I am loudly pushing the batdad agenda i am loudly pushing the— DPxDC Prompt
“Woah. You look like shit."
Granted, that’s probably not the first thing Danny should be saying to the guy that just bit the curb, but in his defense; he’s not running on 100% right now either.
The man -- tall, towering, and broader than Danny is tall -- whips around on his heel, black frayed cape flaring out impressively. Danny would've whistled in appreciation, but he takes the time instead to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing the blood running from his nose across his cheek.
"Sorry." He blinks widely, not even flinching as the man with the horns zeroes in on him. "That was rude of me. I have a really bad brain-to-mouth filter; Sam says its what always gets me into trouble."
And she's not wrong either, per say. His smart mouth is what landed him in this situation -- with blood blossom extract running through his veins and cannibalizing the ectoplasm in his bloodstream. Thanks Vlad.
The man grunts at him; a short, curt "hm" that shouldn't make Danny smile, but he does because he's somewhat delirious and probably concussed. The man keeps some kind of distance, sinking towards the shadows of Gotham's alleyway like he dares to melt right into it.
If it's supposed to scare Danny, it doesn't work. Danny's never been afraid of the dark; he's always been able to hide himself in it. He blinks slowly at the mass of shadows.
"You look hurt." The shadows says, blurring together around the edges. Danny squints, and licks his lips to get the blood dripping down his chin off. Ugh, he hates the taste of blood.
"I am." He says, "My godfather poisoned me. M'dying." The agony of the blood blossom eating him from the inside out looped back around to numbing a while ago, so all he feels is half-awake and dazed.
"Hey," Danny stumbles forward towards the man, a bloodied hand reaching out to him. "You-- you're a hero, right? You're not attacking me; which is more than I can say for most costumed people I've met." Maybe it's a poor bar to judge someone at, but he's already established that Danny's not in his right mind.
The man makes no change in expression, but Danny realizes blearily that it's hard to tell with the shadows on his face. He stays still long enough for Danny to latch onto the cape -- stretchy, but almost soft under his fingers.
He looks up blearily into the whites of the man's eyes. "Can you help me? I don't-- I don't wanna die." Again. He doesn't wanna die again. He blinks slow and lizard-like. "I mean- I'll probably get to see mom and dad again, but I told them I'd at least try and make it to adulthood."
There's a clatter down the street, and Danny's ghost sense chills up his spine and leaves a bitter, ashy taste in his mouth. He immediately knows who it belongs to even before the deceptively gentle; "Daniel?" echoes down the way.
"Daniel? Quit your games, badger, Gotham is dangerous for children."
Danny's mouth pulls back, and blood spills against his tongue. "Please." He rasps, and grabs onto the shadow's cape with both hands. "Please. He's going to kill me. Please--"
"Daniel? Is that you?"
His lips part, dragging in air to plead with the darkness again. He doesn't need to, the whites of his eyes narrow, and the cape whirls around him before Danny can blink. Soon swaddled in shadows, the Night lifts him up, and steals him away.
aside from rsd and inevitably pushing people away the reason I don’t have many friends and am reluctant to make more is simply because I’ve had so many friends or attempted friends be either awful or like just Frightening and I got to a point where I instead cling to what few friends I have but then as I lose those friends I begin to like panic a tad bit because eventually I’m going to have two friends at best and be too scared to ever try and make more lest they be horrible people or freaks or grow to hate me
13 is an utter awful rat to Graham in It Takes You Away, she treats him horrifically as she loses her patience and therefore temper with him and never bothers to apologise for it, but nobody notices because she didn't raise her voice and it wasn't in a situation where she'd be expected to mother him, so it sailed over peoples heads. She lost her temper and she got Mean. She didn't get shouty, she got mean. She's not a yeller when she lets her anger loose, she's sharp and cruel and so very deliberate. And that doesn't track with peoples stereotypes of women, does it? Women are shouty and Shrill when they're angry, apparently.
She does it to the master in the timeless children, she's sharp and mean and cruel and never once raises her voice when she does it (she actually lowers her voice when she's being really mean btw). This did Not happen when you're thinking it did. Not in the matrix room. She had no idea she was scoring a hit against him there because she didn't understand what he was thinking (because he'd deliberately mislead her). It was in another part of the episode. She scores a hit and almost makes him cry and nobody cares or notices because it's not in a situation where she's supposed to be mothering him while he's all sad. He was being a jerk, she hit out deliberately below the belt and won that round, the end.
