#Wild's just a ~little~ stressed

[skyloftian-nutcase]

Outbreak Pt 2 (LU in Healthcare)

Legend slurped on his energy drink, anxious to get to work. He and the entire night shift had been called in early to attend some training for this new virus that was potentially a problem. Administration mandated everyone attend to see how to don and doff personal protective equipment.

It was mildly exasperating, as it had cut into his sleep and he'd run out of time to really grab an actual breakfast. But whatever. He paid attention as best he could, leg starting to bounce with nervous energy. When his phone buzzed, he glance down, distracted.

The name Zelda was on the screen, and he immediately tuned out everything around him.

They hardly messaged each other, really. Birthday wishes, the occasional "are you alive" text, that was about it. It was hard to maintain much of a good relationship sometimes, given... well, everything.

Hey. So. I have this patient. Heart attack, CABG, pathway, blah. But he's got family who knows you?? I just want to make sure??? Like he seemed legit but still. Says he goes by Wild.

He... the heart attack patient from yesterday...

Shit.

Legend texted quickly, gaze flicking between his phone and the person wearing a gown in the front. Yeah, I know a few people named Link, so we go by nicknames.

His sister's reply was practically instantaneous. Still not over the fact that you call yourself Legend LOL you're so lame

Legend huffed, feeling his cheeks flush. THERE'S A REASON OK

Uh huh. Sure. So this Wild dude is legit then? I didn't let some random stranger into my pt's room yest right?

Sighing, Legend replied, Nah he's legit. Good guy. Wish he could've told me his dad was here.

Because it had to be his father, right? The more Legend thought about it, the more it made sense. The man looked just like Wild, except for being older and more worn out. He'd been reaching out to Wild, calling out his name, in a frenzy. Wild had been acting strange. The long drawn out gaze with Time. All of it.

"Legend."

Glancing up, the travel nurse saw Warriors standing over him, looking grim. "Uh... Wars, you good?"

"Hope you paid attention to the training," Warriors said. "That patient who got diagnosed with Arfy at the urgent care is here. You're taking him."

Legend blinked. "He's--he's here? Did he get worse?"

"Yeah. They're intubating him now."

Great. As if his stomach wasn't in knots already. Warriors gave Legend the room and said that would be his only patient to try and decrease cross contamination with other rooms. Legend ran the training demonstration in his head, now mildly panicked that he'd ignored some of it in lieu of talking to his sister, but it was fairly straightforward. Everyone was already masking as a precaution, he just needed to start wearing gowns and goggles and face shields too.

Time to get to work.

XXX

Wild paced in his bedroom, simultaneously annoyed and thankful that he had tonight off. Everyone had texted him by this point asking if he was alright, and while he appreciated the sentiment, he really had no way of conveying that he desperately wanted and needed to keep his past separate from his present.

He hardly knew his life before Castle Town. But what he did remember was enough. He couldn't--he couldn't go back to that life. He'd lost everyone, and it had been his fault. As his memories had come back, he'd doubled down on avoiding his past, including his family.

How could he possibly reconcile the old him with who he was now, after all? He just wanted to close that chapter of his life. He just wanted closure, period. He was terrified of seeing his family again. What would they think of him? How could he have left them like he had? How could he ever return to them?

He... he wanted to check on his father. But he knew by now the rest of his family was likely at the hospital, and he did not need to see them. Guilt twisted his gut as he stared out the window, watching the cows graze in the pasture.

Sighing, he went downstairs, catching sight of Malon watching the news. He distracted himself with asking her what was up, and she said, "There's ten more cases of Arfy in town."

Wild blinked. Ten? Hadn't there just been one yesterday?

That... didn't bode well.

Before Wild could comment, Wind skipped in, having mentioned he was dropping by for dinner. "Yo, you guys should see the picture Legend just sent me of this guy's chest x-ray!"

Wild and Malon both crowded around Wind's phone to look at th eimage, and Wild asked, "So what am I looking at?"

Malon hissed, staring at the image. "Those lungs look awful."

"Right?" Wind glanced up at the OR nurse. "I'm surprised they have any compliance."

Wild stared at the pair dully. "I take it it's bad."

"His lungs are shot," Wind emphasized. "Like... they look like they're rocks. Legend said they can barely get the guy to oxygenate."

Wild felt a new twinge of anxiety in his chest. This new illness had been tearing through some cities in the Gerudo Desert, and now that it was in Castle Town...

