#i got so many ideas for this dude teaching one of the batkids or a visitor to the batcave about how cad programs work

[bonebrokebuddy]

@kodedgeekthings eyo you mentioned wanting a dpxdc prompt for Howard, Batman’s mechanic!

Harold misses fixing toys for kids and in his off hours has taken up the habit of answering questions on forums about machining, electrical, engineering, mechanics, and mechanical design that are often frequented by students.

One day, he comes across a request by a college student who is trying to assemble his own car out of scrap he bought from a local wrecking yard.

Ghostly_Boy states that he has previous experience in machining and can make replacements for broken or too-damaged parts if need be, but he doesn’t know where to start and what specific requirements he needs to reach to ensure it’s street legal.

Harold willing to help, he answers a few of Ghostly Boy’s clarifying questions:

- Great questions!

It’s good to note that if you’re not careful, fixing or making your own car from parts can be a moneysink and can cost you more than a brand new vehicle. - That being said, your first major step to ensuring you can drive the car is to get the title of the body/frame of the car you plan to build. It’ll have the VIN on a plate welded to the frame usually near the lower edge of the windshield wipers on the drivers side. It’s how the DMV identifies vehicles for licensing.

- Generally, you’ll at first get a “wreck out” title that shows the vehicle is listed as a total loss, but if you can assemble the parts for the car with that frame, the DMV can check if it’s properly running and road worthy & license for you to use it on public roads if you’ve done the proper paperwork.

- Once that is done, it’s largely a case of getting the right parts and assembling them. Depending on how much you have to repair, you could be taking on a task that could give a challenge to even a seasoned mechanic. There may be additional paperwork depending on what exactly you need to repair, like the breaks, lights, steering, etc.

- If you want to build the car entirely from scratch, chassis and all, that’s an entirely different story with a much more complicated list of requirements to make it street legal, so getting a frame from a junkyard is a great first step!

- Make sure to keep all bills of sale, junkyard receipts, invoices and manufacturers’ certificates on any major parts you used in building the vehicle to prove its road worthy to the DMV when it’s complete!

Harold doesn’t always answer first but over time he’s found the adventures of this kid amusing and keeps up with it.

Ghostly_Boy keeps the forum updated with his progress:

The kid spontaneously deciding to scrap the wiring system and make his own in a span of 3 days, leaving experienced mechanics on the forum practically screaming at the kid for his updates showing him using random wires he salvaged and pigtailing them together to get the length of wire he needed.

Mixing not only multiple types of wires but ones that didn’t have the protection needed for auto use. DIY-ing his own relay and fuses he didn’t have and connecting the wrong grounds and switches. And planning on leaving the wires unwrapped and loose.

Leaving Ghost to promptly redo the wiring, correctly this time, within 78 hours.

Making a repair of a massive rusted hole on the passenger side by the bumper and the front tire via cutting 1/2in past the rust, grinding it pretty and clean, tac & seam welding the vintage aluminum housing material of a toaster to cover the hole to the response of Harold and many others in the forum just going “… I guess that would work?”

Harold and many others telling the kid that this “ectoplasm” material wasn’t cleared through the EPA’s Clear Air Act and could be illegal to drive with it as it’s fuel source unless he got the emissions tested & the center of gravity of the car adjusted to have the center of gravity a gas car has, it wouldn’t pass Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. Nor would the previously untested on material make it easy or quick to get an Emissions testing certificate. Best to just stick with gas.

Removing what he thought was a “skid plate” that turned out to be another rusted out section on the frame on the bottom of his car and repairing it with steel he salvaged from an old medical table he had laying around. (To the multiple slightly confused commenters asking how Ghost had a spare medical table, he replied, “eh, my folks visit every so often and they’ve been giving me things they’re clearing out of the house so they can move closer to my older sister. I just so happened to get the ye olde medical table. They’re an odd couple of folks but that’s why I love them.”)

People just crying at the kid to go to rockauto.com and just buy the damn parts he needs for his car. (A good resource btw)

The kid kept cutting corners to save cash but through the badgering of Harold and many others that he actually would have to spend money to make this car be safe to drive in, he finally got it completed.

Ghost’s post of him leaving DMV waving the updated title to the car in its envelope in the air, titled, “THE DMV FINALLY SAID IT WASN’T A FIRE HAZARD! ONLY TOOK 2 YEARS! THANKS EVERYONE!” Got the most amount of responses he’d ever had with congratulations from lurkers and previous commenters.

