#I am Scared to post this but whatever

[thebaffledcaptain]

Some studies I did of the British at Monmouth this past June, featuring soldiers and musicians from the 22nd, 33rd, and 71st regiments of foot, inspired by William Barns Wollen’s 1911 sketchbook. Fantastic event and I can’t wait to do it again.

(Alternate, color-less version below cut)

[mossy-aro]

ultimately i think my insistence on aro positivity honestly is as much a political stance as a personal one.

when i say aro positivity is crucial and that i dislike doomer-ist posts that express sentiments like 'I hate being aro so much I wish I was dead instead’ it's not because I don’t think there can and should be a space for negativity and acknowledging self-hate, or the many ways being aromantic can really suck sometimes. i find that to be very important!

that being said. there is smth here about how self-hate posts are sometimes just arophobia that we inflict on ourselves. and when we put that out into the ether it (intentionally or not) can become arophobia that we inflict on other members of the community. i think there absolutely needs to be a place for negativity and the expression of anger and frustration and self loathing even - these are all good things to talk about because these are things that we experience. that being said, it can also be genuinely upsetting and triggering to people to have what is essentially arophobia shown to them and then have that be validated by other aspec people. your personal thoughts can affect your wider community on a level you may not anticipate. and i understand it i truly do! it took me so long to be able to recover from accepting being aroace - it threw my entire world off kilter and made me question everything about my place in the world.

but my insistence on aro joy and positivity is because ultimately i do believe that building is at the core essence of it all. that ultimately discussions and the purpose of community should be about construction, not destruction. and this is both a personal and a political stance. talking about how much you hate yourself and cultivating online discussions/spaces where negativity about aspec identity is the main and only theme is destructive - if that’s where we let the conversation end. these thoughts can and should be used as a vehicle to look for a path forward!

joy and positivity create a space where the focus can become on forging a path forward, on construction, on community building instead of tearing ourselves and others down with negative thoughts. it’s not productive or healthy when it stops at a place of negativity - it becomes actively destructive to the essence of community.

and i do think that this is especially poignant considering the fact that being any kind of queer, but especially aromantic (and/or asexual) means forging a path for yourself and making your own happiness where there is no obvious way forward. our communities exist mostly online (right now, anyway), there is little recognition of our existence in the real world, the effects of amatonormativity are both pervasive and actively dehumanising, and there are legal, economic and social structures in place actively making our lives more difficult. yes that all sucks! it’s good to acknowledge that. we need to in order to change it. but more importantly, that’s not the end. we are still here and our happiness, our future is for us to determine. even if we can’t change the laws or society, loving yourself and understanding aromanticism as a political identity (as well as personal), as a radical worldview, and as a protest against amatonormativity is essential for both community and personal well being. the personal is political.

tldr. i guess my point is that as a community, we should focus on building, improving, and nurturing ourselves and each other (construction) as opposed to destruction. we should recognise aromanticism and asexuality as political identities as well as personal ones and rely on community and self-love in the absence of anything else as a form of protest and political power. destruction (the recognition of everything that is wrong) is essential as a starting point - but where do we go from there? we rebuild.

[isuggestwishcraft]

i think isafrin dynamic, especially postcanon, is so funny to me because (among other things) isabeau is the notorious Gets Scared When The Horrors Appear type of dude, but also happens to be madly into a guy who, for lack of better words, can be aptly described as The Horrors

[whenthewallfell]

more doodles, this time of Jasnah Kholin from Stormlight Archive and Okarun from Dandadan

[itslilacokay]

gonna admit uhh vicagent is the only ava ship so far that i feel ""safe"" posting on this blog.............. do any of you looking at this want me to post other ava ship stuff orwhat please PLEASE LET ME KNOW PLEAAAAAAAASE

[nyctocollective]

friendly reminder that plurality is caused by trauma. trauma is defined as an event that has a severe negative impact on oneself. there are going to be dark parts of plurality that no one wants to talk about. the brain created you to cope with what it went through. it's okay to have parts (or wholes) that have “twisted” desires, attractions, innerworld or external relationships, sexual or emotional needs, etc. other people might call you disgusting, evil, immoral, but it's just part of being traumatized. it's going to be unpleasant or unsightly.

read the tags.

