#as traumatic right?

[theshadowrealmitself]

I just need Vulcans to hear about bunnies dying from loneliness and looking it up to see if anything similar like that happens to Humans just to find out we can die from heartbreak

[brainrotcharacters]

wade's undiagnosed ADHD (giggling everytime Logan stabs him) is only ever matched by Logan's undiagnosed autism (stabbing Wade with his claws when he's overstimulated)

[artkaninchenbau]

People keep on asking for more Baby Robin and Papadile so here is more Baby Robin and Papadile. Now never ask anything from me ever again

[charlietheepicwriter7]

G̴̩͍͆͆̈́e̵̹̣͆t̷̬̋ ̸̻̮̎̒ĭ̸̏̃n̵͙̋͐ ̸̛̳̃t̶̪̣̅ḣ̸̳̇͜è̵̠̲͖̔̑ ̶̢̹̖͗͐̀Wa̵̬̞͝ṫ̴̩̣̣e̶͉̲̯͂̏̎r̴̉

It was a simple mission. Damian was working with Father to confirm the existence of a Lazarus Pit below Gotham, as Ra's Al Ghul speculated. And they had found it, deep in the caves below Gotham. A Pit the size of an Olympic sized swimming pool, bubbling and steaming. He'd only looked away for a moment.

"Kin-slayer."

Standing waist deep in the water stood Damian's reflection. The hair might be white, and the eyes glowing with the waters, but it was his face. But not his face alone.

Danyal's ghost glared at him. "Get in the water."

Father threw a batarang at him, but the metal flew straight through his head like it was air. Danyal didn't even glance at him, his eyes fixed on Damian. "Get in the water," he ordered again. He stepped closer to the shore and the green water sloshed up the bank higher than it was before. "Or I'll raise the tide so high, all of Gotham will die. So get in the water."

Damian's heart jumped into throat. "Wait-"

"Get in the water."

Father shoved Damian behind him, as if it would protect him, as if he could stop Danyal. "Stop this, please-" If he could just explain-

Another step and the waters surged forward, nearly touching Father's boots. "I'll make whirlpools so profound, your entire family will drown," he promised.

"NO!" Not his brother, his kind brother-

"THEN GET IN THE WATER!" Danyal snarled, revealing monstrously sharp teeth and a black tongue from Damian's poison. "G̴̩͍͆͆̈́e̵̹̣͆t̷̬̋ ̸̻̮̎̒ĭ̸̟̰͙̏̃n̵͙̝̟̋͐ ̸̛̳̃t̶̪̣̅ḣ̸̳̇͜è̵̠̲͖̔̑ ̶̢̹̖͗͐̀w̵̜͍̤̌a̵̬̞͝ṫ̴̩̣̣e̶͉̲̯͂̏̎r̴̉͜!̷̡͔́̀̽" He lunged and Father pushed them back down the passage they'd come. "Don't mistake this for a bluff, brother. You've lived more than enough. Just get in the water." Damian swallowed, throat dry. Was this Danyal's revenge? Did he finally have to face what he had done?

"Robin, who is this?" Father snapped, trying to keep retreating down the cave. But Damian wouldn't let him; the waters, and Danyal with them, would only follow.

Danyal looked between them, scowling. "G̴̩͍͆͆̈́e̵̹̣͆t̷̬̋ ̸̻̮̎̒ĭ̸̟̰͙̏̃n̵͙̝̟̋͐ ̸̛̳̃t̶̪̣̅ḣ̸̳̇͜è̵̠̲͖̔̑ ̶̢̹̖͗͐̀w̵̜͍̤̌a̵̬̞͝ṫ̴̩̣̣e̶͉̲̯͂̏̎r̴̉͜!̷̡͔́̀̽" he snapped again. "I'll take your father and gouge out his eyes, unless you want to stop being a coward and choose to die. Now... get in the water."

[inhonoredglory]

Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality

Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.

I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.

Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

[shushmal]

tw: for implied past emotional abuse, im in my feels today

"What the fuck were you thinking?" Hopper growls. He's not quite shouting, but he's still loud, raised voice echoing through the living room. "She's not ready to drive yet, I forbade it, and what? You two decided that you knew better?"

