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disillusioneddanny · 1 year

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It’s me, hi I’m the problem is me (dead tired)

The world was ending.

That was the thing Tim had come to accept. Somehow, all of the big bads had made friends and decided to work together to take over the universe and split it amongst themselves. Darkseid, Trigun, Barbatos, they had all gotten together to conquer the universe. Raven was completely drained, The supers three were in the infirmary, and the Lanterns Corp were barely holding them back, losing every second. Hell, even the Justice League Dark were down for the count.

“What are we doing to do?” Nightwing murmured, watching as the Lanterns slowly lost momentum.

“I-I don’t know,” Bruce whispered. Tim’s adoptive father had ripped of his cowl, his hair stood mussed from continuously running his fingers through his hair in stress. Batman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman stood over all of the contingencies Bruce had ever collected on the three big bads.

Robin stared at the screen that showed the devastation, a frown prominent on his face. “So this is it? We just give up?”

“No,” Red Hood said walking into the room with Arsenal and Starfire in tow. Behind the three stood a young man. He had Lazarus green eyes, snow white hair, slightly blue skin, and pointed ears. His body adorned in black armor, a blue crown floated above his head and a large cape hung from his body with galaxies swirling around. He looked to be Tim’s age, maybe just a little older than him, somewhere between his and Jason’s age.

“Who’s this?”

The being stepped forward, jewelry that hung from his ears tinkled slightly when he did and jeez, he was beautiful.

“My name is Phantom,” the being said with a serene smile. He was otherworldly, unlike anything Tim had ever seen in his life. “I am High King of the Infinite Realms. Jason asked me to come and assist with an issue you are dealing with,” he said, his eyes flicked to the large monitor curiously, tilting his head to the side, the silver that hng from his ears clangled once more. “Ah, those three, how fun.”

“How do you uh, how do you know Jason?” Tim asked, stepping towards the king.

At this, Phantom had an amused smile on his face as he looked back at Jason. “You never told them?”

Jason let out a groan of annoyance, pinching the bridge of his nose as he did. “When I died, Phantom found me in the ghost zone, I never actually moved one when I died. For those six months I just hung out in the ghost zone and became friends with Phantom. Before I came back, he declared me as one of his Fright Knights. And last years he ran into me during one of my missions and brought back my memories from when I died and fixed the pit rage.”

Phantom nodded, a wide grin on his face. “Jason made a lousy ghost. Now, how about I go fix this issue for you all real quick?” He said before he disappeared. Tim went to ask Jason about Phantom only for his father to beat him to the punch.

“Is this why we haven’t been able to get in contact with you?” Bruce asked, furrowing his brow. Jason shrugged.

“Couldn’t find the sword he left me that lets me summon him. Turns out I left it on Kori’s ship so she had to travel to come get me. From there it took a bit for me to remember how to summon him, I’ve never actually done it before so it took a few tries to get it right. And of course Phantom thought it was a social call and he loves to talk so it took a little bit to explain. And on top of that, time works different in the Realms. And Klarion was there so it just took a little longet than I wanted it to but he’s here and he’ll take care of the issue super quick.”

“Klarion?”

“Yeah he’s dating Phantom’s clone, he hates their relationship like a lot but it’s like two little chaos gremlins,” Jason said with a chuckle.

“How old is Phantom?” Tim blurted out.

Jason gave the nineteen year old a confused look but chuckled nonetheless. “He’s twenty.”

“Twenty and he is already a king?” Aquaman said, looking more and more interested in Phantom.

“Been king since he was fourteen,” Jason said, sucking at his teeth before he looked at the monitor and started snickering. Tim followed his gaze and smiled when he saw Phantom grow a third arm and grabbed all three beings by their ears, shrinking them down to his size before he dragged them away from the Lanterns before they disappeared.

Soon after the four reappeared in front of Bruce, Diana and Arthur who all looked on curiously.

“Kneel,” Phantom ordered. The three beings fell harshly to their knees. “I am beyond disappointed in the three of you. Are your realms not enough? What makes you think that you have the right to take over dimensions that do not belong to you?”

“But-” Trigon started.

“No buts from you, Trigon. The only reason you’re even still the ruler of your world is because none of your children want the position,” Phantom said. “Due to your crimes against this realm I hearby sentence you all to a millenia in the Fright Zone. Jason,” he instructed.

Jason grinned and pulled his sword from its sheath and stepped forward. With a quick swipe, all three disappeared from view.

Phantom stepped towards the three heroes and dipped his head in a polite bow. “They should not cause anymore issues. I apologize that I could not get here sooner. While I may be ll power, I am not all seeing and Kronos does not always deem it fit to tell me when my underlings are causing issues,” he said with a polite smile. “Does anyone have any paper or something to write on?”

“I uh, I have a tablet, I can just pull up something,” Tim stammered, stepping forward. Phantom smiled in thanks, taking the tablet from Tim. He drew out a complicated sigil and set it on the large table.

“This is my official line. Next time you are in a situation such as this, please do not hesitate to summon me,” he said before he looked at Tim and looked him up and down, a single fang peeked from under his lip. “As for you, Handsome, feel free to get my personal sigil from your brother and call me anytime.”

Before Tim could say another word, the High King disappeared and Tim immediately turned towards his brother with wide eyes. “ Jason ,” he hissed.

“He’s my fucking friend! I don’t want you dating him,” Jason shouted, running out of the room with Tim following close behind.

#dead tired ship #dead tired #dp x dc #dc x dp fanfiction #dp x dc crossover #dis writes

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thealtoduck · 1 year

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Jason with a ”dumb slut™” boyfriend…

Jason Todd x Male Reader

Damian Wayne x Male Reader (platonic)

Warnings: Superhero violence, mentioned sex, reader is a weirdo mess but in a kinda ”iconic” way, kidnapping.

Summary: You become an ally to the Batfamily in one of the most unexpected ways…

(A/n: This isn’t based in the Titans universe, it’s average dc universe, i just think Curran Walters is hot.)

(A/n 2: Reader is semi-based on the character Faye from Euphoria (i haven’t watched the show but i’ve seen some of her scenes.)

——

You met Jason at a bar where he was looking to release some stress and anger and you were looking for a hot hook up, both of you got just what you wanted, which led to some of the best sex in both of your lives.

The next day you woke up in Jason’s bed to find he wasn’t there. You pulled on your boxers and your hoodie and left his bedroom only to walk in on Jason talking to Batman and Robin.

To their suprise you didn’t seem faced at all by the scene you only walked over to Jason and said ”Jason, you’ve got any aspirin or something”. ”Yeah, in the cabinet in the bathroom” Jason said casually. You uttered a quick ”Thanks” before walking past Robin (who glared at you) towards the bathroom.

After you entered the Bathroom you heard Batman ask ”So… who was that?”. To which Jason asked him ”Do you really want me to answer that in front of my eleven year old brother?”. To which Robin asked ”Is he a prostitute?”.

When you came back out you answered both questions ”Okay so… Hi my name is Y/n L/n and no, i’m not a prostitute, Jason, do you want me to go make breakfast for you, your brother and Batman, while you discuss whatever the fuck your talking about?”.

”Sure” he said awkwardly. You made breakfast for the four of you. As you sat down with Jason and the two vigilantes around the table, they were discussing some case as if you weren’t there. You didn’t really care either honestly.

Robin then spoke to you suspiciously ”Aren’t you even gonna slightly question Jason’s relations to me or Batman?”. ”No, everyone has like that one relative you know” you started. ”Like my ex, his brother was a drug dealer” you continued casually as the others stared at you.

”I can give you his adress so you can arrest him” you suggested taking a sip of your tea. ”Why do you want us to arrest his brother?” Robin asked. ”Cause the asshole dumped me and took my headphones” you said plainly making Jason chuckle.

After breakfast you got fully dressed and Jason walked you to the door. ”So i know this became kind of a weird hook up but do you like wanna meet again sometime” Jason asked. ”Sure, just write your number here and we’ll schedule something” you said with a smile handing him your phone. Then you left his apartment.

As Jason walked back into the apartment Damian stared distastefully at him and asked ”What place could you have possibly gone to too find that guy?”.

After a few dates you and Jason became an official couple. He revealed he was the Red Hood after you noticed the cuts and bruises he had on one of your dates. He was suprised to see how chill you were to the whole thing.

But you had grown up in the slums of Gotham so that wasn’t the weirdest thing you’ve ever experienced. So you just cleaned his wounds and went on with your business.

You got meet a few more of Batman’s team members when Nightwing, Red Robin and Spoiler came by. You were 97,69% sure Robin had been gossping and telling the Batfam that you were a ”dumb crack whore” or something cause they seemed a bit judgy at first when meeting you.

Though they soon realised you were a very kind person but an odd one. You even came in useful with your knowledge of the slums of Gotham, knowing it’s gangs, dealers and all that.

They eventually invited you in for dinner to meet them out of costume. You were for the first time kind of shocked when Jason drove the two of you to Wayne Manor of all places. When the butler opened the door the only words you could find was ”Cool house”.

The dinner was nice and let you and Jason’s family get to know each other better. Stephanie was your favorite, she seemed to think you were really cool and loved your wild stories.

Damian was still an uptight little ass who seemed to think you were disease ridden streetwalker. Though his opinion of you would soon change…

One time Bruce asked you to pick Damian up from school when Alfred was busy. Though it wasn’t a smooth ride. Damian was whispering how it was beneath him to be around you when a car suddenly rammed yours making it crash.

Luckily you and Damian were fine but you passed out and the men who’s car rammed you kidnapped the two of you. When you woke up you and Damian were tied back to back in chairs. The kidnappers filmed a message to Bruce for ransom money and then left to do business.

”Damian, how are you doing?” you asked. ”I’m tied back to back with you, how do you think?” he said annoyed. This made you snap and say ”Listen here you little cunt, i don’t like you, you don’t like me, but i’m dating your older brother so i at least have to pretend i tolerate you. Now shut up and reach in to my pocket, i have a pocket knife”.

This shut Damian up as he reached in to your pocket and got knife and started cutting the rope.

Once Damian had freed you both from the rope the kidnappers returned and noticed your escape. You swiftly grabbed the pocket knife and shoved Damian behind your back. ”Back off or i’ll stab you in the throat!” you said fiercely as the criminals surrounded you.

”Oh come on cutie, give us the boy and we’ll let you go free” one of the kidnappers tried to offer you. ”No, your not laying a fucking finger on him!” you yelled.

One of guys tried to attack the two of you but you made quick work of him by kicking him in the balls and elbowing him in the throat. ”Anyone else want a go?” you asked the other thugs but as you did both Batman and Red Hood crashed through the windows taking out the criminals.

While they were making quick work of the kidnappers you turned around to Damian. You quicky started checking him over for injuries ”Are you okay? Like not anything from the crash or anything?” you asked him.

Damian was a bit stunned from everything he had just witnessed so he just said ”No… no, i’m fine”. Jason then ran over to you and pulled you into a kiss and then started checking you didn’t have any major wounds.

Before you and Jason left the scene Damian walked over and stopped in front of you and said ”Thank you” with a little bow of his head and then walked away again. ”What did i miss?” Jason questioned confused.

”That’s between me and Damian” you said simply and started walking towards the exit.

After that day if anyone ever made a rude comment about you, Damian would beat the shit out of them.

#jason todd x male reader #jason todd x male!reader #damian wayne x male!reader #damian wayne x male reader #red hood x male reader #red hood x male!reader #x male reader #x male!reader #male reader #male!reader #batfam x male reader #batfamily x male reader #batboys x male reader #dc comics x male reader #dc x male reader

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thealexanderfiles · 6 months

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DCU from a Marvel fans limited perspective

recently i've accidently been sucked into the DCU universe, mostly Bat family, if i'm being honest, and although i've never watched a single movie/episode, this is what i have gathered from purely reading the occasional fanfiction/lots of tumblr posts

SPOILERS i guess

There are A LOT of batkids

Bruce Wayne adopts these motherfuckers like they're some kind of limited edition pokemon set

no one is actually sure how many there are but if you have black hair and blue eyes and live in gotham, Batman doesn't care if you've got parents or not. you're coming home with him

There appears to be five Robins and Batman goes though these children like a chainsmoker with a pack of cigarettes

people die a lot

Thats okay though because people come back to life a concerning amount as well

Jason Todd died and came back to life by being dumped in a pit of magical water

Damien Wayne is the only biological child of Bruce and he mentions this a lot

Dick Greyson was the first Robin and the first adoption and i think he and Bruce got in a fight and he left to become Nightwing

Jason Todd stole the Batmobile's wheels and became the second Robin. after he came back to life he became Red Hood

Tim Drake was not an orphan, he just fit Bruce's target demographic and was conveniently close (I mean come on, it's like express shipping) He is also some kind of super-genius. He was the third Robin but became Red Robin/Drake

Stephanie brown(?) was the fourth robin(?), not sure for how long. People get upset when other people forget. I think she's called Spoiler or something

Damien Wayne is the final Robin. Hes this assassins son and im pretty sure Talia dropped him off at the Wayne Manor and said, "I had him through the terrible twos, you get the teen years'

Not entirely sure if Tim runs Wayne enterprises

Brucie wayne is the funniest fucking thing i swear

He's so stupid

not sure is Tim, Dick and Jason follow Bruce's lead and become absolute airheads as well

Alfred is a butler

Alfred has guns

There's someone called Duke and Cass knocking around

The Justice League think Batman works alone

someone in the JL is allergic to the colour yellow

there is a concerning amount of Danny Phantom x DC crossover fics

sames goes for Miraculous

Tim Drake is Bi and for some reason people don't like that

internet is divided on whether of not Batman is a bad dad

#OnlyInGotham is a thing?

