#she deserves therapy

[greenglowinspooks]

To be honest. DCxDP where the reason Danny meets the bats is Ace the Bat-hound

Like, just think about it for a second. Danny is in Gotham for college, or maybe he just moved out to find a city where having mad scientist parents isn’t actually that unusual.

He can see ghosts.

The ghosts know this.

Now he’s getting harassed left and right by spirits trying to get closure. Fine, whatever, most of them are a one-and-done type deal, and the amount of ghosts trying to get his help steadily decreases.

Except for this one very stubborn dog.

It just keeps showing up and leading him to crime scenes! He doesn’t know how many “anonymous tips” he can call in to the cops before they trace his phone! And this dog, this incredibly good boy, will not stop trying to help the city. He’s never met anyone with such a strong sense of justice, let alone a dog. Can dogs even have a moral compass?

And so Danny just accepts the fact that Ace isn’t going anywhere and becomes his reluctant sidekick/dedicated medium. He leans into the whole thing, dressing up in a mix of traditional magic-user attire and accessories that pay homage to the ghost dog.

He becomes somewhat well known. The psychopomp detective following around the shadowy figure of a German Shepard? That’s unusual! That’s weird! I mean, it’s not the weirdest thing in Gotham, sure, but he’s a new vigilante and he’s got a ghost dog that people can only see when it’s around him. Someone’s gonna notice.

Damian, as Robin, is the first to reach out to him.

Ace doesn’t know Damian but he does know a Robin, and while this isn’t his Robin, he’s still friendlier than usual. Danny’s panicking because oh god the bats are here and also is this kid gonna steal my ghost dog, Damian is absolutely delighted by Ace, and Ace is just happy to see a Robin again.

Damian decides that the psychopomp isn’t a danger to anyone, and there’s no reason to put this encounter into his reports, really, and perhaps Danny can help with some of his cases in the future.

Danny is sweating bullets because Damian basically tells him that he’ll keep him secret as long as he gets to play with Ace. Ace is happy that he’s finally getting some bat affiliated crime-fighting assistance.

And so, Danny is now both Ace AND Damian’s reluctant assistant. At least whenever he’s in trouble, he can always call a middle schooler to help him.

(Is Robin even in school? He’s out patrolling damn near every night, and he stays out late as hell. Does he have a bedtime? He should.)

Eventually it gets to the point where Damian is going over to Danny’s house. When he first sees it, he has a damn bitch you live like this moment, to which Danny responds that not everyone has the money to afford a nice place. Damian counters that he could at least take the time to clean up, and Danny replies that he’s working, going to school, and being a vigilante assistant to a ghost dog, something’s got to give.

Danny nearly has a heart attack when he checks his bank account the next day and sees that someone transferred him 10,000 dollars.

And so they get into a routine. Danny and Damian fight crime with Ace at night, and occasionally Damian stops by during the day to play with Ace and have Danny help with his homework.

(Damian is smart enough to do it on his own, but some of the instructions are written incredibly confusingly, and he would never admit to needing help to his family. Danny is just glad that the kid is in school and cares about his education, blissfully unaware that he’s basically emotionally adopted him.)

Damian is used to being in Danny’s company.

Eventually, when going over a case with the family, Damian absentmindedly remarks that he’ll have to ask Danny about some of the clues that they might be missing. Nightwing asks who he means and Damian makes a face like he just swallowed a lemon.

Cue shitstorm.

Who is “Danny?” Why is Damian willing to ask for help from anyone, much less someone outside of the family? Does he know who Damian is? Has Damian been compromised? What the hell is going on?

Damian now has to explain that Danny is the psychopomp with the ghost dog who he might have met hunted down while on patrol and conveniently not mentioned, but he’s not a bad person, really, and he lets him play with Ace, and he’s been quite helpful on certain cases due to his ability to talk to ghosts.

Bruce insists that the family meet Danny. Damian, hoping that he won’t just skip town the second he hears the news, relents.

Danny is surprisingly eager to meet the bats, considering his earlier fears.

Damian, blissfully unaware of what’s coming, sets a time and place to meet.

Once everyone is there, he gives Bruce the earful of a lifetime.

Robin is in middle school! Danny knows that there’s no way to stop the boy from going on patrol, but you could at least shift his schedule so he gets enough sleep on school nights! Does the Bat even know where he is half the time?! (No) And why isn’t he comfortable asking his family for help with both cases and homework? Did they ever even notice how much time he was spending at Danny’s house? If Danny was a bad person, he could have seriously hurt the poor boy! Shame on you!