It's no that I think 13 isn't at times objectively shitty as a person, because she IS, she certainly was to Graham in the moment above. It's just that instead of looking at the Actual moments on screen when she sucks and dragging her for being shitty person, people have to resort to making up things to accuse her of that are Very gendered (as in, things women are going to get slammed for in society based upon sexist ideology) that never even happen, simply because they didn't pay enough attention to notice her being a crappy Person to drag her for that/they don't actually care if she's in general a lousy person at all.
Because they don't Want her to be a crappy person, that doesn't achieve anything.
I have just finished Chapter 10 of Northanger Abbey. Some thoughts:
I kind of wish I had read this book first out of Jane Austen’s works, if only because I would have related to Catherine more
since I’m mostly familiar with Pride and Prejudice and Emma and Persuasion, and a little knowledgeable of Sense and Sensibility, (I have yet to even touch Mansfield yet, I am so sorry) I was immediately like what the heck do you mean Catherine’s got a brother
who is this man?? what is he doing here???
I’ve read too many P&P fics,,, the state of being brotherless is just so ingrained into the story conflicts and character dynamics in my head, whoops
Mr Thorpe was annoying from the first, and he has only gotten on my nerves even more (and do I smell a fortune hunter??)
Isabella is also hmm
at first I was leery of her and Catherine’s friendship because of how she’s older and more polished; I was sceptical of the sincerity of how quickly they seemed to get attached
also I get the vibe that she’s hiding something from Catherine (has she met Tilney before…?)
but if she’s really James’s love interest, then I see her as more harmless; more of a disappointment, less of a threat, I guess?
still absolutely relieved Catherine’s not overly attached to her now though
Miss Tilney intrigues me
I like her so far
might be my favourite character but we’ll see we’ll see
Mr Tilney also intrigues me but less decisively of a favourable bent
I’m kinda suspicious but idrk why
tryna withhold judgement since he hasn’t actually done anything sus yet (that I can think of)
plus I genuinely enjoy his and Catherine’s tête-à-têtes
so mostly on the fence
I am most curious about General Tilney, idk why but he is piquing my interest
the exposition about the late Mrs Tilney seems very deliberate
the whole family is just intriguing I s’pose ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
loving the writing, unsurprisingly
I put off Northanger for a long time because I hadn’t expected it to be as lighthearted as it is due to some reviews I’d read but
there do be plenty of funny parts
and of course Miss Austen’s characteristic wit is ubiquitous <3
Please forgive me for any egregious mistakes, I am no literary academic and cannot spot themes or symbols or meta details for my life. 🙏🏽🙏🏽
Hi! Long time no yap but I've been really bothered by this thing and I know you're just the person I can go to with this (even if we don't always end up agreeing at times).
I got into a tiff with someone in a comments section of a post that was about Amy (Which character do you think deserved to become a villain? or something similar). They brought up Amy's abuse of her boyfriend. I may have tried to defend Amy (key word is tried. I am officially rubbish at debating) but then I may have said something? Because they said that I (and apparently a lot of other fans) was excusing Amy's abuse because of her trauma. It got me stumped because isn't young Amy's treatment of Rory rooted in her trauma? Did I miss the memo where we separate trauma and abuse? Am I missing something?
That statement bothered me a lot because if there's one thing I never want to do it's defend an abuser. So here I am, humbly asking and hoping to clear the muddy waters.
Your really confused and disturbed moot, Tia 💌
TIA!!!!! Thanks for the ask 💌 , and I send you all the hugs.
Discussion of abuse, trauma, ableism, infidelity, and unhealthy relationship dynamics beneath the cut.
(First off… while I really appreciate your faith in my explaining skills <3 <3 <3 my passion for traumatized characters and mentally ill+neurodivergent rights doesn't make me especially qualified to fully clear muddy waters especially not knowing the full context, but I feel you, and what follows is my informed perspective!)
Speaking generally first, harm done in media is best examined by the impact on the audience, with a different lens than harm done to real people. While relatable experiences in media can be useful and validating and incredibly important, you can’t be “defending an abuser” when the abuse is fictional. It's actually normal for traumatized/ND/mentally ill people to project onto mentally ill villains, when villains are the only significant representation for those stigmatized symptoms in a media landscape that excludes and demonizes us simply for existing. RTD can't stop people who hallucinate from reclaiming the Master's Drums and projecting onto the Master, for example — 90% of the best Doctor Who psychosis fic by psychotic authors is about the Master, whether RTD likes it or not. It's not true crime.
(This is speaking generally. Amy Pond is very much not the Master.)
Abuse is a behavior, and there can be many reasons for it, but reasons based in trauma don’t make it not abuse (some forms of generational trauma can propagate abusive parenting styles, when the parent thinks abusive parenting is normal, or lives entirely vicariously through their child). This absolutely should not be taken to mean trauma correlates with abusive behavior; rather that abusive behaviors from traumatized people are more likely to present in specific ways.
