#but they can get thru it

[stevespookington]

Signs: With their season in a tailspin, Richmond try to right the ship against mighty Manchester City. Off the pitch, everyone faces their own setbacks.

Sunflowers: A friendly match takes the team to Amsterdam, where one night out unlocks truths for many.

Boxes: The Greyhounds try a new strategy that has everyone thinking outside the box. Sam prepares to host a VIP guest at Ola’s.

The second act of season 3 of Ted Lasso is about taking that belief, the belief that they have been treating as a passive thing, and extending it. It's been a sign, something they could literally point to, but they hadn't quite gotten it yet.

They made it back to the Premier League, it was a miracle of the power of belief. And then everyone was doubting them and they were struggling to ignore that doubt, struggling to shrug it off. But they were trying, trying to just "let it flow."

But then they had Zava, they could believe in him instead. It was another miracle. They were going to win.

And then that belief was shaken when they realized that Nate hadn't just left them, but had tried to destroy the idea of Believe on his way out. And it rattled them.

And they started to lose.

They started to lose and then Zava left. Zava left and they lost again. And then, when Ted told them they just needed each other the sign fell down. It was a sign. Belief wouldn't save them. They were clinging to the idea of belief, it had brought them together. It united them. And now it was gone.

It is a sign. I agree. Yeah. In fact this, it’s just a sign. All right, guys, listen to me. Belief doesn’t just happen ‘cause you hang something up on a wall. All right? It comes from in here. You know? And up here? Down here. Only problem is, we all got so much junk floating through us, a lot of times we end up getting in our own way. You know, crap like envy or fear, shame. I don’t wanna mess around with that shit anymore. You know what I mean? Do you? Well, do you know what I wanna mess around with? The belief that I matter, you know? Regardless of what I do or don’t achieve. Or the belief that we all deserve to be loved, whether we’ve been hurt or maybe we’ve hurt somebody else. Or what about the belief of hope? Yeah? That’s what I wanna mess with. Believing that things can get better. That I can get better. That we will get better. Oh, man. To believe in yourself? To believe in one another. Man, that’s fundamental to being alive. And look. Yo, hey. If you can do that, if each of you can truly do that… can’t nobody rip that apart.

And this? This was something new. They had taken the idea of belief and thought it was something they had to see. Ted believed in them. They had the sign to prove it.

But then Nate tore up that sign.

And Ted took it down and he didn't replace it. Instead he told the team what they needed to hear. What Ted needed to hear.

It was okay to be a mess. Nothing had to be perfect. You can fail and keep trying. The belief of hope.

Things can get better. Ted can get better. He can recognize his past and embrace it, instead of trying to become perfect. You can be a mess and still have hope.

The players need to believe in themselves, believe that they will have one another's backs.

And then in Sunflowers we see the team bond. They have been unstable for so long, leaning on Zava instead. Following Zava. Getting the ball to Zava.

Not one another. Zava.

And so Issac doesn't let them split up. They have to bond again. Relearn that belief in one another.

But not everyone is there.

Colin is still struggling with the idea of making those two lives of his one. He doesn't want to be a spokesperson. He wants to trust his team, trust them not to care. He wants to believe in them. But he can't yet. He's been in survival mode for too long. He hadn't had anyone who really got it. What it would mean, to be the first out one.

Until he sat down and talked with Trent. Trent who has been in the press rooms. Trent who has torn down players. Trent who knows what that must feel like.

Until he could say, I have two lives and it is fucking hard. He has two lives, he has been compartmentalizing. Putting his lives in two separate boxes.

But Sunflowers ends on a higher note. Everyone has gone out and done something that they needed to do. A new experience, something to give them hope. Something to strengthen that tenuous belief.

The way I see it, we’ve been playing too rigid, you know? Our guys need freedom. Go wherever they wanna go. Follow their guts, their hearts. As long as they remember to fill in the space that someone left behind. They gotta have one another’s backs, that’s for sure. But, you know, it’s just constant, nonstop motion. Just going from position to position until positions don’t really even exist anymore. It’s fast, fluid, free. With full support.

