Familyyy 👯‍♀️👯‍♀️
Very pretty kitty named Ginger I met a few years ago!!
a black mackerel tortoiseshell tabby (torbie) with low white spotting :DD
The Batkids and The Arts (Feral Edition)
They’re all musical theatre nerds. Every single one of them. Bruce, Alfred, Dick, Cass, Jason, Steph, Tim, Duke, Damian. They go see Broadway shows together then don’t stop talking about it for like a week. It is the one bonding activity they will never pass up.
Jason and Steph once entered a ballroom dancing competition and won after some pompous rich kids insulted their moves during a gala. Since then, they’ve entered a competition every month or so just for fun. (And for the prize money :P)
Tim is an avid believer that Culinary Art is one of The Arts. (Can he cook? Absolutely not. It was Bernard that convinced him, but he stands by it.)
Duke talks through every single movie he watches. He always promises to be quiet at the beginning, but then he gets too excited and whispers commentary to the people around him. This habit has since bled into the entire family. They are no longer welcome at the local AMC.
Every single one of them is pretentious about something.
Dick is pretentious about any and all performance arts featured at the circus. Once, someone made a joke about going to “Clown School” and Dick screamed at them about how not even their pinky would have the privilege of being admitted into clown school.
Jason is pretentious about classic literature. They can no longer tell if his jokes and references to Shakespeare and Jane Austen are correct or if he’s just fucking with them.
Cass gets pretentious about martial arts being a performance art. She is also pretentious about ballet being a martial art. She could kill a man in fifth position without losing her balance, and that’s a fucking fact.
Stephanie is very good at acting pretentious about the arts. She absorbs everything she’s learned from the rest of the bat family’s interests then pretends to be pretentious about it to mock them while sneaking in just enough correct information so no one can call her out on it. (Her true interest is graphic design.)
Tim has no professional experience with photography, but he will be pretentious about it like he knows everything. (Bruce: Tim, why is there a filter on this evidence photo you took? Tim: I thought it looked nicer that way. Really makes the blood splatter pop.)
Duke isn’t exactly pretentious about writing, but he will lay down his life for the Oxford comma. (Bruce didn’t use it until Duke called the punctuation in his mission reports “insulting.” He now uses it.)
Damian is pretentious about studio art. If he ever hears his family or friends say, “I don’t get it,” at an art museum, he will make them look at it for five minutes as he explains in painstaking detail what’s so revolutionary about it.
The kids decided to take an improv class together once for their undercover work while Bruce and Alfred were out of town. It was so fun that they still play improv games when they’re bored.
Cass is secretly a metalhead.
Whenever one of the younger kids needs to write an English paper, they will just walk up to Jason, riddle off a dumb opinion about the book or poem they had to read, and record whatever Jason ends up lecturing them about. The most recent incident resulted in an award-winning paper about how the theory that William Shakespeare never wrote his own work is deeply rooted in classism.
Damian always has paint under his nails. It just never comes out.
Dick has personally taught everyone in the family how to do The Perfect Backflip. They all get a little ceremony once they’ve mastered it. There is cake.
Whenever Cass is standing around with nothing to do, she’ll practice her foot positions for ballet. The others always notice and follow her lead.
Jason: dramatically recites a poem in the living room Steph: starts beatboxing
Steph is always the first to find typos or continuity errors in a book, play, or movie. She doesn’t intend to; it’s just second nature to her. (She is now Duke’s official proofreader.)
Duke: So how’d you like the movie? Damian: I really loved the mise-en-scène, especially during the breakfast scene and that one shot near the end with the warehouse doors. Duke: *nods thoughtfully* Everyone Else Leaving the Theater: wtf is a meez on sen?
When Duke is finished writing something and wants to share it with his family, he’ll give it to Jason and Cass first.
Jason and Duke have frequent passionate arguments discussions about who is the best poet. Never bring up Dickinson, Poe, Shakespeare, Hughes, Plath, Wilde, Kipling, Sappho, or Angelou in their vicinity unless you want to start it up again.
