This Is 100% Canon!! 

I feel like Never is supposed to be the sassy best friend but he’s just straight up mean to Omen and it kinda makes me sad

we were meant to live slowly!!!! we were meant to savor moments and feel unabashedly lazy and frolic and smell the flowers and laugh with our entire hearts and love with our entire souls!!!!! don’t ever feel guilty for resting!!!!!! don’t ever feel guilty for slowing down!!!!!! enjoying life shouldn’t be something you’re ashamed of

“Wow…. People don’t like me? Oh, I have a bad attitude? Well cry me a river and DROWN in it!”

— INTJ (in a friendly intervention about their behavior)

During the 2008 recession, my aunt lost her job. Her, her partner, and my three cousins moved across the country to stay with us while they got back on their feet. My house turned from a family of four to a family of nine overnight, complete with three dogs and five cats between us.

It took a few years for them to get a place of their own, but after a few rentals and apartments, they now own a split level ranch in a town nearby. I’ve lost track of how many coworkers and friends have stayed with them when they were in a tight spot. A mother and son getting out of an abusive relationship, a divorcee trying to stay local for his kids while they work out a custody agreement, you name it. My aunt and uncle knew first hand what that kindness meant, and always find space for someone who needed it, the way my parents had for them.

That same aunt and uncle visited me in [redacted] city last year. They are prolific drinkers, so we spent most of the day bar hopping. As we wandered the city, any time we passed a homeless person, my uncle would pull out a fresh cigarette and ask them if they had a light. Regardless of if they had a lighter on hand or not, he offered them a few bucks in exchange, which he explained to me after was because he felt it would be easier for them to accept in exchange for a service, no matter how small.

I work for a company that produces a lot of fabric waste. Every few weeks, I bring two big black trash bags full of discarded material over to a woman who works down the hall. She distributes them to local churches, quilting clubs, and teachers who can use them for crafts. She’s currently in the process of working with our building to set up a recycling program for the smaller pieces of fabric that are harder to find use for.

One of my best friends gives monthly donations to four or five local organizations. She’s fortunate enough to have a tech job that gives her a good salary, and she knows that a recurring donation is more valuable to a non-profit because they can rely on that money month after month, and can plan ways to stretch that dollar for maximum impact. One of those organizations is a native plant trust, and once she’s out of her apartment complex and in a home with a yard, she has plans to convert it into a haven of local flora.

My partner works for a company that is working to help regulate crypto and hold the current bad actors in the space accountable for their actions. We unfortunately live in a time where technology develops far too fast for bureaucracy to keep up with, but just because people use a technology for ill gain doesn’t mean the technology itself is bad. The blockchain is something that she finds fascinating and powerful, and she is using her degree and her expertise to turn it into a tool for good.

I knew someone who always had a bag of treats in their purse, on the odd chance they came across a stray cat or dog, they had something to offer them.

I follow artists who post about every local election they know of, because they know their platform gives them more reach than the average person, and that they can leverage that platform to encourage people to vote in elections that get less attention, but in many ways have more impact on the direction our country is going to go.

All of this to say, there’s more than one way to do good in the world. Social media leads us to believe that the loudest, the most vocal, the most prolific poster is the most virtuous, but they are only a piece of the puzzle. (And if virtue for virtues sake is your end goal, you’ve already lost, but that’s a different post). Community is built of people leveraging their privileges to help those without them. We need people doing all of those things and more, because no individual can or should do all of it. You would be stretched too thin, your efforts valiant, but less effective in your ambition.

None of this is to encourage inaction. Identify your unique strengths, skills, and privileges, and put them to use. Determine what causes are important to you, and commit to doing what you can to help them. Collective action is how change is made, but don’t forget that we need diversity in actions taken.

I fully agree with 2&3, but as a fanfic writer i actually find Dexter interesting to write and read about because we don't know a lot about him.

In the books he's witty and often seems to be untroubled by traumatic experiences but it's also hinted that there's a lot of depth to his character. So, it's really interesting to kinda fill in the gaps that Landy leaves.

I guess, that means that I'm more interested in the idea of him as a character than his actual character in the books because there's really not a lot about him there... (it´s the same with Saracen, Aurora and the Monsterhunters)

The few scenes where we can catch a glimpse at his character are really interesting. Take TM7 for example: He could have told Skulduggery about the god killers and let him deal with them but instead he assembled a team and took care of it himself. If you combine that with him constantly seeking out adventures all over the world, it shows that he needs to be constantly fighting for what he believes is right - even after the war is over. The other dead men (except for Skulduggery) all settled down but not him. Skulduggery fights because of his guilt and his need for revenge. So what about Dexter? There must be something in his past that drives him. Maybe war is all he´s ever known, so he doesn´t know who he is or what to do after it ended or maybe there´s something dark in his past, too. We don´t know, but that makes him interesting. 

