"This person has a secret onlyfans!" "This artist does NSFW commissions!" "This author writes porn on the side!" I cannot begin to tell you how swag and awesome that is.
i didn't have "i'm broken" teenage asexual angst i had "i'm literally being the only reasonable one about this concept and the rest of you are behaving like fucking freaks" perception issues
geeky kid gets super powers from his parents' weird inventions! now he has to fight a rogue gallery of ghosts... but uh-oh! he still has to keep his grades up, deal with his embarrassing parents, and navigate girl troubles! rap theme song!
Danny Phantom, the Fandom, After 19 Years of Fermentation:
a child dies. but not quite. the inherent tension between life and death. the obsession of the dead for faded remnants of the living. warped green shadows on the walls of a dark laboratory. having to hide your true nature from those who should be your greatest allies. the fear of the monster you could become if you let yourself. being a ghost as a metaphor for the trans experience. a cold breath on the back of your neck in the dead of the night. rap theme song!
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.
when nimona first shapeshifted in front of gloreth, gloreth was a little freaked out, but more just shocked, and then they went on being friends. it was only once gloreth’s parents told her that nimona is a horrible monster that she finally turned on her. this movie isn’t subtle in the least with its themes, but i like this part of the movie because it really shows just how imaginary and baseless (for lack of a better way to phrase this) the fear of monsters (i.e. trans people) in society is. children, like gloreth, when left alone without any societal influences, will be faced with this Other, Different thing and accept it, just go with it. befriend them.