#Value of Relationships

[omegaphilosophia]

Unveiling the Illusion of Significance in Modern Society

In a world filled with constant stimulation and information overload, it's crucial to discern between what appears significant on the surface and what holds genuine importance and substance. Many aspects of modern life may initially captivate our attention, but their significance often diminishes when subjected to critical examination. By cultivating a discerning perspective, we can better appreciate and prioritize the truly meaningful aspects of our lives, both individually and collectively. This blog post delves into various elements of modern life that may appear significant but may, in reality, lack true importance or substance.

1. Social Media Popularity

In the digital age, social media platforms have given rise to influencers, celebrities, and viral content that capture the attention of millions. These online phenomena may seem highly significant, given their vast following. Yet, the significance often dissipates when we realize that popularity in the virtual world does not necessarily equate to meaningful contributions to society or personal growth.

2. Celebrity Culture

Celebrities often dominate headlines and pop culture conversations, leading us to believe that their lives and opinions are of great importance. However, the significance of celebrity culture diminishes when we consider that fame does not inherently correlate with wisdom, expertise, or genuine societal impact.

3. Trendy but Insignificant Products

Modern consumerism frequently presents us with trendy products and fads that appear to be significant in enhancing our lives. Examples include gadgets, fashion items, or dietary trends. Yet, these trends often fade quickly, leaving us with possessions that lose their significance as their popularity wanes.

4. Political Soundbites

In the realm of politics, soundbites and sensational headlines can make political events seem profoundly significant. However, these brief moments often lack the nuance and depth necessary for a comprehensive understanding of complex issues. The significance of such events may fade when examined in a broader context.

5. Instant Gratification

The quest for instant gratification is prevalent in modern society. We often prioritize quick, convenient solutions that promise immediate satisfaction. While these solutions may seem significant in the moment, they can lead to a lack of patience and perseverance, hindering our ability to appreciate the deeper significance of long-term efforts and delayed rewards.

It's essential to critically evaluate these aspects of modern life to determine their true significance and whether they align with our values and long-term goals. While they may offer momentary gratification or entertainment, their lasting impact and importance in the grander scheme of life can be relatively limited.

[classycookiexo]

[virtu4l-di4ry]

yeah deancas is cool but you know what else is cool? they gave dean a best friend. dean who never stayed in a school long enough to bond with other boys. he never had inside jokes or slept over at his friend’s house. always an outsider, loner. john even suggested staying away from others in their line of work because no one survives. so they gave him a best friend who’s immortal and who lives with him. someone to have movie nights with and to laugh harder than he has in a while with.

[sk-lumen]

What a healthy, secure relationship looks like

He communicates consistently and clearly. Replies promptly, doesn't leave you on seen, checks up on you throughout the day/week according to his schedule and in agreement with your needs as well.

He pays attention to your needs and desires and quirks, and makes your life better using said details. Ie. buys your favorite kind of flowers, makes your favorite tea in the morning, remembers your food allergies when having dinner dates, etc.

Disagreements may still appear even in health relationships, and it's ok, as communication is essentual for a healthy dynamic. However, his approach to disagreements is a secure one: each will share their perspective, and if feelings were hurt or mistakes were made, he takes accountability for his side, and makes genuine apologies followed by reparations and direct actions (ie. "I'm sorry I did x, I didn't mean to hurt you. I will be/do y in the future", and then does as he promised).

Promises are kept. His actions are in alignment with his words, and he keeps his words. If he says he'll call you after work, he does. If he says he needs to cool off during an argument and will reopen the conversation in 1h, he does indeed return in 1h to continue the topic.

If you're anxious, he will reassure you and work through it. He doesn't run away or avoid the topic (as an avoidantly attached person would).

If you come forward communicating your needs, or sharing complaints or grievances, he will hear you out and actively seek a way to improve things. He won't freak out, or get angry or run away in response to you having needs or communicating your thoughts; these are normal relationship things you're entitled to, and a securely attached man knows this.

A man that is well-rounded, with a secure attachment style, will have a rich life of his own: hobbies, interests, circles of friends, activities, etc. He will enjoy having his independence and space, and will respect your need for your own. He is not co-dependent, nor gets in the way of you having your own life outside of him. He knows having individually rich lives is important for a healthy relationship. To expand on this, he encourages you to enjoy your selfcare time, your girl's night out, or whatever other activities nourish you.

