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[toflyandfall]

mod update

Dear anons,

A quick update: I received your asks and they’re underway.  Progress has been waylaid by ongoing technological problems though, and I’ve had to take my computer in for repair.  I’m unsure when your metas will actually be ready for posting but once the beloved machine returns from the war we’ll get back into it as soon as possible!

Thanks for your patience.  

[toflyandfall]

I just saw a photo of "What persona. Dick Grayson isn't a mask. Not like Bruce Wayne is" from Detective Comics #725 and I find it interesting that Dick and the rest of the bats, with the exception of Bruce, don't wear "masks" per se. They are who they are with or without the domino mask/helmet. The only time I can really think of Dick faking things is when he pretended to be an incompetent BPD cop. How was he able to avoid creating and living, half the time, through a "persona" like "Brucie"?

Oooh, this is a lovely, meaty question.  There’s a lot more analysis of Bruce than I planned because let’s be real, it’s kinda weirder for a guy to run around with half a dozen personas than for someone else to run around as himself.  I hope you still find it interesting, but if you want to skip straight to the more Dick-centric stuff, head under the readmore.

A simple but significant factor is that Dick thrives on the company of people in a way that Bruce does not.  I suspect if you talk honestly to many introverts, you will find they too have an extroverted ‘mask’ they put on to the larger world, though probably not quite so extreme.

Another factor is that the civilian social circles Dick and Bruce travel in are vastly different.  Though they each have a reason for being in those circles, that difference itself enables Dick to escape much of the scrutiny that Bruce’s public identity undergoes, because he doesn’t frequently associate with the much more media-hounded elite.

An interesting thing here is that the large difference in social circles between their civilian lives is actually caused by their own personal similarities: they are 100% committed work-a-holics.  It’s just that they have differing civilian approaches to their goals.

I want to start with Bruce because as you point out, his use of persona is distinct among the bats and his reasons for using them in part explain why Dick and the other bats do not.

Bruce is a child of privilege, he has always lived a lifestyle of privilege, regardless of the tragedies that have occurred during it, and his default view of the world, through no fault of his own, is natively that of the extreme upper class.  This drastically influences his perspective and approach to change, and changing the world is his perpetual goal, the reason he put on the suit in the first place.

Bruce works a top-down society approach toward systemic change, and he works it all the time.  This is actually my favorite but woefully under-emphasized part of him: he is not just someone who punches people on the street ‘for justice’, he uses his company, his money, and his social position toward substantial systemic change. This post does a wonderful job covering the ways he does this through his corporations and personal wealth, as does this one.  I cannot recommend either enough because I constantly want to push even the most casual Batman fans to understand: Bruce Wayne is not just a violent punchy puncher man.  He is a traumatized person genuinely trying to use all his resources including himself to make the world safer.

Detective Comics #725

Bruce has many personas he maintains, and he uses all of them according to what suits his need--Batman for places the law can’t go, Bruce Wayne the CEO pushing for systemic changes, Matches Malone for street information, and Brucie the society high roller for society information and social influencing.  He is rarely ever not in a persona and simply ‘Bruce’.

His top-down perspective of enacting change are what dictated the usage and necessity of these personas. He has the means and capacity to basically disappear from society if he so chose--he in fact does so to train during his younger years so successfully they don’t even know how long he was actually gone. 

The Batman Files

So he doesn’t need the personas.  Not Bruce Wayne, CEO, or Brucie, or any of them really, to protect his identity.  That tells us that Brucie is a deliberate choice he made at some point.  He could have been a recluse billionaire Batman indefinitely.  Even though he fully has the status and means to not maintain a job or a persona or, let’s be frank, a life outside the mask at all, it’s his own work-a-holicness that led to the creation of his public personas.  He’s an obsessive strategist, so if Brucie is a choice, that leads us to why?

Bruce does many philanthropic things with his money, but he isn’t the only rich person around, especially not in a city as old and corrupt as Gotham.   But he’s one of the very few ones doing good with it.

The comic you mentioned has a very beautiful moment where Bruce touches on that, and in full context you can feel how consumed he is by this goal of creating the Gotham his parents would have wanted.  Batman mentions he never sees himself in that place, and the morbid interpretation is that the city kills him before he reaches it, but the hopeful interpretation is that in that shining city, Bruce Wayne and Batman and Brucie and all his masks will no longer be needed.

Detective Comics #725

Back in the old days they’d call it noblesse oblige: the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged. Thomas and Martha Wayne ingrained this feeling of responsibility into Bruce by example, and as all things related to them, he obsesses over it.  It urges him to fulfill expectations within segments of society he finds onorous for the betterment of society as a whole in order to carry out their unfinished works.

Enter Brucie.

Brucie serves a two-fold purpose.  Since Bruce has chosen to maintain personas among society, it becomes a false face to justify any oddities Batman might bring into the life of Bruce Wayne by setting himself up as a eccentric, popular social scion.  But that persona itself also allows him to manipulate the upper crust of society.

I have some insider perspective on the kind of society events Brucie attends.  They’re all about the who’s who of making connections, name-dropping and networking, and unspoken class-based elitism.  Charity events among the upper class have these things at the forefront and the cause is the background.  You don’t get your hands dirty, you don’t go out and make change yourself, you pay money to be socially seen and sometimes it happens to go towards a philanthropic cause.  If you want to raise money from the rich and keep people with deep pockets coming in the door, you have to have social currency yourself. This is where, and why, Brucie comes in.  I believe Brucie ws crafted to maintain Batman’s cover but still attempt to carry on his parents’ legacy to grease the wheels of the rich in the directions he chooses: one of generosity towards those less privileged. 

