#you can only observe

[prismbearer]

Do you think the idea of severance came from Harmony's own desire to be free of the grief and ties to the labor they endured at that Factory?

[chamerionwrites]

Honestly this gets at my chiefest complaint/frustration/discomfort with fandom as a whole. Which is: in their rush to defend the artistic merit of fanworks I think a ton of people have really valorized transformation and remixing and reinterpretation in and of themselves, when imo those are all quite neutral actions. When done well, they can expand and build upon and subvert meaning in really powerful and thought-provoking (and fun!) ways. When done poorly, they are just as likely to flatten and oversimplify and decontextualize and completely erase meaning. The simple act of changing something does not imbue the choice to do so with creative validity. It is entirely possible for a cover song to be bad (or just boring!). To exactly the same degree that it is possible to transform a pretty shallow and straightforward work into something deeper and more nuanced and subversive, is possible to transform a work into a vastly shallower and less interesting shadow of itself. As with nearly everything in art, it's all about the execution!

But the second you voice this position (which should honestly be a pretty uncontroversial one imo), you get people shrieking at you about being gatekeep-y and pretentious and betraying the sacred fandom etiquette of Don't-Like-Don't-Read.

And like...listen. I was not raised in a barn. I am 150% capable of quietly back-buttoning out of a fanfic I think is bad or boring - which is exactly what I do when I encounter them - and I am obviously not advocating for stupid ships wars or any kind of harassment or leaving hatemail in people's AO3 inboxes. (Which some people will also accuse you of the second you say anything less than lavishly positive about fandom, in true piss-on-the-poor fashion.) Literally all I am saying is that you can't have your cake and eat it too - that if fandom and fanworks (in the broadest sense) have artistic merit then fandom and fanworks (in the broadest sense) are fair game for artistic critique. Which means, in practice, that I can go on my own blog and make a post exactly like this one - critiquing broad trends, or stating that some interpretations are bad actually, or pointing out that subverting or talking back to or reading against the grain of canon is very different from simply ignoring it, or saying "fandom's culture of collage/remix/fuck-canon-I-do-what-I-want can lend itself to to really creative and interesting art but also to a lot of really bland homogenized cut-n-paste art, not to mention some pretty troubling decontextualization." And that if you feel this rains on your personal parade, you are then free to DLDR by back-buttoning out of my blog and/or blocking me so you never have to see my hot takes again, rather than clamoring in my notes about how I should let people enjoy things.

[lykoiii]

gah

[vaguely-concerned]

sometimes I think of all the on-the-surface warm, well-meaning but deeply ineffectual advice and attention john gives harrow through harrow the ninth (make some soup and get some sleep! get a hobby! don't be so hard on yourself! self care harrow! as long as I need take no actual responsibility in this relationship whatsoever I would have loved to be your dad!) set up against the stark truth that with his other hand he has been staging her attempted horrific murder again and again and again like a living nightmare on the logic that it will 'put her down or fix her'. and then I find that I wish there is a hell. a special hell where twitch streamers turned necromantic death emperors go

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

He is at his limit.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[i-dare-say]

Everyone always clowns on Luo Binghe for keeping Shen Qingqiu's corpse for five years.

But you cannot tell me that if Binghe died (arguably an impossible occurrence), Shen Qingqiu wouldn't do the same shit and even worse to bring back the protagonist to life

[deadpoetsandlivinglegends]

Something something every time Charlie isn’t fighting to be the center of attention, he is always looking around to others to gauge their reactions and silently observing them all something something he is searching for connection, to fit in and be loved but he doesn’t know how to ask for love so instead he gains their attention by acting out in ways he knows they’ll notice and tries to pretend their attention and love are the same thing

[xxplastic-cubexx]

cant stop thinkin bout charles and erik readin together on the couch but instead of reading with him charles is listening to eriks thoughts while he reads. Live mind commentary ……..

[burningcheese-merchant]

I said sometime ago that Matar Paneer has a bird friend. Behold

To summarize, since I already explained before and don't want to bore anyone: Paneer found him in a tree as a little peachick, tragically orphaned after his family was attacked, killed and eaten in their nest by a predator. Not wanting him to be alone, she brought him back home and fought for him to stay, to which her parents eventually agreed (Paneer does not take "no" for an answer ever). Besides Pepper Jack, he's her best friend in the whole world and they're practically inseparable.

Extra bird factoids:

Obviously, his physical appearance is extremely abnormal. Instead of the typical green, his train/display feathers are a bold and impressive mixture of reds, oranges and yellows; nothing but warm, vibrant colors that almost make him look as though he's catching fire. Furthermore, and perhaps even more strangely, he seems to be made up of triangles: triangular "eye" patterns in his feathers, triangular markings underlining his eyes, triangular crest feathers, even triangular pupils... No one is certain why he looks like this; it's mostly been waved away as a bizarre phenotypic mutation

He is also abnormally intelligent. He appears to understand human/cookie speech and even responds when directly addressed/conversed with (as much as he can, being a peacock). He understands photos, he recognizes himself in mirrors, he's even demonstrated some problem-solving/critical thinking skills a few times. Extremely impressive for an animal (esp for a peacock, which are pretty dumb irl)