Eddie rolls his eyes, but gamely keeps quiet. He knows Hopper's less upset with Ellie taking a spin through the parking lot and more upset about the property damage. Eddie's on her side though, that phone pole came out of nowhere. Must have been pretty rotted out too, to fall over that easily after a little love tap.

Ellie had done a damn good job fixing the huge dent in the bumper.

But if Hopper wants to be dramatic and chew everyone involved out, Eddie's not going to stop him. Whatever gets the guy's blood pressure back down.

"You're supposed to be responsible adults! Especially you, Steve!"

Rolling his eyes again, Eddie glances over, hoping to share a commiserating look with Steve.

Except Steve isn't looking anywhere but down, shoulders and spine ruler straight. Eddie stalls there, stuck on the way Steve's standing, tense from jaw down to his ankles, his hands balled into tight fists flat at his side, knuckles white. Hopper keeps ranting, pacing a wide circle in front of them, but Steve doesn't flinch, doesn't look up, doesn't react. It's like all the color has washed from him.

"Are you even listening?!"

"Yes, sir," Steve says tightly. He doesn't look up. Hopper keeps going.

Eddie watches as Steve's throat works to swallow, like he's choking. Like he can't breathe.

"Hopper," Eddie snaps. "Shut the fuck up."

Hopper whirls on him, livid, but Eddie's not looking at him, fixed on Steve as he reaches out. Tries to take Steve's hand, just holds his wrist when Steve can't unclench his fist, gentle as he touches him. Steve is tightly wound and trembling under his fingers.

When he looks, Eddie finds Hopper with deep regret on his face, struck silent. He doesn't say anything when Eddie leads Steve away, back out onto the porch. They sit on the swing, Eddie's arm around Steve's shoulders, rocking back and forth until the muscles loosen and Steve slumps, strings cut, into Eddie's side. They'll sit like that for a while more, watching the woods as the sun sets and listening to the dusk settle, crickets and cicadas and chats calling the moon up, filling their silence with nighttime music.

Later, Hopper will come out, temper cooled, and sit on Steve's other side. Will ruffle Steve's hair when Steve starts to stiffen. Will apologize when Steve eyes him warily.

Later, Eddie will scowl and glare, but ultimately keep quiet, unwilling to make the whole thing worse for Steve, another fight, another shouting match. Will stiltedly tell Hopper good night and take Steve home, wait patiently until Steve finally speaks, when he finally tells Eddie a little more and a little more, until Eddie's holding him tight.

That's later though. For now, he digs his heel into the porch, rocking them back and forth, and waits for Steve to breathe.

[luthienne]

anyway literally everyone is going through something all the time!!! everyone is wounded!!! everyone is human & no one makes it out of this life unscathed!! maybe try approaching people in good faith instead of always defaulting to the worst possible interpretations of each other

[deadsetobsessions]

What Do You Have There?

A knife!

Danny plunked the butter knife in its pedestal of importance. The nice thing about having a billionaire vigilante for a... foster is the amount of money Danny was allowed to drop on his hobbies. For example, his extensive collection of souvenirs.

They're not just any old regular souvenirs. No, no, no. That would be so boring! No, these souvenirs, he obtained from the various muggings, knife fights, and various other situations he's been in ever since he was dropped ungraciously into Gotham.

The butter knife? Damian. Precocious, stabby Damian who he had startled into the stab instinct. A point of pride, really. Danny knew Damian was good at fighting! It was practically, in ghost terms, a super enthusiastic hello! Yes, the butter knife would be kept in the well lit part of the wall. Alfred had told him to stay home today to recuperate. He didn't need it, since the wound would heal in an hour or two, but he'd take staying at home any day.

A couple of hours later, well into the afternoon and right before what Danny knew to be their patrol hours, Danny had a visitor.

"Danny."

"Oh, hey, Damian! What's up?" Danny turned around to see Damian hovering awkwardly near the door.

