#I did not want to write the NW Jason story because I think the Jason oversaturation is THAT bad

[yellowocaballero]

hi!! loved New Wave & its Jason addition, was wondering if you have any Opinions about the weird characterization of Jason in the comics/fandom?

Oh Jesus. You are talking to a certified fanon Batfam hater jkaljdsfkljsdf. In some senses, yes I do.

I see more 'good or at least interesting' depictions of Jason than I do pretty much any other Batfam character. A lot of the best Batfam fic has an extremely strong Jason POV. From a group dynamics perspective, having a Jason is important. Jason is important: his death irrevocably altered Batman as a series, marked a serious turning point in kid sidekicks and comics as a whole, and created a few pretty good storylines.

It's hard to say 'what's the real Jason characterization', because he constantly cross-contaminates himself. Jason's character is little more than the lens through which he's viewed, and what comes afterwards. Pre-Crisis Jason is indistinguishable from Dick. Post-Crisis Jason isn't that different either, until they decided to kill him, at which point they very quickly gave him all of his character traits we know him for today. Retrospectives on Jason for twenty years were of both this pre-post-humorous angry/impulsive version and The Dead Kid nostalgia, and now they're colored by his Red Hood anger and 'glory days' nostalgia. And then we've had the Batfam-ization of Batman comics and none of that matters anyway, because they're blorbos now.

@lazuliquetzal has remarked several times that the real problem with Red Hood is that you can use him for drama, like, once or twice - that he's a very good foil character for one or two very specific storylines. I agree. I think further usage of the RH as a villain should be separated from the Batfam, since you can't reconcile his pro-killing stance with the Batfam non-killing stance. Give him a different story if you want, but I think it's hard to slot the actual Red Hood character back into the Batfam. Not even sure that you should.

I think the main thing for me is that I don't understand why the 'good end' is always 'Bring Jason Home!' - why reconciliation is mandatory, why what we want is him moving back into the manor and having family dinners. Why. He's 19. Let him live by himself in his shitty apartment and smoke weed and shittalk his dad. He's an adult, he doesn't have to talk to any of you if he doesn't want to. He really doesn't want to. There is more than one way for a family to function, and it doesn't have to look like family dinners.

Regarding fic: obviously the softening and defanging is boring. There's an entire genre of stories where 'Jason hates Tim until he actuall meets him, at which point he's blasted by Tim's #woobie and starts taking care of him", but in the '10s the biggest conflict with Jason is that he irrationally hates a fourteen year old who did nothing wrong completely to the point where he keeps on trying to kill him. For a decade he was just melodramatic yelling. I think people are more interested in writing cute dynamics than they are characters, and Jason is forced into the sympathetic family dynamic as a result. Comics now do this too, because, fandomization,

Young Jason stories are also entirely whump, which is obviously boring. I've mentioned this before, but a big part of my thoughts behind the NW!Jason fic are just that there are a lot of 'Jason comes to the manor' fics, and in very little of them do Jason and Bruce actually like each other. It's pure whump and family bonding over any actual interest in the characters. Thing about whump is just - put in literally any character there, it doesn't matter. Pick anyone. Who cares.

This is all ignoring the number one biggest thing for me, which is: the fandom is obsessed with Jason, and I am sick of Jason, it is all Jason. Even Tim is worse off in comparison, because he gets moe blob'd so Jason can take care of him. Go write the women. Seriously. Jason's a whump magnet and it's exhausting, go write Cass Cain having a character arc.

TL;DR: Batfam fanfic only cares about cute brotherly fluff and whump and it is so fucking bad, man.

[danny-chase]

Tim and Titans tower was clearly framed as a moral victory. The story has Jason ask Tim if he believes he can be a better Robin. Tim says yes. Tim's friends save him and Raven says Jason always wanted to beat them which he never did. So here the writer makes up information to make a character more villainous. Talia is way worse but it is the same problem of writers making up events that never happened to frame characters negatively. The story then says Tim is better because he has friends.

Tim's friends don't save him iirc Jason just kinda walked away because Geoff Johns doesn't know wtf he was doing. I hate to break it to you but him making up things to make Jason more villainous (idk if you mean as Robin - which that is a different story) isn't bad in my opinion because they were presenting Jason as a villain post resurrection.

It's not like there was this post resurrection Jason who was an antihero, going around Gotham making it a better place after he came back. It was utrh. It's not really a problem to me that they took a character they had framed as a villain and changed his motives slightly. I do not think they should do that to Robin Jason. But red hood Jason is different.

You're all picking at certain incidents when i was looking at more of the whole (minus again lost days because the idea of reading talia and jason makes me uncomfortable). If you don't want me to count this incident in Jason's characterization, there's still his appearances in nw (which is picked over for because bad writing), his appearances in batman and robin 2009 (picked over for because morrison hates jason or smth and yall ignore that winick is the one who wrote the prison scene), battle for the cowl (which is was picked over for an untrue statement about CSA), Robin (picked over for being written to prop up Tim), and utrh. So yeah. You'll literally just excuse everything you don't like as bad writing I'm sorry i want to look at the character that is actually there and think about him. Sorry you don't like him. Maybe go make your own post about how only the true jason todd is show cased in x,y,z and how people that ignore that hate him or something. Sorry i didn't discard the majority of his appearances in preboot before making a headcanon.

