#I'm not even into batman and I want this

[ravenous-kookie]

Wooow this is so fucking cool 🤩

Hand in Unloveable Hand (a chokehold) by @a-large-orange-cat 📸 and art by 02png

i haven’t posted a bind on here in awhile so i thought i’d post some of my newer stuff that i’ve been working on in the batman fandom!! i’ve been really focusing on trying new things in my binds and getting out of my comfort zone which has been really fun! with this fic i really wanted to try vellum overlay pages after i saw another binder on instagram (tuftedtomesbindery) and was dying to try!

anyways i WILL be rereading this next weekend now that i finally have it in my hands <3

[frownyalfred]

thinking about a Damian who was raised his entire life hearing how much he looks like his Father, how he's the blood son, how he's better than any other child Bruce Wayne has taken in, starting to buy into it like a kid does, only to hit puberty and turn out looking like 80% Talia.

[were-wolverine]

things in DC canon i’ll literally never get over

1. dick finds out batman replaced him as robin (without asking him) from the NEWSPAPER and simultaneously finds out bruce adopted a new kid without telling him (to make things worse: bruce didn’t even adopt dick)

2. dick finds out jason died from the newspaper (AGAIN? REALLY BRUCE?) and bruce had the fucking funeral WITHOUT HIM while he was still in space

[stolen-wolfbread]

Please reblog if you have strong emotions about Cassandra Cain and/or Jason Todd, and have things of value to say about comics

[anime-potato-san]

I SEE ONE MORE FIC OR BLURB OR WHATEVER DEPECTING ARKHAM JASON AS MEAN, ABUSIVE, OR PRACTICALLY ASSULTING THE READER, I'M GOING TO FUCKING SNAP!

MY MAN IS NOT LIKE THAT.

He is traumatized and not going through a good time, but he is shown to actually care about his men, even when he's harsh on them. And do people forget how he treated Barbara? Think about it: after everything Jason went through, would he really treat the person he loves like shit and abuse them?

NO, HE WOULD NOT.

[blackbatofel]

I just finished my reread of JLA: Tower of Babel and frankly, I'm surprised by the lack of Superbat fics about this plotline. I mean, it's the perfect setting for all the Superbat angst you could dream of.

How everyone keeps pointing out that Supes is the one closest to Batman, Clark emphatically referring to what happened as "your betrayal", how Bruce's files are cold and professional about everyone EXCEPT Clark (his fear of seeing him in pain), his guilt, how everyone else is loud and angry but Clark is silent and hurt, the fact Clark gave him the kryptonite in the first place. Clark having the final say and voting Bruce out of the League. Bruce KNOWING that he would do that and leaving because he didn't want to hear it.

The confrontation on Divided We Fall with all the accusations and the obvious hurt on both sides... then the agreement to reveal their identities together.

Tell me this wouldn't be an excellent break up/getting back together fic? The hurt/comfort of all times. If someone doesn't write this soon, I might have to.

[mionkings]

Making Heads Turn 🫨

Jason had become a father to a little baby boy, taking him in when he found the poor thing on the streets, in a cardboard box, wrapped in a space themed blanket.

While the obstacles a new parent goes through is tough. He knows it's worth it to have Danny, his baby, his son in his life. He doesn't regret adopting him.

Danny is now at the stage of his little life that he babbles and giggles, Jason always had fun having a conversation with his baby. Although Jason's sure that his hair is getting whiter with the chaos Danny brings now ever since Danny's baby brain realized that he can CRAWL to PLACES >:D

However this new development... is a little strange.

Whenever Jason puts Danny down in his crib to make dinner or any other important errand. Danny will begin to babble to the air, as if his little tyke is trying to talk to someone, making grabbing hands and scooching over to grab someone's attention.

It sent a slight shiver down his spine...

Ever since he made his introduction to Gotham as Red Hood, for the first time to those gang leaders with the bang of the AK-47. Taking over the Gotham underworld by storm with anger and precision.

He always felt a chill down his spine... When he was alone, yet... the Pit Madness flared everytime, making him feel enraged and paranoid. As if he was just waiting for a fight... for a confrontation...

Being alone in his apartment, having nightmares, more like repressed memories of what he had done... Lots of things, but for some reason—his mind... keeps going back to the moment he threw that duffel bag at the table infront of the gang leaders that night... the night he went after the lieutenants, taking their heads.

