#cattail fields

[centipeedles]

finished! i love otherworld for the colors, it’s such a pretty place

[alteredstatesstuff]

dragon fly

[weaselmcdiesel]

i made a parallax scene for an assignment and i thought it looked p cool :3 and the full image under the cut <3

also i was working on it for so long i got bored and drew a little karkat for fun keke

[abirddogmoment]

Ready for sniffings

[stargalaxy20]

Does anyone else just lay in their bed playing cozy video games for 24 hours on their days off or is that just me

[dailycattails]

day 49

[delurkr]

I was today years old when I realized there is a water tower behind the diner. No clue how I missed it.

Was this important to point out? No, but this is always a pretty screenshot so let's admire the lighting too

[thedisablednaturalist]

RELEASING THE VAPORS!!!!

Feat. Stump puffballs (Apioperdon pyriforme)

Transcript: "Ready?" Person begins squishing mushrooms with end of crutch which causes them to release a green cloud of spores. "It's farting" they giggle. The camera zooms in. "Squish squish". They continue to squish the mushrooms. " "Oh no my!" They say, getting cut off by their own laughing. "You're getting covered!" They say to the person holding the camera.

[humornaut]

An Analysis of Foreshadowing in Omori's Prologue

Hey everyone!

With the Omori manga's first chapter's release, one thing has been made clear: They are FLYING through the game. Unless they are doing something weird, the entire prologue segment has been moved to right after the Aubrey fight, a move I can only believe has been made so that the real world characters appear in the first chapter. I won't be making any judgements until I see how it all fits together (and maybe I won't make many judgments in general, I don't really consider myself a judgmental person for better or for worse), but it did get me thinking about how well Omori's prologue works in general! So today, I'd like to take some time to talk about that!

The Sidequests

The first things I want to mention are the side quests! I've mentioned it before (or maybe I haven't, I don't remember everything I've said), but nearly all the side quests in Headspace are symbolic on a meta level. A lot of people dismiss this as boring repetitiveness (perhaps true), but the vast majority of the side quests are about finding a lost item or individual. This is, of course, echoing the larger Headspace plot of Basil going missing. However, there is something about this concept that I'd like to point out using one of the sidequests!

In the quest "Whereabouts of Duckie Jr.", you are tasked with determining the whereabouts of Duckie Jr! Crazy, I know. Remember how I said that most of the sidequests are reminiscent of the quest to find Basil? Like 2 seconds ago? Well, this one is good for actually illuminating what is going on with that questline overall! Duckie Jr. and his family are references to a famous optical illusion in which a person can see either a duck or a bunny. Take a look at the house that the family lives in:

They live in a present! Now take a look at this!

"SUNNY won't leave the box, so KEL put a food bowl inside. I guess this box will be SUNNY and MEWO's new home."

So that's interesting! Add in the distant demeanor of Duckie Jr's father, as well as Mari's statements about Duckie having his head in the clouds and comparing Duckie to Omori, it becomes clear that Duckie in this situation is a reference to Sunny, not Basil. What does this mean? Well, it means that we should rethink the Headspace quest all together! The quest to find Basil is much more a quest for Sunny to re-find himself.

Now this (as well as the quest for the character Daisy that I have mentioned previously) is interesting, but it isn't exactly foreshadowing. For that, I would like to draw your attention to the sidequest Stick in the Mud.

In this quest, you must go around Cattail fields to find Mr. Scarecrows three crow friends, and have them return to him. In order to do this, you have to use Hero when interacting with the three crows.

I personally believe that this is a bit of foreshadowing to the Sunny route. Hero's maturity is necessary to bringing Sunny, Kel, and Aubrey back together and bringing them to Basil. I also choose to see Mr. Scarecrow as an analogue for Basil rather than Sunny due to the coloring of Mr. Scarecrow's sprite (Blond hair, blue eyes, green clothes), and Hero doesn't actually bring Basil specifically to anyone (heck, Hero doesn't actually ever talk to Basil in the real world segments of the game)

I also want to make clear: I'm not trying to imply that this is symbolism on the part of Sunny's mind, like a lot of the things that I talk about on this account, rather that this is a bit of meta storytelling foreshadowing how the real world plot will turn out. This will go for everything else that I talk about here as well.

Captain of the Space Pirates

Now that we've talked about the sidequests, I'd like to draw your attention to the main questline of Otherworld. As a reminder, once the gang gets into Otherworld, we are introduced to Captain Spaceboy, who is bedridden and depressed following his break-up with Sweetheart. In order to solve this problem, we have to go through the junkyard to find his mixtape. We aren't the only ones looking for it, and while there, we meet Rosa, a Sweetheart super-fan.

We get the mixtape back, bring it to Spaceboy, at which point Kel plays it, triggering Spaceboy to start his boss fight.

