they want to talk about mental illness and acceptance and how everyone is a little ocd it's cute and quirky and their "intrusive thoughts" are about cutting their hair off and you say yours are about taking a razorblade to your eye and they say ew can you not and everyone is a little adhd sometimes! except if you're late it's a personality flaw and it's because you are careless and cruel (and someone else with adhd mentions they can be on time, so why can't you?) and it's not an eating disorder if it's girl dinner! it's not mania if it's girl math! what do you mean you blew all of your savings on nonrefundable plane tickets for a plane you didn't even end up taking. what do you mean that you are afraid of eating. get over it. they roll their little lips up into a sneer. can you not, like, trauma dump?
they love it on them they like to wear pieces of your suffering like jewels so that it hangs off their tongue in rapiers. they are allowed to arm-chair diagnose and cherrypick their poisons but you can't ever miss too many showers because that's, like, "fuckken gross?" so anyone mean is a narcissist. so anyone with visual tics is clearly faking it and is so cringe. but they get to scream and hit customer service employees because well, i got overwhelmed.
you keep seeing these posts about how people pleasers are "inherently manipulative" and how it's totally unfair behavior. but you are a people pleaser, you have an ingrained fawn response. in the comments, you have typed and deleted the words just because it is technically true does not make it an empathetic or kind reading of the reaction about one million times. it is technically accurate, after all. you think of catholic guilt, how sometimes you feel bad when doing a good deed because the sense of pride you get from acting kind - that pride is a sin. the word "manipulation" is not without bias or stigma attached to it. many people with the fawn response are direct victims of someone who was malignantly manipulative. calling the victims manipulative too is an unfair and unkind reading of the situation. it would be better and more empathetic to say it is safety-seeking or connection-seeking behavior. yes, it can be toxic. no, in general it is not intended to be toxic. there is no reason to make mentally ill people feel worse for what we undergo.
you type why is everyone so quick to turn on someone showing clear signs of trauma but you already know the fucking answer, so what's the point of bothering. you kind of hate those this is what anxiety looks like! infographics because at this point you're so good at white-knuckling through a severe panic attack that people just think you're stoic. even people who know the situation sometimes comment you just don't seem depressed. and you're not a 9 year old white kid so there's no way you're on the spectrum, you're not obsessed with trains and you were never a good mathematician. okay then.
mental illness is trending. in 2012 tumblr said don't romanticize our symptoms but to be fair tiktok didn't exist yet. there's these series of videos where someone pretends to be "the most boring person on earth" and is just being a normal fucking person, which makes your skin crawl, because that probably means you are boring. your friend reads aloud a profile from tinder - no depressed bitches i fucking hate that mental illness crap. your father says that medication never actually works.
you still haven't told your grandmother that you're in therapy. despite everything (and the fact it's helping): you just don't want her to see you differently.
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Escaped clone au
You know all those fics where Danny and Damian are twins but everyone first assumes Danny must be a clone? How about an au where Danny is Damian's clone who escaped the League after he was assumed dead. Damian could even have been the one to have "killed" him, back when Danny was a newly created, fully brainwashed clone minion and trying to kill Damian himself.
Danny gets adopted by the Fentons and canon goes on as normal, until Dan. Witnessing what would happen to the world should he turn evil really drove home to Danny how dangerous he is.
Even if he was confident he could be trusted with his absurd amount of power (which he isn't), what if the League of Assassins found out about him? Does he still have programming triggers from his evil assassin clone conditioning?
So, Danny does the responsible thing: he goes to Batman to turn himself in.
Cue Danny showing up on Bruce's doorstep with ghost hunting equipment, intel on the afterlife, and an almost unbelievable backstory. Somehow he still managed to be more well-adjusted than Damian.
More thoughts under the read more
Here's how I'm thinking Danny leaving the League went down:
After surviving his wounds but failing his mission, Danny (then an unnamed potential Damian replacement) knew there was no point in returning to the League. As a failure, he was meant to be disposed of. He even thought of simply allowing himself to perish, since that was what the League would do.
But he couldn't help but feel as though that would be a waste of a resource. Surely he could be of more use to the League alive than dead?
That tiny bit of rebellious logic is what caused Danny to go into hiding, only living on based on the off chance he would find opportunities to further the League's goals. Obviously, that mentality didn't last long after being exposed to the real world and meeting one Jazz Fenton.
