#but the numbers are which zones theyre from

[melon-colli]

~OFFtober Day 12: oc~

I don't really have any off ocs so...woe. Girl elsens I drew years ago be upon ye.

[egoistars]

HIT BRAKE! sae itoshi

(Sae needs to practice his goals and you… driving)

~3.8k words, humor, fluff, angst if you grab a magnifying glass, use of soccer instead of football (i have too much pride to do that), theyre so polar opposite they unfortunately come full circle and match each others freak

Sae Itoshi returned to Japan with several new things under his belt:

The ability to speak spanish (although his grammar structure can use some help from time to time)

An insane growth spurt

Probably shell shock syndrome

And the scariest new update to a chronic Resting Bitch Face that you had the displeasure of seeing thrown your way when you accidentally ran over his ball driving home. Maybe this is why most Japanese people rely on public transport instead of using their licenses

TWO was the number of times you had failed your driver’s test. Yes, you could always use the bus or ask your friends for a ride, but college doesn’t start for another few weeks and you’re determined by pure stubbornness to be driver certified before starting school. You think you’re doing pretty good so far: no accidents, no being pulled over, no getting cursed, and no one loudly complaining about your skills (no one has trusted you to drive them). The only thing you had left to master was parallel parking. 

It was a legacy in your family to be horrible at city parking.

One of your earliest memories was in the backseat of a rental car in a foreign country while your mother tried to park on the side of the street, only to get honked at by cars and drive against the flow of vehicles in a one-way zone. 

A bag of groceries lie in the trunk of your car as you drive to your family’s home. Humming along to the song softly playing through the radio, you slow down as you near the residential area, confident that this drive will end without a single thing gone wrong. Without speaking, you jinx your thoughts as you jolt when your car goes over a bump and a loud wheeze follows it. Turning your head to the side, your entire body freezes and your eyes go wide upon seeing the pissed off glare of Sae Itoshi, the infamous Japanese soccer player who just returned from Spain with a sexy tan.

With a shaky hand, you roll down your window and immediately start tumbling over your rushed apologies. You don’t even understand what you’re saying but you hope that Itoshi somehow understands. When he doesn’t react, which is what you expected but it hurts nonetheless, you immediately shut up and tumble out of your car before getting on your knees and seeing what you ran over. 

Your hand reaches and pulls out a deflated soccer ball, the entire thing flat with a large hole on the side from when it got run over by your car. You almost feel inclined to inflate it with the tears that are about to spill out of your eyes but the only realistic and socially acceptable choice was to give it to Itoshi and once again, apologize but with words that he and the average person can understand. 

Itoshi mumbles a “it’s okay” before taking the ball (can you even call it that?) a once-over. “I have more at home, I’ll just throw it out.”

“Holy shit I’m so sorry about that I can buy you a new one just please don’t sue me I can’t afford a good lawyer, I’m in student loan debt.”

“...why would I sue you?” he asks, his face slightly scrunched up in confusion. It’s not much different from his normal expression, just a slight crease of his brows but it makes all the difference.

“I didn’t mean to assume that you’re gonna sue me, please don’t sue me for assuming!” You think that you should begin to pack your bags and take out a loan to move to another country. It would be easier to be a criminal than to deal with a conversation with a guy who multiplies your humiliation. “I just thought that you might get your super prestigious and rich and wealthy and prosperous and exquisitely-copious-in-currency soccer team on my ass ‘cause I ran over one of their balls,” you nervously rambled. Your face heats up at every word and one Itoshi divides into two Itoshis and two Itoshis split into four.

“Are you schizophrenic? I thought you were normal back in middle school,” sixty-eight Itoshis say in unison.

Your body freezes, the now one hundred twenty-eight Itoshis all morphing back into one. “Wait, we went to middle school together?”

“Uh, yeah,” he blinks, this time looking even more awkward than you. “We were in the same class for two years straight and I sat next to you the semester before I left. I think I would remember the kid who slept through each period but still got all the answers right when called on.”

“Oh!” You perk up at the recollection of a scrawny red-haired boy from five years ago, one who would try to not-so-discreetly look at your worksheet answers and peek at your notes during class. “You’re the boy who would always copy off my work. I do remember you!”

“Is that all you remember about me?” If Itoshi were any other person, you’d say he looked uncomfortable but all he did was tilt his head a little more to the left and shift on his feet. 

“I mean, the only reason why you remember me is ‘cause I saved your academics without even knowing. Don’t think I didn’t hear our teacher whispering ‘good job’ to you while returning our tests and how you suddenly moved up in our class rankings.”

“Well you didn’t bother to hide anything when you were snoozing away so whose fault really is it?”

“You were gonna leave for Spain, anyway!” you point out, remembering being pissed off when hearing the reason why your seatmate left was because he was some kind of sport prodigy, basically having his entire future as a star secured at the age of thirteen.

“My parents would’ve killed me and held me by my feet if I flunked.” Itoshi grimaced, kissing his teeth and brushing his hair back as it had fallen over his eyes. His cheeks had returned to its usual color, removing the red flush of running and exhaustion.

“Huh, I guess I should be credited for your success. Spain should thank me.”

“Are we forgetting that I’m the one who plays the sport?” Sae’s voice came out harsher than he intended and cut through the playful atmosphere by the first syllable. His demeanor appeared unchanged but he felt himself tense. 

Conversation had never been strong for Sae, only ever talking when he needed to and the most of his words going to his teammates on the field or his little brother. His success was a sensitive subject whether he liked to admit it or not. Spain served as an eye-opener to the teenage boy, being left in a country where no one looked like you and no one spoke your language. The only thing he could rely on was a translator he barely trusted and the expressions of the people around him. 

When you don’t respond, Sae observes your face, noticing how you began to fidget with your fingers just as you had when you first stepped out of the car. You weren’t his previous coaches; you were just a former classmate who he happened to run into, or rather, you drove into. It was too late to laugh and he felt slightly guilty at freaking out someone that wasn’t his brother, an opponent, or a bothersome news anchor. 

“If you want to repay me for the ball, meet me at the sports store nearby.”

“Sorry, but I don’t really know where you’re talking about,” you sheepishly reply, wanting to sink more into the ground with every word. You decide that talking to athletes is more tiring than playing an actual sport.

“Give me your number, I’ll send you the address.”

You hand him your phone, hoping he doesn’t comment on the horrendously cracked screen protector that you had been telling yourself to replace for months. At the same time, you also want him to notice the small possibility of him offering to buy you a new one, taking advantage of rich people or whatever. “I can pick you up if you don’t mind.”

“Should I trust you to drive me?” he asks, carefully looking between you and your car with his turquoise eyes as if analyzing his opponents on a field, only, this was a residential street and the only other player was a balding middle aged man walking his dog. 

“I mean, you’ll be my first passenger so you can find out for everyone else.”

“If I get into an accident I’ll sue you for real.”

