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tried my hand at another redesign :)

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Dick should be incredibly good at fighting under the influence of fear toxin. Like, so good that he’s the guy that’s always sent out after scarecrow because he’s pretty much the only one who can consistently battle its effects. He still quips and does performative little stunts, barely bats an eye.

No one knows why. For a while, the running theory is that he was simply exposed to much more fear toxin as a kid, so he built an immunity. He’s the only one who has been a vigilante nearly as long as Bruce, and was always the distraction, so he was almost exclusively the one hit in the face with toxin during his Robin era. However, this theory is slowly debunked as the rest of the family gets their fair share of exposure too and it doesn’t get any better.

Then they think it’s genetic or something. This is disproven too, though, after loads of experiments to see if a similar effect could be reproduced on the others.

Strength of will is tossed around as a theory, and it seems plausible, but if that were true then Bruce should also be near-immune. He’s actually one of the worst-affected.

Whenever anyone tries to ask, Dick deflects with a ridiculous answer. But in truth, he knows exactly why he handles it so well: It’s because he’s almost always experiencing life in a way that isn’t quite reality. He always has the phantom of dried blood under his fingernails, the ghost of his dead brother still shows up to his nightly patrols, and every time his feet leave the floor he’s struck wi the sensation of falling falling falling.

He’s not immune to fear toxin by any means. His visions are rather severe. But whereas the state of fear toxin is a drug-induced living nightmare for others, it’s just a particularly bad Tuesday for him. And he’s had a lot of those.

THIS THIS THIS OMG YES.

I honestly kind of head canon Dick as having schizo-affective disorder. He has hallucinations, delusions, depressive episodes, anxiety, impulsivity, self-esteem issues, mood swings, and the whole shebang. Dick is genuinely confused when people talk about him as the lights of their lives, as the golden boy, etc. because his reality is so fucked up. He has so much trauma that he doesn’t deal that hallucinations aren’t even a big deal to him. I also do think that being exposed to fear-toxin as young and as often as he was did have some sort of effect on his brain chemistry, especially since he became Robin so soon after his parents death. Like I feel like maybe he was already having grief-induced hallucinations and nightmares for a while, and then Scarecrow shows up and he’s having more frequent hallucinations. Essentially, I think Scarecrow gave Dick’s brain an extra push into hallucinating regularly.

I believe that Tim and Jason became Robin at around 12-13, and though they might’ve encountered fear toxin at one point before then, they wouldn’t been regularly encountering at 8 years old the way Dick did. Like I definitely feel like Dick was the youngest to start being Robin, and this definitely had influence on his body, brain chemistry, and mental health (not just related to Scarecrow and fear toxin, but in general as a crime-fighting 8 year old).

Anyways, Dick has been through a lot of shit, and hallucinates regularly, so I doubt he’d bat at an eye at anything Scarecrow throws at him. From everyone else’s POV, they just think that Scarecrow’s shit doesn’t work on Dick for some reason, despite all the testing they’ve done that shows that it shouldn’t be that way. I feel like this would either freak the fuck out of Scarecrow, or it would make him want to fixate on creating something that works on Dick. Maybe he teams up with some other villains to try and study Dick’s brain.

OOOOH Maybe he teams up with a sorcerer to find out what life looks like from Dick’s POV before and after being injected with fear toxin, only to find that there’s barely any change and he’s just like “damn dude that actually kinda sucks lol loser”. Maybe the sorcerer decides to fuck with the Batfam or the Titans by forcing them into Dick’s mind and making them see Dick’s reality. They’re all scared shitless because everyone feels so wrong. They feel phantom hands and sensations ghosting over them all the time. They feel the hot splash of blood on their face, but then there’s nothing there. They see and hear the voice of a younger Jason, a sometimes crueler Jason, despite the fact that the real Jason is right next to them. They see mutilated bodies and spectres all around them, reaching for them, staring at them, haunting them everywhere they go. They feel off-balance and nauseous all the time, and they don’t understand how Dick has the ability to do acrobatics when the world is constantly tilting.

And then, sometimes, when Dick is being harassed or threatened, they hear their own voices, or voices that are familiar to them. They hear Bruce shouting at Dick how it’s his fault Jason died. They hear their own teammates and friends jeer at Dick and call him a slut. They hear thousands of voices calling Dick a failure, a murderer, a freak. They hear the voice of a woman softly croak that she’s disappointed and disgusted with him, that she never wanted this life for her little Robin.

