#good child syndrome

[autistic-ben-tennyson]

Does anyone struggle with identity issues?

I am a Korean adoptee (20) and I often feel like I am a fraud. Everyone loves the fake, quiet and compliant person that I pretend to be. I was always the polite, responsible one who barely rebelled or talked back and always tried to get the class to shut up. It was always out of fear, never real principles. Dad would yell at me for things like making a grumpy face at my brother or getting mad when my brother’s friends would gang up on me in their “games”. He’d yell at my brother a lot too over stuff like chores or homework and it would always escalate to screaming matches as both have a really hard time admitting that they were in the wrong. And now he’s trying to be all buddy-buddy with me and is always pushing me to talk about my “feelings”. Dad’s always praising me, comparing me to my brother and telling me stuff like “god made you perfect” which doesn’t help my psyche. I am starting to wonder if I am experiencing perfect child syndrome. I always feel like I have to please people and what I want is always going to be dumped on or told is unrealistic, regardless of what they claim about being supportive.

It feels like everyone just wants me to be their perfect little boy who always helps out and stays around forever. Sometimes, I feel like a deeply fucked up person. I have acted like a jerk several times and questioned if I had ASPD or NPD at certain points for not feeling bad about it. I only came out to mom about it but I am trans and just feel disgust whenever people share pictures of the person they perceive. I’m not their perfect little son who can do no wrong. There are times I feel like I don’t belong in the family or wished I had a different life but then felt guilty about it. I am going to therapy about this but I only have a certain amount of meetings available which cost money so I use Reddit and tumblr to blow off steam. I am worried about how I will do as a parent as well with teaching the kids about their heritage. I don’t know much about my culture at all, don’t really like kimichi or bulgoggi and am worried I will screw up as I do have a short fuse and can be impatient. I want to do better but I worry that the only advice I’ll get is “toughen up” or some platitude.

[gothamite-rambler]

There's a reason you don't ever shoot Nightwing... there's many people reasons you don't ever shoot him!

INT. GOON'S HIDEOUT - NIGHT

Goon 1 (Greg) looked visibly shaken as he entered the hideout, shifting nervously.

Greg: Hey... I fucked up.

Goon 2 (Bill) halted his activity, sighing heavily, already uneasy at the anticipation of bad news.

Bill: Oh Jesus, what did you do?

Greg: Promise you won't be mad?

Bill: Depends on the context, but we’re criminals in Gotham. I can usually handle bad news.

Greg: So, I was at the docks with the cargo, and that guy who works for Batman—one of the Robins, by the way—totally not my fault. Anyway, he shows up, and I thought, “Easy job, right?” We went back and forth, and long story short... I shot him.

Bill's eyes widened in horror, pure panic flooding his features.

Bill (terrified anger): You what?!

Greg: You promised you wouldn't be mad!

Bill: With the context! That context is bad! Oh God, this is bad. What happened? Did he die? Because if he died, we are actually fucked!

Greg: No, he’s alive. Didn’t even fall. It was impressive, but yeah, he was pissed. Complained about some alterations to his suit and made it clear he wasn’t going down from a gunshot wound... scared the hell out of me, honestly.

Bill: Oh fuck, oh fuck! Which one was it?

Greg (perplexed): A Robin. Isn't there only one?

Bill: Oh bro, no! There are a lot of them! It’s important you specify!

Greg (shocked): There—there are multiple ones?

Bill: I know you moved here from Metropolis, where there’s one guy, but yes! Yes, there are like four! Did you not read the goddamn pamphlet?!

Greg (crying): I thought it was optional!

Bill: Oh my God! Look, there’s one with a sword—he’s the youngest. Then there’s another, slightly older, skinny one who’s terrifyingly insane. Then there’s a tall one—he's the one who uses guns. He believes in the right to bear arms—

Greg: There’s one with guns, an insane one, and one with a sword?!

Bill: If you’d read the pamphlet I made on Canva, you would know this! Focus! There’s another one who wears blue—slender, and everyone loves him. His teammates will beat the ever-loving shit out of you if you hurt him! KGBeast nearly got killed by one of the fast-running guys for shooting him in the head! It is specifically labeled: DO NOT SHOOT HIM! Did you shoot him?

