#the thing abt jason is that he is a fascinating character and all but i just dont want to deal with his fans at all whatsoever

[mamawasatesttube]

trying to codify rules for running that lil followers only "we must fix the kon tags" minibang and i think this is the funniest one ive come up with so far:

NO jason todd allowed.

exceptions can be made for background tentatodd ONLY

[vivi-scera]

hi hi! so i just found your answer to an ask about johndean, and i got immensely surprised when you mentioned about batman and robin, which i assume bruce and dick, not the other batman and robin combination, and im curious about what do you think about them! i quite recently got into comics, and im so fascinated by their mutual codependency and dick's devotion towards bruce, and how bruce sees dick as his peer/partner despite their age differences before growing into a more parental role, and i wanna hear your opinions abt them :D

hey so. come off anon so we can make out.

dick grayson, the first robin and batman's lacanian phallus. ugh many things to say and think about. i wasn't necessarily referring to just bruce and dick— i think all of the subsequent robins have their own neat fucked-up relationships with bruce, in each their own ways. more fucked-up in that they see him as more their father than dick does, like you mentioned. i like thinking about jason-robin's relationship with bruce the most but i like tim as robin best. i think i was mostly thinking bruce/jason since i was talking about johndean but since you asked about bruce/dick i'll expand on them the most.

some may think brudick is the least problematic of all the possible bruce/son pairings since dick doesn't necessarily think of bruce as his father. which is true, he already had a good relationship with his father and didn't need/want a replacement in bruce like the other robins do. but a huge part of his characterization (during his robin years at least) is his insistence on being bruce's equal. you'll see tons of canon material— tv shows, comics, games, etc.— wherein dick insists that he's batman's partner, not his sidekick. many such connotations about the word "partner" as we all know. and there are popular interpretations about the queer subtext in batman comics. guy who cannot be his true self in the public sphere and thus parades around in fetishistic costumery in secrecy. you know how it is. but not only in batman's character— there was a huge outcry about the homoerotic imagery/subtext between batman and dick-robin in the 40's and 50's (see The Seduction of the Innocent), so I'm not pulling this shit out of my ass. not that i'm saying there's canon truth/weight to these interpretations. they are just that. interpretations.

anyway. not only is dick batman's partner, he's also bruce's partner. his lighter, brighter counterpart. bruce sees himself in dick, and also wants to prevent dick from becoming him (see young justice season 1 episode 22 for THE BEST interpretation of batman/dick's relationship. or just young justice in general). no one else is bruce's partner/equal quite like dick is (jason, tim, etc. are more his sons as mentioned. and they also, unlike dick, possess the fault of actually wanting to become batman, or some version of him). just as batman is responsible for robin's creation, so does robin-dick, in turn, shape batman's character. bruce didn't make dick his/a son as much as dick-robin made bruce-batman a dad. just maybe not his own father. fucked-up of dick to be jealous of jason getting bruce's fatherly-attention but not necessarily even wanting it himself. but it's okay, he made him a father! dick himself, in being the first to create robin, might even be the father-mother of bruce's other children and therefore has a higher role as batman's literal partner. one of my favorite developments in comics EVER is dick becoming damian's pseudo-father/batman. the first quasi-son becoming a father figure to his mentor-father's biological son. canonically, dick even wanted to adopt damian. but none of this can/does make dick bruce's true equal (bruce's true equal is batman, and vice-versa). i'm going to be actively problematic and say that bruce sees dick as something less than his partner and something more than his son. i'd LOVE to see a fic that explores dick's drive to become batman's equal/partner and the proverbial wires crossing because of that drive. i think at this point i'm just gonna have to write it myself 😔.

speaking in a meta-narrative sense, dick was introduced as batman's foil. robin (not necessarily dick, just the role) must project an idealized image of that which must be protected. he is representative of the hope that batman has in not only gotham's future, but his own. there is no point in batman if he doesn't believe he can save the future. in batman managing to save robin, he succeeds in saving gotham. but i mean, does that ever really happen? does batman ever really "save" robin/gotham? if the nature of robin is that which must be protected, robin is also a representative role that must be preserved in order to allow batman to save (and fail in order to save) gotham over and over and over again. robin exists/represents a future gotham that doesn't need batman and stands as a reminder to batman what he chooses to fight for, but robin cannot occupy that future himself (since robin is a condition created by batman and can't exist without him. a perfect gotham would neither need robin or batman. the existence of robin implies that there is a gotham that needs saving and that there is a batman that needs to save gotham). so herein lies the paradoxical tragedy of dick grayson. he needs to grow up in order to be batman's equal (and/or to be his partner in the romantic sense), but batman needs robin to justify his existence. robin, the role, by definition cannot grow up in order to meet his own condition for existence— he cannot exist in the future. when the boy behind the mask is killed/grows up, he ceases to be robin and someone else fills in the role. even when dick grayson grows up and becomes batman himself, he still cannot meet bruce-batman as his equal.

