#And Bruce can’t ever let anyone be his singular priority anymore

[desperatecheesecubes]

This is such a good example of their relationship: Bruce saves Jason at the cost of himself, Jason attempts to get a rise out of Bruce to deflect his own vulnerability, realizes that Bruce is Not OK (TM) and immediately attempts to bridge the gap that he himself perpetuates, but Bruce has already moved to his next target and just leaves Jason there.

[bigskydreaming]

The really great thing about allowing Dick and Jason to have a good relationship before A Death in the Family IMO, is that it opens up sooooo many more possibilities for AFTER Jason’s return.

For example:

Imagine a scenario where Bruce is gone for a week or so, the ever so useful “there was an offworld mission or something” excuse will do. And during that time, Dick and Jason are patrolling and working together....and they have an encounter with a particularly nasty villain or serial killer or whatever you want to go with. The bottom line is something happens during that particular adventure of theirs that leaves them shaken enough that they agree not to tell Bruce about it (believing the guy is dead or something), and then they try and put it behind them and never speak of it again.

Except then cut to a few years later, after Jason has come back but before he’s reconciled with the family, things are still strained and tense when their paths so much as cross, but with added angst because an actual brotherly bond torn asunder by death, trauma and lots of changes gives you way more fodder to work with IMO than the singular facet of Dick feeling guilty for not knowing Jason better - I mean, you have to at least admit that does limit your options considerably, in terms of their interactions, BUT I DIGRESS.

But anyway, Jason doesn’t have anything against Dick in the way he does against Bruce, other than accepting Tim into the fold (which he does understand in a way, because its not all that different from when Dick accepted him into the family and Robin role despite having plenty of legitimate reasons to be a lot more reticent about that).....but they avoid each other because its just kinda painful, the fact that they don’t KNOW each other anymore, not the way they used to understand each other in ways even Bruce couldn’t always follow or understand. Plus Jason’s attack on Tim, even leaning on the Pit madness as an altered state of mind mitigating circumstance....like, that’s still a hard thing to get past, one brother being like “Hey, lets do movie night tomorrow and totes just skip over the awkwardness of me just coming from hanging out with Tim who still has bandages on account of you trying to kill him the other day”.....its not the easiest thing to navigate, yeah? 

And the fact that while Jason does understand its not fair to expect Dick to have like, iced out this kid he didn’t go seeking out or anything, just for the sake of Jason’s memory.....that understanding comes and goes with how rational or not he’s feeling any particular day, because he GETS it, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it and he is after all only nineteen, and capable of bouts of pettiness, lol.

So even without Dick barely knowing Jason or Jason hating or resenting Dick, there’s still plenty of roadblocks in the way of an easy brotherly reunion, plenty of understandable and valid emotions and priorities and choices that make everything a confusing mess and create conflicts of interest and just a general miasma of uncertainty where its like, even though they miss each other and would love to get back their sibling bond, they don’t even know where to begin trying to go about that, you know? And throw in the state of affairs between Bruce and Jason still, which can be summed up as picture the Cold War, but now when you picture ‘Cold’ think ‘Ice Age’ and you’re almost there.

Like. That is the Mt. Saint Helens of roadblocks right there. A big ass volcano sitting in the middle of the road and just cuz its dormant now doesn’t mean that it couldn’t at any minute erupt and blow its top and destroy everything within a several hundred mile radius, and that’s just before Bruce and Jason REALLY get steamed, like, that’s just their warm-up.

So. Y’know. Difficulties. They abound.

But now throw in secrets from the time before Jason died that only the two of them know and they never told anyone else, and adventures they had when it was just the two of them, Jason visiting Dick in Bludhaven or Dick enabling Jason in playing hooky in Gotham because at that time Dick rotates methods of pissing Bruce off and that’s his go-to move for Tuesdays, and crimes they solved together like Dick was working on an investigation and let Jason weigh in to practice his deductive reasoning without Bruce and thus impress him with how much he’s improved. 

