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#and I wanted to do something with Monte Vista for so long
kimmiessimmies · 4 months
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My TOP 23 screenshots for 2023
Thanks for tagging me, lovely Alex @ice-creamforbreakfast.
Considering I didn't reappear on the Simblr scene until late March, many of these will be recent shots, but here are some of my personal faves in chronological order!
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1. James (with previous hairstyle, and with blanket) and Leona on the rooftop of The Factory. Despite it not being the best pic I ever shot, this post was my "comeback", so it's meaningful to me.
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2. The moment Dan and Sadie broke up... Knowing what we know now, this was truly for the best, but I actually cried a little writing this post...
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3. Jasper and Eva's Monte Vista wedding dinner.
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4. When I built an entire coffeehouse just to shoot that one scene reuniting Esme and Martha.
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5. Finn and Sadie giving in to hormones.
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6. Luke and Susie's autumn wedding . I particularly liked this picture because of Boy in the background. 🥂
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7. Eva expecting. But I mostly loved this picture because this house is my favourite house I ever decorated.
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8. Rachel's face when she found out about Finn and Sadie's Friends with Benefits situation.
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9. This moment when Joshua had an epiphany... (My heart...)
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10. The start of Honeycomb Valley 2.0.
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11. Sending Martha home. This one was emotional for me. She had been away for SO long and bringing her home was a big deal for the story but also for me.
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12. This reaction of Sadie's when Martha said she and Finn should definitely "study... hard..." 😏
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13. Finn confessing his feelings for Sadie to Rachel (which does hurt a bit in light of current events...)
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14. This hugely important moment when Joshua was about to come out to his friends. ❤️
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15. The date that didn't go to plan...
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16. The moment that screwed up my entire flippin' storyline! 😳 The chemistry between these two the moment they got together for this scene totally messed everything up. Thankfully, the story became better because of it. More dramatic, but also better.
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17. Phoenix. ❤️‍🔥
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18. The dream. I had so much fun setting up this room for this scene. A little secret only one person knows: I actually shot the entire, very NSFW dream scene... In the end, I decided not to share it because at this point, I wanted to keep the tension alive for a while longer. But it was... something... 🫣
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19. My dear struggling James who "came close but wrote song lyrics instead..."
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20. Release. ❤️❤️❤️
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21. That other release. (I could have chosen any picture from these scenes)
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22. Rock bottom. And oh, how I felt this... 💔
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23. Ending with my absolute favourite shot of the year. 💕
Loved doing this! Tagging @nocturnalazure, @danjaley, @simsaralove, @eljeebee, @dandylion240, @happy-lemon. As always, feel free to ignore.
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architectural-sims · 4 years
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WINE, BREAD AND CHEESE
The new set of @aggressivekitty has inspired me to continue working on Monte Vista, so I’m going to take a break from Paris.
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pudding-parade · 2 years
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Firenze (or Florence, if you prefer) is the capital of Tuscany, Italy, and Tuscany is known for its hot (often too hot) and sunny summers. It's nicer in the other seasons, with mild winters featuring the occasional snow flurry here and there, and pleasant transitional seasons. Overall, the area has a mix of Mediterranean and continental climates, which means that it's generally drier and overall moderate, but because of the continental influence, it's slightly cooler in the colder months and hotter in the summer than a true Mediterranean climate. Obviously, I made this preset for Monte Vista, but it's a good general climate if you want something that's seasonal but on the warmer and drier side.
This is a preset for use with the NRaas Tempest mod. General info about this project as well as installation/use instructions are here, and here is a link to the tag page for all the presets I've posted so far.
Details for this preset:
Highest summer temperature: 90F/32C Lowest winter temperature: 35F/2C
Overall Climate: Hot and sunny summers, mild winters, and pleasant transitional seasons. Rainfall is generally low, especially in summer, but there is a spike in the autumn. Snow flurries happen in the real Firenze pretty much every winter, so it can happen when using this preset, too, when the temperature is low enough.
Snow: Uncommon but possible in winter when the temperature is 40F/4C or below, but the average temperature is such that if any accumulation happens, it won't last long.
Fog: Can happen in autumn if the temperature is 55F/13C or below. In the real world, fog in Tuscany happens most often when it's rained overnight; ground fog occurs as the moisture from the rain evaporates into the drier morning air. Unfortunately, the game doesn't have that level of control, so I just gave fog a moderate chance of happening during the autumn, since autumn is the rainiest season. It will "burn off" fairly quickly.
Hail: As in Stockholm, it will very rarely hail in Tuscany during summer storms, so I have given this preset a very small chance of a brief hailstorm happening in the summer. If it happens, it has a change of killing harvestable plants or setting plants in harvest stage back to mature.
Precipitation Intensity: In the summer, rain is rare and will only happen during an occasional brief, heavy storm. In the autumn, it will rain fairly often and storms will last longer but will never be more than moderately intense. Winter and spring rains will be short and light. Where their allowed temperature ranges overlap (between 35-40F/2-4C), there is an equal chance of rain or snow happening in the winter, with equally light intensity.
Additional settings:
Fireplaces that are upgraded to auto-light will do so on active lots if the temperature falls below 50F/10C.
Any fallen leaves will be removed at the start of winter.
Insect spawners will not spawn in winter.
Download the preset here.
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nocturnalazure · 2 years
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1, 7, 8, 13 and 20 for Romeo aand 10, 12, 15 and 27 for Omar please ^^
(Also your reshade pics look effing awesome! Especially for your first try!!!)
Thanks so much for asking! And for the compliment on the Reshade pics! *_* I’m still a noob with it and it doesn’t seem to work as well on my laptop as on everyone else’s, but I’m happy you like the result anyway. :)
Romeo
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1. What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do?
Well, Romeo is a patient man and doesn’t mind waiting as long as there is an objective to it. If he just has to sit there and do nothing while everyone else is busy, he will immediately start feeling guilty about it. His natural tendency to think he’s useless and doesn’t belong will creep in right away. So, he’s not restless... but he pushes himself to be an active participant.
7. What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling?
Right now, he’s homesick. :) He misses Monte Vista, that’s what he is most nostalgic about. He doesn’t like the grey and cold city of Anne Arbor. Even though his hometown is not always connected to happy memories, he longs for the sun, the colors, the sea... and the food!
8. What were they told to stop/start doing most often as a child?
"Man up!”. From his father, obviously.
13. What color do they think they look best in? Do they actually look best in that color?
Prussian blue is his go-to color whenever he wants to give a little oomph to his outfit. It is a “safe” color too. He’d like to be more daring, wearing brighter colors like peach or light pink. I think it would suit him well but... he’s not there yet.
20. If they were asked to explain the difference between romantic and platonic or familial love, how would they do so?
Interesting one because Romeo never had anyone who actually loved him. Besides his mother, but then she started having hallucinations and she was  too far gone for him to ask for emotional support. Family ties are forever connected to duty in his mind. Upon his father’s orders, he married a girl for whom he felt nothing, physically or romantically. The only relationships he had with men were casual and clandestine. He secretly does have romantic ideals, but they sound a lot like fairy tales.
So in short, his views are that romance is fiction, platonic love is repression and family is obligation. Yay.
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Omar
10. What lie do they most frequently remember telling? Does it haunt them?
Omar (almost) never lies. More precisely, he only lies to protect someone else. Lying is one of the greatest sins for him and he considers honesty as his most important value, in himself and in other people.
Yes, he does lie when he says he is “on Al-Saud business” and goes to see Carla. That’s because her privacy, and maybe her safety, are at stake. He’s at peace with his conscience.
12. How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach?
That’s a funny one for Omar! xD With his bulk, I can imagine that he wouldn’t be flexible enough to reach certain spots.
Besides resorting to the age-old technique of the “Bear Rubbing His Back Against A Tree”, he would shamelessly ask the closest person to scratch the itch for him. :) He does pay attention to hierarchy though, so typically, he would never ask his boss Mohammed! With Laurie though... I don’t think he would trouble himself with decorum! :D
15. How do they speak? Is what they say usually thought of on the spot, or do they rehearse it in their mind first?
Omar’s speech is guarded and he carefully chooses his words. He has a drawling voice, speaking quite slowly and enunciating every syllable, because it gives him time to think. When asked a question, he smiles and starts with a high-pitched “Eeeeeh...”, saving him one or two seconds to come up with an appropriate answer.
27. What causes them to feel dread?
A conflict of interest. If he’s ordered to do something that goes against his heart. And believe me, that happens.
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thehammondlegacy · 3 years
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Britechester - 1 pm 
David: Ahh, look at you! Where are your curls?
Olivia: Hello to you too! I had an event last night so I may have done something to my hair...
David: Stop killing your beautiful curls!
Olivia: That’s because you have nice managable hair! You’ll think differently if you had mine!
David: Whatever! Just don’t change it that much please
Olivia: I won’t... So how’s uni?
David: Well, it’s pretty damn hard! I have ton of homework, and I barely sleep, but at least no one is making a big deal about who I am. How’s the new school?
Olivia: Amazing! Guess what?! I was chosen to be the editor in chief of the school paper!!
David: Liv! That’s amazing!
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Olivia: Most of my school mates hate me because I am new, and some of them wanted the job, but who cares! I’ve got this!
David: You are going to be an amazing journalist one day! I’m so happy for you!
Olivia: Thanks, I guess I’ll have something to work on here in Monte Vista while you are in UBrite. I can’t wait to be there with you!
David: Me neither! I love Robbie, but he’s a horrible roommate!
Olivia: Is he making your life misserable already?
David: Nah, he just parties too much. At leat this place is big enough for him to have a party while I sleep 
Olivia: Well, just two weeks and I’ll be there to keep you company, at least during the weekend
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David: I can’t wait! I’ll make you a tour around campus, and we can even sneak in Foxbury to check out theirs!
Olivia: I’ll love that!! We should hang out with Lottie and Robbie too
David: Really? 
Olivia: Yeah! You two are friends again, right?
David: I guess so. She hasn’t been around much, though. Robbie says she’s way to bussy with her courses, but I guess we can give her a call once you are here. I really miss you, by the way!
Olivia: Oh, don’t say that! We agreed we wouldn’t say that phrase! 
David: I know, but I do
Olivia: Me too... I wish I was born a year earlier 
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David: Don’t be sad! In just two weeks we’ll be here together!
Olivia: Yes, but just for a weekend..
David: And then two weeks later, we’ll meet in Willow Creek
Olivia: I know, I know... It’s just- Well, I got used to being close to you. We went from seeing each other every day to once every two weeks!
David: It’s just one year, Liv. Just one year, and we’ll be together! We’ll just have to make the long distance relationship work for one year and then you’ll be here!
