theyr the same thing

wow ive been kind of off lately I should take a day to rest an[explosion]

day 4! a roman :>

The born in Eastern Europe curse of knowing you were doomed from the start

people dont talk enough about how heartbreaking the marlon betrayal mustve been for clem too,,

this dude saves the life of her and her kid. takes them in has them patched up gives them their first hot meal in who knows how long. gives them a safe place to stay. possibly permanently. confides in her that hes trying to be a good leader but feels like and fears that hes failing. asks her to help him take care of the rest of the group. helps her get over her fear of dogs by asking her to trust him. and things go well. she feels safe. like this place could really finally be the home shes been looking for

but as soon as she finds out what happened to the twins. that marlon planned on giving up her and aj too. she immediately becomes a liability to him and he attempts to kill her for it. locks her in the basement to die by walker. then tries to turn the group against her so he can shoot her instead when the first method fails. and he nearly succeeds

then a majority of the group turn against clem the minute aj kills marlon. ignoring marlons mistakes but condemning aj for his. like clem wasnt betrayed by marlon in the exact same way he betrayed the twins. like she literally wasnt almost killed twice? and how long had he been considering giving her up? was it always some contingency he planned? did he truly want to keep them around and things only changed when he feared the raiders had returned? she'll never know

the construction crew B)

being obsessed with your own oc is so fucking hard all month i have had cosmas on the mind morning to night when i wake up and while i fall asleep

So, remember a few posts ago when I made up a game to go outside and identify every tree I see, but I had to give it up because it's February? And nothing has leaves? I remembered later this doesn't apply to evergreens! Evergreens are still out there, and actually much more easy to point out, now that everything else is bare.

So. This is the knowledge I gathered from various sources from the internet!

Pines have long needles and they grow together in bunches, their silhouette is rounded at the edges, distinct and easy to recognize.

Spruce's branches are always pointed up, and grow upwards. Their needles grow in all directions out of the branches. Their needles also have 4 sides to them, and are easy to roll between fingers.

Fir's needles grow only to the left and right, and leave the middle of the branch exposed. The back of the needles have 2 white lines. Their lower branches point down.

Yew's needles are soft to touch, their color is more vibrant than the other evergreens, they grow red berries on them. Their needles also only grow from the sides, and not in the middle. Yew is the poisonous one that must not be mistaken for the rest!

With this info in my mind, I set off! This is the first evergreen tree I found, right in front of the building. I never tried to figure out what it was before.

It looks majestic. What I can see here, is needles growing in every direction from the little tip I took off, so I decided it has to be spruce.

The next tree I noticed was in someone's backyard, but I wouldn't let that deter me! It was big and noticeable from far away! So. I sneaked in to take a picture:

Isn't it beautiful? This one also has needles growing from all directions, so it has to be another spruce. But, this one also has some tiny cones growing? I noted that as interesting, and moved on to the next.

Then I saw these two in people's backyard:

And I thought, well what are these? At first I thought, cypress, but these are obviously two different things, and they seem to be bushes at that, and I didn't research any bush varieties, so I had to let that go for now. If anyone can tell me their names I would love that!

And then I found lots more of similar trees!

They were definitely planted for decoration, and they're planted all together, but some of them have kind of a purple berry (cone?) growing on them, while some don't, and I'm not sure if they're the same species. Though I do think sometimes trees will grow their fruit only from the side that is more exposed to the sun, so it's possible the branches without berries are just underexposed to the light.

So the next several trees I found were spruces, or so it seems. I'm starting to get suspicious, because first, why didn't I know we were in a spruce-supremacy biome, second, why do all of these trees look so different? Look at them:

Look how janky some of them look! That is fun! Is that really a spruce? They all had needles growing in all directions, and the tips of their branches pointing up, but I'm starting to get suspicious and feel like these are different varieties of trees and we just called them all 'spruce' and moved on.

