#talia and damian are VERY INVESTED in the results

[tachvintlogic]

Danny and Damian Twin AU, except not really

@stealingyourbones this is a story premise that I think would be really funny.

Danny and Damian meet and notice they are identical. This is not a doppelganger situation; they are definitely related.

Danny thinks Damian is a clone. Damian thinks Danny is a clone. Their arguments over who's the clone go nowhere.

They bring in their parents.

Talia is very confused because she only had one son and didn't make Danny. The Fentons are also confused because they assumed that Danny was their biological son. Bruce is just confused in general.

After some discussion, it turns out that Talia went to a fertility clinic to have Damian, and the Fentons used the exact same clinic, so it was the clinic that must've fucked up.

But now no one knows who Danny and Damian's biological parents are. Is it Talia and Bruce? The Fentons? Talia and Jack? Maddie and Bruce?

After some shenanigans getting a sample of Danny's DNA that can be tested despite his ecto-contamination, they order some paternity and maternity tests to find out the truth.

And the results are....

[wesavegotham]

I'm not really a fan of DC retconning the way Damian became part of the batfamily from "Damian is introduced to Bruce, Bruce decides to let Damian stay with Talia and not pursue them not once but twice, Talia brings Damian to Gotham again during Batman RIP and leaves him with Bruce again (however exactly that happened, DC never explained it), Bruce gets lost in time during Final Crisis and Damian becomes Robin to Dick's Batman" to "Talia introduced Damian to Bruce and Bruce immediately tried to bond with him, but got shot and send back in time by Darkseid shortly afterwards, cutting Bruce's attempt at parenting short"

I get it's easier to understand and Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul probably isn't canon anymore considering that many of Damian's more recent stories act like Damian grew up around Ra's, which strongly contradicts Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul.

But Damian doesn't really gain anything from this retcon. First of all, it's not a proper retcon, by which I mean an arc or a oneshot that shows Bruce and Damian bonding, a story that truly replaces the original storyline, we only get single panels that promise us that this is how it actually went down now without elaborating on it.

It's also either written with the main intention of making it sound like Bruce was a better father to Damian than he was in the original storyline:

By acting like Bruce had been dedicated to bond with Damian and teach him another way right from the start.

Or with the intention to create a sob story for Tim about how Bruce forgot all about Tim the minute Damian showed up:

Completely ignoring that Bruce made sure to tell Tim that Damian's arrival wouldn't change anything:

Tim is the one who storms away and acts rather childish.

Even though in fact nothing did really change for several months. Bruce did not make Damian Robin, he did not look for Damian after the explosion on the boat. Instead he went on a date with Jezebel Jet:

Feeling possibly sad about what happened with Damian, but basically going back to business right away.

When Tim goes out alone to face a villain that just beat Bruce to a pulp, according to Alfred because Tim is still shaken by meeting Damian:

Bruce goes after him immediately despite being badly injured and high on painkillers to protect Tim and to reassure him that he has nothing to prove to him:

Bruce also didn't tell Tim about the result of the paternity test, probably out of consideration for Tim's feelings:

In fact Bruce did not refer to Damian as his son until the climax of Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul, always choosing a distancing term to refer to Damian prior to that moment.

But that story also ended with Bruce choosing not to pursue Talia who had once again left with Damian:

You know for all the times Bruce complains about Talia raising Damian to be an assassin he sure as hell was not all that invested in getting Damian away from the league during their first few meetings.

In the original canon that was it. Damian and Bruce did not meet again on-panel until Bruce returned from his adventures in the time stream. Somehow Damian became a member of Bruce's household before Battle for the Cowl off-panel.

And I get that retconning it so that Damian moved in with Bruce after Talia dropped him off the first time makes that whole thing easier to explain. But Bruce's rejection of Damian is important to make early Damian's behaviour more sympathetic. Because a lot of Damian's arrogant behaviour during that time was rooted in deep insecurity. By removing the reason for that insecurity from canon Damian's feelings become a lot more unreasonable when he in fact had very valid reasons to feel that way.

