yeah
"At nearly 150 acres, the Jardim Gramacho landfill in Rio de Janeiro was one of the largest and most infamous in all of Latin America. Now it’s a mangrove forest teeming with life.
Decommissioned 11 years ago, between 1970 and 2012 the dump, bordering Rio’s famous Guanabara Bay, received 80 million metric tonnes of trash from the area’s Gramacho neighborhood.
Now, a public-private partnership led by the Rio Municipal Cleaning Company has returned the area to nature, specifically mangroves, one of the most valuable of all ecosystems.
Planting 24 acres of mangroves at a time, today the forest stretches out more than 120 acres and is the largest mangrove area of the bay.
“Before, we polluted the bay and the rivers. Now, it’s the bay and the rivers that pollute us,” a lead official on the project told Africa News. “Today, the mangrove has completely recovered.”
Other organizations have taken action to restore mangroves along the bay as well. The non-profit Ocean Pact funded the Green Guanabara Bay Project which successfully restored 12.5 hectares or around 25 acres of mangroves.
According to some estimates, 1 acre of mangrove forests can store more carbon in roots and soil than 4 acres of even the most biodiverse rainforest, making them paramount to any world climate mitigation strategy.
Furthermore, their impressive lattice work of roots and insane durability means that storm surges impacting mangroves lose about 66% of their kinetic energy without even destroying the trees.
Lastly, coastal fishing communities, in [four] words, cannot exist without mangroves. They act as nurseries and perfect habitat for all kinds of fish and crustaceans that small-scale fishermen rely on for their daily bread."
-via Good News Network, 7/31/23
-video via Africanews, July 26, 2023
I absolutely love that the Pokémon universe is literally tearing itself apart at the seams. Fantastic worldbuilding, A+++
A non-exhaustive list:
- Mega Evolution comes from a meteor. The impact of that meteor literally split the dimensions apart and made it canonical that different versions of the same game are parallel dimensions (Alpha Ruby is a different world from Ruby, for instance). This is later confirmed by the presence of Anabel in Sun and Moon, who fell through dimensions from a world without Mega Evolution.
- Speaking of Sun and Moon, wormholes are opening up all over Alola, letting in extradimensional beings that Pokéballs don't catch properly. There are silver-skinned humans from one of these portals that live in a giant prismatic city.
- Also in Sun/Moon, you can pass through to a mirror world where day is night and night is day. When this happens, you can catch the mirror world version of your box legendary friend.
- There's a giant space alien in Sword and Shield who's leaking particles that cause Pokémon to briefly turn massive, which sometimes rearranges their genetic makeup.
- In Scarlet and Violet, reality is splintering. There's a hole to the future/past that generates paradox Pokémon which are heavily implied to have been materialized out of a researcher's desire to see them rather than actually from their future/past. The same energy that supposedly made them enables Pokémon to become any type they want and caused a robot to gain human sentience.
- In the hole you find the paradox Pokémon in, you find buried monoliths that nobody knows where they came from. The very material they're made of is canonically unidentifiable.
- Time and space were briefly unraveled in Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum as a maniac tried to overwrite the current world and make a new universe out of it, and in the Platinum universe, this opened a hole to another dimension where a banished god lives. The banished god was pissed off about this and abducted the guy that messed with time and space.
- People sometimes slip through the cracks and become Pokémon in Pokémon-only worlds (the Mystery Dungeon series) or drop through time to different eras (Legends Arceus's protagonist and Ingo).
- In Mystery Dungeon, time is eroding (Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky), and the world is warping and distorting into areas that scramble themselves every time you enter them and make the inhabitants of those areas agitated and hostile (entire series).
adding some bits to this...
- mega evo actually comes from stones irradiated by energy shot from the Ultimate Weapon that ended the Kalos war 3000 yrs ago. the power came from the life force of A Whole Lot of pokemon whose graves still line route 10.
- the meteor didn't split dimensions. in ORAS, Devon Corp possesses the Ultimate Weapon's power source and attempted using it to stop a meteor by sending it to another world. this other world is implied to be one with another Hoenn without mega evolution (RSE) and would've had no means to defend itself from the meteor.
- Anabel is implied to have Fallen from Emerald bc her battle theme in SUMO is the very same OG frontier brain theme.
