#a different kind of life

[differentkindoflife-dc]

ADKOL: Helena Wayne

Helena Alfreda May Wayne is the daughter of Bruce Wayne, Batman, and Selina Kyle, Catwoman. The two costumed vigilantes met during Bruce's first year as Batman, and despite them being on opposite sides (Bruce as a crime fighter, Selina as a burglar), there was an undeniable attraction between them. This attraction resulted in a seemingly inconsequential night of passion on a rooftop one night. 9 months afterwards, Helena was born.

Helena's life was never a stable one. Despite both her parents love and best efforts, it took a long time for them to actually reconcile their differences. Further complicating matters was the fact that they were also vigilantes, and the end result was that Helena was closer to her grandfather figure, Alfred Pennyworth, then she was her parents. Even when she was young, she knew that her parents were too stubborn to comprise. She decided the best course of action would be to introduce a rogue element that would force them to genuinely work together. In secret, she began training with any and all teachers she could find, ranging from the legendary Ted Grant to the deadly Lady Shiva. Not even Talia al Ghul, another romantic partner of her father's that she despised at the time, was off limits for learning how to fight. Once she was satisfied, Helena used some of her parents equipment to put together a costume, and she became Batgirl.

Bruce and Selina were horrified when they found out Helena was Batgirl. They tried to forbid her from her nightly activities, even taking drastic measures to do so, but every night, Helena would be out there, fighting crime the likes of which she had only ever heard about. Ultimately, her plan worked: Helena's parents began working together to keep her as far away from their lives as possible, then to further her training when they realized it was fruitless to try and stop her. This brought Helena to Barbara Gordon, the Oracle. Helena had been recruited into the Birds of Prey, an all female group of warriors also consisting of Dinah Lance, the Black Canary, and a woman who coincidentally shared her name, Helena Bertinelli, the Huntress. She got along well enough with her team, and took well to their training, but tragedy struck when Huntress sacrificed her life to save Helena's life. To honor her and her sacrifice, Helena became the new Huntress, even training herself how to use a crossbow.

Helena's life was turned upside down when two separate events occurred at very nearly the same time. The first event was the discovery that Talia al Ghul had birthed two children from her brief romantic affair with Bruce, Damian and Athanasia. The second was that an invasion by Darkseid had resulted in the death of her father. Helena's life had been shattered, but she was tough. In order to move past her grief and help her younger half siblings, she created a team of heroes, recruiting all sorts of people from various other hero circles. Helena is now the protector of Gotham, alongside her siblings, Batboy and the second Batgirl, her mother, and her father's cousin, Kate Kane, also known as Batwoman.

Notes

It's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry about not posting in a while, this AU fell on the backburner. The one post I do have, about Stephanie, has become severely outdated, so I'm making an update to that soon.

For those who don't know, this AU, named A Different Kind Of Life, or ADKOL for short, explores a world where most of Batman's sidekicks and partners belonged to different hero families instead. I'll make posts detailing the others soon, but just to give one example that I've already shared, Stephanie Brown here is actually Stephanie Allen, adopted daughter of Barry Allen and Iris West, and the second Kid Flash. This is why Helena was mentioned to be the first Batgirl, despite a mention of Barbara as Oracle the very next paragraph, and why Athanasia is the second Batgirl.

For those of you who have questions about this AU, my asks are open.

[stil-lindigo]

lighthearted.

if this comic resonated with you, please consider donating to this palestinian escape fund (vetted by @/nabulsi and @/el-shab-hussein) as it is less than $7,000 away from it's goal.

i turn 24 today. To celebrate, I made this comic to be a spiritual successor to lead balloon, a comic in which I talked about the darkest period of my life so far.

A lot has changed since my 23rd birthday and this one. My priorities have shifted a lot, in ways that I think are mostly good. But i think the best part about today is that suicide has gone back to being a far away notion. I'm really lucky, and I'm grateful for that.

[ionomycin]

Mother of Pearl

[stuckinapril]

friend wanted to see my tumblr, and when i told him i can’t show it to him bc it’s basically my personal diary he went “oh so I can’t see it but a bunch of strangers on tumblr can??” he literally does not get me. no one will get me like the people in my phone get me

[ravenpureforever]

On one hand, Young Justice is kind of neglected by the actual superheroes that should be looking out for them in a lot of crucial ways and very much failed by the adults around them

But on the other hand Red Tornado straight up hosts a parent-teacher conference where their respective legal guardians all show up, barring Batman who’s in traffic so Nightwing fills in instead because Robin’s dad does not know he’s a vigilante which is objectively hilarious

