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gallifreyinstituteforlearning · 4 months ago

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What are the Houses of Gallifrey?

This is quite a long post. Strap in; learning is fun.

House Structure and Servants

Gallifreyans are born into one of the Houses of Gallifrey. Each person is a 'cousin' of their House, which is led by a Kithriarch, typically chosen by the previous leader.

[left: a Drudge; right: the Doctor's personal avatroid, named Badger]

Sentient Houses: These ancient, sentient structures have furniture that sometimes needs training to behave and paintings that whisper at passersby. As if your Gallifreyan childhood wasn't already creepy enough.

Drudges: Massive humanoid servants controlled by the Housekeeper. They're made of non-living, wood-like material and help maintain the House and its inhabitants.

Avatroids: Robotic beings originally from the planet Ava, they were effectively enslaved by the Time Lords. They act as tutors, protectors and friends to individual children.

Looms: Each House has a Loom, which determines the genetic makeup of its cousins.

Housekeepers: These caretakers take vows to protect and maintain the House, using mirrors for surveillance. If they fail, their service ring will burn to ash.

Oldblood Houses

Oldblood Houses are the most traditional and resistant to change. Their cousins often only gain a second heart after their first regeneration, and some can be identified by small purple flecks in their eyes.

👑 House Rassilon (Prydon): Bearing the name of Gallifrey's most celebrated figure, this House's origins trace back to Castellan Fordfarding, when it was previously known as House of Fordfarding. With Rassilon's subsequent rise as a Gallifreyan hero, the family transformed into a Great House, and guess what happened next.

❤️ House Heartshaven (Prydon): Heartshaven was renowned for its exquisite vineyards and the coveted Hartshaven Wine, which it kept in a heavily reinforced wine cellar to protect it from earthquakes. In later years, it was abandoned and infested by pig rats for reasons unknown, but is the wine still there?

📚 House Lineacrux (Probably Prydon, possibly unaffiliated): Famed for its scholarly pursuits, Lineacrux is a bastion of Gallifreyan history and law, obsessed with stability and non-invention and filled with fuddy-duddys walking around pondering. Their loom makes the cousins have the appearance of extremely old and senile people; however, its members wield considerable influence, often serving as advisors within Gallifreyan society. They’ve been known to shy away from the limelight, not taking credit for their input.

🏞️ House Lungbarrow (Prydon): This House has had a - let's say - mixed history, and we're not blaming it all on the Doctor. It's located in the Southern Mountains on Mount Lung and overlooks the river Cadonflood. This House, with its members known as Lungbarrovians, was long a place of wealth and privilege. Then it wasn't. Let's just say it’s awkward.

💎 House Jadedreamers (Probably Patrex): This House has ties to the Sisterhood of Karn, embodying the House's mystical and elusive nature.

🏰 House Blyledge (Prydon or Cerulean): Not too much is known about Blyledge, though we know its dark, angular structure is surrounded by a walled garden of silver trees and sits on some random hill.

🔥 House Firebrand (?): Situated near Mount Cadon, Firebrand is believed to be extinct following the war between Lady Borusa and Lord Prydon.

💡House Goodlight (?): Goodlight was another House that fell during the War between Lady Borusa and Lord Prydon.

🔬 House Arpexia (Probably Arcal): The bastion of scientific fundamentalism on Gallifrey, Arpexia is renowned for its unwavering dedication to logic and doesn't like emotions. This House's innovative spirit has birthed countless experimental time travel capsules, intricate technologies and a bottomless armoury, though sometimes at the cost of stability. Their biggest rivals are House Xianthellipse.

🏛️ House Brightshore (Prydon, could be unaffiliated though): Known more for its political clout and opulent wealth than for the scholarly pursuits of its members, Brightshore has carved out a reputation for producing influential Prydonians. This House's hallmark is a sense of entitlement that sets its cousins apart, often marking them as figures of considerable influence within Gallifreyan society – completely intolerable, but with cash.

🪞 House Mirraflex (Probably Prydon): Originating from the valorous General Mirraflex, this House is a testament to military might and strategic acumen. Known for birthing generals, enforcers, and strategists, Mirraflex members wear their supercilious entitlement like armour, viewing lesser species with disdain. Their aggressive defence of the Laws of Time is legendary, as is their deep-seated xenophobia, particularly towards Newblood Houses like Xianthellipse.

🌌 House Stillhaven (Prydon): Stillhaven's Patriarch dared to defy the Ultimate Sanction, and as punishment, the cousins had their memories erased and were used in experiments. Praise Rassilon!

⚖️ House Jurisprudence (Probably Prydon): Little is known about this House, but some of Gallifrey's legal minds and inquisitors hail from here, making it possibly known for its dedication to law and order.

🛞House Artronides (Maybe Arcal): Likely the House of the great engineer Time Lord Artron. It also produced a notable Commander of the Chancellory Guard.

🌲 House Bluewood (?): This House's contributions to Gallifreyan society aren't very significant. One time, they had their interests represented by K9 in diplomatic discussions, which tells you all you need to know.

🎲 House Urquineath (?): Known for its insignificance as the 'maven House of inconsequence' and 'holder of naught'. The Hussar's gambling led to the House driving into bankruptcy and obscurity. By the era of the Last Great Time War, House Urquineath had vanished. Shocker.

❓House of Dellatrovellas (Probably Patrex): One of the oldest and most noble and privileged Houses.

❓House Warpsmith (?): Once again, Warpsmith was a House that fell during the War between Lady Borusa and Lord Prydon. No more information is known.

❓House Witforge (Patrex): Produced probably the most infamous leader of the Celestial Intervention Agency.

❓House Neutronides (?): No longer in existence, with the most prolific member being a cow farmer. Might be Drome affiliated but not even sure even to guess.

❓House Wetrix (?): Your guess is as good as mine, but it does exist.

❓House Wetstone (?): Again, it's a thing. It produced the minor character Norvid (sorry, Norvid).

Newblood Houses

Newbloods come from newer Gallifreyan Houses, born with two hearts and have better control over regeneration than Oldbloods. They're more open to time-active cultures, which Oldbloods see as overambitious. Newblood Houses are fewer in number, and their members tend to be a bit more eccentric.

🐺 House Dvora (Originally Patrex, now Prydon): The first of the Newblood houses and by far the most successful, it likely came out of the House of Heartshaven. Its cousins are very self-assured, extremely practical and like to remain impersonal. It has a strict power structure that works on the premise of a wolf pack with a pack leader.

🛸 House Lolita (Probably unaffiliated): Founded by the 101-form timeship Lolita during the early years of the Time War, initially consisting only of Lolita and reserved for her timeship children.

🌳 House Oakdown (Prydon): A highly respected Newblood House allied with the Prydon Chapter. Known for its noble status and estates on Mount Perdition, characterised by fields of red grass. However, legendarily produced The Master. Whoops.

👠 House Tracolix (Maybe Scendeles, probably not): Known for its ambition and adaptability, often exploiting societal changes. They love to follow fashion trends and are also noted to be arrogant and reckless, just like that preppy guy/gal you've spent your entire life avoiding.

🧬 House Xianthellipse (Maybe Arcal): Known for its expertise in biology and biodata. Their experiments with biodiversity and 'war forms' made them a key player during the war, despite earning the animosity of traditionalist Houses, and eventually becoming physically indistinguishable from monsters. Their rivalry with House Arpexia was notable.

🧪 House Meddhoran (Maybe Arcal): Meddhoran's members were known for their unique biodata, interwoven with traits from lesser races - an experiment by their parent House, Xianthellipse. This genetic gamble was considered to be a failure.

Oldblood/Newblood Unknown

These are Houses we can't be entirely sure of their status of old or newbloods.

❓House Hellfrost (?): A House that was totally devoted to Morbius.

❓House Duskeriall (Prydon or Mixed, likely Oldblood): All that's known is it produced one certifiably weak politician named Goth, and they liked doing experiments.

❓House Avarna (?): Absolutely nothing is known about this House.

❓House Gashani (?): Or this.

❓House Scarlet (Probably Prydon): Or even this.

Servitor and Caretaker Houses

The Plebeian Class, composed of Gallifreyans who aren't Time Lords, handle vital roles like guards, technicians, cooks, and musicians. They mostly live in the Capitol, with Mid Town bridging the Capitol and Low Town. These Houses are led by a Castellan (or Chatelaine, if female).

🏚️ House Catherion (?): Once a ruling house, House Catherion met a bloody end when a rogue babel massacred its cousins on one dark night. The event stopped further generations from being loomed, marking the House's decline into extinction.

🌄 House Ixion (Mixed): Situated at the edge of Gallifrey's civilised regions at the 'edge of the world', House Ixion's original family departed, leaving caretakers behind. Later, it became the base for the Order of the Weal, getting cousins from other houses who mainly served administrative roles. Rumours suggest it tampered with other Houses' Looms to produce mutants and renegades.

🍁 House Deeptree/Redlooms (Prydon): Deeptree/Redloom/whatever we're calling it these days is characterised by its servitor-class status, producing military. Known for its loyal yet maverick cousins, the house has a history of quelling Time Lord traitors and sharing tales of vampires with its children. Kinda suss, huh?

❓House of Everston (?): Yet another house with no details, all that's known is Romana was a custodian of it.

Not Recognised

These houses are not recognised by Gallifrey as existing, for various reasons.

😈 House Celestis (Unaffiliated): Originally the elite of the Celestial Intervention Agency, they transformed into conceptual entities beyond Gallifreyan biology in order to run away from a War. Sustained by belief, they fashioned themselves as deities, often appearing to lesser species in God-form and becoming amoral and somewhat intolerable in the process.

⌛ Faction Paradox (Unaffiliated): Faction Paradox, initially House Paradox, morphed from a Great House into a cult opposing Time Lord orthodoxy, engaging in temporal shenanigans and roping in lesser species. They deviated from Time Lord norms with their love for paradoxes and death rituals, leading to their eventual estrangement. I believe someone wrote a very long book about it. A splinter House from this is also House of the Seven Gables, which is literally just a man split into seven.

👤 House of Shadows (Unaffiliated): Rumours swirl around Gallifrey of clandestine House/s of Shadows, a place for those scarred by regeneration gone awry – incomplete transformations, insides turned out, or minds unaltered by new forms. The Black Nurseries might house the paradoxical youth trapped in perpetual childhood or monstrous forms within its rumoured walls. Despite modern Gallifreyan advancements (apparently) rendering such anomalies near extinct, whispers persist of the House's past and possibly concealed existence.

Other

🕰️ Nechronmancers (Originally Arcal, now unaffiliated): Nechronmancers are House of Arpexia dropouts, who challenge the very fabric of Time Lord society by denying the existence of time itself. They've renounced their names, genders, and pasts, they embrace a form of existence that defies conventional understanding. Their radical beliefs and practices make them social pariahs, yet their unique abilities to manipulate temporal states hint at powers beyond the grasp of ordinary Time Lords. However, it's not known whether this group formed their own House structure. They may also be related to Faction Paradox. Wild.

Whoniverse Facts for Friday by GIL

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whileiamdying · 7 months ago

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All the Films in Competition at Cannes, Ranked from Best to Worst

The twenty-two films that premièred in the 2024 festival’s main program offered much to savor and revile.

By Justin Chang May 26, 2024

The seventy-seventh annual Cannes Film Festival came to a startling and joyous conclusion on Saturday night, when the competition jury, chaired by Greta Gerwig, awarded the Palme d’Or, the festival’s highest honor, to “Anora,” a funny, harrowing, and finally quite moving portrait of a sex worker’s madcap New York misadventures. It was startling because the movie, though one of the best-received in the competition, had not been widely tipped for the top prize, which seldom goes to a U.S. film; with “Anora,” Sean Baker becomes the first American director to win the Palme since Terrence Malick did, for “The Tree of Life” (2011), thirteen years ago. And it was joyous not only because the award was bestowed on a worthy and remarkable film but because Baker used the occasion to deliver the best, most eloquent and impassioned acceptance speech I’ve ever heard a Palme winner give.

Reading from prepared remarks, Baker singled out two other filmmakers in the competition, Francis Ford Coppola and David Cronenberg, as among his personal heroes. He dedicated the award to sex workers everywhere, a fitting tribute from a filmmaker who has put their lives front and center, with drama, humor, and empathy, in movies like “Starlet” (2012), “Tangerine” (2015), and “Red Rocket” (2021). He tossed some exquisite shade in the direction of the “tech companies” behind the so-called streaming revolution—including, presumably, Netflix, which came away as one of the night’s big winners; its major acquisition of the festival, Jacques Audiard’s musical “Emilia Pérez,” won two prizes. And, in a moment that drew rapturous applause, Baker delivered a plea on behalf of theatrical films, declaring, “The future of cinema is where it started: in a movie theatre.”

I was fortunate to see all twenty-two films in the Cannes competition on the big screen, projected under superior conditions in houses packed with fellow movie lovers. It’s my hope that, when these movies are released in the U.S., as the great majority of them likely will be, you will seize the chance to see them on the big screen as well—even “Emilia Pérez,” which Netflix may not keep in theatres for long, but whose bold dramatic and stylistic risks have the best chance of winning you over if they have your undivided, wide-awake attention.

I have ranked the movies in order of preference, from best to worst. Here they are:

1. “Caught by the Tides”

Jia Zhangke, a Cannes competition veteran, has long been the cinema’s preëminent chronicler of modern China (“Mountains May Depart,” “Ash Is Purest White”), mapping its social, cultural, and geographical complexities with great formal acumen, and also with the longtime collaboration of his wife, the superb actress Zhao Tao. Jia’s latest work, drawing on an archive of footage shot in the course of roughly two decades, unfurls a story in fragments, about a woman (Zhao) and a man (Li Zhubin) who fall in love, bitterly separate, and have a melancholy reunion years later. It’s an achievement by turns fleeting and monumental: a series of interlocking time capsules, a wrenching feat of self-reflection, and a stealth musical, in which Zhao dances and dances, standing in for millions who have learned to sway and bend to history’s tumultuous beat.

2. “All We Imagine as Light”

As the first Indian feature invited to compete at Cannes in nearly three decades, Payal Kapadia’s narrative début (after her 2021 documentary, “A Night of Knowing Nothing”) would be notable enough; that the movie is so delicately felt and sensuously textured is cause for outright celebration. Winner of the festival’s Grand Prix, or second place, it tells the story of two roommates, Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha), who work as nurses at a Mumbai hospital. It teases out their personal circumstances—Prabha’s estrangement from her unseen husband, Anu’s frowned-upon romance with a young Muslim man (Hridhu Haroon)—with a quiet truthfulness that, like the glittering lights of the city, lingers expansively in the memory. (A forthcoming Sideshow/Janus Films release.)

3. “Grand Tour”

The Portuguese director Miguel Gomes (“Tabu,” “Arabian Nights”) delivered some of the most virtuosic filmmaking in the competition—as the jury recognized by giving him the Best Director prize—with this characteristically yet extraordinarily playful colonial-era travelogue. Shifting between color and black-and-white, set in 1917 but full of fourth-wall-breaking anachronisms, the movie tells a story of sorts about a roving British diplomat (Gonçalo Waddington) and a fiancée (Crista Alfaiate) he’s in no hurry to marry. But its true fascination lies in the humid atmosphere and wanderlust-inspiring splendor of its East and Southeast Asian locations, ranging from Singapore and Bangkok to Shanghai and Rangoon. It’s a movie to get lost in.

4. “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”

It’s impossible to absorb this blistering domestic drama without thinking of its dissident director, Mohammad Rasoulof, who recently fled Iran after being sentenced to prison and a flogging. (His appearance at his film’s première made for one of the most emotional moments in recent Cannes memory.) Shot entirely in secret, the story follows a Tehran-based husband (Missagh Zareh) and wife (Soheila Golestani) who are increasingly at war with their progressive-minded young-adult daughters (Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki) during nationwide political protests led by women. The result is a thriller of propulsive skill and blunt emotional force, marrying the muscularity of an action film to the psychological intensity of a chamber drama. (A forthcoming Neon release.)

5. “Anora”

The director Sean Baker is near the height of his storytelling powers with this dazzling (and now Palme d’Or-winning) portrait of a Manhattan strip-club dancer (a revelatory Mikey Madison) who impulsively marries the ultra-spoiled son (Mark Eydelshteyn) of a Russian oligarch. Much comic chaos ensues, some of it pushed past the brink of plausibility, but Baker’s multifaceted love for his characters proves infectious and sustaining, as does his belief that acts of unexpected kindness can redeem even the darkest nights of the soul. (A forthcoming Neon release.)

