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indianascones · 4 years

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Shadow work vs Self Reflection

Occultism and spirituality are taking the world by storm. You can’t go on any social platform today without seeing it mentioned, referenced, whether seriously or lightly. Like most things that gain popularity, words start to lose meaning and the true definitions become lost. That’s what inspired me to write this post today to the empty void of Tumblr.

The term shadow work is very rarely understood, but it’s a favorite to use because of the imagery it triggers. It sounds dark, mysterious, complex, and social media Occult Practitioners gain their notoriety by capturing their audience with that appeal. In fact the allure of that practice title probably played a big part in pulling anyone that’s reading this post, in.

So without further ado, let’s get to the the differences! We’ll start with the easiest and most common first:

Self Reflection

This is what most people on the planet do. When we look back on a situation we aren’t particularly proud of, and think “What could I have done different?”. When we reflect we’ll feel harsh emotions that we’ll want to run from. Shame, sadness, embarrassment, and our thoughts take us to “I can’t do that again!”

To put it simply, self reflection is a review of your actions. In this situation, you are the Cause, and you created an Effect you don’t like. This is healthy and something everyone should do daily. It’s a form of mindfulness, a baby step to being fully aware and accountable for your Vibration, i.e. your Effect.

Simple enough, right? So let’s move on to what people commonly THINK self reflection is.

Shadow Work

Shadow work could be explained simply as “self reflection” but it is so much more than that. It’s a deep investigation to how and why you respond to Effects. It’s deeper than thinking of a previous scenario you don’t like, because that still only shows you the situation from your conscious/earthly perspective, and that’s not the point of shadow work. Our shadow selves are the ugly things our family and society told us were undesirable.

As a result we tucked these things deep within ourselves and suppressed them. This starts from birth. We watch our caregivers and look for ways to get a positive response. Tucking these pieces of us away causes us to react to Effects in ways some people might be confused with.

I’ll use a personal example:

I use to get irrationally angry anytime I heard Amy Winehouse or anyone mentioned her. She invoked hot, liquid rage within me. This person I never even met, got that strongly of an emotional response from me. I dealt with this for years, to the point I shrugged at my friends that were sobbing over her passing. It wasn’t until shadow work that I discovered why. To do this, I pretended she was there with me. I did two sided conversation myself.

As me, I asked her why she did what she did. Why did she glorify addiction and drugs? Why did she mock rehab and make it trendy to refuse help? I had to go deep within my subconscious in order to give myself answers. Which, was me answering myself as her.

This is where shadow work can be dangerous. You can lose yourself. You can go too deep. The point is, is to become the other person so you can get a sort of closure on your pain to their Vibration, to whatever their Effect triggers in you. You can only do that by opening yourself to their experiences, their perspective, and ultimately their Vibration, taking it as your own.

Then, when you’ve asked all you needed of them, it’s their turn to ask you.

“Why do you care what I sing about?” Amy asked.

“Because it’s dangerous.” I answered.

“That’s a lie. You fear danger, you don’t get angry. Why do you care what I sing about?” She pushed harder.

“Because it’s wrong!”

“Why is it wrong? What makes what I’m doing as a grown adult, sooooo wrong?”

“Because we couldn’t do it! We couldn’t sing that song, we couldn’t keep partying. My mom told me I was disgusting, I was a loser addict slut like my dad and said my friends were trash and I couldn’t see them! We’re disgusting, my friend is dead, and you’re cool FOR BEING JUST LIKE US.”

Boom. Just like that, I understood years of suppressed emotion. Self reflecting never would have gotten me to that level of understanding. Self reflecting made me run from what the answer was because I was embarrassed by how I felt. And there was no real action, or Cause, to examine. We had never met each other, we were strangers. Self reflection only took me to the repulsion I felt, and that repulsion was given to me by my family and society. Addicts are viewed poorly all across society and I felt my issue with Amy Winehouse was me being on the right side of society. Having the ‘right” view. I was no longer addicted to and popping pills, so I was right and how I felt was right.

This was just one small example of how Shadow Work has taught me about myself, and given me control of my response to an Effect.

Earlier I said, self reflection is examining your Cause in a Cause and Effect situation, reviewing your actions. So that would make Shadow Work a review of your reactions, even when they’re unprompted. Such as my reaction to Amy Winehouse. She did nothing TO me. My reaction was related to my family telling me a trait I was exhibiting was gross and needed to hidden.

So in a way, Shadow work is the ultimate self reflection. It tests how you process information, and how you change and react to that information.

To be clear you can do shadow work on ANYONE that elicits any strong negative emotion. In future posts I’ll go through various shadow techniques to give advice to beginner, but currently I really wanted to get the differences explained so people can better use them to serve in their life.

#spiritualjourney #occulltism #shadow work #spiritualism #aspiring novelist #healer #lakota #pagans of tumblr #Mountain Witch #eclectic witch #ManifestingMagic #crystals #candlemagick #spiritualguidance #guide #original writing #source: my brain #original post #writers on tumblr

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mbti-notes · 4 years

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P1) So I have this friend, an Enfp like me. For years she's been a dear friend of mine, and being of similar types have made us very easily get along. But now that we're growing older it feels like I'm in a different place in terms of Fi development, and her lack of development is starting to rub me the wrong way. During the time when we both started to get into Fi development, I started focusing on branching out and figuring out who I was, and she ended up in one relationship after another.

[con’t: The men were nice, and I'm not saying that being in relationships is a bad thing or is inherently detrimental to Fi. But now she's single, and says she feels listless, lonely. She says she seeks out men of status to make her feel accomplished but then either ends up losing interest or they break it off. I've been giving her advice to generate self interest, instead of seeking out interest solely in other people, to pursue her passions, and for a bit it seemed like she was taking my advice.

But recently I've seen a... I don't know if it's a different version of unhealthy Fi, or whether it truly is a problem with me. If it is me, I would like to fix it. She seems to kind of assume my motives based off of what she herself is feeling. For example, if she feels insecure about something she'll act on the assumption that I'm judging her. I will be completely clueless to the fact that she thinks this until one of her actions based off of that assumption ends up being hurtful. When I come back and tell her that her actions are hurtful and based on false premises, she doesn't apologize, and despite saying that she loves me regardless, says that she feels I'm kind of a judgy person so that's why she assumed. I try my level best to be a non-judgemental person, given that I'm quite aware that people come from all sorts of life experiences and backgrounds, and I've had friends tell me it's one of my better qualities.

There are times when I do say I can't condone a course of action (because it will hurt someone else or cause problems) and I have had someone break a friendship with me over that before. That person I've been told was toxic and manipulative, and later on I've heard that she herself thought she mightve been wrong. So I've assumed that what she said might not have been true. My family teases me about me being rigid on my morals, but apart from that no one has really mentioned it to me before. I know that being judgy could be a unhealthy trait from Fi, but I have the feeling that my close friend might be having an unhealthy Fi instead.

So I suppose my questions are: am I indulging in unhealthy Fi traits? If so, how should I fix it? If she's the one being unhealthy, how so and how would you advise me to react? As I said, she's a dear friend of mine of many years. I know there've been times that I've been shitty that she's patiently guided me and times I've been behind where she's waited for me to catch up, so in this case I don't want to leave her behind. I know that I can't get her to change if she doesn't want to, (especially now that she feels that I'm being judgemental I don't want to press) but how do I react to someone with an unhealthy Fi while asserting my boundaries?]

When you’ve been friends with someone for a long time, especially if many of those years were formative years, it’s natural for the relationship to carry a lot of baggage - they become more like a family member than a friend. That “baggage” can be a blessing and a curse. It’s nice to have someone who’s known you so well and so long. They’re able to put you in context, they’re able to reflect back to you how you have or haven’t changed for the better, and the bond between you is strong due to all the shared experiences. On the negative side, baggage means that there exist some unresolved issues, problems that float around in the background, pain or resentment that gets swallowed for fear of rocking the boat too much, etc. Try to remember the positive when things get negative.

As a general rule, when an unhealthy dynamic between two people forms, both people feed into it in some way, otherwise it wouldn’t continue to get worse over time. Avoid trying to label one person as the only source of the problem. It’s not a case of either/or:

1) I believe that your friend is indeed having difficulty with Fi development, which is HER business to handle. It sounds like she uses men as a means to paper over low self-esteem, which is a manifestation of Te loop that gets in the way of Fi development. What she chooses to do is part of her journey of growth (or lack of growth as the case may be). You have to let her make her own mistakes and learn from them, just as I’m sure you wouldn’t appreciate always being told what to do as though you’re stupid. This reminds me of an old song that goes something like: “If I make mistakes, they’re MY mistakes, and I cherish them as part of MY story.” You may believe that you know better than her about how to develop Fi, but perhaps you forget that an important part of being FP is that you have to honor your own story. You can’t live someone else’s story, i.e., betray Fi, and then hope to have healthy Fi in the end. Sometimes, honoring your own story means taking paths that others wouldn’t and falling flat on your face.

2) I also believe that your friend is defensive partly because you have been somewhat judgmental, which is YOUR business to handle. Even if you don’t say it out loud, people can sense disapproval, especially NFs. With your voice in her ear, I’m sure she has some awareness that her behavior is problematic. However, if you keep reminding her of this, what you’re doing is exacerbating the shame and guilt that she feels for “slipping”. You’re asking her to do what’s right, which is what Fi would do, but remember that you may also be asking her to do something that she is not yet ready or ABLE to do - this is how the line gets crossed.

When you keep reminding FPs that they’re unable to do something, it doesn’t help them - it only makes them feel incompetent. If they feel that way long enough, it affects their self-esteem, which further exacerbates the feeling of incompetence in a vicious cycle. From here, she starts to assume things about your motives, as she projects her own sense of inadequacy. No one likes to feel less than. If you want to give advice, make sure that it’s wanted and appropriate for her level of competency. Most importantly, advice should be given lovingly, i.e., it should always be obvious that you are doing it from a place of care and empathy rather than a place of moral judgment. Avoid language that implies something about her moral character and focus more on the actions/consequences. You can’t speak such that you never offend anybody, but you can always check and recheck your own intentions to make sure that you’re speaking from the heart rather than the finger.

Sometimes, healing a relationship means stepping back a bit to let things cool down, such that you are able to return with fresher eyes. There’s a time for encouraging your friend, there’s a time for telling them the truth, and there’s a time for leaving them alone. It’s not always easy to decide the best option because the other person may not even know what it is they really need from you, if anything. At least she’s letting you know in no uncertain terms that she doesn’t need or want your judgment. To me, this raises the question of what she does need from you. It seems that you don’t know, because every time you try to intervene, you’re not helping her in any discernible way. If the people close to you are implying that you’re judgy, it’s something to pay attention to. It means that you’re either not approaching “helping” with the right intention or you’re not expressing your desire to help in the right way. Something that I often have to remind Fi types of is that “helping” is ultimately about the other person, not just about you satisfying your own moral imperatives. If you forget this, you may easily overstep and disrespect the other person’s boundaries due to imposing your values on them.

ENFPs love to discuss the things that are important to them. They love to explore new ideas and possibilities. But if the only reason you’re engaging in the discussion is to try to “lead” her into agreeing with your way of judging the situation, she’ll know, and she’ll close up, because you’re being disingenuous. In essence, being “judgy” might mean that you are imposing your idea of what Fi development is onto her, instead of helping her to discover the best ways of reaching healthy Fi on her own terms, at her own pace, in her own way - assuming that Fi development is still something that she wants.

It’s easy to spot problems in people, but it’s a lot harder to come up with the most appropriate solution. Like it or not, these men are fulfilling a need in her life, and this can easily turn into a form of addiction, with withdrawal symptoms and all that jazz. The longer someone carries on a pattern, the harder it is to break. What exactly is the need that she’s attempting to fill? Where does that need come from, why does it exist in that form, or why is it such an urgent matter to her that she’s unable to give up her pattern of serial dating? Is there a better or healthier method to address the need... a method that she is capable of carrying out? If there is a competency problem, what is the best way to address it? These are the questions that you should ask, if you want to understand her well enough to tackle the problem constructively. And you may not get the answers until you approach her at the right time, in the right way.