Over the course of those two years, Danny learned how to draw his own wiring diagrams, properly solder and weld, and learning to actually plan out his projects so he got it right at least the fifth time instead of the 20th. Not bad for a kid that went straight from graduating high school with a 1.5GPA to construction jobs.

But after finally getting the car approved, Ghostly_Boy returns to the forum with a new problem. Lamenting that his parents keep coming over and “modifying” his car to no longer make it street legal.

At this point, about half of the answers to the submission think it’s either a joke project taken very, very seriously with a good chunk of money behind it, or a kid with parents that have narrowly avoided falling completely down the mad scientist rogue rabbit hole.

After all, what sort of parent would think that the DMV would approve to “anti-ghost missiles” being attached to the outer body of the car? Either way, the submissions always had video attached showing a demonstration, proving that Ghost wasn’t just completely yanking their chain. And a good amount of money would have to be sunken in to not only pay for the fines Ghostly continued to get from the additions to his car, but to actually manufacture and make a unique working product for each plea for help request.

Harold is not only taking notes on some of these defense measures but also decides to bring up the boy to Alfred. Intrigued, they together keep an eye on Ghostly_Boy. Bruce may be their employer, but they can handle a case or two on their own.

- I wanted Danny to try to make smth for himself now that he doesn’t have access to his parent’s lab anymore but he also doesn’t have access to ectoplasm so he’s fairly unfamiliar how to wire things Not for ectoplasmic standards.

Also I wanted to make a prompt where Danny had a good relationship with his parents & went into a fairly realistic job after high school with his fairly bad GPA so he’s saving up for a technical school via construction jobs as he doesn’t like the idea of working fast food for understandable reasons.

#dpxdc #bones writes #i have about 3 dozen ideas for dpxdc ideas to do with Howard #I’m going to be a manufacturing engineer. #i got so many ideas for this dude teaching one of the batkids or a visitor to the batcave about how cad programs work #& why he’s using x material for its purpose #instead of y material #like this dude could just be any of my automation profs

[bigskydreaming]

Okay, so you know “Justice League meets Batman’s kids, who they’d previously been unaware existed” AUs?

So picture that.....but this time, instead of them just having no knowledge of any of these other Gotham vigilantes at all....the Batkids all migrate to various cities as they get older and become known as their protectors - Dick in Bludhaven, Tim in San Francisco, Cass in Hong Kong, etc....

Meaning they’re all established figures, the Justice League are aware of them as solo local heroes who stick to their cities and so they just don’t interact with them much if at all, or else some are members of team lineups but are particularly vague about their histories or life outside of the team’s adventures....

So the big reveal isn’t that they become aware of all these other Gotham vigilantes all at once....its that some big conflict or whatever requires a huge team up of all available heroes, and in the aftermath, they figure out that like.....despite being known as solo heroes who work alone or loners outside of their team settings, 80% of these heroes all not only seem to already know each other, they seem to be related.

And so naturally they all turn to Batman, who has profiles on every known hero and they thus figure had researched these individuals too and just never mentioned this little detail, and they’re like, “Did you know about this?”

And then Nightwing turns to him too, arms crossed and is like, “Yeah Dad, did you know about this?”

And the infamous Red Hood is all: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have never met any of these people before in my life. Lives? Whatever.”

And then Red Robin moodily grates out “I have no siblings.” Since he’s nursing a grudge since Dick and Jason broke into his apartment the night before and replaced all his custom Red Robin gear with Darkwing Duck merchandise and his vengeance will be swift and also totally disproportionate because things escalate quickly in this family, that’s true in every universe.

Cass meanwhile has deftly skewered Jason’s lie by walking over to him and brazenly patting down the man with many many guns with no fear whatsoever. He squawks and futilely attempts to bat her hands away as she riffles through his many pockets, but he doesn’t seem shocked, just annoyed. Eventually, she pulls away and triumphantly reveals a box of Hello Kitty themed band-aids.

“So these are yours then? Just for you?” Black Bat asks smugly. Red Hood squints at the box.

“What the fuck? How long have those been in my jacket? Why are those in my jacket? Did you freaking plant them in my jacket just on the offchance you could at some point in the distant future use them at my expense?”

Black Bat frowns, puzzled. “Yes?”

