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#when actually this is all a love story
katierosefun · 1 year
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and when i realize all my original stories are just about the same thing over and over and over again as though i’m sitting in front of a white board of crazy
#caroline talks#when i move into my new place#i think i’m gonna get a white board and a cork board#not for school but for writing#and then i’ll get another cork board/white board for school#but. sitting here feeling normal#when actually this is all a love story#oldest story in the universe and it’s just.#when you love someone but the timing isn’t right or when it’s been dead from the start#what do you do when you know something is dead in the water when it begins#but you decide to pursue it anyways bc isn’t love all about#giving something a chance even though you don’t know if it’ll survive#I mean. American weddings have all the oaths about until death do us part or whatever#right when you’re saying the vows you’re reminded that if anything death will eventually get in the way#and it’s like!!! ‘hello. one day you will lose each other. but do you want to proceed anyways?’#and so many people say ‘yes’ to that and maybe i am sometimes skeptical of marriage but that part makes me scream#or like. even taking marriage out of it#you look at countless people who fell in love despite the circumstances like war or famine or just simply the pains of growing up#and it’s like!! it was inevitable!!!#and I don’t even mean romantic love necessarily either!#platonic love!!! what does it mean to create. companion even though#we will all die or maybe just separate#we have countless friend breakups#and yet we keep entering into friendships going ‘you might one day be a stranger to me. but for now i’m going to pursue this’#AND!!! YOU KNOW!!! YOU KNOW!!!#‘this relationship already is a ghost but we will love it and nurture it anyways’ AND!!
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braisedhoney · 6 months
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fighting back? against who? they're so happy—they've been waiting for you.
you are wonderful. don't you know that?
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bonus: they play sims together :)
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lotus-pear · 5 months
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bsd rewatch w my friend means obligatory art of my fav found family ever
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jackklinemybeloved · 1 year
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zac’s “less is more” approach to comedy is always golden but it is working PERFECTLY for colin provolone from both a comedic and dramatic standpoint. everyone else I kinda get the vibe of but colin is Just Some Guy which is driving both me and raphaniel up the fucking WALL.
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bacchuschucklefuck · 23 days
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okay unironically I love so much that porter is like this world SUCKS its BAD here and it HURTS you why do you care abt it!!! and literally every single bad kid is like ngl we just hate ur ass it does not matter what ur philosophy is
#dimension 20#fantasy high junior year#not art#fhjy spoilers#its!!! gods I will Be My Ass in the tags rn. but thats so like. deliciously setting typical#like porter's desire is to transcend and his contempt for the world he's in feels. idk Real#like he plays the game bc he wants to win and be done with it. how do I word this#yknow. being a god would like. be his win state. when he gets that happening thats it his story is done he checks out#meanwhile the bad kids do actually just like playing the game lmao. like they love adventuring!#theyre so solidly Of This World. they carry the values that can only be born of it and they like having mastery over it#its a meta angle that I think is very fun specifically for d20 being in such a unique position in the zeitgeist when it first started#the rat grinders are from DnD Writ Large. porter wants to escape. but this is the bad kids' home its Their Actual Play Show#which makes it so fucking excellent to me that porter's question is somewhat of merit! its their show and it tries very hard to punish them#and they just straight up dont listen to him here lmao bc they hate him but! since the moment the academic track ended its been clear#that they save the world bc they Like Playing. With Each Others#thats what riz thinks the core of adventuring is! thats why fig stayed! and I also think thats why this hovers over elmville now and#a dead god is coming back in the school gym. porter is a shit evangelist but even if hes a good one I dont think it wouldve worked like he#wants it to. the only way he couldve escaped is if he'd not involved elmville at all. thats where the bad kids met dude#its a shitty place that fucks with them but they all come back here bc they wanna play with each others#and in that regard I think thats what the stress tokens ultimately means. Is This Game Still Fun To Play. ITS A RAGEQUIT LIMIT#Im literally running from one end to another of this conspiracy board Ive pulled out of nowhere#Ill draw after this I just wanna get this out. gods this episode has done nothing but furthering my delusion of grandeur actually#Im the hottest smartest manthing on earth Im king fucking midas over here. anyways uh! great ep!