- people who traveled through Ultra Wormholes are called Fallers and they're exposed to such large amounts of energy that it lingers. any Ultra Beast that finds itself in the same world as a Faller will be drawn to that residual energy, thinking it's a way back to their original world. this phenomenon apparently occurs enough for the International Police to use these people as bait.
- there was a whole thing in Ultra Sun/Moon where villains from alt universes where they Succeeded gathered in one place. it's fine though bc some dude invents a device that sends them back to their respective time/space easy-peasy.
- Hoopa rings show up a lot in ORAS and they pull legendaries from past games along with their original themes
- Hoopa is also probably largely responsible for teleporting people and pokemon from various timelines/worlds to populate Pasio in Pokemon Masters. a lot of them don't remember how exactly they ended up on the island. there's multiple instances of characters knowing each other but remembering certain events differently or ones that haven't yet occurred for others.
- space-time distortions are a thing in Sinnoh/Hisui but also on Pasio too. Adaman and Irida have unique gacha pull animation where they appear from a distortion instead of being summoned by the poryphone.
- there was an event in Masters where a gym leader, Liza, fell through an Ultra Wormhole on Pasio. her twin Tate uses Jirachi to wish her return back to their world.
- people don't really "slip through the cracks" in the Mystery Dungeon series. usually, they (you) are summoned by something else to that world (Rescue Team/DX, Gates to Infinity) or were already part of it (Explorers, PSMD). in GtI, there were a great deal of people who were brought to the pokemon world and upon perishing, their souls returned to the human world.
- Gates to Infinity also expands the mystery dungeon lore. there's an invisible grid of ley lines spanning across the world. when something disrupts these lines (like disasters and calamities) or they get near each other, it creates a force that forms mystery dungeons. the closer they are, the more mysterious the dungeon. with enough understanding and power from external factors like the sun, moon and other special items, these lines can be manipulated to create new paths and dungeons crossing impassable distance in varying amount of time.
- in Explorers, a whole timeline didn't disappear bc god decided to be nice
THIS IS BREATHTAKING
I FORGOT THIS EXISTED
The Door To Hell, in Darvaza, Turkmenistan, a natural gas field still on fire from being ignited by Soviet scientists in 1971.
dumb atla fanfic idea: in which sokka unintentionally buys the blue spirit mask because it looks cool.
and just so happens to be caught the right amount of times holding it by earth kingdom citizens that they end up concluding that sokka, is in fact, the blue spirit.
Bouncing off of @vlanderzine’s replies and @whats-a-reading’s tags—
- Sokka buys the Blue Spirit mask (“It looks really cool, Katara. It’s not my fault your taste sucks.”) from Aunt Wu’s village—the only good thing that came out of that trip, if you ask him.
- Aang gets this really weird look on his face when Sokka shows the mask to him. But Aang’s a pretty weird kid, so Sokka gives him a pass.
- Bato finds the mask familiar, but he couldn’t tell why. It wasn’t until the three left that he realized it was the very same mask from all those Fire Nation wanted posters.
- When he meets Hakoda, he greets him by slapping him on the back. “Congratulations. Who would’ve thought little Sokka would have his own wanted poster, huh?”
- Hakoda looks at him with alarm. “What?”
- “The Blue Spirit. The Blue Spirit. In hindsight, it was pretty obvious.” Bato snorts loudly. “The Blue Spirit. Now if that doesn’t scream Water Tribe…”
- Sokka becomes very attached to the mask after it almost got burnt by one of Zuko’s stray fires back in the abbey. He even fastens it to his hip.
- Strange enough, one look at it seemed to ward off Fire Nation soldiers. “It’s a good luck charm!” He insists.
- They find Aang’s wanted poster. As well as the Blue Spirit’s.
- Aang confesses that he was saved by the Blue Spirit when they both got sick. For some reason, he holds back his tongue from telling them it was Zuko behind the mask.
- Katara tells Sokka to hide the Blue Spirit mask. “It’s too dangerous right now. We’ll just have to buy new ones from the town below.” And Sokka reluctantly leaves the mask on Appa’s saddle.
- Aang wheedles Zhao into burning his own boats. Just before their escape on Appa, Momo pops up from the saddle wearing the mask.
- “My mask!!” Sokka yells out. “Momo, put them down now.”