“Oh come on, Dead Hood,” Spoiler says with an exaggerated toss of her head meant to convey she’s rolling her eyes beneath her own mask. She skips her way across the room to Black Bat and then drapes herself languidly all over the smaller woman. Who in turn doesn’t so much as twitch beneath the sudden added mass as Spoiler holds out her hand towards the box of band-aids. 

“One please. I have a boo-boo,” she says with easy familiarity straight into the intimidating cowl of Black Bat. Only then does she deign to finish her train of thought with Red Hood.

“I mean seriously, are you saying you don’t have potential blackmail set-ups, pre-rigged releases of incriminating material, and a random assortment of traps, pratfalls and mortifying scenarios in place for the express purpose of being able to humiliate any and all of your siblings at any given moment, without any need for additional prep time?”

“Is this true, Little Wing?” Nightwing whirls on the larger Red Hood with a faux-scandalized gasp. The founder and leader of the Titans, formerly the Teen Titans, renowned for his stratagems and calm competence when directing squads of supers in the heat of battle while he keeps pace with nothing more than naturally acquired acrobatics and a utility belt that apparently uses the same technology as Wonder Woman’s invisible jet....now appears to be....staggering with the back of his hand pressed to his forehead, moaning about how he felt....faint? 

What is happening right now, several dozen superheroes want to know. Is this a drill? Are they supposed to be checking for signs of a mental ambush from undetected psychic saboteurs? Did they all hit their heads at the exact same time and are now experiencing some kind of shared mass concussion?

Look, that wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to ever happen on the Watchtower. 

“Have I failed you so utterly?” The veteran child hero bemoans with a dramatic twirl - that when contrasted with his stern demeanor of a mere ten minutes ago - makes the fears of telepathic infiltration seem less paranoia and more....concerningly probable. “Did you learn nothing from me? Did you learn nothing from B?”

He stops and jabs a finger up at the sky. “Quick, everyone! What is the very first rule of Living While Batty?”

As if by rote, over a half a dozen voices chime in from all over the room, causing various heroes to jump. Spooked by yet more and more vigilantes joining in some kind of mass recitation like they and they alone have some kind of clue what the hell is going on and everyone else just hadn’t been invited to the party. Which is just rude, honestly. Nobody likes feeling like they weren’t invited to the party. Not even superheroes. 

“If you’re not going to bother preparing for every possible contingency and at least six impossible ones, you might as well just stay in bed.”

Even the Red Hood joins in the Illuminati chant or Cub Scout pledge or demonic ritual or whatever the fuck that just was, though his slumped and exasperated posture gives away every hint of sulkiness his headgear otherwise would have kept safely hidden. He’s surprisingly more...expressive, than most who’d only known of him by reputation had expected him to be. The day continues to yield surprises.

“Of fucking course I do,” he growls out, snatching the box from Black Bat. She doesn’t even fight to hold onto it, just lets it go with a knowing smirk. “I wasn’t surprised by the idea of it, I was just surprised she bothered with such a weak effort. Like yeah whatever, actually those could be mine. I use those all the time at home. So what?”

He aggressively yanks one of the band-aids out of the box, fumbles with the peel-off strips with one hand and he roughly rolls up the sleeve of his jacket with the other. Then just slaps it on his forearm and raises said appendage high, showing it off this way and that. “See?”

“Oh yeah, for sure,” Signal drawls from the other side of the room, nodding his head approvingly. “Totally convincing. Nice job walking that one back, you really showed them.”

Red Hood’s head snaps in his direction with ominous intent. “Watch it, Day-Glo.”

Signal just snorts.

“Yeah, like I’m gonna take constructive criticism on my name and costume from a dude who’s spent the last several years calling himself Red HOOD while running around in a freaking HELMET.”

“Its not meant to be literal, you fucking pedant.”

“So wait, its not literally a helmet? Huh, does it at least protect your head literally, or just like...symbolically? Like if Bane were to clock you across the head, would your concussion just be a metaphor? What’s the treatment protocol for a metaphorical concussion? Fluids, bedrest and a philosophical prescription of two chapters of Chicken Soup for the Soul as needed?”

“Laugh it up, KC and the Sunshine Band,” Red Hood bats back. “You just got yourself disinvited from Thursday night’s poker game.”

Signal just grins and folds his arms over his chest cockily. “Please. You’ve been looking for an excuse to ban me for weeks, cuz you know until you can prove I’m using my ghost vision to cheat, you can’t actually bring suit against me for it in Family Court.”

