All of the blinds and curtains had been closed. Finn tried to turn on his living room light, and frowned when it didn’t work. He rocked the switch back and forth to no avail, squinting up at the ceiling.
Eyes started to glow in the far corner of the room.
He screeched and dropped his bag on the floor.
“… Bat… man…?” he asked finally. His answer was silence. “Are you… here about the show…? You’re here about the show. We’re — this is all above-the-board, legally speaking.”
Batman stood. At least, that was what Finn assumed happened. The eyes moved from eye level to significantly above that.
“Also legalities aside I think we’ve done a good job of being as respectful as we can within a satirical context,” he added hastily, backing toward the door. “And at this point it’s out of my hands so I couldn’t put a stop to production even if I wanted to. Which isn’t to say that you couldn’t find a way, because you’re Batman, it would just be really nice if you didn’t do that.”
“Convince me.”
It took him a minute to realize that Batman had spoken, to register that they were words in a specific order with a specific meaning. “… convince…? You want the elevator pitch?” Finn wasn’t getting a lot of useful feedback and he was trying really hard not to burst into fear tears and he didn’t understand how anyone could possibly jaywalk in Gotham.
He took a deep breath. “Right. The elevator pitch. I can do that, no problem, not a problem.” He clapped his hands together. “So it’s a show about, uh, Batman — it’s a show about you — not the real you, obviously, it’s — I’m just going to say ‘Batman’, I think you probably get that I mean Batman as an idea and not — anyway.” Finn cleared his throat, tried to swallow the lump in his way.
“The core of the idea is, uh, what if — what if Batman was just a guy. Some guy. No powers, none of, uh—” He flailed his arms into the darkness in an attempt to gesture at whichever part of it was Batman. “Just, you know, a guy. So our story is about, uh, he’s a guy named Johnny Butler — we wanted to name him Johann, you know, for Die Fledermaus, but that seemed a little on-the-nose so we went with Johnny — and he’s this blind guy, and he’s an inventor! He invents, uh, this thing, and it lets him echolocate and he can see all this stuff other people can’t see, and he makes this thing so he can fly, and, you know, other stuff. He lives in Gotham with all these crazy villains, so he decides he’s going to use his inventions to fight them! Because, uh. He can? And Robin is this child prodigy who can talk to birds, he’s sort of, he’s the Marty and Johnny is Doc, or like Penny to Inspector Gadget. That’s. That’s the basics, basically. Is that okay so far?”
“Johnny Butler.”
“Yeah! Yeah. It’s, uh, because of Johann? I already told you that. And how, you know, a batman was like a kind of valet, like a butler, so we were trying to do sort of a pun thing? There’s going to be a lot of puns. I mean, you probably saw the fake intro we made on YouTube? With the theme song? It’s all going to be like that, with the retro aesthetic and camp and the cheesy effects, we’re keeping all of that for the real show. I have this brother, my little brother, he’s really into Batman, uh, you, he collects articles and stuff, and he’s eight, and I wanted to make something that he could watch. So it’s going to be kind of a show for kids, like a funny show — not making fun of you! I can show you a script, if you want.”
“Show me.”
“Yes! Yes sir, absolutely, not a problem, sure.” He bent, and tried to dig through his bag in the dark. “I, uh — here, I think this is it.” He offered a thick stack of paper to the darkness, which took it.
“Rowsdower’s Revenge,” the shadow read.
“Wrong script!” Finn said, snatching the script back. “Sorry, sorry, ignore that, sorry. Here, this one, I think this is the one.” He handed off the other script. “I would turn on the light, but…”
Finn squinted, trying to make out a face in the dark. He would have thought that the light from those weird white eyes would have had more of an impact. But while there was definitely the pale lower half of a face, everything else was just a shape, darker than the rest of the room.
He could make out the sound of pages flipping. And another, different sound. A pen?
“Holy homicide, Batman.” It wasn’t quite a question.
“Yeah, it’s, uh, kind of like a catchphrase? Thing?”
“Batcomputer.”
“Yeah.”
“Bat-o-vision.”
“Y… yeah. It’s like — I mean, you have the batmobile and those batarangs — I don’t know if you actually call them that, but, uh. We thought, you know, wouldn’t it be funny if Batman just puts ‘bat’ in front of everything? As a joke.”
“Batman and Robin consult the giant lighted lucite map of Gotham City, parentheses, labeled.”