Superman/Batman #51

The inevitable flaw of Bruce’s approach to his personas and their philanthropy is that in a city rife with corruption, money distributed from the top has many opportunities to disappear well before it reaches the bottom.  As in many of ways they are complements to each other, Dick’s approach balances that out, because his approach to helping his fellow man starts out at the street level...literally.

Nightwing #153 (Nightwing: The Great Leap)

Dick, we know, does not come from privilege.  His mother was from a middle class family before she joined the circus, and despite being world famous athletes, most circus workers are lower to middle class.  The people he grew up with, was comfortable with, were all working folk who expected everyone to pull their weight right alongside each other.  He enacts this everyone-together approach in almost all aspects and phases of his life. 

Batman #615

Even once he had settled into being Robin and adapted to living at the manor, he didn’t feel belonging to a culture of privilege, materialism, or high society. He preferred shotgun in the limo to chat with the driver to riding fancy in the back.  Once he was able to start making his own decisions about where and how he lived, despite having both Bruce’s money and then later inheriting a substantial amount of his own, he chose mostly lower-class communal places.

Batman Black and White #6

Dick also doesn’t see the value of throwing money at a problem when there is an option to fix it with his own hands.  We see this frequently, from building his own car instead of buying a finished one or outsourcing the work, to deciding the best way to clean out the BPD was to start at the bottom and work his way up (literally), to quitting college because his classes never got prioritized over crimesolving.  Most of his day jobs ended for similar reasons. 

Nightwing #153 (Nightwing: The Great Leap)

Despite the showmanship training, he gravitates away from spotlight on the rich and wealthy, who are notoriously the kind of people who do not get their hands dirty or go out and take care of things themselves, and prefers to find or build communities around the kind of people who do.

Finally, Dick is an extrovert.  He doesn’t need to act extroverted as Brucie does because he is extroverted.  He likes people and likes being around people.  Whether by conscious choice or not, he tends to put himself in situations where he is surrounded by people in nearly all aspects of his life.  He chooses apartment buildings whose occupants frequently pass each other on the stairs; jobs that involve interacting with many co-workers, patrons, or students; and collects superhero teammates like Boy Scout badges.  And all of these behaviors come very naturally to him.  

He doesn’t need a mask or a role or a persona for those kind of interactions; his mask is pre-supplied as “neighbor” or “co-worker” or “teacher” by the situations he puts himself in.  It helps make him an exemplary leader, because just by acting authentically to himself, he automatically builds up little communities around him any time he arrives somewhere.

Bruce, on the other hand, is an introvert.  For him, interacting with people isn’t easy, automatic, or comfortable unless it has a purpose, but as a strategist, he knows the necessity of human interaction as a catalyst to achieving dynamic change. So he adapts personas to suit people’s expectations.  Extroverts have more social currency; the life of the party can generate more resources than a brooding wallflower.  

So, it boils down to just a few elements: Dick believes in living and interacting at the street level to accomplish the things that he wants to, and he is extroverted enough that the level of social interaction that entails is not a burden to him.  He surrounds himself with the types of people he is more familiar or perhaps more comfortable with, which happens to keep him further out from the media’s eye than associating with the upper crust does. The lower profile is more incidental than intentional, but it lessens his need to have a cover story for every single bruise and lets him get away with even less of a ‘persona’.

Bruce, on the other hand, is introverted and follows a more classist view that systemic change needs to be effected from the top down.   His personas are more of a self-assumed duty than a necessity, as a way of trying to carry out his parents’ legacy.  Any of his children could have chosen to follow his path in business or the high society limelight, but the sense of obligation toward it is something personal to him that most of them don’t share.

[toflyandfall]

Empyre #5

Marvel Comics shows first on panel same-sex wedding of gay superheroes.

[toflyandfall]

Do you prefer the hot-headed, cocky characterisation of Clint, or the deppressed, bumbling-but-talented version of Clint? Personally, when done well, I think they're one of the same. But writers often just go for one.

aaaah that’s a major pet peeve of mine, people writing or thinking of clint as “bumbling sad sack that’s almost accidentally talented.” people have misinterpreted that bad, pitying place clint gets into when he’s in a rut, or a depressed period, as his entire being. and so you end up with some seeing/writnig him as a proverbial “sadsack” that can just happen to shoot an arrow when he either feels like it or after tripping over a pile of laundry. i think this kind of takes away from recognizing the intensity of trauma or difficulties (emotional, relationships, and otherwise) he’s facing in his life when he gets into such states, and the toll they can take on him, a regular human who only has his found family after a life of mistrust. instead, it boils it down to “oh that clint! there he goes again, sleeping in on a monday afternoon with yesterday’s pizza on the coffee table!”

