#also give Batman to Cass ffs

[raceydays-hopelesshaze]

Being a Damian stan in this day and age who DOESNT want him to become Batman is like trying to prevent a tragedy and watching as it unfolds.

[clichepips]

So as someone who had only read what free chapters I could find online as well as the various fanfics/blogs/posts I encountered on the internet, this is what I've gathered about the ff characters:

Bruce: I Work Alone (but not really)®. The Tired Single Dad. Seemed an okay father the first two times. Actually, I can't decide if his Parenting is A+ (complement) or A+ (sarcastic). Dude should have gone to therapy instead.

Dick: The Hot One® but also The Punny One of the Most Horrible of Puns. The original sidekick. Does the Butt Match?? That Toned Ass Tho. The nicknames. The huggy one. Why did they get rid of the blue?? I liked the blue!!

Jason: The angry one. But heavens above, he was adorable in a brash and has too many somethings to prove kinda way as a kid. Those relics did him so VERY wrong by voting to kill him off. Horribly. You Only Live Twice. Guns'a'blazin'. Bazookas and explosives too. Why'd you make him forget about the original Outlaws just to make him angsty again???? Let Jason and Alfred Bond post-resurrection!!

Cass: Gurl, I will kill David Cain for you. Just gimme a gun. The Most Awesome®. Like she can kick my ass and I'd thank her. Terrifying tho. Honestly the boys be like I wanna be Batman but we all know Cass can be a better Batman than even Bruce.

Tim: Timbit. Adorable. I'm sorry your heroes treated you horribly. Depressed boy. That is drowning in Espresso. Stop killing his loved ones off!!! I know you resurrected most of them but come on! Give RR a break! Can probably take over the world if bored enough. Is that why they overwork him??? Stay away Ra's!!! You may have ninjas but he has fangirls and fanboys!!!

Stephanie: Dunno what to make of her at first. And then BAM she's dead. BAM she's not. She's back! And there's a lot of things about that to unpack! She rocks purple and black! Why isn't she a Wayne yet? Tim why? You were our best chance! Actually you are both kinda okay as friends I guess.

Damian: Honestly didn't like him at first. And then the gremlin snuck his way into ma heart and won't leave. I live for Robin/Superboy interactions. Did you honestly did the "kill off then resurrect" thing on him too?? Get a new script boyos!!

Barbara: Go Girl!!! Kicking ass or not, she's awesome, okay?? When you can go "no" to Batman's face and he can't do anything about it. Likes to think she's The Sane One but not. Like she probably thinks she's the only sane one 'cause her standards for sanity had been, unknown to her, skewed. But she's just not. Okay???

Duke: The Actual Sane One. Bruh, you don't know what you got yourself into. Like, about time for a daytime hero but...bruh, reconsider. Your saner than this. But then again, who goes out to fight the Joker in a knock off, low quality suit to save your parents within Batman's adopting range?? Maybe not that sane??

Helena: Wait, where'd you come from? Oh, so that's where you came from. Bomboozle everyone. Bedazzle them. Gurl, go be your own self. Rock it with the crossbow. Be free.

Alfred: The Legend®. That's it.

[teresovery]

YES!!! When will DC listen??? I swear the top folks are sitting there in the DC offices scratching their heads trying to figure out why their movies suck and why their comics aren't selling as well. "We just can't figure out what these fans want." Meanwhile we're all screaming what we want.

We know Batman's story. Even people who have never read a comic or watched a Batman movie know Batman's story. Stop it with that already!!

We want the Batfamily. And not just Nightwing & Damian's Robin, please! Not that I don't love them, but there's so many more stories to be told.

How about a movie when the Batgirl persona gets passed from Barb to Cass? (DC does have a Batgirl movie "in the works" still, but not sure where it's really at since the whole Joss thing.) You could have dual stories of Barbara dealing with becoming Oracle as well as Cass becoming Batgirl. Batman set up & paid for Barb to get training with escrima sticks with Richard Dragon (iirc) so she could defend herself from her wheelchair. Imagine being a kid in a wheelchair seeing badass Barbara!! Imagine being a kid who had a traumatic past and/or doesn't speak well and/or is Asian seeing Cass be freaking Batgirl!!

What about a movie about Colin Wilkes/Abuse? Tie it in with the inner workings of the Wayne Foundation. He grows up in an orphanage sponsored by WF. After he gets the Bane venom, he goes to Doctor Thompkins' clinic sponsored by WF. He goes to college on a scholarship provided by the WF to become a social worker so he can give back. Then he finds he can also give back by using Abuse to help Gotham and the end scene is him meeting up with Batman & Robin.

How about a Robin movie about Stephanie and the shit she went thru as a female Robin? Add in Tim's story about having to give up being Robin and everything going on with his dad. Plus they're trying to deal with being boyfriend/girlfriend.

How about Duke and the We Are Robin kids? What about Knightfall from Azrael's perspective? How about a movie where Bruce is missing and the WHOLE FAMILY has to come together to protect Gotham? How about the Red Robin vs. Ra's al Ghul storyline? Or when Tim first became Robin after Jason was killed. How about a movie about the Fox family? Lucius runs WE, Luke is Batwing and Tam works with Tim, knowing he's Red Robin. How about the story of what happened when Red Hood hopped in the car with Batwoman & Renee Montoya? (from a few issues of RHATO ago.) Can you even imagine the MAJOR ASS those three could kick?

