#Validation and Fulfillment

[turiyatitta]

The Paradox of Gain

A Journey Beyond the Self In our dialogue on Guru Viking, the episode “Bodhi in the Brain” unfolds a narrative that delves into the essence of spiritual enlightenment and the realization of oneness. The conversation between host, Steve James, and me explores the paradoxical nature of gain in the spiritual realm, a concept that challenges the conventional paradigms of achievement and…

[shorthaltsjester]

when people think delilah just completely takes over and laudna has no control. when people think jester is just an uwu child who has been manipulated by every man she’s met. when people think vex is an empty husk of daddy issues without her brother by her side. when people think fjord is an arrogant asshole who doesn’t pay attention to the party around him. when people think scanlan saying that vox machina doesn’t care about him is an accurate assessment.

[agirlwithglam]

How do I stop comparing myself to others and how can I feel fulfilled on my own without needing anyone else's validation?

hiii<3 i feel what you're going through, trust me i do. here are some of my tips that specifically worked for me + at the end i'll include some more recommended things to read/ watch.

how to stop comparing & feel fulfilled without needing anyone else's validation

how to stop comparing yourself:

start focussing and thinking about yourself more. lol ok i realise that may sound like "become self absorbed" but i suppose, to some extent, that is what im saying. you're becoming too interested in others' life around you if you find yourself comparing. its time to focus on you and up levelling yourself to the best version possible.

comparison = wanting their life style, yes? so when you find yourself comparing to others in your life, realise that its because you envy something that they have. maybe its money, popularity, prettiness, intelligence, etc. so its like a signal in your brain which is telling you: "i want this. but i dont have it." so now what can you do, work hard to get it.

focus on what you have. i read a quote once (i think its by Oprah Winfrey) and it goes: "if you focus on what you don't have, you'll always have less. but if you focus on what you do have, you'll always have more." instead of looking at other's lives and thinking "i dont have this, i dont have that", look at your own life and think "i have this, i have that."

feeling fulfilled without needing anyone else's validation:

self love. self love. SELF LOVE. self love will ALWAYS be the answer to this. learn to LOVE yourself. and if you dont, ask why!! i have a whole guide on how to develop self love HERE. Stop looking for love in others, GIVE YOURSELF THE LOVE FIRST!!

It’s you over them. Always. Always always always. Always choose you over them. If they want you to do something but you don’t, then you say “no. I will not do that” it’s scary? Oh boohoohoo, suck it up. Because if you are constantly doing stuff that others ask you to just for the sake of pleasing them, you are disrespecting yourself in the worst way. You are basically saying that what they want is more important than what i want and need. Ew. Don’t do that.

extra resources:

a guide to develop self love & confidence (by me)

vanilla's opinion🍰 edition 1: dealing with hate & not caring about what others think. (by me)

ways to stay unbothered (by @pastel-charm-14)

Self validation (by @prettieinpink )

Tam Kaur's youtube channel

Thewizardliz youtube channel

[royalarchivist]

Fit: Thank you. Thank you for accepting me for who I am, Ramon. Yeah, let’s go, let’s- [realizes Ramon was writing a sign] oops.

Ramon: i’d accept u for anything 💚

Fit: Aw, thank you, Ramon.

Ramon: especially if u marry pac 😊

Fit: [Puts his head in his hands and leans completely off-camera, coming back up after a few long moments with a laugh] Of course, Ramon. If you desire it, child, it shall happen. Uh, but- but maybe more of like a– you know, like a long-term partnership, ‘cuz– Marriage is like a big commitment, Ramon! And there’s also like, tax implications, and like... Um, I would want to have a prenup, obviously, but…

Ramon: spring wedding

Fit: Um.

