#....i started rambling

[sadgirlautumn]

“kids spend too much time on their devices” well what else are they supposed to do? there’s no corner shops with pinball machines in them on every corner anymore. there’s no malls or stores in small towns for teens to hang out in without being suspected of shoplifting or kicked out for loitering. sidewalks are too broken for them to ride their bikes and there’s no bike lane in the street to make it safe for them. i just don’t understand where they expect these kids to go when they keep taking places away from them. and yes having no safe public places for them is what leads a lot of teens into addiction if they end up at a place where people aren’t truly looking out for them.

[secondbeatsongs]

somehow instead of saying "as a treat", I've started using the phrase "for morale", as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.

and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.

I'm not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me

[lazylittledragon]

can't believe we're all adults being forced into the club penguin level of censorship in 2024

[disaster-magnet]

I'm one of the few people that genuinely LOVES working customer service (hotel receptionist here), like yes the occasional person is rude and entitled. But most of the time? People are kind, and funny, and will jump at the chance to share a bit of their lives with someone else.

The businessman that comes in every week who seemed grouchy at first now smiles and waves when I remember his name, and explains he's just finished a long drive, and he doesn't MEAN to come off as rude, he's just tired.

The mother and daughter who visit the hotel each summer and tell me they've been coming here for years, and each time they visit they go to the pier and save up their tickets for the big ticket items. One day they come through the doors with the biggest grins, the older lady in the wheelchair proudly waving a huge stuffed toy tiger she's "had her eye on for years".

The young man with his girlfriend who looks nervous as he approaches reception, and stumbles over his words, his hands shaking as he signs the paperwork to check in. I've spent the last two weeks on the phone with him organising this; we've set up the bedroom with balloons and petals and decorations, and he's going to propose as soon as they get to the room.

The woman who I've not seen before who asks if I'm local, and tells me she grew up here, and had recently found herself drawn back. We talk about the sounds of seagulls, and the metal clanging of masts down at the harbour, and how the sounds that fade into the background are the ones you miss most when you leave. She's writing a book and promises to send me a copy when she's done.

The regular who goes out of her way to buy us all the strangest biscuits she can find at the tourist shops. We try them together, pulling faces at the ones that just don't work.

The thirty something woman who immediately sees a kinship in me and whispers to me that she has been here before, but under a name she no longer uses, and we celebrate the freedom she feels.

The support group that comes in for coffee each week and sit together filling the foyer with laughter.

Every single person living their own wonderful complicated rich lives, and I get to be a part of that. How is that not beautiful?

[gieoki]

LOVE FINDS THE GIRL

[calmlb]

“Chuuya wasn’t in Dark Era, why is he in this art??”

wdym, he’s right here 🤨

[getvalentined]

Thinking a lot recently about the constant comparison of Oblivion to Skyrim, particularly claims that Oblivion is superior in every way strictly by virtue of quest length and the greater grandiosity of the organizations in Oblivion, and I think there's been a fundamental misunderstanding of what's actually going on with Tamriel during the time period of Skyrim. Even though it's like...one of the core concepts of the main storyline.

Putting most of this under a cut for length, but I just...I think people misunderstand what's going on here. This is not a "One Game Good Other Game Bad" post, it's an analysis of a major, key difference in story basis between the two that I think gets lost in the (frankly asinine) argument about which is superior.

See, everything in Skyrim sucks. Every organization you can align yourself with is falling apart. Literally every single one.

That's the point.

To summarize:

The Companions (equivalent to the Fighters' Guild) are about a dozen strong, literally cursed, and their most beloved leader gets murdered very early in the storyline.

The College of Winterhold (equivalent to the Mages' Guild, not to the Arcane University) has seemingly only been saved from collapsing into the sea because a master of Restoration fused himself with the structure itself when the Sea of Ghosts tried to tear it down a little under a century ago and his presence is constantly physically "healing" the foundation.

The Thieves' Guild has lost the favor of every possible patron deity, having been outright cursed by Nocturnal after one of her Nightingales murdered another and stole the gift she offers her champion, while the boon that the organization's founder claimed from her in ages past (the cowl) is missing.

The Dark Brotherhood has been all but completely dismantled, the Night Mother's tomb in Bravil having been raided and struggling to persist without a Listener for over a decade; the bodies of the Night Mother's children have been lost and she's essentially being smuggled from region to region in an attempt to find a safe place to continue operations.

