Finnaly

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.

Yooooo, we interacted on a Jason Todd angsty prompt post and i said I'd write a fic and i did! you asked to stay updated soooo, here

Spectrum (Say My Name) - HyperFixatedOnEverything - Batman - All Media Types [Archive of Our Own]

Ooooh thank you so much!!! I’m so exited!

Team “not actually oblivious to flirting, just terrified of appearing presumptuous” represent.

other superbat things we don’t talk about enough: the exact mechanisms that allow Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent to swap suits/personas/etc because they look so alike. is it all just posture and convincing acting? it can’t be. so they look similar at the base level — black hair, blue eyes, pale skin, prominent cheekbones and jaw. they’re both 6ft 2 (+/- 1), broad shoulders, with some small differences in build. does Bruce always sweep his hair back when he’s out of the cowl and that’s why it’s easy to tell them apart? is Clark’s chest just a bit more pronounced? who can tell them apart when they’re really selling it?

(I like to think Bruce accidentally wears his hair down and a little curly one day after patrol (killer humidity in Gotham) and the kids see a little burgeoning Superman curl and are like absolutely not. meanwhile, Clark tries on a black turtleneck for work one morning and is immediately hit by that uncanny valley feeling. Lois finds it in the garbage ten minutes later)

america's sweetheart olympian 🥇

I’ll let you guess

reblog if you're gay, not gay, slightly gay, or if you just want to launch donald trump into a dying star

All healed up Jason who just decides to move back into Wayne manor, and he suddenly takes up his role similar to a 1950’s Housewife with a weapons arsenal. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jason in the morning dropping his brothers off to school: I made Lunch you better fucking eat it

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ jason in a floral apron making cookies?? Bruce just thinks he’s hallucinating for the first week because that cannot be his murder son

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

he doesn’t even tell anyone he’s back. He just snuck in and took up residence in the kitchen at 1am, making pancakes until the morning

Tim, who only knew Jason through stories and rumours and snuck down the stairs for midnight coffee: who the fuck is that??

B is about to be disowned

Metgala had passed once again, and I can't stop thinking about how badly the Batsiblings would judge every look they see. Bruce Wayne taught them to style themselves and be dolls, NOT for this.

Dick, throwing chips in TV: Go, Kylie, go! Give us nothing!

Tim: As the most fashionable sibling out of all of us, I can't stress enough how this pains me.

Stephanie: Be fr, Cass is the most fashionable one, lol.

Damian: Not to appear as Drake's supporter, but Brown, I know that you are not joining us to judge this humiliation ritual, when you wear violet converses with yellow capri pants.

Duke: This year's topic, and the way they handle it, offend me personally. Like. Please. Cassandra, nodding: You would... Slay. Jason: God, I will slay these idiots with my sword, WHAT IS THIS? Another black suit?!

Everyone: *dead silence for a whole minute* Dick, swallowing: That is surely not what I think it is. Jason: I am starting to shoot in a minute. Tim, closing his eyes: I am speechless. Bruce Wayne on their screens, who was invited to the Metgala, but was suggested by the PR-team to wear the most boring outfit, so people would still perceive him as a bimbo with no thoughts behind his big blue eyes: *waving at the camera* Stephanie, scrolling her phone: Oh, that's not a thirst trap edits with this look on my timeline that I see. Everyone: *terrified screech*

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