#enfp #enfp relationships #te loop #friendship #helping #relationships #communication #ask

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wildcardwriting · 5 years

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How Social Media Infected the Glory Pro Circle #1

(or Conversations Most of the Glory Pro Community Would Like to Forget Existed)

[King’s Avatar /全职高手 - 蝴蝶蓝 | Quánzhí Gāoshǒu - Húdié Lán ]

Next Chapter | Read on AO3

Summary: Or Ye Xiu is forced to deal with his fans. No one saw what was coming next.Because the alliance wants more exposure (i.e. fame) for the pro gamers, all pros are mandated to respond to questions from the fans.Naturally, this leads to some...strange conversations and some stranger answers. Likely will lead into AU TKA UniversePart Story, and TKA fun. Will include some social media.

XXxxxxxXX

Chapter #1: When Reddit Happens

XXxxxxxXX

Congratulations all! Due to the huge popularity and demand, the alliance is opening a Reddit forum to allow fans to ask their favorite pros questions.

*Note: All pros will be listed with the following style; Team Name/Name

As a reminder, all submitters must abide by the rules. Any inappropriate questions will be removed, and the users will be punished.

Edit #1: Silver Equipment Questions can be directed to a separate AMA here.

Edit #2: Theories and Analysis of Current and Past Matches can be found here.

Edit #3: Everything about the Rare and Mysterious Ye Qiu is on this thread.

New! AMA Ye Qiu Thread, click here.

LastManStanding4all:

What games did you play professionally and how much "training" was required before you were ready for tournament play?

Top Answer: (Star) Upvoted 18.31k+

Excellent Era (Yin Xiong): Someone finally noticed.

Excellent Era (Qin Tianran): Depends if we can unearth him from his gaming chair Glory. Upvoted 5.02 k+

Excellent Era (Xie Ming): Captain Ye is very hard working. Upvoted 2.31k+

Excellent Era (Wu Xuefeng): And apparently all knowing because he says to go practice. Upvoted 6.32k+

Excellent Era (Qin Tianran): %#$%#%#$%#$ Going! I'm going!

FindinGsOMEAnswers: WXF is team dad, and I ever knew I needed this fact in my life.

Game Master [NM MegaSound]: Due to a huge amount of emails and requests YQ will have his own AMA on this thread.]

Excellent Era (Xue Mingkai) I think I speak for everyone when I say finally. Upvoted 25.49k+

XXxxxxXX

Ye Xiu sighed as he was pushed into learning about Reddit. Ever since the Alliance had managed to gain popularity during its second season, there was a greater focus on advertising that he couldn't quite understand. Pro Gamers, usually seen as lazy, unemployed people were now being thrown into the spotlight and even though he had thus far managed to avoid being forced into doing anything, his luck had apparently run out.

Unlike other interviews and sponsorship meetings that he could get out of by paying a fee, this new Social Media thing was apparently important enough to force changes. Wang Shi, the Chairman himself, had come all the way to Excellent Era and begged him to take part, even offering incentives that he knew Ye Qiu couldn't ignore.

No fees for interviews? Done.

No fees for Sponsorship meetings? Done.

But it was the final two incentives offered by Tao Xuan himself that Ye Xiu had faltered for.

Ownership of both Dancing Rain and Autumn Tree[1] if he answered questions and gained a minimum of 100 asks.

And so, that was how, Ye Xiu found himself in front of a computer, not playing Glory for once but patiently listening to Wu Xuefeng explains the ins and outs of a social media site—

"Do you understand, Captain?" Wu Xuefeng asked leaning back in his chair.

Ye Xiu nodded and watched his vice-captain leave to go lecture Qin Tianran and Xue Mingkai both of whom were starting to fight again.

Moving his mouse to the AMA question email inbox, Ye Xiu started scrolling through the questions already submitted. To his surprise, there was far more than a dozen, or even a hundred. Glancing to his left, he was shocked to see the 999+ hovering by the inbox. He had never thought he would get so many questions, rubbing his eyes, he got to work.

It was going to be a long night.

XXxxxxXX

AMA: Ye Qiu Edition [2]

StraightTalker: When you tell a non-gamer that you play professionally, do they usually react positively or negatively? What about people you've been romantically interested in?

OneLeafofTwo (Ye Qiu)

I once told one of my family members I was going to play professionally. I ignored the next five minutes of him telling me to go home. Most reactions are negative. The only positive reaction I had was from a friend. Never found anyone romantically because I was too busy winning championchips.

ManBearPig: What's the weirdest thing you've ever been asked?

OneLeafofTwo (Ye Qiu):

Is Old Han part of the mafia?

SundialQ: If you hadn't become a battlemage in the pro scene what class would you have choosen?

OneLeafofTwo (Ye Qiu):

Whatever class was needed or useful. Except for Cleric. My friend choose this class for me because there was too few good battlemages when Glory first came out and Battlemage was a highly complicated class.

UbvranCover: What's one thing you regret about your Glory Career?

OneLeafofTwo (Ye Qiu):

Having to be under spotlights during matches.

PrinceofFluffy: There are rumors that you are an alien. How do you reply?

OneLeafof Two (Ye Qiu):

Disbelief. How is this even a question?

CasefilesKK: When you go out do you keep wearing your mask?

OneLeafof Two (Ye Qiu):

Without. There's no point to wearing the mask if no one knows what I look like.

BloodFollowsFight: How do you feel about ALLYe?

OneLeafofTwo (Ye Qiu):

All What?

OnePieceofGold: How do you feel about HanYe?

OneLeafof Two (Ye Qiu):

What does this even mean? Is Old Han trying to beat me?

See all 29+ Pro replies 387.0k+ Comments Share Save Hide Report

XXxxxXX

That first post is like a spark that seemed to set off everyone in the Glory community. Other pros were weighing in and forums everywhere were exploding as users were screen shotting their questions, most beyond shocked that the highly elusive and rare God of Glory was actually communicating. Wiki pages once so bare of data of the most powerful and shadowy existence that was the battle god were quickly edited and re-edited as more and more answers begun appearing on Reddit.

The moment that the news went viral, the newspapers were filled with information, and before long even more and more questions started being sent to Ye Xiu, to the complete shock of Wang Shi and Tao Xuan, both of whom knew that Ye Qiu had a following the Glory community but neither of them knew it was anything like this.

Already, Ye Qiu's AMA was trending on Weibo and nearly every social site that was even remotely popular, and yet no one was asking him to unmask. It was mind boggling because Ye Qiu thought that would be one of the only questions he would receive, and yet from all the hundreds of questions he answered, it had only appeared a few times.

Unfortunately, even though he had met his goal in the first few hours of his posts, the number of questions in his box was still exploding.

How was he ever going to finish this mess?

XXxxxXX

Thankfully, he didn't have to wait long as after Tao Xuan made some calls to the PR group they had on retainer for situations like this. Based on their information and a suitable recommendation, Ye Xiu was given an assistant to help streamline the process, so that instead of him having to type everything manually he could do other things, such as captain his team.

The assistant was incredibly efficient and moved several questions over to a new thread that was due to open in the new week, while she deleted a large number of rather misleading, or crude questions. She worked with him, while he sat at the computer, or at his desk typing up comments to questions.

And so, Ye Xiu thought that was the end of it.

He was wrong.

XXxxxxXX

[1] In this fanfiction Tao Xuan had kept Autumn Tree and he had just been waiting for YX to purchase it back from him. However, even at rock bottom prices, YX was having problems getting the money together while being fined and taking care of Su Mucheng. In addition, as this fanfic takes place during Season 3, I headcanon that Su Mucheng is finishing up in the EE Training camp and her card was purchased (Though I don't know if this is actually a thing that happens.)

[2] Unlike other Reddit thread Ye Qiu is answering questions after the fact, instead of during a time slot like is normally done. I don't know if this possible, or under what circumstances, but here it is.

Reddit will not be the only social media site I add.

Questions were borrowed/created from the AMA on Reddit and Jobstr, all their work belongs to them.

Next Chapter | Read on AO3

#king's avatar #quan zhi gao shou #ye qiu #ye xiu #amerikaknight #fanfiction #ao3 #How Social Media Infected the Glory Pro Circle

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aspoonofsugar · 5 years

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(1) I’m the anon who sent the question about whether characters need to be sympathetic in order to be likeable. Thank you for such a thorough response! The examples you provided were incredibly helpful! As a writer, I often wonder if I need the readers’ sympathy in order to make a point about an issue a particular character represents.

(2) It’s also hard for me to predict readers’ reactions, so I get anxious at the thought of writing contradictory characters who occasionally do something unforgiveable. Then there’s the question of what constitutes as unforgiveable, especially since I find that women tend to be more harshly scrutinized than men who are shielded by the idea that “boys will be boys.”

(3) Then there’s the ableist aspect. Mentally ill people are often seen as incapable of taking responsibility for their own actions, which conflicts with my bipolar OC’s desire for self-agency. That’s why my OC hesitates to request even minor accommodations for her condition, because she sees that as an admission of defeat.

(4) At the same time, however, she understands the temptation to blame her actions on her illness and remain the good, innocent ‘angel’ adored by her family and peers. However, it frustrates her when people dismiss her uncomfortable, cynical, angry, aggressive traits as being part of another manic/depressive episode. But then, who is she?

(5) She struggles to separate her own personality, thoughts, feelings, and impulses from her disorder. She worries that her “deformity of mind” reflects her “twisted inner nature.” Similarly, she wonders the same about her grandmother, who hurt my OC’s father during a breakdown. My OC purposely triggers her grandmother to see if the latter would revert to violence.

(6) Sorry for sending you such a long ramble. Basically, I want to know how integral is sympathy in communicating a point through your characters? Is there a way to write a character as being conflicted and contradictory without coming off as hypocritical? On a related note, can you still express a point through a hypocritical character?

(7) For example, my OC resents people using ‘crazy’ as shorthand for violent, yet resorts to violence toward herself and others. In addition, she goads her grandmother into another violent breakdown to see if destructiveness is an incorrigible side effect of mental illness and if recovery and rehabilitation are actually possible.

(8) I’m also curious to explore how characters operate on and distribute sympathy. For instance, my OC wants to make things better for mentally ill people, but is also aware that she often antagonizes certain individuals who remind her of her worst insecurities toward her condition (i.e. her grandmother). She also tends to justify this antagonism.

(9) Do I need the reader’s sympathy in order for someone to be invested in my character’s arc? I’m afraid that making her too imperfect would cause people to lose interest in her. However, I also know there’s a danger in making her invincible. How do you balance a character’s strengths and weaknesses? Does a character even need to be balanced?

Hello again anon!

First of all, yes it is possible and also common to make a point through characters who are hypocritical. This is simply because real world people are hypocrites, so if one trie to write a character as if they were a real person it is completely possible they will turn out hypocritical on some level depending on their flaw.

I would say again that what @hamliet said about sympathy being subjective on some level is true and it is an unexcapable fact. Some people will not like your character and your story, but others will and there is no way to control it.

That said, when it comes to make a character sympathetic, I think that there different approaches which can be followed.

Before I give some examples though, I think that considering one’s public target can help a little. For example, writing a story for a specific target (e.g. kids, adults etc.) or a specic genre (e.g. detective story, hrror, thriller, science-fiction etc.) might help you come up with some of the attributes your character will have. After all, every genre has its stereotypes and tropes and one can be inspired by them both in recreating them and in wanting to make something completely different.

Going back to your main question, I think that a good way to make a character sympathetic and liked is honestly to just give them an arc. Let’s consider for example Eva Heinemann in Monster. She starts the story by being very detestable. She is arrogant, spoiled, doesn’t care about others and basycally spells word by word the opposite of the series’s themes. However, she develops and grows a lot by the end becoming a better person. I have seen several people starting Monster and commenting how horrible Eva was and by the end many of them have come to consider her one of their favourite characters thanks to her development. In short, a good development can make a character who starts off as negative loved.

That said, it is true that often the characters who start off as completely negative are not the MC nor the main POV characters because they could alienate a part of the public (I think this is particular important for longer stories where the development is slow; in those cases even if the character is going to have a development eventually people might lose interest before that happens). In many cases, it can be useful to give the MC some sympathetic attributes. I think this can be done in multiple ways and there is not really just a right way to do it. I will try to make two different examples using what you told me about your OC.

1) You could give your character a sympathetic objective. For example, you said she wants to make things better for other mentally ill people, so that could be her objective which is sympathetic. It could be better if this objective were made somehow more concrete in the plot itself. So for example she wants to help a specific person or she wants to enter a specific organization/do a specific job which might help her reach this objective. However, while she pursues this objective it might become clear that she herself has some contradictions. For example, she might dislike being seen either as “crazy” or as a “pure angel” whose all flaws are blamed on her illness, but she might treat the person she wants to help exactly in the same way. She might realize she has the tendency to see the other as a person she must protect and not as an equal or a proper individual.