[mauvefiles]

When a woman is consistently spoken to softly & treated gently, she becomes a new woman. You're helping her heal her nervous system, you're helping her heal generational trauma, you're allowing her feminine energy to flourish, you're helping her to remember who she is.

[francesderwent]

Taylor Swift really wrote an album with the thesis “a man who tells you he loves you and lives together with you in a committed relationship for six years but never ever proposes is essentially the same as a man who tells you he loves you to get you into bed and then ghosts you a couple weeks later”

[mytardisisparked]

The reason Psych is the Important Show of All Time is because it said "friendship is the MOST important thing." Like, yes, the romances were good but the show spends even more time emphasizing and developing the friendships and that's why it rocks. Lassiter and Juliet love and support each other unconditionally without even the slightest whiff of romance and it is SO. REFRESHING. When Juliet almost dies, Lassie sacrifices his favorite gun to save her without any hesitation. He's the one there to hold her while she cries. She's his confidant. She leaves everything she knows behind so he can chase his dream of being chief without reprocussion. That's a deep, wholesome kind of platonic love. They also never had Shawn be jealous of how close Jules and Lassie are - instead, in the final episode, we see Shawn thanking Lassie for loving and supporting Juliet. We simply don't do that jealousy crap here. Lassie and Jules are best friends and that's an excellent thing. And then there's Shawn and Gus. Those characters are narratively and physically inseperable. The show makes it VERY clear that, without the other, neither one is complete. They balance each other and exacerbate each other's hijinks at the same time. They're closer than close and everyone around them just accepts it. It's just the way those two dumb boys are and no one is going to try to get between that. And then, of course, SO many friendships develop over the course of the show. Lassie and Shawn form a begrudging friendship eventually. Juliet and Karen end up bonding more than I think either expected. Friendship is the beating heart of this series and it's presented in a way that is unique and fun and I just don't see a lot of other shows that do it like Psych did.

[thatgentlewife-deactivated]

[fizzierolli]

rewatching Ozzie's now is soooo fucking funny like they really were so bad at keeping this a secret 😭

[theambitiouswoman]

Types of relationships that look like love but are not:

Infatuation: This is an intense emotional or sexual attraction to someone that can give the illusion of love. However, infatuation is often based on idealized perceptions rather than a deep emotional connection.

Codependency: Codependent relationships involve one person excessively relying on another for emotional or physical needs. This dependency can mimic love, but it is rooted in the need for validation, control, or a sense of purpose.

Unrequited love: This refers to a situation where one person has romantic feelings for another, but those feelings are not reciprocated. It may involve one-sided affection, longing, or an obsession with someone who does not feel the same way.

Limerence: Limerence is an intense and obsessive form of attraction characterized by intrusive thoughts, longing for reciprocation, and an idealized image of the other person. It can feel like love, but it often lacks a genuine emotional connection.

Conditional love: In relationships based on conditional love, affection and care are only given when certain conditions or expectations are met. This type of relationship lacks unconditional acceptance and can be manipulative or controlling.

Trauma bond: A trauma bond forms when two individuals share intense emotional experiences, often negative or abusive. Despite the harmful dynamics, there may be a strong attachment due to the shared trauma, leading to a mistaken perception of love.

Transactional relationships: These relationships are based on mutual benefit or convenience rather than genuine emotional connection. Partners may stay together for financial security, social status, or other practical reasons, rather than genuine love and affection.

Manipulative relationships: Manipulative relationships involve one person exerting control and power over the other through emotional manipulation, coercion, or gaslighting. The manipulator may feign love and affection to gain control or exploit their partner's vulnerabilities.

Fantasy relationships: In fantasy relationships, one or both partners create an idealized version of the other person, often based on unrealistic expectations or fantasies. The relationship may lack a true emotional connection, as it is based on the person's fantasy rather than the reality of who their partner is.

One-sided relationships: These relationships are characterized by an imbalance of effort, care, or emotional investment. One person may consistently give more while the other takes without reciprocation. It can create an illusion of love, but it lacks equality and mutual respect.

Love addiction: Love addiction refers to a compulsive or obsessive pattern of seeking out relationships and being dependent on the euphoric feeling of being in love. It can lead to a cycle of unhealthy relationships, as the person seeks constant validation and excitement without addressing underlying emotional issues.

