#even tho dc did

[strawberrytalia]

“I once said you haven’t the eyes of a killer. They’ve changed…as you have. You can never go back. Nor can I.”

[bongo-clash]

If I had a nickel for every billionaire that tried to kidnap me, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice

DP/DC week prompt: Mistaken Identity

'Look, in Bruce Wayne’s defence, he has a lot of children with black hair and blue eyes, and he’d had a very long day. But in Danny’s defence, he has no idea what’s happening right now and, according to his previous experience in being kidnapped by billionaires, his reaction is incredibly reasonable.'

(No content warnings || fic under cut!!)

-

Danny’s been in Gotham for about a week with his family, and so far it’s honestly been one of their most relaxing vacations to date. Sure, the drive had been long and finding a place to park the RV had been unsurprisingly difficult, but once the initial getting-there-fanfare was over with, everything had been great. The whole ‘not my circus, not my monkeys’ thing had been amazing for his anxiety. The famous Batman was more than capable of dealing with his peanut gallery without some random dead kid intercepting. 

Okay, he was a little bit worried about Batman’s ‘no metas’ thing, but there was no good reason the vigilante would find out that little tidbit. It’s not like he’s even a meta in the first place! Being dead is a medical condition. Regardless, he’s doing the sensible thing and not making a show of himself; he may have flown over the top of the city invisibly on the first night to get some good shots to send to his friends, but no one needed to know about that but Sam and her gothic-architecture-inspo wall. 

The hotel they’re staying at has good breakfast, the buildings in the inner city look cool as Hell, they already have heroes dealing with their issues so Danny doesn’t have to do anything, and there’s no ghosts barging into his room but the constant chaos of the city still feels homey. Overall, a ten out of ten vacation spot. 

Surely, nothing can go wrong. 

“Tim? What are you doing here?”

He’s taking a morning walk away from the hotel after he and Jazz successfully convinced their parents he would be fine on his own, and he’d stopped in front of Wayne Enterprises because Tucker would be frankly offended if he didn’t. He ignores the call at first, because he doesn’t know anyone named Tim, and it’s not his business, but that’s clearly shown to be a mistake when the call comes again but closer, and then again, but with a man putting his hand on Danny’s shoulder. He’s turns around to tell whoever it is to clear off when he actually catches sight of the guy’s face.

Sleek black hair, sky-blue eyes, a healthy tan and a very expensive suit. That’s Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne as in the guy who owns the building in front of them. Bruce Wayne as in the multi-billionaire. 

Okay, don’t get him wrong, Bruce Wayne does some pretty honourable charity work, and his tech is pretty cool and Tucker’s obsessed with it, but Danny has a very sour history with billionaires and even before he’d met Vlad he wasn’t a fan of them; being friends with Sam for long enough does that to a guy. Dealing with the fruitloop had only cemented what he already knew, and that’s that you shouldn’t trust people that rich as far as you can throw them (or, maybe just not at all, since he figures he could actually throw them pretty damn far, considering the ghost powers). 

Plus, Bruce ‘Brucie’ Wayne has this really weird habit of acting like a ditz, and quite frankly, Danny doesn’t buy it. He’s been successfully running a huge company and heading welfare campaigns for years, and if he’s truly as air-headed as he presents himself to be Vlad would’ve snatched up his company and his wealth in a heartbeat. Vlad, who is the other billionaire he knows, who is also pretending to be something he’s not with the whole ‘gentle hermit’ vibe he maintains with the press. No, there’s definitely something weird about Bruce Wayne and he hadn’t particularly wanted to meet the guy to find out what it is. 

However, it’s looking like he doesn’t have much choice, what with the man having a hand on his shoulder and being about ten inches from his face. “Uh.” He blurts eloquently. “Hi?”

“Tim,” He repeats, frowning. “Why are you here? I told you to take the day off- don’t tell me you were just planning on sneaking off to work anyway.”

Danny’s certain Tucker mentioned some co-CEO of Wayne Enterprises called Tim, and he’s fairly certain Tucker mentioned he was the same age as them and also Bruce’s ward, but do they really look similar? No one’s ever said they do to his face, and he thought that was the kind of thing people talked about- the whole ‘who’s your celebrity lookalike’. So why-?