(My personal headcanon of brotherly advice Dick imparts to Jason on how to deal with Bruce is him telling Jason “when dealing with a man who thinks holding impossible expectations IS taking it easy on someone, he doesn’t understand the question, can you repeat it please....like, in that case there’s no shame in stacking the deck a little, whenever that’s possible.’)

Anyway, point being.....all you really need is one singular bad guy that only Dick and Jason faced, together, when they were younger. Someone particularly nasty or sadistic, enough to disturb even them despite how much they’ve seen and lived. And who for whatever reason, both of them believed to be gone for good, maybe they thought he fell off a cliff into a conveniently placed body of water where no body could be found or blah blah blah look you’re smart cookies, you get it.

Take those few simple ingredients, chuck them in a metaphorical bowl and stir them all together and then leave on low heat to simmer.....

And voila. Just like that, you have a ready-made situation that forces Dick and Jason, specifically, to work together despite how tense and fractured things are between them, and needing to find a way to repair their brotherly bond and figure out how to work together the way they used to.......thanks to everyone’s favorite Tropey McTroperson wherein a villain most foul, long believed dead, seems to be back and up to his old villainy.....and only those two who faced him before know how to stop him.....and despite all the reasons they come up with in their heads for why teaming up together now is just a recipe for disaster and doomed to failure, this is on them. 

They were the ones who stopped this guy before, they were the ones who mistakenly believed he was dead and the threat he posed was gone for good.....which makes his dastardly return....dun dun dun.....unfinished business for them. Its personal. 

All the completely valid, well-reasoned and justifiable arguments for why its absolutely bonkers for them to try and make like the Dukes of Hazzard on this case as if they’re not at least a little bit miffed at each other for various things involving killing certain people and not killing certain people and trying to kill certain people and being totally unreasonable about the trying to kill certain people.....none of that is enough to get in the way of them doing their best to put all that aside for now and team up to stop this guy for good, the way they should have the first time.

Because let’s face it. One of the definitive areas of common ground that Dick and Jason share is when things are personal....they take it VERY personally. And when they feel responsible for something, like, you could get God on the phone to personally deliver absolution and assure them it wasn’t their fault, and they’d still be like “LOL yeah, okay, that’s a good one ‘God.’ Didn’t know all-knowing deities could be super hella wrong about things but hey, everyone’s allowed an off day I guess.”

Anyway.

Two brothers estranged due to extreme circumstances, trauma, loss, grief, blame, the completely unreasonable and frankly just rude passage of time, and assorted other reasons ranging from “you stole my favorite weapon-Bruce-definitely-didnt-know-I-had-and-kept-as-a-souvenir when I was fourteen and you STILL haven’t given it back” to “you can’t just shoot someone as your way of ending an uncomfortable conversation, Jason”......

But force them together via external situations or shared goals, and you have the perfect excuse to sidestep a lot of the more impossible to navigate conflicts born of comic book writers who don’t freaking know how to CHILL when piling on the family dysfunction......and engineer a situation where they pretty much HAVE to retrace previous footsteps, comb their memories for every detail they can recall about that case and in the process remember how close they were then, fall back into old patterns and rhythms while working together....and various other things that give you everything you need to transplant them mentally and emotionally to a time before all those conflicts and problems created by other people, not them, when things were....better. 

While through the mere fact they’re successfully able to fall back into old habits and patterns of working together at all.....you can put them face to face with evidence that despite how much they’ve both changed and everything that’s come between them, they are still fundamentally the same people they always were, and the shared experiences and common ground and all of that which enabled them to become brothers in the first place....its all still there, still able to be brought back out and dusted off and then used to forge a new brother bond that takes into account the ways they’ve changed since they last truly knew each other.

And none of that erases or solves the various complications and conflicts and issues that do still exist in the present, because of everything that’s happened in the past few years and the things they’ve all done.....BUT, it allows for Dick and Jason at least to rebuild or find a new, sturdy foundation on which to stand and plant themselves before wading back into all of that.....so at least now they do so with firmer footing, and with a clear direction and goal in mind.....navigating the emotional minefield from their respect opposing sides.....and aiming to meet somewhere in the middle.

