#that would make me feel good

[floral-hex]

so tired of feeling sick all of the time. I’m in the middle of moving, this time to an upstairs apartment, and just carrying one box up the stairs kills me 😰

[mroddmod]

everyone be quiet i'm manifesting

[egophiliac]

still ruminating over Lost In the Book With Spooky Skeletons Part 1, so here's a selection of some of my favorite little bits! (...some more loosely paraphrased than others) (I just feel like Idia has no room to criticize in general, okay)

anyway, I'm sure we're just going to have a fun time celebrating Halloween and nothing bad is going to happen whatsoever! :)

[addamii]

I got inspired by this post by @thatneoncrisis and I also wanted to draw butch Nona because butches can be silly goofy colorful too and let nobody ever tell you otherwise

[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.

[datcravat]

It seems there's a new lawyer in town!!!

[hinamie]

can't believe im saying this but long time no megumi

[bacchuschucklefuck]

class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Why are you running?

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[sulfurzee]

Prophet of the River

[stars-obsession-pit]

Danny got out.

Danyal al Ghul was created by the League of Assassins alongside his brother Damian.

Created, not born. Though they were both grown in the same lab, Danyal always felt the status quo. Damian was the heir, the real son, the one they cared about. Damian got to be a person, the one for whom human terms like “born” would fit.

Danyal was just the extra. The bodyguard to die in his brother’s place and a spare should he be lost.

And Danyal died.

Shed his old life like a snake’s skin and vanished into the bustle of a crowded city.

They would tell Damian it was a mission that went wrong. A failure, like Danyal always was.

But Danyal would call it his first real success.

Danny Fenton loves their new life.

Jack and Maddie, for all their unsafe work practices, care for them. That’s far more than their blood “family” in the League ever did.

Far more than they felt they deserved for the longest time.

So when their brother reached out, tried to reconnect as if they were normal siblings instead of born tools, is it any wonder they lashed out, told him to never come back?

Danny got out. Danyal is dead, one ghost Danny is happy to put down forever.

[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.

[vaguely-concerned]

the things it adds to both of the characters involved that lucanis used to have a thing for viago could not have been more tailor made to be for me. literally the ideal thing to come out of this game for me personally and specifically and spiritually. I mean I'm teia x viago trash until the day I die and nothing will ever change this (and with the best will in the world and even the power of lucanis' big beautiful soulful eyes, that would never have worked out even if viago DID somehow understand he was being propositioned. which I'm not convinced he did. the mutual 'so. snakes are pretty cool huh. and. knives. also' awkward energy without someone of teia's charisma and people skills involved to mitigate it... it would have been dire), but on so many levels I find it so incredibly charming for what it says about them both that the (one-sided) attraction was there once.

what's more, it means the man about whom this legendary paragraph was written:

Viago was not a typical Antivan. He liked facts—checklists, numbers, precise measurements. Heart palpitations, clammy hands, tight pants—Viago did not like these things. In fact, he would go so far as to say he hated them. Mild curiosity was his favorite mood.

has got some of the hottest coolest deadliest people in thedas down so catastrophically bad it's got them acting unwise. teia had to wait a UST-drenched decade for him to be ready to take his fucking gloves off for her. and she did!! the tetchiest most neurotic least approachable little vetinari knockoff of a man you ever saw has game for days and days and lives rent free in heads for years. in eight little talons viago consistently feels so inadequate up against dante and it's like. man I'm shaking you by the lapels you have what he'll never have. the ability to bewitch body and soul with your terrible personality and long thin legs. do not waste the gift you've been given go get her she's waiting!!!

(lucanis is really good at reading people, so I wonder if maybe he saw through all of that to some of the steadiness and incredible capacity for warmth and tenderness in specific interpersonal relationships you see viago have with teia when he finally opens up enough, and maybe that was part of it. either way it's so perfect that both he and teia have regarded viago with this affectionate intrigued amusement. lucanis still seems pretty fond of him in a 'viago continues to be exactly himself no matter what else happens or goes wrong. comforting universal constant' sort of way, he brings him up quite a lot in party banter.)

you've seen lucanis' game in this day and age, arguably or at least hopefully older and wiser -- can you imagine how catastrophically bad it must have been back when he presumably handed viago, most paranoid man in thedas all years running, a knife like this expressed everything it needed to. people give him so much shit for the cake moment being his big romantic lock-in, but considering where we started that is GROWTH and I for one am so proud of him fhsdkjaf.

also I wonder at what point vis-a-vis that whole Situation teia and viago met for the first time, leading us to ask... just how much was it a matter of lucanis simply being ignored out of a lack of interest on viago's part (tbf, not entirely unlikely). how much was it lucanis truly not managing to make himself understood. (all but certainly. literally how would one understand that. I think it says some sweet things about rook and lucanis' dynamic that they -- somehow -- DO pick up what he's putting down in a similar scenario presumably b/c they know him pretty well by then haha.) how much was it viago interpreting the romantic move as a death threat from one of the most dangerous people alive and freaking out. (1000% and indubitably.) and how much was it andarateia steal-your-girl cantori turning up and thus setting off whatever spectacular, volatile, awesome-in-the-original-sense chemical reaction between the substances of her and viago's souls that goes on to this day and makes everything else kind of a side note at best. a gentle mix of several of these things, perhaps. ...god I love all these characters so much

[lazylittledragon]

the only thing scarier than vampire lords/mind flayers/death cults is meeting the in-laws

[keferon]

What are your thoughts on a decepticon prowl?

Oh I'm all for it. But! Only if he's actually a Con. Like. Wholeheartedly.

Not "nnnooo we're doingg a bad thing and I kind of dont wanna do bad thing but I have no choice poor me".

You know how in canon he truly believes he's on the right side and makes everything to ensure that Optimus wins the war? You know how he's willing to make every tough decision so Optimus doesn't have to risk his reputation? You know how he literally makes Autobots look like shiny brave and clean heroes who did nothing wrong ever?

I want all that but the other way around. I want him to do that for Megatron and for the Decepticons. The implications would be so fucking dramatic I could write a whole essay.

Low rank Cons would hate him so fucking bad.

Starscream would try to murder him at least once a day.

Megatron would absolutely treasure him. Autobots would have it r o u g h

Can you imagine

[ffcrazy15]

There's this way of doing female-ness in Christianity that I call "pastel flower journal Christianity." I've got nothing against pastel flower journals per se, but for some reason people believe it's the end all and be all of female spirituality, and I think it's a real disservice towards young Christian women.

One of these days I'd like to start a prayer-and-reading group or something for young women, but there would be no floral themes or over-focus on how "God thinks you're beautiful even if the world doesn't" (a true statement, but it's wayyyyy too often the focus in women's spiritual reading). Instead we would be reading:

Seneca's Letters from a Stoic

Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning

Sheed's A Map of Life

Portions of Pieper's book on leisure

Kreeft's Three Philosophies of Life

Guardini's The Lord (or something similar)

Therese's Story of a Soul

and some select portions of the Nicomachean Ethics.

(Also they're all getting the porn talk. I don't know why we give the porn talk to young men but not young women. There's this idea that women don't use porn and they only need the talk about "guarding their heart." Bullshit. There's porn on the YA shelves of Barnes and Nobles and before that there were bodice rippers. Young women need the porn talk too.)

Every young woman needs to be getting a basic grounding in virtue ethics, logic, natural law, scholastic philosophy and Biblical hermeneutics if they're going to get by in today's spiritual landscape. Enough faffery and emotionalism in young women's spiritual education! Give them real food to chew on, not pasty sentimentalism!