This needs to be said

Cancel culture is wrong. End of.

Picking out reasons to hate a person and put them down, is wrong. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Tearing someone down over you not liking something, no matter how justified you think you are, is absolutely and completely wrong.

"But this person did this problematic thing therefore they are a bad person!" Yes, they did. They did something you deem problematic. But they are a human being. There is nuance. There are ALWAYS more sides to a story. There are always nuances, and reasons. And cancelling that person is not going to make anything better. This world is not black and white. There are numerous lies that go around online. People love to focus on the negative, and the news, articles, and others will home in on the negative. They will even lie to get those precious views, clicks, and money. Even major news outlets, so you can’t even trust the news! And, in all reality, you can’t even trust a lot of people because when you decide something is bad and start picking it apart, other people are going to be influenced to see this as worse than it is. And before you know it, somebody who made a mistake is being ripped apart by a dreadful mob mentality tearing apart all the improvement they have done. 

I saw it happen, years ago, here on Tumblr. There was somebody who used to be an abusive person. They were manipulative, attention seeking, and generally treated people like shit. They wanted what they wanted, and guilt tripped and the whole nine yards. They realized what they were doing wrong, so they took a hiatus off the internet, worked with therapy, and went through some massive self improvement, and then they came back. They were doing well! They made friends! Their mental health was better. 

But then, somebody brought up their past. And they got harassed so badly that… rumor has it? They committed suicide. Now, I don’t know if they actually did, but I do remember they were contemplating and feeling like they shouldn’t even be alive and these hateful people were actively encouraging them to do it and telling them they were a worthless abuser and would always be a worthless abuser.  Making it worse and bringing up every bad thing they ever did. And yeah! They dropped off the face of the internet. And I have never, ever seen them again. Now, I am not saying that you shouldn't warn people if somebody is actually unsafe. Like if they are a known abuser, or a pedophile, or there's something else they have done that risks harming real people in the present.

This needs to be handled with care. You absolutely can warn folks about their actions, to keep people safe, without adding in extra stuff just to get people as angry with them as humanly possible. Warn other folks about the harm they have done and could do, but do NOT turn around and pick every single thing about them apart. 

Don't go digging into their past and bringing up stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with what you are warning folks about. This should be done with great care, only taking the most recent proof of actual, real harm. 

It is tempting to let emotion take hold. It is tempting to try to make everybody else think you are so good and virtuous for taking that villain down like some comic book super hero, a mighty warrior behind a screen, tapping away at a keyboard. 

But, really, is tearing down another human being really something to be proud of? What if what you are accusing them of isn’t true? What if the sources are wrong? What if you are getting the wrong person? What if they’ve learned and grown and become a better person?  What if you are only seeing part of the story? Try to think of how you would feel if you fucked up in the past. Say, for example, you were an abuser. You manipulated people, hurt people. Maybe you were a bully.  But, over life, you have learned that those actions are wrong. You apologized, did what you could to make it right, then removed yourself from the people you hurt. You grew and learned, you became a better person. You found new friends, using what you learned from your mistakes to keep them and be kind to them this time. You still struggle with shame over what you did, but you are proud of the progress. You are proud of the growth you have gone through, and you are doing your best to continue to learn and grow. Now. Imagine it is years later. You've healed and become healthy and happy, treating people the way they should be treated. Maybe sometimes those old habits come up, but you always push them back down. You apologize when you mess up, and make an effort to learn from your mistakes. It’s slow going, but you’ve come to learn that growth is a slow process. A seed does not become a mighty oak tree overnight.

... And somebody digs up your past because of something or other you did that they deemed problematic. Maybe it was something you did wrong. Maybe you messed up. It wasn't intentional, but what’s done is done, and all you can do is try to avoid that mistake again. Maybe you didn't realize what you did until it was pointed out. Old habits die hard, after all. And no matter how hard you try, sometimes you will slip back. Healing and learning and growing is a slow process. People make mistakes, humans are humans! We are complicated creatures, after all.

But none of that matters. More and more of your past, every little mistake, every little thing folks deem "Questionable" is dragged out and paraded in front of others. All of the past you have worked so hard to grow and learn from is shoved back in your face, a dark shadow you can never escape. The shame, the pain, all of that effort feels like it was for nothing. You become nothing more than the mistakes you made in the past. Maybe those shitty things you did in the past were part of a cycle. Maybe it was learned behavior. Maybe you didn't know it was wrong at the time. That doesn’t change what happened, it doesn’t unhurt the people who were hurt, but you can learn from it and become a better person.

Or, maybe, you didn’t even do anything that bad, or didn't do the thing you are being accused of at all, or it was blown out of proportion with more lies than truth through the grapevine. Or really important details were cut out that make the story sound so much worse than it really is. 

Nobody cares about the real story. Nobody cares about your side. Nobody cares about everything you’ve done to move past it, how hard you’ve tried, how much you’ve grown. All they care about is every single bad thing you have ever done in your life, and any other reason they can find to hate you.

It sure does hurt, doesn’t it? Yeah, there are people who are legitimately bad people. People who really have done bad things, or are still doing bad things. People who hurt others. People who don’t care, don’t learn, don’t grow. 

But that does not give you the right to tear them down. Because when you tear them down, they don’t even get the chance to actually pick up, learn, and better themselves.

What it all boils down to is that we are all human. We are all confused and confusing furless apes living in an indifferent world making mistakes and screwing up and learning and just trying to make it in life.

Tearing other human beings down does not make you a hero. It does not make you virtuous. It does not make you rise above anybody else. It is cruel, needless, and actively makes things worse. 

