#cactus is my favorite plant am i making it too obvious | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thefourchimes · 8 days

Note

🍌🍈

Wasn't able to answer this last night as I had passed out and then I got really busy the whole day today, whoops, my bad about that, but here we go!

🍌 In your opinion, what’s the funniest joke/reference/pun you’ve made in a fic?

Ooooh...well, as mentioned in the previous ask, I haven't actually posted anything for Encanto yet, and while I probably have a lot of possible choices from my other fandoms, I can't remember any from the others off the top of my head atm oof

Plus most of my stuff is angst instead of crack AHSFUIHAFS but I'll do my best

So yes, a joke/reference/pun I've made for a fic...I honestly have a few in mind right now for Encanto, ones from the 233 page AU, but if I say it now, it'll lose its magic when I hopefully post it AHSFUHASF

I'll probably just mention this one scene I had written for the one All of Us Are Dead fic I have, one that still makes me laugh every time I reread it:

It probably doesn't help that my sense of humor sucks but it's funny to me at least HASUFHASF

My bad if I wasn't really able to answer this properly 😅

🍈 Who’s your blorbo and what are some of your favorite headcanons/ideas about them that repeatedly show up in your fics? Free pass to rant about blorbo opinions.

Ah, this question <3

I don't think I made it too obvious as to who my blorbo is before, besides a few posts and the fact that I love all the cool sisters so much, so yeah, guess it's time to "reveal" it

It's Isabela

I remember watching Encanto again all those months ago, the moment where my hyperfixation was about to rear its head and grab me by the throat, never letting go

As that was happening, the feral, chaotic, and unhinged cactus gremlin sister decided to jump me too

I can't remember exactly when I knew she was my favorite, but I just knew that she already was before I even fully realized it

I had WECID on repeat for a long while at one point

I think her exploring herself after everything hit me hard, I relate to her so much in a way, ngl... (except the hilarious thing is that I'm not even Isabela in this case, I'm the youngest out of my three siblings so I'm technically Mirabel in a sense ASHFIASF)

But anyway, I digress, my thoughts on her (along with my ideas for her that pop up in fics—er, will pop up anyway) are so wild that I'm not too sure on how to write it down in paragraph form, plus it probably won't be anything new since someone else in the fandom has probably already mentioned these, but I guess we keep going with it in a chaotic and wild way, true to Isabela's character (apologies in advance for the explosion of thoughts—except also not really sorry):

She's chaos incarnate, a force of nature that is so very extra and so petty as hell but it's okay because we love it sm

We don't get to see it all as much though because of her mask, but that just makes me even happier since she gets to be free post movie

She's acrobatic and athletic as seen in WECID, not to mention her skill with vine swinging, but that doesn't mean she didn't get at least a bit of clumsy genes from Agustin in some way, she just hides it pretty well due to her mask of perfection

She's always colorful and changing colors every time, experimenting with all the possibilities and she changes the color of her hair strand a lot too

She makes and discovers and explores all kinds of plants (ones she keeps track of to know what they are and what they can do), but we all know she has a soft spot for cacti <3

She knows a lot about flower and plant language, whether already having knowledge during the movie or learning after

She loves her family so much that she would and has sacrificed her happiness for them, that's something I admire so much but am also sad about because she really loves her family that she wants them happy even if she can't be happy, ow—

This seems to be a consensus the fandom has: she's one of the ones who will most likely murder someone and will kill for her siblings, very protective of her sisters and her family <3

Speaking of which, she has a ridiculously overpowered gift, one she has just as ridiculous control over as well, that I cackle and shake my head every time when someone just underestimates her and her gift

We know how she wants to be free but is feeling trapped as she's forced into perfection, half due to her own making and half due to others boxing her in, so there are lots of fake smiles and pretending on her part, but that does mean she's a pretty good actress considering she had everyone fooled for so long

I fucking love her bonds and relationships with her sisters and her cousins, but, as my PFP is indicating, especially the cool sisters

