#I made my sister mad

[cappie-art]

Xilonen my beloved SHE’S HOME! ❤️

Y’all pulling for her was wild, I’ve been lucky before but after what just happened I don’t know if I’ll ever have this much luck again…

It was truly a roller coaster of a time… I fear what I may pull next…

BUT UNTIL THEN LOOK AT HER

MUWAH 😘

[giantkillerjack]

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

[plain-text version of this post can be found under the cut]

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.

Plain-text version:

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!

P.S. 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.

[radroachmeat]

[bluemantics]

“voltron in 2024” yes the passage of time exists and people can have continuous interests it is NOT that scandalous i promise!!!!

[cable-salamdr]

Maybe I like bullying Shadow a little too much

[whetstonefires]

Do you have any opinions on Scholomance?

I do! I like it a lot. I really enjoyed all three books, blitzed through them easily and was much more excited to see how the plots unfolded than I'm used to these days, as a jaded adult, and I also really appreciated them as works of craft.

Especially the first one, I spent the whole time being all 'wow!' at how simple it was. So easy to read, but no waste. You really need to know what you're doing, to get that kind of pared-down elegance of form to work and still fit so much content in.

Like these are dense, there's a fantastic stylistic minimalism that allows El's character all the space it needs to breathe by making absolutely every other thing and person in the whole novel also do character work for her, which is exactly where the first person voice shines.

Also great use of character perspective to make the pacing feel really natural, so the fact that the first book takes three weeks, the second book takes one year, and the third book is like. Five or so incredibly stressful days spread out over the course of a few weeks? Doesn't feel imbalanced.

I actually got distracted from the story a few times by noticing the strength of Novik's technique. 😂 This is a me problem, in itself it's the opposite of distracting. Very low-profile.

I think the Scholomance is a great example of how far you can go in specfic when you aren't cringing from the label 'derivative,' because the Scholomance books feel very fresh ad clean specifically because nothing in them is concerned with standing out as 'original,' whatever that's supposed to mean, only with being well-executed and suitable to its task.

Hm, maybe that's where Liesel was born, the intersection of the efficient narrative style and the vast proportion of the story that concerns the maximization of utility and the instrumentalization of persons by themselves and others, and the forces that incentivize these behaviors. Or maybe she's just the narrative counterweight to Orion 'Head Empty' Lake lmao. How's that for a principle of balance, Galadriel?

I really did enjoy how beautifully it was laid out, over and over, in dozens of shades of humanity, how no matter where you go in an exploitative system almost everyone is being driven by the same survival instincts.

Because I don't think I've ever seen made so cleanly clear why you just can't expect any person or small group of people, no matter their level of goodwill or status, to unmake one of these systems from the inside; how it's not a matter of people being bad but of every single person being very...small.

And then not retreating into the idea of a person who is Big coming and breaking the cruel system from the outside as some kind of panacea, because 1) that is terrible, even if it's necessary and done in the best way possible and 2) that's not a sustainable answer to anything. Getting a balance between the protagonist being able to effect change and not subscribing to the great man theory of history can be really tricky!

Also did I mention, I love El, and I love most of the cast, even the dreadful ones. How am I going around with this many feelings about Li Shanfeng who doesn't appear until the actual climax?

The romance murdered me a bit, but it took up no more space than it absolutely needed to do its job, and I respect that. Also I appreciated Orion as a love interest; Novik has a slight record at this point of a version of that style of male love interest who's like a caricature of Mr. Darcy but old, which was shaping up to be my least favorite thing about her body of work.

...Orion is kind of like if you took the human king from Spinning Silver and gave him an alignment flip come to think of it, so he's not coming out of nowhere. Lmao.

Which reminds me (re: romance character typing) I've heard Novik didn't want it to be known she was astolat, which this series has renewed my sympathies if so. Because if I were a published novelist I wouldn't want people going 'you know, that resolution was really emotionally satisfying! reminds me of that fic she wrote where optimus prime and megatron get stuck in a hole underground and hatefuck about it.'

I don't even like Transformers. That fic almost made me cry. Actually I suspect it reads better if you don't like Transformers because I'm sure it does not give a shit about canon.

Anyway, whoever pointed out that one of the things El has going on is she's Enoby (and we're going to sit down and explore what the true reason to put your middle finger up at preps is, and what are some constructive ways to channel that socioeconomic wrath, and what it means that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism) was right and I'm not entirely over that either.

Fucking love El's mom as a character. Spectacular level of parent relevance and usefulness. A+.

Aadhya and Liu are also characters who fucking delivered.

Re: minimalism though, I laughed at the start of The Golden Enclaves when I realized that none of the enclaver characters who'd gotten development in the the first two books were from London, the enclave El was theoretically shooting for when we met her.

[beebfreeb]

do you have any docs about the conlang and/or conscript? i just found your art and that immediately stood out as incredibly cool. i wanna write some funny stuff

The majority of my conlang stuff is written on graph paper held together with a paperclip or a spreadsheet file on my computer, so I do not have much easily accessible to share. Hm...

The vocabulary is currently... quite measly ever since I bulldozed everything and killed it all dead. So fleshing out vocabulary and whatnot is what I have to work on next. Grammar is similarly rudimentary but it was never intended to be very complex. A lot of information wouldn't be encoded verbally, only through pheromones and body language.

[skunkes]

had to babysit nephews for 4 hours and at the end i had them saying Yay and Yippee and things of this nature

[the-meme-monarch]

sorry i just saw a very annoying video. why do people think bothering someone on purpose is funny. you are Just a bitch

[kitsumidori]

The magical girls of Borderlands!!!!

