Humans Are Weird: Not What I Expected

Sorry, but I can't imagine Legolas purposefully drinking. And even then, I bet he would run away from Gimli chasing him with proper vodka.

Thranduil, I am afraid your lessons were useless.

Thranduil, to legolas: When you turn 50, people are going to tell you to buy alcohol and drugs because you can.

Thranduil: But no. You know what else is legal at 50? Blades. Get yourself a sword. A big knife is also okay.

Thranduil: Also, don’t wait until you’re 50 to drink. Those laws are more like... guidelines!

Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.

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.

But by GOD is he trying.

he's trying very hard not to strangle someone

Not a bad way to win an argument, especially with Thorin

Bilbo : How petty can you get?

Thorin : I once edited a Wikipedia article to win an argument I was wrong about.

True rolemodel

Bilbo 'Not Like Other Hobbits' Baggins

Calculated revenge is the best one

Thranduil: What do you think of this coffee sampler pack? Bard: That's a good selection of all of their high-end blends. Thranduil: This will be perfect for Cheryl's birthday. Bard: Wait... Cheryl? Your nemesis on the PTA? Thranduil: Yes, she drinks the free garbage coffee in the break room at the school. Bard: You despise her. Why would you get her a gift? Thranduil: After this, she'll know what real coffee tastes like and won't be able to go back. She'll have to brew her own or stop at a fancy place each morning. This gift will cost her thousands of dollars a year.

you guys HAVE to watch 1670

I like to think the humans ambassador hides black powder weapons around their office instead of Lazer guns or plasma, just walks about with 2 hidden flintlock pistols

You sir or madam or otherwise have given me the biggest grin with that idea, thank you.

(me from after having written it out) I did not know where this idea would take me, stream of consciousness writing will do that.

----------------------

Every delegate of every integrated species aboard a Coalition governing station in their respective segment of the Galaxy receives full accommodations in the form of an isolated embassy structure.

One day, as per a Human custom, the main delegate - Ambassador Glenn York, invited several other delegates on a tour of his embassy. With some hesitation from a few due to their prey-like ancestry and associated cultural background, but ultimately won over by the Human's eager friendliness, they embarked on this little cultural exchange.

It was a little difficult to move about, as each embassy is adapted to suit the environmental preferences of the respective species, and Humans live on a high gravity and dense atmosphere world, so much so in fact, some of the less physically suitable delegates had to put on an exoskeleton, while many others required a breathing apparatus to thin out the poisonous air.

Once we were underway, Glenn showed us that the Humans were diligent in their work - acquiring information from and learning about all the various species within the Coalition, establishing communication lines with the respective counterparts in the disparately varied local government structures, and most importantly continually updating the translation modules.

In addition, we admired their art they had installed along the barren walls. Most, Glenn explained, was done by the delegates and their staff themselves during free time, and it ranged from tiny contraptions painstakingly assembled within a minuscule glass container (we did not realize they could hone their dexterity to such a precise degree!) to large murals covering an entire wall with the most vivid color and shape combinations one could imagine; from the very clear and obvious to impossibly abstract! Though the music they had to turn down - the vibrations of the thick atmosphere were beginning to overload the dampening systems and one of the delegates almost passed out.

Near the end of the tour, Glenn invited us into his office to show off what his "hobby" is:

"The boys and gals I work with are all talented people, but none of them appreciate the kind of craftsmanship I prefer. It's kind of a ancient art form, you see, high maintenance too, very delicate."

He pulls out a pair of ancient looking projectile weapons, at least judging by the shape, but none of us can quite grasp, aside from the trigger, how it operates. We are all silent as he pours some sort of fine grain from a small bag into the upturned tube then drops a small metal ball and proceeds to jam it further in with a cloth and stick.

"I handcrafted these myself. Sure, I could get a printer to do it and it'd be perfect, but perfection just ain't right when it comes to work of the soul, amirite? I find it therapeutic, to mold the shape, heat the iron, cast the shape, smooth the edges, straighten the barrel, carve the grip, roll the bullets, grind the powder... just..."

He lets out a long sigh of relief? satisfaction? euphoria? as he gazes with great affection at the pair of devices in his hands. We feel the urge to end the tour. Like. Right now. But Glenn insists on a demonstration. We hesitantly follow him to a largely empty room below where he sets up a couple of small wooden block on a pedestal. As he points one of the devices and is about to pull the trigger, he stops, looks back at us and says:

"Almost forgot, you'll want to take a few more steps back and turn your dampeners to max."

Heeding his advice, we do so, and after he appears satisfied with our... safety?... he returns his gaze to the wooden block and pulls the trigger.

[cacophony]

We awaken after a short while, the sturdier of our fellow delegates say the rest of us were out for just a few moments, but the ringing reverberation of the shockwave through the Human atmosphere still resonates throughout our bodies. Glenn, worry in his eyes, is apologizing profusely:

"Oh I am so sorry, I didn't think you'd still react so poorly. Is anyone hurt? I even put in less gunpowder than normal, but I guess that's still too potent. I--I'll file an official apology and compensate for any damages I may have caused to any of you. I will take full responsibility for this incident. Please do not think poorly of us as a whole due to the willfulness of one individual, it was never my intention to inflict any injury on anyone."

---Later---

After a thorough medical examination, it was determined that only a few delegates suffered a minor case of shock, which was alleviated rapidly at their respective medical stations. Ambassador Glenn York was reprimanded and sent back to Earth, a replacement will arrive shortly. The one permanent remnant of the incident is the wooden block that was struck by Glenn's pistol - now put on a small display in one of the inner rooms of the Human embassy. The bullet still embedded half-way and the splinters it shot out arranged in a chaotic manner, befitting an explosion, down in front.

So, Humans, what'cha doing?

"We're building a planet-sized Warp Gate."

...Ooo-kay then. Why?

"We wanna move some planets around."

That totally makes sense, yes, fully sensible and... uhh And you're gonna power it with..?

"That Dyson Sphere we're building around the Sun."

And the materials for all that..?

"We broke up a couple of Jupiter's moons for it. Oh right, we'll update flight trajectories for ya."

Right. Umm... thank you? Well uhh... we'll... leave you to it?

"Yup, no problem. Have a good one!"