Nightwing is mortified that Damian didn’t trust him enough to tell him about any of this. Red Hood is laughing his ass off, because yeah Danny is making good points but he’s also chewing out the literal Batman. Tim is recording the whole thing. Steph is delighted by the absolute gall of this Danger Twink™️, and already planning to add him to several groupchats. Damian is more embarrassed than he’s ever been in his entire life.

You, he points to Nightwing, did your academic life feel supported when you were a Robin? Nightwing is too stunned to speak. Red Hood, eternal shit-stirrer, says that oh, we all prioritized patrol over our education, that’s just how it is. Red Robin actually dropped out of high school to avoid distractions, did you know that?

Danny honest-to-god shrieks at this.

He finishes his angry rant and leaves, everyone too stunned to stop him.

And as it turns out, Tim wasn’t the only person recording the whole thing.

The entire internet is blowing up with Psychopomp The Danger Twink™️’s rant. People are taking sides. Things are getting messy. Red Hood literally admitting on-camera to previously being a Robin is somehow not the main focus here.

Eventually someone connects some dots from the video, as well as stories circling the internet about the psychopomp. A ghost dog named Ace, who is the literal only reason that the psychopomp is fighting crime at all, which seems incredibly fond of Nightwing and Robin.

A crime-fighting dog who wants constant attention from both the current and original Robin.

Oh my god, Ace the Bat-hound died and became a crime-fighting ghost.

And, somehow, that’s still not the strangest thing going on in Gotham.

[bet-on-me-13]

Steph's Year of Recovery

So! Danny noticed that a new face had made it's way into town. Two new faces actually, an older lady known as Dr Leslie, and a girl about his age called Steph.

He first met them when he was at the hospital for one of his parents. They had stood too close to an explosion again, and he met them while he was in the waiting Area.

Dr Leslie was a strict but obviously caring older woman, who seemed to be the one taking care of Steph as a kind of maternal figure, or maybe more like an Aunt. She greeted him simply and then walked away to talk with the Secretary, leaving him to talk to Steph.

Steph was a blond girl in a Wheelchair, and he could see bandages piking out of her clothes as he talked to her. She explained that she had been in an Accident a few weeks ago that left her wheelchair bound for a while, and that she had come to Amity for their surprisingly good Medical Centers.

He and Steph got along really well, and by the end of it he asked her for her Number so they could continue talking later. They stayed in touch, and when she was finally permitted to leave the Hospital, he introduced her to his friends. They all got along like a House on Fire, both figuratively and in one memorable case very literally (Vlad had pissed them off okay!)

Eventually Steph recovered enough that she moved from a Wheelchair to Crutches, and their shenanigans got even more chaotic (Vlad hadn't even pissed them off, this time was just for fun)

The only thing Danny could complain about was the fact that Steph was hiding something from them.

She said that she had been in an Accident a while ago, which was why they had come to Amity in the first place. But Danny knew it was more than that.

He could sense lingering traces of Death coming from her after all.

...

Steph honestly loved her current life.

Sure she had lost everything, her home, her health, her friends, her life, but she had gained new things too! Like Danny and the Gang! They were honestly some of the best friends she had ever had, and for some reason they just clicked with her instantly.

Danny was interesting and funny, Sam was vegan and a badass, Tucker was smart and witty, they all fit with her personality perfectly! It almost felt like she bad been friends with them for years. (She ignored the way her heart skipped a beat when she saw them)

But she still couldn't shake the sense that they were hiding something from her.

She knew it had something to do with the Ghost Problem in the town. And wasn't that a kicker, there was a whole Supernatural Ghost Outbreak in this Town and nobody knew about it. Dr Leslie had said that Amity was off the map enough to hide from Bruce, but she hadn't mentioned it was hidden from the Justice League itself!

Danny, Sam, and Tucker definitely knew more about it than they let on however. Whenever a Ghost Attack would happen, at least one of them would rush off with some practiced excuse and return after the Ghost Attack was over all dirty. She could guess what was going on, and she really didn't like it.

(This had killed her, she had died doing what they were doing, she didn't want to lose them)

Eventually she had to confront them, coincidentally on the same day they decided to confront her.

"Are you Vigilantes?" / "Did you die?"

"..."

"What?" / "What?"

