#what were we doing in the 90s

[thirddeadlysin]

kids today don't know about coneheads

warning: video contains rapid flashing

[kyurochurro]

see technically this counts as an x file because of the abnormal and inexplicable shape of the straws ☝️😳👽

[deoidesign]

quick traditional piece for fun ^^

[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

[celestialrealms]

I just noticed Mephisto matches with Barbatos (who is matchy with Diavolo) in the anniversary outfits in his SSR memory card

These three were also the only three who had half masks in the masquerade event!!!

Anyway, The Royals with Mephisto chat group when? We got one for Purgatory Hall with Raphael..... it's just fair !!

And one for Mephisto and Diavolo as well, but also one for Mephisto and Barbatos too. because you can't tell me their relationship isn't deeper than the devs portray when Mephisto has lines like this about Barbatos's room:

[thedreadvampy]

my friend invited me to go with them to a show tonight

and the thing is it was not good. it was a cabaret with some amazing circus acts but each of them got like. 5-10 minute slots. and were interspersed with 20+ minutes EVERY TIME of some of the most tedious standup work I have ever seen from the MC and the same 5 physical comedy bits repeated ad nauseum. this guy literally did a Borat bit. in the year of our lord 2024. he sang 2 entire rounds of the Family Guy theme.

and it just KEPT GOING. it was meant to be a 90 minute show, which imo is already a slog for a show starting at 11:30PM but within the bounds of reasonable. it finished. at fucking 1:50 AM. ALMOST TWO AND A HALF HOURS OF THIS SHIT. and it did not help that the 5 bits were all of the 'OH NO SOMETHING HAS DISRUPTED THE SHOW' variety which is funny for a bit, less funny when you're literally 45 minutes past the end of your scheduled finish and still fucking going.

HOWEVER. what I did not realise was that this was in fact. my friend's favourite comedian. and if I had known this I might not have gathered up my stuff and walked out during the curtain call and probably would not have announced on the way out, 'that was the most tedious fucking thing I have ever endured.' and I almost certainly, when someone overheard me complaining about the length and tedium and said 'yeah it ran a bit long huh,' have replied, at the actual near-shouting top of my voice, "I AM GOING TO KILL MYSELF."

I feel. bad for spoiling the show for them.

in my defence I have been very tired this week, I got home at 2:30 AM, and raked seating really hurts my hips so I was in agony by the end of the first hour. but mostly I'm just a bitch who loves to hate tbh.

[icewindandboringhorror]

sneepy cozy time....

[flandesuka]

“omg we need male idols in the next splatoon game 🥺” you fuckers could barely handle big man

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

i decided to watch netflix persuasion again to see if its horrors hold up over time (lol), and while there are a few things that i enjoy -- a) it's pretty to look at, and b) dakota johnson regency wine aunt hot mess breaking the fourth wall is pretty winning as a concept, even if it belongs somewhere else -- it's incredible how this adaptation took one of the most finely crafted depictions of romantic tension in the history of storytelling and just deflated it with pure generic mediocrity at every single opportunity. like, every moment that's supposed to be like !!!!!!!!!!! is instead like "okay ...... i guess ............ they're bantering halfheartedly again ........ cool .......... zzzzzz ........"

[heckyeahponyscans]

I think the reason people have so much nostalgia for 80s and 90s Barbie--even collectors who were too young to have actually had them--is the material and tailoring of her clothing was better than on modern Barbie.

If there was a giant tub of 80s Barbies and a giant tub of modern Barbies and I randomly grabbed one doll for each then, yeah, I think the odds are that I would find the 80s Barbie more technically impressive.

But looking at Barbie as an entire line, something about her 80s toys feels so . . . elderly. Like an old person's conception of female beauty and fashion, as informed by southern beauty pageants.

It is completely unsurprising to me that Bratz ground Barbie's face into the dirt with their oversize feet when they debuted.

[dootznbootz]

I honestly get a little annoyed that people will act like Penelope wouldn't be in the Fields of Punishment alongside Odysseus :P

Because she'd either go with him or literally be there because of her own things. I mean...She's not that nice either. They're literally "likeminded", all the war crimes he would tell her, she'd be thinking "Oh!!! Good thinking!!!" The only thing is, she just didn't GET to do those war crimes because she wasn't in the war. She would scold him for the stupid things he did acting like she's never done the same or wouldn't do the same.

Also as if she wouldn't also tell Polyphemus her name? Maybe not exactly, but she'd do something JUST as prideful/dumb eventually. BECAUSE THEY'RE SIMILAR. SAME MIND!!!

