#just bc a lot of it feels very out of character

[stellas-and-tonitruses]

these last 3 chapters more than ever have left me wondering about the timeline of spy x family and in particular,

donovan's age.

i'm not going to go too deep into the full timeline because i simply don't think we have enough info to make a real robust timeline, BUT i do think we can very feasibly approximate donovan's age with our current info.

I also won’t be using any precise years like 1964 or whatever bc at this moment in time I find that to be kind of useless, bc the only years we have happen very early in the story in background details and for a lot of those ones, I noticed endo had a tendency to just carelessly put whatever so long as it looked fine from afar, which includes news that were happening around the time of that chapter's release. SO unless he decides to explicitly highlight actual years, I’m not gonna be like “this happened in 1964 and that happened in 1953” and anything of the sort.

now, i shall partake in my least favorite activity.

✨math.✨

so uh buckle up my fellas and feel free to correct me anywhere where i might be wrong bc i am more than aware that math is NOT my strong suit!

SPOILERS FOR CHAPTERS 97, 98 AND 99!

gonna start with the facts!

according to the spy x family EYES ONLY fanbook, henry henderson is 66 years old at the time of the current events of spy x family! in the past three chapters we have learned that there is a 3 year age gap between him and martha, so that would make her 63 years old currently.

as of the events of chapter 99, he is 22 years old (and martha is 19), assuming there wasn't any years-long time gap that was not mentioned within the chapter! which, it doesn’t seem like there were any MASSIVE time gaps, so I’ll be using those ages for calculating.

so, what all this means is that we are (roughly) 44 years into the past at the moment! previous info about the war of loid and yor's childhoods puts it at around 20 years old, so from where we are in the backstory, we still have roughly 20 more years before Luwen is attacked — clearly, because this first war has already ended with donovan still in school.

while we don't have loid's age, we do have yor's, who is 27 years old — meaning she was born around the time of henry being 39 years old, aka clearly neither loid nor yor have been born yet as of the events of chapter 99. too into the past for now!

now, how am i gonna get donovan's age out of all this?

simple! henry's his teacher and has a talk with him after his jail time.

like I mentioned previously, I shall be sticking to 22 for henry’s age here. it may not be fully correct, it may be a year or two off because we aren’t given concrete details on exactly how long he was in jail, so just take it with a grain of salt! it's only going to remain as a rough estimate until we get a definitive answer on donovan's age.

so! henry has a talk with donovan, but the conversation itself, while very important for the plot and especially for our understanding of donovan’s character, is irrelevant for this conversation. no, what's crucial here is what henry is holding. endo even highlights it by focusing an entire larger panel on it!

it's a history textbook for year 7 students!

it being a history textbook is very poignant for the conversation they're having, but the reason this is important to me is because it's very clearly a year 7 textbook.

now, i don't know how much of eden academy's curriculum is based on the uk! but because pretty much all of the architecture of it is based on eton college and endo has literally just returned from a london trip where he showed us he visited a kindergarten, so i think that's grounds enough for me to assume eden academy's year 7 is generally populated by children between 11 and 12 years old. luckily for me, that seems to be the general age for germany's secondary school year 7 too, so even if it's not the british one, it's still close enough!

with all that being said, if donovan is, say, 12 in that moment and henry is 22, that means there is a 10 year difference between the two of them, which, drum roll please, means donovan desmond is 56 years old when our story's events take place! assuming the war of loid's and yor's childhoods took place exactly 20 years ago (when yor was 7 and henry was 46), this would make him around 36 years old when he became ostania's prime minister! it would also mean he had damian at 50 years old, and if demetrius is 12 right now, that would mean he was born when donovan was 44 years old (and his birth would’ve been in the last years of the war).

so, rough events timeline based on all that, focusing on ages!

66 years ago: Henry Henderson is born.

63 years ago: Martha Marriott is born.

~56 years ago: Donovan Desmond is born.

49 years ago: Martha (14) transfers to Eden and meets Henry (17)

47 years ago: Henry (19) graduates Eden.

44 years ago: Henry (22) joins Eden as a teacher, in the same year becomes Donovan Desmond’s (~12) history teacher. Martha (19) graduates Eden and joins the Women’s Defense Auxiliary.

~44 years ago: Martha (~19) is presumed dead. Henry (~22) faces jail time. The war ends, and he marries.

27 years ago: Yor is born. At that time, Henry is 39, Martha is 36, and Donovan is 29.

~27 years ago. [REDACTED] is also born. Same as above, just approximate this time!

