#do i still find them all adorable?

[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.

[sainz100]

two more small Friday moments ❤️ | 📸 via Guillermina Cardoso

[itsamenickname]

I don’t know about you guys, but I absolutely love the idea of Bowser being the most fearsome creature in the entire galaxy to the point where he can very easily scare anyone into giving him what he wants because he is just so scary and terrifying.

And yet, when it comes to Luigi, a shy and cowardly little plumber, it is actually Bowser who is the more nervous one.

[cuteniaarts]

@katkastrofa, circa 40-ish hours ago: Hey, what if our newest bunch of OCs adopted a baby from one of the other brothel girls who knew she couldn’t afford to raise one? That would make for some fun shenanigans :D

Me, with a notoriously non existent sleep schedule, instinct of self preservation or concern for my poor wrist: Alright, bet. Watch how fast I can make you fall in love with this hypothetical baby >:)

Daneli as a gentle and loving caretaker-turned-adoptive-mother is something that can be So Personal, actually, and originally I was going to leave it at this quick sketch, but then I got carried away thinking about what this child will grow up to be like raised by this little gang of misfits, so…

Here she is!! A little older and so, so beautiful, I need more of her in my life immediately, she’s way too precious

And, because I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t also add a sapphic element to this absolute cinnamon roll, a small crack ship that I’m only half serious about for when she’s a little older still:

All in all, we may be getting impossibly far from canon, but I for one already cannot get enough of sweet darling Kumisai <3

(I fully drew three pieces from scratch in 9 hours I cannot feel my brain or my hands anymore send help)

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

You mentioned how actually endearing and compelling Justine/Verity and John/Shaun's bond is, and BOY I so agree with you. I don't see people talk about them often sadly, but I genuinely think it's one of the strongest parts of the game and its narrative (in particular John's character development itself, despite that he appeared pretty late in the story, his involvement in the final sequence was really tasty. "If I kill someone for revenge I'll end hurting people dear to me, so it all will be pointless" hmmm if there isn't a certain samurai guy in another game who needed to learn this as well... but I digress)

Prosecutor's Gambit's parent/child theme is a pretty heavy handed topic, but it's not like there aren't some really amazing parts in this whole deal! I kinda don't even care about the mastermind as much as I care about John (and Kate Hall for this matter)

THEY ARE SO IMPORTANT TO ME!!!!!! I think much of their appeal comes from Justine's shift in personality after her connection to John is revealed (like her joking about smashing Edgeworth's evidence with her gavel), but also every interaction of theirs is so sweet and lovely.

I love how protective they both are of each other, and it makes all the more sense when you take into consideration that Justine wasn't much older than a child herself when she decided to adopt him. I love how they take care to show that, yes, to an extent, they both do look after each other, but Justine is still very much his mother, and she does her job well. The scenes where she's strict with him are so deeply important to me. You know she studied parenting books and did everything she could to prepare herself for this life. And yeah, John is such a great kid!! Genuinely one of the best parent-child relationships in the series to me.

I found it kind of funny how every other relationship in AAI2 involved a dad HAHA It was so much, but I get it. They really wanted to make sure you got what they were going for, and hey, most people seem to like it. I really liked Gregory's segments, which was a welcomed surprise. I didn't expect to love him as much as I did. And, yeah, the mastermind stuff did not work for me. It's probably because I didn't trust Simeon from the moment I met him (their heavy handedness worked against them in his case for me. They were pushing the idea of him being meek and unassuming too hard; I clocked it immediately as a red herring); but even the overall reveal and final confrontation were, like... eh. okay, then. HAHA The best parts of the game for me were those character interactions with the side character. Wasn't really paying attention to whatever was going on with Simeon and the president, but John, Justine, Sebastian, Katherine, Gregory, and Raymond? My actual world.

Also taking this opportunity to share all the screenshots I took of John and Justine <3 :

[longagoitwastuesday]

Kusakabe, dear, you're too beautiful to be saying that kind of stuff

[fountainpenguin]

Hc: tootie’s actual name is trootie, but she couldn’t pronounce it years ago and it stuck with her

That's similar to my headcanon. I gave her the spelling Trudy, although "Tootie" was used as a nickname (like Tootsie Roll).

