#the batman mantle. or whatever. but no i guess she buys all of the batman merch in gotham city

[apopcornkernel]

you ever see a post that for the first few sentences or so you're like YESSSS YES YESSS FINALLY SOMEONE WHO GETS IT and then you keep reading and. Oh. Never mind. You somehow just. completely went off the rails again

[zorilleerrant]

Scenes from Earth 420 (a batfam fic I’m working on)

Bruce: And he said, ‘who are you’ and I said, ‘I’m the goddamn Batman.’

Casey: Wait…you’re…Batman?

Ollie: …

Tony: …

Lex: …

Van (laughing): Brucie, Batman? No, he’s, no, we’re just the world’s hugest Batfans, I have, do you know I have three of the old Batsuits? Brucie got them signed for me.

Bruce: Yeah, I’m not Batman.

Van: He just likes Batman.

Bruce: Yeah. What he said. I just like Batman.

Van: A little too much, if you ask me. I mean, this is, we are talking about a guy who, you know, punches clowns for a living.

Bruce: Someone’s got to clean up Gotham’s clown problem.

Tony: For…for a living….

Lex: To be fair to Bruce, he doesn’t just punch clowns.

Ollie: In the major teamups, we mostly fight aliens.

Tony: In the major major teamups, we mostly fight Nazis.

Lex: And that one time, he fought the school board over giving Jason a suspension.

Bruce: That wasn’t fair. I wanted to kill his math teacher, too.

Tony: Did you tell him that?

Bruce: I did tell him that, yeah.

Van: Aw, Brucie, you can’t be telling math teachers you want to kill them. I mean, I get it, but, babe, that’s not the way. Now, what I would do –

Bruce: Yeah, we get it, you’d bribe them.

Tony: I’d bribe them, too.

Ollie: Don’t act like you’re above bribery, Bruce.

Bruce: I did bribe them. Eventually.

Lex: I’d send drones to their houses with polite notes, for the implicit threat.

Tony: Aw, I want to change my answer.

Casey: I’d break into their house and start slightly rearranging the furniture, then leaving little notes in their handwriting about what a terrible error they’d made, and writing things backwards on the mirror and stuff. Then making ghost noises. And start drugging their water so they’d get paranoid and prone to believing you when you whisper how they’ve wrong Jason into their ears so they reverse their decision.

Tony: I want to change my answer again.

Casey: As an educator, though, I would prefer the bribe.

Bruce: Yeah, I’ll start with the bribe, next time.

 ...

Bruce: I really hope that’s all of them. I said I’d get Wednesday home by 8.

Dick: Wait, Wednesday?

Wednesday: Dinah won’t be Robin, anymore. She says she will choose only to honor her mother from this point on, and I support her.

Dick: By refusing to help us?

Bruce: She’s working on a science project, it’s fine. Homework first.

Wednesday: She isn’t refusing to help. She simply wants to help with the mantle most suited to her legacy. And not to erase her metahuman heritage. A worthy goal, I think.

Dick: Right. But not you. You’re okay erasing your metahuman heritage and, uh, implicitly dishonoring your mother, I guess?

Wednesday: I’m going through a teenage rebellion.

Dick: As Robin.

Bruce: Don’t judge her. You did the same thing.

 ...

Bruce: Shouldn’t you be doing something more. Computery.

Barbara: Why? I already know too much about computers.

Helena (eating popcorn): We have this theory that it’s not just metahumans running around, but we need access to labs to test that.

Bruce: So use my labs, Helena, I told you, mi casa whatever the fuck.

Helena: Thank you, but I’m a strong, independent woman with no need for any kind of Batlab whatsoever. I do my own work with my own bootstraps.

Bruce: Oh shit. I’m a terrible dad. I’m sorry, Helena, I didn’t mean –

Barbara: She’s joking. We need access to peer review.

Bruce: By. By the fish?

Helena (throwing popcorn): By the fish scientists, Bruce.

Bruce: Oh, thank god, that makes more sense.

Barbara: Anyway, my latest line of research is into clownfish symbiosis. There’s actually a lot of promising genetic connections.

Bruce: Clownfish are metahumans? Like. Nemos.

