#in tune with nature

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

[fumifooms]

Omg guys he just genuinely likes bugs and mollusks and critters 😭💘💔 Forced to noble when he just wanna crouch and watch things skitter in the dirt…

[starrysymphonies]

THE GANGS ALL HEREEE!!!!!! My vat7k redesigns

These drawings are kinda messy but!!! They took so long so I’m not cleaning it up :P

Plus a mini doodle comic with a little HC I have. Kinda?? Moon!Varian??? But also kinda not. More like magic radiation from Quirin being near the Moonstone being passed to Varian and my idea on how magic might work

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Old Men(tor) Big Naturals

(for @3luecactuz)

[velociraptorsaurusrex]

I wanted him dead; I wanted him all to myself.

get him back!

[justaz]

merlin raised by druids and being The Androgyn, you ponder it for a while and painstakingly come to the conclusion that you're staring at a woman. blink. you're looking at a man. long, luscious hair that morgana and gwaine are jealous of. pretty eyes and full lips. sharp cheekbones. uther's teachings that echo in arthur's mind and have been quieting over the years going dead silent the moment he sees merlin.

[crepesuzette2023]

Ivan Vaughan writes about John and Paul

This is just a relatively brief excerpt from Ivan Vaughan's book, which, for the most part, focuses on his life with Parkinson's disease. (From what I can tell so far, it's absolutely fascinating: far more than 'simply' a memoir, it's a reflection on illness, the mind-body connection, science, psychotropic drugs, patients' autonomy...and much more.)

But since this blog is climbing the drainpipe to the John & Paul business, and there's been some recent discussion of Mark Lewisohn's claim that John was such a bad boy Ivan's mother sent her son to a different grammar school to separate the two, I thought the following might be interesting.

And the ending of this chapter also gives some context to Paul's reaction to John's murder—another topic about which ML has interesting opinions.

This isn't to pile on ML, but more...as words from someone who was there.

(CC: @mythserene, @anotherkindofmindpod) I met John when I was three or four years old. One wet morning there was a knock at the front door. My mother opened it, and looking down, found a boy a bit older than me, smiling, but preoccupied with the effort of remembering what he had been rehearsed to say.

‘I believe a little boy lives here. I wondered if you might like to come out and play.’ He stood there in the porch, rain pouring down behind him, with a pair of slippers under his arm.

‘Come on in. What’s your name? You live round the corner don’t you?’

Next day I went around to the house where he lived with his aunt and uncle. We played with Dinky cars. I was surprised by his generosity and willingness to share his toys; he was happy even for me to take some of them home. When his Uncle George came home with some sweets John readily shared them. There was an immediate bond between us. He was older, read books, and his great intelligence and experience were apparent. I accepted his leadership but I was determined to preserve my independence. From the warm security of Aunt Mimi’s control, John accepted me into his life.

John was a member of his local library and immersed himself in books so that by the age of five he was already a fluent reader. I was still in the infant school when he started at Dovedale Road Primary School, but we played together after school and weekends. There were numerous parks, a golf course, and fields full of tangled growth and trees — just right for playing cowboys and Indians. In one barren area with large lumps of hard earth we played football and cricket. We spent hours digging all tracks to race our Dinky cars. Our most exciting game, though, was ‘fires’. We would go to a large area of waste ground and simply set fire to the straw and watch the place. I have never understood why nobody stopped us.

John’s gang comprised, besides himself, Pete Shotton, Nigel Wally and me. I was the youngest and was constantly having to prove my worth. I feel privileged to be John’s friend since he was nearly two years older. He protected me against Timmy Tarbuck and his gang on the rare occasions when I made the mistake of confronting one of them.

John and I went to different grammar schools, but I used to hear about the chaos and riots that seem to be a daily feature of his schooling. I’d rather lost touch with him when I went to university, and did not see him again until sometime after I was married. Then one day, as I was playing with my little boy Jus on the steps of our house in London, white Rolls Royce turned into the road. John jumped out followed by a woman I have not met before.