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r-aindr0p · 25 days
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Read dungeon meshi up to vol.8 so far, so here you go Can't stop taking back the (vol.8) book and looking through the pages again and again and I'm wondering why does Mithrun just... grab Not even to use his magic, he just... grabs...
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ueasking · 1 year
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And this person really can't take a hint.
UNINTENTIONAL LOVE STORY EP 4
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pokimoko · 9 months
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The fact that Main-verse Ooo is as good and as kind as it is (relative to the other universes shown so far, at least, it's obviously not perfect) all because of the same character that starts off as the OG series' antagonist, the person we were made to see as the bad guy (albeit an often ineffectual one) for several seasons, is making me lose my mind.
Imagine finding out the guy you spent your childhood beating up and saving princesses from is in fact a driving catalyst behind you being able to exist, and not only exist but also live in a world that knows what kindness is. All because that man, the same man who you've witnessed do terrible things, once met a little girl and taught her how to be good.
Simon's story really shows us that even if you lose your way and forget how it is to be good yourself, the world keeps the memory for you. That act of love Simon showed Marcy by protecting her and seeing her as more than the monster she thought herself to be created ripples upon ripples, small at first but eventually enough to help give their wreckage of a world—a world that easily could have been forsaken, its goodness overlooked because of its inhospitable remains—a chance to grow into something beautiful. Because of those very same ripples Simon created, the people of Ooo grew up in a world where they know enough about kindness that they were able and willing to spare the 'bad guy' some, to see beyond the wreckage and allow him to grow too.
In saving Marceline, Simon helped to not only to save the world, but also himself.
#fionna and cake#fionna and cake spoilers#adventure time#simon petrikov#ice king#marceline abadeer#simon and marcy#meta#this was just a phone note to get thoughts out of my system but then it came out semi-coherent#so welp guess i'm writing meta now. i'm really in the deep end now. but yeah...Ice King and Simon's story being about the power of kindness#A cruel world requires constant cruelty to be maintained. But kindness? That reaches across time. one act of kindness sparks another#'I need to save you but whose going to save me?' That act of love and compassion is gonna save you ya dingus....eventually#In a less kind world finn and Jake could have watched those tapes about Simon and still decided IK was a hopeless cause.#That he was too far gone to be saved. But they didn't. They chose to treat him nicer and actually be friends with him.#One thing i always loved about IK's story is that he didn't have to completely change himself for people around him to treat him better#They changed their perspective and were kind to him and it was THAT that helped him change. to grow beyond the 'antagonist' role#to quote my go to and all time favourite good place quote:#'the point is people improve when they get external love and support. How can we hold that against them when they don't?'#Arrgh sorry I just always loved Ice King's arc in the show. From pesky antagonist to the person Finn dived into a chaos god to save#(the world's new beginning and its near ending being all because of simon. he has such main character energy and boy does he not want it)#And now we're getting Simon stuff and I'm so normal I'm so normal I'm so normal (<- has never been normal about this character)#(i...i have many MANY drawings of ice king and simon from 2015 and the years after. i was doomed from the start. F&C was the final straw)#(as was reading marcy's secret scrapbook recently...and here i thought i'd truly reached the capacity of hurt i can feel about these two)#Going insane over these last two episodes. 'she didn't have a me'. Fionna and Simon bonding. Gumlee kiss. PETRIGROF BACKSTORY#and the implication that Simon isn't remembering it accurately? Their sweet sounding love song actually foreshadowing their issues?#I am clawing at the walls. thank you AT crew you are enriching the enclosure that is my brain
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bitchthefuck1 · 3 months
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Tom's line about Shiv being selfish and "find[ing] it very hard to think about me" is actually so telling because while it's absolutely true that she rarely takes his position into consideration, Tom never once thinks about what he can do to help Shiv unless it also benefits him.