…Tucker also mentioned that almost all of Bruce Wayne’s wards have the same black hair and blue eyes. He’d even joked how Danny ‘fit the bill’. Oh no. What if this is an obsession-with-having-a-son-just-like-him thing? Do all billionaires do that or is that just Vlad? He could really do with someone else to compare the guy to that isn’t the fruitloop right now- it’d be really great to have some kind of gauge amongst general average billionaire behaviour so that he actually knew what to do. 

Staying quiet to gather his thoughts was apparently not his greatest move, though, because the man’s frown only deepens. Bruce Wayne’s hand moves from the top of his shoulder to his arm, giving it a light squeeze that seems like it’s supposed to be comforting but really just makes him more nervous. “I’m taking you back to the manor. You were supposed to take a day off and I really think relaxing would do you some good.”

Now, there are a lot of things Danny could do to absolve this situation, and the smartest of all of them would be to inform him that there’s been a misunderstanding and that he’s just some random tourist who’d been wanting to take some pictures. 

“I— what- can’t you just leave me here? Don’t you need to go in there?” Is what he says instead, because fight, flight, or freeze apparently includes brain freeze too. His mom was right, he never should’ve been allowed out unsupervised. Why didn’t he bring Jazz with him?

“The meeting can wait, you’re more important.” The man soothes, and suddenly the hand on his arm is pulling him away, leading him over to an incredibly expensive car and Danny’s so bewildered by the whole situation he doesn’t even fight back. He stands there, limp, as Bruce Wayne opens the car doors, nudges him inside, starts the engine, and drives further and further away from Danny’s hotel. 

They’ve been driving for about twenty minutes before his stupor finally breaks, and by then they’ve fully left the bustle of the inner city and entered the sparsely populated realm of high society estates— Bristol, he thinks it was called? Doesn’t matter. He needs to get out and he needed to be out yesterday; he can’t believe he ever thought he could have a remotely sensible vacation. Let your guard down one time and you get kidnapped by a man with more money than everyone else in the state combined (though, to be fair, that sounds more normal given his circumstances than it should. Still, the billionaire being Bruce Wayne isn’t normal). 

Now, there are a lot of things Danny could do to absolve this situation, and the smartest of all of them would be tell Bruce Wayne that he’d been too shocked to refute the man, but he wasn’t actually his son, and had finally gathered his bearings to say so and was very sorry for causing him undue stress. 

Instead, Danny jumps out of a moving car. 

Distantly registering the yell of alarm and the screech of the vehicle pulling to a sudden stop, he tanks the roll and springs back up again, taking in his surroundings for all of a second before sprinting in the opposite direction of wherever they’d been going. Bruce Wayne is definitely chasing after him- he can hear the heavy footfalls pounding behind him- but Danny’s been running from his problems for years. There’s no way he’s letting them catch up to him now. 

He rounds a corner and disappears into thin air, because Batman’s not a day time hero so what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him and surely he’d get that Danny was only doing it for the sake of his personal safety. I mean, who’s he to say that Bruce Wayne doesn’t layer on his fortunes with the occasional ransom situation? …Maybe not the best excuse he’s ever come up with, but the damage is done now, and he drifts away for a few more minutes until he figures he’s far enough from his initial launch point that he can drop the invisibility. 

Looking around, he can tell that he’s definitely lost, his surroundings still reeking of big money and the actual meat of the city barely hanging on the horizon. Well, technically he’s not that lost, given that he can still see inner-Gotham from here, but he doesn’t know where the Hell his hotel is in all that grey, and the walk looks far. While he was willing to risk the momentary power-usage to get himself out of the billionaire’s sights, he figures that trying anything else would be pushing his luck a bit further than it was willing to take him. 

He must’ve been thinking about it for a lot longer than he realised, though, because he hears a quiet thud behind him, and there is now a vigilante blocking his exit. Long-ish black hair, an admonishing expression, and a black and blue outfit with a bird decal.