Tim is an asshole about Jason from the get go, he can get bent

[bigskydreaming]

I'm so used to Dick getting hit because his family or friend was annoyed and decided he was the closest wall to punch that I never expect anything different anywhere, and then Young Justice s3 and Titans s2 caught me by the neck and threw me into a pool of unexpected catharsis. I never expected Dick to defend himself, I never expected the catharsis, I never expected how much it'd affect me. Although now that Titans s3 is upon us with a Dick vs Jason fight I'm back to the default.

I really, really, REALLY wish more people had even the slightest idea of the catharsis that can come from one character just fucking INTERVENING in a situation like we see happen so often in fics and the comics and just be like....no. That is not fucking okay. And like, without that, it literally is just...permissive? Like when Jason punches Dick in Grayson #12 after the Spyral thing, and Tim just stands there.....Tim's essentially saying its okay, he sees nothing wrong with what just happened. Which....dun dun dun....not all that surprisingly then turned into Tim punching Dick in Batman and Robin Eternal.....again with nobody upset.

Its why I've never even been able to like, go with the idea that Alfred or any of the Titans knew about what happened between Bruce and Dick in NTT #55, specifically, because like....I can't make peace with nobody saying anything about that ever. Bruce is a Big Time Superhero. Who frequently rubs people the wrong way. I don't buy that nobody's ever gonna throw that back in his face to make a point about how he's got no business being holier than thou about various topics. *Shrugs*

But yeah, unfortunately its not just canon. Like, I've read a fic where the prompt was literally like....people being glad to see Dick back from Spyral and getting actual catharsis for everything he went through instead of what we got in canon....so I went into the fic like okay, cool, this is exactly what I'm looking for. LOL nah, we got Jason STILL punching Dick anyway, even AFTER finding out about the events of NW #30 and Dick actually having died, and like, Jason was still so pissed at Dick for not TELLING them this that NOW, THAT'S why he just has to punch Dick before THEN hugging him and saying okay I just had to get that out, but now I'm over it and glad you're back.

And I was just like.....ummm. The author and people in the comments are treating this like an lol moment where all's well that end's well, and I'm like ARE YOU KIDDING ME, THAT'S THE EXACT SAME ISSUE CANON PRESENTED. Only now its WORSE, because people act like that addressed and resolved it, but with it STILL including Jason punching Dick cuz he was mad, and now with this even MORE formally being treated as like....something fine and necessary to repair their relationship. And all of this is packaged as like...the specific catharsis that people who were UPSET with how that all played out in canon like, came into this specific fic looking for....and this is what we got instead, with zero warning.

That's not even getting started on like, the super long super serious fic set during the Ric Grayson era that was supposedly about addressing Bruce's abusive actions towards ALL his kids, which FEATURED Ric as a regular character, but only ever actually DELVED into the times he'd hit Jason and then Tim. With Tim as an unreliable narrator making some reference to Bruce having hit Dick a couple times but that was different because Dick was an adult....and the author and narration at NO POINT pushing back against this to be like well actually Timmy, that's not fucking different at all, Dick is still his kid, Bruce was still taking out his anger on him, that was still abuse, and saying or even just implicitly framing it as NOT abuse the way it played out in Tim's head, when you're presenting this entire fic as a whole as like, an ode to actually acknowledging the abusive aspects of how Bruce has been written with his kids....

Again, SUPER upsetting to read and witness, because people are absolutely going to read that and internalize that as reinforcing their belief that the situations with Bruce and Dick WERE substantially different and thus not qualifying as abuse and belonging in a separate category the way Tim slotted it in his brain.....because why wouldn't they?

The author only wrote it that way because they perceived it that way, clearly, otherwise by their own stated admission of trying to tackle this subject honestly and completely, like....they would have actually made some kind of point or acknowledgment of it not being different at all and still very much abuse....and the fact that they didn't suggests they very much did see it as somehow different.....so why would readers perceive it any differently and why wouldn't its inclusion in a fic that delved into abuse so extensively NOT at least on SOME level potentially reinforce whatever leanings or perceptions they had in the same direction already? And meanwhile, this story like sooooo many others that wants to talk about abuse SERIOUSLY, all the while calls this their hobby that they do for enjoyment, so please don't criticize anything because that would ruin the HOBBY of it all for them, and its like....

And then there's the fic where its Dick hitting Jason while in the midst of a narrative that's bringing all of Jason's abuse issues and related triggers front and center, and this one is highly recommended as like, a great Dick Grayson characterization by an author who hates any and all canon renditions of Bruce being abusive and so doesn't include anything like that, and so you're going into it like okay, I'm not expecting any catharsis or anything along the lines of acknowledging Bruce's worse moments with Dick or Jason because clearly that's not what this fic is about and that's fine...but by the exact same token, I ALSO was not expecting that an author who is so vehement about how abusive Bruce is wildly OOC writing because the real Bruce would never do that and that's not how they perceive the characters, like....what I'm NOT expecting is for Dick, in a fic PRAISED for a good and complex depiction of him, to like....just fucking pop Jason one in the face and bring to mind how this makes him no different from Jason's abuser and then he runs and seeks comfort in Bruce who whether people like it or not, is canonically someone who has made Dick an abuse survivor himself....

And I'm just sitting there fucking BLIND-SIDED thinking wow, not only did I NOT want this recommended to me by the whole freaking fandom as a wonderfully nuanced portrayal of Dick Grayson, I would have kept a ten mile radius from it if it had say, a tag warning of sibling abuse, which is what they wrote between Dick and Jason, just the other way around. And its like.....I completely understand the author's dislike of abusive Bruce in canon and their desire not to engage with that content on any level, and would have been totally fine with that.....except, I naively figured there was no reason that same logic wouldn't extend to Dick, especially in so lauded a fic, because like, what? Bruce would never ever hit his family and its wildly OOC and simply not believable, even though its happened like five different times with Dick alone, but Dick hitting HIS family is a wonderfully nuanced and complicated portrayal of him? In what universe is that not gonna be a problem for some people??

