#retrospective diagnoses

[theromaboo]

The Ninth Day of Julius Caesar

As a person who enjoys looking at retrospective diagnoses maybe a little bit too much, I have read quite a significant amount of works regarding Julius Caesar. He is traditionally said to have had epilepsy (though we don't know for sure if it's true or not) and so many people have done medical speculation over him over the years.

However, no one's perfect!

My favourite source on this topic will always be Julius Caesar's Disease by Francesco Galassi and Hutan Ashrafian. It's a very neat book about the history of this topic and it looks at bunch of other people's theories, but mainly it argues that Caesar did not have epilepsy but transient ischemic attack. I don't like it because I hate the epilepsy theory and really like this new theory (I consider myself to be neutral in this topic because we can never know), I like it because it is the first thing I've read on this topic that actually had some common sense and wasn't making mistakes all over the place!

However, it's pretty recent, from 2015, and people writing between 2004 and 2015 couldn't use it, so they all went and used a source I don't really like.

Enter "Dictator Perpetuus: Julius Caesar—Did he have seizures? If so, what was the etiology?" by John R. Hughes.

A hint about what I dislike about this source is that it was published in a medical journal. If a retrospective diagnosis work is published in a medical journal, prepare for good medical information but bad historical information. And if it is published in a history journal, vice versa. Context matters! Everyone publishing stuff about this are either doctors or historians and usually it's easy to tell which one the writer is.

Anyway, this one... it could be worse. It's certainly not the most diabolical thing you could read in the whole retrospective diagnoses of Caesar topic (that would go to "Searching for Neurological Diseases in the Julio-Claudian Dynasty"!) but there are a few parts of it that are very poorly done. And for some reason, the only parts that had any influence at all are the poorly done parts!

In the abstract, there is one silly sentence that is the bane of my existence: "His son, Caesarion, by Queen Cleopatra, likely had seizures as a child, but the evidence is only suggestive."

The evidence is only suggestive? I didn't know that was a euphemism for "I cited a modern historical fiction novel," because that's where the evidence came from. Historical fiction!

At least Hughes is pretty honest about where his information comes from and he does say that the only source for that is historical fiction and not ancient sources. But, why put it in?

Anyway, probably from the vague wording in the abstract, it's become a common misconception that Caesarion had epilepsy. People keep saying that and citing this work but if they had actually read it, I don't think they would've been impressed or convinced. Because in the text itself, it's clear that the source is historical fiction! It's only ambiguous in the abstract.

Maybe Caesarion did have epilepsy, we don't know much about him, but there is no evidence at all because historical fiction doesn't count as evidence.

This is actually mentioned in Julius Caesar's Disease! Unfortunately I cannot find the book right now, but I remember that it basically said "I like Masters of Rome, but I don't cite it!"

The author of one of the historical fiction novels actually said in the author's note "This detail about Caesarion I made up and there is no ancient sources that support it. It's not completely impossible, but don't cite this," and guess what happened? I feel so bad for her. If I was unwillingly the cause of a misconception, either my ego would balloon or I'd run away and become a hermit.

(Did you know that once an AI plagiarized me? I was talking to a chatbot about ancient Rome and I was really agreeing with it. I was like "wow this is literally exactly what I would write about this" and then I realised that it was literally exactly what I wrote about it because the AI had stole my words! Seeing my idea somewhere else certainly made my ego ten times bigger so maybe if I start a misconception it'll have the same effect?)

What's funny is that if I had a nickle for everytime this happened (someone citing a historical fiction book in which a male teenager who had a famous father and could've been heir to him and who is a part of Roman history during the first century BC to the first century AD had a medical condition in the historical fiction novel that is not supported by any ancient source and then a bunch of people citing the person who originally cited the historical fiction book until that detail becomes a misconception), I'd have two nickles. How does this happen twice? And how it that the two historical figures are so similar too? This misconception (not the Caesarion one) made its way onto Wikipedia so that's fun!

I know this misconception isn't actually about Caesar, but Caesarion. It's somewhat relevant to Caesar so it's fine! Alright guys remember, historical fiction is not a good source. This theory about Caesarion doesn't have "suggestive" evidence, but no evidence at all.

