Post by Jace on Jul 30, 2019 2:39:31 GMT -5
Some talking points for the soft reset. Feel free to respond/discuss in Discord! Just trying to avoid clogging channels with walls of text. 
I picked the name DC 2020, because it was short and catchy - good for URLs, and all that. It also happens to be a year, and a pretty significant one at that. It used to be one of the go-to "in the near future" years for TV shows. It is a year where a Presidential election will be taking place in the United States. We've got an overarching plot about a future apocalypse, with a bit of a "this is the year when everything started to go wrong" vibe. Do we want to adopt the year 2020 as our focus, and figure out our ages and timelines based around that?
Age: From context, we know that Batman has been around long enough that Jason Todd looks like Jensen Ackles. Sarah has expressed an interest in writing Damian Wayne, so presumably Batman has been active long enough that he has a teenage child with Talia al Ghul. If that happens, I'm keen to write Tim Drake: if his age is somewhere between Jason and Damian, that means he's about the same age as in theTitans show. For the sake of "neatness", perhaps Batman's career started in 1989, the year that Burton's firstBatman movie released? That puts Bruce Wayne in his fifties which fits with a Ben Affleck version of the character, it tracks with those various Robin ages, and it means that Batman has been fighting crime in Gotham for thirty years: long enough that it's "about damn time" he started accepting help from outsiders, methinks.
Dick Grayson: With that 1989 timeline, there is still room for Dick Grayson to fit in with the story. He would be in his forties now, which puts him in the same age bracket as Oliver Queen and Hank Hall. If he was ever Robin, he would probably have been active up until about 2001: this is around the same time that Hank Hall was active as Hawk. This would be a very lonely Dick Grayson, however, as many of his usual contemporaries - Roy Harper, Wally West, Starfire - are twenty years younger. The comics sometimes have Dick become a government agent: this gives us the option of introducing a Grant Ward style take on the character, perhaps with A.R.G.U.S. or Checkmate. It is also possible that, because of one of the handwavey timeline changes, Dick Grayson never became Robin at all: perhaps his parents never died, and he lived happily ever after; or perhaps he was recruited by the Court of Owls like many of his ancestors, and is now one of the Talons, their Winter Soldier style kept-in-stasis enforcer/assassins. It is also possible that someone else entirely was the first Robin (see: Green Arrow).
Like Batman, the specifics of Green Arrow and his backstory are a bit vague and amorphous, but there are a few things we can reverse-engineer and figure out from where it is we want things to end up.
Oliver was orphaned: Rather than dying on the boat as he does in Arrow, Robert Queen was killed when Oliver was still a kid, leaving him to be raised by his uncle, William Glenmorgan. This is important, because it gives Checkmate enough time to thoroughly take control of and integrate the company: not something they could have pulled off in the five years Oliver was dead. Also, it is an important part of why our Oliver is how he is: rather than coming back to a family the way that he did in Arrow, our Oliver is all about the family that he managed to build for himself, hence Roy and Mia and Connor.
Oliver actually died: Instead of five years on an island, Oliver straight-up died and wound up in Purgatory. For us, Purgatory is a mix between Oliver's island and the Phantom Zone. Time has no meaning there, so while Oliver was only gone for five years, his experiences could have been decades, or centuries. He didn't escape until The Spectre - the Angel of Vengeance, who needs to possess people Ghost Rider style - offered to resurrect him in exchange for Oliver becoming his host. Oliver made that deal, and that's the reason for his initial Arrow style murder vigilante phase. Once Oliver was free of that influence - by John Constantine, who has a flair for telling possessive mystical entities to fuck off out of our characters - he was able to 180 his way into being Robin Hood.
(The Spectre is now back in his old host from Justice Society times: except that Jim Corrigan was resurrected without his soul, so The Spectre doesn't currently have that source of morality/conscience to bend him into more of a heroic figure. Jim is the current head of Infernal Affairs at the GCPD, which is the division that Constantine and Hector work for.)
