giantkillerjack · 1 year ago
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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
[plain-text version of this post can be found under the cut]
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.
Plain-text version:
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!
P.S. 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.
#hlep#original#mental health#my sympathies and empathies to anyone who has to rely on this kind of hlep to get what they need.#the people in my life who most need to see this post are my family but even if they did I sincerely doubt they would internalize it#i've tried to break thru to them so many times it makes my head hurt. so i am focusing on boundaries and on finding other forms of support#and this thing i learned today helps me validate those boundaries. the example with the milk was from my therapist.#the example with the towing company was a real thing that happened with my parents a few months ago while I was age 28. 28!#a full adult age! it is so infantilizing as a disabled adult to seek assistance and support from ableist parents.#they were real mad i was mad tho. and the spoons i spent trying to explain it were only the latest in a long line of#huge family-related spoon expenditures. distance and the ability to enforce boundaries helps. haven't talked to sisters for literally the#longest period of my whole life. people really believe that if they love you and try to help you they can do no wrong.#and those people are NOT great allies to the chronically sick folks in their lives.#you can adore someone and still fuck up and hurt them so bad. will your pride refuse to accept what you've done and lash out instead?#or will you have courage and be kind? will you learn and grow? all of us have prejudices and practices we are not yet aware of.#no one is pure. but will you be kind? will you be a good friend? will you grow? i hope i grow. i hope i always make the choice to grow.#i hope with every year i age i get better and better at making people feel the opposite of how my family's ableism has made me feel#i will see them seen and hear them heard and smile at their smiles. make them feel smart and held and strong.#just like i do now but even better! i am always learning better ways to be kind so i don't see why i would stop
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ghost-bxrd · 1 month ago
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I think we as a fandom need to have more talks about ✨dramatic✨ Jason running his own AO3 blog where he posts increasingly violent and heart wrenching stories about Robin. (The second Robin. Because he’s absolutely self inserting.)
And the Batfam find out about those fic that have a startlingly detailed layout of the batcave and accurate patrol routes that they choose to investigate (by reading the fics, duh) and growing increasingly upset about how the characters are portrayed.
Especially Robin.
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turtleblogatlast · 7 months ago
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Something I love about Leo is that, canonically, he IS capable of cooking, he’s just completely incapable of using a toaster. He’s banned from the kitchen not out of an inability to make edible food, but because being within six feet of a toaster causes the poor appliance to spontaneously combust.
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dykedvonte · 9 days ago
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I think any fix-it mouthwashing au has to have the mandatory scenes of Curly either being able to blink again or speaking for the first time.
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bixels · 10 months ago
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While I do think anon was rude, I do think it's pretty shitty to set up all this stuff you were going to add the au and then just drop it. It's disappointing. Definitely unfollowing.
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Bye.
#ask me#anon#once AGAIN.#I am not dropping anything#the au is not getting cancelled. more than likely i'm gonna take a break from it until i find motivation again#But I've been drawing the AU for half a fucking year#In that time I've only drawn 5 things that aren't mlp related#I'm getting tired and my last few posts didn't do as well as I'd hoped#And I'm not about to burn myself out on mlp au art even if I really do love making it#I'm still gonna make comics. I have a bunch of ideas.#Tulli and I still wanna do the limited run merch shop#Discord is still coming. Sunset is still coming. Sombra is still coming. I have so many ideas#But I need to do something else for my own sake. Did you know I was supposed to get the background 6 designs done by now#But I didn't because I'm TIRED#I've been keeping myself on a schedule to keep content pumping despite travel and school and family and I'm tired#what i'm getting isn't matching what i'm giving and that's nobody's fault. i'm not frustrated at anyone. a slump was bound to happen#drawing the au was fun until it become my Thing. Because when your Thing––your identity––starts to faulter#it can really make you freak out#And that's not healthy for the project or for myself. I need to find the fun again and I'm sure I will#I'm really appreciative of everyone's support in my inbox and replies it really does mean a lot especially given that about 2/3 of my#followers followed for mlp. But if you're gonna react to me saying “i'm gonna cool down on mlp art and draw my own stuff” with “i'm#disappointed in you." then Leave! I think it's good you're unfollowing#you are not obligated to stick by my side! But don't act like I'm doing you a disservice by turning my attention elsewhere#I didn't promise anyone anything and I definitely didn't say I'm breaking any promises.
