just to be completely clear, the amount of military power and political influence Israel has has NOTHING to do with its settlers being Jewish. Israel is a force for American & European interests in the region and they're just doing what America does and allows/encourages its close allies to do.
war crimes aren't considered war crimes when someone America finds useful is doing them. european and american pushback against anyone criticizing Israeli apartheid & genocide is 100% because these crimes are useful to American & European hegemony.
Governments that are deeply antisemitic, like France, aren't suddenly caring about Jewish people. Jewish people, persecuted the world over, don't hold some kind of hegemonic power outside of Israel.
The state of Israel and its attendant brutal treatment of the locals are both incredibly useful to the US, and American hegemony means we're expected to celebrate both.
not bc they're Jewish. this isn't a break in the pattern of western antisemitism and it's not evidence that antisemitism doesn't exist.
it's just like how you could get fired for saying shit against the US war in Afghanistan when i was growing up. it is 100% about US military and political interests (ok slightly western europe too but lbr)
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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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Urgent: Help Us Not Get Screwed
Anyone who follows us has seen us screaming from the hill-tops about our current crowdfunding campaign for Aether Beyond the Binary (17 aetherpunk stories! Outside the gender binary main characters!). We've only got 50 hours left...and we just got screwed.
Our Anthology Kickstarter is being scammed.
About two hours ago, with us still roughly $1,500 from our goal, we got a junk pledge for almost $2,000. This pushed us into being marked as "funded" but there is zero chance it's a real pledge, it's from a shell account marked as being in Turkey. This kind of money doesn't just fall like a miracle into the laps of small business like ours.
The timing on this attack is devastating. The final 48 hours of a campaign are absolutely critical, especially for one as close to meeting our goal as we are. We were very likely to hit our target, but doing so was going to require appeals to y'all that started with "hey, we're so close, please help spread the word." Further, the campaign has hundreds of followers who will get a notification at the 48 hour mark, and many who might have backed to help get us to the finish line will now think "oh, they're there, they don't need me," and not back. Meanwhile, one of two things will happen with the spam pledge: either it will get removed by Kickstarter, which could take hours or a day+, totally nuking us during this crucial window, or it won't get removed until the payment bounces post-campaign, at which point we won't actually have enough money to do fulfillment.
Either way, we are fucked.
Please, please don't let these dipshits ruin the love and passion that 30+ people have poured into this project for over a year.
Our campaign IS NOT FUNDED, and it won't be without help. I'm begging, help spread the word about how we're getting screwed, and help spread the word about Aether Beyond the Binary (visit the link for so much info!) so that we can get enough real pledges to fund this project we've poured our hearts and souls into.
SUPPORT THE QUEER ANTHOLOGY KICKSTARTER FOR AETHER BEYOND THE BINARY (with your pledges or with signal boosts!)
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Unknown, the Wandering Hero
So! We all know the typical Vivisection AU, right? Danny is revealed to his parents and they take it in all the wrong ways. They capture him, Vivisect him, and eventually he manages to escape with the help of his friends.
But what about his Rouges?
Sure, we all like to think of some of the more friendly ones like Ember, or Sydney, or Johnny 13 and Kitty, but he has WAY more Evil Rouges than good ones.
Without Danny there to reign them in, the Rouges spread out across the world to fulfill their obsessions, unhampered by the Heroes and Villains of the world that have no means to fight them.
And Danny? He feels responsible. He was the one to open the Gate, he was the Sacrifice, the one to let them through. And when the going got tough he just up and left? No, that won't do.
His Obsession is Protection for a reason, and nothing has changed. All he needs to do is expand his area of focus a little.
Danny, after healing up, starts wandering the world in search of the Ghosts who have escaped into the Mortal Realm. He battles all of his old foes, as well as many new ones who he hadn't met before.
His travels take him far and wide.
He defeats Skulker in Metropolis, as he is trying to hunt down the Super Family for their pelts. They are the last of their race after all, so he is inclined to try and hunt them. Honestly dealing with Skulker was easy, dealing with the Rich Asshole who was funding him was a nightmare.
He chases down Spectra in Gotham as she tries to feed on the misery of an entire City. (Thanks to @impyssadobsessions for the idea, this Prompt specifically). She is actually a very tough fight, especially powered by both the Misery of an Entire City as well as his Own Misery, but he manages.
He defeats Technus is Central City, as he tries to Raid Star Labs for their advanced Tech. It actually took a while to beat him after he amped himself with all that Power, and he did need help from the Local Hero to deal with him. He's just thankful Technus is one of the more "Harmless" ones.
After every Victory, he sends them back to the Realms using the Banishing Spell that Sam taught him a while back (the only bit of magic he ever really managed to master).
