#Parent Tools

[blumoonfiction-blog]

Writing Wizard: A Fun Way to Learn Letter Tracing

Writing Wizard: A Fun Way to Learn Letter Tracing Writing Wizard is an interactive educational app designed to help children learn how to trace letters, numbers, and words while developing their writing and fine motor skills. This app is particularly effective for early learners and children who are just beginning their journey with writing. Recommended Reading and Writing Ages: Ages 3–6:…

[nuvemzinhacorderosa]

Daphne "helping" her brother with his new crush.

[kindgreenape]

i think kim is just as complex of a character as harry, but i think a good amount of players (not all, but a chunk) choose to unflinchingly characterize him as “the Good Cop” and leave it at that.

[aroacewxs]

how old is rui in this card actually. who's giving the baby a power drill and pliers

do you think papashiro sat his son down and taught him how to use a power drill at the ripe age of 5 that's why it comes with his bright toybox and he can use it with no parental supervision

[physalian]

The Hero with Dead Parents is not Cliché, it’s Necessary

The staggering number of protagonists in sci-fi and fantasy with dead parents grows every single year. Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker (before the retcon in ESB), almost every Disney Prince and Princess, the Baudelaire children. Beyond the realm of fantasy into action, thriller, romance, mystery, slice-of-life, and bildungsromans.

Dead parents, or parent, is the curse of being the hero of the story and for a very good reason:

Parents are inconvenient as f*ck.

Unless the mom and/or dad is the villain of the story or the entire story is about the relationship with the parent/parents, the “dead parent” trope serves many purposes and while it may be “cliché” that doesn’t mean this trope is bad or, in my opinion, overused.

It’s one less liability the hero has to worry about protecting

It’s one less obstacle in the hero’s path to their adventure

It’s one (or two) less characters to find excuses to stay relevant in the story

It’s a juicy backstory a lot of people can relate to

Trauma. Is. Compelling.

It’s an excellent motivation

And their murder is an excellent inciting incident

Living parents and guardians get killed off both for internal plot reasons, and meta writing reasons: Living parents are a pain in the ass to keep up with. You’re stuck with a character your hero should still keep caring about, keep thinking about, keep acting in relation to how their actions will be seen and judged by that parent. That parent becomes an obvious liability by any villain who notices or cares.

Living parents can of course be done well, unless they’re the villain, but they just kind of sit there on the fringes of the plot, waiting around to be relevant again and they kind of come in four flavors:

There when the plot demands for pie and forehead kisses (Sally from Percy Jackson)

A suffocating but well-meaning obstacle in between the character and their independence trying to do right (Abby from The 100, Katniss’ mom from Hunger Games, Spirit from Soul Eater)

A mentor figure (Valka from HTTYD 2, Hakoda from ATLA)

The only rock this character has left (Ping from Kung Fu Panda)

*Notice how many of my examples lost their partners shortly before or during the plot, thus still giving the hero the “dead parent” label.

Most of these are self-explanatory so I’ll say this:  I think this trope gets exhausting when the parents are written out without enough emotional impact on the hero. These are their parents and a lot of the time, the emotional toll of losing them isn’t there, like just slapping a “dead parents” sticker is all you need to justify a character’s tragic backstory and any behavioral issues they might have.

Like, yes, the hero has dead parents, but you still have to tell me what that means to them beyond obligate angst and sadness. When the “dead parents” trope reads as very by-the-numbers, usually the rest of the story is, too.

How present the parents were in the character’s life should be proportional to the death’s impact on the narrative (as with any character you kill off). If they were virtually nonexistent? No need to waste a ton of time. If they didn’t matter to the character before, they don’t need to matter now unless the plot revolves around some knowledge or secret their parent never shared.

Sometimes, the hero’s dead parents are a non issue. Frodo being raised by Bilbo doesn’t impact his character at all. It’s a detail given and tossed away. On the other hand, sometimes the entire centerpiece of the work is revenge/justice/catharsis surrounding the parent’s death—Edward and Alphonse Elric’s entire story is defined by the consequences of trying to bring their mother back from the dead.

