#the past one was so much better…

[laeana]

Holding the riders at gunpoint to ask them what they think of that new brand, and Pecco going “it was uhhhhhhhh incredible”, yeah we feel you Pecco, we’re just as amazed 😅

[hansoeii]

crowley

[hinamie]

9 / 266

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Soup solves everything.

[hecksupremechips]

Mizuki and Date though like. Imagine being 8 and your parents are filthy rich and going through a bad divorce. Your mom treats you like shit, lashing out at you, hitting you, saying she wishes you were never born all because you were behaving like a child. Your dad is more comforting, but he doesn’t do anything to stop the abuse and he spends his time invested in a completely different family, a girl who you love and look up to but he loves her more than you and it fucking shows. Then your dads new friend, some fucking bachelor in his late 20s, is just like "wow you guys are the worst fucking parents ive ever seen" and next thing you know your dad is sending you off to live with him. And it’s just a massive kick in the head cuz you go from a rich lifestyle to living in some really shitty tiny ass apartment with this guy who’s clearly never been around a child in his entire life and he doesn’t know how to behave and does a really bad job of censoring himself like he has a bunch of dirty magazines that he can’t hide very well cuz it’s literally a studio apartment and also he talks to himself sometimes, it’s really weird. He doesn’t even have the slightest clue what he’s doing

And he’s the best parent you’ve ever had

Because fuck, it all really hurts. You have to cope with having never received any love from anyone, and with the fact that your parents clearly don’t want you and can’t even be bothered to send you with anyone even kinda responsible. And this guy has a scary job with crazy hours and you don’t know anything about him and neither does he. But still, he never once hits you or tells you you’re not allowed to cry. He just gives you space and doesn’t push you to feel any sort of way about him. And sometimes, he’s even kind. He makes you some stew, even though it’s a bit chunky. He lets you sleep in the bed and takes the couch for himself, even though he complains about the massive back pain he’d never trade his spot for a second. He pays attention to events at your school and gives you your favorite stuffed animal when you make good grades, even though you called it ugly. He gets worried sick when you come home with bruises and puts on a goofy voice and trains you to defend yourself and you develop some highly deadly skills and even though it’s really abnormal, he buys you a bench press so you can get stronger. There’s this distance there, and you feel really weird caring about someone who you aren’t related to, but you find yourself wishing it was meant to be like this all along, that maybe, he’s secretly your real dad and he loves you like his real daughter

And when you say "I’m back" he says "welcome home"

[brainrotisseriechicken]

(heaven is you,)

(heaven is you,)

(heaven is you.)

everything else was stressing me out so i drew a bunch of hands to relax (thus me not bothering to polish them) (did its job for the first couple hours then i got anxious again)

[skrunksthatwunk]

i just know his ass has a debilitating urge to chew ice constantly (<- projecting)

[l3irdl3rain]

How is my best friend Arthur has he helped you baldur any gates

He’s been good! My washing machine broke last week and I hauled it out the other day in preparation for the new one and he’s been loving his new Top Secret Hiding Spot.

We are taking a little bit of a Baldur’s Gate break right now just because I was getting burnt out. We’re slowly making our way through Mass Effect Andromeda for the second time. I’m very excited to get back to BG3 tho.

I left off right at the start of Act 2. I’m playing a Githyanki monk named Ez’rai and spent way too much time coming up with a backstory for them. I’m going to be romancing Wyll this time. I think Ez’rai growing up in such a harsh culture that didn’t have room for soft romance will go together in such a fun and cute way with Wyll. A noble’s son who is just so sweet and romantic and good.

[i-dare-say]

You know what I love about Binghe's character? His role in the story and the way it changes our perception of him through the narrative.

We first meet him as this poor boy and we, just like Shen Qingqiu, get swept by the image of the white lotus. He's a teenager, and we're told that at this age he didn't have any of the darkness that would reign over his life after the Abyss. We're only shown an obedient and sweet Luo Binghe. He is the "young and innocent protagonist".

But we know about his future. Shen Qingqiu tells us so many times that the Abyss will corrupt him irreversebly, that he will come back and take his revenge on the scum villain. The problem is that we see the story through Shen Qingqiu's point of view, he is our protagonist, making Binghe our villain. So we read about the disciple days with the constant thought that this boy will one day become the antagonist.

And see, there's a slight difference between villain and antagonist. A villain is perceived as someone with bad intentions, while an antagonist is just someone who opposes the protagonist.

When Luo Binghe comes back from the Abyss, he is both villain and antagonist. He goes against Shen Qingqiu (antagonist), and the story tells us he wants to kill him like the original PIDW (villain).

Then it's revealed that it may not be exactly like that. First, we're shown that Binghe has romantic feelings for Shen Qingqiu (which, yeah, it's obvious to everyone but him, but still), giving Binghe a new possible role in the story: love interest. This immediately reduces the perceived danger of his actions. It brings him closer, it makes him a safer character.

Yes, there are stories with villainous love interests that do horrible shit, but we're dealing with the most common way narratives treat this type of character: generally, the love interest is good. And so, the moment this role is put upon Luo Binghe by the narrative itself, it also influences the reader.

