But Its Important

Hey do you know a canon summary of Jason’s plotline/ development? Or if you don’t at least what you think his development is? I saw your Damian and Jason being league bros rant and I really liked it. Idk shit about jack that’s canon I just see family vibes in fanfic and my trauma says awooga

Hi hi

Yes yes

Okay so my big issue with the league bros Jay and Dami brotherisms

Is that yes Jaybin was a sweetie (I wouldn’t say he wasn’t reckless or that he was the kindest or nicest Robin bc I think that’s a gross exaggeration but he was a sweetie)

But he just? Wasn’t that? When he came back? He was rightfully angry and violent. He gave into the violent tendencies he had as Robin (which unpopular opinion I think were COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED BTW)

but like? Jay had a bat habit of murdering all his teachers when they were done with him

He killed his goons and low level players in his race to take over the Gotham underbelly and like? Idk he just wasn’t? The current red hood or the past Robin.

Like since I am a dick Grayson stan account I’ll use them to demonstrate.

But Jay and Dicks relationship is awful when he first comes back

-he steals dicks nightwing suit and kills people in it ruining dicks standing and making him a target for more anti-hero ‘vigilantes should be killed’ stuff that was happening at the time

- he killed like 100 people in black gate bc he was like ‘well i wanna kill criminals and here i am surrounded by criminals whatever shall i do’

- then there’s all the WEIRD ASS STUFF he did to Dick and Damian when they were Batman and Robin (stripping them naked and trying to reveal them that way to the world??)

Anyway Jay was a fucking VILLAIN

And then after all this, the reboot happened, they gave Jason a collection of very fucked up and traumatized folks that he couldn’t just murder his way out of

And he like actually had to have dimension and he was moved from being imo one of the most interesting Batman/ batfam villains to being a pretty cool anti hero more in the line with batwoman or like the new Harley Quinn

But he didn’t start out that way

He was a murderer with sociopathic tendencies who remembered what it meant to give a fuck through a lot of shared trauma and experiences and now. His relationship with the bats (I’m talking specifically about the batlings rn like dick, Tim and Damian) is much better

Dick helps him clear his name when he’s accused of murder

Tim and him work together on cases

He’s trying to be there for Damian

And this whole dynamic gave me the ability to watch my precious baby boy beat the shit out of Bruce Wayne during Gotham war (I just love angry Grayson lemme live)

Right

But if you think for a SECOND THAT OG VILLAIN JAY TODD WOULD HAVE BEEN LET AROUND TALIAS BABY??

Not happening

Now a lot of people are gonna be like “oh you’re picking and choosing” or “oh you’re ignoring Talia’s characterization in morrisons and using jays” and yeah I think that Talia’s characterization in dicks Batman run was awful and while I think certain things Jason does in the comic he wouldn’t have done if written by someone else. It 100% is more fitting than the racist nonsense Talia Stan’s had to deal with. 

Anyway I think if you want sweet and fuck brotherisms/siblingisms/ other bat relationships (since you don’t read canon and some of these are lowkey ignored by the fanon i 100% you check out like any fanart/ fanfic of them)

Dick Grayson and any younger Robin is always adorable

Tim and Damian in Gotham war

Jay and Damian in the Robin run

Tim and Duke whenever they’re together

Tim, cass and Steph also have a very fun dynamic (the angst potential here goes crazy tho)

Jay and Dick as red hood and nightwing are very very fun

But also nightwing and Jaybin is fucking adorable (cue dick trying to take Jason Todd from Bruce like YOU FUCK UP IM ADOPTING HIM MYSELF)

Jay and babs (we ignore that one time they tried to make them date we IGNORE IT)

Outside of the Batfam batkid relationships are also so fluffy

Jay and bizzaro have a very cute relationship

Tim and the young justice team are fucking adorable esp him Cassie, Kon and Bart

Supersons can be read as platonic or romantic but they’re fucking adorable and I loved the supersons comic so so so much

Dick and the fab 5 trust me Dick and Donna sibling fluff hurts my teeth.