6. “The Shrouds”

Early on in this elegantly sombre yet mordantly funny new movie, which stars Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, and Guy Pearce, the director David Cronenberg, a master of cerebral horror, unveils his latest invention: a technologically advanced burial shroud that allows people to watch a loved one’s body decomposing in the grave. So begins a drolly fluid inspection of classic Cronenberg themes—the deterioration of the flesh, the instability of the image, the paranoia-inducing incursions of technology into every aspect of life—but imbued with a nakedly personal dimension that the director has noted in interviews; the story was inspired by his wife’s death, in 2017, from cancer.

7. “Megalopolis”

In this legendarily long-gestating passion project, which I’ve written about at length, Francis Ford Coppola posits that our fragile, battered civilization is headed the way of the Roman Empire. The grimness of that prospect is unsurprising from a director accustomed to peering deep into the heart of American darkness (the “Godfather” movies, “The Conversation,” “Apocalypse Now”). For all that, the filmmaking here glows with a particularly hard-won optimism, even a welcome sense of play—borne out by an ensemble of actors, including Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, and especially Aubrey Plaza, who fully embrace Coppola’s rhetorical and conceptual flights of fancy.

8. “The Substance”

Sympathetic or sadistic? Feminist or misogynist? Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror bonanza, which won the festival’s award for Best Screenplay, has been one of the competition’s more polarizing hits, which is unsurprising; divisiveness should be expected from a story about an aging actress and TV fitness guru who, desperate to regain her youthful bod of yesteryear, effectively splits herself in two. Whether the outlandish premise (think “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by way of “Death Becomes Her”) and its blood-gushing fallout withstand intellectual scrutiny, there’s no doubting the ferocity of the two leads, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, or Fargeat’s sheer filmmaking verve as she pushes her ideas to their sanguinary conclusions.

9. “Motel Destino”

Just a year after the Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz appeared in competition with a surprisingly stiff-corseted English period drama, “Firebrand,” it was bracing to watch him rebound with the competition’s most sexually uninhibited and flagrantly horny title; corsets don’t apply here, and even underwear proves blissfully optional. Set at a seedy roadside motel where the clientele never stops moaning, it’s a feverishly shambling erotic thriller starring three very game actors (Iago Xavier, Nataly Rocha, and Fábio Assunção) in a romantic triangle that plays like James M. Cain with sex toys—“The Postman Always Cock Rings Twice,” as it were.

10. “Emilia Pérez”

A trans-empowerment musical set against the backdrop of Mexico’s drug cartels might sound like a dubious proposition on paper, and, for the many detractors of this genre-melding big swing from the French director Jacques Audiard (“A Prophet,” “The Sisters Brothers”), what actually made it onto the screen was no better. But I was disarmed from the start by Audiard’s quasi-Almodóvarian vibes, his touchingly imperfect embrace of song-and-dance stylization, and, most of all, his three leads: the remarkable discovery Karla Sofía Gascón, a scene-stealing Selena Gomez, and a never-better Zoe Saldaña. All three (along with Adriana Paz) were recognized with the festival’s Best Actress prize, awarded collectively to the movie’s ensemble of actresses; Audiard also won the Jury Prize. (A forthcoming Netflix release.)

11. “Oh, Canada”

After a tense trilogy of dramas about male redemption through violence (“First Reformed,” “The Card Counter,” “Master Gardener”), the writer and director Paul Schrader has taken a gentler turn with an adaptation of “Foregone,” a 2021 novel by the late Russell Banks. (It’s his second Banks adaptation, after the 1997 drama “Affliction.”) In exploring the fragmented consciousness of an aging documentary filmmaker (played at different ages by Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi), Schrader bravely forsakes the narrative fastidiousness of his recent work and takes on grand themes of memory, mortality, and artistic self-reckoning, to formally ragged but sincerely moving effect.

12. “The Girl with the Needle”

This stark and terrifying black-and-white drama from the Swedish-born, Polish-based director Magnus von Horn (“Sweat”) was perhaps the competition’s bleakest entry. Set in Copenhagen immediately after the First World War, it pins us so mercilessly to the hard-bitten perspective of Karoline (an excellent Vic Carmen Sonne), a factory seamstress who becomes pregnant out of wedlock, that we scarcely notice her story shifting in a different, more sinister direction. It’s a bitterly hard-to-stomach brew of a movie, at once hideous and beautifully made, with a chilling supporting turn by Trine Dyrholm as a friend whose interventions turn out to be anything but benign.

13. “Three Kilometres to the End of the World”

The setting of this well-observed but emotionally opaque drama, from the Romanian actor turned director Emanuel Pârvu, is a small rural village where a closeted teen-age boy, Adi (Ciprian Chiujdea), is brutally beaten after being caught in an intimate moment with a male traveller. Pârvu teases out the legal, psychological, and moral fallout with the pitch-perfect performances and laserlike formal focus that have become hallmarks of new Romanian cinema. But, though the movie is persuasive enough as an indictment of small-town religious fundamentalism and homophobia, it proves curiously incurious about Adi’s perspective, to the detriment of its own human pulse.

14. “Kinds of Kindness”

After his Oscar-winning period romps “The Favourite” (2018) and “Poor Things” (2023), the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos scales back—but goes long—with a sprawling, increasingly tedious compendium of comic cruelty. My favorite of the film’s three disconnected stories, all featuring the same actors, is the one where Jesse Plemons (the ensemble M.V.P., as the jury recognized with its Best Actor award) plays Willem Dafoe’s Manchurian candidate; my least favorite is the one where Emma Stone joins a sweat-worshipping sex cult. The one where Stone slices off her finger and cooks it for Plemons falls—much like the movie in Lanthimos’s over-all œuvre—somewhere in the middle. (A Searchlight Pictures release, opening June 21st in theatres.)

15. “Bird”

My admiration for the English filmmaker Andrea Arnold (“American Honey”) is such that I’m eager to revisit her latest rough-and-tumble coming-of-age story and find that I undervalued it. Arnold is certainly skilled at integrating recognizable actors, which in this case includes Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, into her grottily realist frames, and she has an appealing lead performer in Nykiya Adams, as a twelve-year-old girl who overcomes persistent abuse and neglect. But the story may lose you—as it lost me—with a magical-realist turn that magnifies, rather than minimizes, the tortured-animal symbolism that has often dogged Arnold’s work.

16. “Beating Hearts”

An exchange of insults at a high-school bus stop provides a saucy meet-cute for a good girl (Mallory Wanecque) and a ne’er-do-well boy (Malik Frikah); so begins a raucous and endearing love story for the ages, in which the director Gilles Lellouche, with outsized glee and little discipline, merrily appropriates the conventions of classic Hollywood musicals and gangster flicks. The result is much too long at nearly three hours—the story spans several years, with Adèle Exarchopoulos and François Civil playing older versions of the two leads—but I can’t say I didn’t warm to its rambunctious cornball charm.

17. “Limonov: The Ballad”

Why make a film about Eduard Limonov, the globe-trotting Russian dissident poet and punk provocateur reviled for his pro-fascist sympathies? The filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov never musters a satisfying answer in this muddled English-language bio-pic, despite an energetically uninhibited central performance by Ben Whishaw and a cheeky panoply of filmmaking techniques—jittery camerawork, lengthy tracking shots—meant to catch us up in the épater-la-bourgeoisie exuberance of Limonov’s revolt. Considering his earlier work, I prefer the rebel-youth vibes of “Leto” (2018) and the dazzling cinematic assaults of “Petrov’s Flu” (2021), both of which also screened in competition here.

18. “Parthenope”

Nearly every new picture from the Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino could be reasonably called “The Great Beauty,” the title of his gorgeous 2013 cinematic tour of Rome. (It left that year’s Cannes empty-handed, but won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.) His latest work remains most intriguing for its ambivalent but still sensually overpowering vision of the director’s home town, Naples, from which springs a modern-day goddess, named after Parthenope, a Siren from Greek mythology. She’s played by Celeste Dalla Porta, a great beauty indeed and an empathetic screen presence, though only fitfully does her character seem worthy of this movie’s epic enshrinement.

19. “Wild Diamond”

Another disquisition on beauty and its discontents, this time from the débuting French writer and director Agathe Riedinger. She hurls us the life and busy social-media feed of a nineteen-year-old, Liane (a terrific Malou Khebizi), who has nipped, tucked, and tailored every part of herself to realize her dream of being selected for a hot new reality-TV series. Part influencer-culture cautionary tale, part bad-girl Cinderella story, the movie glancingly suggests the soul-rotting effects of beauty worship, but it falls victim to the trap that Liane is trying to avoid: in a sea of worthy candidates, it doesn’t especially stand out.

20. “The Apprentice”

Donald Trump’s attorneys have threatened legal action to block the release of this drama about his early rise to fame and wealth under the mentorship of the attorney Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). It speaks to the useless proficiency of Ali Abbasi’s movie that the prospect of such censorship provokes more indifference than outrage. Shot to evoke cruddy nineteen-eighties VHS playback, the movie is well acted by Strong, Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, and an increasingly makeup-buried Sebastian Stan as Trump himself, depicted from the start as a sack of shit that gets progressively shittier. It’s not dismissible, but it’s hardly the stuff of revelation, either.

21. “Marcello Mio”

In this trifling meta-comedy from the French filmmaker Christophe Honoré (previously in the 2018 Cannes competition with the lovely “Sorry Angel”), the actress Chiara Mastroianni embarks on a strainedly whimsical personal odyssey to examine the legacy of her late father, the legendary Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni, and her own conflicted place therein. To that end, she spends much of this overstretched movie in “8½” and “La Dolce Vita” black-suited drag as she navigates a roundelay of industry in-jokes; among the French cinema luminaries making appearances are Fabrice Luchini, Nicole Garcia, and, most welcome, Chiara’s mother, Catherine Deneuve.

22. “The Most Precious of Cargoes”

The French director Michel Hazanavicius continues his uneven post-“The Artist” run with this animated Second World War fable, adapted from a 2019 novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg (and narrated by the late Jean-Louis Trintignant). It has an affecting opening stretch, in which a baby girl, thrown by her desperate father from an Auschwitz-bound train, is rescued and raised in secret by a woodcutter’s kindhearted wife. But when the child’s provenance is discovered, stoking local antisemitism, the movie becomes a bathetic wallow in Holocaust imagery, drowned in an Alexandre Desplat score whose every surge turned my heart increasingly to stone. ♦

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thelambliesdown1974 · 6 months ago

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Okay but like walking across 🚶‍♂️ the sitting room 🐒🪑 I turn the television 📺 on 🔛 sitting beside you I look into your eyes 👁️ as the sound 🎼 of motor cars 🚗 fade in the night time 🌝 I swear I saw your face change 😲 it didn’t seem quite right 🤔 and it’s hello babe! 👋 with your guardian eyes so blue 👀 hey my baby 👶🏼 dont you know our love ❤️ is true 🫂 coming closer 👬 with our eyes 👁️ a distance falls around our bodies ⬅️➡️ out in the garden 🪴 the moon 🌙 seems very bright 💡 six 6️⃣ saintly shrouded men ✝️ move across the lawn 🏡 slowly the seventh walks in front 🚶‍♂️🚶‍♂️🚶‍♂️ with a torch 🔦 held high in hand 🤚 and it’s hey babe! 👋👶🏼 your suppers waiting for you 🍝 hey my baby! 👋👶🏼 don’t you know our love ❤️ is true 🫂 I’ve been so far from here 🌄 far from your loving arms 😘 it’s good to feel you again 🥰 it’s been a long long time ⏳⌛️… hasn’t it🤔…………………… I know 🤓 a farmer 👨‍🌾 who looks after a farm 🌾 with water clear 💧 he cares for all his harvest 🥕 I know 🤓 a fireman 👨‍🚒 who looks after the fire 🔥… cant you see he’s fooled you all 😈 yes it’s him again 🤯 can you see he’s fooled you all 😢 share his peace ☮️ sign the lease 📑 he’s a super sonic scientist 👨🏻‍🔬 he’s the guaranteed eternal sanctuary man 🙏 look! 👀 look into my mouth 👄 he cries 🗣️ and all the children 👧🏼 passed down many paths 🛤️ I bet my life you’ll walk inside 🚶‍♂️ hand in hand 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 gland in gland 😵‍💫 with a spoonful 🥄 of miracle 🕊️ it’s the guaranteed eternal sanctuary 🙏 (we will rock you 🪨 rock you 🪨 little snake 🐍 we will keep you snug ☺️ and warm 😊…………………… wearing feelings 😁 on our faces 💁‍♂️ while our faces took a rest 😴🛌 we walked across the fields 🌾 to see the children 👦🏼 of the west 🧭 but there was a host of dark skinned warriors 🤺 standing still below the ground 👇🏻 🌎 waiting for battle! ⚔️ fights begun they’ve been released 😡 killing for for peace ☮️ bang bang bang! 💥 bang bang bang! 💥 and they’ve given me a wonderful potion 🧪 but I cannot contain my emotion 😭 and even though I’m feeling good 😌 👍 something tells me 🧐 I better activate my prayer 🙏 capsule 💊 todays the day 📆 to celebrate 🎉 the for have met their fate 🪦 the order for rejoicing 🥳 and dancing 🕺 has come from our warlord 🤴…………………… wandering through the chaos 🥾 the battle has left ⚔️ we climb up the mountain of human flesh 🗻 to a plateau of green grass 🏞️ and green trees 🌳 full of life 🕊️ a young figure 👦 sits still by a pool 🌊 he’s been stamped human bacon 🥓 by some butchery tool 🔪 he is you 🫵 social security 🧑‍⚖️ took care of this lad we watch 👀 in reverence as narcissus 😌 is turned to a flower 🌸 a flower? 🌸 …………………… if you go down ⬇️ to willow farm 🌳 to look for butterflies 🦋 flutterbyes gutter flies 🪰 open your eyes 👁️ it’s full of surprise 😲 eye one lies like a fox 🦊 on the rock 🪨 in the musical box 🎶📦 there’s mum and dad 👨‍��👩‍👧 and good and bad 😇😈 and everyone happy to be here 😋 there’s Winston Churchill dressed in drag 👠 he used to be a British flag 🇬🇧 plastic bag 🛍️ what a drag 🙄 the frog was a prince 🫅 the prince was a brick 🧱 the brick was an egg 🍳 the egg was a bird 🦅 have you heard 👂 yes! We’re happy as fish 🐟 and gorgeous and geese 🦢 and wonderful clean in the morning 🧼 we’ve got everything 🤑 we’re growing everything 🌱 we’ve got some in ⬅️ we’ve got some out ➡️ we’ve got some wild things 👹 floating about 🕴️everyone 👦👩🧑 we’re changing everyone 😧 you name them all we’ve had them here 👈 and the real stars are still to appear! ⭐️🤩 feel your body melt 🫠 mum 👩 to mud 🪱 to mad 😡 to dad 👨🏻 dad diddly office ✏️ dad diddly office ✏️ you’re all full of ball 🏀 dad 👨🏻 to dam 🦫 to dumb 😛 to mum 👩 mom diddly washing 🧽 mom diddly washing 🧽 you’re all full of ball 🏀 let me hear you lies 👂 we’re living this up 🆙 to the eyes 👀 mama I want you now! 😩

#radio waves #genesis

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darkmatters-ghost · 6 months ago

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Shadamy week - Day 1 Festive

I'm generally satisfied with this one? So here you go I guess

Amy was beyond excited this time. She couldn't properly describe it. She just had a good feeling about it. A festival all about the prosperity and hope for the future. That new things would be discovered, and difficult problems could be fixed. Sometimes people from out of town called it New Years, and though that wasn't quite accurate, it was good enough for her.

She had a small jacket to shield herself from the cold night air. The games she would play, the things that she'd do, the people she would see, it was all so exciting!

She was most of the way there. She could see the glowing lights from behind a layer of lights. With a grin, she sped up along the path.

Only to hesitate, and stop in her tracks. Her own hesitation surprised her. It was like something was tugging on her heart, telling her not to leave it behind. Leave what behind?

She glanced around. Grass and trees surrounded her, the dirt pathway she was following beneath her feet, a grassy hill to her right. It all seemed so mundane. But it was obvious, something was here that she needed to adress.

The feeling usually came when someone needed help, or if Eggman was nearby. She saved many flickies this way.

Taking a deep breath, she relaxed and let her mind lead to whatever she needed to be.

She slowly left the path and wandered towards the green hill on her right. She felt like she was being pulled toward it. It felt natural. She needed to get to the top of the hill.

It was a tall hill, but no mountain by any means. It didn't take long to get to the top. The festival was much easier to see from the top. It was lit up like a theme park, or an outdoor arcade. She started glancing around. Looking for that something. It didn't take long to find.

