#also i live with my parents and despite being a grownass adult my mom still thinks she can police what media i can consume

[tryingahandinholdingapen]

one thing I'm currently finding v frustrating is that I'd like to know more about canon dc but I am just....not good at reading comics.

I often somehow manage to read speech/action bubbles in the wrong order or even entire panels sometimes and I'm completely terrible at recognising people/characters so if I read one comic, and then read another with a different artists/colourist/etc I will NOT recognise the characters and will have to painstakingly try to guess via context clues which may well take me like 20 pages. And then I'd have to reread the whole thing whilst trying to remember what character from the second comic matches with the same character in the first one

My ability to comprehend different continuities and like, what belongs to what continuity, is fuck awful and tbh I'm continously confused by how the hell you distinguish between various comics series etc within dc??

For some reason I also really struggle with comics in that like...I don't know, for some reason my attention span and memory are both far worse with reading comics than reading a book ot watching TV. I have no idea what's up with that? But I just...can't read much of a comic before my attention span says "okay nah we're done now" and then my ability to remember what had happened in that comic so far when I come back to continue reading later is so fucking spotty

All that's without considering the fact that like. I don't particularly have money or storage space for physical copies of comics (and any sort of online version of any comic ever is even HARDER on my ability to understand and remember shit, again, idk why) and I also frankly have little idea how I'd get access to comics anyway?? Like. I rarely see them to buy and the library has some comics but I don't think many if any of those are dc and I can't remember seeing any I recognised or liked the look of...

I'd really like to get more into dc canon because sometimes I'll see something really interesting in a fic or a post from someone I follow and go "!!! that sounds so awesome how did they come up with that!" only to find out it's actually canon and thus immediately want to consume the relevant source material. But I just? Don't know how to? I don't get on with comics :(( and idk how else to get around that? Like I know theres movies and animated series or whatever but as far as I know those have different canon material/continuity/?? than some of the comics (which are also different to each other I think) so that's not really the same thing

[unproduciblesmackdown]

so being abused the entire first 2 decades of your life: what’s up with that? Night Posts Edition

- classic when finding some “uh oh relatable!” content abt various Disorderres and there’s some thing like “many symptoms overlap with ptsd” and it’s like ooh which one is applying to me?? i mean spoilers the idea that The Grouping Of Non Nt Traits And Experiences Into Distinct Classifications is not actually...an exact science and for all intents and purposes it makes no difference if i am going “oh god #me” at an informative post about adhd if actually its ptsd acting exactly the same anyways so. but yknow it’s wild n zany being like “am i overstepping my bounds b/c this was caused by coping with trauma possibly? what audacity” and etc when it really....that doesnt matter....

- also ugh @ retaining things that downplay abusers’ responsibility for their actions (in specific things you’re personally dealing with, not like, as a general stance) and shift blame onto yourself like........you have to get so used to treating someone’s Abusive Behavior as something inevitable that you can’t ever expect them to stop doing, and thus pretty much considering someone abusive like a force of nature because they’re just gonna do what they’re gonna do whenever they next get Set Off rather than like.......a person who is responsible for their own behavior and in control of their own choices and like. especially zany when you’re a kid and they’re your parent so there’s the Power Imbalance of them being an adult and the other power imbalance of them being in control of your whole existence. but so like even just the other year i was taking the blame for calmly speaking back to a grownass man close to thrice my age raging at me and saying like, not verbatim but the idea of like “ugh i know it was partly my fault for even saying anything back to him because i knew he’d just continue to yell but unfortunately i just refuse to weather that kind of behavior without standing up for myself at all anymore” but like no!!!! that’s shifting all the responsibility for this other person’s behavior onto myself, like i Made him choose to shout at me at like 4am because he sucks and has some kind of superiority power trip issues. cuz i am well within rights to respond to anyone addressing me and it’s Not my fault at all that he chooses to react the way he reacts. 

- also that i was ready to excuse my being blamed for this by others because they were closer to that person than they were to me and i was gonna be like “okay i Get wanting to defend someone who’s closer to you” but no!!!! actually!!!! i may get it but i don’t condone excusing anyone’s horrible behavior in the least just cuz you know them or they’re friends or family or something. in fact that’s terrible. i’m just primed to be Used To It because of the weird situation of parental abuse where there’s other people also trapped in this location and daily life with an abuser and if someone “causes” the abuser to start being shitty then they’ll get blamed / resented for that. me and my siblings seem more like friendly acquaintances b/c we had to be pitted against each other in these kinds of ways for eons until we were all in our teens and got some more Space and kind of realized that we weren’t each others enemies and got closer and my dumb little brother was old enough to stop being a whiny binch and Owed me for helping him with math hw over the phone from 2 hrs drive away lol.....jk, sort of.....we did get along great eventually but then i left thanks to said abuse and us talking via twitter isn’t at all the same as us being able to talk in person :/

