#that flashback??? was so neat

[katiefratie]

Mr. Tomeas is really good and a level up?? Slay Jin

[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

[danielledelayed]

A fun thing I noticed in the Living Armor episode is how, in the flashback, Laios is only wearing leather and cloth. (The part around his neck is quite an elegant solution for keeping his design similar, I'm a big fan)

In said flashback, he saw a man get stabbed through the throat and then he got stabbed through the chest himself, his first death.

And now he wears a chunky buncha metal that happens to cover up those two spots specifically.

[possiblyfunny]

I forgot how to make posts, but don’t worry guys, I’m still alive-

Ghostly Assistance

Heyyy! I finally drew Leaf! (Plus a slight Aster redesign-) This took way too long, and I apologize for the delay and the overall messiness. She had been sitting in my drawing program as a sketch for two months 😅 but with the Flashbacks up starting in Missing Numbers, I finally got the will to finish it!

Leaf Aoyama belongs to @creatively-cosmic. They have a blog called @themissingnumbers, which you should check out, like—right now.

[Sketch + Extras below the cut!]

Here’s the cover of the book, if you wanted that- (I know it’s crap but I’m tired)

[And for those who are curious, some notes about the art:

-The book is Aster’s. He’s read the book cover to cover well over 25 times. It’s his favorite book on flowers, but he’s more than happy to lend it to someone who wants to learn about flora.

-The content of the art (because there was intended to be a background that got scrapped-) is that Aster was showing Leaf around his secret garden deep in the woods, guiding her so that she wouldn’t get lost and showing her the different flowers and such. (That’s why she has the book-)

-You know how in some video games, you can press a button and whatever special companion you have will show up to give you a hint? (Ex: Navi, Fi, Rotom, Olivia, etc) That’s what Aster is doing right now. Whenever Leaf had a question—he had the answers.

-And if you’re wondering—Yes. Aster did make her a flower crown afterwards. And Yes, he thinks she looks very beautiful with flowers in her hair.]

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

me when i have to figure out how to structure a fic

[supersecretnerd]

Sage offering to do crimes after just befriending his new best friend is great

[haemosexuality]

*sits up in the middle of the night* in this next universe where vampires seem to have taken over the world, marceline probably either never met simon or he died soon after they met, which means that since her mom also died when she was really young (too young to remember a lot about her i bet), she most likely raised herself completely alone through the apocalypse and never really learned about Morals which is how after getting bitten she joined the vampires and, became evil i guess. we see that even with simons good influence in her formative years she went through a rough path after getting bitten so it would make sense that shed turn out nasty if it wasnt for him. she is part demon. we just saw an universe where simon lost marcy and was fucked up and now we're gonna see one where marcy lost simon and became fucked up

[velvetjune]

i played the remastered alan wake a while back and am replaying the original on steam, and, honestly, they’re so similar, I couldn’t tell which is which if you held up comparisons. ive come across reviews about the game looking outdated and bad (mostly compared to other releases in that time), but the original looks great and I like the hazy dark lighting for both this and awan

[todayisafridaynight]

Wouldn’t you like to see Mine again though?

always neat seeing mine but honestly im content with how his story ends; id personally prefer if he didnt get brought back, tbh

[madou-dilou]

A young lad on a dark path

[earthyorangeaid]

There’s something I really like about Gun Woo’s character and the way they presented him in particular and that’s his ordinary extraordinariness. Gun Woo is amazing, he’s a prodigal boxer who can take down most opponents with just his left hand and about 10 or more men with his right. He’s brave, compassionate, and idealistic. He’s got pretty much every trait that any big shot heroic type character would have, but he seems extremely ordinary most of the time.

And I love that, I LOVE his ordinariness. He’s just a guy; who loves his best friend and his found family and his mom, and he’s just trying to do everything he can to do right by them and he’s dough eyed and emotional and silly and wonderful, and truly just a guy. And that’s everything to me

[isaacathom]

i have an ongoing beef with the voice actor jason marsden because on two separate occasions, while looking up who voiced a character, i will find out its him, go 'what else has he done?' and get subsequently jumpscared by the presence of Craig Fucking Boone

[ladyimaginarium]

i swear to g-d im& not even the jealous type but jfc i HAAAAAAATE this feeling when im& just lowkey like. who's :)))))) this :))))) bitch 👀👀👀👀🔪🔪🔪🔪 :))))))

[conspiring-limabean]

jurassic world chaos theory is very good. its kind of insanely good for something that's a sequel to goddamn Camp Cretaceous. and im losing my mind because no one i know gives a single damn about it but it's like. actually so fucking good

[toestalucia]

april fools events hihi

[chloemew]

When I was first looking to get physical copies of the MP100 manga, I went into my local bookstores and most of them had like... one or two volumes, maybe three, in no particular order, no Reigen spin-off anywhere, just a pitiful amount all round. A little disappointing since I liked the idea of being able to just pick them all up at once, but whatever, I just ended up ordering them all online instead.

Anyway I went to those same bookstores today and they had every single volume including the latest released and the Reigen spin-off