Helena (laughing): Don’t bother, Babs, he’s not going to get it.

Barbara: I can give you my latest paper if you want.

Bruce: Oh. Uh. Interesting.

Barbara (also laughing): You could ask Lex for the highlights. He read it. And enjoyed it.

Bruce: Right, right. So. Uh. Koi.

Helena: Koi are not metahumans, Bruce.

Barbara: Was that really a concern.

Bruce: Cats, dogs? Horses? What are the ethical implications, here. Should I worry?

Barbara: We’re finding out about potential mutations, Bruce, it’s not suddenly going to make dogs hyperintelligent or anything.

Bruce: Ace will find that very relieving, thank you.

Helena: And don’t worry! If any of the clownfish decide to be supervillains, I’ll fight them for you, I promise.

Bruce: Thank you, Helena. I didn’t want to say anything.

 ...

Bruce: Dick!

Dick: Hi, Bruce. Hi, um. We haven’t been introduced, I think.

Bruce: What? This is Halvy. You love Halvy.

Dick: Who the fuck is Halvy*, Bruce. No offense, Halvy.

Halvy: No, that’s fair.

Bruce: You know! With the koi pond?

Dick: The koi – from the youtube videos? You brought the guy from the youtube videos to visit me at school, Bruce?

Bruce: Well, yeah. Halvy’s my best friend.

Dick: Since when??

Bruce: I don’t know. Two. Three months, now? Three months? How long we been building the koi pond Halvy?

Halvy: A year and a half, if you include when I dug the hole.

Dick: Wait, you’re building the pond? Those are. Those are your videos.

Bruce: Yeah? Me and Lex and Halvy. Didn’t you watch the videos.

Dick: Look, if you’d told me this was your project…

Bruce: You didn’t watch them. You just pretended to watch them. To patronize me.

Dick: I have a lot going on, Bruce.

Bruce: Helena watched them. Helena’s a better son than you.

Dick: Yes, but Helena - Wait. Is this the guy that kidnapped me that one time?

Bruce: He didn’t kidnap you. We had a lovely dinner. That’s not kidnapping.

Halvy: Well, to be fair to me, I did mean to kidnap him, but I forgot to buy rope.

Dick: Oh my god! It is you!

Bruce: He fed both of us, and the food was actually decent, and not even poisoned. You act like you’ve never been kidnapped, Dick. He even gave you wine.

Dick: I had a French test!

Bruce: You already speak French, Dick, I don’t see the problem.

Dick: He threatened me at gunpoint! And now you’re building koi ponds with him!

Bruce: He’s reformed.

Halvy: It’s really just the one koi pond.

Bruce: See? Nothing to worry about.

*Halvy is an alternate universe version of Two Face not originally from Earth 420, but transported there some years ago, replacing that world’s original. He does have a fairly elaborate backstory but it’s not relevant here.

 ...

Bruce: For the last time, Damian, no, you cannot murder Richie Rich and replace him with a dinosaur.

[flamecanary]

Batwoman Season Two: Thoughts & Theories

So, we’ve had a few weeks to sit and ingest all of the news regarding the second season of Batwoman, and I have a lot of Thoughts. 

First off, though, I want to say that I think the casting of Javicia Leslie as the new Batwoman is pretty great! It’s wonderful that we’re seeing a Black woman step into the role, and I think it’s amazing that this whole group of heroes - Batwoman, Luke Fox’s eventual Batwing, Sophie Moore - are people of colour. (Where Nicole Kang’s Mary Hamilton falls into that, I’m not sure. She’s clearly a suspiciously similar canon foreigner substitute for Bette Kane, but with Kate gone, I wonder if she’s ever going to put on a cape and a cowl and become either Bat-Girl, Flamebird, or Hawkfire. Granted, this is a completely different discussion, so moving on…) I bear no ill will towards the actress, and I hope that they write material that does her justice and allows her to shine. 

