#dad lore

[silly-blue-gosling]

I love all the people who write/draw Rocky's kids cause it makes me think of the insane dad lore they would get cause Rocky would just forget to tell them stuff that happened to him

*rocky and his children watching Adrian sleep after a nice evening*

Rocky: This reminds me of the time that I watched my last crewmate die on the Blip-A and all I could do is watch them fall asleep while I wished that I would get sick like everyone else did so I didn't have to be alone

Rocky's child: HOLY HELL DAD WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US THIS

Rocky : oh i just forgot

[inbabylontheywept]

she was dead silent on the drive home, but that was okay. sometimes, after band practice, she was just out of words. it was a short drive to her house. the only part where it actually felt weird was after i pulled up her parent’s driveway. 

after that, the silence stretched so far it smeared and left a weird residue. she kept looking at the car door like she wanted to leave, so i looked at the door too, then she looked at me, and i looked at her, and my first thought was that she was going to tell me that the door was stuck. i was used to that car always doing some damn thing. it was the car me and all my siblings had learned to drive in, and it was really beat to hell. there were dents all over the body, which we’d unsuccessfully tried fixing up with spackle. it had looked nice for maybe a week, but then the sun wrecked it - the spackle cracked up like the mud on the bottom of a dry riverbed and turned a sort of off yellow-white that made the car looked like it had been molded out of chicken shit. it also had a bullet hole it through the cabin that whistled like a toothless old man whenever the car went above 40, so loud it could drown out the radio, and a cabin that smelled so strongly of bugspray that even the arizona summer we drove everywhere we could with the windows down.

(if you have kids one day, you will maybe, possibly, begin to understand how much i loved that car.)

anyway, i was thinking about what else could possibly be wrong with the chickenshitmobile, and she just kept looking at me, and then i wondered if there was something on my face, and she just kept looking at me, and then the penny dropped and i realized she was trying to work up the nerve to break up with me. 

now, i’d seen her work up the nerve to do things like this before – it could take quite a while. and knowing it was about to happen made the waiting immediately unbearable. 

so i said hey. 

and she looked at me, very startled, and said hey back real small. like she’d been caught. and in a way, i suppose she had. 

and i said it’s okay. you can just say it. i’ll be okay.

i’m always okay. 

and she said: i’m really sorry. 

i loved her, you know? it was highschool, but teenagers are capable of love. the way people love changes over time just as much as the way they stand, or the way they talk, but things don’t stop existing just because they're different. opposite really – a thing only stops changing when it's fully gone.

and i said, nothing to be sorry for, and i meant it. she looked a little relived, and i was happy to give her that peace. then she left. i watched her make it through the front door, because that was just habit at that point, and then i sat there a while afterwards, checking how i felt. and the answer was not good, but good enough to make it home. good enough to limp on. 

so i put my car in reverse, took my last look goodbye, and immediately backed into her neighbor’s car. 

crunch. 

air bags didn't go off, which was good. i left a decent dent in the bumper of the other car. genuinely couldn’t tell if i did anything to my car – anything wrong with it just kind of blended together into the general ecosystem of hand mottled, sun cracked, chickenshit spackle. 

i checked my glove box, and my car insurance info was, of course, out of date. my phone was dead too. as a teenager, my phone was less my lifeline to my friends, and more my tether to my parents, so i wasn’t particularly conscious of keeping it charged. both my fault.

i sat there a few minutes, trying to think of the best way to handle things, and there was only one answer i could think of, and i hated that answer, so i spent a few more minutes trying and failing to think of a better one, and then a few more coming to peace with what had to be done. 

then i went back to knock on my now ex’s front door. 

her dad opened, which i was very relieved over, even if he seemed less than thrilled. he looked me over, and in a firm, but slightly apologetic way said: she does not want to see you right now. 

(i think he assumed i was going to try and talk her out of the break up?)

and i said not here for her. i just backed into your neighbor’s car, and i need to call my dad, but my phone’s dead. could i borrow yours?

and he looked at me, then back at his neighbors car, which sure enough was dented, then he looked at the chickenshitmobile, and if there was something wrong with it, it just kind of blended into the general Wrongness of the car, then back to me, and i could see him imagining the last ten minutes from my pov: getting broken up with, backing into a car, having to walk up to your exes door and borrow a phone, calling my dad to tell him that i just reversed into someone.  

and his expression shifted from stern and apologetic to truly sad, which felt more kind that i deserved. things only got here because i kept fucking up - forgot to look behind me, forgot to replace the insurance forms, forgot to charge my phone. it was my mess, but his sympathy meant the world to me. i probably would’ve cried if he said sorry, or patted me on the back or called me sport, but instead he said

stay out here – i’ll bring you a phone.

and then he left.  

i found a nice spot on the lawn in the shade under a sycamore, then settled into his grass.i was trying not to freak out, and was doing an okay job. he came out a minute or so later, not just with a phone, but a juicebox and a jar of green olives, which really threw a wrench in the whole try not to cry thing. soon as i saw those, a few tears squoze out. i was still hoping i could pass them off as Manly Tears but then he told me that he’d gotten the olives a few weeks before and had been meaning to hand them off to me, and that this was his last chance for that. then i made a sound like a horse drowning in a bog, and he patted my back pretty rough, four solid thumps, like he wasn't sure if i was crying or choking on an olive, and was trying to cover both bases at once.

