#woof. people.

[aimzicr]

I'm coming to live a new town, tired by the life I've led behind but tethered by obligation to family I barely know. "Take care of this place," he told me, on his deathbed, "It's important to me." I've been thinking the whole bus ride over what might be important to me, and I come to the conclusion that there isn't anything. It used to be my health and happiness, but my dead-end job kind of robbed me of that. I don't really have anything else for myself, except a couple of suitcases and a long road ahead of me.

I'm met at the bus stop by the small town's mayor, and he takes me to a shack in an overgrown plot. The town carpenter tells me she's fixed the place up, making it livable. But they left the land to grow wild? Did my grandfather ever matter to these people? They offer me some seeds to get started, and call me 'farmer'. What a joke. I can barely keep a potted succulent alive.

But what else is there for me?

Unpacking is easy. I barely brought anything and the shack is tiny. What isn't easy is dealing with my future here. It takes hours for me to clear the weeds and rake away the topsoil and plant a neat row of packet-seeds. I'm exhausted, shaking, sweaty. It feels like a full day's work but it's barely lunch time. I have nothing in the kitchen. I wash up, and walk to town. The place feels stiff, still, empty.

The prettiest girl I've ever seen criticises my appearance as she walks by. The doctor wishes me a tentative welcome from the door of his clinic, but there's something about him that makes me so uncomfortable I walk by quickly after my hello-back. A cute guy tells me I can't play football with him because girls can't do that. There's a pub and a grocer's in town, but the prices are more than my strained wallet can handle, so I cross the river and buy from the convenience store. I take my instant noodles to the beach and it helps, for a little while, to sit and listen to the waves. As I go home, two small children and their babysitter stare at me, and two mothers gossip speculation after I pass by. It feels just like being at home: being alone, being tired, and being talked at or about, rather than to.

The night's a rough one. The bed's uncomfortable, the sheets are scratchy, the whole house groans and creaks in protest about my presence and the renovations done to it. I can hear creatures in the woods, bats and owls and possums and who knows what else. I'm just as exhausted waking up as when I went to sleep, but now my muscles ache from yesterday's attempt at living up to the name 'farmer'.

When I find the first early shoots have been decimated by crows and insects, I want to cry. I do, for a little bit, but then I take out my frustrations on the weeds and the rocks, and even a couple of the stubborn old trees. I eat more instant noodles, and look at the patch of bare earth in front of the house.

When I finally grow the parsnips, it feels like a blessing. I can sell them in town and get myself something to eat that doesn't come from a packet. The pub owner doesn't smile at me until I produce enough cash to make him realise I'm not just here for the free water. It's good to have a hot meal.

There's a sign in the grocer's the next day. "Fresh-grown local parsnips." I hear the grocer say he grew them himself. I buy more seeds, and I leave, and I won't be back until next month if I can help it. I won't be selling anything else from my land to him.

People come by to see me, now and then. But they never ask how I'm doing, if I'm struggling, can I help. It's always about what I can do for them: bring them something, grow them something, harvest something from the wild, give them lyrics for a song or an idea for a novel, pick up trash or mend a bridge. I don't know these people, or why they want nothing from me but my labour. Why they want what I can do and what I can make instead of who I am. It feels like I never left my dead end job.

The woman from the next property brings me a dog, scrawny and snarling. "He likes you!" He doesn't like me, I'm not a dog person, you just want him off your property so your chickens aren't in danger. I fill his water dish and leave him scraps, letting him stay fox-keen in the wilderness that should have been a farm. He stops snarling when he sees me, but we never grow close. I envy that about him: the people in this town keep coming to me with their problems and their demands. Perhaps I should start snarling, too.

I've cleared the ground, and built my own fences. I grow my own food and cook my own meals. This place was important to grandpa, but now it's all I have, and it's mine, and the work here feels right for me. Maybe one day the people in town will stop asking me to fill the various voids in their lives, but I doubt it. They let my grandfather's land fall into ruin as easily as they neglect their own lives, so. Not my problem. I have work to do.

Anyway. Stardew Valley.

[angelicgarnet]

the way people online talk about autism is getting really weird, like do they know that neurotypicals still have interests? that someone being passionate about a hobby doesn't mean they're autistic? you guys know that right

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Ghouls night out

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[xt0t4llys4n300x]

"are you not excited?"

My phantom tail wagging so fast that I might take off flying any second

me: "huh?"

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Does

Does Barnaby

Does Barnaby tell the others to get off his lawn when he's angry

psh, who do you think he is, an old man? he'd Bark, like any lively young dog

[thefloatingwriter]

the victors as complex characters will always be more interesting than making them amazing people.

like these are people who did absolutely everything in their power to survive something as traumatic as the games. most of them probably sleep with weapons in their hands. the thought on the forefront of most of their minds is survival. everything else—anyone else—can wait.

they sacrificed everything to crawl out of a killing game. their mental stability. their innocence. their childhood.

and after all of that, they realized that the games never really end. that they would sacrifice ever having a good night sleep without being plagued by nightmares. they would sacrifice their brains to help the capitol. they would sacrifice their bodies, something that should have always been their own, now snatched away from them. all for surviving a killing match that twenty-three children didn’t.

no victor is immune to this either. do you think cashmere doesn’t regret being so excited to go into the games after her brother after staying the night in a strange man’s bed that she doesn’t know? do you think gloss doesn’t regret not warning his sister about the horrors that await her after she wins? do you think brutus doesn’t sometimes wake up in a cold sweat after having yet another nightmare about being on the receiving end of his weapon, just as all of his victims were before everything faded to black? do you think enobaria doesn’t run her tongue over her sharpened teeth and wonder if it was worth it?