I'm sorry that I've really been slacking with my series. And I'm sorry that today's post is probably completely unreadable (I was really struggling to make words make sense). I promise I'll finish eventually, because once I finish this series, I'll finally be free.

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Boiling hot take, but we're never going to be able to tackle the problem of bullying, especially in schools but also in general, unless we address the fact that some people, especially some kids, are just… not that great to be around.

And that's not always their fault.

Like, as an autistic adult, when I look back on the ways I was treated as a kid, on the one hand I think "fuck that was shitty to live through", but on the other hand, I kinda get it?

I was loud and regularly called out in class or interrupted people when they were talking.

I had a narrow range of interests that I was very interested in, and wasn't great at recognising when the person I was discussing them with wanted to talk about something else.

I couldn't judge my tone of voice and so things I said often came across as insulting when I didn't mean them to.

I was highly opinionated and argumentative.

I would sometimes lash out at people physically (when provoked).

I growled and hissed at people like a cat when I wanted them to go away, because I didn't know how to communicate that in human terms.

I used to hit and bite myself when I felt frustrated, and a couple of times threatened to hurt myself during stressful social interactions.

I had a loose grasp of personal hygiene.

Was any of this a justifiable excuse for bullying me? No. I was a kid, struggling with a brain that was structured very differently to everyone else's. I didn't even know what I was doing wrong a lot of the time. I had a disability.

But was this a justifiable excuse for not wanting to hang out with me? Fuck yeah.

Like, I would have liked it better if I'd been able to have close friends in primary school (without the teachers having to literally set up a structured group of people who were willing to befriend me, complete with weekly meetings where we discussed our social issues with an adult mediator present)? Yeah. That would have been great.

But I was also weird and unpredictable and gross and inconsiderate, and I wouldn't have wanted to hang out with me either. The other kids didn't owe me their friendship. (Even though, again, none of those things were my fault.) But that doesn't mean I deserved mistreatment.

Basically, I think there would be less bullying if we had more preschool books and Very Special Episodes about how to handle interacting with people who are essentially harmless, but who you don't really want to be friends with all the same.

Get rid of the dichotomy in kids media where everyone is either deliberately and purposefully being unpleasant because they can, OR Just Like You with no annoying or unpleasant traits whatsoever.

Sometimes people just are Annoying. It sucks. But part of living in a society is learning to walk away from those people and leave them be, rather than treating their existence as a personal attack.

[the-overthinktank]

I feel like part of autistic infighting is that the term encompasses such a huge range of disability, symptoms, and experiences that advocacy often struggles to be inclusive without becoming so unspecific it's toothless. On one hand high vs low functioning is a false dichotomy, on the other hand someone who was has severe difficulty communicating and motor disabilities has obviously had very different experiences from someone who found out later in life and can mask

[pollenallergie]

do people with adhd have special interests? do we do that? cause i’ve been in my free willy shark week marine biology era for a solid decade now and like shit has not changed.

[henswilsons]

on that note today i blew out the back tyre of my bike and when i took it in to the bike repair shop the man at the desk was like "what's the bike's name" and i said "natalie" and he stared at me for a really long moment and said "i meant what make"

[britneyshakespeare]

Another Thing Wrong With The Former Gifted Kid Discourse, Since I Can't Stop Thinking About It:

people have such an unhelpful tendency to universalize their own experience when talking about the plights and struggles about Gifted Kids™—and what they are talking about is not necessarily invalid, but they're more often talking about their individual responses to their particular schools' policies. This Is Not A Systemic Analysis. it's helpful; i sympathize with you. But You Are Not Dismantling The Inequities by saying this or that happened At Your School when you were a child, and it affected you this or that way because of Who You Are.

example. i always see people talking about neurodivergence in this conversation, which is actually helpful in spotlighting how the Gifted Kid discourse often glosses over such complex intersectional issues. you can talk about how you were Gifted & Neurodivergent and how those experiences lead you to future disappointment. this is, i must stress, valid. but your analysis of your own life Is Not A Systemic Analysis. your experience alone will never speak for how the educational system and trends in policy among schools across the united states affect ALL neurodivergent people negatively because there are neurodivergent people who are Different From You. not to mention that when people point out that very often "Gifted Kid" usually correlates with some degrees of privilege, people push back and go nooooo I'm neurodivergent. people across all other marginalized identities who are systemically disadvantaged by the educational system can be neurodivergent. this does not make you, initially, when you were as a young Kid determined to be Gifted, NOT also in fact privileged.