Shadow was at the edge of the hill staring at the festival. His ears were pointed towards her. He definitely knew she was there, but hadn't said a thing. Was he hoping she would go away?

"Um," she started awkwardly. "Hi Shadow."

"... Hello, Rose." She waited a moment for him to continue, but he didn't. He didn't do anything to say he wanted her to stay, but he also didn't do anything to say she should leave, either.

She slowly stepped closer to him, until she was lined up next to him. On his left. He glanced at her very briefly, but ultamately decided to ignore her, and keep looking at the lights.

"So, you headed off to the festival too?" He shook his head, and she frowned. "Then why aren't you at home? What's the point of coming this close if you're not going to go in?"

When he didn't say anything she worried she might've annoyed him. The last thing he probably wanted to was to be interogated. He had never said much to her before, when they bumped into each other while saving the world. She wasn't sure why she thought it'd be different now.

But then, he took a deep breath. "Have you ever seen so much media for something that you feel you've lived through it?"

Amy gave him a puzzled look. What did that have to do with anything? "...I don't know what you mean."

Shadow thought for another second. "Say, a time period, for example."

Amy stopped to think about it. "Like how everything is about the 80s and 90s?" She asked.

"Yeah, something like that."

He didn't give her a chance to ask another question. "Once a year, at New Years, they would send up a time capsule." Amy cocked her head. 'Them'? Who was 'them'?

"Maria was excited for it every time. And I quickly figured out why. The capsule was full of movies, records, books, all from the last year. The record always had about fifty of the newest song hits. Maria loved Elvis' music. I was more sparatic with it. I enjoyed Dream Lover, Earth Angel, Pink Shoelaces... Whatever song I felt a connection to."

It was a simple story when she thought about it, but it was enthralling. Shadow never talked about his time on the ark. She listened closely as he continued.

"But, it was the movies that really connected us to the ground. Maria liked Alice in Wonderland for its color, I liked Rear Window for its intrigue. Plus... I could relate to a character forced to watch the world from a windowsill. Instead of seeing it personally."

That last sentence made her stomach sink. "Shadow..."

"Now the world has changed so much, I..." He frowned. "It's been years since I was exposed to all of it, but I still feel like... I'm trying to catch up."

Amy wanted to hug him then and there, but she didn't know if Shadow would appreciate the gesture.

"Is... Is the festival making it worse?"

"I'm not sure," he admitted. His ears drooped when he said that.

She immediately started brainstorming things that might help him out. But how could she help? She can't rewind time for him! Plus, she didn't think he actually wanted that. She didn't have any experience with old technology. The only person she knew who did was her grandmother. Who owned an old record player, and hundreds of different records for it.

Shadow did just say he liked records. She wondered if she could...

"Hey Shadow?" He quirked an ear in her direction. "When you say 'records' you do mean vinyl, right? Like, record player stuff?"

He scoffed. "Of course, what else do you think was there in the fifties?"

"Just checking." He hummed and stared back at the lights. There was a slight pain in his eyes that she didn't notice before. It took a minute or two to gain the courage to ask.

"So, you don't want to go to the festival," she said.

"No."

"Then..." She took a deep breath. "How about we go somewhere else? Somewhere fun?"

He stiffened in a way that startled her. His voice, quiet. "We?" His quills got pricklier, his eyes widened slightly, his jaw clenched. As soon as it started, it vanished. His quills smoothed themselves back out, his eyes regained the apathetic look from before. The only thing still emotional was his voice. Which was shaky. "Rose..."

Was it that bad? Maybe she shouldn't have asked! He looked so horrified.

"Nevermind," she said quickly. "I get it. We hardly know each other, I-"

"Where would we go?" He said, while staring at her expectantly. She stopped. He wanted to go somewhere with her? You're really giving me mixed messages, dude!

"Well, you talking about records reminded me that my grandmother has tons of old records. She's out on vacation with my grandfather but I'm sure she'd let us borrow it for a while."

Shadow turned and stared at the ground between his feet. Thinking. Then he looked at her. "I thought you were going to the festival."

"Eh," said Amy. "I've been previous years, I can miss it this once. It's not going anywhere. You're more important anyway." And it was true, all the excitement she had for the festival was now orientated toward Shadow.

Which made her confident that the tug from earlier was for Shadow. Maybe there was even more turmoil in his mind than she thought.

Her sentence had stunned him into silence again. The same fear that he hated her response filled her stomach. It didn't last long, though. Because looking at his body language, he seemed fidgety, and his cheeks were slightly pinker that she remembered them being. Was he... Flustered?

Could you be possible that he was flustered earlier too? That could explain his shaky voice...

After a moment, he looked her in the eyes and nodded. "Just tell me where to go."

She grinned and clapped her hands together! "YES! Okay, okay, um. It's this yellow house by Acorn Street, right where-WOAH!"

She wasn't expecting such a swift movement from him, but in half a second, he was carrying her bridal style, and zooming toward her grandmother's house. It was remarkably quick, though, maybe that was redundant. Once they were nearby, Shadow slowed down to let her give him more directions. It was weird. She'd done this before. Being held in the arms of a speedy hedgehog of a hero, but Shadow was nothing like Sonic. Sonic wouldn't have slowed down for directions, he would've just tried every street until he found a house that fit her description.

And Sonic didn't hold her like Shadow was right now. Sonic would never drop her. She knew that, but his hold was far from secure, and it was very stressful. Shadow was completely different. He held her like she might break if he let go. It irraticated all the fears of falling off from the sheer speed. It was a strange mix of tranquillity and exhilaration.

It made her realize something. Something she'd always known, in a passive, subconsious, way, but never quite thought about. Shadow was his own person. He wasn't a Sonic clone, or a mindless android, he had his own wonderful personality. And as Amy looked up at his focused expression, Amy Rose became determined to find out more.

}{}{}{

Shadow heard the crunching of footsteps long before they were anywhere near him. The sound immediately soured his mood. He growled under his breath. The last this he wanted on this cursed day was for someone to bother him and his alone time.

Maybe they won't bother to check this hill, he thought to himself.

He focused back on the lights. Reds, yellows, greens, and even blues were blurring out the stars in the sky. Making it feel barren and lifeless. A stark contrast to the calm days in the ark. When they filled every window.

Lights. Lights of every color. When he was back on the ark, a blue lightbulb was merely a concept. A pipe dream. Now there were entire computers (that doubled as televisions). And you could fit them in the palm of your hand.

The festival irked him. He wasn't sure why. Something about prosperity and the future. But the future seemed to always go by too fast for him to keep up. And what good has the future ever done for him? All it seemed to do was take, and take, and take. Where's the prosperity in that? Sometimes he wished he could just- get a good taste of the past again.

It was an overly negative way to look at it. He knew that. But knowing something is irrational doesn't stop you from thinking it.

The footsteps stopped and he froze. Listening carefully.

Please just leave me alone.

After a very tense thirty seconds, the stranger did the one thing he said not to do.

He did his best to analyze the footsteps. They were different than before. Probably because they were climbing the hill. He refused to look towards where they were climbing. Maybe they would mistake him as just another patch of darkness in the forest.

As the footsteps reached the flatter part of the hill, the footsteps became more recognizable. Thick, heavy steps. Slightly off center. His insides went cold. The only person with boots that combersome was Amy Rose.

This had never happened before. He'd never been alone with her. He prefered it that way. Less likely to spill all the painfully romantic things that he felt for her. Things she didn't need to hear. Not when she was still into Sonic. Well, she never said she was still in love with Sonic, but she didn't not say it either. And he didn't dare hope.

He made a promise to himself, that if he saw Amy Rose, he would refuse to say some sappy romantic garbage. Be normal for two seconds. Please.

Amy was already atop the hill, and he could feel her stare right into his back.

"Um, Hi Shadow."

Be normal. "Hello, Rose."

She stepped closer and he felt his heartbeat speed up slightly. Something was definitely wrong with him. He spared a glance toward her, but her curious eyes met his for a moment, and he looked away. Back to the lights. At least they didn't make his heart spontaneously sparatic.

"So, you headed off to the festival too?" That stupid festival was the last thing he wanted to do. But instead of voicing all his contempt with the place, he simply shook his head.

He could still feel her eyes on him. Maybe he could talk to her a bit more than he was doing.

"Then why aren't you at home? What's the point of coming this close if you're not going to go in?"

He didn't respond to that, though it was clever of her.

He took a deep breath, Don't screw this up, Shadow. Don't say anything weird.

"Have you ever seen so much media for something that you feel you've lived through it?" Though he tried to look casual, he was worried this whole thing would weird Amy out. He certainly didn't deserve for Amy Rose to care for him.

She made the cutest face when she thought about his question. "...I don't know what you mean."

"Say, a time period for example."

Amy donned the same face as before. "Like how everything is about the 80s and 90s?"

"Yeah, something like that."

He must be cursed. Amy was always good at getting him to talk. How could you resist her when she was looking at him with the most faithful look. Like she trusted him.

He was talking, again.

"Once a year, on New Years, they would send up a time capsule." He watched her face for any excuse to stop. But she was already watching, curiously. "Maria was excited for it every time. And I quickly figured out why. The capsule was full of movies, records, and books all from the last year."

At least he wasn't outing himself as a hopeless romantic.

"The record always had about 50 of the newest song hits. Maria loved Elvis' music. I was more sparatic with it. I enjoyed dream lover, Earth Angel, pink shoelaces, whatever song I felt a connection to."

Amy was still watching him as he told his story. He couldn't be that interesting, right?

Shadow nervously continued.

"But, it was the movies that really connected us to the ground. Maria liked Alice in Wonderland for its colors, I liked Rear Window for its intrigue. Plus... I could relate to a character forced to watch the world from a windowsill. Instead of seeing it personally."

This got a reaction from her. "Shadow..." He forced himself to ignore it.

"Now the world has changed so much, I... It's been years since I was first exposed to all of it, but I still feel like... I'm trying to catch up."

Amy looked about ready to cry on his behalf. That felt like overkill in this situation, but that was something he admired about her. She wasn't afraid to have strong emotions about things.

"Is... Is the festival making it worse?" She asked. She managed to find the one question he didn't have a good answer.

"I'm not sure."

He watched Amy's face change from empathetic, to contemplative. Her eyebrows furrowing as she was thinking about something. She looked up at him again, and he had to shove down a fluttery feeling that appeared the second he looked at her. He looked back to the lights again.

"Hey, Shadow?" He turned an ear towards her. "When you say 'records', you do mean, vinyl, right? Like, record player stuff?"

He scoffed beside himself. "Of course, what else do you think was in the 50's?"

"Just checking," She muttered. That confused him. Checking for what? He resigned to this. He promised he would be normal about Rose, and he tried to refortify that by looking at the lights again. But, once again, the advanced technology he was staring at was slightly jarrring.

"So, you don't want to go to the festival," she started.

"No."

"Then..." She took a moment to find her words. "How about we go somewhere else? Somewhere fun?"

That- that broke him. "We?" They? Together? Run off to do whatever? Like, a date? A date with Amy Rose! It sounded too good to be true! And it was. It must've been! Right? There was no way it was possible! Not with the likes of him, she must've meant it platonically. He shook the foolish thought out of his mind. His quills-that he didn't know were pricked in the first place-smoothed down. And he tried to regain his composure. "Rose..." His voice was still shaking. He looked at her expression and tensed up. She seemed... scared. Had he done something scary? Did he ruin everything without even trying?

"Nevermind," she blurted. "I get it." No! She's going to leave me here? Say something! Something Intelligent! "We hardly know each other, I-"

"Where would we go?" He asked. Not perfect, but not threatening, or creepy. He could work with this.

"Well," again, she made an adorable face when she started thinking. "You talking about records reminded me that my grandmother has tons of old records. She's out on vacation with my grandfather, but I'm sure she'd let us borrow it for a while."

It was like he was finally getting reprieve from everything. Amy Rose, a taste of the past, the good part of the past, it was... Perfect. But what did she think of the whole thing?

"I thought you were going to the festival." He muttered. She handily brushed it aside.

"Eh, I've been previous years, I can miss this once. It's not going anywhere. You're more important, anyway."

'You're more important.'

How long has he been loving her on the sidelines, assuming that she saw nothing but a worse version of Sonic? But here she is, proving that wrong. Maybe he had a chance with her after all.

He shoved that thought down with the rest. Not now. We can think about it later. He'd forgotten comepletely about what was bothering him before. She was a miracle-worker. He looked her in her emerald eyes. "Just tell me where to go."

"YES!" She clapped her hands together, like she was genuinely excited for this. And he was starting to think she was. "Okay, okay, um. it's this yellow house by Acorn Street," he knew that area. "Right where-WOAH!"

He picked her up immediately, and shot off towards the street she said. After a few seconds he realized what he just did. He didn't ask, or warn her. He wasn't even subtle about this whole thing!

He glanced at her briefly. She seemed... Fine? Content, at the very least.

Note to self, don't just pick her up. That is weird. We're trying to be normal.

One day, one day, he would be able to tell her his feelings. And maybe one day, she'd reciprocate.

A/N: I grew up in America, so I was always fascinated by the festivals that other cultures have about blessing the year with good harvests and stuff. In certain parts of China, they have this blacksmith firework thing where they just straight up throw molten metal around. it's pretty sick.

#shadamy #shadamy week 2024 #amy rose #shadow the hedgehog #sth #day 1 #i think there's a crap ton of typos in this #oops

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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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It’s been hard recently to think about anything other than the wars and humanitarian crises raging around the world. Climate change has left its mark in what was almost certainly the hottest year in human history—there were unprecedented heat waves, intensified forest fires, torrential rain, and floods like those in Libya that caused devastation after two dams burst.

But this has not stopped scientists, innovators, and decisionmakers from working on solutions to our biggest societal challenges—with success. Here is a collection of uplifting news to come out of 2023.

A powerful laser veered lightning strikes off their path

In an instant, millions of volts can damage buildings, spark fires, and harm people—unless the lightning can be redirected. An experiment with a laser beam suggests this is possible. The scientists behind it must now demonstrate that their multimillion-dollar laser would actually work better at critical sites such as airports and rocket launchpads than widely used, cheap lightning rods. Read more at Science.

Asteroid rocks and dust were brought to Earth

The first US mission to collect an asteroid sample, OSIRIS-REx, successfully returned a capsule containing granules and dust from the asteroid Bennu. Early analyses back at NASA’s lab suggest the sample is rich in carbon and water-laden minerals, the building blocks of life on Earth. Read more at WIRED.

Scientists grew mouse embryos for the first time ever in space

What would make humans a truly spacefaring species? If we could reproduce and grow outside of Earth’s atmosphere. It may be that this is possible, an experiment with mice suggests. Scientists managed to grow mouse embryos aboard the International Space Station and return them safely to Earth. Their initial growth appeared to be unaffected by the low gravity and high radiation. Read more at New Scientist.

A rare egg-laying mammal was rediscovered after decades

A species with the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater, and the feet of a mole seems hard to miss. But the long-beaked echidna Zaglossus attenboroughi—named after British naturalist David Attenborough—had remained hidden until caught on camera for the first time since it was scientifically recorded in 1961. This egg-laying mammal is known to only live in the Cyclops Mountains in the Indonesian province of Papua. Read more at Mongabay.

Countries signed a landmark treaty to protect the high seas

After almost 20 years of negotiations, members of the United Nations agreed to protect marine life in international waters—the two-thirds of the world’s oceans that lie outside of national boundaries. This legal framework enables, for example, the creation of vast marine protected areas (MPAs). It also states that “genetic resources,” such as materials from animals and plants discovered for use in pharmaceuticals or foods, should benefit society as a whole. Read more at The Guardian.

California national park bounces back after wildfire

Two years after California’s largest single wildfire burned almost 70 percent of Lassen Volcanic National Park, the ecosystem remains viable. Shrubs and grasses are growing in burned areas while fungi and insects are decomposing dead tree trunks, leading to a slow recovery. Read more at The Guardian.

Brazil’s top court rules for Indigenous rights in landmark case

A powerful agribusiness lobby tried to place time limits on Indigenous peoples’ right to land. They would have to prove they lived on the land in 1988, when Brazil’s current constitution was ratified. But many Indigenous peoples were expelled from their ancestral lands during the country’s military dictatorship, which lasted from from the 1960s to the 1980s. The Supreme Court in Brazil squashed the proposed time limit for land claims. Read more at AP News.