he’s in no way bumbling but happens to be talented, he’s skilled because of all the hard work he has and continues to put into honing himself, and that’s part of why he gets to be so cocky; that’s who he is, but he’s also to some extent assured of certain capabilities (though he was not always assured of his place in the avengers) because he knows he can do them as a result of all that work. so he’s not entirely brash, because he’s clever and always thinking of ways to find an advantage in battle, be it through trickery (again, he knows when to use said cockiness to manipulate the enemy), or a specialized skill. he’s all about that sangfroid. actually, i would think his hot-headedness is more outside of battle (again, have to be calculating to compensate) and instead in his life choices/relationships, since im pretty sure quite a few of these of these are by him:

i think a lot of people have forgotten that clint is generally a light-hearted, sarcastic guy in spite of all the wild shit happening around him (or to him) most of the time, albeit occasionally prone to bouts of moping, sometimes extended depending on the situation and its severity. like one of the dozen times he quit the avengers, or especially displayed in hawkeye v1; he was having himself a good time until he got dumped by way of “i was deceiving you the whole time and now will melt you in toxic sludge!” which, again, preyed on his whole mistrust thing, (a recurring problem 

which holy shit how is he gonna react to this ~cap situation~) but he eventually collects himself, usually done once he’s got the support or encouragement of someone he feels he can trust (in that case bobbi), and he perks back up.so he’s’ not like the world’s least put-together college student with a fancy bow, but the highly skilled, street-smart, snarky bastard, at times susceptible to skedaddling for some introspection with only his aim or because he only has his aim.

[toflyandfall]

[toflyandfall]

what are you thoughts on Dick making out with Catwoman? Wasn't it out of character, much less out of character to do so in the middle of a crisis in the field ("this isn't the right time" *makes out*) He eventually realized that Catwoman was just trying to make Bruce jealous and started laughing before getting socked but I was confused as to how it even occurred. How do you think he envisioned that whole episode going - with them dating (since he's demisexual) or trying to get closer?

How Dick reacts to people hitting on him in field situations tends to go like this:

Nightwing #34 (Nightwing: A Darker Shade of Justice)

He generally seems put off by it, but occasionally uses it if it’s to his own tactical advantage.  

Because he’s predominantly always focused on the task at hand, I think it perplexes him to interact with people who are not or who try to mix work and play, so to speak. The more of a history he has with the person it’s coming from, the more likely he’ll engage or let it pass instead of seeming uncomfortable, but even then, he keeps things more or less hands-off.  He’ll verbally banter with his teammates or flirt over comms in the field, but rarely in any physical way.  

So flirting with Oracle on the case is a frequent go, but accepting a threesome with two acrobatic criminals he met while wearing the fingerstripes was a definite no-go.  While he has a history with Catwoman through working with Batman, it’s not in any way a sexual or romantic one, and he’s also very aware of her history with Bruce, making that another non-starter.  

Additionally, thanks to those same histories, he knows that sexual manipulation is a signature weapon for her.

There are two ways that this scene made sense to me, and it’s hard to tell which theory is more accurate without having another clarifying panel.  In neither scenario is there any real attraction going on from Dick’s end.

Let’s take a look at the panels leading up to the Catwing kiss in question.  

Nightwing #52

Theory #1

In the top panel, she’s the one wrapped around him and she’s pulling him downward.  In the next one, her arm is directly behind his head and the other is reaching up towards his head as well. The next after that is the kiss.  

She’s put herself in the correct position to be able to exert pressure downward on his head.  As a society, we’re not really taught how to immediately recognize a man being sexually harassed by a woman, but it ought to be said: from both the way it’s drawn and the physics determinable about their positions, Catwoman has significantly more control and leverage over their bodies than Nightwing does in this series of panels.  She could be literally dragging him into a kiss whether he wanted one or not. If that’s the case, his pulling back to say “this is not the right time for this” wouldn’t about attraction or feelings at all, it’s about her playing games while they’re in a hostile situation.  

I’d say this is also backed up by how he breaks all of his limbs out of her hold as soon as the shooting stops, regaining back both physical and visual leverage in the scene, and tries to cover her mouth until they’re safe.  He also physically disengages from her completely while he takes her to task over what happened in the panel a little further down.

Nightwing #52

Theory #2

Catwoman’s already purposely drawn the attention of the mercenaries to their hiding place, and now ignored first a friendly-ish reminder and then a more businesslike command to stay on track.  Since she’s far from an amateur at this, he knows it’s deliberate.

We know Nightwing will use the interest of others to his advantage if he has to.  It’s not his preferred option, but it’s a strategic fallback.

Ever seen one of those Hollywood moments where someone won’t shut up so someone else shuts them up with a kiss?

What we’re seeing here isn’t driven by genuine sexual attraction, he’s getting what he needs from her in the current situation (silence and holding still so they aren’t spotted) by playing her own game.  She’s made it clear she’s going to cause problems otherwise and giving ‘kitty’ a ‘treat’ is the fastest way to circumvent that to protect them both.

When the coast is clear, he drops the cooperative act and it’s straight back to “Batman Junior”, as she calls him.  He doesn’t bring it up again or rise to any of her flirting or innuendo, which are more indicators there was no genuine interest.

Nightwing #52

-- 

It’s also worth noting that in this entire issue, she’s the only one touching him in any flirtatious way.  His only volunteered contact with her is a few grips when they’re fighting, putting his body in front of her around hostiles, covering her mouth, and the fight over the stone.  We’re not looking at someone realizing the possibility of romance, we’re looking at someone who seems like they’d kind of rather be somewhere else and is only interested in doing their job professionally and well.  His body stays literally turned away from her whenever they’re not in action.

In either case, I don’t think there’s ever a point in which Dick thinks she’s genuinely interested in him, or that there is a point where he is genuinely interested in her.  He knows by her own admission that this entire escapade is a game to her, and he knows from their shared history that she’s opportunistic and socially manipulative. 

Nightwing #52

He knows the kiss was a sexual manipulation in either theory, but he thinks it’s about the diamond and the immediate circumstances.  As someone particularly focused on the job and particularly hard to distract with the physical, it likely hadn’t occurred to him that it could be used against someone else like that until she accidentally clues him in by forcing him to think about that angle.  