Being adopted by the Fentons was the best cover Danny could have asked for, since any odd behavior he couldn't hide while he was learning how to be "normal" was totally overshadowed by the sheer bizarre eccentricity of his new parents. He was still the neighborhood weird kid, but even that was a major upgrade from disposable tool, so Danny considered it a win.
Anyway, if anyone likes this idea, please feel free to have at it! Interpret it as you please :)
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Always a bit puzzled by people saying that anyone who wanted long-term consequences for TotK Zelda's sacrifice are "edgy".
I'm not even particularly in the camp that she should have remained a dragon forever (I think this should have been Ganondorf's fate, it would have been sooo much more impactful than to explode him and move on but anyway). To be honest, I wish the rules for turning back would have been 1) clear 2) active gameplay on the player so that it feels like it's something we have earned, and 3) not make her have amnesia about it and/or at least having her gain some crucial insight because of the experience.
(also: doesn't she crave knowledge? isn't that insanely mean to have her watch over every civilization and every bit of history ever and then take it away from her? kind of dislike how totk privileges the comfort of the player's feelings over what the characters would actually want or need tbh)
To be perfectly honest, I fully expected us needing to turn her back before engaging Ganondorf so we would fight him together, especially since Zelda as a compagnon exists in the game code already (though in a very subdued state). It feels very very strange to me that all of this mechanic of Sages following us existing and yet we never have the very climactic cool Zelda-staple moment of facing Ganondorf or Ganon together (OoT, WW, TP, ST and probably more that I'm forgetting all did this in some way --even BotW had Zelda more involved than in TotK). I'm not sure Mineru was a compagnon that was needed over Zelda honestly, especially given the kind of non-insight she gives us on the zonai (even if the idea of the mecha is cool, it really could have been Zelda using her zonai + sheikah knowledge to pilot one for us or something).
But anyway: yeah, even if this isn't what I would have wanted personally, I think wanting Zelda to remain a dragon is kind of arguably more respectful of her relationship to Link, in a way, that what the game ended up doing. When she enacted this sacrifice, Zelda decided to trust him to such a extent that she lost herself, reciprocated his trust in her and his devotion to her, and now the future of Hyrule exists beyond her and beyond what Hyrule once was, but she trusts them to follow through and be happy and she will watch over them from the stars moving on. It's fine if we manage to save her from that fate, but even if we don't, honestly this sounds like a beautiful story/tragic romance to me, if you want to read it that way. Tragedy doesn't necesserily involve edginess. Fictional pain isn't always mean, or out to get you.
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The girlboss-ification of Galadriel bothers me so much. In the books, in Tolkien’s works, Galadriel is a powerful political leader, even by the second age. She is a princess of the Noldor, the daughter of Finarfin. She is proud and respected.
In the Rings of Power, she is nothing more than a bitter commander in Gil-Galad’s army. She can’t even control her own subordinates. (They call her “Commandeer Galadriel” not “Lady Galadriel”!) She is ignored by Gil-Galad and condescended to by Elrond, she is dismissed and rebuked. She has no influence and no status of her own. So far in the show, her motivation is just vengeance and her own trauma, there is no greater consideration of the fate of Middle-Earth, no political aspirations, no nothing. Her identity becomes one of being Finrod’s little sister, not a leader of her own.
In the Unfinished Tales, there are many inconsistencies in Galadriel’s history, but none of them suggest this powerlessness and this humiliation.
I don’t care if they make her out to be a warrior or not, I don’t care if she leads people into battle or not, I do care about her political power.
They say they are centering female characters, which would be great, except they are disempowering her. I would much rather see a woman in a position of influence and respect, than one who is good with a sword. This is Galadriel, who refused Feanor, one of the greatest elves of all time, when he asked for a strand of her hair, and in Rings of Power she becomes a cast-away who is thrown around, ignored, and manhandled by those around her.
I understand the need to have room for character development and growth, but this is not that. It’s such a performative attempt at feminism, she is a classic 2010 female protagonist. One who is good at fighting, who is the underdog, who doesn’t allow herself to be kind or gentle or have emotional vulnerability, because the writers forgot what female empowerment actually looks like. A woman with dignity and political power is so much more important than a woman who can carry a sword.
