One of the best parts of reading Batman and The Signal was the banter between Duke and Jason based on their districts in Gotham. And I think it would be hilarious if we saw more of that.
Duke: Why are you slowing down? Itās straight on.
Jason: Iām trying to figure out if this is the turn or if these co-ordinates are off.
Duke: Itās literally down there. Look, big sign. Can your Crime Alley ass not read?
Jason: At least we can read the street signs.
Duke: You donāt have street signs. You have arrows sprayāpainted on trash cans.
Jason: Better than the Narrows. You get lost and you fucking pray Killer Croc jumps up from the sewers and fucking eats you just so you don't have to spend another second on those streets.
Duke: At least we have streets. Crime Alley is just a string potholes holding hands and one burning trashcan.
Bruce, over comms: Signal, Red Hood, table your conversation or you can get your asses back to the Cave.
Steph, over comms: Get a load of this Crest Hill bitch.
Jason: Stand your HOA ass stand down, Spoiler. Widow Creek isn't that great.
Steph: At least we have running water and flushing toilet, Park Row bitch. And before you even start Drake, your Bristol ass is on thin ice.
Tim, not even working that night: The fuck did I do??
people who act like batman isn't "judge jury and executioner" because he doesn't kill people are like. genuinely so funny to me because. they're very obviously thinking of "executioner" as like. the stereotypical guy with axe who chops people heads off, and not, yknow, the literal definition of the idiom itself, which is about someone who has the ability to judge and then subsequently punish someone unilaterally. which is quite literally what batman does.
he has the ability to decide what is a "crime" to him, he is the one who decides whether people are guilty of those crimes, and he is the one who executes their punishment. the severity of the punishment doesn't matter - he is unaccountable to anyone else, and indeed is allowed to commit as many crimes as needed to reach his arbitrary ideal of "justice."
the ideal of batman is this: a man who is so fundamentally changed by an act of senseless violence that he takes it upon himself to fight back against the rot and corruption in the world. he does this not through political activism, not through ridding himself of his wealth in favor of a greater good, not through community outreach, but through an individualistic fantasy of being a hero.
and you'll say: charlie, but he does do that !!! he donates his money all the time, he funds social programs, hospitals, orphanages, gets people jobs -
and i will say this: so why don't things get better?
because here's the base of it. gotham, at its core, can't get better. no matter what bruce wayne does, there will always be more crime, more villains, more death, more people for batman to beat up in back alleys. because that's what sells.
reoffending rates don't matter in gotham, prison reform doesn't matter in gotham, what actually causes crime doesn't matter in gotham because that doesn't sell books.
and so here it is; dc has unintentionally created a world where batman can't win, but can't be wrong, and where thousands of nameless, faceless, only-created-to-die civilians must be pushed into the meat grinder that is gotham, to fuel bruce wayne's angst and vindicate his constant, tireless, noble fight against the forces of evil.
and then: a new robin, who is poor and who's parents are dead or gone because of this cycle; who is happy go-lucky and hated by editors and fans for being robin, for not being dick grayson, for being poor.
and this robin is written, unintentionally or not, to be angry at the ways in which batman's (the narrative's) idea of justice is detached from its victims. bruce seems perfectly fine to allow countless unnamed women to be at risk from garzonas in his home country, yet robin is the one who is portrayed as irrational and violent.
this robin is not detached from gotham in the way bruce wayne is: this robin is a product of gotham.
(and here's the thing. you can't punch aids. you can't fight a disease with colorful fights and nifty gadgets. and how would robin dying from aids add to batman's story; it would call into question the systemic changes that haven't been made in gotham. how does a child get aids, in batman's city?)
so robin dies, and then bruce (the narrative) spends the next couple of decades blaming it on him. it is jason's fault; he was reckless, he just ran in, he thought it was all a game. if only bruce had seen what was coming, if only he could have known that jason wasn't rich enough or smart enough or liked enough to be robin.
batman gets a little more violent, a little more self destructive. he hurts people more and almost (!!) kills a couple guys. this is bad because it's self destructive and "not who he is." it is not bad because batman should not be able to just beat people up when he's angry.
and then he gets a shiny new robin - who is all the things jason "wasn't": rich and smart and rational and he doesn't put who batman is into question. batman and robin are partners, and jason is a grave and a cautionary tale, and (crucially here) never right.
the joker kills thousands and it doesn't matter because they were written to be killed.
