#Sympathy For Life

[rastronomicals]

3:39 PM EDT July 13, 2024:

Parquet Courts - "Black Widow Spider" From the album Sympathy For Life (October 22, 2021)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

Another Parquet Courts album, another stupid review from Pitchfork for it

--

[venabulisvinco]

pulcinella // parquet courts

[total-derangement-of-the-senses]

Song of the Day

25 Nov., ‘23

[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.

[rhera]

"Why do flowers have to be for anything? Isn't it enough that they have colour and form, and that they make you feel good?"

— directed by Vincente Minnelli; THE COBWEB (1955) MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944) FATHER'S LITTLE DIVIDEND (1951) LUST FOR LIFE (1956) CABIN IN THE SKY (1943) AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951) THE CLOCK (1945) ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER (1970) ZIEGFELD FOLLIES (1945) TEA AND SYMPATHY (1956)

[sophsicle]

"would you really cut someone off because of their politics?"

yes.

hope u die alone.

xx

[gl1tched-g0th]

It's always "omg this character is sooo autistic coded 🥰" Until that character has low empathy and/or sympathy, is considered "rude", doesn't understand social cues or vague boundaries, doesn't act stupid, helpless, or weak, or has higher OR lower sensory needs, then suddenly it's a Problem and they Aren't "sooo" autistic coded anymore.

Really goes to show how many people just see autism as this cute quirky trait instead of an actual disability that. yknow. Disables the person who has it.

[nohoperadio]

There's a weirdly poignant sort of... metaphysical tragedy in the fact that pain, which evolved as a helpful signal to alert us when bad things might be happening to us, grew into becoming... well, basically the Bad Thing. To the point where by universal consensus the very worst thing you can do to a being like us is torture them (i.e. trigger the warning signal as strongly as possible while perhaps deliberately avoiding causing "actual" harm). And there are tons of illnesses and injuries and disabilities that massively impact people's quality of life, ranging from annoying to depressing to driving people to suicide, basically purely because they're very physically painful, while the underlying bodily dysfunction that the pain is supposedly "warning" of is either relatively minor or literally non-existent.

The capacity to feel pain is a good and important thing, some people lack it and that's generally awful for them, only in a universe unrecognizably different from ours could we ever do without it. But isn't it awful to think how if only there was somebody up there to adjust the settings for us, they'd probably only have to tweak them the tiniest bit to keep 99.99% of the benefits while saving us from all the most extreme miseries forever?

The mechanism didn't have to be perfect for natural selection's purposes, it had to be good enough that the average individual in the average situation would be motivated to stay more or less out of trouble. Measured by the metrics nature was working towards, she could afford to be a little slapdash with the exact implementation, and she was. In doing so she opened the door to infinities of evil and suffering that wouldn't otherwise be conceivable. All this only had one chance to happen, and it happened that way. There's nobody to be mad at--I'm mad about it, though.

[palatinewolfsblog]

“Keep me away from the wisdom

which does not cry,

the philosophy

which does not laugh

and the greatness

which does not bow before children. ”

Khalil Gibran.

[rastronomicals]

1:58 AM EST November 13, 2024:

Parquet Courts - "Application/Apparatus" From the album Sympathy For Life (October 22, 2021)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

Another Parquet Courts album, another stupid review from Pitchfork for it

--

[styrofauxm]

so another thing about aos that I love is that when we are first shown Daisy and Jiaying's powers they seem to be opposites in that Daisy's destroy while Jiaying's powers heal. Daisy's rip her sense of self apart while Jiaying is so self-assured in hers.

And then we are shown that Daisy's powers destroy her, but the people who love and care about her work so hard to make it so that they stop hurting her. And through them, she finally finds herself and her identity.

And then we are shown that Jiaying's healing requires killing others. People are dragged, unwillingly, to her so that she can hurt even more people. And through them, she slowly loses herself.

So the opposite nature gets flipped. Daisy's are the ones used to help people and Jiaying's destroy people. Daisy's are her path to self actualization while Jiaying's are her path to self destruction.

[pop-punklouis]

-

[novakiart]

too much "what if norman osborn filled some complicated pseudo father figure role for peter" and never enough "what if that but dr. connors"

[medicalunprofessional]

just a game!

[bibibbon]

Hot take but I kinda find it annoying how people try to use Rei to lift up endeavour, What she did to Shoto was awful (and if Shoto never forgave her 100% valid imo) but she was having a breakdown and we immediately see her rush over and try to undo what she did whilst apologising yelling what had she done , Idk but I don't think you can compare that to endeavour purposely beating the shit out of Shoto bcus of some one sided beef (sorry for the rant)

Iam sorry but why is this considered a hot take when it's straight up facts!!!!

People (specifically enji apologists and stans) love to use Rei and what she did to uplift enji. SOME even go as far as to denying a lot of things like enji committing marital r@pe and assault or they love to misinterpret this moment of enji "caring for his child's development" when in my opinion he only cares about making shoto a perfect tool/machine so he wants him to be properly developed as he thinks the actions Rei committed will hinder shoto.

Yes Rei is a victim but she also did bad things (that horikoshi has made her realise yet he never gave her a redemption/atonement arc and made the focus on enji).

Rei was practically sold she had no autonomy or agency in that household and she had to face a horrible ton of abuse by both her family and her so called husband. However, even with that she tried to protect her children (even if it wasn't enough or she might of done more harm than good) she still tried to intervene even if it meant that she got hurt in the process.

Heck enji literally abused her to the point she went insane, to the point she felt like she was going insane, to the point she realised that she was going insane and desperately sought and pleaded for help. She felt herself crumbling she literally said it that she couldn't take it anymore (that's not something that happens overnight that's a slow but painful process of things piling up little by little until everything cracks)

Also, I think there's something so tragic about the fact that the side Rei poured the hot water on shotos face is heat resistant. Shotos scar isn't a heat burn but an ice burn. Shoto's scar wasn't because Rei poured hot water on him but because out of pure panic she chose to use her quirk to ice the burn (icing burns actually makes them worse and can turn it into an ice burn so always make sure to use cold water for burns and not ice!!!).

She screams and cries showing that she still has care for her children. She panics and her panic is what causes his scar. Unlike enji she shows regret, she is a complex character and victim, shows remorse, doesn't seek anything and she still wrote letters to her children even if shoto didn't answer she still cared for him and she regretted all she done the minute it happend (not like enji who took him until he achieved his dream to finally realise that he needs family for his life to be good or some bs)

alas, we deserved and needed a Rei himura redemption and attornment arc.

[theriverbeyond]

talked to my thesis advisor today about how i am in the torture labyrinth micromanaging my thesis partner and she was so nice.... she was super understanding of my concerns..... she affirmed that i should NOT have to do the amount of work i've been doing.... she came up w a plan.... she promised my graduation won't be at risk if he doesn't do his part... perhaps there IS hope after all.... ‼️