luanna255:

aeedee:

I don’t know why so many Tim Drake fans don’t like to acknowledge that he’s a relatively happy, emotionally healthy individual.

Tim is not a chronically depressed, vulnerable, insecure person that is in constant need of comfort and reassurance and validation.

I honestly don’t know where this image of him comes from. Why would you want to belittle a genuine strength of your character? One of Tim’s most amazing traits is how resilient he is, how he’s able to repair himself and keep it together even when facing great loss. We saw him suffer, and he worked hard to get through it and better himself and grow as a person. He bounced back to become a relatively happy, well-rounded person even after facing some of the most painful losses you can face.

I know people like to tease and laugh about his crying over Kon especially, but that was his best friend in the entire world, someone he loved more than most people he would ever know. I have to honestly wonder if most of you would not feel that same level of sadness and despair, slashy undertones or not. 

I would hate to see what would happen if he ever had to lose Dick. People laughed over his reaction to losing Bruce. Goodness, how would people tease him for the awful way he’d cry and suffer over the loss of his brother? It’s not a weakness to mourn the loss of someone you love so much. It’s human.

I know he’s had periods of sadness. Of stress, and grief. Even of desperation inspired by that grief. But Tim is a remarkably independent, self-driven person. He loves his friends deeply, but he’s self-reliant and he often deals with pain on his own. This doesn’t mean that he secretly has to be suffering beneath the surface, or that he surely must be broken. No, sometimes an independent person is genuinely independent. Sometimes we simply do not need the reassurance and comfort of someone else’s embrace around our shoulders.

Doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate it. Doesn’t mean we don’t value it. Simply means we don’t need it, in the same way that a more emotionally open, extroverted person might. And honestly, when so many of his fans insist that him putting on a “strong face” must surely mean he’s broken, how is that supposed to make us feel? That it’s not enough to be strong, because you cannot be that strong legitimately, right? You have to visibly suffer and break down and expose some madness beneath it all, you have to cry each and every time or your emotions are suddenly not as honest.

No, sometimes I feel zero need to cry outwardly. Sometimes I retreat into my work and I filter out my grief that way. Sometimes I do have to cry out loud and expose a more vulnerable side of myself. But more often than not, I’m the workaholic settling in and working through my emotions on my own and preferring not to involve anyone else with my problems because I feel no particular need to. That doesn’t mean I am lying, deceiving anyone, or ‘faking it’ whatsoever. It simply means that I prefer to handle things on my own, and there’s nothing better or worse about that because it works for me, better than any other approach would. Everyone is different.

Tim is not as emotionally open as Dick is. For what few deceptions Dick may wear sometimes, he’s remarkably honest and straight-forward on the surface, while Tim chooses to obscure more of his emotions humbly. And I’m certain that both of them appreciate these differences in each other. It doesn’t make either one of them stronger or weaker than the other.

I will of course grant any Tim fans the right to interpret the character as they see fit, and to headcanon anything they like. It’s just that most of the headcanons and scenarios I see for him are painting a picture of someone walking wounded. While I would never deny that he does have emotional vulnerabilities, I would love to see more headcanons of how strong, driven, and independent he is. I think it’d only be fair to acknowledge what his own canon represents.

#Mainly I’m tired of seeing Tim as a vulnerable and wounded person that needs to be protected and saved from his own emotions #because as much as he’s suffered #he’s remarkably composed most of the time #and he prefers to deal with his emotions alone in almost every case #BY CHOICE #It doesn’t make him broken #and it doesn’t make him a liar.

YES YES YES!!!! Thank you SO MUCH for this post.

I think Tim gets a reputation as such because, truth be told, he did go through a bad period there for a while. But dear God, look what the boy had been through! In an insanely short period of time, he lost his girlfriend, his father, his best friend, his other best friend, and his father-figure. One of these losses alone would have been devastating. All of them so close together? Frankly, I think the boy deserves an award just for getting out of bed each morning. Not to mention that he lost his role as Robin, a job he’d loved and defined himself by – and adding insult to injury, was replaced by Damian, someone he can’t stand.

In case you’ve been keeping count, that’s three of the most common causes of extreme stress, right there:

Unstable family situation, conflict with family members: CHECK.

Difficulties at work, changes in career, getting fired, etc: CHECK.

