#magpie lore

[omagpies]

gearing up for the class presentation tomorrow/the day after (unsure yet) which is basically a check in on our projected thesis methodology and i'm about to be That Guy again by dedicating about half of my packet to ethics. if anyone laughs again i'll...idk probably angry cry in the restroom

[omagpies]

(from the fieldnotes, may 2026)

[omagpies]

sometimes it really comes into focus for me how awkwardly and shamefully divergent i am from a nebulous median human being when it comes to mundane everyday experiences. i feel like to most people my age (30s), the things im discovering are by now so completely obvious common sense that coming up to someone to share that ‘hey i did this thing for the first time in my life today and for a moment everything wasn’t as awful’ just invites ridicule. how have you not done this before already and/or why does this matter so much to you and/or that is a weird thing to do this way, you are weird, you will never not be weird so why are you trying to pretend otherwise

i feel like im always waiting to be Found Out, and these small everyday things are what is going to give me away and this is why it’s so deathly dangerous to direct anyone’s attention to them. which i’m sure says nothing about my relationship with shame or just general existence of someone pretending to be a person, looking in from the outside

anyway, um. this morning i found myself in the vicinity of my university, so i popped over after completing my tasks just to get coffee from a specific vending machine. i’ve been getting into coffee after a lifetime of hating it so i don’t even know if it’s good quality, but. i like it. and it costs under one euro, so i don’t feel too bad about treating myself to it when i have class on this campus, but today i went there just because i was in the area and because i could

my usual is a hazelnut cappuccino+americano with a splash of milk mixed in the same cup, if you would like to know

[omagpies]

over a decade ago i had a half-baked automaton oc who was basically a self-insert (this was normal for that fandom; i had a cosplay and everything) (and yes, the automaton was also a weremagpie). originally pincut went by it/its, but that was the era on tumblr where i'd seen people get called out for these pronouns because they were 'dehumanising' so i chickened out and leaned into they/them instead, in a time when i was still investigating my own gender situation.

anyway, been thinking about it again recently and wondered if my pronoun journey would be any different if. well

wanted to draw a slightly updated version, so here! my it #myit

[omagpies]

not a huge fan of this guy 🫤

[omagpies]

*guy who has 4 essays to write by mid-to-end of january voice* being in academia for the past many years and watching it try to evolve alongside/in counteraction to genAI, i remain steadfastly convinced that it's just aint worth it bro.

like anyyyy slop i can write by myself will be better than AI slop by default, so jot that down. but also, even if we set aside all other reasons to punt AI to the curb, i would much rather organically write my bs and KNOW that every word is mine (or properly cited if not) than get paranoid over 'did i paraphrase this enough for it not to come up on any AI/plagiarism detectors' like can you imagine

yes, i'm the guy who quietly freaks out over accidentally bringing a gun through airport screenings when the metal detector beeps (i do not own a gun), and i go through airport security way less often than i write my dumb little essays and articles and whatnot. my heart wouldn't be able to take this much additional stress lmao

[omagpies]

pride month icon btw

[omagpies]

unless something comes up, i'm going to donate blood on thursday, which makes me think about the previous time i did that. it was all the way back in june, and though in autumn i could already donate again, i was deep in the final stages leading up to the thesis defence, and once november hit i was basically sick way too often to flush the bs out of my system (perks of working with kids)

i felt very strange that summer, genuinely the worst case of un-person i've experienced to date. i felt so little like a human, a personality, a presence, that i had no choice but to believe that the only way i could be helpful or useful or worthwhile or good, the only positive impact i could make for anyone in the entire world, was through handing over a physical part of my body.

because that's fairly clear-cut, right? hard to fuck it up so long as i follow very clear pre-donation guidelines, and definitely useful for someone who definitely needs it. in the fog of confusion and apathy (not even self-hatred -- i didn't feel like i was enough of a self for that, though even its absence wasn't a relief), that was strangely effective, at least for a bit. something i could turn to and point at and say, 'objectively, i made a positive impact. they looked at me and talked to me and touched me with care and accepted what i offered and deemed it worth the effort. i was worthwhile. i was someone.'

anyway. not quite deep in those particular trenches at the moment, but let's just say i'm looking forward to that pick-me-up, considering it's a win/win for everybody involved

(POV pic from last summer under the cut, mind the tags.)