And then he laughs because Theory #1, Bruce isn’t going to get jealous over his involvement in a kiss that wasn’t even consensual, or Theory #2, Bruce, master of The Mission Comes Before All Emotions, has a lifetime of knowing Dick with romance and exactly how interested in her Dick isn’t, and isn’t going to be jealous over a battle tactic that prevented a crime.

[toflyandfall]

Detective Comics #490

Categorically, Dick and sleep don’t seem to have a healthy relationship.  Part of this seems to be from regularly prioritizing obligations or interests over adequate rest, as we see above, but part of it also seems to be a general inability to sleep restfully. 

Detective Comics #873 (Batman: The Black Mirror)

There are mentions from people close to him about how rare it is to see him sleep:

Titans Secret Files #1

This is from Donna’s photo album, and the caption combined with the photo’s presence in her album shows that even for someone quite close to Dick, seeing Dick relaxed and asleep is rare enough to be special.

He’s prone to not quitting until the job is done, even if it means working himself beyond where he should: Here, he’s at 69 hours awake out of 72 hours, but he’s found something work-related to focus on and and doesn’t want to be distracted or helped to relax. This seems to be a pretty common theme for him.

New Teen Titans #28

We also have his own acknowledgements of insomnia, some stemming from a generalized inability to sleep and some caused by the need to resolve unfinished business. The panel directly below takes place immediately after Dick springing into bed at the top of this post. 

Detective Comics #490

Detective Comics #877 (Batman: The Black Mirror)

There’s evidence that he does rely on naps to keep himself focused and prevent getting sloppy when he’s going long stretches without sleep.  In the panel below, he’s at 96 hours without sleep and still going, and it’s implied by the fact that he knows exactly how long of a nap he’d need to ditch a sleep-deprivation headache that he’s done so regularly enough to have a calculated idea of what would get him back to some level of fighting fit.

Nightwing #150 (Nightwing vol.2: The Great Leap)

Particularly during Dixon’s run of Nightwing, it’s implied that Dick has chronic nightmares–‘anxiety dreams’, as he phrases it. This becomes less explicitly stated with other writers, but it’s hinted that it does remain an ongoing problem for him by the fact that he is seeing a psychiatrist in New Teen Titans.

He definitely doesn’t have an easy time finding time to manage all the responsibilities he juggles across both civilian and vigilante lives.  He does make more time in his life by neglecting things he sees as trivial for long periods at a time, but in general, he tends to try to take on too much and then struggle to balance it:

New Teen Titans vol. 1 #28

That’s a sampling of Dick’s canonical experiences with sleep.  Long periods without, both case-related and general insomnia, uneasy dreams, tendencies of neglecting sleep to pursue unfinished business.

Bear with me, because below the cut we’re getting into combining those known facts with logical conjecture to look at his actual sleep habits rather than having a directly canon-confirmed answer.

Keep reading

[toflyandfall]

I don't know if we're allowed to ask about you or if you want to keep it strictly Dick/Nightwing related buuuuut what are your hobbies? What do you enjoy doing?

I'd like to keep it mostly Dick Grayson related, but I don't mind the occasional question about myself.  In my free time, I currently enjoy various methods of flinging pointy objects (archery, knife- and axe-throwing), hiking around in the woods, getting crafty and pretending to be other people (cosplay), playing video games, and hoarding books and pretty, nerdy things.

[toflyandfall]

Yay, thank you so much! I love how detailed, thorough, and witty your metas are. Analysis - especially character analysis - is near and dear to my heart so seeing your post really made me happy, lol. Thank you for your time!!!

Thank you!  ♥  Character analysis is very dear to me as well, so I’m glad you enjoyed it, and I hope it answered all of your questions.

[toflyandfall]

YAY :D! OK, I wanted to please ask what your thoughts were on Dick and Shawn's relationship. Did you feel it was in character? Did you feel it made sense? Did you want them to last or did you feel it came out of left field and didn't make any sense? How did you feel about the pregnancy scare and how they broke up ("I know what I said/did was shitty but we can fix this. We can make this work!") - does it sound like Dick? I'm also happy ur still here. I'm so used to asking you & Shelly so thank u!

I'll be honest with you, anon--DC burnt me hard with the Spyral travesty and then putting Tom King on Batman and keeping Seeley on Nightwing, so I don't keep up with current DC comics.  I don’t enjoy them and nearly without exception I don’t find them to be written well or in character. However, you're very sweet and I want to help fill the meta void in your life, so I read through Dick and Shawn's arc together and here's my analysis.

 I’m dividing this into two parts.  The first half will be as objective as possible and analyze your questions on whether Dick seems in character, what he says during the break up, etc.  It’s roughly chronological, starting when we first meet Shawn and continuing through to the break up itself.

The second half I’ll put under a readmore, as it’ll answer your questions about my more subjective opinions about the arc.

 Let’s start by looking at Dick’s previous and most happy relationships to see what good indicators for an in-character relationship would be.

  Getting physically involved with someone -before- having a secure emotional connection with them is not in character for him.  All of Dick's major relationships have been preceded by extended periods of mutual flirtation and bonding before physical overtures.  His most significant and longest lasting romantic connections began by building emotional and romantic attachment before sexual intimacy, frequently paired with a shared history together that precedes even the flirtation.  

