#author’s note: he’s keeping his relationship with Bruce entirely private because can you imagine the scandal

[riddlesandqueries]

Crane mentioned that Christmas is tour season!

While I'm curious about Christmas heists, you likely had to go lowkey while planning them, no eye catching hideout decorations...

What are you planning for the festivities? Have you ever wanted do go all out with the decorations?

Christmas is such a shiny holiday, it's perfect to Glow UP and be Merry!!

Terribly sorry, but a few things came up in my personal life: anything dramatic got stalled out for revisiting in the new year. However, it was a lovely holiday in the end.

I’m sure I have never said any such thing about Bruce, but I can assure you, they’re both just fine.

[roobylavender]

Hello! Thank you for your answer (I'm the Bruce loses his wealth anon) and you're so right about the potential for him to be in a teaching/mentorship field for civilian kids! And yeah the thought was prompted by how living in a literal manor and having that much wealth would isolate him from people to a huge degree even his peers and he likely wouldn't stop until an external shock like losing his wealth and gaining community.

I'm kind of obsessed with this au because it is genuinely baffling to me how the common understanding of Bruce is that he's a brooding pessimistic loner when he has literally devoted his life to an unattainable ideal of a crime free Gotham and has so many kids and is on multiple superhero teams. There are so many stories you could still tell with Bruce without him being Batman. And it actually works really well with the current obsession of deconstructing the myth of Batman. (1/2)

(2/2) You could explore the tension with his kids and students in how they feel about Bruce being happier without Batman while they are devoted to the superhero identity. You could give him an altered role in the justice league and explore the consequences of that. Or reveal his identity and see the response of the Gotham people now that they know Bruce as a peer. Like if we must still keep the crime fighting he could be a private detective helping people who don't trust the authorities get justice while actively being a part of the community. We can also explore the impact of both Bruce's philanthropy and Batman's vigilantism and explore the limits of both while looking at the material impact both things have caused on the community. There is endless potential for stories here that can be accomplished while giving Bruce's kids the freedom to become independent heroes and I am truly baffled why people want Bruce to remain trapped in the Batman identity. Sorry I just realised how long this got so sorry for the rambling asks (no one I know is into comics) and thank you for reading! 🌻🌻🌻

i couldn't agree more like you summarized it so succinctly! people need to drive their bruce analysis beyond the idea that bruce is nothing without batman bc it is so not true and he has so much to offer as bruce wayne! esp love your point about how it can potentially create tension with his kids bc that really should be a huge crux of how his relationship with them is explored. the fact that if there was a world where he didn't need to put on the mask he would let it go whereas with them you get the feeling their entire existence is for the sake of the mask and to their own detriment is incredibly impt. and it's really interesting people have projected the latter reading onto bruce increasingly as time goes by to the point that they believe batman supersedes his own existence, bc it's quite ahistorical. i sometimes wonder if people even understand the point of the knightfall arc or bruce's run with tim at all bc it seems all too many come out of it thinking that bruce's return to batman is necessary bc it's all he'll ever be and he's the only one who can be batman. but i think the conglomerate effect of knightfall and whatever subsequent arcs there are through rucka's run (and in spite of the many flaws in some of those stories) is to establish that bruce wayne as himself is an uncompromisable identity that cannot be lost or subsumed by the mask. what bruce does is impt and he does have somewhat of a duty to uphold by putting himself out there in the first place but that doesn't mean his own life is without value or that he can't want for personal things and exact change through his civilian identity. that seemed to be the core message of the rucka arcs esp and while i don't think it was executed flawlessly, whatever impact it had i do think was diluted by the fact that morrison was his successor and essentially walked back all of the effort rucka made to bring bruce back to himself

* also a side note but i imagine the strongest counterargument to whatever i'm saying here is denny o'neil's depiction of the batman identity and while you're not at all arguing with me on that here it's something i want to address about denny's writing style in general. i think my biggest criticism of him is that he's a painfully archetypal writer. he's great at establishing core traits for a character but it's very evident he was at his peak with dc in an era where long term continuity was not necessarily impt and comic runs were largely ruled by one-shot storylines where maintaining the integrity of the character was more important than necessarily driving them to change or evolve in any way (and that's an issue that shows up in his writing of talia as well imo and even to the point i believe it explains very well why he wanted to do death and the maidens, regardless of how differently it turned out from the original concept). it's easy for a lot of people to say the batman identity will forever and always be the absolutely priority to bruce in light of what denny has written without accounting for the fact that denny wasn't necessarily interested in seeing bruce actually grow as a character. in some ways his stubborn attachment to standard form is a blessing but in other ways i also think it's a hindrance and i wish people would acknowledge that