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dev1lm4n · 1 year

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shroom

pairings: joel miller x f!reader

summary: in which you tried to help your grumpy mentor get over the mushroom's aphrodisiac side effect.

word count: 3.9k (gosh yea i went over the top with this)

warnings: explicit (18+), no actual penetration, thigh fucking, slight age-gap and reader's implied to be an orphan.

notes: honestly this is just a reason to write desperate joel but oh well :)

What lies beneath the gray-ish rocks were dove gray with a subtle hint of purple. Fresh air broke through your nasal cavities, gusts of wind combing your loose strands gently like a doting mother. Even in a photograph you could quickly take into account that it was peak summer, for the steep valleys are finally visible and pretty asters bloom abundantly on every inch of green.

You would’ve guessed mid June was the cause of these heavenly blessings. The rest of the year the ranges were as white-peaked as any storybook mountains and they were especially cruel to visitors. Summer was just more so your cup of tea.

Despite the relentless sun rays burning your skin and the itchiness from sweat and mosquitos, it’s a lot more inviting. Felt a lot like a long awaited vacation, one where you’d get tanned with friends on seashores and gossip about boys like it was the most important thing on earth. Things like that are simply left for your imagination. The United States of America hasn't been as liberating, ever since Cordyceps happened.

It’s not the first time you scaled along the wilderness in order to get to your destination unharmed. Without getting bitten by chomping, pestering infected, or worse, people. Nature is just naturally serene. A hug of browns, a shelter of long dwindling limbs, and a variety of edible materials that’s free to use. You were a quick learner and a considerably great adaptor.

From dusty books piled up in your home, a FEDRA orphanage, you picked up knowledge on a collection of plants and animals native to the country. Being a resourceful forager might’ve been your one and only redeemable feature, and perhaps the only reason why Joel Miller agreed to bring you along on his trips.

Tess was the one who scouted you in the most bizarre fashion possible. You remembered vividly how she interrogated the fungi you picked on the city’s outskirts, asking why you’d pick up the one thing people refrain from eating these days. You remembered the amused look she had on her face, but it was all too long ago. Too long you’re starting to forget what she looked like smiling and full of hope. Time has passed and you’re not the same snotty, bratty teenager anymore.

Though, you’re not exactly grown.

Still budding with youthful stupidity and brashness.

Which is where Joel came in handy. He was your tamer. The one who’d put a rough hand down when you’re being too rash in making decisions. The one who’d tug on your leash when you’re an exploding mess of fury. Tess was kinder and sweeter and.. more of a makeshift mother figure to you, while Joel was whatever he was. He wasn’t introduced into the picture until last winter where you managed to get two different people hunting for your head. Which you still insist wasn’t entirely your fault.

Tess was worried, you understood, but he’s a real mood killer at times.

You watched along the trees, how they swayed in a warming breeze. Hands tied behind your back as you hummed a nursery rhyme fondly. This time it was ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’ on repeat for a billion times, which you’re sure is going to get some unappeased comments from the ball of grouch behind you. He always hated anything fun. Always chalking it up to being far too dangerous or distracting. You were even banned from keeping a firearm around him. What a joke.

“Quit singin’. You’re going to attract trouble.”

“Fucking hell.”

“What was that?”

“You’re such a bore, Joel.”

You could feel his gaze on the back of your head, probably looking at you as if you’re a foul harm to society. Tess always said that it’s just the way he looks but you don’t buy it. You’ve seen the way he smiled at a thing she said, even when it’s closer to a shy grin than a full ear-to-ear smile. An exasperated sigh was all you heard from him next, then a few grumbles about how you two are going to set camp next to a large pine tree as it’s getting late.

“It’s getting late or are your old knees aching?”

“What’re you doin’?”

Joel’s voice almost shook your skin off your bones. There was a delicious moment when you turned on your heels to face him, face washed blank with confusion, like your brain cogs couldn’t turn fast enough to process the information. It’s like you’re caught popping his favorite pills, when it really was just another one of your fascinating finds. You weren’t planning on sharing with him out of all people, so you were visibly annoyed. The distasteful twist of your lips had him scowling.

“It’s just food. Reishi mushroom.”

You showcased the fungus, waving it in front of his scrunched nose. The mushroom was reddish brown varnished with kidney-shaped caps that fanned out the closer it got to the ends. It’s supposedly bitter tasting, but it wasn’t poisonous. You looked convinced enough it wouldn’t straight-up kill the both of you upon tasting, even when it’s your first time encountering such a species.

“You sure it’s not poisonous?”

“You could have the first bite if you’d like.”

He looked at you with that expression– the same one he put on when he’s interested in taking on your challenge instead of diffusing the bickering. It’s harder to see what he’s conspiring when the darkness is borderline blinding. You couldn’t cater to every wrinkle and divot on his face, even with great concentration. Joel reached for the mushroom and held it lightly against the rough pads of his fingers. Examining it much closer under moonlight’s glint.

“We’ll have it tonight as soup.”

His words were absolute, even when Tess is around. You knew that and he knew that. It was unspoken. You surrendered your merry bounty willingly without throwing a childish tantrum this time. He can be cruel and unapologetic; you weren’t exactly eager to go through that route with him. Especially when your first filling dinner is on the line. You simply nodded at his decision, twisting your tactical knife back into its shell and stuffing it deep into your cargo jeans. Slightly sour about the entire ordeal.

There was always something cathartic about having a filled stomach after a long day of trekking, borderline orgasmic if you had to describe it in another way. It was an extremely appreciated coincidence as well that Joel managed to have in hand an actual unopened can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Although horrifically passed its best-by date, it wasn’t rancid or anything. Just slightly sour, but you’re sure the preservatives on that can would do you a favor this once.

You could barely breathe upon settling down on your sleeping bag. The buttons on your cargos digging into your inflated stomach, in which you hastily undid once you’re entirely submerged in the parachute-like material. You huffed. Burped and earned an irritated grunt by none other than Joel Miller. Then let the chirping of crickets and rustling of leaves create a peaceful symphony to lull you to sleep. Gentle summer breeze carried the scent of pine and wildflowers, invigorating your senses. And you’re gone in just a split second.

It felt like being coddled by nature itself, as corny as it sounded. What you didn’t expect was to be startled awake when the moonlight’s still as bright as ever. A light fuck escaped your lips. Irritated was what you are. You’re as aware as can be, ears tuned in to whatever it is that posed a threat to your goodnight sleep. But nothing came up. Just the occasional hoot of an owl, distant calls from coyotes, and what seemed to be woodland creatures rustling around the thick bushes.

Maybe it’s just your terrible paranoia cruising. Maybe you’re starting to hallucinate from fatigue, or maybe it’s just some stupid squirrel in the branches. You shuffled in your cocoon of a sleeping bag before turning ever so slightly to face Joel’s side. To face where Joel Miller, your irritating companion, is supposed to rest. Though for the first time in history, his absence crushed your heart.

You were terrified. Eyes wide and round as you stared in disbelief.

He was gone.

You scrambled to your feet. Taking unlevelled steps towards his side of the camp, you could feel your chest tighten at the confirmation of his disappearance. He wasn’t there no matter how many times you flipped his sleeping bag front to back.

Has he deserted you? Did he finally get tired of you? Were you being way too bratty today? You didn’t think you’d be this distressed at the absence of someone you hated with a passion, but here you were, waterline overrun by stray tears threatening to spill out at any given time. So weak and helpless, it’s pathetic.

Was that a moan?

You froze, as still as you could be, trying to listen intently if the sound decided to repeat itself. It did. This time you could make out what it sounded like: guttural, low, and indistinct. The way your face contorted was comical to say the least. At this point, your mind started to race with all the creative questions. Was it an animal? A person in distress? Oh, or is it something more sinister and dangerous? You didn’t have your gun on you so it’d be obvious suicide if you went on to pursue, wouldn’t it?

This is how people died in horror movies

You knew that and a part of your youthful curiosity (the chunk Tess hated so much) made you take another step forward towards the general direction. The puddle you stepped on rippled and splashed. Your wary eyes dart around, scanning the surrounding area for any signs of movement.

There was nothing of course. Just the waving branches that’s starting to make you feel a little disoriented and claustrophobic. All you could hear was your own ragged breathing above the low groan that once again was being emitted from behind the tree line. You swore it sounded more human-like the more you tuned in.

Dry branches crackled and broke underneath the heavy soles of your boots, making you cringe inwardly at the thought that someone must’ve noticed your moves by now. This is far beyond stupid you decide. You should've prepared an eulogy by now. Maybe even a few stems of the lovely aster you enjoyed so much. If this was a serial killer lurking underneath your shadows, your funeral was right around the corner. But it wasn’t. What made the noise wasn’t a stray squirrel, nor was it a stray clicker. It was Joel fucking Miller.

"Joel?"

His name slipped out of your tongue like melted butter; unstoppable and out of instinct. He's looked at you multiple times during your stays in Tess' flat. Sometimes with gentle aloofness and other times with what you chalked up to be disgust or even disdain, and you'd always cater to his glares with your incredulous grin. This time it was.. different.

His pupils were large— larger than what you think was humanly possible with it almost swallowing the entirety of his irises. A humorous part of your brain wondered if he was turning into some sort of werewolf because of the full moon, if he'd pounce on you with his furry claws.

