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zencat88 · 14 days

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Hi! Sorry about this but you once said Dick was in Arkham or prison during batman RIP?? Why was he in Arkham and i wonder why nobody writes about it?

Oh you’ve hit on one of my favorite grudges, anon! LOL. Yup, Dick was captured by a society of supervillains called the Club of Villains or the Black Glove Society, who ‘checked him in’ to an Arkham under their control under a false name. This was in Batman R.I.P. which was pretty much the last Batman story BEFORE his assumed death in Final Crisis.....which means that uh....add to everything else Dick was going through at the time, that he was also just getting over having been locked up in Arkham in a straitjacket and drugged to the gills and kept foaming and raving and out of his mind for about a week, until he ultimately escaped right before one of the villains was about to give him a literal lobotomy with a pick to his forehead while he was strapped down to an examination table.

This was all part of some very dubiously explained plan Bruce had hatched in advance in order to foil the Black Glove Society and get all his players into place, meaning that Dick literally ALLOWED himself to be captured in the first place, and stay in Arkham all this time, and only ‘pull the trigger’ on his escape at the literal last moment.....ALL because he put his absolute trust in Bruce and him knowing what the hell he’s doing when he asks stuff like this of Dick.

(PS, this was still back in pre-Reboot continuity, so given my fixation of the day, I can’t help but point out that Dick consents to getting locked up and going undercover in prisons QUITE a lot for Bruce in that version of continuity, the same timeline as that juvie origin, which.....I’m just saying. There’s a lot of mileage to be milked out of the fact that Dick is asked to put himself in prison situations a ton without anyone checking in on how this affects the mental state of a guy whose formative years at the time included “was a model ten year old prisoner” among his traumatic experiences.

Just like that whole period of continuity, between the early 90s to around 2010....is chock FULL of times when Dick turns himself into the cops or tries to GET himself imprisoned....as his form of penance when he feels he’s failed in various ways as a superhero. When the secret origin of your son and former sidekick is that people put him in jail and said it was where kids like him belonged, and the go to move of that son and grown up superhero whenever he fucks up or feels he’s let you down is to try and put himself in jail and say its where people like him belong....like, I don’t know how to tell you this, World’s Greatest Detective, but that’s probably not Dick in the driver’s seat at those moments....that’s the trauma, baby!

“Kid who blames himself for his parents death and ends up in jail cuz that’s where they put bad people so they can’t hurt anyone” and who grows up making a habit of being “Man who blames himself for shit and somehow always ends up in jail where they put bad people so they can’t hurt anyone”......idk guys, I’m just really feeling like maybe there’s some kinda connection there? Almost like the one thing....in his formative years....might have had formative effects.....on forming certain patterns of behavior in Dick Grayson whenever he gets his “oh shit, I made a mistake, guess I gotta go to Hell now” on.

Like one could almost imagine that the personal Hell Dick envisions for himself as the only suitable place of punishment he deserves....like, seems to probably looks a lot like...prison. But idk, just spitballing here. There’s barely no evidence for this. Its only happened like six times in one continuity and three in another and in the recent Titans show and also this other time and look, I’m just saying, there’s barely anything there to suggest this is A Thing with him.)

Anyway, I’ve included a couple scans of Dick’s time in Arkham, followed by one of the only images we ever got of Jason’s time in Arkham. This is where my grudge comes in, and why you’ve probably never heard about this happening to Dick:

Because fandom loooooooooooooooooves giving Dick’s traumas to Jason (as though the dude doesn’t already have enough of his own) and then for added irony bonus points....making Dick the Reason that Jason is suffering in fanfics in the same way Dick actually suffered and Jason actually didn’t.

Its like. Symbolism or something. See, cuz parts of fandom hate Dick and Dick being Dick is literally the only reason we’ve ever gotten for why, since.....pretty much all of the reasons people give for hating Dick are....things that literally never happened or that worse, happened TO Dick. See? Symbolism!

Or maybe its stupidity. Idk. I forget which. Its definitely one or the other though.

But like, yeah. So Batman R.I.P. happened, and then Final Crisis happened, and then Battle for the Cowl happened, and then Morrison’s Shitastic Adventures In Writing Batman and Robin Shittily happened, and then Bruce came back and Batman Incorporated happened, and then a few dozen stories happened where Dick locked Jason up in Arkham a few cells down from the Joker and threw away the key while Bruce was gone, and also in a bunch he consented to Jason getting shock therapy treatment or put on drugs and in others he just found out way too late that all of this happened to Jason because of Dick putting him in there and never checking up on him because he doesn’t care about Jason and etc etc, and then a bunch more people decided that they really hated Dick Grayson because wow how fucked up to do that to your brother who was literally murdered by the guy, right?

Except....check it out.

That order of events is important, because add in certain key contextual events, and suddenly....things look.....a bit different.

Batman R.I.P. happens (Dick spends the tail end of it locked up in Arkham, drugged, in a straitjacket, strapped down and almost lobotomized. Weirdly, like, almost all the things that fanfics listed as happening to Jason in the year he was at Arkham? All literally things that happened to Dick in a handful of pages in the few days he was at Arkham. With nary a fic about all the things that actually did happen to Dick while he was in Arkham because he consented to doing this even knowing what could happen because Bruce said its what he needed and Dick said thats all the reason he needed. But whatever. We’re Batfandom. We’re here for the angst. Like the angst of voluntarily subjecting yourself to an experience straight out of your worst nightmares and previous greatest traumas, just so you can be where your family needs you to be to win the day, with no thought to how much this will suck or could go wrong and no need for a thank you for putting yourself through this - hey, no, not like that angst, you tricked us, that’s Dick angst! Eww!)

Ahem. Anyway.

