Prompt 101

 The Fentons have created a machine! A wonderful machine that will reveal a ghost’s true form! So that everyone will see their trickery! They’ll see that the monsters they really are! 

 Now, to know what all went wrong, one would have to know some things about the ghost zone, and more specifically the area the Fentons had managed to punch through to. 

 For one, ghosts do not age like humans. Oh they might take a form similar to that of their death, which may appear as an adult or teen or something similar, but with how they can only die by the complete destruction of their core, theoretically a ghost could live forever once formed. 

 In fact, the equivalent of eighteen years for a ghost was one-hundred realms-years dead. And those years don’t always sync up with the years of the living world that one might open a door into. Thankfully, the Fenton’s world, being one of those synced closer to the Realms, only had a time dilation of a few seconds. 

 That being said, the area their portal had ripped into was incredibly rich in ectoplasm. And areas like that, were where newborn ghosts were formed and arrived. A ghost daycare of sorts, almost akin to a toddler area of the zone. 

 Which meant that when they shoot the Phantom-menace and other pesky ghosts to revert them into their true form, it isn’t exactly monsters that appear. Instead, there are now several ghost toddlers- or in the phantom-trio’s case literal babies- flying around. Very unhappy ghost toddlers. 

 What a horrible time for the Justice League to arrive. Though perhaps some would say it was actually perfect timing. 

People seem to think this is fake because it's written in English. Apart from the racism in believing that Arab doctors and nurses aren't fluent in English (a second or official language for half of Asia), Palestinians have deliberately been addressing their audience in English on every social media, from journalists to children, because they know speaking English to Westerners immediately makes people more human in their eyes. Because language is one of the ways the imperial cultural hegemony conditions us (yes, everyone in the world) to see who qualifies as "people" and who are simply a mass of bodies who were always made to suffer and die. Gazans know this deeply, which is why they have been using English to beg and plead through social media, "We're not numbers! We're not numbers! We're people like you, we speak your language, we deserve to live!" all the while they're systematically slaughtered.

Israeli forces also encircled Al Shifa Hospital yesterday and bombed it for several hours while shooting dead anyone trying to flee including medical staff moving between buildings. Not sure whether it's still continuing because WHO lost all communications with its staff there a few hours after. The last new report said that thirty-nine babies had been removed from the incubators before the power went out. It's extremely unlikely they will survive.

Please understand that these atrocities depend on the war of attrition between governments and public attention. The momentum of public outcry is difficult to sustain through repeated stonewalling and bureaucratic intractability. When we're flooded with these reports and a sense of futility and despair replaces the anger, it allows compassion fatigue to set in and the violence to become normalized. Massacring hospitals, killing sick children and openly targeting humanitarian aid workers (Netanyahu just declared the UNRWA is in league with Hamas) will become simply more news articles that fade into the background, and open genocides will soon become part of the "lesser evil".

Take care of yourselves how you can, take distance where needed, but please never tune out and give up on the two million people for whom we are the only witness and hope. Never stop boosting and sharing the news and posts you find, never stop getting out there and joining every protest you can, however small. Anger burns out, which is why activism must depend on an immovable sense of justice and uncompromising value for human life. It's not just about Gaza, it's about the kind of evil our generation will be coerced into accepting as unchangeable and inevitable hereafter.

The only way I can rationalise people accepting literal children going out and fighting crime as Robin is if they don't think Robin is a real child.

I think it would be fun to see how Bruce would use that to his advantage in protecting his kids. Like, if people think Robin isn't human, if they instead think he's a spirit or a ghost, they are less likely to shoot at him, less likely to try and physically attack Robin because they think it would be no use.

The fun part would be deciding HOW they would do this. I like to think that Robin's domino mask doesn't have a hole for his eyes but instead is glazed over so that he can see out of it, but you can't see in. Maybe they install small lights in it so it looks like his eyes glow in the dark, because can you image how fucking scary it would be to just see these two sentient light-like eyes and just know the Batman must be lurking somewhere close by?

Maybe Bruce installs super strong magnets in their gloves because on the chance that someone does pull a gun on his kid close range, it would be a lot easier for them to grab the gun away if they had the force of magnetism on their side. Also, grabbing onto poles and other metal materials would make all the scaling on tall buildings a little safer. Obviously, they'd need a way to turn it on and off, but still. Can you imagine, you're in a warehouse and there are steel frames fucking everywhere and you look up and suddenly there's a child gripping onto one effortlessly? Horrifying.

Maybe they have a voice box. Want to scare people? Play this really ominous recording of a child's laughter that echoes just a bit too loud to be normal. Play this ominous screaming that seems too silent to be real. Play this ticking that seems to never end that induces stress and increases the chance of them messing up.

What would be even funnier is keeping this act up with the Justice League and other teams.

Batman doesn't bring Robin to these meetings at the beginning because he sees no need to involve a preteen in such matters, but at some point the subject does come up and it's sort of like; So, Bats, what exactly is the kid? Like...is he yours?

And Bruce (paranoid as fuck) doesn't want to admit to these people that yes, Robin is my son because hello? That's gotta be his biggest weakness, he would do anything to keep that kid safe and fuck them if they ever tried to hurt him to get to Bruce.

So, he tells them that he's a spirit sent to haunt him and remind the city of it'd failures and the Justice League just... believe him?? Because this is Batman, and why would Batman ever lie about something so, frankly, strange? And it's not a huge deal, like they're a team comprised of metas and aliens and literal godesses, so what if the one normal human guy has a weird little ghost child? Who cares if he cares about it like it's a real boy? Maybe the baby spirit has rights, too!! They don't know!

So, when the JLA gets more popular and becomes an actual, legal part of the American government, they're required to list all of their members. And they class Batman as a human, because that's obvious but next to Robin, they don't really know what to say or how to ask Batman about it, ao they just put "Unknown Child Spirit - TBD"

And then just... never change it?

So, they don't question why a few years later Robin seems to look entirely different, or why after that he changes again, or why Robin is suddenly a girl for a while before going back to a little boy. That's obviously just some weird spirit thing they don't understand, and it's not like Batman is going to explain it!

