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The Batfam doesn't realize they got pretty privilege.

Like sure, they know they're attractive because duh, they're basically celebrities, their looks is all people talk about. But the small stuff? The opened doors, the free gifts, the extra smiles and good attitude? That, they're completely clueless to.

It doesn't help that it happens to all of them and most their friends, so nobody notices it's out of the ordinary.

Clark goes "The lady at the cafeteria gifted me this cake" and Bruce is like "Oh yeah, she does that"... She doesn't.

Kory gets offered to cut in line to the front at a concert and tells Dick "People here are so nice!", and instead of noticing the favoritism, Dick holds out three STAFF passes and goes "I know right! Look that lady over there is going to take us backstage!", and they laugh while Wally's eye twiches.

Tim goes undercover wearing cheap loose clothes, contacts and a fake nose, and people are just so mean to him, like no manners at all. They bump into him, ignore him, he says 'Good morning' to an old lady, and she doesn't even say it back! ... He comes back ranting about rude people and what not. And Jason is like "Really? But they're so nice in that neighborhood, that old lady is always giving me candy!". Barbara doesn't know how to tell them the nose simply made Tim look average for once.

Damian. Hits. It. Off. At the pediatric unit of the hospital he's volunteering at. Kids love him, and he thinks it's because Jon was right about the 'Always greet them with a smile' thing, but in reality it's because half the kids got a puppy-love crush on him. Jon, just as oblivious is like "Told you sooo".

Stephanie thinks it's the good karma. She gets a whole ass perfume bottle for free at the mall and is like "See Cass? It's that robbery we stopped last week, the universe is giving it back". Cass, with a perfume of her own, knows better but nods anyway.

Duke thinks they're all dumb and unaware, and he's making fun of them when Alfred goes "And I suppose you think Miss Carrington has saved you a seat at the bus for the last three weeks just because". Duke doesn't say anything after that.

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I do think Dick became the most insufferable annoying shit the moment Chandelier by Sia came out.

Like that is his song. Are you kidding? He has been swinging from chandeliers since he was 9! The song was made for him!

Does he know it is a metaphor for addiction? No. Does he care? Also no.

All he knows is that now Nightwing finally has a soundtrack. Forget grappling through the city singing 'nananananana Robin!' this is way better! He's having the time of his life.

It's the worst.

Babs has taken to muting his comm. If he dies it is honestly going to be on him, she can't take it anymore.

Stephanie is mourning because she truly liked the song! But now all she hears is 'I'm gonna swiiing! Cuz the culprit is fleeing the scene! They're fleeeing the sceeeene~!'.

Dick doesn't even know the actual lyrics. Tim tested him the other day, he only knows the chandelier part...

Bruce is too old to care. He was there for the 'nananananana', and the 'mission imposible', and the 'free bird', and the 'papa is in love with a criminal' when they meet Selina– In a way he's just glad some things never change.

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Can you imagine if the reason why Damian thought Bruce would be taller is because of Jason Built-like-a-tank Todd...

Damian is this kid training in the league and one day sees this absolute monster of a man just walking around.

Two hundred twenty-something pounds of muscle, a towering six feet AND some... Damian is used to having to look up to see people in the eyes. This guy could be crouching down, and they still wouldn't be at eye level.

Like mathematically, pythagorically, Damian has to be at 2 ft of distance or Jason is not seeing his ass. His mother says "He's still got some growing up to do" and Damian is like "More??!"

And well, if that tree in disguise was Robin, then naturally Batman must be like at least a head taller. Right?

Cut to show day, Damian has this image of Todd in his mind, distorted by time and the perception of a kid. And he's comparing that to Bruce, genuinely confused, like "Where's the rest of ya?".

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One of Bruce Wayne’s biggest problem is that a large part of his philosophy when dealing with his personal relationships is that “I’d rather they’d be safe and alive while hating me than dead or injured while loving me” which leads him to push the people that love him away because he thinks so little of himself that he majorly undermines just how much that hurts them.