Then Final Crisis happens. Bruce dies in that ‘looked like he was incinerated to ash but actually got booted back to the Stone Age by Darkseid’s laser beam eyes which really, when you think about it, should’ve been everyone’s first guess and thus there’s no excuse for Dick not believing Tim when he said no that’s definitely what happened’ kinda way.

(We are all, of course, expected to disregard the fact that Tim never actually said this or proposed any actual theory FOR Dick to disbelieve and the sum total of their opposing views on Bruce’s death was Tim saying “I refuse to accept Bruce is gone” this one time before he even HAD a theory that Bruce was definitely alive and here’s why, and to which Dick said “yeah I get that, its why I’m in therapy, 10/10 would recommend” before Tim skedaddled from Gotham for his fact-finding world tour about which he shared no facts he found, at least not before the ‘grand reveal’ which Dick literally believed the second Tim said ‘hey btw Bruce is alive’ OH WAIT, DID I PUT MY TIM ARKHAM RANT IN MY DICK ARKHAM RANT POST OMG THAT’S SO AWKWARD UGH STAY IN YOUR LANE, TIM ARKHAM RANT, THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU).

So Batman R.I.P. happened, then Final Crisis happened, and then Battle For the Cowl happened. To be perfectly one hundred percent clear, I pretty much hate all the writing in the Batbooks from this point forward until awhile after Bruce returned, and one of the prime reasons for that hate is how JASON is written. I do not like this Jason, not because I don’t love his character, but because I DO. But this Jason was a total rage monster with NO morals, NO scruples, NO line he wouldn’t cross....which isn’t Jason. The Jason I stand will cross lines the others won’t, without hesitation, but he’s still defined JUST as much by the lines he still WON’T cross as the ones he will. This Jason basically HAS no lines. He’ll willingly hurt children, and has no problem shooting Damian in the chest as a distraction, and gloats about trying to kill Tim a second time here. Also, he dramatically drops himself off a moving train and possibly falls to his death rather than take the hand extended to him by Dick, the brother who has....trauma about watching his family fall to their deaths but whatever that’s probably a coincidence, must be, nobody else ever mentions it.

But also of significance during Battle for the Cowl is.....Arkham Asylum blows up. On the page. The whole thing. A bunch of villains engineer an escape and this all culminates IN THE ENTIRE ASYLUM BEING BLOWN UP AND RAZED TO THE GROUND. ITS GONE. IT DIED. IT DEAD.

A moment of silence for Arkham the First.

Later, Jason returns during Dick and Damian’s run as Batman and Robin, and he’s still all about sowing chaos everywhere he can and fucking with his brothers just because and its like Morrison was trying to play to their favorite theme about people becoming the guises they put on and they were doing their usual meta meta commentary about how Jason naming himself the Red Hood in an attempt to appropriate something that was once his murderer’s and make it his was ironically always in Morrison’s mind doomed to inevitably turn him into the person he ended up emulating despite his initial intentions BUT WHATEVER, ITS NOT LIKE THAT’S KINDA MORRISON’S WHOLE SHTICK AND ALL YOU NEED RIGHT THERE TO REFUTE THEIR VERSION OF JASON AS CRAP INSTEAD OF DEFEND IT LOLOL.

So this Jason clashes with Dick and Damian repeatedly. He takes on a teenage sidekick despite the fact that literally every other version of Jason is in large part driven by his belief that there should be no kid or teenage sidekicks. He kidnaps Dick and Damian and locks them up in front of a video livestream so that everyone can see their attempts to escape - which they’ll only be able to do by revealing their secret identities - and this is how Jason will finally prove he was right to Bruce once and for all....despite the fact that no other version of Jason has ever tried to play the ‘reveal all the Batfam’s secrets and burn all their IDs’ card because that would render them all virtually unable to operate and thus help people, and Jason’s thing has never actually been that he doesn’t think the Batfam don’t do ANY good, its that he believes they don’t do ENOUGH good by not being willing to cross certain lines. He’s never wanted to SIDELINE them purely to prove his way is right, he wants to prove to them he’s right so that they’ll JOIN him in doing it ‘the right way.’ Hell, he’s never been about PROVING he’s right, period....he cares about BRUCE believing he’s right, but just being right in principle? JASON DOESN’T CARE. He’s a grandstanding asshole on main, but his entire ethos is about actions mattering more than easily said sentiments not actually backed up in any actionable way.....NONE of which is in keeping with a full villain version of him with a rationale and agenda that is one hundred percent just about proving abstract points for the sake of vigilante debate team or whatever.

Also, Bruce is still believed dead and its hard to prove things to a dead man, which Jason of all people would know. Since like, he also has died. Or so I’m told.

BUT AGAIN, WHY JUST REFUTE THIS VERSION OF JASON AS BEING OOC AND SUCKING WHEN INSTEAD WE CAN MAKE IT ALL ABOUT HATING DICK LOLOL.

Anyway. So then Dick and Damian finally beat Jason and leave him with the cops to be locked up.....in what turns out to be Arkham.

Which is interesting, see.

BECAUSE DIDN’T ARKHAM JUST GET BLOWED UP A FEW MONTHS AGO?

Well yes. Yes in fact it did. So what is this Arkham Jason gets locked up in?

That would be the Arkham that not long after BFTC, was rebuilt from the ground up.....by none other than Wayne Enterprises.

Who is in charge of Wayne Enterprises thanks to Bruce being believed dead? Why, that would be Dick Grayson. Who has more reason than anyone to be aware of Arkham’s ineffectiveness and its tendency to contribute to the revolving door of villains that go in and out of it, rather than be of any help? That would also probably be Dick, the guy who has been fighting those same villains since he was a kid. And who also LITERALLY JUST HAD A FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE WITH BEING LOCKED UP AND ALMOST LOBOTOMIZED BY EVIL-DOERS RUN AMOK WITH NO SUPERVISION IN THE ASYLUM, NOT EVEN A YEAR AGO?