But Shen Qingqiu, and consequently we, don't lower our guard. Despite being the love interest now, we also know that Luo Binghe has conspired to take down his master and organized the sower plague. He's attacked Huan Hua Palace, killed Gongyi Xiao and many others, putting the blame on Shen Qingqiu. By the end of book 2 he's villain, antagonist and love interest.

But it all gets proven wrong. That almost everything that happened to Shen Qingqiu was not because of Luo Binghe. We discover that there are other villains in the shadows.

The sower plague and the the attack at Huan Hua Palace was caused by Tianlang-Jun and Zhuzhi-Lang. Qiu Haitang's involvement and Shen Qingqiu's imprisonment was one of the Old Palace Master's schemes. All of this destroys Binghe's role as villain and antagonist.

This is the moment Shen Qingqiu decides to trust Binghe, pushing the reader to do the same. Because he's just "love interest" now and by the standard conventions, he's good. We trust him to be. Shen Qingqiu himself starts to project onto him that same image of white lotus. Since our image of Luo Binghe was so bad previously, this makes it jump way higher. It lulls us into this much better perception of his character.

The Old Palace Master was a villain and he died, as villains are often destined to. The only obstacle remains Tianlang-Jun, who doesn't harm Shen Qingqiu because of Zhuzhi-Lang's wishes (not an antagonist), but also wants to merge the realms (villain).

So our protagonist and love interest move toward the action, the big battle against the final boss. The villains get defeated easily and after the truth of what happened to Su Xiyan, Tianlang-Jun gives up his plan. His role as villain ends there. But the story has more antagonists to reveal.

Luo Binghe has never stopped being one. The narrative only hid his real motivations and let him cover himself with the role of love interest. And at this moment, he drops the mask and lets all of his feelings out, everything he didn't tell Shen Qingqiu nor the readers. He becomes the final antagonist, the one we've had since the very beginning.

The thing that saves him is his status as love interest, because no, he's not the only one to blame for what is happening. There's Xin Mo, who has fed on his insecurities and negative feelings, and Shen Qingqiu himself. He is the one who has constantly pushed Binghe to the side, believing himself to do the right thing, first by giving Binghe his death and then by trying to keep him "protected" from his father.

In the end, Luo Binghe wasn't a villain. Shen Qingqiu was, and he dies. But since he's not a real villain, he's allowed to come back.

When everything is over, their story comes to an end. The narrative itself leaves them free, to be whoever they want to be.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Veilguard vaguing:

It's not automatically a good thing, actually, that the game de-emphasizes or even outright removes racism against elves, and bigotry against other groups, from the story

[just-sp-in-inginthevoid]

As much as the 'haha Takemichi went to save his husband after saving his wife, bisexual much?' joke is funny, people who seriously thinks Tokyo Revengers should've stopped when Hinata was finally safe and sound missed an important component to the plot.

Yes, it all started with Hinata - but since when was it all about Hinata?

Takemichi, kind-hearted Takemichi, should've just stopped everything after saving her? He got into Toman for this reason, yes, to get closer to Mikey and stop him - and Kisaki - from killing her, but he also sincerely got closer to Mikey. And everyone else. And he's supposed to simply leave them be when 'mission: save Hinata' is complete? As if the number of people he wanted to save didn't get longer with each timeline? Those are his friends why would he throw them all away.

To protect Hinata he decided to stick close to Mikey since he failed to prevent Mikey and Kisaki meeting each other - and he got attached to Mikey during that, as well as all of Toman. Each steps to save Hinata was also a step to save Mikey from corruption and self-destruction. It was all linked from the start.

There was a shift after Bonten, okay, whatever, the only thing that truly changed was Hinata's importance in it. New enemy? That happens in each arc (right, sure, there wasn't Kisaki anymore). Mikey being more and more violent? Again, each arc featured a moment of Mikey showing signs of being mentally unwell - and now it was aggravated because it was two years earlier than what Takemichi got used to go back to. Etc, etc. Toman may be disbanded, but its (at least main) members still meet and interact and they all kept in touch - Mikey aside. That just a change of mood, a mix of the present/future timelines with a more serious setting and of the past timelines with how young they are, despite not being as young as before. And future timelines have never been a problem - there's a lot of love for Manila and Bonten. If Wakui had had time and energy, Kanto Manji, all 70 and so last chapters of TR could've worked with its fanbase. For some reasons it didn't, and I don't get why by myself

[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

[front-facing-pokemon]

[unordinary-diary]

Seraphina and Arlo: The Brainwashing of High Tiers

Exposition:

— Remi, Episode 50.

There is a heavy implication that Seraphina and Arlo were raised in much the same way. The pressure on Seraphina comes from her parents, so I’ll extrapolate that the same goes for Arlo. This raises the question: how do the authorities create such a strong societal pressure on such a small percentage of the population? Most high tiers will probably not know any other high tiers besides their parents. Take Wellston Private High School for example: it’s the most prestigious private school around, and canonically has the “highest concentration of high tiers in the region”. There are six high tiers in Wellston. Apply this to god tiers specifically, and there are only three. Not to mention that this current group of students is uniquely strong, even for Wellston. In Rei’s senior year, he was the strongest at 5.8 max.

