Merow

see, if you wake up in bed, exactly how you remember going to sleep, congratulations. you're totally good, continue with your day.

if you wake up in the infirmary, then damnit, either something went wrong on patrol and you were knocked out, or you just happened to faint. either way, you'll be fine.

if you wake up in the infirmary, look to your left and see zitka the elephant tucked into your side? it's time to start fucking panicking. you must have been inside a coma or something because having zitka means that you were asleep for so long and scared dick enough that he felt the need to bring you his most precious possession.

oh god, if you wake up with not only zitka, but also dicks favorite blanket? the heavy one that bruce bought him in his first year as robin that he still sleeps with? fuck. fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK you must have died and been brought back, either that or you got the jason 3000 and exploded.

however, if you wake up with zitka, the blanket, and dick sleeping beside you? yeah that's fine. that's just dick sleeping next to you. he probably brought his stuffed animal and blanket for himself, solid 10/10 cuddle sesh, super comfortable.

( there are alternative scales as well that aren't as prominent, such as : the red hood jacket scale, the duke thomas backpack scale, the bruce scale, the damian scale, etc. )

I'm gonna copy and paste exactly what I said in the comments, so if it doesn't seem like the usual vibe of my posts, it's cause it's just the full-on comment.

the jacket scale is for jason. if you wake up and you have red hood's leather jacket over your shoulders or draped on top of you, you've absolutely been through some shit that you just don't remember at the moment. kidnapping, torture, etc. it basically means that jason was the one to find you and was so concerned he gave you the jacket, which is huge for him.

seeing duke's backpack by your bed means one of two things. one, duke has been doing his schoolwork inside the infirmary to watch over you as much as possible, or two, he keeps snacks in his backpack and he's supplying them to anyone who is sitting and waiting for you to wake up. so yeah, sorta like a mom friend. it's about a 5/10 on the 'how fucked am i' scale.

MY FRIEND THOUGHT JOKER JR WAS THE PRODUCT OF JOKER MPREG

✧ Broken ribs suck. You don’t just “walk it off.” Breathing hurts. Laughing hurts. Existing hurts. Characters with rib injuries won’t be doing heroic sprints.

✧ Concussions aren’t instant naps. Dazed vision, nausea, dizziness, maybe even personality changes, but they’re not going to collapse neatly like in the movies.

✧ Blood loss is sneaky. It’s not just about dramatic pools of blood. It’s dizziness, confusion, and the body getting cold as circulation tanks.

✧ Adrenaline lies. Someone can take a serious injury and not feel it until the fight’s over. That “I didn’t realize I was bleeding until later” trope? Very real.

✧ Twisted ankles are brutal. One bad step and suddenly running is off the table. Even walking hurts like hell. Perfect way to ground a chase scene.

✧ Burns linger. Even small burns hurt more than most people expect. Blisters, infection risk, constant pain, it’s not just a cool scar later.

✧ Dislocated shoulders = useless arm. Characters can’t keep swinging a sword or firing a gun. They’re basically fighting one-armed until it’s fixed.

✧ Shock is a thing. Pale skin, trembling, rapid heartbeat, and eventually disorientation. A character might not even realize how bad their wound is.

✧ Stitches aren’t magic. Getting sewn up is painful and recovery takes time. They’re not instantly battle-ready after a needle and thread.

Gender & Multiplicity: A Primer On The Intersection of Transness & DID REDAC FourOFour Spring 2023

Gender & Multiplicity: A Primer on the Intersection of Transness & DID

Hi i’m Ian. so, it’s trans day of visibility. Or at least, it was. It’s kind of a strange sort of concept to us. Because of, well, y'know, the DID*

*that stands for dissociative identity disorder our identity began to divide at a young age. Now we’re a system of over eighty alters. for us, that means our genders are all over the map.

Even between two alters with the same gender…Hisham identifies as cis internally, Karma identifies as trans internally…the perception of the self may differ.

And it only gets more complicated.

Comic: tomboy *not a girl or a boy but a secret third thing.

Alannah: utrinque dyke. don’t fight her on her label.

Ian: faggot (or genderqueer guy… but fag is faster)

Baby Bird Saso: nonbinary bird. don’t even ask

[oldest] Saso: agender. There are four Saso’s. Even between duplicates, genders can still vary.

Alexx: girl. We have few alters with straight-forward genders.

Each of us has a nuanced sense of self.

Did issues aren’t talked about very often. Trans issues aren’t either, but that is changing. And the intersection between them is talked about pretty much never. But as a gender diverse DID system, the intersection of the two affects us every day.

Transition decisions are hard when different parts of you want opposite things. Even things like haircuts and shaving can cause internal conflict. Compromise is crucial. How about we all present as ourselves? That sounds great. Or things go bad.

Where did all this facial hair come from? Forcing transition on alters that don’t want it can cause chaos internally. And make otherwise cooperative alters become hostile to the system. Their reactions can vary from depression or dysphoria to something more drastic. I have a friend who won’t start HRT because he fears his transition would be sabotaged by distressed alters in his system. Who shaved our face? In systems with poor communication, these problems become even worse. We’re lucky to have decent communication and cooperative alters in our system.

But we run into issues all the time anyway. Gender diversity makes DID impossible to hide. Some guy: “Weren’t you a guy yesterday? Your name was different too.” The transition choices we make also impact the safety of the girls in the system. No matter how we proceed, there is no passing as cis for all of us. Of course, trying to agree on a collective name and gender identity is a nightmare as well. How do you decide on one label for over eighty people?

Here’s the passage with the all‑caps sections turned into regular sentence‑case (while keeping the original line breaks and punctuation):

Genderfluid - X I’m sure the experience is similar, but only one of us actually has a fluid gender.

Genderqueer – checkmark? Kind of? Our collective gender is definitely queer, but the word doesn’t fit all of us.

Pangender – checkmark? We identified this way before learning we have DID. It made sense then, thinking we were a singlet, but now it feels lacking in clarity.

Transgender – checkmark? It’s not incorrect to call us trans, but not all of us identify that way. Nonbinary – checkmark? Again, not wrong, just… not wholly correct, either.  

I don’t need to keep going, you get it, yeah? Nothing fits perfect. These days we just say “transmasc” and let people guess.

It just gets exhausting, you know?

I could go on, but it’s stuff like this that makes days like Trans Day of Visibility strange for us.

Unless we quash some part of ourselves, the combination of DID and transness makes us hypervisible. Every day.

Personally, we wind up coming out about both to everyone. Because it’s safer to explain.

Despite this, however, the situation we are in is still…at the end of the day… An invisible one.

But it doesn’t have to be! People with DID and gender‑diverse systems don’t have to hide away forever. We can’t stay relegated to horror‑movie plots and being denied transition because of our systems. We have a right to be seen, acknowledged, and protected.

So this year’s Trans Day of Visibility, I made a decision – I decided to speak up and start the conversation.

It’s time to give trans systems some visibility.  

赤 4R4 Tumblr: Akabirdie Twitter: akabirdie_art Instagram: redacfourofour