Reblog If I Can Spam You With Boops

anyone else prefer whump without a whumper?? just me??

i mean like. there’s a whumpee and a caretaker + the rest of the team (if there is one). but no whumper

like. instead of the whump coming from a whumper, it comes from natural causes instead. so like sickness, weather (think whump involving hypothermia, heat exhaustion, getting sick from the rain, etc), events (like getting injured from let’s say a building collapse or breaking a bone or something like that)

THAT’S the kind of whump that really gets me going. no torture tropes, nothing like that. idk i just feel very much alone on this one, so i think it’d be neat if there were others out there who feel this way too

People underestimate how much it fucks you up to be subtly excluded as a kid. I would try to talk to my classmates and be met with disinterest or annoyance. The one friend I had, who I clung to and nodded along to his every word, had other friends he liked just as much or more. And his other friends didn’t care for me at all.

I look back at pictures from the time and see how separated I was from them. I remember knowing I was different. I remember posing questions about the world to the girls playing next to me and realizing that they had never asked the same ones to themselves. That the ways we thought couldn’t be more different.

I kept myself amused with my own fanatical stories and musings in my head. I would wander the playground on a circular path, imagining a friend and being sorely disappointed when it didn’t feel as real as I’d hoped.

There was a bubble separating me from everyone else, thin, and nearly invisible, but with a pearly sheen you could catch under the right conditions. I knew it was there, they knew it was there, and it changed me

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First <- Part 18 <- Part 19 -> Part 20

Masterpost

cold take: jason todd smokes cigarettes

hot take: jason would never smoke cigarettes due to ptsd from dying of smoke inhalation

hotter take: jason forces himself to smoke cigarettes to prove to himself that he isn’t affected by it anymore

Tim: So Duke, you officially been at the manor a year, how are you liking it?

Duke: I’m finally settling in. I’m no longer worried Bruce is going to send me away.

Jason: I get that. I thought I was just some charity case. I was terrified that I would mess up and end up back on the streets. I stole a bunch of expensive looking things and kept them in a go bag. I was prepared.

Damien: I too feared being sent away. My grandfather would have been disappointed. I was prepared to fight to the death to prove my place in the family.

Dick: I was sleeping with a knife in my sock in case he sent me back juvie.

Cass: (signing) I feared disappointing him. I felt like I needed to earn my place here.

Steph: He couldn’t get rid of me if he tried. I am like glitter.

Tim: Same. I think he tried to kick me out like 6 times. I just laughed and walked past him.

Duke: Are we just going to ignore Dick’s knife comment?

Babygirl I can find places to sit down you didn't even think were possible

EDIT: This is a post about my experience as a physically disabled person, if you are able-bodied do not hijack this post

I’m just gonna say it, cuz people certainly have said it enough about Dick.

Tim was an asshole post BFTC. Yeah, he was. Sorry not sorry. I know losing Robin hurt him and yeah Dick probably could have handled it better, but Tim was the one who made the decision to avoid Dick in the aftermath and refuse to even talk to him when Dick kept trying to reach out and check on him. Like, hello, Tim, guess what gets in the way of a big brother ‘who wronged you’ trying to make things better? You not letting him talk to you even.

(An entirely different scenario from when Bruce fired Dick, because the problem between that and Dick eventually reconciling with Bruce was that Bruce didn’t ever reach out and take the initiative to try and reconnect with Dick, when Bruce was the one who made it clear that Dick wasn’t needed there anymore and did nothing to say or suggest he was even wanted, when Dick lingered for weeks hoping he would, and it was never Dick’s responsibility to try and make the first move to repair their bond after that. This isn’t comparable to Dick and Tim because Dick didn’t do the same thing as Bruce, he did the opposite of what Bruce did because he learned from what Bruce did….thus he kept reiterating how much he needed Tim and wanted him to stay and Tim was the one who refused all the gestures actually being made).

And enough about all the people Tim lost, because guess what? Dick lost his second father too. And he’d not long before Tim lost Jack and Kon and Steph, lost his entire city. After his circus, chock full of all his remaining first family from his childhood, the extended family of friends and honorary aunts and uncles who’d helped raised him, was burned down around him with massive casualties. After his apartment building, which was chock full of people he canonically had made friends with and formed a freaking community of their own with, had been blown up with only one survivor, just to hurt him. After he’d left the Titans because he’d lost multiple teammates in the Titans Hunt and watched Joey killed in front of him, been raped by Mirage and blamed by his teammates for it, lost his several years long relationship with Kory in part because of it and various other manipulations that had nothing to do with either of them but rather his being brainwashed and then Raven’s messing with their emotions and on and on and on….

And after he’d lost Donna, and after he’d been raped again by Tarantula and after he’d lost his relationship with Barbara over Tarantula’s manipulations, to such an extent that when he went to Barbara the night his circus was burned down, she let him stay for the night and then told him he had to go in the morning, after he’d lost Jason and killed the Joker over it and feared he’d lost Bruce’s trust because of it to the extent that he was downright suicidal in the wake of Blockbuster’s death, after Stephanie Brown a girl he barely even knew had become the second kid to die in his family’s colors without him ever having a say in them wearing them in the first place, and then getting Jason back only to have him try and kill Dick’s new little brother Tim, and then try and kill him while they were fighting for the cowl, right after Dick’s newest little brother Damian tried to kill Tim and now Dick was stuck trying to raise him himself, and felt the burden of having to teach Damian to not do stuff like that, because he couldn’t just pretend that Damian wasn’t Bruce’s son, wasn’t his brother, and so he felt the pressure of having to try and find some way to turn Damian into someone who could coexist with Tim so that Dick wasn’t forced to yet again choose between brothers like when Jason was going after Tim, because yeah, Tim was the target and there’s no substitution for that but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still royally suck to be the big brother who feels obligations and ties to all three of these boys and considers them all family because of how they’re tied to him whether he likes it or not so he’s constantly struggling with trying to find some way for them all to coexist because he can’t lose any more family…..