There’s significant canon evidence that he’s demi sexual: a comprehensive, though hardly exhaustive, collection of it can be found here and here (the latter half of the second link relates to the Grayson series specifically, but overall it offers a nice long view on his relationship history since character creation and also addresses beyond-canon factors at DC that impacted some relevant canon writings.)  Whether you use the label demi for him or not, it’s canon that he’s not comfortable jumping into bed without a secure emotional connection.

 So let’s look at Shawn’s relationship with Dick through the lens of relationships in which he was the happiest and most comfortable.  Those relationships have these things in common:  

He has a stable, safe emotional connection to the individual.

He is willing and comfortable engaging in banter and flirtation.  

Relationship is based on mutual respect and affection, often paired with shared history together.

Now, let’s look at Shawn’s relationship.

Their ‘history’ together (as Defacer and Robin) is antagonistic, and their interaction in the past leave Dick feeling uneasy. Sure, he seems to think about her situation, but as this panel reads, the kindest that can be said of any emotional connection there seems to be here is one-sided pity.

Nightwing #10 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

Once they meet again, she’s his boss.  Even or perhaps especially in the world of #MeToo, it’s important to address workplace relationships, particularly boss/employee scenarios, with care and sensitivity.  Seeley sidesteps this by just…having her later quit the non-profit she founded and giving Dick her position for a while.  However, even if she’d just worked in HR at an equal level with him when they met instead of being his boss, let’s look at the amount of participation he shows in their first meeting:

Nightwing #10 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

There is a lot of her talking and almost none of him.  He’s not engaged in their interaction here.  Where he tries later as Nightwing to engage more personally, he’s immediately shut down.  The most dialogue we hear from him is in his own head—in their first meeting, the ratio of her dialogue to his is literally 22 sentences to 9.  Of those 9 sentences, one is a lie he gives to avoid establishing an emotional connection with her, another she interrupts, and three of which were less than five words long: “Sorry.” “You can call me Dick” and “Thanks, Ms Chang”.  Even taking the workplace environment into account as best we can, this is not meeting any of the three criteria for Dick to be feeling emotionally attachment or attraction.  No one would look at those 9 almost-sentences and that flashback and say, “Ah yes, this man is deeply infatuated with her.”  

This is made even more jarring by the fact that the internal narration frequently doesn’t match the actual scenes we’ve witnessed.   

Nightwing #11 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

Nothing about the few sentences Dick has managed to finish around Shawn when this narration comes up has said ‘attraction’, physical or otherwise, but the dialogue here reads like Dick was laying the flirtations on thick every time he saw her.  Same with when they talk about the flashback scene later.  There’s a lot of cognitive disconnect between what Seeley wants to tell us happened and what we actually see and hear and have evidence of between the characters.

If you’re wondering why I’m examining these initial interactions with particular depth, it is because frankly, these are the most interactions the two have together for roughly the first five issues of their ‘getting to know each other’ phase...and when they reunite at the end of those issues, we are supposed to believe they are already heavily, life-changingly in love.  So, for all intents and purposes, this scattered handful of conversations is all we have to analyze to examine whether this fits the qualifications for whether Dick would feel comfortable and emotionally attached enough to approach a physical relationship.

We have three chances in their various guises for Dick and Shawn to meet and start developing that all-important rapport.  This is our first initiation to their relationship and it certainly doesn’t read as a positive one.  The next one, she yells at him and kicks him out—again, a whole page of her dialogue to a fragmented sentence of his.  The third one, the flashback panel posted above, they don’t even speak to each other. Two of them are actively red-flags of being unable to establish a closer connection with that person; the third is a neutral connection.  This is not the kind of two-way interaction we see where he’s comfortable and interested in someone, and this is not an emotionally secure connection.  

Shawn disappears for three issues or so, during which they have, obviously, no interactions.

The very next after that, by the end of it, she lunges into him to kiss him.  

The next issue after that, they’re evidently in honeymoon heaven and already shacking up.  

Trust me, we’ll be going over that under the readmore later.

Back in the area of the objective, if you ever need to know the number of days Tim Seeley thinks is needed for two people with self-admitted enormous trust issues to form the ideal Hollywood manic pixie dream girl relationship, we were given a careful timeline.  

68 days—first date

Nightwing #15 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

62 days—first intercourse.

Nightwing #15 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

Six days.  Not even a week.

They’ve met each other, then met each other’s parents and are living together and are one baby scare away from the suburbs in less time than it takes for someone to finish a semester at college.  It took literally longer for the issues of Nightwing where Shawn was an absent character in her own arc to get published in our real lives than it did for their on-panel romance to go from not even knowing each other to Nightwing (not Dick, but Nightwing) kissing Shawn (not Defacer, but Shawn) upside down in the middle of the city.

Trust issues, amirite?

Nightwing #15 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

Meanwhile during that mostly off-panel ‘dating’ period we have these wildly out of character moments. In particular, there are two noteworthy things.

Shawn says she never would have pinned Dick for being a traditionalist.  

That directly contradicts…well…most of the statements people close to him have made of his dating views, and also his own self-stated views of them, whose top tracks include things like “…this might sound unhip, but I feel strange about living with someone I’m not married to”, “I gotta be honest, Roy—I couldn’t make love to someone I didn’t really love”, and “Love should be between two people”.  

We have a direct parallel of an in-character Dick moment walking someone home after an early date to use for comparison.  

Nightwing #31  

Things Dick does in this panel: reassures his date there is no pressure for sex and the night will not be ending that way, plan out just about the most traditional date experience, and engage in light-hearted mutual bantering.  

