#symbolic of her grief

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Alas, this beautiful dream could not last.

[bluestation]

i found you in the future

[im-smart-i-swear]

coming back home.

@barrenclan

[cry-ptidd]

” Am I not right to weep? O my children, cursed children of a hateful mother - ”

[flickeringflame216]

I did one for each book, but there are lots more so maybe I'll make a part 2! C.S. Lewis never fails to make me hungry.

[cirrus-draws]

nearl utena paletteswap. is this anything

......wait, hold on...

[casscainmainly]

Just asking for fun cuz I think you being really interesting points abt so many of the bats to the table: who do you think should be Batman if 1) Bruce Died, 2) Bruce voluntarily steps down (old age / debilitating injury) or any other scenarios you would like to explore.

It's an age old question, it's fun to see who thinks what and what thoughts they bring to the table :)

Such a great question!! Though honestly I'm not sure I have any original or good thoughts haha. For me the Batman successor should be one of two people: Cassandra Cain (I am a Cass blog) or Dick Grayson.

For Cass the reason is obvious. So many people have written about how Batman is the culmination of her arc about agency and controlling her destiny - for a girl who was raised to be nothing, to be a tool for other people, becoming the centre of the narrative is an incredibly poignant and wonderful conclusion. She wants to be Batman, she has the ability to be Batman, she believes in Batman; she is as clear a successor as you could get.

Dick is more debatable. His feelings on being Batman have always been tangled up in his frustrations with Bruce, in a way Cass (who is more able, albeit imperfectly, to separate the man from the symbol) doesn't deal with. So I think there's some panels of him saying he doesn't want to be Batman, doesn't like doing it, etc.

However, in my mind he does like being Batman, he just doesn't like being Bruce's version of Batman. He comes to this conclusion in Gates of Gotham, and the back parts of Batman and Robin (2009) is basically him having fun once Bruce is alive. It was Bruce's death that made things difficult, not the mantle itself. Where Cass can be Batman now, Dick can elevate the mantle; and it's no secret that Bruce himself views Dick as his clear successor.

I honestly think both should wield the mantle. I love the idea of Cass being Gotham's Batman while Dick is the Justice League/wider world's Batman. This plays to their strengths, and solidifies their arcs: Cass finds a permanent home and a place she loves that loves her back, and Dick gets to travel again, using his leadership and interpersonal skills to save people.

In the case of Bruce's retirement, this would be the perfect set-up. For his death, though, I think it would be complicated by both Dick and Cass' grief. Look at the Batman Reborn era: the Dick and Cass parallels were actually insane. They were both told not to wield the Bat mantle - Dick by Bruce's message, and Cass by Bruce asking her to give Batgirl to Steph. This hurt them immensely, but they tried to follow Bruce's orders. The only difference was that Tim (and Jason) forced Dick's hand into disobeying Bruce, while Cass was already gone.

In an ideal world, Tim should've been asking them both to take up the mantle. His meeting with Cass in HK should've kickstarted her journey home, and she would've arrived back for angsty talks with Dick about who the Bat symbol belongs to or something. This basically happens in Gates of Gotham: Cass' conversation with Dick in the car is about not letting Gotham (and, I would argue, Bruce) dictate who they can or cannot be. They both want the mantle, and this was an acknowledgment that they both deserved it, too.

So, long story short, Cass and Dick are my picks for Batman successor. Them simultaneously being Batman would be so fun too, given their complicated relationship. They would be keeping score of who's the better Bat, and Cass would probably lob Dick out a window again, but they'd also have a shared understanding and deep compassion for each other's circumstances and desires. Curious to hear other people's thoughts!

(Also Duke Thomas should be their Robin but that's a post for another day).

[sealrock]

the major arcana, shuffled: 9/??

