#if anyone cares i Am writing this

[planetcleer]

richie tozier as the newest cast member on snl & eddie kaspbrak as a senior staff writer & richie immediately clocking eddie as Fun To Fuck With which leads to eddie dedicating his life to writing sketches for richie and changing lines literal seconds before airing with the express purpose of getting him to break on live tv a la bill hader & john mulaney send tweet!!!!!!

[mint-fixates]

There's this weird take I've seen floating around on TikTok that Bill doesn't actually care about his family/dimension or Stanford at all; that we're supposed to take everything in TBOB as non-canon basically because he's lying to garner sympathy from reader to make a deal with them. I'm all for having your own interpretations of media, but I just don't think this idea that Bill is a completely heartless unfeeling creature is supported by canon at all. In fact, it kind of feels like the opposite of the point of the book.

Like, yeah, most things Bill says should be taken with a grain of salt because he lies a lot, but he's not actually a very good liar? It's usually pretty easy to clock when he's full of it. But okay, even if we assume every word Bill says while trying to recruit the reader is a lie, there are three major things that this doesn't account for.

Bill is not the only source in the book. The lost Journal 3 pages were written by Stanford, we only know about the interdimensional Taco Bell incident because of an included police transcript, etc.

Even once he's lost any chance of making a deal with the reader to escape, Bill is having a complete breakdown and mentions all the people he so totally doesn't miss for real you guys. Why bother with reverse psychology double-lying for sympathy once his shot at getting the reader on his side is already gone?

Trying to garner the reader's sympathy makes sense to a certain extent, but why go out of his way to make himself look pathetic? Does revealing that he got drunk and cried over his ex in a fast-food drive-through really help his cause if that cause is to convince the reader he's still a powerful being capable of starting the apocalypse again so they can rule with him?

And that's all without even mentioning that, as previously stated, I think the entire point of the book is missed if we're interpreting Bill as having no genuine feelings or attachments. The book ends with Stanford healing from his past by being open about what he went through with his family and accepting their help, while Bill insists he doesn't need anyone and refuses to heal, actively making himself worse in the process. The clear theme imo is that accepting your past and accepting help from people who love you is essential to healing, while denying those things just makes everything worse. If Bill doesn't actually care about his family, his dimension, Stanford, or anything/anyone else, he has no trauma to heal from or regrets to learn from that he's refusing to accept and deal with, and the entire meaning of the book is made moot.

[lgbtlunaverse]

the wangxian + a-yuan "dads with an adopted son" thing is fine and enjoyable in fanfics honestly but I think we as a fandom are really not utilizing the idea of all of them in unconventional familial structures enough. Like, canonically it wasn't so much that wwx was a-yuan's guardian as that a-yuan was being raised collectively by the wens and wwx was adopted INTO the larger wen family. And lwj got attached to him through that. A-yuan just has these very attached weird uncles/older cousin figures that aren't related to him by blood at all but keep sticking around.

Just think of a modern AU with a lot less death where lwj does as he does in canon and keeps showering a-yuan in gifts as much as he can and when wwx is like "aiyah lan zhan you're gonna spoil him. Not everyone is as rich as you! What's his family supposed to say if they can't buy him all the stuff you do?" lwj just goes "Hm". And from then on out every year once a-yuan's birthday is near the extended Wen family members (well. the ones that are invited that is. No one wants wen chao at a birthday party) wakes up to a wechat payment from lwj.

Random wen cousin number 6 texts granny like

cousin 6: i just got 400 yuan????

granny: oh that's just wangji

cousin 6: i've never met this guy in my life???

granny: he wants you to buy a-yuan a nice birthday present!

cousin 6: how does he know my bank account???

[rowanisawriter]

realistically i am aware that diomedes didn’t have any of his father’s boar motif armor because then he wouldn’t have given it away in that armor exchange in the iliad .however. Since it gives a lot of drama for odysseus to see a shadow on the ground of the battlefield of tusks emerging from a massive boulder of a man and for a second in the haze of battle he thinks it’s the boar from his youth come back to finish the job and he blinks and it’s just diomedes. i have elected to ignore canon and just start making shit up

[necrotic-nephilim]

@sasheneskywalker i love when you enable me to ramble about things because oh my god do i have thoughts.

so recently, i made a post discussing the phenomena of DC x DP and DC x MLB crossovers and why they exist and part of that post was discussing how largely speaking, at least half, if not more of the Batfamily fandom doesn't read the comics. if they interact with canon DC material, it's adaptations that are their own sequestered universes and oftentimes not remotely comic accurate or seeking to be. the most obvious example is the Young Justice cartoon. i'm adding a cut to this post because it just got so long i'm so sorry.

