#things that make you more susceptible

[brenna]

watching a continuing education video about dry eye where the speaker repeatedly says digital screens are bad for dry eye. huh.

[starry-bi-sky]

Who is the more well-adjusted twin; Damian, or Danyal? Why, it's Damian, of course!

And I have an explanation for this! But first I wanna preface this that this is just me like, rambling about this thought I have and it's not an attack on the trope as a whole. I love the Danyal Al Ghul au which is why i'm so deeply passionate about it, because I think it has a lot of potential to be explored. It's no secret that I've mentioned before that I think Danny's psychological development tends to get overlooked and underutilized in DAG aus, and the impact that growing up in an assassin league often goes ignored. This is just me further expanding on that.

Now lets set the stage! This is specifically for Danny who is adopted by the Fentons later down in life. Lets go twin au. At 10 years old, Damian goes to the Wayne Family, Danny is adopted by the Fentons (regardless of their affiliation with the League). By 14 years old, who ends up the better adjusted, more socially aware, spiritually in-tune with themselves, sibling? Why, Damian is! Why is that?

Because he has the actual support he needs compared to Danny. And I'm not talking about good or bad parents Fentons, because either way my opinion doesn't change. Damian would end up the better off twin, because, frankly, his family knows his background. They know he grew up in the League, they know what the League's teachings are, and they know he's a born and raised assassin. Knowing this, they can then help tackle and dismantle the teachings and lessons he has been given and ingrained into by the League. They may be a dysfunctional family, but they're functional enough to at least actively help deprogram all of the League's teachings that have been ingrained in Damian throughout his childhood.

Can't say the same for Danny.

Lets say Fentons here don't know his background -- and even if they do, the results may just stay the same if they play their cards wrong, -- Danny's now just been thrown into the deep end of a pool and is essentially being told sink or swim. Regardless of how he got there -- undercover, faked death, etc -- he has no proper support. He knows the League is meant to be secret, he's not gonna speak on it for various reasons. Whether it be some still lingering loyalty, fear of harm, or whatever. Whatever the reason is, he does not have a proper support system in the Fentons, no matter how nice they are. They can only tackle the surface level stuff and whatever Danny allows them to see -- if Danny ever lets them see it at all. For what do assassins do when they don't want to be caught? They hide. Sometimes in plain sight.

"But Jazz--" Jazz is a child. She is 2 years older than Danyal and no better at giving him a proper support system than the two adult Fenton parents, even with parentification. We don't know when she got into psychology or how long she'd been studying it by the time Danny's 14. We just know she's really into it. Even then, Jazz is not a licensed or reliable therapist, or even an experienced or implied good therapist, and should not be used as one either. It's a disservice to her character to reduce her down to 'supporting female emotional crutch'. Besides, therapy only works on people who want to get better. Danny, who'd be hiding who he really is, has very little incentive to want to, or to even think something is wrong with his way of thinking, even with exposure to the outside world.

When people's beliefs are outright challenged, they tend to double down on them, and Jazz canonically has a habit of psychoanalyzing her family and declaring what she thinks is the problem -- regardless of whether or not she's right about it. Jazz would get into psychology, try and psychoanalyze Danny, and all it would do is cause him to clam up, shut into himself further, and throw up even more walls so that she can't figure out that he has been lying this whole time. It would do more harm than good, and would actively hinder any progress he'd make in trying to open up to them. Roads and good intentions and all that.

That being said, I think Danny's development and dismantling of the League's teachings would be slower than Damian's. Much slower. Because he would be the one having to pick apart everything and figure out what is right, what is wrong, what he wants to keep, and what he wants to toss. Everything he unlearns would be stuff he has to unlearn himself. If he even gets to that point at all -- depending on his experiences, he very well could not change at all, or change very little. The League acts as a purge for humanity, meant to reign in their hubris and retain balance, they just also happen to be assassins for hire. Danny's time spent in Amity Park could as well strengthen his belief in their teachings just as much as it could weaken it, especially if it goes as canon and he gets bullied.

