this is how new yorkers @ mamdani
AU where Bruce Wayne becomes the mayor of Gotham because, while it's well known that he has the brains of a golden retriever, and the sort of golden retriever that you end up taking to the emergency vet because he gleefully ate a rock, all the other candidates were worse—don't say it isn't possible, this is Gotham.
And, to everyone's utter astonishment, it kind of works. Because he's stupid. Because someone points out something that's not working—there's a park on Fortieth Street that got closed down because of broken glass, for example—and instead of understanding the system, which mostly says, "So sad, but we can't do anything about that," he starts talking about it.
"We should clean that up and reopen it." Very nice thought, Mayor Wayne, but the budget isn't there. "Well, we subtract money from here and move it over here." That's the police department, Mayor Wayne, we can't do that. "It's just a little bit, they'll never miss it, and anyway, if teens have somewhere to shoot hoops—do kids say that these days, shoot hoops?—they won't break anyone's windows and the police will have less trouble anyway." Mayor Wayne, that's just one stop from the Narrows, the young men in question are more likely shooting rival gangs, and anyway, cars coming by will throw glass there anyway.
For a bare moment, Mayor Wayne suddenly seems—sharp. Knife sharp. "Kids."
"What?" the city council member says, startled.
"If they are fifteen and sixteen and seventeen, they are children."
"I think the police that they take shots at would disagree, sir."
"We'll look at that next."
It really shouldn't seem like a threat, and yet.
Back to vacuous. "We can build a fence," Brucie Wayne says, "to make it harder to throw bottles into the park. Not too big, we don't want it to be forbidding, but just enough to stop it from looking like a target. And put more trash cans in, recycle too—there weren't trash cans to start with? Well, there's your problem!" He beams, as if he's solved something. "We can put together a community initiative to keep it cleaned, maybe have the Parks people bring some snacks or things for everyone who participates. Make a party out of it! And if we're transferring more money, which we'll have to, we might as well renovate it too. New paint on the things that are still within code, new equipment with new materials for the stuff that isn't, and we might as well put some things for the older kids—we can hire someone to draw up a proposal, I don't know what kids do these days but it has to be more than just one basketball hoop with out a net. Tiddlywinks?" For an instant, it looks like his eyes might cross from that lone, bouncing neuron being stuck in a corner, which entirely distracts the council member from the fact that Brucie Wayne is too young for tiddlywinks also. "And some sun protection and trees, that'd be nice too, don't you think. We can do it! This is Gotham, it's the City of Opportunity. John, it's been lovely talking to you, but I had a peek at your calendar and I think you've got something at twelve—unless you can think of more stuff to spend money on?"
John cannot.
Six months later, the local gangs claim that the fucking Bat came out of retirement to tell them that Willow Park (it still doesn't have any willows, but it has saplings that may at least become trees) is neutral territory, on pain of pain. The truce seems to be holding. There is new equipment, new paint, a new cleanup day, and new foliage.
Bruce Wayne's closest confidants are hopeful, but weirded out by the fact that he seems to be smiling—not Brucie smiling, but actual smiling.
Batman is having the time of his life.
#would watch the hell out of this and we may as well get the joker involved too maybe he gets roped into solving sewage problems
tags via @brandyschillace
I feel like Poison Ivy would be the first and easiest to get on board with a Fix Up Gotham initiative. Sure, she's a little mad that she can't give her plants a few little precautions against people—really, once they eat one guy, people will catch on!—but downtown is a challenge fit for her abilities, and before long she's exchanging emails with non-mad scientists across the world about what sort of trees can work downtown and what can remediate the massive soil pollution in some areas of Gotham. She scares the everloving crap out of some people trying to put in an urban garden where there was automobile painting forty years ago, and then gets into rooftop gardening with them.
Freeze is also pretty easy; he wants to work in his lab and have everyone else fuck off. If you give him diamonds or funding or whatever he needs for his cooling devices right now, he will grumpily spare an hour to talk to you about building materials and solar panels and whatnot. Just don't ask him to fix the city council building's air conditioning again. Even if the city council were arguably better at their jobs before they got thawed.
Riddler is compulsive, but with careful management, it doesn't have to ruin his life. It's Catwoman who actually suggests the technique to Batman—"You owe me a lot more than a drink for this," she says. And a week later, Riddler informs the Joker that there's no way he can hijack the emergency broadcast system long enough for Riddler to give him a riddle to answer, let alone figure out what it means. His brain, Riddler claims, is distinctly substandard; the only extraordinary thing about it is that it might honk when someone squeezes it, and that's certainly more use than the Joker has put it to in the last…
The emergency broadcast system gets hijacked.
Riddler acknowledges that he was owned, with very bad grace, and patches the problem, and dares Joker to try again.
It is anyone's guess whether Joker actually realizes that he's doing penetration testing on the same system that would warn the populace if he or anyone else tried to gas the place. But they both seem to be having…fun??
That may not be the right word, but nobody wants to mess with the system. It's insane, but it's working.