But because we live in a fandom that's like, umm, this is just peoples' HOBBY, they're doing it for FUN, we're expected to be silent about stuff like this which are very real fucking problems to watch go unacknowledged in fics that claim to be TRYING to treat these topics seriously, but in reality only want to be entertainment just deep enough to move people but NOT deep enough to warrant criticism for having an undue influence on peoples' emotions or perceptions of various dynamics.....and we're supposed to be polite and just smile and say this isn't for us and let it all go, even though like, we would have KNOWN it wasn't for us and not gone anywhere near it in the first place if like, it had been tagged as sibling abuse or something like that. That would have been a clear advertisement to me that like, this is not something you want any part of.

Like, I go to fics that do acknowledge or reference Bruce's abuse to his kids because I'm LOOKING for the catharsis of having abuse actually called out as abuse....and what about that makes anyone think I or someone like me is in doing so LOOKING for characters who AREN'T already abusive to each other in canon NOW being abusive in ways that only the individual fic writer chose to depict them as? And by the same token, its not like I want to go into any fic and see more of the same thing as we get in canon, which is.....more instances of actual abuse being framed and treated as something that's just fine, actually, and nothing to worry about or take too seriously....

But meanwhile, back at the fandom farm, everyone's still totally convinced that they're so superior to canon and doing things so much better than them and fixing all their mistakes....and its like....well then why are you MAKING the EXACT same mistakes, and what the hell are we supposed to do about it with YOU guys if unlike with canon (where we can criticize but it doesn't do much good because there's no guarantee of the people who need to see it actually seeing it), we're not supposed to bring it to your attention as 'criticism-worthy' (thus making the opposite problem of where we CAN bring it to the attention of people who can see it, but we're not 'supposed to' because fandom etiquette)?

And back to the whole thing about using a sibling abuse tag as a warning for people to steer clear if this isn't something they want in their dynamics between the Batbrothers, not just Bruce and his kids....

The thing that fucking gets me every time here, is like......THIS WOULD BE SUCH AN EASY PROBLEM TO FIX, IF PEOPLE WEREN'T JUST SO FREAKING EMBARRASSED TO ADMIT THEY ACCIDENTALLY WROTE IT WITHOUT NOTICING WHAT IT WAS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Like that first example I used....I very naively DID try to bring it to the author's attention when I was new to dipping my toes back into this fandom, and boy oh boy did that just exemplify how counter-productive that is as long as people can hide behind the DONT CRITICIZE MY WORK shield. I sent a private message on Ao3 so it wouldn't even show up in their comments, and just said very simply:

"hey, I really enjoy your stuff but I was wondering if you would mind putting a warning tag of 'sibling abuse' on your latest fic? I'm not trying to tell you how to write the characters and I figure you probably didn't intend it to come across that way anyway, but as an abuse survivor, I can't help but see that dynamic pop out as such for me in a way that I would at least have liked a heads up about, if that makes sense? Its just I do see how you paralleled how the canon presented this scenario and thus get what you were trying to do there I think, but I kinda only came into this fic for the specific lure of the catharsis we DIDN'T get when things played out somewhat similar in canon, with a lot of it having to do with that dynamic between Dick and Jason, and so...yeah. This part of the comics is obviously emotionally charged for a lot of us and I just know personally, this wasn't quite the catharsis I was after for that scenario and just a quick tag like that would have helped warn me of that. Anyway, sorry for this and hope you can understand my position, I'm not trying to be heavy-handed here or anything, but this was a problem for me and just in case it might be a problem for anyone else in the future, I thought I'd try and send a quick message about that for you to do whatever you want with."

I mean, I thought I was pretty reasonable there, personally?

Yeah.

The author did not.

She went off on me for constructive criticism which she did not ask for, and did not appreciate my insinuations into her character about her being an abuse apologist, because that's clearly what I was saying there. But I mean, that's what happens here. I'd bet anything that she was just embarrassed to have written the dynamic in such a way and then been called out about something she was previously oblivious to and then felt self-conscious about having overlooked or perpetrated herself.

But like....as understandable as that is, like....that's not my problem? And that's not a reason to shut down ANY avenue for people to raise the issue when writers unknowingly perpetrate stuff like this, in ANY way, no matter HOW delicately.

I get being defensive about someone thinking you INTENDED to write a pair of brothers as abusive and saying that was fine, and I even get how, being in a defensive mindset, she could have jumped to that interpretation of what I was saying rather than what I was ACTUALLY saying which was just....look, I don't know you, I don't know your own story, but for whatever reason you didn't pick up on this potentially troubling element of what you wrote in ways that I did because of my own experiences, and I'm just trying to point the issue out as delicately as possible because I KNOW that chances are, you WOULDN'T have written things that way if you had at all perceived the dynamic as I did. And I also KNOW that for people who don't have necessarily the same experiences or perspective I do, that they're not going to be as naturally inclined to perceive trouble spots the way I'm kinda....primed to notice them, and its NATURAL for some of this to pass by peoples' notice for a variety of reasons and like....I'm not freaking mad about that?? That's FINE. That's NORMAL. You're not a bad person for writing something a 'problematic' way purely because you LITERALLY DIDN'T SEE THE PROBLEM WHEN YOU WROTE IT.

