#also i love the idea of batman planning for fights long after his death. knowing freeze is gonna be a problem for a long time

[to-the-batcomputer]

Artifacts is a CRAZY episode of batman 2004. thinking about the future of batman always makes me a little upset... as far as that goes though, that was a decent ending

[charlietheepicwriter7]

Finally reading "Under the Red Hood" for my story, Dick Grayson V Gotham and some notes about what exactly happens here:

Jason's helmet really is a whole ass red circle with eyes, isn't it.

There's constant internal monologue about how much Batman cares about his kids. From Alfred and from Batman.

There's a whole ass woman who I have never seen referenced before called Onyx? Who's apparently the "only other hero allowed in the whole of gotham... other than catwoman".

Bruce recognizing Jason just based on how he fights and plans is beautiful, even if bruce doesn't believe it yet.

Superman's over here flirting with Bruce, going "we could have gotten tickets to the theater if you'd called ahead 😘😘" while bruce is traveling all over the world to figure out if his baby boy might be back from the dead.

Lowkey sad that Jason doesn't have the skunk stripe. I know it was fanon that occasionally became canon, but I still like it.

Wow, this Robin!Jason flashback is really giving us good views of the scaly panties, >:P

So, during the flashback, Bruce brings up the idea that Jason has a "mean streak" in comparison to how Dick was. But it's not that Jason was "mean" and Dick "nice"--Dick has a massive temper, even if canon rarely allows him to acknowledge it--but with Dick... Everytime he was Robin, I think he was still in the mindset of "performer". There was a bit more disconnect between him and the criminals of Gotham, because the fights were more like acts. Jason performs too, but he's very personal about it. This is his city, he's taking all these crimes personally and even when he's "performing" it's still Jason Todd, while Dick's Robin is more so a mask. IDK, this is just the vibes I'm picking up.

I really love the panels after Jason blows up the meth lab. The way the colors are... it makes Jason almost look like he's teared up? It's beautiful.

Oh great, Slade's here. No wonder this things so damn long

You know what, Slade? I'm on Black Mask's side here. A nazi and a hyena man? You can find better hired help on Craigslist.

Just finished the fight, and I'm STILL on Black Mask's side. Slade, who the fuck are these losers!?

Yes, Jason baby, kill the nazi!

Jason got them Christmas presents! That's sweet!

Slade, why the FUCK were you here? Did you see Nightwing was in town and go "lol, this'll be funny"?

Black Mask really calling himself Daddy around Jason... wasn't a joke. Huh.

There are some very nice parallels after Jason reveals his identity to Bruce. Bruce was too late to stop Joker's bomb, he was too late to stop the bomb in the meth lab. Bruce was too late to stop his son from getting attacked by a supervillain, but Bruce was faster now, good job! And Bruce never killed his son's killer, and he won't kill Stephanie's killer either. It's like he keeps testing Bruce to see if he really has to go through with his plan with the Joker.

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if Jason's entire beef with Black Mask was because of his part in Stephanie Brown's death.

...I don't really like the idea of Jason calling himself a zombie after Joker did it.

Jason wiped the smile off his face, goddamn! (And don't think I didn't notice how similar Joker and Jason's laughs are, comic artists. Sure, maybe that's just how cackling laughter was drawn back then, but in literature, that smells like foiling).

...THIS is when Bludhaven gets destroyed!? Really???

Also, what is this depiction of Bludhaven just... being across a river? This feels unreasonably close, why hasn't Gotham just eaten Bludhaven at this point?

IT'S A NUKE???

THEY ARE LOOKING DIRECTLY AT IT, HOW ARE THEIR EYES NOT GETTING BURNT OUT OF THEIR HEADS

I'm just realizing how many explosives there are in this series. Between the bombs the Bats use, and the bombs Jason sets up, and... what happened to bludhaven. That, kids, is what we call a theme!

Bruce really is sympathetic in this. It's subtle, which is good, I don't think anyone would have appreciated the author blaring out "BATMAN IS IN THE RIGHT, HE'S THE BEST GUY, FUCK JASON."

And Jason is getting more and more unhinged as the fight progresses.

You know, it's occurring to me that this all could have been prevented if New Jersey had the death penalty. There's no way Joker could have gotten the insanity plea so many times if they could put him in the ground for good.

...I wonder if Batman votes to reinstate the death penalty?

"But why... why on God's earth--??! Is he still alive!!??" Is just... such a good reveal. Such a good line. No wonder we're all so fixated on this character, omg.

Oh. This is why Jason thinks Batman doesn't love him.

It's the lack of reciprocation. Jason sees "killing the Joker after he killed you" as an act of love. Batman cannot provide that act, so Jason sees that refusal as proof he is unloved.

The funniest Joker's ever been:

Oh, the batarang moment. Oh no.

Oh no oh no oh no

I still feel like resurrection via Superboy punching the universe hard is still a cop-out reason why Jason's alive, but the line "Until time decided to set things right." is speaking to me.

Oh god, the buried alive scene is brutal.

Okay, so Jason came back fully sane, he definitely knew what he was doing breaking out of the coffin, but his injuries that were unhealed and getting hit by a fucking car are what caused his catatonic state. He didn't just wake up not all there, that happened because no one was looking out for him.

Okay, so 6 months dead, about a... year in a coma. It says a year for his time catatonic on the streets, then a year with Talia, still catatonic... that's three and a half years, Jason really started being the Red Hood... like what, a few weeks after he got tossed in the Pits?

...I thought the pits were green. They look gold in my version of these comics, is that normal?

EW, WHY'D SHE KISS HIM

Also, there was no brainwashing this boy, Talia literally just said "you remain avenged" and it sent Jason on this whole murder spiral, she didn't do shit

Except kiss him. which, EW

Alright, good night everybody!

[aceissomunster]

Clearing up misconceptions and such about Tim Drake for all you non-comic reading fic-writers and people that just don’t know. Mostly chronologically

Under the cut, cause this is gonna get long ,,

While Tim isn’t my favorite batfamily member, or even robin in particular, he is the one whose comics i’ve read the most of and know the most about.

If i’m wrong about any of this, please let me know!

- Tim’s parents weren’t especially abusive. they were neglectful, as in leaving him with the nannies and sending him off to boarding schools when they were out of the country, which was frequently. also, they did love him. i don’t even know where people got the idea that they didn’t.

- Tim did not stalk the bats, until he noticed Batman’s grief-driven violence and decided to follow, photograph, and gather evidence

- he also didn’t just go up to Bruce and ask to be Robin, he actually tracked down Dick Grayson to the circus and tried to convince him to come back to being Robin. Dick drove him to the manor, and then found out Tim’s whole story.

then Alfred let him down into the cave, Batman and Nightwing got captured by Two-Face, and Alfred practically threw the Robin costume at him and they went to save Batman and Nightwing. THEN Tim told Bruce that he was Robin. (— A Lonely Place of Dying, Tim’s 13)

- Before even becoming Robin fully, Tim’s parents were kidnapped and held for ransom in Haiti by a man called the “Obeah Man” (“Obeah” translates roughly to black magic, I’m pretty sure). Batman finds them by following the people that were going to pay the ransom, and they were being kept in some underground place? I’m not sure, but it was really really hot. There’s a pitcher of water, and Janet drinks it, and Jack starts drinking it, and Janet dies near-instantly, and Batman smacks the water out of Jack’s hands but Jack still ends up completely paralyzed and put into a coma. (— Rite of Passage)

- Fun fact: Janet’s funeral was Christmas eve

- it’s only after his mother’s death and father’s hospitalization that he goes to Paris (keep in mind, Batman did not force him to go, Tim wanted to!) to train under Rahul Lama, and then with Lady Shiva. (Robin mini 1)

- he doesn’t actually get trained by Shiva in the run, but it’s vaguely implied

- Fun fact: Tim actually kills Lady Shiva once (i forget what the storyline’s called, but it’s somewhere in Robin 52-55 ish)

- OH YEAH, Jason Todd was NOT Tim’s Robin. Tim Drake has been Dick Grayson’s #1 fanboy since the circus. He could not care less about Jason

- Fun fact: early in his Robin career, he hallucinated Dick and Jason as Robin (even though Dick was very alive) giving him advice

- He had friends outside of YJ. Like his best friend Sebastian Ives, his friend Callie, his (ex) girlfriend Ariana Dzerchenko, and a good bit more.

- he started dating Steph as Robin while dating Ariana as Tim, but Ari and Tim broke up like the day after Steph and Tim got together (not because of Steph, Ari didn’t know Tim was Robin, but because of other stuff that happened. go read Robin.)

- fun fact: Tim actually didn’t have contingency plans for Young Justice/the Titans, because he actually trusts them, unlike his mentor. (this is mentioned sometime in Young Justice 1998, but I don’t remember the issue)

- Tim’s 16 (not 14 or whatever THOSE tim stans try to say) and on the Teen Titans, when the fabled and constantly over-exaggerated “Titan’s Tower incident” occurs. Tim is fully suited up in the Robin suit, he puts up a good fight with Jason (who is in an adult-sized Robin costume, by the way) until he gets knocked out. This fight leaves no lasting injuries on Tim. (Teen Titans (2003) #29)

- the whole Jason slitting his throat thing happens in a different comic. (Batman: Hush, i’m pretty sure, correct me if i’m wrong)

- Tim also kicks Jason in the nuts the next time he sees him, so there’s not really any hard feelings there.

- Tim’s dad finds out he’s Robin and makes him quit, and Steph becomes Robin. Then Steph dies and Tim’s school gets shot up and he becomes Robin again.

- Tim leaves Jack alone at their home to go find the man sent to kill him. While he’s gone, the man (Captain Boomerang) kills Jack. (— Identity Crisis #5)

- after Jack dies, Bruce offers to adopt Tim and Tim turns him down and creates a fake uncle. Batman finds out the uncle is fake, commends him on his good job of making a fake uncle, and helps him make it better. Bruce later offers again to adopt Tim and he accepts. Damian literally shows up like the very issue after this in Batman

- Kon dies, then Bart dies a bit after. And, not to hate on yall TimKon shippers out there, but he also planned to clone Bart, and also in TT03 like 50-53ish, when him and the other Titans run into their future evil selves again, their Superman (Kon) and Flash (Bart) are clones.

- All those deaths happen relatively close together and in that order, I think, when Tim’s 16-17. But comic timelines are weird, like how Tim was 15 when the Quake hit and for the year-long duration of No Man’s Land (from New Year’s to New Year’s), he stays 15.

- When Bruce “dies” and Dick (Batman) makes Damian Robin. Damian needs guidance, and Dick wants him and Tim to be equals. Dick had good intentions and did the right thing! He just didn’t have the best execution.

- When Tim finds the painting and tells Dick about it, Dick DOES NOT THREATEN TO SEND HIM TO ARKHAM. He, reasonably (considering all the losses Tim has just faced) assumes Tim needs mental help and grief counseling, and recommends him a therapist in Metropolis.

- Tim decides to just go find evidence that Bruce isn’t dead by himself, and steals the Red Robin suit and runs off without even telling Alfred (Red Robin)

- Ra’s al Ghul sends people to kill Tim at first, but Tim obviously doesn’t die and breaks Pru’s nose twice. Eventually and reluctantly, Tim accepts the League’s help and resources.

- Tim finds his best piece of evidence in a cave in the desert with Pru, Z, and Owens. right after leaving the cave, an assassin attacks them, killing Z and Owens, slitting Pru’s throat, and stabbing Tim. Tim, ACTIVELY BLEEDING OUT, brings himself and Pru to the car they used to get there, drives to a hotel, CLIMBS UP THE BUILDING TO ONE OF THE TOP FLOORS WITH PRU WHILE THEY ARE BOTH BLEEDING OUT, and passes out on the bed, where Tam Fox (sent by Lucius to go find Tim) finds them. and so do a bunch of ninjas.

- Tim had to have his spleen removed because it was kebabed with a sword and was going to rupture. Ra’s also does NOT keep it in a jar.

- during the whole LOA part of RR, Ra’s is NOT preying on Tim. there is NO ROMANCE THERE. (no offense if you see it or think it’s implied, but to me it’s just really not?) its just RESPECT.

- with the whole bases exploding thing, its because the Council of Spiders was there and also he just doesn’t like the LOA. he gave them like 15 seconds to get out, obviously all the assassins managed to get out of the massive, complex bases in 15 seconds. (comic logic: if it’s not specified that it did kill them, then it didn’t.)

- the whole “Damian cutting Tim’s line” is also very exaggerated. Damian did it because of Tim’s “Hit List” and because Damian was on it. and Tim fell a few feet, caught himself, then fought Damian (neither won because Dick broke it up because they were literally right in front of THE alley.)

- not really a timeline thing, but in general, tim is VERY against murder. Part of the reason for this is Batman’s morals, which he built his own around, sure. But I think an even BIGGER part of his moral code is just to not become evil future gun Batman. And evil future gun Batman has no qualms against murder, he even killed Damian.

that’s pretty much the main stuff i wanted to touch on. LMK if i should add anything else or if i got anything wrong, thanks!!

No hate if u use the fanon stuff btw, i just know that a lot of people don’t read the comics and don’t know the actual information.

If you want pictures of some of these events from the comics, just lmk and I’ll provide

[on-leatheredwings]

i've found your account only a few days ago but ever since then I've been STUCK here rereading your fanfics, especially ones with damian. i wasn't even a dc fan (heard about some stuf, watched some films and cartoons, but that's it) but now im reading comics since im Obsessed and need more batboys in my life (rip my productivity😔)

Anyway, after Sleepover i'm curious what will Bruce (and maybe even Thalia) think of batboys strange behaviour towards reader. He's smart, so he definitely notices it early on, but how he'll react....

I can see him being weirded out (like he was by Jason's anger issues, before his death), but he also can be an enabler, since Robin (literaly any of them) had a hard life, so if those relationships can help him why not pretend that everything is normal? you'll be safer in a Wayne's Manor anyway

All in all, thanks for a new hyperfixation 💞💞

P.s. About games:

1. Boyfriend to death 1&2 - since you're into yanderes you might want to check this game out. I prefer the second game, but the first is also fun. But beware the trigger warnings!!

2. Long live the Queen - more of a raising sim than dating sim but you still can romance some guys and girls.

,3. Hatoful Boyfriend - mostly a comedy, but there is a yandere.

4. The Royal Trap - it's been a long time since i played it, but it used to be one of my favorites so i'll just mention it.

