#it’s incredibly brief

[mar-the-magician]

Corrupted Code Part Eight

WE ARE SO CLOSE

Unprofessional and unprepared Mar is unprofessional and unprepared

[bonefall]

How do you feel about the Everluxes?

Well, I'm actually someone who generally dislikes Ancients. I usually find that they're kind of a "waste" of an otherwise interesting breed concept, and the fact they can't wear apparel means I find them difficult to work with even when the colors are all aligned. They're usually just "discount moderns," to me.

So Everluxes are everything I want, actually!

They're something that could never exist as a modern breed because they break the 4-legs 2-wings mold, they're SUPER unique in terms of their grublike proportions and big chunky upper legs, and they released with a ton of amazing line-breaking genes that are fun to play with. This is exactly what I feel like Ancients have been missing since their release!

I actually strongly disagree that these guys are "unfitting" in the Light Flight-- I think everyone who's saying that just doesn't like that Light has a fat dragon. I'm losing patience with the way they'll say, "It's not because they're fat, it's because they're inelegant, ungraceful, gross, tubular, long, round, etc" and just expect people to not realize those are being used as alternate words for "fat." The only person they're fooling is themselves.

They have a lot in common with the other breeds, actually. The wings resemble the Imperial's. The rhino-like horn reminds me of the pearlcatchers. They have the same prehensile "feeler" whiskers. Even the way that they're really long makes me think of a sort of "beta" imperial.

I have a headcanon that the Lightweaver made Everluxes and was suuuuper proud of them, her little "bookwyrms..." and then her bully of a sister, Shadowbinder, got REALLY mean about them. Took jabs at every chance, and ultimately made Veilspuns as "LOOK, IT'S YOURS BUT BETTER LOL. MAYBE YOU COULD LEARN SOMETHING. YOU LOVE DOING THAT, DON'T YOU?"

Long hair, sleek features, strong and tricky... Lightweaver loved her design, but when she looked at what her sister could do, she felt ashamed. She'd just wanted people to help her archive and preserve knowledge, but now that she was being pressured to compare her creations to someone else's, suddenly the joy was gone.

And, of course, FlightRising lore enjoyers know what comes next.

Spurred on by that fierce feeling of inadequacy, her next set of creations would be larger, more beautiful, more powerful than anything that had ever come before. She forced every tear, every sob, every moment of anguish she'd ever felt into her next creation. No dragon that walked the soil of Sornieth would be able to hold a candle to the light of the masterpiece within her claws.

Imperials came after the Everlux-- and Emperors in their wake. The Lightweaver swore to never create a breed out of anguish ever again.

[drabbles-of-writing]

Y’all remember the days when Belos was just the funky mysterious masked villain with the sans eye. Remember when Little Miss Perfect dominated both the fandom and Amity Blight as a character. Remember when some of us were genuinely worried Eda would die in the S1 finale. Remember when we all hated Lilith with a seething passion. Remember when Luz’s biggest issue was just trying to figure out day-to-day Boiling Isles life. Remember when, save for the finale, Understanding Willow and Enchanting Grom Fright were the episodes we all lost our minds over.

Wild times

[dovalore]

erdtree burial watchdog

[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

[teatitty]

At the end of 4 when Trish said "I'll sweep the area and evacuate the people" and Dante was in the middle of complaining about being left to clean up the mess and she cuts him off with "You wanna switch?" and he thinks it over for like 2 seconds and is like "nah that's cool" I felt that. He'd rather die than have to deal with people

[nomadic-star]

Guess who's been on my mind as of late

[x-mensirens]

[sea-buns]

Chaos' new design is the sickest shit I've ever seen. I'd already briefly seen the artwork, just without the context on who it was. NEVERR would I have guessed Chaos not in a million years and that's THE BEST PART!!

LIKE FUCK DUDE YOU SEEIN THIS SHIT?! GET YOU A PRIMORDIAL ORIGINATOR THAT CAN DO BOTH

[captain-space-kin]

”Skybound ruined Jaya for me” Skill issue.

[bayofwolves]

Yeah I am mad about how the authors treated their sweet angel Abeke actually.

Bad things that happened to Abeke:

Mom, only person to understand her, died pre-series

Dad and sister are emotionally abusive

Tricked by her enemies and roped onto the wrong side

Distrusted by the rest of the Four and believed to be a spy

Targeted by Meilin in particular

Kidnapped by obnoxious pre-teen boys

Gets frostbite

Gets concussed

Gets stabbed

Gets captured

Gets beaten up by Meilin

Lied to and betrayed by her dearest friend

Meanwhile dad DISOWNS her

Understandable depressive episode

Makes up with dad because he apparently decided he wanted to keep treating his daughter like shit

Mauled by cougars

Loses Uraza to arch-nemesis Zerif

Another extremely understandable depressive episode

Nicknamed "hollow-girl" which tells you a lot

Almost killed by Uraza on two separate occasions

Friend* killed by Uraza

Denied proper resolution with said friend

Doesn't get to kill arch-nemesis Zerif

Doesn't get to use her Rain Dancer powers a single time

Attacked by ants

Mid bond token

Can't even keep her cat

Justice for Abeke.

