#and the custom difficulty lets me put everything on grounded except i can still adjust hud setting n shit

[frozenpinesmp3]

tlou2 really set the fucking bar for gameplay accessibility

[geneshaven]

The Distance Between Two Hearts

Oliver lost consciousness before hitting the ground in the prison yard. Blood gushed from multiple places---his face, his neck and a puncture wound under his ribs from a shiv. He had taken a particular vicious beating this time. After only two months being locked up, Oliver had been fighting a constant barrage of attacks. When word got out that the Green Arrow was now part of the general population, the criminal element that made up the prison’s inmates lined up to get at the former vigilante, to get some pay back and to enact as much damage as possible. The attacks were brutal and often sudden, but Oliver was not some new fish swimming in a tank of sharks. He was a seasoned warrior who had just as much deadly skill as his assailants. He gave as good as he got.

But after so many beatings, Oliver was constantly on guard. The only moments of peace he found was alone in his cell, usually licking his wounds and slowly healing after the outcome of said beatings. He was not sleeping very much and the exhaustion from this was beginning to take its toll, slowing down his reactions and leaving him open to the kind of engagements that has currently left him out cold on the hard -packed dirt ground of the yard.

No one came to rescue him.  He was like a toy being played with by the population. Even the guards were in on the abuse, laying bets on Oliver’s survival, on the outcomes of the small battles he was fighting and how many inmates he could take out before falling under the weight of numbers. As Oliver lay on the ground, it started to rain, mixing his blood with the dusty earth beneath him and creating scarlet streams of running anguish.

*

Oliver came to in the prison infirmary. He was stretched out on a small gurney and an IV was attached to his arm. He could feel a gigantic headache crashing through his brain as he came more awake. His left eye was covered by some sort of bandage and he had cotton stuffed into his broken nose. Oliver tentatively reached down and ran his fingers over the wound below his ribs. The area was covered by gauze wrapped around his chest. But he was breathing and had his senses about him.  He had survived another encounter with inevitability.

There was only one other person in the room with him. It was another patient laying on another gurney across from him. Despite the bandages covering the man’s face, Oliver recognized him. He had been one of his attackers out in the yard. Oliver had taken him out of the fight early on, with a backhand to his face and a knee in his stomach. The man appeared to be asleep and Oliver ignored him. Then he caught movement to his left and turned his head that way.

The prison doctor---Simmons was his name, came into the room. He approached Oliver’s gurney and stood over it, looking down and shaking his head.  “Mr. Queen, you are one tough customer. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone in my five years here who has taken as many beatings as you have and lived to tell the tale.”  

Oliver directed his one good eye at the doctor. “Yeah, well it has been my MO for a lot of years,” he deadpanned his answer. “I have been through a lot worse than some inmates beating on me. I’m a survivor doctor, and I have learned over those years how to come back from the brink.”

“Well,” Simmons responded. “I’m pretty sure you can’t survivor many more of these types of beatings. But whatever you say. Despite having a fresh set of cuts and bruises, I think you can go back to your cell.” The doctor paused for a moment, as if he was contemplating giving some advice. “Mr. Queen,” he went on. “I’m not here to help you find your way. I don’t care if you’re here because you deserve this kind of punishment or that you being the Green Arrow is noble or even heroic. You are just another inmate I have to care for in this crazy jungle. But I just wanted to let you know that there is a movement going on in Star City by thousands of its citizens. They have signed petitions and have protested outside the local FBI office. They want you freed. After everything came out about the corruption and the way you assisted in ending that corruption---well, a lot of people think you do not belong in here. Maybe that will help you deal with what is happening to you in here and maybe it won’t.” He stopped his monologue for a few seconds and then finished his conversation with Oliver. “If I was a betting man, I would put my money on you.”

Oliver still showed no emotion, but there was a slight shift in his heart. It was a small touch of gratitude.

*

Later that evening, Oliver was stretched out on his cramped bunk in his cell. He had a notebook binder open and a pen clutched in his hand. He was about to start a letter to Felicity. He was having some difficulty adjusting his depth perception onto the page with his one good eye, but he knew what he wanted to say and fought through it.

