#cp rambles

[cluelesspigeons]

Six Sentence Sunday

Thank you for tagging me last week @m0srael. I’ve been thinking about this for a bit cuz most of my WIPs are for anonymous fests, so i can’t really share much of that. But i did find something from an old WIP that i might continue some day. Not sure when. Anyway, here are 6 sentences. And I’ve also NOT forgotten about a tag game for once. I feel like this is progress!!

The darkness around him filled his lungs, making it impossible for any air to come in. Panic wrapped around his chest. He couldn’t breathe! He was going to die! This was it. But then, that quiet, soothing melody was back again, pushing the panic away.

I’ll be tagging some people as well @nelweensfic @owl-of-fandom @steampunkserpent27 @shealynn88 & @getawayfox. Feel free to skip this if you’ve already done this or if you don’t feel like doing it :))

[cologona]

The thing about Bruce making Dick Robin is that it can be read as empathy. Bruce and Dick both lost their family in the same way, and so Bruce tries to help Dick by giving him what he wanted as a young orphan. Justice, closure, power, meaning. Something to make the world right again, some way to move forward, someone who understands.

But that same reading is not as easy to apply to Jason

If I were to read Bruce in a particularly unflattering light, I'd say Bruce fundamentally saw Jason as more expendable than Dick. He was so afraid of losing Dick that he totally sabotaged that relationship, but he's fine with this much younger kid playing the same dangerous role? Jason is a tough street kid sure sure, but is he tougher than 18 year old Dick motherfucking Grayson??? No.

If I were to read Bruce in a more sympathetic light, I'd say that in Bruce's mind orphan = craving-for-justice-that-can-only-be-satiated-with-vigilantism, and since he found out Jason's father was dead he was trying to give Jason the same guidance and empowerment Dick got. He genuinely thought it would work. He did this at the same time that he was actively hiding the death of Jason's father, because this intense self-projection is happening at the subconscious level. He simultaneously wants to comfort the orphan and prevent the orphan from becoming "real" by hiding the truth. It is not logical but it is well-meaning.

(This self-projection is also the source of Bruce's bizarre assertion that Jason has anger issues- he isn't a classist asshole he's just sensitive! 👉👈)

Either way, there is clearly an instability to the concept of Jason's Robin. Batman and Robin requires suspending one's disbelief about child soldiers to degree higher than other superheroes, but there's not quite enough to support that suspension here.

Because how exactly is being Robin supposed to help Jason? What about Jason's supposed anger issues lend themselves to being helped by vigilantism? Jason could've just been Bruce Wayne's son, so why is he also Robin?

...Would Jason have just been Bruce Wayne's son?

I.. don't think so. I don't think Bruce adopted him just to offer a good home- not really. Bruce certainly wanted Jason to have a good home, but that's what sending him to Ma Gunn's school was supposed to be. Ma Gunn didn't work out sure, but it's not like she was the only option. Bruce could've just done more research the second time around. If Jason had rejected becoming Robin, would Bruce have still adopted him? If Batman had not intended for Jason to become involved with hero work, could you see him still sending Jason off to Wayne Manor to be adopted?

Bruce didn't just want a son, or even just a Robin. He wanted something specific- he wanted the feeling of having Dick back. Bruce praises Jason for how similar he is to Dick in his head, and based on Alfred's warning and Jason's own behavior, he apparently compared Jason to Dick quite a bit during training. When Dick himself eventually comes to confront Bruce about why there's another Robin, he pretty much lays it bare: Jason is Robin because he missed Dick. That's the core of it.

Now on one hand this is flattering for Jason! It means he was chosen for the Robin mantle because he demonstrated the good qualities similar to the original. In another universe maybe Jason Todd's Robin isn't the angry one or the dead one, maybe he got to develop and he could've become the Robin that came from sharing laughter and life rather than grief. A Cinderella? A little lotus boy.

On the other hand that's not the universe we live in and this reason has absolutely fuck-all to do with Jason.

As for Tim, parentification is straight up the basis of his Robin. It’s impossible to read his “Batman needs Robin” spiel without reading it as a meta statement because in-universe it’s just an extremely frgiggi depressing scenario.

I think Dick might be the only person for whom Bruce's intense self-projection kinda worked out. Not that their relationship was good, but the core of it was okay? Cassandra comes close but Bruce sorta… lives out his dreams of being all-Batman all-the-time through her. He pushed his bad impulses onto her and she didn’t understand the value of not being Batman so it came off really creepy. He was encouraging her to rely him. Like a tool.

[littlefankingdom]

There are children running away from the system because of how bad it is, but CPS only cares about proving that this rich party-lover playboy isn't fit to be a guardian. Jason literally preferred to be homeless than in the system, but they only investigate when it's Bruce Wayne that takes him in.

