Recent Progress (actually progress-y!)
Anybody who's still watching this journal should (hopefully) be pleased to learn that I've started writing in the DCU again. Current projects: Everything You Never Wanted to Know, companion fic to Death of a Thousand Cuts and A Mile In Your Shoes (completion: very likely) and an AU in which Nolanverse Bruce Wayne is deaf (completion: er...maybe).
So the original premise was "what if Bruce Wayne was deaf?", to which Muse said "somehow I don't think things would change much", because seriously, it's Bruce Wayne. He doesn't let little things like that get in the way of the Mission. Not very interesting, right?
But because it's a story that begs to be told while he's still new to being Batman, I chose the Nolanverse. And then I got to thinking: what brings Alfred to the point of going along with all of this? Because it works if you only think of him as a loyal butler, but he's the guy who raised Bruce. And this is Alfred we're talking about here; his secret super power is making people do what he wants them to (it would be a very bad day for the world if he switched sides). He's not a pushover, and he's not the kind of guardian who can't tell his ward no, even though that's kind of the impression we're given in the movies.
Bruce got kicked out of college and Alfred just went along with it? He just let the kid he raised slack off like that? And Bruce- okay, no wonder people weren't surprised when he returned and acted the way he did, but considering the knowledge he had to pick up to be Batman (sorry, ninja training isn't the only thing he needs, nor 7 years all the time to learn what he needs to learn), Bruce has to have been learning relevant stuff for a long time...and yet Alfred doesn't seem very surprised or upset that he got kicked out.
So this all tells me that Bruce studies what he wants to learn, and has probably done poorly in school all along because he just doesn't care about school. And Alfred is resigned to it because he has to pick his fights, and at least Bruce is learning something- Alfred has other, more important, things to argue with him about, like eating all his vegetables or socializing.
For an AU based entirely around Bruce being deaf, deafness plays a surprisingly minor role in it. But honestly, I can't imagine it any other way, simply because of Bruce. Any other character, it's a major issue. Bruce...it's just another data point, and makes him hate Gordon's mustache. It doesn't make him quit, or do very much differently.