The argument for this all being one large bit of foreshadowing goes like this:

Spaceboy would be Basil (purely from a narrative perspective, not in any kind of character-sense). We go to the junkyard and dig through the trash to find the mixtape, just like we eventually get the photo album by digging through Aubrey's trash. Rosa in this case represents Aubrey, attempting to take care of the mixtape due to her personal connection to the item, revealing that Spaceboy is the one that threw it out in the first place, echoing how in the real world, Aubrey takes care of the photo album for four years due to what it means to her, despite how Basil (from her perspective) destroyed it originally.

We bring the mixtape back to Spaceboy, and just as Kel is the one that kicks off going through the photo album with Basil, he is the one that rushes to put the mixtape into the boombox, triggering the memories that set off Spaceboy, causing the fight.

Admittedly, things get a little cloudy here, as the fight between Sunny and Basil isn't directly caused by the photo album. You could even say that the Spaceboy fight represents the fight with Omori (or even both the Basil fight AND the Omori fight) due to Omori's fight being due to Sunny's mind reacting to memories of the past, better mirroring the Spaceboy fight. But hey! Spaceboy's hair turns green and his eyes turn red so who can say. :P

Then, after the fight, we get a few things! We get an eyepatch (goes without saying), a train pass (representing how Sunny will be moving after the conclusion of the game), and a sno-cone ticket (yeah I don't think this one represents anything).

And, just like the Sunny route, the prologue ends with an early look at Memory Lane, and the dream ends, with Sunny waking up.

There's probably a lot more I could talk about regarding Omori's prologue, so I might update this later! I hope you enjoyed reading this! Within the game, I feel like the prologue is one of the strongest bits of Headspace, and I've always wanted to talk about how I believe it foreshadows the rest of the game! This is a topic that I'd love to hear more people's opinion on!

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Europe without trade, a worldbuilding exercise

This exercise pissed off a bunch of white people for all the wrong reasons, but facts are facts and I can link you to all the major resources. You all should be insulted at the idea that Europe can't trade, that melanin dictates that white people can't get along and find ways to trade. But that's not why they were upset. They were upset at the idea that a single region couldn't provide for people. And that's the wrong thing to get upset about. And I'm telling you that's white supremacy ideology you need to boot. Europe, too, traded and used people from other regions who migrated and were physically there on foot. Stop thinking that your lack of melanin is a force field.

So the exercise goes like this: Shortly after Homo Sapiens interbred with the Neanderthal and migrated to Europe, there was a magical force field put around Europe to cut off Europe from the Middle East, Africa, etc. ^^;; I'm sure people from the Caucuses aren't very pleased with this since they get commandeered into this exercise which racists somehow love. Later people also deemed them inferior (which takes a while to travel through but there is a wikipedia page dedicated to the term Caucasian meaning white [link] that goes over this ranking thing and the racist origins and ties to Nazis). But whatever, Nanowrimo a*holes were determined to argue against trade, fine, let's play this game and cut the whole of the Middle East/West Asia.

The other rule is that the Gulf Stream still exists, so you can have that unusual European climate which is a fluke. (This also ticked off people? But seriously, to get the gradient of Europe that far north, you need to Gulf of Mexico otherwise the latitude range would look more like the US than Europe, more south, and larger, much larger. And most people don't make a continent that large. Why people get ticked off at true facts is a whole thing.)

If you cut off the Gulf of Mexico, which a lot of world building of European-like continents do, you get Siberia. So the Gulf of Mexico has to stay for our Hypothetical Europe. (Not getting into continentality either.)

We're not counting the little bit of Turkey here, BTW. Turkey gets to stay whole. And Russia gets kicked out because it always gets kicked out anyway and besides, people were preaching about stupid things when these racists were posting, like all of Russia is white. And then people were arguing over if Russia counts. Fine. We'll kick Russia out. BTW, Australia was called all white. Haha. Aboriginals don't exist according to them. Like WTF. But whatever.

The question is what civilization can Europe grow with only the resources found naturally in Europe? Can you build a European civilization with only things found naturally occurring in Europe?

The first issue is STAPLE CROP.

Yeah, if you notice, you've cut off all of the major grains to Europe. You've also cut off the Beaker people. Oops.

Some Anthropology here, Beaker people brought agriculture to Europe. They were also from Turkey.

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2018/february/the-beaker-people-a-new-population-for-ancient-britain.html

So, Stone Henge, Long burrows, and all of that are suddenly cut off.

Honestly, this one is terrible to overcome. Most of the BBC docs I watched argued that the ancient people of Britain before Brown people from Turkey brought agriculture and the Cheddar Man, were boiling and eating reeds. Think like cattails type of thing, which is really hard to eat.