Your running thoughts made you steer away from what's actually presented in front of you. The more that you look at it, he looked somewhat.. pained. He's never looked pained before, not when a bullet lodged in precisely behind his arteries or even when an upset customer drove a rusty knife down his side. Joel's been annoyingly tough. But now he's visibly drenched in sweat, face adorned with a shade of crimson, while he shivered and groaned against the base of a tree. This was odd. You slowly crouched over to his side, but your attempts were futile when he's waving his arms in your direction as if shooing a dog away.

You frowned. He rolled to his side, trying to avoid your incoming slaught of confrontation.

"Were you shot?"

"No."

"Were you clawed by a bear?"

"No."

"Are we going to play 20 questions or are you going to let me help you?"

He turned slightly, just enough so that he could finally see the irritation weaved through your expression. Joel then grumbled something about how you shouldn't be out here and that it's better to get back in your sleeping bag. You ignored him, as always, inching even closer to see what he's up to.

Stubbornness runs deep in your blood and you weren't going to let him die out here in the woods when you could barely read a map by itself. You didn't even know how to determine where North is. To simply put it, you'd die without him standing up straight, whether in this unruly jungle or under the gun of Tess' customer.

"Your mushrooms are poisonous," he accused sternly, boring his deep brown eyes into yours.

"No. It's not. I'm fine and well, so it must be a you problem mister," you probed your fingers into his tough chest, not accepting any sort of insult to your own specialty. "Fuck, are you having some sort of heart attack?"

"I'm not. I'm just.. oh god," he stifled his groans with his palm. Now that you're finally seeing him in a better light, it looked like he was.. palming himself through the thick fabric of his tight jeans. Was he rocking into his own palm? Or was it just your perverted imaginations playing tricks on your silly little mind?

Your stomach lurched at the possibility, then a curl of disgust had you pressing your lips together into a thin line. This is your time to back away. He gave you that chance a while ago and you should've let your curiosity lay low. He was your goddamn mentor and worse, Tess' partner, it'd be wrong to see him in this state. But isn't it your responsibility for inflicting this kind of torment? It's your idea to harvest the mushrooms. You're dealing with some twisted version of Schrödinger's cat where no good options are presented in front of you. It's a moral dilemma.

"Are you?" you squeaked. "Are you masturbating?"

"No. Just get back to.. oh."

"Do ya need help?"

He looked at you like you're his inferno. The one that's going to drag him straight to hell from your sweet sweet words. God, he shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be looking down your loose tank top like some old geezer, you're probably twenty years his junior and he's here rubbing his inconvenience away at your expense. You didn't even know what you're offering. Did you even know what he's like?

"Please, just. You're going to regret it, sweetheart."

"How would you know?"

"I'm like old enough.. fuck.. to be your dad or something. You should just go. Tess is gonna kill me if she knew."

"Joel, this is my fault," you persisted, eyes bright with a sense of genuine worry.

Joel's jaw clenched hard at your enticing offer, a bead of sweat dribbled down the side of his temple nervously. He looked like he was struggling to pull out a coherent reason as to why this shouldn't happen. Why he shouldn't be the one to defile your innocence and corrupt you with his bloody hands. Nothing came out though, just a brief desperate grunt.

You swallowed thickly, before taking his lack of an answer as a sign of encouragement. Your hands moved painfully slow. As if waiting to see whether he'd push your hands away or try to stop you in any way, but he never did. Not even when you touched the damp denim clinging onto his bare skin, gently as if he's made of porcelain.

You've never.. done this which frankly explained the awkward touches you're prone to do, or the look in your eyes that further emphasized the fact that you had no idea what you're doing. Aside from the scarce pornographic magazine stashed in your orphanage's library, there wasn't any sort of guidance as to how you'd navigate your sexual life. But you’re almost sure that this was a good start from the way his scrunched up eyebrows start to untangle at your touch.

With that in mind, you traced over the shape of his confined cock, before settling on the damp tip leaking over his jeans. It felt warm and somewhat foreign. You circled over the spot several times, encouraged by his low groans. Did he feel good?

"Fuck. Okay. You wanna help me out and be a good girl?" he rasped, finally grasping your hand with his calloused fingers to get you even closer to where he wanted you. He guided you eagerly. All voices of reason vanished in his head.

You weren’t able to say anything. It felt like you're drowning in his existence; the oak-like smell of his flannel, the rough syllables he uttered, and god that terribly persuasive grin he had on. He's secretly smug about this and you knew it.

"Come here," he beckoned you to come closer and so you did, without a single complaint like what your chatty mouth is used to. You're so quiet and pliant– something he's been wishing for from the start of your journey. Joel feverishly pulled you back onto his lap, pressing his hardened front onto the thick fabric of your cargo pants.

You yelped. He let out a soft mumble of your name. His hips stuttered at the new sensation. He's more than ready to feel you from the inside, get wrapped up in your velvety walls, but the thought of Tess had him pulling on his reins. "Listen. I'm not– oh.. I'm not going to ruin you, okay? Just gonna.. Just gonna use your thighs."

Thighs? What’s that supposed to mean? Your clueless expression had him shudder in anticipation. You’re so cute and perfect to corrupt. It’s definitely not the first time he thought of you in that manner. He secretly loved each and every one of your bickering games, it riled him up beneath all the cold shoulder facade.

Without further warning, Joel manhandled you with his strong arms. You let out a strained gasp as he towered over you, the ground hard against your back. Heat and adrenaline ran through your veins at the sight of his concentrated eyes. He looked determined to go through with this, no matter the consequences.

He took in all of you, not with his touches, just with the soft brown pupils he’s blessed with. You knew that he wasn’t going to be all sweet and lovely, although you silently wished he’d be a little gentler when he pulled your cargos off. You’d wish for him to tell you how pretty you are and how much you meant to him, because as fucked up as it was, you’ve always wanted him to like you. The infatuation was cliché and stupid, but you could never have enough.

Joel was quick to fold you in half, holding your legs up by the underside of your thighs as he observed. A warm palm hovering over your throbbing cunt extinguished any last traces of your desire to rebel; the heat between your thighs only became worse at his nimble fingers dragging along your panties. Out of a need for more, you rubbed your thighs together and tried your best to buck into his touch with a shaky breath.

“I’m not a good guy,” Joel trailed off while he busied himself unbuckling his belt, the sound of the leather sliding out his jean loops ignited a fire within you. “Fuckin’ killed so many people. Stole their things and ran.”

“Do you.. oh.. do you still want to go through with this, sweetheart?”

The nickname was quick to send goosebumps down your back. He’s driving you insane and he had the audacity to ask these questions. He should’ve just seen how drenched you are beneath the scant excuse of panties. You nodded breathlessly and god was it a sight to watch his moral beliefs crumble apart at your confirmation.

“Keep your thighs together, girl,” he ordered briefly, nails digging into your plush thighs as he finally freed his cock. It’s feverishly hot against your skin and drooling with a copious amount of precum, you could even feel the head teasingly poke onto your clothed slit. You shuddered and clenched around nothing at the sensation. “Please.”

“God. Such a good girl are you?” he managed to find the time to tease you as he slid between your thighs, looking down you could see the flushed bulbous head twitching with need. Joel let out a groan he's been holding on to for a long time, even just having your plush thighs squeezing him was enough to send jolts of pleasure through every part of his aching body.

He started to thrust his hips at a slow pace; drawing them back slowly and pushing them forward with enough force to knock you back onto the tree trunk each time. Your heartbeat grew wild in your ribcage, hard and fast as he relished in the feeling of you. You weren’t sure of what the feeling was, but you could feel your clit pulse at the friction his cock made everytime it slipped through.

You admired the color of his tip which reminded you of a wild salmon, slightly pink with tinges of nudes, spilling so much of that thick milky substance which quickly coats the insides of your thighs. What a sight it was to be beneath Joel Miller. Your past self would’ve probably envied you for getting so lucky, whimpering and gasping for air as he held you with an iron grip. It felt so good, you’re at a loss for words. All those nights spent pining over him and spreading your pretty pussy to the mere thought of him is finally paid for.

“Feel good, girl?

He granted you a form of reprieve when his fingers finally pulled your panties aside to quickly find your clit and tease it in tight circles. His calloused fingers provided such good ridges to grind yourself onto. The sound that’s spilling out of your lips was embarrassing, almost pitiful, but it seemed that with each and every whimper Joel looked even more pleased. The expression on his face was sinful by itself. You could only imagine how foul this scenery was from a third person point of view.

“So good to me, shit, where did that pretty mouth of yours disappear?”

He bucked even faster, and so did you, eager to chase after the euphoric friction one another provided. The coil finally broke at his last press against your needy clit. You whimpered, an airy sound as your cunt clenched frantically around nothing, globs of white leaking right through your panties and onto the dried up leaves underneath.

Joel let out a smooth chuckle at the sight, dutifully rubbing circles onto your clit as he reached his high. Ribbons of white spurt out unconditionally. There was so much you wondered when his last release was. Your tank top was drenched and so were your thighs. The sheer obscenity had you buckling onto him. You felt hot, over-sensitive, and wrong.

Realization sunk into you as he pulled away and settled to your side.

“No speaking of this,” you murmured, still in a trance of blissful pleasure.

“Yes, ma’am.”

His chuckle resonated, only to mingle with your own.

#joel miller x reader #joel miller #joel miller tlou #joel miller x you #joel miller fic #the last of us #the last of us fic #tlou #the last of us imagine #joel miller smut

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monstrousgourmandizingcats · 10 months

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Some books and stories that I think are worth reading in conversation with Yellowjackets

Shirley Jackson, all works but especially The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Jackson might or might not need any introduction in this fandom. The Sundial is her take on doomsday preppers, Hill House is of course her haunted house novel (one of the classics of that genre), and Castle has a female protagonist who makes Shauna look like a plaster saint.

Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear It Away. O'Connor's work has some of the most pervasive darkness and brutality of any major American writer (maybe Ambrose Bierce comes close), and the second of two novels that she completed before her death is no exception. (The first, Wise Blood, is also very good; the intended third, Why Do the Heathen Rage?, only exists as a fragmentary short story.) Francis Marion Tarwater is kidnapped and raised in the woods by his great-uncle, who is convinced that Francis is destined to be a prophet. The great-uncle's death commences a bizarre adventure involving auditory hallucinations, sinister truckers, an evil social worker, arson, developmental disabilities, and baptizing and drowning someone at the same time. Content warnings for all of the above plus rape. O'Connor is also a fairly racist author by today's standards--she was a white Southerner who died in 1964--so keep that in mind as well.

Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness. Teenage protagonist is schizophrenic and also a channel for a genuinely supernatural force; well-intentioned but poorly-considered efforts to treat one of these issues make the other worse. Sound familiar? There are supporting characters who are affectionate parodies of Slavoj Zizek and Marie Kondo. A minor character is a middle-aged lesbian who cruises dating apps for hookups with much younger women. Some people find this book preachy and overwritten, but I really like it and would plug it even if I didn't because the author is someone whom I've met and who has been supportive of my own writing.

Yukio Mishima, The Decay of the Angel. Can be read in translation or in the original Japanese. This is the fourth and last book in a series called The Sea of Fertility but I wouldn't necessarily recommend the first three as particularly YJ-ish; Decay is because it deals at great length with issues of doubt and ambiguity about whether or not a genuinely held, but personally damaging, spiritual and religious belief is true. There's also more (as Randy Walsh would put it) lezzy stuff than is usual for Mishima, a gay man. Content warnings for elder abuse, sexual abuse of both children and vulnerable adults in previous books in the series, forced abortion in the first book if you decide to read the whole thing from the beginning, and the fact that in addition to being a great novelist the author was also a far-right political personality.

Howard Frank Mosher, Where the Rivers Flow North. An elderly Vermont lumberjack and his Native American common-law wife refuse to sell their land to a development company that wants to build a hydroelectric power plant. Tragedy ensues. I haven't read this one in a long time but some images from the movie stick in my mind as YJ-y. Lots of fire, water, and trees.

Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers. Yes, this is the same Leonard Cohen who later transitioned into songwriting and became a household name in that art form. Beautiful Losers is a very weird, very horny novel that he wrote as a young man; it deals with the submerged darkness and internal tension within Canadian and specifically Quebecois society. One of the main characters is Kateri Tekakwitha, a seventeenth-century Iroquois convert to Catholicism who was probably a lesbian in real life (although Cohen unfortunately seems unaware of this). This one actually shows up YJ directly; the song "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot" that plays in the season 2 finale takes its lyrics from a particularly strange passage.

Monica Ojeda, Jawbone. Can be read in translation or in the original Spanish. Extremely-online teenage girls at a posh bilingual Catholic high school in Ecuador start their own cult based on such time-honored fodder as Herman Melville novels, internet creepypasta (no, this book does not look or feel anything like Otherside Picnic), and their repressed but increasingly obvious desire for one another. The last part in particular gets the attention of their English teacher, whose own obsessive internalized homophobia grows into one of the most horrifying monstrous versions of itself I've ever read. Content warning for just about everything that could possibly imply, but especially involuntary confinement, religious and medical abuse, and a final chapter that I don't even know how to describe. Many thanks to @maryblackwood for introducing me to this one.

Jorge Luis Borges, lots of his works but especially "The Aleph," "The Cult of the Phoenix," and "The South." Can be read in translation or in the original Spanish. The three works I list are all short stories. The first deals with mystical experiences and the comprehensibility (or lack thereof) of the universe, the second with coded and submerged references to sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular, the third with leaving your well-appointed city home for a ranch in the middle of nowhere and almost immediately dying in a knife fight, which is surely a very YJ series of things to do.

H.P. Lovecraft, "The Colour out of Space," "The Dunwich Horror," "The Dreams in the Witch House," and "The Thing on the Doorstep." Lovecraft in general needs no introduction--the creepiness, the moroseness, the New Englandness, the purple heliotrope prose, his intense racism (recanted late in life but not in time to make any difference in his reception history) and the way his work reflects his fear of the Other. These short stories are noteworthy for having settings that are more woodsy and less maritime than is usual for Lovecraft's New England, for overtones of the supernatural rather than merely the alien, for featuring some of his few interesting female characters, and for their relative lack of obvious racial nastiness. Caveat lector nevertheless.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick. It's Moby-Dick. Once you realize that Captain Ahab is forming a cult around the whale and his obsession with it you can't unrealize it.

#yellowjackets #books #book recs

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omaenanimonoda · 3 months

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buying a house i could afford forced me to the suburbs of boston and out here i am surrounded by lawn cultists. it is a pretty barren, bleak pavement bark mulch and 2 inch grass landscape. but i am one stubborn shit about doing what i think is the right thing and the neighbors think i'm awful and out of my mind, but i made a point to immediately start converting my small barren yard into new england native or native-ish plants, removing all the invasives i could. the grass is being phased out but i don't mow what's left of it. really looking forward to spring - it's been 4 years and the space will be thick with life again. look at all the friends

#bugs #insects #native plants

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crevicedwelling · 1 year

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Hey! This might be a kind of stupid (or insensitive) question but I was wondering about mosquitos. I’m actually pretty chill with most insects but they bite, spread diseases and a whole host of other things. I know there are a lot of scientists working right now to reduce mosquito fertility rates which I’m broadly supportive of, but I’m not sure what the unintended consequences are. Like….. would we as a species be okay if mosquitos were eradicated?

it’s entirely a valid question, and a point I hear raised a lot. the answer depends on on how far-reaching your question was intended to be:

an important thing to understand is that there are over 3500 species of mosquito, and of those, only 88 are known to transmit diseases to humans, with about 200 more that potentially could become human disease vectors (Yee et al.) most mosquitoes drink nectar—both males and females—but females typically (but not in all species/forms) require a blood meal from mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, or even other arthropods and invertebrates.

if all mosquitoes were “eradicated,” there would undoubtedly be some very bad effects on the environment, although in the utmost selfish view I’m not fully sure how long they’d take to affect humans.

many plants are pollinated by small flies (like cacao! you can thank biting midges for all your chocolate) and certainly some only by mosquitoes. mosquito pollinated plants likely include many in tropical rainforests, where mutualisms between tiny, unusual species are very common, and oddly enough in the Arctic, where soggy summers create a whole lot of mosquitoes.

likewise mosquitoes are likely an important part of the diets of many bats, birds, spiders, dragonflies, other flies, and fish that might eat the larvae, among many others (including mosquitoes that eat other mosquitoes as larvae, like the beautiful Toxorhynchites). the negative effect on these animals in turn could affect their predators, or all the other ecosystem. if all mosquitoes disappeared, there would probably be significant upheaval across global environments, although I don’t know enough to say exactly what the end result would be. making all mosquitoes go extinct would be a very bad idea though, so it’s a good thing humans have no reason or capability to do that.

but people probably don’t have the 3,000 other mosquitoes in mind when they’re trying to control the flies, it’s that 88 to 300-ish bunch that bite humans and transmit diseases. first off, any genetic/sterility control method that targets non-native mosquitoes is most likely to have only good effects. non-native mosquitoes are reduced, people are bitten less. good on both counts. (it’s still possible certain things might be upset, such as if native species have adapted to use non-native mosquitoes, or if the non-native ones were outcompeting some even worse species. don’t know enough to say.) In many places, this is precisely what’s happening, with Aedes being sterilized, modified, or infected with bacteria that cause some reduction in offspring where it is invasive.

as for eradicating mosquitoes in their native range… it gets a bit tricky. I’m not enough of an ecologist or mosquito biologist to give a clear answer here. I also don’t know if there’s consideration of using control methods like you mentioned on species in their native range.

your question was about making mosquitoes go extinct, though, so I’ll focus on that.

would losing a few species of mosquito that are particularly dangerous to humans result in ecological upheaval? I don’t know. ecology is vastly complicated and when people make big decisions involving pests, we can often make problems way worse, like all the times a predator was introduced and started killing off things we didn’t think they would (this has happened with mosquito control, by the way). extinction only goes one way. I’d say in a hypothetical situation where I could just *poof* away an entire mosquito species, I probably wouldn’t do it. we just don’t know enough about the world yet to make decisions like that.

that’s not to say there aren’t ecologically and human-friendly ways to solve the issue of mosquito-borne disease—reduction of manmade breeding pools, careful biological control, targeted, safe pesticides—and maybe in some cases, sterilization or genetic control are part of the solution. but if it comes down to extinction or not, we’d better consider things very carefully before swatting at entire species without knowing what might happen after.

some of the links to the articles I used to research a bit for this post. read them if you'd like, they're fascinating!

#mosquito #bugs #ecology

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walks-the-ages · 1 month

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Nothing is more amusing than to see someone make a really well thought out post, critiquing a specific media (or a specific genre); citing multiple examples from the source material(s) about the racist/ableist/sexist themes and biases included in a work (or genre), which may or may not be intentional on the creator(s) part, but especially if it was unintentional, points out how it's showing the creators biases and speaks to the power of structural inequality in society--

Only for someone who insists that 'The Curtains Just Are Blue And That Does Not Mean Anything At All' to come in, and with all the personally-offended scoffing of a middle schooler who doesn't understand why their teacher is making them read The Great Gatsby and doesn't know why a green light across the channel is so significant to come in an exclaim "Nu-uh!!!"

