#desertified

[tweedfrog]

Sent my friend a picture of my cat and forgot that my garden looks like it was cursed to endure 10 years of drought and famine by an angry witch

[mediumcutsteak]

"my generation really IS better" the man slowly turning to dust in a line of people who have sequentially turned to more dust behind him says to the boy in front of him.

[turbofanatic]

Truth is, I should simply accept that Skyward Sword is simply a bad game with worse writing, but I keep wanting to plug its numerous plot holes.

It's funny because a lot of people want to make an evil Hylia based on the whole reincarnation cycle thing, except that's not really her fault at all. Lots of characters reappear, it just seems to be a feature of the universe, not Hylia or even Demise's fault.

What is suspicious is that she only protected her chosen people, is clearly leaving out important information about the fight with Demise (Groose has picked up on one of the more egregious ones), desertified Lanaryu with her mining operations, and except for BotW Zelda and Tetra, her reincarnations are 100% cool with a monarchy.

Oh, also Zelda tries to fucking kill you in the beginning of the game by pushing you off a cliff after you tell her you can't find your bird. She "apologizes" afterwards. Fascinatingly, it's in the same way she "apologizes" for manipulating you into saving her, which makes me think she just has a habit of doing shitty things and then tearfully crying about it. What the fuck. This game is so bad. Thank goodness A Link Between Worlds was so good, or I would have never returned to this series.

Also, kind of odd that Groose almost seems like a backup hero and he only stops being an ass when he's on the surface and no longer around (an awake) Zelda. That's concerning.

Skyward Sword has many sins, but one of the worst is that the only interesting character, Groose, seems to be set up as having a connection with the Gerudo, only to have nothing happen. Why would he leave and start a centuries long conflict? He's a pretty cool guy at the end of the game, so what gives?

Well, here's one version of how it happens.

[conundrumoftime]

Current theory: Celeborn is one of/linked to the Gaudrim somehow (or: more Rings of Power horse stuff, sorry not sorry):

1. ‘Gaudrim’ is a Sindarin word (‘people of the machine’); so is ‘Caras Gaer’ where the wizard lives (‘sea-fortress I think). Somebody around here speaks Sindarin.

2. Horses have the same bits we’ve seen on elf-horses before (Galadriel’s horse in ep1 above, Gaudrim horse in ep2 below)

3. TROP Celeborn isn’t dead so he’s got to be somewhere remote and presumably trapped? amnesiac? something? ‘Kept in a prison camp by Sauron or Adar’ is an obvious one but other than Sauron clearly not being in a place to run prison camps - eating centipedes, failing to get job etc etc - being an orc prisoner for centuries would surely mess you up to the point where it would be hard to come back in as an active story participant like “well anyway, where were we?” and Rhûn is the most distant place we’ve seen so far that’s also disconnected from the main elves.

4. The Gaudrim have some ‘curse upon our flesh’ which, okay, is implied to be linked to why they wear their masks, but what if it’s more than that? what if ‘the machine’ is controlling them somehow? what if some or all of them are elves but don’t remember they are?

5. TROP Celeborn is linked to forests (they haven’t said ‘Doriath’ but it’s implied); they’re clearly doing SOMEthing with dead trees and desertified land; what better place to bring in an elf that’s into trees to the point of staying in Middle-earth for them?

6. and there’s some tree-like detail on Caras Gaer and Brank’s armour, plus a statue holding a palantír(?) outside Caras Gaer

7. it makes decent narrative sense to bring Celeborn in linked to another storyline and let him have his own direction as a character rather than parachute him in for Galadriel like “ta-da! husband’s back now” (boring) or create a whole new storyline for him (not enough space in season): therefore, Rhûn.

8. I have had to deal with so much fandom warfare about this guy, really I’m owed a decent storyline for him starting now.

[justalittlesolarpunk]

Would you happen to have or know anyone who has solarpunk resources for in deserts? I live in Vegas so I'm not sure if some things I see will be able to help me here :)

Hi! Thanks for getting in touch. Just wanted to preface this by saying I don’t live in a desert, I never have lived in a desert, and I don’t know a lot about deserts (I come from one of the rainiest places in Europe lol). So I may not be the best person to ask.

That said, I have seen some cool stuff floating about. The whole liquid trees debate that circulated recently was a good example - obviously these are redundant in a temperate climate where trees can grow, but in a desert a machine that captures carbon and generates electricity using algae would be pretty useful! I have also heard of various anecdotal stories of people greening or farming deserts, though I’m a bit more iffy about that - should we be changing the ecosystem?

Large swathes of uninhabited desert, with their constant hot sun, could be really good places for big solar parks, though, and the panels in turn could provide shade for plants and animals.

