In The Bird Person Au, How Big Is The Ratio Of Bird People To Non-bird People? You Said That All Ability

in the bird person au, how big is the ratio of bird people to non-bird people? you said that all ability users are bird people but not all bird people are ability users.

That's an excellent question! I never actually settled down on how much people are bird people in this world, but after doing some dubious math (seriously it is part counting the Japanese authors, part looking at percentages of various minorities in couple of countries and good chunk of just pulling the numbers out of thin air) I think that roughly 4 to 5% of world's population are bird people!

Regarding the "all ability users are bird people, but not all bird people are ability users", people like Ranpo, Gin and Naomi are part of the bird people's population that don't have abilities. But due to bird people that do have abilities being more noticeable, with how showy abilities are sometimes, general world's population usually assumes that all bird people have abilities from the get go

I think I need to slow down with drawings and actually explain what's going on. That would be part 1 of a pretty long ramble about worldbuilding for the au.

So, let's start with a general introduction to what bird people are!

In this world, there are so-called "bird people"- probably humans that can turn into birds with the help of a special feather cloak called pelt

Pelt forms after first transformation into a bird during a bird person's childhood. When bird turns back into a kid, their wings and tail separate into this cloak, which can be taken off like any other piece clothing

In addition to pelt, bird people, as you saw, have unique, different from normal human anatomy, that mimics certain traits of bird species they can turn into

They lack outer ear, and instead of it, they have tufts of specialised feathers surrounding an ear opening that help channel sound into it. Those feathers can move, and bird people subconsciously display their emotions with them

Their hands and feet have claw-like nails and are covered in either feathers or scales, just like birds' feet. Some of the bird people have additional modifications for their hands, similar to modifications that their bird species' claws have

Peculiar exception are those whose bird species are among waterfowl. Their limb modifications go into their feet

All bird people have full nictitating membrane, or translucent third eyelid that allows birds to see while blinking to clear eyes of debris

[Example of Akutagawa blinking]

The feathers under eyes probably play no real function

Had to switch back to Medibang for Mori & Elise piece. People like Q in this au even less, sadly, because their ability invokes similar feeling to having bird person's pelt taken (it's actually surprisingly less bad than pelt stealing, but not a lot of people bother to understand). Elise has more of her own personality here

Fear of being perceived and desire to overshare thousands of ideas rattling in my skull box, fight!