They weren't close with each other for several reasons for a long while, not even mentioning the strained relationship between her and Mirabel, but to see them have the chance to connect again and make up for everything was done and all that happened after the events of the movie? I love it so much aaaaaa

She teases the hell out of them in various ways, that's for sure, the sister vibes are so real <33

But that doesn't mean the cousins are left out here, ofc, the exploration of dynamics is always so nice and fun to see

I love all the grandkids so much <33333

I want to keep going so badly but I feel like I'd never finish this ask if I do AUISFHUIASHF plus I'm very sure I forgot something, but oof 😔

Ngl, this was me the entire time I was trying to answer this question:

Isabela <33

yep, that tracks HASFUIAHSF but yeah, thanks for the ask!! :DD <33

#ask me anything #ask game #miracles-and-butterflies #mic transcends #mic goes through accidental change #ty!!#encanto #isabela madrigal

2 notes · View notes

honestgrins · 7 years

Text

The Floral Stench of Death || Klaroline

Klaroline AU Week Day Five: Mythology and Creatures

The old gods had fallen into mere myth, relegated to a muted life among the mortals. Sometimes, one needs a reminder of what it means to rule the Underworld. (Hades and Persephone AU, with an American Gods bent)

Klaus was busy with the books when a ringing bell broke the austere silence of his funeral home. His eyebrow raised at the interruption; few bothered to cross his threshold anymore, not without a corpse to visit. Only his closest family made the effort, which was why he was surprised to find a great nephew loitering in the foyer.

“Anteros,” he greeted with suspicion. “I’d thought you long forgotten, unlike your arse of a brother.”

The gods of old were a scattered bunch, but a few of the Greeks had managed to remain a part of human knowledge. Eros made an annoying resurgence every February, his name invoked too often for Klaus’s liking; the popularity made him cocky. But sexual attraction was an easy thing to celebrate, and Anteros encouraged a deeper love meant to be requited in full. Klaus always found that to be more interesting.

Shuffling uncomfortably, the younger brother even seemed to hold a proper respect for the power Klaus still held in the world. “I go by Stefan,” he explained carefully, knowing the importance of names among their kind.

His real name had been rendered unusable by unfriendly myths and ridiculous cartoons, an unfortunate problem that irked Klaus to no end. Persephone chose well for its replacement, but he missed the reverence of those terrified of Hades himself. This Stefan was a delightful memory of eons past. “Why are you here, Stefan? Not many would dare to ask favors of the Underworld.”

“Eros- Damon,” Stefan cleared his throat, concern furrowing his brow. “My brother has gone missing.”

Lips pulling into a smirk, Klaus’s head canted to the side as the boy squirmed. “I fail to see why that is my problem,” he responded cheerfully. “These days, I’m a simple estate lawyer who happens to run a successful business providing mortuary services.”

Stefan bristled. “You’re the god of death,” he accused, though his voice was strained with the effort to sound polite. “I would hardly belittle your influence in this world, and I think you know what happened to him.”

“He hasn’t fallen under my purview, if that’s what you’re asking.” Klaus shrugged, taking great pleasure in the obvious irritation Stefan poorly hid. “Perhaps it is for the best. Your brother’s not a favorite among the old guard, I doubt many would miss him.”

“My wife is worried, as am I,” he countered, ignoring the gleefully curious look on the god before him. “Certain friends directed me here, loathe as I am to discover why. Have you seen him?”

Klaus dragged his tongue across his lips, hands folded behind his back as he stepped into Stefan’s space. “It was my duty to take stock of a man’s life,” he all but purred, a thrill of power firing through his veins. “To lay judgment for his actions and to decide the course of his eternity in the Underworld.”

Hazel eyes wide with a lack of guile, Stefan fought not to lean back from Klaus’s intrusion. “So?”

“So,” Klaus mocked, “there are no secrets that can be kept from me. I see it all. Your wife, Stefan, does she love your brother?”

Fists curling in his Henley, Klaus smiled, a ferocious thing as Stefan shoved him against a wall. “Where is he?”