And, oh yeah, what was that last one…

That’s right, death of a family member or close loved one.

CHECK.

CHECK.

(Just looking at this page makes me nauseous. UGH, be more sensationalistic, why don’t you, DC.)

CHECK.

CHECK.

And, CHECK.

(That’s Tim getting the news of Bart’s death.)

So wow, excuse Tim if he wasn’t exactly going through the best period in his life. Excuse him if he wasn’t exactly his cheerful, well-adjusted self for a while there. You think that makes him weak? Let’s see how you’d deal with something like that. I have no idea how Tim even managed to keep going and stay strong and functional and proactive. I think he’s a hero just for not curling up in bed and refusing to get out, because wow, that is an insane amount for anyone to go through, let alone someone so young.

But you know what? Tim didn’t let any of that beat him. God knows, he would’ve had every excuse in the world, but he didn’t. He kept on fighting and trying his best, and he got through that dark tunnel and came out stronger in the end. Weak? He’s so unbelievably strong I feel proud of him just thinking about it. He went through some of the worst pain a person can go through, and he suffered through it just like any human would, but he never let it break him. He learned from his mistakes, and he learned how to cope on his own, and in the end, he was stronger for it.

THAT’S what a true hero really is. It’s not about wearing a costume or beating up supervillains. It’s about taking whatever life throws at you, and never giving up. Never letting suffering warp you into something you’re not. Finding a way to believe in goodness no matter how bad things get.

Tim isn’t weak because of what he went through. He’s all the more impressive for it.

I kind of miss the heyday of Tim-gets-help-and-finally-faces-his-trauma fic, since it perfectly fit my own emotional wants and needs. But I get where you’re coming from. Now a days, there’s all this Angry Tim fic, and it drives me crazy.

No, authours! I don’t cope that way! I’m uncomfortable with anger!

When you empathize with Tim’s more independent aspects, all the people prying him open to let the repressed emotions out must be infuriating. All that fic is what got me into him, and has had a not-insignificant effect on my recovery.

Even I desire happy fic though. Post recovery fic. Ignore recovery completely fic. Fluff. Drama. I love this boy and want to see every aspects of him. 

I want to see other versions of recovery. Dealing alone. Seeing a therapist. Writing a diary. Talking to one person, on his own initiative. Bouncing back pretty quickly, and not actually needing much of anything. (Just not the anger. I respect it, but am not ready to deal with that aspect of myself yet.)

@luanna255, I’d ask you not to refer to needing other people as weakness. Dealing with things quietly on your own is not inherently ‘stronger’ then working with someone else. 

I know there are a lot of fic that uses Tim’s pain as a way to show how awesome and amazing and perfect his love interest is. Those can be infuriating. If fic that breaks Tim to make other characters look good is what bothers you, that makes perfect sense. But struggling to deal with your trauma, and needing help with it, isn’t weak. Openly showing your pain isn’t weakness.

Of course, retreating from others when in pain isn’t wrong either. Not showing or sharing isn’t a ‘bad’ way to deal. I don’t want to seem like that’s what I stand for.

TL;DR: This is a good post even if I don’t totally feel the same way. I have a little quibble with how the second poster worded things, I agree that we need a more varied fanon Tim.

ATTENTION ALL GIRLS AND LADIES: if you walk from home, school, office or anywhere and you are alone and you come across a little boy crying holding a piece of paper with an address on it, DO NOT TAKE HIM THERE! take him straight to the police station for this is the new ‘gang’ way of rape. The incident is getting worse. Warn your families. Reblog this so this message can get accross to everyone.

sunflower-flow:

goddessxxo:

girlinsky:

booksftreality:

something-spectacular:

I will always reblog things like this, it won’t ruin your blog or the look of it, and this could potentially save a life.

PLEASE reblog this.

I have reblogged this about three times now and I will never not reblog it

i actually heard of this happening in atlanta not that long ago. that shit is terrifying as hell.

idc if it may ruin my blog look or whatever, if it means word gets out about these bastards then imma reblog x1000

reposting on my friends account

quick note to fanfic writers

jenroses:

luninosity:

luninosity:

butterynutjob:

faedreamer:

kiramaru7:

sfiddy:

thecolourpurpleinafield:

So I have noticed that there are times when I read fanfic and I really enjoy so much about it – the dialogue, the characterisation, the descriptions. And then I find my enjoyment is hampered a little bit, not a huge amount, by incorrect dialogue punctuation. I realised this is a common problem in fanfic, and I figured a quick tutorial regarding dialogue was in order. I know it seems like a small thing, but I honestly think putting a comma in the place of a full stop/period makes all the difference with a fic’s readability, and the rules themselves are fairly straightforward.

