#time gulf

[wirelessw]

Would be very cool to have a Mass Effect game where you can play as an asari or krogan, and in all conversations you have a bonus option that is "I'm 500 years old, I don't fucking care about your problems"

[dailyloopdeloop]

DAY 109: happy birthday!

[fraudue]

[senatortedcruz]

Totally agree with this but what’s even funnier is getting literal nonstop ads for Saudi tourism on Insta like their reputation is not still Gender Apartheid Country

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played THIN BLACK GULF ?

By Tamsin Bloom

thin black gulf is an epistolary rpg in which two players communicate over a long distance, but based on a dice table, each message will be randomly and arbitrarily censored

[kaelidascope]

For those of you who aren't following me on Twitter, I am right smack dab in the middle of the projected path for hurricane Milton. I don't get service where I am, so if I lose power, I won't be able to reach anybody until it's restored or I head several miles toward the nearest city. So like, errr, pray for me NGKFNGJKGF I've been dealing with hurricanes for 28 years, this one got me a bit concerned ngl

[swamiiyasssss]

It's established that Damian is middle eastern......this is GOLD for interactions in the Bat Household:

Damian "Wallahi you're catching these hands, Dick" Wayne

Damian "Sorry Alfred, but mother's knafeh recipe will always be better" Wayne

Damian "KHOL KHARA. TODD." Wayne

Damian "Titussss, ya hayatiii, ya amarrr :3, " Wayne

May or may not fast during ramadan but u best believe this adorable gremlin will have colonised the kitchen during Eid and cooking up stuff even Alfred is impressed with. I'm talking Fattoush, Kofta, stuffed vine leaves, Baba ganoush, Makloub.

[ehlnofay]

A woman pauses over the wares sold by the Khajiiti merchants camped outside Danstrar to ask with no small amount of perturbation, “Whose children are those?”

Efri glances up to check she’s talking about them – as if there’s a whole host of other children around she might be referring to. The woman is standing over the rug Tsradaro’s laid out their most intriguing trinkets on – she has one clawed hand on the lid of a little palm-sized casket, one of the boxes of pretty-smelling oils. (If the strange woman is getting to buy one, then Efri’s jealous. She doesn’t have any money, and she’s not allowed to use those sorts of things for free, no matter how nice the perfume smells. Normally she doesn’t care about rules like that, but the caravan is being very nice and the things they sell are their livelihood, so she follows them without much complaining.)

The woman is looking at her and Sissel, clustered with Khasir around the firepit. Efri and Sissel are hunched over the steaming-hot fish on a dish, away from the pan of spitting butter. Efri says brightly, “We’re our own children.”

“We found them in the wilderness,” Taz puts in quietly, fingers running up and down the handle of the axe laying at eir side on the blanket, and Efri nods in agreement. (She likes Taz, even if ey talks barely more than Kazari or Shirri-la. A lot less if you count all the things Kazari and Shirri-la say that the others translate for her. Ey’s calm and quiet and has let Efri touch eir axe, so ey’s good in her books.)

“Exactly,” she says. The woman looks no less perplexed or concerned. Efri squints and tells her, “I like your beads.”

(She does. The woman’s got a string of them, pretty coloured glass, stretched across her breast between her hangerok brooches. Most of them are a fiery orange-red, the same colour as her hair.)

The woman looks down at the beads she wears as if she forgot about them. “Oh,” she says. “Thank you.”

Efri abandons the fish – not like she can do anything with it, it’s too hot to touch still – to shuffle across the laid-out rugs and join Tsradaro at her display. “Are you going to buy any fabrics?” she asks the woman, and then before there’s really time to answer she turns to Tsradaro. “Did you show her them? We’ve got some really pretty silks and things. Nice patterns. I wanted to make a dress with them but Tsradaro said no, they’re for selling.”

The woman’s eyebrows – bright-bead-red – meet in the middle of her forehead. “Do you… help sell things here?”

“She is a born patterer, that one,” Tsradaro says smoothly. Her whiskers twitch. “And yes, they’re for  selling – and yes, Tsradaro already gave you money for the dress you have, she isn’t going to give you fabric for a new one. She is not quite so open-handed.”

