#where has my life gone?

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Vine_Boom.mp3

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[zeb-z]

I just think Tallulah gets to be upset about this. “It’s not Wilbur’s fault” “He’s not a bad dad” “He loves his daughter so much” yes! These are all true! And it’s not his fault! But he’s still not there. And Tallulah has gone through so much and still hasn’t seen him, the one time he was around was the one time she wasn’t, and all she has are letters and “I’m thinking of you always” and things that used to be theirs together, but he’s still not there. She’s waited and she’s been patient and she’s loved him all the same, and he’s still not there. Like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, from the happy milestones to the traumatic events, he’s still not there.

She knows that it’s not his fault, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s absent. That in and of itself just adds to the sorrow, because she knows why he’s gone, and she’s been told time and time again it doesn’t mean he doesn’t care, she knows this - it doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting, that it doesn’t hurt, that she doesn’t yearn for her father to be there more than anything in the world, and he’s just not there.

So yes, she gets to be upset, and be caustic, and stomp her feet and write bitter messages, and be angry and vitriolic, because she’s a little girl missing her father, who feels things with her whole heart and soul - and that means she gets to feel the ugly parts of it, too.

[eyesofshan-if]

fucking around with twine for a bit

[dollya-robinprotector]

I know I have a habit of always keeping things to myself… But why am I still surprised when people don’t know what I know?

[ubashaaa-archived]

Going to stay,

Are you going to stay?

Can you stay here in the moment?

We've only got a moment.

[theotherrichardpapen]

...because any moment may be our last. everything is more beautiful because we're doomed.

[pansyfemme]

now is he reallyyyy a self insert oc if i made him during an obsessive thought spiral during one of the darkest periods of my life and based his entire personality and mindset on my perception of myself at that time but i’ve since left that period and experienced major personal growth and now am happier and more fufilled than i’ve ever been in my life the only remenants being my main oc being horifically depressed and focused on thought processes that are now alien to me except for the brief periods im writing him and realize im more so speaking from memory than from his perspective

[kedreeva]

I would love to hear about the otherworld marketplace

oh right!

Okay, so the REASON I went the expo yesterday, when we weren't planning on it previously because it is Distant, is because my friend that takes me had to exchange some caging, and the crafters were going to be at the show, so why not vend as long as we're out there if we're driving 2+ hours each way anyway. So we vend the show, it goes well, we have fun, everyone's packing up... except the vendor she's exchanging caging with, who tell her they're going to be at least another hour packing up etc and also they don't have the cages with them, we'll have to drive to their brick and mortar shop.

Well, whatever, that means we can go grab some food. We look up sushi places, grab the first/closest one, and drive out. GPS takes us to a mexican restaurant. we fiddle with the GPS and when swapped to "walking" it tells us actually it's across the street. We can't see across the street because of trees, so we drive across the street, and there's a Mall. Like a legit, old mall- and I realize with a bit of dawning horror that I KNOW this mall, it was built a couple of years before I went to college, it was shiny and new when I first visited it, we used to come here often. I did not recognize it because it looked like it at been through some kind of apocalypse. So I turn to my friend and say, we have a choice, we either go in and get Mall Sushi from a food court, or we pick someplace else. She stops her car in the middle of a road, not a parking spot, and we both look at the list of sushi places nearby. I see one just plainly called "sushi market" and it looks normal and there's a picture of its storefront indicating it is, perhaps, not Mall Food Court Sushi, and we take off.

I am expecting a Hole In The Wall sort of strip mall place like the two near my childhood home, but instead we enter The City.

The City, if you do not know, is the same place. You enter into it and you may or may not have been to this city before but you have been to The City and it all looks the same, really. The shops maybe have different names, but it's unclear if that is because time has passed and the coral reef of storefronts has grown/exchanged inhabitants or if this is a different place entirely and actually it doesn't matter. Which street you entered from may determine which stores you see, but you are always entering The City.

This place we are going is a hundred yards outside of The City, and looks like it. It is the same 100 yards outside of The City that exists down by my little sister. If the air had tasted a little different, I would have told you for sure I was in North Carolina visiting my sister, not a little bit lost in northwestern Michigan. We park in a little street parking place and look around hesitantly. There's a storefront for a bagel shop. There's a storefront for a local barbeque (local to ME, not this place, or at least I thought that was the case until I looked it up at home.... they don't have a shop local to me. I have eaten there a dozen times, at work, with others. it does not exist near me. this is how The City works though, sometimes you have to accept that). The parking lot is almost empty. The street is vacant. it's quiet. Nothing is happening in this location. The building indicated is unmarked, plain brick. No windows except at the bagel shop and barbeque's storefront windows. They do not have doors of their own, only a set of unmarked, double doors between them.