And speaking of Red Hood - WHERE'S MY DAMN LIVE-ACTION UNDER THE RED HOOD ALREADY?????

tl:dr We want the Batfamily, DC. Give us more than just the same characters and stories over and over again. Ffs, give me Titus, Alfred the Cat, Batcow and Goliath in their own Lego movie before you give me another Batman or Joker movie.

[lanternwisp]

Hi! So, i'm gonna do the thing: i'm going to battle through the fog of fear and take on a Jason centric batsemble fic and since your batmfam is my favorite rendition i was hoping you might have some hefty characterization tips for writing the rest of the batkids? Specifically Dick, Damian, Cass & Tim and of course the Batdad. Anything you've got to offer would be greatly appreciated!

Oh my. Well first of all, congrats on your new undertaking! Character interpretations are very subjective, but I’ll tell you some basic points that I personally keep in mind.

Dick: Something fandom often forgets is that Dick is a lot like Bruce. He’s incredibly responsible and very occupied with the Mission. He’s far better adjusted when it comes to his parents’ tragedy, so it’s not so much about fighting back the bad in the world but about protecting the good. Dick is what Bruce is most proud of in his life; he’s canonically  Batman’s heir as the world’s second best detective as well as Bruce Wayne’s legal heir for the company. 

Fandom often turns him into a goofball or a ditz or someone who is extremely easygoing, and that is inaccurate. Dick’s chatty and tries to pick up Bruce’s slack in terms of emotional labor in the family, but that doesn’t mean he’s not incredibly serious about the work he does. Speaking of emotional labor, he will try to be there for people but does not like it when others try to draw attention to his own insecurities. His temper is cosmic and he will go for the throat if it means getting someone to drop an issue.

Damian: I am perpetually side-eyeing the jerk sue direction DC has started to take Damian in. I’ve made posts about Damian’s character here and here but the gist is that he’s still a kid; he’s in a constant process of learning new things and unlearning old ones. He’s proud but has insecurities, educated beyond his years but not a genius, wants approval but his social skills are incredibly terrible, is a bit spoiled/sheltered but gaining more practical life experience everyday. He shouldn’t be leading his own team imo, but working under a mentor and being guided through all these changes he’s going through.

Cass: Fandom likes to claim that Cass is some pillar of perfection, and it’s so not true. She’s a complex and nuanced character, not this dutiful, loyal, stoic asian daughter archetype. There have been many times she’s chafed under Bruce’s overbearing ways and rebelled/given him grief. She’s far more expressive, emotive and mischievous than fandom gives credit.

Cass makes mistakes. She acts on impulses. She defaults to violence in ways that are very understandable and shouldn’t be erased. She also understandably doesn’t like being controlled or confined. Her ability to read body language does not substitute social skills and she can have a hard time realizing that her loved ones (notably Babs and Bruce) can be wrong - if she reads that Barbara is upset about Dick, then bam that’s all she needs to know and she’ll throw Dick out a window. If she reads that Bruce believes it when he says Jason and Steph were too reckless to be vigilantes, then she can’t discern between truth and Bruce’s truth. 

But she also loves hard and works hard and is completely dedicated to helping others. Bruce has pretty much usurped Cain as father figure, and Cass has replaced Cain’s philosophy with Batman’s. But Cass also considers Barbara her mother figure, so Bruce and Babs should be depicted as basically having shared custody of her.

Tim: Ookay so people here know that I am not happy with the way DC handled Tim. His origin is built on classism and victim blaming and I’ve got Opinions on it. But a main thing that I like to emphasize is that Tim is a very hard worker; he’s not a natural athlete but he puts in the time and effort. 

A lot of the time Tim seems to be out-of-sync with other people’s social cues or emotions. He also has the tendency to fixate and obsess over specific concepts, and there are many instances of him doing things that are hurtful or cross boundaries, with seemingly no idea he’s doing it or the severity of his actions (cheating on Ariana, trying to clone Kon, the debacle with Tam and her dad, etc).

Tim is not an academic! He hated school and was happy to drop out. He’s a great researcher that is capable of parsing important details from large amounts of information, good at pattern recognition and skilled with technology. He’s like Barbara in that he’s highly valuable to have as mission support, but he’s not going to any fancy universities nor would he want to. He’s also not interested in corporate (he dreaded helping his father with Drake Industries, and his role in Wayne Enterprises was isolated to an offshoot charity project). He’s a nerd and a slob (seriously have you seen how he lives?) who cares most about his vigilante work.

Bruce: The thing about Bruce is that he’s a man of action, not words. Meaning he will show he cares through gestures, but then he won’t explain those gestures, leading to a mess of misunderstanding as people try to figure him out. He often does not do this on purpose. Miscommunication is a driving force behind most of the batfam conflict where he’s concerned. 

Ever since Jason died Bruce changed, becoming the paranoid and constantly vigilant mess we know today. Bruce can be an overbearing ‘my way or the highway’ person, to no one’s surprise. He’s always been a control freak, but that took it up to eleven. He loves his family but demands their obedience so that he can eliminate risk factors to their wellbeing. He’s an anxious man with the stubbornness of a thousand mules. His coping skills are terrible and often self-destructive or self-sabotaging in some way.

But he does also have a sense of humor, can be ridiculously dramatic and Extra, and doesn’t take himself totally seriously (he’s dressed like a giant rodent ffs) despite how stoic he is. He goes overboard with his Mission, but family is incredibly important to him - his parents’ deaths are what began his journey, and his kids are a huge part of its continuation. Bruce is just kinda inept at expressing it.