Greg hung his head down, shame washing over him.

Bill: It wasn't the guns one because I’m talking to you! He doesn’t carry those for fun! Don’t tell me it was the one in blue!

Greg: To be fair, it was blue and black.

Bill (nervously nodding): You met Nightwing. And you—YOU SHOT HIM. Okay, okay, this is fine. It wasn’t a headshot; he can survive those. We can work with this. Was he silent and attacking you?

Greg: He actually told me he would only arrest me if I gave up. I pulled out my gun, thinking he was bluffing. I wanted to scare him. Then the gun went off by accident and hit him in the arm. He got angry though—cursed like a sailor.

Bill (trembling): At least he didn’t track you.

Greg: I dropped my phone when I ran.

Suddenly, glass shattered from upstairs. Heavy footsteps echoed down the stairs toward the goons' hideout.

Greg: What was that?

Bill: With those footsteps? That’s the six-foot bat-wearing hero who will beat you to within an inch of your life for hurting that man! Fantastic.

Bill nervously laughed, moving toward an open window with a gun in his hand.

Greg: Think we can take him?

Bill: Can we... who's "we"? I’m gone. In fact, I was never here.

Greg (scared): You’re leaving me?!

Bill: Not without doing this.

With a calm demeanor, Bill shot Greg in the thigh.

Greg: What the fuck, man!

Bill (quickly): That was so you’re already injured; he won’t go too hard on you! Bye!

Bill escaped through the window, climbing down as Greg sat on the floor, accepting his defeat. Just then, the door bursts open and Batman stormed in.

Batman (calm): You shot Nightwing?

Greg (regret): Yep.

Batman: You ready to have your arm broken?

Greg (sobbing): No.

Batman: That wasn’t a question. More like a warning.

Batman swiftly stomped on Greg's arm then knocked him unconscious.

[stardvstbby]

we need more fics of Dick and Tim bonding over shouldering too much of the family duties. but instead of them venting about their experiences it’s them pointing out the signs in each other until they realize “holy shit we are the same”

Dick: you really need to take a break. between running WE and going out as Red Robin you barely get any time for yourself

Tim: you’re one to talk, the way you’re holding a full time job, parenting Damian, being a vigilante, and making constant trips between Blud and Gotham i’m surprised you even have time to think

Dick: yeah but that’s my job as the oldest! i’m happy to do it, and it’s been like this forever so i’m used to it! you’re still young, you need to take care of yourself and live a little

Tim: okay sure but i’ve handled my shit since i was 7 so really that’s been my normal for a while. also i am taking care of myself, being CEO is great for my resume and building a long term future. you don’t even need to have a job rn we have enough money

Dick: Tim that’s depressing. let yourself have fun, you’re still just a teenager. also i will Never let Bruce have financial hold over me again

Tim: hello trauma! you’re the one who needs to have fun, you’re not even old yet. please take time for yourself every once in a while. i’m exhausted just looking at you

Dick: wait you sound like me?? why do you sound like me????

Tim: turns out Eldest Daughter syndrome and Middle Child syndrome are pretty similar. if i sound like you then maybe i Do need a break

Dick: that’s it, put your phone on Do Not Disturb, we’re ordering pizza and watching the entire Lord of the Rings series

[kacievvbbbb]

Look I like Roger enough, I understand what he represents and I generally don’t think he was a bad dude. I do however think he was shit at interpersonal relationships because, what the fuck. Whitebeards crew is infinitely more well adjusted and I’d say he arguably had the more traumatic death.

Like what even, what kind of planning leads a 53 year old man to sire a child knowing he is dying of an incurable illness and is about to turn himself in to be excuted by the marines where he will cause so much chaos it is literally still turning the world on its head 22 years later. He knew he was going to cause so much of a stir that he literally disbanded his crew and told them to spread far and wide to keep them safe. Because he knew the marines would hunt them far and wide But yet he still brought a baby into the world. Babe. What the fuck? What even is that? What was the thought process. I sincerely hope it was an accident and not a deliberate attempt to bring about a new era.

