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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AAHHHH dying from the anticipation of pain <3
yupppp we’re in the home stretch now…got the fic mapped out thru the end ( <- single sentence fragments written down on otherwise blank microsoft word pages for each ch)
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So here's something I thought abt Friday
What if their was an another and WAY more disturbing way to merge with your element
What if when an elemental master starts to lose their mind and drive into insanity there's like stages of what's going to happen to their element. At first, their element starts to act out, but slowly like once every 5 days, then if the elemental master's mental health has done nothing but deteriorate, then I'm the element just starts lashing out and complete going after the stuff and ppl around the elemental master as a way to WARN the elemental master to stop and get the help they need. But if nothing happens then the element slowly starts to merge with the elemental master and they won't realize it until the transformation is more than halfway done and by then, there's nothing they can do abt it besides let it happen unwillingly. And once the merging part is completely finished, the elemental master starts to slowly lose their memories bc it's the only thing the element can do to put the elemental master out of their misery. Once their memories are completely erased, they're officially one with their element and don't question it at all. Unlike Nya, who did manage to separate herself from her element, the elemental master that went insane CANNOT separate from their element or remember anything from their past, no matter what happens, they're just stuck there for the rest of eternity.
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Update 9/15/23 - New Chapter on Sunday!
Hey y'all! I'm back ;-)
To my shock, it's actually been a very productive month! Chapters 27 and 28 are finished (and chapter 29 is halfway there, but I know where I'm going with it). I also went back and reviewed chapters 1-10, which is something I've been meaning to do for a while.
My writing has improved a lot since starting this fic, and I've been itching to go back and rewrite/tweak those early/unbeta-ed chapters. I rewrote chapter 1 a few months back, but I just rewrote chapter 2 this last week and I'm much happier with it. The rest of the chapters were thankfully less terrible than I remembered, so I only had to clean them up a bit. With that in mind, I highly recommend a re-read if you've got the time! The rewritten chapter 2 is way more intense and it gives a bit more character to Alannys, who will continue to be fleshed out in coming chapters.
Chapter 27 will be posted this Sunday, and we'll hopefully be back to weekly updates for a while after that. Fair warning, chapter 27 will be pretty emotionally intense, but hopefully also somewhat cathartic. After that, we'll be wading more into ironborn culture and politics as Westeros continues to fracture and fall apart.
As a final note, I've got a couple character playlists y'all might be interested in. I highly recommend listening to the Lanny playlist while reading this newest chapter on Sunday, it absolutely wrecked me lol. I've also had a Quen playlist simmering for a long time, so feel free to check it out!
the kraken's daughter (Quen)
the woman who waits (Alannys)
See y'all on Sunday!!
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i made this like. a while ago? i don’t remember exactly lol but this is a little timeline of onyx’s hairstyles and a bit of her vibe through the years!
in order it’s the personal story, hot, pof, and eod
her hair stayed the same during in’s so i didn’t add it, but i might enventually? cuz at the very least her expression here doesn’t really match. she was Going Through It
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