#i just dont think i’m capable of dealing with my past trauma while also trying to become an adult and shit

[jxmbi]

⠀

[bratz-kitten]

Hey girl, i need some advice and i hope you can help me. I don’t know if you’ve been through this but i guess so bc i saw some asks ago where you were talking about this and yeah

How do i deal with someone i love (ex partner) moving on so quickly and being with another girl?

And like, when that happened to you did you compare yourself to that girl? Because that’s also a huge issue of mine, im always comparing myself to her and stalking them like ugh HELP

OKAY FUCKING PREPARE YOURSELF

the first thing you’re gonna do is, hear me out: you’re not gonna get involved with ANYONE. not for a good while, not until you’re ready. trust me when i say that the one who moves on the fastest after the breakup is the one that’ll suffer the most. even though it might not seem like it now, even though he might be experiencing happiness right now, in some months reality’s gonna hit and it’s gonna hit him hard. why? because he didn’t process the breakup. he didnt allow himself the time to get over you and just moved on so he wouldn’t have to deal with the bad feelings. literally a few months after what happened to me, his best friend texted me saying how he tried covering up a huge hole with a quick bandaid and now he was realizing how it had only been a temporary solution to a permanent problem.

the second reason why you’re not gonna get involved with anyone else is because that’s what he’s expecting you to do. he immediately moved on to someone else in part to hurt you — and he WANTS you to move on with someone else so that he can feel the satisfaction of you trying to replace him. it’ll boost his ego and it’ll make it easier for him to warp his perception of you into someone who he doesn’t respect.

if there’s one thing i know is that men always come back, no matter how toxic or healthy what you had was. they come back when they sense you getting over them, they come back when they see how amazing you’re doing, they come back when they realize how much they messed up.

so what you’re gonna do is focus on yourself. im not just talking about a physical glow up, im talking mental. when i went through that i couldnt stop comparing myself to her, i used to have an amazing confidence but i let myself shatter it, constantly feeling like i wasn’t enough, like i wasn’t loveable, like i was replaceable just because he replaced me. you know what helped? working on my individuality. right now im focusing so much on developing my style, wearing things out of my comfort zone, things that make me happy, things that make me feel so sexy and confident. unique things. working on my makeup skills too and how to express myself with makeup. skincare and haircare too, there’s something so healing about taking care of yourself and being gentle and dedicating all the love and care you deserve and start seeing results. go watch hyram on youtube if you want to learn about skincare! it’s so much fun. about the mental part: astrology has helped me so much. you gotta be infatuated with yourself, with learning more about you and your past and your traumas and unhealed shit that you need to acknowledge and work on. also manifestation and saying daily mantras to myself about how pretty and smart and interesting i feel, and listening to music that makes me feel sexy. i find exercise boring bc i need to be constantly stimulated so what i started doing was dancing to just dance videos on youtube and now i cant stop LOL ITS SO FUN, gets my blood pumping makes me feel sexy when im dancing to rihanna songs AHDJDJDJ and makes me feel more energized. and for the love of god: PLEASE get a hobbie. you don’t need to do a lot right now, just ONE. hobbies give you so much self-worth and make you feel so capable and like you’re art creating art - i dont want to be cheesy but it is true that interesting people have interests, this is the time for you to get into something you’ve always wanted to do or that you used to love doing as a child but stopped because life got in the way.

i also want you to allow yourself to feel. don’t repress - whenever you want to cry, cry. whenever you miss him, allow yourself to. whenever you remember all the amazing things he did, or all the terrible things he did, or that YOU did, allow yourself to feel all that. time heals nothing, it’s you who’s gotta put in the work to heal yourself.

also, this is the time to focus on your friendships. join an online community or talk with your current friends, talk with them through what happened, be with people who can make you laugh just as hard as he did. communicate all that you feel to them, about your past, about how much you love them, doesn’t matter.

a thing that i did that helped so much was that i’d imagine him coming back and begging me to get back together with him, and i’d imagine being at a point that i felt so good by myself, that i was so confident and so focused on my shit that i’d tell him no. and eventually i became that girl, who was over him and deserved so much more than some childish kid who thinks i’m replaceable, and that’s exactly when he came back. so, please remember that just because you feel like he replaced you, it doesnt mean he did. you are irreplaceable, unfuckwitable, unlinkable, way too good for ANYONE.

