#this also ended up being a meta about how things went with diana whoops

[movedyoakkemae]

spencer & “crash”. // rewrite.

notice: i have done a lot of research, but i have never had any personal experience with schizophrenia or interacting with someone with schizophrenia at all (i think). if any of this is inaccurate, and you feel the need to reach out to me, i will donate five dollars to any charity of your choice. you will not have to educate me for free. 

mentions of canonical child abuse, mental illness ( schizophrenia, depression ).

in season twelve, we are told that diana gave spencer the nickname “crash” because of how he used to always bump into things, but it’s heavily implied through context of the scene that it’s because she used to hit spencer during her delusions and forgot about it later. i... find that truly abhorrent for a couple of reasons, and thus that will not be canon to my spencer. 

when diana had her delusions brought on by schizophrenia, spencer was often brought with her into the delusions as someone she must protect. occasionally, she would leave bruises, but it wouldn’t be because she’d hit him, it would be because she was grasping his arm/shoulder/wrist too hard and didn’t want to let go in fear of losing him. after the first few times this happened, if spencer could mitigate that by having her clutch onto his hand, he would and that stopped most of the bruising.

for the most part, diana’s schizophrenia made her depressed (anhedonia, asociality, and  avolition), and she had delusions against the government and its purpose. however, she very rarely lashed out, and there have only been a few times where her delusions drove her to either flee the house (with spencer in tow) or do something drastic like rip out the phone or black out her windows. she was never violent, not to herself or to spencer.  

when spencer went to college and thus wasn’t with his mother full-time, he took trips over the weekends to see her and made sure that she was alright during the week. diana’s brother did, whenever spencer pleaded him to, sometimes visit diana during the week, but that wasn’t very often and only if diana missed any calls to check in for a period of three days. 

however, as spencer got older, diana’s apathy towards her own well-being got worse, and it wasn’t until spencer was eighteen that he applied for the power of attorney/healthcare proxy over his mother and received it. it was then he put diana in the best sanatorium in las vegas he could find and went into several local casinos in california (where the legal age to gamble was 18) and won upwards a few hundred thousand dollars (which got him banned) that went into diana’s care in particular. 

tl;dr: diana never hit spencer, and it’s insulting that they wrote a schizophrenic parent doing that in season twelve when there was literally no hint of that ever at all in any of the previous seasons. 

[youngjustus]

I really liked your Bart post, could you make a post about Tim, Kon and Cassie's personalities too?

i’m glad you liked my post! these are probably going to be shorter than my bart response since you’re asking for the other three at once, but

thankfully, i already have this comic vs cartoon meta typed up regarding conner here. there is a lot more i can say about conner in the comics than what i went over in this post, but i think that that’s enough to get a basic feel for who he is. but if you have any specific questions regarding some stuff i did or didn’t bring up in that post, you’re absolutely free to ask more about him.

for tim, the first trait of his that comes to my mind immediately is that he feels immensely guilty about literally everything, even things that couldn’t possibly be his fault. there are a lot, a lot of instances of other characters commenting on or telling him that he’s being too hard on himself!

(titans / young justice: graduation day #2, 2003)

he usually comes off as very serious and/or depressed a lot of times to others because of this - which isn’t to say that he’s never made a joke ever or done anything fun ever, because he has. (and this is also is not me saying that he is the only character ever that struggles with mental health.) he has a very hard time, for a long time, balancing his vigilante and civilian lives, and feels guilty lying to both parties. the most obvious case of this is with his dad and batman; tim feels a more father/son connection with bruce despite his own dad being alive (for a while at least), especially when there are other people who have it way worse than him. in addition, the secret identity thing is a huge plot point of young justice vol. 1, making for interesting trust dynamics between the team, especially with conner!

he’s very much in his own head, worries about everything, and very avoidant when it comes to his own feelings. this is shown in… almost every issue of all 4 volumes of robin, red robin, a lot of young justice issues, teen titans vol. 3, as well as some other misc comics he’s appeared in.

