I think Tyson would make gifts for Percy that are usually armor and weapons or other life-saving things because he knows that Percy lives a dangerous life, more than most demigods. Tyson wants to make something that helps Percy stay safe and alive, and Tyson knows that Percy wants to survive— not just to keep living, but also to keep loving and protecting his loved ones. So it’s swords and shields and daggers. They’re good gifts for a demigod anyway— they always end up being useful— but Tyson makes sure to add just that extra bit more intricacy and passion in Percy’s compared to the basic weapon templates he makes in the forges, added designs, symbols of protection, personalized momentos. One day, Percy explains the notion of a gag gift, and Tyson loves it. From that day forward, his gifts from Tyson now have a 50% chance of being gag gifts. And of course, since all of Tyson’s gifts are breathtaking, the joke is never about shoddy handiwork.
Percy’s personal favorite is a small handheld water gun that’s a perfect rendition of poseidons trident but itty bitty, and it shoots water out of all three prongs. Percy treasures it, and nicknames it Fork. When Estelle is old enough to appreciate it rather than just chew on it, he passes Fork down to her with Tyson’s blessing.
Tyson doesn’t make gifts for people outside his family as often, but it definitely happens. It’s always based on something he knows they like, and it needs to be useful above all else. Gifts are harder to be upset about when they are tailored specifically to your interests and needs. Even if there’s something you don’t like about the design, but you needed it anyway and it was given to you for free as a gift, there’s a very small chance you’ll turn it down. It’s the best path to gift-giving success, and Tyson wants nothing but to make them happy.
When Tyson is hired to work as one of Poseidon's blacksmiths, he grows closer to his dad and makes gifts for him too. Statues and crowns and the like, because Poseidon doesn’t really need help to be stronger or more effective in battle, not that Tyson’s current skill level would be able to make a functional weapon for a god anyway (one day, maybe). Not only that, but because Poseidon is a deity, gifts don’t have to necessarily be useful. There’s more freedom to play around with the art of it considering it’s basically an offering. Even with his loved ones, he still gets that niggling voice that tells him it needs to be better, more useful. Offerings to gods are expected to be perfected and glorious, but in actuality, most gods accept offerings either way as long as it’s made with genuine effort and care, and his works are never lacking in that.
Gifts for Sally Jackson are things like art and jewelry, because she’s a mixture of both. he knows that she’s divine too in her own unique mortal way, but sometimes she doubts that she deserves to be decorated. Which is something he just can’t imagine, Sally Jackson being anything less than amazing? Not possible. Though he doesn’t completely understand her Desiree to not flaunt her beauty and importance, that’s where the art comes in. If she feels like she doesn’t want to decorate herself, then she can always decorate her living space. He also knows that she doesn’t need to fight to be safe, because Percy would never leaver her to fight on her own, but defensive items aren’t a bad idea at all. (Her favorite gift from Tyson is a beautiful locket that she has her family’s pictures in.)
When Percy goes missing soon after the war with Kronos is over, he realizes that even though Percy wouldn’t willingly abandon his family, sometimes it’s not his choice. It’s the first time he gifts Sally something for offense rather than defense. It’s also when he decides that he needs to do some protecting of everyone else too, especially if Percy isn’t around to do it: he makes Estelle an armored crib when she’s born (which is promptly baby-proofed by her parents but still effectively protects her). He makes Paul a pocketknife that works in both humans and monsters, so if he’s being attacked he can fight back first and wonder if the assailant was a monster or human later. Sally’s protective item is an improved version of Percy’s watch-to-shield thing but with an added detachable dagger that is, once again, effective for both humans and monsters. He equips the Jackson-Blofis household with a few small boxes: these open up with a code word and contain an automatic water mister, a handful of drachma, a few extra travel-ready weapons, and a collapsible shield. The box can also only be picked up/moved if code is given.