[weareallgonnaliveforawhile]

Damian has favorites

Damian absolutely has favorite siblings, he actually goes out of his way to rank them using a method that lets their rank change depending on several different factors.

The first time Dick saw the list he left Gotham for a week to cry because he wasn't even on it and thought Damian was somehow disowning him until Barbara dragged him back to Gotham and made them actually communicate (terrifying, I know.) (It turned out it was just as simple as Dick was that much of a dad to Damian that it genuinely didn't occur to him to lump him in with his siblings)

As of current, the list goes;

Duke

Stephanie

Cass

Jason

Tim

Jarro

The placement of Jason, Cass, Tim and Jarro changes based on what they've done for him that week, how often he's seen them, if they've upset Father or Richard, any failings vigilante-wise, and mainly the idea of 'If they saw this ranking, would I be embarrassed about it?'.

Duke and Steph are permanently in the top two spots, with their spots only swapping depending on how much Damian has seen and talked to them that day.

Patroled with Duke but Steph took him out for milkshakes and to annoy Bruce? Number one spot goes to her.

Duke takes him out for a ride on his motorcycle during his lunch period at school? Number one spot goes to him.

It's very notable that the list dictates his behavior to his siblings. Whoever's in the top spot? He'll let them carry him as if he's a fucked up cat with barely a complaint if they want to. They earned that. Five and below? He is actively pouring sand into their beds.

Steph is vaguely aware of the list but honestly thinks she's near the bottom or something. Tim is hyper-aware of it but doesn't know what the criteria are and keeps getting really competitive trying to get into the top 2 at least once, and he keeps failing miserably.

[srslylini]

I have some thoughts about the idea of forgiveness and moving on we see in media and fans. The thoughts mostly come from being in therapy and spending time with people who specialize in those fields and helped me come to terms with my own pain.

This can very well be taken in general but is mostly about Vi.

Right. So.

Vi is a genuinely interesting character, who has gone through hell and back to put it lightly. She lives in conditions in the undercity that has people who don't live in them wear masks to handle them. She grew up and saw her parents die, which means she had to step up. Vander did adopt her, her sister, Mylo and Claggor but Vander still put a lot of responsibilities on Vi. She was told she cannot be selfish when people look up to her.

Then, of course, the entire act 1 of season 1 happens, which in itself is already very much and not something that should have ever happened to anyone, let alone a kid/teenager. She then, on TOP of all of this, got thrown into Stillwater after seeing her entire family die (and presumed Powder also as dead, although she continued to hope), where she was canonically beaten, starved, put into isolation and... the rest is up to interpretation because I guess the writers did not care. But that interpretation is not a good one.

What I am trying to say with all of this is that Vi has been put through so much by the system and by people (Enforcers get a special mention here) all around her.

This gets me to the point. I see a lot of people, the writers themself even, talk about how Vi needs to (or already did) forgive and move on. And I just wonder where this idea comes from?

In all my time in therapy, no matter what and who I talked about, you know what I have never heard? That I need to forgive.

What I heard instead was rather close to this:

"What happened was not your fault. It happened and can't be changed. But there is still something you can do, because you stand here now. You can imagine yourself back then and guide yourself. Hold yourself and tell the younger version of you that what happened isn't ever going to be fine but that you are still here and that you need to be kind to yourself." She told me "take the hand of your younger version and walk her through it because in the end it will have always happened but you can choose to help yourself"

There is a lot more she told me, but that is between her and me. What I am trying to say with this is that not once did I ever get told that I need to forgive the people involved. I am also not trying to say that doing this works for everyone, because health does not work this way. The point I am making is that I find it incredibly weird that we came to the point of saying that the only way to let go is to forgive, when that could not be further from the truth.

I would say understanding it happened and being kind to yourself does a lot more than trying to forgive people who hurt you so much that it ends in you being broken to what seems beyond repair (it isn't I have learned that much, lol). That's what my therapist taught me.

Which brings me back to Vi and why I find the notion of "she needs to forgive and move on to get better" or the writers writing "she forgave and moved on" so weird.

What happened to her is not something that can be forgiven. And... that is okay. Or it should be okay. But for some reason it isn't?

I mean if you can and want to forgive that is for you to do but to say that it is a (or even THE) way to move on does not sit right with me. At all.

