chief-of-restless-hearts:

batmanisagatewaydrug:

this is a gift

•  so, I tend to HC Bruce as being 24/25 and having been Batman for literally a year when he adopts his first kid, because. you know. Dick was literally introduced to comics the year after Bruce. that’s just meta canon.
• so we have this emotionally stunted 20-something who’s currently navigating how best to fight crime while dressed up as a bat meeting another orphan and deciding “oh, shit, I should do the noble thing and adopt him. what’s the worst that could happen?”
• so much
• once all the excitement of catching the peeps who killed Dick’s parents wore off it gradually dawned on Bruce that he was now responsible for a whole ass human child living in his fancy house
• there’s this, like, grieving but shockingly well adjusted and sociable pre-pubescent boy doing cartwheels up and down the halls, breaking the antiques, and gradually it hits Bruce that this kid is going to need, like. outlets for all that energy. and kids his own age. school? probably school.
• (Alfred home schooled Bruce from the age of 8 until college – and yes, I have a LOT of feelings about Bruce Wayne’s college years – so he’s a little out of his depth here)
• emotionally stunted manchild with no real friends Bruce Wayne listening with an increasingly furrowed brow as young Dick Grayson cheerfully chats about his favorite classes and which of his classmates he gets along with and the birthday party he got invited to and which teacher was mean. Bruce realizing that this child is going to be so, so much healthier than he is and almost choking because he is absolutely terrified of fucking that up.
• picture: 25 year old Bruce Wayne, still perfecting his idiot billionaire act, sitting in a parent teacher conference with an increasingly flustered teacher. (flustered because Bruce is hot? because he’s weird? you decide!)
• honestly what would feed that harmless idiot playboy image better than spontaneously adopting a little circus boy and bringing him along to inappropriate places like Wayne Industries board meetings or fancy formal dinners?
• they absolutely have system worked out where Bruce makes a certain very small gesture and Dick immediately causes a disruption, such as:
• [mid-board meeting] “oh I’m so sorry, gentlemen, I’d love to keep talking about these numbers for another hours but as you can see, I’m sure, my young ward is doing a handstand on a rolling chair and we really need to have a word about that”
• [at a fancy dinner] “goodness gracious I wish that I could keep talking about this very interesting socialite gossip but it seems that my young ward has just knocked over quite a large number of champagne glasses and I must go tend to him”
• once they’ve ducked out of this latest obligation Dick asks which bad guy they’re rushing off to fight. sometimes there isn’t one and Bruce was just shamelessly using the child as an excuse to leave something extremely tedious.
• what do kids eat? Bruce has no idea, having spent a quarter of a century mostly eating whatever Alfred put in front of him. conversely, little Dick has never been allowed to go ham and get whatever he wants in a grocery store before. suddenly Wayne Manor’s cupboards are overflowing with frozen pizza and poptarts and sugary cereals. 
• food is basically an afterthought to Bruce, who is actually delighted that calories and sugars are now so readily available in quick and easily consumed packages. 
• I implore you to imagine Bruce and Dick in full costume sitting on the kitchen counter eating cold slices of pizza and handfuls of dry cap’n crunch for breakfast after a particularly hellacious night 
• actually if you can draw I implore you to do that too
• I keep thinking of the Stranger Things directors talking about how working with kids is weird because sometimes they just show up covered in glitter or red in the face because they’ve been slapping each other? sometimes Robin goes radio silent on stakeouts and Bruce panics and goes looking for him, only to discover Dick found a stray dog or he’s perched outside someone’s window watching their TV because a movie he likes is on or he’s staring in the windows of a candy store.
• the first time Bruce Wayne realized Dick had fallen asleep in the passenger seat of the Batmobile and he had to awkwardly lift him out and carry him to bed was an Experience 
• Bruce and Alfred methodically “babyproofing” the manor before Dick’s first birthday with them so that he can invite friends over without having to worry about them finding the cave
• Dick realized pretty fast that Bruce doesn’t have any concept of how money works and that he’ll hand over 200 dollars for a night at the movies without even questioning it. Alfred had to step in and tactfully course correct on this one
• for the record, Bruce never actually stops doing it. to this day, any one of his kids could ask for his credit card (the Batcredit card, Steph insists on calling it) and be given it without argument. does Bruce trust his kids? does he just not give a single solitary shit about money? you decide!
• Dick is easy to travel with, even internationally – he got plenty of that in the circus, and he knows when to just sit down and take a nap. but he’s not accustomed at all to the kinds of places where Bruce stays. you know the opening of Spider-Man: Homecoming where Peter is losing his mind and jumping all over his hotel bed? it’s a little like that, with a side of Dick trying to drag Bruce off to look at everything that looks even remotely interesting.
• at some point Bruce and Dick inevitably got into an argument and as it was getting heated Bruce said “don’t make me ground you!” and Dick shot back “you can’t ground me!” and their fight came to a SCREECHING stop as they both stared at each other and tried to do the mental math to figure out if Bruce actually could effectively ground Dick or not. like, he can say it all he wants, but will Dick respect his authority and listen?
• neither of them knows the answer
• they don’t want to know the answer
• “well, don’t make me then,” Bruce grumps, before twirling his cape dramatically and storming off to cover his parental panic.
• as the weeks and months and years go by Bruce starts getting better at remembering all the little nuances of Dick’s social life outside their vigilantism. there’s a tiny segment of his methodical brain dedicated to it, tucked away behind all the knowledge of combat and crime solving techniques, a mental map complete with figurative yearn connecting the different pictures and snippets of information. when Dick talks about the Titans, his school friends, teachers, Bruce knows exactly who he means. he just wishes he had better advice to offer. he wishes he was better at showing Dick that he cares about all of his life, not just what they do as Batman and Robin. he wishes that Dick wasn’t so perceptive, because after a while Dick realizes that Bruce is out of his league with personal stuff and stops sharing so much. 
• when he looks back at all the bumps of figuring out his first kid, what Bruce remembers most is how much Dick wanted to talk to him about ordinary things. none of the others do that; they’re old enough to know – or think they know – that Bruce isn’t a guy you talk to about college applications or crushes. he never gets to hear about their day-to-day. he misses it.

