#and for making my life better

[musette22]

Obviously, 2022 was a shitshow in many regards. Lots of bad stuff happened, particularly in the world in general, and in my personal life, too. Nevertheless!

I’d like to take a minute to acknowledge the good things that happened in my life as well, because while they don’t won’t make the bad things any better, the good things matter, too – they’re just easier to forget 🙃

So because I love making lists, I made a list! And then debated whether or not to post it on here or to just keep it to myself and my loved ones, but eh, what’s the harm in sharing? Most of you won’t be interested in reading about all this of course, but maybe some of you are, and maybe it’ll remind someone else of the good things that happened in their life as well. Who knows.

So, here goes (I’ll start off with some fandom things and put the more personal stuff & some pics under the cut):

Most importantly (lol) (no but really): I finally saw Chris in the flesh this year, at the Lightyear premiere in London, on his birthday. AAAHHH 😭💙🌟

Sebastian was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe this year!!! 🏆

Both our boys had a highly successful 2022 and we got so much amazing content from both of them ✨️

I made some wonderful new fandom friends (you know who you are) who made this year infinitely better, and this fandom gained a ton of incredibly talented authors and artists whose beautiful writing I got to enjoy. Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for making my own & many people's lives a little (a lot) better 💘

I wrote a few fics that I’m really proud of this year (even if I’d have liked to have written more) and I'd like to think I’ve grown and improved as a writer compared to last year✍️🏻

I got another Stucky tattoo ❤️

I met up with some very awesome fandom pals in real life, twice! @ohhsodebonair & @puppypeter - I love you to bits 🥰💫

I got to go back to some of my absolute favourite cities in the world in 2022. I went to London (and Oxford) twice this year, and I saw some of my best friends again for the first time since moving back to the Netherlands/since the pandemic, which was absolutely wonderful 🇬🇧

I went back to Italy, for the first time in years and spent a couple of glorious weeks in Florence and Venice in springtime, drinking wine and revisiting all my fave spots from when I used to go there a lot as an art history student 🇮🇹

I went back to New York in the autumn and also got to see beautiful Boston for the first time, and had an amazing vacation there which included a few other first times as well (first time seeing Harvard, first time seeing the Phantom of the Opera on stage, first time visiting Madison Square Garden, first visit to the MoMA and seeing Starry Night etc.) 🇺🇸

I’ve been self-employed for a few years now, and this year was a considerably better one for my business than last year (I put in the hours too, maybe a little too many hours, but it did yield results) 🪙

I spent lots of time with my friends and their little ones and got to see them grow and turn into amazing little people 🥺💖

I got back on track with running and am back to doing weekly 10ks now 🏃🏻‍♀️

I started doing Duolingo again for Italian and it went way better than expected (all that stuff I learned during all those language courses over the years is still there somewhere!) 🦉💚

I figured out some really complicated stuff this year (health stuff and financial stuff) and I’m quite proud of myself for persevering until I had the answers I needed 💪🏻

There were several moments this year, particularly in the last month or so, where I looked back at a situation that had occurred previously and realised how much I had learned from it, and that I handle similar situations differently now. Call that growth, I guess 😌🌱

Alright, that’s the gist of it, I think! If anyone else would like to share their highlights too, I’d love to read about them!! 💗 And here's to 2023: maybe it bring us all more good stuff than bad stuff! 🙏🏻💫

And because I can't help myself, a little collage of some of my favourite pics/moments from this year 🥰

[spyglassrealms]

had a fucking hilarious dream that tumblr replaced the "block" function with the far funnier "glock" function, which did the exact same thing except whenever anyone blocked you a random bullet hole, like a png of a bullet hole, would appear on your blog. discourse blogs were unreadable bc you'd go to the page and the sheer amount of bullet hole pngs stacked over the blogs obscured everything. I woke myself up laughing

[laughingcatwrites]

As a reminder that good exists out there, a coworker recently confessed to me that he found out his child is questioning their identity (kid's gender redacted for this post). The kid is keeping it from him, so he can't say anything to them or show that he knows, but he's doing his best to get mentally prepared and educated so that he'll be ready whenever his kid does feel comfortable enough come to him.

For context, this guy is a big, bulky middle aged dude who loves sports and typical outdoor "manly" activities. As his coworker and friend, I know he's a kind and sweet teddy bear of a person, but his kid probably views him as a stern, authoritarian figure, the way most teenagers view their parents. His family lives in a conservative area, so I'm sure between that, their dad's looks and interests, and the fact that their dad is a Figure of Authority, the kid is worried that they won't be accepted.