There could be a large reserve of hydrogen deep beneath the French ground

Hydrogen could power factories, trucks, ships, and airplanes in the future—but producing it requires a lot of energy and is expensive. But the gas also occurs naturally deep in the Earth’s crust, and researchers in France have accidentally stumbled on a potentially large deposit. Next year they plan to begin drilling to collect gas samples from depths of up to 1.8 miles. Read more at the Conversation.

The world may have crossed a solar power tipping point

A new study suggests that solar is on track to become the main source of the world’s energy by 2050—even without more ambitious climate policies being introduced. Renewables are already cheaper than fossil fuels. But in the case of solar energy, obstacles such as integration into electricity grids and financing in developing countries still need to be overcome in order for it to continue to grow as it has in recent years. Read more at the Conversation.

A new type of geothermal power plant is making the internet a little greener

A pilot plant is now helping to power Google data centers in Nevada by harnessing the Earth’s heat deep beneath it. Engineers drilled two boreholes down 7,000 feet, and then connected them by fracking, a technique that’s conventionally used in the oil and gas industry. Water sent down one borehole moves through the fracked rocks below and returns to the surface heated up via the other drilled hole. Read more at WIRED.

World’s first container ship powered by methanol completed its maiden voyage

Laura Maersk, the world’s first methanol-fueled ship, arrived in England in September—a milestone for the shipping industry, which is responsible for about 3 percent of worldwide emissions and struggling to decarbonize. Methanol can be made from food waste at landfills. Read more at the BBC.

A cheap and effective vaccine against malaria got approval

There’s now a second malaria jab that could be produced even quicker than the first and rolled out to more children. It got the thumbs up from the World Health Organization in October, two years after the first one. Malaria is the leading cause of death among children in sub-Saharan Africa. Read more at Stat News.

The largest study of migraine sufferers promises new treatment pathways

In the largest genetic study of migraines to date, researchers have identified more than three times the number of genetic risk factors previously known. This will help to better understand the biological basis of migraines and their subtypes and could speed up the search for new treatments. Read more at Science Daily.

Scientists made breakthrough in cervical cancer treatment

In a UK trial of 500 women, half received existing, cheap drugs before standard radiotherapy. The results showed that with the combined therapy, women’s risk of death or relapse fell by 35 percent. According to the researchers, this is the biggest improvement in treating this disease in over 20 years. Read more in the Independent.

Gene therapy showed early promise for children

Scientists in China reported that some children who were born deaf could hear after a gene therapy trial. Meanwhile, experiments are underway in the USA and France aimed at children with a rare form of genetic deafness. Read more at WIRED.

An implant restored walking ability for Parkinson’s patient

A man with advanced Parkinson’s disease can walk several miles again thanks to a special implant. Positioned in the lumbar region of the spinal cord, the implant sends electrical signals to his leg muscles. The scientists behind the innovation plan to carry out further trials with other patients in the coming year. Read more at SWI swissinfo.ch.

DeepMind’s new AI can predict whether a genetic mutation is likely to cause disease

Researchers at DeepMind, Google's AI company, have trained an AI model to detect DNA mutations, which could speed up the diagnosis of rare diseases. Similar to language models like ChatGPT, this model knows the sequences of amino acids in proteins and can detect anomalies. Read more at WIRED.

AI-powered prediction helped Chileans evacuate from floods

A forecasting tool from Google can predict floods in South America and other regions using a little data on the water flow of rivers, with impressive accuracy. This August, many people in Chile were able to evacuate safely and with their belongings thanks to a warning sent out two days before the flooding. Read more at Fast Company.

The Hollywood actors’ and writers’ battle against AI ended—for now

Generative AI has made it to Hollywood, and after months of strikes, both the writers and actors unions managed to negotiate guardrails on how the technology can be used in film and TV projects. AI cannot, for example, be used to write or rewrite scripts, and studios are not allowed to use scripts to train AI models without the writers’ permission. Read more at WIRED.

Lego bricks are teaching kids Braille

The iconic studs on the Lego bricks allow them to be stacked on top of each other. And now you can learn a new language while you’re at it. The company has started selling bricks with modified amounts of studs that teach the Braille alphabet. The corresponding letter or number represented by a brick’s studs are printed on each brick so that children can learn the code. Read more at TechCrunch.

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bexorok · 9 months ago

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Poorly written Sonic Movie 3 pitch/outline

I’ve never really written anything in a script format, but I had so many thoughts about the next movie that I had to write them out otherwise my brain would actually explode. I’m kind of bouncing around with scenes I think should be in the movie as well as character introductions. Hope people find some enjoyment out of these!

This is the first couple of scenes I wrote out. I also had a little blurb about the opening credits, but it’s kind of just what the rumored trailer for Sonic 3 reviled at cinamacon was, so there’s not much point of it. Basically, Robotnik now looks like his original game design, and that’s all you really need to know

Introduction Scene

interior, prison island

Sirens are blaring and red lights are going off. We see automated doors closing, followed by an explosion. When the smoke settles, we see Stone and Robotnik together in a walking mech, destroying all doors that close in front of them. Military robots fight back but can do nothing against him.

They enter a final room at the end of the corridor. Inside we see a capsule that’s completely sealed.

Robotnik: We've hit the jackpot, Stone! Right inside this capsule is the key to ultimate power, and finally destroying that pesky hedgehog and his friends once and for all! I will finally have the power to rule over this world, and even more!

(Insert gay pining from Stone, we all know it’s canon)

Robotnik instructs Stone to search the files for the password to enter. He scrolls through the data for a moment before he comes across something.

Stone: M-A-R-I-A … really? A 5 letter password is protecting the key to ultimate power?

Robotnik: Remember Stone, this dusty bucket of bolts is over 50 years old. They were simpler times. Password decoders weren’t even invented, and our current program probably wouldn’t run on this hunk of junk.

He pauses a moment, seemingly thinking back.

Robotnik: Maria, huh? Haven’t heard that name in a long, long time. Still, I wouldn’t have thought of my grandfather as the sentimental type.

He walks over and types in the password. The capsule opens with a cloud of smoke, and an orange light reveals a figure not unlike Sonic’s. His eyes open and glow red as the restraints around him detach.

Robotnik and Stone stare in awe as he steps out. He kneels to the ground on one knee.

Shadow: I am Shadow, the ultimate lifeform, created by doctor Gerald Robotnik. You have awakened me, which can only mean you seek the ultimate power.

Robotnik yells in exasperation: Yes! Finally, a creature who knows its master! Welcome to the team, Shadow the hedgehog

The camera zooms back, revealing prison island, going further until it shows the entire earth, zooming further to reveal space colony ARK. The rendition of “live and learn” from the original trailer plays as the logo for the movie is finally revealed, with ARK shown just underneath.

Cut to an overview of Green Hills, where we see the blur of sonic, quickly followed by tails and knuckles, all laughing and whooping. They go through the forests and mountains of Green Hills, eventually getting to the peak of a mountain top, where Sonic jumps off and is caught by tails. Knuckles follows, gliding next to them. They fly over a house, where we hear Tom shout to them.

Tom: Dinner is ready! Get here quick, before all the burgers and hotdogs are gone!

They all fly down, landing in the backyard, where Tom has the grill set up. At a table nearby, we see Maddie, Rachel, Randel, JoJo, and Ozzy sitting down. Tails quickly flies to a tree house connected to the garage.

Tails: Just have to grab something!

Knuckles steps to the side of the yard, opening what looks like a cellar door.

Knuckles: I will join you all in a moment. I must double check the emeralds status.

Tails flies back from a window in the tree house, carrying with him a gadget.

Tails: It's fine, Knux, we would have gotten an alert if anything happened to the emerald.

Knuckles: Fox, I trust nothing but my own eyes to confirm if the emerald is safe or not.

He opens the doors and goes down a dark flight of stairs.

Maddie: Let him go sweetie, you know how he gets when he’s away from the emerald too long.

Tom: Sonic, do you mind getting the plates from the kitchen?

In a flash, sonic runs inside the house and back again, setting a plate in front of each person at the table.

Tom: Thanks pal!

Maddie nudges Rachel, nodding her head.

Rachel: Alright, I’ll admit it, the weird little alien things are starting to grow on me, especially considering how much JoJo likes spending time with them. But I still don’t know if I want to move to this town.

Sonic: aw, come on, Green Hills is the best town ever! Pulse as long as we're here, it’ll be the safest town ever.

Tails: That's right! We’re patrolling every day, looking for signs of danger! And for the chaos emeralds, of course.

JoJo: Oh yeah, have you guys found any yet?

Tails: (laughs awkwardly) well, not yet. But as soon as I’m done with my tracking device, we’ll be able to use it to hunt them down!

He shows them the device in his hands. It has a radar map on it with a single, large blinking light next to the yard.

Tails: right now it can only detect the master emerald, but once we find a chaos emerald, I can use its energy frequency to find other similar frequencies.

JoJo: Wow! That’s so cool! Mom, can I help them look for the emeralds too?

Rachel: Woah, woah, woah. No way young lady, I can not have you running around the world, you’re still just a kid.

JoJo: but mom! Tails is, like, 8! I’m two whole years older than him! Why can’t I go on cool adventures?

Randal: because, you’re still a *human* kid. You can get hurt a lot more easily than these guys can.

Rachel: hold up, do you mean to tell me that that little scientist who makes bombs and guns is only 8?

Maddie: We were surprised too. You’d have no idea any of these guys were so young if you didn’t ask.

Sonic: mom! We aren’t that young! I’m 14 now, I’m basically a grown up.

Maddie: Okay, Mr. grown up. But most grown ups don’t like getting tucked into bed every night.

Sonic: MOM!

Everyone at the table laughs, and Tom comes to the table with a plate of hot dogs and burger patties. Maddie looks over at Tails, who is still tweaking with his tracker.

Maddie: Miles Prower-Wachowski, what did I say about gizmos at the dinner table?

Tails: oops, sorry mom!

He puts the radar down, where the camera zooms in on the blinking light. We then fade to the room in the cellar. An automated door with an eye scanner blocks the way, and we see Knuckles take the last few steps down the staircase. He approaches the door and puts his eye near the scanner. A red laser appears and scans his eye, confirming his identity and unlocking the door. It opens, and inside the room we see a small shrine (designed after the shrine from sonic adventure 1) and resting on it is the master emerald. Knuckles nods in content.

Knuckles: as long as I am here, no harm will come to the emerald ever again.

#sonic 3 #sonic movie 3 #Sonic movie pitch #I’ll probably keep posting more scenes I’ve written #I’m honestly proud of some of them

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de-fright-ful · 6 months ago

Text

AMITY: PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE KNOWLEDGE

TRIGGER WARNINGS: MENTIONS OF DOMESTIC ABUSE, INJURY, DISABILITY, DEATH, PARENTAL ABUSE, PARENTAL DEATH, BULLYING, TRAUMA, BROKEN FAMILIES & SLIGHT NEPOTISM. So, not too dissimilar from standard Pokemon topics! /j

Jokes aside, though, Amity's backstory and the knowledge of parts of it can be distressing. I try to avoid describing it in great depth, but caution is advised by the reader. Nothing here is meant to be advocated in any way; I just personally enjoy writing broken characters who choose love instead of falling headfirst into the cycles of toxicity that birthed them!

ALSO, THIS IS LOOOOONG. A whole backstory worth, in fact! Bun Standard at this point! Push the Readmore at your own risk!

PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE : MADE COMMONLY AVAILABLE THROUGH WORD OF MOUTH, TRAINER BIOS, HISTORY & GOSSIP MAGAZINES. AMITY PARTS WITH THIS INFORMATION OPENLY AND EASILY.

Amity, also known as Ami, is a native of the Kiyose Countryside, which is one of the least populated but most historically significant prefectures in Saijikara.

Amity is a direct descendant of the ancient Joy clan—the same Joy clan from which all Nurse Joys originate in one way or another. Though it should be stated that Amity's branch is the original starting point, all Joys originate from Saijikara and have been distributed far and wide throughout the known world from this shared origin!

Amity is the middle child of nine children, having four older full siblings and five younger half-siblings on her mother's side. She bristles at any emphasis placed on the 'half' aspect. They're her siblings; end of all, what does it matter?

Amity is twenty-six years old and was twenty when she first became the Gym Leader of Autumn* (I have a whole deal on Amity's team, but it's an ENTIRELY separate post).

Amity lives on the MASSIVE old Joy estate, which is a twenty-two-acre property (or about seventeen American Football Fields, for reference) that, in an age far gone, housed the aristocratic Joy family in a palace, villa and entertained with extensive gardens, pokemon stables and a training/breeding area and MANY gardens. Today, though, given the small size of the immediate Joy family, Amity has scaled down the property -- changing the deeply manicured and carefully cultivated gardens into naturalized preserves and pockets of authentic nature for her Pokemon and wild Pokemon to enjoy. Whereas the central portions of the property - the palace, first pond, stable/barn & most recently, the regulation battle area, remain perfect time capsules into a time long passed (with a bit of a spooky makeover but not impacting the architecture whatsoever! That was important to Amity!) (there's also one last part of the estate, hidden deep in the back beneath overgrown trees is the ORIGINAL Minka the Joys established before the palace that's been forgotten by time and considered too cursed to even rip down)

Amity is the second youngest gym leader the Region has had in its history (this is due largely to the fact that the Gym Leaders tended to be chosen not due to trainer ability alone but due to being seen as community elders, artisans and spiritualists and it wasn't until recently that they became more open to all walks of life beyond art and experience alone)

Amity is also the second youngest current gym leader on the Saijikaran roster and is fairly decorated for her age! She has earned several badges across continents and in different countries, and she is the Three-Time winner of the Annual Saijikaran-hosted Pokemon Tournament and participated in the Pokemon World Tournament, though not placing as highly as she'd hoped.

Amity is both mixed-race and quad-ethnic. Her father was Mountain-Clan Saijikaran, and her mother was Unovan, Kantonian & Kalosi and had deep roots in each region through distant family. Though Amity is entirely Saijikaran-passing, being her father's daughter more than anything, to the point most wouldn't guess she's mixed until/unless she points it out. Compared to her siblings, who reflect their mother's side more, she won't deny she feels a little blue, though not enough to dislike her appearance or covet anyone else's.

Amity is very well-travelled and has regularly recounted her journeys from Saijikara to the nearby Sinnoh, Unova and Kalos, even showing the sparse, disorganized badges she'd earned in her periods abroad! Though admittedly, these travels all occurred when she was much younger (and her father was alive) - as she's gotten older, any chances for adventure beyond her home have slimmed to nil, though the recent introduction of the Saijikaran to the greater Pokemon League has renewed her hope!

Amity was named by her mother! Though her father tried to sway her to the name Ami, Rhiannon was INSISTENT. Amity meant friendship and friendliness; it denoted warmth—it was the way! And Amity laughs. Her mother always had a way with words, and her father had the backbone of a Dunsparse, so she was and is Amity!

OBSCURE KNOWLEDGE : MORE ESOTERIC DETAILS, LARGELY KEPT IN THE CONFINES OF FAN CLUBS, INTERVIEWS AND GOSSIP MAGAZINES. AVAILABLE IF YOU LOOK FOR IT BUT NOT SURFACE LEVEL. AMITY MIGHT INCLUDE THIS INFORMATION IN LONGER MORE IN DEPTH CONVERSATIONS.

Amity's Pokemon are the 'SOMEONE WILL DIE,' to her 'Of fun!' they are a freaky, violent bunch that genuinely lives up to the Pokedex entries of the earlier game - but thankfully for all, even though most fall on the more vicious or sadistically mischievous and trouble-making side. They ALL listen to her above all and follow the pace she sets. Now - don't get me wrong - I would never call her a Pokemon master, but she is SKILLED at raising, earning, and inspiring respect in her ghosts and keeping them in line!

However, regardless of their brutality on the battlefield, they're the strangest band of little freaks (affectionate), and she adores them all so much! She says as much herself! Describing her role as an 'emotional support human,' and there is no question that their Pokemon and master bond is no different than best friends of years!

Amity's Pokemon ARE dangerous, in the sense that ALL Ghost Pokemon can be - by nature of their creation, they're sewn into a fabric as delicate as souls - sometimes they don't know their power, and sometimes they do and delight in it. But Amity KNOWS (not believes) that when a Pokemon has the will and desire to be better, to find companionship or follow someone they deem worthy, they can overcome the inherent danger of their nature and are just as worthy of love, respect, patience, guidance and honing as any Dragon or Fire Type. She even goes as far as to trust her ghosts with her own life; she has that much faith in her training and their characters.