Ramon: we don't pay tax

[Long silent pause as they stare at each other]

Fit: Yeah, well– You know, it's just—

[Full Clip]

[jon-sedai]

The way we discuss prophecy in fandom is genuinely fascinating. GRRM spends so much time showing how different characters have different interpretations of the same thing based on their own cultural contexts. He says that prophecy is tricky to navigate through multiple characters, showing that even the most careful practitioner can get almost everything wrong and fall victim to their own fallacies (see Mel). So tell me why the main takeaway for large parts of this fandom is “prophecy stupid, it doesn’t matter”. My brothers and sisters in R’hllor, GRRM didn’t invent multiple characters (three of whom are main POVs!!) who can see the future for this to be the conclusion. This is a FANTASY series. Please I’m begging, let us be serious 🥲

[bananonbinary]

as a certified Diagnosed Autist(TM) i cannot stress enough that i am not only pro- self-diagnosis, but also pretty anti- legal medical diagnosis. it is, at best, a cruel hoop we have to jump through so privileged people will deign to give us what we need. don't fucking do that shit unless you have to, it was disgustingly expensive, fucking humiliating, infantilizing, and dehumanizing, and would probably actively cause problems in my life if i didn't have some really good allistic (-passing) people in my corner and also wasn't so fucking disabled that it mostly doesn't matter.

literally get that diagnosis if you need it for job/school accessibility shit or SSI or whatever, and otherwise dont tell the government SHIT about yourself. there is zero good reason for them to want that information. that's between you and the people you want in your life.

[studywithisabel]

i’m gonna be negative for a second so fair warning

the STEM obsession is literally a plague on the current academic world, especially the recent “women in stem” shit. of course people who are typically discouraged from male-dominated fields should receive encouragement from schools, recruiters, etc, but i am really sick of this being turned into “STEM is the only valuable career path and you are betraying your intelligence as a woman/poc/whatever by doing literally anything else.”

there are SO many non stem jobs that are essential to the proper functioning of society and are definitely NOT worth any less than being a doctor or engineer. i’m tired of there being zero scholarships, internships, encouragement in general for literally any other career path. it’s just disrespectful and honestly dangerous. we can’t let humanities-focused subjects and careers die because STEM is the current hot topic. and i just hate most of all the appropriation of feminism to do it.

[omegalerc]

re: meeting him irl and getting blindsided by his beauty, ricky i can confirm that he’s not only the sweetest ever in person but he also smelled so??? nice??????? couldn’t even place what it was but now ik omega pheromones were strong that day can’t believe he was just out and about like that

🚨 EVERYONE THE MATERNAL OMEGA PHEROMONES THAT OMEGA CHARLES SECRETES HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY AN EXPERT INSIDER ANON

[smartzelda]

Sorry guys I gotta speak my truth on this one

I'm not kidding when I say that I think that blaming shit media literacy from fans on shipping/shippers avoids the actual root of the problem to throw people you can easily throw under the bus (simply because it's not unpopular to consider people who post about ships or ship characters in media as having lesser or derivative tastes by default)

And here's why.

I think when you blame people who are "shippers" or "consume media through shipping lenses", the true root of it all is a mindset problem.

In actually, putting on shipping lenses can be helpful when trying to analyze a piece of media. When analyzing media you're supposed to approach it through a number of mindsets and put on different lenses (both to deepen your personal understanding of the media, and to pick it apart and see what you can find there (whether intentional or not on the author's part)), and different ships can be some of those lenses

When it comes to ships between main characters (for those who are genuinely willing to see what the narrative is showing with their relationship and what it's doing), there are times when analyzing it from a shipping lens may be helpful. As someone from KH fandom, I have seen people come to deeper understandings and pick canon apart in the process of analyzing a relationship that is genuinely integral to the story (platonic or not). I've also seen people get into rarepairs of characters who barely interact or who just suffer little screen time, and I've seen them come to better understandings of those side characters and how they potentially fit into the world of the media simply because people are now focusing on these characters and how they fit into the narrative.

Frankly, I resent the idea that the only way to truly objectively analyze a piece of media is by turning off the part of your brain that gets excited over relationships and individual characters. Don't get me wrong, that is a way to approach a piece of media and a valid one at that, but the truth is that we cannot be free of bias.

