she/her, adult. art -- mostly what I make for other people, including general fanart (really on pjsk right now. that's about it).
main/nonsense is @sixhole
outside here, not particularly active on public social media
mostly just sharing fanart here; I am a bit precious about posting my original stuff. for the foreseeable that fanart is mostly pjsk 🙂↕️
#vivid bird squad <- look at my AU about VBS as hardcore birders (here is the intro). thank you
commissions by quote only, message me if interested
I like to chat and meet people! please feel free to send me asks, etc. if it's about something I enjoy / have talked about I will probably draw something in response.
ive loved birds for so many years and your birding au has become my FAVORITE THING EVER !!!!!!! i never knew much about birding but now i feel inspired to learn more about it
If even one person sees my birdsquad drawings and looks a little more closely at a bird the next time they go outside, then my work here is done 😤 it's such a wonderful hobby / lifestyle / way of connecting with the world and appreciating where you are... everyone should have at least one naturalist interest and learn some names of who we share the earth with 🙂↕️ be that birds or insects or reptiles or plants or anything else.
i joke a lot about the silly intensity of it all, but you can engage in whatever way suits you! it doesn't have to be making lists or travelling or anything like that (though it has really instilled a love of travelling and adventure in me which has been so exciting)... just paying attention to what is around is so nice, even if you're not sure how to identify it yet. it's done a lot for my social skills and anxiety to join local naturalist clubs too if that suits you - lots of them offer casual beginners' outings! if you ever have any curiosity about birding I'd be happy to answer :)
i will put these birdsquad images in their own post too <3 RADder's big year and musings on each member of VBS and their favourite birds. you can read all the text that goes with them here.
absolutely obsessed with your birding AU!!! i love love love ecology and animal behaviour and my hometown is genuinely so starved for wildlife (chronically cold and snowy place) </3 birding sounds like the coolest thing ever and i didn’t know there was such an intense culture around it lol. i’ve also always headcanoned kohane especially as an ecology/zoology major so i literally jumped with joy when i saw your post!!!
huge text wall of an ask but i do ☝️ have questions: how close to canon do you see the storyline of this AU being, and do you have bird-related variations on the major plot points (an being torn up about kohane. seeing more birds than her…….?) also, do they have favourite birds & are these favourites different from their spark birds?
hi hi! thank you for your message :] one of the wonderful things about birds imo is that anywhere you go, any time of year, there are usually birds who literally prefer to be there... everyone should go to ebird.org/explore > explore regions and see their local birds (once you're on a region's page I recommend "Illustrated Checklist" from the left-hand panel).
you got it, actually - a lot of the emotional beats I imagine for the birding au timeline are purposefully directly parallel to the tone and dynamics of the canonical story... i think biggest difference out the gate is that because it's all based around a big year - a year long road trip to tally as many birds as possible in the contiguous US, basically - this is what bird!RADder (BIRDder?) Also Did. instead of the lightning-in-a-bottle legendary presence of RAD WEEKEND, An and Akito's ambitions are here catalyzed by the extended mythological absence of Ken et al.. which has some implications for their characterization and relationship that radiate out to how all 4 members of vbs relate to each other. an and akito are kind of orbiting each other for that year being messy and so fucking 15 years old its painful. i have a lot i've thought about with that actually but there is an illustration i need to do to go with it so i'll share when I can 🙂↕️
for An and Kohane's issues... Kohane of course has her thing of learning at a remarkable pace. going birding 1-on-1 with Taiga she does see more birds than An at times, but I think the insecurity would arise less from the number of birds and more from an ability to locate and identify them on her own. Like hearing a bird singing somewhere in a line of shrub and Kohane is the one who manages to get eyes on it first and point it out... Sometimes people with fancy cameras also get more recognition in birding spaces since there's this obvious visual impact of their photos. It's this idea of Kohane becoming a known player - you know, rolling up to a stakeout and other birders there whom she's never met before are all, "oh, you're Kohane! i've seen your name around", maybe they bring up a bird she and An saw together but theyre only really speaking to Kohane. It should be gratifying to An, that kohane cares about this world now and had been welcomed into it as someone with something to offer, but something feels complicated about it....
favourite birds <3 I think it's pretty common that people's spark birds differ from their favourite birds! I love gulls the most but my spark bird is the long-tailed duck, for example.