Some fic because I love your au, Fenton is gender brainrot, and little baby dan cracks me up. Full disclosure, my only familiarity with DC is DP crossover fanfic, and a Batman movie I fell asleep during. (If I had a better grasp on the characters I would totally write more :(( i love interactions) also sorry for the weird spacing. Idk why tumblr did that

~~~~~~~~

There was an empty cardboard box on the table of the Justice League’s main conference room. Taped on the top flap, next to a doodle of Fenton’s logo, was a jump drive.

Heaving a sigh, Batman plugged it in and pulled up his screen on the projector. The drive, which was named “little baby dan’s evil playtime”, contained two files; WATCH_ME_FIRST.mp4 and its-a-secreeeet.pdf. He clicked on the video file, and immediately the projector filled with a blurry close-up of Fenton’s goggles.

After a moment of fiddling with the camera, Fenton stepped back, giving a cheery wave. His lab coat and goggles were a pastel pink, which was new. “Heeeeya, Bats! Whoever else is there! If you’re watching this, you probably weren’t there when I dropped the box off, aaand it’s probably empty.”

He clapped his hands together gleefully. “And Connie, if you’re there, this is payback for cussing around my daughter.” Batman was instantly relieved that Constantine wasn’t on base. Hopefully the situation wouldn’t require Constantine’s expertise. (Or any of the Justice League Dark. Fenton seemed determined to drive them all to an early grave with his casual refusal to acknowledge the supernatural air around him.)

“Now, as you’re all heroes, I’m sure you’re all familiar with the whole,” Fenton paused for a moment, as if searching for the proper words. “”You ate a burger on a Tuesday or something equally inane, and it kickstarted a series of events that led to you going insane and evil and murdering 95% of the Earth’s population and now you must fight your evil alternate self, because your time-controlling cryptid Peepaw said so,” shtick, so I’ll skip the backstory. Say hi to Dan!” Fenton grabbed the camera, and Batman quickly jotted down several notes about the concerning number of things the boy had just said.

The camera swiveled around to show Nightingale, holding a strange beast in a manner that reminded Batman of an “elongated cat meme” Nightwing had shown him when he was still a Robin. The creature bared a maw full of razor sharp fangs at the camera. Nightingale adjusted her grip to hold the creature’s paw and make it wave, which evoked a deep growl.

“Haha, he’d kill me if I did that. Dan likes Nightingale much more than he likes me.”

“Because the worst she has ever done is attempt to shoot me.”

The camera had moved, so Batman couldn’t visually confirm that the deep voice had come from the creature, but the voice didn’t match any of Fenton’s previously revealed companions. “Yeah yeah, her aim sucked back then.” Fenton gave the camera a toothy grin that was only slightly less unnerving than the creature’s. “Dan’s not technically me, he’s much more like Dani, actually, but the world would probably end again if we left him with his other... What did you call him?” Fenton glanced offscreen.

“Bane of my accursed existence.”

Fenton chucked. “The other half responsible for his existence.” Batman added more notes to his file. “So, yeah, Clocky left him with us for a bit to help along his rehab. But a certain psychologist-in-training I know says that repressing rage isn’t healthy, and even without a lot of his powers, he can wipe out most of a city in- what, an hour? We tested it. It was around an hour.”

Everyone present shared a look of deep concern. As if able to see their reaction, Fenton quickly held up his hands in surrender. “Don’t worry! Clocky reset it. Approximately zero people have died from Dan in this timeline.”

“Yet.” Came a furious rumble from off-screen.

“Yes, you’re very scary.” They heard Nightingale coo.

Fenton laughed. “Yeah, we need him- and all of you, -out of our hair for a bit while we concoct more evil plans, and you’re all the least likely to die to him, so you get to babysit! Thanks!”

He reached to shut off the camera before pausing and turning away. “Foley! Which of the furries is the one who really likes animals?”

“Man, do you realize how that sounds out of context?” Foley laughed. “I think Tim said it’s the little one. Damian?”

Fenton nodded and turned back to the camera. “Don’t let Damian try to adopt Dan. Or anyone. Dan will bite their hands off. I mean it!” To emphasize his point, he removed one of his hands.

Batman sighed and added “ability to remove limbs” to a list of Fenton’s powers.

“I’ll include a list of “tasks”” Fenton’s disembodied hand made finger quotes, “we gave Dan to keep him occupied. There’s some at the bottom for you guys. They’re mostly just blatant abuse of his powers for the sake of fun and science. I’d appreciate it if you’d let him mark things off the list and add notes on how it goes. Or you can do it. Or I can steal your cameras. Your choice.”

He thought for a second. “I think you’re supposed to leave, like, pizza money or something, but I don’t think you can get pizza delivered to space. Anyway, thanks for letting me blab your ears off while Dan’s probably committing war crimes for twelve minutes. For your sake, I hope he inherited my interest in space. Good luck! Thanks for babysitting!”

Waving with his still detached hand, Fenton ended the video. Batman closed it and opened the PDF as the few other members present murmured amongst themselves. Most of the pages were filled with a curling script Batman didn’t recognize. The fourth page had a huge, bolded header, reading JP TASKS.

The door opened and shut in half a second as the Flash burst in. “Superman!” The speedster wailed. “I can’t get this thing off of me!”

The Flash waved his arm around, sending small droplets of blood flying as he tried to dislodge the creature sinking his teeth into the speedster’s arm. Batman raised an eyebrow beneath his cowl as Superman quickly lent his super strength in attempt to pry the creature’s jaw open. Dan didn’t budge.

Well, he could certainly see the family resemblance been Fenton, Dani, and Dan. Shaking his head, he turned back to the list.

Task 1: Find Dan. He’s probably attacking someone.

He highlighted the text and crossed it out. This was going to be a long shift.

[Anon, this is me crying over the wonderful gift you have given me. You bastard.]

---

"Do you think Fenton's regeneration powers extend to his..." Green Lantern frowned, trying to remember the word the kid had used but coming up blank. "I dunno. But do you think if we cut off little Dan here, he'll heal back up with no problem?" He gestured helplessly to the scene in front of him. Flash was still screeching about the beast on his arm, and now Superman and Wonder Woman were trying to pry him off. Batman was standing to the side, silently bemoaning the lack of quiet. He just wanted one peaceful shift. Just one. Please.

"I'd like to see you try, hero. And I'm not little." Dan spoke, startling all of them. His grip on Flash's arm tightened, making the speedster squeal before releasing the man and spitting out a mouthful of his blood. Batman noticed that his mouth didn't move despite the clearly spoken words. In fact, when Dan closed his mouth, it was like he didn't have one at all.

"So you do speak!" Superman marveled.

"Of course I do. I am not unintelligent, unlike you lot."

Despite his pain, Flash still made sounds of protest that everyone promptly ignored.

Superman flushed. "I just wasn't sure. It was hard to tell in the video."

"Ah, yes. The video that the Fenton menace sent you. Was there a note for me in the flash drive?"

"Uh, no." In one of his less finer moments, Green Lantern stuttered over his words and moved in front of Batman, obviously lying. Dan merely growled and flew through both men, heading straight for the giant monitor. Batman barely suppressed a shiver. Density shifting? Might as well add it to the list. He could see Martian Manhunter, who was in the back of the room, tilt his head at the display.

Dan ignored the room as he used his entire body to manipulate the computer mouse and scrolled back up to the top of the page. Staring intently at the scribbles no one could make out, the heroes could do nothing but shoot each other nervous and confused glances. More than a few of them jumped when Dan chuckled deeply. Honestly, his tiny body was at complete odds with his baritone voice.

"Maybe rehab will be fun if he's letting me do this." Dan sneered, flashing their reflections a sharp fang. No one wanted to ask what exactly he was in rehab for. The little beast turned his gaze to Batman. "You are the one called Batman, who rules the cursed city, correct?" The dark hero nodded, not trusting himself to say anything. "Excellent. You will be my chaperone for now, just as Fenton decreed it. Good luck, mortal man. Pray, I do not destroy your home a second time."

Without any time to unpack that conversation, Dan promptly disappeared from view. Some blinking text caught his attention, and Batman scrolled back down to the English text, glancing at the next few items on the list.

Task 2: Do not let Dan read his portion of this letter until you have a way to track him. There is no containing him.

Task 3: Keep him with a chaperone at all times. (If you can)

Task 4: Do not let Dan back into Gotham unless you're fine with a sudden decrease in the clown population.

Task 5: Take him for a walk in Death Valley. He likes hunting lizards.

Task 6: Make sure he goes down for his 2pm nap every day.

Task 7: He'll ask for it, but do not give him any burgers for mealtime. It upsets his stomach.

Task 8: Dan gets ONE(1) sweet after dinner before brushing his teeth. Those green pop rocks Batman always carries will do fine; he likes those. :)

A sudden alarm blared from his wristwatch, making Batman tear his eyes away from the screen, indicating an emergency at Arkham. This time, Batman actually sighed out loud. There was more to the list, but right now, he really needed to find their new charge before he killed the Joker, from the sound of it.

Ben Affleck has had a prolific career until this point. I have been a big fan of his for as long as I can remember. His movies line my shelves from The Town, Gone Baby Gone, Dogma, Argo and Zack Snyders Justice League.

For many people who thought there was still a possibility the former Batman would return to Gotham, those rumors can finally be put to rest. It seems like Bens time, either in front of the camera and behind it, at DC is over. It seems like the upcoming Flash film will be his swan song.

After everything he has been through, Ben deserves the freedom to control his career. He has been vocal about how much the JL17 shoot affected him both professionally and personally. Ben is an acclaimed actor who is taking on new roles at his own company. I wish him all the best going forward and truly believe some of his best work is yet to come.

I can normally deal with people not reading the comics, because not everyone has the means to or even the desire to, and that's okay! The cartoons and a lot of the shows are great, and I can typically adjust to the different continuities being referenced quick enough.

But the one thing that gets me every time in fics written by people who aren't familiar with the comics is the timeline. It is always incredibly wonky and all over the place and just. Incorrect. Sometimes it makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me 🙃, and others I have to leave right now immediately.

So in the interest of saving myself (and perhaps others) a ???? reaction in the future, here is a (very) rough and non-exhaustive order of events for the Bat Clan. The time between these events are variable, but this is the general order of things.

Thomas and Martha Wayne are murdered

Bruce goes on his training trip

Bruce comes back and begins his whole I Am The Night shtick

The Grayson family is murdered

Bruce fosters Dick

Dick debuts as Robin

Justice League/ Super Friends/ whatever group is formed

Dick forms the Teen Titans with Donna, Garth, Roy, and Wally.

Dick leaves Gotham (either for college, or because of an argument with Bruce)

Sometimes more Titans things happen. They also break up at some point

Raven forms the second iteration of the Teen Titans to fight her father. The team is comprised of Dick, Raven, Donna, Wally, Kori, Gar, and Vic.

Jason steals the tires off the Batmobile, thwarts his own grandmother's attempts at robbing a museum, and is adopted by Bruce. He is also made Robin - Note that oftentimes Dick is still Robin at this time as well.

Babs gets shot by the Joker for her dad and Bruce's man pain. She becomes Oracle as a result.

Jason and Bruce have a fight, and Jason goes to find his biological mother.

Jason is betrayed by his supposed mother and murdered by the Joker.

Tim shows up and does his "Batman needs Robin" Thing.

Jason crawls himself out of his grave and promptly gets hit by a car. Don't worry, we'll check in with him later.

Tim's mom is murdered and his father left in a coma that he eventually recovers from.

Knightfall happens - Bane breaks Bruce's back, Jean-Paul Valley is Batman for a minute and so is Dick.

Contagion happens - some dumbass releases a super plague on the city but it's okay because they make a vaccine that everyone gets because it's 1996 and no one has given Jenny McCarthy the opportunity to start the Anti-Vax movement yet.

Legacy happens - It's break through cases this time but don't worry, they fix it because this is comic books and people have two braincells to rub together.

Dick goes to Blüdhaven!!! This is the big one for me tbh. Please stop putting him in the Blüd while Jason is alive, I beg of you. You're killing me.

Cataclysm happens - a massive earthquake hits Gotham, and it is Very Bad. The US government decides to abandon the city and kill anyone trying to leave or enter after a certain date. Because that's an entirely reasonable thing to do. This leads to.....

No Mans Land - the approximate year that the city was cut off from the rest of the country. Lots of shit happens during this time - Cassandra Cain debuts, Stephanie Brown has her baby, Tim goes to boarding school, Sarah Essen-Gordon dies. If there is the only one comic book arc you read, please let it be this one.

Bruce is framed for the murder of Vesper Fairchild - not really important in the grand scheme of things but I love Vesper and you should too.

Hush happens - basically Tommy Elliot has Problems and also Jason shows up but not really but yest really (hi thank you retcons). It's a thing. Read the wikipedia page it's actually very helpful.

Tim's dad finds out that he's Robin and forces him to retire.

The next couple of things happen right on top of each other so - Blockbuster sets fire to Haly's circus and blows up Dick's apartment building and a bunch of other bad things. Tarantula kills Blockbuster and rapes Dick while he's in shock.

Immediately afterwards War Games starts - Steph starts a gang war to prove her worth to Bruce, gets murdered but not really by Black Mask, it's a whole thing.

Side bar - why did no one warn me about Black Mask killing Orpheus - a Black vigilante - and then impersonating him with full Blackface? Everyone talks about what he did to Steph but I really think we need to talk about what he did to Orpheus. Also if you haven't read War Games yet, here are some accurate trigger warnings for it: blackface, sexualized murder of a teenaged girl, a school shooting where a child dies.

Tim comes back as Robin.

Under the Red Hood happens - Jason comes back to Gotham, kills some guys, tries to kill Tim, does his whole Thing. You've probably seen the movie but I also recommend you read the comics it's v good and every time I read Jason's final speech I start crying.

Damian shows up

Final Crisis happens and Bruce "dies" aka gets lost in time, so the boys duke it out over who gets to be Batman. Tim goes on his murder mystery tour. Jason goes to prison but not before adopting a weird little girl named Sasha. Dick is left with Batman.

Oops turns out Steph isn't dead she's back and she's Batgirl now and low-key co-parenting Damian with Dick. It's very cute.

Cass is off being Black Bat in Hong Kong and I miss her.

Bruce comes back, Tim is Vindicated, Jason escapes prison and rides off into the sunset with Sasha to go Cause Problems on Purpose. Dick steps down from Batman. Damian continues to be a murder baby and I love him.

And that's not nearly everything but close enough for fic writing purposes up until Flashpoint. I definitely missed things, so feel free to add on. I also again beg you - please stop putting Dick in the Blüd when Jason is still alive, it makes my blood pressure spike every time I see it. You're killing me guys. Pls.

hey any1 want some superman jon and batman Damian hcs? too bad cause you’re getting them

• damian realized why no one wanted to be batman when he turned 18 and Bruce decided to give him batman when he was 22.

• jon realized why jon didn’t want to be superman when he also turned 18

• oh and right, by gave, I mean bruce sorta can’t be batman anymore. medical reasons…

• damian sorta uh. persuaded clark into giving jon superman.

Damian: look. I don’t wanna be worlds finest with you, old man.

Clark: im- im not old—

Damian: listen here, jon and i? we are gonna surpass you and my dad. so give it to jon and let me prove it.

Clark: this doesn’t seem like a good idea— you aren’t ready— neither is jon

Damian: wait- wait, you don’t believe in your son and i??? wow. WOOOW. okay. i see.

Clark: that’s not it!-

Damian: sure. sure. don’t worry. I see now.

Clark: wait I do!

Damian: no, no you don’t.. it’s— it’s okay, I get it, it’s me, huh?

Clark: no!

Damian: I get it

Clark: please i do! I’ll - oh my rao, you’re playing me

Damian: i am. i cant do this without jon though. please, Clark.

Clark: *sigh, how did he get manipulated by a kid he used to babysit* okay.

• okay so now jon may be a little overwhelmed because one day he’s flamebird, the next, he’s becoming superman? huH. it’s extremely uh. worrying. and really just? wow.

• does Damian feel bad? oh yeah. he does. so bad. but he really can’t do it alone. they always dreamed of being their parents. or being better than them. but they grew up and realized that they really didn’t want to be their parents.

• but here they were, getting fitted for their suits and adding their own details to it.

jon: hey, you look hot

damian: please. shut up.

• they could do this. they could do this. shoot they can’t do this.

• damians own anxiety was going 50 mph. look, okay? remember before heretic when Bruce thought that Damian would become a satanic batman and basically rain hell all over gotham? yeah. that’s what is going on in damians mind.

• he doesn’t want to be that. ( “you won’t be like that, cmon, d, we’re gonna be better.” ) and how Damian wants to believe jon so bad..

• he doesn’t want to become obsessed with Batman like his father did, he still wants to have a life. he doesn’t want to isolate himself away and adopt kids as a coping mechanism. that’s why he needs jon to be superman. jon helps him, he helps him not go off into his own little world and stay there. he believes that with Jon, he’ll be okay. he has to be. maybe he uses jon as his own coping mechanism, but that isn’t the point.

• together, they will outshine their parents. the supersons can do this. they are the next generation, and it’s not like they are alone. they have so many other people to help them. they’ll be okay.

• they have been preparing for this their whole life, but they both feel like they got it too soon. they thought they had more time. Damian does feel guilty when he hears jon talking about how stressed he is about superman and not living up to whatever the hell he has to live up to, but Damian does fear what would. or could. have happened if he didn’t have jon with him. becoming batman took a lot out of him, more than he would like to admit. he just got constant flashbacks to heretic and that whole fiasco he thought he put behind him a loong time ago.

Jon: are you sure you’re okay?

Damian: yes idiot, quit worrying.

Jon: I’ll always worry about, d.

• jon somehow becomes MORE sappier when he becomes superman.

• okay, also, funny story. ( Clark and Bruce don’t find it funny AT ALL ) superman and batman? yeah they sorta kissed after an almost alien invasion. in their suits. uh. in front of an alien who they were arresting for the green lanterns. most people believe that when people say it, it’s a lie, kidding. no they don’t. there were pictures.

bruce: you want to explain this?

damian: not really, no.

• the public knows there’s a new Batman and Superman since yk. Jon’s face is public and was seen as superboy flamebird and now superman, and batman was slightly smaller and had some different moves

• but here’s their main line up: batman ( dami wamie, obvi ), superman ( jonnyboy kent ), nobody ( maya:)) ), green lantern ( tai pham, my baby boy ), lace ( wallace west 2, he goes by lace instead of flash because i said so. ), and shazam ( billy b ).

• fun fact, they have a den mother even though they are all in their 20s. poor dinah.. yeah black canary is their den mother. ( stole it from from yj )

• dinah makes sure they get their injuries checked out, train regularly, and you know. don’t blow up a building.

• again.

• ( when damian and jon were younger, in their teen years, they stupidly accidentally blowed up a building. in their defense, the building was owned by the penguin. and there were no civilians in the area. but they also got a lot of men sent after them.. oops. )

• they are very chaotic. they are the definition of dumbass energy sometimes.

• damian tries to keep the pda down whenever he’s batman, BUT JON DOESNT KNOW HOW TO DO THAT

• hence the amount of photos of jon hugging Damian or kissing him

• damian has never once initiated one in suits

• ( that one time jon almost died does not count )

Damian: thought you were gonna be batman.

Tim: nah, i don’t wanna be bruce. i saw what it did to dick. I would’ve became just like him.

Damian: am i like him??

Tim: god no, bruce would never kiss superman or date him or spray paint the new justice league logo— nice logo, by the way— onto villains bases

Damian: is that a good or bad thing?

Tim; good, that means you probably won’t be a total emotional stunted person using crime fighting as an outlet for unresolved childhood trauma.

Damian: you do realize why i became Robin right

Tim: .. not the point im trying to make. I mean now, brat.

• sometimes you can see some of the heroes dropping by to surprise kids, they heard that their old mentors used to go to children’s hospitals to visit sick kids, so they did that too. on a rare day where there isn’t any crime, which is really rare, they go to a school and talk if it’s a weekday, or they drop by an orphanage to hang out with kids.

• they have gotten into a lot of trouble though. they’re still learning how to work as a team. jon and damian are used to being solo and working with each other, Tai had tagged along a few times when they were younger and knows how they work, along with maya, but billy and Wallace do not.

• they often all get into arguments.

• damian lacks a filter and will criticize everyone if they mess up. and he often goes off alone or is too blunt.

• it takes a long time before they all realize that Damian is just: Damian, he doesnt mean to be mean. ( surprisingly )

• billy is used to being the big kid stuck at the kids table, it’s funny that he’s actually the second oldest when he used to be the youngest. ( lace is like.. 27? shazam is 25.. nobody 24. & the supersons 22. pulled all those ages outta my ass. you’re welcome. )

• dinah is also their therapist. poor dinah.

• like really giving pity to dinah. but dinah loves those kids, she has known some since they were kids. she used to take damian out for ice cream and train with him, and also babysit him. ( AUNT DINAH IS MY FAVORITE GOODBYE ). and she did the same with Jon.

• dinah actually does help a lot of them get over their trauma, not completely, but most have finally spoken about it. they began talking after they all got hit with fear gas.

• that was a bad night.

• they had almost disbanded before when they thought lace had died by the hands of captain cold. they had been arguing all day, and if they didn’t, they might’ve saved him:

• but turns out he wasn’t dead.

• but the argument was still there, and it was strong. it took a while for them to actually work together without dinah forcing them.

• then soon came another new member after maya left to go do some undercover mission for the justice league regarding some alien tech being distributed some place. it was a sad goodbye, but she would be back and she would have a place here.

• welcoming: yara flor. yara was a bit headstrong and wild. damian has screamed at her a lot and almost got into a fist fight with her before being dragged off by his boyfriend 💋

• but she settled in fine. minus the fact damian really wanted to shove a batarang up— anyways. she just had to learn teamwork and shit, she was used to being a solo and she was somewhat new. so they helped her out and she became a solid member of the team.

• sometimes damian and jon just go and sit on a rooftop like they did as kids togeyher. just alone with each other. thinking about how their life changed so quickly.

Damian: i thought we’d ruin our fathers’ legacies and plummet to the ground.

Jon: *he coughed* ..what?

Damian: yeah. i didn’t think we’d get this far, but here we are.

Jon: of course we got this far, and we’re gonna get further.

Damian: i know.

• oh yeah. so. superman. fucking proposed after they defeated darkseid. ( the battle was long, so many people were left injured and on the brick of death, Damian and jon had been separated when it all started. Damian had stayed on earth at first before going to apokolips. Damn he hadn’t seen it since he got resurrected.

Darkseid: oh. I remember you.

Damian: mhm?

Darkseid: ah yes, the little boy who was resurrected here.. the chaos share, your father used it on you.

Damian: i know. i remember what happened. I was there afterall.

Darkseid: I wonder if you are as smart as the original batman.

Damian: i am.

• damian was buying time. he was waiting for reinforcements, namely the people who had powers and could take him down. damian wasn’t stupid. he realized darkseid liked to talk. his friends were fighting off the female furys or whatever they were called. he just had to wait and entertain.

Darkseid: quite the ego there.

Damian: i saved the justice league when i was 13, i deserve to have an ego.

Darkseid: oh, you are by far more talkative than the original.

Damian: thanks.

Darkseid: not a compliment, you fool.

• yeah so. darkseid tried to kill damian, with a beam thing. Damian was about to flip away like the baddie he is, but. jon. went out and yk. took the hit. dumbass.

Damian: you have such a big hero complex.

Jon: wow I just saved you and that’s what you say?????

Damian: yes.

• anyways, after they defeat darkseid, jon pops out a ring from his pocket and asks damian to marry him on apokolips.

Damian: you seriously couldn’t wait til we got on earth?

Jon: dames you almost died. what if- what if something happens, I’ve been putting this off for so long. cmon please?

Damian: you’re seriously asking me to marry you here where, I’m pretty sure, a lot of shit happened to our parents here.

Jon: no time like the present.

Damian: fair. okay.

Jon: just okay???

Damian: im sorry, do you want me to cry or something?

Jon: ughh, you can be so extra and petty sometimes.

Damian: i am not being petty.

Jon: just because I ask you to marry me here you wanna be like “okay” and that’s it

Damian: you’re so dramatic. I’ll marry you. I wanna marry you. Better?

Jon: yeah:)

A Few Thoughts About Hurt/Comfort

