#water root

[theribbajack]

Fallout: Shenandoah - Deep Glowing One "If you see lights beneath the water, it's already too late."

Something Lovecraftian about whales being benevolent giants, but they've absorbed so much radiation from the water that they're basically mobile nuclear reactor cores.

[coquelicoq]

it's about...longevity? stability? it's about natsume believing he'll be somewhere long enough to plant flowers and see them bloom. it's about him taking touko seriously when she asks him to tell her what flowers he wants to plant. it's about making something with his own hands, building a future with the fujiwaras. it's about him repairing a rundown home for someone else, restoring it because it's beloved to them, because it's the home of someone they love. it's about him seeing touko's joy and thinking about the youkai saying we'd like to look upon her happy face forever. it's about the box garden making him think of the fujiwaras' garden and his parents' garden, about the flowers being both the memory of flowers that bloomed there before, and the flowers that he and the youkai planted earlier that day. it's about him waking up in both worlds with sensei. it's about touko finding the petal in his hair. it's about him feeling how he falls short and the youkai saying, but you have such gentle hands...

[horrorknife]

babe, this wouldn't be the first time it will not be the last time there's no parasol that could shelter this weather

[caleod]

29-4-24

[nattravn-art]

Laketober 2024: Grounds - Family tree

[oakbuggy]

I come back from my break with fanart of @theblueflower05's fic they wrote for this crack ship 😭😭

pls fucking READ IT HERE it'S SO GOOD, LET THEM KNOW SO THEY WILL WRITE MORE PLEASEEEE

NSFW on the AO3 as always!

[flyingrttakespictures]

Panama

September 2024

[pucksandpower]

The United States Congress is potentially threatening to investigate Liberty Media for violating anti-trust laws by refusing Andretti entry to Formula 1 despite FIA approval 🍿

[coolnonsenseworld]

Samurai and Ninja in crappy pics because December here is under a constant cloud and I just want y'all to see them all golden and cute without learning how to take aesthetic pictures 🥴 💙❤️😆🥰

linktr.ee/Mezzy

[hedgehog-moss]

forgive me for the possibly foolish question, but what kind of care do the fish in the aquaponics require? do you have to feed them to a certain point where the plants then supply their diet, or do you continuously care for them? merci! i love your blog 🌱

The plants don't feed the fish, it's the other way around :) The plants use the fish poop as natural fertiliser (with the help of useful bacteria that break it down), and in doing so they clean the water for the fish. Here's a little diagram

Since my system has towers over the fish tank rather than grow beds, the fish do nibble on the plant roots that dip in the water but that's just an illegal snack, fish food is their main diet. Also when I find little insects on the plants, I shake them so the insect falls in the water where the fish give it an enthusiastic welcome. Some aquaponic gardeners farm insects to feed their fish (and they feed the insects with some of the plants so they have a complete symbiotic system) but I haven't tried that yet. I used to successfully breed dynasties of stick insects in a terrarium in my bedroom as a kid, so maybe someday.

The fish part of the aquaponic system is very low-maintenance—I don't clean the tank since the plants absorb the fish waste, I just have to adjust how much I feed the fish depending on how many plants there are, so the water doesn't get dirty, it's a bit of a balancing act. The main other thing to watch for is the water pH, for plants it should be around 6 or 6.5 (ideally) and for fish around 7 or 7.5, so I try to keep it between 6.5 and 7 to keep everyone reasonably happy. Rainwater has a lower pH and my spring has a higher one, so when I fill up my watering can in the tank to water outside plants, I look at the pH meter and top up the tank with rain or spring water depending on what's needed.

You just have to be careful not to pick up a hitchhiker fish in your watering can as you go to water other plants!

[loupy-mongoose]

I'm rebelling against the trend.

[some-pers0n]

It feels so weird being a coffee disliker. Like I'm walking into a Timmies and go "Hey can I get like..a donut and a box of timbits? No, no coffee. Just the delectable treats and sweets" like I might as well hide in a cave forever

[los-plantalones]

my piece of ginger mama has finally rooted! and has opened her leaves! i’m going to wait for another inch or two of root growth before transferring to soil. 🫚

[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).

[mintmentos]

How is it that such a popular book series can have a 2 films and a tv show and the best adaptation is still the musical with such a low budget but so much love to give