I was at a Palestinian solidarity gig last night & the one Palestinian artist who was going to perform had COVID so the organisers asked around to see if there were any Palestinians who'd like to say a few words instead.
A local guy who was born & raised in Gaza offered to speak. He started with "I'm an engineer. i'm not a poet or a politician. I don't... do public speaking… I had no idea what to say when I came up here. So i'm just going to tell you about the street I grew up on."
And then he did! He went down the street building by building. He told us about the ice cream shop on the corner, the grocery shop, the charity that supports people with intellectual disabilities. He told us about the people who he knew growing up, the families who still live in the different houses. He told us about the university buildings and about his friends who quit being accountants to start a band together. All on that street.
All of which is gone now, by the way. Bombed to dust.
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Hey Americans, double check that you don't have an election tomorrow, Nov 7th 2023, I know the off years are harder to keep track of, but it'd be a shame if Moms for Liberty gets their people on your school district's school boards because of it. If you don't have an election, great!, but just give it a double check for me if you're not sure ok?
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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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Much like Welcome to Nightvale, I feel like a lot of people have forgotten just how big and influential Yuri on Ice was. It fully broke into the mainstream. It was everywhere. Evgenia Medvedeva, the top female figure skater in 2016 and 2017, had YOI plushies thrown to her on the ice and wore a Victuuri tshirt to an interview. Japanese pair skaters Miu Suzaki and Ryuichi Kihara skated to the YOI theme at the fucking Pyeongchang 2018 Olympics. The Olympics. Canadian ice dancer Joseph Johnson did the ‘J.J. Style’ hand symbol in the kiss and cry. Johnny Weir made me cry by talking about how he wished the homophobic world of figure skating he experienced could have been more like the kinder world of Yuri on Ice.
There were cameos and references to it everywhere. Everyone was talking about it. People who had never watched anime were watching it. It was so big it crashed Crunchyroll and Tumblr. Twice. And all that for what was at its core, a queer love story that helped pave the way for more queer stories to come.
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going insane thinking about the harrow and palamedes friendship. harrow, who has never met another necromancer her age forming a bizarro 3D chess rivalry while pal worries about her safety at every possible turn. harrow, who is up to her eyebrows in paranoia and secrecy, trusting the sixth house with gideon unconscious and hurt, letting them into the ninth house quarters unsupervised. if “i cannot conceive of a universe without you in it” is goth for i love you, “death first to vultures and scavengers” has got to be goth for i love you (platonic). pal’s first reaction when harrow comes into his bubble in the river is to scoop her up in a hug, and at this point she doesn’t remember anything about him because cutting out all her memories of gideon is impossible without cutting out memories of the sixth, but she still makes him a skelehand to inhabit anyway. when harrow’s memories are finally whole, she tells dulcinea she couldn’t face pal knowing that his pen pal girlfriend died on her account, but the next time she “faces” him, palamades’s soul is in someone else’s body and harrow’s body is full of nona’s soul. he spends six months protecting and caring for harrow’s body (and nona obv), believing in the possibility of bringing her back to it the same way cam believed in him. “god, do you know i miss harrow terribly.” and by the time harrow comes back to her body at the very end of ntn, pal is gone forever, fully pauled. the last time harrow and palamades see each other as their complete selves is in canaan house, alive and unlyctored. two of the smartest and loneliest people in the solar system meet each other in the worst of circumstances and spend the rest of the story dancing around each other as fragments of themselves, trying to care about each other in the interim but never fully meeting like they did the first time. a friendship made almost entirely of missing the other person. “do you know i miss harrow terribly.” god. i need to lie down
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Post about art-theft, AI and tracing of my render:
Unfortunately, one of my renders I made a year ago, was traced, copied, edited by AI by "brothers in arms" store and now sold as a merch aimed towards CoD fandom.
They are currently sending this out to various cosplayers asking them to promote it.
As someone who is affected by this, I have to speak up about it.
(post about it on twt & insta)
I found out about it by accident when I saw promoted post on my insta feed. When I started talking about it in my stories, this store sent me a private message saying they had been working on this design for weeks and had never heard of me so they definitely didn't steal anything, and offered me free stuff.
When I disagreed with them and sent them files comparing our works, they stopped replying to me, so I continued talking about it again on my insta. Only when my followers started leaving comments under their post saying this is wrong, they decided to continue discussion on the next day.
2. They mentioned that they could have been inspired by some pictures they found on the internet and showed me their "first sketch" of design… which was made by AI.
3. During the conversation, they mentioned that their artist could have based his work on a picture he found on the Internet, but he defended himself by saying that they might not have known it was mine. But even if they didn't know about me, even if they found some fanart on the Internet - it doesn't mean you can copy something detail by detail and sell it as your own.
What is most important here, their offer to solve the problem was to give me credits in their design. IF they worked hard on it, why would they want to give me credits? My offer was to remove it.
4. Why do I mention that it could have been done by AI? because many lines are unfinished and a lot of details don't make sense.
5. Below is a comparison of my render that I published on March 18, 2023 with their first sketch they showed me, which apparently they drew themselves:
I am saying this so that the CoD community, which is very large, will be aware of this, because there are many people who have already bought it and after my insta story, they felt bad and said they want return it because they don't want to support art theft.
It's not just about me anymore - it could have happened to anyone who creates fanart and share it on the Internet just for fun. One day someone may use it for their own profit without us being aware of it.
It doesn't matter if it's a 3D render or a drawing.
All artists in this (or any other) fandom do not deserve to experience such thing, and we need to speak out about it to prevent it from happening in the future.
Reposting fanart is, as this example shows, dangerous and hurtful, so please respect artists and don’t do this. Especially on pinterest.
Their only proposal and offer to give me credits for the work they traced is something I will never agree to.
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