[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

[mayullla]

NO I AM NOT OKAY. IF THIS PERSON WHO DID IT IS SOMEONE WHO FOLLOWS ME TAKE IT FREAKING DOWN. I NEVER GAVE PERMISSION FOR SOMETHING LIKE THIS AND NEVER WILL.

If someone knows about this fic. Please please please I beg you please send a link to me so that I could report it. If I remember correctly it is only the author who could report something being stolen on wattpad. (The story they took from is one of my original works that is Just One Drop) And please if you do know or if you find out don't go attacking this person.

[sunshine-and-her-ikevil-stuff]

*thinking about the villains' tragic fates*

You know, their routes never really talk too much about their fates and how it effects them mentally. Or how the MC feels about it, and dealing with the fear and angst of it with the slight exception of William's route

*eyes widen*

... I think I know what the sequels are gonna be about

[zeroducks-2]

I feel like a lot of folks who insist that the rampant purity culture in fandom spaces is "not a real problem", and something "an adult with a job" shouldn't deal with, fail to realize that if you simply engage with a certain ship or a certain trope you are exposed to cyberbullying in the form of insults, death threats, rape threats, suibating, self-harm baiting, attempts at doxxing, loss of your livelihood.

Your traumas will be stepped on if you have any, and/or treated as a joke. Your coping mechanisms will be deemed wrong, bad, harmful to yourself and other people, and you will be shamed for having them. The work you have been doing for your mental health, regardless if you dabble in the hobbies you like because of past traumas or because it's just a past-time you have, will be kicked into the dirt because someone is grossed out by them and they arbitrarily decided you cannot express your interest in them.

It is a real problem. Being an adult with a job doesn't give you an "exempt from this" badge that will protect you from harassment if you engage with anything that antis deem immoral.

And there are no "two sides of the same coin" and "two versions to hear" when it comes to this. I don't care if you think someone liking something is "unhealthy", that's none of your business what another person likes. Antis do not "have a point", they never do, their reaction to seeing a dark trope or an "unhealthy ship" are never justified. Hurting real living and breathing people over fictional content is never justified!

[forestgreenlesbian]

.

[wildglitch]

Im 2 hours and a half away from debating infront of my class for 30 minutes. Im so fucked

[enbeemagical]

Idk if this is a good time for it but I've been working on a queer fantasy story for over a year now. Sapphic romance. Brown trans enby lead. Resistance against a fascist empire. Y'know. Standard stuff.

Haven't got all the kinks worked out, need to smooth some things out in this round of edits and get back to making progress but like. Yeah. This is coming, eventually.

a handful of quotes below the cut

Thus the Empire of Light began. It was an era known for peace, its birth marked by blood and slaughter. Peace reigned as the Emperor demanded it, his word made law through fear and bloodshed when his propaganda was insufficient. It was not to last.

A thrill raced through my body at her touch, the whisper of her breath on my palm. “Yes,” I promised. “I’ll see you then.” On impulse, I pulled away, dropped to the ground to find the fallen rose. There, it wasn't even squished. I offered it to her with my best attempt at a charming look, extending my arm like a storybook prince. “Til then, take this.

“She’s scared,” Fionnuala said frankly. “Her heart’s been broken before and she’s scared to let it happen again.”

“Hope you don’t mind,” Vida mumbled in my ear, sounding more than half asleep. I snuggled into her and fell asleep with a smile on my lips.

Another sigh, sounding almost as if she were bracing for something. “Love, look. Feelings, the deep ones, they’re hard for me. I don’t know that I’ve ever had anything more lasting than a passing fancy, and you–” Her voice cracked. “You deserve better.” “You already said you want to be friends, you don’t need to explain that twice.” “No– love, listen.” Vida’s hand caught my chin as she leaned over me. “What I’m trying to say is, I’d like to try, if you still want to.”

“How can you laugh?” Fiachra teased. “Da’s got no idea what to do with another boy around! He’ll be so lost.”