Kohane... I think she really likes Black Phoebes, which are very common, charismatic, and charming (and in general I can see her with a soft spot for the flycatchers). She also enjoys Lesser Goldfinches, which travel in groups and are always chattering like they're having intelligent little conversations with each other. I always imagined her liking House Sparrows for being cute and widespread and comfortable around people, which would make Akito roll his eyes lol. I'm still trying to pick a spark bird for her, but it's one she sees with An some time into their endeavours that makes things "click" for her and solidifies that she really loves this for herself, too. The bird she first finds that's mentioned here is a Northern Parula, though.
An really likes Steller's Jays... A lot of people around vivid street have associated her with them for a long time (because of her hair and personality and love of making funny bird noises) so she has a familial fondness for them. they are like cousins to her. similarly she holds affection for some of the large waders like American Avocets and Black-necked Stilts, which are iconic avian inhabitants of vivid street (black-necked stilt is even the logo for the "Friends of Vivid Street", the nonprofit that advocates for the habitat there). as established, she doesn't have a specific spark bird, since she's been birding since she could hold binoculars. she's lately also been into Bushtits...
Akito, hmm... I think he likes warblers. Whereas we enjoy normal warbler migration in the east, in the west warbler season is a rush to hunt down the scattered eastern vagrants that show up far from home. for some reason i also have in my mind that he has affection for the icterids (blackbirds including orioles, etc). his favourite places however are the hot deserts of the southwest (mojave + sonoran + chihuahuan) and while he enjoys the warbler game, he loves the desert specialist birds like roadrunners, thrashers, phainopepla, etc. his spark bird is the Western Tanager, which is a relatively common bird in LA, but one you might not see unless you're paying attention.
Toya is most obvious - he has a special interest in gulls, especially the "large white-headed gulls" (Larus). their ubiquity, tenacity, grace, and the infinitely deep identification challenges they pose all appeal to him. he also dabbles in shorebirds, particularly the Calidris genus (small sandpipers which are colloquially called "peeps" - very cute) for many of the same reasons. He seems to appreciate birds that are often frustrating and overlooked as a result. his spark bird is the Brandt's Cormorant (another story for another time), so totally different, but another coastal bird.
birding culture is really fucking funny. i mean i think it's so funny. it's truly special but you have to take a step back and laugh sometimes. you should see some messages i have received from 50 year old men who have DMed me to shit-talk after I agreed with their ID over some other 50 year old man's. and then the next month all three of us are 30 km out to sea crammed on a lobster boat with 20 other people hooting and hollering sharing a warriors bond over some rare seabird 1 kilometre away on the horizon. funny.
i’m not gonna lie, i got a little confused when looking at the first art when it mentioned the “big year” because that sounded ominous asl. bc what is the big year? what’s going on??
initially i thought it was abt some apocalyptic shit, but then i read some more and realized that that wasn’t the case… vbs didn’t look to be in any danger at first glance so that should’ve been my first clue. so the kids r fine!! they’re fine!!
anyway, i found this au really interesting and i learned some new things thanks to you! plus, the art is rlly amazing and an’s design speaks to me. girl why are you so cute even
the apocalypse 😭 hahahaha i get it they're really sooo geared up. but nope they're just locking in to look at this thing:
the kids are fine... as fine as anyone who has decided to be a birder can ever be, I suppose. I'm super happy you could learn anything! i like birding so much and it's lots of fun to share that with others… i have some more silly primer things (in the vein of that little dictionary from the original post) i might do on other Birding Culture Stuff with VBS later, so stick around for that ig.
and pleased you like my Ans too <3 she is so special to me… one of the first things I had to do for this AU was try to figure out how to keep the cute charm of her hair while putting it in a style that is at least somewhat more practical for traipsing at length through the wilderness hahaha. steal her look
the Big Year is a truly bizarre phenomenon within the already bizarre world of birding, but it is indeed real! Not that common at its most extreme (since you need the time and money to fuck around for a whole year), but enough so that I have personally crossed crossed paths irl with a few people doing them. You can also do a big month, a big day, or anything more reasonable like that.
for anyone who's curious, I'll leave some more media recommendations about Big Years below!
