#i think its just fun to observe that

[meamiiikiii]

silly comic based on a time i struggled to read live on stream :thumbsup:

context clip compilation below ASDASDFASA

(cw for brief mention of hospitals/strokes)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Hi! Your Hollow Knight AU has really cheered me up so I wanted to do a little drawing for it! This got me to get my art tablet out after months of not feeling like it so thank you for the inspiration! I hope the colors look good on any monitor that's not mine sdfsdf

Bugs In the Jingshi wyd?

I am so genuinely awestruck at how well you translated this AU to the hollow knight style! Also obsessed with the height difference.

[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

[starry-bi-sky]

Out of Context Danny Phantom Memes for a fic i haven't posted (yet)

[faaun]

the way that diff languages sound r so fascinating they're all different and all so vivid

[maskofgabriel]

Warden of Time Ame

[possamble]

Thank you for writing the (messy but neccessary) farcille breakdown. You handled it so wonderfully aaaaaaaah!! Like the other anon I was wondering how far "rock bottom" could get (because chapter 4 already felt pretty rock bottom) but. Yeah. That's pretty rock bottom, huh. The tragedy of loving someone but the other person not understanding <- this applies to both of them.

I think it was really neat how you flipped the question on who's reaching out to who with the academy flashback and the final scene with Namari, because... Marcille clinging onto Falin really is just a reversal of their academy days, isn't it? To everyone who met them after they reunited, it was always Marcille chasing after Falin, but to those who were at the magic academy, it was Falin chasing after Marcille. From picking flowers and berries to eat together, inviting Marcille out to see a play, and generally monopolizing her free time... I'm sure any of them would say the same thing as Namari, but in reverse. No wonder everyone thinks Marcille is just another friend to Falin. They weren't there to witness her pining /j. Idk!! I was rereading the chapter and the academy flashback girl was like "why do you hang off of Marcille so much" and I screamed to myself, "hey wait. HEY WAIT."

[can-a-tuna-fish]

Shaking my coin jar at you and pitifully offering up morsels of my vague richjer content.

[beybuniki]

one thing i noticed (form personal experience and by observing other artists) is that the longer you draw and create, the more boring it gets to simply replicate references, especially when it comes to characers' fashion choices.

with bnha, i keep mine pretty simple and basic because teens ARE very trend-loyal, but mainly im just lazy lol, but when i AM motivated, i love to think about characters' personal style, what could influence them, but also more trivial things such as budget into account, which is why i love to draw Deku in basic tees or clothes provided by his school (while bakugo gets to wear ed hardy and shoto wears arcteryx). i also love to limit the items like its just more realistic to me when someone as ordinary as deku wears the same 5 crewnecks all the time

which brings me to my actual point, namely that the more frequently you draw, the more you learn to do research andto combine your findings into sth new rather than staying faithful to one reference, and i think that's what makes good art so good, being able to draw inspiratioin from all kinds of niches and creating something that feels very authentic and suspends the spectator's disbelief. sometimes i see art and i know exactly which fashion editorial or which kpop idol was referenced, and I'm not insinuating these are bad things i do that too (less frequently now but i sure did!), my point is it's kind of nice to see how ALL artist start out with rather derivative art but eventually move on to create more authentic art that is less about drawing beautiful and perfect people and more about trying to individualize them and that ALSO means giving them weird clothes, scars, asymmetric eyes, a receding hairline etc. like drawing the same beautiful character 200 times gets so boring and it's just more fun to try and make them a bit more human

[sea-buns]

I understand not wanting your party members to walk into a lake and drown themselves but also Laudna has the fuckin WORST bedside manner lol. Yes, your much-needed long rest was just interrupted in a creepy abandoned town where you know weird charm-shit happened and the LAST thing you need right now is for anyone to lose focus. But also "Can you not wait? You can wait 5 minutes." talking to someone who has waited months and doesn't know if their loved one is even ALIVE and has confessed to you how much he misses them and how much it hurts and they could be outside breathing alive right now—

And on the surface, it looks like Chet is enabling a bad decision when he says "You probably heard Dorian. He's probably outside." and yeahh, okay, maybe he is a little bit. But right after that he's about to protest with something about Orym and it's like yeah. ORYM said he heard something. When has there been a time when ORYM heard something, and it wasn't real? How many times has Orym heard something and it's saved our asses? Before Chet is being hit with his own need to check out the lake, he's giving Orym the benefit of the doubt. And while he is an enabler by nature, he's keeping his voice soft rather than his usual, over-the-top "let's fuck around and find out" energy that he brings to dangerous situations like this.