I personally hated the comic this happened in but if you’re not a big comic fan / you don’t care about pre crisis that Jay and Roy??? Adoptable

Anyway this is mainly based on my opinion I AM mainly a Nightwing reader so some of these things come from my Jay Todd Stan friends (cough cough cough you know who you are cough cough) so I’m sorry if I fucked up any details

The best part about DC canon being a sandbox is that you can combine different parts of different timelines into your Frankenstein ideal just to give Bruce Wayne more gray hairs

Observe

Bruce: Dick you know you’re 26 you can’t keep working as a gymnastics instructor on a volunteer basis you need a career.

Dick who has been working as a lawyer in nyc for 3 years now: hmmm yeah you’re totally right B maybe I’ll take some classes

Bruce: Tim you need to get your GED, I cannot allow you to give up on education at highschool.

Tim who got into ivy university and has been zeta-ing back and forth: …hmmm maybe I’m kinda busy

Bruce: I have no idea what Jason does in the day

Jason catholic priest Todd: … yeah I got nothing

-this shitpost was brought to you solely to remind everyone that JASON TODD WAS A CATHOLIC PRIEST IN ANOTHER DIMENSION THANK YOU

I am hijacking this post to rant about my fave one sec

AND this is why Batman’s greatest success in his opinion is Nightwing.

Because Dick Grayson is whoever you need him to be at that moment. While Batman can switch from a chemist to a physicist to a professor to a doctor to a billionaire. Fundamentally his character is the same he will not change or accommodate for anyone even his children. He is rigid in character if not skill. And he accidentally raised his oldest son to fill in those grooves, to alter himself perfectly to fit into the position required of him.

It’s why Nightwing as a hero is so revered. Because he is a leader, solo hero, spy, teammate, brother, father figure, son, support. He’ll erase the gaps that are flawed in the dynamic by changing his tone, behavior, skill set etc.

Superman needed to train his son he went to Dick Grayson

They needed to soften the assassin characters (Cass and Damian) dick was either a support or main presence in their initial development.

He’s the de facto leader of any of the second gen teams

It’s why he can still work well with his siblings bc while he won’t accommodate Jason’s killing he’s willing to work with him at a middle ground. Him and Tim have almost always had a phenomenal relationship because Nightwing is trained to cover up the gaps and the in between. The nooks and crannies of character compromises the other characters wouldn’t either bc of stubbornness or bc of simple inability to do so.

It’s why his undercover runs are so interesting

Bc he’s a chameleon character

Bc he needed to accommodate for Batman his entire life (ahh parentification our old friend)

The thing about “Good Dad Bruce Wayne” and “Bat-Dad” is….that’s the dream. I love any and all depictions of Bruce Wayne that prioritize him DOING THE WORK to be a good father to his kids.

I never look for reasons to criticize Bruce or his parenting. My frequent bitching and moaning about him and how he’s written comes from one place and one place only:

IMO a lot of the time, instead of writing Bruce putting in the WORK to be the PARENT, people just write him being 70% of the problem and only 30% of the solution and call that ‘good enough.’ Because hey, at least he’s trying to be part of the solution and fix his mistakes and be better for his kids, and isn’t that the most anyone can ask for?

Well, no. Its not. Especially since with the exception of Damian, Bruce chose each and every one of his kids with full knowledge of what he was doing. He doesn’t GET to do the bare minimum, even when his kids require more effort than the norm, like the situations with Jason sometimes are beyond the ordinary. There’s no quota to parenting. 

The thing about Bruce Wayne is he is pretty much the most competent individual in the DC universe. He has more resources available at his disposal than any other parent can dream of. He has excelled at every thing he’s ever put his mind to….

Except, often times….being a parent.

And parenting is not somehow inherently more impossible than saving the world every other week. Its just not. It literally is just: put your kids first. 

And that is what Bruce is written as failing to do, time and time again. That is almost unilaterally where every single one of his conflicts with his children come from.

When he puts his own fear of rejection over Dick’s fear of abandonment, and refuses to reach out to Dick, beg him to come home, ask him to stay.