and PLEASE STOP WITH THE STALKING LMFAO THAT’S THE WORST PART OF ALL, IT’S SO HARD TO STOP STALKING AND TO NOT ANALYZE EVERY LITTLE THING THAT HE LIKES AND TWEETS AND EVERYTHING THAT SHE POSTS BUT YOU’RE GONNA STOP THAT RIGHT NOW. you dont need to block them, there’s an option on twitter that lets you silence them so you’ll never see them on your tl, if it’s on other social medias where you can’t silence, unfollow and block. know that it doesn’t matter who’s prettier or smarter or hotter, SHE’S NOT YOUR COMPETITION. know that as much as you’re comparing yourself to her, she’s comparing herself to you ten times worse. sending your pics to her friends asking them if they think you’re pretty and shit. she’s not your enemy and it’s not her fault he’s an asshole. so you’ll just let them completely out of your life. also, out of sight out of mind. avoid seeing him. if you have work together or school together or ride the bus together or whatever, avoid all the places where you know he’ll be. make an effort to never be around the same places as him.

i wish you good luck my love, know that you’re the shit, literally the hottest and smartest bitch alive and that’s something he’ll never be able to take away from you. this is what helped me through the worst times, so take it with a grain of salt pls im not an expert. I LOVE YOU

[iturbide]

the fact that edelgard is the villain in 3/4 routes and yet intsys STILL glorifies her to no end enrages and annoys me. no other villain has been given that perspective of “well actually maybe they arent so bad” except for the hypocritical tyrant. even when she has *literally become an inhuman monster* intsys is still like “oh no dont worry she was right actually!” and it upsets me deeply

It upsets me, too, friend.  IntSys seems to really like glorifying people who don’t deserve it, especially in recent games (Walhart in Awakening, Rudolf in Echoes -- I can’t say if his whole ‘orchestrating a plan to have his son murder him’ thing is carry-over from Gaiden or not, but it definitely exists in the recent remake so I’m including it), but Edelgard actually ends up as a bit of a weird case. 

(I have a lot of thoughts about this, so I’m just going to cut preemptively.)

Now, I’m actually not opposed to Edelgard being the protagonist of the fourth route in Three Houses.  Anyone who’s been here a while knows that I generally see Grima, a figure that IntSys generally tries to paint as a rote villain, as at least a sympathetic villain (and possibly even a secret hero in the events of Awakening itself); it’s entirely possible for someone that’s a villain in most of their appearances to have legitimate reasons for what they’re doing and why, and revealing that in their personal route could be incredibly powerful if done well. 

And here’s the thing: Edelgard really is a compelling character, in large part because of her moral ambiguity.  I actually agree with her when she says that the Church of Seiros is corrupt at its core and the system needs to change.  She’s right about that!  While Seiros might have had decent reasons for establishing things this way, over the past thousand years human societies have changed while the church itself remained stagnant -- something potentially exacerbated by her selfish ambition to restore her mother -- and this has led to a structure that once served an important purpose becoming a toxic and destructive mess for humanity at large.  Edelgard has a completely valid point there, and it’s something that I could absolutely get on board with if she had gone about achieving change in some other way, because she does have other methods available to her that she writes off without real reason -- and even that can relate back in part to her deep trauma and difficulty trusting people after the betrayals she faced at the hands of her “uncle” and her own father’s powerlessness to stop the nightmare she and her siblings suffered through. 

IntSys probably could have crafted a narrative that showed from her perspective why she believed war against the Church was the only valid option available to her.  The issue is that she undercuts her own argument by targeting all of Fodlan, rather than specifically going after the Church: she doesn’t give the Kingdom and Alliance a “stay out of my way or else” warning, she literally turns her sights on the Kingdom as soon as the monastery falls and attempts to fully annex it once Cornelia sets up Dimitri’s fall, leaving the Alliance only because she has her hands full with Faerghus.  She didn’t have to take Cornelia up on her offer of making the Kingdom into the Dukedom of Faerghus and sending troops to finish the job: she could have just left the woman to her own devices, forcing the Twisted to utilize their own people to maintain and secure full control of the region while she worked on addressing the systemic issues, which would have had multiple benefits:

