the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.
capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.
now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.
and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.
and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.
and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".
it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"
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CINDY THE SKULL — “Evening, officers. It’s a bit late to be skulking about, don’t you think?” Though she’s lounging around the coal room door as languidly as ever, her pale eyes ringed with coal dust seem to bore a hole in your skull.
YOU — “I’m looking for a place to sleep.”
CINDY THE SKULL — She lifts an eyebrow at you and Kim. “Did the cafeteria man finally decide he wasn’t interested in keeping a pigsty?”
YOU — “No, Kim is still staying there. I just can’t pay my bill.”
KIM KITSURAGI — The lieutenant clears his throat slightly. “Let’s not give people the impression that officers of the RCM make a habit of dodging their tabs, detective.”
CINDY THE SKULL — She glances at Kim, lips pursing just slightly.
EMPATHY — His little comment irritated her. Curious.
CINDY THE SKULL — “Tough luck, officer.” She shrugs, the faux fur collar of her coat brushing her cheeks. “There’s a perfectly good garbage bin in the courtyard. It’s got a lovely view. Real prime real estate.”
YOU — “I know. Garte said I could sleep there, but I’d rather find somewhere else.”
CINDY THE SKULL — She blinks her coal-smeared eyes at you. Then, she turns to the lieutenant. “Is he joking?”
KIM KITSURAGI — “No,” he says drily. “He is not. If you know of any… more *comfortable* places to sleep, we would be much obliged.”
CINDY THE SKULL — She stares openly at the two of you, as if in disbelief.
COMPOSURE — The absurdity of your plight has nearly broken right through her veneer of youthful detachment.
CINDY THE SKULL — “Maybe I’m the one who should be a detective. I can solve your little case for you right now.” She points to the lieutenant. “Your room.”
KIM KITSURAGI — His face is solid stone. “No.”
ESPIRIT DE CORPS — There are so many reasons why he does *not* want to do that. He has neither the time nor any desire to share them with Cindy. Or with you, for that matter.
-1 MORALE
CINDY THE SKULL — She whistles softly. “Damn. Must be true what they say about pigs and cannibalism.”
KIM KITSURAGI — The lieutenant does not rise to her bait.
EMPATHY — But there is something playing at the downturned corners of his mouth and the furrow of his brow. Something like guilt.
YOU — “What about the coal room, Cindy?”
CINDY THE SKULL — She outright laughs at you. “Fuck no! You want in my room, get a warrant, piggo!”
LOGIC — While drug possession is not a crime in Revachol, it doesn’t stop most cops from confiscating substances from vulnerable civilians for their own personal use. Including yourself, most likely.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY — Hey, good idea! Cindy’s an artsy type, she’s probably got all kinds of shit to get her creative juices flowing.
PAIN THRESHOLD — And to get her through the cold and the hunger and the cruelty.
VOLITION — No. Don’t make things any worse than they already are.
YOU — “But then… where do I go?”
CINDY THE SKULL — She shrugs again. “It’s not my problem, is it? Ask your partner, here. Or maybe you should take a hint and go back home to the farm.”
YOU — “I don’t know if I have a home… I think I lost it.”
KIM KITSURAGI — The lieutenant’s frown deepens. He stares down at his boots rather than meet your or Cindy’s eye.
CINDY THE SKULL — A long, almost uncomfortable silence. Her eyes are hardening as they take you in— you and your bloodshot eyes, your slightly labored breathing, your clothes that are certainly too thin to keep you warm tonight.
EMPATHY — She feels sorry for you, and she resents herself for it.
CINDY THE SKULL — She lets out a long sigh, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “All right, piggy. Just quit looking at me all pitiful… You saw the foreclosed apartment in the hall, right? If you wait for the cleaning lady to go to sleep, and you don’t stay long, it’s not a bad place. Better than the trash, anyway.”
REACTION SPEED — She seems to regret it as soon as the words leave her mouth. She’s not thrilled at the idea of trusting your honor not to rat out or even arrest your fellow squatters. But it’s too late now.
SUGGESTION — Wait. Is it really that simple? What if she expects something in return for the information? Or she could be setting a trap for you!
