#batfamily trashfire <3

[silverwhittlingknife]

i had kind of thought that if dick had actually been killed in infinite crisis, that he probably would’ve been resurrected in blackest night/brightest day. maybe that’s just wishful thinking, but at least that way we would get some good ol batfam angst eventually followed up by a resurrection-gone-right. plus imagine bruce coming back from being lost in time to find that dick’s alive…

OH MY GOD zombie!Dick coming back from the dead and then Tim has to destroy him 😭 in the middle of the awful year where everybody's dead 😭

ooh but a resurrection-gone-right is interesting. Bruce dies at the start of the story when everything's going to hell, but then when he comes back at the end of the story Dick's back and everything has been fixed. There's something nice about the arc of that.

other brainstorming on Dick dying and possible fallout

@upswings look what you've done you've awakened the sadists in all of us

Jason and Tim fighting over Nightwing -- OW. You know, I would really like to imagine this with a happy ending, where ... like, Jason comes to understand Tim better, or vice versa, but also my first instinct is some kind of one-shot that ends in tragedy?

If it's Jason POV: Jason is generally sympathetic through the whole thing but his own grievances take more and more control of him and it ultimately builds to him killing Tim and striding away while his my-villain-turn-is-now-complete music plays, Dr. Horrible-style. Bonus points if the fic makes you think that it's gonna have a happy ending and then it doesn't.

If it's Tim POV: Trickier! But basically the tonal equivalent for Tim, except Tim wouldn't/physically can't kill Jason, so instead it would have to be a Boomerang-esque setup where ... hmmm ... Tim coolly sets Jason up to get imprisoned, or sacrifices him to save someone else, or something like that? I feel like "sacrifices Jason to save someone else" is a more plausible moral compromise for Tim, since this is Tim's "desperately try to resurrect everybody" stage. So maybe you shift genre a bit to make it more fantasy, and invent some kind of reason whereby Tim needs a human sacrifice to bring Conner back, and he knows he shouldn't at the beginning of the story but by the end of it he's convinced himself Jason is an acceptable sacrifice. *ominous doom music*

Does Tim take on the Dick Grayson legacy of putting everything on his shoulders to fix??? Does Tim “Gotham needs a Batman” Drake take on the cowl even though he fundamentally does not want it and does not think he can do it and hates the idea and is afraid he might go evil?? HOW does a Batman!Tim and Robin!Damian AU work because I think it goes absolutely TERRIBLE. (h/t @bitimdrake)

Bruce dying shortly thereafter leaving just Tim and just Damian and if Tim still leaves maybe that would switch the narrative from “drake can leave and stay gone idc” to “drake leaving is an act of betrayal to the family” (h/t @theflopwonder)

Then what happens to Damian when Bruce dies???? [...] now it would just be Alfred and Tim... if Tim is even still living there, he might not be if there’s a chance Bruce wouldn’t adopt him in this timeline and he runs away to Bludhaven or the Titans or something. So. Just Alfred, unless Cass stays this time. .....Actually. Cass might be the one to step up if Tim leaves. (h/t @forestlingincorporated)

okay i am really intrigued by this hypothetical AU where Dick is dead and we get a Tim-and-Damian teamup after Bruce dies

i don't have a coherent pitch but here is some brainstorming

so one option is obviously Batman!Tim and Robin!Damian, which would be great in a oh-god-they're-so-young-and-this-is-so-sad way, a la BatDamian and Robin!Steph

BUT ALSO CONSIDER:

Tim and Damian TOGETHER on Tim's Ra's-al-Ghul-inflected Brucequest

Tim has a fight with uhhhh Steph (?) or Cass (?) about his resurrection plan and storms off, still Robin; but Damian overhears and makes his own Robin costume and ambushes him in Madrid; what the hell, says Tim; I will bring Father back not you, says Damian.

(meanwhile the Batgirls are in Gotham fighting Pyg)

Robin!Tim and Robin!Damian team up and travel around the world looking for clues, and Tim does not care about Damian, okay, he doesn't, he doesn't even like Damian, but they're sleeping in hotel rooms together and sharing meals and so forth and they're with each other 24-7 and Damian will not leave and if he gets hurt then obviously Tim has to bandage him and they still Officially Hate Each Other but sheer proximity means enforced closeness because they can, like, hear each other's nightmares and so forth --

-- and Ra's is then trying to tempt somebody, but hmmmm I feel like this need to be a single-POV fic, so EITHER Tim's POV OR Damian's POV, not both. So whoever's POV it is has to be the person that's getting tempted to betray the other one, e.g. if it's Tim, then Ra's is determined to get Tim to betray Damian, and if it's Damian, Ra's wants him to betray Tim.