The Imperial Army doesn’t get overwhelmed and exhausted fighting in conditions they’re not equipped to deal with, leaving them stronger overall while the Twisted forces are potentially weakened by the same

Hubert is able to better assess the threat they’re dealing with, including learning their capabilities and possibly even where they’re coming from before Merceus

Edelgard actually puts her money where her mouth is and ends up helping the people she claims to be doing this for, rather than just using them as fodder for the war to grind up

Unfortunately, the way she’s written ends up just making her an imperialist.  She’s not just going after the corrupt core of the Church, she’s trying to forcibly unite the continent and return Fodlan to some long gone ideal where it was all united under the Imperial banner because she refuses to believe that Adrestia could have split by natural causes.

Crimson Flower ultimately ends up being a particularly egregious example of this glorification phenomenon in action because they give her a personal route that makes no effort to critically examine her actions and make her face consequences for them.  This, I think, does her a massive disservice as a character, because that aforementioned moral ambiguity that makes her so interesting could have been utilized to great effect -- and the proof is actually there already, because they do it in Dimitri’s route.

Dimitri is himself another interesting character, and outwardly presents as Edelgard’s polar opposite: he recognizes that he doesn’t have all the answers, struggles to figure out the correct course of action when presented with difficult subjects that have  no clear-cut answer -- like the fact that reliance on the Crest system is toxic for noble families, but it’s those very Crest-bearers and their Relics that help keep Faerghus safe from invasion by Sreng -- possesses incredible strength but specifically refrains using it in most cases to avoid harming others, and generally takes everyone’s problems onto himself to his own detriment.  He’s also deeply traumatized and was never given a chance to deal with it in a healthy manner, which contributes to how he snaps -- and Azure Moon starts with Dimitri being so far out of reach that you can’t unlock any of his supports and can’t even engage with him in the weekly discussions.  He’s lost himself to his survivor’s guilt and need for vengeance, considers himself to be nothing more than a monster, and has no qualms about killing if it helps advance his quest; as the story progresses, he faces a direct consequence for this murderous inclination in the form of Fleche who attempts to exact vengeance for her brother’s sake in the same way that he’s attempting to claim it for his family and friends -- only to lose Rodrigue, and have his dying words be a plea for Dimitri to live for himself rather than those who died before him, at which point Dimitri sets his sights on opposing Edelgard rather than killing her and seeing to atone for the crimes he committed.  While I think the game made the change a little too abrupt, it’s handled well overall, and shows a real development arc complete with both actions and their associated consequences that directly relate to Dimitri’s growth as a person.

Contrast this to Edelgard in general and Crimson Flower as a route.  Edelgard believes that she has all the answers despite not trying to engage with anyone outside her own House, decisively chooses what she believes to be the right and proper course of action regardless of how difficult the subject matter, possesses great strength (both physically and of sheer will) that she uses to dominate others, and forces others to join her in addressing what she sees as problems -- such as her line about making her own people into “worthy sacrifices” for her “higher cause.”  Crimson Flower is the only route where her attack on the monastery fails to capture Rhea, but once Byleth returns she sets her sights on attacking and subjugating a territory that has remained entirely neutral through the past five years, turns on the Twisted while she’s still in a vulnerable position which ultimately causes the deaths of at least a third of the forces she left at Arianrhod once they fire their warning shot, lies to her friends and allies about what happened there, murders her step-brother, and allows a city full of trapped civilians to burn unchecked while she deals with what she considers to be the “real” threat on the opposite side of the Faerghus capital -- and all of this is capped off with her never dealing with the Twisted, and cute little endcards that talk about how everything worked out fine and there were no problems ever, The End.  Edelgard doesn’t get a development arc in her route: she’s never challenged, she never faces real consequences (and the one she does face she literally lies about to her friends and then leaves as a problem to deal with later), and she pretty much ends the game exactly where she started it: completely assured that she made the right choices.  The moral ambiguity inherent in her character is instead cast as “of course she’s in the right, she’s so great and there’s nothing at all wrong with what she’s doing or how she’s going about it, isn’t she wonderful?”

