#man fuck it whatever. send it

[lcewarden]

when my family first moved to Texas they splurged on a house with a backyard pool (admittedly every house in the neighborhood was bougie as fuck -- my parents were interested in the school district more than anything else, and being a good school, housing in the area was expensive). the first year we lived there we all had a good time in the backyard pool, even my mom who couldn't swim enjoyed hanging out in the shallow end.

we bought the house around 2006-07, the housing crash happened in 08. mom lost her job. dad had to work longer hours and the company dumped shitty work on him. as my parents and myself got busier, we stopped using the pool. i went to middle school and my flippant "I don't need to study and can still pass the tests" attitude, which worked in elementary school, stopped working, and I wouldn't be diagnosed with ADHD until 15 years later. dad was working twelve hour days, six days a week. mom still couldn't swim.

to keep costs down dad fired the mowers and the poolboy service (we didn't contract them, they served the previous residents and when we moved in they were like "should we keep coming" and my dad said "sure why not"). taking care of the pool consisted of skimming the leaves and big debris off the top, running the pool vac for dust, checking the pump, taking leaves out of the basket filter, refilling the water, refilling the chlorine, refilling the other pool chemicals that kept the chlorine stable, and occasionally powerwashing the main filter.

some fun facts about pool chemistry: you can either use saltwater or chlorinated water to keep algae out of the water. keeping algae out is important cause dead algae clog up the pumps and shit (and are also toxic, depending on the algae), and also you don't want a live ecosystem in your pool cause bacteria and stuff. i'm not familiar with saltwater pool chemistry; we did chlorine. now raw chlorine under the hot sun (well UV light specifically) breaks down pretty fast, so you want to bind it to something so it doesn't break down as fast, but binding the chlorine also makes it unavailable for breaking down bacteria, so it's a balancing act between keeping chlorine available and keeping chlorine durable. you have to manage the pH, partially for chlorine stability and partially just because swimming around in something acidic is bad for the health. theres actually some pretty fun chemistry that goes into this, but basically if shit looks wrong (or just every season) you take out your pH strips and sample tubes and check chlorine levels, pH, etc.

this was, as you'd imagine, a non-trivial amount of work, and my dad spent his precious time off work tending to this pool no one used: an hour or sometimes two, sliding the pool vac around the plaster floor, skimming the leaves, as the shadows grew longer and the sun slid lower. i would watch him out the window from the living room, where my computer was, glancing over my shoulder now and then to make sure my mom wasn't watching me procrastinate. sunset was behind the fence, so i couldn't see the sun dip below the horizon. but i could see it getting darker.

the previous residents kept a garden in the backyard, full of flowers i couldn't name but still vaguely remember: these big two-three foot tall things that bloomed red and orange, and some flowering vines crawling up arch-shaped trellises. none of us had a green thumb; the tall flowers died on their own. the vines persisted, though without bloom, until one day my dad decided they were a nuisance and cut them all down. so the flowerbeds were all empty dirt and the trellises laid bare, slowly rusting.

worst part is that you can't even get rid of it. well, we couldn't get rid of ours, specifically. you'd think "why not just drain the pool", but you can't, is the thing. it's embedded in the ground, it's not one of those aboveground ones. it had a curved bottom and plaster casing and, apparently, was only designed to work under water pressure. draining the pool meant the pressure would be too low, and the plaster would crack. (you'd think "okay why not just put a tarp over the filled pool" and, uh, i don't know honestly? my first guess: it's not a rectangular pool, it's got this weird eggplant shape with a circular jacuzzi raised and to the side, and laying tarp over that would be difficult. second: texas gets deep freezes sometimes and still water would freeze and crack the plaster. suffice it to say, at any rate, that we neither drained nor tarped over the pool, and thus had to take care of it.) of course, removing the pool entirely would be nontrivially expensive, cause you'd have to dig the whole damn thing up, disconnect the water lines, the power too (for the pumps, the lights, etc).

i moved out a few years ago. my dad used to say that when i moved out, he'd sell the house and move to a smaller apartment. but he kept the house, and the pool, and is trying to run the whole property by himself, under the stubborn belief that if he prays hard enough i'll come back to him, and he wants to keep the house ready for my return. i don't plan on doing so.

so, unused backyard pools as a symbol of upper-middle-class wastefulness, conformity, and posturing ... i can believe that.

i was going to post just a screenshot of the title as a joke but i kept reading and now i’m completely floored by this theory

[mr-malumm]

Happy Val Day theyre in love with each other i like when the tall scary one throws the tv around 😍🥰😍🥰😍✨📺🦋✨

[durgeapologist]

"You must know: I love you, Rook. Ar lath ma, ma'sule. Ar las'a."

Elven Translation: "I love you, my soul. I give you myself."

The translation is rough/partial because much of the available lexicon from the wiki doesn't have all the smaller, prefix/suffix Elven words' translations available, and I do not agree with use of the other popular reference material (iykyk)! My barbies, my say so!

This will not be the last DreadRook Cameo I commission, so best believe there will be more coming your way in the next few weeks!