"I am here to... check upon your wound. It is imperative that it gets proper treatment."

Ancients, Damian was exactly like those alley kids. He just ate a thesaurus instead of the drawling accent the alley kids picked up. Which meant Damian endeared himself to Danny pretty quickly. Like a little ghostling.

"Oh, I'm good. See? No blood is leaking out of the wound." Danny held up spotless bandages.

Danny watched Damian step into his haunt- his room- with a pleased hum. Damian inspected the bandages and stepped back with a sharp nod of approval. His eyes flicked to the wall that Danny was rearranging (again) and did a double take at the butter knife in the middle.

"Is that the butter knife I stabbed you with?"

"Why, yes, it is!" Danny beamed.

"Why on earth would you display that?"

"Because you stabbed me with it?"

"That makes absolutely no sense, you simpleton! When someone stabs you, stab them back!"

"That would be mean!"

Damian spluttered. Danny tugged the kid closer to the wall, cheering inwardly as Damian didn't shove him away. It might be because he was exaggeratedly wincing as he moved his "injured arm" but Danny has learned to take a win where he could find them, especially with ghosts. Not that Damian was a ghost, but he sure acted like one.

"Do you want to see my collection?"

"Your collection?"

"Yeah!" Without giving him time to answer, Danny barreled ahead. "So this is the knife you stabbed me with. Which, by the way, was an awesome show of strength and accuracy."

Damian grimaced. Danny continued blithely, secretly memorizing Damian's reactions to laugh at later.

"And this is the knife those guys stabbed me with that one time Cass found me. And this one is a bullet someone shot at me down by the docks. I think I interrupted some kind of meeting?"

Damian's jaw had a slight tick to it that would have been a baffled frown on anyone else.

"And when was this?"

"Oh, like a week ago."

"What? When did you go to the docks?!"

"At night. I couldn't sleep."

"And you went to the docks?! How did you even get there?!"

"Walked," Danny lied, like a lying liar. He floated, obviously, but none of them knew that. "Anyways, this is a law book! Someone threw it at my head!"

"Hey, guys! What're you doing?"

Danny and Damian turned around.

"Richard? Brown? What are you doing here?"

"Oh, Bruce wanted me to come back for the weekend," Dick said. Danny knew it was code for "something's going down and we need back up." Man, he still couldn't believe they didn't know he knew they were crime fighting vigilantes.

"Same!" Stephanie said. Danny was glad to see that her wounds from "cartwheeling in the manor" were healed.

"I see. Danny was showing me his collection of... objects people have used as weapons against him."

"What?!"

"Yeah!" Danny beamed, completely innocent. "Come on! I'll show you!"

With that, Danny continued to ramble. He just knew that the way Dick's and Stephanie's smiles strained would give him a good laugh for weeks to come. "And this is the glass bottle a drunk tried to shank me with in Crime Alley, and this is a knife the Red Hood himself threw at me."

Dick interrupted, face stiff. "Hood threw a knife at you?!"

"Yeah, but that was because my kids broke into his safe house and I was trying to get them to stop looting the place. And he didn't know I was a kid too, so he aimed a gun at my head. He shot at me too, but I couldn't go back to get the bullet, or else it would have joined my collection." Danny grabbed a box and shook it, metal rattling inside.

Dick smiled sweetly, Stephanie and Damian inching away from it.

"Oh, wow, I see!"

----

In his apartment, Jason shuddered. He grabbed his guns.

"Something's wrong. I just know it," he muttered to himself.

----

Danny smiled innocently as he described the horrific, near death events he got his souvenirs from.

"This is my bullet box! Man, Gotham has a lot of gun fights. I got shot so many times!" Danny complained, shaking the box like a rattling toy.

"Did you know Danny snuck out to go to the bay?" Damian snitched immediately, like a snitch.

"The Bay?! Danny! You know that's where people dump bodies, right?!" Stephanie poked him in the arm.

"Yeah, but like... I wouldn't die. And besides! I missed my friends!"