YOU — “Hang on. What’s the catch?”
CINDY THE SKULL — A wry smile breaks out across her face. It almost looks pained. “No catch, officer. I’m no snitch. Nor a pig.”
RHETORIC — You’ve insulted her more deeply than she cares to let on. She helped you because she knows your struggles intimately. Struggles that have claimed the lives of people she cared about. But now you’ve reminded her of the difference between you: she calls you pig because you sold your humanity for the power to strip others of their own.
EMPATHY — She’s sad. She was born sad and she will die sad. You are the one making her sad.
YOU — “Hey, Cindy?”
CINDY THE SKULL — “What?”
“I’m sorry. Thank you for helping me.”
“You shouldn’t judge me. We’re the same. We do what it takes to survive. You have the Skulls, I have the RCM.”
“Can’t we just get along?”
“I’ll pay you back somehow. I’ll make things right.”
“I don’t want to be this kind of animal anymore.”
KIM KITSURAGI — The lieutenant looks up at you, startled. Concerned, even. He almost looks as though he wants to say something, but nothing comes to him. He just stares at you, at a loss.
CINDY THE SKULL — She levels you with a steady gaze. Even without the coal dust, her eyes would look sunken into her wan face. If it weren’t for the roundness still clinging to her cheeks, she would have lost nearly all trace of her youth by now.
“I don’t think you even understand what kind of animal you are,” she says coolly.
ENCYCLOPEDIA — Homo sapien.
CONCEPTUALIZATION — A tiny, violent ape.
AUTHORITY — Predator.
HALF LIGHT — Prey.
VOLITION — You’re a human, Harry. Nothing more or less.
INLAND EMPIRE — The saddest and cruelest animal of them all.
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Tim Drake has a weird fucking function
The thing about Tim that I find unique is that his life became SO MUCH WORSE after joining the heroing thing. Everybody else had a mid-to-shit life before becoming a hero/living with Bruce and mostly everybody (except Jason who LITERALLY DIED) had their life improved by being a hero/being Bruce's kid (or at least it is typically portrayed as such.
Tim had the exact opposite trajectory. His life wasn't perfect before he became Robin, but like...multi-millionaire/billionaire (canon is unclear, but he's within Gotham's upper-strata) kid with both natural intelligence + charisma and a bright future ahead of him and parents who were emotionally neglectful but nothing really beyond that (which is also a form of trauma, but all of the info we have indicates that the Drakes were no Arthur Brown or David Cain) and he still had other people he could rely on outside of them. He went to boarding school, which could be something horrible OR something amazing depending on your own thoughts/experiences. I grew up having a commute where we'd drive past a really pretty and rich af boarding school that literally everybody in our area DREAMED of going to, so to me the idea of going to boarding school sounds incredible but mileage may vary. Tim seems like the type of kid who would thrive in that though. Based on what we know in canon atm, his pre-robin life was fucking amazing.
And then he starts being the sidekick and working towards becoming Robin. His parents immediately get kidnapped and poison themselves through drinking tainted water; his mom dies and his dad is in a coma. This is not the fault of Robin, but Tim himself muses about the idea that Robin and dead parents are linked: to become Robin completely, you must lose your parents. And with how fate/destiny/canon events can operate in comics universes, maybe he isn't that far off. Once his dad wakes up, their relationship becomes strained as the man grieves the loss of his wife and realizes that his son has been doing vigilantism as a hobby. It is unclear exactly how good of a parent Jack was before the incident, but the results of Tim's involvement with the Robin mantle has definitely made things worse between father and son. Jack will also die within quick succession of 2 of Tim's best friends, his girlfriend, and his other father. He will also effectively lose like 1/2 his loved ones in the fallout of all of that mess including: his older brother, his other friends (both civilian and superhero), and the stepmother with whom he shared what I would argue is his best parent-child relationship (Dana also may have died, but it's left unclear). He has stopped pursuing higher education (the moment he even applied for college he 'died', and it seems he hasn't made another attempt since) and if he wasn’t a major focus of the media before he sure is now. He tries to quit briefly (in fact he initially was planning on quitting once someone more suited came along) and cannot bring himself to do so. Even when he does manage to get away for a while, his superhero life impacts the pre-robin life he is trying to go back to. Leaving is an impossibility, this is all there is for him now. He also isn’t allowed to make mistakes anymore, not when lives hang in the balance. The one who enforces that impossible standard the most (besides Bruce depending on who's writing) is