Damian is surprisingly good at acting. Too good.
Dick knows your music taste before you do. He has a carefully curated playlist for every single family member, every possible combination of family members, and every possible mood at the ready.
They can and will correct anyone who mistakes Gothic architecture for Victorian or Gothic Revival and vice versa. (It’s really a Gotham thing.)
Tim: How dare you call The Grand Budapest Hotel the best prison break movie when it’s clearly The Shawshank Redemption! Jason: Well, as someone who’s BEEN TO PRISON, I think I should know! Dick: It’s clearly Chicken Run! You’re all just Chicken-ist. Duke: But what about Midnight Express?! That one’s so good! Steph: Has anyone mentioned Toy Story 3 yet? No? Damian, watching from the sidelines: I liked Escape from Alcatraz. Cass: Same.
There are several art pieces in the manor that have been positioned directly over top of bullet holes and other suspicious damages.
Damian and Duke made an animated short film once for the Gotham Film Festival. Dick and Cass were their models for the concept art. Tim did historical research. Jason helped Duke edit the storyboard, and Steph was the continuity supervisor. It was about a British super spy working for MI6 that saved the world in the late 70’s. It was titled Agent A.
I read somewhere that its common in Arab culture to refer to someone close to you as your organs, implying you can’t live without them. Like in english we’d say “my heart” (qalbi) In Arabic someone would also use “my liver” (kabidi) “my lungs” (riati). Notably, “my blood” is “Dami” which is funny bc it’s Damian’s shortened nickname.
Damian’s brothers have been using the nickname for years with or without knowing. I propose that as Damian gets closer to them, and tim in particular, he responds in kind.
He refers to Tim as “tuhali.”
…it means “my spleen.”
i’m rewatching the apothecary diaries season 1 in preparation for starting season 2 (i like to wait until a little bit into the season to start new shows) and i forgot how immediately jinshi’s whole “maomao glared at me like i was a bug and i got so hard i passed out for a second” thing started. literally the moment he realized his #prettyboyswag moves were actually making her shudder in disgust he was sooooo ready to become her full time malewife.
think abt it. he has been raised with a silver spoon in his mouth and everyone around him chomping at the bit to make him happy (besides his nanny and gaoshun’s family ig) and then this wickedly smart servant girl begrudgingly treats him with the only bare minimum amount of respect she can get away with considering their statuses and doesn’t even bother to hide her distain for his whole Deal and he’s this close to proposing marriage, eunuch cover be damned.
maomao please put this man on a leash already his desperation is scaring the hoes
Lambert brings Narinder breakfast as promised, appearing to catch Narinder on the waking end of a particularly nasty nightmare. A peak into his journal is unsuccessful, but the cat enjoys the mortal joys of comfort food for the first time in millennia and the two enjoy talking normally with each other, every day and current stressors aside, it's pleasant. Heket is moved into what will now be considered the Bishop's formal home, it's only occupant until Leshy is found and/or Kallamar is rescued, in whichever order, and Lamb makes it very clear what rules are to be expected with their arrival. After Heket unintentionally gives the Lamb an idea of how she cares for her brothers, they find perhaps the frog is more somber than they thought. Lambert finds a brief repose in the snow one night and finds a cat ending his disappearing act to confront their own. They offer him an opening to be simple and soft, if only for a single moment, and he follows it.
(Originally part of a larger chapter but sliced for reading/editing ease. Another chapter either tomorrow or within a few days hopefully.)
So you know those adorable details where characters with a tail affectionately wrap their tails around each other's to show affection? Yeah. Lamb can't.
Danny learns how to play an instrument and gets a gig at one if the Bats Rouges bar or something. The Bats show up to fight said Rouge and while the rest of Dannys band ran and left he stays playing music. Like the band in titanic did but instead he’s playing some up beat or intense beat to make it sound like their in a fight scene. Better yet if the instrument he learns is the Violin.