First, just to clarify, a dialogue tag is a verb (i.e. a doing word) that describes how a word is said. Examples of dialogue tags are “said”, “shouted”, “cried”, etc. If the word does not describe specifically how the word is said and instead focuses on another action by the character (such as “coughed” or “laughed” or “smiled”), it is not a dialogue tag and should not be treated as such.

So, when writing dialogue that ends with a question mark:

“Have I told you how much I love you in that dress?” He murmured. (Incorrect)

“Have I told you how much I love you in that dress?” he murmured. (Correct)

The second example is formatted correctly. Remember, you only have to capitalise a word, unless it’s a proper noun (usually names), at the beginning of a new sentence. The “he” is not capitalised because it is still the same sentence and the word “murmured” is a dialogue tag.

Similarly:

“More than a few times now.” She teased. (Incorrect)

“More than a few times now,” she teased. (Correct)

Again, that whole line is one sentence because the word “teased” is the dialogue tag that is directly describing how the dialogue is being said. Notice the comma, as opposed to the full stop/period, and also the fact that “she” is in lowercase. 

If the word you are using is not a dialogue tag, you do need a full stop/period. For example:

He coughed, “you look chilly, though.” (Incorrect)

He coughed. “You look chilly, though.” (Correct)

This is because the character coughing is separate from the dialogue itself, which is why the sentence and the dialogue are two distinct sentences. Notice that therefore the start of each sentence is capitalised.

When you continue the dialogue after the dialogue tag:

“I didn’t mean that,” Oliver said, “although I didn’t see it as breaking my vows. Not when your life was at stake.”

Note the underlined commas and the fact that “although” is in lowercase. The way you test this is simple. Simply take out the dialogue tag in its entirety, and if the sentence still makes grammatical sense, you use commas and lowercase. 

Let’s test this out.  

 "I didn’t mean that, although I didn’t see it as breaking my vows. Not when your life was at stake.“

Yep. It still makes sense, so you have punctuated correctly.

Compare that to this example:

“I remember this one too,” she said. “You know, I thought you were going to bleed to death in my car.”

Note the underlined full stop/period and the fact that “You” is capitalised. This is because the sentences are clearly separate (whereas in the last example it was a bit more ambiguous). If you’re confused, just use the test set out above – take out the dialogue tag and see if the sentence makes grammatical sense.

“I remember this one too, you know, I thought you were going to bleed to death in my car.”

If you know anything about comma splicing, you will know that that sentence is most definitely not grammatically correct, so a full stop/period after “too” is in order, like this:

“I remember this one too. You know, I thought you were going to bleed to death in my car.”

So, in summary: 

~use a COMMA and lowercase when using dialogue tags such as “said”, etc.

~use a full stop/period and capitalise the first letter when using verbs that are not dialogue tags (such as “smiled”)

~if you’re unsure when splitting dialogue with a tag in between, take out the tag and see if it makes sense as a sentence on its own. If it does, use commas and lowercase, and if it doesn’t, use a full stop/period and capitalise.

I hope that was somewhat helpful! Grammar is a strange thing – you often don’t realise you’re doing something incorrectly until it is pointed out to you, so don’t feel bad if you realise you’ve been wrongly formatting dialogue all this time! 🙂 It’s not a huge deal, but it honestly makes such a difference for me when reading a fic and not having the flow of the story stopped because I’ve noticed the same mistake being made over and over. Anyway, my inbox is always open if anyone has any questions about this or anything else. I used to beta a lot back in my HP days, so if you’re unsure about anything grammar-wise, I’m your girl. (I mean I’m not your girl – I wasn’t making a pass at you or anything. :P)

WHERE WERE YOU 7 YEARS AGO

You have no idea how many times I’ve explained this to peeps. Hopefully they’ll see this, read it, & apply it to their ficcage. 😀

please take note, this is so important and will really take your writing to the next level in terms of quality.