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triglycercule · 2 months ago
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nightmare viewing the murder time three as little toys but more in like a little spoiled kid kinda way. because it would be funny and if you take into the account that he was like 6 before getting corrupted and do some mental loopholes it would be even funnier. like these are his dolls (killer dust and horror) and this is their barbie dreamhouse (his castle). they all have to stay in one room because nightmare needs to keep his toys in a toy box. the toys only ever come out when he wants to play but oh damn it they keep on breaking out!! silly toys,,, and then he locks them into the room again.
nightmare serves them food with plastic tea cups and plastic plates and there is no food. there is no tea. they have to imagine the food because dolls can't literally eat. there are food containers and stuff in the house but its all just a bunch of empty boxes. horror starts tweaking out after he scavenges the kitchen and finds a cereal box and milk carton that have NOTHING in it (why keep empty boxes?????)
they have to go where he wants them to go. nightmare gets to dress them up in whatever he wants because theyre his dolls they can wear anything he wants. it gets incredibly embarrassing when the trio is forced to wear pink pretty dresses and fight like that. or they have to go around the castle doing stupid fucking roleplays and it gets weird because theyre being forced to reenact a bullying scene and nightmare's giving them the death stare if they don't get it right (is this projection. this must be some form of coping mechanism dust theorizes)
and then you know nightmare's not exactly the best toy owner so he loses a few of his dolls here and there. maybe they get destroyed when he was playing a bit too rough with them! (killer dies in battle for like the 29th time) but its okay because he can just go back on down to the store (something new) and buy. wait no. steal another doll and then put it back in his dreamhouse and BOOM he has a full set again!! so sweet so cute. his dolls don't have consciousness what are you talking about theyre begging to be let go?? that's all just your imagination. what do you mean you're asking about the several slowly dying bodies with removed arms or legs in his dungeon. oh that's just where the broken but not yet destroyed toys go dw theyre fine its humane
#toy story but evil#imagine nightmare dresses the trio up in dreamtale esque clothes and then forces them to pretend to be his parents#because the stupid shit grew up parentless and now that he has dolls he can just roleplay that now#or he could just make the trio roleplay as a family. one parent two children. huh i wonder where i've heard this before#he's still like totally smart with all the multiversal plans and conquering and manipulation and all that#just that he's still got a bit of childish charm in him yk.🥺🥺🥺 he's sweet and cute 🥺🥺🥺🥺#killer says as he tries not to go insane from being stuck in a room with dust amd horror for weeks on end#nightmare has no sense of boundary for the trio because theyre just little toys for him#if he wants them to change clothes he strips them because dolls cant change by themselves#if he wants them to move a specific way he maneuvers them because dolls cant movs on their own#nightmare's messing around and has all his dolls in the splits because who hasnt done that#dust and horror are in so much pain. killer just feels humiliated#these are GROWN MEN you are objectifying here nightmare. LITERALLY objectifying. but irs okay its funny#dadmare but instead of nightmare being the dad he's the kid. while also simultaneously having all the power#this would go for a sick ass plotline if someone made a fic for it#it aint gonna be me 🤣🤣 but like.... trio has to convince nightmare to stop treating them like goddamn dolls#and nightmare has to change his stupid little kiddy mentality while also they all have to just get on better terms in general#so stupidn so dumb. would the mtt hate eachother during all this. quite possibly#three crazy freaks trapped in one room for unknown amounts of time. homoerotic arguments must have occured#they must know stuff about eachother that they don't wanna know. they all know what they look like naked#nightmare is the leading cause of mtt deaths because he just doesn't know how to properly handle his toys#oops he says as he accidentally breaks horror's neck and dust and killer watch on. guess its time to get a new one!#and he gleefully skips off to horrortale while dust and killer are left with the dusting beheaded body. what a fun time#killer sans#dust sans#horror sans#nightmare sans#murder time trio#bad sanses#tricule rant
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nuclearanomaly · 3 months ago
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。・゚゚・ ☀️🍦💕 ・゚゚・。
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blowjob-horseguy · 1 year ago
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The Steve and Nancy flirting in season four becomes much more interesting when put in the context of steddie and ronance I think. Because it's less backsliding their character development and more about 2 kids in the 80's falling back on the closest het relationship available when confronted with queer feeling and queer people. It's less taking an ambitious independant woman and sticking her with the stagnant nuclear family man because the script says so, and it's more about the triangulation of desire. In this essay I will-
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twinstxrs · 10 months ago
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there’s something so personal about the scene in fantasy high s1e7 where gorgug calls himself stupid & fabian, who up to that point had basically entirely been acting like the bad kids (especially gorgug) were beneath him & had also been the one calling ragh stupid two lines ago, instantly says “okay, do not put yourself down like that. don’t you dare do that to yourself.” like it was obvious he liked the bad kids at that point but the instinct to protect his friends manifesting as an immediate strong refusal of gorgug’s self-deprecating talk kills me. that boy loves his friends so bad oh my god i feel sick.
