90s Arrowbrothers Have Such A Unique Relationship And I Will Literally Never Stop Thinking About It Because.

The sillies yet again !!

The Wonder Twins, Dick Grayson & Donna Troy

To The Desert, Benjamin Alire Sáenz / Writing Prompts for the Broken-hearted, Eden Robinson / My Name Is Memory, Ann Brashares / What We Buried, Caitlyn Siehl / Christmas Eve Forever, K.C. Cramm / In the Pines, Alice Notley / The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevksy (tr. Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear) / Juansen Dizon

As a Green Lantern enjoyer I feel like the batlantern dynamic would be better if fics acknowledged that Alan Scott is there in Gotham and he WOULD be causing problems. Alan interrupts a date by pulling a chair up and then saying "that's not what you said about Parallax five years ago" every 2 seconds. Alan does not leave. Bruce has to call in the JSA but he gets someone else who likes to cause chaos and refuses to send help on the phone (Henry, Ted, etc).

New Teen Titans studies

Kon: Do you ever feel like talking about your feelings Tim?

Tim: No

Bart: I do

Kon: I know Bart

Bart: I’m sad

Kon: I know Bart

Anyway, thinking about how Bruce’s mom tendencies bleed over around the League.

He pulls out a Barbie pink scrunchie from his endless utility belt.

Oliver is very sure he’s seen it in Spoiler’s blonde mane before. He wordlessly secures Diana’s hair in a ponytail before she jumps into battle.

Barry skins his knee while running, which, considering, is pretty severe. Definitely not the kind of wound you can treat with Gray Ghost bandages.

“I’m NEVER taking this off.”

“Okay, gross?”

“Shut up, Hal, you don’t even wash your suit, you just make a new one every time!”

“I’m allergic to laundry detergent, everybody knows that, BARRY.”

Bruce does not tolerate their fighting for more than 15 minutes at a time. “I will count to 3.”

Hal is quite literally flabbergasted when, after a particularly rough mission, Batman walks over to him and gently places a plate of fruits before him.

“Hal,” in that rain soft voice. “Fruit.”

“…Thanks?”

He just walks off. Like it’s nothing.

“…Did he just do something nice for me? Everybody saw that, right? You’re all witnesses. “

Everyone’s equal parts shocked and equal parts losing their shit. Clark’s eyes are just slightly red.

“I need to take a nap.”

Dick's mob era happening around the same time as Jason building himself up as a crime lord has so much entertainment potential.

the way Bruce is his best friend because they play together, all of those cases they solve might as well be sudoku's in the morning, the blood tests n antidotes and learning how to disinfect a wound might as well be science experiments, sparring and exercise, Dick saw it all as playing not as work. And that's why he is a workaholic in his adulthood the line between work or play and downtime is so blurry for him. That's why his arc during v2 is so heartbreaking we're seeing the destruction of all his loved ones and of the way he plays too 😔✋🏼

was scrolling through the GL tag and these are some statements that caught my eye. keep in mind all of these were from the top posts that had hundreds if not thousands of notes and, of course, were batfam centric despite being tagged as green lantern

• jessica was a GL while dick was robin (i’m not sure how anyone with even the most bare bones knowledge of dc in general would think this?)

• john is bad at art (false, he enjoys it and is skilled enough at it to assist kyle thanks to his work as an architect)

• john was in the army (false, he was a marine)

• hal is scared/intimidated by members of the batfam (lmfao)

• bruce has authority over hal on earth (false, hal has jurisdiction over the entirety of sector 2814)

• bruce knows more about aircraft maintenance and is a better pilot than hal (i don’t even know what to say to this)

• hal is the asshole of the league (false, hal is not an asshole, and if anyone is it’s bruce lol)

• GLs can’t get injured (false, crack open literally any GL comic)

• bruce and clark can outwill hal (no??)

• hal is a himbo who doesn’t know anything (hal is an elite pilot with an engineering degree 😭)

• kyle was hal’s sidekick (couldn’t be more wrong, for the love of god read actual comics please)

i had to stop because i was getting too annoyed. this is what GL fans have to deal with on the daily. for the love of god stop clogging the tag with your batfam power fantasy fan fictions involving characters that you know nothing about ✌️

tim drake's rules brain

I did promise I'd use this account for long form analysis of Batman characters' psychological problems. Something I was talking about on twitter the other day was that to me, one of Tim's primary drivers is his sense of duty -- his need to figure out the correct action and take it. This comes out either in family/social obligations ("I have to quit Robin because my dad said so and he's my dad") or in broader obligations he takes on ("I have to become Robin because Batman needs someone, and nobody else is doing it").

