Do You Have A Care Guide, Feeding Guide, Or Just More Info About Japanese Rat Snakes? Is The Blue A Morph

Rick Owens Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear

Astronaut readjusts to life back on Earth

> Don’t give him a baby for a while.

Dress

c. 1860-1864

American

Kent State University Museum

MARKGONG Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear

The thing that gets me the most about critics of Terry Pratchett’s novels who say they’re not important or “literature” because they’re “not realistic” is this:  

By what yardstick are we supposed to be measuring “realism”?

See, I’m willing to bet that the yardstick these critics use is that oh so popular model of “the real world is really a terrible place, so the world of this piece of media is full of barbarism and grotesque cruelty.”*  And Terry Pratchett never, ever fell into that dismal trope.  He didn’t hunt his characters for sport.  There’s no gratuitous sexual violence (no sexual violence at all, that I can think of).  Even if a death or an act of evil is senseless from an in-world point of view, it isn’t random and senseless from a narrative perspective, thrown in to shock or to remind readers/viewers that “that’s reality.”  The Discworld isn’t a happy rainbow place all the time.  But it’s not a bleak pit of despair, either.  There are bad people of all stripes, from literal torturers and megalomaniacs to regular folk who perpetuate the kind of small mundane badness pretty much every human is guilty of at one time or another.  But there are good people too.  And sometimes some of them die along the way, but ultimately the good people win and the world is changed for the better or at least doesn’t get any worse.  Is that really “unrealistic”?

Terry Pratchett didn’t write a bunch of books about people being brutal to each other because “that’s human nature.”  Terry Pratchett acknowledged–often, even–that humanity is prone to base acts.  But what his books are really about, is humanity’s ability to rise above that.  Terry Pratchett wrote about protagonists who are imperfect, doing good in the world often against their first instincts.  He wrote about situations where it is hard to be good, but where his protagonists choose it anyway.

Rincewind is a coward who craves only boredom, but he steps up to the plate and saves the world whenever it turns out no one else can.  

Sam Vimes is a bitter, cynical recovering alcoholic who is desperate to be a better man and to do what’s just for everyone.

Granny Weatherwax is an aloof, blunt loner who finds “being the good one” a burden, but she works tirelessly to protect and serve her steading, just so everyone else can be free to go about their normal little everyday lives.

Brutha starts off blindly believing that “purifying” sinners is necessary, but he learns to think for himself and when later on he has the chance to kill the worst of the Quisition’s torturers?  He carries him through a desert, instead, and ends up reforming a religion.

These are just a few of so many examples.  And are they “unrealistic”?  Is the idea that imperfect beings can choose to do good even if it is difficult “fantasy”?  Is it really too hard to believe that maybe even if the nature of humanity inclines toward selfishness and greed and all that terrible stuff, humanity can also do better than that, if individuals choose to?

Because, wow, to me that’s an awfully uninspiring view of “reality”.  It’s kind of a boring one, too, when it comes to media.  If all you’re going to show me is a series of escalating cruelty for shock value, because “in the real world good people suffer” or whatever edgy thing you think is “realistic”, I’m not interested, sorry.

Give me Terry Pratchett’s world, where readers can think that if a screwup like Rincewind or someone as bad-tempered as Granny can do good maybe they, the readers, can do good too.  That if Vimes can turn his life around and work for justice, and if Brutha can question authority and stand up to oppression, maybe they could help change things, too.  Give me that “fantasy” any day.

That’s the kind of “literature” I want.

*Either that or they just see books where magic is real and immediately put on their “I’m a grown up, grown ups don’t believe in magic” hats and roll their eyes, sure in the knowledge of their superiority, because what value could there ever be in having a little imagination, right?

You reblogged a post about the negative impacts of harvesting mosses and lichens from the wild which made me wonder about my own relationship with (and use of) wild mosses. I enjoy creating terrariums (for my isopod colonies for example) and tend to harvest wild moss to propagate in these. I dry it out in the sun (and make sure to remove any insects) before cooking it to remove bacteria. I then rehydrate it once I've found a place for it. I take moss from areas that are already thick with it and treat collecting it as I would any other wild plant - making sure I take as little as possible so as to have the smallest impact on the ecosystem. Despite this, I don't think I had realised the frailty of this flora and am now worried that I might have had a much more negative impact than I'd originally believed. Do you have any tips/information on how to harvest moss in a way that causes the minimum amount of impact (such as places to harvest from and techniques to employ while harvesting). If the solution is that doing so is just inherently inexcusable, could you give me tips on how to propagate the moss I already have as efficiently as possible, so that I may have enough for bigger projects (like a bioactive vivarium for my snake)? Thank you very much for your time, - A worried moss enjoyer

I’m so glad you’re thinking about this and what actions you can take! It sounds like you’re being thoughtful and intentional about your harvesting practice and not harvesting for commercial use or profit. I recommend identifying the kinds of moss you’re harvesting and doing research on their growth and vulnerability. It’s also not legal to collect moss in many areas, so be mindful of the law and local cultural practices — it’s important to be respectful to the plants and the people who care for them. You also have to consider the environment they grow in — can you replicate it well? What substrates can you provide?

Try not to take from the same place if you can avoid it — give the moss a chance to recover. Monitoring their growth after harvesting can give you an idea of how much you affect them.

Mosses are diverse and their needs and growing speeds are different. My personal recommendation is to harvest a very small amount (and maybe some of the substrate, to make sure you don’t damage the underlying structures) and attempt to grow it at home. If you can’t support it, I would choose a different moss. I would try to find a moss that you can grow so you can harvest a small amount and let it spread naturally over time.

For propagation, my mosses live with my carnivorous plants so they have high humidity and light. Not all mosses want light though, so really check where they grow.

Thanks so much for writing in and being environmentally conscious! I hope you can keep enjoying moss for many years to come.

Pillings Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear

Ugbad Abdi at the 2025 Met Gala

Green-blue chiffon dress

c. 1925

maker unknown

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