As someone who kept one of my protagonist’s parents alive and didn’t make them villains just to spite the trope, I have all the more respect for this enduring legacy of fiction. You can of course keep the parents alive, but I don't think it's seen as lazy or cheating or taking a shortcut just killing them off, so long as you remember that your hero is human and should react to losing them like a real person.

[dr-bloxyy]

Uhh, kids with bad moms, HORRIBLE fathers but guess who survives! Physically, I mean.

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

im gonna cry again beacuase dapper. was so obviously Affected by bad forgetting him and dying and everything but just. always focused on finding him and keeping him safe and playign with him instead of talking through hsi own feelings. and like yea dapper has pomme. he can talk to her. but she's upset by this, too. all of the other eggs can talk to their parents. empanada did. pomme talked to bad. even richas talked to bad. but dapper didn't. bad worked so hard to collect as many neighbours as he could to build dapper a support system, but. bad has always been helping other people. dapper was along with him. bad was always there for dapper so dapper didn't NEED to build up that same support with the other islanders that the eggs managed to build up with his dad and their other non-parent caretakers. dapper has islanders he's friends with, like etoiles, and he claimed baghera as his mom, but id be fucking shocked if he felt like he could rely on them for this. and why would he. it's his own mess. his own research. his dad. he's not the one who needs to be taken care of here. its the fucking. the responsibility of caretaking and the way that putting other people before yourself to the point of hurting yourself is something that BAD taught him. the self sufficiency. soldiering on through the pain. is there really a difference between a thousand totems and a thousand soul vulture scars. the apathy towards his own wellbeing. even when bad was doing well, he praised dapper for helping people.

its just. its fucking. the sunshine song. just like when the eggs went missing, the only way dapper is going to hear that fucking song is when he plays the recording. but this time bad won't be singing it back. he'll be right there, and he won't remember the lyrics.

[furiousgoldfish]

If you've found yourself in that childhood hell with a narcissistic parent, where every year you gain you get treated worse, and the older you get, the more unworthy and unlovable you are, this is why it's going on.

Narcissists are unwilling to be parents, but they're ready to take advantage of every possible benefit they think parenthood has. The perceived benefit is how the world sees them, someone feeling sympathetic or engaged with them, getting popularity based on your kid's talents, abilities and successes, people having compassion for their 'parenthood struggles', and of course, the idea of unconditional love. For them, not for the kid. They also then go on and take extra stuff, like having their personal emotional caretaker, or a target for all of their anger, someone to feel superior to, someone they can violate, insult, touch, beat, and blend with, without any kind of consequences from the outside world. There's very few scenarios that would allow them such power over another person, and parenthood happens to be one of them.

So, why do they prefer small toddlers rather than grown-up children? Because toddlers gain them attention. They can go with a toddler in public, and have people gush and admire the cuteness. They can sometimes teach toddlers to do little dances or sing for the audience. They can do pretty much anything to small children, and children won't complain or understand what is going on. They can neglect their toddlers and nobody will know. They can punish small children for crying. They can convince small children that they exist only for to make the narcissist's life easier.

Once children start developing boundaries, start saying no, and no longer gather the attention of the crowd, that is where narcissists are no longer getting as many benefits from parenthood and start emotionally abandoning the child, and shaming the child for 'growing up' and 'not being as easy to control and manipulate'. And this is not how normally things work, you don't stop loving your kid when they're growing up, you don't value them according to how much attention you can get using them. Sometimes, if a kid has a special talent and is able to get them attention via child contests or tournaments, this kid will not be obviously immediately abandoned. But it will be clear to this child that the 'love' is completely dependent on how well they do and how far they succeed. The second they stop, they know that the parental love will be withdrawn and they'll be rendered a failure.

