#{ I'm totally joking by the way. }

[vaguely-concerned]

having seen at least the rough outlines of all the romances now I have to say that I think emmrich's is probably objectively the best in terms of coherence and completeness of story arc (with the understanding that ultimately the 'best' romance is whichever one makes YOUR heart sing anyway so objectivity is a silly thing to claim that way, it just felt like it's the arc with the most well-paced focused content and the least dangling threads)... but lucanis' is my favourite haha. just. the whole kneeling before your beloved full of reverence but without any of the distance that usually implies??? his complete undramatic certainty and calm in every scene with rook after this, having spent the whole game caught between fear and longing???? mr. lives in a pantry but it says nothing about my psyche don't worry about it it's purely for tactical reasons that I keep myself contained in a small dark room not entirely unlike a cell, love among the parsnips -- finally coming to rook in their room and it's so comfortable and comforting???? after all the times rook supports and comforts him through the game he's finally able to return the same to them when they need it while being so calm and steady and it's so fucking sweet and feels so effortless and with no price attached?????? he basically assigns himself the role of your bodyguard and he WILL stab a god over it??????????????? the turn to protector (which was in his heart all along longing to get out and find a place) of it all????? he sounds like he's found himself unexpectedly stumbling into such a soul-lightening state of revelatory existential relief, full on 'you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves' mary oliver style, and he goes and he shares that with rook and protectively envelops them in it when they're hurting??????????????????????????? hello for the maker's sake hello can anyone hear me?????

[anglerflsh]

get Apollo'd idiot @sheerunfilteredhubris

[silverwhittlingknife]

hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?

GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE

Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.

I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:

Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?

We're gonna go in chronological order!

Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:

Aww. Such a cute elephant!

Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!

Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:

SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.

(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)

Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:

Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.

Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.

Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:

Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:

... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.

Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.

For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.

Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.

Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?

tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later

Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!

The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.

(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)

Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.

By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.

So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)

Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do

Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.

(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)

The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.

Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."

But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.

Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)

Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!

(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)

Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.

Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.

Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.

So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.

And look, here we are:

Aww.

Whew - that's everything I could find!

Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3

[theminecraftbee]

i think my biggest decked out 2 meta thought is that the hermits are currently seriously undervaluing the ethereal cards on account of them losing them in the future, and in general undervaluing the entire crowns shop in favor of the frozen shards.

the thing is, they're right about moment of clarity; building up your permanent deck is more important than that temporary boost, and moment of clarity just doesn't do enough for any given run to be worth it if it's anything other than 'the only thing left you can afford'. they're right about that specific ethereal card.

the PROBLEM is that they're extending that calculus to the crowns shop. but that's not the same trade-off in the crowns shop! literally every item in the crowns shop is one-time use! so the ACTUAL trade-off there is "will this item i buy help me enough to make up for the number of dungeon runs it took to buy it". when you look at it like that, it becomes clear that frozen shards are probably a little overpriced if you're just going to run easy or medium, and are ESPECIALLY overpriced if you're not sure you can reliably win that run. eight crowns, especially early game, seems to currently take three or four runs to build up, and that's if you're lucky with treasure on all of them and win all of them!

meanwhile, three crowns is one or two runs - one if you're lucky, two if you're not, from what i've seen. for those three crowns, though, you can get one of the ethereal cards, which will then help ensure you win your next run, getting you to another permanent card. for a little more, you could get something like tango as the dungeon lackey, and REALLY amp up your ability to make sure you win a run.

now, later on in the game when treasure is more reliable and runs are more valuable, this calculus probably changes; suddenly, one extra run is worth a lot more than it currently is. it's just that one run RIGHT NOW is worth like, one common card and a crown, unless you add something to it to make it worth more, whereas a copy of like, pay to win, could bump a run up to an uncommon card, and that's way more valuable than an additional run, i think.

[thelaurenshippen]

genuinely think it's good and healthy to follow at least one person in each of your fandoms who reblogs good gifsets but has just...absolutely dogshit takes on the show, or who ships that ship you despise. keeps things fresh. keeps things grounded. you gotta stay humble

[fleetsparrow]

Although I've been buying the current main Batman comics for a while, I'll admit I have not read them in a bit, but what?

"Alexis Kaye, a disillusioned college student, embraced The Joker’s nihilism. Creating her own Joker toxin, she murdered her college dean, earning The Joker's approval as "Punchline," his new partner against Batman."

Fucking what?

And these clowns (derogatory) have the audacity to claim queer and/or female fans create Mary Sue self-inserts?

What the fuck is she then???