So for convenience's sake, let's say it's Tim POV. So maybe Ra's is mostly focused on Tim, and keeps contacting Tim, and he's dismissive of Damian and/or doesn't realize that Damian is with Tim -

(okay so in canon the body-snatching threat for Damian disappears post-Resurrection, because now Ra's has a new body, but if you wanted, maybe unknown to Tim the reason why Damian keeps hiding every time Ra's calls or talks to Tim or leaves a mysterious clue is because Ra's still wants to body-snatch him and/or kill him??)

but anyway I kinda like the idea of doing something where Tim's getting a similar recruitment-pitch to the League of Assassins -- here have this passport, we rented a hotel room for you, look these people have showed up to help out, etc. etc. So Tim's getting fêted and Damian's getting ..... actually never mind, I feel like this would be more fun if Damian can be actually interacting instead of hiding, so Damian's just kinda getting ignored, or at least that's what it looks like, but Damian's extra-tense.

So at first Tim's feeling kinda petty and smug because Damian talks a good game constantly about how special he is, but now that they're interacting with the actual League it's obvious that he was full of it, right? And yes, this is a petty feeling to be indulging when they have a Big Serious Quest to bring everybody back to life, but it's still kind of a guilty pleasure.

And something something things happen and THEN

Ra's gets Tim alone and Damian's out sulking in the anteroom or whatever, and Ra's is offering Tim exactly what he needs to bring everybody back there's just one tiny codicil

which is that Tim needs to get Damian to do something

(why does Ra's need Damian to do the thing willingly? I don't know, because magic)

and whatever the thing is sounds harmless, but of course this is Ra's, and Tim's got this creepy feeling, because of course as careless as Ra's is acting it can't actually be that simple,

(and of course it's not)

and then hmmmm

i think to make this satisfying Tim has to actually fall for the temptation initially, and then later realize it was wrong and have to run to help Damian

WAIT WAIT I KNOW

What if -- okay I haven't worked this out -- but what if Ra's and Tim made the deal near the beginning of the Brucequest, back when Tim didn't care about Damian at all (plus when Tim was under the impression that this was just a family squabble rather than any kind of actual danger to Damian), and that deal is the basis on which Ra's has been helping,

and then Ra's decides to take advantage of the deal right before the key moment when Tim's going to pull off his resurrection

so now Damian's been kidnapped or tricked or taken on the Night of the Full Moon or whatever

and Tim has to decide between going through with the resurrection plans or saving Damian, and obviously he has to realize that he has to save Damian

and then when he gets there, Damian's horrified because WHAT ABOUT THE RESURRECTION, and it turns out Damian knew about the deal the whole time but he's okay with it because he's sacrificing himself to bring his father back to life

so now Tim has his big REALIZATION and he's all "no Bruce wouldn't want that" and the two of them fight Ra's

and then they go back to Gotham and fight crime together <3

[fishfingersandjellybabies]

Since DC is getting a digital channel w/all kinds of shows (live and animated). I have several hopes that (will probably go unfulfilled but I refuse to 100% commit to that) they'll do a few really good animated series. My wants: 1) a Super Sons series (leave out future evil timelines please). 2) Nightwing series that mixes focus on Dick's time solo, w/the batfamily and his Titans team. Start it when Jason is already Robin and keep it going after Damian appears. 3) that series that got -

2 scrapped for Young Justice. The series takes place in a ruined no man's land Gotham focusing on Bruce, Dick, Cass and Damian as the core characters trying to protect and rebuild Gotham (that would have been such a cool concept). I'd throw my money at the channel for these series (if well done).

I don’t know how I feel about this digital channel thing. I’d be interested in Titans or Swamp Thing, but everything else looks I hate/wouldn’t watch if it was on cable. 

So basically - I’m not getting my hopes up about any ‘new’ content like you mentioned any time soon. we’ll have to wait for the trashfire that is yj to properly end before any of that might even get written on a piece of paper.