Because if so babe I need to see the recipe or I’m afraid we can never let you cook again

[lil-vibes]

pushing the "narinder is good with children" agenda

[brionysea]

I'm trying really hard not to just be The Complainer because that's an energy I don't want to bring here when I love (present tense; I rewatch it like 5 times a day) arcane season 1 so much but does anyone remember when powder was taken in by silco and being raised by this very utilitarian merciless 'the ends justify the means' type character made jinx turn out violent and merciless as well. and vi was horrified by her and the lanes were terrified of her and piltover was falling over itself trying to scapegoat her as the one bad apple of the undercity to kid themselves into believing that everyone else was perfectly fine with being treated as less than. and that contrasts vi after vander etc. died because she was raised by him and internalised the idea that no one wins in war and fighting back against systemic oppression isn't worth the damage it causes to your own community which is why she ended up working with cait and the council like vander worked with grayson. the people who raised them shaped them into who they are today but then in season 2 jinx has a daughter and she's suddenly completely normal and well adjusted and her attachment style isn't digging her nails in until she draws blood at all. like What. what happened. didn't things used to mean something

[eikichi-supremacy]

ik ppl hate fictional deadbeat moms but im an avid enjoyer. my feminism knows no bounds truly/j

like i get it she did a bad job. but shit she still did a job that's for sure!! like. she did it do you understand. 14 year old girl is pregnant. it's disgraceful. a shameful stain on her family. yusuke doesn't seem to have grandparents or anything so besides yusuke's bio dad she's got no one. and then when yusuke is a toddler the father disappears and considering who he is and what he's like that's probably for the best. gonna go out a limb and say that yusuke was maybe 4 or 5 when his dad cleared out so. at 18 and entirely alone. atsuko looked down at this little thing. this baby because he's still a baby to her this is a baby who only has her. Not even 4 feet tall with the biggest brown eyes looking to her for everything because he quite literally has no one else.

he doesn't know she's a failure yet. he doesn't know people will look down on them just because he exists as he is. he doesn't know how hard this is going to be from now on. all he knows is he loves his momma

so she doesn't cry. she just meets his big innocent eyes and goes "it's just you and me kid" and yusuke doesn't know that that's a sad thing.

so she takes care of him the best she can and it still sucks but yusuke doesn't know what the standard she should be held to is yet. for a small time she is the greatest and best person in his world and he's the only one who thinks so

then he meets keiko and her parents and finds out that his normal is actually dysfunctional and that his mom actually isn't all that great. that living day to day in the bottom of a bottle isn't healthy. so she's no longer praiseworthy but this person he's responsible for. just like that the roles reverse. because while she was all yusuke had yusuke is also all atsuko has. he doesn't respect her but he still punched the motherfucker in the mouth that called her a tramp. she taught him how to do it.

atsuko comes to terms with the fact that Yusuke doesn't really need her anymore, probably never did so she doesn't bother to care when he skips school or beats whoever he wants to a pulp or gambles because at 14 she was expecting so what the fuck can she really say about him. he sneers at her as he makes her coffee. atsuko lights another cigarette

it feels like betrayal when her son dies. at 14 she had him so how can he die at a sorry age like that. i wasted my teenage years on you for what? so you can die and leave me here? you fucking brat. how can she recover from this? yusuke was all she had. he hadn't looked up at her with an admiring gaze since he was 7 and stopped hugging her goodbye soon after but still he was hers he was hers and then he was gone

but then he comes back. and she doesn't get much better as a mom or as a person really. she tries harder than before maybe (keeping him in school) but yusuke never expected her to. he's made up of her bad habits and uncaring attitude but he's so much better than her. became something good something strong despite how shitty of a job she did raising him.

she's not proud because she has no right to be but something like it tugs in her chest when she sees him feeding the people he cares about at his little ramen cart looking as happy as the first time she'd taken him out to park.

yusuke's dad suggests taking another crack at the whole family thing and she wants to laugh in his face. the only family she'll ever have is that little boy who's stronger and braver than she'll ever be.

she doesn't want to see him laying cold in a casket ever again. he's meant for life, a soul as bright and durable as his. atsuko hopes he lives to see the sun explode

