#your posts are so relateable

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

Of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept 11 attacks:

15 were from Saudi Arabia (a powerful/oil-rich country the U.S. works hard to maintain diplomatic relations with)

2 were from the United Arab Emirates (also a powerful/oil-rich country the U.S. works hard to maintain diplomatic relations with)

1 was from Egypt, 1 from Lebanon.

None of the hijackers were from Iraq.

None of the Sept 11 hijackers were Iraqi.

None of the 9/11 hijackers were from Iraq.

[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.

[soracities]

i dont know how else to put this but to approach books (or any media, really) solely for the sake of relatability is genuinely incredibly heartbreaking......to have such little (or such unwilling) imaginative scope that you cannot stretch yourself, even marginally, in a different direction to what you’ve known or are used to knowing when the very POINT of stories is to transport you somewhere else, into someone else, so you can do just that........when fran lebowiz said a book “is supposed to be a door!” and george saunders said good prose “is like empathy training wheels” they were right!!! they were so so so SO absolutely entirely right!!!!!

[lbhslefttiddie]

honestly i don't think sqq (jiu) would have minded the accusations of preferential treatment from yqy if they'd felt true. like as children he guarded the title of being yue qi's Favorite with teeth and claws. why shouldn't he be given preferential treatment? everyone ought to know just who qi-ge likes and trusts over everyone else. and for good fucking reason--who else here is watching out for qi-ge? as peak lords he's literally 2nd in command and chief tactician, if yqy values his word over yours, then its both what makes most sense and also what he deserves.

the thing is that to sqq, being accused of being favoured by yqy over others now just feels like a sick joke, because obviously (to him) that's not the fucking case. if he actually gave him preferential treatment you'd think he'd listen to what he has to fucking say, instead of believing what anyone else tells him about sqq. you'd think, if he was yqy's favorite, he wouldn't have left him to rot.

so i think, in a setting where they reconcile after becoming peak lords, that sqq would very much slap yqy's love for him in everyones faces as a kind of power move. a kind of, "oh, you thought that was favouritism? you havent seen yet what it looks like when qi-ge lets himself favour someone."

[sallymew4]

supposed to be studying but all i have on my mind is this mind-shattering uncle&nephew duo. i need to be sedated

[dailyjermasparkle]

I've seen a lot of stuff going down on tumblr and I just wanted to let you all know that all aromantic, asexual, and aroace people are valid members of the LBGTQIA+ community. It doesn't matter if they are cishet or not.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Thank you all for an incredible 500 days of love and support. I offer you: answers to questions that no one has asked.

(As always, more can be found in the tags <3)

[notbecauseofvictories]

I've seen that "the immortal loses their loved one but not their loved one's family; what if the immortal stayed close, followed them down the generations?" post a dozen times, and I understand it's intended to be sweet---but every single time I see it, all I can think is that it's straight-up the beginning of a horror story.

[nedeii]

Yay! It's been like two years :'), but my commissions are currently open! The slots are limited, please do take a look if you're interested:

https://ko-fi.com/nedeii/commissions

[sacchiri]

Some fanart of Take Your Vampire To School Day, a delightful crackfic by @freshlyjuicedbeetles!

[opikiquu]

more Penacony memes!!!! (yeah its still mostly aventurine)

[knockknockitsnickels]

I think this is one of my favorite lines from the Wraith route because of (imo) how much the meaning changes depending on if you got there via Spectre or Nightmare. For Spectre, it honestly strikes me as a genuine question. Why are you doing this to her? If you're on the Spectre route, you presumably already know the Narrator can't really be trusted, since you had to reject his reward to get here. What are you hoping to gain from continuing to hurt her? For Nightmare, it honestly just makes me sad. As the Shifting Mound describes her, "She desires only companionship, but the only thing she knows is how to hurt." This line feels like a plea from someone who genuinely doesn't understand why you keep rejecting her. She wants to be with you, but she just can't understand how to do that in a way which doesn't hurt you.

[ohwatson]

coming out of my little corner where i like and reblog people’s posts to say that i would love to talk to more people on here and have gotten heavily back into the sherlock holmes fandom as of late (among other things) & may even try my hand at writing some fic (after several years of being semi-inactive as a writer in general) and so if this post happens to come across your dash and you also like that kind of thing, i’d love for you to come and say hello and get to know more of you :)

[dreamerdrop]

Julian does kind of strike me as someone who just sort of. Endures suffering and then pushes it way, way down and pretends it doesn’t hurt.

Bad things happen and he just sits quietly and then pushes it down and pretends he’s okay so he can get on with whatever he needs to get on with.

Doesn’t know how to process trauma or misery inside himself, but he can help other people with theirs, so he just. Keeps going. Keeps working. Keeps trying.

