#(which Jason fans have to witness in practically all his comics because Bruce just has to make an appearance at least once every time)

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

Maybe it’s just me, but family ties and status don’t really mean jack when the way you interact with your family members/loved ones is abusive (and by default, utterly unacceptable).

[bigskydreaming]

Hoo boy. Actually using a cut on this one because it got long even by my standards, so....yikes. LOL. Umm, it started out salty but then it got angsty and then it got salty again and then maybe salt-angsty? Idk, whatever, its about Tim and also Damian and also BFTC and also Ric and its a freaking mess but also probably more coherent than I’m advertising it as here? I don’t fucking know, man, my baseline for this stuff is so fucked, never take my word for it. Okay, anyway!

So I’m probably always gonna be more salty about Tim and the reactions to the Robin/Red Robin thing and to Dick not believing him about Bruce, than I am even about people giving Dick shit for being a bad brother to Jason.

Because with the latter, even though I shout a lot about how there’s no real canon basis for the “Dick was an asshole to Jason before his death” stuff, it is true that most of their interactions had to happen offpanel, where we didn’t see them....so even though I’ll always be like umm, guys, why do you insist on headcanoning Dick as Douche of the Year when you could just as easily headcanon him and Jason getting along....I mean, I do still understand that we didn’t see either of those things really, so its dealer’s choice.

But its different with Tim, because we DID see Dick build a relationship with him, practically every step of the way. For years and YEARS, both in real time and comic book time, Dick made Tim a huge fucking priority in his life. Called him his brother long before Bruce adopted him. Took him places to train, and tried to make training fun too at times. Checked in on him, came running when he needed help. Dick DID THE WORK of building their bond. We saw it happen, in canon. It didn’t just magically appear fully formed, no more than Dick’s bond with Damian did....yeah Tim wasn’t as resistant as Damian was, but that doesn’t change the fact that Dick made an effort to show up in this kid’s life as often as he realistically could. Dick was a rock solid presence for Tim that he could count on, knew he could count on, he’d witnessed with his own eyes how damn much Dick cared about him and worried about him. Dick DOTED on this guy.

And then pretty much the first time Dick does something that Tim and his stans didn’t like - not even because he WANTED to, but because he literally felt like it was the choice he HAD to make, to extend some kind of meaningful gesture that this ten year old assassin who pretty much ONLY saw value in things like symbols and legacies and mantles at that particular point in his life would actually see as a reason to stay - the second Dick prioritized someone else over Tim, not because he didn’t want to be there for Tim, but because he had to make an actual CHOICE, he was just one person, he literally could not be all things to all people all at the same time....

Like, Tim and a lot of his fandom act like this was Dick abandoning Tim as a brother. Rejecting him. What????

And for the record, if we’re gonna talk about how dare Dick choose this kid he barely knows over Tim, his brother of years, not even mentioning what Damian did to Tim already.....like, let’s not forget that its not like Damian was some random stranger who held no possible emotional significance to Dick whatsoever. Like, Tim was fixated on his conviction that Bruce was alive, but Dick didn’t disbelieve him just to be an asshole, he just genuinely believed that he’d buried his father....and here was this prickly little ten year old who was the LAST possible piece of Bruce left in the world. Like, screw the idea that Dick was more drawn to Damian from the start because Damian was ‘the blood son’ and Bruce’s heir more than Tim was, that makes zero sense without Dick devaluing his own equally adoptive connection to Bruce himself. 

Nah, instead try the take that for Dick, Bruce wasn’t just the source of his family in the sense that Bruce was a second father to him....it was also because time and time again, Bruce added to Dick’s family, grew it by yet one more sibling, gave him more family than he’d ever have had without Bruce....and here comes Damian. One last addition to Dick’s family, via Bruce....and he’s not especially significant for the reason that he’s Bruce’s biological son unlike the rest of them, and this somehow elevates him over Dick’s other brothers from the start.....nope, its just as likely a read that Damian’s significant for Dick, he’s someone Dick HAS to take a chance on, HAS to bring into their family one way or another, has to get to ACCEPT them as family, to BE family, no matter what it takes.....because Damian is the last new sibling they’ll ever have, as far as Dick knows at that point. 

Bruce is dead, he thinks. There will be no more new brothers and sisters from that point on, whether biological or adopted....because Bruce isn’t there to be the one to widen their family again, one more time. No, Dick thinks, that falls to him now, he’s the only one who can do that.....he’s the only one who can make this one last gift from their dad, this prickly assassin child who so clearly is desperate for love and affection and approval and the very same things so many of them struggled with, its up to Dick to make sure he doesn’t LEAVE, that he doesn’t reject THEM, that he stays, stays family even without Bruce to be the connection...because anything less than that, anything other than making this one last potential brother, because he’s already connected to Bruce, the actual basis of that connection being shared biology not really that relevant, just that this connection EXISTS even without Bruce’s presence....failing to make him their brother in REALITY, in FULLNESS, rather than just a tangential association that benefits none of them, adds nothing to their family...to Dick, the very idea of that must be like it’d be failing Bruce one last time, squandering his last gift to their family, when his greatest gifts have always been the siblings he added to their number. 

