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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The Revenant Wife
Pairing: Joel Miller x Fem!Reader
Warnings: Mentions of grief and death.
Summary: Ellie knows very little of Joel and even less of the wife he had before the outbreak. When she finally meets you, its just as much as shock to her as it is to your husband.
Word count: 1.6k
Note: ficlet is based off of this previous post about Joel getting separated from his wife during the outbreak and assuming you died until you find one another years later. Reader is described to look like Sarah. Title came from the ever lovely @djarin-junk <3
Tagging those I think would enjoy: @pedrostories @thesadvampire @joel-mlller @softanon @max--phillips @captainsamwlsn @hooplahoopla @moondirti
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Ellie didn’t know that Joel had a wife.
Granted, she didn’t know much about his old life at all.
She knew he built things. That he had a brother named Tommy and a daughter named Sarah, but didn’t like to talk about the latter that much. In one fleeting conversation, full of mumbles as her eyes began to close while they rested under the night sky she heard him mention you but was far too gone to truly hear what he said. Nothing more than the vague rumble of his voice saying “my wife” before her eyes opened once more.
“You’re married?”
She asks with such incredulous shock it sounds more like “somebody married you?” but girls at her age hardly ever have filters.
“I was.”
There’s the same bristle in his throat and far off look in his eyes as when she first asked about his daughter. An open answer but one that carries enough unsaid to tell Ellie of your fate. To warn her that she should change the subject or simply shut her mouth and go to sleep before plucking his raw nerve one too many times until he snaps-
“What was she like?”
But Joel learned early on that Ellie wasn’t one to follow warnings.
“Kind.” His breath stutters. “But not a pushover- she didn’t take shit from anybody.” He stares up at the sky, feeling his chest grow tight and fingers twitch by his side until there’s a rustling, the girl next to him rolling over to face him and he turns to find Ellie peeking out from her sleeping bag with a smile.
Damn this girl.
“Not even from you?”
Joel scoffs. “Especially from me. The amount of times she gave me and Tommy and earful-” he shakes his head, Ellie watches a smile grow on his face in silence, as if worried she may frighten it away.
“Did she cook?”
Ellie thinks of the stories the older kids would tell her. The ones who remembered life before the Outbreak, who told her of freshly baked pies on weekend and fluffy pancakes in the morning.
Joel remembers the first time you tried to bake him a cake for his birthday back when he was sixteen. How he opened the door to your forlorn face and a store bought sheet cake in your hands because as your mother told him over the phone, you damn near burned the whole house down trying to bake for him as a surprise.
“From time to time.”
There was only so much she could get out of him before his voice became clipped and eyes full of an emotion she didn’t quite know the name of that he told her to get some rest. Leaving her with nothing to do but to stare at the sky and wonder about these stories in the shape of a woman who unveiled a little bit more about the mysterious man she traveled with.
Of all the silence and secrets that made up the man that protected her, she created stories to fill them. Stories of Joel Miller, husband, father, brother and badass contractor that everybody loved. Of his soldier brother, of his wife and their smiling daughter between them both.
In Ellie’s mind, you didn’t work.
But not in a ditzy lame way like some boring housewife. But just because you didn’t have to.
Joel said that everybody loved contractors so that means he probably got paid like, a ton of money to build stuff for people so you got to stay at home all day. Ellie imagined your house to be ginormous. Maybe Joel made it himself for you when you guys first got married. It was big enough that when Joel came home everyday he’d call out your name and it’d echo through the hall as you called him into the kitchen, where your daughter sat reading as you set dinner on the table. Sometimes you’d get upset if he came home late but then he’d kiss your cheek and you would roll your eyes but smile before you all sat down and ate as a family.
Ellie imagines Joel’s daughter, she wonders if Sarah looks more like her mother than her father.
Ellie wonders as the sleep takes over her body, if they could have been friends.
When it happens, months later after she’s come to think of Joel as something akin to family and he thinks of her as something he can’t say out loud just yet, she’s shocked. She’s face to face with a woman holding her at gunpoint that looks nothing like the smiling mother she dreamt of during cold nights.
You don’t match the stories Ellie made up in your head.
You’re mean.
No. Mean isn’t the right word.
Cold. Yes. you're very cold.
Ellie watches in shock as you ask where they're headed, gun focused on the center of her chest while the two boys at your side point their own at Joel, who has yet to speak.
She waits for him to answer, but he just stares at you in awe. The same man she’s seen kill and threaten to keep her safe day in and day out is rendered speechless until all he can do is utter your name and she realizes that he knows you. More than that, judging by the way he surrenders his gun to you with no fight, something she had never seen him do.
You lift your head to look at him, the brim of your hat raises just enough to clear the shadow cast over your face and Ellie can finally see your eyes and the snarl on your face.
You’re also very pretty.
“I won’t ask again.”
The two boys standing on either side of you have your eyes. Same color and intensity, narrowed into slits like guard dogs waiting for an order and Ellie sees the way Joel stares at them.
She wonders if Sarah had brothers.
“Out west.” He manages. “Takin’ her to her family.”
Your eyes move to her and she holds her hands higher in the air.