Dear Felicity,

I know I usually write these letters for both you and William, but this one is just for you. I am not sure if these letters are getting to you, mainly because I haven’t received any from you since I came to this wonderful country club. Either someone in the chain of command is stopping them from reaching you or you don’t want to talk to me. If it is the latter, I completely understand. My guilt for not including you in the decision I made that put me in here still runs deep. You told me during my trial that we are married and that we’re supposed to protect each other. I did not give you that chance when I agreed to Watson’s terms. I am sorry for that. I don’t want you to think that my reasons were the same ones I latched onto two years ago when I kept you out of the loop with William. I told you that I wanted to protect  you and William and I could not find any other way to do that except by assuring myself that even with me gone, you two would be safe and taken care of. Felicity, knowing that helps me sleep better at night.

Oliver stopped writing and read back what he had written. It seemed veiled and did not go far enough to let his part in all this play out. But he was finding if more and more difficult to let his guard down enough to make himself vulnerable, even to his own wife and child. When he wrote these letters, it almost seemed like he was a kid at summer camp, covering the highlights of spending time away from home, but not letting on how lonely he was and how much he missed his family. The headache he had all day was notched down a bit, but he had another ache that was much harder to endure.

It was in his heart.

Oliver closed his notebook, capped his pen and placed them in the storage netting on the side of his bunk. Maybe Felicity had decided to ignore his letters. Knowing her as well as he did, it sometimes took her a while to process trauma, especially when it was aimed at her, at the way Oliver blindsided her with his deal with the FBI. He knew she was angry at him, and rightly so. His life wasn’t the only one set adrift. She and William’s lives had been just as plagued as his. Oliver’s incarceration was a shock to his family and his guilt over everything brought bad memories of him not being able to look into Felicity’s eyes in their last moments before he was taken away. It was him not giving his wife, his soulmate a hug and a kiss. Oliver just could not let himself touch her. It would have driven him over the edge and reminded him what he was giving up. Felicity’s fear of losing him danced in her leaking eyes like a victimized affront.  And that was Oliver’s deepest guilt. He once again shattered Felicity’s heart by keeping her away; by not letting her find any of her own comfort in a simple touch.

Oliver felt a tear leak out of his good eye as he turned over and started to search for a few hours of sleep. Rain was in the forecast for tomorrow and Oliver wanted to have enough rest to face it.

@it-was-a-red-heeler @memcjo @hope-for-olicity @almondblossomme @biermank @allimariexf @ajillgreen @silencehealth @mylittlesimba @cruzrogue @dmichellewrites @gabriellamarie97 @bandanab310 @wanhani @1106angel @omglovechrissie @marisatwit @swordandarrow @candykizzes24 @wordslovedreams @melolicity @starofaries

[softsovnd]

Virginia Woolf In The Flesh

Before she started her day's worth of effort Virginia Woolf started to compose carefully yet in a lovely good old content in her journal. 'Franticness is definitely not an appropriate plunking down issue like a supper or high tea. Its dark marvel, in the entirety of its superb force and realms (the 'joint' realm, the 'counter-beneficial' realm, the 'body double's' realm), the beginning and endeavor into maturing, all are composed on the body and in the brain of the imaginative. I am set in its focal point. I am the key that opens its history. I know in any event, when I am restless I should be faithful to my spirit's advancement by releasing things. Aptitude accompanies the capability of the 'conduits' of each enthusiastic bend opening up and liberating me.

Rather than hitting your head against the imposing of all formidables, the block divider that you appear/I appear to easily stick to will collapse without any difficulty and we will rise above those stunning limits of what we once involved. All I feel is winter at the rear of me, hanging itself like a cool cover over me, closing out the white light, whirls, cloud-explosions of air as weighty as greenery depleting me of vitality, leaving me to ask myself that stamped inquiry of every checked inquiry, has my opportunity arrived, is it my turn, is my time up? I am aware of the hour of day. It is about an ideal opportunity for my evening walk. Faces joined to bodies working diligently in fields peer out at me with all around flawless clearness.

I don't have any acquaintance with them Loose Diamonds, they don't fit or have a place in my reality so I go on my own happy way and imagine I don't see them. Or then again is it almost an ideal opportunity for my standard rest or to have a little light dinner with Leonard and discussion about Hogarth Press, its combined advancement and the journalists he is right now printing.

I climb slopes with style, sucked into this new earth with each progression.