“That, and also Family Court isn’t a real thing, you toddler. Stop validating Wing-a-ding-ding’s obsession with Shitty TV Nostalgia and just call it that thing where Oracle traps us all in a room until we settle our latest fight without anyone getting stabbed.”

“Yeah, but like, say that five times fast,” Spoiler pipes up. “Its just not practical. Family Court’s way easier.”

“Says the one who’s not even in our fucking family.”

“And yet I grace you all with my sublime presence anyway,” she blows a kiss at him, beatifically unbothered. “You’re welcome.”

The Red Hood scoffs and rounds on his heel, zeroing in on Batwoman in the far corner.

“Hey Auntie B, my siblings are all dead to me and I just helped stop an alien invasion so I deserve nice things like a fun Saturday night. Can you get me into Dad’s fundraiser so I can crash it? He won’t put me back on the list until I promise not to bring any C-4 with me and I won’t promise not to bring any C-4 because he should just trust me that I won’t when I say I’m not gonna and he won’t trust me that I won’t until I admit I shouldn’t have brought any to that sting last month where three tiny little yachts blew up through barely any fault of my own, and I’m just not gonna do that ever because I have convictions and I feel I shouldn’t have to be punished for that. Y’know?”

Batwoman blinks at him. “Kid, I’m not gonna lie to you. You’re my nephew and I love you, but I stopped listening three seconds into all that.”

“Ugh, fine. Can you help me crash Dad’s event tonight so I can teach him a lesson about why he should just trust me not to make a scene so I don’t have to always make a scene to make a point.”

“Tempting as you make that sound,” she says wryly, “I have a strict policy for dealing with you lot and your......everything. I only worry about tolerating one of you at a time, and there’s seven of you, and seven days in the week. You each get your own. You know perfectly well its Robin’s day today. You get me on Tuesday, just like always.”

“Auntie B, we’re not like other families, are we?” Red Robin’s delivery is sarcastically childish and his question clearly rhetorical. Most of his attention is fixated on whatever it is he’s doing with his wrist-mounted computer. 

“No sweetie, we’re all severely fucked in the head and a little bit too comfortable with that.”

“Just checking. Oh hey, Hood, I just emailed you a patch for the hole in your firewall I exploited when replacing all my shit using your accounts just now.”

“You did what?”

“Used your accounts to pay to replace all my stuff that you fucked with last night?” Red Robin says slowly. “Did you not realize that I’ve been sticking within ten feet of you for the past five minutes just so I could clone your devices and do all that while BB and Spoiler kept you distracted? I gotta say, bro, I feel like that’s on you then.”

Red Hood swivels his helmeted head in the direction of the aforementioned two. Black Bat waves. Spoiler shoots him an utterly unrepentant thumbs up.

“You’d side with your ex over me? That’s what its come to?”

“My only allegiance is to chaos,” Spoiler says brightly. Black Bat shrugs.

“Plus he bribes better.”

“Hateful,” Red Hood points at Black Bat, moving on to level the same finger at Spoiler, who curtsies in acknowledgment: “Hateful-er.”

Then the finger rounds the bases to aim judgmentally at Red Robin. “Hateful-est. And that was all Nightwing’s idea anyway, not mine.”

“Oh, I assumed as much,” he says casually. “Your idea of a prank tends to have more of a Carrie vibe. Or be a literal literary reenactment.”

“Its called an homage, 4chan.”

“Whatever, plagiarist. And anyway, I couldn’t go after ‘Wing for payback on this one. He used an Immunity card. If you didn’t want me getting back at you, you should have used one too."

Red Hood looms aggressively. Red Robin ignores willfully. Round and round they go. Superheroes who can survive excessive G-Forces are getting dizzy just watching them have a largely motionless stand-off. That shouldn’t be how that works, but whatever. All the most infamously reclusive and isolated heroes in all hero-dom are apparently part of the same one big reclusive and isolated family of fucked up weirdos and they’re all officially bonkers. Nothing makes sense anymore. Reality broke. Try another stall.

“Okay, but see, in order to have an Immunity card, I would have to participate in one of you losers’ stupid Immunity challenges,” the Red Hood drags out with exaggerated patience. “And I’m just not going to do that, on account of those all being fucking stupid. You see the problem there?”

Red Robin just shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you, bro. You can have principles or you can have an Immunity card. You can’t have both.”