These are not things which are ever taught in any writing or English class for some reason, or at least I never encountered them. Regarding capitalization, Google docs has decided it knows better than I do and trying to get it to put a non-capital letter after a quote is a bitch and a half. 🙄

Oh my god, this. I have stopped reading fics because of this – because it brings the flow of words to a dead stop. And I swear it’s gotten exponentially worse over the last 1-2 years. *waves old-person cane*

The other thing I’d add to this is, if you’re not sure if your speech verb (e.g. said, or murmured, or shouted, etc) counts as a dialogue tag (and therefore needs to be integrated into your sentence, no capitalization) or not, copy/paste it to a new blank line by itself. Now look at it. “He said.” is obviously incomplete – what did he say? There’s clearly missing information. Whereas something like “He coughed.” is not missing any information.

By the way, a lot of people get taught this in terms of academic writing and integrating quotes (’In her article, Roberta Smith says that “children should read more…” ‘) from sources – that’s how we teach it at my college – but I think sometimes people somehow…don’t…realize that these rules also apply to fiction and dialogue? It’s the same basic rule: is it a complete sentence, or not?

In case my comment above sounded extra-critical, which it kind of does on re-reading, what I was trying to say was, in a lot of cases in the US (which I should’ve said the first time; sorry!) it gets taught at a late high school/first year of college level (in response to the previous comment about it not being taught in any classes, which, as an educator who goes to conferences about curriculum development, I can tell you is untrue), and it gets taught in academic contexts, when you start working with other people’s words. So I think that might be part of the issue: people who have been taught it one way, as part of one genre of writing, not quite translating rules across contexts.

Even so, though, this specific error has gotten noticeably worse over the last year or two (I’ve been active in fandom since, oh, whenever season four of Supernatural was; how many years is that?), and I’m not sure why. I think if it were an ESL or education-level issue we’d’ve seen a longer history behind the trend, given that those populations have existed in fandom for many years, but this particular issue seems to’ve escalated kind of out of the blue. So I don’t know. It seems like there’s something else going on here, but I’m not sure what…

This is a super important post. It stops the flow of reading to do it incorrectly. 

As a writer, I prefer to make my writing as “transparent” to the story I want to tell as possible. I don’t want people to notice the language I’m using when they’re reading, I want them to notice the story I’m telling. 

I had no idea they were teaching this so late now. I was learning about this stuff in elementary school in the seventies and eighties, and just about every year after that, to the point of aggravation.

I know they’re more focused on teaching writing in different ways now that don’t emphasize grammar and spelling, but these things exist for a reason, and it’s really, really great if people learn the rules before they decide to break them.

If you ever, EVER have a question about how to punctuate dialogue, google is your friend. There are so many guides. Wikipedia even. And fandom grammar nerds like me who would love to help you improve your writing. 

(also, use a good, grammar-oriented beta reader. I’m pretty good at this stuff and @rhysiana still corrects my comma placement on the regular.)

sartorialadventure:

defunctfashion:

House of Worth | c.1897– Élisabeth de Caraman-Chimay, the Countess Greffulhe was renowned for her audacious taste which is reflected in this exotic emerald and blue cut velvet tea gown. She often wore shades of green and blue to enhance her auburn hair. #whattheywore #historicalfashion #fashion #fashiondesign #fashionhistory #historyoffashion #vintagefashion #art #vintage #historicfashion #defunctfashion #historicalfashion #costume #costumedesign #couture #costumehistory #victorianfashion #velvet #charlesfrederickworth #houseofworth #victorian

OH MY GOD I LOVE IT

vincent-tsui:

My new independent film OPAL WALTZ 🎈🎈🎈
An inflatable portrait of adolescence.

Listen to Supernaive’s Debut EP “Dazed & Confused”
https://shlo-music.lnk.to/dazedandconfused

Share this around you! You guys are my only support!

[Video is a deeply strange animated series of people and balloons. People trapped inside balloons. People being squished between balloons. People popping balloons. A bouncy castle features prominently.]

(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)

meganphntmgrl:

@mcmansionhell is kind of dear to me because ugly as those damn houses are, in my early teens a new housing development full of what I can only describe as smaller versions of those kinds of architectural monsters opened up a few blocks from my dad’s neighborhood. I’m talking sensibly sized three-bedroom, two-story houses where each room had a purpose, but still like, no yards and oversized windows and cheap molding and all that stuff.

