The duality of man is thinking “children cannot help themselves and we all need to be patient with them as they explore what it means to be human in public” and also “damn, I wish this crying baby was not on the plane rn :/“
Just as courage is not the absence of fear but doing the brave thing in spite of it, patience is not the absence of irritation but doing the kind thing in spite of it.
a ‘hot minute’ can be both a very short period of time, and a very long one. however, a hot minute in the past (“It’s been a hot minute since I’ve seen you!”) is most often a long duration, while a hot minute in the future (“I’ll be with you in a hot minute!”) is most often a short duration. this suggests some very strange things about the temperature of time.
What still pisses me off abt fallout 4 is how, in simple text, it is a doomed narrative haunted by both your dead spouse and the child you’re tearing the wasteland apart to find. You walk through the park you conceived Shawn in and find children’s comic books he would have liked. You go to places you graduated, or were set to give a speech at. You scavenge from the store you probably bought your baby food from. Your home is literally torn asunder and unrecognizable but you recognize it. You pass houses you might have had friends at. Dealerships you might have gotten your car from. The robotics store you got Codsworth from, the only other person who knows what you mean and who you’re talking about when you go “I used to take my partner here for dinner,” “I had photos of Shawn in this child’s swing,” “This was the first road I drove on when I got my license.”
Like. How fucking haunting. You’re the ghost. You’re not the one who survived. You died and came back, and to the ones who’ve grown up here, you’re Wrong. You don’t act like anyone they’ve met before. And they don’t seem to notice all the things that are incorrect. Everything you are is Wrong. You’re a puzzle piece removed and shoved back into it once it was chopped up and sewn back together, and you don’t fit. But you’re there. Your partner is not with you. They died when you didn’t. And your baby, probably one of the last babies before the War, is somewhere out there.
And it’s genuinely fucking haunting but the game just does not portray that feeling of wrongness and desperation.
Sometimes I walk through places that I absolutely adored and they just don’t exist anymore and I feel crushed about it. I imagine it’s that feeling but turned up to a 100 and combined with grief for the people that were there as well
ALT