himself. He’s got TRAUMA now and people want to hurt him constantly. He is constantly questioning his own sanity and morality and place in the world. He almost dies like every month. Tim grows colder and less grounded, he is becoming both a better and a worse version of himself at the same time. He’s saving lives in the same few issues as he’s setting up a Saw movie plot for the man who killed his father. He is haunted by the ghosts of his past and the looming figure of his future. His life becomes SO MUCH FUCKING WORSE after he becomes Robin. Some of it is the fault of others, some is the fault of circumstance, and some of it is due to his own actions. But basically all of Tim's worst traumas and life-changing moments are either tied to or caused by Robin. Dick's parents would still be dead, Jason would still be living on the streets, Stephanie would still have Arthur Brown for a father and a lot of other things that deserve their own posts/IDK if they've been retconned, and Damian would still have been raised in the eco-cult where death is a constant. Those are life circumstances that occur without the involvement of Robin, the only one who even needs Bruce involved at all in their series of events is Damian. But Tim? All of what is considered his 'worst' moments occur after he assumes the role.
This idea is what I find the coolest and most fascinating about Tim as a character. Being a hero is usually portrayed as either an outright awesome thing or a righteous duty that one must fulfill or (maybe in a grimmer and/or more grounded story) a sacrifice to your interpersonal relationships/mental health that is made for the greater good. For Tim, being a superhero actively ruined his life (both because of the general circumstances surrounding being a kid vigilante and the choices he made as part of that role). It's never portrayed that way in canon because we need to come out of issues going 'wow being a superhero is so cool! I'm gonna buy the next issue!', but when you just look at Tim's life literally everything really bad that we know of occurred after he became Robin.
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not to be another donations post but you may remember how over the summer we had massive amounts of plumbing problems and other unexpected moving costs? well. after proceeding to work every single hour available to me for six months, take no holidays whatsoever, and budget the hell out of every aspect of my life, I was actually on track to pay everything back and maybe have a little bit of wiggle room by the time summer came around!
and then we got a call from the vet about routine labs saying that if we didn't take Suzy in to an emergency specialty hospital immediately, she would die within in a week, she might die anyways if we took her there, but it was our only chance to have a few more months with her. after an extremely difficult household discussion, we decided that we needed to do as much as we could for her. she's been a beloved member of the family for 18 years. we were not going to abandon her in her hour of need.
with two days at the specialty hospital, the prognosis was better than we could have possibly hoped! the most important thing is she does not have heart problems at all, which means that we can treat her chronic kidney disease with normal IV fluids and with careful treatment she could easily be with us for years to come. the timely intervention also may or may not have saved her from acute kidney failure too, we'll know when we go back to the vet on Wednesday to get her blood checked where her levels have stabilized at.
two days at the specialty hospital means we are also down $3652 , and no longer are on track to pay back everything by July when it comes due unless a couple of uncertain things going forward Go Right, I do not trust everything to Go Right, and we're also still uncertain about what long-term treatment going forward is going to cost.
I still have my ko-fi and my patreon, but honestly, I'm aware that everything is tight for everyone always and there are also a lot of causes that need money right now and in the face of that "hey my family went super out on a limb to try to save our cat and would love some help not falling off" feels kind of shallow. but like. not to sound dumb or like a youtuber or podcaster, but, like. honestly I think the Most Helpful Thing that anyone could do for me right now is take a fucking HelloFresh link that will send you a "free" box for cost-of-shipping ($7ish?) if you Sign Up For An Account that you can then cancel Immediately After The Box Has Shipped and Never Give Them Any More Money Than That and get Six To Ten Meals Out Of It, and for getting someone to "sign up", they will give me a free box too. like. if 13 people are willing to take a link then I don't need to worry about food for the next three months. which would be. HUGE.
so I guess.... dm me if you want a link? otherwise expect to see a lot of promotion of my writing/ patreon as I scramble the hell to try to make this money up
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