At least in the main game, Hegemon Husk Edelgard is treated with real gravity, shown as the pinnacle of her drive to see her ambition come to fruition and the tragic consequence of her inability to change course and find another path.  The Forging Bonds event just takes the CF brush and paints her actions as the right ones, even though what made her so compelling is that her reasons were right while her methods were horrific.  Edelgard really could have been wonderful.  The potential is right there in her character.  But IntSys completely botched the execution of it, so that her route feels rushed, incomplete, and at best unsatisfying (or, if you’re me, utterly disgusting for how it glorifies imperialistic conquest), and her Heroes appearances only make it worse.

[zuzuslastbraincell]

Katara!

KATARA KATARA KATARA

why I like them

oh god where do i even start. katara just contains so many multitudes - she's sweet and feminine and caring and attentive but she's never reduced to just that, she's never just 'the girl', she's also allowed to get mad, to be petty, to laugh at her brother, to be headstrong and stubborn, to express vulnerability, to cry and to laugh, to make ridiculous facial expressions and *be* very expressive. she's dealing with a lot of trauma not simply from the loss of her mother but that loss represents also how her tribe have been decimated by the fire nation, how she's the last waterbender, how all this pressure exists on her shoulders (but also pride, but also determination, to bring it back) and that is expressed subtly throughout the series with the same depth and love that male characters are afforded with regard to their respective traumatic experiences. and despite all this she never tries to stop making the world good? She's always pushing for change, she's always wanting to make things better, she's relentless and doesn't give up when it comes to her vision for a better world... she has such a big heart. and that coexists with a deep anger in her, and deep hurt. Not to make an ocean metaphor so early on but she's as deadly and deep as the ocean but she chooses to be kind and warm and that's so powerful.

why i don't

honnestly while katara's instincts to mother people are a sad symptom of how she was forced to grow up to soon and automaically asigns herself a role of emotional responsibility she has mixed feelings about, i know that if katara tried to mother me, i would be annoyed. but that sounds more like a me problem.

favourite episode

oh it's either the episode where she beats the fucking shit out of pakku or it's the southern raiders. the first one because it's so gratifying to see how she's grown and developed as a bender and really come into her own. the second because... god i love how *messy* the southern raiders is, and it really taps into what i love about katara - she's flawed, she runs off on an ill-thought out revenge mission with zuko, she's got a great capability for darkness as she quite seriously considers murdering a man she has every right to loathe and to kill - but she chooses against it, in the end. it would not be right for her, if not him. she chooses what's right for her in the end.

favourite season

I'm gonna be a wee bit controversial and say book 1 had the best conception of katara's arc from student to master and really saw her grow and flourish, from someone yelling at her brother' oafish prejudice to a real master, that really solidified her as an idealist and presented that as the strength that is, that showed her struggling with petty jealousy of aang's progress and had her stumble in ways that made her character comeplling and interesting - like what an introduction to her character! book 2 had some fantastic moments but i can't think of anything particularly remarkable about hee character arc - largely because it tied into aang's romantic arc i think at this point. book 3 had some absolutely fantastic moments (scam queens katara and toph!! painted lady!! southern raiders!! the final agni kai) that really shone but also book 3 lays a lot of groundwork for fanon i hate (e.g. katara as the mom friend - wish that headcanon would die tbh)

favourite line

fuck there's a lot of good ones but my underrated fave is when sokka says he's kissed a girl before but she's never met her and katara says 'Who? Gran-gran? I've met gran-gran' and it's bruuutaaall

but my favourite serious line is 'I will never ever give up on people who need me'. powerful.

favourite outfit

water tribe anything!! and i actually think her book one/book two braids are her best hair. underrated katara hair. personally she looks just adorable in her parka in the flashback to when she was like. eight.