there's a great btas episode "the trial" that explores the idea that batman's existence is the condition that creates the very villains he's meant to stop. whether i agree with that statement is another topic. but it's an interesting and valid idea nonetheless. if robin symbolizes all that is at risk of and must be protected from "perversity" (both in the connotative and literal meaning of the word) what does it mean when the birth of batman is representative of gotham's perversion? you can see why i have issues with the statement that batman is the real cause of all evil in gotham. while i think that it's true that batman is a perversion he is just as much a persona created to do good and does succeed in doing good. he is, very much, the john winchester of comics if you'd like to think about it that way.

anyway this totally got too meta-y, sorry. i do think each robin's relationship with bruce brings up some more interesting questions i'd love to explore (and be asked to explore!!!). can batman ever save robin/jason? can robin/tim ever save batman? as damian, son of bruce, what does it mean to be robin, son of batman? thx for the ask <3

[ectonurites]

Also re:YJ cartoon, as far as i remember we have no clue or at least very little what’s going on in the Bats’ personal lives? When did Jason come into their lives? I’ve skimmed YJ fics that had Jason adopted and living with them behind the scenes of season 1, which is weirdly plausible, bc we know nothing about their day-to-day lives! And like, I personally cannot remember if we know what the deal with Tim’s parents is or if he’s been adopted by Bruce or anything. We don’t even really see him interact with Bruce in any meaningful way iirc? They haven’t even spoken about Jason at all, so if they’re planning to bring him back as the Red Hood/that red ninja guy, that’s gonna have like... zero emotional impact for the audience, especially the people who have no clue who he is bc they skipped him and never mentioned him! It’s a mess!!

I do kinda like Damian being a baby though on some level, ngl. Definitely gets rid of that weird “he was artificially aged!” thing from the comics brought about by Morrison not bothering trying to understand the timeline

YEAH NO IT's.... none of it gets mentioned at all which is... on the one hand yes I understand this isn't a show about the batfam, but on the other IF YOU'RE GOING TO INCLUDE A TON OF BATFAM STUFF YOU SHOULD AT LEAST EXPLAIN SOME OF IT.

Like... season one is honestly the only season that did show us what I consider an appropriate amount of a look into everyone's lives outside the hero stuff, like considering everything going on. We did have like a tiny bit of time at the manor where we saw Bruce and Dick interacting that helped to establish what their relationship was like, etc. And I feel that for each of the initial main team members we got stuff like that where applicable (not really for Raquel tho because she joined so late)

But in seasons 2 & 3 they just keep introducing a million characters without elaborating on the vast majority of them! We only know Bruce is Tim's legal guardian because of Greg's blog, it's not ever discussed in the show itself. No clue on if Cass is adopted now too or not since she got introduced but again was not elaborated on at all. And yeah, like sure they've left a handful of Jason hints across time (his memorial, him showing up in that one part alongside other dead heroes with the goode goggles in season 3, etc) but that's stuff you'll only pick up on if you know who he is, and not every fan of the YJ cartoon knows about him!

The YJ cartoon falls in this fascinating place of 'leaves a lot of things unexplained that you will only get if you read the comics' and 'changes so many things that will actively piss off people who read the comics'

Baby Damian is conceptually something i'm fine with its just how it throws all the ages outta whack in such an extreme way (almost feels like some 'me complaining abt how Tim & Damian's comic age difference got shortened from the original 7 years to like 3 in current comics, so the YJ cartoon said ok then lets MORE THAN DOUBLE the original' monkeys paw bullshit) I just wish he'd been like a toddler or something (closer to Lian's age in that season) so you could assume he was conceived during the original 5 year gap between seasons 1 & 2. I just feel that'd line up better, especially if they want to more properly introduce him at some point.