Then I, on purpose, went to the place with pines, where I usually harvest my pine needles for tea. This is, one of the most beautiful pines in the city:

This is not even a good picture of her, this being is divine. She's about the only thing that makes this place livable, every time I see her I'm astounded and filled with awe, she's so gorgeous and lush and perfect? Her shape? The feeling of being closer to heaven when you look at her? She has it all. I don't even know how they made that gorgeous tree grow next to such an ugly building. Anyway.

Close by is a little park made out of pine trees, I was able to find a little pine cone! And here are the pine needles:

These can be eaten, added into meals, they can be made into syrups, tinctures, and they make a very calming tea! You can also weave a basket with them, which I did once! Blessed source of life.

Spruce and Fir needles are also edible and medicinal, but I've never tried them, so I'm not gonna talk about that yet. But here's whats NOT edible. The deadly yew tree:

She's so soft to touch, it's almost impossible not to recognize. If you touch an evergreen and it's super soft and pliable, do not eat it! She's also beautiful and vibrant with her colors, I took pictures of this tree before, just because it was so pretty. You can see the needles also grow only on the sides, and not in every direction like the spruce.

And then, I noticed this tree from the road, and it was Different from all of the others. Firstly, it was growing new shoots, which most of the others were not into. Second, it looked super lush and healthy. I couldn't back out further to take a better picture because of the cars behind me, but I grabbed a little shoot, and checked it.

And see these needles how they're only growing to the sides, and not from the middle? And when you turn the needles on the other side, I know you can't see it, but there were 2 white lines on them! I've found a Fir!

That was the first, and the only fir I've found. I was so happy, relieved, and thrilled to find, all 4 evergreen species in walking distance of my residence. I also was pleased to know that my methods of recognition were true, firs really do have white lines on the underside of needles. Who knew!

Now, these are not all of the trees I've found, but the rest I found only gave me more questions than answers. I've found some baby spruces that looked completely different, like this:

And while I do find these adorable, I wanna know why are they so different? Is it because they're tiny? They look more lush and healthy, is it because they're cared for or they're different, imported species? Why is that last tree in the middle of cone production, while the other spruces are after different businesses? If this is a matter of different varieties then I'm personally offended nobody explained this to me.

Also, I found this bush? And it smelled? Incredible??

The scent of this was thousandfold the power of any other plant. Smelling this transported me into a thousand old forest and underground. After touching this, my entire hand smelled like it for the rest of my trip, I could smell nothing else. It was pine-like but also plant like, and deeper, stronger, like I was smelling not the ends of the plant but the middle of a tree, the center, the roots and the soil. I took a bit of it home to smell. I think it will do me good. Further research revealed that this is a juniper bush, well known for its intense and overpowering scent!

I'm happy to report that this tree ID mission has cured my anxiety for the day, made me feel like a sneaky little secret scientist, gave me special inside knowledge of the evergreen tree society around me and had me meet some awesome trees! I also found some I didn't even know were growing close to me. I looked into making the syrup from the needles, but found out it required outrageous amount of sugar, so I gave up on it. I'm going to use little branches and shoots I took to make tea out of all of the edible plants instead.

you know, i think tenten will also give them good luck charms for protection like how she gave her tsunade-sama one in sd.

she totally would, with her penchant for fortune telling, she’d handcraft three good luck/protection charms and give them to each of them.

I like to think she gives them to each of her team at different times.

Lee gets his first, after Tenten overhears him telling Gai-sensei about how he has almost lost hope in his dream to beat Neji.

“Perhaps just hard work isn’t enough,” he sobs to Gai-sensei as Tenten walks away, her heart heavy. She hands him a little good-luck charm at training the next day, a carved dragon, quietly telling him that he should never lose hope.

Neji may be a genius, but Lee is a genius of hard work, and she will protect his boundless hope until he achieves his dream. Perhaps it comes from a place of selfishness. After all, Tenten is no genius herself, and Lee’s hope is her hope too.

Or maybe it’s not selfishness, but relatability.

Whatever it is, Lee thanks her with a huge hug and many, many tears. Tenten protests loudly, but deep down, her heart swells.