The Empire itself has been kneecapped, forced into a traumatic treaty by a fascist regime determined to strike the beliefs and culture of anyone not Altmer off the face of the planet; the Thalmor have gone so far as to torture and radicalize the figurehead leader of the Nords in order to use their own nationalism and superiority against the Empire, sparking a civil war that will further weaken the Empire and allow the Aldmerri Dominion to destroy it wholecloth.

This extends out into the rest of the world, too! We have confirmed existence of Hist-deaf Argonians. The Dunmer are floundering to recover after the quadruple-whammy that is the fall of the Triumverate, the destruction of Vivec City when Baar Dau finally made impact, the Red Year, and the Argonian uprising. The Bosmer are literally endangered due to habitat loss following a super-isolationist cultural shift due to wars with the Khajiit and Altmer. The Void Nights were devastating to Khajiit culture and population in ways that have yet to be fully explained.

The world is falling apart. Everything is dying.

And then Alduin shows up.

We all kind of talk about Alduin carrying on as World-Eater through the course of the Skyrim storyline like it's him being a piece of shit, since he'd started it ages ago and was just displaced in time to land on the Last Dragonborn's head in the Fourth Era, but I don't think that's the case.

Based on the state of things, I think Alduin arrived right on time. I think it's the end of the world. The only reason he "should" be stopped is because the Last Dragonborn has the capacity to stop the world from ending in a more down-to-earth sense than just defeating Alduin: they can't save everyone, but they can "fix" every single organization that's holding "the world" together.

They can align with the Imperials and keep the civil war from further crippling them, keeping the Empire from being too weak to push back against the Aldmerri Dominion.

They can save the College of Winterhold, the only group in the right place at the right time to stop the Eye of Magnus from opening, and in doing so make sure that the Psijics are able to put it somewhere nobody else can find it.

They can lead the Companions, cure the curse for those members who don't want to run with Hircine after death, which bolsters their spirits enough to keep doing what they can even when everyone else is trying to kill each other. A single neutral martial force in the middle of a civil war.

They can regain Nocturnal's trust for the Thieves' Guild, restore the Nightingales, and in doing so they can return the luck that was stolen from them as punishment for Mercer Frey's transgression. They can even reclaim the Crown of Barenziah and award the guild with a paragon to increase their newly-regained luck.

They can hear the Night Mother, becoming Listener for the Dark Brotherhood to restore the balancing force of Sithis in the world, purify the most broken Sanctuary the Brotherhood has ever had, and finish a story set into motion way back in the Third Era—Emperor Titus Mede II is murdered under the order of a Motierre, a descendant of a mark the Brotherhood specifically kept from dying during the Oblivion Crisis.

The Last Dragonborn can't do anything outside Skyrim—there's nothing they can do for the Argonians or the Bosmer or the Khajiit, and they can only do very little for the Dunmer via work in Solstheim—but they can work with every single guild or guild-adjacent group, strengthening the Empire to stand against the biggest threat to Tamrielic culture since the First Era, and in doing so they can make it so the world isn't ready for Alduin to eat it.

The Hero of Kvatch exists when Tamriel, and presumably Nirn as a whole is in the prime of its life, that's what makes the Oblivion Crisis such a big deal. This is a world that isn't ready to give up, it still has the strength to fight, it just needs someone standing at the head to direct it. The Last Dragonborn comes into the story when everything is falling apart and nothing really feels worthwhile, when it's hard to see why the world is worth saving. They have the chance to prove that there's still some life left here, that the world isn't too far gone to save—Alduin arrived right on time, it's the Last Dragonborn's job to change that.

I can see how coming from Oblivion to Skyrim would feel disappointing and hollow, but I'm pretty sure that's literally the point of the story.

Oblivion tells you the world is worth saving because it's got so much left to live for, even with the odds stacked so high against it. Skyrim asks you whether a world that's dying is still a world worth saving, and it's up to you to prove that it is.

[antennatoheaven]

trying to sell the murderbot diaries to other robot fans is an uphill battle. yes, i also prefer it when my robots don't have human looking faces. i understand why you might not be happy with its appearance, but guess who's also not happy with having a human face

[liimonadas]

randomly rememebered a very silly maya content creator AU i came up with like 2 years ago. its just dumb fun haha

[mwphisto]

Rafayel suffers from night terrors.

