#warning traumadumping

[bogkeep]

idk why there's so much discussion around the ~*morality of traumadumping*~ when it's a VERY solvable social conundrum. all you need to do is ask something like "hey is it ok if i talk about this thing? it's kind of heavy" and respect the answer

[smok3r7]

Is Leaving Even An Option?

Joel x F!reader

Explicit, 18+

One: All Alone

Series Masterlist or Main Masterlist - My Ao3

Summary: Your days have become one in the same, even with the terrifying reality of death right outside the walls of Jackson. You never thought you’d be in the situation you’ve been stuck in for seven years now, the daily abuse you endure has become an expectation. You take whatever your husband throws at you, literally and figuratively, because you’ve been trained to believe this is normal. But a new man, Joel, moves next door and happens to be friendly towards you, this causes your husband’s anger to worsen. Your mind starts a gruesome war with itself - can you leave him or do you stay until the inevitable happens?

Chapter Summary: How did you, out of all people, end up in this situation? You knew about it all, yet it still happened to you. How does losing a significant person in your life make you vulnerable and weak? You meet the man who ends up being the reason your soul burns to death.

Word count: 3.4k

⚠️Warnings: Mentions of verbal and physical abuse from stepfather, mentions of women/children in shelters and domestic violence situations, self-hatred, angst, violence against raiders, blood, slit throat, young death, overkill by stabbing, vomiting, dark fic

—

Shameful. Detached. Callous. Numb.

These are the emotions that are now embedded into your skin, so much so that you can’t remotely begin to remember who you were as a human before your marriage to Nate, seven years ago. Ever since you found Jackson and got married the same year, you were known only as Mrs. Rossi, Nate Rossi’s wife, his beautiful little house wife who always made sure dinner was on the table and did everything for him, and in all honesty, you were fine with it for the first year. You were the happiest you could have been living in the apocalypse - Nate got you anything you wanted and made you feel safe.

He would go out on patrol for supplies with Tommy and he would bring you back the things you absolutely needed, from the best foods to the best board games. This was so different for you - you had always been independent and never let yourself rely on a man, or anyone for that matter. So you got comfortable and truly believed you were secure since you were being taken care of for the first time ever - big mistake, because just after the second year of being married, the true side of Nate started to come out.

—

When the outbreak started about twenty years ago, you were in your mid-twenties, lived in a small town in Tennessee and worked with women who wanted to leave their domestic situations. You spent a lot of time, more than you wanted, at women’s shelters trying to help these women who were at their lowest and completely suffering. You didn’t directly work for the police department, but you were technically working under the “Welfare Department”, and if the situations were bad, the cops would call you, or your one other partner, for help.

You had a love-hate relationship with your job. You absolutely loved it when you were able to save a woman, or her children, from the violence and yet, you despised it when you weren’t able to save them - which happened a lot more than you liked to admit. You knew how hard it was for a lot of women to leave their abusers, even if they were treated like the dirt they walked on, the men were able to sink their talons into these women for as long as they wanted. But you had a really hard time understanding how the women who had kids stayed with the man when he abused the kids also.

Your own mother experienced abuse so badly it almost killed her, and she had gone back and forth with him for four years, but she would not give up on him. It got so ugly that, one time, you found her bloody and a bruised mess, curled on the kitchen tile, unconscious. She would be dead if you hadn’t been there. Your step-father, Roy, had beaten her with a wooden baseball bat because he thought she was cheating on him with his best friend. Yet, she stayed with him for two years after that. You witnessed a lot of fighting between your mom and Roy between the age of fifteen and nineteen, to the point where you were stepping in to deflect his anger and violence from your broken mom, to you.

And this is why you had a hard time understanding why women stayed when the kids got involved. Your moms last straw was when Roy laid hands on you for the first and only time - she kicked him out that same night. He had cornered you while shouting in your face about how you and your mom were whores and didn’t appreciate anything he did. You pushed him away from you, and he backhanded you so hard that his knuckles left a mark on your cheek. You screamed bloody murder and your mom came in holding a knife with her eyes about to burst out of her head.

“Get. The. Fuck. Out.” is all she said, as her body was violently shaking but her face was blank.

He left that day and never came back, and your mom and you were thrilled that he was gone, the both of you finally feeling like you could relax. Soon, however, reality kicked in - the reality that your mom was reliant on Roy because he worked and paid the bills, so you and her inevitably ended up battling poverty, so badly that she almost lost the house she owned for eleven years.

In spite of this, your mom found her way, and she ended up getting promotion after promotion at her job. It took her five years after he was gone for her to feel genuinely comfortable again, with money and with herself. She was the reason why you decided to work with battered women and children, as you never wanted people to go through something like your mom and you had. You also knew that it was possible for women to get back on their feet, that it wasn’t easy, but it was possible.

