#<- how i be feeling

[stinkybrowndogs]

This month was decidedly uhhhhhh bad (whats new) i got hired at the beginning of the month, worked about 3 weeks and was promptly laid off on monday (they told me that they r not getting enough business to pay for my position.... or maybe i was just real bad at my job and they didnt want to hurt my feelings idk) and between the whip lash of having to rearrange my schedule for new job only to no longer have new job is making my head hurt. Thank you kind ppl who commissioned me this month 😥👍 saving my butt

[crythartic]

* Won't you play again, Kris?

[astriiformes]

I know that realistically you can only fit so many movies into a list of approximately 100, but I cannot take that "How many of tumblr's favorite movies have you seen?" list that's been going around seriously because there are some truly egregious omissions.

Some of it is very clearly recency bias, which makes me wonder if the op truly wasn't on here in 2013 or so, but you're telling me you made a list of "tumblr's favorite movies" that doesn't include Pacific Rim or Mad Max: Fury Road? Because, like, I was there, Gandalf.

[ardri-na-bpiteog]

[goldensunset]

if someone is talking about how much they love their parents do not jump in and start venting about your issues with your parents. if someone is venting about their issues with their parents do not jump in and start talking about how much you love your parents. peace and love amen swag city

[ladymirdan]

[icewindandboringhorror]

(also feel free in the tags to clarify Why you made the choice you made!! :0c)

[shrubsparrow]

It's in the eye of the beholder

[shadesofmauve]

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.

[fr-likes-chocolate]

Why the fuck… what happened?????

[synoicus]

I was made to love you, and yet,

Inspired by this observation by a friend:

[exhausted-undead]

tried out apothecary diaries the other day, got inspired to do a study, redrew jinmao as Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss", died

ive been sick for a while so excuse the messiness

[heedra]

unsung benefit i think a lot of ppl are sleeping on with using the public library is that i think its a great replacement for the dopamine hit some ppl get from online shopping. it kind of fills that niche of reserving something that you then get to anticipate the arrival of and enjoy when it arrives, but without like, the waste and the money.

[holographings]

they got me. they fucking got me. jayvik nation hello

[slimespecter]

MAKE ME THE [happiest man in the world!] AND [Die]