So much of this brainwashing relies on the parents to do all of the work, and it only takes one or two people to break the cycle. So how are the authorities creating this immense pressure? One tactic could be by isolating high tiers. There is a very widespread concept that one shouldn’t associate with those outside their level range. A caste system like this that affects everyone is much easier to create and maintain than an expectation for a small group, and it also means that high tiers are only being influenced by those who are also high level. This creates an echo chamber. I’ve researched cults and how they brainwash victims, and the first step in the process is isolating them in exactly this way.

But, if there are so few high tiers, how the hell are they supposed be isolated from other groups? The answer is that high tiers are just isolated in general. Take a look at Arlo: his only friend is Remi, and even her, he keeps at an arm’s length. Arlo is only close with Remi in the first place because he was close with Rei, who, at the time of meeting Arlo, was presumably close in level with him. [EDIT: I forgot about Holden, which I think says a lot about his relevance. He is kept at more than an arm’s length and doesn’t seem to have any actual influence on Arlo, let alone a deep relationship. He is also not presented as an equal.] Take a look at Seraphina: before meeting John, she didn’t seem to have any friends other than possibly Arlo. Seraphina and Arlo pre-John seemed to have had more of a professional relationship, and while they were not close in level, Arlo did fit the bill of being a fellow god tier, and strong enough to also be brainwashed.

Now let’s look at Remi. In episode 60, Cecile says to Remi: “And yet here you are... Always hanging around those two monkeys, Blyke and Isen. Letting them treat you as an equal even though you’re in a completely different league.” This struck me as odd because, aside from Cecile herself, the Wellston students closest in level to Remi were Arlo, Blyke, and Isen. And who is she friends with? She actually was doing a pretty good job at following that social convention, unless Cecile wanted to be friends with Remi, which she clearly didn’t. But... her friends were still not close enough to her level. Was she supposed to just not have friends at all? The answer seems to be a resounding yes. Can you think of any genuine friends that Cecile has either?

Friendship simply isn’t considered a necessity for high tiers.

But... why is it that Arlo and Seraphina were brainwashed differently? Creating a societal norm for an isolated group of people is one thing, because those people’s mindsets feed into each other. Putting pressure on individual families to keep them in line, but doing it all in different ways? That would be near impossible. My theory is that Seraphina recieved the typical high tier brainwashing, and that Arlo was raised differently because he was being groomed to work for the authorities. Seraphina didn’t have a set career path planned out for her, but if she’s trying to be “perfect” by the standards of those controlling her, she’s bound to end up going in a direction that pleases them. Arlo on the other hand was specifically planned to become an authority figure. That’s why his brainwashing is so centered on leadership. Also, growing up with direct contact to the authorities makes it more possible for them to customize his brainwashing in this way.

But does all of this apply to high tiers in general, or is it specific to god tiers? Let’s take a look at the high tiers in Wellston. We have Seraphina, John, Arlo, Terrence, Remi, Cecile, and Blyke. John is a unique circumstance because he wasn’t raised by high tiers, so we’ll cross him off the list. Terrence was also unique, so we can cross him off as well. Remi was different from the norm as well. Why is that? Well, Remi actually wasn’t raised by high tiers either. Rei said on screen that both of his parents were elites. We can cross Remi off. Blyke doesn’t fit the bill either, but that’s easy to explain. He was an elite for a large part of the story, and he shot up rather quickly. We don’t know much of his family, but he probably wasn’t expected to be a high tier at all, and was raised as an elite. (All of this also serves to emphasize how much of this brainwashing comes from a person’s parents.) That leaves only Seraphina, Arlo, and Cecile to look at.

Cecile does seem to have high tier brainwashing, but it’s not nearly as intense as with Seraphina and Arlo. She doesn’t seem “obsessive”, and she wasn’t one of the examples Remi mentioned in chapter 50. It’s clear that high tiers are brainwashed in general, but god tiers are kept on a much shorter leash. This makes sense, obviously, because keeping a population in control like that is less necessary the lower the level. However, it’s also a chicken an egg situation: god tiers are both more important to keep in control, and also easier to keep in control. It’s important to note just how many exceptions we had to cross off. People like Remi and Blyke aren’t actually that unusual— a lower leveled high tier is much more likely to have non-high tier parents, or to have not always been a high tier themselves, or just in general, to have way more day-to-day interaction with non-high tiers. The brainwashing gets more and more diffused the lower down the ladder you go.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji goes to Lotus Pier (No relation to the AU of the same name)

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[fromtheseventhhell]

Cersei and Brienne I am so, so sorry that people in this fandom have madonna-whore complexed you two. I'm so sorry that your characters and arcs have been reduced to you being the devil and angel on Jaime's shoulder. You deserve so much better than how you're perceived by this misogynistic fandom 🙏🏾