- Zhao narrows his eyes at the retreating flying bison. “So the Blue Spirit is actually one of the Avatar’s friends…” He thinks.
- In a local store in one of the Earth Kingdom ports, a merchant speaks to a curious customer, “Why, yes.” He nods his head sagely. “Didn’t you know? The Blue Spirit travels with the Avatar.”
- Zuko, who was perusing the shops collection of theater scrolls, freezes.
This right here is some G O O D S H I T
- Zuko loosing his mind trying to figure out which of the two water tribe siblings is the faker.
- The reception for Sokka at the Northern water tribe is a lot better because despite there isolationism, tales of the blue spirit have indeed reached them.
- Toph loosing her mind because every time she thinks she’s figured it out, Sokka or the Blue Spirit does somthing and she’s fuckin lost it again.
- Suki seeing the mask when they meet up outside Ba-sing-se and is like “hold on, there’s no way this dork is the blue spirit” but the blue spirit did always show up around where the gang was.
- Toph pulling all nighters to try to catch Sokka leaving because the blue spirit had been spotted in ba-sing-se, but he never seems to leave and she can’t tell if he’s just that good or not leaving at all.
- Zuko still wants to know which one of the Water tribe siblings jacked his secret identity.
- in all of this Hadoka doesn’t know if he should be proud because his son causes enough trouble for the fire nation to have a wanted poster of him or terrified because his son causes enough trouble for the fire nation to have a wanted poster of him
- Hodoka and bato and all the water tribe warriors in chameleon bay being all wink wink nudge nudge about the whole blue spirit thing.
- Sokka very confused but more then willing to bask in the praise.
- the blue spirit conveniently showing up in the fire nation while the gang is there waiting for the invasion.
- Toph is loosing sleep over this
- Aang is wondering if he should just spill the beans for toph’s sake.
- so shits gonna get akward when Zuko joins up with the gang since nobody except Aang knows the truth.
- Zuko while on the airship with Sokka “so wanna explain why you stole my secret identity?”
- because Sokka-still believing the mask to be a good luck charm because every fire nation solider who sees it turns take-brought it with him.
- and Sokkas a sputtering mess because “I’m sorry i what now?!” Followed immediately by “YOUR the blue spirit?!!?”
- Zuko is still pretty miffed that Sokka stole his secret identity instead of getting his own, but if you really want one I guess I can help you come up with it.
- and Zuko like the theater nerd he is is coming up with dozens of names and costume ideas
- while Sokka is trying to process that the guy who chased him and his friends across the world is the same guy who saved Aang and spent the better part of a year absolutely wrecking the fire Nation’s day all over the earth kingdom.
- and now everything just clicks. The gifts from strangers. Tophs weird behavior. Everything with the southern warriors.
- and now Sokka has a lot of very always conversations he’s not at all looking forward to.
More additions:
- When the Gaang arrive at Ba Sing Se, Long Feng casts an unidentifiable look at Sokka. “And you are…the non-bender, I assume.”
- “Yeah.” Sokka glares. “What of it?”
- Sokka thinks Long Feng was mocking him.
- Long Feng turns to the Dai Li and whispers, “Keep a close eye on him. He’s the wildcard.”
- Rumors of the Avatar and his companions spread throughout Ba Sing Se.
- Jet, who has been a fan of the Blue Spirit after hearing his exploits, has no desire to get entangled with the Avatar, but if Sokka was the Blue Spirit, then he had to apologize clearly. He hopes the other boy was willing to give him tips on swordfighting.
- (Jet only realized Sokka's—the Blue Spirit's—true reason for trying to stop him from flooding the town back then. He knew it would’ve raised the suspicion of the Fire Nation’s troops. If Jet had listened to him back then, the rest of the Freedom Fighters wouldn’t have…)
- Jet prioritizes finding Sokka over spying on the firebender. When he does, he apologizes and asks Sokka to teach him swordfighting. Sokka says “What the heck? No.”
- Jet doesn’t take no for an answer. Everywhere Sokka goes, Jet is always in the background lurking. Jet even follows him into the haiku-making session.
- Sokka, mentally: Whatthefuckwhatthefu—
- It isn’t until Sokka finally bursts out, “Shouldn’t you be doing something more important than following me around?!”
