AKA "Danny moves to Gotham and records TikToks with absolutely deranged captions. He films Get Ready with Me in Gotham videos, fit checks, and even A Day in the Life of a Ghost in Gotham! Except everybody is freaking the fuck out in the comments" prompt idea!
No, you don't understand, I'm obsessed. Like, what if Danny's idea of "safe" is just... anything that doesn't actively try to kill him? So Metropolitians, Star City, and Central City citizens are literally biting their nails and sweating bullets every time he posts, because what if he gets merc'd by the "Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag" Red Hood?? And that's one of the nicer villains in Gotham. And Danny's just like wow, this place is niiiiiice, I haven't even been murdered yet!
Maybe Jazz took a 12-year-old Danny to Gotham to escape their parents. Gotham's cheap, dirty, and doesn't ask questions: it's the best place to go to disappear because damn near half the city's population are either super villains, hostages, dead, or vigilantes. She gets a job at an understaffed hospital as a clinical psych intern. She enrolls Danny for online schooling because she's scared a public high school would be too easy for their parents to track.
Which leaves Danny alone for hours. He makes a TikTok account called "Danny Phantom" because, c'mon, he's a kid. And, like most kids, he doesn't really comprehend the idea of a digital footprint or that his account is public, accessible by literally anybody.
He's also a little shit. So, the first TikTok he uploads is of a man getting carjacked, but the caption reads: love to see people helping each other. remember it's always okay to ask for help! it's okay, I don't know how to parallel park, either :)
And you just see this guy in a mask shove a businessman away from his car, gesturing with his gun, before getting into the driver's seat. Except the car is parallel parked so the carjacker just slowly inches back and forth between a Prius and a Honda until he can wedge himself out of the parking space. And then gets stuck in stand-still traffic. The TikTok goes viral. It's talked about on the Gotham news and Gothamites are losing their shit, pointing out the exact moment you can see the carjacker start to soundlessly cuss through the car's windshield or the way the businessman is just... standing on the side of the road, watching with a deadpan look.
Danny doesn't know about it being on the news, but he sees all the comments, likes, reposts, and feels something. He wonders if this is what Ember feels every time people listened to her music. So, he keeps posting. Usually, it's short three-second videos of a hilariously unexpected situation with an even more deranged caption. But then he's accidentally caught in the reflection of a store front while recording and doesn't know, posts it like he always does; only for this TikTok to go viral, too. Because "Danny Phantom" is a child??
He doesn't notice the shift in his comments, but the public opinion quickly changes from wow, Gothamites are just like that huh lol to what the FUCK, kid, get inside!!! anytime he posts.
Except Danny never gets hurt. Even in the most dangerous situations, when you'd think this kid is a goner for sure, he's just happily yapping in the background. He's so different from Gothamites because he lacks that dead-eyed, despair-inducing aura of someone who's lived in a hellmouth their whole lives. (A couple people post that Danny kind of reminds them of Golden Boy Brucie Wayne, all air-headed and unrealistically optimistic, and suddenly there's memes of "what happens when you've never gotten shot in Gotham" or "how i act when Commish Gordie accuses me of shoplifting again" with them side-by-side.)
And then Danny's posts go viral again and again. Danny doing a fit check with a blond-haired woman with a checkered outfit, she ruffles his hair and kisses him on the cheek. A picture of him wearing an old jean jacket with a bright red lipstick smear on his cheek is trending for weeks. Spoiler, fully suited up in an all-purple vigilante attire, and him shoving gas station hotdogs in their mouths. He even has videos of him clearly in Killer Croc's lair, with comments of are you in the sewers??? DANNY??? and he responds, no, i'm in mom & dad's basement :) (Waylon Jones is actually sitting behind him in one of the videos, intently watching a TV show on an iPad.)
Everybody adores Danny - Rogues, Gothamites, even the Bats. (There's at least six videos of Nightwing teaching Danny how to do backflips, handstands, and other acrobatic moves. Even the youngest Robin has been caught on camera quietly talking with Danny, a shocking lack of violence that left half the city's population suffering from cuteness aggression for the kids.)
So, yeah, Danny belongs to Gotham.