‘Hello, Ivy! This is Yoko.’ (…)

My attachment to both John and Paul ran deep and occasionally I would go to great lengths in order to see them at a moment’s notice. Maybe Paul saw our continuing friendship as a way of maintaining simple values he held dear. Jan liked Paul, though she did not see much of John. She was not the least bit mesmerized by their fame. She enjoyed eating at expensive restaurants in sampling London’s nightlife, into which Paul took us from time to time. But, should the effort to come to great, she was willing to let the relationship fade.

A month after telephoning John in New York [with the news of the Parkinson’s diagnosis; their first conversation in years], a heavy parcel was delivered. It was not until I was reading the titles of the books it contained that I realized they had been sent by John and Yoko. There was one by Arthur Janov, author of the Primal Scream, and one entitled Mind Magic. How to Get Well had on the fly-leaf a message from John that read ‘to start looking’, and The Snow Leopard had a note saying ���to relax’. This last book gave me the greatest pleasure and I frequently re-read passages from it. Its author, Peter Matthiesen, lost his son through illness and journeyed in Nepal and in Inner Dolpo on a completely pointless journey to catch sight of a snow leopard. The peace he found travels across to the reader from each page.

John’s accompanying letter urged me, in punning language, to keep my spirits high and strongly suggested that it was up to me whether I sank or swam. I must not lose faith in myself.

Ten weeks later he was shot dead. Paul and I did not contact each other about it; in fact, we never brought it up in conversation. I hardly reacted outwardly at all. The day after John’s death, however, a colleague said that he supposed I was very upset at what it happened. I heard myself say: ‘I don’t know what I feel. I don’t know that I feel much at all’. As soon as he had gone, I instinctively made my way to a room where I knew I could be alone, and I wept profusely.

-- from Ivan-Living with Parkinson's Disease by Ivan Vaughan. 1986.

[gideonisms]

Ianthe nature trail guide she shows up in boots with a 6 inch heel takes you 5 minutes into the forest to a big rock and tells you it's famous and you should just stay there to appreciate it. then she leaves

[turtleblogatlast]

One of my favorite things about Leo’s portals is the fact that they’re tangible.

He can throw those like frisbees and hit people with them like?? The boys’ abilities are so fun and magical and even sci-fi-esque but this aspect of Leo’s portals are so distinctly a Looney Tunes flavor of cartoon-y that I absolutely adore.

And sure this aspect of the portals can be used for fighting, but moreover the sheer amount of visual gags this does and can create is infinite.

[susieandhobbes]

I feel bad because Ayo is clearly legitimately pissed about the baseball video of her and Jeremy blowing up like this and her feelings are valid but in my extremely unprofessional and not at all certified PR perspective - she/her team are handling it SO BADLY.

Deleting her tik toks or IG pics, not dropping another vogue partnership video that (allegedly) was coming today, reposting that video about filming people in public - BABY THE STREISAND EFFECT!!!

The more rattled you seem, the more the internet is going to think they caught you at something and the harder they're going to read into everything. Hell, half the people who saw the video were like "oh this must be a marketing strategy" and while that makes literally no sense because you don't promote a ~platonic~ friendship by stirring up dating rumors, it was still something people were willing to believe. She should have posted "anyway The Bear Season 3 airs June 27th! Go cubs" on her IG story and kept it pushing

[peridot-tears]

During the main quests, this appears p often. It literally means "Jin's Journey":

But the kanji for "Jin" -- 仁 -- also means "benevolence," emphasizing a respect for humanity. So 仁之道, while it means "Jin's Journey," can also be read as "the path/way of benevolence."

He isn't following the bushido, or 武士道，the way of the warrior/samurai, but rather 仁之道, the way of benevolence, a path that diverts sharply from the "honor" that samurai follow.