They have been too structured, too rigid. They need to be faster, have more freedom.

They have been constricted by the expectations of others. The expectations of the pundits and everyone putting them to finish last.

The expectations of society to do things a certain way. To love a certain way. To have their brains work a certain way. To play fucking football a certain way.

They need something new, something different. They need to approach it all from a different angle.

Instead of putting things in a box, all tidy and neat. Boxes can be useful, make things easy to think about. But they can also be a fucking cage.

Once you start confronting one thing, once you break out of one box. It is easier to see the other boxes. The other cages.

"Well, if I was wrong about this, what else?"

"What has been compartmentalized that shouldn't be?"

"We turned this box into triangles, what else?"

But it isn't easy to confront things like that. Things that have been ingrained. Rigidity can be useful, it can make things strong. But too much of anything is a bad thing. Even too much belief if they do it wrong. Belief in a sign is blind faith.

To believe in yourself? To believe in one another. Man, that’s fundamental to being alive. And look. Yo, hey. If you can do that, if each of you can truly do that… can’t nobody rip that apart.

It has always been about breaking free of boxes, breaking free of cages. Challenging societies expectations of what defines masculinity, what defines a leader, what defines a family, what defines belief.

What other cages are there for our characters to break out of? Expectations of how to succeed in their worklife, how to succeed as a boss, a friend, a player, a partner.

One doesn't expect to get from life what one has already learned it cannot give, rather, one begins to see that life is a kind of sowing time and the harvest is not yet here. He was just a humble preacher's son. And yes, he had his demons, but they never stopped him from searching for beauty. Because when you find beauty, you find inspiration. If, that is, you stay as determined as Vincent. Never stop, no matter how many failures. When you know you're doing what you're meant to do, you have to try.

When you know you're doing what you're meant to do, you have to try.

As viewers we always have expectations too, when we watch a show, how do we break out of those? How do we break out of our own boxes and challenge what we think should happen based on what we know about other shows plots and stories.

Maybe we do know how it ends, maybe we don't.

A lot can change in six episodes, think of how far we've come already.

The second arc of season three is all about belief and being trapped in boxes and needing the freedom to get free.

But once they figure their way out of their boxes? Their cages? Once each of the players on can really and truly be themselves? Be free? Skies the limit.

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

It won't be easy, there will be communication issues and they probably will step on toes, literally, along the way. But they will be there for each other.

They will be there for each other with their new found belief in each other, not in a sign.

[chloesimaginationthings]

Abby went into the pit and made a FNAF friend..

[souporsaladnatural]

Obsessed with the sudden shift in Cas' willingness to say insane romantic shit to dean in season 8. A couple of seasons ago, he would tell dean that they had a profound bond to his face. That everything he did, he did for Dean. Now? He's hesitating. He clenches his fists to avoid hugging Dean back in purgatory. He stutters and looks away before saying he stayed away from Dean to protect him. When asked what broke through heaven's brainwashing, he looks away and says he doesn't know. It's so interesting to me

[starry-bi-sky]

FUNNIEST fucking shit that comes with making Danny eleven years old when he had his accident in "late at night, when the nightingale sings" is the implication following, that everything that happened in the show did too. And I fully intend on (mostly) keeping it like that. There'll be some changes (of which I need to figure out) but for the most part??? Yeah relatively the same.

Like I FULLY intend on keeping Dark Danny occurring 6 months post accident. Do you know how fucking HILARIOUS that is??? That Dan got his ass kicked by a goddamn FIFTH-SIXTH GRADER?? I'd never show my face ever again. Homeboy spent the last ten years being a one-man mass extinction event, only to get his ass beat by a kid who hasn't even lost his last baby tooth. That's hysterical. I'm losing my mind just thinking about it.

