#why i'm the sober one

[total-derangement-of-the-senses]

I'm exhausted by the number of people around me who get to laugh and “exaggerate” things about me to the point of falsehood and paint me the villain and I apparently don't get a voice because when I raise mine, context vanishes and I'm plainly that.

[trivialbob]

Not long ago I read in a newspaper that "authorities" admonished states that they not get too silly with these highway traffic sign messages. It might be distracting. Must. Be. Serious.

Oh screw you.

I like that at least one government employee has a sense of humor.

Reading this made me seriously hungry for some wild rice hotdish. I am not even high.

[eri-pl]

My dear mutuals, I just realized something.

So, there's been talk recently about breaking Papita out of Mandos and I suppose more of us may need help at some point... but we need one fundamental thing if we are to be able to save one another from some terrible prison (or, idk, recognize each other in a supermarket...):

we need to have a song in common

Like, seriously, the default scheme for breaking someone out from somewhere is: character A start singing, character joins them, character A finds character B and gets them out. Except...

I'm not sure there's any song I could sing together with any of you.

We need to make a list of songs that we all know well enough. Seriously.

[soup-is-here]

Mouthwashing Spoilers

TW: Addiction and Self Harm

I wanna go on about Swansea's final monologue but it's hard to put into words, but I'm gonna try anyways cause it's a short, but strong story about autonomy again. This post ended up significantly longer than I wanted though

It's the autonomy to choose the "less healthy" option because it's appealing to you. It's the moral assignment to normality and stability. An alcoholic is an alcoholic by choice, technically, but do they owe us otherwise? Is it morally reprehensible to enjoy taking LSD at a party? Should we see someone as less than because they relax with a xanax instead of a hot shower? It's not healthy. We know that. We've seen anti-drug ad after ad after ad. But is that the part that's morally wrong, in and of itself? Does enjoying the drugs and chaos make Swansea a worse person?

Like him talking about his entire life and ending it by saying between the "stable" "normal" life and him waking up every morning with a new hangover, he preferred the latter. People always talk about getting clean and fixing their lives and Swansea did it! He did the thing "good men" do! A wife and kids and a trade job and sobriety! He was doing it! He was finally "worth" something!

And he hated it! I mean I don't know if he actually hated/despised it, but he misses his previous life. He misses drugs and partying and living like you might not wake up the next day. He said the thing that changed him was seeing himself dead in a ditch under the bright beam of a streetlight. Now he's looking down the barrel of a gun. And as he looks down it, he looks back. That was his preference. It felt good to be like that. And he wouldn't be here if he stayed there

We always have a narrative about drugs or gambling or sleeping around where a person suddenly realizes that they aren't "doing anything" with their life and becomes stable and it's always played like addiction is a false pleasure. Swansea got to the stability people said would be the real pleasure of life and that just wasn't true for him. One bad paycheck could've been the difference between his stable life and falling apart anyways. His lifestyle was going to kill him someday apparently, yet he's staring down the barrel of a gun at his steady trade job to feed his wife and kids.

I don't know quite how to word it but Swansea is the poster child for rehabilitation. There's this weight to him saying his alcoholic period was the best time of his life. Like it just hits at that pang that makes people wear DARE shirts while smoking weed and post those videos of smoking 100 cigarettes at once. Anti-vaping ads tell you about the damage they do to your body but everyone knows that already. Everyone knows "this is what your brain looks like on drugs." I smoke medical marijuana and it isn't good for my lungs but it's good for my pain. Doing drugs isn't good for me and I know that and that's sorta the point sometimes.

I don't know it's just this weird pang where I know what Swansea means, just not to nearly the same extent. I don't have an addiction so I don't think I could fully understand it. Maybe a better thing I could relate it to for myself is self harm. It's not healthy sure, but who do I owe health? Myself? Other people? And what is healthy? Is it feeling better now? Is it resisting now and feeling worse for it until it stops? What if the coping skills I learn make it worse? What if they make it better? Do I want it to get better? Does Swansea want to get better? What would better feel like to either of us?

