Okay so Danny gets adopted by Bruce. Yeah? Yeah.
And they don't know about his powers? Obviously. We know this part of the story.
BUT. On a casual trip out for food or whatever, Danny and some of the bat sibs get cornerd by reporters and paparazzi. There panicking bec danny JUST got here and they haven't had time to breif him on how to interact with the media and he's totally gonna flounder and they need to help him before he totally flubs it!
Exept, he doesn't. He smiles, nice and bright, into the camra. He waits patiently for each reporter to ask their questions and then answers confidently, giving them something walst acctually answering nothing. "Where are you from?" "A small town, I'm sure you wouldn't know it but, really, it's about where I am now."How did you come to be adopted by bruce?"Well, I look quite a bit like my new brothers, don't you think? Haha. I like to think it was meant to be."
And on and on he gose, dancing around them, shareing professionally worded jokes and calmly addressing eatch person as they viyed for his attention, controlling the flow of conversation.
The bat kids all look at eatchother.
This kids been media trained.
6K notes
·
View notes
My best friend and I had a call recently---she’s back with her family for a bit helping out with some hometown stuff. As part of the stuff, she’s been going through a (deceased) relative’s scrapbook, compiled in the American Midwest circa 1870-1900 and featuring mostly cut-out figures from the ads of the day.
She talked about how painstaking this relative’s work was. (Apparently the relative was careful to cut out every finger, every cowlick; this was by no means carelessly or hastily assembled.) But she also she talked about how---the baby on the baking soda ad is ugly, it is so ugly, why anyone would clip this heinously ugly illustrated baby and paste it into a scrapbook? Why would you save the (terribly told, boring) ghost story that came with your box of soap?
(Why include these things in the first place? we asked each other. ”There’s a kind of anti-capitalism to it,” she mused.)
And we discussed that for a bit---how most of the images, stories, artists, and ads were local, not national; they’re pulled from [Midwestern state] companies’ advertisements in [Midwestern state] papers, magazines, and products. As a consequence, you’re not looking at Leyendecker or Norman Rockwell illustrations, but Johann Spatz-Smith from down the road, who took a drawing class at college.
(College is the state college, and he came home on weekends and in the summer to help with the farm or earn some money at the plant.)
But it also inspired a really interesting conversation about how---we have access to so much more art, better and more professional art, than any time in history. As my bff said, all you have to do to find a great, technically proficient and lovely representational image of a baby, is to google the right keywords. But for a girl living in rural [Midwestern state] of the late 1800s, it was the baking soda ad, or literal actual babies. There was no in-between, no heading out to the nearby art museum to study oil paintings of mother and child, no studying photographs and film---such new technologies hadn’t diffused to local newspapers and circulars yet, and were far beyond the average person’s means. But cheap, semi-amateur artists? Those were definitely around, scattered between towns and nearby smallish cities.
It was a good conversation, and made me think about a couple things---the weird entitlement that “professional” and expensive art instills in viewers, how it artificially depresses the appetite for messy unprofessional art, including your own; the way that this makes your tastes narrower, less interesting, less open.
By that I mean---maybe the baby isn’t ugly! Maybe you’ve just seen too many photorealistic babies. Maybe you haven’t really stopped to contemplate that your drawing of a baby (however crude, ugly, or limited) is the best drawing of a baby you can make, and the act of drawing that lumpen, ugly baby is more sacred and profoundly human than even looking at a Mary Cassatt painting.
And even if that isn’t the case....there was this girl in [American Midwestern state] for whom it was very, very important that she capture every finger, curl, and bit of shading for that ugly soap ad baby. And some one hundred years later, her great-something-or-other took pains to preserve her work---because how terribly human it is, to seek out all the art we can find that resonates with us, preserve it, adore it.
It might be the most human impulse we have.
3K notes
·
View notes
Teddy bear Danny au strikes again! With its partner in crime being the Uncle Waylon au!
So, Teddy Bear Danny ends up in Gotham because he heard his dad mention some man named Waylon in passing, so he decided to put his (figurative) big boy pants on and head out to find him!
He even had a little bag his mom made him, that he filled up with snacks, his allowance, and various Fenton gadgets he could get his hands on without his parents noticing- like the lipstick. It could also, and he's never sure how his parents managed to do it, hold way more stuff than it should looking at how small it is.