I have been asked this month to make a post about hurt/comfort in Avengers comics. And I love h/c -- I actually have a massive number of WIPs right now that are h/c -- so I am very happy to talk about it! Anyway, this is not really all that planned out and this mostly turned into an excursus on Tony Stark's pain. I'm sure you're all surprised.

Like pretty much everyone else, I'm sure, I have found that everything lately has been... pretty tough. And the coping mechanism that really got me through last year and this year was reading and writing a lot of h/c, on the theory that, however lousy a day I'm having, I can absolutely make sure that Tony Stark has a worse one. And then I can make sure he gets hugs. Wish fulfillment? Why, yes. (Once at Hallmark I was trying to find a "get well soon" card, forgot what it was called, and described it to my wife as "a hurt/comfort card.") I think Marvel Comics -- the Avengers side, in particular -- is an interesting canon for h/c for a lot of reasons. Though, honestly, if you asked me to recommend you, a hurt/comfort fan, a new fandom, I would probably just hand you some Starsky & Hutch DVDs. Go watch "The Fix" and get back to me later. If you like that, there's way more where that came from. But there's still lots to love in Marvel! Superhero comics are really a goldmine as far as the hurt side of h/c. Because superheroes, and you probably have noticed this, get hurt a lot. They get hurt repeatedly, in fantastical ways that are probably impossible in real life both physically and emotionally (at least, I don't think anyone's invented mind control yet), and even the heroes without superhuman healing powers tend to get physically hurt a whole lot worse than actual people can take. Currently in Iron Man comics, Tony has a broken back and is dealing with this by locking himself into the armor as a backboard and injecting himself with massive doses of painkillers. He's busy! He's got stuff to do! He doesn't have time to lie around and heal! So, basically, if you name a kind of pain that you would like to see happen to a character, it's probably happened to superheroes. Multiple times. The downside, though, is that comics do not really deliver that well when it comes to the comfort part of h/c. They could. It's not inherent to the medium that they don't. But because of the serial nature of comics and also the fact the primary audience is dudes who want to read about people in spandex punching each other, a lot of the time they don't really feel the need to provide closure and write about people dealing with any of the hurt. (Raise your hand if you're still annoyed with the end of Hickman's Avengers run.) But at the same time, I think that's a quality that makes Avengers ripe for h/c fanfic. Because, generally speaking, fandom likes to provide the things that canon doesn't, and fandom is more than happy to provide the comfort. If you enjoy canonical h/c in comics, I think you really can't go wrong with Iron Man. One of the big innovations of modern Marvel Comics was the concept that heroes would also suffer from relatable human problems, and in practice what this means is that a lot of heroes start with a fully-loaded angst-ridden backstory and origin story, ripe for h/c. So Tony starts out by incurring a heart injury that he fully expects is going to kill him, which he responds to by vowing he won't get close to anyone so they won't be sad when he dies, and throughout the early Silver Age is constantly on the brink of death as his heart nearly gives out on him practically every issue. And then even after his heart gets (mostly) better, there are various plots involving his armor being detrimental to his health and him choosing to fight on anyway. It's hard for me to think of another superhero hitting that particular variety of h/c in exactly the same way. Sure, superheroes risk their lives constantly, because this is how superhero comics work, but Tony is the only one I can think of who is this constantly this badly off, physically. Like, think of all the other heroes who have had a continual solo presence as fan favorites across Marvel history -- Captain America, Thor, Spider-Man, Wolverine, maybe even Deadpool. You know what those guys all have? Healing factors! For the most part, they are not running around continually on the verge of death, and while there are certainly memorable arcs involving several of them being severely injured and/or dead, you really have to work at it. It's not their constant state of affairs, whereas Tony is the kind of superhero who shows up to a fight already bleeding out under his armor. Yeah, I know Extremis gave him a healing factor. But he didn't have it very long, and also he did some extremely dangerous things while he did have it; I'm pretty sure I've never seen Wolverine saying that he'll just solve a problem by cutting off his own foot. So, anyway, yeah, there are a bunch of good arcs involving h/c for Tony. If you're looking for physical injury, he has a whole bunch of heart problems over the years, gets several new hearts, then ruins his brain, et cetera. That level of hurt is basically the background pain of Tony's life; every so often, his heart will get damaged or he'll have to live in the armor or the armor will be killing him, et cetera. If you're looking for more unusual trauma, I am, as always, going to rec Manhunt, a relatively obscure arc in late v3 (IM v3 #65-69) in which Tony has an extremely bad week. His tech is stolen and used to bomb a building. Then he gets shot in the chest. Then while he's at the hospital a nurse tries and fails to poison him, and she then tries to beat him to death. Then he checks himself out of the hospital and a helicopter shoots missiles at him. Then he becomes a fugitive from justice. And then, oh, yeah, he has to fight the Mandarin. It is... a lot. (Volume 3 of Iron Man is pretty good as far as h/c possibilities. You've got a lot of physical pain, Carol's drinking arc, the Sentient Armor, both DreamVision arcs, and Manhunt. Manhunt is finally supposed to be out in trade this month, by the way.) There are of course the drinking arcs, which probably count as their own type of hurt. But if you haven't read the second drinking arc (IM #160-200), please do. Marvel likes to up the stakes on events (Fear Itself, Secret Empire) by making Tony drink, and it does work, I think. I feel like I've spoken at length about Tony's drinking elsewhere so I don't really want to rehash it all here. And then there's the emotional pain. Angst and drama is something that happens to a whole bunch of characters, yes, especially in comics, but somehow Tony seems to end up with possibly more than his fair share of it. Fandom likes to make a lot of Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, so much so that you might think, if you didn't know canon, that this was just fandom running with a throwaway mention of Tony's terrible childhood and making it worse. But, no, canon really does go there with a reasonable amount of frequency. Howard's actual first appearance is in a flashback where he's ordering teenage Tony to break up with his girlfriend because she's the daughter of one of Howard's business rivals. And then we get into the verbal abuse, and the physical abuse, and the time Howard made Tony take his first drink, and the part where Howard was a demon in hell who Tony fought while he insulted him. And more! Currently, in canon, Howard is alive again and is in league with Mephisto for the express purpose of ruining Tony's life. Also when Tony was a baby, Howard tried to trade him to Dracula. I think you can make an argument that fandom is actually showing restraint when compared to canon. Tony also has a whole lot of Terrible Exes whose presence and/or former presence in Tony's life can be used for a lot of hurt. If you've read any amount of fanfic, you probably know that the exes who get the most play in fandom are Sunset Bain and Tiberius Stone -- not that Tony and Ty were ever canonically a couple, of course, but fandom is definitely enamored of this idea. Ty and Sunset both have relatively similar interactions with Tony in canon, in that they are both liars and emotional abusers, heavy on the gaslighting, with the purpose of becoming more successful than Tony. They both also attempt to murder Tony, although this is after he figures out they're evil, at least. (Yes, I know, this is not how either of them usually appear in AUs.) Tony also has a bunch of exes who also have just straight-up tried to murder or otherwise hurt him, sometimes while they are dating, and sometimes before Tony dates them: Whitney Frost, Indries Moomji, Kathy Dare, and Maya Hansen come to mind. There are probably more I'm not thinking of! But, yes, if you want to write about a guy in a series of terrible relationships, please consider Iron Man comics. If mind control is one of your favorite flavors of hurt, Tony's pretty good for that too. We all know about The Crossing. I suppose when I say "mind control" I mostly mean "armor control" because there are an awful lot of plots where someone else makes Tony's armor do whatever they want it to do and Tony is along for the ride -- Demon in a Bottle, Sentient Armor, and Execute Program are the first things that come to mind. There is also a fairly obscure What If that is What If Iron Man Lost The Armor Wars in which Justin Hammer apparently really wants Tony in a mind control collar to take off all his clothes and lounge around in his underwear. No, really. I think a lot of pain for Tony often revolves around his issues with control, generally -- his alcoholism comes into play here again. The entire aftermath of Civil War is also notable for its propensity to hurt Tony over and over and over. Is he stoically soldiering on through his grief after Steve dies? Hell, no! He cries, like, six separate times. He 100% blames himself for Steve's death. It's great. Everybody loves The Confession and the funeral in Fallen Son, but one of my personal favorites is Avengers/Invaders, in which Tony is confronted with a time-traveling Steve from WWII and in order not to screw up the timeline, he can't tell Steve he knows him. He is clearly not coping well. He shuts himself in a room with a giant wall of pictures of Steve! Also there's a part where he has to try to convince Steve he can trust him and he ends up having to tie Steve to a chair to talk to him, and Steve looks at him and asks, "Who did you kill to get where you are?" and I feel like that is probably one of the worst moments in Tony's life. No wonder he gave himself amnesia. So now we might want to ask, okay, but why is hurting Tony in fanfiction so much fun? I mean, I can tell you why I think it's fun. I can't speak for anyone else. One reason is that he is very emotional and very affected by everything he does. Sometimes you will see people complaining that the heroes of m/m fanfic cry too much and this is not realistic. This is not a problem if you're writing Tony! He can cry as much as you want and it's perfectly in character. I don't think it would be as fun to hurt him if he didn't express so much of his pain. But he does. He also feels guilty, and for me that's a very satisfying character element. If he were well-adjusted and didn't blame himself for so many things, it wouldn't be nearly as fun as watching him blame himself for everyone whose death he thinks he is responsible for, whether or not he is. And then he just keeps going, and it's, y'know, nice to watch him be resilient, too. So, I guess, I think hurting him is interesting because it's easy to hurt him, his weak points are pretty obvious, and he reacts a lot. Steve doesn't hurt quite as much as Tony does, in canon. It's certainly possible to hurt him -- I mean, they did actually kill him after Civil War, after all -- but I don't think the canonical patterns of hurting him are as numerous. Obviously deseruming Steve is a fairly popular go-to in terms of physical hurt; he's been deserumed at least three times that I know of. I think's easy to see the appeal there of taking a character who is fairly physically resilient and making him... much less so. Certainly Marvel seems to see the appeal. But other than that I don't think he has any other really common way to get physically injured. Unlike Tony, whose origin story is basically "oh no, I've acquired a disability," Steve's origin story is "I drank a serum that cured all my disabilities." Which, I mean, great wish fulfillment but there's not really as much there to poke at. Pretty much all of Steve's pain is emotional, but, unlike Tony, his pain isn't often specifically in response to someone directly, purposefully hurting him. Hickman's Avengers run is a big exception, yes. His pain seems to come up most often as a kind of situational angst. He feels like a man out of time. He feels out of touch with the modern era, with people his own age. He feels guilt because he feels responsible for Bucky's death. He feels like he can't trust the government and therefore he can't be Captain America. He worries that he doesn't know how to have a normal life. And, yes, these are deep and important worries but it's different than, like, Indries Moomji dumping Tony with the intent to make him sad enough to start drinking. Very few of Steve's villains want to personally ruin Steve's entire life the way Tony's villains do; mostly they just want to do things like bring back the Nazis. In terms of Steve's potential for h/c, I think Steve is harder to hurt than Tony is. Physically, he is definitely harder to hurt. You can deserum him, sure, but unless you want everything you write to be a deseruming fic you're probably not going to want to do that more than a couple of times. And if you want to hurt him physically while he has the serum, you have to hurt him hard. Usually past the point where a regular human would ever survive it. He's also harder to break, emotionally, than Tony is -- which means it's very satisfying when you can get him to break, but this is a guy who's only cried twice (that I remember) in canon. So if you want to get him to cry, you really, really have to wreck him, and he doesn't have as many obvious weak spots. He also doesn't generally sit around blaming himself for things that aren't his fault, and the whole "stewing in guilt" genre of plots for him basically came down to "he was sad that he thought Bucky's death was his fault," and that's really the biggest regret he seems to have, and also Bucky's not dead anymore. The Steve/Tony relationship itself, I would think, is also appealing to h/c fans because canon provides a lot of ways for them to hurt each other. Some people only ship pairings who would never, y'know, take turns beating each other half to death in major event comics. (And for a lot of Marvel Comics history, that was also Steve & Tony, so if you want them to be BFFs who have never fought, you can just set your fic earlier.) They have definitely hurt each other both physically and emotionally, so if you're looking for something easy and satisfying as a h/c fan, you can just read or write something where they... make up. What about Marvel characters other than Steve and Tony? Surely some of them are angsty, yes? Well, yes, but also it depends on the particular flavor of angst that you like. If you like the way Tony hurts, you may very well enjoy Doctor Strange comics, because they have a very similar attitude towards life -- they are both former alcoholics whose origin stories involve physical disabilities, who routinely make tactical decisions that negatively affect their continued existence and/or happiness a whole lot. It's very much an "I must suffer alone in the dark and no one will ever know what I am doing to save the world but it's the right thing to do" sort of vibe. Like, you can read comics where Strange is lying in hell with two broken legs, hallucinating that Clea has finally come to save him. Strange's biggest fear, akin to Tony's control issues, is basically that one day he's going to be an asshole again, so he's out there trying as hard as he can to do good. Also, if you like tentacles, he has all of them. I mean that. Carol also occasionally hits similar angst spots, and her drinking arc is great. A lot of people like Natasha, too; I have read zero Black Widow comics but I get the impression many people enjoy her brand of angst. The mutant metaphor is a little different in terms of overall vibe, but some people really like it as a source of angst -- the whole "protecting a world who hates and fears them" thing. It may not work for you, but if you like your hurt to include things like systemic oppression, go pick up some X-Men comics. Start with something like God Loves Man Kills. I feel like I liked this sort of thing a lot more as a teenager but that I kind of aged out of liking the mutants quite so much. It's also worth mentioning that not everything that hits the spot in one universe will be the same in the others, and I'm mentioning this because I feel like I have to say something about MCU Bucky. MCU fandom seems to get a lot of mileage out of Bucky's guilt about being the Winter Soldier, everything he was forced to do, et cetera. I have definitely read my share of those fics, and FATWS sure went right for that angst too. But as far as I can tell, he doesn't hit the same way at all in 616. And I like him a lot in 616; I'm always pleased when he shows up on a team. (He was so good in Strikeforce. Everyone was so good in Strikeforce.) But the thing is, 616 Bucky is, basically, phenomenally well-adjusted, given everything he's gone through, and I'm including the time he wrestled a bear in a gulag. He gets over having been the Winter Soldier, and now he's just, y'know, a guy with a cool arm who likes to bring guns to every fight to horrify his teammates, and he snarks at Clint. If you're looking for that angst, that is really not him these days. He's all better. So pretty much all that is canon. So what do we do in fandom for h/c? Well, as far as I can tell, a decent amount of it is canon-based or very canon-close -- there are a whole lot of stories exploring the angst of Civil War or Hickman's Avengers run. Tony's drinking comes up a fair amount, and if one of Tony's Evil Exes comes back to haunt him, it's pretty much only Tiberius Stone. I don't think I've read a lot of fic with Steve getting deserumed; it doesn't seem as popular in fandom as in canon. When Steve gets hurt, he tends to just get physically whumped pretty hard, and there's a fair amount of that for Tony too, but of course Steve can take more. There's also a thriving, uh, subgenre of pain involving Hydra Steve doing terrible things to Tony, presumably the terrible things he would have wanted to do to Tony in canon if Tony had had a flesh body. There's the usual kinds of h/c setups that appear in basically every fandom as well -- sickfic, whump, dub-con/non-con. You get the idea. But since fandom in general likes to take specific inspiration from canon, there's a lot of fic where the hurt tends to resemble things that happen more in canon. Like, I feel like comics fic probably has more tentacle fic and more mind control than canons that don't come pre-stocked with those. Probably everybody has a whole lot of "tied up by bad guys," though. And then, of course, fandom brings the comfort that canon does not. This is true in pretty much every fandom -- I mean, you aren't going to find a lot of actual canons where Character A saves Character B from mortal peril and then there's gay sex -- but, like I was saying, comics don't provide a lot of closure before it's onto the next thing. Usually with a different creative team, who has no interest in wrapping up anything from the last team. Steve and Tony talked about the incursions exactly once after Secret Wars and nobody mentioned the part where Steve spent several months trying to hunt Tony down and kill him. Tony is never going to remember the events of Civil War. Hydra Steve died ignominiously in a fire and no one has ever talked about him again. Honestly, if you're looking for a way to get some comfort in your fanfic, picking an event, any event, and just having the characters talk about it will be way more than any of them get in canon. I feel like honestly that can often be a pretty satisfying to read. And even though comics canon physically hurts characters pretty often and pretty badly, they also often skip right past the recovery. Maybe you'll get one page of a character in a hospital bed at the end of the story arc. Maybe you won't. Demon in a Bottle has one splash page of Tony going through alcohol withdrawal and then he's all better. I think Manhunt skips to Tony getting out of the hospital at the end. That's just not a story that they want to tell very often. The second drinking arc is notable in that it devotes almost as many issues to Tony's recovery as it does to getting him to rock-bottom. Similarly, Steve is done with his Nomad angst way way faster than you probably think he is (though The Captain does go in for a fair number of issues). So one of the things we often want to do in fandom is focus on all the bits that canon skips over, both in the "why did no one ever mention this story arc ever again" way and the "wow, so how long are they in the hospital after that" way. That's really all I can think of about h/c! I'm off to write some more of it!

We’re Tired of Him

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Wally interrupts game night.

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Ao3 // Wattpad

previous II next

We’re Tired of Him (part 2)

Dick stared at the cards in front of him, eyes tentatively drifting to Tim and Jason.

Jason’s brows were furrowed before he slowly put down a +4, cheekily grinning at Tim. “I choose red.”

Tim’s face was blank, eyes switching from the stack of cards on the table to the ones that he was holding. In the end, he gave Dick a mischievous grin, putting down another +4. “I want green.”

Dick groaned and the cave was filled with his brothers’ laughter, they gave each other a high five while Dick grabbed 8 cards from the deck.

“You guys are cheating.” he accused.

Jason shrugged and Tim raised an eyebrow, neither one saying anything.

Jason had five cards left and Tim had three. Dick would be winning if it wasn’t for that stupid +8 trick they pulled off.

He put down a green card, leaving him with nine cards.

“Uno,” Tim called out, not flinching when Dick glared at him.

No one said anything for a few seconds until Dick’s voice cut through the silence. “I don’t want to play anymore.”

Tim gaped at him, “That’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair is the fact that the two of you are conspiring against me.”

“We are not!”

“Are too.”

“Are not.”

“Are too!”

“Jason, tell Dick that we weren’t cheating.”

Jason stared back at the two of them, unimpressed. “We weren’t cheating.”

Tim gave him a victorious look. As if he was trying to say, see. Jason agrees that we weren’t cheating, so we obviously aren’t cheating.

“That doesn’t prove anything.” Dick cried out, “Why would Jason admit that you guys were cheating?”

Jason frowned, “Are you accusing me of lying?”

“Yes!”

“That’s not very nice of you, Dickie.”

“I don’t care if it’s not nice of me. You’re cheating and I don’t want to play with a bunch of cheaters.”

Laughter filled the air and Dick turned towards it, launching himself towards the intruder.

Behind him, Tim took a defensive position, bo staff in his hand and Jason had his guns out, ready to shoot the intruder.

With rubber bullets, of course.

The intruder groaned in pain, “Well, at least I know that it doesn’t matter how old you are. You’re still a very sore loser.”

Dick glanced down, getting off the person when he realized who it was. “Sorry, Wally.” he apologized, offering his hand to pull the red-head up.

Tim frowned, “What are you doing here?”

“Yeah,” Dick added on. “Didn’t you guys have a mission or something?”

Wally sped over to the closest chair and sat on it, “Yeah, but we finished it pretty quickly.”

Wally’s eyes were focused on his hands and Tim followed the speedster’s gaze, noticing how they seemed to fidget.

Tim inwardly frowned, was there a problem or something. Everyone in the Justice League knew that the Batcave was off limits. And even then, they didn’t make an effort to try and enter it.

Wally was lucky that Dick was here or else Batman would’ve had to deal with him.

Thankfully, Jason spoke up, “There better be an emergency or something cause it's game night. And you just interrupted it.”

Wally opened his mouth, “You know Damian right?”

Tim stared at Wally, “Yeah, we know Damian. He’s our brother, you idiot.”

“No- I mean- like- I-“ Wally sighed, “I know he’s your brother, it’s just-“ he groaned, “I don’t know how to explain it.”

Tim wanted to groan as well. This was supposed to be game night. A bonding experience. He didn’t want to talk about Damian.

He would be lying if he said that he still didn’t harbor a grudge against the youngest member of the Wayne family.

When Jason tried to kill him, he was under the influence of the Lazarus Pit. And afterward, he apologized to Tim.

As far as Tim knew, Damian wasn’t under the influence of anything. All Damian said was something about how Tim wasn’t worthy of becoming the Wayne heir and tried to slice him with a sword.

Bruce said that he had a talk with Damian about it but the brat never apologized, so Tim hasn’t forgiven him.

Dick’s voice snapped Tim out of his thoughts, “Did Damian do something again?”

“Kind of.” Wally waved it off, “He was just acting like- well, himself.”

Tim winced, that was still pretty bad.

“What did he do?”

“It’s not important.”

“It must be pretty important if you risked going to the Batcave.” Jason pointed out.

“That’s actually not why I’m here.”

It was Jason’s turn to frown. None of this shit was making sense.

He knew that he should’ve just stayed with Roy.

Jason was under the impression that they would be playing games. You know, hanging out, making a mess, being forced to bond like brothers and all that shit.

He didn’t want to talk about the demon brat.

And if anyone asked, the answer was yes. He was still mad at the little Christmas gift Damian got him last Christmas.

What the fuck gave the kid the idea to give Jason a crowbar as a gift?

Jason still had nightmares about his death. The crowbar did nothing but made those horrors come more often every night.

He fought off the shiver that threatened to make its way upon his body.

“If you weren’t here to talk about the demon, then what did you want to talk about?”

Wally faced them, “You wouldn’t happen to know a way to get the bra- Damian to relax would you?”

Jason heard Tim snort at the question, “Trust me. If we knew a permanent way to get Damian to stop being so uptight, we would’ve used it by now.”

He studied the speedster, narrowing his eyes when Wally started to avoid their gaze.

“Wally,” Dick was using his i-am-the-leader-so-you-have-to-listen-to-me voice. “What are you trying to say?”

“I mean, what if we get him drunk.”

Jason blinked, “You want to get Damian drunk.”

When Wally nodded, Jason continued, practically yelling. “Why the fuck would you want to get Damian drunk? He’s gonna kill you.”

Tim shook his head, his mind already coming up with a million scenarios of how this would end up. “How did you even come up with the idea that getting Damian drunk would help him relax?”

“Getting him drunk won’t help him relax at all.” Jason pointed out, “It’ll probably only make him even more uptight and paranoid.”

Jason’s blue eyes glinted with something Tim couldn’t decipher, “Unless that’s not what you’re after. You want to get the brat drunk for another reason.”

Wally nervously nodded, “You caught me. Well us- I guess. The team and I wanted your permission to get Damian drunk so that we can learn more about him and gain blackmail material on him.”

Tim froze, mouth open in shock.

That was a lot of information.

Dick sat down, his head beginning to hurt.

He could see the appeal in learning more about Damian. He’s been living in the manor for around two years now and they still don’t know much about him.

