assigning you a canon batman character based on your favorite fanon jason todd trope/headcanon

catholic, quotes the bible, connected with mafia, works as a teacher at school, has a close relationship with tim drake — helena bertinelli (huntress)

doesn't kill people, good older brother, has a close relationship with tim/damian/babs/etc, best/most recognizable robin, a good leader, in love with roy harper — dick grayson (nightwing)

catholic, "lazarus pit rage", uses a flaming sword, manipulated by a cult to be an assassin, has a close relationship with cassandra cain — jean paul valley (azrael)

cares about and protects women and children, takes over criminal underworld — selina kyle (catwoman)

lady shiva is his mom — cassandra cain (batgirl)

talia al ghul is his mom — damian wayne (robin)

Jean-Paul 🤝 Jason

Murderous Batman Tim Drake haters with magic flame swords

I have been thinking so much about Jean-Paul Valley in my Reverse!Robins AU. Specifically, how he’d react to Steph’s return.

Because, listen: here is a man who had his autonomy stripped from him. Had his identity stripped from him. By the cult his father secretly raised him to serve, while letting Jean-Paul think he was having a normal childhood (and he did. That is one of the things I like about JPV as a character; in the original “Azrael: Fallen Angel” & “Knightfall” stories, he had a perfectly normal childhood… aside from the hypnotic brainwashing implanted while he slept.) This guy who was tricked into murdering several people, when he never, ever wanted that.

He gets saved by the Bats. And they help him. They really, genuinely help him, and sure, Duke & Damian are still teenagers (JPV’s like… 20-22 at this point in my mind,) but they’re also his anchors to reality. Damian, who also was raised to be a weapon by someone he should’ve been able to trust. Damian, who has experience with cults & rebuilding your identity after losing everything. Damian, who’s basically JPV’s “Brainwashed Cult Assassins Anonymous” sponsor. Duke, who also had a normal childhood. Duke, who knows Gotham like only a kid who was raised in its heart can. Duke, who agrees that this whole situation is certifiably fucked, but never hesitates to help Jean-Paul potentially recover a lost memory or find a new one, because it’s not just about who Jean-Paul was before the cult of St Dumas got their hands on him, it’s about remembering that he’s a living human being right now.

They take him in. They save him. They help him save himself. Bruce offers to pay for him to go back to college, for fuck’s sake!

They gave him his life back.

Jean-Paul can never, ever repay them. They tell him they don’t need it, but he wants to and he can’t. He feels so selfish to take & take without giving back, but how do you pay someone back for all that?

So his couch is always open to them, whenever they want. He’ll be their ally, their friend, their confessor, their confidant, their homework editor if need be. And when newer batkids join, well, Jean-Paul would’ve done his best anyway, but the fact he’s entrusted with Duke & Damian’s apprentices is just. It’s something else. And it’s hardly a hardship—the kids are a delight. Obnoxious, sure, and messy, and pushy, and constantly interrupting, and sometimes they break his stuff, and always they eat all his food, but Jean-Paul has more civilian friends now, and they tell him that’s just what kids are like.

What matters is that he loves them. He loves them because Duke & Damian love them, and then he loves them for being them.

And then. Stephanie. Dies. (Because Jean-Paul is broken, he’s a sinner, he can never make up for what he’s done, what he is, and he can never have nice things. Because Steph was sunshine & rage & stubbornness, because she joked that “We blondes have to stick together!” Because no one was there for her when it mattered most. This has to be punishment, right? He got too close, and Steph paid the price.) (His therapist says he’s being irrational again, but it doesn’t feel irrational. They say they need to adjust his medications. Jean-Paul knows better than to trust himself, but he can trust in Bruce to make sure the therapist is safe, so Jean-Paul doesn’t fight it. He’s not happy, but he doesn’t fight it. Because if he starts hallucinating again, he knows it won’t just be his father hovering over him, demanding to know why Azrael refused to avenge them. So yeah, sure, adjust the meds if you think it’s needed—he doesn’t miss Steph that badly. Yet.)

And then. Steph. Comes. Back.

She’s not dead. She’s not dead, but she’s different, she’s so very, very different. Damian says she fights like she spent time with the LoA, that same cult that raised Damian which he’s told Jean-Paul so much about over the years. Training like that takes time, but it’s been 6yrs, and she’s back, risen & gifted back to them! And she’s killing, but Jean-Paul’s killed before, and he’s been kidnapped by a cult before, and he thinks he knows how this goes. Death Mask isn’t Azrael, but he thinks it’s close enough.

And. And. And. He can save her. Because he knows what to do now, after nearly a decade in recovery. He can make up for his sins, he can bring her home again, and maybe, finally, he’ll have finally managed to pay them all back! He can give Steph her self back to make up for—(“You didn’t kill Stephanie,” his therapist reminds him, “you never laid a finger on her. Remember? You didn’t hurt her. It’s not your fault.” But it feels like it is, it feels like it, he can’t shake the idea that he did)—and he can give the Bats their sister back to make up for all that they’ve given him over all this time! A life for a life, and yes! This feels right!

