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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im going to make one single original song & its going to be dog shit but its also going to use every vocal synth i have as psychological torture for both me and my audience
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Kurvitz stresses that Kim doesn't actually have a character sheet hidden in Disco Elysium's code. Imagining that Lieutenant Kitsuragi has only one natural attribute point in Motorics helps the ZA/UM team to understand the depth of his character beyond what's referenced in the game's dialogue. "We just came up with this stuff for coherency," says Kurvitz. "And because we're nerds."
"I like to think Kim has a Thought Cabinet project called Revolutionary Aerostatic Brigades that he's worked on since he was a teenager," Kurvitz says. "This raises the learning caps for his Reaction Speed and Interfacing."
Kim's high Volition skill makes him impervious to prying, Kurvitz says, as the detective can find out on occasions being met with Kim's brick-wall resolve. Kim often chastises these whims of the detective's, but will occasionally play along. The Lieutenant finds his new partner funny, says Kurvitz.
Kim is naturally shit at Motorics and thinks Harry is funny source
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Prompt 209
Now Jason was planning on, well, a lot of things, when he came back to Gotham. He had a lot of plans, several of which had to do with the old man and even more that had to do with cleaning up Crime Alley, making it safer and all that.
What he was not planning on was to find some sort of lab in the basement of where he was planning on setting up a safehouse. Nor was he planning on finding several literal children in cages inside said lab. Oh and Lazarus Waters- but children! With muzzles! Being experimented on!
Now he’d like to say he had a plan in what happened next, but if he’s honest everything had gone Green and he didn’t remember what happened next, only that he’s back home with said children and covered in blood. Oh and everything smells of smoke.
… And apparently there’s more of these things dotted around Crime Alley with the rest of these kids, er, siblings? Family? Fright does mean family? Okay kids, he’s not turning into Bruce but you can stay here while he deals with this… however long that takes.
He better not be turning into Bruce he swears-
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literally where can the zelda franchise go after totk. this is it. we've reached it. the pinnacle of video game entertainment. the whole dev team should just pack their stuff and enjoy a long and comfortable retirement. whoever decides their team has to follow-up on that with the next zelda game should answer for their crimes at the hague. what the fuck. I haven't even beat the game yet but what the fuck.
and how are AAA video game devs everywhere not losing their minds. how the hell did nintendo do any of that? and on that console?? you mean to tell me I can stack 15 differently shaped objects on top of each other and they don't vibrate violently into the skybox?? you mean to tell me the physics engine gladly accepts whatever I throw at it and holds it all together without dropping a frame while running on a machine that was outclassed two generations ago??? this is not witchcraft it's a grandiose demonstration of mastery over every aspect of game development that casts an immense shadow over every other AAA studio. fuck. fuck!!!!
everything about this game is crazy to me. the visuals are crazy. the soudtrack is crazy. the complexity of all systems and how they interact is crazy. the sheer amount of non-repeating content, NPCs, quests, dialogue, puzzles, environment variety - all crazy to me. every time I boot up this game I am humbled by the monumental effort and obvious love that went into every facet of the resulting experience. no cut corners anywhere. mirror-perfect chrome polish.
it's so rare we get something like that, in any field. I'd understand if nintendo never made a zelda game ever again because how do you follow that. god I hope everyone who worked on this game got the fattest check and the sloppiest head. I'm so happy I get to live in shigeru miyamoto's world
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