#hood-ex

88: Superman: American Alien #5 on Jan 12th!

At some point, you have to wonder if you’re worth it.

Really, you’ve been asking yourself that question your entire life. Am I worth it? 

Of course, if the question were reversed, if someone came up to you and asked, “Am I worth it?”, you’d immediately say, “Of course.” It’s no sweat off your back, you don’t even need a second to think about it. Of course they’re worth it. They are everything to you. Everything you have. All that you could ever want to have.

But you’ve been asking that same question about yourself for the majority of your life. Survivor's guilt weighs heavily on the lucky, on the fortunate, on the survivors. And it’s not like you’re not grateful. You are. You are so damn grateful to have friends and family like them, so grateful to know that you have people around you who care so much for you and wouldn’t hesitate to give up everything.... for you.

But that’s so much. That’s too much. Everything? Are they sure? Is he really worth everything? Surely they can place some other value on his head rather than everything. Maybe a limb. Maybe a sense. Maybe some object they hold dear. But everything? Their entire life?

No, Dick Grayson doesn’t think he’s worth it, yet he keeps being proven wrong. His own brother, the one he looks at with something stirring in his chest when he realizes how young he is, how small he is, how, if he squints just so and holds onto that feeling in his heart a little longer, he might consider him to even be his own son, has given up everything for the sake of him. His best friends, the ones he knows he wouldn’t ever be able to make in another lifetime but might one day meet again, have given up everything for him many times, too many times. And it’s all done without hesitance, without a hint of second guessing or back tracking. 

They look at him and say, “Dick Grayson, you are worth it.” 

And he doesn’t know what to say.

When you’re the destined survivor. When you’re the last one standing. When you’re the one that’s left on the battle field, surrounded by glass and covered in so many scrapes and bruises and drenched in blood but alive. 

What do you say? How do you thank them? How do you tell them to stop?

How do you tell them you’re not worth it?

Perhaps this is where the self-hatred seeps in. The doubt and the grievance over every seemingly coddled gesture. You don’t want to be handled like glass. You don’t want to be looked at in the corner of their eyes, fear lingering in their gazes as they have to wonder, “Do I have to give up everything to save him?”

You didn’t ask them to. You would never ask them to. You know the price of everything, knows what it feels like to watch it slip through your fingers and shatter onto the ground. You know what it means to give up everything.

But they keep doing it. Again. And again.

For you.

“I’m not worth everything,” you want to tell them, want to scream in their faces until they get it. “I’m not worth it, so please, please stop giving it all away. Stop giving yourselves away.”

You know they won’t ever stop, that’s why you love them, that’s why you can’t force them to understand, but sometimes you wish they would understand. Sometimes you wish you could present to them a scale that would show them how much their lives mean in comparison to your own. And this isn’t a competition or a matter of your life is greater than mine, or you have more to offer the world than I ever could. It was never about that.

It was always about getting them to understand that you— the last Grayson, the first Robin, the first Titan, one of the last original, the second Batman, the one that somehow keeps surviving— are not worth more than their lives. 

You are not worth everything.

!!!! i dont think ive ever seen you with a wrong take!!!! i love reading your meta, i could read it for hours!! i trust everything you have to say, especially about dick, and i could only hope to have your knowledge on comic history and way with words one day. 

Probably either Homefront or Performance, and I think it’s pretty obvious why ;)

I read that too fast and thought you said “lingerie projects”. I was mildly impressed during that split second of miscomprehension.

Sure! The term “mirrorverse” originated in the Star Trek fandom. The TV Tropes entry says that it is an “alternate universe where Good and Evil characterizations are reversed, but it otherwise the same as the ‘real’ universe.” TV Tropes has an entry for DC! Here’s what they have to say:

The DCU has its "anti-matter" Earth, wherein Ultraman, Superwoman, Johnny Quick, Power Ring, and Owlman (the Crime Syndicate of Amerika) are the evil duplicates of Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, and Batman (the Justice League of America), and Lex Luthor was the only superhero left in the world. (A later story introduced the Justice Underground, a team of heroes led by Riddler's counterpart, the Quizmaster. And following Riddler's Heel–Face Turn, Quizmaster had a temporary Face–Heel Turn.)

The trope originated in the Silver Age with Earth-3, which was destroyed in Crisis on Infinite Earths but was restored later. The antimatter universe was based on this concept.

JACARANDA!!

Emily you are the jacaranda!! It's another tree with gorgeous flowers, representing your strong roots in the fandom and your welcoming nature! (I really recommend googling it so you can see the whole tree!)