That’s one of the Bats. NIghtwing, he thinks? 

Aren’t they all supposed to be nighttime vigilantes?

As if hearing his questions, the taller man tuts, bringing his hands to his hips like his mom does when he breaks curfew. He hasn’t got out the electric-stick-things that he’s pretty sure the guy owns, so that’s good. “Tim,” He starts, tone starkly disappointed, and- hold on, why is Nightwing on a first name basis with the Wayne Enterprises CEO? “I thought B told you to take today off.”

Hold on, that’s a weird thing for a vigilante to know about the Wayne Enterprises CEO, and- Danny’s assuming B means Bruce Wayne- why is he using such a casual nickname for the billionaire? Do they know each other? He supposes it makes sense if they’re all in cahoots, since the Bats’ stuff does seem pretty expensive-looking, but he’d honestly kind of assumed Batman was just some rich reclusive vampire or something. Like Vlad but morally-reversed. 

Unless Batman is still a billionaire and not just funded by Bruce Wayne. Nightwing knowing the Tim guy would make sense, then, given they might see each other at rich people things. But, actually, would that make sense? Vigilante socialites don’t usually go around telling their other socialite friends that they’re vigilantes, do they?

Unless Batman is Bruce Wayne. But that’s ridiculous. He’d figured the guy was hiding something, and the hoard of children is kind of indicative of a weird guy generally, but the man being some kind of edgy bat-themed hero in his spare time was just too ridiculous. There’s no way. 

…

…Holy shit. Batman is totally Bruce Wayne. 

That means that Nightwing is probably one of Bruce Wayne’s many sons, which means that he’s one of Tim Drake-Wayne’s many brothers, which means Bruce Wayne may have called him to chase him down and bring him back to the manor. Even though they shouldn’t be doing that because he isn’t Tim Drake. 

Now, there are a lot of things Danny could do to absolve this situation, and the smartest of all of them would be tell Nightwing that by some hilarious comedy-of-errors, Bruce Wayne had mistaken him for his son Tim the CEO when he is in fact Danny Fenton the tourist, and he’s very sorry for the fuss he’s caused, but he should probably call his sister to pick him up now, thank you very much. 

Instead, Danny feints left and tries to dash out the corner he’d trapped himself in from Nightwing’s other side. Nightwing grabs him like a small dog with one arm and raises a grappling hook to the nearest roof. Danny feels like this is probably karma for all the property damage he’s caused in Amity as they’re flung violently across roofs higher than his town’s tallest apartment complex. He is quickly discovering that being airborne is actually so much worse when you’re not the one in control. 

He doesn’t have an awful lot of time to ponder this, however, because they reach what Danny assumes is the Wayne residence soon after. Nightwing does an absolutely terrifying set of flips as they careen over to the other side of the ledge the mansion is on, and lets him go when they’re on the ground to put a finger against his hear, presumably to some communication device. 

“I’ve got him, B! We’re outside the Batcave now- yep, all safe- see you in a sec!”

…They’re outside the what now?

Nightwing slings an arm over his shoulder- some mix of friendliness and making sure he doesn’t run away- and leads him into a concealed entrance against the ledge just beneath the Wayne mansion. 

He has to be hallucinating at this point. There are actual bats in here. The whole place is scary and dark and gigantic and—is that a fucking dinosaur?

“Tim!” 

And, as if just to cement how utterly absurd today has been, Bruce Wayne is striding towards them with an expression contorted by worry, and he feels bad right up until the moment the guy cups his face with his calloused hands (calloused because he’s Batman, what the Hell). “Tim, I was so worried,” He croaks. “What happened back there? Why did you jump out the car?”

Now, there are a lot of things Danny could do to absolve this situation, and finally, finally, he-

“What the Hell is happening right now.” He blurts, taking a sharp step back and letting the hand fall from his face, watching as surprise falls over the men next to him like an overcast. 

Okay, maybe not the the smartest thing he could’ve said, but not the worst thing either, and that’s probably the biggest win he’s going to get today, so he’ll take it. “What are you talking about?” Nightwing asks gently, reminding him rather neatly that he is still in an absolutely gigantic pile of shit, seeing as he’s now going to have to explain that they have all made some very big mistakes today. 