Upside, you still have fire in the form of rush lights, though you can't use tallow or beeswax--comes from outside of Europe. And horses are too lean. So, likely the European bison? However, this limits technology quite a bit as advancements can't be made by night and only by camp fire. (Fire is safely pre-modern humans—homonins and some say Homo Erectus, though still debated. But at least Homo Hedelberengensis)

Without a staple crop, you're going to have it tough to make enough surplus to build anything. You need free time and enough food supply to build things like castles.

The closest you might get is maybe peas? The best you get is pea flour, and have you worked with pea flour? It doesn't do anything like the wheat family does. Nutritionally, it's also low carbs, which is great if you're on a low carb diet, but not great for a civilization. Pea flour: 100 kcal, 18 g carbohydrate, 8 g fiber, 0 g fat, and 8 g protein

White rice:

Total Fat 0.4 g

Saturated fat 0.1 g

Cholesterol 0 mg

Sodium 2 mg

Potassium 55 mg

Total Carbohydrate 45 g 15%

Dietary fiber 0.6 g

Sugar 0.1 g

Protein 4.3 g

https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/brown-rice-vs-white-rice

68-82 amounts of energy in rice.

So peas aren't a bad choice, but the problem is that you don't have a binder. You need a binder to make bread, etc. Even this one here: https://www.powerhungry.com/2024/02/06/split-pea-bread-vegan-oil-free-gf/ Uses a binder from India. But the majority of your people aren't eating Bread. The recipes I can find include non-European things like rice or things outside of Europe. This severely hinders your tech advancements. Being able to eat on the job and not have it take forever is really hard. The portability of bread is a plus for technology. And peas can get mushy and if cooked can mold.

There are Lactofermented peas:

https://www.beetsandbones.com/lacto-fermented-green-peas/

But they aren't widely eaten and include things like garlic, which is out. Bay leaves are not from Europe. Garlic is a difficult one since garlic kills so many bacteria, but you can cope with oregano, I suppose, which kills a high amount of bacteria according to a well vetted study since it was published (original study was 1999, but followup studies since then):

Preservation is a huge part of production and an upside of grains.

Also, how are you going to produce alcohol? This makes water safer to drink. You'd have to convert to teas. (Raspberry leaf tea is a thing.) Peas are not high starch enough, as cited to hold together bread. It's not good enough to make alcohol.

But now you're thinking, OK, we got peas as a staple, they just won't make bread out of it.

Peas, a major protein source, you don't need cows, pigs, etc as much. (Though you're still kinda lacking in vitamin B12, but I'll cover that later.) And your people make a new type of pea plant (BTW, legumes is the largest plant family on Earth.)

Might limit you to not be able to carry it around easily and it's hard to rehydrate, but eventually your people get there. (If you're thinking, but lentils, yeah, not Europe. Deal).

Subsequent agriculture

Tanning leather, BTW, you need oak trees with high tannins, but this tech originated from Western Asia (or Southwestern Asia, if you want to call it that)

Oak trees are found on five continents, but it's a bit fuzzy on how they got there. Humans have a habit of picking up seeds and spreading them about. My own great grandfather loved collecting seeds and planting them. You also have Johnny Appleseed.

The processing time to make acorn flour is pretty terrible (You have to boil it a long, long time to remove the tannins, this is why I didn't suggest this as a staple), but at least you have leather.

The major other crops are out:

Potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, chocolate, hazelnuts, walnuts, corn, wheat, rye, barley, strawberries? (This one is questionable.), pears (China), apples (Central Asia), Pomegranates (Iran), and major fruits you can think of. Think of a major fruit. Look it up and you'll find it doesn't come from Europe, though it might be grown there.

Most of the spices and herbs are out (sage, oregano, rosemary, and thyme stay in.) No, you can't have garlic. Most allium comes from outside of Europe. Animals are also out: pigs, goats, sheep, cows, chickens, llamas, alpacas.

It's debatable about horses. One thread people debated back and forth on horses, so I'll lay that out.

This leaves you likely with dogs, which probably came with early modern humans. Yeah, ummm... there's a question here, and maybe I shouldn't touch it, and the answer is likely no, probably not eating them. Not unless people get desperate. The Cambridge History of Food also questions the archaeology from Western Asia, but the archaeology also says the only time humans ate dogs were in desperation and the layer in question came at the heels of a drought? (I took a picture of the page, pretty easy to look up since it has an excellent index.).

This leaves deer. Not a good animal to domesticate, but let's say Reindeer. (Thinking Evenk here).

I'm adding in carob.

So Round up of what we have?

Staple crop: Legume, likely related to peas.

Secondary crops:

You have brassica (mustard family)

Olives

Rosemary

Thyme

Oregano

sage

horseradish, maybe.

Acorns—makes leather

carob

currants

gooseberries

raspberry

blackberry

turnip, possibly beets

parsnip Stinging nettle Dandelion (European and edible from roots which make a substance said to be similar to coffee to the buds.)