Let’s highlight that a similar dynamic is present between Killua and Alluka who is a character I used as an example in my previous answer. I think Alluka is a character who despite her short screen-time explores themes related to mental-illness pretty well thematically and she is also used to highlight Killua’s own contradictions as a character.

In short, your character can be presented as a character having a very sympathetic objective and being honest in her pursue of it. She can react strongly at people catecorizing her in one way or another and this can be inspiring to people reading. However, as the story develops it becomes cleaer and clearer she has her own insecurities and struggles with her own identity and how her mental illness influences who she is. In this way, her flaws and negative traits can emerge little by little until she realizes that before she can reach her objective she has first of all to solve her own personal issues and grow as a person.

If you want another example of this dynamic you can think about Judy in Zootopia. She doesn’t want to be discriminated for her being a rabbit and works hard to overcome others’ prejudices, but she herself has prejudices against foxes and other carnivores even if she says she hasn’t.

2) An almost opposite approach would be to give your character an egoistic objective, but to show early on that despite her having negative traits, she has also some positive ones hidden deep down. This is what one would call a “save th cat” moment. For example, you can have you OC state she doesn’t care about other mentally ill people, but have her go out on her way in the beginning to help someone who is being bullied. In short, she can pursue selfish objectives, but she can still show positive qualities despite it. Her arc will be about taking out these qualities and making them shine. For example, the character’s unwillingness to have anything to do with other mentally ill people migth stem from her not wanting to accept her own illness or at least from her not wanting to be seen as only that. And in the end she might realize that even if she is not her illness, she still has to accept it on some level and that her not wanting to be defined by it doesn’t mean she has to lash it out on others.

These two examples translate in two opposite ways to organize a character arc. The character has the same flaw which might be synthesized with her not wanting to accept some of her feelings towards her own mental illness, but she declines it in different ways and her personality will be different in the two scenarios. I would also add that it is not set in stone that everything you have written to me about your character is something she has to realize and to know since the beginning. For example, she might start out as earnestly believing she is helping others with her behaviour, but then she might have to realize she herself can be violent and discriminating towards others. One she realizes it she might have to choose what to do about it and this will help with conveying specific themes rather than others.

I hope this was useful! Thank you for the asks!

#asksfullofsugar #anonymous #writing #writing anon

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dpillustrations · 5 years

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Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 5: A Discourse on Communication and Storytelling (Part 1)

“The poet must stir souls, not nurture idolaters." - Andrei Tarkovsky

I feel compelled to talk about the latest episode of Game of Thrones. The reason I feel drawn to speak is twofold, because I am an artist and I love Art. It is my passion and my life’s work, and I am most particularly passionate about the Art of Cinema, which includes series and television shows. Entertainment, for the lack of a better word, although it is so much deeper than that word implies. It is my desire to see Art thrive in our culture, and more importantly I want to see our culture thrive because of its Art.

For this reason I would like to draw a valuable and crucial lesson from what has happened with HBO’s Game of Thrones and Weiss and Benioff’s series. I will not be addressing the story through technical criticism. I believe there are people more qualified than I to address those issues as I am not a storyteller (in the traditional sense) or screenwriter, so I will not be addressing story structure and development. What I will be focusing on is communication and storytelling themselves as well as the fundamental worldview that has poisoned this series and why the finale was false in every sense of the word and did not ring true in most of our hearts.

I will begin by asking you, my readers,

How do we tell stories?

Again, this is not about story structure and mechanics, but I’m talking about the very act of telling stories, which is, at its essence, communication. So in other words, I am asking, how do we communicate? There are multiple ways in which we communicate, but I want us to consider the very essence of communication and the how and why it is done. I am communicating to you right now through this blog post by arranging commonly understood words (English language) in a specific manner (grammar and syntax) through which I am communicating ideas. I am communicating for the purpose of transferring information that exists in my mind to your mind, desiring that there would be understanding between us. I would not start speaking to you, an English speaker, in another language not known between us and neither would I suddenly abandon sentence structure – the jumped white over rabbit box the – that is nonsense, is it not? It would be pointless and worthless to communicate with you in any other way than by commonly understood rules and structures of communication that exist between us. So, communication’s goal is understanding, we communicate to be heard. Communication is a forward moving action. We don’t want to stagnate or regress, but to progress in deeper knowledge and establish a connection between us. Now considering we are talking about a television series, let us lay out the commonly understood structures of communication through that medium:

- Language, through firstly the written, then secondly, spoken (by actors) word.

- Visuals which include: Composition (i.e. how a shot is framed) - What is actually in the frame (what is shown to us as the audience vs what is NOT shown to us), and Scene transitions (i.e. editing).

- Music

- Sound

With these fundamental elements is a story told through the moving pictures. Now if you will notice, storytelling through the Cinematic Arts is significantly more complex than communication done simply through words alone or images alone. There are layers and layers and layers of text and subtext through word, actor performance, sound, music, imagery, etc. It is mindbogglingly complex, yet at its core it is still working towards that very simple (though not easy) goal as any other form of communication, which is understanding.

Why do we want to be understood? We desire understanding because we hold a conviction that whatever it is we are communicating will be beneficial and/or necessary for the one hearing in order that something may be accomplished. Whether we are communicating something evil, “I hate you.” or something good, “I love you.”, whether positively or negatively, we are trying to give to our fellow person something that person can then take, process, and react to. We communicate at work to accomplish tasks. We communicate with our loved ones to develop deeper connections. We communicate from our emotional needs. We communicate in order to learn. There is an endless amount of reasons why we are communicating, but they all are done for that one goal - understanding which produces a desired reaction and achieves a purpose.

Storytelling, then, as a means of communication, is being told for a reason. It is communicating information and ideas that it might be understood by its audience and then provoke a reaction from said audience. We do not communicate from the vacuum or into the vacuum. We do not tell stories from the vacuum or into the vacuum. Therefore, story has meaning.

Bond of Union by M.C. Escher.

With this understanding, then, we now see that the fundamental elements of storytelling that I laid out above all have meaning. In every nuance of an actor’s performance, in the arrangement of words, in the notes of the music, in every aspect of a framed image, all these variables contain layers and layers of meaning. You cannot escape it. You are bombarded by it by every moving moment. The storyteller is speaking, and we the audience are listening.

Then we react.

Now, I am not going to go into the psychological and philosophical complexities of actually communicating successfully in any given situation, because we know that our perceptions play a key role in it. How you perceive the world is different than how I perceive the world, and so there are, unfortunately, so many ways in which communication can break down between us because of subjective experience. And if there is a communication medium that is very much made up of subjective experience, it is that of Art and Story. So, I am not going to go into the nuances because I want to focus on analyzing the literal communication structure of the Game of Thrones Season 8 episode 5 and lay out a case for its utter failure at communication which follows in its failure of story which then follows to its failure of being meaningful Art in any way at all.

Daenerys Stormborn

For the sake of time, yours and mine, I am only going to focus on Daenerys’ character and how she was treated in this episode because she is probably the most crucial point, being one of the main characters after all. In the episode we see her fully succumb to her Targaryen blood, going full “Mad King”, as she takes out all her rage and sense of betrayal in not being loved by the people of Westeros on the inhabitants of King’s Landing, laying waste to all the innocent people through fire and blood.

Now, Weiss and Benioff, as well as many Game of Thrones fans, say that this was inevitable, that Daenerys was always going down this route from the beginning, but the argument I am making is that that is just not true. At the very least this fact was not communicated to us successfully through the 7 seasons we have been watching, and I shall make my case as follows by using two scenes (for the sake of brevity) which outright contradicts this character conclusion.

Season 1 finale Episode 10 Fire and Blood

You know the moment I am going to bring up very well, that powerful and moving climax when Daenerys steps into her husband’s pyre and comes out with three newborn dragons. She is Daenerys the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons.

Why was this scene communicated to us as part of the story?

Remember as I just laid out above about the fundamental elements of storytelling, i.e. word, imagery, sound, music, etc - each element is strung and woven together for a purpose. What is this scene’s purpose?

I am going to rewind time back to this moment, we yet do not know what is going to come next in this story, but we are solely focusing on how this finale made us feel. How we reacted to what it was communicating. Of course, it makes sense, does it not, to study this finale within the context of what had come before within the first season? We can’t understand the end of the sentence unless we know the beginning. We must listen to the beginning, middle, and end of said communication because if we stop in the middle of our listening, we will be missing crucial information and communication will break down. There would be no understanding, no meaning, and therefore nothing gained.

We have now just established, then, how we understand.

Through context.

Context is how all elements are arranged in conjunction and relation with each other so as to convey meaning. You cannot just focus on one element, pick out one word in a sentence, pick out one scene, you need all the elements in order to effectively communicate and achieved your desire goal of understanding.

Okay, so what is this scene’s context?

We were introduced to Daernerys and her brother as the last surviving members of House Targaryen (or so we thought at this time). They have been exiled because of Robert’s Rebellion which overthrew the Mad King from the Iron Throne. So essentially, our protagonist starts out in a very low station. She is the “underdog”, and it is extremely low, as her brother is vicious and cruel towards her and she is treated no better than cattle to be sold off. Viserys makes a deal with Khal Drogo as means of gaining an army to take back the throne, and Daenerys is given to him marriage. Being Khal Drogo’s wife certainly doesn’t make our heroine’s life any better as she is forced in a traumatic sexual encounter with her new husband and she is miserable through the strain of travel, and there really isn’t any sign that Khal Drogo even cares about Daenerys and her brother’s purpose of regaining what they had lost. Yet as the story progresses we see Daenerys begin to work her way up. She learns to communicate with her husband and they even end up falling love, she gets pregnant (which culturally speaking is one of the highest and noblest functions for women), and she becomes empowered, able to stand up to Viserys and his cruelty. Our heroine finds her voice. She even successfully eats a horse’s heart, which for the Dothraki is an honorable feat and promises great things for her unborn child. Even at some point Drogo gets rid of her brother, so she is freed from his life long abuse. Things are looking up as Daenerys finds herself in an honorable and secure station in life. However, it isn’t long before calamity strikes again when Drogo becomes sick from an infected wound. Daenerys puts her trust in a slave woman captured by the Dothraki to try and help her husband, but things go from the frying pan into the fire when the woman betrays Daenerys using blood magic and is responsible for both the death of Drogo and their child.

Now rewinding back again, we were also introduced to Daenery’s dragon eggs which were given to her as a wedding gift at the beginning of her story. Dragons no longer exist, if they even did exist, so they are more ceremonial than real. However, Daenerys is drawn to these eggs, which seem to be inert stones, because of her Targaryen blood. She sees something within these eggs that encourages her to press on, to remember who she is. They represent hope for our heroine. And this story element has stayed with us through the entire season. It is only now, at the finale, though, that we see their true significance when in her despair, Daenerys takes her dragon eggs and sets fire to her dead husband, and then steps into the fire herself.

The next morning she is Mother of Dragons.

The reason I took the time to outline the events of the plot was to show you how the elements built on one another. How did they make you feel? How did you react to them? What did this story as laid out through words, Emilia Clarke’s acting, imagery, composition, sound, and music communicate to you? What did it mean? Did we not feel triumphant? Did we not feel wonder and hope? Did not all those elements strung together express suffering, perseverance, and transcendence? Did we not empathize deeply with Daenerys and her struggles? Did we not weep with her? Did we not cheer with her? I mean just look at our pop culture surrounding Game of Thrones – the endless amount of merchandise with “The Mother of Dragons” on it and what “Khaleesi” meant to us as fans. (We even named our children “Khaleesi” and “Daenerys”!) Why? What did her story fundamentally move within us that we reacted in such an ardent way? If we were supposed to understand from the beginning that she was only a psychotic murderer, then why did she inspire such affection within us? Did we not instead fall in love with a strong and deep feeling woman who held onto a dream and persevered through some of the worst possible atrocities in order to realize that dream in a more profound way than she could have possibly imagined?

If Daenerys was always destined to be the series’ tragic villain, then why did we fall in love with her as the series’ savior?

My own art piece Take What is Mine! Weiss and Benioff want us to believe that she was always meant to “take what was hers” through “fire and blood” very literally, but look at the title of the 10th episode of Season 1: Fire and Blood. How was the concept of fire and blood actually used in this scene? Through loss and sacrifice, yes, but then, - new life. She lost her husband and her child, but she gained a miracle, this supernatural event, three dragons. The impossible made possible. Life. Not death.

