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yeetus-feetus · 4 months

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Because the foster system is absolute shit, and I'd imagine Gotham's foster system is probs 10x worse, I've had an idea.

We know Stephanie's baby is not Tim's. But we also know Tim was willing to step up and help with the baby regardless, we know he was there for the baby's delivery too.

We also know Stephanie is not ready for a child, and that's okay. She was still basically a child herself at the time and she also feared for her babies safety if she ever was to keep it. It's okay for her to choose to give it up.

But I propose maybe Tim is the one who gets too attached here. And he's confused with himself because this child isn't even his. But he loved Stephanie, he still does though it's platonic now, and I just think he'd see that baby and immediately love it just as much.

And Tim knows he could never take this baby on just by himself, and Stephanie would never let him because again, their jobs are too dangerous.

Tim is also aware of how trash the foster system is, especially in Gotham.

So I'm imagining Tim somehow convinces Ma and Pa Kent to raise this little girl, because he can't imagine anyone else more trustworthy and qualified.

They're always down for a new kid. Ma had wanted a large family all her life, but unfortunately she was never able to have kids of her own. Clark was a miracle sent to her from above and Kon was a blessing in disguise, Ma thanks the powers that be for the chance to raise both boys.

But the Kent's have never had a daughter, and I feel like they would welcome this baby in with open arms. A little girl for them raise and dress up, and Ma's already started crocheting her a cute little cardigan.

And I think Stephanie was more worried than her child's safety than anything else too, so I think she would feel a lot less anxious handing the baby over to the Kents.

Like think of the story potential of the Kent's raising this little girl. She's safe away from all the vigilantism, and she has a normal childhood with two stable parents, just like her mother wanted for her. And then the heartbreak of that vigilante lifestyle still finding this girl despite all this anyways.

Just imagine how devestating a storyline that could be. You sacrifice a relationship with this child so she can have a better life, and it's all for nothing, because there's your little girl in a Kevlar suit swinging from the rooftops.

It was inevitable really, vigilantism is in her blood. Gotham is in her blood.

It doesn't matter that all she's known are the rolling fields of farmland, the soft embrace of a small country town, Gotham is still something living and breathing inside of her, and no one from Gotham can ever truly leave.

And you can't even be mad at the people who raised her, you can't fault them for this because they have done everything within their power, they've been good parents.

All Stephanie can do is despair. Because Tim promised her, he promised this child would never have to know the struggles of their own lives.

Her daughter will never be safe on the crumbling rooftops of this cursed city.

But here she is anyways, despite all efforts and sacrifice.

Also I feel like, if this girl is raised by the Kent's, when she does eventually come back it will be much easier for her to build up a real relationship with her mother when they reconnect. Because as someone with complicated family, I feel like it's very common for a child to want to seek out their bio-parents even if the parents who raised them were super loving and caring.

Sometimes you find your bio-parent/s and you regret ever looking for them, regret ever asking the people who raised you to help you find them. But other times you get welcomed back with open arms, wet apologies, and a good reason for why they gave you away.

I just think it'd be something nice to explore. More representation ig. Like all of Bruce's kids have known their parents before being adopted. But we've never gotten to explore what it's like for a lot of people who never even knew their bio-parents.

I mean sure, we got a glimpse of that desperation to fill the feeling of a missing piece with Jason, but we all know how that ended for him. His mother was a really bad person, and she's the reason he ends up 6feet under.

But I really want representation that shows not all parents who give up their kids are bad people. Some of them are actually doing what's best for that child because they have the maturity to understand that they wouldn't be able to provide a safe and stable environment for a kid. They're puting the child's needs first.

And I'd really like to see the struggle of a child who's only known the people raising her as her parents and despite how good they are, still feel like something is missing.

#I understand Clark also sorta had this experience but like he has lazers that come out of his eyes and his bio-parents aren't alive #I want a story with similar premise I guess but with the child's parents still currently alive so she has to grapple with that fact #Clark was sent away because his parents died #Which might be a lot easier to come to terms with than the idea that maybe your parents never wanted you and chose to give you up #And then the part where you meet said parent and feel guilty for ever thinking you simply weren't enough for them #You learn that you were enough and that you are loved and that's why you were sent away #I just really want to see that #stephanie brown #dc #tim drake #ma kent #ma and pa kent #story ideas #adoption

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hecksupremechips · 1 month

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Honestly though I think it’s really a bad sign when I look at Shin Tsukimi and literally feel like he’s a self insert 😩