[mrknifes]

so i had a batcat headcanon ask in regards to selina's pregnancy & how bruce's autism would affect this before & after helena's born? since he's never had the opportunity to raise a kid from birth. damian was his first born. but due to his upbringing via talia & the league it was missed. and over all how it might influence his relationship with selina & baby helena as well.

I mean personally I headcanon Bruce as afab / trans, so my own headcanons differ in that aspect, in regards to Damian & Helena.

But for the sake of this ask, I'll answer under the assumption of Bruce being a cis man.

As per usual: my experiences aren't everyone else's. And other people may not agree/relate to this. Take this as you will.

Also, I have yet to read Helena's story in its entirety, so this is not so specific towards her, but more of a general view of how Bruce would react.

To be honest, I don't have much experience with parenting myself, so it's difficult for me to write anything specific that would pertain to that area. I have been there for someone after birth, and I have babysat before, but it still doesn't entirely translate into parentage.

Perhaps in the future I can research more into this subject (and baby Helena), and write a far more in-depth post than this. But for now, I'll just write down what I can see happening/feel.

Bruce would be a nervous wreck. He's taken care of other people's babies before, but he's never HAD a baby. So yes, he's freaking out a lot. This results in him sitting down and obsessively thinking over a million different scenarios in his head, and trying to come up with all kinds of plans for bringing the baby home.

It results in very frantic conversations with Bruce wondering what clothes he should get, when he should get them, how to decorate the baby's room, whether he should take time off work (both civilian & vigilante), how long he should take time off, etc. I've mentioned this before but autism involves a lot of rigid schedules & routine, as well as a ton of planning. We're very meticulous about every little thing. Everything. This results in both Alfred & Selina having to reign him in a little bit and assure him it's all gonna be okay, and they're gonna work through it. He loses a lot of sleep over it.

Bruce most likely would take time off to help raise little Helena. He's been seen in canon, willing to quit work for the sake of his family. So I'm sure he would be fine with (temporarily) stepping away from his work, in order to care for his daughter. It takes a Lot of effort to raise a kid, especially when they're a baby, entirely reliant on you. So Bruce is very, very attentive & makes sure to spend as much time as possible with her. It gets to the point where Bruce becomes an annoying mother hen that Selena has to shoo & pry him off of Helena ("hey you're not the only parent here give her BACK")

I'm sure it's most difficult when Selena has to recover from the birth. That's when it's most taxing, I think. Bruce probably loses the most sleep then, and skips his own self-care for a few days. It gets better when Selena is back to full health, so they can work as a team.

Sometimes, I think, there are days where Bruce gets too invested in taking care of Helena, to the point where he crashes. He's gotten better at taking care of himself over the years, but every now and then he still needs a reminder that he can have a break. Another part of being autistic is that essential tasks for every day living are much harder than for someone allistic. Simple things like brushing your teeth or tying your shoelaces can be draining. So every task we do results in a sort of "trade-off." (Ex. If I shower, I can't make breakfast. If I make my bed, I can't do laundry.)

So when Bruce takes care of Helena, there are moments where he spends too much energy on her, and, as I said, ends up crashing. After paying attention to her all day, he probably crawls into bed in the same clothes from yesterday without showering or brushing his teeth. And he doesn't get out of bed for another 16 hours because he's so tired he still lays in bed after he's awake.

Selena & Alfred ofc bonk him on the head afterwards to tell him he's a dummy.

Helena loves getting held by Bruce though because he's constantly stimming, which in turn leads to her getting rocked (gently), a lot. It's her favorite thing. It's also Bruce's favorite thing. There are so many photos of him falling asleep somewhere with Helena attached. Everyone in the batfam thinks it's the cutest thing.

I would write more but my last braincell is giving out 😭

I hope this was decent enough! I can definitely write a follow up post in the future!

[krispydefendorpolice]

Demon’s Bride Drabbles

Daminette December Prompt - Tree

Drabble Masterpost

This one is for @g-arya who sent me a request for information on the relationship between Damian and Marinette. A lot of the prompts from Daminette December were awesome but this one stuck out the most to me.

This happens during the Demon’s Bride universe but not during the story itself.

