#we can’t just give up on everyone

[geneeste]

why would i want to connect with a shitty person#why do YOU want to connect with a shitty person i'm not a therapist i'm not a magical leprechaun that'll take them on a journey of self-discovery and reevaluation of life choices if they're shitty they're shitty. they can work on that themselves but i don't have to 'connect' with them to hold their hands while they do

'your circle of acquaintances must be small' not all countries are murrikka

Oh, honey.

The thing about Tumblr is that, as amazing as it is for fandom and self-discovery, it is very much not real life. The things I would recommend for a good experience here — liberal blocking, curating your bubble, ignoring trolls — is not good advice for dealing with real humans in real life.

In my tags that you’re referencing, I said the shittiest person you know is still a person. And if you stop seeing people as flawed but real humans, you lose all chance of connecting with them, and then you lose any chance of productive change, for either of you.

Here’s something I’ve struggled with my whole life and that I’ve learned from my mother: you cannot shame and rage a bigot out of being a bigot, and an isolated bigot will stay a bigot forever.

My mom is an amazing woman. She was raised in the racist and homophobic Southern Baptist Church in the U.S. Deep South and was closeted for half of her life. She’s suspected she’s autistic or ADHD, because she was always different in ways that being gay didn’t really explain. And because of that, and because her family were a bunch of assholes, she was singled out for physical abuse amongst her siblings.

To get away from that, she married basically the first dude she thought she could get her out, and then spent another decade or two being abused by that asshole. When she was finally free of him, she managed to keep my brother and I alive, despite the best efforts of my father to interfere. We were still living in the South and teenagers when she came out, despite how dangerous it still was for a divorced woman with minors to be openly lesbian.

I tell you all of this so that you understand the kind of shit she’s had to deal with her whole life. In my opinion, she would have been justified to cut her family out of her life, to leave the bigots in her home town in the dust of their own decrepit prejudice forever, and deliver an epic smackdown whenever a bigot tries her.

But she doesn’t. I’ve watched her go to the same hairdresser (her cousin, because in these towns everyone is related to each other somehow) who’d make ignorant comments about gay people while she did my mom’s hair and slowly help her change by being kind and vulnerable and asking honest questions about why her cousin thought those things.

I’ve seen her do this with countless people, countless times — “oh, what makes you say that? Did you know I’m gay? We’ve known each other for years, have I ever made you uncomfortable? You’ve always been my friend, so I know you love me and wouldn’t say that about me. I know you have a very strong faith, here’s what I’ve read in the Bible about that. You’re a very loving person, I know you care more about people than that thing you just said shows.”

And it works! I’ve seen so many people change for the better because of their relationships with my mom, and I’ve come to realize that this is probably the only way for people *to* change — through patience, kindness, and genuine connection.

This is really hard to do. These kinds of conversations require you to be present and be vulnerable, to be willing to find common ground with someone who seems so different from you and who believe things about you that are hurtful and untrue.

Although this seems to be my mom’s approach somehow, every single time, she’s had a lifetime of being herself and being *confident* in herself, and of practicing these kind of vulnerable conversations. So I’m not saying you can or should do this with everyone you meet.

Some people won’t be ready, and some people won’t be safe. And because it takes time and patience, you might not have the opportunity to do this in a way that will really help someone grow. But I’ve seen a surprising number of people who only needed someone who’s willing to take a chance on them, to really connect with them, become better people.

You can’t hate someone else — or yourself — into being a better person. But you can love them through it.

[ducktracy]

there are a lot of evil people in the world and a lot of darkness in the world and so it’s very important for me to stress that now more than ever is the time to spread kindness and compassion. combat the evil by not only not partaking in it, but actively refuting it. destroy the notion that being compassionate or generous or kind to someone is uncool or embarrassing or even scary. be the change you want to see. start a chain reaction. positivity only breeds more positivity. do an act of kindness for someone so that that person who is too afraid to do it themselves can see you, realize that they’re not alone, and perhaps sheepishly follow your example. and then the next person who is too afraid but sees that person can do the same. when bad news comes out about bad people or horrible atrocities in the world it’s such an easy impulse to despair, and obviously it’s important to feel what you need to feel. grieve. be angry. be sorrowful. be empathetic. but dust off your pants and get up and be a part of a chain reaction that, no matter how small the scale, and spread compassion and love and care. all the reasons why you might not—“it’s hard! it’s scary! people will make fun of me! it’s useless because there’s too much evil!” are all grade A arguments as to why you should. you have no idea how many people you could inspire to do the same. even if it doesn’t get you anyway far, you can at least say you have the nobility of trying. please choose love and please choose life. you are worth loving and you are worth inspiring others to love

[tenwhiteandalusians]

so no one was going to tell me if i got literally one episode further tenax drops that he’s the one who saved scorpus from his mom’s pimp AND that he’s intimately familiar with scorpus’ dick when he was younger. guys. guys.

