#forest of floods

[iamfabiloz]

I love u!!!! :3 ❤️

Platonic btw, Velvetvein (brown cat) doesn’t like the other guy (Silverbark) bc he reminds her of her dead kid LOL! Lore

[reasonsforhope]

Legit though, we should start turning ecosystem restoration and work to make our world more tolerant to the effects of climate change into annual holidays and festivals

Like how just about every culture used to have festivals to celebrate the beginning of the harvest or its end, or the beginning of planting, or how whole communities used to host barn raisings and quilting bees - everyone coming together at once to turn the work of months or years into the work of a few days

Humble suggestions for festival types:

Goat festival

Besides controlled burns (which you can't do if there's too much dead brush), the fastest, most effective, and most cost-efficient way to clear brush before fire season - esp really heavy dead brush - is to just. Put a bunch of goats on your land for a few days!

Remember that Shark Tank competitor who wanted to start a goat rental company, and everyone was like wtf? There was even a whole John Oliver bit making fun of the idea? Well THAT JUST PROVES THEY'RE FROM NICE WET PLACES, because goat rental companies are totally a thing, and they're great.

So like. Why don't we have a weekend where everyone with goats just takes those goats to the nearest land that needs a ton of clearing? Public officials could put up maps of where on public lands grazing is needed, and where it definitely shouldn't happen. Farmers and people/groups with a lot of acres that need clearing can post Goat Requests.

Little kids can make goat-themed crafts and give the goats lots of pets or treats at the end of the day for doing such a good job. Volunteers can help wrangle things so goats don't get where they're not supposed to (and everyone fences off land nowadays anyway, mostly). And the goats, of course, would be in fucking banquet paradise.

Planting Festival and Harvest Festival

Why mess with success??? Bring these back where they've disappeared!!! Time to swarm the community gardens and help everyone near you with a farm make sure that all of their seeds are sown and none of the food goes to waste in the fields, decaying and unpicked.

And then set up distribution parts of the festival so all the extra food gets where it needs to be! Boxes of free lemons in front of your house because you have 80 goddamned lemons are great, but you know what else would be great? An organized effort to take that shit to food pantries (which SUPER rarely get fresh produce, because they can't hold anything perishable for long at all) and community/farmer's markets

Rain Capture Festival

The "water year" - how we track annual rainfall and precipitation - is offset from the regular calendar year because, like, that's just when water cycles through the ecosystems (e.g. meltwater). At least in the US, the water year is October 1st through September 30th of the next year, because October 1st is around when all the snowmelt from last year is gone, and a new cycle is starting as rain begins to fall again in earnest.

So why don't we all have a big barn raising equivalent every September to build rain capture infrastructure?

Team up with some neighbors to turn one of those little grass strips on the sidewalk into a rain-garden with fall-planting plants. Go down to your local church and help them install some gutters and rain barrels. Help deculvert rivers so they run through the dirt again, and make sure all the storm drains in your neighborhood are nice and clear.

Even better, all of this - ESPECIALLY the rain gardens - will also help a ton with flood control!

I'm so serious about how cool this could be, yall.

And people who can't or don't want to do physical stuff for any of these festivals could volunteer to watch children or cook food for the festival or whatever else might need to be done!

Parties afterward to celebrate all the good work done! Community building and direct local improvements to help protect ourselves from climate change!

The possibilities are literally endless, so not to sound like an influencer or some shit, but please DO comment or reply or put it in the notes if you have thoughts, esp on other things we could hold festivals like this for.

Canning festivals. "Dig your elderly neighbors out of the snow" festivals. Endangered species nesting count festival. Plant fruit trees on public land and parks festival. All of the things that I don't know anywhere near enough to think of. Especially in more niche or extreme ecosystems, there are so many possibilities that could do a lot of good

[michaelnordeman]

Värmland, Sweden (March 22, 2024).

[notyoujamie]

[ballad-of-elgado]

Really wanted to draw Link again + my rathian subspecies as the featured monster. More or less just wanted to doodle a little and colored it on a whim.

-> Support me on Kofi!

[expressions-of-nature]

by Sergei Shlyaga

[dicegrimorium]

Greetings!

The rain has been going on for a few days now and unfortunately for our group of heroes there's no settlement nearby where they can go to the inn and dry their boots.

Instead they have to fight this gloomy weather, a weather that has left the forest completely flooded and has made their travels that much more difficult.

Yet our party prevails despite the harsh conditions and their continue their adventure no matter the amount of water beneath their feet. Let's just hope that they're not surprised by any enemies that could take this opportunity to catch them off-guard.

Will they be able to see the end of this downpour?

You can see a preview of this map’s Patreon content by clicking here.

If you liked the map I’d be extremely thankful if you considered supporting me on my Patreon, rewards include higher resolution files, gridless versions, alternate versions, line versions, PSDs and more. Thank you!

[pickleweed2]

East Fork Willow Creek, yesterday morning. It recently was at flood stage and pulled down part of the road.

