#my parents were horrified

[mutant-distraction]

A beach full of Portuguese Man-o-wars in the Azores.

Man-o-wars have long, thin tendrils that can extend 165 feet in length below the surface, although 30 feet is the average. They are covered in venom-filled nematocysts used to paralyze and kill fish and other small creatures. For humans, a man-of-war sting is excruciatingly painful but rarely deadly.

They washed up on the beach. They cannot swim. And the water carry’s them there.

[swiftiephobe]

note that by "okay" i don't mean with no hint of awkwardness at all, just that you'd be able to sit down and watch with your parents and then not have it be a big deal that you're all watching it.

feel free to put in the tags how old you are + where you're from + please rb for sample size 🫶

[youngpettyqueen]

truly a crime we didnt get to see more of Miles' reaction to Julian being augmented because I think he should've punched Richard Bashir in the face

[starry-bi-sky]

I'm having incoherent thoughts about clone danny again from the clone/clone^2 au (when am I not?) but more specifically I'm thinking about his reaction to finding out he's a clone. The standalone clone au digs into that a little more than clone^2, which is more focused on Danny and Damian's relationship. But neither (so far) really get into Danny's issues about finding out he's a clone after 15 years of thinking he wasn't.

Because he resents his parents for not telling him for so long. He resents the way he found out; through a trivial school project rather than a sit-down talk. He resents the fact that, apparently, they had meant to tell him sooner. But forgot. He resents the fact that they never told him because finding out feels like something was stolen from him when it had the chance to not be.

Danny Fenton, just fifteen, cloned not even half a year ago, knows what that personal violation of autonomy feels like. He knows what it's like to be cloned and while he loves Ellie, he does, she's his sister, and in this au his twin. But he is still left with that feeling of unsafety after realizing he'd been cloned. Being cloned is violating. The onset realization that it's so easy to get DNA without the other party noticing, and that what was stopping someone from trying to clone him again?

Followed only after with the rest of the inexplainable mix of feelings of being cloned, the rest of that inner conflict and panic that's an ugly mocktail of emotions that range from horror to fear. Trying to imagine what it's like to be cloned from the cloned party, and I imagine that it leaves you with the feeling of needing to crawl out of your own skin with discomfort.

And then he gets put on the other side of it. Danny Fenton, only fifteen, was cloned not even half a year ago, finding out he is a clone. And reactions, I imagine, can vary from person to person. But to him, it feels like something got stolen from him, like someone took a hole puncher and stuck it right into his chest and stole a chunk of himself from him.

It changes nothing about him and yet it changes everything. It's a betrayal on it's own to just find out he was a clone and they didn't tell him for fifteen years -- it shouldn't mean anything, because he's still Danny, and yet it means everything. It's him, it's him, it's about him. It's his personhood. It's about the fact that a load-bearing rock in his identity just crumbled beneath his feet and now there's a rockslide.

Because then he finds out that they used the wrong DNA. Its like pouring salt in an open wound. He's not even related to his parents or his sister, when for years he thought he was. It's the fact that pieces of his identity that he's been so secure in for so long just got ripped away from him in an instant. Then they tell him -- only through his own horrified prompting -- that the person whose DNA they used -- Bruce Wayne -- didn't even know he existed. That they accidentally used the wrong DNA, then didn't tell the person whose DNA they used.

The betrayal of being lied to for years turns really quickly into horror at his own existence. Something very similar to the horror he felt at being cloned and the skin-crawling discomfort that made him feel like his own skin wasn't really his. And then its not. It's actually not. Nothing but his own name feels like it belongs to him anymore -- not his hair, not his eyes, not his heart or his lungs, nothing feels like his anymore and he didn't know what that felt like until it was gone.

It's a question of Nature Vs. Nurture -- where does the line of "nature" begin and where does the line of "nurture" end? What of him is actually his? What of him is Bruce Wayne's? It's not logical, it's not supposed to be. It's a load-bearing wall on the house of his identity being destroyed and now everything else is caving down in on him. What belongs to Danny, what belongs to Bruce Wayne?

[deoidesign]

Joked about Adam being divorced one too many times that now I'm getting anti-divorce ads

Adam think of the children... Please...

[ageofzero]

a crack in the wall

The thing that struck me immediately, like the first time I saw the scene, was the Director saying “...and now, we have a monster in our kingdom.”

framed like that, holding the sword she stole so she could frame Ballister.

My literal first thought was “yeah, I’m looking at one right fucking now”. Two seconds later she’s using that sword to get rid of a threat to her order, so like yeah.

It’s not subtle cinema language at all, it’s basically shouting it at me, but I liked it anyway. She’s a threat and the movie is no longer remotely hiding it.