Season 5 Episode 8 Hardhome

For a non-book scene, this was such an excellently written and performed scene. I loved watching it so much. It was the meeting we were all waiting to have happen. However, we must once again consider the context. At this point of the story we have shifted to Tyrion’s point of view, but I use this scene as an example of what Daenerys means to Tyrion’s personal narrative.

“So here we sit, two terrible children, of two terrible fathers.” Tyrion’s place in the story is not unlike what Daenerys’ was at the beginning of season 1. He is in a very low place. He too has been exiled, a runaway who was accused and sentenced with murdering King Joffery, but an actual killer of his own father. Having been an outcast in society and within his own family, is now literally an outcast and he comes to Daenerys seeking a reason to live. He comes to Daenerys for hope.

We know of the mistakes Daenerys has made at this point, but we also know the wisdom she has exhibited from the advice of others. We have seen her passion for justice and setting slaves free, but we have also seen her mercilessness and her heavy hand of power. In this scene Tyrion points out both of these aspects of Daenerys, but he tells her that he came to see if she was the “right kind of terrible”, someone who could still maintain order and give stability to a kingdom. In the context of this scene, as we look at Daenerys through Tyrion’s eyes, we are in no way meant to see her as mad or cruel, but a deeply flawed, volatile, passionate, and noble woman. She is human, as all the characters of this show have been, neither wholly pure nor wholly evil. Yet it is her dream that sets her apart from the rest of the candidates for the throne, a dream that speaks to Tyrion in his lowest moment and inspires him.

Daenerys: Lannister, Targaryen, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell they're all just spokes on a wheel. This ones on top, then that ones on top and on and on it spins crushing those on the ground.

Tyrion: It's a beautiful dream, stopping the wheel. You're not the first person who's ever dreamt it.

Daenerys: I'm not going to stop the wheel, I'm going to break the wheel.

A bold, powerful, and inspiring proclamation! Daenerys wants to stop “the game of thrones”, the petty squabbling of houses and vying for power. She wants to unite the kingdom under one ruler and bring about a better world for it. We believe her. Why? Because Tyrion believes her. Tyrion is also a dreamer just as much as Daenerys, he also values a better world. Are we to believe then that instead of this moment being a turning point for Tyrion, as it was clearly shown to be within its context, of him finally finding a promise and a hope of achieving something better than what has been, that it was actually all just a lie? Tyrion going from a terrible state to an even worse state: Delusion?

Where in this scene or in the rest of their scenes together was it indicated that Tyrion was delusional? In the elements - dialogue, acting, scene composition, the things shown to us in the frame, etc. In all those parts where was this feeling and concept conveyed to us to make a “delusional Tyrion” make sense?

It simply wasn’t, because he isn’t.

Do you see my argument? If Weiss and Benioff meant to communicate that Daenerys was “Mad King Targaryen” then why doesn’t her character conlusion make cohesive sense with these scenes? Taken in all of its elements, in its entire context, why isn’t this communicated perfectly and without question? Daenerys is one of the most crucial players in the Game of Thrones, her and Jon sharing prominence in the stories unfolding, shouldn’t we all, then, be in agreement on the meaning of the conclusion of her story?

Yet instead what Season 8 Episode 5 communicates is in direct conflict with the rest of the show and what it was communicating from the first. However, this episode isn’t the only place of conflict, there has been other moments in the show which showed this kind of disingenuous storytelling (Stannis and his burning his daughter Shireen is a good example this problem happening early on). Even the first half of Season 8 is in direct thematic conflict with the last half of season 8. Somewhere communication broke down terribly, and it simply isn’t enough for someone to point out this moment or that moment as proving Daenerys was always meant to end this way. ALL aspects of the show are communicating something to us, and so ALL aspects of the show must be taken into account and expected to be coherently saying the same thing as revealed by its whole. When we lay out Game of Thrones in all its seasons and its many elements it should be communicating “Daenerys Mad Queen”, but I have just proved that it wasn’t.

If you, my reader, truly believe this was Daenerys’ fate all along, then I ask you in earnest (in the spirit of communication and the desire for understanding) how do these scenes and the seasons they were contained in that I have just outlined above fit within that context of that narrative?

I have now come to the end of first half of my argument. The final question I would like to leave with you before closing is: what exactly is the end of Season 8 communicating? I hope that you and I can thoughtfully study this further. Thank you so much for reading and listening.

#game of thrones #game of thrones season 8 #The Bells #GOT #GOT 8x05 #daenerys targaryen #tyrion lannister #analysis #my thoughts

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halla12345 · 6 years

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Very Long Ramble™ about Yann’s reaction to Lucas coming out

(Alternative title: Where I say the word tragedy a million times because what is a thesaurus?)

What gets me about the Vendredi 17.05 clip is how it contradicts one of the fundamental and powerful messages presented in the original season.

Now, the remakes obviously have no obligation to follow the original, and I agree that any adaptation/remake can and should interpret works with their own vision in mind. That said, that does not mean, in return, the audience has to enjoy or positively receive their interpretation. We can simultaneously encourage creative free will in reimagining works and critically engage with what is subsequently produced.

So the message I am referring to is the subversion of the idea that the lives of queer and mentally ill people must inherently be tragic and painful.

The references to Romeo + Juliet and Pretty Woman in this season have a number of functions. The primary one being a tool to understand Even’s character - his insecurities, being bipolar and his struggles with suicidal thoughts, his romanticism, his desire to have control over his own narrative. But the season is furthermore framed with these two films in mind to discuss the tropes about love/relationships (specifically for queer/mentally ill people) they put forth.

Romeo and Juliet may not literally be a queer love story; however, it is one quite easily read as such through a queer lens. It is a story of lovers who are torn apart by external forces - families who police their desire and demand the status quo. Their love is a forbidden one that society cannot understand or accept. This speaks volumes as a queer subtext!!

So when Skam season 3 blatantly builds its narrative as a subversion of Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, it is telling us to reject this notion of the inherent tragedy of queer romance. In the episode 2 clip ‘Even’, we’re presented with the claim that ‘the lead must die, otherwise it’s not an epic love story’. And then throughout the season, the story parallels Luhrmann’s movie. Reenacting the pool scene, use of the same soundtrack (Talk Show Host, Kissing You, Local Scene), and visual homages (like the shot at the end of episode 5 clip ‘ Bros’ where Isak falls to the ground screaming mirrors a shot of Romeo doing the same in the film).

But then we don’t get the same ending. Instead, we’re given Pretty Woman (I’ll spare everyone from an additional deep dive into the PW references as this is already going to be a long post). So I’ll just say that after building up a story that parallels Romeo and Juliet, they flip the ending in O Helga Natt: the imagery of the blue neon-lit crosses, the use of montage showing their relationship, Isak/Romeo running through the street may all be parallel, but the outcome is different. We have the contrasting imagery of Romeo entering the church with Isak leaving the church, Romeo not receiving the message from Juliet versus Isak getting and understanding the text from Even. This culminates in the vastly different ending where Romeo and Juliet die while Isak and Even are reunited. We were told to expect tragedy and are instead given the Holywood romantic ending where the two mains save each other. (Now, of course, the final - and my favourite - episode then goes further to critique the idea of viewing one’s life and relationships through the prism of movies altogether, but that’s for another post!).

What we are presented with is a story of two characters who think their stories must be tragic ones because they are queer, because they are mentally ill. However, not only do they find love from each other, but also from everyone else around them. It is a story about learning to reach out to others and ask for support, and in return, they’ll receive not only that love and comfort but also have their lives enriched in the process! When Isak comes out to Jonas, of course, Jonas accepts him - and then Jonas in return can help Isak reach out to Even. When Isak is open and communicates his anxiety about how religious people view homosexuality, Sana is able to give him words of support and the language he needs to come out to his own mother. When Isak is vulnerable and confused about what Even being bipolar means, Magnus can knock some sense into him and dispel the notion that Even was only into Isak because he was manic. This story as such not only disputes the notion that their story must end tragically, but also that their friends and family would be anything other than supportive. Their story need not be one of forbidden love that society (i.e. their peers and family) rejects, but one of community and love!

So with all of that said, why do I dislike how Skam France has reinterpreted this story in regards to Yann’s reaction to Lucas coming out? I mean, I am aware we don’t know yet how the story will end! We have three episodes left, and I still expect Lucas and Elliott will end up together and that Lucas’ friends will eventually come to accept his sexuality. So unless that changes, it will still be a functionally similar ending. And since we don’t know how it will end, why am I even rambling about this now?

Because they have - regardless of the ending - thrown out this message of love and support, this subversion of tragedy in queer stories, in the Vendredi 17.05 clip. Whether or not Yann turns out to have reacted in the manner that he did because Lucas is gay or he wasn’t told first (just ugh no) or something else entirely, their intention is clearly to lean into this tragedy rather than reject it. They’ve given us a narrative where the main character is broken down and thought to believe that his best friend has deserted him because of his sexuality. And even if in the end Yann comes around, in this clip he absolutely has done so. Whether or not that is his intention or motive.

So okay, this argument won’t be convincing to people that view the different Skam shows as ‘completely different stories’ with ‘completely different characters’. However, I believe that media is relational. A story ultimately is a commentary on all that has come before it. Through homage, subversion, expansion, reimagining, and so forth, stories communicate with one another. They do not exist in bubbles. Like as I’ve just said, the original season 3 is a commentary on Romeo + Juliet! And all the Skam remakes are ultimately commentaries on the original. Not necessarily overtly or consciously, but when handed the original script, the directors and their teams have, at every step, chosen to either follow what the original did or change it. And with every decision comes the questions: how? why? and to what effect?

How did they change this from the original? How is it fundamentally the same?

Why did they keep one scene the same but change another one? Why did they change it in the manner they did?

What do these similarities or differences tell us about the story they are trying to tell? What does this change about the themes presented in the original? What themes are they exploring now?

And this change in the coming out scene tells me that they have fundamentally rejected the message that Julie presented in season 3. They have taken her subversion of tragedy and instead decided to play into it. Telling us that ‘this is France in 2019. This isn’t Disneyland. He isn’t a liar.’ (Even when this coming out scene is based on a real story!) That he would rather take this loving, true story of a best friend being supportive when coming out, and make it into a tragic one.

Now, I’m not saying we should never explore dark themes on screen. Homophobia exists and people absolutely do react in this way. We can and should delve into hard experiences in our media. It just hurts to see what once was a story about questioning how we present queer stories contorted to display the very tropes the original wanted to reject. To confirm the very real fears that LGBTQ+ people have about how the people close to them could react if they came out. Again, it’s so so so heartbreaking to see this realised in a version of a story that was telling us that media about queer people doesn’t have to be that way!

Of course, there have been a number of people who have responded to Skam France’s version of this scene positively because it reflects their own experiences. I’m not saying that the way they have changed the scene is objectively wrong or bad. Everyone responds to media differently. I am happy that other people have taken something positive from this, truly! So I’m not trying to change people’s opinions about this clip or Skam France in general. I just needed to express why some people (or at least just I) have reacted so negatively to this scene.

I am still curious to see how the last three episodes play out and what they do with Yann’s character, but I am certainly weary and disappointed that this is the direction they have taken thus far.

Thank you for anyone who has had the patience to read all of this. Alt er Love.

#skam #skam france

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jackbarber89 · 4 years

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How To Get My Stuff Back From An Ex Friend

#What If Your Ex Comes Back Fascinating Cool Tips #Win Your Ex Back Valentines Day

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mbti-notes · 6 years

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1/5.Hello! I'm INFJ. How do I keep balance between taking care of my emotional needs and also honouring others' needs? What to do when our needs are in conflict? There was a situation with my mother, where she often uses phrases like "go to hell" and others which lead me to feel inferior, rejected, hurt.

[con’t: I told her about it and asked if she could stop using such words and to explain to me exactly what’s upsetting her when the similar situation happens. She tried to deny her intention to hurt me and said that I have no right to accuse her, and what about her feelings. As calm as I could I told her that we are talking about her feelings and my feelings and it would be beneficial if she could state what exactly is making her uncomfortable instead of using coarse language. She said I’m oversensitive and read too much into her words, that I will never be able to function in society with such attitude. She also explained to me what caused her to blow up. So there was a progress in something at least.But I still felt disappointed and started to cry, and she asked me to put my anger at her behind. I explained to her I was just sad and disappointed. She comforted me. I said that I decided to try to see past her language the next time and to not misjudge her intention.But I still feel so much confused about this situation. What am I missing? I feel a bit undervalued and denied in respect. Or maybe I didn’t do enough? Maybe I want too much? Please help me by giving your view on this situation. Thank you.]