Nobody has universal experiences. Nobody has all experiences. The problem is almost NEVER somebody just WRITING something in a way that they 'should have' known better than to, especially when it comes to topics like abuse or whatever.

No, the problem is ONLY when they get all up in their butthurt feelings about being embarrassed that they DIDN'T omnisciently know that and they feel self conscious now about how they think it makes them look now that the issue HAS been raised in a way they can recognize, and so they just fucking double down on pretending there's no issue whatsoever and whomever brings it to their attention is just overstepping and who even asked, anyway.

And thus a problem that can easily be solved in TWO ways....1) by adding a simple tag acknowledging the problem area for what it is, or 2) by editing the problem area to erase or write around the issue it raises that the author didn't perceive initially and likely would have avoided from the start if they HAD, because they AREN'T someone who wants to stand KNOWINGLY by that implication and what it says or suggests.....

Instead, this problem just gets turned into a generic fandom discourse issue about critique etiquette that addresses absolutely nothing, changes nothing, makes nothing about any of this better for ANYONE, just extends the problem to one likely to be repeated over and over again because it WILL never change so long as it remains something that isn't SUPPOSED to have attention brought to it, and all of this.

All of this.

Is just self-conscious defensiveness because people didn't want to be perceived as someone who either actually thought the things they'd unknowingly implied for WHATEVER reason, or didn't care/pay enough attention to notice as a problem in the first place....

Or else they just literally DON'T care enough about the content of what they're writing enough that they actually GIVE a shit about becoming better informed on it and thus better able to steer away from troubling implications or points of view in the future. Even if pointed out by survivors or people with personal experience as such that they recognize a problem even where the author didn't themselvse, no matter WHAT their own personal relationship with the subject matter is -

(because yeah, survivors of rape and abuse can absolutely perpetuate harmful viewpoints ourselves as well, because experiencing these things doesn't take away from our being exposed to just as much of the abuse/rape culture and apologia society and media churns out regularly enough that it can cloud ANYONE'S mind on this subject, without the addition or input of other points of view).

And either way, no matter what the reason is, when people aren't willing to even ENTERTAIN input, feedback, or potentially negative or even just AWARENESS-RAISING viewpoints in response to culturally influencing fictional content they put out via a variety of fairly wide-reaching platforms that can thus reach and influence any number of mindsets, from those of survivors to potential survivors to friends or families of survivors to people with no connection to abuse or rape whatsoever currently but for whom that could change at any time because we all meet new people every day and survivors could come into your life and be affected by your views and knowledge of abuse and rape culture and apologism at any point, even if you never become a survivor yourself -

(as is my ardent wish for anyone no matter HOW much I dislike or disagree with them personally. I don't expect or WANT people to be as fully informed on a lot of this stuff as I am personally, just like I'm not like, sad about not being MORE informed on the aspects or experiences stemming from it all that aren't personally relevant to my own life, because I'm additionally very aware that my own viewpoint is not definitive and not the monolithic voice for all survivors everywhere, I've literally only ever advocated for my own perspective on these matters and anyone of a like-mind which is an entirely opt-in POV that people have to decide for THEMSELVES if they feel that applies to them versus something that I'm CLAIMING on behalf of anyone but myself) -

Anyway. Bottom line is whatever the reason for WHY people are so avoidant on this topic, the end result is we've created a culture that says people are allowed to craft fictional viewpoints on any topic in any way to any degree...but the only impact that can ever be acknowledged is positive. Nobody can point out where things can be better. Nobody can point out where things are just fucking WRONG. The entertainment of whomever wrote the thing and whomever reads it and ISN'T bothered by it in any way, is eminently more important and worth protecting than the comfort of anyone who reads the thing and is not only troubled by the viewpoint made or claims presented on a matter they're intimately acquainted with in some form or to some degree themselves.....but then merely wants their viewpoint and concerns acknowledged and made part of the conversation so that both writer and readers can potentially apply that viewpoint and ANY additional perspective or information it contains to future works.

In essence, for all the free speech and censorship talk that gets thrown around fandom spaces....THIS kinda thing RIGHT HERE?

Is the most self-evident example I can come up with of ACTUALLY shutting down conversation and the spread and dissemination of information relevant to the topics being raised as points of interest every. single. day. in this fandom and most every other one I can think of.

So if peoples' ACTUAL goal was creating spaces where the people for whom fictional content is actually MOST relevant to are encouraged and outright TOLD to try and separate their feelings from that relevancy and treat it all as an abstract.....

Just so that people for whom this content already IS an abstract and nothing more, can refrain from having it made real and thus reality-impacting, and in doing so take away some of the escapism and FUN of it all, and make it a little more 'heavy' than they wanted when they turned to it for a bit of self-indulgent angst they never intended or expected to treat (or see treated) as anything more than that?

Then its like, congrats. You did it guys. That's what you've got here. That's what you've made.

Yay.

Go team.

[jackoshadows]

There was a recent discussion on another forum about the most disappointing media in the last decade and naturally Game of Thrones won the poll beating even the recent Star wars trilogy by a large percentage. Someone linked to a Rotten Tomatoes review of the final season and it struck me how much the show veered from the books in terms of it’s underlying themes and stories – not really surprising considering D&D felt that ‘themes were for 8 grade school reports’.

But the thing that stood out for me, was how much so many folks saw GOT as some kind of feminist work about women rising to the top in a man’s world. 

On Rotten Tomatoes, pretty much most of the reviews are similar to this:

Critics Consensus: Game of Thrones' final season shortchanges the women of Westeros, sacrificing satisfying character arcs for spectacular set-pieces in its mad dash to the finish line.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/game-of-thrones

After season 6, we get these interviews:

After several seasons of troubling character starts and vocal backlash after season 5, the women of Westeros are now “running the show.”

