#free the elephants

[animalloversxo]

☀️💚🐘💚☀️

[yuckybusiness]

Elephant Fursona

[orcinus-veterinarius]

I always get a good laugh reading comments celebrating an animal being “freed from captivity!” when it moves to sanctuary.

That is still captivity, my guys.

[foreverfearlessred]

oohhhh when I tell you I’m about to do something that puts me on the international news. James Vowles shut the fuck up challenge when. I hope your shitty excel spreadsheet gets corrupted x

[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

[james-p-sullivan]

[shimmeringknight]

LMK season 4 spoilers

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I need to know more about how the Brotherhood views Macaque. They seem to value DBK as an equal but only Wukong and Peng seem to really acknowledge Macaque. Macaque is seen (at the very least) as close friend of Wukong's, if not Wukong's best friend. Wukong took the time to reassure him that they'll still end up eating peaches together like they planned when Macaque didn't seem convinced of the plant to take over heaven. And Wukong was the one to single out Macaque and tell him that the two of them would be taking on heaven together, like any other adventure.

Peng, on the hand, seems to take every opportunity he has to belittle Macaque by frequently calling him weak and almost dismissing any value Macaque holds. Neither Azure nor Yellow Tusk really react to Peng, neither telling him to stop or encouraging him when Peng insults Macaque. When Azure recounts happy memories with MK, Macaque isn't seen feasting with them, but DBK and the others are.

DBK doesn't seem to acknowledge Macaque either but they don't seem close as neither of them reference each other or visit each other since post-JTTW.

DBK was probably semi-content to leave the Brotherhood after falling in love with PIF and creating a new family. Maybe still having some kind of positive or neutral relationship with Wukong up until Wukong trapped him under a mountain.

Macaque may have left because he had no friends in the Brotherhood after Wukong was captured. They were probably Wukong's friends, not Macaque's.

[gallusrostromegalus]

AEIWAM: What happened (and when) to cause The Divorce between Yamamoto and Tsubaki?

They actually broke up mostly for political reasons! Yamamoto started off rather revolutionary in terms of governance, but circumstances made him grow rigid and paranoid to the point where he fundamentally changed as a person, and Tsubaki no longer recognized him as the man she married.

There were other problems- neither of them could have children, and while they didn't blame each other, it did cause much stress and sadness. Yamamoto grew increasingly paranoid about political machinations and assassins to the point where Tsubaki began to feel unsafe in her own home, and Tsubaki was gone more and more and longer and longer on "diplomatic missions" and becoming friends with people Yamamoto was sure were taking advantage of her good nature and his political position by extension.

The final straw was his capitulation to the noble houses in letting them hold and pass down the captain's post of some of the divisions, instead of making it a pure meritocracy like he had promised her, and she could not/would not understand why.

Legally speaking, the divorce was quite amicable - he let her take whatever she wanted, and she didn't want much. He founded the shinigami academy partially because he needed properly trained shinigami, and mostly to have something to do because he miserable, and she left to start and run The Greatest (and only fully unionized) Whorehouse in the Rukongai.

Their paths would not cross again for some 800 years, until one of her employees accidentally wins the 11th division's annual ranking tournament.

[psychics4unet]

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[discord-emote-customs]

can u do a little cuddling a blue elephant, a brown monkey and a pink blanket :33 plsplspls

did the monkey ones along with this request !

heres cuddle elephant plush & pink blanket ^^

[dougielombax]

“The picture is as beautiful as her soul.”

The picture, in question:

Yeah.

I think this was intentional on the artist’s part.

Fair play to him. (Vincent Namatjira)

Gina Rinehart is a GHASTLY woman.

A putrid, bigoted mining magnate and heiress.

A textbook example of the vulgar, idle rich.

(Ghastly as in stupid, unpleasant, and just AWFUL! Look her up!)

I like to think that this portrait shows her True Self.

The evil lurking underneath.

Even if it looks like she was exposed to the Elephant’s Foot at Chernobyl and started melting.

Still.

The picture is as beautiful as her soul.

Her dead, flint and shite coated, blackened, bloated, corpulent, empty soul!

And she doesn’t want anyone to see this portrait.