Regardless, being tossed to a civilian family as someone who is very much not a civilian, without any support, would be actively detrimental to Danny's overall mental health and development. Especially to strangers like the Fentons. Damian was closed off and standoffish even with blood family, and it took him time to open up to them -- Danny, with the Fentons, would be even more so. He doesn't know them, he doesn't trust them, he has no rhyme or reason to open up to them, and since the Fentons don't actually know him, they can't help him the way he needs. Once "Danny Fenton" is made, he has even less reason to open up. So long as Danyal allows it, they will only ever know Danny, and they'll never know Danyal.

TL:DR the Fentons aren't the better family option just because they're civilians, and actually that makes them the worser option between the two because they can't give Danny the proper support he needs. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

[ghost-bxrd]

Protective fae!Dick, please? This is my favorite AU, I can't get enough of your writing

That’s so sweet 🥺💚

Okay at this point I can admit I have thing for (over)protective characters so I’m all too happy to oblige lol.

Anyway, protective fae!Dick:

He doesn’t notice he’s being overprotective most of the time. When the people close to him mention a minor inconvenience his first instinct is to remove that inconvenience from the equation altogether. It’s a steep learning curve, because when Bruce first took him in he didn’t realize he’d have to stop Dick from killing half the Rogue gallery in the span of a few months. “But they hurt you,” he’d pout, “and it wouldn’t be really killing, anyway. I’m just… recycling them.” “…” “I could let them keep their consciousness—“ “N O”

Friends, while cherished, do not get to claim the same level of protectiveness. Dick would always come to their aid, of course, but for each request for help he keeps a tally mark in his head; accumulating favors. Only his family are exempt from this.

While there have been a couple close calls over the years, none will ever compare to the time he came back from a mission to find a member of his family gone. To this day Dick refuses to talk about the first couple weeks after he found out. And around the same time each year every plant and tree seems to wither and rot for a while before suddenly bursting back into full bloom. Jason has to return to the manor for this time each year, or Dick will absolutely track him down and drag him back himself. Neither he nor the manor lets him leave until Dick is back to his cheerfully self.

Any close calls with the family after that automatically result in several weeks of house arrest for the respective family member, courtesy of carnivorous deer and some over enthusiastic tree roots that enforce this rule with absolute prejudice.

If someone tries to kill a member of the family while Dick patrols with them/is close by, the only thing the batfam can do is damage control. Because while they can usually stop him from killing the perpetrator, it probably isn’t very ethical to allow a borderline eldritch being to cry their brains with his strange magic either.

Alrighty that’s all I’ve got for now <3

[thebirdandhersong]

in my you're on your own kid era again (I never left)

[strawberry-cow-sorceress]

[ID: a tweet that reads “We’ve done an analysis to show that countries that reduced Covid more effectively won more Gold medals than expected at the Paris Olympics and vice versa” above a link to a study titled “Possible impacts of national response to COVI…" end ID]

study linked in tweet:

Obviously correlation is not necessarily causation, but I, for one, am not particularly surprised by these findings. COVID ravages the body in ways that can be hard to detect and athletes (and anyone else who begins serious physical exertion within 6 months of a COVID infection) are at much higher risk of developing Long COVID than people who get radical rest following an infection.

COVID is preventable, though! N95s have been found to be nearly perfect at blocking COVID and Mask Blocs can help you find free or cheap masks and tests in your area. Many even ship within their state if you’re worried about not living in a big city. COVID is not inevitable and more people masking means less COVID in the air!

here’s a link to an article about the N95 study:

and here’s the study itself:

[blossoms-phan]

messing around with new tit ish themes what do we thinkkkkk

[cataschism]

@yingren             /             ren &. yaoshi.

The whistling of the Ambrosial Arbor could be mistaken for a voice, needle-thin hair-like roots fray near the middle of the Arbor to extend outward, reaching the railing that overlooks the Arbor. In the spirit of Abundance, the Arbor never stops growing, and must always be trimmed and cut back to repel its gifts. Keratin-feeling hair-like roots spread to the railing outlooking the Arbor, almost reaching out to touch Ren’s hair. To caress.