Be honest. Do you believe in freedom? Do you believe that people should be allowed to speak freely? Or do you believe that everyone must speak in exactly the way you want them to so that you never have to feel bothered by anything? If you had the magical power to control everyone’s speech, would you? If so, I wonder how you would like it if someone very different from you were to impose strict restrictions and controls over how you speak and behave.

Are you trying to communicate to your mom a “need” or a “desire” of yours? It seems that you don’t understand the difference. Fulfilling a need tends to lead you in a positive direction as you focus on growth and well-being, whereas fulfilling a desire often leads to unintended consequences because it is born of ego and fear. To be a wise person, one must reflect deeply on the implications of pursuing one’s needs and desires before setting forth. You haven’t done so.

When you try to change another person, are you satisfying a “need” that leads to your well-being? No, because you are reacting out of fear, in this case, you are afraid of negative feelings and emotions, so you do not allow them to manifest in yourself or others, with the consequence being that you must constantly be “suppressing” or “controlling” something. How can this behavior lead you in a growth-positive direction when, 1) with your “rules of acceptable behavior”, you lock yourself very tightly into a tiny comfort zone that is then easily disturbed by anyone, and, 2) through coercing someone into being like you, thinking like you, or behaving like you, you continually disrespect their autonomy and thus damage the relationships that you require for healthy Fe? Freedom is necessary for growth and fear is an enemy of freedom.

You are struggling with Fe development. No one can fault you for wanting a good relationship with your mom. However, good and healthy relationships require hard work because one must constantly be exercising empathy. Note that I use the word “exercise” to describe empathy as a verb, i.e., something that requires effort and action. To exercise empathy means that you always try your best to understand the true intention, motivation, or reason behind someone’s behavior, which you can’t do when you’re gripped by fear and all your attention is on yourself. When you understand the truth of the other person, you can then make good decisions about how to approach them.

There are two issues here:

Being presumptuous (making assumptions about people without gathering enough evidence): Is it a fact that your mother’s aim/intention is to undervalue, disrespect, or insult you? Is this what she specifically sets out to do when speaking? If it is, then you have every right to speak up for yourself and prevent harm to yourself. But if it isn’t and you are operating on a faulty assumption because you take everything too personally (once it triggers your unconscious fear of negativity), then your actions are going to be driven by unreasonable anger, spite, or resentment that is likely to damage the relationship. Do you know the facts, or do you run only on “feelings of truth” (unhealthy Ni)?

Lack of proper relationship boundaries (that then spills into unhealthy communication patterns): Two different people - with different personality preferences, different beliefs and values, different prior learning and experiences, different levels of stress tolerance, different coping and defense mechanisms - are bound to encounter disagreements at some point and this is an unavoidable fact of relationships that you would do well to accept. When Fe is immature, a person uses it very crudely like an infant swinging its arms wildly, often by trying to quash negativity and/or coercing/manipulating “harmony” between people. This means that you don’t draw respectful boundaries and frequently overstep boundaries. By contrast, mature Fe-Ti understands and accepts the reality of human feelings and the unpredictable nature of emotional life, thereby able to come up with effective strategies to work with and around them, rather than dreaming of a perfect utopia in which negative feelings can be completely eradicated and disagreements don’t exist (unhealthy Ni).

I agree that your dialogue with your mom was productive and some progress was made. Remember: the joy of creating something new often cannot happen without the pain of destroying something old. You are learning to speak up for yourself and make her aware of how her behavior impacts you. This is important because you are an equal member of the relationship and should be treated as such, and a parent-child relationship cannot be “equalized” without disturbing old patterns of interaction. It’s obvious that she is being defensive in calling you oversensitive but, from her perspective, it is a reaction to your defensive attempts to censor and control her. Remember that children often treat their parents as though they should be perfect beings rather than human beings, and that only serves to perpetuate the generational conflict. There is more work to be done on both sides, so you should accept the fact that progress is incremental and keep at it. However, until you address the above two issues in yourself, you won’t be able to build a bridge that reaches over the entire gap.

#infj #infj relationships #auxiliary fe #relationships #communication #needs #desires #emotional intelligence #freedom #fear #boundaries #ask

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tesslahanline1991 · 4 years

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What Is Taught In Reiki Level 1 Blindsiding Cool Tips

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#What Is Taught In Reiki Level 1 Blindsiding Cool Tips #Reiki Level 9

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cookinguptales · 7 years

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So this came up on Twitter yesterday and I thought I’d post about it on Tumblr today. Frankly speaking, I’ve got a lot of young followers and this is some truth I wish someone had taught me when I was a lot younger because I would’ve gone through a lot less stress.

I know we’re all starved for outside validation on this site, but I wanna talk to you about when compliments are used by creeps. Now, you probably know about negging (when someone uses a backhanded compliment on you to make you feel bad about yourself, often in order to pick you up more easily — i.e. “you’re really pretty for a fat girl”), creepy sexualized comments on the street, etc. But I’m talking about really nice compliments about your work or your personality or your drive. Even the sweetest compliment can be used as a weapon.

(All this is going to be a pretty gendered discussion; I in no way want to say that only guys can be creeps and only women have been socialized in the ways I’m about to discuss, but, well. Let’s all be real here, there are definite patterns.)

Discussion under a cut for length and possible triggers

I don’t want to get into a lot of my own painful personal experiences with creepy guys, but I do have to bring up some examples from my own life, so I’ll use one particular guy as a case study. Let’s call him Dick. (Look, I never claimed to be mature.) I’ve had these experiences with guys IRL, but Dick was a guy I met online. At first, Dick was my friend. He clearly had a bit of a crush, but seemed to accept it when I said I wasn’t interested. It was nice having a bud who shared my interests and I knew he had some issues with socializing, so at first I was pretty patient with his problems with boundaries. But by the time my longstanding friendship with Dick ended, he had become a full-blown stalker — and my friends were on his side.

How did this happen? Well, my friends, it’s the art of the public compliment. Dick was All About Me. He loved me. He treated me right. He praised me for my mind and my heart, and he didn’t care who heard him do it. Or so I thought. It took a long time for me to realize it, but he cared very much who heard it. That was exactly why he said it. To be heard.

Over time, I started to become more and more uncomfortable with Dick’s attentions. He wanted to talk about me more than he did the media we’d bonded over. He kept talking about how our (respective) children would grow up together, and would maybe fall in love. (???) He told me that he’d gone to a place I often vacation at — and he’d looked around for tangible traces of me. Long story short, Dick had become pretty creepy.

But, like many women, my first instinct in this situation was to be nice. I wanted to go to him privately and have a polite conversation about all this. And, to his credit, he seemed truly and honestly repentant. Until he did it again. It became a pattern of me trying to establish boundaries and Dick stomping all over them. Finally, despite feeling guilty, I told him he was really upsetting me and I wanted him to leave me alone for a while.

This is when the second creepy pattern emerged. The compliment trap. When I told him to stop contacting me, he didn’t…technically. He didn’t talk to me. He talked about me. He publicly talked about what a great person I was. How smart. How kind. How forgiving. He said it to my friends. He said it to people I respected. And he tagged me.

Now, this looked nice on the outside. He was just complimenting a woman he respects! How nice! But on my side of things, it felt like a trap. All of my friends were waiting for me to acknowledge these compliments. The situation left me with three choices: thank him (in a demure, polite way befitting a modest woman, ofc) and be forced to interact with a man I’d told to leave me alone, ignore him and look like a stuck up bitch, or say publicly that he’s a creep — which would make me look like I was “hysterical”. (See: rape culture, women “overreacting”, punishing men who “just want to be nice”, etc.)

Left with this choice, I chose option #1. I chose option #1 a bunch of times. Because this would become a pattern. I’d tell him to stop contacting me, he’d do this public complimenting game, I’d feel like I had to interact with him — and worse, I’d question my own feelings of fear. I’d say “Well, look how nice he’s being. Maybe he’s just awkward. He clearly likes me. He doesn’t want to hurt me. Maybe I really was overreacting.” And I’d talk to him again. Until he’d ask me for my address for a Christmas card or something.

And I didn’t realize for a really long time that he wasn’t being nice! This behavior! It was not nice! It was deeply emotionally manipulative! He’d put this horrible emotional onus on me to forgive and forgive and forgive, steadily gaslighting me into forgetting how scared I’d been until I blamed myself for being so quick to react… and let him back into my life. Because this was all public. All our “fighting” happened in private. All those times I begged him to just ease up a little were privy to only the two of us. All our friends, all my support system, only saw a nice boy with a crush praising a girl he liked and her refusing to give him the time of day.

Guess what happened when I finally put my foot down and stopped engaging when he did this? Oh boy. Oh boy. He started sending me literally dozens of messages a day, sometimes over a hundred. Have you ever had a person sending you @s on tumblr and twitter, private messages on tumblr and twitter, public and private messages on Facebook, emails, LJ messages, IMs on two different clients, and forum messages? Every single goddamn day? Dozens of times? Have you ever had a guy start showing interest in something you know he never liked before — just so he can “coincidentally” run into you on every community you’ve ever joined?

Honestly, I was so stressed. In tears all the time. My school work was suffering. No matter how many times I tried to tell him to stop, to avoid him, etc., he just kept going. I told him that we were done. No more forgiveness. I wanted absolutely zero contact — and I wanted him to never mention me on social media again. I didn’t want him to @ me. I didn’t want him to say my name. I didn’t want him to make thinly veiled sad posts about me. Zero contact. If he did that, I wouldn’t block him on every single platform and tell everyone we knew.

Yeah, I was dumb. I still wanted to be nice and polite. He’d been my friend, y’know? I didn’t want to ruin his life. I just wanted him to stop ruining mine. Even then, I didn’t understand how manipulative he’d been. I still believed he was just kind of awkward, and that I was probably the dick for being unable to deal with it. After all, I’d been friends with him, right? I’d encouraged him, right? It’d felt good to have someone like me so much, right?

(Yeah, until it didn’t.)

I almost got out this time, though. He almost made it. Sure, he “accidentally” replied to my posts every few weeks. (Somehow I didn’t put together that even though I’d unfollowed him, he clearly hadn’t unfollowed me. I guess I just thought that he’d kept seeing my posts when our mutual friends replied to them.) I felt pretty good. In fact, I was at a point where I felt almost silly for being upset in the first place. And then our mutual friends started asking me why we weren’t talking as much. He’d liked me so much. We’d had such good conversations. They talked about maybe reconnecting with him. After all, they’d only ever seen him being nice.

And god help me, I said okay. I figured he must have grown! Learned his lesson! Nah, that fucker was back to sending me tons of messages, talking to my friends (who did not know him), inserting himself in conversations I was having with others, making plans for the children I never wanted to have, etc.

I finally blocked him. E v e r y w h e r e. And I felt so fucking relieved that I was actually angry with myself for not doing it earlier. This man had harassed me for years, and I’d been the one to feel guilty over it.

Still private, I contacted our mutual friends and told them very briefly that he’d been harassing me and I was cutting off contact. I asked them to support me. Some people did.

A lot of people didn’t.

They’d only seen his public face. They’d only seen the avalanche of love and compliments. He hadn’t known better!! He just didn’t know how to express his feelings!! Next thing I knew, they were forwarding messages from him to me. Even after I’d blocked the fucker, he was still using compliments and romantic gestures to get to me! Through the people I’d trusted!

I’d finally had enough and was very public about this man who’d harassed me. I told people everything I’d been putting up with. I aired all our dirty laundry that I’d tried so hard to keep politely private. And some people believed me.

But a lot of people didn’t.

(This, coincidentally, is why I don’t answer tumblr asks privately anymore, not unless the person specifically asks me to and they haven’t been creepy at all. I had another guy pull this on me and I found myself in this same position again and all I had was private harassment. So no more of that! Public contact all the way.)

But Sarah, you say, isn’t this an isolated incident? Why are you making this huge tumblr post about one guy? Well, number one, it wasn’t one guy. This happened to me several times before I recognized that this wasn’t one man — this was a pattern of behavior that many men share. Number two, it speaks to wider issues that I’d like to address.