That´s where my personal headcanon sets in: His father fought against Mevolent. While he was away, his mother raised him and his siblings, but due to the high child mortality rate he´s the only one who made it past the age of ten. His siblings all died. Anyway, while his father was fighting, his mother got killed by the mortals in their village for being a witch. Dexter had to watch helplessly. It made him so angry that he lost his way for a couple of years. He ran away, until he was taken in by a family that supported Mevolent. They raised him, so he took on their beliefs. Only several years later when he saw a whole village of mortals get slaughtered, he remembered how his biological parents raised him. He ran away again. This time in search of the resistance, but when he finally found it, he had to find out that his father had recently died in battle. That´s when the guilt and the self loathing began. He joined the suicide mission with the other dead men as a way to punish himself. Obviously, it didn´t work out. Not that time and not after. Then the war was over and he still felt like he needed to make up for his mistakes. That´s why he takes on missions by the sanctuaries all over the world, why he helps wherever he can. Sometimes that´s enough, sometimes it isn´t. It´s always been this way, but know he doesn´t have the other dead men to talk to anymore. They all drifted apart after the end of the war. So he has to find other, less healthy coping mechanisms. They don´t work, but he puts on a brave face and laughs it off. Then the war between the sanctuaries starts. He would never admit it, but fighting alongside his brothers again is the best thing that could have happened. Until they die, one after another. First Ghastly and Anton. Then Ravel. Even though he´s a traitor it still hurts. He gets possessed by a remnant. Just one more thing to feel guilty about. It doesn´t matter, he can handle it. But then Saracen dies. His best friend for centuries dies and he can´t handle it anymore. It´s all too much. He doesn´t want to fight anymore. Skulduggery is the only one who´s left but he only ever cares about Valkyrie nowadays. Tanith tries to cheer him up. She really really tries. It doesn´t work. Saracens death is what finally broke him.

unpopular sp opinions?

1- If Dexter wasn’t hot, people wouldn’t find him nearly as interesting - not his fault, but the lack of actual characterisation of any characters after book 7, with everyone becoming the same generic sorcerer, is pretty awful.

2- Tanith and Ghastly never even went on a date and y’all made out that they were soulmates -_- Like feel free to ship them but I feel like after Ghastly’s death everyone was like oh my god how is Tanith ever gonna get over the death of a man who she only spent four books with, when surely we should be focusing on the dead men who’d lost their best friend of FOUR CENTURIES

3- Militsia + Val are actually cute together and I quite like the reality check she’s giving Val

He's such an underrated character and like the only sane person in the earlier books

does anyone else just occasionally rlly miss kenspeckle grouse tho

but as someone who was actually around when the first movies came out in the seventies, the new ones would probably be a huge disappointment for Tan

I can so imagine, her going really overboard with her reaction and being in actual despair over the bad plot of the new movies... Val would be stuck between fits of uncontrollable laughter and trying to console Tan

Would Tanith know about the new Star Wars films? Because of the remnant? If not, I can totally see Val telling her about them and Tanith practically screaming with delight.

she goes to grimwood (grimwood???? i think it’s grimwood) and she and val marathon them together while tanith sneakily feeds xena popcorn

China: I do not “spew profanities.” I enunciate them clearly, like a fucking lady.

When I was in ninth grade I wanted to challenge what I saw as a very stupid dress code policy (not being allowed to wear spikes regardless of the size or sharpness of the spikes). My dad said to me, “What is your objective?”

He said it over and over. I contemplated that. I wanted to change an unfair dress code. What did I stand to gain? What did I stand to lose? If what I really wanted was to change the dress code, what would be my most effective potential approach? (He also gave me Discourses on the Fall of Rome by Titus Livius, Machiavelli’s magnum opus. Of course he’d already given me The Prince, Five Rings, and The Art of War.)

I ultimately printed out that phrase, coated it in Mod Podge, and clipped it to my bathroom mirror so I would look at it and think about it every day.

What is your objective?

Forget about how you feel. Ask yourself, what do you want to see happen? And then ask, how can you make it happen? Who needs to agree with you? Who has the power to implement this change? What are the points where you have leverage over them? If you use that leverage now, will you impair your ability to use it in the future? Getting what you want is about effectiveness. It is not about being an alpha or a sigma or whatever other bullshit the men’s right whiners are on about now. You won’t find any MRA talking points in Musashi, because they are not relevant.

I had no clear leverage on the dress code issue. My parents were not on the PTA; neither were any of my friend’s parents who liked me. The teachers did not care about this. Ultimately I just wore what I wanted, my patent leather collar from Hot Topic with large but flattened spikes, and I had guessed correctly—the teachers also did not care enough to discipline me.

I often see people on tumblr, mostly the very young, flail around in discourse. They don’t have an objective. They don’t know what they want to achieve, and they have never thought about strategizing and interpersonal effectiveness. No one can get everything they want by being an asshole. You must be able to work with other people, and that includes smiling when you hate them.

Read Machiavelli. Start with The Prince, but then move on to Discourses. Read Musashi’s Five Rings. Read The Art of War. They’re classics for a reason. They can’t cover all situations, but they can do more for how you think about strategizing than anything you’re getting in middle school and high school curricula.

Don’t vote third party unless you can tell me not only what your objective is but also why this action stands a meaningful chance of accomplishing it. Otherwise, back up and approach your strategy from a new angle. I don’t care how angry you are with Biden right now. He knows about it, and he is both trying to do something and not doing enough. I care about what will happen to millions of people if we have another Trump presidency. Look up Ross Perot, and learn from our past. Find your objective. If it is to stop the genocide in Palestine now, call your elected representatives now. They don’t care about emails; they care about phone calls, because they live in the past. I know this because I shadowed a lobbyist, because knowing how power works is critical to using it.

How do you think I have gotten two clinics to start including gender care in their planning?

Start small. Chip away. Keep working. Find your leverage; figure out how and when to effectively use it. Choose your battles, so that you can concentrate on the battle at hand instead of wasting your resources in many directions. Learn from the accumulated wisdom of people who spent their lives learning by doing, by making mistakes, by watching the mistakes of their enemies.

Don’t be a dickhead. Be smarter than I was at 14. Ask yourself: what is your objective?

Why the heck did I give this post a like?? This is awful and making me really sad :( 

Just thinking about how Dexter is completely alone and everyone he loves is dead and knowing Landy he's probably going to die soon and if he does it'll probably be for a pointless reason