Efri curls up her fingers to rub the stitching of her sleeve. “Fair enough,” she acknowledges. “And it’s nice. But that green one is so pretty.”

“Hm.” Tsradaro is grinning with her eyes a bit; she hides it fiddling with the display of the wares on the rug in front of her. “If there is a bolt-end left over, you can have it for a scarf. Now shoo. You are distracting the customers.”

“And you’ve abandoned the fish!” Khasir calls. When he grins, it’s with all his teeth, sharp-edged and sparkling. “This one cannot do it all on their own.”

There’s only one customer, and the fish is still steaming, but Efri gets the hint, so she blinks her thanks and hurries back over to the fire.

“We’re doing all three?” she checks, looking at the numerous pots and pans Khasir’s rigged up over the flames. (She bought three cod with the money they gave her for dinner. That’s certainly not a fish she and Sissel and Kazari ever caught from their tundra creek – they’re so much bigger than she could have imagined, and it took all her strength to haul them back to the camp. She had to carry one of them in her arms because it didn’t all fit in the little sack she brought.)

“Yes,” they say emphatically, poking at something in one of the pots. “So hurry up.”

Because she’s helpful, Efri does. She squats down next to Sissel, next to the dish, and takes up the knife. She cuts off the head – it takes a fair bit of hacking – and the tail, because Sissel hates that bit, and cuts the fins out as well. She cracks some of the bones there by accident; Sissel picks them out with her fingers. Then, sticking her tongue out in concentration, she runs the knife right down the middle, jerking the blade through the bones. It isn’t going right through the bottom like it did with the fish they learned to butcher from the stream, but she more or less gets it eventually; cuts away the chunks of bone, and is left with two beautiful fillets.

Well. Beautiful might be a bit generous. But they’re edible – surely that’s the most important thing.

“Told you I knew how to debone a fish,” Efri says triumphantly.

Khasir glances up over the flour they’re tipping into a hanging pan. “You do,” he agrees amiably, and for a moment Efri thinks he’s being nice, but then he cracks another smug little grin. “But not well. The pin bones are still in.”

Efri frowns. She can’t see any bones. It’s filleted fine.

“Let me,” Sissel says, and peels the knife out of her hand. Efri frowns again, harder, but lets her.

Her irritation is only compounded when Khasir finds nothing to tease about in the way Sissel carefully slices the bones away and strips the skin of with a few neat, if unpractised, cuts. “That’s not fair,” she complains, mulish. “Sissel’s basically a genius, of course she’ll get it right.”

“I’m not a genius,” Sissel says, “I’m just better at this than you,” and she smiles when Efri giggles despite herself, a quick flash of teeth.

Khasir has Sissel do the rest of the fillets. They let Efri watch the way they fry up the batter – just flour in a pan of spitting butter and sizzling herbs, a little bit of egg put in to help it all bond. When it’s cooked all golden, smelling delicious, he levers it quick as a wink off the flat pan and into the covered dish he’s keeping them warm in while they wait for the rest of it all to be done. Efri asks to cook a griddle-cake herself; Khasir laughs at her.

They’re a bit of a bastard.

They do let her stir the sauce for the fish, though – hung a little bit higher than everything else so it can simmer with lower heat. It smells nice too. Sissel’s almost done with the third fish by this time. (She’s a lot faster than Efri was; it’s probably for the best that she do most of the filleting.)

Efri looks up and across the camp. There’s two different people now at Tsradaro’s display – one standing, one kneeling to get a better look at all the things. Shirri-la has come out of the tent, and she’s sitting with her tail curled around her feet on her cushion next to the wares. Kazari’s still in the tent, Efri thinks. They’re tired – helped carry most things as they travelled this last stretch of journey to Danstrar in order to give the nag a break, so now they’re resting. It’s only fair. In a week or so they’ll all split off from the caravan, strike out across the frozen terrain for Winterhold, and they’ll really need the energy then.

Just a bit further away, the red-haired woman is standing. Efri’s not sure if she bought something or not; she doesn’t look like she’s looking to buy anything now.

“That lady’s looking at us,” Efri tells Khasir, her brow furrowing.

Khasir glances over so quick Efri’s not even sure if she saw it right; they make a guttural tutting sound over the batter in the pan. Tch. “People do that,” he replies, deliberately nonchalant.