batman beats up thousands and it doesn't matter because they were written to be criminals.
and then jason comes back, and nothing has changed. there is a batman and a (shiny! rich!) robin and the joker kills thousands. (because it sells)
and jason is angry - he has been left unavenged - his death has meant nothing, just as willis' had, just as catherine's had, just as gloria's had, just as -
thousands. ten of thousands. hundreds of thousands. written to be killed.
but one of them gets to come back.
and he is angry - not only at the joker, but at bruce (the narrative) - because why is the joker still alive (when thousands-)
here is the thing - jason todd is right. not because the death penalty is good, not because criminals deserve to die, not because of everything he says -
but because of what he calls into question. why is the joker alive?
because he sells books.
and dc has written a masterful character, through no fault of their own, because jason knows what is wrong, and he knows who is at fault - batman. (the narrative)
so the argument that bruce can't kill because he's not judge jury and executioner; the argument that jason is a cop or that jason is insane or that jason is in the wrong here; they hold no weight.
batman can't kill the joker because the joker sells comic books.
and jason can't kill the joker because the joker sells comic books.
so he will beg and plead and grovel - he will betray everything that is himself, he will forsake his family and his city and kill himself - just so that bruce (the narrative) will let the joker die.
he was condemned to death by an audience, and after he came back he has spent his whole life looking us in the eyes and screaming, asking, pleading; why is the joker still alive?
why are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands (the number doesn't matter, see, because they're just a number. not people. not real.) why are we expendable for his story? why did i have to die just for nothing to change?
and the answer is money. and the answer is the batman can never be wrong. and the answer is shitty writing. and the answer is -
nothing jason can ever change.
which is the worst of it all. he is a victim with no power, and no one else in the world can see it. he is raging and crying and screaming at his father and his writers and you - and it doesn't matter. jason doesn't matter. and he knows it.
Au where Batman doesn't want to tell the Justice League his secret identity but it's because he's really embarrassed about the things he's done as Bruce Wayne.
The thing is; Batman has spent years crafting and perfecting his public persona.
'Brucie Wayne' is supposed to be a dumber than life himbo, with daddy's credit card and the maturity of a seventeen year old. He's supposed to be someone so outlandishly ridiculous no one would ever even dare to mention him in the same sentence as Batman... And Batman has been acting that part perfectly.
It's a genius plan.
But then the league begins talking about maybe all sharing their secret identities, to become closer as a group and work better together. And the only thing in Batman's mind is 'Oh. My. God. Please don't'
Superman is saying something about trust and how he has come to value all of them as friends. Batman is thinking about last year Christmas' Gala, where he took off his clothes in an improvised strip-tease, and started swimming in the fountain.
Wonder woman is talking about how she wishes to strengthen their bonds so they become greater warriors. Bruce just remembered there's videos of him fucking twerking and pole dancing to Ariana Grande all over the internet.
Flash starts smiling and telling them he already trust them with his lifeā Bruce once said chocolate milk came from brown cows.
āSupermanās suit should be Kryptonianā āMa Kent should make Supermanās suit at homeā or how about the third fun option where the suit is the Kryptonian skinsuit BUT it gets damaged by Kryptonite and Ma Kent has to figure out how to sew/mend Kryptonian cloth that seems to have a mind of its own and wonāt stop SQUIRMING.
Thousands of years of Kryptonian technology vs one Midwestern mom with her favorite show on? Iām putting my money on Ma.
From my reply: maybe the repairs have to be done as a tiny line of kryptonian script which is why maās stitches keep coming out. Until she gets it under her lamp and magnifying crochet glass and realizes thatās how all the other repairs were made! Then she painstakingly hand stitches the kryptonian script and it turns out this is a highly specialized career back on krypton that took decades to master and she figured it out in one or two days
ok final thought: the same line is used over and over again, and Ma assumes itās some sort of prayer/saying/purposeful sentence. protective.
Clark translates it for her: āMay the script of this House (El) protect you.ā
thousands of tiny overlapping lines where the suit repaired itself in the Fortress; and then, in Maās delicate blue stitching, carefully inscribed: āMay the script of this House protect you.ā
in her stitching, the meaning changes ever so slightly. there isnāt a symbol or glyph for the Kent House, but the thread speaks for itself.
Clark Kent carries the blessings of both Houses on his skin, always.
I really like the whole āother members of the Batfam can mimic the Robin, report! to a degree where they actually respond as if itās Batman,ā but I raise you:
What if other Gothamites learned to do the same thing?