Also...Dick Grayson.

So when we find out that Dick was in fact the reason that Jason was put in Arkham instead of general prison population elsewhere, which we do indeed find out - y’see, when Bruce comes back and wants to have Jason moved to general prison population at Jason’s request, the literal first thing out of Dick’s mouth is “but he won’t be safe there!” - well, fandom had two options at this point:

1) They could assume the absolute worst of Dick and write him as a callous, neglectful, insensitive, oblivious jerk who threw Jason to the wolves and never once looked back, until it was made clear to him by people who actually cared about Jason what a horrible thing he’d done and he - for the first time since he’d done this - actually thought thoughts and realized he’d put Jason in the worst place he possibly could, he’s a monster, he should probably just go to Hell right now.

2) They could connect the not terribly far apart dots and assume that Dick Grayson, who had Arkham rebuilt with Wayne Enterprise funding, most likely to do all that he could to ensure that it was done WELL and with SAFEGUARDS and had at least a CHANCE of being effective in its stated pursuits...as well as of course now being in a position to have inside access to the asylum and keep aware of what was going on in there.....well perhaps this dude was like “hey Self, so the brother who displays absolutely no remorse about trying to kill our two other brothers two times and counting, and who even now is laughing about the next time he’s going to try, well....he’s not really a liar, so he probably is going to try again, and seeing as how I’m not really a fan of that, and that for some bizarre reason just saying ‘Jason plz dont kill our brothers though' isn’t getting through to Jason, who keeps insisting 'no I gotta tho, they suck and I hate them so I gotta’.......

Well. There’s noooooooooooot really a whole lot of options there other than: lock Jason up so he can’t kill our brothers and/or other people, or....don’t lock Jason up, and he goes around killing our brothers and/or other people.”

Anyway.

Who wants to guess which option most of fandom picked?

And for the bonus round, who wants to take a crack at answering “Just spitballing here, but speaking totally hypothetically.....COULD the sheer volume of fans who seem to view Dick as a callous, neglectful, insensitive oblivious jerk have anything to do with how many of them acknowledge they only entered the fandom via fanfic rather than the comics....as well as the teeny, tiny, so negligible-its-hardly-worth-mentioning POSSIBILITY that maybe the reason so many hold this view of Dick is because of how many fics just.....write him that way in order to make tropes like “Dick threw Jason in Arkham” plausible? And then said fans just....neeeeever figure there’s any need to fact-check anything here, even if this is what they’re going to base their entire definitive view of Dick’s character on, to the point of being willing to wade into any and all Dick-centric posts or fics to argue that no, Dick IS the kind of insensitive, brother-hating asshole who would and DID lock his brother up and throw away the key?”

Sigh.

If only there was SOME possible explanation for why so many Dick Grayson fans have gripes about fanon and various popular fanfic takes on him, even though everyone knows fanfic’s a free country and people can do anything they want with the characters and you can’t get mad. Like, imagine if there was a line called “cause and effect” drawn between what some people do or write and various perceptions, reactions or discourses other people have that mirror the specific things written by that first group.....no, no, I’m sorry, its too fantastic, too absurd, I sound hysterical. Please forgive me. I could be drunk.

But whatevs.

Let’s get back to CANON.

So yeah, maybe there is an element of being somewhat justified when saying ‘hey dude, locking up your brother isn’t ideal brotherly behavior,’ but I kinda gotta say that Tim and Damian would also not be giving out any Brother of the Year awards if Dick had just let Jason go and two weeks later, Jason showed up again to be all “Hey kids, guess what, its MURDER TIME”.....just like he was promising he would. Right there. To their faces.

So call me a biased Dick Grayson stan, but I do side with him on this one, sorry. At least with the version of Jason that he helped lock up......aka the one with no scruples, no boundaries, no way to appeal to him whatsoever - at least not that Dick hadn’t already tried.

(Because that also doesn’t get mentioned in stories about this time, weirdly. Locking up Jason wasn’t Dick’s go-to move, it was more like.....last option after he’d exhausted a shit ton of other options and was exhausted and pretty sure that next time he and Jason clashed he would like. Die maybe.)

Anyway. So now the other interesting part of all this comes awhile later in Dick and Damian’s Batman and Robin run. Specifically the end of it when Bruce comes back. See, when Bruce comes back, he checks in on Jason in Arkham. Where Jason’s just chilling. Bored.

Yes. Bored. That is the canon of Jason’s time in Arkham. HE’S BORED.

All he does in there, he says, is do these mandatory psych evaluations they make him do and then just like...reads in his cell. That’s it. There’s no drugging. No electroshock. No one proposing lobotomies. No straitjackets of any kind, not even the kinky. No. The terrible, awful place where that DICK of a brother of his had had him locked up.....was treating him humanely and giving him no cause to object or complain other than boredom....which was also his stated reason to Bruce, as to why he wanted to be transferred to gen pop.

(The unstated reason turning out to be that once there, he could enact an escape plan which involved murdering everyone that ate food that day, yes, even the not-so-bad criminals or people who were falsely convicted HMMM SOUNDS LIKE JASON ALRIGHT).

So yeah. Jason was completely and totally FINE the entire time he was in Arkham. The place Dick pulled strings to have him committed to, instead of him ending up in prison.

(Because once again, it also gets conveniently left out that technically it was the cops that sent Jason to Arkham, given that it was the cops that arrested Jason right there on the scene after Jason lost his last fight with Dick, and I’m not gonna lie, I’ve always been SUPER curious what people figure Dick was SUPPOSED to say when the cops said "okay we’re going to cuff the guy who was just loudly and publicly monologuing about all the murders he’s done and all the murders he would still like to do and all the murders he’s going to go do first thing after he’s done defeating Batman. And then we’ll be taking him to jail on account of.....all...the murdering and also the confessing and the avowed proclamations to keep doing all the murder?” Like, what compelling counterpoint was Dick supposed to offer in that moment, and also, why should he and no, “but Jason’s my beloved little blorbo” is not what we’re looking for at the moment, can you provide an equally compelling alternative defense please.)