It makes sense, I mean, the pivotal traumatic incident in his life was one he has never been allowed to even allude to out of fear. His parents don’t seem very emotionally available for him either, so he’s definitely never talked out those issues with them. So he’s probably just grown up pushing any off feelings back down and focusing on something else.

And even when his big ol secret is finally out, he still doesn’t really talk about it or acknlowedge it unless someone basically drags him kicking and screaming into having to focus on it. He never really talks about or addresses like. Anything.

Like his attempts at curing the blight and how fucked up he was over that. Or the time he thought he could save the Jem’Hadar from their ketracel white addiction. (And boy howdy does that episode take on new layers of pain when you think about him being so sympathetic to entities that were genetically engineered to suffer and his own backstory.) Surviving a psychic attack that basically involved his own subconscious mind trying to talk him into embracing death. A month in a prison camp where he probably definitely thought he was going to just die there, and then realizing no one knew he was gone, and his friends are not anywhere near disturbed enough by any of what just happened.

(To be clear, I think it’s fine that they didn’t realise it was a changeling. I think the reaction they have when they find out retroactively, however, is like. Guys. A minute ago you thought Julian Bashir, your close friend of several years, beloved station doctor, had betrayed the federation and had to be killed. Guys. Forget Julian for a second. How was this not traumatic for the rest of you?)

Then there’s all of that Sloan fuckery which is basically just three episodes of one man trying to gaslight Julian into a dissociative break for reasons.

And he just. Bounces back. Next episode, time to move on, insists he’s totally fine. Except he’s not. He gets gradually more and more tired and miserable and closed off but he just. Never fucking talks about it to anyone. Never deals with how messed up he’s slowly becoming. Never recovers. Never heals. Never gets closure for any of it.

He has so many wonderful moments where he comforts someone else when they break, when they’re scared, when they let all the bad stuff finally make them collapse.

But Julian just never really collapses like that, and it’s like he actively ensures he will never have the chance to collapse because he doesn't want to (and probably doesn’t know how to) deal with any of his issues.

Can you imagine what it would look like when he finally breaks.

[sallymew4]

just look how much BRIGHTER Mob’s demeanor is once he has Ritsu safe with him. that is the biggest grin ive ever seen on that boy’s face he loves his little brother so damn much it’s incomprehensible

[inkskinned]

you wanted to be a good friend, because you loved your friends, but the truth was that everyone else somehow had a pamphlet on being normal that you never received. most of the time you learn by trial-and-error. you are terrified of the next big mistake you make, because it seems like the rules are completely arbitrary.

you've learned to keep the prickly parts of your personality in a stormcloud under your bed - as if they're a second version of you; one that will make your friends hate you. it feels feral, burning, ugly.

instead, you have assembled habits based on the statistical likelihood of pleasing others. you're a good listener, which is to say - if you do speak up, you might end up saying the wrong thing and scaring off someone, but people tend to like someone-who-listens. or you've got no true desires or goals, because people like it when you're passive, mutable. you're "not easy to fluster" which is to say - your emotions are fundamentally uninteresting to others around you; so you've learned to control them to a degree that you can no longer really feel them happening.

you have long suspected something is wrong with you, but most of the time, googling doesn't help. you are so-used to helping-yourself, alone and with no handbook. the reek of your real self feels more like a horrible joke - you wake up, and, despite all your preparations, suddenly the whole house is full of smoke. the real you is someone waiting to ruin your other-life, the one where you're normal and happy. the real-self is unpredictable, angry.

your real self snarls when people infantilize the whole situation. because if you were really suffering, everyone seems to think you'd be completely unable to cope. but you already learned the rules, so you do know how to cope, and you have fucking been coping. it's not black-and-white. it's not that you are healed during the other times - it's just that you're able to fucking try. and honestly, whenever you show symptoms, it's a really fucking bad sign.

because the symptoms you have are ugly and unmanageable for others. your symptoms aren't waifish white girl things. they're annoying and complicated. they will be the subject of so many pretentious instagram reels. if they cared about you, they'd just show up on time. you care, a lot, so deeply it burns you. you like to picture a world where the comments read if they loved you, they'd never need glasses to see. but since that's a rule you've seen repeated - "one must never be late or you are a bad friend" - you constantly worry about being late and leave agonizingly early. there are no words for how you feel when you're still late; no matter how hard you were trying.

so you have to make up for it. you have to make up for that little horrible real you that you keep locked in a cabinet. you are bad at answering emails so every project you make has to be perfect. you are weird and sensitive so you have to learn to be funny and interesting. you are an inconvenience to others, so you become as smooth as possible, buffing out all the rough parts.

all this. all this. so people can pass their hands over you and just tell you just the once -how good you are. you're a good friend. you're loveable.