If Damian opens up about his past, then it’ll be easier for the family to help him. It’ll be nice for Damian to start getting comfortable with people. After all, that was the whole reason that Bruce signed him up for school.

And who knows, maybe his baby bird could make a new friend or two. Cause Dick knows full well that he doesn’t have any at the moment.

The cave was engulfed with silence, except for the sound of Wally’s feet nervously tapping the floor.

In the end, the speedster himself was the one who cut through it. “So…” Wally’s voice trailed off, “Do I have your permission?”

Tim’s eyes were focused on the ground. “I don’t care what you do to the brat but I want to be in the tower when it happens.”

Wally smirked, nodding in acceptance. “Deal,” he turned to the others “What about you guys?”

Dick shifted uncomfortably in the chair, his back was stiff and Tim could see how conflicted his eyes were. With a little bit of probing, he knew that he could convince his oldest brother to agree to Wally’s demands.

“Come on Dick,” Tim said, his lips tugging upwards. “Aren’t you even remotely curious about what Damian will say?”

When Dick doesn’t answer, Tim continued. “You know that Damian has a hard time with, um, interacting with people. This is probably the only way we’ll get him to open up.”

He could see the gears turning in Dick’s head and Tim realized that he was so close. All he had to do was push a little more.

“Doesn’t Damian deserve it? Damian deserves people who understand him. People that’ll be there for him. Hasn’t Talia fucked up his life enough?”

Dick clenched his fists at the mention of the Al Ghul, “Fine.” He spat out, “But only because Damian needs this.”

Tim raised an eyebrow at him, not believing a word. “Alright.”

Dick wasn’t stupid. He knew that Tim was trying to manipulate him into agreeing. But it also doesn’t change the fact that his brother was right.

Talia did mess up Damian’s life. She was the reason that he hasn’t opened up to anyone yet. Why he was treated like such an outcast with the other capes.

If all Dick had to do was get his little brother drunk, then he would do it.

Tim turned to his predecessor, “And you Jason?” he asked. His head was tilted innocently but his eyes were calculating him.

Jason knew he would be outnumbered if he disagreed. It also doesn’t help that Tim had his I-can-get-you-to-agree-with-anything-face on.

He groaned in defeat, burying his face with his hands. He knew that he should’ve stayed with Roy tonight. After this, he would never go to a game night again.

He looked at Tim’s determined face and sighed, “I’m not gonna be able to stop any of you anyway. I’m in as well.” his lips formed a smirk, “It won’t hurt to gain blackmail material on the brat.”

Damian better watch out because the next time he puts a crowbar underneath his pillow, Jason was gonna send the video of him being drunk out of his mind to everyone that he was in contact with.

Jason knows that Tim would help him.

“So you all agree?”

“Yes.”

“You’re agreeing to getting your brother drunk.”

“Yes.”

“Huh, okay. Great.”

Wally’s face turns mischievous and it reminds Dick of when they were kids. Back when they just started with the whole vigilante thing.

“So are you guys free for the rest of the night?”

“Wait,” realization hit Tim like the brick that Steph threw at him. “You guys are planning on doing this tonight?”

Wally nods, “Well, yeah. The sooner the better you know?”

“And when exactly did you guys come up with this plan?”

Wally rubbed the back of his neck, “Like about two hours ago? We were just talking and it escalated from there.”

Tim doesn’t know how you can go from talking to conspiring an idea on getting a teammate drunk. At least, not unless-

“You know, you can admit that you were talking about Damian.” Tim leaned forward, “You guys aren’t the only ones that talk badly about him.”

“Tim!” Dick cried incredulously, “You shouldn’t talk about Damian like that.”

He shrugged in response, “You do it too.” he said, “Remember when you first met him?”

He felt his face turning red and he turned away from Tim, hoping he wouldn’t see his face. “That was a long time ago.”

“You were also complaining about him yesterday.”

“I was not.”

“Was too.”

Tim folded his arms, “So you’re a sore loser and a liar.”

Dick fought hard to suppress a groan, “You guys were cheating.” he cried out. “I don’t play with cheaters.”

Jason faced Wally. “What they’re trying to say is that yes. We’re all free tonight.”

Wally smiled brightly. “I knew that you guys would be okay with this.”

Jason nodded, deciding he should be nice for once and not point out how Wally pale and nervous the speedster was before he asked the question.

For someone with super speed, Wally took way too long to get to the point.

He could see why he was friends with Dick.

“You know,” Wally’s tone got Dick’s attention. It was the one he always used where he wanted to embarrass someone. And Dick was usually the target. “I remember you hacking the Mario Kart back when we used to play.”

“Did I?” he put on his best confused face, “I don’t remember that ever happening.”

Dick definitely remembered that happening. He beat a speedster at a racing game. Hacked or not, he was still the winner.

Tim pointed an accusatory finger at him, “I knew it. You’re the cheater.”

Jason shook his head in agreement, “Dickface over here has the biggest competitive streak. Remember when he put the steak in his shorts just so he could prove to everyone that he was Titus’s favorite?”

Dick forced a frown on his face, “Funny thing is, I don’t remember that happening. At all.”

“That took place two days ago!”

“I have bad memory…?” he meekly offered.

Tim scoffed, “We’re never having a game night with you again.”

“You say that every week.” Jason pointed out.

“Well, I’m serious this time.”

“Uh-huh.”

Tim didn’t like the amount of attention that was now focused on him so he turned to Wally, “So how are we going to get Damian drunk?”

“We were just gonna spike his drink.”

Tim swore, “You can’t just spike Damian’s drink. He’s gonna figure out that you guys are acting weird and realize what you’re doing.”

Wally fidgeted under Tim’s scrutinizing gaze, “Well what do you suggest we do?”

Tim smirked and Dick swears that the room just got colder.

“The kid is pretty much a prodigy at everything vigilante related thanks to his training, but he sucks at socializing.”

“Well, yeah. Isn’t that why we want to get him drunk?” Wally asked, not seeing the point in what Tim is trying to see.

Tim answered the redhead's question with a “Well, yes.” before continuing at his attempt to tell everyone his plan.

“But what I’m trying to say is that we can overwhelm him. Me and Jason will help set everything up in the tower and Dick will bring Damian there.”

“So we’re throwing a party?”

Tim furrowed his eyebrows, “I mean, if that’s what you want to call it, then yes.”

It was Dick’s turn to frown, “Why do I have to be the one to bring him in?”

“Cause he likes you better than any of us.”

“But still,” Dick groaned. “It’s gonna be so hard to convince him.”

“That sounds more like a you problem than it sounds like an us problem.”

“This is unfair.”

“Call it paying me and Jason back for accusing us of cheating.”

Before Dick could reply, Wally sped away, taking his brothers with him. And before he could even blink, they disappeared via zeta tube.

They left Dick alone in the cave, with the board games still out.

He rolls his eyes in annoyance, mumbling under his breath as he cleaned up the mess.

“Who gave Bruce the idea to adopt more children past me. If he wanted more children, why couldn’t he make sure that he got the ones that cleaned up after themselves and didn’t cheat while playing UNO.”

He huffed, proud of himself when he accomplished the task.

Now all he had to do was convince Damian to come back to the Titans’ tower so that they could help him.

How hard could that be?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

note: okay, I reread this whole series so that I could get inspired to write this chapter. And can I just say, my writing was not as bad as I thought it was. Like I’m actually pretty proud of myself. 

That was really random but yeah.

(like I always ask, please comment any ideas, feedback, and criticism that you have. i love reading them. Oh! and if you see any spelling errors, please tell me. I don't have a beta reader so I mostly miss those things.)

Static Shock: Shock to the System and Aftershock Review

“You know what? 13 years ago, me and some friends sat in a restaurant all night and daydreamed about the kinds of stories we would tell if we had the chance. We wanted to expand the concept of superhero to include characters that kind of looked like us, who had some of the same background, experiences and dreams as we did. We wanted to create something fun that a new generation would respond to the same way we responded to our childhood heroes -and damn if we didn't succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Today, Static Shock is a household name with millions of fans of all ages (Is there stuff I'd do differently? Yeah, almost all of season four but why nitpick?) Static is the most successful thing I've ever helped create and I'm both proud and gratified that people have taken it into their hearts. “ 

Dwayne McDuffie, Co-Creator of Static and Writer for Static Shock

This review is dedicated to Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III.                                                        Rest In Power Static Shock is awesome. I grew up with the show watching it both first run on the WB and second run on Cartoon Network and loved it as much as I did other large parts of my childhood courtsey of DC like Batman the Animated Series, Teen Titans and both Justice League Shows. What makes this unique among the DC Properties is that Static wasn’t really a big name when he got a show. He wasn’t even part of the DC Universe. 

See as I had no idea for probably a good decade, Static actually came from Milestone Comics, a company ran by and focused on african americans. The goal was understandable: While black heroes existed at the time, and there were some fantastic ones like Storm, Jim Rhodes and Steel... these guys weren’t the center of their universes. The big faces of the big  companies, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash.. were white. So milestone was a shakeup of that with the main teams and heroes all being black, from Icon, an alien who’d lived among man but rather than end up in kansas like say superman ended up imprinting on a slave woman centuries ago and has been with us since, who was encouraged by an energetic teenager named Rocket to put on a costume and do something with his powers and his community, Hardware, a tech genius who had his work stolen by a white asshole and wanted to fight back and BLood Syndicate, a group of gang members all caught in the “The Big Bang”, a huge fight between all of Dakota, the midwest city where the comics take place, that ended when the police released a bunch of experimental gas that gave them all super powers. 

As most of you who have watched the show already know, this is where Static comes from. Static was the company making their own Spider-Man, i.e. a nerdy teenager who suddenly gets super powers, in this case Virgil Hawkins who at the prodding of a friend took a gun to The Big Bang to get revenge on a bully. .but ultimately couldn’t go through with it, decided it wasn’t him and got rid of the gun and ran.. and still ended up in it, becoming Static, a young hero dedicated to using his powers to fight other “Bang Babies”.. a term that dosen’t really sound that great and they really should’ve thought through. But Phrasing aside the character was great and I look forward to reading more and only haven’t because I have to buy the issues gradually, but DC is currently re-releasing the individual issues of Static, Icon, and Hardware weekly in anticipation of a reboot of Milestone Coming in May digitally on Comixology at only 2 bucks a pop, and rereleased the original print collections that were long out of print for 10 bucks each, though i’m getting static on it’s own since i’ts really not that much less expensive as it only collects four issues while Icon and Hardware both collect 8, so I can wait a bit there on Hardware and already own Icon: A Hero’s Welcome.. and really need to review it at some point. 

While Milestone’s output was good, at least from the two books i’ve read, with Robert Washinton III, who sadly not only ahs also passed but was fucking homeless for a while  in the 2000′s.. what the actual hell, writing Static alongside Dwayne McDuffie, whose later moved onto animation writing tons of Static episodes all of them classics including the school shooting episode, the first three rubberbandman episodes and both Anasazi episodes. Point is it had good writers and artists and even had a distrbution deal with DC, so they had a leg up on the glut of other comic book companies.. but happened to start at the start of the comic book crash, a huge downturn in sales in the 90′s as the speculator boom, i.e. a bunch of people assuming every number one would be worth golden and silver age money, forgetting a character has to BUILD INTREST and this stuff takes time, and whose attempts to sell fast flooded the market with comics no one wanted,, caused the roof to cave in and with a bunch of assholes pegging milestone as a “Company for black people” rather than you know, a company trying to add fucking diversity and represntation to the comics industry, and that simply wanted a unvierse that was centered around people of color instead of white guys. The company eventually had to shut down, and was left to lisencing.  This is where the show comes in. Producers HAD been trying to make shows based on Milestone for a while, as far back as the mid-90s and the company was was all for it but the closest it got was an x-men style team series using various characters whose first draft was terrible and whose second draft by Alan Burnett, a producer on various DC Animated shows who’d go on to produce Static Shock, that McDuffie and others really liked but sadly did not get picked up. eventually though with presistance Static ended up getting a series and as I said McDuffie went on to write for it though he did not develop it. Some changes went into place naturally to make it work for an early 2000′s kids show and while i’ll probably miss so since again, only read one issue as we go. But due to Milestone coming back my intrest was peaking, hence finally reading the copy of Icon I had to buy from the library years ago due to keeping it overdue but am now EXTREMLEY glad I own as i’ts incredibly rare and really damn good, and wanting to read static, doing so lately since it’s finally on digtiial and again not too expensive. So join me as I give you a shock to the system and revisit this hell of a series to see if it holds up.. which just to cut that short it does and i’m only holding off binging MORE because I want the first two eps to be fresh enough in my head to review properly.. and also go over the various voice actors because that’s a thing with me now and charcter co-creator dwayne mcduffie because he’s awesome. 

As I like to do when covering a series first episodes, let’s run down the voice cast. 

First up is an UTTER LEGEND, and I use the term voice acting legend a lot, and mean it every time and have good reason to use it when I say it, and Phil LaMarr is a GOD in the buisness, having done a metric ton of voice acting roles, and being easily the most proflific black voice actor in animation. He’s also done some acting work, mostly in pulp fiction which I have not seen, but his true staying power and talent is in animation so here’s just the roles I feel are most notable or may not be very notable but i’m bringing up anyway because it’s my list. 

His roles besides Virgil include Lester Payton the Texas Ranger who showed up for one very good episode of king of the hill to be badass and show up the hickish, stupid and very punchable local Sheriff, Gearld’s obnoxious older brother Jamie O on Hey Arnold, Hermes Conrad from futurama, Carver from the Weekenders (PUT IT ON PLUS DISNEY), Axel Foley for exactly one bit in Clerks the Animated Series, but anyone whose seen it will know exactly which one, Micheal on the Proud Family, Black Vulcan on Harvey Birdman (In His Pants), Hector Con Carne and Dracula on Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Evil Con Carne, Jack on Samurai Jack something I didn’t know for decades (and I didn’t know about the carver thing till today though i’ts obvious in hindsight), John Motherfucking Stewart on Justice League and later Steel and Adult Static in the Unlimited seasons, Osmosis Jones on Ozzy and Drix, Bolbi Strogofski on Jimmy Neutron (And yes i’m just as shocked as you are.), Wilt on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Marcus on Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Bull Sharkowski on My Gym Partner is A Monkey and Also a Sociopath Please Help God My Life is a waking nightmare..... okay the rest of that title is implied but we all watched the same show, we all know in our hearts that was the title

Moving on, he was also, and yes there’s MORE: Maxie Zeus on The Batman, Philly Phil on Class of 3000, Both Robertsons AND Fancy Dan on the Spectacular Spider-Man, Jazz on Transformers Animated, Kit Fisto and Bail Organa on Star Wars the Clone Wars, Gambit and Bolivar Trask on Wolverine and the X-Men, Aquaman I, L-Ron and Green Beetle on Young Justice, J.A.R.V.I.S. and Wonder Man (Simon Williams) In Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Gabe and Carny on Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters (Really miss that game and have been snapping up what cards I can get lately), Baxter Stockman in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (And there’s also an awesome photo of him with 2003 Baxter... the two best together in one place. I got chills), Dormammu (I’ve come to bargin) in various Marvel Shows, Noville in Mighty Magiswords, Zach’s dad Marcus in Milo Muprhy’s Law, Craig’s Douchey Brother Benard on Craig of the Creek, showing he’s clearly come full circle, And Mr. Scully on the Casagrndes. And given It took about two paragraphs to cover all of this, yeah, I MEANT legend. 

Next we have Kevin Micheal Richardson as Virgil’s Dad Robert, and it’s the first time since I started introducing Voice Actors on a show that i’ve overlapped. I already covered him during the second episode of legend of the three caballeros, but for the short version he’s also very acomplished, very damn good and I somehow missed he played the old blind guy in hey arnold> Needless to say the dude is awesome. 

Virgil’s Sister Sharon is played by Michele Morgan who was in the rap group BWP and did some smaller roles outside of this the one exception being Juicy on the PJ’s, which I have not watched much of but REALLY do not like, though i’ll at least give it credit for being a decently long lasted black claymation sitcom at at time when there were, and hoenstly still aren’t, many black animated shows. 

Back to long casting sheets, next up is Jason Marsden, who is one of my faviorites as i’ve realized recently as Ritchie. As I also found out only recently he started on the Sitcom Step By Step and while that show is .. ehhhhhhhhh, he is great in it because he’s great in everything. He also apparently has his own internet variety show which I have to watch now. His roles include Max Goof, ironically given I was just talking about that role a few days ago, Haku in the english dub of Spirted Away, Micheal, the kid being yelled at by a bunch of 80′s cartoons characters not to take drugs in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue!, Nermal in the DTV Garfield movies and The Garfield Show, Tino on the Weekenders (SERIOUSLY DISNEY), Snapper Carr on Justice League, Rikochet on Mucha Lucha! for the last season (Why I do not knkow and while I love the guy he was not the right choice), Felix on Kim Possible, Chase Young on Xiaolin Showdown (WHich I did not realize was him and now I do easily his best role and I REALLY should’ve), Red Star and Billy Numerous on Teen Titans, Speedy on Batman Brave and the Bold, Impulse/Kid Flash II on Young Justice, and Fingers on Kaijudo. He hasn’t done as much lately which is a shame but hopefully i’tll pick up again. 

Next up is Hotstreak, Virgil’s brutal bully turned unhinted pyromancer played by DANIEL COOKSY, another actor i’m happy to talk about and another faviorite I haven’t seen much of lately. Daniel was an actor from childhood, playing Budnick on Salute Your Shorts, but he quickly gained a long and storied catalogue of VA Work: His first big roll was as Montana Max on Tiny Toon Adventures and if there is a god he’ll be back for the reboot, Stoop Kid on Hey Arnold, the incomprable Jack Spicer on Xiaolin Showdown, far and away his best role and part of why Chronicles sucked so bad was he was he didn’t get to reprise the role, The titular Dave the Barbarian, Django of the Dead on El Tigre (Had no idea), Kicks utterly insufferable big Brother Brad on Kick Buttowski and apparently he’s back at it again after laying low for a bit as he’s voicing Snag in Long Gone Gultch.. which I already really needed to watch but hot damn, I missed him. Sign me up. 

Frieda, Virgil’s crush and close friend who in the comics was his main confidante and love intrest but here is eventually pushed aside, is voiced by Danica Mckeller whose work didn’t seem all that familiar.. until I found out she was Ms. Martian on Young Justice. Hello, Megan. Very talented and she did get a major role in a dc show eventually so good for her. Can’t wait for season 4. 

So with our major players out of the way,  let’s talk about Dwayne. McDuffie is an AWESOME man and my respect has grown for him more and more with time. A writer and editor at Marvel, McDuffie has a decent resume doing smaller but awesome books, which I got most of for free last year when Marvel was giving out free digital collections due to the lock down, like Damage Control, a sitcom set in the marvel universe about the company that picks up after superhero battles and the logistics and antics that insue and Dethlok, about a pacfist trapped inside a cyborg zombie. He was as mentioned one of Milestone’s founders, and wrote Icon, Hardware and co-wrote the first few issues of Static. He’d go on to a pretty stacked career in animation, writing on this show and Justice League before becoming  story editor and show runner for Unlimited , even making a return to comics as a result writing the Marvel miniseries beyond and an arc of Fantastic Four in which Black Panther and Storm filled in for Reed and Sue while the two of them worked on their marriage after Reed did.. pretty much everything he did in Civil War. He also became head writer and show runner for Ben 10: Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, revamping the franchise a bit, and Alien Force, at least the first two seasons are awesome and I feel people overreacted on the changes. Ultimate Alien is okay, but has it’s problems but the finale was awesome and left the man’s legacy on a high note.. as he sadly passed in 2011 due to heart complications. He is truly missed and produced some utterly amazing stuff whlie he was alive. So on that melacholy note let’s see what happens when his creation hits the tv screen shall we?

Shock to the System:

This episode is written by Christopher Simmons, who is apparently a huge art designer guy.. but i’m not sure that’s the same chirsptoher simmons. Much more notable is the writer of the episode after this Stan Berkowitz, who was showrunner for season 1 and has done a LOT of DCAU work and is suprising talent, having written a lot of awesome Justice League episodes including Secret Society and The Royal Flush One. Point is we’re in first class hands.  Before the episode itself I want to talk about the intro and how it’s unique among DCAU shows. Like most Western Animation the intros for DCAU shows didn’t change much over the seasons with the most I can see is JLU changing up the footage to preview the current episode and later adding Hawkgirl to the intro after her return to the team. I THINK superman the animated series changed some of it’s footage too, but I can’t confrim it and may of just been imagining it. As i’ve talked about on my blog it’s normally a pet peeve of mine, mostly because shows you know, change after season 1, characters get added some one shot characters used for the intro never return, and after a while it can feel dated especially in more recent shows where the status quo is not at all set in stone and things change quite a bit. But sometimes it can be good enough that either the dated elements don’t matter or general enough that you don’t need to change it and i’ts just that good.. and given Batman the Animated Series has both in spades, you can see why i’ts probably my golden standard for intros and after superman the animated series DC mostly followed suit. But being part of the teen superhero boom of the 2000′s Static is unique in that it splits the diffrence: It’s intro gets the character across perfectly like a good intro should starting with Virgil getting out of bed and running a comb across his head before showing off to his sister to bug her and literally running into his dad who hand shim his bag and smiles, silently showing off his family. He then runs to school and runs into some trouble.. and said trouble changes for each intro, with Rubberband Man for season 1, Kanga (Whose name I only know because I happened to run across it) for season 2 and your guess is as good as mine for seasons 3 and 4, though Hotstreak is a constant. They still save some money for seasons 1 and 2 by recycling some animation.. but that’s alright with mea s it was good animation, and the improtant thing is cycling out old villians for new ones, while Season 3 is the only out and out redo to show off Richie taking on the Gear identity, adding about 10 seconds of intro to let him show off.  Seriously it’s an utterly great intro and like the other DCAU intros outside of superman, stuck in my brain. 

The other change that’s ENTIRELY diffrent from the rest of htem is that the music changes each time. The first two have the same formula just with a difrent vocalist and backing track: a superhero theme but with some hip hop beat boxing over it. The first intro is fine enough, not specattcular but stilll god. The second song.. is eh. Not really great and feels like a marked downgrade from season 1 and just dosen’t blend an ocrehstiral superhero theme with the beatbox elements NEARLY as well. The third song though is my faviorite.. even if I HATED Little Romeo as a  kid because I really did not like his nick show, it’s more a straight up rap song, but it has a faster beat that fits the intro better, and Romeo’s bragging fits Virgil’s character and penchant for Spidey quips perfectly. I also find it ironic that the theme that blends in with the dcau the most, the first season’s, is the one from BEFORE they decided to put it in the same universe. Still this season’s intro slaps, I just like the LIttle Romeo one a bit more.  The opening scene is picture perfect. Some masked crooks looting a warehouse are loading some stolen TV’s into a van when suddenly the lights come on one by one above one of the crooks before his tv switches to various channels before going haywire. Cue our heroes’ entrance. Let’s tak ea good look at him

Static’s Costume is awesome. While I prefer the season 3 redesign, and clearly DC agrees as the redeisgn was used for both pre and post new-52 when they used him, and while he’s getting a fresh design for the reboot, said design takes a lot of cures from said outfit. As for how the outfit differs from the comics itself  this is the design he had in the comics