#fabian seacaster#fantasy high#gorgug thistlespring#these two specifically are so dear to me#top 5 most underrated fh dynamic the girls that get it get it#acts of service (gorgug) meets words of affirmation (fabian)#spring break i believe in you. i hand you an orange. you never hug me / shut up.#THE TENDERNESSSS#it’s about gorgug fixing the hangman & fabian having no idea how to repay him other than saying ‘i’m gonna buy you an orange.’#when fabian a year ago had an insecurity about buying other people things bc he thought they’d just use him for that.#it’s about gorgug’s tin flower that’s tattooed on his arm being both symbolic of his roots & deeply tied to his relationship with fabian#it’s about ​fabian being the reason gorgug was in that fateful detention in the first place.#& gorgug being the first person to see fabian again in the nightmare forest.#all the bad kids are tied by destiny but god. fabian & gorgug you are so tied by destiny.#anyways i will not lie this far into my tags i expect nothing but in another universe they would be the slow burn of all time. to me.#it is so subtle & casual but there is so much love there it makes me kinda crazy.#but either way my beloveds who i think have helped bring out the best parts of one another but who r also both soooo lame (affectionate).#also i think it’d be funny if a) gorgug was the final bad kid to join the giant family tree via dating fabian#and b) telemaine was eventually gorgug’s grandather in law. can u imagine.#thistlecaster#fabigug#whichever one it is idk idc#they r just so gentle :(#UPDATE sorry i stopped right when this happened to write this whole post & literally like 5 minutes later gorgug has that idea to look at-#zayne’s pearl & his hunch isn’t right but fabian IMMEDIATELY jumps back in with ‘it’s moments like these that prove you’re smart’ GODSDD#when the fabian & gorgug dynamic hits it truly hits. besties/bfs ever i can’t decide they r simply so great
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raraeavesmoriendi · 6 months ago
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Okay but watcher originally wasn’t going to leave the old videos up. Like that is something that they backtracked on and are trying to gaslight people about. They did an interview with Variety where they told them that they were going to slowly remove their content from YouTube.
I’m trying to figure out if you’re footstamping at me or what, but babe it’s not worth it.
they’re going to do with their videos what they deem they need to bc they’re not actually our weird friends and we don’t know them like that, they’re guys who make video series who are trying to figure out how to keep a studio afloat in a landscape currently dominated by media conglomerates owned by people like jeff bezos. that is the cut and dry of it. yeah, they probably changed their minds and reversed their earlier decision, but if anything the way people are frothing at the mouth about losing their ~comfort content~ (which. yikes don’t get me started), one would think that would be a relief.
look, I had a whole essay here but I have shit to do so, short version: watcher could have strategized and rolled this whole thing out differently, and who knows, maybe more things will change. maybe they’ll change their content output schedule for their own channel. maybe they’ll add shows or cut , or re-scale for international viewer accommodation. I’d hate to be their PR person right now. but it is what it is. if you can’t pay them, don’t. do not subscribe. literally no one is forcing you. if you wanna see their stuff that badly, find someone who can and password share. they literally said it was fine.
cards on the table, I don’t even know if I’ll be getting a sub until October, or at all, bc I’m a grad student and I have bills. but I’m not about to sit here and act betrayed and hope they fail a. because I’m an adult who understands that no matter the size of the staff, providing employee benefits and insurance costs money, as does making any kind of for-fun content in our current hellscape, and b. it’s kind of shitty to watch people turn around and act like a media company is their friends personally stabbing them in the back and betraying some grand marxist ethos when it’s literally just people who don’t have things like mousecorp and netflix behind them trying to make their shit on their own terms. I’m not going to sit here and pretend they’re some rich greedy corpos trying to wring money out of us poor broke smol beans out of malice when they’re not even in the same ballpark. they’re allowed to ask to be paid for their time and their labor. if people can’t pay them, then they can’t pay them, end of. some things we just have to go without and that’s just how it shakes out; there are worse and more critical things I could be missing out on that I will be paying that money for instead.
but I’m not about to insist their stuff be free forever because ~I want it~. because that’s not what it comes down to, in the system that we currently operate and exist under. I’m not entitled to their shit like that and frankly no one is.
watching people openly hope they crash and burn bc it won’t be free anymore just makes me chalk it up to one more shitty example of how consumer culture has just made people not think about how stuff is made as long as they can get that instant gratification, but like. water is wet, news at 11.
