welcome happy haunts

But now, let's get to the rest.

Brucie is excellent at mirroring, masking and generally BS-ing people!

As an adult he uses scripting a lot and his detective skills to pick up cues from people and act as they expect of him. Very good at playing pretend, not so good at real relationships. He reads people through factual data, analyzing micro-expressions, posture and words like a puzzle rather than naturally understanding social cues. (Additionally, he actually has fun playing different characters like Brucie or Matches.)

He's extremely empathetic (my god, so much hyper empathy) but also struggles with alexithymia.

He feels so much empathy that he literally cannot stop caring, he cares so much that he tries to protect the city with his bare hands, throws money at a million causes and will always go the extra mile for people (such as, for example, offering a Wayne Ent. job to an underage prostitute to get her off the streets).

He feels all this compassion but can't quite express it, he has a lot of trouble being emotionally demonstrative and picking up the right social cues, vulnerability does not come easy to him and neither does abstract expression.

He uses a flat tone, he's monotone and generally expressionless when he's not trying to fake a reaction or emotion, so he comes off as disconnected and disinterested and that causes friction with people like Dick and Clark.

He tends to express himself more in actions than words precisely because verbal expression is hard for him (unless he has time to plan out his speeches or is being very blunt).

Examples:

When Dick tells Bruce he's dating Babs and Bruce just grunts and shows no reaction, Dick misinterprets as lack of interest but Bruce actually just has no idea what reaction is expected of him.

He's incredibly blunt and to the point, he says exactly what he means and sometimes comes off as very confrontational, he doesn't go through the trouble of lying to make people feel better (I don't want to think about the Ric arc but... the Ric arc). If he has to lie to play a part or mask, he will often resort to sarcasm.

When he wanted to adopt Tim he was so bad at putting his intentions in words that Tim couldn't understand him and Bruce had to ask Alfred to explain/show him.

He hates small talk with a passion and goes out of his way to avoid it, he says what he has to say and leaves, if he wants to know how someone is doing he will go check/spy on them rather than simply ask (literally does this with the whole family). This also extends to Batman's habit of just disappearing mid-conversation once he feels he has as much info as he needs.

When Bruce gets engaged (and I'm referring to the almost-wedding with Selina in this case) he has trouble telling his kids and best friends about it because he doesn't understand why it would be important to them and doesn't know how to say it.

When Bruce is proud with Damian's efforts reigning in his violent tendencies early in their Batman and Robin partnership he had this interaction with Alfred- A: "Did you tell Damian you are proud of him?", B: "Of course.", A: "What exactly did you say?", B: "I said I found his efforts commendable.", A: *sigh* "Couldn't you just say you are proud of him?", B: *visibly confused* "Isn't that exactly what I did?"

When he and Dick have that rough patch where Dick leaves and stops being Robin (right before he becomes Nightwing), a lot of that bs is because Bruce can't properly express himself and pushes Dick away instead telling him that he's letting him go for his own good.

When Jason comes back as Red Hood and is so pissed at Bruce for not killing Joker to avenge him and for replacing him with Tim? Bruce could have told Jason that he did in fact try to kill Joker to avenge him but was stopped by Superman (and a whole lot of other bs) and he didn't replace him with Tim, he rejected Tim and Tim stalked him and made himself Robin against Bruce's wishes. Would this explanation had helped with Jason's anger? Probably not but Bruce didn't even think to try because he didn't know how to express himself and that bullshit spiraled out of control.

Clark: "I know you didn't bring me back because you like me." B: "I don't...not like you."

Another canon interaction- B: "Family is...good." Jason: "What are you trying to tell me?" B: "I just told you." Dick: "He's telling you he loves you." B: "Isn't that what I just said?"

Hyper empathy- he pays for the Graysons' funeral and takes Dick in literally out of empathy, he sees himself in this boy and he thinks the most rational reaction to this is to adopt the kid, and he does it again with Jason.

SO. MANY. ENGAGEMENTS. He's so bad at expressing or even understanding emotion that when he falls in love he does it HARD and is really bad at expressing it so he just jumps right to the ring. Granted, this is a product of writers re-hashing the same classic climax and drama tropes with love interests over 80 years of history but I went through the comics and counted, Bruce was engaged at least 9 times (11 if we don't nitpick too much).

(I have a hundred more examples but this is getting long as it is.)

Real emotional expressions are rare and that makes them stand out, they can also be extreme and/or inappropriate.

Some examples of his extreme emotion reactions could be adopting the kids so easily, or punching people as a first instinct when he gets mad or overwhelmed, even when it's unnecessary (I could give a dozen examples of this one but my favorite is during the Court of Owls nonsense when he discovers the Owls put an electrum implant in Dick's tooth and rather than explain this to Dick while they are having a calm conversation about the CoO, he just pauses to punch Dick in the middle of the conversation in order to knock the fake tooth out, talk about a drama king).

Lack of social skills.

He doesn't even try to be social as Batman (and we've established that Brucie is a mask), and often misses certain jokes or sarcasm and has a very skewed sense of humor (often finding things funny that others don't or saying amusing things totally unintentionally).

His grunts or just outright refusal to answer certain things. Vocal stims. He seems to actually go non-verbal from time to time.

