#sentient plants

[tinytracys]

The Tiny Tracys (and special guests) star in:

The Vines of Doom

One sunny afternoon, Professor Moffat took a walk in the lab gardens to recite her fractal tables and calm her nerves after an unfortunate incident involving the newly built Superlative Hadron Collider and a misdirected shipment of hair dye…

John: International Rescue we have a situation…

Brains: W-Wait, is that… M-M-MOFFIEEE!!! 😧

The rescue gets underway. Brains has come along to supervise and wail pitifully at key moments of tension

Scott: Relax, Brains, this will be a piece of cake, it’s only a few plants…

OH.

Scott: Hey bro, could do with a hand up here. It’s like these twisty menaces are sentient. What could have made them act this way?

*mysterious cackling*

*wailing*

Virgil: Ok big bro let’s laser you out of there and get back to saving Brains’ sweetheart.

Don’t worry Professor, they’ll free you in no time.

Virgil: Soooo, new hair?

I don’t think she wants to talk about it, Virg…

Professor Moffat is gently lowered to safety and a very emotional Dr Hackenbacker

Brains: I-I hope you’re o-ok? Your h-hair is v-very impressive.

Meanwhile, Kayo is enjoying her favourite hobby - ruining The Hood’s plans…

Kayo: Killer plants, really, uncle? You might regret “tangling” in horticulture, you know

Who could have predicted this?

Kayo: Lovely to catch up but I’ve got to dash. Why don’t you “hang around” here for the GDF?

*angry squawking noises*

Later, while the big bros reason with the groundskeeper about digging up the deadly vines, the little bros are catching some rays before the flight home…

Alan: Wow Gordy, it’s so peaceful here…

*more mysterious cackling*

The Hood: the GDF will never hold me, I disguised myself as a vine. I am a genius, none of you can stop my evil plans!

Gordon: Alan, look out! I think he’s going to start villian-monologuing!

Alan: Aaaagh, surely there is nobody who can save us now? We’re doomed!

John descends from space in his high tech space elevator

John: Your speeches are terrible.

The Hood’s schemes are thwarted again. He was taken for another short holiday at the GDF’s most desolate prison facility.

The boys return to Tracy Island, adding vines to the growing collection of weird phobias experienced by International Rescue.

[gradientpillar]

[free-range-writing-prompts]

Who Resets The Traps?

You know how, in stories where some treasure-hunting adventurer goes into some ancient lost ruins in search of a particularly special artifact or treasure horde, and there's all these traps left behind by some civilization so long gone that the ruins are all overgrown with jungle vine, moss, or some other form of vegetation (or it's filled with snakes, beetles, or some other vermin) with or without crumbling stone, worn rope bridges, or some other signs of the structure being old and worn...

I gotta ask, if the place has been protected by traps since it was built, then why would any part of it show wear of any sort other than old age alone, looking like countless generations of people wore down stone steps or bridges or whatever else? Have there really been THAT many people who tried to break into this place? (Also: Do the vermin never set off the traps accidentally?)

BUT MORE THAN THAT: if it's so long abandoned, old, and untended by a lost civilization that (presumably) is no longer there to tend it, then why do the modern-times adventurers come across multiple skulls/skeletons and other signs of previous would-be raiders having been killed by the traps... which are still sitting in wait, ready to be sprung by the next attempt? Is there some secret hidden someone who lurks around, just waiting for people to get killed by the traps, and then who resets the crushing room and the wall spikes, opens the fallen-down stone doors, closes the trap doors, refills the stock of poison darts and/or arrows in the walls, puts back any large rolling boulders, and rebuilds crumbled statues and other stoneworks? Also, if everything is so old that rope bridges might fall apart at any moment, why would the trap mechanisms not also be falling apart? Why should they work as well as they ever did when they were first made? Organic material components break down over time, metal can corrode in environments where there's enough water present for plants to grow or vermin to thrive, and even stone mechanisms would eventually wear down if the traps have been set off countless times before.

