#am I getting better?

[finagled]

hey like???

why is life so difficult? why are things so asinine?

inefficient?

unethical?

why???????????????? is it like this

right now

[beebfreeb]

Messaging people for the first time is so hard. What am I supposed to say? Like, "You seem really odd and your blog intrigues me. Do you want to have philosophical conversations or perhaps talk about fictional characters?" What! Whatever. I will just follow you back and stare at your blog with my big beautiful brown eyes.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Expertise can't help you here.

[midnight-coffee94]

No single line has ever wrecked me as hard as this one from the Good Place and I think about it constantly

[katsinspats]

I think my copy of the game is broken they've been doing this for 30 minutes

Crop of the Biolizard edit I did bc it makes me laugh:

[thepioden]

if you ever go to an art gallery and you see a painting and you think "that sucks. I could do that." maybe you can! I think a lot of people could do like. Matisse. Mondrian. Rothko. From a technical standpoint at least. Not everyone but a good number of people. But please consider: Artists™ aren't special people. They're just people. Just regular folks with something to say and a trained skill who showed that skill to the right people.

So instead of being like "that sucks! that's dumb! I could do that. It shouldn't be in a gallery." instead try, "I could do that. I should be in a gallery." and then do it and go and show your art to people.

[lgbtlunaverse]

Nothing will dispell the "the curtains were just blue" myth faster than writing something yourself, because the amount of pretentious symbolism i am putting in my silly little fanfics is ridiculous. I mean SO much with these words, literally every single one of them. This fic has twenty five typos and zero correct uses of punctuation but if there's curtains you bet your ass I put thought into what colour they were.

[mienar]

the wandering painter, part one

instagram | shop | commission info

[bumbleboa]

We have a deal~

[sophies-junkyard]

I’m in the South. I’ve got ears to the ground. Republicans are SWEATING at the prospect of Kamala being nominated. They’re not sure Trump can beat her.

Let’s prove them right.

[ivebeencursedbygays]

new pose trial

[televisefur]

My journey so far in social media and the art community went like this:

I will be popular and a good artist

I will never be popular or good at art

I am getting better

I am not getting better

I am feeling anxious because everyone around me is getting better and more popular

I think I am getting better again

I'm going at my own pace, so why should I care?

Twitter has gone bad so I no longer trust it

Am I actually getting good at art?

Twitter is still usable for me, and most people are still using it, so I still trust it

I feel disoriented because there is too much content and too many social media websites

Screw it. I do whatever I want and I go wherever I want to

[captainsaltypear]

for legal reasons caine needs to give pomni her own marketable gummipoo plushie. as a treat.

[the-kreechur-featurr]

Funny little comic I made while trying to figure out how to draw these queers

[glimfag]

say it's me that you want to dismember

[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.