ok but fr tell me about Aaron I have no knowledge of this character, as I haven't watched the thing he's from 👀 A Cobblepot I see 👀
He's a character from Batman: Caped Crusader--the show that reimagined Penguin as a MILF. ;) He's one of her two sons.
During the first episode, Penguin becomes aware of someone in her gang leaking information to her rival, Rupert Thorne, and during a gala she's hosting, Thorne heavily implies Aaron was said leak. She confronts both her sons in private, then reveals she knows Aaron was the one who betrayed her, and has her enforcer shove Aaron into a crate and dump him into the ocean to drown. She claims Aaron was her favourite son (not that it did him a lick of good), and thus promotes her remaining son, Ronald, to favourite.
Spoiler alert: Aaron was innocent, Ronald was the rat. Whoops.
That's the canon info on him. I could go on and on about my headcanons for him (including how I'm not 100% sure he's dead), and my hopes that he gets a token reference in the upcoming second season.
I believe I fell for him through a combination of his unique character design (and his resemblance to a certain Hatter), sheer pity at the horrible way he was killed, and the performance of his VA, Paul Scheer. Seriously, the murder scene? Broke my heart and gave me chills at the same time.
Aaron, Aaron, Aaron... now I know why they only gave you less than 5 minutes of screentime. 😂 You shouldn't be this hard to draw.
I always wondered what Aaron's civilian clothes might look like (probably identical to Ronald's, just a different colour), so I used some screencaps as a reference to sketch it out myself. Then coloured them in.
Whether or not he even gets so much as a reference in the new season (or future seasons), I wanted to post this today. What better way to christen my new blog theme, am I right?
Well, Season 2 of Batman: Caped Crusader airs tomorrow, and while everyone's been excited over the new villains and speculating over the episodes, y'know, like normal fans, the burning question on my mind has been... what role does my best boy Aaron play in all this? 😂
Because my 'tism has decided to zero in on this one character who got less than 5 minutes of screentime in a single episode, and has come up with all the ways he could conceivably have a presence. Even if it's just a few-second shot of a picture or his name.
So, from most likely to least likely, will he:
A) Not get acknowledged or referenced at all
B) Get a brief cameo (picture, name, mention) in a way that confirms his death in Season 1 (ex. his gravestone)
C) Get a brief cameo (picture, name, mention) in a way that does not confirm his death in Season 1
D) Actually get screentime, but in a way that confirms his death (going off of what I've seen in the trailer, it looks like there's gonna be zombies in Season 2?)
E) Show up alive and well
or F) Show up alive and well... having gotten plastic surgery so he's a bonafide Adonis? 😑
Because his tag needs more content, even if I, as his one and only fan, have to do it myself.
He and Ronald are half-brothers; they have different fathers. Both their fathers are dead.
Aaron is two years younger than Ronald (their child portraits were probably done around the same time, and don't look too different in age, plus Aaron radiates younger brother energy).
I gave Aaron the full name Aaron Thomas Kennedy Cobblepot, after Tom Kenny, the voice of the Penguin in The Batman (2004). On a semi-related note, I gave Ronnie the full name Ronald Paul William Cobblepot Jr., after Paul Williams, the voice of the DCAU Penguin (and also Paul Scheer, the voice of Ronnie and Aaron).
Aaron's civilian clothes are mainly teal/turquoise, matching what I imagine is his eye colour (another reference to the 2004 Penguin).
Aaron's status as "Penguin's favourite child" never meant a damn thing; he and Ronnie were equally abused growing up, physically and emotionally. The only difference was their responses: while Ronnie used it to justify throwing his lot in with another gang, Aaron internalized the abuse and sought his mother's approval even harder.
Family is sacred to Aaron; aside from his devotion to his mama, he never actually seemed to suspect Ronald of treachery when his mother accused them, since his first instinct was to vouch for both of them ("Wait, what? No, Mama, we'd never--"), and when Ronnie threw him under the bus and they started pointing fingers, his position read as less "It wasn't me, it had to have been you!" and more "How dare you accuse me of being the rat?!" Even when Penguin zeroed in on him, he tried to point the finger at Clarence, a previous, now-dead suspect, rather than his brother. It only adds to the tragedy of that scene--he at the very least trusted his brother not to sell them out, and that trust was betrayed in the worst possible way.