if you are not ready to discuss experiences that were different from your own growing up, you aren't really engaging in the discourse of how to improve public education in the united states. it's a diiii-verse country we live in. not only in the ways we traditionally think of. when we think of "marginalized" or "oppressed" people, some specific and historically significant groups come to mind. when it comes to advantages that set up a child for future educational success, these broad categories often leave gaps because they lead people to generalizations, and ultimately, fatalism.

but there's really so much hope in early childhood education if we were to make things more equitable, ie like i always say UNIVERSAL PRE-K. these kids who are determined as "gifted" more often than not were just from more enriched home environments that prepared them for learning how to read, write, and do math. it's often not special innate abilities that leads to differences in outcomes for different students, but That's How The Kids Interpret It When Some of Them Are Called "Gifted." they're more often than not, not doing something that's truly exceptional or precocious for their age. they're displaying signs of age-appropriate development, when often, the kids who may be lagging behind them skill-wise just Haven't Practiced Those Skills As Much.

so yes, that's why there's a correlation in things like upper- and middle-class white kids being seemingly more successful in school (and more commonly deemed "gifted") at a young age. it's from privilege. it's not even just the implicit biases of their educators already working in their favor for their race and class. it's the fact that being more privileged, generally, means their family and parents had all of their basic needs provided for. they had more time to read with you. they could buy more development-promoting toys. they probably had better mental health to cope with the demands of child-rearing. if they suffered chronic or sudden physical health issues, they were insured. privileged children are usually less exposed at a younger age to the harshnesses of this world, as every child should be. ALL of these little advantages build up, in terms of what a child can be provided with before they go to school. anything that's going wrong in a child's family system can negatively impact them without them even being old enough to understand it.

you may not think of yourself as Privileged. you might prefer to think of yourself as Gifted. Gifted is so nice, even if it's demoted to Former Gifted. at one point you were told you were superior and it felt really good. and You, reader, i do not know You. i'm not calling You privileged, even if you are! hell, everyone's privileged in some way. i am at the point in the post where for transparency's sake i think i should say I Could Be What Some People Call "Former Gifted". i was called smart as a kid and given special homework sometimes etc. i'm not calling any Former Gifted people stupid for not realizing this either. what i mean is that this kids Are Not Usually Actually Gifted. this is a compliment given overwhelmingly to children who were just simply not deprived. when people say they were once Gifted, they're more often than not saying I Had The Early Opportunities To Learn Everyone Should Have, But Doesn't. this doesn't make you an outlier. It Might Just Be A Sign of Privilege.

[proteuus]

turns out those may have been symptoms of the disorder

[sammygender]

had no idea he was actually autistic so did a quick search on this - from what i can see a lot of the assumption that he was autistic comes from the imitation game which obviously is full to the brim of stereotypes and as covered isn’t accurate, but reading how people described him and his life it’s definitely highly possible he would’ve fit the criteria.

article going into more detail: https://autisticandunapologetic.com/2021/06/13/was-alan-turing-autistic-what-the-father-of-modern-computing-was-really-like/

just wanted to add to clarify for anyone else who’d never actually heard this before

sometimes I get so angry thinking about ‘The Imitation Game’ that I have to go in a little ‘upset big tantrum room’ in my head for a calm down

like, Benisnatch Cumberque played the same character he’s always plays as an asshole genius and we were all supposed to be okay with it, but it’s basically character slander

at different parts of the movie Turing is described as ‘arrogant, “inhuman,” “narcissistic,” and even “a monster,” in the film he goes against those around him and is shown to periodically ignore and belittle his colleagues

And. I. Am. So. Angry.