(*except for Spiritomb, Amity doesn't like to talk about Spritomb because it is a unique case, and on some level, she keeps it close by, not out of trust but more so out of fear of its capacity for hurting humans and delighting in harming humans. Amity knows she's the outlier, not the norm, and she tries hard to work with it, but it's difficult to put it lightly. It wants her affection, her respect and a place by her side, but it has no desire to change its attitude towards other humans; it wants HER to change and follow its ways, and she feels like she's trudging uphill through a snowstorm on the best of days but call her foolish, she has optimism that Spiritomb will change their demeanour someday when it realizes its current way sparks no joy)

AMITY IS NEVER SEEN WITHOUT A HAT; it doesn't have to be her big witch hat! She's always wearing a hat, to the point where it's become something of a joke!

Amity is such a fan of hair dye! She's gone on record for saying that she has never before attended any public or private appearance related to her Gym Leader Status or her roles with her natural hair colour, leading to much debate by fan clubs about what her hair colour actually is! Leading theories are that her hair is either BROWN or BLACK, but Amity makes no public comment!

All of the costumes you see Amity wearing are hand-made! She sews every part of them herself and even creates the more intricate hats and accessories you see her wearing!

If you visit Kiyose through the large train network of Saijikara, you might notice a familiar voice announcing the stop and welcoming you to the prefecture - that voice is, surprisingly, a younger Amity! Back when she was eighteen, the train station was undergoing a complete facelift for appearances, and that included replacing the old, near illegible recordings with new ones. They put out an ad to the local area - Amity needed the money, and history is history! Two years later, she underwent the trials to become an official Gym Leader for the Region (secondary to the job interview process itself, which she had been approved through), and after securing her position, the station was emboldened and doubled down on the recordings, even using them as a further novelty, even though Amity has admitted she finds them embarrassing.

Amity is an orphan and has been an orphan since she was sixteen. First, her biological father, Kija, died in a workplace accident when she was only thirteen, and later, her mother, Rhiannon, suffered complications during childbirth when she was sixteen. After Amity's mother died, her older siblings (largely) left her to fend for herself and upkeep the estate and encouraged her to give up her half-siblings to save her resources. Amity refused and has been caring for her five younger siblings with the aid of extended family and family friends since.

Amity previously served as a Kamuro or personal attendant to the Gym Leader of Mid-Summer, Illumise, in her Youth

Amity's first Pokemon was Whinnie! Her Drifblim! Amity never had a formal introduction to Pokemon like her older siblings, with inherited Pokemon to guide her. She found her own - or rather, her own found her! She occasionally mentions a foundational incident as a child when she 'got lost' and was rescued by Whinnie, who brought her back to humanity, and how that moment saved them both and sparked their career. Most think a lot of THAT is fluff inspiration wording and that the true story is less mutual saving and more her finding and befriending the ghosts.

Amity is a trained Pokemon Nurse, and could have been one of the Nurse Joy's, but due to 'Personal Reasons,' she's never stated to the public (lack of funds, lack of any jobs in the small locality, and needing to be close to home to care for her half-siblings and the estate when it became clear it was all down to her) she ended up having to shelf that dream! She doesn't consider it a waste of time or a waste, though - her lessons come through in the occasional work she does as a homecare nurse for aging people and Pokemon in the nearby town and outskirts and in the naturalized / reserve area of the Estate, and she feels it gives her an edge in battle too!

Amity has a large continuous hypertrophic burn scar running from her wrist to her elbow on her right arm that stands apart from her more pale skin in a dark brown-red hue. She's spoken at length about it and how it limits her mobility and the bad days, especially in relation to League efforts to make training more accessible to trainers with disabilities.

Since she began, Amity's status as the Autumn Gym Leader has been challenged three times, and every time she has won & rebuffed the effort to claim her position!

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE : INFORMATION A PERSON WOULD ONLY KNOW IF THEY WERE LOCAL TO THE AREA AND AROUND AMITY DURING HER FORMATIVE YEARS. AMITY CONSIDERS THESE HEAVIER TOPICS SO, WHILE IMPORTANT, SHE TENDS TO BE MORE CAREFUL ABOUT HOW SHE EXPRESSES SUCH INFORMATION.

Amity's birth hair colour was SALMON PINK, matching her TEAL GREEN EYES! Pretty on par with the common appearance of the Joy family! LIKEWISE—Amity's current natural hair colour (white) isn't a personal choice, and neither is it white-haired anime logic. Amity's white hair is actually a medical condition! It's called CANITIES SUBITA or MARIE ANTOINETTE SYNDROME, and it developed during that small window when she went missing at eight!

EVERYTHING ABOUT THE MINKA INCIDENT GOES HERE. No one in Kiyose believes the fluff wording that 'I wandered off. ' They all know the truth; the now-adult girls involved know the truth. Amity chooses not to drag out the experience, though, as a way of letting that past be laid to rest. She forgave all the girls long, long ago. It's done, it doesn't define her - hell, it gave her two of her best friends (Whinnie and Magnus); she says the town and the others need to let it go. She already has.

On THAT subject, the incident in the Minka lasted two days, give or take a few hours. After the first day and night passed, the girls who had locked her in there returned to release her, fearing she was still in there. Amity, though, was not. She was nowhere in there, and her exact whereabouts for a while were unknown.

What IS known is that after two nights, Amity re-emerged from the forest but in a zombie-like state. Her clothing was ripped, she was missing a shoe, and she was covered in mud, scrapes, cuts, and bruises. Her hair was deathly white and a nest, and her eyes were unfocused and staring straight ahead.

Instead of walking home or even to Illumise's home, Amity sort of stumbled her way to the local schoolhouse, making it in before the bell and without saying a word to anyone. She sat down, staring straight ahead into the distance. Her friends tried to talk with her, and the teacher tried to talk with her. Nothing, no acknowledgement or even sign she'd heard them. In the end, she had to be taken directly from the school to a hospital and showed very little improvement for weeks.

After the incident, Amity struggled with speaking for three years and had extensive speech therapy to overcome the Selective Mutism that developed. Thankfully, her efforts paid off, and she no longer struggles with it. If anything, the experience has given her far more patience and understanding for her nonverbal younger half-brother, Orin.

Amity has no clear recollection of what happened during those two days. She remembers blips of colour, lavender and deep purple, which she assumes are unfocused memories of Whinnie and Magnus finding her and helping her out of the house. But really, she only started picking back up days later, and 'familiar' feelings are what've put pieces together about that time period!

While the closeness between the Gym leader of Spring, Illumise Mikasa, and Amity has been well recorded—to the point where Amity is known to call her Auntie, even in public—the truth is, there is ZERO biological relation between Amity and Illumise. However, Illumise was a close family friend of Amity's father, Kija, and HIS father, Chikao, whom Illumise grew up alongside.

RUMOR HAS IT ILLUMISE ALWAYS HAD FEELINGS FOR CHIKAO AND SECRETLY WISHED SHE HAD THE PLACE OF HIS WIFE AND THAT HIS KIDS WERE HER CHILDREN, but Amity simply chooses not to notice that. She does NOT want to unpack that!

Illumise has been around for Amity's ENITIRE life. She was the nurse working when her mother gave birth to her - she was the family babysitter when Amity grew up - she was the first adult that had rushed to the school to access Amity after she had reappeared from the forest. When Kija died, she was the only one who really stepped up for Amity, giving her a safe place to mourn and to exist outside of her (understandably) resentful older siblings, new half-siblings and her mother's on-and-off boyfriends in the aftermath of Kija's death. When Rhiannon herself died, it was Illumise who became Amity's rock and supported her emotionally when she made the tough decision to continue caring for all of her younger siblings despite the lack of support she would get from her remaining family.

When the Late Gym leader of the Autumn season went into retirement for his health, Illumise raised Amity as her sponsor for the next Gym Leader to take his place. And I hear you, isn't that nepotism? And yes! It is, but that's sort of how the League in Saijikara works! Every gym leader raises a would-be gym leader that they personally sponsor (from their own pool of students/passing past challengers) both financially for the trials and in an honour sense. If a hopeful contestant fails, it's the reputation of the Gym Leader who raised them up who answers for it. And while most failure, like gym battles, isn't considered 'shameful' in a reputation-breaking way -- raising potentials with known problems in personality and personal character WILL, and in most cases, that alone prevents Gym Leaders from sending their ill-fit kin to try and take the role, because the social backlash would be intense enough to the point where it could cost them their own position as well. That being said, there are always situations like Amity's where nepotism is dubious on all levels. Was Amity qualified? Absolutely, she SWEPT the challenges that pitted everything from the depth of thought in team building on an artistic front, to their battle capacity. Did Amity deserve it? I'd argue so. She fought hard on all levels, both in terms of scraping by for equipment and hustling for support BEYOND Illumise (to the point she refused the customary financial incentives typically given when a person is elected by a current gym leader) She did it all, helmed her own ship or so to speak, not only for herself but her younger half-siblings who looked up to her as their primary role model. She wasn't gifted the chance like a cheque over dinner. She EARNED it, receiving the offer after winning a small pot cash prize for participating in a homebrewed battle competition with her then team of four. Now, Illumise felt the decision wasn't kin-based; she felt she was rightful in electing Amity. After all, who knew her better? Who had seen her growth and worthiness better than someone who had been around since the start and watched her grow? But at the end of the day, dubious is dubious, and some will remark that the only reason she got the position was because of Illumise.

That big nasty burn scar on Amity's right arm? That occurred not long after she became a Gym Leader for the first time in an accident. The Pokemon League wanted to update the previously established indoor battle venue on the Joy Estate. Amity agreed and let them have at it, but battles needed to continue. They set up an area in a field with little in the way of environmental hazards; all were up to code on the distances, but being so new to the trade, Amity forgot the most crucial consideration of outdoor battles: the wind and as it turns out, so did the League Representative sent to help Amity set up. The battle started, and things went well for the first half -- Amity had the head and whittled her opponent's team down to a Magby. They cast a flamethrower at Whinnie, Amity's Drifloon(at that point), but the wind changed, and the fiery plume with the accelerant made by Magby blew right into Amity. Setting her aflame and causing her to drop to the ground SCREAMING.

To not go too far into Whinnie's backstory: CHAOS ENSUED, HAVOC WAS UNLEASHED. Several people ran to put Amity out, put fire extinguishers and their small water Pokemon. The heat and the sound of Amity's screaming caused ALL of her Pokemon to unleash themselves and go into a rage. Whinnie had a post-traumatic episode and evolved into a Drifblim. MADNESS, COMPLETE MADNESS. But! EVERYONE SURVIVED, which was the main thing! It was an extremely trying period, but Amity made it out with major but healable burns. The other trainer was okay; both of the Pokemon were panicked, but neither died, and Amity counted her blessings for that alone.

ALTHOUGH DESPITE THE MANTRA OF 'THIS IS FINE, IT HAPPENED, ALL WORKED OUT' SHE STILL FEELS UNBELIEVABLE AMOUNTS OF SHAME FROM THE EVENT. Whinnie, well, Whinnie, with his PTSD, just disobeyed; he stopped listening to Amity entirely - he wasn't anchored in reality. He thought she was dead and believed it with his whole heart - in that split second when the fire took her, and he heard her screaming, she was gone, he was still the little drifloon that was helpless when his other best friend died - Whinnie lost both of them all over again in that split second, he failed them both, he couldn't protect either of them, his best friends were dead, and it was all his fault. but the outlier was, when Whinnie's last friend had passed, there was nothing to blame; it was an accident without recourse to lash out against, BUT THE MAGBY THAT DID IT WAS RIGHT THERE. Staring at his best friend burning - and that alone did it.

Where Whinnie was frozen in terror and shrieking before, seeing Magby watching just brought out something awful. Whinnie stopped and began evolving on the spot. Meanwhile, Amity - now put out, was left in pain and trying to calm all the Pokemon that had broken loose and prevent the situation from getting any bigger - and most did - they were terrified but redirected the attention from 'AVENGE OUR FRIEND' to 'help stabilize her so we can bring to the hospital' does Miracles in de-escalating. Some of her more reliable ones even returned to the balls, much to her relief, but Whinnie, her boy, didn't. She looked over to see him evolve, and just as soon as she'd called his name. He grabbed that Magby in its arms, constricted it to the point that the entire situation was drawn from Amity to this Magby screaming bloody murder and took off high into the sky. Amity knew in an instant what Whinnie was going to do: take it as high as it could and throw it down to kill it - like Wingulls with Pincurchin. And she was SCREAMING for Whinnie to listen and get back down to NOTHING. He would've KILLED that Magby; she knows it. If it hadn't been for the lucky break that Spiritomb had been in her team and intervened with hypnosis, putting Whinnie to sleep on her behalf... she knew how that situation would've ended. & That fact alone haunts her; in the end, the whole situation amounted to nothing more than a big accident, no major punishments or reprimands needing to be taken other than her gym being suspended until the internal construction was complete, and a harsh reminder that Pokemon are still animals at the end of the day. (mind you, though, she was ACTIVELY ON FIRE for most of the situation, so take her judgement & harshness on herself with a big grain of salt)

Who would've guessed that being really good at forgiving OTHERS doesn't translate very well to forgiving YOURSELF. On that note, though, Amity's forgiveness isn't lip service or a superficial effort to make herself seem or look better. It's genuine! When she says no hard feelings, she means no hard feelings!

Going back to the burning incident, that trainer that accidentally had her nearly burned: she was a childhood friend, not a frenemy, a TRUE friend who had come to train with Amity on the grounds for so, so long. They knew each other, they knew each other's Pokemon, they were close, and after the incident, there were no hard feelings. Amity was the one that brought up a rematch - no Whinnie involved - and apologized deeply for the entire situation. The trainer didn't expect that; god knows, she was in tears apologizing on her and Magby's behalf and weeping at the sight of Amity's arm, but even though the incident did leave Amity permanently damaged, Amity wouldn't let it do that to her friendship, too. And with Magby, even despite everything - they're pretty close, too. Amity visited them in the Pokemon Centre as soon as she could after the battle to make sure they were okay. She knew she wasn't mad, that it was okay, and that it was an accident. That's just Amity's character!

Anyone in Kiyose knows Amity's team has gone through SO MANY CHANGES, and she frequently switches her buildup between the active Pokemon she has on rotation. Typically, Whinnie is involved, except in the year after the fire incident, when he was benched for his mental health.

Amity can often be seen wearing what appears to be a mechanical brace on her left arm that's been covered in a cloth sock of sorts that's been painted and themed like the anatomic view of a skeleton forearm. Most chalk it up to a fashion statement, especially given Amity's witchy wardrobe and alternative fashion choices, but it's not! Beneath the arm warmer / brace cover is a medical elbow brace! She's SUPPOSED to wear it every day, but because she is young and optimistic (read: dumb) and unwilling to listen to her body, she chooses to wear it only during painful flare-ups from the scar tissue.

Also, funnily enough, while Amity and the family HAVE A WHOLE PALACE out here, Amity actually LIVES, and SLEEPS in the refurbished, furnished, insulted, etc. barn of the property for the sole reason that its large size makes it more accessible to her fully evolved Pokemon that want to sleep close to her and get cuddles in a way they can't in the palace! Sadly, when puppies get big, they don't always appreciate how large they get!

PRIVATE KNOWLEDGE : KNOWLEDGE ONLY KNOWN TO HER DIARIES AND THE CLOSEST PEOPLE TO AMITY. DOES NOT PART WITH THIS INFORMATION LOOSELY AND SOME FRIENDS NEVER LEARN.

Behind closed doors? Everyone who knows her well KNOWS she's the embodiment of the tired but determined 'We Stay Silly'

SHE IS SO DEEPLY CLOSETED IN HER SEXUALITY THAT IT IS NOT FUNNY. Unfortunately, it's the most significant and overlooked aspect of the VISCOUS early bullying she faced as a girl. Yes, Amity was desperate for friendship and social validation. Still, she was hopelessly smitten with the main girl who was orchestrating the bullying, and it coloured so much of her experience. Of course, there is the gaslighting and reliance on the fact that Amity was an awkward, nerdy, not very socialized girl otherwise rejected by her older siblings, so being told 'this is what friendship is' does have additional meaning there. But even her Aunt Illumise could see it; she practically worshipped her and doted after her, hungry for affection and attention, and that alone was why she desperately held on to the idea that maybe, deep down, they actually were friends and that she DID love her back. It was what led to her putting up with abuse after abuse and humiliation until The Forgotten Minka incident -- after that, Amity sort of shut down towards them. There was no explosive ratting or revenge; they tried to 'make it up' and 'explain,' but there was no going back. Amity simply didn't care anymore. After that, though, she never really REVISITED her sexuality, too much in her personal life going on to consider such trifling matters. Not until her status as a public figure and Gym Leader brought it back to the forefront of gossip and interviews, like a forgotten bag of trash. Amity was the second youngest Gym Leader, the third youngest in recorded history and a GIRL. Everyone wants to know about sweethearts. Do you have any courters or plans? Family in the future? What about Natsuo, the young cherry-season Gym Leader?

