I found the rat king felix fic randomly and enjoyed it and tried to find the genesis of this meme/thing via ur lore tag on here but I'm still perplexed as to what prompted this whole idea
i am almost certain that it started from abyssal (@felixravinstills) as the arbitrator of Felix Lore TM saying something about felix getting attached to lab rats/keeping them as pets(?) and then it spiraled from there. but the earliest posts on tumblr that i could find were this one with abyssal reblogging in the tags that felix would have them. before lily (@persephoneprice) followed up with this post about guards for felix’s rats and this ask about felix-dna rats.
i’m pretty sure that more discussion happened within the corso creatures discord before that too, but Felix Ratvinstill 🐀 is so ingrained in my headcanons at this point that it’s hard to remember where it started. so many bits of corso lore (festus as part of the secret police, serial killer androcles, magno stift being snow’s disgraced firstborn, etc) started as small ideas that built up into their own thing over time.
sorry i don’t have a solid response, but thanks for the ask anon!
because I would love to know any and all behind the scenes thoughts
of course! happy to yap about the rats <3
(i have an embarrassing about of lore about these rats)
i already mentioned a few things in these replies:
gaul's beef w/ felix & where the rat obsession started
clemmie is tired of felix's rat shenanigans
reference to livia worshipping taylor swift
max making sure the rat parade was not broadcast
expanding on those:
felix's rat obsession started shortly after his parents' deaths as a coping mechanism that no one addressed until it was too late & felix was irrevocably attached
it was still war time so there were a lot of rats around on the streets and felix had somehow managed to capture one (aesop) to keep as a pet turned support animal
max (president) was pretty concerned about the whole thing, but between the grief of losing family members and the ongoing war, he basically went 'kids will be kids ig' and let felix be
felix originally calling aesop 'mr rat' and would read him some stories (aesop's fables) to help him go to sleep bc that's what his parents would do to help him sleep when he was younger
aesop was named as such because he went 'storybooks' -> 'rat that helps me sleep' -> 'perfect name :D'
max (president) did have gaul 'check' aesop (without felix's knowledge) once it was brought to his attention that felix was letting aesop sleep in his bed bc he did not want felix to be killed off by a potentially diseased rat
(is aesop the same rat that felix originally caught? maybe. maybe not. gaul certainly isn't saying whether she modified aesop or gave a mutt replacement. maybe the rat she melted on their field trip as nine-year-olds was the original aesop. again, gaul certainly isn't going to say anything one way or the other)
anyway, that's how all of felix's rats live past 3-4 years 🐀
felix stopped collecting rats when the war ended (eight-years-old) because max (president) was able to convince him that it would be too much of a hassle to have more rats once transitioned from homeschooling to a school with others. max was not, however, able to convince felix to get rid of any of the rats (his original intent).
when felix was younger, i like to think he had one of those little red wagons to bring all his rats along everywhere. by the time he reaches the academy, he just carries them in his pockets and/or lets them follow him on their own.
asclepius is his medic rat (named after the god of medicine) and the first rat that clemensia was introduced to. she was severely weirded out, but came around after an asclepius alerted a teacher when she was having an allergic reaction (strawberry allergy headcanon from medea)
yes, felix did make clemmie thank asclepius for quote "saving her life", which she did do. her thoughts on felix's rats after that event were basically 'well, i guess this is a thing.....this is fine....' which felix took to mean that she was an ally against rat haters (livia)
max (rat) was the last (36th) felix had adopted. it was just a few months before the end, and he quickly became felix's support rat. max (president) was not present enough in felix's life to realize felix had named after him under nearly a year later.
max (president) knew about albanus (rat) but was fine with it because he thought felix was just honoring a dead family member. max (president) side eyes felix's interactions wtih max the rat all the time. marius and gnaeus are just grateful that no rats are named after them.