It didn’t change much from the first issue, with the exception of his now iconic big puffy jacket which was added pretty early into the character’s history but I was unaware of that and just assumed he had the bodysuit the whole time. The more you know. But as you can see outside of the cool puffy jacket over a costume the two couldn’t be more diffrent. While the Dakotaverse outfit is more a standard superhero outfit, with some regular clothes touches on top the first cartoon outfit comes off more realistic, looking fantastic, but still coming off as something two teenagers could realistically have thrown together with what clothes they could buy, while still looking awesomely superheroy. IN short it’s perfect and only topped by the season 3 onward look...

But the slicker look, with an even cooler jakcet and the new colors all fitting the lighting ascetic better, but fits: not only has Virgil come along farther since he started, but with Richie now having a genius brain as Gear, he can provide a far slicker, far more professional superhero outfit on the budget the two have.  This show is just great  at costume design. 

So getting back to the episode at hand, Static puts up a huge sign in elecrticy saying “Bad guys here”, PFFFT, and then hides away and narrates that a few days ago he’d be the last person anyone would’ve expected to be a hero. Cue Flashback. 

We meet Virgil Hawkins on an average day: rapping into his razor, getting into a petty argument with his older sister Sharon, as a younger brother myself I relate to this, and talking to his dad who tries to get them to cut that out. We find out his mom has passed via his sister making really terrible eggs and saying that’s how mom made them. Exposition! Though we do get a great bit through this as when his sister gets distracted by her boyfriend calling, he uses the opportunity of her leaving the room to dump the eggs.. after having earlier jokingly prayed to his mom for a way out of breakfast. “Thanks for looking out for me mom” That’s both very sweet and very hilarious. 

This is a change from the comics it turns out as I was utterly flored to find Virgil’s mom alive and well when reading the first issue of Static. Turns out this was a change made during development and one Dwane McDuffie admitted in the interview I got the tribute quote from to not liking as he had a good reason for having Virgil have a nuclear family, as most black families in media at the time were just one single parent and a kid or two with the other having either left or died. He wasn’t too bothered by it as while he preferred what he came up with in the first place, the show DID get some really good stories out of her being gone and didn’t just have her be absent because shut up. Virgil is still working over her death and the way HOW she died ends up playing an important role in this episode and gives Virgil a dislike of guns, as she died to gang violence. So the change wasn’t for stupid or racist reasons, but likely both to keep the character count down while giving them something to work with for storylines. Or it could’ve been for stupid reasons and the writers simpily made lemonade out of that very dumb lemon, either way it ended up working.  Virgil also plans to ask his friend Frieda out. Frieda was a bigger deal in the comics, being Virgil’s friend and confidante as well as his ocasional love intrest, but here while she was inteded to at least be his love intrest here, that sorta fizzled out. As for the best friend role we meet her replacement in Richie, which McDuffie conceded was the kind of change a studio would make swapping out a female character for a male one. That being said the crew made the best of it and Richie is awesome, a bit of an overcompensating dipstick at times, but a good sounding board and pal for virgil and funny as hell too. He was also gay, something only revealed post series by McDuffie.. but unlike say Dumbledore, it’s a bit easier to swallow here: The early 2000′s were an even worse time for gay characters in tv let alone cartoons, and if they couldn’t kiss or have sex scenes on regular tv, there was no way we were getting any representation in a children’s show. So it was largely just hinted at by Richie overcompensating in how “into girls” he was and i’m once again fine with this being word of god as it was literally the best they could do and his counterpart in the comics was also gay, if not as relevant.  Ritch encourages Virgil to work on his opening to ask her out as it’s awkward as heck, hits a bit close to home.. but I do appricate the show just .. having him try and ask her out from the first episode. They likely would’ve drug thigns out a bit granted had they used Frieda more, i’m not blind to the convetions of the time. .but as someone who got the very wrong idea from tv that just waiting around meant a girl would like you eventually, when no you need to actually try even if rejection happens, I honestly wish we had more of this in media than the other garbage morals at the time. 

So he prepares to , not helped by her mentioning guy after guy is asking her out.... but before he can F-Stop, the future hotstreak, shows up.  F-STOP

That being said...... it’s not as bad as the original gangster name for the comic’s version, Biz Money B. Yes BIZ MONEY B

So yeah while F-Stop is no more intimidating, it at least means I can stop laughing. Francis, because I can’t type F-Stop without laughing and this review is already behind, shoves Virgil out of the way and agressively hits on Frieda, even saying “you smell good”, the international sign your a douchebag and also to call the police. Virgil steps up to the guy and gets PAINFULLY slammed into the lockers, something I give the animation team a lot of credit for, as you can FEEL how fucking painful that was. Virgil is saved by Wade, another local gangbanger who in the comics was a close friend of Virgils but here saves him seemingly just because.. seemingly. 

On the way home though Virg’s problems don’t end as naturally, the giant sized asshole with nothing better to do has his goons corner virgil before VIOLENTLY beating him.. off screen but the noises, and the clear brusies including a black eye, on virgil afterwords.. just holy damn i’m suprsied they got away with this but it shows just how horrifing it was and that this is a step above regular bullying, which make no mistake is absoluttley terrible and the series would later do an episode on it and school shootings, into straight up gang violence. Wade shows up again and gets the bastards to flee.. but also makes it clear he can’t keep doing this.. and forces Virgil to meet him at his base under the bridge. And it’s a tense sequence, with Virgil KNOWING this is a bad idea but having no real choice and Wade making it abundantly clear that he wants Virgil to join his crew, and makes a chilling point: while Virgils dad RIGHTFULLY dosen’t want his son to join a gang as Virgil points out.. he can’t be there for him all the time and eventually one of those times, Francis will be around. And he may not surivive that. Virgil nods noncomittaly.  At home it gets even more grim as he dosen’t open up to his family, understandably as his dad would jsut say to call the police and well.. we’ve seen how the police treat black people. At best they’d just try and use Virgil as an informant and that likely wouldn’t end fucking well for Virgil. Ritchie points out he can’t join a gang, virgil’s mom died that way.. see told you it’d be important to the plot.. but I like how the story dosen’t offer an easy answer.. well okay he gets electric powers soon enough but without the fantastic element this is just an innocent kid caught between either joining the very thing his mom hated or hoping a system not built to protect him will keep him alive. It’s utterly saddening and chilling and holy shit is it amazing a cartoon in the early 2000′s was able to get away with.. ANY OF THIS, and they handle it great, paired down a bit from the comics but even then it’s still incredibly balsy they got THIS much in. 

Naturally Wade calls in his favor and our hero is forced to come running.. and soon finds out Wade’s brought him in for a massive gang war. Welcome to the big bang, baby. He hands Virgil a gun as things get started and Virgil.. drops the thing and tries to escape, in a harrowing sequence.. and runs into Francis because god apparently REALLY hates this kid today. As if to prove that the police show up and while that prevents a beating, they demand they disassemble. then release untested gas on them because of course they do. 

As a result the big bang truly begins, with the various gang members getting mutated.. and naturally so does virgil. Though he wakes up the next day seemingly fine. How’d he get home? Does his dad know where he was?

I don’t know and we’re not getting any answers, but Virgil soon finds weird stuff happening like his clock shorting out, change being attracted to him and his razor going wild. It’s only once he get sback to his room he gets an inkling of what’s going on and calls Ritchie to meet him at the Junk yard.. though it is a bit of a dick move as he dosen’t you know, tell him anything about Wade or Francis right away. He does at the yard though.. and that he has powers, having finally figured out how to use them to a point. And the series does provide a decent justification later as to why he’d get this so quickly: Virgil is a smart kid, gets great grades at school and apparnetly there’s even an episode later where he gets a scholarship to a fancy genius school. So him getting how elctromagntisim works or being a quick study on it makes perfect sense. 

Richie suggest the obvious.. to become a superhero. And the thought.. hadn’t occured to Virgil. It’s honestly a nice twist on the old trope. That he hadn’t thought of it, not because he’s selfish or any of that or needs to learn a hard lesson, those have been done.. simply because the rush of getting his powers, and implicitly of having a way out of his current predciament, a way to keep Francis off his back and keep Wade from pulling him in further. His own path. But once i’ts brought up.. he jumps on it. Part of it is being a nerd like you or I, of course he wants to.. and being a good intetioned one, he knows this is the right thing to do. It’s waht makes a superhero a hero: Anyone can get powers in a universe like this, esepcailly the dcau, but it takes true courage and heart to use them selflessly and knowing you’ll be in danger. It’s why I love surperheroes: they often didn’t ask for this but they do it anyway because somebody’s gotta. We also get an intresting wrinkle is superman is, at least I think in this episode I could’ve missed it or misremembered things, mentioned as a fictional character. That’s because originally like the comics this wasn’t part of the DCAU.. but eventually the crew decided it shared staff from it, shared a network, both first run and on reruns, why not just make it part of the DCAU proper. I fully support this decisionf: While i’m midly annoyed unlimited never really used anything from static shock outside of Static himself in the time travel episode, despite you know Static and Gear having BEEN to the tower and not being much younger than Kara and defintely older than Courtney, I chalk it up to weird rights issues or something like that. But having Batman, Batman Beyond, Superman, Green Lantern and the Justice League itself all guest star was a good idea, and expanded both static’s universe and gave the DCAU something differnt as most heroes in it were older and more experinced in contrast to the up and coming virgil. Again really would’ve been nice if he and gear could’ve been a part of the expanded league but production might of just been too far ahead or, given he had his own series, they might just have wanted to stick to toher characters. Also begs the question why Icon or Hardware wasn’t adapted for the expanded League but hey, questions for later and the tricky logisitics of the milestone rights might’ve been the issue. I don’t know I wasn’t in the room. 

So we get a costume montage, including Black Vulcan from Superfriends, who again ironically would be voiced by Lamarr not too long after this, though weirdly they DON’T use his outfit from the comics for this montage. I mean why not? It fits the gag and would’ve been a good second to last choice.But what could’ve been aside we get our winner and cut back to present day...

Thanks boys. Static finds out one of the things in the warehouse is a shipment of computers for the school and can’t help but show off, showing up to the school, where Frieda and Richie are setting up for the dance, and dropping off the computers, and even saying his catchphrase for the first time “I’ll put a shock to your system” (Which Richie chimes in with awesome line and I agree, great catcphrase), before helping set up and flirting with frieda. 

Though as Richtie says he’s a natural. He’s not wrong as he can work a crowd. .but back it up too as his first run out had him easily taking out the crooks, and as many teen superheros and fans of heroes of hte type, myself included will tell you, getting it right in one is not easy. Not even Miles MOrales was immune. All Static needs now is a villian. 

And the end of the episode provides one as we see, in horrifc and once again damn suprising detail most of hte new metas aren’t doing so good and are melting and other stuff and we catch up with Francis whose burning up.. and naturally given that hair, though given he named himself F-Stop it’s the least of his problems, he’s got fire powers and escapes to “Have me some fun”

So with that we end episode 1. And it’s excellent, a great way to introduce the hero and while the warehouse opening is a bit superflous, it is a decent addition, showing our heroes first outing in costume and giving us a bit of an action scene to get us through the very heavy rest of the episode. But the rest of the episode is no less grippping, telling the tale of a teen caught in an unwinnable scenario who suddenly finds a way out. And speaking of which waht of Wade? Will we see him again? Is he perhaps Ebon, the series big bad as I thought when I was a kid? What comes of the man who directly caused static’s origin?

Yeahhh that’s the one mistep I think the pilot makes. Frieda is understandable as that was likely a simple change in creative direction. This though? Why build this guy up if your not going to bring him back. I mean where he went was probably the grave, as he probably did due to his mutation, but it’s still VERY weird to spend a whole episode focusing on this guy, building him up as a big personal threat to our hero.. and NOT have him become the series big bad. And maybe he WAS supposed to be ebon and they just changed their mind. I don’t know but it bothers me it bothers me a lot. Otherwise though flawless. ONe more to go. 

Aftershock: We open outside an electronics store, as our heroes watch the news reacap what happened in the first episode, with the media dubbing it the Big Bang and revealing their could be hundreds of “Metahumans”, as Virgil dubs after deciding the media’s term “Mutant” dosen’t fit, a nice wink to the fact that that’s the term used in dc comics and I believe milestone but could be wrong there. Me I like the term, has a nice ring to it. 

At the store while Richie mulls over waht this means Static finds out he’s a human CD player.... this was before mp3 players and streaming on your phone made them horribly obsolete mind you and if you don’t know what one is congradualtions you live in some sort of bubble and you made me feel really old junior. 

Frieda happens to be there and Virgil quips “What’s the matter they run out of britney cds”. Dude she’s not bad. Also be careful what you wish for man. Nickeback returned the year after this. You have not truly suffered through bad music yet my young friend. They spot a kid looking feverish, and he soon turns into a purple werewolf, as you do. It’s a bang baby.. those are richie’s exact word and you may not want to start a panic there bud. Just saying your best friend is one. THeir not all like this. Our heroes book it only to run into Francis who naturally refuses to let them leave and only doesn’t try to beat up Virgil because Virgil points otu the werewolf and nonplussed, he goes to fight it, scarring it off by revealing his own powers. He’s now dubbed himself Hotstreak which points for getting an actually good name kid. No points for what happens next as unsuprisingly getting powers did NOT mak ehim a better person and he attacks Virgil who blocks with a garbage can lid and thankfully is blasted into an ally. Richie tries to guard frieda for damn obvious reasons but gets hsi shirt burnt up because shut up Thankfully Static shows up, and we get our firsdt full on superhuman fight as both fight each other with aplomb, and it’s a damn good fight.. and one that goes pear shaped for Virg as he’s caught off guard when he finds out Hotstreak can use his powers to fly, and tackles him and his previous trauma causes him to freeze up. Thankfully , as Frieda put in a call earlier, the fire department arrive and HOt streak has to retreat, though Virgil is bummed that he “Choked”. And I love this as it not only shows Virgil’s inepxerince, as this is his first time fighting a bad guy but that just because he HAS power now dosen’t mean trauma and his previous fear of Hotstreak goes away or you won’t freeze up from time to time. It dosen’t make him weak or anything like some assholes would call it .. it makes him human. Humans make mistakes, and it makes him all the more relatable that he’s not pefect and that he did freeze up as I know I certainly would at last once in the circumstances. 

Things don’t get better at dinner as Sharon and Pops argue over the bang babies with Pops calling them a meance and Sharon pointing out Static exists so they can’t all be bad. See assuming a group of superhumans are bad because a handful of them ar edick sis why the x-men had to get their own island nation. You can only save an ungreatful populous so many times before you say “fuck it i’m getting my own island, pay me for life saving drugs, save your damn selves and stop doing genocides on us. Kay thanks”. But he does bring up a valid point that rattles his son: We don’t know anything about the Bang Babies or their biological structures and it’s likely they might further mutate into monsters, Static included. 

Virgil, understandably, wants to check this and thus he and richie compare blood samples in science, to no real conclusion. She he checks out with his doctor who assumes he’s sexually active in a great getting crap past the radar bit and a bit of realisim, but he agrees to the test though if something came up he would have to tell Virgil’s dsad and is up front about this. Nice dose of realisim.

That night City Council has a meeting and the Mayor TRIES to deflect Papa Hawkins questions about the bang babies which again, while being a judgmental ass as not every person hit was a gang member (Virgil, and as we discover later some others), and not every gang member is there by choice, some by circumstnace some, like virgil almost was, because they HAD no other option. Again years of reading x-men may of just made me a bit touchy on assholes admitely assuming superpower people bad. But it’s clear the public is upset and while she says an investigation is underway... Virgil and Richie are not only not convinced, but figure she’s actively covering it up. And unlike everyone else there who probably suspects the same, they can do something about it and tail her.  It’s during this, and cleverly as I didn’t realie till writing this using similar skills to his human cd player act, Virgil listens in and discovers whose behind it: Edwin Alva, whose apparently richer than bill gates and a beloved phinarophist Alva, as it turns out, was actually the arch enemy of Hardware in the comics, taking advantage of the guy in his civiliian idtentiy and thus casuing him to launch a war on the asshole. He does transition into this series well though, being the one behind the gas that caused it and with the mayor agreeing to back off, planning to simply dump the info about the big bang on a disc then destroy everything for now till the heat dies down. Yup sounds like a corprate douchebag. 

Static tails him, finds the lab and infiltrates it, stealing the disc.. but getting caught by Alva’s goon, and trapped in a glass prison, forced to use ALL his power to escape and barely getting out alive, but not before bouncing off alva’s car. Still he now has the proof.. and meanwhile Hotstreak, who I was wrong did get captured, is forced to take pill sbut spits them out once the orderly is gone. Dude.. WHY DIDN’T YOU WATCH HIM. Make sure he swallows that shit especially since, as he has no powers right now and can’t harm you. 

Hotstreak escapes off screen and our heroes discuss the disc before he shows up, and we get a REALLY fucking amazing scene: Virgil ducks into an Alleway and ritchie is worried.. and Virgil disarms him with just one word responses Ritchie: Virg you can’t take him.  Virgil: Gotta. Ritchie: Well at least wait for the fire department Virgil: Can’t.  It’s simpile but it gets the point across: This is his fight, he can’t wait for help, and people need him. And this is what makes a true hero: It’s easy to be a hero when everythings going well.. but it’s the true ones who stick it out against the odds and fight anyway. And he’s going to.  So we get one hell of a fight, though naturally Hotstreak burns up the disc. And I do like this as it dosen’t feel contrived.. yes Static could’ve left it with ritchie.. but he wasn’t thinking in the moment and dind’t really have time to think abotu the disc, only that people were being hurt and he was all they had between them and Hotstreak. It was no choice at all. Still that pisses Virgil off that the last night’s work is now worthless, and he fully charges up and curbstomps francis who retreats into a clearing. Hostreak brags when static follows, as even he’s figured out Static needs to be around metal, as he’s usually on his disc or the street, and in the park there suppodsidly isn’t any. But he’s not THAT smart as Virgil points out two things: one, he hoped to do this on PURPOSE so they wouldn’t be around people and no on e would get hurt and 2).. this is a city, there’s metal everywhere.. and he awesomely and cleverly proves it by unlodging a sewage pipe with his powers and dousing his foe, winning and proving his stuff. I love this solution, it’s a clever spider-man type way to disarm him, using smarts and the einvroment instead of just brute forcing it. Though the sewage part wasn’t intetional our hero still won and gets praise from the people dumb enough to follow the fight. 

However at home Virgil points out it was  Pyrrhic Victory and shows off his smarts by telling the tale behind it, which I didn’t know,because tv tropes didn’t exist yet: king pyrhus fought the romans and WON.. but had so little armies left that he still lost overall. That’s what this feels like to Virgil: he beat hotstreak but any chance at a cure for Bang Babies and Alva going to jail for causing them is gone. His mood does get a boost though as the doctor calls and reveals he’s fine, he just has a bit too much elctrolytes and just needs to lay off teh salt. He celebrates, we get a quick gag and the episode ends

Aftershock is another stellar episoe, giving us Virgil’s first super foe and a personal one at that, while showing some growth. As richie tells him he’s not virgil anymore he’s static and he can’t let his past get to him.. and he does’nt going from cowering in fear to easily beating his foe with simple logic. It’s a good followup that answers questions you may have from the first ep, like what does this do to virgil’s body, who supplied the gas, and why has no one done anything about this, and sets up another villian for Static in Alva. Great stuff. I highly recommend these episodes and the show as a whole: it’s fast paced, grounded and enjoyable, having just enough levity to not be too dour but just enough tension and stakes to be intresting. A throughly fantastic superhero show and one that i’d certainly love to revisit on this blog If you have an episode of static or the dcau in general you’d want me to cover, my comissions are open and details are on a tab on my blog or can be gotten simply by asking me via ask or dm. Tommorow we’re going deeper underground, there’s too much damage in this town as the Lena Retrospective continues. So expect gay ducks, straight ducks and some terrfirmains. See you next rainbow. 

Day & Night ~ Ch. 1 ~ Baby Steps, Bruce.

Batman/Bruce Wayne X Reader (Lady Light) X DC universe

Warnings: past trauma, lies, ETC 

(A/N) Please read the intro first. Here’s chapter 1, the next part will come out on Jan 24th. Please like, comment, and reblog. I would love to hear what you all think. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I take a deep breath as I stand at my front door not wanting to open it. Of course, Batman had seen what happened. This was his domain. He saw everything that happened in Gotham. This was not good. When I tell him who I am, it was only a matter of time before HE knew I wasn’t in Metropolis anymore and I was done with the whole superhero thing.

Unlocking my door, I walk inside and setting my bag down on the counter I walk over to the window and opening it let out a heavy sigh. This was gonna suck. I walk over to my room and opening the closet pull out the case that held my super suit and sigh. I thought I was past this. Opening it, I grab the simple white mask and then closing the case slide it back into the closet. The mask should be enough.

I walk back out to the living room to see Batman standing there and I am instantly aware of just how tall and muscular he really is. The suit did nothing for him. He clears his throat and I shake my head free of the thoughts that were running through them.

“Sorry, it’s just been a while since I saw you in the light.” I answer honestly causing him to tense.

“When was that?” He asks and I look up as I try to remember.

“Can’t remember the exact day, but I know it was on the watchtower. When Diana introduced me to everyone as,” I pause as I place my mask on my face and run my hands through my hair changing the color to a shimmering blonde color.

“Lady Light.” Batman concludes and I nod.

“Haven’t heard that name in a while.” I reply quickly changing my hair color back to my normal one as I take off my mask.

“Why’d you disappear?” He inquires and I shake my head.

“Sorry Bats, we don’t know each other well enough for me to tell you that.” I reply tossing the mask onto the coffee table. “So, are you gonna tell them where I am?” I ask addressing the elephant in the room.

“They deserve to know that you aren’t dead.” Batman concludes and I roll my eyes.

“You always knew best didn’t you.” I retort crossing my legs. “But you’re right. You can tell them I’m fine.” My eyes plead with him as I continue, “Just please, do not tell them where I am.”

Batman folds his arms over his chest, and I wait for him to chastise me, but he doesn’t.

“Very well.” He answers and my eyes shoot to his as confusion fills my eyes.

“You’re not going to tell them?” I inquire moving to stand in front of him.  

“It’s not my secret to tell.” He answers and I nod.

“Thank you. Honestly, you’re the last person I thought would help me.” I answer honestly and he nods slightly.

“I can understand why.” He replies moving to the window. Before he leaves, he stops and reaching into his utility belt he grabs something and then holds it out to me. “Take this.”

“What is it?” I ask as I cross the floor to him. I look down to see a communicator and I cock an eyebrow at him.

“If you ever want to come back, or even just to talk. I’ll be here.” He replies and then without another word he is gone.

I stare off after him in confusion for a while. That was very uncharacteristic of him. Why would he do that for me? I though he hated me. Well hate may be a strong word, but I did not think he liked me. I run my fingers against the communicator as I think to myself that maybe I had been wrong about him.