**************************

Marinette woke up later than usual. She had spent the night before putting the finishing touches on the gifts she had made for Damian and his family. Since this was the first Christmas she was spending with them she wanted to make a good impression on them and had pulled out all the stops on her creative ability.

Walking down the stairs at Wayne Manor she stopped when she saw Damian’s brother Dick standing in the doorway of the main parlor staring at something inside.

“Richard,” she acknowledged the man as she approached to see what had held his attention. Inside the room Damian was decorating a large Douglas fir tree with his little niece Mar’i. Damian was following Mar’i’s directions as she told him where to place garlands, tinsel and ornaments around the tree. The result was an exuberant clash of colors that only a child wold think beautiful, but it brought Mar’i joy to decorate with her uncle.

“You can call me Dick, you know. It’s a perfectly acceptable nickname.”

“Be happy I’m not calling you Grayson and accept that your nickname is a general insult and not a name at all.”

“And I thought baby bat was bad.”

Marinette ignored the man and continued to watch the two decorating the tree. Damian had a small smile and was looking at little Mar’i with a soft fondness that Marinette hadn’t seen in years. Even after their reunion most of their time was spent trying to put an end to the Hawkmoths situation in Paris.

“The first few years after Talia dropped him here we tried to get him to celebrate with us but he refused. Every time he called it a ridiculous waste of a time to celebrate a false belief in a fat red man that would bring toys as bribes for good behavior. Then a couple years ago this started,” he gestured into the room, “I still have no idea what changed.”

Marinette smiled fondly.

“The first year after my family left Tiān we went through the motions of the Christmas holiday. We decorated our bakery accordingly, my mother went shopping for gifts for me and we chose one present to be from ‘Santa’ that I could tell my peers about if they should ask.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.” Dick said looking at her.

Marinette’s smile turned bitter. “We were aping at a holiday none of us believed in because it allowed us to blend into the society we found ourselves in. We would have stood out if we didn’t do those things and a good assassin is never seen.”

Dick was taken aback at her words.

“For three years we continued this practice of celebrating a belief we had no investment in. The fourth year one of my parents regulars at the bakery needed a last minute sitter so she could go to an interview. Maman volunteered me to keep the child occupied for a few hours.”

“What happened,” Dick asked. Marinette’s expression had returned to the fond smile from before but he didn’t think it had anything to do with the sight of Mar’i sitting on Damian’s shoulders as she tried to put some of the ornaments at the top of the tree herself. Well not much anyways.

“Manon happened. She’s the child I watched and during those four hours I heard all about how she was sad that Santa had been unable to find the perfect doll that she wanted. He had brought her three different dolls, a house and clothes to fill a room in that house but not the doll. She showed me a picture of her mom as a child. Her mom held a soft baby doll that had gone out of production years before. Manon had wanted that doll to give to her mom for Christmas.”

Marinette shook her head, “A child asking Santa for a gift that she could turn around and give to her mother was unusual to me. At school I only ever heard about the things he brought to my peers or their siblings. What they would give to others never came up. It stayed with me after she left with her mother and that night I grabbed bits and pieces of cloth and thread I had around my room. I used what I remembered from the picture to create an approximation of the doll.”

“And you gave it to Manon?”

Marinette laughed, “No that would have been too easy. Making it only took a few hours so it was very early morning when I finished. The sun wasn’t up yet but I decided it was the best idea to go over to their house anyways and leave it there. They often leave a window on their third story cracked a very little bit. Not enough to see it from the streets, but when you parkour over rooftops it’s something you sometimes notice.”

“You broke into their house to leave a doll?” Dick asked in disbelief.

“Yep,” Marinette said proudly. “It took skills from the League to enter on the third floor, make my way down to the first to leave the doll by their tree, and leave through the same window. Manon was so happy to come by with her mom the next morning to show us the doll that Santa had brought her mom. Christmas magic was a toy appearing because she wished for it to.”

Dick shook his head, “Unbelievable. But why are you telling me this.”

Marinette turned so she her back was to the room and she faced Dick directly. Her face turned as serious as stone. “Damian and I spent our childhoods under a regime where our childhood innocence was brutally murdered. My mother risked our very lives to tell us the histories and legends of Tiān. But it was important that we, as the children of Tiān, knew our past.”