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Olivia: I know... Just one year! We can do this, can’t we?
David: Of course we can! 
Olivia: Good... Ok, I have to go now. Mom and I are going shopping 
David: No problem. I have to keep working on my essays. Have fun! Call you tomorrow?
Olivia: Same time! 
David: Alright... I love you!
Olivia: I love you more!
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jaimesam · 3 years
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Sawtooth
We woke up on the morning of our fourth day in the Sawtooth wilderness feeling spry. It can take a day, or two, or three before the rhythm of backpacking— wake up, wolf down some instant oatmeal, slurp up some instant coffee, shoulder a 35 pound pack and start the day’s climb—begins to feel right. This was our morning.
A miracle: the skies had truly cleared of wildfire smoke for the first time since setting off from Grandjean. Good timing, too: our day ahead would be perhaps the best of the trip — up and over Cramer Pass, beneath “The Temple,” down past the Cramer Lakes and up again to Alpine Lake, reputedly a gem. We hit the trail with bounce in our step.
Three, four, five miles into our hike we were still having fun, even as we began to wonder — was it possible that Hidden Lake was, in fact, so hidden that we wouldn’t see it from the trail? When would we hit the killer climb up to Cramer Pass? Slogging through overgrown brush and clambering over deadfall — all of which felt oddly familiar — we encountered a group of five friendly outdoorsmen from Seattle.
“Morning.”
“Afternoon.”
“Am I right that we’ve got a climb ahead?”
“Oh no, it’s all downhill from here.”
“Hmm.”
“Where are you trying to get to?”
“Well we were aiming for Cramer Lakes…”
“Oh you’re a long way from there. This trail goes down to Grandjean.”
“Oh my god.”
Jaime caught up.
“We took a wrong turn.”
“I thought so.”
“It’s a bad one.”
“How bad?”
“The good news is that we’ve been making great time. Covered a lot of miles.”
“And?”
“That lake was Elk Lake. This is the trail we hiked in on our first day.”
“How…”
“Five miles ago. Missed a turn.”
“God damn it.”
“Actually more like five and a half.”
Oh yes, there were signs. Including literal signs made of actual wood. Two of which we somehow blew blindly past, and a third: seen but egregiously misinterpreted. Also the creek we had crossed thrice, which, had we been paying close attention, we might have noticed was flowing in the wrong direction. Or beautiful Smith Falls, which we had passed two days before. Or the 2.4 miles of the South Fork of the Payette Trail we had hiked on day one — the most grueling and unattractive stretch of trail we had yet encountered — you would think we might have realized something was amiss. And yet.
“We could just hike out.”
“It would be eleven more miles.”
“So we backtrack.”
“Five and a half. Uphill.”
“We’re spending an extra night out here, aren’t we?”
“I think so.”
“Do we have extra food?”
“We have enough food.”
“I hate this.”
So we backtracked. An eleven mile detour, all told, with 1500 feet of elevation lost and then gained agin, for no reason, on unremarkable, overgrown, valley trails with views of nothing but dense forest, overgrown with scrubby mountain brush. The last few miles, a steady and grueling climb, brought us back to where we had missed our first sign, six hours before. We collapsed at the intersection, refilled our bottles, and snacked on salami — the promise of which was all that had gotten us up the hill. Mosquitoes and black flies swarmed, and the sky, which had begun the day clear, turned a pinkish gray as wildfire smoke began to dim the sun again.
“Why do we do this?”
“Good question.”
Onward to Hidden Lake, not so hidden after all. After dragging ourselves over 14 miles — 3 miles of forward progress from our last camp — we collapsed on a grassy shoreline, and rinsed our scratched and bruised bodies in the glassy frigid water. The lake sat beneath two pointed cliffs, side by side — one of red stone, the other gray— and the sun set early in the narrow valley. Trout jumped, snatching flies from the water’s surface, and pair of mergansers jetted around the lake, snatching the fish in turn. Exhausted, we fell asleep listening to hermit thrushes whistling their fluting ethereal song over the quiet rush of cascades tumbling down the cliffs, filling the lake.
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We woke up, wolfed down some instant oatmeal, slurped up some instant coffee, and began the day’s climb. Up and over Cramer Pass, beneath “The Temple,” a tower of red sandstone capped with a knobby monolith that might well have been the icon of some desert religion. We descended again to the three Cramer Lakes, each one cascading to the next, down further to cross a rushing stream of snowmelt and spring water. We dipped our hats and bandannas in the almost-freezing water to drip down our necks and backs in the hot afternoon. Then we’re climbing again, this time twice as high, twice as far, to Alpine Lake, a pristine tarn carved into the side of the slope, a fine place for a salami break. Then higher, sweating our way up to the day’s second pass. We looked down on the Baron Lakes, where we would camp for the night, and across the lakes to Warbonnet Peak and Monte Verita, grey and purple in the late afternoon shadows.
“This is why we do this.”
“Yeah.”
One reason, anyway. The most obvious reason. If you did a survey of the people who somehow ended up at the top of the pass above Baron Lakes, this would be the number one reason cited for braving the insects and the varmints, dealing with the aches and the rashes, and slogging up a mountain with a heavy pack: the views, the vistas, the landscapes, the panoramas. The drama of the mountains. It’s like cooking your own meal — it tastes better when you’ve worked for it, earned it, done it yourself. The view from the pass is more beautiful for the sweat and exertion dragging your body and your pack up the climb.
We got more the following day as we descended from the Baron Lakes, our final day on the trail. An oceanic valley opened up beneath us, ringed by steep cliffs and rockslides of red and grey and purple, Baron Creek turning into a 30 foot waterfall. You can’t find this outside the mountains, this sense of three-dimensional space. Of looking down a valley two miles wide as it falls away from your feet, three thousand feet down. Like standing in the greatest of civilization’s cathedrals, but one with enough open space to park a carrier group, with more room for a fleet of attack submarines below.
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After five nights and six days, we have become the land. Smeared with the dust of an arid country, we blend in with the rock and dirt. And despite our daily dips in the alpine lakes of the Sawtooth, we smell like it too. That first shower will feel great. The first meal — Jaime’s been fantasizing about a tuna melt and French fries, Sam has been inexplicably craving pancakes — even better. This is also why we backpack. It feels awfully good to have done it.
More than just the relief and indulgence of returning to civilization, a week in the mountains offers a welcome reset on city life. I am a city person. I like living in a density of people, living within a stroll of most everything I need, nearby neighbors and friends. But I crave the balance offered by nature, by a week in the woods, a month in the mountains. We’ll return feeling refreshed, glad to be back, awed by the commonplace luxuries of modern urban living: a world’s worth of cuisines, at my doorstep in 20 minutes; humanity’s complete works of recorded music, in my pocket. We’ll be very glad to have done it, for all its ups and downs. And, more immediately, we’re glad to be done.
“I’m sore.”
“Me too.”
“My blister just popped.”
“Ew.”
“I feel great.”
“Me too.”
Leaning on the car, we ease off our boots. The horseflies are back at this lower elevation, and their buzzing takes us back to last week when we tightened our laces and adjusted the straps on our pack in preparation for starting our trip. We had arrived at Grandjean just a few hours behind the first wave of wildfire smoke. Hiking in July, we thought we’d beat the wildfires to the punch; no such luck. So we started our hike in a haze - literal and figurative - wondering if we’d be walking up mountains for 54 miles with the reward of smoggy vistas waiting at the passes and peaks.
The first day’s hike didn’t lift that haze. The trail was overgrown, not often used, with deadfall lying across our path requiring us to clamber over dead trunks or bushwhack through brush to get around. Horseflies dogged us, buzzing and biting. As we climbed, sweating, copses of trembling aspen yielded to a forest of ponderosa pine, white spruce, douglas fir, and horseflies yielded to mosquitoes. Six miles up the trail, we encountered two fellow hikers, who informed us that the first good campsite was another eight miles ahead, and that they were churning out 20 miles in a day to get out of this godforsaken wilderness pronto. Terrific.
Fortunately, they were wrong, and we soon found a very fine place to pitch a tent next to a small waterfall. The Payette River’s headwaters split and cascaded down on either side of a great red rock, and every few seconds, the waters surged and a shower of snowmelt would surge over the rock itself, spraying into the air.
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A western tanager — electric yellow body, reddish head, and jet black wings — flitted through the campsite. So did chipmunks, rushing around frantically to spread the good news that a pair of slovenly campers had finally arrived, and the summer’s harvest was here at last.
“Look at the cheeks on that little guy.”
“He’s just dying to fill them up with our trail mix.”
Joke’s on us. His cheeks were already full. We turn around, and our bag of trail mix has been chewed open, our week’s supply of almonds, cashews, chocolate, and cranberries pawed through and looted.
“Oh no!”
“Tou thieving little bastard! You bandit! Son of a bitch!”
He was long gone, and presumably the life of the party in whatever chipmunk den he had retreated to. Not wanting to contract whatever rodent virus the chipmunks might have left on our nuts — and not wanting to reward their banditry — I fed our entire supply of trail mix to the fish, swearing profusely as each morsel washed downstream. We have enough food without it, I think.
Our second morning, we awoke to what appeared as a fine morning mist; the pines in the middle distance enveloped in a grey cloud; the ridgeline hazy. But central Idaho is a dry country, this time of year. There is no mist. The wildfire smoke has thickened, and an image of peace transforms to a vague and grim picture of threat and foreboding. We shoulder our packs and resume the climb; eleven more miles on the trail, plus half a mile vertically.
As we walk we get our first glimpses of sawtooth silhouette. Steep rocky cliffs capped with jagged ridgelines, hazy and dark in the smoke against the grey sky. We cross a cold stream, boots off, sandals on, almost knee deep in the rushing icy water. We stop to rest — our first salami break of the trip! — beside Smith Falls, a roaring cascade.
“Do you have the hand sanitizer?”
“I thought you had it.”
“Nope.”
“Where’s the soap?”
“Packed with the hand sanitizer.”
“We’re disgusting.”
The day has gotten hot, and our final mile is a savage climb, switchbacking up the rough talus slope of Mt. Everly. Closing in on 9000’ feet of elevation, we stop to catch our breath every few steps and soak in the panorama behind us: smoky and grey, but astounding nonetheless, with miles of views into wilderness valleys ringed by sawtooth ridges.
Finally, we climb high enough that a lake reveals itself as a sliver of blue, and then it’s at our feet. Everly Lake is a sapphire droplet, water clear to the bottom, the gently rippling surface sparkling azure in the late afternoon sun. It sits beneath the east face of Mt. Everly, a scree cliff dropping a thousand feet to the water’s edge, across from where we set up camp. We haven’t seen another soul all day, and we have this lake very much to ourselves.
