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.

Thoughts on being aroace

Uploading all my Tomgreg art at once from the past few week before season 4 hits, who knows in what kind of mental state i'm gonna be once it does :')

but the Devil sees all and She thinks you're a beauty

this girl and this devil scene live in my brain live in my brain live in my brain

category 5 jetko moment

i already mentioned in the past that a friend of mine trained an AI on my drawings so that it could replicate my artstyle, a fun thing is that it fed it a bunch of drawings i made of myself so most of the things it creates look like self portraits i could have done

other just look like random cool guys i could have come up with

(i fucking love the guy with short hair and lipstick, he looks fucking sick, i am 100% using that design)

first of all, i cannot begin to descrive how mindfucky and trippy is to see drawing that *could have been done by me* but werent. every time i see them i have to catch my self for a few seconds wondering "wait, did i do these and forgot????"

second, because i didnt do these they are not worn on my eyes like a drawing i would have made, these are fresh images to my brain. i dont have a memory of having done every line and curve and having observed it a million times as i was doing them, thus the illusion of life is a lot more stronger for me.

so with all this is mind, this little excercise is allowing me to do something i always craved for but that i could never get. to see my own art from an outsider's perspective. to be able to appreciate my work from the point of view of someone else. how does my drawings look to others. i can do that now with these.

and let me tell you, not to sound too conceited but, damn, i really like what i see. i can now see what everyone else sees in my artstyle, its fun! its dinamic! its really expressive in a way i never noticed! and yes, the noses! oh my god the noses! and the way the lips curl and tighten.

on top of that, as i said, a lot of the overfitting in the model is directed towards self portraits that i made of myself, so the AI will tend to use many of the faces and features i use to depict myself. now you have to understand i identify quite strongly with my own drawings. i said often that i see more of my self in my drawings than i do in a mirror.

with this in mind its also super trippy that my friend basically has a fip generator.

every time i see things like this i cant help but go "OMG, THATS ME! THAT IS ME!"

(this final piece was actually done by me, lol)

so yeah, this has been all very illuminating

Little is Alyx 👎🏻

Little is Penny 👎🏻

Little is a reflection of Ruby in Vol.1 and is a physical representation of “healing your inner child” 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

no it's fine this mind flayer is totally my friend and 100% honest with me all the time it's ok it likes me everything's so normal

I have a feeling that Sanji and Zoro’s death pact will be properly resolved in Elbaf, as it certainly doesn’t feel like we’re done with it. And while Elbaf is gearing up to be very Usopp-centric (and I can not overstate how hyped I am to see him take the spotlight again, finally), let’s not forget that this all ties back to Little Garden, the arc that properly introduced Zoro and Sanji’s rivalry by paralleling them with two rival giants who fought each other every day for over a century, but who also lost themselves in their grief when one thought the other death. The parallel isn’t even subtle, Little Garden’s biggest landmarks are the remnants of Dorry and Brogy’s dinosaur hunting competition. You know. The very same competition Zoro and Sanji posed to each other at the start of the arc?

But here’s the thing. I’m a little worried about how it’s going to be resolved. Because. Despite how readily Zoro agreed to kill Sanji if need be, he must have known that the crew would never forgive him. Zoro is Luffy’s specialest guy but Luffy would not accept any excuse as to why Sanji had to die. Nor anyone else in the crew. But. Does Sanji realize that?

Does he know that killing him would literally be the hardest thing Zoro would ever do, because it would mean literally betraying his Captain and crew? Luffy said he can’t become Pirate King without Sanji, and Zoro and Luffy swore they’d commit fucking ritualistic suicide if they got in the way of each other’s dreams, so does Sanji know where that would leave the swordsman in this case? With no Captain, no crew, and yet another dead rival and best friend (who, mind you, began to live in fear of his own biology betraying him right before dying. but the parallels between Kuina and Sanji and how they relate to Zoro could be a long ass post for another day).

I think he doesn’t know. But he can’t find out how Zoro would mourn him unless the pact actually follows through. But still, I don’t think Oda would kill Sanji, cause that’s no way to resolve this issue. So here’s my speculation about how I think it could potentially play out, following that initial line of thinking of the death pact’s resolution being set in Elbaf, specifically because of Sanji and Zoro’s parallels to Dorry and Brogy.

Like Brogy, Zoro would have to believe that he killed Sanji. That he won their final duel. He’d have to believe that Sanji has fallen and, also like Brogy, have to face that grief and hurt all alone. But in the end, like Dorry, Sanji would survive, having never actually been hurt. Because their edges have dulled after fighting for so long, no longer as capable of landing killing blows as they thought. “Not even the blades of Elbaf could endure two giants fighting for 100 years”? Something of the sort. And maybe this line of speculation is simplistic or optimistic, but the chances of it playing out like this aren’t zero, so just in case, I would want to be able to say that I called it.