[areallyyellowmango]

Younger Steven and Mclooy Rudboys lore because they're my faves and I love them dearly

[whetstonefires]

Thinking about the parallels set up between Wei Wuxian and Mo Xuanyu, and how actually most of them are oddly specious.

The sketch of the backstory lines up, but on close examination they're mirror images.

Wei Wuxian wasn't kicked out of his sect, he left it. Wei Wuxian didn't hate the house he grew up in, he loved it, and getting the people there killed was the absolute last purpose for which his dark powers were ever intended.

Jiang Cheng was no Mo Ziyuan--his jealousy was a complicated thing all twisted up with love, and while he would lash out at Wei Wuxian both as a casual means of shit communication and more damagingly in moments of high tension, he had neither the desire nor the ability to bully him, and in general respected his boundaries almost too well.

When Wei Wuxian destroyed himself about Jiang Cheng, it was to give him cultivation, and protect his life and happiness. He would never have killed him.

Madam Yu was a domineering aunt-like figure, who hated Wei Wuxian for reasons of reputation, and because she had resented his dead mother, but she crucially did not have the power to actually disrupt his lifestyle to any significant extent.

Mo Xuanyu was shut up in a small room to rot; Wei Wuxian didn't even attend classes unless he wanted to. Mo Xuanyu was weak and disliked; Wei Wuxian was brilliant and popular.

Mo Xuanyu's uncle is a cipher of a figure, without character or agency, a nonentity who is resented to death apparently mostly for what he didn't do; in theory he is the master of the house, but he certainly never protected his wife and son's punching bag from them.

And this is what got me thinking along this track: because people keep interpreting Jiang Fengmian as this, as exactly like Mo Xuanyu's nameless uncle, a nonentity who lets his wife make all the decisions, and is contemptible therefore.

He shows up in fic characterized this way all the time, handled narratively as a gap rather than a person, an absence where there should have been a parent, and it's...totally inaccurate? The man only has a few scenes but the things that are most firmly established about him are:

he regularly goes out of his way to protect Wei Wuxian

he's extremely fond of Wei Wuxian

he cares a lot about ethical behavior

he's conflict-avoidant and gentle

he can and will overrule Yu Ziyuan when he's made up his mind, and there's nothing she can do about it

his communication skills are mediocre at best

he doesn't understand jiang cheng

he has a dumb sense of humor

Now almost none of this made it into cql besides point 4 and maybe 6, 5 is technically there but buried by the cinematic framing, so I totally get why the fandom on the whole struggles to characterize him well, and it's easier to write him off.

But it keeps bugging me to see him and Yu Ziyuan squashed into the mold of the Mo, because not only is that boring and reductive and kind-of-missing-the-point, it's like. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's characterization suffers a lot when you alter the environment and take away the influence exerted by their shared father figure.

Jiang Fengmian was Wei Wuxian's primary adult role model and it shows.

Jiang Cheng's relationship to his own sense of ethics is fraught because 'teaching him good ethics' was his dad's number one parenting goal, but they misunderstood each other so badly (partly because Yu Ziyuan kept loudly misinterpreting them to each other, which is so realistic I can't get over it, that's exactly how it works good lord) that Jiang Cheng has a direct association between the concept of 'doing the right thing even when it's hard' and a feeling of personal inadequacy.

The fact that Wei Wuxian got their dad-person's approval for being exactly himself and Jiang Cheng not only couldn't do that, he couldn't even get that same level of approval when he really pushed himself to rise to expectations, because Jiang Fengmian did not intend that warmth as a 'reward,' and so never realized he was withholding it, and therefore misunderstood Jiang Cheng's visible jealousy as a dangerous sense of personal entitlement that had to be carefully restrained, which reinforced his distrust of Jiang-Cheng-the-person and fed into a shitty loop where they were less and less able to relate to one another--that's fantastic. That's so human! I love it so much.

Both their failures are their own but at the same time it would never have gotten so bad if Yu Ziyuan hadn't been interjecting herself in there, in the middle of their relationship, fucking it up. That's family, baby.

I would ofc like if there was more fic engaging with the subtleties of all this because it's so good, mxtx did such elegant work here and it is not sufficiently appreciated. But it's the kind of thing that's hard to write good fic about; I am struggling with it myself.

So mostly I wish there was just more fic that didn't impose Mo Xuanyu's cliche angst backstory on Wei Wuxian, who has a whole different thing going on.