#the klock keeps ticking #yttd #i wanna replay yttd so bad but i also like Gotta play other stuff with the time i have akskks #but yeah the brainrot this specific character has given me idk if I ever really talked about it but it was BAD #i like obsessively played the game in like 3 days and it was not a good idea lol but just like shin #i had to take like a week to recover from this guy cuz i couldnt stop thinking about him and how hes just like me fr #first off just the very inconsistent personality hes got going on that is very me he has these different personalities he wears to cope with #all the traumatic shit happening hes both so helpless its comical and so manipulative its terrifying #and idk its really interesting how like good and bad he is at being manipulative like hes very smart and can analyze weaknesses and lie so #good not even he knows the truth but hes also grasping at straws he doesnt think things through at all #like the second main game he just didnt prepare at all hes fumbling his way through everything its going so bad #he just wants to go home he wants to outdo the game makers but hes being used by them so bad he wants it to STOP #and its just the way that like. it hits so hard cuz you know hes really not a bad person not at all he doesnt want any of this hes just #being horribly manipulated and doing whatever he can to survive but its also really scary how #well hes able to lie and manipulate and claw his way through but hes also weaker than a grade schooler #and you never forget that either and as much as he cheated his way through he still failed it was all just a cheap trick in the end #and all of this hits very hard like his personality is eerily similar to mine and just the way he thinks and acts #cuz im the same like im weak and a dweeb who likes funny cats but im also emotionally detached and observant and selfish #but where it hits the hardest is his relationship with midori like oooof that one was too real just like #the first person who was ever his friend was horribly abusive and treated him like a child and didnt respect any boundaries #and he just got sick pleasure out of seeing shin be upset and he was like. a groomer #and shin was fucking relieved when he died but also kept his scarf and adopted his personality to survive #and still goes by sou after ch2 and the scene that gets me the most is when shin ai is asked about his relationship with midori #and you can just SEE how horrified shin is because his deepest shame his abuse is being shared to everyone without his consent #and hes reliving it all in that moment and literally seeing who he used to be experiencing the abuse #he just curls into himself and like covers his ears and pulls his hair thats literally what i do AAAAAA #im just so grateful for the direction they took this character kokichi ouma wishes he was shin tsukimi so bad #and yeah just like damn. its scary how similar i am to shin like damn i really am going through it huh oof #I LOVE HIM I LOVE HIM I WILL DEFEND HIM WITH MY LIFE HE DID ALL OF THAT STUFF YOUR HONOR BUT LISTENNNN #have you considered that hes cute and smart and weird and maybe just needs friends who arent assholes

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vargaslovinghours · 4 months

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Y’all are being subjected to my Sims 2 tests, so there

The other set of Vargases came over for a visit and Scriabin picked up Shmee and started talking to Scriabin through him. Very normal, very usual

I downloaded some circle-glasses recolours and hghghh they look so good! Closer every day to his final details! Getting ever closer!

Edgar too! I made him a custom hair with a lighter undercut - I’m mostly happy with it, probably could’ve shifted it a shade closer to his skintone but the texturing was weird no matter what :P And his stripey shirt! I wish Body Shop didn’t have that hands-on-hips pose lol, it looks so much better in-game, but that’s all the better :)

I got some new clothes for Todd as well! As soon as I saw this ‘fit I was like “Oh that’s 100% Todd there he is.” Scriadad hug ♥ So cute

Foot-dancing together stopp it’s so cute!!

The way he looks at them stoppp <3 <3 They kept doing this right up til they left for home haha, Todd’s giggles are the cutest

Used SimPE to save him to the Body Shop, I now have infinite copies of The Boyyyy ♪

Moved him in with his “parents” as just shadow people basically, they’re not gonna matter in a bit as long as I remember how to get the Social Worker/Adoption process to work properly. Get her Todd!!

Wanna play? :D

Menacing :(

Look, Todd, your new dads are here! Initially I wasn’t sure who I wanted to adopt him, got lots of options; the first passes, the married couple with their own Todd, Johnny?? He definitely doesn’t have the facilities for a child lol But these are the ones that showed up on their own, so the married Vargases are the winners!

Scriabin cares more about him than his actual parents ;; A stranger off the street shows him more care! Not that it’s a high watermark

Look at him being a good dad!

Weh, he just wants friends ;; Poor baby

Best timeline, thank you

While we wait for CPS, let’s get some other interactions in! Nny is mean so he tended to prank the other two with a nose flick - mostly Edgar lol ♪ Now kiss

“Oh please don’t break all my bones~ :3” I love Todd looking up at them haha <3

Pffft, I think he was talking about the other Scriabin and just how attractive he is. Classic Scriabin. Alternatively, also funny to imagine him bragging himself up about how he’s just so handsome that Edgar can’t help but love him hahaha ♪

Allow me to tickle you with my KNIFE! >:D

Get a load of this guy lol

He ended up passing out at one point - I forgot which motives make CPS show up >.> - and completely 0%’d his comfort, but for some reason stargazing increased it?? It’s the same ground wh

Is two not enough to satisfy your butterfly bloodlust child?? He ended up with three, I had him release them before he was picked up by the Social Worker - success!

