[ID: Colored digital art featuring Lionblaze holding Dovepaw in StarClan and Hawkfrost holding Ivypaw in the Dark Forest. Their positions are mirrored vertically, linked by Dovepaw and Ivypaw's twined tails.
In the top half of the image, Lionblaze holds Dovepaw close to himself, shielding her with his paws, and he growls protectively at the viewer. Dovepaw seems to be uncomfortable at Lionblaze's overprotectiveness, trying to get out of his grasp. She has a solid yellow halo behind her head, and there's a larger yellow ring around her and Lionblaze. Six disembodied eyes are watching them. Outside the ring are several winged StarClan cats, with halos above their heads and around their wrists.
In the bottom reversed half of the drawing, Hawkfrost draws Ivypaw closer to himself, smiling deviously as he covers her face with his paws. Ivypaw looks away with a downcast expression. She has a solid red halo behind her head, and it's dripping like blood. Behind her and Hawkfrost is a dark purple forest of dead trees. Six paws claw upwards towards StarClan. Where the two sides connect are clouds and dripping blood.
The second image is identical, except that it is flipped so that Hawkfrost and Ivypaw are on the top. End ID] ID written by @curlfeatherstar
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.
they want to talk about mental illness and acceptance and how everyone is a little ocd it's cute and quirky and their "intrusive thoughts" are about cutting their hair off and you say yours are about taking a razorblade to your eye and they say ew can you not and everyone is a little adhd sometimes! except if you're late it's a personality flaw and it's because you are careless and cruel (and someone else with adhd mentions they can be on time, so why can't you?) and it's not an eating disorder if it's girl dinner! it's not mania if it's girl math! what do you mean you blew all of your savings on nonrefundable plane tickets for a plane you didn't even end up taking. what do you mean that you are afraid of eating. get over it. they roll their little lips up into a sneer. can you not, like, trauma dump?
they love it on them they like to wear pieces of your suffering like jewels so that it hangs off their tongue in rapiers. they are allowed to arm-chair diagnose and cherrypick their poisons but you can't ever miss too many showers because that's, like, "fuckken gross?" so anyone mean is a narcissist. so anyone with visual tics is clearly faking it and is so cringe. but they get to scream and hit customer service employees because well, i got overwhelmed.
you keep seeing these posts about how people pleasers are "inherently manipulative" and how it's totally unfair behavior. but you are a people pleaser, you have an ingrained fawn response. in the comments, you have typed and deleted the words just because it is technically true does not make it an empathetic or kind reading of the reaction about one million times. it is technically accurate, after all. you think of catholic guilt, how sometimes you feel bad when doing a good deed because the sense of pride you get from acting kind - that pride is a sin. the word "manipulation" is not without bias or stigma attached to it. many people with the fawn response are direct victims of someone who was malignantly manipulative. calling the victims manipulative too is an unfair and unkind reading of the situation. it would be better and more empathetic to say it is safety-seeking or connection-seeking behavior. yes, it can be toxic. no, in general it is not intended to be toxic. there is no reason to make mentally ill people feel worse for what we undergo.
you type why is everyone so quick to turn on someone showing clear signs of trauma but you already know the fucking answer, so what's the point of bothering. you kind of hate those this is what anxiety looks like! infographics because at this point you're so good at white-knuckling through a severe panic attack that people just think you're stoic. even people who know the situation sometimes comment you just don't seem depressed. and you're not a 9 year old white kid so there's no way you're on the spectrum, you're not obsessed with trains and you were never a good mathematician. okay then.
mental illness is trending. in 2012 tumblr said don't romanticize our symptoms but to be fair tiktok didn't exist yet. there's these series of videos where someone pretends to be "the most boring person on earth" and is just being a normal fucking person, which makes your skin crawl, because that probably means you are boring. your friend reads aloud a profile from tinder - no depressed bitches i fucking hate that mental illness crap. your father says that medication never actually works.
you still haven't told your grandmother that you're in therapy. despite everything (and the fact it's helping): you just don't want her to see you differently.