Roy went to college: That's the reason why he stopped being Arsenal. I flat-out refuse to go with the "Oliver kicked you out because you had a heroin problem" angle from the comics: I figure the idea of a son leaving home to go to college is a much more dad-like challenge for Oliver to face, and a bit more of an optimistic situation for Roy to be in. It also distances his Speedy > Arsenal transition from the Robin > Nightwing transition, which seems like a good move. This puts him in his early twenties, so he's a fair bit older than Wally, but not so much that they couldn't have Young Justiced it up at some point.
Young Justice: Wally definitely knows Roy, because he's teased Red Arrow about it. Given the time scales we're talking about, it makes sense that various sidekicks might have sidekicked at the same time. However, the name "Titans" might be something we want to reserve for Starfire + Friends, because they are captives of Project Tartarus. The sidekicks being known as "Young Justice" in the press seems like an aptly groanworthy option. I don't think there ever would have been a fully-fledged formal team, but teaming up with Donna and Garth for that OG golden age fivesome seems like a component worth having.
Age: Oliver is definitely older than Stephen Amell. He seems like a guy in his forties: old enough for his kids to be teenagers, but not old enough to be old. Green Arrow first appeared in More Fun Comics #73: if Oliver was born in 1973, he would be around 46/47 at the current time... a little on the old side for Stephen Amell, but bearing in mind he was dead for five years and then resurrected, that sort of tracks. Depending on when he died, Oliver has probably been Green Arrow for about twenty years, sharing the last ten-ish of them with Roy and Mia - though a chunk of that first decade would have been his time as The Spectre.
Batman: Oliver's age does present a slight wrinkle in his relationship with Batman. When things were vague and nothing was nailed down, the thinking was that Oliver and Bruce "probably knew each other from school". However, given the age difference between them, Bruce would have graduated from Brentwood before Oliver even started. One option is to make Batman younger. If his vigilante career began in 2001 (after 9/11?), Bruce could feasibly be the same age as Oliver, and would have become Batman when he was about 28. This age still tracks with Jason Todd and Damian Wayne, though it will be a bit tight squeeze if we try to sneak a Dick in there beforehand.
Alternatively, we could lean into the age difference. In 1989, Oliver was 16 years old. If Dick Grayson never became Robin for some reason (see: above), then a rebellious teenager, packed off to a boarding school on the other side of the country, on the outskirts of a city where an illegal vigilante is operating? For someone who already has a Robin Hood, that's a fantastic origin story. Oliver starts to sneak out at night, takes his bow, dresses in green... and instead of the odd combination of a bat and a random bird, the newspapers start talking about "Batman & Robin Hood", which subsequent sidekicks adapt into Robin. That jives really well with Jason Todd being both Robin and Red Hood, and it also cultivates a really interesting relationship between Bruce and Oliver. It isn't a father/son dynamic, because Oliver isn't young enough, but it is the prototype for Oliver's relationships with Roy and Mia, and it means he understands them better, because he was an angsty teenage archer too. Oliver choosing to adopt Star City when he returns from the dead is his Blüdhaven analogue: a city of his own, and also one that is his family's traditional home, somewhere that feels like "his" city in the same way that Gotham belongs to Bruce. It also makes his return interesting, and more of a homecoming, less butting in on a city where he doesn't belong, and more returning to one where he does. It makes Batman more likely to be receptive to Oliver's presence, because he's part of the extended Bat Family, and in return, it means that Bruce is part of the extended Queen Family as well. It isn't Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne, they are Anakin and Obi-Wan, in Episode II when Oliver is the sidekick/apprentice, and in Episode III when Oliver is supposed to be his brother. Also, Anakin's wife doesn't suck and won't die of a broken heart, so it's win-win.
(Yes, Mia. That makes you Ahsoka.)
