Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.
Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.
He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.
Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.
But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.
Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.
Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.
So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?
Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.
Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.
Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.
Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.
Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.
Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.
But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?
Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.
Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.
So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.
Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.
At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.
The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.
Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.
All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.
Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.
But by GOD is he trying.
In situations and headcanons and such where Bruce doesn't tell the justice league his identity, I feel like one of the most often cited reasons is that they'd then immediately connect all of his many waves of increasingly smaller vigilantes back to him.
But I'd like to think it doesn't happen like that.
Like, at some point, Nightwing has been on the team for years, and somehow, no one that didn't already know him as Robin has connected him back to Batman, but of course both Bruce and Dick think they know, because they have to, right?
But then Bruce's identity gets revealed while Dick's off world or something, but he gets filled in, so he assumes that his identity is blown too, right? Of course, once you know Batman is Bruce Wayne, it'd be easy to put together that Dick Grayson is Nightwing.
So then Bruce and Dick have to rush to the watchtower from some sort of Wayne family event one day, but there's no real need to put on their costumes yet, because the league already knows their identities.
Until...
Green Lantern, watching a young man that he's only ever seen through gossip magazines fiddle around in the watchtower: Hey, Bru-Batman, I know we found out your identity and all, but do you really think it's a good idea to bring your children into this? I mean, what if he gets hurt?
Dick, incredulous: You... you do know who I am, right?
GL: It's hard to not know who you are. I saw you on a magazine cover just the other day.
-long pause-
Dick: Bruce, when you used to complain that you work with idiots, I thought you were exaggerating.
-general sounds of outrage from the JL-
I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard
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Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.
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Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.
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The Batfamily, by proxy of being raised by Bruce (undercover pro, lies every other word) and Alfred (actor in another life and in possession of the world’s blankest poker face), are probably the best at just running with something (a con, a secret identity, an undercover job, etc) and acting it out 100% believably. With zero hesitation.
Someone runs up to Red Hood one night in an alley and says “pretend to be my boyfriend! please, he’s following me!” and suddenly that’s not Jason Todd, Crime Lord. That’s Todd from the upper east side, and what the fuck man? leave her alone, you’re fucking tripping!
Etc etc.
"justice league doesn't know batman has kids" and by some freak incident, they end up meeting them all at once, after never having one single sneaking suspicion of batman being a family guy.
you've got every batkid + justice league member in the same room, and bruce tries for a total of 6 seconds to diffuse the situation before giving up.
there's bats left right and centre making completely false claims about how their family came to be, just to stir shit. also purposely trying to ruin batman's 'stoic and mean' reputation as best as they can.
jason and steph are telling everyone that they're all bio kids, and bruce does try and correct that one (some of those kids don't even belong to him in a non-bio way!!) but not before tim pipes up and goes 'well actually it depends what you count as biological, he grew me in a lab'.
dick's taking full advantage of the JL's perception of batman being oh so impressionable in the moment, and is telling stories of his childhood + batman raising his younger siblings, making him out to be the softest guy to ever exist (completely on purpose). cass is nodding along next to him, and making sure whenever she adds a comment that she uses the word 'dad' instead of batman just for the extra domestic flare.
babs and jason are explaining how they all consider themselves bats, in a way that would make anyone believe that they're in a cult. bruce is standing amidst it all, an immovable object, with dick's arm on his shoulder, and damian huddled into his side (ALL for dramatic flare. they need the JL to know that he's. just a guy with kids).
Various Yugi, Yami, and puzzleship headcanons because one I'm too busy to draw much, and two I wanted to write a little something for myself, just for fun. And you get to see them too (• 3 •) :
Yami’s transition from vengeful vigilante to kind-hearted yet prideful pharaoh was rocky to say the least. Not understanding and not quite willing to accept Yuugi’s kindness, most of his attempts to understand his newfound life was filled with stone-cold faces, confused stares, and offended petulance. But Yuugi is equally stubborn in helping his new friend acclimatize to being human again, so he does his best to teach him, even if not everything he does is successful.
Yami, despite loving Yuugi, doesn’t worship the ground his partner walks on. Instead he sees a person who’s gone through hardship, being lonely and bullied, and still somehow smiling at the end of it, and it amazes him as much as it confuses him. He’s unsure how to proceed with a person who seems so contradictory. Though with time, he recognizes Yuugi's inner strength and resolves to help Yuugi see what he himself saw in his partner.
Yuugi will never admit it, but whenever he gets the chance to become “the strong one” and help Yami out for a change, it gives him a heady feeling that rivals anything he’s felt before. For once, he gets to protect others, something he never gets to do, and plus, he’s protecting the one person who protects everyone else. He, the tiny and small Yuugi Mutou, protecting Yami no Yuugi, the hero! He finally gets the chance to be “the lead” almost, and it brings him greater joy than any other. Ofc he doesn't flaunt it, but it's definitely something he feels and to a degree feels ashamed about. Though he lets himself be arrogant, just a teeny tiny bit.
