rambling on bruce's thought processes re: family and the mission
Alright, so. This thread got me really thinking about Bruce's psychology, what his view of family and The Mission are and some of the differences between him an Comics!Bruce, (who will be referred to as C!B from here on out) and I figured it'd probably be a good idea (and fun) to write all my ramblings and ideas down.
C!B and Bruce have some very similar and then some drastically different ideas when it comes to things like The Mission and family. There's a couple of reasons for that and it stems mostly from a few key things in the comics that either don't happen or happen differently in the Aniverse.
The first big thing is there is no Scary Bat God in the Aniverse. What is the Scary Bat God, you may ask? It's that thing that lives inside C!B's head and tells him to do things and tells him about the Mission. No, I am not kidding. Some writers ignore it (which, ngl, I prefer to do when I'm writing Batfic alskjdf) and some writers don't. Point is, for at least part of his life, C!B had a Scary Bat God that spoke to him and told him to do things. And C!B listened to it. In the Aniverse, the only thing fueling Bruce is his own determination and emotions. There's nothing besides himself that tells him what is or isn't conducive to the Mission. He may get advice from Alfred or someone else, but the Mission is solely his.
Which brings us to the next part of this little ramble, family and the Mission. The way the Batfam works in the Aniverse is a little different, mainly because of the fact that it's only Bruce, Dick, Barb and Tim. They've got their own drama and everything, but it's not as bad as the comics because they're missing a bunch of people that are in the giant ass Batfam that is C!B's Batfam. In the comics, C!B seems to go back and forth between YES MY FAMILY IS IMPORTANT and ARGH MUST BE A LONER. Well, up until recently. The Return kind of smashed any of the ARGH MUST BE A LONER with a hammer, but for the most part, he's gone back and forth. Bruce has only really done that once, pre-Batman Beyond, and he pretty quickly realized that he was being an ass.
Basically, it goes like this. Bruce loses himself in to the Mission and starts being harder better, faster, stronger on the criminals. Then he starts pushing people away without really realizing what he's doing. He blows off Dick, and probably Barb and Alfred too, and it finally comes to a head when Dick, still Robin at this point, calls him on his bullshit and goes "WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU MAN?!" punches him and then leaves Robin and Bruce behind. This causes Bruce to have a major paradigm shift and realize that he Fucked Up Big Time.
And here's where things get really interesting. See, C!B had a Robin in between Dick and Tim. But in the Aniverse there is no Jason Todd. Instead we have Timmy who is only called Tim in the show, but we'll call him Timmy to differentiate between him and Comics!Tim. Timmy is, for the most part, an amalgam of Jason and Tim in the comics, personality and back story-wise. Like Jason, he grew up on the streets but like Tim, he pretty much stalked Batman and Robin and had a Wall of Crazy Pictures and all that. It's hard to see the similarities between Timmy and Tim when you look at the more recent comics, but if you look back at the stuff to when Tim was Robin and actually knew how to smile, there are some similarities.
Now, to tie these the story of Dick and Timmy together and show how it shapes Bruce.
When Dick left, Bruce, as I said, has this major paradigm shift and realizes things have to change. It's slow going but he gets there and when he takes on Timmy as Robin, it helps even more. However, Timmy is not Tim and he can't bridge the gap that there is between Dick and Bruce. Their relationship never recovers for a number of reasons, one of which I will admit I pretend never happens. (That would be Bruce and Barb hooking up, btw.) Losing his first son, in a way, makes Bruce that much more determined to make sure things are good between him and Tim. He screws up because, well, this is Bruce. He has the emotional capacity of a teaspoon. But he tries. Because of Dick leaving, Bruce realizes how important his family is to him and wants to do what he can to make sure his family is okay. Which, in Dick's case, means letting him go off and do his own thing because Bruce knows that if he pushes, Dick will push back and that will result in chaos.
Eventually, though, things go wrong. After The New Batman Adventures comes Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Going into how all of that shapes Bruce would take forever and a day, but I'll summarize and just say that Things Happen, Bruce learns the meaning of Friendship and starts to Fall In Love. Everything is going pretty well for his family and extended 'family.'
Then Timmy gets kidnapped by Harley Quinn and the Joker. And this is how we get the crotchety old guy we see in Batman Beyond and the JLU episode Epilogue. In the comics, Jason Todd is killed by the Joker and that changes C!B forever. In the Aniverse, however, Timmy becomes the Aniverse's version of Jason Todd, and that leaves Bruce even worse off than he was when Jason died in the comics. See, in the comics, C!B got violent and lost himself again after Jason died and did that pushing people away thing that he does. It's never shown in the Aniverse, but it's safe to assume Bruce does the same. C!B gets pulled out of his funk however, but a young man named Tim Drake. In the Aniverse, it's Timmy's torture and brainwashing at the hands of the Joker that send Bruce into a downwards spiral. So there is no Tim Drake to pull him from that edge. This event breaks Bruce beyond repair.
The intervening years between the flashback in the Batman Beyond movie and then the actual series Batman Beyond are never really shown, but there's a few things we can assume, knowing Bruce's personality and things about the people he cares about. The first is this: Bruce believes he failed Timmy. Timmy is in no position to correct him and, thanks to brain washing and chips and things like that, probably thinks Bruce failed him too. The second thing is that Bruce pushes people away. It's what he does. Because of what happened between him and Dick, it wouldn't be too hard to alienate him forever. Barbara would take a little more work, but he could do it. Diana would just take hitting the right buttons over and over again for her to believe that he didn't actually love her (despite the fact that he did) and things would be ruined. Clark would be one of the hardest, but it's pretty obvious that Bruce managed it somehow. Alfred would probably be the only person Bruce wouldn't push away. But Alfred is old and eventually he dies, leaving Bruce completely by himself.
This scars Bruce more than he will ever let anyone realize. When he starts working with Terry, he tells himself it's for the Mission, but there's a part of him that is so damn lonely, he can't say no. But Bruce will never admit that, even to himself. Even at the end, when he's pretty much on his last leg and near the end of his life, Bruce says that everyone left because they didn't have what it takes to follow through with the Mission. That is a load of bullshit and he knows it. Everyone left because he made them leave and it's easier to say that it was their choice, not his.
As for how this relates to the Batfam in Paradisa... well. There's two things that really influence how he views and treats his family there. One, he has a relationship with a version of Dick where things are better than just okay. And two, he hasn't gone through what happened with Timmy and hasn't seen first hand the aftereffects of what it does to his son, though he knows what happens. These two things are pretty much the opposites of what happened to him in canon and so they shape him a little differently. He sees what things could be like between him and Dick and he's become even more determined to protect Timmy and the rest of his family. These two things, combined with the fact that he hasn't got either of his real confidantes in Paradisa, means he's a little closer to his family. He'll probably end up telling them things that he wouldn't normally tell them without some prodding, should those two things not have happened in Paradisa. He will never be an open and honest person and, when things go wrong, he will still push people away. He did it when he went into Isolation Mode after the Joker turned back into Timmy. But there is a part of him that is developing in a way completely different than how he develops in canon. It's an interesting thing to play with, but a hard one, too, since in later canon, it's painfully obvious that Bruce has turned into that ARGH MUST BE A LONER type person.
Which is a very, very sad thing. :(