Arabic In The Batfam

There's an open pit in the middle of our office plan that drops down into a bunch of very sharp spikes that kill you instantly. This is bad. People keep falling in there and dying. Someone put a sign up, the other day, all bright yellow so you can't miss it, that says "Beware!!! Spikes!!!"

The office immediately split into two factions over it. One says that if anyone falls in the spike pit it's their own fault for being so stupid and not watching where they're walking, so we should remove the sign. The other says that the sign is an insult, there shouldn't be a spike pit in our office at all, and having the sign up like that is just normalising the existence of the spike pit, so we should remove the sign.

We ended up removing the sign. Probably for the better. Still... for a while there it looked like it might have worked...

The absolute best thing about the fab 5 is literally any ship pairing is acceptable except for exactly one (1) and we all know which one it is

Like

Dick/Roy 100% in love with feed it to me, inject me with this (lowkey my favorite ship please put recs in the comments im dying for some good angst/comfort)

Dick/Wally adorkable my babies I love them (no need for fic recs I have plenty)

Dick/ Garth omglookitsocuteandperfect (recs recs recs recs)

Roy/Donna GAG ME WITH THIS SHIP OH MY GOD YES (RECS RECS RECS RECS RECs)

Roy/Wally oooohhhh there are so many interesting things you can do with this dynamic (please we argue and then go fuck in the closet vibes - not hate sex but we are competing for the same person and getting nowhere might as well)

Roy/Garth UGHHH ESPECIALLY AFTER ALL THE SHIT STIRRING IN THE EARLY 2000s??? AND THE WAY THAT ROY WAS A LIL SHIT TO BABY GARTH OMG IT COULD SO WORK

Wally/Donna omg adorable, cute, sweet, Donna would beat the sexism out of teen Wally sokka/suki style tell me I’m wrong.

Wally/Garth cutesy, demure, they could geek out together, my lil ones together, they’d do gardening for fun trust me.

Garth/Donna omg iconic, cute, they fit so well together, the responsibilities? The fish out of water bonding. PEAK FICTION

Donna/Dick: ….ew no

I have 10 wips rn so here is an excerpt of one.

Dick knew once Bruce told him the story of his parent's murder, in the acerbic light of the juvenile detention hall that served as the place for their second meeting, that they were not same.

Even if Bruce believed they were.

Bruce told his story in the hushed tone of morning light. His eyes shining with the pain of memory as he detailed the moment he saw Martha Wayne, his mother die in front of him.

Dick knew as soon as Bruce uttered that final fateful sentence, a recounting of watching his mothers pearls scatter onto the blood-soaked ground, only to roll away to places he has searched time and time again and never found.

That Bruce was far-far luckier than him.

Because Bruce might have trained all around the world but Bruce was not raised by the watchful eyes of hundreds of men and women who didn't speak a shared language but still called each other family.

Bruce did not spend his time being babysat by Hala, the widower of a pearl diver who once held Dicks hands and told him, with the gentle reflection of the night sky in her eyes, tone alight with pride at her history, her life, her late husband, how she had made jewellery out of the pearls and sold them.

How her husband could not do it because you needed small, gentle hands to be able to tie a protective knot in-between each pearl as to make sure when the necklace breaks you will not lose too many if pressure causes the string to snap.

the rest of this will be on my ao3 eventually but for now~~~~~

The eternal dichotomy of hating how Alfred pennyworth spoke about and to a young Dick Grayson

Vs

Loving how he talks about adult Dick Grayson and all forms of Damian Wayne

DICK GRAYSON and TALIA AL GHUL coparenting is such a cruel and unusual punishment for both of them but also for damian. I know they don’t do a good job of it either it’s a shitshow in the way typically only brought on by an acrimonious divorce. First time these behaviors have been seen outside of a walmart parking lot weekend custody swap

Because I am gay (see name above) all of my favs are gay but because dc are cowards and refuse to admit that yeah having a character damn near exclusively date redheaded friends and then making both his male close friends redheads is a lil suspicious

I have simply decided that Dick is openly bi and no one has realized it in the universe.(Titans -core 9- and Clark Kent excluded)

So here picture this.

They’re all at a diner/batburger/ wherever they chill as civilians. Are they doing important stuff, working on cases, shooting the shit, your choice- I’m lazy.

And it’s practically empty bc none of them have normal schedules and so yeah you can have lunch at 4:45am that’s a normal time to eat.