“In the beginning it starts off with something of a stereotypical view of women, ss the wives, the girlfriends the ones that are always under other people’s control,” Sophie Turner explained to Variety. “And as the show moves forward you see these women rising to power and the evolution is phenomenal.”

Where did the change stem from, the fans. “We heard what audiences want, and what they want are more female characters,” Gwendoline Christie said. “And they want more complex, female characters.” 

https://variety.com/video/game-of-thrones-the-women-of-westeros/

Now it’s their turn: On HBO’s Game of Thrones, the show’s powerful female characters are about to take center stage more than ever before.

The ascension of Thrones’ female characters isn’t a new strategy. Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, working from the narrative template established by author George R.R. Martin, introduced Westeros five years ago as a male-dominated world ruled by figures like Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) and Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance). One by one, these strong and commanding men have suffered tragic turns of fate that have cleared the way for a fleet of heroines who have learned new strategies to survive and conquer in a brutal world.

https://ew.com/article/2016/03/24/game-thrones-ew-cover/

With covers like this:

How many of these women ended up winning at the end?

Did people really think that an old white dude writing a fantasy story in the nineties was writing about female empowerment in the medieval ages? Really?

GRRM’s books did have complex female characters - Catelyn Stark comes to mind. But the last thing he was doing was writing about how the women of Westeros were going to win in the end using their wily ways. Characters like Cat and Cersei have to navigate their world having less power than their husbands and sons. Arya has to go around in disguise as a boy, Sansa has to endure abuse and stay silent to survive.

At the end of the day, GRRM was writing about female characters in a man’s world and as such they were limited in what they could do. Quite a few times, they are the characters pulling the strings behind the men (Lady Olenna), but there are rare open displays of their power - because they only get that through the men.

The audience complaining about all the rape and violence on the show? The books are much worse in terms of what happens to female characters. What was done to Jeyne Poole in the books is far, far worse than what was done to Sansa. Jeyne suffered a torturous existence - getting send to LF’s brothel and then to Ramsay because she is unimportant in the grand scheme of things  while Sansa escaped that fate because she was a noble woman belonging to a great house.

GRRM’s romances? We get Dany wanting to die after being repeatedly raped by Khal Drogo and then she falls in love with him. We have 27 year old Sandor Clegane in love with 11-12 year old Sansa as GRRM writes his beauty and the beast romance and Brienne falling for a guy who mocks her appearance and verbally abuses her. Even Jon/Ygritte has consent issues because 19 year old Ygritte coerces 15 year old Jon into sleeping with her by threatening to out him to Mance as still being a brother of the NW watch. GRRM’s romances all belong to the ‘forced seduction’ trope commonly seen in the bodice rippers of the eighties and early nineties.

In GRRM’s world if Sansa snarked at Littlefinger about ‘seizing the last word’ she would be lying dead in a ditch somewhere, Cersei would be dead/deposed if she blew up a sept full of people and Arya would not just magically recover after getting stabbed 10 times and then go take out the entire house Frey. 

And that’s why the show became more and more nonsensical over the seasons as D&D threw out GRRM’s world building and rule book and characters could do whatever they wanted with no consequences.

In the books the only female character who has real, hard power is Daenerys Targaryen. And that’s because she has what are the equivalent of nukes. Dany did get a semblance of power before her dragons grew - but she got that by charming Drogo, convincing him to invade Westeros for her and slowly and surely grabbing power away from her brother. When she stopped the rape of the  Lhazareen women, she was only able to do that because she was the Khaleesi - Drogo’s wife.

This changes when she hatches the eggs and her dragons grow - what happens in Astapor is a game changer with a new power in town. That’s why the moment was celebrated and enjoyed by book fans. This shit?

This is what actual power looks like in the books.

Dany is pretty much the only female character who can actively effect change and fight for the throne like the other male contenders because she has the weapons to do so. That’s why she’s unique in the books.

And that’s why the show ending was so disappointing to many fans. Because the men ended up back in charge (other than the nonsensical part where Sansa alone is able to randomly remove the North from the 7K by way of shit writing) despite all these proclamations from the showrunners/cast/HBO about how the women were now running things. Because, ultimately, GRRM was not writing about female empowerment or defeating the patriarchy or about women getting to the top in a man’s world.  He was writing a coming of age story for his main characters that included 3 men:

Five central characters will make it through all three volumes, however, growing from children to adults and changing the world and themselves in the process. In a sense, my trilogy is almost a generational saga, telling the life stories of these five characters, three men and two women. The five key players are Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and three of the children of Winterfell, Arya, Bran, and the bastard Jon Snow. All of them are introduced at some length in the chapters you have to hand.

If D&D and HBO wanted female characters at the top in the end, they could have just written their own ending incorporating these ideas.  The disconnect happened because of their ‘The women are winning!’ writing and then ending up with GRRM’s ending.

Write a ‘feminist’ adaptation of the books. Kill off Jon Snow in the battle against the AOTD - it’s not like he had any story that was about him for the last 3 seasons. Have Dany kick out Tyrion for his bad ideas and defeat Cersei. Let her reward Arya with Storm’s Landing for killing the Night King. Let Brienne dump Jaime after realizing he’s a waste of space.  We would have Dany on the Iron Throne, Arya in the Stormlands, Sansa up North and Brienne setting off to start a school for young girls like Gwendoline Christie wanted. All of this makes more sense than the farcical King Bran/queen Sansa ending we got, so they could have done this.