Chuckling, Klaus easily broke the finger that held a shiny silver ring, forcing Stefan to release him. “A human, too.” He clucked his tongue in faux remorse. “Imagine Aphrodite’s sons, torn between the same woman. She loves you, but she lusts for him. Think of the stories that would be told.” But his smile turned wicked, a hand reaching up to grip the boy’s throat. “If we weren’t dying out, that is.”

Stefan squeezed his eyes shut, muttering a silent goodbye to Elena, only for them to fly open as the god of death released him from his fate.

“Try next door,” Klaus dismissed with a wave. “You can buy your wife some pretty flowers, so she can properly mourn your brother.” Without bothering to watch Stefan leave, he went back to his work. Some luck, and he might not be late for his evening plans.

“And you’re going to grow deep,” Caroline whispered to the rose cactus, “just be sure to remain moist.” She ran a finger along one of the plant’s spines, coating it with the viscous blood that ran from the man’s thigh it pierced. “I want the pain to last.”

There were days that Caroline missed the simple life of tending her mother’s garden, but Persephone’s botanical prowess still thrived as a florist in the modern world. What lacked were the opportunities to punish those who wronged her, with their behavior, their attitude, their disregard for her position.

As Eros - or Damon, as he preferred to be called, the douche - had committed all three wrongs, she delighted in the angry hiss that came from her favorite plant box.

“I already apologized,” Damon spat, though breathless with contained agony as a stinging nettle wound around his neck. “You were just a cute blonde at the bar, how was I supposed to know who you were?”

Smiling, she urged the hemlock away from his lips. “You were just to keep him still,” she scolded the poisonous plant. “Any more, and it will be too quick.” Her fingers ran lovingly through the soil half covering his naked, prostrate form.

The chime hanging over her door sang out, jauntily clashing with the pop music playing in her shop. “Just a minute,” she called, clearing her hands of dirt. Standing, she rolled her eyes as Damon greedily tracked her sundress up the line of her leg.

This was just one reason why he was going to rot for as long as it took him to die.

Leaving the refrigerated storage room, Caroline found a pretty young man among her more exotic lilies. “You have good taste,” she greeted approvingly. “Can I help you?”

“I hope so.”

She frowned at the hesitant, almost fearful tone of his voice. Hardly anyone would fear Persephone at first sight, let alone her persona of Caroline Forbes. While she enjoyed the reminiscence of her old reputation, the suddenness of it all put her on edge. Her head canted to the side as recognition hit. “I know you.”

Stefan nodded, not bothering to deny the Olympic blood that tied them together. “I suspect you know my brother as well,” he answered instead. “Klaus sent me here. Do you have Damon?”

“He’s asked for you.” Determination in every step, Caroline walked through the aisles of her shop, plucking cut flowers and greenery to some unknown rhythm. “Well, he asked for Elena, but your name was sprinkled in there, too,” she explained, nonchalant.

Sighing, Stefan ran a hand across his face. “Dare I ask what he did to offend you, your grace?”

She positively preened at the use of her former title. To reward his manners, Caroline decided to grant him peace of mind. “I happened to run into your brother last night while having drinks with a friend,” she explained. “He seemed to think a pleasant conversation was an invitation to drug my margarita.”

Like a light had been extinguished, his shoulders sagged in resignation. “Please, I know he doesn’t deserve mercy,” Stefan begged, “but-”

Caroline held up a quelling hand, her glare deceptively friendly. “And when informed of his mistake in attempting to take advantage of the queen of the underworld, he laughed.” Her expression hardened, making Stefan wince. “In my face.” But as quickly as it came, the stern frown left and a bright smile was in its place. “You seem nice,” she told the young god, bouncing on her toes as she went about wrapping the bouquet she had gathered. “I’ll let you say goodbye.”

Before Stefan could follow her nod to the back room, though, her eyebrows raised in warning. “If you try to free him, you’ll pray my plants kill you before I do.”

With an audible swallow, he left her alone. She set the bouquet in a lovely crystal vase, and she was busy arranging it for perfect balance when her door chimed again. Glancing up to the clock on her wall, she shook her head. Even with a cheerful smile on her face, Caroline’s voice fell flat with disappointment. “You’re late.”