And some dude walks in and Dick just straight up freezes for a sec before hiding under the table. The dude orders to go and fucks off.

Dick gets back up and does a cartoonish ‘phew’ bc he’s extra

Jason: yo what the fuck was that

Dick: what the fuck was what?

Tim: that- you hiding under the table of our booth??

Dick: oh that

Steph: no shit worlds third greatest detective

Jason: yeah you saw that dude and freaked, I once saw you laugh in banes face and use his forearm as a jungle gym? What gives?

Dick: oh come on! You’ve never wanted to avoid an ex??

*cue spit take from character of your choice*

Steph: AN EX?!?

Dick:??? Yes

Tim looks like he’s seeing god himself parting the clouds, giving him a view of the sun

Jason is just giving Dick the how did I not know this what the fuck dude how could you not tell me stare

Dick looks at each of them: what did you think I only dated babs and Kori?? I have a life outside of our night job?? Right? Like I’ve dated many people who still don’t know what I do at night?

Steph: no do how could you not tell us about H.I.M

Dick: I mean he wasn’t really all that…nice by the time we hit the three month mark and we didn’t have much in common outside of a shared hobby

Tim who was a closeted bisexual for 5 years realizing his first ever idol the first ever Robin also liked boys: .... you dated him for three months?? when?

Dick: I don't know we broke up like 2 months ago

Steph: How was I not aware of this information??

Dick: im sorry would you like detailed information about my sex life??

Jason, traumatised:.... so when I was Robin, you and roy weren't wrestling in the bathrooms..

Dick:.....

Tim:.....

Steph:.....

Dick: yeah Jay no shit?!?

Tim: so you and Wally... were not playing Jenga when I visited

Dick:... you are adults yes? you realise that I as an adult was not going to tell twelve year olds that I was getting laid?

Steph: Dickie DIckie baby.... we knew you were fucking

Tim: true

Jason: unfortunately

Steph: we just didn't know you were also fucking men

Dick:....

Dick massaging his temples: okay so.... you know I have a thing for redheads and I notoriously befriend my exes.

Tim: yep

Jason: mhm

Dick: and none of you thought for a second that my two redheaded best friends who both have a type aka Dark haired and can do a backflip... and just decided we were totally Hetero besties

Steph: yeahhh I mean...

Tim weakly: you guys just seem

Jay: like friends

Dick deadpan: Lian still calls me dad sometimes and Wally and Linda keep asking me to swing or join a throuple.

steph: fully believed they were joking high key tho

Dick: okay, okay... so the way that I talk about Joey Wilson... just didn't tell you anything?

Jay: okay that one... was my bad actually y'all were hella gay

Tim: hey! that's no fairrr we werent there

Dick: you broke into my house Tim, you literally stalked me

Tim: that's not the same and you know it.

if i had a nickel for everytime a favorite comic character of mine is shown being killed in almost every universe but the main one because the writer really hated them, i'd have two. which is weird that it happened twice.

Will let yall know if this works I have an exam soon and I haven’t done shit for it

good things will happen 🧿

things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿

I am hijacking this post to rant about my fave one sec

AND this is why Batman’s greatest success in his opinion is Nightwing.

Because Dick Grayson is whoever you need him to be at that moment. While Batman can switch from a chemist to a physicist to a professor to a doctor to a billionaire. Fundamentally his character is the same he will not change or accommodate for anyone even his children. He is rigid in character if not skill. And he accidentally raised his oldest son to fill in those grooves, to alter himself perfectly to fit into the position required of him.

It’s why Nightwing as a hero is so revered. Because he is a leader, solo hero, spy, teammate, brother, father figure, son, support. He’ll erase the gaps that are flawed in the dynamic by changing his tone, behavior, skill set etc.

Superman needed to train his son he went to Dick Grayson

They needed to soften the assassin characters (Cass and Damian) dick was either a support or main presence in their initial development.

He’s the de facto leader of any of the second gen teams

It’s why he can still work well with his siblings bc while he won’t accommodate Jason’s killing he’s willing to work with him at a middle ground. Him and Tim have almost always had a phenomenal relationship because Nightwing is trained to cover up the gaps and the in between. The nooks and crannies of character compromises the other characters wouldn’t either bc of stubbornness or bc of simple inability to do so.

It’s why his undercover runs are so interesting

Bc he’s a chameleon character

Bc he needed to accommodate for Batman his entire life (ahh parentification our old friend)

The thing about “Good Dad Bruce Wayne” and “Bat-Dad” is….that’s the dream. I love any and all depictions of Bruce Wayne that prioritize him DOING THE WORK to be a good father to his kids.