[wormtime123]

surprise i've had another insane person AU bouncing around in my head, it’s based on martyn's lore and the gist is gem gets brought into the games as a listener agent to investigate what's up (with the limlife swap being the test run <3)

all that said:

[inkskinned]

he says i hate everyone except you and that is addictive and that is kind of romantic and beautiful because you're young and you're kind of a sarcastic asshole too and you don't like bad boys, per say, but you don't really like good ones either. and you like that you were the exception, it felt like winning.

except life is not a romance book, and he was kind of being honest. he doesn't learn to be nice to your friends. he only tolerates your family. you have to beg him to come with you to birthday parties, he complains the whole time. you want to go on a date but - people are often there, wherever you're going. he's just so angry. about everything, is the thing. in the romance book, doesn't he eventually soften? can't you teach him, through your own sense of whimsy and comfort?

at first - you know introverts often need smaller friend groups, and honestly, you're fine staying at home too. you like the small, tidy life you occupy. you're not going to punish him for his personality type.

except: he really does hate everyone but you. which means he doesn't get along with his therapist. which means he has no one to talk to except for you. which means you take care of him constantly, since he otherwise has no one. which means you sometimes have to apologize for him. which means he keeps you home from seeing your friends because he hates them. you're the single exception.

about a decade from this experience, you'll type into google: how to know if a relationship is codependent.

he wraps an arm around you. i hate everyone except you. these days, you're learning what he's actually confessing is i have very little practice being kind.

[thoodleoo]

don't cry, okay? egyptian wood figurine of a cow suckling her calf

[two-corpses-in-the-burial-mounds]

Anyone else think a lot about how at the end of canon, Lan Wangji has had time to mature for 10+ years into a guy in his mid-30s, but Wei Wuxian still has the life experience and general maturity of a war-traumatized early 20-something?

Because like. Wei Wuxian died young and he died tragically, and everyone who was around him then that's still there after he's resurrected has gotten to live their lives. They got to mature. They've had 13/16 years to heal (or not heal -_-) and learn who they are. To become fully realized adults outside of the pressures of war. And Wei Wuxian hasn't had that. If you believe MXTX's interview that circulates on this site sometimes, he spent those 16 years in a suspended state of agony. And even if you don't believe that, he was still dead. Non-existant.

For Wei Wuxian, the war is fresh. The pain is fresh. He has no idea what's doing because he's barely an adult, if admittedly a highly skilled one for his age. The world has moved on around him and he has stayed in place. What does he do with that?

Wei Wuxian had no choice but to pretend that he's moved on, too, because that war that took so much from him was almost two decades ago, now. The Wen Remnants have been dead for over 10 years. What use is it to dig up old hurts? Except, those hurts are still hurting him.

When he died, Wei Wuxian was helping care for Lan Sizhui. Wen Yuan. When he died, Lan Wangji raised A-Yuan with the Lan. If Wei Wuxian was dead for 13/16 years and A-Yuan was 3/4 when he died, then Lan Sizhui is about his age, or very close to it.

This is the child he was raising. This child is now his peer.

Wei Wuxian has memories of war and tragedy, but no one to talk to. The juniors, who are closest to him in relative age, haven't known war, and everyone who has known it has moved on. He's trapped between generations, and that has to be so incredibly isolating.

Jiang Yanli, the Wen Remnants, Wen Qing of particular note, all of them died shortly before he did. Did he ever really get to grieve them? Will he be allowed to now? Especially with his reputation. Especially with the number of people who would really prefer him to simply leave the past in the past. Especially with all the people who think he is the cause of the deaths he wishes to grieve.

Will he be allowed to mourn, if the cultivation world thinks these deaths are his fault? Or that these people don't deserve to be grieved?

Wei Wuxian has the misfortune of being a man who is a decade out of time, and he will have to learn to cope with that, but how does he account for the missing years? When the pain is still fresh for him, how does he find a place in a society that has long since moved on?

[wolfythewitch]

Kinda want to learn more about military/war history but taking a look at my current interests (Greek mythology, the bible, f1 to an extent) seems like opening a can of worms

[wszczebrzyszynie]

My sl favourites + jimmy i drew while sick . Dobranoc

[benevolenterrancy]

("Always. Continuously. With increasing apprehension, and decreasing hope. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this." -- paraphrased from The Beatrice Letters, Lemony Snicket)

[jaybirdscoffee]

helen doing the distortion laugh reawakened something within me

[kinstein-art]

sanji's weird

[totalswagisland]

design of ~middle school age bridgette. her fashion style can only be described as "tropical adam sandler"

[thattheater-kid]

You know what’s wild about being a fictive? Missing your old life even though it was shitty because it’s a shittiness you were used to. The life you’re living now is a new kind of shitty that feels unpleasant in a different way.