“Seeing the joy in Manon over a simple doll, seeing the light in Mar’i over decorating a tree is a gift we are able to give to them. We were never able to be so bright. The Demon made sure any light, any joy that was so pure of childhood was ended either through blood or through death.”

“It was always a aching pain in our souls to see the children younger then us go through the trainings that broke their beliefs in a fair and kind world. That taught them that the world was really a dark place full of pain.”

“Now that we’re out of that place, in a world that allows us too, we do what we can to preserve the magic that children see in the world around us.”

“Damian wouldn’t have cared to celebrate for himself because he knows the world is a broken place. But for Mar’i he would celebrate to help protect her belief in a kind and caring world.”

Marinette nodded at Dick and turned back to the gleeful decorators. Joining them she offered an ornament up to the little girl and laughed as she dropped it on Damian’s head. Richard watched for a moment more before turning away and going to find a quiet place to regain his balance.

While not entirely unexpected the story and understanding Marinette shared of his youngest brother was yet another bitter failing his family had left their youngest. Instead of trying to understand why he didn’t join in their celebrations, they had either dragged him along unwillingly or left him alone during these times.

Perhaps they couldn’t repair the damage Talia, the League, and they themselves had done to Damian so that he was undamaged. But maybe they could fix it so that he could find a bit of the joy and belief he had been forced to throw away as a child. Maybe, this year they could do better to help their family heal as a whole.

****************************

@multifandomscribette @mochinek0 @inevitableenquere @ravennightingaleandavatempus @northernbluetongue @bluerosette23 @fertileleaf @thepeacetea @zebrabaker @mystery-5-5 @dast218 @evil-elf16 @vivilakitty @dessarious @rhub4rb @ozmav @unmaskedagain @actualaster @a-marlene-s @del-phin @tog84 @luciferge @sonif50 @actual-human-disaster @clumsy-owl-4178 @aarushi-03 @moonyloonyx @shreky-boi @thanks-captain-obvious @panda3506 @hinata3487 @thequestionablyhuman @dontgiveaflyinflip @chocolatecatstheron @asianfrustration13 @weird-pale-blonde-person @yin-390 @mycupisbroken @vixen-uchiha @kuroko26 @autisticlinx @worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @mariae2900 @zalladane @hypnosharkrebeldreamer @tbehartoo @novicevoice @thebookish3lf @fandomkitty8

[bigskydreaming]

Part of the reason I lean so hard into the juvie origin for Dick in particular, as well as why his cop storyline pisses me off so much in light of that (given they were both the work of the same writer and wtf, why would a kid who got screwed so massively by the system ever grow up wanting to become PART of it? even to ‘fix it’ given that would require still working in service to it at least part of the time, in order to move up the ladder to positions of power within it in the first place? BUT I DIGRESS).

Where was I? Oh yeah. So part of the reason for that is because I view each of the Batkids as having their own specific metaphorical niche, based on their origins.

What I mean by that is like: the true villain of Jason’s origin and backstory is poverty as a whole. The impoverished status of his parents and his surrounding community are definitive stressors that lead directly into all the most critical elements of Jason’s origin: his father working as a henchman for various crime lords, which pretty directly loops back and into his alcoholism and abuse of his wife and son....his mother’s spiral into addiction after turning to drugs as a means of self-medicating for all the stress and shit in her own life which she needed an escape from....Jason’s own lack of options as a child seeking to support himself on the street and with petty crimes, as well as his unwillingness to put his faith in foster care or any adults in general, given how they as a whole tended to look at him, specifically due to his impoverished background and thus making assumptions about his intellect, potential, and overall ‘value’ to society.....

Jason is who he is as a character for a variety of reasons, but none moreso or more directly than the poverty that acts as a direct anthropomorphized antagonist for him....and thus, is the focal point of where Jason directs his attention and his own antagonism as an adult. When Jason seeks to take control of crime in Gotham, when he targets drug dealers, etc....its really the deliberately inflicted and perpetuated impoverished state of Gotham’s lower class that he’s combating. And that works perfectly for Jason as a metaphor and a character direction, and gives him a clearly defined niche in the Batfamily.

