My father is a classic layabout lazy bastard. He's the guy that people try to stereotype people on benefits as when they call them "dole bludgers". Sits in a filthy house all day whining that his wife won't clean it up, gets a great idea for a new business every few months and gives up after two weeks when it becomes clear that starting a business is hard, does everything he can to avoid doing a single scrap of work in life, uselessly drags his feet when the government forces him to actually do some.
Or at least, he was, until about three years ago, when he was sent off to do mandatory Work for the Dole at a volunteer organisation. He'd done a lot of Work for the Dole in the past, of course, and like most people who are forced to do a shitty job under the threat of starvation, was neither enthusiastic nor particularly useful. But in this particular place, he was given a job that he could do better than anyone else (he was one of 2 men working with a legion of elderly women, and the only person able to easily haul around the heavy goods that the organisation works with). He quickly found himself with a job he could understand, he could see the clear utility in, and that his coworkers greatly valued him for. He started arriving on time every day, putting in the effort, getting shit done. He started caring about the results. And when his Work for the Dole time was up, he kept volunteering.
He's one of two people paid to work in that warehouse now (the other person being the manager), and he's a lynchpin of activity there, their sole regular and reliable source of physical labour. When he takes holidays, they have to plan around it, because his consistent hard work has become such a critical asset to their work. And he's not taking nearly as many holidays as he should -- he works extra unpaid hours, lifts loads that are somewhat heavier than he should be lifting, shoulders the work of others when they need breaks, and we all have to urge him to take more days off for his health since he's not a young man any more. For my entire life this man has been a pile of old mud in the shape of a human, and the instant he found a job that fulfils his needs, he won't fucking stop. He's gonna die in that warehouse and die happy.
So, not all dragons hoard; for some species its prevalent in younger dragons, it's more of an outlet for territorial behavior, while for some species, it's a way to display power and status (this is particularly common in smaller dragon species)
With that in mind~
Acnologia is not a hoarder, technically. As a child, he would collect dragon scales and feathers, especially untarnished ones. It wasn't an organized collection, but he did have one. He has since outgrown the desire (although, he does seem to collect children like Pokémon cards...)
Serena developed hoarding instincts later in life (partly as a reclamaition of his childhood). He has a copious amount of musicals on record and first edition comic books. He may also have a small drawer of a certain black dragon's scales, but who's counting?
Erik never developed hoarding instincts, but his territorial instincts helped develop his strong bond with Cubellios and Laxus. This is somewhat responsible for his strong sense of loyalty and protective nature. Much like Acnologia, Erik's "hoard" is better understood through personal relationships rather than physical items. Compared to his siblings, Erik is one of the most protective. This is rooted in his trauma, but he has no interest in unpacking all of that... ever...
Laxus, on the other hand, found himself suffering post-transformation with a severe reluctance to throw things away. He kept a drawer of worn-out pencils and broken pens, and found himself unable to throw out old clothes, shoes, notebooks, homeworks, and even toothbrushes. This wasn't solely due to dragon instincts but was an unfortunate combination of his personal traumas that were then magnified by the lacrima. Acnologia and Makarov helped work him through it, but there is still a drawer of stubby eraserless pencils bearing Laxus's tooth marks (he chews on his pencil when he focuses). He will probably keep those forever, and may add to them now and again. There's a pencil with a burnt eraser, a white, half-eaten eraser (thanks Sting), and an eclectic collection of colored pencils that, while Laxus personally has never used, he couldn't bear to throw out.
Gajeel's hoards, as all metal dragons typically hoard: food storage. Earth and metal dragons' instincts treat hoarding more like a survival mechanism: leaving food stores around their territory allows them to ration, and stealing from other dragons' stores means you wear out your local supply of gems, metals, or rocks at a slower pace. Thus, there are pockets of iron scraps stowed all around the house. Gajeel does not like it when someone messes with his stashes.
Natsu hoards in more sporadic ways. Some weeks, he'll decide he wants to start a new collection and will collect shells, rocks, feathers, scales, flowers, leaves, acorns, literally whatever snatches his attention - and he'll gather A LOT of whatever he wants. But after a while, he'll forget or grow bored and have no issue passing his treasures along. No one's sure if that's a fire dragon influence or just Natsu being Natsu.
Sting is far more consistent. Rocks are his usual fascination, but anything white and non-perishable will tend to land in Sting's corner. He's particularly fond of white chalk and marshmallows. Neat or interesting rocks can be any color, but if you have a white pair of shoes, you may want to keep an eye on them. Sting's never been above snatching.
Rogue's collections tend to be more... alive. A bucket of tadpoles or a pocket of frogs. He kept a salamander in the house for weeks before anyone caught him - kept it in the cabinet under the leaky bathroom sink. It's always heartbreaking when he has to be a responsible pet owner (and by that, Acno means to put the amphibians back where they came from).
Wendy loves collecting shed or molted feathers. Her collection is mostly Seagull feathers - they remind her of Grandeeney. As she gets older, the collection grows, and she frames her favorites. As a child, though, Wendy was notorious for stashing candy. In the guild, in the house, in the vents. It was slightly problematic, but it's very hard to stay mad at little Marvell.