He doesn't know why.

But ever since the precious cargo that was his baby Danny, arrived in his life. That all went away as he took care, fed, and loved his baby boy.

Jason never had an episode with Danny; he couldn't bare the thought of hurting the child.

Jason was even having less episodes when he was with the Bats!

The chills; however, Jason still feels them occasionally... but they would always disappear the moment Danny would demand attention or to nap.

And instead he would feel something else hang over his baby everytime Danny slept peacefully...

———

Second ever DPxDC prompt that I've ALSO been getting brainrot over ❤️ I'm having fun 😄

Basically this prompt idea is Jason adopting a baby Danny, while seemingly unaware that he's being haunted/watched by the people's he's killed to become a crime lord. More specifically, being haunted by the heads/headless ghosts of the lieutenants Jason killed as Red Hood.

While Jason can't seem to see them, he can feel 'chills' from them. Danny, however, CAN see them mostly because I based this on that thing where babies/toddlers can see spirits in those typical YouTube videos that list ToP 5 ScArY gHOstZ VidEOz!1!1

Whatever happened though, this causes the ghosts to instead focus more on Danny than on Jason.

How much will Jason freak the fuck out when he finds out? Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Although Danny is absolutely having fun here ^^

Anyways, I might add extra stuff soon to this!

[littlefankingdom]

I fucking hate when one of my silly incorrect quotes post is successful and people reblogged it with some Bruce's slander. Get the fuck off my post.

"Talia took care of Jason because Bruce abandoned him."

Wtf are you talking about. Bruce didn't abandoned Jason, he died. And he didn't abandoned him when he came back, Jason was not in the right to ask people to prove their love to him by killing others. And he also tried to kill the Joker after Jason died, he thought he had succeeded. Like, shut the fuck up.

"I don't give Bruce credit for anything regarding Dick's education."

Well, who the fuck raised him from 8 to 18 then? Alfred Pennyworth? The same Alfred Pennyworth that raised Bruce Wayne? The one that maintained the "employee/employer" distance with the grieving child he raised. Look at young adult Bruce Wayne and I dare you to tell me Alfred Pennyworth can raise a child better than Bruce, I dare you. And don't you fucking dare blaming Bruce for it, that would be ableist af to fucking blame him for being mentally ill and labelled it as "difficult", I don't tolerate that shit. Bruce Wayne was there for Dick when he lost his parents, he helped that kid through grief and showed him love, he held him close contrary to how Alfred held him. He taught him how to be a great detective, how to be a great fighter, and all he wanted was Dick to be a better man than him. Go tell that bs to your fav and see if he agrees (he doesn't, Dick doesn’t agree and would bite your head off for saying that)

[minty364]

DPXDC Prompt 58 Part 7

The long dining room that held the ornate old dining table that seated way too many people already held  most of the family. Bruce was missing and Damian informed them he was at work, the only other person missing was Jason but it was typical for him to skip out as he didn’t live there and didn’t have the best track record with the rest of the family. That left Damian, Tim, Cass, Duke, and Dick seated.

Damian sat next to the chair that Bruce normally sat in at the head of the table. Tim sat across from Damian followed by Dick, Duke, and Cass. Danny sat next to Damian and Jazz sat next to Danny. 

“So, how was school?” Dick asked his elbows on the table with his head on his hands and a smile. He was the only adult in their life besides Bruce that actually cared about their schooling. 

Danny had actually forgotten that all of this had happened in just one day. The thought was a little jarring if Danny was being honest with himself. He wasn’t sure what to tell Dick, on one hand he was just asking about school on the other… no he wasn’t going to think about what happened right now. Just the thought caused phantom volts to go through his body like he was reliving the accident. He felt a nudge to his foot from the right and looked up to see Damian giving him a quizzical look. He cleared his throat and looked back over to Dick who was giving him the same kind of look. 

“I-I’m, uh… school was fine, didn’t learn much since school just started,” He eventually decided to say after stumbling on his words a little. 

“Dash isn’t picking on you again this year is he?” Dick asked with a concerned look on his face. 