Brassica family, mainly Brussel sprouts, but possibly they would invent others.

BTW, carrots originally weren't orange until William of Orange, who gets his name from a plant native to Southern China-ish.

But other berries—cranberry, is from the Americas. And strawberry, while found in Europe, was originally domesticated in the Americas. This one is a question mark. Because it was found on both continents, but was only domesticated in the Americas.

The majority of the foods you find are domesticated in West Asia, Southern China and the Americas (mostly central Americas and Northern South America.) Welcome to the downside of temperate climates.

Pies? Nope. "What about Shepards Pie" Yeah, where are you getting the potatoes? Also the iron works is in question here. (later)

Short list. You're losing your mind, no pizza? Yep. No pizza. (lol Someone got mad when I pointed this out with links). Tomato is New World, Wheat is West Asia, Cows domestication is West Asia and Northern Africa. Horse milk you can't form into cheese without camel rennet. Camels, you guessed it, not Europe.

Possibly new legumes to maximize it. (They grow tall as trees, make peanuts, etc, so it's possible a culture under pressure would make new ones. BTW, peanuts is new world.)

Domesticated animals: Dogs, deer, maybe horses—horses are debated. European rabbits, yes, though don't make for good domestication since they are really difficult to work with which you'll have to look up. Look up a rabbit care video. But at least breed fast. Low amount of fat for candles, though.

You'd also have seafood. Only one type of seaweed is poisonous in the world and that is in England. But it's highly nutritious. (The native seaweed in India is apparently nasty, but edible).

You don't need as much with the pea family anyway.

European Bison are not easily domesticated, BTW, but would give you tallow-ish stuff if they succeeded or an ethnic group decided to be nomadic pastoralists with them.

For sweet taste, carob. Easy to process, and you don't need sugar beets, which is harder to process and were only invented as a source in the late 19th century. Mediterranean. The seeds are edible so just grind it up. Though it's easier to grind the pods. So it's easier to process and use in other recipes.

The other options are out: Honeybee domestication originated in China, there's a form in Northern Africa, but the frame design was late 1800's, so Victorian. Even if you had it, it would be for rich people.

Sugar cane is tropical.

Carob mildly tastes like chocolate. This is your chocolate substitute. No fermentation required. However, it doesn't have the properties of chocolate melting, etc. The fat content is much lower, but the production is much higher.

Dates, BTW, are from 4000 BCE in West Asia, fertile crescent. It's out. https://foodandnutrition.org/from-the-magazine/dates-an-ancient-fruit-rediscovered/

The problem with horses

This part is really difficult to climb through.

The first part is that horses were likely domesticated outside of Europe. Also, the invention of the saddle, etc was also outside of Europe. You need a good staple crop to have enough time to mes around with it. You would also have a smaller population if it stays in Europe.

This part got heated in the original. So the evidence is this:

Horses were domesticated outside of Europe (It's on the border of Europe, so hotly debated)

Horses were killed off in the Americas by Indigneous people before being reintroduced. https://new.nsf.gov/science-matters/horses-part-indigenous-cultures-longer-western

The technology to domesticate the horse further was outside of Europe (saddle, stirrups, etc)

But horses exist in Europe, wouldn't they want to breed them?

But maybe only for food? (recent scandal at the time)

Would they be burden animals? You need burden animals fro agriculture to advance and higher production.

So yeah... without cows, pigs, goats, sheep, large questions arise about this.

Would the population split into eating and noneating? Would it not?

Yeah, limited foodstuff. Limited calories, but your people are making it, but maybe not turning white yet? Well, in Southern Europe. Introduction of grains and farming was said to be the thing that tipped people over.

Agriculture is really difficult to achieve without a staple crop like grains or starchy tubers.

But for the sake of argument, let's say they get there, and manage to never break the force field, no matter what, because racists win or whatever. No food importation in or out, no new ideas.

What now?

Arches, as an idea, came from outside of Europe. Rafts do predate humans (Homo Erectus again), but boats, was likely Phonecian. And metal working and stone working also came from outside of Europe as ideas. Beaker people, love them.

Metal working came from Northern Africa, BTW, but say they figure it out, and we let them slide.

You get stunted in Maths since ideas of math came from Babylonians. Later Migrations of Minoans don't count anymore. Linear A isn't invented, but OK, OK, there was written language invented in the Americas, so it's possible, if they get through agriculture and get up to what? Trade, they might have language. But wait, you (Nanowrimo person) just said trade is evil, so maybe they don't have a written language? In all instances of language being created it was on the back of what? trade. Maths awas also created on the back of mostly trade. Sumerians created their written language on trade. The oldest tablets we have is a trade dispute.

Look up Complaint tablet to Ea-nasir. In another words, written records were for keeping track of ledgers, one of the oldest types of writing on record.