But the internet is widely accessible and Danny made it so, so easy to find him. Jazz obviously didn't know he was posting videos of himself publicly; she was too tired after back-to-back 12 hour shifts at the hospital that she hadn't even checked social media in months. Otherwise, she would've told him to be careful, to never show his face or post his real name on the internet. Then again, Jazz would never have expected all of Gotham (and Superman himself, totally endeared by the kid after Kon and Jon showed him a couple TikToks) would beat the absolute shit out of anybody going after Danny.
Imagine GIW's surprise when they track down Amity's former residential Ghost only to find an entire city frothing at the mouth to protect their Phantom.
I can't believe batman and superman saved me from artblock
That awkward moment u get called down to eat while crying or smth idk
Johnny hits Jason with his bike ("we were supposed to go through him babe!" "But we didnt!") which knocks Jason unconscious. Kitty sees he's a ghost and is like "its a baby!" gif and refuses to leave him there.
Jason wakes up to the weirdest coddling experience of his (after)life. After many many tries he cannot successfully escape the growing group of concerned ghosts who are doing the coddling
Two days later Batman issues a search for his missing son, becoming more and more distressed when the batfam finds no leads
I love the idea of Dick being all the Batkid's favourite sibling but in violently different fonts.
Jason: Dick and Jay canonically have a pretty solid relationship but i'm partial to the Jason was around for Dick's rebellion stage and so Dick doesn't think he has to worry about the pedestal thing bc Jason has absolutely seen him violently hungover before he was legally allowed to drink font of this
So by the time Jason comes back and is no longer trying to murder Tim (except psychologically) Dick decides... Well he's evil sometimes but also I can finally tell someone all the Titans drama. So him and Jason meet up like once month if they're in the same city and get progressively drunker while shit talking their teams and Bruce.
Also I hate the Dick and Robin!Jason didn't get along. They absolutely did, Dick was like 0.5 seconds away from taking Jason to live with the titans permanently.
Tim: 'Oh Jason is Tims Robin, Oh Dick betrayed Tims trust.' in the name of the orange dude y'all elected twice W R O N G. Tim Drake used to watch VHS tapes of the flying Graysons routine. He wasn't even a batman Stan first. That came after he saw Robin do a quadruple summersault. Tim is a Dick Grayson fanboy first Person second. Like Tim canonically saw Jason die and went lmao skill issue, imagine not being like Dick Grayson i'm better. When Dick first started training him, he'd consistently excuse himself go to the other room, hyperventilate over Dick Grayson teaching him how to train surf. Dick is not just his idol he's also a pretty substantial part of Tim's support system. He calls Dick when he's going through something or is stuck on a case. And he knows that Dick will always have his back. They have like the unrealistic adorable sibling relationships from Tv that don't exist irl. Tim also does that awkward shuffle thing after fights bc they're still siblings and Dick just pretends the fight didn't happen until Tims calm again
Damian: You have to understand Damian thought he'd have to basically do the league all over again. He lands with Bruce and those ideas are soundly rejected and he now has no trust or respect and he has to adjust. And Bruce is doing his holier than thou, you should know better 10yro who literally was brainwashed as a child act, like Tim didn't have to pull him away from straight up becoming a villain and Dick didn't have to put him in his place with his fists a couple times a year (we love Bruce really). Then Bruce gets Time-streamed, Tim runs away and now the circus freak is BATMAN. Except the circus freak is also a sadistic bastard to criminals, despite being made out of marshmallows to you. Dick hangs people upside down off high buildings for information and cackles as Nightwing. He also listens to Damians worries and helps him deconstruct his bias view of the world. Dick canonically set the standard for child heroes and is among one of the most beloved and trusted heroes despite being marshmallowy and refusing to murder people. Dick is kinda like Damians stand in non pretentious moral compass until he learns his own one later on. Hence why Damian adores Dick Grayson more than anyone really.
in summary support my agenda that Dick and Jason are gossipy drinking buddies, Tim absolutely had a Dick Grayson Shrine as a child and Damian calls Dick to double check that he still cannot kill Timothy (its now entirely a joke.... mostly)
Bruce has to spend a day working an important mission with the league at the watchtower but the kids are bored so he tells them as long as they don’t disrupt the JL’s work they can hang around the watchtower and then get takeout on the way home. they succeed in keeping themselves to themselves but don’t quite manage not being disrupting. this is because Tim convinced them to do a tiktok trend.