Danny wished it was just Dash, the pain he felt from the portal was a thousand times worse than anything the bullying blond could pull. If it was just Dash, Danny could have just laughed it off and forgotten it probably, but it wasn’t just Dash and Danny couldn’t help but take a deep breath trying to gather his thoughts and calm himself.

He startled as he felt a hand on his knee, he looked to his left to see Jazz giving him a look of sympathy as she rubs her thumb comfortingly on his knee. She then spoke, “Danny you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, Okay?”

Danny gave her a small nod, a small smile on his face. 

Before a new topic could be discussed Alfred arrived with their food and began serving them. Danny loved the food the old butler cooked especially since he was able to do so in a kitchen that wasn’t contaminated. Alfred did his best to make sure everyone was served food to their liking, as long as it was a balanced meal at the end of the day the elderly butler would serve just about anything you’d request.

Danny picked up his fork to begin on his salad, however when he tried to push the fork into the lettuce his hand felt a cooling sensation with pins and needles and his fork went through his hand. He stared at his hand for a moment wondering what just happened. He then picked up his fork to try again and was able to get a mouth full, but when he went for a second bite it happened again, his fork clanging against the bowl again.

“Something wrong Danny? You're staring at your hand weird,” Danny heard Dick speaking and looked up to see Dick staring at him giving him an odd look. 

Danny couldn’t help but rub his neck nervously with his other hand, he hoped to get ahold of whatever this was so no one noticed. Though knowing his luck everyone probably did notice, over the years he and Jazz both noticed that the Wayne family was much more observant than their media persona’s showed. 

Dinner continued and Danny struggled to eat anything as anything he tried to hold fell through his hand frustratingly and Danny couldn’t help but get agitated. 

Eventually his glass he was holding slipped through his hand and tumbled onto the floor shattering into a thousand pieces. Danny let out a frustrated sigh as he stared at the mess he made. 

Before he could stand to clean up Alfred appeared by his side with a dustpan and broom and began cleaning it up, “are you still feeling unwell Master Daniel? Perhaps you should retire for the evening, I will attend to this mess.” Danny begrudgingly nodded his head and made his way out of the room.

He wasn’t alone for long as Damian and Jazz tailed him out of the room. 

“What was that? It looked like your spoon was going through your hand,” Jazz asked after they were a ways from the dinning room.

“Jazz, honestly I don’t know, it felt cold and then anything I tried holding fell through my hand.” Danny brushed his bangs away from his forehead and they dropped back into his face as he dropped his hands back down to his side.

The walk went silent after that, although it didn’t stay for long as Danny felt the cooling sensation again but this time through his whole body, he let out a yelp as he felt his body sink into the floor.

Damian and Jazz looked at him with panic but as they grabbed at his arms or his hands to pull him back up they went through him just as the spoon and apparently the ground now. 

He let out a panicked yell as the floor swallowed him whole, so now he was sinking further down further into the earth. What was going to happen to him? Would he ever find his way back up?

Thankfully he didn’t have to wait long as the cooling sensation left and as gravity took hold of him again he fell. Apparently there was a cave under the manor and he was able to turn back into solid as he felt air again. There was no way he was surviving this, even with new weird powers now was when he’d get impaled by spikes right?

The cave was too dark to make out much but Danny thought he might have seen a computer with several monitors. That didn’t matter now as he finally landed, and he grunted as he landed on a person who also grunted as having a teen land on you couldn’t be the most comfortable.

He knew he was in big trouble when he realized who he landed on, “Batman??”

[mikakuna]

the way people care more about jason fighting tim than like any other rogue fighting tim during his robin run is...!

"they're brothers! jason is so horrible to attack his little brother."

aside from the obvious twinkification of tim, stop pushing the family narrative on two people who did not see each other as siblings at that moment.

[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

[psalmsofpsychosis]

not gonna lie homos and homies, there's something incredibly, incredibly depressing about Batmanverse and the concept of Batjokes in particular, and it's not the murder murder stab stab death plots.

It's the collective unmentioned canon agreement around these characters never being able to escape the confinements of their narrative.

they get pushed to the very edges of their predefined thresholds, they toe the lines of their stories, they poke it and probe it and sometimes even flirt with the possibility of crossing the bounds of their narratives, but they never break throught the structure. they never go over the line, always sorta of wiggling in place; batjokes in particular is the most enticing and intriguing stagnant 85+ years story i have ever seen.