The thing is, these beasts just were not selling, even before the bubble burst. There were plenty of houses built in the 60s and 70s literally five minutes from this new block of fancy new Mansion McNuggets that were selling for much cheaper or being rented out by their empty nester owners when they moved to retirement homes. So the McNuggets sat there for years, the model homes dutifully opened on a daily basis, the wax fruit in their kitchens growing dusty.

My brother and I were, by this time, 14 and 12, with a seven-year-old half-sister and two-year-old half-brother we saw when we visited our dad on the weekends. Between the two of us, we were deemed old enough to start taking the two little ones down to the playground the construction company behind the McNuggets had built as a bonus attraction to the new neighborhood from time to time. This worked out just fine until there was a downpour one day just as we got to the playground, and we realized we had to think fast or get soaked.

So we hurried into the nearest model home.

I want to emphasize that while this use was certainly never intended by the realtors, the model home was unlocked from 11 AM to 7 pm daily. We weren’t breaking and entering- but once we were inside, we realized we were basically in there for the duration. If the rain didn’t let up within the next two hours, we would have to hurry out to the realtor’s office and ask if we could call our dad to come get us.

We had time to kill. So we played hide and seek, and when our toddler brother wore out, I put him to lay down on the couch in the model living room while my 12-year-old brother found an actual, opened pack of playing cards as part of a display of stacked board games on one of the shelves. We played War for about an hour while the baby napped, and when he woke up, the rain had subsided and we were able to head home.

But it was, in many ways, already too late. We had discovered something we thought only uber-rich kids had access to: a life-size playhouse.

My brother and I set a few rules for ourselves: we absolutely had to keep a close eye on the other two and work even harder at keeping them safe. If we were ever caught, we would just gracefully apologize and leave. We had to leave everything the way we found it.

Aside from that, though, we started getting pretty attached to the place. We found out that the room upstairs that had been decorated to suggest a little girl lived there had a bunch of real-life books in it, which we took turns reading to our little sister. She started bringing her school reading log with her so I, a comparative adult at the ripe old age of 14, could sign off on her weekend reading time. Once we decided to bring some art supplies and make authentic pictures to hang on the fridge (one of the only real appliances in there- turns out there are whole companies whose job is to make prop appliances for model homes) just to see if anyone noticed. As far as I recall, those pictures stayed on there at least until deep winter arrived and it wasn’t practical for us to go that far from home with our little siblings. After that, we just didn’t go there much anymore, until it was no longer much of a thing at all.

Eventually, the McNuggets sold, though it took years. The neighborhood has actually matured better than expected, in that it at least no longer looks like weird bonus houses on a dirt mound at the end of a much older street. But I can’t help but wonder what the realtors thought when they had to send someone in to take out all of those fixtures and furniture so the new owners could decorate it themselves and found that art on the fridge.

caramelmachete:

I just finished reading a very interesting article written in 1974 about trapeze artists, the history of the circus and the quest for the triple flip.

Dick Grayson fans should definitely read! It would also be great for fic writers who want more info about the circus or acrobatics.

The Sensational Tito Gaona and His Spectacular Aerial Flights By William Johnson, originally published in Sports Illustrated April 8, 1974 issue.

staff:

Tag filtering is here
Don’t see what you don’t wanna see

In our ongoing effort to help you all determine your own experience here on Tumblr, we’re launching one of our most requested features: the ability to filter out posts from your dashboard based on their tags.

Trying to avoid #Star Wars spoilers? Filter them out. Need a break from all the #holiday excitement this month? Sheesh, fine. Filter it out. It’s your dashboard. Groom it well.

Where do I set up a tag filter?

In your settings! You’ll find it in your general settings on mobile, under “Filtering.” On the web, you’ll find it in your account settings, also under “Filtering.”

That makes sense. Will I know when stuff is being filtered out?

Yup. Just like with Safe Mode, you’ll see a placeholder in your dashboard wherever something is being hidden. If you actually do want to see it, you can click/tap on it, and it’ll appear.

I follow some real nimrods. How can I stop seeing their posts?

Unfollow them! And if they’re really being a jerk, block them. And if they’re truly being hateful, report them.

Anything else I should know?

Sure. There are lots of other tools for making Tumblr the Tumblr you want to see. You can read about them all in our help center.

❤ Tumblr