lilyminer

[lilyminer]

“whatever the fuck these two characters had going on” is a vastly underrated character dynamic

[lilyminer]

Nature is healing.

I burned the Meadow a couple weeks ago. At first it looked like nothing but charred ashes and dirt, with a few scorched green patches, and I was afraid I'd done something terrible. But then the sprouts emerged. Tender new leaves swarming the soil.

My brother and I were outside after dark the other day, to see if any lightning bugs would emerge yet. We had been working on digging the pond. That old soggy spot in the middle of the yard that we called "poor drainage," that always splattered mud over our legs when we ran across it as children—it isn't a failed lawn, and it never was.

Oh, we tried to fill in the mud puddles, even rented heavy machinery and graded the whole thing out, but the little wetland still remembered. God bless those indomitable puddles and wetlands and weeds, that in spite of our efforts to flatten out the differences that make each square meter of land unique from another, still declare themselves over and over to be what they are.

So we've been digging a hole. A wide, shallow hole, with an island in the middle.

And steadily, I've been transplanting in vegetation. At school there is a soggy field that sadly is mowed like any old field. The only pools where a frog could lay eggs are tire ruts. From this field I dig up big clumps of rushes and sedges, and nobody pays me any mind when I smuggle them home.

I pulled a little stick of shrubby willow from some cracked pavement near a creek, and planted it nearby. From a ditch on the side of the road beside a corn field, I dug up cattail rhizomes. Everywhere, tiny bits of wilderness, holding on.

I gathered up rotting logs small enough to carry and made a log pile beside the pond. At another corner is a rock pile. I planted some old branches upright in the ground to make a good place for birds and dragonflies to perch.

And there are so many birds! Mourning doves, robins, cardinals and grackles come here in much bigger numbers, and many, many finches and sparrows. I always hear woodpeckers, even a Pileated Woodpecker here and there. A pair of bluebirds lives here. There are three tree swallows, a barn swallow also, tons of chickadees, and there's always six or seven blue jays screaming and making a commotion. And the goldfinches! Yesterday I watched three brilliant yellow males frolic among the tall dandelions. They would hover above the grass and then drop down. One landed on a dandelion stem and it flopped over. There are several bright orange birds too. I think a couple of them are orioles, but there's definitely also a Summer Tanager. There's a pair of Canada Geese that always fly by overhead around the same time in the evening. It's like their daily commute.

The other day, as I watched, I saw a Cooper's Hawk swoop down and carry off a robin. This was horrifying news for the robin individually, but great news for the ecosystem. The food chain can support more links now.

There are two garter snakes instead of one, both of them fat from being good at snaking. I wonder if there will be babies?

But the biggest change this year is the bugs. It's too early for the lightning bugs, but all the same the yard is full of life.

It's like remembering something I didn't know I forgot. Oh. This is how it's supposed to be. I can't glance in any direction without seeing the movement of bugs. Fat crickets and earwigs scuttle underneath my rock piles, wasps flit about and visit the pond's shore, an unbelievable variety of flies and bees visit the flowers, millipedes and centipedes hide under the logs. Butterflies, moths, and beetles big and small are everywhere.

I can't even describe it in terms of individual encounters; they're just everywhere, hopping and fluttering away with every step. There are so many kinds of ants. I sometimes stare really closely at the ground to watch the activities of the ants. Sometimes they are in long lines, with two lanes of ants going back and forth, touching antennae whenever two ants traveling in opposite directions meet. Sometimes I see ants fighting each other, as though ant war is happening. Sometimes the ants are carrying the curled-up bodies of dead ants—their fallen comrades?

My neighbor gave me all of their fallen leaves (twelve bags!) and it turns out that piling leaves on top of a rock and log pile in a wet area summons an unbelievable amount of snails.

I always heard of snails as pests, but I have learned better. Snails move calcium through the food chain. Birds eat snails and use the calcium in their shells to make egg shells. In this way, snails lead to baby birds. I never would have known this if I hadn't set out to learn about snails.