“That true?”
“What?”
“Is he telling the truth?”
The taller one, Duke, she had heard you call him, had already ripped the bag from her back and emptied its contents onto the ground, she had nothing else to hide from you.
But then she sees something in your eyes. A concern for her that she hadn’t seen since Tess or Marlene.
And she understands.
“He’s telling the truth.” Ellie forces out.
You watch her for a moment and there’s a moment of panic where she thinks you can see right through her lie.
But then you lower your gun and jerk your head over your shoulder.
“C’mon.” is all you say before you begin to walk away. The boys gawk at you for a moment before you give them a look of warning and they follow in your step, occasionally casting glances behind them at Joel and Ellie who follow suit.
She’s quick to grab onto the sleeve of Joel’s jacket and pull with a harsh whisper as the other’s march forward.
“You know this psycho?”
Joel flinches at her voice as it pitches up. If any of you heard her, which he gathered you did because Ellie didn’t have an inside voice to save her fucking life, you didn’t care enough to react.
Ellie whispers his name again. Insistent and angry for answers but he just keeps looking forward. He can’t take his eyes off of you or the boys ahead and it fills her with worry but she doesn’t know why.
“She’s my wife.”
You lead them to a cottage. Its paint is chipping and the fence is reinforced with wiring around the perimeter but it looks like a home. She can vaguely hear the soft clucking of chickens nearby and there's a flash of fur behind the fence with a pair of pointed ears that duck away just as fast as she saw them.
Ellie has seen the remnants of homes before the outbreak. The plates still stacked in the sink and the jacket still hung up on the hook. A story telling a family that once lived within its walls and is now nothing more than memories that ghosts along its foundation.
But this one is real. It’s yours.
There is a rickety wooden table in the dining room. Each chair around it seems to have been brought from a different house and is varying shades of faded brown. You kick the leg of one and nod toward it.“Sit, both of you.”
Ellie looks to Joel before sitting. He follows suit, choosing the chair closest to her.
“I’m gonna get some bandages for that leg-”
Joel shifts forward. “I don’t need-”
“I wasn’t fucking asking, Joel.”
You’re not stronger than Joel, if she had to guess. You both look the same age, but she’s seen his strength, his violence, all done for her safety and knows if it came down to it, you might not win in a fight against him.
But at your order, he sits back in his chair.
You turn and set a shoulder on your son’s shoulder.
At least. She thinks he’s your son.
Softly spoken words are exchanged while the other keeps his eyes on Joel and his hand on his holster. The boy says something back in insistence, but you tilt your head and he nods.
“If either of them try moving or taking anything.” You offer them one final look over your shoulder before slipping out of the room. “Shoot them.”
They listen to your footsteps slowly retreat until there’s nothing but the subtle creak and groan of the wood floor beneath them. Ellie leans forward to look at Joel, setting her hands firmly on the dinner table in announcement.
“Dude-” The young girl breathes out. “Your wife is a bitch.”
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Lady Gotham raises Danny as a single mother
Danny gets de-aged and Clockwork sends him to live with his Daughter, Lady Gotham.
You would expect Lady Gotham to look very Gothic. Like a noble lady from the 1600′s or a ghostly woman in a large veil. Maybe even just a mass of writhing shadows?
But no, Lady Gotham looks like your stereotypical Single Mother at all times, cause she always has to keep her Bat-Kids safe like the rambunctious children they are, and it’s a 24/7 job
She basically has the house-mom look, frizzy hair tied up in a ponytail, a stained apron from making dinner, always looks tired but always has time to indulge her kids games, all that
After she takes in Danny, she decides to create herself a Civilain Identity so she can raise him as both a Human and as a Ghost. And raising the future High King has it's side effects, for example he is constantly producing excess Ectoplasm which empowers her enough to maintain a Corporeal form for much longer than she could before.
Now she can just live in her City, and actually Interact with her citizens like she never could before!
She starts helping out more, dispelling some of the more Nasty curses placed on her City and making people feel more safe than before.
She gives packed lunches to homeless kids, every day without fail, and they are always filled with that kids favorite snacks alongskde some healthy foods. None of her children are going to go hungry on her watch!
She donates to the local homeless shelters, and gives them some Good Luck charms so they experience less problems. She needs to teach her kids good morals after all!
She starts a Rooftop Garden on her apartment Building, handing out the produce to anybody who asks to borrow some. Somehow she never runs out no matter how much they ask for. It's good manners to treat your neighbors with respect! A cup of sugar and all that!
She embodies the "Neighboorhood Mom" stereotype perfectly, just across the entire city instead.
And the Batfam don't even notice for a few months! She isn't doing anything big, just being a good Samaritan, and a good mom.
Then, one day, Red Hood shows up and tells everybody that he was kidnapped by a Lady who kept saying stuff like "We need to get that dirty ecto sorted out, we are long overdue for a check up!"
And now he feels perfectly fine. No more green vision, no more violent tendencies, he's just not as angry about that anymore.
Now the Batfam are trying to find thus lady, but it's kind of hard since all Jason could give for a description is "She looked like a Stereotypical Single Mom. That's all I can remember about her appearance."
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