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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Taking the current topic as an excuse to ask you to tell me all the reasons you love Rarijack. Your art for the ship is so sweet and intimate I'd love to hear any in depth thoughts you have.
Breathes in.
I think what makes their dynamic really strong is that they have opposing personalities but aligned values. It's deeper than just "opposites attract." Rarity's fancy, prissy, and femme while Applejack's modest, rough, and "masculine." But both value hard work (to the point of being workaholics), their families (both have guardianship over their little sisters), running successful businesses, and eventually each other. Their relationship can be boiled down to, "Despite our differences/disagreements, I still like you because we value the same things."
We see their relationship develop so much. In the first season, they can't stop bickering about surface-level differences. By season four, they still bicker, but will mend their relationship because they can't help but do nice things for each other. In Trade Ya, they start off arguing over personality differences (Applejack likes old junk and Rarity likes useless crap). Then they pivot and start arguing that they value their relationship more than the other. In the end, they mend things by sacrificing their needs and buying each other a gift. Even if they don't understand it, they know it'd make the other happy. And that's all that really matters. It's a genuinely sweet moment that shows how arguing can be healthy and necessary for relationships to strengthen.
We even see them dropping their hang-ups about each others' personalities. In Made in Manehattan, when Rarity runs off in dramatics about someone's fashion, AJ doesn't roll her eyes or scoff, she smiles. Oftentimes, their conflicts are very common domestic conflicts romantic couples face. Applejack's Day Off is about a woman's inability to balance work and life and find time to properly spend with her partner, causing her partner to feel neglected.
By season seven, they're actively participating in each others' interests. Any problems or conflicts that arise are dealt with, and they come out the other end stronger and closer. In Honest Apple, AJ pretty much spells out why their relationship works so well: even though she doesn't understand fashion, she can recognize and appreciate how much work it takes and wants to respect that. When she realizes her mistake in the episode, AJ goes above and beyond to fix things and apologize to Rarity. They care about each other so much.
The two go out of their way, sacrificing their personal desires and beliefs and doing things they normally wouldn't, to make the other happy. That's just love.
There's Simple Ways, where AJ gets stuck in an unwanted love triangle between Rarity and her hipster crush. And her frustration and anger can be so easily interpreted as AJ finding herself in a terrible position; the girl she loves wants another man, and that man wants her.
I dunno. I've always had a preference for opposites attract ships, but Rarijack's stuck with me like a brain worm because they have the perfect chemistry. The way they show they care, or do things for each other, I've always read it as the truest representation of romance in the show.
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(Spoilers for the sctir novel)
I honestly don't know what is funnier:
The fact that when Yoohyun learns about the Regression, he pretty much immediately asks Yoojin what his relationship to Sung Hyunjae was before turning time back, and that when Yoojin tells him that he and Hyunjae didn't know each other at all before the Regression, Yoohyun thinks Yoojin is lying to him........
.........or the fact that Yoohyun is right.
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Ok so I have been stewing this crossover au in my brain nonstop for the past few days and. I am nothing if not committed to the bit, so. Volume cover redraws :)
Here are the originals:
If you want to read more about my one piece spy x family crossover, keep reading!
So the idea is simple! Crossover reincarnation au where ASL is reborn in Spy x Family. They’re each born separately and none of them are born with the same names as their previous lives, and with no way of finding each other, they each find their own thing to do in the world.
Sabo, too used to the dangers of being a spy, eventually finds a cause to devote himself to again, in preventing war from engulfing the country he was reborn in. Ace, drawn to fire as he was in his previous life, used arson as a means to rob rich people for sustenance and survival, and is eventually scouted and hired by Garden as a fire specialist and assassin. And Luffy, though born in perhaps the poorest condition, grows up happily and takes whatever part time jobs he wants to do.
The thing about Sabo is that, as much as he seems like a young man of good repute and high standing within society, everyone in WISE knows that he is a massive nuisance. Nobody knew in the beginning how a child less than half the age of most of their veteran agents could have the same skills and knowledge in their profession. Sabo was— and still is— hyper competent, and by the time WISE figured out just how much of a menace to society he was, it was too late.
