Hi! Hope you dont mind me taking a swing at this because I love recommending stuff :) So I'm gonna preface this by saying I think the batman fandom really shines in its shorter one-shot fics in the 3k to 7k range, and also I highly recommend getting into Dick Grayson because theres some very good writers obsessed with that guy! Anyhows I tried to not just pick super big fics and some more new ones :)
But yes, onto my recs (with an attempt to include some different characters and genres)
look back in anger by vechter | 40k, complete
Dick and Bruce are like this:
Not the sun and moon, a love devastated by circumstance, a story of light and gravity but a different beast altogether. A nucleus fissuring into two, borne of the same energy, the same matter, the same decay.
Their story has always been radioactive.
A canon-divergent take on Dick's return after Spyral featuring debilitating self-loathing and guilt, interspersed with the ordeal of being unmasked and the subsequent waning sense of personhood.
*If your not deep into Dick Grayson lore this might be a bit confusing, but the writing is totally gorgeous and how its built up and and how the text is in dialouge with itself is sick!
Declensions by dustorange | 4k, complete
âMy father,â Dick says, âworked the rope. It cut him. His hands were never clean.â
*Another Dick Grayson fic, but this one I think anyone can get into. It's just really good! I love how segmented it is and I would claim it's like The Dick Grayson fic ever actually. Really all of dustoranges stuff is good, I also rec iâve been looking for a night and I Left My Conscience On Your Front Doorstep
to be buried alive by FromStarstuff | 43k, complete
Bruce died and Cass couldnât breathe for a week. She didnât want to believe it at first, didnât want to even think of it. She knew Bruce and she knew death and they didnât fit together, not at all.
He was gone, gone like Brenda and Bludhaven, gone like Steph had been. Like Faizul. She felt it inside of her, so keenly it was as if she had killed him by her own hand. She could search the whole earth and not find a trace of him. It was too much. The pressure was squeezing her insides, left her constantly choking for air. She couldnât stop dry heaving.
Or: Bruce is dead. Instead of leaving, Cass stays in Gotham. She learns a thing or two about being Batman.
*Cass timee :) Totally one of the best Cass Cain voices out there, really good grasp on the dynamics of the bats and also I just love how like the internal dialouge is like structured, I dunno, good writing!
I THINK OF YOU ALL THE TIME by orpheusaki | 6k, complete
"Why did my parents leave me to you?" Bruce asks, with enough childlike genuinity and confusion that Alfred can't even be offended by the slightly backhanded accusation.
In a way, he can agree with the boy's disbelief. Why had Thomas and Martha Wayne left their darling son to a man who they barely knew in any emotional capacity? Serving them lunch and organising their linen closet is hardly a reason to write him into their wills.
Staring down at Bruce, the butler desperately tries to work out how to explain to an eight year old that his parents might have been insane.
But maybe, the insane one is him.
(Alfred Pennyworth's life from butler to friend to father.)
Ok so this is mostly a way to reccomend Orpheusakis writing, really if you like any of the batfam members this is a good place to check. I picked this one because I think it's a pretty grounded Alfred Pennyworth (who can suffer from both saintification and thisistherootofallevil-syndrome, depending on the writer, this is somewhere in the middle and is a pretty compelling answer to why Bruce was left in his custody), also the Waynes are very charming :)) Also I'm a sucker for all caps titles what is there to say.
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust (filling up my coffee cup) by LilaVaporizer9000 | 59k, unfinished
There is occasionally a certain point one reaches during the attempt to attain a goal where one decides that the goal is just not worth it.
Unfortunately, this also often coincides with being at a point in the attainment of that goal where itâs too damn late and youâre just gonna have to suck it up, buttercup, and get your shit together and do it anyway.
Tim is pretty sure this shit is absolutely not worth it, but itâs too late now and even if it wasnât, Mama ainât raise no fuckinâ quitter.
Or:
Timâs quest to bring Bruce back from his Time-Travel-Super-Vacation goes horribly topsy-turvey when Ra's takes a more pro-active approach to keeping Tim prisoner, and he ends up in an alternate universe where he never existed, and everybody is disorientingly well-adjusted and weirdly obsessed with his âwellnessâ, whatever that means.
Tim hates mystical artifacts.
(Alternate universe Better Batfam trope)
So this one might skirt the "fanon" type fic, but fanon is such a vauge term so I'm reccing this anyways because Lilas writing is really fucking funny, go read Boom, Boo, Pow! also which shorter and also Tim centric (he hits the joker with the batmobile). Ashes is just worth a read if you wanna get invested in this freak Lilas came up with I dunno! (also when did it become so popular, I swear the first chapter was uploaded like 5 months ago...)
Anyhows this is getting a lil long so I will stop here! I would also recommend going into all these peoples bookmarks, good way to find more nice writing :))
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
discoholicmusic
blakekathryn
pixelskylines
baratheonpilled
tangentwithtanner
titsay
gummygunk
