Tim: Batman Needs A Robin!

“[insert dc comics thing] is not canon anymore—” i’m gonna be so fr i haven’t cared about what’s canon and what’s not ever since they killed alfred in order to further bruce and damian’s character development. bc to acknowledge the different canons is to acknowledge that alfred pennyworth, my ideal man, is dead. therefore, to me, nothing is canon unless i like it. and that’s not even to mention damian’s furry arc.

Bruce: Who is that?

Dick: A kid I met in Bludhaven.

Jason: Oh god, not you too.

Damian, whispering: Are we sure Richard isn't my biological brother?

Tim, also whispering: Yes... Maybe?

Jason, joining the conversation: The adoption gene got transferred through osmosis

Bruce: Where did you get them?

Dick: I was on patrol and they wanted to show me some flips.

Bruce: So they're an acrobat?

Dick: Yeah!

Bruce: Alfred!

Dick: Huh?

Alfred: I shall reinforce all the chandeliers.

Dick: Wait that's not necessary!

Everyone else: ???

Dick: Seriously they're only staying with me a couple days.

Bruce: DAYS?! Alfred order the newest chandeliers.

Alfred: Right away, Master Bruce.

Tips from a Beta Reading Writer

This one's for the scenes with multiple characters, and you're not sure how to keep everyone involved.

Writing group scenes is chaos. Someone’s talking, someone’s interrupting, someone’s zoning out thinking about breadsticks. And if you’re not careful, half your cast fades into the background like NPCs in a video game. I used to struggle with this so much—my characters would just exist in the scene without actually affecting it. But here’s what I've learned and have started implementing:

✨ Give everyone a job in the scene ✨

Not their literal job—like, not everyone needs to be solving a crime or casting spells. I mean: Why are they in this moment? What’s their role in the conversation?

My favourite examples are:

The Driver: Moves the convo forward. They have an agenda, they’re pushing the action.

The Instigator: Pokes the bear. Asks the messy questions. Stirring the pot like a chef on a mission.

The Voice of Reason: "Guys, maybe we don’t commit arson today?"

The Distracted One: Completely in their own world. Tuning out, doodling on a napkin, thinking about their ex.

The Observer: Not saying much, but noticing everything. (Quiet characters still have presence!)

The Wild Card: Who knows what they’ll do? Certainly not them. Probably about to make things worse.

If a character has no function, they’ll disappear. Give them something—even if it’s just a side comment, a reaction, or stealing fries off someone’s plate. Keep them interesting, and your readers will stay interested too.

headcanon that the smaller batkids steal the bigger ones' hoodies and jackets. and by "bigger ones" I mean literally anyone bigger than them.

jason gets the short end of the stick because dick and all his little siblings take his. tim's the only one bold enough to go for the leather jackets (well, and cass, but they're way too wide in the shoulders for her) but it's not uncommon to find dick or stephanie in a dark red or gray hoodie that smells of motor oil and gunpowder.

damian usually takes dick's hoodies, but they're very oversized on him. on the bright side, there are thumbholes in the sleeves of all dick's hoodies, so he can still use his hands. the thumbholes make them a hot commodity in the winter.

there is a tim-steph-cass jacket pipeline. steph steals tim's hoodies and cass takes them from steph. hence tim stealing jason's leather jackets -- steph won't take them, so he gets to hold on to them until jason realizes and takes them back. sometimes cass will also steal duke's hoodies, but she always returns them clean and neatly folded (unlike how it goes with the rest of the family, in which they are returned only under threat of blackmail or with long rounds of negotiation).

this is an extremely long-standing ring of jacket theft. you cannot leave a hoodie unattended in wayne manor. damian doesn't actually own any hoodies, and cass only owns one, because there's so many other people in the house to "borrow" one from. nowhere is safe. steph once broke into dick's apartment to steal his warm hoodie, the one with the fuzz on the inside.

but it goes the other way sometimes. jason leaves things in the pockets of his leather jackets for tim -- film for his camera, hand sanitizer, half-filled punch cards for local coffee shops with "drink water too, fucker" written on the back. cass will tuck little slips of paper in the cuffed sleeves when she leaves hoodies out. the notes don't say anything, but they have little smiley faces and hearts on them, and steph has taken to doing something similar with corny jokes. dick just straight-up leaves candy in the hoods of his jackets.

it's a game, it's a love language. it's simultaneously annoyance and affection. there's nothing like wearing a hoodie that's too big for you, that smells like your family, to make you feel safe.

