Literally anyone meeting bruce and his family for the first time: So how did you get so many kids by 30?
Dick: HE WAS A TEENAGE DELINQUENT
Jason: *shouting over him* HE LEFT MY MOTHER AT THE ALTAR
*tim is sitting, just happy to be included*
Bruce: BE-quiet. They're ADOPTED!
Jason: *not a beat missed* Because he’s never known the touch of a woman.
Most people will probably never understand the fear of looking into a mirror, and the person looking back at you isn't you
It's like a horror movie, only it's real, and you can't do shit about it
sometimes disability does mean inability. and that's fine. "disability doesn't mean inability" is fine, but please follow up with "inability doesn't mean a lack of worth"
growing up, my mum always told me, whenever i went to the doctors or any sort of health professional, that it was important that i told them that i was hypermobile. she'd done the tests with me (herself being hypermobile and disabled in large part because of it) and though she didn't know the details, she knew that hypermobility was important to have in my health record.
so it was to my great surprise and displeasure that, whenever i told doctors i was hypermobile, it was skipped over. never addressed, never touched on, not even a comment to belie what that meant for me. i myself didn't know the impact hypermobility could have on a person, but my mother had been insistent about that fact. it was important, so why did no one else seem to think so?
i grew up with kids in school who were on the extreme ends of hypermobility. i knew a boy in middle school who could put both feet behind his head. i knew a girl in high school with long, spindly fingers who showed me how far backwards her arm could bend.
both of them had health problems, which became more profound as they aged. i never knew the details, but it stuck out that they were hypermobile, and so was i, and with my own health declining there HAD to be a connection.
common knowledge gives the vague definition of hypermobility as extra stretchy muscles, of being double-jointed. it comes with warnings not to push your hypermobile body into the extremes. don't overextend, you will hurt yourself.
the warnings are warranted. the importance isn't overplayed. these things i knew, but i didn't know why. and without knowing why, they were warnings that i could never truly obey, despite how conservative i became with my movements in a vain attempt to protect what little ability i had left.
hypermobility is NOT stretchy muscles. muscles are supposed to stretch. in fact, it's important to their health (those conservative movements prolly hurt more than helped!). hypermobility affects connectives tissues, and lands under the umbrella of Ehlers-Danlos Sydromes (there are a few) which can range in severity from affecting skin and tendons to affecting blood vessels and organs.
severity is rare, and much easier to catch. this post is for the people who are "a little hypermobile" so that they can understand what makes their body different.
a muscle and its associated tendons are like a hammock. the muscle is the fabric you lie in, stretching to accomodate the load. tendons are the rope that attaches the fabric to the trees, providing a secure anchor for the muscle to operate.
so, what happens when the ropes on the hammock are also stretchy? well, you sit in the hammock and your ass hits the ground.
now imagine that the fabric of the hammock has the ability to clench like a muscle. a normal hammock doesn't need to work that hard to stop ass from meeting ground, because it has sturdy anchors. a hammock with stretchy rope, however, must exert several times more effort, because the more the muscle pulls, the more the tendons stretch.
in short, hypermobility forces your muscles to work harder, because they must first pass the threshold of stretch the tendons are capable of before it can actually do the task it's meant to do. the stretchier the tendons, the harder the muscle needs to clench, the easier it is to overwork.
this info reframed everything i was doing with my body. small tasks of strength required the effort of much larger tasks, and larger tasks ranged from extremely difficult to impossible. holding my arms up so i could work above my head required monumental effort. with an anatomical peculiarity of the feet, i needed to use several muscles in my calves and hips just to stand without losing balance.
so no fucking wonder i crashed and burned in my 20s, when everything i did took all of my strength to accomplish. no wonder i would contort myself out of shape, so flexible that i could anchor myself into extreme poses just to give my muscles a moment of relief, overstretching myself without ever realizing why, and what damage i could be doing.
so, some things to remember:
overextending isn't good for you, but it shouldn't be your biggest concern. instead, be aware of overexertion, both how LONG you are using a muscle without breaks and how HARD you are using it.
small, frequent breaks are your best friend if you need to do something for awhile.
when you take breaks, stretch the muscles you'd been using.
if you need to exert effort to maintain a pose (whether it's sitting, standing, etc) examine whether you need to be clenching those muscles, and why.
actually whenever you are using muscles, try to train yourself to use as few as possible. you can practice by sitting or standing, and relaxing as many muscles as you can before you tip over. finding a sense of balance can make your life so much easier.
become acquainted with what relaxed muscles feel like. chronic tension can distort your perception of this, and result in habitual tension.
so yeah. if you're hypermobile, that's important. don't let a doctor's dismissal make you think otherwise. take care of yourself and know what you are and aren't capable of.