The stringlike quality of the Arbor and the wind of the Luofu mixing to create words sounds nearly like an offering. Not an apology—for all gifts have their wrappings to obscure the truth &. ribbons of which to make it beautiful—but an extension of itself to reach out to those the Arbor and the Abundance have touched, affected.

Gold—awaits. Gold—beckons. Gold—gold—gold.

Like all life, forever beginning, the Arbor is neutral and unremorseful to its consequences.

Beautiful.

[kittykatninja321]

Speaking as a personal autonomy enjoyer I hate the way the fanon conception of “lazerus pit rage” not only treats Jason’s actions as not his own but also his feelings as not his own. To me personally even if there was no evil green Jacuzzi and no Talia, the question of “why is that clown not a funny ass corpse” would still come up and there’d still be some hard feelings about Tim. Just probably with less killing and maiming

[booasaur]

Seeing some frankly stupid ass takes on the debate and Biden and now I'm even more worried about the situation. What's it called when people don't have, like, politics literacy or even... life literacy?

[hannibal-confessions-nbc]

I hate when people say Hannibal "ruined" Will's perfect life with Molly shuuut up Will made his own choices. Will conveniently walked his dogs when Jack was there and left Molly alone with him knowing he would show her crime scene photos and she'd try to make Will go. He said he knew what he was doing going back after Molly got hurt. Hannibal told him not to come back even and Will ingored it! We need to acknowledge Will is a manipulative person and makes his own choices

.

[coulsonlives]

Who was gonna tell me that Adam Powell, the original creator of Neopets, lost his mind and went full-on crypto bro in the neopets discord a few months ago

He totally did the textbook 'us versus them, you're all Poor and Uneducated Bums' thing

And then he literally flipped the bird to everyone

Never meet your heroes, apparently

[coockie8]

i was kinda low key wondering why chapter 2 was taking so long since youre usually pretty quick with fics youre really interested in writing but then i saw it was like almost 5000 words long and i get it now lmao

lol yea This is what I meant when I said Cult of Desire is going to be my longest by word count.

Given it relies a lot on my own original lore, there's gonna be a lot more set up in certain areas for this fic than there normally would be in other fics I've written, 'cause I can't reasonably assume you guys are gonna already know what I'm talking about, like I can in regular fics; how could you? I wrote this lore haha

There will obviously be aspects that contradict established world rules for FMA in this fic, but that should be expected, as Cosmic Horror is, by definition, the concept of contradicting the established rules of reality and the fear and madness that comes from that; given that Ed low key comes across as an annoying Redditor at times, there's gonna be quite a bit of back and forth between him and the Cult members.

[the-casbah-way]

FINALLY finished my outline for prodigal son it’s going to end up way longer than i planned </3

[gibbearish]

everyones predicting garret will be this universe's charlie and possess the puppet which i don't disagree with. but also. would it not be an equally exciting twist if garret was still alive

[toytulini]

Thank you for your tags on the baeddalism post. As someone who is aroace (formerly biace) and a nb transmasc I've literally watched every identity I have be dragged into discourse time and time again and it's always the exact same rhetoric to a nauseating degree. People are so terminally online that they constantly invent new nonexistent stereotypes of other queer identities to get mad at or just pick a queer identity to be the monster of the week, and it's excruciating to see it repeat the same way everytime.

I wanted to try to respond to this more eloquently after i had some caffeine, but if we wait for eloquence itll go unanswered for years. but lmao yea of course. Im also aroace and enby. I was here since like 2014, I suffered through reading all these same stupid arguments about a-specs and my tolerance for it is so fried. The queer infighting and gatekeeping bullshit is so rotting. I hope we learn one of these days. My disillusion that this keeps fucking happening is at least tempered by the fact that all the blogs who I followed for good takes on inclusionism and queer solidarity during the acecourse are also not tolerating this shit, and they are recognizing it as the same old bullshit its been the whole time.

[todayisafridaynight]

yall think im playing but i truly need aoki and mine in the ring kicking the shit out of each other right now