‘I implore you to imagine Bruce and Dick in full costume sitting on the kitchen counter eating cold slices of pizza and handfuls of dry cap’n crunch for breakfast after a particularly hellacious night 

actually if you can draw I implore you to do that too’

I decided to capture the BatSnack™

naomisalman:

gather round, folks, that i may pass down the tale of Fuck-It Jonn, because that dude is just the GREATEST FUCKING CONMAN in the WORLD, and he WASN’T EVEN TRYING. he absolutely fucking STUMBLED ON ACCIDENT into THE SCAM THAT WOULD DEFINE HIS ENTIRE LIFE. the lie that transformed his ENTIRE EXISTENCE out of SHEER RANDOM BULLSHIT.

and his sole motivation was to EAT FINGER FOOD.

consider:

in the Wayback Days™ before i was born, the people who would later become my parents had this friend named… yeah, let’s say jonn. i’d rather not say his real name. bitches not snitches, and all that.

so. france in the late 80s. jonn and my parents had just finished school and all found jobs in computer engineering. (not that they STUDIED computer engineering, mind you. no, they were all studying how to become fish farmers or some shit. but those were simpler times, when knowing how to turn the fucking screen on got you a comfortable salary at the ripe old age of 24 years old.)

except that jonn, who was a chill hippie kind of dude, was bored to death by his desk job. so bored that he decided to just up and quit. “fuck it”, was basically jonn’s motto. fuck it, he’d find something better! fuck it, and things would work out! EXCEPT (as you may have guessed) THEY DIDN’T. for months and months he didn’t find another job. and so he ended up depressed, struggling, and eating dinner at my future-parents’ tiny apartment, three times a week, so he wouldn’t literally starve.

time went by. jonn was still unemployed. so before his resources hit rock bottom, jonn did the only logical, reasonable thing. what’s that, you ask? begged for his old job back? went back to school? crawled home to his parents? ha ha! obviously you do not share jonn’s ADVENTUROUS AND ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT. and also you lack his BIZARRE LOGIC AND PLAIN WEIRD APPROACH TO LIFE.

what jonn did was: say “fuck it” (again) and leave for thailand.

because you see, thailand was cheap by french standards. so cheap that even a penniless dude on unemployment could live there for weeks on end, spending much less than he would have in france, as long as he didn’t mind roughing it. and jonn didn’t mind! “fuck it”, he’d said. and by god, he would stand by his words!

so jonn gamely scrounged up the money for the plane ticket and then… yeah. basically bummed it out in thailand. for two months. seeing the sights. sleeping on the street. making new friends.

and one of these news friends turned out to be very adept at FORGING PAPERS.

huh, jonn said to himself (probably high at the time) this sounds not at all shifty and more like a ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY; what could POSSIBLY GO WRONG. my new thai best friend is even offering me a FAMILY DISCOUNT. for fake papers. fuck it! let’s have some!