Meanwhile, on another side of....the same room.....look, its like, an octagonal room, probably. It has a lot of sides. Robin fends off questions from an aggrieved looking Superboy.

“You never told me you had a bajillion brothers and sisters!”

“Yes but I never said I didn’t either.”

Superboy rolls his eyes. “Oh yeah, so I should just assume everyone I meet has a bajillion secret brothers and sisters?”

“Well clearly it would have worked out in your favor in this instance if you had, now wouldn’t it?”

“Assuming of course that you can trust what has been said or implied here today and I am actually related to any of those numbskulls. Which I am not actually admitting to,” Robin tacks on hastily.

Superboy eyes him dubiously. “You joined in the same creepy chant all the others did and then got super self-conscious and looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Which uh. I did.”

“First off, your interpretation of body language is abyssmal. I do not get self-conscious,” Robin says with a delivery that probably could have benefited from being a little less self-conscious. “And second....that proves nothing. I guessed what they were going to say.”

“Word for word,” Superboy says super-skeptically.

“I’m very good at guessing things. You know this.”

“Okay. Guess how much I believe you right now then.”

Robin glares and folds his arms grumpily across his chest. 

“And what was that anyway? Was that like....you guys’ family motto or something like that?”

“Oh no,” Spoiler pipes up. “That’s much shorter.”

Superboy balks at that. “Wait, you guys actually have one of those for real?”

“Yup,” Steph says, counting out the words with her fingers. “He who laughs last....probably works for the Joker. So tranq him just to be safe. See? Only sixteen words. The first rule of Living While Batty is way longer, and what we said was just the abridged version. You should hear the original, before Black Bat put her foot down and refused to memorize it unless sizable edits were made.”

Superboy hovers between her and Robin now, both in mid-air and on the verge of taking Spoiler’s words as an invitation to hear just that. A low growl arises from Robin’s direction.

“Must you?” He asks the older vigilante, with a most put upon expression.

She looks at him pityingly. “Do you actually need me to answer that? Like, we’ve met, right? Hi, I’m Spoiler.”

“Wait, so Robin said that I just never specifically asked him if he had a bajillion brothers and sisters, and that’s why he didn’t tell me, so that means he wouldn’t have just lied and there’s not some code of secrecy that flat out forbids telling other people stuff, right?” Superboy realizes excitedly.

“Yes, excellent direction. Go on,” Spoiler says, steepling her fingers. Robin buries his face in the palm of one hand.

“Soooo, what other stuff could you tell me about Robin’s super top secret family that I wouldn’t think to ask about but that he would tell me about if I knew what questions to ask?”

She claps once, lightly but with emphasis. “Well done. You’ve passed the first barrier. Untold secrets await you behind just a few more.”

“I’ll get you for this,” Robin vows calmly. She waves a hand at him.

“Yeah, yeah. Just make sure you do it before January 1st, remember? You’ve promised retribution like ten times already this year and those don’t roll over, y’know. Rules are rules.”

“Enough!” Thunders a voice then, from the front of the room. Well one of the fronts anyway. Like sides, it has a lot of them, but this is the one where Batman’s standing. All eyes snap to him. Which is kinda just what eyes do when Batman says stuff like that. Its like his superpower, except he doesn’t actually have superpowers, which is what makes it scary. But where the snapping of the eyes (directional) is usually followed by Batman saying something else besides just “hey look at me,” here he pauses in the wake of his own call to attention’s waning reverberations. Uncharacteristically silent.

Not that, y’know, he’s normally Mr. Talkity Talk, but usually his silences feel like he has the words to fill them, he’s just withholding them. This though, this feels more like he doesn’t have any words at all. And he’s as confused by it as any of them, and most everyone else is confused by Batman being confused, and its this whole trickle down economy of confusion and its wrecking havoc on the value of the golden silence standard.

Of course, not everyone present is rendered spellbound with confusion.

“C’mon B,” Nightwing cajoles, leaning forward and practically radiating delight. “I think you know what you have to do now. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Its not likely to come around again.”

Red Hood snickers beneath his helmet and chimes in. “Yeah Pops, go ahead. You do this and you’ll actually have my respect for a whole twenty four hours. No, wait. Sixteen. No! Eight. Yeah, eight. Still a good deal.”

“Carpe diem, B,” Red Robin grins, leaning back as if to enjoy the show.