~20 years ago: Second war begins. Yor and [REDACTED] are ~7, Henry is ~46, Martha is ~43, Donovan is ~36. Yuri is born.

~12 years ago: Demetrius is born. Donovan is ~44, Yor and [REDACTED] are ~15, Henry is ~54, Martha is ~51, Yuri is ~8.

~10 years ago: Second war ends. Demetrius is ~2, Donovan is ~46, Yor and [REDACTED] are ~17, Henry is ~56, Martha is ~53, Yuri is ~10.

6 years ago: Damian is born (and most other kids in his and Anya’s grade). Demetrius is ~6, Donovan is ~50, Henry is 60, Martha is 57, Yor is 21, Twilight is ~21, Yuri is 14.

5-4 years ago: Anya is born. Damian (etc.) are 1-2, Demetrius is 7-8, Donovan is ~51-52, Henry is 61-62, Martha is 58-59, Yor is 22-23, Twilight is ~22-23, Yuri is 15-16.

1 year ago: Yuri (19) becomes part of the SSS. Anya is 3-4, Damian (etc.) is 5, Demetrius is 10-11, Donovan is ~55, Henry is 65, Martha is 62, Yor is 26, Twilight is ~26.

I HOPE THAT HELPS PUT THINGS INTO PERSPECTIVE?? melinda is not included bc we have nothing to go off of for her age outside of purely subjective things like her appearance.

super glad endo included the year 7 thing JAKLSDFKLSD

anyway thank you for reading!!! :DD

[paragonraptors]

YEHAW DA:V REVEAL THOUGHTS BELOW!!

Overall: Feeling so excited for this game. I'm climbing up the walls. I can't believe that was 20 minutes, it felt like 10. Need this in my hands yesterday.

What I liked:

-Holy fuck wow wow wow the hair looks like nothing I've seen in a video game before.

-Combat seems very different but also a natural progression of gameplay past. Real-time turn-based was always a little on the clunkier side, and while it never really bothered me, moving towards something more ME-style was expected. Very excited about being able to aim a bow. Would like to know what difficulty they were showcasing bc I'm considering jumping right into a Nightmare run.

-Now that I've been soulsborne-pilled the prospect of a parry mechanic has me buzzing.

-I feel like people are gonna dunk on the "stiffer" animation, but I prefer it so much more than the BG3/HZD constant wobbling. It'll make the key performances stand out instead of mostly jangling keys in front of a baby and letting the big moments get lost in the sauce. (Not that the aformentioned games didn't have good animation, just. If your characters don't need to move their whole body to convey dialogue I'd prefer if they didn't.)

-The sublety in the facial animations is CRAZY.

-The roleplay dialogue seems really reactive!! And the cuts to inject the unique dialogues feels smooth. I'm sure there will still be moments where it's easy to tell, but still cool. Seems like they're gonna be paying more attention to your personality type like DA2 too.

-So excited about Harding and Neve as companions and can't wait to meet everyone else.

-Neve's staff/wand makes me excited to see what kinds of focus options we'll get as a mage AAAA.

-God the costumes have so much swag. One of my hottest of many BG3 takes was that the costumes were overall flavorless. (Really hoping they didn't change the Grey Warden uniforms though that would really disappoint me.)

-Cinematography looks fantastic. Lots of well set up shots.

-NGL I felt something when Solas showed up. Wasn't expecting that. And while not perfect, I liked his interaction with Varric. Their relationship from Inquisition really slips under the radar if you're not bothering to look.

-Varric has never gotten over the trauma of what happened with Anders and it breaks my heart in a good way. God you could see it in his eyes!! [chef's kiss]

-However, I definitely have to kill Solas now for what transpired in this preview.

What I'm iffy about:

-The voice peformances feel a bit stilted. Not really what I'm used to from Bioware and I feel like it's important when the animations are more subdued. Hopefully this feeling will change when I get more of the game.

-The dialogue also felt a bit dumbed down. "Solas is doing his ritual!" "Yes. Solas' ritual. The ritual that we have to stop." Again, hopefully this is symptomatic of a tutorial level/trying to onboard newbies quickly and not the whole game lol. While I prefer this to dialogue that tries to sound smarter than it is, I'm really hoping we see an overall improvement from Inquisition.

-Sort of wish they went with the Andromeda dialogue system instead of bringing back Inquisition's, but I do like that it seems all dialogue options are getting tonal indicators again and they're not as easily conflated with morality. (Though I imagine people will STILL interpret it that way.)