OTP

katara/personal fulfilment

katara/happiness

katara/fulfilling her goals and dreams

katara/loving minor background character who is never named

there's some ships i like in AU situations - yuetara is actually one i lov, especially with waterbender yue, i just love the whole sea/moon thing as well as katara and yue rebelling in loud/quiet ways, being girlfriends who refuse to have their lives defined by the expectations of older men, who have a great sense of duty towards their nations and won’t let gendered expectations stop them.

and most of you know i like the messy drama of katara/azula in a lighter AU situation where they're like, school or academic rivals, and the legacy of imperialism isn’t quite so personal (and azula makes better choices, obviously), but it’s not as much as i “ship” them as i just find the potential dynamic interesting, they’re both driven by a sense of duty for their home, it’s just that means *very* different things depending if you’re SWT or FN.

none of them are OTPs though - they’re more just fun thought experiments

brotp

katara & sokka - absolutely love their sibling dynamic its amazing. both have been impacted negatively by the shit in their lives and are not always dealing with it in functional ways but theyre there for each other, through thick and thin, always have each other's backs, they roast each other and bicker and sometimes make stupid decisions and sometimes lash out but at the end of the day their love pulls through, they’re able to work past those conflicts.

katara & aang - honestly while i feel kataang was just so poorly executed in the show (listen guys I just can’t after ember island players, i know that was a bad episode, but i can’t) & i cant imagine katara wanting to leave the south pole after the war for long spells (it would have to be long distance love, lots of profound and heartfelt letters and occasional visits, if anything, but i dont know if that’s what katara wants or needs? so maybe it wouldn’t pan out?), but regardless, i really do think these two had a life-changing friendship where each really represented hope for each other, that's at the core of it, they both truly believe in each other, and inspired each other. katara & aang good.

a headcanon

chief katara anyone?? chief katara?!?! 

oh oh OH i also think that katara, while primarily a combat bender during the war, actually takes to healing a lot more after the show and gets proper healing training at some point with the help of a trained medical expert and maybe yugoda. tbh i feel like the show was a bit dismissive of healing as an ability - i feel like having that is *extremely* useful in any combat situation, you always have a medic on hand - but i understand why katara, who wanted to be recognised as powerful regardless of her gender, and wanted to hold herself in a fight alongside sokka & aang, pushed for combat waterbending training because that is what 'powerful' looks like to her in the moment. obviously katara is capable of incredible healing feats (see: saving aang) but i think given we see her as a healer in lok (not a decision i necessarily disagree with) would mean a shift in focus. i think katara actually comes to realise she likes healing a great deal, but really she excels in all aspects of waterbending and is the south’s most respected master who helped rejuvenate southern style waterbending  

unpopular opinion

the main reason people think katara is straight is because we see her have very few meaningful interactions with other girls outside of toph. ATLA as a show is a bit romance obsessed, and very heteronormative in that regard, and so interactions with minor characters almost always line up with a potential crush for sokka or katara, and later, zuko (suki, haru, jet, yue, song, jin....). we rarely see katara build friendships with other girls and it’s such a damn shame.

(anyway bi katara for life)

a wish

the version of the puppetmaster we saw was actually fire nation propaganda, i feel like katara would have felt deep compassion for a prisoner of war and after maybe some clashes, would have agreed to help smuggle her out of the fire nation and secure passage home for hama, and tried to assure her that she still has a place there. the treatment of hama in that episode was awful (but also hama was written to be almost cartoonishly evil, very much an evil witch in her cottage in the spooky woods? like the whole horror movie / spooky story opening was such a big tell) and tbh i reject the thesis that we saw ‘katara’s dark potential’ in that episode completely, or that bloodbending as a power is inherently dark, or katara’s use of it to stop hama ‘corrupted’ her. I feel like katara might feel this way as a teenager perhaps but with time (she can be a little black and white at times), and especially with more training as a healer, i think she might realise that’s not the case, she’ll realise that she was right to try and oppose hama, her elder (she was lashing out rather than really trying to oppose the fire nation), and it wasn’t a betrayal of her or her beliefs, but also her use of bloodbending wasn’t wrong or evil inherently at all? and maybe she’d find ways to use it for healing purposes? anyway my wish is that, i like the idea that they meet again, speak about their differences, reconcile a little / come to an understanding, and katara learns more from hama again

an oh-god-please-don't-ever-happen

anything where katara’s character is reduced to a comforter or a healing device for a man and his trauma. particularly zuko. (they don’t have that dynamic in canon thankfully, zuko would never, zuko respects her too much)