[fanofshitorwhatever]

She really said he needed to be studied 🔎🔬

[uncanny-tranny]

This is an EVIL part of the body btw:

[thatoneacecryptid]

Don’t get me wrong, I love this most recent episode ending as much as the next person, but there was something about the blue glow in Jen and Lilia’s eyes that really unnerved me

[luxury-nightmare]

mom says it’s my turn on the writing

Idea came from @silverstudios

The exhaustion has returned, as it always did this time of year. The snow outside the window signaled that it was time for it to hibernate. But it couldn’t bring itself to go back to the nest. It was too big for just it. It would bring back to many painful memories of it’s last hibernation.

Back when it still had Winfrey.

It didn’t know where else to go to hibernate besides it’s nest, it couldn’t think of anywhere else it felt safe. Besides, well-

No, it would not stay at the human’s house to hibernate. They would turn it into the asylum the second its guard was down. It would not get lured into such an easy trap.

It wouldn’t. It,

It needed a place to sleep, and the human was the closest thing it had to a safe place, but it would not.

It would not,

It would….

……..

It did.

Curled up into Alex’s bedroom closet, it padded the nest of extra blankets and pillows it had made from it could fine inside. It curled around in circles, preparing to finally hibernate for the winte-

“What are you doing?” It looked up sleepily at the human, standing in the open closet. “Preparing to hibernate” it said, struggling to keep its eyes open “why?”

Alex raised an eyebrow in confusion “Velidgun hibernate?” They asked. Clyde rolled its eyes “yeah, most of the winter.” Alex looked over to the side, “and you’re staying, here?”

Clyde turned over to the side. “I can’t go back to the nest” it stated simply. “Why?” The human asked. Clyde shivered, it couldn’t tell them about Winfey, couldn’t tell them anything.

At least not yet

“None of your business” it stated, and it could see Alex’s flinch in its mind. They were still kind of scared of it. Good. It wouldn’t need them for much longer.

“Okay” they replied, then turned to shut the door. They paused, and turned back to the veldigun. “Tell me if you need anything”

They shut the door. Clyde rolled its eyes.

It didn’t need anything

It didn’t need anyone

It needed to stop lying to itself

————————————

Alex had been avoiding their closet like the plague, aware of the sleeping demon inside. They had been trying to live life around the velidgun in their house, but Clyde had somehow become some sort of staple in Alex’s life.

So, they did something weird.

Not as stupid as the first time they had left out a sandwich for Clyde, just sort of odd. It had seen how much Clyde had adored Halloween, and they had seen it squirming around in its sleep, so they had dug up an old bat plushie they had as a kid. They opened the closet and placed the plushie into Clyde’s makeshift nest, then turned to leave.

Only for Clyde to grab them and pull them in.

Alex panicked, only the breath a sigh of relief when they realized they were still in their coat and winter gloves. Their bones wouldn’t be fusing with their flesh from this. They looked over at Clyde, the sleeping veldigun’s face still as the sea, arms wrapped around them in a hug. Alex was confused, but went along with it for now.

They could rest for a bit.

————————————

two more left

new connection

faint, but there

drown the soul in void

An experiment

could it drown this mind in madness

w̵͇͙̤̄͆͑h̷͚́͝a̵͓͚̋t̴̬͉̞́́̾ ̶̘̽̒͠à̶̹̰̤r̶̫̂͆͂ẹ̸͎́̓͌͜ ̷̻́̇̕ỳ̵͉͑̽o̸̝̠̤̕͠͠ȕ̵͔͚ ̶̪͇̦̒̃̈d̴͔͓̩͐ǒ̷͚͙͘î̸͎͔́ṉ̶̬͑̀g̵͉͑̇ ̴̙͓̐̀f̴̺̭̄͋͝ǐ̴͖͎͆ṟ̷̛̉͑s̸̬̙̣͗́͝t̶̺̩̙͌̓?̵̘͊͐̋

————————————

Clyde woke with a start. It blinked a few times to chase the sleep away from its eyes.

It’s always had the weirdest hibernation dreams.

Six it was starving, it always was when it woke up from hibernation. It saw something out of the corner of its eye, and it turned to open the closet door.

Sure enough, there was a sandwich there. Peanut butter and jelly, it’s favorite. It yawned and stretched, and went to go take a bite.

Maybe staying with the human for hibernation wasn’t so bad

[oneheadedcerberus]

Rung being kind of a loser old man is so much better in mtmte after finding out he's Literally Their God like what kind of god forgets he's a god? The kind that thinks finishing off a particularly riveting jigsaw puzzle is grounds for a sit down with a hot toddy