Media pushes this idea that if a girl is mad at you, you just have to work hard to be romantic and win her back. Piss her off? Hold up a boom box outside her window! Romantic, right? No, bruh, you’re lurking outside a girl’s bedroom window when she said she doesn’t be around you. She’s terrified and you’re being a creep. This isn’t gonna win her back. It’s just going to tell her you don’t know how to respect her boundaries.

Women are socialized to be nice even when they’re scared. We’re supposed to ignore the alarm bells in our head because it’s not socially acceptable to pull away. When we are complimented, we are supposed to acknowledge it graciously. When someone likes us, we are supposed to like them back. If we draw strong boundaries and enforce them, we often face strong social consequences. I’m here to tell you that every one of those consequences is worth it to help you feel safe.

Hell, I’ll reiterate it. It’s okay to be a bitch. Don’t sacrifice your mental and emotional well being for someone else’s. Women are supposed to be self-sacrificial, too… but you don’t have to be. A truly good person wouldn’t want you to be.

A PERSON WHO REALLY LIKES AND RESPECTS YOU WILL NOT WANT YOU TO FEEL UNSAFE AROUND THEM. IF THEY’RE OKAY WITH YOU BEING SCARED OF THEM, THIS IS A DEEPLY UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIP.

Compliments are not always kind!! You do not always need to be grateful for them! Even nice compliments, ones that are more “you have beautiful writing” vs “nice tits”, can be utilized to emotionally manipulate you and those around you. If a compliment is making you uncomfortable because of the context in which it’s given, you do not need to even acknowledge it. It doesn’t make you stuck up or a bitch. Compliments are supposed to build you up and make you feel good, y’know? If it’s hurting you, it’s still a shitty compliment and that’s on them.

We’re taught that it’s best to be discreet. Naw, man. Be as public as possible, especially if someone’s giving you weird vibes. Keep things on the public record. Like, don’t be an asshole or anything, don’t publicize private information, but you don’t have to keep your conflict in the dark away from prying eyes. That’s only going to benefit the person hurting you… because there will be no established pattern of behavior. Establish establish establish.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, no one is owed your attentions. It doesn’t matter if they like you. It doesn’t matter if they do nice things for you. It doesn’t matter if there’s social pressure to acknowledge them and/or their efforts. It doesn’t matter if they do every single thing right. If you don’t want to interact with someone, you don’t have to. It doesn’t matter if they just give you vague creep vibes — or if you just plain don’t like them! No one is owed your attentions! Never feel trapped into interacting with people because they make you feel guilty!

(And for that matter, never let someone make you uncomfortable because “they’re just socially awkward”. You can be sympathetic towards someone’s social issues without letting them make you feel unsafe. Believe me, I’ve fallen into this one so many times.)

Anyway, tl;dr? Live bitch is better than dead sweetheart. Don’t fall for the compliment trap. Tell him to fuck off. If friends try to act as intermediary between you and someone you cut out of your life, they’re trash. Tell them to fuck off, too. You have my blessing.

#I literally have no idea how to tag this #but if my bad experiences help anyone else I'm happy

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badcowboy69 · 7 years

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You ready for this one Travis!? A7, A17, B9, B12, C1, C5, C6, D1, D2, D5, E1, E8, F5, F10, F11, F12, H1, H8, H9, I1, I6, J1, J5, J6, L1, L2, and L4!

Hooo boy...well, this took a while and it was pretty fun having Travis answer the questions. He was so flattered that you did that! He also hopes he did well as he’s never answered this many questions at one time before! Anyway, long reading ahead! Thanks so much for asking these, we both appreciate it!

A7 Is your OC confident in their reactions to life in general, or do they get embarrassed or easily shamed for it? I.e., if something startles them, do they insist it WAS scary? When they cry, do they feel like they overreacted?

Ain’t nothing to be ashamed of in how you react to life. So yeah, I reckon I am confident in those things. Crying though is another story. I don’t like to cry in front of people, especially someone I know or love. Ain’t saying it can’t and won’t happen, but I do all I can to make it not happen. Does that make sense? Really, though, if I cry when I’m angry about something, you best be taking cover because that means seriously bad things are going to start happening.

A17 What’s one of your OC’s proudest moments of themselves?

Hmmm...I reckon it’d certainly gotta be me taking my motorcycle and trekking across the country to the Commonwealth in search of cats. Lots of unexplored territory to be sure. I ventured into the unknown if you think about it. Had my pip-boy update terrain maps and stuff like that if I found a computer somewheres. I mostly avoided any towns and stayed as far from people as I could. It wasn’t until I got to the DC area where I tried to mingle with folks. They seemed right pleasant and all. Found Boston, found the cats, and found one hell of a guy too. So a’yup, taking a huge risk like that’s gotta be my proudest moment.

B9 What kind of humor does your OC like the most? Slapstick, ironic, funny sounds, scare pranks, xD sO rAnDoM…

I love sarcastic wit and snappy comebacks the best. But still, anything that makes me laugh I like. I also like making people laugh. Scare pranks are wrong, though. Jokes are meant to be funny, not showing how much of a dick you are.

B12 Your OC orders something to eat and gets their order done in a pretty wrong way, something they can’t just pick off or whatnot to correct, or something major is missing. What do they do?

Well, when having a complaint you should always start with a positive before the negative that way the person you’re talking to don’t get defensive. I’d tell the waiter that this is fantastic and looks or tastes great (if I already took a bite). Then I’d go on to say, however, I really was wanting this or that. Whatever the issue is wasn’t done on purpose or to piss you off so why treat it like that?

C1 Does your OC have a moral code? If not, how do they base their actions? If so, where does it come from, and how seriously do they take it?

I always had a thing about a true man keeping his word (that goes for the ladies too really). I won’t say or promise anything I don’t mean or don’t intend to do. Hell, I’m even the kind of person where if I promised I’d do something and me and that person had a falling out I’d still try and keep my promise to them regardless. Trust me, I take that pretty seriously. You can’t keep your word then you probably can’t be trusted none either.

C5 Do your OC’s morals and rules of common decency go out the window when it comes to those they don’t like, or when it’s inconvenient? Aka, are their morals situational?

Hmm...reckon it does depend on the situation. I mean, I don’t like unarmed people getting hurt, but if I see some weaponless Fiend out in the desert trying to rape a woman or choke a kid, mark my word they will get a bullet up their ass. Sometimes one’s gotta forget what’s considered morals and do what’s right.

C6, What do they do when they see someone asking for money or food? If they ignore them, why? If they help, how so?

I’ve been told I’m a phil...umm...philly antro pissed or something like that. I got more caps than I really need and already do a bunch of donations to the Bitter Springs Refugee Camp and to Fort Mormon. Ain’t too many people in Freeside or in New Vegas begging for money or food these days, but out in the Mojave it’s something that unfortunately happens from time to time. I do what I can to help them, but not to the point where they become a leech. I ain’t nobody’s father.

D1, How religious is your OC? What do they practice, if anything? If they don’t associate with any religion, what do they think of religion in general?

Ain’t religious. I reckon you can say I’m spiritual of sorts, but I don’t follow anything set. I mean, it’s pretty nice thinking someone or something out there is watching over me. But I’m not sure what to make of it. Religion, well, no. It’s all an organized cult if you think about it. No thanks.

D2, Do they believe in an afterlife?

I am torn on this one. I’d like to think there’s something in the great beyond. I know I was pretty much dead after getting shot, but I don’t remember much of that let alone what came afterwards.

D5, Do they believe in ghosts? If not, why? If so, do they think they’re magical/tie into their religion, or are they scientifically plausible?

I’ve seen a lot of unexplained shit out in the Mojave and sometimes I’ve even been helped by a mysterious stranger of sorts from time to time. Ain’t sure if they were a ghost or not, but I have a feeling we ain’t exactly alone.

E1, Would you say that your OC is intelligent? In what ways? Would your OC agree?

I think I’m pretty dang smart. Now, I know I ain’t no genius or anything and I surely don’t have the smarts a lot of other people have, but, I think I still am rather intelligent. In battles I plot things out instead of rushing head-first into them. I can learn things rather quickly and know a lot about a lot. Lots of my smarts got me out of situations that could have gone very badly otherwise. I know I still got lots to learn, or relearn rather, but then again who doesn’t?

E8, What’s one of your OC’s biggest regrets?

Hate to even answer this, but probably getting involved with a certain NCR First Recon Sniper is my biggest regret. Now don’t go telling me crap about that ‘loved and loss’ shit...trust me...I would have much rather to not know what that loss felt like or even that love. I used to wonder if he only got involved with me ‘cause he didn’t think he’d live much longer or something and wanted to feel affection one last time.

F5, How handy are they? Can they fix appliances, cars, cabinets, et cetera?

Ain’t much I can’t fix, really. Robots, appliances, guns... Hell, I fixed up a motorcycle by using the energy cores from Mister Handy robots in order to make it run. If that don’t say handy then I don’t know what would. Currently I’m studying the old Giddyup Buttercup toys. What’s a cowboy without a horse? Gonna make me a full sized one using the old toy as a model as well as pre-war books to help me understand how those critters functioned.

F10, Do they engage in any of the arts? How good do you intend them to be? Would they agree they are?

Is playing a guitar arts? Probably not. Ummm...I do draw once in awhile, but ain’t nothing too fancy or spectacular. Not sure if writing is considered an art, but I do that dang good. Painting, not so much. I tried and it’s horrible. Acting...well, I suppose I can be good at that. I was told I can bullshit my way out of anything.

F11, What are some of their favorite things to do for recreation? How did they get into it? What part of it do they like the most?

You sure you want me to be answering something like this? Sex! Ok ok I’ll be serious! I like to fish in the non-radiated waters of Lake Mead. Got into it because I like to eat hah! I like to camp and I do like to explore. Got into that because it was a part of my life as a courier and from what I can scantly recall, when I was a cowboy at a brahmin run. Riding my motorcycle is a big thing for me. Once I got one of those working it opened up a whole new world.

F12, Would they enjoy a theme park?

Ahhh yes! Riley’s told me all about those and dang I would have loved to go on some of those rides! In the town of Primm there’s a broken down roller coaster thingy that has been sorta repaired. Now the trouble is finding out how to make it work and get the cars for it. Yeah, I know that ain’t a theme park, but I’ll take what I can get.

H1, What is your OC’s orientation, romantic and/or sexual? Has it ever been a source of stress for them? Have they always been pretty sure of their orientation?

Lots of questions in one in this thing, didja notice that? Lordy...anyhoo, I’m a confirmed bachelor (which means gay). Ain’t never been a source of stress for me. Women, now that’s a source of stress. Lordy, you tell some of them you’re gay and they look at you like you’re crazy or they say stupid shit like they can make you forget all about that and turn. As for being pretty sure of my orientation, as far back as I’m able to remember, my answer is yes and it’s still a very solid yes right now. I am romantic and I am sexual, but to only one person.

H8, What’s your OC’s idea of a perfect date?

Oh, now you’re wanting to see the mush side of me, huh? Reckon it would be to get all dressed up in something snazzy. Make the first stop somewheres nice to eat. Have some wine maybe while we chat about stuff. Afterwards take a small stroll arm in arm to a lake or a nice place facing west. I’ll build a campfire and we can watch the sunset when it happens. Just the two of us enjoying the outside and peace in each other’s company is the best really. Good food followed by good company all sound perfect to me.

H9, What are some things that your OC finds to be an instant turn-off in potential partners?

Man, I don’t like hateful people or people stuck on themselves. I also really dislike loud-mouth drunks or people who can’t take no for an answer. I reckon, too, anyone that’s mean to critters can be part of the list.

I1, What are their favorite kinds of flavors– Sweet, salty, sour, spicy, creamy, et cetera?

HOT! I love hot and spicy foods. People say I probably burned my tastebuds to hell from eating hot stuff so much, but that ain’t true. I also have a sweet tooth and do like fruity flavors as well.

I6, Could they eat the same thing they enjoy over and over and not get bored of it quickly?

Oh heck yeah! I can probably eat jalapenos all the time and most certainly a nice brahmin rib-eye steak! I like to drink beer and not get bored of it, but is that considered a food?

J1, Where does your OC stand most politically? What would they align with most?

For me as long as the cause is just and has the interests of the people and critters I’ll support them.

J5, Are they or would they protest for a cause they’re passionate about?

Yeah, I would protest something as long as the meanings behind it are just. Sometimes people bitch about something just to bitch and it makes things worse. I can’t stand that. Stand up for what you believe in, but make sure it’s really what you want and will change things for the better.