To Yami though, Yuugi becomes very vigilant and constant in looking out for him, something he does appreciate exclusively from Yuugi when he can no longer stand on his own.
In terms of love, the spirit only knows it in theory. He loves his partner, he cares for his friends, he loves his home of Egypt, and he loves his priests and his people. But the kind of love where two people love each other, is less foreign and more of unsure territory for him. He recognizes it’s a love that goes beyond what he’s felt for anyone else, but doesn’t know how to approach it. Much less appreciate it.
Yuugi meanwhile, understands love very well. He’s yearned for it for years, and finally feels it for Yami, his partner and dear spirit. He hides it of course, the world is more important than his feelings, but when it’s all over and he gets the chance to act on them, his desperate heart won’t let him be so selfless. He enjoys and revels in teaching Yami the many ways one could love, as to him, it shows just how much he loves Yami in turn. But he’s equally patient about it, taking it step by step. Sometimes, he’s so gentle that Yami gets impatient, but Yami’s equally weak to his partner’s tenderness, especially when it’s geared towards him.
Their relationship isn’t fueled by something as small as one’s appearance, nor did it ever start from it. But when those moments come, Yuugi can feel his breath be stolen by Yami’s visage, or Yami blinking when he sees how the light refracts in Yuugi’s eyes. Still, they appreciate each other’s appearance and take full advantage to do so, especially when having separate bodies. They appreciate them as they entirely are, and not for singular details.
Yuugi likes squeezing Yami’s butt. There isn’t much there, but whatever he gets, he gropes. Yami’s since then no longer bothered to scold him, only giving him a mild glare and blush whenever he does it. Though he always somehow knows when to smack Yuugi’s hand away when they’re out in public events.
Neither are comfortable to sleep on because they’re quite lanky, even if Yami came back in Atem’s body (trust me, if he really is all muscle then those are rocks dude, not pillows) So instead Yugi and Yami both like taking a pillow and just putting it on themselves so the other can sleep on them.
Atem, when alive, was a well-meaning king. A little spoiled, since he was such a golden boy, but overall, a good-natured king. He often listens out to his people, gets into quarrels with Seth because of his seemingly soft nature, and tries to be equal in his sense of judgement. But it never changes the fact that he was a young king, and there was much he had left to learn by the time Kul Elna’s history was revealed. These lessons unfortunately, he would never know, not until 3000 years later.
When Yami/Atem comes back, he doesn’t come back fully human. Being locked in an ancient artifact with the remnants of darkness incarnate changes you. So while he looks human, he still holds control over the shadows and is as much of their slave as he was their master. The only difference is that the shadows don’t scream anymore, and are more or less docile unless Yami riles them up. And they don’t hurt him anymore, so that’s pretty good too.
why is this sooo goood
I see your "Alfred is a Disney Princess" characterization and raise you "Walt Disney met Alfred and then based his princesses of HIM."
We can be friends.
That's a fucking fantastic raise, and I love it and am adopting it as a HC immediately.
Anyone looking to make a proper Scooby-Doo adaptation please remember:
Fred is the charismatic face of the group and the strategizer. Later adaptations made him a massive himbo who chugs respect for women juice and those have become necessary parts of his character.
Shaggy is cowardly but also incredibly resourceful; let us not forget his skill at ventriloquism. Make Shaggy the skill monkey, who every episode mentions some weird skill he has that's previously unmentioned; that'd be an amazing running gag. Also, bring back the dry humor Casey Kasem injected into the og character.
Scooby is Shaggy's best friend, the other half to his two-man comedy routine. Independently of Shaggy, Scooby is also prone to be a bit mischievous and just kind of a little scamp. Play up both of those things.
Velma is the smart nerdy one, who also had a really dry sense of humor. I don't know why she was turned into the "I'm surrounded by idiots" character because, while as I stated, she always had a dry sense of humor, she was never mean to her friends and never talked down to them, or anyone else. Bring back the chipper Velma from like Witch's Ghost or Zombie Island. Let Velma be a little cutie pie. Also keep her as a lebian
Daphne was... originally really just "The Girly One" but later adaptations have fleshed her out, like making her essentially the muscle of the group, which is just amazing and should continue. She's also been cast as the oddly resourceful one. Shaggy is the skill monkey, Daphne is the one who has a tool for literally any job. Human Swiss Army Knife, which again, would be an amazing running gag.
Have Shaggy and Daphne bounce off-the-wall ideas for a plan together, Fred steps in to ground them, while still using their ideas, and incorporating Velma's theories about the case.
Make references to Flim Flam and Hot Dog Water
A Scooby-Doo adaptation should not be difficult, and must be done with love.
my current hyperfixation — a post-crisis nightwing ongoing in the same verse as persephone, where the new52 never happened and dick moves to new york after bruce is rescued from the time stream in batman and robin 2009. aka dick fights cops and reconciles with the important people in his life, free from the shadow of the bat