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thinking about zoro being the crew's main protector.
it’s quite literally his role amongst the straw hats; luffy's captain, usopp's their sniper, sanji cooks, nami navigates, chopper's their doctor, franky's their shipwright, jinbei's their helmsman and brook's their musician but zoro? zoro's their swordsman. zoro’s their guardian. his job is to be the first line of defense and protect everybody else so they can focus on doing their own thing and sure, none of them really need protecting— but they don't have to worry about defending themselves, either, because whoever they can't or don't want to handle zoro will finish up (if he hasn't gotten to them first).
like imagine a bunch of idiots cornering one of the crew (bad idea.) and picking nami because she's the woman without a devil fruit, as opposed to robin (BAD idea.). they've got her surrounded in the dead end of an alleyway and have somehow neutralised her clima-tact and she’s not worried, she’s not.
but against twelve men and with her weapon essentially now just a regular staff, she might be panicking. just a little. she’s gotten a couple of them good enough that they’re down for the count before a chain wrapped around her ankle trips her. it pulls at enough memories, faded but never forgotten, to bring up a sickening wave of fear and anger— and nami decides that she’s had enough of the bullshit.
she takes a deep breath and screams. “ZORO!”
the silence afterwards is deafening. the wind shifts, gently lifting the pieces of hair stuck to her sweaty face, and the men laugh uneasily. one of them yanks hard on the chain and she spits at him, heels scrabbling against the dusty ground even as he starts reeling her in like a fish on a hook. “he can’t hear you, little missy,” he snickers, grin widening the longer nobody shows up.
it’s still on his face when his head slides right off his neck.
blood sprays right before his body crumples like a doll. it takes a second for the others to realise and then the screaming starts— none of them get any farther than three steps before zoro’s cutting them down, swift swings of his sword and almost surgically precise slices rendering them incapacitated if not plain dead.
“sorry i’m late, witch.” the swordsman’s breathing hard, gore dripping off his blades even as he arcs one down and snaps the chain off nami’s leg with a growl. “did they hurt you?”
“no. no, i’m fine,” nami breathes, her smile quivering just a little— not because she’s shaken, no. because she’s pissed.
zoro’s voice is gruff as always, but his hands are careful if not outright gentle as he kneels to inspect her ankle before pulling her to her feet. “stay close,” he mutters, making sure that she’s nodded before cutting them a path through the fray. they bump into chopper next, and the doctor’s out cold over zoro’s shoulder in his regular form by the time sanji joins them to guard their flank. nami’s taken to just using her clima-tact as a bat for now, and it’s admittedly efficient.
she knew zoro would come. he always does. for all that they bicker and snip at each other, zoro has always protected his crew— even when said crew was just three people on what could barely be called a boat. he’d fought for her at arlong park and he fights for her now, his sword slicing over her head at an enemy she can’t see as she ducks low to jam her staff into another’s stomach.
they’ve moved closer to their ship when they find jinbei, then robin, then usopp, then brook and franky, and then zoro’s yelling luff, time to go! and their captain’s launching them all back onto the Sunny with a gleeful cackle that makes nami wheeze a laugh as they land in a mildly painful pile of limbs. somebody’s elbow digs into her ribs and she’s pretty sure that’s sanji’s bony kneecap pressed into her lower back. the swordsman swears as he sets about trying to pry them all apart and luffy seems to be actively fighting him, based on how his cursing’s getting more and more colourful.
behind them, their enemies burn, sliced to pieces. they debrief in the galley and zoro refuses to come away from the door until nami drags him by the ear and sanji threatens to personally shove dessert down his throat. they both know it’s because zoro’s still guarding them from a threat that doesn’t exist anymore.
they know he pretends not to care as much as he does. they know he keeps his words blunt and his swords sharp, but zoro lets luffy hang off him, unfazed, and makes a marginal effort to stick to nami’s budget even when he’s getting booze, and he eats his dessert. every last bit. he lets usopp fire moving targets to slice through so they can both practice. he keeps collateral damage when sparring with sanji to a minimum. he stitches whoever needs it up himself when chopper’s a little too tired.
and when his crew calls, he answers.
(now with a part from nami’s pov!)
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