I LOV MURDER MYSTERY ON TRAIN

You know all those humans are space orcs posts about how we anthropomorphise inanimate objects? Next time a computer asks me to confirm I’m human, I’m telling it about Fang, the small paper shredder at a neighbours house I met while helping her with organising and ended up feeding him different things over the course of a while bc there was that much to get rid of and if he ate too fast he overheated and had to be given time to calm down.

I cannot stress enough, he was not my paper shredder. He was the size of a waste paper bin under a desk, really simple. He was not named Fang by his owner. I have never not referred to him as Fang.

I spent a couple hours with Fang one day in the summer. It’s been years, I still think about Fang fairly regularly and consider getting a paper shredder like one might consider getting a dog. The worst part is everytime I get to that point in the line of thought, I think it wouldn’t be the same because it’s not Fang.

So I get emotionally invested in things quick.

??? Void Introduction

*camera starts recording. A shadow appears on screen, and in the abyss where a face would be stars twinkle on the other side of a black hole. They wave at you.*

Hi everyone, my name’s Andy (they/them). I am the ghost of-

*lights flicker, not because of anything paranormal but bc someone broke in off camera and started chucking salt everywhere and tripped over the lights* not that kind of ghost, god fucking damn it not aGAIN-

*camera glitches. The lighting is fixed. The only human thing about the Void is their frustration. The nebulas floating across their form manage to convey the utmost annoyance.*

Hi. I’m the Void, or the Abyss, and you can call me Andy. I’m the ghost of universes that once were. *squints at someone off camera, celestial orbits clearly raising a frying pan just off frame* if you mention the multiverse I swear to god-

*camera glitches*

So yeah, I’m travelling around, dipping into different stories and fixing them up, trying to give them a happier ending, y’know?

*if the Void had eyes, they would be sad. Instead, there is only the constant drift of broken planets and colliding stars.*

I’ve seen so many things end badly for the people, or characters, involved, I want to try and make it a little bit better, one story at a time. Like the Good Place, except in the found family sense and not in the making me bawl my fucking EYES out at the end-

*camera glitches*

-just a silly little nerdy cosmic mess trying to have fun. I hope if you are interested, check out my blog for talking about my stories, to the writing process, to just generally fun things to talk about. I hope if you do put some faith in this Not-Universe, you enjoy reading or chatting, and that it makes you smile. If you do, come talk to me! I’m always looking to meet new people whenever I drop in on another world.

Even if you don’t say anything, have fun, and remember: you are never alone, even if you can’t see all the stars surrounding you.

*The sweet moment is interrupted by the thumping footsteps of a large animal of some kind, and something knocks into the camera, sending it to the floor as the Void, meteors flying, tries to shoo the beast*

Sorry, Ghost gets a little over excited when he meets a new friend- Ghost, quit slobbering all over me you oversized bread basket-

*camera glitches to a close up of a very ruffled Void, dwarf planets askew and stardust swirling as they hurry to say farewell* Ok, enjoy! Bye!

*camera cuts*

Miss Piggy's response to misogyny and fatphobia is physical violence and I think we should all take something from that

They may be fully trained vigilantes, but they are also brother's at the core.

Commission Info / Kofi (members get comics a week early)

Content warning for death, blood and description of injuries

Another slice to my throat. More stains running down my armour, rivers feeding the nutrients I no longer need into the ground. You stand frozen, gaze blank. You always do when we die. Blue already lies, eyes vacant and staring, neck angled horribly wrong. I can’t see Yellow’s face. Their back took the worst of their injuries, as they tripped and did not get back up.

My knees crumble, throat gasping out one last time. I didn’t see Green go down, I heard them like I can hear myself. Their cry cut off, because their brain was targeted. Not their throat. My brain is still stuck trying to make broken vocal cords work.

I blink for what should be the last time.