Every single time he makes a move or sacrifice that might help her, it's always something that he thinks will give him a leg up. He volunteers to take the fall for cruises, not for Shiv, who is in no way implicated, or even for Waystar, but because he thinks it'll ingratiate him to Logan, and the second it seems like he might have to actually follow through on that, he immediately tries to get out of it and even throws Shiv under the bus. Meanwhile, for all that Shiv disregards his interests, there are a number of things she does that only help him, and she's the one who actually sacrifices something and undermines her position with Logan to beg him not to let Tom go to jail.
It just makes it so clear that no matter how much he might love her (and I think he does, in his own compromised way), for him their relationship was always built on the underlying assumption that it's her job to prop him up, but it's not his job to help her.
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tyriongirl · 5 months
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Genesis 4:1-5, translated by S. R. Driver, from The Book of Genesis, 1905
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A Clash of Kings, Prologue - Maester Cressen
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Emanuel Krescenc Liška – Cain (1885)
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Claus Westermann, Genesis : a commentary, 1984
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Arthur Segal - Kain und Abel (1918)
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A Clash of Kings, Prologue - Maester Cressen
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Natalie Diaz, A Brother Named Gethsemane, from When My Brother Was an Aztec
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Lovis Corinth - Kain (1917)
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Genesis 4:6-9, translated by S. R. Driver, from The Book of Genesis, 1905
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A Clash of Kings, Chapter 33 - Catelyn IV
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Odilion Redon - Cain and Abel (1886)
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A Clash of Kings, Chapter 33 - Catelyn IV
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Genesis 4:9-14, translated by S. R. Driver, from The Book of Genesis, 1905
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A Clash of Kings, Chapter 31 - Catelyn III
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St. Omer, Benedictine Abbey of St. Bertin; c. 1190-1200
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A Storm of Swords, Chapter 36 - Davos V
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S.R. Driver, The Book of Genesis, 1905
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A Clash of Kings, Chapter 42 - Davos II
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Lazzaro Pisani - Death of Abel (1885)
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S.R. Driver, The Book of Genesis, 1905
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A Clash of Kings, Chapter 42 - Davos II
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A Clash of Kings, Chapter 42 - Davos II
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Cain and Abel - City of Zeven - 2015 (source)
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Genesis 4:14-16, translated by S. R. Driver, from The Book of Genesis, 1905
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POOR GABRIEL MONTEZ! YOU NEVER SAW THIS COMING DID YOU? ALL YOU WANTED WAS POWER. SECURITY. SAFETY. & THATS EXACTLY WHAT YOU GOT! JUST IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR BODY. LETS JUST HOPE NO ONE FUCKS THIS UP. LETS JUST HOPE YOU WONT HAVE TO CLEAN UP THE MESS.
#jrwi fanart#jrwi show#cw gore#jrwi suckening spoilers#jrwi suckening#jrwi gabriel#jrwi gabriel montez#LOOK FAMILIAR?hahahahahDONT WORRY#IM REUPLOADING THIS HERE BC i fixed up the drawing a lil. and also i wanted to add main tags#U WONT SEE ANY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THISSUN N THE POST ON MY SIDEBLOG.i changed the image there too.HA!!!!!!!#ANYWAY.i rambled plenty about pain and gabe on my sideblog.SO LETS TALK ABT THE ART SHALL WE.ihad i very hard time getting the colors down#would u believe i nearly left this uncolored??FUCKED UP!! it was only a sketchhow did it end up like this. it was only a sketch...