what I was talking abt earlier. we have fully looped back around and away from feminism, societally, whereas before it was very Feminism 101 to acknowledge that many parts of existing as a woman in a misogynistic society are painful and upsetting. not that being a woman is Inherently Negative in a bubble. but that living on this earth, in the conditions we're living in, is hostile to women. and that gender is a performance. that many of the Staples Of Femininity as accepted by society are things that you have to create and perform and mold artificially and aren't inherent, that COMPLAINING about day to day difficulties of existing as a woman is something that you're allowed to do. acknowledging these basic, again, feminism 101 things, that something tied to womanhood is more time consuming or more expensive or more dangerous Because Of The Problems. does not CREATE the problems. that when women complain about having to perform femininity, they are not, in fact, oppressing themselves. the call does not come from inside the fucking house. saying that you HAVE suffered does not fucking equate that you believe you SHOULD have suffered.

like I could talk about this for hours. how braindead and one-dimensional the Takes are getting. "being a woman is looking in the mirror and going fuck yeah i'm a woman" damn. I guess any negative experiences you have by living in a misogynistic world... are your fault if you are anything but positive? "you don't actually want liberation" we've fully gone back to telling feminists "you WANT to be oppressed" when anything negative about our society is pointed out. it's not real until I say it out loud, I guess, and then I'm actually the one who caused it. if anybody expresses any unhappiness with how they're treated or the status quo or the language and culture surrounding womanhood and femininity. they've created it, right that second. they invented it just now. it wasn't a problem before somebody complained, right? also trans women aren't braindead zombies who just follow the flow of whatever cis women around them say. I am pretty fucking sure they are very much aware of pain, and are MORE than aware of the swirling torrent of misogyny and standards of femininity than anybody else. actually. and I am pretty sure someone complaining on tumblr that being a woman means always putting on a performance is going to make someone change their mind about transitioning. also "performing femininity" as a necessity to being treated well as a woman is not fucking NEWS to your Local Trans Woman. I AM PRETTY SURE SHE GETS THE CONCEPT. using trans women as a scapegoat for this braindead perspective on gender politics is spineless, meritless, and pathetic.

it's so hard to explain to people who aren't jewish the profound sense of loneliness we feel when our posts about any other cause get ten times the engagement, but whenever we share something about antisemitism, the only people who engage are other jews. it's not about likes, but it feels like screaming into the void. we post about the latest synagogue attack, or about our community getting bomb threats, or how another jew got assaulted on the streets, or killed at a protest. and the world sees it, and doesn't blink. doesn't care. because they can care about anyone on the entire planet, defend them, speak up for them, but a jew? well, we aren't people, are we. we'll never count.

how fucking bad does it have to get for my friends to share a single fucking post.

LISTEN. If we get a bisexual!Buck arc, I will ACTUALLY LITERALLY CRY, I’m already emotional just thinking about it, it will literally bring me so much joy

BUT

I don’t want it at the expense of an Eddie coming out arc…

Bc listen, I read a post talking abt how the writers probably won’t give both of them a really flushed out Queer Realization Arc bc it would be redundant, which like, okay sure, yes, I can see why you wouldn’t want to have two main, male characters going through the exact same thing, so sure, whatever, BUT -

I feel like, out of Buddie, Eddie is going to be the one that really struggles with coming to terms with his sexuality.

Eddie, who had to be The Man Of The House at 10 years old. Eddie, who grew up in the Deep South. Eddie, whose family is Catholic. Eddie, who already had a strained relationship with his judgmental parents. Eddie, who had a WIFE. Eddie, who says that what he had with Shannon was magic & compares every relationship he had to her. Eddie, who was in the military, which is infamous for DADT. Eddie, whose aunt constantly pushes him at random women because he needs to not be alone. Eddie, who canonically suffers from comp-het, saying that dating women feels like putting on a performance, not that he understands why. Eddie, who dated Ana & was planning on staying with her, even though he was unhappy, for his son.

I think Buck would be way chiller with realizing he’s queer - if he doesn’t already know, which is my fav head-cannon - & I feel like he wouldn’t struggle as much bc it’s Eddie, & Eddie is his best friend, and gender wouldn’t play as big a part for him as I think it would for Eddie.

I would love for them both to have an arc where they worked through their expectations when it comes to relationships & realize that they’re queer, but idk man, I feel like Eddie is going to be the one to really struggle & he deserves to really have that flushed out.

Idk, I’ve been thinking about this ever since I saw that post & nobody I know watches 9-1-1 😭

i hate being a mentally ill adult actually. i hate that there’s always groceries to be bought and housekeeping to do and work in the morning i hate that we have no space to feel it all i hate that we walk around acting normal. there are so many people i know who are clearly deeply unhappy with their lives and we make silly little jokes that allude to it but sometimes i want to grab them by the shoulders and scream ‘i know you are miserable!! we can’t keep living like this!! this is why people break!!’ im sick of this drudgerous apathy i want us all to be dramatic like when we were teenagers i want us to sob together and scream bloody murder at each other and tell each other we want to kill ourselves not as a funny post-ironic joke but because we all feel like that sometimes!! i want us to get fucked up on god knows what til we can’t open our eyes i want us to take care of each other instead of always taking care of ourselves i want us to be vulnerable i want us to hold each others hands in the ambulance!!

“Mike said his life started the day he found El in the woods, which was technically the following night. What he said had nothing to do with offending Will because he went missing the day before.”