But here you are, years later, in a worse marriage than your mother had, way worse than most of the women you’ve helped along the years, and your own self twenty years ago would be so disappointed in how you, out of all people, got stuck with an abusive husband.

——

Before marrying Nate and before living in Jackson, you were a badass. Surviving by yourself for thirteen years just by constantly moving, you never stayed in one location for longer than four days. In the beginning, you had overheard FEDRA talking about a camp in Boston, and ended up reaching it in the fall time. After about a month there, you found out about the fireflies and you knew Tommy through one or two incidents before he left everything and traveled out West, creating his own camp. You decided you wanted to leave Boston, realizing that the camp just wasn’t what you had imagined, so you snuck out six months later and headed West.

Doing it alone was the most efficient way to survive - you didn't have to worry about anyone else, only you. You quickly mastered shooting a bow and arrow along with guns - the bow was your talent though. You could shoot clickers from yards away and none of the others would be set off, and you were a quick thinker because If something didn’t go as planned, you instantly thought of a backup plan.

Evading FEDRA was another thing you were especially good at, all because you had a radio that had all the stations they used on their walkies. You knew their every play. Even if it didn’t pertain to you directly, you knew about it. Groups and raiders were something that you took care of from a distance, mainly due to the fact that a lot of these groups were men, and even though you could fight a man off, there was no way you could stop all of them by yourself - it was simply unrealistic. You would stumble upon a group of raiders inspecting a building for anything, and you would stay a couple of blocks away, following them for a few days just to study them. The way they talked to each other, what they talked about, who was the leader, who was the weakest link, how comfortable and trained they were with their weapons, and what was their watch rotation at night.

Depending on how smart and big the group was, you would either shoot them with your bow from afar as they were occupied with something and causing chaos, or you would sneak into their base at night, tiptoeing around and silently stabbing them one by one. You would then proceed to steal whatever you could carry with you. Killing was never something you looked forward to, but you looked at it like this; it was either killed or be killed in this new world. If they found you, they’d do worse than just killing, and you’d be damned if you allowed that to happen. So maybe sometimes you got pleasure from making sure these animals never got to hurt anyone again, and that didn’t make you evil, just a little malicious - which you didn’t mind being.

You didn’t mind being alone all the time either, except for when some nights got lonely. After the first three years, you started to hate being alone. You missed having someone to at least talk to - all you had was yourself. You kind of started to go stir crazy from talking to yourself, from reminiscing about your past life always, making you upset more often than you’d like to admit. But you always got up and did whatever you had to for the day, and you came to terms with the prospect of traveling and dying alone.

However, during the winter, after a couple days traveling through Nebraska and being by yourself for eight years, you stumble upon this girl, alone, stealthily trying to cross an open road. You’ve been hiding behind a tree up on the hill right by it, camping there for two days just to see if anyone would come by. But this girl looks no older than seventeen, and she reminds you a lot of yourself, looking like she knows what she’s doing and having things she needs. You’re still hiding, but peek your head to the side to see her, and she turns right towards you, making you snap your head back. “Shit,” you mutter to yourself.

“I saw you,” the girl yells towards you, in a raspy tone of voice, “I know you’re alone. As long as you don’t try to kill me, I won’t try to kill you.” You’re unsure of what to do or what to say, but your instincts tell you to show yourself, so you step out from the tree with your hands up like a truce.

“I’m cool with that,” you yell back, actually getting a chance to look at her.

She’s about five foot three, has the fit yet curvy body type, and looks healthy. Her hair is a dark red color in a messy bun but you can tell it’s long, and although she has a healed scar across her right cheek from what looks like a knife, her face still has this soft look to it. Her backpack and the gear on her back looks worn, like she’s had it for years, her ripped jeans and long sleeve shirt fitting her like they’re all she has along with her black combat boots. You also take note of the weapons that are visible, that she’s holding a bow in one hand with arrows on her back, a rifle strapped along her back, a pistol in her holder on her hip, and a large hunting knife on a thigh holster. This girl is smarter than she puts on, you think as you examine her.

“My name is Rosa, what’s yours?” She asks you, and the two of you are now only about ten feet away from each other, just talking, no weapons drawn. You tell her yours and ask how long she’s been alone.

“Forever. My mother died by FEDRA agents when I turned ten, but she had taught me everything I needed to know to survive,” she explains as her eyes scan your body, then repeats the question back to you.