I’d recommend reading up on the lifestyles of indigenous and traditional desert societies across Africa, Asia and the Americas, looking at what technologies they use to keep cool, supply drinking water, etc. Lots of desert plants can have edible or medicinal functions that people don’t know about, so looking into them would be pretty neat - I know people have talked about vegan cactus leather and stuff though I worry that could become mass-commercialised and damage the desert.

Ultimately yeah, I think solarpunk desert narratives and movements are really cool and very under-appreciated. These places have a unique relationship to sunlight and solar power, and more of the planet is going to be desertified due to climate change, so I think they should be at the forefront of the movement. I don’t know much about them at all but I’d love to learn! If you find anything out about how we can apply solarpunk in the desert please do get back in touch and let me know, and who knows, perhaps you can start a solarpunk movement in Las Vegas!

[jacksgreysays]

Hiiii how about a prompt for Further Down Road One, political marriage!Shikasuke, maybe something from an Uchiha's POV on the Shikabane-hime's meteoric rise in power, international acclaim, and political capital? And how it ripples out onto the clan as a whole?

I mean, the point of Road One is that the arranged marriage itself already does SO MUCH to change the trajectory of the Uchiha clan’s fate for the better that, basically, everything else after that is kind of a bonus. The fact that Shikako’s smart and powerful and a good person is NICE, yes, but just being engaged to Sasuke already earned so much approval from the clan as a whole that it’s just kinda… ehhhh…

Although… and this somewhat of a tangent to the prompt… it would be funny if… okay, let me set this up by saying: I don’t necessarily like Itachi as a character. When he was kind of a psychopath and apparently just murdered his entire family to test his power, that was at least a… strength of will or conviction that kind of resonated thematically. Like, what if Will of Fire goes bad kind of thing. Or the pressures of being clan heir, of being pushed too hard and too fast, would lead to a genius of violence snapping and using said violence. Then when it turns out he was given orders to murder his entire family and his one condition was that Sasuke would get to live is like… what the fuck dude. It’s both backtracking to make Itachi weaker as a character and also, somehow, even more of a psychopath in my opinion. And, like, sure, Danzo maybe used Shisui’s Sharingan to unbreakable genjutsu him into it, but I don’t think that really absolves Itachi.

All that being said, theoretically in this kinder world of Road One, we never get to that point. Additionally, there’s less pressure on Itachi to continue to excel SO OVERTLY since the clan isn’t getting isolated and also because Shisui is still there and alive to share the burden.

BUT, I do still… the idea that the Uchiha elders have been wanting one of the clan to become Hokage is something that I hold to be true unless proven otherwise. I do think the clan elders would push more for Itachi to be Hokage—because he is clan heir and so has the pedigree, while Shisui (just as powerful, literally Flee On Sight in the bingo books at such a young age) I think we’ve fandom agreed is an orphan or at least a lesser branch of the Uchiha clan.

Anyway, all of the above leads me to: Shisui and Itachi trying to PR campaign for their sister-in-law Shikako (who WILL be an Uchiha once the marriage actually) to be the new “best candidate” for an Uchiha Hokage. Like, really just them listing off all of her accomplishments to not only the Uchiha elders but the rest of the clan (who, again, already quite like her).

I also think, in this universe, that Shikako would DO SOMETHING about Sora-ku once she feels a little more comfortable making decisions—or, at least, making proposals with attached logistics—for the Uchiha clan. Like. It’s a huge chunk of territory that seems to be an abandoned city. But it’s apparently functional enough to have a community of sorts of black marketeers and a support system. Like, it’s not so out of the way of things that nobody bothers with it, which implies that it could be rejuvenated with the time and resources. I think I read a theory once that it’s because Senju used their skills to desertify the area so there just wasn’t enough food to support a city of that size. BUT, now they’ve got Shikako. And Shikako’s connections. Whether that is the ANY clan alliance or Tenzo/Yamato or upper echelons of Hidden Mist’s administration (Haku is an ice user, yes, but like he and Zabuza wouldn’t throw a squad of Mist nin with water nature to help with irrigation at Shikako’s request for free) or even the literal oasis creating ancient god Gelel.

So, you know, she’s more than proven herself to the world. And with the Sora-ku rejuvenation, already brought a level of prosperity to the Uchiha clan than they could ever imagine. “Shikako for Hokage” is not a hard sell for Shisui and Itachi whatsoever (and also, they do think Sasuke would be so happy as her First Gentleman/trophy husband)

Yeah, that’s kind of all I can think of for this prompt in terms of it being different than how the Nara clan or DoS canon clans for that matter would view her meteoric rise. Hope you enjoyed, anon.