It is disappointing as a book reader to know that the ending involves GRRM disposing of the only female character who actually has real power in the world of the books, and that of the main 5, she is the only one who ends up dying.  But maybe that’s why she ends up dying  - because Dany is an anomaly in GRRM’s fictional world and with her death Planetos reverts back to the usual patriarchal structures with the men in charge of everything. That’s a depressing thought. I can only hope that book Arya at least ends up with more power to effect change rather than getting shuffled off in a boat to some ‘west of westeros’.

[darkspellmaster]

So long as we get Dick being a older brother/father figure who helps Damian learn how to be good in YJ, I don't care. They are my most favorite Batfam relationship and I totally want it done right in media outside of comics (plus lets be real. Dick's whole 'don't want to be Batman' is totally leading up to him being forced to wear the cowl at some point. depending on the time skip, by then Tim might have moved on to RR or even be the next NW for awhile. That'd be interesting).

Honestly given that we have both Jon and Damian, and several younger sets of characters, I’m pretty damn sure now that by Season 4, maybe 5, is going to vanish and Dick is going to have to play Batman until he comes back from his trip to the past. 

Dick was great at teaching both Damian and Tim to be Robin. People tend to forget that when Jason was dead and Bruce was still learning how to have a Robin with him again, Dick was out there nightly teaching Tim everything he could about Bruce, their history, how to stay alive and keep away from being hurt along with fighting and defense. He is a great Mentor, and even with Jason, there have been issues that show flashbacks where Dick did work with Jason and while Jason was a bit of a jerk he did listen to what Dick said and could be understanding. 

I love all their relationships, and I hope that Tim and Damian will be given a better one in YJ then they were in the Pre-52 version of the series. I really do want to see Jason and Damian join the fold in a more optimistic way, and having kids closer to his age, like Jon and the other younger babies that are just being born I think will help that. 

Kinda want Steph to get the role of NW, just because I remember Brian Q Miller having that be one of the future story lines he had wanted to cover back when he was writing her, and I think she would be fun to have it. Tim as Red Robin would be a good choice there as the two could work together (or hell have him be Flamebird as that’s the actual Krypton legend) as a team. 

Thing is I wonder if they’ll allow Dick to stay as the Bat if Bruce comes back or if they’ll have him go back to being Nightwing. That is the question. 

[motel--california]

What if you want to ask all of the questions?

Then I guess I’ll have to answer all of them

1- Tell me about your favorite person.I don’t really have one single favorite person, so I’ll just do one of my best friends. She’s so much fun to hang out with and I love talking to her. She always is the one to start conversations which is good since I’m always too lazy to be the one to hit other people up. I met her at a summer camp on Lookout Mountain (a mountain partially in NW Georgia) and we’ve kept talking since then. She loves to make jokes and is so funny and she absolutely loves playing tennis and anything tennis related

2- What was the last book you’ve read and finished?I’m currently reading Half a King, which is a fantasy book by a really good author that I love, Joe Abercrombie, but the last book I finished is A Dance of Chaos by David Dalglish. It’s the last book in the Shadowdance series and it’s SO GOOD. It’s also fantasy and not only is the plot really good but 2 characters are revealed be bi and get in a relationship, and that makes any book better. (There’s also a trans girl in a previous book in the series)

3- What is the weirdest scar you have and how did you get it? I don’t have any particularly weird scars, but I do have one that I got because I thought to myself “if I scratch this skin really hard, I wonder if it’ll scar”. It did scar and it hasn’t faded at all even though I’ve had it for roughly a year. It wasn’t even itchy or anything, I just wanted to know if it would scar, which was kinda dumb. It’s this dark line on the bottom of my left leg near my ankle.

4- Recommended Netflix shows?Definitely Breaking Bad and Jane the Virgin. I’ve recently started Bates Motel and it’s also incredibly good and so is The Walking Dead.

5- If you could trade lives with one person for an entire day who would it be and why?Probably some billionaire’s kid who doesn’t have to work and just has fun all day long but isn’t so young that they have to go to school. Tbh id love to experience that lifestyle even if it’s just for a day

6- Do you believe in miracles?Not really. I’m not religious so I don’t believe there’s a spiritual force that can create things like miracles

7- Snorkeling, sky diving, bunjee jumping, or zip lining? I’d prefer snorkeling and zip lining. I’ve gone snorkeling before on a family vacation to Panama City Beach and saw a group of manta rays while doing it which was v cool, but I haven’t done the others. Zip lining sounds like tons of fun, but something where you’re just falling straight down is too scary for me

8- How do you take your coffee?I don’t drink coffee. I actually really don’t like it even though I feel I should since you’re supposed to like it once you get older but I just don’t. Sometimes I’ll see coffee in a vending machine or somebody will bring some for an event and I’ll think “well maybe this time I’ll like it” and I don’t no matter how much cream or sugar I put in. I’ve tried coffee tons of times since that age when everybody else starts liking it and it’s always bad to me, unless it’s that coffee ice cream from Bruster’s which is really good.