Who knows until you try. Swansea got a collared shirt, a mortgage, and a credit card. He got a job and a wife and kids. He got sober. He got healthier, depending on your definition.

But did he feel better? He's looking down a barrel of a gun and he has to decide if he feels better. It doesn't seem like he regrets his new life. He says he wants his kids to be better than him. He wants good things to happen for them. He saw himself as one bad slip away from falling again. I don't think he felt better though. I think he got healthier. He likely would've ended up in the ditch he dreamt about, but we don't know that. We also don't know if that's what he'd prefer. But, we do know he got healthier, depending on your definition.

[wernerherzogs]

well now that i'm officially right in the midle of s7. i can honestly say my biggest issue with it is. (what happened to all the pussy in supernatural voice) what happened to ALL THE BANGERS ON 911.

[cementcornfield]

https://x.com/vikingzfanpage/status/1867748114540433549?s=61

ummm excuse you justin, that is your best friend

lol really though!!

but nah, i touched on this in my tags of a rb of this tweet. like to me it isn't a huge deal or anything. they're obviously still close, they just don't talk in season (which they've both said before). but they spent time in france together this offseason and have also said that they love each other and are always gonna have that connection so i'm not too worried! friendships go through stages sometimes, and adult friendships are just kind of like that, even for football players i guess! (some of my absolute best friends in the world, my favorite people, i only talk to once a month if that. and like a real deep catch up session happens only a few times a year. it's just hard! and i can say for sure that me and my friends do not have nearly as much going on as these two guys lol)

but anyway i'm also gonna take this opportunity to ramble about some more ja'marr character analysis lol. so like, it's becoming pretty clear that ja'marr is deadset on keeping tee and joe with him as long as possible (not gonna get into contract details or likelihood at the moment because that's all still in the air of course. but like, ja'marr's intentions at least are clear at the moment). and it's also obvious how much ja'marr treasures his friendships! he loves his guys and thrives off of being around them! i wonder if like, the evolution of his relationship with justin has to do with how extreme he, tee, and joe are being about contract stuff right now???

like justin and ja'marr were SO close for awhile there. from the hyper competitive but clearly loving friendship they had going on in college. the way they were always together on the sideline and always doing their dances and making up ridiculous elaborate handshakes <3 the way all of their joint interviews involved so much laugher and loving glances. and even after joining the league still talking about each other in the media and how much they love and support each other even as they're still super competitive. hell, when i first became a fan in 2022, ja'marr would still be streaming with justin almost every week lol. (i think justin has stopped streaming and maybe doesn't even do much gaming-wise anymore, which may have been the main way they kept in touch tbh. like, many such cases for the men i know in my life lol)

and now they're at the point where they have so much else going on, that even though they love each other, the constant conversation and all that isn't as present. (and ja'marr has kind of made it clear that that started on justin's end. like, ohhh he doesn't text me back blah blah blah, however true that is 🤔). and i feel like, even though ja'marr probably understands, that had to have hurt. again he values his friends so much and is at his best mentally, emotionally, and athletically when he's around them!!! i wonder if that taught him something about like, "if i want to keep these people i love in my life as much as possible, i need them to stay on my team. justin went to a different team and something that was so beautiful and important to me changed. i can't have that for tee. i can't have that for joe. we need to figure something out" which like, could absolutely be me digging depth into something that isn't there but at the same time it makes sense motivationally for me!!! like did he sob on his agent's shoulder one night about how much he missed justin and how he couldn't stand the thought of that happening with tee (I WANT TO PLAY WITH HIM FOR ETERNITY!!!) and the agent was like, hey, we can do something about this actually! send me his info!

[itsjaywalkers]

guys i got home really late and . kinda drunk . so my friend convinced me to call in sick tomorrow (i've never done it not even when i was actually sick) so i texted my manager, the one who's on shift tomorrow and i'm hoping for the best........... wish me luck?

[nombitenary]

you people reblog shit Fast got damn okay i am going to make some sort of beast or perhaps a creature. i have tried doing this before but i think i was too limited by trying to be anthropomorphic. i am becoming a creature in the night. at last. i am free.

