#who allowed them to be so cute

[sugarbear2001]

Artsy boyfriends 🥺

[i-said-blimey]

Fabian is obviously going to love his baby sibling so much it's hilarious to see him freak out about them now

Like every single thing about Fabian's character tells us he's basically going to be the most over-protective older brother ever. He's gonna yell at Gilear if he buys the wrong kind of lotion because it's not the fancy kind that the baby likes. He's gonna fight with Hillariel about the best way to get the baby to sleep. He's gonna cuddle with the baby all the time and make sure they get their daily tummy time. All the while pretending to be doing all of it begrudgingly

[ok-pop-1]

an evening doodle of a modern!war from @linked-maze :)

[luluxa]

🐻+🐈‍⬛

[turtleblogatlast]

Man I wish we got more of the turtle tots especially their “slightly older turtle tots” designs, because they are so cute

[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

[boundinblueleather]

Listen, I just think everyone currently invested in Agatha All Along should rewatch the WandaVision finale. Reasons: The dynamic between Agatha and Wanda is so interesting and reflects directly in the last scene with Agatha and Billy in episode five. Agatha figures out what Wanda is (the Scarlet Witch), but when looking at her, sees this new young witch who doesn't/shouldn't know how to use her powers. They fight, and she is stripped of her magic. As she realizes what this means and especially when she realizes Wanda's going to turn her back into Agnes, she pleads frantically. (Side note: it says something about her character how quickly she can switch from acting on top of the world and invincible to completely helpless. I'm not going to get more into that, but it's something to ponder.) With Teen, he was this young wiccan whom she felt protective of, mostly because he reminded her of Nicholas. When she learned that he for sure wasn't hers at the end of episode four, I think she had already known but was just holding out on the only hope she could. Then, she still cares for him but starts analyzing who he could be. The pajamas are a dead giveaway but not concrete evidence. It's his attitude, mainly, in which she sees his mother. The woman she had mostly wanted power from, true, but unusually for Agatha, there were lots of times when she wanted to be her friend as well. In Teen who is now Billy, now not only not her own but disgustingly hers, she sees a teenager who is so naïve and hopeful that he thinks he can use magic without hurting people. (He probably can, but Agatha has grown up her entire life being told she was evil, only being able to take more power by killing others, and then making it into her personality because what else could she do? She is evil, everyone says so - even her mother, and when they don't give her a chance to prove them wrong, she decides to prove them right. It's a game now, a joke. Of course you can't be a witch without being evil to some degree. Magic is taken from the weak, the undeserving, and given to her. If she finds people she cares about, she is loathe to admit it, even to herself, because love is always a weakness. They always stab her in the back. Her struggle with this is a focal point of the show.) So, when Billy says he won't hurt people, it's like when Wanda thought she could take the Darkhold and become some other, good version of the Scarlet Witch. It's ridiculous, and he really is just like his mother. Then, when Billy gets really angry and finally snaps, finally demands respect, and Agatha is still near powerlessness (and might not even want to use Alice's powers, even though they feel like a drug, because they belonged to her?), she realizes he can destroy her, and all she can do is plead mercy - the same thing she had claimed was overrated an hour ago. I could probably go on, especially about Billy's side of the story, but this is mostly what I needed to get out.

[elvenbeard]

You're my World

Doesn't matter where we are as long as we're together.

New Pride Flags Makeup (AXL Edition) by @pinkyjulien 💛

[hrodvitnon]

SIGNALIS Big Teef Fic Preview!

Did anybody want a fic with the Big Teef? No? Well, too bad, you're getting one anyway. Have a taste!

---

"Hey, when were you going to tell me you have fangs?"

Elster pauses, having just gotten engrossed in a scene of tense questioning.  "Excuse me?"

Ariane sits beside her at the table, lays down the Replika overview, leans her elbows on it and rests her chin on folded hands, giving the Replika a look that to any Gestalt would be similar to a parent wanting to know why their kids didn't do what was asked of them – or rather, like she's taken on the role of detective in the midst of questioning.  Elster lifts her eyebrows, waiting for an explanation.

Ariane elaborates as if telling an anecdote from her Rotfront years.  "I looked through the Replika overview again to see if there was anything I could pick up to help you out, or do something for you, when... in the corner of my little eye, I spy... a schematic.  A schematic, El Bell.  Of retractable canine teeth.  Which you are in possession of, and neglected to inform me."

Elster closes her eyes, knowing where this is going.

"Ariane."

"Now, I don't ask the time of day from a clock..."

"Liebchen."

"But I'm not shy about how hot I am for nibbles and love bites..."

"Light of my life."

"And you didn't think to tell me?  When were you going to tell me?"

"Settle down, dramatic.  They're for self-defense, not for sexy time.  Besides, it's not even unique to LSTRs – all Replikas have them."

Ariane blinks in surprise.  "Wait, seriously?  Even Eules?"  Having such teeth makes sense for a Storch or Star, but an Eule?

"Absolutely.  I once heard that a secretary unit back at headquarters almost bit the fingers off an untrained Storch who got too ugly with her.  Not sure how it ended, but I like to think Frau Beißer got off with a warning and the Storch never lived it down.  Self-defense, like I said.  With combat units it's a last resort in case one runs out of ammunition or doesn't have a melee weapon ready."