(am now picturing the Knight in The Last Crusade who guards the Grail, waiting centuries for the right person to come along, and most of the time, even if someone does show up, they don't even make it to the inner room to fight the Knight, so after waiting a respectable time after hearing the traps in the outer passages get set off, he's saying to himself: "Well, I guess that's another one who didn't make it very far. Better go reset the traps." )

SO:

In your dungeon, who would reset the traps?

Fairies, gremlins, magic somehow indefinitely sustained by some secret power source, perhaps the very creeping vines that cover the walls have enough intelligence and freedom of movement that they are in charge of dungeon maintenance...

...or maybe it's this guy?

" 'Ello. "

(btw, am now also imagining some kind of scenario where there's an entire working dungeon ecosystem (on purpose), where the artifact in the ruin provides energy (instead of sunlight) to the plants, which perform maintenance (including trap-resets) and where insects feed on the plants, larger vermin feed on the insects, and dumb wandering animals larger than the vermin feed on them... and also randomly set off the traps, which provides the important function of routine testing to make sure the traps are working smoothly as designed. Alternatively, the larger fauna (such as gremlins) might perform maintenance instead of sentient flora. "Oh, hear that? There goes the trap in corridor 2-57G. Today was Bob's turn to test there, I wonder if he survived?" )

(alternatively, are none of the traps actually automatic at all, but instead all function by some life form(s) in the walls manually setting each one off, firing each individual dart, moving the spikes and walls and trap doors because they are always watching for intruders to come by? The sci-fi equivalent would be that nothing would be set to automatically go off, but instead some kind of dungeon/spaceship/building master-control AI is watching everything all the time and chooses each trap to turn on at just the right time... a fantasy-world equivalent of THAT would be some magical being with a crystal ball (or hundreds of them) watching everyone who enters and choosing what perils to inflict on which people, and when. (Like a GM in an RPG, haha)

(Note: Totally am NOT planning to use any of this stuff for anything anywhere in my writing, just couldn't help thinking about it when watching Indiana Jones movies... so it is all up for grabs for anyone (or everyone) who might want to use it, that's why it's here.)

(hoping it won't keep taking up space in my head, causing me to think of more and more related concepts)

[sourtomatola]

Solar was afraid that after he was falsely arrested and imprisoned for a month, his poor little ornamental pumpkin plant would die without him. To his shock, it instead gained sentience.

I was trying to think of a metaphor for how it must have felt for solar, making something that was basically alive but not sentient, only for it to gin sentience on its own...anyways this is what came to mind. Also instead of dying he was falsely accused and arrested

Part2

[dragons-hoard-of-fandoms]

Unless we get official confirmation that "Cyn" no longer exists/never existed in the first place and is nothing more than a hollow shell for the Solver to control, I refuse to believe she's not still somewhere in there and isn't actually a sweet little precious baby angel who should be protected at all costs and deserves to be saved and reunited with N just as much as Uzi does.

[memoriesbyebba]

i remember that study about grass screaming when you cut it and now i genuinly feel bad for my cactus

me giving up on my cactus and just cutting of the parts that look weird

[ohno-the-sun]

Uh oh Sun is dying

And he’s known for awhile

[hiimcanadia]

I love Sexual Sunday but I'm always so nervous to participate because I personally like writing fantasy sex a lot more than realistic sex. So other ppl will post normal stuff like "what if Stede surprised Ed with new lingerie 🥰" and my silly little brain will go "ooh my turn! What if Stede ate a gummy worm that made him grow a second penis"

[serpentface]

Do psychotropic drugs and/or ritual play a role in any of the blightseed cultures? A pretty broad question, lol

Yeah that’s a very broad question, the answer is about as much as it tends to play roles in real history. Alcohol is pretty ubiquitous (outside of cultures that abstain from intoxicants) and used for a variety of purposes, opioids are commonly used in some parts for pain relief or recreational purposes, stimulants (usually in mild, natural forms) are used to provide extra energy, and hallucinogens are most commonly used as part of a larger religious framework (rather than for recreational purposes). Any more elaborate answer kinda has to be case by case in a certain culture or part of the setting.