“I’ll try not to, I don’t have a job anymore and I’m going to college soon so even if I do please be merciful I swear I have good intentions.”

“Pick me up tomorrow at 11 and I’ll give you a review,” he decides, handing over his phone with the contact ‘Sae Itoshi’ at the top of your phone and the name of a sports store sent to your conversation. You ponder for a moment about asking for a contact picture but you’d like to stay alive for at least one more day so you bid him farewell and sit back in the driver’s seat, hoping he doesn’t hate your taste in music when you turn the radio back on.

—

The Itoshi residence is rather normal, differing from your expectation of a lavish mansion with fountains and fences of gold, given that Sae was a famous athlete and his younger brother Rin was known throughout the prefecture for being a mini Sae. The previous night when you had just finished brushing your teeth, your phone screen illuminated with the presence of a new notification: a text from the older Itoshi.

>make sure you don’t have anything planned for tomorrow

>i’ll need to try each ball out

>you did this to yourself

>shitty driver

A jolt of pain had struck your pride, crumbling your ego at the realization that he was, unfortunately, right about needing to sacrifice your entire afternoon to babysit a (grown) stranger whom you haven’t talked to in years; those conversations were brief, lacking any substance to consider them actual conversations. For a moment, the thought of bailing on him had crossed your mind, the idea of leaving him stranded at his residence while you enjoyed a night in, marinating before a tumultuous college career seemed insatiably tempting. 

Disaster struck when you Googled Sae Itoshi’s net worth, his bank account leading you right to his front doorstep.

“Don’t get into any car accidents,” Sae told you as he dipped his head down to step into the passenger’s side of your car. You were suddenly struck with a moment of insecurity; a wealthy athlete who could probably buy your family and your ancestor’s mummified corpses is sitting in your car and is probably rich enough to get away with murdering you for having half a particle of dust fall onto his lap.

You realized you zoned out when Sae cleared his throat, blinking a few times at you with an unamused expression and eyebrows furrowed in judgment. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, man. Just trying to remember the name of the place you mentioned. It’s a technique I use where if I think really hard in the same place I was when I thought of that thought, that thought I had thought of can reappear in my thoughtless mind.” You aren’t sure if you understand what you’re saying but you think you can get away with spouting bullshit if you use enough hand movements like a person on TedTalk.

“What the actual fuck are you saying?” Sae doesn’t seem to believe you but you’re an innovator—you simplify the problem down to something the average person (underling) can understand. 

“Can you give me the address again..?”

“You’re a freak.”

Sae picks up your phone, which was opened to the navigator app, and quickly typed in the name of the sporting good’s shop he had mentioned the day before. It was a small place, smaller than you would expect a star athlete to go to for equipment but you suppose it makes sense at the same time: less people, less paparazzi, less crazed fans, and a selection of items picked specifically for trained athletes. 

“So, uh, are you gonna make me pay for the ball too ‘cause I’m at least, like, five yen in student loan debt,” you sheepishly ask, hoping Sae can appreciate your humility in being a college student, taking a step forward in life by pursuing a higher education. 

“How cheap are you?” Sae scoffs, letting out a sound that started off as half of a chuckle but ended as a constipated grunt, making him sound like a diseased lab-grown goat that was raised by war-stricken alien society. You think Sae should become an experimental musical artist if soccer doesn’t work out, sorta like a fucked up version of Björk who’s slightly less musically talented and a total cunt instead. 

“I’m not cheap! I’m just curious. I brought my credit card just in case. I’m a responsible adult; this is all for budgeting and logging my payments or whatever else people do to save money.”

“You’re lucky you’re funny,” Sae comments as if it’s the most nonchalant thing in the world. For you though, you almost stepped on the breaks and begged him to repeat what he said. It would have been just another condescending compliment from anyone else but Sae Itoshi is notorious for not humoring anyone in the media and you quickly realized, even those in real life. Before you could doubt your memory, Sae opens his mouth again. “You lucked out on pretty privilege. All the bullshit you say would not slide if it came from any other person. I’m convinced the only social experience you have is talking to a mud wall.”

Any negative statement he had made went through one ear and directly out the other, keeping only the compliments for your brain to process. Without noticing, a giddy smile appeared on your face and to Sae, it was wildly masochistic the way you tolerated his foul personality and even relishing in his attention—no matter good or bad. He could almost pity you, deducing your attitude as a lack of self respect, but you somehow manage to surprise him every time.

“Nah, I think I had a lot of friends. I don’t know if we were actually friends but I knew their names so it’s probably good enough. Speaking of, there was this guy named Kota who I knew when I was seven and he seemed pretty cool until I caught him picking at his feet in the middle of class. Sometimes I wonder how he’s doing and if he’s still collecting foot gunk. But yeah, I think you’re just self projecting with the whole ‘no people, only soccer’ thing and moving to Spain with zero spanish skills. Damn, wait, that’s kinda sad. Shit, now I feel bad,” you take a look at Sae, searching for any sort of discomfort or offense but he simply shrugged. 

“It’s whatever, they all bothered me anyways. I was there to play soccer, not make lifelong friends. It’s not like I’m gonna stay in Spain forever. I’m back in Japan to renew my passport ‘cause I know I’m gonna come back eventually.”

“You’ve already made a name for yourself and you’re making insane money that can last more than a lifetime for the average person once your contract is over. It’s not gonna be long before you get onto the Olympic team for Japan. When you do make it on, you better thank me for making sure you kept on playing by bringing you to buy a replacement for a ball I ran over.”

You drove into a parking lot with two other cars directly in front of the sports shop. The building was in the middle of a small plaza, adjacent to an udon shop and a bar. It was undoubtedly an odd place for a sports shop to be and that might have been what caught Sae’s eye in the first place. In the window display, a tennis racket and a pair of soccer cleats are put on display and on the glass door, countless advertisements for events and brands are taped on, each barely correlating to the others.

Right in the corner of the shop is the checkout where an elderly man sits, scribbling something in a beaten journal. There is a stack of newspapers behind him, every issue marked with highlighted annotations and then neatly folded as if it were untouched. Sae greeted the man and turned to find someone else, this time, being a younger man who appeared to be in his thirties or forties. He gave Sae a warm smile and shook his hand, not as a business partner, but as an acquaintance. 

It’s here that you realize you’ll never be able to see the world the way Sae does. In your car he was just another boy in your neighborhood that you decided to get to know. But to others, he was Sae Itoshi, a prodigy who could conquer the world with just himself and a pair of cleats. Although his eyes are dimmed and his apathy anything but silent, his shine was lost to know one and when he boards a plane back to Spain while you settle into college, you think you’d be content calling him a shooting star.

