Why Is This Sooo Goood

Batlantern where they are openly dating but no one believes them.

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Hal, during some small talks at Watchtower : "You know, Bat, you can offer me some privileges."

Bruce : "That's called nepotism, Lantern. No."

Dick, the guest of honor today : "What's that about?"

Hal : "You know, lover privilege, husband favoritism, something, anything."

Dick, thinking about Bruce's past romance heartbreaks : "That's not nice to tease him with something insensitive like that."

Everyone else in the room : *nodding and humming in agreement*

Hal : "Huh?"

Bruce, as equally confuse : "Hn."

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Tim : "You know him. He is kinda extra when it comes to his cover. You're attractive, you can score someone pretty easily even after this whole thing is over."

Hal, who just want to grab a glass of water from bats's kitchen : "... okay?"

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Olliver : "He can't really tell when to stop joking sometimes, so don't be too hard on him. I'm sure you can hook up with someone soon to shut him up."

Bruce, doesn't even know where to start : *grunt*

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Bruce, during an outing with Clark and Diana : "I wonder if my choice would annoy him or not."

Clark, sighing : "Bruce, I know you two don't have the best relationship, but you can't just keep pastering him with your whims."

Diana, nodding : "I don't know what kind of psychological warfare you're planning on him, but you need to not take it too far."

Bruce, who just wants to ask opinion on his choice of movie for their next date : "You two are unbelievable."

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Hal : "I am not joking. I went to bed with him."

Barry : "Dude, stop annoying him. He will kill you one day."

Hal, frustrated : "I am telling you—!"

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Billy, in his Champion form : "I truly believe we only kiss the people we love."

Hal, freaking out because Billy—out of all people—accidentally seeing them making out : "Look, I know this is not a professional way to use any room in Watchtower but—"

Billy : "You know, you two took the whole battering fiasco way too far this time."

Bruce, still internally shaking for not noticing Billy entering the room : "... you can't seriously believe that's what's going on."

Billy : "Hey. Wisdom of Solomon."

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Damian : "That being said, we should treat Jordan with respect since he is willing to put up with Father's schemes."

Other bats : *agreed*

Bruce, just give up at this point : "This house is supposed to be the nest of a bunch of detectives."

Bruce unintentionally dissing the league while praising his kids is so funny to me

Bruce: we need an expert marksman for this job

Oliver: *getting ready to stand up to fully accept Bruce’s praise*

Bruce: Redhood will be here shortly. We also need someone quick on their feet. Luckily Cass is working on a case nearby so we can ask her

No but you know how Dick still randomly does handstands as an adult? I feel like that's something Bruce must be incredibly fond of. Dick is grown up in most ways, but in that way, he's still the kid Bruce remembers.

Detective Comics 2021 Annual

Bruce keeping a tighter and tighter lid on his identity around the Justice League because with each new person to reveal their identity he realizes that he has fucked far too high a percentage of his co workers as Bruce Wayne and he has to take this secret to his grave

Dick Grayson's unmatched success as a child vigilante makes a lot more sense when you remember the Court of Owls was a thing and that Dick was meant to be the next Grey Son.

There is no way that someone at Haly's Circus wasn't there keeping an eye on him while he grew up. A future weapon needs to be trained and monitored after all, and a circus, a place where weird skills are completely normal, is actually a great place to secretly train a child.

You know, just some knife tricks that translated really well into actual fighting. How to get out of restraints and pick locks while under a time limit. Death defying acrobatic stunts that coincidentally do wonders for parkouring. That sort of thing. Nothing that seems out of place for a boy growing up around circus performers to learn, but would literally any where else.

I mean, while I fully believe that most kids would want to kill the man responsible for their parents deaths, Dick was weirdly prepared to go through it. He tracked down Zucco with way more ease than any normal child should have too. He became the first child vigilante, for goodness sake. The first Robin! He only started getting formal training after he basically forced Bruce into it!

Bruce himself has no idea that this kind of competency in a child is unusual, considering he was much too blinded by the similarities between his and Dick's tragic orphanhoods.

Alfred is in a similar boat because he’s desensitized to weird children after he somehow managed to successfully raise Bruce 'The Batman' Wayne, so he doesn't clock the hyper-competency as abnormal either.

