Ruble

Husband and Former GameDev #actuallyautistic and advocate.

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

@MoltenSlowa @MacticsG1 @Destiny2Team I see no problems here.

I think you should let him.

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

@A_dmg04 figured you might enjoy this.

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

The room we kept

There is a room I have kept for ten years
that does not exist
in any house I have lived in.
It has six chairs.
It has a low hum underneath everything, six people breathing.
It has a door that never quite closes,
and a light by that door
that none of us remember turning on,
that none of us have ever thought to turn off.

We come in on Tuesdays, mostly.
Sometimes Fridays.
Sometimes a Sunday afternoon
when the week has been the kind of week
that needs somewhere to go.
We do not knock.
We do not say hello.
One of us says you ready?
and the rest of us, wherever we are
in our kitchens, our cars, our small rented lives,
say yeah, I’m ready,
and the room fills up
the way a quiet house fills up when
everyone gets home.

I could not tell you half their last names.
I could tell you how each of them breathes
in the half-second before a jump.
I could tell you whose dog is barking in the background tonight,
whose kid just wandered in to say goodnight,
whose marriage is good this month
and whose is quieter than usual.
I could tell you the exact pitch of the laugh
that comes when I die first,
which I do, often, and on purpose sometimes,
because the laugh is worth more than the clear.

One of them got married last spring.
I was not there.
He sent me a clip from the dance floor anyway.
The DJ had stumbled into the song
we used to play on raid-clear nights,
and for half a second, in a rented tuxedo,
he thought of me,
and then he went back to his wife,
which was exactly right,
which was the whole point of all of it,
the way the best things we build
are the things that let us go
back to the rest of our lives,
lighter.

There was a week I could not find any words.
I logged on with nothing in my chest.
One of them, I won’t say which,
did not ask, did not push, did not try to fix.
He just said “patrol?”
and we walked nowhere for an hour and a half,
shooting nothing that mattered,
chasing small lights across a small moon,
and somewhere between the silence and the stars
I remembered I was a person
who knew how to start a sentence.
He never mentioned it again.
That, too, was the whole point.

The years did what years do.
Babies arrived. Jobs ended.
Parents got sick. Some of them got better.
Some of them did not.
We moved cities.
We moved countries.
We moved on, and then we moved back,
the way people do,
and whole seasons disappeared between resets,
whole lives happened in the gap
between one expansion and the next,
and then one night, without warning,
the mic would click on again
and nobody would ask where you had been.
They would just save you a spot in the fireteam.
The lobby music would hum the same low hum.
Your callout would arrive
the same half-second late it always did,
and I would know that voice
the way I know my own name,
the way I know the ceiling above my bed,
the way I know the shape of my mother’s hands.

It was never the loot,
though we lied and said it was.
It was never the lore,
though we argued about it until two in the morning.
It was never the perfect clear,
though we chased it for months and never got it clean,
or the title, or the gilded seal,
or the gun we farmed for a hundred hours
and put down two weeks later.
It was the room.
It was the door.
It was the light by the door.
It was the standing invitation,
the chair pulled out,
the small unspoken understanding
that whenever you could make it back,
for as long as you needed,
there was somewhere
you already belonged.

Across a galaxy.
Across a continent.
Across a life
none of us ever quite figured out how to live.

Maybe that is the secret
no one printed on the box.
Maybe what we were really building
all those Tuesdays,
all those wipes,
all those countdowns into the dark,
was not a Guardian, or a clear, or a kill count,
but a habit.
A simple, stubborn habit
of showing up for each other,
again,
in a world that does not always make that easy.
A standing Tuesday.
A standing promise.
A standing love
that never needed a name
to know what it was.

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

@A_dmg04 @MoltenSlowa and I have done it legit

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

@MoltenSlowa

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

@MoltenSlowa Uno reverse Mitch. I cried every day

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

@RosaNagashi Nice!!

Hopefully you didn’t have to sell an organ for the ram, but it looks like it’s going to be a solid build!

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

This is for @alex_frostwolf @just_benn @PyroInsane @Sjosz @MoltenSlowa @GriffinWB And any guardian that has had that room in their life.

The room may change , but the door is always open and the light is always on.

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

And when they call it a monument now,
I know exactly what they mean.
Though I don’t think they mean what I mean.

A monument is not the end of a thing.
A monument is the shape a thing leaves
in the people who carried it.

So if the stars go quiet,
and the tower lights grow dim,
and the servers, in the long slow way of servers,
finally fall asleep,
I will still hear them laughing
when the music starts again
in whatever room comes next.
I will still know the breath before the jump.
I will still know the joke
that comes when I am first one down.

Somewhere, in a kitchen, in a car,
in a small rented life,
one of them will say you ready?

And wherever I am,
whoever I have become by then,
I will say,

Yeah.

I’m ready.

Let’s go.

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

I’m getting Mitch a new keyboard for his birthday

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

Three, two, one beachball
Here we go again
I couldn't tell you half your last names
but I'd know you anywhere, my friends
Same patient stars
same six voices
same room, same clan
Funny how the journey was the reason
Funny how we understand it at the end

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

3500 is going to happen tomorrow.

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

I did it!

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

@he4rteyed Congrats!

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

@BwuhMG You ever need a chill tank I got you BB

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

I dont think I can run anymore

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

3300

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

@JaydenzOmega I’d run keys with you! I also hate lugging and will also tank as well outside of pushing.

[Ruble @JoshRuble]

@EziMoonpiercer Nice! Just know you don’t have to pug! If you ever need a tank lemme know!