Cryptid Batfam - Tumblr Posts
Mermay Special Prompt 3
“Are you kidding? No one goes to Gotham, that place is like,” Aquaman made a motion with his hand, a not-quite grimace on his face. “Like things should not be living in the water, like it should be impossible, and things should be dead, but they aren’t and it’s like, like the equivalent of an undead apocalypse over there!”
Bruce rolled his eyes behind his cowl, taking a sip of his coffee as the others continued drinking. Socialize, they said, it’ll be fine they said. Well excuse him, but the waters weren’t that bad. Sure there were always dumped bodies, and chemicals from the rogue attacks, but it was far worse at one point.
One thing he’ll always be relieved for is how the… curse (thank you broken statuette back in the beginning of his vigilante career that fused with the other many curses of Gotham) made the people of Gotham actually care about the waters around them.
Though also, he couldn’t help but thank anything that might be listening for the fact that the curse only interacted with Gotham waters, because losing legs with any risk of a drop of water would be downright annoying.
“No dude, you don’t understand, no one goes there for a reason! That shit is horrific- someone saw a big thing with bits of rebar stabbed straight through it and still chased after a big alligator-thing!” Oh. Oh that had been him. Oops. Hopefully his kids didn’t find out about this, but they were probably already on the cameras. Dammnit.
AHHH I LOVE LONG SPECULATIVE BIOLOGY POSTS
Mermay Special Prompt 3
“Are you kidding? No one goes to Gotham, that place is like,” Aquaman made a motion with his hand, a not-quite grimace on his face. “Like things should not be living in the water, like it should be impossible, and things should be dead, but they aren’t and it’s like, like the equivalent of an undead apocalypse over there!”
Bruce rolled his eyes behind his cowl, taking a sip of his coffee as the others continued drinking. Socialize, they said, it’ll be fine they said. Well excuse him, but the waters weren’t that bad. Sure there were always dumped bodies, and chemicals from the rogue attacks, but it was far worse at one point.
One thing he’ll always be relieved for is how the… curse (thank you broken statuette back in the beginning of his vigilante career that fused with the other many curses of Gotham) made the people of Gotham actually care about the waters around them.
Though also, he couldn’t help but thank anything that might be listening for the fact that the curse only interacted with Gotham waters, because losing legs with any risk of a drop of water would be downright annoying.
“No dude, you don’t understand, no one goes there for a reason! That shit is horrific- someone saw a big thing with bits of rebar stabbed straight through it and still chased after a big alligator-thing!” Oh. Oh that had been him. Oops. Hopefully his kids didn’t find out about this, but they were probably already on the cameras. Dammnit.
For any of your cryptid batfam AUs. We know Batman thinks criminals are superstitious and cowardly. So how superstitious should most Gothamites be? What are some of the superstitions and things they do because of that? And what random BS do the Bat kids do to actively encourage the superstitions because they think it’s funny?
Vibrates in headcanons.
Okay, so, this is less just the criminals of Gotham- a lot of goons are just trying to put food on the table after all- and more of, Gothamites in general. Like they have good reason to be superstitious.
Like everyone already knows about the Court of Owls, if nothing else then from the Rhyme they use to get children to behave. But Gotham? Is Weird with a capital W even in canon. There are literal streets that disappear and only reappear on certain days, areas where on specific days gravity just doesn't work right, several portals to hell have been opened just in Arkham alone, and there's enough curses and cults to smother any other place.
Funnily enough I am actually currently working on a story that focuses a bit more on the superstitions of Gotham lol. Like a lot of this stuff? Not shit you're going to see in the more tourist-esque spots, but those are death traps already.
Now a lot of the habits and myths of Gotham start out as a thing about Survival. It started less with things about the Bats and more about the Rogues and how to survive.
Tiny plant boxes meticulously cared for, after one noticed how plants react when Ivy is around. They line the windows of almost every home despite the smog, and some even pray through them for their Mother to not attack today.
Small scarecrow dolls, made of grass balls and cloth hang from overhangs on roofs with rope like a hangman, a charm in hopes that the one walking the streets will leave them alone. It ends with some claiming that if you rip the head from the body of cloth, the Scarecrow will come for you.
Small candles and lanterns begin to appear on the windowsills of children, their own homemade batsignals. Some say if you're very good, gifts will appear beside it, while others claim that if you're very bad, the Signal will appear and take you away.
Tiny shrines appear on rooftops over the years, meticulously carved statuettes within. It started with one for the Second Robin, and some whisper about how the Red Hood emerged from it, was reborn through their prayers and gifts. Now there are more, offerings ranging from snacks to child's drawings to figures of clay. No one dares take things from it, the last time someone tried... well, let's just say it didn't end well.
The thing is? The Bats don't even have to do much to encourage this, and don't usually even do it on purpose.