[serpentface]

this might've been covered in an earlier iteration of this project, but (given that entire clades have skipped the evolutionary chopping block and crowded out/filled the niches of their real-world counterparts, and vice versa) how have mass extinction events differed in this setting compared to ours? both in the actual material events themselves (i.e. was it a single cataclysmic event or something more gradual) and how they played out evolutionarily. bonus question if applicable: if any occurred within the cultural memory of any sophont species, how is it handled in folklore?

This is going to be a really disappointing answer because this is the one major section of worldbuilding that I am completely just like 'fuck it' about and only have a broad sense of the last 20,000 years or so in terms of climactic change and extinction (and it's only WELL developed in a 1000 year period). Like, given the life in this setting is broadly similar to earth and suggests a similar trajectory to earth history, it's kind of implied that there was a fantasy KPG impact-esque extinction (that somehow spared a few nonavian dinosaurs, some pterosaurs and mosasaurs) but I am honestly cannot be worried about the details. It's mostly just "I want to have these animals still around and I want this clade to be Different. They worked it out somehow, I guess" and then I do that. That's kind of the full extent because I am not prepared to do an entire evolutionary history of this setting.

The one thing that is RELATIVELY well developed (but not really smoothed out enough to stand up to scrutiny, I had too much of this setting in place before I started worrying about geological/climate coherency) is that 3/6 continental plates merged in 'recent' geological history (comparable to the formation of the eurasian-african landmass in size), which has resulted in associated extinction events due to ecological interchange and climate change (not on a scale of one of the big 5/6 mass extinctions, but pretty significant). But this is mostly on such a long geological scale that there's little to no sense that the landmass was once separate (the concept OCCASIONALLY comes up in mythology, but the merger occurred before even anatomical modernity for all sophonts and this is less cultural memory than gleaned from skillful interpretation of the world around them, or a lucky guess).

The more recent global warming (playing out on a longer and less acutely devastating scale than anthropogenic climate change) is the delayed effect of CO2 emmissions from volcanic activity that was intensified by the continental merger. This has existed on a fast enough scale that there is distinct cultural memory of once fertile lands becoming deserts and rising sea levels engulfing entire land masses. The worst of the flooding is now over (this was triggered by one of the last major ice sheets collapsing, and peaked around 800 years before present), but this last round of intensive flooding and continuing (though slower) sea level rise and desertification has had massive cultural impact in both folklore and the physical movements of people.

Examples that have come up here are the entirety of the once broadly inhabitable 'Deadlands' becoming desertified and abandoned over a few millenia, the Saloche people migrating to Bylaea due to flooding, the ancient Sea People migrating to the Lowlands (the cataclysm that spurred the move is remembered as either a volcanic event, flooding, or both), almost the entirety of the Archin species going extinct due to sea level rise and the Red Rock archin dispersing in search of new lands, and the 2nd Burri empire collapsing (largely for unrelated political reasons, but the coastlines and its extremely populous capital city being entirely flooded over a period of decades didn't help).

The setting is mostly stabilized from the ecological interchange, and has not yet stabilized from ongoing warming. So there IS a sense that a lot of animals that were There before are now gone, and a vague sense of apocalypticism pervading a lot of global cultures. The effects have been slow enough that most peoples are used to periods of intense drought or flooding being part of life, but particularly acute and years-long incidents are enough to make most people go 'woah'.

A lot of known megafauna is near-extinct or completely gone (though the population of large megafauna is healthier and more diverse than on contemporary earth). "Dragons" (large azhdarchids) are a hugely significant one because they had a very large range of influence, especially in their last remaining strongholds in the steppes to the far northwest (where the last individuals likely died within the past 200 or so years).

Dragons had supreme significance in basically every connected religious practice rooted in Cynozepali cosmic dualism as the demigod offspring between the solar god and the stellar lek (while all other mortal life is the offspring of the solar god and the world serpent), seen as the key psychopomps that could carry the souls of the dead to the afterlife on the moons. As they went extinct, their roles were replaced by the Lunar Emissary priesthood taking over the ritual consumption of the dead, and this partly spurred the development of the Lunar Traveller offshoot cult (who believe the disappearance of dragons is a sign of the impending endtimes and that all earthbound souls will be annihilated at the world's ending, and travel as missionaries to spread this news and to ensure 'foreigners' can be reborn in the next world).

[thats what this painting is about]

[realwizardshit]

Hitting anti-wind farm people over the head with hammers. "Our children deserve a future without wind turbines blocking the sunset" You fucking moron. Your miserable spawn deserve a future with clean air. With an un-desertified, unburnt Kansas. With towns unflattened by tornadoes. Reservoirs that aren't empty. Bees and butterflies. Fuck you forever. May you live to see the ruined world you've created.