Sae notices that you stopped following him and turns around in confusion, tilting his head to motion you to follow him. It takes a breath before you put your hands in the pocket of your jacket and tentatively follow him. It wasn’t until you walked into the store that you truly realized how out of place you felt and if it were just you and Sae, you might’ve thought to ask him what everything did. He’d call you a dense fuck and tell you that he plays soccer, that he doesn’t deal with anything else. You had even the smallest bit of shame so you kept your mouth shut and continued to trail after him, stealing glances at the stacked shelves until the employee came to a halt.

Before you was a wall, lined with four shelves of nothing but soccer balls, each decorated with the signatures of different brands and their series’.

“The guy said I can try them out in the back.” Sae tapped your shoulder and grabbed onto the fabric of your jacket, dragging you with him like a pet cat. “They have a lot of empty space there. You can help me carry everything I want to try.”

Agreeing turned out to be a mistake. In your arms you struggled to carry six different balls, with Sae dribbling one between his feet as the owner of the stop unlocked the door to the back where Sae would be testing things out. You felt like an overworked butler from some bad comic and in your head, you imagined yourself as a fainting princess—a damsel in distress being overworked by the evil kingdom in which she is supposed to be respected.

“Stop being dramatic,” Sae sighed, noticing your dejected pout and lost eyes. He could almost pity you if you didn’t look comically pathetic in the moment, almost adorable if he wanted to be slightly sentimental. “You can put them all down now. Just sit here and wait. Take a nap or something, you’ll be fine.”

The lack of standards you have would be an issue to address at a later date because the barely comforting words of the ever eloquent motivational speaker Sae Itoshi had you immediately perking up and cheering for him.

“Go! Go! You got this! Get that goal, ugly!”

“Who are you calling ugly? I could knock you out with this ball, you know. If you want to be supportive, don't be a freak.”

“Are you really gonna disrespect the only fan you have at the moment? What if I tweet about this and get you canceled or some shit?”

“Do you really think I care about that?”

“...no…”

“...”

“...”

“Whatever. Do what you want.”

“Kick that ball, little boy! You’re a prodigy! Number one soccer player in the world! Bend that net over!”

—

By the time Sae had finished shooting several goals and alternating dribbling between them at least five times, the sun had set and your throat was sore from bullshit cheering, half of which were incoherent sounds of moral support. Sae grabbed an unopened box of the ball he had chosen and denied a pump when offered one. When he placed the cardboard packaging onto the checkout table, your wallet was in your hand and ready to check out and pay off your debt to the Itoshi. 

However, you were met with a receipt in your hand instead and a farewell from the owner, bidding you and Sae a happy rest of your day. You quickly turned your head toward Sae, mouth agape as your brain twitched, trying to process if he was fucking with you or not.

“Do you want me to pay you online or write a check or what? Wait, why did you pay? I thought I owed you it? My complaining earlier was all joking. I literally popped your old ball. The least I can do is pay for a new one!” You rant, quickly taking your phone out of your bag to open up your banking app but Sae was quicker to take your hand in his and bring it down to where it was before.

“And I was fucking with you too, dumbass. Or are you too stupid to remember back in the car how I didn’t respond to you asking if you needed to pay? Start listening, will you?”

“I think this is the meanest act of generosity I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m not being generous, I’m telling you that you owe me something else.”

“What the fuck?” You’re perplexed by the audacity of this man. You hope his athletic career flops and every brand deal that he has gotten offered drops him. “Are you gonna start charging me an insane amount of interest like a loan shark? Dude, aren’t you rich?”

“I’m not asking for money.”

“Then what is it?”

“Go on a date with me.”

“Are you being for real right now?” You’re still perplexed by the audacity of this man. You’re perplexed by how his words are chosen to form the most foul sentences with sweet meanings. You’re perplexed by how out of all who know him, and all whom he knows, he would take an interest in you. But you’re a selfish person—if Sae Itoshi is offering his beauty and his awful personality to you, then you’ll take it with all your heart. 

You move to Sae’s side, putting everything in your hands into your bag and intertwining your fingers with his, a dumb smile planted on your face. As you skip to the car and swing your hands between the two of you, Sae Itoshi’s grin is highlighted by the golden glow of the setting sun. 

He really can’t wait to come home.

[autismcatboy]

i hear the sunspot is a story about being human first, disabled second and a bl third. it doesnt flow like a bl and has very brief moments of romance because its not intended to be read/watched a romance.

the mangaka did not write it as a BL because she herself wasnt even familiar with it as a genre until after she started publishing. she was writing a story that just happens to also feature queer romance.

the live drama is not going to end with them getting together. its an adaption of just one series within the story and even at the most current series, they only barely got together.

the story is not unrealistic in how it handles communication (or lack thereof). its a lot easier to judge characters (and people in real life) when you think you have all the pieces, but the reality is we know very little about how others truly feel and when you have a lot going on and pulling you in different directions, its hard to know it yourself.

continued below the cut, spoiler free.

taichi and kohei are busy adults. between work/school, family and personal health, they dont have a lot of free time. many people dont have ways to contact friends they made in school because usually, you just see each other and dont think about exchanging contact information until later.

exchanging contact information is a bigger step to take in japan compared to places like the us. taichi uses a flip phone until hes pushed to get a smartphone after it breaks. data plans are expensive and many are selective about when and how they use them, and chatting apps like line are usually the main form of communication method. many people in the us dont like to give out their number or social media (which is also a feature of line) to people they know, like coworkers or classmates.

theres some pretty big assumptions about japanese culture and what its like to be a young adult by fans watching the drama that, in my opinion, just arent realistic. you're thinking like a bl fan and not like what people actually do in real life.

i hear the sunspot is a story about navigating the awkward, the hardships, fumbling and coming to terms with the things we may not like about ourselves. this isnt just about being disabled. able bodied, fully healthy people have things they dont like, push off and ignore. we see this in taichi, and how he continues to push that hes happy, nothing is wrong, he's just a big goofball and doesn't have anything below the surface and a lot of you have fallen for it.

relationships rarely go "we met, we fell in love, and now we are together and everything is perfect with only mild and entertaining drama." in fact id say they almost never do. people get scared to get close to other people, people dont think about if their feelings are romantic love or not when theyve never considered they might be gay. people get busy and distract themselves from addressing the things theyre not ready to look at and understand. all of these things happen much more often and often subconsciously, too.

people are mean and bullheaded when they feel like their comfort zone is threatened. people *run* when they feel like their status quo might change and they dont know what that will look like.

its easy to say someone is being ridiculous when you dont have their full story or dont stop to consider their circumstances. will it be different from how you'd react? absolutely. you lived a different life and had different experiences shape who you are.

but its equally as ridiculous to assume you know exactly how you'd react better than someone in their situation. no one is perfect, and definitely not 20 something year olds figuring out how to be adults after tough moments completely changed their childhoods. your early 20s, especially, is about thinking youre an adult and realizing just how little you know about adulthood. its easy to look back on when i was taichi and kohei's ages and say "oh there is a /lot/ that i fucked up with and couldve done better".

i hear the sunspot is about being human. the mistakes, the drama, the pain and the laughter. it happens to also have a gay love story but its not written to *be* a gay love story or even to be any love story in the first place.

if youre not willing to wait, and consider all the troubles that come before and during their relationship, this is not the story for you. save yourself the time, its got a long way to go. maybe come back in a few more years and see if the story resonates differently.

theyre not going to dive right into a relationship when they still barely know themselves.