Having said that, though, I still kind of disagree with the showrunners’ plan to write Kate Kane out and bring in a new character. My main issue isn’t that they’re changing who Batwoman is, but their reasons for WHY they’re changing the character. Caroline Dries is on record as saying that they didn’t want fans to “address the elephant in the room” with having a new face portraying the face of Kate Kane. Here’s the thing: A major plot thread of the first season is people getting new faces, from Mouse wearing many identities (and seeking out a permanent new face of his own when he was younger), to August Cartwright wearing a new face and changing his identity, to Alice taking Duela Dent’s face and masquerading as her for a moment, to that final twist with Hush at the premature end of the season. If any audience is ready and primed for the main character to suddenly show up with a brand-new face, it’s the audience for Batwoman. And there are options here too - explanations ranging from not even mentioning the change apart from saying something along the lines of “did you change your hair?” to explaining it away as a delayed aftershock from the Crisis changing Kate’s face so she now resembles the Batwoman of another Earth. It’d be a fairly seamless way of continuing on the world that the showrunners set up in the first season. 

Which brings us to the first big problem of swapping out Kate Kane for a new character. The entire world of Batwoman so far has been created to affect Kate on a number of levels - her sister is her enemy, her father is enemy to her caped and cowled persona, her romantic and social entanglements are related both to Kate herself and to her cousin, Bruce Wayne. It’s not as easy to take Kate out of the equation and drop in this Ryan Wilder character, when Ryan has none of the relations that Kate does. The entire supporting cast is deeply related to both the Kanes and/or the Waynes in one way or another. Now, it’s easy to see how Ryan would be brought into the world of Batwoman. She’s on the run, she’s living out of her van, she’s clearly a little hard-up in life. An easy scenario would be to have Mary chance upon an injured Ryan and bring her into her secret clinic, and from there, it’s easy to see how she could get entangled into the Batwoman persona, especially with the plot thread from last season when there were Batwoman impersonators running around trying to protect Gotham when Kate had given up the cape and cowl for a few weeks. It’s not a perfect solution, especially since Ryan lacks the ties to the Batfamily that Kate had, but it’s also not the first time that someone unrelated to the Batfamily has tried to take on a Batmoniker. (Misfit, what’s good?) 

Honestly, the best way to move forward would be to phase out some of the elements of the first season that are Kate-specific and bring in new elements created to tie specifically to Ryan. The Wonderland Gang and Alice’s motivation don’t make sense anymore, since Kate is gone. Swapping out the Wonderland Gang (as well as the threat of Safiyah Sohail and the rest of Coryana) for something like the Religion of Crime - perhaps led by Whisper A’daire - would work - given that they’re setting up Ryan to have been a drug runner, she could easily have been one with ties to the Religion of Crime. It’d be an easy way to give Ryan foes of her own to fight and establish herself as Batwoman, while using classic Batwoman villains. The show is starting out by tying Ryan’s origin to Scarecrow, and that’s a great place to start out, but Batwoman deserves more than just oft-used Batman villains.

As for Alice herself, well, Rachel Skarsten is a phenomenal actress. For a time in the comics, Alice starts calling herself Red Alice and seeks out redemption. With Kate gone, it’d make sense for this version of Allice to go down a similar path, maybe trying to live up to be the person that Kate believed she could be. Red is an important colour both to Kate and Alice, so it’d be easy to see why Alice would start calling herself Red Alice in an effort to distance herself from her old, villainous persona. (Perhaps it’s also accepting the “red on her ledger” that she’s trying to wipe clean?)

As far as Ryan Wilder’s identity goes, I’m not sure I buy that the character’s name is Alice. The DCTV universe has a habit of using familiar names in new ways - it’s how we got both a Dinah Laurel Lance and a Dinah Drake on Arrow, after all - so it’s not unheard of that Ryan may just be a placeholder name until the character’s true identity is revealed. There are a number of options as to who Ryan Wilder’s actual identity might be, though currently the front runner in my mind is Kathy Duquesne, the Batwoman from Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman. While that version of Batwoman was one of three women using the name, and the wealthy daughter of a gangster, the DCTV shows have never been particularly beholden to other continuities when adapting characters, and out of all of the possible characters that could be adapted, Kathy is a strong contender. (Given that her surname is pronounced Du-Kane, well, she even sounds a bit like Kate Kane.) 

