#i know you're a threat

[bixels]

I'm not explaining why re-imagining characters as POC is not the same as white-washing, here of all places should fucking understand.

[mbohjeezart]

[ WIP ]

Bring a goat to a courthouse...

[gloriousmonsters]

love when you can ask the Narrator why the Princess is a Princess and he's like 'well i uhhhh YOU did that. maybe it's because uh... something something about her being above you... but still approachable... look i don't want to analyze or anthropomorphize your--' my guy. i am a primal being of Order and Eternity and Shaping. You're the one who convinced me I was some dude and were quite willing to take credit for shaping my view on the world through narration five seconds ago. Are you gonna look me in the eye and tell me the desire to interpret something worthy of adoration and more powerful than me as a dommy princess is written in the very nature of the universe or are you going to show me your browser history like a man

[funkopersonal]

Im quite literally so done with this shit. i keep on going back and forth between hiding all the i/p related tags, but then I realize that its seeped EVERYWHERE. It's in the motherhood tag, and jewish history tag, and everything else. I can't fucking escape it. I opened tiktok yesterday to see one of my favorite characters (iron man) weaponized to support the one group that wants to see me dead, the user saying that iron man would support palestine, and be an antizionist because he "spoke out against the public" and he wasn't like the sheep. It frustrates me to no end this horrible cycle of fucking misinformation that exists.

As a Gen Z, I simply do not understand how its reached this point? I can't even write all my feelings and information about how shitty this is in a single sitting because 1) it'd be too long and 2) my joints wont let me write that long. But how did it reach this point?

How did it reach the point where jewish/isreali stores are fucking marked to notify the public. Their windows are being broken and the stores are being robbed. How did it reach the point where jewish students on some campuses are told to stay home? how they're harassed out of specific areas, and campuses have been made unsafe? How did it reach the point that people literally have written "I ♡ Houthis & Hamas" and "no mercy for Jews."? How did it reach the point that there are nazi symbols, and hanging deadmans, and communist symbols being drawn on college campuses? How is it possible that students are calling for the end of jewish student unions and hillel international on campus? that'd be like calling for the end of the fucking muslim student organization, or disbanding an african-american affinity group. Which would never be acceptable, but apparently its fine when its jews.

I'm sick and tired of all the horrible conditions of palestenian cities being blamed on israel. Palestine is its own country. They had their own government until they elected Hamas to lead them. Hamas, who diverted all their funds to the military. Hamas, who uses hospitals and public spaces as their bases. Hamas, who built miitary tunnels under cities so that when they're invaded, the cities will collapse on itself. Hamas, who steals all humanitarian aid from its citizens. Hamas, who controls palestenian media and teaches hatred to its children. Hamas, who wants their citizens to become martyrs for their country, to die for their goal. Hamas, whose number one goal is to eradicate all jews. Hamas, who denies the existence of the holocaust. Hamas, who enlists children as soldiers and suicide bombers. Hamas, who has has never expressed an interest in a 2 state solution.

Is this the organization you consider freedom fighters? because i dont think they should ever, in any context, be called that. Hamas is nothing but terrorists.

Yes, the deaths and treatment of palestenian citizens is horrible. but no, this is not a genocide. Israel is trying to rid them of Hamas, because quite literally, no country should ever be forced to live in "harmony" with a terrorist group. Especially one who denies their existence and actively wants to kill them all. Israel has been letting palestenians get jobs in the country, has let palestine use their resources and water, all for years. They've let hamas continously bomb them, they've gotten used to a life of bomb shelters in every residence. Hamas has done nothing but crippled their country's own economy and society.

None of the surrounding coutnries want to let in palestenians, or live with palestenians. Egypt wants to annex Gaza, and Jordan wants the West Bank. In fact, they did own that land for a part of history! Yet Israel has let palestenians govern themselves for years, even when Hamas originally came into power, they didn't interfere. Not until they were provoked.

Yes, Israel has flaws. But welcome to the fucking real world, princess. Every country has flaws. Even America, you dipshits. This is not a little fandom for you to play sides on. its not some fictional world that has a black and white solution. Yes theres going to be deaths, just like in any other WAR. But you really can't call for the destruction of a country on the basis that they're trying to make sure they're allowed to stay a country? Because guess what honey bunchkins? "from the river to the sea" really doesn't mean what you think it does. It just means that you want to kill all jews, or at best, forcefully remove them and scatter them around the middle east. (to countries that have killed them in swaths in the past. To countries that have emprisoned jews for helping others escape. To countries that avidly hate jews and want them dead). I don't understand how that would mean peace in any way shape or form?

