#I feel like they respect each other

[hermemescabin]

To be honest I feel like Percy really overestimates the level of animosity between Annabeth and Clarisse because he has personal beef with Clarisse and just assumes she feels the same way.

[a-dumb-sarcastic-bisexual]

Nimona headcanons I wrote instead of sleeping

Sometimes the boys forget that Nimona isn’t human 

Like they’re used to the shifting into animals aspect of Nimona because she does it as often as she breathes

But sometimes she’ll do some really creepy shit like make her arms longer to reach something when she’s too lazy to get up

One time they shifted just their neck to be like an owl so they could turn their head 180 degrees instead of just turning around cause that was “too boring” 

Or he’ll mimic people’s voices without realizing it 

Sometimes he’ll tell a story and suddenly he’s using Bal’s voice 

The first time she did this Bal searched the whole house cause he was convinced that Todd has snuck in

Or she’ll grow an extra arm to hold more shit and they take a moment to realize “oh yeah we adopted a little weirdo” 

They get used to it after a while and the arguments surrounding it are always funny because both the boys will complain and say “I don’t sound like that” and they have to be told “No love you do you really do” 

You know those videos of babies reacting to their parents shaving their facial hair or putting on glasses 

That’s Nimona's reaction every single time the boys change their appearance even the smallest bit they cant shave or wear their reading glasses because if they do he freaks out 

Talking some “help me Nemesis I heard bosses voice but I can’t find him” while Bal was standing right in front of them 

It was the first time he shaved his face in years and he’s never doing it again 

Mostly cause Ambrosius kept telling him he looked like a teenager and it was freaking him out 

I feel like Bal and Ambrosius are those kinds of people who will tell people about the little injuries but neglect the big ones 

Like Bal mentioned that he thinks he sprained his ankle during the fight at the institute but he won’t mention that he’s pretty sure he got a concussion 

(BECAUSE THIS MAN HEAD-BUTTED TWO PEOPLE WHEN HE HAS A METAL ARM) 

(I’m bout to wrap this man in bubble wrap and give him a helmet because wtf) 

Ambrosius will complain the whole day about the fact that he has a paper cut

But will completely neglect to inform his doctors “Oh yeah I can’t move my left arm higher than my waist without pain and I can’t see that well out of my left eye or hear that well out of my left ear do you think that’ll be a problem?” 

It isn’t until Nimona makes an off handed comment about how this super weird that the laser did basically nothing to him that he told both of them

They literally dragged him to the ER because “Who thinks those symptoms are normal Nemesis what is wrong in that pretty little head of yours!!” 

When Bal tells Nimona she’s being a bit of a hypocrite (cause who refers to an arrow as a splinter?) she turns to him and says “I know you’re not saying something Mr. Human battering ram” 

It took literally everything in Ambrosius not to break down laughing

After that she forces them to have frequent checkups with the doctor because these dorks wouldn’t go otherwise

Honestly I'm fully convinced that some people in the kingdom don't know who Nimona is and are constantly confused why they let this little weirdo follow them around 

And finally the curiosity will eat away at them and they’ll finally ask 

Sometimes the boys will give some “normal” answers like “Oh that’s Nimona” and they won’t elaborate at all

Sometimes they’ll give funnier answers like “Oh that’s a raccoon we found in the garage who turned into a person one day” “I don’t know they just showed up in our living room” and their personal best “You see her too?” 

And their favorite that they only started using a couple of years down the line “Oh that’s our kid”

[tavina-writes]

I started writing yet another tag essay in the notes of a different post where OP posited that the reason established relationships that are rock solid or functional are hard to write and find in fiction because there's missing tension due to the lack of will they won't they, and how one way to solve this in a story is to make the characters insane about each other. (The post is here.)

And don't get me wrong! I like when characters are a little or a lot unhinged about each other! and I also like relationships that self destruct, tragedies that end badly, and all that jazz I enjoy these things a lot! They're good things!

But I'm thinking about relationship tension again and how like, okay yes sometimes we want our characters confess they're in love with each other and get together and sail off into a soft epilogue, etc. This too is love!

