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Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.

Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.

He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.

Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.

But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.

Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.

Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.

So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?

Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.

Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.

Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.

Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.

Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.

Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.

But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?

Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.

Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.

So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.

Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.

At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.

The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.

Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.

All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.

Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.

But by GOD is he trying.

lockedtombmemes

may12324

Gideon and Harrow redrawn as “The lament for Icarus” by Herbert James Draper

lockedtombmemes

riverkingmarley

Wait maybe I’m just stupid because other people have said this before but it’s just occurring to me now how so much of worm really is about masks.

Alec is perfectly symbolized by the happy/bored mask.

Brian’s mask is almost cartoonishly intimidating to hide himself underneath.

Lisa’s character surrounds the roles she plays and the lack of a solid identity underneath. Sarah, even if having once been her identity, is now just another discarded mask.

Rachel’s mask is cheap and almost there just to check a box as an expression for her lack of control over anything. There isn’t any real thought behind her mask because she didn’t get the chance to think any of this through, being a villain was forced on her. And maybe I’m just making this up but I feel like she wears it less through the book as she gets more agency and footing as she heals.

Taylor’s mask was designed to reflect her aspirations for heroism but instead comes off as intimidating and reflects her apathy for her enemies. Perhaps being modelled off Alexandria but appearing villainous speaks to the rot at the core of this society and the unfairness that creates these villains. It doesn’t matter how much you look or act like Alexandria because they’ve already decided who the good and bad actors here are.

thetallowman

Taylor and Armsmaster are both characters that become the mask, traveling in different directions

Cauldron doesn't wear masks because there's nothing underneath to hide

Coil puts on the mask

Scion is the mask, in a very literal sense

thetallowman

Hmm. Most of that was supposed to be deleted.

anexperimentallife

Also applies to "AI" "artists" and "musicians."

postoctobrist

I’m a cis boy and I’m constantly eggbaiting hot trans people online and irl.

I slip little calculated comments into conversation that make me seem like a repressed girl, or let out wistful little sighs at strategic moments.

I know I’m evil but this is the only way girls want to top me.

this is the most egg thing I have ever heard in my life

hatersmad

thinking about that one wordless calvin and hobbes sunday strip thats just calvins dad ditching his work to go play in the snow... its going to make me cry

hatersmad

ohhhh my god

faithful-grigori

”#I LOVE that the comic keeps the lens on Calvin’s dad to the degree of not even showing Calvin’s excited face when his dad surprises him, #You can see the joy and excitement of the moment in his pose and reflected in his dad’s expression, #it’s a great little artistic decision, #I realized what gets me about it it’s the hat covering his dad’s head and hair so the dad just looks like Calvin. #you don’t HAVE to show Calvin! You already see him in the dad becoming a kid for a moment you only have to draw that once”

importantandunavoidable

In the late 2020s food shortages and increasing corporate power, combined with a decrease in the effective power of the federal government slowly led to the collapse of the United States of America. Local grocery chains began to usurp the state and local governments as people sought more solace and identity with mere stores before their "political" governments, only for groceries to become the new politics when armed men seemed to seize control of random stores across the country one day. Nobody knows for sure who shot first. Some blame Walmart. Some blame a nameless "deep state", "cabal" or chalk it up to late-stage-capitalism. Whatever it was, it began one of the strangest collapses of any large state in human history, and a bloody chapter in the history of America. Most foreign observers were just surprised it wasn't over fast food.

writing-is-a-martial-art

truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.