me: oh this is my fave alicks song

every alicks song ever: allow me to introduce myself

Danny is about to be kidnapped in Gotham This is not a good time.

He's studying for the SAT, he's already been kidnapped by Vlad like, four times that week and it was a fucking Tuesday, he forgot his wallet at his new apartment, locked himself out of said new apartment (he could phase through the door but that wasn't the point), he's just been informed that the grant he applied for was denied so he needs to ask his mom and dad for college funds when he'd already told them he had it covered, and just...it was shit.

It had been shit. The entire week had been awful and annoying and he was ready to either murder everyone on the planet or go find a corner to cry in for the next three days.

So when the band of wild goons working for whatever villain of the week pulled up and tried to kidnap him, he snapped.

He used them to vent.

Shouted about how terrible his day had been, how terrible his week had been, how he'd already been kidnapped by his creepy godfather who was way too into him, how college funding was shit and the grant system was rigged, and how he'd have to call a locksmith or break down the door to his own apartment if he wanted to go to bed-all of it. He unloaded all of his frustration.

The goons actually backed off.

One of them gave him an awkward side hug and told him it'd get better.

Danny wasn't paying attention to his surrounding. He doesn't realize that the whole thing was livestreamed.

So when he gets home to his apartment later that day, his door is opened for him by the vigilante Spoiler before he can even turn intangible.

She brought over BatBurger and kidnapped Bruce Wayne, Gotham's bumbling Prince, to talk about college grants.

slick was so insane for this i need to get inside his head. like imagine meeting some weird alien kid with an inferiority complex and the second thing you do after stabbing him is cut open your own hand to show him that his blood color is nothing to be ashamed of and thus allowing him to begin his arc of self-acceptance. and then he imprints on you like a baby bird and you spend the next couple of months learning about the power of friendship together

remember like a year ago when the west was acting appalled at russia arresting anti-war protesters for holding up blank signs and showing even a shred of sympathy for ukraine? sorry folks your genocide doesn't pertain to our geopolitical interests you're on your own ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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'm asking this genuinely. My Jewish family has lived in Israel since the 30s. Where do you expect them to go "back" to?

There was no Israel then. They could go back to being Palestinians.

And if your family can't coexist without having an ethno-state to support them then I couldn't care less about what happens to them.

Get a fucking grip lol

You know, Brennan Lee Mulligan talks a lot of shit about the cruelty of Game Changer, but I’m not sure Sam Reich has ever done as much violence to his players as Brennan did when he handed out those irl exam question packets with sand timers, like that was real ptsd in their eyes

i do think lisa having an easy time understanding creature because she herself was mute was an amazing detail and incredibly romantic

Death to all israeli occupation soldiers. They are responsible for the bomb that tears a child's body in half. They are responsible for the destruction of the entire gaza landscape. They are responsible for the orphaned children for the disabled children. They are responsible for every parents tears. They are responsible for making hospitals battle grounds. They are responsible for the starvation and for the disease. There is no sympathy for people who commit these acts of absolute inhumanity. Netanyahu cannot do anything without willing happy murderers and an apathetic and hateful society. And worst some fucking zionist will screenshot this and talk about how "u need to have sympathy for iof bc they're drafted" they are the reason I see the limbs of my people all over the ground like torn pieces of clay.

i've seen quite a bit of confusion about this, so let me attempt to clear things up :

empathy is the ability to feel somebody's emotions as though they are affecting you personally. for example, somebody tells you "my dog died last night!" -> you now feel as though you've lost a pet personally -> you feel grief and sadness just like the other person. not everyone has empathy. it's a trait some people develop and others don't. some have high empathy, some have low empathy, some (like me) have none.

sympathy is the ability to understand and care about somebody else's struggles, even if you don't feel them yourself. so, somebody tells you their dog died -> you realize how this affects them emotionally -> you care about this person, and are upset that they are suffering. not everyone has sympathy either! it's a scale, just like empathy.

compassion is doing something to relieve another person's suffering or make them feel better. somebody tells you their dog died -> you don't want them to remain upset -> you come up with ways to help them feel better, like offering comfort and distractions, or other forms of support. compassion is a learned trait, not something you can be born with like empathy or sympathy. anyone can learn to be compassionate, although some may struggle more with it than others; it's a skill, just like anything else.

however, none of these are required to be a good person. that's a choice you make on your own accord. i hope this clears things up!

Elon Musk wants your sympathy because he had to pay a whopping 4.5% of his net worth in taxes

big brother humping me from behind but im too sleepy to push him off so he just rubs my clit as an apology <333

This,,,but with Peter

Love that Oppenheimer is a deeply disturbing horror movie about a man forced to accept that he is, in a person, the representative manifestation of mankind’s evil in committing one of the greatest horrors of human history - LITERALLY acting as the modern Prometheus, tormented by his sins for the remainder of time. Knowing that he will never be pitied and his actions will forever be utterly unforgivable because the blood of genocide and the potential of total human annihilation will eternally drip from his hands.

But also the simultaneous indictment by the film that to blame a single person for the Manhattan Project is to refuse to accept your own capacity for great evil if the ends ever seem to justify the means, and the culpability of every member of a species that lets itself create something so unspeakably terrible.

Hate that twitter’s take on such a nuanced and brilliantly handled examination of those issues is “movie bad because protagonist not evil enough.”

It’s actually insane how some of you justify your antisemitism. And yes, this time I’m specifically talking about being anti-Israel.

When Israel is attacked by Hamas, it’s their fault for retaliating. When is Israel is attacked by Iran, it’s ok because it’s retaliation. When Israel calls out the UN for being unhelpful, they’re getting what they deserve. When Israel asks the UN to step up, it’s a sad cry for help.

THEY CAN’T ATTACK, THEY CAN’T DEFEND, THEY CAN’T ASK FOR HELP, THEY CAN’T CONDEMN TERRORISTS, WHAT CAN THEY DO?? BE BLOWN TO BITS??? IS THAT WHAT YOU’RE WAITING FOR? WHAT MAKES ISRAEL SO SPECIAL??

It is no coincidence that Israel can’t do anything right and that it houses 7 million Jewish refugees. It’s the oldest excuse in the book. “It’s just the zionists!” Israeli children are children, too. They have no better of a concept of Zionism than you, and yours is scarce. Zionism IS LITERALLY ABOUT JEWS.

Just say you won’t be happy until half the world’s Jews are dead. It’s a lot better to be an antisemite when you’re comfortable with your identity.