Narcissists will ask you to go not just out of your comfort zone in order to give them what they want, they will ask the downright impossible, and when you inevitably can't give it to them, you will be discarded, and possibly punished. You will degraded from 'special' and 'important because you can do this one thing for your parent', to nothing but a target for rage, forced to feel like you deserve it because you couldn't do what no child can - make a narcissist act like a normal parent. They convince children that they would be loving and thoughtful parents, if only the child was not so x, and y, and z, and the list is endless. Endless excuses not to love their child, because withdrawing that love will make the child absolutely desperate in their attempt to please the parent, and be good enough to deserve love.

This is not what would normally happen to a child. We're meant to be celebrated for growth. Our progress into adulthood should be about us, about what we can do now, how much new experiences and excitement it brings to have a bigger body, how much more capable and safer we are, what new skills we can develop, new games we can play, better connections and understanding with others we can now achieve. It's not supposed to be about whether we are of a benefit to someone, our growth is about us becoming a happy adult! Appropriating this entire process and reducing it to 'grovel endless to deserve love, and feel guilty for growing because you're of less use now' is absolute torture to a child, who doesn't understand that it's not meant to be this way, that they were never supposed to be a tool to use.

As we mature with the narcissist continually building this narrative of us not being good enough to deserve love, we end up having no other narrative, and believe that we're fundamentally, intrinsically lacking in something, and this makes us unlovable. It has nothing to do with the truth, and everything to do with a continuous lie that someone made up about us when we were still small, that we exist as a tool and a resource, and every hint of free will and desire and personal goals and boundaries is us failing to live up to that use. We were never meant to be exist for them, there was no achievable goal, us even trying to 'deserve their love' was nothing but a waste of our time and energy. We're not unlovable. We just don't a parent. We had someone leeching off of us, taking instead of giving, convincing us we don't deserve attention, care or resources, unlike them, who deserve to take it all.

For any normal parent, everything about you would have been good enough, you would have been a source of joy and celebration without ever even trying to deserve it. Nobody has to deserve parental love, it's either given by default, or there is nobody willing to be a parent to you. Being unwilling to parent you, they have no right to expect anything from you. You did not break the parent-child bond, because there never was such a thing in the first place, they betrayed you from the start.

[sticks-and-souls]

Anakin & Letting Go

I always found it to be a little skeptical that Anakin could become a force ghost after it took Yoda, Qui Gon, and Obi-Wan learning and training how to do it, and I always thought “really? Anakin? Finding that level of peace and letting go?” But after this episode, seeing the care and lesson that he imparts upon Ahsoka that he learned so painfully, I understand it from him so much better. Vader was so stuck in his complete self-hatred that he allowed nobody who had known him before as Anakin to reach him (most notably Obi-Wan and Ahsoka) because of the overwhelming extent of his shame. It took his son, who had never known him and yet who still stood before him and believed in him, loved him, sacrificed himself for him, to call Anakin back from the depths of Vader. And this Anakin, let everything go to save his son and to allow his son to save him.

And it felt so impactful to get to see this mature post-Vader Anakin reaching out to Ahsoka to teach her this very hard-earned lesson that he took the very hard road to get. Because she has Vader in her. She is everything Anakin taught her, and we saw the behaviors that led Anakin to becoming Vader—the fear of losing his most cherished relationships—reaching out of Anakin very early in the clone wars (and before) and the two of them are both very aware that he imparted those lessons on her. And then we've seen across this season—and overtly in her clone wars flashbacks—that she believes she is inextricable from these traits.

I’ve always loved Anakin as a fictional character, getting to see his earnestness, his flawedness, and his intensity (to borrow Huyang’s very accurate adjective), but this episode brought a level of humanity to him that has moved me so deeply. Life is HARD, loss gets forced on all of us no matter what, and the lessons that we learn through mistakes that we made can be extremely painful because acknowledging and taking responsibility for hurting people is actually really painful for humans (not owning up to our actions is the emotionally easier choice and George Lucas has stated time and again that the Dark Side is about taking the short-term easier choices). But it ultimately means that learning from your mistakes is an actual choice you have to MAKE. And this is the core of Anakin’s lesson. He is teaching Ahsoka that she has to choose which lessons he has taught her that she will live by, but more than that, that she is empowered to be able to choose. Yes, she has everything that he taught her—the good and the bad—but she is not condemned to live out all of the lessons. 