Ariane's eyes widen.  Eules always looked so delicate to her with how lightly they carried themselves, but it seems even those domestic units are made of sterner stuff than expected.  Her eyes lower to Elster's mouth.  Elster gives her a knowing look.

"No."

"I didn't say anything!"

"You have that 'in the interest of science' look on your face."

"I just want to see them for myself!  There's nothing wrong with that!  Show me, please?  It's not like I'll ever see them in a combat situation, unless we get picked up by aliens or something."

Elster stares.  Ariane stares back, pleading and doe-eyed, just seconds away from deploying the dreaded pouty bottom lip.  Elster gives in, of course.  She can never really refuse humoring her love, so she teasingly grouses like it's such a chore.

"Ach, fine."

Ariane tries not to drum her fingers happily while Elster pops the mandibles in her jaw, mouth opening.  Nothing out of the ordinary, just 28 white teeth – go figure Replikas aren't manufactured with wisdom teeth – and then Elster curls her lips back wolfishly, her canines extending with an audible click.

There is, of course, the knee-jerk flicker of saucy fascination since Ariane does so love when Elster bites her, but in the moment it's also tempered by actual scientific curiosity.  Elster's lengthened teeth are only sharp at the very tips, as Ariane knows from experience, so while they probably can pierce through flesh or biomechanical components they must be intended for crushing and tearing, clamping down and keeping a steady grip thanks to powerful jaws.

A rather specific detail from the Replika overview comes to mind: the LSTR unit has a bite force of 1250 PSI at minimum.  Ariane's heard of certain Vinetan animals having a comparable bite, capable of piercing through the skulls of their prey.  The knowledge of this results in a revelatory daydream of hostile alien forces intercepting their little ship and abducting Ariane, causing Elster to crush an extraterrestrial skull or spine between her teeth as she goes in a rampaging rescue...

"Ari," Elster drawls.  The extended fangs seem to mess with her speech, an added lisp causing her accent to border on nonsensical.  "Ye hab dat look."

Ariane shakes her head.  "I wasn't thinking of anything sexy this time, honest!"

"Uh-huh.  Cad I pud dese away now?  Iz hahd to talk."

[shorlinesorrows]

don’t be a coward

*aroaces your rottmnt leo*

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Ask and you shall receive (a sneak peak of what's to come)

[mariailoveyou-guerin]

Colin I am a gentleman Bridgerton I love you so much like you have no idea, the carriage scene is the same as when modern men just crawl or unannounced climbed and get into the girl’s bedroom but Colin asked pen to let him in and he wasn’t gonna get inside until she said yes and he even said PLEASE and that’s why Colin will forever be the most beautiful perfect male character in media history and you can’t change my mind about it!

[bunnihearted]

regardless of the "learn how to be alone" dravel, being lonely actually is really bad for your mental health and can be very painful :p

[puppyeared]

Ouhhhh friendship I love friendship……..

[chameleonwritess]

Everyone stop and look at them.

[hecksupremechips]

To also go off of the point about cop!akihiko being annoying to me I gotta say that Akihiko as a character is very hit or miss with me because of how different adaptations of p3 will subtly alter his character. I felt like in portable with the femc route he comes off best, he’s a bit of a hothead with an obsession with fighting, but he’s overcompensating his strength so he doesn’t feel as weak and helpless as he’s been in many situations. He defines strength in a very literal sense, being physically strong and using that to protect others, but he’s lacking in emotional strength as a result. And in particular in this version I think he’s portrayed as a bit more goofy and sweet in a sense. He cares deeply for you as a friend and leader but he struggles with finding the words to describe how he feels. Hes kinda naive and gullible and has trouble noticing his surroundings. He has no clue what he’s doing but his heart is in the right place. I think he just comes off much more human and he has flaws, many many flaws, and that makes him all the more lovable

But then in other adaptations and spinoffs it’s like. They look at him through some hetero male bullshit filter and seem to view him as a lot more admirable and cool. Like in p3 dancing, theres literally an event where he’s talking with Junpei and Minato and they’re gushing about how perfect Akihiko is and how he doesn’t seem to have ANY flaws at all. And it becomes clear his inability to flirt with women just gets added as a way to make sure you, the Straight Male Player, don’t get insecure being next to such Perfection because at the end of the day, you’re still more charming and sexy than he will ever be because you’re better. It’s a “flaw” that’s only there to shield a sensitive male ego. And then in arena I mean, come on. He’s overly beefy and is a damn cop and travels the world and loves Protein™️ it’s his whole personality and he’s so clearly meant to be seen as hot but like, he’s just some shitty hetero male fantasy. Hes what the writers deem to be a Perfect Man that every guy wishes he could be, but don’t worry he’s still bad with women so you don’t gotta worry about him stealing your property- I mean, girlfriend!

And though I’ve not played reload and don’t really plan to anytime soon, judging from his social episodes they seem to have a similar problem. Akihiko comes off as a lot less approachable, like the year age gap is just too much of a barrier to get to know him properly. And he doesn’t have that dorky sweetness he has in portable, he’s just that perfect hetero male fantasy guy and don’t you fucking worry- he still has his protein powder with him