He sits at the table with the rest of the family during meals. His first night with them after being taken in, Paneer set him down next to her plate so he could reach the food (he was super smol), which her parents didn't like. They argued about it until Paneer grabbed Paravani + her food and sat down to eat on the floor in protest (Paravani is family, family sits at the table, if he can't sit there then she can't, either), after which they caved (MP is STUBBORN you have to understand) and let him sit. He sat on the table proper while he was a chick and got his own chair when he grew large enough

Paneer considers him her friend and her equal and does not take kindly to him being referred to/treated as a pet

He mimics Paneer's actions often. Like, if she tilts her head to one side, he'll do the exact same thing. It's cute

Paravani is very curious and adventurous in nature, and normally quite friendly/approachable unless you give him a reason not to be. Even then, he's slow to anger and usually becomes skittish instead; to truly anger him, you have to hurt Paneer, whom he is very protective of

As a chick, he would hide in Paneer's hair when he was scared

He does get along well with the rest of the family - but while he got on with Pepper Jack and Golden Cheese right away (bird people + he could sense their kind natures immediately), he was terrified of Burning Spice for quite some time (it's mostly because of how he looks. He looks like a predator to him). It took a while of Spice deliberately appearing docile/nonthreatening and the others insisting that Spice is nice for Paravani to overcome his reservations. Nowadays he's as fond of Spice as he is everyone else

As I mentioned here, Matar Paneer takes after Kartikeya, Hindu god of war and victory and Shiva's second son. Kartikeya is known for having a peacock as a mount, named Paravani. Keeping in line with this, not only did I give Paneer a peacock as a companion, but one day, her Paravani will grow big enough for her to sit and ride around on, just like Kartikeya's. No one knows why this happens, either. It freaks a lot of people out. Once again his unique features are written off as "mutations + lol Beast-Yeast creature")

Matar Paneer always blames herself for his family's deaths. She thinks that, if she'd found them in time, she could've fended off the predator and saved them, and Paravani wouldn't have been orphaned. Giving him a home and good company was the absolute least she could've done for him...

[casualavocados]

#he doesn't want to fight with you ai di, he wants to Kiss🙄💘🥺

Nat Chen as CHEN YI KISEKI: DEAR TO ME (2023)

[fluffyartbl0g]

Is it me, or did his stories get even crazier???

Speedrun/Time travel AU masterlist

@ishipmyotp thanks for the ask <3

[airenyah]

one thing i really love about the lilly confrontation in ep12 is how even though style is only a supporting character in that scene and the camera isn't on him all that much, you can still clearly see just how worried style is about his dad. like, of course the first thing out of his mouth is "dad" and he's looking at him

but it's not just that. style's dad asks what's going on and we get reaction shots of everyone else (not style), and when the camera goes back to the wide shot while lilly says "i'll tell you soon" we can see that style is still staring at his dad

in fact, right before it cuts away to a different shot, style actually moves his leg as if he wants to take a step towards his dad, as if he wants nothing more than to run to him, to check on him, to make sure he's safe and uninjured and to rescue him somehow:

style wants nothing more but to run to his dad and to check on him. the camera cuts to lilly inviting everyone to sit down and style must have finally looked over to her in reaction to her talking, because when the camera cuts to the group style is looking at lilly at first, but then his eyes immediately move towards his dad again and he's scrunching his eyebrows and you can tell how worried he is. the only question on his mind right now is whether his dad is okay. everything within him is pulling him towards his dad

then bison takes a small, hesitant step towards the table

and with that, style knows he's finally allowed to get close to his dad without risking something bad happening. this is the moment style's been waiting for. the second style knows he can safely start moving, he instantly rushes to his dad with no hesitation, practically runs to him while he keeps his eyes totally fixed on his dad

even when style is sitting down he never takes his eyes off of his dad and i love that we can tell despite the fact that we only see the back of style's head

style sits and he's still staring at his dad and his dad looks back at him and there's some silent communication happening between them, as if style is asking are you okay? are you well? are you hurt? and his dad is like i'm fine, but what's all this?

after this, there are a few other shots in between while lilly is starting to bring style's dad up to speed, and it's only now that style can afford to focus on lilly, now that he's made sure his dad is (mostly) (physically, at least) fine:

lilly now has this whole monologue, with her sons chiming in:

LILLY: You probably don’t know, but your son, and your brother, together with my sons, threw me in jail. They probably thought I’d be in there for life. They must have forgotten that money can buy even freedom. FADEL: What the hell do you want now? LILLY: Is that how you talk to your mother, Fadel? I lost everything because of you. My reputation, the trust I built, my connection, even my employees… Everything was ruined because of you. BISON: As it should be. You don’t deserve anything. Let them go and deal with me! LILLY: What satisfaction would that give me?

style focuses on lilly throughout her whole monologue and we can mostly see the side/back of his head whenever the camera pans out to this shot:

i don't know what emotions are happening on his face since we can't exactly see it, but i think he's paying close attention to what lilly is saying and doing so that he can be ready to jump in at any second if things take a turn for the worse and there's something he can do to save the situation (similar to when keen had him and fadel at gun point in ep10)

kant now decides to speak up and offers his life in exchange for his brother's, and style immediately jumps on it as well and tells lilly that she can do anything to him (style), but to let his dad go.