If you want to read a book about a big year: Kingbird Highway, by Kenn Kaufman.
I respect Kaufman's ethos a lot and this one doubles as a pretty unique coming-of-age story. It follows him as he drops out of highschool to do a big year in 1973, before the time of electronic rare bird email blasts and all that, ultimately setting the record at the time. He sees all his birds by hitchhiking cross country (even up to alaska), eats cat food, and confronts the tension between the rush of racking up numbers and the meaning of actually truly watching the birds. Required reading imo for any birder who has remotely flirted with listing (and interesting for anyone else!). I mentioned it in the tags on the original post but my Shiraishi-Ken-As-Birder is inspired by this guy. Shiraishi Kenn.. lol.
“A new perspective was dawning on me. As a crass young bird-lister, I might have said: a trip to the Tortugas is good, because it adds species to the total. But a better viewpoint would be: working on a list is good, because it gives me an excuse to come to the Tortugas. After this Big Year was over, I hoped, I would be wise enough to come back to this place for its own sake.”
If you want to watch a documentary about a big year: LISTERS: A Glimpse into Extreme Birdwatching (18+)
A recent huge hit (and free on youtube!). Literally every birder I know has asked me if I've seen this. Two brothers decide to learn about birdwatching by starting at the most extreme, living out of a van for a year and trying to see as many birds as possible. imo they're a little too scared to be truly genuine but it's pretty riotously funny start to finish. I think at least once a week about when they're in some park trying to see this rare warbler and its like "i heard guy fart, like just fart from excitement. it's fucking awesome. i mean there was a woman who was almost in tears, immediately texting her loved ones, calling them, letting them know that she did in fact see… this little bird…" it's soooo fucking real its so real lol. You can watch it and imagine akito on a rural farm road at 4 AM clicking 2 pebbles together for hours to imitate a tiny marsh bird's call. wondering what his life even is
If you want Owen Wilson to be there?: The Big Year (2011)
This is a comedy film based on a real big year where three birders were competing, but it's fairly dramatized. I remember it being okay with some charmingly real moments, but there were some egregious inaccuracies too (pink-footed goose alone on top of a mountain? come on, you're where's waldoing that bird in a field of crop stubble on the side of a rural highway with 1200 canada geese in it). honestly if you're gonna watch one movie watch Listers instead.
Oh my god I love your vivid bird squad au already. I know fuck all about birding (except what was listed on your post) but oh my god I'm in love <333
THANK YOU!! it is never too late to get into birding. honestly most people get into birding at like 50+ so you probably could get a pretty good head start (unless youre 50, in which case, power to you)
here is my collection of dumb images from ebird_memes I assigned to vbs characters while drawing everything.
hi i JUST left like eight hundred tags on your vbs birding post but im here now because i had more thoughts if you don’t mind. birds aren’t my focus but i love wildlife and seeing animals (in my case mainly bugs, reptiles, & bats as my main focus) so seeing a vbs wildlife au made me jump for joy thankyou so much!!!
