#im tagging him bc he and dick's relationship is a solid chunk of this post whoops

[aspiring-wildfire]

I appreciate your post, but I think that, by avoiding one cliché, Jason being the angry Robin, you're falling into the trap of another one: Dick being the angry Robin. He wasn't more angry than the other ones. They all had their moments of great anger and of great controll over their emotions. Truth is, none of them fall into a neat little box and we should, imo, stop trying to do that. Let them be multifaceted. Tim was a jock at first, for instance and Dick was pretty nerdy.

hi! i totally get what you’re saying, and honestly the whole point i was trying to get at with that post was that they’re all more complicated than they often get treated (and that the roles they get slotted into often aren’t the right ones even if they were that simple) so i definitely don’t think any of them fall in a neat box. that said, this also gives me a chance to talk about my Absolute Best Boy dick grayson so buckle up y'all!! i love my boy and i am always thinking about him!!!

okay so first of all: i do think that, of the four of them, Dick has the worst temper. he canonically had a huge problem with his temper when he was younger, and i really think it does him a disservice to dismiss how fucking hard he works to keep that under control. that's not at all to say that the "happy sunshine boy with vague theater kid energy big brother figure" characterization of dick is wrong, though! he's both! dick feels everything so strongly and just fucking cares so much about the world and the people in his life, and that makes him incredibly kind and wonderful and potentially really fucking angry.

There's a reason he often gets referenced as kind of the gold-standard of the superhero world; in a lot of ways, dick is the embodiment of what a hero should be. he does what he does because he really cannot bear the idea of being able to help people and not doing it (ric grayson arc dni). there's a reason he makes lifelong friends everywhere he goes, and that's that dick is a paragon hero who draws people into his orbit by the sheer force of his compassion and charisma. that magnetism, the way he supports and inspires the people around him to do good, is so important because it's... kind of one of the backbones of the whole superhero community? depending on the timeline you're using, robin either already exists when the JL starts or gets established very early on, usually before identities get revealed, meaning that from whichever perspective you're looking at things dick was there very early in the creation of a superhero community, and on top of that had really strong personal relationships with all of the big 3 heroes. considering how close batman and robin were then (robin was really the only one of the younger heroes who had more of a partnership than a sidekick relationship with their mentor, bc he and bruce really needed each other in a way that wasn't necessarily true with the other heroes) and how fucking extraverted and adorable a baby dick grayson was, it's fair to say dick was one of the best-known and probably most loved heroes in the entire community basically from minute one, and as things expanded and other kid heroes started popping up- most of whom were directly inspired by robin- that circle only expanded. batman was the hero that kind of started the idea of heroes, but dick was the one who created the idea of younger superheroes and the vision of a superhero community that could grow and evolve.

bruce is a good man and a great hero, and he's the fucking batman, there basically isn't anyone more competent, but he's also haunted by his trauma in a way that prevents him from really being a symbol of hope the way dick makes himself right away, and bruce knows that. he's so fucking proud of dick (bad parent bruce arcs dni) bc he sees all the best parts of what he wanted to build without the pain and with all the best parts of dick grayson added in, and that's kind of the dream of batman? batman was created to make sure that no one will ever have to suffer the way bruce did ever again, but bruce is also way too fucking smart and frankly too emo not to realize that the "criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot" and therefore could be easily terrified, and that that role is something he's just a lot more able to fill, especially super angsty young adult bruce who was kind of tearing himself apart before dick came along. robin though? robin was that light in the dark, because dick was that light in the dark. that's who he is and who he's always been, even as a kid desperately and furious and grieving. at the end of the day he's just a good person who does good things because he wants the world to be better.

obviously though, that's not to say he doesn't have flaws, and i personally tend to think that the biggest of them is easily his temper. dick has in a lot of ways had a brutal and very painful life, and the massive eldest daughter syndrome he's got kicking around plus his main emotional role models growing up being bruce and alfred means he's... kind of the worst at dealing with his emotions in a healthy way. 9 times out of 10, that manifests in self-destructive or self-sacrificing actions, but it also sometimes bleeds out as (sometimes justified, sometimes not so much) anger. he and bruce's partnership split up because it was basically immovable object meets unstoppable force- in other words, bruce's unparalleled stubborness and control issues didn't mix well with a late-teens dick grayson's irrepressible need for freedom and very touchy temper. dick has a lot of anger, but over time he works really fucking hard to get it under control, and he mostly does! even when he slips up, he almost always realizes and regrets it pretty quickly thereafter (the most notable time being when he literally beat the joker to death with his bare hands). i mean fuck, the fact that he and damian have the kind of relationship they do is a testament to how fucking hard dick's worked over the years to get his temper under control and keep himself in check, bc i fucking love damian but the patience you would need with that kid is UNMATCHED.

even setting aside his temper, though, he's still very much a flawed character, and when that doesn't manifest in a hot temper it can often show up looking a lot like bruce?? especially as he gets older and takes on more responsibility and becomes a leader for a lot of teams, dick grapples a lot with the ways he's similar to bruce and how that isn't always something he likes about himself- at the end of the day, dick is a genius level intellect with an incredible mind for strategy and hard choices and is as hypercompetent and skilled as he can be impulsive, but that strategic knack? the ability to make the tough calls?? yeah he doesn't love that! he can do it, and he's really fucking good at it, but he also hates that he can- he doesn't want to be able to look at people as pieces, he doesn't want to be able to set aside his love for his teammates and take a coldly strategic approach that could mean sending them into danger, but he knows he can, and he knows sometimes someone needs to, and there's no chance his hero complex would put that weight on anyone else's shoulders, especially considering the fact that, simply put, the best candidate for the job is always gonna be a bat. he won't make any of his younger siblings make those calls bc he knows how hard they are to live with, even as he hates the fact that he can live with them or make them at all. dick is absurdly good at what he does- he's better trained than nearly anyone, he's a natural leader who can always see the big picture, his gut instinct is unparalleled, and imo he's probably one of the best/most talented superheroes there is overall bc he's literally been doing this nearly his whole life.

tl;dr dick grayson is stubborn and kind and loving and brilliant and angry and patient and passionate and hopeful and tough and skilled and so deeply, genuinely good and i would die for him