Imagine losing all understanding of your native language. You can't understand it, can't speak it, can't read it, can't write it, can't think in it, and can't even use or understand sign language with it.
Instead you start speaking in an entirely unknown language. It is as if you have been speaking it all your life. You know you haven't but you're able to completely understand the intent behind what you say.
And it's not like your intelligence has really degraded or anything! You're still capable of rational thinking. It's just that you have very little way to communicate.
Then combine all that with an irreversible transformation. Your body has changed and you have all these new and confusing instincts.
You could really use some help adjusting... but now nobody can understand you, and you can't understand them.
sometimes while i think about that while a lot of adults did not treat me very well as a kid i also get a lot of 'in hindsight this person was so good to me and i didnt even realize it until now' as an adult. today i was thinking about how the first anime convention i ever went to was when i was 10 and i asked the man working the manga cafe what manga was/what a good place to start was (because the con was very overstimulating for me and i had gotten lost) and he asked how old i was before recommending yotsuba and asking if i wanted any water or something to eat. its really simple but theres a lot of bad things that couldve happened or he could've been careless in his recommendation, but instead yotsuba has remained one of my favorite manga for years, and probably a large portion of why i continue to read manga as an adult... i think adults who try to involve kids in the world safely/kindly even in little ways make so much more of a difference than they ever really know.
percy has been called smart by hazel, reyna, and annabeth (twice).
to say he’s actually dumb is to disagree with those three women. and if you are disagreeing with 3 of the most knowledgeable, capable, and badass characters in the series… what are you even doing?
Danny needs a few...odd things. A few dietary and emotional requirements unique to his physiology.
Meat is one of them.
But like, raw meat. He doesn't have to eat it often, maybe twice a month, but it does need to be completely raw.
He also needs to eat non-sentient blob ghosts, which are very different from sentient ones. Same amount, maybe twice a month.
He's weak to hot temperatures, where most humans require some sort of positive contact he needs to fight, if he gets too much sunlight his dopamine levels drop, and oddly enough as he got older milk or products with a lot of milk started to affect him like alcohol affects humans.
Now that he's made it to college, hiding most of these things is easy enough.
He chose Gotham, because of minimal sunny days and naturally cold weather. He regularly goes for walks at night, to fill his need for fighting. He says he has a milk allergy, and avoids milk products.
The blobs and the raw meat are a little uh. Those are a little hard.
He's taken to ducking into a bathroom stall to just swallow the blobs whole. But the meat...
He decides to sear the outside and leave the inside entirely raw. Does this detract from the nutrients by cooking them off? Yes. Does it mean he needs to eat raw meat four times a month instead of twice? Yes. Does it mostly hide that he's doing this in front of humans? Kind of.
Until he got a vegan roommate.
Said roommate is far too sharp-eyed for his own good, and now the guy is being weird.
Or: Damian's roommate is a meta who clearly has dietary restrictions outside the norm. It's fine; Damian understands that like animals in the wild, people have different diets. But the cuts of meat Fenton is eating are...subpar.
Damian isn't sure how to be...civil, or appear polite, or not be a "snob" if he suggests Fenton allow him to procure farm fresh cuts of steak from cows raised in an open pasture and were well taken care of.
nothing makes me more insane than the phrase "selling your body" btw. like was i not also selling my body at every other job i've had where i had to be on my feet all day, lifting boxes, working in a warehouse, etc. why is it that sex work is uniquely labeled as "selling your body" while every other job is sorted into another category, no matter how much that job might have a physical impact on your body. lmao.
like. okay i’m in bandom and like the only people that consistently talk about the women here are all. lesbians. or the feminists here for riot grrrl. but like. for every post about laura jane grace there are one thousand about gerard way. for every post about hayley williams there are one million about frank iero. and when a post goes around about women you can bet there are people in the tags talking about ls dunes and pete wentz and it’s like. fine cool. but Also.