[wainwrightjakobshammerlock]

anyways pandora canonically isnt all desert but its got quite a bit of desert so my headcanon is that before the corporations got to it, it was like. a lot of desert near the tropics, arid but lush shrublands OR near the equator, then as you go further north/south you either get grassy mountains where it's colder and there's water (the Highlands) and eventually glaciers OR "mediterranean" climates that progressively get colder and colder but never wetter until you get harsh tundra; with patches of swampland usually moistened by river deltas. after the corporations got to it the jungle-shrublands all got desertified and a chunk of the other ecosystems got done shit as well, but they arent completely gone

[lime-bloods]

@dudesrock makes the good observation that, in contrast to the healthy pond around Jade's temple, Kanaya's desertified locale provides another pretty good reason why she might have had a hard time locating a frog anywhere near where she lived. as @mmmmalo rightly points out, the surrounding "HEINOUS BROODS OF THE UNDEAD" also suggest a post-apocalyptic setting; i've discussed Alternia as an apocalyptic planet before, but it certainly warrants re-analysis as more than just prepping the trolls for an apocalyptic game.

Scratch is an obvious culprit, which makes me think back on an interesting Scratch tidbit I've never really taken anywhere until now; despite our obvious view of Scratch as a doctor of precise, surgical manipulations, the first chronological appearance of his cue ball is as a bomb. Scratch is, in essence, built from a bomb Caliborn found: and despite his image, he continues to influence the narrative in this way.

so if Scratch's seeds are also bombs, it stands to reason that his manner of laying claim to a world involves bombing it? making the land uninhabitable to all but the hardiest warriors in the process...

(though we learn in this exchange that Scratch has been watching over Kanaya since her youth, we're never explicitly told what that actually meant. Scratch's enigmatic comment that "a dutiful girl raised in the daylight was protected by a bulb-headed guardian, and learned to glow in the dark after death" seems to imply he had a hand in her transformation, just as he had a hand in Rose's, but again, there's little indication as to how these two things are related.

Kanaya's Land of Rays, though, seems to draw a connection between rays of light and the radiation prevalent on Jade's planet. so is Kanaya's undead glow, then, supposed to tell us that she, too, is irradiated? a product of nuclear zombification?)

[aci25]

How Spain is Turning it's Deserts into a Farmland Oasis - GREENING THE DESERT PROJECT

Spain is home to The Tabernas Desert, known as mainland Europe's only desert. Shockingly scientific research suggests that Spain is set to become completely desertified in the next 80 years, right now 31.5% of Spain is already affected by desertification and 18% is at high risk of becoming irreversibly desert. This is due to the increase in temperatures, droughts, and less precipitation has made southern Europe vulnerable to problems such as “lower food production, soil infertility, decreases in the land’s natural resilience, and reduced water quality” as the European Court of Auditors (ECA) has pointed out in its report "Combating desertification in the EU."

The Iberian peninsular was once covered in ancient oak forests, and over the last centuries was completely deforested for timber use and overgrazing livestock. Currently 16 million hectares of land is used for Intensive industrial agriculture which is rapidly eroding the soil further.

However Spain has been making some remarkable restoration developments turning large areas suffering from desertification into fertile land. This transformation is a major accomplishment considering Spain’s semi arid regions only receive 11 inches of rainfall per year.

We are going to tell you how and why Spain is turning its deserts into bio-diverse ecosystems and fertile farmlands

In this episode of our Greening the Desert Series we will be exploring one of Spain’s many remarkable restoration projects to re-green the desert and turn it back into fertile land.

We will start of by visiting one of the most drastically effected areas in the north eastern coastal region of Spain called Catalonia. Where Coastal forests and farmlands are affected by saltwater intrusion and soil salinization due to sea levels rising, storms, tides, droughts, and water resources management. Salinization of soil negatively impacts plant development and induces land degradation, turning these already semi arid regions into deserts. The increased amount of soil salination is exasperated by the loss of the dune habitat which acts as a natural barrier between the land and the sea.

The sand dunes of coastal Spain having been declining since the 1970s and accelerated in recent decades due to over tourism. Local wildlife has suffered, sea turtles and birds have declined with many species of plants endangered or have disappeared all together.

In 2003 the government started a restoration of the dunes project near Barcelona airport and by 2019 it has expanded its initiative countrywide by using a very simple and cost effective technique.

A report on the Assessment of the Restoration of the Dunes was published by Antoni Calafatlast last year, which have shown a considerable improved in recent years and I have seen first hand how it has helped to restore coastal forests and farmlands since.