[levitatingbiscuits]

something so fucked up about shauna shipman is that she is still so obsessed with jackie taylor that she will recreate that toxic, one-sided jealousy and resentment with her own daughter. our introduction to shauna is a scene of her masturbating in callie's bed while staring at a picture of callie's boyfriend. the immediate parallels are unmistakable, because we also see her teen self fuck jeff later that episode. we both know that it was always more about taking something from jackie than any real love for jeff; now she's lusting after her daughter's underage boyfriend and secretly resenting callie in much the same way she secretly resented jackie and lusted after her boyfriend. she even mistook callie for jackie when she wore the same uniform a few episodes later.

as the first season progressed, we saw a lot of shauna's pretty chilling dislike of her own child. sure, callie's a little shit, but she's also a teen girl with deep-seated mommy issues. shauna is a woman in her 40s acting like the catty mean girl she never had the courage to be in high school. she talks shit about how much she doesn't like callie, she relishes in holding one over on her, she shows off the affair she's having with a hot younger man, she threatens callie's future, she manipulates her, and so on and so forth. she treats callie like she might have treated jackie, if the power dynamic were reversed.

and what's really heartbreaking is that callie, much like jackie, had no idea about this deep-seated jealousy and resentment. neither of them have the callousness nor the mean streak that shauna does. for jackie, shauna always mattered most; and we see how callie blooms under the attention and approval her mother gives her when she helps cover up her crimes in season two.

then shauna had the goat breakdown, and i realized that this is the closest thing to love she can give callie. she can't love her daughter the way she loved wilderness baby, can't open herself up to that kind of pain again. but she also can't help but love her child, so she recreated the only other comparable form of love she'd ever felt: her love for jackie, which is much more complicated and messy and cruel than a mother's love for her child.

[wzardjellies]

I’d like to thing she’s well adjusted but still def not normal in the future <33

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 126

like if u think she did nothing wrong

rb if u would take her 2 the mall for boba

[screams-of-the-damned84]

godd these last pages have been so heart wrenching for everyone but who really breaks my heart is Rachel. if anyone’s feeling like a fool it’s her!! turns out your best friend of however many years/boss and your other bestfriend/little brother surrogate are the same person and you don’t know if something happened to one of them or if they’re even real or if it was all just an act or what!! but you cared SO much for them and you were so so worried and maybe a little overprotective, but you were trying to get better, you were working on it, but turns out it was all a lie!! you knew them- you thought you knew them, him- only to watch in horror as one transforms into the other. you loved them and laughed with them and worried and cried for them and for what? why? what was the point? did you just spend the last two years babying your boss? did your oldest friend decide to fuck with you and act like someone else? was it just for fun? did something happen to him- did he do this to himself? how didn’t you notice something was so wrong? were you just a tool to use? part of a game you didn’t even know you were playing? was hyde even real? was any of this real? you still care for both of them, though, whoever, whatever, they are. you still spent all that time together, all those conversations and bonding moments and everything else- surely that meant something, right? some part of you still wants to help. but what the hell are you supposed to do? where do you even start? what do you even say?

[shitpost-faerie]

Helluva human versions as I'd like to see them..pt.1?

[vifromtheundercity]

trust me yall when i say i don't ship it.

in fact - I do not like either of these two.

both of them could catch these hands.

HOWEVER

they need to kiss.

at this point its like - bruh. just kiss.

perhaps them making out sloppy style will make them more bearable

[centaur-dreaming]

So from Vi’s point of view, not only has Jinx taken away Vander and Mylo and Claggor, but now Caitlyn, too.

[frapajapa]

shoutout to girls who learned they deserve to live free and left the cage!!

[arriettyspin]

You ever think about how during her imprisonment in a desperate attempt to claw away the constant flow of grief, sorrow and regrets, Vi found the tiniest bit of solace in the fact that her baby sister was not entirely alone since she and Little Man still had each other? Two freshly re-orphaned children with no one left to care for them - but with their combined brains, Ekko's street smartness and Powder's sharpshooting skills, there was still hope that they could make it out of this wasteland unscathed so long as they stuck together? Right?

[biggest-anya-lover]

“anya x curly” bitch, hell the fuck no. 😭

[milk-ducts]

///spoilers

…,,,

me thinks they want eachother carnally ..

[poisonousquinzel]

"I'm nobody. I haven't done anything with my life like you have."

Todd Phillips, Scott Silver, Lady Gaga genuinely, lovingly, fuck you.

I will never forgive you. I hope every day your bones get softer and softer and then one day when you're not expecting it, I shall be there, and I will gnaw through your Achilles heel<3