#but don't get your hopes up loves

[andthebeanstalk]

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!

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.

[a2zillustration]

Raphael is the perfect character 10/10 no notes

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[[ All Croissant Adventures (chronological, desktop) ]]

[[ All Croissant Adventures (app) ]]

[upperranktwo]

☆Tomura Shigaraki☆

Happy Birthday Adrienne ♡ @tenkoushimura​

[justanotherignot]

The Sword of the Moonmaiden and the Servant of Selûne.

[pain-in-the-butler]

A compilation of art for my Dadbastian fanfic Coattails that I commissioned from the incredibly talented @tomoyoo! They went above and beyond with the details... Each picture feels as cozy and warm as a storybook, right? I'm so delighted with how they turned out!! Thank you for making each one so beautiful! 🥹🥹🥹

[starryluminary]

You Matter To Me

Sara Bareilles (ft. Jason Mraz)

╾━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╼

◃◃ II ▹▹

Noah and Cody have a quick chat.

Cody really didn't expect to like Noah as much as he does. He also didn't expect Noah to make him this happy. That's why it hurts when he realizes Noah's better off without him. Without his baggage, without his adversity, without his mess. Man what a mess it is. He wouldn't blame Noah in the least if he thought it was too much to handle and left without looking back.

Fortunately, Cody matters too much to Noah to let him go so easily. Cody couldn't be more grateful. Maybe one day he'll learn to tell him.

[musicalchaos07]

Sighing in Steve & El have never interacted onscreen together so how exactly is he her big brother

Meanwhile, her ACTUAL big brother performed emergency surgery in a mall food court and drove across 3 states trying to find her

But y'all don't like him.

[flowery-laser-blasts]

Drakken: You're a loser, baby... Shego: ...A loser, but just maybe if we, Both: eat shit together, things will end up differently. Shego: It's time to lose your self-loathin', excuse yourself, let hope in. Baby. Play your card, be who you are: Both: A loser, just like... me.

My friends and I watched the first four episodes of Hazbin Hotel and honestly this song is too catchy (+ I really really love this visual in the number). I'm weak for Keith David's singing voice.

[doodleodds]

Happy Valentines, Akira. Happy Valentines, Asshole.

If you can’t read what Akechi’s secondary inner-dialogue says cause I obscured it too much behind his regular dialogue, here’s a transcription in panel order: Hello, you fucking- Ah- Hello, Akira! Fuck off, why should I tell you- Just a soda- there’s a new flavor.

I don’t want your shitty gift. Oh- haha! You’re so sweet.

I hope I choke. They’re lovely, thank you.

Like hell. Likewise. There’s no way it’s just a coincidence. Still though, it’s a funny coincidence.

[cluescorner]

I cannot imagine being a Damian stan right now. You've got both Zdarsky's bullshit (where he clearly doesn't give a shit about your boy) and The Boy Wonder (where Juni Ba clearly gives so many shits about your boy) coming out on the same day. The whiplash must be insane. I hope y'all get some nice warm soup for your efforts jfc

[ride-a-dromedary]

#also *is* it canon that he’s like 7ft at least?? bc he has to be#average elf height is 6ft I know this bc. yknow. I’ve read the elf parts of the 5e descriptions#and iirc bg3 moooooostly follows that#so everybody saying ‘oh Halsin is 6ft tall’ THATS NOT EVEN TALL FOR AN ELF THAT IS AVERAGE

@whatever-man-whatever I have been summoned!!

The short answer is no; Halsin's height has not been canonically confirmed in game as far as I'm aware (though I would be a little dodgy if it was anyway, and you'll see why in a moment, but mainly due to the fact that because Halsin is still considered a medium creature, as an elf, the game lists his weight as 75KG - look me DIRECTLY in the eye and tell me that man is 165lbs). And, as far as I am aware, there hasn't been any confirmation of his height from Larian either (though I am happy to be corrected if they have).

But you know whose height has been canonically confirmed? Astarion's. And you know that that leads to? The long answer, which is: logical approximation time with yours truly.