5. Higurashi - once again not really a romance sim, but its an interesting horror mixed with a slice of life

;A; AWWWW THANK YOU IM SO HAPPY YOU LIKE MY STUFF.... THAT MAKES ONE OF US GIJSDOFAFGHFOJDSD

and yes yes get into DC!!! (girl who hasnt even read a full run since like. injustice)

damn now you got me thinking and excited. incoming spiel

i agree entirely about bruce just knowing how Bad things can get, so to make things simpler, he's like "yes, your darling(s) can stay in the manor, boys. 🙄"

mmm yes..... when it comes to bruce noticing the batboys are yandere, i think it's always sinfully delightful to just have him be reluctantly okay with it. 😈 it's also easier narratively ngl but i also like the idea that the batfam is all just corrupted.

bruce's thoughts are that they (his sons) fight for vengeance and justice but this is where they could use some leeway.... we all need our vice... they fight so hard for gotham, they deserve a little treat (getting rid of your human rights)... it's very "Dad who wants his sons to have happiness even if its not healthy" of him. in fics where bruce is a yandere, well, he's the exact same way so he can't judge. although if that's the case, i like the idea of bruce just being like "yes what we do isn't right. let's not talk about it. just don't kill <3"

still wondering what i like more. a yan!bruce who's self aware what he's doing is wrong but he just refuses to think about it. or a yan!bruce that justifies it all because of his paranoia, Tower of Babel style (if you don't know, that's when it's revealed batman has plans to subdue/kill the justice league just in case they go rogue.)

for the batboys depends on their personality... for damian, he's so resolute in things that i prefer when he just believes 100% what he's doing is okay, if not actually righteous. ^_^

hmmm talia.... I'M STILL UNSURE HOW I PREFER THAT AS WELL... i think talia being a you-arent-good-enough-for-my-son mom is a little cliche but also. she kinda would say that. you'd have to prove your worth somehow but idk how tf darling would do that LOL. in the end, i think talia is just relieved/comforted that her son indeed feels desire and wants love and will continue the family legacy (regardless if youre afab/can biologically have children.)

no THANK YOU FOR THE ASK!!! AND THANKS FOR RECS!!!! heheh yeah ive checked out btd and im not averse to the warnings its more like im not that most of into the designs ngl. fox guy seems cute? AND LMAO FUNNY BC IM ON A HIGURASHI REWATCH (never played it tho)

[angelique-of-the-volturi-guard]

You know, I don’t see a lot of discourse about media portrayal of adoption, so I wanted to talk a little about it, Specifically with my own experiences with the choice to adopt. That decision is courtesy of one man alone, and that was Bruce Wayne. Bear in mind, this is strictly through my experiences, I’m not here to speak for everyone, but this is a topic I don’t think we hear enough on, so I wanted to add to it. (This will be a long post so get comfy and read below the cut if you’re interested).

Growing up zillenial, my childhood was defined by Teen Titans and later by The Batman. In particular, the season 4 episode 1 opener of The Batman called “A Matter Of Family” which basically covers Dick Grayson’s transformation into Robin. But in doing so it also covers his adoption by Bruce Wayne after the deaths of his parents. There has never been an episode that made more of an impact on me as a 9, 10, 11 year old child than seeing the portrayal of that adoption. Most adoptions you see in media are the preplanned already looking for a kid kind or the kind that’s already established when you watch the show. This episode was neither. Bruce Wayne didn’t go to the circus planning to adopt a kid. But he saw enough of himself in that kid to recognize that he was capable of meeting the needs of that kid and made that choice right there and then. Bruce paid for the funeral of Dick’s parents. He took him in and gave him a home, knowing exactly what that kind of trauma does to someone, and knowing that he would still have to keep his secret identity a secret. All because of one child that he dared to love immediately.

I cannot overstate what a profound impact this had on me. After Dick leaves his parents’ graves, the following snippet of conversation occurs between Alfred and Bruce:

A: His parents were all the family that boy had.

B: I know. That’s why I’ve decided to take him in as a foster son. If he’ll have me. I was lucky enough to have you to guide me through those dark Days, Alfred. Dick deserves the same.

It’s 4 sentences of dialogue, but it shows so much about Bruce’s intent. He’s not overriding Dick’s free will to take him in where he isn’t wanted. He’s interested in being a guide first because he knows Dick has parents. And he understands the need for Dick to have companionship in his grief, because he knows how isolating it is. He stepped in with that intent and let everything grow from there. He didn’t push it, he didn’t try to buy Dick’s love immediately, and eventually they did form a genuine father-son bond from that foundation.

Was Bruce a perfect parent? Hell no. There’s no such thing. His money could have gotten him a nanny but he didn’t get one. He wanted to raise his children. And he did it without a spouse, though he did have Alfred to help. But when it came to the big issues, those kids went to Bruce. Even in full teen titans slade obsession mode, there was no doubt in my mind that even in the worst of their fighting, Bruce would have been there for Dick regardless of the circumstances. He wasn’t the best at expressing himself but he always showed up for his kids when it came down to it. He put his identity as Batman above that of Bruce Wayne, but he was still a dad first. In a later episode of The Batman (Season 5’s 3rd episode Vertigo) kids start getting Sick, and when Batman confronts the villain with Green Arrow, Dick is affected. The first scene we see of him after getting back to the bat cave is Batman- *Bruce*- Tucking dick under his cape and asking how he’s feeling. He cares about him. And even after Dick is 16 forming the Teen Titans, he still acknowledges Bruce as his father to Slade, even when they fight.

The notion of being able to love someone unconditionally and immediately was a radical idea for 9, 10, 11, and 12 year old me, who grew up in a family before everything kind of family, and ultimately, his story informed me of choices I didn’t know I had. I was raised with the idea of children being a requirement but long believed myself to be incapable of handling pregnancy (Nausea as a sensory issue makes a terrible complication). But Bruce taught me that I did have options, and eventually at around 12 I understood that I wanted to go with Adult adoption (because I definitely wasn’t good with small children but knew I had a lot of love to give someone). Bruce Wayne adopting Dick Grayson paved the way for me to meet my kiddo a decade later, and I’m so grateful that I had that kind of role model to look up to. Because even after Dick’s adoption, things weren’t perfect for Bruce or Dick, but they loved each other anyway, even if they didn’t express it.

I know there are a lot of challenges prospective parents face that Bruce didn’t have to worry about (Finances, home visits, etc.), but the knowledge that you can just immediately connect with someone on that level changed everything for me, and I know there are plenty of others who feel the same. And if I hadn’t had that portrayal of that unconditional love even when a parent isn’t perfect, I might not be who I am today. God bless every single soul who worked on those shows, and gave me something to emulate. I literally wouldn’t be a mother if Bruce hadn’t been a father first, and I wish more people would acknowledge the kind of positive impact like this that fandoms have on us. It really is everything.

EDIT: texted my kiddo I loved them after posting this because making it reminded me of how much I love them, so this is your reminder to say that to your kids today 💖

[horsechestnut]

I would love details on the Reverse Robin AU idea, I always adore those. (Though I often feel they miss an opportunity by not having Duke be first. Then again I sort of have a "Either its the first four Robins being reversed, or its all of them and thus Duke is first" system. A lot depends on what swerves the story best.) Sorry for the off topic ramble and no pressure to share, but yeah it'd be cool.

One thing I am notably curious about is how you'd handle the pre death relationship between Bruce & Stephanie. Cos so much of their canon one is filtered through his grief over Jason and projection onto her which led to his awful treatment of her, which led to her desperation to please him. Without that death things would probably be a lot more chill.

Still, I could see a similar death happening if Bruce got to up his own ass with trying to play master mind and it all blowing up in his face (Which I insist would have happened with his crime control plan regardless of Stephanie.)

No apology necessary! I love off topic rambles and am prone to doing them myself (see how long this explanation ended up for reference lol).

Here's a link to a sort of fan-fic/sort of explanation I wrote earlier (Though I think you already found it). I would love to flesh it out into a full fic, but I'm not sure that will ever actually happen.

As for Steph and Bruce specifically though, I think there's still tension between them, but it comes from a different place. Spoiler is a rouge agent, a teenager with no training, no oversight, and a personal score to settle, and Bruce isn't really prepared to handle that. Damian came to him pre-trained and if Tim comes second (which I think he should since he's both before and after Steph in canon) he was doing it because he believed it was the right thing to do. Without Jason Bruce has never had to deal with anyone who's completely untrained before, and without Dick he's never had to deal with a personal grudge as motivation (except his own, and he's really not prepared to get into that), so the combination of them in Steph seems far to dangerous to have in the field. Besides, it sets a bad precedent, he can't just let any teenager start running around fighting crime or he'll have a We Are Robin situation on his hands, and he already has a Robin. I don't think it's really personal for him, it just makes logical sense for everyone if she would stop, but for some reason she won't, even after Cluemaster is dead. (She also reminds him a little to much of himself at that age, but he's not going to think about that).

On Steph's end I think things are a little more complicated. I think the indifference would both drive her insane and give her this sort of false hope. No matter what she does it never seems to be enough, but the parts of her Bruce seems to dislike are all related to Spoiler, not Stephanie, which means she can change them! But there are parts of Steph that are baked into Spoiler, which carry over to Robin in turn that she can't get rid of no matter how hard she tries. Plus there are just enough similarities between the way Batman talks to her and the way Arthur did that sometimes it activates her fight instinct when logically she knows she should just listen to him. And unfortunately Bruce doesn't respond well to being snapped at, but he also never seems to hold it against her for more than a day. So Steph just keeps running in this circle and never knows where she stands with Bruce, and in some ways it's better and in some ways it's worse, because at least with her dad she knew where she stood and could stop trying.

I don't like that answer, trust me I wish I could say things between them would be better, but personally I don't think so. Bruce might be nicer about the way he says it, but I think he'd still want Steph to stop and Steph would still think if she tries hard enough he'll realize he was wrong.

Sorry, that got away from me, but anyway, I think the concept of including Duke is interesting! I just don't really know enough about him to know how it would play out or have thoughts on how We Are Robin could happen without Robin.

[house-of-slayterr]

Hello Mx. Writer! It's me again:)

How do you think Maggie and Basil and even V would react to see a Riddler v.s. Victor showdown? Aka how they react to the love triangle?

Hello Anon 🥰 how are you my dear?

Oh god, ok. Victor Vs Ed would be a walking nightmare- but god would I want to watch! Also I know we’re talking our Gotham boys right now, but I can’t help but think about what would happen if Birds of Prey Zsasz tried to fight The Batman’s Ed Nashton… terrifying!

Ed’s love for Y/N is very respect base. She’s a little older then the man and he knows there’s a lot he can learn from her. So perhaps one day when Oswald is really getting on his nerves, Ed goes to Y/N for help with revenge. I mean it’s obvious he’s in love with the boy. Y/N can see it plain as day, so of course she’s going to help the younger villain.

He sees Y/N and Vic fight all the time. Yet they’re still madly in love. Besides he enjoys the thrill of his little feud with her boss. Is Gotham, normal relationships don’t exist. If you haven’t tried to kill each other even once, are you really even a couple? Them spending more time together is totally innocent. Riddler slips in from time to time and tries to crack little jokes and puns at Y/N. He’s not blind, the women is very attractive, but he doesn’t have a death sentence. He knows she’s Victor’s, but a little friendly flirty never hurt anyone right? Besides, he loves to watch her laugh.

And boy is she laughing! You know that classic cackle where you lean back in your chair so far you almost fall, and the other person puts a hand on their shoulder to steady you. That sort of full belly laugh that has a minor insanity behind it. Of course neither of them are sober during these little midnight plotting sessions. That would be no fun. Between the shitty riddles, the booze and plotting to make Oswald so furious the idiot throws a week long tantrum, Y/N feels totally free and giddy. There’s a certain high she gets from strategising a war that’s not serious for once. One where there’s no high stakes, and nobody’s going home having lost something they’d rather not go without.

VICTOR DOES NOT LIKE THIS!! That attention should be his. Her laugh should be from him. Not this low level, criminal wanna be. He looks like a damn leprechaun who sprouted real people legs. And when Victor comes home after a long day, looking for his Wife and finds Nygma with his hand around her. He’s seeing RED!!!!

Despite what everyone thinks, Vic does have impulse control. It’s very little but he does know how to show some self restraint. So he pulls himself away in the moment. Course, he does go out and make it EVERYONE else’s problem. Jimbo better hope he doesn’t run into the assassin on his little rampage. Cause Victor is not afraid to cut anyone down to size who gets in his way. He’s furious, and even if this little friendship was totally innocent, that wouldn’t change fuck all to him. Little does Victor know Y/N planned this. She could help Nygma, while playing the side game to rile her lover up. I mean Vic is way more fun when he’s bloodthirsty. Can’t blame a woman for wanting some excitement, or to be dominated every once in a while.

And Victor is playing right into her plan. If Oswald called a meeting because he’s growing suspicious of this sudden friendship, everyone would have to be there. If there’s one thing Oswald likes, it’s humiliating people. Why do in private what you can do in public instead? Needless to say Maggie and Basil have no clue why they’re being summoned that morning. Oswald’s pretty much locks them all in the room and just glares until someone tells him what he wants to hear. Nobody says anything at first, I mean poor Maggie and Basil have no idea what’s going on. But Victor would be the first to make a move. No words, just a punch straight to Ed’s nose.

He’d pull his gun as the man stumbled back and point it right between his eyes. A challenge to try anything, wether that be making a physical move, or attempting to even speak. Nothing Ed could say would make Victor any less trigger happy.

Maggie is the first to recognise this, and would instantly jump up from here chair.

“Woah, Victor, what the hell are you doing?” She’d ask bewildered.

Victor doesn’t move the gun, just turns his head to look at her and smirks.

“Taking out the trash.”

She’s roll her eyes.

“Nygma, what did you do?” She’s demand.

Maggie might be fairly soft spoken, but everyone could tell there was an urgency in her voice. It was gentle but commanding.

“What makes you think I did anything? The bastards crazy!” Ed defends.

Of course, Basil takes note to the fact that Y/N hasn’t had much of a response to any of this. She never attempted to rise from her seat, and there was no readable emotion on her face. It was suspicious, like she was trying to play innocent. Basil just raises a questioning brow at the woman, who gives no indication she’s going to be revealing anything anytime soon. She just sips from her cup while she watches.

Maggie pinches her brow in annoyance.

“Oswald?”

Despite him very clearly taking a more dominant role in the relationship that they have, Oswald steps forward as if his own mother just called him forward. No hesitation at all. She’d look down at the man.

“Why are we here?”

“They’re plotting something against me, I just know it.” He says, anger in his town.

Maggie hand help the exasperated sigh that leaves her mouth. She’s grown used to playing therapist.

“You’re all hopeless.” She scoffs. “Ok Oz, you’re being paranoid. Nobody in this room is trying to hurt you. Edward, you need to wipe that smug grin off your face, Victor put the damn gun down. And you-“

She’d pause when she gets to Y/N. I mean what can she say, she’s not exactly doing anything. Besides, it would be a weighty punishment if she talked back to the woman. Y/N would raise a challenging brow at the girl, smirking a little.

“Stop being so quiet, it’s creeping me out.” Maggie said, shuddering.

Nothing good ever happened when Y/N was quiet for too long. Quiet meant she was thinking, and hard. Y/N certainly amused by Maggie’s lame attempt at diffusing this situation.

“How can I stop a non-action dear?” Y/N would smirk.

Maggie would just look to Basil for help. He’d just nod his head at Edward, showing he’s the weakest link in the group right now. Maggie would clear her throat and approach.

“Look, Edward, sweetie-“ Riddler does not enjoy her tone right now. “You’re going to have to fess up to what you did sooner or later. Or else none of us are leaving this room. And I swear to you, if I have to miss going to the bookstore with Jim to pick out Bruce a book for his birthday, I am going to rip out your spleen and make you crawl across hot coals to get it back.”

She wasn’t fucking around. If anyone hated plans being interrupted more than Y/N, it’s was Maggie. And plans with Jim none the less, she was currently wanting to scream.

“Wait you’re going book shopping with Jim?” Oswald asks.

Everyone can hear the slight jealousy in his voice. Despite him not sharing affection for the girl in that way, didn’t mean he had to enjoy anyone else showing her said affection.

