Personally the amount of people who are either "Jake is a stupid himbo" or "Jake is actively malicious" blow my mind. No, Jake isn't stupid, and he's not evil. He's a sixteen year old who is implied to have a mental disability and/or brain damage (it's not exactly clear, Caliborn claims they have the same developmental disorder and Dirk iirc worries that Jake hit his head too much, I guess you can take either with a grain of salt but I digress), and has not had meaningful real life interactions with other human beings in years. He is in the wrong for his actions, but it feels. Purposefully ignorant to claim he's just stupid or just evil for them.
He's socially stunted. He wants to emulate heroes in movies but lacks self esteem and experience. If the alpha kids had enough time to be more fleshed out (and let's be real, if Hussie cared about Jake) this might have been explored more thoroughly. He'd never had the opportunity to learn how to cope with a relationship, how to communicate his needs, or understand that he can't control how other people perceive him like he can through a computer screen.
He doesn't know healthy boundaries because he's never had to use them, and this goes both ways (allowing his friends to sexualise him and treat him like an object, as well as constantly complaining about his relationship with Dirk to Jane) Like yeah he does run away instead of communicating with Dirk and yeah he does dump all his problems on Jane. I love Jane, but one of her problems is her bottling up her feelings and people pleasing until everything blows up. She should have told him off much sooner, and while he was being a dick, it was partly because she allowed him to feel like it was okay to do, since she never told him it wasn't after the first few times or when she was starting to get aggravated.
His problems with Dirk are a little more complicated because we're never actually shown their relationship or how it broke down, but from what we can gather, Jake felt overwhelmed by Dirk's intensity and decided to ignore him rather than tell him try and avoid confrontation but leading to Dirk being frustrated and breaking up with him. Dirk claims he feels like he bullied Jake into a relationship, and though I personally think that's him making it seem worse than it was, it does mean that Dirk probably was trying to go too fast. I've best heard it is Jake being an introvert pretending to be an extrovert.
This is not to say I don't think people can't dislike or even hate Jake, but it's like. Idk. Misinterpreting a character and disliking that version of them is a little redundant to me.
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Talk about the dick Grayson aus pls!! I am so curious :0
GRIPS YOU. Okay I have like a million AUs already but I have. One that's on my brain half the time
The au is based heavily around Batman: Arkham Knight, and it's essentially an au where Dick gets the Arkhamverse Jason Todd treatment and becomes the Arkham Knight!
It's a fun au idea, essentially I was thinking like,, "What would push Dick into going full villain mode?" And I looked at Arkham Knight and went ooooh,, that's a fun idea! I'm putting venomous spiders in his terrarium basically.
Overall the AU is pretty self explanatory: Dick gets captured by the Joker, is tortured and brainwashed for over a year to 2 years straight, and comes out murderous as hell. Overall not too different from the game. There ARE important differences though, like exactly how I imagine Dick gets captured.
Some inspirations for the au are: Joker: Last Laugh, Grayson: Futures End, as well as Devin Graysons run with the whole Blockbuster stuff, and the Ric Grayson arc.
Inane rambling under the cut
Okay, SO!! Why and how Dick gets captured is a bit complex. The au takes place not long after Dick gets his memories back from the whole Ric arc- which is actually kinda important here??
Joker was very much inspired by the short time he had Dick Grayson brainwashed and under his control. It was very fun and very fascinating to him to see him fight the rest of the batfamily, and incredibly disappointing when Dick broke out of his control. From this, he got an idea- an incredibly horrible idea. Why not just torture poor Dickie into doing what he wants? Why not twist and turn this little Butcherbird against the family he loves so dearly?
Because there is nothing more devastating to Dick Grayson than to hurt the people he loves. To turn against the morals Batman drilled into him- and, well, Joker already pushed him into breaking that code once before, he can certainly do it again.
And that's where Joker gets the idea to capture Dick, to torture and brainwash him. Joker isn't an idiot, he knows how resilient Dick is. Dick is practically a diamond, he formed under pressure. But even diamonds have their limits, and Joker fully intends to find it.
Joker keeps an eye on the birds and bats of Gotham, even when they've flown the nest, so he pulls some inspiration from Blockbuster, and uses his own past experiences to push Dick just enough to come after him. Joker knows full well that targeting those he loves pushes Dick over the edge, pushes him to kill- after all, supposedly killing Tim and even mentioning Jason made Dick beat him to death. And everyone knows about Dicks rampage through Blockbusters ranks, and how he was an accomplice to the crime lords murder. So, well- why not target those that Dick Grayson cares about- but specifically the most defenseless people he loves?