Not only that, but half of "protestors" and "activists" for palestine, haven't even done basic research. They dont know what river or sea theyre talking about. They dont know that "palestine" was not a palestenian state in 1948, but it was instead a BRITISH MANDATE, that was NOT fully occupied by palestenians. In fact, "palestenians" weren't a thing. Palestenians are just muslims and arabs from countries like syria, who lived alongside jews and christians in the same land (which was largely uninhabited for the most part). Yeah, you heard me right.

Honestly my thoughts on this issue are so scattered its so hard to make a solid points when I can just keep on going forever.

Fact is, Israel deserves to be a country. No one should be supporting Hamas. Everyone should be supporting the eradication of Hamas (and I mean Hamas not palestenian citizens). I don't get how these are debated, and seriously don't understand how citizens of america are so quick to support a terrorist group, to resort to antisemitism.

Im so done with this all. I cant believe we have to tell you gentiles that stoning a 13-year old kid for being jewish is horrible. That throwing a brick through an israeli-owned cafe in New York is horrible. That students not being able to be on campuses because of their religion or ethnicity is horrible.

This has to end.

Do your research, or don't speak (and terrorist-controlled propoganda channels don't count).

[poolboyservice]

Not as much as a positive post like previous one but !!

To those who have read Sophie's (the tulpa/endo account) post, just remember:

They cannot hurt you, they will not hurt you, nobody is going out to get you. Your therapist is not going to be pro endo or try to backstab you for being anti endo. Your family and friends do love you. Syspunk and any other system safespace will not be taken over by endos.

I'm sure I'm forgetting other things they said, but the bottom line is: You are safe, no one is out to get you, the endos will not win, and most importantly: you are loved, and it's going to be okay <3

Try to get comfortable, maybe wrap yourself up in a blanket, and just take deep breaths. You are safe, I promise.

[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

[unforth]

@esper-aroon has enabled me, so here let me scream at y'all about The Imperial Uncle.

Okay, so I recently read The Imperial Uncle (Huang Shu) by Da Feng Gua Guo from Peach Flower House and I really loved it??? It's first person pov, mlm, about the Emperor's uncle Jing Chengjun, who is mistrusted by everyone simply because of who his parents were and his position, and so he's basically given up on trying to convince people that he's actually a nice, decent person without ulterior motives. He's super trapped by his position, and there's so much he can't say and do, and he's also a hopeless romantic, like, from his own mouth all he really wants is to sleep beside and wake up next to someone who actually gives a shit about him, and even that is basically out of reach in his life. Like, the book starts with his wife (who he has never once had sex with) storming into a meeting he's having and announcing he's a cuckold and she's pregnant.

But also, this poor bastard really thinks he knows what's going on and his very smart. Very unreliable narrator. He's actually kinda a hilarious, impulsive himbo. But the TL:DR is that his loneliness and isolation and the extent to which he's politically trapped routinely lead him to make absolutely terrible decisions.

E. Danglar's translation is absolutely gorgeous, too, and... idk, if you love political plots, melodramatic idiot main characters, a dose of pining, and a slow burn that eventually pays off, come take a look??? (some people think it's a love triangle??? idk, I never really got that vibe, I never felt it was really in doubt which of the two potential dudes he'd end up with, but maybe I only feel that way because I got it right, lmao).

Anyway, I can't stop thinking about how these two idiots end up finally finding each other and getting together, and I have an entire AU in my head (a modern corporate one) and part of another (canon divergent from like a decade before the book starts), and I just want people to love this book as much as I did and scream with me about it.

[rcmclachlan]

what if i put my life in your hands? what if i took your life in mine?

[static-scribblez]

if i had a nickel for every time people attempted to cancel or deplatform will wood over stuff blown out of proportion just before a big ww event i would have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice

[pygmy--tyrant]

y'all spin the whole 'kavinsky made ronan worse' angle too often. I don't think we're giving ronan enough credit here for how much he did not give a single fuck about anything kavinsky said. poor man was trying his absolute HARDEST to give effective villain monologues and expose ronan's repressed homosexuality and every time he was like ok. are you done now. also stop saying you fucked my mum she would do no such thing

[blakbonnet]

I'm so tired honestly I'm just so sick of mean people, the world is shitty and depressing and children are dying and volunteers who are trying to do some damn good in the world are getting their trucks blasted, and you live in this world and you choose to be unkind. It's beyond incomprehensible to me.