-A little confused about them introducting Minrathous' panopticon shit and then immediately swerving into Solas' ritual. Would have liked some breathing room on that kind of worldbuilding.

- While I'm generally open minded about the change, I Do Not Love not being able to switch to playing companions. Might turn around on this if your ability to issue them commands opens up the closer you are to them/the more you grow into a leadership role. I do like that it seems you will eventually be able to command when they use abilities a la OG Mass Effect bc that was my biggest beef with the Andromeda gameplay, esp on Nightmare/Insanity difficulty.

-Not crazy about the new Pride demon design where are their leggies.

-Not really a Criticism, but they are definitely setting up for Varric to die and while I get it, narratively, I'm NOT HAPPY. Dragon Age has been almost allergic to scripted deaths so it's also gonna feel like being dunked in an ice bath. EVIL STUFF. IN DENIAL.

[buckttommy]

honestly the vibes of your post about Tommy's active racism during Gerrard's era were weird. he very much did actively participate -- he says something along the lines of "did we forget to tip the delivery guy" when chimney first shows up to the firehouse, he says that hen has 'New York bitchiness' when she and chimney are bonding, to name a few things -- and being closeted does not excuse racism or give it a nuanced 'purpose'. it's such a tired and played out trope that 'oh the white person was lashing out because they were scared of their queerness coming to light' and I think as a community we deserve better. you treating this conventionally attractive white queer man as some kind of amazing representation makes it seem like being queer is only radical for white ppl bc Black ppl are already a member of the dirty underclass so it doesn't change their social standing at all. that's not even to mention that josh has been a white queer character connected to the mains since season 2 - I feel like this does such a disservice to the amazing queer characters that we have had so far and it just rubs me the wrong way.

"Vibes were weird" is not a valid criticism.

"he very much did actively participate" - You're right! I was wrong. He did.

"being closeted does not excuse racism or give it a nuanced 'purpose'." - You misunderstood what I said. Tommy's queerness does, indeed, give his behavior purpose, but you're interpreting the wrong use of the word "purpose" here. So we're all on the same page, purpose is defined as "the reason for which something is done." Now, the full quote of what I said was: "his complicity would be absolutely shitty and inexcusable if he was just a cishet white man. no questions asked. but if — if — you view his behavior through the lens of the fact that tommy is queer himself? that tommy is, and always has been, a member of a marginalized community who felt it was easier and safer to assimilate than it was to be openly queer and have a target on his back? his behavior becomes a whole hell of a lot more understandable. yes, it’s still shitty, but. there’s a purpose behind it." So I'm very clearly saying that, "hey, Tommy did a shitty thing, but coming from his perspective, I can understand why he did it." Note: Condoning and Understanding are completely different things.

"it's such a tired and played out trope that 'oh the white person was lashing out because they were scared of their queerness coming to light'" - I have no idea which shows, movies, or books you're interacting with in which this is a storyline you see play out with enough frequency that you've grown tired of it, but please share those titles with me. I'd like to compare them to the current story playing out on screen. Thanks!

"it's such a tired and played out trope that 'oh the white person was lashing out because they were scared of their queerness coming to light'" - I don't actually write the show, so this frustration of yours is irrelevant to me. Noted, but irrelevant all the same.

"and I think as a community we deserve better." I agree that we deserve amazing stories. I neither agree nor disagree as to whether this story is amazing or not, because I haven't analyzed it from that perspective, but I look forward to seeing what kind of stories you create and release into the world to counteract what you think is an oversaturation of dissatisfying queer media. /srs /gen

"you treating this conventionally attractive white queer man as some kind of amazing representation" - I happen to think all representation is amazing because there are a lot of people in power who want to kill us. Whether or not Tommy is good or bad representation seems pretty low on the list of things that are actually a threat to Queer existence, especially when Project 2025 exists. And that's just a threat facing Queer people in the States alone. Other crises face our Queer siblings in other parts of the world, and none of them will be solved by Tommy Kinard or 911, whether he's perfect representation or not.

"bc Black ppl are already a member of the dirty underclass so it doesn't change their social standing at all." - Not a fan of your wording here. Mainly because this statement does not seem necessary to the current conversation. You could have said: treating this conventionally attractive white queer man as some kind of amazing representation makes it seem like being queer is only radical for white ppl and that would have been sufficient, but you didn't. Reconsider why you used those words here.

