personally i think the reason Batman is really good with kids is because he more or less hitchhiked his way across europe and asia fully intending to wilderness man his through it during his training years but local families kept taking one look at him and thinking 'that skrunkly young man needs help' and would take him in for a night or more and task him with watching the toddler and up kids cause it was the one thing they were sure he couldn't fuck up
#i love the idea that the time he spends traveling isnt just him training; but also the beginning of him learning#to let go of his anger and finding forgiveness and love and community#the same things that will come to define his role as batman and mr wayne and as a parent by @tangerinetrees
it's so important to me that his traveling isn't just him learning to fight and be a detective, cause it would have been so easy for him to have never let go of the anger that way, he is a very rich very privileged man who's parents were killed in a robbery, it would have been SO easy for him to decide all poor people were the problem, to latch on to some kind of hatred and grief fueled prejudice to ease the pain and be just another rich asshole who thinks harder laws would fix the problem or to just import world class trainers
choosing to turn away from that was the first step in being a hero instead, but i think the next several were in traveling the world, in seeing places outside of Gotham and america, not even in a "wow now that i'm talking to them maybe poor people are people" but in a "oh shit i'm being helped by so many different kinds of people and i'm falling in love with all of them" kind of way, in a "i expected to be alone and miserable while i turn myself into a machine but people keep touching me gently" kind of way
he first steps out of Gotham and he's so cold and angry and hard and bitter when he leaves but everywhere he goes there is kindness and laughter and a space freely offered to rest his head and food snuck into his pockets and Bruce holds it all in his hands and weeps because how can he not love them all? how can he not think there is goodness in them all? how can this not irrevocably change him as a person for the better?
Hi sorry i just gotta
HE changed for the better and he’s a terrible person so clearly anyone can change
From your tags because Bruce recognizing his own growth and and it translating into the basis for his overwhelming and unabiding belief in everyone’s ability to change and everyone’s right to a second (and third and fourth and fifth and -) chance has me chewing on my walls excuse me
