Agent Jazzy

That was the exact thought process

Look, the Batkids have all been forced into various social gatherings, and enough of them share vague features with Bruce that some of the older members among Gotham's old money, or the younger ones that are out of the loop, sometimes mix up the facts.

Dick gets it from the very beginning. Old women pinch his cheeks, still tan from a life outside of Gotham's gloom, and tell him, Such a sweet little boy, and just like your father at your age. His hair used to stick up just like yours. Dick didn't like it at all. He bit the first person that told him he had Bruce's eyes, and stomped on the foot of an old politician that told him, With your father's height, I thought you'd be taller by now.

He laughs it off as an adult, but sometimes, it still eats at him. People still tell him that they thought he'd eventually be as tall as Bruce, or that he should be thankful for his inherited jaw line. It's not the comparison to Bruce that bothers him anymore, or even being mistaken as his son, but rather, the fact that he sometimes struggles to remember exactly where his features actually came from; parental faces turning fuzzy in his distant memory.

Jason thinks it's funny, the first time it happens. Mostly because it's his nose of all things. Your nose is bent, grumbled the old man sitting across from him at the gala, Just like your father's. Tough luck on the genetics. The man didn't realize the bent noses were because they'd both been broken in the past. Jason spent days after studying Bruce's face, trying to figure out if their noses really bent in the same way, and eventually came to the conclusion that, yeah, they really did. From that point on, each time either of them broke their nose, Jason would distantly think, Ah, damn, there goes the family resemblance.

As an adult, Jason takes care to make sure people don't often seen his face. The hood does a pretty good job of that. Besides, he doesn't move in circles where the mistake could be made anymore. Still, sometimes he looks in the mirror at the bump in his nose and thinks, Family resemblance. Yeah, right.

It happens less with Tim. Anyone that made the mistake with Jason and Dick also remembered Jack and Janet Drake. It's not until he's almost an adult that a new hire at Wayne Industries, some kid from out of town, sees him and Bruce in the office together and remarks, Oh, you two furrow your eyebrows in the same way when you think. My mom says that my dad and I do that too. We inherited it from my grandpa. Tim feels unsettled all day and makes a conscious effort to not to furrow his eyebrows anymore.

There's no mistake to make with Damian. At least, not the same one that can be made with the others. He's the blood son, and he's a perfect mix between Bruce and Talia. Of course, there's the well-meaning, if confused, adults that assume he's adopted like the others. He corrects them, swiftly, and sometimes aggressively.

There is one incident. It happens while Bruce is gone, after he's been staying with Grayson for a few months. He knew, of course, that people thought that Grayson looked like Bruce. He could even see the similarities. Superficially, of course. However, he never considered that Grayson looking like his father also meant that Grayson looked like him. Not until an old woman leaned over to him at a gala and said, You look just like your father when Mister Wayne first brought him out to these things. The hair, that disgruntled little frown. He hated these parties too. Couldn't ever sit still. Gosh, I really can't believe it's been long enough that he has a child of his own. It took Damian a while to realize what happened, and even then, he couldn't bring himself to tell her that he wasn't actually Grayson's son, or that he and Grayson weren't actually that far apart in age. He felt strangely guilty the rest of the night, and he never dared to tell Grayson about it.

It happened to Steph exactly once. Really, she doesn't look like Bruce at all. It was a man with exceptionally thick glasses, who actually told her that she reminded him of Martha Wayne. She's pretty sure he was just trying to be nice. She tries to forget about it. She never tells Bruce.

You have his eyes, is what Duke gets. Which confuses him, because, uh, no, he doesn't. Not even close like Dick's. He says as much to the woman that said it to him, and she squints her eyes at him and responds, No, you definitely do. Not in the shape or the color, but you look at things the same way he does. Duke thinks about that sometimes, and he swings back and forth between being annoyed and weirdly proud that he apparently looked at the world like Batman did.

Grace is joking around with a selectively violent creature that can rip his soft squishy body apart in an instant!

But it’s also a lot of fun to hear Weir talk about all the stuff he wants to include in a possible sequel, like the fact that eridians can have several conversations at once even with the same eridian. He imagine Rocky and Adrian bickering in one conversation while having a nice conversation at the same time that slowly turns into a fight and all of a sudden they’re yelling at each other in two conversations about different things.

He also says they have terrible spacial memory because they can see everything around them all the time thanks to their echo location so to them it’s crazy that humans can only see in one direction but still remember what’s behind them and even what the last room they were in looks like. Apparently eridians mostly just remember that the room exists and that it has the computer in it but if you asked them where the computer is placed in the room they’ll struggle to give a precise answer.

And Rocky got scared when Grace hugged him because eridians don’t have a concept of expressing affection with physical touch. To them it’s only neutral or violent because thanks to their hard shell they can’t really feel much. They only use it to move each other around or to break through their prey’s shell to get to the soft insides. So in their inter-species friendship only Grace would feel any desire to touch Rocky. It makes it very cute that Rocky joins in on Grace’s hugging ritual. It’s purely for Grace’s sake.

Okay so recently my darling angel cat son Ollie has been giving me signals that I have LEARNED means his natural young predator instincts are kicking in and he’s inviting me to play-wrestle, and over the last couple days I’ve been figuring how to go about stimulating these instincts without encouraging spontaneous violence, yeah?

So I’ve slowly started communicating with the word “fight” to signal that it’s okay to proceed- once he KNOWS the word I’ll get him another talking button to prompt me back, but for now, I’m going with body language- when he gives me his usual bastard signals, I say “fight”, sit on the ground, and cover my hands and arms with a backwards coat or a blanket. Right now, I put my covered arms up, and he’s been taking that as invitation to “attack”.

But I want him to know an emergency stop, too, so I figured when he bites too hard or gets too rough, I’ll make a high squeaking “ow” sound like I have normally since getting him.

Just like… five minutes ago, I was sitting on the floor wrassling with him, and one of his claws got through a hole and scratched my arm.

It wasn’t very bad, but it WAS a good learning opportunity, so I made the “ow” noise and dropped my arms.

My boy. My sweet perfect son. He froze mid-bite, holding on a second, then let go, let me scoot away, paused a sec… then snagged a nearby kicky fish toy, picked it up with his teeth, and started shaking it around like he was an angry little bulldog.

My precious baby angel recognized the ‘playing too rough/unhappy/pain’ sound, stopped of his own accord, and then- recognizing I was hurt and withdrawing, but still wanting very badly to fight- redirected himself UNPROMPTED to one of his toys instead of attempting to re-engage when I wasn’t ready

I’m so stupid proud right now. I’m very careful about not mentally anthropomorphizing animal behaviour because it can go so wrong but like. Seeing evidence that little mans KNEW we were playing, KNEW I wanted to stop, WANTED to keep going, made the connection in his head of “playing attack with dad - Dad hurt - Dad doesn’t want play - Ollie want play - attack Fishie” is absolutely insane.

It’s one thing to know he has a process, but it’s a totally different thing to like… slowly, carefully learn to work out exactly how he communicates, and watch him clearly think things out in return.

My baby likes to fight. My boy doesn’t want to hurt me. My little guy has a concept of respect and boundaries and inappropriate behaviour, as broad and nebulous as it is, and he is capable of making choices with that information.

It’s absolutely blowing my mind. He is a cat. He is 17 months old.

And he is demonstrating- to the greatest capacity that one could feasibly expect from an animal, to the best of his ability- what one may reasonably describe as kindness, consideration, and selflessness.