“Hey! Infringe on my trademark one more time, dude,” Signal throws a faux-glare at the former. Red Robin just quirks an eyebrow.

“And what, you’ll start saying Yum every time you eat a burger? Oh no. I’m hoist by my own petard.”

Signal flips him off with a grin and then redirects his attention back to Batman. “Yeah seriously though B, you kinda gotta do it now. Because if you don’t do it, then you’ll forever be the guy who didn’t do it, and you don’t want to be that guy, do you?”

“Yeah you really don’t want to be that guy,” Spoiler shouts out. “Nobody likes that guy. He’s the worst.”

“Do it, do it,” Black Bat starts chanting beside her, steadily picking up speed and volume. Several others start joining in. Even Robin appears to be slightly anticipatory, albeit trying very hard to hide it.

Batman sighs, and somehow everyone manages to hear it. Stills. Waits for....something? Nobody but them seems to have any clue what, but the air is thick and heavy with portentiousness. Something is about to happen, and all most of the heroes present could say for sure is it was something they never would have in a million years seen coming.

Finally, Batman straightens with the resigned air of a man about to have oh so many regrets. He crosses his arms, shakes his head, and in an absolute deadpan monotone, says:

“You are awful children. You know you’re killing me. You’re killing your father.”

[bigskydreaming]

Does dick read in canon? Because i heard somewhere his favorite book is robin hood and in part, his alter ego comes from that due to his mother calling him robin What do you think he likes to read Also, OMG Jason, Dick and Tim can make a book club :0

He does absolutely read in canon! And lies to the contrary are just fanon nonsense along the lines of “only one Robin per hobby, and Jason already called dibs on reading!” Which uh....if we’re going by ‘dibs’ logic, that might not be the best approach for non-Dick stans given that the dude has been around for 80 years and thus has essentially called dibs on everything by now, at least once. Hacking, reading, etc....Dick did ‘em all first, technically speaking. And also by that logic, none of the other Batkids are allowed to be acrobatic at all, to any degree, that’s Dick’s thing! Feet firmly planted on the ground at all times, Jason through Damian! No flipping about on grounds of copyright infringement!

Sorry. Ahem. I have a lot of feelings about the ridiculousness of certain ideas. And also no filter. It died.

But yeah, Dick does read in canon, and before the more commonly used origin of Robin where it was what his mother called him based on the bird itself, one of the earlier origins for the name Robin was in fact Dick naming himself that after Robin Hood, one of his favorite stories. 

(I had this one idea for an AU once where Dick and Jason are roughly the same age and both are running around the streets at the same time after Dick escapes from juvie and is hunting down Zucco, and Jason is stealing tires and sharing some of the money with smaller, younger street kids because y’know, he has a heart. And basically my idea was they’re both roughly the same age, same size, black hair and blue eyes, and a kid like that picking fights with guys twice his size and age and frequently coming out the victor is noteworthy enough that people have heard of both of them.....BUT.....they tend to think they’re the same kid. And Dick is calling himself Robin. And Jason is calling himself Hood. Put them together, and.....ta-da! But then I was like yeah no, people will inevitably make that shippy so I didn’t do the thing and also I died a little more inside. Bleh).

ANYWAY ANYWAY.

My personal headcanon is that while Jason reads classics and also fantasy stuff because my random hill that I will die on after being resurrected after dying on eighty million other hills cuz I have no chill - is that Jason is a dungeons and dragon nerd. No I will not elaborate or accept constructive criticism, it is TRUE and it is FACT and never shall I be convinced otherwise. In his spare time, Jason dreams up ways to torture his players with Dungeon Master glee. And I think Tim has always been a superhero buff and a bit of a geek, so he’s got a soft spot for comic books and various genre fiction.

Dick in contrast I believe is the kid who actually reads nonfiction of all types. He reads to learn things. Part of why I hate people’s usual classist attitude towards his intellect and the fact that he didn’t want to go to college, is that people often equate that with ‘doesn’t want to learn’ and umm, a) No, you’re wrong, stop doing that, that being wrong thing, its bad. And b) HELLO HAVE YOU MET DICK, THE DUDE LOVES TO KNOW THINGS AND KNOWS TEN MILLION THINGS ABOUT EVEN THE MOST RANDOM BIT OF TRIVIA.

WHERE DO YOU THINK THE COLLEGE DROPOUT GETS ALL THAT KNOWLEDGE????