Efri bites her tongue. “They shouldn’t,” she complains. It’s uncomfortable, to be stared at. It’s rude, to stare.

(She feels a bit bad, even though she didn’t do anything wrong; because the woman seemed uncomfortable with Efri and Sissel being with the caravan, and maybe if they weren’t, Khasir wouldn’t have to be stared at while they cook dinner.)

“Perhaps,” Khasir says. He flips the batter. “But they do.”

“Done,” Sissel says, holding up a dish full of neatly filleted fish.

(Efri says, “How.” Both Khasir and Sissel ignore her.)

“Chop it up small,” Khasir tells her. The jewellery in his nose glitters as he shifts over the fire. “Then – Efri, mix it in with the sauce. No, not – smaller than that, dran khrassa! So all can eat.”

Sissel slices the fish into little bits. (Efri would have cut them into tiny strips, to get back at Khasir for being bossy, but Sissel is more forgiving.) Efri takes the dish, tips it into the saucepan, begins to stir.

“If we were in Elsweyr, Khajiit would stare at you,” Khasir says. He takes the flat-cake off the pan. “They would say, who let these bald children run around unsupervised?”

Efri chuckles, but she feels pensive. Her face screws up. “But if we were in Elsweyr,” she says, “even if they stared at us, they’d still let us buy from their shops and all.”

Khasir sighs, long and low. They lift the lid off the dish. “Efri,” they say, with unexpected patience; “This one understands that you are a child who has just discovered injustice. This is new to you. It is not new to us. Khasir knew before he travelled here that he would be treated poorly.”

“But it’s not fair,” Efri replies, agitated, her fingers bony and twitching on the handle of her spoon. “It’s not fair to do both. They can keep you out or they can stare, they can’t keep you where they can’t even see you and then still come to look anyway.” She keeps looking, without quite meaning to, in the direction of the red-haired woman. She keeps glaring. She hopes it scares her off.

“Mm,” Khasir says, unimpressed – but faintly amused, she thinks, which is kind of annoying but also kind of good? “Well, you can tell the people who make the laws so, have them forbid wrongful staring.”

Efri, mixing, considers this. “Sissel,” she asks, “can you write a message to a jarl?”

Khasir cackles. Sissel scrunches up her face. “Well, you can. I doubt they’d read it.”

That’s one idea gone, Efri supposes. She’ll have to keep thinking.

Khasir does not allow her time to keep thinking. “Another few minutes and that will be perfect,” they say, nodding to the pot she’s stirring, and they take their griddle-pan off the fire. Then they pause, look at Efri out of the edges of their bright greeny-gold eyes. “This one will own, it has been much easier with you as companions. We did not have to wait for the grocers and fishmongers to come out to trade on their own time, or forage for ourselves if they did not.”

“You just don’t want to do your job,” Efri says. Tsradaro said Khasir hunted but he’s barely hunted at all while they’ve known him, only just at the beginning.

Khasir barks a laugh, tipping his head in acknowledgement. With the air of one conferring a great and shameful secret, he replies, “This one does not like deer stalking in the snow.”

Fair enough; Efri nods seriously. She’s never hunted deer but it’s probably difficult, especially in the snow. She stirs the sauce, the lumps of fish buffeted by the flat of her spoon, the smell making her mouth water.

She glances up at the cloud-blanketed sky. She asks, “When we’re in Winterhold, can we write a message to you?”

Khasir tilts their head further. “You can try,” they say. “But Khajiit may be too fast for the couriers. It may never arrive.”

“We’ll try,” Efri decides; when she glances as Sissel, she sees her nod. “We’ll figure out a way. I want to hear about where you go after!”

“About what other strays we find on the road?” Khasir jokes, but his smile is wide and shiny, nose scrunched up with it so whiskers flicker over his eyes. He leans over, takes Efri’s pot off the fire. “Good.”

Efri grins, even though they’re not looking and can’t see it.

“Go get Kazari,” they command, lifting the lid of the dish and moving one of the still-hot flat-cakes to a plate with their fingers. “This one will get a plate ready. He has to take over for Tsradaro, so he’ll eat quickly.”