Everyone knows what happened to the ones who tried to be a vigilante. They know of the first Batgirl, humanity slowly dripped away the longer she huddled in the Bat's shadow until she was twisting around just like it. Any child who had been making their own costumes, their parents burned it that night, terrified that the Bat would take their children to be its own next. The small child, everyone knew about him, a wee little thing with a camera clutched against his chest. They all saw him run after the Bats despite the protests, saw him run towards the Bat as bodies crumbled before it. They saw him grab its arm with such tiny hands, and the Bat, grieving, stopped. They all saw the Bat whisk him away, and once more whispered to their children to never follow the Bats into the shadows. They know of the girl cloaked in amethyst cloth, who chased after them despite the warnings and pleadings of others. She disappeared, and the faceless thing of chittering laughs that raced the Robin that appeared in her stead... Everyone knows what happens to those who offer themselves to the Bats, knowingly or not.
Robin can mimic voices, their own childish giggles and clicks echoing across the stone slipping into another's words. What is merely a game to them is horrific for anyone wandering the streets in the dark of the night. Some say that it can steal your voice permanently if it so wished.
Everyone in Gotham knows that the Bats aren't human. Oh they might mimic and pretend to be as such, or even had been at some point, but they're confident they aren't. Even if they put on an act outside of Gotham, corpse-like skin gaining hints of color like blood is actually rushing through veins, everyone knows that's what it is. An act.
The Bats themselves? Well, it keeps their civilian identity safe- and the shrines have helped them get children out of bad home lives and to safety, so they're not going to just... not encourage it.
Slightly cryptid Batman idea:
(Not familiar enough with costume evolutions to know how canonical this is, but if DC can mess with the timeline as much as they did with the New52, I can tweak costumes.)
Anyway, Batman here is still human (mostly) but Gotham got to him and now he’s a little… feral? Inhuman? Weird?
Bruce was a rich only child so he’s always been a little possessive, but he was also raised by Alfred, so he doesn’t show it a whole lot and it’s not very bad.
Until Gotham gets to him.
And with most things he’s the same as he’s ever been. But with his Robins? His birds? His babies? That man is now some kind of weird mix of dragon and cat and bear.
They are his and he loves them so so so so so so much, even if he would never use those words. Something deep inside him kinda wants to just gather them all into his cave and never let them out of his sight, but he knows they’d all hate that and he values their agency, so he doesn’t do that.
Instead, he makes sure that everyone knows they’re his.
As many of them as he can convince have a huge bat emblem across their chests. Robin has little bats at the hem of his cape and at his collar. All of their boots have little bat symbols on the sides. Their dominos get more and more overtly bat themed.
Every time he sees one of them with his symbol on them, something in his chest purrs. And if their wearing it in their civilian clothes? That’s even better. (Tim has a huge oversized Batman hoodie that Jason will deny until he’s blue in the face was originally his; Cass has a few sets of bat hair clips; Dick has a pair of yoga pants that are covered in garishly colored bat symbols)
He won’t trap them, he won’t control them, but he’ll mark them as his until they stop him, which none of them seem inclined to do. (A couple of them find it a little weird, but this is so much better than anything else he could be doing that they just go with it. Those whose slightly-feral-cryptid tendencies align most with Bruce’s find that it makes them feel incredibly loved.)
And that’s the story of how the bat kids all ended up covered in bats. And how the main result of Bruce becoming vaguely-a-cryptid is that his kids are covered in bats.
You know what I need more of? The Batkids completely fucking with the Justice League and their rogues and coming up with stories for their existence.
Like I am talking about the creation of demigods sort of stories, like Loki sort of stories.
Duke has convinced all of Gotham that he's the Bat Signal brought to life and that's why he's never seen at night and why the signal literally doesn't work during the day. He's waiting giddily for the story to spread outside of the city.
The batkids have convinced half the League that Nightwing is quite literally Batman's lovechild with Justice. Hey, Constantine had a one night stand with the manifestation of a city and they've dealt with gods before, so surely it's not that surprising? Right???
I need more of the Batkids being little shits, of Alfred the-greatest-enabler Pennyworth backing them up and Bat(the-biggest-troll)man to never confirm the stories, but he doesn't deny them either.
Well, Mermay is almost done buuut, Aquatic batfam is always lovely. So which would you be fine hearing me ramble about-slash-work on the Oneshots lol
Eel Mer- Eeels. Long wriggly friends. Now with apposable thumbs! And Bruce's growing adoption problem- and a slight family curse but shhh.
Merfolk- I mean, fish! A mixture of modern and fantasy with the merfolk of Gotham waters being cryptids compared to the rest of the seas. The bats think it's hilarious.
Octopus Mer- Octopi are fun. And you ever see the videos of octopus continuously escaping their tanks? Imagine if the octopi were vigilantes with weapons. Yeaah...
