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Reunion Page 2: Ouch

Reunion Page 2: Ouch published on 91 Comments on Reunion Page 2: Ouch

Page two of Reunion! Don’t worry, Anthony is okay, we’ll find out what stupid thing he did to himself soon.

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91 Comments

Do feathers continue to have an active blood supply after they’ve fully grown and matured? It seems that Tony’s do. Poor guy obviously can’t take it anymore. :/

his feathers looks like they’re still growing, so, yah, he tried to cut the damn things down, and instead is now bleeding profusely.

On a chicken, you can tell if clipping is safe by looking carefully at the feather shaft. Might be harder to see on a…whatever Tony is.

Or Tony simply had no idea what to look for in the first place.

Good rule of thumb if you ever find yourself changed into some fantastic creature: do as much research as possible!

Of course Tony’s thinking processes aren’t at their best right now, and even the other fantastic creatures aren’t quite sure what he is.

Still, there are a lot of other people with wings to ask for advice, and for all we know there’s actually a wing clipping salon somewhere in the Avalon.

I would think if you had something as freak-out inducing and horrifying as turning into some weird creature, you would want to take full advantage of whatever benefits that form gave you, including flying. If you clip your wings, you probably would’nt be able to fly, or at least not very well. But then, I have always framed of flying, and maybe Tony hasn’t.

One of the questions on the Mary Sue Litmus test is “Do they get turned into something else?” with the followup “Are they happier that way?” The tests are almost garbage as check-off tests, but a great template for thinking about these cliches of wish fulfillment.

Back in the days of Oren the Otter and the Transformation Assistance Agency… Almost everyone there was a furry, or wanted to be something else, so most people were cool with not being human because they thought it would be cool to not be human. There was occasional hesitancy about going into the unknown, and a few awkward to deal with situations, but very little exploration about how much it would suck to stop being human if you liked being human.

Which is why Skin Deep is so cool. (Does this mean we’re not going back to the Sphinx story? Michelle Jocasta seems to have moved into acceptance.)

You still get those types of people in stories.

Not to mention where would Tony be flying anyway? Sure, we’ve seen Jim and Michelle flying around the river valley, but the UK is a bit shorter than the US on places that secluded, plus they can disguise themselves as humans to get there and back. Tony’s situation effectively leaves him bound to the Avalon. While the Avalon does have many winged residents that do fly around the place, it probably doesn’t cut down that much on travel time for such a confined area. It’s really not that odd that Tony’s frustration with his feathers getting in the way of things would outweigh any remote advantage flight might give him.

Blood feathers do still have a blood supply, because they’re not done growing quite yet. When a bird has just newly fledged (like Anthony) many of these feathers are still tapped into the main blood supply. A bird CAN bleed to death by breaking off a blood feather. It’s one of those things that parrot owners dread and keep around a set of hemostats to fully remove the feather and fix the problem.

Anthony probably should have looked some of this up before this decision. :(

Huh, I’m pretty sure I recognize the symbol on the necklace Blanche wearing. Not the one for his medallion, but the other one. Looks like the symbol of the Deathly Hallows. Not sure if it’s a symbol that is known to appear in other places with other meanings. Never expected to see that.

As for Anthony, it looks like he’s trying to clip his own wings. That’d be my guess at least. Feel like I recall some of that being mentioned some time back by Sfé. I’ll definitely say that I didn’t expect that so soon or suddenly. I suppose I didn’t think we’d see it either.

A little unnerved to get into the comic and running into that quite suddenly without much warning. It’s not particularly a big deal for me, though I know of people that could certainly trigger…

Or maybe he’s just a Harry Potter fan. Isn’t it an unwritten rule in England that you have to be a fan of Harry Potter and/or Doctor Who? :P

I’m torn between “Oh no, poor Tony, don’t hurt yourself!” and “Dangit, Tony, you know those scissors are for fabric only”.

Also, we’re going to get to see Blanche’s mum, hooray!

It’s one thing when someone uses them on paper (they tend to get all sticky for some reason, guess cause Glue Stick is often involved), but feathers and BLOOD?

Man that will NOT wash out easily (unlike some cases with when they’re used with paper and get sticky, I’ve actually managed to clean a pair like that once).

Oh god, I didn’t expect him to go that far. Now my birdy owner instincts are kicking in and I just want to hug him tightly and stop the bleeding. Tony, why did you have to go and do that. ;-;

Glad I’m not the only one. I had a whole birdy first-aid kid for things like broken feathers when I owned birds. I still have styptic powder, stuff’s hella useful for all sorts of critters (great for nails accidentally trimmed too short due to an uncooperative pet). Seeing something like this would have sent me running for it, although Tony’s feathers are bleeding so bad, he’ll probably have to just have them pulled.

The risk of cutting nails too short is one of the reasons I always trim my pets’ claws with an emery grinder instead. You avoid several safety issues that way, plus you can round off the edges so you don’t end up with claws sharper than when you started.

way to go Tony…
obviously not a bird person, or he’d known blood-feathers take a while before they can be trimmed without it bleeding
he probably thought that cutting them would make him more… human… I guess…
and now he’s gonna have to get those feathers pulled out…. ouch indeed…

Now thats some serious denial.