a lot of times, when people are discussing the "why" of this oversaturation of fanon-only fandom, they blame Wayne Family Adventures. and i think, to a point, i agree WFA is responsible for a boom in this fandom. but as someone who's been in the fandom long before we had WFA, to me it's the other way around. WFA was DC's way of meeting the demand for this easy-to-get-into, easy-to-consume content about the Batfamily that predicates itself on the comics just enough to be vaguely the same characters, but has a more sitcom, slice-of-life sort of vibe so DC could profit off of this section of the fanbase that otherwise wasn't consuming its primary material. and well, it's definitely worked. not only that, but i have a weird theory that the decline in the MCU also led to the rise in the Batfamily fandom. when you consider the fan content that made the MCU popular within fandom, it's that 2012 "they all live in Avengers Tower and Thor is eating poptarts and Clint is in the vents and there are movie nights every Friday" sort of vibe. those were the fics that were a hallmark of the fandom. and as the MCU has strayed from well... quality content in general, but specifically well-thought-out crossover content where characters can have their own arcs but also exist in a wider story where they clearly care about each other, that fandom was sort of homeless. so where do you go, if you like a superhero found family where you can have villains for angst but also stick them all in one big family-like home for silly crack and have a plethora of options for gay ships? well. you go to the Batfamily. if you write a crack/fluff Batfamily genfic with silly vibes and low stakes instead of say, a fic about a very specific comic issue even if it's a popular comic, you're *going* to get more traction for the former. because the fanbase largely just isn't reading the comics.

and i feel... complicated about this. because on one hand, Don't Like Don't Read has been a tenet of my fandom experience. i'm very pro-fandom and that includes fandom content i don't like. and to an extent, i do think this sort of should apply to Batfamily fanon. i enjoy having my moments with other comic purists, giggling over exceptionally painful OOC headcanons or even facepalming in pain over some content but it is on me to not interact with that content. you don't make fandom a better place by being hostile to fans who engage with canon in ways you don't approve of. and frankly? we as comic readers are not going to get non-comic fans to read the comics by being asshats to them. no one is going to want to pick up any comic if we get a superiority complex about it. and also, i feel like we're all lying to ourselves a little bit insisting comics are so, so easy to get into. they're not. we can just all agree, they're really not. i've been single-handedly helping my sister get into comics, specifically Wonder Woman and no matter how simple i make it, i watch her get frustrated trying to understand what pre-Crisis and post-Crisis and New-52 and Flashpoint and all these things mean and what a retcon vs a reboot is and what a Crisis Event is and what the hell Diana's current backstory even *is*. sure, you can give someone a beginner list of comics to start with and slowly dip their toes in the water but sooner or later, *something* is going to confuse them. comics as a medium straight up aren't going to be everyone's cup of tea. and if someone *just* wants to read silly fluffy fanfiction about the Batfamily, i can't entirely begrudge them for not wanting to take the hours and hours out of their day to understand this medium. it's not an accessible medium to get into. "read this and this, but this run is out of print and this run wasn't collected in trades at all but also make sure you read that event in order and this is a good comic but the backstory in it is retconned and you *have* to read this it's so important but it's also really bad because the author kind of sucks" sounds. ridiculous for someone who like. just wants to read some stuff about Nightwing. sometimes, we all make reading comics sort of sound like a chore, not a hobby.

so my point is, i do extend some grace to Batfamily fanon for existing. i think my biggest gripe is, as i said in my other post, misuse of tags (if you're not creating content about comics, maybe you don't need the comics fandom tag on Ao3, just the all media types umbrella tag) and my far bigger gripe: when panels are taken out of context to support fanon only headcanons. if i could impart *anything* onto the Batfamily fandom as a comic fan it'd be this: if you haven't *read* the comic, don't spread the panel. if you don't even know what comic it's *from*, don't spread the panel. it's fine to use comic panels to discuss your headcanons, but so often i see someone spreading a comic panel from a comic they haven't read, and when asked where it's from, they can't source it. a silly example that comes to mind is a post going around, taking a panel where Dick, in his internal monologue goes "here comes the sun. do do do do." and the post is claiming it's from him getting buried alive. when that panel comes from Nightwing (1996) #140, and he gets buried alive in Nightwing (1996) #127, two completely different moments frankensteined together. if you're going to not read the comics, that's completely fine, but unless you're sure of the source and the context, panels shouldn't be spread around. i'm sick of this specifically happening to Red Robin (2009), with ppl claiming Tim has totally killed people because he blew up some of Ra's' bases, when those panels within context, make it clear he gave everyone time to escape. and in a later arc in that very comic, Tim grapples with the idea of murdering Captain Boomerang, and *specifically chooses not to*, because he doesn't agree with murder, even against the person who has hurt him the most. if you'd like to write fanfiction where Tim is pro-murder and has done some sketch things, i'm totally on board and would probably like to read it. but there's no need to pretend it's canon from a few panels you saw out of context.