[total-drama-brainrot]

psycho!noah au, what do the aftermath cast think? conversely if they dont know/dont see the show (isnt it implied to be canon in wt that they watch the show or atleast can?), how do they react to newly eliminated cast members telling them?

and then, at whatever point he gets eliminated or just whenever the cast sees him again, how do they react with that new info?

The justification I have for Noah remaining stealthed under his "stoic cynic" persona pre-reveal in this AU is a little convoluted, but I do have one. Vaguely. Which I'll try to outline here for continuities' sake.

So, to clarify; Noah only competes in Island and World Tour, just like in canon. Most things happen just like canon, with the exception of Noah lasting a little longer in Island so he and Izzy have more time to be menaces (I have no idea how I'll shift the elimination order to justify keeping him around, though). Noah's still eliminated fairly early and ends up on the Playa, where the other elimination fodder welcome him with open arms, because in Island they're only given access to the raw camera footage instead of the final cut!

I imagine it'd be pretty hard for a Brand New Show to have the manpower of a full professional editing team that can plan and prosecute the final cut of a whole ~20 minute episode in only three days (in-universe), so to keep the losers as in the know as possible in real time, they're given access to the same live camera footage Chris and Chef have, just without the confessionals.

Since the confessionals are, uh. Toilets. And no one wants to have 24/7 access to toilet stall footage.

Noah only ever really drops his ruse in the confessional, or around Izzy, so none of the losers have gotten the opportunity to see the real him in action; even when he is visible on camera, it's only during the stolen moments he shares with Izzy outside of challenges, wherein the two plot and scheme together like Pinky and the Brain. Given that the majority of them don't even bother to watch the live footage unless there's a challenge actively happening (or something else otherwise noteworthy), his true nature goes undetected amongst them as well.

And then, in Action, the show's budget and workforce increases. Suddenly, the editing team is thrice the size of Island's, and they are capable of providing a final cut of each episode within the span of 24~72 hours, allowing the show to air quicker. Which has the added bonus of allowing everyone in the peanut gallery access to the yet-to-be-aired episodes (instead of the live footage), keeping them up to date with the competition whilst also giving them the same perspective as the audience itself. Including people's confessions.

It's a good thing Noah didn't compete in Action, then. His mask of indifference lives on.

Then there's a year-long break between seasons, wherein Noah works under Chris as his personal assistant. Yada yada yada, World Tour happens. He knows that the losers are going to see his confessions. So now Noah has to choose between maintaining his persona at the sake of losing out on toying with the greater audience, or carrying on as he did in Island at the cost of revealing his 'true colours' (which, in this case, still isn't the real Noah so much as an exaggeration of his more deranged tendencies, since Noah's still essentially performing for the cameras; just with a different role).

Of course he goes with option two. He's primarily motivated by his own amusement- that was the reason for his whole charade in the first place.

(Alright, clarification over, time to actually answer the question.)

So the peanut gallery and steadily increasing number of World Tour Rejects are horrified when, in Noah's scattering of confessions- as he doesn't confess very often, so when he does it's a treat to himself and the audience- he mostly waxes poetic about how exciting each near-death experience the cast go through is, and all of the different ways he so wanted to cause the others harm (either in general, or themed around the challenges), being so much more expressive than anyone's ever seen him (concerningly so, to the point of it breaching the uncanny valley) and giddy over the prospect of performing Acts Of Incredible Violence against his castmates.

They're living in that same fearful anticipation the wider audience experienced through his tenure in Island; waiting for Noah to Drop The Act and fulfil his promises of brutal sabotage, if only to finally put an end to the constant looming threat of his self control snapping. They're horrified bystanders of a car crash waiting to happen (at least, they think they are. Noah's not actually gonna do any of the things he's suggesting, probably, but keeping the audience on their toes is one of his favourite games!) and each episode he features in is a test of both their patience and their own sanity.

Because, could you imagine watching your friends interact and be friendly with someone who (you think) is out for their blood, entirely unaware of the danger? that's literally what they're experiencing.

And Noah, because he's a little shit who thinks he's funny (he is), sometimes goes so far as to fake-out the audience by rearing up attacks against his castmates during challenges, only to shoot the nearest camera a wry wink and a sly smile as he carries on with the actual task at hand, the others none-the-wiser.

It becomes so concerning, in fact, that every new arrival is immediately checked over for any signs of injuries or Noah's Influence and hastily given the rundown on The Situation. Which is, more often than not, met with the same incredulity as Sierra's claims- until they're shown various clips of Noah's confessions, or the fake-outs and otherwise unhinged looks he teases the cameras with.