Irene: Oh, Irene. She'll deny it until the day she dies. She rejects all draconic influence with vitriol, but it's an unspoken rule that you should never touch one of Irene's grimoires or spellbooks. Even if she knows the spells insideout, even if the books are falling apart and turning to dust, she'll waste a copious amount of enchantments to keep it together and will hunt down anyone who thinks they can lay a hand on her belongings. The audacity of her coworkers. She also has a large collection of her old staffs, some hand-carved... some less meaningful. She keeps them all, calls the collection: "a testament to her history as a mage". It is normal for a mage of her caliber to collect such things... but there may be a deeper urge that she hates to acknowledge
Do you ever think that maybe the reason silver’s personality changes so much through canon is because the timeline changes, meaning his childhood changes too?
Depending on the timeline, it’s very possible that his memory of being a kid is very different. His morals, personality, and memory are completely different and through the IDW comics and games, he acts differently. Like how his first appearance is him being stubborn and angry and his IDW appearance is him being chipper and bright-eyed.
He acts differently because his life constantly changes and his upbringing is different in every single one.
My assumption was more like. Different settings and stakes, just made it so he now can act differently. In 06 he was man on mission because he saw this as last chance at good future. In Rivals his timeline wasn’t great, but not dire too. Then currently in IDW his future safe and he could let himself be loose, act like teen he is
You are a fan of internationally-acclaimed K-pop group Huntrix. They drop a new single to wild success and its debut performance is canceled without clear explanation. Huntrix's management says something about a medical condition with the lead singer.
At the same time a new boyband debuts with a song that tops all the charts. The boyband doesn't seem to have a management company. Or names. Maybe that doesn't matter because their sound IS catchy. Huntrix is completely out of the public eye except for two appearances alongside this new boyband where they are there exclusively to beef. It's maybe a PR stunt. It's maybe because Rumi is exes with one of the only two named members of the Saja Boys.
People start going missing at a rate 4x the national average. You probably wouldn't even know about this except that 3 of the missing people were big names on Stan Twitter so it's kind of a big deal. There are four different high-traction posts claiming all the recent missing people were Saja Boy fans. But that's like claiming all the recent missing people drank water and breathed air.
Rumi is still on medical leave but Huntrix management is saying Huntrix WILL be at the K-pop Awards. Someone on Twitter's uncle's friend works in a recording studio and he says Huntrix is debuting a song which tells the Saja Boys to die. The exes theory gets a lot of traction. Twitter tries to doxx Jinu to confirm the theory but no one can figure out who he is. Twitter tries to doxx the other Saja Boys to the same lack of success. One account said she had "a lead" but her Twitter has been silent for 72 hours since.
Rumi is back from medical leave for the K-pop Awards just in time to have a massive falling-out and break-up on stage. This probably devastated you but you don't really remember it. The Saja Boys invite everyone to a concert. A lot of people who went don't remember going, and you'd call that suspicious except you also went and don't remember going.
Somehow no one in the crowd of 10,000 thought to record the concert on their phone. Maybe there was a "no phones" rule but usually there are still leaks. No one has any video or photo evidence of this concert happening. However you all collectively remember hearing "What It Sounds Like" at the concert (before it debuted 4 days later from Huntrix's label.) This does not make a lot of sense because this was a Saja Boys concert, supposedly. Someone says they saw Zoey impale at least one of the Saja Boys. You would brush this off as a stupid rumor but 2-dozen other people are saying the same thing and you a little bit remember it too.
There's a lot of people saying "Let's wait for an official statement from the Saja Boys" on Twitter but they've been saying that for 2 weeks now and no one has seen or heard from them since the concert. There's a lot of people saying "Zoey killed them fr" which was a joke at first and now, is not not a joke, but it hits a little different.
Most of you are kinda over SB Twitter at this point so you kind of don't care anymore but there are a few remaining fans who've doubled down on the doxxing effort to figure out if they're okay. It's not going well. One person claims to have found Jinu's identity but everyone thinks she's stupid because that guy died literally 400 years ago. YES the royal court's painting of him looks identical and yes that guy was a singer too, but come on, the K-pop look is 90% make-up anyway.
Every time this post comes around I’m too busy to tell this story so I’m gonna do it now: when I learned to scuba dive, there was a dude in my dive group named Dumbass Dave who was always being relentlessly roasted by his buddies because when they went to the Great Barrier Reef he brought a baggie of hard boiled egg down with him because he wanted to find a moray eel and feed it and pet it
Well he found a moray and attempted to hand feed it, and it snapped up the egg and bit the shit out of his right hand in the process and the dive had to be halted so the blood wouldn’t attract sharks. But was this enough punishment for Dumbass Dave? No it was not, because he had a Plan
Dumbass Dave’s plan turned out to be a chainmail glove. Where he obtained it has been lost to time, but he put it on his right, injured hand and down they went, whereupon Dave found himself another moray and tried to feed it some hardboiled egg
With his left hand
And yes it did bite the shit out of him and they did have to cancel the dive, again
So I guess the moral of that story is maybe eels aren’t bastards, maybe they just meet a lot of people like Dave
I reminded my scuba instructor of this story and he wanted me to amend the post to let everyone know that it was the same eel who bit Dumbass Dave both times
Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”
And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”
And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.
my liege if you keep having all of the guards come to your bedroom to read you bedtime stories, there will be no one to actually guard the castle during that time!
you sign up for the job because you want to save lives, and sometimes you get a chance to just be really, really, clear about "yes it is my job to save lives, there is an obstacle, and i am paid to use an axe to solve this problem"