“Forever. I was in the Boston camp just about eight years ago, but hated what they did. So I left and I’ve been heading West, a guy I know had left before me to head there also, I heard fireflies talk about a new settlement somewhere over there.”

She nods her head and asks, “So, like… Could I come along with you?” Her face shows that she is clearly tired and needs to rest, but you’re hesitant. This could be a big ass ploy, but there’s something screaming that she’s being sincere. You also have this weird gut feeling that you need to take care of her, and it’s the same feeling as seeing the kids in domestic situations back before the apocalypse. You are almost too eager to reply to her, “Yes, you can! I just have some ground rules that I follow, and as long as you can keep up with that, we’re all good, hun.”

She then comes up to you and hugs you, and your body freezes, not having had human contact in years. Yet, she somehow feels like home. Your arms naturally wrap around her shoulders and you two stay like that for a little while, and having the comfort of another living person who you trust is a feeling you can’t even explain.

Rosa and you grow to have a mother-daughter kind of relationship over the next five years, which actually makes a lot of sense in some way, since you were in your early thirties and she was about eighteen when you met. You two built a connection so strong, incredibly fast, like it was meant for you both to stumble upon each other that one day. But one night after you two go to bed in an isolated cabin Rosa found, the worst happens.

“NO-“ Echoes in the room you two share, shocking you awake in a panic, realizing that it’s Rosa’s voice. As you turn to look in the other bed, you see a dark shadow-figure slicing her throat with a large blade, and in a blind rage, you grab the knife under your pillow and lunge towards the attacker, who must’ve not realized you were even in the room. He has no time to react as you start to stab his body over and over and over, not stopping, not caring if he has others with him - he killed Rosa and you have to get revenge. By now, the attacker’s body is on the hardwood floor next to Rosa’s bed and you’re still on top of him, stabbing him repeatedly while screaming and sobbing.

“Why her?! Why not me?!” You scream at the top of your lungs as you stab him for the final time, leaving the knife in his chest and you stand up to look at the mess. You stare at her bloody, lifeless body, the long slice along her neck, full of blood that soaks the mattress under her and her body below, her golden brown eyes wide open along with her pale mouth, and her gorgeous red hair now soaked with blood. The sudden urge to throw up climbs your throat, so you cover your mouth with your right hand and sprint behind you to exit the bedroom, and as soon as you reach the other side of the door, you vomit onto the floor.

After a minute, you swipe your face with your bloody hand and walk out the front door, trying to process what just fucking happened. You open the front door and the sun and cold air hits you in the face immediately, the most gorgeous morning it’s been in weeks making you even more angry because Rosa should be here and be able to enjoy this weather - the way the white snow lays perfectly on the ground and trees, the sun causing the icicles to glisten as they hang, and the wind blowing just enough to make it a bit cooler. You’re standing outside, looking into the sky as tears sting your face, and a piece of your heart breaks in your chest. Rosa was like your child and she told you that you reminded her a lot of her mom. You just lost your girl.

You shake your body, clear your throat, and whisper, “Okay.” A minute later, you walk back inside, grab all of your belongings and some of Rosa’s things you either need or simply want to keep, then you stand over her body one more time as you kiss her forehead and close her eyes.

You leave the cabin, not looking back again, and after a day of walking, you come across a sign that reads, MOTEL 6. The building looks dirty and rundown, but you can’t really complain anymore. You end up clearing the whole building with no issue, which has about twelve rooms, and a total four clickers scattered throughout.

You find the room that is the least destroyed, room 616, and you whisper to yourself as you open the door and walk into the bedroom. After closing the door, you put your back to it and slide down, and as your ass hits the cheap dirty carpet, the true emotion is allowed to leave your body. The anger, grief, and pain is finally able to leak out of your skin with tears that come out of you like a waterfall. You end up in the bathroom and you stare at your reflection, at the amount of blood staining your hands, chest, and face - all horrific. The fact that you know that most of it is from Rosa's killer makes you feel disgusted. The reflection you see of yourself, makes you want to die, just to be with Rosa.

You make yourself shower, since this motel magically seems to still have running water - warm water at that. You scrub and scrub the blood that has stained your skin over the course of a day, just needing to feel clean again. After turning your skin almost raw, you change into the one other pair of clothes you have, and check your perimeter one last time before you go to lay down in your room and sleep for the night.

The sound of a shotgun cocking wakes you up, your eyes open and you see two men standing over your bed with guns pointing right at you. “Who the fuck are you?” The man closest to you demands, he’s blonde with a buzz cut and a patchy beard to match, but he has a face that looks like he doesn’t play around.

“I’m just moving around, was gonna leave when I got up,” you instantly respond, basically defenseless, then turning your attention to the other man at the foot of your bed. He looks kind of familiar but you can’t put your finger on where from. It’s right on the tip of your tongue too.

