#family by choice ages

[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.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 345

Let it be known that none of them actually expected the idiots’ of the week’s ritual to work. The summoning hadn’t worked for literal centuries- everyone knew it had been sealed away, presumably forever!

(Of course they had no way to know that in the Infinite Realms actually used the term forever as a measurement of time, what with how time itself wasn’t particularly linear within. And to beings that could hypothetically live for eternity? Forever was a nice vacation time really) 

So maybe they hadn’t been exactly focused on stopping the ritual as much as they could of been, and by the time they realized it was working, well, it’d been a bit too late then. So yes, mistakes had perhaps in fact, been made. 

First had come the chill, the cold of the ground as your body was lowered down, the cold of your blood dripping from your living corpse. Then came the shadows, the darkness creeping along their vision as their soul slipped from their body. Followed by boiling heat, flames scorching through their flesh and tearing from their chests like a blade piercing their hearts. 

The form that emerged was massive, a cloak dripping crimson fluttering in the wind of an unseen battlefield, verdant flames licking at the air and causing the surrounding shadows to writhe. A dark growl echoed through the building, the stone below them shaking while deathly green eyes glowered down at the living with utter contempt. 

“Do any of you imbeciles know how long it takes to get ghostlings to sleep-” 

[otaku553]

New blorbo :)

Also a silly interaction with this piece

[vaguely-concerned]

can you even imagine what a fucking horror show the early game is from spite's perspective, though. not only is this funky forcibly severed little slip of the fade having to deal with the reverse cosmic horror of physical reality as perceived by a spirit and being trapped in it against its will -- existentially confused and disoriented and hurting and nothing makes any kind of sense, at the mercy of human cruelty at its most deliberately sadistic. and then the one source of comfort and compassion and some kind of safety and clarity that lucanis surely must have been to him in the ossuary despite everything just goes and shuts himself in his room inside with a seemingly passive aggressive number of locks between them and no explanation and won't speak to him and they're STILL in the fucking ossuary. rook came and found them and they could be free now (rook is here!) and still lucanis keeps them in the ossuary even though he PROMISED he promised they'd get out of there together!!! what the fuck DO you think at that point? like did he trick me that whole time??? he wasn't like zara before, so why is he doing this to me now? why isn't he saying anything? 'he won't move. I can't reach him'. at least in the ossuary they had a deal, a goal, a hope -- each other. at least he wasn't entirely alone, before.

this poor poor poor little spite spirit really was ferried into the real world like 'hey welcome to reality! as your first introduction to it you're first getting horrifically tortured and then getting to vicariously experience one of THE most distressing and harrowing psychological conditions the human brain can cook up for itself (a fully fledged and deeply entrenched freeze response flaring up with catastrophic severity due to an unbroken ongoing and unlikely to let up any time soon chain of Unfortunately... Recent Events). I think spite is being extremely reasonable and patient about the whole thing, when you put it into perspective. I'm not saying let him eat the self-lighting candles or anything, but he's got some extremely valid points along the way lol. spite is not only child-like, the metaphor work going on is a lot more pleasingly flexible and complex than that, but he is also helplessly existentially dependent on lucanis in a way that, if anything, is a heightened version of the way a child (or child part) has to depend on a parent to navigate the world and survive.

tl;dr: we truly don't give enough sympathy to spite for having to live in the head of lucanis dellamorte. a place even lucanis dellamorte would prefer not to be. to be fair to him I think lucanis would be the first person to agree with this lol

[tootysweetcheeks]

“Touya was evil from the start, he tried to kill baby Shouto”

People when the clearly neglected/emotionally neglected and abused child, riddled with unhealthy jealousy doesn't act morally correct:

[ikemenomegas]

@animeomegas This post crossed my dash and I immediately thought of you with cockblock sasuke headcanons haha. Itachi might be exasperated at worst and desperately horny at best during that time, thinking he understands and Sasuke will too when he's older. But I love the idea of Itachi who is sorely mistaken, has pups by the time Sasuke is courting, and is just like this. Suddenly extremely concerned for Sasuke's modesty, "are they making you wear that?" when Sasuke wears something revealing, tries to be nice because he knows Sasuke wouldn't accept someone he's not already serious about, but Itachi's eye is sort of twitching and his alpha has their second child in their arms and are staring at him like "are you okay?" when they have a second alone at a family dinner. He realizes Sasuke might be having extramarital sex and accidentally squeezes a chicken too hard when he's carrying it around in the garden and gets screamed at by a hen - not like Itachi didn't also, but Itachi was already practically married by then! and is his stupid cute little brother being safe? is it possible to be sneaky about taking him to the doctor to get checked out?

Itachi might be a little insufferable during Sasuke's teenage emo/goth rebellion too. Like he learns how to make clothes specifically because he knows Sasuke will wear anything Itachi gets him and they're all cute bulky sweaters or comfortable traditional robes. Sasuke mostly wears them around his house or when he's visiting Itachi, but it lets Itachi delude himself into some semblance of imagining Sasuke dresses like that most of the time instead of being bare chest out in the streets.

Ooh! and maybe part of Sasuke's courting story is running into his future alpha on the way back to his family's home from Itachi's house and he gets flustered and embarrassed at how obviously adorable they find him in sweater paws instead of his current off-both-shoulders, no juban, open-down-to-the-navel uniform.

