One of my favorite tricks for designing alien species/cultures is to take a real animal with an interesting lifecycle and think about what that biology would translate to if they had human intelligence
Example: silk moths as a base species
Because the moths themselves don’t eat and only live long enough to mate and then starve to death, the entire culture is made up of children and adolescents. The older children raise the younger ones, with families being made up of hatchmates from different years.
Because molts and eventual transformation into a short lived adult happen on a set schedule, families have a cycle— when your oldest set of siblings cocoon to become adults, you wait at the mating grounds and try to adopt their newborns after they pass. If that fails, you take any ‘orphans’ you can find.
Because death and birth are nearly simultaneous, they have a religion based around reincarnation, and infants with markings similar to a parent are often given their name. Claiming the offspring of a beloved family member is vitally important, because you want to be able to protect their soul and keep them close.
Because it’s hard to track the offspring of your male family members, there are sometimes major fights when a family sees an infant with familiar markings in another family’s clutch.
Between mating seasons, their culture is extremely food-oriented, because everyone is growing and silkworms eat nigh constantly. They spend most of their lives outdoors but sleep and shelter from bad weather in large family dwellings made from wood and the remains of the silk cocoons of prior generations.
everyone is really vibing with the silkworm aliens I see
I still like the idea of Bruce Wayne making a point to take each of his kids individually out to movies, even though there’s a movie theater in his house, because he needs all of them to experience a joy that’s permanently beyond him which is “going to the movies with dad and having him still be alive when you get home” and it usually isn’t until they get home and talk to their other siblings that they realize why he was white-knuckling a blackjack for the whole 20-foot walk from the movie theater doors to the back of Alfred’s towncar
Bruce, taking a 13-year-old Dick Grayson to his first concert (Britney Spears, 2004 Onyx Hotel Tour at the Wachovia Center with backstage passes) and paying off the whole security staff to let his butler keep the car idling directly outside the stage door so they can leave quickly after the show. Alfred’s already bought one of everything in Dick’s size from the merch table because it’s very important that they all get in the armored Lincoln Continental with bulletproof windows as quickly as possible after the show, so this can stay a happy memory for Dick as an adult that doesn’t constantly compel him to do anything
Bruce takes Damian to see Detective Pikachu because he knows Damian loves animals and they both love detective work, but he isn’t aware ahead of time that it’s an emotional story about a father whose presumed death makes his son realize he should’ve been more open to a relationship with his father, and their eventual heart-warming reunion and decision to go into detective work together. It’s an incredibly meaningful night for both of them. Neither of them ever directly mentions this to the other or realizes that the other read into it as deeply as they did
When he completed this ritual with Jason, they actually did get cornered by a mugger and Jason, hams it up and says “Oh no, Bruce! Isn’t this how your parents died?!”
And the mugger realizes he’s mugging Bruce Wayne in front of his kid and is like “Oh. Oh my god I am SO SORRY I’m not! Oh fuck! Just! Forget this happened! I’m gonna go!”
Meanwhile Bruce stops calculating the 57 ways he can disarm this man, 17 of which won’t do any permanent damage, 2 that won’t even hurt him and stops him and asks if he’s eaten today, does he need a job, how good he is with computers and the mugger heads home with a plate of street tacos, a business card and a lot to think about.