I'll just take this as an opportunity to talk about the one established sect that pretty much REVOLVES around psychoactive use. This is the Scholarly Order of the Root, which is a sort of mystery religion + elite community of scholars who currently occupy the Ur-Tree and its forest in the far southern Lowlands (southeast of Imperial Wardin, on the same land mass).

The Ur-Tree is the obligatory Huge Fucking Fantasy Tree (and its surrounding forest). It’s a mass of vegetation about a mile tall and almost as old as Plant Life Itself, its upper branches are primeval plants, which become more modern the nearer they get to the ground (and each 'level' holds tiny ecosystems, some containing descendants of LONG-extinct arthropods/other small animals). Its lowest branches and the surrounding forest are contemporary plant life, and all is connected and protected by an incomparably MASSIVE fungal mycelium network (which is itself a living god).

A lot of the Scholars' more secretive practices revolve around experimentation with substance use with the goal of expanding the Mind and transcending the body to fully connect to the Dreamlands, and they have a supply chain of traders and mercenaries called Rootrunners who traffic substances into the Lowlands. Most of their psychoactive use is in a very intentional capacity and not just like, for fun, but a LOT of them are just straight up addicted to cocaine (in the form of alchemically refined bruljenum, which is used for practical purposes of its stimulant effect during long hours of work).

All known psychoactives are desirable for experimentation (particularly hallucinogens), with each having properties that either allow expansion of the Mind, transcendence of the body, or outright divine communion. Their effects are logged in great detail and interpreted to form the basis of the Scholars' understanding of the natural world and reality itself.

The most important substance is Ur-Root, which is root matter from subterranean levels of the Ur-Tree that have both their own intrinsic psychoactive substances and a very, very high concentration of living god mycelium. The tree root contains DMT and the mycelium has its own wholly unique effects (being an actual living god). They alchemically refine it into a purer, more potent form, and use it to expand beyond the body and directly commune with the Giants, a group of entities they have identified as the only true gods.

An Ur-Root trip starts off with minor visual distortion, which turns into shifting fractals that slowly obscure the vision. Eventually the senses are entirely taken over by a 'tunnel' of rapidly shifting fractals and geometries. In a complete trip, the experiencer gets a sense that they have been pushed through a membrane and entered another realm, finding themselves in a distinct experiential Space.

At this point they may encounter entities which communicate to them in a language impossible to describe but wholly understood. These beings are understood to be the Giants, or at least aspects of the Giants that mortals are capable of comprehending (they often take familiar tutelary forms of the Mantis or the Snake, or appear resembling the same type of sophont that the experiencer is, all composed of ever-shifting geometries). The experiencer often feels a sense of unconditional and endless love from these beings, though the Giants may be more hostile and may appear in the form of the Trickster (usually a cultural figure regarded as malicious, be it an animal or otherwise) in a bad trip.

(^Up until this point, this has mostly just been a DMT 'breakthrough' experience ft. 'machine elves' and the like).

They are then removed from this space and returned to something that feels like the real world, but is nearly unrecognizable. They have a sense of rapidly moving through time, and will usually see 'the spires' towards the beginning, which just so happen to look like this:

(source + some context via Implication- the spires are exactly what this art is depicting)

The experiencer continues to move across an unfathomable amount of time, occasionally 'seeing' other such flashes of unfamiliar landscapes and creatures, and yet also being devoid of all their senses, the 'seeing' is pure, unfiltered experience. There is a sense of interconnectedness with all life, and that one has become the forest (or even Life) itself. The sense of time is wildly distorted, the trip lasts only about 5 minutes but feels like an eternity and is understood as literal hundreds of millions of years.

The experiencer has usually lost any remaining sense of Self and individual consciousness during this phase (in which case this time distortion is usually a neutral or even peaceful experience), but some retain a fraction of their identity, and find themselves trapped and conscious while experiencing what feels like eternity (which can be LIFE-CHANGINGLY distressing, even after the fact).

(^This latter part of the trip is the effects of the Ur-Tree fungus).

The trip ends with a sense of rushing through the ground and back up into one's body, at which point they will abruptly return to their senses and consciousness. The details are then immediately retrieved via interview and recorded in immense detail. The whole experience is understood as having been full comprehension of the Dreamlands, communion with the Giants, and then a tour through the act of creation.