The first time it happens, Jim is panicking. Heās got an injured bird on his hands and no idea where Batman is. The kid isnāt responding no matter who asks questions, and suddenly the GCPD is treated to Commissioner Gordon doing a scarily good Batman impression, to the point Robin immediately responds
Word doesnāt necessarily get out right away. It happened in the precinct building, so the only witnesses were cops. But the rumors start in bars with drunk men telling anecdotes, with officers coming home with stories, and it spreads from there.
Eventually, people know that if you channel Batman and go āRobin, report!ā the bird will go from gasping desperately in pain to a robotic list of injuries. EMTs learn to do this as part of their training. The Bats donāt go to hospitals, but they will let someone do emergency first aid on them.
Interestingly, it doesnāt just work on Robin. Gotham knows, regardless of what the rest of the world thinks, that their little birds grow up to become other Bats. Itās why their rivalry with BlĆ¼dhaven over Nightwing is so vicious. Thatās their little bird the city is claiming. BlĆ¼dhaven did not raise him, Gotham did.
Of course, not all of the Bats were Robin. Signal flipped someone off for trying the trick, and Black Bat pulled out a sharpie and drew a sad face on a civilianās hand when they were trying to see how injured she was after falling several stories due to a snapped grapple line. So, the trick isnāt universal.
The most surprising one was when someone found Red Hood, half-buried in rubble with a slash across his neck, and barked out the order in a panic and he immediately complied.
It wasnāt Batman who told the city he was their dead little bird. It was the panic of a passerby just trying to do the right thing.
I couldn't help it. @leithlovesyou i reblogged your reblog and then decided no i need to write it, so i did.
===
Mary is just a kid, in the grand scheme of things.
She's nineteen, fresh out of high school after flunking a year, and trying her damnedest to find a job that doesn't have a manager who will grope her under her dress.
They can tell her an 18 year old is an adult all they like, it doesn't give Mary any more idea of what the hell she's fucking doing.
But even clueless as she is, even as scared and lonely and desperate, she knows that when you come across a downed Bat, you help.
You help, because the Bats stop at nothing to help you and ignoring a Bat is like spitting in the face of all the little good things you experience in this beautiful, fucked up hell hole of a city.
Because Gotham is a hell of a place to be but when you're born and bred here, there ain't no other place to beāthe city's tar runs in your veins.
Even if that Bat is Red Hood.
Mary's from the Narrowsāshe knows about Hood and the good he's done for her Alley friends. She's notāshe knows about the bad, but in the grand scheme of things Hood's got the Bat on his chest, and Signal's her guy and he seems tight with Hood andā
Mary might be panicking.
She was on her way to another interview when a building collapsed, and like a good Gothamite she ran the other wayāonly to get turned around this way and that because the smoke and rubble and dustā
Somehow, someway, she's ended up here in the thick of it. Not 10 feet away from her is Red Hood, bloodied and delirious, half buried under rubble with blood all over his neck there is so much fucking blood and it might be bad he might not be breathing except Mary can see his chest heaving, and his helmet looks cracked all over like some kind of horror movie god there's so much bloodā
Mary is definitely fucking panicking.
"Hood, Red Hoodāoh god," Mary rasps, tumbling over on her knees, scraping them to high hell, reaching over only to hover her hands awkwardly because what the fuck is she supposed to doā "Hood, can you hear me? Oh god oh god oh godā"
Hood doesn't react beyond a painful sounding wheeze, and she's definitely hyperventilating but she's a Gothamite god fucking damn it, so she cries a little bit as she scrambles for her phone.
"911, what's your emergency?" A man's gruff voice answers.
"H-Heāthere'sā" Mary tries to say, hiccuping through her sobs. "Buildings collapsed, he'sāhis neck isāthey're so much bloodā"
"Ma'am, you're okay, take a deep breath for me." The man asks, which she complies to with a stutter and a wheeze. "Can you tell me where you are? Are you safe?"
Mary looks around, not recognizing much of anything in the wreckage exceptāthere's a signā "I-I'm on front street, andāand Madison street, I-I think. I-I'm safe but he'sāoh god."
"Good, that's good, I'll send someone over right now, you said he? Is he safe?"
