#stop doubting yourself

[sxrrhhn]

[typelikeagirl]

[princessoftheroad]

The people in my life didn't destroy me. I destroyed myself with intense feelings of inadequacy.

[lesbianwyllravengard]

People who don't have autism: you can't self diagnose yourself with autism no matter how much research you do! You have to take 3947493 tests and pay thousands of dollars before you can call yourself autistic!!

People who have autism: yeah you're autistic. We're diagnosing you.

[spankedbyspike]

I don't know how old the text it but there is always a context in which this is somewhat still true sadly.

Let's make a difference and take this challenge head front.

“This compulsion to compete with and destroy other women is our deadliest enemy, absolutely ensuring failure. We not only can’t seem to control it, but most of the time we can’t even see it in ourselves. It is part of the invisibility of our oppression. We perform impeccably the art of keeping ourselves and other women powerless and remaining oblivious to the dynamics.

There are very few women among us who haven’t personally experienced the “rush” that comes from putting another woman down. If we are honest, we have to admit the pleasure of feeling “on top,” superior, right for a change, after a lifetime of being viewed and treated as hopelessly stupid and wrong. Some of us can hardly get enough of this bogus freedom, this elation. The inherent rewards are feelings of being powerful, as well as of being “on the right side,” which unconsciously means the men’s side against women; the momentary feeling of not being like other women, not being a woman at all, not a slave like them, removed from the degradation of our caste altogether; the incredibly heady feeling of escape from the bondage of our gender. 

The instant enough of us break this habit among ourselves, however, patriarchy will begin to wither. We must therefore take this ugly and ubiquitous phenomenon seriously, each one of us, and begin studying in our own lives how to stop getting our kicks from hurting one another. One sure way to at least disrupt this pattern is to refuse to give our co-addicts the fix, remembering that everything depends on breaking our own habit and on not feeding other women’s addictions. Whatever we do, we must learn never to give the expected, typical response. 

I believe women can love one another, can cooperate, can trust, can, in short, rise above our conditioning. I believe we are ready to practice what we know -that as we build one another up and rejoice in the achievement and triumphs, in the gifts and beauties of other women, we ourselves grow more gifted, beautiful, and strong. I believe that as we do this, we will forge a sisterhood so mighty that nothing in the world can stop us. This is my dream. It is a dream in which we each remember that every woman born is us.”

Going out of our minds, Sonia Johnson

[pjs-everyday]

If requests are still open, could you draw some Izuocha?

"leave the heavy lifting to me!!" or something like that 🤧💕✨

[utilitycaster]

#reblogging for the “see: girlfailure” tag#caus I have opinions on the insular fandom memeification of characters but I don't - as this post highlights - have the words for it#but I keep those to dms caus anytime I or a friend has challenged it in a public space it gets shot down#it reeks of my troubles with the general fear of using the word woman these days and how it's girldinner this girlmath that#also what do you call as intentional character traits vs a flopped dice roll

(via @distant--shadow)

so I agree and this is interesting to me because what always frustrated me about "girlfailure" outside the more general issue of "um, coquette/bimbo/girl dinner/uwu soft divine feminine cottagecore domesticity don't you mean u want to braid her hair is actually TRUER feminism than being the surly woman who loves math and sword fights and hates sewing" and the fact that, as you said, it mostly came from bungled dice rolls and no real intent, is that the same people who call her a girlfailure insist that Imogen is the main character. And like, she kind of is! And yet - and I've said this about Imogen and Laudna in the context of their relationship but I'm going to not include that because I actually don't think that's even relevant, it's about them as individual characters as well - people want them to simultaneously be The Main Character or at least heavily in focus and also never, ever have any agency. Like, they want "capable" to mean that everyone likes you, and not that you are a person who makes hard choices for the better.