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miraculouslbcnreactions · 3 months ago
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I wouldn't really agree that boys are just arm candy in magical girl shows and only there to look cute. Yeah, sure the girls' friendships are the focus, but the boys are usually very much involved in the plot and most shows do explore their feelings about the odd things that happen due to magical shenanigans even if they aren't in the know (It's why ML baffles me even more with how they screwed up Adren's arc when he's the deuteragonist, when all these boys are supporting cast and get well rounded arcs)
I'm not much of a winx fan, but the specialists were very much not arm candy. Did the girls talk about them being cute? Yes, it's what teenage girls do. Did the narrative suggest they were good looking? Yes, but that's standard for most love interests in any genre. But we still got scenes with them talking amongst themselves about how they themselves feel and they got a fair share of badass fight scenes even if they wield no magic. A large amount of episodes actually included the boys and girls working as a team solving a mystery or fighting a villain. The girls might deal the finishing blow but the boys were still integral to the plot.
I hope this doesn't come across as hate, it definitely wasn't my intention. I'm just a bit too passionate about the magical girl genre.
I do think you have a good point with ML having a problem choosing a genre or blending two genres successfully.
For the CCS fans, I will add though that Cardcaptor Sakura had both Tomoyo and Syaoran serve as sources of motivation for Sakura. And both Sakura and Syaoran collecting cards even if Sakura is the only one who could seal them and yet never made you question whether Syaoran was even necessary for the job the way ml does with Chat.
I wasn't trying to say that boys have no part to play in magical girl team shows or that they're always treated as having no lives beyond the girls, that's why I mentioned that the Winx Club boys - aka, the Specialists - have their own (mostly off screen) lives and occasionally show up help the girls:
the boys are usually off doing their own thing and only occasionally show up for a date or to give the girls a ride on their cool bikes or magical spaceship
Even then, this is certainly a simplification of the roles that they play in the story, but I kind of had to simplify their roles down to their base components for the original post's discussion as I was talking in broad strokes of how these stories are written.
In terms of those broad strokes, the Specialists are absolutely only there for shipping fodder. That's why each one is assigned to a girl from the start and why their main role in the narrative is supporting their assigned love interest or causing relationship-based drama for their assigned love interest. If it weren't for shipping, then the Specialists would not exist.
While the Specialists do have fleshed out characters and may even effect the plot, the execution of those elements is designed around the girls. A really obvious example of this is the character Timmy, who has character development as the boy's tech guy. Why is he into technology? Because he's the designated love interest for the fairy of Technology and we have to show why they're a good match. Along similar lines, the boys don't really get plots that are removed from the girls because this is the girl's show. Every episode features one or more of the Winx, but the boys are optional and often don't appear.
This is because, narratively speaking, the boys are just love interests and that brings us back to Miraculous' big problem. You can't have a show where Adrien is written like a Specialist while also being part of the Winx Club and where Alya is written like she's part of the Winx Club while technically being more of a Specialist in terms of power set and actual narrative role.
I'm was thinking back to my memories of various Winx Club plots to find one that really highlighted what I mean here and I remembered that one of the big dramas in season one was the reveal that Bloom's love interest - Sky - was in an arranged marriage and had just never told her. As it turns out, that's a great example of what I'm talking about re Adrien!
Is that plot line technically based around Sky and letting his life effect the plot? Sure, but the fallout of that reveal revolves around Bloom, not Sky. The story doesn't really care how Sky's feeling as the conflict progresses. Instead, it focuses on how it affects Bloom and her friends because of course it does! She's the main character. It would be really weird if that plot suddenly focused on her side character love interest and his friends during one of her darkest hours/biggest moments.
Think of that and then consider how the ending of season five is written. Notice any similarities? Sure, this is Adrien's family drama, but because he's just a Specialist, the focus isn't on him. It's on Winx Club member Marinette and Adrien only shows up at the end for a kiss. That is the problem. That is what I'm talking about when I say that Miraculous will randomly write him as if we're watching a magical girl team show where Adrien is just the love interest.
In fact, let's really dig into this example because it's a good one.
You can have a look at the transcript for the finale episode of Miraculous season five here and see for yourself that Adrien doesn't even show up on screen until the final scenes when the big drama is over. The Winx Club wiki also has episode transcripts, so I took a look to see what happened in Winx land during the arranged marriage reveal plot (I love that this is a thing. It's so useful for fact checking myself!) This is the script for the episode after Bloom learns the truth. Sky does not appear even though his lies and family drama are the fuel for this episode's events, which are a major part of the season's arc. Note how perfectly that matches Adrien's writing?