AND PARIAH DARK TOO. Imagine being an eons old tyrant capable of dragging whole towns down into your dimension, and you get singehandedly shoved back into your coffin in less than 48 hours by a kid whose bedtime is still 8:30. You didn't even have the time to expand your army! You were still trying to take over the city the kid came from!

And he just!!! Shoves you back in!! Insane! This kid hasn't even been dead for a full year yet! He's still growing in his ghost fangs! And he just knocked you flat on your ass in an oversized mech suit. What the fuck! It's like looking down and seeing a four week old kitten meowing very indignantly at you and trying to bite your feet, except that kitten is also actually a black-footed cat and they have a 60% kill success rate, and oops! Now you're dead. You took too long laughing at the kitten trying to attack you that it clawed up your pant leg and ripped out your throat.

COULD I, realistically, span these episodes out over the course of 2.5 years prior to Danny's family dying?? Yes I could! Do I think it's hilarious (and horribly traumatizing, which makes it twice as fun) to shove all of this into the span of (roughly) a year instead?? Yes. Because the show has such a skewed timeline that I've always just assumed that at the end of the show, Danny was starting his sophomore year in high school. So fuck it, lets go for it!

[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.

[lucabyte]

monologue

[inkskinned]

the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.

[aprito]

(tw blood) the kids spend so much time with each other it's heartwarming

[pokeberry5]

i feel like i never draw tim smiling but bb robin tim smiles a lot! (in between angst and tragedy)

brought to you by my continued attempts at figuring out tim’s early robin hair

[squinkoblinko]

hes thinking real hard about eating a yummy sandwich

one with no crazy filters cause why not zzzz

[meamiki]

silly comic based on a time i struggled to read live on stream :thumbsup:

context clip compilation below ASDASDFASA

(cw for brief mention of hospitals/strokes)

[sanjipussyindulgence]

watching the kaiju no. 8 anime and the kafka + reno dynamic is so top-tier. contrasting reno, a sterotypical edgy anime teenager, with kafka, a pretty regular guy in his 30s, has such endless comedy to it.

they're father-son coded but reno did the adopting. he saw how lame and wet kafka was and fetched the adoption papers out himself.

[artemistics]

Paul swallowed. The figure in front of him turned into the moon's path and he saw an elfin face, black pits of eyes. The familiarity of that face, the features out of numberless visions in his earliest prescience, shocked Paul to stillness. He remembered the angry bravado with which he had once described this face-from-a-dream, telling the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam: "I will meet her." And here was the face, but in no meeting he had ever dreamed.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

binging drawtectives... have u seen them. have u frickin seen them!!!

[whatsjulietslastname]

HEY GUYS REMEMBER WHEN CHLOE WANTED MAX TO BE THE LAST THING SHE EVER SAW BEFORE DYING. BTW GUYS. REMEMBER WHEN CHLOE SAID “i’m never leaving you” AND “that’s okay we will, forever” AND “Max, i’ll always be with you”. GUYS GUYS GUYS HOLD ON REMEMBER WHEN CHLOE SPENT YEARS TALKING TO MAX IN HER DIARY BECAUSE SHE COULDN’T LET HER GO GUYS. AND WHEN SHE TOOK MAX BACK IN A HEARTBEAT BECAUSE SHE MISSED HER TOO MUCH. OH AND BTW REMEMBER HOW THEY WERE CHILDHOOD BEST FRIENDS AND GREW UP TOGETHER AND FELL IN LOVE AND ARE NOT LINKED ONLY BY A ‘trauma bond’. DO WE REMEMBER THAT. COLLECTIVELY.

[socksandbuttons]

You are single handedly helping me survive my wifes death my godd my godd sobbing at your fucking baby nexus shit pleasee pleaseee draw him happy and often andssdd fucking hugging sun or se bullshit i dont care as long as hes hhhapy im crying and aobbing rn /big silly btw

dfvkjsd Im glad im helping people also cope with this for nexus

I can provide babying-

Even throw a bit of Moon actually chilling with Nexus.