“You by yourself?” The familiar man asks with a southern twang to his question, and it then clicks in your brain, Tommy.

“Yes, my dau- my friend just died yesterday,” you remark, and they lower their guns to the floor.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tommy says with a different tone than before, and the other man stays quiet.

“Thank you,” you start, still very confused, “Um…who are you guys?”

The man next to you scoffs and replies, “You really don’t know?” You shrug your shoulders with honest curiosity, because last you checked on your map, you were still in Nebraska.

“Sugar,” Tommy laughs, “You are in Wyoming and you have stumbled upon Jackson.” You can’t believe it, you’re in disbelief and filled with sadness. Rosa just had to survive one more day and she would’ve made it with you.

“No way,” You laugh out of disbelief, the two men having a confused look on their faces.

“Yes ma’am. I’m Nate and he’s Tommy, he and his wife are a big founder of the camp,” Nate replies as he sits on the bed next to you, and that’s how you get introduced into the safe life of Jackson and how you meet your ultimate demise, Nate Rossi

[iviin-855]

I love those terminals where durandal is using the security officer as a rubber duck for talking about his issues and halfway through remembers he is being vulnerable in front of another person right now and goes "fuck. Do this for me, bye" and closes the connection

[mister13eyond]

being salty for a sec forgive me

anyways it drives me batshit crazy seeing people talking about "there is no such thing as traumadumping, you're my friend and i love you and it's okay to talk about your problems" and like. yes, i agree, i want to hear my loved ones tell me about their struggles and pains

that's not what fucking traumadumping is

its the same shit as people calling it "gaslighting" when what they mean is a person Told A Lie. these are not the same thing.

traumadumping is when someone who YOU DO NOT KNOW LIKE THAT, such as A STRANGER IN PUBLIC or a RANDO IN YOUR TWITCH CHAT, comes in and unloads a massive amount of extremely heavy subject material about their life. Unprompted. It's bad because you're doing it to a relative stranger or acquaintance who is left in an awkward position because they don't know you like that and are not prepared to handle it. it is not bad because talking to people about traumatic things is bad.

If y'all can't use the word right i'm taking it away and putting it on the shelf with all the OTHER weaponized therapyspeak yall keep using

[2500ji]

if you interrupt a conversation to start being self deprecating and expect everyone to immediately comfort you don’t be upset when i don’t say a word

[lacunasbalustrade]

Actually, although I haven’t even touched this book yet, it’s played such a huge part in my life. This is bringing up memories…..

[Warning. Traumadumping below.]

When I was thirteen, to the beginning of fourteen, I was intensely obsessed with Zodiacs. I also happened to be on Wattpad. That place had a lot of zodiac stories and because the search filter was so bad (I feel lucky to have ao3 now), I started a recommendation book for wattpad’s zodiac stories. because of Subaru’s recommendation of this book, I named it the Zodiac Train, in homage to the Buddyfight I loved so much. I had an online friend whom also lived Buddyfight, pretty much, and she’s still a lot older than me. Because we were friends, she joined the Train to help me manage the book. For context, I was only allowed one hour of handphone time a day back then, so I was having a lot of trouble keeping the book up, but I also didn’t want to disappoint my readers, who had grown into a really treasured audience of mine despite my unprofessional writing and spontaneous awards that you couldn’t submit your own writing to.

lots of people ended up joining the train.

I was really happy at first, especially since I have no real life friends. Since a toxic friendship in primary school, I’ve been alone of my own choice, uninterested in people who might hurt me in ways I can’t withdraw from, people who I won’t be able to get away from afterward. I’m still like that.

we were talking about doing real life meet ups, and I thought everything was well, but I guess I was a stress factor to them. I kept throwing out ideas for new projects because I was enthusiastic and wanted to discuss fun things with them, and they kept agreeing because they thought they could manage. I won’t say I don’t know, because I do - I was not doing as much as they hoped I would be doing, and I couldn’t do more than what I already was doing, and I told them as much.

soon they started complaining. Not quietly, not take-you-aside complaining. They were complaining about me right to my face, saying that I was lazy, saying that I was forcing a lot of things on them, that I was spoiled and guilt tripping them into doing things, things that they had agreed to but later considered a bad idea. All that was on me.

they apologised afterwards.

I quit Wattpad, I quit the discord account I was using, I left. And I didn’t get back into the online world until about a year later, when I made friends with a Cardfight Vanguard fic writer.