For instance, I was watching House MD with my parents circa last year. At some point I started heavily tuning into what was going on with House and Wilson's relationship. My parents, on the other hand, were largely watching casually. They're not thinking of character relationships or getting heavily invested in most characters, they're watching because they like watching. One of them in particular did try to analyze things that were happening in the show as they happened. However, when it came to the scene late in the series where House threw out Dominika's letter approving her American citizenship, my parents could understand that he was doing that because he didn't want her to leave, but not much beyond that. I ended up explaining to them that House's fake marriage for Dominika was an explicit parallel to when Wilson was living with House in the early seasons. Both situations started with House being none too happy about it but ultimately letting them stay, spending a considerable amount of effort getting them to leave/getting this situation to be finally over so he didn't have to deal with it anymore, and then by the time a piece of news comes through that would mean the person in question actually leaves, House hides this news as long as he can. Because he doesn't actually want them to leave and has grown attached. And by doing this he became a self fulfilling prophecy. By reacting to the truth of Wilson and Dominika leaving him the way he does, he seals his fate and they ultimately leave anyways. Maybe I ship Hilson, but becoming open to how their relationship was handled allowed me to transition to doing character studies and recognizing patterns/parallels that I wouldn't have noticed if I didn't particularly care about the characters or their relationship.

Likewise, I've seen mutuals complain about how people who don't like or don't care about certain characters often overlook these characters (what they're actually like and their place in the narrative), while the mutuals in question (by default) are able to come to deeper understanding of what the writers/story is trying to do because they care about this funky guy

You can't eradicate bias when you're engaging in media analysis, but you can consciously put on a range of lenses and observe the media through different povs with the goal of understanding the media better or bolstering your reading of it. And those lenses/povs can include focusing on specific relationships or the perpective of certain characters

And this is why I say it's actually a mindset problem. Shippers and people who have this one blorbo they like a lot aren't inherently terrible "fandom brained individuals" who are the root of media analysis problems. The problem only arises when people's readings/analysis of a piece of media are inherently restrictive/narrow and self centered. Your problem is with people who view a piece of media through a ship they like but don't keep an open mind about it, and whose "media analysis"/views on canon cannot be split from fanon and their comfortability levels. These are the people whose "media analysis" starts and ends with justifying their fanon as canon, whose views on media revolve around sorting characters and relationships into categories they personally enjoy rather than trying to understand what's going on.

Here's another example.

Here we have a fictional ship we'll call uhhhh...Blanebin. this fictional ship I made up on the spot for characters that don't exist named Blane and Corbin

Person A is super into Blanebin. They're part of the main cast of characters and canonically childhood best friends, so person A (as much as they enjoy fanart and fic) is also enjoying analyzing how narratively important to each other they are. Recently, Corbin started dating another character in canon, but Person A is enjoying watching how Blane is reacting to this. "Is this potentially a tell that Blane is jealous or is having complicated feelings about this? What if he was, how would that contextualize his behavior this season? Here's what I think based on how Blane dealt with explicit jealousy last season in a different situation". It's not impossible that person A is still missing further understanding due to their obsession with Blanebin, but at the end of the day this obsession has allowed them to start picking through the characters both in and outside this relationship. It has allowed them to see potential subtext and theorize on what might happen next with these characters' relationship. Not to mention that with addition of Corbin dating someone else, instead of trying to erase this fact or state that Corbin canonically isn't into that person, Person A is trying to factor in how Corbin's current dating life affects his relationship with Blane (irregardless on personal views on the nature of Corbin's relationship with the person he's dating).

Person B is also super into Blanebin. They really enjoy fanart and fic of the characters, love obsessing over their moments together, and just feel like there's really something between the characters. To person B, every moment between them is just further proof that the writers are ship teasing them. But Corbin getting together with someone else this season? Oh that pissed person B off. They cannot believe that even though Corbin and Blane are CLEARLY gay for each other the writers had Corbin get with someone else this season. Perhaps, they think, it was even a decision specifically made to spite fans. How evil of the writers to tease a perfectly good ship and then have them not get together first? They must have been just doing those teases to get views from Blanebin shippers those scoundrels. To Person B, since Corbin started dating someone when he obviously has some chemistry with Blane (even though the series is far from over) means that Blanebin can never get together now and Corbin x person he's dating is ruining Blanebin by existing. In fact, they think, this is terrible writing for Corbin to be dating someone else because they don't like that relationship and don't see the point. Obviously if the writers were good then Corbin would have started dating Blane instead because this was supposed to be the Blanebin show.

