#how am I writing more in the tags than the actual post

[themeraldee]

omg the idea of him not having (or at least thinking he doesn't have) a soulmate because of how he was born 👌👌👌👌👌👌👌👌it reminds me of a soulmates au fic i wrote for a vastly different fandom where those who were born without soulmate markings were known as "the soulless". yknow. just for the extra angst.

AHHHHHHHH YES I love that so much. Nothing like adding another brand to his already scorched soul. I think that would be a really good angsty selfcest fic or just a pure Homelander whump.

Now that I'm thinking about it more I'd love to see how Vought deals with that.

Because depending on the kind of soulmate AU it could be I see them abusing his still 'soulless' status by running game shows like 'Could you be Homelander's soulmate?' and whatnot. And how sad would it be to be presented with hoards of people wishing to be his soulmate and having them all rejected by fate. While knowing the people signing up to see if they could be his soulmate or not are not even there for him as much as they are for the fame and prestige that comes with being on TV.

Or would they just manufacture a soulmate for him because they don't want him to be seen as abnormal (beyond the obvious) Like they wouldn't want to highlight that he didn't have normal upbringing or ever even really had the chance to find love the normal way.

[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

[serpentface]

Do you conlang? I was wondering if you had naming languages (or possibly even more developed ones) for pulling the words you use. I tried to search your blog but didn't find anything, wouldn't be surprised if the feature is just busted tho. Your worldbuilding is wonderful and I particularly enjoy the anthropological and linguistic elements.

Ok the thing is I had kind of decided I was not going to do any conlanging because I don't feel like I'm equipped to do a good job of it, like was fully like "I'm just going to do JUST enough that it doesn't fail an immediate sniff test and is more thoughtful than just keysmashing and putting in vowels". And then have kinda been conlanging anyway (though not to a very deep and serious extent. I maybe have like....an above average comprehension of how language construction works via willingness to research, but that's not saying much, also I can never remember the meanings of most linguistic terms like 'frictives' or etc off the top of my head. I'm just kinda raw dogging it with a vague conceptualization of what these things mean)

I do at least have a naming language for Wardi (and more basic rules for other established languages) but the rudimentary forms of it were devised with methods much shakier and less linguistically viable than even the most basic naming language schemes, and I only went back over it LONG after I had already made a bunch of words so there's some inconsistencies with consonant presence and usage. (This can at least be justified because it IS a language that would have a lot of loanwords and would be heavily influenced by other language groups- Burri being by far the most significant, Highland-Finnic and Yuroma-Lowlands also being large contributors)

The 'method' I used was:

-Skip basic construction elements and fully move into devising necessary name words, with at least a Vibe of what consonants are going to be common and how pronunciation works -Identify some roots out of the established words and their meanings. Establish an ongoing glossary of known roots/words. -Construct new words based in root words, or as obvious extensions/variants of established words. -Get really involved in how the literal meanings of some words might not translate properly to english, mostly use this to produce a glossary of in-universe slang. -Realize that I probably should have at least some very basic internal consistency at this point. -Google search tutorials on writing a naming language. -Reverse engineer a naming language out of established words, and ascribe all remaining inconsistencies to being loanwords or just the mysteries of life or whatever.

I do at least have some strongly established pronunciation rules and a sense of broad regional dialect/accents.

-'ai' words are almost always pronounced with a long 'aye' sound.

-There is no 'Z' or 'X' sound, a Wardi speaker pronouncing 'zebra' would go for 'tsee-brah', and would attempt 'xylophone' as 'ssye-lohp-hon'

-'V' sounds are nearly absent and occur only in loanwords, and tend to be pronounced with a 'W' sound. 'Virsum' is a Highland word (pronounced 'veer-soom') denoting ancestry, a Wardi speaker would go 'weer-sum'.

-'Ch' spellings almost always imply a soft 'chuh' sound when appearing after an E, I, or O (pelatoche= pel-ah-toh-chey), but a hard 'kh' sound after an A or U (odomache= oh-doh-mah-khe). When at the start of a word, it's usually a soft 'ch' unless followed by an 'i' sound (chin (dog) is pronounced with a hard K 'khiin', cholem (salt) is pronounced with a soft Ch 'cho-lehm')

-Western Wardin has strong Burri cultural and linguistic influence, and a distinct accent- one of the most pronounced differences is use of the ñ sound in 'nn' words. The western city of Ephennos is pronounced 'ey-fey-nyos' by most residents, the southeastern city of Erubinnos is pronounced 'eh-roo-been-nos' by most residents. Palo's surname 'Apolynnon' is pronounced 'A-puh-lee-nyon' in the Burri and western Wardi dialects (which is the 'proper' pronunciation, given that it's a Kos name), but will generally be spoken as 'Ah-poh-leen-non' in the south and east.

