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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i don't think some of y'all understand how significant it is that annabeth chase, the leading lady in an IP/brand as big as percy jackson, is played by a black girl. she is not some sidekick or comic relief. THEE annabeth chase, one of the wisest, intelligent, brave demigods and love of percy jackson's life, is played by a BLACK GIRL!!
but you're so hateful and caught up with book inaccuracies and changes that you can't even offer a sliver of hope for things to improve in continuing seasons, and instead immediately resort to wishing the show gets cancelled because they didn't do that specific thing in that specific scene in the books. makes me think there might be another underlying reason as to why you want it to fail.
and before someone starts, this isn't to say you can't have criticism, but if you really love percy jackson, why wouldn't your hope be for things to get better?
"i hope this show gets cancelled" yeah girl fuck you
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DP x DC prompt [11]
Vlad is planning something big, something powerful and he’s using his wealth and connections to make it happen.
Danny realizes that his parents' tech and his friend's aid isn’t going to cut it, and brute forcing the matter as Phantom is just going to ruin his reputation permanently.
What he needs is another different fruitloop, and thankfully for him the world is pretty damn full of them.
but he needs a very specific fruitloop, the one with a big company, advanced high end tech, so much money they don’t really know what to do with it and preferably they gotta be an absent figure, because Danny is on a mission, he’s not looking to get a new parent (he has his own)
and after some searching he finds his guy
Oliver Queen
Now he just needs to get in on that, and he decides to do that by using what little he managed to remember from Vlad’s “you will be the heir of Dalv,co” rants and Sam’s ideas on environmentalism. cause Queen apparently cares a lot about giving back to the little guy.
Which is great! very important, even if his business kinda suffers from how he goes about it (but Danny can help with that! somehow! he’ll figure it out, can’t be that hard)
We can’t all be Brucie Wayne, but we certainly can try.
So anyway, shouldn’t be too hard, he’s got some history in the field of environment stuff what with the whole purple back gorilla thing.
and Ollie takes one good look at this smart enthusiastic black haired blue eyed teen and is like, “oh neat! my very own Tim Drake Wayne” and he just goes with it.
Danny’s hidden power of drawing in rich people is truly something to behold…
Oliver is more than happy to just let Danny do whatever he wants as long as it doesn’t break the law or look bad on him, and no drugs, he was very clear on that.
and Danny is like great, I can now work on undermining Vlad and ruin his plans!
but then… Dinah…
“Oliver Jonas Queen!”
oh shit, full named…
“You are not going to do a repeat of Roy!”
Dinah is very effective, and the whole thing starts small enough.
Oliver personally shows him around in the company, makes sure to introduce him to the important folks.
that evolves into occasionally checking up on him, making sure he takes the appropriate amount of breaks.
then he takes him to a baseball match, he had multiple tickets… would have been a waste to refuse.
Then Dinah insists he tags along for dinner in a restaurant (there were some others, it was actually not awkward at all somehow, quite nice really), this grows into dinner at the penthouse.
It's when Oliver expresses the desire to teach Danny archery, telling him there are a lot of things in the sport that are also applicable to business stuff that Danny comes to a sudden and violent realization.
He's being parented!
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