“My apologies, love,” Klaus answered lightly, careful not to brush the vines slithered up the doorway on his way in. Leaning on the countertop, he watched her murmur encouragement to a too small flower until it grew to her satisfaction. “I’m afraid I suffered the same distraction of Stefan’s brotherly woes.”

Caroline shrugged, fondly patting the display before setting it aside, just outside his reach. Reaching across the counter, she welcomed her husband with a kiss. “Unfortunately, it takes more than a few growing buds to sap a god of his energy,” she sighed, brushing through Klaus’s brassy curls. “But I hope a few months in my planters will teach young Damon a lesson he won’t soon forget.”

Turning into her touch, Klaus pressed a kiss to her wrist. “I wish you would let me take care of him.”

“And I wish you would let me enjoy hunting him down over the centuries when he surely does this again,” she sighed, adopting what she called his patronizing tone.

Klaus knew better than to keep up the fight, so he held out his hand. “Shall we?”

Happily, she let him lead her toward the door. “Oh, Stefan,” she called. The god returned obediently, looking worse for the wear. “Mythic Florist is closed for a standing dinner date, but that arrangement is yours, on the house.” Caroline winked at his utter bemusement. “It should go where Elena sleeps. Hyacinth to promote her grieving process for your brother, hyssop for the sacrifice you both make for his foolishness, and forget-me-nots to remind her of the true love she still has in you.” She leaned into Klaus, her own love that had sustained her through the ages. “Rot and ruin like Damon is only as good as the healing it can provoke.”

Tense with anger, Stefan moved to throw the vase. Klaus, however, laughed. “My wife is a generous soul,” he said, kissing her temple. But turning back to Stefan, his smirk turned dangerous. “Don’t test it.”

As Stefan stalked out of the shop, still clutching the vase and powerless to challenge them, Caroline laced her fingers with Klaus’s. “He’ll be back.”

Klaus smiled, squeezing her hand. It had been so long since their status had been recognized, even mere acknowledgement a powerful taste of addictive belief. “We can only hope.”

Links: FFnet and AO3

#klarolineauweek #day five - mythology and creatures #klaroline drabbles #klaroline #fandom love #fic: the floral stench of death #come sail away #sorry this is late #it was also supposed to be a longer thing #but i'm lucky it got done at all #totally inspired by cupcakemolotov and something wicked #I love Love love the idea of Caroline feeding people she hates to her plants

50 notes · View notes

topmixtrends · 6 years

Link

WELCOME TO the House of Pain. As I greet you, I’m suffering from various not-quite-self-inflicted wounds. There are small punctures in my shins and thighs where I’ve been pierced by the pointed ends of agave leaves. There are a couple of inflamed patches on my forearms where I splashed some sap on myself while trimming a euphorbia. There are opuntia spines in my hands and also, I’m sure, in my clothes, which I will only discover as they gradually work their way into my flesh.

Yes, I have been working in the Garden of Pain, which surrounds the house, what I usually refer to as a cactus garden, though in fact it contains as many succulents as it does cacti, and of course a few plants that are neither. Botanists differ, but the current consensus is that all cacti are succulents but by no means are all succulents cacti. This is only a small help, and the layman — which I most certainly am — can have a hell of a job telling what’s a true cactus and what isn’t. (Clue: It’s largely about the areoles.)

More correctly, I suppose I should say I have a xerophile garden. Xerophile: From the Greek, xeros meaning dry and philos meaning loving. (The term refers not to people who love these plants but to the plants themselves, which love dryness.) My own interest in xerophiles started when I moved to Los Angeles, partly because I took seriously all those warnings about the evils or watering your own backyard in a time of drought and partly because, as a deracinated Englishman, a xerophile garden was about as far away from the traditional English garden as I could imagine. But chiefly I got hooked because there’s something so compelling about living things that have so thoroughly adapted to hostile environments, and because xerophiles look so beautifully strange and strangely beautiful.

