Latest Posts by fractalflowers - Page 3
Help choose a pairing!
Monsters at Heart/Under Star Filled Skies fans, I'm stuck. Please let me know, should I give Tim one very sweet love interest or three all working together to support him? I can't decide and it's delaying the chapter
When ur mutuals w/ some cool ass people rb if u agree
Tim Drake is the original Jason Todd Apologist
Post-Crisis Jason was a stroke of genius from DC.
The first time bruce wayne is robbed in crime alley he walks away a broken child. He swears Vengeance on Crime and dedicates himself to the pursuit of Justice.
The second time bruce wayne is robbed in crime alley he sees injustice didn't start at the crime. He is a man now, aware of the world and its complexities, and his own ability to change it. He takes a weapon out of the hands of a broken child and leads him out, to find his own justice.
Checkpoint
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But if any of these reminded you of something you need to do, please take care of yourself. š
Oficial Marcus (red robin comic artist) art
What if Dickās hallucinations of Jason got so out of hand that he began to believe that the spirit of his brother was trapped in his coffin and needed to be laid to rest?
So, like, HalluciJason normally just hangs out in the corner of Dickās eye and occasionally blames Dick for his death. But one day, HalluciJason begins to talk about how heās trapped. How itās so dark and it smells like dirt and thereās velvet beneath his fingers and he canāt breathe. At first Dick tells himself to just ignore the hallucination, heās just crazy. But over time, as HalluciJason starts to venture further and further into Dickās field of vision, it becomes harder and harder to ignore his pleas. Something about the hallucination becomes more substantial, more real.
Eventually, Dick breaks. He goes to the graveyard where Jason is buried and digs up his grave. Bruce, who has noticed Dick slipping, is horrified when he finds out what Dick is doing and rushes to the graveyard.
He arrives just as Dick finishes digging and Jason bursts out of his coffin. Dick hugs his little brother, covered in dirt and sweat and tears.
After this, everyone believes that Dick was actually having visions and wasnāt going crazy at all. Stranger things have happenedālike Jasonās resurrection. He was trapped in his coffin, if only briefly. And if Dick hadnāt been there, Jason wouldāve indeed suffocated.
(But two weeks after Jason returns to life, Dick sees him, just in the corner of his eye. A boy dressed in a bloody Robin suit. Jason. Watching, with pale blue eyes.)
The Real Reason Joker Hates the Robins
(Batman 2016, #54)
(Batman 1940, #408)
(Robin 1993 #139)
(Batman and Robin 2015 #40)
You cannot convince me he didn't giggle a little with those last two, or snort, or something.
Bonus, some sick kids make him smile for a scavenger hunt:
(Superman 2018 #39)
"Don't you get it?" Jason spat, teetering on the verge of a howl. "I'm not him! Jason Todd is DEAD. He's gone! I'm just what crawled out of his grave."
He panted into the silence that followed, eyes stinging heat.
Bruce said nothing. Jason worried he might stand there, unspeaking, unmoving, til the end of time. Or just turn and walk away. That was what he wanted, wasn't it? For Bruce to stop chasing the ghost of a dead boy? To accept that he was someone different, someone new?
Instead, when Bruce finally spoke, he was quiet, thoughtful. "Did you know that I loved you the moment I met you?"
He wasn't looking at Jason, but down at his hands, as if his gloves were a scrying pool that he could peer into to see that old Jason, twelve years old and desperate but so full of life. Jason thought he could taste dirt.
Then Bruce chuckled, still to himself, still to his hands. "You were so cocky, so unwilling to give up without a fight, even to me. Some things never change."
His smile fade and he looked up, straight into Jason's face. "You were also scared. Traumatized. You had nightmares for months. You lied constantly. Hoarded food. Stole. I was so worried we'd never be able to make you feel safe, the way you deserved to feel."
"I'm notā" Jason began, voice tight.
"You're not him," Bruce agreed, and hearing it spoken out loud, so easily, cut off Jason's air.
"You haven't been him for years." Bruce stepped forward, pushing into Jason's space. "Part of him is in you, but you're not him. You changed." He shrugged, shoulder somehow expressive even beneath the weight of the armor, the cape, the night. "You weren't the boy I took in off the street even before you died. You grew. That's life, Jay."