The "Nu-uh"-er then usually goes on one of two paths:

"It's just a story, stop thinking so much about it! it's not that deep! Aesop stop telling those funny little fables about plants and animals, don't you know it's just nonsense for kids that means nothing!?"

"This is a really shallow/surface level reading of the text :/. (I am ignoring the fact that a true surface level reading of the text would come to the exact opposite conclusion I am arguing against, because I only care about what a text tells me , and don't care to look deeper into what the text shows me, (including unintentionally) about the events and world within the text and what it reflect about biases in the real world and society at large.")

It should be noted that both kinds of responders will either absolutely refuse to cite examples from the source material, or when they deign to respond to direct quotes from the text used by the OP's essays, they will inevitably completely fail to understand what the quotes are literally textually spelling out to the reader, and come away literally proving the OP's point and show their complete lack of credibility, by showing literally anyone following them just how bad they are at comprehending really basic text.

(They also, inevitably, also refuse to actually try to refute individual claims, because they refuse to think about the content of a text deeply enough to formulate responses to direct quotes from the source material; their usual excuse is the "Uno Reverse Card" of trying to say "If you think x work is racist/ableist/sexist, you're the real x-ish for thinking that way!!!" )

Literally, nothing makes me drop a fandom faster than fans who not only refuse to engage critically with the source material, but specifically go out of their way to demonize anyone who does analyze the media with a critical lens, if that critical lens sheds new, unpleasant light on their favorite character/institution/franchise/creator/show/etc.

This is why I love the Faction Paradox Fandom (completely unafraid to speak up about the racism/exotification of Native American tribes present in the early 2000's The Book of the War)

and Steve Shives on Youtube (Actually addresses and talks about all of the ways that the Star Trek Universe is not as progressive as it presents itself, instead of thoughtlessly defending the Federation and the racist + antisemetic caricatures that are the various aliens)

#critical thinking #reading comprehension #Literature #Media Analysis #media criticism #Literary analysis #bookblr

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arctic-hands · 2 months

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My milk journey has been

First meal: rice porridge with breast milk

Start dropping weight and can't stay out of the bathroom by age seven, get told to avoid dairy so mom buys Lactaid milk for a year. Whole family despises it and Mac and cheese in particular is now terrible and avoided. I'm still very sick anyway

Be diagnosed with Crohn's at age nine. Resume consuming regular dairy

Twelve-ish: begin to feel a little distress at eating ice cream. Does not stop me from accepting a Dairy Queen cheesequake blizzard reward for single handedly winning a science class quiz game that was supposed to be played in teams but no one wanted me. By sheer force of will and remarkable sphincter control for an IBD patient, mange to wait it out get home that day before having a violent reaction.

Thirteen: throw up violently at school after having cheese sticks for my free lunch. Convince myself it was just the greasiness of the meal that set me off

Fourteen: go into high school conceding the point that I'm lactose intolerant. Unsuccessful at lobbying the head principal to provide lactose free strawberry milk. Start paying more money than a lunch would have even cost if I didn't qualify for free lunch at the snack bar for juice or V8 in order to not go thirsty at lunch. Repeatedly throw up when the only option for lunch other than the very popular spicy chicken every Wednesday that I couldn't tolerate mouth-wise or gut-wise was the same cheesesticks that I had in middle school

Sometime later in high school: discover the Meijer's house brand of lactose free milk actually tastes decent.

Seventeen-ish. Find a hair in the carton of Meijer's lactose free milk and swear off it forever. Try rice milk

(Also an aside at seventeen: develop celiac disease and I thanked my lucky stars that it was polite enough to have waited until I was done with wildly ableist school and too old to trick or treat)

I forget which age but I was a fresh and new adult: discover rice milk ice cream. Desperately pretend it tastes and feels like real ice cream.

Shortly after: try coconut milk. It's tasty, but hardly a neutral milk-like taste and doesn't go well when mixed with other ingredients. Coconut milk ice cream is likewise lackluster

Nineteen? Discover the boxed and shelf stable almond milk. Begin to have hope.

Twenty: find out they started making a cartoned and refrigerated almond milk that tastes brilliant

Twenty three? Realize I have forgotten the taste of dairy milk. Almond milk reigns Supreme

Twenty-six: find out what an environmental menace the non-native aimond trees used in American almond milk is to drought-stricken California. Feel guilty but also feel like there's no real way to avoid drinking almond milk

Twenty-eight: Oat milk explodes in the plant milk scene. I ignore this because there's a high likelihood of cross contamination with wheat in both the field crop and in the processing of oats in the same facilities of wheat. No major and common oat milk brands have any gluten free signage

Twenty nine: Oatly converts its American version to gluten free oats brown in dedicated fields and processing facilities. Try it and it's decent. (CAUTION: some celiacs have a reaction to oats themselves regardless of any cross-contamination. I, however, am not one of them.) Become mostly fully converted to oat milk but still keep ordering almond milk when I get an iced coffee because Dunkin and the anarchist coffee shop/bookstore never label which brand of oat milk they use and you're a millennial and despise phone calls

Thirty: Planet Oats is a bit cheaper so I try it on a lark and like it better. Be bummed that it comes in a smaller carton that Oatly and thus is more expensive in the long run. Start putting oat milk in my oatmeal and have a religious crisis because it seems like a decadent and cardinal sin. Remember I'm an atheist and it's okay to be a lil hedonistic and perverse esp where food is concerned

Nearly thirty-one: realize halfway in making this post that it's entirely boring and pointless and is too long for such an uninteresting subject but goddammit I've sunk the cost and will finish this stupid post.

#long post #stupid things #milk #nut milk #plant milk #lactose intolerance #food

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geopsych · 1 year

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Blue flag iris, Iris versicolor.

There’s a little copper iris, Iris Gil a, mixed in with it along an inlet at the lake. They were planted as native(ish) plants by a nature-minded lake association and they’re beautiful.

#pennsylvania #landscape #flowers #lake #iris #iris versicolor #iris fulva #copper iris #blue flag #may #springtime

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notallthoseinheadspace · 18 days

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So I cleaned up this little fic I wrote, Stronger, and expanded on it - have some sweet angsty brotherly bonding between Tech and Echo. Posting it now before the finale destroys us all so please pardon typos and tense changes.

Now also on AO3!

If you’d like some angst with your flansgt, Stronger is a sequel to Heartbeats, which is part of my prediction for canon.

CW: panic attack, emotional disregulation from PTSD, survivor guilt, etc.

Speculatively post-canon.

PG-ish, Echo & Tech brotherly bonding over their trauma.

STRONGER

The pavilion was soaked in the golden light of late evening. His family, friends, and acquaintances surrounded him. There was abundant food and drink remaining, and he was completely safe.

Tech wished that he was anywhere else.

The noise of over a dozen overlapping voices, the ache of his not-yet-fully-healed scars, the myriad scents of the food, drink, and environment, even the warmth of the setting sun combined to create a distracting level of sensory overload after months spent in the quiet of isolation.

He could see glances being exchanged - Hunter to Echo, Echo to Phee, the last of whom glanced back to him, nodded, and abruptly stood on the seat of her chair. “In honor of recovering our treasured friends, let me tell you about the time - ”

Tech allowed himself to tune out her speech, although he acknowledged the gratitude he felt for her distraction of the others. It allowed him to slide out of his corner seat - and he acknowledged his gratitude to Crosshair as well, for surrendering the more isolated chair to him - and hastily walked away.

There was a far more isolated pavilion not far away, with a high stone wall and several large, broad-leafed native plants, which created a level of privacy he currently finds necessary. While it was often occupied by people attempting physical intimacy, it was thankfully unoccupied at present, and he ducked between the shielding flora to lean his elbows against the wall and press his head into his hands.

“It doesn’t get better if you don’t talk about it, you know.”

Snarling, Tech whirled on the intruder, the violent anger that he was still unaccustomed to biting at his impulses. How dare some reg come and presume to lecture him? “You don’t know - ah.”

Wincing both at his mistake and a tight throb of pain from his scars, Tech slumped back against the wall, motioning his chosen brother in. “My apologies, Echo, I did not realize it was you speaking.”

“It’s all right, you’ve got a lot on your mind at the moment. I understand.”

Another bite of irrational anger rose in him, and Tech shoved the emotion aside with far more mental effort than such things had ever required. Echo would understand, possibly better than anyone else. “If you will forgive the insensitivity of my statement, it is… easy, for others, to forget that you were once The Algorithm.”

Arching an eyebrow, Echo parted the leaves of the plant and stepped through, gesturing at the length of his body - depigmented eyes and skin, cranial ports, reduced muscle mass, artificial legs - with his scomp arm. “Really?”

“I did not know you before your imprisonment, and only have holographic records to remind me that you were once a standard clone,” Tech reminded him, turning back to rest both elbows on the wall again. “To me, your current state is as I have always known you. You are Echo as you are, not…”

“An echo of my old self?”

“That pun is both one you have repeated often and poor enough wordplay to cause me physical pain.”

“The pun isn’t all that’s causing you pain, though.”

“It is not,” Tech admitted, carefully sliding his repaired goggles off and letting them hang from his wrist so he could more freely rub the scars spiderwebbing across the side of his face. “Full repair of the nerve damage would have required more resources than were allocated, and physical pain in CX operatives was deemed irrelevant.”