side note: originally, this fic was just supposed to be felix's perspective, but as i was writing, felix's pov sounded too 'rational' bc of how much he was coping, so dill's pov was added in for contrast (and get an outside view of the rat-related insanity)
the rat parade happens at heavensbee hall. the people in attendance were the mentors and tributes (and, of course, felix's rats). max (president) did not attend. gaul was not invited. livia was also not invited, but she showed up because she was insulted that facet was given a personalized invite.
felix wanted it to be bigger, but that was the compromise that max (president) was able to negotiate felix into agreeing to. there were cameras that felix insisted on being there with the intent to broadcast the event, but none were actually recording.
max (president) made sure that none of them were on and told felix after the fact that they had 'malfunctioned' so the rat parade 'unfortunately' was not shared. felix is very disappointed by this and has to be comforted by max (rat) when he can't host a second rat parade to make up for it.
no one ever believes reaper and dill when they go back home and tell others about the rats. eventually, they just fudge the story to stop people from pressing them for the "real" story (aka "the mentors were convinced by the tributes' humanity from interacting with them and realizing how bad things were in the districts & dill's mentor was able to use nepotism to stop the games" - basically the same concept minus the rats)
i didn't have any solid ideas after that, but i like to think that felix visits dill in d11 sometime in the future and she has to awkwardly explain to her family that 'this is felix ravinstill, yes, that ravinstill family, yes, these rats are normal and please don't say anything against it to his face, please'.
Hi! Thinking about your fic about Felix and his 36 rats again when I saw this video. But I was imagining one of Felix's rat in place of the guinea pig haha🐁
(actually now that I think about it, how big are his rats?)
Maybe Felix is playing for one of his rats.
Alternatively, he made Clemmie play for one of them. This is what happens when one of your friend's 36 rats enjoy listening to you play piano, I guess 😆
re: ratvinstill fic
oh my gosh that’s amazing!! felix serenading max ratvinstill to the piano (courtesy of clemmie giving him piano lessons for this exact purpose) - his rats need their nightly lullabies after all!
Crazy? I Was Crazy Once. They Locked Me In A Room. A Rubber Room. A Rubber Room With Rats. And Rats Make Me Crazy. Crazy? I Was-
felix ratvinstill, the patron saint of rodents
Dill is 80% sure that her mentor is insane. She does her best to ignore the rats resting on his shoulders, and circling around his feet, and peeking out of the pockets of his bright-red uniform, and—
“You really think so, Max?” asks Felix, glancing up at the squeaking rat atop his head.
Dill is 200% sure that her mentor is insane.
In which Felix Ravinstill and his thirty-six pet rats end the Hunger Games.
I've been kicking around a Festixia AU in my head (haven't started it... who knows if I'll actually get to it. but fun to imagine), because I think by rule of the rats, it would actually allow them to have a happy ending, and I was wondering, can Felix understand his rats?
From my understanding of your fic, it seems he is pretty in tune with his rats, but he can't actually understand them (they aren't comprehensibly speaking to him with actual words). My evidence being he understands what they want/are saying generally, but he has to ask Dill exactly what happened multiple times instead of talking to Max (Ratvinstill).
Anyway, I once again must tell you that I love your ratvinstill fic! It's amazing! Felix gets to live his confidant Disney princess dreams... Every other version of him does not know what they are missing out on!
hi abyssal!! yeah- ratvinstill au felix is living out his best disney princess life 😌😌
you pretty much have it right with felix getting the gist of what his rats are trying to tell him- they can't convey any actual words, but felix gets the concepts of what they mean! dill can kind of guess their moods, but she wouldn't be able to determine anything past "happy" "sad" "upset" etc. felix, on the other hand, has spent far too many years guessing meaning out of each squeak.
about dill having to tell the story 36 times- felix understood the story after the first time dill told him, he just also wanted her to recount what happened once for each of his other 35 rats as well. in my mind, he was probably rotating which rat he was holding in his hands while dill was retelling the events yet again, but dill was just too DoneTM to pay attention to felix's felix-ness to care anymore.