do you think beetee doesn’t flinch every time he sees lightning? do you think wiress doesn’t think of how if she hadn’t learned acrobatics that the 48th hunger games would have gone very differently? do you think finnick doesn’t see nets in the same way ever again, after he saw the girl from nine begging for her life tangled in a net he set up before he stabbed her with a trident? do you think annie doesn’t think about if she hadn’t spent all of that time on the beach growing up, playing in the water, that she wouldn’t have survived the dam breaking in her arena? do you think mags doesn’t think about how she left her district partner to die in the first ever traditional career pack? how if maybe, if she had been there to take the blow for him, there would be a different victor of the 11th hunger games?

do you think that blight doesn’t wonder what would have happened if the boy from two had looked up a little bit sooner, looked a little bit closer at the treetops above him, before the knife previously in blight’s hand found it’s way to the boy’s back? do you think that every time johanna picks up an axe, she doesn’t think about what if felt like to stab someone with it, what blood felt like when it splattered you? do you think she doesn’t wake up in a sweat, thinking the moisture on her skin is blood, that she’s back in the third quarter quell? do you think she doesn’t ever walk into her house in the victor’s village and think she sees a glimpse, a shadow, of her lost loved ones?

do you think that woof doesn’t use real knives anymore because every time he sees one, he remembers how it felt to stab blindly at the boy from seven? that even when he was seventy-five and the male tribute from eight for the third quarter quell, he couldn’t even look at the utensil and had to get cecelia to take it away from him? do you think cecelia can’t look at seashells anymore, that she could barely stand district four on her victory tour, because the girl from four was her last kill? that her necklace, a pretty one her sister made for her with a seashell strung through the string, was what cecelia used to choke the life out of her?

do you think that chaff doesn’t ever feel the phantom feeling of his hand? doesn’t ever touch the stump where it used to be and feel the phantom pain of it being sawed off like it was yesterday, even thirty years later? do you think that seeder doesn’t ever feel the hot sun of her arena on her body, doesn’t ever think she’s back, waiting for her death to come?

do you think that haymitch doesn’t start shaking every time a blowgun is provided at the cornucopia? do you think that he didn’t see the gold pin on katniss’ arena wear and have to sit down, remembering a very different girl with blonde hair and a quick witted humor with the same pin? do you think that peeta doesn’t hear foxface’s voice during her interview, over and over and over, until it’s so distorted he can’t even remember what she had actually said? that he doesn’t ever think of the girl from eight, a girl he might not have even known the name of?

do you think that, years down the line, katniss doesn’t realize the fate that waited for glimmer if she had won? do you think that she doesn’t wonder what would have happened if cato was a little quicker to get to the cornucopia to save clove? do you think she doesn’t wonder what the girl from four was like, what her name was, what her parents were like, what she was like? do you think that she doesn’t think about what would have happened if marvel was just a little bit quicker with his spear than her with her arrows, what would have happened if she was just a little bit slower to get to rue?

the what-ifs plague them. their games will never leave them. they will never escape their experiences. their lives will never be their own, if they ever were, ever again.

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 178

TIS DONE

except for like. styling the beard. and final assembly on a couple things. BUT THAT IS A TASK FOR TOMORROW ME!!!!!! THE ARMOR IS FINISHED!!!

[domesticdevil]

i keep getting targeted ads on this blog for trained service dogs for sale

no tumblr, i don’t want a service dog, i want to be a service dog

[ummbandits]

Durgetash but they comissioned a slutty portrait to display after they get the W and it just so happens to be Gortash's prized possession for the time Frail is gone 🫠

[theaceace]

imagining a world in which Simon agreed to go with Edwin and try to escape hell, imagining Simon developing an immediate and very inadvisable crush on the cute guy that just threw a grenade at a demon and Edwin's reaction to that, imagining the reaction of Charles Overprotective Rowland when he finds out that the guy Edwin insists on dragging along with them is one of the guys that sacrificed him to a demon in the first place, imagining the Night Nurse's face when three dead boys pop back through the door instead of two

[jasperyourmutt]

Need a dom that will run with me tasks until I’m a tuckered out dog. Have me take out the trash, wash the dishes, fold your laundry, replace that burnt out light bulb you’ve been meaning to fix for weeks. My tail will be wagging the entire time, happily asking “now what?” when I’m done. I’ll mow the lawn, clean your gutters, reorganize your closet all to have you pet me, thank me, and tell me I’m your good boy.

Sit back, relax, have me bring you a beverage- I love to serve you <3

[almostfoxglove]

pedro pascal cinematic universe aus 16/?

the one where jack daniels comes knocking on your door. (insp)

[bromcommie]

I would not change it each time (heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I)

[cagedcats]

Been keeping an eye on the @whispering-clan blog a tad. Kind of inspired me to redo LostClan ngl. But also inspired me to try and make some puppy sprites.

But here you have a custom Bigpup/kit! :,D idk if I’ll do an apprentice, adult or elder sprite tho.

The kit sprite is just a random kit sprite that I yoinked

[theyamjam]

warm welcome 4 this woof !!!

[acoraxia]

Ultimately I think something people often do without realizing is that they keep stripping SWK of attributes that make him so interesting and give it to another character — who more often than not ends up being Macaque of all people

Cares for children and is a good father figure to the monkeys? Macaque

Has a plan even when faced against a strong force in short notice? Macaque

Capable of tricking even the most cunning of people? Macaque

But the moment you describe an attribute that’s negative people often pin it to Wukong such as being an “awful planner” or “a poor mentor” or “someone who abandons people when they need it the most”

When in fact SWK does everything in his power to make sure Xiaotian is cared for and has a stable support system and did his best to try and get to him as quickly as possible when reaching for the Samadhi Fire map.

Not saying Macaque can’t have these qualities either but it’s almost saddening when people take away parts of SWK that make him interesting and fun