#Their love story is SO compelling??????

[cloudy-with-a-chance-of-chaos]

How did I

A 24-soon-to-be-25yo

Ended up being obsessed and actually emotionally involved in Miraculous: Ladybug?

[crustaceousfaggot]

Shout out to Cishet White Teenager Christopher Paolini for realizing that if you give people infinite time, a completely non-judgemental society, and the power to change their bodies any way they want, lots of people are gonna start doing Freaky Anthro Transgenderism on themselves.

Like yeah, if I had the option I'd probably turn myself into a bizzare eldritch creature too

[taxinealkaloids]

horrible children who are. so so mean to each other

[smile-files]

something interesting i realized while on the vessel-making screen in the deltarune introduction is that it's physically impossible to make kris: there is no hair that perfectly matches theirs (none have the cowlick or the right jagged shape on the bottom), and there is no sweater that perfectly matches theirs (none have a single stripe). this is fascinating, as it perhaps suggest that, if we (the player) had a choice, we *wouldn't* make kris. they aren't something we want, or are even capable of wanting, rather something we're stuck with.

and i suppose the fact that they can't be *created* as a vessel is telling, because we didn't create kris -- they weren't made for us, they're not a player avatar. they're a pre-existing person we just happen to gain possession of.

we weren't made for each other; they don't want us, and we don't seem to want them either (if the inability to choose to create someone like them says anything); funny, then, that in a way we're "soulmates"...

(both pictures are from the deltarune wiki!)

[bookshelf-in-progress]

I love how a well-written romance is so often structured as a mystery. A person starts with a certain idea about another person, and over the course of the story, they uncover more evidence that gives them a fuller picture of who the other person truly is. They learn about layers to the personality and backstory that give the other person more depth. They learn how the other person's personality meshes with theirs. Even the third-act misunderstanding fits the mystery structure--it looks like they've uncovered the final secret to the other person's identity, which is that they're not the worthy person they seemed to be, but then discover that they misinterpreted that evidence, or the other person takes steps to apologize and repair the level of trust. When the mystery is resolved, they've reached a full understanding of each other and know they've found a partner they can trust their whole future to.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

psa that the day there are no jgy stans left on tumblr dot com is the day i am dead

but rest assured i'll go to my grave exactly as i lived: obnoxiously proclaiming to everyone within earshot how great lianfang-zun is. narratively, metaphorically, spiritually. sexually, too, like why limit myself. i like to keep my options open

[usertoxicyaoi]

"Are you crazy? Why did you forcibly suspend your cultivation and bring about your own destruction?"

FANGS OF FORTUNE (2024). EPISODE THIRTY TWO.

[katabay]

original thief series basso & garrett :)

ngl, it's about quality over quantity for me. an npc can have a total of three minutes of screen time, but if they have a cool name, they can live rent free in my head and I'll spend several hours trying to decipher drawable features from a blurry screenshot of pixels

there is a vague hint of a story here, and that's because every time I try to play thi4f, I get incredibly frustrated with how Not Fun the game play is. like, is the story good? well. but it has a PLAGUE. that should've given it instant 'I'll replay this once a year' status in my heart, but the game play sucks so bad that I've never finished it. I can't believe Not Fun gameplay beat out my obsession with narrative plagues.

anyway, the idea is basically if the original era had a game with a plague centric narrative and some other stuff I liked out of thi4f thrown into a narrative blender, with a heavy dash of horror thrown in because some parts of the thief games were scarier to me than entire dedicated horror genre games.

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app

[rhinoyo]

a little fan animatic for @lostxmelody's mikofuu fic parts of a human...! <3 a very very very good read :') <3

[inksandpensblog]

Judging by the trailer, it feels like they made this movie for an audience that doesn’t know anything about Minecraft except that it’s “the block game.” As much as it may look like Minecraft (and that’s debatable), it doesn’t FEEL like Minecraft.

Anyone who hasn’t experienced Minecraft for themselves will be getting exactly what they’re expecting from this movie, meanwhile the people who are actually familiar with and love the game will feel alienated because this is such a poor representation of the thing that they love.

You know what my basis is, for believing this? It’s not the stylization of the cgi, though that’s part of it. It’s not the comedic tone, though that’s part of it. It’s not the weird choice and lazy execution of live-action integration, though that’s part of it.

It’s because the trailer isn’t trying to say that Minecraft is an experience just waiting to be understood. It’s because the trailer isn’t trying to say that the oddities of Minecraft are what make it fascinating, sometimes even wonderful (and, yes, quite often amusing). It’s because the trailer isn’t trying to say that Minecraft is something you can find meaning in; whether meaning is a family, a skillset, a creative passion, a sense of belonging, a community, a reservoir of memories, a means of connection, or a better understanding of oneself.

It’s because the trailer is trying to say that Minecraft is ridiculous and incomprehensible.

This trailer doesn’t show me a movie about what it’s like to play Minecraft.

This trailer shows me a movie about what it’s like to not play Minecraft. And that’s the perspective it’s trying to sell the movie on. That’s the perspective it expects its audience to find relatable.

The trailer tells me that this movie was not made for the people who play Minecraft. It was made for the people who don’t.

I just hope that, if it does make people want to try playing it, they come to appreciate what the game really is.

