Sometimes It Feels Like Everyone Around Me Is Speaking In A Secret Language And I'm The Only One Who

Fr, i love Duke, and I always get so sad when he isn't included

Hey full offense but if your excuse for not including Duke as Bruce's son and in Batkids/Batboys/Robins lineups is 'he already has parents' and you 'don't want to erase them',maybe you should consider Duke's parents literally can't take care of him and that you can have multiple parental figures.......and that Bruce and Duke have literally refered to eachother as father and son in the comics and even official arts frame them that way too.Duke was bullied all the time,kicked out of multiple schools,had a hard time making friends and keeping them too,was targeted by the cops AS A MINOR(which he still is!!!!),lost his parents or rather his parents lost their sanity to The Joker and now he's expected to self-rely when older and less good people were given more grace and care than him.I think y'all should drop the respectability politics and just let the black kid have a dad💀If DC stands for 'Disregard Canon',then DC also stands for 'Duke Counts'

A Timeline of Dick Grayson's Unrelenting Trauma Era (circa 2004-2006 in comics)

So as I was coincidentally reading the Outsiders (2003) and Teen Titans (2003) runs, I became gradually aware that some of the events were overlapping timeline with the Batfamily "War Games" arc. As I had previously become aware that "War Games" overlapped both the Blockbuster + Tarantula arc (Nightwing) AND Under the Red Hood, I became shocking aware of how many new traumas were rapidly piling onto Dick Grayson in very quick succession across multiple ongoing series.

So I did a lot of reading of both specific comics that I had read--and summaries of a few that I hadn't-- to do my best to make a definitive timeline of this absurdly stressful period in Dick Grayson's life. (Most of which seems to have occurred with around 6 months or less).

Google Docs

Dick Grayson Trauma Timeline

Dick Grayson’s Unrelenting Trauma Era Please bear in mind that unless otherwise indicated, each event (in the sections on Blockbuster + Tara

(I am no expert so feel free to add/clarify anything that I may have overlooked or misinterpreted).

Are you fucking kidding me

Y'all fixing to make me cry

Reblog if you can hear this image I'm trying to see something

I’m just gonna say it, cuz people certainly have said it enough about Dick.

Tim was an asshole post BFTC. Yeah, he was. Sorry not sorry. I know losing Robin hurt him and yeah Dick probably could have handled it better, but Tim was the one who made the decision to avoid Dick in the aftermath and refuse to even talk to him when Dick kept trying to reach out and check on him. Like, hello, Tim, guess what gets in the way of a big brother ‘who wronged you’ trying to make things better? You not letting him talk to you even.

(An entirely different scenario from when Bruce fired Dick, because the problem between that and Dick eventually reconciling with Bruce was that Bruce didn’t ever reach out and take the initiative to try and reconnect with Dick, when Bruce was the one who made it clear that Dick wasn’t needed there anymore and did nothing to say or suggest he was even wanted, when Dick lingered for weeks hoping he would, and it was never Dick’s responsibility to try and make the first move to repair their bond after that. This isn’t comparable to Dick and Tim because Dick didn’t do the same thing as Bruce, he did the opposite of what Bruce did because he learned from what Bruce did….thus he kept reiterating how much he needed Tim and wanted him to stay and Tim was the one who refused all the gestures actually being made).

And enough about all the people Tim lost, because guess what? Dick lost his second father too. And he’d not long before Tim lost Jack and Kon and Steph, lost his entire city. After his circus, chock full of all his remaining first family from his childhood, the extended family of friends and honorary aunts and uncles who’d helped raised him, was burned down around him with massive casualties. After his apartment building, which was chock full of people he canonically had made friends with and formed a freaking community of their own with, had been blown up with only one survivor, just to hurt him. After he’d left the Titans because he’d lost multiple teammates in the Titans Hunt and watched Joey killed in front of him, been raped by Mirage and blamed by his teammates for it, lost his several years long relationship with Kory in part because of it and various other manipulations that had nothing to do with either of them but rather his being brainwashed and then Raven’s messing with their emotions and on and on and on….