Alan Turing was described by his friends and people that knew him as “intensely shy and kindly”, he was said to “inspire loyalty and affection among those who appreciated his unusual gifts” and was “unfailingly generous with his time and expertise, especially toward younger recruits”

He was kind, he was kind, HE WAS KIND, he was kind

he was kind and geeky and awkward and gay, I don’t care if the whole of society doesn’t find that compelling, I don’t care if we don’t value kindness as an attribute in men, he deserved to be loved and respected as he was, not as we wish he was

I am so sorry Alan Turing, I am so sorry your story was not told with care and thoughtfulness, I am so sorry you didn’t get to be shown to be deeply in love with the men you loved, I am sorry your great and terrible tragedy was never unfolded as a kind and brilliant man abused by a horrible homophobic system

You are a hero that turned the tides of history like no other and I am so sorry

[thenixkat]

just, i keep seeing reasons why Ted Kord didn't have to die and multiple points that could have been changed

but that's wild stop using a character at all once he becomes disabled only to bring him back to gruesomely murder him

just already I'm picturing like actually using the Scarab, going off the stuff from when it brought Dan back to life evil, and Ted seeing a mechanical entity inside his mind from the Scarab trying to tempt him with its power. In the story where Ted died, he'd put down his costume a good while ago due to the heart condition but he's back in it due to everything going to shit and having no one to help him with the conspiracy he's uncovering especially after Booster gets hospitalized by a villain trying to help Ted in a fight where Ted got jumped by the Madmen plus an extra superpowered villain. like that sounds like the kind of shit building up where maybe taking the Scarab and using it b/c he's not got many options left

like could let the dude save the world at the cost of his own alignment due to Khaji Da's influence. Like it's not completely taken over since Khaji Da is still broken and doesn't have its instruction manual downloaded into Ted, but between the stress of everything leading up to the shit it works as a push.

and like shit if we wanna take the Blood Beetle stuff from the New 52 into account you can still have Jaime gain powers from getting a sliver of Khaji's armor stuck in him that becomes a new scarab

just idk thinking about shit

[chilledstrawberrysoda]

Do you ever just get really hung up on small injustices in your past that aren't THAT big of a deal but we're so pivotal to who you are as a person and felt like the end of the world at the time and everything turned out okay but you still get caught up on the what if of it all occasionally and mourn the person you may have been?

[platformcowboyboots]

thinking about that summer when I was 14 and zero computer and phone access (I had gotten Cs) but I got it into my brain that I should watch all of inuyasha so I'd use the family's tablet and watch it for a couple hours after everyone else went to bed. I did that for two months straight every day.

[spootsaline]

To be entirely real I stepped away from all mental illness community's at large when the entire autism vs adhd special interest debaucle went down years ago. So I only ever see stuff like this through the grapevine. So yeah seeing this really came out of nowhere to me.

But the fact that people genuinely believe any that is absurd?

I've only ever seen or been around people who are generally accepting and have a decent grasp that mental illnesses do indeed share symptoms? But obviously I've been lucky in that regard. Even though one would that would be a common and shared stance?

The fact that people are trying to shame you (and others with your disorders) and saying things like you can't experience hyperfixation (which is also news to me??? I've only ever seen it as always including autistic folk and adhd ppl?) , and emotional dysregulation when it has never in the history of ever been an ADHD thing is, mindblowing. (And the fact that it's evil apparently on top of that? Hello?)

I had no idea RSD was being used like that in particular, especially when it came to demonizing other disorders that share the same/simular set of symptoms. So now i do understand the hostility when it comes to people using the term, I genuinely had no idea that people were being so despicable with it?

Also with the manipulatation of keeping ADHDer in a stress loop I've ALSO never seen. Again probably bc I'm not in those circles anymore.

(Though insta has shown me that some lovely people think that all adhd people are Actually Autsitic, and can't have symptoms such as sensory issues or stim. Which hails back to the special interest thing, which...is also what is going on here. Wow. We never stop running each other in circles, do we?)

But no seeing this post initially had just read to me as yet another, "people with adhd aren't allowed to do/have anything" post, and it being the first one in years was...a shock. Even if it wasn't intended to be read like that.