When he puts his own moral choices over Jason’s need to be understood, to have a father who can coexist with him and his choices when that very same father has at many times reconciled working with heroes with vastly different moral codes and even body counts of their own.

When he puts his own discomfort with emotional conversations and expressions of affection over Tim’s need for concrete gestures and reassurances that his parent needs and wants him in his life.

And so on.

These things are all actionable. They are all based on choices Bruce can make, and at many times just chooses not to. They all demand one thing and one thing only, the one thing that is expected of parents who take on the responsibility of a child that they and they alone are responsible for the wellbeing of:

Put. Them. First.

And falling short of that, when there’s every opportunity to do the work…is Bruce’s failure. It just is. Its not on his kids. He is the parent. Always and forever, with each and every one of them. That is what he signed up for. THEY did not. Kids don’t have the same power and choices about where they end up as the parents do when deciding that where they end up should be with them. And that can’t be disregarded. Bruce’s kids, as much as they love and appreciate him, are not ultimately the ones who arranged to be tied to Bruce for the rest of their lives, even if they all accepted that and wanted that in their own ways. He was the one with the actual power to make those choices, and to quote DC’s competition:

With great power comes great responsibility.

Bruce’s kids will always have less power than him purely in the context of their relationships with him, because the yearning for a parent’s approval exists on a wholly different level than anything a parent can need or get from their child - especially when they have multiple children but those multiple children each only have the one parent they’re all desperately hoping for the approval of. As well as when each of those multiple children arrive in Bruce’s life already burdened with issues born of abandonment and abuse and neglect that aren’t Bruce’s fault….but from the second Bruce stepped up and volunteered to be their parent, still very much became his responsibility all the same.

Bruce’s kids will always, always, always have more to lose, when there’s any conflict between them and their father.

And the thing that frustrates me so much about how Bruce is written in both canon AND fanfics….

Is how often the narratives cut corners and emphasize the blame and responsibility of his children and make them settle….for just ‘good enough’ from him. For ‘well at least he’s trying.’ For ‘he’s not perfect.’ 

He doesn’t need to be perfect.

But he needs to be the parent.

And personally, I will never be satisfied by narratives that feel like they make more attempt to coddle him and say its okay to just do the bare minimum, as long as he’s making an effort…than they do to make him step up and do the work, put his kids before his own issues.

He’s not the child. So stop treating him like one. Stop writing his kids being more mature than him. Stop saying his children are ‘equally at fault’ for him refusing to make them a priority and any issues of insecurity and abandonment and hurt they feel because of this. Stop expecting his oldest children to act as buffers for his younger children and do the parenting he refuses to do at times, and stop only treating them like his equal when it allows for them to victimize him in some way, with the story treating them like the aggressors and him the misunderstood recipient of their emotional harm and neglect.

Bruce Wayne has more social power and resources and skills and intelligence than just about any other human in the DC universe….his children included. Please can we just start holding him to the standards that kind of power should entail? Instead of looking to his children to always make up the difference for the times he refuses to be accountable, or a narrative refuses to hold him responsible for his own behavior and poor choices?

I WANT Good Dad Bruce Wayne.

I’m just tired of seeing ‘emotionally stunted surly teenager who makes his family’s lives far more difficult than they need to be and then awkwardly hugs them and grunts out an apology in the last paragraph to make up for it’….and being told: that’s Good Dad Bruce Wayne too.

No. Its not. I know what actual Good Dad Bruce looks like, and that ain’t it. Do better. Make him do better.

Question?

We talk about how Tim, Jason and Damian’s parents raised them pre Bruce but why don’t we talk about Dick Graysons.

Bc even before all of the court of the owls shit the way that man was raised was wild.

So remember Dick was a member and active participant of a circus as a child. A trapeze act without a net who was expected to pull his weight since he could walk.

That means that despite what everyone thinks John and Mary Grayson absolutely could not afford to gentle parent their child.

At all.

Dick had to know how dangerous his life was forever. He has to be perfect because if he fails him or his parents die. They die with a mistake. Don’t stretch your hand out far enough and someone falls.