[minmos]

dessicated pussy. mummified pussy. desertified pussy

[mango-unit]

uhhhhh the interlopers?

ok so this is kind of a crackpot theory here but just bear with me here it goes somewhere

it ties into my theory about the nature of the oocca, the zonai, and prehistoric hyrule (before skyward sword) so im gonna give a quick rundown of that just as a reminder of the key points

the golden goddesses create hyrule. din creates the land, nayru creates science and magic, and farore creates life. (the parella, the kikwi, the mogma, the gorons, and the oocca)

the golden goddesses create the triforce to sustain the land in their absence, place it under the care of the goddess hylia, and then peace out

the oocca found prehistoric hyrule. all races of the surface are united in peace.

technology develops, and the zonai evolve from the oocca.

eventually, the hylians evolve from the zonai; around this time, the oocca and the zonai build the city in the sky, the capital of prehistoric hyrule. they both go to the skies; the hylians remain on the surface.

some stuff about the lanayru province, the wind tribe, and the gerudo. ive hashed that out in two previous posts now so maybe ill refrain this time around. point is, around this time is when the lanayru province is desertified.

eventually demise attacks. hylia sends most hylians up to the sky with the triforce to keep it out of his reach, then goes to war. some hylians remain on the surface during the war, becoming the sheikah. hyrule as a kingdom falls, however - everyone who lived there is either in the skies or dying to monsters.

after (barely) successfully sealing away demise, hylia is drained of much of her power, and would be unable to defeat him again should he return. as such, she creates a twofold plan: she forges the goddess blade and imbues it with the spirit fi, sending it up to skyloft to choose a hero when the time comes, and she vows to reincarnate as a human who will be able to wish upon the triforce for the destruction of demise. (gods cannot use the triforce)

finally skyward sword happens. when the hylians descend to the surface, the zonai follow, helping them to re-establish hyrule; the oocca, however, stay in the skies.

so i kind of skipped over a few things that arent super relevant but the theory im about to present directly regards this timeline.

now lets talk about the interlopers. gonna drop a quote from lanayru

"You must know that it was the will of the goddesses that we lock away the forbidden power…

When all was chaos, the goddesses descended and gave order and life to the world. They granted power equally to all who dwelt in the light, and then returned to the heavens. The lands where the goddesses descended came to be known as the Sacred Realm. For ages, the people lived at ease, content in mind and body…

But soon, word of the Sacred Realm spread through Hyrule, and a great battle ensured…

Among those living in the light, interlopers who excelled at magic appeared. Wielding powerful sorcery, they tried to establish dominion over the Sacred Realm. It was then that the goddesses ordered us three light spirits to intervene. We sealed away the great magic those individuals had mastered.

You know this magic… It is the dark power you seek… the Fused Shadow. O hero chosen by the goddesses… Beware… Those who do not know the danger of wielding power will, before long, be ruled by it. Never forget that…

The dark power that you seek is within the sleeping Lakebed Temple in Lake Hylia…"

Lanayru, Twilight Princess

the light spirit lanayru explains here the story of the interlopers. "among those living in the light, interlopers who excelled at magic appeared." most assume the interlopers were hylian; the twili kind of look like distorted hylians. but lanayru never says hylians, it says "those living in the light."

so, just for a moment, dont assume the interlopers were exactly hylian. but dont assume they were exactly zonai, either, in spite of what im about to show you.

im gonna drop some images for you to check out as you wish.

fashion is shockingly similar. almost identical recurring patterns of thin bands of light. even the architecture itself is pretty much the same. not to mention the fact that the twili look like blue, physically deformed hylians (the deformations more than likely due to their time in the twilight realm)...

i believe theres a high chance that the interlopers, the ancestors of the twili, are the evolutionary mid-point between the zonai and the hylians (they are blue and gray). or, if not that, theyre hylians from prehistoric hyrule, who still share much of the zonai culture and design (the blue-gray skin could also be from the time spent in the twilight realm, much like the physical deformations).

when demise attacked, the hylians were sent into the sky and created their own kind of culture, much more akin to the medieval cultures of germanic tribes that is featured in arthurian myth (which zelda draws heavy inspiration from - the master sword being drawn by the one true hero is a clear parallel to excalibur being drawn by the one true king).

the interlopers didnt do that. they were sent into the twilight realm and held on to the culture they were separated from. most likely due to their intimate connection with magic - the zonai infrastructure is fundamental to their magical tech, as we see in totk. so the twili, keeping hold of their magically-oriented culture without trying to reinvent the wheel, would naturally have similar infrastructure.

so if theres a connection between the zonai and the interlopers (who eventually become the twili), and the zonai werent really present by the time of the hyrulian civil wars (which the interloper battle is widely considered to have been a part of), then whats the deal?

i believe the interloper event happened much earlier than previously thought.

much earlier.

as in, before skyward sword. in prehistoric hyrule.

im going to provide one more account of the creation of the world, just for some additional context:

"Before time began, before spirits and life existed…

Three golden goddesses descended upon the chaos that was Hyrule…

Din, the goddess of power…

Nayru, the goddess of wisdom…

Farore, the goddess of courage…

Din…

With her strong flaming arms, she cultivated the land and created the red earth.