-R's are rolled in Highland-Finnic words. Rolling R's is common in far northern rural Wardi dialects but no others. Most urban Wardi speakers consider rolling R's sort of a hick thing, and often think it sounds stupid or at least uneducated. (Brakul's name should be pronounced with a brief rolled 'r', short 'ah' and long 'uul', but is generally being pronounced by his south-southeastern compatriots with a long unrolled 'Brah' sound).

Anyway not really a sturdy construction that will hold up to the scrutiny of someone well equipped for linguistics but not pure bullshit either.

[seraphic-sibyl]

I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been

[thehandwitch]

thinking about ford calling shermie shortly after coming through the portal because he hasn’t spoken to his older brother in thirty-something years — he was kind of bad at keeping contact, okay — and he misses him. (and also, yk, as far as ford’s aware shermie thinks stan is dead and that ford owns a kitschy tourist trap, and he really needs to rectify that.)

and it’s probably like 5am when he calls but shermie picks up a few rings in with a sleepy “hello?”

and ford’s heart stops because he can barely believe he’s hearing his big brother’s voice again, and it takes a few long seconds before he finally says “shermie, it’s stanford.”

“stan? hi! what’s going on? are the kids okay?”

“the kids— yes, yes, they’re okay. they’re great, actually.”

“so why are you calling? i’m not complaining, i wish you’d call more, but it’s a little out of character.”

“… speaking of that.” and ford pauses because he didn’t exactly plan on how he was going to broach the whole ‘hey stan is alive and has been pretending to be me this entire time’ thing.

he settles on asking: “did you ever find it strange that i started wanting to go by stan after— after stan passed?”

he expects shermie to say something like ‘no, i figured you were just grieving’ but instead the pause on the other end of the line stretches out until shermie says, slowly and tearfully, “ford? is that you?”

and ford breaks. “yes,” he whispers because if he speaks at a normal volume he’s certain his voice will crack under the weight of his emotions. “yes, it’s me. shermie, how did you…?”

“you think stan could fool me? i grew up babysitting you punks. the two of you switching places tricked me maybe three times before i got smart. and then you got me a few more times when stan realized he could wear your gloves with an stuffed extra finger, but i ended up developing a sense for it. i knew from the second he called to tell me about his death.” shermie scoffs, and then quiets. “stanford… what happened?”

“it’s a long story.”

“i’ve got time.”

“i’m afraid you don’t understand. it’s… an exceedingly long story.”

“well, i’ll make time,” shermie says and then pauses. “is stan still around? is he okay?”

“yes, he’s … he’s here.”

“and you’re not still mad at him, are you?”

“well—”

“after forty years, ford?”

“it’s complicated!”

“then explain it!”

and ford does, he explains, he fills in the gaps of his own side with what stan told to the kids and that gopher-looking man and lays most everything out in the open (except for bill, he’ll never, ever tell anyone about bill) and at the end shermie is dead silent.

eventually he says, “if you weren’t you, and stan weren’t stan… i don’t think i’d believe any of that.”

and ford sighs and says “yes, that’s understandable.”

and shermie says “well, you know what i’m going to tell you now” and gives ford this excellent monologue about how he needs to mend things with stan, and ford knows he’s right but he’s still just so bitter and all he says is “i’ll consider it.”

the conservation wraps up with shermie telling ford to tell stan to expect a call from him very soon and then they hang up. and ford just. leans his head against the wall.

and from the end of the hallway, stan says “yeesh, i was really not looking forward to having that conversation. thanks for handling it for me, sixer.”

and ford can’t even find it in himself to be mad at that because he knows shermie is going to unleash the world’s wisest and most annoyed three hour rant upon stan the next time they speak.

(ford doesn’t warn stan about the phone call either, even though shermie asked him to. he thinks stan deserves it.)

anyways. yeah. thinking about that.

[seventh-district]

not even gonna tag this properly bc i don't wanna get Involved but i do have some Thoughts i need to get out into the void so here we go

(aaa quick edit: CW for mention/discussion of Boothill leaks)

[steakout-05]

i was ranting to myself in a really disorganised fashion just now about how Barry has ADHD and like. dude. he absolutely has it. there's no way he doesn't. i myself am an undiagnosed ADHDer and i see so many traits in Barry. like.

in the rock opera 'The Very Last Minute', Barry spends the entirety of it procrastinating on training for the monster apocalypse and literally having almost every trait of ADHD ever. like when i watch this video and see Barry legitimately trying to do what he needs to but repeatedly getting stuck in a loop of jumping from task to task and struggling at actually get started on The Big Task™, i see me. like. that is me.