For his lovely harpy girlfriend, he’ll make her anything and everything he can. She likes to hoard more than just words in her head once she has a permanent, structured living place. Not to mention tyson would build her the world if she wanted, so trinkets are fun and no trouble at all. Ella also likes to give him little gifts in the form of scavenged findings— pretty flowers, quirky metal parts, shiny rocks— so he’ll find a way to incorporate them into his crafts. A nice shell might become a pendant for necklace, a scrap of wood with a nice design might be shaped into a small sculpture, a uniquely shaped peice of metal could be put in the hilt of a sword. Ella doesn’t mind if these little bits she collected become gifts for her, but being a part of the process of someone else’s gift and knowing a part of her plus a part of Tyson made something special for their friends makes her want to burst with joy. (Ella will sometimes recites love poems/stories/etc as gift for him. Rarely, she will go out of her comfort zone and purposefully mix up the words of stuff she remembers to make personalized romantic writings for him. It’s a high honor and Tyson absolutely melts every time she does it.)
Some batkid reactions to being hassled by the press and other PR related shenanigan (inspired by this post by @timdrakewhump, it got the brainworms shmoovin)
(edit: added a cut here because DAMN this post is fucking LONG and I know it’s clogging up other people’s pages too)
Dick: the humble founder of the batkid “troll the press” train, so he has a lot of experience and stories. As a kid, he charmed the pants off of everyone but was a handful to interview because he kept going off on random tangents. And it was just. the most unrelated and weird shit ever, like his favorite species of beetle or how he used to think when he was little that all clouds were pollution so he hated cloudy days. Things so off-topic it was practically unusable material. Bruce once asked if it was on purpose, and Dick responded “sometimes!”. He’s also the king of petty but ultimately inconsequential pranks because of growing up where he did, a place where the job was bringing joy and entertainment. If someone was an asshole to him (or anyone really) in his presence, they’d better prepare to be on the receiving end of the most manipulative, career-devastating smackdown delivered by a pink-cheeked, gift-to-the-world, curly-Q babychild— who’s now got tears running down his face because of them. It’s joever. This performer stuff helps when he’s trying not to get caught (ex: the pranks). As an adult, he wears the most butt ugly outfits (even to “important” events) but can dress stylishly if he wants. That’s usually how the press will notice which events Dick actually cares about, and Dick utilizes this to get better coverage on the more meaningful events. It’s fucking hilarious when ppl can't even really comment on the outfits because even if the clothes aren’t great, Dick somehow manages to make it look decent. When he’s out casually in public, he’s notorious for wearing shirts with puns and dad jokes on them. The shirts started ironically, but now it’s a whole thing. He gets them as presents too, Tim giving him shirts that have horrible brainrot on them. Additionally, when someone is more comfortable talking in a language other than English and Dick can speak it, he’ll switch over. But the flip side is that he knows the best insults in that language too, so if you piss him off, his roasts are both more accessible, personal, and devastating.
Jason: Snuck books to read into boring events like clockwork, and Bruce never really tried to stop him. (It’s hard to be upset at your kid for reading of all things, especially when you’d rather be doing the same too.) But Jason’s favorite activity was spreading lies and slander. He dragged everyone into it whether you were kind or bitchy, and had barely any limits. (Dick was really proud, even of the particularly wicked rumors, but tried not to show it too much else Jason go wilder.) Jason has the most fun with the gossip-distribution method of old-rich gossips who are just incapable of shutting the hell up— it’s like one big maze traversing the social cliques and making a plan of action. He gets to map out how it all works and then find the best way to wreck it, and he lives for it. Overall, he made up such an astronomical amount of bullshit that photographs were practically the only thing the paparazzi could reliably use. And even then, Jason still trolled them by wearing the same type of common plain hoodie over every outfit out in public (when he wasn’t at some special event). Present day (post-death), anytime Jason goes into the manor (not often if possible), he sneaks in. Absolutely refuses to use a door. One time, someone gets a blurry picture of Jason sneaking in, and the figure is visibly packing heat. The person who got the photo went to the police immediately, and it sent the media into a frenzy. Bruce had to make up some story about an attempted robbery and how the (non-existent) security guards he’d hired were able to take care of it. Jason thinks it’s the funniest thing ever, and can barely keep his face blank whenever he remembers it. Tim got the articles/papers printed and framed as a gift, and Jason begrudgingly accepted it (it’s proudly displayed on a shelf). He’s also secretly pissy that he can’t blatantly make up rumors for the gossips anymore because of the whole “being dead” thing.