Wasn't I… well, traitorous was the only word I could think of. I'd practiced magic without a license, and whether I was a girl in love with a girl, or a boy who'd been born a girl… or, maybe, neither… what I wasn't was the good daughter I was supposed to be. Maybe I was a shadow too.

Ceri’s dark eyes reminded me of an inquisitive beetle I’d found on the edge of the water bucket when I was a girl. It hadn’t meant to be any trouble, it had just been there. I’d watched it, entranced by its shining black carapace, until my mother came to see what was taking me so long. She’d screamed and slammed the bucket to the ground upside down, killing the beetle and causing me to burst into tears. Later, she’d said she was only scared.

“That’s entirely fair. Are you ready?” A bubble of laughter squeezed its way up. “No. Do it.”

“That’s politics, Shadow. One aspect of it, anyways. Changing the world, little by little.”

“Wasn’t there another way?” Ciaran was silent for a few seconds before he admitted, “Perhaps. Perhaps there was. But I still feel the world is no worse off for the loss of him, and I cannot find it in me to regret it.”

“Don’t you ever want to do something you’re not supposed to? Love the wrong way, be the wrong person, want the wrong things?”

**bonus mention to two scenes friends specifically liked that were a bit longer than I wanted for this, the "Would you love me if I were a worm?" "Yes but also please don't be a worm. ew" conversation, and the "hot" meeting scene where one character puts her finger on another's lips and says "I want you knowing you're in your right mind for this [kiss]"**

[thesummerstorms]

The other thing that I think I would want in an Annabeth Wayne AU that I don't think I've seen so far is Bruce being absolutely pissed at Athena.

It was bad enough with Talia and Damian, but Athena is a literal god of wisdom who should know better AND he doesn't even have the "culpability" of having slept with her.

She one hundred percent saw Batman, tactician of the Justice League, was drawn in by her aspect of the Goddess of Strategy, and proceeded to create a child without his consent, a daughter who she didn't even raise before the child became a weapon.

And like whatever else, however fucked up Damian was by his own training to become a child-weapon, at least Talia loved Damian.

Whereas Athena loves Annabeth in the way a Goddess loves, not the way a Person loves, and I don't think Bruce, whose entire identity is so fixated on his relationship with his own parents, would recognize that as love at all.

And, like, Talia put Damian through a lot of shit. I think Bruce would be angry there too. But when push came to shove, she at least at some point brought him to Bruce because she thought it was in her son's best interests.

Athena actively lead Annabeth away from Bruce and into the streets at the age of seven, which Bruce would never see as in her best interest, whatever Athena's godly perspective is, however badly he reacted after Jason's death, even though he couldn't see (and dismissed the idea of) the spiders and the monsters. She was seven. In the streets of Gotham.

Athena let Annabeth fight a major role in two wars back to back without being there to train her or protect her or love her or even advise her. Athena advocated for the cold blooded murder of the other children who had actually tried to keep his daughter safe. Athena sent Annabeth against Arachne when Athena's children have universally died on that quest for a thousand years.

Athena let Bruce think he had gotten Annabeth killed because of his own inability to handle his grief. Let him think his daughter was dead or worse for years. Would have let him keep thinking that if the Fates didn't have other plans.

And just, in true fashion for all of my ideas on a PJO x DC crossover, everyone really comes out more traumatized than before. This includes Bruce.

Because now he wasn't just used unknowingly for a child just once, but twice. And in both cases he's going to have to live forever with the guilt of not having been able to protect his kids from what their other parent wanted to make of them

(On top of all the ways he has directly failed them and made any complexes worse, of course )

[deoidesign]

.

[dailyfrostpaw]

Day Three

[Image ID: Frostpaw and Waffle/Wafflepaw from warrior cats sitting next to each other, with text bubbles that say "I'm Frostpaw" and "And I'm Waffle!" respectively. Frostpaw is a lynxpoint, white with a striped warm gray face, ears, legs and tail. She has pale teal eyes and is looking at Waffle with a smile. Waffle is warm gray with tabby brown on his back, tail and upper face. He has a green collar, closed eyes and is smiling.]

[Gif ID: burning text which reads, in all caps, "the gray and brown siblings".]