[faaun]

and also just adding onto that, the recent wave of like armchair diagnosing ppl as npd is sooo annoying. Like its actually a serious condition, you CANNOT diagnose someone as npd with just one story or interaction. Sometimes ppl are not "narcissistic", they're just assholes? It feels like every second story i hear, there's ppl going "thats a narcissistic trait yk :/" and its like just bc its a narcissistic trait doesnt mean they have npd??

yes defintely !! it's so so harmful and i have not seen any other disorder (except maybe aspd?) get as much demonisation and hate as npd has and it is genuinely so heartbreaking bc it is a serious dissociative disorder that does Not inherently make anyone a bad person and yet !! like the term "narcissistic abuse" and also ppl just generally equating [mostly covert] abuse w narcissism is so immensely Harmful .

anyway i think we should bring back calling people mean, assholes, rude, gaslighters, abusers, etc instead of being like "my mother was a narc abuser so all ppl w npd are abusers and will never change!" etc etc bc it does 3 horrible things:

1) implies all people with npd are abusers

2) implies people with npd are not capable of self-improvement just like any other human being

3) offloads the horrible actions of abusers onto a disorder, thereby taking away the responsibility they had/choices they made in the situation and instead blames the (completely inaccurate + harmful!!) perceived invariability/ubiquitous evil of npd symptoms/traits .

"how to spot a narcissist" babe are we birdwatching now for ppl with a dissociative disorder or...???

[princesssarcastia]

god that post about child abuse got me thinking about a passage from a fantastic hal jordan/bruce wayne fic by @/fabula-unica, which is actually very sweet despite the excerpt i'm about to post. a few years ago I did my best to try and verify it and it seems like it's true, but i'll leave you with the caveat that i'm not 100% certain.

Anyway. Excerpt from Getting It Right, by fabularasa on ao3.

“I’ve been thinking about X-rays,” Bruce said, examining the edges of his cone. “X-rays,” Jordan said. “Mm hm. They used to use them for everything we now use CT, ultrasound, MRI for – they used to X-ray people for anything and everything, even pregnant women, before they understood the dangers of continued radiation exposure.” “Okay.” Bruce balled up his napkin and tossed it at the bin. He missed. “Unbelievable,” Jordan said, staring at his napkin. “How the fuck do you miss that.” “The breeze knocked me off course. Anyway, the thing is, when they started X-raying children, doctors saw the strangest thing. Almost every other child they X-rayed had multiple hairline fractures. It was incredible. It rearranged what doctors had thought about the growth and development of human bone, because how could pediatricians have missed all those breaks? America must be in the grip of massive undiagnosed malnutrition, is what they thought.” He gave his butter brickle another few licks. Jordan beside him was silent. “It wasn’t malnutrition,” Bruce said. “Americans were just systematically beating the shit out of their children, and had been for years, and no one ever knew about it or talked about it. They did it for no other reason than they could, and because they wouldn’t get caught. When doctors finally figured out what they were looking at, that’s when the term ‘child abuse’ was coined. You don’t see that phrase in any medical or popular literature before X-rays. Not incidentally the national child abuse epidemic was one of the reasons for the legalization of abortion in the early 70s – people assumed that children were being beaten because they were unwanted, and that if you could just solve that problem, then child abuse would go away. As if people beat children for any reason other than evil, and as if evil could be legislated out of existence.”

god. what a country we live in. what a world.

[atrociouscreations]

Monsoon rain

[kashilascorner]

Actually, I do have a lot of thoughts about Prose Tristan (not necessarily coherent ones) and I'm only halfway through

[jayjamjary]

Hiding in my car from the scary people in my house !!!!

[monmuses]

me:  perfectly  guesses  the  title  of  an  episode  from  The  Incredible  Hulk  that  my  dad  summarized  the  plot  of  with  perfection  and  describes  the  first  ten  minutes  of  the  episode  in  detail

my  mom,  horrified  to  watch  me  become  my  dad  in  the  worst  way  possible  (i  watched  the  same  show  as  them  and  indulged  in  it  for  ten  years):

[deadpanwalking]

David Milch, from Life's Work (2022)

[quibbs126]

Just todoroki dark choco and zuko

I never got far with My Hero, I was only at like the beginning of the Overhaul arc, so I can only judge Endeavor based on everything up till then (I heard he might have improved somewhat later on?), but again, it’s just Dark Choco being like “are you two okay??”. Especially since like, these two are teenagers while he is an adult

[littlecornerinbrooklyn]

Elizabeth & Phillip not fully embracing their children because they created American Kids who have no true understanding of their heritage or cultural identities

Kendall telling Logan that he was "so jealous of his children"

Lorelai advising Emily on how to laugh through the judgment & scorn received from mothers & mother in laws

[gay-victorian-astronomer]

you know, I used to think I managed to get away with a lot of stuff as a teenager because I was queer— for example, I could have my partner sleep over without anyone really batting an eye because that’s expected behavior for high school “girls” who are “really good friends” with each other

but tonight my Very Heterosexual teenage brother had a girl over & they’ve been alone together in the basement for the past few hours, and both of my parents are seemingly perfectly fine with this

needless to say I’m rethinking some things