These people think trade is too complicated and evil to exist in Europe. So OK, no written language for you, though seriously, I don't know how that works. Is Northern Europe a different subsistence system than Southern Europe?

You all are fighting for diminishing resources (considering 1500's Europe and a BBC doc about how trees were fought over and laws about not cutting down trees) each other while the rest of the world is trading back and forth on ideas and not getting imperialized. Fine. Let's play that game.

The amount of technology gets cut down severely when you disconnect Europe from the rest of the world. You don't get the iron age without some knowledge about smelting. And you need those "dirty Africans" or whatever racist thing they were thinking in order to get that smelting. You don't get masonry without PoCs (Most masonry, as an idea came from West Asia, and they would literally import those people to work on castles, see the docs on Guédelon Castle from British TV). Whatcha going to do?

Let's move onto clothes...

Flax (for Linen), silk, ramie, hemp (for clothes which is a different cultivar), coir, Abaca, Angora (rabbit)*, Angora (goat), wool (obviously), bamboo, banana fiber, cashmere (the goat), sisal, camel hair (obviously), kapok, mohair, kenaf, yak, Qiviut, vicuña,Hibiscus cannabinus, Lyocell, Modal (AKA Rayon) *, Piña (pineapple), and Soy protein are out. All of them occur outside of Europe or require an industrial society. Byssus AKA sea silk, Chiengora (dog hair), spider silk*, is in.

However, notice how expensive and difficult it is to make clothes of these things. So only rich can access them.

dog* hair often requires wool to be added to make the hairs stick together. And sheep wool, in particular has really good spinnable fibers.

Spider silk also kinda takes higher technology to produce into clothing. Look it up and some might find it cruel to do it that way.

Byssus also known as Sea silk was produced by the Greeks and Romans, but only for the super rich.

This means for poor people: Leather and stinging nettle fabric is what they have left. You can see a video of that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-usU7-WjUU So your people have clothing. They aren't white except for the nomadic people to the north unless you can advance their agriculture and slide the pea family to replace the major nutrition somehow.

And making clothes is torture for the common populace who have to pick stinging nettles for their clothes.

You're thinking, but Angora Rabbits? Yeah, this is possible, though not likely called that since the rabbits originated from Turkey, which is outside of the scenario, but it would be maybe possible your people come up with something similar given human nature as long as they pause the rabbit breeding long enough and have enough surplus to tinker.

So poor people are running around with stinging nettle fabric, rich are wearing most likely sea silk, and you can see the misery compared to growing something like flax.

I doubt anyone can afford to be vegetarian with limited resources. Pescitarian, maybe closer to the shore.

*Dogs were domesticated outside of Europe, but are often attributed to why humans outpaced Neanderthal and date back far enough in time that early humans likely took them to Europe when they first arrived. Cats, however, were domesticated in Africa and are OUT. (Making the majority of writers cry since there seems to be more cat people than dog people among writers).

Conclusion

You're stuck with the Humours, but does Greek civilization even exist without grains? So much collapses when you don't have the subsistence infrastructure. I mean there is a reason people made bread and carry grains and we don't eat peas as a staple.

So you'd have to build everything from scratch starting around ~45,000 BCE or earlier (when Homo sapiens came to Europe by estimates) and you don't even have those really white people then according to science except the Evenk ancestors who show white about 10K years ago? (No, it's not the Caucuses—in what right mind do you think white people developed in the Caucuses when you know about Vitamin D and darker melanin generally around the equator due to skin cancer, etc issues and so on.)

Umm, the lesson here is that Europe was never cut off and people should stop going into that fantasy. Like how did you get apples, plums, honey, etc without trade? And also, people shouldn't be afraid of trade and keep in mind temperate climates (Middle/Northernish Europe) aren't the only biomes in Europe. No matter how much fantasy wants to focus on Western Europe and ignore the Scandis. Seriously, I'm so bored of people assuming everything is like Germany or a less rainy England in fantasy. (And I do mean England, not Scotland or Wales). Can't we get some variety? You have the Mediterranean, but you also have Scandinavia, and you're doing Europe? Where are they? You also had foragers and Nomads in the history of Europe. The Romani from North Western India, for example. And some say that early Celtic groups could have been partial foragers before the coming of Beaker people.

But even in an alt sci-fi, you have to trim all of those accomplishments of PoC and then argue that your people killed all of the PoCs on the way to the planet, and really, that makes no sense. But I suppose then you can murder Bibimbap into tatertot disgusting mess later on. But really?

But even say, you had an organically grown planet that happened to grow a humanoid species, how are you going to grow it without some level of cooperation? And the majority of the food stuff is going to come from those warmer climates: Southern China, West Asia and Central-ish Americas. They don't have a winter to worry about. So it would be imperative for your people to trade.

While you're at it, I'm really squicked by the idea that people put in 16 year old girls to marry much older guys in fantasy and then call it acceptable. You can change at least those rules.