Maybe it's because I'm playing Baby's First RPG right now, but the deal with RPGs and I think(?) especially this one, is you must make every choice and it is laden with consequences (not that I as a D&D player, or, you know, a human woman, am unfamiliar with that already) but what drives me nuts about the just a silly guy! girlfailure! she chooses to be good and therefore is good narrative for Imogen, and the "stripped of choice" (another highly repeated turn of phrase) for both her and Laudna is that it's untrue and it means nothing. For all my criticism of What Doesn't Break, Laudna makes choices. I frequently dislike them and wish they had more gravity, but she does make them. She doesn't make every choice - notably, her death and Delilah's presence are huge things that happen to her without her input - but even while barely herself she frequently brushes off Delilah. You can imagine the dialogue trees and the paths she takes, to intervene or not. She decides to renew her pact; she decides to run into the desert. Imogen decides to attack the villagers with lightning to defend Laudna. She decides to leave, she decides to keep burning their rivals in the Twilight Mirror Museum, she decides to tell her mother that she won't join her, she decides not to help assassinate her mother.

Fearne has a wonderful line when she's talking with Chetney after shardgate, in which she explains that she's terrified of making bad choices. Not of being a bad person, but of making the bad choices. And that's the thing. You cannot choose to be good. You cannot choose to be bad. At least not in any general sense. You can, however, make choices that harm people or help them. You constantly must do this. You can stray, or change the type of choices you've made, but they do accumulate to a point, eventually, where it becomes harder and harder to stray. However, the premise of D&D is very much that your character hasn't become locked in, yet. Is Imogen making choices that will be better for other people? If the world rests on her shoulders, is she making better choices for the world?

This is perhaps the core theme of this campaign, dating as far back as Downfall. Aeor made their choice - many, many choices. The gods made theirs. Ludinus kept making his, over, and over. It's particularly resonant among the women of the campaign. Obviously there's Fearne, and I've covered Imogen and Laudna, but going over to the Crown Keepers, Morrigan becomes a paladin in a few short weeks - an immense choice. Fy'ra advises others on what they are going to do. And Opal is where she is now because in one moment she put the crown on her head - and in doing so, ceded further choice in the long run. The deities of both fate and free will in this world are given considerable presence in this story, and both use female pronouns.

Maybe I'm making a mountain of a molehill, but I don't think I am. I really do think people cling to "girlfailure" and act like we're just being meanie haters who don't believe Imogen is good because she can be the central character who has power to change the world and the narrative; or she can be pure and innocent of all wrongdoing. she cannot be both. No one can. And deep down I think the "girlfailure" proponents prefer a useless innocent girl to a powerful woman who sometimes makes choices or does things that hurt other people. So I don't think that one's just harmless meme-ing, and if you want to see Imogen as an exceptionally important part of this narrative I think you have to reject the girlfailure, and anyone saying "oh it's just a joke" is either unthinkingly repeating or is pushing a story where Imogen is just a MacGuffin without agency, and neither is worth, in my opinion, listening to. Someone "stripped of choice" in real life is worth our pity and deserves our assistance but they make for a pretty terrible fantasy protagonist, and it's maddening to see a woman in the center of the story and then to be attacked if you want her to be treated like a person who, as a result of being a key protagonist, holds particular power and isn't just a girlfailure.

[lovebvni]

just go do it.

don’t waste anymore time. you know you can do it. pick up your feet, pray, manifest and move. let it all come to you. you have been blessed by the universe, deities and life itself. go see them. go complete that thing. send that email. apply for that job.

take that leap of faith. it’s worth it

this is your sign. go shift your reality, change that mindset, and get on the path of what you’ve always wanted to do. you know you can. you’re not stuck. this is the door opening, so get to that goal.

just do it. your mind has opened, the time has come.

[ganondoodle]

i wish confidence found its way into my head as easily as doubt does lol saw a single tweet about how a big problem in media criticism is alot of people think they can do the job of the devs/writers better when they dont and i immediately go ... oh god im one of those arent i ...

posts like those are probably rly obviously talking about a specific kinds of people but if its not clarified my brain just goes "could be you :)" and leaves it at that :^)

[anarchonist]

That post about guilt and shame only being effective as deterrents but not in inspiring anyone to change their behavior in any meaningful way got me thinking about those other posts about progressive circles consisting way too much of people not with a desire to do something right but instead with a fear of doing something wrong, and...