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Why do we do this? An interesting question because, in case it’s not obvious, backpacking trips involve a considerable quantity of suffering. We do it for the satisfaction and rejuvenation of completing a trip, certainly. And obviously the views — even when they’re gray and hazy. But this — this is really why we hump heavy packs up rocky cliffs, put up with clouds of insects and wildfire smoke, endure blisters and aches and altitude sickness. There is freedom in solitude (dual solitude, in our case), and real solitude is a hard thing to come by. Hot and sweaty and ragged from the climb, I splash into the glass-clear snowmelt of Everly Lake, naked as a wild animal.
When telling people about our big trip west, our route through Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, the most frequent first response was “ah, you’re doing the parks.” Meaning the National Parks, those natural American wonders with scenic byways leading drivers to the parks’ iconic sights, visitors’ centers full of gifts and amenities and fun facts, and influencers dangling their immaculate bodies over sheer cliffs to rack up the likes. Not so. We are, in fact, avoiding the Parks at all costs, instead seeking solitude in forests and wilderness — the likes of the Sawtooth.
In March, we took a trip to Great Smoky Mountain National Park, hoping to hike and revel in some of the finest scenery you’ll find east of the Mississippi. The joke was very much on us. Day one, we spent two hours in the car, inching toward a trailhead, in a miles-long snake of cars and trucks and RVs. In July and August, Yellowstone National Park transmutes from the largest national park in the lower 48 into the biggest parking lot on the North American continent. People sleep in their cars on the road to Zion, in the hopes of snagging a shot at a sunrise selfie.
It’s been fifty years since Edward Abbey wrote Desert Solitaire, which I’ve been reading on the trail. The book is an account of his summers as a ranger in the park that would eventually become Arches. He lamented road-building in National Parks, and proposed banning cars altogether, a fine idea. Many of our Parks did alright for decades, even with their roads and scenic byways; today’s plauge, clogging those roads and viewpoints and even some of the trails, is known as Instagram. The secret is out about the natural beauty of the American west, and the hoards have flocked.
Of course, not everyone out here in nature is seeking solitude. That’s fine. Certainly, every person has a right to see and experience earth’s great wonders. But even for the casual nature tourist, I would posit that the Grand Canyon would be better enjoyed with enough room to swing one’s arms. What to do about it? Who knows. The French are de-marketing their national parks, advertising the flaws and shortcomings of the country’s great natural sites; another fine idea, maybe there are others. At any rate, Abbey is lucky to be dead; the sight of hoards of selfie-snappers crowding for the perfect pic at Mesa Arch would kill him over again.
For those who do seek something approaching solitude, it’s harder and harder to find. We’ve avoided the National Parks, but even many of the forest campgrounds are full beyond the brim. We’ve spent evenings driving around the backwoods, trying in vain to find a good place to camp that isn’t already clogged with RVs. And I’m not here to tell anyone how to enjoy nature, but I am here to tell you that the RV is a blight upon American wilderness. Pulling into a campground in a forgotten corner of the Black Hills, and listening to a fleet of generators run for hours is, shall we say, irritating. If your idea of exploring America’s natural beauty involves parking a bus that costs as much as Lamborghini in the woods and running a generator 16 hours a day to keep your A/C running and your TV on, why not save yourself the trouble — and do the rest of us a favor — and stay home?
As one friend likes to say, gazing up at a spectacular mountain view and taking a contented sigh: “We mean nothing.” In the city, it’s hard to see yourself outside the contemporary, the immediate, the urgent. Put yourself in nature, in the shadow of a great peak or at the bottom of a colossal canyon, and it becomes possible to see your ego and your consciousness in a more accurate perspective: transient, insignificant. There’s freedom in that. And peace.
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The chipmunks of Everly Lake share the thieving attitude of their cousins down the mountain. As we sat absorbing the last of the orange sun’s rays, we heard a rustling behind us, and caught one in the act trying to seize our sesame crisps. Rather than chewing through the bag and filling his fat cheeks with whatever they could carry, this greedy fellow had his tiny arms wrapped around the entire ziploc bag, attempting to make off with the whole kit and kaboodle. Not today, chipmunk. We learned our lesson. Our food bag didn’t leave our sight the rest of the trip.
We awoke the next morning to the smell of a campfire burning outside our tent. Poking my head out into the grey predawn light — no campfire, just a thick cloud of wildfire smoke. The far shore was shrouded in haze, and our sparkling blue lake had turned dull; a grim sense of foreboding gripped us as we wolfed down our instant oatmeal, slurped up our instant coffee, and shouldered our packs to descend from Everly.
We hop from lake to lake through the southern Sawtooth, and, mercifully, the cloud of smoke thins as we go. Not a soul on the trail, as we dip our toes in lakes with wonderful names — Ingeborg, Spangle, Ardeth— and some quotidian names — Rock Slide, Vernon, Benedict. I regret leaving my binoculars in the car, we try to ID our avian companions anyway. Most will end up in our books as LBBs (little brown birds), curious peepers and cheepers. We do grow fond of the white-capped sparrow, which looks like it’s wearing a bike helmet and sings a song that sounds like the opening refrain of Baby Shark. Funny little fellow.
We arrive at Lake Edna, our camp for the night, and the skies have cleared. We are treated to sunset over a glassy indigo surface. We watch the sun fall behind the same mountain that it has set behind for hundreds, thousands of summer evenings previous. It’s harder and harder to find pristine nature like this, unaltered by humanity. If some other person had felt compelled to make the same hike, climb the same hill 500 or 5000 Julys ago, they would have seen the same thing, heard the same birds, enjoyed the shade of the same trees. There is magic in that.
We woke up on the morning of our fourth day in the Sawtooth wilderness feeling spry.
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This essay borrows liberally and consciously in structure and style from Messrs. Edward Abbey & John McPhee.
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carmichealroyals · 3 years
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PRINCE WILLIAM AND PRINCESS MARIA THERESA’S ENGAGEMENT INTERVIEW: HEAR DETAILS OF THE PROPOSAL, THE TOLL OF WARTIME ROMANCE
Today, TRH Crown Prince William, Duke of Brevell and Princess Maria Theresa of Monte Vista sat down with Monica Tennet, chief royal correspondant for the BCOW to discuss their engagement, including how the couple met, how the Prince proposed, and the struggles of being in a relationship while war rages around you. Read the transcript below!
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Monica: ...Thank you, John. Well, everyone, today I am here with the Winden Territories favorite young couple, Prince William and Princess Maria Theresa of Monte Vista. Thank you both for sitting down to chat with me -- I know these must have been a busy few days for you both. 
Prince William: Just a little, Ms. Tennet. 
Princess Maria Theresa: It has been an absolute whirlwind, it’s nice to just sit down for a few minutes. *chuckles*
M: So, let’s rewind: how did the two of you first meet?
PW: Well, it’s hard not to know of each other when you run in such similar social circles, but if I’m remembering right, the first time we met was at... Mary’s birthday ball?
PMT: Yes, that was it. 
PW: So, Grand Duchess Margot’s birthday ball. It was my and Belle’s first foreign event besides the tour in Sedonia, and it was still one of the best nights of my life, between the dancing and the food. And the excellent company, of course. 
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PMT: Margot introduced us when we all sat for the group portrait. She had already known William from attending the Duke and Duchess of Daven’s wedding with Grand Duke David and thought we would hit it off. I’ll be the first to admit, I had a small crush when we were first introduced. 
PW: As did I, but I was so nervous around her that I didn’t register it until after I came home, and by the next time we met, well...
M: You had just broken things off with Fiona Holbrook. 
PW: Yes, I had. I want to make it clear that at the time, I didn’t want to end things when it wasn’t on my own terms, but my father wasn’t going to let up. I saw Maria when I entered the ballroom with Belle, and it turns out that crush had never really gone away. 
PMT: I knew little of that situation. I simply thought William was being a gentleman by asking me to dance on our own. But then, again, we didn’t reconnect until Margot’s wedding. 
PW: And at that point, I was with Lady Rachelle. 
M: The timing was never right, was it?
PW: It certainly didn’t feel like it. So you can imagine my surprise when I walked into an introductory History class to find Maria there. Getting to know each other away from the pressure of royal life made me realize just how in love with her I realized, and that was it. I knew that I didn’t want anybody else, even if she turned me down a hundred times. 
M: Let’s talk about the proposal. How did it come about?
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PW: Well, earlier that day, my father told me that I was going to be going to the front to fight alongside the other Allied Powers in the war. I was devastated, not only because I felt like I was unqualified, but because I wouldn’t be able to continue living in the bubble I had put myself in. We had talked about it before, of course, and we had wanted to wait until we had both finished school at least, but we didn’t get that chance.
PMT: We each made promises to each other. William promised me that he would stop thinking so negatively and that he would come home so we could be together, while I promised I would wait for him. I also made him promise to stop fussing over doing an elaborate proposal -- I didn’t want that. Just the promise to each other of getting to be together when it was all over was enough. 
PW: Still, I wanted to do something. Before I left, I managed to get into Maria’s apartment and leave her this ring in a box on the counter, along with some flowers, a note, that sort of thing. I had full intention of doing the getting down on one knee, proclamation of love when I came home, so I said it was for then. 
PMT: It’s been so hard keeping it secret all this time. Every time I went out in public without it on, it didn’t sit right with me. I’m just glad we can talk about it now! 
M: Prince William, you came home after being medically discharged following a skirmish in Shang Simla. Did that have an impact on your relationship at all?
PW: I don’t want to touch on it too much, but it did. I felt like I wasn’t what someone as amazing as Maria deserved anymore, but she reassured me, told me she didn’t care. She has been a massive support system for me as I’ve recovered and gone through physical therapy. I won’t ever be fully rid of the injury due to its nature, but knowing that Maria has been there through it all and will continue to be is more than I could ever ask for. 
M: Let’s switch to the ring, then. It isn’t one we’ve seen before -- can you talk us through the process?
PW: Maria deserved something fully to her taste, not something that had belonged to someone else in my family. She had already been accepted in, she didn’t need something labelling her as ours. I knew she didn’t like pieces that were terribly flashy, so I consulted with a few different designers and collectors of vintage pieces to get the look just right. I especially liked the look it has of a sun of sorts -- she is my light in the darkness, and always has been. I was just too blind to see it.
PMT: As soon as I put it on, I loved it. It’s exactly what I always pictured for myself. 
PW: That was the real reason I left it for you to find once I had already gone -- so you couldn’t immediately tell me you hated it.
*Monica, Prince William, and Princess Maria Theresa all laugh* 
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M: Princess, you’re marrying the future King. Are you nervous at all?
