#in the meantime the bats are trying to make heads and tails of wtf is even going on at all

[ghost-bxrd]

Exchanging blows like we’re gladiators in the arena, huh? :P I can do this aaaaaall day 🏟️ 🦇

Omg YES tho!

Dick is absolutely horrified that a villain is bastardizing the purpose of Robin and, good gods, did he just see the kid hold up a severed arm and wave at him with it!?

But you’re absolutely right. Originally, Robin was out for revenge for the death of his parents but eventually he became “The Boy Wonder”. The one every Gothamite (except criminals ksks) would be so excited to see or even catch a glimpse of they’d be telling stories about it for years aftward. Robin became a symbol of hope and everything that is still good in this city. And Dick was proud of that, because while Batman is this huge and hulking shadow raining down punishment on the bad guys Robin is the one to calm and soothe the victims, to smile and tell them “everything is going to be ok”. But then Jason died and suddenly Robin seemed like a curse, but Tim managed to bring back that magic and things have finally gotten better since that devastating day in Ethiopia. So this? A criminal with the JOKER’S OLD NAME who appears to be grooming a 9/10 year old into committing the most heinous crimes and murders? Yeah, Dick is taking that shit personally

Jason on the other hand has already had more than one argument with little Bruce about keeping him out of vigilantism until he’s AT LEAST sixteen. Obviously to no avail because, duh, it’s still BRUCE, pig-head-extraordinaire, the kid is going out in friggin pajamas if he has to. So eventually Jason gives in because either his kid does it behind is back in civvies anyways or he can at least provide sufficient body armor and put down some ground rules. Little Bruce is way too smug about it all in Jason’s opinion, so he vows to feed the kid only spinach for the next five days minimum.

But then? Nightwing threatening to take the kid away from Jason? The ensuing fight is absolutely cataclysmic. Red Hood fights like an absolute pit crazed maniac.

Nightwing, Batman and Robin all quickly update their files that “taking away the anti!Robin from Red Hood will not be as easy as initially suspected”.

(Little Bruce is kinda touched by how viciously Jason fought for him and Nightwing has now officially made it on his shit list.)

But before Damian comes into the picture, let’s talk about Tim!

Tim, who’s an insecure little bean with no sense of self preservation who still idolizes Jason’s Robin to no end and is determined to follow in Jason’s footsteps of “rescuing the poor and traumatized child because that’s what Jason would have done”. But Tim goes about it in a much smarter and a lot less offensive way than Batman and Dick. Instead of trying to nab the kid and telling him how bad Hood is for him, Tim actually attempts to build a basis of trust with the kid first.

Casual quips here and there, greetings during patrol (even if that devolves into fights half the time), a liberate amount of little gifts from the Bats, a card with each of their numbers on it and a promise of “if you’re in trouble just call and we’ll come for you!”

Obviously little Bruce isn’t impressed at first, but eventually Robin kind of… grows on him. And since Tim is actually listening to what he says instead of screeching about his adoptive dad guardian being an evil crime lord he starts opening up a little, telling him how kind and loving Jason is and that he’s the most amazing person ever.

That, in turn, throws Tim for a loop. Because—- what? Wait, is Hood actually—- the kid’s real dad? Did we get it wrong?

Tim is so caught up in theories and what-ifs and one too many cups of coffee that he doesn’t notice that he’s not the only one doing some info gathering around here, and soon Little Bruce walks up to Jason and tells him that the current Robin is suffering from criminal neglect and that his counterpart “is too stupid to notice, do something Jason!”

Omg tho the thing with Damian is BRILLIANT! Damian looks exactly like Little Bruce at that age only with darker skin, but it’s not like you can easily tell when someone keeps to the shadows. And they’re literally the same age here, too! It’s like having a set of twins running around but everybody things it’s one kid! Brilliant. Marvelous.

Damian is absolutely FOAMING AT THE MOUTH for being accused of breaking and entering in the span of a few hours since being introduced to his father. In the meantime, Little Bruce is proudly presenting his “spoils of war” (aka the torn Robin suit) to his adoptive dad guardian and asks if they can burn it together. (Jason absolutely does not cry over how touched he is. No way.)

But soon there’s a murderous baby assassin who seems to have it out for Little Bruce during patrol and who demands a “duel to the death for tainting my honor”. Little Bruce is appropriately disturbed because as far as he knows he did not dishonor anybody or their cow recently. And if he did then they totally deserved it. But hey, at least the boy is providing him with sufficient training opportunities.

Damian is getting progressively more frustrated by the Anti!Robin refusing to engage in combat with him.