He knows they'll eventually find their way back out, but it's all he can do anymore. It's his eternal Punishment for unleashing them out into the World in the first place. He was the Catalyst for this Situation, now he was tasked with Fixing it, no matter how long it took.
...
The Justice League is caught in a tricky situation a the moment.
In the past few months, they have been encountering more and more of these Extra Dimensional Beings known as Realms Ghosts across the World.
Justice League Dark has had some success in battling them, but even they are getting tired of having to deal with every single incident alone.
They did get approached by a Government Agency known as the Ghostly Investigation Ward that seemed to want to help, but it didn't take long to realize that their main Aim was to Genocide the entire Race. The JLA had quickly cut ties after realizing that, and took what little Tech and Information they had been able to gather.
Still, it wasn't easy to deal with these Entities.
Thankfully, they have had some outside help. An Unknown Being has been routinely showing up whenever a Realms Ghost appears and defeating them, before using a (as described by Constantine) "Rudimentary Banishing Spell held together by willpower and luck" to send them back to their home Dimension. There's honestly no way it should be functional, but he did make it work either way.
They don't know much about this Unknown, aside from the fact that he seems to be the only one able to consistently damage the Realms Ghosts. His Powerset leads them to belive he may be from the same Dimension, or at least drawing his power from the same Source, but as he actively avoids the League and takes every opportunity to not talk to them, they know they aren't getting any answers any time soon.
Over the past few months, they had affectionately started referring to him as Unknown, creative they know, because they could never get his Real Name. Sure, some of the Realms Ghosts seemed to recognize him, but they always called him stuff like "Whelp" and "Punk" and "Usurper", which were not very good names to use when referring to him. Although the last one was a bit concerning.
They had only managed to trade a few quick words with Unknown in the past few months, but it was enough to get the Gist of it. He was just doing his job, sending the Realms Ghosts back where they belonged. There was apparently a Tear in Reality letting them through, but he seemed hesitant to reveal what he knew about it.
After a few months of sparse interactions, they eventually managed to convince him to at least take an Emergency Communicator. Just in case. They even let him take it apart to look for any Tracking Devices, which earned them a small bit of trust. They took whatever wins they could.
Fortunately, it seemed he never did need it. In fact he was getting more and more efficient with every battle, defeating his foes in half the time it would have taken before.
Unfortunately, it didn't last forever. One day, the Communicator went off, a distorted voice quickly saying, "Need backup, some of them decide to Team Up" before cutting out.
They quickly rushed to his location, finding an active battlefield with no less that a dozen Ghosts battling Unknown. And he seemed to be on the ropes.
With their arrival, the combined force of the Justice League and Unknown eventually managed to defeat the Group of Ghosts. Justice League Dark volunteered to work on the Banishing Spells while the others cleaned up the damage from the Battle.
One of them approached Unknown to make sure he was ok, and froze.
During the battle, Unknown's Mask had been Torn off, and they could finally see the face of the Hero they had been working with for the past few months.
And he was a Child.
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Halloween Dancers
I had an idea, I'll probably write it properly later but for now I'm getting it out of my head. I was reading a post a out Dash being a talkshow host and leading to them outing Amity and this came to mind.
A cousin of a citizen of Amity heard all about all the crazy stuff going down, they keep them updated in their weekly phone calls, but thought they were making it up. Eventually divolves into an argument and they decide to look to prove them wrong. And find the internet oddly sanitised, which makes them look deeper. Eventually they get others involved wondering tf is going on over in Illinois. They manage to break through but mess up, instead boosting the signal so much that the halloween livestreams take over a large chunk of American media. T.v. s, computers, phones, etc all playing the phantom streams, where someone sees phantom just chilling and starts streaming. this time it's Samhain and the place is eerie. Blue tinged fog covers the place, it's dark out, no living person in sight and the camera pointed to the sky. In the sky you see glowing figures dancing to music coming from nowhere. An ageless youth in regal clothes spinning his partner, white hair drifing like he's underwater, his partner dressed like the pharohs of old spinning alongside him. A woman dressed in victorian ballgowns joining their dance. Other etheral beings coming out of the woodwork, spinning in the sky alongside their king. The dead dancing in the starlit sky as the veil becomes thin enough they can all come through with no major issues. And this haunting scene taking over every screen within the signals range. As the hours go by the sun begins to rise and the fog fades. they bow and begin to fade back into the realms, leaving the original three waltzing in the sunrise as the stars fade before leaving themselves and the stream cuts off.
Turns out their cousin wasn't lying, wierd stuff is going on in Amity, and no one, including the JL, knew about it. Someones head was going to rule for the lack of info. This stunk of a coverup.
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