#i am rotating it in my brain like a tetris piece
au idea I’ve been rotating in my brain lately: cryptid runaway batman
so this starts with me thinking: “if Bruce had started out getting information from the POV of people facing violence and poverty in Gotham instead of exclusively the police and TV news I bet he could have figured out the Renewal conspiracy long before The Riddler.”
so then I go: “what dominoes would need to fall to make that happen?”
and we get cryptid runaway batman
the first thing we need is some evil relatives. For this purpose I have invented Samantha and Rich Arkham, Martha’s younger sister and her husband. Martha and Thomas leave custody of their beloved son to their closest friend, Alfred Pennyworth. Samantha Arkham objects. There’s a protracted legal battle that ends with her and her husband taking custody of Bruce and taking up residence in the tower.
next we need Bruce’s neurodivergence and self-destructive tendencies to become public knowledge. In canon, he avoids this by (1) isolating like a champ, (2) having Alfred there to cover for him, (3) following the advice drilled into him by his mother who had been so traumatized by her experience with institutionalization that she would never let her son be evaluated by a psychiatrist. In the absence of Alfred and surrounded by normal, upper crust relatives that expect complete conformity, this is all going to break down.
next we need Alfred out of the picture. He’s not dead, don’t worry. He’s arrested for child abduction after he tries to get Bruce out of the country. That’s a felony and he’s a green-card holder, so that allows the US Government (with some encouragement from the Arkhams) to have him deported back to the UK.
then all we need is something to give Samantha and Rich Arkham control of the family fortune and Bruce’s life indefinitely, even after Bruce would have come of age. A conservatorship does the trick neatly. Clearly Bruce needs responsible, capable adults to take care of the company, to ensure he gets the psychiatric help and medication he need. A judge puts them in charge of his life, his money, and his mind.
and
bruce
runs