building off of this post, people love to say that “trans men want to keep going into in women’s spaces after they transition because they just want to have the best of both worlds!” but in my experience, there are four main reasons that a trans man might use a “women’s space” after they transition:
it’s an important resource that’s being arbitrarily gendered and we need to use it regardless of which gender is “supposed to” be using it.
it’s a public facility where we’d be significantly less safe in the men’s version and we have to choose our safety over our desire to not be misgendered.
it’s a social space that we’ve been in since before we transitioned and we don’t want to suddenly be cut off from our friends and support system.
the trans man in question is multigender and is also a woman, or maintains some other kind of connection to womanhood alongside their manhood.
do any of those sound like “evil men rubbing our dirty little hands together making plans for how we’re going to get male privilege without losing access to women’s spaces” to you? they sure don’t to me!
i think it’s pretty reasonable that we want to transition without losing the ability to access the resources we need, keep ourselves safe, keep up the relationships we’ve built, and express all facets of who we are. all of those are really, like, pretty basic parts of having good life and we shouldn’t be expected to give them up when we transition.
and honestly, if you claim to care about trans people, you should not be so attached to the gendering of these spaces that you’re willing to deny trans men those things for the sake of upholding gender restrictions. anyone who prioritizes the sanctity of gender segregated spaces over the safety, health, and well-being of trans men is a fucking transphobe. (yes, even if you’re trans yourself.)
and that’s what really gets me about all of this — the vehemence with which people are willing to defend those spaces being entirely and inflexibly gendered, despite how enforcement of gendered spaces has hurt trans people time and time again. gendered spaces have literally always been set up in ways that force trans people to break the rules; some trans men might break those rules in ways that don’t make sense to you, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong for us to do so! it just means you might feel weird about it and that’s okay, discomfort won’t kill you.
“but using women’s spaces after transitioning to male defeats the purpose of transitioning! the whole point of transitioning is to be able to live as a man!”
and who are you to tell trans men what the point of our transitions should be? what if the purpose of us transitioning is just to live the happiest and most fulfilled life possible, and forcing ourselves into unsafe spaces or denying ourselves access to important resources or cutting ourselves off from important people in our lives or pushing down the more complex parts of our genders would “defeat the purpose of transitioning” for us? what if being able to go where cis men go is just one part of a much bigger journey, not the end goal?
if you really want to talk about “defeating the purpose,” let’s talk about how policing which gendered spaces trans men can access defeats the purpose of trying to stop cis people from policing which gendered spaces trans people can access, because it allows the policing of trans people in gendered spaces to continue in some form instead of eliminating it altogether. let’s talk about how using “evil men invading women’s spaces” rhetoric against trans men defeats the purpose of trying to stop cis people from using it against trans women, because it allows the rhetoric to continue in some form instead of eliminating it altogether.
the point of saying “let people decide which gendered space is right for them” isn’t to make sure everyone uses the one aligned with their “true gender,” it’s to let people do what’s best for them without punishing them for their choice. sometimes the best choice is one that seems wrong from the outside, and you need to learn to live with that.
i just think we as a community need to be more hostile toward people who think upholding the sanctity of a gendered space is more important than giving trans people the freedom to move through the world without being punished for existing in those gendered spaces. that kind of thinking is fucking dangerous and it’s weird as hell that some of y’all are so comfortable with it being directed at us.
moral of the story: stop giving so much of a shit about where a trans man decides to piss or see a doctor or hang out or whatever else. even if you think he doesn’t belong there, he probably has a good reason to be there anyway, and that reason is frankly none of your damn business.
When Katsuki Bakugo needed saving, Izuku came up with a plan where Todoroki, Iida, and Kirishima went rocketing across the sky to reach him.
When Izuku Midoriya needed saving, it was Katsuki, Todoroki, and Iida who went rocketing across the sky to reach him.
