Villains in Addams Family movies go to really unnecessary lengths to defraud them of the family fortune. These people just give it away on whims all the time. If I just walked into the house and started wearing their clothes and spending their money, they wold start introducing me as Cousin Intruder and forget there was ever a time I didn’t live with them.
Gomez in particular would enjoy your boldness, Cousin Intruder.
Oh shit.
The Addams family loves and greets every person entering one of their homes.
The Addams family adopted or married every person wishing to stay.
This is why the Addams family is full of freaks.
Of course.
So what we’re saying is, tracing the Addams’ geneology is damn near impossible and it’s just as likely that no living member of the family is actually a blood relative of the people who originally held the family name?
What I’m hearing is that Batman is actually an Addams.
He most certainly is
I could have sworn I saw someone prompting this somewhere
Your typical urban fantasy/supernatural story with your average every day normal girl, and your brooding guy who turns out to be an immortal supernatural in some way.
And you have all the “romantic” cliches and suspense of will they won’t they.
Except the big moment, is basically the brooding immortal supernatural becoming the eternal dad friend to the girl instead of a romance, because ‘my god have you looked at our age difference? You’re a literal child?’ ‘Says the old man who has worst dad jokes than my actual father’
Look instead of a romance between the main two protagonists please picture a friendship where the supernatural immortal’s broodiness is just them being a long suffering old grump who is 1000% likely to adopt people, and the plucky young average girl behaves like an actual teenager and her fatal flaw is that she’s 100% willing to fight in any given situation no matter what.
When supernatural plot happens almost everyone who knows broody supernatural immortal is completely unsurprised that he’s hanging out with plucky heroine because his whole reputation is accidentally adopting stray humans.
…Oh, this is why so many people ship Bruce with his kids.
“Jesus christ eat the goddamn mac and cheese.” scowls the hero “I can hear your stomach growling through your armor, you know.”
The villain blinks “You-”
“Are feeding you, yes. If all I wanted to do was punch people and throw criminals in jail, I would’ve become a vigilante. Heroism involves kindness, dipshit.”
“Heroism involves kindness, dipshit” is the most amazing phrase I’ve ever read. I need to incorporate it into all my work.
This straight up sounds like something Spider-Man would say
This is what people who actually know how to write Batman would say
I’m 85% sure Batman has really really bad Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Not, “keep things tidy” or “wash my hands until they bleed” but, like, his obsession with being Batman and fighting crime is driven by fear. The repeating thought of “if I don’t become this bat vigilante then people will die” is… irrational. But he doesn’t see it that way. He trains. He can’t not train. If he doesn’t then people die. He pushes himself to the brink of death, pushing himself beyond the limitations of his body because if he relents for just a moment people will die. It’ll be his fault. He needs to be out on the street every night. He needs to train every day.
Without people like Alfred, his obsession would’ve killed him within the first year. That’s not normal. He literally cannot stop himself from going out and fighting crime. He tried to stop being Batman before, but he always come back to it. He’s too afraid. He needs to be Batman. It’s all he thinks about.
By all means he should be dead. He’s basically insanely smart and lucky.
Thinking he’s personally responsible for the deaths in Gotham is his obsession. His compulsion is to train all the time and to go out every night to fight criminals.
Batman definitely has obsessive compulsive disorder.
Other examples of his irrational ways of thinking include
“I need to be miserable and alone.”
“Using a gun makes me as bad as the serial killers”
“Killing no matter the circumstance will turn me into someone like the Joker.”
In a DC Nation comic they put multiple hero’s sanctuary files, Batman being one of them, and at the bottom listed their diagnoses conditions.
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’
DarkestElemental616 