I’ve never watched any Critical Role stuff before now so while all the long-term fans are having a great time pointing out all the references to other campaigns and so on, I’m just sitting here enjoying how most of the characters have your typical fantasy weapons - axes, swords, bows etc. - and then there’s one guy with a fucking revolver.
i’m so sad english has no word immediately equivalent to “bürzel” because it really improves the german duck experience
it basically means “bird butt” and i think it should be clear that phrases like “i’m gonna freeze my bird butt off” are vastly superior to, idk, “i’m gonna freeze my tailfeathers off”
i JUST thought of another cute german bird term but i’m less sure about whether it exists in english? SCHNÄBELN. means bird kisses.
unlike “bürzel”, it’s criminally underused in duck content. probably because bird kisses in general are criminally underused compared to anthropomorphised kisses. let them nuzzle their beaks together. let them.
(It’s also finals week for me so I’ve been a little too busy to do a shoot so close to the date, *but*)
I’ve made sure to let my inner magical being shine through whenever I could since last year, so here are some of my favorites, including a few improvements on last year’s elf wizard!
All photos except the selfie were taken by my favorite photographer and director (I married him, after all), @finalcosplaycorps
This is my attempt on making Blackbeards knee brace. All is leather, the braces themselves are hardened with beeswax. All is put together with buckles and rivets.
Functionality wise i was surprised how actually really great it is to wear. I have a problematic knee myself and it got to bend so much lighter and easier and at the same time its greatly supported. The middle strap is very important for it all to work well too tho and its not that visible on the show so thats an important bit. Overall 12/10 ☠️✨
If you want to see the whole making process, you can head over to my Twitter
Medinilla magnifica is a plant native to the Philippines which has spread throughout the tropics and has long been cultivated as an ornamental ‘exotic’ plant. It comes from the family Melastomataceae with which I have little familiarity to the point that from a list of 175 genera I only definitely recognized one (Tibouchina)!
I came across this plant growing in the wild on my first day arriving on Oahu while waiting for my check-in time at the hotel to arrive and collected it and several others in the hopes that at least one would turn out to be a native. It turns out that as with a lot of the flora especially around urban areas, this is an introduced species becoming increasingly naturalized and invasive with time. The two species of Medinilla in Hawaii are problematic because they continue to be sold by oblivious or unscrupulous nurseries and stores, and they produce thousands of tiny seeds which are spread by birds. The plant can grow as a terrestrial or an epiphyte and does well in low light conditions meaning it can displace native plants that would normally grow under the canopy or in some cases right in the crown of rare palm trees.
There’s no doubt that it is a striking plant with great aesthetic value, but after seeing so many native plants at Hui Ku Maoli Ola, Lyon Arboretum, Koko Crater, as well as while hiking, I know there are no shortage of stunning Hawaiian natives and people working hard to get them into the hands of those who are seeking botanical beauty!
This is the last of my native flora photos from last year’s Hawaii assignment. Fittingly this is from the final shoot and perhaps strangely my favorite of all. This is Nototrichium sandwicense, an endemic species in the Amaranthfamily known in the indigenous language as Kului. The flowers’ white-light color is rather tame, but they remain attractive for the fluffy character and produce a pleasing cyan to green tone when exposed to my ultraviolet light. The leaves may be my absolute favorite thing about this plant though. Especially when grown in bright and dry conditions, the leaves become heavily pubescent, tiny hairs creating a translucent silvery sheen overlaying the green leaf surface. They prefer to grown in dry conditions and are naturally present on many of the islands, growing in various well-drained soils at low to moderate altitudes. If I could choose just one of the plants I photographed to grow at home in California, it would be this species!
For some bonus fun, check out the ant in the final picture. She and her associates were wandering all over the flowers, creating quite a lot of frustration for me. In the end there was one frame where one ant was both somewhat in focus and stationary enough to get a good look at how the body fluoresces under 365nm UV.
This is my last native Hawaiian flower to share. I’ll be taking a short break from posting UVIVF images, but I’ll return with some invasive species I photographed the first night there and probably some infrared images down the line as well!
Thanks to Hana Hou! magazine (in particular Matt Mallams!) for bringing me in on this assignment and both the Lyon Arboretum and Hui Ku Maoli Ola for all the help in providing subjects and sparing the time to talk about things. I hope I’ll have another opportunity in the future to come visit!