“Obviously you don’t actually go around putting labels on everything, it just, uh.” Trying to explain jokes to Batman was the most painful thing he had ever done in his entire life and he wanted to die.
“Johnny Butler is blind.”
“Right.”
“The actor isn’t blind.”
“He… is not.”
“Why.”
“He’s — casting is — that’s not really how we—”
“Fix it.”
“I. Okay.”
“King Tut.”
“We’re trying to get Rami Malek but he’s been pretty busy but I’ll make sure we get someone Egyptian because I can tell it’s important to you.”
“The theme song.”
“We can get a new one!”
“No.” Batman handed the script back, and Finn took it, hands shaking. “Robin likes it.”
“He does? The, the na-na-na-na-na—”
“Stop.”
Finn shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked.
“I said Robin likes it.”
“Right.” He looked down at the script in his hands, or tried to. His eyes were adjusting, but still not enough. He brought the paper close to his face, squinting. Had Batman written notes on his script? It smelled like permanent marker. He could barely make out a few crossed out words. “You know, if Robin ever wanted to come by set after we start shooting, we could—”
The lights came on.
“Augh!” Finn shut his eyes, then blinked furiously. His apartment was empty and the window was open. He looked back down at the script, and flipped through it. The notes looked like they’d been left by a monk, taking a break from illuminating Bibles. They sat next to words crossed out and sometimes replaced, saying things like ‘mental illness is not a joke’ and ‘don’t use this word’ and ‘words with more plosives are inherently more humorous’. A note beside the description of Batman’s lair mentioned a carefully labeled ‘Historically Inaccurate But Well-Meaning Tyrannosaurus Rex’.
Finn hit the speed dial on his phone.
“Marco. Dude. You are not going to believe the notes I just got on this — okay, wait, first of all, we need to recast Batman. We need a blind guy. No, like a real blind guy. A tall one. Really tall. And Robin needs more screentime, we’ve got to curry favor with Robin. No, the real Robin. I have never been more serious. Making sure Robin likes this is going to be vital to not getting our asses kicked.”
He does get less mysterious! I mean, it becomes more public knowledge that his deal is World’s Greatest Detective, and not Giant Shadow Monster. But there are still very popular Jekyll and Hyde theories, and vampire theories, and werebat theories. And shadow powers are never entirely ruled out by the general populace. Or by Barry.
okay but that transitional period must have been insane. like. imagine if interpol had a conference and they were like ‘we’re switching out all our k-9 service dogs for chupacabra’, and there was this really long pause before a reporter goes, ‘excuse me, WHAT.’ and then everyone loses their shit. oh, yes, chupacabra are real. they’re very nice actually once you get to know them. they are in fact bloodthirsty creatures of the night but perfectly willing to cooperate with international security measures. here is one now. we’ve trained him to wave politely for the cameras.
like, here’s superman and wonder woman, everyone knows they’re heroes, everyone knows they’re badasses. but there they are standing right next to THE BATMAN, gotham’s weirdest fucking phenomenon, like they didn’t somehow talk a grim shadow made of vengeance and vampire magic into a photo op.
tbh i like to imagine that he still manages to avoid all photo ops and it’s extremely frustrating for everyone who isn’t batman
like “well they SAY batman was working with the league, but there’s only this one single picture with a big black blur behind everyone else, so maybe he just showed up and they’re trying to cover their asses??”
carefully positioning himself according to the time of day where he knows the lighting will be shit because it is exactly where a photographer would ask bruce wayne to please not stand
theories that batman is LITERALLY superman’s shadow because supes is a very convenient camera shield
good luck trying to get an action shot, it’s nothing but cape. is this a picture of batman fighting a kraken, or is it the world’s gothest shower curtain caught in a hurricane?? it’s impossible to be sure but take a lot of pictures and slap CONFIRMED on them anyway
what if it’s like how sometimes people try to sell everyone on melanistic lions and tigers. what if people just start photoshopping the lighting on superman all the way down and going CONFIRMED. what if that’s the hot new meme. just take a random JLA photo and burn-tool the absolute living fuck out of wonder woman or the martian manhunter or a stop sign and be like IT’S BATMAN.
question: do you think thomas and martha wayne ever offered to make a huge donation to pbs or the children’s television workshop in exchange for bruce being able to meet some muppets. has bruce wayne been to sesame street. somewhere in wayne manor are there pictures of bruce wayne hugging big bird and snuffie. does bruce wayne still secretly consider kermit a close personal friend.
what if that christmas bruce insists on including kermit on the christmas card list. he is six and his parents humor him and let him write a personal note to kermit. a sesame street writer is tasked with writing the return christmas card. they do it the next year and the next and one year kermit writes bruce a very heartfelt letter about how much he misses jim henson, about love and grief and remembering the good times. you would think this tradition would stop when bruce was a teen but it did not. he could never bring himself to stop. bruce wayne, grown-ass batman, still sending christmas cards to sesame street.