[whetstonefires]

While i was rifling thru your fic tag like a half-starved raccoon in a cake tin I found your clone Damian's fic & i'm in LOVE! And like, do u hav anymore meta on that verse? like how do the rest of the fam find out? how do they REACT?! how does Damian? does the heretic clone still exist? Just reading abt tim with a bunch of tiny dami's gave me heart palpitations. Thank you for this gift.

(In reference to this post.)

Why thank you!

It’s vaguely inspired by some meta @cerusee and @audreycritter did about what if Damian was one of several identical clones, but I’ve been fascinated by the character potential suggested by Damian having been cloned since Talia first revealed it, so.

Let’s see.

I don’t think the Heretic still exists, not in the form we saw. This story fragment sort of assumes Talia went less crazy than they made her for the whole Leviathan storyline; she doesn’t regard the clones as sons the way she does Damian (she totally relied on cloning to get him perfectly matched organ replacements, like that spine) but she’s not “sons are born to die in battle” “let’s grow him big inside a WHALE” levels of whacked out.

She hasn’t fully committed to having them compete to be selected as the official Damian #2, either, because she’s still attached to the original, though the growing prospect of that was a lot of the reason they ran for it. One of them might have wound up as the Heretic, in another timeline? But it was a timeline that diverged long before they fled the League.

So they make it to Tim’s emergency van without being intercepted, and get as far as his secure site on city limits, but they have to fight their way through the last leg of that trip and to make it inside the bunker, and it’s supplied for a siege but not really big enough for eight people, even if seven of them are small, and also staying there and being besieged would draw the attention of the Bats, which defeats the whole purpose of not making for the Cave/calling reinforcements.

So he calls his friends for extraction, and they all wind up in Kansas.

Tim puts off contacting the family until the clones have with his guidance sorted out exactly how they want to present themselves.

Unfortunately, the last stage of the ninja battle was showy enough not to be overlooked, so his absence was noticed much sooner than he expected, and regarded as more worrying. On the second day Dick calls Kon to see if he knows where Tim’s gotten to, and Kon fails to lie adequately.

Dick can’t pressure Kon as easily as he can most people because last time he asked Kon for a favor Kon came to the North Pole and died for him.

Which is the kind of thing even Nightwing isn’t veteran enough not to take seriously.

But he still calls his bluff and asks a bunch of questions, and winds up very suspicious and worried, so at this point Tim and the Damians have to hurry up and figure out how to announce the situation or go on the run from the Bats as well as the League, which would be. Not smart.

Tim explains the situation over videochat with the Cave before having the cloneboys join him on the feed; this spares them the worst of the yelling.

Bruce, Dick, and Damian all respond pretty badly. Bruce because he doesn’t like change and he’s reflexively suspicious, and having eight Damians to raise is a justly horrifying notion. Also anti-clone prejudice. It’s unfortunately an established trait of his, though not like. A strong one.

Dick because he’s really defensive of Damian, and perceives this first and foremost as an emotional threat to his bab’s fragile identity.

Damian because he knows exactly how he was raised to react to someone being in a place he wants, and he knows how many opportunities his father’s household policies gave him to take shots at Tim, and they may be six years old but there are seven of them. He is going to die.

All things considered, Damian’s being the most rational here.

He’s wrong though. The clones were raised as disposable ninjas, not princes; they’re perfectly well aware killing him would gain them nothing, and they have very little sense of entitlement.

Bruce and Dick do try to be nice to the kids once it’s finally settled they will be staying at the Manor at least for a bit, because they need to be somewhere safe and Bruce can’t leave them at Clark’s house forever. Even Ma Kent has her limits.

But Bruce blows bewilderingly hot and cold and Dick kind of makes a point of of not being too warm to them, because he’s loyal to his demon brat. Damian starts staying at his place a lot and consequently working with Nightwing instead of Batman.

Bruce has no idea what to do about this or if he even should do something. Damian’s thirteen, right? Teenagers are supposed to rebel??? This is a pretty harmless way to do that?

But he misses him.

This does lead to making more time for the Seven Identical Six-Year-Olds.

Their sense of morality revolves around having made the breakthrough to valuing on another’s lives; they aren’t as opposed to not-murder as Damian was but they’re also a lot harder to coax into seeing things his way because they don’t need as much from him, emotionally.

This makes them ironically less terrifying for Bruce, even if he’s still having trouble actually bonding with them the way he normally does with his kids.