9- All expense paid vacation to…?Normally I’d say something like somewhere in the Rocky Mountains since I’ve never been and would love to see it (Well I went to Colorado for a huge family reunion that happens every 5 years but that was when I was like 4 so it doesn’t really count although it took place in a cabin in the mountains), but if it’s all expenses paid, might as well go for the most expensive vacation I can think of. So probably some kind of private island resort in the Caribbean or something like that

10- Favorite homemade food?Probably pot stickers. Idk if people know what they are but they’re fried dumplings

11- What is something you’ve always wanted to try but have been too scared to?I guess opening up to people. Like there are so many things I want to tell my friends but I just don’t even though I know they’re there for me and all that. I mean I know there’s absolutely no reason at all why I shouldn’t, but still I’m kinda scared to I guess

12- What accomplishments are you most proud of?Idk? I always score in like the top 1% on standardized tests like the ACT but I don’t really have a ton of things I did I’m super proud of.

13- If you were going to go to the movies alone, what type of movie would you want to see?I prefer action movies, or anything with Maisie Williams in it because she is absolutely amazing.

14- Dream job?Don’t know for sure, but I’d say an audiologist. It’s what I think I’ll probably be once I graduate college, since I’ve always leaned towards the medical field and audiologists are supposed to have one of the least stressful jobs

15- What is your favorite physical attribute about yourself?Idk my dimples I guess? I have them on both sides and get complimented on them a lot

16- Favorite vacation spot?The Blue Ridge Mountains, since as a little kid my parents would take me there a lot and also it’s so pretty there. The air is so clean, the views are amazing, and you can see way more stars than in the suburbs and even the Milky Way and it’s beautiful

17- Where is your favorite place to go to on a weekday afternoon when you have no plans?The movie theater, where there’s also this very good Mediterranean cafe that I love getting dinner at before a movie

18- What are you waiting for at this very moment? It’s 1:30 am and I’m waiting to feel sleepy cause I accidentally took a nap from 7 till 11 and now I can’t sleep

19- Five favorite songs!This isn’t in any particular order, but my top 5 are:1- We Sink by Of Monsters and Men2- The Boxer by Jerry Douglas3- This is way more than one song, but Mumford & Son’s entire discography, especially Tompkins Square Park, Dust Bowl Dance, Only Love, Thistle & Weeds, Lovers’ Eyes, Broken Crown, Roll Away Your Stone, Timshel, After the Storm, Wilder Mind, and Hot Gates4- 93 Million Miles by Jason Mraz5- Hopeless Opus by Imagine Dragons

20- You have thirty seconds to tell the world anything you want. What do you say?I’d get some company to pay me millions of dollars to give an advertisement. I mean if each Super Bowl ad is about $5 mil, then imagine how much money i could make by giving an ad to the entire world. Yeah it seems kinda selfish to do that instead of something like “I love all my friends so much uwu” but still. All that money.

21- Favorite Disney movie?The Lion King, since I love the songs and the story so much. I even went and saw the musical when I visited New York since the movie was so good

22- What is your favorite board game or card game?Extreme spoons (i feel like most people don’t know what it is, but it’s just like regular spoons except the objects are hidden around the room and you have to get up and find them or they’re really far away and you have to run to them) or Uno

23- What did you love most about the place you grew up? I don’t really have something for this one, not that my hometown’s a terrible place, but I guess I liked the river there? My dad would rent a canoe there sometimes when I was in like 2nd or 3rd grade and we’d go canoeing

24- Where do you want to be in 5 years?I’d have won the lottery, bought some expensive house and moved

25- What is your most bizarre talent?This isn’t that weird, but I can bend my thumb backward and touch my arm with it but only on my right hand for some reason. Idk I can’t really do anything especially weird

26- Do you collect anything?No

27- If you could change one thing about your past, what would it be?I’d go back and fix all those embarrassing things I said/did

28- Have you ever been arrested or in trouble with the law?No

29- You could have any superpower in the world, what would it be and why?I’d give myself the ability to change my physical qualities, which would be really amazing, since that’s basically invisibility, shape shifting, and a bunch of others all rolled into one.

30- Ever been in love?Romantically, no. I’ve dated in the past of course, but it’s never gotten to that point

31- If you could achieve anything what would be your number one goal?Invent something that allowed you to travel way past the speed of light without using any fuel, since I feel that would solve a lot of problems. It’d be easier to discover Earth-like planets and people could just move to them and move again if that planet ever became too dirty or whatever, then you wouldn’t have to worry about pollution or overcrowding, and you could easily mine water and rare minerals and stuff from asteroids and then everyone could have water

32- When was the last time you left your comfort zone?I can’t really think of anything for this one, since it’s not like I do wild and crazy things every day, but I spose the last time I asked a girl out (she said yes but it just never happened)

33- Think of the five people you are closest to. Are they good people who influence you life in a positive way?Definitely and I love them all so much

34- If you found $100 on the ground, what would you spend it on? I’d go and buy myself some new clothes

35- Favorite quoteI don’t have one, mostly because I’ve never really thought about which quote is my favorite.

36- Do you have a good relationship with your parents?I’d say so, yeah

37- List five good things that happened todayRight now it’s 7:30 am so not much has happened at all (earlier in this post I said it was 1:30 but I fell asleep while writing this) but yesterday 1- I saw @saveme-exe which I do all the time but he still always makes my day better 2- saw the most goals lesbian promposal on Snapchat 3- saw a picture of Maisie Williams on ig which I always do since I follow some fan accounts but she’s just so beautiful and amazing 4- got a burrito from Moe’s and 5- got complimented

38- Do you think we should make things happen or let fate guide our lives?I believe that fate is partially what you make it, because if everybody thought you would turn out a certain way but then you make it so that you don’t, then it wasn’t really ever your fate anyways, just what people thought it was. So I’d say that I think we should make things happen

[bigskydreaming]

Something to keep in mind with a lot of fandom or fic critical stuff is like.....causation and correlation are two distinct things, and they’re not always both present in like, the reason someone might have an issue with a thing.