PMT: I would be foolish not to be. I’m aware of the responsibility that I’m going to inherit one day, and of course I want to perform my duty to the best of my ability, but at the end of the day, I know it will be worth it with William there. I think he’s more well-suited to the task than he thinks he is. *she gives him a playful glance*
PW: Your optimism never fails to astound me.
PMT: It isn’t optimistic -- it’s realistic. 
M: Finally, let’s talk about the wedding itself. Have dates been set?
PW: Nothing yet. We’re still trying to work that out with the government and the Monte Vistan royal family.... we’re well aware that this wedding will be as big as my parents, if not more. It’s intimidating, but all we can do is take it one step at a time.
PMT: We are both so lucky to have so many friends across the Simtinent that I think it will be a miracle if they all fit into the church. Whenever it is, though, I’m looking forward to it. I told William I wouldn’t care if we had a big splashy wedding or not before he left, and I still don’t. As long as I get to spend my life by his side, that’s what matters to me more than how long and impressive the guest list is. 
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M: Thank you both again for sitting down with me, and congratulations once again on your engagement. I think it’s safe to say everyone will be eager to hear more details as they become available. Back to you, John. 
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bethanyetc · 4 years
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Wow, what kinds of things did the therapists there do? That’s terrible
It’s time to dig out the journals. Sometimes I feel so riled up about this and I’m sick of no one talking about things like this. So I’m just going to give a few examples. And I’m putting this under a read more because it’s very long.
Basically, to set this up, there are certain things I do not talk about because they are too shameful. There was one particular issue I was especially resistant to talk about that the treatment team at Vista latched onto. I had a session with my therapist, and this is what I wrote in my journal:
She said that they all agree that if I’m not going to work on it then I can’t be here, which I thought was really harsh and made me scared because I do really want to be here and do the work and get better, but why does this have to be my work?...She said all of my work, all of my treatment is going to be about this and only this. She said, “You’re going to try to starve it out of you and either you face it or you literally take it to the grave.�� She said that none of the other things matter because all of my problems led back to this.
I’m not going to share what the issue was, because it actually doesn’t matter. Looking back now, I am so sickened by the way they made it so black and white. I am also sickened by the way I didn’t say a word, didn’t stick up for myself and my truth at all. This thing is actually not related to ANY of the huge major struggles of my eating disorder and had nothing to do with why it developed and why it was perpetuated.
I just want to point out that this session happened a few days after our weekly lunch outing. We went to a place that completely blindsided me. I was blindsided by the location and cuisine so deeply linked to a specific piece of my trauma I hadn’t talked about at all in my 5 years of treatment. I was blindsided by the immediacy and intensity of the flashbacks I had when we got there. Trauma is so complicated to explain and I still feel unworthy of using that word, but sometimes the body speaks for you.
I’ll spare you the gory details, but the important part is that I had therapy that same day, and I actually held a little piece of hope that I would have support. But I was told off. Really, it was my fault for coming into Vista and being very transparent about my “treatment things”. Things I did that kept me sick, and one of them (yes, I admit this) was to subconsciously struggle to get people to take care of me, to suppress everything so that I would eventually explode and be in crisis mode, forcing people to take care of me. I held on to my “old story” of being the victim, of not wanting to be happy just to get attention (this one came directly from Vista and if I hear anyone say the words “old story” to me again, I will scream). I was chastised for making such a big scene on the outing. I was told I was “doing one of my treatment things”. My therapist had heard my complete life map, she knew the basics, she knew it was something bad, but I was told to let it go. I cannot emphasize how damaging that is to someone with PTSD. Or anyone for that matter!
The point of telling you that story is to say this: my treatment should not have been about one thing. That should have been explored on my own terms, because what ended up happening was so damaging. 
They only knew about this thing because it had come up in my numerous stays at various other Monte Nidos, so it was stuck with me. At times in treatment, I have lied, like everyone has at some point, but by that point I was terrified to be called out for lying about anything because I wanted to stay in treatment. So I became very confused and unable to look at what was true for me. 
So I went along with what they said and blindly agreed with the story they presented. The intensity and drama with which they presented it to me was spellbinding. Then there was the fact that I was only allowed to stay there if I worked on ‘this thing’ so I told them what they wanted to hear, and it felt awful. For a long time, I could not figure out why it was so upsetting to me, until I realized that the story I was going with, the story they made me go with, was completely untrue, but I was in so far deep that if I said something, it would have looked very bad.
As I write this, I am aware of the lack of agency I gave myself, but I really saw Vista as my last chance. Before Vista, I had been inpatient at Princeton for a while, which that’s where I went when I was at very sickest. That was the first time in my eating disorder that I ever thought I was going to die. If I was going to get better it had to be then and it had to be then and it had to be at Vista. I needed to stay there, and this was the only way I could. 
That covers the oversight/gaslighting portion of my treatment issues at Vista. I played my role in it, but didn’t get what I needed at all. I became small, passive, and desperate. I was ashamed, regretful, and humiliated.
The bullying, however, was a whole separate issue, and because this is so long already, I will just leave you with one anecdote:
I had been at Vista for two months, and I was really, really struggling. I woke up each day wishing I hadn't. One day after a morning meditation group, I was left behind with the therapist leading it. I told her that I didn't want to be alive anymore if it meant living with this much pain. She shared something with me that was extremely personal and I’m still shocked she told me, but from that I felt like there was some level of understanding if she was willing to share that with me. Later in primary group, she and another therapist (the one who did most of the bullying tbh) basically ripped me to shreds for it. They asked what I thought I was doing casually telling people I didn’t want to be alive. They said that what I was doing was manipulative and I wasn't even trying to get better. I was humiliated many times at Vista, but the worst part is that after each time, I was convinced there was something very wrong with me. I couldn't understand why I always seemed to be doing something wrong. 
I couldn’t figure it out because I was doing nothing wrong...oh god, I just thought about that time the (worse) therapist was leading a group in which I was trying to respond to some prompt and she shouted to me, “Oh my god, you are exhausting! I don’t even want to hear you talk anymore”....sorry this was so long, but boy did I have a lot to say (and this was just the tip of the iceberg). 
Anyway, I hope people can feel that they can share their stories. My inbox is always open, to anyone. And I promise I will believe you.
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annakie · 5 years
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We're back for part two!  Remember the last time how I said....
And after that game... I parted ways with my friends once again.  Because I had tickets... to Critical Role.
Well... not only that, but I was finally meeting @thievinghippo​ IRL to see it!
CRITICAL ROLE (aka Friday Night)
I took off right after the previous game had ended and headed for the show.  My one big frustration was that it took 30 minutes for my Lyft driver to arrive from AROUND THE BLOCK (ok, about a quarter of a mile, but still).  In retrospect, I think he was hoping I'd cancel so he could get a bigger fare or something.  I think he just fucked himself over because he could have done that route twice in the time it took him to come get me.  So I got there with just a few minutes to spare and no time to get in the merch line.  But hey, I found Hippo and met a few other people from Tumblr whose names I recognized!  
It was so great to finally meet her, but we had almost no time to talk beforehand (but when we did, it was all about how mad we still are about Jaime / Brienne and also I tried to catch her up to what's happening in CR since she's pretty far behind.)
The show was AWESOME.  It was so fun to see live!  It was particularly awesome when the entire audience sang along with the theme song (See this video if you haven't yet for those of you not there: https://twitter.com/PhoenixHeart815/status/1157446225223962624 ).  It reminded me a lot of singing along with the Sparks Nevada theme the last few TAH shows, I got a little misty-eyed.
The bad?  It was really really hot in the theater.  At intermission I bolted out to the bathroom and buy cold waters.  I was about to get in the merch line but the lights already started flashing.  SIGH.  I gave Hippo a water and before we could settle in much, the show started again.  I told her my plan for the end of the show, though.
I will admit, my lack of sleep from the previous two nights was starting to catch up with me, and I had no caffeine available to combat it with.  I almost ducked out of the show early because I felt myself nodding off with the heat in the theater masked with the dark of the theater and that the second half of the show was less exciting (but still fun!) than the first.  Seeing the show live was amazing!
Just as Matt said they were ending the show there, I hopped out of my chair (I was in an aisle) and went into the lobby.  I was dying to get a set of the metal dice... and they were sold out of EVERYTHING except the big blue d20 and some pins.  ARGHGHGHGHGH.  So I got the d20, and watched the rest of the show including Liam's very surprising win, on the monitors.  (I'd voted for Liam because I assumed Sam would win.  I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. :)  Though I love Sam to bits.)
Hippo joined me outside in the lobby early, and we left the theater just ahead of everyone else and she waited and we chatted while I called a Lyft.  She wanted to get out before traffic got too crazy, too, so she took off.  I am VERY MAD I didn't get a pic with the two of us at all.  Next year?!  
Then of course my Lyft driver didn't come to where I was exactly (literally at the Lyft pickup/dropoff designated location) and I had to walk around and look for him and by the time I found him, he'd gotten boxed in so we had to wait in traffic anyway.  Ah well.
At least the freeway was re-opened that night heading back to the airport, and thus, my hotel, for a shorter ride.  I ended up not falling asleep til close to 2.
I loved my evening and would do it all again but that Jeremy and Marcus told me that the Starfinder game they played in that night was AH-FUCKING-MAZING and was literally one of their favorite games of their entire lives, both of them.  It was a multi-table megagame that had a pass-fail condition and would shape the next season of the Society, and I'm sad I missed it while being really glad I did what I did.  Sometimes it's feast or feast, and you gotta pick which awesome meal you want.
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I didn’t take many pics, just one as they were settling in after Sam came out in his costume, and one during intermission.  It’s all on Twitch, anyway!
SATURDAY
Oh man, for some really dumb reason we'd scheduled our Saturday morning for 8AM... but it was Starfinder!!  Uh, I will say I consumed more caffeine on that Saturday than maybe any other day of my life.  But it was needed.
What also helped keep me awake that it was FUCKING FREEZING IN THE ROOM.  The game itself was an absolute blast, though.  It was a brutal slog through a dead planet with hostile aliens everywhere and we had to stealth through, collect information and get out.  This was the game I felt the closest to death in all weekend, I'll say that for sure.  But we did it!
The very kind Felice(sp?) who was at the table decided she didn't want to carry her hoodie through the dealer hall, where she was going next, and her husband was working the main table at the Pathfinder room, so she told me to leave it there with him when I was done with it.  Since our next game was also in the Paizo room, I took her up on this offer and was warm and comfy the next few hours.
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Our DM, an Operative, and Felice, plus the Hoodie of Warmth +2.
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A very rare picture of me, on the internet, along with the guys.