#BUT IM RLY GLAD I WENT W COLORING IT.this time i actually used the airbrush n pencil tools BUT i also have a handy dandy brush i made#its just the mspaint air brush tool. fucking LOVE THAT THING. but now its in fire alpaca and it can be slightly transparent.IT LOOKS SOGOOD#perfect for splatters and grime.i love you mspaint i love youuu.im also so happy w the blood here.i think i reached a shift last year#back when i made that genloss fanart something abt the way i draw blood finally CLICKED and im like OH. the inside must always be darker.#like i KNEW that already but it was like my hand itself finally had it click.i wonder what i will learn next?I LIKE THE ORGANS HERE TOO#not as veiny or thready as i usually draw em. but i think thats fine. not as WET as id like em to be but thats also fine.#i got the point across. the point ofc being WOW THIS IS GRUESOME AND PAINFUL AND TERRIBLE#I LOVE HIS EXPRESSION.i love pain and thinking abt pain. you lose yourself to it after enough time passes of just being in an ocean o agony#at one point its just too tiresome to scream or writhe. theres a point when the body accepts it.sometimes.atleast.#OHHH GABRIEL AS A CHARACTER DELIGHTS ME SO MUCH.he is a dog to me.a thing to serve others.I WISH I KNEW MORE#WHAT ELSE DID YOU WANT BOY?? SURE POWER AND SECURITY AND SAFETY ARE NICE.BUT DID YOU HAVE DREAMS? WANTS? PASSIONS?#WHAT WAS THE STORY BEHIND THAT TIGER TATTOO ON YOUR ARM?WHAT DO THE DOGTAGS SAY BOY?I WISH I COULD HAVE TEA W U#OHHH TO SIT DOWN WITH A CHARACTER AND JUST SPEAK TO THEM. AND YET. AND YET IN THE END ITS ALL TRAGEDY AND COMEDY#TRAGEDY AND COMEDY THAT IS SO SO PAINFULLY UNBALANCED. SIGH.#WHATEVER CMERE BOY YOURE BECOMING AN OC OF MINE NOW UR GONNA BE IN SPACE AND UR NAME IS GONNA BE VINEGAR#UR STILL GONNA BE SHIP OF THESEUSED THOUGH. OOOHHH GABRIEEELLL GABRIEL MONTEEEZZZ#HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE BUILT INTO YOU.HOW MANY DID YOU LOVE AND CHERISH.HOW MANY TATTOOS DO U RECOGNIZE ON UR NEW ARMS#WHAT WAS IT LIKE? ON THE NIGHT U WERE SIRED?WERE YOU EXCITED? DID YOU SEE YOUR BOSS' FACE?WHAT WAS THIS PROMOTION LIKE?
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unexpectedbrickattack · 8 months
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experimentin w shit heehee
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orchid-n-petals · 10 months
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So I've already shared parts of this on a discord server, but I have to scream about Ketheric Thorm on here as well. Obviously spoilers about the character under the cut! It's a long one.
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The entirety of act 2 is about him, right? Jaheira, Shadowheart and numerous other NPCs shit on him for his fickle faith. First Selune, then Shar, then, as we meet him, Myrkul. You hear about his changes of faith on a whim, you hear that he's the person responsible for the shadow curse, he is painted as a villain, plain and simple.
You can figure it out pretty early on that Isobel was resurrected and that she is his daughter; the detail as well that he wants Isobel alive is so on the nose, it gives him away completely but there are still a few questions that remain unanswered, mainly about his faith.
And then you get to the mausoleum and the picture assembles; this entire tragedy, the death of hundreds if not thousands and the complete ruination of a landscape was all, ALL because you had this absolutely wrenched, heartbroken father who had lost everything and nobody answered his grief. He was left woefully alone, the Goddess whose daughter his daughter was involved with did nothing to save Isobel.
Imagine outliving your wife and your daughter. Imagine dedicating your life to fight the Lady of Loss, your Lady of Silver's enemy, and then be left so completely alone and in silence with your grief, with your loss. It's so, so poetic how and why he turned from Selune, and it's so understandable as well; he broke. His spirit completely broke. He couldn't deal with that void of having lost the only two important people in his life, seemingly undeservedly so. He was going mad with this and a lot of his ire was likely targeted at Aylin who, in his eye, represented Selune; she's literally her daughter, after all, and it was implied that even before the deaths of his family, he sort of saw Aylin courting Isobel as Selune taking his daughter from him, despite his service. This relationship was clearly not seen by him as a boon of "giving his daughter to the Moon-maiden".