Larian tweeted Astarion's height as being 5'9" in 2021:

Which is slightly contradicted by the fact that, when playing as a Gith character in the full release, you can choose the option to describe Astarion literally to him when he asks:

Which - while understandably says 'approximately', so it is just a logical guess on Tav's part - obviously contradicts what Larian indicated previously by implying he's 5'11". Likely this was changed in the two years, or just tossed out there as a joke, or genuinely just mixed up (but I much prefer the 'gith count hair as height or are just not very good at height estimation' and @winter2468's theory that Astarion just wears lifts in his shoes).

However, what this does give us is a point of reference, with the possible height range of Astarion (and I suppose by extension the lithe elf body type in player characters) being somewhere between 5'9" and 5'11" (both a little on the taller side of the average for an Elf in 5e descriptions, but very tall for - say - 3e descriptions).

Now, this has to be taken with a grain of salt because all of the smaller male body types are the same height, so a visual doesn't necessarily say TOO much, however:

(Note that this is the two of them standing side by side in their idle pose, which means they are balancing weight on one of their hips, cocking it to the side. Astarion's idle pose also has him lifting his chin considerably, which makes him look a little taller. These both affect the measurement slightly but bear with me. I have also made an estimation as to where Astarion's skull would actually begin in relation to the bouffant of his hair)

So what this immediately tells me is that Halsin cannot be only 6ft - he stands significantly taller than an individual who is allegedly between 5'9" and 5'11"

A few more for good measure:

(The left bottom image is Astarion standing straighter with Halsin still bent at the knee - I have also noted that Halsin's left shoulder slopes lower than his right when standing idly)

So it's evident, by visual average, Astarion stands pretty consistently at about Halsin's shoulder. The only times they don't stand at this same relation in height difference is in character sheet screens (and level up screens by extension):

Which is what I meant by a little dodgy in visual base, so for the sake of this we'll keep outside of menus.

The average height between the shoulder and the top of a head is approximately 1 ft (with of course variations of neck length and head size in between, but let's stick with average for ease)

THEREFORE - if it looks to be that Astarion stands pretty consistently at the height of Halsin's shoulder, give or take an inch or two, Halsin is approximately about a foot taller than he is. And if Halsin is about a foot taller than he is, and Astarion's canonical height sits somewhere in the range of 5'9" - 5'11", that leads to reason that Halsin stands at somewhere in the range of 6'9" - 6'11".

(The other source of this conclusion is that I feel it in my heart that Halsin is pushing 7ft because I reason his height would need to be significantly above average for everyone to make a comment on it)

[catlover4536]

My part of an art trade I did with @bloomynmoon!

[someterriblewonder]

The bitter, desperate demeanour of someone who's been fucked with just a little too much.

[crescentfool]

forever thinking about minato's swag moment (courtesy of @mymp3) <3

[tcfactory]

This is fully a personal preference thing honestly, but I've been turning it around in my brain why I don't like BingQiu specifically when I'm at worst neutral on almost literally any other ship and I think it boils down to this: it's really important to me that in a ship that's supposed to be lasting and stable at least one character can say "I see you for what you are and I accept you for all there is to you". And that's just not a thing with BingQiu.

Binghe literally can't know a huge part of Shen Qingqiu - the part that is Shen Yuan, the part that wears the scum villain as a mask that it can never even take off completely - because of the transmigration and the System. He also idolizes his Shizun and at the same time puts on mask after mask so that he can be Shen Qingqiu's lovely white lotus which also don't help.

And Shen Qingqiu's head is full of so many bees, so much denial and self-delusion that we watched him actively think himself in circles rather than admit that Binghe might be interested in him for three whole books. I don't trust him to have a reasonably realistic idea of himself, much less of someone else. Especially not Binghe. He will make up a picture in his mind about how things are supposed to be and it has to be an act of divine intervention for him to budge from it. He will deny reality if he has to, so he's incapable of seeing Binghe as anything other than the Perfect Protagonist.

