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[dickheadcanons]

sorry for the vent, but nothing annoys me more than people who don't read the comics because they claim they don't want to read inconsistent characterization. Just say you're too attached to the fandom versions of the characters! You don't want to find out what they are actually like!! Being inconsistent with what you like is not the same as being inconsistent!

Because, at the end of the day, these people don't know if the stories are inconsistent because they don't actually know the characters, they haven't read the context, and they don't know how the events in the story came to be. These characters have been around for decades. They've "done" almost everything under the sun. If someone's only heard a laundry list of things they've done (usually told by a pretty biased 3rd party, myself included) then of course the actions are going to sound inconsistent. The connecting tissue of how they got from point A to point B is the entire point of a story.

I think this urks me so much because it’s always couched in this haughty, "it's impossible to read all of the comics and they’re not good enough to try" language, which for one thing, is just such a dismissive attitude of something they claim to love. But the other thing is that, so often, these people love to talk or write about specific comic events. If all they're writing about is the batfam going for a day at Disneyland, then yeah, they don't need to read anything. But if they're specifically writing a fic to address, like...Tim and Jason's fight at Titans Tower, or Bruce's return from the timestream, especially in a “fix-it” framing, and they can't be bothered to read the *40 pages of pictures where that happens*....what is this manufactured outrage? Are they just trying to be angry about something that never happened? Are they so obsessed with the canon being wrong that they can't give the thing they're mad at a chance to be right?

[dickheadcanons]

Obviously people can write what they want, but nothing takes me out of a story faster than seeing Jason adopted without Bruce meeting Dick.

I know I have my biases, but I feel it shows a complete…lack of interest in Bruce, as a character. Bruce is a highly traumatized man, one who hasn’t had a family since he was 8 years old (hired butlers really don’t count, for all that they might get more family-like later). What could possibly convince him that he was the best person to care for a young boy? It’s delusion at best or even insane narcissism. What could he possibly offer besides money, which he already gives in large amounts to actual child-helping organizations in Gotham??

Unless, of course, he witnesses something so shocking, so deeply affecting, that it’s become one of the best attended events in the DC universe because everyone wants a piece of that emotional arc. Something that vividly takes him back to the alley way, back to another boy kneeling between two bodies. Makes him realize that there might be other people in that lonely, dark world of his.

Dick in general is so massively influential on Bruce, but this moment is what pries its fingernails under the doorframe. It’s what makes everything that comes later possible. And it’s not just that he’s an orphan boy; it’s the shock, the spectacle, the intensely public display of grief after violence from a boy who looks like Bruce, who is the same age as Bruce was,and, I think this is critical, was so happy just moments before like Bruce remembers being.

Maybe Bruce still finds Jason and Tim and Cass without taking in Dick. Maybe he still can be a good father, be a good Batman, without Dick’s influence directly in his life. But the character is fundamentally different without being there that night. It’s the first and longest lasting moment of character growth that we see on page for Bruce, one that gets retold over and over.

He needs his night at the circus.

[dickheadcanons]

thinking again about that time tim broke into dick’s apartment in bludhaven and immediately started making fun of his home security the moment dick walked in the door 

nightwing (1996) issue 6

and then the next time we see someone break into dick’s apartment (this time it’s a stranger trying to rob him) we find out that he has installed a human-sized glue trap in front of his home entertainment system (and coincidentally, right next to the window)

nightwing (1996) issue 12

this is a cartoonishly deranged thing for dick to put in his apartment as actual security but also i believe with my whole heart that this was meant for tim. this is cruel and unusual punishment for some random home invader but completely justified if it was actually meant to clown on one’s annoying younger brother all along

[dickheadcanons]

This is just a little thing, but I just can't get behind characterizations of Jason that talk about him thinking that "Robin makes me magic" was proof that he was like, this sweet little kid.

For one thing, the Jason Todd who says that is pre-crisis. The Jason Todd who says that was being written as Dick, just a little more reckless and inexperienced. For another, Jason said that for exactly the same reason all Robins say shit; to justify disobeying Bruce lol.

The line isn't the cute wish-fulfillment of a poor kid from the Narrows. It's evidence of a circus acrobat's belief in his own invincibility, offered as proof that he is tougher than Bruce thinks he is.

The pages in question, from Batman #385:

[dickheadcanons]

ok question for comic readers; have Tim's parents being dead been mentioned in Rebirth?? Because if not, then I kind of feel his New52 status is still in play....

which would mean that Dick is literally the only child orphan vigilante Bruce has worked with, which I think is incredibly funny.