[rene-hl-trashcan]

Purple boys, purple menaces (¬‿¬)

*stares shamelessly at that open shirt* (⸝⸝ര ‿ ര⸝⸝ )

**Allan belongs to @a-usernamelol

[crovvlipso]

The least favourite Crollow's kid. (sarcasm)

[elven-butts]

talks to Lacroix wearing this

[hanzajesthanza]

~a vampire at dawn~

excuse the quick sketch, for this post is less about the art and more about the idea behind it... i have this headcanon from when geralt's company was trekking with the beekeepers through the wilderness:

although they were initially very grateful to have three meals a day prepared for them, they quickly got sick of having honeyed porridge served for all three of them. "Everything was sticky from the honey, even the young women." milva began to get nauseous at mealtimes, and cahir, usually ravenous at mealtimes as befits a strapping young lad such as he, even turned down a few bowls.

regis, however, was quite happy with it.

because, as is mentioned later in the book, about saovine traditions: "The spirits of the dead (...) should be given honey and groats, all sprinkled with vodka…" i imagine some confusing night where he went into a villager's hut to drink blood, but, it was around saovine, so they were even expecting someone like him to arrive and to even be looking for such a thing. prepared for such a situation, they handed him some kasza with honey. he didn't really know what to do with it, but they instructed him on how to eat... it was surprisingly pretty good, so he started pulling this on all the other villages, like hey i;m "undead" (whatever that means) do you have any "porridge" with "honey." yeah also put a little vodka on it while you're at it.

so honeyed groats turned out to be the first human food he ate, and over time, became like a comfort food to him. now he has it without the vodka though

[qunaributts]

My new OC Alacrity for our upcoming DragonLords campaign! They have the Lost One epic path and were shipwrecked and almost drowned, and they are most assuredly Fine and Completely Unscathed by that.

I was really proud of this one!

Not for use or reposting, thankyou!

[hoipeepsimruby]

Genshin things that I will ignore in canon:

Diluc and Kaeya exchanging letters to each other during his 3-4 year revenge quest

Kid Kaeya was a perfect angel who never did anything wrong

Adult Kaeya is a perfect angel who never did anything wrong

(Let the man be morally dubious that’s when he’s most interesting. Plus his recent characterization is inconsistent with his earlier one and his bio lore)

Yae Miko tormenting every single Inazuma guy character (her silly rivalry with Itto can stay it’s funny)

60% of the Venti alcohol jokes (they aren’t funny most of the time. The only time it’s funny is times like when Beidou wouldn’t let Venti and Kazuha drink despite them both being of legal drinking age)

Paimon being the travelers voice (I’m in the minority where I like Paimon as I feel she’s the travelers annoying little sister and with that in mind she’s written rather well but I do agree with everyone who’s annoyed with how she speaks for the traveler. While I’ve never published any fanfics in a lot of my ideas Paimon ends up getting a bit shafted due to me not really knowing what to do with her because outside of being the travelers voice she doesn’t do all that much.)

Most of the Inazuma main story (if I want to I can be willfully ignorant and enjoy the story but after reading gold-rhine’s Inazuma re-write I can never go back)

The traveler being a jerk to Furina at the beginning of her story quest. (In character for Paimon but the traveler I think would at least be a little more understanding and would try to get Paimon to stop guilt tripping her)

Finally, the traveler fails to get Charlotte any scoops from the fortress of meropide. (I know why but they did waste a bunch of her money and that feels mean)

[ladystoneboobs]

In the dark crypts below Winterfell, a stonemason was chiseling out his father's likeness in granite. [....] Rickon even showed them [the walders frey, big and little] the deep vaults under the earth where the stonemason was carving father's tomb. "You had no right!" Bran screamed at his brother when he heard. "That was our place, a Stark place!" -Bran I, aCoK