[lgbtlunaverse]

I feel like too often people frame Nie Mingjue's issues as ignorance borne from safety. Like, they think that because of his privilege as a sect leader he doesn't know what it's like to be in danger and forced to make hard choices to survive. And I disagree. Strongly.

First of all, Nie Mingjue is very familiar with death not only from war but from. You know. Actively dying since the age of fourteen. Let us not forget Nie Mingjue is dead! Super dead! And maybe he didn't die the exact way he expected to but he did, absolutely, know he was going to die. To act like Nie Mingjue is unfamiliar with the scenario of "do something you find morally reprehensible or die" is to ignore that he has been living that exact scenario and chose death.

Nie Mingjue knows death is a risk for someone like Jin guangyao, in fact he explicitly acknowledges it even in his worst moments like the stairs in chapter 49. Had his issue been ignorance, then he would've responded to Jin Guangyao saying that he's in danger and has to sacrifice others for his own safety with "No you aren't you'll be fine." But he doesn't. He accepts the fact that jgy is in danger with no qualms and says: then you should die.

That's not him betraying his values, those are his values. He is, essentially, pro-suicide. Jgy is like hey I have a moral dilemma what should I do and nmj straight up goes "Kill yourself" and earlier that same chapter when he was faced with a moral dilemma he went "I'm gonna kill myself." He believes the solution to moral dilemmas is suicide! He is extremely consistent about this! When it's pointed out to him that it would have been dangerous for Wen Qing to oppose Wen Ruohan it doesn't phase him because he thinks putting yourself at risk to do the right thing is the only moral choice. The idea that he can only hold this belief because he is himself somehow not in danger, again, requires you to ignore that he is dying the whole time. And it doesn't deter him. He is the idea of self-sacrifice as a moral good taken to its absolute logical extreme. Someone who is ready to die and demands the same from everyone else.

It makes him a very fun case study for fandom, because a lot of fandom spaces also tend to revere self-sacrifice as the ultimate good, and yet we get very uncomfortable when someone starts demanding it of characters we love. Like woah, hold on, that's a bit too far isn't it? Only we the audience get to do that!

[leelight]

Hot Take: One of the reasons the PJO fandom doesn't care about Lester and Megs dynamic as much as the HoO characters is because they can't find/twist it into romance. Therefore, they find little value in it. Also, they're the strongest found family trope in PJO.

Honestly say what you want abt ToA but Lester and Meg as characters and their relationship is insanely overlooked.

[artbyblastweave]

Funniest thing I've seen recently, and not funny in a ha-ha way, more funny in a "the endless entropic void gnawing at my will to live" way, was somebody asking around for alternatives to Neil Gaiman, in the light of Neil Gaiman's ongoing fall from grace. As though what we're currently sitting through isn't the collapse of the carefully curated "Good Guy Neil" image that caused people to parade Gaiman as the same kind of preferred progressive alternative to, say, Rowling. As though we won't be in the same goddamn situation in a few years or months, with some number of the new progressive sci-fi/fantasy darlings- not all of them, to be clear, but at least some of them- when their impeccably-curated marketing implodes in on itself and they're revealed to be the same kind of sex pest or abuser. Can you not see the wheel to which you are strapped. The game of human pinball you are condemning yourself to with this mindset. Maybe you do see, and you're just resigned to taking it one soul-crushing disappointment at a time, one "I never would have guessed" after another. I mean I think we all need to get resigned to that one way or another, sun's gonna go out before it stops happening

[helleboretea]

Mel & Langdon’s friendship is so important to me because I don’t think I’ve ever seen an autistic character have a friendship with someone non-autistic that healthy. It’s something that’s rare in real life too (for me at least). To meet someone and not constantly have to explain your needs to them, or why you do that particular thing, but instead for them to just see you. Like he only has to ask questions once, then he just seems to get it, and just appreciate her as she is. Then he’s anticipating her needs, and telling her to take breaks when she needs it. He even fucking tells her she’s needed. Autistic (and disabled) people are constantly being told from every angle that we’re a waste of time and space and resources. And here’s this man telling an autistic woman that she’s valued just the way she is. He listens to and learns from her. And Mel is such amazing and authentic autistic rep for so many of us, and so many of us really identify with her, it’s no wonder we love and value him too. Because too many of us don’t have anyone like him in real life.