As if he didn't have enough to worry about. He sighed. Hopefully his father would get better quickly and his family would leave before anything truly terrible happened.

Hopefully nothing terrible would happen at all.

[aulerean]

a bamboozling turn of events

[starry-bi-sky]

danny and officer martinez's relationship in "late at night, when the nightingale sings" in a nutshell:

Martinez: FREAK! GET YOUR FUCKING KID!

Battinson, on the other side of the crime scene: he don't bite

Martinez, with Nightingale firmly attached his arm, visibly biting him: YES HE DO!

*points at them* Danny is the Bugs Bunny to Martinez's Elmer Fudd.

Another Officer: i can't believe you're fighting with an actual twelve year old. Martinez: i swear to god that is not a twelve year old, that is a little hellion that crawled out of batman's shadow one dark and stormy night and decided to dedicate his existence to tormenting me. Officer: Are you really that mad about him putting a sticky note on your back-- Martinez: thats not the point

in danny's defense: the word "freak" is. a mini beserker button for him for.... obvious ghostly reasons, so like, even if its not directed at him, he still very much unappreciates Martinez's insults at Battinson. Danny may or may not be projecting.

he's not going to hurt the guy! not in any serious or permanently disfiguring way at least! But he is going to leave mean sticky notes on the square part of his spine that he can't reach, and stick salt in his 3AM Late Night Crime Scene Coffee, and kick the bottom of his heel while he's walking so he stumbles. And other petty, infuriating things that tally up and boil over, over time.

[luna-loveboop]

I want. Four to get appreciation. Because

Four gave a ton of unnoticed help when Twilight was injured

The fight with Wild was difficult, and I know we're all concerned about his negative view of the shadow crystal

But Four did something that no one else really thought of to help- He took care of Twi's stuff

From the beginning he told Twilight to not worry about them

So Four took care of pretty much everything but the others (that Sky and Wars handled)

He took care of Epona

Which is so very important- he took care of Twilight's horse. After her arrival at the stable Four followed up on her

And for Epona, a horse so attached to her human, having some company can help so much for reassurance

He took care of Twilight's stuff

He got Twi's shield- his bags and equipment, and organized it into one place

And he was worried. He obviously found the shadow crystal while handling Twi's stuff, but his negative reactions to it were out of concern.

Also- because of his placement in this scene

I'm fairly convinced Four was ready to start cooking before Wild showed up (since he's beside the counter with food supplies). At the very least he had the basket of fruit out for everyone -but he was literally standing with food behind him- he thought of everything

And he did housekeeping!

Wars payed for the inn, so Four took care of the inn

Realistically these boys were probably not too concerned with tidyness. Four got all of Twi's things on one table, and took care of the room they stayed in

Organizing tables and Twi's things, having food supplies ready, and opening the curtains- overall he was the one tidying up the inn

Four helped in a huge way! He took care of Twi's horse (Epona is so important), his equipment and shield and bag, as well as the other rooms in the inn

Four filled in all the little tasks that others didn't think of. He helped in ways that were needed, but not obvious

There's a lot of problems with the shadow crystal and with Wild, and I don't know what's gonna happen in the future

But don't forget this- don't forget that Four was one who stepped up in an almost unnoticeable way

Don't forget that when everyone was barely holding it together, Four visited Twilight's horse and took care of his things

No matter what develops in the future- this amount of care shown is important ya know?

.

Art and comic from Jojo @linkeduniverse au :)))

[littlecrittereli]

Reprogrammed Chris core (dementia)

Just a silly scene I had in my head and wanted to draw it out :)

[deoidesign]

My comic is so pretty...

The hiatus is letting me take a little extra time on these episodes, and I'm definitely putting it to good use!!!

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Our Lady Of Mysterious Ailments & The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle

books 2 & 3 in the Edinburgh Nights series

paranormal mystery set in a climate-ravaged future Scotland, plagued by ghosts and magic

follows a 15yo Black girl who’s finally gotten an in to learn scientific magic properly - but it turns out to be an unpaid internship, so she has to take more jobs delivering ghost messages and investigating mysteries to take care of her gran and little sister

in book 2 she’s investigating a strange illness centred on a magic school for boys

and in book 3 she’s attending a global magician conference held in a creepy castle - when someone’s murdered, and they’re locked in until she figures out the culprit

Zimbabwean magic, friendship, disabled characters, no romance (so far)

[caitlynmeow]

This is child Bela you can’t change my mind 😭😭

[wumbsie]

graduated 👍

[holysaintscathedral]

Cishet men are so intimidated by female sexuality, it's honestly so pathetic and sad. Come to think of it, they're intimidated by ANYTHING remotely womanly or feminine.