In short, whether you believe that Bruce knows all kinds of stuff like that because of his random BUSINESS degree he hardly ever uses since LUCIUS FOX is the one who actually RUNS his damn company for the most part.....and that Dick somehow picked up all his own knowledge via Bruce in terms of like....osmosis or brain hacking or Bat-lectures....

The bottom line is DICK KNOWS LOTS AND LOTS OF FACTS.

And you can either conclude that Dick knows all this stuff because Bruce is pedantic as hell and growing up with him 24/7 is the equivalent of sitting through the lecture requisites for seven different masters degrees and probably a couple of PhDs.....

Or Dick knows all this stuff because he has a genuine thirst for knowledge and reads whenever he gets the chance to pick up new knowledge. Which allows him to know things that even Bruce doesn’t have archived in his Trivia Banks.

Or you can be like me, and assume that the answer is Both. Both is good. *nods sagely*

In conclusion, Dick reads, he reads a lot, he is hella smart despite his lack of a college degree - OR it can be just as easily argued, BECAUSE of his lack of a college degree, because rather than wasting time on various prerequisites that aren’t essential to the knowledge he wants or needs to acquire and wasting time being taught things he already knows via a childhood growing up with BATMAN (seriously, when he did go to college for like a year, it was for a criminology degree. Exactly what the hell was any college going to teach ROBIN THE BOY WONDER about criminology that he didn’t already KNOW? Of course Dick dropped out! He probably could have TAUGHT most of his classes, what the hell does he care about a piece of paper when he’s already been putting that knowledge to use since he was twelve and he clearly hasn’t suffered for a lack of that piece of paper ever since?)

ANYWAY AS I WAS SAYING BEFORE I INTERRUPTED MYSELF - yeah, it could be just as easily argued that Dick acquired MORE knowledge by not going to college than he would have sitting through required college courses because someone who is adept at teaching themselves (and don’t forget Dick grew up homeschooled before he lived with Bruce, his formative habits were structured around self-schooling) well, that someone usually is going to get more out of picking and choosing what information he most wants to acquire when and in what fashions it’ll be most expedient for him to acquire it.

*takes breath*

And in conclusion, a book club between Dick, Jason and Tim would be extremely amusing, especially if it were formed not long after Jason’s return by Dick as a way of awkwardly brokering peace and forming bonds between the brothers.

And also imagine the sheer entertainment value of the Robins with their many varied interests arguing over what book to pick next.

[bigskydreaming]

I just really hate how much of Kyle’s story had to be erased or buried in order to make way for Hal’s return to the spotlight. Like the Hal being Kyle’s Space Dad thing is fun and all, sure, except for how its also this kinda obnoxious way of looping Hal into being part of Kyle’s successes and triumphs as a hero, like....after the fact though? Kyle’s entire thing is in a universe filled with legacies and mentors and sidekicks, he was the one guy who was just COMPLETELY unprepared for any of this, and just had the weight of an entire intergalactic peace-keeping corps’ tragic past and legacy just thrust on him with no warning, and the thing is....HE DIDN’T HAVE TO ACCEPT IT! Even once he understood what it was he was really inheriting, the sheer scope of it and what was expected of him now, to carry on the work that was intended to be shared by THOUSANDS, just...all by himself, with no one to teach him, guide him, share with him, understand what all this was like....

Kyle Rayner’s high concept is that in a franchise that revolves around the idea that “being a GL means you’re never truly alone, you’ll always have thousands of comrades in arms to learn from, lean on, etc”.....he was the one and only character who had to do all that ALONE. Even now, with the Corps restored and back to its full capacity, its obvious in pretty much every story that Kyle has never learned how to fit in with the rest of them, be ONE of them, like here’s this guy who busted his ass for years and years trying to make all of this possible, bring all of this back, make it so he isn’t the last one anymore, the only one....and then it HAPPENS, and he’s still kinda...lost. Because he doesn’t really fit. Because even among this chaotic community of varied experiences in the Corps, he is the ONE guy that NONE of them can ever truly relate to, not even John or Guy, because while they were still around, neither of them were expected to....BE the last Green Lantern, the way he was. Neither of them ever felt the same responsibility to fix what had been broken, that it was down to them, like Ganthet basically put on Kyle.