You can't have everyone in the group treating a dilemma with the same amount of sympathy and care. What makes the BH so fascinating to watch is the variation in responses and different ways they interact with each other. You need a balance of someone who will take the cold, unyielding stance against something that is so obviously a trap, and someone that is aware of the risks but willing to speak up for that person and humor them when they're so clearly struggling.

I have a lot of feelings about Laudna and Chetney's instinctual responses and I think both stances are fascinating and they've both shattered my heart to pieces

[synthaphone]

Unfond of this new style of illustration for item artwork on Neopets- the Chokato Kiko Taffy clearly took a lot of time and effort to render, all for a result that looks vastly more uncanny than the Bubblegum Kiko Taffy + the rest of the item set it was based off of.

The final image is only 80x80px, there's no need to give it that type of rendering treatment! It only makes image less clear. In addition, making the pupils smaller, adding an outline to the iris and reducing the mouth to a pinprick combine to make the face look creepy and haunted doll-like instead of cute.

[skitskatdacat63]

"Victory belongs to the most persevering" - Nandopoleon Alonsoparte

+ First Consul Nandopoleon

Wow look I finally drew him properly! This was like the 2nd or so AU I've ever made, but honestly I feel so strongly about it that it's really intimidating to try and make a satisfying explanation post for it. I want it to be perfect ah. But I will one day! Maybe a web weave or smth in the meantime. But I digress. Napoleon Bonaparte = Fernando Alonso, please contact @/skitskatdacat63 for details.

In this painting I drew the uniform Napoleon wore during the Italian campaign in the 1790s, bcs I think it's so pretty, and not just the typical Napoleon outfit everyone knows(tho dw I'm in love with that one too.)

Though I will say, it was a bit weird drawing Fernando in navy blue(is this a sign for 2025?), so I had to draw him in the bright red First Consul uniform, to return some order to the world y'know

I ended up picking "victory belongs to the most persevering" as the Napoleon quote to use, but that was really hard to pick tbh. I literally have a whole folder of Napoleon quotes that remind me of Fernando LOL. Some others, to give you an idea:

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."

"From triumph to downfall, there is but one step."

"Morality has nothing to do with such a man as I am."

"It requires more courage to suffer than to die."

Etc etc., again: I have a folder ;;;

I don't think this drawing was nearly as complicated as the Seb one, but for some reason it made me suffer more. I think you just get into this really intense mindset after drawing smth super detailed, and it's very frustrating. But I like it! His face was very confusing to me(the angle of the eyes), and then it randomly hit me how to draw it so that was cool. Look at him face :) handsome boy

Also here's the process! I think I'm gonna try and draw something each weekend as a gift to myself after the school week(if I have actual ideas for it lol)

[laugtherhyena]

Okay so maybe the wrinkly split head devil isn't the Aging devil itself, since it being called aging definitelly feels like a mistranslation and and public safety wanting to erase old age by sacrificing the younger generation fits the point the chapter is trying to get across much nicer than if the devil was aging itself (+ if you think about it for 2 seconds erasing aging as a whole is a terrible fucking idea since no one will be able to grow anything anymore and people will be stuck as babies and kids forever whereas erasing old age should just make people not age past adulthood and probably cause people who are already elderly to just dissapear on the spot)

But that doesn't mean i'm keeping Cherryboy the exact same because if old age specifically is enough to achieve primal fear level then aging as a whole has gotta be one too. So hooray! someone's getting a slight revamp in the future :)

[red-revival]

I got multiple saves planned to romance the doc under various circumstances with various traits entirely because thats the most efficient way to learn abt a character in this game and the closest I can get to studying her under a microscope

[aropride]

my chest hurts qnd i have to do this stupid fucking assignment. Pray for me

[bunnihearted]

i like actually dont want this blog anymore i've always loved my precious safe space but recently i've started to resent it...... but maybe instead of deleting it i should just log out and dont log in again for a while at least...