Efri salutes (a habit she picked up from an Imperial courier they traded with on the road – she thinks it’s funny) and marches towards the tent.

(The food, when they eat it, is delicious.)

[constant-stateofdenial]

I JUST noticed that two of the names on the hurricane name list for this year are Joyce and William and if it hadn’t been for Michael being retired in 2018 that name would’ve been on the list too

idk what i’m trying to say with this I think the brainrot is just getting to me but the national hurricane center is a byers family supporter and shipped byler in 2018

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

was meaning to write a serious and thoughtful meta on this shot as the show's first use of metatextual framing (a story within a story) linking its premise to the war movie as a genre (the show as a fascist gothic work) but yknow what. scratch all of that lmao. the only thought that matters is: the moment you really start thinking about the show as a reactionary post 9/11 power fantasy, you can't stop.

[lonestarbattleship]

Battleship TEXAS entering the Gulf Copper drydock in Galveston, Texas.

Date: August 31, 2022

source

[asgardian--angels]

gotta say tho. TVL is an incredible book. show-only iwtv fans truly do not understand the complexity of Lestat, his nobility of purpose, his strength of self, his philosophical questioning of existence and desire to understand and affect, and the depth of passion that fans have for him because of getting to hear his story so intimately through his own words. when fandom reduces him to vain, stupid, abusive, catty, it betrays a complete lack of understanding of his character, in a way that benefits no one because his story is as transcendently transformative for the reader as it was for himself. like, show fans, if you read one book in TVC, just one, read The Vampire Lestat. It's truly a beautiful, gripping, and moving journey and you will completely rethink your ideas about him.

[gideonisms]

I also think we should put harrow in Texas sometimes because she would definitely find either some half abandoned beach where the sky water and sand are monochrome or a long stretch of flat land with nothing there except cows and start worshipping that and make it into a hot girl in her mind

[zmediaoutlet]

this land is your land

for @wincestwednesdays - americana

"Relax," Sam says, and Dean says back immediately "You relax," but that doesn't work because Sam, damn him, is so relaxed Dean's surprised he's still walking upright and not a puddle of dissolved bones, somewhere a few miles back on the sun-baked road. Where the car's sitting, steaming, the engine ticking as it cools, alone--

"You know what's wrong?" Sam says, and Dean gives him a look, and Sam says, "You know how to fix it?" and Dean rolls his eyes, and Sam says, "So what are you gonna do about it between here and that co-op in town?" and Dean says, "You know, this is how you talked when you didn't have a soul," and Sam laughs kinda soft, hitching his backpack higher.

Hot, humid, but not horrible. The fields growing up with something green. Maybe future wheat. Dean's not a farmer. The kind of summer day where you want to lay in thick grass and drink about twelve ice-cold beers and eat watermelon, or burgers off the grill, or a rainbow snowcone just dripping with every color, like remember, that time --

"Fairfield County Fair," Sam says, grinning. He drags his hair back from his forehead. Their jackets tied around their waists and Sam's sleeves rolled up to his elbows; if it gets much hotter out here he might strip that layer too and then, hey, free show. "Yeah. That was good. Other than the ghost."

"Ghost was easy," Dean says, "as was Miss Mindy the concessions girl. You remember, right? All that funnel cake?"

"I think I puked it all over the tilt-a-whirl," Sam says, dry, and Dean grins back at him so Sam rolls his eyes, but -- he remembers, and that's what matters to Dean now. When he's got this brother, stitched back together, remembering the snowcone and the tilt-a-whirl and also what it means, that they're walking side by side through this yellow afternoon, sweating their balls off.

A barn, past the next field of maybe-wheat. White-painted metal that's peeling bad as they get closer, but it's got a heavy fall of shadow in the driven-over silty dust and abandoned crates that don't collapse when Dean plants his ass on one, so it's good enough for now. "Could go for a snowcone," he says, and Sam snorts somewhere past his closed eyes and there's a thunk of his bag hitting the dirt and then scuffing away, through the silt, and Dean watches the world golden through closed lids and imagines. Sam sweating, long, his body moving sure through the shadow and then -- through the barn door, sliding on squeaky rollers -- and then into somewhere Dean can barely hear him except whatever he imagines might echo through the wall, but it's okay because he'll come back. He's promised that, now. Dean turns his head against the side of the barn anyway, his ear against the warm metal, in case there's some echo. Long night and a long day and a long night ahead and maybe it's lame but he's old now, or feels it, and he's tired. He'll take even an echo.