Abuse is also a targeted behavior, based in control — not consistently displayed C-PTSD symptoms as seen in Season 5 Amy Pond through many aspects of her life. Mental health symptoms don't become abuse just because they hinder one partner from meeting the other partner's needs. Any life event can do that.
Without knowing the context of the arguments, this is the aspect of their relationship I've seen you talk about before (which I also feel strongly about), and what I assume is what you were debating? So, here I will talk specifically in regard to Season 5.
We all know Amy — she's never attached to Leadworth because she never wanted to leave Scotland, no steady therapist because none of them stick up for her, can't stick with one job yet her first choice is a job that simulates intimacy because her avoidant behavior (a known trauma response) isn't sustainable to her wellbeing. Rory knows her fears of commitment stem from her repeated abandonments, it’s why he’ll always wait for her, and it's why he blames the Doctor “You make it so they don't want to let you down.”, who apart from having caused a lot of her trauma, has actively taken advantage of her being the “Scottish girl in the English village” who's “still got that accent,” because he wants to feel important, so yeah, I think interpreting Amy's issues (and how Amy and Rory transverse them) as Amy abusing Rory indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of their relationship, as well as a misunderstanding of the (raggedy) Doctor’s role in Amy’s formative self-image (which of course she works through in Season 6, but I am sticking to Season 5).
Abuse is always based in control. That just doesn’t fit here. While Amy's detachment from her real life includes things like calling Rory her “kind of boyfriend” (which she is upfront about to his face; differing commitment levels isn't abuse, though it can be a relationship red flag for both parties IRL) — her Season 5 disregard of Rory’s feelings occurs only in response to the fairytale embodiment of her trauma. It's never a response to Rory; it's a response to the Doctor, who stole her childhood and led her by the hand to her death. She cheats on Rory with the Doctor in her bedroom full of Doctor toys, drawings, models, she made from childhood to early adulthood.
(And yes, like many repeatedly-traumatized people, Amy is prone to being sensitive and reactive. Take her “Well, shut up then!” line in The Big Bang; but given Rory responds to this by hugging her, clearly he doesn’t take it as her actually dismissing him. He knows her better than that.)
And by no means do I meant to imply this is fair to young Rory, poor Rory, who's left struggling with the feeling that his role in her life is in competition with the role of her trauma (aka the Doctor). But not every unhealthy relationship dynamic is unhealthy because of abuse. Labelling Amy's treatment of Rory in Season 5 more accurately isn't the same as excusing her harmful choices — but making mistakes is part of being human, Amy's mistakes are certainly understandable, and she works through them out of love for Rory.
If there's one thing to say about Moffat women, it's that Moffat allows his female characters the same grace that the male characters *coughTENcough* have always had, to hurt and struggle and make realistic mistakes and overcome those mistakes and to heal without being demonized.
Amy isn't perfect, but she is a fully realized character, and her story gives us a resonant depiction of childhood trauma.
woe! first art post since a month ago be upon ye! take my gay bugs
[Start ID of the first image. A digital drawing of the five bugs forming Team Taranoake, drawn without anthropomorphized biology, short clips of text describing each one's name, pronouns, species, and size. The background is a solid-color pale orange, with the rest of the drawing being similarly flat-colored and golden-toned. The first shows Kritto, an azure damselfly, who stands on two legs with short stilts to counter the length of xer abdomen. She's light teal with black stripes, holding a brown scroll in one claw, the other pair of arms tucked between her two backpacks behind xer. Next is Lidii, a worker of the ant species Myrmecocystus mexicanus, yellow and orange. She's rambling about something excitedly, just barely propping up the thick wooden weapon beside her. Third is Rantan, an ox beetle, brown with yellow fur. He subjects himself to whatever Lidii's talking about, sitting with all six limbs on the ground and a mildly tired expression, resting their head on one claw. Gorge, a light purple coquina clam, is settled beneath two of Rantan's legs, his shell decorated with small notes and scribbles from work as an archivist. Last is the sea slug Ceras, a single-stalk aeolis, pink with bright stripes of yellow and white along their cerata. She's drawn further away from the rest, his head turned back towards the other four bugs. Like Kritto, they're marked as an honorary member of the team, lacking the seaglass bracelets shared by the three close-knit bugs from the center of the drawing. End ID.]