“Yeah, Bruce has been talking about this specific book for months, only place I can find it is down in the offered. Jim offered to go with me, probably cause he has no idea what to get the kid and wants to leach off my gift. But whatever.”

Not true. Everyone in that room new it’s because Jim didn’t want her alone in the narrows. Always the gentleman, that man. She tried back to Riddler.

“So you’re going to sit down and start talking, or so help me god I’ll just let Victor shoot you.”

Nobody really knew if the girl was being serious.

“I’m serious, I didn’t do anything wrong. Is having friends illegal now?” He questioned.

“Now I get it.” Basil chimed in. “Victor you jealous bastard, you do know your wife is allowed to talk to people right? That’s a basic human right.”

Victor would growl, wanting to shoot the younger man as well.

“Ed, apologise to Victor for making him insecure. Y/N apologise to Oswald for making him paranoid. And Victor, put the fucking gun down before I shove it up your scrawny ass. I’m not fucking around today guys, I don’t have time for this shit.”

“That time of the month?” Victor asked.

Yeah that would be the last straw. Screw an actual showdown between Victor and Edward, right now this was about to be between Victor and God. Of course Victor is going to be holding a grudge on Edward for a long time. Messing up the man’s plans and trying to shoot him at practically any opportunity they have when Maggie’s out of sight. Victor thinks Maggie’s and innocent little kitty cat, and frequently makes fun of the girl for being so soft. But, he’s also seen her shot Sofia with no hesitation because Jim was involved. Honestly he was pretty proud of her for that.

Maggie would turn back to him bewildered.

“What did you just say?”

Oh, she’s bold with it. To talk to the Victor Zsasz like he wasn’t gripping a fully loaded gun right now. Basil would be quick to step in, stepping between his big sis and Victor. Of course he’d love to watch her throw a punch at the guy, but he also knows it’s a fight she can’t win. And nobody in that room is thinking straight. He’d pull her backward into a hug, trapping her against him so she can’t move. She’d put up a valiant effort, kicking and grumbling to try to get out of his arms. Even going so far as to bite him, but he’s undeterred.

“Fine, the two do you kill each other for all I care. And Y/N, I hope whatever you’re planning is worth it.”

She’d convince Basil to let her go.

“I’m getting out of here, Basil you’re on family therapy duty today. Whatever blood is spilt, they’re cleaning it up. If I come back and see a maid doing that shit, I’m setting this entire house on fire with both of them inside.”

She’d walk over to Oswald and kiss him on the cheek. As she does so she swipes the keys from his pocket and walks toward the door. Everyone watches as she goes.

“Be back later, love you all!” She’d say, a clear attempt to try and push down any anger she was feeling.

She didn’t want her mood to be sour when she met up with Jim. As the door shut behind her, everyone just turns to look back at Y/N.

“Oh she’s definitely on her period.” Y/N concluded with a smile. “You heard what the lady said, she wants blood she’d and carnage.” She would sip her drink, even further amused as it dawns on everyone they’ve been used.

“Unbelievable.” Basil says, shaking his head.

But sitting down to watch as Y/N just hands him the full bottle of wine she’d been nursing.

“You’re insane.” Oswald grumbles as he also goes to leave the room.

Victor and Edward just stand there dumbfounded, not sure what to do next. Victor cracks his knuckles.

“I’m going to give you a five minuet head start.” He tells the man in green.

“One- Two-“

Yeah, Edwards supposed to be a genius, so he doesn’t even wait for three before he’s sprinting for the door. He’d have to think of a good way to shake Zsasz. They’d watch after him until he was out of sight. Victor just turns back to his wife.

“You’re not going after him are you?” She asks amused.

“No, that idiot can die tomorrow, you on the other hand-“

And Basil takes that as his que to leave. He knows where all that pent up rage is going to leave. And frankly he doesn’t want to see them hate fuck each other.

An; lol I love sassy Maggie in this chapter. I was just in a silly goofy mood today guys, so so is she. We all know Edward ran to the Sirens club to hide.

@keffirinne @flaysthings @howl-fantasies

[davidlcki]

Babes it’s me again hihi 🫶🏻

This randomly hit me when I saw your profile pic lol I love it: being friends with Bruce but secretly being a villain and him going all soft for you, not wanting it to be true but knowing all along. Smth like “stop this. I know you’re not like this” 😫

DUDE! THANK YOU! YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY COMING IN CLUTCH WITH THESE REQUESTS. I LOVE YOU YOU GENIUS 🫶

all along

pairing: pattinson bruce wayne/ reader

warnings: mild cursing, movie typical violence, bruce in pain. (i think that’s it!!)

words: 1,297

you had known bruce for a long time. long before he was batman and long before you became who you were today. although you two became very good friends, the two of you went very different routes. you were an orphan just like bruce, but you didn’t exactly have money. you lived in the orphanage until it lost its funding, then proceeding to live out most of your teenage years on the streets, which were very rough on you. since then you’ve been angry at the world, it never treated you with kindness, and you swore you’d get revenge on those who deserved it. that’s when you met bruce, and alfred decided to take you in, letting you live in the mansion alongside them. you were there for the creation of batman, but you didn’t agree with how bruce went about things. you didn’t let him know this of course, but you thought those thugs and criminals out there deserved nothing less than death. so, you trained yourself, going out on your own and ending the bastards yourself.

one night in particular, you came home after a night out. it must have been 3 am as you crept through the mansion doors, nearly jumping out of your skin as you’re met with bruce standing before you. as you came into the light, bruce’s stern features softened at the sight of you. he was planning on asking you about his suspicions, but it was now the last thing on his mind. you were covered in blood, and your face and body were littered with bruises.

“Y/N?” bruce’s voice was soft, worried.

“i uh, what are you doing up bruce?” you ask, tilting your head away as he walks up to you carefully. you were lucky you had tucked your suit away into your bag before coming in. now you stood in a white cropped tank top and workout leggings. he brought his hands up to your arms before leaning his face in close to yours, examining the damage.

“what the hell happened.” bruce carefully brushes your hair back before deciding to pull you off to the kitchen where he could clean you up a little.

“got in a bad bar fight. i’m alright bruce, you should see the other girl” you lie, giving a little laugh. bruce looked at you blankly, he saw right through you, but decided to keep quiet and instead tend to your wounds.

“i really wish you’d be more careful. i care about you, a lot, Y/N” bruce stops and looks dead at you. you felt your stomach twist at the genuineness in his words. his eyes were soft, and pleading as he looked into your weirdly cold ones. had your eyes always looked like this?

you didn’t know what to say, so instead you pulled him by the shoulders to your lips. his kisses were desperate, his body engulfing yours as your hands find his hair. bruce was making noises that could make you go weak, noises you most certainly have never heard from him before. suddenly, you pull away from his lips. bruce gives you a look of ‘did i do something wrong?’ as he catches his breath, his eyes half lidded.

“i don’t need you to worry about me, bruce. i can handle myself. i promise.” you were almost begging the man. you knew he had an idea of what was going on, and you also knew he wouldn’t be able to leave something like this alone. instead of responding, bruce seems to tug you impossibly closer by your hips, reconnecting his lips with yours. how long would this moment of bliss last before things went to shit?

not even a week had gone by. probably 5 days since the two of you shared that kiss. on this night, you had found a very well known criminal in gotham. upon capturing him, you decided to drag him to the top of a deserted building, where you could end his life. before you could speak a single word to the now terrified criminal, you heard a voice.

“Y/N” bruce’s rough voice rung out into the night air of gotham. quickly, you turn around, freezing as you stare at him. from the pained look in his eyes, you could tell he knew for a long time.

“bruce. just go. this isn’t any of your business.” you look up at him as he walks over to you slowly, the frown on his face growing as his suspicions were confirmed. you were the villain he had known you were. you look away, it suddenly felt like your heart was being squeezed. it was much easier to do this when you thought bruce had been more clueless. bruce’s hand finds your chin, gently pulling you to look at him.

“stop this. i know you’re not like this.” bruce sounded desperate as he spoke from his heart. he didn’t want to have to go against you. slowly, you snake your hands up his chest and to his face to cradle his cheeks. you stand on your tippy toes, smashing your lips against his. he kisses back without hesitation, and when you pulled away he tried to lean forward for more, before finally getting the hint and pulling back with a shaky breath.

“go. please.” you plead with bruce, but you knew he couldn’t. not with the way his eyes were flickering between you and the criminal who was half conscious on the floor. he gives you that look, and you knew things were going to be different. with an inhale, you sweep his legs out from under him. he was quick to get back up before you could pounce on him, grabbing your shoulders and pressing you harshly against the wall. a shocked noise that you could only describe as a moan leaves you lips, followed by a laugh. it’s all you could do, laugh at the situation before you. it began to rain, and you could feel his shaky breath fanning over your face as he looked down at you. you could tell he didn’t want to do this. unfortunately, that was his weakness. using all your might, you push off the wall and send a kick to his chest that sends him landing on his back. before he could get up this time you were on top of him, your knee pressing down to his neck. he gasps, hands grabbing your leg, but he dosent fight back. if you wanted to, bruce would let you kill him. he didn’t want to hurt you.

“Y/N, plea..se don…don’t do this. you’re… bet…ter than this” bruce’s voice was strained as he pleaded with you in between gasps for air. his grip on your thigh tightens, but you don’t budge.

“this city was never good to me. never good to us. these pieces of shit on the street, hell, even the politicians, no NOT deserve life. they deserve to feel what i, and so many others have felt. i died a long time ago, bruce, and i plan on returning the favor. i’m sorry, but i don’t plan on stopping. i love you, so please, PLEASE stay out of my way.” you didn’t notice the tears that were rolling down your red cheeks as you released your knee from his neck and turned to leave the building, leaving the criminal for bruce to take.

bruce gasps and blinks away the black spots that were beginning to form in his eyes from the lack of air. he closes his eyes tightly as he hears you leave, and he became aware of the tears in his eyes. or was it the rain? he loved you, and he had never been so truly conflicted in his entire life. where would he go from here?

[chamiryokuroi]

Hi Chami! You love Desmond Miles (and Elijah!), so I had a question: if you had do a crossover with Batman, how do you think it would go?

I have thought so much about this idea, as some of you might know I am a crossover lover so obviously once I got into DC I immediately started thinking about crossovers.

I honestly have a few but my favorite is mostly centered around Elijah.

What if after he escapes the Templars and Assassins during his fight with Juno for the Koh-i-noor he decides “Fuck it, fuck the Isu and their grand plans, I’m going to mess with the timeline” so he goes and hunts down the Isu artifacts needed for him to go back in time, problem is, when he finally activates the mess of wires and technology he has created, instead of being sent back in time he is sent to a completely different universe (wakes up in Gotham specifically).

He is understandably angry because what in the fuck? He was supposed to go a few years back, just enough to change things (save his mother) so why is he now in some world where the Isu influence seems to be non-existent and there are honest to god super powered people parading around as superheroes, like right out of a comic book?

Well dang it, he will find a way back to his own world, whatever it takes, and regardless of how many vigilantes get on his way.

Because obviously Batman and company notice the spike in energy resulting from a tear between universes when Elijah arrives, they arrive in scene but by then Eli is long gone, and then a sudden peak on theft starts in the city, thing is, there are no clues as to who is behind it, but whoever it is they’re up to no good, because everything they’re taking is highly advance technology the likes of which could be used to create something to destroy cities (or jump through universes).

That would be more or less the beginning, with the batfam desperately trying to catch Elijah, while the later is using every little assassin related knowledge he knows to get by (he might be going through the bleeding effect as well, you know, just because).

I like this crossover better than if it was Desmond on the Dc universe because Desmond is very much a reluctant hero, he would set one foot in Gotham and immediately go “fuck it, I an fixing this place” he is just like that, is in his genes, but Elijah is different, for me Eli is neither good nor bad, not even a middle point, if he was “good” he would have gone to the assassins after the whole Juno thing, but we know he didnt, he just took a powerful and dangerous artifacts and fucked off into the desert, for me he is selfish but not evil, he has gone through a lot and came out deciding to look after himself first, and that would give way to such interesting interactions with the batfam.

He is not blue, nor red, nor grey, he is a completely different category on his own, one second he would join Luthor to get access to his tech, the next he would be shaking hands with Ra’s to look into the Lazarus pits, and then he would be sending info to the League about something happening somewhere else in the world, but then he would be jumping into Arkham because there seem to be some caves underneath that might be old enough to contain an Isu temple, then he is helping the bats with a smuggling ring, just for him to steal right under their noses an artifact that might or might not be isu related. He would be invited to join the Young Justice just for him to go “why in the fuck would I join your child soldiers team?” Just for him to show up during life or death situations to help because dang it, he might be more isu than most humans, but he also has a ridiculous amount of dna from people who regularly put their lives on the line to help other and once in a while that part of his genetics seems to win over his need to find a way to get back home.

Idk how I would like this au to end, but I have been toying with the idea of Desmond showing up one day, but the thing is that this is not Eli’s dad, this is just a Desmond that fucked around with the Isu artifacts and got send to this universe. Which would be awkward all around because that’s not his dad, but it is some Eli’s dad and dang it he never knew the man but some deep part of him had always wanted to meet him.

[remosdeerica]

Batshit AU Pt #2: The Grandkids

So I mentioned in the last post Batshit AU Pt. #1 that I cover Dick and Jason's kids but since I've been thinking (read: fantasizing) about the future of the Batfam I figured I'd just do a post with ALL the grandkids!

Just a heads up: this is a LONG post.

First we shall start with the Grayson's:

Mar'i and Jake (Jake is not my original name I've seen it pop up in other media- dunno if it's canon in any timeline but I'm going with it).

Mar'i Grayson: Mar'i is the biologically daughter of Dick Grayson and Koriand'r of Tamaran (aka Starfire). Kori is unknowingly pregnant after one last one-night-stand with Dick before going back to her home planet to take over as queen. Unfortunately, because of Kori's sister Komand'r (aka Blackfire) causing civil unrest to try and usurp the thorn from her, Tamaran becomes unsafe for Mar'i as she is Kori's only heir.

-Kor'i goes back to Earth with an infant Mar'i and begrudgingly hands her over to Dick so she can live with him and be safe from Blackfire.

-Kori of course visits while she can but has a lot of responsibilities on Tamaran. When Mar'i is older she is able to go back to Tamaran to visit her mother.

-A few years later when Dick and Barbra get married, Barbra officially adopts Mar'i. Seeing both Kor'i and Barbra as her mothers Mar'i decides so call Kori "Mama" and Barbra "Mom/Mommy".

Jake Grayson: don't have much of an exciting backstory for him. He was basically just an orphaned infant Dick and Barbra decided to adopt after his bio-parents had been murdered.

Now he have the Todd family:

Because I am a heartless monster I decided that since Roy died in the comics without any sign of Lian and Jason was pretty fucked up about it, I would have Jason adopt Lian because Roy wasn't round to take care of her. So this is basically what happened:

Lain Harper-Todd: 1 year or so after Roy's death, Jason is visited by Jade Nguyen (aka Cheshire) who is carrying an infant Lian. Jade explains that she hadn't realised she was pregnant with Roy's child until after he was already dead and since she is not ready to give up her life as an assassin she states that Lian is better off without her. She then asks Jason if he would be willing to take Lian in as Roy's former partner (read into that how you will).