Because if he hates himself with such passion how could it be conceivable for anyone to love him so much that to them, the pain of losing him is worse than any physical pain could be? Kind of the motto “if you love someone you’d let them go” but when the people he’s trying to push away are so devoted to him that they KEEP COMING BACK, it ends up falling into a cycle of violence that hurts everybody. What he doesn’t GET is that they hold him on such a high pedestal that his act of pushing them away translates to THEM not being good enough instead of HIM not being good enough.

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Bruce doesn’t know why Jason is mad at him. At this point, it seems to be an everyday thing.

Jason successfully integrates his way back into the family, making it possible for him to hang out with his brothers without being coerced by anyone. He comes and goes as he pleases and struts around the manor like it’s his home again.

Bruce couldn’t be happier.

So why is his second/third oldest mad at him? It seems like nowadays Jason gets mad at Bruce for breathing the wrong way, or walking too slow, or something completely nonsensical.

It all comes to a head when Jason confronts him in his office when Bruce was just finishing up some paperwork.

“What the fuck is your actual fucking problem?” Jason hissed angrily, slamming his fist down on Bruce’s mahogany table.

Bruce distantly hopes that it won’t leave a mark, but for now, he’s more focused on why his son is swearing at him.

“Hello Jason.” Bruce decides to start, giving him a second to collect his thoughts and mentally see if he’s done anything lately. “I’m afraid I don’t understand-“

“Bullshit! Absolute fucking bullshit!” Jason spat, cutting Bruce off.

Bruce’s eyebrows wrinkled slightly at the many curses directed at him. It’s not like he wasn’t used to it; Gotham is his home, but he just doesn’t know why.

“When was the last time you fucking talked to me?” Jason questioned, rounding the desk and jabbing a finger in Bruce’s shoulder.

This causes Bruce to blink, somehow even more confused than before. “I don’t understand. I’m talking to you right now. And we spoke yesterday.”

“No, you walked into the room looking for Golden Boy, saw me and said some fake ass greeting before turning and basically running away!” Jason swung his hands around, making Bruce lean back in his chair to avoid getting hit. “Why are you avoiding me? I thought… I thought you had forgiven me and stuff…”

“What? Of course I have! You’re always welcome here!”

“Then why are you avoiding me? You don’t invite me places, y-you barely speak to me nowadays…”

Bruce picked at the peeling arm of his swivel chair, peeling off a small portion of the black paint and ripping it into smaller pieces before dropping it on the ground. Alfred would probably make him clean it up. “I’m giving you space.”

Jason blinked, looking down at Bruce in confusion. “Space? Why are you giving me space- so much space? You're never fucking around anymore!”

“Well… because you hate me?”

“What..?”

“You told me…” Bruce says slowly, barely stopping himself from scratching at his arm in the tense silence, a habit Alfred made sure he broke. “You’ve told me multiple times how you hate me… and that I’m not your Dad.”

Jason gaped at Bruce, taking a moment to sit on the edge of Bruce’s desk, running a hand down his face. “Fuck Bruce! I-I wasn’t- ugh! I wasn’t being fucking serious!”

Bruce squints, his eyes darting around Jason's angry and confused expression.

“But… you said it? Why would you say that if you didn’t mean it?” Bruce asked quietly, his chest tightening like it does when he wants to cry.

He hasn’t felt this way in a long time. At least, not so strongly. The kind of feeling that you get when you know everyone around you understands something that you can’t. Why would Jason say something he didn’t mean?

Why did Bruce have to be so fucking stupid. He's supposed to be the world's greatest detective, so why does he always have a hard time deciphering what people mean? Especially his children.

“I don’t understand,” Bruce repeated, his eyes stinging as he flapped his hands before drumming them softly on the arm of his swivel chair, trying to calm himself down. “You’ve said it. You say it all the time.”

“Bruce-“

“All of you say it! You say that you hate me, so you hate me!” Bruce insisted, no longer looking at Jason, the study felt significantly smaller now. “Why would you say it if you don’t mean it? Why would you say something so mean?”

“… Dad…” Jason whispered softly, slowly taking Bruce’s hands in his own. Bruce hadn’t even noticed that his fingernails were painfully digging into the palm of his hand, leaving angry red half moons.

“Dad, if you think that we hate you, then why…?” Jason gestures widely, pointing at nothing in particular yet everything at the same time. “Why do you do this for us? Why are you still here?”