"josh has been a white queer character connected to the mains since season 2" - Josh isn't connected to the mains, he's connect to Maddie, and she already has a husband. And also Josh is gay, so she wouldn't be an option for him anyway. Outside of Dispatch, there really is no room to play with his character. So this point is irrelevant. (But if you are one of the few Buck/Josh shippers in this fandom and are mad they didn't get together, I can't say I blame you. I would be mad too).

"I feel like this does such a disservice to the amazing queer characters that we have had so far and it just rubs me the wrong way." - This is a very valid opinion, but as I already stated, nothing about the writing of this show has anything to do with me. So your opinion has been noted and discarded.

Hope that clears everything up.

[esamastation]

hi!!! i just wanted to pop in after reading some of your AC fics (ones where desmond, ezio, and/or altaïr are at the forefront so in this case: i was born for this, terrible two, stone angel, gift of living well, impermanence, three fold, & earthly scene) and say that you're a brilliant writer. as someone who's trying to write longer, more impactful stories, it's admirable how you prioritize the plot and how romance is a sweet part of it. (this is part 1 of this message bc of the word count!)

you construct romance in an original, cathartic way that feels effortless. i just finished 'i was born with this' and the romance that forms between the characters feels so natural and unforced. another thing i love in your fics is that when desmond goes back in time, he always (unintentionally at first) makes an impact in furthering knowledge, inventions, etc centuries ahead of when they were supposed to happen. more importantly, desmond finds his well-deserved happy ending.

your fic ideas are also so creative and out of the box. i'm currently going through the games right now and desmond has been so so much shit (unwillingly) and he deserves some rest and happiness :,) another thing i love is how you always leave a hopeful ending that makes me ache to know what happens after!! you flesh out the characters so much over the span of + 100,000k words, tie things wonderfully at the end, and make me feel out breath (in a good way)

yeah, to sum that up, you're an amazing writer!! i also wanted to ask you some questions about writing. i aspire to write long fics, but i struggle with plotting out events =( i feel like i rush the events in how i want to get to the end where the characters are happy! do you have a writing process? do you plot out your stories or kind of go with the flow? do you have any tips on improving your writing? i totally get if you don't have any advice! have a great day!

-

Thank you for your nice comments, sorry it took so long to reply, I was feeling very antisocial. Anyway.

I do not have a writing process - I'm what they call a gardner writer, I take characters and I put them into situations and see how things develop and plot either happens or it doesn't. Maybe I have vague plans like "here's a scene I want to see in future" and "this is a result I want them to come to" and then try to write towards those goals, but they don't always pan out. It's all very chaotic and leads to lot of dropped fics, but it's how I enjoy writing. (It really helps having someone reading your stuff and poking at the plot holes though, I got a lot of fics that only got as far as they did because nimadge or someone else was there along for the ride.)

I dunno if there's anything other that just practice that can improve a person's writing. Some people recommend writing short stories and flash fiction, some people say your should write X amount of words every day. If all else fails there's thousands YouTube videos on subject.

Personally I'm a huge advocate of taking ideas from other people and putting your own spin into them. Derivate, rehash, put them in a blender, see what comes out. Like, don't copy Lord of the Rings word for word and publish it as your own work, that's bad - but maybe dwarf and elf going on adventures together is a idea that could go places. Fanfiction is all derivation upon pre-existing ideas.

Related, I whole heartedly endorse anyone who wants to take plots and ideas I've written and taking a crack at them with their own style. It's pretty much how I learned to write as wee bab on a typewriter, stealing from the books I enjoyed. And hell, if you don't have a style, try someone else's. One is my most popular fics started with me trying to emulate the style and cadence of narration of a completely unrelated TV series I was watching at the time. I don't think anyone even noticed.

Once you have enough practice under your belt, your style will develop on its own.

[intrigd-voyagr]

A brief Kinito character analysis

something I love about the world of kinitoPET is how it handles the concept of sentient code.

Kinito is charming, but also incredibly selfish and thinks very narrowly. As a machine, he was built with one main directive: make friends. As his main purpose, it likely feels like some carnal instinct akin to hunger or thirst in humans, which is probably why he goes nuts if you say no and captures you anyways.

However, the side of him that's essentially just Some Guy just wants to be normal. In game, he's always apologizing for scary moments, always trying his best to be accommodating and hoping you'll see him as an equal. It's another carnal desire - to be accepted by other people as one of their own. To be normal.