And then with one family bond rejuvenated, revitalized and consciously reaffirmed by both of them......then its that much easier to turn their attentions to the rest of the family, one by one, and repair or forge those bonds through a concerted effort....not just Jason on the outside looking in, or members of the family on the inside looking out at him like he’s a poor, lost soul they need to save (I can’t help but picture Jason upchucking at the very thought, eww, how dare they)......but rather, a mix of both. Jason making his way back into the family via walking side by side with an ally on the inside who is still keeping pace with him so they can present a united front while they work towards a common goal they both want.....a family that acts like a family instead of like.....idk, y’know, that thing they act like in the comics that’s called ‘a family’ but also, they all hate each other and wish everyone else would die except for the times when they forget the others even exist at all.

Anyway. That of course, is just one angle that can be taken with them, out of the many possibilities that arise just from letting them have a good relationship before Jason died.....and all the shared history, in-jokes, secrets, camaraderie, grief, etc that comes with that.

My point is just.....I talk a lot rant a lot about the fanon and fic tendency to paint them as having barely known each other back then and with it largely blamed on Dick having been a stand-offish asshole because he has a chip on his shoulder named Bruce and its not a chip at all its actually Mt. Everest, yup, the whole dang mountain, yetis and all.......

And then I kinda just....keep it there on that and how much it bugs, because, y’know. It bugs.

BUT.

In keeping tunnel-vision locked on that and nothing else, I’ve never really expanded on the other byproduct of this fanon tendency that I think is worth considering:

And that’s the fact that this angle, this story? The one where Dick was a douche and Jason doesn’t really like him because of that until Dick apologizes for being a douche back then and begs for a second chance to do better, etc, etc? Its been told. Literally hundreds of fic writers have written that story by this point, and in the process limited...confined themselves, to this one singular possible dynamic between Dick and Jason when the thing is, like....that’s pretty much the ONLY story and angle that can result from Dick and Jason barely having a relationship before he died.....basically just various executions of acknowledging their previous lack of a relationship, assigning blame, making apologies and granting forgiveness, and then from there building a relationship from scratch. 

Obviously, people come up with unique spins on this all the time, I’m not saying the stories that do this are all exactly the same....just that there’s an innate ceiling to that particular premise, because when that specific dynamic of ‘no relationship really existed before’ is your one and only starting point......there’s only so many places you can go from that, and wind up in the present where you then proceed to have them make a relationship for the first time.

BUT. But but but but but.

The second you allow for the possibility that Dick and Jason DID have a relationship before ADITF, and it just happened largely ‘offscreen’ due to the fact that no solo Nightwing or Robin titles existed back then so there was nowhere to showcase just the two of them together......

You open up like.....so many more possibilities and angles and avenues and directions.

Because the thing is, y’know how so many people in fandom pride themselves on not feeling constrained by canon, or better yet, speak fondly about the idea of just taking a flamethrower to the whole damn thing and cackling maniacally while shouting “This one’s for Bruce/Dick/Jason/Tim/Cass/whomever your fave fam member of choice might be”?

Well. I mean. *spreads hands*

The second you flip the switch from “Dick and Jason barely knew each other and mostly didn’t like each other, this is the only canon that exists despite the fact that we just made it up because we could and canon can suck it”.....to.....”Dick and Jason did have a relationship and were close before Jason’s death, its just we never saw it develop on the page due to logistical constraints”......

Suddenly.....you have THREE WHOLE YEARS of possible interaction that you can literally cram full of WHATEVER YOU WANT, and canon can’t say a damn thing about it because its Schrodinger’s Adventures of Nightwing and Little Wing......without any canon viewing point set up to observe these interactions and thus force them into a singular form that you either like or you hate and set on fire.....those Adventures can look like aaaaaaaaaaaanything you want, and canon can kiss your patootie if it doesn’t like it!

Its three whole years of “lost family history” just waiting to be mined for all kinds of treasure, and you can unlock it in any number of ways once Jason returns, to any number of potential end points.

