#advice

[thatsbelievable]

[wingsofaphrodite]

Normalize falling behind in worship. Normalize not constantly being at 100%. Normalize needing to take a step back in order to keep moving forward. Normalize being imperfect. Normalize being human.

[sonandheirofnothinginparticular]

[thatsbelievable]

[brick3621]

[thefemigirl]

✤ What To Add To Your Vision Board

Visualize what you want these 6 areas of your life to look like in the near future.

( 1 ) FINANCIAL a. What is your ideal annual income? b. Describe your ideal home situation to look like and its location.

( 2 ) CAREER a. What kind of organization or role do you envision yourself in? b. What type of projects or tasks are you passionate about doing?

( 3 ) RECREATION a. How do you prefer to spend your leisure time? b. Which hobbies or interests are you actively pursuing?

( 4 ) WELLNESS a. In what ways do you care for your mental, physical, and spiritual health? b. What kind of diet do you follow to stay healthy? c. What activities help you maintain your fitness?

( 5 ) RELATIONSHIPS a. How would you describe the quality of your relationships? b. How often do you connect with friends and loved ones?

( 6 ) PERSONAL LIFE a. What personal goals are you striving to achieve? b. What habits, values, and boundaries guide your daily life?

Remember: you can build your vision boards any time of the year.

[teresablogs]

You are capable of achieving the dream that’s been planted in you.

[thepersonalquotes]

I dont celebrate any friendship that was build on hate, because we share the common enemy.

De philosopher DJ Kyos

[angstandhappiness]

YIKES

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

What are Vil's flaws if he has any?

Definitely not asking because I would love to get a list of them (if it's not asking to much) 👀

I love how complex Twist's characters can be, especially Vil. He's extremely admirable, but he also has flaws like everyone else, no matter how perfect curated his image is and how distant people/his fans (or even some readers) feel from his difficulties and suffering. It never ceases to amaze me how connected his problems are from the ones we live today. Maybe I'm bias, or maybe it's my kin side talking but I love how real and relevant his writing is.

First time sending something, hopefully I didn't do anything wrong, hope you have a nice day/night ♡

I won't be going out of my way to make a list of all his flaws due to the reasons cited in this post. However, I'm going to discuss the idea posed by this anon.

I think Vil operates in this weird liminal space where how he’s treated in-universe and how he’s treated within the fandom sometimes align. For example, Vil is commonly viewed as a shallow, vain, and mean person by his peers as well as by fans. Peers believe that his character is just as rotten to the core as those of the roles he plays. Fans similarly judge Vil very harshly; I frequently see accusations of being classist (towards Epel) and racist (towards Leona) (which are entirely separate cans of worms in of themselves) lobbied at him, especially up to 2022. He is never without scrutiny, and the harder he works to try and earn the approval of people he can never win over, the more he finds himself in pain for it. That's why his breaking point in book 5 is his failed attempt to poison Neige--he's consumed by the shame and the fear of proving his detractors right, that his character truly is ugly, that he is a villain. Vil being a celebrity is such a double-edged sword. It grants him a high social status, a nice life, and all eyes on him--but these things also serve as a detriment to him. A public figure like him is seen, but not often heard. When people see you constantly but don't actually know you as an individual, it can create a situation where they're free to project their own ideas and beliefs onto you. Parasocialism to this degree can breed intense love and intense hate, and VIl has to gracefully bear the brunt of those extremes with a perfectly practiced smile. He can never crack under the pressure, never let people know how much it really gets under his skin. He silently suffers, and the saddest part about this is that he doesn't get a ton of empathy for his situation. Vil is a celebrity. He has everything he could ever possibly want. He's so glamorous and cool and everyone knows his name. How can someone like that possibly be unhappy? I feel like people can pretty easily formulate thoughts like this and use those as justifications to dismiss or downplay his struggles.

There’s the obvious lesson you can glean here about the dangers of deriving your self-worth from strangers/public perception/social media. You’ll never be at peace or satisfied with yourself if you keep chasing the approval of others. We can also see the juxtaposition of how the public views Vil versus how he is in private. No one sees how hard he works. No one sees his cute, vulnerable side. No one sees he can be sad or mad or giggling. This is proof that, no matter how devoted we may be to a celebrity or personality, we will never fully “know” them or what they’re going through. The media we see them in and their posts are only brief, curated windows into their lives. This is especially relevant now, since so many of us are ingrained in the internet (where we have access to social media, streamers, celebrities, etc.) and online etiquette has become a thing of the past.

Though I doubt this was the intention of the devs, I feel that Vil's circumstances could also translate over to fandom spaces. Nowadays, there's a lot of this... eagerness to judge and denounce others (particularly in western circles) based on the work one creates or consumes. You happen to enjoy this character that has done bad things? You must condone their actions; you’re a bad person! You made fan art of a popular ship? You’re a sellout and clout chaser! Morals are assigned to creations and preferences, assumptions are made about the fan’s character or intentions, much like how Vil is called wicked simply for acting in villain roles. It’s a false equivalency that leads to hatred, harassment, and even harm of the creators (or Vil, in this case) 😔

I think there’s definitely a lot we could learn from Vil and his experiences! ^^

[bumblebee-art-blog]

Random but can anyone find me where this xmen panel is from? (Like the comic?).

I don’t know why but the art styles scratches my brain and I wanna know

[lipikkawrites]

- @lipikkawrites

[angstandhappiness]

Neat

And after a while you just stop. You stop watering your plants. You stop watching netflix. You stop reading. You stop replying to your friends as fast as you used to. You stop buying yourself nice things. You stop putting an effort into how you look. You stop taking care of yourself like you used to. You stop sleeping. You stop eating healthy foods. You stop petting your dog. You stop socializing.

You stop with everything. You find yourself sitting in your room for hours on end, without doing a single thing. Days feel like years. And you think you can’t do it for much longer.

[thewhimsicalarchives]

~ one of my favorite movie quotes. everyone has their own set of goals and aspirations, and whether or not they align with your visions- never dissuade or discourage someone from achieving what they dream of.

[ardentreader]

People of tumblr,

Can anybody tell me the difference between aromantic, asexual, and everything that comes after it with their respective short forms (slangs?) I'm just trying to place myself on the spectrum...I think I'm buy but learned today that there is something called grey aromantic (I think) and it resonated with me and now I'm just completely unsure where I lie. Help!