Sunlight dances through frosty willows and colorful currant.

(c) riverwindphotography, September 2023

sillyposting

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Vintage Native American art.

oh so chilly..

Oemleria cerasiformis (oso berry)..cedar stump..dry grass..and thou..

There needs to be a conversation about the colorism in the casting of indigenous people so far-even if you believe Sokka’s actor is ndn he along with Kuruk and Katara’s actors are noticeably lighter then their characters. (Comically so in Sokka and Kuruk’s case)

Usually I’d give Katara’s actress a pass because at least she’s visibly brown but with the other actors it’s a :// pattern. This is not criticism at Katara’s actress btw I’m glad a native woman is getting any role but between the colorism and the inability to just cast Inuit people there’s def conversations to be had 😭😔

Image id : a screenshot from Twitter account “discuss avatar” saying “meet your past life avatars from season 1 of Netflix’s avatar the last airbender. Water : avatar Kuruk - Meegwun Fairbrother. Earth : avatar Kyoshi - Yvonne Chapman. Fire : avatar Roku - C.S. Lee.” Underneath are three headshots of the actors over their characters (a lightskinned man with green eyes over Kuruk a darkskinned man dressed in white fur, an Asian woman with short hair in a black dress over Kyoshi an Asian woman in white makeup and green robes, and a bald asian man with a mustache over a Asian man with long hair and a beard in red robes.) : end id.

odo sketches

#BetweenShadowAndLight

A shadow is not a reflection, even though it is often the same shape as the object.

~O come let us adore Him~

People who argue that Rhaenyra has no right to fight the misogyny she's subjected to because she's already "privileged," take me back to all those men who belittle western feminists for complaining about "first world problems."

You know the ones. The ones who say that if you're lucky enough to live in X country, you have no right to complain about "the little bit of privilege you don't get". The ones who then go on to say something racist and paternalistic about how women in Y region have it so much worse.

And the thing is, the demographic proportions of medieval nobility vs. peasantry, and citizens of [these countries they're thinking of] vs. [THOSE countries they're thinking of but probably don't even know the names of], really aren't THAT different.

What I'm saying is, knock it off. It screams, "Rhaenyra wanting bodily autonomy is such a first world problem!"

I had a brother, once

When I was about nine, and he was four, I think, he went away. He was so cute, he had a bunch of shiny copper hair, a nice smile and those big blue eyes. I loved to play with him, he was so little and funny. But one day he started moving things around the house, like small things that ran across the table to his little hands, and once he befriended a bird outside the window, it came so close to him that it accepted the food he gave it. My mother didn't believe me at first when I said that, but then she and dad started watching him closely, and I remember they talked of a thing called the Temple, after a while. Dad looked sad for a bit, but mum was so thrilled. She had an old picture, she always told me the woman in the picture was his grand grand grandmother, from centuries ago, and that she went to the Temple, and one evening they came into our room and talked to us. They told us that my little brother, Ben, had a special gift, like the woman in the picture. That he was touched by the light, and he could do great things, and that new people would come to test him and see if he was touched enough to learn how to use his gift for the Galaxy and the Republic. I was so scared, at first, I didn't want my little brother to go away. I screamed and hugged him, and he was so still in my arms. My parents were emotional too, mum said to me that giving a child to the Temple was a privilege and that he could live better with them than with us. I didn't understand at first, but they told me that the Temple was full of people like him, with his gift, and that their job was so important to the Republic, and he would have the chance to become a good person between them. We were just humble citizens, my dad was an architect, like me, and my mom was an artist and a painter. She told me that Ben could become something that they could never prepare him for, and the people at the Temple could help him with his gift and prepare him to be the best person he could be.

Some days after that, people from the Temple came to see my family. There was a tall black man and a creature with a mask on his face and eyes. They played with Ben and asked him a lot of questions, and then they came to me. They asked me if I loved him, and if I wanted him to be happy. Of course, I wanted that. The black man told me that he understand I was sad and didn't want to lose my brother, and he was right. He told me that Ben was going to live a life in the Temple, that he would learn how to use his gifts, and that he would be happy with them, but I was afraid that he would be alone and sad.