And after he’d lost Donna, and after he’d been raped again by Tarantula and after he’d lost his relationship with Barbara over Tarantula’s manipulations, to such an extent that when he went to Barbara the night his circus was burned down, she let him stay for the night and then told him he had to go in the morning, after he’d lost Jason and killed the Joker over it and feared he’d lost Bruce’s trust because of it to the extent that he was downright suicidal in the wake of Blockbuster’s death, after Stephanie Brown a girl he barely even knew had become the second kid to die in his family’s colors without him ever having a say in them wearing them in the first place, and then getting Jason back only to have him try and kill Dick’s new little brother Tim, and then try and kill him while they were fighting for the cowl, right after Dick’s newest little brother Damian tried to kill Tim and now Dick was stuck trying to raise him himself, and felt the burden of having to teach Damian to not do stuff like that, because he couldn’t just pretend that Damian wasn’t Bruce’s son, wasn’t his brother, and so he felt the pressure of having to try and find some way to turn Damian into someone who could coexist with Tim so that Dick wasn’t forced to yet again choose between brothers like when Jason was going after Tim, because yeah, Tim was the target and there’s no substitution for that but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still royally suck to be the big brother who feels obligations and ties to all three of these boys and considers them all family because of how they’re tied to him whether he likes it or not so he’s constantly struggling with trying to find some way for them all to coexist because he can’t lose any more family…..

And all of this happens in the span of like, three or four years comic book time, and then their second dad dies and Dick is suddenly stuck living his dead father’s life, running the company he never wanted, being the Batman when all he ever wanted to be was his own hero of his own invention, protecting a city that has taken from him time and time again, raising his dead father’s son as though he’s practically his own, and he just had to battle his brother Jason for the cowl he didn’t even want with it ending with Jason falling from a train and potentially to his death again (since Dick didn’t know yet if he had even survived that for sure or not) when its not like Dick has issues with family members falling to their deaths in front of him….

And Dick gives his newest little brother Damian the mantle Robin that means family in his eyes, because its the only way he knows of to make Damian believe that Dick actually wants him here, wants to form a bond, and isn’t just doing this out of obligation to Bruce, as Damian did believe at that point and why he was keen on leaving….and he tries to explain to Tim that this was an act of desperation, of necessity, of he didn’t know what else to do, and it has nothing to do with Tim not being good enough, or not wanting Tim as family, or wanting Tim to leave, its the exact opposite, he sits there and tells Tim he feels Tim is too good to treat as a junior partner, that he’s his equal and he could never be Batman to his Robin again because Robin takes the lead from Batman and Dick no longer sees Tim as someone who needs to follow, and that’s why Dick needs him to stay, needs him to help him in Gotham because he’s fucking drowning here…..

And Tim just goes, whatever, fuck you, you took away Robin which was the only thing that matters to me (no mention of the fact that he only had it in the first place because of Dick) and just outright refuses to respond to any of Dick’s frequent attempts to check on him, to see how he’s doing, to acknowledge that Dick is just fucking worried about him because he’s stretched impossibly thin and all he knows is he can’t bear to lose anyone else, it’ll break him, he’s lost all he possibly can right now…..

And Tim just…..doesn’t fucking care. Peaces off to pursue his (still lacking evidence) Bruce isn’t dead theory because Dick did something he didn’t like and won’t believe him without evidence about the thing he always says every time someone who’s close to him dies and has led to him going down some very dark roads in the past but why should past behavior worry Dick at all……

And sorry not sorry, but if you can reframe every one of Dick’s issues with Bruce about Robin as him being an immature spoiled brat, but that doesn’t sound like sulking to you, I’m calling foul. 

*Shrugs*

Tim was kinda a brat back then. I know he had a lot going on and was dealing with a lot, but Dick was too, and all he wanted was to know that his little brother was freaking alive and Tim was like no, that’s too big an ask right now, you made me mad so stew on that bro. BYE.

Yeah Tim was a teenager, but Dick wasn’t even eighteen when he left home, and if he has to always be a big boy or else he’s a spoiled kid throwing a temper tantrum for not getting his way, I don’t see why Tim (who preboot, was definitely at least close to eighteen at the time) can’t be expected to be a big boy too and at least say “Dick I’m still mad at you and hurt, but I at least recognize that you are going through shit too right now and so I can at least be bothered to check in and let you know I’m alive and okay still and you haven’t lost another family member while they’re hating you and blaming you and thus making it likely your fault too.”

How u gonna boop me 268890754 times and still not like my post

Dick Grayson and his guilt, a really toxic and long relationship.

Green Lantern: You know, most Superheroes are cornered into the job by moral obligations because of how powerful they are, but... aren't you just like, a normal guy? Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if you gave up the vigilante life to just take it easy?

Batman: Well--

Nightwing, suddenly vaulting into the conversation from across the room: No, no, NO, the last time we pretended to be a normal family for an hour, we played Trivial Pursuit and it ended with an arrow through the living room TV. None of us even fight with arrows. We're freaks that need to fight crime, don't take that away from us.