[biscuit-munchies]

Some more Harpy Jimmy, now with a mix of some silly and some angst :)

[buff-muffin]

Au where the ASL brothers somehow get stranded on an abandoned forest island and it’s a lord of the flies situation but not really where they just become half feral and rely on each others. Horrifying bonus points if it’s somehow the island Luffy trained on for two years. And they are just impossibly strong before either, a. Getting found by someone or b. Setting sail themselves and they bite every marine they meet.

[halflifebutawesome]

you used to be such a baby.

[thisonelikesaliens]

some random notes:

I need Xiao Hai

(please make the distinction between Xiao Hai the real person and Sea the stage name)

我是叫你回飯店睡啦

吃飯

Orca pretending to not understand 飯店 (fan dian aka hotel) and redirecting the convo using the first word (吃飯 chi fan, literally "eat rice" but just means "let's eat")

there'll probably be more word play that doesn't translate directly to english going forward

[charles-le-sorcerer]

The thing is, youth liberation cannot be achieved without the end of capitalism and the liberation of workers. We cannot expect to gain our human and civil rights by working with the bourgeois system, because the bourgeoisie relies on the dehumanization and subjugation of youth to have the workers feel like they still have some kind of property. Your rights under capitalism are directly tied to your ability to produce capital. Since children cannot produce capital, and teenagers are not guaranteed the fruits of their labor, they are subjugated by the adult bourgeoisie. Hell, even CPS exists to pacify the youth (feeling like there's a way out of abusive situations) and adults because CPS protects their "rights" to abuse kids. Calling for expansion of CPS is capitulation and will inevitably be weaponized against parents who treat their kids with respect. The best solution is securing the right for youth to leave of their own free will and have a place to go, which can't happen as long as housing is commodified under capitalism.

If we are to fight for youth liberation, mere protests and petitions and (anarchistic) individual action will not do anything because the current system hinges on the oppression of children and workers. The solution is to ally the revolutionary struggle for the working class and the struggle for children's rights. It is no coincidence that socialist countries like the Soviet Union and the DDR advocated for the protection of children from violence and recognition as people, or that their education systems were largely more democratic. Youth alone are not a big enough sector of the masses to make a real change, and real change cannot exist within the current system, so the best course of action in terms of youth liberation is to align with the revolutionary movement.

In Marx's time, women's liberation was unheard of, and yet the early socialists championed it as a goal of socialism. The DDR decriminalized homosexuality 20 years before West Germany did. Now that youth rights are the new frontier, there is little doubt in my mind it will be the (revolutionary) socialists who lead the way.

[dark-elf-writes]

Thinking about Tsuna having normal little boy interests. Thinking about Little Tsuna watching old videos of stunt men and falling in love. Thinking about little Tsuna going further and further back because he wants to see more and he has pretty unlimited internet access. Thinking about little Tsuna finding a stunt man in all stunning purple and declaring him his hero. Thinking about little Tsuna playing pretend and declaring he’s the “Great Skull-sama”.

Thinking about the arcobaleno cursed in the bodies of their preteen selves. Thinking about Skull wandering like he always does, just drifting from one place to the next, untethered and distant with nothing but a motorcycle and Oodaku to call his own.

Thinking about Skull hearing a little voice claim his name through tears and moving before he can think about it.

(It’s not hard, even for him, to recognize the little Sky. It’s not like they did a very good job at hiding him even with his flames locked away.)

Skull steps in and chases the bullies off and Tsuna takes one look at his hair and makeup before shrieking and trying to tackle him in a hug. (He can’t remember the last time someone was excited to see him. Before the pacifier certainly. Before he was pulled from the world he knew, from his territory and told to find his way in a whole new life that didn’t make sense with a body that no one would take seriously. (He hadn’t been much older when he was cursed, just shy of his nineteenth birthday if he remembers correctly, but at least he was considered an adult in most cultures.))

Tsuna drags him home and Skull? He takes one look at Tsuna’s mother’s vacant eyes and the bruises poorly hidden by Tsuna’s jacket from kids just like the ones he had driven away earlier and decides he can stay a while, if only to protect the forgotten spare of a bloodline. A task that only gets more complicated when it becomes apparent that his little Sky wont stay forgotten or a spare forever.

[cluelesspigeons]

✨my festive tree✨

Thank you @nelweensfic for the tag!! I didn’t even know this was a thing. It’s a cute idea tho!

So here is my tree! 🎄 feel free to leave some messages (or not) ❄️

@purplehotmess @m0srael @hogwartsfirebolt @nv-md @shealynn88 @isamijoo @curlyy-hair-dont-care @basicallyahedgehog + anyone else his wants to

(I’m honestly very tired right now, so excuse me if you’ve already done this or if you don’t feel like doing it 😅)

[cyberpunk-20xx]

Kerry's situation is a very painful reminder of how fucked up the game's canon society is, even to the rich people. Which is maybe my biggest gripe with the game. A game where I'm not given even the slightlest chance to change shit around me, a game that's just so pessimistic and cruel in how it treats its characters, so hopeless, is not punk. but that's smth else entirely to talk about.