But I think fundamentally to deny the fact that two (or more) people can love each other deeply, be totally committed to each other, and yet still have difficulties and life problems to tackle together is an underexplored facet of romance. The mundane of this is where the real romance lies on our day to day as people, and I find this so...rarely? tackled in fiction?

Maybe this is because I'm ace, but I feel that there's a distinct? vibe to these sorts of mature and enduring romances where like, the love is there, the commitment is there, but we still have moments we need to work for it because that's life and we work for it because we find each other worth it.

What is more romantic than compromise with someone you care for deeply? What is more romantic than tackling problems together and trying to come to an agreement and sometimes not being able to but still having done your best and accepted the outcome anyway?

What is a long lasting relationship that isn't about give and take and growing together or coming apart? Aren't those stories interesting? How could any long lasting relationship where people are deeply in love with each other be boring when like, to BE in a relationship with someone for ten, twenty, thirty, sixty years and come out the other side of that saying 'you're the one, you're still the one, you've always been the one' is one of the most wild and rare type of relationships to have?

What sort of sacrifice and compromise and work it takes to build that sort of relationship, isn't that interesting? To persist despite moments of doubt and periods of despair and all the work it takes in mundanity? all the trials a relationship like that has to survive and has survived, isn't that still tension? isn't that still interesting?

Maybe it's just me that I find this more interesting than "will they? won't they?" Either they will or they won't but when I'm reading a romance they mostly will! But do they have what it takes to stay there? And if they do isn't that one of the most interesting things in the world to look at?

Isn't that also love?

[zxal]

3 extra people in your head = 4x the hairstyle opportunities

[loving-jack-kelly]

here's the thing. jack is a gentle person who was forced into being tough and strong and fierce by circumstance. his hands are calloused and his knuckles are bruised when he picks flowers to display in the window by his bed and when he wipes away tears from a younger boy and when he braids the hair of a little girl who can't do it herself. and davey is a fierce, angry person who has learned to be gentle and quiet and pleasant by circumstance. he isn't used to being in a fist fight but when he stops trying to be otherwise, his words are sharp and pointed and direct even when he's offering comfort and kindness and wit. jack has never had the chance to just be gentle without fighting for it. davey has never allowed himself to exist without a filter.

[hisui-dreamer]

a world without you

Pairing: Leona Kingscholar x gn!reader

Synopsis: When Leona hears the Shroud brothers' plan, he thinks back to his herbivore, and how their existence has changed so much for him.

Tags: spoilers up to Ch 6!!!, established relationship, angst but fluff, drama, bot proofread

Word count: 878

Notes: this can be read as my view of leona's character, so please accept my leona brainrot <3 just some thoughts I had when I read ch 6. also leona might be a little ooc but it's his internal thoughts so I like to think he's more emotional :3

"It needs to reset before we can start a new game."

Shocked expressions were exchanged across the room as the implications of the younger Shroud's plan slowly settled on everyone's mind.

Leona couldn't help but think that, if the opportunity had been given to him a year ago, he'd likely have accepted whatever the robot kid was going for.

Leona always felt that he had been cheated in life. Ever since he was young, he was constantly compared to his older brother, who was seen as the epitome of success in their family, the perfect heir to the throne. Everyone would constantly praise his brother's achievements while dismissing his own accomplishments as trivial. It didn't matter that he was working hard to prove himself, that he could wield such powerful magic as a child.

He often wondered why he had to be born, if he was only meant to stay in another person's shadow to make them seem brighter in contrast.

No matter how hard he studied, how mature he acted, or how strong his magic was, it was all pointless. The ghostly whispers of the palace staff continued, and the judging remarks from the council intensified.

He was born as the second prince.

And he was destined to forever be just that—second.

When it finally clicked for him, he stopped trying. Why make an effort in anything, when time and time again, he had given his all only to end up with nothing? They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results. Despite what others might say, Leona was incredibly brilliant, with a sharp mind fit to be a wise ruler. He knew, without a doubt, that it was pointless to continue down the road of insanity.

Instead, he continued down the path of sloth, eventually finding everything, the entire world, pointless. He found himself skipping classes and taking naps whenever he could, hiding away from the world where he would never be able to stand under the sun, but at least comforted by the serene embrace of his dreams.