He rolled a new Want as soon as Todd was taken away - “Wants to see Ghost of Todd” Woah, dark! :0

And here he is on the married Vargases’ lot!! Success!! I did it right!! Heck yeah! :D Unfortunately they were uh, indisposed at the time. Good job guys pft

Goes right for Shmee, he really is Todd <3

#The Sims 2 #My queue is too backlogged on main! And I /have/ been working on a lot of Vargas-specific Sims 2 retextures so it's fine lol #These are still tests - as said up top lol - so these events are ''non canon'' to what will eventually be my actual Vargas family #The beats will be similar tho! It's mostly just a lot of tweaking at this point to get everything just where I want before the domino falls #Edgar Nny and Todd are all so close to done - Scriabin still needs a bit more work lol of course he's the problem member ♪#It'll be worth it tho! >:3c Handsome lad <3 #Did find out some interesting things with the Social Worker/Adoption process :0 Most importantly that adoption basically wipes everything #Wipes memories and family relations and changes the last name! So I'll have to go in with SimPE to change his name back once I'm there #I love SimPE haha ♪ I mean it's just an extension of how much I love TS2 but I just ughsjkhagf it's a good program!#It's extremely powerful and easy to get lost in if you don't know where to look but it's also incredibly user-friendly if you do know #Like - it's as easy as ''Open this sub-menu. Click this button. Rename this. You're all done'' it's just jdsflf Sims 2 my beloved <3 <3 #I decided to cheat down the Casils' relationship with Todd before everything else - thus why his father is menacing him for the prank #I've seen Sims with not high enough friendship to not take a water balloon as a fun invitation but not between a parent and child!#It's subtle but the parent being mad and the kid cowering :( It's sadly appropriate for Todd #I stuck the Casils in a box to wait things out and they ended up glitching frozen in bed - they're effectively dead by Motive but can't move #So they can't die /or/ live - feels fitting #If you'd like to recreate CPS taking your child away without straight up torturing them! - Hunger. You just need hunger lol #Alternately you can also have them miss class if you'd prefer to feed them - both will result in being taken away after long enough #If I return to this save it's gonna be confusing since both Todds are identical and have the same names lol #I do have a bunch of new clothes! Second shopping trip :D #There's something oddly fitting for the Vargases to adopt twin/clones lol - fun shenaniganary until the Final Version comes to pass #Although now that I think of it I Could also give them a toddler!Todd hmmmmmm #It's an idea :)

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ohmyoverland · 2 years

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okay maybe I’m biased, but did it bother anyone else how literally none of the characters acknowledge that Harlan /is/ like family to Viktor? When they’re deciding whether or not to give him to the Sparrows it’s always “Harlan saved our lives” or “Viktor owes Harlan for giving him powers”. Not “Viktor partly raised him” or “Harlan is like a son to Viktor”. Family is soooo important but Harlan doesn’t get to count?

#the umbrella academy #tua s3 #tua spoilers #I know he’s an old ass man in s3 but that doesn’t stop viktor from feeling the responsibility of taking care of him for a year #Allison can be irrational in her grief and that’s so valid but no one else sees the problem with #‘I killed your child bc you very indirectly caused the non-existence of mine’???#even though I will die on the hill that Claire wouldn’t exist if the umbrella academy didn’t. at the very least Allison’s child would be a #different person even IF non-umbrella Allison somehow also met and loved Patrick #so the problem was not Harlan it’s still Reginald deciding not to adopt them #I haven’t finished the season so don’t @ me if this is brought up later #mine

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awheckery · 1 year

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DEATH TW and mentions of murder so if that is triggering for you don’t read, but if it’s not then i’d like to ask if you’ve heard of forensic genealogy? while i am uneasy at the prospect of using it to find suspects, it can also be used to find the identities of unidentified decedents, who die of accidental causes or are murdered, and often it’s the only hope to identify those who have been unidentified for decades. the dna doe project is a nonprofit that’s mostly volunteer run, and i think that your research skills could be useful there or somewhere like there. i know this is kind of a random ask to receive, identification of unidentified remains is my special interest but i don’t have the time or training to get better at researching beyond a few tricks here and there.

