#i don't think i missed anyone

[thejudeduarte]

Soc memes because our fandom is lacking:

Honourable mention @kazbrekkersfedoraaintgotshitonme :)

[redwinterroses]

One week on the Edge server, season 3.

[k-is-for-potassium]

i feel like many people use "straight"...wrong

it's used a lot to mean cis, het, allo, perisex, etc.

basically just not lgbtq+ at all

but that's not true

trans people can be straight and lgbtq+

intersex people can be straight and lgbtq+

neopronoun users can be straight and lgbtq+

arospec people can be straight and lgbtq+

acespec people can be straight and lgbtq+

polyamorous people can be straight and lgbtq+

genderfluid, bigender, and other gender non-conforming people can be straight and lgbtq+

people who are biromantic, panromantic, etc. and heterosexual or vice versa are still lgbtq+

and there are so many more identities that can absolutely be both

straight does not mean not lgbtq+

[lazylittledragon]

ok i swear i'm not going to talk about my breakup forever but the thing that just keeps bothering me:

i know that not getting what you need in a relationship is a COMPLETELY valid reason to end it but also. i feel like having a very vulnerable moment where i opened up about my struggles with intimacy and being relieved that i didn't have to keep doing things i wasn't comfortable with, then being dumped a YEAR later because of my lack of intimacy. is something i should be allowed to be very hurt by???

[swagveryswagamazinf]

gyus i forogt I had a tumblri think I never posted tjis here hai hello

[camellcat]

"cordelia could you please drive me home?" "of course" OF COURSE she replies to buffy, softly, without hesitation. even if she goes right back to harping on about the world ending, of course she'll help buffy. head in my fucking hands

[phonification]

doodle dump because i will not finish these evar!!!!!!!!!!

[carlyraejepsans]

someone else asked about when you think Chara fell and adjacent thoughts about the UT timeline and it got me wondering: how old do you think the characters are? I’m of the opinion that a lot of monsters we come across are closer to human ages, though I know there are probably incongruities with actual canon if that’s the case

I'm the same as you, actually! my take is something like "developmental times are the same up to adulthood, monsters just live longer once fully developed (i was thinking 40-50 years age range) and die later compared to humans".

as for the main characters, my headcanons are roughly

papyrus: 20 (coolskeleton95)

undyne: 24 (strongfish91)

sans: 32 (28 in deltarune)

alphys: 27 (just vibes)

mettaton: uhhhh ghost. he's been a robot for 1-2 years so far though

toriel: mid 40s when she stopped aging, several centuries old by now, but not quite a millennium yet, maybe in her 700s

asgore: same as toriel, but he was a couple of years younger than her before they stopped aging

chara: 11 when they fell, 13 when they died, but they spent more time with the dreemurrs than it seems via resets, which is why they were so attached to them even if only two years had passed

asriel: died at 12, spent a LOT of time resetting and exploring his newfound powers as flowey, but it didn't exactly contribute much to his development from a psychological and mental perspective. I'd say he's a bit closer to being mentally 13-14 by the time we meet him in canon, but nonetheless, he is EXTREMELY immature, and still obviously a kid

frisk: 12

monster kid: 11

muffet: spiders.

[moonchild-in-blue]

Hey, remember that time II kissed Vessel's arm? Okay byyeeeee :D

Well HELLO GOOD MORNING TO YOU TOO

(yes i did see this before i went to bed but i was wayyy too eepie to reply)

I hope you know this has just set the mood for my entire day so. I'm gonna be extra yearning and soft and whiny 👍 Sorry about that guys, I'm a pathetic wet cat of a person 😞

He could've hugged him. He could've high fived. He could've done that guy thing where they slap each other's butts and it's totally platonic and wholesome and hilarious.

AND YET. Mr. Daddy Twofoot (cmon guys, catch up on the name) KISSED??? HIS ARM??? On the sensitive soft part too?????

Like. Okay. Yeah yeah, the boyfriends, etc etc. But let me be actually serious for a second here.

(hello this turned out to be way longer and sappy than i intended so)

Do you see how effortless that was? He didn't hesitate for a second. How often do you see two guys (who I'm assuming are straight) be this affectionate with each other? A kiss on the inner arm is *such* a tender, intimate gesture, regardless of gender/sexuality - a type of action that is not usually expected between straight men.