[coriander-candlesticks]

I'm sick so I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense, but I've been thinking about the nature of myths recently as I've been exploring hellenic polytheism.

For context: I'm ex-Mormon. I was raised in the church and, because of that, was taught biblical literalism but in, like, a more subtle way than most? I was raised believing that Adam & Eve and Noah's Ark, etc., were literally true, but that the story of Job specifically was not; I also always knew evolution and the Big Bang to be correct, despite there being a verse in the Doctrine & Covenants (a Mormon-specific religious book) where God apparently told Joseph Smith that the world is 6,000 years old- a passage I didn't know existed until my senior year of high school. I didn't realize I had believed in biblical literalism until I'd left the church, actually.

Now that I'm aware of it, it's a mindset I'm actively trying to combat while I explore Hellenic polytheism. It's definitely been a task to separate the nature of the Gods from their myths, as brutal as they often are. And it's something I've noticed within the community, too, which I think is interesting. It makes sense: Christianity, at least, has had a chokehold on much of the world for a long time, and so many of us have experienced literalism as our first interaction with any sort of holy text (though, of course, Greek myths as a whole aren't that) alongside our first experience with divinity as a wrathful God whose flaws are waved away, or ignored, or twisted into positive attributes. This also means that I'm trying to re-approach several deities with an open mind (Zeus, Hera, and Ares in particular, but many of them to some extent) while also trying to un-condition myself. I was already in the process of doing this, of course, but trying to figure out how to interact with a completely different pantheon has made that especially clear.

It extends to things like prayer and offerings, too. Prayers were very formulaic growing up, even though most of the time there wasn't a strict script to follow. There was always something you ask as part of the prayer, even if it's just 'please help me do better tomorrow' (alongside giving thanks, of course), so trying to craft a prayer without adding *everything* I'm used to including in makes it feel incomplete and, therefore, disrespectful. And daily prayer is something I'm resistant to because of prior experiences with it. I don't want to offend any of the gods by asking for something or asking for too much, especially so early on, and there's always a promised offering the few times I *have* asked. Add worries about exact obedience on top of that and it's proving to be a difficult thing to untangle. And I know that the gods are difficult to offend, figuring out how to do this takes trial & error and that's okay, it'll get better the more I do it, etc., etc.; this is more an issue with my own overthinking than anything else (hooray for ✨ mental health issues ✨). I'm not really asking for advice here, necessarily, just thinking out loud because I'm not comfortable talking to people in meat space about it yet.

[margindoodles2407]

In Defense of King Rhoam

okay so before I start this I just want to say, before you go dissing me in the comments just hear me out. I know that some people absolutely despise Rhoam, and I'm not trying to change their minds because I completely understand why. I just thought I'd offer my perspective on his character and why I don't hate him as much as other people do.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I will defend King Rhoam to my dying breath.

Not his actions. Of course not. The way he treated Zelda was a way no parent should ever treat his or her teenage daughter. But even though we focus so much on Zelda's pain- as rightly we should- we tend to forget about her father's.

As far as we, the players, know, Zelda was an only child. Unless she was a miracle child conceived in old age, that means that Rhoam and his wife were married probably at most two years before she was born. Therefore, if she was six when her mother died, then Rhoam and the Queen had been married probably at most eight years. They were newlyweds. And, let us also not forget that the Calamity's return was prophesied very shortly after Zelda's birth.

Imagine being the head of a huge country, home to six major races and thousands of people. Imagine that your wife has just had a baby girl and that whole country celebrates. Imagine that, on that occasion that's supposed to be so joyous, an evil so old that everything about it but its name has been all but forgotten is said to return soon.

Imagine, then, that that wife whom you love throws herself and her sacred power into the work she must fulfill, because if she doesn't, those six races and all those thousands of people could die in a heartbeat.

Imagine that, one day, she suddenly dies.

Imagine that your six-year-old daughter doesn't even cry.

(We know why Zelda doesn't cry. We can't forget that Rhoam doesn't.)

Rhoam's in grief. He mourns his wife, and as everyone knows, when you're in grief you become blind to the pain of others because yours is so intense. But he also knows that his kingdom is still in danger, and that his wife must have passed her sacred power onto their daughter.

