#she really is staggering

[forteania]

I've had this album on repeat the last 24 hours. Guess it's the album of the week now lol.

[mohntilyet]

let me be clear i like veilguard but it does suck that no one disapproves anymore outside of like. three choices. i want to be fighting for my life earning approval back again someone has GOT to hate my ass. i should be careful about party composition and companion reactions again. i miss tactically taking fenris out of the party before i'm nice to merrill like those were the days

[trainingdummyrabbit]

thinking more abt dummyrabbit angela, couldnt get this scenario out of my head

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

The thing about the whole "don't assume a gnc woman is trans/has a gender" thing is that most of the time you are unfortunately very fucking right lmao

[kvroii]

Book Divider (3/3) - Poison World

[misiahasahardname]

guess who just realised they have a type

[plinchy]

Im not scared I'm not scared I'm not scared I'm not-

[asteracaea]

she is really gunning to break records with 1989 tv isn't she!

[doctorweebmd]

afa;ldf;lakdflk;asdf urgh sorry i've been MIA i unexpectedly got super busy with the grant and my grand rounds and having to pick up shifts for people with emergencies/illnesses/moving PLUS my 'graduation' is tomorrow so i'm all over the place AHHHHH

[vastiitas]

Runaway Turned Thief, His First Horse, and its Consequences.

Cole's first horse after the razing of his hometown is a dark bay no-spot appaloosa mare. She's built for long distance riding, and bursts of extreme speed for outrunning trouble. While she can go quite aways, there is definitely a lack of stamina in maintaining a sprint in comparison to a fully committed race horse.

He steals her from two drug mulers who had been camping out in the wilderness. This is where he ends up with most of his supplies that he keeps with him 'til Deadlock, including a second revolver to go with his first, a analog hunting rifle that he uses extensively for hunting and self-sustenance, and dressing knives. (Before then, he had a bed roll that was on its way out, carried in a ragged pack, a multi-tool, a foldable knife, and a water bladder; one extra set of clothes. Having a horse allowed him to pack greater inventory, travel further, and carry more quality of life items such as a wire set to cook over fires, rope, etc. Etc. In the case of meeting @/quick-drawn, she also allowed him to pack game to bring back home.)

He is on the verge of becoming 12, having left the orphanages some months prior (having been inducted into the system at 11 and spending time being tossed around for about 6-8 months). The whole debacle is a bit of a shit show with him waiting for the dark of night, pressed flat to the ground on his stomach amidst the cover of large rock and sage bush rooting between the crevices. He is, at this point, learning to be a little more clever with his thefts, scoping out the individuals, the layout of the camp (but fails at this time to consider escape plans, terrain.)

Sky turns indigo, then a void of black fractured by the salt-scatter of stars. Fire's died out to embers and the men retire to their tents. Cole scrapes himself up to his feet, scurries down the path tied between hasty and careful and rifles through their supplies like a shambling animal that's wandered someplace it don't belong. He ransacks ammunitions, the aforementioned firearms, some cans of food and a flask engorged with gin, amongst an assortment of other things; gathers and piles them up in the saddle bags on the Appaloosa.

Men start rousing as he's on the tail end of packing - the one stirring with a need to take a piss - and the little heist becomes a smash-and-grab operation where he's cutting the reins with a knife and blasting down the mountainside as they start yelling and searching for their firearms.

Later on, when it's deemably safe and he's lost them, he rummages through her saddle bags and finds papers reading Honeysuckle and his face scrunches up sour. Amber-brown eyes dart up from crinkled black print to the dark pits of the horse's. "Y'don't seem like a Honeysuckle."

He doesn't know why, but the name Maria falls off his tongue much easier. Fits her features more, he thinks. (It is, absolutely, a lapse back into his religious roots. Finding the name like a prayer, which he utters in both thanks and apology. Most of all, the significance just falls down to lyrics of Plastic Jesus: Goin' 90 I ain't scary, 'cos I got the Virgin Mary assurin' me I won't go to hell.)

