#i should read house of leaves

[godofstory]

Alicent honey I've got some news for you..😭

*my children are fine*

her children:

[inkskinned]

im having a particularly terrible night with urges and imagery that i dont know how to handle. i gave in to some things. held back on some others. but im barely holding on, dear internet stranger.

you do not owe me your time or your words.. but if you could write some hope into existence for me.. i would be unendingly grateful to you.

please. tell me how you do it. tell me how you survive. because im not so sure i can get through the fifteen days it'll take to get to my seventeenth birthday.

could you please give me something to place my faith in? i dont think the universe is watching out for me anymore.

i don't usually answer these, because i am not a professional, and you deserve professional help. when i was 17 i was terrified of the idea of professional help, because my household was extremely unsafe, and made it clear that if i ever chose to get help, i would be punished for it.

i hope this is not your case. i hope that you can call someone, and they can take you where you should go.

but i will give you the advice that i wish i got, when i couldn't get help at 17, when i was so bad that years later, i literally don't-know-how-i-survived it: what you want is peace, not death. your brain is sick. it has romanticized an ending where there are no consequences. where effort isn't necessary. where you can just... forget.

you want peace. that is a normal, human thing to want. maybe it feels more like you want quiet. or just... to take a break for a second.

here is what i will say: to end yourself means you never get to experience what it's like to actually be happy. i thought i knew what it was like, and i was bitter about it. i'd say - i've been happy, it's not worth it, because i didn't know what i was missing. i thought that happiness meant having a partner or having a job or money or a college degree. it sounded like effort. it sounded like something that had to happen to me.

for the first time in my life, just this week, i was able to go to a concert and just-enjoy-it. no liquor, no drugs. just stomping my feet and getting caught up in it. i didn't feel nervous or self-conscious or overwhelmed. i just had a good time. these days have a lot of these firsts for me - it is the first time i can eat cake without crying. it is the first time i can be around an exacto blade without supervision. it is the first time i have too many people to call when i am crying.

i can't tell you where you'll run into happiness, only that, for me, it started once i was out of that fucking house. it started once i figured out where the pain was coming from. once i figured out that i was not possessed, something medical was wrong with me. that i am not stupid or lazy, i have depression and adhd. the first few years were difficult. at 19, during my efforts to recover, i actually got worse by a considerable margin. and then, with time and patience - i got better.

happiness doesn't feel like what you think it will. in movies it's so golden and all-encompassing. but it doesn't fly into your hands when you buy your first car nor does it arrive in the arms of a partner nor does it require passing your classes. happiness came to me on a tuesday in the form of a red-winged blackbird, and i looked at her, and she looked at me, and i said - oh. the whole world suddenly filled itself in with color. like i had been forever-asleep. like every corner of every room was suddenly glistening.

it ended quickly, back then. it just stopped in to check in on me. but it was enough - this thing i had never experienced, but that i knew (logically) could happen. before that, i was only staying because it would make my mom sad if i died. that was my only reason. and then the happiness came, so strange and brilliant and lovely that for years i couldn't even look at it directly.

these days, things are so different. life is so much easier. i don't wish for death because so much of what i have is already at peace. my boss understands when i need a mental health day. people in general are less prone to high school drama. entire communities hold my hand and have my number. i have a car and a dog and a little apartment garden and candles on all available surfaces and today i bought myself a little cake just-to-celebrate-nothing. my body is my own and we are both dancing.

there are so many things i've gotten to taste in the last 10 years. i know, for you, that is an eon, because it's more than half of your life. but if it helps? in the 5 years between 17-21: i filled myself with laughter and love. i got to be a lead in a ballet and got my first tattoo and then my second and pierced my ears the way i'd wanted to (one of them professionally the other over a hot stove with a potato) and i discovered hozier is my favorite singer (i know. he was new back then) and i got my first real job and my first real paycheck and i hadn't ever been seen as smart but then i started to actually treat my adhd as a condition rather than a burden and people started saying you're like the smartest person in the room and my best friend met her husband who i will one day stand next to as maid of honor when he is her groom and i got to help people and make a stupid blog called "inkskinned" and find out that writing is actually my passion and that maybe i'm actually kind of good at it if i just practice and i got to meet my parents' dog (his name is kaiju) and i slept on couches and kissed people and tried new things and learned how to breathe without feeling my chest tighten and that peace is here, on this planet, that peace echoes everywhere, it is in my hair and my homework and my houseplants, it is quiet and divine and mine because i fought for it and i built it and yes i lost hair over it but holy shit the whole world feels like it is shifted through a sunbeam