Tim: holds grudges to hell and back if you’re not a loved one. If you happen to be more than just an average-everyday amount of douchebag and mess with him or someone he cares about, he’ll make sure you know he dislikes you by basically passive-aggressively harassing you back (when it won’t have immediate/future bad-time consequences). It’s obvious he’s being unkind only to the person/people it’s directed at, and it’s an art form Tim has been honing since the age he first understood what ‘passive aggressive’ meant. One example: once, some person said how odd it was for Mr. Wayne to keep taking in children who looked like him and “forcing them” to take the Wayne last name. The man said it in that condescending tone of people who try to imply something’s “wrong” with you without actually saying it (you know what I’m referring to). Even though Tim was visibly disgruntled in the video, it was still published. (Tim hacked the site, unpublished, and deleted the recordings out of spite… but it’s the fact that they did it in the first place!) So now whenever he sees that news station he refuses to answer them until they address him by “Timothy Wayne” (his last name is hyphenated and he doesn’t mind answering to either— usually). When Tim’s not in the mood to be passive about his aggression, he’ll just fuck with rude ppl anonymously. Hacking to mess with files/programs, deleting important info, digging up dirt and publicizing it, recruiting Jason’s help to concoct a fake scandal (Jason tries to pretend that he doesn’t love the chaos but he really obviously does), and other ways to constantly annoy/inconvenience them. Tim also accidentally adopts Jason’s habit of scoping out and analyzing the famous gossips of Gotham. It was something he’s been proficient at as a kid out of necessity, but he actually gets into it when he becomes Robin, beginning to view it like one big puzzle he can solve and use to his advantage. As a child, he’s not in the immediate focus of the news as much as you’d think. The Drake’s keep him out of the way unless he can be useful somehow (PR mostly— the Idealistic Loving Family tactic and Cute Kid Distraction are utilized often). (This becomes Pretty Boy Distraction and Desirable Man Distraction as he gets older.) They think that controlling his media presence is easier than doing damage control if he makes a mistake, as all children tend to do, which inadvertently ends up protecting him from some of the more despicable side of modern media… as long as he doesn’t seek it out himself… but as we know, Tim Drake is a very curious kid.
Damian: the perfectly behaved Wayne child, but rude without realizing (of course he realizes, but the press doesn’t know that… or won’t mention it, at least). The Wayne family PR team has long-standing beef with this kid and has had to put up with him repeatedly for PR training and other PR nightmares of his creation. He refuses to act childish in front of the media unless it’s for a mission or some other gain. (He can look like the cutiest patootie on command now, but it’s something he had to work on in his PR training, unlike some of his other siblings who have charm oozing from their pores.) The only thing that reveals Damian’s discomfort to those who know him is how he’ll stay near his family members' side, following them around like he’s stuck with glue. Once he got overwhelmed by a sudden crowd, and didn’t notice one mic coming his way until it was shoved in his face— he reacted instinctively, punched the mic (it goes flying), and ducked low into a fighting stance next to Bruce. The others poke fun until they realize he’s genuinely upset he couldn’t stay calm, so they don’t mention it again. Even though Damian loudly rebukes and scoffs at his family’s shenanigans against the press, he still secretly wants to be included. So, when he doesn’t want to be talking to someone, he’ll slowly shift into speaking Arabic and pretend not to notice. More than half the time, the listener will feel too awkward to point it out and will find some way to leave the conversation. Dick takes him to his favorite dessert place when he does this for the first time, and brags about Damian finally joining in on the family tradition all day, so he keeps doing it.