And despite the fact that the Romani aspect of his character was born out of a writers need for fetish content. I still find it interesting to explore.

And since I am European! Halys circus truther

It gets more interesting because the anti-Romani sentiment in Europe is vile, obvious and violent. (And I say this as a poc who grew up outside of Europe and moved here for college. Like you’d never imagine the type of shit they say about a group of people with no shame before turning around and commenting about how crazy it is that poc are treated poorly in the rest of the world.) Now imagine your child is working a dangerous gig while being part of a hated minority and you have to go and advertise your whole families location because you are the centerpiece of a show.

Yall think Mary and John Grayson didn’t teach their kid to lie? To fit in with any group humanly possible.

You think Mary and John didn’t teach dick to switch from, mama to mom to Daj. To switch accents and tones and languages since before he could walk on his hands?

You think that this kid who grew up traveling everywhere wouldn’t know how to integrate himself so fully into the society he’s in that he’s invisible as an outsider?

When Dick talks to Bruce in Juvie right before hes taken in as a ward he has an American accent. A Gotham accent and not the ones the other kids has no Dick has a Bristol accent. When he first meets Alfred he has a charming softly British accent, the kind that isn’t immediately noticeable unless you share the accent. The softening of the vowels and heavy central consonants. Think kids who went to British schools abroad and learned English from people with British accents.

Bruce notices this but doesn’t think much of it I mean kids can adapt to their environments startlingly quick maybe the kid just kinda picks up accents.

But then Dick becomes robin and he’s horrifically good at it from the get go.

Which sends alarm bells in Alfred’s head because he raised Bruce at that age. He taught Bruce to defend himself at that age. Bruce wouldn’t be about to do 1/10 of what this kid can do.

No eight year old should be able to throw items with that sort of precision even a child as good at gymnastics as dick. No child should be that comfortable with a knife in his hand.

And of course dick always had an excuse, he grew up around fire breathers and knife throwers of course he’s good.

And Bruce notices when Dick goes out as Robin and begins to help people because for the first few months, he never speaks first.

He’ll save someone and when they thank him, he’ll reply in their exact accent.

The crime alley rougher tones

The high class smarmy Bristol accent

The open vowel Jersey accent

When he meets Superman there’s the barest edges of midwestern twang in his every word.

And it’s just unnerving

He flickers between cultures like their clothes in his wardrobe, accents like they’re a new set of perfectly fit shoes.

He’s just good at it.

And it’s a game to him.

He sees how close he can get to your accent without coming off as suspicious.

By the time he’s being doing the Robin shtick for a while and knows the areas he just immediately switches to the most common accent there even if there aren’t any people around.

His facial expressions and hand gestures change as well.

It adds to the myth of the Batman because the gcpd for a long while believes any Robin reportings to be a myth because one minute someone is reporting a Jersey accent the next genial Californian, or a tv safe reporter tone, one minute the kid is conversing in perfect Russian the next he’s speaking Spanish like he grew up in Mexico.

When he wants to get away with a mistake his voice switches to one indistinguishable from a scared child, with a mild stutter, overgramarization and the scared world slurring children do that makes your heart soft

When he wants people to listen to him his he’s eloquent and enunciating perfectly. He sounds far older than his years.

And everyone thinks they’re hearing the real Dick Grayson speak and it makes their hearts happy because look at how he puts on a show for everyone but trusts me enough to talk without lying.

Without ever realizing that they’re one of the people watching the show.

“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

✨Incorrect quotes✨

(Except they are real conversations that I or my friends had).

Wally: I'm going to kill myself.

Dick: Same.

Wally: ... Figuratively speaking, right?

Dick: Literally.

Wally: I'm calling your therapist.

Dick: You don't know my therapist.

Wally: Well, I'm gonna find them and then call them!

Dick: What's life without a little of risk?

Donna: A longer life.

Dick: ...

Dick: Who needs to live so long?

Random Socialite: You are just like your dad (Bruce). His genes must be strong.

Literally any of the Wayne kids (minus Damian): I'm adopted.

Tim, after going back to drinking natural fruit juice instead of five cans of Monster: I feel nutritious.