[bobacupcake]

We got the earth and the sky, but has anyone asked about what you think of Abzu?

i love abzu!!! another one i have watched the gdc talk for which you can watch here!!

the two big things in abzu are the fish animations and the overall environment lighting - lets start with fish!! there are a lot of them. and when you want to animate a lot of things, your computer will explode. this is specifically when you animate things with bones, how a lot of computer things are animated

luckily one thing that gpus can be really good at is drawing a tonnnn of the same object really fast, using something called instancing. as long as its the same mesh and material, it can be rendered a ton with just a single draw call (like i am talking hundreds of thousands). so lets make 10 thousand fish. unluckily this doesnt work with skeleton animations. luckily you dont need them! especially with fish

even though all the objects need to be the same mesh and material, doesnt mean they cant have different input. not only that but shaders let you modify individual vertexes, so, what if you just take all 10000 fish and wiggle them along an axis, like this

and give them all slightly different inputs so they arent all doing the exact same animation, maybe by giving them each their own unique number. now you have 10 thousand fish swimming around, wiggling, at almost zero rendering cost

these are all individual 3d models and all their animations are running in the shader !

the other way they animated fish without giving them bones was through something called blendshapes - these are usually used for stuff like facial animations, where you move vertices around to your desired "shape" (so like maybe your default face is :| but you edit the vertices so your character goes :> etc), and keep track of the difference between each vertex's position and its original position so you can move it whenever you want

that doesnt need any bones so they used this for things like fish going CHOMP and fish making sharp turns

for the actual environment, they experimented with a bunch of things like using actual volumetric lighting, but in the end they found that just using fog worked best!! they did tweak it a bit though - they had a "zone" between where the fog started to get thick and when the fog just ended up being a solid color where they dimmed any lighting - this really helped the background geometry stick out and give that underwater feel (left is without dimming the lights, right is with dimming the lights!! fun to think about how firewatch did something similar but changing the fog color based on depth rather than literally dimming the lighting)

they also let different volumes have their own fog value, so if there was say a cave off in the distance, it could have less fog than the surrounding area for clarity & also made the fog look a bit more volumetric

and the other huge thing that helped was "portal cards" - not an official term but its what they called them, basically just quads they could stick in any place where they needed to make something "stick out", like a cave, or a hilltop that blended with the background too much. the card sampled the depth of objects behind it, and used that 0 to 1 value to map a color to it. and then the closer youd get to these cards, the more transparent theyd get, until youre right on top of it and you dont need the objects to stick out of the background anymore!! here you can see a Me, but very dark, and then i slide the card over it. the black and white is the camera depth of all objects behind the card, minus the depth of the card. and mapping that to a color makes me stick out way more than i was initially!! then as you swim closer to me, the card fades away, until you pass the card completely

these portal cards were also used to make the light beams poking out from the surface, theyre just animated a bit!! you can see how the portal cards affect the look of things in this frame breakdown

and one other thing thats pretty prominent that wasnt touched on in the talk is all the caustics on the ground, those little wobbly light things you see underwater. but those were probably? just added to every shader as a "add this caustics texture on top based on the with the texture mapped to the world x and z position and only if the object is facing up"

like this !

anyways thats all from me on abzu..!! really pretty game

[transgenderer]

everybody talks about aquifers like theyre normal. but aquifers are weird. the ground is full of water. and apparently weve known about this shit since like forever.

Artesian aquifer scheme:

Aquifer

Impervious strata

Infiltration area

Artesian well

Saturation level

Subartesian well

Artesian spring

An artesian well is a well that brings groundwater to the surface without pumping because it is under pressure within a body of rock and/or sediment known as an aquifer.[1] When trapped water in an aquifer is surrounded by layers of impermeable rock or clay, which apply positive pressure to the water, it is known as an artesian aquifer.[1] If a well were to be sunk into an artesian aquifer, water in the well-pipe would rise to a height corresponding to the point where hydrostatic equilibrium is reached.[1]

The first mechanically accurate explanation for artesian wells was given by Al-Biruni.

1000 years of knowing about the rocks...

The Great Artesian Basin (GAB)[1] of Australia is the largest and deepest artesian basin in the world, extending over 1,700,000 square kilometres (660,000 sq mi). Measured water temperatures range from 30 to 100 °C (86 to 212 °F). The basin provides the only source of fresh water through much of inland Australia.[2]

Most recharge water enters the rock formations from relatively high ground near the eastern edge of the basin (in Queensland and New South Wales) and very gradually flows toward the south and west.[6] A much smaller amount enters along the western margin in arid central Australia, flowing to the south and east through the permeable sandstone, at a rate of one to five metres per year.

Discharge water eventually exits through a number of springs and seeps, mostly in the southern part of the basin. The age of the groundwater, determined by carbon-14 and chlorine-36 measurements combined with hydraulic modelling, ranges from several thousand years for the recharge areas in the north to nearly 2 million years in the south-western discharge zones.[7]

the earth provides....

also, ive mentioned qanats on here before but there are nearly 3000 year old underground aqueducts in iran. i mean. i guess its not that crazy like you just dig a tunnel and mining is super old. but still

[heister-shmeister]

i need to overanalyze sokols safehouse interactions ouhh

i wonder if this line implies sokols done cocaine before. i mean theres no direct mention of it but its jimmy

i think sokol tries to be friendly to most heisters because he has no fucking friends after leaving russia. dallas is kind to him but sokol feels odd making small talk with him due to viewing him more as a boss than anything. he asks dallas about how things in the usa are like (usually involving bear meat for some reason.)

i feel like sokol is a very hungry fella. hes athletic, 6'2, and a russian who mentions food pretty often. he cant be trusted with a buffet. i believe that jacket is the #1 food thief and it pisses sokol off immensely when hes hungry as fuck for his burger just to discover jacket snatched it.

sokols early behavior makes some of the heisters uncomfortable. notably sydney, joy, houston, and jacket. this is of course because theyre all either gay or disabled, sometimes both, and sokol hails from a country notoriously hostile towards those minorities. ive spoken about this so often. i dont think any of them other than jacket were nervous of him at first but immediately after sokol joins the team they start noticing that he is shocked and scared of some things that are normalized in the usa.

sokol looks like hes so focused and lost in thought all the time but hes zoning out 90% of the time. he has adhd and never knew about it until houston brought it up one day. i also think sokol has dyscalculia which he also discovered existed when houston and sydney brought it up. "mate i tell ya i cannawt do maths for shit." "oh really" "yea like i cant even read some of the numbers its all jumbled up and shit in here" "oh you got dyscalculia" "Wat is dat? i thought it was normal" he thought it was like a disease at first

sokol loves robbing casinos and this predictably led to an acute gambling problem. its not nearly as bad as bonnies is but he needs to have dokkan battle forcibly removed from his phone. ive mentioned those gambling arcade games before.