recently someone asked me if i could go back in time to 6th grade, with all the knowledge i have now, would i? and without thinking, i barked absolutely not. i know i should say it's because i wouldn't want to risk losing any of this stuff - but really it's because i would never survive being a teenager again. it sounds incredibly lame and impossible, fake - but being a teenager was the hardest thing i ever did. i had no voice, no control, only fear and hatred.

but i did survive it. nothing about me is special. nothing about me is stronger than you or better prepared or more efficient. i didn't survive it perfectly. i made a lot of mistakes and lost a lot of friends and harmed myself in ways that i'm still recovering from. but i did survive it. and there is a part of me looking at you in the past and saying - i'm you in the future.

and holy shit. every day. every goddamn day i'm glad we survived to see the rest of it. because you hit 18 and everything changes. like, everything. and holy shit, it is infinitely worth it.

[1010lilfoot]

¹ I read house of leaves

[orangenjoyer]

song was stuck in my head feat. my shitty karen and will design

[genderqueerpond]

IF 👏 YOU 👏 DIDN'T 👏 READ 👏 THE 👏 FOOTNOTES 👏 YOU 👏 HAVEN'T 👏 READ 👏 HOUSE 👏 OF 👏 LEAVES 👏 (you have read The Navidson Record)

[atopvisenyashill]

“why would elaena marry a dornishman when they’re nasty evil people who murdered her poor innocent brother daeron”

maybe because once elaena grew up she realized that there were better ways of bringing dorne into the realm than violent conquest, and that daeron got the death he deserved from not just a nobility that is valid for fearing subjugation from valyria but also a smallfolk sick and tired of these people showing up every few decades to set their principality on fire, and put aside any anti dornish sentiments she may or may not have harbored as a child to see the way her family had directly attributed to their suffering, eventually even falling in love with and marrying a dornish man??

also, considering daeron ii attempts a type of proto-reparations act in bringing dorne into the kingdom, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that someone as intelligent as elaena would recognize the inherent racism in the targaryen conquest of dorne and especially considering the very loud anti-dornish, deeply anti intellectual faction in the blackfyre rebellions, realized they wouldn’t be kind or understanding of an intelligent woman like herself and had no interest in herself or her daughters (of which she had four!!) getting shoved back into the maidenvault again?

like, daeron i is on some andrew jackson manifest destiny shit, and if it makes me an asshole for thinking “god i wish someone had merked jackson before he genocided & displaced my ancestors, good on the dornish for realizing you can’t negotiate with imperialists” than i am perfectly comfortable being considered an asshole right next to my girl elaena.

[simgerale]

me after attempting to get back into sims and realizing i had a lot more to do than play the game

[tf2heritageposts]

this is not the anon yorue lookin for….

this was sent on 9/11

[myclutteredbookshelf]

Spooky Month is fast approaching, and I need help deciding what to read in preparation of Halloween.

Please reblog for a larger sample size.

[chrysopoeias]

Hawkeye’s tattoo makes me unhinged

What was the point of it, really? Her dad knew he was dying and wanted to write his research down, but what was he thinking? He probably was not, but really, what was Riza supposed to do with it? Was she supposed to just keep it to herself her whole life and die alone with it? But her dad believed alchemy is for the people. What’s the point then of never sharing his research?

Did he expect her to go travel around and find other alchemists that agreed with his worldview to teach it too? Lots of alchemists would probably love to wield it. But it’s in such an awkward place. And no way she would want to become some unknown alchemist lab rat and/or get taken advantage of. 