Then we have Tim, who I would argue has an origin and backstory defined by the apathy of the upper class as an antagonist, and thus, the perfect metaphor for him and his character direction. The self-centered tendencies of his parents, his history of neglect and the necessitated self-reliance and independence it instilled in him from a very early age - which could have very easily turned him into a copy of his parents, with that self-sufficiency turning into a mirror of their self-centeredness and repeating the cycle if he hadn’t actively broken the mold with his actions by seeking out Batman and picking him as someone, ANYONE to try and help, rather than focus entirely on himself and his own needs....and in near adulthood, Tim has become someone whose chosen focus tends to be on trying to repurpose his wealth and resources for the good of all of Gotham...essentially, the very people that for so long his parents and fellow upper class ignored and exploited.

Of course, Tim is still a product of his background as much as he’s aware of the flaws in it, much like Bruce himself, so similar to Bruce, Tim will always look at his wealth/resources in terms of the good he feels he can do with it, which he sees as more than any good that would come from just directly giving it away. In contrast to Jason and Dick, who come from entirely different backgrounds and have always prioritized their own more modest or otherwise-gained means of income or resources, even when investing in projects intended to help others - they look at things in terms of the good they feel they can do WITHOUT needing money, or as much money. Its the result of coming into resources from entirely different directions....which are sustained even as they then continue their trajectories in those opposite directions but now with added resources under their belts.

Cass and Damian are the two Batkids I would love to see explored more in juxtaposition and contrast to each other, because I feel they occupy very similar but opposite niches, the same as Jason and Tim represent the stresses of poverty vs the apathy of excess. Because Cass and Damian represent the two flip sides of parental expectations....BUT in their case, they start out on the same page. What I mean by that is the metaphorical antagonist of both of their origins and backstories IS the bogeyman of parental expectations taken to the absolute extreme. They both exist in at least one of their parents’ eyes to essentially be what their parent wants or expects them to be. An end result of carefully planned and executed molding of a next generation, with no real consideration for what that next generation wants for themselves.

They simply diverge in how they both break free of those expectations and the limitations built into them, and where they go from there. Damian finds his niche (or comes closest to it IMO, since I feel a lot of writers, at least lately, have regressed him from the considerable progress he made in this regard, and where and when he was his most fully...DAMIAN).....essentially, Damian is most fundamentally Damian, I feel, when he’s able to put aside what he thinks Talia and Bruce want or expect him to be...and instead simply prioritizes figuring out what HE wants to be and what that looks like, even if it ends up having no connection to the League or even Batman at all. Or at least not in the ways he always expected those connections to look like, as a result of the expectations that were drilled into him from an early age. Damian’s metaphor is pushing back against selfish parental expectations by saying I no longer care what your expectations are, they have nothing to do with me.

In contrast, Cassandra finds her niche in the fulfillment of not the expectations precisely, but the HOPES of a NEW parental figure, aka Bruce. Cassandra, out of all the Batkids, most fully CHOSE Bruce and everything he represented and offered, as much as Bruce chose her. She was the oldest of all the Batkids - except for perhaps Duke - when she met Bruce in the various continuities, and she had the maturity and life experiences to at least be able to recognize the different life path Bruce stood for and offered, as a contrast to the one David Cain had laid out for her and forced upon her from birth. So Cassandra differs from Damian in that while Damian grows the more he breaks away from the mold of Batman, Cassandra finds herself the closer she gets to what Bruce has always wanted Batman TO be, in the example he puts forth and holds up to show her that there’s more to life, to her, to what she can be, than simply what David told her existed.

