#Brutal honesty

[bloobydabloob]

Look at that beautifully low quality. He will never switch apps halfway through again

[someonetooksendnoodles]

i love how grease rotpl reads like SUCH a musical. the choreography and way they filmed it felt so reminiscent of the way one watches a musical and it made my heart swoon a bit. also the talent of this cast is INSANE. oh and how could i forget, poc leads...in the fifities...being the main focus of the show!!!!!!!

[uncannybob]

All these fanfics where every parent that isn't the Belchers is an abusive monster kinda makes me want to write one where Bob is an angry slavedriver who forces his kids to work in his failing restaurant and Linda is an alcoholic do-nothing wife. Why not? It's about as in-character as Rudy's parents abandoning him at the drop of a hat or homophobic Jimmy Pesto.

While I'm on dissing fanfic tropes, can you all stop writing Jocelyn as smart? She's not meant to be smart, she's meant to be an airhead. It's what makes her fun. Take that away and she's just boring.

[heyzoal]

White dudes for Harris was cute and all, but seriously prepare to be unsurprised when we let you all down.

White dudes are fuckin’ lost cause as most of them are still engaging in their almost decade long mantrum that Trump is the chosen avatar of and white women, especially suburban white women, are simply not gonna stand for the first female president being a black and asian woman.

Basically write off all white people above their mid-30s and hope to be pleasantly surprised but probably not, and focus on getting as many young people to vote as possible.

Yes your vote matters, and yes you should go do it.

[wack-ashimself]

*This is the harshest, realest, 'fuck, none of us want to admit it's the truth' truth you will read in a while. "Do I even need them as friends when they only care about what's important to them?" That...okay... (sighs)... ...Crystal, that's everybody... All the time. Everybody is only thinking about themselves: all the time. Maybe you catch someone on a good day, and... they care about you for, like, a minute... and then they go right back to caring about all their own bullshit. And not for nothing, but it sounds like maybe that's what you're doing too. "That's...bleak. So you're saying I'm selfish? Great; now I'm mad at myself." Okay...great talk! -dead boy detectives s1, e1

[butchwink]

[sidetracts]

Fanfic of terribly specific intersections:

Very first AA meetings start like...

Knights of the Round Table! My name is Arthur and I am not even a king unto myself.

(sheepishly, from the back row)

Then what have you got all of that Armour on for, then?

(Member’s mom, seated behind her, while administering a mom-slap)

Denise! What have I told you about finishing your sentences?

(continuing a little less sheepishly now, rising in her second-to-last row seat) And how do you still manage to get the best seat. Every time.

Arthur: Service and Tradition. I remembered to get the coffee brewing ahead of time, and I brought donuts. So be quiet. For now. There’s tea and coffee (various satisfied sippings) and a lovely basket of biscuits (thank you, Brian). Also, a different, entirely clean basket that was not used for biscuits last week, will be passed for truly voluntary contributions (heads bowed in prayer). Right! Who’d like to be the first to share?

Sir Robin: I’d like to run away now.

Sir Galahad: A little peril can’t hurt that much, surely.

…

If we somehow meet at the crossroads of Monty Python and recovery from unsustainable and unhealthy dependence, I feel confident in your ability to fill in mental pages of details your own way.

Author's Note: AA was a critical part of my journey towards sobriety a long time ago. Chemical dependence disorder is no laughing matter. I still serve as best I can.

[vim2]

[bellabaxter2023]

i wish you would JUMP OFF of that ledge my ENEMY

[findingmyvoice-alossforwords]

They say “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

But I know that with a strong imagination, that apple can grow legs and run far, far away.

[linesandlattes]

most people who pride themselves on being ‘brutally honest’ are often the ones who lack the maturity to accept the slightest amount of feedback regarding their own flaws, a lot of the times they’re more interested in ‘brutality’ than ‘honesty’ both of which are typically unsolicited. As important as it is to be real, the art of expressing displeasure with humility is a virtue because remember when newton said, ‘tact is an art of making a point without making an enemy.’

[jessicalprice]

unbrutally honest

(Photo credit: Karolina Grabowska)

I overheard someone say, today, “Well, he prides himself on being brutally honest.”