Safe to say this only further enforces my general urge to stay away from these circles. But I'm also sorry for coming at you with apparent ignorance in this situation, it's definitely not my intent. I had no idea I was missing out on so much.

rsd is not a condition. rsd is not a diagnosis. rsd is not a medically recognized symptom of adhd and the experience “rsd” describes is not exclusive to adhd at all. this does not mean people with adhd can’t experience rejection sensitivity, but “rsd” as an “adhd” thing is a concept with no emprical backing developed by one man, with claims of it being brain-based without any evidence behind that claim, as well as many other claims surrounding the “nature” of rsd. adhd is a condition characterized by executive dysfunction, which can involve emotional dysregulation, but acknowledging that is different from the framework of “rsd” and seeing people on this site pass this around without critical thought and even claiming rsd is “adhd only >:(” makes me sick. you’re buying into what’s basically pop psychology instead of scientific research.

emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity is by no means adhd exclusive, and people with adhd experiencing those things doesn’t need to have its own special label or whatever when there’s no meaningful difference between someone with adhd experiencing those things and someone without adhd experiencing those things. that’s not logical and a ridiculous mentality of “rsd is adhd ONLY because our rejection sensitivity is SPECIAL” completely goes against building common ground with other neurodivergent people for petty and invalid reasons.

the amount of misinfo going around about adhd on this site is uncanny. please investigate claims others make about disability and do your research - actual research, which doesn’t include tumblr posts that lack citation and oft unreliable sources like ADDitude Mag and WebMD. it would be INFINITELY more productive to operate on a shared experience of emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity among varying groups of neurodivergent people than to feed into this nonsensical idea of “adhd-only special super rejection sensitivity.”

[semij]

getting my diagnos(es) at my psych tomorrow, wish me luck

[finneander]

So I know I should probably go to my GP or someone about my mental health at this point but I don't know how to go about it like do I just. Show up and say oh hey mate I think I might be depressed and life is pain can you help a fella out

[taibhsearachd]

...ngl, the fact that ADD and ADHD got condensed into ADHD when the hyperactivity specifically is part of the reason so many girls were simply not diagnosed drives me up the wall.

It's not that the whole name isn't bullshit, because it is. It describes the way people outside of our experience perceive us, as opposed to the difficulties that are part of our lived experience. Even from an outside standpoint, it's recognizable that "deficit" is not always the issue with our attention... but that's beside the point.

When psychiatrists noticed that ADD and ADHD were basically the same thing... they chose to favor the typical male presentation in the literal naming of the condition, and in doing so condemned a generation of girls (and other afab people) to suffer through being told they're so smart, they just don't apply themselves enough, that it's a personal failing they can't regularly turn in homework, that they're lazy for waiting until the last minute to work on an assignment... because those girls weren't hyperactive. Those girls just kind of drifted off and daydreamed in classes. Those girls doodled or wrote stories all through their school years, and functioned measurably worse when a teacher noticed they were doing that and tried to stop them. Those girls are now so many of my adult friends who are now being diagnosed with ADHD as adults, because the hyperactive part of the diagnosis almost solely applies to children (CHILDREN, when, I might note, this is a lifelong condition) who are socialized male.

We need a whole other name for the condition, because attention deficit is not our problem at all. But my god, the hyperactivity part actually ruined my life for so many years, because I had no way to explain to my dad why it physically hurt me to be bored, why I had to read or write or doodle in class in order to keep my focus, why I excelled in tests but failed at homework so my grades sucked because of that. No one even considered I might have ADHD, all through my childhood, but earlier this year I had the opportunity to go through all my grade school reports, and they could not be MORE CLEARLY talking about a child with ADHD. "Pleasure to have in class", "assignments not complete", "does not pay attention in class", "Birdie is a highly intelligent child with specific and unique needs" (I would LOVE more follow-up on that one, from third grade, do not have it). But I was a quiet and reserved child, so obviously I couldn't have ADHD.

I'm legitimately angry about it in retrospect. I went off my Adderall for a couple months recently, as an adult who only started taking Adderall as an adult, and it completely fucked up my ability to function. For years I was just out there as a teenager struggling through high school and college entirely unmedicated because as a child I was too withdrawn to be diagnosed. Fucking wild and also infuriating.

[redflagshipwriter]

Fast Car Three (of four)

masterpost

“Why would I ever need help from Victor?” Danny scrunched up his brow and puzzled aloud after his passenger got out. He didn't mean to be rude but he was genuinely confused. Vic seemed nice enough, but he was kinda delicate, wasn't he? He was scared of Batman. What for? He was just some guy who was so risk-averse that he wore a motorcycle helmet out in public. He probably held the world's record for diagnosed anxiety disorders or something. 