[dickheadcanons]

I'm always seeing these posts about how sad Dick must be to be pushing 30 because his brothers call him old and blah blah blah.

I just feel so strongly that Dick Grayson does not give a flying fuck about being old. Like I dont think he's ever been shown to identify as some cool young thing. He didn't get pop culture references when he was young, why would it matter to him that he isn't getting them now. He's been the team leader since he was 14, the emotional support for a billionaire since he was 8, and while everyone else might be rabid about his appearance, he doesn't care if he as a wrinkle or a gray hair. He's never been shown really caring at all how he looks (and WFA is the only time I can ever think of when he cared about being old, and that was for a joke, not a character moment).

When it comes to aging, if the DC writers were ever going to let him get close to "old," I would only buy two things being on Dick Grayson's mind; first, the ticking timebomb of his body, the way it bends and bends under the strain of his lifestyle and how far he's got to go until it breaks...

and second, how much time he has until he's older than his father ever was.

[dickheadcanons]

No deep thoughts, just all the shitty takes on Twitter about how Dick Robin “doesn’t fit the vibe” and is too “silly and campy” to be Battinson’s universe

Like beside the way that basically every dark story now a days is centered around a little kid…what the fuck do you think Batman started as if not camp???????

[dickheadcanons]

The potential of a decade(s) long DickBatman and DamianRobin era literally haunts me at night.

Don’t get me wrong, one of the most interesting things about the Robins imo is how baked into each other they are. I know it’s a joke that Bruce will just adopt any random orphan in reach, but the truth is, especially for the boys, their entrance into the Batman world is predicated on the one before; Jason is only taken in because Bruce misses Dick, Tim only because Jason dies. (Steph becoming Robin is even more of a story choice, and not one I particularly like, but a narrative nonetheless.) Their narrative is tight in a way that “replaced sidekicks” aren’t usually. Somehow, they made a pure narrative choice (Dick needs to move on, readers wanted to see a dead Robin) into a very compelling character choice for Bruce too.

But Damian takes us back to the heart and soul of the dynamic duo. A young boy with a dead family, and a young man with a mission that’s too big for him.

Despite the differences, Dick is working to help Damian in the same way that Bruce worked to help him. And Damian, a wildly different person than Dick, still has really wonderful moments of giving Dick exactly the advice he needs to hear. Their partnership isn’t quite the same as Bruce and Dick’s (Dick and Damian are honestly much less damaged, comparably), but it’s closer than the others imo.

Damian and Dick purposefully take the original duo and flip it directly on its head. The exact opposite inside the same frame. They really felt like a new era. The perfect circle. If only we got a little more time before the close.

[dickheadcanons]

ok look i get why people like to imagine a relationship between jason and damian. the violence and the league connections are very surface level but juicy details, and if you ignore everything about their personalities or their character arcs, I can see why it might sound cute. But it ignores the very basic fact that Damian does not and would not respect Jason at all.

At the end of the day, Damian is a child who was taught to kill at a young age and goes through an arc of discovering that there's another way. A harder, but ultimately more satisfying way to defeat his enemies. Jason being someone who backslides into killing, who wasnt taught or forced to kill but then starts killing because he wasn't good enough to survive using nonlethal methods (not even my words; that's what damian thinks!) is just not gonna be very impressive to damian wayne. what about jason would damian respect? he's a grown man trying to be who damian used to be, only hes not even good at it because the jokers still alive

[dickheadcanons]

Your brain is literally gynormous. Do you think Damian's and Dick's relationship is paternal? Because, as someone who has actually had to raise their sibling (do not recommend) it looks more like a guy that had too much in his plate trying to be the best caregiver he could, but not really being a parent, if that makes sense. I feel like the idea of him wanting to adopt him feels like kind of a retcon, couldn't really see it in the og run. But of course, it could be because it's not exactly the same as my experience (abusive father, incapable mother, yknow the drill). What do you think? All your posts are so good.

Also while you're at it, what do you think of Dick as a parent? Some elseworlds have played with the concept, and main continuity did something too with Olivia but T*m Tayl*r fucked that up too. I also wonder how Damian would be as a dad, but I don't think I've ever seen any stories with it.

omg anon thank you and thank you for asking!! this is literally one of my favorite topics!! i was thinking about making a post on this and now you gave me the excuse for it!!