She's a playful mare, likes to 'sneak up' on him while he's turned away despite the very obvious noise of her shoes hitting the ground. Likes to nuzzle her head into his neck, or knock into his back, set his hat off-kilter. Loves hoofing at creek/river/brook water - though that's a learned habit when he decided to splash at her on a non-eventful, idyllic day at a lakeside shore. Steady girl - he'll call her lady, sometimes. There are days where he'll share a beer with her, too.

He is somewhere in the throes of 13 when he unfortunately re-crosses paths with his victims. It's serendipity on their end, an accidental run-in out in the wilderness near an ol' gutted hunting lodge. The owners recognize Honeysuckle and they sneak up on him like he'd done with them, except instead of running off with a horse and materials, they put a gun to him and have him flag up his hands. They don't know what to do with him (there's an additional man to the original duo) and they murmur amongst themselves in Spanish after beating him to the ground and tying him up; they converse like this thinking the boy can't understand.

There's not a lot going for them to toss him towards a lawman; not a lot of pretty coin for a petty thief, not in these days where the economy and infrastructure's been starved out to a post-war drought. One of them suggests killing him out back. There's nothing really stopping them, and they could re-collect their stolen goods and continue on their way. They'd lost money because of the kid's stunt, lost out on 50% of what they could mule with only 1 horse instead of two.

Third man finally says, Sell him. Some place beyond the border where English is just a rumored language spoken only on tv sets. Labor camps need more hands. Sold men are cheaper than the free ones. He gets his reckoning, we make-up our money and then some.

In English, they tell him that in ancient times the law would have his hands severed from the wrists for theft and they knot up the binds on his hands aggressively tight to prove the point.

And then they'd travelled South, days piling into days. The ribbed rope would gnaw the skin raw, chafing towards bone like it's trying to eat him alive, and the entire thing leaves his wrists risking sepsis and scars; bloody, mangled.

they're stopped by in some post-war abandoned location along the way to rest that's filled with rusty tools and broken beer bottles. Some sort of logging warehouse. Cole finds a shitty piece of glass on a countertop and palms it; clenches his hands around it even when it threatens to nip cuts and draw blood. The men get ready for bed. Cole starts sawing at rope fibers. One of the men check up on him while he's just about free - the binds snapping loose as he realizes something isn't quite right.

Cole doesn't know where the guns are; his hands are in too much pain to aim straight anyway. First man goes down with Cole tackling him right into exposed pipes, gritty sawblades. Commotion brings the other two out: one tries to grab him from behind, while the other moves to sling a punch to the gut. Cole kicks wildly, butts his head into the nose of the man who's got hands on him. He's dropped to the floor. His knees ache from impact but it's his wrists that are screaming and he chokes out a strangled noise of pain, blearily grabbing at a slaughtered beer bottle that he's landed right next to.

Man in front of him's had enough, is going for his gun when Cole launches up into him with the bottle in hand. The serated glass punctures cheek flesh, into an eye socket. Man screams. Cole reels the glass back and keeps jamming it back down - and his face is soaked by the gore of it. The screams stop coming, and there's a thick hand that gloves around his shoulder. By some blind, desperate instinct, his other hand has found the handle of the dead man's gun when he is swung around with a fist cracking into his jaw. The glass bottle crashes into the floor. A gunshot spears the air. A third body cripples to the floor, blood guttering from the stomach. He spits on them, staggering to his feet: hablo español, hijo de puta - ir a la mierda.

He shambles out from the building, doused in blood, brain matter, and tries to put on a brave face, but he starts breaking down and ends up mumbling in a sort of low-key hysterics to maria "im sorry, im sorry, im sorry" -- doesn't know what he's apologizing for, that he stole her, that he killed her previous owners, that he's alive. Between the adrenaline and everything crashing in all at once, it's the first time he's reduced to tears since the times before the war.

Exhausted, he falls asleep outside. Leaves the men as is and weakly cuts their horses free (too tired by it all, he doesn't think to search their pockets for money, to rifle through saddle bags before releasing their mounts.) It's a mistake, because the news will later search for the horse owners, talk about a bloody horror scene found in the stomach of a logging complex. But, until then, the next few days are of travel, trying to find a main road while his wrists are pounding hellfire.

He ends up stumbling into a gas station in the middle of bumfuck nowhere looking like road kill. The attendant is startled right out of his seat as Cole walks up to him and shoves forward a fistful of ruddy-colored bills.