"I-it's..He's, there's something wrong but he's under rubble a-and there's so much b-bloodā" Mary bites her lips, tastes metal. She shouldāshe should do something, something for his neck right? That'sāshe shakily puts the phone on speaker. It takes her three tries and the phone tumbles down but the man on the phone is asking her to describe what's wrong and she can't fucking think.
She tears off her sweater, she liked this sweater but she has nothing else and Hood isāhe'sā
She crumbles it up, presses it against where the blood oozes at the base of his neck. Pressure, apply pressure. Red Hood groans under her hands, twitching.
"Ma'am, paramedics on their way to your location right now, can you tell me what you're doing?"
"I-I'm putting pressure." Mary coughs out, tears blurring all around her. "O-on his neck. I-it'sāI can't seeā"
"Ma'am, I'm going to need you to take another breath for me okay? Just breathe." She takes a breath, and it must be something like clarity, must be the sirens, must be the man's voice or that red fucking Bat symbol soaking and blurring together but she remembers something that all Gothamites remember and it can't possibly work, it can't it can't it can'tā
"ROBIN," Her voice is gravel, from the dust and crying and sheer fucking panic, "Report!"
For a moment, Mary can't hear a fucking thing. The man on the phone, the paramedics that have arrived so fast somehow, the city noises, the rasping of her, the rasping of Hood, all of itāgone. And thenā
"G-ash to the ne-ck-k." The throat under her thumb swallows painfully. "Damaged left fibula, possible c-lean brea-k. Sprained right wr-ist, fractured ribs, possible p-uncture to the lu-ungs."
Hood tilts, spitting out a glob of blood, and passes out.
Mary's fingers feel numb.
There are paramedics surrounding her now, taking over and dragging Hood out of the rubble on a stretcher. Batman might have arrived, she doesn't know. She blinks and somehow she's sitting in the back of an ambulance with one of those stupid shiny blankets and bandaids on her knees.
She remembers when she was 12, and her mom was leaving her and her dad to fend for themselves.
She remembers sitting on the fire escape listening to her mom pack up, to her dad yelling and her mom screaming back, remembers hearing her name like it was some kind of prayer, some kind of excuse. What about Mary?
She remembers Robin, the second one, hanging upside down like a parrot-colored Spiderman, grinning down (or was it up?) at her.
Yeah, Robin had said then, What about Mary?
She remembers Robin talking to her that night, remembers crying and a warm hand that rubbed her back. Remembers Robin, smaller than she was but his hands were big.
Big and warm.
She remembers crying her eyes out when the city rumbled with rumors. When Joker kept laughingāha! ha! clipped wings for pretty birds!
She remembers seeing a Robin fly over her when she was sixteen and her heart jumping into her throat.
Remembers the bitter taste of grief when this Robin was not her Robin.
Nightwing, Red Robin, Spoiler.
All Robins accounted for, except for hers.
She thinks about the things Red Hood has done.
She thinks about eight decapitated heads, about the gun shots that echo in the Alley, about the clean drugs being shilled out, about the hookers overflowing the streets, about dead goons and rampant crime.
She thinks about Candy walking the streets and paying for med school, bruiseless and proud.
She thinks about Armando and the recovery program out in the Alley outskirts.
She thinks about rubber bullets and goons that have better things to be, lesser in number and better for it.
She thinks about those eight heads, and how much a body can bleed. Someone's cleaned her hands and her sweater is gone, but there's still blood on her dress. It's all over the hem of it, some of it on her stomache.
She thinks about Robin, younger than her. You're barely a year older than me, Robin had sniffed at her on that fire escape, years and years ago.
Mary is just a kid, in the grand scheme of things. Nineteen, clueless, desperate, and no longer grieving.
Canāt properly explain it, but āI like this characterā, āI like how this character is writtenā and āI care about this characterā are 3 very different things which may or may not overlap.
Bruce Wayne panicking because he walks into a WE board meeting to see a fully suited Red Hood sat at the table spinning around in a wheelie chair and CEO Tim Drake can only shrug and be like 'well he wanted to invest money'
Bruce, frantically pulling Tim aside: he is a CRIMINAL
Tim: so is like 90% of Gotham's elite. nobody else cares.
*both of them peer through the window to see literally nobody else in the meeting acting like a helmeted crime lord amongst them is any way odd. Stacy from accounting offers him a coffee and Red Hood denies politely*
Bruce: i understand him donating money, but why is he at our board meetings!??!
Tim: oh he bought like, over half our stocks. he owns 58% of the company now
Bruce:
Bruce: but thats...