Its no coincidence that she’s so often cited both in universe and out of it as one of the, if not the, ideal successor to the cowl.....not just because of how much she embodies the specific ideals and yes, expectations, that the cowl holds....but because she CHOSE that, with INTENT. Unlike even Dick, who Bruce has at times said is what he always wanted Batman to be....Cass is this as well, but Cass is this deliberately, because Bruce found her, and then he held up these ideals and convictions and said ‘this is what I prioritize, this is what I think is important’ and Cass looked at those and said yes, good, I like those, I like what they stand for, I want to BE those.....and she found fulfillment in fulfilling Bruce’s hopes for a next generation even without either of them FORCING that fulfillment on her, unlike what David did or tried to do. And that’s what makes all the difference in the world in Cassandra’s situation and in her and Bruce’s dynamic....and is a large part of the reason, IMO, that they have one of the strongest and healthiest dynamics of any that exist between Bruce and one of his kids.

Duke is a very unique niche as well. In short, the true villain of Duke’s origin is an ACTUAL supervillain....which coincides thematically with the direction of Duke’s character as a meta with superpowers himself, something that historically is pretty unprecedented within the Bat franchise, at least as far as Batman’s allies and direct family go. Bruce’s distrust of meta’s, or at least discomfort with them, is well established and longterm, so Duke represents an extreme break in tradition for Bruce, as well as having hallmarks to the sphere of thought that Batman and other vigilantes, by their very existence, bring about the existence of supervillains like the Joker and the Riddler. I’m still working out the kinks in this metaphor, tbh, in part because of how relatively new Duke is, he doesn’t have even the decade worth of content and story direction that Damian has by this point, to point to how some directions serve a character better than others....but overall, I see the most potential in Duke as a metaphor and niche in the Batfamily as like....as the Signal, he’s the embodiment of potential, once allowed to be REALIZED, rather than shied away from because of pre-existing beliefs or perspectives. Of course, the fact that Duke is black can’t be disconnected from this, which is part of things here as well....I’m not at all the best person to explore this particular metaphor to its fullest, so anyone who wants to take it and run with it more thoroughly if they see any validity in it at all, I’d very much like to see your thoughts if you ever write them out.

Which brings me back to Dick’s metaphor and niche in the Batfamily and franchise, and why the juvie origin works best for him IMO.....because the specter of Dick’s origin and backstory, the true villain even moreso than Tony Zucco himself, is the system as a whole. The way it is built and structured to exploit less advantaged members of society to the benefit of the upper class...such as the Court of Owls. Everything about Dick’s individual character direction falls pretty neatly into this chain of thinking, IMO....Tony Zucco murdered Dick’s parents, yes, but it was the system that took Dick away from his extended family, his planned life direction as an entertainer, everything he was familiar and comfortable with...and said it was for his own good, they knew best, he was better off this way. It was the system that ‘lost’ him in juvie when it was just more convenient than figuring out what to do with him, or just plain didn’t care, or due to the actions of a single racist case worker perhaps, or maybe even done at the behest of the Court of Owls in an attempt to wear away at the morality and resistance their future Talon might have to their plans for him. Bottom line is, everything about how Dick ended up where he was and on the course he ended up taking through life, is a direct result of the system’s manipulations of him in service not to HIM and what was best for him, as a member of society himself, but entirely at the whims or discretion of others.

Which is why Dick’s choice to become a cop both works and doesn’t work....I can see how at eighteen he might have briefly entertained the idea of trying to change the system from the inside...BUT it only works if the stories that result from that make no attempt to glorify or romanticize the work or character of any of his colleagues, and instead simply make him realize that he can’t change the system by becoming a cog in its flawed machinery, no matter his intentions...and that’s why he’s best served operating outside of it, as a vigilante. Bruce is a vigilante because he feels he exists to pick up the slack where the system fails, or is broken, because Bruce is someone who the system actually is meant to work FOR, and thus the times it doesn’t work that way, such as with the deaths of his parents....IS a result of a failure on the system’s part. In contrast, Dick, for all the superficial similarities in their origins, is someone who the system was never meant to work for, and IMO, Dick is best served as a character at the times and points when he’s allowed to RECOGNIZE this....and thus Dick is a vigilante for the sole reason that he’s someone who puts his faith in individuals rather than institutions. He’d much rather trust in the morality of singular people that he KNOWS and VALUES, rather than the morality of an uncaring system of bureaucracies and red tape.