I don’t know why I’m sharing this. I don’t know why I’m saying this. I loved the time I spent with them before everything got demanding and the pressure flattened me into cardboard. I wish I had said goodbye properly. No one of them has an alive account anymore. I could never hate Buddyfight, but I did hate what happened to that friend of mine in the fandom, how I wasted her time. Up till the end, someone in the Train deleted the book. No one else had the password. No one knew who had done it. It sounds ridiculous, deleting a book headed by a thirteen year old girl to be petty, but it happened.

I’m still, scared that I’m too much. I’m scared to death that I am hurting someone without knowing it, that they feel obligated to follow up. That I’m going full steam ahead and ignoring them picking up on the places I’ve slacked. I am afraid that I will break a place that I loved again. And I’m afraid that people will hurt me with the things I’ve made again. I don’t think I would have even come here if it hadn’t seemed quiet and solitary and safe.

It’s not quiet, or safe, or solitary anymore, but it’s better than that because how do I say that I have come full circle, back to this book? Back to the milky railroad, and this time with a friend who treasures me more than I could ever know? Back to the places I truly loved rather than a place that made me die on the inside?

i'm only like 1/4 through kenji miyazawa's "night on the galactic railroad" but i can already tell why subaru likes it and recommended it to mel [x]

[graveyardmouth]

are you ever having a good time and then suddenly you get brainblasted by a random unwelcome memory

[mycenaae]

roy being so down to listen while his good friend and colleague ted talks about the pain of someone he loves moving on, and then the second ted's like "hold on let's make this a mutual situation" roy's like ACTUALLY I HAVE TO LEAVE NOW FOR REASONS ... i love him so much. he's repressing so hard he's gonna implode

[lupuslikethewolf]

sometimes i judge myself for reading and writing so much dark/dd:dne content around SA and taking comfort in it

but then it just Fucking Hits Me like:

oh yeah. it happened to me too.

[the-martyrfication-of-the-matron]

Dude idk you please stop traumadumping to me over iMessage

[cavvyiswriting]

VENT PIECE: TW, Gruesome, Graphic, Violent, Allusions to Past Violence

She didn't want to kill him, that was never the goal; the revolver was just to keep him from fighting back.

Getting him on the linoleum was the easy part, the hard part was actually hitting him.

He hurt her for years. Broke her down into a shell of a woman. But she hesitated now? Right when she had him where she wanted him?

A voice, quiet and shy, subtle in her head whispered, "No."

Without another thought, she raised her fist and struck once, hearing cartilage pop and bone crack, hot pain, and blood practically oozed from her clenched fist.

And again.

And again. Blood began to pool under his head, he wasn't fighting now.

Again, and again.

"She thinks her bones broke at about this point," her shrink would go on to recount in a report, "Didn't stop her, though."

That quiet voice so, so much louder now. Unbearably. Screaming in her ears, deafening her, and she became so deaf, she could no longer hear her own voice of reason.

She struck until his face was unrecognizable, and she no longer saw half of herself staring back.

And once he was maimed beyond recovery?

She noticed the kitchen knife, sharp and gleaming in the moonlight.

It was instinct, what she did, no thinking.

The same way you see a steak on a plate and separate it from the cow.

She saw meat, she ate.

She was so, so much worse than he was. But it wasn't her fault.

It wasn't her fault.

It wasn't her fault.

It wasn't her fault.

He made her do it.

And after the adrenaline had settled? Rationale stepped in, but it was broken, and wrong.

Years of fantasy and Mom's true crime shows. She was smart.

The blood was easy, enough bleach and elbow grease and anything will come out, even if it takes her fingerprints with it, oops.

The leftovers were harder, she had nowhere to put the rest of the meat, so she made it into a thin slurry, and poured it down the drain. She wanted to laugh, seeing his eyes dance around in the blender. She didn't.

The bones were hardest, how do you dispose of a whole skeleton inconspicuously? She thought for several days, too many days while it sat in the kitchen collecting dust.

Eventually people came looking when he hadn't been to work in a few days.

It wasn't too long before a good samaritan found her trying to crush up the bones in the basement with a sledgehammer too heavy for her malnourished form to lift with broken hands.

Lots of people asked her why she did it.

She told them about her imaginary friend, and the papers, and everything else.

They didn't understand that he made her do it.

That he made her worse.

“if you kill me, you’ll be just as bad as me.” The villain says, not knowing that the “hero” is so, so much worse than them.

[dumblemonchickenwing]

severe ableism tw, trigger warning, traumadumping tw

When I was born, I had a high chance of developing cerebral palsy (, too much stress for pregnant woman, early birth, + med workers messed up) but due to mother's efforts i guess, I developed without it. I can walk and grab things and do things as others can.