Back to Kerry. He's less suicidal at the end of the game when V reached out and helped some to sooth his trauma about Johnny, even if one could argue it's maybe just, well, putting him back where he started or indulging a toxic fixation. Depends on your interpretation. But his situation hasn't actually changed, he's still held by his label in a death grip, even if at least his current manager's supposedly out of the picture. But even that i don't believe. All we know for sure is that we burned his yatch. Like. Kerry tells us that his MSM Record manager (can't remember his name and be bothered to check) makes him drink on purpose to get him to sign shit, which is blatant abuse and all we get to do is fucking burn a boat? Let me make the dude a corpse, even if you make me have to work for it jfc.

I really love when fanfic writers actually address that issue btw, because it really hurts me to think about him being left in this bullshit. And in so many endings we know his situation is less than ideal even with V.

Kerry's profound unhappiness is visible in many ways: the state of his house, his insinuated addictions, his impulsive, self-destructive behaviors, his tendency to lash out and paranoia to assume people are against him, and overall defensiveness, his fear of the unknown, his clinging to fame, his refusal to see his kids, his mentioned and hinted suicide attempts. He's a guy who, at 89, doesn't seem to me like he knows what he wants, what he needs.

Personally, it both hurts me and makes me really like him, because I find him relatable in how he reacts to despair. In that aspect, I find him very well-written, even if a lot of shitty tropes and pop star stereotypes are used. Yes, pop stars one.

(One other thing that's devastating about Kerry is that he's a rocker, but he doesn't act like one, according to his own definition (which seems to really just be Johnny's shitty macho definition altho it's a whole label that precedes both of them in the TTRPG lore). Which wouldn't be a problem to me if he also didn't find the genre inferior to rock.)

But what fucks me up the most is that he's dealing with despair at all, when out of the four LIs, he's the one that has the safest, most stable life. Hell, he could even easily leave Night City and never look back, and still create, he's got the money for it, it might sound terribly materialistic of me but the man has enough money to just no longer be dealing with all this shit. But he's stuck there because even at nearly fucking nine decades of life, he's not yet felt seen, heard, or acknowledged. He's still scrambling for his roots and something to look forward at once.

Kerry is 89 and has the self-esteem of a 23 years old still.

If I just listen to my basest instincts, I blame Johnny for a lot of that, but that's the easy way, actually. If I actually think about it, Kerry's responsible of his own life too, and Johnny got nothing to do with how he feels out of touch with his Filipino roots, or him being a burnt out rockstar, Johnny is not that powerful at all, and mostly I blame Arasaka and the corps, and i blame the music industry in the game especially actually, i blame the media and the fans for how Kerry bit by bit stops feeling human in the spotlight, but the thing is, it's harder to be angry at those, even in game. Because we're not actually given meaningful ways to do something about inequality in game, and when you're unable to fight something, your brain becomes apathetic to it. It's just a survival thing. my brain does that a lot. i prize my anger a lot because of that (probably why i am so attached to Johnny tbh).

I think Kerry craves to be seen as the man he is, but his ways to try and fix that is to feed the demigod image his career upholds. I'm mad we can't do something about it, nor see the change he deserves happen. I'm mad a game with "punk" in its name is so hopeless and cynical.

[be-the-creature-fan]

@aristokratts reminded me of something I had put off for so long but today is the day where I attempt to fix the Wild Horse CPS

Note I made this edit on my phone and did the drawing stuff with my finger.

Hope this is an upgrade (I know it's a bit on the basic side also plus ignore the hands 😅)

Original photos for reference

[alexclaain]

It's weird how everyone is immediately considered proship the moment you decide to not give a fuck. You can try to keep yourself out of this discourse all you want, but the moment you dare to shrug, some anti will stamp you with the proship logo and start to hunt you down specifically

[afrouniverse]

Dumb as hell but like tumblr culture is a little traumatising. I can't shake off the feeling that there are people looking at my blog and thinking I'm either cringe, a terrible person, or both. And I have less than 20 posts and less than 10 followers (I think), so why am I even afraid of this??

I understand people have the right to dislike whoever they want, but the idea that there are people who dislike you based on shallow things without even getting to know you and thinking horrible things about you in their head is horrifying to me. Exactly why whenever i look at a stranger's blog I try to not think anything negative about them even if they said something I think is bad, because man I would be so fucking sad if I knew somebody did that about me..

[compo67]

my mentor: you're going to need to feel comfortable talking about yourself. let's do an easy one. "tell me a little about yourself?"

me: (don't say anything SPN-related. don't say anything SPN-related. nothing about S/D or J2 or all the times i have seriously considered getting the anti-possession symbol tattooed somewhere on my body) uhm. uhhh. hockey??? knitting??? these are things that are completely normal and sane, yes?

my mentor: just register for the Networking 101 class next week.

[gretahayes]

They never took Max and Bart to Hawaii cause they knew if they did Max would take one look at Kon and call CPS