His ways in the past clearly didn't spare him from tragedy and having to cope with it (which he clearly didn't, he snapped under the weight of his grief). He was clearly angry and unable to do anything, furious and helpless, which is a dangerous combination. A good part of his first change of heart must have been fuelled by a sense of revenge.
But then Shar didn't provide any balm to his aching heart either. If you read his letters in Grymforge and in act 2, he is so focused on enacting the will of Shar because he believes that healing lies in oblivion. Everything would be easier if he could just forget, if the damn world could just forget, if nothing was remembered because without Melodia and Isobel, nothing was worth remembering.
Then came Myrkul. Literally the only god who was not only able, but WILLING to give back his daughter to him. Imagine spending your all, EVERYTHING you have to serve two gods who would not give a single shit about the greatest suffering in your life. You were basically nothing, your loyalty didn't matter for shit, everything that was taken from you amounted to no recognition whatsoever: you should simply cope and seethe. Your grief will not simply go unanswered (which is not inherently antagonising) but ignored.
And then comes this supposedly evil entity who can alleviate your pain just like that, snap of a finger and it's a done deal.
I am so serious when I say that I believe Ketheric's main incentive was to extend Aylin's immortality to Isobel as well. You can read in her diary that she feels a taint after having came back, and there are things not even Selune can cleanse, but at this point, Ketheric doesn't care about Selune, vengeance is secondary if not tertiary, he's done that war during his Shar years and what did it give him? Literally nothing.
He doesn't even care about the fact that Isobel is still her cleric. He cares about the single most important fact: Isobel is back. Life is worth living again, there is something for him, and it was not Selune or Shar who gave it to him but Myrkul, and for this singular gift, he would raze the world for the Lord of Bones. Like people can clown on him for being disloyal but the man has the loyalty of a dog bonded to its owner.
He is powerful and is willing to go to insane lengths for crumbs. What is raising a single life for a god? Nothing. It has happened and it will happen again. But Ketheric will go to the ends of the earth to serve the single god who actually listened to him. The one god who didn't ignore him.
He knows that what he does is not the morally upright thing! He is so insanely self-aware that allying with Orin and Gortash and doing this entire plot with them only to then betray them is morally reprehensible at the best of times, he knows that people hate him, etc-etc. He was a Selunite at one point and he's not stupid. He just doesn't care; it could be literal Asmodeus and he wouldn't care as long as he got what he wanted, no matter the price.
He is probably the only one from the three of the chosen who has complete clarity over his situation, he almost sways (if you pass the check during his confrontation), he is not an inherently evil man blinded by power.
But he is inherently loyal to those deserving, and as of the story's standing, completely broken by his grief. In his eyes, at this point, the only one deserving loyalty is the one who actually listened to him. Isobel lives. It doesn't matter that she hates him, that his entire life has fallen apart, that literally nothing else that is good has come of it, because Isobel lives.
I don't think he regrets a single thing. His consciousness might tear at him at the end, but I believe he would do everything over again, exactly as he did, because in the end, his daughter was brought back. Because what would a grieving, broken parent give to bring back their child? Everything. Absolutely everything. And it's such a simply given answer, no second thoughts, no doubts.
Nobody can tell me that this man is fickle. Nobody. This man was willing to burn the world to the ground, create a Boudica destruction layer all by himself for the one single thing he wanted. For any God that would listen.
I don't know, I just have a lot of thoughts about his character.
