2 Things I've Found Very Helpful As An Uneducated American When I'm Working On Characters Who're From

What if Janet went into Labor with Tim during a Wayne gala and Bruce helped deliver him, but Bruce didn’t realize Tim was the same baby

Until a random stakeout/confrontation with a villain/league meeting, he remembers suddenly and just straight up goes

“I birthed you”

He then starts to think back to all the other women he helped and like...

– Teenage Bruce stopping in the middle of his day to help Mary Grayson call the hospital when her water breaks in public

– His first test of people skills as Batman is looking after Sandra Wu-San, not knowing she'd become Lady Shiva

– A short while later Batman does the same for Sheila Haywood because Willis didn't bother to show up

– Arthur Brown being too absorbed in his scandals and early scheming to be present so Batman swoops in for Crystal

– Then Janet Drake going into labor at a Wayne gala and Bruce helping her through that

– Couple years later, Batman keeping Elaine Thomas company in the twilight hours

– He stops to help Talia amidst a dangerous battle, not knowing the baby is his and her maintaining the secret

– He gets sidetracked on a time travel mission and assists a stranger, not realizing it's Mary Pennyworth

Something I noticed is that Bruce isn’t really that sympathetic to his villains unless that are family or have been romantically involved with him

Selina is stolen so much stuff with no regard for who it is half the time but she has gotten a pass over and over

Jason and Talia have murdered a lot of people but they get a pass because Jason is one of Bruce’s kids and Talia is Damian’s mom

But when it comes to everyone else it usually radio silence

But on the other hand you have Batman the animated series where Bruce tries his best and is super understanding and compassionate with everyone, including his rouges

I’m not criticizing any specific character this is just an observation about how Bruce is usually written but there are exceptions, of course

Can we acknowledge stomach acid being fucking weird? We have pits of acid in us that sometimes comes out our very delicate throats??? Imagine an alien hits a human in the stomach hard enough to make them sick and thinks they've won, but they get melted by the vomit. And somewhere along the line aliens get convinced that one of a human's defence mechanisms is spitting acid and we have to explain that no, but we have some earth native reptiles that can.

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.

A quintessential early-career Robin that fits the tone of The Batman

This post was originally written for Reddit, where folks are much more opposed to having Dick be in The Batman universe than on Tumblr. But still, I thought I would share it here!

Bruce, in trying to be more publicly a part of Gotham’s community, is out in the world again and in one of his public outings, he comes across the orphaned 15 year old Dick Grayson. This could be Haley’s circus but it doesn’t have to be - but Dick’s acrobat and gymnastics past should be retained.

(Another way to modernize it is to have Dick be an Olympic gymnast prodigy - but it’s not the most relevant. Theoretically you could tie this into the Grayson murder plot, but you don’t have to. Anyway…)

Bruce, against Alfred’s advice, wants to foster Dick himself and let him live with them at Wayne Tower. Alfred thinks this is a crazy idea because of Bruce’s nighttime activities as The Batman and because he’s far too young and emotionally-detached to be a father-figure, but Bruce is insistent on it after recognizing the extent to which Dick’s pain mirrors his. Bruce has an opportunity here: to give Dick what he wish he had when he was young and orphaned. Alfred comes around once he sees this too, in a moment mirroring Alfred seeing the footage of the mayor’s son in the first movie. Bruce gets an opportunity to emotionally reach a younger version of himself, and Alfred gets a chance to be more of what he wish he could be, a warmer father figure to both Bruce and Dick. This is a story about second chances. It’s a second chance for Bruce, it’s a second chance for Alfred, and it’s most vitally a second chance for Dick.

Here’s where things get interesting: even though Bruce adopts Dick early-on in the film, for most of it, neither of them are operating as a duo. Bruce and Alfred are keeping The Batman identity away from Dick, *and Dick is secretly hunting down his parents’ killer as a street vigilante inspired by Batman* - using a rudimentary version of the Robin identity. This becomes a major subplot and eventually connects back to the central antagonism of the film - whoever they choose, the killing of the Graysons is banally tied to this similarly to how the killing of the Waynes is ambiguously tied to the Falcone story in the first movie. At the same time, the dual deception between Bruce and Dick on each of their respective nighttime activities is a core obstacle to their relationship deepening. They can’t truly reach each other because they don’t trust each other- and Dick is singlemindedly focused on vengeance. It also gives us a chance to show Dick as a smart kid; he’s able to successfully elude the suspicions of both Bruce and Alfred while living with them and living a double life.

At the end of the second act, Batman comes across this proto-Robin and sees through it, and realizes the extent to which Robin is the same as him. He’s also a young boy who can’t move past his pain and is lashing out at the world and trying to make sense of the horror of it. Bruce does what he’s never done before. He takes off the mask and he lets Dick see him for who he truly is. *This* is when the Dick-Bruce relationship really begins.