5 words to describe them:

idealistic, hard-working, powerful, headstrong, kind

my nickname for them:

chief. or comrade. :^)

[icharchivist]

Thanks a bunch too! ^_^ Road has always been one of my most favorite dgm characters. Before I just really liked her as a villian. But these past few arcs have really given her a lot of depth and dynamic action. She's really grown into one of the more interesting characters to ponder about. I'm always really reevaluating my theories about her and Neah. Before I thought she had a close bond w/Mana and that made her one of the Noahs less predujice when dealing w/Nea. But nope. She apparently -

2 hated Mana or at least wasn't against using and lying to him. That alone opens up a bunch more possibilities on Road and Nea's past. Nea being so connected to Mana would give Road no reason to personally care about him. She can also hide her true body elsewhere (like she did on the Ark). It's possible Nea didn't kill Road because he flat out couldn't. Road and Nea also haven't seen each other yet. It not be because of any sentiment on both parts. It could be Road despises Nea so much his-

3 very presence could trigger her like it does Joyd's memory in Tykki (except maybe worse). Nea is technically a even greater source of trauma and hatred for Road now. The real Mana at least doesn't want to be the Earl or the Pillar. Nea does (even if only to save Mana) and butchered everyone Road was close to. Leaving her to suffer forever alone (until Wisely showed up anyway). With all this info it's hard for me to imagine Road having any positive feelings for Nea. She obviously disagrees -

4 w/his objective despite having some kind of agreement with Cross herself (who is 99% devoted to Nea's side). It is possible she was convinced by Cross Nea will offer everyone the best solution. But I still think her and Wisely have a different mission in mind. Wisely after all hates Nea (which again makes me wonder if this sentiment is shared by Road since the 2 are working together secretly for something). Honestly that mission might be Allen or at least capable of including him. Both -

5 of them want Allen safe from Nea. Road does things to keep Allen grounded to his identity and resisting Nea's control. Wisely wants Allen cut off from Innocence and on their side. Despite seeing Nea as a threat he openly likes Allen. Shoot Road has more reason to feel negative toward Nea since he's essentially killing her Allen. I would not be surprised of Road got ptsd triggers after hearing about Nea devouring Allen's existence since it would once again remind her how Nea killed those she-

6 (whoops sorry I had to go. And... O kind of forgot where I last left off x_x. I roll with and reply later what I forgot). Basically Road has and is losing a lot to Nea. Even if he's trying to save Mana (who she now possibly seems to care about) she's going to lose Allen to him. More then that he's probably running contrary to her goals. Not calling Road and Wisely secret heroes. Allen alone is most likely going to be the one who figures out how to stop this war of reckless hate. But I'm just-

7 both her and Nea seem to have a far more complicated history now that it's revealed she did not care for Mana (something I imagine Be a saw very clearly). I also imagine she did not care for Nea too much because of the nature of his existence (honestly this explains so much why all Noah hated Nea). Both Nea and Road have plans to stop things. Both I bet are bad neas in some way. But maybe Road is willing to give Allen's way a chance now that she cares more in general for her own people.

ohh yeah i can imagine what you mean! 

Road is honestly such a fantastic character, it’s just that before last chapter it was so hard to figure out her motivations. It was always clearly not fully with the Noah even if she’s all “family is the most important”, and her care for Allen truly became genuine.

I think she didn’t hate Mana though, probably the second option you said, she wasn’t against lying to him. there was a Plan, a Script to Follow, and Mana was part of it.

I think it’s possible that Road may have ressented the previous Earl for leaving them and spliting and perhaps she projected on Mana and Nea but in the end i think she probably didn’t see them as heir own person because she had known what the “full earl” was supposed to be. 

I could see her being caucious about that.

As for Nea it’s very hard to say how she would have felt for him before the massacre but the massacre sure made her at least ressent him and i think she hates him for it...

but then there’s how she cries remembering Nea’s last words to Mana, with that smile on that face - and i think that even if it hurts she could see the love of the two brothers and was touched by it. She can hate what Nea did to her family while still at least not hating this part of him if that makes sense?

