#cuz from experience i know people who didnt grow up somewhere where this is common are appalled | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bigskydreaming · 4 years

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I’m literally in love with the way you write Dick and Jason’s dynamic

Thanks, glad to hear that! Personal preferences aside, I honestly do think it just opens up SO many more potential stories if you go with the idea that they did have a brotherly relationship before Jason died, just they didnt get together around Bruce because Dick was still hoping Bruce would make the first move in reaching out to him. Rather than just stick with the usual assumption that because it wasn’t seen on the page, they had barely any interactions and both resented each other for various reasons.

But those reasons all trace back to Bruce, and if you look at them as two people who are united by the common experience of being fish out of water, adapting to the same environment after coming from DRAMATICALLY different origins, able to connect over that and understand each other in a way nobody else really can because nobody else has ever really had to straddle two worlds as definitively as Dick and Jason had to in their formative years....

Like, the big sticking point for me in the Dick vs Jason: The Grudge theory was just that....at the end of the day, these are two boys who grew up with very few loved ones to start with, or having had to deal with the loss of those loved ones.....

But one way or another......are these two specific characters really ones that make sense as wanting to reject the possibility of more family?

They’re connected through Bruce, like it or not, that was never going to change even from before they ever met......and the idea that Dick Grayson and Jason Todd would each be content to waste literal YEARS never even TRYING to connect with the person who was probably most like him and who by all accounts was already his brother in most ways just by way of Bruce...not even to see if maybe they COULD actually be brothers? To have family beyond just Bruce and Alfred?

Me @ every fic or headcanon that says Dick had Only Child Syndrome and resented Jason because of that: right because Dick Grayson of all people is anti-family. He’s full up with that one guy whose legal guardianship of him has been expired for a couple years and who he hasn’t spoken to since long before then.....nah, why would he want any more or any other family beyond that?

I mean, I absolutely believe that Dick was upset and hurt that Bruce adopted Jason while he’d never even offered to adopt Dick......but Dick has never been one to pass around blame instead of focusing it on its true point of origin. That’s his and Bruce’s issue. And honestly, there are TONS of reasons for Dick to be upset about that, without making it about Jason at all.

There’s literally no reason for Dick to take it out on Jason ever, if his biggest issue or grievance is that like....it feels like Bruce was just so done with Dick and considered him so out of his life, something like “just added a new kid to the family” didn’t seem like relevant information he should pass on to Dick despite the tenseness between them. When you have to find out from the NEWS that your old family unit just full on up and adopted this kid you’ve never heard of before now without even so much as a phone call.....there’s plenty of cause to feel like this is a message that you’re not really considered part of that family unit anymore, so why would you need to know?

Or like, the fact that Bruce didn’t consider hey I’m thinking of adding another kid to my family that consists of me and the kid I’m so afraid to tell I think of him as a son in case he doesn’t feel the same way, that I’ve sat back and let things get this bad between us and fester.....hey maybe before I issue adoption papers for a second kid, I should think about putting in an equivalent effort at fixing things with my first kid first?

Or why not write Bruce thinking: “Hey if I can’t even fix things with the kid I raised for almost a decade and think of as my own no matter how long its been since I talked to him.....what on Earth makes me think I’m qualified to take on a SECOND child?”

Like....Bruce was the one who held all the power and all the options, Dick had no other option but to go along with whatever Bruce decided Bruce was going to do, and neither did Jason really.....so there’s no real reason in my head that should be a point of contention between them or a reason to resent each other instead of just stressing to them the importance of having significant family ties beyond just Bruce because history clearly showed even at that point that best intentions aside, the man is fallible.

If anything, that should have been common ground!

I think there was like, an initial negative reaction of maybe one night, the first time they met and Dick even though he was prepared for it still had to adjust to the reality of actually seeing this stranger he was irrevocably connected to now by both his names, even if neither was technically his anymore....like to actually SEE him standing there in his old role....that’s gonna hit anybody hard.

But he also would have clearly been able to see that whatever else he may have been, this twelve year old Robin was still a kid, and one who hadn’t had a lot of time to ever be a kid in the first place.....which again, instant camaraderie, because boy could Dick relate.....remember, Dick may have had a happy childhood with his parents before they were murdered but it was also a childhood where he WORKED. He loves being an acrobat, he loved being in the show, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t WORK, that his childhood didn’t consist of training as long and as regularly as any adult acrobat while everyone else his age was running around playing outside and making friends. And after Bruce took Dick in, most of Dick’s free time was spent being Robin, training as Robin, etc?

Which IMO would have made him take one look at this kid in his old costume, literally standing where he had once stood, stepping into his old shoes.....and I think Dick’s real honest reaction once he brushed aside any kneejerk feeling of pain or bitterness the way he brushes aside all the physical pain he feels when out as Nightwing but refuses to let get in the way of him doing what he has to, doing what’s right....