By the time the other batkids start popping up (Jason 'The Audacity' Todd, borderline-street rat with no fear) (Tim 'the greatest stalker in Gotham history' Drake, child genius, also bullied his way into becoming Robin) (Barbara 'raised by the only uncorrupt cop in gotham' Gordon) (Stephanie 'daddy issues and spite' Brown) (Duke 'Pretends he's the normal one and people believe him' Thomas) it's too late.

It would also explain how Dick got along so well with Damian out of all of them. Similar childhood with different approaches and all that. On some subconscious level, Dick recognises and resonates with the murderous ten year old assassin with strong familial ties to a secret elite assassin organization.

It isn't until after the whole Court of Owls and Grey Son reveal that suddenly Dick realises a whole lot of things about his childhood that suddenly make a lot more sense.

Sexualities and Nightwing

Modern Dick Grayson is devoutly, serially monogamous and demiromantic. He has to have an emotional bond with his partners before anything else happens and then he falls in love. Trouble is, he has an emotional bond with the entire DC universe. You can't tell me that man hasn't fallen in love with most of his friends, female, male or everything in between because of the kinds of emotional bonds they have, however unhealthy.

Modern Dick must be consumed by romantic feelings he only keeps in check by pouring his energy into Babs, his current partner. He does genuinely and devotedly love her, of course. He probably thinks it's a moral failing to even fantasize about someone else, so it's easy to "forget" everyone else. Except he doesn't forget that he's in love with all of the Titans and most of the Justice League, he'll just never act on those feelings and no one will ever know.

A quintessential early-career Robin that fits the tone of The Batman

This post was originally written for Reddit, where folks are much more opposed to having Dick be in The Batman universe than on Tumblr. But still, I thought I would share it here!

Bruce, in trying to be more publicly a part of Gotham’s community, is out in the world again and in one of his public outings, he comes across the orphaned 15 year old Dick Grayson. This could be Haley’s circus but it doesn’t have to be - but Dick’s acrobat and gymnastics past should be retained.

(Another way to modernize it is to have Dick be an Olympic gymnast prodigy - but it’s not the most relevant. Theoretically you could tie this into the Grayson murder plot, but you don’t have to. Anyway…)

Bruce, against Alfred’s advice, wants to foster Dick himself and let him live with them at Wayne Tower. Alfred thinks this is a crazy idea because of Bruce’s nighttime activities as The Batman and because he’s far too young and emotionally-detached to be a father-figure, but Bruce is insistent on it after recognizing the extent to which Dick’s pain mirrors his. Bruce has an opportunity here: to give Dick what he wish he had when he was young and orphaned. Alfred comes around once he sees this too, in a moment mirroring Alfred seeing the footage of the mayor’s son in the first movie. Bruce gets an opportunity to emotionally reach a younger version of himself, and Alfred gets a chance to be more of what he wish he could be, a warmer father figure to both Bruce and Dick. This is a story about second chances. It’s a second chance for Bruce, it’s a second chance for Alfred, and it’s most vitally a second chance for Dick.

Here’s where things get interesting: even though Bruce adopts Dick early-on in the film, for most of it, neither of them are operating as a duo. Bruce and Alfred are keeping The Batman identity away from Dick, *and Dick is secretly hunting down his parents’ killer as a street vigilante inspired by Batman* - using a rudimentary version of the Robin identity. This becomes a major subplot and eventually connects back to the central antagonism of the film - whoever they choose, the killing of the Graysons is banally tied to this similarly to how the killing of the Waynes is ambiguously tied to the Falcone story in the first movie. At the same time, the dual deception between Bruce and Dick on each of their respective nighttime activities is a core obstacle to their relationship deepening. They can’t truly reach each other because they don’t trust each other- and Dick is singlemindedly focused on vengeance. It also gives us a chance to show Dick as a smart kid; he’s able to successfully elude the suspicions of both Bruce and Alfred while living with them and living a double life.

At the end of the second act, Batman comes across this proto-Robin and sees through it, and realizes the extent to which Robin is the same as him. He’s also a young boy who can’t move past his pain and is lashing out at the world and trying to make sense of the horror of it. Bruce does what he’s never done before. He takes off the mask and he lets Dick see him for who he truly is. *This* is when the Dick-Bruce relationship really begins.

Have Dick play a supporting but pivotal role in the third act. He needs to sabotage, distract, inform, scout, something. Give him agency and let him navigate the world, in between his new relationship as Batman’s semi-partner and still grappling with what this means for him. And have it coalesce in a moment where he chooses to accept his pain in a healthier way, to follow Bruce’s example. And the film ends with Bruce choosing to train Dick, to better him as a person and to offer him what Bruce sorely needed when he was his age.