(adventure comics vol. 2 #3, 2009)

he is very lonely for a long time because of his parents being gone so often when he was a kid! this is why he projected so much onto and invested so much time into batman and robin, following their exploits. this is why he cared so much when he saw bruce slipping after jason died.

(robin vol. 4 #11, 1994)

i think it’s really important to remember that he says “look, i never wanted this for myself…” with reference to becoming robin. he makes the conscious decision to help someone because he can.

how i choose to interpret a lonely place of dying is a message of “you’re never really as alone as you perceive yourself to be, and someone always wants you in their life”, and i think that that applies to a lot of tim’s relationships with the other bats and the other members of the core four. he’s very grateful for them and knows in the back of his mind that he’d be worse off without them. (does he always remember this? no, but that’s a different and longer conversation.)

as for something that’s not sad or fake deep as hell, his sense of humour is often times very sarcastic, but can also be self deprecating and there is the occasional pun. he does make a number of pop culture references (but not nearly as many as conner); the one i can remember off the top of my head that always makes me laugh is him referencing elmer fudd from looney tunes (“be vewwy qwuiet! i’m hunting langstroms!”). he’s also usually the one at the end of a series with long inner monologues or speeches about the power of friendship, which i think is equally corny and sweet.

here is a really neat response to a fan letter in the back of an issue of robin, i think vol. 4:

unfortunately, i don’t remember what specific issue this is, but i felt it was worth sharing.

finally, as for cassie, i really love her and i’m honestly really sad that, of the four, she’s the only one who never got an on going solo series; she has two limited series that come to a total of 7 issues. (but i remember them being pretty good actually!)

anyways, the first things we learn about cassie in her debut are that she and her single mom have a rocky relationship, and she is very stubborn and a huge trouble maker.

(wonder woman vol. 2 #105, 1996)

her mom works at a museum as an archeologist and later we find out that her father is zeus. but before we and cassie learn that, cassie does meet him and asks him to grant “[her] fondest wish”, which, like most teenage girls, is to have super powers and work with her heroes.

(wonder woman vol. 2 #122, 1997)

she very intensely hero worships diana and donna (just as tim does with dick, and bart does with barry)! she even goes as far as to wear a black wig in her early days as wonder girl to not only help conceal her identity, but also to look more like the two of them. donna later gives cassie her old red wonder girl costume, which cassie carefully stores away and doesn’t wear because she doesn’t want to “ruin it” (the double entendre!).

cassie is not an amazon, not fully human, and not fully a god, so she, at times, feels out of place in her social circles. being accepted as an honourary amazon, being allowed to be wonder girl, fighting alongside diana and donna, being on the young justice team, being a titan, all means a lot to her - especially considering her relationships with her parents and the fact that she’s an only child.

like the three boys, cassie is very brave, and cares very deeply about everyone and everything! she’s a good leader, being team leader for both young justice and the titans, but, part of just how she is, and part of being a leader, she generally has a very hard time asking for help and coping in a healthy way with negative emotions; see fifty two, wonder girl vol. 1, and a lot of teen titans vol. 3 after issue #34.

(wonder woman vol. 3 #27, 2009)

(wonder girl vol. 2 #1, 2011)

Someone Hug Her More Please

i love that she’s kind of rowdy and that she loves beating up bad guys. she’s enthusiastic, and when she was younger she was very eager to prove herself. she’s very happy to be part of so many amazing things!

(young justice vol. 1 #7, 1999) (this is also why i hate the yj cartoon lol can you spot the tone difference??)

also she has a fucking sick special lasso that’s made of lightning that was gifted to her from ares, and it gets more powerful and intense the angrier she is. I Just Think That’s Neat.

anyways, uhhhh these are kind of abridged responses (i think i actually ended up making these as long as my bart one, whoops), but i hope that my explanations make some sense?? there’s a lot more i could say, but i’ve been working on this and leaving you hanging long enough.

i also hope that with that you can kind of start to see some similarities between them? and see why they’re such good friends? they’re all very grateful to have the people that they have in their lives, all struggle with mental health, all want so badly to do good, all want to be accepted, all have complicated relationships regarding the heroic legacy, etc. i really love them all!