I feel like we've read the same articles recently; did you see the tumblr post (and linked articles) about Joseph Augustus Zarelli, the Boy in the Box?

Which is to say, yes, I am aware of forensic genealogy and the DNA Doe Project, because like many white American women, I'm a true crime junkie.* My big Thing is investigative procedure tho, so I'm also deeply interested in plane & train crash investigations, medical mysteries, archaeology, anthropology... basically 'what happened, and by which processes and methods do we figure out what happened?'

So far as getting into the game myself, I dunno. I assume there's probably some sort of required formal training, along with the expectation of reliability and sustained effort, and I'm a chronically ill autodidact with ADHD. I'm the research equivalent of a sprinter; investigative genealogy requires a marathoner, because there's so much exhausting, grinding work involved.

Something I've never seen brought up before in any investigation is how many extant family trees are just wrong. Genealogical sites make it too easy to crib notes from other users, and all it takes is one person deciding 'eh that's probably the right guy' for dozens of other amateur researchers to make the same mistake, and then somebody ties that erroneous information to their DNA profile. I don't know how the forensic genealogists deal with that.

You also have to take into account how many people throughout history have just gone missing, or otherwise fallen off the historical record. Just because someone's date of death is absent doesn't mean something nefarious happened to them. (Just because someone's date of death is present doesn't mean it's correct.) People emigrate. They marry. They change their names. They die alone and unknown in a ditch**, or they die somewhere that doesn't make those records public***. Paper records can burn or flood out, and family stories rarely make it down more than one or two generations. History is messy.

I've only done serious research into my family background for two years, in fits and starts interrupted by illness flare ups. Half the time it feels like I find more questions to ask than I get answers. I've found a pair of illegitimate daughters and a handful of adoptees. I've found some two dozen 'missing persons' who may as well have disappeared into thin air, for how suddenly they dropped out of the historical record. I've found a murder victim and a (maybe) would-be murderess.

And four months ago, I found the answer to another family's 150 year old missing person case, and it changed everything I thought I knew about my mother's family.

This is how.

Five months ago, I thought I knew everything there was that could be known about John Robert McDowell.

I knew he was born July 1st of either 1868 or 1869, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. According to his naturalization petition, he came to the United States in April of 1883, when the absolute oldest he could have been was fourteen, and at the time of his naturalization in 1896 he claimed his nationality was English, presumably due to anti-Irish sentiments at the time.

I knew John's handwriting was idiosyncratic: he wrote the J in his name with a rightward upper loop that scooped up again before curving back around the center staff, and his uppercase R was a mess of curlicues. I've never seen the like before or since.

I knew that despite living in America for ten years longer than he'd lived outside it, John still had an accent in 1908 when his second son was born. Spelling is incredibly inconsistent across historical records because up until very recently, it was the practice of the record keepers to write down their best guess at what they heard, and in 1908 a midwife heard and recorded John's surname as McDoul.

John's life was actually remarkably well-documented, in comparison to his contemporaries. I bought myself access to Newspapers.com along with my Ancestry subscription, and he made semi-regular appearances in the Newport News Daily Press for the better part of thirty years as a Navy veteran, successful entrepreneur, and president of a labor union that later became the United Steelworkers Local 8888. (A seemingly throwaway notice in the Daily Press was the only record I've yet been able to find for his divorce, which eventually led me to find out whatever happened to his wife, which is another saga entirely. Pauline, you dirty rotten cheater.)

I knew that John was in and out of the hospital with thyroid cancer, but he was such a tough old bastard it took the better part of fifteen years to kill him, and he died in 1954 at the age of 86.****

According to John's death certificate (and the U.S. Government records at the VA hospital where he died), his parents' names were Thomas McDowell and Isabell Rabb (or possibly Robb, the Accent strikes again.)

This is the only record linked to either of them on Ancestry.com at all.

I have most of a history degree, so I wasn't surprised. There are next to no records of the 1890 census of the United States, and that was down to a fire in the National Archives. Ireland was dragged backwards through hell by the ankles for centuries by a succession of British monarchs and governments, and Belfast was in the prime of especially conflicted territory for much of it. No census records from John's lifetime were kept, and the likelihood his parents would show up in the surviving fragments from 1841 and 1851 was slim to none.

There were transcribed indexes from birth and marriage records available, at least, and I scoured them through, looking for a John McDowell, and there wasn't a single damn one born to a Thomas or Isabelle McDowell in a decade on either side of 1868. There wasn't any record I could find at all of a Thomas McDowell marrying an Isabelle Rabb until well after John left Ireland.

Five months ago, as far as I knew, John Robert McDowell was probably a bastard, who'd either been left out of whatever records were taken at the time, or he was one of the unfortunate ones whose birth record had been lost.