He had wanted to turn the world to sand and start over.

It had been a wild thought, but here the Shrouds were, proposing an entire reset of the world.

Leona's mind raced as he contemplated the consequences of such an ordeal. Indeed, he had always dreamed of a world where everyone had an equal chance to succeed, where people were not judged based on their social status, birth order, or magical ability. A world where he was no longer burdened by the expectations of his family, where he was free to be who he truly was, a world where everyone was given a fair chance to succeed, and where no one was left behind.

And yet, without realising it, the thought of starting over in a new world had left his mind ever since you came into his life. You were everything he had ever wished for but never deserved in a partner—kind, caring, and endlessly supportive, always by his side despite his crude demeanour and harsh words. You showed him that there was meaning to living, opening his eyes to the people around him. He had friends who cared about him, incredible talent that could bring great changes, and most importantly, you, his dearest herbivore who shone like a beacon in the shadowed depths of his heart.

For the first time in his life, he felt truly content with what he had, despite all the flaws and problems that persisted.

He had never cared about resetting the world and losing everything he had to start anew. But it was a different story now.

What would happen to the people he cared about in this new world? What if he never met you? What if everything he had ever known and loved was erased? And what of the memories that he made at NRC with you, with Savanaclaw, and everyone else?

Leona's thoughts drifted to his memories of you, your fierce eyes staring directly into his, determined to befriend him; the quiet evenings you had spent together under the starry sky sharing stories and enjoying each other's company; the way you would instinctively lean into him for comfort; the dazzling smile that graced your face when you spotted him in a crowd.

He made up his mind then.

He didn't want, no, he wouldn't risk losing you. Your presence had given him the joy he had never experienced, the hope for a better day tomorrow, and he wouldn't give that up for anything. He would continue to work towards a fairer world, but he would do so without resetting everything that he had come to cherish.

He had learned to appreciate the people in his life. He had found happiness, despite the unfairness of the world. He knew that he had found something precious in this unfair world—someone who cherished him wholeheartedly for whatever he may be.

No, he doesn't want to reset the world.

"I'll grant you one thing. The world totally sucks as it is. But I don't think your new one would be any more to my taste. So I'm going to stick with this one. It's less of a pain."

[imaybe5tupid]

Traveling alone is quite dangerous for a girl.

(my toshiro overcompensating trans man hc)

bonus 1

bonus 2 ft. toshiyuki (middle brother) grown up a little but still a menace

[agent-troi]

scully and mulder's dynamic visibly changes after the onset of the season of secret sex

i've been thinking about how dd and ga deliberately played season 7 like mulder and scully were sleeping together, and i think there's solid evidence of that in the differences in how scully reacts to mulder appearing to show interest in another woman before and after the season of secret sex begins (i'm using millennium as the before/after divider bc i think that's what dd and ga decided, but this is based on my vague memory of a reddit comment about it which is how i first learned that the season of secret sex was a thing)

so overall there's an undercurrent of insecurity, borne of scully's uncertainty regarding precisely how mulder feels about her and what her place is in the hierarchy of things that are important to him in his life, that exists in the pre-millennium incidents and is glaringly absent post-millennium:

before millennium:

(i'm not gonna include phoebe/fire here bc i don't think scully's awareness of her feelings had yet risen to the point where she'd be truly jealous, i'd characterize her in that ep as largely protective of mulder and unwilling to let him deal with phoebe's games alone. it also helps that he's clearly not happy phoebe is back in his life again, unlike his much more positive reaction to diana)

war of the coprophages- the second scully finds out about bambi, she immediately hops in her car and drives up to miller's grove to join mulder, bc letting him investigate cockroaches alone was fine but god forbid he spend quality time investigating an x-file with an attractive female scientist who isn't herself- that's their thing!!

syzygy- to be fair the planetary alignment situation was exacerbating her- and mulder's- behavior here, but her jealousy of and hostility to detective white were still real, even if she would've been able to rein in her emotions better under normal circumstances.

