In honour of the Vance being autistic headcanon

Imagine vance and Bruce at a party and vance is starting to become overstimulated and restless while Bruce is talking to one of the guys on the baseball team and vance just loops his finger in Bruce belt loop because that’s how he he can sort of ground himself for a while until everything sort of becomes too much and his skin feels like it’s burning and melting off so he quickly slips away from Bruce and runs to the bathroom and locks himself in there. He doesn’t care about the knocking on the door, there’s more bathrooms in the house so they can use those ones.

Bruce knew Vance had walked away but he figured it was to get a drink so when he doesn’t come back after a few minutes he starts to worry and decides to go look for him. He asks around for a while and no one has seen him until he asks a brunette girl if she’s seen him and she points to a crowded hallway. Bruce thanks her and squeezes past all of the drunk teenagers to reach the bathroom at the end of the hall. He figures Vance is in there because all the other rooms in the hallway were bedrooms and he doubts Vance would want to be in anyone’s room but Bruce’s and his own. He knocks on the door in the ‘shave and a haircut’ pattern (yes that’s literally what it’s called I did some digging to find it) and Vance sort of knows it’s him (because no one can knock so softly but so loudly at the same time). Vance slowly stands up and makes his way to the bathroom door and opens it to see Bruce’s worried expression. He opens the door more to let Bruce in and walks back to where he was sitting, leaning on the side of the bath. “You okay?” Bruce asks knowing that it’s a stupid question to ask someone when their cheeks are red and slightly tear stained. Vance leans his head back all the way and looks up at him. “What do you think?” He says sarcastically. Bruce nods and sits down next to him in silence. He knows Vance can’t deal with touch when he’s overstimulated so he just sits. Close enough to bring Vance some sort of comfort. Close enough for Vance to be able to reach out and seek his own physical comfort if he needs it.

I probably won't finish this piece any time soon, but I wanted to share the unfinished version with you anyways!

come back skulk Cub my beloved come back

good games i've played on itchio lately:

please tell me you love me - chat with your guild members for the last time before the game's servers are shut down

GIRLKILLER (covet) - there is a girl who looks like you, and today you're going to kill her

cover me in leaves - stuck in your small hometown, you get your first tattoo. and then a few more, and more, and more

don't rock the boat - play through the different perspectives of a women's crew team as they are stalked by something in the water

GUTLESS - you are the captain of a deep sea vessel. your mission doesn't go well

so, about last night... - you wake up sick and weirdly hungry after hooking up with someone at a party. you spend the next night trying to find her.

close the window, my love - short bitsy poem about closing the window. sound on! this creator has a lot of short bitsy works i recommend.

there is a beautiful star - just a short, cute side scroller. lots of short, lighthearted games from them, definitely recommend for a mood booster.

Mr. Riordan, it is truly a pleasure getting to experience your second draft.

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.

first meeting

Kintsugi is the art of decorating your scars with pieces of Agni.

In the Fire Nation, the amount of golden marks are a sign of status. Only the Royal Family can afford to seal every single wound with Kintsugi. Such is the weight of this tradition that, among the ones with Agni's blood, it is the highest mark of dishonor to have a natural scar, for it proves you aren't worthy of the privilege.

After the Agni Kai, Ozai forbid Zuko's scar to be sealed with Kintsugi. The boy wasn't worth his title, his traditions or his pride. Zuko would be broken, but he wouldn't be beautiful. Not anymore.

(And sometimes it's easier to pretend he never was)

got bored, decided to play some destiny 2 cause why not

new hyrule, old friend

((it's been a hot minute, pls have this humble lil totk drawing :'^D))

i always remember it being harder than i expect it to be to find video of ramiels screams so heres a little compilation

IM SO EXCITED

—Evan already forgave you. He loves you.

<prev

love when men cry about body hair bc "it's hygiene" and yet 15% of cis men leave the bathroom without washing their hands at all and an additional 35% only just wet their hands without using soap. that is nearly half of all men. that means statistically you have probably shaken hands with or been in direct contact with one of these people.

love when men say that women "only want money" when it turns out that even in equal-earning homes, women are actually adding caregiver burdens and housework from previous years, whereas men have been expanding leisure time and hobbies. in equal-earning households, men spend an average of 3.5 hours extra in leisure time per week, which is 182 hours per year - a little over a week of paid vacation time that the other partner does not receive. kinda sounds like he wants her money.

love that men have decided women are frail and weak and annoying when we scream in surprise but it turns out it's actually women who are more reliable in an emergency because men need to be convinced to actually take action and respond to the threat. like, actually, for-real: men experience such a strong sense of pride about their pre-supposed abilities that it gets them and their families killed. they are so used to dismissing women that it literally kills them.

love it. told my father this and he said there's lies, damned lies, and statistics. a year ago i tried to get him to evacuate the house during a flash flood. he ignored me and got injured. he has told me, laughing, that he never washes his hands. he has said in the last week that women are just happier when we're cooking or cleaning.

maybe i'm overly nostalgic. but it didn't used to feel so fucking bleak. it used to feel like at least a little shameful to consider women to be sheep. it just feels like the earth is round and we are still having conversations about it being flat - except these conversations are about the most obvious forms of patriarchy. like, we know about this stuff. we've known since well before the 50's.

recently andrew tate tried to justify cheating on his partner as being the "male prerogative." i don't know what the prerogative for the rest of us would be. just sitting at home, watching the slow erosion of our humanity.

tourism entry agreements for many countries are completely unbalanced and unfair. did you know that people with a canadian passport can go to malaysia without applying for a visa / obtain an automatic tourism visa upon arrival, but if you have a malaysian passport you have to apply in advance for a tourism visa to go to canada? sometimes months in advance? any canadian can just show up to malaysia unannounced and they'll be let in, but my malaysian family has to beg the canadian gov for permission in advance (and get DENIED) just to come see me for a couple weeks. this is what it's like for most western passport holders in general, just because you are allowed free entry to the global south does not mean people in the global south are allowed free entry to the global north.