[auricdrake]

Round 5 because my polls have gotten lots of love...

I want to give folks the chance to vote for their faves once again (or for the first time if you missed it the first go round)! As always, if you wanna give some love to a meme I didn't put on the poll, let me know and I might do another!

[creature-wizard]

The big secret to getting in tune with nature is to just habitually observe and watch what it does. It really is that simple.

[the-priestess-of-dawn]

Thinking about how when Chrom talks to Robin at the beginning of chapter 6, just after war has broken out, he specifically says "Not everything Gangrel said was a lie." And then his next line is talking about how his father waged war on Plegia, which makes it sound like, oh, okay, Gangrel was telling the truth when he said the former exalt led a crusade against them. But I'm wondering if the line that was truly eating at Chrom was actually "Yours is now a haven of hypocrisy." Because this is when Chrom goes into detail about how Emmeyn suffered ending the war and bringing peace to Ylisse, and he's, y'know, way more bitter about how the Ylissean people acted than anything Plegia did. He talks about how Plegians "rightfully remember" what his father put them through and he does mention that their desire for vengeance was part of the legacy their father left her to deal with, but what he goes into detail about, what he complains about, what he's really upset about is the Ylissean response. They hurt her and she hid the fact that she was suffering from everyone while continuing to work to heal them. And then they "forgave" her—Chrom literally uses scare quotes. Now, he doesn't say "those damn hypocrites" aloud, but the implication is pretty much "how could those damn hypocrites 'forgive' her when she did nothing wrong and they did nothing but attack her? They should have been the ones begging for forgiveness."

And like, this all started when he was 4 years old, you know? He brings up how Emmeryn wasn't even 10 yet when she became exalt, and that means he was only 4! It's been 15 years. He's had these feelings about the situation for most of his life! And then you've got Gangrel over here, mouthing off because he wants to start a war but he needs to be able to paint Ylisse as the aggressor, and he throws out "yours is a haven of hypocrisy"— How horrific and sickening must it feel to hear the enemy who openly claims to want all of your people dead make a statement about them that you agree with.

And perhaps Chrom is thinking about himself, too. This conversation is where he gives his "perhaps I must be death's agent" line. Emmeryn would never order Gangrel killed, and he wouldn't WANT her to do so, but he is fully ready to take the matter into his own hands. He believes in his sister's ideals. But. They're not as important as HER. Virtue isn't his priority and he knows it.

Honestly, the whole Plegia arc is such a dark time for him.

[cricketsrings]

Eine Stunde Cricket-Feld. Cricket-Zwitschergeräusche

Das Zirpen von Grillen ist ein einfaches Geräusch, das jeder auf der ganzen Welt verstehen kann. Es ist eine Stimme, die man würdigen kann, ohne dass es komplexer oder kulturspezifischer Erklärungen bedarf. Das Zirpen von Grillen hat eine universelle Anziehungskraft, die Erinnerungen wecken, eine friedliche Stimmung schaffen und den Menschen helfen kann, sich in der geschäftigen Welt der modernen Welt mit der Natur zu verbinden.

[hunxi-after-hours]

love a character dynamic when the bad guys corner the protagonist in an abandoned warehouse and is like "give it up! we took care of your friend on the way over so you have no reinforcements!" and the protagonist is like "wait what did you say. did you kill him" and the bad guys are like "yeah you heard us right! we took care of him! no one's coming to help you!" and the protagonist grabs them by the lapels like "no but did you KILL him" and the bad guys are like "uhhh the point is you are alone with no reinforcements???" and the protagonist just pushes them away in disgust like "you fools. if you don't kill him dead for realsies then he'll just keep getting stronger and stronger and soon it'll be impossible to stop him it all! you absolute idiots" and then said friend crashes through the roof with a blaze of light and a perfect three point landing and the protagonist just facepalms and shakes his head like "god. now it'll be even HARDER to get rid of him" while the friend mops the warehouse floor with the bad guys