Ace forgot for the first few years of his new life that he wasn’t made of fire, and consequently, received multiple accidental burns. This did not deter him, however, from growing up to be a very skilled arsonist, well-practiced in every which way to start a dumpster fire or house fire. As a teenage he would use this often to draw attention as he robbed rich people blind. When he was caught, he was given an ultimatum by Garden: join them and receive payment for starting fires and causing problems under contract, or face the government and authorities for his crimes. Begrudgingly, he joined Garden, but eventually comes to appreciate that he can make substantial money in his element.
Luffy is Luffy. No telepathy or experimentation, no fancy schools, no gimmicks or secret identities. But he has still lived an extremely colorful life in this world, full of fascinating and kind individuals who have helped him grow up healthy and relatively happy. He goes where he is free, and he takes whatever part time jobs he wants in order to make the minimum he needs to survive.
Ace and Sabo find each other first, in their late teens, and neither of them realize that the other remembers their previous life, but both refuse to separate. (Sabo thinks Ace doesn’t remember, because Ace didn’t recognize him. Ace never saw Sabo grow up past 10, however, so he doesn’t recognize older Sabo immediately. By the time he does realize who exactly Sabo is, Sabo has backtracked and pretends to know Ace from a dream, or from somewhere else.)
Sabo’s attachment to Ace, predictably, causes problems between Sabo and WISE, but by then, Sabo is indispensable to the organization, and they make an exception for Sabo to be able to remain with Ace, so long as Ace never finds out what Sabo’s actual job is. Ace, on the other hand, hides his job because he doesn’t want his brother, who he has just found and who does not know Ace well enough yet, to know that he makes a living from killing people.
And they find Luffy sometime afterwards, prior to the beginning of the Spy x Family canon. Luffy figures out, not long after moving in with his brothers, both of his brothers’ secret occupations and the fact that both of them remember their past memories. He thinks it is common knowledge, however, and so he never brings it up.
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Learn to draw Heinrix or die: the challenge
("Die" seems a much more likely outcome with the way it's going so far, tbh)
This one was supposed to be a study of a Jeremy Irons shot, but for some mystical reason while Irons looks similar to Heinrix (in my eyes at least), whenever the picture started to look like Irons it stopped looking like Heinriix at all. So at this point there is not much similarities left to either of them, but, well, at least it started to resemble Heinrix at least a liiiiitle tiny bit
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I’m still so mentally ill over the whole Luffy refusing to eat unless it’s Sanji’s food thing. Like. We KNOW how fucking feral over food Luffy is. He loves food and loves eating so much that he steals it off other people’s plates and out of their hands and is so impatient when it comes to meals that he’ll literally try and sneak into the kitchen to mooch before it’s ready. Or he’ll try to break into the refrigerator. I know Sanji mentioned putting a lock on it at some point bc Luffy literally wiped it clean. He will not hesitate to eat other people’s portions or literally an entire meal meant for a whole ship of people! He’s unbelievably selfish when it comes to food and that’s just SUCH a central part of his character that it’s become almost endearing. Even in Totto Land Luffy didn’t think for a second before devouring everything in sight, including an entire fucking HOUSE, regardless of the consequences or the people it might affect. Homie did not care!! He’s food driven first and foremost!!!
Until Sanji leaves him. Until he decides that eating—something that he loves and brings him comfort—isn’t WORTH it unless it’s Sanji’s food he’s eating. It’s been shown that Luffy has zero self restraint when it comes to food so the fact that he was SURROUNDED by food on all sides on a food themed island and utterly refused to partake in any of that? Even though he hates being hungry and will always make eating a priority over pretty much anything else?? The amount of willpower it must have taken for him to sit there and purposefully let himself starve, for SANJI. Even when food was offered to him conveniently (in the form of syrup rain) he stubbornly rejected that. Because it wasn’t Sanji’s food. Because it wasn’t Sanji who made it, who always puts so much thought and care into the food he makes, who always indulges Luffy and prepares extra because he knows how much Luffy eats and how much he loves to eat. Luffy literally took one of the most defining traits he has and tossed it out the window. For Sanji. I’m going to fucking blow up
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