And our next game was our first Pathfinder 2 game!  We were very excited to try out the system, and were put at a table with a father and son duo.  Jeremy and Marcus were excited because the DM was the same guy who'd DM'd their Starfinder game while I was at Critical Role.  
The only bad thing that happened here was that the El Paso Cielo Vista shooting news broke.  I grew up in El Paso, from when I was 12 to 22... it's Middle School through college for me.  Even though I've now lived in Dallas twice as long as I lived in El Paso and I haven't been there in like ten years, it's still... a little bit home.  So I left the table for a little bit to get on Facebook and make sure my friends there were all okay (they are), and text with my mom to make sure a family member who still lives there is okay (she is, though she took awhile to answer mom so we were worried.)  I have a lot of thoughts though, which belong in another post, and I'm still angry and upset about the shooting, even though it didn't affect me personally.  But for now, that's the end of talk of that terribleness.
At our table were a father and ~10 y/o son, who I'm cutting out of the pics because posting pics of minors without getting permission is not OK.  Also, the game was SHORT.  It turns out it was designed as an intro to Pathfinder 2 or maybe even RPGs in general so we knocked it out pretty quick, like 2.5 hours.
One very cool thing that Pazio was doing was that when you played in a game, you got a wooden token that you took up to the prize table, and rolled a d20 + d10.  No matter what you rolled, you got a prize, though most of them were cool little boons for your official characters.  However, if you critted, you got to pick a physical prize from the table.  Well, we played so much that Jeremy and Marcus both critted twice.  They ended up getting ALL THREE Token boxes (like cardboard minis, very nice quality) for Starfinder, plus the Starfinder Beginner's Box.  Pretty sure those four things together retailed for over $100.  Score!
So after the short game, with time to spare before our next game, the gang decided it was Dealer Hall time, literally the first time Jeremy or Marcus had time to go AT ALL.  I volunteered to be the stuff-holder.  After dropping off Felice's hoodie, I found a comfy seat near an outlet that was near the dealer hall and let everyone dump the stuff they didn't want to carry with me.  They came back and left stuff with me, and then after a couple of hours, also brought me dinner from the food trucks.  It was a fair trade.
I also asked Jeremy to stop by one particular booth and pick me up a set of dice I'd decided on, Blue Turquiose stone dice from Metallic Dice Games.  I took some pics of the dice below, though the next day I did have Jeremy swap out the d20 at the booth because I didn't like how some of the faces looked (by far the angle in the pic is the best side, there was too much solid color on the other sides of the die.)  These are going to be my official dice for my 4e character, who is a storm sorcerer reskinned as a druid.
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LOVE THESE DICE, can’t wait to roll ‘em.
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DM, Dad and blurred-out son.
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A blurred-out boy and my guys.
Our final game of the day was the Cypher system, which is made by Monte Cook (one of the original D&D designers).  Cypher is a fairly simple system which mostly just uses a d20 and d6, and the DM never rolls dice.  The original system was made for a game called Numenera, which we'd played the beginner's box adventure for a few years ago but didn't feel like we got a good feel for the system, so we wanted to give it a go with a DM who knew the system well.
Overall, we enjoyed the game, it definitely wasn't "bad"!  But the problem was, we all agreed later, that the module that was being run was the kickoff module for a much longer campaign, there was a huge lore dump near the end and we also didn't really "get" everything that was going on.  
It also had the most memorable ending, though.  We ended the game by trying to escape from a base while being chased by some guys who greatly outmatched us.  My character was a pilot, and we needed to leave via a shuttlecraft.  One of the players who we didn't know was on the "get the door open and provide covering fire so everyone else can get to the shuttle" team.  And then he needed to make a roll in order to also GTFO and get to the shuttle.
He rolled.  Got a 5.  There's a mechanic where you can spend a card that you've collected in order to re-roll.  So he did that, got a 2.  Someone else gave him a card to re-roll.  He rolled a 3.  Someone else did.  He rolled a 5.  I was the last one with a card on the table, so I slapped it down.  He rolled a 4.
It was amazing.  Amazingly terrible rolling.
My pilot already had the craft powered up and was waiting for only him to get on.  I sighed, looked the player in the eye and said...
"I'm so sorry, but my character sheet says that I have a personality flaw.  I'm impulsive and impatient and have a setback to anything that requires patience, concentration or willpower.  I'm not waiting for you."  I looked at the DM and said "I decide that he's sacrificing himself to save us, and take off."
So I left him behind.  
The player was 100% cool with it, we had a laugh about it, and he agreed it was what my character would have done.  So it was kind of a tragic and funny way to end the game.  Also Brian needed to get some sleep that night so he hadn't come to that game, and Marcus left a little early to tend to the family, so just Jeremy and I closed out the night.
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DM on the left, players I didn’t know in the center, and one on the right.  The guy in the bright blue shirt in the center?  I killed his character.  Sorry not sorry.
SUNDAY
The next morning, sadly, was the last day of GenCon.  We only had one game scheduled that morning, our second Pathfinder 2 game.  And EVERYONE was gonna be at the game!  
I hadn't even SEEN Gwen or Laura the entire con, and when they arrived at just about the same time Jeremy and I did, we joked that we hadn't believed the others were at the convention.  
We'd hoped that they'd let us put all 7 people at the table (Kirstyn had left late Saturday night to fly home and be at a concert she was playing in.)  They did not.  So we split up "Kids" and "Adults".
Sadly, this didn't work out super well for either table.  Gwen/Brian/Ally's table had a DM they did not enjoy and also a married couple who actually fought with each other uncomfortably at the table(!!).  
We had a good DM, but also an old guy who... I did not like.  At all.  He talked over the DM, even when the DM was explicitly trying to answer a question we'd asked him, things like rules questions on how game mechanics in PF2 had changed from PF1, since, you know, it was a system that had released THREE DAYS AGO.  Also, he was very... helpful... in telling me how skill checks worked and also questioning my decisions on how I was playing my character.  (YES, thanks I did consider carefully before casting Sanctuary on myself, and yes, it WAS THE RIGHT CALL.  I was the only healer in the party and had gargoyles flanking me, THANKS.)
I literally told the guy (as nicely as possible) "Sir, I've been playing RPGs for over twenty years, I'm well aware of how RPGs work, thank you" the second time he told me how skill checks worked as I was adding up my die roll with my skill modifier and took two seconds to do the math. And sure he'd probably been playing for thirty or more but um... I know how to roll a skill check.
After a short break, I told my friends I might need to leave the table.  Instead, Marcus and I switched seats so I wasn't sitting next to him anymore and the DM tried to refocus the game a bit.  It helped me at least.  I just did my best to ignore the guy.  I'm pretty sure he just didn't have the greatest social skills in the world but sometimes my tolerance for people like this can be... low.  His brother was also at the table and seemed okay, at least.  
The game itself was pretty good, ignoring everything having to do with that guy.  After the game the DM thanked me for sticking around and basically empathized that he was getting pretty annoyed, too.  
Not the greatest way to end gaming at the con, but hey, it also could have been worse.  I took pics of that game but decided not to put pics of someone I didn’t like on the internet.
Gwen, Brian and Ally's game ended like 45 minutes before ours (sadly, much to their relief) and they'd left to do one more run through the vendor hall and then left the con to start their drive home.  I had Gwen pick me up a set of dice that... I haven't even seen yet... and they were hella expensive.  I'm kinda feeling buyer's remorse about them right now, I didn't need to spend that much on dice this con but... well, we'll see how I feel when I see them in person.  If I hate 'em, I'll resell 'em.
All weekend long I'd been texting with my BFF from High School's husband, who is also my friend.  He was at the Con as well but doing his own thing and we'd been trying to arrange a meetup.  Well, we finally did it!  He came and saw me, and we hung out for about 45 minutes, just talking about the con, and old times and what we're doing now and the family etc. etc.  So that was great!  I was really glad to see him and catch up.
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It’s Richard!
After he left because he had to go help tear down the booth he'd been working at, like the day before, I set up "basecamp" in the same place as before.  I had thought about going back to the vendor hall where Jeremy, Marcus and Laura were, but I'd already sent Jeremy off to ask him to pick me up the one last thing I wanted (the official GenCon dice tray.  I have a Wyrmwood Lacewood dice tray for home use, but wanted a nice travel dice tray.  I had a leather one for Kraken, but I'm real unhappy with Kraken Dice now and wanted something else.  I don’t plan on buying from them ever again in the future.  The official 2019 Gencon tray is very nice, and Jeremy had gotten one the day before, so he picked me up one as well.)
POST-CON
I only had to wait about an hour for the end of the con, and by that time the only ones from our group left were "the adults."  So once we were all gathered back up, the four of us headed out and walked a couple of blocks to a restaurant, which we couldn't get into, so we went to the restaurant next door, the Yard House.  
Wherein we had comically bad service, but they were very nice about it, and also WE were really nice about it, and ended up getting about half our meal comped.  Like our waiter had put in all the drink orders for all his tables to our table, so we had the wrong drinks delivered about five times.  We never got water refills.  Marcus had half a beer spilled on his leg (not even his beer, just another wrongly brought to our table), Laura's Appetizer-as-entree came out as an appetizer.  We asked for more chips for the chips and guac and queso we'd gotten as an app and never got it, etc.  Also while the manager was there assuring us we wouldn't have any more drinks brought to our table we didn't ask for... drinks were brought to our table we didn't ask for.  It was actually hilarious by that point.  
The waiter was brand new (his second day) so we got it.  It was just one of those things.  But they took care of us, we tipped well, it was all OK.
So that was the end of Gencon.  Back at my hotel, which Jeremy and I had long decided we wouldn't stay at again, I'd taken a shower very early Saturday morning after Critical Role.  Sunday morning when I showered again, the water still hadn't drained from the tub(!!) but I was in a hurry and just showered in gross cold water at my feet.  Then told the front desk.
They hadn't even been in my room all day to even clean up the room at all, much less do anything about the bathtub when I got back to my room Sunday night, so I switched rooms.  And then the room next to me had left the alarm clock on, and it went off at 9pm.  And my phone in that room didn't work, so I had to go downstairs a second time to get someone to go shut it off.  Also the AC in that room never turned off, the controls seemed to do nothing, so it was like 60 degrees in there the entire night.  It was actually a relief to leave the hotel the next day.  Next year... we'll pay a little more for a bit nicer hotel.
Annnd.. the next morning Jeremy and I got to the airport early enough, flight was full but not delayed, and had no problems getting home.  Spent most of the day from getting on the plane to going to sleep that night with a massive migraine so I spent the afternoon at home sleeping and drinking lots of water.. but yay... no con crud!