“Uh, okay, so funny story- and you have to promise not to like, beat the shit out of me or whatever-“ He ignores the horrified faces they make at that, nervousness leaking out into a hysterical laugh. “But, uh, a very bad thing has happened, and— it’s like, fine! I won’t tell anyone if you won’t tell anyone, it’s totally chill and I’m really great at keeping secrets-!”

Bruce Wayne cuts him off, looking terribly concerned. “Tim, whatever’s going on, we’ll-“

“I’m not Tim!”

The moment the words are out of his mouth, he backs away with his hands raised placatingly, panic heightened by the way the two men freeze in their tracks. “I am so sorry,” Danny chokes, figuring he can’t dig himself into any deeper of a grave than he already has. “I was just- I was outside Wayne Enterprises to take pictures and when you came up to me I had no idea what to do so I just froze, and by the time I came to I was in your car and like, I was kind of scared you were kidnapping me? Because I kind of have a history with billionaires and kidnapping so I just panicked and jumped out the car but that made everything worse ‘cause you chased me and now I’m in the Batcave and you’re Batman and-“

There is a very long pause when Danny’s words fail him. The Batcave is very quiet beyond the chittering of bats on the ceiling. 

“You have a history with billionaires and kidnapping?” Nightwing asks, like literally nothing else he’d said registered. 

Quite frankly, Danny does not want to know what their expressions are like. Averting his eyes, he replies- “That was definitely a weird thing for me to say. Sorry. Uh, yeah.”

“Are you safe?”

What is happening? “Like… right now? I mean, so long as you aren’t gonna feed me to that dinosaur then yeah; I’m just in Gotham for vacation. I don’t- it was a very nice vacation. Until like half an hour ago. Now it’s a stressful vacation.”

Bruce Wayne, to his credit, is not trying to kill him for his knowledge of the man’s secret vigilantism, which already makes him better than the only other billionaire he knows. The man drags a hand down his face, looking stressed beyond belief. “I should’ve known you weren’t Tim,” He breathes. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“Yeah, now that I’m actually hearing you talk, you sound nothing like him. Bruce, were you actually listening when he was talking to you before you shoved him in the car? This guy’s midwestern. What happened to world’s greatest detective, B?” Nightwing snorts and, wow, they’re not taking this half as badly as he thought they would. And, hey, now that he’s thinking about it, these are the first actual vigilantes he’s ever met outside of himself and Valerie, and wouldn’t it be a waste not to ask them for pointers? 

Maybe it’s not the best idea in the world, but he already knows their secret identities and they’re being chill about it, so maybe they’ll be chill with his, too. Screw it, he’s doing it. 

“Again, I promise I won’t tell anyone- I’m, ah, pretty good with secrets like this.” They turn to look at him curiously there, and he tries to talk past the lump in his throat. “I’m kind of, um, also a vigilante as well? Funny coincidence, right? Small town gig, though, nothing like Gotham! And I’ve only been on the scene a few years, so… I don’t know what I’m asking, here. Any good pointers?”

Nightwing looks thoughtful. “Does this have anything to do with the billionaire you mentioned?” He asks.

“It very much has a lot to do with the billionaire. If Vlad Masters ever asks you for anything- I dunno, punch him? He’s got a really punchable face, you’d know if you met him. It’s all creepy and shit.”

Nightwing continues asking questions as Bruce Wayne’s head remains firmly buried in his hands, and sure, maybe letting this well-established team of heroes know about his less-than-legal and more-than-ectoplasmic hobbies might come back to bite him, but right now he can’t help basking in the fact that he gets to bad-mouth Vlad to someone who Vlad will probably care about his reputation with. Everything else comes second. 

“-Hang on, you said you’ve been a vigilante for a few years, right? How old are you?”

Okay, almost everything comes second. Both men are looking at him now with something that’s probably-definitely concern and is getting worse the longer he neglects to answer, and Danny is very suddenly reminded once again that the majority of Bruce’s children fit the same appearance-criteria as he does. 

