#Sometimes hard conversations are needed

[thatonebirdwrites]

It's taken me far too long to write this. I just have not felt well, and am a little burnt out. I have this tale sketched out, so just need to get it all written and edited.

My health just defeating me this past two months. It always does at this time of year. So updates will now be either weekly or biweekly until my health improves.

EXCERPT:

Speaking about her feelings never came easy. Asami had tried hard to be better about it before Zaheer. Korra’s feelings tended to roll off her in a tidal wave, which made it easier for Asami to assess the situation. Sometimes Korra didn’t seem aware of her emotions, but with the right questions, Asami found a way to lead her there.

But when it came to her own emotions? Asami struggled to articulate them. Her trust in people had always been fragile. Korra had managed to work her way past all of Asami’s carefully constructed walls, blown up her compartmentalizing, and helped her see that sharing was a strength not a weakness.

Intellectually she knew all this.

Yet here she sat in the chair at Korra’s desk in her room. Korra had just laid down to rest, her pain had flared up in the ride back from another healing session with Katara. The look of despair and guilt that kept filtering into Korra’s expressions left Asami aching with a desire to comfort.

But the time away, her trying so hard to live up to the Mirror that the Lion Turtle had called her, that had fractured something between them. Part of it was her own stupidity and paranoia about sharing details over radio.

But part of it was the depth of despair Korra radiated from being unable to be the Avatar. 

That Asami didn’t know how to address. She wasn’t a bender. The closest she’d come to understanding the loss of bending was the spirit affliction, which had been some of the worst pain she’d ever had. Was that what Korra dealt with every day since the poisoning?

Thinking about all of this wasn’t helping her actually talk to Korra. That required words spoken out loud. 

“Remember when I taught you to fly an airship?” Asami asked, surprising herself. She picked up her tools and fiddled with the model plane she was building. Turning it over, she adjusted its screws and fitted its landing wheels into the small notches on the underbelly. The plane reminded her of that memory, and maybe trying a low states question could help her jumpstart this. “How worried you were at first?”

“Yeah, and I wasn’t worried!” Korra huffed when Asami raised an eyebrow at that. “Okay, fine, maybe I was a little, but I didn’t want to crash it.” 

“I wouldn’t let you.” She flicked her finger against the small wheel and watched it turn. “I had your back.”

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

I have to quickly explain myself before I forget what I’m about to say. It’s especially hard when you have epilepsy and the bad memory that comes with it…

Life in an Autism World

[vaguely-concerned]

as I am replaying origins -- a game which, to be clear, I love very VERY much -- I can't help but feel that people do don the rose coloured glasses on it a bit specifically when it comes to the range of dialogue options you're actually given to work with at any given time (something I've seen my fair share of silent vs. voiced protagonist discourse about over the years *smokes tired cigarette in survivor of a decade of DA tumblr*). like... there are a couple of situations where you're given a decent range of responses, but the vast majority of the time you have about three dialogue options, and often they're presented sort of like 'polite/bland/unprovoked near-cartoonish levels of assholery'. arranged like, y'know:

I am [BLANK]. It's an honor to make your acquaintance.

You can call me [BLANK].

How dare you speak to me. Fuck you and your family back five generations. I'm going to rob your mother's grave before your eyes.

(sometimes if you're real lucky you get the secret extra 'Something else/I'm bald/but I'm a dwarf!' option)

I'm not at all saying it's worse in that aspect than the other games (Dalish Inquisitor 'Who's Mythal' just entered the chat), but I do think it's worth considering that this might be a bit of a franchise original sin that has been present since the beginning, as indeed it is in most rpgs because making rpgs is real hard, and you notice it more with the dialogue wheel format than when the responses and questions you can ask are all laid out in a list together

[autisticlee]

sometimes people who struggle like to make jokes or find positives about their condition that causes them to struggle so they can escape the constant negative and struggle. sometimes autistic people will say things like "the 'tism" or use the "autism creature" or say their autism helped them have a *positive trait* to feel better about their struggles. because living your life only focusing on the struggles and negatives is depressing and makes it hard to want to live, even if those struggle take up 100% of your life and you can't actually escape them. sometimes any little seemingly positive thing can help a lot.

but there's so many other autistic people that hate when we do that and call it "reducing autism to a cute trendy thing" and say it takes away from *their* struggles and is bad and shouldn't be used. maybe *you* want to only focus on your struggles, but some people can't live in constant negative and need some positive or to find ways to make their condition more positive so they can feel better about living with their struggles. life is hard. I take anything I can get.

