#obviously his innate connection to hope is very important to his character at a fundamental level

[autisticcassandracain]

Duke Thomas

the only character that matters <3 focusing mostly on how I write him and what I try to keep in mind

Under the cut bc it's a bit long, but in short the aspects I find most important to keep in mind when writing him:

Duke's a massive adrenaline junkie

His parents' influence

Duke's strong sense of personal responsibility

Duke's way of connecting with people

Duke being extremely analytical

1. Duke's a Massive Adrenaline Junkie

Seriously. TBH this might be like, my favourite part of his character. I fell in love with him the moment he reacted to being shot for the first time with 'isn't that baller'. If fandom HAS to distill him to one assigned character trait, I want it to be 'the crazy one'. On a more serious character analysis note, I think it's one of the most interesting things about his character because it was born out of trauma. He explicitly states this in We Are Robin; after all of Duke's death-defying experiences, he started craving the thrill of escaping death at the last second. You know how heroes sometimes create their own villains (and how people will argue heroes create their own villains even when they don't)? The villains of Gotham created the Signal when they decided to pull their batshit stunts. I just think it's neat!

2. His Parents' Influence

Might be a bit of a weird one to include? I think canon does pretty well on this, especially when it comes to his mom, but in fandom portrayals I find it lacking. People often slot Duke in as yet another Wayne kid, and while I don't doubt he sees certain Batfam members as family (he explicitly considers Cass his sister), I really don't think he ultimately considers himself part of the Wayne family. He was never adopted by Bruce, just fostered, and his parents are still alive and he has a strong attachment to them. I think erasing his biological family (or at least, the family he grew up with, since I guess his biological dad is a villain) in favour of the Wayne family does Duke's character a massive disservice, since so much of his identity is wrapped up in the way he grew up and especially his mom's ideals and values. Also I think it's Pretty Shitty to erase his biological Black parents in favour of Bruce, a white dude.

3. Duke's Strong Sense of Personal Responsibility

@/phamtai did a wonderful meta on it here, which I feel like I don't have much to add to bc it said pretty much everything that needs to be said. Duke considers it his personal responsibility (and, by extension, the responsibility of others) to help if he's able to do so, and even if he's unable, he needs to try. He's absolutely the kid who got into fights with bullies in school. 100% think that's what the majority of the fights referenced in We Are Robin are about lmao.

4. Duke's Way of Connecting with People

IDK how to put this? I think one of Duke's most prominent character traits is (or at least should be) the way he connects to the people around him. This manifests itself in various ways in canon. One of them is that he's a great and natural leader/team player; we see this in We Are Robin, and also in Tales of the Dark Multiverse. (Personally, I think this is one of the main ways in which Batman and the Outsiders dropped the ball on him; putting him in a team but not having him truly and properly interact with it.) In addition, he's a natural at reading people; we see this when he figures out Damian's entire psyche in like, a day, in the ways he approaches villains and mysteries (trying to connect with Daryl, figuring out the motives and secrets of Szasz' victim in The Cursed Wheel, even the way he connects to Batman), etc.

Like, Duke just has charisma and is a natural at reading and connecting with people. He can get them to believe in stuff they otherwise wouldn't, and he's great at pulling them apart and putting them back together. His first response when faced with a human problem is almost always to try and reach out and understand them, and it often pays off. (TBH it's why I'm still kinda wondering how they're gonna play the 'Daytime Vigilante' thing with him, since it's by nature a very isolating position in Gotham, and I think Duke works better with a large cast because it highlights his people skills. It's part of why I'm so pissed they're ignoring the potential of the Robin Collective in his continued story.)

5. Duke is Extremely Analytical

This is something I pay a lot of attention to when writing, because I feel like it affects pretty much all of his thought processes. Duke is, by nature, extremely analytical. He tries to pull patterns out of the world and unravel them. You can easily see this in the way he tried to challenge the Riddler as a kid, the way he approaches/uses his powers, his natural talent for detective work, etc. This talent also got nurtured by Batman's training during the Cursed Wheel, so Duke's actively using and trying to improve on it. I think it affects how he sees and interacts with the world a lot.