[r0semultiverse]

You know what feature we need to bother staff for next? Other people’s posts getting flagged as counting towards “strikes” on our blogs.

[avirxy]

beauty and beast au but Claire’s the one cursed because she’s the only one I can see literally pissing a sorceress off enough to get cursed. (If we’re going off the original movie Jim would probably offer them a hot meal and a room for the night, knowing him he’d make everything super accommodating)

[fakeoutbf]

five stages of grief but it’s five stages of social anxiety

[artist-issues]

outer banks melting from something barely watchable to something certainly unwatchable before our very eyes

[jackienautism]

she would not say that ???!?!?!?!?

[bioswear]

not to sound like some political bootlicker but i could cry honestly seeing a presidential candidate who can actually string a coherent sentence together and isn’t on the verge of having an aneurysm

[solace-seekers]

screaming into the void <3

[fappellmoan]

for months i genuinely wholeheartedly could not tell the 911 guys apart and this is so important for me to stress bc throughout my life i have prided myself on being able to tell twins apart really easily and liking being that person to connect faces to other things ive watched or honestly just seen in passing like i could track down a random commercial actress and shit and i mean i suppose part of that is not knowing their characters and they just twin all the time but i apologize still im aware that mans last name is diaz and now i feel like im sitting here laid up @ all the tumblr lesbians like haha damn so thats buck x eddie? that said idk if im like happy i know any of this.

[figofswords]

I want to know which octopath developer woke up and chose violence

[crossbackpoke-check]

I just need you to know I was reading your tags on the Sillinger/Fantilli Deadpool/Wolverine gifset going "YES THE EYE CONTACT! AND COLE'S WHOLE FACE JOURNEY! AND *OH MY GOD* ADAM'S HAND ALMOST BUT NOT GRIPPING AT COLE'S BICEP" like that near grip Adam took had me fainting like a fucking Victorian era man who saw a woman's bare ankles like W.H.A.T.

I neeeeed to write them omg.

ANON. ANON!!!! please. write them!!!!! and send me a link if/when you do 😇 i’ll prepare my fainting couch (the floor)

[foreverppl]

Victoria Valentine…. I see you.

[hopecomesbacktolife]

GODDD getting accommodations at work should not be this fucking hard.

where is my Star Trek utopia where we don’t even have to worry about this ridiculous back-and-forth bureaucracy rife with miscommunications and where people will just be fuckin decent to disabled & chronically ill folks 🫠🫡

[ssreeder]

Hi pook 😢 ( sorry if u don’t like the nickname) but I’ve been reading your series and I am reading Into the Fire (chapter 8) and I’m just wondering why you made Sokka give in so easily when people tell him to control himself that’s not Zuko. Because I would imagine that he would be more stubborn and more focused on what he wants instead of being caring. Even though he’s a caring and kind person I feel like being in prison would make him more selfish and less understanding of other people if than makes sense 😭

Like it just aggravates me when I see Katara try to idk really baby him and control him a bit (not mentally) it just kind of annoys me. Because even though Sokka loves his Sister I feel like he shouldn’t listen to her for real.

But that’s just me because that’s my opinion coming from someone behind has anger issues/ gets angry easily 🤷‍♀️

I love love love this series btw!!!!

I added your other ask too so I could respond to both! Hiiii hellooooo I don’t mind nicknames it’s actually nice because then I can keep anons apart haha

as for your comment about sokka I gotta say you’re probably the first person to tell me sokka isn’t angry enough haha. Which is fine because everyone’s allowed to have their own opinions, but my thoughts on LIAB angry sokka is his intelligence is often battling his emotions. I think sokka is smart enough to know he isn’t supposed to be lashing out at people the way he is or clinging to Zuko so tightly to where they both can’t breathe. i also think he is desperate to be back to his “old self” without actually wanting to be his old self. I do think he is fighting his path to healing every step of the way but even with all the time spent in prison he is still SOKKA. He cares for people he loves his family and he knows from watching his parents growing up what a healthy relationship looks like - his codependency to zuko is probably not it. I doubt it will change much, but when people tell him ‘you need to chill’ Sokka is very much like I FUCKING KNOW BUT I HAVE NO CHILL!!! NONE! ZERO CHILL.

but I can’t imagine sokka wanting to hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it. Or fighting his friends and family to isolate himself anymore than he already is. I have learned that writing a more emotionally triggering fic does stir up emotions in people and causes them to project onto the characters a bit which is fine but everyone processing trauma differently. & sokka is doing it his own way just like zuko is.

Also…. This is a fanfic and I don’t know if people wanna read sokka being a raging asshole for 50k… so some of the realism in healing gets lost to word count because unfortunately I can’t spend years and 1000k helping these boys overcome their trauma so some of it has to be rushed a little for word count / plot purposes haha.

Liiiiiiisten here pooki-anon you come yell at me anytime about liab I’ll be right here to soak up every word! Thanks for the ask I’m glad you’re enjoying the series!!