#however i love them so whatever

[winepresswrath]

Every character on this show struggles with feeling unlovable because they're somehow broken or dirty or just put together wrong but for my money the real winners in this terrible competition are Claudia and Armand. There are, I think, a lot of echos between them especially in showverse- parental abandonment, abuse, being rescued and remade by vampires. Armand was one year older than Claudia when a vampire found him in a terrible situation and brought him home. So naturally just as Claudia finds someone she thinks could really love and know all of her Armand is going to kill her in the desperate hope of keeping someone who might love and know all of him.

[slyzia]

A Stop For A Drink

Second art to this series! (Yes I’m making it a series I wanna draw more of them)

After drawing this part, I really wanted to write a fanfiction based off of this, I’m not a writer if at all but I’m so curious! Anyways they take a stop to get a drink and Gary just wants this to be done with already. (Probably because they’re still on their way to the location idk where I haven’t decided yet + they’re taking forever) It was a hot day too so he let it slide.

Days have been becoming colder for us southern hemisphere people so make sure you take care of yourself and warm up! As for the northern ones stay hydrated and enjoy your summer breaks! I forgot to say last post but happy pride month and I’ll catch you guys next time, smell ya later!

[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

[dungeons-and-dragon-age]

Hiii everyone, say, how do your Hawkes go go about sharing their estate? If they do it at all? Is everyone free to come and go or are they more private? Or do they only invite their LI to stay? I'm curious!! :)

[uncanny-tranny]

Hey, you're being lied to about what fitness constitutes. If you can't work in an hour-long crossfit slog, but you can work in a five-minute walk, then that is still fitness. If you can't use your legs but you can do arm circles every now and again, that is still fitness. If you're moving around at work, that's still fitness. It can be intentional or incidental, but here's the best part: your body doesn't care if you're dedicating specific work-out times. It doesn't care if the "only" fitness it gets is your nine to five on your feet. It doesn't care, fitness is fitness is fitness. Some of us do it differently, but the end result is more or less similar.

If you can do any type of fitness safely, your body isn't going to care if you're doing it like an Olympic athlete or if you're just a casual.

[braisedhoney]

some tragic love stories be like: if i could bottle the galaxy, i would pour it into a cup so it would be easier for you to drink. do you want them? do you want the stars? or do they suit you better as adornments for your eyes than glitter on your lips?

but they don’t want the stars. they don’t want the galaxy. but how can they not? is that not enough? (it’s too much, that’s the problem. it’s too much.)

[kimbapisnotsushi]

i'm just. thinking about how kuroo told kenma that the setter didn't have to move around much to get kenma to play setter. and i'm thinking about how that was such a blatant lie. how we already knew. how the narration TOLD us that. but kuroo built a team where kenma wouldn't have to move anyways. he built a team AROUND kenma. he built a team for kenma's sake and comfort because he wanted to keep playing with kenma. and i'm not saying that he was begging desperately for kenma to stay, or that he didn't care about the rest of the team beyond what they could do for kenma (because of course he did!!), but what i AM trying to say is that. kuroo really REALLY cherishes the people who are an essential part of his life. and he'll do EVERYTHING he can to get them to stay.

[sieglinde-freud]

project of insanity finally done. i can play the game now

[relaxxattack]

well, a lot of women on this website have tangible experiences of living as men previously. i think it's normal for them to project transfemininity onto male characters sometimes. like i get what you're saying , people absolutely slap "she's trans" on a male character without introspection, but i think its pretty normal & reasonable for trans girls to see transfeminine experience in characters written to be men. like, trans girls dont just spawn out of nowhere midway through our transition :P

you’re so right and thank you for saying this kindly.

[jasofthehollow]

as the token "friend who is into folk music" there is nothing worse than having a well-meaning friend recommend you a "folk" song from whatever fantasy show/movie/video game they've been watching/playing because first of all- holy shit that is so kind of you to think about me. and now i have to break your heart by not liking whatever music you're about to play to me.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

yeehaw just wrote over 3k and i can't publish Any of it without miles of fantasy au context

[cerealmonster15]

haikaveh... save me haikaveh...

i KNOW it's been talked about to death but. the haikaveh research project. it literally haunts my mind. i cannot get over the implications. alhaitham going through his school life as someone that most people dont even really know about because he keeps to himself and doesn't socialize, with kaveh being the one exception to that, finding his way into his life as his Best Friend, and then leading to alhaithams one and only time he participated in a research topic. his bio says he only ever did ONE joint project!!! one!!! the one with kaveh his best friend and i think also his only friend at the time!!!! and then it ended in not only the project falling apart but also alhaithams only friendship. kavehs best friendship. they were each others closest person. they had no family around - alhaithams parents having died when he was young and his grandmother dying before he joined the akademiya, and kaveh's dad dying when he was young and his mom having moved to fontaine. like even if you dont look at it through a romantic lens it's still undeniable how important they were [and are] to each other..........

i'm getting off track but my point is very specifically for alhaitham, the one time he got close to someone, made a friend, even agreed to join one(1) group project ever, it ended in disaster. it led him into a fight so bad that his one and only friend said he regretted that friendship!!!! it was so bad alhaitham left the project and he and kaveh didnt speak for ages until they just happened to run into each other again at the tavern!!!!! like obviously it has to be incredibly awful for both of them but i just think how this probably had alhaitham in the cynical mindset that friendships and collaborations like that might just never work out for him because the one time he let someone into his life, it blew up on him and he was all alone again. even though alhaitham never seems to care much if people dont like him, that clearly cant still apply to someone he was exceptionally close to. like if he didnt care he woudlnt have been the one to take his name off the project and mutually not speak to kaveh...... kavehs words are the ones that hit the most significantly to alhaitham.......... kaveh is said/implied to have had at least some other friends while at school / people knew who he was, but not so much alhaitham. people didnt know him and the ones that did just knew he didnt socialize/he was not easy to get along with. he only had kaveh and then, for a while, he lost him too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

Rosaria Champagne, “Law of the (Nameless) Father: Mary Shelley’s Mathilda and the Incest Taboo” // Star Trek: Deep Space 9, 2x22 “The Wire”

[toxifoxx]

fighting the urge to make a rant post . but once you notice you really never stop noticing!!

[numberoneanika]

Honestly the roleplay blogs are stronger than I am because if I saw a post where people were saying my blog was annoying and calling me corny I would jump in a large pit and rot away

[skhardwarevers1]

a second font has hit my tumblr page