^ once again, these guys are from a universe I made with @froggoexists :]
[Start ID of the second image. A colored sketch of two humanized original characters, Ceras, a sea slug from the previous image, and Thorn, a Hollow Knight vessel. They're both drawn from the waist up, facing forward, close enough that Ceras's hand wraps around Thorn's shoulder. Ceras is shown as a young Black person, their cerata incorporated as long locs dyed pink, white and yellow, and piercings stud their ears and tongue. Thorn is paler-skinned, taller and thinner than Ceras, with pointed ears, and white hair styled at the top into two rows of spikes. Ceras is wearing a studded denim vest, thoroughly decorated with eclectic pins and patches, mostly of bands, bugs, games, and simple declarations of hope. Thorn wears instead a black leather jacket, with long studs at the shoulders and smaller ones along the sides and center. One sleeve is torn off, as they don't have a right arm, and the other is cuffed to display the adaptive device making up half their left. Ceras is sticking their tongue out and smiling, one eye shut and the other turned to Thorn, stimming with their free hand. Thorn's looking back at them with a smile.
The background is simple, a pink horizontal wave. There's a bright, pale halo behind Ceras' head, one which resembles a spoked wheel or a sun, seeming to cast light upon the two of them. A line at the bottom of the image reads "part-god mute disabled they/she/he bug punk BESTIES", and at the top of the image there's a small doodle of their original forms sitting together contentedly. End ID]
genuine question to folks i dont talk to on the daily: how do i go about making myself less intimidating? im constantly scared to step out of my bubble, but i also am a little tired of getting zero contact from others when i repeatedly ask for art requests / questions / ect ;-; i know im not a popular artist but at least i could try looking less like a threat?
Under the cut are mostly self-insert doodles of decreasing quality. Again, not much directly tied to Team Fortress 2. Might as well toss these out while I have no access to my puter. Much yapping under the cut and in the tags incoming.
Another self-insert, this time less of a "here's me as a tenth class" and more of a "here's my game experiences translated into the class I would take the place of". The Cleaner. Although I guess they could still be wearing either suit. It doesn't matter that much.
That one Convict's Case taunt with Backup would be extremely funny, because the man would be on the verge of a breakdown (he does not want to go to jail so bad you have no idea). The second image- I owe no explanation. You know what I am. You see the pattern with my favourites.
The duality of the man. Resting face versus "just heard you express interest in religion/Russian folklore" face. He's not that hard to make friends with, when you pull him away from all the explosions.
Some doodles of trying to figure his face out. Unfortunately, the more I stare at him, the more I worry that he looks like A Certain Guy With The Last Name "Kazarin", and the fear of never being original in my life caught up to me.
Don't look at me, don't perceive me, I refuse to explain any of my actions to you.
I was so happy when I saw you on @onepiecepositivityproject and discovered that you not only inspired me to write, but someone else out there as well.
So, high five to you and the other anon author out there :D
Also, I'm currently working on a fanart of the fanfic that inspired me to write again, and I wanted to quickly check in and make sure that you're fine with me posting it when I'm done ^^". If not, that's totally fine too <3 I'm also just happy drawing it because it won't shut up in my head.
My Anon - my sweet - my treasure - my joy - Please please please please please please do share with me when you're done. Post it publicly, or DM me, or send it in as an ask - whatever you are most comfortable with because I am already 10000000000000000000% okay with it.
I love it <3
I am at a loss for words with how ECSTATIC - I cannot physically be happier than I am right now.
I'm going to just cry because my emotions are too much \lol/
I am beside myself to have inspired, verifiably, two people to start writing T-T - BUT YOU'RE MAKING FAN ART OF MY FAN FIC?!
i need to speak up with this because it's getting grating as a bi arospec.
Please. Think before you say that someone writing a character as demi-, grey-, or elsewhere on the aromantic spectrum is only doing so to 'appeal to the alloros'. When you say that, you sound exactly like the people who call bisexuals 'fakers' or 'basically straight' for wanting to see or think about m/f pairings. I do not want to see the community that should be supporting me, a greyro, pulling the same gatekeeping shit that still hurts me and my bi friends.
I do not mind if you hc this character as repulsed. More power to you, enjoy your headcanons. But you will not tell someone that they are doing it wrong for exploring the idea of romance with that same character. 'It's only when the allos do it--' can you tell? Do you have a magical scrying orb that tells you who is aro enough to write a headcanoned-as-aro character in a romantic relationship? Do you remember how bisexuals get called 'straight' for enjoying a m/f pair? Do you see how others within the arospec community might think that you're calling them allo when they hear you saying that? That this makes them feel unseen and unheard?
I'm sure it's very alienating if you want to be a part of popular fandom, and I could never understand that. But think about how you alienate your allies and siblings when you say these things. Our existence isn't to please anyone else, the same as yours. So stop talking as if it is.