There are unspoken rules around who Batman is, what he will and will not do, and those rules are rarely questioned, if ever. No matter what he does, he cannot be in love with a man, and he cannot ever love Joker in particular. He cannot experience mental and emotional peace. he cannot kill and he cannot show sincere emotional vulnurability, he cannot experience his love in an open and unashamed way. His narrative thresholds confine him to a socially sanctioned image that is meant to be familiar and tangible to the average straight dude, and it's quite frankly exhausting to witness. Whatever happens to Batman's story, he never arrives at physical emotional or mental peace and on a foundational level his tale never changes, not really. You can almost feel it when he constantly bumps into this unspoken narrative rules and stops in his tracks, each and every goddamn time, for 85+ years. It's like a keyed up nutcracker toy soldier bumping into a wall, stumble back two steps, bump into the walls, stumble back two steps, bumpt into the wall,

As someone who loves stories that love to question their own narrative points and break through them and do something different, staring at Batmanverse comics for too long at a time lowkey feels heartbreaking, nothing ever truly changes in this bitch.

[minzart]

Btw I loved krypto the superdog animation and the hyenas with bathound where, unsurprisingly, my favorites

[radiance1]

Hey ya'll back on my bullshit again!

So this time if this idea doesn't get outta control it'll mostly be focusing on Danny and Bruce!!!

Danny is gonna be younger here by the by, maybe like 10.

So after being accidently hit by on of his parents inventions, big ol' Danny-o sometimes gets these dreams about some random ass old man. He doesn't know who he is, nor why this is happening, but he mostly just goes along with it.

Most of the time they just spend the time there in silence, not really doing anything and just existing around each other until one day Danny let slip that he fights people on the regular.

Most of them being other people in a dream, who he assumes are ghosts. He manages to hold his own decently well, even without powers of his own.

Plus, he can even take his parents stuff into the dreams!

Sure he sometimes loses, but that's really not the point here.

but the man does not like it.

Danny doesn't get it, considering he can kick ass, take names, and it is just a dream after all.

So imagine his surprise when that old man, who he's known for a while and dare he say can perhaps even be called a friend, takes a fighting stance and tells him to come at him.

He asked if the guy was sure, the guy nodded, he told him not to regret anything when he gets his ass handed to him, the guy said nothing and motioned for him to attack and Danny went for it.

Not even a few moments later and he's insanely embarrassed he got his ass handed to him. Like, it was over before he even began and Danny didn't even know what happened.

So of course, being who he is and knowing this guy for a while. He very obviously asks the guy to teach him his ways and he must be insanely charming because the guy didn't even hesitate to say yes!

It was like, a few more dreams in that he finally asked for the guy's name. He said his name was Bruce, and that he was traveling the world and learning every martial art currently still existing.

Danny instantly grew to like him more after that. Sure, his mom's a blackbelt, and sure she taught him to kick major ass before she got dragged into her inventions, and sure she doesn't train with him or spend time with him anymore because of that-

Wait he's rambling.

Anyways.

So the guy asked him if he was taught martial arts, since he does have a pretty solid foundation. Danny said yes and then talked about his mom, because anytime to gush about how much of a badass she is, is one he's gonna take.

Somewhere along that rant it turned into a rant about his parents, and then their inventions, and then it turned into his sister and then it turned towards the ghosts he fights and how he beats them up really well and how his parents inventions really helps and then it turned towards that one time he got hit by one of his parents inventions which is why all these people appear in these dreams-

Bruce motions for him to stop, and then asks what Danny means by being hit by one of his parents inventions.

Danny stops, then gets real sheepish about it. Because really, it was kinda technically his fault that he got hit since he did sneak into his parents lab while they were out and accidently messed with something unfinished.

Bruce asked how Danny got into their lab. To which Danny said pretty easily since he already cracked the passcode for their 'secret' lab, and yea sure they didn't know that and sure he shouldn't really be in there in the first place without them knowing, but it's not like they know where he is most of the time.

Then Danny gets frustrated and say that they changed the passcode, so now he has to crack it again and he can't ask Jazz for help since she's too busy with school, but it's not like he really needs her help because he's plenty smart on his own but it would be nice-

Bruce doesn't say anything while Danny takes the conversation to an entirely different place than it started. His face only growing dark, as he quietly listened to Danny now going on about how to not fight a living jelly because they are vicious.

