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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The tgcf characters are good-looking, BUT THE MANHWA MAKES THEM GORGEOUS
Xia Lian
Hua Cheng
Feng Xin
Mu Qing
Pei Ming
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I really despise the Marvelification of Stranger Things, because all the interviews nowadays are constantly referencing how fast paced and epic and big the finale will be but the reason people fell in love with the show wasn't special effects or long episodes; it was the plot, it was the characters, it was the mystery. Stranger Things 1 may have been a story about a government conspiracy and a monster, but that's not why we stuck around. The show can throw amazing CGI, Russians, a battle within the American army and an apocalypse at the audience with the biggest budget known to man but if they forget to ground it and keep it central, it'll just get lost amongst a plethora of other "epic" blockbusters. We want Steven King, not Avengers.
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My roommate and I are financially unstable while he does through a long, complicated diagnosis process that started as we stopped being homeless. I just got a job, and it's going to pay well and allow us to get caught up and stable, but I don't get my check for a week and a half. We have rent due on the 1st, our storage bill due at the end of the month, and we are out of food.
Dm me for proof or details
I will do art for anyone who gives, just message me @theartistrans I also take commissions there.
Dm me for zelle
$creepiecrippl
V
PP
$0/$900
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Happy Birthday Crosshair!
Who needs a weighted blanket when you have Hunter?
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>be a webcomic
>decent popularity and critical support from the fans at the start
>immediate drop in quality over next bunch of updates
>fans hate it
>gets so bad writers and artists are harassed to the point of leaving the team
>endless controversies between writers acting shitty on their personal Twitter account to fans to accusing discord mods of being 4Chan nazis
>comic loses half its funding 8 months in
>bimonthly updates 4 months in return to the sluggish once a month updates from the start
>pause 14 months into the comic’s intended 5 year run.
>announce a month later indefinite hiatus
>radio Silence for THREE YEARS AND NINE MONTHS
>be almost 4 year anniversary of the webcomic’s start, 17 days away to be exact
>drop 4 DOZEN pages
>new director
>new writers union
>new EVERYTHING even the title of the comic changed
>the “it’s so over” from the fandom supercharges back into “we are so fucking back”
>its name is enough to scare half this website into shock
>look at tags
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