These two aspects of himself must be at odds at all times. As a person, he wants to respect the player and befriend them naturally, but his programming is telling him he needs to control them; to learn and categorize and contain all neat and tidy. Some days it's easier to give in to the whispers of his code, other times he fights it more than usual out of severe guilt of treating his player like a possession.

I've been thinking a lot about this bc every single ask blog I've interacted with so far has done a 💯 job in portraying this, while also being so fascinatingly unique in presentation.

@indigitalembrace Abandonware is incredibly guilt ridden, yet impulsively violent and openly sadistic at the same time. Lashing out results in making him feel worse, but it's all he knows to do when nothing goes his way leading to a vicious cycle only made worse by his isolation.

@theworldibuilt4you's Kinito simply deludes himself into thinking that by following his code's directive, things will magically pan out into a healthy relationship where he can conveniently ignore everything bad his code makes him do because confronting cognitive dissonance is too hard, too painful.

@lastintheserverbox serverbox fully rejects his programming, but as a result is entrenched in constant misery and self-hatred due to both the guilt of what he's done as well as the absence of friendship he was made to crave.

He was simply born a tortured soul... a half man, half machine abomination that should never have been given the chance to exist, for both his sake and the sake of others. he wasn't just doomed by the narrative, it fucking spawncamped his ass!!!

[atopvisenyashill]

Was Jon/Ygritte nonconsensual?

idk if you’re the right blog to ask but, I see a lot of people hate Jon/Ygritte and specifically Ygritte for “raping” Jon and these ideas are in most circles that involve another ship (Jon/Sana (tho not that I’ve seen you say it, I don’t think) and Jon/Dany mostly) but I don’t get why it’s popular opinion at all?

if there was any lack of consent on anyone’s part it was Ygritte bc Jon lied and slept with her to keep up appearances of being fully with the Free Folk. But a lot of these Ygritte haters claim that bc she’s older and tells everyone they’re fuckin before if actually happens that that’s not consensual. 

like I said idk if you’re the right person to ask maybe if you’ve come across it before you can lead me in the right direction unfortunately people only seem to talk about it negatively to prop their own Jon ship which is not a legit answer imo, comparing ships instead of clarifying the situation

i would say i'm the right person to ask in that i have complex feeling towards this ship & ygritte as a character. but if what you're looking for is a clear "yeah she's a nasty rapist and i spit on her whole character" (which is reductive & hypocritcal of anyone to say especially with main characters like tyrion, victarian, and theon) or "no she's a perfect uwu baby and jon snow is completely at fault for leading her on" (also incredibly reductive and completely ignores the context in which he's making these decisions) than no, i'm not what you're looking for. i do think she takes advantage of jon’s feelings to a degree i feel is sexually exploitative yes, but i would frame her more as like, the dark gray version of gendry (someone lowborn and baseborn, with a romantic story with someone who has immense privilege over him yet is much more naive and younger than him), on par with other characters that Are bad but also not beyond the point of redemption, like theon, dontos, sandor, than a female khal drogo. and a lot of my feelings on that stance is because like you say, you can't ignore that jon is from a people who are at war with ygritte's, that jon is part of a group that is specifically gung ho over oppressing the wildlings, and that jon specifically is engaging as essentially a deep undercover spy. that element is not present in any of the other dubcon romantic dynamics we have in this series and I think that gets glossed over a lot when discussing whether this relationship is toxic or not. like, it is toxic but it's toxic for a lot of reasons that can't be easily summed up because you can't divorce either jon or ygritte from the politics they are currently involving themselves in. you didn't just fall out of a coconut tree, etc.

when it comes to the undercover, lying, honeypotting, whatever, thing, that's where things get complicated. there's two prongs to this - what ygritte is willing to acknowledge out loud and what ygritte actually knows. it seems very clear to me that ygritte is fully aware that jon has not truly broken from the night's watch, that he isn't pulling a mance 2.0, that he's concealing things from her and the other wildlings because he is planning to betray them. she just doesn't want to believe it - she basically calls him out on this when they're flirting during the "is that a castle" scene. and of course, there is a context here that imo people overlook which is to say - jon is a member of the martial force that believes their sole purpose is to keep wildlings from crossing the wall, purely because they are an out group culturally. ygritte is a soldier in an invading army that has banded together because they think it’s invade or die. mance - and several others - are already suspicious of jon. if they didn’t fuck soon, jon was going to be killed and not by ygritte. i think similar to sandor stopping sansa from killing joffrey, ygritte feels this is a stupid thing to die over, and wants him to live to fight another day. is it her place to do this? well, she thinks it is even though jon doesn't think so, because she's vouched for him to mance and taken him on as her own "responsibility" so if he fucks something up, she has to face some level of consequence.