‘I’m lucky he's so reactive,’ Danny chided himself not to be ungrateful. ‘If he wasn't, like, hyper-vigilant I might have had to talk to Batman. Horrific.’

He shuddered at the thought. He had planned to work a little more, but Danny decided to go back home and rest for a bit. His nerves were a little shot after the excitement of the morning. 

Oh, right. He hadn't checked what his tip was yet. Danny unfolded the bills and his eyes bugged out. “This is fifty dollars,” he said incredulously. “He paid me fifty dollars to take him like 10 blocks, with a 50 block detour.” 

Was Victor, like, okay? Danny cast a dubious look back in his rearview mirror and caught the barest glance of Victor's ridiculously jacked form disappearing into one of the murder warehouses. What a guy. Why'd he do-

“He was hitting on me?” Danny's voice reached a whistle pitch. Ah! Ah!!! Holy shit. What the hell? His face burnt red and he floored it back to his apartment complex, trying to get his heart rate under control. 

It was so obvious in retrospect! The weird awkward pauses in conversation! The huge tips! Asking for his number! 

Danny pulled to a stop at a yellow light rather than run it explicitly so that he could bang his head against the steering wheel. 

“I don't even know if he's hot,” Danny wailed. Instantly he knew it was a lie. He didn't know what Victor’s face looked like. He didn't remember what the photo had looked like anymore and the information was long gone. But he knew that Victor was tall, fit as fuck, and had really nice hands. 

Danny bit his lip and howled sadly. It helped, a little. He stole a glance at the receipt with Victor's phone number on it. He couldn't help but memorize the number. 

“I'm not going to call,” Danny told himself. Even if it was flattering. Victor might be a sketchy guy! Only sketchy people were out at the hours Danny worked. Danny couldn't afford association with anyone like that because he needed the authorities to never ever look at him. 

Also, and probably more importantly: you can't go to medical school if you have any kind of criminal record. If Danny was going to be Doctor Fenton the fourth and be able to provide his and Ellie's medical care, he needed to be a model citizen. He couldn’t trust that Vic would keep him out of whatever weird shit he was involved in.

Well. It wasn't like he was complicit in anything. Danny parked his beloved shitty car in the garage and took the stairs up to his apartment. He opened the door, saw Batman in his kitchen, and closed the door.

“Fuck.” 

Danny turned intangible and dropped like a rock through the floors. He was back in the driver's seat in less than 5 seconds. He turned it on and called Victor with one hand, because he'd just gotten the guy's number and he didn't exactly know a lot of Gothamites. “Hey, what do I do if Batman is in my apartment?” He said as soon as it connected. He turned the car on and peeled out onto the street.

“Wha- move, I guess. Is he there for fucking real?” Victor's electronic voice somehow managed to come across incredulous. “You probably shouldn't go back there. You're in your car?” A horn honked in the background. “You're faster,” Victor said. His confidence gave Danny a little. “I'll send you my gps point. Come to me and we can strategize how to get him off your tail.”

Danny swallowed hard. “Okay,” he said, and violently repressed the part of him asking why this nervous ass Gothamite would know any better than he did. At least Victor was a local. His phone pinged and he opened up the address. “Got it.”

“See you soon.” Victor hung up. 

Danny burnt rubber out of there, heart all the way up in his throat. Why was Batman after him? What did he know? He gasped for air, feeling like he was choking. He needed to be normal. He needed to- to get his degree and get his career and never ever have a whole fucking militaristic brancho of the government after him. He was one guy. When he was 14 he'd thought it was a funny game and the GIW were a bunch of chumps. But they were a bunch of chumps with money, weapons, and numbers. He couldn't afford to fuck with them. The fact that his parents gritted their teeth through associating with the GIW was the only thing that kept suspicion off of Danny.

He cycled through a panic attack and then into anger. What the hell, dude? Danny got that Batman had a bee up his ass about metahumans “in his city” (like he fucking owned it??) but Danny wasn't causing crime or fighting it. He was going to classes and trying to survive. Batman had no right to get involved in his business. 