and after style says that, after style announces that he's willing to sacrifice himself, he again turns his head to his dad and there's again some kind of silent dialogue going on between them as his dad looks at him for a moment, too, before they both put their attention on lilly again:

and i love that style is communicating with his dad again at this very point, because style offering himself up will also affect his dad. his dad might be physically fine if style trades his dad for himself, but emotionally the dad will be ruined if lilly takes his son's life, especially when he's already had to deal with the loss of his wife years ago. style being willing to sacrifice himself isn't nothing, in fact, it's a very big deal and so the two of them communicate about it

lilly continues to talk:

So it was your hero complex that made Fadel and Bison fall head over heels for you. Don’t worry. I prepared some drinks for everyone. You will all… die here together.

and again style is focused on lilly while she talks, paying close attention (i think. it's not like i can see his face, sigh)

because lilly is now the most immediate danger and it's vital for style to know what she's doing in case she is planning on attacking his dad or whatever else she could be doing. then style has dialogue that directly addresses his dad, so obviously he'd be looking at him

and what i adore is that after this style keeps his eyes fixed on his dad again even when it cuts back out to the wide shot and it's only when lilly opens her mouth and continues to talk that style slowly draws his attention back to her

the brothers start pleading with their mother now and we don't see style for quite a long time. it's only after lilly says she'll spare her sons' boyfriends if her sons poison their family members that we're shown style's reaction again. at first he's looking straight ahead before he turns his head and i'm guessing he's looking at kant, communicating with him (or at least trying to? kant isn't looking at him in the shot right beforehand) and then he turns to look at his dad again, in shock

potentially he might also be looking at fadel instead, here. it's a bit hard to tell from this angle and we don't get a shot of someone responding to him, it just cuts straight to lilly. both versions would be coherent: if style is looking at his dad, it's in a fuck is my dad going to die? sort of way and if he's looking at fadel it would be something more like fuck what do we do you're not actually killing him are you?

style's definitely looking at fadel when he says "mueng" after fadel says he can follow lilly's order

it's a please don't do this, please don't kill my dad and maybe also a little bit of a there's gotta be a better way out, right? we gotta be able to come up with something, right?

in the next shot it's a bit hard to tell if style is looking at lilly or at fadel, but judging by how much we can see of his jaw/cheek i think he's looking at fadel, actually

because this is style's head position looking at lilly, we can clearly see the side of his cheek as well as his chin:

when he's looking at his dad we see absolutely no cheek and no chin, just his hair, just the back of his head:

and so i think this is him looking at fadel, because we see mostly the back of his head, but also a tiny little bit of his cheek, telling us he hasn't turned his head all the way to the side:

it would certainly make sense if he was looking at fadel in the context of the scene, because now fadel is the most immediate danger to style's dad if fadel really does give style's dad the poisoned drink, not lilly. it's fadel's actions that matter now, whether style's dad lives or dies depends entirely on what fadel does now

and so style watches fadel closely when fadel lifts the cup and while i do think style kind of trusted fadel not to kill his dad, style was most definitely nervous and was ready to jump in at any moment

fadel and bison do save the day and kill lilly in the end

anyway, the point of this post is i just love how focused style is on his dad in the beginning of the scene when he doesn't yet know if his dad is alright and i love the silent communication happening between them throughout the scene, even though both of them end up as background characters in the brothers vs mother showdown. the actors didn't forget to play the relationship that their characters have with each other and it fills me with so much joy. because style and his dad is easily my favorite non-romantic relationship in this show (save for maybe fadel and bison) and we've been told (and shown) over and over again how important style and his dad are to each other and i'm sooooo so happy that the actors kept this relationship up and kept telling their story consistently even when their characters were by far not the main focus of the scene

[bumblingbabooshka]

Janeway/Tuvok Vibes

[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

[ficsiwontwrite]

I like the stories where bingge goes dimension hopping to find a ‘kind shizun’ for himself, those are great, I like them even better when he ends up with other characters instead (usually shen jiu, but it’d be a great setting for binghua too)

Now, in a sy x lqg au where sy transmigrated in a npc, that world’s binghe grew up admiring his shishu (lqg) and his cultivation partner but they where never close so he just got a puppy crush in his past but he’s over it and thats very embarrassing to remember, actually

Binghe grew up learning to be a kind and smart cultivator, the hero worship made him subconsciously emulate sy, even if he’s still a bit of a manipulative and snarky little shit at heart

Meanwhile Bingge already knows the soul he is looking for is not always reincarnates as sqq and learned after many worlds to keep a eye open, last time the kind shizun was just getting into a committed relationship so he won’t be slow next time!!!! He’s pissed

What I’m saying is soft (but not really) binghe x bingge who’s very proactively trying to seduce him

[hballegro]

the ideal way to watch quantum leap is actually via following me and watching clips i post with no context or clarifying details whatsoever, up to and including the actual plot of the show