~~~

I stand at the water fountain in the middle of the park my hands wringing themselves against the strap of my purse. I hadn’t slept that much last night, terrified that Batman would have lied and the person I did not want to see the most would have been at my door. I would have canceled on Bruce today, but unfortunately, I didn’t have his number. So here I was. Dressed in a nice sundress with my converse on.

I look down at my watch to see that I was a little early. Letting out a heavy sigh I find a clean spot on the fountain to sit. My mind was still racing about last night. I didn’t know why but Batman seemed weird. He was different than I remembered him.

Why? When I had been a part of the Justice League, he and I fought all the time. People joked that it was because I was the Sun, and he was the Night; but I knew that was bullshit. I glance around at all the people at the park to see them all enjoying themselves and the sunshine and I smile. One of the reasons I had left the League was because I wanted that. I wanted to be normal.

Sure, I loved being a hero. There was an amazing feeling when you saved someone’s life. It was intoxicating. The rush you got from their love and adoration was dangerous. It was like an addiction.

Closing my eyes, I let the sun soak into my skin and smile softly. The sun was my symbol. I am, or was, Lady Light. So naturally I got my enrichment from the sun. The more I was in it the healthier I looked.

“(Name),” I hear Bruce’s voice say my name and I open my eyes. “Sorry I’m late.”

I look at my watch and see that it’s one minute after noon and I chuckle.

“Really? You consider one minute as late.” I laugh as I stand up next to him. “If you think by those standards, I’m always late.” I smile brightly and he returns my smile.

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Glad you see it that way.”

“Shall we?” he asks holding his arm out for me to take and I nod.

“So, where are we going?” I ask as I intertwine my arm with his.

“Well, there are some museums, the opera house, the shopping district; you pick.”

“While those all sound amazing, I was thinking more of the places you find interesting.” I reply as I look up to meet his gaze.

Confusion mapped his face and I instantly want to take back what I said.

“I’m sorry,” I add, and he furrows his brow.

“Why are you sorry?” He asks and I let out a sigh.

“You looked like I had said something wrong.”

“No, I was just surprised. The women I usually see always jump for the shopping idea.” Bruce says and I roll my eyes.

“If I wanted to go shopping, I’d take myself. No offense.” I reply and he smirks.

“None taken, so places I find more interesting.” He pauses for a moment before his eyes light up. “Are you hungry?”

Will continue

Hypnotic You

Second Series for Jason Todd

Request: Mixing up requests I got in submissions. 

Summary: [Name] has to come to terms that she really isn’t a fighter yet. Her mother, Diana Prince, left her in the care of Batman to help [Name] fight or at least learn how. Jason and [Name] have been partners for a long time and he is her mentor. But that all changes when he requests to go back to his team, The Outlaws. [Name] feels that she is left behind and comes across a new friend. 

But this new friend of hers is another enemy of the Justice League and a sworn enemy of her mother’s. [Name]’s body is resistant to some magic, but when Hecate awakens her godly form, is she able to control her dormant powers?

Pairing: Jason Todd x Fem! Reader

Genre: Mystery, Drama, Angst, Fluff

Word Count: 2.5k, 6 pgs

WARNING(S): NONE???

The sun shined brightly onto Gotham City providing light and warmth in the cold season of Winter. The snow that piled up from last night's storm was gradually melting under the bright star. And [Name] witnessed the frost on her living room windows going away. 

     She watched her neighbors do their daily routine of mowing their luscious green grass. Their kids had the job of taking out the trash and recycling. The mother would usually watch on holding their newborn baby or she was wiping her hands on a dish rag. [Name] turned away from the normal scene and glued her eyes on the TV.

      "In Today's news, Batman and Robin had stopped another criminal last night. Despite the storm, the caped vigilantes stopped the Riddler from robbing one of Gotham's finest jewelry stores. The Riddler is now being sent to Gotham--" 

     [Name] turned the TV off knowing that the Riddler would just escape again from wherever he's being sent to. She stayed on her couch for a while and enjoyed snuggling with her warm blanket that she got out of the dryer. Her eyes closed in happiness and she began to wonder in her land of dreams. That was until there was a knock at her front door. 

     She grumbled in annoyance and got up from the couch. [Name]’s sock covered feet carried her to the door and she opened it with a kind smile. There standing on her porch was her best friend and partner, Jason Todd. He was wearing his signature red hoodie with black jeans and black adidas. He stuffed his hands into his hoodie and sighed, “Are you gonna invite me in?” 

     [Name] snapped out of her trance and opened the door more to let him in. She watched as he relaxed and walked into her house. He took his shoes off by her door where her own shoes were placed. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” She asked and walked in front of him to stop him from entering her kitchen. 

     “I’m hungry,” He responded and took his hands from his hoodie. He placed his cold fingers on her exposed waist and moved her aside. [Name] recoiled from his touch and giggled, “You should warm your hands up. Oh, I’ll make you hot chocolate!” 

     Jason stayed silent and watched [Name] run into her kitchen. He chuckled when he saw that she struggled to reach her mugs on the top shelf. But after a few seconds, she managed to get them. “I said I was hungry, not thirsty,” Jason grumbled and sat in the barstools at the kitchen island. [Name] stopped pouring the hot chocolate and looked at him, “Do you not want any?”

     “Let’s go grab a bite.” Jason asked suddenly. 

    “Are you asking me out to eat breakfast with you?” [Name] looked at him questioningly. 

     Jason sighed and walked over to her. He grabbed the mug filled with hot chocolate topped with cool whipped cream. He took a sip and relished the hot drink entering his freezing body. “I am asking you to eat breakfast with me,” He replied after setting the cocoa down on the granite counter.

      [Name] smiled and grabbed a napkin from the kitchen island. She wiped Jason’s mouth to get rid of the whipped cream. She made eye contact with the male and laughed, “Yes, I’ll go eat with you, Todd, so stop your glaring.” [Name] walked away and threw the napkin into the trash. “Gimme five minutes to get dressed.”

       It took her longer than five minutes to get dressed, but Jason wasn’t going to ruin her perfect mood. He looked at her outfit and he took notice how she wore gloves and a scarf. “What?” [Name] interrupted his thoughts and placed her hands on her hips, “I’m not going out there freezing my butt off like you, okay?” 

     Jason raised his hands up and looked away, “I wasn’t going to say anything about your fashion choices. It’s a smart idea to bundle up, I don’t want anybody blaming me if you get sick.” 

     “You really do care for me,” [Name] softly said and Jason scoffed, turning to the front door. He opened it and walked out. He was going to ignore her comment about how he felt toward her. Jason wasn't’ sure himself. There were days he wanted to shoot her because of her rash decisions of saving a petty criminal. Yet there were days he had the strong urge to protect her from those petty criminals. “I’ll buy breakfast!” [Name] shouted as she locked her front door. 

……

     “The reason why I brought you here was because we need to talk,” Jason lit a cigarette and before he could inhale the deadly toxins, [Name] was quick enough to snatch it from him. 

     “Smoking isn’t allowed in here and I want to enjoy my breakfast before we get kicked out.” She smiled at him kindly. 

     Jason grumbled under his breath as he watched the female put out the cigarette in her empty glass half filled with ice. He crossed his arms over his chest and began speaking, “I requested that we change partners or back to our original teams. Now I don’t want you to interrupt me because I need you to listen to my reasons.” Jason’s blue eyes connected with her [e.color] eyes. 

     [Name] remained quiet waiting for his reasons. She stopped messing with the crayons she got from the host and paid Jason her undivided attention. 

     “I feel as though I need to work with my team, The Outlaws, more than Batman’s sidekick. Roy said he needs some help with the team and that they’re breaking without my leadership. I am also needed on higher stake missions and not burglars who steal money from an ATM.” 

    “He didn’t just steal money from an ATM. He was stealing from homeless people!” [Name] whispered-yelled. She was a bit frustrated about Jason’s choice. 

     “Hey, I told you to not interrupt me,” Jason scolded and continued his explanation. His stare softened and his body slowly relaxed into a vulnerable state. “I’m needed with my team, [Name]. I helped you with a lot of your training and I believe you already make a fine Batgirl. You don’t need me anymore.” 

     “Yes, I do,” [Name] spoke up, not caring that she didn’t let him finish, “You help me make those hard decisions. You sometimes influence me, but most importantly you make me decide what I want to do. I never really had that choice with Batman and Robin. You help me a lot in those times, in our missions.” 