beyond that, i think it's not *entirely* correct to say that fanon is harmless. whenever i see very WFA-positive posts, they often default to the argument that WFA is fun and silly, and comic fans are killjoys for not liking it. which. i think is complicated because the issue is, WFA and fanon don't exist in a vacuum. if you like WFA power to you, i don't think it's the worst thing ever, but i do think it's degrading to these characters because honestly? they feel incompetent in the webtoon. it's one thing if WFA was solely a slice-of-life sort of deal, just having silly episodes where Bruce is taking on a PTA mom or they're all fighting for the last cookie. but when WFA attempts to take on more serious plots with these characters, it *fundamentally* falls flat in understanding them. i get it, Bruce comforting Jason having a panic attack because a noise reminded him of the crowbar felt cute in a microcosm, but i'm so serious when i say that storyline destroyed how like. half of this fandom understands Jason Todd's relationship to his trauma. it doesn't understand how he reacts when he's triggered, what coping mechanisms he seeks out, and how he would handle Bruce comforting him. even if i can believe for a brief moment Jason *would* be triggered by something like that, him running and trying to hide and then getting a hug from Bruce to make it okay is just. painful. WFA needs everything to be wrapped up in a nice, neat little bow. so even when it starts to tackle interesting concepts, it makes them fall flat with its need to be soft, low stakes, hurt/comfort. there was a two-parter episode that dealt with the complicated mutual hatred/jealousy between Tim and Damian that *almost* really interested me because for once, it felt like the webtoon wanted to explore canon messy dynamics. but of course, it had to be fixed with one conversation and a hug. you don't mend the *years* of issues these characters have like that. WFA isn't in character because these characters are hyperbole cartoonified versions of themselves to fit within the medium and be a cute happy family.

because that right there, is the crux of it. the Batfamily fanon seeks to simplify the Batfamily and force them into a nuclear family. there are so many fantastic posts on here discussing how the nuclear family-ification of the Batfam is eroding decades worth of complex histories so i won't go too far into that. but what i will say is that there's this need, in the Batfamily fandom, for the Batfamily to exist as a unit. they are a *family*. (honestly i think calling it the Batfamily is a misnomer and has been for years but we're in too deep now.) they exist to each other first, and any teams or friends they have come secondary to this family unit. you can *specifically* see this demonstrated in what headcanons are becoming popular these days. i have an entire lengthy meta in my drafts about how i *loathe* the "the Batfamily meets the Justice League" genre of fanfic because it makes no *sense*. in order to have this genre of fic exist, you must operate under the assumption that no one in the League, or adjacent to the League, knows the Batfamily exists and are thus utterly shocked to discover Batman has kids. and to make *that* work, you have to strip *every single Batfamily member* of such important dynamics and friendships so you can lock them all in Gotham for their whole lives. Dick can't have the Titans, Tim can't have Young Justice, Duke & Cass can't have the Outsiders, Jason can't have the Outlaws, Damian can't have the Supersons, Babs can't have the Birds of Prey, and so on. because if they had these relationships, they would be known to the League. the Batfamily fandom doesn't care about this, it's just "silly fanfiction", it's not trying to be serious. but how can you say you like Dick Grayson as a character if you don't understand the Titans *are* his family? at some points of his life, moreso than the Batfamily even is. it is constantly repeated to us in most comics with Dick how much the Titans mean to him. he *needs* them to be who he is. the same extends to every other Batfamily member, most of which have been full League members at this point. but in fanon, that doesn't matter. the Batfamily are a sequestered unit first, and all of those side relationships are secondary and easy to toss away, if it makes your fanfic work better.

and because they have to be a unit first, you have these forced relationships that dump years of actual canon material for the sake of making them get along. the Batfamily fandom has its favorites and well. it's no secret it's usually the boys. Jason and Tim by *far* stand out as fandom faves so, their dynamic is a heavily explored one. it does matter that in canon they don't tend to get along and especially don't see each other as family. what matters is that you can push dynamics onto them. and so fanon gets all twisted up about which Robin Tim actually idolized as a kid (Dick) and what member of the Batfamily is pro-murder but still an older sibling figure to him and looks out for him (Helena, or if you want the dynamic of once tried to harm Tim but they've reconciled, Jean-Paul) in favor of who's the most popular. Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian are always going to be the standouts for popularity, but it's specifically Jason and Tim who are getting fanonized the most. and that's because really, we don't have much canon content of Tim that *isn't* the comics. for Dick you've got Young Justice (tv), for Damian you've got the DCAMU, for Jason you've sort of got the Under The Red Hood movie, but Tim sort of lingers in this limbo. (yes, he's in Young Justce (tv) and Titans (live action) but in neither is he the main character nor given much depth) so, he gets a *lot* projected onto him and has become fanonized. and even with Jason's animated movies, you don't see him interact with Tim, so people build it from the ground up how they want to see it, disregarding of canon comics. i think it's what makes him so popular in the first place- he's malleable into whatever you want or need him to be.