DC: if we want to get people emotionally invested in batman we need to really up the angst factor
me: okay so hear me out what if batman’s costume gets really uncomfortable in the summer so one day a league meeting runs long because j’onn and hal are having some kind of disagreement about space jurisdiction and bruce had planned to take a shower like two hours ago and technically this is a very important discussion but he cannot bring himself to care at all because all he can think about is that he has a monstrous case of swampass. then before he can leave a giant robot attacks new york and they all have to go fight it but batman deliberately lets himself get punched into the harbor and he cracks a rib but it’s completely worth it just to have some fucking relief. aquaman finds him floating aimlessly and batman has to pretend he was unconscious. superman thinks he fucked up by not having batman’s back and batman allows him to believe this because it means he can use his rib as an excuse to leave meetings early. bruce wayne has to sit through enough fucking meetings everyday without this shit on top of it. he doesn’t even care about his rib he got hurt worse falling out of bed once. the bed was on the roof at the time but that’s beside the point.
There’s a lot of St. Rita’s orphanages and group homes and they’re all very well-appointed and when Bruce Wayne visits there are always kids who think they’re gonna convince him to adopt them but then they spend more than ten minutes with him and change their minds.
It’s not that he isn’t nice, it’s just that he’s trying very hard and you can tell he has no idea what he’s doing and it’s honestly kind of depressing and when you’re thirteen and living in a pretty nice house with a bunch of other teenagers and you see this man you think “do i really want to have to take care of this disaster” because obviously someone has to take care of him and anyway the prospect is tiring when you can just stay home and play mario kart and collect christmas presents from afar instead.
I mean you think to yourself “I’ll get adopted by Bruce Wayne and live in a mansion and I’ll live in one of his million rooms and have all kinds of stuff” but then you meet him and you realize that this man will try very hard to spend time with you and maybe even have conversations about feelings and try to understand your interests and sure he’ll probably buy you things but now that you’ve met him the thought makes you feel kind of guilty and is it really worth being awkwardly dadded at. Is anything worth that.
Orphans who discover that he is also Batman have no choice but to adopt him because clearly the situation is even more dire than it appears on the surface and if they don’t take care of this ridiculous man then who will.
first off, sleep. i’m using this site as a source because i might as well. does anything on this site have any scientific backing whatsoever? who knows, who cares, it looks legit and that’s all that matters for comic book science. now: a lot of people like to attribute the “ultraman” sleep schedule to batman because then he only has to sleep two hours:
however i believe that this is goddamn stupid because then bruce wayne has to take naps constantly. and i mean constantly. the only way this schedule works is if you stick to it. the first time batman has to pull a shift longer than four hours he’s completely fucked. his sleep schedule is screwed. he’s got no room for error. even when things are going well everyone in his life is worried about him because he’s constantly sleeping and always tired what the fuck. like maybe he does this occasionally because Shit Has Gotten Real but generally fuck no, why.
here’s what i think is more reasonable, it’s the “everyman”:
this here is a schedule with some wiggle room. you can pare it down to about 4 hours which still leaves you 20 hours to do whatever the fuck, up to and including clown punching. occasional all-nighters won’t kill you too much, because all you’ve really got to do is get rid of one of those gaps and sleep straight through and you’re back in business. to an outsider it even probably looks like you slept the night. you went to bed, you slept, maybe you got up in the night because of insomnia but you came back to bed and you woke up in the morning like a normal person. being the guy who makes a habit of an afternoon siesta isn’t going to raise too many eyebrows, especially not when you’re an Eccentric Billionaire. “likes a nap after lunch” is the least suspicious thing a billionaire can do. or a poor person. or anyone.
