Status Updates From Into the Windwracked Wilds ...

Time to reread this one.

A. Excited to add Jack Daw to our band of misfits.

B. The way Crow Girl (Soleil - beautiful name, and very for coded) addressed the queen so informally. And the queen seemed almost frightened of her for a second. Maybe she really was a princess.

C. That was incredibly smart on Zib's part. The loophole of how Avery's trade was contingent on the Queen's guarantee of safety and hospitality for a day.

"The Queen had already done her enough harm. She didn't get to be commemorated with scars." -180pg

"Are you coming with us?'
'My mother's going to be furious when she realizes what you're doing. (..) Of course I'm coming with you." -197pg

"She understands that tidiness takes many different forms, even as people do, and 'presentable' for a zephyr isn't the same as 'presentable' for a nixie, but she likes it when people make an effort."

More people should take on this logic when it comes to understanding other people's normal.

"I'm a girl, and I'm weird. The Crow Girl's a girl and she's made of birds, and that's weird. And Niamh's a girl and she drowned and didn't stop moving, and that's weird. All the girls we have around here are weird." -115pg

I love that he's still carrying Crow Girl on his hip, especially now that their on the Queen of Swords castle where she'd feel even more vulnerable then ever. -120pg

She asked for uppies!! 🥺
He can join the group. He gave our little, baby Crow Girl uppies, I'm sold.
.
"My girls can't hold the Page forever." -106pg


" "Fine," said Niamh. "But you stay on two legs."
"I'll have to if I want to carry this one," said Jack. "
Further sold. -107pg

Lol. Speaking of neurodivergent .

I love that the author used almost an entire page to give us the definition of a geography term.

He must be fun at parties. 🙃

Imagine listening to someone describe every square foot of their yard in great detail, probably repeatedly, until you could navigate easily without ever having been there.
That's got to be a circle of hell.

"People can't own people anymore," said Avery. "It's against the law." -83pg

"Why did Crow Girl have to give her name away if you get to keep yours? It isn't fair." -Avery -87pg

Like I said, Avery will be a fantastic lawyer/politician/activist/social worker/etc. He has a strong sense of justice when it comes to ppl.

"Kingdoms and countries rise and fall. They have a lifespan, just like every other idea. Land though . . . lands just are. They don't care where you draw the line."

."It's an idea, it's a line on a map, and it could be different tomorrow than it is today."

Avery has such a strong sense of justice and fairness when it comes to people. And he's shown that, even though he has problems keeping his tongue in tense situations, he's actually very attuned to his friends' feelings.
And this isn't the first time he's shown outrage at the injustices of the Up-and-Under.

Avery will be a fantastic civil servant one day.

Zib after being expelled or if the back end of an aquatic dinosaur: "Did we hurt you?"

Normalize prioritizing empathy for others.

"She didn't want to think very hard about how they had been expelled from the mosasaur,"

Nah, that is the coolest sht (pun intirely intended). I'd be putting that on my resume: 🤚shat out by a mosasaur.🤚
That's my new orgin story.

"Can't be a hive thing and not know that sometimes you might lose pieces of yourself."

This is just inching its toes over the edge of the line between safe for child consumption and body horror.

I love hard world/magic laws, and the rules around how she gains birds and what this means for her as an the whole (who she is at her core, and how that can change as she takes in new birds) is great.

I love that Zib is appalled when she thinks Naimh is suggesting she cut open the Mosasaur.

"Mosasaurs went extint a long time ago, so it could be the last of its kind!"
Zib grew up on Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park and is gonna grow up to become one hell of a zoologist or some sort of biologist or archeologist. It's gonna have ologist at the end.
And you can't tell me differently.

"You would come to the end of my intestines and have to pass through my cloaca, which would be unpleasant for you and painful for me, and ends with you floating in the middle of the Saltwise Sea, where I would not swallow a second time." "

Fkn, FAIR! -30pg

"Won't we be stealing your dinner if we sit in your stomach not being food and eat all your fish?"
Imagine ever being that empathetic -31pg

"Drowning as a Community Enrichment Activity."
This is why we need to bring back chapter titles.

... And so it makes sense that as we grow and change, so should our elements.

I like that Niamh was never "fated" to water. That she became a child of water through her circumstances, but had once held as much possibility for change as any person. And that Aviary's rigidy and steadfastness lens him to earth.
.
"... but "might have been" and "maybe" are countries that can only ever be visited, and never lived in."

"Growing up is a process of exchange. Not always fair ones, but exchange all the same." -10pg

I love the concept of people being drawn out tied to one element in particular over all others. I always have.
I also really like that the elements a person is best represented by/suited to can change. Humans are not stationary creatures in any sense. We are ever evolving... -

There is now a comma shortage in the world. There are entire states where it is now illegal to use commas since they are in such short supply. Deborah Baker used all of them in this prolog. There are no more.

When she said "without her consent," I made some conclusions, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're correct.

Everything about this is wonderful, cozy, whimsical, and safe.
Like, it feels like your mom tucking you in at night.