#pride and prejudice talk

[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.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 271

“Grandmother is visiting,” Damian suddenly said with no warning and with his usual not-quite demanding tone. 

“Who?” Tim wasn’t the only one to startle, seeing as Bruce had practically froze, a downturn to his lips in a silent show of confusion. 

Damian scowled. “Are you deaf Drake? Grandmother is coming to Gotham to, quote, make sure I am being properly cared for.” None of them had known that Ras was with anyone actually. At least Tim was pretty sure that would have been in the files. 

“Oh?” Dick didn’t quite crouch to Damian’s height but it was a near thing. “She-” “He,” Damian corrected, interrupting him. They all exchanged a glance before Dick continued. 

“Is he coming to the Manor or…” 

Damian scoffed again, a tiny bit of a flush against his face. “No, Grandmother will most likely be staying with Akhi-”

Now wait one moment-

“YOU HAVE ANOTHER BROTHER?!” 

[beebeedibapbeediboop]

My bf offered me a dress...It's giving "I'm waiting for Mr.Darcy to come and utter his unyielding love for me"

[wings-of-flying]

i will never understand people who don't like jay ferin because she's truly the best character in riptide. i don't say that lightly, either. (chip's exactly the sort of character i always love, and bizly plays him so well, with so many nuances. gillion's that perfect mixture of comedy and tragedy that charlie always manages. so many of grizzly's npcs are so well-rounded and developed you'd think *they* were the main characters - mainly talking about people like lizzie, caspian, ollie, the ferins, etc.) but jay ferin is a wonder to behold

for the first half of the campaign - literally the first half - she's hiding who she really is. she's still brilliantly funny and interesting, but she seems not quite fleshed out - but that's because condi's doing an absolutely incredible job at playing a character who's not being herself. and then once she comes into herself and feels more confident, oh my goodness condi's so great at showing her self-doubt but also her silliness. she's such a good female character (and others in riptide don't achieve this so easily, so again i'm not saying it lightly) and it's down to how well condi writes and plays her story

as much as chip is my favourite due to personal preferences when it comes to tropes and archetypes for my blorbos, i really mean it when i say jay ferin is the *best* character in riptide. i could talk about her forever, and i do often, but i really wanted to talk about this cause it baffles me when people say she's underdeveloped or boring. she's the best one, you sillies, you just might've missed when the extent of her brilliance was revealed (aka episode 53)

[prideandprejudice]

#same energy (requested by anonymous)

[tolerateit]

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2005) dir. Joe Wright

[starliteonearth]

I'm seeing a lot of discourse on the Daemyra divorce scene and some are arguing that Rhaenyra was terrified and she flinched when Daemon raised his hand, but I've rewatched the scene over and over, for research purposes, and Rhaenyra wasn't petrified, she was PISSED (and very turned on considering her eyes literally drop to his lips right after but some of y'all are blind I guess). And she didn't flinch, she SNARLED. It was very much "try me bitch, i'm not playing with you today", which is why Daemon pulls back his hand so quickly. Mans had to consider his next move very carefully lol

Like come onnnnnn now

[hello-eeveev]

I have no evidence to support this, but I like to imagine that when Orym randomly pulls out a rock at breakfast and says, “Mr. Widogast?” there’s a least part of Essek that’s like—

“hehe, that’s me :)”

[peach-pot]

I think Catherine Tate could play Lizzie Bennet but idk if David Tennant could be Mr. Darcy.

[shinehalley]

I think between the most common misinterpretations of Pride and Prejudice that irritates me the most i can say the one at the top is when they say that the story is about a woman fixing a complicated guy and this becomes references in terrible romances. I've heard this so many times and as a person who grew up with the 2005 film and reads the book at least once a year I need to get it off my chest.