hes also an adrenaline junkie and gets hyperactive really easily, begging other heisters to play hockey with him or go with him on an unprompted heist. if hes bored for too long he'll start pacing around the safehouse and bothering people. sometimes this adrenaline search or just searching for entertainment gets him injured from things nobody would expect. he once tried to see how many cinderblocks he could hold above his head and broke his foot which meant he couldnt heist for a bit

he is reckless. hes good at making drills and shit but he rarely thinks before he acts. he can listen when he knows he needs to during stealth but during loud is nigh uncontrollable and it pisses everyone off. at least they can trust jacket to not get in trouble during stealth but sokol if not being told exactly what to do constantly will try to speed things up to everyones detriment

[nanatsuyu]

Top 5 vs Personal 5

List your top 5 fics ranked by kudos on AO3. are you surprised by what's most popular to your readers? then provide your ranking of your personal top 5 fics, and tag a few fellow writers!

oh boi these make me nervous but thank you @mostlymaudlin ;; (tagging: @skvaaader @jaywalkers @annawrites @marianjos @kevneildependant @takitalks)

i'll follow format cus this looks pretty and personal favs first feels nicer to share. (i havent posted a lot of fic so there's a bit of overlap)

that's just something people say (T), 119k, andreil || slowburn road trip au where neil steals andrew's car and andrew makes a deal to take neil west before they part ways again (haha...unless? 👀) this is my baby that i worked on for several months and posted every chapter in one day lmao it was my first chapter fic and my first major au. im still very proud of it <3

better safe than damned (E), 18k, andreil || a smuttier au of an au with demon!neil and witch!andrew and tentacles lol it sounds depraved, and the tags make it sound really depraved but half that word count is aftercare and exploring ones comfort zones and sexuality? so its personal and one of my best written smutfics imo

what a chatty creature (T), 14.7k, kandreil || 5 times neil goes nonverbal and the one time he finds his voice. i wrote this for my friend gull and had them give me 6 of their favourite words and included those in each part. i liked exploring communication with kandreil when in a slightly different font

messy (E), 10.3k, kandrew || au where kevin and trans!andrew are fwb (but more because feelings are fun) its another soft smut where andrew thinks too much, and hes a bit further in his healing, but reservations are still that. i like playing with their dynamic a whole lot. i was incredibly nervous to post this but im glad i did <3

taptaptap (T), 7.2k, kandreil || canon divergence kandreil where theyre a year or so removed from college and in love, but kevin and andrew never resolved The Incident after baltimore. this was my first big softie fic of them. i love kevin with my whole heart and i think he should be happy always so this one is close to me

taptaptap (T), 7.2k, kandreil || this one doesn't surprise me when it comes to popularity. its super soft and canon divergent and my first non exchange/gift fic!

that's just something people say (T), 119k, andreil || its a 100k+ slowburn andreil fic. it was bound to do numbers but its also very validating because i worked so hard ;;

like you swallowed a bone (T), 7.6k, gen twinyards and nicky || mixtape post canon fic exploring what happened with the twins and nicky's relationship years down the road. i think this got popular because of age and i still really like it, but im not sure what sparked this one for people lol

what a chatty creature (T), 14.7k, kandreil || this def got popular because fuzzy and kandreil and its relatively low stakes in drama (not that i write particularly dramatic things but yknow)

morning coffee (E), 9.8k, kandreil || post canon divergence smut with the boys before neil has an interview. kandreil smut speaks for itself in popularity lol i am still incredibly fond of this one and its gotten a lot of comments recently which has been nice. wrote it because i wanted to see more fic that felt like kandreil and not just andreil + kevin

im terrible at boosting my own stuff because i never feel like i explain myself well enough to sell my ideas or fics which is definitely reflected in my summaries that i have often been told "do not do the fic any justice" lol that and im horrified of people saying theyre silly but at least a few people think theyre pretty neat! :^)

[eggbagelz]

OUUUUUUUGH DO YOU HAVE THE RIGHT OPINIONS ON EVERYTHING WHEN IT COMES TO THE KILLJOYS.

dr death defying is my fav but the way u jus described motorbaby..... she might take the crown....

okok now i gotta ask- what r ur fav hcs abt any of the killjoys? or what hcs are so stuck in your brain that theyre practically canon to you??? i love ur killjoys sm please i would love to hear you ramble abt them >:]

OH WELL SINCE U ASKED

Actually I've been wanting to talk abt my hcs for a while so THANK U FOR THIS TEE HEE

Anyway! I think like. My interpretations [or hcs i guess] of the 'joys is a lil nonstandard in some ways bc i took the blank slate of their personalities and ran with it GSJSH [so these are all like. Canon to me. Basically. Sorry gerald u never gave ur apocalypse ocs personalities so theyre mine now] basically like. I have some v set hcs on their personalities and main characteristics as a whole

SO!

I like to think that fun ghoul is like. While hes v v chatty and more than a little mischievous hes also EXTREMELY perceptive to the point it's unnerving, and while hes not v good with his own emotions he's fucking insanely good at picking up other people's, as well as like. Tiny details and shit that others wouldn't have noticed. Hes still an idiot tho godbless GKEHSJ. Hes the number one mad gear fanboy. Hes good w explosives but crap with other tech.

Kobra. Ohohohohohohohoooo kobra. Ppl like to hc him as v stoic [which im not implying is a bad hc at all btw!!! Just an observation] but i like to thing hes EXTREMELY emotional and p unpredictable. A v shoot first ask questions later type, and deathly afraid of being percieved as cowardly or weak. Absolutely GARBAGE shot, which is why he has stun gloves. Practically the fucking tech whisperer.Official motorbaby wrangler. Gets astronomical amounts of ass but is terrified of feeling any romantic emotions.Half Japanese, he and poison are fraternal twins!