But anyway, the cops went to haul Jason off to jail, where Dick felt he wouldn’t be safe cuz of all the murder and stuff and also because of that time Jason was a crime lord that pissed off every other crime lord and gang in Gotham while shouting hahaha come at me bitches....(Ugh, Dick’s such a worrywart)....and thus its not even that Jason only ended up in Arkham instead of some other alternative that would have been much BETTER for him because Dick just didn’t fucking care about his brother.....its the complete opposite! Jason only ended up in Arkham instead of some other alternative that would have been much WORSE for him BECAUSE Dick cared about what happened to his brother, even despite various attempted fratricides (plural! note the plural!) AND after Jason made destroying Dick and everything he stands for his literal MISSION STATEMENT and then BRAGGED about it on NATIONAL TELEVISION.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but considering allllllllll the shit fandom holds against Dick on his various brothers’ behalves (most of it made up, like.....this whole locked him up next to the Joker thing).....

Literally what the hell do Jason and the others have to do before DICK is allowed to hold a fucking grudge, let alone just.....make non-optimal choices in situations largely of Jason’s own making that he left Dick with extremely limited options to choose when dealing with the fallout?

But yeah.

As terrible as “Dick threw Jason in Arkham” sounds, the REALITY of it was Dick had his one brother who kept vowing to kill all his other brothers locked up in the ONE facility Dick could guarantee himself easy access to and keep a close eye on, to make sure Jason was being kept locked up and literally nothing else was being done to him - no experiments, no weird stuff, not even making him draw for therapy time if Jason didn’t want to.

I know. WHAT AN ASSHOLE, huh?

And then we have out of Dick’s own mouth the concern for Jason’s safety and assumption he wouldn’t be safe in a regular prison, as like......literal proof that he’d pulled the strings he did with Jason’s safety in mind. He couldn’t let Jason go free while Jason was actively trying to play Murder Tag with his other little brothers, but that doesn’t and didn’t ever mean that Dick didn’t care about Jason or just acted callously and without thought.

But somehow, all the fics from and about that period of time are unanimous: Dick had his poor defenseless brother thrown in ARKHAM when Jason has done nothing wrong ever okay so maybe there were a couple things but certainly nothing that deserved being thrown in ARKHAM where he was drugged and shocked and tortured and could hear the JOKER laughing at him from just a few doors down and he was terrified every single day and Dick didn’t come and see him even once because he’s a terrible person who never loved Jason.

And if all the fics say it, well it must be what happened, lol. Or else its just like, peoples’ headcanons. Of what COULD have happened.

Which is true, I guess.

All of that COULD have happened. If Dick.....only did it because he’s a terrible person who never loved Jason and Jason spent his whole time drugged and tortured and terrified of the Joker, who also could definitely have been a few doors down from Jason the whole time (if he wasn’t the primary antagonist for Dick and Damian at the same time). You don’t know!

And if, y’know....all of this hadn’t happened in the same continuity where it was still very much A Thing that Dick most definitely did beat the Joker to death on account of he murdered Jason. Who Dick did care about, allegedly, as he’s not in the habit of going around murdering anyone who kills people he’s just ‘eh’ or kinda so-so about.

But whatevs! Fanfic was clear: Dick is the worst and he has no idea the pain and suffering he inflicted on poor Jason who was unjustly accused of trying to murder his brothers, and ugh, if only Dick knew what it felt like to be locked up in Arkham and drugged and tortured and almost lobotomized, maybe THEN he’d have compassion for what hypothetically could have happened to Jason if literally everything that happened in canon didn’t actually happen.

Me: Stares at the camera like he’s on the Office, and presents the pages I mentioned including earlier:

DICK IN ARKHAM:

JASON IN ARKHAM

And then Jason immediately took advantage of the prison transfer to stage a break-out that only required loosing poison into the food supply to create a massive distraction and oh yeah killed 88 other inmates whether they were in there for murder or possession or who knows and who cares - certainly not Jason. Cuz that wouldn’t be out of character for him or anything.

But again....WHY BLAME JASON’S SHITTY WRITING FOR THIS WHEN WE CAN ALL BLAME DICK INSTEAD AMIRIGHT GUYS?

Yes. Dick, that utter CAD, for the mere crime of repeatedly trying to murder his brothers and his repeated vow to keep doing it, locked Jason up in a place where he had little time to do anything BUT THINK.

But there you have it! That time Dick was in Arkham for a few days of drugged up straitjacket fun with an almost lobotomy for the grand finale, and that time Jason was in Arkham for months of thinking about how he was going to do all the murdering as soon as his asshole brother wasn’t keeping him locked up and unable to murder people anymore.

LOLOLOL but bonus points if anyone can find even a SINGLE fic about that experience of Dick’s or if all the drugging and experimenting and electroshocking is just in fics about Jason suffering because Dick doesn’t care about him and never even thought once about what could happen to him in jail or in Arkham.

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zencat88 · 16 days

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Dick Grayson and Body Image: A Thread

I’ve heard people call Dick Grayson the sex symbol of DC. Ever since the era of DCYou and Rebirth, along with some selective Pre-52 material, he’s been characterized to know how good he looks. He wins over women, he walks around shirtless, he uses his sex appeal to gain info.

But what these people don’t know is that this is actually a HUGE mischaracterization. Here’s a thread about how Dick’s personality and views of himself have changed to fit a sexualized agenda, rather than staying true to his character.

Let’s begin with the Pre-Crisis era.