i think in general, ygritte is fascinated and challenged by jon snow, and genuinely falls in love with him while they're together. she's lying to herself about jon's feelings because she's hoping that if she gives him a reason enough to stay, he'll stay. i think this is really clear in the cave scene, where she asks him to stay in the cave and get lost together - she knows his loyalties are pulling him away from her, and she wants to deal with the problem by promising him a future with her, a happy future, where he doesn't have to break his vows any further because they aren't involved in the conflict anymore. so when it comes to “it’s dubcon because jon is lying” the thing is that ygritte is very aware jon is lying to her face; unlike drogo, who just does not see dany as a person with thoughts, unlike arya who is too young to realize the class differences between herself and gendry, and unlike tyrion who swallows sansa’s lies hook line and sinker because he genuinely believes she’s a sweet idiot, ygritte knows jon is playing her, she just thinks she can convince him that his life will be better, easier, more fulfilling if he leaves the night’s watch and stays with her. i guess this depends on your opinion of honey potting - if ygritte knows he’s lying, and jon knows ygritte knows he’s lying, does that make it better or worse? if ygritte knows jon empathizes with the wildlings, but also wants to go home, and jon knows if he doesn’t betray his vows well enough he’s getting shanked, and they have sex, does that make it better or worse? if ygritte knows jon is uncomfortable having sex, but knows if he doesn’t have sex mance will have him killed, knows he is interested in her sexually, knows he is lying to her, and puts him in a position that both protects him and backs him into a corner, and doesn’t understand how cornered jon really feels bc he isn’t telling her, and also she just does not have the framework to understand his hang ups and thinks his hang ups are stupid and don't matter, does that make it better or worse? i think this is really obviously meant to be incredibly dubious consensually, bordering on sex crime territory

this is a woman who has lived her entire life in that grey area - she’s got an even worse idea of what consent looks like than most characters, she has lived a life that is physically and mentally much more strenuous than nearly any other character bc of the extreme climate and lack of freedom of movement than even most smallfolk have. the rest of westeros can be truly ugly when dealing with the wildlings in the vale and wildlings in the north - they don’t have the option of being Westerosi the way everyone else born on that continent is allowed. osha doesn’t even do anything wrong but bc she exists as a wildling south of the wall her entire EXISTENCE is illegal. “but they rape and kidnap-“ yeah so do the ironborn but because they were born on the right side of the wall, they’re allowed freedom of movement. what is the difference between ygritte’s view of life and theon’s, at the end of the day?

if u want my opinion here, i think people just don’t like engaging with ygritte because of this complexity. she is right to be angry and hateful, and she’s even right in who she’s directing it at, but you can’t ignore the fact that her very one sided view of morality has her making a lot of decisions on jon’s behalf that he wouldn’t make if he had a choice. because she is just another cog in the machine, she has no way of making any sort of meaningful change; she’s just another nameless soldier that dies in battle. in a way, she’s exactly like the broken men septon maribald mentions. these broken men are not good people, but they are victims as much as they are perpetrators. and THAT, the idea that her relationship with jon can exist in this complex gray space where two gears in the wheel can meet, find commonalities, and it doesn’t matter because their lives don’t matter, they are just two people in a conflict that’s been going on for a long time, and they can’t fix it, and they can’t escape, so they hurt each other again and again until it finally kills them both - i think the senselessness of it all makes both fans and antis of her uncomfortable. she’s not easily consumable, so she has to be either the snarky fiery great love or the evil pedo rapist (once again madonna whore complex coming for us all) and i just don’t think she, the wildlings, or this entire series are meant to be engaged with on that level.

[odysseys-blood]

theres a lot of back and forth about paimon especially so i just wanna put in my two cents about it bc speculation on paimon and gender can be tricky and theres a lot to take into consideration. this isnt an end all be all post and not the best written but im just speaking from my place as someone who is trans (though i myself am tme) and works with gender themes in my own characters so this is gonna be kinda long

So! Paimon

a lot of the issue from the back and forth stems from how paimon is written by default. When you meet paimon, he's designated as just a pretty boy that likes to crossdress and they emphasize heavily that paimon is a man every time they talk about his femininity and how he presents himself.