I think Road’s survival is completely due to her Dream form though, i think Nea wouldn’t have hesitated to kill her when he went on rampage. Imo i think everything Nea did was for Mana. And if Mana was to be sacrified (regardless of Road’s feelings about it), Nea could have wanted to “become the Earl” instead of him in order to save his brother from being a sacrifice. But for that it means people must have forgotten they chose Mana as their Earl. So killing all the Nea would do a “soft reset” of the Noah memories and Nea could pretend to be the Earl and save Mana from it. I think that could have been Nea’s initial plan and thus Road’s survival had no place in it.

Joyd seems to be the one with the clearest feelings against Nea considering the smile that pops up when Nea brings up the face looking like his - Joyd must be playing something on the long run but it is at least pettiness against Nea at the minimum.

But Wisely and Road are hard to get through. For Wisely i don’t know how much he’s actually wanting Allen to join them - right now he’s stuck in the Noah family, unlike Road who can pretend to be somewhere else. So he gotta follow the Earl’s order in some shape or another, not really show a will of his own. If any will there was, it was that he didn’t want to hang around Sheryl’s looking through the Bookmen’s head so perhaps he stayed out to keep an eye on Tyki considering Joyd is the most awakened Noah aside from Road and Wisely at this point.

But as of now i do think that both Road and Wisely dont’ want Nea back. Whenever it is to protect the Earl or because they grew to love Allen or both. 

And I agree with the rest, I think currently Road has all the reasons to hate Nea and now there is perhaps another path they can try out to protect her family. 

since Road loves her family and wants to protect them, while we know they are set up to be sacrified in some way, Road could be willing to take a road that would protect her family while still carrying on what plans they had to start with.

And i think Allen offers this opportunity in some way.

So i could definitl see that and that’s fascinating! i’m so glad of her development so far i’m just... so curious about it all ahhh

[my-nameless-bliss]

You seem like an understanding person and Ive been having a hard time. I was raped about a year ago and I literally can't trust any man I meet. Ive been looking for a job and I feel uncomfortable applying anywhere that I might have male coworkers. I got a call today but the manager was a guy so I didnt call back. Im so scared to be around men and its probably irrational but I dont know how I'll ever get better. Its impossible to avoid men everywhere but I cant leave my house somedays

Hi, anon. First of all, I just want to say that what you’re feeling isn’t irrational. Something horrible happened, and your brain is trying to protect you. It may feel like your reactions are too extreme, but fear/discomfort around something that hurt you is perfectly understandable. I know it must be frustrating for that instinct to still be this strong, especially since some time has passed, but your feelings are completely valid. People avoid things that have hurt them in the past all the time. Yes, it’s so much worse when that thing happens to be something that’s as prevalent and difficult to avoid as men, but your feelings still make sense.

If you’re still having difficulties dealing with what happened, there’s nothing wrong with that. Trauma is awful, and it affects everyone with different levels of intensity. There’s no ‘correct’ amount of time it should take to start feeling safe or comfortable again. If you’re in a position where you can continue putting work on the back burner, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with letting yourself take as much time as you need. Recovery also looks different for everyone, and if it takes you a while to feel comfortable enough to be in that type of environment, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with respecting that feeling. You need to take care of yourself, in whatever timeline happens to be necessary.

Of course, I know that a lot of people don’t have the luxury of not taking a job as soon as possible, so this is the most important thing I can say: This isn’t something that I’m educated about, it’s not something I’ve ever been trained in dealing with, and my advice can only go so far. If you’re struggling, and you want help dealing with your trauma, finding a therapist or counsellor who deals with trauma recovery would be so much more beneficial to you than I ever could be. I can only say what I think seems helpful; I have no actual experiencing helping someone deal with this sort of thing. A professional would know what to do, and would be much more capable of giving you actual help.

I’m so sorry that you’re dealing with this. Feeling helpless against your emotions - and feeling like those emotions will never change - is something I do understand, and it’s absolutely shitty. But please remember that there are people out there who can help you, if you need help. What you’re feeling is understandable, not irrational. You deserve to feel safe and comfortable, and to not have to put yourself in a situation where you feel unsafe or unhappy. If you ever want to talk more, or just vent, I am always here to listen, and I will always do my best to support you - even if my best isn’t as much as you deserve. 💜💜💜