He has a lot of complex feelings but often doesn't understand them or know how to show them. Canon Dick, Clark and Jason don't often 'get' Bruce and become very frustrated by his lack of communication and his avoidance of emotional topics.

One of the reasons he connected so well with Cassandra Cain before Rebirth is because he doesn't have to talk to her, she can understand his feelings purely through his body language and that is clearly a massive relief for him.

When he's alone with Selina he shows a very soft romantic side but even there he has trouble knowing the right thing say or what is expected.

As an example, the proposal comes to mind- B: "marry me." S:"no" [some time later] S:"ask me again, but this time ASK, don't say it at me." B:"will you marry me?" S:"yes".

(Also, literally all his repressed reactions to the break up after she left him at the altar.)

He has canonically had meltdowns as a child in the comics (and shutdows in the "Gotham" show). It can be argued that some of his extreme (often violent) reactions to certain things as an adult could also be called meltdowns.

Rejection sensitive dysphoria. I think this one is really obvious, the man would rather block out anything emotion-related than face rejection, it's often a big trigger for his depressive tendencies.

He has "special interests".

Batman started as a symbol (let's not forget he has a bat phobia) but he became obsessed with all things bat-related, obviously. But he also has more specific and personal interests- detective work (he will make up puzzles if there's nothing to solve or he will actively look for trouble if everything else has been handled), making gadgets, dinosaurs, Grey Ghost, Zorro comics, classic lit, etc.

He hyperfixates on his interests and hyperfocuses on specific tasks A LOT to the point of injury and forgoing basic needs. A good example of his hyperfocus is how he handles specific Batman cases.

He info dumps! Enough said.

He has told Gordon that he "doesn't change his routine" and there was a whole panel about the importance of routine for him, including doing the same rituals every night. When he has to take a break from patrolling due to injuries, more than once it's been shown how it's almost physically uncomfortable for him to have that routine interrupted even when there's no specific case to follow up on.

Sensory issues!!!

Bruce has shown to like quiet and darkness, he's shown in some forms of media to be sensitive to bright light, he prefers to avoid crowds when he can, he has a massively high pain tolerance, he has a specific type of clothes he feels comfortable in and doesn't deviate from them (not the bat-suit but rather his damn turtlenecks).

He is a picky eater and likes very spicy food and sweets (autistic people either prefer bland foods and certain textures to avoid overstimulation or they go for very strong intense flavors precisely because they need the stimulation, Bruce is the latter, Alfred often sways him with sweets and it's official that his favorite food is spicy mulligatawny soup). In fact, he's such a picky eater that he has stubborn eating habits (like forgetting to eat entirely) and doesn't see anything wrong with feeding young Dick nothing but chips because it's "what Dick likes".

The entire design of the bat-suit could be connected to sensory things: his cape is very heavy, which could be connected to pressure stimming (it's so heavy that when Dick becomes Batman he complained and had to have a lighter cape made), if you really think about it his cowl is designed in a way that can filter out excessive stimuli (lights and sounds) and help him focus on specific things, etc, etc.

As a kid he connects better with adults because of his intellectual level, but as an adult he connects a lot more easily with children and teens.

This is shown both with people he rescues and with the people around him, there's a reason he connects and works so well with the young Robins but starts having communication issues with them when they grow up. (It's not mentioned often but a typical trait of people in the spectrum is that they tend to have problems connecting with people in their own age group).

Outside of life-or-death situations he often avoids physical contact as much as possible, even with people he cares about, and sometimes even when he's clearly touch-starved he doesn't usually initiate contact.

It seems to depend a lot on the level of trust he has for people. If a person he trusts initiates it he gets awkward but enjoys it, Dick is a good example; if a person he's not close to initiates contact he often shows annoyance or discomfort. It requires a high level of intimacy for him to initiate contact but when he does he's extremely affectionate (scenes with Selina or any of the his kids come to mind).

He likes making lists, files and hoarding information.

There's a scene where someone apologizes because the info they gave wasn't helpful at all and Bruce's reply was "I know more than I did 10 minutes ago. I like information." He also keeps very extensive (and often invasive) files about people he knows and has his famous contingency plans for every superhero he knows.

He's very methodical and organized about these things (like his case files and reports) but...

...he's a naturally messy person as seen by the state the manor and cave fall into when Alfred is not around and has difficulty taking care of himself, not because he's some sort spoiled rich man-child but because he underestimates his own needs and limits. EDIT: this is executive dysfunction. Both Battison and comic Bruce seem to need prompting for basic things like taking a shower or cleaning up after themselves as they seem to forget their own needs.

When he's not masking, he has a very atypical body language, such as his skulking and looming, avoiding eye contact, his evasiveness, the way he can stay inhumanly still for long periods of time if he needs to but is also extremely impatient and often doesn't stay still (I remember a panel where the cave computer takes 8 seconds to process some data and Bruce still complains it's too slow and needs and update, much to Clark's confusion).

.

I have more but this list is so long already and I'm tired.

I also had some comic panels but I don't have the patience to find them and pick out them out (tumblr has a 10 picture per post limit anyway). Might edit this later if I find any. If anyone knows the different sources, comic issues or has the different panels and gifs, feel free to add them.