So Dick had to get Damian to stay, to see that he had family here, by any means necessary, and so of course Dick did the only thing he knew would work, the only thing that has EVER worked except for in the case of Cass who is an outlier and should not be cited in reference to any of her brothers’ emotional obstinancy ever...he gave Robin to Damian....the only thing that has ever bonded him and his brothers, the only thing Dick has that didn’t come straight from Bruce and that he could offer on his own, the only thing that all his brothers value so highly, and thus in that they’re all connected.

And its like, so the first time Dick does something that Tim actually doesn’t like, that’s proof that Dick doesn’t really care about him, like all those years of bending himself into a pretzel to try and show up for his little brother every chance he could, no matter what else was going on in his life....like suddenly they mean nothing. Like Dick was only ever actually a good brother...so long as he was doing what Tim wanted. So long as he was prioritizing Tim properly.

And people compare it to Bruce and what happened between he and Dick years earlier, when Bruce fired Dick as Robin, when first off, there’s the fact that Robin is and was Dick’s and never Bruce’s, but I’ve gone over that to death, but secondly, there was no FIRING Tim as Robin, like there was no scene ever where Dick took Robin AWAY from Tim. I realize that might be parsing semantics to a degree, as by making Damian Robin, there was the implicit assumption that Tim now would no longer be Robin, but my point is that....there was NO scene where Dick did or said anything that can reasonably be construed as him thinking Tim wasn’t good enough to be Robin, wasn’t cutting it, was a liability, or that he wasn’t his brother. Could it have been written better, the exact how and when of making Damian Robin, that took Tim’s feelings more into account? Sure. 

But I maintain there is no version of that scenario that was ever going to satisfy fans who simply wanted Tim and only Tim to be Robin and weren’t interested in this newest one....which is ENTIRELY different from what happened between Bruce and Dick, no matter WHICH version of that story you go with....because there WAS no one else to be Robin at that particular time. It wasn’t happening because Bruce felt someone else needed it more than Dick. The ONLY conclusions there, were always going to be that....Bruce’s motivations or thoughts there were about Dick, in some way or another.

With Tim and Damian.....it wasn’t that at all, because it wasn’t like Dick just out of the blue said hey, Bruce dying has made me decide its too dangerous out there, I’m going to be Batman but I’m going to do it alone, I don’t want you being Robin anymore. No, he only did it to GIVE Damian something, to bring in MORE family, make that circle WIDER and try and build a connection that at the time was non existent. That’s an entirely different motivation than just wanting to TAKE AWAY Robin from Tim, purely because of something to do or not to do with Tim and nobody else.

And Dick literally told Tim it was because he felt Tim was too GOOD to be Robin anymore? Because he viewed Tim as an equal and wouldn’t be comfortable ordering him around in the field, the way Batman and Robin’s dynamic has always worked? And that just....didn’t mean anything to either Tim or most of his fans, because it wasn’t what they WANTED to hear, it wasn’t ‘oh I realized I made a mistake, Tim please be Robin again’ so it might as well have never been said, I guess.

But another huge component of Dick’s angst when he was fired as Robin was because no matter how close he and Bruce had been before that, Bruce had never actually taken the initiative and clarified what their relationship was without Batman and Robin in the picture, what Dick was to him, if and when Dick was no longer Robin. And even after he fired Dick, its not like he stepped up then either to offer an alternative view of how he saw Dick....he was perfectly willing to let Dick just go off and become Nightwing and at no point take the initiative to reach out to Dick and clarify hey, just because I thought it was too dangerous for you to be Robin, that doesn’t mean I stopped viewing you as my family, as my son. No, he waited for Dick to come back to HIM before he could even manage to utter that he’d missed Dick at all.

And that is not Dick and Tim’s dynamic and never was??? Because Dick CONSTANTLY told Tim he was family, he was his brother, long before all of that went down in RR #1. Dick expresses affection openly and often, so much so that the joke has long been that he can be smothering with that. And at the time, Tim was very much legally a Wayne, as was Dick, so....where on earth in any of that was the implication that Dick was in any way trying to reject Tim as a brother? That whatever Dick did with the mantle of Robin could at that point have anything to do with their status as brothers....which had for a long time by that point existed entirely independent of what they both did or didn’t do as vigilantes?