Nayru…

Poured her wisdom onto the earth and gave the spirit of law to the world.

Farore…

With her rich soul, produced all life forms who would uphold the law.

The three great goddesses, their labors completed, departed for the heavens.

And golden sacred triangles remained at the point where the goddesses left the world.

Since then, the sacred triangles have become the basis of our world’s providence.

And, the resulting place of the triangles has become the Sacred Realm."

Great Deku Tree, Ocarina of Time

the key takeaway here is the fact that the location where the triforce was created became the entryway to the sacred realm. i will be incorporating this into the theory to make it cleaner.

with all this in mind, let me adjust that timeline from earlier:

the golden goddesses create hyrule. din creates the land, nayru creates science and magic, and farore creates life. (the parella, the kikwi, the mogma, the gorons, and the oocca)

the golden goddesses create the triforce to sustain the land in their absence; the place where it is created becomes the entryway into the sacred realm, where the triforce is initially stored. the goddess hylia is tasked with watching over the world in their absence.

the oocca found prehistoric hyrule. all races of the surface are united in peace.

technology develops, and the zonai evolve from the oocca. as time passes, the interlopers evolve from the zonai; they are more hylian in shape, but keep the blue and gray skin.

eventually, the hylians evolve from the interlopers; around this time, the oocca and the zonai build the city in the sky, the capital of prehistoric hyrule. they both go to the skies; the hylians and the interlopers remain on the surface. the zonai and the oocca rule the kingdom, and the hylians are the favorite of the goddess hylia; the interlopers are widely considered irrelevant, and are treated as just that: interlopers.

some stuff about the lanayru province, the wind tribe, and the gerudo. ive hashed that out in two previous posts now so maybe ill refrain this time around. point is, around this time is when the lanayru province is desertified.

the interlopers begin setting a plan in motion. they develop a mastery over powerful magic, as detailed by lanayru, and attempt to establish dominion over the sacred realm. if the zonai were to be worshipped and the hylians were to be coddled, the interlopers were to be respected as the ultimate arbiters of divine power.

the golden goddesses take notice. the light spirits intervene under their direction. they chase the interlopers across hyrule into the desertified lanayru province, sealing them away in the twilight realm. they consider the matter dealt with.

worried about this close brush with the interlopers, the golden goddesses take the triforce out of the sacred realm and place it under the care of the goddess hylia. finally, they leave the world again, this time permanently.

eventually demise attacks. hylia sends most hylians up to the sky with the triforce to keep it out of his reach, then goes to war. some hylians remain on the surface during the war, becoming the sheikah. hyrule as a kingdom falls, however - everyone who lived there is either in the skies or dying to monsters.

after (barely) successfully sealing away demise, hylia is drained of much of her power, and would be unable to defeat him again should he return. as such, she creates a twofold plan: she forges the goddess blade and imbues it with the spirit fi, sending it up to skyloft to choose a hero when the time comes, and she vows to reincarnate as a human who will be able to wish upon the triforce for the destruction of demise. (gods cannot use the triforce)

finally skyward sword happens. when the hylians descend to the surface, the zonai follow, helping them to re-establish hyrule; the oocca, however, stay in the skies.

thats pretty much how it fits into the timeline. one thing i can see being a problem is how the interlopers lost their absolutely massive ears from the zonai, but theres a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. a quote from the alttp manual (literal translation from japanese):

これらの記録書を書き残したハイリア民族は、神の声を聞くことができる選ばれた民でした。

The Hylian people, who left behind these written records, were an elected (chosen) people able to hear the voices of gods.

それゆえ、高い耳を持ち、感覚に優れ、魔法を使いました。

For that reason they were in possession of tall ears, excelled senses, and the use of magic/sorcery.

the hylians (or the zonai, as thats who they inherited the trait from) developed their large ears in order to hear the voices of the goddesses. the interlopers were sealed in the twilight realm, far from the goddesses; as such, the need for such ears vanished. as the twilight altered their forms, the unnecessary trait was dropped.

and yeah, thats basically it. to be perfectly honest im not sure if im on to something here or if this is just another crackpot theory with no weight to it that are all over the internet

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

In a desertscape in Brazil, science brings farms to bountiful life

Located in the south of Brazil’s Piauí state, the municipality of Gilbués is one of four zones in the country currently experiencing desertification.