Four months ago, I realized that the record indexes on Ancestry included film numbers, which meant there were pictures of those records to be found somewhere. If they were organized chronologically, I could try to find his birth registration that way. Googling "ireland civil registration records" brought me to the Civil Records search page of a genealogy site run by, of all things, the Irish government's tourism department.

Once again, there wasn't a John McDowell born to the right parents during the right time period, so I went looking for his parents' marriage. And found it.

If they married in 1872, John would probably still technically be a bastard, but I had a point to start from. Once I clicked into the actual scan of the record I nearly snapped myself in half sitting upright in attention, because Thomas McDowell's father's name was Duncan, John named his eldest son Duncan, Isabella's father's name was John, I had to have the right two people, this couldn't be a coincidence.

And then I noticed Isabella was a widow. Isabella was a widow.

Who was your husband, and when did he die, Isabella? I searched again, and found her marriage to a Thomas Logan July 30th, 1866. No men named Thomas Logan died in Belfast between 1866 and 1870, which meant he was probably still alive when John was born. It meant I had been looking in the wrong direction the entire time.

John Robb Logan came into the world on July 1st, 1868, in the Ballymacarrett district of Belfast, the second child of four born to Thomas Logan and Isabella Robb. Once I knew what I was looking for the rest came easy.

John's early life was riddled with tragedies. His younger brother Joseph was six months old when he died in March of 1870. His father died of smallpox in December of the same year, exactly one month after the birth of his sister Mary. Three months before his fifth birthday, his first half-sibling Bella died, at just five months old. And in 1879, his older brother William died after a long, miserably drawn-out illness from spinal tuberculosis.

(As an aside, god, poor Isabella. She had four children with Thomas Logan, and a further nine with Thomas McDowell, and before her early death from a long respiratory illness she buried a husband, two sons, and two daughters. How do you go on after that, how are you not forever shattered?)

If I hadn't been sure I'd found the right family, I was after William died. Thomas McDowell was the person who reported William's death to the registrar's office after sitting by his deathbed. The registrar recorded William as a "child of [the] baker" that Thomas was by profession; Thomas McDowell claimed his stepson as his own.

Duncan McDowell, John's step-grandfather, had a family burial plot in Ballygowan, and he named William Adam Logan as his grandson, with no qualifiers, when they buried him.

All the evidence suggests that the McDowells loved John Robb Logan and his siblings, and he loved them back every bit as much. You don't choose to take on the surname of people you hate, and it seems very much the case that John chose to go by McDowell when he came to America. I'm honestly not sure there was a way for Thomas McDowell to bequeath his name to his stepchildren, given John's brother William died a Logan and his sister Mary married as one.

John Robb Logan disappeared from history after his baptism, and John Robert McDowell made his first confirmed appearance in the historical record in 1883, but I was certain they were one and the same. The problem was proving it to my mother, because McDowell was her family name. She'd grown up with it, as had her sisters and her dozens of cousins and her father and his siblings and her father's father; I only had a paper trail arguing the name she knew didn't belong to any of them by blood.

So I went for blood.

I refuse to give my DNA to Ancestry.com on a principle born from paranoia and ethics concerns. It's absolutely not happening, ever, like hell do I expect a corporation to do the right thing with my genetic material. My mother doesn't share my concerns, either now or four years ago, when she bought an Ancestry DNA kit and then did absolutely nothing with her results besides marvel at the unexpected Swedish heritage in her 'Ethnicity Estimate' because doing anything else looked like too much work.

It took a few days to figure out how to hook my mother's DNA results into the tree I've built, and a few more for all the features to populate, but all told it took less than a week between learning the truth about my great-great-grandfather's parentage and proving it irrefutably with DNA, via several descendants of his full-blooded sister Mary and a grandson of his half-brother Wallace.

Ancestry doesn't tell you when new DNA matches are found, or when someone adds you to their tree (and thank god for that, my mother has somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty thousand matches). To those descendants of Mary Thomasina Logan, the handful of John's descendants who've shelled out for Ancestry DNA kits could be any random person. Frequently the relationships between matches aren't clear, because of all the folks like my mom who never add a tree to their results, or those who don't try to go any further back than their grandparents.

As far as Mary Logan's descendants know, the sons of Thomas Logan dead-ended his line, and when I do find John in their trees there's never more than a birth year and a blank space where there would usually be a year of death. (They all have the wrong Isabella Robb too, but I don't really blame them; apparently Isabella was one of the most popular names for girls for well over a century, and Robbs weren't exactly thin on the ground.)