It won’t be.

“Everyone understand?” Purple looks around at us, all jostling in the belly of the plane, trying to break the tension before our last mission. “We only get one shot at this. We’re counting on you.” They look directly at you as they say that, before turning to where the doors will open.

I don’t know why we don’t get one shot. I don’t know why the gods keep rewinding the clock. You’re the only one that initiates change, so you have to know. I think you’re the only other one who does. The fifth try, you took out a guard I hadn’t spotted. They killed me last time. The seventeenth, you found another way in, after the previous one kept leading to traps and dead ends.

I don’t know why I’m granted so many second chances, and I know I’m alone in remembering what came before. I tried to mention it to Green once. It distracted them, got them killed earlier. I stopped talking after that try. I didn’t want to mess anything else up.

We’re getting close, we have to be. I don’t know what try we’re on, but you get better, stronger every time. Sometimes there’s a stupid mistake from one of us, or a weirdly placed guard, but generally, we’re improving.

Out the airplane, land on the roof, take the fire escape to the fourth floor even though it goes down to the third because there’s too many guards on the third, sneak through the vents, avoid the alarms, climb into the lift shaft and into one of the lifts, ride it down to the basement.

Yes, I can feel it. The death by gravity as I was pushed down the empty shaft. Bones crunching, not able to move my legs. Internal bleeding got me that time. A shot through the window of a corridor, so quick I didn’t have time to be surprised. The phantom pains following me into the next try, aches where my body expects to still find snaps.

This try, we get all the way down the final hall to the vault before the tripwire catches you out. We can still make it, we’ve made it past this point before. Footsteps rumble like thunder above as we dash towards the vault door, weapons and equipment flickering through your hands as you search for something we can use. The vault door creeks as it begins to swing slowly, a ticking clock for our team. Blue makes it in, sliding their backpack off immediately to search for the lock picks they will now need. Yellow whoops as they make it in, keeping an eye on Blue while taunting the guards and hurrying us up. The vault door gets closer to shut. Green makes it in, preparing to take up cover fire through a narrowing field of vision. You’re right behind, squeezing through the shrinking gap. The vault clicks as it closes, Purple slamming into it unable to stop their momentum, and me skidding to a halt beside them.

There’s a small glass window through the vault door, and you walk right up to it, staring at us while you try to slam anything into the door. Looking for a trigger to open the metal lock. Running to get Blue or the others to help, but they shake their heads, already moving on. You return to the window, and I smile back. It’s ok. You might be able to make it this time. This could be the one. You could do it.

The door we came through shatters open as guards pour in. We ready our weapons for a fight, turning away from you, who has gone so still. You never stop moving, not unless one of us is dead, but you can’t do that now. You can make it, you can complete our mission and save the world. We signed onto that, weeks of training and trusting each other before we committed to our shot. Helping people, or die trying.

The stench of blood taints the air as Purple and I engage, holding back the guards to give you as much time as we can. Every second gives you more of a chance to make it. Please, you have to make it. You can do this. Dodging a knife and twisting away from the action, I see you, still frozen on the other side of the glass. A jolt in my back, my breath catching and your blank express do the rest.

I blink.

“Everyone understand?” Purple looks around at us, jostling each other. I smile at you, because you are already moving, already checking weapons and ammunition and equipment again. You could have made it that time.

It’s happened quite a bit. Your chance for freedom, for success, very clearly in reach. But then Yellow will get taken out as a warning that we’ve been spotted. Green succumbs to previous injuries. Blue can’t break the locks in time. Purple gets caught in a triggered trap. I stay behind to buy more time. It resets every time. And although it hurts, and the hollow pain in my stomach has me checking the wound really did disappear like they do everytime, I will smile at you. Because you are going to get us through this. You’re going to make sure one of these times, everybody lives. Every death, every injury, is nothing compared to losing any of us.

It may be selfish, and painful, and at times threatens hellish hopelessness, but whenever it gets too much, whenever the danger gets too close, I know you will save us. You will stay with us, and I know you will keep doing so until one try, we all make it out ok. And I would rather that ending than any other.

Player keeps reloading trying to save every ally in a mission, one of their allies remembers every attempt.