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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i think the fast travel in this game is very cool 👍
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I'm really just Feeling Things tonight about the conversation with Gale after Elminster's visit and like. Gale is So Insistent that if Mystra says he needs to blow himself up, then it must be the best option. The only option. And of course he is! Because what's the alternative? If there's another way, any other way, that means either
1. Mystra doesn't care enough to consider whether there might be another option. Gale blowing himself up is the easiest solution, so that's what she goes with. Or, even worse,
2. She does know there's other options, but tells him to sacrifice himself anyways, because it gets rid of two of her problems at once.
Gale doesn't just assume she's right because she's a goddess. He goes along with it because of what it implies about him, and her, and how she sees him if there is another way. He has to believe that this is the only option. Because the alternative? That he's disposable at best and actively unwanted at worst? That's just too much to bear.
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something I’ve been thinking abt is how many people think Makoto is immune to despair. I don’t think he is. I think becoming the ultimate Hope was BECAUSE he felt despair. He wouldn’t have fully reached that point without Junko. Makoto becoming such a beacon was his last attempt to avoid completely falling and it wasn’t because he didn’t feel despair, it was because he was too damn stubborn to allow everything to go to waste and he refused to sacrifice his beliefs for someone else’s. His inner monologue tells me he DID experience the same new low the other suvivors did in the final trial, but at the point where he had the choice to give up and die, he looked at the others and he looked at Junko and he couldn’t allow it to happen, not out of self preservation, but because the idea that Junko would have control over their lives made him FURIOUS. and that utter refusal to die kicked in, wether luck or otherwise, and he made the concious effort for one last push while something in him was breaking. He had to be broken in order for the Ultimate Hope to come through so aggressively, bc it could only exist in the face of the Ultimate Despair. He snapped the same way she did, but in the other direction. In what could have been his final moments he chose to embody everything Junko wasn’t, and every single optimistic and luck fueled ideal in him suddenly charged forward and pushed him. It was a combination of the final straw and a choice. Makoto isn’t immune to feeling despair, he’s just too stubborn to fall into it of his own volition. I think that’s why I like that scene in DR3 so much. People were SO SHOCKED Makoto actually fell for the tape, that he actually became despair for a moment. I saw people getting mad or disappointed, saying it was pathetic and Makoto seemed to fall from some sort of pedestal for them. Honestly part of me wonders if that sort of mentality, which clearly people had in universe, affected Makoto a bit. Like he started to see himself as less of a person, subconsciously. Prompting him to take more risks, less self preservation, act way more bold. It seems he has to be reminded a lot not to put himself in danger by his friends, to not do something too reckless. All over the place I would see in regards to that scene either this frivolous ‘oh this was just angst drama with no meaning behind it’ or ‘he can do better than that. he’s so weak’ or ‘come on, there’s no way he’d fall into despair, he’s the Ultimate Hope!’ This kind of mentality, which was kind of ironic considering Ryota was there the entire time saying the same thing and treating Makoto the same way. Like Makoto was superhuman. Like Makoto didn’t feel despair the same way ‘normal people’ did. In a way that was also how Munakata saw Makoto. Makoto stopped being a PERSON to the world when he became Ultimate Hope, he became a concept, a belief system, much the same way Junko ascended beyond herself. But the difference is that treating Makoto that way is the opposite of the reason Makoto became such a representative for hope. He wasn’t doing something no one else could. He was doing something everyone had the chance to, he just… was a little more optimistic, a little more stubborn, a little more ‘gung-ho’ about things. He just took the lead where no one else did, where no one else knew they even COULD in the face of Junko’s unstoppable force. She had overcome the biggest threats and obstacles in the world, what could one person do? And the answer Makoto found was, anything. Everything. It doesn’t all rest on Makoto, he’s just the one that was inspired to try to do what seemed like the impossible. But as evidenced by the change in his friends after that trial, it’s clearly not something only Makoto is capable of. The others pulled out of despair thanks to Makoto, but it was their choice to do so.
“But… this world is so huge, and we’re so small. What can we do…? No, we can probably do anything. Yeah! We can do anything!”
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when adam says "no, john winchester was some guy who took me to a baseball game once a year. i don't have a dad" like yes SIR get his ass
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jay not asking coach about letting lonnie onto the team bc he doesn’t want to do anything coach might disagree with…….