He always keeps it in the hidden pocket of his jumpsuit, and never forgets to take the charm out before washing it. He shows it off with pride to everyone, much to Tenten's chagrin.

Gai-sensei receives his next, after both Tenten and Lee end up in the hospital after the Chunin Exams.

After Tenten is healed, she finds her sensei standing over a sleeping Lee, tears rolling down his face. He immediately puts on an act when Tenten walks in, but she knows what she saw, and it weighs on her.

The next day, when Gai-sensei pops into her physical therapy to check on her and offer some good old Gai-sensei encouragement (motivational shouting), Tenten pulls him aside. She hands him a small charm she’d made the previous night, a little wood turtle carved with the symbol for luck.

“Don’t worry sensei, the people you care about will always be okay!” She smiles brightly at him as she sets the charm in his hand. “It’s for protection—”

Gai-sensei’s thanks is also in the form of many, many tears and shouted declarations of his sweet lotus flower’s kindness and compassion. Tenten’s response, as usual, is loud and embarrassed protests, and a secret smile muffled in Gai-sensei’s broad shoulder as he hugs her tightly.

Gai keeps his charm in the safest pocket of his jounin vest, going as far as to ask Genma to give him a seal to make sure it never breaks or gets damaged. After all, his lotus gave it to him so he could protect her and her teammates, and he would rather die than let her down.

Neji is the last to receive his charm, after his fight with Naruto in the final round of the Chunin Exams. He sits in the hospital room and tells her about everything, his clan, his uncle apologizing to him, his restored faith in the future.

"I will change my clan," he insists to her. "I will better it, for all of the Hyuuga."

The next morning, through the rubble of a torn-apart and betrayed village, in the wake of the Sandaime Hokage's death, Tenten walks to the Hyuuga compound dressed in her mourning clothes and deposits a small carved phoenix charm in his hand.

"What's this for?" he asks, turning the charm over in his hand and studying it.

"Good fortune, protection." Unlike the rest of Team Gai, Tenten always keeps her stories to herself. For some reason, she finds the words tumbling out of her. "My mother used to make them for me. They were for protection and good luck."

Neji nods. He runs a thumb over the carved bird's wing. "Protecting what?"

"My hopes, my well-being, whatever it was she thought needed to be protected."

Neji finally looks up at her, understanding filtering through his gaze. Tenten turns around, ears burning. "Come on, let's go. They'll kill us if we're late to the funeral."

Neji stows his charm in the pockets of his clothes and jogs after her.

Several years later, when Lee surpasses everyone around him, his taijutsu a shining beacon of his hard work and dedication, he is ever aware of the wooden dragon in his pocket, the way his hope is a reflection of Tenten's. He vows to work harder, to prove to her that she can do it just like him.

He will protect her hope too.

On the battlefield facing down Madara Uchiha, Gai quickly moves the little turtle charm to the pocket over his heart. To protect the village, to protect his precious students, he can do anything.

"Eighth Gate of Death, release!"

As medics work to stabilize Neji in the emergency tents, they find a blood-soaked phoenix charm clutched in his hand.

His full recovery is nothing short of a miracle.

i always thought artificer was irredeemable - even with everything from this world being able to come back from the dead it still attempted genocide of the scavengers. and sure, i'm not saying that others can't like arti (in fact i do like them and their story) or write a redemption arc, they can have their fun that way. but i don't want to be guilted into thinking otherwise

I don't like to terms like 'irredeemable' on animals, even more sentient/intelligent (and fake) ones. Artificer is absolutely expressing unchecked hostility, but ultimately its still in the form of a creature reacting to its own trauma with aggression and, as a more intelligent being, with spite. Slugcats (and scavengers) are at their core not meant to be stand-ins for humans, and I think that there is a tendency for fandom (and humans with other 'smart animals') to correlate intelligence/sentience with at least somewhat of an obligation to conform to human morals. As a biologist who's a fan of wasps, I know how much people tend to project a need for human reasoning and morals onto creatures who literally could not comprehend it nor would want to. Hell, on an individual basis, even humans disagree on where things like that do and don't apply.

