batman beyond

Tim has also been seen snowboarding once or twice, though i don’t recall the issues – he’s basically been put onto most of the trendy vehicles of the nineties.

source: im a fuckin tim stan don’t @ me i WILL dig up old scans

Because, right now, all I can imagine is, idk, one of the Robins walking past a bookstore. Like, say, Dick Grayson (a grown man who is about to have the last of his innocence destroyed). Then, slowly, Dick walks backwards to get a better look at a book display of “Superhero Romance Novels”. Because… it’s just.. the classic bodice-ripper covers, except the heroines are clinging to love interests who are clearly thinly-veiled knockoffs of actual superheroes. 

And at least half of these books read like someone went back and changed the names of the featured superheroes and/or supervillains so they wouldn’t be sued (can you imagine a career supervillain getting mad because they got written into a romance novel and trying to “get revenge” for it, the superhero just being like “are you serious is this my life now”). Also, at least half of these male protagonists are clearly based on Batman specifically, except Batman still maintains a cryptic quality so none of these authors know anything about him. Also also, none of these authors know anything about superheroes in general, especially not about crime-fighting or detective work or… y’know… anything, but that’s not important because that stuff is basically all plot device for a smoldering, passionate, steamy, and (insert rom buzzword here) romance. 

So, there’s a romance novel where Batman is literally a bat man (or cat man or something), kind of like a werewolf supernatural romance. Complete with a whole lot of mating bullshit with an ordinary, perpetually swooning young woman. Then the obligatory ones where Batman is a vampire, ranging from the “bitten by a radioactive bat sci-fi vampire” to a straight-up “3000-year old immortal vampire”. Lots of “true mate” bullshit there too, but also blood-sucking scenes that devolve into porn. There’s a few alien Batman books that seem to be Superman fusions. Most of the books have their Batman stand-ins having superpowers of some kind, but sometimes he’s also an ordinary guy living a lonely and extremely unrealistic vigilante life with some incredible internalized misogyny issues. (There’s, surprisingly, sometimes a Bruce Wayne type character too, alongside other knock-offs of famous Gotham faces, but usually Brucie is there as a best friend, antagonist, or rival love interest.) 

The heroines of these books are usually “ordinary women (with beauty and the beast fantasies)” or “intrepid reporters (with similar fantasies)” who do very little journalism over the course of the novel (Lois Lane is enormous inspiration and, somewhere in Metropolis, is dying a little inside whenever she’s reminded of these novels), but sometimes they’re knock-offs of female criminals from Batman’s Rogues Gallery, and sometimes they’re fellow superheroes who need to teach the male protagonist (who repeats “I work alone” and “I can’t let anyone get hurt because of me” like a broken record) to work with a partner and look on the bright side of life. (The inspiration for these superhero female protagonists is clearly Wonder Woman by the skimpy costumes on the book covers, except all the models have noodle arms instead of being jacked and Diana has never swooned into a man’s arms in her life, and Diana also would never put up with any of this nonsense in order to “fix a man”.) 

And there is… an entire bookstore display of these books. The sort of bookstore display that suggests these are by far not the only ones out there. This display is clearly dedicated to Batman knock-offs, but there are a few Superman and Green-Lantern and Flash inspired ones on the other side of the display. The one that is an obvious Aquaman knock-off is lauded to be part of a series. 

“Sir,” says one of the bookstore employees. “Sir, can I help you?” 

Dick looks up at them and then back down, and realizes that he’s been flipping through these trashy superhero romance novels like a madman. (There are good superhero romance books out there somewhere, books that are compelling and well-researched and genuinely romantic and possibly even written by an actual superhero, present or ex, but these are not those books.) 

“Sir, you’ve been at this display for an hour,” the employee says flatly. 

Dick looks up at the employee again, who raises their eyebrows tiredly, then he looks back down and notices that he has his phone in his hand and has been live-texting this discovery (by taking pictures of covers and some of the most ludicrous and objectively terrible passages) to people the entire time. As though he was exorcising himself at the same time he was being possessed. (Everyone knows the only way to get through this sort of terrible thing is to send it to other people and share the pain.) 

Dick has no memory of starting a new group-chat consisting of Barb and Jason, beginning with “look at this” and containing enough terrible Batman-inspired romance content to burn a person’s eyes out. He’s very grateful that, despite apparently losing his mind, he managed to keep the horror both in-family and to the appropriate members of the family. (Appropriate meaning: a) fellow adults who can stand being scarred for life like this and appreciate it properly, and b) not Bruce, and c) NOT ALFRED.) 

Jason had actually replied, multiple times (which is not surprising, but kind of surprising because Jason doesn’t respond to at least half of the mountain of other nonsense Dick regularly sends him). Jason’s response began, “DICK, WHAT THE FUCK” and continued, as Dick just kept mindlessly sending pictures, with threats, blackmail attempts, and straight-up begging for Dick to stop. 

The last text from Jason says, “dick why” 

Dick had apparently responded, “if I have to see it so do you”

“Sir,” the bookstore employee says, exhausted in the way of a retail employee who now has to reorganize something for the nth time that day and has possibly faced down supervillains on their daily commute and can no longer feel fear or horror or fucks to give. “Look, are you going to buy something or not?” 

Bruce presented the idea to him when he was finally mostly settled in the manor around 15, though he didnt get the actual job until he was almost 17. So, a year after he becomes Batman, but that’s only because he doesn’t have his GED before then. And things are crazy enough with being Batman because Terry’s a mess.

He screws up on small things. Sometimes more important things like scheduling, but he gets better at it as time goes on. The one thing he does forget to do fairly often is order items. Whether its like…groceries for the manor or something else, he forgets it. 

He gets a lot better once he’s able to get everything straight–meaning not sleeping less than five hours most nights and actually taking care of himself and working on learning about business stuff, because he actually likes it. 

Sometimes he gets to sit in on meetings and he’s interested in some of it. Gets the numbers part. Although he does tend to zone out sometime due to being unable to concentrate as well as he’d like. 

                Terry was so sick of hearing that he was some kind of ‘pretender’ as Batman. How many times would he have to prove that he was worth the mantel? He guess he had to deal with it since he had no proof to back-up his point. At least in his time he could point out how long he’d been at it–but this wasn’t his time. Just the suit and A.L.F.R.E.D, but he wasn’t exactly supposed to be letting everyone know about the latter. Time travel was weird.