There’s soooo much about this hc that I want to explore, I might add onto this later.

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I know a lot of ppl ask u abt jason or dick but im wondering now, what do u think about bruce? I find him a very interesting character whose characterization is incredibly feeble, both bc of his 80 years of history and the tendency writers have to project their own male fantasies on him. So i'd definitely love to hear ur own thoughts about him. I personally enjoy depicting him as someone morally grey, although my sympatization for him changes day to day. Wether you think he is a good or a bad person, i believe u need to make him dedicated to gotham and the bat as a symbol, and that comes with all its advantages and drawbacks

bruce wayne is sooooo interesting (derogatory) because like u said, he carries the baggage of every masochismo author that decided batman was too woke and should hurt his kids and that supporting gotham’s infrastructure is for pussies. there’s also the flipside of that, where he’s the perfect father who’s waaaay too emotionally regulated for my taste. both of these interpretations are bad imo, and both functionally miss the point.

i think part of this (in fandom) is an obsession with moral angst — u can either be a good person doing good things, or a bad person doing bad things. think about how some characters are crucified while others are babied. someone always has to be absolutely right, and the other has to be absolutely wrong.

in reality, there are a lot of people who are fundamentally kind and fundamentally want to do good that are really terrible to the people in their lives. bruce wayne being someone who relies on having so much control that it implodes his connections to the people around him is an important part of his character. his profound love for his children, for gotham and her people, for humanity in general and his belief in peoples ability to change, doesn’t circumvent the fact that he’s often an emotionally abusive man who hurts others to achieve his own ends. he contains multitudes.

writing him as a functionally irredeemable, violently abusive person is the anti-thesis to the symbol that he himself created. no, i personally don’t believe he actively beats his kids (even though it’s supported in the text). no, i don’t think he’s an irredeemable sadist (as much as frank miller wants u to believe otherwise). to have people like dick grayson and diana and clark and dinah love and believe in u means that there has to be something there worth caring about, otherwise the whole universe is gonna fall apart.

that’s what makes his relationship to cass so interesting — he sees his neuroticism, his dedication to the cause above all else, and does not find it admirable. he finds it confronting and upsetting. and to be clear, cass (like dick) is very much the moral ideal of what batman should be, but still bruce finds it hard to deal with!!

his abject failures — his treatment of the robins, his crippling guilt about jason, his fears of becoming a killer, the impossible load he gives himself to carry — means that when he’s shown as someone who genuinely cares, it makes him more complex. like yeah, bruce isn’t actually a cold hearted person. he really really gives a shit. too many shits, to be totally honest. he’s a morally grey person that wants to do good, but is so terrified of losing control that he keeps others away and hurts them in the process. there’s a reason why his emotional crutch was a traumatised eight year old fr. nothing is more important than the mission, including bruce wayne himself

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mischaracterising dick grayson’s robin as a feral, violent pseudo murderer because profound hope and perseverance in the wake of immense loss is apparently too complex of a character arc

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Had Jake Grayson (Dick's son from the elseworld Nightwing New Order) been raised in a more stable timeline like the main continuity, how do you think Dick would've done with him given for ALL his canon appearances with kids?

Dick would do an awesome job raising Jake in the main continuity based on his canon interactions with kids. 

Scarecrow: Year One #2

The New Titans #71

The Titans #1

Nightwing #5

Nightwing #64

Gotham Adventures #26

Nightwing #71

Gotham Knights #9

Nightwing #142

Grayson #5

I think the only time it’s insinuated that Dick doesn’t connect with kids is in this issue of The Titans. 

The Titans #20

However, in this other issue of The Titans, Dick tries to parent a bunch of random kids that are hanging out in the Titans Tower. He’s pretty stern with them since they are withholding information from him. Even though he comes off harsh, he genuinely feels bad about playing the Bad Cop because he’s worried he scared the kids. It’s not hard to imagine him acting the same way towards Jake should he have to punish him. 

The Titans #29

Dick loves his family and will do anything to protect them. That’s reflected perfectly in The New Order when Dick does everything possible to save Jake and keep him safe. I imagine Dick would be just as protective and loving towards Jake as he is to someone like Tim in the main continuity. 