Military Service: If we go with the Batman & Robin Hood option - which we absolutely do not have to, I just think it's kinda neat - that does raise the question of why Oliver leaves. He's not Batman's son, so he can't have an angsty rebellion outburst. There are no volcanos nearby, so you can't cut off all my limbs, either. But with Anakin and Obi-Wan, they part ways because the war forces them apart. That could be an option here. William Glenmorgan sounds like the sort of person who might have seen Bill & Ted and decided it was a good prototype for an approach to parenting: no doubt he's been threatening to send Oliver off to military school if he doesn't buck up, and things along those lines. Perhaps Oliver gets some sort of ultimatum - prove to me that you're a "real man", else I'll make sure you never get your inheritance; I won't pay for your college tuition, join the military and get them to pay for it; etc - and joins the military?
My main thinking here is that on Arrow, they spent a very contrived five years trying to justify from how Oliver went from trust fund brat to abs of steel badass. In the comics, it just takes time, and Oliver is already an archery enthusiast even before he gets to the island. By putting Oliver in the military, and giving him that training in advance, not only does it justify why he has those skills now, but it also justifies why he had them in Purgatory too. There's a season of Supernatural where Dean Winchester gets sent to Purgatory (which he experiences as a forest suspiciously similar to those within driving distance of Vancouver), and for him it is very much a warrior honing his skills experience. I think that's a good fit for our Oliver, and a good way for him to leave Gotham (again, if we even do that, we don't have to) and Bruce on amicable terms.
As an added flourish of possibility, perhaps Oliver's death happens on a mission. Perhaps he's left behind by his unit, perhaps he's captured and declared dead, perhaps people in his unit literally see him die. That creates a situation where there are people out there who might know, categorically, that Oliver Queen is 100% dead. Perhaps those people are friendly, and it just turns into an opportunity to exposition some of his past in the story. Perhaps they're not so friendly - the works-for-Checkmate style of not-so-friendly, perhaps? - and that's earning Oliver a kind of attention that he might not want. Perhaps there are even theories about Oliver. He died, and when he came back he was unusually bloodthirsty: so perhaps there was a Lazarus Pit involved, people might think. Knowing that Robert Queen faked his own death, certain people might believe he did the same for his son. Knowing about Robert Queen's connections to Checkmate, perhaps William Glenmorgan is convinced that this Oliver isn't really his nephew, and is instead some clone that Robert has sent to torment him. We know the answer, but leaving characters to guess based on partial information could be fun.
2020
I picked the name DC 2020, because it was short and catchy - good for URLs, and all that. It also happens to be a year, and a pretty significant one at that. It used to be one of the go-to "in the near future" years for TV shows. It is a year where a Presidential election will be taking place in the United States. We've got an overarching plot about a future apocalypse, with a bit of a "this is the year when everything started to go wrong" vibe. Do we want to adopt the year 2020 as our focus, and figure out our ages and timelines based around that?
Note: It probably isn't 2020 yet: our Brentwood stuff is still towards the start of the academic year, so it's probably still only October 2019.
Batman & Robin
Since we now have the option of including Batman in things, we should probably figure out how he fits in, and what has happened.
Age: From context, we know that Batman has been around long enough that Jason Todd looks like Jensen Ackles. Sarah has expressed an interest in writing Damian Wayne, so presumably Batman has been active long enough that he has a teenage child with Talia al Ghul. If that happens, I'm keen to write Tim Drake: if his age is somewhere between Jason and Damian, that means he's about the same age as in theTitans show. For the sake of "neatness", perhaps Batman's career started in 1989, the year that Burton's firstBatman movie released? That puts Bruce Wayne in his fifties which fits with a Ben Affleck version of the character, it tracks with those various Robin ages, and it means that Batman has been fighting crime in Gotham for thirty years: long enough that it's "about damn time" he started accepting help from outsiders, methinks.
