Ocalina de la Myth

Artist, Author, Autistic, Adventurer

[boldlyawkward]

I made stew. It was awesome. I love potatoes.

[potato]

i luv u too

[potato]

wait what was in the stew

[mercutiomoths]

The refusal of almost every search engine and social media to even allow users to hide AI content is literally just making it harder to find real information. Wasn't that like, the main conceit of connecting to the internet? Having a connection to a vast library of information all in one spot? Was that not like, the Whole Entire Thing with the worldwide web? I mean, I was born in 2000, so I don't have the best insight on the internet's creation, but I really thought that was kind of The Whole Thing

[kosmogrl]

[chaoticneutralwife]

the next day after exerting myself too much because i felt good for once

[elminx]

I’ve noticed some posts around about how you can’t romanticize your life during a fascist regime and while I deeply sympathize with this sentiment, I want you to try to understand that’s what they want you to believe.

Fascism thrives best in the cesspool of hopelessness. They want us so confused and hopeless that we give in. When you give in, you don’t fight back.

If you wait for life to look good to do the things that bring you joy; life will still be bad - you will just have less joy.

As someone who has struggled with my mental health a lot for the last thirty years, I know this struggle firsthand. And changing this belief system - the one where you spend all of your time expecting bad things so you won’t be surprised when they happen - it’s the hardest work that I have ever done. And I’m not perfect; I still have setbacks. I still experience really real fears about the state of the world and the US, in particular, because that’s where I live.

But I made a vow to myself that I will not let the choices of others ruin my life. When I made that vow, I was thinking of my parents - but it applies to the state of the government right now, too.

There are still flowers in my garden, and ripe tomatoes, and it’s almost pick-your-own apples season, and I have plans with my friends to go to as many cemetery ghost walks as we can find this October.

I still deserve to live. I still deserve to laugh. I still deserve to love. I still deserve to be as happy as I can be.

And you do, too.

[yeahawvampire]

Dan Savage.

[anarchistmemedistro]

*gestures broadly at the resistance movements in europe during the last reich*

[anarchistmemedistro]

[m0tel6mxzzy]

“Where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.”

— The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank

“One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.”

— The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin

[sweatermuppet]

i understand its chronic pain but every day seems a bit excessive

[great-gatsby]

every reread kills me a little bit more

[great-gatsby]

reread and enjoy <3

[pangur-and-grim]

I feel so insane about ai. I've had face-to-face conversations with people who use it for therapy, who use it to calculate the safety of pill interactions, who use it for all their emails and grant applications and legal documents and academic papers and finance sheets and for every single question they have about the world, and if you tell them about the ecological costs they just laugh and say "I guess I've used a lot of water." and I've been in multiple gatherings of 10+ people where I'm THE ONLY PERSON who doesn't use chatgpt. it's turning me into a ranting raving pariah, because how don't you people see??? why don't you understand??????? this bullshit didn't exist five years ago, you absolutely do not need it, and it is destroying everything

[batbetbitbotbut]

"focaccia, serves 4" yes all 4 me

[batbetbitbotbut]

"tiramisu, serves 2" yes all 2 myself

[sadspectre]

'Profiteroles, serves 8" yes I 8 it all

[jame7t]

I still think it’s objectively fucked how the world is built for morning people and if you wake up later than everyone else you’re seen as a malicious aberration of some sort. I am that but it’s not because I wake up at 11 fuck yourself

[biglawbear]

I finished reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in my life. With all of *vague gesture at everything* this going on.

I Am Not Okay

[biglawbear]

You have to understand. I watched the movies maybe once as a kid when they came out twenty years ago. I've somehow avoided learning like anything about these books my entire life. Literally everything about these books was a complete unknown and surprise to me. Totally blank slate going on. I barely even knew how it ended.

Holy shit.

[biglawbear]

Frodo didn't complete his task. Sam literally carried him up Mount Doom. And when he got to the end, he couldn't throw the Ring away.

But for Gollum biting it off with his finger, it wouldn't have been destroyed.

So Frodo's journey saved the world nonetheless.

And it broke him.

It was too much for him to bear. He could no longer live in the Shire or live in Middle-Earth. He wasn't of the world anymore. He had to go to the Undying Lands.

He took on the task that no one else would. He saved the world. Everyone got a happy ending. Aragorn became King, Sam rebuilt the Shire, Merry and Pippin became heroes. They all lived in renown.

But Frodo had the hardest task of all. No one else would do it. A simple hobbit who came by the Ring by chance. Not a King, not an immortal. Not a wizard. No power save his will and his friends. And he did it and saved everyone.

And he never got to rest. He never got to remain in peace. The task destroyed him. It was too much.

But there was no other way. Nobody but a simple hobbit could bear the ring all the way to Mount Doom and resist its power so long. Not a man, not an elf, not a wizard; they would have succumbed. Gandalf knew this, which was why he chose the hobbits in all his designs.