Echo made a noise under his breath that Tech can only classify as a growl and moved to stand beside him at the wall, resting his elbows on the stone beside Tech’s own, and listed sideways enough to gently knock their shoulders together.

“I still get phantom pains from my legs, sometimes,” Echo offered, his tone light, and Tech recognized the conversational prompt for what it was, although he was unsure whether he appreciated it or not.

“I am aware that discussion of traumatic events is shown to help reduce their long-term psychological impact, but I am… uncertain of my ability to do so at the moment. To do so safely, I believe I must first rectify the instability of my current emotional state as well as recall and comprehend the conditioning I was subjected to on Tantiss, and I wish to speak to Crosshair in order to understand why he was immune to such conditioning when I was not, and - ”

The frantic, ever-hastening tumble of words was halted by Echo’s hand gripping his shoulder, giving him the lightest of shakes - everyone was treating him as though he was fragile, now, as though his scars had not healed.

“Tech, breathe.”

Tech sucked in a deep breath, then winced and coughed weakly, one hand rising to rub at the starburst scar high on his left pectoral, the bacta patch on it not entirely removing the pain. Perhaps everyone’s current treatment of him was not unwarranted.

Echo kept the hand on his shoulder, the gentle grip grounding, until Tech’s breathing had regained a more normal rhythm, and for several minutes they sat in silence, watching the moon-yos scampering about in the trees below them.

“I don’t imagine Crosshair’s going to use his rifle again,” Echo said softly, apropos of apparently nothing, and Tech exhaled sharply with another wince.

“I am certainly fortunate to have survived. A direct hit from a Firepuncher rifle bolt, particularly one modified as Crosshair’s has been, would typically result in death regardless of the quality of one’s armor.”

“I don’t think he’s ever been so grateful to have missed a target,” Echo remarked, “even if you did pop up and declare ‘Crosshair, you missed,’ you little shit.”

“It was an accurate observation! I have not known Crosshair to miss a target without injury being involved, and I was unaware of his tremor at the time, so I had no basis for comprehending such a phenomenon! Also, I did not ‘pop up’ - ”

“No, you stayed down long enough to give all of us heart attacks, because your damn helmet fell off - ”

“I do not understand what the - truly inadequate, I might add - state of the Empire’s armor has to do with inducing myocardial infarctions in the squad - ”

“ - and we saw your face on the assassin Crosshair had just shot - ”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“….he would not be the first of us to kill a clone,” Tech said softly, leaning a little more heavily against Echo’s shoulder. “I would not, in fact, even be the first clone he had killed, and I was willing to give my life to ensure the survival of the squad previously. His actions were objectively correct, even if he had been aware of my identity at the time.”

“If he’d been aware of your identity, he never would have taken the shot,” Echo countered, shifting enough for his head to rest ever-so-gently against Tech’s.

“Not taking the shot would have been illogical. I was a threat to the lives of the squad at the time.”

“Feelings aren’t logical or objective, Tech.”

“I am aware, which is why they are often difficult for me to process. I am struggling to even categorize the emotions my experience as a CX-trooper have left me with, although I have identified guilt, inadequacy, anger, resentment, and what I believe to be grief. I was unable to resist the programming as Crosshair was, despite having been deliberately engineered for my intellect, for the strength of my mind, while Crosshair, who was created to - to shoot accurately - was able to resist the entirety of the reconditioning, and to escape Tantiss with Omega’s help, while I was so fully under the command of our enemy that I not only destroyed our home, I returned our sister to them!”

Tech was aware, distantly, that his voice had been rising both in speed and pitch as he spoke, but he was unprepared for the way his breath seized in his chest, shattering the last words into broken gasps.

Echo, to his credit, very gently took hold of Tech’s shoulders and turned him so they stood back-to-chest, then guided them downwards to sit with Echo’s back braced against the stone wall and Tech leaning against his side facing outward, easily able to move away from the contact if he desired.

He did not so desire, and he curled his legs up and turned enough that he could press his face into Echo’s throat, grounding himself in the sharp press of armor and the sound of Echo’s breath and heartbeat and the familiar scent of his brother, and let the overwhelming tide of emotions drag him under, knowing he was safe.

The moon had fully risen by the time Tech felt his physical equilibrium return entirely - breathing and heart rate still elevated but within tolerances, temperature returned to normal, emotions… at least moderately under control, if not as easily regulated as was both typical and preferred.

Echo had remained stedfast throughout his breakdown, his touch minimal and gentle, and humming softly instead of speaking, as he knew Tech’s preferences were.

Rather than removing himself from the contact, though, Tech remained settled against his brother’s chest, drawing comfort from the motion of Echo’s breathing and the sound of his heartbeat beneath him.

“I regret not being stronger,” he admitted softly, and felt Echo’s chest dip with a heavy sigh.

“It wasn’t a matter of strength, believe me, not with people like that. If they decide they’re going to break you, or make you into something else, they won’t stop until they’ve done it.”

“Crosshair was able to resist them.”

Echo chuckled softly, though it was a broken sort of sound. “You did too, if you think about it.”

“Echo, I am aware you have not been present for significant portions of my - ”

“Tech. I can read a damned report whether I was present for something or not. And I’m not focused on what you did, I’m focused on what you didn’t do.”

“…please elaborate.”

“You landed the charges on the Marauder while Wrecker and Gonky were outside of it and gave them time to get clear. You didn’t shoot Hunter, you shot down the pilot of the ship he was trying to hijack and let him swim away. You scared the civilians here, but you didn’t hurt any of them.”

“I killed numerous members of Rex’s team on Teth.”

“Oh, we can compare kill counts if you want. I know exactly how many casualties I was responsible for under Tambor’s control. Brothers, Jedi, enemies, civilians. Should I have been stronger?”

“Echo, our situations were completely different - ”

“How?”

It was just one word, rough-toned and accompanied by the slightest tightening of Echo’s hand on his shoulder, but Tech found that he had no answer. Both of them had been injured, captured, forced against their will into positions that had harmed them and those they loved. And while Tech’s experience had been more personal, the number of lives Echo had inadvertently taken had undoubtedly been higher.

Echo, reading his silence correctly, jostled his shoulder lightly. “I understand feeling guilty, Tech. It’s probably not avoidable. But the harm didn’t come from you. The resistance did.”

“Is that why you joined Rex rather than remain with us? Out of a sense of guilt or a necessity for atonement?”

It was Echo’s turn to be silent, now. Tech leaned back enough to regard his brother - without his goggles on, his vision was a muddle of sharp clarity from his cybernetic eye and the blurriness of his natural one, and he pulled his goggles back on with a grimace.

Echo’s expression was distant, and while not blank it was entirely unreadable, though the thoughts were clearly racing behind his eyes.

“I had thought it was just a desire to help my brothers, to get them out of a situation like I’d been in,” he remarked after a long moment of silence. “But… yeah. I guess atonement was part of it, too.”

“If I have nothing to atone for, Echo, then neither do you.”

“But I - ”

“Either both of us are guilty, or neither of us are. If the situations of our actions are fundamentally identical, then so too is that conclusion.”

Echo opened his mouth, closed it again, visibly weighed his thoughts - organically, as he had destroyed his neural interface on Tantiss to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, and it had yet to be replaced - and finally sighed, before shaking his head with a soft, rough laugh.

“And here I was trying to help you feel better.”

“Perhaps I will feel better with my family in a healthier emotional state.”

Chuckling, Echo knocked their foreheads lightly together in a keldabe, easily avoiding the sharp rim of Tech’s goggles. “Maybe you will. We’ll work on it.”

Smiling, Tech braced himself on the sharp juts of Echo’s knees to push himself to his feet, then offered his hands down to help Echo up. “We will work on it. Together.”

[ END STRONGER]

#tbb #the bad batch #tbb speculation #tbb fanfiction #tbb echo #tbb tech #tech lives #fanfic

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innerchorus · 10 months

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Okay I'm suddenly having Farangis brainrot and consequently have like, a bucketload of questions. Hear me out.

Was Farangis native to Khuzestan? Was she born elsewhere, sent to a temple from that region, only to be transferred to the temple in Khuzestan or was she from Khuzestan to begin with? I realize this is somewhat of a stupid line of question but whatever! My brain can't help it! I wonder how young she was when her parents died and she was sent to the temple, fairly young? 8-9-ish? Even younger? In her teens? I'm just now pondering in amusement how she ended up on the opposite end of Pars from her homeland— southwest to northeast. Also I planned to have her join the clan around the same time Ranna does: aka when she's about like, 13 and they 7 or so, and have them bond with each other as they get accustomed to their new home, but maybe I should move it up a little, but gah I've gotten so fond of the idea!

I'm not sure there are confirmed answers to many of these questions but let's have look at what the novels say! (These are exactly the sorts of things I wonder about too, so I'm more than happy to look into them.)

I don't recall seeing any direct reference to where Farangis was born. It could have been in the region of Khuzestan, or it could simply be that the cultural importance of the temple at the time was what led to her being sent there. It does seem that she was sent there to be raised immediately after her mother's death, though (her father died earlier, leaving her mother more or less a fortune, half of which her mother instructed to be donated to the temple after her death, while the other half was left for Farangis herself). Her mother asked that the temple support her daughter, presumably because there were no other relatives capable of providing for her, or perhaps because she saw being raised in the temple and becoming a priestess as the choice that provided the best future for her daughter.

The temple of Mithra in Khuzestan was built as a donation to mark the birth of Prince Arslan (ordered by Andragoras himself). Arslan was born in 306, at which time Farangis was around 8. So that's the youngest she could have been when she was sent there, and I do tend to think it was likely to be around that age that her life at the temple began.