I miss the con, but being back in my own bed with my kitties is all worth it.  Still, I can't wait for Gencon again next year. :D
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storiesbyjes2g · 5 years
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We all have them. Little bits of our stories that exist only in our heads. Things we know but never seem to find a way to share for whatever reason. Or maybe you’ve mentioned it in passing but haven’t gotten a chance to explain. Either way, here’s your opportunity to spill!
Copy and paste this into a new post and then tell us five (5!) little bits of trivia about your story. It can be about the characters, plot, you name it. Then tag a few storytelling friends and keep the game going!
I was tagged by @boomchicapopdat. Thanks, sis!
Man...which story do I do? Most of you guys here aren’t familiar with my stories because they’re on WordPress, but I’ll play along! At one point in my life, I was working on 4 stories at once. SMH I do not recommend that lol. I’ve completed all but one of them! For this tag, I think I’ll talk about Discovering Juliana because it was the only non-game-driven story I have and has the most backstory and stuff I never got to say. Let’s go!
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1. I could never explain Juliana’s nationality in the story because I didn’t have the foresight at the beginning to make the characters humans and not sims. Problem is, all sims speak the same language. Because of that, I could never say expressly what language Juliana spoke which made it near impossible to name her nationality. However, the story did say she was from Monte Vista, and everyone who’s ever played TS3 knows it’s based on Italy so the story heavily implied she was Italian. The ONLY reason she spoke Spanish when I wrote her in “her language” was because that is the only language I know well enough to not depend on Google Translate LOL. They’re similar enough, right?
2. Juliana is Catholic and was raised in a very strict Catholic home. Even though faith was a huge part of her life, it didn’t really take root in her life as deeply as her parents. She is what I call “God conscious.” She believes there is a God and respects His authority, but beyond that she doesn’t really know what she believes. So, when she arrived in Willow Creek, she didn’t have a church to go to or her mom around to remind her to pray and what not. Of course she still prayed, but her new environment caused so much confusion. No one went to church or even spoke about God. Things she was not allowed to do at home were commonplace in her new home. There was a stark contrast between her two lives, and it kind of through her faith for a loop.
Harriett, the matriarch of the Humphries family, was a spiritual person and would probably be something like southern baptist. But, like I said, I didn’t have the foresight to do anything with this. I began this story in 2015 when the game was just a few months old. It was my second foray into the SimLit world, and I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Oh well.
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3. Faith actually served as a backdrop for many elements in this story. The number one element is the family drama and why the Humphries children treat Harriett like a pest they wanted to be rid of. I always imagined her being someone who is loud and proud of her faith but not necessarily sensitive to others about it. She forced them all to go to church and nagged them about what they should and shouldn’t be doing and ended up driving them away. Harold remained neutral. He didn’t share her beliefs, but he liked that she had them and found value in some principles. He wanted her to teach those things to the children so she could raise them “right.”
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4. Kevin’s first marriage was more tragic than the story let on. You know Caroline died. You also know that when Kevin discovered his feelings for Juliana, he kinda questioned his relationship with Caroline. I have a whole dissertation on that LOL. The long and short of it is Kevin didn’t have deep love with Caroline. I struggle to say he didn’t love her, but sometimes I think that’s accurate. They had fireworks. She was his first real relationship. Also, he had a deep need for connection and roots resulting from his parents dying when he was a kid, being raised by an uncle who didn’t care for him, and being estranged from his family. They got married far too quickly than they needed to and didn’t know each other as well as they should. They fought a lot, and the makeup sex was hot.
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 5. I’m not sure if I can think of a 5th thing! I’ll tagging care of my tagging duties now lol. @maladi777 @notjustabooksims @mrsracooney @tripstaysnoided @capricornsim @eslanes
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notjustabooksims · 5 years
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I was tagged by @loladiamond01 in this here thing and it was pretty great! Thank you, Jowita <3 I, of course, decided to do Regina - because I’ll take any chance to share pictures of her!
I put it under a read more :)
GETTING TO KNOW: Regina
► Name? ➔ Regina Mancini, or just Gina. ► Are you single? ➔ I guess, though whether I’m available is a little more complicated than that. ► Are you happy? ➔ In a way. ► Are you angry? ➔ The same: in a way. ► Are your parents still married? ➔ That’s complicated. Very. Complicated. They’re together and that’s all that matters.
NINE FACTS
► Birth Place? ➔ Monte Vista. ► Hair Color? ➔ Reddish brown, like my dad. ► Eye Color? ➔ Got dark, olive green eyes from my mum. ► Birthday? ➔ 3rd of April ► Mood? ➔ I have no idea. If you find a good way to describe being happy and confused and a little pissed at the same time, hit me up. ► Gender? ➔ I’m a woman. ► Summer or winter? ➔ Summer. I can’t stand the cold. ► Morning or afternoon? ➔ Afternoon. I never get up before noon, because mornings can kiss my ass.
EIGHT THINGS ABOUT YOUR LOVE LIFE
► Are you in love? ➔ I don’t know. I mean he said he was… I don’t know. Fuck off. ► Do you believe in love at first sight? ➔ No, not really. Lust at first sight, however, is a very real thing. ► Who ended your last relationship? ➔ He did. His name’s Rico. ► Have you ever broken someone’s heart? ➔ Nah, not as far as I know. ► Are you afraid of commitments? ➔ Not really. It’s everyone else who’s afraid of committing to me. ► Have you hugged someone within the last week? ➔ I have. He’s a client. ► Have you ever had a secret admirer? ➔ If I have, it’s secret to me, too. ► Have you ever broken your own heart? ➔ With the steady stream of guys just waiting to break it for me, there just hasn’t been a need.
SIX CHOICES
► Love or lust? ➔ It’s hard to have love without lust. At least for me. ► Lemonade or iced tea? ➔ Lemonade. I’m not big on tea of any kind. ► Cats or Dogs? ➔ Dogs, I guess, so long as I’m not the owner. Don’t get me wrong, I love the bastards, but I can’t be bothered to take care of them. I prefer visiting other people’s dogs to pet them and then let owner do the boring stuff. ► A few best friends or many regular friends? ➔ Both. I don’t have a preference here. ► Wild night out or romantic night in? ➔ Had a lot of the former, would like more of the latter. Maybe soon… ► Day or night? ➔ Night time is when I’m active and it’s when I work, so…
FIVE HAVE YOU EVERS
► Been caught sneaking out? ➔ Only once! I think that’s impressive, considering how many times I’ve sneaked out. ► Fallen down/up the stairs? ➔ I did fall up the stairs once… I was very drunk okay. And it was Lotta’s fault because she leant me her stilettos and bought another round of shots. ► Wanted something/someone so badly it hurt? ➔ Right now, there’s one someone. Let’s not talk too much about it, I don’t know how to feel about it. ► Wanted to disappear? ➔ Every time I’ve been dumped, I’d have liked to disappear.
FOUR PREFERENCES
► Smile or eyes? ➔ Well, that beautiful idiot has both going for him, so… ► Shorter or Taller? ➔ Taller. ► Intelligence or Attraction? ➔ I don’t know. ► Hook-up or Relationship? ➔ At this point, I’m getting ready for something that lasts.
FAMILY
► Do you and your family get along? ➔ My dad’s my best friend (besides Lotta) and the best dad ever. My siblings are great, so is my brother’s fiancée and kid. Mum and I don’t get along super well, but I like her. She’s smart and a criminal dirtbag like the rest of us. I love my family. ► Would you say you have a “messed up life”? ➔ Nah, I’m a pretty ordinary gal… Oh, the crime thing? That’s not messed up—it’s just how we do things. ► Have you ever run away from home? ➔ Nope. There’s nothing to run away from. I love it here. ► Have you ever gotten kicked out? ➔ You mean out of my home, right? Because I haven’t. I’ve been kicked out of a few bars, though… and a museum… and a few homes… and a church. But I can’t imagine ever being kicked out by my family.
FRIENDS
► Do you secretly hate one of your friends? ➔ Trust me: If I hate someone, there’s nothing secret about it. ► Do you consider all of your friends good friends? ➔ Yeah, I guess I do. ► Who is your best friend? ➔ Carlotta is my best girlfriend (probably the only one, besides family – don’t have a lot of lady friends) and dad’s my best friend in the world. ► Who knows everything about you? ➔ Carlotta and dad probably come the closest.
Thanks again to Jowita for tagging me in this. I don’t know a lot of folks on Tumblr, but I’d like to tag @summerreverie, if you’re up for it. If not, don’t worry about it - just thought you should have the chance :)
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jenna-darknight · 5 years
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Waitwaitwaitwaitwait, "Creep Hands Lady".....???
I missed a letter in that tag apparently, it was supposed to be “creepy hands lady”, but yes, let me sing you the song of the Creepy Hands Lady.  @tsubamari can back me up on this horror show.
So, my home town is pretty small, and like most towns in the Central Valley, pretty boring except for like one or two things that happened there in recent memory.  Probably the only reason you may have heard of my town if you’re not from the Valley or California is that we got sued by Walmart once because they bought land right before a zoning law passed that wouldn’t let them build a super Walmart in town and crush all the local businesses like they usually do.  Walmart actually lost the suit, but still owns the land, I presume out of spite.  The other reasons you might know it is that it used to be in the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Churches per Population and it was the town they filmed the Christian Mingle film in.
If you’re from the Valley, you know my hometown either because one of the county fairs happens there and all the musicians eat at the oldest diner in town that also had George H.W. and Barbara Bush eat there once (their chairs have plaques on them) or because you’ve driven down 99 and had our awful Auto Mall sign burn into your retinas before it finally got scrapped in like 2014 or so.
That last one is kind of emblematic of our city council’s philosophy: Nobody Wants This, But Fuck ‘Em They’re Getting It Anyway.  That sign got proposed, nobody liked it, and they spent tax dollars on it anyway.  Then years later they stuck some awful art on top that no one wanted and wasted more money.  They also tried to make everyone use one of the newest roads in town by sticking speed bumps and roundabouts on all of the other east - west roads despite: a.) most of them being residential and making it fucking awful for anyone to get out of their house, and b.) the road they wanted everyone to use was on the very north edge of town and no one wanted to fucking use it because it was inconvenient.  They also tried to rename one of the busiest streets in town to reflect that we had a state university in town, but every single business on that road (which were a lot because it runs the entire length of the town) basically rioted in a city council meeting, so they basically stuck “University street” under it’s actual name (Monte Vista) so they could appease the very angry people but also claim they were a university town.  
That is how my hometown’s city council do.
