#just don't bully kids you know

[burningcheese-merchant]

Honestly I don’t understand the hate behind “toxic” ships in fiction, I personally couldn’t care less what people ship as long as it’s entirely fictional and they aren’t condoning the actions of the characters. Sure I’ll still block someone if their ships make me uncomfortable, but I have a “ship and let ship” type of view on these things.

Exactly. I'm just SO tired and so done with this shit. The Cookie Run fandom has always been shit to some degree, since CROB first came out, but CRK brought in whole legions of people who haven't seen grass in years and it's just sad at this point lol. So long as they're both adults (ZERO tolerance for adult/minor ships at all times, fuck that shit), why does it matter? It's fiction. No one is being harmed. Explore whatever concept or dynamic you wish. Wholesome, toxic, everything in between. Just remember to maintain a healthy level of detachment from it all; don't get mad if people don't ship the same ships you do, don't get wrapped up in discourse or arguing or anything. Doesn't do anyone any good, including you and me.

There are plenty of ships I don't like (in general, even outside of Cookie Run). I am anti-FireWind and always will be. ShadowSpice makes less than zero sense to me, like wtf are you people on about lol. Hollytaya gives me rabies and I hate remembering it exists (God I hate Hollytaya so fucking much it is absolutely unreal lmao). Guess what? I block the ship tags and go about my business. I don't go out of my way to look for ship art or fics, nor do I bother people who ship any of those (or any other ships I don't like). I have friends and acquaintances that ship these three that I've listed, and I don't think any less of them for it. It's all good in the neighborhood. All shipping is at the end of the day is playing dollhouse. Getting mad at people for playing with the dolls in the "wrong" way is dumb and pathetic lol. Live and let live. Hate the ship, not the shipper.

Just don't call me names. Don't accuse me of terrible things because I like hero/villain ships, the enemies to lovers trope, and/or exploring darker topics or relationships in writing. It's FICTION. No fucking shit that stuff is wrong and I don't condone it irl, the fuck is wrong with you? What kind of person do you take me (or anyone else like me) for? I get so goddamn irritated with the shit I see getting hurled at Beast x Ancient shippers regularly, especially on Twitter. People get harassed, people get outright doxed and threatened. All that over fictional talking cookies? You're the ones who need help, not us lol. You don't have to like BurningCheese, you don't have to like Beasts x Ancients, you don't have to like Heroes x Villains at all. That is perfectly understandable, that trope is not for everyone. But don't do that shit. Don't call us misogynists, or abusers, or anything else like that. Those are serious and damning accusations. You've got a lot of nerve saying that to people you don't even fucking know, especially from behind the comfort and safety of a computer screen. Frankly, you cheapen what those horrible things really mean by hurling them at random strangers so carelessly. You think words in a document or lines on a screen compares to real-world violence against innocent people? You think because I toy with the concept of some little buff spicy cookie dude having an evil crush on a little winged cookie lady, I want real people to be harmed? Fuck you for that. I am VERY familiar with the horrors of violent crime, BELIEVE ME WHEN I FUCKING SAY THAT. I hate bad people as much as the next guy, probably more so, because again, I AND MANY I KNOW PERSONALLY HAVE SEEN SHIT IRL, SO DON'T FUCKING COME AND TELL ME I ENDORSE REAL CRIMES WHEN I AM THE LAST PERSON ON EARTH WHO WOULD. Fiction allows us to bask in the light or be engulfed by shadows as much as we wish, while being able to safely disengage and return to real life without any pain or discomfort being inflicted on ourselves or others afterwards. All of this morality and media-enjoyment policing is just the newest incarnation of the fundies that tried to paint Pokemon as satanic, or those pearl-clutching dipshits on the news and in government that insisted that people would become carjacking homicidal maniacs because they play Grand Theft Auto. It's fucking stupid and a waste of time.

I'll say it one more time: YOU. DO. NOT. HAVE. TO. SHIP. BURNINGCHEESE. OR. ANY. OTHER. BEAST X ANCIENT PAIRS. You are entitled to your thoughts and feelings and ships. Block the tags and move along. Block users if you have to. Better yet, turn off your computer and go spend time with real people. There's more to life than Twitter or Tumblr or these wack ass games about cookies, I promise. None of this matters, man. I have a Bill Cipher plushie as my avatar. I post silly dumb memes half the time, and then just ramble nonsensically about Evil Spice Man x Pretty Cheese Lady the other half. This shit is stupid. We're all stupid for liking these games in the first place. They suck. We all suck. Write what you want, draw what you want, mind your own damn business and I'll mind mine

[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

[d1sc01nf3rn0]

I'm seeing a lot of people with neurodivergency, specially under the autism spectrum say that "Laios is annoying, never shuts up, is insensitive, and I can't stand him"; and the irony is not lost on me lmao.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[waitineedaname]

something that will never fail to be amusing to me is when an mdzs college au needs the name of a professor, and then suddenly shen qingqiu is there

[spoopy-arcade]

This'll be a weird question but I've been thinking about this since I watched a video discussing hot takes within FNAF and wanna discuss it with other people.

How do you feel about people who still cling to the idea of Roxy being a narcissistic bully because of the stuff she'd say while hunting Gregory, despite being hacked into/possessed?

Cause honestly, I think it's funny how apparently Roxy gets flack for saying some mean stuff while under the influence of a hack. At the same time, people will go to the ends of the earth to defend William Afton or Monty (if he really did kill Glamrock Bonnie I mean).