Dick Grayson: With that 1989 timeline, there is still room for Dick Grayson to fit in with the story. He would be in his forties now, which puts him in the same age bracket as Oliver Queen and Hank Hall. If he was ever Robin, he would probably have been active up until about 2001: this is around the same time that Hank Hall was active as Hawk. This would be a very lonely Dick Grayson, however, as many of his usual contemporaries - Roy Harper, Wally West, Starfire - are twenty years younger. The comics sometimes have Dick become a government agent: this gives us the option of introducing a Grant Ward style take on the character, perhaps with A.R.G.U.S. or Checkmate. It is also possible that, because of one of the handwavey timeline changes, Dick Grayson never became Robin at all: perhaps his parents never died, and he lived happily ever after; or perhaps he was recruited by the Court of Owls like many of his ancestors, and is now one of the Talons, their Winter Soldier style kept-in-stasis enforcer/assassins. It is also possible that someone else entirely was the first Robin (see: Green Arrow).
Barbara Gordon: If Dick Grayson is in his forties, it seems logical that Barbara Gordon would be as well. Handily, that's the right age bracket for Dina Meyer, who played Barbara in the Birds of Prey TV show. Yes, Dina Meyer from Starship Troopers and Star Trek: Nemesis. A version of Barbara who used to be Batgirl, went through a Killing Joke style experience with the Joker, and is now around as an adult/mentor could be a really useful character for us. She's the antithesis of Jason Todd, someone who was "broken" by the Joker and came out stronger because of it. She'd make a great addition to the Brentwood Academy cast, perhaps as a librarian and/or English teacher: a much-needed female addition, and also someone whose Batgirl career overlaps with Hank's career as Hawk. You usually find Barbara quarterbacking the Birds of Prey, but there's no reason she couldn't do that for the Brentwood crew and/or the Outsiders. There's no reason that the Birds of Prey couldn't already exist, or have existed, or come into existance either: a bonus excuse to draw Dinah Lance into the story, among other things.
Stephanie Brown: If Tim Drake and Barbara Gordon end up being part of our story, Stephanie Brown might not be a bad idea either. She's a pretty fun/interesting character, potentially. Her father is Arthur Brown, a villain known as the Cluemaster: think the Riddler, but with more of a gameshow obsession. While Cluemaster himself might sound a bit lame, the "I became a vigilante to make amends for my father" angle is compelling enough that Arrow stole it (and one of Stephanie's later costumes!) and made it part of Felicity Smoak. Also, if Batman has quite a long career as a vigilante, characters like Cluemaster are pretty useful: he could essentially be an older/proto version of the Riddler, letting Batman defeat that kind of a foe while allowing us to encounter a younger/contemporary Riddler in the present. I think Stephanie would make a great NPC: she's a peer for Mia, some bonus diversity, and she's a member of the Bat Family who isn't a miserable shit about it. We've implied before that Wally and Roy know each other, perhaps as part of a casual Teen Titans style thing: giving Mia friends like Stephanie is a chance for her to have a team-up like that of her own.
The Joker: Speaking of villains, the Joker is a big part of the puzzle. He features as part of the backstory for Jason Todd and Harley Quinn (and Barbara Gordon, if we go that route). From that we know that he's missing, and that some people think he's dead while others don't. Sarah is going to write a version of Jeremiah Arkham (based on one of the proto-Jokers from Gotham) as someone who believes they are the Joker's illegitimate son. There is always a lot of vague regarding the Joker, and I think we should lean into that. No one is ever certain who the Joker really is, if there's one Joker or several, etc. It would be fun, I think, to populate our world with all sorts of different takes on the character. Perhaps we have a version who looks like Joaquin Phoenix who was the Joker that Batman faced back in the 90s. There's a con artist in the comics called The Gambler who once ran a con where he pretended to be the Joker: perhaps something like that is where the Heath Ledger version fits in. The Joker's illegitimate kids, copycats and imitators, Creeper, Mark Hamill as the Trickster - a whole big chaotic mess of Jokers, where people aren't even sure which Joker you are, let alone which backstory belongs to you. Perhaps there's even some sort of Joker team-up, as a reaction to all the extra heroes showing up in Gotham: if Batman gets allies, the Joker does too? That could be a great thread/event to play around with, as it would involve not just Brentwood, the Outsiders, and the BatFam, but potentially loops in Arkham Asylum, Harley & Jason, and all sorts of other things too.