Gotham is like an australian NYC

the Riddler is a not funny, less aggressive version of the Joker

apparently Alcatraz and Arkham are different prisons but thats on me

there's a whole group of superheroes out there, each have strong powers and they decide to leave the most dangerous city to the member that has no powers and dresses up as an anthropomorphic bat and runs around the city causing copious amounts of property damage with his children

there is a girl called barbra? Gordon

there is a criminally small amount of content for the girls

for some reason people ship the bat kids together, ike, anytime you have to remind yourself 'its TECHNICALLY not incest is Not Good'

Clark Kent is running round acting as if his reading glasses are the only thing standing between a normal life and CHAOS and the worst thing is that he is right

i am a MCU fan and i was SO sure that Deadpool was MCU but now i'm not so sure

Fandom likes to have this troupe that Bruce wayne doesn't believe batman exists when obviously the superior troupe is that Gotham is pretty sure they are exes

teen titans and young justice are a thing but i cant figure out which robin is who.

Damien Wayne has enough animals to open a zoo

who tf in the batfam are metas?????

Batman has definetely used the Tired Dad voice on villains and the Brucie Wayne voice on the JL

Bruce Wayne has contingency plans if someone discovers his contingency plans

THERES A PLACE CALLED THE FUCKING BAT BURGER???????

it took 2 robins until batman realized that a small child running around in a vest top and speedos was not the greatest idea

Someone needs to tell me, like right now what's going on, where to start and what to read. bc rn im LIVING on chaotic fics

#bruce wayne #brucie wayne #batman #dick grayson #nightwing #jason todd #red hood #tim drake #red robin #damian wayne #dc robin #dc comics #dc universe #someone pls tell me what DC means im actually loosing my mind here #batfam

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msfcatlover · 1 year

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In which I propose a new superpower for Jason Todd

Jason was resurrected by a ripple/fracture/break in space-time/reality. Significantly, he was resurrected physically to a moment right before his death (I’d argue right before the bomb went off, based on his injuries and specifically the lack of smoke-damage to his lungs allowing him to call out for Bruce from down in his grave) but he remembers dying. Some analysis even suggests that resurrection made him immortal, that his death was overwritten and cannot be rewritten in any way that will stick. Plenty of AUs speculate about this giving him a whole variety of powers, but I haven’t seen this one yet, so...

Jason Todd exists, physically, as every single version of himself that ever was, could have been, or ever could be. He is, in a way, outside of time, a permanent glitch in the metaphorical matrix. He is a very, very specialized kind of shapeshifter, able to hit fast forward or rewind on his own physical form whenever he wants, but his perception of time remains linear & constant---he can’t actually see the future or anything, and if he shifts to the time he was a corpse, he’s still trapped & aware inside of his nearly useless, rotting body. When he meets alternate versions of himself from parallel universes, he also learns of different paths his life could’ve gone down, allowing him to rewind to the point where that changed and then fast forward down that other path as far as he wants (once again, this does not grant him the memories of that alternate life, he is always the Jason who stole from Batman, became Robin, died in that warehouse, and came back with a vengeance.) Not something he gets much use out of, given how few of the alternate selves he’s met have useful powers of their own, but handy for hiding scars or changing his build slightly for undercover work.

No, what Jason got/gets/will get the most use out of is the rewind feature. It can heal wounds, as long as he removes the blade or bullet which will not be affected by his shifting, which is both very handy (in the case of the former) and very troublesome (when the latter means he can’t risk shifting at all if he’s been shot or hurt with shrapnel.) He comes back to Gotham as a ghost, the Robin they all remember him as, and haunts his family just irregularly enough to really throw them off their games in between antics as the Red Hood.

(He also did/does/will do it instinctively sometimes, losing track of what age he’s supposed to be and shifting to the one he currently feels like, or the one he wants to be. He almost always drops however many years back to his late teens whenever he’s being especially petty or underhanded. When he’s scared, he has to actively remember not to let himself literally shrink back to 14, when he was Robin & a Wayne and actually felt safe. Under fear toxin, it’s not uncommon to find Jason under ten years old, tiny & scared, trying to find somewhere small to hide. In the opposite direction, he often gets older when he wants people to take him seriously, because something Jason learned young is that nobody listens to people they think are children.)

(Needless to say, the full-face helmet is very useful, and he keeps the filters well maintained & at the bleeding-edge of bat-technology. Nightwing having to carry a sobbing six year old back to the cave for treatment should never, ever have happened even the one time, and Jason’s not about to let it happen again!)

He needs to remember to age at all, since he just hit/hits/will hit “pause” when he reaches the form he wants. He came out of the Lazarus Pit a glitchy, blurring mess of a thing, and it took a while before he was able to find a form that felt comfortable in the time he was now in (the body he would have had, if Bruce got there in time and took Jason to the al Ghuls to beg healing for his son’s wounds.) The further he gets from the current time/reality, the more uncomfortable a form was/is/will be to hold; like wearing a skin-tight suit that doesn’t quite fit, getting smaller the further he gets from “here & now.”

(Yes, that does mean Jason will inevitably experience ever-increasing discomfort as time goes on and he gets further from his original resurrection; he’s not supposed to be “here” right “now.” The longer it’s been since Jason Todd ceased to exist, the more out of place a living Jason Todd was/is/will be.)

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babygirl-but-a-boy · 8 months

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Reverse Robins AU Ideas

Duke is the oldest but (Like Dick) he was never formally adopted

I don't think 16 -year-old Duke would vibe with Damian (I'd imagine Duke started at 14)

Tim becomes Robin- Damian becomes Nightwing, Damian gets the name from Jon (canonically Dick got it from Clark- its kryptonian), Duke stays as the signal

When Tim takes a break from being Robin, Bruce gets Stephanie (canonically accurate) But Steph dies

Tim comes back as Robin

Stephanie becomes Red Hood

they all have bird names but they have different birds (Robin was Dick's name, so each person would have a different name, no legacy names, just a legacy position)

Damian goes to the Circus when Dicks Parents die, and adopts him

at this point dick either goes by Flamebird or robin

maybe he goes by robin and then when he gets older he become flamebird

cass is never close with Steph (I could go into detail about why, in this universe they wouldn't) suffice to say, Cass is super against killing, and finds it personally disrespectful (canonically) when someone who uses the Bat mantle kills people

Babs probably doesn't become a vigilante because she probably would never meet dick, but Im not sure on how she canonically became a superhero- id need to read more about her

damian (as nightwing) does not become a cop- realistically I don't think he'd even need to work given his al ghul side of the family and part of me thinks he'd become a painter (under a pseudonym, he would want the wayne name being the art) and go that way, or he work with animals

dick did not have formal education in the circus and I think Damian (someone who was trained with private tutors and hated going to formal schooling/Gotham Academy) wouldn't make him- so Damian would homeschool him

alternatively dick might not have even become a vigilante, damian might have helped him process his anger toward his parents death or smth idk

when damian learned about Steph- he brought her to the lazarus pit himself and brought her back to life, but then she ran off and they lost contact, when she came back as the red hood, it made their relationship compliacted

it also complicates damians reltaionship with tim, and tims reltionship with stephanie

jason would be bruces apprentice

Duke or Cass become batman after bruce "dies", around the same time Damian becomes Nightwing

Bruce didnt want Damian becoming Batman and it was a contention in their relationship (lack of trust) so when Bruce "died" he didn't become batman

jason is robin, and Tim figures out how to bring Bruce bacl but because hes older and closer to damian, damian actually helps him and thats how Tim meets Ras Al Ghul

the teen titans are formed by tim before he becomes batman

so it goes Duke, Damian, Tim, Steph, Cass, Jason, Dick (ish)

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aikoiya · 1 year

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DC AU - Bruce the Burdened

You know, I wonder how Bruce would've turned out if his parents never died. And if he himself hadn't died like that one universe where Thomas became Batman & Martha became the Joker.

Which, I have thoughts on.

But that's for later.

Generally, I think that he would've just been Bruce from the Animated Series, but with only small hints of Batman in there every once in a while.

Like, he's Bruce, but not the oblivious, idiot Brucie Bruce. More so the Bruce from the animated series but with Batman's innate competence. Because Batman wouldn't exist, at least not yet, he doesn't need to distance himself from it, so he's free to be as intelligent as he truly is.

Now, this is the product of my Legacy 2 idea, which you can find here:

You will have to read the link if you actually wanna understand where I'm coming from here.

But anyway, the idea is that instead of becoming Batman, he sorta becomes a warden of Gotham. He learns the apotropaic magics of his family like he was always meant to & maintains the seals & wards like the Waynes who came before him. He sort of becomes a magic user/supernatural hunter.

However, that doesn't stop all of the problems that continue to show itself in the Batman continuity. Like, the villains might not be the same as in the original.

For one, there's no Joker because there's no Batman.

There's also the fact that Mrs. Fries didn't get Huntington's Chorea, her husband did. So, we get Mrs. Freeze instead.

Harley & Bruce become besties, even date for a bit, but even after breaking it off, they stay besties.

Keep in mind that the Batman Rogues Gallery is still out there basically in tact, just without Batman, so Bruce sees what's happening with his home & comes to the conclusion that he can't just work from the shadows anymore. So, as a teenager, he runs away from home & goes on the same training journey as in canon, but this time, the fuel isn't to avenge, but to save.

As such, when he comes back, he becomes the Nightengale in honor of his ancestry.

He has more of a focus on magic, but that doesn't stop his use of gadgets. Even inventing a sort of magi-tech.

Either way, he's a much more lighthearted hero here. Like, he's still dark & brooding, but not as much as in canon. He actually smiles every once in a while.

Then, he begins collecting kids, but he's got his parents to help him along the way. When Jason comes along, Thomas tells Bruce outright that he shouldn't just give the name Robin to the boy without Dick's permission. It's his title, given to him by his mother. That Bruce has no right to take that from him. So, Jason goes by the name Cardinal because they symbolize strength, courage, & loyalty. However, there is a secondary symbolism that comes in later.

If the guy who became Joker still becomes a villain, it won't be because of Bruce. So, it won't be Joker & more than likely, he'll stick with og Red Hood.

If dude gets as bad as Joker it'll be due to his own choices.

However, if Red Hood ends up killing Jason, then, due to Bruce not having been traumatized at such a young age, he won't even hesitate.

That's the last the world sees of Red Hood, period. Whether it was by the Nightengale's own hands or by him simply turning a blind eye when Nightwing did it to avenge Jason is entirely up to the writer.

At the same time, because of the presence of his parents, he's able to understand shit better & the name on the headstone is written Jason Todd-Wayne.

However, because Robin is not just a symbol here, Tim has to choose his own name too.

When Jason comes back, his vigilante name comes with an entirely new meaning because it's said that when you see a cardinal, it means that the spirit of a dead loved one has come to visit. This one just happened to be very angry & aggressive.

I also feel like due to Bruce being more well-adjusted, he'd have managed to get into a legitimately steady relationship with Selena. Even married. He doesn't try to make her stop stealing, but he does ask for a compromise. Only steal from master criminals &, if she can manage, why not help him to expose their dirty dealings. After all, what better whetstone to sharpen her skills with?

Selena finds that... Yes, that is very much acceptable.

Talia still steals Bruce's DNA to create Damien & when he shows up, it creates turmoil between Bruce & Selena.

Random Stuff Masterlist

#dc #batman #bruce wayne #alternate universe #living waynes au #dp #dp x dc #danny phantom #fenton-nightengale family #aikoiya aus #writing prompt

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ayamari-no-goshi · 2 years

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And Think of Him as Living - Dick’s chapter

AO3 — > Companion to this fic, To Join the Whispers

Fandoms: Danny Phantom (DP) / DC universe

Summary: THIS IS A CROSSOVER. What was supposed to have been a normal mission to stop members of the League of Assassins became something so much more when their family accidentally tangled with a ghost. And sometimes, the details leading to the resolution were obvious to some while completely missed by others. Companion chapters to ‘To Join the Whispers’ written from the POVs of some of the others

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, and questionable mental health

Parings: none

Notes: originally uploaded to AO3. Cross-posted to tumblr

Dick walked alongside Jason as they traveled to the Fenton home. It had been a while since he had a chance to spend time with his younger brother where they weren’t fighting some criminal. As much as he wanted to talk to him, he figured Jason needed some space.

Although Jay hadn’t said anything was bothering him, Dick could tell. There was that moment the previous day where he had a momentary slip with the Pit, and just before they left, part of his arm had passed through something solid! While weird things were part of their lives, when it came to things related to the Pit, it was more of a concern.

Was it possible the effects of the Pit were wearing off? Or maybe they were getting worse. Would he turn into a ghost? Or be in that weird in between state Danny Fenton seemed to be in? He already lost Jason once, and it nearly broke him. He… he couldn’t let that happen again.