This seems like a good place to talk about Khuzestan itself, since I mentioned that geographically it doesn't match up with the real life location. It is an area located east of Ecbatana, west of Peshawar Fortress and just north of the Nimruz Mountains. (That's not super specific, but the comment about the Nimruz range helps the most, especially because that's included on the map from the guide that covers up to Book 10)

(annotated map courtesy of the first fan translation)

As well as being just slightly above just above the Nimruz mountains, if Khuzestan is more or less mid-way between Ecbatana and Peshawar that would make it very close to Soleimaniye's location on the Continental Road.

The Chinese version describes Khuzestan as a 'small town' (小镇) but when checking the Japanese the novel is actually talking about the Khuzestan region (地方) which makes more sense.

Now for a little cypress diversion; we were talking about cypresses being planted around temples in ancient Iran, and although I didn't see a mention of it for the temple of Mithra in Khuzestan, the temple of Ashi in the Oxus region is surrounded by them, so that appears to be a thing in Parsian culture too. (Although this is a female-only temple dedicated to a different god, there's a little more detail of temple life in that section which probably applies to other temples like the one in Khuzestan too, so it's a good section to look at for inspiration for that.)

And also, since I may as well add it to this post after I think I forgot to mention it in comments yesterday, concerning the novel's use of the term magpat for a Parsian high priest, it hasn't come up in manga canon presumably because the time it crops up in the novels is when one of these high-ranking priests betrays Tahamenay's location to Hilmes, when in the manga Arakawa changed it to Husrab. In looking at that scene in the novels again I did see Tanaka gave us a brief description of what that priest was wearing; robes of 'gaudy gold and purple'.

Anyway, I think your proposed timeline for Farangis meeting Ranna in your AU would work! Perhaps the jinn told her to travel that way?

#arslan senki #the heroic legend of arslan #farangis #wolfpack au

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fatehbaz · 2 years

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Are concepts like “invasive species” actually a little outdated? Can the concept of “alien species” actually support xenophobia and/or racism? Now that we live in a global ecological apocalypse, in “the Anthropocene,” do we need to learn to live with or collaborate with certain non-native and invasive species, to mitigate their harms rather than eliminate them? What even counts as “natural” during the Holocene, anyway? Is the coconut sentient? Who created the Great Plains? Should Aotearoa New Zealand be purple? Even if we work with non-native species, does a newer paradigm of ecological restoration provide a colonialist/imperialist absolution that protects plantation monocultures and European-US academics while destroying and subjugating Indigenous foodsheds and lifeways?

In response to my post about how it’s unfortunate that the rugged fjordlands of Scandinavia and the globally-unique landscapes of remote mountainsides in Aotearoa have come to be associated in photographic representation or public/popular consciousness with fields of purple-colored lupines, a non-native plant which, especially in the case of Aotearoa, was introduced as part of colonial/imperial campaigns to spread European agriculture and which choke-out rare and sensitive native species:

This was in response to some headlines I posted, including:

And, yes, in the case of Iceland, non-native lupine can still harmful. Yes, (1) Iceland has not changed much since Pleistocene glaciation and (2) the lupine does enrich the soil in a way that Iceland’s native plants could not do previously, but think about the relatively tall canopies of lupine on the previously lightly-vegetated “barren” or “rocky” landscapes of Iceland: The lupines choke-out the native lichens and mosses.

But.

So I see that there are several posts on this site from within the last couple of weeks (July 2022), which have been circulating among ecology-themed blogs, and which have received a lot of attention, posts which basically begin by saying something like “the more we think about it ... maybe we need to begin accepting/working with invasive species rather than aiming for their total elimination.”

And cool, it’s good that this has apparently now become a popular-ish consideration, though there has been a lot written/discussed about this very issue among environmental historians and cultural historians in decolonial/anticolonial and academic circles for at least two decades now.

And generally, I agree. Like with non-native bullfrogs and their firmly-established new distribution in, say, the Mediterranean California biome, where the bullfrogs’ success is linked to the simultaneous success and state enforcement of non-native monoculture plantation crops in the San Joaquin Valley, meaning that “simple” elimination of the bullfrog wouldn’t really be possible as their is simultaneous ecological degradation from agricultural irrigation, associated soil death/loss, etc. In other parts of the Rocky Mountains, I’ve seen single large non-native bullfrogs roll up on mating balls of native boreal toads, and the bullfrogs obliterate the mating ball, eat one of the toads, and literally directly kill the native toads while also preventing their reproduction. Or like with cane toads in Australia. I was on a rural roadway in Northern Territory one day when many cane toads were emerging from the soil, covering the road, and multiple drivers passing by would swerve to hit as many as possible, before making a u-turn to return and kill more toads. But I asked myself at the time “is the violence helping?” Because how many thousands and thousands of cane toads are able to breed at once in a single ephemeral seasonal pool nearby? Killing 100 toads may save a few native snakes from death by consuming the toads, but will the road rage really stop the toad invasion?

But there’s more to it.

Specifically: (1) Indigenous/cultural autonomy, and (2) the existence of species that still always require highly-specific microhabtiat.

Yea, lupine kills Aotearoa’s life. Maybe Aotearoa’s a uniquely serious example? It’s not just a remote and isolated island archipelago adrift at the extreme limits of the planet’s most expansive ocean. Aotearoa is also home to the globally-rare and unique temperate rainforest biome. And islands host essentially “closed systems” where small or localized ecological damage can quickly cascade to destroy life island-wide. And Aotearoa is also home to an incomparable number of unique endemic species found nowhere else. “Ancient” or “primeval” species like moa (now extinct), kakapo, tuatara, etc.

But Iceland’s status as “little-changed since Pleistocene glaciation” doesn’t mean lupine colonization is not-bad.

I’ve addressed this specific question before here, in response to the ask/question: “... i’m working for someone who is part of the ecological landscape alliance and we’ve been having big talks about the concept of “invasive” species vs “native” plants and how the concept is rooted in xenophobia, and also talking about how maybe invasive plants aren’t that bad?? ...” This post addresses concepts like assisted migration, invasion biology, and creolization; arguments like how post-glaciation global Holocene change is potentially entirely anthropogenic; Crosby’s “neo-Europe”; and how concepts from authors like Tsing and Haraway have been influential in the disc horse, though potentially dangerously supporting white, European-US academics’ hand-wringing self-absolution.

And I’ve also elaborated, here, more on those same concepts and why we ought not be so quick to dispel with notions of alien, invasive, native species, using Pablo Escobar’s escaped hippopotamus in Colombia as a case study to discuss “justified” killing of invasive species, naturalization, anthropogenic change in the Holocene, potential problems with so-called “re-wilding” restoration projects, as well as the case study of the coconut’s assisted migration. This one contains a longer response to your specific argument/question/proposition.

---

For an example of how the language of “alien” and “invasive” used in ecology and science communication can support eugenics, racism, xenophobia (in this case, plants and insect pests as threats to industrial plantation monocultures in Hawaii, California, etc. being used to support narratives of Asian invasion/subversion of US interests):

Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890-1950 (Jeannie N. Shinozuka, 2022)

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For an example of how the Anthropocene and global ecological apocalypse might require “working with invasive species” and, specifically, learning to avoid exalting notions of “purity” and instead valuing “damaged landscapes” and “impure species” without enacting undue mass killings against introduced species, try this good tale of the preservation of the “junk-bird”:

Hugo Reinert. “Requiem for a Junk-Bird: Violence, Purity and the Wild.” Cultural Studies Review. 2019.

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For a similar example of how the mass killing of non-native or introduced species can be bad, try some of Anna Boswell’s essays. Her writing on stoats is especially well-known/respected, as she criticizes how silly/violent it is for the colonial New Zealand state to have introduced stoats in order to perform mass killings against introduced mammal species, before the state then turned to demonizing the stoat itself:

Anna Boswell. “Sanctuaries and the Stoat-Free State.” Animal Studies Journal. 2017.

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For an example of how we may as well learn to live with some invasive species, since, at this point, there is not a single “untouched” landscape in any remote corner of the planet that has escaped the ecological effects of industrial extraction and its supply chains, creating a web or network of “planetary urbanization”, and therefore notions of alien, invasive, wilderness, etc., all must be interrogated and questioned:

Lindsay Bremner. “The Urban Hyperobject.” Geoarchitecture. 24 August 2015.

Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw. “Radical urban political-ecological imaginaries.” Derive. May 2014.

I also made a compilation post of the juiciest excerpts from here, which you might like.

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For an example of how local/Indigenous people can simultaneously acknowledge the harms/danger and violent/imperialist origin of an introduced species while still trying to respect the introduced creature (in this case, these Indigenous Marind communities recognize that non-native African oil palm destroys their food forests and supports devastating Indonesian colonialism and capitalist plantation industry, but also have a nuanced respect for the tree):

In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua (Sophie Chao, 2022)

For an example of how not only a non-native plant can come to be perceived as locally useful and functionally naturalized to the point that it becomes central to regional cultural identity, but also how a non-native plant can support marginalized communities and their pursuit of autonomy. Therefore, alien/invasive/native denominations are complicated. (in this case, ex-slave quilombola and other Afro-diasporic communities of Brazil guarding Blackness from imperial/state recuperation through relationship with non-native dende, African oil palm):

Palm Oil Diaspora (Case Watkins, 2021)

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These final considerations -- human foodsheds, Indigenous lifeways, cultural autonomy -- ought to be discussed right there alongside the “purely scientific/ecological” considerations.

