Just Learnt That Damian Would’ve Had A Doctorate In Geology At 7 Years Old If He Hadn’t Killed His

Adrien falling in love: *twirling in the air, giggling, and kicking his feet*

Marinette falling in love: *experiences seventeen different psychotic episodes in the span of twelve hours*

okay i'm locking these in early i know what's gonna happen i'm calling it now

Exactly!

“He cut her hair too short”, “Why couldn’t he make it longer it’s so ugly”, have you ever considered the fact that HE WAS DYING??? He didn’t exactly have time to be like ‘oh how long would you like it dear, let’s make sure there is a good length!’ ALSO have you considered how freeing it would feel to have all that pressure gone?? Like she is free of her burdens both literally and figuratively. And also it’s not even that ugly, like those layers are amazing! Anyways, I get so mad when people criticize the haircut, like appreciate the symbolism please! God I love this movie

Duke Thomas Meta List

Ones without a credited author are from me!

Character

Duke's Resolve by redjaybathood

Duke is Not (Really) Nice by himejoshiangels

Duke and Emotional Repression by 5-7-9

Fanon Extremes by strawberrytalia

Duke and Self-Reliance by himejoshiangels

Personal Responsibility by dukethomas

Relationships

Duke's Views on Jason by batboopp

Duke & Damian

Duke & Tim

Duke is a Dick Hater

Duke is Dick's Successor by mattiebluebird

Duke & Bruce

Is Duke in Bruce's Care? by duketectivecomics

Robin / We Are Robin

Duke & The Robin Mantle

Robin and the Making of American Adolescence by Lauren R. O'Conner; screenshotted by 5-7-9

Thoughts on We Are Robin by millylotus

Meta Powers

Summary of Duke's Abilities by dukes-cassettetape

On Duke Being a Meta by arellas

Elaine Thomas

The Karma Incident by himejoshiangels

Extras

Duke in Wayne Family Adventures

Duke is Shaped By Love by ungodlybliss

How Old is Duke? by duketectivecomics

Not all of these are comprehensive and some slightly contradict others, but I find them all interesting and valuable discussions about Duke. If you don't know Duke at all or haven't read his comics, I recommend starting with the Character section!

I will be updating this whenever I find another meta so feel free to send any my way :).

I had a vision

america's sweetheart olympian 🥇

Prev thinks that dc is the worst fandom ever, and is absolutely not a fan of nightwing

New REBLOG Game

Just fucking lie about the previous poster

God that is insane

can you please explain what happened on tim’s sixteenth birthday if it’s not too much trouble?

Anonymous said: what did Bruce do on Tim's birthday???

@gothamsiren4: i’m afraid to ask what happened but what happened

I would have just included screenshots of the other ask + reply but I need the image space for panels . tumblr and this stupid image limit is going to kill me

ALRIGHT LETS GO OVER ROBIN #116-120!

So, Tim just had a whole adventure from #112-#115 where he was out of town undercover (it was a WILD time. there was a giant monster, this random guy Stephen that could let Tim walk with him through the woods really fast, Tim accidentally wore a mullet wig nearly the whole time- chaos, truly) and when he gets back to Gotham he is fucking exhausted and his sense of time is all sorts of screwed up- something Dana notices as soon as he gets home, when he doesn't recognize an important date coming up that week.

(Robin #116)

So Dana calls up Steph & Ives to come help celebrate, and they all give Tim a particularly surprising surprise party- because he forgot his own birthday! Things are going great until the end of opening presents- where Cole (the guy who works the elevator in their building) has joined the party and it's revealed a mysterious box was left for Tim earlier and they have no idea who it's from.

This makes Tim's Robin anxiety kick into high gear, leaving him paranoid basically the rest of the night

(Robin #116)

Later after the festivities, Tim brings the box to Bruce to start examining it, and Bruce ya know forgot Tim's birthday (Alfred didn't though <3)

(Robin #116)

They do some analysis, follow some leads, and narrow down the guy that delivered it at least. But ultimately they don't get very far before the box… activates, while Tim is alone away from Bruce. It shows a hologram message apparently from a dystopian future Alfred (from the year... 2012... for reference, this issue was written in 2003) who says that in his time period someone in the Bat Family is going to go bad and cause the bad future- and that Tim needs to stop them in present day before it’s too late. But the message is disrupted by Future!Alfred getting shot and killed with some laser thing before he can say who it was, right in front of Tim.

(Robin #117)

Which... well all of this is a lot on Tim's mind. He's torn between 'is it fake or real' and ultimately doesn't tell Bruce about what happened, instead deciding to try to handle this on his own. He at first thinks okay- it's gotta be fake, but who is trying to manipulate me with this and what are they trying to get me to do. He thinks someone is tailing him, and his prime suspect is Jaeger: a guy he'd gone up against a few times previously when dealing with monsters (Man-Bats and Charaxes). He runs into Dick (bc he wanted to wish Tim a happy belated birthday) who helps out- they stage a very convincing (they are ridiculous) fake fight to try to fool anyone potentially trailing Tim, this way Dick could then follow at a distance to observe and see if someone really was following him.