When word gets around that you’re a cactus (and xerophile) enthusiast people have a tendency to give you cactus-related items of varying degrees of kitschiness. And so in the House of Pain you’ll find T-shirts, tea towels, socks, and hats, all bearing images of cacti. There are cactus-shaped coasters, cactus-shaped margarita glasses, and a cactus-shaped bottle opener. Nobody, as yet, has offered me anything from Cartier’s “Cactus de Cartier” range, perhaps because the basic bracelet goes for about $30,000, but it’s early days.

Of course I have books, a shelf that includes Edward Abbey’s Cactus Country from the Time Life “American Wilderness” series; What Kinda Cactus Izzat?, a cartoon “who’s who of desert plants” by Reg Manning; the photographer Lee Friedlander’s The Desert Seen; and for the title alone (though the jacket’s pretty amazing too) Naked in a Cactus Garden by Jesse L. Lasky Jr., “a novel of Hollywood” in which “character after character is stripped of every pretense.” I’m also very fond of an essay titled “Cactus Teaching” by Michael Crichton (yes, that Michael Crichton) in which he goes to seek enlightenment at a meditation conference in the desert. He’s told to find a rock or plant that “speaks” to him, and after much searching and soul-searching he finds a small, unspectacular, damaged cactus in the garden of the institute where the conference is taking place. “The cactus had equanimity; ants ran over its surface, and it didn’t seem to mind,” Crichton writes. “It was certainly very attractive, with red thorns and a green body; bees were attracted to it. The cactus had a formal aspect; its pattern of thorns gave it almost a herringbone look. This was an Ivy League cactus. I saw it as dignified, silent, stoic, and out of place.”

If all this might make you think that I’m obsessed with xerophiles, my response would be to proffer a copy of Xerophile: Cactus Photographs from Expeditions of the Obsessed and say, “You think I’m obsessed — get a load of this.” No author is named on the jacket or the title page, but we in the L.A. xerophile community know that it’s the effort of Jeff Kaplon, Max Martin, and Carlos Morera, the guys who run Cactus Store in Echo Park. Xerophile is an extraordinary book, a singular and single-minded volume. It contains 300 pages of photographs, preceded by a three-page preface and rounded off with a 30-page section containing interviews with eight xerophile enthusiasts (xerophile-philes?): not people like me, but the kind who go on expeditions that require being dropped in by helicopter. There’s also a short appendix on relevant topics that includes “off-roading,” “mirage,” and “oblivion.”

But, really, it’s all about the photographs, taken over a period of some 70 years, of xerophiles glimpsed in situ around the world. A few are in the United States, but the majority are from Mexico and South America, along with outliers from such gloriously “far away places” as Somalia, the Galápagos Islands, Madagascar, and Namibia. Twenty-five named photographers are credited, although one or two images are captioned “photographer unknown,” and in some cases the date isn’t known either. This might create some irritation for the more academic reader, and I think that kind of reader is going to be irritated by other parts of the book too. As far as I can see there’s no obvious, overarching organizing principle at work in the arrangement and selection of photographs — it’s simply what’s in the Cactus Store’s archive — and yet I can’t say that I particularly minded. The overall effect is more celebratory than scholarly, and that’s fine by me.

Xerophile is somewhere between a coffee-table book and a slightly chaotic field guide. I know from extensive personal experience that it’s very easy to take dull pictures of cacti. And although some of the pictures in the book are incredibly dramatic, very few have the gloss and stylishness of professional photographs. The preface describes the images as “evidence.” A few are a bit blurry, either because of faltering focus or because of the low quality of the camera and lens, but this somehow only adds to the sense of authenticity. When you’re halfway up a mountain in Chile you may not have time for sophisticated and considered aesthetic choices. We’re not in National Geographic territory here. The plants are the stars, and the photographers are the adoring fans, perhaps in some cases the paparazzi, snapping what they can on the fly.

The fact is you can forgive quite a lot of technical and compositional failings in order to see things you’ve never seen before, like an Adenium in Namibia that looks like a long-dead tree but is bearing extraordinary white flowers at the tips of its branches. Or Peruvian Haageocereus plants growing in a foggy habitat and consequently covered in bright yellow lichen. Or cacti growing out of rock faces, poking up through broad stretches of sand or lava fields.