J6, How do they react to people whose political viewpoints are very opposite of theirs?

As long as they don’t shove it in my face I really don’t pay them much mind. We’re all allowed to have different likes and viewpoints. However, like in the case of Caesar’s Legion...no. That’s bad! You’re bad! End of story!

And now for the section directed at me, Travis’ mun!

L1, How have your characters changed since you created them?

Travis has been part of me ever since I was a little cowgirl. He went from me being a cowboy riding a palomino stallion to becoming a created video game character taking over New Vegas in Fallout New Vegas. He then went on to age six years so he could be involved in the life of a certain sole survivor (and simply be involved in the Fallout 4 world). Travis is also alive and well in the world of Sims 4. Not too much has changed with him, but with him becoming more “alive” in the Fallout world it’s been amazing and fun developing him.

L2 What do you consider the biggest themes in your character, if any?

He’s always a country boy in western garb. Even in his Sims life he can be found sporting a cowboy hat and boots, playing a guitar, loving country music, and just being a sweet good ole boy.

L4! Would you hang out with your OC if you could?

Even though he is pretty much me for the most part, yes, I would most certainly hang out with him. He’s a fun, and loving great guy who is very playful and kind.

#ask #abouttravis #long post #thank you for sending these #free-hugs-for-ghouls

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leviathangourmet · 6 years

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Amidst the recent brouhaha about the alleged sexism of discussing Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s perceived “unlikability” and relative unpopularity as a presidential candidate, Atlantic columnist Peter Beinart asserted that any conversation on this issue should take account of America’s entrenched misogyny — especially hostility toward female ambition. As evidence, he pointed to a 2010 study with seemingly striking results:

[T]wo Yale professors, Victoria Brescoll and Tyler Okimoto, showed identical fictional biographies of two state senators — one male and one female — to participants. … When they added quotations to the biographies that characterized each as “ambitious” and possessing “a strong will to power,” the male state senator grew more popular. But the female state senator not only lost support among both women and men, but also provoked “moral outrage.”

As Beinart notes, he has written about this study several times before, mostly in the context of arguing that hostility toward Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi is rooted in sexism: a female politician seen as ambitious or power-seeking elicits not only negativity but “contempt, anger, and disgust” (feelings that the study groups under “moral outrage”). The issue is clearly important to him, and he clearly finds the Brescoll/Okimoto study compelling. Others, including current New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg during her time at Slate, have also cited it as a stark demonstration of fear and loathing of powerful women.

Guess what: the study actually shows nothing of the kind. Also, it’s a pretty bad study, and the people who peddle it should feel bad — especially since they generally link to various summaries rather than the study itself, of which a free digital copy is available online.

In the internet-based study, 230 Americans 18 to 76 years old (two-thirds of them women) read a short biography of a fictional Oregon state senator, identified as “John Burr” or “Ann Burr.” They then rated Ann/John on a 7-point scale on various qualities of “agency” (strong, assertive, tough), “communality” (caring, supportive) and “competence” (competent, productive, effective). The questionnaire also asked participants to rate how much they would like Burr to be their representative and to what extent they felt various emotions toward him/her (including contempt, anger, irritation, disgust, etc.). Half of the participants got a version of the text with this added paragraph:

The Oregon Sun-Sentinel described him/her as “one of the most ambitious politicians in Oregon … a politician that has always had a strong will to power.” Burr him/herself has been quoted as saying that “Being hungry is everything … it’s key to gaining influence in politics.”

And here is the table summarizing the results:

Yes, it’s true when a female politician is described as power-seeking, her ratings become somewhat more negative while those of a male politician become somewhat more positive. But the summaries and the media reports omit some key information.

When the politician is not explicitly described as power-seeking and ambitious, Ann is perceived more favorably than John, with much higher ratings on some items. She also comes out ahead in voter preference. (This finding echoes other recent research showing that voters of both parties tend to be biased in favor of female politicians.)

And the “moral outrage” part? With no ambition/power-seeking cues, the mean moral outrage rating for John was .27 points higher than for Ann. Among participants who got the text with the power-seeking cues, the mean moral outrage rating was .17 points higher for Ann than for John.

However, the claim that participants reacted with “moral outrage” to the power-seeking female politician but not to the power-seeking male is simply wrong. (Disturbingly, the misconception was promoted by the study authors themselves in a brief write-up on the website of the Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard.) In fact, the moral outrage ratings for both were extremely low: midway between 1 and 2 on a 7-point scale, i.e., between “none” and “very little.” The man fared marginally better than the woman with the “power-seeking/ambition” cue; the woman fared marginally better without it.

Do these findings indicate lingering negativity toward open ambition in women? Maybe. But several caveats are in order. One, the study has not been replicated; knowing what we know about the “replication crisis” in the social sciences, drawing sweeping and far-reaching conclusions from a single study is foolhardy at best. To take a related example: There has been a lot of hype about a 2003 experiment in which business school students regarded a male entrepreneur as more likable and a better colleague than his female twin with an otherwise identical resume (the “Heidi/Howard study”). The fact that the experiment was repeated 10 years later and this time the woman was rated as more likable and as a preferable colleague has gotten a lot less exposure.

Second, the somewhat negative reactions to “Ann Burr” happened when the text had a passage explicitly stressing her ambition and power-seeking (with a quote from the politician herself about being “hungry”). Without those cues, the study found, the female politician was not perceived as more ambitious or power-hungry than her male counterpart. In real life, messages about a politician’s ambition and power-seeking are far more complex than in the study’s fictional vignette, with a lot of variables the study didn’t explore. (For instance: is the negative effect of such messages neutralized by stressing that the politician is caring and ethical, two areas in which women in politics have an edge in popular perception?)

In short: The John Burr/Ann Burr study tells us zilch about prejudice against ambitious female politicians, and people would do well to stop using it.

Are female politicians held back by gender biases? That’s a complicated topic. (There’s evidence that, for the most part, being female is now an advantage in politics — or at least it was 10 years ago.) But, ironically, misogyny in politics can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: some Massachusetts voters have told The Boston Globe they don’t want Warren to run because “there are still some people out there who won’t vote for a woman.”

So next time you want to hype a study supposedly showing that Americans find female ambition in politics repulsive, think again. And check your data.

#academic corruption #propaganda #fake news #feminism #anti-feminism #media corruption #archive

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lassieposting · 7 years

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Romance head canon ❤️ in all the fan fiction I read its Valkyrie initiating the relationship/kiss👄 , her flirting. I read this piece and it was like from ghastly POV and he picked up on the way skul 💀look at her. Want some head canons of skulls POV. 👀

oho do i have some shit for you

seriously anon i think this might be the longest fucking post ive ever made

the way i read the books, skul starts to realise he’s in the process of falling for val when she’s 17-18. which is dodgy in some parts of the world, and idk where you’re from anon, but in my country the age of consent is 16 so i’m cool with interpreting it like that

the first instances of like, gentle flirting, from him are in death bringer and kotw.

1. “You’re late.”

“I’m beautiful.”

“You’re always beautiful.”

“I’m always late, too.”

skulduggery is from the 1600s, and flirting back then was not as obvious as it is today. this is roughly the time where he starts complimenting her regularly on her appearance. “you’re always beautiful” is a pretty safe compliment to give any girl, especially a girl like val who’s fairly vain and aware that she’s beautiful. i think here he’s kind of. testing the water? like not openly flirting with her, but more seeing whether she’s receptive to that kind of comment coming from him? whether he should bother to keep them coming? because if she’d responded here with an immediate awkward or disgust reaction, or if she’d kind of gone “that’s a little weird, skulduggery” i bet you none of the other semi-flirty stuff in the books would’ve gone down. he would’ve backed off, immediately

but she doesn’t. she just accepts it - we don’t get a physical reaction from her, but he keeps the compliments coming so there was probably some vaguely positive physical cue, i.e. she smiled at him or something, and says, “I’m always late, too.” The ‘too’ acknowledging that she knows she’s always beautiful. Thank you. Which let’s be real, is a response to half-flirty compliments that he’s probably used to from china. She’s not told him to fuck off, so that’s a positive.

And then he’s treated her to a gorgeous dress.

2. “The dress was long and slinky, strapless, silk and chiffon. Her shoes were gorgeous”

I’m sorry, but if you see someone as a surrogate child, you don’t buy them a sexy dress. You just don’t, it’s inappropriate and wrong. And yeah, you might buy a dress like that for your platonic friend if you know that’s your friend’s style, but val isn’t a regular dress-wearer. so chances are, he bought her something he’d like to see her in, and hoped she’d like it. It’s not mentioned in the book, but it’s also possible he had to actually buy her underwear at this point. “Long, slinky, strapless” dresses usually require panties that don’t leave underwear lines, and strapless bras. Since val isn’t a regular wearer of slinky clothing or dresses, chances are she doesn’t actually own any suitable underwear for this dress. So either she went without, which would’ve been kind of uncomfortable for her during the whole nonsense with melancholia that went down at the requiem ball, or skulduggery bought her underwear to wear with the dress.

how does he even know what size she is? either he asked ghastly, or he paid a lot of attention to that naked reflection.

“I thought I’d spoil you,” he says. We know skulduggery spends a lot of money on the important woman in his life. China says he used to bring her priceless books and artifacts which would’ve cost him an arm and a leg, and it’s probably safe to say he bought her outfits, too, while they were together. He doesn’t seem to spend his money on people who don’t matter to him (as much). You don’t see him splashing out to get tanith a set of protective clothes, and he doesn’t so much as take elsie through the burger king drive-thru. Yet, I googled how much it costs to remodel a house and the answers I’m getting are all in like the £40,000 to £75,000 bracket, which might be out, but since I know nothing about house renovation, I’m gonna run with that. So he spent over £40,000 on doing up his house so val could essentially live there and spend more time with him. You don’t spend that kind of money on someone you’re not planning on having there long-term.

He also implies that he would’ve gone to Ghastly to get val’s requiem ball dress if he hadn’t been so busy. ghastly’s clothes are implied to be expensive. it’s one thing for skul to buy val protective clothes - she’s his responsibility, and he wants to keep her safe, it’s an understandable expense. but splashing out just to buy her a fuckin expensive dress tailor-made by ghastly just to spoil her? dude got feelings

i mean let’s also take into account that that was what dudes did in ye olde days, right? they were the primary source of income. in 1600-whatever, the girl would’ve moved in with the guy, put her own touch on the home, and it would’ve been her husband’s responsibility to “keep” her; to pay for her clothes, her food, her entertainment, etc

What’s val done in the past few years?

“Moved into” skul’s house - not full-time, but it’s implied she spends a lot of time there, put her own touch on it via having it entirely fucking remodeled to suit her, what with having the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom put in, and spent a whole lot of skul’s money. he spoils her. in exchange, she makes his house into a home - probably just by being there, bc lets face it this is val and she’s no domestic goddess. but it mimics, i like to think, the way he would’ve treated his wife. money no object to make her happy

if you look at it like this, he’s basically treating her as though they’re in a relationship already. i doubt he’s actually taking that seriously and deluding himself that they’re a thing, but again, he’s testing it out. how does she react to him treating her like this? does she have issues with it? is she comfortable? and she’s totally chill with it, so another positive

There’s also this:

3. “Now she had her own bedroom, there was a bathroom with a huge shower and a kitchen with a fully-stocked fridge.”

So not only did he refurbish for her, but he refurbished with quality. Which, yeah, it’s skulduggery, he’s got expensive tastes, but tbh i think he let her pick out everything. which means she picked all this expensive shit that looks great but cost him a mint and he doesn’t care, bc this is how he shows affection

4. “sometimes she wondered how much money she’d cost him with her insistence on refurbishment”

So refurbishing was val’s idea. The fact that she wanted skul’s house changed for her probably came across as like. not flirty, exactly? but to him, she’s saying that she wants to spend more time here. more time with him. she wants his home to be her home. he probably saw that as encouragement, tbh, he was so happy about it?

then in kotw, we have this:

5. “Remember that sorcerer who went missing?”