#bg3#baldur's gate 3#ketheric thorm#and I also have a lot of thoughts of how Aylin foils him#I fully believe that he was in the right in the capacity that he switched around his gods when he was literally ignored despite his life's#work. despite all that he has given. I think it's reasonable to expect in the world of gods who actively meddle in mortal affairs on their#whims and make shit worse that in just one single case they would. idk. NOT expect one of their devotees to remain blindly loyal to them#after their prayers go unanswered. like yes; go and try your luck elsewhere because this devotion of yours is clearly being taken for#granted. you get NOTHING out of your worship. you can't even sleep well because your loved ones are dead and you are expected to just what?#deal with it on your own? and remain loyal? why?#some sense of 'honour'?#I really like this depiction of faith actually. I really like when clerics and paladins are given agency and critical thought that hey!#this is actually giving me nothing despite me dedicating my entire life to it! and I have only one of it so why not take it somewhere where#it's actually valued. you know. as a treat.#I *personally* much more prefer this depiction of a crisis of faith than what we got with Shadowheart or Lae'zel; their stories are very#interesting on their own but I think throwing yourself from one end to the other not because you actually have a goal that it could serve#but because you are desperate for a purpose#is a slightly less potent character narrative than having an actual goal yourself. not by much but by a little.#again#PERSONALLY
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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?
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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... 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?!
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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:
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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
#dick grayson#anyone with more info feel free to chime in & we can crowdsource <3#i do think the toy elephant is awfully cute though <3#total digression but i was thinking about it as i was writing:#i'm fascinated by the ways that the post-crisis batboys & their stories can intersect with 90s masculinity and all its issues with stoicism#and i'm pro-queering and gender-bending - 90s comics were a total boys' club so i think it's neat that transformative fandom isn't#but i do love 90s masculinity and All Its Issues too & one of the things i find compelling about the dick-tim-bruce trio#& especially dick's place in it - is the unspoken hierarchy whereby bruce is manlier than dick & dick is manlier than tim#and so dick's in the middle as this somewhat softer-character who aspires to be a harsher & more stoic & ultimate manly-man character#caught in the middle between robin & batman & what each role represents#and like. batman is both manhood & the only desirable thing to be AND ALSO it represents this immense narrowing of possibility#because so much of stereotypical masculinity is about reducing the range of emotions you're allowed to have or express#and dick is both incredibly conflicted about bruce AND wants to be just like him & by extension is conflicted about masculinity writ large#so a lot of dick's interactions with tim veer between trying on a frat-boy-ish 'I'm The Manly Guy' persona vs. giving up on it#or trying on imitations of Bruce's Batman persona but also trying to backtrack out of it bc he doesn't like how it feels etc etc#ANYWAY i think what i am trying to say is that if tim had a stuffed animal dick would be entertained & poke mild fun at him#and call him 'teddy' for the next hour or something while tim got increasingly defensive about how the teddy bear was steph's#and/or about how the teddy bear was OLD and tim doesn't even care about it and also WHATEVEr i'm above this#and to an uninformed observer this might look like bullying BUT ACTUALLY#this ritual would IN FACT be very reassuring to both of them + tim would feel WAY better afterward than if dick had ignored it#because by poking fun at him dick shows he still respects tim enough to tease him thus subtextually exorcising the threat of wimpiness#plus allowing tim to defend himself & demonstrate that he can take a joke so they've both reaffirmed their masculinity to each other#& they don't have to be scared of the teddy bear and all it represents anymore#however also afterward dick would have a brief nostalgic flashback to when he was a kid & had a teddy bear & feel weird about the memory#because he would be unable to articulate to himself that what he misses is a past when he allowed himself to be vulnerable#anyway this wouldn't actually happen in comics but it's what would happen in my soul. you know.#ask tag#zitka
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takkamek · 28 days
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one thing that seems to prevalent in almost any lestappen fanfic is that ferrari doesn't care about charles, and that fred especially is made to be this villain, and its just... maybe people just don't know because they weren't around in 2022, or maybe they just forgot, but things were bad in ferrari in 2022 to the point where charles threatened to leave because of the bad management--and ferrari scrambled to keep him. they fired binotto (the tp) and a bunch of the staff (like head strategist) because of charles, they got fred because he and charles were on good terms, the team is literally being build around charles.
i don't immediately dislike the fanfic if ferrari is the antagonist of the story (but some reason rbr isn't lmao), i just think it's strange that ferrari is always the big bad guy
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wildflowercryptid · 10 months
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doodles of cliff at 29 years old, thriving while living in mineral town & making new friends during his delivery trips to forgotten valley!
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