Six Rivers National Forest, California

[pink-alchemy]

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Vale dos Lagos-Pateira in Sintra, Portugal

[iamfabiloz]

this one goes out to all 3 (me included) velvetvein fans in teh world, my fellow velvetveiners WE WILL PROSPER!!

[tortilla-of-courage]

so like did faron put those big fish bulls that want to kill you on sight all over the flooded faron woods with a Purpose or was it specifically to fuck with link. where did they come from

[thresholdbb]

A Federation starship seems like a terrible place for a bath

[mollykflood]

The second episode I boarded for Craig of the Creek premiered today! @crewofthecreek

@deenabeck 

[bonefall]

Thistle Law

The most extreme, violent interpretation of the Warrior Code, initially founded by Thistleclaw near the end of the Campaign Era, with its first implementation defining the beginning of the Slash-and-Burn Period.

One of three distinct Clan ideologies, next to Fire Alone and Traditionalism.

A guide to its origin, the parable associated with it, its principles, and most importantly, my authorial intentions with it in the Bonefall Rewrite. Seen a couple of questions about it, so I think this’ll help clarify.

Origin

Extreme interpretations of the Code go back as far as the founding of the clans themselves, but the roots of Thistle Law trace back to the Exile of SkyClan. Justifying the loss of an entire clan included cracking down on medicine cats and quashing a rebellion, and the ‘clan pride tide‘ added FOUR new laws to the Warrior Code.

The following wars and conflicts in the Chivalric Period further contributed to xenophobic sentiment in the Clans, with each one vying for supremacy over the others, branching out to attack non-Clan cats when there were brief stints of ‘peace’. Thistleclaw merely gave these ideas a name while educating his apprentice, using thistles as a metaphor.

Tigerclaw then went on to tell the story to his clanmates, to his own apprentices, and at gatherings to his future allies who told it to their own clanmates. Though the details of the story changed at times, the takeaway is constant;

Other cats must die, so yours can stay strong.

The Parable of the Thistle

The story goes that Thistleclaw brought Tigerpaw out to a massive, thorny bull thistle. He pointed out that the other plants were dying around it, but the flowers stood tall and proud. Thistleclaw explained the thistle was killing the plants around it to have more room to grow, and then cruelly commanded that Tigerpaw try to destroy it.

By the time it was done, Tigerpaw was covered in scratches and the sun was setting. All the way home, he tried to shake the thistlefluff out of his fur and forget the painful experience. The seasons turned, and one year later when Tigerclaw was a young warrior, Thistleclaw led him down a path lined with young, thorny leaves.

There, in a sea of green spikes, the thistle was standing as tall and as proud as the day Tigerpaw shredded it.

In killing every other plant in the area, the thistle had given itself room to come back stronger. The fluff that clung to Tigerpaw’s fur became new growth. Around them was an entire clearing of thistles, ready to burst into a wall of flowers and seeds.

Thistleclaw asked if Tigerclaw would dare to try again, and remembering how his last battle with the weed ended with scratches as deep as claw marks, admitted that he would rather be a thistle than fight one.

(Little did Ivypaw know, the beautiful field in which she meets Hawkfrost was completely strangled by flowering thistles.)

Principles

Depending on the exact time period and the cat it takes root in, Thistle Law can look different. For examples, Brokenstar’s goal was to drive every Clan out of the forest except ShadowClan, where Tigerstar’s aim was to annex every clan into TigerClan and enforce a standard of purity.

Incarnations of Thistle Law tend to share these principles,

The Code Hardens The calling card of Thistle Law is a stricter, more violent interpretation of the Warrior Code. The harsher laws are emphasized, such as the Law of Loyalty and the Right of the Challenge, while softer ones are downplayed or dropped entirely, like the Law of Honor and the Queen’s Rights.

Extreme Xenophobia Against outsiders, against cats of other clans, against half-clan cats. Thistle Law sets itself apart from Traditionalism for becoming willing to enforce some sort of purity.

Hierarchy Becomes Rigid The social power of medicine cats, deputies, and elders is suppressed. The leader is raised as the ultimate authority, even if that leader isn’t the Clan’s -star.

There Is No ‘Pointless’ Death The Clans are a battle culture, but a good battle is still fought for a reason. When tides turn to Thistle Law, fighting is the goal AND the means. To live is to battle, to kill is to win, and a warrior’s purpose is to die at war.

Each incarnation likely contains each point in varied amounts and tosses other ideas into the mix, but the name of the game remains the same-- and it springs from the taproot of Thistle Law.

Intentions

Thistle Law is what fascism looks like in Clan culture. I approach this using Umberto Eco’s 1995 essay Ur-Fascism as my primary reference. Ur-fascism is a ‘fuzzy‘ concept that looks very different depending on the exact society it springs from, mixing and matching several symptoms in varying degrees of severity.

So, in adapting this, I had to simplify a very complicated topic. I wanted to keep the antifascist theory recognizable, while still following canon events and creating an engaging rewrite.

So for simplicity sake, even if a clan might have technically called their own version of Thistle Law something else, I use this name to address it.

[suturaura]