#batman: contagion

[violent138]

Tim does this look like the time for your jokes? 🤨

[milkimae]

alfred is mom-coded canon

[rootbeerrex]

girl I just finished reading contagion for the first time and all I'm gonna say is that I've gotta assume it would've been easier to enjoy pre-covid.

[havendance]

haven, how did i almost miss your ask game. here's an au for you:

au where helena catches the clench during contagion instead of tim

Helena is alone when she realizes that she's sick. She is alone when she realizes that she is too sick to keep fighting. She knows that the hospitals are full and no use, so instead she hunkers down in her apartment, alone.

There is no butler to nurse her through it. Instead, she tosses and terms and has fever dreams in which she sees her family dying, her brother dead. She sees James, his eyes bleeding. She tosses and turns, in pain and longing for relief.

She nearly dies. She would have died, alone in her apartment, if Robin hadn't come by.

See, after Azrael's buddies faxed the the cure over and Wayne Enterprises started manufacturing it, Tim went out to go and find the Huntress and see if he could recruit her into crawling through Gotham and making sure everyone got administered it. And eventually, he finds her.

And so, Helena does not die, but instead wakes up in a hospital bed with a little bird lurking in the shadows.

[speedforce-paradox]

I feel like we don’t talk enough about Batman: Contagion enough

[bats2tired]

[mae-kent]

tim fans can we talk about tim’s trauma that ISN’T his emotional neglect or dick taking away robin.

can we talk about his extensive history of SA?? dana winters??? contagion???? knightfall????? not only kon dying, but also bart and darla and steph and so on??????

[lixiedrakelies]

Bros immeadiate reaction to getting ebola was saying sheesh 💀goofy ahh

[angelshipper]

I literally just got to NML so I'll keep it in mind while I'm reading! I've read Batman: Sword of Azrael but not the new one yet so thanks xD

Honestly the school thing probably came to my mind first because it's one of the first things we learn about Jean-Paul, and one of the only things we learn about his past EVER. He had enough technical know how to figure out Tim had been in the Bat-computers in Knightfall so it wasnt like it was all just pretend. At the time of my original post I had just finished (or was about to) Contagion, and iirc there's a mention how Azrael was old fashioned or smth and thats why he didn't fax the cure over lmao.

My guess (before reading the rest of NML yet I'm on RTNML lol) is that if it was mostly just "pretend", or fake or whatever is that the writers probably had a specific idea of what they wanted JPV to be in Knightfall, and that idea changed as they went into Azrael and began exploring the Order of St Dumas and its past. So they retconned it

I'm reading the OG run of Azrael (1995) by Denny O'Neil and honestly Batman/Bruce just irks me in a way I really didn't expect. I'm reading issue #36 and my biggest gripe is...why doesn't he teach him?Like legitimately why doesn't he teach him, or atleast send him to someone who could. That just feels so obvious to me.

It's obvious JPV is a danger to himself and others, and it's obvious Bruce's initial plan of just....giving him the mantal without any help and extremely minimal training wouldn't work but even if he says he doesn't blame JPV um????? You sure aren't acting like it???? Seriously that guy needs an ACTUAL therapist (and no, Brian doesn't count when he so obviously needs his own mental help). He is traumatized, extremely repressed, and is being actively manipulated by Lilhy and I'm just.....MAN.

People say Jason is his greatest mistake but honestly I think it might be tied with JPV at this point, bc unlike Jason (I may be wrong, haven't read Under the Red Hood yet), Bruce has so. many. chances. It's so obvious Jean-Paul looks up to him, he wants to do something good and I get he wasn't Bruce's responsibility, but I do think after Bruce took him into vigilanteism he has an obligation to help. He took those lessons to heart and made them vital parts of himself, that he had to help people and he had to go out in order to do that.

Like JPV had a life. He was getting a degree in computer science for christ's sake. Why didn't Bruce just...let him go back to that? (Tbf i may be misinformed on that last part , I did not read the Knightfall saga I listened to the radio drama instead when I found out there was one.) But seriously. He's rich. Just...get him a psychologist and leave him alone.

[lemonlimestar]

happy birthday to this total loser <3

[roseandgold137]

so about that last point bruce

[violent138]

There's maybe three reasons large swathes of the GCPD haven't resigned: 1) kickbacks from the Mob and other gangs help or they work in parts of the city that aren't entirely a lost cause, 2) they're psychopaths that enjoy the position, 3) they're hopeful near-lunatics like Gordon.