Barry tries to train. he really does. he really does try to take a crack at it, but he just can't focus on it. he just keeps getting distracted by it over and over and avoiding what he needs to do with other little tasks to keep him occupied at every single moment. and like he knows he really needs to do it. he knows that it's super important that he gets started on it as soon as he can. in fact, there are several lyrics to this effect: "Gotta keep focused, gotta keep training, but I just can't seem to stop procrastinating" and "I should probably stop working on this rocking theme song" are a couple that come to mind. but for whatever reason, he just can't focus on it properly and it ends up with him looking like he's "lazy" or "not putting in the effort". like, you see him get exhausted by doing a single skiprope jump, and that is how i feel whenever i try to do a big task when i'm not ready for it or focused at all. it's really really heard to focus on something that seems so big and overwhelming when you have ADHD, so you often kind of try to avoid it and ignore it because it's super daunting by doing smaller tasks. the difference between executive dysfunction and perceived laziness is that if you were being lazy, you wouldn't care and would likely be having a great time slacking off, even when you are reminded of the task at hand. but with executive dysfunction, you can forget about it for a while, but deep inside you likely still care and know you NEED to get the task done soon, and when you're eventually reminded or suddenly remember, you feel a crushing sense of dread. at least, that's how it is for me. and all the excessive task switching and getting everything else done except The Big Task™ you need to get done the most? i do that! i do that!!!

Barry literally does the ADHD thing where he sets an alarm that tells him to do what he needs to do, but the thing is that he was already doing something else on his phone beforehand and presumably forgot about the alarm, so when the alarm goes off, he just feels like he suddenly can't and that it's way too daunting to actually start because it feels like an intrusion. like. that's the ADHD thing!!! he's doing it!!!! he's doing the ADHD thing!!!!! his executives are NOT functioning!!!!!!

Barry also shows a lot of ADHD traits in 'Rainbow Barry' as well, as they're the most prominent in that specific short. in fact, he shows literally every single inattentive trait in all of the shorts together. impulsiveness, distractibility, impatience, forgetfulness, commitment issues, not following instructions properly, he's even got the emotional problems that come with it like being easily angered and frustrated. he EVEN shows the same traits in the JJ2 event dialogues!!! like!!!! look at the dialogues on the JJ wiki and tell me he isn't having ADHD traits!!!!! bro is clearly showing each individual ADHD symptom in everything he's in and either no one is noticing it or no one is talking about it and i'm just SO obsessed with this headcanon/theory of mine. Barry Steakfries is an undiagnosed ADHDer and nobody can convince me otherwise

[onewingedsparrow]

Hey all this is my new bLorbo whom I take very seriously Reblog if you appreciate him on your dash

[snickerdoodlles]

there's a point at which someone's fear of being a dick wraps back around to them just being a dick anyways

[chipjrwibignaturals]

i love having autism. i wouldnt want it to change. but like....., damn that sense of social isolation has got HANDS

[the-brainrot-central]

Writing over 30,000 words worth of content for a fic only to realize it’s all pointless because you have no interest in it anymore and you were never gonna finish it anyway….

What even is The Point anymore

[chibishortdeath]

Hmmm I kinda want to make a side blog for RPG Maker game development related things to be able to talk to more experienced people in that community, but at the same time I both don’t really think I’d get much attention and don’t want to accidentally spoil my own game (^^ ; ).

I have a rough story, concept doodles, a tileset, some character sprites, an enemy that walks around but can’t initiate battle yet (if I even decide to have a battle system), a couple rooms with some events, and a functioning run button, but I’m still lost on how to do much else at the moment. Especially since this program has the ability for scripting, meaning I’ll probably have to learn and actually retain another coding language.

So, I’m not very far at all lol. Idk how well that’d go over on the established fandom website, but eh.

[waywardsalt]

bellum x linebeck chapter summary drafts that won those polls:

chapter 8

chapter 14

chapter 20

[ifyourereadingthisblinktwice]

i need to stop forgetting things exist the fucking second they leave my field of vision. why is is impossible for two things to occupy my mind at once especially when im tired. like. i feel like a sim. i feel like actions are being canceled and i just. move on. and completely forget what i was doing moments before. i fucking hate it

[maulfucker]

Reread Maul Fucks Some Guy today and. man. It's not even everything I wanted to write but it's so fucking good. I was so right for this.

[godsfavoritescientist]

the unexpected aspec experience of opening up a word document to write more pages for an ~adult~ fic, happily writing a little bit, and then suddenly being completely uninterested in the subject material anymore. 0/10 very inconvenient, finishing this fic will take forever at this rate