"You mean the minions you made in Crime Alley?" Steph asked. Danny pouted, eyeing the way Dick's gaze roved over his souvenirs and paling the more he realized how often Danny "got hurt."

Damian bumped a shoulder against Dick's arm. Danny returned to the conversation.

"If anything, I'm their minion." He said, remembering the times the Alley kids sent him on food runs.

"Fear Danny, the overlord of street rats."

Danny snorted. And- "Oh! Yeah, there was like a weird owl looking guy? And then they stabbed me with a finger and I kept it because woah, cool talon looking thing, right? And then they threw a bunch of those tiny knives at me? And then they just kind of vanished? Gotham is so weird."

And now, with all of them pale and stressed out of their minds, Danny swung a devastating blow called guilt trip.

"And that's the batarangs!" Three heads swung over to the line of batarangs. "Those vigilantes kept throwing them at me! One of them even hit me in the arm. Those things are sharp, man."

"Uh. Which ones?" Stephanie asked.

"Hm?" Danny hummed obliviously.

"Do you know which vigilantes?"

"Oh, it was like... the purple one. And the sword one? And like the one with the yellow insignia in the middle. And... all of them, I think? Except for signal. That guy's cool."

Stephanie and Damian had matching veiled looks of guilt. Dick shot them a sharp look. Danny decided to deal the last bit of damage to Dick.

"I'm glad you guys are way less stabby than the general Gotham public though, butter knife incident aside. At least I don't have to worry about you guys getting into danger, right? If you guys got hurt like my family did... I don't know..."

Danny smiled-squinted at them, channeling Cujo at his cutest and saddest: when he doesn't get to eat off of Danny's plate. So, pretty sad and pathetic.

"Uh, yeah." Dick said, guilt splayed all over his face. "Alfred said dinner was almost ready."

"Yes," Damian cleared his throat, looking away. "We shall partake in Pennyworth's hard work."

"Ahaha!" Stephanie laughed, nervously. "Welp, let's go bother Tim!"

Falling into step behind them, Danny grinned.

[scealaiscoite]

.☽༊˚ prompts for helping bathe an injured loved one

¹⁾ sitting on the edge of the bathtub and letting them lay their head against your thigh as the fatigue starts taking hold

²⁾ “i know, i know it hurts but hold on for just a little longer and we’re done, yeah? think you can do that for me, pet?”

³⁾ helping them lean up so you can wash their back, and pretending not to notice them shaking in your arms

⁴⁾ “you needn’t be so gentle, y’know. if today wasn’t enough to break me, i doubt an ill-applied handful of shampoo will.”

⁵⁾ using your soapstuffs because the familiar scent will, hopefully, help calm them

⁶⁾ “i can’t believe it took a night like that for you to let me help you with something.”

⁷⁾ having never seen them in a state of undress before and so, trying admirably hard to avoid looking directly at them in such a vulnerable state

⁸⁾ “so mr/mrs surly and serious likes having their hair washed for them, hm? don’t worry, i’ll keep your secret.”

⁹⁾ climbing into the bath/shower with them, more for the physical comfort than practicality

¹⁰⁾ “i wish the first time you saw me like this could’ve been under better circumstances.”

¹¹⁾ stripping down to the same level of undress as them in an effort to try and make them feel more comfortable

¹²⁾ “can we- can we just stay here, like this, for a minute? please?”

¹³⁾ using as gentle a touch as possible to clean them off and feeling your heart break each time they still suppress a pained whimper

¹⁴⁾ “it’s just me now. you don’t have to be brave anymore.”