And again, IMO Dick works best as both a metaphor and a character with a clearly defined niche and purpose when he targets the system directly with his actions. Whether its fighting their embodiment as the Court of Owls and their attempts to exploit him, or pouring his own time, energy and resources into trying to buy and renovate the former entertainment district of Gotham and turn it into a sanctuary for impoverished Gothamites to visit cheaply as a break from their stressors (I’ve talked a lot about how similar I view Jason and Dick being, at their core, so its no surprise that I see their metaphors and niches as being so closely linked, even if not entirely the same). And of course, even if you hate Dick as a cop as much as I do, his focus there still fits what I’m laying out here, for the same reasons, its just the actuality of it that doesn’t work as intended, for the reasons I already mentioned.

So yeah. That’s my post. That was a post. This post is concluded. Man I suck at denoument.

[whetstonefires]

how do you think the batfam mightve progressed if jason never died?

Whaa, 4 asks at once? I’m sorry I still haven’t gotten back on the last one, I thought I was unstuck but guess what, I wrote myself into a pretty little corner by being all ‘I don’t care about what’s canon! i’m just gonna have fun!’ which is the correct approach except then you find out the thing you made up is incorrect and idk how to deal with that. being wrong. it’s a life skill i’m still working on.

So like, if the vote had gone the other way...it depends so much on the writing and editing teams, and so little on real causality, it’s hard to frame a picture?

Jason was created as an alternative to aging Dick down and taking him out of the Titans; his new character origin after the Crisis on Infinite Earths barely got out of its shakedown tour before they killed him off. We know who he was enough to spot the major character derailments, but who he might have been? It’s hard to say.

If he’d made it through the vote, the noisy fans would still have hated him, and so would the man writing his comics. I doubt Starlin would ever have convinced DC to do the HIV plotline with Robin like he reportedly tried, but I feel like Something Bad remained likely.

The 90s are known for their grimdarkness for a reason, and Jason just missed living through them. I feel like his odds of going villain were pretty high anyway, not because of him but because of the constant need for drama fuel. I mean, Alfred had a villain phase, in the 60s.

Babs became Oracle almost simultaneous with the Robin trade-off, debuted the same month Jason died (January ‘89), so that still would have happened. Tim’s influence on her was very slight.

Without Tim, there would have been no need for Steph, since she was created partly as a love interest but more importantly as a foil, and a way of getting more of that high-energy feeling traditionally associated with Robin back into the story even though so many of the fans loathed it and refused to have it in their lead.

(Not that Tim didn’t have a lot of it anyway, but it wasn’t his core feel the way it had been for Dick and Jason. Possibly of note, the ‘87 Killing Joke and ‘89 Batman movie also marked a rise in the use of Joker as Batman’s main dramatic foil rather than Robin, which coupled with the Bronze Age in general really shaped Tim’s character direction. It’s hard to say what caused what, with these trends.)

They might have introduced a girl anyway, to replace Babs. Maybe even a version of Cass. Shiva stated under interrogation during ADitF that she had no child, but in comics terms that half-guaranteed she’d get one eventually, because the concept was now out there.

I doubt Jason would have gotten his own series in the 90s, considering his screaming hatedom and the fact that it took three extremely successful mini-series to get Tim a regular title, but if DC had managed to repackage his character into something that the 90s liked and he had made a go of it, he’d probably have acquired a completely different supporting cast. He might well have continued his pattern of acquiring moms. Maybe even Talia. The whole Sheila thing would have been a half-forgotten backstory subplot by like ‘94 probably.

It occurs to me after typing all of this that you might want to hear my ideas about what in-universe causality might logically have led to, lmao. Let’s see.

Jason’s adolescence was hitting a rocky stage that I doubt this betrayal and near-death experience and technical bereavement would have ended, though it would probably have hit harder than his last few near-death experiences even assuming another improbable complete recovery.

If we up the realism dial a little, he might be forced into retirement by the severity of his wounds. He’d still have to hash out his trust issues with Bruce, probably more than ever. Being a shit communicator was not yet a key part of Bruce’s personality; they might have sorted things out.