I don't get why people work so hard to cut out LGBTQIA, disability and PoCs from fantasy? Like people should have maimed legs from all the battles written.

BTW, I am amused by the idea that in Star Trek times they didn't have birth control. lol thousands of years and haven't perfected birth control? That one I can't believe. Picard didn't know how to use a condom. lol.

[na-bird-of-the-day]

BOTD: Tricolored Blackbird

Photo: Marcel Holyoak

"While the Red-winged Blackbird is abundant over most of the continent, the very similar Tricolored Blackbird has a very small range in the Pacific states. It differs in its highly social nesting: in a dense cattail marsh, nests may be packed in close together, only a foot or two apart. Some colonies may have over 100,000 nests, although such large concentrations seem to be growing scarcer in recent years, as the birds shift to smaller (but hopefully more) colonies."

- Audubon Field Guide

[centipeedles]

sunny you might be coping unhealthily but GODDAMN do you have pretty colors in your head

i just want to eat them up and feel the sizzles in my brain

otherworld? so pretty. making fanart of this is is making me froth at the mouth from all the pretty colors i get to use

[alteredstatesstuff]

pond view

[inuhalfdemon]

Lucifer Explores Alastor's Bayou...

Lucifer left Alastor to dine as he liked; choosing instead to explore Alastor’s bayou in the form of the white ermine he had taken most recently.

It still amazed him; how flawlessly and naturally the dimension butted up against the room in the hotel. Nothing about it was synthetic in structure; the bayou was a natural bayou – through and through.

Lucifer found genuine enjoyment in darting and trotting through the reedy cattails; and in climbing over and under dead logs to cross the mud-filled bogs. He chased and leapt at the buzzing dragonflies and even hunted a field mouse; pausing briefly only when he heard the sound of a grunting gator coming from nearby in the swamp – the sound of it sending the fur along his back and down his tail to stand straight on end.

When Alastor had finished with his meal; his shadow slinked out into the bayou to retrieve Lucifer; finding him curiously investigating some bank burrow – possibly belonging to a muskrat or a nutria that utilized the resource. He quickly turned away from his investigations; darting playfully and agilely after the shadow as they cut their way from the swamp and back to the hotel.

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Excerpt from "No One Can Know..." Chapter 16

[monster-ultra-yellow]

hm wetland field biology course this summer has got me thinking.

what if you had to wake up super early for class but your alarm didn't go off in time and so you had to rush out the door without being able to take your morning pee first because your professor wanted to leave at 8 am on the dot because there's a long drive ahead to the site you'll all be working in today. and of course they're not going to wait for you to use the bathroom on campus first before you all pile onto the bus because they already waited a good 5-10 minutes for you to get there and they don't want to wait any longer.

so you grit your teeth and board the bus, hauling your heavy bag with you and setting it on your lap so your classmates have room to sit still, the bulk of it digging into your torso in a way that you can't quite make comfortable and that pushes into you even more whenever your bus hits a bumpy stretch of road (all the more common the further you stray from civilization), or when the person sitting next to you shifts around, or when you have to pull your water bottle out for a drink, and boy do you--the bus is stuffy already, and as the summer day begins to heat up more, it's only getting worse. and it's not like the water stored in your bladder is going to get reabsorbed back into your dehydrating body, is it?

after a couple long hours, you finally reach the site your class will be working in today. you wince as you drag yourself out of your seat with your bag behind you--fortunately, it's heavy enough that you don't look too suspicious stepping out onto the gravel road hunched-over. the professor begins relaying the plans for today as the rest of the class stands around, as attentive as they can be on this humid hot day, but you're too distracted by the growing, now almost painful pressure in your lower abdomen to pay them any mind. you look behind you to see if there's maybe any shrubs you can step behind real quick to relieve yourself--

and it's all standing water. it's a gentle, mucky slope down into an emergent marsh, covered in lily pads with cattails and arrowheads sticking out from the span of murky water. water that's gently rippling against the vegetation with every gust of wind. water that's broken by the occasional splash of a frog leaping out, or perhaps an osprey diving in. water that's running down the back of a diving duck as it resurfaces, dribbling back down into the pond in a way only you can notice. and it's deep, too, going far up these cattail stems and oh God. you have to wear your chest waders today. your heavy, heavy, waterproof chest waders, so you can get deep into the marsh.