At the point when I feel most not of the tissue is the point at which a spell of franticness happens upon me. Surrounding me the universe turns into a spooky circle. Stars are unfailing observers to the components of my mind flights. As I compose this in moderately isolation, in my room, I can see precious stones of light dissipate in winter downpour outside my window. See, look, squeezing with a forefinger into the center of the flushed salmon-pink of the palm of my right-hand as though I am exploring blemish, I am living confirmation that even despairing can lift you. For what reason is it generally the devastated, the most weak residents of our condition, what that undeterred image of misfortune intends to us, what is it about the lives of Outsiders that address us?

Head contacting sky, feet contacting ground, taking in a lungful of the sound wide open air (it feels as though it is sliding through me, the fruity extravagance of my organs, my blue veins) these are a portion of my most valuable minutes. Where might I be without you? Surrounding me are the eternal statures of nature. To rest, I have the seat of a tree to incline toward and the sky, even the landscape of the land is wonderful. What might I do with gems, red rubies, shimmering sapphires, gold when today I've seen shades of the world through a couple of pristine eyes? At the point when you're more seasoned, you are all the more lenient, more grounded, astonished at your intentional suddenness to grin and draw in with other 'craftsmen' when you are at your best at open social events.

Is the world actually so loaded with life, so brilliant that it can hurt, cause you to sob, cry wildly, would it be able to draw a bluff line of trick between your consecrated agreement with your god and a most characteristic inventive blessing that is likewise applicable, convincing and one of a kind? Here I am, climbing up my skirts, mud on my shoes, my hair put in an unladylike manner against my brow, appreciating endeavoring, discovering delight in it, my appendages shuddering, the 'woman of the estate', adjusted yesterday problematically between the hellfire of psychological sickness and the unceasing condemnation, all things considered, With the last remnants of my youth everything except eliminated, who was left to fault for my delicate perspective. Psychological sickness had me once inflexibly ablaze and here I was a youngster again in my mystery garden.

Strolling, regardless of whether it was a width of a string of our cabin, appeared to harden my soul from the back to front. I have figured out how to suffer isolation (it has me snared); even the quiet has not lost its jewel sparkle. So I endure in the quiet that consistently appears to explore its approach to meet me in microscopic blasts in my quality and I didn't assume that fruitlessness was a wild discipline or that it was an exercise in camouflage. It was a seismic tremor offering me calm torture before it turned into an excluded visitor sequestered to the upper room. It was only a misconception poured between my cells and platelets. Maybe even the social strife of otherworldly obstruction was merged to my bones, ligament and fragile living creature and not simply the natural.

Somehow or another there is still 'the repressed young lady' about me, no Goth, no alarm am I with flaring lips. I believe I have met people's high expectations splendidly, as time everlasting has needed me to by making a delightful profession of it. As I compose this leaves are falling like unadulterated floats of day off one day I realize this journal will be held up forever, as so numerous others before my time, before my nation, to open investigation. Paper dogs, researchers and intellectuals will announce 'it', my journals and passages from them writing. They will say Virginia Woolf was a lady relatively revolutionary. On the off chance that there is a commendable truth to that announcement I am sure I will not know about it in my own lifetime.

She's constantly lived like this with the winters of dejection. She called it 'flawlessness', 'delight and the specialty of endurance is found in a craftsman's imaginative articulation', 'a characteristic territory for a lady composing fiction', 'I am a craftsman and all authors are craftsmen and all craftsmen are journalists', 'I find endless things valuable in the limited consolidation of my ceremonies before I plunk down to work. The custom of making, of living, of the strength of routine and quietness, that inward space that you are generally aware of'.

In her psyche's eyes she instructs herself to close her eyes, to accept the voice of her adjust conscience and all that it is advising her. It is advising her, selling her, her undetectable doppelganger's dreams until she could even feel it in her heart. She was not fastened to anything in the material world. 'The main belonging that I came into this world with and am leaving this world with is this physical body.' She had revealed to her sister, Vanessa, who had been her most enthusiastic partner during their youth and youthfulness. She lived in books and without them she would be dead, cold and in their central instruction they had given her she saw pictures of the astuteness she would one day come to have.

'Record this. Record this. Make notes.' She lets herself know. Her hands are numb on the grounds that she has been composing for such a long time. She had not known that the light had been falling flat until she gazed upward and there was a thump at her entryway. 'Virginia, in the event that I didn't have a clue about any better I would be slanted to imagine that you needed to be held up from your work, with a couple of day's rest in bed from getting a bug in this drafty room.' Her significant other strolled over the room and remained behind her.