She cannot use it for herself.

Was it specifically for Mustang? Betting on that he would feel obligated to both protect his research and her after she had taught him? Berthold wanted to teach Roy flame alchemy himself anyway and basically hands her over to him in his dying breath... 

She wanted to be free, free from alchemy, to be her own person. But she never was and never really can be free. Her father handed their universe’s nuclear launch codes to a child and expected her to be responsible with it. Even if she ‘consented’ to the tattoo, she should not have been in that position. Yet she takes responsibility for all of it and blames herself for all the consequences. 

She always goes on about choices, but she did not have a choice in this. Maybe she thinks she did. Maybe she does not see that those who did bad things to her made choices too.

Her life revolves around flame alchemy and its consequences. It’s her responsibility for releasing it onto the world after all. Everything Mustang does with it is her fault in her eyes. His kill count is mentally added to her own. She describes flame alchemy as ‘driving good men to madness’. Perhaps thinking ultimately she drives good men to madness. Both her dad for not being able to connect or 'save' him by being a good daughter. And Mustang for teaching him the very thing that made her father that way.

Flame alchemy is her responsibility to her. That is on top of all the other terrible things she has done herself. fuck.

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: September 4

“Paint My Face” by The Devil Makes Three

[mushroompoisoning]

nothing invokes more raw, violent, non-specific emotion in me than the fact that there's a fucking house of leaves reference in uktrakill

[bugfuckerkian]

This is like- basically what happens in House of Leaves, Right?

[doctorwhoisadhd]

hmm thinking about the idea of love songs. i think the idea of what a love song is that we have in our culture is inherently a little bit flawed because we have the idea that any song written about romantic feelings is a love song and im thinking thats not exactly true because there is a difference between "romance" and "love". what i'm saying is not that love is a broader category and applies to things that are not romantic in nature. this is in fact true, but it's not what makes the important distinction here. the true distinction between "romance" and "love" is that romance is a societally defined type of interest in another person, whereas love is, essentially, a promise that you make when you build a relationship.

as such, what i call "love" here might be better defined as "care", as that implies more time and effort, but that's a different suitcase to unpack and largely unimportant to my point here, which is more about the societal conventions of what we call love songs. the point is, relationships can be built with other people, yes, but also animals, places, organizations, ideas, so on and so on, whereas romance requires another person, hence the difference between the ideas of "romance" and "love".

with that in mind, there are two types of songs we in western, english speaking, society call "love songs":

1) songs that are about a person's romantic interest in someone that is either definitively known to be unrequited (existing monogamous relationship, sexuality that doesn't align, etc) or simply not requited (aka romantic interest being unknown); and

2) songs about an existing relationship (keeping in mind my points about relationships not just being with people, but also places, things, etcetera) as is.

(some examples of the latter category: mountaintop by relient k, which defines the relationship in question as non-romantic; or i miss my mum by cavetown, which is - as the title implies - a song about the singer missing their mother.)

now, the thing that makes distinguishing these two difficult is the fact that songs about an existing relationship CAN be about wanting certain aspects of that relationship to change. in these cases, determining that a song is one or the other will hinge either on a) authorial intent or b) whether the song is more about what the singer wants (thereby implying #1) or the lack thereof in that relationship (which would imply #2).

to get back to the subject at hand: the term "love song", as we think of it, is an umbrella term that include both of these two categories, and i think that perhaps it is reductive to do so. with that in mind, i think perhaps it would be more appropriate for "love song" to mean only the latter, whereas the former is a category of its own. WHICH is not to say that the two can't overlap — just that if a song is about a person with whom the singer has no relationship, it cannot be considered a love song due to the fact that it is a song about infatuation, not love.

(another interesting wrinkle this provides is the fact that a song might start out in the first category and, as the writer develops a relationship with a person, might move into the second category as they write more.)

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 5!!!

[botcomplex]

I blame PowerPak for this one Got the spooky book referenced in MyHouse.wad, it has been a very good read so far! Shit gets weird very fast though lmao but that is exactly how I like it.