HER FAMILY IS SUCH A HOT MESS IT'S NOT EVEN FUNNY. Amity has very sparse to no contact with her older siblings; they consider her a 'traitor' for refusing to kick out her mother and then her half-siblings and a failure for refusing to follow through on being an esteemed Pokemon nurse, and for not keeping the entire property to the former standard it had when they were growing up. Amity's younger half-siblings are mostly oblivious to the tension of their family. Still, they're not stupid, and she can tell that the older they get, the more they can see and appreciate her wearing at the seams from the stress, but she doesn't WANT them to bear that burden of feeling like they've ruined her life. They didn't! She adores them! They can't help that their mother, well, she set all the dominos to this inevitable conclusion. & Amity's late mother was - well, she was PROBLEMATIC; she stole THOUSANDS from Amity and her sisters' Survivor's Benefits from Kija's death. She forced them all to endure her NUMEROUS failed, toxic and unstable relationships after Kija's death, isolated them from their extended family (which were judgemental of her decisions), and hid the truth that THEY owned the family home and had inherited it. She set them all up like meat shields for herself, she steered them from a comfortable existence into a more impoverished one - she kept having kids to try and fill a hole in her, and most unforgivable to Amity, she just LEFT them. She died, of course; she probably wouldn't have chosen that, but it's the cherry on top of her. Amity's mother created a teetering tower of unstable blocks and ran away before watching it crash. Now it's only Amity and these innocent children, and she's barely more than a child herself trying to make the scraps WORK! And while Amity TRIES and TRIES to forgive her, tries to fully understand and put together the pieces of her mother's troubled, troubled life to understand herself that her mother had... demons, ones she was thankful to not experience, it's so hard to not feel so angry. Her anger is a void in her stomach, and she's felt it so long and hard that it's nothing more than a festering void.

Amity misses her Dad SO MUCH MORE THAN HER MOM. She has grieved for her Mom, but less for the person she WAS and more for who she COULD have been and the relationship they COULD have had.

Being that most of her siblings were SO young when their mother died, many of them have only ever known Amity as their mother, and this... well. It sparks that dysmorphia; of course, there's the joke about the 'world's youngest milf,' but truly? Amity is not their mother. Their mother was an awful, awful person; the comparison is claws in her chest, and it really puts into perspective EVERYTHING; she's raising her siblings; her siblings ARE her children, and she didn't have a single say in it. She's a mom, but mentally? She's not. She hates being a mom; she wishes she could just be their sister again, and it could be carefree - or at least FEEL more carefree.

When Amity was first called 'mom!' by the twins, they were so happy about it. Their little chests puffed up with pride, and their smiles were as wide as a Gengar's, and, to them, I think they felt they were clicking in that piece of what was missing. Sort of a 'maybe she never asked us 'cause she's SCARED we'll forget mom, but we'll show her! It's okay! She's our mom!' but it was distinctly the opposite, and she could barely hold back the tears until they ran off to play, and she was left alone with the emotions.

When Amity's mom died, her then-boyfriend (father to the twins) was still living with them. Now, Amity didn't actually WANT to kick him out and potentially disrupt the horrifically tenuous situation even further, or at least, not IMMEDIATELY, he was an absolutely useless scumbag, but unfortunately, her mother brought him around. The kids had become attached and had already experienced one loss, so should she throw another right at them? For her ego? She couldn't. She grinned and bared it for them and vowed to keep her distance. The palace IS big, but unfortunately, it was not big enough for his ego. He should've been happy, free board, and his kids were being cared for; there was no pressure from Amity. But she assumes he wanted to be 'the boss', not her, to have a say but do no work, and what that translated to was being cruel to her and her siblings. He had to GO, so Amity packed up the kids for a fun night with their Auntie so she could handle things and finally cut the leech loose, and it didn't go well. It went SPECTACULARLY wrong, in fact. She was eighteen and relatively petite; at least, she had to guess this guy was in his early thirties. It escalated fast, and between the screaming, she got the hell beat out of her but took bites out of him and eventually, it took her, a knife, and her Pokemon to heave the fucker out. She called up Illumise that night and asked that she keep the kids for the entire week; she explained a little but not much, and that whole experience and the follow-up sort of changed everything about the reality they were living in. He never showed up again after that (A part of Amity is convinced her Haunter, Magnus, caught up to him and either killed him or scared him in a way he wouldn't come back from), but what happened happened. And Amity's oldest (but still younger) sister, at sixteen, sort of broke out of the haze of fully taking Amity at her word. She remembers returning and seeing what she thought were poorly covered-up bruises, Amity with nothing but good news, and that guy... gone. She didn't miss him, but she knew somehow, somehow Amity was lying, and it sort of altered things.

On the family subject, Amity knows she's never having biological kids. Will she adopt and be an older sister and maternal figure to any lost person who follows her home? Absolutely, but she's never going through with pregnancy, giving birth, or raising immediate children from her. She can't; she simply can't mentally.

THOUGH I WILL ALSO SAY EVEN THOUGH ITS THE MOST OPEN SECRET, SHE LOVES AND REMEMBERS EVERYONE WHO'S COME TO STUDY UNDER HER AND DO THE OCTOBER / FALL TRIALS. She has pictures of every graduating class since she started and keeps in touch with all of them. It's the guiltiest delight she has. She loves her old friends! She wants them to succeed. I guarantee that she'd show up if they invited her to anything.

What is the biggest reason Amity is always wearing hats? It's not for the aesthetic or even to hide her hair's white roots. It's because the CANITIES SUBITA that caused her hair to be completely white is joined in hellish union with ALOPECIA AREATA, and she gets these spots, the size of quarters, where the hair falls out in ugly clumps when she's too stressed out. Amity hates it, but the hats make it so much easier to hide!

SECRET KNOWLEDGE : INFORMATION ABOUT AMITY THAT NOT EVEN SHE KNOWS / IS ONLY KNOWN TO THE GODS AND THE WRITERS

Amity isn't exactly... human. A part of her IS human, but, well— it's complicated. To make it simpler, let's go back in time, all the way back to that fateful day with the Haunted House, when the local mean girls locked her inside the Forgotten Minka and barred the door to prevent her from escaping. Laughing all the while saying that she'll be food for the Gengar. This, the betrayal & terror all caused Amity to have a panic & asthma attack in the House, clawing at the door and then her own neck trying to breathe.

According to Amity's recollection, it was after this panic that Whinnie (a drifloon then) approached her, then Magnus (a haunter) emboldened by Whinnie, seemingly as scared as she was, trying to soothe her crying and calm her down. This is true... but it's not the entire story. Whinnie and Magnus only found Amity after the Legendary, ancient Pokemon found her.

The Legendary Pokemon had been hibernating and licking its wounds for centuries since its last battle with the Seasonal Quartet of the Saijikara region. But Amity's death throes awoke it from its slumber and drew it from its hiding place, deep in the skeleton of the Abandoned Minka. It approached the dying, terrified, gasping Amity and prepared to do what it's always done — steal her identity and her life. But this is where things became... complicated; Amity, while scared, was in a place between death and life, beyond pain, kind of delirious and in a way, she knew she was dying and was happy it wouldn't be alone. She THOUGHT the legendary Pokemon was, well, a normal Pokemon, one she just hadn't seen before, so she embraced it like one. Reaching out and embracing it, forgiving it because, on some level, she knew the truth, it was going to eat her after she died, and she was fading fast. But, despite it, she forgave it, gave it her blessing, and loved it. Her terror turned to delirium and turned to relief and gratefulness not to be alone.

The Legendary Pokemon watched it all, and it couldn't... process it, it understood, but they couldn't understand— it wanted to understand, but it couldn't. Not in that form, at least, but Amity's dying moments touched it deeply, and when it took her genetic material (bit her corpse's arm off) to replicate her through its own body and power.

It was at that point that Whinnie and Magnus found her, or rather, the Legendary (essentially), wearing her skin and mimicking her tears and panic that had stopped in death moments before.

What was intended as a sneaky attempt to assimilate her identity into it, turning her life into a mask to hide behind and escape the Seasonal Quartet, and all other legendaries it had pissed off along the way, was turned on its head. The direct copy of Amity, which it (essentially) cloned within itself to piggyback on, became an ENRAPTURING experience. The Legendary Pokemon was riding as co-pilot in Amity's body, but her mind, her heart -- the Legendary Pokemon saw it both and could finally understand and FEEL the way she felt through her spirit melded with its, and it loved it. It loved her, a little at first, but what started as a mask consumed the Legendary. It had no desire to burst from its vessel and destroy her; it loved her, it loved living through her, loved BEING her, loving through her, it loved her mind and her family and slowly, in time, it BECAME her.

The Legendary didn't assimilate Amity; Amity assimilated IT through her humanity and the bundle of traits unique to humans that the Legendary wasn't capable of on its own.

In that way, Amity is not human. Her body is something between human and the beast that took her corpse and replicated it through the DNA gathered, and her spirit? It's inseparably fused with the Legendary Pokemon. Amity WAS human, but her human self died and was resurrected enough to almost hijack this Legendary that was so overjoyed to embrace the change her body and mind gave it.

AMITY DOES NOT KNOW THAT SHE IS FUSED WITH THIS LEGENDARY, THOUGH. If you even brought up the theory to her, she'd think you were on crack. The idea is ABSURD to her, but there are things about herself that are perfectly explained by this explanation, even if she could never see it.

MISC THINGS EXPLAINED / ORIGINATING BECAUSE SHE IS PART LEGENDARY

The fact that Amity is seemingly immune or otherwise unbothered/unable to be possessed by the arcane and ghostly forces of both her preferred Pokemon types and the mysteries she's often pulled into. Amity is SURROUNDED by Hex Maniac and Possessed Channelers, and yet she's never faltered in that respect, even when training notably difficult Ghost Pokemon for reasons she cannot explain. She jokes about being a ghost-buster, but for some reason, her jokes have more than a bit of truth in them.

Enenra, Amity's Spiritomb, was already a powerful Pokemon and general spirit when she first encountered it and exorcised it from its former home/point of terrorizing humanity in the unearthed archeological site, where it had previously claimed the lives of five workers. But when it met Amity, it met its match, not only in battle but on a mental ground. Enenra tried to attack and weasel into her mind to possess her. It met a brick wall each time. Enenra assumed it was Whinnie or one of her other Pokemon stepping in to provide a mental block so nothing could possess her or creep into her subconscious, but even on her own, Amity was untouchable to it. It made no sense to Enenra, and only served to make Amity more of an enigma. But with the legendary dwelling within her that LOVES her and has converted their relationship to something symbiotic AND powerful? It makes more sense!

AND OF COURSE, THE BODY. In the post-game of HER story, she and the trainer, Summer, joined forces to finally deal with the matter of the Forgotten Minka and clear it of dangerous ghost Pokemon -- and bind the malevolent spirits to a keystone to protect the public and ensure no one else is made a victim of that building. In doing this, they discover a HORROR SHOW, to put it lightly. High-level ghost double battle encounters, disorganized messes of rubble, furniture weathered to ruins and a false imitation of a normal, traditional home, untouched by time but the errieness of that was nothing compared to the several decidedly human skeletons amidst the remains of Pokemon. All decomposed to nearly dust, and thankfully, Summer was none the wiser, remarking only that there were a lot of 'old Halloween decorations' and deducing the building must have been a former storage area for Amity (Amity didn't correct her) but Amity knew the truth and after dismissing Summer with a new, high level, shiny, one of a kind Spiritomb made from unresting spirits of the Minka. She turned her attention to the elephant in the room: the bodies. She called EVERYONE, shaking with the waning adrenaline as she stared at the remains, too terrified to move and for the first time in over a hundred years, the Minka was BUZZING with life. The poor people were collected and removed, and the entire building was swept through twice over. Their deaths were confirmed to be the result of Pokemon attacks DECADES earlier, though that as much could've been told by the broken, old Pokeball shells beside some of them and the faded, tattered clothing & all but one of them was given back their old names and returned to their family to be laid to rest, all but the smallest skeleton, no bigger than waist height, a child - a child with more clothing than all the rest - still clad in a faded flowery dress and missing an arm. That child, their bones (the original Amity, for clarity) HAUNTED Amity deeply, and even after she was given the clear on the building - something felt so WRONG. Why, why did they seem so familiar? Why did no one come forward to identify them and claim their child? They couldn't have been any older than six... and why, why did the sandal found near the body match the one she remembered wearing from The Incident?

BUT I WOULD ALSO BE REMISS NOT TO MENTION THE HIVE INCIDENT, so, after Amity and the others went through the Minka, she expected a sense of peace, a feeling of levity. After all, she conquered such a traumatic incident from her past and reclaimed it! She took her torment and gave it life and soul and a loving partner so it would never hurt again, AND YET, the uneasiness didn't wane. It only got worse - she was expected to open the Minka back up soon, and yet something in her gut screamed, IT'S STILL NOT SAFE, THERE IS DANGER, and while her loved ones TRIED to comfort her, it did little. She blamed herself for the former hiker and trainers' deaths. She wouldn't let anyone else be hurt - not on her watch or her conscience. Even if it meant putting HERSELF in the line of fire. One night, after sending her siblings to stay with their Auntie Illumise, she took Voltaire and Laverna to the house and began dismantling and destroying. Tearing up floorboards, opening walls, ANYTHING. Her feeling had weight, she knew it, she just HAD to find it before someone stumbled into it! That's when she fell, or rather, the three of them fell. The crashing and pulling at the seams of the Minka caused the aged wood to give way, revealing a deep tunnel hidden beneath the structure, carved deep into the stone base the entire structure had been built on, with claw marks as big as her arm. But the horror of the size of the creature that must have made the tunnel - and the power it had to possess was shortlived when Voltaire ventured further, and his light illuminated nothing but hundreds of feet of pure hive and EGGS, not Pokemon eggs, something different, the size of her fists, maggot white and ovate. Something like Amity had never seen, not in her lifetime. She'd wanted to run, but something inside of her refused. It was the Legendary, woken like a sleeper agent, gripping hold of her body in a way she couldn't explain, only long enough to order Voltaire to 'burn it all' before letting go and letting Amity and her Pokemon escape. Before Amity could renege on her order, the comb was alight, and soon, the flame took over. Leading the Trio to escape and Amity to real from WHAT THE HELL THAT WAS. She chalks it up to adrenaline and disgust, but it's not... no, while those hives weren't any immediate danger, the Legendary couldn't allow them to live longer - it had no need of them, no, it would never split with Amity and require The Swarm again. And its continued existence, a vestigial branch of its true form, would only serve to potentially expose it and hurt Amity -- and it would never hurt Amity, not on purpose. To quote my friend in the group chat, “I’ve had Amity for a fraction of my existence, but if anything happened to her, I’m killing the planet and then myself”.

THE LEGENDARY, HOWEVER, IS NOT FULLY GONE INSIDE HER; it lives on and prevents itself from being fully absorbed if only to live this life it has built with its favourite person unfold and to relish what it means to be truly alive and mortal (in a sense). BUT IT CAN BE BROUGHT OUT AND BUGGED TO THE POINT OF SHOWING ITSELF. However, such cases always end in death and bloodshed and will only come if Amity, and its beloved, cherished life is threatened in a way that truly matters.

ALSO BASIC KNOWLEDGE ON THE LEGENDARY POKEMON INSIDE HER:

It's an alternate reality, paradox version of Giratina, dubbed Vespidoza by the ancient people of Saijikara.

It is a BUG / GHOST type that cannot breed, doesn't evolve or transform beyond switching through three distinct stages of existence, henceforth dubbed Parasitoid, Swarming and Soaring.

Vespidoza does lay eggs, though—the eggs for the swarm that constantly surrounds it. They aren't really related, more so functioning as mini-clones rather than independent entities, and ancient texts refer to them as 'mouths with wings'.

Vespidoza's power largely comes from its ability to create massive swarms, measuring millions, that it can control with little more than its mind and the spectral magics it was formed from.

These swarms could, in a matter of moments, reduce cities to nothing and strip Tyranitar to nothing more than bones. They were, as an understatement - DEVASTATING to any Region it unleashed itself on.

For that reason, the Legendary and Mythical Pokemon of any region it decided would be the victim to the latest swarming event would come out of hiding to metrically kick its ass with all the power it could muster and typically, the efforts worked if only to put an end to the current swarm.