Someday soon, I'm going to reach out. People who study genealogy do it because they're looking for something: long lost relatives, answers to questions asked too late, or even a better, more personal understanding of history by learning about the people who were there when it happened. Every family has its mysteries and this one, at least, could be solved.

John's story doesn't end here. Here is where it begins.

*I'm aware of the problematic nature of White Lady True Crime Brain Poisoning, but I'm gonna have to pull the 'I'm not like other girls' card. I'm incredibly discerning about my crime shows, I hate the fucking cops, and I'm realistic about how unbelievably low my chances are of ever being the victim of a violent crime. I'm white, I'm broke as shit, I'm built like a running back and walk like the Terminator, and most importantly, I'm single and planning to stay that way for the rest of my life. The only way I'm getting murdered is if I happen to get caught in a random mass shooting, which isn't outside the realm of possibility because America.

**In case anyone's gotten this far and is still interested, there's strong evidence that the mystery of the Somerton Man was finally solved last year. At some point I'd like to take a look at the tree the forensic genealogists built tho, because I have some Doubts. There was only one person in that family that fell off the map in the 40's? Just one? I was lightning-strike kinds of lucky enough to find John's real parentage, but I dug up more unanswered questions with it, because two of his half-brothers dropped out of the records after 1901. Completely setting aside the possibility of infidelity in the Webb family and how common inbreeding has been (both historically and in recent memory) in populations of European descent, I have a hard time buying that Carl Webb was the only person who could be the Somerton Man. It's still cool as shit that they have a strong possibility tho.

***Maryland and Kansas specifically can blow me, if somebody died in either of those states I have to find an obituary or a tombstone to get the mcfrickin' date, and I have to either pay money and prove a relationship to see a death certificate, or show up to an archive in person to search on their intranet, MARYLAND WHY DO YOU NOT WANT ME TO KNOW WHEN MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER DIED. (Being fair, I don't know if she died in Maryland, that's just a great-uncle's best guess, because she ran away from her family in 1949 and nobody ever saw her again after the early 60's. Helen, where the hell did you go?)

****One of the big reasons why I got into genealogy in the first place was to see if I could find how far back the predisposition to early deaths and autoimmune disease went in my family. What I hadn't expected to find was a predisposition for extreme longevity on all sides. Longevity as in 'skewing the life expectancy bell curve' kinds of longevity. As long as someone didn't come down with a freak illness or make a looooooooong string of poor life choices, they were apparently immune to death, which honestly explains a few things about Crazy Grandma, god damn.

#genealogy #forensic genealogy #research throwdown #storytime with stella #long post #I'm seriously not kidding it's a long goddamn post #image heavy #all images described in alt text #I don't think I did a particularly great job communicating why I shouldn't get into this professionally #this took a long goddamn time to figure out #I think most people want answers quicker than *checks back of hand* seven-ish months?#fwiw my mother took it remarkably well #our big family mystery has always been What Happened to Helen?#that was probably the central question of my grandfather's life: not knowing what happened to his mother #so that was my mom's big question too #and luckily we had other weird familial circumstances as precedent #me: 'heyyyyyyyy uh so great news yr great-grandfather wasn't a criminal on the lam OR a bastard child. he was kind of adopted?'#mom: 'adopted??? huh. like your grandpa with the mudds?'#me: '....actually. yeah. almost *exactly* like that. but like if grandpa changed his last name and then never told you he'd done it'#tho I still have no idea why john changed 'robb' to 'robert'#my theory for a long time was that he was just REALLY leaning into the scottish heritage; the guy named his sons duncan & bruce #then I learned about irish naming conventions and while that answered some questions it just wound up leaving me with MORE questions #I went through all 8 stages of grief a year ago when I figured out john's presbyterian funeral meant the fam married into catholicism LATER #and thus were probably scots colonizers to the plantation of ulster instead of former gallowglasses #I don't love the idea of my ancestors being unionist kiss-asses #which the naming scheme kinda supports #but john was a LABOR UNION ORGANIZER #he left well before the clearances in the 20's but labor activism was synonymous with catholicism & nationalism for aaaaaaaages #he had to have picked that up from a parent. two of his half brothers (who also emigrated to the states) were union members too

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masquenoire · 1 year

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I started thinking about something when walking back from town just now and the thought is that Roman would go completely out of his way to get ahold of a child he’s taken a liking to, even going as far as befriending the parent/s until a suitable ‘accident’ could be arranged. In swoops Roman, picking up the pieces and offering to give the child a good home, just pulling all the strings he can to get what he’s after - a heir to mold in his image.