Dick first began to show an aversion to the sexualization of his body in Tales of the Teen Titans, which was his primary book at the time. Here Tara’s ‘compliments’ are met with a brief thanks before he reminds her of his modesty.

This would continue into the edge of Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis, with a sense awkwardness for any sort of joke involving his body or appearance. At this point he and Kory have been dating for a number of years, but Dick still seems embarrassed with a comment such as this one.

In The New Titans, a disguised Dick says to Kory that he’s “pretty conservative” about nudity, and she replies that he must learn how to accept himself.

“Easier said than done.”

This reveals that Dick actually struggles with an insecurity regarding his body.

When what’s generally known as the Pre-52 era of Post-Crisis rolls around, Dick never overtly admits his struggles like he did with Kory.

But there are several instances where he is clearly uncomfortable with people sexualizing him or pointing out his appearance.

Both of these instances fall within Nightwing (1996). Similar comments are made, and both times, his response is exasperated and uninterested.

Unfortunately, Nightwing (1996) is also tainted by the hand of Devin Grayson, who plays a role in the new wave of sexualizing Dick and portraying him as a womanizer. But this just goes to show that even despite that, there were still hints regarding how he could care less.

Dick Grayson being the sex symbol of DC makes no sense when you consider his character history before the work of Devin Grayson and Tim Seeley, among others. Dick is also an incredibly monogamous person to whom love means a lot. But that’s another thread for the future.

The point here is that he should still be appreciated as a character with his insecurities and struggles meaning something. Tossing that away in order to appeal to the people who truly believe Dick thinks himself all that is a complete disrespect to his development.

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zencat88 · 17 days

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THINGS RIC GRAYSON KNOWS:

- His parents are dead, and he woke up fifteen years too late to make it to their funeral.

- His doctors tell him he’s forgotten half his life even though he retains a lot of the knowledge from it, and he might never get his memories back or return to the person he was before he was - apparently - shot in the head.

- Everyone expects him to be totally on board with going back to a life where things like getting shot in the head happen to him. Twice.

- Everyone he’s met since he woke up tells him they’re his family and his friends and they love him. Every single one of them would most likely erase him from existence in a second if there was even a chance it would replace him with the him he used to be, the one they actually love.

- Everyone is too busy telling him who he is, to ever get around to asking him who he is.

- When you’re an acrobat, success or failure, safety or injury, all of it comes down to trusting your instincts, ones honed by hours and months and years of endless repetition, instilling in you a gut-level ability to just KNOW if you can make a leap or not. But instincts have to be reliable, and reliability has to be earned. He now has more new instincts than he can count, none of which he can remember earning, and he can’t rely on a single one. Too bad so many of these unreliable instincts revolve around whether or not he can trust his impressions of people.

- No matter what he does, he will always come in second best to….himself. He could save the damn world, but apparently he’s already done that, so cross that off the bucket list. Any attachments he forms to his old self’s old friends will always be the second time around as far as they’re concerned. The closer he comes to the person they remember, the more they’ll forget not to hold past grievances against him that he can’t remember committing, and apparently, the further he gets from being a knock-off of himself, the less people even want to get to know him at all.

- Making the choice to risk his life and body and mind for the sake of innocents, day after day after day isn’t an easy one. But apparently it should be, when a previous version of him already made that choice and now any other choice he makes will be the wrong one, a disappointment, a letdown. Much like he himself, designated runner-up from the very second he woke up from being shot in the head. His entire life and new sense of self the result of another man’s sacrifice - a man he’s expected to step into the shoes of, whether or not they’re shoes he’d ever want to wear. Shoes he can’t even remember the past him’s reason for putting on in the first place.

- It took him from the time he could walk to become the acrobat he was by the time his parents died. It took him from that moment on to become the man that everyone tells him Dick Grayson was. Its occurred to exactly nobody that fifteen plus years of growth as a person might not be possible to replicate in a mere fifteen days.

- Nobody wants him to grow as a person. Everyone wants him to just be someone else.

THINGS RIC GRAYSON DOESN’T KNOW:

- Where 95% of the scars on his body come from.

- How anyone whose life has been as full of tragedy and pain as his scar tissue and wikipedia page indicate his has been, can go through life smiling and laughing and cheerful, the way everybody seems to be expecting him to.

- Why everybody thinks he should be in a hurry to reconnect with alleged family and friends whose ranks are full of dead people that he, Ric Grayson, will never actually know as anything other than yet one more person for him to mourn.

- Why this Bruce guy, if he loves him so much, waited until he was twenty-three to adopt him.

- Why, if he’s the adopted son of a freaking billionaire, did the past him live in a shit part of a shit city and work as a gymnastics teacher? Dick Grayson might have had his reasons, but without a clue what they were, to Ric Grayson all it looks like is he was just the PR stunt the internet seems to think Wayne took him in as.

- Why - when he can’t actually remember even going to an R-rated movie in his life - its just assumed he’d be fine with being shown footage of his own brains being blown out on candid camera.

Etc, etc.

People keep acting like Ric Grayson doesn’t have a million and one reasons to act the way he does, when not a single character has tried giving him a reason to even WANT to go back to life as Dick Grayson.

Instead, they keep trying to just TELL him who he’s supposed to be and what he’s supposed to be doing with his life, as though the one fundamental, core character trait that’s so deeply woven into Dick Grayson’s entire being it probably could never be changed, isn’t that….

HE IS NEVER OKAY WITH OTHER PEOPLE DECIDING WHO HE IS OR WHAT CHOICES HE SHOULD BE MAKING.

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zencat88 · 18 days

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I will forever squint suspiciously at a fandom that overall makes a bigger deal out of Dick Grayson expressing he didn’t want to replace his father when he was still young and actively grieving than they do Tim Drake literally hiring an actor to be his fake uncle and saying no to Bruce’s first actual offer of adoption.