Person C despises Blanebin. Don't get them wrong, they've always enjoyed the character's childhood friendship, but they actually have always thought Blane would have been better off with Victoria. They have a lot of moments too! But they're tired of seeing people ship Blanebin. Corbin just got together with someone else, so obviously that's not gonna work out. Plus Corbin and Blane totally has always given person C bro vibes. In fact, person C thinks, sure Corbin and Blane have a close friendship, but people shouldn't be shipping them. Person C likes Blanetoria and Blanetoria can't be canon if Corbin is in the way of it. So Person C likes to read Blanebin as siblings anyways. Sure they're canonically friends, but obviously their friendship turned into brotherhood. This means that nothing can be in the way of Blanetoria and Corbin can keep dating the person he's already canonically dating. Actually, now Blanebin just straight up makes Person C uncomfortable. Don't the pesky shippers understand that Blanebin are sibling coded because they're childhood best friends and that they're important to each other because they're brothers? It's obvious to anyone with eyes.

Sure, ships are involved here, but is the root of this problem shipping? Character A isn't as knowledgeable of other characters in the plot due to this lens they're using, but at the end of the day they're dedicated to analysis. Their love of the characters is pushing them beyond what they like or dislike to try to understand what might be happening through their lens. Not perfect, but they are slowly broadening their horizons. But Person B and C's problems here are their restrictiveness. What is or should be canon to them is tantamount to what they personally like or find comfortable. Is person C actually analyzing the this fake show when they decide to "read" Blanebin as basically canonically siblings (and this all of their moments are totally a bro thing) just because they don't like Blanebin and the idea of them getting together over Blanetoria makes them uncomfortable? Is person B actually analyzing this fake show when their "analysis" of Blanebin goes only as far as asserting it's being ship teased and deciding anything short of canonizing Blanebin is a targeted attack or "bad writing" because it's not what they wanted personally to happen?

This is what I'm talking about. This is the mindset. Shipping isn't the problem. The problem is when people marry fanon and canon to the point where they have a vested interest in superimposing their fanon over canon as "a reading" and trying to make "collective decisions" on what is canon (or what canon is trying to say) based on what does or doesn't make them uncomfortable. The problem is people being restrictive and centering their own likes and dislikes in the conversation, so they can only interact with canon "analysis" wise by deciding what is canon or should be canon "as obviously agreed on by everyone". You can't simply claim you like media analysis. To be able to analyze media and bolster your views on any given canon, you must be open to looking at it through multiple povs, to studying characters without trying to pretend things you don't like don't exist or do like do exist. There is a balance that must be kept between trying to keep objectivity and putting on specific focus/bias based upon the lenses you're putting on. You have to be willing to try to figure out what a media is doing or saying, not saying you're trying to figure out what it's saying while in actuality trying to define the narrative around what people believe it's saying in ways that suit you.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

love thinking kipperlilly spends her afterlife looking for lucy in a familiar forest

[lord-squiggletits]

i know i’m late to the conversation—i just watched the movie this month—but i feel compelled to say this because i was genuinely shocked (still am) to see that the overwhelming takeaway for many viewers was the "d-16/megatron was right" bs. while it’s understandable to sympathize with his anger and grief, justifying his actions in the end or framing them as entirely right feels so deeply misguided. what surprised me even more was the tendency to shift the blame on orion/optimus, as though he was solely responsible for d-16’s downfall. it’s disheartening to see orion/optimus being villainized so much. his efforts to reason with d-16 came from a place of desperation and hope, as he tried to prevent the escalation of violence. at that point, d-16 had already begun to spiral into his unchecked rage, disregarding the safety of those around him. to see that nuance overlooked, with orion being faulted for a situation that was far beyond his control (the whole "don't be like sentinel" thing is often used to shit on op lol), is genuinely baffling.

while i love that the movie showed the tragedy of d-16’s arc and even empathize with his situation, painting his actions as justified—and vilifying orion/optimus in the process—feels like a misreading of the movie’s core message. sorry but i was so happy to see your post about the movie, it was tiring to see so many 'megatron was right about this and that' comments.

