#it’s actually immense love

[fully-functioning-pigeon]

I’ve got a love hate relationship with the art slide shows at the beginning, middle and end of every CR episode

Pros: they’re absolutely gorgeous, stunning prices of work, they help me visualize the scenery of Exandria better, these incredible artists get to have their work on display, I get to see certain moments from campaigns on the screen

Cons: there are certain places and people who I don’t recognize but look so freaking cool and I want to know more about who they are and what their story is but there’s no context to some of these so these faces go by and we may never know who they are or what they can do but I want to know

[abstractfrog]

Happy 1 year anniversary to Mr Sherlock Holmes! Here's a litttleee celebratory comic from me

[egophiliac]

do skully have pokemon?

Pumpkaboo is the obvious one, but y'know, sometimes the obvious one is the right one! (we'll say SUPER SIZE Pumpkaboo, just for fun. big pumpkin for big skeleton boy.) and another person actually also suggested Greavard, which I somehow hadn't considered, but feels so perfect that I feel like I should have. dangit.

(they can also have little Nightmare Suit costumes :D)

[rainbow-sunshine-unicorn]

Remember when Anthony Bridgerton said:

And then it turns out that this is him with his wife:

[juls-art]

⁜ Il cielo guarda solo chi merita ⁜ --   Kofi | Patreon          

[turnipoddity]

i’m writing my thesis and i thought like, whew i did so much work!! let’s see how many words i’ve typed in already—and it’s just around 6.000 words… about 30ish pages. My mind immediately goes to how dedicated fanfic authors are… i stare in horror as i realize how many pages of fanfics i must’ve read all this time… this is a love letter to all fanfic authors out there… y’all are insanely talented and so dedicated to your work

[bigskyandthecoldgun]

imagine eddie’s out of work because reefer rick got put away for good, and rick kept such a tight lid on his own supplier that eddie has no clue where to buy from now. he’s applied to a couple of jobs, but nobody’s gotten back to him yet. thankfully, his saving grace comes in the form of a flyer for someone seeking a babysitter.

enter single dad steve, who just needs someone to watch his five kids (and occasionally the miracle baby hopper-byers twins from nextdoor, because they’re best friends with his kids and refuse to be separated from them for longer than twelve hours) for a couple hours while he takes a much-needed nap every few days. he can’t keep asking their auntie robin and auntie vickie, after all. even if they’re more than willing to watch them, steve feels like it’s too big of an ask without payment, which they refuse to accept. and if the babysitter that responds to his flyer just so happens to be a very attractive guy whose guitar-playing and d&d skills are enough to captivate said children’s collective attention for those hours, well…that’s just an added bonus.

[herebecritters]

Scrapbooking title cards and intros ~

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Taking a snooze.

[rosieofcorona]

(heavy sighing) we're so back WIP

[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

[sylvancastor]

Writing out my preferred way the battle at Rook's Rest should have gone because why not.

The beginning mostly stays the same. Criston signals for Aemond and Vhagar, but Sunfyre arrives first. Aemond sees him fly overhead and is pissed, but he doesn't wait to follow him into battle because he's not an idiot and as much as he wants the crown, he's aware of the intensity of the blow losing Aegon would be to their cause.

Still, Vhagar is slow and has to launch herself off the ground, so Aegon gets their first and has an initial fight with Meleys but Vhagar's quick arrival keeps Sunfyre's injuries from being quite so intense. The two of them attack Meleys side by side, but due to her speed and Rhaenys's expertise, she manages to keep evading them with fairly light damage.

Meleys takes off high into the clouds and Aemond and Aegon follow her. No one can see them from below. Aegon urges Sunfyre to engage directly with Meleys and the two dragons become locked together. Instead of intervening this time, Aemond simply watches as Sunfyre is injured and Aegon cries out for his help. Aemond only watches.

We can see the anger in his eyes. It would be so easy to allow Meleys to kill Aegon and Sunfyre. He could say he did his best, but that Aegon refused to battle carefully. He would be honored after he died and Aemond would become king. Aegon doesn't notice the inaction, too focused on saving Sunfyre and himself. In a desperate move, Aegon unclips one of his restraints to grab the dagger at his side and drives it into Meleys's eye as Rhaenys screams in shock and fury.

Meleys wails and lets go of Sunfyre, dropping out of view. Aegon is triumphant and turns to his brother with a smile. Aemond isn't smiling. We watch as he follows Meleys's descent and decides he's safe for now. He returns his attention to Aegon. It would be so easy to do the deed himself and blame Meleys. He contemplates it only for a split second, but Aegon's face goes from smiling to horror. We think he's understood what Aemond plans to do, but in fact, his eyes are fixed on a sight behind him. Meleys has darted up from behind, mouth open and poised to burn Aemond in his saddle.

Aegon doesn't hesitate. He urges Sunfyre forward and as Meleys breathes out a wall of fire, he throws himself and Sunfyre in front of it to protect Aemond from the blast. Before Aemond can react, Meleys sinks her claws into Sunfyre's chest and pulls him out of sight.

Aemond pursues, but it's too late. Meleys has bit into Sunfyre's wing and Aegon can barely stay in the saddle with his one remaining restraint. Meleys rips her head back breaking off part of Sunfyre's wing and the king and his dragon fall through the air, landing in the forest.