So to actually get to the point of this story, the City Council had some extra funds in 2005 and decided to invest it in the historic main street part of town to basically get more people to shop down there.  This is great in theory, but naturally it started to fall apart after that.  They decided as part of this beautification effort, they needed to put a statue at the end of main street you’d enter if you were coming into town from the freeway.  you know, to try and really spruce it up and make it distinct.  So the Arts Commission found an artist willing to do it and spent around $15,000 on it.  The statue is supposed to be of Califia, the“Goddess” of California from a 1500s Spanish novel and was supposed to represent the valley agriculture.
This is what it ended up looking like:
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The water for the fountain comes out of her wrists and her hands are usually have build up from the hard water (you can see how they’ve gone green in the photo).  They’re also massive man hands and look fucking horrifying.  This photo doesn’t capture the thousand yard stare this thing has too, it looks like it was made by someone who vaguely understands how a person is supposed to look, but can’t actually make something that looks like a person without giving it a face that’ll give you night terrors.  Not to mention she’s just tacky and looks super cheap in person.
And Surprise! Everyone fucking hated it.  The barber shop that she was built in front of actually volunteered to pay to move her because the artist refused to modify her and make her less awful, but the Arts Commission “felt very strongly” she needed to be where she is.  The barber shop eventually went out of business because no one wanted to get their hair cut staring at this horror show.  She comes up at council meetings pretty regularly for two reasons: a.) people still want her moved or modified because she’s terrible, and b.) the city council wants to spend more money keeping her up because they’re proud of it.
So that’s the creepy hands lady.  I have to live with it every time I go home to visit my folks and I’m sure it’ll somehow manage to haunt me long after she’s replaced by something much, much worse.
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joshuadunshua · 6 years
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What to do when you’re afraid to leave, but you’re just as afraid to stay?
I was born in the covenant, to a convert father and a Mormon-since-birth mother. I was baptized at eight, like I was supposed to. I had a spiritual crisis in middle school, then found my way back to the church by high school. But I have never felt at ease with the teachings of the church. It has never sat right with me. I figured it was because I wasn’t like the other girls my age, I was geeky, nerdy, entirely unathletic, and for a long time I didn’t even want to be very feminine like them. They avoided me, and I stood upright and alone trying my best anyway. There were certainly some points where I’d not want to go to church at all, but I always attributed it to being outcasted by others. I graduated from YW with barely anything completed in my Personal Progress booklet because I didn’t believe in doing things just to get them done. I moved on to relief society, the only one left my age in the area as all the other girls moved off to start college.
Relief society has always had a fake feeling veneer over it, no matter what ward I was in. All the sisters seem to have fishhooks in the corners of their mouths whenever we’re all together. And I’m not even anywhere close to Utah. I can’t imagine how it might be out there, where there’s the mental health and opioid addiction epidemics. It’s not a mere correlation, I don’t think.
I had a devoted boyfriend who would go on to serve a mission, and before he left I felt that I should also go on a mission too. I think I felt that way because i would have nothing else to do for two years, so why not?
The only spiritual experience with prayer I can remember clearly having was as a middle school youth, and I cannot remember whether I prayed to know if the Book of Mormon was true or that Christ’s teachings were true, or if it was for a testimony of something else entirely. I don’t trust my memory very well. I’ve never felt spirituality during a prayer since. Which means I never got confirmation from the Lord that I should serve a mission. But hey, I never got confirmation from the Lord for anything since middle school, so maybe it was always as I had heard someone say once, that the Lord knows I already know the answer, so He wouldn’t tell me?
So I weaned off the antidepressants I had just begun taking earlier that year and submitted my mission papers. And I was sent to Phoenix, AZ, Spanish speaking. The most exciting part was being able to get endowed just days before my only sibling’s Sealing to his to-be wife. I had been so afraid I wouldn’t get to be there for it, as he is older than I am and you can’t just get endowed if you’re a female. I don’t remember very much of my own endowment, not specifically. I do remember not feeling prepared, and feeling uncomfortable. I did not know what covenants I would be making exactly, but I knew it was the next step I was supposed to take.
So I packed my bags, said goodbye to my best friend, and left for the MTC. I’ve always struggled with routine (hello depression), so to have such a rigid schedule was good for me. I was desperate to become more in tune with God and Christ and the Holy Spirit. I read, listened, learned, and prayed more fervently than I ever had before. I also got sick in week one of six, lost my voice completely, and due to the nature of having to learn a language, was never allowed to fully recover it. Singing has always been the only thing I am great at in my life, and for the entire six weeks I was there, i could not sing. Not even for a visit from an apostle. I begged my teacher for just one day of vocal rest from practicing Spanish, and it was not permitted. I was heartbroken, and I still am. Singing has always been the one way I would say I could feel connected to my spirituality, and I could not access it.
I prayed desperately in the MTC many times over, begging God to let me feel His love. I prayed at night for ten minutes, once even half an hour. I prayed in the Celestial room on Saturdays when we were permitted to do endowment ordinances for the dead. Every week i would cry deeply in that beautiful room. I cried many many times at night. I just wanted to know for sure that God loved me. To feel something, anything, that i could identify. I can’t say I ever did. I figured there must just be something wrong with me and that I should stop asking. I persisted along.
I left the MTC and headed into the field, to Arizona. To Monte Vista, specifically. I had a decent compañera, she was tough, and steadfast, and strong in her convictions. She could seem a little unempathetic and unsympathetic at times, but she was doing her best. But where things had at least been going okay at the MTC, arriving in the field saw my mental health deteriorate. Rapidly. I have a paralyzing fear of role-play and role-play-like situations, and practice teaching is such a situation. I could not do it; I would freeze, panic, and cry. I quickly became more depressed on my mission than I had ever been at home since the eighth grade. Which is to say I was just shy of suicidal. I wanted to die, and be dead, and stop existing, but I was at least not in danger of acting upon it. I lost all sense of self-worth I had managed to build up. I cried everywhere i could without pestering my compañera. In the bathrooms, in the shower, silently at night after she was asleep. I did cry to her also, often during the morning studies. I still did not have my voice back. I was still not permitted a day of vocal rest. I began speaking with my mission president. I set up a time to visit with a family services therapist.
After a session with me, she told me she couldn’t see that there was anything wrong with me. To her, I was fine, because I was clearly not having an emotional breakdown in her office, and was cognizant of the irrationality I was dealing with. I was fine.
I went on splits with an English Sister, and cried to her, poured my soul out to her. She helped me to feel loved, but gave me the same response as everyone else. Pray about it.
Christmas came quickly. I had had thanksgiving in the MTC, after all. It was without a doubt the best thanksgiving I ever had. Not because I felt the spirit, but because it was not with my extended family. Thanksgivings with my extended family often turned into some kind of argument, then. So doing service and spending time with other missionaries was a nice change. While my compañera was Skyping with her family, I knelt in our bedroom alone and prayed. I prayed so hard. I wanted to stay, and yet I knew I might have to leave. I begged for help, and I received an answer for the first time in almost a decade. That I should go home. I Skyped my family, and told them what to expect. It was a very bittersweet Christmas Day. More bitter than sweet. But I felt I had my answer.
So I told my mission president, the priesthood leader presiding over the whole Phoenix, Arizona mission. God wanted me to go home.
“God wouldn’t tell you that.”
It took me over a week after that to make the final decision to go home. There are two things my mission president told me that i will never forget. One, was that, even if I went home and all my problems went away, that I still needed to get help, because it would come back, and it couldn’t come back when I was a new wife, or a new mother, when I had new and difficult responsibilities. The other, “God wouldn’t tell you that.”
I returned home in January. I was released with honor, a real RM in the eyes of the Church, and I went to the doctor for my depression. For a small while, I tried to stick with the habits of a missionary, praying and reading and studying daily. Maybe not the “up at 6am,” part, but much of the rest. But it soon became too painful to bear. Everything reminded me of my mission. Everything seemed to have the word failure on it in hidden inks that only my heart could read. I had to take a step back for my mental health.
I don’t know if my mission president knew what weight his words carried when he told me that. I don’t know if he thought before he spoke them. He justified his words to me. The only spiritual feeling I had felt from prayer since grade school was written off as a feeling I conjured myself. It’s easy for others to say “he abused his priesthood position,” but he learned that idea from somewhere. He’d thought on that idea before. He was immediate in that response, and he maintained it. He was a leader, and if someone like him is able to so simply destroy faith with a single sentence borne in his mind of God, how can I trust what any leader tells me is of God?
I pushed myself through the rest of the time my then boyfriend was out on his mission. I was faithful to him— it was easy, as I loved him so much and am asexual, so I had no concern that I would find myself in a position where I wouldn’t be able to “control myself.” I felt at that time that we were foreordained to marry, that when he returned home he would save for a ring and we would soon be engaged. That was always our plan.
Then he came home in late December of 2016. I tried to jump back into what we had had, but physically it was difficult as I had physically been isolated for two years. I told him I would need time to warm up to the more serious bits. Instead of trying to communicate boundaries and asking permission to move forward with anything, he grew cold. Any physical contact, I had to initiate. Kissing him felt like kissing a brick wall. He talked to me less— he never opened up more than surface level, an issue we had never had. He began to treat me like a monster, began to grow upset if I knew more than him about anything, and instead of talking to a 21 year old returned missionary, I felt like I was constantly speaking with an immature 17 year old high schooler. He was the perfect mormon boy, if you look at him objectively. He never missed a day of scripture reading or prayer, and he loved his mission, or so he said. He broke a lot of rules near the end, jumping into pop culture and watching anime and music videos on his P-days. He did not come back a man at all. He came back a depressed, worn down boy in denial of his own health.
Eventually I got him on skype with me (he lived an hour away), six months into the new year, four years of dating now behind us, and we broke it all down. I explained everything I felt was wrong, that I wanted to make it work, that I wanted both of us to be better. He explained how he was feeling, and that the feeling was mutual, that he wanted to see us succeed. So we agreed to take a break to focus on other things, our mental health and our next steps in life, and come back in a few months.
And then he told me he cheated on me months before. Kissing the sister who brought him to institute every week. I was heartbroken, devastated, angry. I could never trust him again, how could I? I had been faithful without him for two years, and he returns and is going at someone else after a mere three months.
I stopped talking to him under the premise of taking the aforementioned break. I needed time to think. Eventually I wrote him a breakup letter, too broken and angry to say anything to his face. A mutual friend meant to deliver it to his new address, which I didn’t know, but sent it to the wrong one. Before I could bring myself to write another letter, he texted me for my new address. I discovered he intended to break up with me through our mutual friend. I told him to screw off. The next day he was dating the same girl he had cheated on me with. He got engaged to her the day before what would have been our fifth year anniversary. He recently got sealed to her in the temple. They have been together for less than a year, and he is more committed to her than he had ever been to me. But I am still broken. I am still hurting. I do not miss him, but at one point he said that God had confirmed for him that we were right for each other, that he’d had a vision of our future family. I trusted him when he said that. I believed him. He had the priesthood, after all. He was the perfect member.