Do I think Artificer is good? Hell no, I said myself that I think they're something so violently consumed by their own grief and anger that on a literally spiritual level they have damaged themselves beyond reasonable repair. I think you need to be pretty uniquely fucked up and far gone to achieve that in such a level that it's literally scarred your own karma. I guess I think they are irredeemable in that sense, but mostly on a more meta level referring to their actual ability to recover vs. a moral one. The narrative of the story certainly condemns their actions pretty heavily in what is, effectively, a form of divine punishment- a complete and total inability to find peace in the form of proper ascension no matter what they do now. I feel that even if they threw away their grievances and just lived with Five Pebbles forever they would be unhappy and restless, just stuck with a permanent stain they wish they could ignore because it was an itch they scratched entirely through violence. But in that same sense I don't think the scavengers are uniquely, humanly evil for killing a slugpup for stealing just because they are also an intelligent creature with the capacity for culture and understanding. I believe the scavengers fully understood they were attacking the equivalent of a slugcat child, and they did not care. That did not matter to them, because they are just naturally very selfish unless they have reason to believe youre on their side already, and even then they aren't above violence due to personal grievance. They killed Artificer's pup because it violated a rule it couldn't have known was a rule, and its unfair that it died for it, but I don't think it makes the scavengers evil for it in the same way I don't fault a lion for attacking the weak or young of a herd, or a bee for stinging. I mean hell, even the scavengers themselves do it- They attack anything they perceive as threats, and will send squads to eliminate ones they think are particularly significant, even going out of their way to track them down. Sure, this is the a result of the creature already harming them- but Artificer was harmed. They were originally fleeing in their dreams. You could say it's different because Scavengers only target the one, but they already have a natural hostility to some slugcats and slugcats are generally independent (although its worth noting that slugpups pay for their parents' crimes by sharing reputation)- scavengers are not. They're all animals, they do what they perceive to be in their best interests, even if they perceive their best interest to be going out of their way to fight. The Ancients are the closest we have to a society with established morals in Rain World, and their favorite pastime was advanced genetic modification and disrupting ecosystems. It seems a little silly (to me) to be hung up on if any of these things are 'good' in that sense.

I never tried the option myself bc it'd probably mean skipping the Reason You Suck speech at the end (fire for speedrunners though) but I Love that you can frame your Phoneys in 3, especially so if you've already killed the previous two. Like yeah couldn't send you off to die so i'll let the goverment do it for me 🧸 like its just Peak evil imo.

good news and bad news.

good: did get in to see the doctor on friday, got some meds, attacking this shit from many angles, feeling much better already!

bad: feeling perhaps a little TOO better, considering it's 1AM and i'm fucken WIRED lmao

deathstar shippers stop going out of ur way to tell me you hate dominator being a lesbian and that you’re homophobic asf challenge (impossible, apparently)

.

I think my main problem with having fandom paracosms (as in, this is a 100% personal problem/applies to me/my feelings about my own fandom paracosms) is that they’re never truly “mine”. 

Like, yes, I make up a plot - but that plot is based on a storyline from the original source material. I can change the paras - but how much can I change before they’re just…original paras? Wouldn’t that be better for me, then, so I can feel less self-conscious/insecure (for lack of a better word) when it comes to daydreaming about them? 

Even if I never say the source material, even if I make the paras unrecognizable, I will always know what they’re based on & I can’t change that fact. Maybe this ties into my feelings on fandom as a whole (which…is a whole mixed bag of worms). It’s genuinely hard for me to like/be immersed in my fandom paracosms sometimes because of how much shit I give myself for having them in the first place. That’s why they’re either so short-lived, or end up becoming original paracosms (that…get very little attention…).

This isn’t to say I always hate my fandom paracosms, just that I can’t help but be a little…..disappointed in the fact that my brain will latch onto these & not my original paracosms as much.