diana fowley arc- i think this speaks for itself, lol

alpha- this is an interesting period in their relationship: after most of the diana shit is over, but before the tension between them is fully resolved (a process which to me begins with milagro/the unnatural and ends with amor fati, but that would be its own post lol).

other than introducing himself to karin as "fox" (maybe as a way to appeal to her preference for canids lol) and thus implicitly giving her permission to call him by his first name (which she proceeds to do throughout the episode), mulder doesn't seem to show much in the way of attraction to her.

even when he touches her hand to move the mouse, he's more interested in what's on the screen than in paying attention to her:

karin, however, is visibly affected by the contact, a fact which scully immediately notices:

later in the car, they have this convo, the last line of which is so heavily laden with diana subtext it's not even funny:

scully's reaction to karin is similar to her reaction to phoebe in that she's motivated mainly by wanting to protect mulder from his own naive, trusting nature, and from someone she believes is seeking to take advantage of it, rather than being motivated primarily by jealousy and defensiveness. she doesn't really believe that karin is a genuine threat to her relationship with mulder, but with diana still fresh in her memory she can't afford to not be vigilant. hence why she confronts karin alone later:

here scully demonstrates that she somewhat empathizes with karin (mulder is also someone who challenges her, makes her feel fulfilled and happy and alive). karin's response indicates that she has correctly deduced the basis of scully's dislike/distrust of her, and also acknowledges scully is the dominant one as it relates to the territory (mulder) that they are sparring over.

scully looks away at karin's "feminine wiles" comment, revealing the nagging insecurity about her place in mulder's life that diana's arrival exacerbated and that will continue to plague her until amor fati.

after millennium:

rush- when mulder looks back at chastity in the hallway, scully's reaction is to possessively grab mulder's sleeve and pull him away into the interrogation room:

and his response is to laugh and say "what?" like he doesn't know he belongs to her and only her.

keep in mind this happens just before they interrogate tony reed, and right after they finish interrogating him this shit happens:

i already made a post last week about how insanely flirty they are in this episode, but this scene!!

she's pouting and giving him big doe eyes and playing with his tie!! at work!! in public!! she feels comfortable staking her territory in such an obvious way (also playful rather than hostile) bc she's not longer insecure about her place in his life!! i can never be normal about this i'm sorry ssdfgksdgsjdkfhkjsdf

first person shooter- when mulder checks out jade blue afterglow as she's leaving, he leans so far over in such an obvious, exaggerated way, almost as if he's deliberately trying to get a rise out of scully, but all she does is raise her eyebrows at him and lean over to block his view (while smirking):

and then he says he's "feeling the great need to blast the crap out of something", an almost direct quote of scully's line from their convo in the autopsy room right before they went down to the station:

and her response is to SMILE at him!!

pre-millennium scully would absolutely not have reacted this way in this situation. just like in rush, the insecurity that previously haunted scully whenever mulder seemed to be close to or interested in another woman is utterly absent here. they're joking and teasing and enjoying each other's company like they've always done, but there's a different dimension to it now. pre-millennium mulder would never have made a show of checking out another woman like that right in front of scully (unless a planetary alignment is affecting his behavior ofc lol), and pre-millennium scully would never have found it amusing.

(side note: people were debating on twitter a while back about whether this scene was ooc for mulder, and tbh i'm not sure what my own opinion is bc to me the whole episode has an air of... unreality? idk but it gives me similar vibes to post-modern prometheus, like maybe it's real or maybe it's just someone telling a story or it's somewhere in between, and it's also got that same unserious feel idk how else to describe it)

anyway, back to my main point, which is: dd and ga are damn good actors in the way they were able to subtly telegraph this shift in mulder and scully's dynamic. one might be able to argue that the insane flirting throughout season 7 isn't by itself evidence of the season of secret sex bc on some level they've always been like that, but to me these specific interactions provide important clues that the nature of their relationship has changed.

[aenslem]

i fuckin love the empath ending, because bones just knows what he is doing and doing it on purpose to annoy spock, using 'fascinating' to point out the fact that Vians valued emotions over anything else, and he looks directly at spock saying that and smiles, he is such a lil shit i love him

[southstand]

HARRY KANE (10) & SON HEUNGMIN (7) OF TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR The greatest partnership to ever exist in the world of football. “When you turn, I will be always there.”