- Jet gets an understanding gleam in his eye (What is wrong with him?) and goes, “Of course. You were trying to make me realize where my true priorities should lie, I should’ve known. Thank you, Sokka.”
- Sokka couldn’t even be bothered to feel creeped out as relief washed over him when Jet left.
- Zuko, who thanked Agni too early that he could finally move without someone breathing behind his neck, saw Jet on the rooftops once again, watching.
#
- Azula is CONVINCED that Sokka’s the Blue Spirit. After all, it’s pretty clear that only the strategist of the Avatar’s team could possibly save as many Earth Kingdom villages as he did without getting caught at least once. Clearly his wits far surpassed many.
- She tells Mai and Ty Lee to keep a close look on Sokka during battles. “Who knows when he’ll drop the ruse of his secret identity and pull out his swords.”
- During the Day of the Black Sun, Azula greets gaang by saying, “I see you’ve got yourself a new sword. Still keeping up your ruse even now?”
- Sokka’s like “???”
- “What ruse?”
- Azula gives him an appraising look. “Commendable.” She smirks. “But you still can’t beat me.”
#
- “Hello, Zuko here.”
- Zuko’s eyes zero in on the Blue Spirit mask fastened on Sokka’s hip.
- “Aha, I finally caught you.”
wretched-aurora
i had a whole fucking thing typed out in the tags, but tumblr didn’t tell me i hit the tag limit, so half of it got deleted >:(
anyway
—at some point after zuko joins the gaang, he figures it might not be that bad if the rumors weren’t entirely inaccurate
—they have similar builds, so the difference wouldn’t really be that noticeable anyway
—he ends up teaching sokka how to dual wield swords, how to sneak around quietly without getting caught, how to assess a situation and quickly determine the best course of action at a glance, and how to run around and fight without talking
—the last one was the hardest
—at some point sokka asks why they’re doing all this, to which zuko replies, “you know… keeping his identity hidden isn’t the only reason why the blue spirit wears a mask.”
—sokka looks at him, confused
—zuko sighs. “people think you’re the blue spirit. if they’re going to assume things like that, you could at least be good at the things they think you can do.”
—sokka continues to stare at him blankly
—zuko internally facepalms. “i’m the blue spirit, dumbass. i’m teaching you how to do what i do so i won’t get found out, and we’re similar enough physically that nobody would notice if you went out instead of me sometimes.”
—sokka finally gets it
—he then proceeds to freak out for two hours straight
—they end up switching blue spirit duty weekly
—the thing is, nobody else knows there’s two blue spirits, not even the rest of the gaang
—so imagine their surprise when they’re attacked while zuko and sokka are out, and the blue spirit shows up to help
—but not five minutes later, another blue spirit appears
—the first one looks at the second one, and even though they’re both wearing masks, the first one looks almost angry
—once the threat disappears, the two blue spirits run off, and zuko and sokka come back a while later, with zuko looking pissed, and sokka mildly embarrassed
—aang asks zuko about it later, but zuko refuses to answer
—the second they’re alone together, zuko starts yelling at sokka
—"I HAD IT! I HAD IT UNDER CONTROL! YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO COME HELP! NOW EVERYONE KNOWS THERE’S TWO OF US!“
—"I’M SORRY, OKAY? I DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE ALREADY THERE!”
—"I THOUGHT I SPECIFICALLY FUCKING TOLD YOU NOT TO ACT IMPULSIVELY"
—despite zuko’s insistence otherwise, literally nobody knew there were two. they just thought one was a copycat that was so good, nobody could tell the difference
—some time passes, and nobody seems to know who the copycat might be, until some conspiracy theorists from omashu somehow manage to arrive at the conclusion that the copycat is none other than firelord zuko himself
—when asked about the rumors that he’s the blue spirit copycat, zuko responds, “the blue spirit is a wanted criminal with a massive bounty on his head. he broke into a maximum security fire nation prison, fully aware of the risks, specifically to rescue one single person. with all due respect, sir, why the fuck would i attempt to impersonate someone as obviously idiotic as him?”
—when someone points out that he also broke into a maximum security fire nation prison, fully aware of the risks, specifically to rescue one person—the only difference being that he did it with a friend—zuko completely denies it, claiming that he’d never do anything like that
