#people we were allies to

[cascadianights]

I don't know how to describe how hurtful it is to watch all the communities and individuals who were out and loud and vocal about BLM and Roe v Wade be dead silent now

[apollos-olives]

before october 7th this blog was a meme page btw.

[giantkillerjack]

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!

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.

[chick-it-out]

[le-corbeau]

What I say: I'm fine

What I mean:

It exists a version of TBOSAS where Mizzen had to see Coral die and a version of TBOSAS where Coral had to see Mizzen die

[thetriangletattoo]

✨ally✨

[vanessakimballs]

restoration is good (TO ME) because after 12 years we finally get to see carolina gather the clarity to understanding tex. just as carolina was beaten down, when we don't have sarge or wash to guide us, it happens.

tex saves us. the woman who failed defies fate and saves the day.

[jawz]

Do you care about detransitioners or do you care about gnc people re-conforming to the expectations of their assigned sex? Do you care about lesbians, gay men, bi people, and any other gnc person, or do you care about hyperfeminine women supposedly being “nature’s counterpart” to hypermasculine men, both of whom are expected to perform heterosexuality and only heterosexuality (these concepts, in the Western world, backed up by oppressive Christian ideals)? Do you care about doctors and surgeons, most of whom are NOT TRANS OR GNC, coercing gnc people into “acceptable” binary gender and promoting treatments that can sometimes decrease quality of life and cause health issues, or are you only interested in pointing & laughing at trans people and gnc people because you consider us to be freaks of nature? Do I embarrass you? Does my noncompliance make your skin crawl?

Do you only celebrate detransitioners “finding ourselves” when that involves re-conforming to the standards we initially ran from, or do you support those of us (in fact, a majority) who still look to the outside world like trans people/gnc nonbinary people and are treated as such? Do you actually believe that biological sex exists regardless of physical appearance, chromosomes, secondary sex characteristics, “gendered” behavior, and sexual orientation, or are you a servant of the binary gender spectrum just like those you claim to disagree with?

[satyrradio]

perisex trans people when something isn't about them:

[galaxythreads]

Made cake at 11pm today to celebrate my engagement because my parents refused to be happy about it.There is perhaps a small amount of bitterness in me. Cake was good though. Even if it's kind of gray for some reason.

[uncanny-tranny]

It really is evident to me that cis people, on average, view trans identity as this idea that we transition for social benefit.

I was listening to my manager talk about how she "understands how chicks would want to be guys" because the only thing a guy has to deal with is "awkward boners." She then said she can't "understand how a guy would turn into a chick" because it isn't like "being a chick is all that good."

I had to stop myself from being offended because it's really incorrect what she said. Being cis would be easier. I had to closet myself to make sure I could get this job, so how is my manhood easier than being cis?

This plays into the idea that not only do trans people only identify as their gender for social/financial/political gain, but that being trans even earns you that in the first place. I'm sorry to say, but being trans is not easier than being cis. We don't have anything to gain, politically/socially/financially, by being trans.

I need cis people to understand that this mindset is part of the reason why it's so fucking scary and exhausting to be trans around cis people.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

Just want to say: a, I admire very much that you've figured out a healthy way to work on your fics that allows you to have fun with it. And also b, am very excited to hear that you are getting there with pez! It has fully given me brain rot ever since I read it last year, there is just such a lack of content for the highly specific trope of using time travel as a device to explore extremely unhealthy levels of self loathing.

I just adore everything you're doing in it. Neither midoriya is anywhere approaching okay for any portion of the fic and I love rereading and mining into all the subtle characterization pointing to that. It's a bit like nhtycth in that some really goofy funny stuff is often hiding some really fucking worrying things, but the fact that characters DO do that stuff—that todoroki uses his teaspoon's worth of extremely stunted social skills to bludgeon his friend's door open and help him, that a rpf shipping war is an actual source of drama despite how goofy the sentiment seems on the surface, that about half of what jon says is deeply worrying and the other half is extremely funny and there's a lot of overlap between the two—really lifts the tension and brightens the universe. It's sort of similar to what you did with gerry, in that endless misery isn't nearly as painful as the ups and downs of a life that, when you step back and zoom out, has something deeply and horribly wrong with it.

(jon sort of reminds me of spider-man in that he uses human to deal with trauma and stress, except I don't think he at any point realizes how fucking funny he is. He's just there, in a home depot, gnashing his teeth because he's got so many bodies to dispose of and this cashier sure is taking her time.)

I really, really, really have had trouble finding fics that take everything midoriya has dealt with to task. It's a hell of a thing to live 14 years as a disabled minority, have it heavily shape your existence, and then one day you wake up and you realize you're...not that, or at least, nobody will ever acknowledge you as that again. You've lost all claim to it. Those experiences that shaped who you are? Dust in the wind. 14 years of pain and life might as well be buried in the ground for all the good they do you. Nobody's going to cut you any slack or quarter, you've gotta simply work harder, be better. And now when you do that you get the results you wanted, so that's fine, then. That's good. There was something wrong with the you before, and there's something right with the you now, and if the transition is a little rough, well that doesn't matter, you're the same as everyone else now, so it's your own job to fill in whatever gaps you need to.

