I got- I can't!
Imagine being 15, you've grown up your whole life with this one belief in this one God and you were told you were Chosen by Him, for Him. And you're 15. You believe so fully in the spirit of your religion, not necessarily the word, that you want to go to a non-religious school to try and help other kids maybe find your God because you genuinely believe that could be helpful to some of them, because it's all you know, and it's helped other strangers (human trafficking victims she helped in the black pit before) so why not other kids her age? You're 15 and all you can think about is helping others. And you start thinking about your religion, and reading books, and asking questions and you come to the conclusion that maybe your God and His Father aren't actually all that great. Maybe the church you're in has done some really bad things that you can't possibly make up for. Maybe that church is still doing bad things. And then you find out your family is actually in a cult for that God, not just part of the normal church, and you suddenly have to undo all the cult shit in your brain you were raised with, while that cult stuff you know about is actually useful to your friends, like having that knowledge is helpful for them! You're 15 and you stop going home. You have no real adult supervision or carer, just your other 15 year old friends.
Imagine you're 16, you're gay and figuring that out on top of navigating your first full romantic relationship and being the sole creator and cleric to a new God that you honestly find to be very two dimensional and empty. You're on a quest to find an evil being and stop them. You nearly die. Your friends nearly die. You're 16. You're 16 and feel something calling out to you, you know it's divine because you've felt that sort of pull before, but you've never felt one like this. You find memories and hints and pieces and you figure out that the evil being you have to stop, isn't evil, she's just hurting. She's hurt and She's a God. She's your God, and she's so happy to see you, and she has so many ideas, and so many hopes.
You're 17. You've spent your rest time (summer vacation) tearing across the world chasing down and defeating another evil thing that you and your friends accidentally released in the first place. Your God is with you, you have no time for Her. No time for anything but trying to survive and stay sane. You know She's disappointed in you, but you're one person -ONE PERSON- and you're 17. You missed your birthday. again. You've saved the world; again. You're so fucking tired -like always. You're Chosen, and alone, and have no idea what to do with your life, let alone your God. You aren't very good at school, but you go to every class. You're drowning as you try to rewrite your understanding of the world from what you grew up with, having no idea how to do anything without a book and godly hand to guide you. You only ever followed before, your new God is demanding you Lead. You don't know how. You're only 17. You see your horrible, abusive parents spitting abuse and racist rhetoric at your baby brother, who you haven't seen in two years, on the front steps to your school and for the first time ever you are filled with righteous fury. Your God answers your call, not knowing what you need but so eager to help, eager for your attention, she starts talking to you but you're busy -why can't she understand that you're fucking busy? trying to not die, trying to be safe, trying to keep your friends alive, trying to navigate a world that hates you, you're 17 and you're busy goddammit just wait!- and she snaps back at you and flees. The next time you see Her, maybe an hour later, She's got a creature with Her that nearly destroyed you and your friends last year sitting in her lap, so smug to see you again.
You're 17- no, 16- no, 15 years old and you're expected to build and carry the world on your shoulders, Chosen from birth, raised a lamb to follow a Shepard, not to be followed behind. You have no one and nothing and everyone expects everything and you can't back up, you can't pause because if you do someone dies and doesn't come back. You have to be a hero, a chosen, a saint. The steps behind you crumble to dust with each step you take forward and the new one is already cracking under your weight. There are only wrong choices. There's no hand reaching for you. God, you were taught, will save and guide you. God knows best. Why is your God looking to you, a mortal human, to be saved, raised and guided? You're a child.
You're just a child.
You just want to go home, wherever that is. You thought it was your God, but She's not exactly helping you out either, is She? She's just disappointed. Like everyone else. Like you.
You're 17. You think it would have been better to never do any of this. It would have been easier to stay, blind and naive. Sometimes you think you should have stayed in heaven. Sometimes you think about the God you killed by not being good enough for it. Sometimes you lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling and pretend you don't exist for awhile. Sometimes you work your body so hard you forget it's there and your mind shuts up and you exist without being you. Sometimes you wish you never asked any questions or read any books. You're 17, but sometimes you wish you were 15, with no idea yet.
You're 17. You wish you were good enough.
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Due to the fact that both Adaine and Gorgug have been depicted wearing the same item of clothing (jacket and hoodie, respectively) ever since they were first introduced to them, I like to think that those are just a permanent part of their outfits now. Going outside without them is the mental equivalent to going without pants.
A rogue student once tried to steal Adaine’s jacket as an extra credit project and she threatened to hit them with a Ray of Sickness so potent they’d be shitting blood for the next month, and sometimes when Gorgug’s out of things to rage about she’ll just take her hoodie off and hand it away and that’ll get the correct emotions going all on it’s own.
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I don't know if you've touched on this but do you have any analysis that might explain why so many people think Cass is the "favorite" child? I've been seeing so many tweets and tiktoks about it (along with people pointedly snubbing Tim and saying he's the least favorite for whatever reason) and I'm not sure if it s joke because aside from the whole 'she's the only girl' explanation I don't think Bruce has ever expressed any sort of personal interest in Cass. He respects her fighting abilities and staunch no-killing morals but when she was mind-controlled by Deathstroke he turned on her pretty quick (so did Dick I think?). Not even considering the possibility that she was acting out of character and I'm pretty sure Tim was the only one defending her and pointing out that something was off. It was just interesting to me to see so many people thinking they were significantly closer than I believe is supported by canon and I was just wondering if I have missed something or just completely misread their relationship because Bruce does not seem all that close to Cass for her to even be considered in the running for "favorite child".