and of course, the fanon ignores other characters in the Batfamily it doesn't know about. i feel like you could create a tier list of Batfamily characters by their popularity, going from the fandom main characters: Tim, Jason, Bruce, Alfred, Dick, Damian. to the underrated: Steph, Duke, Babs, Cass. to the forgotten about unless they're convenient for a story: Kate, the Foxes, Helena Wayne, Carrie, Selina, Harper Row, Maps, Minhkhoa Khan. to the absolutely unknown: Helena Bertinelli, Jean-Paul Valley, Onyx Adams, the Clovers, Julia Pennyworth. it's not lost on me that the ignored characters tend to be women and people of color. which is both a canon and fanon problem, DC will continue adding interesting characters to the Batfamily, play with them for a few years, then drop them to default to the "Batboys" again. and it's a vicious cycle of the fandom only caring about the "Batboys", and thus people entering the fandom via fanon osmosis won't have content about the other characters, therefore, they won't be interested in those characters enough to create it, and it's just this ouroboros consuming itself, no matter how much canon content we have of these other characters. and it's ridiculous just how large the Batfamily is becoming because of this, which is why i'm a pre-Flashpoint fan, because then the Batfamily was contained enough to actually feel like a family with every character having nuances relationships with each other, but i digress because those thoughts could be their own post.

and the thing about fanon is it doesn't exist in a vacuum. DC has started turning the comics to accommodate for what fans are asking for, because fans will beg and beg for content they're not going to consume. Tim Drake: Robin had Tim as a coffee drinker because that's the fanon accepted headcanon. and the resolution of the recent Gotham War arc was for Bruce to buy this new manor for everyone to move in and call him. nevermind that most of these characters have their own homes and have zero reason to be moving in with Bruce. Tim had his marina in Tim Drake: Robin, Dick has Bludhaven, Cass and Steph have their little side of town in Batgirls (2022), and so on. these characters are being forced together as a unit, as one big happy family living together, to appease what non-comic fans want and it's damaging comic relationships. Robin: Knight Terrors saw Jason and Tim team up and working together, which i've seen varying opinions on but i personally despised. their interactions made zero sense for any of their canon history, but it appeases them being this close sibling relationship that fanon acts like they are. also the fears they faced in their respective knight terrors didn't make sense for either character and *only* worked as a moment of bringing them together so they could reassure each other and have this weird dreamscape bonding moment. the canon is bending itself to the will of fanon rather than building on the pre-existing complex relationships. Tim barely even gets along with his most important team in Dark Crisis: Young Justice because it seems the only important relationships the Batfamily can have is with each other. and when we do see them outside of the Batfamily, it only seems to be to relive the glory days like with World's Finest: Teen Titans, instead of developing them as they currently exist. this isn't recent in the comics, it feels like you can trace it back to the New-52, but it does feel a *lot* worse over the recent years. WFA is fine when it exists in its own bubble, but the simple truth is, DC content never exists on its own. the adaptations will reflect back onto the comics. (the damage the Young Justice cartoon has done to some characters should honestly be studied) and so it does frustrate me a bit when fanon-only or adaptation-only fans act like we're being nothing but killjoys for being frustrated with this. since they don't read the comics, they don't see how the comics are suffering as a result of this.

people argue about what's out of character for the comics they don't even read. i'm sorry, but "bad dad Bruce" is consistently canon. that man is just kind of shitty. when you take someone who has the drive he has, who has this need for the Mission first, who needs a teenager in spandex next to him to keep him off the ledge, that guy is sort of going to be a shitty father figure. he just is. not on purpose or with malice, but when you compare him to any other dad in a big DC family, he sure takes the cake. it's why characters like Oliver Queen tend to *really* fucking hate Bruce for how he treats his kids. Bruce loves fiercely, but he doesn't do well with putting that love first. and his love is a controlling one, he is very particular about controlling how others in the Batfamily are "allowed" to operate. it's what drives the wedge between him and Dick, it's why Steph is never a true daughter to him. (besides the reason of her needing to be a love interest to Tim first, anyway-) i've never understood the massive outcry of people reacting to Bruce kinda being shitty in comics they're not reading. there are some moments that get ridiculously OOC with how cartoonishly evil he is (the whole Gotham War arc and that... complicated mess with Jason) but largely if you want sitcom loving nuclear father Bruce, you have to accept that is a fanon thing, not a canon one. the Batfamily being a nuclear family in *general* is fanon. most of the "Batkids" don't actually see Bruce in a particularly fatherly light and begging for moments where he calls them his kids or they call him dad outside of incredibly specific circumstances is just OOC.