Valkyrie raised her head off the pillow even as she woke. For a moment she didn’t know where she was, then she recognised the house on Cemetery Road…

“Patrick Xebec,” Skulduggery said, standing in the morning sunlight that streamed in through the window.

he’s. in her room. while she’s asleep. at this point, they have no boundaries. skulduggery would’ve been raised that to come into a young lady’s room while she is abed is just. not done. the only woman it would’ve been appropriate for him to do that with would be his wife, or a lover - women he’d essentially share a room with anyway (don’t quote me on this, but i think a lot of couples in his era had separate bedrooms as standard? and then just slept together when they wanted to? because a lot of marriages were out of convenience and not love?). but im pretty sure there’s also another scene of him doing it again - coming into her room before she’s up and waking her up by talking at her - so either he’s just utterly lost his sense of propriety over the years or he’s so comfortable with her and she with him that they no longer have that boundary

6. “She took a quick shower, dressed, and Skulduggery had a bowl of cereal waiting for her when she emerged.”

so not only is he a-ok with coming into her room while she’s still in it, they’ve also got into a morning routine with each other. he makes her breakfast. it’s wonderfully domestic, a little gesture of affection in his very understated way. skulduggery is an over-the-top personality who doesn’t do emotions very well, and val has no subtlety. he’s treating her like he’d treat his significant other, but because he hasn’t actually smacked her in the face with a brick stamped with “I LIKE YOU” in big letters, she’s not picking up what he’s throwing out there

it’s also worth mentioning that like. in death bringer and kotw, he starts touching her a lot more. hugging her, or letting her hug him. that scene where he pushes her up against a wall and kinda feels her up to check if she was shot, even though she’s wearing protective clothes and so he knows none of the bullets would’ve hurt her. that bit in kotw(?) where she gets stuck in the hole and he has to pull her out. it’s pointed out on the skulduggery forums in the valdug thread that if you pull someone out by their underarms, like he tries to, you’re gonna touch boob. you just are. it’d be shockingly difficult not to. and again, no negative reaction from her, not even an awkward joke

again, for the most part of skul’s life, male-female physical contact was very limited. he didnt touch her very often for the first half of the series, and i think that had a lot to do with the fact that in his mind, it would’ve been inappropriate. touching is something you do with the girl you’re courting. so like, he’ll hug her if she needs to be hugged, or comfort her if she needs it or whatever, but there’s no casual touching. but in the last four books, he touches her an awful lot. because he is kinda courting her

kotw i think is the point where skul stops dodging around on the edge of flirting, and starts actually flirting. and tries to let her know he’s got feelings for her, because he’s a whole lot less subtle in this book. there’s this whole exchange:

7. “It’s just, if you were feeling somehow…unattractive…”

“Sorry?”

“I don’t mean unattractive,” he said quickly. “I mean, if you were thinking that maybe you’ll always be alone -”

“You think I’ll always be alone?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

We know that when skulduggery was alive, he had a stutter. this isn’t a stutter, but he’s definitely nervous, and you can tell? i can count the number of times skulduggery was visibly nervous in the books on one hand. he’s a very confident, very self-assured man. but this is the first time he’s kind of made it obvious to val that he likes her. this is him kind of going, i’m an available romantic prospect, valkyrie. but she doesn’t let him get it out, she won’t let him finish. he phrases it wrong and loses his chance.

8. “I was only trying to be sensitive.”

she’s hurt him. she won’t let him talk, won’t let him tell her how he feels. she “doesn’t need him sensitive”. she’s kind of. pretty much completely dismissed that he’s also a person with feelings, and she’s hurt him.

9. “you can’t run from your feelings!”

“i can walk from them.”

he doesn’t deny that there are feelings to walk from. by now he’s picked up that valkyrie is dense as a fucking wall, so the flirting is getting a little bit more obvious. and even though she just hurt him, and he’s now kinda pissed at her as a result, he still acknowledges that he has feelings

and then, in lsodm, we get this absolute fucking gem

10 “tight trousers don’t count.”

he’s given up, everyone. this is outright flirting, it even sounds flirty on the audiobook, he knows he’s not fucking getting anywhere and now he’s just not even bothering to be subtle

and then, going totally outside of canon, i like to think that the Big Reveal is essentially skulduggery says something even more obvious than the tight trousers comment, and val kind of pauses and goes, “are you flirting with me?” and skulduggery is just like

HAVE BEEN FOR THREE YEARS NOW BUT THANKS FOR NOTICING

#skulduggery pleasant #valdug #sp headcanons

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mixedfeelingsproject · 7 years

Text

Via

Where are you from? Greater Boston, MA, USA

How would you describe your race/ethnicity? I describe myself as biracial or mixed-race most often, though I will sometimes refer to myself as black/African-American/PoC, white, or reference a specific ethnicity.

Do you identify with one particular aspect of your ethnicity more than another? Have you ever felt pressure to choose between parts of your identity? Though I never experienced explicit pressure to choose sides, and was never told I was not "black" or "white" enough, the racial hierarchy that exists in American culture definitely affected me subconsciously. For instance, it took me years to address my underlying reasons for chemically straightening my hair. I reflected the mainstream media's unwillingness to understand or appreciate the beauty of black hair, which led to feel like it was better for my hair to look and feel "white."

Did your parents encounter any difficulties from being in an interracial relationship? My parents' relationship was a complex and challenging one. Though they did not argue about race, or experience much pushback from friends, family, or the public, I think my father's struggles in particular could have been partly a result of the stress and pressure that comes with being a black man in American society.

How has your mixed background impacted your sense of identity and belonging? I buried a lot of my feelings of racial otherness while growing up, because I was not ready to face my difference. Middle and high school were periods of great personal growth for me in many other ways, and though it took until college and beyond to feel like I "belonged" racially (especially when attending the Mixed Remixed Festival in Los Angeles in 2016), I think it worked out in just the timing it needed to.

Have you been asked questions like "What are you?" or "Where are you from?" by strangers? If so, how do you typically respond? I don't think I have ever been asked "What are you?" directly. I have been asked variations of that question, but never felt it was expressed in a rude or inquisitorial way. I am always happy to speak about my background, because so few people I come across in my daily life are interested in race at all. If anything, it disappoints me when I tell people about my work and studies in race, and they look bored, become awkward, or shut the conversation down.

Have you experienced people making comments about you based on your appearance? Because my appearance is multilayered (i.e. ethnically ambiguous, androgynous, alternative), it can sometimes be difficult to figure out how people are reacting to me and what they are reacting to. I haven't received any direct negative comments about my appearance that were racially-charged, though a friend once told me that two strangers were making fun of my hair behind my back, so perhaps it happens in a more subtle way.

Have you ever been mistaken for another ethnicity? I have been mistaken for Hispanic multiple times before, and will sometimes be spoken to in Spanish, when someone assumes I can speak the language.

Have you ever felt the need to change your behavior due to how you believe others will perceive you? In what way? I believe everyone does this to a certain degree, perhaps without realizing it. There are some identifiable traits that enable me to "pass" in the suburban area I reside in, such as the way I talk and my last name sounding "white," which I think makes a lot of people more comfortable and willing to accept me. I don't feel pressure from others to be more "black," but I definitely have a strong desire to engage in black culture and have picked up new interests and ways of thinking from it.

What positive benefits have you experienced by being mixed? Race is always changing, and there something new to learn about it every day. I think it's really amazing to be able to explore race from a fluid, dual perspective. On a broader note, being mixed-race has made me empathetic toward the unsung and underrepresented - people whose voices are drowned out by the majority, or people who feel like no one understands or cares about them.

Have you changed the way you identify yourself over the years? I've always identified as biracial, but my racial knowledge and self-esteem have changed drastically over the years. Because I grew up with the white side of my family, and was raised in part by a grandmother who immigrated from Slovakia, I found it easier to connect with her strong sense of ethnic identity as a child, though I always recognized I was different from my family members. In middle and high school, I mostly shut out race from my life, and it wasn't until college that I went through a period of massive racial growth. I met many mixed people and people of color that helped me explore, balance out, and feel proud of my biracial identity.

Are you proud to be mixed? Yes

Do you have any other stories you would like to share from your own experiences? I sometimes blog/vlog about my racial experiences and thoughts on my Tumblr, vialiveshere.tumblr.com

#mixed #black #white #identity #biracial

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megpreecedesign · 8 years

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When did you first become aware of the boundaries of your habitus? i.e. When did you first feel like a fish out of water? Why? And what did it reveal about your habitus/hexis?

Bourdieu’s habitus concept is one of his most influential yet enigmatic. Habitus is a system of tendencies that allow people (individually) to comprehend and react to the social world around them. It is integrated into our skills, habits and life experiences meaning that we cannot escape it. People with the same lifestyle and background can share these factors, these include religion, nationality, education, social class, ethnicity, and profession. Habitus is like a common characteristic that we all share but that we realise in distinct ways.

I think I first became aware of my habitus when I entered high school. For most of my life I had considered myself average, with enough money being working class and a British citizen, I never really considered my position and views on society as being any different to other peoples. I come from a small countryside town in Herefordshire meaning that everyone knew everyone and I guess this made me more aloof about social, political, and general issues in the UK. I thought I was always being treated the same as everyone else, which I guess is something everyone generally feels at a young age. But as I entered high school I was subjected to wider views from people in different areas, ethnicities, social classes, and religions.

My religion was never an issue for me as I was raised a catholic and I was sent specifically to a catholic school, my realisation through habitus on how much my religion was shoved down my throat didn’t come till I studied philosophy and ethics at college as I could see how other people were raised with their religions. Being in a bigger school allowed me to make friends with different people, I became aware that most people tended to drift towards people from the same social class as them. I do not think this was intentional and it obviously didn’t happen a lot as I don’t believe social class effects how you think of people, at the very least make friends, until you hit university. At university, you are paying for your own food and clothes and general lifestyle so you observe where other people’s priorities lie in their lives, and this reflects their past lifestyles and can change how you sympathize and relate to them.

Something that I didn’t become aware of was how the fact that I am mixed race was going to change people’s attitudes and views towards me, and my family. I am half English from my father and half Peruvian from my mother and as issues of immigration in the news seemed to rise through my time in high school, more people seemed to act prejudice towards me. Having people question me on my background and my mum, and during college being told to “go home” really opened my eyes to how closed minded British people are about immigration, about people travelling across borders that we’ve created, and how it must affect their lives when in reality it doesn’t, not in a negative way. My family didn’t seem as bothered as me, presuming my mum already dealt with this when she moved here more than 10 years ago, however, when someone at school started a fight with my brother declaring that “your mum is stealing my mums job!” they realised that even though we were born in the UK people were still going to act with a narrow mind towards us. Its things like this that show me how far people will go to defend their uneducated opinions because of the news they have been subjected to and their lifestyles growing up e.g. parents’ opinions. But i do not feel it is their fault but the fault of the education system, media reports and lack of representation of people of colour in the media, as this lets people believe they are better than others especially with their white privilege.

This was not the only thing that became evident to me, as people realised I was from Peru they would ask how my family live in the jungle. My family live in Lima the capital of Peru which is just as big as London and just as busy and developed, so explaining to people that it is much more built up in Peru than my tiny town didn’t seem to make sense to them. I was opened to the ignorance of people who take up their white privilege in a strange way, in a way that makes them believe that they are the only ones in the world, apart from the rest of Europe and the United States, with money and a modern/developed lifestyle. It demonstrated how uneducated people are and how there are so many preconceived notions about South America that they are exposed to and don’t bother to consider and research themselves.

Something, that I believe all women realise during their habitus, was the gender divide. Everyone knows about the wage gap between men and women and the objectification of women, but these things were both more evident to me when I started working at the age of 14. I would walk to work in my uniform and get people shouting crude things at me and then have friends of my parents tell me I’ll probably not earn much more in my next job due to the fact that I’m a girl. And as you get older the reasons for you not being allowed to walk alone or late at night change from being because you are too young to because you are a girl. In high school I was also named ‘manly meg’ because of the way I, apparently, did things in ways only men could do which really confused me because it was small things like how I ate my crisps and how I sat. This behaviour allowed me to realise how in our society people are so set in gender roles, the fact I was the only girl in my resistant materials class meant that I was a ‘manly’ female.

These things that made me conscious of my habitus are also what that have inspired me to create specific work concerning the patriarchy (gender roles and women’s rights) and knowledge of South America (Latin American icons and the continents development). I believe that everyone is a product of their environment and that it is not necessarily a bad thing as long as people don’t use it as an excuse to be prejudice towards others. Knowing your habitus is something that can help you widen your opinions of others and the wider social world, something needed to help you develop in any work you do and, of course, yourself.

#habitus #bourdieu #religion #sexuality #social class #race #ethnicity #immigration #meganpreece

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