Whisper on the Wind: Once Upon a Time

Showing posts with label Once Upon a Time. Show all posts

Monday, September 1, 2014

Monthly Favorites ~August 2014~

Hey guys!

So August has ended and September is here! Which means it's time to go over all of my favorites! Make sure to check out my YouTube channel HERE to see my Monthly Wrap Up focused on EVERYTHING I read this past month, not just my number 1 favorites.

BOOKS

Slaves of Socorro by John Flanagan

I am a HUGE John Flanagan fan. He hasn't written anything that I haven't loved! Seriously! His newest release is no different! It's fun, funny, a blast! I adored it!

Teen Titans: It's Our Right to Fight by Scott Lobdell, Brett Booth and Norm Rapmund

One of the MANY new 52 titles I read this past month, it's a stand out because of how fun it is. While many of the others were dark and twisted this was a blast and great fun! Reminds me a lot of Young Justice! I just hope it runs longer than the show did!

MOVIE

Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier

I managed to catch this just before it left the cheap theaters with my girl LA Knight! We both adored it so much she started another amazing fanfic about it! Also saw it another time...on YouTube. BE WARNED that one has about 5 minutes muted. -_-'

Expect this on DVD and Blu Ray soon!

TV SHOWS

Fullmetal Alchemist (original series)

This is the series that doesn't follow the manga very truly at all, but it's what got me into the manga back in the day! I actually missed several episodes and never got to see them, so it's been fun seeing the old stuff combined with new episodes entirely! (Watch this BEFORE you read the manga, otherwise you won't be able to finish unless your a diehard fan like myself)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

The Lost Missions (season 6)

This is the first and only 12 episodes made for season 6, which never aired on TV due the transfer of the rights from Cartoon Network to Disney. It's on Netflix, and thanks to my girl LA Knight I'm now able to watch it! And it's GOOD! They TOTALLY set the stage for Episode III Revenge of the Sith. You see Anakin's downward spiral and they touch upon Order 66. I'm also not done with this, but I can't wait to get into it. I'll hopefully be done with it before Star Wars: Rebels (the movie) airs but probably not.

VIDEOS

LA Knight's Once Upon A Time Trailer

by Nicole Godard

This is for LA Knight's fanfic of the same name, which you can read HERE. It's a Hellboy Fanfic I've been editing as Beta for YEARS. Because it's AWESOME! And this vid is awesome too!!!

Shake It Off by Taylor Swift

I've had this video on repeat ever since I heard it. I've already listened to it at least once today and probably will hear it a million times more. I ADORE it! It's so funny, and Taylor said it was about how you can just shake off the haters, and she showed it by getting a bunch of professional dancers and then throwing herself into the mix. So funny, cute, and I adore the message (if not the twerking).

YOUTUBER

Novels and Nonsense

YouTube Channel HERE

Sam of Novels and Nonsense actually subscribed to me first thanks to a video where WhittyNovels told her followers to advertise their channels in the comments. I did and she subscribed after telling me that we were about the same age and had the same interests. Of course I was intrigued and I'm OBSESSED! She's funny, quirky and awesome. Love her! Zelda and Doctor Who fans, SUBSCRIBE TO HER TOO! She's so nice. :)

MUSIC

Happiness by Red Velvet

Like two days before I got into Shake It Off (which is, let's face it, the number 1 song of the month) I found this weirdo video that's as random as the image above. But it's incredibly catchy despite being in Korean (ya'll know I love K Pop). When I looked up the lyrics I found it's positive message of looking for happiness, not wealth and power, uplifting. And then I got addicted to it, and it was barely not number 1.

Chasing the Sun by Hilary Duff

Another song I heard via the music video (which ya'll should check out because it's hilarious and cute!). This I also found myself just humming along to and I've heard it a million times this month now!

Edge of a Revolution by Nickelback

This song doesn't have a video that I'm aware of (if I'm wrong, just let me know!) but I got into it because of Spotify. And despite the fact they say the S word 3 times I can't stop listening to it! It's really powerful and with all the drama in the media this past month I found it quite fitting. Helped my rage come out and not overwhelm me too much through the sadness in the media.

PERSON

Robin Williams

Sadly Robin Williams passed away this past month, a great tragedy. This image basically sums it all up.

If this has made you feel terribly sad and have some dark thoughts of your own, please check out my post about it HERE.

Rest In Peace, man. You were loved.

RANDOM

Boots Botanics Soothing Eye Makeup Remover

I have NEVER found a good eye makeup remover until now. This does have an oil base, and it isn't hypoallergenic, BUT! It's the ONLY eye makeup remover that hasn't hurt my eyes at ALL, it gets practically EVERYTHING off (unless I layer up my mascara, which is all but impossible to remove completely), and doesn't leave a sheen on my eyeball (which is FRUSTRATING!!!!). It's AWESOME! I love it! Yes, there's a bit of a shine on my eyelids after I use it, but that goes away after I wash my face in the morning. ADORE IT!

So that was everything I've been loving this month! Make sure to click my links, and be sure to subscribe on YouTube to see my videos, I upload 3 times a week (unless there's something going on, I may only get 1 up around Thanksgiving).

:)

Friday, February 1, 2013

My Week in Photos ~1/28 - 2/1~

Hey ya'll!

So I've been good! I got some photos for you! Here's what I've been up to lately!

I've just been obsessed with this manga series, Nura Rise of the Yokai Clan

It made my January Favorites here: http://lorienlobrien.blogspot.com/2013/01/january-favorites.html

Homemade pumpkin bread made by moi and a banana for breakfast? OH YEAH!

LA Knight fans should be ready, this one's great! (Aren't they all???)

In order to get my chapter edited, I decided to bribe LA Knight with the one thing she's absolutely addicted to - SPRITE!

It should work! >:D

So that's what I've been up to lately. Editing, reading, eating. lol!

What about you?

Friday, September 7, 2012

My Week 9/1 - 9/7

Hey ya'll!

I've had a pretty crazy week. I hope yours hasn't been too nuts!

Did some comics for LA Knight's Once Upon a Time. This is just a taste!

Ate way too much of this while driving home from my Grandparents'

But In-n-Out saved me from a tummy ache!

Finally got this! Vol 1's been so lonely for so long...

I smashed my hand while wearing this...couldn't use my hand for a day, and my ring's all bent! TT~TT

Finished I am Number Four. I'm torn. The present tense is annoying, but the story is just too good. I guess I need to buy this.

Took a look at Chanel's website (way too expensive), but I'm in love with these boots. If only they weren't worth more than my house, and made of lambskin...

Sat down to watch Tron, but this version from the library's scratched! *sniff*

That was my week! Ups and downs and lots of crazy!

How was yours???

Saturday, August 18, 2012

PTSD Explanation

So, my friend/beta/editor Ray--who you know as LA Knight--wanted me to explain about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, aka PTSD. I have had PTSD since I was a freshman in high school, though I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 19. We knew I had it because my dad’s had it since he was 28 or so, and my brother was having the same issues at the exact same time.

PTSD is basically when a person is so traumatized by an event that they cannot get over it. Often, their mind blanks the event out entirely, and over time, it returns to them. This is especially true when it wasn’t just one thing that happened, but a sequence of events that could drive you crazy if you continued to deal with it all at once. One person who had this was Jessica Lynche, who had three hours lost to her memory, but in an interview two years later, she said she was starting to remember some things that had happened. This also happened to my dad, who gained the memories back over the course of two decades, and my brother who is still remembering things very slowly. One time, my brother had a bunch of memories come back at once, and he literally passed out.

Many soldiers get PTSD due to war, though my father has it due to a series of attacks that happened in high school that were so gruesome that all involved ended up in jail, and several others were killed. My brother, my best friends, and me all have PTSD due to "bullying," though we prefer to call it what it really was: torture. I’m not going to go into details, as I could fill several novels with what I experienced alone, but I will explain just how PTSD affects me in everyday life.

When you have PTSD, what happens is that you are affected by a trigger of some kind, and go into a flashback. A trigger can be anything that reminds you of what happened. In a comic that I love, ElfQuest, a character flashes back due to an earring that she wore when she was raped. She pulls away from the earring, curls into a ball and begins sobbing hysterically, while in her mind, she relives the rape moment by moment for several minutes. A big trigger for soldiers is fireworks. The big boom reminds them of cannon fire, and the ones that are a bunch of little explosions sound like rapid gunfire. A big trigger for me is schools. Any school. If it looks like a school, I go into this strange sensation where I feel like I’m a little kid again.

