#a tool

[ayatxt]

everybody knows im a good girl, officer

[girlzoot]

The King’s Wit was not a silly court fool such as one might find in other kingdoms. He was a sword, a tool maintained by the king. Insulting others was beneath the dignity of the king, so just as one used gloves when forced to handle something vile, the king retained a Wit so he didn’t have to debase himself to the level of rudeness or offensiveness. —Brandon Sanderson/The Way of Kings

[leaelakey]

Only bellamort fans deny that Nagini was the most significant being to Voldemort. They're deluded like that.

[devoutjunk]

there are my ever present obsessions: myth & folklore, fairytales, antigone, the gothic, retellings, ghosts/hauntings, Places that are Alive and Want something, the sea, the mountains etc.

and then there are my Current Weird New Things, the obsessions/interests that come into my life like lightning strikes and light everything up. Right now, for some reason, it’s fiction set in medieval Europe, particularly stories that deal w/ shifting currents of faith and allegiance, and paired w/ that, oddly stories set in space, usually futuristic, often dystopian. The two seem superficially so different, and often can be when it comes to genre and style, but I keep finding so many common or mirrored resonances there as well: the sense of living on the limits of “civilization,” always aware of how that natural world could, if it wished, swallow you whole; the interrogation of what it means to be human & who gets to be human & what happens when you’re forced to confront the interiority and complexity of someone you’d designated as “alien;” crises of faith, of language, of definition; an obsession with the apocalyptic: a constant preparing or mourning for/resurrecting from the end; the beauty and terror of the things humans make: spaceships, cathedrals, the written word, the science to save or take a life. The way we think we own what we make. That it’s stable, unchanging, ours. But we don’t. The things we make take on lives of their own. A man preaches earthly poverty and self-denial and several decades later another man burns at the stake for echoing his words. Everyone is alien & heretic to someone, somewhere; the kings and commanders do not have our best interests at heart, they want more land, more stars, flags planted in palaces and on planets. In historical fiction, like in sci-fi, the world is often changing too fast for people to keep up.

A girl in an England-before-it-is-England climbs over Roman ruins, wonders what other wonders those long-gone strangers built. People tell her the world was greater then. The countryside recovers from their greatness; new growth creeps over the old roads. In her lifetime the girl will worship one god, then another. Speak several languages, and never be sure, not entirely, which one she thinks of as hers. They say there was an Eden once. Maybe there was, but she doesn’t mourn it. She’s only ever know the world as it is—

An astronaut hovers high above a ruined earth, examines a sunken city through a telescope. Algae slicks the crumbled skyscrapers, and slowly stunted trees begin to grow, splitting up through dirt and concrete. The astronaut has never climbed a tree. Once, whole swathes of country were swallowed in forest. People tell her the world was greater then. But she has only ever known ship & station; brief trips planetside for yearly vaccinations. She’s not sure the old world was greater, or better, or pure. She thinks maybe it was only ever the world, torn up by the bitter feuds of kings, ending and beginning over and over, one after the other, an endless orbit she cannot help but love, even as its gravity grinds down her bones. Death not now or soon but one day & sure. But oh, she thinks, what cities, what forests will grow from her grave—

[duskkodesh]

I'm just going to leave these here. Yes, I had to put the swim trunks first. Reasons.

[episims]

Hi! May I ask how do you roll aspirations and traits for your sims?

Hi! Sure! For traits, I give every toddler one trait from their other parent and one from their other (a system stolen from @deedee-sims). I use a random number generator that's set on 1-5 to decide which traits get passed down.

Whenever they age up after that I just use the trait randomizer to roll a random trait for them. I have all the limitations turned off, if I get a trait that feels too conflicting I just randomize a new one.

And the aspiration I also roll with the random number generator. I haven't quite decided yet how to pick up the secondary one! I might just go with what feels suitable for the sim.

[svcgry]

Rathain being a descendent of Thuringwethil tho. ( a messenger / vampire who worked for Sauron in the 1st Age ). Despite having fought many battles for his kind and Thuringwethil / Sauron, he was presumed killed during the Battle of Fornost. but in reality, he merely disappeared and lived near Dol Guldur in hiding, pretty much spending his time healing ( hence the ugly ass scars ) and living in shadow.