so step one: when is it nighttime. batmen are for nighttimes. batman only comes out during the day for emergencies, and we’re not looking at emergency scheduling right now. this is day-to-day batman operations. batperations. i’m using this site for info here. so here’s what day/night cycles look like in general (those weird fissures are daylight savings):
jun 18th you’ve barely got any nighttime at all. it’s 11-4 at best. dec 18th? TWELVE STRAIGHT HOURS. straight-up 6-6. I AM THE NIGHT AND I’M HUGE.
anyway this is so variable it’s fucking useless, jesus christ.
so let’s look at CRIME STATISTICS YAY.
according to this thing right here which probably has a better source but i don’t care, once you hit 3am there’s about jack shit happening because even criminals are fucking tired. according to this other thing, people are more likely to beat the shit out of each other when it’s hot and more likely to steal shit when it’s cold.
this infographic got cited earlier in a dead link in an article and includes dick-all about detroit so i’ll settle for chicago. gotham can be both detroit and chicago. it’s fake i do what i want. anyway aside from a weird spike at lunchtime most shootings happen after five but before midnight. assaults actually mostly happen during the day because that’s when you have to be around people and therefore that’s when you’ll punch a motherfucker. anyway i think we’ll have to assume that batman can’t be worrying about every single instance of a motherfucker getting punched in gotham and therefore does not account for it in his schedule.
robberies! once again the stats say 5pm-12 but it seems pretty likely that people are actually getting robbed while they’re at work and just reporting it when they get home and their shit is gone. still: ain’t shit happening after midnight. like a mogwai.
burgling, ham and otherwise: MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING DAY. can you believe that shit. batman have you considered a less nocturnal animal. still, there’s a lull again between 12-6am. with theft there’s a lull between 1am-9am but otherwise that’s another all-day thing.
basically night is when the least crimes happen, except for shootings. which. okay. that makes sense for batman. clearly he has a personal interest in singling out shootings as The Worst Crime.
SO WHEN DOES BATMAN PROBABLY SLEEP:
4:30-7:30am for one big sleep. six hours later he takes an afternoon nap at like 1:30, for twenty minutes. three hours and forty minutes later, it’s 5:30, time for another twenty minute nap. he’s in his office just sleeping at his desk. no one even notices. he looks like he’s reading this report REALLY intensely. his third nap is probably all over the place depending on the time of year. sometimes he probably opts to just sleep longer and take fewer naps.
GOD IT TOOK A LONG TIME TO FIGURE OUT WHEN JUSTICE SLEEPS.
anyway based on all that we can safely say that batmanning usually doesn’t get started until after 6pm, at the earliest, under ordinary circumstances when no one is trying to blow up the whole city. that seems like a monthly sort of a thing. maybe biweekly depending on if you mean twice a week or every two weeks. most of the time, though, dude has between 3am and 6pm (MINIMUM) to sleep and run a company and do whatever else. so that’s 15 hours, minus four hours of sleep – 11 hours of who gives a fuck, and that’s assuming a long night of batman. bruce wayne ain’t workin’ 8 hour days i guarantee that. here’s the ceo of ge trying to sound busy and sounding like he does fuck-all so yeah sure i totes believe bruce wayne could do that guy’s job and also fight crime.
(what i think about how wayne enterprises is structured and bruce’s function within it is a whole nother bullshit post but tl;dr privately-held multinational conglomerate with a wayne as chairman and ceo)
(i actually like to treat wayne enterprises as analogous to ge for most purposes and while i am well aware that there is little to no precedent for a privately-held company to be that fukken huge, do you know what else is unprecedented: a batman)
there are probably going to be some nights when bruce has to stay up late entertaining guests at fancy parties, but again those are probably more of a once-or-twice-a-month kind of thing. unfortunately, fancy party hours are – according to this totally bullshit excuse for research – also Peak Crime Times. but if crime peaks on weekends, maybe wednesdays are chill. can you imagine bruce wayne constantly throwing parties on wednesdays, like an asshole. “why wednesdays???” sensible people ask. “to annoy you, and you specifically” he says. it makes his parties more exclusive. who can party on a wednesday night. only the coolest motherfuckers in gotham, that’s who. like super-cool bruce wayne who definitely passed out drunk and isn’t taking his regularly scheduled old-man nap.
i feel like there was supposed to be a point to this post but i think it’s mostly that there are actually plenty of hours in the day for a person to be both batman and bruce wayne, if you assume he’s an overachieving asshole that only sleeps four hours and builds a careful schedule around gotham’s crime statistics.
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