Which is another cause for concern, frankly.

Bruce has noticed that Danny has a tendency to just. Ramble about random things for hours if he isn't stopped, and is extremely surprised when Bruce actually listened whenever he stopped to take a breath.

He does wonder who exactly this boy's parents are however.

So then this keeps going on for a while, with Danny and Bruce either training martial arts or just talking (more so Danny rambling on about his day or anything really and Bruce just listening and commenting here or there.) and existing.

Then when Danny turned 11 he tells Bruce about how his parents got this huuuuuge mysterious donation that let them buy parts to make this super-mega-awesome invention of theirs that's supposed to be some kind of portal or something.

Which Danny is a bit jealous over because his parents are spending less and less time out of their lab, but that's besides the point.

Sometimes he also shows Bruce blueprints on things his parents worked on and then left unfinished because they lost interest in it or just don't see how they can work it out.

And Bruce, being the super-mega-awesome-nice friend he is, looked them over and then tweaked them a bit here and there and then they just worked!

(Also yes, he did indeed crack his parents code again and stole some of their parts to make said inventions but hey what they don't know won't hurt them and plus he can take it into his dreams.)

Some very, very rare times, Danny showed Bruce some of his own blueprints that he tried to make. Because if he showed an interest in inventions then maybe, just, maybe he'll be able to spend more time with his parents.

But anyways.

He showed them to Bruce, and they kinda just sat there figuring out how to make Danny's dreams become a reality. Then over time Danny just, sorta stopped showing his parents blueprints and more of his own.

They still trained of course, but it was really cool to just, tell someone his ideas and for them to actually listen.

And sure, he could tell his mom and dad but they have the attention span of a goldfish when it isn't anything ghost related (no hate indented but it's just facts.) and Jazz is really busy with her own life too and also a bit... smothery.

And he didn't really have any other friends since no one really wants to take to the child of the resident ghost hunters. There is those two friends he knows online, but he doesn't wanna ruin anything by just showing blueprints.

So telling Bruce was something he took readily too after he reacted well the first time he showed him his first blueprint. Hell, it didn't even need to be a blueprint for a weapon, it could be anything and Bruce would still find a way to help him.

Eventually it shifted from Blueprints of weapons and household items, to ones of spaceships and stuff meant to mimic the stars. Then conversation shifted from everyday stuff to space and it's many wonders and how cool it is.

Danny talked, and Bruce listened.

Bruce trained him, and so Danny fought.

Danny trusted an adult for once in his life, and Bruce gave him every reason to trust him.

Bruce helped Danny with his ideas, and in turn Danny gave him a distraction from most of the pain and worry of what's happening in Gotham until he can go back and help.

Danny found a place he can just let go in, and Bruce allowed him that space.

Which made it oh so terrible whenever he lost everything.

Well, not everything. But it sure felt that way to Danny.

It was when he turned 12, telling his friends online about how his parents completed this craaaaazy new invention that apparently should open a portal to, somewhere he isn't sure.

One of his friends told him he should totally go check it out and tell them if it works or not. It didn't really take much convincing since he also wanted to check it out too.

The pain was overwhelming.

Feeling his body be defiled by electricity and then slowly disintegrate while he could still feel everything and then not feeling anything from his limbs after and yet still being alive and then suddenly feeling again after he couldn't was so overwhelming and the pain was still there and-

Nobody was in the house at the time, his parents out for the day and Jazz hanging out with her friends. So no one could hear him scream.

Then there he was, in the air trying to remember how to breathe only to realize he wasn't breathing-

Then he dropped to the ground and found he could breathe as air forced itself into his lungs until he started feeling light headed and passed out.

Later when woke up he told his friends that it never worked, and stayed away from it for awhile.

Later when he was asleep he didn't see Bruce anywhere, nor any of those ghosts he fights at all.

He didn't think much of it, maybe Bruce just wasn't sleeping.

He thought the same when a few days past by and still no signs of Bruce.

He distracted himself with fighting the ghosts from his dreams that came from his parents portal that he forces back to the zone.