Long story short, I don't think that “parental” is a binary thing. I mean, I know several bio-parents who are just guys with too much on their plates, trying to be the best they can, you know? And people can see parent figures in all kinds of relationships that aren’t blood or traditional moms/dads, especially with people who didn't know each other from birth. There are a million ways to be parented, and a million ways to act as a parent.

The way I think about it is, is Dick Damain's John Grayson? No, I don't think so.

But is Dick Damian's Bruce Wayne? Yes. Totally. Absolutely.

More under the cut bc I have a lot of thoughts.

I think to talk about Dick and Damian, we have to start with Dick and Bruce. So much about Dick and Damian is a reflection of the original Dynamic Duo, and I think that's very much the case with this element as well. From the start of their very long comic history, Dick and Bruce have been dancing around their relationship. We get early comics that say they're "like" father and son, we have Bruce saying he couldn't care about Dick more than if he was Bruce's son, but we also have places where they call each other their best friends, where they act more like brothers, etc etc.

When it comes to who our parents are, I think there is the responsibility, and the result. Certain people have the responsibility, the duty, to be our parents, and sometimes (because death or illness or being shitty people), they aren't able to meet those responsibilities. That never removes the responsibility; they don't stop being the parent. But they aren't able to create the result of us becoming good stable adults. That's where other people can step in, where the parental figure appears, and those are the people that we actually point to when we say "they made me the person I am today."

In fandom, we see a lot of Dick not wanting Bruce to replace his father, of him asking not to be adopted. I think this is a fine characterization that works with who Dick is, but Bruce is actually the one to say that he is not going to replace Dick's father. He says it completely unprompted, too. This is withholding the responsibility of being Dick's parent from Bruce, keeping him at a distance and reserving it as an honor for someone who can't hold it anymore, even as Bruce demands responsibility for literally everything else about Dick.

And I think that it's very telling of what Bruce's idea of a father is. The thing about having a dead parent at a young age is that the person of your parents is still tangled in the role of parent in your life; Mom is mom, not Martha, and because she's dead, the image of both Martha and "mom" is frozen. For Bruce, the relationship of father and son is frozen in the relationship of specifically his father and him. Of course Bruce is not Dick's father; Bruce himself is so different from what his conception of a father is. And as a fellow son, for Bruce, someone who just got back from 7 years abroad studying to be Batman, for whom the nearly 20 year old wound is still fresh, the idea of even wanting another father doesn't make sense, particularly for a boy that Bruce identifies with so hard that he becomes the third person ever to know who Batman is.

This looming memory is even worse when it's Dick's turn to be Batman. While Bruce looks at Dick and sees the memory of his own loss, the shadow of his own grief, Dick is looking at Damian and seeing Bruce. Dick knows very well who Damian lost; Dick is grieving what Damian lost more than Damian is. Bruce couldn't conceive of replacing a father, but Dick is struggling to imagining himself replacing Bruce at his job, much less who he was in his personal relationships.

But even if Damian isn't Dick's responsibility, Dick doesn't hesitate to care about Damian's future. "Who's going to save him if we don't?" At the start of the DickBats era, Dick isn't looking at Damian as a family member, really. He's looking at Damian as a victim, abet a very involved, very dangerous one. It's how Bruce looked at Dick too, before he had any reason to know that this kid would become something more to him. But, like Bruce, what Dick does to save Damian is bring him into the thing that is most precious to him; Batman. The mission. Saving people. A way to live in the world.

I know saying someone is the Batman to their Robin is like, a joke at this point. Something unbelievably cheesy. But you google "iconic duos" and Batman and Robin are one of the first responses. There's a reason for the joke. So imagine you are Robin, and your Batman is dead. And you have to go and find a new partner. Dick making Damian his Robin is heavy, just as heavy to me as adoption papers. Bruce made Dick his partner without any idea of what that meant. Dick, and the audience, had 70 years of expectation on what Dick and Damian could be. Dick making Damian Robin was a very specific claim, far stronger imo than just claiming him as a son would have been.

Because, to be honest (and speak to your other question), I don't think Dick thinks a lot about being a parent. I don't really think it's that important to him. Dick is a leader, a mentor, he deals with a ton of teenagers and kids through his vigilante work, he goes to Tim's sidekick parent's meetings and takes Jason skiing and more than that, he's also young. He's in his 20s. He should be at the club. I think he probably thinks he'll have kids in an abstract way, but it's not something he's looking for, consciously or unconsciously. He's not searching for connection, or to fix his mistakes or his past, the things that lead Bruce to adopting sidekicks. He'd be a great dad, and I think we see him being pretty good with his Elseworlds kids, but Dick is a very practical person, and him taking a kid in (vs finding somewhere else they can go) is not really the practical choice.