Jason was the one unable to speak now, stuck in place like a gods-struck fool.
"You change. You grow. And I'll keep loving whoever you turn out to be next."
I have no context and I am desperate to know what led to Batman using a flamingo as a weapon
Batman: my real kids could beat my ass any day
in the next batman movie selina is back in town to con bruce wayne which he knows but he missed her so much and obviously he can afford it so he just lets her
Losing my mind but the prospect of Damian being so otherworldly beautiful and thriving at the face of catastrophe is so tragic to me idk why.
Like oouuughhhhh little boy how does it feel to look like the moon and the stars before you implode and your stardust gave birth to a new constellation???
Like baby boy my baby why are you the sole hope for humanity to exist and the key for peace and co-existence?? Little Damian did you know that your hands are the gentlest in the future where that would cost you?
How are you the embodiment of horror and all that is bad yet the symbolism of love itself?
Why are you in hell and looking up to heaven while cradling creatures of the fiery pits? What do you mean you found a companion in the shape of something you don't even know while laying in the midst of bloodshed of your own doing??
You are cruel yet so, so kind. You look at something so grotesque and decide to cradle its face with tenderness and care. You look at something so unlovable and decide to love it first.
Damian al-Ghul Wayne why are you so tragically beautiful when you're not supposed to?
When ur brutally murdered son comes back from the dead with pure unfiltered rage
Russian Roulette, except its goons trying to see if Jason is still wearing the bat symbol.
Itās okay, I didnāt need my heart anyway šššš
AU of an AU: what if Bruce could see ghost!jason?
Got a lil help from @sunlitlemonade - thank youuuu
daily affirmations:
my appearance strikes fear into the hearts of criminals
my cape looks as though it was cut out of the night itself
the ears are Not goofy
my children love me
i make reasonable and level headed decisions
it's normal to communicate solely through grunts
the bats like me and are my friends
I canāt be normal about this man
Do yāall ever wonder if post-pit Jason gets phantom pain - not in the sense that missing a limb or anything but in that he was severely tortured and died and spent years being malnourished and his brain still remembers that pain, but the pit wiped it clean from his body. But his brain remembers. And sometimes his brain misfires and forgets for a second that his body been changed, thatās heās not still that malnourished kid who got beat with a crowbar. Do you ever think his bones ache, or he bumps into to things because his mind thinks heās still 4 foot 6 and not some hulk of a man, or heāll get random hunger pains that make him double over despite being well-nourished and eating regularly? Do you ever wonder if Jason gets days of dysphoria, where he canāt even stand to look at himself because he canāt recognize the person staring back at him?
Mmmm tragedy. Love it
What if Jason died, got resurrected, started his whole rampage as Red Hood, but ended up losing his memories? Maybe he hit his head too hard, or the lazarus pit finally screwed his brain over, or he just woke up one day unable to remember anything except his time with the league so he goes back and instead of turning him into a weapon Talia gives Jason a choice to live the normal life he deserves. And Jason chooses it, of course, he does. He leaves Gotham, enters a University, and pursues an English Degree.
Years later, when Jason is an English Professor or maybe a librarian, Bruce sees him.
And Jason looks alive. Real. Glowing. He still has a white tuft in his hair, he still has scars, he's unable to explain, but he looks happy in a way Bruce hadn't seen him since the first time he put on that Robin uniform.
Bruce doesn't force anything. He makes small talk but then, out of nowhere, he asks, with wet, sad eyes, "Are you happy?"
Jason stares. Blinks. And then smiles, "Of course." And it wrecks Bruce.
Because he knows, he knows Jason wouldn't have died if he never met him, he knows Jason wouldn't have come back as a monster, he wouldn't have been cut open and stitched back wrong.
He knows Jason would've been happier, but knowing it and seeing it breaks him differently.
Because now Bruce is wondering: Would all of them be happier if they never met him?
Don't mind me, I'll just be here, screaming incoherently about how beautiful this is
Wax Wings and Gotham Skies
Everyone always talks about how Icarus fell. Not enough people talk about how he flew.
About the boy who looked the sun in the eye and smiled. Who laughed as the heat blistered wax and feather, as gravity remembered his name.