So they brought us all to the Temple, and we had the chance to see where he would live and grow. The school and the creche were so fun, and warm, that I even asked if I could stay with them too. But I was not gifted as him, so I couldn't. We hugged my brother for the last time, but every year, for the anniversary of the day he went to the Temple we received a picture and a few words from his teachers. It went on until he became a Padawan, around fourteen, and it was ten years since he left us.

We never forgot him, and I was still a bit sad, but I grow up being proud that my youngest brother went to become a Jedi. I got married and watched my children closely, in their youth, wondering if there was a hint of the same gift that he had, but apparently, that wasn't the case. It was a relief, surely, I didn't have to say goodbye to one of my children at such a young age, because I remember how conflicted my parents were, when we left him on Coruscant, in the Temple. They cried a lot, and I thought that it was because they didn't want to leave him behind, but then I understand. Sometimes it's hard to choose the best for your children, and you wish you can do everything yourself. But it's not always possible. He had great power in his little hands, and with great power comes great responsibility, and sometimes as a parent, your job is to accept that you're not the best fit to teach something important to your children. We knew nothing of the Force, we couldn't help him with it. We wouldn't be able to give him the proper teachings to understand and use his power in the best way, and it could easily hurt him and the people around him. Instead, he went on and became a great Jedi, and now I can read about him, saving the Republic and the galaxy with his power, against the Separatists that want to destroy our way of life.

So, yes, I spent my youth wondering how he was and if he was happy with the Jedi, but now I know he was. And every time someone at work asks me "are you related to that Kenobi?" I always smile.

Yeah... that's my brother.

day 6 - hawaii trip

Snowberry covered in dew, and sparkling in the morning light

(c) riverwindphotography

Oh yeah also wanted to share with the Sunflowers that this weekend I’m gonna do one of those invasive plant pulling events in a local park!! Its gonna be my first time going to one and I’m excited (and a lil nervous but yknow). A friend’s also coming with so I don’t gotta be alone, which I appreciate because A: nervous about going alone and B: she doesn’t even like plants or outdoorsy stuff so we have to stan her putting up with my idea of Fun Activity being ‘yanking plants out of the ground’

All this to say I urge yall to go live out your solarpunky dreams. And apparently the native plant society’s website is a good place to start finding events like these.

... so does anyone have any clue on how undeath is supposed to affect elven souls?

Because I have been building my own elf character, and thinking about this a lot, and it's a thought that just will not leave me (hard not to think about this with an Astarion romance), so it's time for another one of my navel-gazey thinkpieces i guess lol.

Like, my main source is Mordekainen's Tome of Foes, and that book states clearly that elven souls are immortal. Their numbers are more or less fixed, or rather "capped" (that's why they haven't "outbred" every other race even with their long lifespans), and each elf currently living is the reincarnation of an elven soul that's already been to Arvandor (their afterlife) at some point, and then returned in a new body. That's why they have such few children: because a birth is as much a joy as it is a sorrow. It's both the arrival of a new life, and the death of another- either decades, centuries, millenia past, or as soon as barely a few months ago.

As a quick and dirty run-down for those who don't really want to wade into the lore (I don't blame you, it's murky in there), early in their lives and when they are nearing death are the times when elves are most intimately connected to their previous lives, and in their sleep-trance (their "Reverie"), these individuals can call upon memories of those past lives. The young elves relive exclusively the experiences and adventures of their immortal soul until their second or third decade- then, slowly, those memories become interspersed with those from their current life (the First Reflection, the first time that happens, marks the start of their "adolescence" of the mind essentially- they are physically fully mature by then), until roughly the end of their first century, which is when their access to these primal memories is cut off. From that point forward, the elf loses access to their previous lives. This is called the Drawing of the Veil, and from that point forward, the elf may only relive events from their current life in their trance, right until they start nearing the end of their natural lifespans some 600 years later.

This is all fairly clear in the case of a living elf.

But what happens if that immortal elven soul, that's so intimately interconnected with the afterlife and the very passage of time, finds itself suddenly housed in an undead, unaging, immortal body? How does that change things?

It's got to change things, no?