The second option as for who it might be is Onyx Adams, though we have already (briefly) had a version of Onyx Adams appear in the Arrowverse before. Of course, that was pre-Crisis, and who is to say she wasn’t a casualty of continuity resetting itself? Sure, this might be the League of Assassins badass that was present in the comics, but she is a vaguely bat-related character, though never one who wore the mantle of a Bat. (There were rumours for a while, years ago, that she was going to be the next Black Canary in the comics, though that obviously never came to pass.) 

There are many other canon characters who Ryan Wilder could turn out to be, though they all seem very doubtful, such as Katrina Netz/Kathy Webb-Kane of Spyral, Katrina Moldoff from the Brave and the Bold animated series, Elainna Grayson from the current Batman Beyond comics, or even Violet Paige, who is Mother Panic in the comics, but could easily just be Batwoman here. Of course, if it does turn out that her name is just Ryan Wilder, this isn’t the first time that live action DC has created a new civilian identity for a familiar costumed character. Catwoman had her Patience Philips, after all. 

One of the things I’d like to see is Ryan Wilder getting a Batwoman costume of her own. As wonderful as Kate’s Batwoman costume is (though that wig did get a little unwieldy and weirdly styled sometimes), Ryan deserves her own look and her own identity. If Betty Kane, Barbara Gordon, Helena Bertinelli, Cassandra Cain, and Stephanie Brown could all have their own looks as Batgirl, then Ryan deserves her own look as well. I’d earlier posted a John Byrne look from the 90s which would be an interesting place to jump off from, but then there’s also the greyed out version of the costume from Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman, as well as the more traditional black and gold look that Cassandra Cain sported as Batwoman in a possible future. Whatever direction they go, Ryan deserves to have her own identity with a familiar codename, and let’s hope that the show does right by her in that regard. 

How well this retooling is going to go is anybody’s guess, but Batwoman is an important character in the DC mythos - both in the comics and the tv universe - and I really hope that they do right by her and by the legacy being left behind by Kate Kane.

[britaisy]

Writing suggestion num.1

@smalltalkerr ‘Tim Drake actually going to Ivy University and becoming the worlds greatest detective (not a superhero literally a detective) and Damian as future Batman’

---------------------

Life has a funny way of proving people wrong. One day your whole being is scorched deep into stone, and then you blink an eye and all of a sudden everything takes a 180 degree, it leaves one able to utter only two simple words: “Well, shit”

When Tim Drake graduated from Ivy University with a criminology degree under his belt after being adamant that the education system was a pile of shit and being certain that whatever university had to offer, he had already learned, that’s exactly what he had said. Well, shit. Of course, he would have never enrolled into university had Bruce Wayne not ‘discreetly’ persuaded him into joining. It had taken many arguments for him to finally accept. They usually started with Tim saying something along the lines of “I am not wasting three years of my life in a leisure programme when I could be doing some real work. These are 1,095 days, Bruce. Lots of days, who’s going to be doing all the investigating work? Damian? He’s far too impatient. Dick is busy with Bludhaven and Jason, well, Jason spends him time with a Superman clone and an Amazon shooting up mob bosses. You need me.”

Bruce would remain calm, his stoic face as unwavering as always, and respond: “You spend your days in the batcave, hardly going out, Alfred is getting concerned, Dick is getting concerned, and frankly so am I. University will help you adjust in society. As for help, you forget, we got Barbara, Duke, Cassandra, Stephanie, Kate.”

“So, you are saying I am useless?”

“I am saying that what you are doing to yourself with lead you to a path that you will not escape from. When was the last time you even took a shower?”

 Those days had been mentally exhausting, one argument piling up on the other until the mere implication of university caved into Tim’s taut nerves. Tim hated to admit it and he would certainly never vocalise it, but Bruce had been right. University had changed him. He was still an incurable introvert with severe caffeine addictions and an unhealthy dose of cynicism, but he had learned a couple of things about people that he would have never learned in the batcave. Besides, the parties had been shockingly fun.  Those mere three years had eventually led him to an entirely different path than the one he had initially planned out for himself. He had been Robin, then the Red Robin and now he was the world’s best private detective, working restlessly in Gotham. Not that bad. Not that bad, at all.