Nah, Dick would have taken one look at this tiny kid full of fire and bravado but also so clearly eager to please, to be praised, to be told he was doing a good job and even without that he was worth something, his life had value, the world was better just because he existed......

And I think Dick’s bitterness about the situation would have crystallized into him resentfully thinking well B’s not exactly the best about dishing out affection or praise so I’m gonna make sure this little Mini-Me standing there in my old colors looking just as young and small as I must have looked then even if I didn’t realize it at the time....I’m gonna make sure I keep him supplied with a steady diet of “Nice Words and Gestures That Kids Should Grow Up Receiving Regularly.”

Dick has always been a firm believer that the best way to make sure something gets done is to do it yourself.

So yeah, I honestly do think that back during those days, Dick and Jason were thick as thieves when their schedules allowed for it, with it being simultaneously painful and unspoken that they had to like....work around Bruce’s presence so Dick could avoid him, but somewhat softened by the challenge and thrill of two brothers scheming to pull one over on the Big Bad Batdad every time the older brother wanted to take the little brother to go somewhere or do something, like, even just to spoil him rotten.

Cuz really....isn’t that a lot more interesting than ‘oh they barely ever even met back then and it wasn’t great, that’s it, the end’? There’s so much you could do with even just that, from them sneaking Jason out for a fun adventure that’s layered with just a hint of poignant angst because of the unspoken why of him needing to sneak out instead of them just saying hey Bruce, we need some bro time, Jason’s hanging with me this weekend? Or you dial up the angst and layer it with lightness or literally anything between those two points on a spectrum.

There’s so much Secret History potential buried back in those years....adventures they had together and never told anyone about, secrets shared between brothers they never shared elsewhere.....maybe Dick opening up to Jason more than he usually likes to, but here felt it might be the only way to get Jason to do the same, with Dick thus offering up some painful tidbit from his past that he never told even Bruce or Alfred for some reason, if he thinks Jason’s upset about something and needs to vent but will just keep insisting he’s fine unless Dick leads by example and goes first.

There’s so much potential for in-jokes that only the two of them know and everyone else is ENDLESSLY curious about, because everyone always forgets that those two have so much history because it was literally kept out of sight, out of mind, so they could keep it free of the friction that was bound to come of adding Bruce to the mix before their father cleared the air with his eldest first.

So its an easy thing to forget about or overlook, especially since it rarely comes up....but everytime it does rear its head via some private joke only they know or a reference to some event back then that everyone else is kept boxed out of having any context for....that’s the kind of stuff that would drive a family of detectives craszy, because they want to know! What’s the joke??

And yet its likely they’d never ask, because as curious as they are to hear about the mysterious missing years of the first two Wayne children, back when there was literally nobody else present to ask for details.....they never can figure out HOW to ask those questions, not when they’re equally aware of the swiftly hidden expressions of pain or bitterness that flash across the two eldests’ faces after each unearthing of some long-buried treasure they shared between them. Unable to ever escape the fact that each of those treasured moments would forever be followed with an inevitable reminder of why there were so few of those moments, in the end.

Why those years ended far earlier than they should have, and why their reunion upon Jason’s return was hindered and complicated by Dick’s obligation to other siblings Jason hurt while dealing with Pit after-effects and the lack of a strong support system while swayed to League sympathies...

And of course, ultimately there’s the reality that after the Adventures of Young Dick and Tiny Jason were cancelled far ahead of schedule, and that several year long intermission....by the time everything else was gotten out of the way, the stars of those earlier adventures were as long gone as the adventures themselves. Dick and Jason were both entirely different people by now.....still containing within each of them enough of who they were back then that those memories are kept carefully protected and hidden away, all the more valuable for how few and sparse they are, and how rarely they’re brought out to look at and enjoy.....

But with those vaults buried deeply enough within who Dick and Jason both are these days, that there’s a lot of blood and loss and pain you have to cut through just to reach that vault. There’s no retrieving anything from it without a cost. A cost worth paying, given that they can’t help themselves from calling back to it every now and then, even though they know the inevitable result is going to be end negative and not end positive. But still high enough to give them pause before actually doing so....holding back sometimes so the toll is doled out sparingly and over time. Getting greedy and trying to bring out/back/up too much too fast is far more daunting than either can afford to pay at the moment.

So that’s how I like to view the two of them and their dynamic back during and because of those early years before Jason’s death. Bittersweet and shaded by nostalgia.....temptation and warning both, in how much they want to revisit it but how much they fear ruining what they’ve managed to cobble together now by bringing the past too much into the light, comparing past and present too clearly and risking that being reminded too strongly of the brothers they were back then, will just make it impossible to ever be content with anything but that bond replicated in full and they’re not sure it can be, are both too afraid too much has happened since then and trying too hard, putting too much pressure on the dynamic they’ve built now could risk shattering the relative fragile bond completely.

Pretty much everything I write with the two of them, unless I specifically state otherwise via context, is generally written through that lens, with me viewing that as the backstory for their dynamic that I’m running with.

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