This trait of his is super compelling to me because it's both a strength and something that backfires on Tim constantly -- it's a big source of crunch. On twitter I called him the world's worst utilitarian: he will identify a need and then do pretty much anything short of murder to fill it, even if it tramples over things like his happiness or other people's boundaries.

It's pretty popular in fandom right now to frame his origins like: Tim figures out Batman's identity young, then spends years running around Gotham at night taking photos of Batman and Robin. This is fine!! This is a fine story! Have fun!!

But to me the compelling thing about his intro in A Lonely Place of Dying is that it goes more like: Tim figures out Batman's identity young, and doesn't do anything with this other than keep up with Batman news. While at boarding school he see Batman go apeshit when Jason dies, decides he has to fix this, and during his next week off from school he goes to Gotham and stalks Batman, Nightwing, and Starfire to figure out what's up, makes a plea to Nightwing to come home (without ever telling Nightwing his name because that's not relevant to the task!), and then finally takes on Robin because someone has to do it and he's the closest candidate (while firmly believing he's just a temp substitute!).

The compelling thing is how fast he goes from nondescript eighth-grader to stalker to Robin as soon as he convinces himself he has to do it.

And he does this constantly. My boy sees the world through the lens of rules/obligations/correct actions.

Like I said above, he quits Robin when his dad tells him to, because he needs to respect his dad.

He learns to skateboard (and builds a rocket-powered skateboard) because his dad sells his car and he needs to find a way to get around. Is he a 1990s teenager who just wants to skateboard? Yes. But he has to find a way to make it an obligation.

His conflict in Young Justice 98 is a conflict of obligations! Batman told him he isn't allowed to tell anyone his identity, while his YJ teammates can't trust him because he won't share his identity. Tim repeatedly asks Batman for permission and is bitter about getting a negative response, but won't go behind his back: he needs to respect his duty. (He's super relieved and gleeful when a villain reveals his identity to the team -- it's out of his hands! oh no! what a pity!!)

When Bruce tells Stephanie his identity he's furious at Bruce for the breach of trust and giving Steph more info than he wants her to have, but also specifically for breaking their contract -- they have an agreement and they need to follow it. Tim follows it! Why isn't Bruce??

Throughout the 90s, Bruce's failures to Tim are framed by Tim basically as breaches of contract. It isn't "this isn't a just or kind way to behave to someone in your life," it's "we had a deal and you need to follow it." Batman's 16th birthday present to Tim is two weeks of psychological torture in the form of a fake time-travel mystery; when Tim figures out it was a test, he's furious Bruce for the breach of trust and quits, but he returns within a week because 1) all his friends are capes and he'll never see them again as a civilian and 2) someone needs to protect Gotham. (His loneliness/desire for companionship is another Big Tim Trait imo. but that's another over-long tumblr post.)

Battle for the Cowl is not a good arc but I do think it's significant that in it Tim is the one who lets Jason out of prison, because in a way they're family, and you need to give family a second chance. That's the deal with families.

There's a point in 90s Robin where Tim builds himself a mobile computer system and teaches himself to type on a one-handed keyboard because he needs to find a way to look stuff up in the field without Oracle. Like the skateboard thing... he doesn't actually talk about just wanting to be a keyboard guy. Lots of people have fun building keyboards as a hobby, Tim. No. He has to invent an obligation about it.

[Tim Drake Fake Uncle Scam Arc Goes Here]

Red Robin is entirely about Tim deciding he needs to achieve a series of increasingly ridiculous goals. He needs to prove Bruce is alive. He needs to keep Wayne Enterprises solvent. He needs to take out the League of Assassins. If this ends with him as 1) the boy-king CEO of Wayne Enterprises 2) missing a spleen 3) obliged to pretend to have two broken legs for a year 4) the target of multiple real and fake assassination attempts 5) out of contact and on the outs with his family for months he'll do it. because he needs to.

As a counterpoint to the above, if he doesn't feel an obligation he'll do absolutely whatever. He lies to Batman constantly if it isn't something he feels Batman needs to know.

I could keep going. I'm forcing myself to stop here. This is too long.

Tim isn't "the smart Robin." Tim is the Robin who has weaponized the feeling of I Just Gotta so hard that he can use it to take down Ra's al Ghul. And watching himself either get trapped in an obligation or make one up so he can do what he wanted in the first place is part of what makes him so interesting to me!! ok thanks.