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.
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you ever watch a video essay expecting some sort of passionate takedown of a fictional character, then you get hit with breakdown of our current political climate, society, the issues of certain male role models, and how men don't get enough media that helps teach them to heal from trauma
i mean it was enlightening; worth the watch and educational, but now i have other modern things to worry about, like stupid algorithms being confused about what the fuck i've been finding and trying to figure me out
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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.
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ok but that kid Mobius couldn’t prune was Loki right. like, that was Loki right. The brothers at the dock. That was Loki and Thor right. It was Loki
Mobius couldn’t kill Loki, chose his burden, and dedicated his life to him instead.
Mobius’s story started and ended with Loki. It had to be Loki.
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going insane thinking about the harrow and palamedes friendship. harrow, who has never met another necromancer her age forming a bizarro 3D chess rivalry while pal worries about her safety at every possible turn. harrow, who is up to her eyebrows in paranoia and secrecy, trusting the sixth house with gideon unconscious and hurt, letting them into the ninth house quarters unsupervised. if “i cannot conceive of a universe without you in it” is goth for i love you, “death first to vultures and scavengers” has got to be goth for i love you (platonic). pal’s first reaction when harrow comes into his bubble in the river is to scoop her up in a hug, and at this point she doesn’t remember anything about him because cutting out all her memories of gideon is impossible without cutting out memories of the sixth, but she still makes him a skelehand to inhabit anyway. when harrow’s memories are finally whole, she tells dulcinea she couldn’t face pal knowing that his pen pal girlfriend died on her account, but the next time she “faces” him, palamades’s soul is in someone else’s body and harrow’s body is full of nona’s soul. he spends six months protecting and caring for harrow’s body (and nona obv), believing in the possibility of bringing her back to it the same way cam believed in him. “god, do you know i miss harrow terribly.” and by the time harrow comes back to her body at the very end of ntn, pal is gone forever, fully pauled. the last time harrow and palamades see each other as their complete selves is in canaan house, alive and unlyctored. two of the smartest and loneliest people in the solar system meet each other in the worst of circumstances and spend the rest of the story dancing around each other as fragments of themselves, trying to care about each other in the interim but never fully meeting like they did the first time. a friendship made almost entirely of missing the other person. “do you know i miss harrow terribly.” god. i need to lie down
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Danny may be a Ghost Baby who feels like an Anicent, but his friends don't.
SO, we all know the Ghost Baby Headcanon by now right? The idea that Danny is literally a Toddler by Ghost Standards, but because of how powerful he is everybody else believes that he is an Ancient or a God who is hogging the Mortal World to himself.
But what about his friends?
They were right there when the Portal opened. No Hazmat Suits, no Cover, no Protection from the Dimension of Pure Energy that had just been opened right in front of them.
That has to have some kind of Side Effects!
And actually, we do know of a Character who was just standing in front of a Portal when it opened and still got affected by it. Vlad.
While Danny was turned into a Halfa instantly, his friends would be more similar to Vlad in that they are slow to transform.
It takes weeks, but eventually they become mini-halfas themselves. Except they didn't have an entire Dimension of energy pushed into them upon fully forming, so their Ecto-Signatures actually feel like the babies they are supposed to be.
So imagine this from the Ghosts perspective.
They meet this guy called Phantom, a Halfa who is Extremely Powerful, but nobody has seen him in centuries. He was known as a very powerful Protector Spirit for millennia, randomly showing up across history, but always helping others. And then he just vanished one day, not seen again for centuries.
Until recently, when he showed in the Mortal World, stopping any other Ghost from fulfilling their Obsessions with Humans. And by his side are 2 smaller Halfa's that feel like they must have barely formed. You can see where this is going.
They think Sam and Tucker are Danny's children.
It makes sense! A Powerful Ancient, known for protecting people, suddenly disappears for centuries and then shows up again with 2 baby Halfa's in tow? That sounds like a Protector Spirit who lost his will to fight, decided to settled down in the Mortal Realm, and then found out that 2 baby Halfa's were formed when a Portal was opened!
He isn't selfishly holding the Mortal Realm to himself! He's protecting the Fledgling Haunt of his 2 Babies! They must still have living Family, that's why he is so adamant that they don't hurt the Civilains in their battles!
Now they just feel like assholes for attacking the Baby's dad when he was just trying to protect their stuff.
Danny finds this both extremely infuriating, and also agonizingly hilarious.
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