Like this is such a specific thing, I don't believe specifically elven intelligent undead (that is also a protagonist about whose soul we are supposed to care) has been written about super extensively in the sourcebooks, but my guess personally is that the moment of undeath, it... severs the bond of the soul to Arvandor. This is not unrealistic, as that bond can break for many reasons: Drow for one are never invited back and die true deaths with no way to be reincarnated, and so do elves who have turned to gods outside of the Seldarine. (.... that also means that, with the drow's propensity for casual murder, the number of elven souls available for rebirth is in a constant and steep decline, but that's a whole other thing.) (I've no clue what this means for the Seldarine drow. I wanna say that they can gain admission back, but that's just me being an optimist, I've no recollection of a source literally confirming or denying that.)

This loss of the primal memories, it's said to be a traumatic experience in itself, even if it comes naturally, as just part of the elven life cycle, and it coming on the heels of such a profound upheaval of one's life (such as being turned into a vampire), it may just be the least of the person's worries... but it would explain some things in a way that goes beyond the traumatic experiences of Astarion's current life.

If that moment of being cut off were to happen before the elf would naturally lose their ability to access primal memories, I assume that they would... be forced to more or less "grow up" (at the lack of a better term) in an instant. And to be denied roughly half the time you would have otherwise had for regaining experiences and memories from your past lives, it's got to leave one a bit... emotionally stunted, when compared to a living elf of a similar age, who had time to go through their natural life cycle as one should.

(Which, it's not a huge reveal that I believe our guy to be emotionally immature, and a bit stunted in his emotional growth. That's, like, clear, and I don't mean to say anything to the effect of "ooooh, he was so youuuung, still an uwu baaaaby---" no, we're unequivocally talking about a fully grown, adult man lol, but specifically in the case of how this all relates to this weird trait of elves, it's still interesting to think about this odd dissonance that... may very well exist between a living- and an undead elf.)

Hell, my personal little theory is that elven intelligent undead (like vampires, who do retain a soul within their bodies) specifically, while they do go into a trance and have dreams/nightmares/memories of their current lives, may just even lose the ability to recall events from their pre-undeath life (beyond conventional memory, meaning that they can't strengthen those memories and are bound to eventually forget them) as well, as evidenced by Astarion not remembering his own face, or what color his eyes were once. (You can't tell me that while he was alive, he didn't spend a shitton of time looking at his own face. If he could relive pre-undeath memories, he'd know these things, or would be able to recall them if he wished.)

There would be something... strangely tragic, in this kind of isolation, for an elf. By becoming a vampire, you'd become undead first, and an elf.... somewhere way, way, way down the line.

As a fairly young undead elf, you're somehow simultaneously ancient, adolescent, and middle-aged, and also pretty much confined to a singular existence of nothing but pain and abuse, with memories of a distant childhood slowly fading just out of reach, knowing that... this, this is just your soul's lot now. That a significant part of your fey heritage, your very ancestry as well as part of your immutable essence, has been torn from you in just one moment, in exchange for preserving this current life, as a simulacrum of itself. And now there is no next life, because this one is one without a natural end, and Sehanine Moonbow will now never invite your immortal soul back to Arvandor to be reborn, because it's been cut off from you, and your very body is holding you hostage. Six, sixteen, or sixty centuries can come to pass, and still nothing is going to change... unless you die, in which case you're just dead, like any non-elven creature.

Anyway, there's no real point to this, or a conclusion to be drawn, beyond just... fuck, man, they couldn't have made this fucker more of a tragic figure if they tried.

(...... Fun fact, Silvanus is not part of the Seldarine. So unless he maybe turns to worship Rillifane Rallathil instead, Halsin's soul would not be reincarnated either. But he seems to have made that decision himself and he seems content, so I'm guessing he's just cool with it.)

(I'm not fucking touching half-elves now, you can't make me, that's such a fucking can of worms oh my god)

Ameria maritima..perhaps..

debora nascimento gif pack

CLICK THE SOURCE LINK BELOW and you will find #50 245x150px gifs of Débora Nascimento as Filomenta "Filo" in Êta Mundo Bom! various clips (2016)! These were created from scratch by Sveja. Do what you want with these, just don't repost/claim as your own, don't use them to play Debora or in any smut/smut-based blogs, and like/reblog if using. If you like what I'm doing, feel free to commission me (/commissionsinfo) or send me a coffee (/svejarph). Débora was 30-31 during filming and is Brazilian (Native, Black, and white). Please keep in mind that this show was set in Brazil during the 1940s.

tw: alcohol, baby, drinking, fire, flashing lights, flickering lights, hugging, kissing, military, shaky camera