WHERE IS CONGRAJULASIONS

Imagine a world where Batman and his family never joined the Justice League but like, both Wonder Woman and Superman know him.

They mention him idly sometimes and even despite not being there (that they know of) he's become the League's cryptid. No one knows who this hero is- Gotham sticks to itself, it's a shithole but it's their shithole- or where they are or anything??

Eventually rumors start going around between the heroes. Is the bat some sort of eldritch being? They overheard the big 2 say something about shadows and undead revival?? Their secret boyfriend? They heard them talk about kids???

It comes to a slight head when during a mind-controlled Superman rampage he gets tackled by a black blur and the next time they see him he's fine?? No mind control??? What?????

"Oh, Bats was passing by and is exasperated about me getting mind controlled again."

Supes that doesn't explain as much as you think it does-

I did it!!

Imagine a bee rn in a hive muttering "the beekeeper is not real because he is not intervening or helping me at all with this disastrous relationship I have with another bee". now imagine that's you talking about the good lord. now imagine a dog with a propeller hat on

also did i post this one yet? i don’t think so.

Headcanon Bruce color-coded his kids... but the colors make No Sense with the Power of Hindsight

Dick is red ❤️ since that was the main color of the Robin suit, and Bruce started doing the color coding when Dick was Robin

Barbara's not technically his kid, but her Batgirl suit was purple so she's purple 💜. Stephanie straight up refused to be anything except purple, so now purple just means Not Technically Adopted

Jason also got a Robin color, but he got yellow 💛 since once he got settled in, he had a very sunny personality. This does not age well.

Bruce doesn’t actually give Tim his own color, since his integration into the family is sloooow. Since Tim is #1 Dick Grayson Fan TM, he always chose the blue cup when grabbing something to drink, so he accidently became blue 💙

Everyone was thinking Cass should be black. But also, Bruce is black. So they shrugged and grabbed the next darkest cup available, which happened to be dark green. The "dark" part ended up getting dropped, though, as it's just easier to get any shade of green 💚

When Damian showed up, Bruce’s mind was still stuck on "Talia’s Kid", so he's bright pink 💖 before he even realizes the color-coding exists

Duke is orange 🧡 because there are literally no other unique colors left

This leads to the baykids yelling at Bruce, "You can’t adopt that kid! There isn't a free color open!". It unironically has a much greater success rate than any other tactic

Damian: *peaks head above dining table* Baba

Bruce: *sighs, gives Damian the rest of his incredibly juicy fruit salad* Hn

Damian: *scampers off with bowl, Titus hot on his tracks*

Bruce: *watches with a faint smile, sipping on his water*

Bruce is totally a mom the way he just lets his kids take his food, just like my mom. They give him one look and Bruce is ready to feed them himself

Pinned Post

Since I plugged this blog on my main I guess I should make a pinned post clarifying everything.

I made a silly little sideblog for talking about the Youtube tabletop RPG series made by Sequence Break, starting from Star Road Now, continuing with The Quiet Decay and Severed Strings.

If you're not familiar with it I suggest checking out the official playlist with all the episodes on Youtube to get a feel for it as well as the wiki (beware of spoilers for later parts), but tl;dr it's a collection of TTRPG campaigns set in the same continuity, in the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure universe (albeit it strays from Jojo canon later on.) The events happen in a near-ish future (2088-2140) in the city of Electros, Japan and usually revolve around dealing with some kind of grand moral dilemma told through a series of labyrinthine fights and personal subplots. Also punchghosts. I'll elaborate on the specific parts of the series under the cut.

I won't be tagging spoilers since this is just a tiny thing I have on the side, so if you're interested in this series in any way I suggest you at least finish Star Road Now before continuing.

Star Road Now is generally centered around themes of dreams, self-improvement, potential and family. This is the first entry in the series set in the year 2130, and is the most popular one by far; in fact it's what you usually get when you search "jojo ttrpg" on Youtube. It sets the stage for the rest of the series and is a must-watch if you want to understand what's going on in the other two parts.

The Quiet Decay narrows the scope a bit while retaining some thematic ties to SRN (family and self-improvement are even more prevalent now), but it also explores the inner psyche of many of its characters through the mysterious phenomenon of Black Tears. It's the second entry in the series and is chronologically the earliest one, starting in autumn of 2088, and features some characters from Star Road Now as well as Severed Strings (as to why, see below)

Severed Strings is the third and latest entry in the Sequence Break Jojoverse and is still ongoing, having been run parallel with The Quiet Decay up until the latter's finale. It is a lot more experimental, taking concepts established in canon Jojo and flipping them on their head or otherwise playing with them, though it still retains strong thematic ties to SRN and TQD in the form of familial bonds and what they can mean to a person; it also introduces the theme of freedom and individuality to an extent which becomes more clear later on.

There are some spinoffs to the main series such as On The Road Again (a darker AU of Star Road Now featuring a completely new cast of characters) and Crystal River Romp (an ambiguously canon spinoff set in an amusement park), though I don't know much about them as I haven't watched much from either spinoff.

This blog has a tag system in place to make it easier for me to look for specific types of posts (ie a certain character/part/etc) and it's accessible through mobile as well as desktop. Feel free to reblog anything from here, I don't really care.

My favorite character is Hephaestus Brando from Severed Strings she is the light of my life my quirky little construction worker and generally funny little lady who lives in my head rent-free. I have a couple other characters I really like but you can figure those out on your own.

I think that covers all the bases, feel free to send me an ask or something if you have any questions for me or about the series.

I don't really care for Sealand except as a source of jealousy for America. He sees this "child" that looks so much like himself at that age and how England dotes on him and is so frustrated by his own feelings. He's frustrated how jealous he is and how badly he wants to be held in England's arms again, frustrated that he wants to be loved that way again (even if he has England's love romantically) after all he did to be on his own exactly so he wouldn't be coddled anymore. He isn't unkind to Sealand but I like to think he's a bit quieter and more reserved when the principality is around, particularly with England because he feels he needs to be more 'adult' to make up for his childish feelings of jealousy. At any other time he's clingy as a barnacle but when England has his attention focused on Sealand, America grits his teeth because it reminds him of being that beloved child that constantly saw the world over England's shoulder and he hates it as much as he wants it again. He hates that he only wants it again because now someone else has it.

It’s pretty much canon that England would leave America for long stretches of time during his childhood (like in that Davie strip), but I’d like to imagine that he hired teachers and caretakers or nannies to actually raise America while he was gone most of the time.

Of course, because America ages a lot slower than a human, those nannies would get old and retire or die, and then England would have to replace them like goldfish.

Eventually America would get old enough to understand the concept of death, and England would start to get a bit careless about it, like:

England: America, where is that nanny I hired? I haven’t seen her since I’ve arrived.

America(physically around 13y/o): …England, she died like 2 years ago. You forgot to hire a new one.

England: ah.

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.