During Jason’s time as Robin, Dick made mistakes that he couldn’t take back. He was young and angry, and his issues with Bruce kept him away from the Manor a great deal of the time. Even if he remembered his relationship with Jason in a good light, there was no telling how his brother felt about the physical distance between them. If… if he’d been around more or made more of an attempt to bond with his brother, maybe Jason would have come to him first or at least reached out to him when he made his fateful decision to meet with his biological mother.

What stung more was that Bruce never even told him Jason died! He found out because of one of the other Titans over a week after it happened. Yes, he’d been off world at the time, but why did he have to find out that way? But time passed, and the hurt lessened, even if it never completely went away.

Then, against all odds, Jason came back. Not as the troubled but talented teenager Dick remembered, but as a brutal and dangerous adult. Nightwing had a brief encounter with him as the Red Hood before his identity had been revealed, but never in a million years would he have connected him with his deceased brother. And that was one of the first things he was told after waking from a coma caused by the destruction of Bludhaven.

It was hard trying to understand what happened when he woke up and got the report from Bruce. Not only was Jason alive, but he’d done so much damage in Gotham. How could his brother have done those things? Hell, he’d even attacked Tim and badly injured him. All the tests showed it was him, but whomever this man was couldn’t have been his younger brother. As troubled as he could be, Jason had been a sweet and empathetic kid. Sure, that empathy sometimes manifested as a desire to do more damage than necessary, something he’d personally seen in Jason’s early days, but that had been something he’d been working on. His brother couldn’t have been that same person.

His first real interaction with this resurrected Jason was when he decided to impersonate him. That was a mess in and of itself, but it helped give him a glimpse into how such a drastic change could happen. Jason’s logic made sense to him, but it was difficult for anyone else to rationalize it. That was most likely due to the influence of the Lazarus Pit. However, there were a few moments when flashes where he could see glimpses of his brother, and he wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.

But things slowly got better, for all of them. At least, that’s what he thought.

Dick sighed as he remembered Jay’s words from the previous day: “I didn’t ask to be thrown in that Pit. I didn’t ask to be brought back to life!” Those words stung. Most people would have been overjoyed to get a second chance, but it felt like Jason didn’t share those sentiments.

Had his brother been at peace with his death? Was that possible for someone who had died in the way he had? Or, was there more to it? There was a lot they didn’t know about what happened to him when he died and in the years after his resurrection to his reappearance. Jason rarely talked about it, and even if he did, he’d only give the bare minimum. One of these days, he should watch the video from when Jason first reappeared. Dick had been putting it off. Other things had taken priority, but maybe it would help him understand why Jay had gone down the path he had.

Those were things to worry about later. Jay was here now, and as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he needed help.

And right now, that help would come from a bit of a heart to heart. It also filled the silence that Dick didn’t particularly like. “You know he’s worried about you.” It was true. Bruce was worried even if he wasn’t great at showing it.

Jay rolled his eyes even though his shoulders stiffened. “He certainly likes to pick and choose when he cares. Dick, you know how he is. Right now, he’s only worried about whether or not I’ll compromise the mission.” It sounded like he was gritting his teeth. “Maybe if we were on our way home, I’d buy it, but not now.”

It was easy to think like that. Bruce did have a habit of sometimes prioritizing missions over health, but that wasn’t the case here. When Jay had escaped for a smoke, Bruce had asked them to help keep an eye on him. Sure, it wasn’t obvious to anyone outside the family, but he was worried.

And, Dick wanted to make sure his brother understood that. So, he moved in front of Jay and looked up at him. Seriously, how did little Jason get so big? “Little wing… Jay…” He tried to keep his voice soft. “What happened to you affected him, badly. You didn’t get to see it. On top of that, you’re the only one we know of who seems to be permanently affected by the Pit.”

“Yeah? Well, it sucks.” Jay huffed as he pushed past him. For a moment, it almost seemed like there was a flash of green in his eyes. Great. “I had heard Cass was resurrected in it too. But she’s clearly not crazy.” For a moment, it almost seemed as if he wanted to continue.

Dick could tell what was left unsaid. “The only thing I think makes you crazy is your dislike of grappling hooks.” One of the things that baffled Dick about the adult Jason was how rarely he seemed to use them. The chase he’d led him and Bruce on through Gotham was amazing in its own right. Jay had made jumps without assistance that he and the others would never risk.

“I don’t dislike them. I just don’t need them as much as you do.”

Pleased that managed to get a smile out of his brother, Dick playfully nudged him. “Now you’re smiling.” But his own smile slipped. “None of us are still really sure what happened to you once you came back, but we’ve started seeing glimpses of the old you.” Jay’s posture tightened again. “That’s probably thanks to Kori and Roy more than anything we’ve done to help.”

His brother didn’t respond. Crap. Had he phrased that badly? Probably. Deciding not to acknowledge it until he had a better grip on how to better put what he meant, he continued. “We’re in new territory when it comes to ghosts and the like, so we’re all a bit on edge.”

“Meaning you’re worried I’m going to go on a killing spree.”

“What? No!” Dick was almost offended by that statement. Almost, but he couldn’t deny it was something he and the others had discussed when Tim when to go get him from the roof.

“You don’t have to hide it.” Jay lit a cigarette. Seriously, how many did he have hidden on him? Dick had been trying to throw away all the ones he could find. “The need… desire… obsession? I don’t know how to explain it… for taking them out, permanently, hasn’t been as bad for a while now.”

That was a good thing. They’d noticed that too. While there were still criminals Jason would dispatch without a second thought, he was much more likely to disable than kill. “Except the Joker.”

“Can you blame me on that one?”

“No, not really.” All of them wanted the Joker dead. Heck, Dick had even killed him once even though Bruce had performed CPR and saved the bastard. While the action was traumatic at the time, he wasn’t sure how he felt about it now. And it was something he hoped Jason never found out about as it was unlikely he’d ever forgive Bruce for it.

After a few moments of comfortable silence, Dick decided a little bit of teasing was in order. So, he grabbed Jay’s cigarette and put it out, causing his brother to curse at him. “You know these will kill you.”

“Been there. Done that.” The nonchalant way Jason brushed off his own death bothered him. “I think I’ll take my chances, especially if it helps me deal with nosey assholes like you.”

But, if his brother wanted to joke, he’d play along. “You wound me, brother.” Not bothering to hide his grin, he decided to change the topic. “So, what’s the Fenton Portal like?”

An almost diabolical grin flickered across Jason’s face before he adopted a more neutral one. “You know, if you ask them, I have a strong feeling they’ll show you.” He then gestured to a large building with a hulking metal contraption on it. It almost looked like an old broadcasting tower. Almost.

“How on earth is that even allowed?”

…

Like Jason said, Maddie and Jack Fenton were more than happy to show Dick their portal. Didn’t these people have any qualms about showing their inventions to strangers? If they had lived in Gotham, they would have been robbed twenty times over.

Well, maybe not. The security system Jack and Maddie demonstrated to them was something else. He shared a long look with his brother. They really needed to reevaluate how they viewed the Fentons. These two were brilliant and unintentionally dangerous.

Then the Fentons off-handily mentioned a weapons vault. Who just mentioned that?

The demonstration of the security system had the unintentional benefit of bringing the Fenton children to the kitchen. The daughter, Jazz, reprimanded her parents before introducing herself. Something about her reminded him a bit of Barbara.

Her dad then asked her to show Jason the metal monstrosity that they called the Ops Center while he and Maddie showed Dick the portal. That didn’t sit well with Jazz, but her parents just brushed it off. The shared look between her and Danny told him that Maddie and Jack weren’t nearly as competent as they projected.

Without much warning, Jack wrapped his arm around Dick’s shoulders as he led him towards the basement lab. Something about the situation didn’t sit right with him, and he glanced back at his brother. Jason smirked as he waved. That didn’t make him feel any better.

Trying to tune out Jack’s ramblings about ghosts, Dick busied himself by glancing around the lab. Some of the technology just lying around could put some of what he’d seen at Star Labs to shame. Maddie eventually drew his attention to a large set of doors in the wall.

Jack bounded over to his wife and pressed a button on a control panel next to it. The doors opened with a hiss, revealing a swirling green wall of something. No wonder why Jason seemed unsettled by it. The coloration looked way too much like the waters of the Lazarus Pit, but there was also something else.

There was a change in the air once it was opened that Dick didn’t like. If he wasn’t imagining it, it almost felt as if the stillness of death was spreading from it.

Maddie quickly closed the door as she launched into an explanation of it. Jack quickly joined, though he ended up steering the conversation to the weapons in the room. The glee the two had as they explained the damage each one could do to a ghost sickened him as he realized they were talking about dissecting their own son. Trying to keep the grimace off his face, he suggested they’d left his brother waiting for them.

It thankfully worked as the two lead him up to the Ops Center. Jason’s lips twitched as he tried to hide a smile when he caught sight of him. Oh, retaliation would be given when they got home.

But both of their attentions were drawn to Jazz as she announced, in one of the fakest voices he’d ever had the pleasure of hearing, that they’d gotten a reading about a ghost in one of the parks across town. How in the world could anyone believe that?

But, somehow her parents did? Both pulled weapons out of thin air, which was an impressive feat, before announcing they’d take care of the ghost and rushing off. Moments later the roar of an engine and screeching tires could be heard.

“How… how did that work?” Jason muttered as he moved towards one of the windows. “That shouldn’t have worked.”

Danny gave him a tired smile. “It works every single time with them.”

“Guns blazing and all?”

“Yep.”

Knowing he was missing something, Dick hesitantly asked, “What exactly did I just watch?”

Jay patted his shoulder. “That was a distraction, Dickie-bird. Anyways, are you up for a trip?” He quickly explained that Danny wanted to take him to one of his ghostly allies in the Ghost Zone. This ally, Frostbite, knew much more about how ghosts worked that Danny did, and would be the one who most likely could help explain why Jay was having the trouble he was.

It was a good idea, even if it meant going into unknown territory. And there was no way he was going to allow his brother to go in alone. And if he was honest, the idea was exciting.

As he and Jay excused themselves for a moment to suit up, he caught his brother mouthing the word ‘neglect’ to him as his eyes moved towards the Fenton siblings. Oh, that explained a few things like how their parents could just leave the house like that. It was sad really. The two did seem to care about their kids, but it seemed their priorities weren’t quite where they needed to be. Maybe that was another reason why Jason and Danny seemed to be bonding so easily.

A couple minutes later, he met his brother down in the basement where Danny and Jazz were prepping a device they called the Spector Speeder. But what caught Dick off-guard was the change in Jay’s costume. He didn’t have his traditional helmet. Instead, it was a pair of goggles and a half-mask that covered his mouth.

“Changing up the look?” he teased.

Although the goggles hid it, Dick could tell his brother was rolling his eyes. “Would you rather me carry the helmet, which I should remind you contains explosives, everywhere I go?”

“Point taken.” That was something Dick never exactly understood. Sure, Bruce had wired a taser into is cowl, but Jason had actually put something that could kill him in his helmet. It was something they’d all been concerned about when they found out about it. And it wasn’t like they’d be able to disarm it either. Jay knew what he was doing with explosives, and none of them had any ideas where he might have learned those skills. They had some suspicions he might have been involved in an incident in Britain a few months before he returned to Gotham, but that was about all they could get.

Danny stopped what he was doing at the control panel to stare at them. The idea that someone could wear explosives so close to them openly concerned the teen. Though Dick couldn’t blame him, he decided to tease him about his parents materializing weapons out of somewhere unseen. That was enough to stop Danny from judging their family, so he turned his attention back towards the controls.

After checking to make sure his sister could hear him, he turned towards them with a mischievous grin. “Ready to see the land of the dead?”

Both Dick and Jason moved forward to better see out of the windows when Danny moved the vehicle. As they entered the portal, he felt Jay stiffen. And for a brief moment, it didn’t seem like he was in the present.

Before Dick had a chance to check on his brother, Danny turned back to look at him. “Are you okay? I forgot that sometimes you can get an echo of what happened. I’m not sure if I just got used to it, or if it stopped happening after a while.”

“Hood?” he asked when Jason didn’t immediately respond. Was it his death he was remembering? Or was it coming back to life?

A shake of the head told him Jay had snapped out of it. “Bad memories. It’ll pass.”

Uneasy silence fell between them for a while as they moved through the Ghost Zone. The eerie green swirls and floating islands were almost surreal. Floating doors could sometimes be seen along with some of the movement of things he wasn’t entirely certain were sentient or not made it worse. According to Danny, each one of those doors led to either pocket dimensions that could be thought of as homes for various ghosts or just doors to entirely different dimensions. The thought people could just wander into different dimensions that easily might have been the most unsettling thing about the entire trip.

Soon, the temperature started to drop, and Danny momentarily asked him to take the controls while he fetched heavy jackets for them. Jason barely fit into his. And even though Dick was able to keep himself from laughing outright, he couldn’t stop the grin which caused Jay to flip him off.

Once they were ready, Danny gave a quick explanation of where they were going. Apparently, the Realm of the Far Frozen, a permanently icy island, was where this Frostbite lived. His people had one of the only known medical centers in the Ghost Zone, and, from the hesitant hint Danny gave them, seemed to hero worship him.