They call him arrogant. Reckless. Say he shouldāve known better. But maybe he did. Maybe he just wanted to see how close a mortal could get to divinity before the world pulled him back down.
Because thereās something sacred in the reaching. Something holy in the trying. And even if the fall is inevitableā there is still meaning in the flight.
And far from the sun, beneath a sky choked in smog and sirens, in the bones of a city that never sleeps, another boy is born to that same story.
No prophecy named him. No legacy claimed him. Not shaped in fire, nor vengeance, nor divine right. He was not forged like a weapon, or claimed like an heir. Instead, he saw the shape of a myth stitched into Gothamās skylineāa shadow stretching across rooftops and ruinsā and stepped toward it with empty hands and open eyes.
He was not called. But he came anyway.
Like Icarus, he didnāt wait for permission to reach. Tim Drake was a boy built from questions, sleepless nights, and the aching need to know. He was a boy carved from questions, sharpened by silence. The kind of boy who watched too long and listened too well. The kind of boy who stared too long into shadows and found himself staring back.
He pieced together wings from scrapsā late-night stakeouts, news clippings and coffee-stained theories. A thousand tiny truths stitched together from silence. He studied the dark like scripture, read between bruises and newsprint until a pattern emerged.
No one gave him a path. So he drew one in ink and breath and quiet resolve.
Not for glory. Not to be seen. But because the pull of the sky was louder than fear. Because some part of himādeep and unrelentingārefused to stay grounded.
And maybe that was the beginning of the end. Perhaps chasing what was already breaking was always meant to end in ash. Maybe he was never meant to carry the weight of a symbol sewn in grief. Maybe no boy can hold the sun and not burn.
But when the cracks came, he didnāt look away.
He climbed. He reached. He flew.
And when the wax burned and the feathers tore loose, he didnāt scream.
He smiled.
Because like Icarus, he had touched something divine. And he knewā that to fall is to have once reached the sky and kissed the sun.
Oh my god the absolute cuteness
oh this has the potential to be hilarious
Dick's mob era happening around the same time as Jason building himself up as a crime lord has so much entertainment potential.
clark kent with his superior smell not smelling a drip of alcohol coming from brucie waynes breath and wondering why hes dancing in his boxers acting drunk in the middle of the gala
Pre-Crisis Jason Todd, you are an utterly incomprehensible child.
Your compulsive acrobatics are adorable. Your ability to imprint on Bruce and call him your new father within a month is impressive. Your cute child powers are so strong that Man-Bat tried to adopt you. Your ability to phrase things in the weirdest way possible is matched only by Pre-Crisis Dick Grayson, and even then, you have proven yourself his equal in that regard.
Youāre insane, and I love that for you.
Brothers
i love women
Youāre welcome
During an important meeting at Wayne Industries it gets crashed by Robin and Red Robin fighting. They crash through a window onto the long table causing the employees to freak out and hide in a corner. Various objects in the room are being used as weapons. The room gets trashed. Bruce has to use his dad voice on the two vigilantes and they stop fighting and sheepishly run away. The scared employees are impressed that Bruce was able to stop the fight and he just shrugs it off like itās no big deal. āMy kids fight all the time I knew the dad voice would workā.
ooh interesting idea
I need more people to acknowledge that bruce is not gonna be a great parent, but i'll be damned if he doesn't try
His parents are dead, and as far as I've seen, the only real, not-explicitly-toxic relationship he has is with Alfred, his butler
and remember that, at least for a long while, as much as Alfred cared, he still drew a very clear (sometimes limiting) line between them as butler-and-master
so no Bruce does not know what he is doing with any of his relationships, familial or romantical
and no he probably will never really learn
he's going to make absoulutely horrible, relationship-ending choices, but can you truly look me in the eye and say that any batman does not truly love and value every single relationship he is in (asides from when dc butchers everyone's personalities)
so I need to see more fics like this,
a bruce who tries and fails,
who does not know how to deal with any of this,
and so hides behind a mask or a doof smile, uses his persona to try to deal with it, to try to cope
a broken batman who doesn't know what's wrong with him but desperately wants to fix it, only, if only, just to maintain whatever semblance of love he gets from his friends, his kids
maybe that's why he has so many, desperately searching for any warmth in the innocent's child eyes
fanfic writers where you at?