#and even making real friends!

[craycraybluejay]

sex and hormone therapy and killing my abusers and doing hard drugs will fix me

[andthebeanstalk]

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.

[andsewingishalfthebattle]

Novice sewing pattern: Cut out shapes. Line up the little triangles on the edges. Stitch edges together. We've also included step-by-step assembly instructions with illustrations.

Novice knitting pattern: yOU MUSt uNDerstANd thE SECret cOdE CO67 (73, 87, 93) BO44 (63, 76, 90) 28 (32, 34) slip first pw repeat 7x K to end *kl (pl) 42 * until 13" (13, 13, 15) join new at 30 pl for 17 rows ssk 27 k2tog mattress lengthwise BO and sacrifice a goat to the knitting gods. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT "INSTRUCTIONS," I JUST GAVE THEM TO YOU

[syn0vial]

my gun-loving, car guy, "i'm the straightest man i know" brother who just finished baldur's gate 3 talking about astarion:

[crowsgrudge]

fionna's world being represented by a dandelion makes so much sense ... they're weeds. yet people make wishes through them, changing their whole meaning from something meant to be destroyed to something hopeful.

dandelions are also resilient and it makes sense that something associated with them would. you know. perservere despite the destruction caused by the scarab.

but ultimately i think what REALLY made me tear up over this is that dandelions are really boring plants. when you're a kid you blow on them and make your wish but they're not eyecatching or anything but still, fionna's final wish was for her old world to still exist as it was when she left it (> plain and simple. boring even).

like the moment she realized she would lose her friends, and that her friends might forget each other if the world got its magic back, she immediately decided she didn't want it and I think that ties back to the dandelion metaphor so well... like, do you really need magic to be real to find it everywhere? or can you turn something boring into something magical?

[rassebers]

Pull yourself TOGETHER man

[getgriddled]

best griddlehark modern au 100%not even exaggerating

[deathberi]

FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH (2024) ↳ The Spice of Life ➤ Gongaga

[lucabyte]

Hmmm just gonna spit this headcanon out in text post form since A. I don't think I could exposit it well enough in image form and B. It's not actually textually/thematically substantiated and I don't like actually staking my stuff on just vibes alone*

But anyway. I'd say it's pretty evident that all the islanders forgot their names, right? King obviously. Because why the hell else would he do that, but also Siffrin No Middle Names No Last Name.

They're 'pretty sure' they've 'always' been 'Just Siffrin' 'as long as they can remember'. It's a pretty cruel twist of the knife to say that they don't even get to keep their birth name as a memento, which is why I'm saying as such.

My utterly unsubstantiated claim is I think it'd be cute to say that Sisyphus *is* the name Siffrin initially picked, assuming the myth of King Sisyphus is recontextualised as idk, just a play or something in the setting. But I like the idea of Siffrin going 'oh shit 🫵 he's just like me fr' at a tortured fictional character long before the irony kicks in.

As for how Sisyphus -> Siffrin. I think that chronic mumbler and emotional doormat Sif just did not correct people who misheard the name during their time travelling, and went through enough places with incompatible phonologies (pronounceable sounds in the language) without ever really writing it down that it just got kinda. Changed until it was unrecognisable, and Siffrin just went with it until the earlier pronunciations slipped out of their swiss-cheese brain. And they just kinda don't remember any of that.

Also, something something the horrid realisation that Siffrin also named themselves after a King. Just not as blatantly.

*(though I think there's something here about Siffrin, a guy from a belief system that seems to thoroughly disincentivise autonomy and self-motivated choice continuously having their hand forced to make changes/choices they don't want but have no choice but to... It's not solid enough to really back this up tbh, but it informs it.)

Anyway.

[skellydun]

i wish I had more friends who liked the same things that i do bc I'm booking this tiny cabin in the woods for a few days and none of my friends enjoy the outdoors so I'm going solo which is good for the soul but at the same time if I'm murdered I'd like someone to be there other than the murderer

[bucksbisexualawakening]

the progression from "there's a morning snack and a midday snack" and "20 bucks for pizza" buck looking after his friend's kid to "bobby's famous lasagne: 6 types of cheese cooked to perfection" buck cooking for his family to "that's makes me your sous chef" teaching his kid how to cook is making me go so feral.

[iphigeniacomplex]

breaking my silence on chess the musical to say that i would literally not give a fuck about this show if i thought it was good or fully successful at what it is saying. SORRY! i love how messy she is. i love how since 1984 and continuing to this very day people with entirely different perceptions of and opinions on the musical have attempted in their own ways to "make it good" by creating all these different versions with like notably different plots, characterization, and song order, and i love how fucking bad the vast majority of these are despite it all. i hope people keep trying to fix chess the musical forever and until the end of time. i hope no one ever figures it out. i want every currently living theatre director in existence to make their own version and for all these versions to come out on broadway at the same time, making that year's musical season entirely comprised of various different versions of the cold war chess musical by tim rice and half of abba. i want not only our greatest minds but also our middlest-of-the-road and worst minds to come up with their own conclusions as to why chess does not entirely work in its original form or any subsequent forms like to really think about it and yes i do want someone to dedicate their entire life to perfecting chess by releasing version after version after version until they die peacefully but still, as always, in the grips of obsession. i want marriages to be broken up. i want mental states to be shattered. i dream of this world

[decarbry]

[ryllen]

I MISSED THE WAY YUU RAISED HER VOICE TBHHH she is very sweet when she does that and gets mad~

[zivazivc]

guess who

I've seen a few artists I like making human art and I got inspired to make my own.

First version was based just on their character designs and personality, and what inspired their look in the first place. Second version happened when I took into account their backstory and what I imagine human versions of their parents' would look like. I don't consider either of these "canon", because to me they're just trolls but it was a fun experiment to try.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming of me drawing little colorful dolls

[toadandtails]

not to get sentimental over an anime i just got into but its genuinely so refreshing watching dunmesh. there's no incest, the underage characters aren't sexualized, and most if not all the fan service is of senshi and laios or even chilchuck. this is the bare minimum of making a good anime but it's got me really happy