I don't often see Binghe shipped with others (he's so singularly No Thoughts Head Empty Only Shizun that it's hard to put him with anyone else. Shen Jiu sometimes I guess, but he is shipped more with Bingge which feels like a distinctly separate thing to me and anyway, it's usually predicated upon the realization that they are both similar kinds of monsters, even if Bingge outdoes his scum villain by several orders of magnitude) but Shen Yuan has a few choice ships that either challenge his expectations enough that his denial and delusion breaks down eventually (Liu Qingge, Shen Jiu, etc.) or ship him with Airplane who knows him for what he is because he's also a transmigrator and he's familiar with Cucumber bro's acerbic inner self.

Other ships too. QiJiu/LiuJiu/QiJiuLiu any variations of these three tbh thrive on clearing up their misunderstanding and starting to see each other clearly again. MoShang get together once they start to properly pay attention to each other and their respective needs. Airplane in general has just an impossible understanding of whoever he's shipped with as only Author and his creations can have. Tianlang-jun's weird charm comes from it that he can't (or possibly refuses to) pretend to be anything than who and what he is beyond the most superficial disguise.

And BingQiu just doesn't have that. They are both too obsessed with an idealized version of each other to ever see things clearly and that's what makes their dynamic not very fun to me personally.

[uncanny-tranny]

Hi! would you by any chance have tips on how to get a binder when your parents refuse to buy you one? ☹️

That's definitely a sensitive and complex answer, and while I might not know of the best option for your unique situation, there are some ways you can go about this.

If it's a foregone conclusion that you cannot convince them of this, what I used to do is DIY my binder. The ways I primarily did this were:

Option One: Wearing a camisole that was one size smaller than I actually was (so, wearing a small instead of a medium, for instance), then folding it up over my chest. As a disclaimer, this may only work well if you are smaller in the chest

Option Two: Layering two sports bras in my size over each other. Some of the DIY tips I found before I got a traditional binder advised to wear one sports bra in your size, then wear another sports bra backwards in a size smaller. I would advise against this for potential safety reasons, but also because (at least personally), it can be ineffective and a waste of resources.

Some people have also had friends or other family members order their binder for them, but this can be risky, depending on your situation. While I don't know the ins and outs of your specific circumstances, risk management is important to me, so I would recommend this if it is a risk that is acceptable to make.

I understand what it's like to not have access to this resource, so what I will do is advise you against:

Binding with ace bandages (I did this before (multiple times, in fact, because of dysphoria), and believe me, not only did it hurt like hell, but it constricted my body so heavily that I may have done long-term harm)

Wearing a DIY binder (or any kind, for that matter) for longer than your body can handle

Doing DIY in such a way that even mimics binding with ace bandages. This means that your binder shouldn't constrict your ribs, breathing, or range of movement

Here are some general good practices that you should use to guide you for any type of binding, whether traditional or DIY:

When you start binding, only do so in very short sessions to begin with. While binding shouldn't outright hurt, it can be a weird transition while your body is getting used to that new sensation

Minimize heavy lifting or exercise while binding. If it is unavoidable, drink plenty of water and take plenty of breaks

Stretch after binding

Don't bind while sick or have inflammation in your lungs or chest

If you DIY, treat your binder like it is a traditional binder. Don't make the mistake of assuming you don't need to listen to your body because you aren't using a "traditional" binding method

Ultimately, listen to your body. If it is telling you that it needs a break, honour that. Your body isn't punishing you, it is trying to keep you (and it) safe, even if it doesn't feel like it

In the end, this isn't perfect. Sometimes, parents do come around, even in their own ways, even if little by little, they come around. When I first came out officially around 2016, I was convinced that my transition would be completely forbade by my family; I concealed a lot of it in the worst instances of this. However, now, I think most of my family has come through their own journey with the understanding of the reality of what and who I am. I tell you this, anon, because I want you to know that this, too , shall pass. You can make it. I know this might be devastating to you, and believe me, I know what that's like. But it won't be forever. These bridges aren't burnt forever, and I hope you can find your happiness and contentment wherever it may be.