In the golden hour of evening, bugs drift across the sky like golden motes of dust, whirling and dancing together in the grand dramas of their tiny lives. I think about how complicated their worlds are. After interacting with bees and wasps so much for so long, I'm amazed by how intelligent and polite they are. Bumble bees will hover in front of me, swaying side to side, or circle slowly around me several times, clearly perceiving some kind of information...but what? It seems like bees and wasps can figure out if you are a threat, or if you are peaceful, and act accordingly.

I came to a realization about wasps: when they dart at your head so you hear them buzzing close by your ears, they're announcing their presence. The proper response is to freeze and duck down a bit. It seems like wasps can recognize if you're being polite; for what it's worth, I've never been stung by a wasp.

As night falls, bats emerge and start looping and darting around in the sky above. If the yard seems full of bugs in the day, it is nothing compared to the night.

I'm aware that what I'm about to describe, to an entomophobe, sounds like a horror movie: when i walk to the back yard, the trees are audibly crackling and whirring with the activity of insects. Beetles hover among the branches of the trees. When we look up at the sky, moths of all sizes are flying hither and thither across it. A large, very striking white moth flies past low to the ground.

Last year, seeing a moth against the darkening sky was only occasional. Now there's so many of them.

I consider it in my mind:

When roads and houses are built and land is turned over to various human uses, potentially hundreds of native plant species are extirpated from that small area. But all of the Eastern USA has been heavily altered and destroyed.

Some plants come back easily, like wild blackberry, daisy fleabane, and common violets. But many of them do not. Some plants need fire to sprout, some need Bison or large birds to spread them, some need humans to harvest and care for them, some live in habitats that are frequently treated with contempt, some cannot bear to be grazed by cattle, some are suffocated beneath invasive Tall Fescue, Kentucky bluegrass, honeysuckle or Bradford pears, and some don't like being mowed or bushhogged.

Look at the landscape...hundreds and hundreds of acres of suburbs, pastures, corn fields, pavement, mowed verges and edges of roads.

Yes, you see milkweed now and then, a few plants on the edge of the road, but when you consider the total area of space covered by milkweed, it is so little it is nearly negligible. Imagine how many milkweed plants could grow in a single acre that was caretaken for their prosperity—enough to equal fifty roadsides put together!

Then I consider how many bugs are specialists, that can only feed upon a particular plant. Every kind of plant has its own bugs. When plant diversity is replaced by Plant Sameness, the bug population decreases dramatically.

Plant sameness has taken over the world, and the insect apocalypse is a result.

But in this one small spot, nature is healing...

[lilyminer]

im literally on my period jschlatt cannot drop music or else im so fucking attacking him

[lilyminer]

every time i see someone call kirk and spock the oldest ship, i'm filled with the urge to go "hmm actually the holmes and watson girlies have been here for a hundred years now", and i refrain because i know the natural conclusion of this game is gilgamesh and enkidu

[lilyminer]

[lilyminer]

Happy birthday to the only video that has ever been posted to youtube actually

[lilyminer]

Ugh I both hate and love tumblr.

A nearly 1000 word writing piece just fell behind a post containing one single sentence. Both about the same character. And ya know I can’t blame y’all, sometimes concise and to the point is the way to go.

[lilyminer]

big fan of when some edgelord isolates himself from the world hiding in his menacing magical castle, only for his future love interest to ram down the doors like YO BITCH! i live here now

[lilyminer]

Hey y'all, here's some more Emerald Duo character headcanon writing. A bit of a throwback since I haven't done this in a while. For anyone not caught up on my weirdly elaborate headcanons/sorta au, I made up a whole 3000 year timeline for the life of c!Philza, and most of it is sad cuz I'm an angst writer :) You don't need to know much about my headcanons for this tho, just go with the flow. Enjoy.

Like The Spring Thaw

The reign of the Antarctic Empire was a turbulent time, not just for Phil and Techno of course, the political conflicts, scarcity, and relentless environment was a constant onslaught against all the people they ruled over.

Philza and Technoblade's friendship was new, at least by an immortals standards. Techno had been so young when they first met, brought together as allies on the grand battlefields of a war neither of them really cared about. Win? Lose? It didn't matter. Techno was there to try to tame the influence of the blood god hidden deep inside his brain. Phil had been fighting to forget at first, to forget what he's lost, the home, the community, the friends. But nothing builds a bond like fighting for the same cause. Techno gave him something to fight to protect again, after all those years of not having time to take anyone under his wing. So once the war ended the two decided to try to bring peace to a divided world full of conflict.

