#the love and care between the characters

[disenchanted-youth]

Seriously, what's up with that golden light that's protecting Phaya and Tharn? Is it Phaya's powers? Someone in his family tree? I feel like this episode needed to be longer. I usually get tired of shows explaining every little thing. This time I wish this show actually gave me more. It's ending next week! Why are we still having questions about the mythological/supernatural aspect?

That Tharn and Chalothon scene will be stuck in my head all week. Babe kills it in these emotional scenes, this one and the one with Phaya in the cave. Pain. Tharn sounded so broken and hurt.

Honestly I don't blame Tharn. I get why some people do. It was definitely frustrating to watch him constantly defend Chalothon. But Babe honestly saved that part for me with his acting. When Phaya talked about Chalothon being the naga, it was kinda obvious that Tharn really didn't want to believe it. I mean who would? It's crazy to think about. You put all your faith in someone, go to them for advice and support, even your mental health troubles, and then you find out they were the one hurting the people you love. Abusive relationship 101 by Psychiatrist Chalothon. Moments like that make it clear that Tharn is a victim of emotional abuse. Chalothon has his fangs deep in my boy.

Once Chalothon actually showed up, it completely broke him. Babe conveyed that confusion and pain so well. Big shout out to Heng and Babe for nailing that scene, Chalathon's desperation and Tharn's hurt were so real.

Then the doctor had the guts to be like "I'll never hurt you". Mate what do you think you are doing? Making him all giddy while you keep trying to kill the person he's in love with? Threatening to kill everyone he loves? How to keep your man happy - a masterclass by Mr Naga himself. There's crazy, and then there's Chalothon.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Have you seen my little lad?

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[hinamie]

the sirens are turning red

[skateboardtotheheart]

there is just something about the difference between edwin's love interests and having the cat king's reaction to edwin in hell being "i'll be waiting when he gets back" vs charles "no version of this where i don't come get you" rowland convincing a powerful trans-dimensional being to open a door to hell just so he could get him back

i am insane

[meirimerens]

curious and curiouser

[winepresswrath]

one thing I like about tazmuir as an author is that at any given time she will be like "here is a character," and I will think "that's nice, but I don't care. please return me to my beautiful Gideon" and then she'll be like "no. look at this other character under a microscope. they are so fucked up and full of love in such specific ways. probably they are bad at sex also." and I make a shocked face and welcome them into the pantheon in my heart, still waiting to hear from my beautiful gideon, at which point tazmuir will show me another character. and then.

[untitledgoosegay]

re last reblog I do see fanfic culture pushing/replicating a certain model of "what trauma looks like," "how trauma works"

this is a problem across all areas of society obviously, but transformative works are, well, transformative. they're about crafting and modifying narratives where the fan-creator sees a flaw or a lack -- often for the better! don't get me wrong, I've done my fair share of "I take a hammer and I fix the canon," it's the main thing that gets my creative gears spinning -- but what happens when that "flaw" is simply a narrative not conforming to popular expectations?

some people just don't get PTSD from events that sound obviously traumatic. they're not masking, and they're not coping; they just straight-up didn't get the permanently-locked stress-response that defines PTSD. they walk away from a horrible experience going "well, that sucked, but it's over now." some people do get PTSD from events most people wouldn't find traumatic. we don't really know why some people get PTSD and others don't. but fandom has an idea of events that must be traumatizing, of a "correct" way to portray trauma. you see the problems with this lack of understanding in e.g. fans pressuring the devs of Baldur's Gate 3 to add dialogue where the player character badgers Halsin about his own feelings on his abuse -- because he must be traumatized, and his trauma must fit a certain mold and presentation of sexual trauma, under the mistaken impression that anything outside that narrow window is somehow "wrong" and disrespectful or even harmful to survivors.

take, for another example, the very common trope of a traumatized character who hates touch or sex "learning" to like touch or sex as a part of their healing process. certainly that can be healing for some people; other people will never like, or want, touch or sex, because of trauma or because they just don't. the assumption that someone who doesn't want sex or doesn't like to be touched must be traumatized, must be suffering from this perceived lack, is seriously harmful -- to asexual people, to people with sensory issues around touch, and to people for whom healing from trauma means freedom to refuse sex or touch.

and there's a secondary trope, one that's slightly more thoughtful but ultimately repeats the problem -- that once someone has learned that their boundaries will be respected, they'll feel it's safe to soften those boundaries. once they feel safe refusing touch or sex, they'll feel comfortable allowing it on their own terms. but many people don't, and many people won't! many people will simply never want to be touched, and never want sex, and they are not suffering or broken or lacking because of it. the idea that proving you'll respect someone's boundaries entitles you to test those boundaries -- the paradox is obvious, and yet this is something i've seen hurt (re-traumatize) people i care for.

people are imperfect victims. people don't heal in the ways you expect. many people have positive memories of their abuse, of their abusers. many people hurt others in the course of their trauma, in ways that can't easily be unpacked in a 5k oneshot. very few narratives of trauma and recovery actually fit the ones put forward by popular children's media and romance novels -- which are the ones I most see replicated in fandom spaces, because they provide the clearest narrative and easiest catharsis, and so they're easy and soothing to reach for.

that's not necessarily a bad thing! i am not immune to goopy romance tropes. i am not immune to teary catharsis. not every fic has to grapple with ugly realities. but there's a problem when these narratives become predominant, when people think they're accurate and realistic depictions of trauma, when the truth of trauma is unpleasant and uncomfortable, and doesn't fit any single narrative, let alone one of comforting catharsis

[monabee-draws]

I've unintentionally become obsessed with Jiang Cheng MDZS. He's thrust into power at a young age, he hates his brother, he loves his brother, his family is dead, he was suffocated by the pressure they put on him, his dead/alive brother's core is literally sustaining him and saved him from living only half a life, he's agressive and brash and snarly, he loves dogs, he uses a whip as a weapon and everyone compares him to his mother, he's purple, he has no friends except his nephew who is a literal child who is also everyone else's nephew, a portion of the fandom crucifies him for obstructing the main couple. Truly no one is doing it like Jiang Cheng.