He was steaming mad by the time he pulled up to where Victor was waiting for him. Victor hauled open an old style garage door and ushered him in quickly. Danny parked inside and sighed over the steering wheel. It took a few moments to center himself and then he got out. “Hey.” He lifted a hand in greeting and then shoved it in his pocket, feeling unimaginably weary. It wasn't even 5 am, jeeze. What was his life? “Thanks for answering.” He cleared his throat and bumped his butt against the hood of his car. “Helluva morning,” he complained dryly.

“It's no problem.” Victor seemed a little stiff and uncomfortable, standing in the middle of the other parking space. Either that or he was posing. “It's not your fault.”

Danny let out a snort. “It's not, but what does that matter?” He shrugged. And then he realized- “Wait, do you know what I am- scratch that.” He made a hand gesture to wave that away. Victor had known what Amity Park was offhand and he'd had a chance to see Danny phase the car through solid matter. “I guess what matters more is why Batman is on my ass. D’you think he knows?” 

Victor looked at him for a long time. “No…” 

“No, what?” Danny narrowed his eyes up at the taller man. 

“I don't think Batman knows that you're…” Victor made a gesture at Danny that explained nothing. “Whatever you are. I think he wants to ask you what you know about me.”

Danny stared blankly at him. “About you,” he echoed. He gave Victor a dubious look. “Why would he care about you?” 

Victor lifted a gloved finger and pointed at his helmet as if that was supposed to mean something. Danny tilted his head to the side like a bird and raised one eyebrow. “Because I'm the Red Hood?” Victor said dubiously. “You know that, right?” 

“You're Victor,” Danny said. He furrowed his brows. “Is - is The Red Hood like, your drag persona or something? Cool for you but it's not really relevant -” 

Victor tore off the helmet to reveal a face that was a lot younger than Danny had anticipated. “It's not a drag persona,” he snapped. “It's- I'm the Red goddamn Hood! You have to have seen me on the news!” 

Danny mutely shook his head. He thought about saying that he didn’t watch the news, but he sort of felt bad for the guy. It was probably safer not to comment.

“It's been non-stop,” Victor said, and Danny could really tell how incredulous he felt without that goofy voice filter effect removing the pout from his voice. “I dropped 13 human heads off at the police station yesterday. Come on!” 

He blinked. 

Wait.

One.

Second.

“You had me take you to the police with contraband?” Danny roared, incandescent with fury. 

“Uh.” Victor looked a little shifty now, even with that dweeb ass mask covering from his eyebrows to his cheekbones. “Yeah, I guess-”

“I'm going to go to medical school!” Danny roared, and suplexed the bastard. Victor went down with a howl and a valiant attempt to dig out Danny's eye with his bent index and middle fingers. Danny went selectively intangible and rolled them both over to start slapping Victor on his stupid face. “I-” slap “can't” slap “have” slap “a criminal record!” He leaned so far forward that his lips were nearly touching Victor's. “Capiche?” Danny jabbed a finger into Victor's stupidly ripped chest. 

“Um.” 

“Capiche? Understand? Do you get my meaning?” Danny howled. “I am an illegal entity! My paperwork is suspect!” He dug his knees a little harder into Victor's sides, struggling to control his strength. 

“Hey man, me too,” said Victor. He seemed mildly surprised by this commonality. “That's why I can't get a driver's license.” He put his hands up by his head. The movement made his incredible biceps sort of…pulse. Bulge? 

Danny blinked, attention caught by something about what Victor had said. “How'd you get your Uber account verified without- oh my god!” He threw his hands up in disgust. “You're not even Victor, are you? Your first word to me was a lie?” 

Not-Victor laughed. Danny was surprised enough that he loosened his grip. But the other guy didn't try to get out. “You're fun,” he said. He had a nice smile, crooked and kissable. Oh, fuck.

Danny felt his whole face burn red. Shit. Abort. He scrambled up, suddenly mortified that he was sitting on the other guy. “What's your name?” he demanded, trying to sound unaffected and mean. 

“Jay.” 

“You're sure this time?” Danny managed to work up a little more indignation. 

“Hands to god, on my grave,” Jay promised. Danny sort of hated that he believed it. 

Danny relented. “Fine.” It wasn’t like he had any moral high ground to stand on about maintaining secret identities, if he was honest. He huffed and crossed his arms. “How do I get Batman off my ass? I'm guessing you don't want me to talk to him about you.”