POISON! Also extremely emotional but has it under sliiightly better control than kobra [lol. "Control." How full's that bottle ur filling ur feelings with now pois?]. Very very good w tactical stuff and planning, likes logic and such. Also v flamboyant and enjoys colour and the life of the zones. Prettiest 'joy in the zones, seriously. Talks a LOT but has absolutely no fucking filter. Extremely sex positive.Abt as emotionally intelligent as a brick. Also half japanese ic the they and kobra being twins thing didnt make it obvious GDJDDJ. Terrified of death but doesnt know it. Romatic feelings for jet are approximately the size of the continent of asia

Jet jet jet jet jet. My sweet girlboy. Lost his entire family in a shootout against bli when he was 14 and now suffers from "i have to keep everyone i love safe at all fucking costs so help me god" disease so bad that its actually a reflex now. Took care of motorbaby the most when she was an infant. Best shot in the zones GODBLESS. Hes got an eye [ha] for beauty and appreciates p much everything the world has to offer as best he can. Trying to be an optimist despite his horrendous anxiety disorder. Spanish is his first language! Doesnt talk much and thinks carefully abt what he says before he says it. Madly in love with poison but has carefully filed that away under "n" for "never touching that ever"

Motorbaby. Stuck halfway between "extremely unchildlike behavior" and being a regular weird little girl. Far too used to violence. LOOOOVES big robots so much her favorite toy is an old mecha action figure ghoul fixed up for her. Impossible not to love, seriously. ADORES her big brothers. High energy but also burns out quickly and has to nap a LOT. Picked up some of the languages the fab four speak aside from english [spanish, italian, and snatches of japanese] but in the manner that means she knows how to swear in four languages. Veeery small

Jet and ghoul are desert boys [tho ghoul wasnt born in the desert and was smuggled out of bat city by his dad when he was a toddler], while kobes and poison are cityboys [escaped when they were both 13]. Jet's the oldest, ghoul's the youngest

I also have some ideas abt zones culture but aside from the talk abt bigotry probably still being rampant in the zones thats smth im saving for my roadtrip au fic tee hee

[barbatusart]

Hi I'm back again. This is going to be a weird question so please bare with me.

Is the use of cards in lovos as a form of payment about how popular pokemon cards got in 2020 onward and how popular trading cards have gotten in general because of it, or was it a joke form of payment? Or something else entirely? Thank you very much!!!

OH YES THANK GOD MINUTIA QUESTIONS YESSSSS YESSSSSSSSSSSS

cards are a partial form of payment! desert/outlander/"zone C" operates on a barter system as theres zero currency, so people place value in arbitrary things that shift a bit from generation to generation. there are numberous onscreen & offscreen cultures in zone C but nearly every culture places value in entertainment like books movies & games, as theres Fuck All to do out there otherwise lol. theres also a planned running gag of this completely ridiculous card game that everyone out there likes to play, the rules of which vary wildly depending on the settlement youre playing it in, & so cards wind up being the closest thing to paper money youll find as they have practical use in the form of entertainment & gambling

also for this game it 100% doesnt matter what kinds of cards you use, any card of any kind can be used & theyre divvied up like picture cards vs number cards vs cards with a shitload of text on em vs whatever. i deliberately didnt plan out how the card game works because calvinball the cardgame is funnier to me & also i completely dont care LOL

[oflgtfol]

uhm,

i somehow got roped into going clubbing w some of my coworkers next month,

im. kinda dreading it but also i kinda wanna experience it at least once in my life. because like i have to stress this is totally not my scene at all im home by 10, 11 at the latest whenever i go out, i do not dress up except for actual formal venues which are very rare, i can count on one hand the number of times i have worn makeup, etc. theyre telling me how i should dress and god i gotta do my makeup and style my hair like girlies i do not do this. at this point its not even that i dont want to its that i dont even know how because i never do it

but yknow like again i wanna experience it at least once even if its terrible its just gah i dont want to do it just bc im being like peer pressured into it i dont want to change how i look and behave just for peer pressure but its also like. i recognize now that part of life is going out of my comfort zone to experience new things even it theyre scary and so then i can at least say ive done it, and i know from personal experience that i dislike it, rather than stopping myself from ever doing it in the first place

[userblaney]

racism rant part 23456786543245

the double standards are through the fucking ROOF. it actually makes me want to fucking strangle someone. if i get called 'racist, and anti white' for saying that white ppl cannot experience racism and get held back when i have another lesson????? then a pasty ass dude call me, the n word (im fucking brown anyway) IN FRONT OF A TEACHER?? AND NOT FACE ANY CONSEQUENCES??? and if i report them?? i'm 'mistaken' and hes 'just uneducated'??? number one. educate them?? number 2. thats unfair???? these incidents happened when i was 14 btw. but do u know what is even more painful?? when ppl 100% know what they are doing, what theyre saing and the meanings of theyre actions and consequences. im talking about higher ups, teachers, slt members, shopkeepers, all that. it makes me so fuckING MADDDD. im in a class with one of my friends. she has a pretty noticeable indian accent bc she yk. moved here from india less than 2 yrs ago?? but her english is perfectly understandable. yet this bitch (ofc middle aged cishet white man) decides to pretend he has no clue what shes saying. anD PROCEEDS TO MOCK HER??? the audacity he has. hes also called me the saddest and most awkward person ever for waiting for him to fimish his converstaion. which ok yeah i am, however if alex (white kid) waits for him to finish his convo before asking something. hes polite and well behaved and praised like crazy. its not much but its very worthy of a fucking boot in the face. and if i report him?? im disrespectful. ofc i am. its jus banta inni. cant u take a joke? NOT IF ITS FUCKING RACIST I CANRT. oh yeah dont even count the number of times ive been called paki. another huge thing, im sure poc would relate to (specifically 1st gen immigrants) is being underestimated like fucking CRAZYYY dont even lieeee. when i was in primary, i was rlly good at readinf so like everytime i had a sub or wtvr yeah theyd always b like omg ur english is so good!! no shit i was born here. ur accent is rlly welsh omg i thought itd be different!! no shit i was born here. do you understand what that means?? yeah dw. my personal fave is one where ur doin sumt wrong or zoned out like ill give u an example. the local co op makes a queue for the skl kids since its right by our skl and i was waitin once bc i had to get milk n eggs on my way home innit then. i had a major migraine so i was zonin out all day and i happened to zone out while second in the q. then i was allowed in then for abt 30 secs i dint realize, then atp someone nugded be from behind so. i went in. then the security guard asked me if spoke english??? even tho id spoken to him on previous days bc im a rlly regular visitor???? anyway long story short, id been called a 'fuckin immigrant' but yeah. i'm just mad bc how can ppl who we are supposed to trust treat us like that and thing thats ok????? yeah its nutn new k bye

[a-little-bit-poss]

clares vanguard rambling corner

eledglema, or the batman as a lot of the vanguard refer to him, is a meme deck yes but one that i will stan for forever. eledglema has 2 skills. the first when theyre placed as the vanguard reveals the top 5 cards of the deck and places any revealed set orders directly into the order zone. this is helpful because generally you can only play 1 order per turn so even if only hit 1 off the top 5, youre still accelerating the game plan. also we generally we run mostly orders that let us draw cards or otherwise plus in other ways, so win win. still the inconsistent nature of the top 5 check is why this is considered a meme. ive packed as many orders i reasonably can for this reason but yknow. eledglema's second skill is the payoff, and the trigger you generally wanna hold off pulling til the last second. after the battle it attacked, choose any number of set orders from the order zone and send em back. sending back 3 with different names restands a rearguard, sending back 5 restands the vanguard as well. so lets say youre able to hold back and get lucky and wind up with 13 set orders. this results being able to restand eledglema twice and a rearguard thrice, which assuming you have a full board, equates to eight total attacks. generally the ceiling for amount of attacks is about 5-6, so you can see why its compelling to want to pull off. fun fact is that eledglema is actually able to pull off the most attacks in a single turn in standard play at 20 attacks, but thats not going to happen in a practical match.