#💀 ;; OOC #💀 || musings #When your muse doesn't necessarily want biological kids but still has raging child fever #Every boss with a long term plan ideally wants an heir to continue it when he starts getting old #Roman would be fucked up enough to pull a stunt like this #Going out of his way to become part of the family only to shatter it and take what he wants #Kind of like a reverse Bruce Wayne when adopting Dick Grayson #Got one more shift tonight and then I'm off all week!#Barring tomorrow since I'm still catsitting but won't be in such a rush for work ect #I will post pictures of the cat too if people are interested #There are two cats but one is super shy and still won't say hello lol

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mishkakagehishka · 1 year

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And we know Suzu was adopted and we know Mika will meet her (or has met her, looking from EnGirls pov). Do you think he ever feels envy. Or perhaps resentment.

Do you think he's envious of the fact that she got adopted and he didn't. Do you think he ever thinks about the fact that they both have mismatched eyes, which he'd always blamed for his being abandoned, yet she was adopted. What will he blame now? Is there something inherently wrong with him? How come his twin was wanted, and he wasn't? He's spent years blaming one (1) thing about himself for it, but considering she shares that trait, it must be something else that's wrong with him. Do you ever think about Mika desperate to find some sort of logical explanation for the fact that he was abandoned. His own form of "closure". Do you think he said that he never tried to find parents because he projected his abandonment issues and didn't want to "abandon" the kids he was in charge of taking care of, or do you think it was his defence. His way of saying, "It's not that nobody wants me - it's that I don't want to be adopted". His way of protecting his feelings. Anyway-

#i just like thinking of Mika overcome with negative feelings and anger #i like thinking about him desperate and grieving his child self.#i like thinking about him meeting Suzu and realising she was adopted ''despite'' the weird eyes. so obviously that wasn't the reason why he #wasn't adopted. so what is it? go on Mishka. find what it is that's inherently wrong with you. find an explanation for why you were #abandoned because your fragile lil heart just can't handle the idea of ''your parents just didn't want you''. there must be a valid reason #right? ... i esp love the idea of their parents being dead or otherwise they can't contact them #better yet - they don't /want to/ be contacted. Mika could ask them himself - but they're not answering emails nor letters #even now that he's a famous idol - when he could be the perfect son - when he's found them. they still want nothing to do with him #not even to grace him with an answer to the simplest question ''why?'' - not even to lie and say something like ''we couldn't afford to #raise you'' or something like that. or did you guys think i only like physically torturing mika?#ensemble stars #angst #i guess i'll tag it like that #mika kagehira

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proto-language · 4 months

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hrngnfghnfg

#just thinking aloud but #i dunno. kind of feel like the last Barrier between me and Normal Personness or whatever #is just. i feel so completely and utterly unable to feel empathy specifically with regards to children and childbearing and childrearing.#like. i have known ever since i was small that my parents lost other pregnancies before me and between me and my sister. and all i could #feel about that as a kid was 'thank god because i never wanted a sibling anyway' and 'uh well i never asked to be born soooo... so what'#and now as an adult. i know that it's a terrible thing to suffer a loss like that.#and i'd at least manage not to act inappropriately towards someone i knew if they were in that position.#but i still can't find any of the *feelings* about it.#which is strange because i usually feel Everything So Much.#i also still don't understand when people talk about like. instantly falling in love with their kid or whatever #like maybe i almost get it if it's a child you've gestated for nine months and then given birth to.#but i feel like people *must* be at least partially lying about it when it comes to things like adoption #because there'd be such a high psychological and social penalty to admitting that you felt anything less.#adoption in general drives me crazy like i cannot Believe that it's still just a really accepted alternative to having a biological child #when... any kid who has had to be removed from the circumstances into which they were born and given to new people #is surely going to be traumatised or have issues or however you want to put it.#and it can't possibly be the Same Thing as having a... fresh baby of your own.#anyway. i feel some sympathy for and plenty of logical understanding of children and parents.#but none of it makes sense to me on the level on which i usually connect with people.#and hell maybe everyone feels that way until they have a kid. in which case i think everyone #is wildly irresponsible for having those kids without knowing they're gonna like it or be good at it and hoping it'll just work out. lmao

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minamotoz · 11 months

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do NOT talk to me i just remembered how tragic of a character kc guthrie is