     Jason pinched the bridge of his nose, “Those aren’t missions, [Name]. I get it, you entered the fighting scene a little too late. But what Batman has us doing, what he has you doing is nothing compared to what I used to do with my team. We take down guys like Sionis. We take down actual criminals with dangerous agendas.” 

     [Name] felt small in her seat. 

     “And to be frank, I’m tired of dealing with those petty criminals. I want the real deal. I want to go back to my team,” Jason finished.  

    [Name] swallowed the lump in her throat, “Then be with your team, Jason. No one is going to stop you.” 

     Jason stared at her and was baffled by her response, “You-- Why are you not stopping me?” He was 100% positive that she was going to throw a royal fit. But here she was surprising him.

      [Name] pushed her plate of food away from her kid’s menu. She grabbed a red crayon and began doodling. Her attention was divided now and it was because she needed a distraction. She could no longer stare in his gunmetal eyes anymore. “You said you needed your team and that they needed you. Why would I stop you if you want to leave?” 

    “I don’t know, I thought you would have put up a bigger fight. It’s what you would usually do.” Jason replied back and watched her aimlessly draw on her kids menu. He didn’t know what she was trying to draw and honestly he didn’t care. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he quickly looked at who was calling him. It was Roy Harper. 

     [Name] pretended she wasn’t looking, but she noticed how Jason didn’t hesitate to answer the call. She put her crayon down and raised her hand in the air to call the waitress. Their waitress came by with a pretty smile. “Can I have the check please?” [Name] warmly asked with her own smile. The waitress nodded her head and handed the check to which [Name] handed back cash. “Keep the change.” 

     Jason watched [Name]’s interactions with the waitress carefully. He noticed the front she was putting up. After all, he spent a long time with her to notice how she was doing. He focused back on the call and listened to Roy’s words. Apparently, Sionis was still in the game while in prison. It meant that the criminal had connections inside the prison to make deals outside. Jason wanted to shoot himself twenty times right about now.

      [Name] waited patiently for Jason to end the call, so they can have a proper goodbye. It was rude to leave while he was on the call, but it was also rude to answer the phone when he was having a conversation with her. Yet [Name] didn’t have the confidence to communicate with him. It wouldn’t matter anyways because they were no longer going to work together. Maybe that is why [Name] felt so sad. She was growing attached to the male even if they did have their downs.

      “I got it, Harper,” Jason said with the roll of his eyes, “We’ll talk about it more later and plan from there. Alright, see you guys later.” He ended the call and gave a curt nod to [Name]. “Roy called about--” 

     [Name] waved him off and laughed, “Spare me the details and go get the bad guy.” 

     Jason sighed and gestured to her with his hands, “You’re mad.” 

    “I’m upset,” [Name] truthfully said with a shrug of her shoulders. Her eyes were downcasted to examine her scramble of a drawing. “I thought of us as a team, you know? So being sent back to a dynamic duo like Batman and Robin kind of makes me feel-- I don’t know,” [Name] laughed and looked up at him. She waved her hands side to side, “I don’t know what I’m talking about now, my words are going to be scrambled soon if we keep talking.”

     [Name] put her wallet back in her purse and flipped the straps on her shoulder. She was collecting her things. She scooted to the edge of the booth and stood up, “But thank you for teaching me the ropes and other important things. I’ll catch you on the flipside.” [Name] turned her back on Jason and hurried to exit the restaurant. She was really digging herself into a hole back there. 

     “Catch you on the flipside? God, what was I thinking?” [Name] scolded herself and lightly hit the side of her head with her palm. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” She helplessly muttered as she walked further away from the restaurant. [Name] walked past some people going about their business and easily dodged the shoulders of people not paying attention to their surroundings. She was surprised that she was able to notice the people around her when her mind was plagued with questions. 

     At this point, [Name] wanted to be home and enjoy her hot chocolate for real this time. If Jason really requested for her to go back with Batman then the caped crusader will call her if she soon. "I should go pick up Blue from the pet store. Ah, I forgot my poor baby had an appointment today,” [Name] hailed a taxi and got into the backseat while telling the driver where to go. 

     “Rough mornin’, miss?” The taxi driver asked looking into the rearview mirror. 

     [Name] gave him a small smile, “You can say that.” 

    The taxi driver whistled with his clapped lips. They seemed to bleed a little meaning that he was picking at the skin of his bottom lip recently. “The storm must have hit yer area hard or somethin’ if ya ain’t smilin’. The kids ‘round here are havin’ a field day! Throwin’ snowballs and jus’ havin’ some normal fun! Ya should join ‘em, put a pretty smile back on ya face, y’know?” 

    “I will when I pick up my dog from his appointment. Blue would love the snow and I’m sure the kids would love him,” [Name] replied looking out the window. She watched the buildings she recognized pass by with a blur. Then she averted her attention to the taxi driver. She noticed a purple ring surrounding his irises before it disappeared. 

     The taxi driver cleared his throat and clenched the steering wheel tighter, “He must've really hurt yer feelings.” 

    “Excuse me?” [Name] swallowed and stared at the man with a new sense of curiosity and suspicion. She scooted to the edge of her seat and asked again, “I’m sorry, what did you say?” 

     “I said he must’ve hurt yer feelings. Especially if ya have that sad look in yer eyes like someone ran o’er yer dog. What’s his name?” The taxi driver tilted his head to the side and a large pop resonated in the taxi. 

      Uncomfortable, [Name] leaned her back into the cushion of her seat. Her lips parted in uncertainty, “He’s only a friend and there’s no reason for you to know his name. You’re a stranger.” 

     “I’m more than jus’ a stranger, darlin’,” The taxi driver answered quickly. The car came to a stop and [Name] opened the door. She almost forgot to pay the man, but he stopped her with a creepy smile on his face.

      “No need to pay me, girl,” He said and leaned over the passenger seat, “I want ya to know somethin’.” 

    [Name] got out of the car and closed the door. She bent down to listen to him talk though. She didn’t know why she was staying any longer with this weirdo. Yet her curiosity wasn’t quenched, not now. “She’s always watchin’ ya. Said somethin’ about awakening yer true potential.”

     “Thank you for the ride, sir,” [Name] dismissed his words  and ran into the pet store where she felt somewhat safe. She picked her phone from her purse and dialed Jason’s number hoping he would pick up as quickly as he did for Roy. It rang twice then went straight to voicemail. Might as well tell him what happened to her. 

     “Hey, Jason, I called to tell you the strangest thing that happened to me. This taxi driver gave me the weirdest ride ever. I-- He knew that I talked to you? Actually, he doesn’t know you, but I don’t know. It was the oddest thing that’s ever happened. He knew what I was feeling. I mean he knew-- Whatever, just give me a call back?” She said with nervousness, “He said someone was watching me. I have to hear some advice from you.”

      She ended the call there and perked up at her dog barking happily. She hoped that the taxi driver was only crazy and that what he said wasn’t true. [Name] has enough to worry about. 

Set In Stone - Choose Your Own Love Story Prologue (Tim Drake or Bart Allen x Reader)

Words: 2k

~ AH!!! Welcome to my newest multi chapter fic! Except there’s a twist! It’s up to you dear reader. I’ll be writing two different stories about each path, like a choose your own adventure, except you choose how your love story progresses to the eventual end! There will be a private masterlist specifically for this series where you can choose the way your personal love story unfolds. Just know that the future is never cemented, meaning you can always go back and try again! Think of this as the prologue to the actual event, but your first decision drops tomorrow, meet Bart or dig deeper into Tim? Hope you enjoy! ~

Seeing teenage heroes was really something else. They were your age, and they weren’t grumpy and old like the Justice League. “Okay well this is fun and all but I wanna hang with people my age!” you groaned following J'onn down the never ending corridors of the Watchtower. “You know your powers are not fit for the type of missions the Young Justice team attempt, you are arguably weaker than the regular human” he reminded you. That was rude. “Am not! I’m an asset! I can’t get hit cuz I know where they’re gonna swing so who cares if I have a mental breakdown every once and while!” J'onn knew you weren’t wrong, you taking a hit was a rare occurrence, but the Justice League refused to risk you even taking one hit, you’d protected thousands by scanning the infinite number of different possible futures. 

“Everything you need is here” you replied “I knew you were gonna say that, like I literally knew it” you also knew you had to prod J'onn just for about two more minutes until you met Nightwing. “Oh my god Nightwing fancy seeing you here!” you grinned at J'onn who now understood your goal. “Hello, I didn’t know the YJ team had a new member?” Dick glanced at J'onn who shrugged. “Do not blame me Nightwing, Flash found her and the team agreed she stays with us” you rolled your eyes before starting with Dick Grayson, but he didn’t know you knew that yet. 

“Hi! Y/N, no last name. Flash found me when he ran into the future and I was totally feeling the mode because I got these powers [ you tapped your head as Dick smirked ] and I can like see different parts of future when I’m super focussed, so like short time is kinda easy but far away and hard and I don’t remember anything from my past. I’m like a future only kinda girl.” you sighed, hoping you’d made sense. Dick’s eyes lit up. “So you don’t have a family, and they’re just keeping you here?” you nodded, crossing your arms to try to look more emotionally secure. 

“Dibs” and something sparked in your head, this was a new future. It hurt. You sunk to the ground clutching your head as a new future bounced around your consciousness. Trying to shake out of it you realized you’d been carried to a med bay, Dick and J'onn stood above you looking concerned. Pushing them off you as you got up you explained “sometimes people make big decisions that change the future, I’m guessing you calling ‘dibs’ on me changed something, but I’m a little too tired to check if that’s okay, also what does dibs even mean?” and Dick smiled, “you’ll have to come find out!” and against J'onn’s protests he pulled you towards the Zeta Tubes. 

Flash zipped in front of you and Dick. “No.” and Dick waved him off. “I’m taking her to the manor, get her to meet the family maybe I’ll get a sister if Bruce is in a mood” he waggled an eyebrow at Flash who was focussed now on you knowing he couldn’t get in Dick’s way. “I know you don’t know him yet but if Jason Todd asks you to do anything that seems dangerous say no. And watch out for Damian’s swords. I guess just look for Tim Drake, he’s a good one” and he patted you on the shoulder. “Go feel the mode kid”  and you face palmed. “Flash you mean crash the mode oh god don’t even try to be cool” you groaned. “You totally have to meet Bart” Dick mumbled before he cleared you for zeta tube access. 

You appeared in what can only be described as a man cave. There was a giant computer where a tiny boy sat covered in leather typing. There was a teenager looking about your age punching dummies while another boy was shooting literally guns at the dummies. “Welcome to the batcave!” Dick announced loud enough for the three boys heads to turn. The smallest boy stopped typing and stalked over to you. “A little young for you Grayson, stolen her from the baby justice team?” you knew this was Damian Wayne, and you couldn’t contain yourself.

“OH MY GOD BATMAN HI!” you screeched pulling him into your chest. “You’re totally crash like so cool but you’re so little right now! Last time I saw you, you were like super tall but you totally got moded or something - oh I wasn’t supposed to say that don’t worry!” Dick nudged you “this is Robin, Batman, Bruce Wayne, is in his office” and you slapped a hand over your mouth. “Right, no spoilers” and Damian stood still, processing his own future. “Moving on, Tim and Jason!” the two older boys had come down to get a closer look.

“Hood, Drake, this is totally cool!” you exclaimed, shaking their hands. “Why is he Red Hood and I’m Drake? Not Red Robin?” Tim looked puzzled. Best not ruin his life like that, this was one of the few things you planned on changing. “Because I know you’re Tim Drake! So does the world, Drake is a good LAST NAME right? Red Robin is totally crash for a hero name!” and Tim looked a little confused, but brushed it off. “What the demon said, she new?” and you shook your head, explaining your story again.

“20 bucks says adoption papers” “50 says she gets a room” “75 on a new animal persona” the boys started screaming bets as soon as they heard the “family trauma emotional instability” part. “Why can’t she be in Young Justice? Or the Outsiders? She’s still a teenager” Tim looked confused. “I dunno man, she’s been with the JL for a while because she’s apparently delicate which is bullshit” Dick explained and you strongly agreed. “None of you could even land a hit on me” you puffed out your chest. “Care to defend that claim?” Damian unsheathed a sword. “No! J'onn sai-” you cut Dick off. “Absolutely ”.

Now you were dodging and ducking Damian’s advances. You’d swung a couple punches but it means undoing some focus which allows Damian to get his own shots in, so you mostly stayed on defense, letting him get frustrated and tired. “I think you’ll get better with practice baby Batman” you teased him. Next was Jason, bullets were hard to avoid because you didn’t have lightning fast reflexes, although that would be nice. But Jason wasn’t as calculated as Damian so you could play a little dirtier. Knocking his guns out of his hands you let up, “this is boring I’m done” you raised from the ground where you and Jason had tumbled down on. 

“So you really have powers. Your moves are all the most probable choice mathematically, you can’t be running the numbers in your head that quick!” Tim was toying with a tablet, shocked at your prediction abilities. “That’s right Boy Wonder, that was fun but I’m feeling kinda diz-” and then you realized you’d overworked yourself a little bit, and it all faded to black. 

You woke up to fully aged Batman. “Oh god no I’m back. How am I back! Damian you were just a kid like ten minutes ago! How long have I been out?” you began to throw blankets off yourself, blankets? You were in a bed in someone’s room. “Calm down, Y/N, Y/N! It’s okay!” and the Older-Damian just enveloped you in a hug. You couldn’t remember the last hug you’d had. Literally couldn’t remember. And it was a welcomed comfort. Pulling away you got a closer look, and it wasn’t Damian Wayne, but Bruce. 

“Bruce right? Current Batman?” you whispered, trying to wrap your mind around what had just happened. “That’s me, I see you’ve met my son, at multiple ages too” his eyes were smiling but his mouth wasn’t, it showed concern. “Yes, I did, I’m sorry for being a nuisance, it’s a pleasure to meet you but clearly I’m a bit moded so I should head back to the tower” you explain beginning to get up. “Actually that’s something I wanted to talk to you about, if you feel alright? [ you nodded, your powers were still a little too weak to peek ahead at what he was going to say ] Well, as you can see, I’ve got a couple of children, and you haven’t even met all of them. And I take them under my protection and I train them, and it seems to me you want training. Now you’re not ready for field work but you can start with me and my team, and maybe do a couple visits with the Young Justice team when Tim heads over. I think I can help you, and give you a family, would that be something you want?” 

A family, you had one of those. And you knew the word brought you warmth, that had to be a good thing. “I think I’d like that a lot, but I’m kinda already with the Justice League ya know? Their personal magic 8 ball.” and Bruce shook his head. “They won’t be a problem for me, you’ll fit right in with my family” and you felt a smile spread over your face. “Then it’s a deal!” and you stuck out a hand, Bruce clasped it, pulling you in for another hug. 

“We’ll talk later about what this means logistically, but there’s someone really excited you’re here.” and Tim Drake came bursting through the door, holding cookies. “Welcome to the team Y/N! You don’t know Alfred yet but he made these! I’m so glad you’re here!” he was beaming with excitement. And blushing? “Hi Tim, I’m glad to be here!” you chirped. Bruce mumbled something about paperwork and left the room as Tim continued. “This is totally cool, if you want I can call Bart I think he’d totally want to meet you! Or, you and I could hangout just the two of us!” there was that blush again. “Yeah! Can I just sit and think for a minute before I catch up with you?” this was a decision you wanted to read into, it felt important. 

Tim left, and you sat back into the plush bed, diving into the future. And it was something you hadn’t seen you. There were two futures, still fuzzy from the infinite decisions to be made securing the future, but it was clear enough to see that it was your wedding day. Down one path you saw a beautiful wedding with someone you haven’t met yet, and you looked beyond happy. You heard yourself whisper “if only Tim were here to see this” wiping a tear away in the arms of your lover. Recoiling back you knew this future wouldn’t do, not at Tim’s expense. So you went towards the other. Same set up, but this time it was Tim that you were marrying, but the same tear slid down your cheek “if only Bart could be here” you recognized the name. Bart, the guy you’re supposed to be meeting. 

And you were stuck in the middle no matter what. Like yin and yang you couldn’t find a future where you didn’t end up in the arms of one at the other’s grave. Or worse, in the futures where you tried to pick them over yourself both lost their lives saving you. So how you do pick? Who gets to be your future and who has to perish to secure it?

“Y/N you ready yet?” Tim called from down stairs. It was years out, but you knew every decision you made from now on was one step closer to the loss of a hero. And there was nothing you could do about it. 

First Decision:

Get To Know Tim Drake First

Meet Bart Allen

 ~ I really hope you’re excited to make your own fic! The masterlist with the choices goes up with the actual start tomorrow! I can’t wait!!! ~

Justice league Snydercut review

Wow talk about a long movie. Remember Mass Effect's 3 shit endings that were later improved (sorta) with DLCs. Well that is kinda how this movie is.

Before we start this, I just wanna say that I was very impartial throughout the whole snydercut movement. I wasn't part of it but I do see the good that they did in regards to some of their charities and with how the fandom itself has been painted in a negative light. So its good that they got what they have been demanding for quite some time. Snyder as director for me, I really am not the biggest fan of. His movies have some great cinematic moments that look amazing but the context around it is what muddles it for me.

Is it better than Whedon's JL? YES. To start I'll look at some of the things that I do like.

I do like how it was split into parts.  Gives it that miniseries/Comic book feel

Thank god they removed that stupid cringy flash landing on top of Diana's chest scene.

Darkseid looks good. I know some people have issues with it but I liked it. I mean looking at it first glance has me convinced its Darkseid. His voice isn't too bad either. Reminds me a bit of Injustice 2.

As much as I have issues with Darkseid being introduced so early I do like that he had a brief confrontation/glaredown with the League, foreshadowing a possible in person encounter and that the League needs to expand if they are going to fight against Darkseid.  

Steppenwolf's design has greatly improved and looks better than before.

Loved the scenes between Alfred and Diana.  Wish there was more of that.