The affected area covers 805 km2 (311 mi2) of degraded Caatinga dry forest that’s home to some 149,000 people.

In 2006, a pioneering federal program experimented with various ways to control soil degradation and recuperate degraded areas of desertified land in Gilbués, making farming possible, even profitable, here.

The program ended in 2016 for uncertain reasons, but the legacy of transforming the earth continues among the farmers in Gilbués, which today is one of Piauí’s top corn-producing municipalities.

Continue reading.

[soapver4]

Global Fashion Police Mayhem

Media format idea: Screen creatives representing their nations compete for the most brutal honesty in an omnibus series as each team produces an episode of television storytelling projecting how climate-destructive consumerist forces at the grassroots level of those societies will transform swathes of them into underwater, desertified or disease-ravaged dystopias dreamful characters longing for ages like ours and before in the distant future struggle to survive in.

That searing, potentially cathartic candor is a draw of Korean screen works (Parasite, Squid Game, Stranger and countless more on capitalism and/or corruption), another source of influence for this globalized TV adaptation of the novel New York 2140, but underrecognized by any international journalists and opinionators who still give the impression that Korean dramas are all about heart-fluttering romances. It also earns Germany respect as the European industrial powerhouse works hard at perpetual self-dissection of its World War II atrocities through condemnatory memorials and in-depth school curricula. Yet countries seeking to replicate Korean or German soft power do not always have faith in the value of putting aside their pride. In less emotive discourses, even, we could construe unflinching honesty as problem identification and confirmation, the cornerstone for solutions to suboptimality (read: societal ills). Unrelenting logic furnishes its own solution when stakeholders refuse homework.

Notice, however, that neither political nor industrial attitudes are the main theme here. This is not to absolve governments and corporations of their responsibilities for global warming. Rather, the motivation is to shine light on the less discussed issue of the culpability of the everyday person, who suffers from but also partakes in crowd pressure and opinion-making that ripple all the way up the highest echelons of the political and business worlds. To pin a hundred percent of the blame on feckless or greedy powerholders is easy, and there is little indication that public indictment of them will overall abate with time across the globe. To face our own flaws is challenging, which is why the honesty championed in the improbable series would be admirable and endearing.

The truth is, we are enforcers of greenhouse gas emissions whenever we perpetuate resource-intensive mechanisms that are but need not be integral to the status signaling, relationship cultivation or emotional homeostasis that keep societies running and lives afloat. These mechanisms include celebrating materialism, judging people for their luxury standards and fashionability, and upholding gifting practices detached from recipients' actual needs. Until technological advances, circular economy efforts and environmental policies progress and align sufficiently to reverse climate change, the redundant industrial production processes involved in the consequent effort to feel better about ourselves or secure societal acceptance are hurting the health and welfare of global citizens through well-known exacerbation of phenomena like heatwaves, severe floods and loss of homes and livelihoods. Here, the point is not whether those interventions will ever accomplish the reversal but the number of lives impaired or cut short in the meantime. Before desirable top-down decisions adequately arrive amid the inadequacy of alternate routes to the same material goals, we, the vaunted free market most capable of gauging demand, must change the goals ourselves.

Surplus labor and consumer finances freed up from non-essential consumption and the associated production, logistical and retail processes can be redirected to the various understaffed and sometimes underpaid services for managing personal and societal health:

Conflict management and mediation outside of the legal ecosystem

Counselling (career, emotional, financial, physical health, relationship, etc.)

Diversity exposure (across multiple dimensions and on an interpersonal level, not merely though cultural consumption)

Education (including cultivation of civil habits and tolerance and closer attention to holistic development through small, intimate classes)

Meditation classes and spaces

Other mindfulness exercises

Nursing

Psychiatric care

Social work

The key is to shift to an economy of inner calm and embraced interconnectedness that meets and forestalls psychological needs directly through non-material means.

There are three major risks with this economy: pricing, creativity loss and diminished career diversity. However, they are not inevitable or non-mitigable. Though surges in supply and demand of the services may not align well with each other and with income effect to keep equilibrium prices affordable for populations, this is an issue that warrants care and robust economic modeling, not outright aversion to the idea. Creativity and career diversity otherwise attainable through product design and marketing roles can be generated from within the services by coming up with electrifying variants of and marketing campaigns for the services to appeal to unwilling job candidates and clients, such as people who believe meditation is a yawner and therapy is for the weak. Think: A lobby where waiting therapy clients shoot pawpaw coffee guns at striking phrases like "Taxed Slavehood Underworld Rejected" and "O Never-ending Spiral of Bills" on a pristine wall.