-

For the second question; I have no idea. I'm still workshopping how people will react to Noah, and how Noah in turn will react to them. Post-reveal p!Noah will, eventually, disclose the fact that he's not as bloodthirsty as he portrays himself as, but until then it's anyone's guess as to how far he'll take the bit- and who could/will get hurt in the process.

[oh-meow-swirls]

i think this was funnier in my head.

[dichromaticdyke]

idk what woman or similarly gendered nonbinary person needs to hear this, but if you feel actual distress, frustration, discomfort, etc. at the thought of being attracted to men, or being with men in a sexual or romantic context--if you genuinely feel this way and you hide it behind "haha sucks that i like men lol" jokes--you honestly should consider lesbianism.

[bonetrousledbones]

its not unusual at this point for me to go several days and occasionally weeks without posting here BUT this time i'm going to have a good excuse and her name is hurricane helene and she sucks and i hate her

[marshmellowtea]

i literally cannot overstate how much it shook me in world tour when sierra said chris was born in 1978 which means he was probably around 29/30 in the original series. i thought he was in his 40s this whole time but no he doesn't reach his mid 40s until the reboot......i feel sick this is just WRONG

[hissterical-nyaan]

Saying this for the 100th time here but some of you are so out of touch from reality when you make your "it's okay to be straight!!! It's okay to be a man!!!" posts like I get it there can be some context or exceptions to this but most of the times it's just people thinking straight people or men are somehow being oppressed cause the people they have oppressed for an eternity are speaking their truth loudly online now

And no, you don't get to take the defense that people feel bad about themselves when they read these things because the real world still fucking favours y'all. You don't have to sob in your bathroom for hours and hide your whole life away from your family from a young age. Y'all still don't care about queer kids, especially queer girls who never find any comfort anywhere except that small family they created online. I'll take you feeling bad any day over another girl feeling trapped in this society cause no matter what she does, she will always feel inferior or another queer person having to take their secret to their deathbed

Get a grip, touch some grass. You are not oppressed because a 16yr old said they hate men or made a joke about how being straight is actually awful. Y'all have said worse shit to us for centuries now. "Learn to take a joke :)"

[gideonisms]

the fact that the symptoms of anxiety exhaustion and overstimulation are the same ones for getting sick as well was suuuch a funny little joke on god(hypothetical)'s part... just so entertaining I love to constantly be kept guessing

[iangallagherisadeadman]

something something a fanfic in which Ian is best friends with Yevgeny and then he timetravel and falls in love with his best friend's father.

I like to think that in this version he was raised by Clayton cause Monica obviously couldn't, and canonlike she wasn't in the picture much. He then lives with his father, stepmother and siblings but doesn't quite fit with them. Yev was raised by Svetlana and never knew his father cause he left when Yev was a baby.

When Ian travels back he is saved by Mandy. He says he's a Gallagher and she's like "I know the Gallaghers but I never saw you!". He's introduced to his "cousins" who immediately take he in like a brother? Who he is cause of Monica.

Then because of Mandy he gets to know Mickey and younger Svetlana and baby Yev and it is extremely fucked but... my dick's in your dad mouth, sorry Yev!

Gallavich: they start as friends cause Ian quickly hits off with Mandy, and soon Ian gets to understand the difficult situation that led to Yevgeny's conception and why Mickey probably left them when Yev was still a baby. Then, feelings come along and Mickey's deep in the closet but Ian's nothing if open-minded so with time it works out. Ian doesn't lose interest even though Mickey has a wife and baby, he isn't scared off easily, and Yev Svet and Mandy all like him so that's a turn on. Ian likes older guys so the fact that Mickey's an old soul in a hot young body who listens to dad music and is grumpy is what attracts Ian.

The future is forever altered. Ian now actually has a family of Gallagher's he actually likes and fits. Ian came along so Mickey never left the picture and now Yev was raised with his father around. Which changed the way Yev grew up to be, so he's not the version Ian knew, but that's alright cause then Ian gets to meet him again. And yes, they end up being best friends all the same, after all, Yevgeny watch the type of cartoons and listens to the kind of music and plays the same videogames Ian grew up with so they're very close.

[milolovesbmc]

Hate to see cis gay guys whine. Like okay your 9th boyfriend broke up with you??? I'M GIVING YOU TITS AND HIPS WHINE ABOUT THAT ONE

[cold--carnage]

btw because I got an anon about this a while ago but deleted it out of spite: if you are uncomfortable with nsfw jokes, just ask me to tag them. if you politely say "hey I'd prefer if you made that blockable" I will happily accomodate that. but do not tell me I have to put in on a separate blog. if you want it tagged, it will be tagged. but that was the same vampire dick sucking joke I've made on every blog I've had on here in the past year