And the beauty of it isn't just the lesson, but that Anakin gets to be the one to teach it to her. The betrayal that she experienced in discovering his fall, the taintedness that she has been portraying that she feels about herself, gets specifically addressed because if he figured it out, then she definitely can too. If he is more than just Vader, then she is too. And THAT is what the "Is that what this is about?" line is actually about. It's so so important that we get to see pre-Vader, Vader, and post-Vader across her vision because the point is that yes, Vader is a part of him, and that brilliant shot of the two of them glaring Sith eyes across the blade at each other did it's job in conveying that Ahsoka is capable of that darkness too, but you are not only the darkness. You get to choose. ("You're more than [death and destruction] because I'm more than that"). And more to the point, you have to choose. Because if you don't specifically choose to fight the dark, then you're ultimately choosing to fall into it. "Fight or die."

So for Anakin to be able to reach out to her one more time, to be able to love her the way he, as Vader, had refused to the last time when they met on Malachor, and to open with “you’re never too old to learn”, because god if he didn’t learn that the hard way too. And to be able to pass on to Ahsoka how to actually let go because he himself had only just finally been able to learn it as well, feels so powerful and poignant.

And that look of pride and wistful sadness that he gives her at the end? That both she and Luke were able to learn so quickly what took him so long? And that maybe, he may have helped save her from the worst traits that he imbued upon her? That’s him having let go of his own shame. He feels grief, he feels guilt—we can see it on his face—but what has happened has happened and he has accepted that, and finally learned that letting go doesn't mean it didn't happen, it means it doesn't have to define your actions going forward.

And finally, it’s also him letting go of ahsoka. By teaching her that she will choose her destiny, he has to accept that he cannot control it either. And he has. “There’s hope for you yet.” 

So yeah, Anakin learned to let go, and getting to see him here, in this headspace of acceptance and peace, practicing and understanding what it means to be a Jedi, was so unexpectedly cathartic and revelatory for me as viewer. 

[thecatinthepurplepants]

just scrolling looking at what the crunchyroll algorithm would spit out at me tonight when I came across this category and uh

... the best huh? Aaare you sure???

Are you really, really sure about that crunchyroll???

[dawnsies]

this is how i imagine giorno being in part 3 would go tbh

bonus:

[thesummerstorms]

The other thing that I think I would want in an Annabeth Wayne AU that I don't think I've seen so far is Bruce being absolutely pissed at Athena.

It was bad enough with Talia and Damian, but Athena is a literal god of wisdom who should know better AND he doesn't even have the "culpability" of having slept with her.

She one hundred percent saw Batman, tactician of the Justice League, was drawn in by her aspect of the Goddess of Strategy, and proceeded to create a child without his consent, a daughter who she didn't even raise before the child became a weapon.

And like whatever else, however fucked up Damian was by his own training to become a child-weapon, at least Talia loved Damian.

Whereas Athena loves Annabeth in the way a Goddess loves, not the way a Person loves, and I don't think Bruce, whose entire identity is so fixated on his relationship with his own parents, would recognize that as love at all.

And, like, Talia put Damian through a lot of shit. I think Bruce would be angry there too. But when push came to shove, she at least at some point brought him to Bruce because she thought it was in her son's best interests.

Athena actively lead Annabeth away from Bruce and into the streets at the age of seven, which Bruce would never see as in her best interest, whatever Athena's godly perspective is, however badly he reacted after Jason's death, even though he couldn't see (and dismissed the idea of) the spiders and the monsters. She was seven. In the streets of Gotham.

Athena let Annabeth fight a major role in two wars back to back without being there to train her or protect her or love her or even advise her. Athena advocated for the cold blooded murder of the other children who had actually tried to keep his daughter safe. Athena sent Annabeth against Arachne when Athena's children have universally died on that quest for a thousand years.

