#i am old as fuck now

[radio-free-beth-sarim]

I'm currently sitting on the boardwalk in Ocean City, MD. My family has always taken vacations here, and coming here as an adult is basically just me doing all the things I used to do as a kid, but also the things I wanted to because I couldn't... I was a kid. For a long time I just couldn't afford a vacation. I was bound to my job at the cost of my health. And that led to me getting sick when I just wasn't taking care of myself. Being as sick as I was, I wasn't sure I would ever come back here. There was no guarantee I'd recover, and a good possibility I would be dead by now. So I see being here as a triumph on several fronts. I can now afford to take a vacation, and I am now healthy enough to make it here.

Often I would entertain the idea that I was actually dead, watching the world from the afterlife as it just moved on past me. I came back to a world just similar enough to be familiar but different enough to feel like I'm out of place. I felt like a space alien when I tried to swipe my debit card at the supermarket the first time and they told me to tap. And I was just like "that works?"

I told the cashier I was "gone for a while" and they gave me a strange look. I can only imagine they thought I was just out of prison. I tell people now that "I spent five years dead for tax purposes" and that usually gets either a laugh, or a stranger look than the implication I was in prison. A win for me either way.

But returning to places after the passage of such time is bittersweet no matter the circumstances, and being on the Ocean City boardwalk is a good feeling but one that carries a twinge of sadness.

Arcades have always been my happy place. From the Dundalk skateland that had a Darkstalkers machine and an MVS cabinet to Aladdin's Castle where I spent so much money playing DDR, I always felt so at home and comfortable in those spaces. So being back at the boardwalk for the first time in so long, I had to go to the arcades here. I walked along the boardwalk, and man, it's different but in all of the important ways nothing changed. The weird t-shirts. The Thrashers fries. They're selling deep fried oreos now which I am sure is delicious, but the things that would do to my intestinal tract make me cringe in horror.

I stopped at just about every arcade on the way. All of them left me disappointed that they weren't like what I remember. It's all ticket games, coin pushers, or claw machine variants. If they're actual video games they're reworked versions of old school games like frogger or space invaders, or mobile games. I don't mean to sound all boomer about this, like these kids just don't know, that's not what I am complaining about. I saw a lot of kids having a ton of fun, and it was so good to see. The laughter and joy was a delight, and being in such a place is a wonderful experience. Somewhere among those kids is someone building those core happy memories that will make them love the place like I did. Arcades are an important space where, as the great Charles Entertainment Cheese once said, a kid can be a kid. And going to an arcade makes me feel like a kid again.

But being there was also a stark reminder that I am no longer young. The arcades I remember are out of fashion. Those games are niche now. They don't make it to America often, let alone the Ocean City boardwalk. I made it to Sportland, one of the arcades I went to most frequently. I saw more of the same coin pushers and ticket machines. The place changed. Of course it had. Everything changes. But I mourned those days. In a way I was mourning my youth. I found a single neglected Tekken 3 machine and made my Person play me in a first to five. They 5-0'd me. That's how bad I am at Tekken, I got 5-0'd by someone that doesn't play fighting games. But it was fun, and they were a good sport. I also let a kid beat me in Mario Kart, so that was cool. The kid had to be like 10-12. He was happy, and that made me feel good. I won my Person a weird sonic plush, too. I had a good time! A great time! But as I walked out of Sportland with that bittersweet feeling in my chest, I looked over at Marty's Playland, THE arcade I used to spend most of my time at, and I couldn't bring myself to go in. I need it to be just the same as I remember, even though I know it isn't. I need there to be a place unchanged by time, exactly as I remember it, even if it exists only in my mind. And I know that's not reality anymore.

Maybe this is what W.B. Yeats meant when he wrote "There is no country for old men."

But I saw a kid in an Electric Wizard shirt so there is definitely hope for the future somewhere.

[zira-draws]

they have been rotting my brain for a WHOLE year and I CAN'T STAND IT .

[arcanegifs]

Here are some Season 2 Arcane GIF comparisons before and after I color and sharpen them! | Season 1 Comparison GIFs

[be-a-snake-stab-your-brother]

OKAY BUT THE CALLBACK TO THE THE FIRST THOR MOVIE

Anyone remember the theme the first time we had a broken bridge and Loki? Death and destruction.

And now? Life and creation.

[muttmurdock]

[buckingham-ashtray]

APPARENTLY JOHNLOCK DOESN’T ROCK ON JUST EARTH NOW

‼️⚠️this is NOT an au⚠️‼️

Our babies are on Mars.

Freaking MARS.

Okay backtrack. So basically both SHERLOC and WATSON are cameras attached to a robotic arm in search of life on Mars. SHERLOC detects organic molecules and minerals on Mars, and WATSON captures detailed images of the Martian surface to support SHERLOC's analysis.