it's getting harder and harder to exist peacefully in this fandom it feels like, if you don't comply to the standard fanon has set. i'm happy people are having fun with their blorbos, even if in ways i dislike, but that "harmless fandom fun" does ripple it's way back to canon, eventually. so i end up pretty tangled with my feelings because are fans at fault for DC making these poor decisions? probably not, but it certainly feels like an unfortunate cause-and-effect situation whether at the end of the day, nobody is happy. and of course, i know some fanon-only fans are striving to be more canon accurate and care about canon dynamics more than others, but for them it's always going to be an uphill battle with the above-mentioned out-of-context panels thrown around and ever-pervasive fanon overtaking anything that's truly seeking to be canon compliant. so really, it sometimes feels like we're all losing.

[ganondoodle]

actively fighting a full blown panic attack born out of sadness and anger after having to drive by yet another victim on the side of the road

it makes me livid how accepted it is to just let cats suffer and die disgustingly horrid deaths and live awful short lives just so what, for what?? so you dont have to play with them for an hour a day??? when i was little it was just kinda normal that they disappeared at some point, i didnt understand what it actually meant until our outdoor cat i loved dearly was found in the bushes near our house in a condition so horrible my dad has never told me and i have never dared to ask, she only made it to 6 and had horrible scars and infections before that i allowed my family to convince me to let my first own cat outside, we only had her for a year, she died at only 2 years old, i am still suffering from the guilt, it has never let me go, she went missing for a week and i walked the entire vilage up and down every day, yelling her name, wandering into the forest alone, talking to every stranger i met until one morning my mom told me that our neighbour who works for the city asked if we had a white cat with a very specific collar she had- he found her on a busy road crossing in the next bigger city, i never even got to bury her, its haunting me, the thought of her wandering lost and scared in the city for a week until meeting an awful end gives me headaches, the fact that i was the last one to see her alive, that i put her outside bc we were late for school and had to leave quickly, that she had come home with oil in her fur from crawling through maschines and cars before, that i was worried but still didnt act, that it is my fault, any time i am up to late its coming back, it will never let me go, if i had stood my ground and not allow her outside unless on a leash or similar shed still be alive today, any time i read a description at our local shelter it comes back, they still advocate for outside cats, all of them, even if they have only been an indoor one before, its madness my older sister had a cat, i dont even know how old he got but it wasnt long either, he got hit by a car in front of their house, she has two now again and the only reason she hasnt let them outside is because they havent shown much interest in it, i tried to warn her before and she didnt listen and shes still resistent, even after losing one too

i have seen so many on the side of the road, anywhere i drive i see them, i cannot forget a single one, we are surrounded by farm land and all its giant maschinery, its still common to poison rodents, why do people value them so little, you wouldnt let your dog just live outside in the woods and streets for half the day or more, you wouldnt just throw your guniea pigs on the road and tell them have fun, you wouldnt just let your bird roam outside, there probably assholes that do that too but you cannot tell me its as common as outside cats

i dont understand it, i dont, i wont, i never will, i will never forgive myself this poor little animal that was my responsibility having to pay the price of my ignorance, or my own weakness letting my family convince me despite the awful way we lost one before, it makes me want to explode it hurts my brain in grief and anger i can barely contain

cats deserve to live a safe and long life, i get only having them inside may feel like you are locking them up, but do you think that not doing so is worth having them die a painful death? being poisonend? on purpose even by disgusting people that hate them? abused and chased by other animals and dogs? hurt and lost? cutting their lifespan in half? if they even make it that far? the amount of wildlife that they kill unnecessarily so when all of that is already in a steep decline everywhere? and if they eat what they hunt get infected with diseases or again, poison? die somewhere in agony? if cared for they dont care about going outside, plenty can be leash trained or given a secure way to roam like those cat proof aviary like things, if you dont want to put effort into caring for a cat DONT GET ONE, ALL pets require adequate care, and if you think cats are the easiest bc you only have to feed them every now and then IF they come home? you suck, you are an asshole, i hate you and you do not care about them, if you just want to occasionalyl feed and pet an animal go to the petting zoo

(this is about pet cats of people who can absolutely afford to keep them healthily inside, i know feral cats and those in poor neighbourhoods are a thing, even if not here where i live, and thats a whole other but still similar problem and not the point of this post)

[chalkrub]

super fun trade with @charseraph !

