briashard

[briashard]

listen to me, really. I am holding your two hands tenderly in mine. being part of a privileged group and benefitting from systemic exploitation without meaning to is not the same thing as being an inherently trash person who makes the world worse by living it in. that's not what that means. I'm telling you this for two reasons, 1) so you can chill the fuck out and be at peace with yourself without feeling like you're draining the universe of value, and 2) so you don't go onto oppressed people's posts about systemic privilege and exploitation and react like they've just told you that you, personally, should not exist because you're a man who lives within the vicinity of a supermarket that sells chiquita bananas. you're just gonna have to put some trust into your own brain and hold on to both the ideas that you're on one of the dominant sides of a set of global scales of injustice and that you don't have to shrivel out of existence about it. it can be difficult to reconcile those ideas at first, but it's completely possible and worth doing. if you don't, then you start constructing a worldview where you believe that either you have a civic duty to self destruct or you start vehemently denying that these systems of oppression exist, both of which are Bad and Not Good. peace and love x

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annalaura_art

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toastedbyeli

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i wish i could remember who made the recommendation to "make a list of all the different ways someone could feel about a topic in your fictional setting and then make each of them a character" because it is a great technique and is also extremely fun

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allow yourself to be a beginner

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literally though if you feel like your life is slipping through your fingers and every day goes too fast… try doing hard things, not just taking the easy route, like reading and making art and exercising and cooking a meal from scratch and journaling, doing these things without distraction, without being absorbed on a screen… the time will stretch and you’ll be reminded that life is long and beautiful if you make it so.

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if all else fails at least we have books and sweet treats!

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@lingerie_addict has a really cool thread on ancient fashion over on twitter.

Those source links are here

cambridge.org

Youtube

ucl.ac.uk

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Questions I think to myself a lot when confronted with certain kinds of Online Posting:

Do you want a better world, or do you want revenge on those you think aren’t doing enough to improve it?

Do you want a more just world, or do you want to see bad people suffer merciless punishment?

Do you want a less oppressive world, or do you want the reins of power for yourself?

Do you want to do the right thing, or do you want to feel righteous?

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You know what I think its grossly under-rated in fandom? Second loves.

What it's like to love and lose and then love again. To suffer through either the death of a loved one or the death of a love you used to share. To know that loss, to know that hurt, and to still make yourself vulnerable to someone again. To love scared, to love wounded, to love anyway.

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it doesn’t have to be good it just has to be done

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Having a traumatic childhood means you cannot talk even objectively about your basic foundational experiences without it being "venting", even if you're not actually venting. You just straight up have a huge chunk of your life you can't talk about, full stop, without it being trauma dumping.

And it not being socially acceptable to talk about your own childhood is super alienating. Sometimes people want to know why, and any answer you can give them is going to be off putting.

It's to the point I get irritated when something I said is framed as venting when I'm literally just talking about my life experiences, doing my best to keep emotion out of it.

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good things will happen 🧿

things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