Also: GDL is a DreadRook shipper confirmed! (Yes, he did say this unprompted and yes, my cameo was longer than these two small clips. But that is for me and the DreadRook server to freak out about :>)

[Disclaimer: Do not repost to external platforms without credits. I do not condone usage of this audio for commercial profit. If you would like to utilize this audio for edits or other personal usage, credit is required.]

[josephtrohman]

joe kicking one of the bubbles into patrick’s face (x)

[chasedeys]

https://vt.tiktok.com/ZS6DqqjKE/

😭❤️‍🔥

the way he fuckjsing STUDTTEREDDDDRD MIKE BROWNNNN DUKE TOSSBIN WHOEVER THE FUCKKKKKK WHEN I CATCH YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

i can't do this.

[st-peculiar]

The way Maxwell says “And if he can get a look at the personnel reports to see what Kepler really thinks of him” about Jacobi in ep33 (Don’t Poke the Bear) has so many layers of implication that I can’t even being to unravel it

[adharastarlight]

when i started taking philosophy, I never imagined I'd be having a breakdown over fucking apples

[trans-leek-cookie]

i don't follow dungeon Meshi discussions closely and also haven't seen much in depth analysis of the marginalization of halflings specifically but I feel like the Infantilization aspect is focused on without acknowledging the ways they are often also Dehumanized (little weird considering the usage of "human" in the context of the story but I think it fits well enough). Like they are considered unskilled and immature due to their appearance + shorter relative lifespans, but also they are considered shady, used as literal bait (for sirens and succubi), and fucking disappeared when they come into contact with dangerous artifacts. Like both are significantly negative, but one is a bit more Obviously Violent in a way that I feel like is under discussed.

[zosonils]

the ancient share thing i've seen a couple people doing :] some ancients i've currently only got as part of the flight rep collection, and because of that i don't have a cool finished dusthide to show off yet since i'm waiting on them getting rockbreaker [pour one out lmao], but i'm still proud of my little collection!

voxel 91032038 | gravity 94212138 | flora 99083620

inferno 91322995 | seaglass 98992969 | blizzard 95430869

masu 92950190 | koi 89497960 | rosalina 91646535

[ranger-danger]

What if. What if I made my sole survivor trans. House wife lawyer turned themself in the wasteland. What if. What if I did that.

Like you’re no longer burdened by your pre-war self. A miserable person, though loving of her husband, who never got to be who they wanted to be. Or maybe never thought about it to begin with. But the wasteland? well all the structures of society that held her back before aren’t there anymore. No one knows who you are, only that you’re someone looking for your lost son and maybe that you were cryogenically frozen. Your husband is dead. Your kid wouldn’t know whether or not you’re his mom or dad, he’s a baby! It’s a clean slate isn’t it? Codsworth wouldn’t give a damn, if anything he’d put on that cheery voice qnd be proud of you…

Might make you seem less frail to the people who stole your son? Maybe they don’t recognize you, or rather, maybe they see the wasteland hasn’t killed you so much as hardened you to a fine point. I mean there’s a film noir detective running around, a zombie as mayor of an entire town, huge green dudes, and giant fucking murder lizards around. You’re only going to be half the freakiest thing around. Besides! People are getting swapped out for fakes, you’re all starving and dehydrated, radiation poisoning is constant threat, and people constantly attack each other to get any resources they can. You’re hardly their biggest worry at the moment, right?

Now that I think about it, the sole survivor is a fun character to make trans. Hmmmm.

[fair-fae]

Narratively, I don't think Zenos should come back from the dead because FFXIV has already had way too many death fakeouts/back from the dead storylines and he has already had one of them. But I would still be more than willing to accept it because a) I really love Zenos and will always want more Zenos content and b) the idea that this motherfucker just absolutely will not die is hilarious to me.

[iamonlyhereforthefreefood]

I found out that there are apparently some Luigi fangirls that are sending him like a letter a day, five letters a day etc. I'm sure because they've convinced themselves that if they send enough letters he'll fall in love with them or something but I'm sure that if he's getting like 20 letters from the same stranger his reaction to seeing their name is probably just "ugh not this creep again"

[home-halone]

unzipping your boyfriend*'s outfit to give them a boob window 👌

[anxiously-sidequesting]

Not to keep beating dead horses like I so much love to do but I am still completely Flabbergasted and Astonished at how you (Merle Ambrose) could discover the most terrifying fact that a child that is essentially under your care has been indoctrinated into a cult (which, by the way, a process that has taken over the course of years) ((by an agent that has been stationed in a direct position to make it easier to access and manipulate children, that has easily escaped your notice for such a long time)) that worships a nihilistic entity whose ultimate goal is the absolute and total destruction of Everything and Everyone around you, and your one, single, simple-sentenced response to that is to say "Oh, that's a shame. He (Duncan) always was pretty terrible. Hope he gets better someday." And then to move on from those extremely worrying and dangerous bundle of issues permanently without taking any sort of action to protect the vulnerable and make sure nothing like this ever happens again

[butchvamp]

i just know as soon as solas stepped into the fade at the end of veilguard my hawke was on his ass. unfortunately all that work for nothing, the veil is still coming down because she is killing that man for what he did to varric she doesn't give a fuck

[lacnunga]

In the wake of the IA situation, I've seen a lot more posts circulating about using your local library and I just. Sigh