[insufferablemod]

i keep thinking about post game aus where Davesprite survives(AS HE SHOULD HAVE) and the whole,,, Name issue that creates theres 4 things ive seen ppl do 1. keep the name Davesprite(feels dehumanizing af, makes him being not the 'Real Dave' part of his core identity) 2. change his name(can make sense as a part of self discovery and reclaiming ur own identity, trans coded, But also again, kinda legitimizes his whole identity issues at the same time, he shouldnt have to compromise his identity just cus some fucked up shit happened 2 him, hes just as much Dave as Dave is) 3. give Davesprite a nickname (can be cute but again, prioritizes the other daves identity as dave) 4. call them both Dave(validating, but can get confusing af(especially in written works)) i believe i have found a solution tho give them middle names

[polls4you]

Found Family Battle (First Round)

[thunderclangens]

thunderclan is almost ready to rumble for ClanGen! click for quality lol

[rocker-socks]

I see your Bruce adopts Billy au and raise you Diana adopts Billy while Bruce hovers on the sidelines playing godfather who has the adoption papers ready if something bad happens. Jon also gets this treatment.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

my greatest achievement in DA2 is maxing out Carver's friendship

and all it took was begrudgingly kissing a little templar ass in act 1 because Carver didn't want to plan a prison break if my Hawke got his ass arrested for being stupid.

[andromedaexists]

i'm trying to gather fonts for the recipes in D'Jeet? WIP and my cover artist made me question some things so now i need y'all to answer me a question:

[wangxianficrecs]

Flowers Blooming by Ilona22

Flowers Blooming

by Ilona22

M, 35k, Wangxian

Part of the MXTX Epic Journeys Big Bang

Summary: At the coast, there is a city where they say the most beautiful of flowers live. Among them, one shines for many reasons. Wei Ying is orphaned when he is four years old. Unlike in another world, he does not have to wait years to be found by his father’s martial brother. Instead, he is found by a woman looking for a child to love. From that, he grows up differently. Some things are changed. Other matters are not influenced by the absence of one child. And yet others were written in the stars long ago. Kay's comments: A lovely canon-divergence story where Wei Wuxian gets adopted by commeners before Jiang Fengmian can find him. He still manages to grow into a formidable cultivator, but he also gains other talenst and a whole family! And when the Sunshot Campaign breaks out, he also meets Lan Wangji and of course, they fall in love. Really enjoyed how this story breathed life into the world outside of the gentry sects and expanded on the world-building of MDZS. With beautiful fanart by @krynnibear Excerpt: “We owe gratitude to that cultivator then. Do we know his name?” Lan Qiren asked. “No, they described him as very young, about Wangji’s age. Dressed in grey and a colorful underlayer, archer’s bracers,” she reported. Lan Wangji was interested, there were not many cultivators his age who could have successfully taken on all those ghouls. And from what Lan Lin reported, he had not taken money from the women in the teahouse, either. He sounded kind, and very skilled with talisman craft. It might just have been the way the tale was passed on, but some of those described did not sound like the standard talismans. “There have been reports of a cultivator of this description in several places,” Lan Mingchen remarked, telling them what he knew. There was no discernible pattern to the cultivator’s movements. Odd, as most rogue cultivators moved along trade roads, or in a fixed area. But all the tales added to the picture of a young man willing to help even without a big reward. Lan Wangji hoped he would be able to met him one day.

pov alternating, canon divergence, wei wuxian isn't adopted by the jiangs, rogue cultivator wei wuxian, inventor wei wuxian, genius wei wuxian, different first meeting, sunshot campaign, slow burn, falling in love, coming of age, getting to knew each other, strangers to lovers, families of choice, happy ending, cultivation sect politics, supportive lan xichen, supportive lan qiren, fanart

~*~

(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)

[frogaroundandfindout]

You remember when dick was in space (for the first time with the new teen titans) because komand’r took Kory back and they needed to save her? And you remember how he understood it was a war they were fighting and that they needed to do what they had to in order to survive it? And how when Gar told him he needed to control Kory, dick wondered if he even should try to stop her from killing her sister? And how he literally killed to save her (there’s some deniability but he’s literally hitting them with lasers described as deadly right in the head)? I do.

[csphire]

Is nobody else upset by this?

Warning: Major spoiler for Dragon Age Veilguard below regarding Varric and Solas.

Please bear in mind I've not gotten to the end of fail guard yet but I've been spoiled in this aspect. (Yeah that's what I'm calling this action game in a preschooler-level RPG guise as I'm holding my nose in order to play it.) I know Varric is dead-killed by Solas. But I don't understand why I've yet to see any commentary at all over how an Inquisitor, Lavellan especially, forgives Solas for killing a mutual friend?

Because I can't see my Lavellan forgiving him so easily. Sure he is trying to restore the world to what it was before knowing full well demons will kill some people. I can understand that and he doesn't have blood on his hands directly. He did take measures to minimize casualties etc. But apparently killing a mutual friend with one's own hand is a step too far.

What? Does Solas say something akin to, "Oppsie I didn't mean to kill him I swear! I was aiming for his shoulder and the fate of the world and all." How do we move past this finely polished coprolite? It just makes Varric's whole story arc and life seem cheapened. Where is the memorial?

Most of all I hate how it's only Rook who didn't know he was dead. Sorry, I can't suspend my disbelief that far although I could certainly swallow the idea better if Solas misled the two companions who were there also. Certainly one of them shed some blood too, right?