(Apparently this program was launched a while ago on July 30, 2020. In 13 days our babies are gonna have their fourth Mars anniversary. I’m going to cry.)

In my mind:

SHERLOC: *bossily points at something*

WATSON: *heaves sigh and takes photos*

More information can be found at:

[wishfulsketching]

Based on my observations, average zaundads enjoyer is living for the class divide storyline in Arcane (which makes sense) and shakes their fists at Riot/Fortiche for kinda just throwing that away in s2

We want these old men to fuck. For political reasons!

[ninesugars]

hello to all 5 people that still care about fates. guess who’s replaying conquest

[the-kipsabian]

saw a take so fucking rancid on twitter i almost deleted the entire app from my phone jesus fucking christ

first of all ao3 is an archive site. this is like going to the library and saying "oh i dont like this" on every piece of media you find that you dislike and thinking they should be stamped with some sort of a marker just cause you didnt like it

you can always click back and leave. fic writers owe you nothing to explain themselves and their creations. if they have mistagged or miscategorized fics, then i understand, however there are report tools for that instead of yelling at the artist tbh

im not saying free works arent necessarily above criticism. but this is just. fucking wild. its common courtesy to just enjoy stuff (or fucking leave if you dont, the back button is free) and if the artist specifically asks for critiques, then give one - constructive that is, shitting all over someones work is not proper criticism, mind you

i just find it fucking wild people are treating art and archive sites as social media these days like this and everything needs to be policed and ~catered to the algorithm~ like. no. ao3 doesnt have an algorithm. you should be able to fucking tell what you like and what you dont like and steer away from that kind of content and let people fucking be with their art. they dont owe you anything (except trigger warnings i'd argue, but i know some people disagree with that as well for some reason), and imagine how much more energy you'd have if you only engaged with things you liked and spent time looking at instead of going to places where you dont enjoy yourself. let alone spending time telling other people you dont enjoy what they enjoy. what a fucking life

[whenthelightisrunninglow]

spent the last couple nights watching the handplates (<- @zarla-s if you’ve never read it) comic dub with a friend of mine :-]

gaster ^

[mod2amaryllis]

uhh oh!!! unexpected hospital stay 🤪

last night i fell flat on my stomach tripping over absolutely nothing, so i went in to get checked. everything looks fine aside from a scraped hand and knee but they kept me for overnight monitoring just in case. this, of course, happened while jose is out of town, so ngl chat it was a rough time!!! baby spent the entire night gettin funky, blissfully unaware of her mom's moment of lonely mortal terror.

I've never had the nuts to ask but idk how much this stay will cost and I'll be officially without an income in two weeks. anything you could throw my way would be so appreciated. 💛

[meanyart]

"Do we have a deal?"

[martyryo]

It's not abt situations anymore I put them on literal things.

[measurelessdreamer]

One of these scogan Post-X-Men: Days of the Future Past fics where Logan changes things so everyone from the original timeline is alive and he’s back at the school and about to find out somehow that he and Scott are a thing in this new timeline, but first, after Logan is done explaining himself to Charles, Scott is charged with showing him the way to his room and they talk sort of but not really and all of a sudden they both hear a very happy “Dad!” screamed through the hallway and they both turn and there is a little girl of age four (or more), smiling and running towards them and Logan doesn’t get it because he hasn’t seen her before and he had no idea a child so young could even be at this school and someone here is her father but who? Cyke himself? And he’s about tu turn to see if someone else is standing behind them when all of a sudden the girl slams herself against his legs with such force that it wavers his stance for a moment and surely she hurt herself just now because there is adamantium on his skeleton and there isn’t any on hers and she is only a child after all but then he looks at her and not only is she completely okay, she is also staring at him and she is smiling and as much as it doesn’t make sense, it slowly dawns on him and just as he is about to accept it, the girl lets him go and then hugs Scott, more gently but with no less amount of affection and Scott is affectionate right back but he is also trying to send her away. Only for a moment, though, so he can talk with Logan, and the little girl frowns and doesn’t like it but caves in when he promises to get her some ice cream and Logan doesn’t get it yet again and as if it wasn’t already bad enough, the girl finally smiles again and nodds and then she says, “Thanks, papa!” and runs back where she came from, leaving Logan so awestruck it feels as if he’s a mere breeze away from losing his balance.

Part II | Part III

[nuge]

from being the youngest captain of the nhl to losing after being down 0-3 and forcing game 7. i don't care what you say. this is his team

connor mcdavid | EDM @ FLA | 06.24.2024

[th3tawaves]

What I imagine Ghirahim was up to pre-Link battle