He’s just doubled his own problem, hasn’t he? It’s not just one anymore-he’s going to have to deal with two billionaires now. 

He’s never going on vacation again. 

[ecoamerica]

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

[lift-blog]

Damian Wayne is a fashion icon I fear

[boygirltreehouse]

have u ever seen a comic book panel so beautiful it made u wnna cry?

[daigah]

The current state of affairs

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

Straight up had a dream last night that DC revealed that Bart and Kon were dating and it was in the WILDEST FUCKING WAY.

K, so picture this: Clark needs someone to fly around disguised as him for a plan. So Clark goes through the options in his head: Bruce can't fly, MM is off world, Jon is too much of a twink to be believable, Kara is blonde, Kon is.... Perfect! With a person in mind who would be perfect for his plan, Clark flies off to find Kon.

Cut to Judy Garrick zipping around the Garrick's house. Joan is quietly scrapbooking at the kitchen table and Judy is bored out of her mind. Judy asks Joan if there is anything she can do because she is so unbelievably bored.

Joan responds, very calmly, that she can hear "your brother's boyfriend touching down in the backyard, so why don't you go ask him?"

Judy's face jumps from emotion to emotion as three things are revealed at once. 1) Joan considers Bart to be a son and thus, Judy's brother, 2) Judy's new brother is not straight and 3) Bart has a boyfriend who is in the backyard.

So Judy immediately runs to the backyard and is stunned to bump into Clark (who was there looking for Kon) and then the dream continued on with the two of them hunting down Bart&Kon (who were just at school being normal goddammit!!!) but the entire time Judy is secretly out for blood because she thinks that Joan was referring to Clark and that this adult man is trying to date her new little brother and Judy keeps trying to kill him but it doesn't work because Clark is Kryptonian (and oblivious to the attempted homicides).

Anyway, wild dream all around.

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID: An animatic of Stephanie Brown as Robin set to Tears over Beers by modern baseball. The images are paired with the lyrics. Stephanie as spoiler staring longingly at Bruce, Tim and Cass on a rooftop is paired with "he needed more than me". A compilation of sketches of Steph as robin go with "im friendly and thoughtful and quite awfully pretty". Finally a redraw of Steph's firing as Robin is paired with "but he needed more than me". End ID]

been trying to finish a comic for. Weeks now (just been hitting a lot blocks) and quickly threw this together as a break from it! Do you guys ever think about Stephanie Brown…

[heroesriseandfall]

Kind of funny when fanfic writers have Tim figure out Dick’s identity by seeing Robin do a quadruple flip in person, because DC writers didn’t even think of that back when they were trying to make it a rule that Robin couldn’t be seen on TV so the Batfam could be urban legends. They just still had Tim see Robin do a flip on TV and never tried to explain how Robin could be an urban legend and still have his exploits broadcasted on TV by professional news media.

[kittykatninja321]

This shit looks crazy I’m not gonna lie

[zefforuins]

Batman (1940) #426 // Batman: Arkham Knight (2015) - Arkham Knight Audio File #2 // Batman (1940) #650

[xysidhequeen]

Did Jason open up his trauma to Jazz? Since she is the group team mom

Oh my Ancients, yes. She cracked that boy open like a walnut. It took a bit, but Jazz reminds him somewhat of Barbara and Harley, so he warmed up to her fairly quickly overall. She really taught him what it's like to have a big sibling(sorry, I love Dick but he was a shit older brother before Jason died).

Jason will talk to Jazz about things he'd never say to anyone else. He actually opens up to Ember and Kitty too, but they're more for when he wants someone to cry with and to have get all enraged on his behalf. Jazz is who he talks to when he wants to fix it.

It wasn't always like that. He had to learn how to differentiate. Had to learn when he needed help, when he had things that needed to be fixed. He had to unlearn the emotional constipation and phobia of talking about his feelings he learned from Bruce too. But Jazz is used to dealing with teenage boys who won't admit they're hurting even on pain of death. She's good at subtly working their pain out and helping them confront it. (She learned a lot from helping Danny and from her Psych classes so she's more crafty about it too)

Jazz is one of the biggest reasons Jason is as stable and emotionally healthy as he is. He's not healed completely. He won't be until he gets closure with Bruce and the Joker. And there's some things that will always stick around. Trauma leaves scars. But without Jazz, we wouldn't have the Jason we do in TKAHRK we'd have someone far closer to the Jason from UTRH.