I never look for reasons to criticize Bruce or his parenting. My frequent bitching and moaning about him and how he’s written comes from one place and one place only:

IMO a lot of the time, instead of writing Bruce putting in the WORK to be the PARENT, people just write him being 70% of the problem and only 30% of the solution and call that ‘good enough.’ Because hey, at least he’s trying to be part of the solution and fix his mistakes and be better for his kids, and isn’t that the most anyone can ask for?

Well, no. Its not. Especially since with the exception of Damian, Bruce chose each and every one of his kids with full knowledge of what he was doing. He doesn’t GET to do the bare minimum, even when his kids require more effort than the norm, like the situations with Jason sometimes are beyond the ordinary. There’s no quota to parenting. 

The thing about Bruce Wayne is he is pretty much the most competent individual in the DC universe. He has more resources available at his disposal than any other parent can dream of. He has excelled at every thing he’s ever put his mind to….

Except, often times….being a parent.

And parenting is not somehow inherently more impossible than saving the world every other week. Its just not. It literally is just: put your kids first. 

And that is what Bruce is written as failing to do, time and time again. That is almost unilaterally where every single one of his conflicts with his children come from.

When he puts his own fear of rejection over Dick’s fear of abandonment, and refuses to reach out to Dick, beg him to come home, ask him to stay.

When he puts his own moral choices over Jason’s need to be understood, to have a father who can coexist with him and his choices when that very same father has at many times reconciled working with heroes with vastly different moral codes and even body counts of their own.

When he puts his own discomfort with emotional conversations and expressions of affection over Tim’s need for concrete gestures and reassurances that his parent needs and wants him in his life.

And so on.

These things are all actionable. They are all based on choices Bruce can make, and at many times just chooses not to. They all demand one thing and one thing only, the one thing that is expected of parents who take on the responsibility of a child that they and they alone are responsible for the wellbeing of:

Put. Them. First.

And falling short of that, when there’s every opportunity to do the work…is Bruce’s failure. It just is. Its not on his kids. He is the parent. Always and forever, with each and every one of them. That is what he signed up for. THEY did not. Kids don’t have the same power and choices about where they end up as the parents do when deciding that where they end up should be with them. And that can’t be disregarded. Bruce’s kids, as much as they love and appreciate him, are not ultimately the ones who arranged to be tied to Bruce for the rest of their lives, even if they all accepted that and wanted that in their own ways. He was the one with the actual power to make those choices, and to quote DC’s competition:

With great power comes great responsibility.

Bruce’s kids will always have less power than him purely in the context of their relationships with him, because the yearning for a parent’s approval exists on a wholly different level than anything a parent can need or get from their child - especially when they have multiple children but those multiple children each only have the one parent they’re all desperately hoping for the approval of. As well as when each of those multiple children arrive in Bruce’s life already burdened with issues born of abandonment and abuse and neglect that aren’t Bruce’s fault….but from the second Bruce stepped up and volunteered to be their parent, still very much became his responsibility all the same.

Bruce’s kids will always, always, always have more to lose, when there’s any conflict between them and their father.

And the thing that frustrates me so much about how Bruce is written in both canon AND fanfics….

Is how often the narratives cut corners and emphasize the blame and responsibility of his children and make them settle….for just ‘good enough’ from him. For ‘well at least he’s trying.’ For ‘he’s not perfect.’ 

He doesn’t need to be perfect.

But he needs to be the parent.

And personally, I will never be satisfied by narratives that feel like they make more attempt to coddle him and say its okay to just do the bare minimum, as long as he’s making an effort…than they do to make him step up and do the work, put his kids before his own issues.

He’s not the child. So stop treating him like one. Stop writing his kids being more mature than him. Stop saying his children are ‘equally at fault’ for him refusing to make them a priority and any issues of insecurity and abandonment and hurt they feel because of this. Stop expecting his oldest children to act as buffers for his younger children and do the parenting he refuses to do at times, and stop only treating them like his equal when it allows for them to victimize him in some way, with the story treating them like the aggressors and him the misunderstood recipient of their emotional harm and neglect.

Bruce Wayne has more social power and resources and skills and intelligence than just about any other human in the DC universe….his children included. Please can we just start holding him to the standards that kind of power should entail? Instead of looking to his children to always make up the difference for the times he refuses to be accountable, or a narrative refuses to hold him responsible for his own behavior and poor choices?