Starting off, Darcy is not a "complicated man". He's not a bad guy who takes out his traumas on other people, he's not a guy who's waiting to be saved by a woman who "silences his demons" and even less a guy who mistreats the women he's with. Darcy is actually a rich man with rude manners and some class prejudices. The point is that Darcy is a man with moral convictions and feelings that make him a good man despite these aspects. His rude manners are a reflection of his class prejudice, but they do not dictate how he treats people for whom he has feelings of affection. The way he would be able to move the world for those he cares about and seek the closest thing to what is considered justice in the temporal context of the story reinforces the goodness of his character. This is even more evident in the comparison that is made between him and Wickeham, where one is unpleasant but good and the other is pleasant but a cheat.

And what Elizabeth does is far from correcting him. Darcy doesn't realize how his class prejudice affects the way he communicates with people and the view he has of himself because everyone always justifies his arrogance as fair because of his wealth. So he believes that Elizabeth admires him when, in reality, she despises him for these characteristics. And what she does is just say it to his face, something no one has done before, and that's it. This is Elizabeth's contribution to any development of Darcy, to say how arrogant and prejudiced he is. It is Darcy himself who reflects on her words and realizes that she is right and that he is not being as fair as he thought he was. He realizes his own prejudice and realizes his own arrogance and of his own free will decides to change because he wants to be a better and more pleasant person.

It could be said that it was fate that put him and Elizabeth in each other's path and made her realize, now with more pleasant manners without prejudices obscuring her actions, what a good man Darcy is and become enchanted by him. But if they hadn't met again, Darcy would still take on this challenge of re-educating himself and being a better person and Elizabeth would still continue to think of him as an arrogant man in whom she feels no interest.

The other issue is that Elizabeth is not perfect. She has her own prejudices that are overcome throughout the book thanks to her coexistence with Darcy and not because of Darcy. The fact that she lives with both Darcy and Wickeham at the same time is what makes her understand how unfair she was in her first impression and how foolish she was in being guided by that to define the characters of both. Kindness and amability are not synonymous with integrity and she learns this the hard way. It's a lesson that if she hadn't learned through her time with Darcy, she would have learned it in some other way because life has things like that.

Finally, they were essential in each other's lives because of the teachings they left to reflect on their actions in relation to the world and not because they depend on each other. Both are confronted with their prejudices and realize that they were not fair and try to change for better people regardless of whether they are together or not. Their meeting after realizing their errors in judgment is purely accidental. They don't change for each other, they change for themselves, because they realize how proud they were and want to be more fair, and after that they end up being placed back in each other's lives by chance. That's what makes them such an interesting couple and makes us wish we had what they have.

Reducing the story of Darcy and Elizabeth to an asshole man who is fixed up by a woman is a mistake so grotesque that it is noticeable that it could only have been said by a person who has never seen the story or seen it with their ass.

[sunny-rants]

the unspeakable crimes I would commit for a funny lighthearted spicy lesbian regency romance with at least somewhat of a happy ending…

edit: everyone recommending books, you have my eternal love and gratitude, and please keep recommending them, but I meant on screen

[bubblesandpages]

Love the centuries long female literary tradition of writing men who fall for women who hate their guts.

[beebeedibapbeediboop]

I am drawing Mr Darcy again....he is a little miserable...a little slutty..

[emry-stars-art]

Ok ok but royal au Andrew def does the Darcy hand flex™️ after any hand interaction with Abram

YOU UNDERSTAND MY VISION

[itsacruelsummerwithyou2]

blitz saying stolas’s romantic desires are just a romcom as if they’re not literally hell’s elizabeth bennet and mr. darcy

[ladamedusoif]

Permission to be a nerdy expert and deeply thirsty for two minutes.

I am begging - begging - fashion writers et al to realise that “Victorian” is a specific time period and place, not an entire century. And if you must insist on the Darcy comparison (about which more anon), then recognise that Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813, aka the Georgian/Regency period. (Victoria wouldn’t become queen for almost two decades.)

And that being said: I stand by my read of the whole look being far more 1830s European Romantic.

Now that I’ve got my nerdy twitching out of the way: I would like to hear more about the whole “making a shirt that’s nicely oversized and designed to be opened like that” design process please and thank you. 😘