- also one thing that sometimes Strikes me is that when i’m like blandly recalling incidents of abuse like “oh yeah, that time” it bothers me less to think about stuff that happened to me specifically than to think about times it was Other people who were being treated that way. the latter was always equally or probably more upsetting and it always felt just as bad in the moment anyways, there was no major distinction in the Abuse In Progress experience if it was directed mostly on you than on other people

- all my life i’ve also been super stubborn which never helped and even Abuse MaGee would have to try to get creative with Disciplinary Systems and there was this golden “punishment” which was eat dinner in your room by yourself and i was like oh my god can i really. the horror of Family Dinner was like, this dark comedic farce playing out in that house for all our lives. christ. speaking of being stubborn this one time my sister cut my toe with a knife (half accidentally) because i refused to stop swinging my legs despite her holding the knife under the table lol and i also refused to tell on her b/c we were All In This Together (that is, Us vs The Abuser, which always took precedence over any internal conflict in our faction lol)

- always remembering how my “’”””””””defining”””””””””” trait was always getting good grades except the only reason i ever felt this pressure was the time my sister caught shit for getting a C, and i wasn’t even getting A - F letter grades yet and was already like jfc guess i can’t like....get a single C ever.....the joke is i’ve always been a godawful student who hates school, i just also managed to get great grades fairly easily, b/c of the devil probably. i’m sorry

- love to wonder what interests i might have been able to explore if i didn’t want to hide anything i was genuinely interested in and other True Thoughts And Feelings from my ‘rents. who knows!!! even now i’m not sure what i like and my vague ideas about it are all mostly In Theory and i don’t have any hopes and dreams b/c of never being able to really consider my own interests and desires and also because when every day of your life is basically spent in survival mode about everything else, that’s not really conducive to having dreams and ambitions. see also: like, being really poor

- The Weird Experience when only one of your parents is abusive and the other parent is also experiencing spousal abuse and so like, even though they’re your parent, you know that they don’t really have equal power as the abusive one because they too are being abused? it’s a complicated thing b/c that’s how every individual experience with abuse is (complicated). and so you’ve got this bizarre situation where maybe someone cares about you but they can’t really protect you from this other person. and like, my dad is crap and in some areas even a crappier person than my abusive mom and also i hate him, but i only hate him for certain things lmao not for being abused or some ways he tried to deal with it. i know what’s trash and what’s not

- the zany experience of No One Will Help You Ever.....lucky for me i eventually figured out on my own that what i’d been living with all the time had actually been abuse for real all along! and yet still i knew that like, there wasn’t much i could immediately do with that information because..........yknow, what do you actually do. i was basically already 18, so. and even if i hadnt been. there’s nothing to do for it!! just sucks to be you, basically. but an exception is that when one day i texted my friend to ask if i might be able to leave my house overnight and crash at their family’s place for a little bit, their parents immediately were like Yes Of Course and they let me stay there for a week and were very nice about all of it. between them and the nice trans lady who gave me some more Housing Assistance by letting me stay in her spare room for like, most of december.....my Allies. plus someone who talked to me via online once i bailed on my ‘rents! if they read this they know who they are and they have continued to be so kind and generous ugh love and appreciate you

- god just individual occasions of “THIS bullshit that i went through this one time” of especially ridiculous incidents.....i could go on for eons

- sort of tangentially related and related to the first point but ugh specific memories of Moments In Which It Continued To Be Revealed To Me That I, Individually, Was Prone To Being Kind Of Socially Ostracized.....like my ass started noticing that shit as soon as i was around other kids aka preschool aka 4 yrs old.......like i’m usually somewhat withdrawn and cautious and quiet in social situations especially what with the association that “misbehaving” = trauma exposure so, yknow, that might be a way that you’re pressured into just keeping to yourself and keeping your head down. but talk about “i don’t really relate to other people my age” lmao like i always preferred interacting with adults really while by and large dealing with the other kids felt like a challenge that i was never gonna actually come out on top of and i still remember individual Efforts i’d make to ~fit in~ and Participate that just fell flat or got me actively excluded....Ugh City........and it’s like, i could make a list of Social Traits i think i have that help make it difficult for people to be interested in interacting with me, or “contribute” to those joyous occasions when you get to sit back and take in the thinly veiled contempt directed at you by various shitheads, but like, even that’s not really the right way to explain it. its kind of more a Greater Than The Sum Of Its Weird Parts sorta combined experience where i guess i just have this kind of Negative Je Ne Sais Quoi that gets ya the social brushoff / rejection. c’est ce que c’est. the joke is i actually like people and socializing In Theory, i just usually don’t get to do it. shoutout to the advanced relatability of alana calling everyone Acquaintances b/c i literally did/do that lmao......like are we friends if we don’t talk all that often? it’s part on me cuz i’m crap at being the person to initiate conversation cuz too often i assume i’d be an annoyance and also b/c conversation with me is like, not great lmao but still......ce’st l’a v’ie

anyways (clip from that fuckin song where it’s like WHO CAN RELATE lmao.mp3)