I loved how the movie added Cyborg, Aquaman and Flash attempting to stop Superman from getting to Batman. I also liked how in this version,  Batman pleading to Clark's humanity telling him that world needs him and he needs to snap out of it.  Also bonus for taking out that scene of Batman on the ground groaning about how old he is getting.

Okay seeing Clark get the black suit and having the voiceovers of both his father's merge together works in terms of Clark's arc into becoming the person he was meant to be. Also like the use of Zimmerman's Ideal of Hope score wished they let it play out a little longer.  Probably my favourite moment in the film is where Superman just takes Steppenwolf's Axe like its nothing and freezes it.

Now to go into some of the more critical stuff that bugged me when watching.

For a movie that is 4 hours long, pacing issues were bound to happen. I think the first example of this can be found in the opening with the Superman scream wave (which started to get a bit hilarious when his screams could be heard every now and then) hitting all three mother boxes. they are shown individually reacting to it and it takes time, where it could have just showed them together or an compilation of each of the motherboxes waking up. I know it Snyder's thing but tone down on the slow mo. Like some instances its fine (like with bullet time or Flash's scenes) but other instances I'm just like alright I get it.

The scene involving Cyborg transferring money into that single mother's bank account. Is he gonna do this for all the people suffering just like her? or just for that one person? I mean if you can hack into the world monetary system, you can solve a lot of financial issues affecting  the majoirty and not just one person. Did I miss the scene but why did Cyborg go from helping one poor person, suggesting the potential good he can do to change the world for the better  to "Fuck the world". Seems a bit inconsistent in character. Especially since he knows who Diana is (from what he says)  and that Parademons are after the motherbox. Maybe her offering help, you should take it? idk Vic. Also the whole Auto defense system malfunction, would it not be better if this was established beforehand where we see Vic struggling to maintain his body's autonomy leading up to the Superman confrontation? Prior to that it seemed he had it under control and his biggest conflict throughout the movie seemed more to be with him coming to terms with his new body. With that being said, Cyborg's character here is much more interesting and better than it was originally. I can see why Ray Fisher is so pissed (well that and the abuse he faced).  I am glad this was improved and gave the character a lot more to do.

The movie still has the same issue as before in regards to the whole motherbox plot and how convenient it was that all three are located on earth. You would think that with the involvement of Darkseid/Steppenwolf that separating them to distinct locations across space would make it more difficult to collect them. I mean we know that the Green Lanterns exist (we saw one get chomped), you'd think that they or the guardians would take one and secure it on Oa. The pushback to this would be "well there was only one green lantern and he died, so how could they retrieve the box?" which begs my question, why send only one? I mean it has been established that Darkseid is a known conqueror of worlds, you'd think the Guardians would be smart enough to send more than one Lantern to aid Earth in their fight.  Did they not think it would be a good idea to have the corps be more involved/keep an eye on earth since it is the only planet that was able to repel Darkseid's forces?

Why is it that the best idea of security when it comes to humans is to bury it? Would it not be better in optics to look over it and know its location instead of dropping it somewhere on the off chance that someone might find it due to being  curious or the land changing/altering  making the box more easy to attain? A situation as dire/serious as this, you would think that the Amazons/Atlanteans would have been better prepped with armor/weapons for such an event. I mean you have the arrow of Artemis that shoots quite a distance to give Diana a message but not some kind of weapon that hurts/cripples Steppenwolf? Or better yet, how about the moment that the boxes started acting up after Superman's death, that Atlantis/Themiscarya would put aside any differences they had with one another and to the outside world to come together to secure the boxes?  How could Darkseid forget the name of the only planet that was able to force him to retreat? nor does he know that it harbors the anti life?

Did this movie break Aquaman's continuity? because from the dialogue between Mera and Arthur, its implied that Atlanna abandoned/left Arthur at Tom's doorsteps whereas in the movie,  we see Atlanna spend a couple of years with Tom and raising baby Arthur before she was forced to come back. You'd think Zack being a producer for the Aquaman  movie would have edited that line or made it more clear. Well that or James Wan F'ed up when making the movie.

"I've never seen a being as strong as Steppenwolf" Did Diana just forget Ares aka the god of war who killed the Greek Pantheon/Old gods and orchestrated the first World War? Hell from the looks of the flashback it seemed Ares (I'm assuming its Ares, if its Hades, my bad) was getting some good hits in on Darkseid, who is superior to Steppenwolf.  While we are on the topic of Diana, it's a bit odd that Snyder who  was a producer on WW84 where one of the biggest focuses on the movie that Patty Jenkins talked about was how Diana doesn't solve her problems with violence (even though her primary weapons in this movie are a sword and shield but okay. Then again New 52 hasn't done a good job in disproving that), yet in this movie we see her using her gauntlet smash to fucking kill the one remaining terorrist. Like sure you can argue that they were terrorists and deserve to die, but given how easy and quick it was for her to take out the previous guys, why do something that runs the risks of destroying the very building that you are in (with hostages). I mean from the look of the blast and how much debris fell from the building outside, and it was a miracle no one (but the terrorist) got hurt/killed.

Why did Steppenwolf  kidnap  them in the first place? Just use that mind extracting device you used on the Atlantean soldier to see if they know. Seems like a waste of time to collect them in one location only to interrogate them later.

Okay, I'm sorry but even in this cut I still don't like Miller's Barry Allen. He isn't as bad as he was in the theatrical cut but man does it stick out. When he is helping to escort the kidnapped civilians out, why doesn't he just grab them and transfer them to a safe distance? He even makes a comment about how slow they are going. Can I also just say how weird it is for Barry to take time saving Iris to caress her hair and look at her more creepily in slow mo? Like yeah its in slow mo but still I think your priority should be to get everyone to safety as quick as possible and check if anyone else could get hurt.  I will admit that Barry's speech as he is running so fast to reverse time at the end was really good. Tho the more I think about all the slow mo Flash scenes are good.

They still kept the "Let's use the mother box to bring back Superman plot". Why? This is a piece of tech that you don't fully understand how it works and you are going on the whims of someone you just met. Especially if they come back as a different person/mindset all together.  If Superman 's death was the reason that allowed for the Mother box to call to Steppenwolf/Darkseid, what the hell were they doing prior to Superman's arrival on earth? I mean we've seen how easy it was for Steppenwolf to attain the two boxes even if they were guarded, so why the wait ?. I get that Batman is going through an arc and trying to change from the person he was but how does go from "1% chance of absolute certainty" to "let's go on a whim and have faith" when it comes to resurrecting Superman? 

Its gonna be awkward as to how Clark will explain his sudden return from the grave around the same time Superman came back.

I was wondering when the Knightmare scene will play out. Jared leto's Joker isn't over with me, it seems way too try-hard to be edgy. Other than that yeah, not much I can say about it. Tho do we seriously need another iteration where Superman (or someone with Superman like powers) is evil?

I also love how nonchalant Bruce is about J'onn appearing in front him. However the revelation that J'onn was that army general all the time breaks so much of continuity (and just why now did you decide to show up and help and not idk the time Zod invaded and nearly  terraformed earth, HELL WHY TF DIDN'T SHOW UP TO HELP THE LEAGUE IF YOU KNEW ABOUT DARKSEID, I'M SORRY TO RAG ON BUT REALLY THIS CAMEO JUST OPENS UP SO MANY QUESTIONS, IT JUST SEEMS LIKE AN "PALPATINE WAS BEHIND THIS ALL ALONG" KIND OF THING ).

In terms of getting a sequel, I am not sure if WB is going to go through with it given that their current vision seems to be a different route than the one Snyder intended so who knows. Despite my criticisms I do believe this is Snyder's best DCEU film to date and probably one of his better films. You could tell that he put in a lot to make this. The movie itself does have issues mostly due to the plot surrounding the motherbox as well as pacing. I would say it's worth the watch at least once, though I think its best to watch it in doses rather than one sitting. Ultimately this is the version that we should have gotten and I can see why so many people who were supportive of Zack wanted or vouched for him to finish it. Regardless, I think the very least I am happy for Snyder. If you like Snyder's previous stuff, you will like this one, if you don't, your perception of the film won't change significantly other than some cool bits here and there.  

Having now seen all four hours and two minutes of the Snyder cut (including Jared Leto’s terrible Heath Ledger impression), I have come up with my improved version of this film, which I call The Seldnei Cut:

1. DeSaad has finally found the Anti-Life Formula!  It’s on Earth! Darkseid kills him because the dumbass is the one who lost it in the first place, and sets course for Earth.

2.  Scott Free, who has spent the past 5,000 years hacking the shit out of the Apokalips mainframe to keep the formula’s location hidden, desperately tries to sabotage the fleet/boom tubes/whatever, and fails.

3.  Darkseid defeats Earth.  Scott starts sabotaging his hunt for the Formula.

4.  Every future member of the Justice League goes up against Darkseid and fails, except for Batman, who starts gathering them up and taking them to the Batcave.  Scott Free notices this.

5.  Lois Lane is leading a small band of rebels in Metropolis.  Jim Gordon’s doing the same in Gotham.  Lex Luthor tries to cut a deal with Darkseid, fails.

6.  Batman is like, “We need to be a team.”  Everyone else is like, “We need to be a team that has Superman.”  Scott tracks them down and says, “I can make that happen.”

7. Grave robbery!  But less dorky this time!

8. Superman comes back to life and is, like, totally confused.  Zooms into the air.  Darkseid and Lois both see this and hightail it to the scene.  Lois gets there first because Darkseid is distracted by the Evil League of Supervillains attacking him because Joker (now played by literally anyone else) thinks it would be hilarious.  They fail. of course.

9. Lois and Clark have a reunion, and she catches him up on things.

10. GIANT SUPERHERO BATTLE!  Also the citizens of the DC Universe get to kick some evil alien ass!  Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey are fighting in Gotham!  The Suicide Squad is battling in some other country!  The Doom Patrol Movie Edition is protecting their town!  Fucking Green Arrow fights some parademons in Star City! Lucifer is protecting LA while John Constantine is pissed off and covered in parademon ichor in London. 

11. The Atlanteans come to join the main battle!  Holy shit, Amazons are real and here to throw down!  Big Barda switches sides due to her love for Scott Free, and the tide is turned!

12.  At the end, Superman has Darkseid on the ropes, and he says something snarky about Clark being Earth’s protector, and Clark says something stirring about how Earth doesn’t need him, Earth has its people, then Bruce shoots Darkseid into the sun or some comic book type thing.

13. THERE IS NO GODDAMNED SLO-MO EXCEPT TO SHOW HOW FAST THE FLASH IS!

14. None of the rescues or battle scenes are set to acoustic emo guitar ballads, what the fuck was that?

The epilogue includes: Clark and Lois reuniting with Martha Kent, Big Barda and Scott Free setting something on fire as they make dinner in an Earth apartment, Bruce Wayne chilling in a hot tub with a margarita because why the fuck not, Arthur and Diana having a burger in a greasy diner, and Barry and Victor doing some kind of science thing together while their dads look on proudly.

The End

Credits tag: STARRO, BABY!

TEDDY HI okay I think I'm late but I would love to hear about DC Spiderman, love and other ways to die (the jay one at the end), aaaaaand Zuko accidental baby acquisition!!

LYSS! hi! lol

ok, so, DC Spider-man is, essentially, what it says on the tin--an AU where the powers of the multiverse that be decide to stick a Peter Parker into a DC universe, and things go a little differently for him. He still gets bit when he’s 15 and his uncle still gets shot, but Ben doesn’t die--instead, he goes into a coma for a few months. During that time, Peter takes on his Spider-man persona to deal with his guilt (and the fact he doesn’t know if his uncle will die or not). Eventually, Ben recovers, but Peter continues to be Spider-man. Ben and May find out a year later, and while things are tense for a while, they eventually accept it and help him out (such as with his webshooters).

Anyways, the beginning of the fic partially follows some points of the “Justice League: War” movie. Peter ends up meeting Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern when they go crashing through New York fighting each other. At the time, Peter is 18 and a senior in high school. I also get a huge kick out of Bruce being younger than people expect, so he’s only 22. Here’s a lil excerpt I wrote:

“Spider-Man, don’t fight him,” the man in black growled.

He glanced back at him and saw he’d climbed back to his feet. He was holding a weird, glowing box that basically screamed ‘Danger, Will Robinson!’ But the man himself didn’t set Peter’s sense’s off.

He was in a get up similar to Superman’s, but in all black and with a mask that covered half his face. The mask had little points on top and he had an emblem on the front that looked like a… 

Oh, Peter thought, eyes widening behind his mask. 

The Batman.

Well, that saves me a trip to Jersey, he thought. And then—holy shit, the Batman knows about Spider-Man!!

and another, cause i think these are funny lol:

“Well?” Superman asked. His question was clearly addressed to Batman, but he was glaring daggers at Lantern.

Yeesh, Peter thought. If looks could kill… Wait. Superman has heat vision. His looks could actually kill! How does that even work, anyway? Does he just stare really hard, or is it like flipping a swi—Wait, stop, I need to pay attention, Batman’s talking.

“—antern and I chased it into the sewers. It exploded before we could find out anything, leaving this box behind. We deduced that both the creature and the box were likely of extraterrestrial origin. We agreed to reach out to you,” Batman gestured towards Superman, “to find out anything you knew, and tracked you here.”

“Because he’s an alien?” Peter asked, cocking his head.

“Uh, obviously?” Lantern replied. “Who else is going to know anything about aliens?”

Peter ignored him, carrying on with his line of thought.

“Is that, like, speciesism? Or racism towards aliens? Cause, I mean, I don’t know a lot about non-humans, but I feel like they probably don’t all know each other.”

Superman snorted, and when Peter looked, he was definitely suppressing a smile. Probably.

anyways, the fic is an elaborate excuse to force a friendship between Spider-Man and Batman (and Superman) and would basically follow them through the years (and possibly lead to romance between them? i hadn’t decided lol). Oh, and last 2 tidbits before i move on: Peter is trans, cause why the fuck not, and i was also seriously considering titling this “Spidey and the Bats” to only be read like the Elton John song “Bennie and the Jets”.

ok, on to the Ajin!Jason Todd AU

so, idk what you know abt ajin, so i’ll explain a bit. Ajin: Demi-Human is a manga/anime about Ajin, people who possess extreme regenerative abilities that trigger upon death or mortal injury, allowing them to completely recover from their wounds in a matter of seconds to such an exceptional extent that not only can missing limbs be restored, but Ajin can fully regenerate after being turned into literal meat patties. Additionally, Ajin can create "black ghosts", which are highly dangerous combat-oriented entities that are invisible to normal humans and only visible to other Ajin.

I tweak the idea, somewhat, because in this AU, the amount of time it takes you to come back can vary--especially the first time you regenerate. It gets faster the more times you do it, but it starts off slower. Jason is an Ajin, so when he dies by the Joker’s hand, he later regenerates--only, he does so much slower and more incomplete than other Ajin. His body is restored to how it was prior to dying, but somehow his mind got locked inside his black ghost. He ends up wandering around Crime Alley with his black ghost trailing him until another Ajin stumbles across him.

This new Ajin, Kay, realizes something’s wrong with Jason and tries to help by... “resetting” him aka killing him again. It ends up working, but it doesn’t exactly engender feelings of friendship between him and Jason. Kay is pretty weird, though, and doesn’t seem to mind Jason not trusting or liking him, and despite killing him like it was nothing, is actually a kind person. He’s also determined to explain Ajin to him and ensure the kid understands the potential danger he’s in (he’s very vague about it, though, cause Kay has Secrets lol).

Anyways, it turns into this whole superheroes (mostly the Bats) vs the government vs rogue Ajin, and Jason ends up thrown into the middle of it all. The beginning of the fic deals more with Jason and his family’s grief/guilt/trauma and Kay sorta just hangs out until shit starts hitting the fan and he’s forced to reveal some things about himself :3c

OKAY on to the last one, Zuko Accidental Baby Acquisition AU!

this one starts off write after Zuko Alone when Zuko is leaving that town where he met the little boy. He ends up coming across another town, but this one has been destroyed by the Fire Nation--it’s a literal battle ground. There are the bodies of Earth Kingdom soldiers and civilians left to rot in the sun with only the broken weapons and armor of Fire Nation soldiers to explain what happened here. Zuko is horrified and wants to leave, but he’s starving, so he has to go into the town to try to find something to eat.

The fires from the battle are still burning low when he starts searching the town, and eventually he hears the cry of a baby. he runs to investigate without thinking and comes across a woman with her eyes closed and so severely burned Zuko automatically assumes she’s dead. In her arms is a crying baby, red-faced and distressed, but otherwise looking unharmed. Zuko approaches and as he reaches for the baby, unsure what the hell he’s even doing, the woman opens her eyes. She can barely speak, but she asks Zuko to take her son--Kyo--and to bring him somewhere safe. Zuko agrees without thinking, wanting the woman to pass on with some amount of peace.

The woman dies and Zuko is now left with a baby. The story goes on with Zuko seriously struggling to care for a baby, not to mention his inner turmoil and the trauma of seeing that town and watching the woman die from burn wounds. Zuko, like in canon, follows Azula’s tracks, but because of Kyo he’s slower and ends up arriving just as Azula shoots Iroh. This time, while Zuko wants to say no to Katara’s offer of help, he’s stuck b/c he can’t care for Iroh AND Kyo, so he ends up accepting her help. 

Which is also when the Gaang find out that Zuko, somehow, now has a baby. Katara also helps look the baby over, and it’s basically a really weird time for all parties. Eventually, the Gaang help Zuko, Iroh, and Kyo get settled in an abandoned house to recover, Aang insisting on leaving blankets and food behind (mostly for Kyo and Iroh’s benefit).

Anyways, the story goes on and Zuko, who had planned to just leave the baby at an orphanage in Ba Sing Se, ends up wanting to keep Kyo (he gets attached and feels responsible for him, and can’t just let him go). Things, obviously, go differently with a baby involved, and Zuko doesn’t end up betraying the Gaang/Iroh like he does in canon because of Kyo.

but yeah, that’s it lol, sorry this is so long, i got carried away