By all means, make sure folks are informed if somebody is dangerous, but otherwise? Just let it be. Let them live. Let them learn. Avoid them yourself, maybe warn friends about them if you see friends potentially being harmed, but that’s it. Just block and move on.

DON’T attack their livelihood. Don’t attack their friends and family. Don’t attack them. Let them be. Even if that means letting them be somewhere other than near you. 

Every single human being alive on this planet has fucked up. Often times, they have fucked up MAJORLY. Sometimes they have done things that hurt other people. Sometimes they have made a string of terrible decisions that ended up leading to a tragic end. But… they’re still human.

What this all boils down to, is this simple thing.

We are not our mistakes. Who we are as a person is not defined by what we do. When you fuck up, you want the chance to improve yourself, right? The chance to make it right. Do you want to be defined by that series of bad decisions you made for the rest of your life? Do you want that to be brought up time and time and time again, and used to drag you down repeatedly?

I didn’t think so.

LISTEN TO ME RN, when the character is supposed to be rlly strong and muscular and buff PUT FAT ON THAT GUY fat is so fucking necessary to have a physical build that is so strong MAKE THEM FATTTTTTTTTTTTT

part in the book where percy starts to realise something is Wrong about the casino because a guy he's talking to says "groovy" you will always be famous to me

“we need more evil female characters” you guys cant even handle a traumatized teenage girl making a mistake

can someone please get these hoes under control i'm BUSY

fanfiction writers when a character is remotely non-human

something so fucked up about Chat Noir’s whole deal is that he is in a lot of ways Adrien playing a character. Like Adrien picked up his miraculous and was told he’d be a superhero so he was like “ok, time to act like a superhero!” and he lets himself have fun w it and play up the role and let loose and kind of just allow himself to be silly and goofy and have fun and for once in his life not care about performing Perfection™.

But. But none of the other characters KNOW THAT. So everyone just sees Chat Noir and is like “look at this guy’s ego. He’s so full of himself. Surely it’d be fair to knock him down a few pegs” without being aware of how few pegs he actually HAS. He’s like the “insecure character who overcompensates in ego” trope except he’s really not doing it unironically, he’s just having a fun LARP pretending to have self worth in his off-hours but nobody else is on the same page about it being a game and he refuses to tell them. He just dramatically pouts about it and lets them laugh and pretends like he’s not internalizing it and it is almost 3 am and my brain forced me to write this instead of sleeping I’m gonna take a melatonin

So I'm leaving work and something darts in front of me, maybe 10ft away, too fast for me to see what it is. Peek around the tree blocking my path and I see this

Just like... a whole ass hawk. Dude's gotta be about 1.5ft tall. Massive fucking bird. And it's just staring me straight in my soul like this, even as I try to move ahead. It didn't budge. And there's only this path back to my car unless I want to walk on a busy highway. So I have the option of Death By Raptor or Death By Truck.

So I walk in the poison ivy filled patch off the sidewalk. Guy still isn't moving. Still staring me directly in the eyes. And I do this thing when animals are behaving strangely where I'll talk to them, so I'm just like, "Hey, man. I don't know you. You don't know me. This feels really threatening. I'm just trying to get to my car, dude. Can I get some space please? You're a big fucking bird. I see those claws. You could kill me right now, but I'd appreciate if you didn't, ok?"

It didn't move until I was about 2ft away. Again: I'm as far from it as I can be without walking into the street. It clearly wasn't going to budge. I walk past, thing flies up (silent, btw. Scary) and lands on a brick wall a little further ahead

Anyway. Weird guy. Nearly shit my pants when I noticed a bird big enough to carry off a fully grown cat was just... there, staring me in the face, unwilling to move away from me, a human, something it should see as a threat. I watched behind me the whole rest of the way to my car, just in case this bird decided to help me shed this mortal coil. 10/10 experience. Super cool guy.

for context: I read the hobbit first over the course of two years when I was like 13, but I'm only now starting to read lotr. having a blast tho!

anyways, reblog if you feel like it 🙌🏻

FNAF movie Mike vs Vanny on ordering pizzaplex food

lore accurate teen soukoku. the worsties ever

“I plagiarized all of my video essays because of a head injury I had when I was a child” was not on my youtube bingo card

ooooo superman would HAVE to be uncut because of his super strong skin

Okay

Fucked up looking dog you got there

Im of the full (possibly delusional) belief that Durge is not the species that they physically appear to be.

You’re telling me this being crafted from nothing but bhaal’s flesh and his blood - this demigod - is actually a dragonborn/tiefling/human/elf/etc.

No. This thing is bhaal’s flesh and it just happens to look like that. They’re an imitation of a species, they’re not truly a (full)mortal being, they have no heritage aside from bhaal.

As a result I’m sure there’s some…oddities.

For example, a demigod child, not fully mortal. I doubt they adhere to the lifespan of whatever species they look like. Looking younger than they should. (less so perhaps with long lived races like elfs and half-elves where that is par for the course).

A dragonborn durge that by all accounts looks like a blue dragonborn but their breathweapon is acid. A tiefling durge that seems to be a Mephistopheles tiefling but they cannot cast mage hand, instead smiting like a zariel bloodline tiefling.

An elf or tiefling durge that doesn’t read as fey or infernal trough identification spells. Because they aren’t either of those things. Perhaps they could read as divine but not quite.

Members of a race that durge is supposed to be looking at them and sometimes when making eye contact they read as wrong. And some kind of uncanny effect triggers in their brain.

Give me more freaky durge who isn’t really what they appear to be at all. Just a little murder demigod crafted from dead god flesh to be the shape of something else.

me? redrawing my old shit?? its more likely than u think