Twitter was the Bad Place long before Muskrat bought it and the only TikTok opinions I've ever heard that had any basis in canon reality came from PandaRedd, and I don't even know if he's still posting, I haven't heard from him in a while. So I have no idea what they're saying over there and quite frankly I don't want to think about it.
That said, the idea that Cass is Bruce's "favorite" is fairly common around fandom. For the most part I do think her being the only girl and fandom's knee-jerk tendency to make women perfect angels with no flaws whom everyone loves and adores out of a misplaced belief that doing so is the height of feminism plays a big part in that, buuuut I am also very much of the opinion that even the most out-there fandom misinterpretations almost certainly have their seeds somewhere in canon.
So I'd say -- mostly just based on gut instinct -- that some of it probably also stems from the connection mentioned in my last reblog. The fact that Bruce and Cass are so in-sync when it comes to The Mission and that said Mission is so fundamentally important to both of them, means it's not unreasonable to see how and why he'd favor her. I've heard Cass's Batgirl described as "the embodiment of everything good Batman was supposed to be," and you can see how people would extrapolate out from that to her being especially important to Bruce as a result.
All that on the table though, I don't think it's true. I don't actually think Bruce has a "favorite," I think he genuine does value all of his proteges for their unique strengths, worries over their unique struggles and is proud of the unique people they've become without feeling the need to rank them against each other.
But if he did have one? There's no contest in my mind -- it has to be Dick. They have the longest and most complex relationship. They're partners, brothers, mentor and student, father and son, master and disciple, sage and scholar -- they're soulmates, in the truest sense of the word. Nightwing is better than Batman, better than anything Bruce ever dreamed Batman could be, capable of doing more good for more people. Dick is his pride and joy, the best thing Bruce has ever done, the solid, tangible proof that, if nothing else, he could make the world better for one scared little boy who'd lost his parents.
Cass would definitely be up there in the rankings (probably jostling for position alongside Duke and Tim) but there's really no contest for first place.
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🔥 shannon ? or diaz parents ?
i got another ask about the diaz parents so i'll answer for shannon.
shannon is...hm. i think the current fandom trend is to swing wildly in the other direction and absolve her of any and all wrongdoing, which i frankly think does her a major disservice as a character. she is by far the most complex guest character the show has ever had, which is really saying something considering she was there for only half a season. to take away the agency she exercised in making the decisions that she did just erases all of that. and frankly, i think fandom is subconsciously approaching this from the bias of "she's a woman, and women cannot ever be bad mothers" and not to say that shannon was a bad mother for her entire run, but there was a period of time where she certainly was! just as there was a period of time where eddie was a bad father! idk i just think there's a lot of nuance to be found here and its troubling how fandom just wants to strip it all away so everything can fit into neat little boxes.
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Hey y'all! Weird question time again, this time about push-ups!
So I have a weird assortment of health issues, which makes most exercise in general somewhere between difficult, impossible, and inadvisable, but back before I got sick I was learning to do handstands and I loved it. Long story short, my new meds are helping, but it's been more than a decade and I want to work myself into being able to do handstands again without my arms collapsing and landing on my head, so I've been trying to strengthen my arms a little at a time
So far, that's mostly been pushups*, but today I tried pushups with my feet elevated and that was significantly easier than normal pushups??? I'm pretty sure it's working different muscles, but it's also closer to a handstand, so have I been doing pushups wrong this whole time if my goal is handstands???
Also, are there other exercises you'd recommend if my goal is handstands? I want to really overprepare my arms in particular, because sometimes when my blood pressure is wonky my muscles are weaker than they should be, so I can't rely on them reacting correctly and I really don't want to fall on my head
*I also have a weird headstand trainer contraption thing that's basically like a shoulder rest so you can be upside down, like a headstand, without putting all your weight on your head? idk how to describe it but it helps practice the "being upside down" and "various torso muscles keeping you balanced while upside down" parts of handstands. I have no idea what it's called my mom was thrilled I wanted to do handstands and sent it to me
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i hate when people portray michael and/or patrick as some kind of master manipulator who was terrible to shaun and stormy. like, in the past, michael sometimes got portrayed with little autonomy, or as childish and overly innocent in a weird way. that in itself is an issue with the treatment of mentally ill characters (infantilization), but the solution isn't to argue that he's actually a monster who only wanted to hurt and mislead people. the same goes for patrick. i don't enjoy the "goofy flirty mass murderer" interpretation for very similar reasons, because in the canon patrick did indeed do some wild shit but i think it's a stretch to say it was out of malice, except maybe towards eric lol
obviously there will be different views of these characters and this isn't meant to be gatekeep-y or anything, i'm just concerned with how certain portrayals can quickly slide into negative biases towards mental illness. i think if you're going on this route you might want to ask yourself why, and consider how it could make the mentally ill people within the fandom feel when they see their own symptoms portrayed by their peers as synonymous with being dishonest or manipulative
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Hey guys does anyone have context for what Con said about Izzy yesterday(?) I'm only seeing it through the posts that are interpreting it negatively and so far I haven't seen the actual transcript. Something about soulmates but also something about abuse apologism which I am taking with a HUGE grain of salt considering the sources but I'm curious.
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