Human beings appear in some of the photographs. At the very least this is useful to give a sense of scale. We all know that cacti grow to spectacular heights, but when we see a picture that shows a full grown man looking utterly insignificant at the base of a 70-foot-tall Pachycereus pringlei, the sense of surprise and amazement is brought home with incredible force. Other pictures show botanists at work in the field, usually but not always in the desert, taking measurements or collecting seeds. One of my favorite photographs, dated 1952, shows George Lindsay, former director of the California Academy of Science, standing next to a Ferocactus that’s a good head taller than he is and much wider in girth. He’s khaki-clad, wearing sunglasses and a solar topee, has a camera and light meter slung around his neck, and he’s smoking a fat cigar. One’s sense of nostalgia (today’s desert rats just don’t look anything like that), along with the inevitable phallic resonance of a certain kind of cactus, are elegantly and wittily confirmed.

The most tantalizing, and to some extent frustrating, part of the book is the section of interviews with xerophile obsessives, frustrating only in the sense that it leaves you wanting much more. In there you’ll find tales of near-death experience from Joël Lodé, who suffered severe heatstroke on his first trip to the Mojave desert in 1984, and survived to risk his life in much the same way in New Mexico and Baja. He also went to Yemen at the height of the civil war to “photograph a plant.” I’m not sure what kind of plant that was, but I hope it was the Euphorbia abdelkuri discussed in a different interview with John Jacob Lavranos who hitched a ride with the British navy, across pirate-infested waters, to the island of Abd al-Kuri in 1967. (It’s part of Yemen, but closer to Somalia, hence the pirates.) Lavranos says that seeing the Euphorbia abdelkuri “was one of the highlights of my life. I’ll never forget it — coming up over the mountain and seeing those tall green candles, which, of course were Euphorbias that were centuries old.” Asked if he collected plants on the trip he replies, “Yes, of course. Every single Euphorbia abdelkuri in circulation came from that trip.” A little research reveals that they’re now extremely rare, both in collections and on the island.

Others are less interested in collecting than taxonomy, a fascinating and ultimately mind-boggling field that increasingly relies on molecular analysis. There’s an interview with a married couple, both botanists, named Giovanna Anceschi and Alberto Magli who say they have no desire for possession. Magli says,

For me, there’s nothing further from nature than a greenhouse. People put plants next to each other that would never, ever be seen together in nature. That’s fine for a fan. But not for a researcher, and I would venture to say that it’s part of the reason people continue to have confused ideas about the taxonomy of these plants.

The old wisdom was that there were about 175 genera and 2,000 species of cacti but the current thinking is that many of these are the same basic plant, achieving different forms because of different environments. Most of us amateurs would indeed welcome some clarification on the subject, and advice on how to identify obscure genera and species (the people who work in nurseries are seldom much help), but this pair really don’t put your mind at rest: “We eventually realized that many of the species you see in books don’t exist.”

If you want more detail, without an absolute guarantee of clarification, may I direct you to the activities of the International Cactaceae Systematics Group, a working party of the International Organization for Succulent Plant Study, which has been contemplating these matters since the mid-1980s? In fact there are many online cactus and succulent websites and groups. Few of them are quite as interesting or as obsessive as Xerophile, though I did come across the website for The Cactus Store which currently lists a Haageocereus tenuis for sale, yours for a cool quarter of a million dollars. They warn gravely, “This is not a statement piece, a collectors item, or a center piece for your garden. This is a critically endangered specimen plant for those familiar with ex-situ conservation who have a proper greenhouse setup.” Even in matters of obsession it’s good to know your limits.

Geoff Nicholson is a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Review of Books. His latest novel is The Miranda.

The post Cactus Love: On “Xerophile: Cactus Photographs from Expeditions of the Obsessed” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2B9fkFQ

#Los Angeles Review of Books #topmixtrends

0 notes