It has been around three years since I returned from my mission early— 12 weeks, by the way, was how long I had been out— and I still think about everything every day. I have been struggling with my faith every day. And as I grow, as I learn, as I have tried again and again to jumpstart my faith once more, to read and to pray and attending church like a good girl, the less convinced I am that I’m in the right place. I believe in God, but beyond that, I’m no longer sure. There’s so much dissonance with the concept of the God I feel from reading scripture and the concept of the God the church teaches about.
I can’t conceive of a God who makes some of His children gay, and then condemns them for it. I can’t conceive of a God who makes half of his Children to be Lesser than the other half, and commands them to know their place and covenant to maintain submission to the other Children’s authorities.
I cannot in good faith follow a leadership that ignores the teen suicide epidemic in Utah that disproportionately affects LGBTQ+ LDS youth. I cannot in good faith follow a leadership that in finally addressing mental illness, fails to address rampant spousal abuse.
But I’ve made these covenants, up to and including my endowment. I am filled with doubt of the truth I’ve been raised in, and am filled with fear that I cannot be truly happy if I stay. And I am also filled with fear that if it is true, and i should leave, then I am condemned, and am a disappointment to my parents who love this gospel so much.
I only hope that something somewhere got lost in translation, that God’s truth is still perverted in many aspects due to the folly of men, of patriarchal society, of homophobia and transphobia. I hope that this Church that I have been raised in, that i feel could still be the most correct, will yet change.
It’s a pessimistic hope.
I’m afraid to stay. I’m equally afraid to leave.
I’m unsure what I should do.
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Current household - The Ruby and The Parker family
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Ani Parker:
A Young artistic soul Ani is about to show the world her perspective through the magical lense of a camera. 
Ani Parker, a dreamer, an illustrator and a hopeless improviser grew up in Hidden Springs where people all over the town knew each other. From there, she had learned to love big events and she could almost be recognized as a social butterfly. The bond between everyone was strong and there were never really hard feelings towards anyone what so ever. Ani really loved and cared for her friends & family but unfortunately she lost her beloved aunt when she was a little girl. That really got into her. Life wasn’t all butterflies after all. That girl has got special talent: I want her to know that when she grows up. Let her be herself and show her who she really is” her aunt once said to her mother when she had little Ani. Her mother Crista knew extacly what she meant. She was already preparing herself to tell the big secret to Ani when she grew older. Aunt Rosa was a witch and Crista, Ani’s mother was suppost to give her a special elixir when she would pass the age 13. Unfortunately the elixir was stolen by a local junkie and was never found again. Since then, Ani has always been really interested in supernatural stuff such as alchemy and the moon. She also loves artistic things like writing & painting and she would love to study that in the sims university. Her long time wish is to direct a full movie and she is more than ready to make that dream become reality.
Ani’s characteristics:
*Ambitious - Ani is always really inspired and she rises up high with her dreams
* Schmoozer - She’s social at work and at home. Easy to work with
* Family oriented - Ani loves her family and friends
* Artistic - This trait comes from her childhood. She loves to write, paint and do all that artsy stuff. Ani is the kinda girl to have a secret Tumblr blog (lol)
* Supernatural fan - Loves all kinds of supernatural stuff!
Favourite food: falafel/sushi
favourite color: yellow / all neon colors
favourite music genre: country/pop/indie
Astrological sign: Scorpio
August Ruby:
Sporty and adventuros young man full of energy and a little bit of mood swings. The Ruby family is from the northern Monte Vista where the culture of beautiful history comes from. So does the conservative family of Ruby which includes a sport freak father and his wife and the mother of August, Polly (they’re married of course) who works at home as a ”full time mother”. August got her sportiness trough his father. That’s never been a problem though because August loves sports! His lifetime wish is to own a gym, master the athletic skill and learn martial arts and master. At such a young age he has been hitting the gym & he’d love to work with sports and make a career out of it but his father doesn’t really care for his idea. Conservative mr. Ruby (A lawyer) would want his son to study either business, law or medical sciences but not sports. August is thinking the idea of telling that he’s about to study the science of the human anatomy (which includes sports) and he thinks that that would make a good deal between his father and him and he’s ready to take that risk. Either way, he’d wanna go with the university with his long time friend Ani who she just moved in with.
August’s characteristics: * Dog person - August loves his dog Millie (Millie is still in the town of Hidden Springs)
* Loves the heat - He’s from Monte Vista, the warmth there is definitely something that he enjoys
* Neurotic - Comes from August’s mother
* Adventurous - August is always ready for a new adventure!
* Athletic - He couldn’t love anything more than sports! (or maybe someday hehe)
Favourite food: Dim Sum
Favourite color: irish green/blue
Favourite music genre: pop/indie
Astrological sign: Gemini
see you on the next post & hope you liked it!
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wannabecatwriter · 3 years
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After getting completely stuffed on seafood and carbs, the five of them were stayed on the pier to chat.
“So, you and your mother travel between here and Monte Vista all the time? How’s that like with school and all?” Terra asked.
“Oh, it’s not a big deal. I usually stay here during the school year and travel during breaks,” Gianna explained. “But it’s nice that way - I have homes in two countries. Besides, it’s easier for me to go to Italy than for Dad to travel here. He’s kind of tied up at the winery.”
From what the four of them understood, Marla and Gianna’s father Marco were truly birds of a feather - neither of them wanted to have a traditional relationship of even a long-term partner, but both came together when Marla found herself pregnant to give all the possible love and stability to their daughter.
“We’re actually going there in two weeks time, so it was nice to get to meet you before we left,” the girl told them. “Say, if any of you want good wine, hit me up. I’m not quite a professional vintner yet, but I’m getting there and can definitely tell the good stuff from something you’re better off avoiding.”
“Thanks, we’ll definitely remember that,” Matthew smiled. Wine making, now that was an idea!
“Sounds fun,” Dahlia agreed, fiddling around with the bracelet she bought at the boardwalk. Doing so made her notice something that was missing. “Say, Gianna, weren’t you wearing a bracelet earlier?”
“Ah!” the girl’s face turned to horror as he noticed her own bare wrist. “I was! Oh no...”
“Is it expensive?” Terra asked.
“It was my Nonna’s,” she explained. “And Dad told me I had to be careful with it. Crap, this kind of thing always happens to me.”
“It’s ok,” Dahlia hurried to reassure her. “You had it on when we met, so you couldn’t have lost it before that. And only a short amount of time passed since then. We’ll look for it.”
“Do you remember if you had it on before we went into the diner?” Chris asked.
“I don’t know,” Gianna shook her head. “I didn’t even notice it wasn’t on me...”
“Ok, we can split up and look for it,” Matthew promised.
“We’ll run to the boardwalk and see if it’s there,” Dahlia offered. “Can you check the diner?”
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carmichealroyals · 4 years
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(A sunny fall day in the capital of Winterven. Prince William and Princess Belle walk together through the cobblestone streets of the Heritage District.) 
B: Okay, I have to know. What’s with the new hair, Will? 
W: Wh-- what do you mean? This is the hair I’ve always had. 
B: You know what I mean! You’ve gone and styled it differently. Does this have something to do with Rachelle? 
W: No. What gave you that impression?
B: You’ve been spending a lot of time with her recently. You’ve seen her more than I have, and I go to school with her. 
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W: I enjoy her company, Belle. She’s a good conversationalist, and we have similar ways of looking at things--
B: And she’s also very conventionally attractive and holds a lot of power at school and socially, plus she has blue blood unlike your first girlfriend, who was also one of my friends. 
W: You don’t miss anything, do you?
B: I take great pride in it. Are you going to keep seeing her? It’s caused such a storm in the press recently, you might want to make it official by all accounts.
W: If we’re talking about storm in the press, you’re a pot calling the kettle black. You and Emery haven’t been hiding your relationship, if you can even call it that.
B: It’s more of a relationship than you and Rachelle have! Don’t change the subject, Will -- is it real between you two, or is it for the cameras and for Dad? 
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W: (sighing) I don’t know, alright? I like her. I really do. And I know she likes me, she’s made that abundantly clear. But she knows who I am outside of... well, me. She knows the title I will inherit one day, and I can tell there’s a part of her that wants to put on a good show now so that if we announce we’re courting, the press won’t turn on her. And if we announce we’re courting, people would expect an engagement soon after and it’s just... it’s too much. Is it so much to ask for a girl who doesn’t care about becoming Queen? For a girl who cares about me, William Carmicheal the person?
B: You’re the heir to the throne, William. Nothing can change that. But if I were you, I would end things sooner rather than later. Before you go to university, at least. It will give you a chance to start fresh when you meet all these new people. 
W: Are you encouraging me to break up with your own friend?
B: Rachelle will be fine, trust me. She’s always known to keep her eye on the prize, which makes her a terror to go up against in debate practice. I say this with love for you both, but if you want someone to consider you as a future partner outside of the perks of the position, you need to look elsewhere. There are plenty of foreign girls out there that would throw themselves at you--
W: You’re one to talk. That’s what you’re doing right now. 
B: Stop changing the subject. Besides, who can blame Emery for being drawn to me and my natural charisma? (laughing)
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W: (laughing) Yes, yes, you’ve all captured our attention, for better or worse. 
B: I’m serious, Will. If you feel this way about Rachelle, she’s not the person for you. Your person is out there waiting for you, and you won’t find her if you don’t actually try and date outside of my school friends.
W: Where would you suggest I start, then, oh wise romance guru?
B: Well, there is Maria Theresa... you two seemed quite taken with each other at Margot’s wedding. And Auntie Diana’s wedding. And at Margot’s birthday party. And--
W: You’ve made your point. I’m sure that will go over well: “Dad, can I take a spontaneous trip to Monte Vista to ask their eldest Princess if she’ll get coffee with me the next time we happen to be in the same location?” He’ll love that idea. (shaking his head) You’re too much of a romantic, Belle. 
B: It’s the only way to be in this world, I’ve found. If I wasn’t about taking chances, I wouldn’t be where I am today?
W: You mean being labelled a party princess by the tabloids and currently somewhat seeing the Prince of Windasia?
B: You mean having a large social circle of friends who actually do things together outside of school and exploring a relationship with someone who actually seems to give a shit about Belle the person and Princess Belle. 
W: When did my little sister become so much more knowledgeable about people than I am?
B: Oh, it happened a long time ago. You just had your head up your ass with dating the Prime Minister’s daughter, however brief. (She elbows him before linking their arms together.) Come on, there’s a cafe just up the street and I am starving. You can repay me by buying me a croissant.
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