Tim: yeah. more than you. Jason's the majority shareholder now.
Bruce:
Bruce: why did you let him do this
Tim: well you WANTED him to be part of the FAMILY again-
Bruce: SO YOU APPROVED HIM BUYING MY COMPANY?!
Tim:
Tim: shouldnta' benched me from fucking patrol.
Bruce:
Red Hood, knocking on the glass: can y'all wrap it the fuck up? i have other meetings to attend to after this
when jason died, they buried him with the possessions that he carried on him all the time. there was a pocket knife tucked into his sock, the bracelet on his wrist from catherine that he never took off, a tangled pair of earbuds in his back pocket, and, in the top pocket of his jacket, the cellphone that bruce bought for him after he was adopted.
that cellphone stayed with jason in his grave. went with him when he dug his way out. somehow stayed on his person when he was taken by the league, and he managed to convince talia to let him keep it throughout all his training.
he doesnāt know why, maybe as a grief thing or maybe just because bruce forgot and itās not like the bill effected him in any way, but he never stopped paying jasonās phone bill. his numberās still active, still working after all this time. even weirder, but dick started adopting the tradition of adding his dead brotherās phone number to each and every family group chat any of them created after ethiopia. again, jason doesnāt know why. maybe it was dickās way of carrying his memory with them; including him in family conversations even if they all thought the number was connected to a long buried phone in the pocket of a long dead boy.
the point is that jason wasnāt dead any more. and all throughout his time at the league, he gets to watch the family chats. the mission statuses, the arguments, the rapid spiral every chat went through where they started off using it as a serious bat communication centre only for dick or tim to send a meme and instantly spiral into nothing but chaos that bruce would neither take part in or attempt to stop. jason spectates it all, always fingering the keypad but never actually typing out a message. he came close when there was a heated debate between steph and dick about the best donut types and he knew they were both absolutely fucking wrong, but luckily tim came in to educate them on the right choice last second and jason was saved from having to reveal himself.
the closest call was when little damian got a hold of his phone, attracted to the bright colours of the block game jason had been absently playing out of boredom while raās droned on about whatever had pissed him off that day. heād let the kid play, sat on his lap and eagerly jabbing at the screen, and jason had only looked away for at most a minute before heād turned back to find the screen open on the family chat, damian having accidentally clicked on the camera button and taken a selfie of the two that heād been about to send through. luckily, jason deleted it in time, but he became much more careful about letting the kid play with his shit after that.
this is all just a long winded explanation and backstory for and au i think would be funny where jasonās reveal is literally just him deciding to fuck with his family by randomly dropping in through text like:
-in the chat-
bruce: status report.
dick: hungry :( but good!
steph: seconded, im fine
tim: drug bust went to plan, on way back to cave uninjured
cass: ^ same answer
babs: everything seems calm from what i can tell
jason: a little claustrophobic but the coffinās kinda homely so ig no complaints from me
You're about to close on your very own, suspiciously affordable and comfortable house. Just before you sign the contract, the realtor shows you the required legal disclosure: your new house is haunted by the type of presence you'll get from this spinner wheel.
Of course it is.
Are you still buying the house?
š„³ Yes! Are you kidding?!!! Now I'm buying the house BECAUSE of the ghost!!!!!
š Yes. I'm happy to have found this house, and the ghost is a nice addition.
š¶ Yes, but the ghost doesn't play into my decision at all.
š Yes... I guess. I'm not happy, but I'm not passing up an affordable house.
ā No. I've found my limit, and this ghost is past it.
imagine you and your wife get poisoned by a cult and when you wake up not only do you find out your wife didnāt make it but also billionaire playboy philanthropist Bruce Wayne is actively stealing your son. your boyās not even home half the time when you get back because heās always at Mr Wayneās place. getting picked up by his butler. Bruce Wayne knows your sonās school life better than you do. pretty sure heās got his report card hanging up on the fridge and everything.
āoh youāre just being dramatic Bruce Wayne isnāt actually stealing your sonāā
wrong! not even 2 seconds after your death and guess whoās getting adopted by Bruce Wayne. thatās his son now. dude straight up stole your son.
i genuinely think boats are such good places to set a story because it automatically gives you a set of really interesting circumstances -- boats are transitory, you are not meant to stay on them forever, there is an automatic assumption of ending up somewhere different from where you started...characters are forced into close proximity, stakes are higher, etc. boats also just look cool, so that's always a plus
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