Bruce, after being told how handsome Dick is by like five people; completely confident and proud: Yeah, he got it from me.

Dick: I'm literally adopted.

Dick: The only thing I got from you is an addiction to using expensive sheets.

Tim, listening to loud music, knowing Jason was there and wanting to annoy him:

Jason, completely fed up with the world: TURN OFF YOUR MUSIC IT'S TOO HOT OUTSIDE.

Tim:

Tim: And what the hell does that have to do with it??? *proceeds to turn up the volume*

Annoying math teacher: Okay, students, do your math...

Dick: Do we do it mentally or can we use the calculator?

Teacher: Do it mentally with the calculator.

Dick, and probably the rest of the class: ???

Tim: I slept for 14 hours and I'm still sleepy.

Jason: Wtf. And I thought that sleeping 10 hours was a lot.

Damian: I don't know how you sleep more than 8 hours, you are lazy.

Steph: Let them enjoy their sleep. I can't even sleep 6 hours because of college.

Cass: 4 hours. Take it or leave it.

Bruce: At least you sleep more than 2 hours.

Dick: What the fuck did sleep mean?

Tim: I failed the natural sciences exam.

Dick: How? You said it was one of the easiest subjects.

Tim: It is!

Dick: So?

Tim: ...

Tim: I put "solar ecosystem" on the exam.

Steph: When I was little, we had to sweep the classroom at school, and since I hated sweeping, I pretended I didn't know how to do it.

Steph: Then, a classmate who always wanted to be superior, made fun of me, grabbed the broom and started sweeping for me.

Steph: She stayed sweeping the whole recess and I was able to go out and play without doing anything.

Dick: I'm so fucking proud of you.

Duke: What are you doing on the floor?

Dick, overstimulated because there is too much shit going: Floor time.

Barbara: You're autistic.

Barbara: Artist, I mean. Sorry, the phone's autocorrect.

Dick: We are having a face-to-face conversation.

(This is a bit lost in English, but in Spanish the words are "artista" and "autista", and they sound and are written in a similar way.)

Tim: Can we go to the sun if we go at night?

Duke: I swear they told me you were smart.

Damian: Who lied to you that way?

Steph: Which Hogwarts house would you be?

Dick: According to the test, I'm a Hufflepuff.

Steph: I've seen you angry.

Dick: Have you ever seen an angry honey badger?

Steph: ... Good point.

Dick: I take pills, everyday, so that I don't kill myself. 🎶

Roy: I'm dragging you to the psychologist right now.

Dick: We need an adult.

Garth: We are adults.

Dick: Responsible adults.

Roy: Normally you are the responsible adult.

Dick:

Dick: How the fuck are we still alive?

Canon

Next fic: bodyswap

Jason: *in Dick‘s body*

Jason: I feel awful. What is wrong with your body???

Tim: *absolutely obliterating a punching bag in Jason‘s body*

Dick: *looks affronted at Jason in his body*

Dick: My body is fine! What do you mean??? You aren‘t the one who needs to consume an unholy amount of caffeine to function!

Jason: I feel like someone is about to push me off a fucking cliff, Dickhead.

Dick: *grins suddenly*

Dick: Ohhhh. Lemme fix that for you, Little Wing.

Dick: *walks up to Jason and hugs him tightly*

Jason: *relaxes before tensing up*

Jason: WAIT. YOU NEED HUGS TO FUNCTION?!?!

(Next fic is in the works! o7 It isn’t the one I had originally planned cuz my brain went brrr. Have a good one, my lovely birdwatchers! <3)

((Edit: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59545189/chapters/151862587 ))

Sometimes you find a piece of tumblr history and you have no choice but to preserve it

Slutshaming women is not ok Slutshaming Alexander Hamilton is totally ok Tumblr logic

can we stop pretending the bats all live in the same house together i swear those people do not communicate nor see each other regularly

I know he is legit suicidal at that point and the entire city of Bludhaven is being erased from the map but this is so cool. So badass.

This is one of those panel I would die to see animated. Are you kidding ?