[adjit]

This was originally going to go in my post on Dick and Tim's relationship in Red Robin, but I have moved it to a separate post because while I can draw conclusions from it that ultimately serve my defense of Dick, it's kinda a whole other subject.

If you know the story of Tim's hot girl summer, you might know this: he saw a portrait of an "ancestor" of Bruce's and realized that Bruce was alive, and trapped in time, which lead him on a worldwide quest to finding clues about where and when Bruce is. This is true! However, this is not how a reader would experience the comic. Because while the first 4 issues cover most of the saga of Tim's departure from Gotham, you don't actually see that he had any proof of Bruce being alive until issue #12- the end of the arc. And this was done 100% intentionally.

Details and analysis of this under the cut!

In issue #1, this is all you get (in two separate flashbacks spaced over the issue):

A closeup shot of his face, after throwing a bit of a fit and breaking shit, suddenly saying that Bruce is alive. That's it.

It isn't until issue #12 (which was published an entire real time year later!) that you finally get to zoom out and see what actually happened:

The first four issues jump back and forth between Brucequest and the events immediately preceding Tim's departure from Gotham, and while that time is mostly covered in these issues, they withhold from the reader that Tim had any proof until after everything is over. Tim never mentions it and it isn't shown on page.

This is done very intentionally to create narrative tension! It introduces mystery and doubt!

And more importantly, for the point of this post, it introduces the specific tension that Tim isn't sure if he's right that Bruce is alive and neither is the reader.

(Granted, comics readers are going to know that Batman is alive. They don't kill off big names in comics, not forever, and in any case you can read his adventures in time in a different comic and he's clearly alive there. But that's not the point and you know it.)

When Dick, Stephanie, and Cassie all react to Tim suddenly saying Bruce is alive with alarm, confusion, or pity, the narrative is constructed so that the audience is reacting the same way.

Why was this a part of my Dick defense? Because the narrative itself is reinforcing his view. Tim is supposed to come off as unreliable, information is withheld from the readers to invoke that reaction from them as well, and the characters believing that he's reacting poorly to grief are completely understandable.

But, if you'll allow me to go on some more analysis...

As I said, Tim never mentions his proof on page. He knows he sounds crazy, and yet not in a single conversation does he bring up what caused him to think this way. Throughout the first issue especially, he also has a way of insisting that he's right in a way that makes you think he absolutely does not think he's right.

"I know I'm right until I think too hard about it" really inspires confidence. Almost as much as "he's all I have and he has to be alive." That's definitely an argument based in logic and not in grief! (<- lying)

And thinking to yourself "Oh my god, it's true" when you actually find evidence is the sign that you really actually believed it before you found that evidence!

All this to say, Tim was not at all confident in his hunch. He himself doubted whether he was right, but he latched onto the idea in his grief.

Dick wasn't even wrong to believe that Tim was only believing this because he was grieving! Because he absolutely was! Tim was doing all of this as a last ditch effort and it was absolutely motivated by him not wanting to face a world where Bruce was gone. He ended up being right, but even he doubted his own original hunch, and underneath it all knew he was grasping at straws, even though he couldn't bear to admit that out loud. So much so that he, and the narrative, never mentioned it. Not until he already knew he was right.

[figofswords]

anybody remember the stephanie brown essay I was working on under a research grant fully last summer? yeah it’s not done yet it super needs to be done and I’ve been avoiding working on it for weeks. someone tell me to just do it already

[vermillioncrown]

tpac ch 10: #JustGothamThings

back for another ride in tim's pov. and you think the answer to the poll is obvious...but is it?

[tamdrry]

Happy B-day Jay 🎉🎉🎉

[waterwindow]

Would anyone wanna do an art collab?

(Edit) i got a couple! Ty to the people who responded :]