[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

[dickbaggins]

here's how I'm doing my own fuckin november writing event since nanowrimo destroyed itself (by grooming minors and endorsing ai):

pacemaker to establish my word count goals (very flexible!) and spit out the numbers I love so much - I don't use this beyond coming up with my initial goals but you can track progress on this site too

the writing log spreadsheet to track progress (this is the same spreadsheet I use for my professional writing - it tracks your annual words, words per hour, per project, all kindsa stuff but there's a lot of free alternatives like this one designed specifically for a november 50k)

scrivener for planning and writing. they have a free 30 day trial and a special project for tracking a 50k event with the targets set up already, but it's very easy to do this on your own too. unfortunately they are still supporting nanowrimo this year for some batshit reason but since I bought the program two years ago, I'm still gonna use it ok

a physical journal with daily targets (this is the only reason I used pacemaker tbh) and stickers and washi tape is something I do every year as a way to feel more connected with what I'm doing AND play with stickers and glitter gel pens

what I am missing is a community of accountability pals and a place to do writing sprints so if you're interested in doing any kind of writing challenge in november, maybe we can do it together?

[arospecsyourblockdudes]

Shang Qinghua is one of the SV characters I can most relate to purely in terms of also being a writer. I know that a lot of the stuff I want to write won’t end up being super popular (a romance with a purposefully unsexy vampire? a story between an m/f best friend pair with a really deep emotional bond and no romance? come on) and publishing is a nightmare anyway. But the difference is that I don’t plan to make a living off my writing. Poor SQH does. So if he wants to do fun things like pay his bills and eat food every day, he has to pander to the big audience.

He’s written other things that weren’t PIDW. Things that weren’t trashy stallion novels. Things he might’ve had a passion for and put his heart into. No dice. So PIDW it is and my god I can’t imagine how annoying and frustrating it is that the one work that you purposefully sold out on so you can, yknow, survive, is the only one that got big. It got really big. Really popular. That’s gotta be so fucking enraging. Imagine that, you think sitting down to write something you like is hard? Try to pump out a few thousand words of some crap you don’t even like every day, crap that you know had potential if following your actual ideas and plans for the characters would allow you to pay rent. Alas. The characters you lovingly crafted are watered down now. No one cares that you came up with a really compelling backstory for this one villain, he did bad things and he got murdered and that’s all anyone wanted to see. Not a real story, not something you put love into

In a way I think that’s partly why he and SQQ became friends. I’m a writer, we like feedback. We like to hear what people think of the things we write, even negative feedback can be appreciated. So if you have this one guy who reads everything, comments frequently, and (most important) can see how absolutely shitty this work of yours is? Someone that also sees the wasted potential of this story? Gotta be worth something.

[bipanicoverthegravessiblings]

How about Ashley x Emo Fem Reader? Like gothic with uhh emotic? Or something like that. Like they meet when they been in high school. And they live in Y/N's house that she get from her parents when they passed

If you had any questions, ask me

Oooohhhh- okay okay!

Ashley Graves x Emo Fem!Reader

Social outcast, you generally considered yourself

Not just you, your peers as well had called you that- or…crude variations of it

Point is, no one in school really liked you

You’ve overheard their gossip- all the same shit really

“I bet she lights cats on fire!” “Look at her sleeves, I bet she cuts herself.” “She’s gonna blow up the school I swear”

They couldn’t even bother to be creative with their assumptions about you- a lot of the same depressed demon stuff

….and you are depressed- but that’s besides the point!

You never really connected with any of your peers..

…well- except one..

Lunchtime was quite possibly the worst part of your day. It was a war zone. In the classrooms you had teachers to lessen the blows your classmates would throw at you, both metaphorically and physically, here the only solace of a savior were the underpaid lunch ladies who were occupied handing out food to students.

You hugged the wall as you carefully watched your peers, they all seemed fairly occupied in their own conversations- not even noticing you. You liked it when they forgot your existence. Loneliness beat cruelty.

There was a table you always sat at, tucked into the corner of the lunchroom- and for good reasons. The surface was littered with graffiti of swears, slurs, those cool S’s, and various crude doodles left by your peers. Not only that, but the table was very wobbly, so badly you usually have to use two textbooks to prop it up. The bottom was covered in dried out, chewed gum- the entire thing was just a sitting “DO NOT COME HERE” sign.

And it was perfect!

No one ever sat there due to how shitty it was, you think the students and faculty didn’t even bother to go near it. They either think it’s cursed, or forgot about it. Or both. Maybe both. But today someone had actually got there before you did.

A disgruntled girl with messy black hair poked at the mystery meat on her lunch tray. Poked isn’t the right word- more like viciously stabbed it repeatedly. Her nose scrunched in frustration, likely not directed towards the so-called food, but it was the only thing she had to vent her frustrations on to. She hadn’t noticed you.

You stood there a little awkwardly, not wanting to startle her on accident, so instead you spoke up meekly.

“Uhm…hi.” You smiled a little, trying to harmless. She didn’t look like your average bullies, but you can never be too careful.

She looked up at you with her pink eyes- her gaze was sharp, and you instinctively tensed in preparation for some insult to be thrown. She gave you a once over before returning to her tray, “…hey.”