In the barn: dusty John Deeres, and tools Sam doesn't bother to describe, and a case of too-warm water of dubious age in cheap plastic bottles. "Thief," Dean says, but just to say it, and Sam shrugs and says, "Trespassing, too," but he cracks a bottle and hands it to Dean and Dean dumps it over his head, just to get off some of the sweat and dust. Long walk. Sam says dude and Dean says, "Bite me," but when he slicks his hand back over his head Sam ends up smiling at him, after all, and hands him another bottle to actually drink, and then -- bends at the waist and dumps water over the back of his own head, slicking his hair to black in the shade, dripping down and turning the dust to mud. Stripped down to his t-shirt after all and the water sopping the grey to dark. "See, I'm a genius," Dean says, and Sam scratches through his hair and groans like he does on other midnights and says, "Don't get ahead of yourself," but when he sits down next to Dean his hair's curling wet against his neck and he looks as relaxed as Dean's seen him in -- god, how long? Years anyway. Like Dean would see him sometimes in dreams, during that year that's pressed too close up against his back teeth, and he'd wake up on those mornings with his heart full in his chest and with a good mood, almost, that lasted until he opened his eyes and remembered what bed he was in and the mood pierced like a water balloon that hadn't popped right. Draining out slow until he was left pointless and limp.

Sun finally heading toward setting. Over the fields the air's golden, thick in that way of summer. Sky exactly the shade of a cherry '67 Mustang. Acapulco Blue. Sam's bootheels stretch out to full-length in the silt, past the mud-mess he made, and there's his legs long in denim. Dust on the hems. Dean leans forward, elbows on his knees, taking in one of those long deep breaths that when he blows it out feels like he's expelling air from decades ago. Lungs one hundred percent empty.

Big hand on the back of his neck. He closes his eyes. Sam strokes up over his head where the hair's gone spiky-wet and then smooths it back down, his thumb braced up behind Dean's ear. Heavy and hot.

"Gonna make it back to town tonight?" Sam asks. Like he doesn't know the distance just the same as Dean. Dean shrugs. Sam hums and squeezes Dean's neck, and then Dean opens his eyes and looks from where his head's held down like this to see Sam's heel draw up through the dust, and for his knee to press against Dean's, and then his hand dragging down Dean's back and then back up under his shirt, hot on damp skin, a big square heavy thing. Landing somewhere up between his shoulderblades. Dean wants it on his dick and on the side of his face thumbing his mouth and also just exactly where it is. Sam touching him. Over that last year, what he missed more than anything else. For Sam to touch him and for it to mean what it was supposed to, when Sam touched him.

"We've probably got the worst case of swamp ass this side of the Mississippi," Dean says.

"You remember that time in Tupelo?" Sam says, and of course Dean does. Of course, every single time, like some dorky glittery journal in his heart, he remembers -- Sam's face over his in Tupelo spattered with mud-and-blood and laughing at how disgusting it was, and doing it anyway; Sam's breath desperate at the back of his neck in Portland, both Maine and Oregon; Sam's fingers lacing with his in Colorado Springs, and Sam pressed chest-to-chest with him in Pittsburgh, and Sam's mouth blurring strange in the drunken dark in too many places to name. Dean remembers.

Sam lifts his hand, stretching Dean's shirt, and Dean feels the air gust up against his sweaty back before he follows it, unbending slowly, and then Sam's whole arm's shoved awkward up against his spine, his fingers and thumb bracketing Dean's neck, and when Dean tips his head back Sam's there to catch him.

"Gonna miss the show tonight," Dean says, slit-eyed. Salt in his eyelashes.

The county such-and-such. Volunteer firefighters put on the show, one of the witnesses told them. Not a big display but big enough to please the kids and the folk who hadn't got too cynical for it. He was kind of looking forward to catching it, just because. When was the last time they'd had a July 4th that wasn't some kind of miserable?