[carlyraejepsans]

I’ve started watching Utena because of you. What. Is going on

HI. WELCOME TO THE CLUB, watch the trigger warnings. but yeah, revolutionary girl utena veers more and more towards surrealism the further you get into the series. it often and voluntarily forfeits narrative/logical consistency in favor of visual storytelling, metaphors and symbolism. i was just talking about it with nic the other day, and if the story weren't so harrowing, i would recommend it to everyone who wants to get into literary analysis, because it is SO packed with symbolism EVERYWHERE that it actually encourages you to try to decode it.

whatever you think utena is about, it is NOT. you can't go in and treat it like your 49293th classical shoujo. utena is a firework show of visual symbolism and it very rarely, if ever, explains itself to the viewer. it refuses to handhold you, but it never berates you for trying and getting it wrong either. there is SO much handholding in modern day media, but utena trusts its viewer to take away something meaningful from itself and to piece its message together on their own. it's one of my favourite pieces of media of all time just for that

[mixed-up-metaphors]

weird practice doodle comic thing idk 2/2

(first one is over here)

in case you are bamboozled and missed the first post this is just me ranting/rambling abt dimitri and ashe and ghosts in comic form

huzzah, the rest of the first one featuring uhhhhhhh idk lol its like the first one. But Now With A Brief Appearance From Our Special Guest, Dedue!!!!!!!!

[lexalovesbooks]

I just realized that in the scene where everyone else is talking about their past identities, Teraeth is the one who says that he doesn’t know who Thurvishar was in his last life. Teraeth, aka the only one of them that remembers his afterlife at that point, who also has specifically said that he remembers the moment when the guardians asked for volunteers and Elana and S’arric volunteered. The only conclusion to be drawn from this is that Teraeth was so busy shooting heart eyes at the two of them that he didn’t even remotely register the fourth person who they’d be saving the world with, who also happened to be the guy that invented his job and the empire that he ruled.

[thebirdandhersong]

well mark that down as situation 2938489 that I don't know how to handle

[batsplat]

29/6 - valentino

11/7 - marc

both 'pecco doesn't have to prove that he earned those titles by beating the marc marquez' and 'pecco should embrace the challenge of testing himself against the marc marquez' are takes I fundamentally agree with, but of course there's still something fun about how it's basically mind games by proxy from these two. neither of them are wrong! but the contrast is still pleasing. it stems from their fundamentally oppositional relationships wrt pecco, where valentino functions as The Mentor and marc functions as The Rival. valentino is emphasising pecco's existing status in the sport by offering a reminder of the world championships he already has, in order to minimise the importance of next year's battle and the pressure on his protege. marc is emphasising the status imbalance between himself and pecco by offering a reminder of how marc has more titles than pecco, in order to heighten the importance of next year's battle and increase the pressure on his rival. the two statements end up mirroring each other quite nicely, right?

you see it in how valentino positions the battle as something that's been hyped as the press, as something that's more illusory than 'real', versus marc implicitly challenging pecco by saying pecco should surely be seeking to challenge him. valentino will not go so far as to suggest pecco will beat marc - all he's saying is the outcome does not reflect on the fact that pecco WAS already the strongest (past tense). valentino's removed from the action, he can't make any promises on behalf of another rider, he deliberately refrains from placing more pressure on pecco by engaging in any way with his chances of winning next year... whereas marc very much argue his own case, saying that he believes he will win at least one more title (which would most likely involve beating pecco). valentino says pecco doesn't need this challenge, whereas marc suggests pecco should want it. and more than that - what marc is saying the challenge isn't just facing marc on the same bike, it's the fact that pecco's team decided to put him there. that they invited marc into pecco's house. marc speaks of all that pecco has to lose, while valentino speaks of all that pecco cannot have taken away from him

I don't want to read too much into the phrasing here since I'm aware the translation may be imperfect... but valentino both explicitly ("he will have a very uncomfortable teammate") AND implicitly "[pecco] has everything he needs to keep up with [marc]") acknowledges just how big a challenge this will be. uncomfortable - not just because marc is hard to beat but because he is a bastard of a teammate. keep up - not even beat, because just matching marc isn't going to be easy. and marc isn't being shy either about how hard defeating him will be for pecco, pointing out they will be on equal machinery for the first time, that marc still has more titles, that pecco still hasn't shown he has what it takes to match marc under those circumstnaces. still, marc is coming for pecco because right now pecco's on top of the mountain - pecco is the one with the results, the momentum, the "mental stability" (jorge martin girl stand up)

I don't know. I'm really fond of how pecco has ended up being positioned between the two of them. pecco's unique narrative role is such that if anything, the marc/valentino axis is de-emphasised. it still matters, but it's very much the hypotenuse. this isn't just a continuation of an old feud, it's not just two legacies facing off or the title race or any of that - because it's pecco's legacy that's being litigated as much as anything else. pecco's primary objective is not protecting valentino's title count, and valentino's advisory role is centred around pecco's objectives rather than his own... his desires and hopes in that capacity are subservient to pecco's. marc isn't there primarily to match/overtake valentino, he's there to beat the current king in his own castle and to win titles for himself. they mirror each other and oppose each other... but ultimately, it's still pecco who currently sits at the centre of that triangle. he's the one who the other two are primarily focused on. quite a unique position, especially for a rider who has been so publicly wrestled with how he compares to those particular legends of the sport. quite the task ahead of him. quite the challenge