This is done as part of the initiatory practice into the inner mystery-religion of the scholars, and as needed for study by high scholar-priests. It is not taken lightly, both as it is absolute communion with the gods and reality, and in that it can be a very, very difficult experience. People who have gone through this often walk away with a permanently shifted perspective, often in a positive and/or comforting way- a sense of interconnectedness with all life, a peace with the concept of death, seeing less of a point in individual ego and the concept of Self, and comfort in the sense of divine love they (may have) experienced. This heavily influences the philosophy of the Scholars and has had effects by proxy in the religious worldviews of the region.

Details of this experience are closely guarded, and initiates are given absolutely no prior knowledge and expectations for their trip. This is seen as a necessity- their naivety will allow for a true, unfiltered experience, and can be used to gauge whether they should or should not be accepted. Those that have a distinctly bad trip upon initiation may be assumed to have been 'rejected' by the giants and thus denied full priesthood, though this largely depends on How they interpret their distressing trip- those who identify this as a test and harsh lesson in a journey to enlightenment may be accepted (as this is how fully initiated scholar-priests interpret and handle their bad trips).

This inner priesthood is only a small fraction of the Scholarly Order, and its greater function is as a hub of education and repository of knowledge, and Scholar-trained doctors can provide some of the best medical care available in the setting ('best medical care in this setting' only means so much but it's pretty solid, relatively speaking). Only a chosen few Scholars ever get to commune with the Ur-Root, and most of the divine secrets revealed in the process are kept hidden (though they indirectly influence the politics and worldview of the entire order).

[marshyoftheblobs]

The undertaker knew full well it wasn't like the fairy tales, but even if his angel were never to awaken, he'd still kiss him tenderly as always

So on the Vashwood Hell discord we came up with an AU where post July, Vash, broken both mentally and physically, drags himself into an abandoned ship, lays down and falls into a death like state and his plant powers cause and entire forest to grow around him. Meanwhile outside the forest the world is plunged into a perpetual blizzard, and Wolfwood and Meryl have to race to find Vash before EoM does. They can't wake him up because his consciousness has rejoined the plant hivemind, but they can't move him because he's literally rooted.

What about Nai? Well he's in a similar, if worse state (under a cut because of the body horror)

Yeah. Methinks Legato wants spare parts for his master.

[cold-neon-ocean]

My dogs my beloved dogs!! The first line of beastial spirit vine soldiers from my LoK AU. Created by Baatar when during experimentation, he discovered the spirit energy after being condensed causes the vines to react strangely to machinery and processed material. Turning the inorganic to organic.

These soldiers are comprised of spirit vines that have mutated in reaction to the condensed activated spirit energy and adhered themselves to the suits. Similar to "mimics" in a way, they can conceal their mouths fully so they're indistinguishable from human soldiers, though very astute earthbenders may notice they neither breathe nor have a heartbeat.

[adhd-languages]

I often wonder how English distinguishing between “sentient pronouns” (he/she/they) and “inanimate pronouns” (it/its) affects our perception of the world.

I wonder if languages without this distinction foster more care towards the environment.

Animals and plants are usually referred to as “it”. Would we care for them more if we thought of them as sentient?

[oonaluna-art]

Another one of my plant guy OCs. He's based on a ghost pipe plant, hence his unusual coloration. I'm still working on a name for him.

Part of his concept was he was going to be a love interest / partner for Caesarion in the underworld, after Alice killed him. Given how unstable Caesarion is, I just can't imagine the relationship lasting too long.

[rararasputins-dick-mind-control]

fungus AM

[bereft-of-frogs]

Torbin was so Reath-coded this episode.

They can duel it out over who had the worse outcome of having a tantrum about going back to/staying on Coruscant.

[g0at0ad]

started listening to wolf 359 because I'm a podcast fiend now apparently. went in completely blind and wow no one told me this was a sitcom. yes there are still The Horrors but after listening to malevolent this is downright goofy. anyways dr Hilbert is my favorite yes I know what he did but he's funny and Russian so I forgive him.