you tune back in to your lesson as the rest of the class slips into their own waders--you don't know why you're going in there today, all you know is that you are and you need to put on your waders and that can only begin with an excruciating kneel down to untie your sneakers. you take as deep a breath as you can handle to steel yourself before slowly lowering yourself down, just enough so you can pee your pants--no. so you can untie your shoes. but you peed a little, just now. did you? no you didn't. you're being paranoid. you're not pissing your pants as a grown college student, and certainly not in front of your class. you can't be, so you're not. and so you untied one shoe without leaking again (but you didn't leak, you can't have, please not here and not now). you can't handle the idea of shifting your weight onto your other knee to untie your second shoe, so you choose the worse idea of contorting yourself enough to reach the other sneakers laces in your current position, which jams your overfilling bladder into your knee in a way that definitely didn't squeeze another spurt out, no way it did. and then you stand up, gripping onto the thighs of your pants to resist your urge to grab your crotch instead as the mass inside you shifts down, pressing harder than ever.

but your waders. you need your waders. fuck.

you kick off your sneakers and grab for your chest waders and, stifling a whimper, lift your leg up like a dog who's about to pee in the grass, wouldn't that feel so nice, it all gushing out and splattering against the ground, but you're not a dog, you're a field biology student that needs to put your chest waders on and you can't afford to pee yourself like you almost did just now. and so you lift your leg and your thigh pushes even harder into your now-distended bladder as you wrangle your limb into your oversized waders, followed by your second leg and another squirt into your pants (maybe it's a good thing you're wearing waders today, so nobody can see the wet spot you think is growing on your pants now). after bending down to help pull your waders up over your legs and sensitive, bulging abdomen, kneading your bladder like a ball of dough with your stupid little "I bought the wrong size and these are too big to easily put on" dance, your clip your waders on with the buckles by your shoulders and you are ready.

and by the time you finished, everyone else had already moved past you, and you can see them several yards away already, standing around the professor as they show you some stupid fucking plant with water dripping from the roots and splashing onto the water below.

you should get a move on, so you do. and you step into the mucky slope, and it's soft. it's muck, so of course it is, it's just mud but shittier. but you're moving! you're moving and you're making it over to your class and maybe you can say you just had a ton of rocks in your show and that's why you were slow! or maybe you were getting another drink because it's so hot out today, and the thought of water, a whole gallon of it, sloshing around in a water bottle with every step just like your pee is sloshing inside you with every step, just thinking about it is making each drop of that gallon trickle into your bladder and it hurts--

and it released another spurt, much larger than it had before, as you suddenly plunge into the muck up to your hips. guess it was a steep drop into the water!

you clench down harder than you ever have in your life as you try to stop the stream and not think about that splash as you fell into the water and definitely not think about how your whole class is looking at you now. and they want you to come over, of course, so you don't hold them up even more. so you try to go over. but you cant. the muck has sucked you right in, and every time you jerk your leg to free yourself, your hold over your bladder muscles gets weaker and weaker, with every jolt of force from your leg and hips smashing into the great rock in your abdomen, jostling even more pee out of it with every move you make to try to free yourself.

and now one of your classmates is coming over to free you, and theyre splashing so much water around as they move towards you, and you can't stop peeing--you can't stop peeing? you can't stop peeing! your bladder, with a stubborn, angry shock of pain, has decided it finally had enough, and now youre helplessly filling your waterproof waders with fresh, hot pee as you look in the eyes of your classmate coming to rescue you from the muck.

how are you supposed to explain to them that you can't join the rest of your class, because your waders are so filled with your pee that they're too heavy to safely walk in the water with now?

[queer-ragnelle]

Best of Ladies of the Lake

Seeking recommendations for media featuring the Ladies of the Lake?

Here’s a curated collection of Retellings, Films, TV shows, and more ordered alphabetically by Lady and oldest to newest. Each recommendation comes with a brief synopsis and review containing mild spoilers.

All PDFs link to my Google drive, videos to MEGA drive, and can be found on my blog. Each passage adopts the unique spelling of character names as used in the media.

🌊 More Best of Masterposts 🌊

Lady of the Lake

Books

The Chessboard Queen by Sharan Newman

Guinevere Evermore by Sharan Newman

Possibly my favorite version of the Lady. Nameless despite all her subjects having names, including Nimuë. She kidnaps Lancelot, then kidnaps a wetnurse & brother for him too. Lancelot is her “toy” & between her & the wetnurse, messes him up beyond recognition, even though the Lady claims to love him. In the third book, she gives Morgan a place to stay & remain eternally youthful. They realize the horror of their actions, the Lady gave Merlin Excalibur/scabbard to give Arthur, Morgan stole scabbard, now their sons Lancelot & Mordred are fighting on opposite sides of a war Arthur can’t win.

Movies

Excalibur (1981)

The Lady appears briefly to issue a repaired Excalibur to Arthur who broke it by using it to chat & wrongfully defeat Lancelot. She wears a beautiful sequins dress & she's so otherworldly with the green lighting & eerie music.

TV Shows

The Adventures of Sir Galahad (1949)

The Lady helps Galahad escape Merlin’s machinations while on his quest to recover Excalibur. She pops up throughout the show to offer guidance & advice.