Similarly, Sky's dialogue in the reveal episode is all about Bloom. He's worried about her learning the truth and thinking less of him. To match that, here's Adrien's only real dialogue in the penultimate episode of season five (full transcript):
Adrien:(Covers his ears.) I cannot transform... (Looks at his ring and tries taking it off.) Plagg: What are you doing?! Adrien: I'm not in my right mind. I'm too angry — at myself for falling short of Marinette's love, at my father for sending me here in London, at this stupid app and these rings that use my image... it makes me sick! This nightmare is giving me the horrible feeling that, if I transform, I'll get akumatized and destroy everything with my Cataclysm — Marinette, Ladybug... (Takes off the ring and hands it to Plagg.)
Switching back to Winx. After Bloom learns the truth about Sky, bad things happen because she's depressed. This results in her and the Winx going off on a journey to learn the truth of who Bloom is. After the girls share this big plot moment and Bloom gets her mojo back, the boys show up to be their ride home and to give Bloom her romance moment where Sky wins her back by declaring that he broke off the arranged married because he loves her.
Sky notably doesn't get an arc about choosing between his arranged marriage and his true love. We don't even know that the marriage is broken off until he tells Bloom because that was never really a conflict as far as the narrative was concerned. Of course he's going to pick Bloom! He's her designated side character love interest! He only exists to be with her. We don't need to treat this as a serious thing for him. The arranged marriage plot was never about him anyway. It was about giving Bloom a reason to have a darkest hour moment that moves the plot forward. Similarly, Sky calling off the marriage is nowhere near as important as him telling Bloom that he's called off the marriage to be with her in a grand romantic gesture.
This perfectly mirrors Miraculous' season five ending where Adrien doesn't appear until after Marinette is done fighting her big girl power fight against his father. As far as the writing is concerned, that fight isn't about him. His connection to the villain only really matters in terms of how it affects Marinette's actions during the final battle. Then, when the battle is over, Adrien shows up to give Marinette her big romance moment because, while the plot may be driven by Adrien's family, he is not a Winx club member. He's just a Specialist. Or, in the words of the head writer:
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[image text: She's Barbie, he's Ken. You don't like it. I get it. It won't change. Anything else?] (The full, even more damning context of this tweet can be found here.)
What else can I say other than, "I rest my case."
Oh, and also that I didn't take this as an attack. I just thought it was a good opportunity to really dig into the nuances of this and what I was talking about in that original post as I never know how obvious this stuff is if you don't closely study story telling. As this case study hopefully shows, if a show is about a group of girl friends using the power of friendship, then their love interests may have important roles, but the boys are never going to be more important than the girls and most of the boy's screen time will be focused on romance and how their existence effects the girls because it's ultimately the girls' world. Without them, the show wouldn't exist. Without the boys? Well, then we just wouldn't have a romance plot.
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wonder-worker · 7 months ago
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I've been thinking about the tragedy of Elizabeth Woodville living to see the end of her family name.
I don't mean her family with her husband, which lived on through her daughter and grandson. I mean her own.
Her sisters died, one by one, many of them after 1485. When Elizabeth died, only Katherine was left, and she would die before the turn of the century as well.
All her brothers died, too. Lewis died in childhood. John was executed. Anthony was murdered. Lionel died suddenly in the peak of Richard's reign, unable to see his niece become queen. Edward perished at war. Richard died in grieving peace. For all the violence and judgement the family endured, it was "an accident of biology" that ended their line: none of the brothers left heirs, and the Woodville name was extinguished. We know the family was aware of this. We know they mourned it, too:
“Buy a bell to be a tenor at Grafton to the bells now there, for a remembrance of the last of my blood.”
Elizabeth lived through the deposition and death of her young sons, and lived to see the end of her own family name. It must have been such a haunting loss, on both sides.
