#ahhhhhh #so Good #

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

via 2rawtooreal2

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NEVER THROW YOUR VOTE AWAY!

(captions added by me)

For Atlantis, Disney needed a new language for the Atlantean people. To do this, Disney hired Mark Okrand, the man who also created the famous Klingon and Vulcan for the Star Trek series. In the Atlantean language, Mark Okrand’s main source for it’s roots and stems of its words are Proto-Indo-European,but as Okrand also described it as being the “tower of babel” or “root dialect” for all languages in the world, he also used ancient Chinese, Latin, Greek, Biblical Hebrew, along with many other ancient languages or their reconstructions. As such, you can actually learn to write and speak the language!

my favorite louis trait is his eye for the future.

I can't get enough of how visionary he is.

this is a man who can look at his surroundings, no matter how dodgy or hopless they may look like, and see opportunity. See the upcoming change. See the potential. And he BELIEVES in that potential, fully, betting on it, believing in it, investing in it. And he's always RIGHT.

"My business could be bigger and just as successful if my girls co-optly own the whorehouse". And it works.

"Yesterday I saw a girl in an old, five year old dress, putting on a new lipstick". And he decides to believe in Paris.

"I'm not an artist, but I know what's good. I'm going to invest in little-known art and real estate, then re-sell it". And he becomes a millionaire doing that.

"This little nervous dude who's interviewing me is kind of an idiot, but I can see that he has potential. I'm going to give him a lifeline and the sheer will to keep working". And he changes Daniel's life.

He's such a hopeful person with an unwavering, profoundly generous kind of intuition. He doesnt HAVE to give back to his employees. He doesnt HAVE TO save Daniel. He sees things nobody else sees. He loves to see things grow.

To call him the first vampire capitalist is fair, but he's so much more than that...to me he's the first vampire since Lestat in the 1700s to be like: this life could be more than we're allowing it to be.

And people call him arrogant and too much because he's black, obviously, but he's SUCH an unflinching innovator and he sees SO MUCH. What arrogance? He's always looking at something beyond himself! Always looking forward! It's an instinct he had while alive, and now he has the time, the respect and the means to MAKE IT REAL.

I really love Louis so much. The first hopeful vampire.

ghosta nova 👻🎸

(youtube)

genesis 🌏

Point

MATT MURDOCK + Reddit Comment Reactions to that One Iconic Matt Tweet

BONUS:

You ever invite your coworker to watch you give birth just to spite a racist

The chicken project is finally complete.