Not to mention the fact that unlike with Bruce and him, where Bruce had shown no effort to reach out to Dick in the literally-according-to-canon EIGHTEEN MONTHS between firing Dick after the Joker shot him and Dick coming back to the cave to confront Bruce about adopting Jason and making him Robin....

Again, not remotely accurate in comparison to Dick and Tim, because even when Tim left, pissed off and hurt....Dick still tried to check up on him constantly, worried about him? Asked others to look after him when Tim kept rejecting his attempts to reach out? Where the fuck does all this stuff about Dick making no effort to hang on to Tim and keep him in his life come from, I would def love to know.

Because if its just about the fact that Dick didn’t believe him about Bruce being alive at first.....I’m just gonna say it. That’s a really fucking shitty thing to hold against someone. LOLOL, yeah, he sucks because he ‘refused’ to believe Tim that the father he’d just buried and whose life he essentially now was living - raising his son, running his company, wearing his mantle, protecting his city, all of which is despite the fact that Dick’s ONLY wish for himself for years, as Tim well knew, had simply been to be his own man, live his own life, not just a pale imitation of Bruce’s....

Like basically, that whole thing there is Tim and/or his fandom resenting Dick for.....being too emotionally fragile at that point in time to deal with the possibility Bruce might actually be alive, might be able to be brought back, brought home....since what goes hand in fucking hand with that is the CRUSHING EMOTIONAL DEATHBLOW that’s the inevitable fallout of THAT if Tim turned out not to be right.

We of course know that Tim was right in the end, and we knew it even then too, those of us reading back at the time....because its comics, and its Bruce, and of course he wasn’t going to stay dead forever, which meant yeah duh, Tim is probably right, even without any evidence yet we can say that.

But without that awareness, without any kind of GUARANTEE....can you imagine being told hey, I know it literally sounds too good to be true, too good to be believed, but that thing you’re probably wishing like hell could happen, your dad could come back, maybe he’s not even really dead at all....guess what, it can! And like....you wouldn’t at all be hesitant about that, afraid to trust it, afraid to believe....because that means finding out later that he really was dead and not coming back would be like losing him all over again? Even though you never actually even got him back, just the idea, the hope of it, but that’s still enough to make you start to dream of how much better things could be, if and when you find him and bring it home....except nope, now you have to wake up again, dream’s over, time to face reality....your dad is still dead and he’s always going to be.

And then can you imagine being RESENTED for that, for not believing that because you’re literally just trying to protect yourself from losing anything else when you feel like you’ve already lost everything you can possibly bear to lose and anything else could break you.....to have this thrown in your face and cited as further proof you don’t really love your little brother, you’re rejecting him....when it has absolutely nothing to do with his credibility and everything to do with the freaking emotional toll that’s demanded of asking a twice orphaned guy to just take it on faith because its you that hey, our dad isn’t really dead, we can get him back?!

Not to mention the fact that Tim had almost gone some VERY fucking dark roads in the not too distant past because he had trouble dealing with Kon’s death, and those of his other friends, not to mention his other dad, Jack....all things that fandom cite for why Dick was so brutal to basically pile on to all of Tim’s other losses by taking Robin away too....but Dick KNEW all this and that’s literally a huge part of WHY he was so worried about Tim, because being aware that your little brother canonically has trouble dealing with major losses and was still reeling from a shit ton of major losses when he lost Bruce too and oh god, I know I made it worse by making Damian Robin instead but I didn’t know what else to do there and its not like I can take it back or change things when I didn’t see an alternative in the first place.....like...are these not legitimate freaking reasons for thinking that said little brother insisting that Bruce wasn’t dead and they could get him back the same way he refused to accept there was no way to bring Kon back....miiiight be more to do with explantions other than...oh yeah our Dad is actually totes alive and just time traveling because that’s what happens when magic god energy kills you, duh, everyone knows that?

Like, its not really that much of a stretch even to take practically everything Dick says to Tim about Tim’s possible mental state as just Dick projecting like hell about his OWN mental state and how much he’d fucking love to take a break and take some time to get his head sorted out before diving right back into the chaotic mess that is their day to day lives.

But like, both Tim and many of his fandom STILL really just don’t even hold back about not caring about any of the time Dick put into building and nurturing the fuck out of a happy, healthy, wholesome relationship with his little brother, not when he then turned around and ruined it by hurting Tim by.....reluctantly prioritizing someone else at a time that Tim really could have used him in the specific way and dynamic they were used to....and not being willing to believe him about Bruce, and in doing so open himself up to the possibility of losing Bruce all over again.

Like???? So many of the mistakes Dick is most vilified for in Batfandom as a whole are in reality actually just....times when he did something people don’t like, because it didn’t center or prioritize their personal favorite SPECIFICALLY, as in above all others. Even though in almost all of these specifics, Dick is actually asked to CHOOSE between two different loved ones or siblings, both equally demanding his attention and focus and efforts....and he’s only allowed to prioritize one, because that innately creates conflict with the other.