But you know what? When he found out about his kid, the first thing he did was reach out to his closest queer friend and ask for resources for parents of questioning children. His biggest fears are that his kid will be bullied or discriminated against and won't feel comfortable enough to be themself. His second action was to find himself a mentor in another parent who went the same situation (kid coming out in a conservative town). The other person is preparing him for some of the struggles his kid may face and the fights he may need to take on as a parent to make sure his kid is safe and treated well.

Something I want to emphasize for people focused on language as the primary method of allyship is that when we spoke, he used some outdated terms and thoughts about gender and sexuality. That does not make him bad. These were the terms and thinking used about questioning teenagers when he was growing up and he never needed to learn more current ones. But now that he does have that need, he's throwing himself in head first because that's his kid and he's darn well going to make sure that his kid feels welcomed and has a safe place to be themselves even if they never come out to him.

[bigfatbreak]

Birds of a Feather previous / next

[giantkillerjack]

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

[plain-text version of this post can be found under the cut]

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

Plain-text version:

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

P.S. Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

[bixels]

Scary Sunset.

I'm concepting things way outta order in this story, but I'm sure you can piece things together. Context is for a storybeat where, after defeating and capturing Adagio (thus having all three sirens in her possession), Sunset enacts her revenge plot to release the sirens on Canterlot as Thea discovers she's been manipulated. In a confrontation, the two scuffle and fight over the siren orbs while Sunset struggles with her conflicting wants and emotions.

[pitsazawr]

my oxygen

[legally-allowed-to-slime]

pearl and cleo have whatever the opposite of the red soulmate string is

[chalkrub]

saw some mangy dog on the outskirts of town

[triple-pupil]

Man, love when characters' actors participate with them and the fandom on their own, it's so lovely.

Also, had to make an ugly ass doodle about it.

Please spare me, I never drew them before and I was drawing in an uncomfy position.

[egophiliac]

like mother, like son, but less wholesome this time?

(I couldn't decide whether or not to put them together, so have them in all the different ways!)

[sharkylad]

Thinking about the fact that Mabel and Dipper didn't know they had two great uncles.

Yeah they are 12 and at 12 I had a shotty understanding of my family tree- But really? Nobody brought up their great uncle? Stanley? Especially since they'll be staying with his twin brother, Stanford?

Shermie never went to Stan's fake funeral, which to me means the twos relationship was strained on some level. If Shermie is older that means his view of Stan was poisoned in some way, that even as kids they weren't close. If the Shermie is younger then he never even got to meet Stan and all he knew about him was how he failed his family. Hell, people probably barely mentioned Stanley TO Shermie.

The fact that Stan had become a black stain upon the Pines family name makes me so vividly upset. Stanley faked his death and the family just- seemingly decided to strike him from the record. To pretend he didn't existed to spare themselves the sadness and shame.

Stanford and Shermie Pines. The only children worth mentioning of Filbrick and Caryn Pines.

It was never Stanford that was lost to the world. It was Stanley, ever since he had to leave New Jersy- it was always him that had to be struck from the record. Change his name, change his state, change his affiliations, destroy the remains of ghost that was Stanley Pines. Kill him so the family doesn't bring him up, doesn't ask questions, stops asking "Stanford" about his twin.

I just keep thinking about the fact that since the day he made one single mistake all the way up until Ford walks out of that machine- Stanley Pines was killed and did not exist. And Stan himself had no one to blame, he had to play the part in his own demise- He is the only one who ever knew Stanley was alive and has been for decades.

He lives in the multitudes of every personality he's ever taken, all in the hope that he himself can stop being Stanley Pines.

[pokytoad]

photo of a REAL BILLBOARD that my best friend sent me on their daily commute, in case anyone needs money-laundering advice you know who to call

[ameliadoesstuff]

something about s1-3 zane is just. oh this guy is so silly and friend-shaped. look at his friendly boy swag. like????? how could you ever hate him. the ultimate silly

not to hate on his titanium era because frankly it is very cool. but the essence of s1-3 zane is unique and uncapturable. he is just a little guy you can put in your pocket. his default facial expression is so inherently funny. there are no thoughts behind these eyes. i would trust him with my life.

[jabesa0]

💜🐩💜

[tubbytarchia]

got an urge to design ponies oops