“Can I…sit here?” It was a dumb question. Technically this table had been your seat, and this girl just showed up out of nowhere- but, oh well.

She gave a frustrated sigh, “God- did Andy put you up to this?” She asked rather accusatory, pointing her fork at you.

You opened your mouth to reply before she interrupted you, “Look how many times do I have to tell you hussies, you’re just wasting your time! He’s not going to fuck you if you’re nice to me so just—“

“Who’s Andy?”

The question you asked sounded genuine….cause it was. Really, you had no idea who this ‘Andy’ guy was. The girl lowered her fork, eyeing you wearily before she decided that you weren’t lying. She turned her head and muttered,

“….you can sit.”

And so you did. The two of you ate in relative silence. Well- you ate. Your new lunch friend more-so stabbed at her food then ate it. You swallowed down the lump of unidentifiable cafeteria meat and gave her a friendly smile. The silence was deafening and you’d never had anyone to eat with so maybe…maybe this could be nice for a change..

“I’m Y/N.” You introduced yourself.

The girl glanced up at you before returning to her tray, “…Ashley..”

“I’ve never seen you at this table much.” your hands patted the surface nervously.

“Normally I sit with my brother and so-called friend,” her words dripped with malice, “But my stupid brother had to go study for some history test! And my ‘friend��� conveniently didn’t save me a seat…” she stuck her fork into the biggest chunk of her food and muttered, “Fucking bitch…”

“That’s a bit harsh..” you mumbled, causing Ashley to perk up and glare at you.

She practically climbed over the table and held her fork out towards you, making your hands instinctively raise in surrender, “She is a bitch! A doe-eyed hussie who thinks she’s soooooo innocent when she sucks just as much as everyone else!”

“I meant it was harsh that she wouldn’t let you sit with her,” your eyes were fixated on the fork, kind of worried Ashley would drive it into your neck, “I…should’ve been more specific. Sorry.”

Ashley’s pink eyes widened a little, she almost seemed- shocked someone took her side. Slowly, she clambered back to her seat and went quiet. You lowered your hands back into your lap and stared at her. Ashley pushed her tray and folded her arms overtop the table.

“….thanks.” She mumbled.

After that, you saw Ashley a lot more

It wasn’t every day, maybe once a week or two she would show up at your hidden table to eat

Slowly, she came out of that shell and actually initiated conversations

Well- conversations were a stretch. It was more like her venting about her frustrating day while you nodded along and ate.

Eventually, she liked you enough to stop you in the halls and walk with you

Usually her brother, Andrew you had come to learn his actual name, walked with her and she made a show to cling on to your arm

It never failed to make the heat rush to your face

Ashley was cute. Very cute. And had a general unhinged vibe that just made her all the more alluring

So it didn’t surprise you that you’d catch feelings for your new friend

No- what surprised you was when Ashley actually liked you back

You paused, silence hanging in the air as Ashley stared at you expectingly. Her foot tapped with impatience as she awaited what you were going to say.

“Well?”

You didn’t know what to say, the only time anyone has asked you out was as a prank. This was different. The question wasn’t coming from some bully barely able to keep their giggles in, this was coming from your friend. Someone you trusted. Someone who wouldn’t hurt you…..at least you think. She did threaten you with a fork.

Ashley’s growing impatience let you know just how slack jawed you were, “Look- if you’re going to be weird about this then just…forget I said anything.” She crossed her arms, turning away from you in a huff.

That was when you came out of your stupor, trying to salvage this, “No! No! It’s okay- really! I’m just….shocked that you asked me out.” You stammered with your explanation, “I didn’t even think you liked girls..”

“Me neither.” She mumbled, the faintest starts of a blush painting her cheeks. It was cute. She was cute.

Your face softened as you placed a hand on her shoulder, “….I’d love to.”

From there you two were dating

Had it only put more unwanted attention on you? Yes, but you wouldn’t have it any other way

You were happy, so fuck what those jerks had to say

Things were good, and after high school the both of you fucked off to another town

With Andrew in college, it’s not like Ashley wanted to stick around her shitty homelife

And you- honestly had no connections aside from your parents, and moving out was expected

So, it was you and Ashley. Outcast for outcast

[hungergameshyperfixation]

Oh you think you were a fan of Maysilee Donner, Haymitch Abernathy, Haymitch’s family + girlfriend, Katniss’s parents, Plutarch Heavensbee, the Undersees, the second Quarter Quell, etc, BEFORE Sunrise on the Reaping was announced?

How many of you wrote FANFICTION about them???