Additional relevant context around this panel: Dick and Clancy have known each other for months and have a friendly, mutually respectful connection.  Dick’s turned down a sizable number of invitations from her because despite living in the same building, the vigilante life made it difficult for him to make and keep plans.  This is their second date because Dick had to bail in the middle of their first.  It took months both in comics-time and in real-time of developing a mutual interest to lead up to that first real date.  And by then, the reader is invested in the status of that relationship, too.

To contrast the then vs now, we also have in that same moment with Shawn Dick, of all people, ignores a phone call without a second thought in favor of trying for a booty call. On the first date.  Let’s take a look at Dick and Clancy’s first date, 9 issues earlier than the one we just saw.

Nightwing #22  

Dick is a chronic workaholic, with all the associated inability to disconnect from his work while in relationships even during date night or intimate moments. It’s perfectly reasonable, considering that with his lifestyle choice, that phone call could be life or death for someone he loves, a stranger, or many, many someones, and it’s put significant strain on his past relationships when dating those not actively in the superhero lifestyle.  Clancy is, again, a great example of this--despite genuine interest on both sides, he blew her off at least half a dozen times because of vigilante emergencies before they even got to their first date.  And then despite their great rapport and a genuine interest in being there, he still ditched her in the middle of it when his phone rang.

What we see in Seeley’s Nightwing #15 not only runs directly contrary to significant chunks of his history and personality, it also tells a deeply upsetting story of a world where exists a horndog Dick Grayson who would risk other people’s lives to get laid with a chick he’s known less than a week.

They handle vigilante interruptions more in character in later issues once the relationship is established, but...yikes. 

Not in character.

We’re going to take a little jump here to move from discussing whether their relationship is in character for Dick to whether their breakup was in character.  

In general, it actually is pretty in character for Dick to panic himself into commitment in a romantic relationship even if he’s not really sure about it.  Dick is very interesting that way: he runs away from platonic relationships under tension, either by throwing himself into casework or by literally setting up in a new location.  If his romantic relationship is undergoing trauma, however, he's very capable of reacting the opposite, like in this example with Kory.

Team Titans #2

There’s even an awkward Devin Grayson incident where he thinks a woman is serial-murdering her husbands, fake-marries her to solve the case, uncovers the real killer who wasn’t her, and feels bad enough afterward that he offers to date her for real. (An interesting side-note: this makes Devin Grayson responsible for not one but two of Dick’s emotionally compromised almost-marriages. This one, at least, came before she jumped the shark with the dreaded Catalina Flores arc.)

Nightwing Annual #1

So let’s take a look at where Shawn’s exact circumstance falls in against those.

  To me, the lines that sound the most like Dick are actually the lines he says that cause their break-up.  

Nightwing #23 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

Dick has a lot of darkness and anger in him. He’s a lot like Bruce and he’s a lot scared of how much he’s like Bruce.  We’ve seen several timelines where Dick’s had biological children and we’ve also seen how he tempered Damian’s darkness when Bruce was lost in the timestream.  Though this arc and timeline does not show it well (and that’s a whole different meta), we have the advantage of having known how Dick behaves as a father in a way this particular Dick has never had to experience.  And we know that when kids are in the picture he does work hard at repressing or concealing his anger and darkness to be a good role model, often in a way he isn’t sure he has the capacity to do when there are no children involved.  Despite some of the specific phrasings being iffy, the general sentiments here do feel like legitimate concerns Dick would have.

With this knowledge, that moment felt significantly more honest to Dick Grayson’s character than most of the rest of their relationship.  

Nightwing #25 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

The actual break-up dialogue itself is…well, it’s not out of character, exactly, because as shown, Dick has been known to clutch onto potential romances hardest when he feels they’re about to slip away. But the delivery of it isn’t in character.  Yes, in general, Dick has a temper and he lashes out. However, he’s clearly aggressive and angry in this panel, where previous experience has showed us he should be at his most emotionally vulnerable and pleading.  Dick, who is a generally emotionally closed-off person despite his extroverted demeanor, reacts to these kind of romance scares by showing emotional vulnerability in ways he frequently is unable to do during the relationship itself.  And the panel that he’s apologizing for as being a crappy thing to have said, is…as mentioned, the panel that comes closest to a consistent Dick Grayson.

And the thing they’re fighting about is that Dick missed a job interview because he was doing Nightwing things.  Shawn fell in love with Dick knowing he was Nightwing (somehow), he’s been Nightwing the whole time they dated, constant interruptions and all, but she breaks up with him because somehow 'the thing I always loved most…you.’ apparently wasn’t one that included the Nightwing schedule.  She also seems to be both blaming him for wanting the baby and also accusing him of not wanting it.  At the risk of getting off-topic and subjective, I’ll be honest and say Shawn’s dialogue here makes no sense to me at all.

Dick’s tried not being Nightwing, in both pre-52 and new-52.  Dick spends a fair amount of pre-52 time either bouncing from job to job or lacking a day job entirely.  In both pre-52 and new-52, the Dick she’s claiming is the one she’s always loved the most…doesn’t exist anywhere I can think of. Certainly not anywhere during their on-panel relationship.

Now that we’ve looked at what we see of Dick and Shawn on-panel, it’s time to talk about the impact this has off-panel.