Both times, our Twin Stars decided to set their own needs aside and allow the other’s trusted friend to take the lead in bringing them home. Izuku knew Kirishima was the right choice to get Katsuki away from the league quickly and safely, and Katsuki knew Iida was the better man for the job of catching up to Izuku and bringing him back.
Can we please just take a moment to appreciate the parallels. Please.
I say this in the kindest way possible, but I think this style of prose is more appropriate for a personal account rather than an update account. I have no idea who's being talked about half the time. 🥲
Just saw this Jimmy skin for the first time from back when he could still experience joy and whimsy and uh yeah I can't blame anyone for having any parental instincts towards him (looks at myself and my moots and Doc)
i hope sunny gets a villain arc if tubbo wont get one fully
like i need her to lash out at every single adult around her for not carring for her pa or her (looking at phil who offered to care for pomme and dapper when he wouldnt for sunny on tubbos Confirmed death), for no one taking her pa seriously, for taking things from them, from her pa until there was nothing left of him.
i need her to lash out at the adults for never seeing her pa hurting and thinking it wasnt serious, i need her to lash out in peoples faces how she had said they were worried for her pa and the adults just said hes like that or he'll get better and he didn't
i want her to lash out and reveal that tubbo said to her he felt more seen and cared about by a fed worker who was learning to have emotions than from any islander around
i want her to burn things, even if not a house and just a wood she placed down to set fire, i want her to do that, i want her to blow things up and lash out and be heard
cuz if being a good girl for her pa ends with them unheard and him dead then she will be heard now and once this thing called Creation gets her pa back to her, she is not letting him go
if any of the adults who didnt do anything to get him back cared for him in life and cared just a bit in death, they dont deserve to see her pa back again, he is sunny's and sunny's alone
i want sunny to spew vitrol and fire and to lash out at everyone, she deserves to go on a murderous rampage too as a treat
Goth Vaggie because how could you let her be so tasteless in the gothness bro. Please... atleast one hint at goth vaggie 😔
My other non related Vaggie redesign sort of expression sheet + goth vaggie x Charlie under cut vvvv
Didn't turn out as well as I wanted it to. I think I rushed out the sketch and tried to fix it in line art as best as I could. Soo... I love Vaggie guys. Like a normal amount yknow? So normal. (It's crazy. I kin Charlie ofc but Vaggie is literally so mmmff)
Still trying to find a consistent head shape for Vaggie sooo I'll jst practice I guess
Very VERY messy and quick doodle I shit out. Might finish one day, these new nails make digital art hard (i draw on phone and am too pussy for computer and I'm too poor for traditional art lmao so expect shit art for a bit maybe unless i thug it out fr)
PLEASE CHAGGIE JST ONE CHANCE ONE CHANCEE ONE CHA-
I love these goobers so much 💜💜
Charlie tryinna not look at booba, respect women even tho they is in bed wit you 🗣🔥
[ID: Two panels from Dungeon Meshi. The first scows Senshi clutching his face as tears start to spill out of his eyes, saying, "I've always... always wanted to have this soup one more time." He's not wearing his helmet in this panel, so his face is unusually visible, detailed and vulnerable. The second panel shows himself as a youngster, surrounded by his old mining team, all smiling at each other, one of them rubbing Senshi's head. Modern-day Senshi continues, "Thank you. All of you. Thank you." End ID.]
Holy shit. I anticipated some tragic backstory from the "I must feed the young ones" panels, but what I'd guessed was that Senshi might have become so devoted to cooking and eating literally whatever because he'd previously survived a famine and had seen children starve to death. I did not expect him to have been the child who was the sole survivor of a doomed travel party, one of whom was determined to feed Senshi first because he was the youngest, and that Senshi has lived with the fear of having inadvertently committed cannibalism by eating stew that he'd never quite known the contents of. I'm happy for him that Laios deduced and confirmed for him that it was griffin meat, that he was able to taste the meal that saved his life once more and remember the friends he lost. Seriously, I'm crying, and also earnestly relieved that while his backstory is pretty dark, it's not the type of fucked up I'd been preparing myself mentally for.