No seriously I’m not doubting you I just want some fanfic recs-

[running-on-coffee-and-anxiety]

Noticed But Hoping For The Best Part 1

So this is based off this post I made about Danny slowly losing small motor function after the accident. I'll be doing this in parts, both for more writing time and because I have no idea how to add a 'read more'.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first person to truly realize something was wrong was Jazz. Oh, Danny wasn't dumb, he knew something was different- after all, he was the one living through it- but it was no big deal. Fumbling with shoe laces could easily be due to exhaustion from adjusting to having to deal with ghosts, the same with slipping up on buttons or the slight decrease in the quality of his handwriting. While he wasn't dumb, there were some things he just wasn't perceptive about, and his sister noticed.

Danny thought he was just being clumsy any time food dropped onto his shirt. Jazz noticed his hand couldn't quite hold the fork or spoon steady. He laughed off a failure to catch something, but his sister noticed he did catch it but it somehow slipped through his hands. Small issues, new ones that had no reason to appear.

When she learned about the accident, that felt like a reason, but- Phantom was a part of who Danny was, and when flying around and handling things with ghosts or using tools, there were no indications of anything the oldest Fenton child had seen bothering her brother. It might be a new set of colors and new powers, but it was still her brother's body, so nothing could really be wrong. Maybe he was just more alert as Phantom.

The best she could do was keep an eye on the situation, nothing seemed to be going too wrong. Maybe Danny's insistence that it was just from exhaustion was true and she was looking too far into things. After all, the only scar from the accident was so faint it could only be seen if he got sunburnt or otherwise discolored his skin, something like that shouldn't be able to cause long-lasting problems.

Maybe it was optimistic, but Jasmine Fenton was hoping for the best.

Next

[bonesandthebees]

sorry I've been so inactive with my writing lately. it's really difficult for me to get the writing vibes flowing again after everything and when I do have energy to write I've been wanting to work on more original stuff than fic (although I am trying to write more of ready set detonate still, and once I'm done with that I want to continue rose. but also I didn't think ready set detonate would take so long my brain is just not cooperating with writing anymore and it's killing me a bit)

[greenerteacups]

Hello GT, I absolutely love Lionheart!

I published my first fic and have been dealing with some criticism; it’s not anythjng super hateful, but it’s not anything meant to make me improve either. I’ve been feeling sort of down because of it. My question is: have you ever dealt with hate or criticism before? What is your attitude towards it?

I find your work and answers on here super insightful and inspiring! I hope you have a nice day ❤️

Fuck em. Like, seriously, just fuck em. There's a time and place for writers to take critique and be strict with themselves; it's necessary for any artist to grow. That place is with a chosen group of creatives whose work you admire and whose judgment you trust. A rando on the Internet, while they may in fact be the next Marcel Proust, probably isn't. And I was raised to believe that while it's appropriate and kind to pay compliments to strangers when they're performing — just as you'd smile at a busker on the sidewalk, and or compliment a chalk artist — it's not appropriate to criticize them when what they do isn't to your tastes. They're providing you with their art for free. No one forced you to read it; no one forced you to listen. If you don't like it, it costs $0 to shut the fuck up.

Also — that thing I said about artists taking critique? That assumes that you're doing this out of a desire to improve your writing, which, while noble, is not actually a thing you need to do if you're a hobby writer. I like trying to improve; it makes me feel good. But at the end of the day, I do this for fun. I do this because in my real job, I am ruthless and self-critical and try really fucking hard to do well, and you need parts of your life that Aren't Like that. You need parts of your life where you're not worrying about whether you're Doing It Right. And living without that anxiety of critique is, paradoxically, the only way you'll find the artistic courage to take risks and develop new skills. Everyone is a little bit rough around the edges to begin with. (Not saying you're a beginner — you merely said "publish," and I certainly wrote a lot of things before I started publishing! But every artist is always trying to develop new skills and techniques; in the grand scope of things, we're all beginners.) Giving someone blunt critique when they're in the beginning phases of their journey as an artist is about as helpful as screaming at your six-year-old kid because he can't swim the butterfly.

And the thing is, these people will bluster and say "well, I'm just being honest, I'm just trying to be helpful," but like: mmmmmmno, you're not! You're not. And it's disingenuous to say so. Because if you were actually trying to be helpful, you would introduce yourself, offer your skills as an editor/beta reader, and start building the relationship of trust that grounds any meaningful co-creative partnership. People do not just accept random critique that comes flying at them from the blue nowhere. And issuing it in that form is the best way to make them hostile, defensive, and unreceptive to it. Delivering harsh feedback without a context of care and support is almost sure to fail as a method of actually changing behavior, and either (1) you know that, and are doing it anyway — presumably because you want people to know how Terribly Clever and Better At Writing you are, or (2) you sincerely have never thought about the effect that context and word choice have on how other people receive your meaning.

Which tells me you are the last fucking person on the planet I want writing advice from.

[kentopedia]

truthfully i want to back away from jjk but i don’t know how