Yeah. Those two are related. Guilt and shame are the weapons of the status quo, designed to instill in everyone with a conscience a fear of failure, of hurting others, of being a bad person. And it's pretty fucked up when people are being shamed for that, since, well, shame doesn't inspire any meaningful change. So the problem persists, deepens, even. Since by shaming someone for not getting over that shame, you've now discouraged them from thinking about that instilled shame and maybe finding a solution.

It's shame and guilt all the way down. Perhaps shame and guilt could be used against people who tend to shame and guilt others in order to shame and guilt them out of shaming and guilting others? I don't know. And that's a true shame.

[sxrrhhn]

[zymstarz]

yeah sure that's how i'll [re]come out

[princessoftheroad]

Girl, Stop Apologizing

If I could tell you anything, if I could convince you to believe it, it's that you were made for more. You were made to have the dreams you're afraid of having. You were made to do the things you don't think you're qualified for. You were made to be a leader. You were made to contribute. You were made to make changes for good, both in your local community and the world at large. You were made to be more than you are today and - this is the important part - your version "of more" might not look like "my more" or "hers".

[iknowwhereyousleepatnight]

should i sleep for a hundred million years or purposefully stop sleeping just to see what happens

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

Are you aware that I'm-a-gay-fish and Zu ship dr//m/are ?/genq

okay so it took me a while to answer this but i finally found the words to so here goes; yeah i do know, and i totally understand if you don't ship it, neither do i, but there's nothing i can do about it?

they're allowed, so long as they don't harm people, to do whatever they want on their own platforms. and before you ask me if i support *ncest, would you actually ask someone if they support toxic relationships and murder whenever they ship two unhealthy killers with mental problems? because that's funnily enough what most people do around here! you can say it's not the same, and that they're romanticizing it, but i can personally detach myself from fiction enough to realize that while this concept depicted in their art shouldn't be recreated in real life, that doesn't mean they actually engage or support people that do that irl- they asked zu the same question so many times, and frog doesn't either and i've known gayfish for three years! you're well within your right to stop associating with them or distance yourself from their content but i myself won't.

i know fiction affects reality to a degree, don't twist my words please, but if you're too young to consume that kind of content with a nuanced perspective or is triggered/affected by it then as long as they tag their content properly then you can unfollow, block and move on. i have a habit of following and reblogging people's works before looking at their bios and before i know it find myself having to choose between two sides i don't belong to and i frankly don't want to! anti this or proship that- in this online era you have to adapt by keeping your cool and curating your own online experience and viewing people in black and whites is stressful, painful and dangerous for everyone involved. i don't even reblog the content you probably have a problem with, and i'm honestly still scared of the response i'll get-

i will not blame or hate whoever unfollows or blocks me for this, it's to be expected, but please don't think about it like some bad vs good guys dilemma? sometimes thought provoking morally grey ambiguous stories with messed up characters spark more positive discussion and healing than people looking into it because they suffer from the same delusions and want a justification-

like realistically, in my blog, most ppl here are basically shipping two literal skeletons with magic in their bones who are sometimes almost the exact copy of one another, and who theoretically have a very similar dna, and sometimes they make shipkids, which, if you know anything about *ncest, is one of the main reasons why you shouldn't bang your siblings - mostly from a moral standpoint because that's so gross i can't even think of it, but also because any offspring would suffer greatly from physical and mental diseases hidden in their genetic code- like. you could argue it's not the same but it's sancest for a reason. and even when they're widely different sanses, you wouldn't think fell x sans is wrong (at least in this specific community) but really we've all just gotten numb to how weird that sounds. trust me, there's a reason we don't talk about our ships to outsiders HHH

TL,DR: so while i greatly encourage you to block people and content you don't want to see/associate with, including me! i hope i made it clear why i, personally, don't care about dreammare and whoever ships it.

[stargiirl27]

some of you listened to just a girl by no doubt and forgot the part where she screams THATS ALL THAT YOU'LL LET ME BE at the end