But, the GPS insists it is here, so we go through those blank doors, and step into an Otherworld. Inside, is a busy marketplace.

The floors are all dark, smooth concrete. Above is all grubby, teal-grey steel and wood, the walls are covered in bright-colored artwork. There are stalls that don't look permanent fashioning the interior into a maze. This is the bible belt of michigan. There's Thai food, sushi, a mochi donut shop. There's a stall devoted to popcorns, both in different flavors but also from specialty kinds of kernels. There's a wall of soda in glass bottles from companies I've never heard of. There were four shelves devoted to black cherry sodas. Floor to ceiling shelves of ginger beer, birch beer, root beer. There's a pastry shop around a corner where I stood and watched someone slicing a cheesecake six inches tall, decorated in strawberries like a painting. We pass a charcuterie shop to reach a wine and cheese bar, which is across from a seafood shop peddling fresh catch from the great lakes, which is next to a deli of local meats, across from a shop exclusively dedicated to seasoning rubs for meat. Tucked into a back corner is a chocolaterie selling bonbons and hand scooped michigan-made ice cream. There's some kind of reunion taking place up at the front of the place. There are old ladies buying popcorn. There's a guy looking at the soda walls, dressed like it's 3am and he couldn't sleep.

The place is packed, but there's hardly any cars in the parking lot so I have to assume people walked here. We dodge people and make it to the sushi counter, where we are greeted by a young woman who has sparkles glittering across the bridge of her nose instead of freckles. She takes our order and welcomes us to sit at the bartop to eat (we don't), and we find a quiet corner to sit and eat. It was the best sushi I've had in my life- the rice was actual sushi rice which is a good start, it was slightly warm still, it was melt-in-your-mouth good. We stopped by the chocolaterie to get a small scoop of ice cream (cashew caramel) and a couple of chocolates to bring home. They're tiny, with local strawberry/cherry fruits, with little things painted on their tops. They were delicious.

My friend took photos of some of the inside of the place. I don't know if she waited for the right moments or what, but there's almost no people in her photos. I cannot express to you enough that this place was FULL. I waited in lines to get food. That's me at the chocolate/ice cream shop counter and there were several people in front of me in line.

There was a second story we didn't make it to, because we had to leave to go get the caging. We exited back to a normal Michigan spring a hundred yards outside The City. The parking lot was mostly empty. The building was plain brick. There was no one on the street. The bagel shop and the barbeque storefronts had no people past the windows. There was no storefront for the sushi shop, because it was in the very heart of the place, it shared no walls with the building walls at all, there was no door to it.

[kusuokisser]

kusuo is a smell autistic. the most important sensory thing for him is the way things do or dont smell.

i think that his mom bought some candles once and kusuo caught a whiff and, in order to remedy his autistic upset, he sent it flying out the window.

[maddymoreau]

I'm enjoying Fallout 3 a little more but there’s one thing that’s extremely bothering me.

How come, in the dialogue options, I can NEVER can mention, I was FORCED to leave the vault?

I didn’t have a choice but to leave. Jonas Palmer was beaten to death in attempts to get info about my father James. The Overseer was going to have the same done to me if not WORSE.

The Lone Wanderer: "So they killed Jonas, and I'm next, is that it?"

Amata: "Yeah. It's lucky I got here ahead of them. But we can't stand here talking! You're got to get out of here!"

I understand my father didn't know this would happen. That he simply thought I wouldn't be able to leave the vault after he escaped.

But the fact I can never explain what happened when reunited with him is just so ODD!?!?!!?

I COULDN’T STAY!!!!!!!

I FEEL LIKE THIS IS IMPORTANT INFORMATION YOU SHOULD WANT TO KNOW DAD!!!!!

WHY ARE THESE MY ONLY OPTIONS?!?!?!?!!!!!

Why give me that entire section where I had to escape the vault to avoid MURDER!!?? If they were going to back me in a corner (dialogue wise) that I would've gone after my father no matter what.

It would've made the dialogue option, "Why would you throw away the life we had?" WAY MORE INTENSE AND INTERESTING IF I COULD TELL HIM HIS ACTIONS UNINTENTIONALLY AFFECTED ME!!!

It could've been followed by a cute bonding moment where he apologizes and says while this life was never what he wanted for me he'll now help me adjust however he can.