Okay, now that the thematic plotting is out of the way, let’s talk about vibes. Vibes are super important to this universe and a core reason why people seem to have hangups around including Robin in the Reevesverse.

Early vigilante proto-Robin should navigate this world of orphaned street-bound teenagers who are parts of gangs and criminal networks. It should feel kind of like Victorian London’s child street gangs, but it can also be reminiscent of modern organized crime recruiting children. This is the world Robin navigates to get what he wants in the story, and it’s a world that is unfamiliar to Batman until Robin officially becomes his partner. Then it becomes a resource he can use to keep tabs on different goings-on in the city and make Gotham safer. This also echoes how Batman treats children and sex workers in the comics. Because Batman treats the vulnerable and disenfranchised with respect and humanity, it makes him a stronger and more capable hero to protect the communities he operates in.

Proto-Robin operating separately from Bruce should have a similar ad-hoc DIY vibe to The Batman, just lower tech and more discreet. It’s important textually that Robin was also inspired by The Batman without knowing him or coming into contact with him. It parallels Riddler ironically, it shows that the tragedy of Edward’s descent into vengeance and rage has had an effect on Bruce and that’s why he fights so desperately to keep the same fate from happening to Dick. Dick is someone who has had everything taken away from him, he was a brilliant gymnast whose aspirations were dashed when he lost his parents. Bruce can’t let him descend further into that spiral.

Robin isn’t a fighting partner in this film. He’ll become that when he’s older, closer to 16-17 in Part Three, but right now he’s a rogue agent navigating this world on his own, and Bruce has him as a mix between an informant, a spy, and an intel source. We need to sidestep the child soldier allegations, and it also means that Robin can do things Bruce can’t. Robin isn’t famous, Robin isn’t a fully grown adult. He can navigate spaces and places and worlds Bruce can’t, and that makes both of them stronger heroes for it.

In this sense, this version of Dick Grayson is a loose amalgamation of the first three Robins. He has Jason’s rage, brashness, and involvement in the underworld; he has Tim’s shrewdness, detective skills, and sense of loyalty; and he has Dick Grayson’s backstory and sense of optimism. We’re not just watching this boy become Robin, we’re also watching him transform into the version of Dick we know so well - the same way we’re watching Bruce transform into Bruce in this story.

Why I think we fucking need Robin in The Batman Part Two? Because Part One is a film about Bruce realizing that he can’t be vengeance alone, that he must be hope as well. Part Two needs to be a film about Bruce coming to understand what vengeance has done to those who have seen his example, and Dick presents a tangible opportunity to actually instill a better example in someone who went through what he did. They would act as foils to one another, they would be permutations and mirrors of each other, and we would finally get a faithful, beautiful, and compelling version of the Batman-Robin dynamic on the live action big screen.

NEW ART STYLE WOOOOO

Yet another JL learns about Batfam post

Featuring: everybody loves Nightwing

So, Nightwing isn’t technically a member of the JL, but everyone knows him and adores him. Even Batman seems to tolerate him fine.

They’re on a mission. Let’s say alien invasion. Or killer robots. Something large scale and dramatic.

Everyone’s fighting in the same general vicinity. Nightwing and Batman just happen (read: either very carefully planned, unconscious habit, or a combination of the two) to be fairly close together.

Suddenly, an explosion happens. Everyone is knocked down. Including the aliens/robots. Conveniently, they stop being an issue now, so we can focus on The Reveal.

Anyway, everyone knocked down. They start to get up and look around, checking to see that everyone is fine. And it looks like everyone is well and accounted for, except…

Nightwing!

Where’s Nightwing? They all start to panic (except Batman). Is Nightwing okay? Where did he go? Is he hurt?

And then Nightwing ducks out from under Batman’s cape, with a grin on his face, sunny and cheerful as ever.

“Well it looks like that instinct is fully intact. Explosion? Duck under the cape.”

He laughs at himself and Batman’s face twitches in what his family would read as a smile and most of the JL thinks they’re hallucinating.

“Do you two know each other?” They want to ask. And it’s been long enough that it would probably be awkward to ask. But they’re confused/curious enough that they might ask anyway.

Demons and monsters that torture people because they feed on human suffering are so dumb. People are suffering everywhere my guy go literally any place and take a deep whiff.