Frostbite ended up being a yeti-like entity who was surprisingly friendly. After Danny gave a quick explanation as to why they were there, he ushered them inside what originally appeared to be just a mountain of ice. Instead, it was a rather modern looking medical facility.

Things were going well as Frostbite explained what he and his people were going to do until Jason was asked to remove his shirt. Dick hadn’t expected him to get so defensive about it. All of them had scars, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to show them off and compare stories. Was there something else about it?

After come coaxing, Dick could have sworn Jay grumbled, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” before he removed his shirt.

For a moment, it felt like the air was sucked out of the room. Sure, there were the normal scars Dick was expecting, but on Jay’s chest was one that had no business being there. That… that was from his autopsy. Why hadn’t the Pit fixed that? And then with a jolt, he realized that wasn’t something he’d received while he was still alive.

“What… what happened?” Danny’s horrified whisper broke the silence.

“Told ya, kid, I was dead before I came back.” Jason gestured to the scar. “This is my permanent souvenir.”

“Little Wing…” He had to say something. “None of us knew…”

“And I wanted it that way.” Jason’s eyes narrowed as he watched him.

“I should have been there.” He moved forward to try to give his brother a hug, to let him know that it was something he would always regret.

“Don’t pull this fucking shit!” Jason snapped as he pushed him away. His goggles had been removed for the examination, and hints of green were starting to become noticeable in his eyes. “What happened was my fault. I got duped and went in alone. Don’t you dare blame yourself for my stupidity.” He must have been able to tell the Pit was started to affect him as he began using a breathing technique to ground himself. When he spoke again, the anger from before had been replaced with what Dick could only describe as wariness. “Don’t go telling anyone else. I don’t need anyone else blaming themselves.”

Dick wanted to say something to reassure his brother, which was hard because this was being recorded on his gear. Apparently, Jay forgot about that in the moment. He wasn’t going to be the one to remind him about it.

Frostbite politely coughed, reminding them of his presence. That started the line of questioning of what led to Jason being thrown in the Pit. And true to fashion, Jason only provided the bare minimum.

But, when it came time to discuss the Pit, Jason faltered and glanced at him. Interesting. That seemed to be the one thing he couldn’t seem to bring himself to talk about. Was it possible that was more traumatic for him than dying? Dick wasn’t sure he’d considered that possibility before. Deciding it was something to shelf for later, he gave Frostbite a quick explanation of the Pit.

Horror openly flashed across Frostbite’s face when he learned that was what brought Jason back to life. “I’ve heard of such places,” he eventually stated before explaining they were areas where the Ghost Zone leaked into their world. According to him, they could be easily corrupted, which matched up with some of their own reports.

After he checked the scans his people ran on Jason, Frostbite provided them information they’d been wondering for years. Apparently, Jason’s body had bonded with the ectoplasm in the Pit, but because of the corruption it had affected his mind, causing what the ghost called an ‘obsessive madness.’ And, that made a lot of sense.

Jason’s ideas of justice were never really the issue. His belief that some criminals were irredeemable could be found in other folks around the country. If you asked Dick, it was Jason’s obsessive need to prove Bruce’s teachings wrong in the wake of his reemergence is what tipped his actions into madness. How many elaborate plans had he created as a result? Combine that with how the Pit seemed to magnify negative emotions, and it just became a recipe for disaster.

Jason seemed to agree with Frostbite’s statement. And if Dick wasn’t imaging it, some of the tension in his brother’s shoulders had lessened.

Then came the explanations as to what was currently happening. Frostbite believed that due to the high levels of ambient ectoplasm in Amity Park, it was causing the temporarily bouts of ghostly abilities while having the added effect of removing some of the corrupted ectoplasm from his system. That, Dick decided, was ultimately a good thing as it meant the negative effects of the Pit would lessen.

The biggest question though was whether or not those abilities would be permanent. The answer ended up being that it was possible if Jay developed something Frosbite called a core which could give him the same status Danny had, and unfortunately, Frostbite didn’t have a good answer on how that could possibly happen. Apparently, halfas like Danny were so rare that they just didn’t have the needed knowledge.

If ghost’s answer unsettled Dick, it had to have bothered Jason judging by how he responded. For a moment, he could tell Jay was considering what having powers would be like and just what he’d be able to do with him. There was a way his hands sometimes twitched when he was thinking about what he could do to the Joker, but whatever thoughts he had, he seemed to pull out of as he sighed and ran his hands through his hair.

He gently touched his brother’s shoulder. “Hood?”

“I’m good.” Surprisingly, Jason didn’t brush away his hand as he stood and pulled on his borrowed coat. Glancing at Frostbite, he gave a slight nod. “Thanks for all your help, but I don’t think you want someone like me joining those ranks. Let’s head back.”

Although he wasn’t going to openly admit it, namely because Jason didn’t tend to respond well to compliments, Dick was proud of his brother’s response. It further proved he was trying to better himself.

But as they boarded the Specter Speeder, Danny seemed unusually reserved. Knowing that he and Jason seemed to be bonding, he gestured for his brother to say something. Jay titled his head in puzzlement as he trying to step into a brother-like role which brought a grin to his face. Danny’s presence was proving to be a positive factor in Jay’s life.

“Are you mad that I don’t want to share your situation?” Jay eventually questioned. When Danny didn’t answer him, he sighed and leaned against the wall. “Danny, I’m not a good person. Giving me that type of power would only end badly, for everyone. You don’t need someone like me ruining your reputation by proxy.”

Oh, that made sense. Danny was a weird combination of being a ghost and human. That had to be hard on him. Maybe they should introduce him to Superboy? While it wasn’t exactly the same, he was also half human and could understand Danny to some extent.

Though, it seemed to be Jason’s connection to death that seemed to be the cornerstone to their growing friendship. While it was true many heroes had died and come back, their experiences seemed to be similar enough that they understood each other in a way that made Dick a little jealous. Jason was also around Danny’s age when he died.

Deciding not to dwell on it too much longer, he turned his attention back to Jason’s statement. “You should give yourself more credit.” The fact that he was openly trying to avoid getting permanent superpowers spoke a lot to Jason’s current self-control.

But that apparently wasn’t the right thing to say as he could sense Jason raise an eyebrow at him. “Did you hit your head or something?” His voice was incredulous. “You and Arsenal are the ones who like to remind me about the eight heads I had in a duffle bag when I began strong arming Black Mask. I also tried, repeatedly, to main you and the others. You kicked me off a train because of that.”

“I tried to help you,” that was true. For a moment, he thought he was going to lose Jason again as he fell into the river below the tracks, “and I said I was sorry!”

Jason snorted as his form seemed to flicker for a moment. Was that a momentary slip into invisibility? “Why? I was trying to kill you.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Danny finally spoke as his bright green eyes darted between them before pointing at Dick. “You kicked your brother off a train, and you,” he turned towards Jason, “had heads in a duffel bag? What the hell?”

Jay shrugged. “I needed to get the attention of some crime lords, and it made sense at the time.”

“How does putting heads in a duffel bag ever make sense?”

“Go on, Hood. I’m sure Danny would love to hear some of your adventures. I know I would.” He had to stifle a laugh as Jason flipped him off before begrudgingly launching into the beginnings of his original plans for Black Mask. In the past, he would never have been able to get that information out of him, but it seemed like Danny’s presence made him open up more. Yeah, it was a good thing that he and Danny met.

#Danny Phantom #DP x dp #Danny phantom crossover #DP crossover #Danny Fenton #To Join the Whispers #THIS CHAPTER IS FINALLY DONE

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aalghul · 2 years

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Why Do People Think Jason Todd is the "Dumb" Robin?

I just saw your post defending Jason's intelligence. THANK YOU for that! But I wanted to know why people think of him as the dumb Robin?

In the comics, has anyone OBJECTIVELY described Jason Todd as a moron? Was low intelligence ever listed as one of his weaknesses? Was he ever portrayed as a class clown or something?

Maybe it's because fans wanted to typecast someone as the "dumb jock" and Jason's physique fit the stereotype?

I'm just trying to understand how this belief started out. Is there any basis for it? Even in his more controversial portrayals?

Jason was never described as anything below extremely intelligent when he was Robin. This applies to both pre and post-crisis, but I know people like to whine about how Jason stans confuse pre-crisis Jason’s personality with post-crisis. (Generally people who don’t read comics or don’t understand how crisis worked. Jason’s core character traits stayed largely the same. Even if that was not true, crisis did not erase all of Jason’s time as Robin from prior; it was gently added to his post-crisis run as Robin.)

Jason was described as brash and reckless and angry only after Tim became Robin, so that Bruce (& DC) could be absolved of blame over his death + to make Tim seem like a better Robin in comparison. They were probably worried people weren’t actually willing to just accept a new Robin like Tim, mainly because he wasn’t as skilled as Dick or Jason, so DC overcompensated. Two birds with one stone, I guess. So, not very objective at all, considering it was all done to paint a picture of Jason that very blatantly opposed what was actually true.

UTRH, the defining story for who Jason is post resurrection, very clearly made Jason outsmart Bruce on every level. Bruce never ‘caught’ Jason, it was a planned reveal and confrontation and everything. Following UTRH, Jason was viewed as a dangerous threat in every appearance. N52 Outlaws sucked, but even that didn’t generally ignore Jason’s intelligence. I think it’s generally agreed upon that Battle for the Cowl is the worst portrayal of Jason…ever. But even then, it doesn’t treat Jason like some second rate villain. If Morrison was going to make him a villain, he should’ve showed off his skills a little more, but that isn’t to say that Jason wasn’t a major threat. Basically the only person in BftC that was on Jason’s level was Dick, and it wasn’t like Dick didn’t take him seriously. And that continued on after BftC, and right up until the reboot. What’s important to note is that Jason wasn’t even actually ‘caught’ as Dick’s villain either, he let himself be taken to Arkham. He lost because of his emotions, same as in UTRH, not because he couldn’t mentally keep up with Dick or Bruce (who are well established as some of the smartest people in the DC universe).

It is N52 & Rebirth that decided to cement the Red Hood as some trigger happy idiot instead of the highly trained threat ther came up with a plan to fuck with both Batman and the Green Arrow (and Speedy) in like an evening. And succeeded. Just because he felt like it. Coincidentally, Jason being dumbed down often went hand-in-hand with Jason & Tim suddenly being buddy-buddy. But it wasn’t just that. Most recently, we have Urban Legends’ Cheer story showing Jason being what fanon has wanted for years: an idiot that doesn’t know when not to think with his guns. But never has Jason been called an idiot without the intent to kick his actual intelligence under the table. It’s always characters with some sort of bias, in some way.

We have, however, had a monitor (different scale of ‘feelings’ than humans; literally was not possible for this mf to be biased) say this in response to Jason figuring out what was going on with Donna, Duela and himself (this was some messy universal error stuff, by the way. He went off of like a few words from one interaction and half a connection. And he was right):

Countdown to Final Crisis #46

As for why fans characterize Jason that way, it’s half just being lazy and assuming he must be an idiot cuz they think he looks the part of the “dumb jock”. People always reduce characters to stupid things (like Stephanie’s personality, according to fanon, is waffles & sass & also being an idiot). That’s not out of the ordinary, but the point about Steph also being labelled as an idiot in fanon brings me to the worst reason that Jason is mischaracterized on such a large level over something that should never have been contestable: classism. Plain and simple. Not to pick on Tim, but Tim was born a millionaire and has always been rich (yes, including when his dad lost his money. They were still living extremely comfortably, so it’s unfair to include him not being a millionaire anymore with Jason, Steph, Duke and Dick). It’s so easy for people to look at characters that are born into wealth and go to private schools, and just decide that they have to be the “smart one”. It doesn’t matter if that wasn’t even true originally. It doesn’t matter that the “idiot” Robins weren’t anything but geniuses until they had to be dumbed down for the benefit of an originally unrelated character, because they were from the streets. They have to be stupid, have poor vocabulary, never be able to keep up with other characters, etc. It’s really obvious when it’s Jason and Steph both receiving this treatment, especially considering that there’s more canon proof against these portrayals.

So, that’s that. There’s no real basis for it with either Jason or Steph. People are just stupid or stupid and classist.

#mara answers #more like rambles cuz im sleep deprived and so sorry if this doesnt make any sense #jason todd #me: im not gonna make this jason ask about steph this time #me: *makes it about steph*#i cant help it okay theyre both thrown around in basically the same way

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river-bottom-nightmare · 3 years

Text

you know what i’m curious about? jason reacting to dick after red hood.

and by “after red hood,” i mean after he’s become a more of an anti-hero, teaming up with the bats when it fits his convenience, looking out for the underprivileged and lower class of gotham specifically, not turning to killing as his first thought but not shying away from it if required either.

and that’s roughly how the bats are pulling him back into their little universe: it’s not their first priority anymore now that jason’s established himself as someone who uses lethal violence but has still managed to gain the trust of gotham’s people, but they aren’t shying away from how they clearly want him back either. so jason isn’t plugged into the bat’s central mainframe, but oracle passes on knowledge whenever it’s deemed important. and tim made jason a couple of fake ids as an olive branch, he returned it with the keys to a safehouse he never uses but tim may find useful. steph doesn’t seem too terrified of him, cass doesn’t seem to hesitate talking to him. and bruce is awkward and fumbling and manages to completely screw up almost every interaction the two of them have, but goddamnit he’s trying, jason can see that bruce is really, really trying. so he backs off bruce’s neck, knowing that he won’t ever be accepted into the family again, knowing that bruce has made it clear he won’t ever see jason as his son again, but maybe he can establish himself as an ally. someone they don’t trust with their hearts, but they trust with their lives.