They could have faced villains together just by themselves during that time, they could have teamed up on investigations. They could have had sleepovers, Dick could have helped him cram for tests or covered for him when he just needed to take a mental health day because dealing with Gotham’s upper class can be exhausting and he doesn’t know how to explain that to Bruce in a way that won’t just lead to Bruce saying “I know, I get it, I hate it too” even though the ways in which its exhausting to Bruce and the ways its exhausting to Jason are not the same and not interchangeable.....but he doesn’t have to explain that to Dick, because Dick is closer to an understanding of it, he’s been there for a version of that himself, and they were assholes to him because of his lower class and unorthodox upbringing too.

You could have Jason tagging along on various official or unofficial Titans missions or just meet-ups, the way Jason teamed up with them for the Brother Blood story without Bruce ever knowing. Dick’s kid brother that nobody minded him bringing because they all adored him, and thus just by having him and Dick get along, you open the door to Jason having established dynamics and history with any number of Dick’s friends, allowing for a wide range of potential reactions to Jason and his Red Hood persona after he comes back.

You could have Jason being really invested in his brother’s relationship in Kori because he thinks Kori is just the fucking coolest, or you can have Jason secretly shipping his brother and Babs and thinking they’d be a much better match but keeping quiet about his opinion as long as Dick’s happy with Kori. You could have Jason panicked and turning to Dick for help and advice the first time he asks a date to one of his school’s formal dances, because he’s pretty sure he’d be able to provide actual proof that spontaneous human combustion IS possible, if he had to ask Bruce for romantic advice, like, aside from the fact that he’s seen flies trapped in amber whose relationships appear to advance at a faster pace than Bruce’s does with Selina, that’s his DAD, eww, he can’t ask his DAD to fill him in on what’s normal to expect and likely to be expected of him on this kind of/level of dating, but Dick? He can go to Dick for that, and imagine the adorbs potential. 

And the likelihood of various Titans coming up with the flimsiest of excuses to keep popping into the room in order to spy on the adorbs-ness, and the literal natural disaster that is the combination of Wally, Roy, Garth, Gar and Joey all trying to be ‘helpful’ and offer their own dating tips to Jason, while Donna and Lilith kick back with some popcorn while taking shots at the various boys’ expertise and credentials in this matter, if they’re gonna be offering advice to an impressionable young teen who doesn’t deserve to be saddled with having to learn from THEIR mistakes.

And on and on and on. Three whole years you can fill with any manner of adventures, secrets, shared stories, confessed ambitions and hopes and dreams for the future, commiserating on the parts of growing up in the spotlight in Gotham that Bruce just can’t relate to, sharing things from their pasts that they’ve never even told Bruce about purely because there are some things that are just easier to tell or talk about with a sibling close to your age than to your father.

But you see what I’m saying? Rounding Dick and Jason’s early relationship down to the barest bones until its practically being non-existent......that makes for a paragraph or at most a chapter dedicated to covering that ground, something that everyone pretty much expects to pop up in a story in order to address that history they have, or lack there of. And thus its never really a surprise to see it, there’s not a ton to take away from it, and it oftentimes ends up kinda just being filler despite even the best writers’ best attempts to make it engaging.....because there’s just not a lot to say about a relationship whose defining aspect is it didn’t really exist, and I’m pretty sure most writers would love to simply skip past that entirely and not even bother addressing it because it FEELS like writing filler a lot of times, I imagine. But at the same time, you kinda HAVE to include it and can’t really come up with a way to just leave it out entirely, without having a gaping hole in the meat of your actual story that explains how Dick and Jason got from there to here. Its a part of the story that everybody already knows, or expects.....but still demands being included, because canon just skipped over that entirely so there’s nothing from canon to even reference when shifting Dick and Jason into the kind of dynamic you want them to have or grow after his return.

And so its a paragraph or two paragraphs or a whole chapter that nobody really ever wants to write, because there’s not a whole lot of new ground to cover with it, and its kinda a cause for resentment, being stuck having to include it in every story covering Jason’s return anyway, even though there’s only limited ways you can stretch and exercise your creativity and expand on that particular angle.