i was thinking! since kohane has count pearl in canon and seems to ramble about her a bit, would her interest in snakes carry over? ik north america has quite a lot of snakes in areas (jealous) so whilst they’re exploring do you think she’d go peeping under wood and leaves to find them just out of curiosity and enjoyment? if they’re camping she goes off for a while and then comes back to show them her photos of snakes. maybe akito and an are still grossed out by it lol
i also would like to know their opinions on lawns. just plain trimmed grass. particularly akito’s i can imagine a wildlife-loving akito going on an incensed rant every time they drive past a neatly trimmed lawn LMAOO. and since i imagine toya’s family, if you are keeping close to his canon backstory, are very much Lawn People based on what their house looks like would one of his points of contention with his dad just be. turning their lawn into an actually inhabitable place. i think it’s funny. toya tossing wildflower seeds off his balcony
you mentioned they’re a little older than in canon, did you have any thoughts on what they’d be doing in terms of education/work? college and stuff and also that equipment is expensive as shit so are they working to fund stuff? or do they rely on Bird Nepotism which made me laugh really hard btw
apologies for the long ask!!!! as i said birds aren’t really my usual niche but seeing my favourite characters in any form of wildlife watching made me really happy and now i want to return to the vbs go bat watching fic. i hope that you are having an awesome day and see many birds. also yes ena should be angsting it up whilst akito plots out birding trails its funny
Yayyy hi thank you for your kind words! 🥺🥺 people’s response has been soooo nice and unexpected and I have had such a great time reading everyone’s tags.… I was truly making this for myself and as a love letter to my friends and our wacky lifestyle, so I’m happy other people can enjoy it as well!
I'll put a cut here for everyone's sake 😌
I can so see kohane with an interest in herps and other things… I actually imagined that the first time she sees An, she’s at the park to photograph plants and bugs mostly?
Kohane: (It’s that girl from the other day again…? She looks so cool… She was on the phone saying she was looking for a bird, right…? Did she not find it?)
Kohane: (Actually, there was that weird sound earlier… brrrrrrrrr-zeeup? I don’t think I’ve ever heard something like that before… Oh, but she’s looking somewhere totally different… Should I say something? Ah, but I only know because I was eavesdropping -)
[Totally lost in thought, Kohane doesn’t notice that she is now being watched...]
An: Hey! You were here earlier this week, too, right? Sorry - that’s weird - I mean, I just remembered because you seemed so cute and focused taking photos, I didn’t want to interrupt you…!
Kohane: H-huh??
I feel Kohane has a general interest in those things to begin with, mostly on the casual level of taking photos and having fun posting them on iNaturalist or something like that, but she hasn’t tried much with birds since they tend to be fast and far away. As for the others, I think An has the most generalist knowledge of nature and holistic appreciation of ecosystems (my gf and I were talking about her taking kohane tidepooling which is cute…), akito is a little more laser-focused on birds (he can’t help it…), and toya has a naturally deep curiosity about everything.
I actually see very few herps where I live (Canada) - it is always crazy to me whenever I am further south and there are just. Lizards and shit wandering around LOL. here are some cool ones I’ve photographed on my travels!
Regal Horned Lizard, Eastern Fox Snake, Blanding’s Turtle (sitting on a Painted Turtle i think lol), Carolina Watersnake
Toya’s family and backstory are indeed pretty close to canon! which is kind of funny because it means he's the only one with any musical inclination now. There are a few hints in the original post… if you check out the areas where each of them lives, Toya is solidly in richy-rich golf course 4+million dollar house land. Lol. He also has the most Expensive and most Austrian gear, particularly the $5000 dollar spotting scope (yep, it’s That Swarovski). I kind of get the sense that even once Toya tries his best to make himself truly understood, daddy mostly gives him money instead of love or warmth or approval, but I need to chew on that relationship a bit more.
I know the situation is making Toya miserable for sure… He spends a lot of time at the coast watching the cormorants and pelicans from the cliffs. The Shiraishis probably have a tiny yard but I know it would be xeriscaped and native and attractive to lots of insects and birds. Advantages of having Ken as your dad - there is no fight to fight on this one, haha. I’m sure Akito is still working on it on his end.
Hmmm! I think it probably makes sense that they’re in the gap between highschool and uni? A Big Year does not mesh very well with having any obligations in life. After all is said and done, An and Akito are living in the moment and just want to look at birds - I don’t really imagine a traditional academic path for either of them, An probably spends a while hanging around just helping her dad out and networking like that, and Akito bums around the country for a few years living off housing stipends doing barely-paid seasonal work for ornithology grad students. They'll have to figure something out eventually, but for now they can keep putting it off. Kohane I don’t think knew what she wanted to do before, but I could imagine her studying ecology later… would be sweet if Toya is studying there too. Maybe he's writing a book about their big year. People love to write books about big years. Also they’re all best friends forever and ever and group-text about birds they're seeing every day no matter if sometimes they’re apart. They told me so :)
Akito still has (had?) his part time job so he saved very diligently to buy his optics himself... Vortex has a great warranty so they're a solid and practical investment. An's optics are from Ken (good quality Japanese glass!) and Kohane's were from her parents and An... Toya has been established above. I get the sense everyone in pjsk is kinda affluent.. lol. Akito and Toya are saving money by sleeping in that damn car in parking lots though. an drives a hybrid and fuelmogs akito.