And like, the thing was....Hal wasn’t there for any of that really. And when he was, most of it was as the BAD GUY that Kyle was fighting, the one who had destroyed everything Kyle was stuck trying to fix. Yeah, ultimately the Parallax retcon made all of that not really his fault and so its not like Kyle blames him for any of that, or should, but its also like....what are you doing, acting like the guy who was literally the face of his enemy for years and years is like....this Space Dad who thank god he’s finally around to give Kyle the mentoring he desperately needed, when like....no dude, Kyle did everything he’s famous for and celebrated for in canon....on his own. Without you, or anyone else. He is who he is because he had one bad-ass mom, Maura Rayner, who raised him right and gave him the tools he needed to succeed...

ESPECIALLY the one that served him best....the ability to recognize when he didn’t have it handled, and ASK FOR HELP.

Which is not a skill Hal could ever teach anyone lol, sorry.

But like, that was one of the greatest things about Kyle at the start of his story....he was wearing one of the most powerful weapons in the universe, the last of its kind at the time, and there was no one who could teach him how to use it the way he was meant to be taught, none of the teachers he was SUPPOSED to have...but rather than just keep trying to bulldoze his way through things and stubbornly insist well he’d figure things out himself then....he was like, okay, I need all the help I can get...and he literally went on a tour around the country, stopping in every major hero’s city to ask them if they could help teach him stuff they felt he should know. Like that was the main reason that for a long time he was called the only Lantern Bruce had ever truly respected....because Kyle had the humility to recognize he was NOT qualified, and he needed to GET qualified, by any means necessary.

And that’s just...so....Kyle, and so fundamental to his character and what makes him so great, but all of that has kinda been handwaved away, not even like retconned in a lot of places because they couldn’t figure out a way to do that that actually made sense....but instead like this sleight of hand thing where they’re like if we dont mention it for long enough and just hype up the Hal as Kyle’s Space Dad mentor person stuff, it’ll eventually be as if Hal really was there guiding and shepherding Kyle all along, even though...lmao, no, that is quite literally incompatible with the majority of Kyle’s overall story and character arc....which is why for as much as the comics talk up Kyle’s role and specialness as the Torchbearer and White Lantern and other titles....they’re extremely vague about delving into details at this point about what any of that even means and what it refers to and he’s mostly shunted off stage so nobody asks too many questions like, hey if this guy is so important and honored by the Corps, why isn’t he involved more in their biggest storylines and like, front and center? 

Its the same problem I was talking about with DC not wanting Dick or the other Batkids to surpass Bruce. DC screwed up massively with their second generation of heroes....Dick and Kyle and Wally and more....because they DID advance the universe’s overall story and timeline, they DID allow the younger heroes to age, and then they DID kill off and do away with a number of the old guard which allowed the original legacies to step up and fill their shoes, AND DO A KICKASS JOB OF IT ACROSS THE BOARD.....

Until, fifteen, twenty years after they started doing that (with Wally), by which point DC’s writers were primarily fanboys who’d grown up idolizing the original heroes like Hal and Barry.....and so they rolled the clock back to allow for their preferred heroes to take center stage again....

Which leaves the younger generation stuck, and with no real place for themselves, which I think is also a big part of the reason their Titans’ reboots haven’t worked. Because they know that these younger heroes are TOO experienced, TOO good to just go back to being actual sidekicks, but they went to all this trouble to bring back all the originals and don’t intend to let them go again any time soon, and so they’re like...well, we can’t have this middle generation fucking things up and making the older heroes look bad, so they kinda just get shuffled around the DC universe and various titles in the hopes that they’ll find somewhere they click, but no idea what to even aim for. 

And so you’ve got Kory with Roy and Jason here and then now she’s in space with Vic and a handful of others that honestly feel like they just pulled names out of a hat, and meanwhile she’s got SOME kind of romantic history with Dick, but good luck trying to pin down where or when that even happened, because that would mean committing to them having been ages that just do not work with the ages they try and claim Dick is now and the amount of time the Titans were supposed to have been retroactively active and lol what even. 

And meanwhile, Titans and their age group remain the first to get picked off and killed in any major event, Titans keeps being the first book to be axed, they tried to speed through an original Titans’ lineup all the way to a team made up of Tim’s age group in a span of thirty issues, and on and on. And its just a mess, and it all traces back to the sheer wtf of DC having spent twenty years writing about their universe growing up and moving to the next stage of things....and then trying to take it back, and its like no, you cant stuff all that back in the bottle, it GREW. It doesn’t FIT in there anymore!