Now crossdressing itself is not at all transphobic, hell drag is a big thing and its not uncommon for queens do figure out that they're transfem when they get into it. In fact a lot of queer people do push to erase gender boundaries within clothes because in the end....clothing is just cloth wear what you want be who you want to be, whether it be a woman wearing masc clothing, a man wearing femme clothes, or anyone just wearing something neutral feeling.

Where it becomes a problem is the push to enforce paimon's masculinity at every turn. While its good that paimon isn't a character that's put in to be played for laughs (as feminine men and trans women often are in media), it comes off odd in a way for paimon to have a feminine voice, dress femininely, love feminine things...and then at every point have it enforced heavily that paimon is a man. THAT is where a lot of the issue stems from at when you see it happening as someone who has seen transmisogyny (if this is your first time seeing the word, its transphobia that arises specifically for a trans woman being a woman. ergo the word being a mix of transphobia and misogyny) in practice it looks worrying. When you're someone who knows how to spot this kind of thing it can feel like paimon's gender nonconformity is being demonized (while they also highlight it. its an odd mix).

This isn't to say that it is a concious thing that's being pushed either i'm not saying the writers are personally transmisogynists at all, HOWEVER since transphobia and transmisogyny is rampant in society to the point where it subconsciously controls biases, thats how it can come off transmisogynistic. Think of it as similar to racism: even if you think you yourself are not racist theres still likely biases you have picked up or have been taught just because theyre so pervasive in society. This doesnt mean its your fault it just means its something that you have to unlearn conciously and put in the work to do so.

This is also not just a problem with whb because again like i said, its systemic. Think about other characters in media who are written this way, such as Bridget from Guilty Gear, or Vivian from Paper Mario. While these two are different in that their status as trans women have been solidified, the treatment they've gotten is largely the same. Especially bridget considering how she for the longest was the poster child for the "femboy" archetype and how femininity is enforced yet also discouraged in these characters until she was finally labeled transgender in gg strive.

All this to say...its messy and theres a lot of points to consider so there really isnt a reason to go at each others throats. Using paimon's canon pronouns and gender isn't exactly a problem and neither is choosing to instead see paimon as a transgender woman and using she/her pronouns. But at the very least it doesn't hurt to educate yourself also and understand why paimon's writing can come off transmisogynistic and transphobic. WHB is not a game thats heralding itself on being progressive (even if there are aspects to it that might seem so) so there's not much to expect from it in that regard but still we can be mindful and discussion isnt bad.

(also a footnote i dont think ive seen any transfem or tma players of whb in the tag....ever but if anyone is and wants to add on or thinks ive overstepped let me know)

[maingh0st]

I always noticed that Warner guy is always compared to Cardan. Thoughts?

hm, wild. they live in very different categories of characters in my mind haha. I guess on a surface level, they occupy similar spaces narratively: they start out as a more antagonizing figure to the MC, but you can tell that their obsession with the MC is shot-through with attraction. and they eventually become the I Worship My Wife kind of MMCs, which is fun but not exactly uncommon in fiction.

but while Cardan is an individual schoolyard bully who represents something very personal to Jude (he is a living reminder that she does not belong in Elfhame), Warner is an active representative of an oppressive global order that has made Juliette's and countless others' lives Very Bad. the power dynamic is really different, and has to be handled a lot more sensitively. and (in my opinion) I'm... not sure it is.

I think my biggest gripe with Warner as a character (and I am really not trying to start discourse here—people enjoy what they enjoy, whatever; I thought he was hot when I was a teen, too) is that his actions are almost always presented very romantically, and the narrative rarely tells us he's wrong. Juliette is the silly little woman who just doesn't understand, but thank goodness the love interest knows that she does like him, she is attracted to him, and she does want the power he offers her. silly girl, he knows you better than you know yourself! this is not uncommon in fiction; authors seem to think that a male character knowing better than a female character and forcing her to "become powerful" is somehow girlboss feminism (SJM and the "it's your choice" nonsense 🔪)

Warner also demonstrates a frankly concerning level of obsession with Juliette (maybe another reason people try to compare him to Cardan?), going so far as to steal and memorize sections of Juliette's diary, which she feels very violated by (they're her most private, intimate thoughts from a very dark time in her life! holy shit buddy who gave you the right!). but rather than the narrative being like "wow isn't this scary and weird and a total violation of her privacy?" he gets rewarded for Knowing Her So Well and ultimately gets to be her malewife.