Team Arrow
Like Batman, the specifics of Green Arrow and his backstory are a bit vague and amorphous, but there are a few things we can reverse-engineer and figure out from where it is we want things to end up.
Oliver was orphaned: Rather than dying on the boat as he does in Arrow, Robert Queen was killed when Oliver was still a kid, leaving him to be raised by his uncle, William Glenmorgan. This is important, because it gives Checkmate enough time to thoroughly take control of and integrate the company: not something they could have pulled off in the five years Oliver was dead. Also, it is an important part of why our Oliver is how he is: rather than coming back to a family the way that he did in Arrow, our Oliver is all about the family that he managed to build for himself, hence Roy and Mia and Connor.
Oliver actually died: Instead of five years on an island, Oliver straight-up died and wound up in Purgatory. For us, Purgatory is a mix between Oliver's island and the Phantom Zone. Time has no meaning there, so while Oliver was only gone for five years, his experiences could have been decades, or centuries. He didn't escape until The Spectre - the Angel of Vengeance, who needs to possess people Ghost Rider style - offered to resurrect him in exchange for Oliver becoming his host. Oliver made that deal, and that's the reason for his initial Arrow style murder vigilante phase. Once Oliver was free of that influence - by John Constantine, who has a flair for telling possessive mystical entities to fuck off out of our characters - he was able to 180 his way into being Robin Hood.
(The Spectre is now back in his old host from Justice Society times: except that Jim Corrigan was resurrected without his soul, so The Spectre doesn't currently have that source of morality/conscience to bend him into more of a heroic figure. Jim is the current head of Infernal Affairs at the GCPD, which is the division that Constantine and Hector work for.)
Roy went to college: That's the reason why he stopped being Arsenal. I flat-out refuse to go with the "Oliver kicked you out because you had a heroin problem" angle from the comics: I figure the idea of a son leaving home to go to college is a much more dad-like challenge for Oliver to face, and a bit more of an optimistic situation for Roy to be in. It also distances his Speedy > Arsenal transition from the Robin > Nightwing transition, which seems like a good move. This puts him in his early twenties, so he's a fair bit older than Wally, but not so much that they couldn't have Young Justiced it up at some point.
Young Justice: Wally definitely knows Roy, because he's teased Red Arrow about it. Given the time scales we're talking about, it makes sense that various sidekicks might have sidekicked at the same time. However, the name "Titans" might be something we want to reserve for Starfire + Friends, because they are captives of Project Tartarus. The sidekicks being known as "Young Justice" in the press seems like an aptly groanworthy option. I don't think there ever would have been a fully-fledged formal team, but teaming up with Donna and Garth for that OG golden age fivesome seems like a component worth having.
Age: Oliver is definitely older than Stephen Amell. He seems like a guy in his forties: old enough for his kids to be teenagers, but not old enough to be old. Green Arrow first appeared in More Fun Comics #73: if Oliver was born in 1973, he would be around 46/47 at the current time... a little on the old side for Stephen Amell, but bearing in mind he was dead for five years and then resurrected, that sort of tracks. Depending on when he died, Oliver has probably been Green Arrow for about twenty years, sharing the last ten-ish of them with Roy and Mia - though a chunk of that first decade would have been his time as The Spectre.
Batman: Oliver's age does present a slight wrinkle in his relationship with Batman. When things were vague and nothing was nailed down, the thinking was that Oliver and Bruce "probably knew each other from school". However, given the age difference between them, Bruce would have graduated from Brentwood before Oliver even started. One option is to make Batman younger. If his vigilante career began in 2001 (after 9/11?), Bruce could feasibly be the same age as Oliver, and would have become Batman when he was about 28. This age still tracks with Jason Todd and Damian Wayne, though it will be a bit tight squeeze if we try to sneak a Dick in there beforehand.