You know what that means!

Feel free to reblog.

Reblog the SHIT out of it!

[ihaventcomeupwthanameforaheroyet]

Reverse AU where Armand is Marius' maker? Yes, but I think we should take this further. Imagine a reverse AU where adult!Armand (40 mortal + 1500 vampire years old Armand) is the Master of a 17 y.o. Marius.

Imagine teen!Marius being a very serious young man and... not entirely asexual, but he knows he has the whole life ahead of him, and does not feel the need to hurry up. Like, sorry, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your kind invitation, but I have books to read, and I should be home by sunset to greet my Master properly, therefore, I regretfully decline. Imagine a young loyal Marius who firmly ignores Bianca's very obvious advances because he knows that his Master courts this woman, and he would be an ungrateful pupil if he stood in his Master's way (of course, his own feelings regarding this matter are completely irrelevant). Imagine Armand being mad because he already decided this boy will have the whole eternity to enjoy his goddamn reading and writing, but has very limited time to engage into other activities, but he can't explain this to Marius without revealing too much, or can he? And then this epic moment probably happens...

(This is a screenshot from Rome HBO series, but I totally HC same thing also happened to young Marius at some point of his mortal life, AU or not AU.)

For the first time in his Venice years, Marius considers disobedience. He can't explain or rationalize why he is opposed to the idea. He goes to the brothel anyway. The act is pleasant but otherwise deeply unsatisfying. He can't justify this feeling, either. It seems that everything suddenly makes no sense at all. On the way home he considers drowning himself in a canal. He doesn't. Instead, he returns to the palazzo and has a very polite Marius-style silent meltdown and no one knows how to deal with this until Armand returns. They talk. They finally talk. And then they don't. And then they finally don't. And then Maruis thinks he probably understands what everything was about. BTW, he makes zero drama out of the fact that some of his Master's body parts do not function the way they are supposed to. On the opposite, he thinks he is connecting the dots now. He totally knows this may happen to older men because his books told him so. And at this point he suspects his Master is older than he seems (there is a talk in the palazzo that he is a magician or something), therefore, nothing to worry about. He suddenly understands why his Master was so insistent about the whole... virginity matter - like, "go enjoy all these things while your body is still young". His own feelings make more sense now, too. He is certainly happy to have a satisfying intimate life, but he is even more content now than every irrational thing received a consistent explanation.

And then teen!Marius gets himself mortally wounded, IDK, maybe while defending his Master's honour on a duel or something? And then he is so surprised to find out that he was not entirely wrong, but still... wrong. About certain things. And then probably comes the whole "we kill to live" thing, and it probably comes along with some drama, because it's Marius we are talking about. A man who claimed he haven't killed anyone in his mortal life. And then the separation, the lonesome journey through the centuries to come, the reunion in modern timeline and everything else.

Bonus points if teen!Marius was the voice of reason in the palazzo and talked his peers out of any mischief as much as possible. More bonus points if adult!Armand is a da Vinci type of artist, always engaged into his flying machines as much as he is into his paintings (I mean, canon Armand is good with technology, this fact should be used somewhere!).

I wish I could write fiction.

[hussyknee]

We need to start calling the US, Canada, Australia and NZ settler colonies too. I know there's a lot more of them but let's start with the funniest.

[eggtrolls]

saw a photograph of a statue excavated at Delphi -> checked out the Wikipedia article on excavations at Delphi -> realized how utterly shit it was -> spend the first 5 hours of my first day of vacation fixing it instead of spending time with my family

[madfoolish]

[gallusrostromegalus]

“Tatsuki and Don Kanonji are the spiritual equivalent of Caulerpa taxifolia.”

Do you mind expanding on this? Because that’s a wild and extremely vivid comparison, but I don’t think I understand how the two match up.

They’re … a type of seaweed? An aquarium species that escaped containment? Remarkable well adapted and don’t appear to have any negative impacts on their ecosystem?

Caulerpa taxifolia is most famous for being a stupidly huge single-celled organism.

Tatsuki and Don Kanonji are the spiritual equivalent of a single-celled organism that grew so absurdly powerful that it managed to change in scale so much it functionally changed taxonomic phyla!