I happen to have been re-reading a lot of Chuck Dixon’s original Nightwing’s run lately.  And here’s the thing.  Clancy’s been showing up consistently in that run as someone Dick could be attracted to for for oh, about...two full graphic novels now (that’s 17 single-issues) and they haven’t so much as gone on a date, let alone shared a smooch. It takes 20 issues before they make it to the first date we saw from Nightwing #22.  I don’t remember if she’s in every single issue of that period, so I’m going to round down by probably a lot and say that’s a minimum of a year when this was getting published for us as readers to get to know her and how she interacts with Dick, to get interested and invested in a potential relationship.  In comics-time, it’s weeks before Dick actually sees her face, not just hears her voice.  Even if you’re reading post-publication like me, that’s hours and hours where we watch she and Dick bond and banter and develop a mutual interest.

That’s build up.  That’s emotional investment developed over time.

I’m not saying every single relationship has to take more than a year’s worth of issues on-panel to develop.  However, she does summarize one of the single biggest struggles for DC’s cadre of writers over the last few years.  Basically, the problem I have with this beyond just the characterizations is the same that made me stop reading from New 52 onward: DC constantly trying to skip out on the process of creating meaningful emotional build-up or connections but still expecting to cash in on an emotional payoff.  

You can’t go from ‘kissed once’ to ‘been together for years like an old married couple couple vibes’ off-pages like Nightwing #15 tries to do.  Even if you expect the readers to believe the protagonist now feels that connection (which, frankly, I don’t), we don’t have that connection to the relationship.  It’s a cheap paper cutout with no actual emotional content behind it--why should we care if it tears under pressure?  We have no stake in it; we don’t know why the protagonist has a stake in it.  It’s meaningless.  

As a reader, my experience with Shawn and Dick’s relationship is as follows: a) they meet in a scenario where she is his boss (strong do not date vibes) b) they meet as vigilante and paroled ex-villain and she doesn’t even let him finish a sentence (would not date) c) they show a flashback where they don’t even speak to each other (Robin pities her; no ‘date/no date’ vibe data gathered), d) they share a confusingly out of nowhere ‘emotional’ moment that didn’t match up with my prior understanding of either what I extrapolated from the flashback or what I saw in their on-panel interactions (vibe check, please??) then she disappears for several issues into police custody (no ‘date/no date’ vibe data gathered)  The very next time she sees him, she betrays him  (STRONG do not/would not date).  Then all of a sudden at the end of that issue she kisses him.  

My context for their relationship is based on two ‘emotional’ conversations of dubious quality and consistency, one ‘look’ where their dialogue contradicts my own understanding of the on-panel events, a shouting match or two, and a very major betrayal that just happened to work out alright for everybody but is never actually addressed.  Most of her introductory arc where we’d be piecing out how she fits in with Dick and how they interact together, she isn’t even there for.  They’ve known each other for less than a week.  I the reader have known them for, in my case, maybe an hour of read-time. 

And the very next time I see them, I’m supposed to believe, and more importantly, feel emotionally attached to the fact that They Are The Most In Love Couple To Ever Be In Love.  

Trying to put a timeline on intimacy as a gimmick instead of establishing genuine emotional connection never works.  Yes, maybe we knew that one person in high school or know someone in college who falls hard and often and met and married someone within two months, but Dick Grayson has never been that person.  Maybe this style of flashback manic pixie romance would be more believable if they’d tried it on a different character with a different history and personality, but it especially never works on a character like Dick Grayson with a strong history of being slow to decide his feelings and even slower to jump into bed. 

In order to work, the entire arc that follows with the kidnapping by Pyg is predicated on the fact that I, the reader, am supposed to already care about Shawn’s relationship with Dick, and that I, the reader, believe in the validity of Shawn’s relationship with Dick and in Dick’s commitment to it.  But I haven’t been given time or reason to do either of those things by the time that arc starts.  

You cannot shortcut relationships and expect them to be meaningful to the reader.

So they threw in a baby.  Because even if you don’t care about a relationship, everyone cares about babies.

Throwing in a baby to up the emotional stakes is just a further step up that same problematic cheap-shortcuts ladder I was talking about: like in a stereotyped failing marriage, if you feel like you have to add a kid just to put meaning into your relationship again, maybe what you actually need to do is take time and consider what that relationship is built on.

[toflyandfall]

are you still here?

Oh, you know.  Just hanging around. 

[toflyandfall]

Yay! OK: what kind of dynamic would you have with each member of the batfam (Dick especially but each member)? How would you handle his tendency to lash out and dish out scathing comments. Would you find him intimidating? Where would you live in the DCAU, what would you do and who would you hang with?

Oooh, interesting!  I think of the batfam, I’d be the most useful with Dick and Alfred. Though I can lead when necessary, I prefer the role of second in command and do well at managing people efficiently without making them feel managed.  Alfred is the uncontested champion of both those traits, and Dick’s no short hand at them himself, but even they must need or want help sometimes.  I think I’d slot in easily in that kind of capacity.  

Dick has a lot of people that look up to him in one way or another, and not many that know all of him but have no expectations for him, no matter what mask he’s wearing.  I think he’d benefit from the grounding of someone who knows him and doesn’t directly need anything from him.  It would also be pretty easy for me to get caught up in his workaholic mentality, being already inclined towards it.  He’s not particularly open to accepting help for himself, but since my bottom line is always what will effect the greatest good, I think that would make it not really about him in a way that he’d understand.

He’s prone to lashing out, but often because of internal tension rather than a direct quarrel with the person he’s lashing out at. That kind of anger, to me, is much easier to manage or not take personally.  Either see the stress coming and redirect it before it gets to a breaking point, or afterwards, give some space and then come back with a clean slate.  So long as I felt I was able to help more people by being there with him than by not, I’d stick around despite temper flare-ups.