(and jason’s okay with that. he really is.)

the one person that doesn’t sit right with jason is dick.

because the dick that jason remembered from his scattered, ash-blown mind was nothing like the dick he saw parading around the manor.

for one. he was in the manor. jason’s formative years as robin were filled with the most agonizing screams he could ever think of. his father’s drunken yells, the gang boys that busted up far too near jason’s dilapidated little home, the yowls and howls of a thousand voices in gotham city screaming in pain, all of that had nothing on what jason heard. because sure, he’d heard from the people bruce and dick took him to meet that dick was so kindhearted, so good, so passionate. and,,,,passionate certainly seemed to be a word for it. there was nothing more terrifying, thirteen-year-old jason decided, then the harrowing, angry screams of a sober man screaming at someone he loved. because bruce and dick loved each other. loved each other so much that love turned to hate, rolled around until it became black and blue like an ugly bruise, except dick decided to take that black and blue and smear it across his chest so the whole world could see his pain.

now? now, dick smiled at bruce like a mischievous little boy, corrected his form during spars, pointed out things he missed in the field. and bruce,,,,,acquiesced. he rolled his eyes longsufferingly at dick’s antics when previously, a hint of that humor would have bruce sneering at dick’s childishness that he should have outgrown. bruce corrected his posture on the mat, then struck again calmly. bruce nodded his head at the correction, thanking dick for his insight with a glance and a nod, then carried on with the investigation. that easy trust the two of them fell back on, previously only seen during a combat situation when jason was robin where action was instinctive, was now present in almost every interaction the two of them had. seemingly overnight, bruce had learned to respect dick as an adult, and dick had grown around bruce’s paranoia and obsessiveness instead of rushing straight into it.

for another thing. he wasn’t joking when he called dick the “golden child.” he’d joked when he was a kid, calling him every iteration of the nickname his team had given him, because in his mind it was ridiculous. over time, dick had warmed to him, though it had taken a while for the man to stop seeing robin every time he looked at jason and started seeing jason. the death and the resurrection and the impromptu swimming lesson in the world’s most dangerous indoor pool had mixed up jason’s memories, but he was slowly getting back flashes of a laugh, a hand on his shoulder. dick teaching him how to train surf, dick taking him out for ethiopian and scoffing at how americanized it was, dick stitching up a nasty gash on his calf. but those incidents were rare, few and far between, and dick knew it. the two of them knew dick wasn’t as perfect as the world made him out to be, and dick shot jason a rueful smile every time he called him “goldie,” because jason seemed to be one of the very few people in the world that got to see how imperfect dick really was.

when jason was younger, he used to think that made him special.

now, jason couldn’t decide if dick had stopped thinking of him as one of the select few that actually saw dick grayson and not a picture-perfect mask he presented, or if dick had taken a dive in his own personal lazarus pit, only this time instead of anger issues and trauma, he got a fat ass and brilliant big brother skills. the guy managed to connect to cass on a level no one else could, the two of them using their bodies as a language few others could read. he coaxed laughs out of steph even though the two of them didn’t see each other that often. but the biggest change? timothy goddamn drake. his replacement, only you can’t replace a position that never existed in the first place, can you? to dick, jason was only ever a kid he babysat sometimes, someone whose hair he ruffled on occasion and bought hot chocolate for, but nothing more. dick tugged tim into hugs so naturally, jason almost believed they’d been doing it all their lives. dick’s teachings were evident in every fluid line of the kids arms twirling a staff, dick’s influence in his not-as-beautiful-and-smooth yet practiced acrobatics, dick’s mark on the kid showing up even in his ice cream order. tim was dick’s brother, someone that looked up to him with stars in his eyes, someone that dick actively strived to be perfect for.

the stars in jason’s eyes had burnt up into a supernova of tears the first time he’d met dick, that tiny flame of hope snuffing out immediately as he curled under dick’s harsh gaze and spiteful words.

the thing is, people don’t just change like that. jason liked to convince himself that he’d become someone new, someone different once he came back to gotham, but he knew deep down he was that same scrappy, street-smart kid. jury was still out on whether that little kid had the same inky darkness drenching his soul that jason was covered with now, or if robin’s wholehearted goodness still shone through in the cracks of red hood’s armour.

dick sure as hell hadn’t been the perfect big brother back then that he was now. he wasn’t the family mediator, translating bruce’s gregorian knot of emotions to something the others would understand. he wasn’t the calm, cool, collected crimefighter with a powerful name stretching out in front of him and the biggest legacy ever created behind him.

dick was human. he screamed and raged cried and hated and made mistakes and broke like a dying star. this glossy, picture-perfect mask he seemed to have drilled to his face wouldn’t stay on forever. and jason wanted to be there when it cracked.

who even knows what the fuck this was. certainly not me. i was just having some robin!jason feels.

tag list: @woahjaybird @birdy-bat-writes @anothertimdrakestan @screennamealreadyused @subtleappreciation @pricetagofficial @catxsnow @bikoncon @maplumebleue-blog-blog @sundownridge @iwhumpyou

#scribbles from the swamp #jason todd #red hood #robin #dick grayson #nightwing #batfam #dc #jason todd headcanon #red hood headcanon #robin headcanon #dick grayson headcanon #nightwing headcanon #batfam headcanon #dc headcanon

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stxleslyds · 3 years

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Also, the writers' failure to understand, every crime Jason committed had a motive. Attack other criminals? Holy warrior destined to purify the world of evil. Attack Bruce? Joker's still alive. (Oh, Jason, it's much worse than that.) Attack Tim? A parody of what he once was. He wasn't just a "bad boy". He was dangerously insane.

Hi, Anon! Yup, there seems to be a lot of things that writers have gotten confused about Jason Todd/Red Hood and the biggest one is his motivations to kill certain criminals.

Let’s be honest, Judd Winick set a golden path for the upcoming Red Hood writers. But each and every writer that used Red Hood in their stories completely missed the point of Jason’s character. All of them. It’s so incredibly wild to me that every other writer read UtRH and came up with whichever version of Jason they came up with.

Let’s list the writers that completely missed the point.

Geoff Johns in Teen Titans vol.3 #29.

Geoff Johns was one of the first to completely mischaracterize Jason, why on earth would Jason go to the Titans Tower to beat up Tim? This is not me saying that Jason would never do that because Jason thinks of Tim as his brother or a friend or the person that he can trust the most from the Bat-Clan (can you believe Lobdell tried to sell us that one?), this is me saying that Jason wouldn’t have done that because he couldn’t have given less of a fuck about Tim’s existence.

When Jason found out that Bruce had another Robin he wasn’t bothered by his “replacement” he was mad at Bruce for having another child playing hero after he lost his life as a fifteen-year-old. Jason didn’t even think of Tim as his replacement as fandom likes to make us believe, Jason called Tim “pretender”. And that was that, but to go from minimal recognition to go out of his way to beat him up at Titans Tower is a massive mischaracterization.

Paul Dini in Countdown (to Final Crisis).

Paul Dini in Countdown did absolutely nothing with Jason, I am sorry but that’s all he did. Him writing Jason was like watching a dog trying to catch their own tail. He started with a pretty basic take on UtRH Jason, then he added a bit of Jason being an annoying man with Donna, then we had the jealousy arc because apparently, Jason had the hots for Donna but she didn��t want anything to do with him and he was all angsty when she paid attention to Kyle instead of him, and then, later on, he had that whole Red Robin bullshit (I am sorry about this, but I absolutely hated that, it was so dumb, I am so glad it didn’t last long because it was just too bad), and after all that mix of just not interesting stuff he went right back to the Jason that he had at the very start. It was a waste of time, but I guess that he had to be there because he was an anomaly and all that. I just think that was DC’s first try at making Jason Todd/Red Hood something more than just a street-level vigilante and they failed miserably.

Tony S. Daniel in Batman: Battle for the Cowl.

Even though the first two did make mistakes with Jason’s characterizations, this man was the first to just throw UtRH out of the window and make up his very own version of Jason Todd. And his version was horrendous, that Jason had no problem with attempting to kill children and innocent people, he also really wanted to be Batman because Gotham needed a Batman and he wanted to be the person to wear the Cowl and he was looking for a Robin for himself.

I know, the whole concept is the perfect opposite of what Jason Todd and Red Hood were in UtRH. Every aspect of BftC Jason is based on nothing.

Jason wanting to be Batman because Gotham needed Batman is just the beginning of what’s wrong in this book. Jason became the Red Hood (in part) because he believed that Batman and his ways weren’t what Gotham needed so he made a better version of Batman with Red Hood (according to him) because Red Hood did what Batman refused to do. Another thing that is just wrong is Jason wanting, Damian, Tim or Dick to be his Robin, there is just so much wrong with this, first of all, Jason wanted Batman to stop having Robin because child soldiers ran the risk of dying at a very young age and that’s exactly how he saw the whole thing because that was what had happened to him. Second, if Jason was mad at Bruce for getting another Robin why would he now want one of his own to team up with his Batman? Damian was a child, Tim was someone that apparently Jason hated (because Jason beating Tim was mentioned in this event), and then Jason actually asked Dick Grayson, Nightwing, to be his Robin? Listen, there is no way that was Jason, nothing about him makes sense, even taking into account that Jason had beaten Tim already in this event Jason actually tried to kill both Tim and Damian (it might have been just one of them but yeah, it still doesn’t make sense).

I just don’t think that Tony S. Daniel knew who Jason Todd was, maybe he got confused but the thing is, his “villainous” and deranged version of Jason Todd allowed a villainous and deranged version of Red Hood to happen with the next writer that I will be talking about.

Grant Morrison in Batman and Robin vol.1 #3-6.

This was the birth of the villainous, deranged and bloodthirsty Red Hood. There is absolutely no trace of UtRH Jason here, not even if we are looking at the opposite of things like we could do with Daniel’s Jason. Grant Morrison wanted Dick and Damian to have a villain to match their Batman and Robin and they decided to give us a red-haired-pill-headed-red hood. Everything from Morrison’s characterization of Jason is crazy, from the red hair (hello pre-crisis) to the awful Joker’s Red Hood looking suit, everything was just weird.

I still don’t believe that was Jason, to be honest, I would rather think that version of Jason was actually a rouge Skrull that came all the way from the Marvel Universe and lost his way in Gotham City. Maybe when he made the jump between universes, he got too much information and got confused and took the form of the wonkiest Jason Todd he could come up with.

This Jason was absolutely deranged, he knew exactly what he was doing and he didn’t care if innocents died. This Jason was the one that got locked up in Arkham. This is the Jason that Dick put in Arkham for Jason and everybody else’s safety.

Dick putting that Jason in Arkham wasn’t a bad thing or something that anyone can use to shit on Dick Grayson (not on this house). This Arkham was reformed and that Jason knew that if he stayed in that new Arkham he would stay away from trouble, but here is the thing, that Jason loved trouble, so he took all the tests to prove he wasn’t insane and asked to be transferred to Blackgate (where all the Red Hood’s enemies were). That Jason didn’t ask to be sent to Blackgate because the Joker was a cell away from his in Arkham, he did it so he could go on a killing spree in Blackgate (which he did when he got there).

Skrull Jason was just bloodthirsty and nothing like UtRH Jason, he had no motive other than just killing for fun or whatever. He didn’t want to protect Gotham and he couldn’t have cared less about the drug trade in Gotham. In Batman and Robin vol.1. Jason Todd was unrecognizable. And luckily, we never saw him again.

Scott Lobdell in Everything that he ever wrote about Red Hood.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Lobdell was the king of overpowering Jason, he was the one that drove Red Hood farther and farther away from his street-level vigilante status. He continuously added more to him, he was a big deal because he was meant to take down Ra’s al Ghul, he was a big deal because he was the only human to train in the All-Castle and learned to summon the All-Blades.

This Red Hood’s morals and ideals were kind of gone, there just wasn’t any kind of interest in Jason to get rid of drugs or try to control its trade in Gotham, he just had no interest in street-level threats, everything was extraordinary in both New 52 and Rebirth. If he wasn’t in space he was in some mystical land. His friends and allies became even more and more powerful, his level of power was completely off compared to the others. His personality was ever-changing and quite honestly you could barely see the Jason that he once was.

This Jason also was very inconsistent in the way that he felt towards people (obviously because Lobdell is a shitty writer), he wanted to follow Batman’s rules and was shown as someone that still had fond memories of his life with Bruce before he died but was also willing to let those memories go, to move on? Maybe? I don’t know. But he changed his mind about Bruce and following his rules or not for a very long time. Jason was also a little bitch about Dick, and he was a little bitch because he (Lobdell) never gave the reader or anyone a concrete reason as to why he hated him so much and then in Rebirth he decided that Dick wasn’t that bad. Also, Jason went from “Willis Todd, abusive husband and father that deserved to die” to “Willis Todd abusive husband and father but he sent me letters when he was in prison and Penguin had him killed so now, I really want to avenge him”. Yeah, I don’t really know why that happened and like most of Lobdell’s arcs and stuff it was never really completed or well thought out.