#degrassi #hi im rewatching season 10 for the first time in lile a year and ahalf #the more i rewatch the more i become a kc apologist even thoigh i was already a massive kc apologist #hes just So tragic to me and its hard to watch with the knowledge that he never gets a resolution to any of his trauma #he repairs his relationship w his mom but he never truly heals from her neglect #we're jusr supposed to forget that he was groomed and nearly molested ?????#i know he acts like a massive shithead throughout the entire kenna pregnancy arc but i still cant help but feel bad for him then #bc hes been forced to grow up so fast as a result of his neglect #and now that hes about to become a father hes realizing hes about to lose his childhood entirely #like yeah being a massive dick to the girl carrying your child and them cheating on her/avoiding parenting ur child #is a massive dickhole move no shit #but IDK. im sympathetic. especially when he realizes that hes become his Father when they put their kid up for adoption #so he tries so hard to make it work and to keep in touch w his son even though its futile at that point #AIBDIEJCUSLXN fuck. kc isnt even in my top 10 favorite degrassi characters yet i could talk abt him forever #the way his traumas are downplayed and never resolved the way his gifted-ness effectively disappears during s10-11A #people just write him off as an asshole cheater and yeah he is one but jes so layered and tragic to me

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betweendoctorsanddetectives · 2 years

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forcing myself to stop feeling bad by having a shower with dua lipa playing and making my plan for the day look like this: go on a walk and put a book I finished in the community library box; bake a loaf of bread; finish the one task that is still hanging over me; put some laundry away

#:-)#then i can play stardew valley in peace . i am adopting a child #i am curious now that if your characters arent gay do you fuck and have your own child or do they still adopt #make stardew valley hornier . i think we deserve it #as in i think there should still be symbolic sex for the gay couples

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h-i-raeth · 2 years

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One thing that I think might be hard to grasp if you don't actually have a fuckoff big family is how, even with the best of intentions and resources, past a certain ratio of adults to children people are just inevitably going to fall through the cracks.

Older children will be mildly neglected on the basis of their being presumably capable of fending for themselves, younger children will have less support and extracurriculars than older children had at the same age because there simply isn't enough time, unless older children get conscripted to the job, which is its own thing.

I have. A lot of thoughts & feelings about that. But this isn't a personal post. This is a fandom post.

The point is people (rightfully) give Bruce a lot of flack for various shortcomings in his parenting, but honestly? Even if he wasn't Batman, didn't have the mission, didn't have an endemic of child vigilantes that would be out in Gotham whether he trained them or not, was just Bruce Wayne, rich philanthropist with a soft spot for orphans.....

Well, he'd still be dealing with the fact that you can buy a lot of things, but you can't buy time.

Admittedly, if he wasn't Batman, he'd have a lot more of that. Maybe enough, even. Depending on how you tally them, he's directly responsible for parenting as few as six and as many as.... Well, it depends on what you count as "parenting", I guess. But they're spread out, and very few of them are or could be in his care as infants/toddlers.

My experiences as a child amongst six Without billionaire resources leave me inclined to think that six isn't an Entirely unreasonable number if Bruce was dedicating all of his vast effort and resources into orphans.

But juggled with The Mission? Even the best of intentions isn't going to erase that deficit, which is going to show in the discrepancy between Dick's early days & Bruce's later approach.

My experience as the eldest of twelve leaves me inclined to think that even without the mission there's a point where best intentions fall short of ability to give the best support to ones children.

& I'm not trying to take moral stance here. I'm just saying that you gotta acknowledge this if you're writing Batman, you know? Like. Give the man his orphans, but he's juggling a lot of balls. He's going to drop some. You can't be surprised by that.

You don't need to agree with his actions or let him off the hook in meta or fic (god knows I don't) & you can like. Intentionally disregard it if you just want some fluff. But it's a factor.

Outside of the mission, outside of the tragic backstories and various ways that these specific children are difficult in, outside of Bruce's.... Well, Bruce's Everything. There's only so much you can expect from a single father of six minimum.

#batfam #batfam meta #I don't know folks just like. if you're expecting A+ parenting from Bruce just on the basis of him technically having the resources #I think that you probably have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it's like to live in a big family #and also the difficulties of suddenly parenting an eight year old when you don't have experience with children and are actually very young #what's the current consensus on how old B was when he adopted Dick? like 22? fuck man. I'm 22.#I've been halfway parenting my siblings since I was like. fourteen at the latest & I'd still struggle with being handed a random 8 year old #to raise on a permanent basis #I also think that some people don't understand the very particular resentment that can develop based on discrepancies as a result of #a rising child count. not neccessarily that you resent your new siblings but that you resent the ways in which your childhoods differ #and the ways in which your current resources fall short of what you need even when there isn't particular fault to assign #and understanding the ways these resentments clash is fundamental to understanding how to write siblings in this situation #without either disregarding affection/fondness or glossing over confrontation #I dunno. guess it just feels like there's a lot of fic that either villifies or excuses Bruce that doesn't understand this factor enough

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