Ooohhh, she's a nice design, not as elegant mind, but still rather beautiful.

and now you know what does a rich man do when he gets his hands on Philo. 😈

Bastard I hope his trousers rip in half infront of his mother >:V

😂

It seems that in this world there are copycat Songbirds too! I wonder how "rugged" they say this is?

📝📝📝📝 *takes notes*

Beware of cheap imitations!!!

("Philafelis" = lover of cats?)

Yus!

+----+

Also: nerdiness ensues... 🤓

anofelis/afelis = "in vain" (without benefits) or "simple" or "naive" (without "a rough skin" / "bark/rind")

felis = cat (but in latin)
ailouros = cat (in greek, like the rest)

Those wings remind me of some renditions of the German Eagle, most notably the more modern versions.

She was built in the 1920s and she is the in-universe "cheap copy" of a different character of mine who was built inspired by art nouveau. So she is a mix of art deco and art nouveau.

While art deco was by itself fascist in nature, the character itself has no connection with the reich or the germanic imperial eagle, she was just built cheaply in that style.

Also, like the original that she is the "discount copy" of... she is supposed to be a nightingale.

As a certain morally-bankrupt researcher from the Bioshock franchise pointed out, "Theft of intellectual property (is a) two-way street."

If Philefelis's design incorporates any genuine improvements, the original inventor can incorporate them in his next creations. And rich though he may be, the man making knockoffs can't take legal action without risking his own theft being detected. Even if he wins the court battle, things won't quite be the same.

Something will be in the public record (and probable public eye) which will cause people from that point forward to become curious and examine the evidence themselves. And once proven to enough private citizens, his IP theft will damage his good name and credibility quite a bit. Whereas the inventor will likely be seen as a person who's just seeking a rather poetic form of due restitutions.

that would be true... if the SONGBIRD™ was sold in more than 1 unit. And you might notice on the very cover of the comic ... it was not.

My mind has trouble accepting that on anything deeper than a surface level.

With the money needed to develop just one or two Songbird versions, the inventor must have been financially wiped out. But he kept building an entire chassis and logic engine for each new further one? Why not keep tweaking the already-existing automatons to make the new prototypes? They weren't going anywhere.

I grant he would likely have given the relevant Songbird a say in this, and she might have been opposed. But for such a mechanical miracle to go unowned and unused because their entirely-necessary price tag is deemed 'not worth it' by those they'd serve must be constantly humiliating! One might bear the indignity of alterations simply to keep other 'sisters' from being created who'd wind up as lonely and unappreciated as herself.

He was financially wiped out. most of the rest of part 1 of the comic was about him finding people who would fund him rebuilding the now destroyed songbird.

He found a buyer but that buyer responded by "i will pay you when i get the thing, not before" while at the same time firing a singer because a machine was going to take her place, sue to what Wayne offered.

It ended up being the singer to actually invest in his ideas and help him rebuild the songbird.

And since her name was Birdsong... he named the SONGBIRD™ company after her.

Once he rebuilt and sold the first... he used the money to go and create more which his new wife... while the rich man who bought the songbird started reverse engineering what he had and mass producing the cheap imitations above.

While the inventor was full of energy and happy with his new wife, building more like Philomela...

...another engineer was being whipped and forced to destroy Philomela to see how she worked.

The second engineer could do no more, not only he barely understood how the mechanisms inside her worked, and thus did not know how to simplify them... he was destroying what he considered a piece of art... and that is when ... Baba Ptitsa... of all creatures appeared in front of him She offered him one of her eggs. to give life to his creations.

But Philomela seized the opportunity, animated by the magic of the appearance, she wanted to cling to life... and the egg resonated with her rather than with the imitations.... and she became Philekdikisi, the "beautiful revenge". she killed the engineer that had been slowly killing her then remade him into DETERMINATION, filling him with new life with a single purpose... and seeing that she could actually give life, she gave life to one of the imitations, then she went back to her birthplace, the home of the inventor and saw many incomplete songbirds... and she completed them giving each their identity rathewr than being all identical.

This drained her and she almost died right there, she did not know she had limits.

But this is when the inventor and his wife entered the workshop and Philekdikisi tried to get her revenge by killing them both for giving her a life that could only be li9ved 1 minute at a time and being completely reliant on others...

...except she could not... because she was too weak now and ...well... they still did give her life, however shitty it was.

At which point the rich man, followed by DETERMINATION came in the workshop wielding a shotgun.

A fight ensued between the humans and Philomela's mother the one that gave the inventor the money to rebuild her... was killed to protect the songbirds.

Hence Philekdikisi used the last of her magic to revive Apurva Songbird... as Philagness. And she died right there. Making this her third death. The first was saving Wayne from the fire. The second was when she was dismantled to reverse engineer her. And now this one. she reverted to being that magic egg... now without magic.

This should have been her final death were it not for the fact that several decades later.... DETERMINATION went back to the museum where the cobbled up together body made from the remnants of what was left of the other songbirds after they were given life lay as a monument to her... and somehow he had the egg which was thought to be lost he sacrifices himself to give her life anew, 50 years after the events of that night.

Philomela has one last chance at life and this time she makes sure she does not squander it... but also she is tired of humans and all their mess.

So, after she does one last thing for her creator and Philagness... she leaves the real world to enter the world of dreams.

And that is why there only ever was 1 songbird ever sold.

Thank you. A rather complex story, but one that resolves the greater confusions that were in my head.

I suspect it was all told already on that lightly-enciphered gallery page. Since I'd like to be able to read those kinds of pages, what do you use to advance the characters? I'm certain you didn't just work all that out letter by letter as you type... that'd be simple, but absurdly slow and cumbersome. Is there a procedure somewhere within modern browser or typing programs that will apply the effect to text selections?

this is the third time i gave you the online decrypter.

😂👍💖💯

https://rot13.com/

copy the text, pass it there, copy to a text file 🤣

have a chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/.....idcdaiidfmhomh

I saw that link, but had no idea you were trying to send me somewhere that would have an encryption shortcut method. I thought it was in case I wanted more general information.

oh, no, it's a page that literally does only that. You can check its source code, it does exactly nothing else.