So, a trigger is just something that reminds you. A sound. A sight. Smell is a BIG one. Even a touch. The biggest one for me and my friend Scott is touch. If someone comes up behind us and grabs us, or touches Scott’s hair, we go into attack mode. For both of us, a lot of kids would come up behind us, grab us, and start hitting. They’d get her long hair especially, since when you have someone by the hair and jerk them around, they can’t see. Once, a guy I was dating thought it would be funny to come up behind me and scared me. I literally thought I was being attacked again, as I have been hundreds of times. I was reading at the time, and I began hitting him with the book, and couldn’t stop myself until I worked it out of my system. I was screaming at him, too. When I ran out of energy, I sat back down and began sobbing hysterically, until I got myself under control. The poor guy didn’t even know what was wrong for several minutes. Scott has a similar reaction with her hair. But she’s been trained more than I, and can really hurt someone.

When you are flashing back, you are immersed so deeply into a memory that you forget what is going on and who the person in front of you is, or where you are. The present is gone. Entirely. Only through training can you force your mind to pull out of it enough to return to the present, and sometimes, stop whatever it is you are doing--like hitting someone with a book. The way you think, the way you feel, what you see, all of it is in the past, sometimes a decade or more gone. Several years ago my dad flashed back while driving (luckily it was a straight road, or we would’ve gotten lost). He had trouble reminding himself he was 50 years old, and not 15. He also had to remind himself that he was speaking to me and a friend, not his buddies from high school. But at that point, my dad had been dealing with it for more than 20 years, and it wasn’t that big of a deal. But for my friends who are still dealing with it, it is very hard to pull out of it. Often, if the memory is a feeling, they don’t even realize it until they’ve been in the memory for several hours, and we’ve been fighting over something that never happened.

It’s not easy to describe the feeling of flashing back, but LA does a great job of it in chapter 72 of Once Upon a Time, her Hellboy 2 fanfic. Dylan goes through flashbacks A LOT. In 72, you can really see what it does to the psyche. Dylan has been trained, and is in fact a psychiatrist who knows all about how to do it, to pull herself out of the past, though when Nuada is there it all goes out the window because she cares for him so much. That is what a flashback does to you. You don’t know who you’re dealing with (Dylan couldn’t remember that Balor was NOT Westenra), and you don’t really remember where you are (Dylan tells herself she’s not in the asylum), or even who you are (Dylan had to remind herself that she wasn’t a child anymore, that she was strong enough to handle this).

Now, this may seem a little extreme or crazy if you’ve never experienced this, but let me put it in perspective. In the state of Arizona, where I live, when you have really bad PTSD (I think it’s in classes of extremity, 1-5), like class 3+, it is considered a SMI, Serious Mental Illness. Another SMI is Schizophrenia. That means that you can apply to the state for aid in paying for your medication--yes, there is medication, though I’ve never been bad enough for it, like legal marijuana and antidepressants.

Also, the way that you are diagnosed isn’t that there’s one thing that you have, like flashbacks, and you have PTSD. Nope. It’s because you have EVERY type of anxiety disorder there is, as well as (often serious) depression, audile and visual hallucinations, manic-depressive moods swings, intense nightmares, insomnia, body pain due to muscle tension, OCD, temporary amnesia, and probably more that I and LA can’t think of.

So to recap, PTSD is a serious mental illness that can lead to other illnesses. What happens is that something will trigger a flashback, during which the person cannot be in the present and will react to something that isn’t happening. The reaction is often violent. With therapy, a person can learn how to pull out of a flashback, though the stronger the flashback the harder it is. It is dangerous to touch a person with PTSD during flashbacks, and you should always learn the triggers of someone’s flashbacks so as to avoid issues. Any major traumatic event can cause PTSD, and it is very common in victims of violence, and especially soldiers.

Does that make sense?

If you have any further questions, you can comment here, hit me up on twitter, or pm LA, as she also has it and can answer questions also.

<3