He cooks up scenarios, imagines Steph reaching out in a moment of lucidity, or showing up injured on his doorstep guided by muscle memory, or running into her on the street or in a cafe and the look of alarm & recognition in her eyes as she—like he did, still does occasionally—knows that she knows him but can’t remember. He imagines the conversations they could have, all the different variations, and knows that it will take time, but patience is a virtue and Jean-Paul’s gotten rather good at it. He can be her anchor.

He just needs to figure out how to start.

(And meanwhile, Steph’s on the other side of Gotham like, “Why are my ears burning, and why do I feel like I’m staring down a tsunami-level wave of second-hand embarrassment right now?”)

The sword said so…

Anyway, my proposal for a run on Detective Comics where I write a series of one-shot stories showcasing all of the various supporting cast Batman has accumulated with stories, including, but not limited to:

Batman invites Nightwing to Gotham to help him solve a murder. The murder is very straightforward and they dance around the real reason Bruce invited him, until at the end, he finally admits in a constipated Bruce way that it's the anniversary of him adopting Dick and he wanted to spend time with him.

Huntress and Robin (Tim Drake) team up to investigate Killer Croc. It turns out he's turning over a new leaf in the sewers near the Marina. Huntress is dubious, but Robin convinces her to give him a chance, though she says she'll be watching him. We re-canonize Joker: Last Laugh.

Damian and Duke team up to take on a street-racing operation--a mission that naturally requires them to do some high adrenaline racing together.

The Riddler gets on social media with a plot that involves lots of puzzles and clues all over Gotham. Oracle taps into old members of "We are Robin" to take it down.

Batgirl (Stephanie Brown) and Batman end up on the same missing persons case. With the pressure on to find the missing child, they snipe at each other as tensions rise. In the end, after saving the kid, Bruce sort of kind of apologizes in a Bruce way and expresses some measure of respect for her.

Jason teams up with Ghostmaker to take on, idk, one of the Clayfaces. Does Gotham still have one of those? I haven't read any comics ghostmaker's in yet, but from I've heard it sounds like they'd have an interesting dynamic. Jason gets flashbacks to digging his way out of his grave.

Luke Fox recruites Harper Row (She does engineering stuff right? I also need to read comics she has a significant role in.) They take some new tech for a joyride and go bother the Penguin.

Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) and Azrael team up to take down Mad Hatter. He probably has some elaborate Alice in Wonderland theming going on that neither of them get. (I think neither of them should have read it.)

Batwoman and Catwoman team up to steal back some Kane family heirlooms, possibly from Jacob Kane (What's his and Kate's relationship looking like anyway?), possibly from someone else.

Gotham Girl and somebody. Me advancing my Cass & Claire agenda Possibly Oracle trying to rehabilitate her in that controlling yet well-intentioned way she has sometimes? Someday, I will get to being more up to date on what Claire's status quo in current comics is.

A handful of representatives from Gotham's various crime families get together in the backroom of a bar somewhere. They play poker and exchange stories of being busted by the various bat-affiliated vigilantes in which they are very scary and almost inhuman. It ends with Batgirl (Cass) busting in and beating them up.

Helena Bertinelli takes a gig as a substitute teacher at Gotham Academy. She teams up with Maps & other supporting cast when Mr Freeze takes the school hostage while trying to escape the police.

Detective comics #677 / Gotham Knights #10

did you know that in scribblenauts unmasked, red hood jason is counted as a villain so the rest of the bat-family will immediately start beating his ass if he's near them

Cass Saying Hi: A Compilation

Bonus:

House-ad for the four-issue miniseries Batman: Sword of Azrael (1992).

dc six fanarts challenge

I love that when Cass was first learning how to speak the people she was closest to were Barbara “probably reads the dictionary for fun” Gordon, Batman, and a guy who talked like Papyrus Undertale

Justice League Odyssey covers by Lucio Parrillo

Rank the batfam's hero names

Nightwing, Flamebird, Azrael: 10/10 no notes

Huntress: 9/10 I don't think the name quite matches the look but it's still pretty badass

Oracle: 8/10 I can see where she's coming from but aren't oracles supposed to see into the future

Bluebird: 7/10 because it's better than what's coming after this

Robin: 6/10 since so many people have held that title

Batwing: 5/10 a little derivative but it fits

Red Hood: 4/10 I feel personally victimized that Jason Todd isn't a real person that I could have a drink with

Batman/Batwoman/Catwoman/Batgirl: 3/10 anything with a man/woman/etc. suffix loses points for originality in my book

Spoiler: 2/10 sorry Steph I love you but it doesn't work outside a specific context

Signal: 1/10 you're named after a lightbulb

Orphan: 0/10 I get the message but that doesn't automatically make the name good

Red Robin: -5/10 might as well call yourself Applebee's

Drake: -1000000/10 who greenlit this I need to have a word

jean-paul valley orrrrr noriko ashida & sam blindspot (hanging out) (i think she could be his friend that he doesn’t like that much)

two of them