Tim tells the Batclan he's going on a space mission with Young Justice for a few weeks, he's got everything sorted civilian side and his cases and patrol routes covered, and also if any of his usual Rogue's Gallery suddenly comes looking for him don't worry about it.
And all of that is fine and normal - except that last part hey Tim what the fuck does that mean?
and Tim just goes it's fine don't worry about it anyway gotta go bye! and then he just bounces
and everything is fine until not even a day later when Babs forwards them a video Red Robin uploaded to his social medias that is a music video of him (Red Robin) seductively lip-syncing along to Chappell Roan's "My Kink is Karma" against a backdrop of fail compilation clips of several of the villains Tim has a particular grudge against, including Azrael, Lex Luthor, and most prominently Ra's al Ghul.
so there's Tim, in a form-fitting catsuit styled like his Red Robin costume, in heels, feeling himself up with a video clip in the background showing Ra's tripping on his own robes and face planting into the brickwork, evidence he dyes out some of the gray in his hair, his sash coming undone and pants falling off in the middle of a fight, trying to swipe the effects of a glitterbomb off of himself, etc.
It all ends with the Mean Girls clip of "why are you so obsessed with me?"
The video is immediately viral.
(There's some clips of Red Hood in there fucking up but Jason can't even be mad because he's laughing so hard he's gonna throw up)
Tim's Rogues absolutely DO show up to Gotham looking for him, and while they all want revenge, Red Robin is THEIR arch enemy like HELL are they going to work with these other embarrassments, so they all start fighting each other and it is absolutely CHAOS (Lex decides discretion is the better part of valor and makes a statement that no of course he has nothing against Red Robin he has no idea why he was included in that video haha yes of course it was Very Funny when a bird accidentally pooped on his head he is Very Capable of laughing at himself Thank You, and then he quietly goes to one of his vacation houses and moodily drinks for several days waiting for things to blow over)
Tim, meanwhile, is having a wonderful vacation with Young Justice, catching up with Lobo and Slobo, chasing down some space pirates, and just getting out of Gotham and away from his Rogues trying to challenge him/seduce him/kill him/whatever.
Bruce is taking the constant psychic damage of having the image of softcore Red Robin erotica burned into his brain along with the realization that way, way, WAY too many of Tim's Rogues want to sleep with him like an absolute champ. (Dick is not taking it like a champ, Dick is taking it like an unhinged vengeful wraith and has had to be benched for trying to tear out Ra's throat with his teeth.)
Stephanie is having the Time of Her Life. Damian cannot look anyone in the eye and absolutely cannot look Ra's (or his mother who ALSO showed up prominently in the video) in the face and is Not Having the Time of His Life.
(Jason is with Steph on this one, he is having SUCH a blast, this is so fucking hysterical)
Just after dusk the birds go silent.
🌘🪶🦇♥️
Non-phone camera version under the cut
After Jason’s resurrection he finds that his body works… wrong somehow.
Some days he forgets to breathe until he wants to say something and finds there’s no air in lungs. Other days his body goes eerily cold until someone points out that his lips are blue and he needs to warm up.
And some days his heart stops beating in his sleeps.
It’s fine, really. It always starts again eventually a short while after he wakes up. And yeah, of course it was a bit scary the first couple times it happened but it’s not like his resurrection and Pit-dip came with an instruction manual, so this is probably pretty normal stuff, all things considered. He is kind of the definition of “undead”.
The real trouble starts when he forgets to mention those little details to the Batfamily when he stays over for the night.
you can always give your blorbos mobility aids btw . you can always make them disabled its always morally correct
more on tim being a bird
the bats have titled Tim's sleeping habits "nesting" when he does actually take yhe time to nap. he likes to be cozy
*struggles while writing* i suck and writing is hard
*remembers some ppl use ai* i am a creative force. i am uncorrupted by theft and indolence. i am on a journey to excellence. it is my duty to keep taking joy in creating.
I actually need some fanfic, where Bruce and Jason are in the middle of some argument, and a casual (and a well-practiced with Dick before) sentence leaves his mouth, something along the lines "How old do you think you are?!", meaning that he is acting childishly. And because Jason is irritated, and his tongue runs loose in his anger, he screams back that he is nineteen, and Bruce just freezes, because... Oh. Jason is nineteen. He is a fucking kid - his kid - that lost years of his teenhood, and was forced back without anyone giving him a space to catch up, with everyone else already treating him like an adult... When he isn't.
Bug || 22 they/them || pure chaos + lots of neurodivergent and Batman shit
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