Bruce tilted his head in confusion. Not a single second of this conversation has made any sense to him but he knows this part, it is woven into the very fabric of his being. “Because I love you. I love all of you.”

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I adore Garth

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[spoken like I'm at a confessional] there's a classmate of mine I absolutely hated, despised beyond all reason, because he was very physically affectionate and would often touch me without warning me, as well as try to converse with me in the vaguest possible manner. I felt anger in my heart whenever I saw or spoke to him. It got so bad I would keep a 5 foot gap between us whenever possible. Honestly, it was getting a bit unreasonable. Last week I had a dream where he came out to me using She/They pronouns and ever since then I have been nicer and more tolerant of him. He doesn't annoy me as much anymore. Yesterday, he waved at me and I smiled back, and it was genuine

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Clark breaking his own rules about his secret identity but ONLY for the nice little old lady who works in the Daily Planet office with him. You will never find him 1) dropping things 2) acting clumsy 3) running away 4) pretending he isn’t strong with her.

He stands up straight with her and looks her in the eye, glasses and misdirection be damned. If she needs help lifting something, he’s there — and it’s never too heavy. She needs help during a full-building evacuation, suddenly she’s outside on the sidewalk and he’s checking her over to make sure she’s okay.

Everyone else sees the misdirection first, the clumsy awkward Clark Kent who aspires to be unremarkable. But this sweet little admin lady who runs payroll? She doesn’t care about the identities or the names he uses. She appreciates him being “a kind young man” and Clark will never disappoint her. He might have been born on Krypton, but he’s a Midwesterner first. If she needs help — she’s getting help.

(Clark ends up watching her meet Bruce a few years later, when he comes by for a tour of the Daily Planet, and gets to witness firsthand as his friend also drops the act with her, zero coordination needed. The woman squeezes his arm, teasing, and says something about him being “quite large.” Bruce laughs, a little pink, and says “That’s the goal.”)

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I know this is going to make me sound pretensions but I have to get it off my chest. I feel an unimaginable rage when someone posts a photo and is like "this picture looks like a renaissance painting lol" when the photo clearly has the lighting, colors and composition of a baroque or romantic painting. There are differences in these styles and those differences are important and labeling every "classical" looking painting as renaissance is annoying and upsetting to me. And anytime I come across one of those posts I have to put down my phone and go take a walk because they make me so mad

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Batman: The Knight #3

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Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

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the humorous upside to Jason really doubling down on being the kind of Red Hood who is at best morally grey and makes a habit of chopping off heads and shooting anyone he doesn’t agree with is that he is 100% Batman’s obscenely scary dog. the second he puts that bat symbol on his chest it’s over, even if it’s a mockery or a message or whatever. Gotham’s underbelly shits their pants when they see Red Hood. and therefore, Batman — brutal as he is, but so much less lawless, in a way — is suddenly the nice cop in his own city. the city where he routinely cracks skulls, stalks targets in the shadows, and throws people off buildings to get information. Jason makes him the “easy” option in Gotham, and while I’m sure the whole Jason thing keeps Bruce up at night for other reasons, that must be so frustrating? here you have a little shithead upstart elbowing into YOUR city and breaking the rules and suddenly goons are being nice to you? or they’re acting out because they’re more scared of the “other guy.” only a father could love that kind of prodigal son without strangling him.

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Damian, now a teenager and wanting to experience normal teen shit: Baba, it’s just an overnight party

Tim: Yeah Bruce, at least Damian’s asking and not sneaking out

Jason: Small victories

Bruce: Fine… I’ll let you go on one condition

Damian: Anything

Bruce: Point to one person in this room that’s straight

Tim: …

Dick: …

Jason: …

Damian: Thats easy. Pennyworth

Bruce: *pulls out buzzer and presses on it* Wrong! It was a trick question. Not a single person in this household is straight. Get your ass upstairs

Damian: Wha- That’s so unfair, ugh! *stomps upstairs muttering under his breath*

Alfred: Master Bruce-

Bruce: Don’t even try to deny it Alfred. I was young but I still had eyes. You and my parents were very obvious.

Dick: Oop!