as far as i can tell, jonn… didn’t even need fake papers?? like, he was literally just trying not to pass up on an opportunity here. so he smoked some more weed (i can only assume) and got A BRILLIANT IDEA. fake ID card? LAME. fake driver’s licence? HACKNEYED. fake medical degree? PEDESTRIAN. no! jonn got himself a fake press card.

but why??

well, OBVIOUSLY, just so he could get into cultural events for free – conferences, art premieres, etc – and eat all the finger food. that was his grand plan. stroll into press-only events, wave his poorly-made card around, and gorge himself on canapés. no more going hungry! ever! jonn would live off tiny slices of toasted foie gras and flutes of cheap champagne for the rest of his life!

so now jonn, Very Obviously Fake Journalist™, is back in france and he’s DOING THE THING. and guess what? this was before google. before facebook. before linkedin. impersonating a journalist was very easy. if people asked where you worked you just said you were freelance, then steered the conversation to current politics and stealthily devoured the entire buffet while everybody was busy debating.

and so. this is what jonn is doing. his monumentally stupid plan is actually working. this is how he eats. with thai-made fake papers and sheer fucking confidence. and of course people start noticing him eventually! jonn is always fucking there! at all and any events in paris! because, again, THIS IS HOW HE EATS! but it’s always the same people running around in these circles, anyway. so nobody’s surprised to see the same dudes popping up over and over again. jonn blends in! and jonn is very good at making friends. and changing the subject. and eating canapés.

and then ONE DAY

one of jonn’s newfangled journalist friends (a REAL journalist, mind you, who has NO IDEA that jonn isn’t What He Seems) basically goes: “dude i’m so swamped rn. everyone wants everything all at once. fuck. shit. are you swamped too?”

“oh, for sure,” jonn says through a mouthful of his twenty-ninth serving of canapés that night. “not a second to myself”

“god. fuck. tell me about it. shit. i’m just so damn swamped.” Real Journalist shakes his head. “if i could only find someone to cover for me on this one article.”

now, i know i said before that jonn was smoking weed. but i must confess now i said it for humorous effect. i have no idea if jonn’s ever been within five hundred yards of a blunt his whole life. but what you must understand is that jonn is Chill™ on like. a soul-deep level. his whole mind is one long exhale of smoke followed by the words “fuck it”. this is a man who left his job for no reason, lived in thailand on a tourist’s visa for two months, got fake papers there for the lol of it all, and is now living off press-only events in paris. jonn was BORN HIGH.

SO. when RJ asks him: “dude. jonn. you said you were working freelance. i know you’re busy but don’t you think you could maybe cover for me? just this once?”

jonn NATURALLY answers: “fuck it. sure”

then goes to an unemployment center and applies for one of their free one-week classes. on journalism. jonn spends ALL OF ONE WEEK learning How To Write An Article Like A Real Journalist With A Real Press Card. then writes the article. basically bullshitting his way through that thing. half-assing the life out of it. faking his heart out. because why not? FUCK IT.

i have NO IDEA if he actually did a good job or not. but it was in fact good enough for RJ who really must have been truly swamped, and was so truly grateful that he told all of their mutual journalists friends. who were ALL SWAMPED. i’m given to understand it’s the natural state of the journalist in the wild.

and so jonn is now REGULARLY COVERING FOR ALL SORTS OF JOURNALISTS.

not making much money i assume. but still, not bad for a dude who studied journalism for five whole days.

and well, it’s kinda fun! better than moping around at home waiting for the next free canapé press-only premiere. so jonn keeps at it. and eventually it occurs to him that hey! he spent two months in thailand. why not make an article out of that? so he writes himself a lil paper, retelling his Bumtastic Adventures in the Land of Thai People, Cheap Living and Forged Papers (That Last One Having Nothing to Do With Him Personally of Course). and he’s kinda proud of it. so much that he gives it to his journalist friends. can they maybe pass it around? see if anybody would be interested in publishing it? for a modest fee and some more canapés?

and yeah. someone was in fact interested in publishing it. and that someone was:

THE

NATIONAL

GEOGRAPHIC

(french edition.)

so jonn got a REAL press card. got a FULL-TIME JOB at the national geographic. and spent the REST OF HIS WORK LIFE traveling abroad for six months, then going back to paris the rest of the year to write about his wacky journeys. he’s retired now, having published several books full of his articles and photographs. he’s bought a b&b in the french countryside with all his money. and continues to say “fuck it” to any problem that comes his way like the absolute fucking legend he is.

as far as i know, none of his journalist buddies nor his boss ever found out about any of this.