thunder-rolled-a-seven

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

Me, still not even halfway through Warhammer lore: "That's it. All y'all just need to get absorbed by that hivemind and call it the end. I'm placing you all on timeout. F- on friendship. "Berserk" isn't even this bad. And that's bad.

...No, seriously, I'm literally whisper-whining "omg wtf" every 5 minutes.

...

Still very interesting, and my mind is going absolutely wild with side stories, but sweet Saint Theresa on the hood of a Mercedes Benz this universe needs therapy.

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

Me, reading up on the different Warhammer factions:

Also me: I should rp this shit.

Also also me: Do they have farmers or baristas in this universe because I'm honestly more interested in the regular joe's life than all of this...this. Or are the farmers all "WE MUST SOW THE GROUND WITH THE BLOOD OF OUR ENEMIES" too?

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

Tiny carrots. I'm sure mini carrots are not supposed to be this small, but I'm just happy they grew. They are HEAVY on flavor. I think I'll pick the rest come end of summer.

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

A garden I started a few months ago as it is today. I am pleased to report that most of the plants in these two plots have survived so far. I currently have corn, bell peppers, monstrous cucumber plants, a smattering of beans (alas, these were both the first to grow and first to die off, likely because of this infernally relentless AZ sun), and mini carrots. I once had a row of onions, but those were dug up by a neighborhood stray, whom thought the garden was an excellent dumping ground before I put up the chicken wire. Literal dumping ground.

I also tried to plant flowering herbs like lavender, chamomile, chives, and dill in the pots in the back and the bird sanctuary...but they never made it. I think my herbs growing powers are cursed. They sprout and immediately die. It distresses me.

I do have a single basil plant though. It has three tiny leaves and lives all by its lonesome in a trough meant for five. Kind of sad, really. I think I'll name it...let it know it's special.

I'm a little worried about the lack of pollinators. I don't see many bees or hummingbirds around and I fret that all those flowers on the cucumber plants and tomato plant (elsewhere) will not yield fruit. Then again the corn is growing husks pretty well... I'm just not sure. Time to be a beekeeper / hummingbird trainer, I guess.

I'm also not sure where the little praying mantises went. We had about 6 chilling in our plants at one time. One got pretty big. Hope they are playing nice wherever they are.

Anyways. Just something I do to keep from exploding. I plan to switch out the plants when they eventually die. I already plucked some of the dead bean stalks and replaced them with brocolli. It's only been two days but I already see little sprouts growing, and that's exciting. Might try to do something similar with the bird sanctuary after hell, I mean, summer passes...

...anything for the excuse to buy more plants, really.

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

Perhaps I'm just old, and not with the times, but I've become increasingly disappointed with many issues or points of views I hold and have held dear, because they have increasingly become associated with anger, exclusion, hypocrisy, derailment, and extremism.

I need to practice what I preach, but if we, humanity, can begin to approach different cultures, ideologies, histories, peoples, oppositions/oppositional arguments, etc. with the same kind of respect one should have towards their significant other I believe we will come to a greater state of being.

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

No More Time

Ark: Survival Evolved / Scorched Earth

Characters: Rockwell, Nasrin

Notes: I think about what Rockwell did to that one Scorched Earth tribe way too much. I like to think that the "timid, desert flower" Nasrin and her baby survived; that she ended up becoming another Raia with baby in tow, but knowing Ark they both very likely did not. Thanks Rockwell, you piece of shit.

------

"At last," he sighs, leaning his head until the base of his sweat-matted hair met his back, "Freedom."

Sheltered beneath the withered boughs of arid-spawned trees, the day's most celebrated warriors laid scattered and stiff over rough spun rugs and large wooden tables. With a single sip, each man and woman forever surrendered their existence to the endless desert. No one, not even the most cunning hunter, had struggled, for none had suspected death to come from within their oasis home.

Sir Edmund Rockwell could not have been more pleased. It was a just reward for those primative miscreants, a prize for their insuferrable hubris. How bold the fools for thinking they had the upper hand - for thinking he was theirs to corral and control like one of their beasts of burden. The man stands tall over his handiwork, clucking his tongue at the thicket of contorted forms - their jaws blossoming with silent, foam gnarled screams. If only they had valued his intellect from the beginning, he muses, drinking deeply of his own freshwater goblet, this bloated death could have been avoided.

Without opposition, the scholar makes haste to leave, packing his leather bound studies and the precious Edmundium upon one of the tribe's larger mounts. Death attracted unsavory creatures, and he peferred to keep the heavy stink of decay off of his dust saturated clothes. Already the vileness filled his tent and pinched his nose, the sour fruit of his murder carried in by the hot, evening wind. So after one last look at his gilded cage, he strides towards the unforgiving sun.

And comes face to face with a woman, the chieftess Nasrin, and the infant child he had guided into this perilous world not long ago.

His hooded eyes linger upon the sleeping babe tucked carefully within the nest of silk cloth upon his mother's arms. The boy held a look of concentration upon his newly formed brow: dreaming, no doubt, of milk and not the shadows behind the camp's sudden silence. Nonetheless, those little hands held a rebelious lock of his mother's dark hair as if he knew within his infantile dreams that his father was gone.

