I Don't Know About Obsession, But If I May Ask...

USA Native Plant Resource Masterlist

Because Google is totally useless and won't help you with ANYTHING

iNaturalist: Take photos of living things you see, post them, and the community will identify them for you. Data from iNaturalist is used in scientific research.

Wildflower.org Plant Database: Enter search criteria and find some plants. Very useful if you're looking for plants with specific qualities or know what you have in mind.

Native Plant Finder: This website is still in beta and is a work in progress, but it will show you plants for your area ranked by the number of butterflies that use them for their caterpillars.

WildflowerSearch: AMAZING resource for identification and for learning about new plants. Shows you where plants are native/not native, TONS of search filters.

Native Plant Trust: A New England organization, but probably useful to anyone.

Northern Forest Atlas: Great images and identification resources for trees; has good pictures of bark, seeds, buds, leaves.

FloraFinder: Another plant database site that's being slowly built up by a passionate nerd.

MonarchWatch milkweed by USA ecoregion: Tells you what milkweed species you should plant for monarch butterflies.

Native Beeology: Not plants, but a closely related subject.

I will add more and post an updated list as I find more.

I have so many poems memorized for the right moment but what they don't tell you is that there's pretty much never occasions to recite poetry unprompted. or prompted for that matter

Lines from the original composition of “A letter to an Israeli soldier,” written by Muin Bseiso and Mahmoud Darwish as they sheltered during the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982. Courtesy of the family of Muin Bseiso.

Moments of decolonization, in relation to the recalcitrant Palestinian case, have been occasions for jubilation. We may recall the scenes from southern Lebanon in May 2000, when the Israeli military finally withdrew from the region. Israel had been in Lebanon, with the help of its right-wing Lebanese adjuncts, since 1982, when it invaded to evict the Palestine Liberation Organization from their Beirut headquarters. That summer, the Israeli military laid siege to Beirut for more than two months, bombing the densely populated city and killing thousands. While many Lebanese died, Palestinians were the principal targets of the Israeli campaign.

Among those huddled beneath the bombs were Muin Bseiso and Mahmoud Darwish, two of Palestine’s most prominent poets. They would both later produce book-length accounts of the siege, but over the course of one evening that summer, they wrote a poem as one.

A letter to an Israeli soldier, is what they named their poem. In one stanza, the two poets address the “inhabitant of the tank.”

We write to you Before a shell ignites us or ignites you Here is a message of the last besieged to the last besieged We write from a fragment you sent … to carry you From the darkness of the “ghetto” to our bodies … We write to you

Bseiso and Darwish ask:

Can one piss in a tank? Can he read in the tank? Can a person fly pigeons in a tank? Can one fuck in a tank? Or plant trees in the tank? … How long have you been in the claws of the tank? How long have you been safe?

The poem enacts an incredible reversal: the poets, themselves confined to an apartment at the mercy of missiles and mortars, taunt the soldier besieging them. The Israeli soldier is confined by the steel that is meant to protect him. They write in their letter, “You are in a dungeon, behind bars.” Many of the poem’s stanza’s end simply with the refrain Hal anta fi aman?—meaning, Are you safe?

Meanwhile, the poets have their own refrain: our siege is long.

Our siege is long We shall bake the stone We shall knead the moon We shall finish our journey Upon this beautiful day Our siege is long

From "Our Siege is Long," article by Esmat Elhalaby (published 27 October 2023)

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How do you feel about evolved forms of contractions? It'd've, for example :3

I think you should use whatever tools communicate your intentions best!

I've seen eggheads complain about excessive contractions, and against trying to phonetically write out how characters speak. but lol i say. lmao.

Beautiful writing is rhythmic writing, and every syllable is a musical note. Why would you restrict what notes you can use? Preposterous. Ludicrous!

This is for you, Rainwalker! You asked for it, baby!

The road infrastructure in Sharteshane must be appalling, good thing Rilursa can always count on GEICO Roadside Pickup :)

I’m sorry.

//rainwvalker…… you will pay for this//

Did you actively design Cresce and Alderode to be opposites of each other or did they sort of evolve that way as you were writing the comic?

They were designed to be foils. Can’t have a story without conflict! However I didn’t design one to be markedly or obviously “better” or more just than the other. They both have their problems. I’m not extraordinarily interested in the fight between them, because neither are ideologically pure. You can’t honestly cheer for either side. If you DO, that’s fine, but there is plenty of space and reason to dislike them both.

I’m more interested in the citizens of each place and how they deal with each other on an individual level, and how people in general are able to live in a world where no one is ideologically pure; where almost all institutions are self-serving and wicked. That’s a big theme in Unsounded. All group endeavours are rotten, or become rotten. Trust individuals, but never institutions.

This will all carry through to Alderode. There is no “right” caste. There is no “right” religion between the Ssaelit and Gefendur. There are good people, good intentions, and good days all carried along by a river of time and entropy. That’s life.

odysseus and athena

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