[navree]

i'm sorry but this is sending me into the goddamn stratosphere, if you send people to physically attack my mom, torture my sister, cut my six year old son's head off, threaten to murder my toddler, and then also threaten to rape my six year old daughter, i would be very happy and jovial in declaring war on your psycho ass for pulling that shit on people who literally didn't do a thing to you.

consequently, if i sent people to physically attack someone who never did me any harm, torture my sister who never did me any harm, cut my six year old nephew who never did me any harm's head off, threaten to murder my toddler nephew who never did me any harm, and also threaten to rape my six year old niece who never did me any harm, i would be very full of regret and sorrow for what i've done, because those are bad things that i did.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

my greatest achievement in DA2 is maxing out Carver's friendship

and all it took was begrudgingly kissing a little templar ass in act 1 because Carver didn't want to plan a prison break if my Hawke got his ass arrested for being stupid.

[capn-twitchery]

oh hey back to red honey talk :3 how would Twitch feel learning about scenarios where people consumed it against their will? ie. jamie's situation, or the situation with victor albert being given it as a baby

please you can't come in here with a :3 right after "red honey talk" when that's like waltzing into my inbox with a hydrogen bomb

anyway this got me Thinking. i think twitch would simplify red honey in their brain for a long time into Just "people only take this by choice and totally disregard or even enjoy my/other victim's pain, and that makes them bad." because that's a lot easier to process! i can't imagine they're putting a lot of thought into whoever is consuming the red honey or why, they just know it causes them pain

so i don't think it would even occur to them (or, more accurately they just don't like to think about it) that someone could do all of that, and then ALSO inflict it on other people to make them suffer too. that's a whole new level of fucked up for them to process

that said, if they Did find out--once they'd gotten over the "oh god do people actually do that" hurdle, more than anything they'd be understandably Fucking Furious at whoever forced someone to take it against their will. does red honey not already cause enough pain that they have to bring in other innocent people too?? i think twitch would 100% consider it one of the most evil things anyone can do

as for whoever was forced to take it-although they're Obviously uncomfortable with the concept of anyone taking red honey, they'd understand it wasn't their choice. they absolutely do not want to talk about it, it gets left at that, but they wouldn't be upset at the person.

(extra for funsies: one possible exception is if it was their memories. that would complicate things. they still wouldn't blame the person who experienced them, but the concept of being around someone who knows that they went through that and knows things about ""twitch"" that twitch doesn't even know themselves, and doesn't want to know, makes them feel 1000 emotions they can't put a word to.

if it was someone they didn't know well who approached them to tell them, they're getting kicked to the ground + threatened with a sword to never, ever speak to them again or they're getting permakilled.

if it was someone they knew & liked--honestly, they're still getting threatened with a sword and told to stop talking Right Now do not say another fucking word about this we are forgetting this happened and you are not ever mentioning it again.

but even with someone they were close to-they would find that incredibly difficult to move past. they have a very real fear of people seeing them differently because of the cage gardens or because of something related to who "they" were Before the cage gardens that they're not even aware of themselves. even if it's pity, or sympathy they don't want it!! i think thy could move past it eventually, providing that doesn't happen, though. and providing the person respects their wishes, of course)

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

Yeah, people like to think that (adult) Jason’s snarky, cutting, and unapologetic post crisis characterization and the (mostly) “watered down”, docile personality he’s had from N52/rebirth onwards are irreconcilable, and that the shift was just an editorial decision with the intent of marketing him as a “likeable” hero.

While that last part might be true, have they considered that textually it makes perfect sense that being consistently in contact with an abuser just does that to a person. Wears them down until they feel like nothing but a husk, without any discernible direction or opinions of their own. If it isn’t completely burnt out yet, they (consciously or unconsciously) suppress that part of themselves that thinks independently either for self-preservation or to keep the peace. Considering anyone, even “mentally strong” people could fall victim to mental abuse, it’s actually pretty realistic imo.

[secondbeatsongs]

"DNI if you-" this and "Don't follow if you-" that; you're all cowards. just put this in your bio like it's 2007