-Jason agrees, and decides to hyphenate her last name Harper-Todd so that she will always have a piece of Roy with her even if he can't be there for her in person.

it's not that I don't think JayRoy is cute! It's just that I honestly I don't really picture Jason dating anyone in my mind and the thought of him being a single dad is just precious. I'm also allergic to OC's (of my own making) so I usually try to keep to characters that are at least canon in some timeline and Lian was the first to come to mind.

Also I'm a angst-hungry monster so...

Drake-Wayne/Dowd/McGinnis household:

Lol, this family has too many names.

I already went over Terry and Matthew McGinnis' backstory in Batshit AU Pt. #1 but if you are too lazy/ don't feel like reading it I'll try to make sure to cover the important details.

Terry & Matthew McGinnis: A few years down the road, Tim is the current Batman and married to Bernard Dowd (my new fave batship). One night on patrol he finds the boys hunkered down behind an garbage container and approaches them.

-Terry is extremely protective of his younger brother Matt and becomes immediately aggressive, swinging a baseball around and threatening Tim to leave them alone.

-Tim finds it admirable/endearing that Terry is willing to face Batman alone in order to protect his brother and tells him so. He then asks them where there parents and and Matt (trusting Batman) tells Tim that they were killed by the 'Bad Men' who are now looking for he and Tarry.

-Tim is worried for the boys safety and offers to take them to the Police, but Tarry only says that they already tried that and that there are spies in the GCPD who ratted them out to the 'Bad Men'.

-Tim figures out that the boys are in more danger then he first realized and takes them home with him in order to protect them.

-Tim eventually finds out about Project Batman Beyond, an experiment orchestrated by A.R.G.U.S. in order to create the perfect child to usurp the Cowl and give A.R.G.U.S and 'in' with the Justice League and the super-community as a whole. A part of this project is making sure the children are biologically Bruce Wayne's in order for them to also gain influence over Wayne Enterprises.

-Tim realizes that there is no real safe place that he can send the boys and after discussing it with his husband, Bernard, the two decide to adopt the boys.

I think this adoption story is one of my favourites. Especially because I find the idea of Bernard not at all being surprised by his husband brining home black-haired blue-eyes orphans, hilarious.

Bernard: I figured since you are now Batman it was only a matter of time.

Tim: >:(

Wayne-Kent situation:

DamiJon is one of my absolute favourite ships in existence. But since both boys are so young in canon my version of their future relationship truly is creature of my own design, I will explain them a little and then the kids. I'll be quick about it. Promise. (There is also a 2 part series I'm working on that goes into my version of events called "Jon and Damian" if anyone is interested. Jon's chapter is done but Damian's is still in the works).

Jon: he is the one that I really have to explain. I call my version of him "Dark-ish Jon" or 'dark ish jon' for the tags. For those of you who already know the deal (or don't really care) y'all can skip to the *** for the kids.

-basically Jon was kidnapped by Jon-El (Clark's Kryptonian Bio-dad) in order for Jor-El to mold Jon into the perfect weapon for his plan to conquer the universe. They have a machine that Jumps through various timelines so no one can find them, and Jon-El trains/tortures Jon for 2 years.

-Jon eventually discovers new powers that allow him to kill Jor-El and escape but he ends up spending the next several years trying to find his original timeline.

-He eventually meets the Legion of Superheroes that help him get home, but once he arrives home he realizes that for him it has been 7 years since he was kidnaped, but only 2 weeks for his family/friends.

-Because of this he and his family find it hard to adjust to the new situation and Jon ultimately decides to return to the Legion but visit occasionally.

Damian: Honestly I don't think I really have to explain much about Damian for y'all to get the kids but I do want you to know:

He has long hair

He has peirced ears

Possibly tattoos?

He's has more of a slim figure than Bruce's bulky one

He is a fashion icon and kinda has 'bitchy white girl' energy

Bacically he very pretty and looks a LOT like Thalia

And yeah. The two eventually reconcile after Jon is done moping in another timeline and they decide to retire from crime fighting and build a cottage/farm and live in peace.

***

Athanasia: So she is actually Bruce's bio-kid from the Injustice timeline. And for my AU she is still Bruce's biologically and she does recognize him as her father, but because she and Damian are 13/14 years apart and she knows him better she lives and defers to him as her caretaker. I shall explain:

-Athanasia was created by Thalia in a fit of madness after Damian's death. Because of what happened to Damian, and because Athanasia turned out to be a girl (and therefor Ra's would have no use for her), Thalia keeps the little girl locked away and a secret so that no one can harm her.

-Years pass and Athanasia has never seen the outside would. Eventually something happens (will depends on the Fic -because I will get around to writing this shit eventually) and Athanasia is given to Damian (the only other person Thalia ever told her about.)

-At this point Bruce is getting older and most of his current children already have their own kids, so both he and Damian agree that because Athanasia is mostly attached to Damian and doesn't really know who Bruce is outside of being her father, that she will live with he and Jon.

-Athanasia get's older and eventually meets another girl at her school named Carrie Kelley. The girls form a quick bond, Carrie's louder personality complementing Athanasia's more quiet one.

Carrie Kelley: being best friends with Athanasia leads to Carrie spending a lot of time over at her house. This allows Jon and Damian to get to know the girl and become quite fond of her.

-one night after a sleepover at Jon and Damian's house with some of their other friends, Carrie's father comes to the house drunk and carrying a shot gun. He accuses Jon and Damian of being pedophiles because of their sexual orientations and calls them a variety of homophobic slurs.

-It's his attempts at shooting Jon that leads to Carrie calling 911 and having her own father arrested.

-Because her mother had already left and Carrie only had her dad to take care of her, Jon and Damian offer her a place in their home and eventually adopt her along with Athanasia when the girls are teenagers.

So, yeah! That's it for now. I am absolutely obsesses with this AU. I just love the idea of Bruce deciding to take in Dick leading to him having an army of children and grandchildren so large that all family gatherings have to happen at the Manor because nowhere else is big enough.

[sohotthateveryonedied]

Hiii!! I really love your tumblr posts and I'm pretty new to the Batfam (meaning I have only read fics and textposts about them, no comics) and I wanted to ask about the year Bruce/Batman gets "lost in time". I know general things of what the kids have been doing–Dick became batman and fired Tim from robin, giving it to Damian, everyone thinking Tim was crazy for believing Bruce was alive, (don't really know what Jason was up to though, was he still murderous towards Tim? Does the pit still affect him? Also I have no idea about Cass and Duke, were they introduced at this point??) Anyways, my real question was why was Bruce lost in time, what villain put him there? And how did he get out? And how long was he "dead"? Was Bruce in another reality or like just asleep the whole time? Oh! And how soon did this happen after Damian got introduced to the family–a couple months?

I'm so sorry this is so long, but I hope you answer and thank you!!

(I’m going to try and cover all my bases here by going into how exactly Bruce “died,” what went down during the Battle For the Cowl, what the Batkids did while Bruce was gone, and how Bruce came back. Hopefully it all makes sense?? We’ll see how it goes lmao.)

Part 1 - What Happened to Bruce:

So there was this event called Final Crisis (which I won’t go completely into since it would make this post a million times longer than it already is), but the bottom line is that Darkseid wants to overthrow reality and release his Anti-Life Equation, which would overthrow the whole planet and turn everyone into slaves. (If you’re interested in knowing more about the storyline, here’s a Reddit thread that explains it WAY better than I could.) 

What I CAN tell you is that during his final confrontation with Darkseid, Bruce is hit by an Omega Beam and turned into a burnt chicken nugget killed. Poor guy.

Final Crisis #6

Clark and Diana bring the body back to the Batcave and break the news to the Batfamily. Batman #687 covers a good portion of the aftermath such as Bruce’s funeral, the Batfamily grieving, and Dick coming to terms with his new responsibility of becoming Batman.

Batman #687

Part 2 - Battle For the Cowl: 

Musical chairs time, fellas! After word gets out that Batman is gone, Gotham erupts into chaos. Dick doesn’t want to take over the mantle, Tim needs Dick to take over the mantle, and Jason says “fuck it” and takes over the mantle himself because somebody around here has to. He becomes this murderous psychopathic Batman and starts taking out criminals with deadly force because someone’s gotta do the job, so it might as well be him.

Batman: Battle For the Cowl #1

(Okay honestly, this series had some pretty bad characterization overall, which sucks since it’s such an important storyline. Jason is portrayed as this violent psychopath, which...okay, he was kind of insane after the Pit and all, but not to this degree. Personally, I choose to owe the bad characterization to Bruce’s death because as much as Jason resents Bruce for all he’s done, he does still love him and losing him would be devastating, which would exacerbate his already fragile mental health. As for Damian, this happens roughly three years after his first appearance, so we can assume it’s been a few months since he first joined the family. He’s still relatively new at this point, so nobody knows how to write him yet. He ends up being depicted as if his main two personality traits are Bratty and Assassin-Child and that’s it. It’s all just a mess.)

Anyway, Tim tells Dick to become Batman and stop Jason’s reign of terror. Dick says no, so Tim follows Jason’s lead by saying “fuck it” and putting on the cowl himself. He goes to confront Jason, which ends in Jason beating the crap out of him (again) and leaving him for dead after Tim declines his offer to become Jason’s Robin. Dick goes to save Tim and ends up fighting Jason. 

Battle For the Cowl #3

Dick wins, Jason disappears, Tim is fine, and Dick finally gets his head out of his ass and becomes Batman. 

Part 3 - What Happens to Each Batkid While Bruce is “Dead”?:

Dick: 

As I said, Dick becomes the new Batman a month after Bruce’s death. He’s got big shoes to fill, and it takes some time for him to get used to his new role. He and Damian end up flipping around the classic Batman and Robin dynamic, with Batman now as the fun counterpart to Robin’s edginess. Dick, Damian, and Alfred relocate to the penthouse above the Wayne Foundation building, operating out of a secret Bat-Bunker in the basement.

Batman #688

Jason: 

After Battle For the Cowl, Jason is still batshit insane and determined to make Dick’s already stressful life even harder by becoming a supervillain with an ugly costume and an even uglier hairstyle. (I know it’s just because the artist sucked, but still. Jason is horrifying to look at during this time.) He mostly just gets on Dick’s nerves by running around Gotham with his new sidekick Scarlet and killing criminals as Batman and Robin wannabes. Eventually, Dick has Jason committed to Arkham Asylum and he hangs out there until Bruce returns.

Batman and Robin (2009) #5

Tim: 

Tim...doesn’t do great after Bruce’s death, mentally. Dick makes Damian Robin, his reasoning being that Robin is more of a sidekick and he sees Tim as his equal. By making Damian Robin, Dick hopes that it will give him the stability he needs to keep him from straying back toward the “bad” side. (It’s the right move ultimately, although his execution was pretty messed up since he didn’t discuss it with Tim beforehand, but he’s allowed to make mistakes. Dick’s father just died and now he’s in charge of picking up the pieces of their broken family. It’s a lot to handle.) 

Long story short, Tim has a breakdown, realizes that Bruce is alive, dons the Red Robin identity, and cuts ties with his family to travel the world in search of proof. It’s a rough time. 

Red Robin #1

Damian: 

Our little guy becomes Robin! So proud of him! As I explained earlier, Dick makes Damian his Robin with the assumption that it will keep him out of trouble, and he’s right on that account. He mentors Damian, teaching him how to channel his violent instincts into something productive, and it works! Slowly but surely, Damian makes the transition from bratty assassin to actual hero!

Batman and Robin (2009) #22

Cass:

Duke sadly was not introduced at this point in time, so he missed out on all the pandemonium. Cass, however, has been Batgirl for years by now, but she got kind of pushed aside by the writers after Bruce’s death. Bruce disappears shortly after adopting Cass, but once he was “dead,” the writers sort of moved Cass around for a while, not quite knowing what to do with her. First she was with the Outsiders. Then they got disbanded and Cass tried forming a new network of heroes to take over for Batman if needed. Then she helped out in said network during Battle for the Cowl, taking care of a newly ravaged Gotham. Then Cass gave the Batgirl mantle to Stephanie Brown after she became disillusioned with the role, thanks to the loss of her father and mentor. Then Cass picked up and moved to Hong Kong to “follow Bruce’s plans” by continuing whatever work he had set up for her there. It was all very vague and confusing, and Cass more or less got swept under the rug during this time. Thanks, writers.

Batgirl (2009) #1

Part 4 - How Bruce Came Back: 

When the Blackest Night storyline happens, the Justice League realizes that the corpse buried under Bruce’s grave is apparently not the real one and that he’s actually alive out there somewhere! How wild is that! This is further proven by Dick after he places Bruce’s body in a Lazarus Pit to revive, which has the same result because it’s very clearly Not Bruce and they should have listened to Tim from the start.

Batman and Robin (2009) #9

Anyway, what actually happened is that the Omega Beams that Darkseid shot at Bruce didn’t kill him, but rather blasted him back through time to the prehistoric era with his memories wiped. The Omega Energy inside of Bruce ends up catapulting him through various time periods, which is all part of Darkseid’s plan. With each time-hop, Bruce builds up more Omega Energy in his body which, when he gets back to his original time period, will be unleashed and destroy everything.

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #5

It’s been a little under two years since Final Crisis, though in-universe it’s uncertain exactly how long Bruce has been “dead.” We can assume it’s been a year, give or take. The way he comes back is too scientific and complicated for me to understand, so uhhhh the bottom line is that Tim and a few Leaguers save Bruce at the Vanishing Point and the day is saved! Hooray! 

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #6

(If you want to read about how it actually goes down, then I seriously recommend reading Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne. It’s only six issues, so it’s a quick read and it explains the situation far better than I ever could.)

Bruce eventually reunites with his family after spying on them for a period of time as Insider to see what has changed in his absence:

Bruce Wayne: The Road Home

After that, things quickly settle back into their new normal. Dick and Damian stay on as Batman and Robin. Bruce goes back to being Batman as well, with him handling Batman Incorporated business and Dick continuing as Gotham���s defender. Tim keeps the Red Robin outfit, Steph stays on as Batgirl, and Cass becomes Black Bat. Jason stays in Arkham for a while before filing an appeal to be moved to a regular prison. He kills 82 inmates in less than a week and gets transferred back to Arkham, which he promptly escapes from. It’s a ride, I tell ya.

Aaaaand that’s about it! I hope this answered all of your questions!

[stxleslyds]

you know how dc keeps forcing this sudden "we're a family" narrative out of nowhere? I'd love batfam content but years of hurt among them make the recent content seem unearned.

bc you know more about dick and jason than the others, how do you think they would realistically become family to each other, or would it even be in character for them to be the "bros" they're written as now?

Oh anon, this question is amazing, I love it! I saw it when I woke up and since then my brain has been brewing this answer, I was thinking about it as I brushed my teeth and as I was making breakfast, and now I am ready to give you the answer, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed thinking/writing about it!

DC keeps forcing the wrong relationships, and they keep forcing the wrong centre of this supposed family, they make it out to be the Bat-Family when in reality the Bat (Bruce) should have never been invited to this party.

This is why I give you the… Dick-Family!

Oh yeah baby, I am going there. Dick is the centre of this “family”, he is the guy who is actually connected with everyone, he has been around for so long and he has been present when almost all of the remaining characters were introduced! Bruce might have come first but that guy has nothing on Dick Grayson.