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when the dying place is lonely

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It's literally impossible to read bat fanfiction because it's all based off those ridiculous fanon tropes that spread like crazy and people take as fucking biblical!!!!! Dick was never a jerk to Jason when he was Robin- they got along because Dick is mature as hell and in one retelling- Jason was a jerk to him!! And when he came back as Red Hood he had literally not a single damn reason to treat Dick like shit! Not a damn one! But he did, didn't he? Cause he's the fucking asshole! How dare you make Dick grovel towards that bastard! Dick has only ever tried to help him! Reached out during his Batman run, over and over! Also- Dick never put Jason in Arkham with Joker just a few cells down???? What the fuck! The Joker and all those other fuckers had been broken out of Arkham by Black Mask already for like the whole run??? Jason went to Arkham after losing to Dick, and Gordon put him in there because One he fucking deserved it, Two the literal circumstances?? And at that point!! Arkham was fucking rehabilitated itself!! By Dick!!! Because Bruce had him go undercover there for real, and Dick was actually tortured there before he got out!! So Dick put in the work to get that shit in order to actually help people!!

Dick never chose Damian over Tim- Tim refused to engage with him over his grief, shut him out, and left of his own devices! He never told Dick his suspicions on why Bruce was alive, never! And Tim is not the one to bring Bruce back either, there's a whole team at that point! Dick learns Bruce is alive through tossing his 'dead' body into a pit and the body comes to life as a zombie. Tim didn't tell him shit! Tim is also not a little crybaby- Damian cutting his line was a fucking blip on the page, he was momentarily shocked, that was it! He put Damian on his Hit List, which is why Damian cut his line. And his first attempt at "murder" is just pushing Tim off the dinosaur statue in the cave, he didn't go all assassin on him! Also Dick wasn't even there the first incident and wasn't told about the second incident. Alfred is the one who gave Damian Robin and Dick accepted him because he saw that Damian needed help! He needed guidance! He didn't fucking fire Tim the way Bruce fired him, and fuck all of you for thinking that Tim or Jason or fucking anyone has more right over Robin than Dick Fucking Grayson! He tried to promote Tim and Tim walked off. How dare yall make Dick fucking grovel towards that bastard!!!

Jason did try to kill all three of them!! Why does everyone just gloss over that like what the fuck??? Why does he get a pass for every shitty thing he's done??? "Bad writing" stfu this is the same dude that without hesitation kills random criminals, people who deal drugs, do you know how many random ass people deal drugs??? Jason doesn't give a single shit about being his own type of hero or saving Gotham his own way, nor do the people think of him as their savior!! Are you people fucking delusional?? I saw a post that said citizens would trust Jason over CASS and I cannot Believe the hallucinations yall are seeing???

It is literally downright impossible to find fics about Dick or Damian or Cass or fucking any of them that doesn't include these literal bullshit fanon takes!!! It's impossible!!! This fandom sucks!!!! You don't even need to go buy the comics, all these popular takes have been debunked right here on tumblr!!!! Also Dick can do literally everything!! He's hypercompetent as hell, die mad about it!! Jason doesn't like Wonder Woman???? Where the fuck did that come from??? Wayne Family Adventures is not real!!! Those people could not BE more out of character!!! Look at Bruce for crying out loud!!! Yall know that man ain't act like that!

Edit: leaving this here in case anyone wonders what my hot take is towards this question I was asked: "have you considered tho, that fanon is more fun..."

Well of course fanon is more fun if you're a fan of Jason or Tim. Fanon actively caters towards those two pasty white boys. Fanon actively shits on Dick and Damian though. And for Dick? He literally never did that shit! It is all made up! It's literal character assassination?? But by the fans?? And for Damian? He was 10!!! He grew up as an assassin! He was actively trying to grow with Dick's help! How can yall see him as the bad guy?? And not the literal bad guy, (Jason), and the 17 teen year old who literally fought him back btw, (Tim), like old boy did not act victimized the way you people portray. And Jesus for Cass? Cass is just a prop in fanon. So what exactly about this should be fun to me? Like seriously.

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Incorrect Batfam Quotes

Tim: The thing I’ve always admired about Dick is the fact he carries himself with the confidence of a much taller man.

Tim: And I despise Damian because he carries himself with the audacity of one.

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fluff fanfic writers saw talons and were like… new kind of baby? i guess

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VILLAGE CAST resident evil village, 2021

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Their dynamic is very important to me.

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somebody had probably done this before but

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a dickkory kiss! for my birthday 🌃⭐

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A little short haired Ivy 🌿

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I have come to realize the plot of Across the Spider-verse is the same as the original plot of Ever After High.

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Some unfinished talon drawings I’ll probably never finish

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Unfinished sketch time 👍🏼