So I’ll repost something I said in the Colombia feral hippo post:

Also regarding degrees of “naturalness” and the Pleistocene [...]. So a question that scholars, theorists, ecologists, etc., ask regarding “re-wilding” is: To which moment in history are we trying to turn the clock back to? In the US, for example, are these re-wildling actors trying to rehabilitate landscapes to their conditions before the 19th-century intensification of Indigenous genocide and settlement of “the West”? Or, a return to before English colonies and the deforestation of New England? A return to 1492? Outside of the Americas, as re-wilding campaigns in Europe try to return lynx and European bison, are we returning to a time before Roman state-building and imperial expansion? Or even earlier, a return to landscapes before agriculture in the eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, to the Pleistocene? [...] What is a “natural” environment during the Holocene/Anthropocene, during the past 12,000 years, anyway? The myth of “wilderness” dismisses millennia of Indigenous influence on ecosystems. Even before sedentary agriculture, urban settlement, and state-building in Indus, Yangtze, and Tigris-Euphrates valleys, we know that there were urban constructions along the western coast of the Indian subcontinent (now submerged beneath the sea), and at Gobekli Tepe before the end of the Pleistocene. [...] Or, at the very least, these humans helped instigate transition from woodland to grassland inadvertently by harvesting herds of mammals/megafauna. [...]

And then, dialogues of historical/social analysis and ecology meet, with controversial concepts of “hybridization”, etc. Some ecologists, especially in recent (2000 until present) disk horse argue that, with so many non-native species (especially plants and invertebrates) now so widespread globally, should we begin to accept that conditions have simply changed so much that people ought to work with non-native species to forge a “new” understanding of what counts as “natural”? (You’ll see this issue discussed in places like Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, and other settler-colonial places. But careful: Does this disk horse function as a roundabout way of sneakily implying that humans, too, can “become-natural” to anywhere? So that, if a European colonial power inhabits a “new” place, they also can frame themselves as natural? Would this be a “settler absolution” that works to literally “naturalize” imperial occupation?) And these scholars also ask: How long does a creature have to have lived in a place, in a landscape, before it has been present long enough to be considered “natural”? When you see a European dairy cow grazing on non-native pasture in Aotearoa on land that was temperate rainforest, home to strange endemic flightless birds only decades ago, it is “unnatural”. But maybe when you see a coconut in western Polynesia, it might seem natural. However, the coconut species “swam” there, floating over the seas. It migrated. But has the coconut been around in Polynesia long enough to be considered natural to those islands? Is this also how the yam/sweet potato found its way from Southeast Asia, across the Pacific, to Latin America? Does the fact that coconut migrated on its own, (possibly?) without apparent deliberate human introduction, make a metaphysical/semiotic difference, does it mean that the coconut is more natural because it found its own way rather than through direct human introduction? But even if humans did “unnaturally” introduce a species to a new region, do we consider that species “natural” or “native” species after enough time has passed? What to make of the human-induced spread of apples and other fruits from the Tien Shan slopes, or the human cultivation of tomato in the Andes? If humans propagated an apple variant 8,000 years ago, has enough time passed that the apple variant has become “natural”? Are the Asiatic steppes actually “natural” grasslands if humans, during the Pleistocene, burned woodlands and helped create those grasslands?

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And specifically about your proposition that lupines in Iceland pose relatively less danger to ecosystems, so is it really that bad? Here’s an excerpt from the first post I’ve linked at the top:

At the end of the day: Sure, kudzu or English pasture grasses or coconuts or European earthworms or domesticated cattle might be generalist species which can successfully inhabit landscapes across the planet. So whether humans introduce them via agriculture, or whether they "naturally" expand by some accident or by drifting across ocean currents, they might exist in this strange ontological space between "native" and "alien" which confounds human conceptions of what "belongs"? And this is worth considering! This is good to think about! But there are still, and always have been, those "small" landscapes, those isolated pockets, those relicts and remnants in shaded stream corridors, where small populations of endemic species teeter on the verge, with highly-specialized adaptations to highly-specific microhabitats. You're not going to "assist the migration" of or "accidentally introduce" a cave-obligate salamander from a limestone cavern or a temperate rainforest-dwelling land-slug to a desert biome. But, again, I still think it is good to stop and ask ourselves whether categories of “natural” and “alien/invasive” in ecology make sense, are outdated, or if they reinforce racism/xenophobia. And, again, I haven’t read enough -- I haven’t grappled with these questions enough -- to have an opinion which I’m comfortable sharing definitively, so I don’t want to discourage this disk horse too much.

---

Hope some of this is interesting.

#abolition #ecology #imperial #colonial #hippo

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anime-simp-0 · 1 year

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what i think each MHA 1A student would do in a quirkless society

midoriya: nurse. oh my god i saw a fanart of nurse deku forever ago and it was fine asf. but anyways. i think he would still have the desire to help people and save them, but not wanna go running head first into buildings. so, he decides to use his head and hands instead. i could also see emt since it’s still a little dangerous for his adrenaline junkie ass without almost burning alive.

bakugo: i can’t explain why but quirkless AU bakugo to me is always a firefighter 🤷. i think he is a junkie when it comes to danger and saving people is just engrained in him so, even without a quirk, he would still wanna do something whether military or police service.

todoroki: i’m gonna say family business. but he runs it the exact opposite of his old man just to piss him off.

kirishima: public service of some kind. i’m stuck between police officer or a firefighter cuz i could see both. on one hand, i could see him running head fire into fires with bakugo being each others partners and saving each other left and right since he’s the only one that can put up with him. but i can also see him as the police officer of an area. like the one that everyone loves and treats with respect. so much so that even the gangsters and drug dealers are like “hey sir, how’s your day been” because kiri wasn’t disrespect even when arresting them.

denki: i'm gonna say electronical engineer. he might act stupid but he managed to pass the UA written exam just like the other members of UA so clearly there is a brain up there. Having said that, electronics were something he always thought were cool and he started messing around with them as a kid and it stuck.

sero: i feel like he would LEGALLY sell marijuana. like he would have a license to and would sell edible snacks as well as marijuana straight. he just gives me hippie-ish "the world is less shitty when your high" vibes so he sells good quality weed so people get blissed.

iida: i think his family business would be something tech based instead of heroing. i still think they would make bank from it tho. and the family business would make him feel obligated to follow it.

aoyama: model. enough said.

uraraka: probably join the family construction company “temporarily” but then always come up with an excuse to why she needs to stay. “well, __ is gonna be on a 1 week vacation so, i’ll put in my notice after they’re back” “well, now it’s close to *insert holiday* so i better stay and help get the projects done faster” and on and on.

momo: design. whether fashion, interior design, architecture. something with design tho. she likes being able to create things from scratch. enjoys watching what she can turn things into.

jirou: musician. specifically vocalist and guitarist for a indie rock / alternative rock band.

ojiro: i feel like he would totally have a therapy office where you talk about your feelings while doing yoga 😂. his reason is it helps align your body and your mind.

tsu: i feel like she would be one of those people that study plants and creatures in their native habitats. but she would exclusively work with ponds, rivers and streams and has a deep love and interest/fascination with frogs.

mina: model. i think she would start as a model for a fitness brand and would gradually move over to being a diverse model as her career grows.

hagakure: kindergarden teacher for some reason. i can't explain why. it just seems right in my brain.

satou: baker. like come on.

tokoyami: musician. specifically guitarist for a rock / metal band. it just… fits.

koda: something to do with animals. whether that’s working at a zoo or traveling the world studying animals.

shouji: cop. he's really good at spacial awareness and protecting his partners. plus he has really fast reflexes.

mineta: he died <3

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joy-haver · 2 months

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Yes you should vote. You should probably vote for Biden, or Cornell West. Some of you see Biden as potential short term harm reduction. Some of you see West as potential long term harm reduction. These both make sense to me as options and I’m not going to split hairs on it.

But the thing is. We are at a point with elections where we aren’t really reducing harm. The harm is escalating no matter who gets elected. The question is speed. Libs burn down the world a teeny tiny bit slower. Sometimes a decent-ish bit. But the problems are still increasing.

If there is anything you should learn from this election season, it’s this;

Voting will not save us.

*Not voting* will not save us.

We have to break out of the fiction that this shit is helping. That it is the most relevant. If you are buying time. Figure out what it is you are buying time to accomplish. The legal system, the state, the government; they are giving diminishing returns on all your efforts for improvement. You are giving them more than you get. So what are you going to do instead?

Are you going to start feeding people? Are you going to start building communities? Are you going to start planting native food species? Are you going to give trans people financial and physical security? Are you going to help out your local libraries, and start non-library systems of exchange to supplement when they are censored? Are you going to build the world you want to see, instead of praying that someone who never even wanted to will build it for you?

Stop cheering for the parties. Stop waiting for them to save you. It is only by our hands that liberation, and survival, can happen. Together, intertwined. In community.

Act now.

#elections #electoralism #us politics

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the-habitat-ring · 1 year

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The (Real) Stardew Valley Farm

So a year and a half ago we bought a house, AKA the real life habitat ring. I swear the yard came with every single non-aquatic invasive plant we’ve got. Slowly but surely we’ve been murdering all the Japanese honeysuckle and poison hemlock, tearing up a truly inhumane amount of weed barrier and pea gravel, and adding truckloads of wood chips and other organic matter to start to repair the soil. Our goal is to replace everything with mostly native plants with an emphasis on food production.