His voice rattles like pennies in a rusted gutter; tinny, scraping. He croaks, "I got some money for a band-aid and some rubbin' alcohol."

Man thinks this kid's been in a motor vehicle collision, says, "Kid you're going to need a lot more than just a band-aid" as he unlatches the medical kit from the wall. He seats Cole down on a plastic foldable chair, patches him up free-of-charge to the best of his ability the way a gas station attendant can offer. Man adds in a pair of gloves to make sure the gauze don't shift around too much. Man asks questions.

Where's your parents? What happened?

Cole says war got them. That he got into an accident.

Man tries to have Cole clean up in the bathroom, says there's snacks waiting outside while he phones for the police. Cole washes up, peels off his clothes for the last set he's got, and pockets the medical supplies the man had been using. He walks off, leaving the bathroom -- just does not come back inside -- and hitches back onto Maria and starts to ride off before anyone can come.

He leaves a few crumpled dollar bills on the sink.

[fishareglorious]

LCCB Ishmael is ridiculously cracked wtf?

[tovaicas]

I think the main reason the way the dravanians are handled (other than the kinda shitty implications of this game wanting to have its cake and eat it too re: the dragons, so that it doesn't have to engage with the honestly terrifying and extremely sad plight of the dravanian horde so that the player can still have mindless dragons to fight that you don't have to feel bad abt killing) annoys me so much is that heavensward had an honestly good curated experience of you learning gradually and then all at once just like an ishgardian would that the dravanians are real people with lives, families, customs, and dreams and not the mindlessly hyper-violent animals you've up until anyx trine you've been made to believe they are, something that is started in ARR with midgardsormr but really hammered home that all the dragons, even the ones you've killed, are sentient, intelligent beings with lives and many simply want quiet lives away from the war and don't want to lose their children to it. up until then you've been made to fear dragons and think of them as deserving of violence in turn simply for being what they are under the assumption they're mindless swarming beasts...just as the ishgardians do. heavensward does an honestly very good job of mirroring the ishgardian mindset and viewpoint of the war to you so that you can experience what ishgard feels when the truth is finally laid out for you.

but then as soon as we get anywhere close to actually engaging with that nuance, with what that says about the situation of the dravanian horde and ourselves, combined with the previous, initially offhand lore that the dragons literally cannot ignore the calls of their sires (which is the entire potential crisis that drags aymeric in for his first on-screen appearance, because midgardsormr can drag every dravanian currently alive into the war if he wants) and that maybe this is a far more complicated and tragic situation for all sides than we initially expected, and that maybe nidhogg's brood suffers in a way that's actually very similar to the ishgardians - we drop all of that. we drop it so that we can have an enemy in dungeons we don't have to feel bad about killing, so that we don't have to feel too uncomfortable with our actions or with running these two dungeons.

[cyborg-hydra-girl-thing]

I think this is my favorite build so far. A perfect blend of performance and firepower. I've got 10 quick boosts in a row, rocket volleys in 10 & 13, a minigun, and songbirds grenade launcher. Ammo runs tight on some longer missions, but when they're dry I just get faster and more energy efficient

[two-calicos-in-a-trenchcoat]

Idk why I never did this before but if you like building in the sims but your houses all kinda end up looking exactly the same on the interior (like mine do) then I highly recommend using a random color pallette generator

Like this is the best house I've built in awhile

You could probably stick to one color pallette for the whole house if you wanted but I'm using a different one for each room

For the bathrooms shared between 2 bedrooms i combined aspects of both color pallettes and for the master bathroom I used the same pallette as the master bedroom.

I think it even looks good for the rooms that aren't actually separated from each other (the kitchen and informal dining room kept the same pallette while the living room and hallway are different ones)

Not all the color pallettes are gonna work exactly right (like tone and shade wise) cuz you have to work with the swatches you have available but ive managed to keep them pretty close to the pallettes the generator gave me.

[pictureswithboxes]

I know I’m supposed to be writing but instead I just got REALLY MAD at miles. And need to vent in my tags.

[sampilled]

I can defend Taylor for a lot but I cannot!!! Defend her merch