#ozkirk

Goat, do you want me to write a fucking essay? Because questions like that are how you end up with an essay.

I definitely ship their 2004 incarnations, but I wouldn't know enough about other versions to have much of an opinion.

This one started as a crack pairing only to spiral into a fleshed out dynamic over the course of half an hour. Blame the "Pets" episode of The Batman and Sin for pouring gasoline on the fire. In the episode, Penguin gets what he thinks is a whistle that can control birds, but grabs the one meant for bats instead and summons Man-Bat without realizing that there's a guy under there. It goes about as well as you'd expect. I like to think they would beat the shit out of each other after that debacle only to start bonding once they're too incapacitated to keep going.

I'm really fond of that series's takes on both Penguin and Man-Bat. They both enjoy causing trouble because it's fun as opposed to making any grand point. They both make some stupid mistakes (for fuck's sake Langstrom, don't tell the guy with the key to your cell that you're going to beat his ass as soon as you get free), but they're also a lot smarter than people give them credit for. They're similar enough personality-wise that there could be a lot of interesting friction.

I see them as friends with benefits more than as an actual couple. I'm also partial to the idea of them more-or-less dating and not realizing it until somebody else points it out. They have similar interests and can enjoy having someone to spout off to about them, but that doesn't stop them from insulting each other all time. It's a fun dynamic to work with.

•These dense fuckers are the last ones to know that they're kinda/sorta dating. After the first time they wake up hungover and without pants, they figure things can't possibly get more awkward so they might as well keep it going. It's only after they've been friends with benefits for a while that they start becoming actual friends.

•It's weird because they barely know jack about each other, but it turns out they have just enough in common that they can find things to do together.

•It doesn't occur to either of them that anything they do outside of sex could any romantic connotation because they are well past where flirting normally leads to from the beginning. It's mostly small things: sharing a blanket on the couch, staying for dinner more often, finding excuses to just spend some time together.

•Kirk develops a habit of kissing Oswald's hand when he sees him after he mentions that most people find them gross. It makes him short-circuit every time.

•Oswald has a cache of bat-related insults that unintentionally turn into pet names over time.

•After a few stints in Arkham together, Joker started taking bets on whether or not they were actually a thing. In the end he took the whole pot for himself and said it was a trick question because they didn't even know.

•When Kirk is in his Man-Bat form, Oswald can't get him to listen at all. The collar thing backfired so hard that if Ozzie tries to get him to do anything now, he acts like a cat pushing a glass off a table while their owner begs them not to. If anything it will just make him do the opposite of what he wants.

•Kirk introduces Oswald to science fiction and gets him begrudgingly interested in it over time. Usually by putting on Star Trek reruns and hiding the remote. He grows a fondness for Deep Space Nine and ends up reading a lot of Kirk's old Harry Harrison paperbacks.

•Kirk spends a lot of time in Oswald's aviary after he tries to go straight (ha), since his lab has been shut down and he doesn't have anywhere else to live. Oswald has found him roosting from the ceilings of the larger birdcages several times.