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.
“i, criston cole, a grown man in my early twenties (when the show starts), met the princess when she was 14 (in hotd) and 8 (in f&b), groomed her, and then had sex with her while she was intoxicated (and still a teenager) but my stans seem to believe that i, A GROWN MAN, was the one taken advantage of and raped.”
even though she was a child in f&b and these were unsubstantiated rumors. even though he’s been an adult since the show started and she was still a kid. even though he’s been her closest confidant for years and watched her grow up. even though the writers and producers and show runners and actors ALL AGREE that it was meant to be consensual in the show. CRISTON is the one who was taken advantage of? CRISTON is the one who was raped? either get real or get slapped because i have no time for that type of bullshit.
@artisticallyill you asked about the Battle Cody & Obi so here it is
This one is definitely a bad name. While technically accurate, it's not the defining thing about this. Battle Cody & Obi is the name of my drawing that is my Codywan FMAB AU. Truly the title says nothing, and idk what i was thinking when i named the drawing but it's my fmab au
Here's it is so far:
In this au, the jedi are the state alchemists, Obi-Wan is a general and a state alchemist and a highly revered one but I don't know what his alchemy specialization is yet. Cody is his right hand who watches his back and has several big guns and people are scared of him.
I imagine this drawing to be them fighting Maul, who would absolutely just set a bunch of things on fire, not even with alchemy but with straight up matches cuz he's petty like that and Cody and Obi-Wan are trapped by the fire and waiting to see where he strikes next.
When I was ideating this, I realized that their dynamic is already pretty similar to Mustang and Hawkeye, especially with the "we can't date cuz you're my superior officer/subordinate" and the "i will flirt with others as a tactical move but it's fake and the real adoration only comes out with you"
hiiii ok has anyone else ever thought about the person robin was before joining the straw hats? like who she was when she was at her worst? because i do. a lot. so go along with me here
from her introduction, robin has this very small smile that feels cunning and is seemingly meant to taunt luffy and co. it creates a sense that there's a canyon's depth of difference in power between her and the others.
robin's is a subtle character in her expressions compared to most other major characters in the series. and i think it fits her background of having to work in subterfuge. (???)
she maintains this expression throughout multiple scenes. the same shape of her smile that is so exact that it has to be with intention. this is the face of ms. all sunday. this is the person robin had to be in order to survive.
and yet each one still has it's differences and that's robin being not so perfect at hiding her true feelings (which btw i love that robin will always be exactly who she is). she's stressed or even strained at times. while also feeling perfectly at ease, but still performing a role.
i think for the most part. robin didn't mind what she had to do or who she had to be. because she's pragmatic, but she was definitely bothered by vivi and the strawhats. they're the ones who cause robin to show anything other than that static smile. notably when she is faced with vivi and luffy's determination.
and i've rambled about it once before robin is a kind woman at heart and who has a soft spot for the crew + vivi. their earnestness breaks through her own desire/need to not care for the effect her actions have on the lives of others.
notably the only times robin does seem to genuinely smile is in small sudden outbursts around luffy when something he does makes her laugh.
and throughout the rest of the alabasta arc. robin's clearly uncomfortable with facing the real destruction of alabasta at crocodile and her hands. later revealing that she never planned on helping him obtain the poseidon weapon. she never once smiles, instead dropping everything to focus on getting to the poneglyph.
after that though? she does her miss all sunday smile one last time when she asks luffy to join his crew. it's a famous panel, we all know it, we all love it.
the longer robin was with the straw hats. the more she began to genuinely smile. it's well established that being on the crew brought back joy and laughter into robin's life, that being with them gave her a reason to live again. but it was a slow start until we got to see this robin more often and more freely who is cheered by everyone's bright youth and excitement in being alive in a ways that she never had been allowed.