After regaining his memory, in the AU, Dick goes back to teaching classes of children Gymnastics and Acrobatics. And Joker finds this out, pulls some strings, slaughters the children and stitches them all together like Frankenstein. Maybe he even pins the blame on Dick.
And it's pretty clearly targeted- and Dick doesn't know why, but he doesn't care. These were children- just little kids he knew. It's a horrific reminder of what happened with Blockbuster, except almost worse. And Dick is fucking furious; it's the Joker, he made it obvious, and Dick wasn't there and he could've stopped it. It's horrific, beyond it, and all he can think is- if Joker stayed dead, this wouldn't have happened.
This was his fault; and he needs to rectify it. And Arkham won't keep Joker for long, it never does.
And Joker gets exactly what he wanted; Nightwing coming after him, wanting him dead, not thinking straight with all the trauma and horrific reminders.
And Dick hunts him down; it's reckless, he goes it alone, and this is fully on purpose. Dick intends to kill the Joker, but he doesn't intend on coming back out alive. It's a suicide mission, one that he doesn't tell anyone about because he knows they'll stop him.
And, stripped of any trackers, comms, anything that could be used to find him, he tracks Joker down to Arkham Asylum. He never gets to kill the Joker, but he doesn't come back out, anyways. Not until nearly 2 years later.
For the first 6 months, the Batfamily as well as the Titans and even the Justice League try to look for Nightwing, but to no avail. They have no idea where he went, where he disappeared at- there's no trail to look for or follow. And, of course, the last place they'd look is Arkham Asylum, if it's even on the list of places to look in the first place.
The entire time, Dick is being tortured- he comes very close to escaping a few times, but it's hard to escape with your ankle broken and being injured and tortured and starved constantly.
And then- the batfamily gets The Video, and upon genuinely thinking Dick is dead... they stop looking.
And, after months, Dick completely loses hope. He's resilient, yes, but not unbreakable, and eventually he breaks enough to do anything for less pain, for some kind of reprieve from this hell- even killing. And it only breaks him down further, and before he knows it, it's nearly been two years, and he feels more about the rewards he gets than the blood on his hands.
And then- Dick escapes, during some chaos that happens in an Arkham breakout (or was it an attack? Dick has no idea). He escapes on his own (or rather, the Joker let's him run, but Dick doesn't know that), and in his angry, hurt, deeply traumatized state, doesn't go to the batfamily or his friends or anyone.
Instead, Slade finds him during one of his contracts in Gotham. Dick is hardly even a shell of his former self; he's stick thin, broken and bloody, covered in filth and a threadbare Arkham inmate uniform, head constantly bowed and almost too weak to stand. Despite all that, though, there's still a defiant glint in Dicks eye, saying "I dare you" even though he's no more threatening than a kitten at the moment.
And Slade is fascinated by this development, especially after some poking and prodding. The brainwashing runs deep, and it's present in just about every action Dick takes, every little decision he makes. He's never seen a torture victim in such an awful state, and he's never seen such thorough brainwashing. Slade is fascinated, and finds himself pitying the state Dick is in. Nightwing, the seemingly unbreakable man with an unbreakable resolve, and he's bowed at his feet, speaking in broken whispers about how he wants to kill the Batman and tear Gotham asunder.
So who can blame him if he picks up Dick Grayson and ships him off to Venezuela after he gets done with his contract? No one needs to know about his vested interest in this broken man, to see what he'll do once he's back in shape. And besides, seeing Dick Grayson like that was the worst kind of uncanny valley Slades ever experienced. Who's bright idea was it to turn Nightwing into a violent, borderline sociopathic killing machine while keeping him too broken to actually do anything? Oh, right. Stupid clown. Well, at least it's interesting to Slade.
And Dick pours every ounce of his being into physical therapy and then training. He plans and strategizes and plans some more.
I'll leave this here for now since this post is getting fucking LONG- and honestly you can guess the rest of what happens in the au. There are a few differences in the au, like Dick having electrified swords on his back, Dick revealing himself earlier, the Titans being involved when the Militia invades, Dick actually almost succeeding because he plans REALLY well and only failing because he's unable to pull the trigger, that sort of thing.
I'm also still considering what happens after the invasion, when Dick runs, so that's a WIP.
And before anyone tries saying "oh Dick would never do that, that's ooc and this au sucks"- a) it's an au and b) brainwashing is hard as SHIT to break, especially when the person you're working with is actively encouraging it. And I know characters like the Supers could've found Dick, but let's pretend they couldn't for the sake of Plot Reasons. After all, it'd be a boring au if it ended immediately when they got involved lol.
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