[alectology-archive]

while it’s important that rj understood how prolonged exposure to trauma would mess with you psychologically on various axes - mental, emotional, spiritual, physical - it’s also very significant that he put in the work to question and explore how people could go about healing and recovering from their experiences with a realistic attitude.

sometimes they don’t heal - they don’t understand that they need healing, dismiss their instincts, or manage to bury all the complicated emotions they’re feeling. it’s seen when mat suffers from a severe case of survivor’s guilt whenever he survives a battle, and this is observed more obviously when he escapes from ebou dar without managing to save all the windfinders; he also doesn’t have the vocabulary to express why the abuse he suffers at tylin’s hands feels wrong, and his cultural background and his tendency to lie to himself prevents him from examining why this is the case. rand is simply incapable of dealing with the sheer physical, mental and emotional stress he’s subjected to without a support system to back him up - support that he’s specifically unwilling to ask for because he doesn’t want to be put in a position of vulnerability just like mat and has a very unique relationship with the level of autonomy he’s afforded and the abuse he may be subjected to as a result of his madness - and resorts to unhealthy coping mechanisms and internalises traits that also serve as an allegory for ideologies that toxic masculinity directly feeds off of; he reacts to aes sedai very badly although he eventually unlearns that instinct; he’s extremely suicidal, and lews therin works as an indirect metaphor for depression. egwene feels the need to be in a position of power whenever approaching a certain relationship (be it romantic, platonic or otherwise) after her time as a damane, and is often uncomfortable with setting down her guard unless she trusts the people she’s working with; rj has a very complicated track with his depiction of corporal punishment but he also touches on how it enables people in power to take advantage of it to abuse the people under their control through egwene’s arc. rand specifically laments how the sort of stigma and alienation that male channelers face will never really go away because of the fear ingrained into popular belief, and that’s also a very accurate depiction of how certain mental illnesses are received by society.

but rj puts in the extra work to explore how people who have access to support systems and are on the receiving end of patience and compassion are able to get on the path to recovery. he has nynaeve & co deal with the problem of deprogramming egeanin, the sul’dam and damane who’re thoroughly brainwashed by the seanchan. juilin is able to help amathera recover by being very sympathetic to her situation and protecting her from difficult situations that could trigger her ptsd. rj specifically spends a significant amount of time letting joline, teslyn and edesina slowly encourage the seanchan channelers to entertain the idea of their ability not being a curse and to even train to control it at the white tower. the maidens are able to get a read on rand’s discomfort with the dark and small spaces post dumai’s wells and are kind enough to always leave a light on in the dark for him; they also push rand to take his meals and care for himself. the asha’man are explicitly recognised as a group which needs to unlearn some of the toxic ideas encoded in the founding principles that rand introduced. rand himself is recognised to be in dire need of help again in the latter half of the series, although we never got to see the culmination of that arc, unfortunately* - but I have a theory that his arc as a hero is tied very closely to his ability to recover from the various traumas he’s subjected to.

wheel of time takes a very realistic stance on mental health and ptsd. more significantly, it recognises that trauma might not necessarily bring about a positive transformation in a person. and that’s okay.

*cadsuane’s arrival is the only one I can’t get a clear read on, and feels so obviously doomed to disaster from the very beginning given how her personality clashes with rand’s and with her introduction with the intent of controlling rand and never respecting his opinions or autonomy - but given how she’s criticised by the narrative, I’m inclined to believe that min’s reading might have potentially been fulfilled in a bittersweet way as her readings often are. if rand learned how to embrace his humanity again, I can’t imagine that she would have ever had a part to play in it that involved compassion or understanding.

[ibrithir-was-here]

Well I've tried writing this three times now.

People of Tumblr over 30-- any advice on how to be Ok with the knowledge that life will never turn out the way you try and plan for and not Demotivated because of said knowledge?

[aefensteorrra]

Going to Turkey soon and am quite (very) nervous because I have heat intolerance and every day it’s going to be at least 29 degrees with a uv index of 9 (which I have never experienced?? that can’t happen at this latitude). Everything I wear in summer is either linen or cotton so I know I’m okay on that front, I wear spf 50 every day in summer here anyway cause I’m ginger so will be very on top of that, got a hat, just have to buy a tonne of chewable electrolyte tablets… 🫡

[deeva-arud]

Boo!

I'm the paranormal activity on your dash :]

[landwriter]

i have never done one of them tumblr videos but winter is the prettiest season here and i wanted to share the extremely specific sight of snow drifting off conifers and being caught in the afternoon sun

my goal craft-wise as a burgeoning little words doer is to be able to describe something like this and do it justice

[hxhhasmysoul]

wouldn't it be nice if the author of the fics finished them. the author is me.