Lobdell’s Jason characterization was a mess for ten years and that’s the prime reason why Jason is a character with no solid background, story or future.

James Tynion IV in Red Hood and the Outlaws.

Tynion’s Jason Todd was a hero, he was like a mini Tom King Batman. Everything he did was right and there was just no way that you could bamboozle him. This Jason was able to hold to Blades that drained his soul as well as hosting the Untitled in his body (that were able to drain his soul too) and on top of all that he completed his journey of the Chosen One by making those ancient martial arts moves that he learned before he was Robin even though Talia hadn’t been able to master it yet.

Scott Snyder, Tim Seeley in Batman Eternal and Batman and Robin Eternal.

A mess, this was pure New 52 levels of bullshit and they all just wanted to push the “Batfamily” and while Dick was gone, they were trying to make Jason fill the void that Dick left in Batman events. It didn’t work at all and all they did was mess around with Jason’s characterization more.

Geoff Johns in Three Jokers.

I have talked enough about Johns’ takes on Jason Todd and Red Hood, but let me tell you something real quick, if a writer thinks that the best they can do with a character is make them give up their morals/ideals for an unrequited love interest, then they can keep that idea for themselves. Geoff Johns wrote a book that was absolutely not needed and then proceeded to butcher every characterization that he could, Three Jokers was three issues long and he managed to add more trauma to Jason’s torture, push the narrative of Jason being at fault for his own murder and make Jason’s motivations to be the Red Hood weak enough to make him want to give up his work for a woman that he barely knows (and doesn’t like him at all).

Joshua Williamson in Future State: Red Hood and Robin #5.

Now, with Williamson I have issues only when he writes Jason, not because his stories are bad, don’t get me wrong, I would have completely enjoyed FS: Red Hood if it weren’t for the completely unnecessary Rose/Jason side plot he had going on. Jason was clearly working undercover for some people that he hated working with. He had to arrest or kill “masks” (vigilantes, just like he “used” to be) for the Magistrate.

His ideas were pretty solid, Jason did the job but he never killed the masks and actively didn’t trust the Magistrate but he was working there to tear them apart from within, and that’s amazing if Williamson had given us Jason Todd/Red Hood working undercover to dismantle an organization I would have been really happy.

But that’s not all he gave us, even if I just forget about his failed attempt at giving Jason a relationship, I can still see that Williamson is the kind of writer that wants (or is just following DC) to make the “Batfamily” happen no matter how dumb and out of place it looks in comics’ canon. So, I am a little bit weary, any writer that leans too much towards making Jason and Bruce work together and become a family makes me want to scream, but I do understand that is just me, many people want those two to be buddy-buddy, I, personally, would love to see Jason kick Bruce in the balls and tell him to lose his number.

Chip Zdarsky in Urban Legends: Cheer.

Ah, yes, I remember the days in which I thought that this could have been something good. Well, I was utterly wrong and I suffered all the way through this mini. I feel like now I can safely say that Zdarsky only wanted to write a Batman book but DC told him, “Hey you can write Batman but it has to be within a Red Hood story, but don’t worry, you don’t have to know much about the Hood guy, just come up with something and write Batman around that”.

I know that’s what happened because I read that story and all we got from it was horrible characterizations for pre-Robin Jason, Robin Jason, Jason Todd and Red Hood. I don’t know how he did it but yes, he managed to mess it all up.

From Jason not really wanting to be Robin and acting recklessly every step of the way, to secret desires of a perfect family with Bruce and so many other people that he couldn’t care about, Urban Legends: Cheer is the perfect book to avoid at all costs if you believe that the concept of “Batfamily” is the biggest lie, DC is trying to profit off this time around.

Zdarsky also nerfed Jason in ways that I thought DC only wanted to nerf Dick Grayson. But I was able to see that I was wrong. Zdarsky’s run also pushed some of the most disastrous narratives that DC really wants readers to believe like: Robin Jason wasn’t good at his job, he was too reckless and ultimately his death was his own fault. Yay! I want to cry!

I will give Zdarsky two points for at the very least showing that Red Hood wants to protect children and that he has a huge issue with how the drug trade is controlled and abused in Gotham City, it had been a while since we had seen that aspect of Jason’s Red Hood make an appearance.

It’s just too many writers completely missing the point of Red Hood’s character or simply writers agreeing to destroy Jason’s uniqueness in the DC Universe so DC (as the publisher) can further push the abomination that is the “Batfamily” in comics’ canon.

I do agree with you Anon when you say that Jason isn’t just a “bad boy” but I also don’t think that we can call UtRH Jason “dangerously insane”. Personally, I will only use that last description for BftC and Batman and Robin Jason, those two were dangerously insane indeed.

UtRH Jason was very meticulous in who he wanted dead and who got to live. He entered Gotham’s most dangerous world and he had to make a big entrance, he invited the eight most prosperous street dealers to a meeting, showed up with the decapitated heads of each of their right-hand men and an AK-47 and said:

“I am offering you a deal. I will be running the drug trade from now on. You will go about your business as usual. You will kick up forty percent to me. That is a much better deal than the Black Mask will give you. In return, you will have total protection from both the Black Mask and Batman. The catch? You stay away from kids and schoolyards. No dealing to children, got it? If you do, you’re dead.”

This was Red Hood! Red Hood wanted to control the drug trade in Gotham because he knew that Gotham is far too corrupt and filled with drug lords for him to just want to eradicate drugs from Gotham. If he had tried that he would have been a dumbass, but he wasn’t. He didn’t want to start a gang war and get innocent people killed because of it, he wanted to set the rules of his new Empire and he had to start with the street-level drug dealers, from there he grew until he became a major pain in Black Mask’s ass.

We went from Jason wanting to control the drug trade and take over Gotham’s underworld so people like Black mask couldn’t have people work for him (or being dependent on him) when they were still in high school or were in a vulnerable position, to Jason fighting a war for a mystic land because he was their “Chosen One”. DC really wanted to do something grand (yet boring) with Jason instead of sticking to a street-level vigilante that could have become a Drug Lord to control the drug trade of a city that is so filled with crime and corruption that it can’t be saved by anyone.

Batman doesn’t eradicate crime, he “controls” it, puts a blank it over it, lets it nap up until it wakes up once more to make more mess.

Red Hood had other plans, certain criminals didn’t get to nap, or, better said, they would get to nap forever.

So, no. I wouldn’t call that “dangerously insane”, I will call that “vigilante that believes himself judge, jury and executioner” of a city that is drowning in crime and corruption.

Anyway, I hope you have a really nice week Anon and thank you so much for sending me this ask!

#jason todd #red hood #under the red hood #red hood and the outlaws #dc comics #future state red hood #three jokers #bftc #asksss

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Brain topic du jour is reflecting on the frankly weird as fuck pattern in Dick’s life where....he barely ever experiences losses one at a time. Most of the loss he’s experienced in his life is compounded by him losing multiple people and other elements of stability all at the exact same time.

1) When his parents died, in some continuities this is coupled with him losing his extended family of his aunt and cousin as well, with his uncle left comatose and on life support for years before he eventually died as well. Even in continuities without Richard, Karla and John, the loss of Dick’s parents is compounded by the additional loss of his circus family in the sense that he was taken away from them by the state and their constant reassuring presences in his life were no longer comforts he was able to rely on.

2) When Jason died, Dick didn’t just lose his brother, as the tragedy was compounded by Bruce’s reaction. I’ll never be able to gloss over the effects of NTT #55, personally, because I think its too key to Dick’s entire characterization and the specific direction his character took in the years that followed this, to like....disregard that Bruce however unintentionally, while lost in his own grief, added to Dick’s own sense of loss for Jason in probably the worst way possible. As by kicking Dick out and telling him to leave his keys, Dick - having no way to know or guess that they’d ever reconcile, just like he never actually went back to the circus being a regular presence for him - to Dick, this was in essence the equivalent of his childhood tragedy all over again. Losing not just one family member, but his whole family in one sweep, and all the comforts and stability offered by a home he was forced to leave. Even Dick’s contact with Alfred was minimal for awhile, because why would the guy who basically JUST saw history repeat itself and was like, well I know how THIS tends to play out.....why would he think that if Alfred felt forced to actually choose between his loyalties to Bruce and Dick respectively, that Alfred would pick Dick over the man he’d known and raised from childhood himself?

3) Titans Hunt. I know I harp on this one a lot, but you can’t deny that it fits the pattern. Dick didn’t just lose one friend and teammate.....he lost Joey, he lost a good four or five lesser known Titans who nevertheless were people he viewed as directly HIS responsibility to keep safe. With these tragedies compounded by the fact that though comics played out a lot more slowburn and extended stories over years back then, like.....the aftermath of Titans Hunt was still everpresent and directly died into Dick’s reactions and emotions during the Mirage storyline and everything that happened with the failed wedding and his breakup with Kory AND the fact that he was literally forced off the team he’d basically founded, by the government agency that took over the team and appointed Roy as its leader in his stead.

3) Graduation Day. The second time the Titans disbanded it was again not due to a singular loss, because Dick didn’t just lose Donna at this point, but also Lilith died in the exact same story and though Lilith is criminally underused, like, she’s also one of Dick’s oldest friends. She was literally the first Titan to join after the original five. This then led into the Outsiders era, where Dick was shown to still be reeling from the losses of this story for an extended period of time, and in a fun parallel to the Titans Hunt aftermath, Dick was also ousted from his leadership of THIS team by essentially a vote of no confidence by his teammates (and uh, Bruce too, literally).

4) The Blockbuster arc. Where Dick’s emotional state was due to a continued string of multiple losses. He lost his apartment building and almost every one of the neighbors he’d built a community out of, as we’d been shown him actively involving himself in their lives and vice versa for YEARS before this point. Then he lost his circus, his childhood home, burned to the ground and with dozens of deaths - both spectators and actual performers Dick had known and loved as a child. Then he lost his relationship with Barbara, his sense of self-security and autonomy to Tarantula, he lost another teen vigilante who died in his colors, the mantle HE’D created, when Stephanie was believed dead in War Games, and it all culminated in losing the city he’d invested himself in as his CHOSEN home, the place he dedicated himself to protecting, when Chemo blew it up.

Oh just for the record - my nonexistent passport to the magical kingdom of Narnia for a fic that raises the point when bringing up Tim’s losses in the Red Robin era, that like.....ALL of the above happened at literally the EXACT SAME TIME as all Tim’s referenced losses occurred. Obviously Steph meant more to Tim than Dick on a personal level, but I also included her largely as an anchor point to the timeline, to show how that death, and not long after that Jack Drake’s and then Superboy’s.... occurred right smack in the middle of one of the absolute WORST periods of Dick’s life. To be clear, I don’t intend this to suggest that no actually, Dick had it harder than Tim - nah.

No thank you. Hard pass. I hate that sort of thing even in support of my own faves over other characters. No, instead the thing I’d love to see explored more is just in light of the SPECIFIC angle fics take here - that Dick’s actions while Bruce was lost in time showed an obliviousness to everything Tim had lost lately - for literally ANYONE to bring up or introduce into the timeline here an awareness of everything Dick had lost AT THE EXACT SAME TIME PERIOD. To establish that actually, Dick didn’t just ‘not understand what it was like’ - rather, its more accurate to say that nobody in universe around this time ever shows an awareness of Dick’s own losses and says oh wait, that doesn’t track then.

Because obviously, with this stuff put in proper perspective, Dick understands VERY VERY WELL the exact thing we’re accusing him of not understanding by being oblivious to Tim’s losses that he’s not actually oblivious to because he tries to talk to Tim about them all the time, while meanwhile its everyone else who has absolutely mum to say about the fact that Dick’s emotional state is compromised to hell and back at this point, not JUST because of losing Bruce, but also because *gestures wildly* literally ALL OF THE ABOVE in the exact same time frame Tim’s extended losses happened in.

And okay I am going to indulge in slight tiny itty bitty pettiness and point out my ire that so many fics set during this time tend to recite listicles of Tim’s losses, with Steph, Kon and Jack Drake at the very top of said list....while paying no attention whatsoever to the fact that STEPH WAS LITERALLY BACK BY THE TIME THE RED ROBIN SERIES HAPPENED. She’s LITERALLY a person Dick sends to check up on Tim after Tim turns Dick away when he tries himself. How are you gonna stress the impact Steph’s loss has on Tim when you’re not even acknowledging STEPH’S RIGHT HERE IN THE EXACT SPECIFIC CANON STORY YOU’RE CITING??? I just. afhioskhflafhlafhklfahlfa.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but you know who ELSE was also back at the same time? CONNOR. Superboy LITERALLY was already back to life by the time the Red Robin series even began. Like, the issue where a resurrected Kon and Cassie (Wonder Girl) have a heart to heart about the fact that Tim and Cassie ‘connected’ during his absence and Connor stresses that this doesn’t bother him or make him feel negatively towards either of them at all, because hello, he was literally dead at the time, why would he mind that two of the people he loves most in the world sought comfort in each other? Yeah, that issue? Literally came out BEFORE Tim even became Red Robin.