Ultimately though, nobody was tailing him, but Tim keeps investigating the Jaegar idea until eventually finding out he's actually in jail, so clearly not involved in this. When Tim gets home he's got an urgent message from Bruce, about some crazy new high-tech interrogation methods he used on the guy they tracked down, Yak, that had delivered the box to Tim's house and apparently unknowingly made it under a kind of hypnotic state.

(Robin #118)

And the voice from these recordings Bruce was able to get from Yak's mind, that gave him commands for building the box and delivering it? That's a voice Tim recognizes alright- it's the voice of the future Alfred! So now Tim is distressed because the hologram of future Alfred being real and him needing to stop a teammate going bad to prevent a bad future... is suddenly the most plausible scenario, and the only lead he's got.

Tim tries to go hook Yak back up to Bruce's new machine himself, to see if maybe the name that future Alfred got cut off from saying was somewhere hidden in his mind, but Yak had escaped his holding cell and in the ensuing fight he breaks the machine, so Tim can't use it. Instead he's stuck, forced to be paranoid about his friends- investigating them to see who could be the person that goes bad.

(However we do get a slight detour from the main plot to check in on some stuff with Steph- who'd been lying to Tim for the last few issues. Since finding out her dad died, rather than going home and facing her mom like she promised she would in Robin #111, she'd been renting a room on her own. Tim helps do some mediation with Steph and Crystal, so that she can feel comfortable going home again. Then that night he resumes investigation)

He trails Cass first (remember, this is 2003. She’s still like the newest Batfam member and the two of them aren't that close yet), but comes to no conclusions. He theorizes possible scenarios for how it could be Dick, then Babs, and we find out he spends about 10 days straight trailing basically all his Gotham allies trying to figure out who it could be.

He forms a plan to try to test his allies, by writing up a whole planned manifesto of the sort of ideals that led to the bad future according to that future Alfred, with the idea of showing/explaining it to each one and gauging their reaction (thinking that someone who didn't react extremely negatively could be the person who goes bad). However before trying this method out on anyone, he gets paranoid that maybe him doing this is the thing that plants the seed in someone's mind- and freaks out a bit... before-- WHAT?!

Future Alfred comes back- not just a hologram this time! A real physical person! He explains that more things happened in the future- yes Tim saw him die its okay they were able to fix it- but ultimately Tim starts noticing holes in his story, for example his robot arm suddenly being on a different hand than last time.

(Robin #120)

Tim rips off this guy's mask and it's- PRESENT DAY ALFRED?

(Robin #120)

The "Have a drink, sir. I don't care what your birthdate says-- after tonight, you are of age." as Alfred pulls out a flask fucking killed me the first time I read this, it's such a funny line in the middle of this tense mess.

But yeah, it's revealed this was all Bruce's doing. Tim calls it a trick, Bruce calls it training. The entire situation was basically a test of Tim's abilities, to take him to the "next level" and Bruce is overall pleased with how he did... despite then going on to point out some of the flaws in how Tim handled the situation.

(Robin #120)

"I mean really, time travel?" is infuriating. Bruce. You know damn well time travel has happened in this universe.

Timmy is, understandably, fucking pissed.

(Robin #120)

This is one of the not-too-common instances of Tim swearing (like, in a way that needs to be censored. That's what's rare for him, he uses 'damn' and 'hell' regularly like most teen characters). He kinda quits- and very seriously contemplates doing so for real because this whole thing seriously fucked with his head... but after venting to Steph about it, he ultimately decides to go back to Bruce.

But it uh... doesn't get... resolved. Bruce does not apologize. Tim doesn't ask him to. The story just... ends. The ending feels extremely rushed imo. This was the last issue of Lewis' run though (Willingham's run starts the next issue) so idk maybe he thought he'd have more time to spend on the aftermath and that just didn't happen, I don't really know how that transition between writers went since ya know it was 18 years ago.

But yes, anyways, while a lot of these events happen after the actual day, this all started with Bruce having the box delivered to Tim on his 16th birthday.

A slight side tangent to this already very long post- but I do wanna bring back up how Meghan Fitzmartin talked about picking Bernard for Sum of Our Parts because of Tim's mental/emotional state (feeling unsure about himself and his place in things) around the time he met Bernard... because this story is definitely something we could consider part of that. This birthday arc ends in Robin #120, and Tim first meets Bernard the following issue in Robin #121! Very shortly after that, Tim nearly decides to quit again- because he thinks he killed Johnny Warlock (in #123-124). When he gets out of that funk and decides to go full swing into Robin again- that's right when his dad finds out and makes him quit in #125 (Issues #126-128 are Steph's time as Robin... then we begin War Games. Tim goes back to Robin at the start of Act 2 of the event, in Detective Comics #798, so between Robin #129 and #130). As evidenced by this constant back and forth, this is absolutely a period where Tim is going through a lot of uncertainty and identity issues.