Like, if you can get on board with Timothy Drake-Wayne after that, because Tim changed his mind after he was further along in his grieving process, you can get on board with the idea that at some point after the age of ten or twelve Dick similarly changed his mind about thinking a second father would be an insult to his first father’s memory.

*Shrugs* I just don’t get how hard some people go to bat for the idea that Dick never wanted or needed someone he viewed as an actual parent at any point after he was eight. Because you can’t deny that whatever Dick has said about that in the comics, he’s NEVER made it nearly AS big a deal as most fans who cite it at all do. Like, when you run with the most extreme extrapolation of that but gloss right over Tim’s far more extensive efforts to keep Jack Drake the sole father figure in his memory at first, I feel like something else is going on there.

(And I’m not trying to turn this into a Tim vs Dick thing, btw, I’m honestly just using Tim’s story there as a benchmark for how a clearly parallel sentiment is overwhelmingly referenced in regards to just one character but not another. My issues with the way people engage with this particular idea in regards to Dick like, exists without Tim being in the equation at all. That was simply an example of the fact that there IS a discrepancy.)

But point being, as all roads in this particular direction of thought almost always seem to lead to Dick being slotted into some nebulous category separating him from the rest of his siblings, where he’s only partially Bruce’s kid but not FULLY, not like the others….I am the Wary.

Because whatever the surface intentions behind that, it almost inevitably voids some of Bruce’s responsibility to him as a parent, while at the same time making it easier to heap parental or caregiver style responsibilities for the others on Dick. If Dick’s more like Bruce than he is like his siblings in the overall family dynamic, this not only lessens the need to show him on the receiving end of Bruce being a parental figure, it simultaneously heightens the urge to make him a parental figure to the others to pick up Bruce’s slack there, because they’re more partners than they are father and son, see. So why wouldn’t Dick pick up Bruce’s slack and help him out there, and why would he need Bruce to actually be fulfilling that very role with him instead?

All the things people are critical of Bruce for in his parenting with Dick aren’t quite as bad, right, when Dick’s not fully his son or doesn’t quite view Bruce as his father….its easier to reframe it as fights between colleagues. Or recast Dick’s estrangement from Bruce as not actually a failure on Bruce’s part to reach out and cement exactly what Dick meant to him every time Dick flat out says “I want to know what I mean to you, give a name to it, give me an explanation for why you made these choices that isn’t that you don’t want me because all I see when I look at those choices is you expressing you don’t want me.”

Because if Dick doesn’t actually want that explanation ever, if Dick doesn’t actually want that rock-solid expression of Bruce putting a name to what he feels for Dick and what he views him as, then the arguments between Bruce and Dick in his late teenage years DO become two-sided. Its just them butting heads back then. Rather than what they actually WERE in the comics, which was Dick clearly expressing insecurities about his place in Bruce’s life and Bruce repeatedly letting him leave or outright telling him to leave without actually giving it to him.

(I’m not even talking about NTT #55 for once, I’m actually talking about when Dick went to Gotham after he found out about Jason being Robin now. And as the events of that issue get referenced a TON in fandom, its HIGHLY suspect that one specific part of that issue gets rewritten in particular: where its acted like it was Dick that stormed off in a huff there or Dick who didn’t want anything more than to confront Bruce about Robin. It really doesn’t get addressed enough IMO that yes, Bruce said outright that he did it because he missed Dick….and then two panels later, Bruce literally asks Dick to go now. Says I would like you to leave now. Bruce is the one who blew up and lost his temper, literally smashing something while Dick was just heated because he was understandably upset, while Bruce somehow made it like he was the one being hurt by Dick and asking for space from him. Yeah, he said I miss you, but he never DID anything with that and in fact just turned around two seconds later and drove Dick away again, like Holy Mixed Signals, Batman! Y’know? Like what exactly was Dick supposed to do with that? “Oh, so Bruce misses me, but also he didn’t want me there, like I was literally RIGHT THERE for the first time in seventeen months and he missed me so much that….he didn’t even ask me to stay for dinner? Or call or reach out to me afterwards? So….my conclusion is…..what, exactly?”)

Ultimately though, my big beef with the stuff about adoption or Dick not wanting to replace his father, its not even about those specifically. Its about that period when Bruce very visibly was NOT in Dick’s life….and that was BY BRUCE’S CHOICE. That is the thing that needs addressing in my book, and far too often goes unresolved. No matter what the particulars of Dick’s views or wants re: adoption, there is literally no confusion about the existence of comics where Dick is repeatedly the one to reach out to Bruce, at a point in his life where he no longer had any legal ties to Bruce whatsoever…..and clearly express in one way or another that he is there and willing to talk, that in fact he WANTS to talk about why Bruce doesn’t seem to want HIM, specifically.

It was Dick who brought up the issue of Bruce adopting Jason but not him and asked WHY at that one issue with them at a party. It was Dick who returned to Gotham and asked Bruce WHY he made Jason Robin when he hadn’t wanted Dick to be Robin - (and for the record, NO version of events where Bruce is the one to make Jason Robin aligns with Dick voluntarily giving up Robin…..the one and only continuity in which Dick did that, HE made the choice to pass Robin on to Jason. Mixing and matching continuities specifically to make Dick unable to claim hurt or resentment for the identity he crafted for himself being given away to someone else without his approval because ‘he was the one who said he didn’t want it anymore’ is yet again, suspect, as it serves absolutely no purpose other than to lessen the hurt done to him and abdicate Bruce’s culpability in hurting him when he did that).

It was Dick who returned to Gotham after Jason died with no intention but to express his condolences and share their grief, and it was Dick who returned to Gotham to check on Bruce after Tim said he was worried he was going to get himself killed, as well as again more longterm in order to help with Tim’s training.