The Legend of King Arthur (1979)

The Lady appears to bring Arthur across the lake & receive Excalibur. She doesn't speak which makes her very strange & her hair is decorated in cattails. She returns twice, once to bring Merlin to the afterlife & again to receive Excalibur from Bedivere.

Merlin (1998)

Coolest Lady—she wears shimmering white and floats above the lake like a ghost, fish swim around her throat like a necklace & the numbers dwindle as her power weakens throughout the show. She gives Merlin cryptic guidance & causes problems seemingly on purpose.

Nimuë/Ninian

Books

The Story of King Arthur and His Knights by Howard Pyle

The Story of the Champions of the Round Table by Howard Pyle

The Story of Sir Launcelot and his Companions by Howard Pyle

The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur by Howard Pyle

Nymue is the head of all the Ladies of the Lake & the one who guides Arthur across the lake to get Excalibur. Ironically she is not the hand that reached out of the water. She later kidnaps baby Launcelot & raises him in the Lake Kingdom. She has a sort of rivalry with Vivien, who curses Gawaine, which Nymue releases him from. After Ettard’s rejection of Pellias, Nymue marries him. Nymue is also the one to lead Galahad to his shield just as she outfitted Launcelot for knighthood before him.

Bedivere: The King's Right Hand by Wayne Wise

Nimué is a little girl rescued by Bedivere from a battle. She can foresee everyone's deaths & freaks them out. She only comes in near at the end but I like that Bedivere is her big bro & Merlin is afraid of her, as he should be. She eventually joins Vivienne & Morgan in Avalon for training as a Lady of the Lake.

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

Nimue is an honorary member of the Round Table as a replacement for Merlin. She is present throughout the entire story & uses magic to fight on the battle field along side the knights. She gets her own flashback chapter to explain her backstory & why she sealed Merlin away. Her romance with Collum was cute.

Movies

Merlin and The Sword (1985)

The movie is a frame story which opens with Ninian & Merlin trapped together for eternity in a cave beneath Stonehenge. In Medieval times, Ninian is rescued from evil knights by Pellinore & brought to court because her father is too ill to present her himself. She quickly develops a relationship with Merlin beginning first with divination but progressing to learn his most powerful magic. Morgan imprisons & tortures Ninian’s father to extort her to get Merlin’s most powerful magic, her she accurately binds them both into the cave forever.

TV Shows

Merlin (1998)

My favorite Nimue ever. She was a very unique accent & alluring acting. She first meets Merlin when they’re both teenagers, no questionable age gap. They come together again many years later when she helps him escape Vortigern’s prison. After she is burned & scarred by a dragon, she stays in Avalon with the holy people where Merlin visits her sometimes. They get their happily ever after when they’re old!

Video Games

Sonic and The Black Knight

In this alternate universe, Amy Rose takes on the role of Nimue to give Sonic the sword he’ll need to defeat corrupted King Arthur. She guides him on his quest & at the end, unites her magic with the Knights of the Round Table to help defeat Merlina.

Vivian

Books

The Story of King Arthur and His Knights by Howard Pyle

The Story of the Champions of the Round Table by Howard Pyle

The Story of Sir Launcelot and his Companions by Howard Pyle

The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur by Howard Pyle

Vivien is an enchantress taught magic by Morgana le Fay whilst on the Isle of Avalon. Vivien successfully beguiles Merlin & traps him. She returns later to tempt Percival while on Grail Quest & puts a curse on Gawaine.

Bedivere: The King’s Right Hand by Wayne Wise

Vivienne is the old leader of all the Ladies of the Lake in Avalon. I like how powerful & well respected she is throughout the book. Didn't care for the ending at all where she facilitates Morgan/Arthur marriage, but everything before that is solid.

Movies

Sword of Lancelot (1963)

Vivian is a handmaiden that travels with Guinevere from Cameliard to Camelot. She becomes romantic with Mordred & helps him spy on Guinevere & Lancelot while spreading gossip among the ladies.

Lancelot du Lac (1970)

French film adapting the Vulgate. Viviane has raised Lancelot from his infancy & brings him before the King & Queen to be knighted. She also has her handmaiden Saraide from the Vulgate as well. They wear pretty blue gowns except when they bring Lancelot to the surface everyone in the party wears white.

Camelot (1998)

Vivian is the head of the Isle of Avalon where Merlin brought Arthur to be raised. She introduced Morgause to Arthur & they eventually marry. She also helps Lancelot & Guinevere conceal their affair from Meleagrants who caught them together.

TV Shows

Starz Camelot (2011)

Vivian is the first person that Morgan recruits after deciding to employ more women. She is not a true Lady of the Lake here but acts as Morgan’s messenger, handmaiden, & confidant. She has cool face tattoos & a gorgeous wardrobe. It was compelling to see she let Igraine escape against Morgan’s wishes, allowing a glimpse into her conscience.