They had their laughs, taking over the whole world via a bureaucratic loophole, yeah people got pretty pissed at them for that. But something about having a group of people to take care of again helped Phil fix some broken part of himself he left to fester years ago. He was still, and would surely forever be haunted by the memory of his long and winding path in life. The screams of those who had taken shelter in his temple as it was raided became a echo forever reverberating through his head as he slept. But now, instead of nearly being smothered in his sleep by his fellow soldiers, furious at his habit of giving away their position, there was a gentle knock at his door, a friend who's head was filled with much the same noise there to make him a tea and chat away the nightmares.

That castle became home. Sure he was forced to maintain a persona faker then any he'd worn before and the cold and exposed machinery made binding his wings out of the way a must, but they lived a life of plenty. Phil began to enjoy the cold, at home above the layers of ice and frost. Eventually, it became easy to ignore the small and inconvenient plights of his people. Without even knowing it he became the kind of ruler he swore he'd always hate. The apathetic king who saw violent gangs of thieves roaming the countryside as a non-issue. The monarch filled with so much hatred they allowed two armies to needlessly fight for decades. With a uncharacteristic lack of his usual foresight he was among those tyrants now, and so when reports came from the fishermen on the outskirts of the empire that a deadly plague was whipping out every man, woman, and child, the duel emperors brushed it off as yet another mild health issue. Just like the last illness, nothing to worry about.

And in the blink of an eye it was all over. Him and Techno watched in horror over the course of a handful of weeks as the treatments they knew had no effect on this illness. Their advisors locked them away in the castle, hoping to protect them but it only made the helplessness worse. Their doctors, nurses, midwives, wise-folk, and scientists dropped like flies. As they made the decree that all must evacuate the death-cursed city it seemed less were alive to hear it by the minute. All supply lines and social structure broke down, their empire fell to ruin while their backs were turned.

Him and Techno evacuated. Like cowards.

They were hated for a time, scorned for their inability to save their people. But not nearly long enough for Phil. At times he felt the need to remind people, even as generations passed. How could death on such a scale be forgotten? He had truly become what he hated all along, not even brave enough to fight back on others behalf. His lady was his world, but it pained him to know he had become the omen of death that he had been accused of being. Techno didn't speak much anymore, but he knew that similar feelings must be bubbling up for him as well. The two were more similar then they cared to admit.

Soon Techno was on the road again, Phil settled into a cottage all his own, but it was far too lonely. He began to feel better day by day, year by year. He laughed to himself when his crows once filled with wanderlust returned home with stories of the fearsome warrior of the blood god who opposed governments of any kind. It seemed Techno had taken a far more proactive approach to the beliefs he too had felt solidify after their great failure. He hoped the memories didn't haunt his old friend like they did to him. He did nothing with the pain though, no actions of great conviction, which he knew would make it worse in time. But his cruelty had been transformed back into the compassion he had been missing all these years along the way. With it, he felt any remaining pride he had for his days of leadership fade. The days he spent alone filled his old soul with the soft and tender warmth of a hearth fire. It was time to move on, he had sought out those who hated him for long enough. At the very least it was time to unbind his wings. It was time to fly again.

[lilyminer]

well good morning it’s time to get up and find out why my roommates (neither of whom, to my knowledge, celebrate Christmas) are blasting Christmas music at 8:30 AM on November 14th

[lilyminer]

if you dont have a fursona at this point youre just being unprofessional

[lilyminer]

she was at the club. it didnt change anything. it didnt save anyone. there were just too many forces against it. but it still matters that she was at the club.

[lilyminer]

Guys how do I like, confess to someone I wanna be in a queer platonic relationship with them? I don’t wanna be romantic about it, it needs to be chill. But at the same time is there really a chill way to tell someone you regularly wish you could call them your partner and kiss them?

It went ok with my last QPR when I straight up just brought it up. But that was after we already kissed so idk how easy it’ll be to ask to queer up this relationship.

[lilyminer]

Forever thinking about dsmp c!Philza

[lilyminer]

[lilyminer]

they shoulda let him say “i get lesbians” in the movie

[lilyminer]