Dick has cared and loved for everyone in this family in a true and beautiful way, no matter how much fanon and DC try to tell us otherwise. This man was an amazing son to Bruce and Alfred (my love for Alfred and Dick is brought to you by @hood-ex), a fantastic brother to Jason, Tim and Cass as well as a phenomenal father/older brother to Damian.

Dick Grayson is the centre of this whole thing, and thanks to DC now being an Omniverse I will be able to explain my line of thoughts. But first let me clear some ideas up.

The way I see it Jason would only get along good enough with Dick. I am not here for Jason and Tim having brunch together (honestly, Lobdell, what were you thinking), Jason never cared for Tim, and then writers that didn’t know how the Red Hood worked made him try to kill Tim so, to me, that relationship is non-existent, Jason doesn’t really perceive Tim (yet).

Jason and Damian, listen, I know that there is this fanon theory that Jason knew and cared for Damian while he was in the League, but that is just fanon talk and it doesn’t really fit in canon either. Jason wasn’t really capable of doing much other than fight, and after he was put in the Lazarus Pit he either had to leave because Ra’s wanted to kill him or Talia took him to the All-Castle. So, Jason’s only real interactions with Damian would be when Jason was written as a crazy, blood thirsty dude that actually tried to harm a child. So, him and Damian wouldn’t really have a good relationship (yet).

Jason and Cass… that’s just a no. Jason and Barbara, I mean Barbara was older than Dick when she first met Jason, so they wouldn’t have much of a relationship.

Now, lets move on to how I will make the Dick-Family work.

Dick (bless him) actually talks and listens to people, unlike Bruce, so the change would start there. Let’s set the timeline, I will stand right after the events of Under the Red Hood. Bruce just chose saving Joker over letting Jason kill the Joker and the building they were in exploded.

Batman keeps on being himself (trash) and Jason, having survived the explosion, moves on to keep on building his empire. He really wants to control the drug trade in Gotham, so he works on that, he slowly but surely takes his place as a drug lord again and is a constant pain in Black Mask’s ass.

While Jason is doing that, Dick is trying to put together his life after Bludhaven was attacked with Chemo. Let’s say that Bludhaven isn’t completely erased from the map but he does have to leave so the city can be re-built. He goes to Gotham, where the Red Hood works.

Let’s say that Alfred told Dick who was under the Red Hood, so Dick being a good brother goes looking for Jason. Their first interaction out of the mask wouldn’t be nice, Jason barely remembers his life before the pit and he really is convinced that Dick is the absolute worst.

But then Jason being a nosy man would make an appearance, for some reason, let’s say that he hacks into the Batcave and when he does that he finds some footage… The footage in question would be the one which shows Bruce punching Dick and sort of blaming him for Jason’s death. (Oh yeah, I am going there). The footage will make a memory come to mind, Dick taking Jason on a skying trip.

So, the next time that Dick and Jason see each other is because Jason went looking for Dick and here is where these two actually talk. The way I see it, Dick is more flexible with the no killing rule, he has worked many times with people that are villains or that just have different ways of doing things. So, I think that he would understand where Jason’s coming from with his ideas. As they begin to understand one another Jason begins to recover more and more memories from before the Pit.

They get together once a week and they chat about life as well as vigilante stuff. They become friends.

At the same time Dick is also very good friends with Tim and also acts like the amazing big brother he is with him. They chat, they sometimes work together and one day they come across a very complicated situation involving a new drug being introduced in Gotham.

Dick would call Jason and now both of them and Tim are reunited in a safe house working together so this new drug doesn’t fall in the wrong hands. Jason and Tim wouldn’t really like each other. Both of them are there for Dick and because they have to get the job done.

That’s how I see Dick forming the Dick-Family unconsciously. Hell, I will introduce Barbara now. Do you guys remember that in UtRH Barbara was mad with Bruce and didn’t want to work with him but she was still in contact with Dick? Well, I am using that so it can fit my narrative.

Dick, Jason and Tim need more intel so Dick calls Oracle (real Oracle) and because Barbara trusts Dick she works with them.

Here is where it gets interesting, through Barbara, Dick meets Cass, through Tim he meets Stephanie. You see that Dick’s connections are leading him to form a group of people. Cass and Stephanie are trained by Babs and Dick and they become the new Batgirls.

As all of that keeps developing Jason and Dick become “partners in crime” they help each other, they start building a brotherly relationship again. Although Jason refuses to say that out loud.

Then comes in Damian, a difficult child if there has ever been one but he has Bruce so Dick doesn’t have to jump in that fast… right?

Oh brother! Bruce is dead (omg what would we do? Battle for the cowl maybe? No!). with Bruce gone there is only one person who can take his place and everyone knows it has to be Dick.

Dick would feel a lot of things as he is taking Bruce’s place as Batman but he has a group of people ready to back him up (Alfred, Jason, Tim, Babs, Cass, Steph), and he also has to take care of Damian, he is a child and with his father gone then maybe his mother would want to take him back to the League of Assassins, Dick obviously doesn’t want that so he talks to Tim and tells him that he sees him as his equal and that he has a plan to make Damian stay and it involves making Damian his new Robin.

Tim would obviously be sad and a little hurt, but he understands Dick’s decision because they talked about it and Dick actually took the time to explain why he was doing what he was doing (really DC half of the problems you guys come up could be fixed in seconds if people would only take some time to just TALK!).

Dick and Damian work as Batman and Robin and Dick starts assuming the position of his father. They would live with Alfred in the penthouse and maybe Tim will join them from time to time (when he wasn’t busy with Young Justice/Teen Titans stuff). Slowly Dick and Damian will become the Dynamic Duo that we love today.

So, Dick would have his own Robin, Oracle (who is also managing her own team with Black Canary and (why not) the Batgirls), Red Robin and Red Hood working with him if he needs them. They are always a call away. Jason is the most difficult to reach and he will only involve himself in that kind of drama if its about controlling the drug trade or scaring the living shit out of some very shady people.

So, Red Hood wouldn’t be working with the new (and improved) Batman but Jason would hang out with Dick sometimes.

From there they build up. Dick renovates Arkham Asylum and makes it work they way that it is supposed to work. He might also recruit Catwoman when he needs someone really sneaky, they have known each other for so long, I bet Selina loves Dick, she would certainly help him out.

But as all things do, this happy and well-connected Dick-Family is disrupted when Bruce comes back, he inserts himself slowly back into his role as Batman and as he does that Dick starts to move away from it.

But Dick’s connections are strong and well cared for, so, even when he goes back to Bludhaven and starts fresh (again) as Nightwing those connections remain. Oracle still gives him intel, Robin and Red Robin come over to Bludhaven to patrol, maybe they even have their own rooms at Dick’s place.

With Bludhaven functioning again, all of the terrible people that were working there also come back, maybe some of them never left and they have been corrupting the city from its very core. So, when Jason tells Dick that he would like to expand his operations to Bludhaven, Dick says yes, as long as Jason keeps him updated on his work and also lets him know what is going on.

I think it works! What do you guys think so far?

From then on with the whole Dick-Family being connected and strong I think they can actually act and solve their problems as a family. All those arcs that didn’t work very well because Bruce was in the middle of it being a jerk, I think they will work if Dick is at the centre of it. Let’s say that Bruce hid the fact that Joker knows their identities and all that, with such a strong family the second that the Joker tries to manipulate Jason into believing that he created him, Dick will come out of the shadows and shut that bullshit down. If Joker tries to do something to the Circus, then the Birds of Prey and the Robins will be there in seconds helping Dick.

The Court of Owls, those little shits wouldn’t stand a chance against this team, this force of nature! Jason would be the one working from afar because you know my boy wouldn’t be subjected to the “no-killing” rule but if he does it, he has to do it away from the children (Damian) and away from Cass, if he doesn’t want to know real trouble. (He probably arranged those things with Dick a long time ago and he is happy with it).

Now, please forgive me but for angst reasons I will actually let the events of, Batman Incorporated #8, Forever Evil, Nightwing #30 and Spyral run its course.

Let me explain, after Damian’s death Dick holds the Dick-Family together, as well as Bruce because he is amazing like that, but then after Dick supposedly dies, things change just a little bit. Jason would retreat back to his own corner because the only thing attaching him to the Dick-Family was Dick but he would also keep his eyes open and he might also have a direct line with Oracle if things go south.

Aside from Jason, I do see the others working on keeping their connections intact. When Damian eventually returns the land of the living, I can see all of them coming together even more because that’s what Dick would have wanted.

And then Dick will come back from Spyral and here is where the Dick-Family will show the “Bat-Family” why its superior to it in every aspect possible.

The Dick-Family will notice that something must have happened, Dick would never play dead and leave them like that, but Dick loves Bruce and he doesn’t want to tell them the truth, Bruce has no memories now and his family doesn’t deserve that kind of drama BUT Jason and Tim are suspicious, they know Dick at this point and they trust him so they firmly believe that he is hiding something to protect someone. And here is where life repeats itself. Let’s review the Batcave’s footage, yes, I did it again, I just love the fact that Bruce has footage of himself being the absolute worst to his kids, how does DC not use it! Anyway, Tim and Jason find the footage from the events of Nightwing #30 and suddenly the Dick-Family have their “Dick defence squad” jackets on and they are ready to party.

After all that Bruce eventually gets his memories back and he is held accountable for his actions. Also, around this time the events of Robin War would have already happened so Duke is also introduced. Dick lets him join and all that, and then Duke and Cass become besties and they work together.

And yeah, as Rebirth comes closer the Dick-Family would be more united than ever.

The end.

That is how I would have done it. But this way is slow, and DC wouldn’t be able to monetize it as much as they would want.

Jason wouldn’t be giving hugs and calling everyone their brother or sister, he will only get along with Dick and he would be professional with everyone else.

Tim and Damian would get along but they wouldn’t go for ice cream together on a sunny day. Steph and Damian would and so would Cass and Tim or Cass and Duke.

Oracle would work with Dick and the others as a side thing because her main thing would be the Birds of Prey, this time with Helena too.

Alfred would spend his time with Bruce but he would also be very aware of Dick and his influence on everyone around them. Bruce eventually would be integrated to the Dick-Family because Dick is a sweetheart but Dick would also make Bruce follow his rules, Dick is a little bean but he is also the most badass person in the room (whichever room) so you better listen to what he has to say.

The Dick-Family would be something that grows silently and doesn’t need a “Joker War” in order for them to be there for each other, they would try their best each step of the way and they will talk things out when mistakes are made.

This is the way that I see this family dynamic working.

I would even go as far as to say that Talia can be part of the Dick-Family because she is connected to three people, Dick, Damian and Jason.

Dick is the person with most connections in the DC Universe, the Titans, the Justice League, Deathstroke, they all have connections to this treasure of a man. If he needs help in Gotham or Bludhaven then he can call people from the “first circle”, if things are beyond a “street level” threat them he can call the Titans and if shit really hits the fan, Clark and the others are a call away.

Anyway, this was unnecessarily long, I am sorry about it but I am also not because I really don’t know how to answer your question without going on a long rant.

In conclusion the Bat-Family doesn’t work and sadly it wouldn’t work no matter how much they force it. These people don’t have connections, Bruce is not able to make connections between people. And DC has erased entire relationships that Dick used to have. I mean, they got rid of Dick and Tim being close brothers just so they could give us a shitty brunch between Tim and Jason? Only yesterday we saw a true and beautiful interaction between Dick and Damian.

DC is handling the “Bat-Family” in all the worst possible ways. It just doesn’t work.

They should have used Dick all those years ago and they shouldn’t have destroyed Jason’s characterization with Lobdell’s ideas.

So, sadly, my dear anon, I don’t see the Bat-Family as a in character thing for any of these people as they are written currently, but I hope that you enjoyed my version of it. May the Dick-Family bring everyone who reads about it a little joy!

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Stalker X Stalker, Part 4

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Perma tag: @nathleigh

Stalker x Stalker taglist: @aespades @jayjayspixiepop @blueslushgueen @fan-written @seraphichana @nerd-nowandforever

Marinette almost missed Hawkmoth. Sure, she ended up extremely emotionally repressed, but hey! At least her opponent was stupid, at least she never had to fear losing.

But, yeah, that was why she didn’t notice the fact that chloroform was on the floor. That was way too smart for a villain, in her opinion. Wasn’t Joker supposed to be insane or something? Why wasn’t he completely stupid like Hawkmoth had been?

Those were her last thoughts before her vision blacked out.

She blinked her eyes open one time while she was being transported, but… it wasn’t enough. Her head pounded, her limbs felt like lead. She tried to pull one of her arms away from the five goons carrying her around -- she giggled at how much effort they were going through to keep a half-conscious person down -- but it was too weak to even break their grip. She wasn’t going to be getting out of the situation anytime soon.

She rested her head back against the chest of whoever was carrying her head.

Her eyes fluttered shut without her permission.

It took a while for her to be able to open her eyes again, and when she did she was almost tempted to close them. She was tied up with Red Robin, hanging upside down over a vat of acid. Decidedly not a good situation to be in. Maybe she could ignore it for a little longer…?

She buried her face in the neck of Red Robin’s suit, using the cool material as a kind of cold pack to try and soothe her pounding headache.

… wait... Red Robin!

She had a bit of protection because of her mask covering her mouth and nose and miraculous immune system, but he was a human and both his mouth and nose were uncovered! Shit!

Marinette pulled back as much as she could to check his face and see if he was okay and then cursed the domino mask blocking his eyes from her view. What she could see wasn’t good, though: the skin of his face had broken out into hives where he had come into contact with the chloroform. Ouch.

She tried just poking the good parts of his face with her nose to get him to wake up, but clearly that wasn’t working. Alright, new plan.

“Red Robin?” She whispered.

Nothing.

“Red Robin Red Robin Red Red Red Red Red…”

She was pretty sure she was doing this annoying thing right. She didn’t have siblings, how could she know?

Wait wait wait, what was that one thing that his siblings always said to him?

“Reeeeed Robin, yum~.”

Not even that got a response? Damn, he must really be out of it.

Time for drastic measures, then.

She tipped her head back as far back as it could go and then slammed her forehead against his. This evoked a lot of swearing from both parties. Apparently, headbutting people doesn’t help headaches.

When her head stopped ringing as loudly, she peeked her eyes open. “Sorry, checking to see if you were alive.”

He gave about as much of a nod as he could. “It’s… I understand why you had to do it.”

She gave a tentative smile. “Right. Still, sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he assured her, then glanced down to see what they were working with. He bit his lip anxiously. “Ah, that’s not good,” he said after a few moments of consideration.

She rolled her eyes because, yeah, obviously. She didn’t say that aloud, it wasn’t productive, so she said: “I’m going to squirm. See if you can free your arms a little?”

“Do you think I have some kind of gadget in my gloves for every situation?”

“Don’t you?”

He hesitated. “I mean… yes, I do have something that could help us out of the ropes, but we are kinda over acid right now. How fast is your reaction time?”

She tipped her head from side to side with an awkward smile. “Not great.”

“Then maybe we should just wait for backup --.”

“Do you think they’ll get here before Joker does?”

“... you’re right. Start squirming --.”

“Wow, you two hate me that much? I’m hurt,” a voice cooed.

Marinette jumped out of her skin. She craned her neck to glare at Joker for scaring her…

And immediately regretted it. Why was his face not attached to his skull properly? Did he cut his own face off? Who even does that? Ew.

Red Robin scowled at him. “I can’t say we were all glad to hear you were out.”

“Red Robin...” she warned.

“Wow, not even old Batsy was happy to hear the news?”

“Nope. Didn’t say anything, actually.”

Joker’s smile wavered. “He didn’t?”

“Um, Red,” she tried again.

“Nothing,” he confirmed. “Not. A. Word.”

Joker didn’t seem to know what to do about this information. Batman wasn’t even paying attention to him? What was the point, then?

Marinette was also concerned about what was going on, but for a completely different reason. She leaned close to his ear and whispered: “Why are we trying to anger the psychopath?”

He gave as much of a shrug as he could while tied up. “If he’s talking he’s not trying to kill us.”

“And what if he gets angry enough to kill us?”

“He probably won’t.”

She winced. “Okay, I really don’t like your use of ‘probably’ there --.”

With both of their hands forced behind their backs, the only comfort he could really give was pressing his good cheek to hers. It shouldn’t have worked, but apparently life or death situations mess with your emotions.

“Just… trust me?” He pleaded quietly.

She sucked in a deep breath before turning to glare at Joker, who was still having a crisis over the fact that Batman didn’t care as much as he did. Well, she guessed that she had to take out her headache on someone. Might as well be the bitch in ugly clown makeup.

“You know, I don’t even understand why people are scared of you.”

Joker frowned and turned to look at her. “What?”

“I mean, I get why Poison Ivy is feared, I get why Mr. Freeze is feared… I even get Penguin and Riddler since they both have a high enough intellect to make up for their lack of powers… but you’re just… some guy.”

Joker gave her a cold look. “I could kill you.”

“So could a particularly determined cow, you’re not special.”

Red Robin snickered. She smiled, a little proud of herself for making him laugh.

Their grins were wiped off their faces when the rope holding them up dropped.

It caught them again dangerously close to the acid. Red Robin was a few centimeters from getting a new haircut. Marinette wondered, morbidly, whether her suit would go with her if she disintegrated.

“Not going to kill us, huh?”

“... well, I did say probably,” he mumbled, his face a little red.

She swallowed thickly. “If we live, I’m going to kill you.”

“Fair. Want to mess with him if he’s going to kill us anyways?”

“... yes.” She whipped around to glare at Joker again. “I mean, honestly, why aren’t you dead yet?”

“We don’t kill,” supplied Red Robin.

She grinned. “Sure, and I get that. I’m also not fond of murder... but is every citizen in Gotham just agreeing to not kill him? Does Batman spend all his time making sure that civilians don’t do it? Why hasn’t anyone seen him on the street and just tried to run him over?”

“... I mean, Robin hit him with the Batmobile once.”

“See?” She grinned. “And don’t even get me started on Punchline and your goons, Joker. How did you find so many people loyal to you?”

“I love him!” Said Punchline defensively.

“... sweetie, if you want a pasty white guy with green hair just watch 2016 Jacksepticeye.”

Red Robin nodded. “At least he’s kind of funny sometimes.”

“If you need the guy to be evil, how about the evil alter ego he made… what was he called?”

“Antisepticeye.”

“Ha, you’re a fucking nerd,” Marinette teased.

Red Robin blushed (or maybe that was just the blood slowly rushing to their heads from being upside down for so long) and pointedly ignored her: “Look up Antisepticeye. It’ll probably be healthier for you.”

Punchline didn’t have a retort for that. Marinette was deciding that was because she was considering it, not because she probably didn’t know who Jack/Antisepticeye was.

She pushed on: “And, hey, you goons don’t have to give Punchline over there the glory. Stab your boss. C’mon, it’ll be cool. Doubt he’s paying you more than whatever bounty is on his head, anyways.”

“If you’re going to rally henchmen maybe you shouldn’t call them ‘goons’,” suggested Red Robin.

She pouted. “But ‘goons’ sounds cuter.”

He opened his mouth to retort but she’d never know what he was going to say because, at that moment, Signal and Robin came busting in through the skylight.

~

Tim relaxed when he heard the glass shatter. Whether Marientte’s henchmen rallying had somehow worked or their backup had come, it at least meant that Joker and Punchline were distracted from wanting to murder them.

He struggled to crane his neck to see what was going on.

Oh. Damn. Damian was back from his angsting on the weird murder island? And he was here? Nevermind, he’d prefer Joker and Punchline. Damian was never going to let him live this down.

Speaking of Damian, a weight jumped onto their ropes and the three vigilantes became a pendulum. Tim grit his teeth tightly and Marinette let loose a long string of swears as their headaches worsened.

But, apparently, the world wasn’t done with them. Damian sliced the line at the highest point and they went flying across the room. Tim was the unlucky one on the bottom when they hit the ground, which he doubted was an accident.

Damian left them to deal with things on their own from there. Least he could have done was cut them free with his katana, but Tim supposed that was too much to wish for from the youngest brother.

He rested his head back against the cool floor for a second. He could feel Marinette stretch across his shoulder to do the same. They sighed in relief. This was the closest they had come to treating their headaches and wow was it nice.

But, frankly, resting in the middle of a fight isn’t a great idea. So, they wriggled around on the floor until he was able to flick open the tiny knife in the index finger of his gloves and cut the rope binding them without, y’know, cutting one of them instead.

Freedom! What did they do with this newfound freedom, you may ask? Scratch their heads. Turns out chloroform sucks for many reasons and one of those is that it’s a major skin irritant.

He also vomited. Thank god they’d been freed. He’d been only a few seconds away from throwing up on Marinette. He felt especially bad about that when she peeled a hand from her itching to hold his hair away from his face.

The fight was over soon enough. Duke and Damian came over to watch the two of them attempting to peel their skin off layer by layer.

“Pathetic,” chided Damian.

“Don’t be a dick --.” Marinette cut herself off, her hand flying to her mouth. “I swore in front of a baby.”

“I’m twelve!”

“Exactly: a baby.” She reached out and cupped a very affronted Damian’s face in her hands. “Look, you still have baby fat! You shouldn’t be fighting crime!”

Tim couldn’t tell if she was messing with Damian for being rude to them or if she genuinely saw him as a little kid. He wasn’t going to correct her. She’d remember he was a gremlin soon enough.

Damian wrenched his face from her grip. “If I hadn’t come you two would have been burned in acid.”

“Please, we all know Signal probably could have dealt with this entirely on his own,” Marinette waved him off.

Duke rested a hand over his heart like he was touched.

Tim rolled his eyes and pulled Marinette to him, resting his head on top of hers lazily. “We should get a checkup at the cave. Chloroform has… not nice effects and we both rolled around in it a little while fighting.”

Duke and Damian both winced, but Marinette didn’t seem all that concerned.

“I’ll be fine. My immune system is enhanced by --.”

Duke clapped his hands by her ears as loudly as he could. Neither Marinette nor Tim were particularly happy about it.

“Behold: a headache, one of the main symptoms of chloroform. Your face also has some red streaks, so don’t even try to deny that the chloroform is affecting you.”

“I take back my praise, I’ve decided I hate you,” she murmured, massaging her temples.

“I just remembered that I need the siren on my bike on to tell all the other bats we’ll need them at the cave...”

“Wait, no --.”

~

Marinette glared at Black Bat and Spoiler. The batboys had left the infirmary area for her own comfort and that was nice of them but she would really prefer if she hadn’t had to come at all.

Now she sat in some of Black Bat’s pajamas and one of Spoiler’s spare masks as they inspected her.

Her nose scrunched as Black Bat drew blood from her arm.

“This is dumb. I don’t need this.”

“We’ve been told. Humor us?” Spoiler said and, though Marinette couldn’t see her face from where she was, she knew she was rolling her eyes.

“I would if you were actually funny.”

“I think we can definitely put her down for irritability,” commented Spoiler.

Black Bat nodded and dutifully wrote it down. Traitor.

The cool metal of a stethoscope was pressed to her back and she cringed.

“Deep breaths.”

Marinette complied, however reluctantly. Might as well get all this bullshit over with as soon as possible.

… she was regretting that decision, now, though.

She gave Batman a cold look. “You can’t keep me here.”

“You need to stay so we can monitor your state overnight. You could have asphyxiated.”

“But we didn’t,” complained Red Robin, who looked just as annoyed about this as she was.

“We have lives, B,” she said.

“You weren’t going to do anything other than patrols tonight, don’t act like I’m tearing you away from something important.”

“The protection of the city is important,” Red argued.

“Neither of you would be much help tonight in the state you’re in, anyways.”

Red Robin stuck his lower lip out in a pout. Marinette gave her best puppy-dog eyes.

Batman wasn’t moved. “If you need something, Agent A will provide it.”

She blinked, eyes returning to normal in her confusion. “Who --?”

He disappeared into the shadows before she could finish the conversation, something she was, unfortunately, getting used to.

Marinette scowled at where he had last been.

Maybe she should have expected this, maybe if she had been less out of it she would have. They had given her pajamas when she’d had clothes and insisted on cleaning her old ones ‘for chloroform’. The checkup might have been a genuine checkup on her state, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered what the results were. She was always going to end up staying the night in the cold, dingy cave filled with bats.

She sighed and laid back against the stone floors. She heard Red Robin groan and looked up to see he had been locked out of the Batcomputer for the night. He leaned back in his chair and mumbled curses.

She giggled at his distress and, despite himself, a tiny grin poked at his lips.

“Want to race to see who can hack into it first?” She suggested.

He raised an eyebrow at her under his domino. “Think you can win?”

“Considering I don’t know that much about hacking, I’m going to say probably not.”

A wide smile spread across his face, now, and he waved her over. She took a seat on the desk beside the keyboard and he started teaching her everything.

Most of what he said, while technically heard, wasn’t exactly understood. She couldn’t concentrate. It was the first time she had seen him in anything but his vigilante suit and she decided that that was a crime because he looked so cute in the Batman-themed pajamas. Furthermore, the way his long hair was pushed back by a headband to keep it out of the green paste spread over his face to alleviate the chloroform’s rash reminded her of a spa day in all those movies.

And then there was the smile. It made her heart flutter in her chest because she was so used to his grins but this was just a genuine smile. He looked so passionate about the intricacies of cyber crime. She was almost sad about the domino hiding his eyes because she wanted to see the way they lit up while he explained different ways viruses could be accidentally downloaded to devices.

Basically, she was a mess for this random cute guy she worked with. She had never seen him so casual and at ease and it felt far more intimate than it maybe should.

She rested her head on her hand, nodding along as he talked about data encryption versus decoding.

Well, maybe a forced sleepover in the Batcave wouldn’t be so bad...

~

Tim was suffering a lot more than he would ever admit, and only a small part of it was due to chloroform.

He was going to be having a sleepover with one of his idols and he was going to be spending a large amount of the time trying not to throw up. And she could totally tell, too, why else would she be watching him so intensely? Someone kill him, please. He was so glad he had a secret identity because he didn’t know how he would manage if she thought Tim Drake-Wayne was a loser.

Granted, she was going to think Red Robin was a loser... but at least he had a second chance as Tim.

He rested his chin on the back of his chair. He had hacked into the Batcomputer already but it was a relatively dull night out on patrols and he wasn’t eager to be yelled at for showing Marinette some files on top of already hacking into them when he wasn’t supposed to.

“Wanna do something?”

She grinned. “Is there anything to do here other than train?”

“... nothing approved.”

She tipped her head to the side. “And of the things that aren’t approved?”

He matched her grin. “Well…”

And that was how he ended up setting up a movie projector in the cave so they could watch Groundhog Day. Marinette had taken to making them a pillow fort.

Duke stumbled down the steps, half awake, and raised his eyebrows at them from behind his domino. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot that they had made and took a long sip before sending the two of them a wary look. “Do I want to know?”

Marinette didn’t look up from her and Tikki’s base construction. “Dunno. Do you want to watch Groundhog Day with us?”

He frowned. “Isn’t that the one where that guy in a time loop stalks his co-worker until he knows enough to make her fall in love with him?”

“Just say you don’t like romcoms and go,” Marinette irritably.

“I’m fine with romcoms, it’s just… a little messed up that he uses the knowledge he gets from being in a time loop to ensure she falls for him?”

“It’s a story about self-improvement,” Tim said, sending his brother a glare. “He grows as a person until he is worthy of her love.”

“Him learning about her is part of his arc. He starts off selfish and he ends it with a deeper appreciation for other people,” agreed Marinette.

Duke held his free hand up in mock surrender. “Fine, fine. Enjoy your stalker movie.”

“It’s not a --,” Tim tried to argue, but Duke was already heading back upstairs.

He huffed a little and finished setting up the computer and projector, then took a seat in the pillow fort. She poured each of them a cup of coffee, put a straw in hers to maintain her identity, and then took a seat beside him.

He took it from her with a bright smile and turned on the movie.

She rested her head on his shoulder as the happy-go-lucky music started up.

Unfortunately for them, they didn’t manage to stay awake for all that long. Duke had drugged the coffee pot.

~

Marinette shifted awake a while later and promptly decided that being awake sucked.

Nothing about her current situation sucked, of course. At some point during the night they had fallen asleep and now she was laying half on top of Red Robin, clinging to him like a koala. He didn’t seem all that upset about it, though, with his arm wrapped around her and his face buried in her hair.

Unfortunately, the time on the bottom right of the Batcomputer’s screen told her she didn’t have much time to enjoy it.

She started the slow process of extracting herself from him. Getting the arm off of herself was easy, getting his face away from her head was much harder (this wasn’t helped by the fact that the paste on his face had stuck to her hair).

There was one scare where she thought he was going to wake up. She pushed herself off of his chest and he took a long breath in. Marinette froze, watching his lips tighten… and then he turned over in his sleep.

Oops, apparently she’d been suffocating him a little in her sleep. Sorry, Red.

Well, at least she was free now.

She slipped out of the pillow fort and glanced at the time again.

Even less time to do what she needed. Because that’s how time works.

She sighed and called Tikki over with a tiny wave of her hand, walking over the edge of the railing. She looked down at the abyss that stretched many feet below.

Tikki couldn’t have looked more disapproving if she tried.

“It’s just a little insurance,” Marinette signed.

This didn’t make Tikki any less upset with her, but she hadn’t really expected it to. She signed for her transformation. She tied herself to the railing with her yoyo as a precaution and then hooked her legs around the railing.

And down she went.

She flexed at an awkward angle, flashlight in her mouth, and stuck a tracker to the bottom of the platform.

And, really, she wasn’t intending on using it. Like she said, it was just insurance. They had drawn blood from her earlier and she knew for a fact that it wasn’t necessary for chloroform inhalation. The only reason that made sense for that was that they wanted to check and see if she had inhaled some but they already knew that so… what did they want with her blood?

She was willing to bet it had something to do with her secret identity. And, hey, she didn’t particularly care if they knew her identity, she trusted them, but if it ever got out because of them revealing then who the bats were would be 1) revenge and 2) a good distraction.

“Hey --?”

Thank the kwamis she had tied herself to the railing because she’d been surprised enough to let go of the platform.

“Shit, sorry!” Said Red Robin.

She pulled herself back up onto the platform with his help and then collapsed on the cool stone. She spat the flashlight from her mouth. “Fuuuuuuck, don’t do that again, please.”

“Sorry,” he said again. Then he glanced back at where she had been and, momentarily, his lips pulled into a frown. “I gotta ask: what were you doing?”

“Hm?”

Shitshitshit.

“Oh, I wanted to see if there was anything down there or if it was just for The Aesthetic.”

“Why not just use your yoyo to go down?”

She shuddered. “The flashlight barely did anything. Would you want to go down into that darkness with no clue even how far down it goes?”

He seemed to accept the answer. “It’s an old iron mine. No one uses it anymore, though.”

She nodded her understanding.

She pushed herself back up to a sitting position and looked at him.

“The bats don’t get back for a while and we’re still on lockdown, so… want to do something?”

~

Damian was the first one to get home. Apparently he had broken a leg on patrol. This was fine (well, maybe he shouldn’t have been driving himself, but whatever).

What was not fine was that he had promptly decided to be an asshole.

Tim and Marinette had been playing Minecraft on the Batcomputer and, like all younger brothers, Damian asked to play.

And, like all older brothers, Tim barely looked up from his controller to tell him: “No.”

Damian looked to be on the verge of a meltdown.

Marinette sighed and sent Tim a tired look. “Red, don’t be mean. He’s just a kid. There’s more controllers, we can just give him one.”

“But…” He started. Damian was a terrible partner to play Minecraft with because he never helped out with anything except for the farm.

However, Marinette was looking at him expectantly. Tim bit his lip, considering.

Damian looked between the two of them and a wicked grin spread across his face and oh no.

Damian took a seat next to Marinette and gave her puppy-dog eyes (a real feat, considering the fact that he was wearing a domino and therefore his eyes were invisible). “Miss Ladybug, can’t you please make him let me play?”

Marinette gave Tim a tired look. “Red, c’mon, just for a bit.”

Damian smirked a little but, by the time Marinette turned back around, he had schooled his face back into a pout.

She handed him her controller. “You can have mine. I’ll find another for myself.”

The two watched her leave and Tim sent his younger brother a glare. “I can’t believe you would embarrass yourself this much just to play a game.”

“Anything to annoy you, ‘big bro’.”

He opened his mouth to retort, but then Marinette came back and all he could do was send him a glare behind her back.

Damian retaliated by sitting himself on Marinette’s lap. She looked down, amusement making her eyes crinkle, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge it. Damian smirked and stuck his tongue out at Tim.

That little shit.

And it continued on for hours while the three of them waited for the rest of the bats to come back. Damian would cling to Marinette in some way and he would become the bad guy for glaring at a child. He was seriously considering breaking the No Killing Rule for this kid.

Finally, though, people started coming back and apparently Damian thought it too embarrassing to do such a thing in front of more than just the person he was trying to annoy because he clambered off her lap to play just a little bit away.

Bruce was the last one to come in and he looked at his kids with the patented Batdad Glare because they had managed to drag Steph into playing with them (without much effort) and Cass into watching (with much more effort). Which meant that there were currently five family disappointments. Yay them.

Tim smiled innocently. “What? We got bored. Maybe you should let us out so this doesn’t happen again.”

“I’m keeping you here for your own safety.”

Marinette and Tim both groaned.

“I have work to do.”

“Me, too.”

Bruce didn’t relent because he was a stubborn asshole.

But that was fine. They really hadn’t expected them to. Tim glanced at Marinette and she twirled her index finger against her flat palm, the sign for ‘start’.

One flash and smoke bomb later, the two of them were running as fast as they could to his bike. He grinned as he helped his giggling friend get on and hopped up himself. Arms wrapped around him tightly and her face buried in his back. They tore out of the cave, giggling all the while.

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

just because you’re afraid it doesn’t mean you’re broken.

Titans 3.05

once more into the cold dark void of the internet with my stream-of-consciousness take on a superhero tv show...

spoilers ahead.

1. i cannot believe that among the first things i get to hear in this episode with my own two ears is the line 'eluded our overdudes'. why must you give me such pain along with so much joy, show?

1.5. scarecrow stringing jason along on this path to red-hood-dom is not something i would’ve ever expected, but does kind of make sense. 

1.55. i don’t know all the details of the original resurrection arc in the comics but i like that jason, weirdly, has a greater role to play in his own demise and rebirth? i think it makes it easier to draw a line between his past trauma, the demonstrably shitty and terrifying responsibility of being robin, the ways bruce and the titans wronged him, his responses to that, the reasons he turns to scarecrow, and his final evolution to red hood. it makes for a smoother character arc rather than a one that was interrupted for two decades before somebody went oh hey let’s resurrect that kid that the audience once voted to kill and make him an anti-hero!

1.75. what’s crane giving him? anti fear toxin? anyway, crane is a fucking creep and i’m not sure i want to see a whole lot of him on my screen.

2. oh, um, heads up: there’s a long sequence of unsteady cam + flickering lights right after the title card upto the 3:16 mark. it’s a bit headache-inducing so if you want to skip, you can go ahead and do that. 

2.45. that’s... weird... why would he dream about... donna...

ok, who am i kidding. i’m going to jump right into my theory about Why Titans Makes Sense Actually because the show itself is apparently not interested in explaining itself:

a) it makes no sense for jason to be conjuring up donna--who famously did not care much for him!--in his dreams. (he wasn’t even there when she died.) or for her to be telling him don’t go or there’s still time.

b) this leads me to think that that’s actually donna, in some sort of limbo between life and death, the kind of place where jericho used to be

c) rachel has demonstrated that she has the power to link the minds of the titans across great distances--she called jason and hank/dawn for help in 2.01, she linked up everybody later in the season, projected dick’s hallucination of his father into their brains without even realising she was doing it, and in the finale, she managed to get dick into conner’s brain. she’s in themyscira now. is this how she gets donna back to life? but reaching out to her in that non-space between life and death?

d) the next obvious question is: why isn’t donna appearing in the dreams of the other titans? she probably is, but they have better reason to be dreaming about her since they were actually close to her, unlike jason.

e) but why would she warn jason in particular? does she foresee jason entering the afterlife--however briefly? does she have an idea of what jason plans to do and what he will become?

f) anyway, more trippy mindscapes and weird psychic powers, yay!

2.5. my heart clenched when bruce comforted jason post-nightmare: clearly i’ve been reading way too much batfam fic. this is a side of bruce we haven’t really been told to expect by all the characters on the show calling him a ‘psychopath’ (*cough*unreliablenarrators*cough*) and him getting jason to speak to a professional speaks volumes about the kind of self-reflection he’s done post dick’s departure, and maybe some of the regrets he has with regards to how he dealt with dick’s traumas.

i mean, just look at him when jason dismisses his concerns! BRUCE IS TRYING JASON

anyway, i have a whole lot more i want to say about this, but i’ll save it for later. 

also: LESLIE THOMPKINS!!!!

3. i really like molly--and i love that she’s a friend from before jason got taken in by bruce, the implication that they meet up regularly and that she’s a grounding influence on him (tho clearly not grounding enough to not go along with his dumbass idea about confronting a child trafficker alone). 

3.5. aw, jason. robin was his armour against everything in the world that would throw him down and chew him to bits, but san francisco proved that even robin wasn’t enough to protect him. it’s really interesting how ‘disillusionment with the idea of robin’ is so integral to the traumas of both dick and jason but in such different ways. 

4. LESLIE!!!!!!! i even forgive her office being so goddamn blue because leslie! 

4.5. it makes so much sense for titans!verse leslie to be a therapist, because this show is so inward looking anyway, and therapist sessions are a useful tool to showcase this character work in a story. besides, at least in fanfic, leslie often seems to double up as a counsellor anyway. 

4.6. oh man. i’m not terribly convinced by walters’ red hood (tho i think that may be the point--argh. i’ll come back to this thought later. have to stop getting distracted!) but he plays the asshole kid that’s trying not to let any real emotion seep through really well.

“you’d like me to punch you, wouldn’t you”

5. not sure what to think of batman’s little trophy case other than the show winking unsubtly at us and going look look - catwoman! the riddler! two face! you excited yet?! it’s like the scene from the end of amazing spiderman 2 when they were trying to drum up excitement for a sinister six spinoff by having harry osborne walk by a bunch of display cases with stuff from iconic villains in them.

... but then again, bruce does like to display a lot of shit in his batcave, including his dead robin’s bloodstained costume, so.

5.5. bruce is so soft with jason it’s killing me. beyond just trying to learn from his mistakes with dick, it speaks to his own genuine desire to balance his dedication to gotham with doing the best by his sons, although he’s often not successful with that. 

i love that titans is really playing the long game with bruce wayne, with each season and character-perspective sliding in fresh pieces of a bigger puzzle. titans’ bruce has always been a phantom of other peoples’ making, but now we’re getting the idea that he’s a whole lot more complicated than other people make it seem.

5.75. it really recontextualises some of his actions from previous seasons: the fact that he locked dick out of his security systems in 1.06 is likely his way of respecting dick’s independence and his desire not to be associated with batman/gotham anymore. jason knowing about bruce’s tracker while dick doesn’t is probably bruce trying to be more honest and upfront with his charges. bruce sending jason packing off to sanfran to spend time with the titans is probably not him passing on a big responsibility to dick (as i first uncharitably thought) but him trying to get jason out of the toxic influence of gotham for a while and a sign of his trust in dick as a leader and a mentor,

5.8. i mean, bruce is a prick, but he’s also human.

6. i think leslie is doing some good work with jason here, though she may have overstepped the line with her line about robin as a construct being projected by a man with BPD. her speculations about bruce’s diagnosis have no place in her session with jason, and if bruce confides in her, an egregious violation of patient-therapist confidentiality. 

(about the diagnosis itself... i don’t know. i can’t really confirm or refute this without a whole lot more information, and i’m not sure if the writer of this episode means BPD in the same way an actual professional might.)

6.5. i think a huge thing that gets missed out in a lot of recent comics as well as movies/shows is that bruce didn’t create the robin persona out of whole cloth. dick did. he’s the starting point of that legacy and to call it entirely bruce’s creation is blatant erasure of that. in fact, i’m surprised that dick doesn’t feature more in the conversations they’re having about the pressures of being robin. after all, the guy had been robin--bruce’s partner--for such a long time before jason. 

6.8. (and here’s the primal part of me that resonates the deepest with dick grayson--the Eldest Daughter part--that’s sort of resentful: that jason gets the therapy and softness and the learning from mistakes when it took years and years for bruce to reach out in any meaningful way to dick.)

7. oooh that was a great scene!

it’s fun to do these stream-of-consciousness live reactions, because the moment you step down from your soapbox, the episode goes right into tackling what you were just complaining about. bruce means well, he’s learning, but he goes about exactly the wrong way to help jason: taking away robin now can’t be read by jason as anything but a devastating judgment call from bruce. and iain glen really sells the moment that bruce realises this--too late--and his helplessness in trying to get jason to see that it isn’t jason’s fault that he’s trying to do this. he loves jason enough that jason is enough. 

7.5. aaaah so jason brings up the elephant in the room at last. dick got everything makes sense from his perspective, where getting to put on a costume and fight crime means approval, means being something stronger and better than you are. dick got to be robin, then nightwing, and a leader of a whole team of other costume-clad heroes. 

8. ... how did jason just walk into arkham????? this is ridiculous.

8.3. i mean, clearly jason’s not thinking straight, but betraying batman like this puts his possibilities of being robin again even further away. 

8.5. watching that chemistry experiment montage was strangely funny. this guy is looking for an antidote to fear? well, constantly mixing up and inhaling gases concocted by a mad-scientist supervillain is something only the very fearless--reckless to the point of foolishness!--would do. what’s to say crane’s not given you a formula for a drug that will keep you tethered to his every will and whim? hmmmm?

8.7. so he sought out the joker to... test the formula??? 

9. wow the “loud and clear... boss” hits different after a whole episode of them referring to each other as father and son.

9.3. waitwaitwait HOLD UP. wait a DANG MINUTE. you’re telling me that scarecrow had enough resources that he could not only have folks on the outside steal jason away and dunk him in a lazarus pit (i TOLD you that this show would bring up and dismiss ra’s al ghul in a ten second aside! I TOLD YOU) but also have his own little chemistry lab in the basement, AND have enough resources for jason to build his red hood persona???????? all of this in barely twenty four hours?

well there goes my ‘jason orchestrated his death’ theory. it was nice while it lasted. *cups hands to the sky* fly away, my baby.

9.6. a part of me is gleeful at the rushed nature of such an iconic transformation though, especially when compared to all the character work that went before it. we’re so used to getting the opposite that it’s fucking delightful to have a show that’s more interested in exploring its characters’ minds rather than battle scenes or recreating transformations from the comics. that’s taken such bold and exciting steps to fully convey all the nuances of its most recognisable character, bruce wayne, from casting an older actor to play him to unflinchingly showing just how damaging the vigilante lifestyle has been to him and the people he loves. BRILLIANT

*sporfle*

10. again, heads up: a whole lot of flashing lights between 40:28 and 42:00. 

10.3. i guess it’s the super-compressed timeline that’s really throwing me off. where did he have the time to get/develop the mind control thing from? or is it something that he got from the cabal of villains that he intimidated at the beginning of 3.02? very messy.

10.5. i love molly, i hope she shows up again this season.

11. aaaand that’s it! that was a solid episode as flashback episodes go, but now i can’t wait to return to the present.

[maxwell-grant]

Any thoughts on Darkman, the Liam Neeson movie? I heard it was originally going to be a Shadow movie.

I love Darkman very much, but I've realized recently that this love comes with some pretty bittersweet feelings at the story behind it.

Michael Uslan: I was going to produce a Shadow feature film with Sam Raimi, but Sam got consumed by back-to-back movies and we ran out of time. We were headed in a good, period piece direction and managed to do so without relying on yet another bout with Shiwan Khan. I later had another major director passionate to do The Shadow, but a person at the company wanted to do a modern day TV series instead, which ultimately did not go... - comment saved from a post in The Shadow Knows Facebook group

For those of you who only now got into The Shadow or don't remember, for much of the early 00s, when The Shadow basically had no current projects and Conde Nast was taking down webpages and fan content left and right, the only things that kept this "fandom" alive were occasional fanfics (many of which are gone now), and the dim light in the horizon that was the rumors that Sam Raimi was finally going to make his Shadow film. Dig back on The Wayback Machine for Shadow web page and you're gonna see this as consistently the only thing they had to look forward to in regards to the character. These rumors floated around for over a decade, at one point Tarantino was even supposed to direct it, but he confirmed in 2013 that it wasn't going to happen. At least, not with him at the helm.

The project has been dead for a while now, and Conde Nast seems to be shuffling around plans for the character, and I deleted my Facebook months ago so I haven't kept up with any news, although it seems the James Patterson novel wasn't received too well, so I'm not sure what other plans they have in the pipeline.

Back in the 1970s, after the release of Richard Donner's Superman and in line with The Shadow's pop culture resurgence, thanks to the paperback reprints and the 70s DC run, there were plans to make a Shadow feature film, and there were quite a handful of scripts being tossed around for the following years (Will Murray states most of them were horrible), several names attached to the project at one point or another. The plans died down a bit following Gibson's death and only really picked up again after the 90s, and of course we all know that the 1994 movie came out with spectacularly bad timing. From what I recall, it seems Sam Raimi wanted to make his Shadow film in the 80s, was unable to secure the rights, and then just made his own version, which would go on to be his first major motion picture.

