#Bruce and Dick angst is my favourite flavour

[astorianyxkings]

Oldest Daughter Dick™ is probably one of my favourite things ever. And it always will be and here's why:

Of course Dick loves his siblings and of course he loves that they know Bruce as the father he is. But it won't stop the jealousy he feels. And no one gets it, not even Jason. They were all raised by Bruce Wayne, he was raised by Batman.

When Dick came to live with him, Bruce had no idea how to he a father. How to handle normal kid stuff like sicknesses and school events let alone the fact he was an acrobat. He was Batman and Dick was raised to be not just his successor but the only contingency plan he had against himself.

Bruce never held his punches ("That was a good block but I still got you, didn't I?" Bruce had said, rubbing cream into the blossoming bruise on Dick's side. "I'll get you next time," Dick had promised, young eyes challenging. "You better." Bruce had grinned back.) All attacks were to remind him that he was at a disadvantage strength wise and thus needed to re-evaluate his lines of defense and offense.

Dick was raised by the paranoid-in-his-late-twenties-probably-shouldn't-be-a-dad-despite-what-Marisol-said Bat. A fun game of catch? He was dodging Batarangs. Learning to drive? It was the Batmobile and he was age 14 (and a half). School events? He was fumbling, awkward and did not want to be there (but still was because he'll be damned if his boy didn't have his support.)

And you know that's fine, Dick was fine. It wasn't Bruce's fault he didn't know how to be a proper dad, despite Alfred's parenting books and videos. And he did try, he was always there. But it just really hits a sore spot everytime he sees Bruce hold a punch before he knocks Tim out cold or when he's behind the wheel with Steph telling her what not to do. Or even when he's at school with Damian and Duke making Marjory and her cupcakes look ridiculous compared to him and his coconut crumble cakes.

It also irritates Dick beyond senseless whenever the topic of sparring with Bruce is mentioned. ("We can all beat the old man Goldie, he's ancient." Jason shrugs off and Dick wanted to scream.) The only one who even tries to sympathize with him was Cass. More than likely because she'd seen him fight as Batman The Dark Knight before seeing him fight as Bruce The Father of Six-Almost-Eight.

And it just really stings because he can't relate to being raised by Bruce the way the others can't. Bruce changed for them, not him. And maybe that kind of hurts. But maybe he's overreacting.

What he doesn't realize is he's the reason why Bruce changed. Bruce saw the hurt and anger in Dick's eyes when he fired him from Robin (Think Shifu denying Tai Lung the Dragon Warrior scroll). He knew the second he saw the betrayal in Dick's eyes after seeing Jason as Robin, that he'd have to change. (The same way Shifu should've changed for Tigress but I digress, not that fandom).

Bruce pulls his punches because he hated seeing Dick limp away from their sparring matches—despite the fire and promise of a rematch in his eyes. He teaches them how to drive regular cars before the Batmobile because the one time Dick crashed (while trying to avoid some of Poison Ivy's vines) his heart rate skyrocketed so high Clark had called him up demanding to know if he was okay. He shows up for Duke and Damian and Cass and Tim because Dick's smile whenever he saw Bruce in the parent's lounge never failed to make him melt.

Bruce stands firm on the fact that while he may have made a hero out of Dick, Dick Grayson made a father out of Bruce Wayne.

[doodle-dog-diary]

Thoughts/hcs re: the 2003 animated teen titans series:

Robin having multiple flavours of angst including but not limited to: "ScRew YoU yOu'Re nOT mY dAd", general teenage angst, not wanting to be under batman's shadow angst, thinks he's getting replaced by a younger sibling angst (jason), etc and running away from home to live on the custom built T shaped tower on the private island that's all very much being paid for by batman

At some point Jason steals the red x suit and uses it to torment Dick!robin CONSTANTLY. Bruce either doesn't know a thing about this or does, but doesn't let on that he knows, and is just watching on from a distance with fatherly affection like "aww they're bonding :)" while dick is popping a blood vessel with stress going "WHO is this KID???"

When Bruce adopted Jason he had no intention of making him Robin, but at some point the red x shenanigans were going so far that he actually started feeling bad for dick so he had to put his foot down like, alright, this kid clearly has some energy to burn off or something, let's redirect that energy to something more productive. Like punching the sHIT OUT OF GOTHAM GOONS HELL YEAH. And gives Jason the Robin ii mantle

Jason "gremlin child" Todd is clearly very "yippee :) violence" about this and the red x fuckery stops, but of course dick!robin finds out about this and is all "you replaced me?? >:'( I HATE YOU DAD" and his list of reasons to be angsty and emo increases yet again. Clearly his stress never ends

Eventually dick grows out of his teenage angst and becomes everyone's favourite big brother figure nightwing. And every time Jason tries to tell anyone about Dick's emo angsty edgy menace robin era NOBODY believes him. This is cosmic karma for all the times he broke into the titans tower and moved all of Dick's furniture two inches to the left so he'd stub his toe in the morning. And the time he replaced all of his birdarangs with custom made glitter bombs. And the time he bought a seam ripper and broke into titans tower AGAIN just to rip all the crotch seams of Robin's pants. And the time...you get the point

(Tim DOES know about Dick's edgy emo era (because he's a creepy little stalker FREAK) He just acts like he has no idea what Jason is talking about just to mess with him. Jason is TEARING his hair out and FOAMING at the mouth.)