[meara-eldestofthemall]

Alfred only seems unflappable. He uses his acting skills to seem as if he's completely in control of himself when he's not.

In many ways Alfred always had the hardest job. He's on the one who tries to put the pieces back together when his boys come home wounded and bleeding; or worse, dying.

Love how Alfred just takes that in stride. Like obviously he’d make a great mom he raised Bruce

[fantastic-nonsense]

im soso curious, i need to know... why is tim a child of apollo? bless u for not going with fanon<3

[referencing how I decided who the Batfam's godly parents were in my PJO AU WIP]

People like to sort him into Athena because DC has spent the last few years emphasizing how smart he is and how he's better at the more “cerebral” and detective aspects of the job. But Tim’s most prominent pre-reboot traits are not actually his detective or tech skills: they’re his reckless, impulsive bravery, his ability to analyze and think very quickly on his feet in dangerous situations, and his "power of friendship" idealism.

He's a people person; it's one of his greatest strengths. Tim is like...physically incapable of going somewhere and not making at least one friend while he's there. Hell, when he ran off to travel the world on his "fuck you, I'll find Bruce on my own" trip he still managed to pick up his own little crew of assassin friends along the way. Making connections and talking to people and relying on others for help is how he successfully navigates being a hero, as he himself notes on multiple occasions:

"Did you think I was going to run all around the city, desperately trying to save everyone all by myself? I'm not Batman. I have friends." -Red Robin #12

Tim loves his family and friends, and losing so many people he's close to within such a small timespan sends him off the deep end in multiple ways (trying to clone Kon, fighting Dick to get the Lazarus water, isolating himself from everyone, fighting with Dick and running off to find proof that Bruce was alive on his own, etc).

At his core, Tim is an idealist who becomes a hero for no other reason than a) a broken man needs help and a broken family needs mending and b) if Dick won't go back to being Robin he might as well do it, because someone has to be Robin. He sees what will happen if Bruce stays on the path he's on and says "no. I'm not going to let that happen." He's a hero because someone has to help, and he's able and available to do so. He doesn't work on cold hard logic and facts. He works off of gut instinct and then uses his big brain to go find facts and logical conclusions that support those instincts.

Tim was never going to be an Athena child.

So I started thinking. At first, I wanted him to be a Hermes child; it seemed right to frame his parentage around being the child of the messenger of the gods given how he became Robin. But that's not really him, either. Apollo, within the scope of both classical mythology and the PJO-verse's depiction of him and his children, fits him better.

While modern culture tends to zero in a lot on Apollo's status as the god of music, poetry, and the arts (for good reason), Apollo in classical Greek mythology was first and foremost known as the god who (for lack of a better term) helps his people. He's the god of the sun, of light, of medicine and healing, of prophecy, of truth.

Tim comes into Bruce's life at a time when Bruce is at his absolute lowest point. Jason is dead. He's estranged from Dick. He's failing in his mission to save Gotham. He's highkey passively suicidal. And Tim takes it upon himself to fix that. And he does it by being a solid, bright, stable presence in Bruce's life and an extremely blunt, truthful messenger of the future he sees: Batman needs a Robin, and if Bruce doesn't have one he's going to die.

And I didn't abandon his intelligence in the calculations: Apollo is also the god of rational thinking, order, and knowledge, contrasting and working in harmony with Dionysus (the god of irrationality, chaos, and passion). He was also known to be the god whose job it was to interpret the will of Zeus to humankind, which I thought was appropriate for a boy who spends quite a lot of his time being the living communication translator between Bruce and everyone around him.

So. Apollo child.

............also I thought it was funny to make the god of youth the father of the boy DC refuses to allow to age.

[plutoslvr]

tim during the clench is like. you know you're gonna die, you're dying, there is blood leaking out from your eyes, you are in so much pain, you miss your mother, you hallucinate her alive, you miss your dad, you hallucinate not lying to him anymore, your brother is worried sick over you, he's fretting non stop, you know you're holding alfred back from helping bruce, you can hear him cry, there's bandages over your eyes, it hurts so much, you're going to die, your hands won't stop shaking, you keep trembling, you are going to die.

[adripakoffee]

Guys I hate this arc

What the heck :[[

Panels from: Batman Contagion Issue #8