Submerged within an itching silence, Rockwell realizes then that he had never bothered to learn the child's name.

Frowning, he shakes his head, and pushes past the woman's willowy form. He is sure she protested the collision of shoulders, but his thoughts were already battling another conscience. Someday, not today - he vehemently vowed to himself - he would study the social-psychological affects this strange wilderness had on human children. Tonight, however, he would continue his search of the remaining Obelisk keys, that laid scattered to the land.

"Wait-"

"What," he whirls, snapping before she finishes her plea. "What could you possibly want?"

She flinches. Rockwell had never been overly kind to anyone save that single flame of intellect amongst the darkness of savagery - Helena, dear Helena, that traitorous snake - but he had always been gentle to the soft spoken flower that was Nasrin. The sudden unveiling cruelty in his studious eyes now frightened her and confirmed the suspicions growing within her heart. "You killed them..." Her question quivers on the air like a taut pulled string.

Or statement, Rockwell hums. Surely, she was not so dull.

A glimpse of yellowed teeth flashes between his cracked lips. "Oh?" He whispers and turns away.

A hand brushes against his back, nervously and harmlessly, yet his skin recoils as if she branded him by iron. Grimmacing, he turns back around, and is struck by the sheer desperate absurdity of her expression, the searching in her unsteady eyes. He almost chuckles at her forlornness, but arches a brow instead. "Why...you, want me to stay?"

She says nothing, but her clenching jaw told him what he wanted to hear.

He licks the backs of his teeth. Had she forgotten her sorrows and the love, if it was indeed love, that she had held for her former husband, whose broad, able body now slumped uselessly over the high table? Or had she taken a fancy to his distinguished, gentlemanly demure? The thought was flattering. Indeed, he nearly blushes beneath his sun tanned skin, preening himself with contrived implications until-

Until he remembers the child.

His tongue wells with imagined bile, and he is tempted to spit like an improper man. He scowls, brushing her away. Typical, he thought. The weak always thronged to the strong. "You waste my time, little woman. Farewell."

But she steps forward, panick bruising the softness of her dark face. She holds the boy closer to herself as if that bundle was the last buoyant board of a rapidly sinking ship. "But," the young woman strains, "what are we going to do?"

Her exhausted voice echoes within his chest, but he is already steps away. Nonetheless, Rockwell pauses and looks back into those imploring eyes. To her question he answers with a tone of cold, academic finality, for he had no more time to waste.

"Survive."

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

Just finished "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, another curious distopian, but its themes theorize that freedom from strife creates a downfall of...well, freedom.

Is it bad...that I kinda wanted the universe of "1984" to kick "Brave New World"'s ass? Just a bit?...

I'm sure this reflects something on my own perspectives, of which I'll contemplate elsewhere.

...nonetheless, I wonder who would win. I'm hesitantly putting my money on Brave New World, but such a collision would likely send both into an imploding collapse.

Good.

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

Siobahn and Sibeal // Kelley Harris

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

The Storm Crow // Tran Nguyen

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

Meet Lucky, your partner and pet parasaurolophus!

She will be your trusty steed as you explore the wilds and encounter new dinos in our upcoming dino ranching game, Paleo Pines! 🌿✨

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

Recommended Audio-drama. George Orwell's "1984" made even more terrifying by Steve Parker (and co.'s) superb voice and accompanying ambient sounds. *

Summary: "A distopian novel set in the year 1984 - Orwell's near future and our not so distant past - but with themes still relevant to today due to its depiction of a totalitarian government and its methods of using media manipulation and advanced technology to control people. It follows the life of Winston Smith, a low ranking member of "The Party", who is frustrated by the government's omnipresent eyes and it's ominous ruler, Big Brother."

Warnings: (Because Audiobook) Violence, sex, brutal political torture. Rated "R", but I read this as a teen and didn't die.

*Check out his channel. Excited to listen to him read "Treasure Island". His voice + pirates?? Yeeeaaaboooiiii.

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

*soft sobbing* Four...it's four fingers.

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

I'm happy to report that my garden has attracted little friends.

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

*Nervous Laughter* I must be sick.

I'm listening to an audiodramatization of George Orwell's "1984", a book I haven't read in years, but completely satisfies my (twisted) distopian novel fascination/ my nature of power studies, and I've just been reintroduced to a minor character whom gets his kicks in destroying languages, and watching puplic executions, and I feel myself actually reddening and thinking:

I should RP this man or a likeliness of him.

*Deep breath*

I'm sick.

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

I am being recommended group chats with names such as "Old People" and"Hell" and I'm...

[thunder-rolled-a-seven]

I'M GLAD SOMEONE AGREES WITH ME.

Southern Dandy Rufus Shinra. *slams hand on desk* Dammit!

I will only accept Machinabridged Rufus's voice as canon don't @ me

Shshdhshdhd not only did Machinabringed Rufus have the best voice, he delivered the best line in the entire series: