#that would be infinitely worse than running into any batfam members

[scarletackrmn]

So I recently made a cosplay list of DC cosplays I want to do, and the different versions for certain characters. I recently saw the comic panel of Damian getting stabbed and had a thought.

I remembered how some people did this cosplay of Junko where they attached the stuff that stabbed her to the cosplay (reference photo below, I am not the cosplay so credit to them and the photographer!!)

So what if I did something like this, but cosplayed Damian’s New 52 robin suit and attached a sword to me

Just me, Damian Wayne, walking around with a sword through me bringing trauma wherever I go, seeing if I can make a Batman weep.

Please tell me you see the vision

[littleeyesofpallas]

Always bugged me(i mean... me and i assume every other batfan on the planet on some level or another...) that the Batfam always has these wildly fluctuating and often nonsensical power levels. I get that's just an innate problem of having infinite different writers and the ritualistic reboot once a decade, and the musical chairs game of who gets to wear the plot armor in any given story... And I keep wanting to make a radial stat chart to map the different individual skill levels and specialties(and honestly to customize them into a sort of balance I think makes more sense.)

But somehow this always falls apart for me once I start trying to really boil the batman skill set down to something sufficiently granular... Because sure, there's the martial arts, the detective skills, the techie/gadgeteer stuff going on... But martial arts breaks down to empty hand and weapons, and melee and ranged, and striking vs grappling; techie runs the gamut from soft computer skills to electrical engineering as opposed to mechanical or architectural, etc... The acrobatics and parkour and general athletics that brush up against the martial arts and even gadgeteering via ninjutsu... the ninjutsu that then runs up against stealth, disguise and espionage, which in turn rubs shoulders with some of the archetypal detective routine... And the disguise and espionage gets into street smarts and the intimate knowledge of Gotham itself which feels like a weird thing to even quantify, yet it absolutely is something some of the batkids do better than others: the ones who know Gotham as seen from the other side of a screen or from the tops of buildings, a maze of streets and alleys with flagged locations where valuable things are liable to go missing, vs the kids who actually know the city from the street and the trivia of who actually goes where and for what, where and how people both victims and criminals actually live their lives.f

Anyway as you can probably tell this constant splitting of hairs just means I keep ending up with a radial graph with, like, a dozen axis and that's to convoluted to be any use, or even readable for that matter...

The unfortunate consequence of a less detail oriented approach to writing the batfam is that every member of the batfam in isolation ges treated as if they have the exact same balance of skills at batman, but worse according to the seniority of what other batfam members are present. Yet what I find most compelling is the idea that Batman is not and has never been The Best at any one thing he does, only the best as everything-he-does; as in he's the only one who utilizes the full package at the level he operates at. But in turn that every one of his proteges is better than him in at least one category.(except maybe Damian, who appropriately is just a tiny Batman waiting to grow into the role and indeed the only person who can rightly outclass Batman in the whole package approach)

but i feel like there would be such utility writing wise to be able to match end to end, like dominos, which batfam members compliment or supplement one another....

I like the idea that Tim might be the galaxy brain hacker detective who can see the patterns and fish information out of a cellphone, but Steph is the one that's actually good with her hands when it comes to breaking into a building, evaluating the blindspots of a security system's hardware, working on a car, dismantling some gimmicky supervillain deathtrap, etc...

That Luke and Babs are the ones who share the commonality of excelling in a formal education; unlike their undeniably intelligent but distracted and hooky prone batsiblings. They know the city's history, neighborhood by neighborhood, they know the weird trivia about every major building and who built it, who owned it, who lived in it, and what it was used for over the past 200 years.

That Dick and Cass are the natural athletes of the family. Where everyone else is athletically fit and talented even, only these two (okay and again I guess Damian...) were really born and raised to be physically fluent first and foremost. What the others, even Bruce, can do tactically they can achieve reflexively.

Also Damian and Jason really need to have more of a bonding experience over having died and been brought back by the Lazarus pit. I know batman has this weird kind of unspoken we-don't-talk-about-the-occult rule, but, like... They both experienced death first hand and came back... Have them talk to Spectre, or Jason Blood, or Constantine or something...

And speaking of "dead" Robins, Jason and Steph really need to talk more about that time in 2004 when they BOTH independently tried to enact plans to take over Gotham's gangland.

One of the Helenas is/was a spy now, right? her and whatever weird nebulous iteration of the original Batwoman was behind Spyral. Do they have any kind of a working relationship with Julia Pennyworth?

How many of the batfam still have any actual working knowledge of the legal system? Was Dick still a cop in the current continuity? (although with the new infinite frontier anti-continuity thing does that even matter?) And babs still has a degree in law, right? or did they replace that with one in forensic psych?

Speaking of the law, what about the kids who have more personal feelings about the other side of it? Jason, Steph, Harper (sort of Duke? if we count his dad being a supervillain, but that was less law breaking villainy and more cosmic shenanigans...) all ought to have a lot to talk about growing up on the opposite end of town than Wayne Manor.

And what about Damian and Cass both being raised by a cult of assassins and needing to be basically fully deprogrammed and assimilated into normal civilian lives?

While the whole family might have the full repertoire of bat gizmos at their disposal, some prefer to work up close, while others function best keeping a distance, and others still only use certain tools as a last resort. I imagine Cass would never use the bat gadgets at all if she didn't have to. I imagine Dick is the first to whip out the grappling line and take to the air, even when it might not be necessary or the most efficient. I imagine Tim loves to dip into every gadget at every opportunity just because he can, because he's a dweeb and a batman fanboy at heart... and this sort of circles back around to the giant string of batfam fighting styles rants that I can never iron out into something postable... so I've come full circle to drafts I was wrestling with at the start of pandemic...

Anyway, I dunno, what do you think are some of the essential "core skills" of a Batfam vigilante?