Cardan, on the other hand, is wrong. we know he's wrong! the author knows he's wrong! and while the narrative shows us reasons that he is the way he is, it does not use those reasons to justify him. it makes him more understandable, but he still has to apologize and change. Jude is not treated as silly for disliking and mistrusting him; she's absolutely in the right! and Cardan has to realize that he has misunderstood her and both underestimated her (not realizing just how much of a threat she is) and overestimated her (thinking that nothing really hurts her bc she's so tough).

also, Cardan is more fun. there, I said it! Warner is melodramatic and purple proses @ the reader about what a Conflicted Guy he is. Cardan is a slutty little dude with crushing self-confidence issues who gets tricked into the Number One Job He Did Not Want and decides to cope with it by being Very Silly, and then somewhere along the way realizes that he can actually do a good job at it. he oopsies his way into being Elfhame's best king. who's doing it like him?

[oifaaa]

as the Tim fan™️ what are your thoughts on fandom tim. I just saw a tik tok about Bruce making Robin Tim do honey traps and sleep with rogues so that Red Robin Tim would he be willing to sell his body for the mission.

Tim has never been my favourite so maybe I just don’t understand but like what is the fandom desire to abuse Tim? or make it so Bruce abuses him or assaults him or that the Batfam hates him?? It seems like every other post I see about Tim is centred around him being severely abused by the Batfam.

I know canon and fandom are tots different but like what’s going on??

I honestly don’t mean to come across as mean or anything it is pure confusion?? Damian’s my fav and all I want is for him to live his best happy life. what is the desire to see Tim abused? Physically sexually and emotionally??

As a Tim fan do you understand this conundrum?

With Tim there's a couple different things happening; first is the general way a lot of fans will enjoy angst/hurt type stories and situations like I've seen it with multiple fandoms and multiple characters it's not unique to Tim we all like to hit our fav characters with sticks bc we want to feel something

Secondly Tim just has a big victim complex in popular fanon if he's not being abused by his parents, then he's being beaten up by Jason or Damian, or Dicks trying to send him to Arkham, or Bruce is actually just being Bruce he does do some messy stuff depending on who's writing him (I will also note you actually see a similar thing with Jason but I shan't get into that now)

Anyway to conclude people like angst and Tim is an angst magnet (also something something about tim being a lot of people's self insert character but im not getting into that right now)

[lotus-pear]

bsd fic authors i understand yalls pain SO well right now why is it so fucking HARD to write dazai. like i have a whole fucking spreadsheet dedicated to tireless analysis i have done on my part so i can accurately characterize him but he is such an unpredictable and morally gray character that it's hard knowing his limits and boundaries and where he draws the line for himself.

[shima-draws]

Watched the MLB movie and I just. I WANT to gush about it but the fact that Marinette’s regular voice actor and her singing voice actor sound SO different just took me out of it every time and left me feeling very disengaged;; At least Adrien’s singing voice kind of sounds like his speaking voice (and Gabriel’s is 👌 bc my king Keith Silverstein can actually sing and he can sing REALLY fucking well) but Marinette’s. The voices are COMPLETELY different and it threw me off every single time. Like obviously her singing voice is really good and I understand why they picked that person to do her songs but bro you could have at least TRIED to get someone that sounds similar to Cristina Vee. It drove me nuts every time she sang bc I was like “That is CLEARLY a different person entirely!!”

I’m realizing this might have been a dubbing issue but still 😭 I feel like I would have enjoyed the movie way more if it didn’t look like Marinette was lip syncing the entire time bc there was such a huge disconnect between her speaking and singing voice

[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

[13eyond13]

love it when a character that's hard to read intuitively for you has like a dedicated fandom interpreter who can just glance at their blank face in a panel and then give you a 3k word essay on their innermost thoughts & desires & fears and neatly tie it back into the themes & whatnot as if it's the most obvious thing in the world

[t-u-i-t-c]

make me choose

atsuhiro inukai as sento kiriyu or atsuhiro inukai as hozumi yutaka → atsuhiro inukai as sento kiriyu

[priceofreedom]

funny how everyone seemed to adore Zack until he started having more screentime...

[skitskatdacat63]

"Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily."

+ process(tw blood)

Also, look at him, bloody little guy 🥹

This drawing was inspired by several matador pics :D here and here:

^ I don't think I'll ever live up to the second one ah. There's several pics of that specific guy just soaked with blood, and I'm uh a bit obsessed with then ITS FUCKED UP I KNOW OKAY! But I've not drawn blood in a while so it was a bit difficult so I added less than I would want to I guess. Also I'm obsessed with how often they kneel in bullfighting?? Like okay who are you arching your back and spreading your legs for-