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unsure how to word this but there is something about having ocs with unsavory events happening in their past where it's like. talking about it, even when asked, seems almost gratuitous and inappropriate. and i'd much rather describe it through the oc themself and/or draw Them saying it. which is like. fitting for the subject matter? like of course its weird to talk about somebody else's business...!
and falls back into humanizing em/exploratory writing and development where u consider the impact of words said/words unsaid/HOW those words are said etc etc
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i have genuinely so many thoughts about how the book Lieutenant Hornblower was adapted and how most of the changes work, when accounting for the fact it must necessarily leave Bush's POV in order to work as television, and how those changes end up fucking over Bush's character in the movies, and how he was further pilfered by the series' decision to maintain characters like Styles and Kennedy. There is so much going on in there. Unfortunately, I don't yet own a copy of Lieutenant Hornblower, and having to constantly borrow it from my library is a faff and prevents me using post its to mark important passages. :(
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thinking about how sarah connor was a girl who worked in a diner and wanted to go to a late movie because her date ditched her and kissed her pet lizard on the mouth. in a deleted scene from the first film, she tells her time-traveling warrior that when this is all over, she wants to take him to disneyland. buy him a hot dog. "i want it to be over for you." when we see her again, 10 years later, she's strapped to a psych ward bed. she's screaming of the end times, how everyone is already dead, there is no future. she's snapping at her kid until he cries, because he wanted to help her.
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Was Archie holding Mallum's phone funny as in the same way he holds his knife?
HE WAS IM SO GLAD THAT WAS CLEAR ‼️ it's also what made Mallum's panicked (and possibly mildly concussed) brain go I KNOW THAT FUCKER
Also you didn't ask but Archie picked it up and stayed close enough to be run into because it was Mallum's phone, he recognized it and was like "hm that doesn't bode well"
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"I'm not a damn thing but this time that lasts between running from finding myself and finding myself while running." (x)
SPN moments but abstract [17/?] - The ouroboros of Carver era Dean, aka "what if Dean's present had been presented as connected to his past"
inprnt.| society6 | ko-fi
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6, 12, 30 for the writing asks ^_^
6. What’s the last line you wrote?
Shaking its head in what seems like disbelief before meeting his eyes again, almost like it wants to say something before it makes a noise like a growl, "oh, you're one of those seraphs, aren't you. A star-eater. No wonder you act like you've lost your mind."
(ignore that that's a couple sentences, the Thought is important)
12. Do you outline your fics? If yes, how detailed are your outlines? How far do you stray from them?
Oh yes! I outline my fics thoroughly. Though, I do allowed myself to deviate as much from the outline as I feel like when things go off the rails.
Some snippets of planning from a couple fics & concepts:
My outlines are very... One for one. With some exceptions. I tend to basically write a very brief version of the fic and try to get the feelings and words right before I actually write it. This is... Also why it can and will take me a month to write a oneshot. I try to get things Right.
30. How much do you edit your fics? Do you edit as you write or wait until you finish the first draft?
So! I edit them a bit? I edit while I work, but often I don't really touch anything I've already written unless it's something longer that might be taking a few months to get through. I think the fic I've edited the most is the prologue of Artificial Stars, which was originally a quickly written 2k oneshot into about 5k of actually decent fic.
Usually I don't edit to make something shorter/more concise, since I tend to only come up with more ways to bridge concepts when I go back to it. Also to be fair... There's usually no difference between first draft and final product. I cannot be asked to edit my fics after I write them, I just release them to the birds and pray for the best. (Unless I actually decide to show it to my beta reader in full instead of just sharing snippets as I... usually do.)
Conclusion: Rarely, those thangs are being given to the world as-is unless something is horrifically wrong with them
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looking @ old fic i started when i was 14/15 is so funny bc im realizing once again why i never mark fics as abandoned even if its been literal years since i've touched them. specifically i was checking docs for stuff i started and either did or didn't post to ffn.
and its like. nothing is bad??? like i can see where my outside-the-box ideal of fic writing comes from. not just fics but writing in general, i'm p sure. even if it's a total cliche plot setup, there are details on each that rly make it stand out like oh yeahhhhhh i did have this great idea once upon a time.
funny too bc was it executed well in prose??? no absolutely not i wrote like shit when i was 15. would i revive an idea one day and revise it to be less cliche or cringy while still keeping the stand-out elements??? yea maybe. i might. everything i'm currently working on that i started from 2021 up to now still holds my supreme interest, but like i'm not gonna say never.
esp since i write fic first and foremost for my own need and specifically what i like to read, it makes it impossible to consider an idea i've thought extensively about "not worth writing anymore". anyway not making this too long i jus found everything interesting to consider
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