*the league, pouring over case files in serene silence*
*heard faintly from three rooms away*
Tim, Damian, and Jason: we listen and we don’t judge,
Jason: my original plan for terrorising B after coming back to Gotham was to start leaving him a bunch of creepy voicemails Taken-style, and the only reason i scrapped it was because i just genuinely couldn’t remember Bruce’s phone number.
*Bruce lifts his head, squinting slightly*
The kids: we listen and we don’t judge,
Tim: when i was nine my camera broke because a rogue that Batman was fighting threw the car i left it in off a bridge and i was so mad at Batman that i sold photos i’d taken of Bruce Wayne wearing a thong on his private beach to the Gotham Gazette to buy a new one
*the rest of the league also lift their heads, staring at Bruce uncomfortably. Bruce shifts in his seat*
Jason: THAT WAS YOU?
Tim: YOU’RE JUDGING WE SAID NO JUDGING-
Damian: i feel like we should be able to judge OCCASIONALLY.
*the league, eyeing each other*
Clark: they wont… post that video online, right?
Bruce, sighing: to the family groupchat, probably.
*heard again from across the watchtower*
The kids: we listen and we don’t judge,
Jason: back in the league Damian’s hamster died and we told him it was natural causes but it’s actually because i set it loose during a meeting and Ra’s freaked out and stepped on it.
Jason: OK DRAWING A SWORD MEANS JUDGEMENT DAMIAN PUT IT BACK-
Diana: should you be… checking on them?
Bruce, dead inside: what am i supposed to do about it?
Ollie: aren’t you in charge of them?
Bruce, completely seriously: i’m not in charge of anything anymore.
The kids: we listen and we don’t judge,
Damian: when I was a child I was forced to kill 183 people and I dream of their faces every night
Tim: Damian I don’t think you understand the game.
Bruce, getting up: I’m going to go-
The rest of the league, simultaneously:
Clark: see if the kids are-
Diana: we can handle this-
Barry: you got this buddy-
Ollie: yeah go- go take a break-
Some of Bruce's observations about Dick in The Batman Files:
[Dick's not smiling when I find him perched on the rooftop of the west wing of the manor. He's so used to heights. Looks almost as natural as a bird up there on the steeple. He's looking at Gotham's twinkling skyline like he has somewhere to be. But we both know he doesn't. Not anymore.]
[Then the gunshots start. Joker and Two-Face spot Dick's yellow cape in the shadows. It's a problem we've discussed several times. But the flashy red, yellow, and green were his father's colors. So now they belong to this new Robin. Dick's flipping and somersaulting, springing around the shadows. It's impressive. He's much better at acrobatics than I'll ever be. But he was born on the trapeze. He never even learned how to fear it.]
[My hand goes to the belt, but then I stop myself. The boy's already on it. He takes his staff and breaks it across the Joker's face. Not quite a controlled strike, but it does the job. Joker's unconscious on the cave floor, and the boy is beaming with pride. This is helping him. Being Robin is helping.]
[I turn to look down at the boy. This... it's not responsible, and it certainly can't be good parenting. But it's the only way I know. And it seems to be helping.
"Batman and Robin," I say.
Dick jumps into the air and lets out a shout that I worry will wake our soundly sleeping prisoners before we can deliver them to the GCPD. But despite myself, I still crack a smile. Because this isn't about them. This is about the boy.]
My unexplainable tendency to get obsessed and focused on a sole person for months only for me to hate them right after
Batman is so focused on losing his tiny shadow that he doesn’t realize there are actually three of them.
aka wanted to play with dynamic duo dynamics and i couldnt decide whether to give bats a kid, a preteen, or a dick hilariously close in age, but then, epiphany: all 3 at once. batdad speedrun
btw timmy got the other two interested in following batman around so they basically adopted batman, really