I would probably get into spats with Bruce here and there because I don’t blindly follow other people’s orders and he isn’t much for explaining himself when he gives them.  But our goals would probably align more often than not, so I’d probably try to make myself useful to him.  I generally err more toward admiration or jealousy of people’s qualities than intimidation from them, but I tend to treat people like people regardless of their capabilities.  Most of the time, that’s a good thing that’s appreciated by people usually put up on pedestals.  Other times, it potentially gets you kicked out of the ‘cave for telling Batman to not be an emotionally constipated mushroom and show his children he loves them. Alfred might be too British to interfere, but I’m not.  

I think if I were going to be intimidated by any member of the batfamily, it would be Barbara, because I’m not sure what I would have to offer her.  I’m good at picking apart what people need and once you know that, it’s a good starting place to find a connection to them for either working or personal relationships. Babs already has a fairly well balanced life, however, so while I’d gladly make myself available for her, what kind of dynamic that would end up as would almost entirely depend on how well or how little she took to me.  I’d enjoy being friends with her but she’s a busy lady with a full social circle and being only another willing associate to her is a very possible outcome.

I have mixed feelings about a dynamic with Jason, for the simple reason that he can be volatile and I don’t enjoy being around people with whom I don’t know where I stand.  Despite that, and despite some moral differences, I think in terms of organization and recreational taste, we’d get along. 

If he were my neighbor rather than a vigilante I had to sometimes work with, sometimes work against, we could probably hang out.  Friends, but the kind you’d catch lunch or a movie with but have to be very careful not to talk politics around.

Out of the newer sibs, Cass would probably be my favorite.  I’d be tremendously interested in learning from her, and I’d look for peaceful things she hasn’t experienced before to introduce her to.  She’d probably be the most relaxing member of the batfamily to spend time with.  Kind of the reverse of the dynamic with Dick: it’s calming to be around people who don’t really need anything from you.  Everything you do for them is solely because you want to.

As for Tim, I actually had a friend for many years who reminded me of Tim, so I’d imagine our dynamic would be pretty similar to that.  He was like a little brother to me, very smart but also prone to isolating and with a lot of internal struggles.  Light-hearted grounding worked wonders for us and it’s similar to Dick’s own behavior with Tim.  I think given time to build up trust, it would be good for Tim, too.

I’m not sure how much I would have in common with Stephanie outside of the batfamily nightlife. We’d probably be friendly and banter, and I could see hanging out in group situations, but I don’t foresee us having much one on one interaction or a very personal relationship.

Damian is probably the member I would get along with the least.  We do both have a soft spot for animals, but Dick, despite that infamous temper, displays a patience with Damian’s habitual abrasiveness that I’m not sure I could emulate.  I tolerate occasional lashing out from people who respect me (see Dick and Bruce), but not habitually from people who expect to receive respect without offering respect.  We would get to an understanding with each other but there would be friction first.

As to the last part of your question, I’ve always been fascinated by the question,  ‘Who helps the helpers’.  Major surgery is not a job one beleaguered butler can do in a basement, even with the best tools money can buy, and let’s be honest, almost anyone in a mask is going to experience things worth going to therapy over.  I’d like to be involved with something akin to Leslie Thompson’s clinic or Young Justice’s Black Canary-as-therapist-for-traumatized-superheroes.  A safe space to pick people and protectors up and put them back on their feet.  I’m willing to take on a mask, but at its core, I don’t think that you need one to be capable of doing good in this world or any other.  It’s just an added benefit if you can do it in your nightlife and your daylife.

[toflyandfall]

Are you still here? Please come back. WE MISS YOU & HAVE SO MANY QUESSSTTTIIIOOONNNNSSSSSS !!!!!

Hello, dear anon!  Please send all your questions over to this account and I am happy to answer them, but I won’t see them if they’re sent anywhere else!

[toflyandfall]

By the time Tommy and the Graysons became recurring characters rather than a cameo, they had also changed the creative team on World’s End more often than some people change their socks, (at one point there were like 5+ people getting writers’ credits if I’m remembering right), so I’d have to look but I’m about 85% sure that none of the Johnny editors or writers were even on the story anymore.  Of all the stories a continuity error could happen in, this one was practically guaranteed at least one.

I just saw the answer for the john/Tommy confusion. I know reviews and opinions were mixed on earth 2, but did the editors really just not care about the kid?! I know a lot of Dickbabs fans who don't even know their son exists. Now I know why, DC just obviously didn't put a lot of effort into him and kept changing stuff. Sad because I like seeing all of Dick Grayson's babies.

It was kind of out of nowhere that a continuity error would carry like that but to be fair, it was the first few issues and the Graysons appeared only for a few panels at first so ill let it slide.

[toflyandfall]

Batman: Gotham Knights #36

Dick and Babs play six degrees of separation with superheroes lmao

[toflyandfall]

shelly come back :(

Dear anon,

I miss Shelly, too, but @theflyingwonder and @toflyandfall are run by different people! If you miss her personally you should swing by one of her blogs to tell her so where she may someday see it, or if it’s the Dick Grayson meta void in your life, you’re still welcome to leave questions here. 

[toflyandfall]

Oh, ha, thanks for clearing that up for me. I haven't really been keeping up with WW titles, you know, so I didn't know whether she was supposed to be exclusively homosexual now or if she was bi/pan.

No problem! Comics is a big world, it’s easy to only hear part of a story and not know what’s going on with who.  That’s what this blog is here for, my friend–answering questions and informing.  Happy we could clarify for you!