Oh man if you're new to this fandom, you really ought to know that this place is full of people who glorify terrorism and war in the name of "justified revolution" and it doesn't really matter what Dee/Megatron does or how horrible/over-the-top it is, he's oppressed or he's mentally ill or he's just plain upset which means that everything he does is justified and questioning him makes you evil.

It's so funny because I hoped for sure that a continuity where both OP and Megatron were working class individuals before the war would reduce this kind of shit take (compare to something like archivist/librarian OP and gladiator Megs in TFP or CBV, or cop OP and miner Megs in IDW1), but unfortunately this fandom literally still found a way to blame Orion for everything even though he suffered the exact same things Dee did..... and furthermore Orion literally was the rebel challenging the system compared to Dee who wanted to keep his head low and not cause trouble so honestly at this point I just think the fandom (and somehow new fans whose first exposure to TF is this movie) purely sides with Megatron on everything as either a knee-jerk reaction or some misguided attempt at being counterculture and intelligent.

People get sooooo mad when you tell them that unbridled rage and killing everyone who disagrees with you isn't a good social/political strategy, but then again this is a problem that is universal to humanity and not just the Transformers fandom. It's just a shame that so many people looked at a movie that blatantly spells out what the moral of the story is, and has all of the protagonists be working class oppressed people fighting against a tyrannical system, and their takeaway from it is still basically "fascism is okay if you're mad enough about it and if your friends try to stop you it's a sign that they're centrist liberals who think punching Nazis makes you as bad as a Nazi." It's childish black-and-white thinking masquerading as critical literary analysis.

And at this point people pretty much just don't give a shit about Orion/Optimus and will find a way to make him the villain no matter what the context is, no matter if he also has feelings or if he also deserves to be respected/listened to/validated as Megatron's long-time (possibly lifelong) friend. If ppl look at the way Dee treated Orion and their other friends and DON'T see what was concerning about that then there's really no saving them until they deradicalize a little and learn what usually happens when "kill all the bad people until society is a utopia" is implemented as a governing party's primary strategy.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

wanna ask how you feel about the eridan bpd headcanon/theory(?? not sure what to call it!) you're so good at your character analysis and i'd love to see your outlook on it

Since I don't have a degree or any formal training in psychology, I feel deeply uncomfortable diagnosing characters. I've made an autism joke before but only because I'm on the spectrum. He's definitely traumatized and anxious, but I mean those as descriptors of his behavior rather than capital-D Diagnoses. I try to focus on those when I can - the cause and effect of cognition, self-image, and behavior - and those factors may very well match up with DSM criteria, but I try not to touch an actual diagnosis with a ten foot pole unless the author has explicitly stated that X character has Y condition.

[existentiol]

something that pisses me off in RA is that Flanagan will occasionally hype up Pauline as this super important and prominent figure in Will’s life, even treat her as a proxy for the mother he never knew, and yet will just refuse to show it beyond the like. two or three (personal) conversations that they have in canon. I get that he was attempting to make her an important person in Will’s life but why not do that by actually making her an important person in Will’s life

[wordsofwisdomandsoul]

[sapphorror]

oh the unbeatable romantic bond between an obsessive stalker and the guy with a pathological need to feel like the center of the universe at all times

[danrifics]

my friend is trying to set me up with a guy and she was like i know you’re ace but like would you have sex with someone cos i know know guys who would be perfect for you but they’re all not gonna wanna go with out sex and i had to explain like im so unbothered by the concept that if i had a partner who wanted that intimacy i would as long as they know it doesn’t mean to me what it does to them ?? like i wish we could move past this whole if you’re ace then you don’t want sex ever thing cos it’s simply not true 🙃