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 feel like many people have a fundamental misconception of what unreliable narrator means. It's simply a narrative vehicle not a character flaw or a sign that the character is a bad person. There are also many different types of unreliable narrators in fiction. Being an unreliable narrator doesn't necessarily mean that the character is 'wrong', it definitely doesn't mean that they're wrong about everything even if some aspects in their story are inaccurate, and only some unreliable narrators actively and consciously lie. Stories that have unreliable narrators also tend to deal with perception and memory and they often don't even have one objective truth, just different versions. It reflects real life where we know human memory is highly unreliable and vague and people can interpret same events very differently
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Tbh? I don't like Paul. I don't want Paul. I understand that Paul serves an important narrative function and that Paul is the best possible ending for Camilla and Palamedes given their situation, personalities, and relationship. However what I really want is for Camilla and Palamedes to attend the ATN wedding as two individual humans and for Pal to be a lightweight who loses his tie in the garden fountain after three drinks and for Camilla to do exactly one shot with the group, keep Gideon from ripping the sleeves off her dress shirt, and absolutely kill it at lawn games during cocktail hour. Since this scenario is a wild tonal mismatch for the series and also Palamedes was already dead, this was unlikely to ever happen. However Paul is the final nail in the coffin for the theoretical existence of this scene and I can't help but resent them for that
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Losing my shit about this article in which a transphobic Tory was so busy panicking about existing in the vicinity of a Trans that she almost certainly misheard "jeans" as "penis" and decided that not only was this a problem with the other woman, but also that the world must be informed of this pressing danger.
"a trans woman! I had to stand directly behind her....I thought, 'this is going well', I'm handling The Situation fine'..."
translated: I saw a tall woman with broad shoulders. How would I get out of this alive? I thought. she has a PENIS. PENIS PENIS PENIS. through some force of PENIS I mean will I managed to PENIS behave normally towards her. My hands were PENIS PENIS PENIS shaking as I tried to dry them. summoning up all my PENIS courage I said 'dryer's crap innit'. she turned to me and said " yeah I'm just goiPENIS PENIS PENIS"
It's been a week and I'm still shaking. This proves trans women are the problem and I'm not weird. I'm fine. It's fine. If you think about it I'm the hero hePENIS!!!!!
very this
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I want to be excited for the live action Little Mermaid so badly
The Little Mermaid is my favorite Disney movie. Anyone who knows me knows I'm obsessed with mermaids as a whole and will watch any media that has them. Hell, I own my own tails and monofins. But every time I see a gif or a video for the new Little Mermaid, I cringe
(btw, this is NOT because of the casting. If you're against this movie because Ariel is black, you're a racist piece of shit and this post isn't for you)
My issue lies with the CGI. It just looks so FAKE. We've seen through the course of movies and TV shows that use it that CGI does not age well, and that's because technology is constantly improving. What was impressive in 2005 is not impressive in 2023 (Just look at Aquamarine, another movie about mermaids). And the CGI on Ariel and her sisters already looks fake and the movie isn't even out yet!
Compare this image from the trailer
To this screenshot from H20: Just Add Water (a TV show that came out in 2006):
You can see the details of the scales in the second image
The first image is flat. Sure, it's colorful, but it's flat. It's fake. Halle herself is the most beautiful and alive part of the image, because everything else is fake
The difference?
H20 had costume designers, ones specifically trained in mermaid tail making, HAND CRAFT every tail on the show. All of the scales were hand laid, all the tails molded to fit the actors/actresses perfectly, painted by hand
Let's even look at someone with no affiliation to TV or movies:
This is Mermaid Linden, a very well known (in the mermaid community) professional mermaid. You can tell her tail is not as high quality as the ones made for H20 (though it's still a VERY expensive tail) - but it still looks like it's a part of her. You can still see the details. Because professional mermaid tails are also all handmade and molded to fit each person. Even if they don't lay every individual scale, good professional mermaid tail makers are very meticulous about what they do.
This is what happens when Disney refuses to pay practical effects artists. We could have had beautiful, handmade tails that would look real on screen for decades to come and could be reused for promotional purposes - instead, they're underpaying and overworking their non-unionized employees to make CGI tails that don't even look real now.
(to be clear, I'm not shitting on the artists. As I said, they're being underpaid and overworked. This is not their fault)
And before anyone comes and says "But swimming in those is difficult!" Absolutely it is. You should never swim in a professional level tail (or even just fabric tails) without practice and training. Which Disney could have given the cast if they were willing to PAY people (the cast of H20 [a TV SHOW] literally learned how to be mermaids on set. It's been done before)
Disney's "Live Action" needs to be rebranded as "CGI with some real people tossed in" because that's all any of these remakes have been, and it's exhausting when I look at what we could have had.
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I think i just need to express that the culture surrounding QPRs right now made me think that i couldn't have strong bonds with my friends. Society told me i cant have strong bonds with friends because that was only for romantic relationships. Then i went into aro spaces and this idea was reinforced using QPRs instead of romantic relationships. it was "You can still have strong bonds with people without romance! It can just be a QPR instead!" "QPRs are MORE than friendship so you can have STRONGER BONDS than you would with friends."
it made me think that the relationships i wanted with my friends HAD to be something other than friendship for it to be as strong as i wanted. If i wanted to be the first person in someones life i had to enter some sort of committed relationship. if I wanted someone to care about me as strongly as i did them then it would have to be a relationship that was "more" than friendship.
I thought I wanted a QPR because i was told the only way to get that care and security that I wanted was to enter into a relationship that was "more" than friendship. because friends didn't care that much. because friends didn't live together their entire lives. because friends were never the priority relationship wise. and it took me years to realize that i didn't want any partnership and i shouldn't have to be in one to want these things from a friend. these things CAN be something friends can do. but i found that out on my own. because the aro community kept saying "you want a QPR" when i just wanted a friend who finally saw me as a priority in their life.
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Honest to god Titans Tower is probably the funniest thing that's ever happened in comics to me? Like, there's so much to unpack here it's insane?? The tear-away stripper Red Hood costume? The knock-off Robin costume with the stupid ass yellow tights that somehow looks worse than if Jason just rocked the bare thighs? The way Jason is drawn like he is fully 35 with two stepkids and a mortgage? Jason inventing fanfiction about Tim and Bruce's relationship in his head because he refuses to believe Tim actually stalked his way into being Robin?? Trying to mimic his crowbar death by beating Tim with his own staff but I as a reader am entirely unable to take it seriously because of those stupid fucking tights-
And then you get to Tim's side of things and he says like, all of 5 things the entire time and three of them are a coded 'fuck you'. He has absolutely no time or respect for Jason's pity party and it's actually hysterical because Jason cannot stop yapping. Meanwhile, Tim is like, definitely losing the fight which makes it funnier??
Then the ending?? Jason scrawling "Jason Todd was here" on the wall in blood (or red paint meant to look like blood, up in the air) and signing it with a handprint like he's a middle schooler who just discovered Creepypasta???? Ripping the 'R' off Tim's costume when he's literally already unconscious?? Zipping away from the scene thinking "damn I actually like that kid, wish I had friends tbh"??
And then it's literally never brought up again.
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