She went on to share that her non-Black industry peers expressed that they initially weren’t interested in seeing The Woman King, deeming it unrelatable.
“We, Black women, do not get that same grace. So the question we need to ask is, ‘Why is it so hard to relate to the work of your Black peers?’” Prince-Bythewood asked. “What is this inability of Academy voters to see Black women, and their humanity, and their heroism, as relatable to themselves?”
because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.
you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.
you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.
don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.
if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.
you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:
how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!
Do you guys notice how when Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union, started planning a general strike, he did it by a) targeting his messaging towards unions with the ability to safely and effectively strike in large numbers, b) laid out a clear, actionable plan for those unions to follow (setting contracts to all expire at the same time, since many unions cannot strike while under contract), c) is using union contracts to set clear, actionable demands that can be met in order to gauge success and provide an end goal, and d) started organizing FOUR YEARS before the proposed strike date to give people the chance to plan accordingly, because it takes a really freaking long time to get tens of millions of people organized?
You notice how he didn't do it by slapping a message on Twitter saying 'hey nobody go to work on Monday, that'll really show 'em'?
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.
I think there's no greater indication that disco elysium is sympathetic towards communism when it literally says "communism is failure" and then the literal gameplay itself rewards trying and failing. The most obvious one being the Shivers check at the FELD mural, which is an Impossible 20 check BUT opens itself up again and again the longer you spend in the world doing things, but even just looking at sheer probabilities, for any given white check, rolling first and THEN putting a point into that skill upon failure is more likely to grant you success than putting a point first and then rolling, but that would require failing first.
Other things too: Precarious world saying you'll 100% fail red checks no matter what (not necessarily a bad thing, btw!! throwing the boule into the sea is a success but like. in some other ways one would want a perfect petanque throw instead. but people wouldn't typically assume that failure is desirable sometimes from the start) persuading you to accept that you'll fail some things that is irrevocable, for a world where everything is just a tiny bit easier.
The faux game over screen when you faint after reading Dora's letter— emulating a sense of failure on the scale of the entire game. When it rolls up most people go "What?? Game over?? No way, what did I do wrong!!" and waking up after that, with no huge or lasting impact on Harry's health or morale really tells the player, "Sometimes things will seem so bad that it all seems like it's coming to an end, but it's not the end, it's really not the end, go drink so water, you can still go on despite this failure"
I'm sure there are other things as well that are eluding me but like. The literal gameplay rewards failing and succeeding far more so than simply succeeding every single time, and I think you get a fuller experience of Elysium that way too
What I've realized is that I believe that the matter of gender is practical and relational. It's not about who you are inside, it's more about how you would feel most comfortable in the world. It's not 'Who are you?' but 'How do you want to live?'
Had that been the discourse when I was coming up, I would have breathed a sigh of relief. I don't have to figure out who I am on the inside, I just have to figure out how I want to live.
(thanks to my buddies Lucanimations and SpykerFX for helping w some animation and music! theyre not on tumblr)
I'm so incredibly happy to announce TWO new plushies!!!! It's been an absolute blast working with makeship again on making an Eddie plush and a brand new Duncan plushie!! They'll be available to pre-order until april 20th, then they're gone forever!!!