Even after making Darkman, Sam Raimi still wanted to make The Shadow. I guess that's ultimately the bittersweet part for me. I imagine the current state of Shadow media would be significantly better if Sam Raimi, who was a fan of the character and the pulp version (and even knows of The Shadow's connection to Houdini and stage magic), got to make his Shadow film, years before Blood & Judgment, years before Burton's Batman made it impossible for a Shadow film not to be compared to it, in a time period where it wouldn't have had to compete with The Lion King and The Mask for box office. And second, I have been drawing up my plans for Shadow projects for, what, 5 years now? And I have just barely got my foot off the door as a filmmaker. Sam Raimi had a decade-long career as a cult filmmaker before he got turned down, and decades later, after becoming a household name in charge of Marvel's biggest icon, the project still fell through. It doesn't exactly get my hopes up, y'know.

I love Darkman, it's the best Shadow film that doesn't technically star the real Shadow, and it works pretty well on it's own regardless of that association, but I do get pretty sad looking at it from the outside, because I just can't help but think on what it could have been.

In some aspects I do think the film benefits from not being about The Shadow proper, because it means Raimi got the freedom to do whatever the hell he wanted. The character of Darkman already existed separately from Sam Raimi's plans for a Shadow film, already carrying off the Phantom / Universal Monster influence, and what Raimi did was basically combine the two ideas together.

He took the basic iconography of The Shadow, a terrifying urban crimefighter in coat and slouch hat, and add in other Shadow traits like his mastery of disguise, his disfigurement, and that wonderful scene where he's invisibly running circles around a panicky triggerman while laughing maniacally, a moment which definitely feels like Raimi taking a second to indulge himself to do what you can call The Classic Shadow Scene with a character he's, for the most part, succesfully convinced us (and Conde Nast's lawyers, most importantly) isn't supposed to be The Shadow.

But then he filters these through his own influences and style to make him a new character, so instead of a mysterious mastermind with lots of resources and a enigmatic background, instead he's a disfigured and psychotic scientist with a vengeance against those who made him that way. He's like Night Raven, in the sense that he's built off traits that The Shadow has, but develops them differently to the point he stands on his own as a character. It's The Shadow combined with The Phantom of the Opera, filtered through a 1930s Universal Horror lens, played for greater tragedy and a dash of Evil Dead 2 wackyness.

He hides away in trashed up ruins and bickers with a cat, he has fits of rage that make him endanger innocents, he has a doomed love affair, and sometimes he gets so batshit he gives us hilarious moments like "TAKE THE FUCKING ELEPHANT" and "SEE THE DANCING FREAK! PAY - FIVE - BUCKS! TO SEE THE DANCING FREAK!". Moments that really show why he was such a good fit for Spider-Man despite the liberties he took with the source material.

I think the big thing that helps to make Darkman works as a property in it's own right is also that, ultimately, these influences are ultimately at the forefront of it, and the core of it works on it's own. Darkman is a believable, engaging character in his own right, one who tells a story that would be more at odds with The Shadow proper. 

In some aspects, Darkman tries to be The Shadow, he is forced to become The Shadow by literally picking the clothes off a dumpster after he escapes the hospital, and it's a miserable, wretched existence, in a way rather befitting his status as a legally safe knock-off. He is a creature of nightmare who lost his face and takes on a dozen others to fight crime by turning terror against them, except he is still just a man in the end, and no man was ever supposed to live like this.

Raimi was also inspired by the Universal horror films of the 1930s and 1940s because "they made me fear the hideous nature of the hero and at the same time drew me to him. I went back to that idea of the man who is noble and turns into a monster".

He originally wrote a 30-page short story, titled "The Darkman", and then developed into a 40-page treatment. At this point, according to Raimi, "it became the story of a man who had lost his face and had to take on other faces, a man who battled criminals using this power"

A non-superpowered man who, here, is a hideous thing who fights crime. As he became that hideous thing, it became more like The Phantom of the Opera, the creature who wants the girl but who was too much of a beast to have her

I decided to explore a man's soul. In the beginning, a sympathetic, sincere man. In the middle, a vengeful man committing heinous acts against his enemies. And in the end, a man full of self-hatred for what he's become, who must drift off into the night, into a world apart from everyone he knows and all the things he loves.

For the role, Raimi was looking for someone who could suggest "a monster with the soul of a man"

It's the fact that Darkman is ultimately played for vulnerability and tragedy that really sets him apart. While I wouldn't go far enough to say The Shadow is a man with the soul of a monster, still, the difference in presentation is still there when it comes to these two. The Shadow is The Other, Darkman is You. Darkman is the victim of extraordinary circumstance that affects his life, The Shadow is the extraordinary circumstance that affects the lives of others. People react to The Shadow, Darkman reacts to people (and rather poorly).

One is the man who takes off his skin (or yours, staring back at you) to reveal the weird creature of the night ready to prowl and pounce and cackle at those who think they hold power over it's domain, and the other is the monster who falls apart bit by bit until you are left staring at the broken man within who has no choice but to be something he was never supposed to be.

The Shadow is The Master of Darkness. Darkman weaponizes the dark, but in the end, he's still just a man, lost within it. Not everyone can be The Shadow, and you would most likely turn into Darkman if you tried.

[lady-literature]

I rewrite Sky High

okay so, disclaimer: sky high was actually pretty damn good for it’s time and a lot of the plot twists/tropes used in it were still just starting out and not as commonplace as they are today. so 10/10 really good movie.

Also as i was writing this, it turned into half analysis of what’s already in the movie and half things I would change about the movie so,,, yeah. enjoy!

***

So the point about Sky High is that and the way the school and hero society as a whole works, is that you, as the audience, are supposed to look at it and know that it’s a flawed system. We’re supposed to see it as an injustice that kids are sorted into hero or sidekick- Sorry, I mean ‘Hero Support,’ on your first day of school based on something you can’t even control.

(This movie was my hero academia-ing it up before it was cool.)

Anyway, the movie calls a lot of attention to it in the beginning, but then doesn't actually give it the resolution it deserves in the end. Which, not cool guys.

The Hero/Sidekick debacle is, on the whole, a very thinly veiled metaphor for the problems minorities face. Specifically, those of the alphabet mafia, or LGBTQ, as we’re more commonly known.

There are a lot of examples for this so I’ll speed through the big ones real quick:

Will’s nerves regarding not having attraction to girls superpowers?

The way he tries to fake having an attraction to girls superpowers to get approval from his dad?

Being literally outed in front of his whole class (by someone named Boomer no less) and then immediately trying to hide it from his parents as long as possible?

The constant references to being a ‘late bloomer’. Doesn’t it remind you of the common phrases: ‘it’s just a phase’ or ‘don’t worry. You’ll start liking [opposite gender] eventually.’ ?

The scene in the kitchen, right after Will introduces the Sidekick Squad (and yes, that is what I’ll be referring to them as for the rest of this essay tumblr post). Will is so obviously trying to gauge how his dad is going to take his friends being sidekicks and also him being a sidekick. I just, this is so blatantly a coming out scene? How does anybody not see it as that?

(also the dad talking so offhandedly about bigotry and the hatred his own father had for sidekicks??? Who else has been there?)

Will telling his dad that he doesn’t care, that he’s proud of being gay to be a sidekick is just,,, *chef’s kiss*

With all of this backing behind Will and him growing into not being ashamed of his lack of powers, My first change would be that Will does not, in fact receive his father’s super strength. It’s just such a cop out! The movie had all this amazing build up, and this brilliant metaphor it could have used and, instead, they threw it all away.

The sudden acquisition of powers and immediate acceptance by his peers, feels too close to someone being ‘fixed’. That Will wasn’t good enough the way he was and had to be better, had to be his father in order to be good enough.

So, no. Will remains powerless.

Instead of the revelation of ‘he’s strong’, we get to let the Sidekick Squad shine.

Lash and Speed still cause a fight between Warren and Will, but when Will is under the table, the sidekicks actually do something.

Will knocks the table over (not, like, lifting Warren up but something closer to pushing him off. I mean, even I could push upwards from underneath a table fast enough that if someone is standing on it, they’d lose their balance and fall to the ground) and that starts things.

The Sidekick Squad all grab forgotten lunch trays or cartons of milk or something and throw it at Warren. It isn’t long then that the whole scene devolves into a food fight (Zach, at least, does not have good aim and probably hits a bystander accidentally, drawing more people in, until the whole cafeteria is involved.) The fight turns into something more playful, but still with that bit of an undertone of trying to actually hurt each other.

Ethan melts at one point and (accidentally) causes Warren to slip and land on his back, Magenta probably punches someone (not Warren) and Zach is just mouthing off to anybody who gets close enough. Near the end, right before Principal Powers shows up, Layla finally gets the right idea and just fire extinguishes the shit out of Warren.

(Side note here: I am very much also nixing the Layla crushes on Will plotline. I love best friends to lovers just as much as the next person but… no. Let kids see boy/girl friendships! 

Instead, I will be inserting a Layla/Warren love story and you can consider this the first scene on the road for that.)

Anyway, the whole Sidekick Squad plus Warren ends up in the detention room and all of them are covered in food. Right after Principal Powers leaves, the Sidekick Squad is immediately talking excitedly to each other about how cool they just were and what they did. Basically it’s very wholesome and they’re all hyping each other up and then one of them, Layla or Will, excitedly turns to Warren and goes, ‘and that thing you did with the fireballs? God! I don’t think Lash is going to have any eyebrows for a month’ and the tension between them all but drops.

Warren, of course, tries to push them away and not get involved with their ridiculousness, but the Sidekick Squad is stubborn and by the end of detention, everyone but Warren is in agreement that he’s a part of the Squad now. They will not leave him alone. They also start hanging out at the Paper Lantern all the time just to annoy/make fun of him in that loving way friends do.

(I just want Warren to be a part of the Squad guys. Will calls him his best friend at the end but what did the movie actually do to show they were friends? Nothing, that’s what. I want that fixed.)

So the cafeteria fight boosts the whole Squad’s reputation, right? People think those sidekicks are pretty cool, and they get their fifteen minutes of fame. Only… Will gets a little hooked on the feeling of being popular. He doesn’t want to be a capital-h Hero or anything! But, well… he’d be lying if he didn’t like people thinking he was cool.

The others don’t really care all that much about being cool, but Will does. He hates that he does but what is he supposed to do? He can’t change how he feels. So he starts trying to make himself more popular and sometimes tries dragging his friends into stupid schemes.

And then enter stage right, one Gwen Grayson.

I prefer Gwen being Royal Pain’s daughter, actually. A girl who would’ve had no stock in this fight but her mother, who is sickly and weak and survives mostly because her daughter takes care of her, practically brainwashes Gwen to do her bidding.

Gwen is a minion here, and also, perhaps, a victim.

At first, she follows her mom’s orders and charms Will into dating her. She also feeds into his desire to gain popularity but can’t, in this world, break him from his friends. Actually, Will brings Gwen along to the Sidekick Squad hangouts and, slowly, she becomes a part of the group too.

She starts to doubt her mother. Starts to care for Will and the Squad.

She throws the party, and the Squad is all invited (trying to break them up isn’t conducive to the Plan her mother has anyway and wouldn’t work besides) but she lures Will away to make out and… other things, and he brings her to the Sanctum for privacy just like before. She still steals the pacifier (or whatever death ray equivalent you want idk) but she and Will don’t break up at the end of the night.

It’s not actually until two days later, right before the dance is going to start, does Gwen decide she can’t stand back and let this happen anymore. She spills the whole plot and her betrayal to Will when he comes to pick her up for the dance. She’s crying and apologizing and basically expecting to be hated forever by the only people she thinks ever actually liked her.

And, well. Will is furious at her for lying but there’s more important things to deal with at the moment. They’ll talk more about this and he’ll be angry, but that’s all going to be later. Right now they have a school to save so he grabs her hand and starts running to warn the rest of their friends.

Things happen mostly as canon from that point with minor changes.

It’s Warren who pulls Layla into a kiss before they all split off into groups, telling her to kick ass and stay safe before sprinting off after Speed. There have been scenes throughout the movie where the two are very obviously getting closer and are into each other. And then, before the dance, while Gwen and Will we’re technically going as a couple, the whole Squad was going as a group.

When Warren and Layla saw each other all dolled up, it’s very cliché. Warren says she looks nice and Layla visibly gulps at his outfit of a button down and suit pants, sleeves rolled up to his elbows (because homeboy does not wear a full tux you can fight me on this).

And also, Will doesn’t fight Royal Pain by himself. Instead, Gwen is there with him and they don’t fight with super strength. Gwen’s been helping Will build an arsenal of gadgets a la Batman and the two face off against her mom together, Gwen with her powers, and Will acting as half support and half as a watered-down Batman who still needs some more training before he’s totally polished.

The school falls from the sky, but Gwen buys them time by keeping the anti gravs working through sheer force of will, while Will holds off her mom from attacking her while she’s vulnerable and concentrating. Magenta eventually kills the EMP or whatever it was, and the day is saved.

Gwen passes out, cause ~drama~ but she ends up okay so don’t worry. She’s just exhausted. 

The sidekicks get their recognition and then immediately bounce because dances suck and they all agree that they should go to the Paper Lantern instead to celebrate cause they’re tired, alright? Saving the day is hard.

So it’s all of them, a little battered and bruised and exhausted, crowded into this corner booth and laughing and being kids. The camera does it’s fade to comic book page thing, and the narration is something more along the lines of:

“Royal Pain and her cronies got locked away. Gwen and I talked things out, and she’s getting help for all the stuff her mom did to her. We’re taking things slow in the meantime.

The school is undergoing a lot of changes to the curriculum and getting rid of the whole ‘hero/sidekick’ divisions. (Mostly at the urging of my parents… and Layla). Next year is going to look a lot different, I think.

But it’ll be a good different, just like we are. None of us were what we were expected to be, and, I think, we’re going to keep defying expectations. There’s a whole world out there that needs changing.

And I can’t think of a better group of friends to do it with.”

THE END

(just give me found family saves the day by being themselves rather than somebody else, give me them saving the day because they care about each other, give me them fighting for what’s right and fixing things. please i am b e g g i n g.)

***

Additional nitpicks that are small but Very Important to Me

Coach Boomer is still called coach Boomer because there is no way I am missing out on the ‘okay, boomer’ jokes

Layla stays like Layla, but i’d like for the movie to stop trying to make her seem annoying for her beliefs or like she’s wrong to be so vocal about them. Her caring about things that are wrong ends up as the butt of too many jokes and i… do not like that.

Why so many dad/son scenes? Why this janky imbalance parenting dynamic between the Strongholds. Knock that shit off. I want happy functional family thank you very much

Mr Boy and the mad scientist are very obviously in a relationship

Wait, actually: mr boy, mad scientist and Boomer are al in a poly relationship and are ridiculous about it

I’d like to see more of the sidekick classes going over like, ‘the boring’ parts of the job, and teaching the kids how to deal with the aftermath of the heroes heroics, just to hammer in the fact that the system is fucked up and that it’s messed up that the heroes get all the recognition while the sidekicks are left to clean up the mess

Use actual 14 year old actors? These kids look like seniors.

Or, if you want more ‘mature’ characters make it so sky high is like,,, a finishing school or smth. Something kids 16 and over go to.

(What the fuck kind of parent thinks that their freshman child dating a senior is a good idea?? An almost adult coming onto a fourteen year old??? Are you trying to make Will’s parents (particularly the dad) seem like irresponsible assholes??)

Gwen is, at most, a year above Will in this rewrite, kay?