And yesss please join me in VBS doing naturalist things I would looooove to see any of it <3 I was shocked at how many bats were around when we went owling in Arizona, but I couldn't really make any sense of them because of the. Nighttime. We have white-nose fungus pretty bad where I am so I don’t see them often. Here is a weird bird I saw though.
Happy wildlife watching of your own!! Vivid bird squad has manifested great birding for me lately tbh… I wanna draw so much more but also… I want to go outside….!!!! Ahhh!!!! And no worries about your long ask, I love to hear it all! Here is my long answer in response :]
au where instead of trying to surpass rad weekend, vbs are birders trying to beat a big year record. vivid bird squad
additional thoughts and context and such below the cut for the interested ✌️🐦🔭
birding has a reputation as a relaxing and chill retirement hobby, but if you're enmeshed in the subculture you will soon come to know the epic highs and lows. the cutthroat drama and betrayal and crashout fights and gossip and grudges and incorrigible, life-ruining, life-saving obsession. the pushing your mind and body and the goodwill of everyone around you to the absolute limit. the property damage and trespassing and run-ins with the law. the exhilarating passion and beauty of it all. joy and idiocy in equal measure. it's extremely easy for me to imagine it as a vbs-appropriate high-octane life calling, lol.
since this is based entirely on north american birding culture, they’re japanese-american and from LA instead of shibuya. sorry. a lot of the specific locations/birds are based off my experiences birding with my gf and friends while visiting california :]
vivid street itself crosses a naturalized strip of the LA river that has colloquially borrowed its name and hosts a passionate naturalist community... i've based it on the willow street estuary - where the concrete encasing the LA river recedes and green things return, great egrets roost on discarded shopping carts and flocks of shorebirds forage along graffiti-lined riverbanks. very resilient and defiant and absolutely brimming with life. ken is a highly-regarded birder who has opened a café-slash-interpretive-centre since completing his own Legendary big year (a Rad year, even) with taiga and nagi 3ish years ago. these days he's mostly left the numbers game behind him but is still an active presence in the community locally.
vivids + bad dogs bird dogs are birding/travel partners, but it's also the nature of the lifestyle that you continually run into the same people as you all orbit the same birds and follow the rhythms of migration, and thusly they increasingly keep winding up in the same places and kinda fully join forces at some point. the order of how everyone meets is directly parallel to canon still, so an and akito have known each other the longest and kohane is pretty new to it all. i think they are a tiny bit older than canon here but not significantly so - probably like late teens or early 20s.
the history / experience / talent dynamics that initially inform a lot of the vbs relationships translate really fluidly to birding in interesting ways, and it was fun imagining which type of birder each of them might be... kohane the motivated, talented amateur with a big camera, an the birder-by-birthright with something to prove, akito the perpetually-in-motion lister with nothing to lose. and to toya, i have given the highest honour of all: the keen-eyed, inscrutable larophile. though obviously they're all listers here which is a particular and hardcore slice of the subculture - remember, all birding (as long as you respect the birds and each other) is good birding no matter if you're “hardcore” or "casual" <3
i have many more ideas I wanna draw (kohane's philosophical development... toyas spark bird and how he met akito.... exploration of akian friendship..... more about the previous generation...), but this is already a kinda hefty post... for now enjoy this glimpse into the funny & chaotic & life-changing & and beautiful world of looking at birds!!! i tried to make it a) entertaining and accessible for people with no knowledge of birding and b) hopefully in-character while still keeping it faithful to the ways birders at this level really act and talk. the intersection is where the fun lies lol
if you're still here thanks for looking at my long post