I was up until almost 3 am finishing this. A showcase of both the siren's and some of the psychic users.

And if anyone asks what the hell is the thing behind Maya, I'll give you a hint: It only shows up in my most despised mission in BL3.

Also I gave Moze a cosmic bear companion, her name is Usagi and she's a real sweetheart.

(click for better quality)

[bellamyblakru]

i will never understand how some people can actively shit on something they know someone loves and finds joy in right in front of them. how can you hate something that makes someone else happy in this absolutely fucked world in front of them.

its the passive aggression for no reason i will never ever understand or do to others. if you have a passion, fucking LIVE it. if nothing else, passion gets us through every shitty day, and i will always support it.

have passion in spite of those who hate.

[happi-dreams]

a couple hours ago i ranted to my sister angrily about the lego movies and here’s a visual reenactment of that

i was so pissed i felt like matpat

[follineo]

Mad dog with his sister alert!!

Some doodles that I do today because I think big bro and lil sis deserve to be drawn more often! Both character belong to @ghost-qwq

Thanks for your attention!

[itz-pandora]

Huh. If my life was a quote, it'd be "one of those sad ones with a deceptively happy tune"

[missbunmuffin]

head canons for my favorite punch out boys

Some oc stuff is in here ;-;

Glass Joe

- Has a doll faced Persian cat(I think those are safe to breed but if not she’s a ragdoll) named BonBon. He acts like she’s the sweetest thing in the world but she’s a literal demon.

- He gives the BonBon the teddy bear haircut because it’s easier for the both of them. Her fur is less of a nightmare with it.

- Used to bleach his hair but stopped due to how damaging it was. I imagine at first he did it himself instead of getting it professionally done and a chunk fell out once. Bonbon tried to eat it.

- He has silk bedsheets

- He has a younger sister named Genevieve and she’s only about 11 months younger so that makes him an Irish twin(My logic is to give the French guy a Irish twin but not the Irish guy lmao) she’s married and has two kids while he just has his girlfriend Eleanor.(She’s a oc of mine I’ve posted about her before if you want to learn about her ig) She likes to refer to Joe as her little brother because of this and he has to correct people a lot.

- His sister can kind of be an insensitive asshole sometimes.

- He’s not really scared of doctors and dentists like he used to be he’s more used to it with all those losses.

- He’s still kind of afraid of getting haircuts though(totally not self projecting hee hee) he doesn’t like looking at himself in the mirror with the cape thing wrapped around him along with wet rat hair. He’s been seeing the same hairdresser for years that he trusts more than anyone. Yet he’s still afraid of something bad happening.

- He wants to take Eleanor to Lorie Valley someday. He thinks she’ll like the castles and shit

- If you’re close to him and you’re being a dick you are basically asking him to be a dick back.

- Scared of those swing rides at carnivals and fairs. Based on a fear of hitting something on those rides since I was a child

- His mom bugs him about not being married or not having kids. She also forgets Eleanor exists and one time said “maybe you’ll find your future wife there :D” right in front of her(based off that one time my grandma said something like that to my brother when he has a gf. She wasn’t in the room but still)

- Always goes along with the games his nieces wants to play even if it’s just him being tortured. Their favorite game is horses which is basically Joe being on all fours on the ground pretending to be a horse.

Disco kid

- Can’t cook for shit

- Responses to texts with these things sometimes

- Type of person to go all out in just dance

- One of the only boxers Aran’s sister is more friendly with. Also her names Freya posted about her too. He’s actually interested in her artwork and doesn’t try to push boxing on her. They also have a common interest in dancing

- He found out not to look at other people’s sketchbooks the hard way by snooping in Freya’s

- He has a shit ton of those paper star things because Freya gives them to him

- Was one of those kids who would just dance in the hallway

- He was a choir boy and was the only guy to get accepted into the advanced choir because he was actually good and not just because he was a guy(no this is not based on the fact that guys get easily accepted into that more at my school)

- I think he would collect pusheen stuff

- Laughs at the dumbest shit

- Blasting music in the car. It’s so loud you can hear it when he’s passing by your house or something.

Don Flamenco

- He’s actually more anxious than he seems to be he worries about the most random shit (totally not self projecting again hee hee)

- Scared of lice to the point where it’s pretty much a phobia(same bestie)

- He’s tried on Carmen’s heels before for fun and almost twisted his ankle

- Also kind of scared of the swing rides but he would never admit it

- Shaves his legs to show them off

Aran Ryan

- He treats Freya like she’s 8 sometimes he’s not really accepting of the fact she getting older.

- He forces Narcis to play with her old dolls with him because he was forced to play with her as a teenager so he could be *productive* and he misses it. It was never in the normal way there was alway drama.

- They add WVBA action figures into their games and they make stupid stories with the other boxers.

- He’s been aloud to curse in the house since he was like 7 his mom didn’t care just don’t say anything at school or in front of grandma

- Cuts his own hair with kitchen scissors and gets bullied by Narcis and Freya for it.

- His mom wasn’t from Dublin she was from Londonderry

- Basically his sister’s father figure because he died when she was so young

- Type of person to just shake the wii remote in just dance but he still loses that’s the one thing his cheating won’t get him to win

[koipudding]

i had a dream abt a-yuan and it was a rlly good au but i forgot it all (a building explodes in it, and for some reason in modern day they’re still doing arranged marriage bs. or i got unlucky.) but it feels like i’m mischaracterizing him in the dream and it feels mean.