Similarly to the show, Aemond is able to defeat Rhaenys and Meleys on his own after Aegon's fall.

Later on, we learn the only reason Aegon was able to survive was the one remaining restraint held him to the saddle but allowed him to slide off to the side enough to evade some of the dragonfire. He's still burned and in pain. He sacrificed himself for his brother and Aemond can't betray him now. Not when he owes his brother a life debt, not when he's seen how deeply Aegon loves him. He becomes Prince Regent and reconciles himself to forever protecting his brother from this point forward.

[fearmeeeee]

Mama Zigvolt

[flickeringflame216]

blessings roll call! add on in the tags if you so wish <3

[toothlespoggers]

I got silly and infodumped again…

The fact that crystalised despite being the worst ninjago season by far- showed that for a long time now, possibly since season 11 has had his emotions turned off. Is crazy to me. Because I know Cole had a pretty okay moment with Zane about it and he ended up turning it back on in the same season or maybe even same episode I can’t fully recall. But I don’t know how mentally fucked these characters are or what- but I feel like no one stopped to think about that for enough time. Like Cole, he’s a very caring, affectionate, empathetic guy. Yet even he didn’t really seem to register the implications this had for Zane’s mental health. Zane is filled with so much emotional turmoil that he physically couldn’t bear to feel anymore. And this group of traumatised young adults were like- “oh haha Zane, that’s so quirky, that’s so silly of you, haha relatable anyway-“ Like duuuude I don’t know if this is the writers wanting to avoid actually discussing mental health in a “children’s” show or if these characters have had such little emotional awareness and support through their lives, almost dying everyday since they were teenagers that they are so desensitised to the horrors tm that they literally cannot tell when someone is basically holding a sign over their head saying “I NEED SERIOUS HELP.”

That kinda says a lot about Sensei wu, doesn’t it? I mean he’s great we Stan- but he did kinda adopt a bunch of struggling teenagers and burden them with saving the world and then allowed them to put themselves in harms way for years, without ever sitting them down and asking them if they were okay, emotionally? Like I don’t know if this happened and I didn’t see it or if it was implied to happen off screen but I really doubt wu was any sort of a support system for these guys that treated him like a father figure.  

Maybe it’s because this cycle of pain goes back to wu as well, because he’s not the most stable person in the world either, but idk it feels crazy to me that these people that were basically family. Just- never checked in on eachothers well being or looked out for each others mental issues.

I mean they never really got a break and when they did- hell the only reason season 11 happened was because wu, so obsessed with the ninja being in tip top condition urged them to do something, which led these idiots to unleashing Aspheera and then ended up with probably the worst fate you could wish upon a Lego, for Zane. Seriously the fact they turned the ice emperor thing into a joke is so tone deaf to me like if this happened to your friend. In real life, (just suspend disbelief for a second) you would be absolutely GUTTED. You’d probably feel SO BAD. And that person? Probably can’t function like a normal individual anymore. Probably needs serious therapy.  Not a joke.

I don’t hate wu, I never did. But I just think he’s been very irresponsible with the way he’s handled his students and while he’s wise in some aspects 70% of problems in the show could’ve been avoided if this old man valued communication.

And if this isn’t based on the characters flaws. And it’s Lego refusing to discuss mental illness and mental health. COME ON LEGO IT WOULD EDUCATE YOUR YOUNG AUDIENCE ON PTSD, ANXIETY AND HOW TO HEALTHILY DEAL WITH YOUR PROBLEMS. Because right now, if you wanna deal with issues the ninja way, YOU BURY THEM AND TAKE THEM TO THE GRAVE AND YOU NEVER COMPLAIN OR REST.

All I want is at least one episode where it’s not all about the current bad guy or plot and it’s just about the ninja actually confiding in one another and trying to help their friends out. Maybe Zane or Lloyd finally snap and have a full mental breakdown and the only way to deal with it is for them to actually talk about it and work it out. I’m sure you can make a compelling episode with that in mind. They’ve tried to address mental health in the show with Lloyds anxiety arc thing in DR they need to do better.

We need a scene in DR where Zane and Frohicky are at the monastery while the other ninja are doing stuff, (maybe I’ll work out the details more and write something on this) and something happens where all the pain and trauma and just, awfulness just builds up in Zane’s mind and he just. Has a moment where he cracks. And he stops working on whatever he’s working on. And Frohicky notices the shift in the air and suddenly his entire demeanour changes and he comes over concerned and Zane is standing there or kneeling and Frohicky puts his hand on his shoulder and asks. “Are you okay?” And Zane just doesn’t know how to respond. He tries to shake everything off but he can’t, he’s never been asked that before. And Frohicky starts babbling on trying to help him and offers to get him set up so he can rest, and Zane doesn’t have the strength to object or the will to say anything and he’s just like.

“I.. don’t know.” In a final response to the previous question. 

And it’s just a scene where Zane accepts Frohickys gesture of kindness. And while not everything is fixed obviously. You can slowly see the tension leaving him.

Because it matters if someone asks you if you’re okay. It reaches into the darkest place and offers a hand saying “I’ll listen.” And that could genuinely change someone’s life.

[moeblob]

They're soulmates in every single universe and I miss them at the most random times.