BBC Sport / Kane and Son break the all-time record for Premier League goal combinations / The Guardian / Kane-Son trademark celebration during Liverpool 1-1 Tottenham, 07th May 2022 / Kane-Son trademark celebration during Manchester United 1-6 Tottenham, 04th October 2020 / Kane-Son trademark celebration during Aston Villa 0-4 Tottenham, 09th April 2022 / Kane-Son trademark celebration during Tottenham 2-0 West Ham United / Kane on Twitter after assisting Son on 4 goals against Southampton / Tottenham 1-0 Burnley, 26th Oct 2020 / Nice to Mich You, Son Heungmin / Premier League / Kane and Son hug during Manchester City 2-3 Tottenham, 19th Feb 2022 / Kane and Son hug during Tottenham 1-0 Crystal Palace, 20th Sept 2015 / Kane consoles Son during the Carabao Cup final against Manchester City / Kane and Son celebrate during Tottenham 5-2 Southampton, 26th Dec 2017 / Commentator on the Kane and Son partnership / Tottenham 2-0 Arsenal, 06th Dec 2020 / Caption from ‘Heungmin Son and Harry Kane guess their Premier League goal combinations’ / Stray Kids, I am YOU / Kane and Son celebrate during a 6-1 game against Leicester City, 18th May 2017 / Kane and Son celebrate during a 4-0 game against Everton, 13th Jan 2018 / Kane on Twitter / Frank O’Hara, ‘Morning’ / Kane wins the Golden Boot 20/21 / Son wins the Golden Boot 21/22 / Kane assists Son against Southampton / Caption from ‘Heungmin Son and Harry Kane guess their Premier League goal combinations’ / Mitski, Francis Forever / YouTube: Record breakers! Kane & Son react to becoming Premier League’s most deadly duo! / FootballJOE on Twitter, referencing Son’s trademark goal celebration, the ‘camera,’ through which he is looking at Kane / Gang of Youths, ‘Achilles Come Down’ / Kane and Son celebrate their goal against Arsenal / Kane on his relationship and link-ups with Son / Son and Kane on Instagram / Kane and Son after Kane assisted Son on four goals against Southampton / Tottenham 3-2 Ajax, 08th May 2019 / cr. Shaun Botterill, Getty Images / Commentator on the Kane and Son partnership / Tottenham 3-2 Manchester City, 19th Feb 2022 / Caption from ‘Heungmin Son and Harry Kane guess their Premier League goal combinations’

[skitskatdacat63]

Cannot stop thinking about how Fernando was the first one to hug Seb after Monza 2008:

[blue-b-bro]

Guillermo with Nandor: aggressively pulls him out of depressive episodes by fighting (verbally or literally), tired of his shit yet indulges him most of the times, generally takes care of him

Guillermo with Laszlo: "oh honey, shush now, don't fight 😘", all this domestic shit they do, me and my (??? what are they) on our silly quest again te he~

Even before s4 it kinda like Nandor is his demanding sensitive baby and Laszlo is that annoying unthreatening guy, like they were destined to be silly duo

[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

[greensaplinggrace]

people on this site will see content creators begging, pleading, screaming for interaction speaking about how disheartened they feel and asking for even a lick of attention and be like "wow it's so presumptuous and cruel to act that way about your loyal customers - the lurkers and viewers on this site!" while not reblogging or interacting with anything and then not two days later they'll have the gall to come online whining about how all of their fandoms are fucking dead. like two guesses as to why that is.

[faircastle]

LAN MANDRAGORAN & SIUAN SANCHE in THE WHEEL OF TIME

[nitw]

serizawa being all like "i have little experience in relationships of any kind due to my sheltered past but being in love sure sounds nice :) anyway do you wanna hear about my boss? he's so cool~" and reigen being canonically bitchless always + showing no interest in the female clients he's popular with + questioning the importance of sexual attraction and marriage + actually feeling insecure about his struggle with emotional vulnerability deep down and thinking no one could possibly like him back for who he is..............

so anyway yea they're both somewhere on the aroace spectrum and gay for each other