A single day multiplied as it turned to a week, and then that week turned into weeks and then a month and then that month turned into months-

-And he hasn't seen Bruce in so long that he just doesn't get why he couldn't find him. He searched his dreams, not seeing hide nor hair of Bruce and spent his days awake fighting ghosts since his parents homeschool him even though they spend most of their time in their lab and it's him who homeschools himself and sometimes he has to run from his parents because they also attack and hunt him-

But it doesn't matter.

He kept searching for Bruce until he couldn't. He kept searching past when he couldn't.

Sometimes he couldn't help those few thoughts that creep into his brain whenever he stares up at the ceiling and can't sleep.

That maybe Bruce finally got tired of him and that he doesn't care about him anymore and stopped wishing to meet him and abandoned him for another child who isn't like him and can actually be normal and isn't a freak who can't do anything right.

Sometimes Danny lets himself stew in those thoughts.

Danny doesn't like thinking about them that much.

Bruce will be back. He just has to wait. Friends wait for their friends and besides he already has two other friends and yea he can't meet up with them in person but still.

It was when he encountered this one ghost while going past the boundaries of his own dream in search of his Friend that he was told that Bruce wasn't ever going to come to his dream, that he can't come back to his dream anymore.

Now, Danny is smart. Maybe not as smart as his parents or Jazz, but he has something in his brain and he knows that what this ghost is saying is probably true and that he should just accept but-

He just can't.

He doesn't want to.

Bruce couldn't have abandoned him. He's probably still looking for him right now in his own dream and Danny would be such a bad friend if he didn't continue looking.

But then he was told that Bruce wasn't looking for him, because this Bruce person never existed in the first place.

Danny didn't want to believe it. He couldn't.

Bruce wasn't a figment of his imagination.

He just couldn't be.

Bruce was his friend. He's his friend and he was real.

So obviously this ghost is lying.

Until he found out that he wasn't because this ghost knows the dreams of every person on the planet and the Bruce that he knows was never one of them and Danny.

Danny couldn't take that.

This ghost was lying. he just had to be. Bruce is his friend and he's real and he's been with him for so long and he couldn't help him if he wasn't real and everything they've done together was real.

Bruce was real.

Bruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was realBruce was real

He woke up.

He didn't move. Didn't do anything. He just stared up at the ceiling of his room while light shined from beyond his curtains and he should be getting up but he just can't and then it got dark and little stars and planets and blackholes and supernova's played across his ceiling and it was the first thing he and Bruce made together and-

He started crying. He couldn't even sob. He just laid there, watching his pride and joy dance across the ceiling of his room for minutes and then hours.

When the first ray of sunrise tried to peek throw his window was when he finally managed to drag himself out of bed. He took the invention and one of his parent's bat, went to the back of the house and hit it again and again until he felt better.

He didn't feel better.

He did the same to everything else he and Bruce made.

Nothing ever made him feel better.

So instead, he threw himself into fighting all the ghosts that came through the portal. Every fight marked victory, and victory meant injuries because that's just how things worked.

Victories used to give him joy. Because he could go back to Bruce and tell him everything about it and get praised for it.

Now he can't.

He can't tell his parents. He can't tell his sister. He can't tell anyone.

Nobody cares about him anymore, and that's just sometime he has to accept now.

[allgremlinart]

the post-canon jetko dynamic I'm crafting is like. ok so these two men who both feel things WAY too much can function well when separated [either through distraction/hierarchy of priority/conscious refusal to acknowledge certain feelings about certain people (at least on Jet's end, Zuko isn't emotionally savvy enough to CONSCIOUSLY repress his emotions)] but when you put them in a room together its like splitting the atom. like you have a certain amount of time before they cant ignore each other any longer.

THAT or they just slot back together like nothing has happened or no time has elapsed at all. maybe they make a creepily professional and efficient duo. maybe the smooth working-together (a la "we made a good team" Ferry dynamic) is like. the Prelude to the eruption. What I'm saying is they both have the POTENTIAL to be incredibly possessive people but would also never admit to it so instead they'd just have to have crazy reunion sex all the time.