And I don't know, I find it incredibly endearing and important to see that, as much as they do all that funny sexy stuff for the fans (and for themselves too - they seem to have so so much fun), these type of actions seem to be a part of their regular off-stage interactions. You can feel how genuinely good friends they all are.

And in the case of Vessel and ii, the founders of Sleep Token and the major force behind it all - how surreal and incredible it must be for them to get to experience all of this together. To see their hard work paying off. To stand proudly in front of literal thousands of people side by side with your best friend??? HELLO???

It's such a small thing, but I carries so much weight ya know? Like yeah dude, I love you and I'm proud of you, and you did a wonderful job. Isn't it SO touching???

I just LOVE to see it. Men who are vulnerable and affectionate around each other, who are comfortable in it, who shows us that yes, platonic friendships and pda are beautiful and important and in no way make you any less of a men. Which is something a LOT of dudebros in the metal scene would benefit in knowing.

I just. I don't know bro. Vessel x ii interactions mean the whole word to me. I was just talking with someone a few days ago of just how far Vessel has come in his music journey, and even within Sleep Token, the difference between One days and now is. Nothing short of astronomical. It feels almost miraculous, yet it is anything bUT, because we know how much effort V and ii put into making the music we so love. And of course iii, although not part of the creation process, has been with them from the beginning as well.

Can you imagine how overwhelmingly awesome and scary it must be for them?? And what are the odds of after a few years of changes, they somehow found the perfect person to complete them? SO MUCH SO, that you can see just how close iii and iv are BY THEIR MIRRORING ATTIRES?? HELLOOOOO ???? SOULMATES FR FR

Aaaa I feel like I'm going off on a huge tangent, and I am stopping now before I bring up the German Rituals and Wembley. December was a wild month omg I have not recovered yet.

I just!!! My heart!!! I love them. Vessel PLEASE I have been begging on my hands and knees, PLEASE PLEASE give your drummer a smooch omg he deserves it poor guy has the twinkliest prettiest eyes ever how can you NOT 🥺✨💙

Anyways. Yes, I do remember. Good gif 🙂👍

[the-sunlit-earth]

a lot of clipping to fix, but hey I got it moving at least! I'll get the Telvanni robe properly physic'd if it's the last thing I do >:0

[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

[blazeball]

god me and primrose got high tonight and went on a beautiful nature walk and we were going home as it was peaking. and then we find a CAT

who is INCREDIBLY SWEET AND VERY OBVIOUSLY HAS PEOPLE. so i had to spend the next hour knocking on doors. HIGH OFF MY ASS

[retributory]

gx is so crazy how do you explain to someone with a surface-level understanding of what yugioh is that the series after dm features a hermaphroditic dragon-demon card spirit fusing their soul with the main character, who also has apparently been continually reincarnating for 100s of years with the card spirit's primary goal being to protect him, and when they embrace to fuse he says they shall never part again because they will forever and always from that point on be one jointed soul and body, and also he commits a borderline genocide against the card spirit race (???) and straight up kills some of his friends (they get better), and also there's a character who got his leg broken during an archeological dig and they replaced the broken bone with a dinosaur bone (???) and now he's like part dino and has fucking dino dna (?????????) and they send him to space as his dinosona to destroy a satellite that is about to destroy the earth (????????????), and also one of the teachers in the school (seto kaiba's duel school for dueling) is a homunculus and when he dies his soul (???) gets eaten by his cat and for the rest of the series he is living (?) inside of the cat's body, and also on top of all that theres a cool rival character as expected of a show targeted towards young boys who looks cool but in actuality he's lame as hell like he canonically stinks like shit cause he doesn't wash his clothes and he joins a cult and they get him out of the cult by reminding him that his real personality is being a rancid little stinky smelly bastard loser and no one likes him and he spends the entire series getting completely dunked on and also his main archetype is these things:

and then you have to concede that at the end of the day it is still an anime for a children's card game designed to sell the cards so if you ever try to explain the impact this had on your developing mind at 7 years old you'll sound sick

[rcmclachlan]

Trademark: Top-tier Bucktommy writer + generally Cool + getting Buck pregnant

Thank you + thank you + thank you!

[mybraindumpsterfire]

I didn't say it last night but after seeing Phil in those shorts last night and hearing how he was all cute and giggly while tipsy, I am once again asking: Dan Howell, can you fucking fight?

[mars-ipan]

Matthew 7:15

(my commissions are open!)