Cassandra: leans heavily into the “can’t speak” thing that she’s been mistakenly assigned just so she doesn’t have to talk to the press as much or be a center of attention. If someone does approach her she just stares at them with wide unblinking bug eyes until they back off and/or are distracted by something else. But really, she isn’t even approached that often because she sneaks around everywhere. When she is found, it’s because she feels like teasing someone that day. (It’s a bonus when her family gets all giggly seeing her mess with the press because yeah, it’s practically a Wayne family tradition at this point.) Also, everyone knows by now that Brucie will unabashedly raise hell to defend his loved ones, so even years later, when media people are like “okay wait shouldn’t she be able to talk by now??” they keep their ignorant mouths shut lest Bruce Wayne descend upon them with the power of a thousand suns lawyers. Misinformed media-people assume she’s deaf or hard of hearing all the time because of her use of sign language, and sometimes, in the spirit of trolling, she’ll feed into it indirectly. Because if you’re calling over to her for a comment and she happens to not answer, it’s your fault if you “connect the dots” and assume she didn’t hear you because she’s deaf/HOH. This also leads to her getting away with absolutely everything, because she’s a (assumed) deaf woman which means she gets infantilized, meaning she can obviously do no wrong! /s It would piss her off more if she gave a fuck about what the media thinks, but she really doesn’t, so she just uses it as another tool when she wants to cause havoc.
Duke: doesn’t get bothered too often compared to most of the others, and subsequently doesn’t give a fuck. Was offered PR training just in case by Bruce and he took it, but he could hold his own just fine before. Sometimes he’ll get approached by those sidewalk interviewers as Signal, and if he has the time he’ll stick around to quickly answer a few questions because he finds them funny. He’s always terribly vague though, and taken out of context you just have no earthly idea what he’s on about. Clarification? Duke doesn’t know her. As someone who hangs out with a family consisting of some rich white people who are often in the public eye of other rich white people, he likes to make the annoying ones squirm by interpreting everything they say to be offensive, just. Fucking with them until they’re panicking, having mini heart attacks thinking of the PR nightmare they’re gonna have. “So young man, do you think you’ll go to college?” “Why do you ask? Think a black kid wouldn’t be able to?“ “I didn’t—” “Think I’m not as capable as anyone else?” “NO no no of COURSE NOT—” Damian, Cass, and Dick think it’s genius so they take inspiration from him and do it too in their own ways. Duke usually goes straight from Bat Business to the manor, entering from the batcave but when he does visit normally, he’s pretty discreet. All that to say that when he’s first noticed hanging around the batkids + co. it’s in public areas. There are definitely some rumors going around because Duke hangs out with them like all the time. the media are left wondering where the fuck another kid came from, why Bruce hadn’t introduced his new kid, etc. Bruce comes out with a vague summary story to get the majority of the press (the ones who didn’t bother to do more research) off dukes back, and after a while, they go back their normal level of invasive.
Stephanie: will get pissy if someone calls her Bruce’s child but won’t deny being part of the family. Loves to spread misinformation like Jason, but it’s only ever fake news about herself. At one point, half of Gotham is convinced she’s some estranged Wayne (some third cousin, or was it second?) and the other half thinks that she’s the secret affair child of Martha Wayne (even though the timeline zero sense). She drives the celeb-focused conspiracy theorists bonkers by introducing herself by different names, bringing up fake relatives, sharing absurd fake stories, etc. Then, she’ll throw in an absurd truth, someone will connect the dots about that one thing being real, and it’ll start another conspiracy frenzy because wait, if that’s true, what else is??? She's also mastered how to use makeup to make her features look different for undercover missions, but will wear it out in public too so it makes sneaky pictures and videos look doctored/fake. One time, she applied some fake facial prosthetics too for fun, and a paparazzo got into hot water for trying to pass off a picture of ‘some random woman’ as Stephanie Brown. She decided to frame the best of those articles written (framing “best-of” incidents is kind of a thing now). She’ll always be excited when one of the bats comes to her asking her to disguise them for a mission because they all know that the price of her work is that she gets free reign of what the disguise looks like (as free as you can be within the mission parameters, but she finds a LOT of little ways to entertain herself).