I MEAN. I’m just saying, when people constantly take shots at Dick’s choices during this period because of how much Tim had lost before Bruce already, in order to shift focus away from the fact that Dick lost Bruce every bit as much as Tim did......and you repeatedly emphasize the SAME three names as the focal point of Tim’s losses while paying no acknowledgment whatsoever to everything Dick lost at the exact same time Tim lost these three.....it quickly becomes kiiiiiiinda relevant in my opinion THAT TWO OF THE THREE NAMES CONSTANTLY MENTIONED AS BEING TIM’S LOSSES ARE NO LONGER EVEN LOST BY THE TIME THE SUBJECT COMES UP. Again, I’m just saying! Pettily, mind you! I am aware of the pettiness, I just beg awareness of like *again gesticulates wildly at all of the above* ALL THAT!

LOL.

But I digress.

5) When Bruce was believed dead while he was lost in the timestream. Again, Dick didn’t just lose the father who had been the only parent in his life for almost TWICE as long as his first parents......this was coupled with the loss of numerous other sources of stability in Dick’s life. There’s the matter of his personal sense of identity and self-expression....Dick FOUGHT against becoming Batman, trying to handle Gotham in Bruce’s absence as Nightwing for as long as he could, because he knew being Batman was very much NOT going to be good for him. He put so much of himself into building his identity as Nightwing, establishing himself in that role, that self-image, that yes, I maintain it was an actual LOSS for Dick, to feel like he had no choice but to give that up and everything it meant to him and his own life, in order to essentially live Bruce’s life for him in his absence.

Because it wasn’t just being Batman that Dick was struggling with at this time....he also had to act as the patriarch to the Wayne family, essentially raise Bruce’s ten year old son, step into Bruce’s old role in Wayne Enterprises, all while getting no acknowledgment for any of this, for literally LIVING his father’s life instead of the life Dick had worked so hard to build for HIMSELF....because of course Dick’s actions and struggles couldn’t even be advertised beyond the family and close friends, because the whole point of him doing all this was so that nobody else even realized that Bruce wasn’t really there anymore. Dick didn’t just assume Bruce’s responsibilities. Dick assumed Bruce’s life, so thoroughly that most people didn’t even put together that Bruce was ‘dead,’ between Dick handling Bruce’s actual roles and responsibilities while Hush made public appearances as him.

Like, when you’re living someone else’s life so completely that nobody can tell they’re even gone....how on earth does that leave any time or space for you to have ANY kind of life of your OWN, y’know? Not to mention the fact that like in so many times previously....all this meant that Dick couldn’t even afford to let his grief for his own losses show, because he wasn’t supposed to be grieving any losses in the first place, that was the whole point of the con!

Additionally, couple this with the fact that throughout this time period, Dick didn’t have Tim to lean on at all, because it was never that Dick kicked Tim out or neglected him or didn’t care....he’d actively stressed how much he needed Tim, because the partner Tim was convinced Dick chose ‘over’ him - Dick was the first one to admit back then that he DIDN’T trust Damian yet, couldn’t afford to, because he was all too aware that Damian didn’t give a fuck about him yet and couldn’t be guaranteed to step in to have Dick’s back - because that required mutual trust that Dick literally just hadn’t had time to build yet. And add to THAT the fact that during this time, Jason was actively antagonizing the family and Dick in particular at every turn, trying to bring them all down and basically write over what all of them saw as Bruce’s legacy with Jason’s own version of what he thought that should look like.

Also also, take into account that unlike how often we see fanon depict Dick as just too stubborn or proud to ask for help, there’s the fact that he actually had very few avenues TO ask for help! As already established, he DID ask Tim for help. Not like Jason was an option at this time, and Dick’s friends weren’t actually just sitting waiting in the wings and groaning about the fact that Dick was trying to do all of this solo....nah, they kinda had their own problems, which Dick was all too aware of?

Like the fact that in the wake of Final Crisis, it wasn’t just Bruce that was believed lost. Many other key Leaguers like Martian Manhunter were dead or lost, with others struggling to fill the gaps left in their absence. Cry For Justice happened right after Final Crisis too....that story where Lian was murdered? So it wasn’t like Dick was remotely going to try leaning on Roy when Roy had just lost his freaking DAUGHTER and very much wasn’t handling it well (and not to overshadow Roy’s loss at ALL, but please let’s not act like Dick - who had literally been the person to put a baby Lian in Roy’s arms for the first time and had known that girl for pretty much her entire life - like, it shouldn’t be used to detract from Roy’s loss at all, but it shouldn’t have to, to just acknowledge that Lian’s loss right at this exact time was painful as fuck to Dick, who’d loved his niece like crazy.)

The pattern of compounding, concurrent losses in Dick’s life. I’m just saying. Its there.

And it extends into the New 52 as well, where Forever Evil came right on the heels of Dick losing his circus in THIS continuity to the Joker, just as a way to hurt him in Death of A Family. And with the aftermath of Forever Evil and Dick’s own literal death, being like....the complete loss of Dick’s entire life, even though he was revived quickly. That didn’t mean he got to live HIS life though, since Dick Grayson was believed dead and he was told had to remain so, so its like fuck whatever he actually wanted to do as he went about on the Spyral mission aka something that pinched his own sense of morality and personal agenda at every turn and was kinda the last thing a therapist would recommend for a trauma recovery period, lol. And like, for all the focus that was paid to how Dick’s family were hurt because they believed they’d lost him when he was actually alive, let’s not forget that for all intents and purposes, Dick DID lose his family in the wake of his resurrection because he was flat out told over and over that due to what ‘he’d LET happen to him’ he was an ACTIVE danger to them, and thus wasn’t allowed by Bruce to contact any of them or lean on them to any degree, until Bruce got amnesia and stopped blocking Dick’s pleas to return home by just not being there to pick up the secret phone line at all.

(And omg, the obliviousness that just EMANATES off the hot takes that Dick had a ‘choice’ in all this and he still CHOSE to do what Bruce told him....like. LOLOL, stop being pissy about me bringing up the term abuse apologism when its literal victim blaming to paint the guy who had to be beaten into ‘agreeing’ to the Spyral mission in the immediate wake of the trauma of DYING, all while his father vocally blamed him for his own suffering and the ‘threat’ he now posed to his family, keying directly into the guilt complex Bruce knows damn well is at the core of most of Dick’s motivations.....fucking please. There’s no choice in all that. That’s active emotional, mental and physical abuse aimed at directly manipulating Dick’s actions, delivered by the guy who knows Dick best in the world and whose approval - particularly when Dick is at absolute rock bottom aka Current Location - matters more to Dick than just about anything because his sense of self-worth has more in common with dog shit than actual dog shit does. Or something. Idk. That analogy got away from me. But like. You get it.)

BUT. I. DIE. GRESS. (I guess).

Aaaaaaanyway, so yeah! That repeating pattern throughout Dick’s life of ‘loss? What loss (singular)? My losses only come in groups, lolol, fuuuuuun’ - mmmm. Yeah. So that’s what’s on MY brain right now. Thoughts?

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ectonurites · 3 years

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if u were a dc writer (bc dc themselves dk what they're doing) would you let tim stay as robin rn or move on to a new identity? would u age him up? dc is just making him blah what do tim stans want to do w him

I mean okay I obviously do not speak for all Tim stans (and I know several off the top of my head who def would disagree with my opinions on this- which is ok! we can all have our own opinions and coexist lmao) but

Rather than like making a point of aging him up i'd just kinda confirm that 'oh yeah he's been aging at a normal rate like everyone else we just didn't mention it' because as I've talked about before- you could pretty easily make a case for him being anywhere between 16-20 based on stuff from canon right now without it being an age-up that needs like an in-story justification/acknowledgement ya know? I'd probably put him at around 19 (because while in my heart 21 to restore the original tim & damian 7 year age difference feels right, that might need a bit more specific explanation since it's such a big jump from his last mentioned 16)

And I'd want to spend some time with him in the process of figuring out a new identity. (like. maybe a 6-issue mini or something where he comes up with that new Identity at the end) I think that him trying to stick to Robin right now because he's going through changes in his personal life and Robin is one thing that's a constant for him makes sense, and is something he'd try to hold onto for a while. But I want him to reach a point of personal discovery where he can try branching out again and making something of his own (I've talked about how Drake was in theory a great core idea but just the execution was terrible) as he transitions into being an adult.

I've very frequently been asked what I think a good new hero title for him would be since I talk a lot about wanting him to move on from Robin, and I usually come up blank! Because god that's an overwhelming choice. And I also think that right now Tim's in a similar headspace to that where the thought of trying to come up with something new while also dealing with "hey holy shit I just realized I'm attracted to men and that changes some things for me” is just a lot to deal with so it gets put on the backburner (especially after his last attempt was so poorly received not only irl but in-universe too).

And so exploring some of that inner conflict he's got going on now (now that he's started solving the sexuality crisis aspect of it) as he maybe has to go up against someone from his past* that could make him re-examine himself... and like by the end he could come to some new conclusions about who he is as a hero/what being a hero means to him outside of just 'Being Robin' and as a result decide to redefine himself as a new hero

*(idk who exactly... my heart says Lonnie because he was one of the earliest ppl Tim went up against back before he even officially became Robin but also Lonnie since the reboot has NOT felt the same... maybe with Infinite Frontier tho he could be more like his old self… could even be a cool thing where at first they’re fighting but slowly Tim & Lonnie both remember more about their partnership in Red Robin and end up working together against someone else entirely)

I also do think it'd like... be nice for a new hero identity for him to be original. Main continuity Tim has taken on mantles that came with a lot of inherent baggage (Robin obviously was in the wake of Jason's death so there's All That To Unpack and Red Robin originally because of being in such a rough spot & using Jason's identity as a form of punishment as speculated by Kon and/or more simply so he could cross lines Robin couldn't) so I think him getting to establish who he is going to be as a young adult by creating something new that doesn't have preconceived notions attached would be really nice.

For ideas I see a lot of people list various bird names and/or names associated with the color red (Cardinal is a pretty popular one, and I had some people saying Scarlet in my inbox a few weeks ago) but idk I feel like even that kinda stuff is so close a tie to Robin & Red Robin, that it feels more like a substitution for his old names rather than a reinvention of his hero identity, if that makes sense? Unless there was a good in-universe justification with something like that it's just not what I gravitate towards. (like how yes Dick went from Robin -> Nightwing so still with bird motifs, but in-universe Dick picked Nightwing because of Superman not because 'oooh gotta stick with a bird motif' even if out-of-universe that may have been a factor)

I think something rooted in old detective novels could be interesting, though I’m not well-versed enough in those to be able to come up with something without doing more research than I have time to right now (but like man if I was actually given an opprotunity to write a Tim story like this you bet I would sgfdhg), but like back from Tim’s early stuff he was involved in two different real life Sherlock Holmes fan clubs (The Sherlock Homes Society [Detective Comics #618] and the Baker Street Irregulars [Robin (1991) #2]) so him drawing inspiration from something he enjoyed in childhood as he reinvents himself now as an adult could be a cool full-circle thing. (Before anyone makes any sort of BBC Sherlock joke or makes me look at that guy’s face I would like to point out the panels abt these societies are from 1990-1991) And in my head when he moves on from Robin he’d definitely be leaning most into detective work over the other aspects of being a hero (like. he’d still be a ‘superhero’- but just that’s his main theme & focus) so it’d be thematically relevant.

IDK I have lots of ideas on this but I just haven't really had the time to put the research into it that I'd want to, so they remain half thought-out.

tl;dr: I'd explore him realizing it's time for a new identity which would then lead into him moving past Robin, and i'd also confirm him as being a little bit older.

#i jst think tim is neat <3 #sam talks about tim too much

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sohotthateveryonedied · 3 years

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Hiii!! I really love your tumblr posts and I'm pretty new to the Batfam (meaning I have only read fics and textposts about them, no comics) and I wanted to ask about the year Bruce/Batman gets "lost in time". I know general things of what the kids have been doing–Dick became batman and fired Tim from robin, giving it to Damian, everyone thinking Tim was crazy for believing Bruce was alive, (don't really know what Jason was up to though, was he still murderous towards Tim? Does the pit still affect him? Also I have no idea about Cass and Duke, were they introduced at this point??) Anyways, my real question was why was Bruce lost in time, what villain put him there? And how did he get out? And how long was he "dead"? Was Bruce in another reality or like just asleep the whole time? Oh! And how soon did this happen after Damian got introduced to the family–a couple months?

I'm so sorry this is so long, but I hope you answer and thank you!!

(I’m going to try and cover all my bases here by going into how exactly Bruce “died,” what went down during the Battle For the Cowl, what the Batkids did while Bruce was gone, and how Bruce came back. Hopefully it all makes sense?? We’ll see how it goes lmao.)

Part 1 - What Happened to Bruce:

So there was this event called Final Crisis (which I won’t go completely into since it would make this post a million times longer than it already is), but the bottom line is that Darkseid wants to overthrow reality and release his Anti-Life Equation, which would overthrow the whole planet and turn everyone into slaves. (If you’re interested in knowing more about the storyline, here’s a Reddit thread that explains it WAY better than I could.)