so while that is the main game plan it is worth mentioning some significant supporting actors. we run the arkhite ride line for its thematic purpose (shes a monster researcher and eledglemas a monster), as well the ability to tutor torrential energy research, a set order that grabs monsters revealed in the top 5. a bit a gacha mechanic theme going on. we have savoeid, a monster that recycles itself and other monsters, ensuring we always have a proper board and access to reriding eledglema every turn. we also use the craggy monster perfect guards to increase the amount of monsters in the deck as well as sure up our defenses. habitable zone tutors set orders as well as increases the total playable for the turn up to 2. mobile kennel eingarten is a cute set order that has a dog on it,, but acts good fodder for a lot of our effects that require discarding, cuz when its discarded it just cheats itself into the order zone instead. definitely a card you wanna see in your hand rather than in eledglema's top 5 peek. finally the shining new star from this years festival collection: Surga & Dargage. theyre a dual nation pair for brandt gate and dark states, that look at the top x+1 cards of the deck (where x is the number of set orders you have in play), put one to soul and then allow you to put a card from your soul to your hand. in most decks, this is moderate filtering. but for eledglema who can get x higher than anyone else, this is the ultimate compression piece. the best case scenario is playing one and starting a chain that brings them all out of deck and making it so your deck is almost all triggers in the late game, setting yourself up for the best moment to use eledglema's restanding skill.

this has been clare rambling vanguard thoughts, please consider playing vanguard. its worth it.

[royalwilmon]

Ok I’m gonna pick some random numbers. 5, 16, and 28! - ungaroyals

5. Share one of your strengths

oof this is weird to talk about haha. but ugh. i think i'm pretty good at dialogue? i don't know if that's a product of my first big Thing being a text fic? or, well... i don't know, i liked the dialogue in some of my old glee stuff, so maybe it's just very much my comfort zone. idk!!!

16. If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?

it Almost feels like a copout to answer wilmon but its genuine. the great thing about young royals is just how juicy meaty delicious the story and characters are. there is SO MUCH to explore that i COULD sit here writing for the rest of my life and still feel like their are aspects of the story i have yet to explore, y'know? blessed with the BEST fandom and the BEST material

28. Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

so there is this user on ao3 called embracedthevoid, i dont know if youve heard of them but theyre amazing and prolific and so so sooooo talented

ok while that was definitely genuine, really the thing with the young royals fandom is that the fic writing community is SO incredible and so close knit. i consider so many of you my friends so there is no universe in which i could pic three, it's just. i couldn't.

so instead, here are three non-YR authors that have inspired me in some way:

iknowitainteasy - this one is obvious. the author of little numbers, which not only sparked my love of fanfiction well over a decade ago, but also inspired the fic that got me to enjoy writing really for the first time ever. a MASTERCLASS in immersive storytelling and combining humor with emotion, there is not a Day of my life where i don't think about this fic and how much it has done for me

cacophonylights - when someone asks me what my favorite fic of all time is, i have an Easy Answer that has remained unchanged for twelve years. a change in the weather permanently altered my brain chemistry. it is enemies to lovers executed with Masterful precision. so much of how i think about story structure i learned from this fic, too. i know it's perpetually incomplete, but the emotional arc the story set up was still so Well Constructed. i marvel about it All The Damn Time. my FAVORITE forever

finalizer - this is a VERY recent one and maybe it's recency bias but also maybe it's just that GOOD, but. i've read anyone else at least thirty times in the past three weeks. this author UNDERSTANDS pacat in a way that i find suspicious, almost. like, have we seen ao3 user finalizer and cs pacat in the same room????? this fic is singlehandedly tiding me over until we get dark rise book 3 and for that i am grateful

ok sorry that got so long!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHH i just love talking about fic stuff its so fun and good

(please ask more questions!!!! <333333)

[ethernetmeep]

emotional tangent which is Dumb and has no real meaning to it ahead

Was obligated to tell my counselor something i didnt want to tell her. Got called the r slur in lunch by some 8th grader & got immensely effected. Got told something not very nice (not related to the r slur thing, although that didnt help) and proceeded to cry backstage because i didnt comprehend why. Almost didnt perform because i was genuinely so unable to do anything except cry. Keyword almost because eventually i got myself in check.. people liked my performance, including my history teacher & english teacher. Was just proud i was able to do it and that i didnt back out.

My tiredness may also be due to the fact i hadnt eaten anything…… i was meaning to eat one of the donuts but felt weird & awkward & was nervous. Have donuts at home anyway. Didnt eat lunch cause of the r slur thing plus just generally didnt want the pizza. Felt bad for existing again and immensely guilty for being so visibly emotional. Two girls stopped & asked if i was okay and wouldnt exactly budge until i talked. Didn’t mean to be seen crying but i think i was.. Principal herself stooped beside me as i was sitting near the doors to the auditorium and asked if i was okay and needed anything…. I know i diss her at times but shes Sweet. Also saw my old spanish teacher… school officer showed up though and scared the shit out of me. Why were so many people concerned for me,??? I dont get it.. Why…. I cant comprehend it..

Backstage audio with music was very loud & scary… i didnt want to just run out as i was still crying, so i had to sit and endure it. Horrible. Had sat in a very niche corner of the backstage to have my existence be one hard to find.. it worked until there was technical difficulties yet simultaneously didnt work because a handful of people saw me distraught & upset. Had to move. Didnt want to but i did, didnt want to do anything. I got better, but it still wasnt pleasant. Crowd was loud & people were loud & noises kept going & mouths kept moving & i only contributed to my own agony by talking too. Too much noise… i tried putting my headphones on for the really awful parts but they didnt seem to help much, still got overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by how many emotions i had today and by the end i was emotioned out per se… although emotioned isnt a real word.. It was a lot is what i Mean.

Eventually got myself back together and went back to my seat. was growing irritated because of the noise once again & how many people were starting to file in. Zoned out on what half of the stuff the guy next to me was saying. Talked & talked & talked because thats what i do and simultaneously hate that i do at times. Told him too much and let myself be unfiltered which is a bad idea because my unfiltered self is loud and i dont always like it. Told him he reminded me of a robin and that i was a chickadee…………

Now i seem to be somewhat of a … um. Husk. Of emotion. Theyre all muddled and i dont like it and my stomach hurts & everything is painful. Got told news that only made this worse by my mother, specifically that DCF was not going to shut the case and that the so called optional after school program our worker wanted me to do is not in fact optional anymore. I just want this to be over with, nothing seems to be helping anything & its all very overwhelming and scary. All i can do is cry and i feel pathetic for it because i should be better & more well rounded but i seem to be a hexagon when im meant to be like. A circle or something. Sorry i dont have good metaphors right now.