Barbara meanwhile is cautious. She always takes a while to warm up to new people, and she doesn’t have Tim’s history with clones to get her over that speedbump. She tries very hard to be fair, but she’s not really welcoming. She’s Reserving Judgment.

Jason thinks this is the funniest thing ever and goes out of his way to tease Damian about it. Privately he’s super creeped out, but as that wears off he starts getting mad about Bruce and Dick making the kiddos feel unwelcome and at some point does a rant, and after that is vaguely protective in a useless sort of way.

He enjoys being a bad influence. The septuplets also enjoy this. They think he’s funny, too, and he’s easier to communicate with than most people around here. Achieves a fairly high tier on the Favorite Non-Clone Brother list they aren’t exactly keeping.

Cass is super about these kids. She can relate to them even more than to Damian, because they weren’t raised as heirs to anything and don’t have the sneering put-down form of pride going, and also she’s actually around to meet them at the crucial getting-to-know-you stage.

She thinks sparring one-on-seven is an excellent sibling bonding activity. There are assassin-child puppy piles once they’re all worn out. Many photos are taken.

She’s doing much better than Bruce at getting them to extend their nascent sense of empathy beyond one another, without actually making an effort. It’s not like they’re actually much behind their cohort when it comes to social development, they’ve just got murder conditioning flattening their affective empathy. (And are ahead of cohort intellectually, which contributes a lot to the dissonance.) Cass’ accidental therapy involves butterflies.

Tim continues to be around, a lot more than he has been for a while because he’s kind of obligated to see this through. The septuplets trust him, which is more than they do anybody else for a while, so he winds up with a lot of childcare duties.

Since this amounts to ‘showing them where to find soap’ and ‘being in their vicinity’ rather than i.e. brushing their teeth for them and making sure they don’t steal each others’ snacks, he’s fairly okay with this.

Sizdahum sticks especially close, which is fine because he’s not a big talker; he winds up getting a lot of absent lessons on detective work.

Tim gets yelled at for having murder scene photos open in front of him; both of them and Haftum, who happens to be there at the time, roll their eyes a lot throughout.

Tim’s friends also visit the Manor a few times specifically to visit the kids, since they already met them. At one point the Damian clones, Tim, Kon, Wonder Girl Cassie, and due to rumor mill Anita, Cissie, and Greta all have a picnic in a rare afternoon of sunshine on the Manor grounds.

Alfred packed the picnic so it has ludicrously expensive cheese, a fruit salad featuring freshly pitted cherries, and thermoses of milkshakes in the favorite flavors of everyone who got one, even the ones he’s never met before. In response to this bounty Anita threatens to come to visit every time she can get babysitters for her parents.

Then she considers introducing her parents to the clone kids. They’re turning out almost as weird, even if in theory they don’t remember their previous lives. We’ll see how that turns out.

Bruce got used to how all his sons’ friends know his secret identity over a decade ago, it’s…fine.

Steph thinks they’re creepy but she’s far enough from ground zero to laugh about it, especially about their occasional appearances as Tim’s row of ducklings, and also she trusts Cass’ judgment.

Everyone does, to a certain extent; it helps the septuplets’ cause incredibly over the course of the first few weeks. It wins Alfred off the fence about them after about three days, which is quite a coup; even before that he was fast catching up with Tim in the ‘learning the differences between the septuplets’ sweepstakes.

(Cass is the only one who can even semi-reliably tell them all apart if they’re not wearing their nametags, or catch them switching, but learning things like their individual preferences in weaponry or cake is arguably much more important.)

Speaking of names, it’s a difficult issue. Bruce would (with considerable angst and self-doubt) be willing to name them all if asked, and they’d probably be open to it if he offered, but they’re not quite comfortable naming themselves and he’s too insecure and weirded-out to suggest anything else.

The other members of the family are varying degrees of not okay with the numbering system. Steph’s main issue with it is she has trouble remembering them precisely, because she doesn’t speak Farsi and learning seven unfamiliar similar-sounding words at the same time doesn’t play to her strengths.

Damian has a tendency to call them by their numbers in English, which only some of the clones actually mind but it offends the hell out of Bruce.

The necessity of keeping them secret until they have actual public-ready names and a story has been settled on wears on everyone’s nerves a bit. The issue that there exists no story more believable than the actual extremely weird truth stands in the way.