So then he left Amity Park with his family none the wiser, thinking about how awesome it would be when he shows up with his uncle!
He went through a few cities, getting weird looks here and there, playing with some kids he's met, being kidnapped by a few, being kidnapped by decidedly not children, practicing stranger danger- sometimes and others following random people he's just met when they said they knew who Waylon Jones was after he showed them a picture!
A picture he drew himself in crayon, thank you very much. His family said he was quite the artist!
He never managed to actually find his uncle though, even with showing random people his picture. So eventually, he always had to hop buses to the next city he could, though he was unfortunately running low on his allowance...
So low that, when he managed to think about it, could only drop his off at one more city, if he didn't want to impose on the amount he set aside to get him and Waylon back to Amity Park. So, he set his sights on Gotham City, hoping that he would be able to find his uncle there!
When he did get there, he psyched himself up, striking a few poses he saw on Tv once and then running off to go find his uncle.
Once again, a few people looked at him weirdly, but it wasn't anything he wasn't used to, but for some reason he got kidnapped more so than usual, not even by kids! Which were his usual kidnappers, sometimes they even tried to mug him for some reason.
So he gave them a snack.
Some took it and let him leave, others... not so much. So he had run away from those ones, fading through a wall or hiding behind a dumpster, or losing them in the crowd were all very effective methods!
He showed some people his drawing, and nobody still didn't know who he was asking about! Which was stupid, in his opinion, because his drawing was very detailed and very accurate! He was about to give him, thinking that nobody would be able to help him, and was just about to head back home.
At least until he ran into somebody, quite literally falling over due to his sides. It was an accident, but still! People should really be considerate of Teddy bears roaming around!
The guy bent down and apologized for running into him, which was a very rare thing when he stepped out of Amity! So this guy had an instant improve on him on that alone, so he got up, dusted himself off and showed him the drawing of his uncle.
The guy who introduced himself as Brucie Wayne actually recognized him too! He said he was on his way to meet him, to be exact, and Danny saw an opportunity when he saw one, so he climbed onto Bruce Wayne and practically forced the guy to take him alone.
He gave him one of his favorite snacks as payment.
Actually two, because he was nice and fun. But no more than that because these are his snacks, and some were also for his uncle!
So when he got to the place his uncle was being held at- Arkham Asylum-, he was informed that his uncle is currently held here in captivity for something, something, something that he didn't bother to remember if he was being honest.
So of course, the most natural thing and reaction to do was to plan a prison break.
He stayed on Bruce's shoulder, using him as a free ride throughout Arkham Asylum while directing him towards his uncle via picture. It took a while of insistence, but they eventually got to his uncles, so he got down, gave Bruce a handshake, phased through the glass of his uncles cell and stared up.
And up.
And up.
And up.
Sweet macaroni! He didn't know his uncle was so tall! he was practically taller than his Pa! Which said something considering he was like, the tallest person he'd ever seen in the history of ever. But regardless he managed to find him, so he jumped around him a bit in happiness, and showed him the picture.
===
Waylon Jones, otherwise known as Killer Croc, was exceedingly confused about why there was a tiny, sentient teddy bear in his cell. Who seemed happy being in his presence of all things.
It showed him a crudely drawn picture of him after jumping up and down around him, and he doesn't exactly know the significance of it, but it implied that the toy was trying to find him, he watched it dig through its bag and pull out a wide variety of snacks, all of which were thrown at him.
Quite literally.
So he decided to just, sit down and eat them. Not everyday he gets free snacks like this, so.
While he was chowing down, it took out a crayon and paper and started drawing, then after that it showed him a picture of Jack- helpfully labeled- and his family, which the teddy bear was on there along with another girl in the kids section.
Which, huh, he supposes he has a nephew and niece.
Then in the middle of eating the last snack, guards stepped into his cell to extract his nephew. His nephew's time was up, it seemed, so he waved goodbye and stared trying to plan a prison break to meet his nephew outside of prison the next time they saw each other.
He could have never expected for him to be turned into a smaller, stuffed version of himself and phasing through the walls of his cell.
===
Danny liked his uncle, he was nice! But it was a bit unfair that he was still way taller than him, even when turned into a doll.
Anyways, he had a prison break to complete, and then he could drag his uncle back home to his family's utterly surprised faces!
454 notes
·
View notes