#it didn't tell

[ablndfsh]

how do I open the door

in baldis basics on the laptop

[lylahammar]

My take on unicorns! I'd really love to make a mythical creature field guide someday, since the Spiderwick Field Guide is what inspired me to start drawing in the first place 🥰

[jzargo]

"oh Astarion is SOOOO effeminate" wrong. You are judging Astarion by human genders. Astarion is first and foremost a high elf and by high elf standards he is actually INCREDIBLY masc. Other high elves look at him and he reminds them of that one annoying straight guy in their elf-economics (elfenomics if you will) class in elf-college who loved playing devil's advocate. And then they see him kiss a guy and they almost die of shock.

[jamjoob]

Oh hyenas & their catnip 🙂‍↔️

[madlori]

My ankle journey

I am sharing this with all you good people on the dash because I am so fucking mad it took so long for me to learn it and if I can spare one (1) person the agony it will be worth it.

So for like...oh, 8 or 9 months, I've been struggling with pain/inflammation/tendinitis in my left Achilles tendon. I don't know what caused it. It just started up (welcome to middle age, this shit happens). It wasn't severe enough to be debilitating, but it was annoying and limiting. It was also intermittent, in that some days it would be very painful and other days hardly at all. The kind of shoe I was wearing affected it a lot.

Now, I have bone spurs on both heels (it's just a thing that happens as you get older sometimes). I'm also aware that heel pain is usually the result of tight calf muscles that pull and irritate the tendon. I tried stretching that calf muscle. You know the stretch, this bitch right here:

I did it all the time. I also iced the ankle after walking for awhile, hoping to avoid inflammation. Results were...unsatisfying.

I went to:

A chiropractor

A podiatrist

A physical therapist

A bodywork coach

They all gave me some variation on the "strengthen your calf muscle, stretch your calf muscle" advice. I continued doing this without results.

I was getting frustrated, and a little afraid that this was just my life now. Finally, I thought...maybe some targeted massage might help. I asked for rec on a local FB site and was pointed to a woman who specializes in therapeutic massage including cupping, etc.

I went to her a week ago.

She spent over half our first session working on my left lower leg. Within about 10 minutes of making my eyes water, she uttered the sentence I did not know I had been waiting to hear:

"Oh, it's your soleus."

Excuse me, what?

"It's your soleus that's the culprit. It's all tied up and stiff." She started digging into it and I felt literal sparks run up my leg as she released adhesions and got the muscle moving a little. When she finally put the leg down, it felt like it was on fire with all the blood rushing into it.

She said, "You'll need to stretch your soleus. It'll clear up, but it'll take a bit of time - tendons take ages to heal."

But I HAVE been stretching.

"No, you haven't. The usual straight-leg calf stretch only stretches the gastrocnemius, that's the big belly muscle in your calf. That's not your problem. That stretch doesn't stretch the soleus. Don't worry, I'll show you how to stretch it."

My mind is spinning.

So here are the muscles in question:

The gastroc (as the pros call it) just attaches down the back but the soleus runs underneath it from the knee around the side to the heel. The lower part above the ankle is where it typically gets tight and forms adhesions.

To stretch it, you do the same calf thing where you put your foot back and press your heel to the ground, but you have to do it with your KNEE BENT:

The bent knee keeps the gastroc from engaging. It's one of those selfish muscles (like traps) - if you give it an inch, it'll just take over and prevent other muscles from working or stretching. There are other ways to stretch the soleus but this is the easiest and you can literally do it anywhere. I've been doing it while standing and waiting for things (the elevator to come, the toast to toast). You just put the heel back and bend the knee. It's kind of like curtseying.

The minute I did this stretch, I could FEEL where it was pulling on my tendon. I knew that THIS had been the problem.

The massage therapist also told me to stop icing my heel. She said icing is for an acute injury, but a more chronic aggravation needs heat, to increase blood flow for healing. She recommended elevation with heat every day (I've been doing it in bed during "phone before bed" time).

I have been doing the soleus stretch at least half a dozen times a day for almost a week, and the ankle is at least 70% better. It is still a little tight and tender, but the improvement is significant. I think a few more weeks will have it feeling normal.

I am...blown away by this. This massage therapist was able to pinpoint an issue in only a few minutes that eluded all the other professionals I saw. I can't wait to go back to her and have her solve all my other problems, tbh.

[ladybracknellssherry]

Why didn't anyone tell me this is a play on a bible quote? First time I regret being raised by atheists.

Can't believe some gay ass show got me reading the bible.

[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[annabelle--cane]

sure, "I'm part of this marginalized group that I'm writing about" isn't a get out of jail free card for all bigotry, but if someone says "I'm portraying an exact experience I've had, this literally happened to me" and your response is "okayyy but think of the optics of showing that that happens? maybe keep that to yourself?" it might be time to reconsider your approach.

[excali8ur]

When you meet your past lives but they're all ignoring you and freaking out over this one guy?

I've seen a few versions of this floating around with the different Leos and I wanted to have a go at doing one for Mikey. They're all collectively realising what a bus sized bullet they dodged by not ending up as messed up as Ronin

[sachermorte]

the way they sometimes introduce fish to lakes cracks me the fuck up because they literally will just drop a bunch of them out of an airplane

imagine that happening in the warrior cats universe. dudeheart, respected warrior of riverclan is trying to chill and enjoy the five minutes of peace he has today. his new apprentice is a dipshit. the deputy is on his ass. thunderclan is up to something weird. he just wants five minutes. five goddamned minutes to himself to sit and organize his thoughts.

and then a giant metal bird screams by and dumps a fuckton of fish into the lake

what do you even say after that. what do you even do. it never fucking ends for dudeheart. it's always fucking something

[hermit-frog]

[abd-illustrates]

💖 Alchemy 💖

Finished art from this week’s video! Idek how long it’s been since I got the chance to sit down and do some fully rendered character art, but revisiting Alchemy for this one was SO refreshing! (Tho y’all’s kind comments on this vid have been even more so, tysm 💖)

[DO NOT EDIT OR REPOST TO OTHER SITES / ACCOUNTS] ♻️reblogs are lovely tho!♻️

[massiveladycat]

leo shouldve learned how to cope with his trauma and his need for validation instead of rick slapping a girlfriend on him and calling it a day. in this essay i will-

[mythicalcoolkid]

You don't wish your disability was worse or more visible, you wish your disability was taken seriously. Please stop confusing the two, I guarantee you would not get the support you need JUST by being more severe or more visible. Please listen to visibly disabled people when we tell you it isn't better on our side

[arthur-lesters-right-arm]

Thinking back to the time I was about halfway through TMA and was explaining the plot to a friend who has never listened to a single episode and they tried to make one of those "Soup was invented by John Soup when he wanted to drink a chicken" jokes and ended up saying something along the lines of "The Magnus Institute was created by John Magnus when he wanted to make an institute for all the fears" and at the time I was like haha good one bro but in hindsight I think I need to fucking throngle them with my bare hands

[multigenderswag]

This just in: Multigender people are intentionally being transmisogynistic if they choose not to disclose their assigned gender.

That is. Certainly a take.

(Context of this reply: A discussion on how genderqueer/multigender people who were assigned female don't want to say that they were assigned female because they want to escape accountability for being transmisogynistic and don't want to be seen as TME. And not because, you know, trans people don't owe you knowledge of their agab and it's quite frankly transphobic to demand that)