#(the quote is by Richard Woodville in his deathbed will; he was the last of the Woodville brothers to die)#elizabeth woodville#woodvilles#my post#to be clear I am not arguing that the death of an English gentry family name is some kind of giant tragedy (it absolutely the fuck is not)#I'm trying to put it into perspective with regards to what Elizabeth may have felt because we know her family DID feel this way#writing this kinda reminded me of how I am just not fond at all about the way Elizabeth's experiences in 1483-85 are written about#and the way lots so many of the unprecedentedly horrifying aspects are overlooked or treated so casually:#the seizure and murder of two MINOR sons and the illegal execution of another;#her sheer vulnerability in every way compared to all her queenly predecessors; how she was harassed by 'dire threats' for months;#how she had 5 very young daughters with her to look after at the time (Bridget and Katherine were literally 3 and 4 years old);#how unprecedented Richard's treatment of her was: EW was the first queen of england to be officially declared an adulteress;#and the first and ONLY queen to be officially accused of witchcraft#(Joan of Navarre was accused of her treason; she was never explicitly accused of witchcraft on an official level like EW was)#the first crowned queen of england to have her marriage annulled; and the first queen to have her children officially bastardized#what former queens endured through rumors* were turned into horrifying realities for her.#(I'm not trying to downplay the nightmare of that but this was fundamentally on a different level altogether)#nor did Elizabeth get a trial or appeal to the church. like I cannot emphasize this enough: this was not normal for queens#and not normal for depositions. ultimately what Richard did *was* unprecedented#and of course let's not forget that Elizabeth had literally just been unexpectedly widowed like 20 days before everything happened#I really don't feel like any of this is emphasized as much as it should be?#apart from the horrifying death of her sons - but most modern books never call it murder they just write that they 'disappeared'#and emphasize that ACTUALLY we don't know what happened to them (this includes Arlene Okerlund)#rather than allowing her to have that grief (at the very least)#more time is spent dealing with accusations that she was a heartless bitch or inconsistent intriguer for making a deal with Richard instead#it also feels like a waste because there's a lot that can be analyzed about queenship and R3's usurpation if this is ever explored properly#anyway - it's kinda sad that even after Henry won and her daughter became queen EW didn't really get a break#her family kept dying one by one and the Woodville name was extinguished. and she lived to see it#it's kinda heartbreaking - it was such a dramatic rise and such a slow haunting fall#makes for a great story tho
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Hesitant to post this since season 7 did almost everything I didn't want but
All I want for season 8
Mara home with the Wilson's by the end of e1
Racist captain gone by the end of e3
Ravi/Anirudh season 8 series regular
Christopher home before the mid season finale
Buck spending time with his Grant-Nash siblings
Canon queer Eddie in s8 e4 aka Eddie's 100th
Canon Buddie in s8 e12 aka episode 118
A 118 Firefam gathering that doesn't involve an emergency or tragedy (don't think there's been one since the Henren vow renewal in s5)
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batcavescolony · 6 months ago
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What ever you do don't think about Percy reading Estelle a little kid version of 'The Odyssey' because that's what Sally read to him but he doesn't want to scare her. Don't imagine Sally looking on with guilt in her eyes cus she HAD to read him the real one so he knew what to expect. Don't think about Sally looking down on her little girl with tears in her eyes cus she doesn't need to worry about snakes in her bed or teachers being Cyclopes. Don't think of Sally seeing Estelle with Paul and having to leave the room cus when Percy was that age they had Gabe. Don't think of the unimaginable guilt that Sally must feel for being relieved that Estelle's biggest battle at 16, is her Dad being her teacher. And whatever you do don't think about Percy feeling like an outsider in his own family even though he gets constantly reassured that he's part of it and loved.
#percy jackson#percy jackon and the olympians#sally jackson#estelle blofis#paul blofis#teenage estelle making a comment about how blue food is for babies and Percy and Sally stopping cus to her its a juvenile thing but to them#it was a way to rebel against their abusive husband/stepdad.#camp half blood#perseus jackson#heroes of olympus#rick riordan#dont imagine Percy looking across the way at Sally Paul and Estelle play at the park and not going over cus he hed hate to ruin it with a#monster attack (theirs no monsters around that he can see but what if? he cant let his sister be harmed by them too)#pjo hoo toa#pjo#pjo series#theirs a Reddit abour this person that got to go on a overnight trip for school and their sleeping bag was a blanket tied up with rope.#their pjs were old sweats. their tooth paste was in bagie instead of a travel size. cus that all they could afford and they got bullied but#it was ok cus they got to go on the trip. but in the end the trip kinda sucked cus they didn't get to do what they wanted but they got to g#so it wasn't all bad. but afew years later after their family came into some money their little sibling got to go on the trip but they got#all new rhings for the trip. new clothes new sleeping bag a suit case. travel size products etc and while the other sibling get it its just#they're upset that they didnt get that. they know WHY they didnt but their still upset.#or that one episode of The Goid Place where elenor doesn't believe her mom is a good mom now cus she wanted a good mom but all she got was#shitty mom and if her mom had the ability to change she could have changed all along she just didnt.#that vibe but make it Percy Jackson (not to say sally was wrong she did what she could to make sure percy was prepared she just... doesn't#have to do that with Estelle that its kinda heart breaking cus she would have LOVED to not have had to prepare Percy but life sucks)
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gothhabiba · 1 year ago
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“poverty we have in favour of abundance we have yet to organise” i fundamentally disagree. Its fundamentally impoverishing to take away child from their carers and give them to a bunch of strangers. if thats not whats going to happen what is exactly? so far all i read is a dystopian nightmare and people saying “but no it will be great i promise”
[regarding this post and broader recent discussion of family abolition]
I'm getting a lot of responses in this same emotional valence (as does anyone who talks about "family abolition," and again, this is the exact emotional response which Sophie Lewis preëmpts and responds to at the beginning of Abolish the Family)—I'm chusing this message to respond to not to pick on you specifically but to try to unravel some of the assumptions that underlie this objection.