"Maybe," Sam says. His eyes on Dean's mouth. Which is so like the soulless version Dean's heels dig into the ground, some weird no instinct making him want to stand -- but then Sam's eyes flick up to meet Dean's, and he grins lopsided and dorky like Sam always used to, when he was okay enough to grin, and relief washes through Dean like stepping under a waterfall. "Could celebrate right here, though. Right?"

"You think that line actually works on anyone?" Dean says, chest blooming hot, and Sam says, "Guess we'll see," in a way that's frankly smug, and Dean rolls his eyes but he also swivels on his stolen crate-seat and presses his mouth against Sam's and gets salt-sweat and stale bottled water and also the good spit-flavor of his tongue, and so maybe Sam deserves the smug.

Birds calling in the trees by the barn, squawky-loud like they're making commentary. Sam's thigh hard and hot alongside his. At first Sam presses against him too hard and Dean grunts, and then Sam lays his other hand soft against Dean's cheek and kisses him sweet, instead, and then grips Dean's neck and kisses him just -- right, Goldilocks finding the right level of comfort. Dean lays his hand on Sam's chest and feels his heart go right out of himself, like a roman candle.

[thistledropkick]

Desperado made a few different tweets about Narita Ren joining HoT, some of which are pretty long. I've put them all in one post here.

"As partners and rivals working hard together, they became such an entertaining team

They developed such a good relationship, and their backstage comments went beyond expectations.

What a damn shame.

Such a half-hearted bastard.

I can see quite clearly why you're so impatient, but I'll deal with you as a member of STRONG STYLE after the Dome.

Don't underestimate us."

"I was pissed off and went back to the hotel room and drank with my senpai, but now I've cooled down a bit and thought this over.

The three of us didn't have that many chances to fight together on New Japan shows.

We won the belts, but we failed to defend them.

And after that, the timing for the three of us to challenge for them again just didn't work out.

From self-expression to pro wrestling ability, the members of our unit are absolute beasts, and there's nothing we can't do in that ring.

But also, the clumsy way that the company announced the "Reiwa Three Musketeers" and the massive expectations around it resulted in a backlash from the wrestlers in question. And then the whole situation was left awkwardly up in the air.

As for those involved:

Shota has a costume that makes him look like a star, uncontrollable backstage comments, and a Moxley-like entrance and fighting techniques, giving him a royal flush of personality.

Tsuji's next-level lucha technical abilities and all his hard work backing it up, his physical potential and his creative expressiveness, all come together to give him the voice of a champion.

But his studies under Shibata-senshu had too big an impact on him, so when he used what he'd learned under Shibata, people could only talk about him in comparison to Shibata.

Things don't change in an instant.

Especially not a person's value.

A kick that he no longer uses, by his own choice,

and shin guards that he removed as well,

and also the Cobra Twist that we thoroughly discussed the use of.

It hasn't even been a year yet.

What percentage of pro wrestling fans in Japan were able to see him in person and say "That's Narita Ren"?

It can take an entire year for a technique to be seen throughout Japan, and even then you don't know if it'll get over or not.

And that's especially true for guys like you and me, who wrestle in a straightforward and persistent style.

You lack the courage of your convictions."

"The whole reason STRONG STYLE originally began was because you were being bullied by House of Torture until me and Suzuki-san sent them scattering.

Did you already forget?

Are you stupid?"

[myaoiboy]

do you believe Love Deterrence was kind of a love confession from Kaz to BB?

Sort of. Kind of. I do think it was about BB, and we know the lyrics are written by Kaz.

I don't know if we ever find out all the languages that BB speaks, obviously English, Russian, Spanish, that leaves iirc 3 more languages he speaks, and I don't know if Japanese is ever confirmed as one.

It seems likely given that he speaks to Kojima in PW, and that BB speaking other languages is translated for the player, but Venom also speaks to him and gets a verbal response in TPP, and we know that was in English due to [mumbled summary of TPP plot]. That's probably the closest we get to confirmation.

Anyways my point with that is, I tend to think that BB doesn't speak Japanese, at least not around Kaz, and Kaz intentionally wrote Love Deterrence in a language he didn't think BB knew so that he could get his feelings out without the utter mortification of actually sharing them.