I really can't get over how mentally fucked it must be for midoriya to run into quirkless people, run across quirkless issues, and be silently caught between, incapable of speaking his mind and too scared to do so anyway around those he can trust.

Also I should mention, I'm just very excited for bakugou to get back from the gym. He's been there like a year I hope he's getting a good workout in.

Me realizing that it’s been a year since pez dispenser debris:

I feel like there’s just this very specific type of grief that Izuku has to grapple with in the span of pez dispenser debris that I’m just obsessed with. He’s sort of silently mourning who he could have been, when 1) he has to present like there’s nothing lost to maintain his secret and 2) the entire world is constantly inundating him with the message that there was nothing lost.

Like. I don’t want to get too deep into it because it risks spoiling things and I do have major plans to continue it (I’ve loved this story for so many years before I ever even hit publish), but the emotion that Izuku’s feeling right now is so much more complex than “I hate who I used to be and want him to stop existing” or “I just want to keep my secrets.” And I think the way he interacts with Mirio is the biggest evidence of that.

Izuku’s placed himself at the very center of the Quirklessness debate with his support of Mirio. He fights for Quirkless heroes, very publicly, to the point where he’s not even graduated yet but considered to be one of the most prominent voices on the matter. If you took a poll of Quirkless people as to which hero would be most supportive of them pursing their own career in heroics, Izuku would be right at the top of the list. When it comes to Quirklessness itself, he’s nothing but supportive.

But he didn’t tell Mirio the truth of his own Quirklessness.

Out of everyone, Mirio’s the one everyone expects to know, despite him being a relatively newer relationship compared to someone like Iida or Uraraka or Todoroki. And I tried to imply that he’s sort of the one who knows the most about Izuku out of everyone save All Might.

Like, we’ll get into how much exactly Mirio knows soon, so I won’t divulge what, if anything, Izuku has told him. But we know that Mirio knows, weirdly enough, that Izuku is deeply fucking haunted. He knows that boy has many violent ghosts in his bones. He finds it hilarious and will tell their realtor about it. Izuku told him about the discontent spirits who died in a violent passion and live on inside of him before he told him about his Quirklessness.

And I just feel like one of those things is a little bit easier to discuss than the other.

Izuku has decided to keep his own Quirklessness quiet in a way that surpasses secrecy about One for All. If it was just about OfA, he could tell people he didn’t get his quirk until the entrance exam, and it wouldn’t even be a lie. He’s purposefully obscuring his own past as Quirkless even as he takes a forefront of the Quirkless hero debate with his open support of Mirio.

And the fact that he’s at the forefront of this debate in and of itself requires a difficult dichotomy. He is the world’s most vocal proponent for the first Quirkless hero. He is a known figure in the Quirkless community now.

He isn’t considered one of them anymore. He’s an outsider coming in.

It must be such a strange, odd sort of grief to come to the people you were home amongst for most of your life and be greeted as a stranger. To return home, and to be welcomed in for the first time, and to not even be able to tell people that you’ve lived here all your life and don’t need a tour.

It’s a sort of death of self, I think. And I think Izuku never expected to have to grapple with his own ghost.

[canarydarity]

having a normal one watching Bdubs lim life tonight and thinking about how when Bdubs betrayed Tango in last life, Skizz told Tango that for the sake of team best he had to go and forgive him.

But when Bdubs boogey kills Skizz in lim life before team ties is even really formed, Skizz is allowed to have it out for Bdubs for almost the entire first half of the season, even when the clockers ally with them and it would've been easier to let sleeping dogs lie.

Tango, the perpetually extraneous and undervalued member of his alliances...the too often shoved aside and betrayed...being told it was his duty to the team to forgive bdubs and move on....

But no one—especially not Tango—tried to tell Skizz to let it go.

[aloeverawrites]

If you want to learn math, no amount of good intentions and warm feelings alone is going to help you understand math.

If you want to learn science you can’t just sympathise with a biology textbook without reading it.

If you want to learn another language you can’t just smile at the text until you understand it.

So if you want to learn how to be an effective ally, you have to learn about the people you’re trying to help and the bigotry you’re trying to fight.

It’s a nice attempt but you can’t purely affection your way out of the bigoted teaching that the dominant culture taught you.

You’re going to have to do some studying.

[rewritingcanon]

you should get into taylor swift. she’s a master songwriter and really touches the soul. if you love pop you love taylor swift. she’s the big thing now, saying you dont like her is like saying you dont like michael jackson. and everyone likes michael jackson.

master songwriter…. yeah okay…..

[kamiko1234]

Noticing that some of the youngest Jedi younglings were afraid of the clones (bc fully grown men in armor who mostly wear helmets do seem scary to toddlers), the creche masters decide to get them some clone dolls & toys to take away that fear. That meant that a whole generation of the youngest Jedi grew up playing with self-sown dolls of different clones from different battalions. And slowly the clones stopped being these big faceless men that are sorta around out there outside, but instead are the heroes of their playings and their friends. A whole generation of Jedi children begging the older Jedi knights and masters to tell them about their clone battalion. A whole generation of children fighting over the clone dolls with the painting in their favorite colour. A whole generation of Jedi younglings growing up hearing about how great and heroic the clones are, just like the clone cadets across the galaxy who are growing up hearing how great and heroic the Jedi are.