Except for one kid. There's just been one kid with legitimately no where else to go, where Dick is truly the only option, because going home meant only bad things for him. Dick made Damian part of his family in the ways that mattered to them both in that moment. With their lives, adoption doesn't really make a huge material difference on custody (if Damian wanted to leave, Dick couldn't have stopped him; Damian has access to basically unlimited money and can feed and clothe and wash himself. and possibly already has a phd.), and Dick wanted Damian to choose, anyway. If I recall correctly, Dick says he didn't think about taking Damian with him until Bruce comes back. He thought about taking Damian with him, thought that Damian might be better with Dick (his partner!!!!) than even with Bruce, his dad, the person Dick loves so much, only in the face of them being separated.

Meanwhile Damian, for all his blustering about how Dick needs to "earn" his respect, warms up to Dick startlingly quickly. For Damian, who had never known a father, who in his initial run hadn't even known his mother for more than two years, whose other male family is Ra’s al Ghul, his father is Batman. Even in Tomasi's kinder depiction of Damian's childhood, Damian only knows the Bat. And when he meets Bruce, the first thing he expresses is disappointment. Bruce the man is underwhelming and then goes and dies. So much for the mythic hero!

And then he meets Dick. Who manages to teach Damian something, who doesn't discount his skills even when he's wrong. Who proves that he is better at being Batman than Damian, and shows that he wants Damian around. And, even more importantly, who doesn't die. Dick is stable in a world constantly in flux. Damian screws up a lot in that run, and he leaves for long stretches of it, but Dick is always there when he gets back. There's no blame here, but the truth is that Dick is the one who stays.

Bruce was Damian's father, but what does that mean to someone whose never met a father at all? Bruce might have tried to connect with Damian before he died, but he doesn’t do it in a way that works. He doesn’t give Damian trust, he doesn’t encourage him in the ways Damian finds important…the first person to do that is Dick. Dick gives Damian responsibility, makes him part of the team. It could be argued that Damian didn’t deserve it, but we’re not talking about deserving. We’re talking about what worked. It sounds like as good an idea as making a tiny 8 year old acrobat a sidekick, but it undeniably worked for both Damian and Dick. Does that mean that either of these relationships were parental in the way that we think of it in the real world, in the way that a child psychologist would say is good and healthy? I have no idea. But they are the most parental in the absence of any other parents, and I think that means a lot.

Unfortunately, we don't get to actually see the dissolution of Dick and Damian's partnership. DC conveniently skips over showing us Bruce coming back and Dick becoming Nightwing again; preNew 52, Dick is still Batman with Damian even when Bruce returns, and in the New 52, he's been Batman "Before" and we don't really see the end, just a vague aftermath. But if it did take that kind of change to make them realize their relationship had a flavor of "parent and child", had the makings of something like a father and son, well, they'd just be following in the original Batman's footprints.

[dickheadcanons]

So the timeline is contradictory in many places, but what makes the most sense to me is:

Dick is fairly newly 9 y/o when his parents die. He meets a 26 year old Bruce, who has been Batman for 1 year.

He is Robin for nearly a decade, until he’s fired at 18 y/o

Jason meets Bruce at 13, and is Robin til he’s 15. He’s 5 years younger than Dick. Note that he is 23 years younger than 36 y/o Bruce, a gap that suits their more parental relationship.

Tim is 13 y/o when he finds Dick again. He and Dick met when he was 2 y/o and the Grayson’s death is his earliest memory (to the point where he thought it was a dream for many years). They have a 7 year difference.

Tim is Robin until he’s 17 and Damian becomes Robin at 10 y/o. Dick is 24-25, and Jason is 19-20.

This allows a couple of fun things. The first is that Jason was a shitty teenager in UTRH which is just kind of funny. The second is that the Damian-Dick-Bruce parallel can exist, but also a Damian-Tim-Dick parallel, which I think is almost juicier. Dick was the perfect older brother to Tim, and yet Tim and Damian’s relationship is nothing like that. Tim is no longer Robin, but he’s also no longer the baby, which is almost harder. And I think is a reminder of how tiny Damian is at introduction. Tim is on the verge of high school when he becomes Robin. Damian is in 5th grade. And Dick is 25 trying to stop them from fighting.