1.
I did my best to outline some of the major actionable demands of a programme of family abolition and include links to further readings that laid each of these demands out, including the abolition of parent's property rights over children & freedom to mete out "corporal punishment," the end of social and economic dependence on the family that works to impoverish 'family outcasts' or to force them into abusive situations, &c.
Yet, amongst all of these things, the questioning of the naturalness of the social/economic/legal/political category of "mother" (and investigation of how the category is sexed, gendered, & racialised) is what draws the most ire, and commonly the only thing that is responded to in people's objections to "family abolition"—as though it is the weakest part of the argument, and not the conclusion we necessarily come to through an understanding of the economic and social position of the "wife," the "single mother," the "single woman," &c.
What about the affective / emotional nature of the presumed "naturalness" of the mother relation causes the questioning of it to meet with such a disproportionate amount of resistance? Could we understand this individual emotional attachment to the concept of motherhood and its positioning as "natural" to be part of, or a result of, the naturalizing work that discourses about femininity and labour* do?
2.
Where does this spectre of an infant being "taken away from" its biological parents (actually, and tellingly, "mother" far more often than "parents") come from, and why does it keep being dragged forth? Communal raising of children is indeed part of the speculative programme for (most?) people who advocate for the abolition of the "family," but what part of that entails that a child must not be raised in part by, or anywhere near, their biological parents?
If no family abolitionist is saying that every child ought to be reassigned to some other random communal housing unit immediately upon birth (and, if anyone is, I have yet to come across it!), why is this the image that is brought up repeatedly in response to arguments for family abolition, as though the image is 1. an argument in itself, that 2. meaningfully responds to the programme being put forth? In what inheres the shocking nature, the emotional effectiveness, of this image? What assumptions and attachments does that effectiveness reveal?
3.
You've said that it is "fundamentally impoverishing" to a child for them to be "take[n] away" from "their carers" and "give[n] to a bunch of strangers." You haven't laid out how we can determine who a child's "carers" are���the "carers" fundamentally, properly, 'rightly' belonging to the child in your grammatical construction (in fact, in terms of property law, we ought to say the people the child belongs to—and we can see this arrangement reassert itself in your use of the word "give").
Incredibly, "carer" seems here to mean something other than "the people who are caring for the child"! "Stranger," similarly, must mean something other than "people the child has never had contact with," since in this fantasy these are the people who are raising the child... So if "carer" doesn't mean "person who cares for," and "stranger" doesn't mean "person who is strange," then where do these labels come from? What assumptions are you recreating when you use them in this frankly counter-intuitive sense with the assumption that I will know what you mean? (See also a message I got reading "i am not a mother but i already know i would rather die than have my baby call some strange women mom," emphasis mine.)
I think that probably you've used "carer" because you know that "biological parent" is a weaker proposition—and yet, in regards to the legal structures I'm talking about, it is biological parenthood which confers automatic, presumptive "rights" over a child upon someone (in default of other specific legal arrangements which someone must chuse to enter into in order to renounce those automatic, presumptive rights).
It is the idea that biological parenthood (or adoption, or "using" a surrogate, or any of the arrangements people may enter into that fall between these categories) ought to give one or two people complete control over another human being, such that that human being has no recourse at all from abuse, coercion, forced isolation, being raised in a cult, being denied transition or other medical care or put through conversion therapy, &c., so long as their caretakers do not in theory fall afoul of the very high standard of legal "child abuse" in a way that someone in practice actually cares to pursue—it is this reality, which is ideologically baked into your assumption of who a child's natural, automatic "carers" are for them to be "taken away from" in the first place, that family abolitionists want to change.