He doesn't talk about them, doesn't dare acknowledge them out loud. Saying he has them makes them real, and that's not something he's ready to come to terms with yet.

They are not visions his mind conjured up. No, they are something far worse. They are memories. Memories of his past, of his lives with you. Each one etching their own unique scar in his mind. Taunting, tormenting, breaking his heart over and over.

Still, Rafayel refuses to dwell on them longer than a few minutes. After he's jolted upright in bed, sweat covering his body, his pupils drawn tight despite the darkness enveloping his room.

His body is shaken by fight or flight, arms trembling with tension as he holds onto the dying version of you that has long since passed.

They don't stop, not until he has you. Not until you are throughly bound to him in this life too. Tangled in the infamous red string of fate, one that ties you to him as helplessly as he his tied to you. Your presence in his bed has warded off the cursed dreams.

Now, Rafayel's night terrors are few and far between.

He can go a few weeks, even a month, without his past tormenting him in his dreams. His resolution is much healthier than his previous coping attempts. Each time his skin is soaked with sweat, each time his heart seizes and he is left grappling for reality, he reaches for you.

You, who is sleeping soundly beside him. You, who sleeps like the damn dead. You, who sleepily mumbles his name and reaches for him just as he clings to you, sweat, panic, and all.

You may not remember. It may kill him a little bit. But he has you again, you are his and he is yours. He can cope with the nightmares of his past so long as you are sleeping - breathing - beside him.

Are we fucking joking with that trailer. Raf looks un-fucking-real and (SPOILERS) I genuinely gasped when we died in his arms. My poor fishy, the visual sucked (it was gorgeous but painful is what I mean lmfao)

[dippiesque]

on our way!!💚

[lazylittledragon]

i hope the person who made the romeo and juliet uquiz never deletes it and also knows that i think about it at least once a month

[reinanova]

people LOVE using the excuse of “just bcuz the writer said so doesn’t mean it’s canon” and that the line “i’m not a lesbian, i’m not anything” doesn’t actually make yelena aroace

okay. so by that logic, deadpool isn’t canonically pansexual (even tho the writers confirmed it)

and by that logic, loki isn’t canonically bisexual since “a bit of both” isn’t actually a direct confirmation of his bisexuality

if you’re telling me that yelena needs to say the words “i’m aromantic asexual” in order for her aroace identity to be canon, then that same logic better apply to other queer characters, otherwise you’re being a hypocritical aphobic asshole

if you can’t accept a queer characters canon identity based on their actions or words unless they literally say their sexuality/romantic identity out loud, you’re losing so much representation (especially of the casual queer kind) and character diversity

[discountlittlebro]

Alcoholic dad grooming his sons best friend fff yeah

His dad isn’t in the picture, so he steps in. Treats him just like his son! Plays ball with him, teaches him to drive, helps him with homework. Ruffles his hair and holds him close so his scruff scratches the boys soft skin, so he can smell the alcohol on his breath. Best friends who call themselves brothers and dad who jerks off to it later, who strokes his cock to the memory of him calling him dad as a joke.

But in his mind it’s not a joke, he’s under him gasping and shaking going “dad dad dad..” and when he cums all over his own hand he imagines that pretty boy on his knees, imagines being able to caress his face and feed the cum into his mouth past those pretty pink lips. He swallows back another drink and grins when the boy shows up in tears, his stupid boyfriend breaking up with him and ofcourse he goes to his dad, because at this point that’s what he is.

And dad is going to make it all better. Make him forget that dumb boy, and show him how a real man would love him, fuck him. And it all starts with him pouring another drink, along with an extra one for his poor boy. Something to take the edge off, to numb the heartache.

[gravedangerahead]

The Federative Republic of Brazil (written Brasil in the local Portuguese) is a country in South America, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean. It is the world's fifth-largest country by area and the seventh-largest by population, with over 212 million people. The country is a federation composed of 26 states and a Federal District, which hosts the capital, Brasília. Its most populous city is São Paulo, followed by Rio de Janeiro. Brazil has the most Portuguese speakers in the world and is the only country in the Americas where Portuguese is an official language. Currently, Brazil's biggest export is derogatory nicknames for the United States of America.

[oh-no-its-bird]

Favorite dinluke trope is where Luke is like "Mando...I have something to share...this is really hard and I understand if u dont look at me the same after this... but my father... he was Darth Vader..."

And Din just.

"I dont know who that is."