My Favourite Chords

Creating Codsworth:

“I never really think of him as a hunk of metal or a robot,” says actor Stephen Russell. “And I imagine he might say the same about himself.”

Russell is talking about his performance as Mister Handy, a role he reprises in Fallout 4. As players are now discovering, this iconic automaton has evolved quite a bit since Fallout 3. But, mind you, we’re not just referring to the utilitarian machines roaming the wasteland, which might seem somewhat similar to those in the previous games. Russell also voices a very special Mister Handy: Codsworth, the steadfast servant to the Lone Wanderer – both before and long after the bombs have dropped. It’s a star turn for the resourceful robot, who emerges as a key character in the player’s journey. And it’s a role that Russell cherishes because of the range of emotions it allows him to convey.

“I was best off voicing him if I would treat him as any other sentient being capable of joy and frustration, pleasure and pain, affection, anger, exhilaration, exhaustion,” Russell says. “He has a lot of heart.”

she was just accepted into 3 major art schools. she wrote me a letter. inside was a picture from when she was younger. monochrome pink. 

And its not really like that, at least not to me.

You stop getting the butterflies when you live together. Your heart no longer speeds up when you see them, but instead, everything calms down. When youre in the room with them, you feel calm, and secure. When you cuddle them you feel your heart beat slow, and the sound of their breathing carry you towards comfort. It doesnt feel like a roller coaster anymore, it feels like home.

You don’t sleep curled up with each other every night, legs twisted between theirs so tight its hard to tell where yours begin and theirs end.

Instead, you sleep comfortably, side by side, sometimes facing different directions. But every night, you find yourself scooting backwards on the bed so you bump into them. You snuggle against their arm, or stroke their hair as they fall asleep. There are nights when my boyfriend, in his sleep, reaches around me and pulls me to him, like a child with his teddybear, like I am his comfort.

 In the wee hours of the morning before the dawn breaks, when the world is blue and you see through cracked eyes, you curl into their chest and inhale their scent before drifting back to sleep. 

Kisses aren’t always romantic and firey anymore. But there are so much more of them now. There are cold kisses when you’re eating ice cream in the summer, and sticky kisses over breakfast pancakes. There’s “im leaving now” kisses, and “one more kiss before you go” kisses. There’s sleepy morning kisses before work, when you don’t remember the alarm going off but instead the press of their lips against yours is what brings you into the day.

There’s kisses before sleep, and, you are so sweet with the things you do kisses. There’s kisses because you treat animals so tenderly, and I’m so glad i’m with you and not someone else kisses. There’s quick kisses in the aisles of the grocery store, when its loud and you gravitate together, when instead of having your own personal space and their own personal space, its both of yours together, and you step into their chest to take up less area together. 

You don’t always text each other with confessions of love and care like you used to, because that’s a given now, and you’ve moved on to quirky inside jokes about the life youve built together. You share looks of exasperation and amusement in public, your own little world against the outside one. 

Relationships aren’t always a fairy tale. They’re not always fireworks and sparks, at least, after the start.

But they are a quiet rhythm and hum of love and care. It’s not a fire in your soul, but one in your hearth, keeping you warm and comfortable, comforting you as you drowsily drift into sleep.