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See here’s the thing, I personally dislike Damian’s design in Batman and Robin (2023) cause it looks too much like Tim, however I would like to propose an adorable headcanon that keeps me from hating it: He thought Tim’s hair was cool so he got the same hairstyle, but will never tell Tim.
The himbo act is only partially an act. Sometimes, Danny really is that dumb. Danny will play up Jack Fenton obliviousness, but he really does have his own blind spots.
But space? Yeah, Danny literally cannot help himself.
Okay so Danny gets adopted by Bruce. Yeah? Yeah.
And they don't know about his powers? Obviously. We know this part of the story.
BUT. On a casual trip out for food or whatever, Danny and some of the bat sibs get cornerd by reporters and paparazzi. There panicking bec danny JUST got here and they haven't had time to breif him on how to interact with the media and he's totally gonna flounder and they need to help him before he totally flubs it!
Exept, he doesn't. He smiles, nice and bright, into the camra. He waits patiently for each reporter to ask their questions and then answers confidently, giving them something walst acctually answering nothing. "Where are you from?" "A small town, I'm sure you wouldn't know it but, really, it's about where I am now."How did you come to be adopted by bruce?"Well, I look quite a bit like my new brothers, don't you think? Haha. I like to think it was meant to be."
And on and on he gose, dancing around them, shareing professionally worded jokes and calmly addressing eatch person as they viyed for his attention, controlling the flow of conversation.
The bat kids all look at eatchother.
This kids been media trained.
dick: you can’t just do that, it’s illegal
jason: pft what are you, a cop?
dick: ……
jason: no…
dick: listen- jay it’s-
jason: NO
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.
I think it would be really funny if every time Dick and Jason joined missions they kind of failed upwards, even if they goofed off, or dredged up extremely personal shit, it helped with their secret identities or got them to think outside the box. There's always a disagreement on methods, someone gets kicked through a door but it's the right door and they stumble on all the evidence and the bad guys. Something that got set on fire was actually a secret message that only appeared upon heating, or they found evidence of the crime while trying to delete embarrassing CCTV footage.
Based on og bost by @thethirdtriplet
Order left to right pic 1 lolz
Damian, cass, dick, duke, Tim, Steph :)
Party of some kind:
Dick: [ making a scene,hyping up the crowd]
Jason: stop hyping up people, your causing a scene!!
Dick: NO!! I’m one of those people who gets energy from the people around me :D
Tim: get energy from somewhere else, your like a vibe vampire.
Dick: I’m not a vampire?!
Damian:[ pulls out a book, holding it up like a cross] may the power of introvert energy compel you!
Dick: *hisss
absolutely obsessed with Jason and Tim being the family psychologists that spend 90% of their time together just getting into long debates and discussions about the personalities and mental issues of everybody in the family. they will meet up at Jason’s apartment twice a week for takeout and a 2 hour conversation on how Damian might be so obsessed with the Robin mantle because the dynamics of the league make him think that family should be a business and if he cant work as a vigilante he’ll be abandoned. every stakeout they do together ends up with them getting distracted talking about Dick and his obsession with red heads. they’ve let multiple people go during these stakeouts bcs they’ve gotten side tracked when they then start discussing if Jason’s childhood issues and strained relationship with Dick somehow influenced HIM to befriending Dick’s old pals so often, and they get so fascinatingly into it that the guy they were waiting for just. slipped right by them.
nothing is off limits between these two when they start talking about mental health and family issues. they’ll compare Tim’s abandonment-independence from the Drakes to Jason’s caretaker habits from his dug addicted mother. there have been 3 hour phone call conversations about the loa and how it fucked with Jason’s perception of Bruce that then get turned into 4 hour face to face discussions about how Tim’s opinion of Bruce rapidly declined because of Jason’s death and how he handled it. they rehash how Bruce has effected every single bat child about 12 times and they still never get tired of it.
it’s not even about therapy or coming to terms with trauma. these two bitches just love dissecting family drama and psychology within the Waynes. every now and then during dinner somebody will make a fairly casual remark that has nothing to do with anything and Jason and Tim will make eye contact across the table because they KNOW they’ll be tearing that apart at a later date. what I’m saying is english-enthusiast Jason Todd and stalker-genius Timothy Drake are 100% the gossip scientists of the family, and the Waynes are their lab rats being observed for their own entertainment
as much as i love angst i do also adore familial league of assassins shit, and since i keep seeing them on my tiktok fyp i cant stop thinking about those videos of idiot teenagers in military training being. teenagers. and thinking of jason and damian. just those two having weird little gimmicks and traditions that confuse the absolute fuck out of the rest of the family from their time at the league.
damian will refer to grapes as ‘assassination implements’ because of that time jason tried to throw one at him, missed, hit ra’s in the back of the head, and to avoid getting out of trouble gaslit him into believing it must have been some kind of dart that hit him from a coup attempt. ra’s went into lockdown and had the entire base searched and jason’s been lying about it for a year, nodding along whenever ra’s brings up the ‘irritating failure that escaped capture’.
nanda parbat had a specific bar that a lot of the assassins would go to when off-duty for a break, but damian wasn’t allowed because talia said he was too young so jason and a couple other loa workers dressed him up in fake facial hair and convinced the bartender he was just a really short old guy to get him in, and since then whenever they talk about something damian’s done that he wasn’t supposed to do they say it was ‘old man brutus’ that did it. bruce has no idea who the fuck brutus is or why two of his sons find his existence so amusing.
whenever the assassins were fucking around on loa grounds they would have a specific low-down gravely tone of voice that when any of them saw talia or ra’s approach, they would use to warn the rest of the group by saying ‘al ghul’ in that tone to indicate everyone had to straighten up and act like they were training. damian can copy that tone perfectly, and will use that voice when saying non-sensical words like ‘ooby-dooby’ and ‘birch tree’ because the tone makes jason instinctively straight up and whirl around like a soldier hearing the word ‘sergeant’. it works every fucking time.
one of damian’s tutors and jason’s mission colleague hated coconut milk with a fucking passion and would rant about it every time it was brought up in conversation. a lot of the guys would take bets on how long she could go talking about it and then purposely brought it up to set her off as a game. every time anyone around the loa base was seen with coconut milk somebody would respond ‘what would eden say if she saw you with that?’. tim dick and bruce do not know who eden is or why they hate coconut milk and at this point they’re too scared to ask.
all im saying is the loa becomes much funnier if we consider it just to be a very strict assassin boarding school that jason attended and damian grew up in.
Dick was the last to be adopted, Jason became the black sheep post-resurrection, Tim made himself Robin, Damian was dropped in Gotham after ten years of being kept secret, Cass possesses killer instincts that run counter to Batman's philosophy, Duke is a meta whose parents are still alive (albeit jokerized), and Steph has zero legal connections to the Waynes. All of the batkids have reason to believe they're the only one Bruce doesn't want around and Bruce is unaware of the problem because they don't vocalize it not just out of the usual emotional constipation, but also a deep-seated fear of being proven right. In this essay, I will—
When it comes to mission reports, Damian is the epitome of not showing your work.
Bruce: Damian, what did you do with the Riddler?
Damian: I apprehended him.
Bruce: When, where, and how?
Damian: Yesterday. Crime Alley. Stakeout.
Bruce: Why isn't any of this written down? You have to document it for future case references. You just wrote, "Done."
Damian: Because I'm done.
Bruce: But you're supposed to tell us the steps you took.
Damian: Step one: I did it.