I Was Beyond Excited To Draw This Scene. Normally I Get Asked To Draw Romance, But This Time It Was A...different

You were only a child when they sent you off to war. Now look at you… The weight of a galaxy on your shoulders.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (2023) ‒ final gameplay trailer

Somewhere in Wild Space, Anakin is at an art museum

I started using Head and Shoulders ten years ago for itchy scalp and dandruff, and then for ten years I have not had itchy scalp and dandruff, so I thought “why do I still buy shampoo to combat itchy scalp and dandruff when I do not have itchy scalp and dandruff,” so I stopped buying the shampoo for itchy scalp and dandruff and can you guess I have now? Can you predict what currently afflicts me? It’s alright if you can’t because apparently I fuckin couldn’t either

Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.

Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.

He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.

Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.

But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.

Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.

Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.

So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?

Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.

Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.

Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.

Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.

Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.

Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.

But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?

Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.

Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.

So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.

Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.

At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.

The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.

Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.

All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.

Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.

But by GOD is he trying.

Of course Ezio is going to have wrist and hand and arm pains. He wasn't trained in the art of the assassins -- he isn't used to their weapons. He's brawled with his fists and wielded a rapier (as was common for nobles at the time) but the robes are heavy on shoulders used to thin cottons and the bracers awkward and clumsy on his wrists. The flick of the hidden blade is foreign, and he has no-one to teach him the proper use until he is taken in by Mario. The heavy swords and maces and spears require so much force, and Ezio has always been a quick, lithe sort of fighter, filled with trickery and mischief instead of bludgeoning trauma

He does not know the right exercises to soothe strained muscles. Does not know what cramping to expect, and he is not used to running and leaping and diving in cumbersome robes and a hood that obscures his vision

Of course he is in pain. Of course he aches and cramps and curls up in a ball where nobody can see him as he tries to will away the persistent hurt. His body wasn't trained for this. Wasn't made for this. But he is forced to adapt anyway, and change everything about himself from the inside out. Would you not suffer from that too

and very, very often, self care is not plants and ice rollers and fluffy blankets of peace.

it’s standing over your kitchen sink and crying while doing the dishes because you just want to go back to bed but the dishes need done. and you don’t know why you’re crying but you're trusting you need it. and you aren’t listening to the music that pulls you into a spiral; you’re listening to some cheerful shit your friend sent you. it’s getting up and staring at your fridge and closing your eyes and then cooking yourself food even though you hate it and it’s miserable. because you know that you’d cook for your friend, and you are trying to befriend yourself. it’s dragging yourself into the shower because you know you’ll feel better afterwards. it’s doing mundane tasks with patience, cursing under your breath, trying desperately to give yourself grace. grace is the beginning of care. care is the beginning of love.

we think it’s supposed to be peace and yet the most powerful self care moments are when we hate everything but especially ourselves. and life does not feel worth the loving. to look into that pain and yet choose to care for yourself in however many pieces you are — that is care. love. grace. trust. belief. it hurts because it’s love where there was no love before. it heals because it believes there will be love, one day, soon.

Star Wars is making me delusional for happy endings more than ever and unfortunately I still don't have regrets. The absolute ache my heart goes through every time I stop and think about it in its entirety is phenomenal because how dare these characters from a galaxy far, far away give me pain

Sure we've got the Force and lightsabers and shiny armor and beautiful planets and I'm tickled pink by it all but no one warned me about the tragedy that threw me off the fucking rails with the speed of light

Because can you imagine cutting off the limbs of someone closer to you than a brother and a lover, the other half of your soul, and turning your back as he burns because you can't bring your lightsaber down and end his misery, you can't kill him, you spent years protecting him, fighting for him, keeping him close and not-close so he can find his happiness that the Code you are both bound to cannot give him as you willingly turn a blind eye, only to turn around and find that he has drifted too far and already completely out of your reach, and all you want to do is go back to the time when it's just the two of you, growing and learning together, watching each other's backs against blaster fire, when it was you and him against the world, not you and him against each other. You spend the next 19 years watching over the two stars that are the only parts left of the man you loved from different ends of the galaxy and learning to love them as themselves even as you see him and her in them and it makes you ache, makes you wish for simpler times as you stare down the red blade into red lenses hiding yellow eyes and you are tired, so tired with longing and pain and guilt for the monster you unknowingly helped create

And on the other hand can you imagine finding the child you thought you had lost along with the love of your life, the very people you burned the world for and you thought burned with it? The decades of anguish and anger all culminating to this moment, and instead of the joyous reunion you have always imagined in your weakest moments, it’s her familiar, beloved eyes doused in the color of the desert skies glaring at you with hate and fear as he hides his arm you ruined with your own Force-damned hands. You have loved this child from when he was just a dream whispered underneath the stars, feeling the warmth of twin suns burning in you as you imagine the weight of him (them, you are a father of two) in your arms, incandescent with the promise that you will protect the family you made, all the while forgetting the family you already had. Then you are on your back, electricity still crackling underneath your skin and robbing you of strength as you look at him with your own eyes for the first and last time, and there is forgiveness you didn't know you were looking for, and when you wake up again on the other side of the veil you hope you can find forgiveness there too

Found this on Pinterest, but count this screenshot as a reblog