[cluescorner]

Tim Drake has a weird fucking function

The thing about Tim that I find unique is that his life became SO MUCH WORSE after joining the heroing thing. Everybody else had a mid-to-shit life before becoming a hero/living with Bruce and mostly everybody (except Jason who LITERALLY DIED) had their life improved by being a hero/being Bruce's kid (or at least it is typically portrayed as such.

Tim had the exact opposite trajectory. His life wasn't perfect before he became Robin, but like...multi-millionaire/billionaire (canon is unclear, but he's within Gotham's upper-strata) kid with both natural intelligence + charisma and a bright future ahead of him and parents who were emotionally neglectful but nothing really beyond that (which is also a form of trauma, but all of the info we have indicates that the Drakes were no Arthur Brown or David Cain) and he still had other people he could rely on outside of them. He went to boarding school, which could be something horrible OR something amazing depending on your own thoughts/experiences. I grew up having a commute where we'd drive past a really pretty and rich af boarding school that literally everybody in our area DREAMED of going to, so to me the idea of going to boarding school sounds incredible but mileage may vary. Tim seems like the type of kid who would thrive in that though. Based on what we know in canon atm, his pre-robin life was fucking amazing.

And then he starts being the sidekick and working towards becoming Robin. His parents immediately get kidnapped and poison themselves through drinking tainted water; his mom dies and his dad is in a coma. This is not the fault of Robin, but Tim himself muses about the idea that Robin and dead parents are linked: to become Robin completely, you must lose your parents. And with how fate/destiny/canon events can operate in comics universes, maybe he isn't that far off. Once his dad wakes up, their relationship becomes strained as the man grieves the loss of his wife and realizes that his son has been doing vigilantism as a hobby. It is unclear exactly how good of a parent Jack was before the incident, but the results of Tim's involvement with the Robin mantle has definitely made things worse between father and son. Jack will also die within quick succession of 2 of Tim's best friends, his girlfriend, and his other father. He will also effectively lose like 1/2 his loved ones in the fallout of all of that mess including: his older brother, his other friends (both civilian and superhero), and the stepmother with whom he shared what I would argue is his best parent-child relationship (Dana also may have died, but it's left unclear). He has stopped pursuing higher education (the moment he even applied for college he 'died', and it seems he hasn't made another attempt since) and if he wasn’t a major focus of the media before he sure is now. He tries to quit briefly (in fact he initially was planning on quitting once someone more suited came along) and cannot bring himself to do so. Even when he does manage to get away for a while, his superhero life impacts the pre-robin life he is trying to go back to. Leaving is an impossibility, this is all there is for him now. He also isn’t allowed to make mistakes anymore, not when lives hang in the balance. The one who enforces that impossible standard the most (besides Bruce depending on who's writing) is himself. He’s got TRAUMA now and people want to hurt him constantly. He is constantly questioning his own sanity and morality and place in the world. He almost dies like every month. Tim grows colder and less grounded, he is becoming both a better and a worse version of himself at the same time. He’s saving lives in the same few issues as he’s setting up a Saw movie plot for the man who killed his father. He is haunted by the ghosts of his past and the looming figure of his future. His life becomes SO MUCH FUCKING WORSE after he becomes Robin. Some of it is the fault of others, some is the fault of circumstance, and some of it is due to his own actions. But basically all of Tim's worst traumas and life-changing moments are either tied to or caused by Robin. Dick's parents would still be dead, Jason would still be living on the streets, Stephanie would still have Arthur Brown for a father and a lot of other things that deserve their own posts/IDK if they've been retconned, and Damian would still have been raised in the eco-cult where death is a constant. Those are life circumstances that occur without the involvement of Robin, the only one who even needs Bruce involved at all in their series of events is Damian. But Tim? All of what is considered his 'worst' moments occur after he assumes the role.

This idea is what I find the coolest and most fascinating about Tim as a character. Being a hero is usually portrayed as either an outright awesome thing or a righteous duty that one must fulfill or (maybe in a grimmer and/or more grounded story) a sacrifice to your interpersonal relationships/mental health that is made for the greater good. For Tim, being a superhero actively ruined his life (both because of the general circumstances surrounding being a kid vigilante and the choices he made as part of that role). It's never portrayed that way in canon because we need to come out of issues going 'wow being a superhero is so cool! I'm gonna buy the next issue!', but when you just look at Tim's life literally everything really bad that we know of occurred after he became Robin.