Barbara actually crafts an entire cover about rescuing the products of an illegal cloning operation by people planning an overly complicated ransom scheme for Damian, and Bruce going ‘well dammit they’re my kids too,’ which doesn’t get deployed for a while because:

1) everyone’s still hunting for something a little less weird and

2) they have to review the entire body of legal precedent relating to clones to make sure this won’t put the kids in jeopardy down the line or undermine Bruce’s chances of getting custody somehow.

Meanwhile, Bruce absolutely forbids the clone squad from getting involved in vigilante fighting. Because they are six. They’re not quite on house arrest but they have strict supervision and a curfew. They mostly accept this; they’re used to discipline and they did come here for refuge.

He tries to take away all their live weapons. Because they are six. This fails to stick. It threatens to become a serious bone of contention.

Cass, Tim, and Damian (somewhat unwillingly) wind up having to broker the issue; explaining to Bruce that the kids think he suspects them of plotting murder, and to the kids that Bruce doesn’t think they can be trusted not to hurt themselves with sharp objects is. Fraught. On all sides.

Why does Bruce never get any kids for whom normal responsible parenting guidelines are fully applicable?

[shouldihavewaited]

Since I care abt your opinions: HoND: 2 and 7 Bapo: 15,16 and 27

Hunchback

2) Your Fav song. “Made of Stone”. To this day this song gives me chills. Especially when it’s sung by our boi. our man. Michael Arden. Fun Fact: Michael Arden was hungover during the recording of the album. (DWSA Parties are wild)

7) My favorite character....eSmeRaLdA anD QuAsiModO. Im gay for Ciara Renée ok. Ok. But real tea here. Esmeralda is always hopeful and sacrifices herself for her people various times. She doesn’t let riches or even her life get in the way of respecting her values. She isn’t a “g*psy wh*re” as she is told she is. She follows what she believes in, and she’s so kind and is only the nicest to Quasimodo. When she realizes that Quasimodo can’t hear well she tries to learn sign and she tries to help Quasimodo by speaking slower and more annunciated so he can read her lips. As for Quasimodo. He is honestly such a fascinating character. I know he isn’t anything revolutionary but idk. I relate. We both share those thoughts of being unlovable and feeling worthless. Quasimodo is also such a supportive friend to Esmeralda. At the beginning you can tell that he might have a crush on her but when he sees how content Esmeralda is with Phoebus he cheers Esmeralda on. He is happy for her and remains her best friend. Risking his life various times to help her.

Bare: a Pop Opera

15) “Lest Faith Turn To Despair”

Idk if this counts as spoken but it’s originally Shakespierrian so yeahhh. It has always stuck out to me how perfectly this encapsulates the story of Romeo & Juliet and Peter & Jason. There are obviously many interpretations for these 2 are my current favorites one is that Jason’s (and Peter’s) faith and religion lead to their demise (despair). The second, that Peter & Jason’s relationship being faith and hope for better, turned to despair because of the pressure to come out and stay in the closet, which eventually leads to the death of Jason.

16) “Remember the Word Forget”

Me? A hoe for Role of a Lifetime. Most definitely. This song is such a good omen to the queer experience. It’s so good. If you haven’t listened to it. DO IT NOW!!! But this specific line is one of my favorites. Ngl i am also a hoe for oxymorons. Likeee this line is such a punch in the gut gAhHhhhh

27) Unpopular Opinion. MEL! You’re gonna get me slaughtered....i don’t like Bare LA 2013 Revival. There. I said it. Oops. Why? It’s just always given me such a weird vibe idk. This isn’t a personal attack on the actors since they were great! But there are a lot of things that i felt were lacking. I’ve seen many dif bare productions even in different languages and...i know it could be worse but i find it pretty sad that many people only give that version a try ya’know. The energy in some songs and scenes is sooo....low. Take a look at 911 Emergency. I literally could not. It was so visually boring. The actress is doing her best in the little she is given. But it’s just sooo ehhhhh. I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again but the lack of diversity in the cast will to this day make me sad. Like....I get that it’s sorta regional but i promise there are poc actors in LA that also need jobs. I promise! And then....Jonah Platt and Payson Lewis are straight white cis het men playing gay roles. Like... im not saying that het people can’t play gay roles in anything but i also feel that in a musical focused on repression on one’s sexuality maybe it might be best to cast someone who has gone through something similar...ok.

That’s all the asks from my lovely friend. Thank you for enduring all of that. And also please pray to me that i don’t get savagely killed by bare 2013 stans.