#heroesriseandfall

[heroesriseandfall]

Clark Kent’s birthday canonically being February 29th is hysterical to me. Not because it’s meant to jokingly explain away how Superman is a timeless character, but because it implies Martha and Jonathan Kent found an alien baby in a cornfield, and when pressed to choose a birthday for their new baby, they gave him the most difficult birthday possible.

[butch-chastity]

as The cass enjoyer and dick enjoyer i need your ideal cass & dick dynamic pls 🤲

dick & cass's dynamic is really interesting because, up until the evil cass arc, their canon material together tends to be really good! (even if there's not a lot of it)

cause, like, in the beginning, dick puts up his usual front. he's all about appearing responsible and collected in front of the new, "less experienced" hero:

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #120 / Batman: Family #7

but drops that role the moment he spends a few minutes alone with her.

dick realizes very quickly that a) cass can see through any facade dick tries to play in to, and that b) cass doesn't need him to be someone older & wiser than her.

batgirl #29

compared to dick's other siblings, like damian and tim, cass feels like dick's contemporary, not someone he's mentoring or trying to guide.

they're on equal ground. and, they both know that they can take care of themselves.

this leads them to be pretty silly (for bats) around one another:

Detective Comics #782

gotham knights #45

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #184

because, while i'm not going to outright say that dick is completely himself around her (as in, he lets himself be emotional vulnerable), dick is at least aware that he can't pretend around her, and probably feels at least a little kinship with her.

I mean, they're pretty similar. They enable each other's guilt complexes, neither one of them is comfortable spending a lot of time in one place, and they wouldn't know what a healthy amount of devotion looked like if it smacked them upside the head.

^ that's not even unpacking their similar forms of trauma, which is just. woof. y'know?

cass's insecurities are similar to dick's, in that they're both desperately afraid of slipping up and hurting every one, but also her insecurities aren't similar to his at all because they formed under completely different circumstances and choose to act on those fears in different ways.

i think a lot of what i'm trying to say could be summed up by my own tags on a post:

as well as @/heroesriseandfall's tags on the same post:

also, as cool as dick & cass's canon material is, there isn't a lot of it and the evil cass character assassination ruined EVERYTHING!!!

i want cass and dick in blud together!!!!!! we were so close to having it all!!!! i want it sooooo bad and its so fucked that dc editorial decided to pull BULLSHIT and drag cass through the mud for ??? reasons.

so, tl;dr my ideal dick & cass dynamic is pretty complicated, but looks a little like this:

they trust each other a lot. and they're a little goofy together, because they're on equal ground, and both know they're really damn good at their jobs. the majority of their relationship is quiet, based around mutual understanding and an unspoken desire to fill in the gaps left behind by trauma.

and if i had it my way: they would both live in blud (for at least part of the year) and get shitty midnight coffee together, on the really bad nights.

my absolute favorite interaction they have is in NW vol. 2, even if it happens because dick is busy being a cop:

because, yeah. "what do you need me to do?" that's it.

also, much as i love being recognized as a dick and cass enjoyer, i think the person who's actually thee d&c enjoyer is @heroesriseandfall, who posts about them semi frequently and is actually smart enough to keep a dedicated tag, which i pillaged for screenshots for this post.

thank you, bestie. :>

[roseworth]

https://at.tumblr.com/heroesriseandfall/i-dont-think-any-comparison-between-robins-is/gx0spwhhcnla

I thought you might like this

x

oh my god ty for sending this 😌 good fucking doylist robin discourse 🙏🙏

listen i rly like how op mentioned how damian’s writers wanted to do something different bc YEAH! they were like “ok we’ve got this robin thing down now it’s time to do something that’s not just cookie cutter robin” and some peoples takeaway from that was “damian isn’t as good as tim 😡” which. Yawn.

and even though starlin was the only one writing jason that actually Hated him, there were still other writers that wanted to be writing dick and since jason was the first legacy robin it ends up reflecting badly on him whenever he messed up since everyone was like “dick would never do this 🙄” like hmm. die.

anyways i am lovingly holding robin!jason and damian and protecting them from the horrors of the world

[heroesriseandfall]

People know Tim was Weird about being adopted by Bruce but honestly the “committing fraud and hiring an actor to pretend to be his uncle so he won’t get adopted” thing is only one part of it. Always remember that when Tim finally did let himself be adopted by billionaire Bruce Wayne he immediately used it to intentionally get himself kidnapped so he could stop a rich kid mass-kidnapping operation.