Crabtaur- Lazarus crabs? Lazarus crabs! And a curse to them all that they have to work around in their day to day lives.
Nudibranch- Sea Slugs? Indeed. And a lot of them poisonous and using the poisons in their work- along with messing with each other.
Mershark- Sharks! Includes Flashpoint-esque Thomas being a murder grandpa and past AlfredxMarthaxThomas, along with Bruce being less murderous
Kraken- Squids. Think giant merfolk but well, giant squids. Fantasy-esque AU with Gotham being the largest population of pirates & crime on the seas.
Sea Dragon- Sea serpents mixed with seahorses and a bit more. Includes the kids being bio-kids via blood ritual and a couple galas. Also some shapeshifting.
If I could I would pay you to continue this
So if I were to hypothetically start a Project....
Would anyone actually be interested in it?
Meme Prompt 11
A three-way crossover this time
posing for the photo vs the photo they got
i love this idea that “yeah batfam seems scary to other superheroes at first but theyre all actually nice” but give me more “batfam are almost all regular humans but theyre also complete freaks in different ways”
like yes. justice league and other teams are full of aliens, cyborgs, magic users, fish people, etc, but:
nightwing can bend his completely human body like its laffy taffy
red hood got stabbed and was barely phased in the midst of battle
red robin has been awake longer than any league-er has even attempted and seems fine, along with solving and completely so many cases some heroes think he has a meta human brain
robin has been found completely still for incredible lengths of time and knows things about league members that no one told him until he casually mentions it in conversation
black bat can appear so silently in a room that even those with heightened senses dont notice until they turn around and jump at her standing right in front of them
batman is BATMAN
and its like yeah these teams are glad that gotham vigilantes are there to help but also they are side eye-ing each other because gotham vigilantes are complete and utter freaks in the most HUMAN way to the rest of the superheroes
Okay so I haven't read it and I have no idea if the Batkids even knew they existed until right before it all went down, but. What if, during "We are Robin" the Batkids all stopped by every now and then to tell them stories of their Robin days so that this gang of kids gets to troll the JL along with them.
Superman hesitated, glancing down at the group of kids, bloodstained in the midst of Gotham dirt and rubble.
They watched him as one, heads tilting in exactly the same way and eyes tracing his every movement. Clark suspected that if he paid attention to what he could hear, there would be only one heartbeat, simultaneously breathing. He didn't dare, but he made a mental note.
Bruce wouldn't like this.
So the Kryptonian took a deep breath.
"Who are you?"
They smiled.
"We are Robin."
Superman stared.
One of them, appearing to be a teen with hair as black as Batman's cape and skin the shade of stained mahogany, spoke, seemingly the front for this hivemind. "Don't you remember, Supes? We met before the Justice League even formed, when you noticed our heartbeat as we hid under B's cape."
Clark looked at them.
Too many glittering eyes stared back, and he nodded, slowly.
"Okay... Very nice. I'm going to go before Batman gets angry about me chasing down a Metropolis Rogue in his territory. Just... Don't kill anyone?" he pleaded.
He turned and fled, cape fluttering in the wind as Robin laughed.
idea: batman and the robins never acknowledge that there have been different robins. like they all act that there's only been one and that they're the same person basically.
Justice League who's used to teen dick not kid jason: who is this child?
Batman: what do you mean, it's robin.
-
Batman and Tim walking through the watchtower:
Justice League who remembers robin literally dying: ...*side eye*...
-
Flash: batman… who is this?
Batman: robin. you’ve met before. several times.
Flash: no, i met a black haired boy. this is a blonde girl!
Batman: her name is robin
-
Superman: it's time for you to explain. where are you getting all these children?
Batman: i have no idea what you're talking about.
Superman *pointing to damian*: who is this kid?!
Damian: i'm robin. i'm offended you would even ask that? don't you remember *proceeds to recite a story dick told him of his robin days*
Oh gosh y e s.
This is perfect and I shall have to write up some cryptid Batfam angsting and terrifying the JL tomorrow
idea: batman and the robins never acknowledge that there have been different robins. like they all act that there's only been one and that they're the same person basically.
Justice League who's used to teen dick not kid jason: who is this child?
Batman: what do you mean, it's robin.
-
Batman and Tim walking through the watchtower:
Justice League who remembers robin literally dying: ...*side eye*...
-
Flash: batman… who is this?
Batman: robin. you’ve met before. several times.
Flash: no, i met a black haired boy. this is a blonde girl!
Batman: her name is robin
-
Superman: it's time for you to explain. where are you getting all these children?
Batman: i have no idea what you're talking about.
Superman *pointing to damian*: who is this kid?!
Damian: i'm robin. i'm offended you would even ask that? don't you remember *proceeds to recite a story dick told him of his robin days*