It's SO fucking stupid and I hate it 💀

And I fully agree with the last part, people out here (youtube and twitter people) treat Roxy as a full on evil bitch while defending and wanting to fuck a literal child murder and abuser. And we don't know if Monty killed Bonnie or not, but if he did, no one's gonna say anything lmao. (Even people who think he actually did kill him, they still love him and are fully riding him, but nooo RoXy StIlL bAd Bc ShE mEaN 😡😡🤬🤬)

I guarantee you that if Monty (or a "male" animatronic) was in Roxy's place, no one would say jack shit and some people will only think he's so hOT 😫😫 for it

I really don't see Roxy as a narcissist, the game clearly showed us that Roxy deals with a lot of self esteem issues, and I think she just talks to herself so she can feel better. And the whole "bullying" thing when talking to Gregory, I really believe it was just her being hacked by Vanessa/Glitchtrap to get to Gregory.

AND RUIN LITERALLY SHOWED US THAT??? Roxy clearly had a close relationship with Cassie, and there's a reason why she's Cassie's favourite. Roxy apologized for scaring her when she recognized her voice, and when she heard her again, she welcomed her back and talked to her so sweetly and was just so gentle with her?? NOT TO MENTION HER BEING THE ONLY ONE TO BE AT HER BDAY!!! AND PROTECTING HER FROM THE MIMIC DESPITE CASSIE DEACTIVATING HER AND POSSIBLY DYING FOR HER

After all of that, you're still going to tell me that she was always a narcissistic bully who cares about no one but herself??? BLOCK ME THEN /SRS

[4me2knowandyou2wonder]

Teeth Headcanons for Modern Warfare characters

As the winner of our first pole, we will be starting with everyone's not so, maybe sometimes favorite baby man...

Graves!

Yep. Graves was the braces kid. He just was.

At 13 his American ass was told by the dentist to go to the orthodontist. His mother dragged him there despite his protests and he was put in big metal brackets. (He had some normal crowding and a healthy underbite) Graves was awful at wearing his rubber bands, just awful and had braces for 3 years. Almost all his teen pictures have that metal smile on display.

Graves also was the type to not know what color brackets look good and constantly switched them around so half his photos not only have a metal smile but also have a candy-colored metal smile - Blue, green, yellow, and red all clashing on his teeth. (You know he did red white and blue at least twice)

His wisdom teeth were removed at 18 because his mouth is too small for them. His mother made a video of him on the anesthetic drugs as he says all sorts of things. He definitely cried a few times. Graves swears the video has never seen the light of day - he’s wrong and his shadows can prove it. Mercenaries can always find a way.

After getting his braces off, Graves never truly wore his retainer. He lost it within the first year he was prescribed it and never let his family replace it.

Today, It shows in his teeth. Their crookedness and original setup has all but fully returned. Graves has genetically yellow teeth (fig 1) and they're going to be that color even though he brushes them 13/14 times he’s supposed to. (this success is mainly because his shadows will comment if his breath stinks.) lastly, Graves does not floss and refuses to with the conviction of a man with toxic masculinity. 

NOT LASTLY I just rewatched some graves scenes on confirm his underbite and not only is it *really there* its there because he is shoving his jaw up and out like he’s chewing tobacco (fig 2 & 3). Which made me realize… this bitch probably chews tobacco! So put dozens of cavities, worn away enamel, and early tooth loss on your Graves bingo cards!  Figures under the cut

Please excuse the quality I took this with my phone camera off my computer screen while binging the cod games. It was snapped in moments of excitement over teeth and not meticulously clipped from the videos for posting purposes o7

(Fig 1)

(Fig 2) these next two were screen shots from a not 1080p video and you can tell. But they do their job. Also, hi ghost!

You can’t tell me this man hasn’t chewed tobacco before … look at the way he hold his face !

(Fig 3)

[pickapea]

my absolutely biggest online pet peeve is US centric people projecting their rich sorority girl bully stereotype of nurses onto everyone else, as if nurses aren't working class and mostly immigrants of colour everywhere else. and when did it become cool to hate on underpaid and exploited workers anyway

[bitchkay]

Being undiagnosed does not work in my favor actually because I just go through life thinking I'm fucking insane

[r7inyz]

could u try drawing reed n Julius from the breaking wheel ?(if ur fine with it)

THE BREAKING WHEEL.....😰😰YEAAAHHHHHH‼️

honestly i liked that story even though it made me fear for my life

(drew these today in school sorry if they aren't the best, BUT THANK YOUUUU FOR THE ASK)

[queers4years]

I just keep thinking about august when I had 2 nonbinary kids talking to me about how scared they were. One told me she might have to go back into the closet for safety.

[otherpens]

yes I'm on episode three yes I'm already fuming

[anonprotagging]

finished the villain arc.

meh. underwhelming.

there's crumbs for the guzma/piers shippers at least ig

[hauntingblue]

ANOTHER DEATH BY INMOLATION???? ENOUGH!!!!

[katierosefun]

not me being fully transparent about law school life as a queer woman of color, but like. literally started tearing up in front of my school’s dei officer lmao

[featherymainffins]

Sometimes I think I must be a weird author because everyone keeps making "haha writing the middle part of the story is so hard haha the start and the ending are so easy baba" jokes but I never know how a story will end.

I start and then I write the middle, and then a logical conclusion happens.