Selves are crucial to writers.  [...] Reading and writing require focusing the mental attention upon a text by means of the visual sense. As an individual reads and writes he gradually learns to close or inhibit the input of his senses, to inhibit or control the responses of his body, so as to train energy and thought upon the written words. He resists the environment outside him by distinguishing and controlling the one inside him. This constitutes at first a laborious and painful effort for the individual, psychologists and sociologists tell us. In making the effort he becomes aware of the interior self as an entity separable from the environment and its input, controllable by his own mental action. The recognition that such controlling action is possible, and perhaps necessary, marks an important stage in ontogenetic as in phylogenetic development, a stage at which the individual personality gathers itself to resist disintegration.  If the presence or absence of literacy affects the way a person regards his own body, senses and self, that effect will significantly influence erotic life. It is in the poetry of those who were first exposed to a written alphabet and the demands of literacy that we encounter deliberate meditation upon the self, especially in the context of erotic desire. The singular intensity with which these poets insist on conceiving eros as lack may reflect, in some degree, that exposure. Literate training encourages a heightened awareness of personal physical boundaries and a sense of those boundaries as the vessel of one’s self. To control the boundaries is to possess oneself. For individuals to whom self-possession has become important, the influx of a sudden, strong emotion from without cannot be an unalarming event, as it may be in an oral environment where such incursions are the normal conductors of most of the important information that a person receives. When an individual appreciates that he alone is responsible for the content and coherence of his person, an influx like eros becomes a concrete personal threat. So in the lyric poets, love is something that assaults or invades the body of the lover to wrest control of it from him, a personal struggle of will and physique between the god and his victim. The poets record this struggle from within a consciousness—perhaps new in the world—of the body as a unity of limbs, senses and self, amazed at its own vulnerability.

Anne Carson, from Eros the Bittersweet

extends my hand ibuprofen style. Charles is on the same insane wavelength as Kevin gang join me in my "he killed his shitty ex" musings

the commodification of friendship is the most annoying thing to come out of the internet in ages. like actually i love to break this to you but you're supposed to help your friends move even if it's hard work. or stay up with them when they're sad even if you're gonna lose sleep. you're supposed to listen to their fears and sorrows even if it means your own mind takes on a little bit of that weight. that's how you know that you care. they will drive you to the airport and then you will make them soup when they're sick. you're supposed to make small sacrifices for them and they are supposed to do that for you. and there's actually gonna be rough patches for both of you where the balance will be uneven and you will still be friends and it will not be unhealthy and they will not be abusive. life is not meant to be an endless prioritization of our own comfort if it was we would literally never get anywhere ever. jesus.

hahahahaaaa get safe and cared for, idiot

Fun fact: We know the size of the Pokémon world because Scarlet and Violet has framerate issues

I'm not answering any more questions

Phantom, the newest addition to the Justice League, pulls Wonder Woman aside.

He has...a strange request.

He's nervous, flustered, fading in and out of the visible spectrum. It's clear that what he's about to ask of her is important to him, and even though she has an uncomfortable voice in the back of her head telling her this young hero is about to ask her out, she resolves to listen before she jumps to conclusions.

She's glad she did.

"Can...can you put a grave for me in Themyscira? I know it's just for women, but it's the safest place I can think of for it! I just...I don't have a grave, and Clockwork says it's starting to stunt my growth as a Ghost, and I have too many enemies on American soil, so. It's okay if you say no, though, I'll figure something out, it's fine."

Diana lets him ramble to the end, already knowing what her answer is going to be.

"We would be honored to host your grave, Phantom. Do you have any remains I can take home? Do you require a funeral service?"

Phantom looks...he looks beyond grateful. Close to tears.

"No, no remains. A symbolic grave is fine, it just. It has to have my real name on it, my mortal one." He says, looking hesitant. "Please don't reach out to my family, Wonder Woman. They don't know."

With that, he hands over a small slip of paper, torn from a notebook and clearly folded one too many times.

She takes it as though he were entrusting her with the rarest diamond in the world. She wants to, but she does not ask how they could not notice the death of someone so very bright.

Instead she nods, tucking the paper away.

Phantom will get a grand grave, one worthy of a friend to the Crown of Themyscira. She will ensure it.

 Breath is primary insofar as the spoken word is. The conception has a solid psychological and sensual basis in the daily experience of these people. For the inhabitants of an oral society live much more intimately blended with their surroundings than we do. [...] What is vital, in a world of sound, is to maintain continuity. [...] Breath is everywhere. There are no edges.  The breath of desire is Eros. Inescapable as the environment itself, with his wings he moves love in and out of all creatures at will. The individual’s total vulnerability to erotic influence is symbolized by those wings with their multisensual power to permeate and take control of a lover at any moment. Wings and breath transport Eros as wings and breath convey words: an ancient analogy between language and love is here apparent. [...] It is an analogy that makes perfect sense in the context of oral poetics, where Eros and the Muses clearly share an apparatus of sensual assault. [...] Written words, on the other hand, do not present such an all-persuasive sensual phenomenon. Literacy desensorializes words and reader. A reader must disconnect himself from the influx of sense impressions transmitted by nose, ear, tongue and skin if he is to concentrate upon his reading. A written text separates words from one another, separates words from the environment, separates words from the reader (or writer) and separates the reader (or writer) from his environment. Separation is painful. The evidence of epigraphy shows how long it takes people to systematize word-division in writing, indicating the novelty and difficulty of this concept. As separable, controllable units of meaning, each with its own visible boundary, each with its own fixed and independent use, written words project their user into isolation.  That words have edges is an insight most vivid, then, for the reader or writer of them.

Anne Carson, from Eros the Bittersweet

Honestly everyone give it up for repulsed aces/aros. Yall get so much shit for having boundaries and its frustrating to watch. You're all getting sent complimentary gift baskets

we need to talk about the fact that for many of the posters in season one, they are literally on opposite sides and/or have a dividing line between them

and now they're literally crossed over in some way for the season 2 posters

THEY'RE LITERALLY ON THEIR OWN SIDE NOW, PEOPLE!

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS?

Kink isn’t shameful because of the weird sex stuff. That part’s rad. It’s shameful because it is technically improv. 

Proper boundaries

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.