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

So I just finished My Stand In. And I gotta say, I know I said some things about Ming. But really, he's not that bad. Sure he did some things and said some things, but I mean, we've all seen worse. And he's so pretty...

No, but seriously, that's my main issue with this show to be honest. Granted I had only watched this show from my dash but I got the impression Ming was the devil himself. He was proper toxic for like 3 episodes. Ok, after that, the whole contract with Joe 2.0 to be his 'paramour' wasn't great but Joe had a choice. And yeah, he was a bit of a stalker when he started to suspect Joe 2.0 of being Original Joe. But again, I say. We've seen worse.

And here's the thing. Joe is not without blame. Sure at first he was used for his back lol. And Ming wasn't exactly honest about why he was with him. He treated Joe like dirt from the start. But he also didn't exactly lie. He didn't claim to love him or anything like that. But Joe put on those rose tinted glasses and was happy to go along and be a door mat, until his ego was shattered much like those mugs.

Also. No one forced Joe to do the stunt that got him killed. That's not on Ming. That's on Joe. Just like no one forced Joe into that contract. Joe also chose to get back into the same industry as his previous body, aware that Ming was now in the business. Joe made a lot of the choices.

So, at times, I felt like the show was telling me I was supposed to think that Ming was this horrible person, but they weren't actually showing me that. Some red flags for sure, but mostly he was just a frustrated and miserable dude that took that out on everyone around him. Then he went a bit crazy with his grief and eventually recovered and tried to get his guy back. His methods are a bit unorthodox for sure, but love makes us do crazy things.

Now for the body swap thing. The show didn't take it seriously so neither did I. I got a bit surprised every time Joe 2.0 appeared in a reflection. Like, oh that's right, he looks different. They didn't commit to that part of the stand-in concept. I'd like to think that if all of a sudden another person was to occupy my body, I think my mother would notice. Certainly before my work buddy noticed. I also think if my soul ended up in a different body, it would take some getting used to. There would be some body dysmorphia at least. But not Joe. He's just ready to go. Incredible.

Now, the final part.. First let me just say, Tong is a proper asshole and I can't believe he got his happy ending. That was the thing that pissed me off the most. The drama with Ming's family was a bit insane and the turn around a bit ridiculous. But I mean, at that point my suspension of disbelief was so stretched so why the hell not?

Despite some of its flaws, it was a very pretty show to watch. Visually, it's great. Beautifully shot and edited. And I mean, the leads are gorgeous and Poom's face should be illegal. But they're not just pretty faces, they can act and have some really strong moments here. I'm looking forward to seeing these two again.

[maysrinn]

The bois are off to school

Janus can never seem to get to school early enough, always eager to arrive first. Meanwhile, Xanthos, who has to hurry along with him, is never able to finish his breakfast. His brother's impatience to see his dream✨lady✨ always cuts their morning routine short.

Janus: If Clelia passes by just so u know, I dont know u-

Xanthos: ur loss, I’m endearing and lovable

Xanthos, on the other hand, couldn’t care less. He was all too familiar with his brother’s habit of being a player, cycling through the girls at the academy as if it were a routine to find the perfect future spouse. Last week it was someone else, and he knew that next week it would be another. To Xanthos, it was just the same old story on repeat. Little did he know, though, that Clelia was different—she was the one who would stay.

My bois look good in academy uniform qwq

[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

[exlimix1a]

Quick piece of @luluyamofficial 's character Lucelia + a 30 second speedpaint!

[groverapologist]

i think two things can be true at once so when i say i think rick didn't plan on piper being queer until years after she was introduced and until he saw years worth of fan reception and reactions + i think piper being queer is amazing and makes complete sense for her character arc and explains a lot about the way she has acted in the books starting as early as TLH, i do not see them as contradictory or wrong.

[daffodil--lament]

look i figured out how to put this post underwater

my personal opinions and interpretations of a piece of literature are incoming. this is me nitpicking but: by the end of the first ghost scrooge is already ashamed of himself and looking toward change and when the third ghost comes he assumes that theyre looking upon a future in which he has changed so he's terrified and devastated when he sees the reactions to his death because he doesn't know if the scrooge they know in a year's time is one who has changed, or one who has changed enough.

like yes i do think that seeing his own miserable lonely celebrated death is vital to the man he becomes on christmas morning BUT. it's not just that. scrooge's fatal flaw isn't just greed, it's isolation and indifference. seeing that there is tenderness and love in this world not far from him is as important as watching his own kin disregard him as lost and loathsome.

that's why, in my mind, seeing how loved tiny tim is, understanding the love and faith and perseverance of the Cratchits as well as his own hand in continuing their poverty and illness, and being struck with the abject tragedy of tim's (really quite preventable) death changes him as much as the businessmen's jokes about him do.

i think what the point one might make here comes down to the fact that it isnt until scrooge is confronted by the reality of the suffering he is enabling that he understands how badly he needs to make a change. he knew Bob Cratchit is poor, I'm sure, but he was able to ignore that fact until the spirits show him the Cratchits' home and their malnourished children. Healthcare CEOS see that every day, they arent ignorant. healthcare companies actively fight to keep people in poverty and sickness. so maybe they're way more evil than Scrooge, who's to say