[lilianade-comics]

My brain gaslit me into believing that Valerie got her outfit upgrade in D-Stabilized because she was the only remotely acceptable thing about that episode, so imagine my surprise upon watching Flirting With Disaster again and Technus, Lord of Drip and Shipping Gray Ghost, shoots her with the drip-upgrade beam and she (and everyone else standing around her) doesn't even question it.

[dxxtruction]

Louis' "You're boring!" Could mean so many things, but I think what's most apparent about that line is that Armand takes no initiative just for himself. He's not really anybody, because he never goes out and finds himself or gets attached to anyone but Louis. Without Louis as his guide he's literally just sitting on a couch picking lint! That's the thing.

He orbits constantly around what would make Louis happy, and never really fully going what would make me happy? Ultimately that drive to please Louis is what drives him to torturing Daniel, not so much that he'd care to just do it. Ultimately, not giving proper care to Louis is just a way to make sure Louis knows he has to orbit around him as well, with shoving Lestat onto him just that other nail on the coffin. So, even if he fails to figure out how to make Louis happy with him, he still knows what Armand is good for, and better than.

That dependency is what drives Armand's abuse. It really just comes down to that. Armand doesn't even realize how suffocated he is by his own dependency. This is just how life is to him. (It shouldn't be lost either that dependency is a theme considering this episode also deals with addiction).

Daniel's fascinating because he's just so driven to be somebody. He's largely independent, he seeks things because he wants them. It's his drug to poke and prod at all the things that he shouldn't. Daniel's exciting because he lets Louis in to something different, lets him in to all this potential in another person that he can also do the same with for himself. It's a real connection. A two way street. It's easy to tell how Armand can be smothering then because he's never introducing him to anything really new, and most the ways both of them connect are all painful and traumatic. It's never just fun because there's always that layer of that pain. Fun died with Claudia.

50 years on they've gotten to a lot better place, both of them, but it's still that same shit. No seriously, "How is this any different from last time, Louis?"

Well... Because Armand's going to be, at the very least, making one [1] decision only for himself - and that's to hold power over Daniel's life. Fucking sick foreshadowing.

They aren't driving each other to the brink anymore but "The vampire is bored" STILL. Maybe it's even worse, despite being in better places, because Louis' sort of just been defeated by it. (I mean, can he even really leave this either?). He's accepting the dependancy cause he kind of has to. He'd literally ended up letting all the enjoyment be up where he can't reach [The book shelves]. Armand so desperately wants Louis happiness but what really ends up happening is that Louis ends up having to give Armand all his own. He's got no one or anything else to get it from. But like an iPad and an over the top eating ritual. Two extremes of what's just more lint picking.

This whole relationship is one I find just tragic inside and out. You have to just pity it, really. There's ways in which you can find yourself feeling bad for both of them. But you can only really be mad at Armand for any of it. Armand, who isn't even 'free' in any sense, having so little concept of his own independence, but is at the same time so controlling over other's. It's a tragic cycle. It's an infuriating one.

Louis at least has the mind to know when enough is enough. If just needing that extra push to get there. Armand's too scared of it being over to even try.

[biblicalhorror]

Aroace Riz real but also Fabian is SO clearly in love with him and Riz has no idea

[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

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Instruction on Courtship

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[butchnavi]

nina salazar-roberts is such a beautiful case study in comphet and I genuinely think her arc deserves so more appreciation

[ablazenqueen]

The most upsetting part of this scene (and probably the whole ep) are these two looks:

Because the look on Jeff’s face? It’s hopeful and trusting. He has just the slightest ghost of a smile when he looks at Alan, he looks like he has full confidence that Alan is going to back him up, continue backing him up like he does at the start of this confrontation.

But the look on Alan’s face? It’s doubt. He looks at Jeff and he thinks maybe and he breaks eye contact, looks away just slightly, drops his gaze, because he wants to trust Jeff and he can see the hope in those eyes, but he’s unsure. And even if he chooses to trust Jeff, he’s team leader, how can he not side with his boys? How can he not support the majority, the boys he’s known the longest, the boys who’ve proven their loyalty to him and each other over years, and offer the resolution that most benefits the most amount of people?

How can he not choose the rational resolution, even if it requires squashing that hard-earned trust?

[avocadohass]

I will be living out my life and suddenly Im like "wow we actually got the trojan/jerejean sequel"

Because for years it was such a crack random thought, a truly hopeless dream because in the main series there were absolutely NO HITS.

It was just a wild manifestation of a bunch of fans that REALLY loved side characters, and I can say it because after reading aftg in 2016 my favorite character was fucking Jeremy, so I know what I'm talking about it okey.

I been in a state of shock since it was announced, and even after I read it, that just now while we wait for the golden raven it just hit me like we actually getting a trojan trilogy A JEREJEAN TRILOGY LIKE????

I remember I found out about jerejean after reading the jean extra content, and thinking that he needed something good in his life and immediately seeing that people ship him with Jeremy, a character who he never interact with in canon but was probably gonna in the future and I was like "that makes so much sense" and this was when there were like barely fics of them

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I cannot believe that saying "the trojan sequel" isn't synonyms of impossible dream anymore