However, NEVER were ANY of the Legendary Pokemon or Pokemon of Myth able to kill it definitively. Like the pest it was, it would always manage to slip away - create mass, hidden caverns of hive beneath the earth, hidden in plain sight for the next century's Swarm and go into hibernation to gather its strength until it can detect death near its location. Which serves as its spectral cue to emerge and hijack the identity of the dying to facilitate its return and act as a living yolk to empower it until it's ready to split its host body into pieces and fly free to wreak havoc again.

Now, where did it come from? Vespidoza was recorded as far back as the Saijikaran region itself and in records earlier from nearby locations, so its methods of leaking into this world are a mystery. & Given the power of its counterpart, Giratina, it's easy to assume its power is probably due to it muscling through a rip left in space-time by the creation of our reality.

Past aside, I CANNOT understate how deeply Amity has changed the very fibre of who Vespidoza was. It will remain forever to fuel her, if need be, and silently watch if it means her light will keep it warm. It ADORES her, and the worst ending / Rainbow Rocket nonsense follows after a new innovation that was made to aid in the Nihilego apocalypse ended up exposing her as being not entirely human - Amity consented to basic tests, which ended up revealing Vespidoza inside her -- she panicked, but they delighted and wanted to run tests that were more dangerous. She didn't consent. It didn't matter. She ran away but was quickly caught, and the Amity's humanity died, leaving Vespidoza to emerge from her corpse in true horrifying Parasitic Wasp fashion, but it's emerging was not joyous. It grieved hard and was filled with so much anger and hatred over Amity's obvious murder. With it now capable of HUMAN EMOTIONS, it takes personal vengeance against ALL of humanity, starting with the people responsible for killing Amity before moving on to the rest of the world and letting all fall to the Swarm.

#about tbt #me??? posting my first things out of order? ABSOLUTELY

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ilanorgratvol · 6 months ago

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Rough tempest they will raise - Part 6

Table of contents

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Talia struggled to open her eyes. Tears streamed down her cheeks, only to be instantly swept away by the rushing wind. The sorceress was plummeting toward the ground, surrounded by debris from the falling ship.

“Se ne…,” - she tried to cast a spell but choked on the wind, - “Se…,” - she began to make out objects on the ground below, - “Se neme!”

Finally, she managed to cast “Feather Falling,” slowing her descent. Now, she was gently floating down to the earth, giving her a chance to take in her surroundings. It was a green, forested area, bordered by a river on one side and a mountain range on the other. A few kilometers from Talia’s expected landing site stood an ancient temple.

The illithid ship crashed with a thunderous noise not far from the riverbank, smashing through trees and sending a flock of birds soaring into the sky. The fire that had started on the ship during the flight continued to rage even more fiercely on the ground.

“Please be alive… please…,” - Talia muttered. As soon as her boots touched the sand on the shore where she finally landed, she took off running toward the crash site. She noticed with horror the scattered bodies of innocent people crushed by the ship, destroyed boats, fishing barrels, and provisions. Reaching the ship, she found nothing but a pile of burning wreckage and charred bodies, so disfigured that their races were barely distinguishable. For a moment, she almost succumbed to despair, but then she pulled herself together, wiped her eyes, and moved through the remnants of the ship, heading into the part of the forest that had survived the crash.

She hadn’t walked a mile before she spotted a familiar head of red hair ahead. The bard girl was still walking alongside a dark-haired girl in armor and a githyanki warrior. Talia felt bile rise in her throat, and her heartbeat pounded in her temples. She quickened her pace.

“Oi! Redhead!” - Talia shouted, as a compressed bolt of lightning energy formed in her hand, ready to strike at the bard at any moment.

The girl barely had time to turn at the sound, her eyes widening more in surprise than fear. Talia pulled her arm back, ready to send the lightning bolt flying, when a hand grabbed her from behind, stopping her:

“Whoa, whoa, easy there. We’re all friends here.”

Talia turned and saw Gale, smiling broadly as if nothing had happened. Beside him stood a tall, pale elf with red eyes, watching the situation unfold with interest.

“Gale…,” - Talia exhaled, - “You’re alive…,” - her face showed relief for a moment, but then she looked back at the bard. She jerked her hand away and continued advancing toward the bard, practically growling and clenching her fists:

“You saw me on that ship and left me there to die, you bitch!”

The bard didn’t have time to respond as Gale stepped in between them, blocking Talia:

“Hey, let’s calm down. We’re all in this together. No need for hostility,” - he said, spreading his arms wide, trying to hold Talia back.

“No need?” - Talia exploded, - “No need?! That songbird saw that I was alive and left me in that capsule! She didn’t even try to help me!”

“I had no choice!” - the bard finally spoke up.

“Like hell you didn’t!” - Talia tried to get around Gale and reach the bard, but the wizard grabbed her by the shoulders, preventing her from moving and trying to focus her attention on him:

“Up there, everyone was doing what they could to survive. You can’t blame her for wanting to live, right?”

Talia took a few breaths to calm down. Gale's touch had a strangely soothing effect on her. She looked at him:

“It doesn’t matter. We survived, the illithids and their ship did not. Let’s go back to Karse…”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” - Gale’s smile faded, - “You’re smart enough to know what’s coming in the next week.”

“What do you mean?” - Talia frowned.

“A tadpole?” - Gale brought a finger to his eye, - “We need to at least try to find a healer skilled enough to rid us of this parasite.”

“You were infected?!” - Talia gasped.

“WE were infected,” - Gale clarified, emphasizing the word.

Talia shook her head: “They didn’t get to me…”

“Oh,” - Gale sighed with relief, - “Gods above, that’s wonderful!”

For the first time in ages, Talia took a few steps back and looked around at the others. Each of them was infected with an illithid tadpole.

“We’ve noticed something strange with our guests,” - Gale began explaining, - “Normally by now, body temperatures should be rising, and there should be bouts of nausea…” - He trailed off as the bard girl approached Talia and extended her hand.

“Let’s start over? I’m Tav,” - she said with a friendly smile.

“I want you to take your lute and shove it up your…” - Talia hissed, but Gale quickly intervened again, trying to defuse the situation.

“Let’s continue our journey, shall we? The tieflings mentioned that there’s a healer in the local druid grove. Shall we?” - He bowed slightly and motioned towards the grove, allowing Tav to go ahead of him. Before following her, he shot a frowning, disapproving look at Talia.

“Well, well… Someone has teeth…” - the pale elf leaned toward her slightly, grinning wickedly.

“Look who’s talking,” - Talia muttered grumpily, ignoring him and following the group.

The elf’s smile faded, and he left her comment unanswered, choosing instead to keep a certain distance from the sorceress.

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By evening, the group of unlikely companions had managed to reach the druid grove, help the tiefling refugees fend off goblins, and realize that there was little hope without the archdruid Halsin. The group decided to set up camp near the grove, on the riverbank, and spend the night there before deciding what to do next in the morning.

Talia sat on a log, poking at the newly lit campfire with a stick. Her involuntary companions were busy setting up tents and preparing for the night. This was not how she had expected things to turn out, let alone ending up in such a motley crew. She had never felt so far from tracking down her brother, and it infuriated her. What annoyed her even more was Tav. The bard had quickly charmed almost everyone around her, managing to convince the tiefling siblings to stay and protect the grove from the goblin horde, getting involved in the druids' discussions about the future of their grove, and… Oh, this, for some reason unknown even to herself, bothered Talia the most. Gale seemed to like the red-haired girl too. They were joking around while setting up their tents. Talia had never seen Gale smile like that before. She turned back to the fire and resumed her activity.

“I don’t see your tent,” - the wizard said, approaching the sorceress from behind.

“That’s because there isn’t one,” - Talia muttered, - “I lost my pack when we were on the ship.”

Gale sat down next to her:

“Well, I suppose you could sleep in mine. I could easily enlarge it; it would be comfortable…”

“Don’t be…,” - Talia began, but was interrupted by the bard, who had approached shortly after Gale:

“You can sleep in my tent, Talia, if it makes you uncomfortable. I’ll keep Gale company,” - Tav giggled. Gale’s face turned bright red, but he didn’t object.

Talia’s expression hardened:

“There’s no need,” - she replied curtly, standing up from the log and walking towards the riverbank, brushing past Tav’s shoulder.

“Is she always like this?” - Tav asked, frowning.

“Only when she’s in a good mood,” - Gale smirked, watching the sorceress as she walked away.

That night, Talia slept on a bedroll right by the fire. Though it was hard to call it sleep, more like a state of oblivion. Anything to escape, to disconnect from all the problems that had suddenly fallen upon her. She tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable position, trying not to think, not to let her thoughts cloud her mind. Finally, she sighed heavily, lay on her back, and opened her eyes. What was she doing here, in the middle of the forest, with all these strange people? She could leave at any moment, cast a portal, and head back to Waterdeep, Neverwinter, or wherever she wished. She could forget about the deal with Elminster - after all, the wizard was closer to his end than ever, which meant the deal hardly mattered; she could resume searching for Nathaniel. Gale would… Talia sighed heavily again. Damn wizard had gotten under her skin more than she wanted to admit. What did she want from him? And what did he want from her? Oh, right, with or without the tadpole, the orb would eventually need to be fed again. And, judging by the group’s composition, she would be the only one who could satisfy it. Talia bitterly smiled at her own internal calculations. If she left the group, it wouldn’t be two weeks before Gale blew them all up, along with the tieflings and druids in the grove. Talia considered herself quite pragmatic, but even she couldn’t bear such a burden. She sighed heavily and closed her eyes, trying to find the sleep she so desperately needed.

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The following weeks were a blur of frustration and exhaustion as the group tirelessly searched for any information about the druid Halsin. Each day, a small team would set out to explore the surrounding area, hoping to find some clue about his whereabouts. But all they brought back were weariness, wounds, and bruises from the now frequent skirmishes with goblins, and the growing sense of disappointment. Slowly but surely, they were making their way towards the former temple of Selûne, where the druids had said Halsin had gone earlier.

Talia rarely joined them on these expeditions, preferring instead to stay at the camp or spend time in the grove, studying the local scrolls and books that the druids had kindly granted her access to. One evening, she was sitting in her usual spot by the campfire, legs stretched out on a log, deeply engrossed in the study of ancient healing rituals, hoping to find something remotely useful to rid the others of their parasites. The scouting party returned to the camp. Talia glanced briefly at Astarion, the elf with whom she had formed a rather odd but solid bond that an outsider might even call the beginnings of friendship. He shook his head, indicating that today, like so many other days before, had yielded no results. He tossed his newly acquired bow to the ground, grabbed a bottle of wine, and disappeared into his tent.

"Gale, I have something for you!" - Tav's voice broke the calm of the camp. Gale, who had been sitting next to Talia all this time, carefully tending to the stew he had been working on, looked up.

Talia tore her eyes away from the book. The bard was holding a small silver medallion with a large emerald at its center. It dangled on a chain, glinting in the firelight. Gale's gaze shifted from the medallion to Talia, and he raised his hands in a placating gesture:

"Talia, let's be reasonable…"

It took her a moment to realize what was happening. The book slipped from her hands and fell to the ground, forgotten. Her nostrils flared, her face flushed with anger, and she clenched her fists so tightly that her own nails dug into her palms.

"Gale, can I have a word with you?" - she said in an unnaturally high voice.

The wizard quickly grabbed the medallion from Tav's hand, whispering a quiet "I appreciate that," and followed Talia into the tent. As soon as he closed the tent flap, the sorceress waved her hand, creating a soundproof barrier around them. She turned to him.

"You told her?!" - she snapped, snatching the medallion from his hand.

"To be fair, I told them all," - Gale shrugged.

"That tadpole really has eaten your brains, Waterdeep?!" - Talia couldn't hold back and raised her voice, - "Do you even understand how dangerous this is? For both of us!"

"We've been traveling with these people long enough to know they don't pose a threat," - Gale said calmly, - "You've seen Tav, seen how she helps the tieflings in the grove. I trust her. And it seems she trusts me."

"Do you think she'd still trust you if she knew the whole truth? Do you think she'd still care? You didn’t tell them what will happen if you don’t feed the orb, did you?"

"As if anyone actually cared about me!" - Gale snapped back, unable to contain his frustration.

Talia fell silent. The unspoken truth in her gaze seemed to hit Gale, and regret crossed his face. He reached out to her:

"Talia, I…"

At that moment, Tav burst into the tent, disheveled, flushed, and clearly having had a good time: "Gale, about the book you mentioned…," - she trailed off, noticing the tense atmosphere, - "I’ll come back later…"

"A rare sensible thought…" - Talia began, but Gale interrupted her.

"No need. We're done," - he said, turning to Tav with a welcoming smile, - "Illusion school, I have an excellent book lying around… allow me…", - He placed a hand on her back, gesturing with his other hand towards a table cluttered with scrolls and books in the back of the tent.

Talia felt her face grow hot. An unfamiliar, pulsating pain in her chest seized all her attention. She said nothing, merely threw the medallion onto the pillows and stormed out of the tent.

#bg3 gale #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #gale x tav #gale x sorcerer tav

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sinelanguage · 11 months ago

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and for the museum of the day i was Considerably more excited for: the National Museum of Modern Art!! splitting this into two parts for my sanity, main exhibit first

one thing that impressed me about this museum was the overall presentation of descriptions used. a lot of art museums will present some information and context to the piece, but the national museum specifically tried to encourage people to read the text (metaphorically) and engage in Thoughts. it was pretty neat to look at a piece then see what specific emphasize the museum curator wanted to put on something.

For example, Nakanishi Natsuyuki’s piece Compact Object was described like this:

Fish bones, a rubber ball, a clock, seashells, hair.. this egg-shaped object seems to be packed with the contents of a garbage can. Or is it a time capsule, capturing a fleeting moment during a certain era? Nakanishi staged performances by bringing these clusters of everyday objects into public spaces, such as in the streets and on trains. His intent seems to have been to carry a microcosm of the world in his hands rather than to produce a sculpture that sits on a pedestal.

which, imo, does a decent job at explaining the intent but also promoting people to think about the intent going into objects on a level a bit further than just “here’s what this means.” this was pretty consistent in the museum’s presentation, which I really appreciated.

The other thing I thought was incredibly funny was this fucking. diary entry they had on display. keep in mind i was dead on my feet in this museum writing down notes to post to my tumblr blog and then read kishida ryusei’s diary from 1923:

Woke up around 10 o clock with a slight headache. Not surprising since i was up unttl three last night talking with Senge [Motomaro] and others, and that's why I overslept. Took a bath after breakfast. Got on the 1:49 pm train to Tokyo and then a taxi to Shintomiza. The play was about to start. My seat was excellent. Sendai Hagi is a famous kabuki play, but it was the first time I had actually seen it. The scenes performed were: the Bamboo Room, Cooking Rice, Under the Floor, The Showdown, The Scar. All of these were fascinating. I's not often these days that l immerse myself as deeply in kabuki as I did this time.

me, two museums in, feeling a profound kinship with this artist from a century ago writing a diary entry about his hang over but going to tokyo for three plays. as i write notes in my phone about art. incredible.

For actual pieces though there were quite a few:

Kayama Mayazo, Waves in Spring and Autumn thought this piece had a lot of really neat spins on some classic imagery (mountains, seasonal trees, waves/water). I especially liked the details of the waves breaking— the waves themselves were this even, looping/fluid lines but the edges were crashing with noisy scribbles

Komaki Gentaro, Bricks and a Squirrel: this is one of those “can’t explain myself”. the bricks had a very weird wood grain pattern, paired with a squirrel in this frightening black orb, completely surrounded. sometimes ur just a squirrel in an orb

Nomiyama Gyoji, The Withered: i like organic things in weird, inorganic messes. this was like, a rat king but with branches, and it was confusing to look at. enjoyed it a lot.