And as I live , years by years, I witness my parents being ableist. My mother calls disabled people "freaks" and she argued with me when I tried to say its wrong, by saying to me "Im just calling things the way they are. They are freaks."

My parents recently shared that when they were young they would be jealous of wheelchair users. Father said "Woah, so fortunate - they just sit and do nothing, when we do all the work" or something like that. My parents mistreat my grandmother who is blind and uses a wheelchair.

My parents already dont really like me much (they are helicopter parents, they worry about me, or used to, but they always dislike everything i do and call me a t@rrorist and other things). I can do the dishes but I dont move my hands perfectly and mother gets mad at me. She often calls me ''lazy'' and ''not trying enough'', ''pig'', ''dirty'', sometimes getting so mad she then leaves me and doesnt talk to me when I do things she asks me to do but when she sees i dont do it well . My mother already cries because of me and how awful i am because I dont do things the way she wants (do dishes in specific way, wash clothes well, etc.). She gets really mad at me and offended at me, like when ppl react by something that hurt them or someone insulting them, to me not washing my hair well, even though I dont do it on purpose.

I had been shouted at for not doing something i was asked to do fast enough. And I dont have CP. I can Do things.

And I am enveloped with fears. Had I got CP, what would have been happening to me ? - I thought to myself. If my mother is already upset with me, how much of their fury would I have gotten had I had CP.?

I dodged the bullet. I Am mega lucky in that regard, I wont argue with that. But thinking the ''what if'' scenario, and how much theyd hate me, makes me feel depressed.

[anti-anti-vents]

Every Conversation with an Anti Ever

Antis: it doesn’t make sense that people would argue that problematic ships help them cope. Aren’t you just retraumatizing yourself?

Proshipper: patiently explains how it ties into their trauma and coping mechanisms.

Antis: WOW LOOK AT THIS EVIL PROSHIPPER TRAUMADUMPING WITH NO WARNING?!!? I have no idea what could’ve prompted this. Proof they want damaging material to reach people who weren’t even looking for it.

Antis: anyways, as I was saying, not all coping mechanisms are healthy. Pro shippers are basically supporting self-harm.

Different proshipper: it never harmed me, I know how to engage responsibly

Antis: but look at this person who does feel like unhealthily engaging in content harmed them? Checkmate liberal

Hope y’all enjoyed my unhinged vent and find it somewhat relatable lol

[ezrazwrldz]

vent. i may have yapped. deleting later.

i genuinely thought i was doing better. but bpd has to come in and take all that away from me. all i’ve got that i’m clinging on to is the fact i’m 3 months self harm free. other than that, i’m an emotional, unstable wreck.

my friends think i’m a fucking psychopath. i’m deranged and i see things that aren’t there. i leave nothing but a path of destruction wherever i walk. i absolutely wreck everything i touch. i hear things that don’t exist, i see my fucking dad in every brown haired older man that walks past. i always panic for a moment, thinking it’s him. i missed out on my childhood because of that fucking dick. i’m 15, but i may as well be 50 with how fast i’ve been forced to mature. that man wrecked me. he fucking ruined my entire life. every traumatic experience has stemmed from what he did, at least a little. the bad people i got connected to and attached to were because i bonded to them through my trauma.

TW. DETAILED TRAUMA VENT RELATING TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND PEDOPHILIA AND SUICIDE AND GROOMING AND TRAUMADUMPING AND SELF HARM

my dad was a wife beater and alcoholic. i was as young as 4 when they broke up, but i has still seen everything. i don’t even fucking remember much of my childhood because of dissociation.

i do remember my 7th birthday, though.

we were in the car on the way home from my birthday party, and i was happy as anything. but, my mum and dad were in the same car, and that could never end well in a million years. they got into an argument, and my dad opened the car door and undid his seatbelt on the motorway, threatening to jump out and end his life right there, in front of me and my siblings. i screamed and cried and begged, resorting to screaming about it being the ‘worst birthday ever’ to try and distract them both and hope my dad forgot about the attempt he intended to make. and, i don’t remember anything else. i literally only remember the moment i screamed ‘this is the worst birthday ever’, and both my parents turned to me, my dad still stood there with the car door open and tried to convince me everything was fine. i knew better. i always knew better.

i remember when that man promised he would never leave me, but he forgot my birthday this year. there was a time when we didn’t talk for 4 years - only being forced back into each other’s vicinity when my mum and stepdad got mad that i went to an after school homework club that i wasn’t meant to go to and made me pack my bags, driving me to his house convincing me they were going to make me live with him. that they didn’t want me anymore.