It's amazing that one of the precedent setting works in the fantasy genre holds up so well because it subverts what ultimately became the genre's core tropes. The hero was not the King, or a chosen one. In fact, the hero not being the King was a key point that allowed Aragorn to distract Sauron and allow the task in the first place. The hero was someone unassuming but courageous, who did the thing because no one else would, even though it was just by chance he came upon it.

But Frodo couldn't resist the Ring completely. He wasn't superior to anyone else in that way. And in the end it left him broken. The burden crushed him. No one else could do it, and in the end, he couldn't either. He wasn't so special that he was invulnerable.

I'm not okay. Holy fuck you guys.

[biglawbear]

It's been a week and I'm still not over this, I'll never get over this.

Something that I've been thinking about, as I struggle with depression and anxiety and *another vague gesture at everything* is that LOTR does not criticize Frodo for being broken. It does not shame him or deny him what he needs.

The task was too much and it broke him and that's okay. His friends nonetheless take care of him and let him go with understanding. The book doesn't treat it as a bad thing.

This seems to be a theme throughout the books. The characters rest and heal. They spend time recovering in Rivendell, Fangorn, Lorien, Ithilien. It's treated as good and necessary. They don't heroically endure endless torment from the second they set out until they're done.

And in Gondor's march from Minas Tirith to Mordor, Aragorn recognizes that some of the very few men he's taking with him don't have the heart to go to battle against the Enemy. And he says that's okay. He gives them other tasks the they can do. They hold other strategic points. They aren't shamed for not going all the way, or kicked out, or told that they aren't manly or whatever. Their limitations are recognized and respected. The task was too big and it was okay that they couldn't do it.

I don't know man. I've held on through some absolutely crazy shit. White knuckled through mental health crises when my doctors were begging me to take a break, to go to the hospital before I hurt myself. My therapist has tried to slow me down and tell me that I've been going through it and it's understandable that I am feeling some kind of way. Even one of my colleagues remarked that I've had an absolutely fucking wild career and that I've seen more as a lawyer of seven years than she has as a lawyer of forty. But I've gotten it into my head that I have to be strong, I have to be independent.

Fuck me, man, I'm currently white knuckling through life and hanging on by a fucking thread. A few weeks ago I was about an hour away from checking myself in to a mental health facility until my best friends swooped in to help me. And then I went right back to work.

And then I read this book. This fucking brilliant and beautiful book written by a man who had seen the horrors of war and spilled it all over the page. And I read it for the first time as an adult with full understanding and experience of what it all means. And it hits me like a fucking truck.

And it says that you can't endure everything. That at some point you need to rest and heal. That if you take on too much you will break. And that all of that is okay.

How am I supposed to move on with my life after reading this?

[three--rings]

Certainly there are many messages within Lord of the Rings, but you have to think that Tolkien would have been happy that this message in particular was still being conveyed all these years later.

[b0nkcreat]

having a friend crush is so god damn embarrassing like yeah.... i like how you play toys and i think youre really cool..... and im scared to talk to you........do you wanna..... play toys with me too...... or something...... its whatever if not..... kicks a rock. Fuck my life dude

[b0nkcreat]

this doesnt end even when you actually become friends btw. "oh no what if they think im weird and cringe for wanting to hang out with them and they beat me with rocks and make fun of me" DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU HAVE NEEDS AND ARE A PERSON

[femceltonysoprano]

Real

[portraitoftheoddity]

Once knew a guy from LARP who told a story about when he had first gotten his hands on chainmail and was getting used to wearing it and maintaining mobility and balance with the weight of it (it was heavy stuff). So he started wearing it under his clothes when he was out running errands and stuff to practice for when he had to wear it in mock combat.

Then one night he was coming home late and got mugged by a dude with a knife.

Apparently the look on the dude's face was amazing when he went in to gut the guy for his wallet and found out he was wearing medieval armor under his hoodie.

So, you know. Pretty good argument for wearing it under streetclothes!

[magicratfingers]

so maybe my type isn't totally unrealistic

[lotuspositivity]

You don't have to force yourself to bounce back so quickly. I read something recently that said "when you come in from a rainstorm, you don't expect yourself to be dry and warm right away", and it really resonated with me. It's okay to take time to dry off and warm up. Take the time you need to process what happened to you.

[anxeious]

[hauntedwhiskers]

Pondering my orbs.

[tormentum-ab-intra]

help

[just-horrible-things]

[transhuman-priestess]

under the blankets staight up "snuggling it" and by "it" haha well lets just say. my plushies

[sunfortune]

booktok did ruin a lot of romance novels bc of the demand for instant gratification but culturally it is kind of a slay that so many young women are just reading smut and masturbating all day #respect