But nothing about biological parents no longer having automatic, presumptive rights to do basically whatever they want with or to their children automatically means that children will be taken away from them in the sense of enforced physical distance!
I think we need to look at what is ideologically entailed in assuming that a) parenthood in which a parent does not have quasi-property rights over their child is not "real, natural" parenthood, such that removing "parental rights" equates to "taking a child away"; b) certain people are just inherently strangers or strange to a child by virtue of the circumstances of their birth in relation to the circumstances of the child's birth, regardless of the actual social relationship they have with that child, and the ways in which this division between "naturally connected" versus "naturally distant," "natural proper and correct" versus "naturally strange," "inside" versus "outside," and the concept of the "stranger" (and the foreigner as the "eternal stranger," the racialised as the "eternally foreign") play into a situation where you can say "a bunch of strangers" and assume that you will be understood, and that this will be understood to be obviously bad.
*E.g., women are naturally caretakers, having a child is naturally the ultimate fulfillment for any woman (thus women who do not or cannot give birth are not fulfilling their function or are not "really" women), women love and are never exhausted by any aspect of gestation, childbirth, or childcare and they certainly don't need any help, &c.
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nerdie-faerie · 8 months ago
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I'm once again thinking about the missed opportunities to have Klaus and Kol bond more. Part of Klaus' whole motivation as a vampire is to get his werewolf part back and to finally be stronger than Mikael (sort of, I'm simplifying) both of which can be obtained by breaking his curse. But Kol? Kol is the only other original that can relate to having a fundamental part of themself ripped away from them. Klaus might not have known he was a werewolf until he killed, but he likely still had a connection he couldn't explain, as evident by him going to watch the wolves transform. And something he'd never been able to explain was now gone. He might only be able to realise the connection afterwards through its absence.
Kol though. Kol had grown up with magic, a connection to nature and the world around him in a way the rest of his siblings supposedly didn't have. And then he gets turned. And not only has his baby brother died, his father has just murdered him and the rest of his siblings after forcing them to drink human blood, which he'll later learn. Now, not only does he have to deal with the grief of Henrik's death and also his own but also the loss of his magic. A loss that's likely only worsened by Kol being a self-proclaimed child prodigy.
Kol is pretty much the only one who could understand what Klaus is going through with the binding of his wolf. We know Kol searched for ways to get his magic back/carry on practicing magic in the same way that Klaus was looking for ways to break his curse. While Klaus likely could still feel his wolf there despite being bound, Kol has no access to his magic anymore. I just think they should've been able to bond or connect over their shared loss of an intrinsic aspect of their selves at the hands of their parents
#TVD#The Mikaelsons#Kol Mikaelson#Klaus Mikaelson#briefly back on my the originals shouldve gotten to be a family goddammit and as someone from a big family im personally offended bs#i did right a lil snippet about them bonding over this that i havent posted yet for the joml verse but still think its an unexplored concep#need more witch!kol acknowledgement honestly. just need more content of my boy#anyway. klaus having a fascination with the moon and kol telling him about celestial events and how it affects his magic when theyre boys#klaus losing that connection to the moon feeling lost & extra tempermental feeling his wolf claw at its binds and vowing to break his curse#kol determined to get his magic back at any cost relating to that devasting loss and promising to help him find a loophole for his curse#kol who becomes extra reckless and determined when he learns that theres a way to break klaus' curse so maybe he can get his magic back too#that knowledge and recklessness combined with his loss of magic driving him to become the volatile vampire that we see#that leads to him being daggered repeatedly but that first time breaks something in that bond between him & klaus that never fully recovers#it makes him bitter and resentful only fueling his reckless behaviour particularly when there seems to be no leads on reclaiming his magic#that he becomes distant from his siblings in the process especially with finn still daggered but that distance only cements the idea#to his siblings that hes a danger and cant be trusted that he needs to be daggered if theyre to stay safe from mikael#the loss of his magic leading to his spiral as a vampire and him being ostracised by his family > actual tvdu kol canon#klaus being trapped in a room staring at the corpse of his little brother knowing he never repaired that relationship with him#and now he never can so he refuses to look away as penance and a reminder of his failings to his little brother#*edit: one of the reblogs on this post is the author of big bad wolf and honestly she does an amazing job at portraying the mikaelsons#as actual siblings if you havent read it its one of my favourites for characterisations but we need more 😭 i want it to be the norm
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