Have Dick play a supporting but pivotal role in the third act. He needs to sabotage, distract, inform, scout, something. Give him agency and let him navigate the world, in between his new relationship as Batman’s semi-partner and still grappling with what this means for him. And have it coalesce in a moment where he chooses to accept his pain in a healthier way, to follow Bruce’s example. And the film ends with Bruce choosing to train Dick, to better him as a person and to offer him what Bruce sorely needed when he was his age.

Okay, now that the thematic plotting is out of the way, let’s talk about vibes. Vibes are super important to this universe and a core reason why people seem to have hangups around including Robin in the Reevesverse.

Early vigilante proto-Robin should navigate this world of orphaned street-bound teenagers who are parts of gangs and criminal networks. It should feel kind of like Victorian London’s child street gangs, but it can also be reminiscent of modern organized crime recruiting children. This is the world Robin navigates to get what he wants in the story, and it’s a world that is unfamiliar to Batman until Robin officially becomes his partner. Then it becomes a resource he can use to keep tabs on different goings-on in the city and make Gotham safer. This also echoes how Batman treats children and sex workers in the comics. Because Batman treats the vulnerable and disenfranchised with respect and humanity, it makes him a stronger and more capable hero to protect the communities he operates in.

Proto-Robin operating separately from Bruce should have a similar ad-hoc DIY vibe to The Batman, just lower tech and more discreet. It’s important textually that Robin was also inspired by The Batman without knowing him or coming into contact with him. It parallels Riddler ironically, it shows that the tragedy of Edward’s descent into vengeance and rage has had an effect on Bruce and that’s why he fights so desperately to keep the same fate from happening to Dick. Dick is someone who has had everything taken away from him, he was a brilliant gymnast whose aspirations were dashed when he lost his parents. Bruce can’t let him descend further into that spiral.

Robin isn’t a fighting partner in this film. He’ll become that when he’s older, closer to 16-17 in Part Three, but right now he’s a rogue agent navigating this world on his own, and Bruce has him as a mix between an informant, a spy, and an intel source. We need to sidestep the child soldier allegations, and it also means that Robin can do things Bruce can’t. Robin isn’t famous, Robin isn’t a fully grown adult. He can navigate spaces and places and worlds Bruce can’t, and that makes both of them stronger heroes for it.

In this sense, this version of Dick Grayson is a loose amalgamation of the first three Robins. He has Jason’s rage, brashness, and involvement in the underworld; he has Tim’s shrewdness, detective skills, and sense of loyalty; and he has Dick Grayson’s backstory and sense of optimism. We’re not just watching this boy become Robin, we’re also watching him transform into the version of Dick we know so well - the same way we’re watching Bruce transform into Bruce in this story.

Why I think we fucking need Robin in The Batman Part Two? Because Part One is a film about Bruce realizing that he can’t be vengeance alone, that he must be hope as well. Part Two needs to be a film about Bruce coming to understand what vengeance has done to those who have seen his example, and Dick presents a tangible opportunity to actually instill a better example in someone who went through what he did. They would act as foils to one another, they would be permutations and mirrors of each other, and we would finally get a faithful, beautiful, and compelling version of the Batman-Robin dynamic on the live action big screen.

dick grayson in fanon: sweet silly older brother, pretty but stupid, favourite child, happy robin, basically batman 2.0 but a nice person, his brothers are more skilled and could outpace him but they love him anyways, goody-two-shoes, good relationship with batman, responsible eldest child, mentally stable and supportive

dick grayson in canon:

became robin so he wouldnt commit first degree murder

like all of his appearances young justice season 1 are about how hes a maniac and a genius

leader and strategist of the teen titans

actually Murdered the joker

considered an equal by the worlds most dangerous and deadly mercenary

was literally fired by batman and only really continued working w him because of jason and babs

managed to keep up with angsty new-to-the-job batman

has had so many arguments with bruce its a miracle he hasnt cut him off forever (hes tried though)

can take down the entire teen titans if he wanted despite being the only one of them with no superpowers/abilities

was the definition of angsty teenager

inherits his insane paranoia from bruce

a thread away from breaking the no-kill rule, give him a rest

hes literally feral guys i mean cmon

Are fedoras really that bad?

YES YES THEY ARE

"Dick Grayson is the mentally stable one of the Batfamily"

Ah yes, the same Dick Grayson who literally every time a particularly unpleasant event happens his most normal "coping method" is HALLUCINATIONS.

"Dick Grayson, the multiversal constant," yes, just like his hallucinations are Dick's constant in every freaking universe.

Danny a Rogue in one of DC city, but not the "I'm gonna kill everyone cause' I HATE LIFE !!!" no, he's "Oops, call the hero I accidentaly made a superweapon that I cannot stop (for the third time this week) !"

The Super Hero doesn't know what to do with him and you cann see Danny cheereing from a stand while the hero is battling the thing in a désolation landscape

Not "humans are inherently good" or "humans are inherently evil" but a secret third thing (humans are inherently social animals which means that we're very good at cooperating and being compassionate towards those we perceive as being part of our community but we're also very good at being tribal and violent towards those we perceive as threats to our community and everyone defines their community differently)