And in each and EVERY one of those situations…..it was Bruce that ended those encounters, and ALWAYS without ever offering Dick any actual resolution or change in their dynamic. Despite Dick’s very presence in each of these being a very clear sign that Dick was unhappy with their estrangement and wanted a change to it or else he wouldn’t even be there, he would be off being comfortably estranged somewhere else and totally content with that.

THAT’S the bigger issue and always has been, I think. That no matter how else you parse it, Dick repeatedly looked for and asked for reassurances, some kind of actual TIES to Bruce, and that Bruce for whatever personal reasons of his own, repeatedly did not give….even when Dick walked him right up to the perfect opportunity to just fucking say “I would like you to come home more, I want you here, I want you as part of my family even though you’ve already aged out of our existing legal bond.”

Bruce still just WOULD NOT SAY IT. Dick was very clear about needing and wanting something from Bruce that Bruce DID NOT GIVE HIM. Bruce gave him basically nothing to work with in these encounters more often than not.

(In the interest of not being disingenuous here, I do admit that at the party when Dick asked Bruce why he’d adopted Jason and not him, Bruce did give a fairly touching response about how by the time he thought Dick would be open to it, he thought that Dick was too old to actually want or need it anymore. BUT, problem is, even with that it does absolutely nothing to change or address how the very fact that Dick was expressing insecurity about this now meant that Dick WASN’T actually too old to want or need it. It was literally a smack in the face that Bruce’s conclusion was wrong and not actually about Dick’s wants. And Bruce knew this, even referenced it at later points when he threw it back in Dick’s face to accuse Dick of resenting Bruce adopting Jason and not him…..which is a clear indication that Bruce knew it was something Dick still wanted or else there would be no reason for resentment, and THAT is the issue there. That no matter what Bruce said at that party about his reasons for not adopting Dick sooner, that very conversation itself should have been reason enough for Bruce to rethink his stance then there….but he didn’t. Also he ended up adopting Dick like five years later soooooo…..if he could do it then when Dick was even older, that doesn’t work as a barrier for him not doing it then.)

And that’s the troubling part…..how many people try and make that period of their lives unclear with no other visible purpose than to make the fact that Bruce WOULD NOT OUTRIGHT CEMENT DICK AS FAMILY OR ASK HIM TO STAY, like…..less problematic.

And as I’ve said before and will no doubt say again…….that logic process bugs the hell out of me, because it ultimately tries to claim the responsibility for Dick’s unhappiness in this regard back then is at least as much his fault as Bruce’s. That it was some kind of fight between equals, or that it was something Dick initiated or that Bruce had no power to resolve on his own via just his own choices or gestures.

Because it wasn’t! That’s not remotely what all of that was! And like I’m also always saying, you don’t HAVE to stick with the canon by any means. You can literally rewrite things so Bruce adopts Dick before he’s eighteen and they never HAVE that period, you can rewrite things so that Bruce reaches out and ends that period early on by DOING THE WORK of being the parent in that situation, you can ‘fix that’ by any number of means……yet over and over we see that period of estrangement repeatedly upheld as a thing that exists in the history that fics and headcanons reference having happened……but with the only ACTUAL change from the comics being that its framed as though it was just growing pains or Dick being stubborn or a dozen other things that somehow keep coming back to Dick doing something wrong there instead of repeatedly standing in front of Bruce asking for him to clarify their relationship and Bruce changing the subject or asking him to leave.

Again. THAT’S the problem.

You want Good Parent Bruce Wayne? Then WRITE Good Parent Bruce Wayne. Don’t just write Stubborn Teenaged Asshole Dick Grayson who btw doesn’t even really want Bruce to be his parent so there’s absolutely nothing Bruce could have done to bridge that gap back then anyway.

(As that’s an equally critical part of the equation here as well. See, since Dick DID clearly express a want for a clear connection to Bruce back then, acting like Dick never really wanted a second father is a super convenient way to write over the part where Dick spelled out for Bruce how to bridge the divide between them and make things good again…..by demonstrating an actual WANT to have Dick in his family!)

But writing Stubborn Teenage Asshole Dick Grayson Who Did This To Himself…..that is something entirely different from writing Good Parent Bruce Wayne. You haven’t actually done or said anything with BRUCE’S character by just making Dick the fall guy for every conflict between them as though they were just equals all along and there was never any kind of actual parent child relationship or even a DESIRE for there to be a parent child relationship. Where the responsibility for being the PARENT like, lands on the….y’know. Parent.

And for the record, I don’t think this issue is confined just to this period of the comics, I think rather that its kinda the point of origin of a very large recurring problem in Dick’s conflicts with other people.

Because like I said, it was abundantly clear that Dick was expressing a want to be acknowledged as family, or just flat out acknowledged by Bruce at all, during this time. And if people can somehow make THAT period into just his fault…..then of course it should be no surprise that they can make any conflict he’s part of into his fault. Its a freaking blueprint for doing just that!

And that’s exactly why this pattern recurs so damn often with EXACTLY the same fanon beats……whatever role the other character plays even in initiating a conflict is shifted onto Dick and somehow made into his own proactive choice and not something he’s actually reacting to. Thus Dick does double duty as both the CAUSE of the conflict and the resulting EFFECT - aka how he reacted to that thing that originally, he did not actually cause or initiate. While meanwhile, the other character not only gets off scot free bearing no actual culpability….no, now since DICK is the one making all the actual choices in the conflict from start to finish, now the other character is actually his VICTIM in it as well.

And that’s just…..so….blegh.

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zencat88 · 18 days

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“You were all so quick to believe I was dead!” Tim burst out, letting the dam dissolve and all the anger and hurt flow free. Rising up from his gut, collecting bile and long-buried resentments along the way. Until it all spilled forth in a churning torrent of bitterness and pain.