I cant get jobs. I can't make and keep friends. I can't get help and support for doing "normal" things so sometimes I go weeks without being able to shower and without eating more than a bowl of cereal a day. most times can't even do things I like. struggle to communicate. have meltdowns. i'll never be able to live independently. I struggle a lot. but instead of sitting here always depressed and having no motivation to live, i'd rather try to joke about "my 'tism is acting up again" when i'm struggling (just an example. don't think I ever actually used the 'tism thing but i saw others use it) or say "i'm just being a creature" when I need to stay in my dark room because everything is too much and I personally find it cute to be a little creature meant in a positive way. i'm not actually downplaying mine or anyone else's struggles. I still acknowledge them and that silly jokes dont make them go away. i'm not trying to be trendy. i'm not doing any of the things people say we do by making silly little jokes. i'm using the silly little jokes to convince myself life can be a little more than pointless, painful garbage all the time.

(continue in tags)

[moonchild-in-blue]

Oh.

[silusvesuius]

g*lmar rly has to be the best skajrim character on the real like even if you don't like him he just is . literally The best one i think......... on dat note i also imagine that he and ulfr*c despite being fairydust BFFs for lyfe genuinely have the worst communication skills ever seen

[diceig]

they are first degree cousins

[roobylavender]

im really sorry if this question ends up being repetitive: but, if not for bruce’s over reliance on dick to regulate his thoughts and emotions, why would dick grow up into feeling like he needs to repress his emotions so much and his eagerness to act as people’s support? i know youve spoken about wolfman and his altering of their relationship but if ntt is generally an accurate portrayal of an adult dick, to me this nevertheless sounds like the consequences a parent-child relationship where the responsibilities are titled too much towards the child

i suppose this could also segue into asking for recs that would help me better understand your interpretation of their relationship 👀

not repetitive at all! to me the irony of wolfman's depiction of dick lies in that it is simultaneously something you can logically ascertain from prior canon but not for the reasons actually presented by wolfman. if that makes sense. he does extra work that isn't actually necessary to help explain why dick would act the way that he does because there's plenty of reasons for it without rewriting his history with bruce to have always been suppressed and edgy and dark. to me it makes far more sense to capitalize on the inevitable disconnect between bruce and dick as an adult and a child. batman: full circle is a good example of that dichotomy (and although it was published in the early 90s it built on mike w. barr's prior understanding of the relationship between dick and bruce that he wrote into the early 80s). bruce's primary concern for the people he works with is never standards or finesse but safety. he worries constantly about others coming to harm under his watch and with a child in particular those worries were exacerbated. he ran a tight ship not because he believed dick had anything to prove but because the only way dick could keep being robin was if he went about it safely. that was obv easy for an adult to understand. but not so much for a child

to bruce these worries were practical and par for the course (as well as an expression of his love and protectiveness) but for dick their consequences formed the crux of his entire world. as a child he idolized everything about bruce. his heroism. his work ethic. his skill. his resolve. his preparedness. if dick couldn't live up to the standard he set for himself in idolizing bruce then what could he ever hope to amount to? that was the thought constantly going through his head. and it's why the bulk of his childhood and primary tenure as bruce's partner was so precariously protected by the fact that nothing bad ever really happened during it (and admittedly this framing is convenient because even chronologically speaking nothing very significant happened in their history with each other until dick left for university in 1969) (i know dixon opted to write that whole shtick with dent in his version of events but personally i never found it necessary to do so). there is enough there in the idea of dick working hard for the course of a decade to embody who he believed bruce to be that lends itself to it eventually being difficult for him to healthily express himself once the rift between them actually began to emerge

because what about bruce was there to actually see that was broken and dark before dick became an adult? i know a lot of dick fans hate batman #408 because they don't like that it enforced "retirement" upon dick (which i personally believe is a conclusion they come to because of the way batman #416 re-framed the same scene) but to me that's an inaccurate reading of the text. batman #408 was about bruce (admittedly far too belatedly) recognizing that he could not in good conscience continue to ask dick to go out and be a vigilante on what he considered to be his own "orders". he viewed dick's close call with death at the hands of the joker as something directly of his own making. although their tenure with each other had been wonderful if dick wanted to continue to be a vigilante it had to be on his own terms and of his own volition. obv that was logical to bruce and it was something dick managed to accept in the moment. but it's still hard to go from always having a purpose alongside someone you idolized to finally being entrusted entirely to forge your own