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do you guys think considering the relatively small age gap between Damian and Tim (depending on the author) that they would have been in school together? because coming from a youngest sibling who went to school with older siblings, that would be really interesting to look into.

i’m imagining Tim getting pulled out of class because Damian’s thrown a tantrum and refuses to listen to any of the teachers and they need his brother to convince him to calm down, and it actually working because Tim is the only person Damian is familiar with and so will ever listen to. Damian having no interest in making friends with civilians so he ends up sat on the end of Tim’s lunch table while Tim eats with his friends. Tim getting bullies in Damian’s class to back off, and Damian scuffing his foot on the tiles of the school halls as he waits for Tim to get out of detention so they can walk home together like usual.

considering how strained their relationship was when Damian first arrived in Gotham, putting him in an environment five days a week where suddenly Tim is his only true familiar ally and he has no choice but to accept being on friendlier terms would be really fucking interesting. suddenly Tim is his protector, and although he refuses to let that effect their home dynamic, he does have to accept that at school at least, he needs Tim to be his older brother.

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when Duke needs backup in a fight he uses his powers to blast bat-signal-esque signs into the sky to call for whatever sibling is best suited for the job. each sibling hates their calling sign, and even worse, they actually have to respond to it because Duke only uses them when he’s like three minutes away from dying so they literally have no choice, like if their symbol shows up they have to fucking BOLT over there regardless of the indignance or Duke will not make it

Jason: the middle finger emoji

Damian: a somehow detailed image of the Boss Baby

Dick: just the word ‘slut’ in bubble letters

Tim: the red robin restaurant logo, complete with ‘gourmet burgers and brews!’ underneath

Steph: a taco, in reference to a time when she was drunk one night and Tim got on video her chasing down a moving taco truck insistently only to face plant into the side of it when the driver finally stopped to let her buy one

Cass: her regular symbol, because shes the only one he respects completely and it drives the others insane to have one sibling un-harassed

Bruce doesn’t have one because he refuses to call for Bruce. Alfred has one, a shotgun, although it’s never been used, and it pisses Bruce off to no end.

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Newly Robin Tim: Thanks for bringing me to my appointment, Dick

Dick, regretting not being closer to Jason but still avoiding Bruce as much as possible: No problem

Dentist: Timothy?

Tim: *goes back*

Dick: *chilling in the otherwise empty lobby*

Dentist: Hey, Dad, are we fine with using fluoride?

Dick: *barely 21, only 9 years older than Tim*

Dick: I— uh— I’m not his— I’m not dad

Dentist: Oh, sorry about that! I’ll just see if he has in the past, no worries!

Dick: okay

Dick, internally: Do I really look old enough to be his dad??? Does she think I would’ve been a teen parent???? Is she surprised I stayed????? Am I a GOOD dad???????

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Thinking about the Bats suppressing their injuries and how yes, they have crazy high pain tolerance, and yes, they are in peak human condition, but ALSO, they do Too Much Shit sometimes and have definitely made injuries worse by accidentally ignoring them

Like, imagine one of them throws out their back doing something Totally Normal and Mundane so they just. Ignore it. Because I literally sneezed, it can’t be that bad, right?

(Spoiler alert: it is that bad)

Tim, moving more slowly than normal and grimacing every few seconds: damn maybe I pulled something

Jason, stopping by to pick up some things he needs while Bruce is out: ?? What’ja do?

Tim: I dunno, but my back really fucking hurts and I’m starting to get all numb and tingly

Jason: ?!?!?

Jason: How long has it been hurting????

Tim: I don’t know??? I guess, like, a few hours???

Jason: What did you do????

Tim: I DON’T KNOW, MAN, IT STARTED AFTER I SNEEZED

Jason, laughing: YOU HURT YOURSELF BY FUCKING SNEEZING????

Tim: THAT LITERALLY CANNOT BE THE CAUSE

Jason: I dunno man, kinda sounds like it

Jason, in tears: Maybe it’s time to retire

Tim: FUCK YOU IM FINE

Tim: WATCH I’LL PROVE IT

Tim, about to do a backflip: oh fuck- OW

Tim: *passes out from the pain*

Jason, still laughing his ass off: Nice landing, Timmy!

Tim:

Jason: Timmy?

Tim:

Jason: Tim?

Jason: oh shit—