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If I’m consuming some Batman content that has Dick Grayson say/think “I’m poison” at any point it is automatically S-tier. Doesn’t matter. Dropping that line is always fucking legendary.

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No wait fuck no wait hold on a minute fuck wait I can’t wait fuck

BREAKING NEWS: EMOTIONALLY CONSTIPATED FATHER TRIES TO SHOW AFFECTION

Tiny Tim needs some validation and love.

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Vampire Dick Grayson AU but he’s actually just himself as a vampire and not whatever OOC bullshit the comic pulled.

- Assume some horrible transformation for maximum angst.

- Dick is initially terrified to be around his loved ones. They try to convince him that they trust him; he doesn’t trust himself. It takes a few up-front confrontations to diminish that fear, including saving one of his family members while they’re injured (and thus covered in blood) and not giving into instinct.

- Eventually he begins to trust himself again. During a patrol with family where someone gets hurt, he helps out again and sticks around longer. The family member notices him very deliberately trying *not* to look at their wounds and scrapes some of the blood into a discarded cup or something. They offer it to Dick in like a “it’s not going back in there anyways” sort of fashion. Dick is initially horrified by the idea, but after being reassured that it was fine, he takes it.

- Dick discovers that the closer he is to someone, the more unique their blood tastes. Jason tastes like spicy-smoky barbecue, Tim tastes like maple (edit: I change my mind he is 1000% a caramel latte), etc.

- This turns into all of Dick’s friends and family competing to have him try some of their blood next. Bets are made on what they taste like. It’s a really weird bonding experience but somehow Dick is the only one who feels uncomfortable. (It turns out all Kryptonians, regardless of their personal tastes, also have a faint whiff of raspberries.) They eventually make a schedule where Leslie pulls an extra ounce or two of blood from everyone with every checkup and that becomes Dick’s main source of comfort. He doesn’t actually need that much.

- Also included: Random other vampire traits and the comedic/angsty situations that come with them. Maybe he actually sparkles now. Maybe his eyes are now red and when he looks in the mirror, he no longer sees his mother’s gaze staring back. Maybe he’s now much stronger and accidentally hurts people occasionally. Go wild.

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I’ve been reading up on the events of the Crime Syndicate arc right before Spyral, and now I’m questioning why the fuck people focus so much on Dick getting his heart stopped and not on anything else. Like don’t get me wrong that’s definitely traumatic, but he was also tortured for a significant period of time by people who resembled his loved ones. I can count on one hand the number of times this hasn’t been waved away or ignored in Spyral or post-Spyral fan content.

It’s like if people only focused on the explosion that killed Jason Todd and not him getting beaten by a crowbar and mentally abused beforehand. Sure, dying is terrible, but in both cases I kind of feel like the prolonged pain and helplessness beforehand was worse.

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I just… that means he’s older than Bruce was when he first took him in by most continuities. I can’t man 😭

(Respect tho. Clearly only one of our opinions is canonically correct.)

I struggle with Dick Grayson canon sometimes because on one hand I fucking love the older brother thing he has going on but on the other hand I cannot imagine him over the age of like 21-22. Dick Grayson should not be old enough to rent a car. He should be old enough to legally make his own life choices but young enough that he *really shouldn’t be*. I spent so much of my life exposed to Young Justice and Teen Titans 2003 that like… come on.

But like if you actually do depict him at 19-22ish, you lose the brothers. Why can’t they just be closer in age or something 😭

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I struggle with Dick Grayson canon sometimes because on one hand I fucking love the older brother thing he has going on but on the other hand I cannot imagine him over the age of like 21-22. Dick Grayson should not be old enough to rent a car. He should be old enough to legally make his own life choices but young enough that he *really shouldn’t be*. I spent so much of my life exposed to Young Justice and Teen Titans 2003 that like… come on.

But like if you actually do depict him at 19-22ish, you lose the brothers. Why can’t they just be closer in age or something 😭

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Okay so occasionally I see Batfamily stories revolving around the idea that Bruce was a bad parent at first to Dick because he didn’t know what he was doing, and so was overly harsh and cruel for a while, until he eventually got a hang of the parenting thing and did better for the future kids. These stories generally play with the conflict between Dick’s happiness at the current state of the family and underlying resentment at his own treatment.

I would like to offer a crack twist to this: Normal Batman canon is true EXCEPT that the first few years of Batman is replaced with All Star Batman and Robin, and that’s the “bad Bruce Wayne” that Dick experienced. Maybe Bruce was prescribed some bad antidepressants at this time and they made him unhinged, or maybe he was just Like That™️ until he was snapped out of it, but somewhere between Dick and Jason, Bruce becomes normal again, and Dick is the ONLY PERSON to have known Bruce like that.

Like the Robins are all in the cave together one day talking about ways Bruce used to train them and Dick just mentions that he had to eat a rat once. Or that Batman used to use the Batmobile to charge at cops. He used to call himself the “Goddamn Batman”. And modern Bruce is just so fucking ashamed and embarrassed.

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My favorite genre of character is “protagonist who suffers immense tragedy but still finds a way to authentically feel and be a better person at the end of the day”.

1.) It’s admirable. I don’t like cynical or mean characters, even if the cynicism/meanness is just, because I don’t like it when I respond that way. I find it so honorable to be able to experience hardship, cry a little, then put on a brave face and do your best anyways.

2.) I like torturing characters, partially because it’s oddly cathartic and also because more instances of tragedy allow for the characteristics in point 1 to be more prominent. It’s not quite as impressive that your character continues to smile if they’ve had a good life.