But with Dick and Jason having an actual relationship pre-ADITF that is filled with nothing but whatever you choose to fill it with, whenever you feel like delving into it or dusting off an old memory or vacation or want to reveal some long-buried secret only the two of them know.....the sky’s the limit. Instead of that standard stock paragraph/chapter rehashing the take on that particular story that everyone already knows but narrative structure forces everyone to shoehorn in somewhere anyway.....there’s more than enough in those three lost/secret years of family history, especially specific to Dick and Jason, to serve as the basis for entire fics exploring that time, digging up secrets or mysteries that originated in that time, reminiscing about that time or diving back into existing dynamics with people Jason met through Dick during that time without having to write Jason meeting them or only getting to know them for the first time as an adult.

(Omggggggg, imagine a story that’s just Dick and Jason and Uncle Clark, or Dick and Jason and Aunt Diana, and like, Bruce is like I GO OUT OF TOWN FOR ONE NIGHT AND YOU SOMEHOW END UP WITH MY KIDS HELPING YOU FIGHT AN ALIEN/DEMON INVASION ON SOME OTHER PLANET/DIMENSION??? WHAT THE HELL!)

In conclusion, you hate canon and how much it fucks with the Batfamily? Totally with you. But this is the one period in these characters’ lives where canon doesn’t actually weigh you down or cage you in if you don’t want it to....instead it gives you the gift of being whatever the hell you want it to be, just so long as you make sure everyone ends where they need to be by the time ADITF happens. (Assuming you don’t just end up going full AU by that point since there’s no law saying Jason HAS to die or else the DC universe will destabilize and implode in upon itself).

Anyway, I’ve waxed poetic about this long enough, I think, and without a single line of poetry to show for it, but that’s for the best. Me to poetry is like a butcher to a carcass, but only if this particular butcher is very bad at his job and always makes a mess everywhere, and it just never ends well for anybody.

And now, as usual, I end an overly long post that exhausted my brain cells and made me sputter to a stop just before I come up with an ending to the post that actually makes sense and isn’t just me going, hey you know what, maybe there is something to be said after all for the Sopranos’ sty - 

[kegareki]

dameamaryllis replied to your post “The video opens to the Five Nights At Freddy’s title screen and a...”

Oh, I love this! May we know more about Jaz, pretty pretty please? (Does Jason still dies? Please say no!)

it’s ME, do you think that i could let jason die if i could help it??

jason has a much larger weakness to mother figures than jaz does. jaz is a lot less willing to extend any amount of trust towards possible bio mom sheila--which is good, considering that if they went along with it with their guard down, they would’ve been lured into a trap and brutally murdered by the joker. no thanks!

as you can imagine, jason is more well-adjusted than in other canons because he was not killed or almost killed by the joker at 16.

jaz and jason are robin at the same time. it was suggested that they have separate codenames, but this was shot down because they both want to be robin.

(”do you want one of us to be batboy?” jason demands. “i’m not gonna be batboy.”

“i don’t wanna be batboy, either,” jaz says. “that’s the name of a reject robin.”

“the name of a shitty bargain-bin robin.”

“technically, i am getting a deal on robins,” bruce says.

“you can be batboy then!”)

because no one has an untimely death, the role of robin does not pass over to tim during a time of desperate need for a stabilizing influence on batman, and therefore jason doesn’t resent bruce for replacing him or tim for being his replacement. tim becomes robin in the same way that everyone else does: bruce sees a tiny child in need, sees that he is in a position to help them, and goes “oh, no.”

jason and jaz respectfully retire from the position of robin and move cities entirely to help dick over in bludhaven.