in general i like the idea of dick the adult becoming privy to all of the personal problems and conflicts that come with being a vigilante. he was conveniently shielded from a lot of those problems as a child because all he had to do was be bruce's partner and hope to live up to the title. bruce had no reason to trauma dump on him or talk about his worries and concerns at length with him because it was never supposed to be dick's job to field those worries and concerns in the first place. he was a child. the only thing bruce wanted to do was to help channel his emotions through an outlet and provide him with a home to grow up in. but when you become an adult often that dynamic shifts. you're still not responsible for fielding those worries and concerns but you can perhaps be trusted with them. that's why i like the framing in batman #408 of dick now being a man. it's a subtle way to frame the double-edged sword of adulthood. the world is in your hands now but so will be the horrors that come with it. coming to terms with the real world that bruce lives in should be hard for dick. coming to terms with who bruce is when he's not perfect should be hard. coming to terms with how quietly bruce kept his grief because he did not see fit to overwhelm a child with it should be hard. that dichotomy of dick both wanting to be bruce's brother and his son should form the crux of their conflict with each other because you can't hope to be someone's equal and someone's protected at the same time in that kind of relationship. for dick to transition into the position of equal he has to expose himself to the fact that bruce is not in fact an idol but someone irrevocably human. and that should interfere significantly with his head and his own standards for himself

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

why is everything (showing other people respect. being patient and kind. not flying off the handle about stupid things. emotional regulation and self-control. et cetera.) so easy when I'm not around my parents and so so so so hard when I AM around them?

[knoproblem]

Maybe the fog’s here because I want it here.

Is that why I opened the windows?

Maybe I asked the fog to come…

-MAG170: Recollection

[faggypuppywhore]

.

[mobgeo]

I feel so clueless on how jokes work. I know what makes people laugh, and I can repeat what makes them laugh so I can be funny, but I still don't understand the joke itself. I know how to make people laugh but I don't understand WHY it elicits laughter

[ouraniatm]

if you asked cora frankly, these missions and highly specific biddings for someone else were bunch of crazy talk. elio this, elio that... the green haired criminal grew tired of those lines being thrown around, over and over again, like a mantra. she didn't think much of it in the beginning - back when the world seemed to truly turn it's back on her - and even played along in order to survive, but now only annoyed her. perhaps it's the arrogance of their leader to believe destiny could be predicted and planned through, like he's playing a strategic role-play game, or just the fact cora does not like being told what to do ... it didn't matter. her opinion wouldn't make a change, nor would her situation get any better should she do the foolish act and oppose elio, himself. better survive on your own than to get in more danger than she's ever been in her life.

then again...who would give a damn should their underdog hunter get caught by IPC? nobody knew anything about her, not even the highest authorities had much information on her...she was just a black sheep.

well, not that she'd just up and say these thoughts out loud...especially not to spider lady, over here. hollow, icy eyes roll at kafka's comments while back is turned to her, mostly preoccupied with fixing her ice launchers before scoffing. ❛ heh...you were definitely the spoiled rich kid in previous life. ❜ she pauses to reload said launchers with ice-cased rockets, clicking her tongue and moving the goggles on top of her head. ❛ sure, bashing skulls is fun and all...only after i've taken everything i needed and made them watch it all, so they know they got duped on. ❜ cora grins devilishly as jaded eyes look back to kafka. ❛ but, eh... it's not like i give too much thought into my methods...i just find an opening. least i'm not a petty loser like our resident hacker. ❜

cora moves one hand to hip while other swings her weapon across the shoulder, finally having the decency to fully turn to kafka. ❛ so, you here to brag 'bout your criminal record or to fix your shit, again? you know i don't do chit-chat. ❜

@crownshattered ... continued from here!

[bitegore]

Genuinely fucking batshit how some people will act as though the bare minimum level of care + respect for the people around them with different problems is like, an insurmountable fucking bar

[v-arbellanaris]

to be clear, i'm not entirely convinced the entire lore.fm thing was like idk intentionally/deliberately malicious - and i can understand/see the need for better TTS, and i certainly Feel it abt for e.g. the quality of TTS voices. but i think there's massive issues with how it's being rolled out, esp wrt to the lack of transparency (like the prev rb mentions, where are they getting the money to finance the whole project, since it's ad-free, if its not thru generative ai?) and the intensely dodgy "opt-out" option, rather than making it opt-in. crucially, i think, is the fact that they're not working along with ao3 to actually roll this out. the way fics would then be 'transferred' essentially to the app, without the original author being acknowledged (or maybe even consenting because it's opt-out??? like how many people on ao3 are actually going to know abt the existence of this app, let alone that they need to email to opt out???) or credited in any way like idk!!! but i can respect the original intentions (like i suppose i could be a cynic and claim intentional maliciousness but i don't really want to? like idk i get the feeling of protectiveness and defensiveness, but i think it's such a leap to go and claim a brown person's like idk crocodile tears-ing - i think there was a lot of immediate concern and the exact nature of the concern has maybe not been entirely articulated clearly to them???) and im glad they're going back to rework the idea, and i do hope that there's wider & important discussions around accessibility tools.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

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