emily gwen, the creator of the sunset lesbian flag that we’ve come to commonly use, still continues to live in poverty.
multi-billion dollar companies have used their design and made profit from it, and yet they have not seen a cent for their creation.
i’ve been friends with emily for years, and i have not once seen them be financially stable the entire time. i’ve seen them homeless, unemployed, starving. right now, they need our help more than ever.
please consider donating to emily’s ko-fi, especially if you’ve used their design to create something and profited from it.
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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.
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the way that one line from the new epilogue in an astarion romance is going to HAUNT me
just. what a profoundly intense thing to confess to someone.
like, just these six months of newfound happiness with you exerts a force on his heart equal and in direct opposition to two centuries of endless torment, the gnawing hunger and exploitation. this flashbulb-bright fraction of his long life holds the same gravity to him as years upon years of darkness and suffering.
in all likelihood, he hasn’t even known his lover for as long as his worst memory lasted, that year sealed away to go mad from starvation and sensory deprivation, yet he still tells them this brief time has been so fundamentally and powerfully important that the weight of even that unimaginable hell is vanishingly small compared to this present he has now and the future ahead of them both.
how am i supposed to act normal about this.
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Oh hey I get to share another commission- this one is for an ACOTAR inspired puzzle for Reverie Puzzles!
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kamala khan would have the most horrendous ao3 author's notes known to man
"hey guys sorry the update is late i switched places with an avenger (ajdgrhsh literally crying) and a really cool space scientist lady and then got into a fight and some alien dudes wrecked my house and then I met Nick fury and I was literal space it was crazy and I had to help save the universe and saw said scientist lady give up her life to save all of us... anyways hope you like the new fic, branching out with an arranged marriage au for this one!!!"
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