𝓥𝓪𝓵𝓴𝔂𝓻𝓲𝓪

Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.

He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.

Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.

But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.

Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.

Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.

So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?

Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.

Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.

Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.

Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.

Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.

Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.

But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?

Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.

Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.

So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.

Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.

At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.

The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.

Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.

All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.

Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.

And I still see some of yall say ‘make this fic into a character ai pls!’

WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF WATER

Get off those god forsaken generative ai apps or you will go down with those who care

Especially those of you in the fanfic community, you steal your own work by going on c.ai and simultaneously kill us

For those who don’t know, ai takes from fresh water to cool its computer systems and the water can’t be recycled. ChatGPT alone uses 500 million gallons of water a day, and the AI industry used more water last year than the plastic water bottle industry. It also produces nothing original and takes from artists and writers alike.

"oh oh but I need chatgpt, I'm stupid!" Who's fault is that. If you're not special needs or neurodivergent I don't want to hear it, even then there's multiple other ways to educate yourself if you have mental or learning disabilities that don't include generative AI. 75% of Lake Tahoe will lose their electricity or have the prices SKY FUCKING HIGH because of their power supply moving to power the ai data center rather than the people, meaning there's not enough power to spare for both and they'll make a bigger profit off the data center. I'm tired of being surrounded by pigs with mush for brain who lack sympathy and don't care because it doesn't affect them YET. IT'LL BE YOUR PROBLEM TOO IF WE DON'T GET RID OF AI. THEN WE HAVE NO CHANCE OF SAVING ANYTHING BECAUSE THEN WE CANT EVEN SURVIVE. No water mean no life, no life means no saving the planet you guys claim to care about but really fucking don't because you can't even comprehend that there's multiple issues and ALL of them need handled wether it's the main cause of rapid climate change or not.

(Reader is a woman)

And it'd be on accident, too. Like, you're being saved by the unreal crush that you thought you couldn't meet. Let's say one night after you're all tipsy-topsy-turvy in that nice little black dress with the layered stitching and a cowl neckline with your pearls, (the only nice thing you own with those heels, honestly) and one moment, you're wondering if you are going to throw up next moment you hear a *SLAM* next to you and you see the man you had wet dreams about with that helm, slamming some dude who you vaguely remember talking to and shutting down at the bar and the clatter of some metal. He's asking you if you're okay and all you can say is;

"*hic-* Mister Red Hot"

#hello again martin and bosco!! sending you boys round for another go :)

Tiktok didn't like this art

Dick is singing something off-key from the 2000s, flipping pancakes in a pan that he’s definitely about to burn. Damian is arguing with Tim about the correct temperature for storing eggs. Jason has just opened the fridge and declared they’re out of “the good kind” of milk, which he refuses to define.

Stephanie and Cass are painting glitter on each other’s nails at the table. Cass does not flinch when Steph spills. Duke is sitting cross-legged on the counter eating cereal out of a measuring cup.

Bruce, standing in the doorway, has not yet been noticed. He doesn’t know how to enter this scene.

He was supposed to be reviewing mission footage. He meant to be upstairs for ten minutes. The house wasn’t like this when he left it.

Now—sunlight. Laughter. Shoes on the counter. Someone left the window open and Alfred is going to be livid. There’s a trail of muddy bootprints across the tile from where Damian brought the goat in last night (long story, not relevant). It smells like cinnamon and acetone and home.

Dick catches sight of him first. “Bruce!” he beams. “Want a pancake?”

Bruce blinks.

Cass waves at him, glittery. Jason, at the sink, mutters something about “old man caffeine dependency” and slides him a mug of coffee. There is exactly one sip left in it. Bruce takes it without speaking.

There is no mission. No costume. No emergency. Just…this.

He should go.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he leans against the counter, lets the noise wash over him. Listens to Damian yell “YOU CAN’T MICROWAVE EGGS,” and Stephanie reply “It’s called innovation, baby,” and Tim mutter “we’re going to die.”

Somewhere beneath the chaos, he feels it: that ache of love that comes not all at once, but slowly. Like sunlight inching across cold stone.

It is Sunday, 11:47 a.m.