[lacefuneral]

you know disco elysium is a good game because i'm willing to play through the exact same plot and side quests and puzzles over and over and over again. not to solve a murder mystery but because i'm fascinated with trying out alternate universe versions of harry du bois

what if he was a centrist honor cop that is also an outspoken feminist that chainsmokes. what if he was a sloppy sloppy party boy drunk doing every drug he sees, and he thinks the world is going to end. what if he was a horribly bigoted fascist - how does he exist in this world with a gay partner of color, how does he reconcile his white supremacist beliefs with that of measurehead's black supremacist beliefs (which he ends up adopting)? what if he was an outspoken communist bisexual that actively hates being a police officer at every single step and is going to resign the second the game ends, and he's been sober the entire time? what if he has 1 in every skill and spends his entire time crying, throwing up, apologizing, and passing out.

and also... do any of these men know their own name? what do they prioritize, in terms of memory recall? how do they choose to dress and present themselves to the world? does he shave? why or why not?

if they all pick the same dialogue option, are they saying it and meaning it in the same way? our protagonist is not voiced. he could be sincere, sarcastic, bitter, manic, bureaucratic, empathetic.

it's such a good study in people and ideology. regardless of beliefs, all of my characters have taken bribes. they've helped the union leader. they cozy up to the ultraliberal. even the cop trying to be the most Ethical. the most Fuck The Police. ends up abusing his own power. ends up killing people. ends up stealing. invades privacy. because its what is dictated by the job. by the narrative.

when you try to be apolitical, you still do all of those things. and, in fact, if you're apolitical enough you can abandon martinaise entirely and you get assassinated by the moralintern for Knowing Too Much about the pale.

if you play a communist you still have dros at the end telling you that you're not a real communist because you haven't fought for revolution. you're a wannabe

if you play a fascist dros even tells you that you're not a real fascist because you haven't enacted enough fascist violence. you're a wannabe

if you're a liberal you're shielding the fascists

you cannot be "a good guy" in disco elysium and you cannot "win." a "good" ending is getting recruited back to the force, and you can still manage to do that if you don't drink and kim is by your side. you can be brutal and awful and violent to everyone and everything. and they let you back.

even "good cops" cannot choose to resign. you must be kicked out of the force. which you do by hurting yourself and letting others get hurt

you can only resign if you take enough Morale Damage that you abandon not just the force but the entire community. and you get a game over screen

man. this fucking game....

[sygneth]

Jean Vic, everybody.

Me on DeviantArt

[copia]

the number of times i've cried to life eternal in a public park isn't large but it's not zero and not one. not two either

[freckleslikestars]

Hi, genuine question, real serious:

What do you do when your best friend, the guy you've worked with for 3 and 1/2 of the last four years, tries to kiss you two days before he catches a flight half way across the world?

The guy you spent a year and a half crushing on and not doing anything, before realising that you loved him as a friend.

The guy who dated your closest other friend for a year, before she fucked him over?

The guy who you've slept at the foot of the bed of, you've shared a bed with, you've gotten blind drunk with and gone to concerts with and done everything that the closest of people do together with.

The guy you worked together in the most hostile workplace with.

The guy who lost his job for you.

The guy who's just given you 3 entire crates of his vinyl collection.

The guy who says "i don't share food" and "i don't like finishing drinks" but automatically shares food and drink, and automatically offers you the dregs of whatever you have left.

The guy who tells you he loves you, and has tried to kiss you four times now, and has told you you're the only person he cares about?

What do you do when he drunkenly tries to kiss you two days before he catches a flight across the world, with plans never to return?

[alpha-leoniis]

at least christmas eve was good, I got the squishiest of cat plushies (everyone is envious of it), so I'm doing great

[stupidg0th]

overshare in tags, alcohol tw

[handsoffthefuckinshield]

we're fun memes and parlour tricks until we hold legitimate trauma huh. we're a lot of fun until you realize that we're not joking about the shit we hold onto huh

[team--charlotte]

having an almost comically bad couple days so i'm microdosing on all my fixations by alternating episodes of kids in the hall, night court, h2o just add water, and conan o'brien remotes. just having a normal one