[heroesriseandfall]

Tim saying that Haly’s Circus was his first memory means that Dick really has been his hero for as long as Tim can remember…Tim literally does not remember his life before Dick Grayson entered it…

[heroesriseandfall]

Guy who thinks he’s asking a simple question to a regular young adult: So, where’d you go to high school?

Tim Drake, who attended precisely 5 high schools and did not graduate from any of them: uhhhh

[heroesriseandfall]

Pre-teen Tim Drake as a hidden spectator to 80s New Teen Titans is so funny to me. That Dick Grayson-obsessed kid would absolutely be following all their exploits which makes it so much more amusing that their media presence is basically:

“Interview with model Starfire and Titans leader Nightwing!”

“Starfire kills a man.”

“Starfire is found innocent and declares her love for Nightwing on live TV!”

“Wonder Girl claims The Church of Brother Blood is evil and we’re all being brainwashed.”

“Nightwing invites you to join the Church of Brother Blood!”

Who needs to follow Batman when your entertainment during boarding school can be whatever the hell is going on in Titans Tower.

[heroesriseandfall]

Bruce spending the whole time Jason is dead blaming himself for not getting there in time to save him, and then Jason returning to Gotham only to tell Bruce he doesn’t blame him for not saving him, but that he has 10 other huge gripes about Bruce…it’s simultaneously devastating and hilarious. Seriously it comes off like this:

Good news: your fear that your son would blame you for not saving him turns out to be untrue, he doesn’t blame you for that!

Bad news: he has committed many murders to explain everything else you did wrong.

[heroesriseandfall]

Kind of funny that fan works seem fond of describing Drake Manor as being like a museum or a mausoleum in a negative way, because:

In the comics Tim himself actually talks about Drake Manor as fondly being his first real home with his dad (which he had convinced his dad to buy!). He had secret passageways to the Batcave there! His dad was actually pretty consistently home when they lived there! He once ran away to there when they moved! Tim liked living there.

Drake Manor has brightly colored walls and interior decor, Tim’s bedroom gets messier and more chaotic the longer he lives there, if it’s a museum then it’s a peculiar museum of a teenage boy who is constantly leaving stuff for Mrs Mac to pick up.

Edit: more reminders from the tags. Tim’s dad Jack once kept an extremely valuable artifact just lying around in a closet. He also once gave another precious artifact he’d recently dug up to his fiancé as a wedding present (which is illegal). He clearly does not know or care enough about artifact preservation to ban Tim from touching any artifacts he may have in Drake Manor.

The first time Tim walked into Wayne Manor he excitedly pointed out the artifacts on display there. Not to even start on how the Batcave can aptly be described as a museum or a mausoleum. Bruce loves that vibe!

(Dick visited Wayne Manor right before Tim came along and was like “How does Bruce add so much new art and things to this place while I’m gone?? And the Batcave’s so cold.”)

Why would Tim not want to live in a mausoleum? His choice of a Gotham apartment was the theater from where Bruce’s parents died. He currently lives in a busted boat that his boyfriend calls a murder shack.

[heroesriseandfall]

Blüdhaven becoming Nightwing’s base has kind of overshadowed the fact that Dick’s first several years as Nightwing were in New York City with the New Titans. In the 80s and early 90s, even Gothamites associated Nightwing with NYC enough to question why the New Yorker hero was in Gotham when he came to save Bruce one night.

Importantly, Dick lived in Manhattan during the entire time Jason was Robin, at least in preboot timeline. Jason associated Dick with NYC. Enough that when Jason came back and Blüdhaven was blown up and Dick was nowhere to be found (traveling), Jason went looking for Dick in New York, expecting him to be there. And Dick did move to New York again, without even knowing Jason had anticipated that.

Blüdhaven certainly has its own special place for Nightwing, but so does New York. It’s one of the places Nightwing was born.