He did not like the crypts, had never liked the crypts, but he was no stranger to them. -Theon V, aDwD

relationship to the crypts could best exemplify theon's paradoxical position in the stark household: discomfort and familiarity all mixed together, not a stark, yet not always an outsider either. bran treats the freys' invitation to the crypts as an unheard-of sacrilege though he must have been aware that the previous winterfell ward was "no stranger to them."* theon was more a part of winterfell to bran than the frey boys could ever be, even if bran never much liked him. he'd been there since before bran was born, and was close enough to the family that his being in the crypts was unremarkable. (bran deems it not just a northern or winterfell place, mind, but a stark place.) one does not have to like extended family members or friends of the family, after all. don't we all have that uncle or cousin or sister's bf or brother's friend that we don't really care for or want to spend time with? but you still feel that person is one of you whether you want them to be or not if you attend enough family gatherings together. sometimes familiarity breeds a weird sort of acceptance.

while i do think it is important to note that theon was beaten at winterfell, which none of the starklings (including jon) ever were, and that the adults there certainly understood his position as a hostage better than bran and rickon (or sansa and arya prob) could, idt that means he was always seen as an enemy foreigner by all of them and treated accordingly. after all, even if he was meant to be punished for his father's sins if balon rebelled again, that was not really the only purpose of his being there, more a last resort. everyone was hoping and (vainly) expecting that balon would not make war on them again if his only son's life was on the line, that theon's time in winterfell would bring peace with the ironborn for the forseeable future, and that, in due time, he would end his time as a hostage not on the chopping block but as the new lord of the isles having become a friendly ally to the mainland.

that was what truly messed theon up, the insidiously damaging part of his situation: that he was always ward/fosterling as well as hostage at winterfell, contradictory as that may be. theon was never one of ned's kids, but ned "had tried to play the father from time to time", even if he mostly kept more of a distance with theon. unlike sansa with joffrey after ned's death, or theon's later captivity with the boltons, this was not blatant abuse all the time. that's what made theon want to be a stark even while he still had reason to fear for his life as a hostage, to the point that he was trying to seem like a lord like ned even when taking winterfell in balon's name. when theon expects the winterfellians to accept him as their new prince, that's obviously delusional, (bc he just became no more than an enemy foreigner by taking their home by force, promising to be a good and just lord after some of his men raped palla and while others beat poor hodor at his command!), but idt that means he totally imagined that some of these people liked him well enough beforehand, these men he'd diced, hunted, drank, and "wenched" with, and all the women he'd kissed or had sex with. they were wrong to think he was one of them in the sense of owing the starks absolute loyalty, but idt that means it was unnatural for he or any of them to sometimes feel like he was one of them all the years he was part of the winterfell household.

imo that's part of theon being foils with jon snow, the way that neither of them could ever truly be a stark yet neither was ever a total outcast with no place at winterfell either. they're stuck in a liminal status. bc that's grrm's thing more than any straight either/or categories! jon ofc did have the stark blood and had lived at winterfell since infancy, a major difference from theon, but they each had different advantages over each other while never quite seeing the areas where the other may not have had it better than them. is it coincidence that theon felt unwelcome in the crypts and jon had nightmares of wandering the crypts unwelcome by his own stark ancestors? jon's last crypt dream(s) in asos even include sounds of feasting overhead, as if he's hearing theon's dream feast of the dead**, the same dreamworld for two people dreaming months apart, each visited by bloody grey wind in turn.

*(unless robb only took theon there in the years before bran was born or was old enough to remember, ofc. but i find that explanation very unlikely, given that we know robb and jon still played down there after bran was old enough to go with them, and that theon was still familiar enough with the tombs to recognize the stone starks on sight, both with lady dustin, and before when rickard and brandon appeared in his dream feast of the dead.)

**it's commonly said that theon's feast dream was due to using ned's weirwood bed, but i think that must be a conflation with jaime's weirwood stump dream, bc i cannot find any textual ref to a weirwood bed in winterfell. people are just assuming theon must need a similar weirwood source for his dreams but if rickon could share bran's dead ned crypt dream without being a full greenseer like bran, then why can't theon (whose evilest uncle euron is likely a fallen protege of bloodraven's) have at least one magic dream without being plugged into any weirwood?

[appleciders]

MMMMMM

[334iwatchshit]

tugs you close by your shirt collar

you may think youre nice but you are NOT oliver wolf !!