I did a search to see if it comes up in my files, and here's a scene I wrote in 2020 that makes me laugh (ft. aged-up Tootie now using her birth name):

Molly looked curiously at Trudy, tapping a finger against her lip. “Didn’t she move to some small country in Europe with her boyfriend or something?” “Husband, actually. She’s really the queen of this micronation they rule together.” Trudy’s eyes turned misty behind her glasses. “I wonder how she’s doing right now.” Since Tootie asked a valid question, we may as well pause our brunch date for a moment and take a brief trip one million million miles away from planet Earth. At that precise moment, Queen Victoria could be found sprawled across her royal mattress (which was, of course, stuffed with wads of cash for extra padding) in her second-favorite set of skull and crossbone pajamas, snoring half-contently. Each of her arms hugged a fat sack of coins with a ridiculously elaborate Yugopotamian money symbol printed on its front in blue. The covers tangled around her legs in a cyclone, which was the only reason she hadn’t completely rolled off the bed to the floor. Rolled off the side, it’s possibly worth mentioning, that her husband normally tried to claim for himself whenever he spied enough room to place a tentacle. As for her husband? King Marqavalier had just made the mistake of attempting to hold his wife’s pale human hand in her sleep. The death-defying trial proved successful on occasion, but that night turned out not to be tonight. He was now rinsing himself down furiously in the royal bedroom’s private muckpool wing, mumbling a variety of incoherent curses he’d picked up during his time on Earth, even though he wasn’t certain what they meant and happened to be using every single one in all the wrong ways. Back in their bedroom, Vicky murmured in her dreams and rolled over to cuddle with a third bag of taxes she had personally collected from the royal manure connoisseur earlier that day.

Along the Cherry Lane

Tootie growing up to live a relaxed life because her sister is in a loving relationship with an alien who adores her and she gets to rule over a bunch of people who are super into her way of threatening them with axes, my beloved...

Actually, do you think Mark gets huffy when Vicky threatens their subjects with weapons? We know driving a spear into the tentacle is a courtship signal for Yugopotamians and I feel like he probably had to have some talks with her about why she can't just attack people.

Vicky at a royal banquet: /throws an axe at the butler Mark: I'm being cheated on

Of course, the beauty of their relationship being that Mark spent 50+ years on Earth learning human culture, and would probably NOT interpret this as cheating and would instead interpret it as super hot the way he did when his ex almost sliced him to bits and threw him in the dungeon, but-

[seaweedstarshine]

You know that time in the comics when the Doctor is so depressed, he shuts off the lights, turns on an interrogation spotlight, locks himself in the console room, and argues with a bunch of judgmental shadow-figures resembling his past incarnations?

And all the TARDIS' lights go out and her interior becomes a maze to keep his companions out of the console room, all from her psychic connection with the Doctor (“moodbleed”)?

And his companions are left wandering in circles for two days as the air goes “stale,” not knowing where he is but thinking the worst, while he hallucinates in a dark room?

...because I'm thinking again about the times this definitely happened when he was with the Ponds.

[yioh]

some of my fave ships over the last few years !!!

[running-in-the-dark]

still no internet, also I had a bit of a breakdown over our dishwasher today (the damn thing doesn't fit with the door that we've got, but we'll figure it out, and if not I'll just explode or whatever).

BUT. I started listening to The Thursday Murder Club yesterday because it was on my phone and I've listened to almost all the other audiobooks on there now, and oh my god? I love it so much. haven't been obsessed with a book in a long long time but this might do it lol

[starlooove]

“There is no fanfic on Stephs treatment I have checked” that’s like the whole point.

[ofweave]

periodic disclaimer that any mystra bashing on this blog is a joke and as far as forgotten realms lore goes i find her an interesting and enjoyable character. i would go as far as classify myself as a mystra enjoyer (although i do find her portrayal and presence in bg3 weak but thats not here nor there).

she is, still, the villain of gale's (back)story very specifically. i find it annoying that people who view it that way or who are critical of the relationship between her and gale (in a 'it was not a healthy good relationship' sense not in the sense that it shouldnt exist in the text because what) are labelled as hysterical and jealous mystra-hating fangirls ??? i mean ????? huh ????? whuh ????

[beastsovrevelation]

Perpetually torn between loving and hating this bitch.

I mean, her treatment of Lana is irredeemable.

[arolesbianism]

Just realized I forgot to post these

[ashtcnirwin]

🌻

[spaceratprodigy]

lights are on but nobody's home

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