Of course, his occupation meant haphazard working hours. Mostly, he was always working, it could be twelve at night or three in the morning, Tim Drake could be out on the job with a matching coffee cup in hand. It was a good thing he only needed three hours of sleep to recharge. But, he wasn’t the only eccentric with questionable habits in Gotham who worked unorthodox hours. Night time in Gotham still belonged to the one and only Batman. Only Bruce Wayne was no longer the Batman, the round age of seventy had taken its toll even on the stubborn billionaire. After his x-rays begun resembling something out of a sci fi movie, he had retired. Damian Wayne, former assassin, former (annoying) Robin, son of Bruce Wayne was now wearing Batman’s mantle and that was who Tim out to meet tonight.

The man was standing in the alley where he had been told to wait, one hand in the pocket of his long trench coat, the other holding his coffee. He heard the faintest sound of rustling in the wind, a sound that would have gone unnoticed to the untrained ear.

Tim chuckled when he turned around, not the least surprised when he was face to face with Batman.

“Trying to spook me?” he mocked.

“If I had you would have noticed.”

“Touché” Tim smiled.

“I need your help.”

Just like his father, straight onto the point.

“I assumed so.” Tim said, sipping his coffee, waiting for Batman to continue.

Batman fished out some files that he had been hiding under his cape. He handed them over to Tim, the front page was dominated by the blurry, stained picture of a grey-haired severe-looking woman.

“She’s been gone for two months. She’s from the Narrows, but my sources say she used to be an assassin in her younger years, she was even employed by Raz Al Gul, at one point. Father always kept a close eye on her, even though she seemed to be in retirement. All her things are in her flat, but she’s gone, no signs of struggle, either.”

“If she did work for the League of Shadows, wouldn’t you have better access on the case, considering who you are?” Tim asked, though his eyes were solely focused on the woman’s face, despite the dim light provided by a lone lamppost, he was already skimming through the information in the folder.

“The League hasn’t been very accessible to me lately” there was a bitter coldness in his voice. “Seems as if they are hiding something.”

“Hence the name. You are not exactly one of them anymore, Damian.” Tim tore his eyes from the paper to look at him. Despite the mask, Tim could tell the young man was frowning, he had always been more expressive than Mr. Bruce Deadpan Wayne.

“I am no stranger to them, either. I was supposed to be the demon’s head.” He argued

“And you turned that position down once you chose being Batman, which honestly, I am glad you did. It would be a pain in the ass battling with you.”

Damian smirked, satisfied with his words. “That, I agree with. But, back to the point. I need you to find her. I want to know what she’s up to. I would have done it myself, but Gotham is keeping me busy.”

“You know…it’s not bad to admit that I can get this job far more easily done than you. I am the world’s Greatest Detective, after all.” Tim shot him a shit-eating grin.

“Show off.”

Tim laughed. “Anyway, I can get the job done. I’ll need five days, the fancy jet with the espresso maker, some cash, around three thousand dollars, and a new coat” he tucked onto his tacky coat’s collar. “Mine is worn. A detective is only as good as his trench coat.”

“Sure, just make sure you don’t ruin the espresso machine this time.” Batman replied.

“Noted.” He looked back at the picture. “From what I can tell you this far is that this woman was never retired. An assassin who had worked with the League of Shadows would retire in glory in an island and buy an extravagant mansion. She chose the Narrows, an unlikely area, she was living in a poor multiblock. She was hiding, she didn’t want a certain somebody to find her, somebody she really feared. Judging from the fact that her last job was with the League of Shadows, my guess is that somebody there has a grudge against her.”

Tim knew that Batman’s silence meant that what he had said made perfect sense to him.

“When will you be ready to start?” he asked.

“I have to sleep for three hours and then I’ll be good to go.” Tim replied.

“Good.” Batman smiled. “Pleasure doing business with you as always, Drake.”

Tim smiled, the man looked down at his lower pocket, patting himself to find his pad. But, as soon as he looked back, Batman had disappeared into the night.

“Can’t believe the kid got me.”