that night was my breaking point, and the first time i went to social services about my mum and stepdad, and they got involved, which ruined my relationship with my parent even more. my stepdad was threatening to move out, and asking if i could be sent to a mental hospital for treatment or a facility for troubled kids on weekends or whatever. i hated being at home. i preferred school but that was hell too. that’s where i met her at 11 years old. i’m gonna refer to her as amy for privacy reasons. amy was a traumadumper. a REAL traumadumper, not just the tiktokified version of what a traumadumper is.

i, being the fucking idiot i am, became very close friends with amy. we bonded over similar trauma, and i’d try to talk to her about my problems as she said i could, but she’d always turn it on herself. she’d send me HORRIFIC self harm photos on snapchat, only to send me a ‘whoops!! trigger warning!!’ after, as if it was all some stupid fucking joke. amy would also make up fake trauma story after fake trauma story, each one more disturbing than the last. but, i was obsessed with her. i loved her so, so much, so i was completely blind to how poorly this girl was treating me. i loved her, and i wanted to save her. to save her from this “horrible life” that she had been through. eventually, she binned me off for trying to prevent someone from killing themself (which also turned out to be a joke as an attempt to bully me but that’s another story)

a few weeks after amy, i met one of my groomers. real sweetheart he was, pretending to be my age to sexually exploit me and using the fact i’m mentally unstable to take advantage of me. he was my world when i thought he was my friend. he meant everything to me. and, in classic bpd fashion, he became my FP. just like amy had previously.

so, when my parents found out and took him away from me, i fought tooth and nail to get him back, completely in denial, no matter what my parents or the literal police told me.

when the police decided to “take action”, they said they couldn’t do anything due to only having his discord and email. the problem? this fucking guy has my address and school. and he’s still out there. i mean, it’s been a long time now, but i still get nightmares and live in fear.

[ballinandcantgetup452]

Terry McGinnis is the only person who can be the next Batman

I don't normally make hard statements like this. I typically hate it when somebody makes hard statements like this, but hear me out.

No prior Batfamily character can be the next Batman. I'll keep it brief and explain why going person by person (obvious headcanon warning)

Dick is definitely a likelier candidate than most. He can cover for Batman if the need ever arises. But I believe that Dick Grayson hates the idea of actually becoming Batman. He can play the role. He was a circus kid and he's got the heart of a theatre kid, he can play the role all day long. But he was the first. He arguably saw Batman at his natural worst. He and Alfred, anyways. I'm going to drop some OP lore to further elaborate. My dad's a pastor. He's a really good pastor. He's a good man, and he may be an ass, but that's because I know him as "dad". For YEARS, people would tell me that I was just like him, and for a long time, I wanted to be him. It's what boys do when their dad is at the very least decent. But, as I got older, I saw the tapestry and saw the flaws. I saw how tired being a pastor made my dad. I saw how much of his life being a pastor was taking up. I would never tell my dad to stop being a pastor, because that's him. That's his calling; and if he was anything else, then he'd be a soulless, husk of a man. But I've seen what being a pastor does to you, and I don't want that. I want to be better than that. Dick Grayson has seen what The Batman does to a person. He's seen Bruce do things that Dick would never do, and the idea of being the next Batman is something that got soured to him. And it definitely doesn't help that that's what a lot of people used to do to him. So yeah, traumadumping aside, Dick would never STAY Batman. Even if he doesn't know it.

I honestly think it's best if Jason stays as far away from the idea of The Batman legacy as possible. Jason's at the best possible spot right now. He's taken his trauma and has turned it into his empowerment. I don't care what Three Jokers says, that's dumb. Joker's an ass, we don't listen to him. ESPECIALLY if he's swapped out his gun for a crowbar and has a no-kill rule, Jason could be Red Hood until he's 90 and it'll be narratively fulfilling.

Tim is one I see get thrown around a lot. However, I believe that The Batman would absolutely DESTROY him and he would be too stubborn to acknowledge it. One common denominator I believe every Robin goes through is the realization of "oh wow, Bruce is not okay" and trying to be better than that. While I do believe that Tim went through that, I also believe that Tim is arrogant enough to believe that he's better than that. Even putting all of the "alternate Tim evil gun toting Batman" futures aside, I think that Tim is obsessive enough as is. Giving him the mantle of The Batman would cause him to obsess even more to be like Bruce thus causing ANOTHER evil gun toting alternate future Batman. Tim is best as Red Robin. An independent agent that can go well with ANY Batman to keep them on the straight and narrow.

Babs is best as Oracle. No I will not be elaborating. If you want her to be Batgirl, then say that she can Batgirl every once and a while but doing it stresses out the microchip in her back.