But of course I needed more of a challenge. I love playing Stardew Valley. It’s really the only video game I play. And somewhere I got the idea, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to grow everything in Stardew Valley in our yard?” So here we are. Obviously I don’t live on some magical land with perfect weather, a giant greenhouse, and a second farm on a tropical island, so I have to make plenty of substitutions. I’m also trying to grow native plants whenever possible. Any suggestions are welcome!

2021

Amaranth - Native white amaranth (the birds love it!)

Grape - Native riverbank grapes (so many grapes) and some green cultivated variety from the neighbors

Dandelion - Obviously

Maple Tree - Native silver, red, and sugar maples (also an invasive Norway maple but we chopped it down)

Pine Tree - Not sure what kind of pines they are

Apple Tree - Not in great shape. I’d love an Enterprise apple tree at some point

Coffee Bean - Chicory (maybe that’s cheating, but it’s a naturalized plant commonly used as a coffee substitute)

Salmonberry - Not native to the Midwest, so we’re sticking with native black raspberries. We’ll likely add some pink/yellow raspberries later though

2022

Kale

Rhubarb

Strawberry - Both cultivated and native

Tulip

Radish

Tomato

Beet

Eggplant

Fairy Rose - Not a real thing so I substituted the native prairie rose

Cranberries - Native cranberry viburnum

Orange Tree -Native persimmons, which produce orange fruit

Daffodil

Spring Onion - Native nodding onions and also green onions indoors

Spice Berry - Native spicebushes

Wild Plum - Native

Hazelnut - Native

Crocus

Cherry Tree - Native black cherries and nonnative bush cherries

Tea Leaves - Native New Jersey Tea bush

Banana Tree - Native pawpaws, which are also known as Indiana bananas

Mango Tree - One of the pawpaws is a named variety called mango so I think that counts

Ginger - Attempted native wild ginger, which I don’t think survived, but am also growing ginger indoors

Green Bean

Sweet Gem Berry - Native Juneberry (Downy Serviceberry) which are a redish color

Planned for 2023

Blue Jazz - Not real so I went with the native Ozark Bluestar, which seems similar enough

Garlic

Parsnip

Apricot Tree - Native passionflower vine. Not a tree, but it is known as wild apricot

Blueberry

Sunflower - Both native and non-native sunflowers

Pineapple - Neither my spouse nor I like pineapples, so we’re going with white strawberries known as pineberries that are said to have a tropical taste

Pumpkin

Melon

Wild Horseradish - Except I’ll be growing it in a pot because it tends to get a little too wild for my tastes

Holly - Native winterberry holly

Oak Tree - Native dwarf chinquapin oak

Sweet Pea

Hot Pepper

Palm Tree - Obviosuly not going to work here but there is a native palm sedge that I’ll plant instead

Planned for 2024

Potato

Corn

Hops - Hoping to get a cutting from a native hops vine (if the local beer people don’t kill me)

Winter Root - I’m gonna go with native ground nuts because you can dig up the roots in winter

Poppy - Hopefully native wood poppy

Red Cabbage

Artichoke - Native Jerusalem artichokes

Cactus Fruit - Native prickly pear cactus

Yam

Bok Choy

Leek

Fiddlehead Fern

Blackberry

Crystal Fruit - I’m gonna go with honey berries, which produce fruit earlier than anything else

Ancient Fruit - Native Aronia berries are the only thing I can think of for this one. They’re blue(ish) and have lots of antioxidants so you live to be ancient

Figuring Out Substitutes

Rice

Wheat

Starfruit - Not really sure how to swing this one, so suggestions are welcome

Summer Spangle - Not real, so I’m open to suggestions of native plants. Possibly prairie lily? It has a similar-ish shape, is orange, and blooms in summer

Qi Fruit - Creepy little man

Taro Root - I would have to plant it in pots

Morel - I wish I could grow this

All the other mushrooms - I think I’ll just ignore any varieties and just try plugs or similar

Snow Yam

Cave Carrot - Trying to find a native carrot substitute

Coconut - I shouldn’t count this separately from palm trees, right?

Mahogany Tree

Peach Tree

Pomegranate Tree - There are Russian pomegranates that are hardy to zone 6, which just might work with climate change

#I make bad decisions but at least the wildlife love me #don’t be a petaq grow native plants #gardening #stardew valley #sdv #the habitat ring #the (real) stardew valley farm

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jasper-book-stash · 3 months

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February 2024 Reading Wrap Up

I finished off my reading challenge with time to spare! So let's talk about the books I've read this month. I'm making this up before the end of the month, because I don't foresee myself finishing up my current book in the next few days.

Religious Text

None applicable.

1/10 - Why Did They Publish This?

A Book of Pagan Prayer | Ceisiwr Serith

This book sucked ass. Fucking Robert Graves in the bibliography, treating any "non-Abrahamic" (meaning not Christian, Catholic, or Jewish in this context) as Pagan-with-a-capital-P, a baffling usage of Zoroastrianism, using "Indian" instead of "Indigenous"/"Native American", misusing "shaman", the baffling choice to have a prayer that you need to use to prepare yourself to pray, sloppy editing, self-contradiction without realizing the author did that, and, dare I say, an overly-Wiccan syncretic approach.

I genuinely have no idea how it got published.

Hands-On Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation through the Ovayki Current | Andrieh Vitimus

I damn near threw this one across the room within the first nine pages. Why are you citing a WHITE WOMAN when talking about hoodoo? Why is J K Rowling's Harry Potter book in the bibliography? Why does the bibliography suck overall?

2/10 - Trash

None applicable.

3/10 - Meh

None applicable.

4 to 6/10 - Mid-Tier

Witchcraft For Everyone: A No-Nonstense Guide to Creating Your Own Magical Practice | Sam Wise

I wrote my thoughts on this one in a separate post.

7 to 8/10 - Good With Caveats

From Sanctity to Sorcery: An Author’s Guide to Building Belief Structures and Magic Systems | Angeline Trevena

This is a perfectly passable book talking about religion and magic systems. But I still prefer Timothy Hickson's "On Writing and Worldbuilding" books and YouTube series (under the YouTuber name Hello Future Me).

Zendikar: In The Teeth Of Akoum | Robert Wintermute [reading challenge]

I'll admit, this one was a dredge to get through. I much prefer the short-and-sweet version of the story found through the WOTC website (or, even better, MTGLore.com). But hey, Nissa at least gets time to shine! She deserves something nice.

Memories & Memoirs: Essays, Poems, Stories, Letters by Contemporary Missouri Authors | Sharon Kinney-Hanson

This wasn't for a reading challenge, but rather, it was my book club book for this month (our theme was "biography"). I chose memoirs instead of an actual biography because I genuinely don't care about a lot of people who have biographies written about them.

But there was something...nice about this. It was nice, reading stuff by people like you in the place you live (admittedly 24 years ago). It's an experience I don't often get - not a lot of people set their stories in Missouri, and even less are from Missouri themselves. The best we usually get is traveling characters stopping to appreciate the St Louis Arch. So it was nice to be...seen.

Diadem: Worlds of Magic: Book of Names | John Peel [reading challenge]

This book has been on my TBR list for ten years, and I've finally read it. And it's pretty good! You can definitely tell that it's made for a particularly young audience (probably preteen at most, as the main protagonists are 12-ish) and is a product of its time (the mid-1990s). Baby (cough, preteen) Jasper would have gone hogwild over this, if they had bothered actually reading it when they got it. But to Current Jasper, it doesn't hit how they would have liked.

9/10 - Very Very Good

Snow White with the Red Hair, volumes 13-20 | Sorata Akiduki

Volumes 13 to 19 were 9/10, and volume 20 hit 10/10, but I'll just bundle them all together here. Snow White with the Red Hair is an ongoing manga series about a romance in a fantasy world (though notably, one that doesn't seem to actually have magic, merely fantastical creatures and plants). The main romance is a woman on the run from her home kingdom after her prince became obsessed with her due to her red hair, and the second prince of the neighboring kingdom, though neither really know each other when they meet. At this point in the story, they're fairly dedicated to seeing each other despite the woman working hard to be a proper royal herbalist (following her dreams) and the prince dealing with the politics of his older brother (who recently became king) and his land along with a dedicated loyalty to the woman.

It's surprisingly sappy and adorable, despite the fact that I don't typically read romance. These two characters and their friends have wormed their way into my heart.

Hide | Kiersten White [reading challenge]

Kiersten White is an author I recently started reading, and I absolutely adore her writing. In Hide, she captures the exact feeling of being a broke queer person in a conservative small-town and the danger that comes with it. Along with a more supernatural danger.

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea | Rebecca Thorne [reading challenge]

This is a damn fine story with damn fine characters, a loving and already-established relationship (where there's no "will they break up" drama), and a fascinating set of magic systems. My only real complaint here is that the stakes are much higher than what I expected from something marketed as "cozy fantasy". The settings and vibes often were more cozy, but there were higher stakes than what I expected, what with the dragons and the queen and- Well, it was a good book. It was inspired by Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, but don't expect the two to be the same.

10/10 - Unironically Recommend To Everyone

Well, everyone who's into the genre these fall under, at least.

Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe | John Boswell

This is an incredibly in-depth look at exactly what it says it is - same-sex unions in premodern Europe (stretching back to ancient Greece and Rome) with comparisons to opposite-sex unions of the times. If you're interested in one or both sides of those, pick it up. Just be ready for the long haul; this book is 464 pages long and has multiple appendices.

#jasper post #books #bookblr #authors #reading wrap up #2024 #february 2024

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