[dickheadcanons]

Batman and Robin 2009 #2

Something that's really important for Dick and Damian's relationship is that Dick didn’t connect with Damian by teaching him the power of love and hugging him all the time or whatever. Damian is a ten year old who was fundamentally raised to be extremely good at his profession. Dick, who we must remember was also a child raised to be extremely good at his profession, does not try to tell Damian that being good at his job is wrong or that it’s not what children should be thinking about. Because how reductive and condescending would that be? Damian would hate someone who told him that he shouldn’t or couldnt be a fighter because of his age. And he would never be able to connect with whats "right or wrong" for a person of his age, because his entire frame of reference is about what he's capable of.

What Dick gives Damian is the understanding that being the best doesn't mean being alone. They can work together. That accepting help and having a partner is okay. That he can be wrong or still have room to grow, that he could get knocked down and that Dick would still wait for him to get up. They connect because Dick can still teach him something.

Batman #688

[dickheadcanons]

Tbh my ideal backstory for Tim is that his earliest memory is of watching Dick Grayson watching his parents fall, the screaming and the crying, but he’s also only 2 years old. So he can’t totally remember what he’s remembering. But when he’s a little older, his parents are taking about being there, really being there when the famous Grayson’s fell. And the whole thing sounds so familiar. So Tim goes home and watches every single Flying Grayson’s YouTube clip and random tv spot he can get his hands on. And a lot of those become part of his memory, like a story that’s been told to you so many times.

[dickheadcanons]

Dick and Bruce's problem is that Dick knows Bruce better than anyone. everyone knows it, including Dick and Bruce. Dick knows Bruce better than any of the other bats, the other Robins, better than Clark, even Alfred

The one thing Dick doesn't fully know is how important Dick himself is to Bruce. And for Bruce, Dick is so fundamental he doesn’t even need to think about it. He’s like his right leg. And Dick knows him. How could he question such a thing that Bruce isn’t even questioning. It's not possible for him to get such a core thing wrong.

[dickheadcanons]

Bats and Killing

Something that I think bat fandom doesn't separate well enough is the difference between someone dying in a fight, and killing someone as a punishment.

When Dick beat the Joker to death in Last Laugh, he wasn't upset because the Joker died while he was trying to save Tim. He was upset with himself because he though Tim was already dead; the violence was pure anger. Pure punishment. He wasn't protecting anyone.

Same with Blockbuster. Blockbuster was making threats, yes, but Dick wasn't pushing someone out of the way of the bullet. Catalina killed Blockbuster executioner style in Nightwing (1996) #93. He's unarmed, laying on the floor, already had the shit beaten out of him....and he dies from a bullet to the back of the head.

On the other hand, the much discussed issue of Nightwing (1996) #146, where Dick lets a man get electrocuted in order to save a baby, doesn't effect him very much. Because they were literally in the air, and he had to hurt that guy so he could pluck an infant out of the air.

Like, people have always died in comic. Heroes watch bad guys die pretty often in the course of an active fight. But they're supposed to be the best of the best; killing someone who is unarmed and not actively threatening anyone is so different.

It's the difference between Bruce leaving Joker to die in the helicopter in Death in the Family because he doesn't have time to save him, and Jason demanding Bruce not lift a finger as the Joker is shot in the head. Regardless of whether you think the character deserves to die, or whether they were right to do it, not acknowledging just how different these things are makes the whole conversation pointless.

[dickheadcanons]

A general reminder that Tim is canonically the oldest Robin…. Dick becomes Robin at 8, 9, or 12, depending on continuity, Jason at 12 or 13, Damian at 10, and Tim firmly at 13 before his training even starts….

[dickheadcanons]

the secret key to writing in character dick grayson is that dick does not get enjoyment out of relaxing or doing fun things. its a hard mindset to understand because it's the opposite of what you or i as fandom people experience, but Dick is never shown to do things for fun. if he's watching a movie or playing a game, it's almost always to spend time with other people, not because that's his impulse (and lowkey he sometimes ruins it for other people by never being able to turn off his brain)

now, this is not to say that he's unhappy, or that he doesn't experience happiness in his day to day. but he doesnt get that from the things that we, as comic book readers and fanfiction writers, get enjoyment from.

Dick is the definition of a workaholic. His only enjoyment comes from a job well done, helping people, and sometimes adrenaline (as his only real canon hobby is...skydiving)

Further reading: Flash Plus Nightwing (1997) (hating on the Hardy Boys)

Nightwing (2016) #43 (being unable to take a night off)

Nightwing (1996) #140 (skydiving)

The Titans (1999) #3 (being a terrible film watcher)