But he also becomes a little bit suspicious because, wait, those moves seem familiar.. does the Anti!Robin have League Training!? Did mother have another child and is pitting him against Damian to see who will come out victorious?

Prompt:

Jason gets booted to another dimension and adopts a recently orphaned Bruce Wayne.

Whom he also takes along for the ride when he’s pulled back into his own dimension.

[the-cryptographer]

We were watching Sonic X because batty is an enabler and nobody seems very invested in preventing my decent into furrydom but whtvr. Sonic X was full of explosions and the US military and I vaguely remembered that Sonic Adventure 2 had a really similar kind of feel. And, since my computer wasn’t working, I thought - what the hell~ Let’s dig out the Dreamcast and play some SA2.

See, I’ve replayed the first Sonic Adventure a bajillion times. I prefer it to the sequel quite a bit - off the top of my head I like the stage select hubs, and the general ancient civilisation and mysterious history feels, and the fact that Eggman is the only human character that matters. I mean... I know part of it’s probably nostalgia and it was baby’s first game for baby’s first game console (or no wait. that was Kirby’s Dreamland 2 for GBPocket), but I do think the difference in tone between the two games is marked, so it seems logical to prefer one over the other. But, leaving that aside, an unfortunate side effect is I can remember a lot about SA, but I forgot most of what happened in SA2 (except that Rogue was in it and Rogue was awesome). So I felt kind of determined to rediscover it and also I hurt my left thumb - it got really swollen toggling the analog stick.

Okay, but this is what I learned.

- The plot does such a poor job of trying to explain the settings for half the stages. It’s just like, ‘we’re in a forest now that’s why this level takes place in a forest’ or ‘let’s raid eggman’s base which is in the middle of these ancient Egyptian pyramids for some reason we’ve never talked about before’. It’s such bs.

- If you didn’t know, you play stages as both the heroes and villains in SA2. I remember noticing before that the villain half of the story starts much earlier in the timeline. The early Rogue and Knuckles stuff is kind of isolated plot-wise so it’s kind of arbitrarily spread out through the beginning part of the game until they meet up with the other characters. But the first stage for the heroes with Sonic happens after stage four for the villains. I didn’t think about the reasons for this when I was younger but, now, I can say with certainty - gd, the heroes in Sonic are so reactionary. They don’t do things just for themselves, they’re always 5 steps behind running damage control. Like, Shadow wants revenge, Eggman wants power, and Rogue’s balancing a job and her own thirst for jewels - and that’s all motivating the plot. In the meantime, Sonic basically wants to run and bum around, Tails likes to invent and build things, and Knuckles wants to go back to napping and looking after the Master Emerald, and I think it’s good they have personalities distinct enough that I know what their hobbies are, but none of this has anything to do with most of what happens in the game.

- Speaking of Knux. Angel Island is apparently not a thing in SA2 like it is in SA. Like, him trying to protect the Master Emerald before was part of keeping Angel Island floating - and also maybe there are other Echidnas living there ??? unknown. Here the Master Emerald’s just chilling out in the middle of Egyptian ruins and it becomes ‘why do you even care if Rouge takes it? you’re not using it. do you just not trust her with its powers?’ and I think Knux would keep protecting it just for the sake of it, because its his duty or whatever, but it does make you wonder how empty his life is if he’s so intent on preforming this meaningless task. Like, really he should be grateful people come to steal this thing and cause trouble - what is his life when he’s not fighting and searching for the pieces of his shattered Emerald? He seems to almost use Eggman’s and Rogue’s theft attempts as an excuse to break it to bits and go treasure hunting (he decides this is the best course of action really quickly??) I guess bc otherwise it’s just him sitting next to this gem for eternity and picking his toes and being a lonely sad sack.

- I knew this already, but it didn’t really hit me before. The Wild Canyon song, sung from Knuckles’s POV actually calls Rogue ‘sexy and smooth’. Like, wtf? I mean, I like Knouge and it’s fine if Knuckles thinks she’s sexy or whatever, but why is this game telling me, even by proxy, that a cartoon bat is sexy? Water you doing, localisation team?

- And all that included, gd, I love the English Language songs the localisation team came up with for SA and SA2. So god damn amazing. (also this one that’s probably in the jp game too...)

- I forgot how much I liked Shadow. He’s still not my fave. And he’s got poorly developed dead female characters as the excuse for his manpain. But, man, he’s a quality amount of angstily not giving a shit.

- Eggman blows up the moon.

- And can confirm that Sonic and Tails do speak with the president. They kind of hop in his limo and steal confidential information and zip out with a cheerful wave. (... Rogue’s the one that’s actually got the ongoing connection with him and his cabinet tho...)