And all of this happens in the span of like, three or four years comic book time, and then their second dad dies and Dick is suddenly stuck living his dead father’s life, running the company he never wanted, being the Batman when all he ever wanted to be was his own hero of his own invention, protecting a city that has taken from him time and time again, raising his dead father’s son as though he’s practically his own, and he just had to battle his brother Jason for the cowl he didn’t even want with it ending with Jason falling from a train and potentially to his death again (since Dick didn’t know yet if he had even survived that for sure or not) when its not like Dick has issues with family members falling to their deaths in front of him….

And Dick gives his newest little brother Damian the mantle Robin that means family in his eyes, because its the only way he knows of to make Damian believe that Dick actually wants him here, wants to form a bond, and isn’t just doing this out of obligation to Bruce, as Damian did believe at that point and why he was keen on leaving….and he tries to explain to Tim that this was an act of desperation, of necessity, of he didn’t know what else to do, and it has nothing to do with Tim not being good enough, or not wanting Tim as family, or wanting Tim to leave, its the exact opposite, he sits there and tells Tim he feels Tim is too good to treat as a junior partner, that he’s his equal and he could never be Batman to his Robin again because Robin takes the lead from Batman and Dick no longer sees Tim as someone who needs to follow, and that’s why Dick needs him to stay, needs him to help him in Gotham because he’s fucking drowning here…..

And Tim just goes, whatever, fuck you, you took away Robin which was the only thing that matters to me (no mention of the fact that he only had it in the first place because of Dick) and just outright refuses to respond to any of Dick’s frequent attempts to check on him, to see how he’s doing, to acknowledge that Dick is just fucking worried about him because he’s stretched impossibly thin and all he knows is he can’t bear to lose anyone else, it’ll break him, he’s lost all he possibly can right now…..

And Tim just…..doesn’t fucking care. Peaces off to pursue his (still lacking evidence) Bruce isn’t dead theory because Dick did something he didn’t like and won’t believe him without evidence about the thing he always says every time someone who’s close to him dies and has led to him going down some very dark roads in the past but why should past behavior worry Dick at all……

And sorry not sorry, but if you can reframe every one of Dick’s issues with Bruce about Robin as him being an immature spoiled brat, but that doesn’t sound like sulking to you, I’m calling foul. 

*Shrugs*

Tim was kinda a brat back then. I know he had a lot going on and was dealing with a lot, but Dick was too, and all he wanted was to know that his little brother was freaking alive and Tim was like no, that’s too big an ask right now, you made me mad so stew on that bro. BYE.

Yeah Tim was a teenager, but Dick wasn’t even eighteen when he left home, and if he has to always be a big boy or else he’s a spoiled kid throwing a temper tantrum for not getting his way, I don’t see why Tim (who preboot, was definitely at least close to eighteen at the time) can’t be expected to be a big boy too and at least say “Dick I’m still mad at you and hurt, but I at least recognize that you are going through shit too right now and so I can at least be bothered to check in and let you know I’m alive and okay still and you haven’t lost another family member while they’re hating you and blaming you and thus making it likely your fault too.”

Are Jason Todd stans really out here cribbing about Dick and Damian content ? Are you fr right now ? Just saw someone say they "hate how Dick treats Jason" with reference to Dick attempting to adopt Jason in his original origin story. Dick has NEVER mistreated Jason during his Robin days. In fact, Dick NEVER mistreats Jason even after Jason -

(a) attempted to kill Tim in Titans Tower

(b) attempted to kill Tim and Damian during Battle for the Cowl

(c) actually killed people wearing the Nightwing suit leading to the city and police thinking their hero Nightwing had turned evil

(d) attempted to forcibly unclothe Dick and a minor Damian in front of cameras.

Please Jason Todd stans. Your singular fixation on a fictional character is understandable. Even sympathetic. But don't try to INVENT negative stories about other characters just to make your uwu fav the best there is. That's just plain whining and it is entirely pathetic to watch that breakdown.

Do you know why so many folks Dick and Damian's relationship? I can take it or leave it Damian but whose heart didn't fill up with fondness when Dick returned from Spyral and received THAT welcome hug from Damian? What did Jason do? Punch Dick. Remember, this was after Jason had laughed mockingly at Dick's funeral (in the scrapped issue that was replaced with Nightwing #30). Remember, there is precedence to such behaviour from Jason. When Talia and Deathstroke got Chemo dropped on Bludhaven with Nightwing in the city, Jason was confronting Batman. At Batman's dismayed expression at Chemo's touchdown, Jason mocked Bruce with the loss of Dick.

So please can it with the "how could Dick mistreat Damian?" because some folks wrote fics on Dick and Damian but not Dick and Jason. Maybe if Jason hadn't been so committed to being a murderer and a serial killer? Who knows then.

But then again, imagine being jealous of a child who discarded so much of his lifetime learnings and embraced the philosophy of compassion and empathy that Dick endeavours to follow every day and set as an example for his younger teammates.