The thing about that is no one who fits that description actually gives a shit about the “honest” half. They’re there for the brutality. They’re there for the chance to be cruel and feel morally superior about it. They don’t care about honestly anymore than a witchfinder cared about the safety of the community.

And you can tell, because they’re almost never brutally honest about themselves. They might tell you you’re never going to be loved because you’re annoying, but they’ll never say “but to be honest, part of the reason I wanted to say that to you is because I’m jealous of how successful you are at your job, how confident you are that people listen to you, and that’s really what I find most annoying.”

The truth can sometimes be brutal. And sometimes, there’s no way to give it to someone without hurting them. It’s a rare situation, for example, where telling someone you want to break up with them isn’t going to hurt. But you can always try to minimize the hurt. You can always strive to be kindly honest.

But that made me start thinking about toughness. I have a mother who sometimes engaged in cruel teasing to try to “toughen me up” when I was a little kid. And I’ve gone through some fairly horrific things in my life and survived them and now a lot of my friends tell me I’m tough.

The thing is, tough is not a virtue. 

It doesn’t make you morally superior. It doesn’t make you more mature. It’s just an adaptation that sometimes, tragically, you have to learn. Toughness can fuck you up--it can get in the way of connection, it can mean you don’t actually listen to people, it can inure you to others’ pain. But sometimes, it’s how you get through something. 

The job of people who love you is not to make you “tough.”

Their job is to help you become resilient. Not to ensure you don’t feel it when others hurt you, but to ensure you heal quickly from it, that it doesn’t damage you. 

Trying to “toughen someone up” by being cruel to them is trying to give them a thick skin by covering them in scar tissue.

The thing is, some things are still going to get through it. But when you’re covered in scar tissue, sometimes they can’t get back out.

And it’s hard to experience tenderness of the good kind with others when you’re not, you know, tender. 

And the thing is, it should hurt when someone is cruel to you, or even when they hurt you without meaning to. That pain is information: it’s a warning signal. It might mean that something is wrong with this relationship. It might be the first realization you have that they touched on something that is deeply important to you. It might tell you something about the parts of your identity that are important to you, and how you want to be understood by those around you.

We’re biologically hardwired to care about what other people think about us because we are social creatures. Being in community with others is a big part of how humans survive. Things that threaten bonds with other people, even in a minor way, are information we are instinctually primed to pay attention to.

What the people who love you should be doing isn’t trying to make you feel less. They should be helping you learn how to set appropriate boundaries (one of the most important things an adult can do for a child, I think, is to say “you don’t get to talk to her that way” when someone is cruel or belittling, and hell, sometimes it’s an important thing you can do for another adult).

What they should be doing is loving you enough that you know what healthy love feels like and know how to recognize it in other relationships, so that when someone says something that hurts you, either you love yourself enough to know it’s not true--which is not the same as it not hurting, it’s normal to be stung when someone says something cruel--or if it might be true, to be able to reflect on that without it becoming an obsession or a source of continual anxiety. What they should be doing is providing you enough love that you have safe people around whom to unpack something you’re worried might be true.

Being a mature, healthy human isn’t about being impermeable. It’s about being self-healing. 

Anyway, shabbat shalom or happy and restorative weekend.

[altaruwusmolboiz]

[butchwink]

im not really a conspiracy theorist im just a communist in between red scares. were in the denial phase of a genocide and its getting easier to talk about it every fucking day thank god assholes

[noellie-writes217]

“I really fucking missed you.” He says once he finally gets the opportunity to stand in front of her.

“No.” She scoffs. “You really missed fucking me.”

[grimfox]

false idol

your eyes were mirrors clouded by misunderstanding but that cloud backlit with grace shining in mercy acceptance without restraint love blinded me from all but that light and i forgot my darkness and in you i grew brighter for a time you darkened as days passed without laughter as i disappointed you again as hope left burns in the fabric of us i was never that person i knew when you knew the scales fell like damascus only i was not saved the hope left unattended dwindled to cinders mutilating the shadows of what dwelt in me that snorting beast cloven hoofed and stamping an idol for madmen and under dark moons we died sacrifice unaccepted eden was barred against us our angel will never know me it mutes my will to be my heart is bursting open a dam with cracks too deep there is no world hereafter not, at least, for me