Athena let Bruce think he had gotten Annabeth killed because of his own inability to handle his grief. Let him think his daughter was dead or worse for years. Would have let him keep thinking that if the Fates didn't have other plans.

And just, in true fashion for all of my ideas on a PJO x DC crossover, everyone really comes out more traumatized than before. This includes Bruce.

Because now he wasn't just used unknowingly for a child just once, but twice. And in both cases he's going to have to live forever with the guilt of not having been able to protect his kids from what their other parent wanted to make of them

(On top of all the ways he has directly failed them and made any complexes worse, of course )

[vaguely-concerned]

something so deeply garak core about lucanis' 'surviving at this point not so much because I actually want to live (lmao imagine!) but because I refuse to let any of you fuckers get a W out of me' deal

(with a side dish of the sisko 'but you exist here' agony. just for spice)

[screamting]

Part of what makes Rpatt's Batman so compelling to me is the same reason I fell head first into batfleck as soon as he woke up from that nightmare and downed his xanax with bordeaux.

Martha is institutionalized for an unnamed mental illness that-- listen-- could very well have just been grief or disobedience.

But it may not have been. and it could be something passed down. Something Bruce may have inherited, along with the money, and the company, and Carmine Falcone. Legacy he doesn't want to have but you don't get to choose what family you're born in or what happens to them when you're a kid and someone threatens them.

And there's a moment right after the reveal of Martha being institutionalized that-- Riddler swerves directly to Thomas having the reporter murdered-- but there's a lingering sort of feeling that Bruce is much like Martha. She barely gets mentioned in the murder allegedly done in her name. She and Bruce are both just there, learning what Thomas would do for them without the ability to offer input or refute it. Neither of them speak out against it, Martha because she's been dead for years and Bruce because what can he even say?

If his family saw him now, would they institutionalized him? Crazy, violent Batman, running around at night with no friends and strange drugs and neglecting everything around him that isn't part of the mission?

Is he just another crazy, rich orphan like his mother?

...

I could make this a separate post for dramatic effect but to ensure it's all in one place and not mistaken for 'owo spooky mental illness' :

I like Bruce who becomes meaner and more critical because he doesn't think he can trust his own memories. I like a Bruce who maybe has a family history of schizophrenia, who struggles with whether things are grounded in reality or not. If he seems more sympathetic about Harvey Two Face because he spent years feeling like a stranger in his own skin and not knowing how to rip the disguise off without ruining everything. If he goes to seemingly ridiculous extremes because he doesn't know and what if he's wrong, or worse, what if he's right and neglected it even though he knew it was coming. 'if you stay in the dream forever, you could be happy--' but he has had years of practice, waking up the next day to an unhappy, difficult world. If he knows there is something wrong with him, but there isn't any fixing that. There is a place in his brain where the wires cross. It doesn't matter if it's been there from birth or was implanted when his parents died. Unless you can remake him a different person, it's staying.

He has to live with himself.

He has to figure out how to do what he wants to do, despite it.

[naniguini]

A stimboard inspired by Door from Hunter: the parenting

Credits: ⚠️: Gif 1 has a cartoon butt

1 / 2 / 3 4 /🚪/ 5 6 / 7 / 8

[harrowedsoup]

Light hearted modern AU where Gideon gets raised by Wake and Pyrrha.

Gideon is trained by the both of them in different fighting styles and they work out as a family. She isn’t aware of how good she is compared to others because her parents still put her on the ground regularly.

She’s super embarrassed about them sometimes. Wake will pick fights with anyone ever while Pyrrha’s default setting is flirting with everyone that comes into their path. It doesn’t help that her parents are milfs- she was in more than one fight over boys making gross comments.

The fact that Gideon has literally no game is a source of great controversy with Wake. She switches between thinking that it’s hilarious and just plain sad. Pyrrha tries to be helpful but her advice isn’t helpful. Gideon would love less comments all round.

Pyrrha likes Harrow immediately because she always liked people who were a little poky. Wake took longer and it was only after she saw Harrow chew someone out so much they almost cried.