“After everything, after everything we’ve been through, nobody came for me because you were all so easily convinced I was dead and gone. He barely had to work to cover up my abduction. The others, I can understand but - god, Dick, why didn’t you at least….I mean, Bruce came back! Jason came back, Damian, Clark, after all the people you’ve seen die and come back, you couldn’t even hold out hope that might happen with me too? You, the guy who’s hailed as the most hopeful hero out there, the eternal optimist….but you couldn’t hope I was still alive, or could be again?”

Part of him wished he could have stemmed the tide a little, the second he sees it smash against his eldest brother’s defenses with visible force. Enough to blunt the impact, soften the edges at least. But before he could hunt and peck for better words to carry the hurt but none of the harm, Dick responded, his voice rising to meet Tim’s own.

“That’s the problem! That’s what you never seem to get, that its like you never want to get, because you’re always so damn quick to judge me for not reacting to death the way you want me to. Yeah, there’s all those people you listed and more, people I’ve loved and lost and who have all come back to me. But that’s only half the list! What about all the other people I’ve lost? It’s been almost twenty years since my parents died, Tim, am I still supposed to hold out hope they’re coming back just because my second dad did? Do you know how many Titans are still dead and buried? Are they all just waiting their turn too? I mean, God, if they are, I will gladly stand here and let them hate me as much as they want for giving up on them, just to have them back, but how long am I supposed to wait?”

His older brother deflated like a balloon no longer capable of staying aloft, lighter than air. He shook his head as it dropped to his chest.

“Don’t you get it, Tim? The reason I’m always so quick to “give up on people,” its not because I’m not grieving for them, not because I wouldn’t give anything to have them back, wouldn’t have given anything to get you back….and its sure as hell not because I’m not aware its a possibility. Its because I can’t let myself hope! Because the second I do, I’ll be hoping forever. And I’m sorry but I can’t live like that. Believe me, I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. I could spend every single day waiting and hoping and begging for all my loved ones to come back to me, I could cling with every scrap of optimism I have to the knowledge that we live in a world where that’s at least possible, that its happened before and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be so fucking lucky as to have it happen again….but there’s no expiration date on that hope. There’s no clock to run out, where after that I know its time to make my peace with things. Am I supposed to spend the rest of my life waiting on everyone I’ve ever loved to come back to me? And being disappointed all over again, every day that they don’t?”

Tim’s breath caught in his throat and stayed trapped there, along with any possible response. Of all the myriad hypotheses he’d dangled in front of himself, tantalizing him with the possibility there was some other explanation for his brother’s lack of a rescue attempt beyond the everpresent refrain echoing in the back of his mind, drumming away with a steady beat of “he doesn’t care, maybe he never cared,”…this had never been one of them. Never even flashed on his radar as a possible reason.

And maybe that was the trick of it…maybe the truth that’d been right in front of him all along is that he just didn’t understand his brother, at least not the way he did Bruce or Jason, or hell, even Damian. He had all the data, knew him better than most people ever would, but that never seemed to fall into recognizable patterns, familiar arithmetic that would play ball with his attempts to solve for x.

Then Dick’s eyes snapped back up to meet his, and Tim flinched back from the accusation in them, totally unprepared.

“And you know, this isn’t a door I ever wanted to open, but you’re the one that insisted on walking on through so now I kind of have to ask,” his brother said quietly, but no less fiercely for his volume.

“Because you’re the one who always refuses to let death win, the one who puts his foot down and says no every damn time. Who won’t accept it until you’ve exhausted every last option to prove its not true, they’re not dead, or if they are, you can find a way to bring them back. And I’m so fucking proud of you for it, I am, and so goddamn grateful too…you went to the ends of the Earth to try and bring your friend back, you hunted through time to prove Bruce was alive….but then someone told you I was dead, and that was that, that was all you needed to hear, that one time and one time only. You wouldn’t even have had to raise the dead that time, all you had to do was just look in my coffin and find a plastic doll, Tim!”

Dick shook his head again, and barked out a toneless laugh. “You condemned me with so much fucking conviction when I came back, telling me how you never expected I would be the one to let my family think I was dead. Well guess what? If its honesty hour, I gotta say, I never expected you to be the one to accept it so damn easily! So what was different? Why, out of everyone you’ve lost, am I the one who was so easy for you to accept was gone?”

“I…don’t know,” was all Tim could think to say as his brain stuttered and crashed to a halt. Because for the life of him, he couldn’t remember, his memory failing him for the first time when he needed it most, needed an answer. Not just for Dick but for himself, because when it was pointed out so blatantly, so bluntly stated and searing him with the sheer obviousness of all the clues he’d overlooked then…he couldn’t understand either. And thus honestly couldn’t blame his brother for the bewilderment laced beneath his own pain.

“Because if you think just because I was alive then, that means I was alive and well, I’ve got a newsflash for you little brother,” Dick said into the silence, his eyes intent on the floor. A wry, humorless grin curled his lips, anathema to his sincere expressions of cheer. “I was very much not okay, and I would have welcomed a ‘rescue’ even if it blew that whole stupid fucking op. I spent every fucking day of that year wishing and hoping and dreaming of it being over, so I could be back with my family, back where I wanted to be from the start….because if you for a second think after everything the Crime Syndicate put me through, I wanted to be anywhere other than surrounded by my family and hearing it was all going to be okay, maybe you never knew me at all.”

“You never said anything,” Tim whispered. He hated how inane it sounded, how faint, in the wake of that. For this, his treacherous memory was all too happy to provide a painfully intense recollection of his first words and reaction to his brother upon his long waited for return.

“Yeah, well, I guess I always hoped I wouldn’t have to, and someone would figure it out for themselves.” Dick huffed, a nearly silent exhalation, like a half-voiced scoff most likely voiced at himself. “Its like I said. Once I let myself hope for something, I’ll hope forever.”

There wasn’t really much left to say after that.

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