Zelda didn't cry. But she's six years old. She doesn't know how to tell him why. So he jumps to conclusions, and assumes that she's just mature- because she's SIX, and she doesn't know how to express her emotions- and so he sends her away to start her training.

Zelda tries, and she tries, and we KNOW that she tries; we know she tries her hardest, we know that she passes out in the freezing water of the Sacred Springs because she's trying so hard and nothing's happening. But we also need to remember that, because of this, she's away from home- where Rhoam is- all the time. Rhoam only gets to see her when she's at the Castle- which isn't often- and when she's there she wants to do the things she loves and not worry about her destiny. She's sixteen. She she still doesn't tell Rhoam how she's feeling, and since he can't see her trying her hardest, he once again jumps to conclusions and assumes that that's all she does when she's gone, too.

And Rhoam is running out of time. It's been ten years, and he doesn't know how seriously the princess takes her duties, so he keeps pushing her because he also has six races and thousands of people to look after.

He has to sacrifice being a father to be a king.

And we can see the whole picture, so we're quick to judge him. And to be clear, yes, the way he treats Zelda by jumping to conclusions isn't a model of parenting that any parent should ever follow. But, unlike us, Rhoam can't see the whole picture.

Not until it's too late.

Rhoam probably dies first when the Calamity hits, and then suddenly, as a ghost, he can see his daughter. He sees her flee the guardians with her knight, he sees her slip her hand from his, he sees her sob in wretched agony as she chokes out that the terrors around them are her fault because she couldn't access her cursed power. He realizes that she did take everything seriously, that she cared so much- that she probably cared more than he did.

He loves his daughter, he always has. But he realizes that he never showed it.

He realizes that he was a terrible father, and that is why he is stayed to the earth as a poe.

Ghosts are the souls of people with unfinished business. Rhoam's was that he was a bad father- and so, by extension, a bad king. So he haunts the plateau where his devoted Sheikah bodyguards buried him, and 100 years slip by like sand in an hourglass.

Link awakes from the Shrine of Resurrection, and Rhoam decides to atone for his past mistakes. He as a ghost can't save his daughter, but Link's alive. Link can. And so he becomes like a father to this boy he knows but who doesn't remember him, guiding him along his way, providing him with direction, food, and shelter, and he tries to fix all the mistakes he made in his life.

And when Link completes the shrines and meets him in the bell tower of the Temple of Time, Rhoam provides him with the Paraglider and the story of 100 years ago. He pleads with the boy to save his daughter, to be the man he never was.

When Link agrees, Rhoam can finally pass on.

He can't tell Zelda that he's sorry. Not yet, not until her time comes and she peacefully passes over into Hylia's realms of light. But he can send her someone, someone to care for her like he never did.

He can only pray that she forgives him.

[waitineedaname]

Idk why but I get a lot of joy from like. getting used to a place? getting comfortable there? I get on my regular bus route, and this is My bus route, I know exactly where it goes and I know when my stop is coming without even looking at the map. I know the major streets, I can orient myself towards downtown or the ocean or campus almost anywhere in town. I know how to get to several beaches and parks and grocery stores and banks and the mall and my friends' apartments. Idk it's just really nice feeling at home somewhere

[mychlapci]

As someone who gets horny for world building, I was trying to figure out where all the dratchrod babies go

Instead, my mind jumped to an au where the majority of cybertronians are infertile (from war injuries or smth) but due to some shenanigans the crew of the Lost Light got magically healed and they're all volunteering (or being voluntold) to get pregnant to give the rest of cybertron babies

lost light as a breeding facility drives me crazy. do they have a baby quota to fill?.... tbh i do have many and varying headcanons about cybertronian parenting, but since i am first and foremost a strict feral sparklings truther, i would imagine the dratchrod babies are indeed brought to cybertron, since, well, most cybertronians dont know how to raise three litters of dozen feral babies, anyways. i dont think any of it is planned, the lost light just starts sending babies to cybertron and they had to be like Okay well we’ll do something with these.

[daily-whistlepaw]

daily whistlepaw until ah becomes PoV day 1167

I think I finally understand how people feel when around a crush, can't say I enjoy it

[airyairyaucontraire]

Little Nephew (Linus) last night on the way home from a barbecue with friends: Today, none of us died. Unqualified success!

Linus just now, getting changed for a swim, seemingly to himself: Just put this on... and I'm ready to swim. The question is, for whom I'm narrating this.