#hal is even MORE busy than clark always getting called off to space and shit

[shoot-i-messed-up]

One of the hardest things about writing superlantern is figuring out what’s the deal with clois in this universe…they’re literally soulmates….why is clark with hal and not lois….

[navpike]

TumblrFrostbite's AU Questions: If Dick Grayson had never been Batman's sidekick, but just his ward, his foster child, and never knew Batman's true identity during the Bat's second year as a costumed vigilante, how different would Grayson's life be if he never became Robin? And what happens if Batman never had a partner to rely on during his early years of crime fighting? Note: This alternate scenario could happen in any DC continuity. ANY DC continuity.

hey so this is in my unholy mashup of only the things i like from various DC continuities. i’m not sorry. [i am sorry this took me so damn long to answer though, lmao i’m trash] also this got a lot out of hand so. suffer with me children.

so. i think that if dick had never been robin, just bruce’s ward, then we’d have A Lot more angst. like, A Lot.

without dick to lighten things up for him on the streets, we’d definitely have a batman who is a lot more violent and ruthless with his criminals and who is likely not as close with the league, as he doesn’t have a robin that all the other leaguers come to see as almost their son. batman remains a mysterious ‘sometimes’ figure in the league who scares all of the other leaguers just by existing in their general space.

without robin, and without an explanation for why bruce is always gone and sometimes disappears for extended periods of time without telling him, we’d have a dick grayson who is afraid to trust as easily as he did when he first came into bruce’s care. all he sees from a young age is that his guardian doesn’t care enough to stick around with him, that bruce only took him in as a charity case for some good press, despite what alfred’s constantly telling him. alfred disappears sometimes too. what else is dick supposed to think? so his relationship with bruce is severely strained right from the start and dick moves into bruce’s penthouse in gotham city when he’s 16 because he can’t stand to be alone in such a huge empty house all the time.

and then jason comes and jason isn’t robin either, because there was no dick to set the precedent. dick is furious that the second he’s gone, bruce has replaced him with what he sees as another charity case, neither of them knowing that batman and bruce are the same person, that bruce saw a starving child stealing his tires and doing god knows what else to support himself and wanted to help, to give him a better life than that. neither of them really know what bruce’s real motivations are for anything he does. it makes jason wary and that makes him angry. it makes dick upset and that makes him even more mother hen-like, so by the time jason’s been bruce’s son for a year, he’s spending most of his time with dick in the penthouse. alfred visits them often and brings groceries and meals sometimes, because dick isn’t exactly the best cook, though he tries his best. the same way dick became a father figure for damian in bruce’s absence, he does the same for jason, only this dick is barely 17 and he’s still trying to figure out how best to take care of himself, let alone care for this child that his father has decided it best to take in again, when he could barely be a good parent to the first child he swept off the streets of gotham.

dick doesn’t understand why bruce just does these things. does he think he’s helping? obviously it’s better for jason to have a roof over his head than to be on the streets, and it’s better for dick to have a real home to live in than the shit place he was dealing with when bruce came for him. but why not find them families elsewhere? why take on kids when he couldn’t handle it? when he couldn’t even be bothered to spend time with them?

and then tim comes along, still curious about the gotham bat, and it doesn’t take him long to figure out that bruce wayne is always out of gotham whenever batman is and he’s always seemingly unavailable whenever the bat’s busy. he’s a very good detective. so the first thing he does is track down his son and his ward. they’ve got to know their father/guardian is the batman.

[spoilers, they don’t. tim tells them.]

there’s a long period of dick trying to keep tim away from jason [jay has come to live with him all but permanently by now, bruce has fallen further into the bat without his robin to keep him grounded] and then jason’s starting to wonder why the hell this kid is being so persistent, he’s not threatening to go public with any of this, he just wants to talk to dick and jason. so they hear him out and. wow. everything tim says makes So Much Sense.

the three of them confront bruce about it.

it goes predictably Horrible.

but after a while there’s an understanding. dick is a little less upset about the way bruce has always treated them and acted as a parental figure. jason is less angry. it’s a huge blowout, but it’s… cathartic. it’s good for everyone involved.

except maybe tim. he’s a little intimidated. not gonna stop what he’s doing, but a little concerned about the family dynamic a bit.

tim’s mother is murdered and his father is paralyzed, and dick, ever the bleeding heart, makes a point of taking the drake case when it hits the homicide department of the gotham pd, checks up on tim whenever he can and makes sure to stop by the drakes home as often as he can.

then tim’s father dies when he’s sixteen and then tim’s a wayne and he’s the batman’s first sidekick. red bat takes to the streets with the gotham bat and he’s… noticably More Chill. tim is a detective before he’s some crazy brute with a vengeance dressed like a bat. batman becomes… a little more human. not by much but a little more. gotham’s criminals notice but everyone is still justifiably terrified of the bat.

dick, jason and tim get an uncle clark. and their aunt diana. and barry and hal and j’onn and arthur.

one day when a particularly nasty injury has bruce laid up in the watch tower, tim brings dick and jason up to see him. it’s a generally awful experience, they don’t know if bruce will be able to pull through for a bit, and then wally west is there, and suddenly dick has a new best friend and just one more superhero in his phone contacts. through wally, dick meets roy harper and the titans, and jason makes friends too. it’s… an upside to an all around awful situation for bruce’s kids.

and then damian shows up. and that’s a whole other can of worms. damian shows up and everyone has to readjust and then bruce goes and dies [disappears in time] and suddenly there’s no batman, and tim can’t take up that mantle. not yet. so in a series of terrible decisions, dick takes it. he trains with tim for a way too short period of time and then he’s batman. he makes damian his sidekick. gives him a name his mother used to call him. damian becomes his robin. tim goes off on his own, develops more as the leader of the titans, makes a name for himself and dick is a proud older brother. dick makes a decent batman, much as he hates the way he has to act, does a good job bringing damian out of the toxic mindset his mother had put him into, and tim is a proud mentor. 

tim finds bruce and brings him back and gotham has her batman back and batman has a robin and dick lets that go, but he can’t stop thinking about what it was like to save people that way. he thinks and he thinks and then clark tells him a kryptonian story about nightwing and flamebird and dick knows he wasn’t meant to let it go. 

dick grayson becomes nightwing, because there is no universe in which he can keep himself from helping those in need, and gotham becomes that much safer. [tim’s proud that dick’s joining the family business, that his brother’s doing something that makes him happy, if he is a bit worried about dick’s well-being like, always]

and then jason sees what all of his brothers are doing, sees that they’re all helping people like this and he can’t help but want to do that too. and he’s still living in the penthouse with dick so his older brother is the first one he talks to. 

jason todd becomes flamebird, dick grayson trains him, makes him a hero, just like the rest of their family, though jason’s just a touch more violent than the others, and the world seems to right itself again.