Kodama Yasue, ambient light - sakura: this is exactly what it says on the tin but for what it is it works really well. it’s just the impression of looking up at Sakura blossoms through sunlight, and man is it effective at it. I think in person this works better just for the size and detail of it- it captures the feeling of looking up through foliage very well and was very pretty to boot

Takanashi Yutaka, Hongo: Mansada Parlor, 6-17-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku from Machi imo all of takanashi’s photos had this very lived in quality to them, like a photo taken of a place that feels deeply familiar and like home. The collection overall has these deep colors and contrasts with mundane settings and a large amount of visual objects/interest, so it made the feel of the piece really nice (photos here)

overall: really solid, probably doesn’t beat the contemporary art museum but that’s just because my taste is what it is. for an art museum though, i really appreciated the approach and curation

#personal #sineposting

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abwwia · 6 months ago

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Agnes Denes (Dénes Ágnes; born 1931 in Budapest) is a Hungarian-born American conceptual artist based in New York. She is known for works in a wide range of media—from poetry and philosophical writings to extremely detailed drawings, sculptures, and iconic land art works, such as Wheatfield — A Confrontation (1982), a two-acre field of wheat in downtown Manhattan, commissioned by the Public Art Fund, and Tree Mountain—A Living Time Capsule (1992–96) in Ylöjärvi, Finland.[2] Her work Rice/Tree/Burial with Time Capsule (1968–79) is recognized as one of the earliest examples of ecological art. She lives and works in New York City. via Wikipedia

#Dénes Ágnes #art by women #art #palianshow

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omegaradiowusb · 11 months ago

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MARCH 4, 2024 (#370)

Nico: “The Fairest Of The Seasons” Velvet Underground, The: “Who Loves The Sun” Stooges, The: “Dirt” T. Rex: “I Love To Boogie” Public Image Ltd.: “Annalisa” Birthday Party, The: “The Red Clock” Gang Of Four: It Is Not Enough” English Beat, The: “Ranking Full Stop” Talking Heads: “Moon Rocks” Kinks, The: “Living On A thin Line” Husker Du: “Hardly Getting Over It” Love & Rockets: “Kundalini Express” Smiths, The: “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” Jesus And Mary Chain, The: “Nine Million Rainy Days” Fall, The: “New Big Prinz” Galaxie 500: “Strange” Pixies, The: “Hey” Primal Scream: “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have” Concrete Blonde: “The Sky Is A Poisonous Garden” Slint: “Good Morning Captain” Machines Of Loving Grace: “Burn Like Brilliant Trash (Jackie's...)” Dinosaur Jr.: “Start Choppin’” Blur: “Hanging Over” Oasis:”Columbia” Manic Street Preachers: “Archives Of Pain” Replacements, The: “Can’t Hardly Wait” Radiohead: “Fake Plastic Trees” Elliott Smith: “Coming Up Roses” Paul Weller: “Broken Stones” Placebo: “I Know” PJ Harvey: “Naked Cousin” Morrissey: “Piccadilly Palare” Verve, The: “Bittersweet Symphony” Brian Jonestown Massacre, The: “Let’s Pretend That It’s Summer” Pulp: “Sorted For E’s & Wizz” Le Tigre: “Friendship Station” Radiohead: ”Fake Plastic Trees” Jay Reatard: “Let It All Go” Future Islands: “Like The Moon” Mountain Goats, The: “Blood Capsules” Weezer: ”Everybody Needs Salvation”

A new broadcasting season, a new five-star edition of Omega Radio. For tonight's midnight slot, we kickoff our first Springtime show with three hours of marquee music full of awesome standards, unanimous favorites, and top-shelf songs. We play these familiars for all of our listeners to enjoy, and also to have more time assembling future deluxe broadcasts.

A big thank you to @tewz for contributing much of the sounds heard on this morning's show. We have more new, current, and favorite sounds and artists on the way in the coming weeks. See you then.

March 18, 2024 (Midnight-3AM): deluxe Omega.

April 1, 2024 (Midnight-3AM): deluxe Omega.

April 15, 2024 (Midnight-3AM): deluxe Omega.

April 29, 2024 (Midnight-3AM): deluxe Omega.

May 13, 2024 (Midnight-3AM): deluxe Omega.

May 27, 2024 (Midnight-3AM): final deluxe Spring '24 Omega.

#omega #music #playlists #punk #rock #new wave #no wave #alternative #Britpop #noise rock #shoegaze #folk #vocal #legends #classics

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stefike · 1 year ago

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One of my photos was chosen as a finalist in the 20/20 Photo Festival Call For Entry: The Natural World. There are 24 finalists out of 155 submissions and 750 photos. The top 3 winning photographs of fellow photographers are pictured below.

Please join me this Friday, September 1st, at Cherry Street Pier from 5:30-7 pm for the opening reception. The reception will include an informal panel discussion at 6PM with curator Ryan Strand Greenberg and the top prize winners.

The Natural World is a continual source of inspiration and inquiry. Over the last 200 years, photography and science have evolved with our ambition to comprehend Earth's ancient processes, understand our place in the universe, and share knowledge and beauty with future generations. Landscape photographs have become almost ubiquitous in the canon of photographic history, appearing in magazines, academic journals, scrapbooks, galleries, community science projects, and home decor. The tradition of documenting the environment continues worldwide today as some photographers attempt to capture the effects of critical environmental issues such as biodiversity loss and climate change.

Curated by Ryan Strand Greenberg, The Natural World is a collection of images by 24 photographers documenting today's environment. These photographs highlight the delicate balance between living organisms and habitats from Philadelphia to India. From endangered insects and monoculture farming to cell phone transmission towers disguised as trees and the erosion of a mountain belt, these photographs capture the uncanny convergence of distant past and present landscapes: a time capsule that helps describe the natural world today.

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tameblog · 16 days ago

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Tolmiea menziesii The first time I saw a piggyback plant, I was hiking Mount Hood in Oregon with a friend who lived in the region. I saw this cute herbaceous plant with a funky, tiny leaf growing out of its foliage. I asked my friend what the heck I was looking at, and he told me it was called youth-on-age. We link to vendors to help you find relevant products. If you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. Turns out, not only is piggyback plant, as it’s also known, a beloved native in my area, but it’s a valued ornamental in other regions with a similar climate. On top of that, it’s a popular houseplant in areas not blessed with the perfect Pacific Northwest climate (I might be biased). Whether you intend to grow piggyback plant in a hanging pot in your kitchen, an urn for your entry, or even in the garden, this guide will help you out. Here’s a look at what I’ll cover: Tolmei menziesii is an herbaceous evergreen in the Saxifragaceae family, native to the Pacific Northwest in the cool, moist climate west of the Cascade mountains in southern Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and northern California. If you live in Zones 6 to 9, you can grow it outside in shady, moist areas. Otherwise, it makes a delightful houseplant. When not in its reproductive stage during the summer, it looks a little like a small, herbaceous maple tree because the leaves have a similar shape to those of Acer species. But then the tiny plantlets form at the point where the stem meets the leaf and suddenly piggyback plant looks quite different from everything else. This plantlet will eventually fall off and root in the ground. Basically, the youngsters live on the mature plant, absorbing nutrients and moisture, until they’re ready to head off on their own. Quick Look Common name(s): Curiosity plant, pick-a-back, piggyback plant, youth-on-age Plant type: Herbaceous semi-evergreen perennial Hardiness (USDA Zone): 6-9 (outdoors) Native to: Pacific Northwest Bloom time / season: Spring, early summer Exposure: Partial sun, part shade, shade Soil type: Loose, loamy, well draining Soil pH: 5.0-7.0, slightly acidic to neutral Time to maturity: 1 year Mature size: 2 ft wide x 2 ft high Best uses: Woodland or pollinator garden, houseplant, ground cover Taxonomy Order: Saxifragales Family: Saxifragaceae Genus: Tolmiea Species: Menziesii T. menziesii has several common names that reflect its funky reproductive habit. It may be called curiosity plant, mother of thousands (not to be confused with the succulent, Kalanchoe daigremontiana), pick-a-back plant, youth-on-age, and piggyback plant. In addition to forming plantlets, this species can also reproduce via seeds and rhizomes. Photo by Brewbooks, Wikimedia Commons, via CC BY-SA. The seeds form inside fruit capsules on tall stalks following unusual chocolate brownish-purple flowers with yellow anthers. The stems are hairy and the leaves hairy, heart-shaped or palmate with toothy margins. There is another Tolmei species out there that is indistinguishable from piggyback plant, T. diplomenziesii. This second species only grows in Oregon and a small part of northern California. I mention it because you might occasionally see T. diplomenziesii listed for sale as piggyback plant. It’s essentially the same, and only botanists will know or care about the difference. Youth-on-age grows to about two feet tall and wide when mature, so it’s not too demanding about space, and it will stay even smaller indoors, where it works well in a hanging planter. Outdoors it will spread readily via plantlets, seeds, and rhizomes in moist areas, so it’s perfect for growing as a ground cover. When in bloom it will attract all the pollinators. How to Grow Piggyback plant is quite easy to cultivate provided you try and replicate its natural woodland habitat. Soil Piggyback plants love loose, loamy, rich soil, like what you would find on a moist forest floor, with lots of decomposing organic matter. Ideally, the soil should be well-draining, but this versatile species will tolerate both poorly draining and sandy soil. You’ll just need to be mindful about watering. A pH of between 5.0 and 7.0 is fine. If you’re cultivating in a container, I love FoxFarm’s Ocean Forest potting mix. I use it in my potted plants, raised beds, and to amend small areas of the garden. It’s made using earthworm castings, bat guano, forest humus, and sea meal. FoxFarm Ocean Forest You can find FoxFarm Ocean Forest in one and a half cubic feet bags available via Amazon. Light If you’re growing piggyback plant outdoors, choose a location in shade or dappled light. Photo by Kristine Lofgren. The plants will tolerate partial sun, but you’ll need to be meticulous with your watering. Indoors, bright, indirect light for most of the day is ideal. Humidity Many plants that grow in the Pacific Northwest need a good amount of humidity to survive, but piggyback plant is fine in the average home humidity. Don’t bother worrying about trying to increase the humidity unless you start to see crispy brown edges on the leaves. If that happens, you can group plants together or move yours into a bathroom or kitchen, where the humidity tends to be higher. Water In many parts of the Pacific Northwest, there is constant moisture from October through May, but it can be totally dry during the summer months. Piggyback plants have adapted to that kind of shifting moisture level. If you let the soil dry out a little in the summer, it will be totally fine. Make sure you keep it evenly moist from fall through spring, but short periods of drought shouldn’t be a problem. Ideally, the soil or potting medium should feel like a well-wrung-out sponge, not soggy and wet. Fertilizing Plants outdoors don’t need to be fed unless your soil is extremely depleted. Indoors, you should feed twice a year: once in spring and once in late summer. Whether indoors or out, use a fertilizer with an NPK ratio of 1-1-1 or 2-2-2. Cultivars to Select In the US, you’ll mostly find the species for sale at garden centers and nurseries, but cultivated varieties are becoming more common, especially in Europe and the UK. Here are a few to look out for: Cool Gold Talk about eye-catching, ‘Cool Gold’ has golden foliage and it forms dense clumps. Beyond the foliage color, it’s the same as the species in size and other characteristics. Taff’s Gold Tremendous ‘Taff’s Gold’ is variegated with bright yellow and green foliage. It grows a bit wider than the species but the same height. ‘Taff’s Gold.’ Photo by Noobnarwal, Wikimedia Commons, via CC BY-SA. The downside is that this cultivar is prone to reverting back to green, so prune off any totally green leaves that form to encourage the gold variegation to remain. Variegata ‘Variegata’ is a naturally-occurring variety that was found growing in the wild. It has creamy yellow splotches on green leaves. Otherwise, it’s just like the species. Maintenance Pruning isn’t necessary unless you see dead or dying leaves. Feel free to snip these off. Otherwise, you can prune leaves to create a shape that you like, but it’s not necessary. If yours flowers, which doesn’t always happen indoors, you can remove these at the base, as well. Photo by Kristine Lofgren. Over time, the original specimen will start to become a bit sparse. When this happens, cut it back to the ground and it will re-emerge from the soil with a more dense, compact growth. If your piggyback plant starts to spread where you don’t want it, you can dig it up. It won’t spread into dry or sunny areas, so don’t worry; it’s not prone to taking over an area. Propagation You can propagate piggyback plants from the tiny plantlets it produces, as well as from seeds or by division. From Seed If you have access to an existing plant, you have a ready-made seed source. Or, you can often buy them from companies that specialize in rare or native seeds. Photo by Kristine Lofgren. To harvest your own seeds, you’ll need to wait until late summer after it has flowered and the pods have developed. When the pods turn brown and some of them begin to open, it’s time to harvest. You can pluck the entire pod or rub it between your fingers to release the seeds. Collect them in a bowl or cup underneath as they fall. The seeds need to be cold-stratified for at least a month before sowing. To do this, fill a bag or sealable container with moist sand. Place the seeds in the sand and set the bag or container in the refrigerator. Set a reminder on your phone to check them every week to make sure the sand is evenly moist. After a minimum of one month, but preferably two, they can be sown in pots or trays indoors for transplanting after the last frost date has passed. Alternatively, you can sow the seeds directly in the ground outside in fall and let Mother Nature handle the stratification. Cover the seeds with a bit of soil and then lay chicken wire or some other mesh over the area to protect the seeds from cats, crows, squirrels, and other critters that love to dig in the soil. Divisions Piggyback plants spread via rhizomes and it’s easy to divide these to grow elsewhere. To do this, look for a specimen with multiple clumps of stems. Gently dig down around one of the clumps and lift it out of the ground. Photo by Kristine Lofgren. You might need to snip away some of the roots to fully separate the plant. Set the division in a new spot by digging a hole the same size as the roots. Place the division in the hole and fill in around the roots with fresh soil. Fill in the hole you left behind with soil. From Offsets or Leaf Cuttings Those offsets are what make youth-on-age unique, and you know you’re dying to try your hand at propagating them. Spoiler alert: it’s super easy. The little plantlets that form at the center of the mature leaves can be gently teased away and set it their own containers. Photo by Kristine Lofgren. Or, you can just remove the entire leaf with its piggyback and all. I prefer this method because there’s no risk that you’ll remove the plantlet too early. The offsets start showing up in the late summer and are usually gone by spring. Look for those that are about the size of a pencil eraser or larger on a healthy leaf. Use your fingers to gently tease it away from the parent. Otherwise, pull or cut a leaf with just a bit of petiole and an attached plantlet. Stick the petiole in potting medium with the bottom of the leaf just touching the surface of the medium. Moisten the soil and place the pot in an area with bright, indirect light. Photo by Kristine Lofgren. Keep the medium moist and while roots develop. Either the plantlet will leap off the leaf and start itself in the soil, or the leaf will send out roots. Maybe even both. Either way, keep the newly emerging specimen in its growing container until the following spring. Then you can transplant it outdoors or repot into a permanent container. Transplanting Most houseplant specialists will carry youth-on-age. Your job is to move it from the grower’s pot to a larger, more permanent container or into the ground outdoors. This will be one of the easiest jobs you’ve ever done. Prep the new container by putting a little potting medium in the base so that the crown sits at the same height it is in its existing container. Gently remove the specimen from the growing container and set it in the new pot. Fill in around it with more potting medium. Water, add a bit more potting medium if it settles, and you’re done! For planting in the garden, dig a hole the size of the growing container. Lower the root ball into the hole and fill in around with extra soil, if needed. Water, add more soil if it settles, and voila. Managing Pests and Disease For the most part, piggyback plants are pretty easygoing. Fungus gnats are annoying, but they aren’t the end of the world. They feed on dead material in the ground and sometimes on roots. Photo by Kristine Lofgren. Aphids and mealybugs might also make their way to your piggyback plant. Slugs will also chomp on the foliage. If you grow piggyback plants in heavy clay or other unsuitable soil, chances are high that you’ll end up facing root rot at some point. While this species loves moisture, it doesn’t thrive in poorly-draining soil. Too much standing moisture, whether from overwatering or poor soil, will deprive the roots of oxygen and cause rot. Root rot shows up as brown, dying leaves, and the piggyback plant will eventually collapse. Learn more about root rot here. Bring the Woodlands to Your Space Whether you want to fill a woodland-like space in your garden or you bring the temperate rainforest vibe into your home, piggyback plant is the perfect option. Even if you just want to enjoy the look of the unusual plantlets, you can’t go wrong. Photo by Kristine Lofgren. What are your goals with this plant? Looking to please the local pollinators? Or will it be the perfect houseplant for your space? Let us know in the comments section below! If you found this guide useful and you’re looking for a few more plants with interesting foliage, check out these guides: Photos by Kristine Lofgren © Ask the Experts, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. See our TOS for more details. Product photo via FoxFarm. Uncredited photos: Shutterstock. !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments); if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script', ' fbq('init', '176410929431717'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); Source link

#PLANTS_AND_SEEDS #GARDENERS #GROW #PATH #PIGGYBACK #PLANTS #YOUTHONAGE

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ramestoryworld · 16 days ago

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#PLANTS_AND_SEEDS #GARDENERS #GROW #PATH #PIGGYBACK #PLANTS #YOUTHONAGE

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alexha2210 · 16 days ago

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#PLANTS_AND_SEEDS #GARDENERS #GROW #PATH #PIGGYBACK #PLANTS #YOUTHONAGE

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