Show me a Harry Potter who craves knowledge so deeply it destroys his world around him.
Show me the boy who didn’t know his middle name until he was in school (and probably didn’t know for longer that it was his fathers name), who didn’t know anything about his parents that wasn’t insults or lies. Who was told his parents died in a car crash and that he got the deep scar on his forehead from it too, which were both lies, for more than half his life. Who was lied to about his magical heritage, who didn’t know that there were others like him, that he wasn’t the freak they said he was. Who was never told what he needed to be told until it was too late, and everything had been flipped on its head again.
Show me a Harry Potter who needs to know. He needs it. Craves it. Cant reign in his temper when he’s out of his depth. He tries so hard to know it all, all this stuff he’d never been told but he has to learn to keep everyone safe. Who can barely keep it all straight, sometimes— a new world with new rules and new objects and words, ideas, solutions, standards, new everything to learn— who never ever lets himself forget it when he messes up despite having all the data. Who tries desperately to pretend sometimes that nothing is wrong because ignorance is bliss, tries to live normally for just a little while, but it always crumbles apart.
Show me a Harry Potter who’s considered for Slytherin not because of some Voldemort-related bullshit, but because he’s willing to do things others wouldn’t to get the information he needs. Because he’d do dangerous, immoral things to not be the one left out.
Someone who’d be inconsolably seething for hours after finding out that people weren’t telling him about the murderer in the papers on purpose because apparently, he was Harry’s godfather. Who’d hate Snape’s guts not just for everything else he’d done, but because he’d never heard one truthful word out of that bastard's mouth— and if there was anything genuine, it was impossible to decipher it from the spy crap. Who hated Umbridge’s censorship with a burning wrath he’d had for very few people, one of them being the man who quite literally killed his parents and made an attempt on Harry’s own life. Who would want to curse and scream and tear his hair out at Dumbledore’s airy vagueness, but could never bring himself to stay away when it seemed he was the only one who told Harry anything. The only adult who saw Harry’s pleas to help him understand all these new scary things happening to him and the world around him, and answered. Harry, who would fly into a long and tumultuous rage after finding out Dumbledore had still been fucking lying. After all this blood, and death, and tears, and time, and trust. The man had been keeping such a devastating secret, and been molding Harry to walk down its doomed path. who has to be held back by his friends from yelling and casting spells at Dumbledore's portrait after the war. Harry, devastated that all those memories Snape had of being Lily’s childhood friend are now lost forever because Snape decided that holding a grudge included not sharing any of it. Snape most likely knew Harry’s grandparents, knew Lily's childhood home, knew what Petunia was like as a kid before knowing about magic, knew so damn much that really only someone who knew you through your childhood could know— and he took practically all of it to the grave.
Harry Potter who is 43 unique flavors of paranoid after the war. He wards his house and his loved ones’ houses to hell and back, checking up on them consistently and visiting to recheck the warding every few months like clockwork. Making small routines within his larger schedule that he follows to the tee whenever possible to soothe his racing thoughts. Who has to be bullied into going to see a mind healer because Harry sharing his secrets has never gone well before, and he’s more famous than ever, and what if the doctor is a planted spy, how would he know, how could a paper saying their qualified be enough? (It’s negotiated that he has to go at least once a month, and Harry makes his mind healer take a magically binding oath.) His friends do their best to update him frequently about their schedules and plans, about new developments at work, about anything and everything. because if anyones noticed that knowing makes Harry feel more at ease, that it’s how he copes, it’s Ron and Hermione.