Dammit boy, you need to learn to cope with this, not kill yourself trying to force it to change back to what was.

Yeah, I know.
Easy for me to say.

But when the choice is cope or die, I know which I would choose again.

-Badger-

I don’t know about denial, Ironbadger, but certainly problems adapting to having long, stiff feathers draping down from the backs of his hands, getting in the way of everything.
Adapting to change can take some time time.

Hm, my initial reaction was that he had a serious manic moment and decided to try to cut all the feathers off, thinking “If they go away, I’ll be human again!”

Other people’s views on it have me thinking I was likely wrong..But having a friend who had such a reaction and nearly killed himself in the process…

Well, I think I can be forgiven for jumping to conclusions.

-Badger-

I can guess what Tony was thinking here, because I probably would have done the same dumb-ass thing in his place.

I had a parakeet as a child, and watched as a pet-store owner used a pair of scissors to remove select feathers so it couldn’t fly, so I probably would have assumed that any feathers could be trimmed bloodlessly and painlessly.

Anthony said something about having no interest in flying, so from his POV, big armfuls of feathers are just a nuisance, getting in the way when he wants to use his arms.

So he probably planned to cut them all off. His arms would still bend all weird, but at least he’d have a decent chance of being able to change t-shirts. Too bad he didn’t know about the blood…

Please tell me he did not try to commit suicide. He is one of the more likable characters. I don’t want him to die.

I think he would have gone to slit his actual wrists instead of accidentally ending up doing the same as slitting his wrists.

Blanche is calling for his mom because she has feathers and will know what to do.

Blanche’s dad probably had to do a talk with his son about not scraping off his velvet until it starts itching.

On an unrelated side note, do you think Blanche drops his antlers every year? If so, you think he saves them? Carves them? Uses them in all of his decorating?

that’s a bit like saveing your teeth to carve

Very nice Beauty and the Beast reference there
Given that the furry characters go through periods of shedding it is probably safe to assume the antlers would drop, maybe not every year but that would depend on their history and whether mating seasons did/did not change after they no longer had to worry about fawns being born close to winter.

THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY

I know. I was expecting to find Tony had fallen because he’s still not used to his new legs. Not this. D:

Tony looks a lot like a black storm petrel, what with the narrow wings and the forked tail. Can harpies have markings like any type of bird or only a specific group?

Tony is modeled after a frigatebird. It’s mentioned in the notes section of the Exchanges collection.

Aand we get a look at Blanche’s teeth. Hefty herbivore incisors, two sets – check; hefty herbivore molars, two sets – check. Open roots – still uncertain.

Now, question had been whether harpies and so on had to moult their feathers – a requirement in nature as feathers cannot self-repair, and will eventually get damaged and degraded until useless unless renewed in this way. The fact that Tony’s feathers bleed, when they probably ought to be fully grown in at this point, could be a point toward unnatural self-repairing feathers that don’t have to be moulted. The fact that he seems to be feeling severe pain from having cut them could also be a point towards this, since, in nature, the feathers themselves do not possess nerves or any other organs of sensation.

Anyway, I don’t know what they’re going to have available to patch Tony up there, ‘cos if nothing else works, they’re going to have to cauterise, and that’s not nice even with just a human sense of smell… …and especially in an enclosed Avalon. >:x(>

Actually, deer do not have upper incisors. They have a fleshy pad in place of teeth that makes contact with the mandibular incisors for cutting plant matter. Blanche should not have those upper incisors unless it’s something that his midform grants him but I figure it’s similar to animal faced mythical creatures having human eyebrows.

I’d actually love to hear from Kory on this as she’s done a great job on paleo artwork and skull illustration so I’m pretty certain she’d know about cervid dentition.

Oh man… I thought he’d stub his talon or something, but not this! Damn it man, I hope someone in his position helps him through this sudden change of lifestyle or we may have an unfortunate seires of accidents to catalogue Tony’s misadventures.

The only one we know of who’s been through a physical transformation like, and at a similar age to, Anthony is Ike.
I wonder if Ike has been talking much with Anthony since Exchanges?

I doubt Ike would be able to help much though. He doesn’t have any avian features whatsoever, so I doubt he’d have much first-hand info on this kind of stuff. Tony would probably be better off talking to someone who’s more similar in anatomy, such as Abby. She’d probably be able to give him better pointers on the ins and outs of being a bird person than Ike could.

I have been reading this comic for some time already, but it’s my first time commenting.
I just can’t take anymore, every time I see Tony I remember a greek legend about some women, Persephone companion’s (don’t know their names in english), that when she got kidnaped asked the gods for a way to search for her above water or land and got transformed into big black birds with human’s head and chest (or maybe it was a punishment?). And they could charm sailors with their voices, often to their deaths.

I mean, he may be a guy, but the description matches very well and his father was a sailor.

And it got me kinda curious, if I am correct, once he sings will he charms males like the legend, or females, since he’s a male?

I’m dying here.

By the way, I LOVE the comic. Keep the good work ;*

I was just wondering, maybe Tony’s a Tengu? They are a type of shapeshifter from Japan that are half crow and half human. The coloring and feet seem right, and I believe they are supposed to be only male.

So maybe… Tengu?

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