(”WHAT IS A GOTHAM GOLDEN CHILD DOING IN BLUDHAVEN,” someone tweets in distress. accompanying their tweet is a photo of jaz, who is sitting on the other side of their classroom.

someone else responds with: “grayson went to bludhaven around the time bruce wayne picked up the todds & bruce wayne is apparently in the process of adopting another kid rn. bludhaven might just b where gotham kids go to escape their adopted sibs”

the original poster replies to this, shaken, “are you telling me that gothamites view bludhaven as a vacation spot? this is the most terrifying thing anyone has ever said to me”)

more under the cut because this answer is getting Very Long

jaz’s vigilante name is nightingale, which immediately pegs them as a double-act with nightwing, but i wanted a bird name and if leliana could use the name nightingale, so can i

they’ve got the same sort of blue stripe that nightwing’s got going on, as well as the domino mask, but their outfit as a whole is more reminiscent of red hood’s--suit beneath a jacket and trousers, belt, boots, etc. they use escrima sticks like nightwing does, but they transition comfortably between impact and edged weapons, with the same sort of “if they don’t go down when beaten, they’ll go down when bleeding” mindset that jason has

jaz, dick, and bruce are all similar in that they all go where the need is. sometimes you have to make a choice on what thing or person needs you more, because you can’t take care of everyone and everything at the same time. you can’t. something will always be your priority.

in ‘verses where it’s just dick who’s trying to meet people’s needs, he gets so strained, because he can’t give all of himself to everyone who needs something from him. jaz helps, though. they can go where he can’t. like--between damian and tim, dick’s gonna go after damian. damian’s a kid and dick’s responsible for him. and jaz can go after tim in his stead

in one of my aus, where jaz lands in an alternate universe where there’s no native jaz and therefore everything went predictably to shit:

"Dick is the only Robin who made it to eighteen," Jaz says. "Have you thought about what you'll be after?"

Tim pauses, expression shifting. "Not really," he admits. "I haven't needed to. Until now, I guess."

Jaz puts a hand on his shoulder. "Hey. Even if Damian does become Robin, that doesn't mean you're being kicked out. Damian is a ten-year-old who's been trained by the League of Assassins. He needs to be supervised, and you don't anymore. And besides," they add, "you're not the only one whose partner is being stolen. We could team up."

He smiles hesitantly. "I haven't patrolled with you yet. Let's start there."

(i gave up on understanding the dc timeline so the ages i go by are “if damian is 10, tim is 18, jason is 22, and dick is 25″ since i think that dick is 28ish when damian is 13?)

dick, jason, and jaz are all pretty tight-knit with each other, but their next favorite batkids are all different? dick is close with babs and damian, jason is close with cass, jaz is close with tim...

ALSO if it was not obvious, jaz/dick is a thing. generally i do not write romantic relationships involving si/ocs, because i am aromantic, but i make an exception for dick grayson. (”you are my only exception” by paramore plays in the distance) they’re very cute together and playful and fun and sweet. i have a soulbond au where they’re soulmates. i almost never write soulmate aus. that is how much i love them

more things i want to say but that i’ve run out of steam for paragraphs about:

jaz adopts a black cat and names him catman. they take snaps of him zooming around their apartment with the caption “nya nya nya nya catman”

they are the singular robin whose favorite hero/vigilante is batman. however it should be noted that bruce wayne is not their favorite; batman is. the absurdity of a growling man of the night accompanied by a brightly-colored acrobatic child is so utterly charming

in jazverse canon, jaz is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns and tim is trans and uses he/him pronouns. bruce wayne has not messed up their pronouns Once and, when other people misgender his kids, he always makes sure to say The Correct Pronouns Or Terminology in his response. #BruceWayneSaysTransRights is a real hashtag

jason and jaz are protective of each other. i’m not saying that jaz would’ve decked sheila in the face, but i’m also not saying that they wouldn’t

the imagery of jason and jaz attending gotham academy is so funny. like. they’re from fuckin crime alley and then they get adopted by bruce wayne and now they go to the Elite Private Academy of gotham where everyone is rich and snobby. they read the lord of the flies for english class and agree that the events of the novel are made possible only by virtue of being populated entirely by rich white cis boys. their discussion immediately goes to “so if that happened with our class, who would die first” because, to quote jason todd, “even if no one tried asserting dominance, these kids have the survival instincts of a toddler”

jaz’s full name is jasmine and their nicknames are jaz and jazzy. dick calls them hummingbird sometimes because they’re short and have adhd. also because they looked Utterly Betrayed by dick and jason both having -bird nicknames but not them