An Ode To The Artifacts Of Inefficiency

Xemnas' pronouns are "what's left / all there ever was"

bonus Demyx interaction below cut:

In my own little 'I can help *this* one' scream into the universe, I've been de-stringing the feet of the pigeons that live in the park across from my office.

Pigeons (rock doves) are feral, and they live in our cities. With our rubbish. They get string (human hair, fishing line, threads, etc) wrapped around their feet when they do their little circling dance, or from their nests, and they can't get it off themselves. So they limp along as best they can, for as long as they can. They're pretty tough little guys! If you start to look, you'll probably notice a lot of them are missing toes or have strictures holding their feet in painful positions. Some even have both feet bound together.

But the good news is - it's actually SUPER easy to help them!

This little guy had thread around one foot, and wire and nylon line around the other. I removed it on my lunch break on Monday, and now he's already walking easier and won't be losing any more toes.

The photo is from the next day, because he came back to hang out again without hesitation. They're very friendly.

People really hate pigeons, which is a bit unfair considering we are the ones who brought them in to our cities in the first place. If you want to make a world of difference to some lives that don't get a lot of love any more, check out the below for everything you need to know.

Stringfoot Pigeon Help

What is stringfoot?

What is stringfoot? A brief overview.

My part of an art trade with @melkychi!!! Yay!!!

❤️💚

Valentine's day quick sketch

PIGEON SORIKI

Had the pleasure of illustrating two enchanted cards for Disney Lorcana's 7th set, Archazia's Island. All Is Found was the first card I illustrated by myself and it was such a joy ❄️

Art Director: Giulia Riva ©Disney/Ravensburger

More dragons, Escolas (Imperial) and Enoby (Veilspun)

doodled this Monday before a water science lecture ^-^ it’s low effort but also like. passing period

An artdump of Elsa as she appears in the holiday short Olaf's Frozen Adventure (2017).

my love for this woman is kinda debilitating sometimes. i could gush about the benevolent ice queen for paragraphs

8, 17, and 20 for Xion :)

We meet Xion when she's like an empty husk baby so we actually see several of her firsts lmao

8. First time they took a risk, or the biggest risk they've ever taken

Her first time running away from the Organization. Early on, due to Sora memory shenanigans or amth, she loses the ability to use her Keyblade and doesn't return to the castle for several days so no one will find out. For someone who has never known anything outside the Organization and the absolute authority it holds over her, that is kind of an insane thing to do. It's also very much like a kid breaking something and lying about it so they won't get punished. And she is consciously avoiding punishment; Xion says with certainty that if the higher-ups find out, they'll turn her into a mindless Dusk. Now, this might be a bluff on Xemnas' part, since we never actually see this punishment carried out on anyone, but it's apparently not an unprecedented threat, since Axel gets threatened with it too later on. Regardless, she knew it was a risk, and it was probably a bigger one then she even thought it was. Xion's position in the Organization is secured only by the fact that she is a unique Replica. If she proved to be, in Xemnas' eyes, not only useless, but unpredictable and hard to control, they would have no reason to keep her alive. I think the only reason they keep trying with her is because all the members who know how to make Replicas die at C.O., so they can't just pull another blank off the line and slot it in her place.

It's quite sad, in that way. She's just a kid having the same hide-and-hope-for-the-best reaction that lots of kids do to getting a bad grade, or getting in trouble at school, and for most kids their feeling of it being a life or death situation is just catastrophizing. With her, it probably would have been, if they didn't still want to make use of her.

17. First favorites - favorite color, animal, movie, etc.

Favorite food: I mean, ice cream, but tbh I'm not sure if that counts because it seems ro be the only thing she's ever eaten??? I don't thinks she needs food so idk what she would have eaten otherwise

Favorite color: Blue. The color of sea salt ice cream, the color of the ocean, the color of the sky, and, assuming she sees herself how we do, her own eye color. She likes that she shares it with Roxas, too, and for her, she just kind of likes that she. Has eyes. Like they're the window to the soul and if she has them that means she has a soul idk what I'm saying

Favorite animal: I think she likes fish. Particularly pretty, decorative fish like brightly colored goldfish or koi. I can imagine her walking past some kind of stall in the Twilight Town commons and seeing a beta or smth for sale and being enchanted by the bright colors. The one she likes the most are those kinds of angelfish with the wavy fins you always see in like dentist office fish tanks

Favorite place: you'd assume the Clock Tower, or just Twilight Town, generally, but I think she likes those more for the associations then the place in of itself. I think her favorite place for its own sake is the beach. There may have been some Sora influencing her, but when she starts bringing back seashells for Roxas when he's in a coma for a while, she seems to come up with that on her own. She could've gone with like. Pine cones from the woods outside Twilight Town or ice cream sticks or something, but she goes apparently out of her way to stop by the beach after every mission to grab a shell, so I think she just likes the beach

20. First time they felt accepted/welcomed by another character

The first times Roxas and Axel call her their friend verbally, and I say times bc it was on separate occasions and i think she probably interpreted them differently (Axel's away for a good chunk of time and they don't meet until after she's known Roxas for a while.) With Roxas I honestly don't know that it was feeling accepted so much as like. Baby duck imprinting on him, because it happens on the same day she tales her hood off for the first time and it seems to be the first time she's truly conscious of her surroundings. She's more curious or intrigued about the idea of friends then anything else, and when she observes that Axel and Roxas are close she asks if she can be their friend like she's asking if she can try a bite of food.

When Axel also calls her his friend, I imagine her world opens up a little because it informs her that friendship is something she can have with everyone and not just Roxas. She's also more alive at this point so she's probably more aware that someone claiming her as a friend means something deeper then just a name, you know?

Xion does have to deal with isolation and even outright hostility later on, but at the beginning, she thankfully didn't have much trouble finding a place she was welcome, at least for a while.