What I CAN tell you is that during his final confrontation with Darkseid, Bruce is hit by an Omega Beam and turned into a burnt chicken nugget killed. Poor guy.

Final Crisis #6

Clark and Diana bring the body back to the Batcave and break the news to the Batfamily. Batman #687 covers a good portion of the aftermath such as Bruce’s funeral, the Batfamily grieving, and Dick coming to terms with his new responsibility of becoming Batman.

Batman #687

Part 2 - Battle For the Cowl:

Musical chairs time, fellas! After word gets out that Batman is gone, Gotham erupts into chaos. Dick doesn’t want to take over the mantle, Tim needs Dick to take over the mantle, and Jason says “fuck it” and takes over the mantle himself because somebody around here has to. He becomes this murderous psychopathic Batman and starts taking out criminals with deadly force because someone’s gotta do the job, so it might as well be him.

Batman: Battle For the Cowl #1

(Okay honestly, this series had some pretty bad characterization overall, which sucks since it’s such an important storyline. Jason is portrayed as this violent psychopath, which...okay, he was kind of insane after the Pit and all, but not to this degree. Personally, I choose to owe the bad characterization to Bruce’s death because as much as Jason resents Bruce for all he’s done, he does still love him and losing him would be devastating, which would exacerbate his already fragile mental health. As for Damian, this happens roughly three years after his first appearance, so we can assume it’s been a few months since he first joined the family. He’s still relatively new at this point, so nobody knows how to write him yet. He ends up being depicted as if his main two personality traits are Bratty and Assassin-Child and that’s it. It’s all just a mess.)

Anyway, Tim tells Dick to become Batman and stop Jason’s reign of terror. Dick says no, so Tim follows Jason’s lead by saying “fuck it” and putting on the cowl himself. He goes to confront Jason, which ends in Jason beating the crap out of him (again) and leaving him for dead after Tim declines his offer to become Jason’s Robin. Dick goes to save Tim and ends up fighting Jason.

Battle For the Cowl #3

Dick wins, Jason disappears, Tim is fine, and Dick finally gets his head out of his ass and becomes Batman.

Part 3 - What Happens to Each Batkid While Bruce is “Dead”?:

Dick:

As I said, Dick becomes the new Batman a month after Bruce’s death. He’s got big shoes to fill, and it takes some time for him to get used to his new role. He and Damian end up flipping around the classic Batman and Robin dynamic, with Batman now as the fun counterpart to Robin’s edginess. Dick, Damian, and Alfred relocate to the penthouse above the Wayne Foundation building, operating out of a secret Bat-Bunker in the basement.

Batman #688

Jason:

After Battle For the Cowl, Jason is still batshit insane and determined to make Dick’s already stressful life even harder by becoming a supervillain with an ugly costume and an even uglier hairstyle. (I know it’s just because the artist sucked, but still. Jason is horrifying to look at during this time.) He mostly just gets on Dick’s nerves by running around Gotham with his new sidekick Scarlet and killing criminals as Batman and Robin wannabes. Eventually, Dick has Jason committed to Arkham Asylum and he hangs out there until Bruce returns.

Batman and Robin (2009) #5

Tim:

Tim...doesn’t do great after Bruce’s death, mentally. Dick makes Damian Robin, his reasoning being that Robin is more of a sidekick and he sees Tim as his equal. By making Damian Robin, Dick hopes that it will give him the stability he needs to keep him from straying back toward the “bad” side. (It’s the right move ultimately, although his execution was pretty messed up since he didn’t discuss it with Tim beforehand, but he’s allowed to make mistakes. Dick’s father just died and now he’s in charge of picking up the pieces of their broken family. It’s a lot to handle.)

Long story short, Tim has a breakdown, realizes that Bruce is alive, dons the Red Robin identity, and cuts ties with his family to travel the world in search of proof. It’s a rough time.

Red Robin #1

Damian:

Our little guy becomes Robin! So proud of him! As I explained earlier, Dick makes Damian his Robin with the assumption that it will keep him out of trouble, and he’s right on that account. He mentors Damian, teaching him how to channel his violent instincts into something productive, and it works! Slowly but surely, Damian makes the transition from bratty assassin to actual hero!

Batman and Robin (2009) #22

Cass:

Duke sadly was not introduced at this point in time, so he missed out on all the pandemonium. Cass, however, has been Batgirl for years by now, but she got kind of pushed aside by the writers after Bruce’s death. Bruce disappears shortly after adopting Cass, but once he was “dead,” the writers sort of moved Cass around for a while, not quite knowing what to do with her. First she was with the Outsiders. Then they got disbanded and Cass tried forming a new network of heroes to take over for Batman if needed. Then she helped out in said network during Battle for the Cowl, taking care of a newly ravaged Gotham. Then Cass gave the Batgirl mantle to Stephanie Brown after she became disillusioned with the role, thanks to the loss of her father and mentor. Then Cass picked up and moved to Hong Kong to “follow Bruce’s plans” by continuing whatever work he had set up for her there. It was all very vague and confusing, and Cass more or less got swept under the rug during this time. Thanks, writers.

Batgirl (2009) #1

Part 4 - How Bruce Came Back:

When the Blackest Night storyline happens, the Justice League realizes that the corpse buried under Bruce’s grave is apparently not the real one and that he’s actually alive out there somewhere! How wild is that! This is further proven by Dick after he places Bruce’s body in a Lazarus Pit to revive, which has the same result because it’s very clearly Not Bruce and they should have listened to Tim from the start.

Batman and Robin (2009) #9

Anyway, what actually happened is that the Omega Beams that Darkseid shot at Bruce didn’t kill him, but rather blasted him back through time to the prehistoric era with his memories wiped. The Omega Energy inside of Bruce ends up catapulting him through various time periods, which is all part of Darkseid’s plan. With each time-hop, Bruce builds up more Omega Energy in his body which, when he gets back to his original time period, will be unleashed and destroy everything.

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #5

It’s been a little under two years since Final Crisis, though in-universe it’s uncertain exactly how long Bruce has been “dead.” We can assume it’s been a year, give or take. The way he comes back is too scientific and complicated for me to understand, so uhhhh the bottom line is that Tim and a few Leaguers save Bruce at the Vanishing Point and the day is saved! Hooray!

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #6

(If you want to read about how it actually goes down, then I seriously recommend reading Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne. It’s only six issues, so it’s a quick read and it explains the situation far better than I ever could.)

Bruce eventually reunites with his family after spying on them for a period of time as Insider to see what has changed in his absence:

Bruce Wayne: The Road Home

After that, things quickly settle back into their new normal. Dick and Damian stay on as Batman and Robin. Bruce goes back to being Batman as well, with him handling Batman Incorporated business and Dick continuing as Gotham’s defender. Tim keeps the Red Robin outfit, Steph stays on as Batgirl, and Cass becomes Black Bat. Jason stays in Arkham for a while before filing an appeal to be moved to a regular prison. He kills 82 inmates in less than a week and gets transferred back to Arkham, which he promptly escapes from. It’s a ride, I tell ya.

Aaaaand that’s about it! I hope this answered all of your questions!

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serafilms · 3 years

Note

Hi Ash!I'm not sure if you still write for dc but in case you do,i'm here to resend my request!Can you please write headcanons for Jason Todd x gender neutral!Reader where Y/n was adopted by Clark and Lois when they were 10 because Lex Luthor killed their parents in a rampage across the city and that caused them to unlock their pyrokinesis(fire powers)so Clark took them under his wing as his sidekick so that's how they met Jason?They have anger issues like Jason which their adoptive parents took them to anger management classes for as a kid and they worked and go by Clark's last name(Kent) + the hero name 'Sparks' so Jason calls them 'Sparkles' and the main plot is them getting together after Jason comes back to life?

jason todd x pyrokinesis!reader hc's

↳ pairing – jason todd x gn!pyrokinesis!reader

↳ genre – headcanons; bulleted scenarios; fluff; gender neutral reader

↳ warnings – mentions of death

hi frankie! when i moved blogs, i decided to reinvent my masterlist to fit my current interests, and i realised that dc doesn't fall under that category so i put a miscellaneous section of the masterlist for the odd thing i may write. so yeah while i don't write for dc anymore, i still wanted to write this for you as my friend and one of the best supporters i have on tumblr <3333 (i've also put atla and pj under misc as i don't see myself writing for them a lot, and well, you saw the announcement). i hope you like this!

10 years old was a rough age for you

you suppose it all started when lex luthor staged an attack on metropolis

you had been asleep at the time but your parents had woken up in a panic

they had yelled at you to wake up and run

so you did

when it was all over you couldn't find your parents anywhere and your house had essentially collapsed on itself

it wasn't all that hard to figure out what happened and you found yourself falling to your knees and crying

something snapped inside of you and the next thing you knew you were surrounded by a ring of flames

and that was when clark found you

as superman ofc

he saw your powers in action and had a big oh my god moment and decided he couldn't just leave you on the streets

so he took you in

it was tough goings at first

you had a lot of difficulty controlling your powers, and even more difficulty controlling your emotions

you found yourself exploding at the tiniest things

both metaphorically and literally

clark did his best to train you, but hero training and emotional training are two very different things, so you had yet to prove that you could be brought into a field as a sidekick

eventually clark and lois had to bring you to a specialist to work through your anger

your attitude became better

you had less outbursts

and you were more in control of your powers than ever

finally you were allowed to go out into the field

your first mission ever was a situation in gotham city that had gotten out of hand

and it was there that you met batman and robin

you and jason were snarky with each other at first but eventually you called a truce and made peace with each other

and you two became the best of friends

for the next few years you two would do everything together (that you could, living in different cities)

you understand each other well, having similar pasts and even more similar personalities

when he died you were devastated

your emotions were out of check and clark had to pull you from field work and put you behind a desk so you wouldn't burn down metropolis

after a few months you were ready to go back into the field again and for a while you tried to enjoy it

it was nice getting back out there

but it wasn't the same

so you quit and decided to focus on the last few years of high school and then college

clark and lois had become parental figures to you and they wholeheartedly supported your decision

so that's what you did

you moved on with your life

it wasn't easy, but you tried to live out the rest of your adolescence and beginning of your adulthood as best you could

when the time came for you to go away to college you said your goodbyes to them and your old friends and moved away, to a crappy little apartment closer to your school in gotham

gotham may be a freak show, but goddamn their universities are good

yeah ok shh it's for the plot

you didn't have any roommates and it was a somewhat unsafe area, but it was still pretty average and heaven knows you could take care of yourself

it was in this apartment that you and jason met again

clark had told you about a new vigilante with a red helmet and leather jacket who had been causing trouble in gotham

he still kept you in the loop even though you had quit the hero business years ago

sometimes you thought he might just want you back as a sidekick

i mean you were pretty amazing

you didn't really think much of it

new vigilantes, heroes, and villains popped up all the time so it wasn't anything surprising

until of course he showed up in your living room

you were in the kitchen cooking a budget college student dinner (toast. it was just toast.)

"can i get some of that?"

cue heart attack

"WHAT THE FUCK"

you shot a blast of fire towards him, it he dodged and it disintegrated out the window

"whoa, whoa, whoa. it's me"

he took his helmet off

"jason? wtf"

you couldn't believe it

you'd literally talked to bruce

you were sure jason had died

there was no way you were mistaken

"hey sparkles"

"stfu bitch ur dead"

"yea about that lol"

you spent the next 2 hours sitting around your kitchen bench eating toast and drinking tea, trying to catch up with each other and make sense of what happened (jason and then you, respectfully)

it was really nice

you offered jason a place to stay for the night since it was getting late, and he accepted

the two of you lay in the dark of the living room that night, pretending like you were middle schoolers having a slumber party, and not young adults who had just reunited for the first time ever

but the next morning you woke up to the shower running and when jason came out, dressed in his clothes from yesterday but still with wet hair

you couldn't help but

notice him

dying and coming back to life really did something for him

and this became a regular occurrence

every now and then, red hood would pause his duties to come visit you and hang out

he would make sure you're ok in your sketchy little neighbourhood and you would reassure him with a small demonstration of your powers that you were fine

jason knew you could take care of yourself, but it had been years since he'd seen you, and since then you'd retired as a superhero

he couldn't help but be a little worried about you

so this routine continued for a while until one night you were lying side by side on your bed watching this show you had become obsessed with after jason's death (that he obviously missed because he was dead)

and you fell asleep and CUDDLED HIM

while you were dozing off, somewhere in the state between awake and asleep, you felt him kiss your head and whisper "i love you sparkles"

the next morning you were in a daze

you couldn't do anything properly and almost burned the pancakes you were making

"whoa, you ok, sparkles?"

you turned abruptly

"did you mean it?" "huh?"

"last night, when you said you loved me"

"WTF YOU HEARD ME" "YEAH"

awkward silence

"well,,,,, yeah"

"oh,,,, cool,,,, well me too"

"hUH?"

"i love you"

*open mouthed fish jason*

"hurry up and kiss me, jackass"

and you all lived happily ever after :)

#dc #dc comics #dc imagines #jason todd #jason todd imagines #jason todd x reader

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