THE HANGED MAN; ⤉ martyrdom, lack of direction, perspective, contemplation ⤈ stagnation, impulsiveness, needless sacrifice, detachment 

[shroudkeeper]

She is your student and you are the master. Though that relationship is sacred and meant to be respected, it is time to transition from that and see her as your betrothed. You and I both know that I do not expect you to suddenly fall in love with her Hayate, for that shift in dynamic will take time, but time is what this relationship between you two will grant her. To extend her life is a boon that I will gift her.

She has never known love, and for someone like her, who has seen her share of demise and deaths, who manipulates the world around her, it is best to keep her away from others who would utilize her for their own purposes.

Even merchants can not be trustworthy, he has proven that. I indulged her whimsy because I am a sentimental man, I took on the contract because she asked this of me. However..

..if he were to fall, to be killed because she could not protect him, because he could not protect himself, it would break her heart and cause her spirit to wilt.

I refuse to lose another daughter to grief.

Treat her delicately, like a work of art. You already harbor care for her in your heart, show it to her more than before. Keep her company while he is overseas; I give you permission to take to the markets, to the theaters for her favorite plays, continue to train her, keep her distracted. Allow the public to see you both together.

Let her forget him, her heart will mend, for time and your company will ease the aches that she will endure.

I will deal with her ire, and perhaps my guilt will eat away at me. But I will not suffer her to experience such loss..

[wikipedie]

grief is like a really ugly couch

I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room—but eventually, you learn to live with it. ― Jodi Picoult, Leaving Time

[riverside-lavender]

i could write an essay on how the character’s clothes in one piece show their emotional journey. i think about it so much.

[mad-hunts]

' i thought about you all the time, even though i've lived longer now without you than with you. even though i can't remember your laugh or the way you held my hand. these days, you're no longer a face to me. just a blurry picture that i carry in the pocket of my heart. i remember everything and nothing at all. i don't remember your voice. i don't remember the last time we spoke or what your favorite song was. i don't even know if you knew mine. but, i remember what you taught me very well. that there is never enough time, and i will always wish i spent more of mine with you. that every year i grow older... more people become memories, even the ones that still speak. i forget their voice, too. and i remember you taught me very well that no one can live without grief they carry in the pocket of their heart. you taught me that grief lives in the heart because it is just the price of having one. and now? i have to miss you until i am a memory in someone else's. '

[flowercrowngods]

and today in sometimes i write shit that fucks me up for weeks: time travel au steve & trees

Steve gets up. Goes into his room — not his room at all, it’s not his home, it’s not his — knowing Hopper won’t follow him, locks the door knowing El will unlock it if she needs him, and crawls under the blanket. He doesn’t cry, just curls up and lies there in numb misery of feeling too much, thinking too much, knowing too much, and not having the right words to express anything.

The air under the blanket gets too warm to really be comfortable, but he doesn’t want to move. He’s turned into a tree again, as El would put it. Another pang of guilt and misery runs through him, because he doesn’t want to be fucked up like that, fucked up enough for a child to call him a tree because he loses his reality a lot; but then the thought of being a tree almost feels so relieving it makes him want to cry.

Because trees don’t think about their friends dying. Killed. Murdered. By forces greater than this world’s imagination. Trees don’t watch the blood seeping from them over and over again until they lose their minds and go into shock that this world doesn’t support, instead tugging him back and forth until all there is is nothingness, because there is no time to think or feel or process, and once there is time, there is too much to even start. And no one to talk to about it. No one to listen.

If he could turn into a tree and never have a single thought again, he would without hesitation.

But he can’t, so he thinks, and the thinks until he falls asleep and the thoughts turn into memories morphed with fears until it’s Steve who kills them. Steve who fails. And Steve who does it over and over again. In the Upside Down, in Eddie’s trailer, at school, in Mike’s basement.

It’s Steve. Like it was Billy.

[…]

Walking on legs that haven’t quite accommodated to being upright yet, stiff and heavy in the dark of night, Steve makes his way through the forest, tumbling and stumbling, but never enough to make him stop. He’s heaving breaths now, willing the cold air into his lungs to stop everything from feeling so wrong, to break through the haze and the fog and the cotton, to pierce his insides with little pinpricks of ice as December is fast approaching. It only serves to make him more dizzy, his head spinning, glowing spots of black and white appearing in his field of vision until he leans against a tree, catching his breath and holding it.