then he went back inside, and i made a few more bog horse noises while finishing off the rest of the entire jar of green olives, and then i called my dad.

he was about ten minutes away that day, and luckily was home. he drove over, and we went to the neighbor’s house, and from there things actually went quite nice. the neighbor was a retired man who actually said he could fix the dent himself, no need for insurance. he said he appreciated that i didn't just drive off, and i said i was really sorry about his car, and he said he was really sorry about my car, and then he gestured to the chickenshitmobile and i laughed because it really was a disaster on wheels.

then we left.

i thought we were going to head straight home, but instead we went to a gas station, and we both got several slim jims that we folded into thick enough coils that we could put them on a hotdog bun because the growing up mormon equivalent of having a sad brewski with your dad is just choosing to make bad decisions sober. then he took me to the canals and we watched the sun turn all orange and pink, and he looked over at me and said:

brains are good at remembering bad days. so you gotta make sure that a bad day has a good part in it, so you can remember that too. remember that when you have a kid. try to do a good job on days like that - they're going to be a big part of how they remember you.

and then he gave me a big hug and said he was never going to eat another slim jim again.

---

the year after that i went to college, which kicked my butt in new and exciting ways. and on a lot of those bad days, after a test that went sour, or a faux paus that was particularly embarrassing, or some other hardship of my new adult life, i’d stop by the gas station and pick up leathery, half jerkied hotdog before heading to the canals to watch the sun set. i’d take a bite and imagine my dad next to me, grimacing through the slim-jim wad, asking what good thing i was going use that time to remember. 

and in my head, i’d say you, dad. 

i’m going to remember you.

[v00do-d0ll]

Even tho it’s funny for Bruce to be bad at doing things. I want fics where Bruce is just GOOD at things, and I don’t mean things that show off his smarts. I want it to show off his natural athleticism.

Like just being good at skateboarding, or gymnastics (obviously not as good as dick), I wanna see his ass parkour up the side of a building. Random shit that the kids don’t think he’d be good at.

And they’d always being like “When tf did you learn that?!?” and he’s just like “I didn’t learn it” and then he tells them in the most obscure way possible that it goes with some training he did before being Batman and just drops some insane dad lore.

[skeleton-brainz]

bad parental figure Alfred? Yes, love it

Bad parent figure Leslie? Also yes

Bad Parent Thomas wayne? Under utilized, need more.

I always view Martha as a good mom, I think i always will even in this situation.

She was the last good person he loved.

But i feel like vaguely would further his no kill rule.

Like Thomas Wayne wasn't a good man, but deep down Bruce can't let himself think that his father deserved death. Because what son wishes death on their parent

Plus I think it would be prime dad lore. Imagine the batkids really don't know anything about Bruce's childhood. They get vague stuff from Alfred occasionally.

But one day they see some weird scar that they can't place, they have been there for long enough to know every scrape and scar on each other's bodies. But this one is just one they can't solve.

And Bruce just casually goes

"Oh that one? That's from a firepoker because my father was worried I was gay when I was 5. Luckily he let it cool down a little."

(This is vaguely based off my father casually mentioning that he was scared of Christians for a long time, because his neighbor would torture his son in their shared back yard with electrical wires. When I commented on powerlines)

[gracious-midnight]

"Mike's straight because he has a girlfriend"

That means nothing, my dad was married to my mom for 10 years and he still cheated on her with a man

Funnily enough his name is also Mike...this is byler proof

[emmasmoke8]

Sonic and Shadow just dropping the craziest dad lore. Examples:

Sonic: I died once

Silver: …what?

Sonic: Stabbed right through the back with a spear by one-half of a crazy powerful god of time and destruction in front of a princess

Silver: but you’re still alive?!

Sonic: I got resurrected. You helped.

Silver: I did?!

Sonic: Yeah, but that timeline got erased, so I’m the only one that remembers

-/-

Shadow: I killed my dad twice.

Astra: …

Shadow: Same dad. Just two different times.

Astra: …

Shadow: Good times.

[farewell-wanderlust7]

Dad lore is the wildest shit. Like, my dad casually tells me about that one time he was in London and was in a pub and he looks across the bar and who’s sat there? Christopher fucking Eccleston. What my dad does? Goes up to him and buys him a drink, before sitting and chatting with him for an hour over a pint. Legendary.

And then that time he was sat at the back of a funeral service for someone he didn’t know that well, and he’s ended up sat next to this man. Before the funeral starts, he and this man get to talking, go to the pub after, it’s all chill. A year or so later my dad sees some new James Bond promo and gets the shock of his life. That man he was sat next to at the funeral? Daniel Craig. The new Bond. Jaw dropping.

Dad lore always goes crazy. MY dad was temporary drinking buddies with The Doctor and James Bond, respectively.

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]