I also got a call from a number i didnt recognize & didnt realize this until i checked my phone as i was backstage…. I didnt call them back because i didnt know who it was & because i also was in general not in the greatest state to talk. I think someone wanted to talk to me but i didnt realize it & now i feel bad because i look like a dick when i dont mean to.

I also remember something i knew would happen happening and getting very mad despite absolutely everything. I was so pissed & kept saying said phrase aloud because i was genuinely unable to contain my distain. I was incredibly annoying today and i think it was because i was so anxious. Sometimes i talk a lot when im excited but sometimes it can also be because im word vomiting and just need to do something so i dont fall over and die. I had my sea slug friend with me though… they helped a lot..

I know its an inanimate object & dumb & stupid but i appreciate my slug friend. Havent given them a name & i should but i have no clue what… ive brought them with me to many places… the [I REALIZED MID TYPING I WAS TECHNICALLY DOXXING MYSELF TO AN EXTENT HERE.] aquarium is one i can remember, maybe even the [HERE TOO.] aquarium.. and many other places. they are dear to me because they are compact and my friend. if i didnt have something to hold today i think it would’ve been worse, so im happy i had my buddy.. im happy i was able to get over the fear i had & was able to still perform…. i also got my schedule changed to the elective i really wanted.. that makes me happy. im just happy to be home… i still have a prevalent headache but at least i get to try and sleep.. theres many things i regret from today and am ready for a night of being a pupa.

Im so ready to get home and go into a cocoon for the next 24 hours

[headspace-hotel]

people truly think that the sheer size of the agricultural institution (especially in the US) is at all “good” just because it feeds billions of people (while a sizable part of the population still goes hungry?). from an agricultural science standpoint its a NIGHTMARE the way we harvest and crop. no one is saying that hunting would be an over hunting or destruction of habitats, everyone just assumes that any harvest/hunting of food has to be in excess because the current food institution operates in excess and i hate to break it to yall but you know ecofascism is rooted in the fact that the government destroyed indigenous agricultural practices and stewardship, which were based in re-fertility AND hunting? anyway i agree with you sorry for rambling this is just a niche i like

so like, we are hurtling toward a collapse in our current system especially with crops because it's so wildly unsustainable. Fertilizers are polluting the shit out of our waterways.

It works like this: Nitrogen fertilizer goes into a creek or stream or pond. Algae explodes in population because of it. The algae then die off and then leave an oxygen-less dead zone.

Our current methods are soil-depleting rather than soil-building. Monocultures mean no nitrogen fixing legumes, and constant tilling means no mycelium (which is where most land plants get up to 90% of their nitrogen)

basically in soil without mycorrhizae or nitrogen fixing plants (legumes mostly) you gotta pour on 10+ times the nitrogen fertilizer for the same results

Not to mention that a huge amount of farm labor in the US is done by migrant workers who are abused and mistreated, like iirc that's the major driver of human trafficking in the USA

and most of our major agricultural weeds have evolved pesticide resistances. That Roundup Ready corn people were talking about a while back? Basically useless in many states now because so many weeds shrug off Roundup like it's rain. There are only a limited number of herbicides out there, and we haven't discovered a new chemical mechanism for herbicides in decades. There is no guarantee we'll discover a new herbicide mode of action anytime soon or ever.

But like. SO many things are edible but not well known because they're not commercially viable. For instance, hickory nuts. Hickory trees take forever to grow up and produce crops irregularly, so theyre not really a good thing to grow for money, but that doesn't mean that you can't go out into the woods and scoop up enough for a feast in no time. And PAWPAWS!!!! I got to try a wild one last week and it is the most perfect food to exist.

Acorns! You can cook the tannins out and grind them into acorn flour! Wild blackberries. All over the place. And that's not even getting into the mushrooms. SO many edible mushrooms that just pop outta rotten wood. (Not that you should just go trying mushrooms. You gotta be really experienced with identifying them for that, so you don't die.)

[justletmeplayminecraft]

I also love the mumbo lag jokes, but it also makes me think in sense of worldbuilding, like theres afking and logging out and theyre voluntary but wouldnt crashing/lagging be so painful? Your stuck unmoving while the world pushes in on you, you cannot withstand the force of the worlds pressure so u cave in and involuntarily disappear from the world for a moment (also I think the fact mumbo could crash a server is so fun lore wise as well) // sorry to ramble lol hope ur doing well :)

I always think it's curious: where does a player go when they crash? I imagine the logical answer is back to a 'safe' world. Maybe their creative test world, a survival world, maybe even another server. Disorientated, probably still a bit hazy. Before realising what's happened and groaning.

If they're stuck in lagged chunks for too long, do they experience phantom lag for a while? Like how after going on a ride, sometimes you'll sit down afterwards and feel the motions in your head... It still feels like every movement is a fight against nothing, anticipating resistance and accidentally overshooting actions.

And lag clearly is a problem, considering many of the sub-admins' main jobs is to kick AFK players causing it. You have to wonder how Boatem experience it, when their area constantly has slight stutters. Probably get a headache if you're not careful, though I imagine they're used to it, in the strange way Boatem tends to be.

And especially with the new rendering mechanics, TPS now effects how the very world loads around the hermits.

But! The idea of lag and 'forgotten hermit moments' does lead me on one hell of a tangent I shall put under the cut. We set our scene in S6, when the hermits decided to fight 100 Withers. At once.

X's episode is named 'An Epic Failure' which about sums up the events. They'd previously fought 64 Withers in Season 3, so what's 100?

Joe, Cub, X and False were fully geared up. Doc was streaming at the time and (wisely) didn't get involved. But what they didn't anticipate was the amount of lag. The frames were so low the hermits could barely get hits off, let alone move effectively. Emergency 'save frames' measures were taken (lower render distance, low particles.) I wonder how they'd translate over, too.

X guessed that the lag was caused by the number of items left on the ground. Joe was the only person who ended up actually dying. X tried writing a command to show how many withers were left and even that took forever to do. Combat, even outside the main lag zone, was difficult. Arrows weren't firing correctly. Eating food took ages. If you want an exploration on the effects of lag: this is an episode to watch.

They got a few withers, but the Wither tornado remained in unloaded chunks throughout the season, with people occasionally dropping in to pick some off.

And you can only imagine how oppressive the lag must have felt. It was inhibiting. Moving was a struggle, eating, firing a bow. Typing commands. The entire world is stuttering, or maybe you are. There's consideration into whether the server needs rolling back. Those chunks become quarantined to keep the mass of entities causing the lag at bay.

(And because I love my Legacy lore, Pearl's reaction upon finding that one out after dealing with the catastrophic effects of the Withering Energy on Legacy.)

Anyway yes. Lag is one hell of a beast and I would love to see more world building around it.