Like I know when we stan, its pretty natural for us to get blinded by our biases and not look at the whole picture, like of course we all inevitably tend to think our personal faves were most right or most valid or most hurt, but like just look at that for a second....

Look at how many of the occasions when Dick is considered to have made a mistake and really done wrong by one of his family as a result....how many of those situations are literally a catch-22, where the ONLY way for Dick to have made the ‘right choice’ in the eyes of one particular character’s fans....is for him to have chosen to prioritize that character over the one he actually prioritized in canon....which simply means that even if Dick had taken the road not taken there in canon, he STILL would be just as resented....just by the other’s fans now instead. 

Or when its not about fans at all, but characters, like in the Forever Evil aftermath....the ONLY way for Dick to have made the ‘right choice’ in the eyes of all the characters who give him crap for it later....would have been for him to look his father in the eye, while he himself is at absolute rock bottom, an emotional wreck, and in response to Bruce’s blatant manipulation of Dick’s guilt complex there, say “no, I’m not going to do what you’re asking me to do, even if it costs me your trust and affection?” Like can you imagine being pissed at a guy for NOT being able to say that to their dad when their dad is currently trying to pull the mother of all guilt trips...as if that’s an easy thing to do even when someone’s calm and at their peak emotional health....and not like, recovering from having been tortured and killed and revived just the day before?

Like ahflshglashfa. Srsly? C’MON!

And my question is okay, so when have ANY of the others ever been DEMANDED to make a choice, to pick either Dick or someone else to make their priority...and they chose Dick over that someone else? The CLOSEST I can actually come up with is the end of Under the Red Hood, when Jason taunts Bruce by telling him he better go check on Dick.....BECAUSE THEY BOTH SAW THE SKY TURN GREEN FROM GOTHAM CUZ SOMEONE JUST DROPPED A NUKE ON DICK’S CITY.

(And for the record, I ABSOLUTELY have read stories that bring that up as a point of resentment for Jason, that Bruce was willing to leave their confrontation....because he was worried about Dick....who was in the city that was just leveled by a nuke. Like...that’s not him running to kiss Dick’s boo boo all better because he skinned his knee maybe, lmfao.)

But srsly, its easy not to get blamed for making the ‘wrong’ choice in an impossible ask that doesn’t ALLOW for you to ever make an actually ‘right’ choice...when YOU’RE not the character who is constantly put in that lose/lose situation, specifically in regards to your family. Which is not really a situation that Jason, Tim, Cass, Damian, Duke, are really ever often in, you gotta admit?

AND DICK CONSTANTLY IS.

But yeah, I’m especially cranky about this today, hence the epic rant even by my standards lol, because I’ve been stewing about the Ric storyline still, and what I was saying there about how nobody’s ever really asked to put forth effort that actually COSTS them something, for Dick’s sake specifically...

Because that’s what made me think of the Red Robin stuff, after BOTC. Because just like the Batfamily apparently has no big issues with leaving Ric alone, per his wishes....it would have been SO much easier for Dick to just take the hint when Tim basically was like I’m mad at you, looking to stay that way, so leave me alone unless you’re ready to help me do what I think needs to be done. But Dick DIDN’T stop trying, even though Tim was PISSED at him, and making no effort to hide it, Dick was still like....fuck it, I’ll send Steph to try and look out for you if you won’t let me do it, and yeah maybe that’s less than fucking ideal too but I’m not making good decisions here for a reason like OH YEAH MY LIFE WENT DOWN THE CRAPPER WHEN DAD DIED TOO, and just because you’re mad at me doesn’t mean I can stop worrying about you.

So Ric was mean to the Batfamily, and because of that, I should give a shit what this has to do with them and whether or not they owe it to DICK, their brother, friend, son, to still show up and keep TRYING anyway, no matter what Ric says, because they’re not here for him anyway, they’re here for Dick Grayson, who they all know and believe is still in there somewhere, and they’re not going to let him get hurt anymore than he has been just because the guy in the driver’s seat right now insists he’s not him and doesn’t want to be?

Nope, I’m more like, WELCOME TO THE CLUB, BATFAMILY, FOUNDING PRESIDENT: DICK GRAYSON. Now you too get to for once share in the joys and delights of having to ask more than once for your brother to let you so much as freaking HUG him, without him insulting you or throwing that in your face or bringing up all the times you did stuff he didn’t like and that’s why he doesn’t want you around.

Except.....*searches high and low* no Batfam currently demonstrating levels of give a shit and/or remorse in regards to Dick, shock, woe, how can this be, what a mystery, much befuddlement.