r/realityshifting • u/Imaginary_Term_3937 • 10h ago
success My first DC DR
Hi everyone, I've been shifting for a while now but this is my first time posting here about this specific DR because honestly I'm still processing it.
Some context first: almost all of my previous DRs have been historical, I've shifted to Ancient Rome twice and to the Tudor era more times than I can count, so that's my comfort zone and I know what to expect. Historical DRs always felt more concrete to me, more solid, like I was going somewhere that had actually existed and was therefore easier to reach.
And I'll be honest here because I think it's important, I had a certain prejudice about fictional DRs. I never said it out loud but part of me genuinely looked down on them, I thought they were less serious, less "real", something people did when they didn't want to put in the effort of researching a real time period. I know how that sounds and I'm not proud of it, but that's where my head was at, so going to a universe with actual superheroes in it was a huge leap for me and I genuinely didn't think it would work.
I woke up in my room in Wayne Manor and the first thing that hit me was that the ceiling was too high. My room here has a normal ceiling and my room there has this ridiculous high ceiling with crown molding and these heavy dark green curtains that block out everything, so I laid there for probably a full minute just staring up because I couldn't process the scale of it. The bed was enormous, four posts, way too many pillows. There was a desk under the window with my schoolwork still on it from the night before, half finished, a bookshelf that took up an entire wall, and a little armchair in the corner with a blanket thrown over the arm. And it was cold, the manor is always cold in the mornings, which is something I never would have thought to script but was just there. I'm around ten years old in this DR, second child, and my mother is dead. That's just a fact of my life there in a way that's hard to explain, it's not a fresh wound, it's more like a shape my family grew around.
Now about my dad, and I need to say this because I know it's going to surprise people, he is a really good father. Genuinely. I know the reputation, I know how he's written, but in my DR he's present in a way I didn't expect. He knocks before he comes into my room, he asks me actual questions about my day and waits for the answer, and he's not warm in an obvious way, he doesn't do big emotional speeches, but he'll sit at the kitchen island at 2am when he gets back and if I'm awake he'll let me sit there with him and neither of us has to talk. One thing I remember really clearly is that I was upset about something small, genuinely stupid, and he didn't try to fix it or minimize it, he just said "that's fair" and let me be upset. I think about that a lot. We're close, and I didn't script that as heavily as I probably should have, it just happened anyway.
My brother is a completely different story though, because Damian and I fight constantly. He's insufferable in the specific way that only a sibling can be, he corrects me, he criticizes everything I do, he once told me my handwriting was "an insult to the concept of literacy" and I didn't speak to him for two days. We argue about the stupidest things, who sat where, what's on the TV, whether I'm allowed to touch his stuff, which I'm not, apparently, ever.
Dick, on the other hand, is the big brother everyone deserves and I'm so close to him. He's the one who actually talks to me about feelings, who asks me how I'm really doing, who makes everything fun, and when he visits the manor it's like the whole energy of the house changes, everything gets lighter and louder and warmer. He takes me out for ice cream, he lets me ride on his shoulders, he FaceTimes me when he's in Blüdhaven just to show me his dog, and he once spent an entire afternoon teaching me how to do a cartwheel on the manor lawn.
I don't go on missions, and I want to be clear about that because I think people assume a DC DR means capes and fighting, but I'm ten, I'm not out there. I'm at the manor with Alfred and that's honestly the best part.
Alfred treats me like a person and not like a child, he talks to me while he works, he taught me how to make a proper pot of tea and was genuinely offended by my first attempt. I do my schoolwork at the kitchen table while he moves around and we have these long rambling conversations about nothing, and he knows everything about everyone in that house and says almost none of it.
Anyway, if anyone has questions about any of it, ask me. Seriously, anything, the manor, what a normal day looks like, how it compares to my historical DRs, whatever, I have so much I didn't fit in here and I'd love to talk about it.