Jason would not have dropped out of college. If he’s retired, he goes into a prestigious but helping-centered field with an understanding that he is now the son Bruce trusts to step up to keep WE on the straight and narrow after he dies; inheritance of voting shares may be structured around this expectation.

(Dick experiences that really complicated hypocritical jealousy where you specifically rejected a thing, but it spent so long being marked yours that you feel robbed anyway when someone else gets it. Not a lot of it in the disability scenario, because there’s a distinct vibe of consolation prize there, but otherwise.)

Babs would still have been Oracle. It would have been a less fraught launch, though.

Dick might not have heard about the Ethiopia thing at all, if Jason made a full recovery, considering how little communication was passing between him and Bruce at that point. Dick’s level of Batcomputer access only stated Jason as ‘location unknown’ when he was dead, so.

He and Jason got along fine, regardless of retcons since then, but he was under a lot of stress from a lot of sources, and the feeling that he couldn’t go home even when he really needed to, because he’d been replaced, was very present. That might well have blown up at some point.

I tend to think of Bruce as having changed pretty dramatically as a result of Jason’s death, disregarding a lot of retcons, but I mean, 1987 Bruce already failed to notice Dick having a mental breakdown right in front of him and put him off in favor of hero work with Jason on Dick’s birthday, he just did it cheerfully and with fairly courteous wording. There was a trend in the faildad direction starting already.

There was a lot of relationship stuff in need of fixing and in some ways Jason’s presence made that as hard for Dick with Bruce as Damian’s later did for Tim, even though there was a lot less drama and intentional emotional violence and attempted murder involved. So. That could have gone a lot of ways. Realistically, even without Tim trying to play peacemaker, Dick always gets dragged back into Bruce’s orbit, though. That’s narrative causality at work, but also psychology.

In-universe, Tim can be assumed to have already existed before Wolfman invented him. He’s mostly away at boarding school, but he’s nosy and well-intentioned and he Knows. If Jason ran away more comprehensively than the Great Mom Tour, he might approach him with an argument for why Batman needed Robin and he should go home. Or there would eventually have been a case where he knew something they didn’t and attempted to subtly pass information and got noticed.

Or Oracle’s expanding field of awareness would have eventually noticed him and his zoom-lens one summer evening while his parents were in Haiti getting dead. Idk.

He’d probably have gotten mixed up in Bat-things eventually, and if it wasn’t before the Haiti thing there’s no way Batman would have been invested enough in this random disappearance to be there in time to help, so he’d have been completely orphaned at 13. Bruce taking him in is reasonably likely, since he wasn’t exactly in a position to create himself a fake uncle at the time. On the other hand, he might have gone into foster care. His parent’s company still would have crashed without them, so he wouldn’t have inherited much, but he’d have been better off than most kids in the system because he’d have some assets.

Steph is even more guaranteed to hit the vigilante scene. Bruce would be a lot friendlier to her without Jason death issues for her to trigger, though that doesn’t mean he’d actually be friendly, and Jason would like her, and possibly communicate more effectively than Tim did about how she could not die, or possibly they’d have egged each other on into steadily more unwise behavior.

On the other hand, depending on where Jason’s character development went after surviving Ethiopia, he might at 17 find 15-year-old Steph indescribably annoying precisely because they have so much in common, and lash out at her as a proxy for his younger self, and be kind of awful.

Cataclysm breaks causality to even acknowledge anymore because they rushed on from it like massive chumps, but Jason would have been a good Robin to have for it. He’d have been pretty tall by then, and he’s got the mental tools for surviving in an unfriendly urban environment where money is useless. I think he and Cass would have gotten on well, they have compatible personalities. The only major issue I can see is if Bruce or Babs got really positive about her and triggered some kind of jealousy or possessiveness issue.

We don’t really have any specific data at all from before Jason died about how he would cope with a rival for something he felt entitled to but insecure about--he deferred very nicely to Dick as his elder, but Dick wasn’t actually a threat to anything Jason valued. Assuming later canon is applicable, jealousy would be a definite issue with any additional family members, though I assume without the risk of homicide.

Okay here is an after-midnight hour of my half-baked opinions. You asked for it! ;DDD