Holding onto it with whimpers and wheezes and pathetic little groans that make him want to scream. He punches the tree, his hand numb with pain upon impact, his knuckles stiff and scraped up; bloody, even in the pitch black darkness.

Bloody. His hands are always bloody. It stains them, has seeped into his skin, like a reverse tattoo that only he can see. This, though… This is real. It’s his blood.

And so he punches again. And again, until his breath has evened out, and the pain has moved from his arm and his side over to his hand. Over to something real.

He flexes his fingers and watches them, can barely make out their shape, and focuses on the pull of his skin, the scrapes making it feel too tight — but in a real way. In a way that… he’s not going crazy. It’s real. It’s all real. And it’s burning, sizzling along with all of that anger, the grief, the confusion, the complete and utter fucking lostness. The loneliness.

Steve punches the tree one more time, then turns around to put more distance between him and familiar walls and stale air and worried glances so heavy they slowly scrape away the scar tissue growing over all those rawest of feelings.

He walks and walks without direction or destination, simply placing one foot in front of the other as his racing heart calms down and he is overcome with an absolute, all-consuming kind of exhaustion that makes him sway the very second he stops. His eyes are getting heavy, like his body is slowly coming to the realisation that his beside clock said 3:38 a.m. and that he hasn’t slept through the night for some days now, or maybe weeks, always awoken by nightmares — on days that he even dared to fall asleep.

No one should have to feel this kind of exhaustion, Steve thinks. Even after the Russians, after torture and fighting and more torture, followed by running and more running and almost dying in a car crash and then in a fire… Even after all that, he wasn’t as exhausted as he feels right now.

Probably because back then, he had Robin. Robin who would hold his hand, Robin who would share a glance with him and resuscitate everything that died inside of him with just one brave little smile.

God, she was so brave.

Steve leans against a tree, closing his eyes for just one second as he pictures Robin — alive and smiling and determined. Robin, in the passenger seat of his car at ass o’clock in the morning, grumpy and tired, leaning in to give him a hug hello and a hug goodbye. Robin, who would roll her eyes at his antics, his insecurities and his worries — Robin, who would explain hours later, her hand in his, that he had no reason to doubt or worry. That he was fine. That he was perfect. That everything else would slot into place soon and be perfect for him, too. Payback, she’d called it.

Payback, he thinks now as he heaves another breath, willing it through his constricted throat, and just barely keeping himself from screaming. Payback, because he failed. Payback, because he watched her die and nothing, nothing good will ever come out of that.

As much as he will try to save her, she will always have died. As much as he can try to keep her safe this time around, he will always have failed her.

That’s nothing he can take back. Ever. Nothing he can fix. Nothing he can make un-happen.

It’s the cruellest constant.

One that won’t leave him alone. One that won’t let him sleep at night, one that won’t leave his head even for a minute, flooding his consciousness with memories of blood and failure, weighing down his conscience until he can’t fucking breathe, and—

A sob escapes his throat even as he stumbles forward, continuing on his nonexistent path that feels a lot like running, fleeing from this new life, as though he could magically make his way back to the old one. Because they have died. They’re dead. He watched them. This new world won’t fix that. Won’t fix him. And he doesn’t deserve fixing anyway.

So he runs.

[stuffyflowers]

undertale yellow fans when a character makes a morally grey/imperfect decision or has a reasonable outburst based on their current emotional state

[skin-slave]

Do you think any of the families would've declared the kids legally dead? Besides Daniel. The ones that love the kids.

After a yr they could ask to have it made official. I'm sure the courts would agree that the chance of survival is so low that it's functionally nonexistent. But they were already halfway there. I'm sure they would've made it.

I'm just thinking about how weird it would be to get home and find out they'd had your funeral.

[llamaalpacca]

you have flown too close to the sun.