Despite their adversarial relationship, Aaron does care for his brother--he's his brother, for crying out loud! Theirs is very much a "nobody can pick on him but me!" type of relationship.
While Aaron likes to flirt, and would love a relationship, he'd never pick his romantic or sexual partner over his mother--he's a true mama's boy.
"Your mother" jokes are the highest form of insult according to Aaron. If he truly wants to hit someone where it hurts, he'll throw one of these out; conversely, receiving this kind of insult is the surest way to send him into a rage.
Not that it amounts to much--he can't fight, or wield a weapon, to save his life.
How Aaron interacts with someone depends entirely on how much he respects them/views them in the hierarchy compared to him. With those he's well aware are above him (his mama, Bruce Wayne, other socialites), he's a suck-up, trying to get/stay on their good side. With those he doesn't respect/looks down on (Ronnie), he's snarky and sardonic. With those his gang is actively deceiving (the GCPD), he puts on a front of the former, but is the latter behind closed doors ("So, how much you figure we cleared off all these dumb coppers anyway?").
Due to their role in the episode being meant to evoke sympathy (in a pity-based way), Aaron and Ronald have never engaged in activities that would, if revealed, retroactively drain that sympathy--sex crimes, human trafficking, torture, other Moral Event Horizon-crossing stuff. It's up in the air if they've ever committed a murder, too--if not, it probably has more to do with lack of ability than any standards on their part. However, their mama has no such standards (or inability).
The Penguin's gang was involved in bootlegging during the Prohibition era (I don't care what anyone says, to me, Batman: Caped Crusader is set during the early 1940s), and Aaron is old enough to have helped his mama out with that during his adolescence.
Aaron has basic mixology skills; he likes to drink (he had no less than two different drinks, champagne and a martini, at his mother's gala in the show), and if he's near a bar and no one's manning it, he'll happily jump behind the bar to fix himself a drink. These skills came from a lot of trial and error; he probably put himself in the hospital due to alcohol poisoning a fair number of times growing up.
He also knows basic sleight of hand tricks. He uses them to cheat at card and dice games (much to Ronnie's chagrin), as well as pickpocket.
He's a surprisingly good singer and dancer; it's one of the reasons Oswalda favoured him, he's a performer like his mama (unlike Ronald, who doesn't have any skills she values). Unfortunately, his lack of conventional good looks means he can't capture an audience like Oswalda can.
Speaking of, he's self-aware of his lack of good looks, and when flirting with a girl, he'll put all his effort into making a good first impression, and a lot of emphasis on being able to provide her with anything she could possibly want, due to his family's wealth. He's 110% sure his mama's money is the only thing he has going for him.
Surprisingly, he's not self-conscious about his height, as shown when Ronald tells him to "go climb your thumb, half-pint" and it doesn't even faze him.
Both Ronnie and Aaron have a very open standard of beauty when it comes to women: they find women of all shapes, sizes and colours (hair, eye and skin) attractive. Naturally, since their mother is a singer and dancer who effortlessly captures the attention of men despite (nay, because of) not conforming to conventional beauty standards.
Aaron has slightly more rizz than his brother. Granted, the bar is in Hell... but at the very least he doesn't say stuff like "Guess my shirt got a little hungry." XD
Aaron is a people-pleaser, and that extends to the bedroom. ;) He'll do anything he can to make his partner feel good. No points for style (his and his brother's only experience with intimacy was paid escorts, who acted into it no matter what he did), but he'll try.
This ties into the headcanon about him compensating for his lack of good looks--gifts and acts of service are his love languages. He goes all out to try to keep his loved ones (friends, family, romantic partners) by his side.
Assuming he survives his mother's murder attempt (or, if he didn't survive, he gets resurrected), the experience leaves him with a heaping helping of trauma on top of everything else his upbringing did to him, and a huge phobia of bodies of water, tight spaces, and the dark. He may or may not have had claustrophobia and/or a fear of the dark prior to the murder attempt, but he certainly does now.
Ironically, he used to love the sea--part of the experience of working on a gambling ship. Now the very idea of going near the ocean makes him sick with fear.
Nightmares about the incident are a nightly occurrence for him now. :'(
While hurt that his word was worth less than a rival's, he doesn't actually blame his mother for trying to kill him--again, he internalizes the abuse, convinced he must have done something to lose his mother and brother's trust. He can't imagine what it could've been, but it had to have been something...