(im maybe thinking a little too much about that totk rewritten project ..)
had a cool idea and wanna know what people would prefer; after you beat ganondorf once, marking the half way point of the game, would you rather:
get a long cutscene in which you see some of his memories, that shows why he ended up there and why he is the way he is, with you occasionally being able to walk around in them
get a few sudden flashes of memories, nothing detailed or clear but have 'miasma hearts' spawn across the surface and underground map, a tree like growth of miasma that holds an important memory from the past; they unlock in order of them happening as there are several stages of growth to them, you can find all before seeing the first one but you cant access the memory until the 'tree' has matured, they will grow more the closer you are to unlocking them; they slowly lead you back towards ganondorf and you need all of them to unlock the endboss
tired of early 20-somethings acting like harry potter was never good or had no value in its day like shut the fuck up half of you weren't even there when it peaked
mizutaigen is literally like. the first "toxic" m/f ship i've ever cared for. cuz like usually my taste in m/f ships is basically "unhinged baddie" x "badass wifeguy" *
* (see:yen/geralt. trevor/sypha. adolin/shallan. kataang but katara is sane and they're literally so wholesome like theyre traumatised kids in love who are each other's emblem of hope in a war-torn world! so basically they don't count. anyway. i'm rambling.)
and to that end my friend called mizutaigen yaoi-adjacent and im like. yeah you're right actually cuz like hell yeah non-binary mizu and bisexual taigen rights and all the gender fuckery in the show in general
but also like.
theres just SOMETHING else about mizutaigen that just GETS me. like there's a special secret sauce like the pheromones in that one sephora lotion attracting spiders and i am the silly spider!!! there's just something about it!!! it's not even the enemies to lovers trope cuz i personally am not even usually into that (obv it's fine if you are. but yk.)
so as i keep rotating these thoughts around i thiiink it's the fact that, yknow, theyre so similar. like i honestly truly think they could be besties in another universe: a kinder universe where taigen was not taught to hate. a universe where mizu was not born a girl in a deeply misogynistic society or half-white in a xenophobic homogeneous society.
yeah now that i think about it that really just might be THE secret sauce!!! like the fact that they COULD be perfect and happy together, if only things were different, if only they werent themselves.
smth v bittersweet about that's just driving me insane and makes me want to root for them to overcome all those obstacles, to say "fuck all that" (re:the world and all its fucked up shit) and find each other in the end. to eventually become each other's fav person and confidant. who obv still bicker and tease and insult each other all the time but they dont really mean any of it and over time it just becomes a running gag between them and no one else has to get it because it's just between the two of them.
suggestion do you have... any wants? like obviously you do but like? suggestion my guy my ourple boy. both the easiest and hardest to write. you need a skill to say something to move conversation along but it doesn't fit any skill in particular? about 80% of the time you can have suggestion say it and it will make sense. but like actually characterizing him... how do i define you dude... what makes your character tick... urgh. i dont get you yet. im trying to understand but you are difficult.
Biting the bars of my enclosure about autistic ford tonight. There's something about him using vocabulary and turns of phrase that seem "outdated" or "pretentious" that feels so painfully genuine to me. When people say he talks like that just to "try to sound smart" I wish I could explain what it's like to be so ostracized from your peers growing up that you spend all your time reading instead, to the point where you pick up your way of speaking from books instead of from people. And then what it's like for people to call you out for "talking weird" over and over again, not able to wrap their heads around why the fuck you would choose more archaic or technical or formal words than the simpler ones that surely come to everyone's minds first. What it's like to have to dedicate a sizable chunk of attention to filtering through every single word you say out loud in real time before you say it, to make absolutely sure that it isn't a word people will judge you for using or make fun of you for using, just so you'll have a chance of being taken seriously. Learning through trial and error how to filter out the words that other people don't think are normal or casual enough for the conversation, even though for you, the word choice that's "natural-sounding" enough for them is the third or fourth word you came up with when searching for the right way to phrase something in your head. I wish I could explain just how long it takes to say fucking anything after spending a lifetime doing that during every single conversation, and how repetitive and long-winded you end up being when you spend so long coming up with alternative ways of saying every little thing you ever think. And I wish people realized that, at the very least for autistic people and autistic-coded characters, speech that's seen as pretentious is really just the way they talk when they're not putting in the extra effort to filter through every word they say just so others will take the time to listen.
there r fics that make u insane (so amazingly good it’s removed ur sanity) and then there’s fics that make u insane (you need to fistfight the author for how they did a specific thing that caused u to rant for hours)