I WANT Good Dad Bruce Wayne.

I’m just tired of seeing ‘emotionally stunted surly teenager who makes his family’s lives far more difficult than they need to be and then awkwardly hugs them and grunts out an apology in the last paragraph to make up for it’….and being told: that’s Good Dad Bruce Wayne too.

No. Its not. I know what actual Good Dad Bruce looks like, and that ain’t it. Do better. Make him do better.

Okay but I have questions?

Is it Arabic coffee or Turkish coffee?

And if it’s Arabic coffee with or without cardamom???

Talia is definitely a Turkish coffee person she also does the thing where she flips it over, swirls it and reads the meaning.

I think Ras would be an Arabic coffee drinker but he’s one of the puritans who likes his coffee light, kinda how they serve it in Saudi. Like the pale green one with a small plate of dates.

But there’s one thing I think is really funny

Listen Arabs don’t… really drink coffee alone in a full house? It’s just not really done.

You also don’t drink coffee quickly

Coffee is a period of time where you sit down and get all the gossip from your family members if you’re a matriarch (I’m talking elopements, marriages, divorces, cheating scandals with the Al ghuls probably all of that + murders, assassination attempts and or plans etc)

Can you imagine Damian moving to the manor and seeing Alfred the eldest member of the household serving people tea and then …. Leaving?

Or taking his tea by himself for a well earned break?

Personally if I was 10? It would freak me the hell out if my grandma was sitting alone having her coffee when my mom and various aunts and uncles were in the house.

Or my GREAT grandma omg no that’s just eerie

He’d be so confused?? Like wtf are you doing?? Or like how people have coffee with breakfast here instead of after??? Like you don’t move to the sitting room and have coffee with tiny bite sized desserts or dates? Are you okay? Why are you having a pot of coffee with your oatmeal?

In my Arab region (I can't speak for the others, but I'm pretty sure they have similar things. Add your stuff if you do!) Coffee time is kind of sacred and is tightly regulated with heavy traditional rules. Especially so for the male populace.

Coffee makes the man! (Literally, I can't stress this enough)

Men and women alike are trained from a very young age on how to make and serve their coffee. A coffee with a good colour is a bright sign for your guests, and the way you serve is very telling of you.

Doors are ALWAYS open for guests, and HUGE halls are prepared to accommodate them (they can reach hundreds, depending on your dad's popularity). A household's head is a very blessed man when he has children/grandchildren because he can brag about them by showing their serving skills off. Those children will be scrutinised and judged according to their coffee serving manners. It's a very integral part of a charming character's traits for us. So, parents, especially fathers, are very strict about this.

Aside from guests, families have daily coffee time for themselves, too! It's very respectful to serve your mom and dad coffee. So it's expected from you.

Considering Ra's personality, serving him coffee as a grandson would be a nightmare.

Imagine Damian refilling the finjaan again and again in front of an elegantly sitting Ra's until he gets it right? Imagine him waiting (while standing, maybe for an hour or so) for Ra's to finish his finjaan so he can refill it again? Imagine how LIVID Ra's would be when Damian accidentally fills the finjaan to the top (a message that says, are you satisfied, yet? Get out! In my region) imagine Ra's asking Damian to serve coffee for his villain allies?!! Arabs and non?? And imagine people getting to know and hear about him from his coffee serving, like a good Arab son, before they know him from his sword?

Also, when he finally lives in the manor and sunset arrives and Batman is sitting by the batcomputer, deeply focused, and then is surprised by a finjaan presented to him because it's coffee time?

Damian would be very confident and proud of his coffee making and serving skills he would expect from Bruce nothing but sipping and asking for a refill, because his father should know his manners.

Bruce would know nothing about this but would, of course, sip (not drink! Drinking bad!!!) without question, and will continue to accept and sip every. Single. Day before patrol without knowing what is happening but going along with it because he's pretty sure this is Damian's way of bonding.

Which is not really true because Damian is only performing his duty as a son. He never really understood the core meaning behind this tradition because for a long time now, the art of Arabian Coffee was only a skill that was expected from him and a part of showing good grace. But as days pass and the number of people being served coffee increases and coffee time becomes a routine before each patrol for the whole family, when dates and snacks and small talk and occasional laughter join in, the very meaning behind this tradition clicks with him, and he serves it with a smile.