Alternatively, we could lean into the age difference. In 1989, Oliver was 16 years old. If Dick Grayson never became Robin for some reason (see: above), then a rebellious teenager, packed off to a boarding school on the other side of the country, on the outskirts of a city where an illegal vigilante is operating? For someone who already has a Robin Hood, that's a fantastic origin story. Oliver starts to sneak out at night, takes his bow, dresses in green... and instead of the odd combination of a bat and a random bird, the newspapers start talking about "Batman & Robin Hood", which subsequent sidekicks adapt into Robin. That jives really well with Jason Todd being both Robin and Red Hood, and it also cultivates a really interesting relationship between Bruce and Oliver. It isn't a father/son dynamic, because Oliver isn't young enough, but it is the prototype for Oliver's relationships with Roy and Mia, and it means he understands them better, because he was an angsty teenage archer too. Oliver choosing to adopt Star City when he returns from the dead is his Blüdhaven analogue: a city of his own, and also one that is his family's traditional home, somewhere that feels like "his" city in the same way that Gotham belongs to Bruce. It also makes his return interesting, and more of a homecoming, less butting in on a city where he doesn't belong, and more returning to one where he does. It makes Batman more likely to be receptive to Oliver's presence, because he's part of the extended Bat Family, and in return, it means that Bruce is part of the extended Queen Family as well. It isn't Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne, they are Anakin and Obi-Wan, in Episode II when Oliver is the sidekick/apprentice, and in Episode III when Oliver is supposed to be his brother. Also, Anakin's wife doesn't suck and won't die of a broken heart, so it's win-win.
(Yes, Mia. That makes you Ahsoka.)
Military Service: If we go with the Batman & Robin Hood option - which we absolutely do not have to, I just think it's kinda neat - that does raise the question of why Oliver leaves. He's not Batman's son, so he can't have an angsty rebellion outburst. There are no volcanos nearby, so you can't cut off all my limbs, either. But with Anakin and Obi-Wan, they part ways because the war forces them apart. That could be an option here. William Glenmorgan sounds like the sort of person who might have seen Bill & Ted and decided it was a good prototype for an approach to parenting: no doubt he's been threatening to send Oliver off to military school if he doesn't buck up, and things along those lines. Perhaps Oliver gets some sort of ultimatum - prove to me that you're a "real man", else I'll make sure you never get your inheritance; I won't pay for your college tuition, join the military and get them to pay for it; etc - and joins the military?
My main thinking here is that on Arrow, they spent a very contrived five years trying to justify from how Oliver went from trust fund brat to abs of steel badass. In the comics, it just takes time, and Oliver is already an archery enthusiast even before he gets to the island. By putting Oliver in the military, and giving him that training in advance, not only does it justify why he has those skills now, but it also justifies why he had them in Purgatory too. There's a season of Supernatural where Dean Winchester gets sent to Purgatory (which he experiences as a forest suspiciously similar to those within driving distance of Vancouver), and for him it is very much a warrior honing his skills experience. I think that's a good fit for our Oliver, and a good way for him to leave Gotham (again, if we even do that, we don't have to) and Bruce on amicable terms.
As an added flourish of possibility, perhaps Oliver's death happens on a mission. Perhaps he's left behind by his unit, perhaps he's captured and declared dead, perhaps people in his unit literally see him die. That creates a situation where there are people out there who might know, categorically, that Oliver Queen is 100% dead. Perhaps those people are friendly, and it just turns into an opportunity to exposition some of his past in the story. Perhaps they're not so friendly - the works-for-Checkmate style of not-so-friendly, perhaps? - and that's earning Oliver a kind of attention that he might not want. Perhaps there are even theories about Oliver. He died, and when he came back he was unusually bloodthirsty: so perhaps there was a Lazarus Pit involved, people might think. Knowing that Robert Queen faked his own death, certain people might believe he did the same for his son. Knowing about Robert Queen's connections to Checkmate, perhaps William Glenmorgan is convinced that this Oliver isn't really his nephew, and is instead some clone that Robert has sent to torment him. We know the answer, but leaving characters to guess based on partial information could be fun.