself!!

not expecting anything from this post, just sharing and i'm sure others can relate.

my son for tax

so my partner came out as trans like a couple years ago (mtf, all pronouns 36), and they're obviously excited to explore a lot of stuff about it! we're no strangers to the queer community (i'm ace/pan) and a lot of our friends are enby, pan, or some flavor of queer.

the problem is my partner has been using a lot of gendered talk that my conservative mom used to about certain things that i figured they'd know better than to do?

like they seem to be pretty black-and-white about clothing, calling certain things boy clothes and certain things girl clothes. and like, i get what they mean, but considering our friends, i would've figured they would understand that that type of language is offensive to people already struggling with being misgendered and labeled this or that BECAUSE of people making assumptions based on clothes.

we've always followed a philosophy of "clothes have no genders" and "you can't gender someone based on clothes"...and yet they're doing it a lot lately? like the other day they told me "you look more like a boy than me" because i was....wearing pants and a hat? and that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. like i get what they were saying but still, that's offensive, especially to enby people who get that all the time, and also me who has literally grown up with my mom shoving the "right way to look like a woman" down my throat since childhood (i'm talking locking me in a bathroom and forcing makeup on me).

they will also sometimes speak to things they have no experience about and claiming to. someone (afab) will be discussing a traditionally gendered topic and they will jump in with "as a queer woman, i feel this way about that" and i totally get the enthusiasm. but they were raised a boy. some of those things they literally have no experience with, just opinions. it doesn't feel appropriate to weigh in on. to listen yes, to be supportive absolutely! but their experience is different. it's made me uncomfortable before, particularly with stuff that i actually /do/ have experience with and know they don't. and then they give a take that...comes out kinda wrong or insensitive. ESPECIALLY when some of it is very sensitive (that i probably can't post on reddit). they don't have a history of this with other topics they don't have experience in, so i can only guess they're just eager to jump in on traditionally female-gendered topics.

my partner and i can talk about anything, so that's not the issue. i'd just like advice on how to phrase things in a way that won't sound like an attack on their identity. i know they're excited to explore this new chapter in their life, i'm just scared they're going to start turning into my mom with all the gatekeeping feminine stuff, or start alienating our friends for not presenting "properly" or something.

what are some of the silliest signs that there is a feathered child running your life?

i'll start! every single banana in my freezer (i freeze them for smoothies) has a beak-sized bite taken out of it.

I am coming to the end of a longfic series (everything is written, just editing needs to happen) and can officially say im burnt out lol.

I know that the best thing for me to do right now is not start any new projects, focus on the remaining edits, and then take a long break from writing.

but omfg I wanna write! I already have my next 3 projects lined up and all I want is to sit down and just go go go! but I kno if I do that anything I write will be sub par and not make me happy, plus i kno I have a higher chance of brain fog which will lead to frustration. even tho im already frustrated! how can I be burnt out and simultaneously itching for more??

anyone else ever go thru this? ​​

Wasn't sure if this counted as a question or a discussion, I suppose both?

Anyways, I have read plenty of classical stories where authors will phonetically write this sort of dialogue. (think like "'ave" instead of "have" for someone with an accent), but I'm curious how more modern audiences and writers are doing it in their fics.

Do you shy away from it? Letting prose dictate that speech is slurred or accents exist? Does it come off as childish to you, or dated? Or do you want the audience to know exactly how this character sounds from the get-go? Curious what the sentiment is these days.

and i don't mean writers block, im talking youre driving or at work and your brain is just spitting prose and dialogue thats so good, yet the second you sit down to write anything its not half as good? I swear my hands impede my brains ability to write, its so dumb and sometimes annoying lol

it's been a year of writing for this franchise. one 2 part fic, 10 and 15 chapters each, and i'm on chapter 10 of part 2. i can already feel the sadness creeping in! yeah, I've got 5 bonus stories line up and a handful of one-shots set in the future with them but STILL.

the first time i wrote a longfic i was blissfully unaware of the grief waiting for me at the end of it, and i learned that writers grief was a real thing. and oh boy it was! i was out of sorts for at least a month after it, and thought i'd never write a long fic again...then i did XD. this one is even longer! (107k words vs 120k sitting). and had so many more emotional twists and turns!

i love these characters so much. i'm going to miss this journey with them, figuring things out with them, sharing their story with others, reading comments and reactions to their nonsense. i'll probably have everything posted before august (i have a 1 a week schedule), and i'm just so not ready for it to be over!

nobody ever warns you about the mourning part of a fic when you first start writing, it just his you like a freight train T_T

guys im so miffed rn! my one drab/1shot collection has been steadily ticking up and I was finally at 99 today! got #100 and a comment, super stoked until....a guest making vague comments and talking about being a comic artist. im so disappointed ive been waiting for 100 and now it just feels like ive been robbed T-T screw these gd bots!

we've all been there. writing writing writing, then the editing comes, and we realize this one scene we love just doesn't jive with the story anymore, so to the abyss it goes! let us mourn them today! what is a scene you had to cut from your story that you really liked? be as detailed as you like!

i ended up having to cut an entire confession scene from one of my longfics because the way it ended would have completely conflicted with the characters dynamic, and made the big 'OH' moment for one of them kind of irrelevant. i liked the other parts of the story way more than the confession scene, but it had some gems in it that still makes me shed a tear. i've kept it in a separate file and may make it an unrelated oneshot cuz oof, some of the angst is so juicy.

ETA: Thank you to everyone who responded! you guys gave me such awesome answers and things to think about! i ended up realizing that i was overthinking it, and had this preconceived notion in my head that a plot needs to be huge and/or world altering to count. just based on everything here, it seems i'm on the right track after all. thanks guys!

allow me to explain.

so i thought i knew what a plot was before i endeavored to write a slow burn longfic. while i am a-ok with the romance being the driving plot, i kind of want to give it a bit more meat than that.

but after going online, and scouring some reddit posts for plot ideas, i'm starting to think i have zero idea what a plot actually is in a broad sense.

internet says character development is a plot. reddit says character development is a BYPRODUCT of plot. but even before that, my understanding of a plot was something grandiose. an fanciful adventure, a cataclysmic event, a world changing endeavor, a journey with a purpose, or going through life changing events like marriages, graduations, births, or navigating deaths.

but again, when i check online, it's like EVERYTHING can be a plot. then i read an article where this lady listed 6 "tried and true" plots: working together, rivalry (sports or otherwise), deal-making, forced proximity, newcomers/new settings, second meetings. and i was like...those aren't plots, those are just elements of a larger story.

and that got me thinking wait...do i just not understand what a plot actually is?

because, as per the planning stage, my story has SEVERAL of those plot elements going on at once, but it still doesn't feel like there is any real plot besides the characters meeting and overcoming obstacles and helping each other get passed past trauma. there are some outside elements - the planet is desolate so everyone working together to just stay alive is a constant factor. but that doesn't feel like enough of a plot?

so...wtf? i feel like i just don't get it. and i feel like this is a pitfall of writing fics, because you are GIVEN a plot to work with. this is post canon, the driving plot doesn't really effect these 2 characters (one is a side character, one is an OC).

or maybe i'm overthinking. adhd does that.