Steph is best as Spoiler. She backdoored her way into the Batfamily by being competent enough as Spoiler. I honestly wish that she could be like Batwoman and establish herself as Batfamily adjacent and have her own supporting cast and such. If she does have one, then I'm sorry. Cassie is kind of a blind spot.

Sadly, Cassandra Cain, Duke Thomas, and Harper Row are even bigger blindspots of mine. From what I've seen of them, I can't think of any reasons they couldn't be Batman. However, I can't think of any reasons why they especially should be Batman.

Damian Wayne is my personal vote for becoming the next Batman out of everybody pre established. Not for any birthright reasons. That's dumb. Admittedly, DCeased really turned me on to the idea. I think that the idea of Damian being the child raised by Bruce that turned out the best is a really good idea. In retrospect, I guess the idea of birthright is technically why I'm choosing Damian. BUT, understand I'm doing it with the caveat that Damian is fully developed as a person and as a character. That is the END of his arc.

HOWEVER, Terry McGinnis takes the cake for me in terms of Batman successor. This is going off of the idea that he isn't a Bruce clone. I don't know how canon we've made that, but canon is relative, so I'm saying it's not for the sake of argument. Terry is an outsider. He has no baggage with the idea of The Batman. He's just a guy working through some grief with The Batman being used as a vehicle. He doesn't know any of the Bruceisms. He never had to explain to his friends that his dad is crazy and he's sorry he made contingency plans for all of them. Terry McGinnis gets to make Batman his own. And, luckily, he gets to have a fully realized Bruce to guide him along the way. I also think that it opens so much more story potential. It's essentially a soft reboot for The Batman as an idea. Everybody else can be out doing their own thing. But I think this works in the same way that Miguel O'Hara can ALSO be Spider-Man. I believe that every intimate Batfamily member would follow Bruce's footsteps by making Batman an UNHEALTHY obsession. Terry would be different, he'd lead the pack by turning The Batman into something HEALTHY.

Or maybe I don't read enough comics and all my interpretations are super surface level. Let me know. I'm willing to be wrong.

[tornoleander]

I'm in the middle of reading wytyaa cuz I saw you mention it at some point and it sounded cool

Anyway, if wytyaa Jay and bbnb Jay ever met, and you somehow got them to traumadump on eachother, both of them would think "First Master, this guy went through hell. Compared to him I had it easy." Meanwhile neithed had it easy and both went through hell.

Might be wrong cuz I haven't finished wytyaa yet but I'm gonna go back to reading now byeeeeee

Oh I’m going to rant for a while because I love talking about and comparing these Fics.

YES, I can absolutely see both them sitting there and invalidate their own experiences. (Unless one of them gets a very important lesson about comparing Trauma)

Art under cut

Trauma dumping though? Currently I doubt wytyaa Jay would. And while bbnb Jay seems willingly to talk to his therapist there’s not a chance 16 year old him from an alternate universe will learn the extent of the shit I had to read through.

The have similar canon complaint story line, to an extent. Both fix my many issues with Cannon and add so much more. Both deal in forced labor extreme physical abuse blood wounds broken bones Starvation With emotional abuse from Nadakhan’s and the crew. But everything beyond that is where things drastically differ

Biggest difference being Explicit vs Mature

Wytyaa being vaguely 16+ and won’t go past implying anything sexual. So a lot is left to interpretation, which is usually easier to handle.

While Bbnb has be 18+ Does not shy away from anything….. no matter how much you wish it would most popular ninjago dead dove for a reason.

Wytyaa Jay is drugged out for the 2 months he has to deal with the withdrawal and wiped memories coming back to him. This scrambles the order you learn about what he went through. Vengestone sorta poisons him, the power suppression is painful and causes long term damage.

In the end Neither Jay is given a moment to feel safe and comfortable over months they are always in extreme danger this is the sort of damage that turns ptsd into C-ptsd✨

Like you said, neither had it easy they both went through hell.

But while comparing trauma is ultimately unhelpful experiences effect people differently both Jays are very traumatized I can tell you one of these was A LOT harder to get through as a reader. VERY much not the same reader experience.

Here’s are the fics with the obligatory READ THE TAGS and warnings at the top of each chapter. They are there for your safety when r themes of sa can be helpful and hurtful to some. Know what you can handle..

When you think your all alone by @mondothebombo

Bending but never breaking by @writing-hat

Both authors are awesome and have read each other Fics lmao.

Never posted this but a long while ago when both fics left off on angst for a long time I messaged them the same thing and got these replies.

The Audacity of hat to blame mondo lol.

If any of you like these fics follow me cause I have a lot of art coming. Also if you have any asks don’t be shy! I could rant for so much longer.