3.) When these characters DO have their snapping moment, it is the BEST. You can’t overdue this or else the character just becomes another mean/jaded guy, but give them one moment to lose their positivity in the face of hardship? To genuinely become mean, or even better, depressed? Oh my god. The angst. The potential. The drama. And then in the aftermath, these characters can once again reflect on their poor decisions or vulnerable sense of self, and in that moment choose to reclaim the genuine good they hold in their heart, thereby reaffirming point 1 again. Lordy I could cry.

Anyways you all can have your 24/7 angst machines and edgelords. Keep the prickly assholes. The kind protagonists are mine.

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I need one of those trope-y “watching protagonist’s memories” stories with Dick Grayson but the twist is that the memories aren’t like uniquely traumatic or anything. Most of them actually include the other people watching. But in Dick’s memories, there are just random ass hallucinations everywhere.

Like a memory of Dick casually eating dinner at the manor and talking Tim’s head off but Jason’s bloody mangled corpse is hovering beside an empty chair, and Dick does not appear fazed by it AT ALL. And Tim’s like “wait I remember this but that wasn’t there????”

Or like Dick is just holding a standard team meeting but you can vaguely see the outline of Batman’s hand on his shoulder and the whisper of “failure failure failure you are going to get them killed failure” and the Titans are like “wtf is Batman doing here?”

Idk if they’d realize immediately that Dick is constantly hallucinating random shit or if it would take them some time, but eventually they ask him about it and he’s shocked.

“You mean that doesn’t happen to you when you guys are stressed?”

Bonus points if he’s incredibly flippant about how he deals with them too. Like “no guys it’s chill. They don’t have shadows, see? You also can’t touch them either.” And suddenly minor impulses like Dick’s tendency to constantly check the ground every few seconds or his touchiness with other people make a lot more sense.

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Do you think the reason Dick Grayson is so friendly and forgiving is because whenever he’s ended up being mad at someone for more than 24 hours they end up dying without him ever able to apologize?

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Chat what does it mean if you’re genuinely having a good day and then you just start bawling with sadness the second someone asks you how you are???

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The world is so cruel. I have just been introduced to another Powerful Young Hero Who Maintains Goodness In Spite Of The World Hating Them in the form of one Mark “Invincible” Grayson and there’s a shocking lack of good angst. I’ve combed through all the good material in like a day and the rest is all smut 😭 😭

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The aftermath of Vlad’s accident is totally inaccurate. Coming from a student researcher in experimental atomic physics, if one of our folks was blasted with a whole bunch of random shit (and lived), this would be the response:

1.) Other lab crew makes sure they’re okay

2.) If the contaminated person in question is still conscious, they would immediately begin B E G G I N G us to take random ass measurements and talking about ways to insert this into their dissertation

3.) Jokes about suing the school for money. So many fucking lawsuit jokes.

4.) Other lab mates would constantly be checking in on them in a state of guilt until the next shipment of optical equipment arrives, whereupon the injured person steals the Cheez-its from the box of Lab Snacks (look it up) and all guilt is forgotten.

Sorry. I don’t make the rules.

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The concept of a “halfa” is interesting on a philosophical level, but I’ve always interpreted it differently. Most Danny Phantom media describes halfas as both human and ghost, but this just doesn’t feel right. To me, halfas are neither human NOR ghost.

Like, a nectarine is a cross between a peach and a plum. But put a nectarine with either peaches or plums and clearly something is not right. Nectarines are their own unique thing. This exact type of gene trading is the beginning of many new species that we eventually recognize as entirely separate from their origins.

And to me, that’s so much more lonely. Danny’s not just “not human enough” and “not ghost enough”. He’s not human or ghost at ALL. He’s just a new thing. And even though he has adopted traits from either end of the spectrum, the sum of a living being is far more than its parts. We are defined by how our components interact with each other to make a whole, and nothing exists that can compare to the dynamic of a halfa in its totality.

No wonder Spectra bothered him so much.

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Is ectoplasm functionally an alternate building block for life in the DP canon? Like, is there a distinct delineation between carbon-based life forms and ectoplasm-based life forms, or are ectoplasmic organisms still carbon-based but use ectoplasm as energy in their own metabolic processes?

It would be neat to explore the implications of an entirely separate category of life form, having to do with the different properties of ectoplasm compared to the organic matter that we are made of. They don’t even share our LUCA, so are they even MADE of cells? Do they even HAVE metabolisms if the ectoplasm they’re made of is also an energy source? It doesn’t seem like ectoplasmic creatures would need any special process to convert it to a usable energy source — it’s already in that state.

Idk. They aren’t confined to ANY of the biological givens of Earth creatures. That’s wild.

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My favorite genre of Danny Phantom media is “Danny’s secret gets revealed and various adults in his life are now reeling at how badly they’ve failed him”.

Even better if he’s REALLY good at what he does, whether that be simply protecting Amity or being the king. Because then, there is universal recognition that far too much responsibility has been foisted on Danny from the people who were supposed to care for him, but they can’t get him to relinquish that burden because his new role is irreplaceable. He was forced into the position of Atlas, and now even when the injustice of it all is known, this Atlas simply cannot shrug.

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I could totally imagine, post-reveal, Danny’s parents try to bond with him by asking seemingly-non-invasive questions about his ghost half. They’d be thinking that it would be a way to show comfort and interest in his new form (and obviously add some stuff to their notes too). But, well, everything having to do with a ghost is morbid as hell.

Like Maddie asks “so how come you have that cool screaming power when most of your other enemies don’t?”

And Danny just has to think *do I really wanna tell my mother that ghosts can only Wail if they scream when they die?*

Or Jack ribs him at some point about the hazmat suit, like “I see you’re trying to carry on the family legacy of proper ghost hunting attire!” But Danny’s just in the corner like “well I died in this suit…” but of course he can’t just say that.