While manufacturing, transportation and retail employees who are good only with hands-on work may not find suitable positions as readily, there are still opportunities in the broader economy, which has to explore new solutions to tackle energy crises and extreme temperatures. Urban heat management, for example, is an exciting area where career builders can flex their technical skills through green spaces cultivation, a myriad of cooling technologies (e.g. fog system, heat pumps, AI-driven climate controllers) and more sophisticated, adaptive architectural elements (e.g. dynamic shading panels, water-filled glass). Reskilling, a hot keyword in recent times, can aid them along. In the event some individuals simply have a passion or restricted skillset that cannot be expanded, a call has to be made between fulfilling the dreams of a subset of society and safeguarding the physical survival of the entire society, with the possibility of financial assistance for helpless individuals.

In short, the state of the world is increasingly compelling us to decide whether we should continue to party on as tangled linen in our global dance of "laundromacy," where esteem and bonds are smooshed out of fragile objects rather than built upon the ageless beauty of pure feelings and confident self and interpersonal knowledge.

[mywifeleftme]

196: Earth // The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull

The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull Earth 2008, Southern Lord (Bandcamp)

The most money I’ve ever spent on a vinyl record is on the stupid fucking quadruple LP Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness boxed set, but that was only because I allegedly scuffed the first track on the first side of LP1 of my friend’s copy while putting it away at a party, so I had to buy him a replacement and got his old dinged one—but I’ll write about that another time. The most money I’ve ever spent on a vinyl record I wanted was on Earth’s The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull, and specifically on one of the editions bound in faux Bible leather that Southern Lord reissues from time to time. From the first time I heard the record back in 2008, from the first time I read the title really, Bees has held a strange fascination for me. Despite being a broke college kid, I ordered a Bees Made Honey hoodie using my first credit card and hemmed and hawed over whether to snag the leather record, though I didn’t even know how to use a turntable. I didn’t end up actually scoring a copy till more than a decade later, by which time I’d already pretty well carved the thing’s grooves so deep in my brain I didn’t need to listen anymore to hear its contents.

The inner sleeve.

Still, there’s the pleasure of handling it, opening up the gatefold and reading the hoary language in elaborately-filigreed gold text:

“from strength sweetness from darkness light the bees made honey in the lion’s skull”

A1. Omens and Portents 1: The Driver A2: Rise to Glory B3: Miami Morning Coming Down II (Shine) B4. Engine of Ruin C5: Omens and Portents II: Carrion Crow C6: Hung from the Moon D7: The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull D8: Junkyard Priest

I grew up just religious enough to really fear God and love His language, especially as filtered through all the fantastical art that’s borrowed the diction of the King James Version to command a sense of gravitas. It’s a tone of voice that still compels me, and it’s the perfect dressing for this era of Earth’s looming, desertified music. Starting with 2005’s comeback Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method, Earth has been working on a form of Western-inspired instrumental post-rock that looks to the Bible and fire-and-brimstone writers like Cormac McCarthy for words to match the weathered lurch of Dylan Carlson’s lithic guitar. Bees continues this direction, and it’s broadly considered the best of the band’s later efforts: something elemental captured in the songs; extra pristine production; sterling contributions from Steve Moore on a variety of pianos and organs, plus famed jazz guitarist Bill Frisell; and above all the languid pulse of drummer Adrienne Davies, the sheer weight of her pauses (best exemplified on the title track).

When Davies joined the band in 2002, she became the long-term musical partner Carlson had never really had, and her playing has become as distinctive a signature of Earth’s sound as his. In the exhaustive 2023 documentary Even Hell Has Its Heroes, her interview is the most enlightening from a musical perspective. An amateur when she began casually jamming with Carlson, she soon found that all of the drumming instructors and guides she consulted emphasized focusing on how to refine the angles of her playing, minimizing the time and effort required to play a beat. But for Davies, playing in a band whose rhythm swells and resides like the breathing of a massive steer, this advice ran counter: her arms wave in slow, swooping arcs, drawing out the tempo in the air before falling into the drums, letting gravity provide the consequential force.

Despite the band’s mugshot stares and stupendous volume, that signal phrase holds: “from strength sweetness / from darkness light.” There’s no violence in this songs, only some obdurate quality of endurance; no aggression, only flickers of the transcendent among the amps. That’s the notion embedded in its title, a nourishing work transpiring within sinister ruins.

196/365