¹⁵⁾ trying to towel them dry but ending up just cradling them to your chest with the towel pressed aimlessly between you

[vaguely-concerned]

the fact that irving canonically survives through the end of asunder to be at wynne's funeral is so fucking funny to me. nothing but love and respect for MY unstoppable cockroach morally grey machiavellian mage dad!!! he's survived in his position through multiple attempted rites of annulment and blood mage plots popping up left right and center around him. the chantry keeps trying to stamp him out but his dodge game is simply out of this world, divine. civil wars, political machinations and minefields, chantry atrocities, this wily old motherfucker is dodging and weaving his way through it all, not-quite-no-hits-taken-running-it-but-honestly-close-enough-under-the-circumstances style. if solas does succeed in tearing down the veil I would fully believe that one of the like three people still alive at the end of it all would be a very weary 90 year old first enchanter irving going 'oh this shit again huh'. the maker has cursed him for his hubris and his paperwork is never finished (affectionate, it's fine he canonically loves paperwork)

[hoshizoralone]

I imagine being around other Smashers from Super Smash Bros. does wonders for Samus' self-esteem and emotional well-being. Not in a sarcastic "haha we're comparing traumas wheeee" kind of way, but because SO DANG MANY Smashers are so very insightful, compassionate, and caring in their own ways and would want to see her have some measure of peace and help her heal.

The Smash Crew (with the obvious exception of fucking Ridley and probably Dark Samus too I dunno) is Ride or Die for Samus Aran and they will not hesitate to remind her at every given opportunity.

samus gets put in therapy for the first time ever thanks to the fact that there are actually people around to hear what she says to herself

[darkeneddawning]

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 :)

[thehealingsystem]

if you ever wonder why I don't interact with the traumagenic community as a traumagenic system this is why

[genderqueerpond]

We don't talk enough about the fact that Amelia Pond, s5 Amelia Pond, before the timeline is reset, isn't just a normal orphan. Her parents didn't die, didn't abandon her, and didn't send her away. They never existed in the first place.

And if her parents never existed, then Amelia cannot exist. She is a causal impossibility.

"People fall out of the world sometimes, but they always leave traces." A photograph. A face carved into an apple. Yes. Sure.

A child.

Now that's too big, surely.

But that's what she is. She is exactly the same as these things. A trace. An echo of something that could never be, never was, never could have been.

And the universe should never allow it. A whole person, that's just too much. She could not have continued to exist indefinitely, in normal circumstances, after her parents never existed.

In normal circumstances.

Because the Doctor didn't just save her from things coming out of the crack in her wall. He saved her from going into it. And he didn't just save her from the threat of going into it simply because of its vicinity.

No, by arriving when he did, he interrupted a process that was probably already in motion. And then by arriving again only moments later on a cosmic relative timestream (too quickly for the process to complete) and yet in the local relative timestream, years later --- years of a potential future caught midway through the process of rewriting -- he solidified that existence. Amy is a creature from another timeline, caught in amber. The Doctor prevented her from never existing, but only after she could already never exist.

And so, no one around Amelia thinks about it. Neither does she. There's some kind of consciousness block, because if you thought about it, really thought about it, for two seconds you'd realize she cannot exist. And the human mind can't deal with that. So, to protect itself, everyone's brain simply slides off it before ever noticing. They just assume that her existence makes sense, and don't question it, and don't notice what they don't question, that is staring them in the face.

But of course, to some extent they do notice. They can't think it, but they notice subconsciously that there's something they can't think. They notice there's something wrong with her, something uncanny. And they don't like it, and they alienate her even more because of it.

"Does it ever bother you Pond that your life existence doesn't make any sense?"

[benevolenterrancy]

May your hardened heart be woken By the soft and distant song Of all you left here unspoken All the shards we keep stepping on - Take this body home Take this body home Call the wind, and let her know Take this life outgrown Take this broken soul Call the stars, call them all And take it high, take it far, take it home

[bunnieswithknives]

Okay but does Peri KNOW that Dev has a robotic leg when he shows up? Something about the fact that Peri's wand is a cane and the fact that Dev could have kept his leg and just had a cane for the rest of his life instead tickles my brain.

I mean he doesn't know immediately, he wasn't like briefed or anything, but he basically lives in Dev's house so he definitely finds out. Peri doesn't comment on or react to it all though really, there's no reason for him to think anything of it, plenty of people have missing limbs, a lot of people are born without them, it doesn't necessarily mean anything sinister happened. He had no reason to pry or ask and I think Peri's lack of reaction to it helped Dev feel a bit more comfortable in his skin. (Not by much but.. a little bit.)