What I mean by that is, sometimes there are fanon or fic trends that people take issue with BECAUSE of a certain root problem. They dislike this end result in fic, because it is derived from this specific cause, and that cause and effect are the issue in their mind. 

BUT sometimes there are fanon or fic trends that people take issue with because the problem isn’t like....due to a specific cause and effect, rather, the problem is a thing always going hand in hand with something else that IS a problem in someone’s eyes.

For instance, its no secret I think abuse apologism, intentionally or not, is a big problem in Batfam fandom. This is why I have a huge issue with fics who make direct reference to story events from canon that include clear and unequivocable abuse, like NTT #55 or NW #30....in the sense that they utilize the FALLOUT from these scenes, they pick up the story thread of what Dick did in the aftermath of these scenes, those actions and choices that were his direct REACTION to the ACTIONS of others........BUT many of these fics fail to acknowledge those actual inciting actions themselves, because they don’t want to portray Bruce as abusive or acknowledge that depiction. 

However, by removing the inciting action, but keeping the ensuing reactions, they PIVOT the conflict from being born of Bruce’s actions and that Dick was reacting to.....to now have Dick in the driver’s seat of that conflict, with what were originally his reactions to harm done to him now taken out of context and repurposed as its OWN kind of inciting conflict, that other characters then react to as though he’s the problem.

This issue is one of causation. Its a textbook example of abuse apologism where the abuser is by default protected via their defenders removing them from the context of the abuse entirely, and pivoting the focus to be JUST on the abused, making their reactions entirely divorced from the REASONS they’re acting that way. The problem lies entirely in writing Dick as the aggressor in these situations, with the direct CAUSE being not wanting to write him as the one justifiably aggrieved.

Now compare and contrast this with something like Dick being a jerk to Jason when he was Robin, or similar situations where a time when Dick was the injured party in one respect like, coincides with a time where Dick is heavily hyped up as being the offering insult or injury to someone who has nothing to do with whatever happened to him.

The issue I have here is one of correlation. Its not a simple cause and effect thing in play here, but there is still connection between say, a heavy focus on what a jerk Dick is (without much basis for that ever happening) and at the same time, a deliberately light focus on Bruce’s role in Dick and Bruce’s dynamic at the time and what very much did happen in events directly referenced, and which are then in turn referenced as being a big part of Dick’s mood without ever letting this truly come into focus.

See, the issue here is still purely between Dick and Bruce, but there’s a correlative effect in what’s going on between Dick and Jason......as the more people are focused on what Dick is or isn’t doing in his dynamic with Jason, and THAT being the focal issue....the less people are thinking about or invested in what’s going on between Dick and Bruce, even when there’s nominal acknowledgment that that’s the real root of the problem overall.

Of course, then sometimes correlation BECOMES causation. Because the more a trend builds and builds, without acknowledgment or discussion of related issues, the more the unacknowledged connection causes problems in and of itself, and it all loops back in on itself and feeds a never-ending cycle of cause and effect and correlation and avoidance that literally can only ever be broken by just.....critical thinking and direct analysis.

You might think I was building to a point here, but hahaha jk, not really. Tbh this is mostly just me trying to break down a fandom phenomenon into bite-size pieces to present for consideration, because the only real point here is like.....this shit is complicated. It SHOULD be complicated, as anything that pertains to not just liking certain characters and interacting with them, but also interacting with their STORIES and the real life problems they’re mirroring and the resulting behaviors that stem from them, like....should be. 

The problem with treating story-telling (as either a reader or a writer) as escapism, is that story-telling doesn’t exist TO be a form of escapism. Its often utilized as such, or aimed to be used as such, but story-telling is at its heart just......a means of talking about the human condition. Life. How we interact with it.

And thus, even though some stories very much DO work to provide escapism from life and its problems.....some stories very much will NEVER work as such, because you can’t escape from life’s problems by way of....stories that are meant to be examinations of life’s problems. 

(Something that’s particularly an issue with discussions of fiction vs reality. You hear a lot about how fiction isn’t reality, or how fiction does affect reality, but something we really need to talk about more is how some peoples’ fiction IS some other peoples’ reality. Like it may not be the equivalent of writing someone else’s personal memoir, but there needs to be more serious acknowledgment that when writing something that is abstract for you, personally, as in outside your realm of personal experiences because it pertains to aspects of identity or marginalization or lived experiences that aren’t a direct reflection of your own......these topics are not REMOTELY abstract for someone whose very real identity or lived experiences or oppression IS directly reflected in what you’re treating as simple fiction born of your imagination and nothing more. And thus how you interact with what you’re writing and reading and treating as nothing more than fictional, someone else is interacting with as something that’s a lot more real than that, feels a lot more real than that, that’s more personal than abstract). 

But anyway like, escapism isn’t a one-size fits all kinda deal, and CAN’T be. Because the things people want to escape from, the lives that they’re escaping from, and what they need to escape from it vs what will never allow them to escape from it because it will actually just be more examination and awareness of the reasons for their own want for escapism in the first place....none of these things are one size fits all, and that’s why fandom and fanfic are never ever ever going to be a one-stop shop for escapist fantasy the way too many people in fandoms try and treat them as.

And at a certain point you either gotta like, get on board with the fact that life is complicated and there IS no easy breakdown or solution to or discussion about extremely complicated topics like this, and that’s just the way it is so level up already and start treating it as such.....

Or you can do the other thing, which is double down on digging your heels in and pretending there is a simple, shallow, superficial way of dealing with or acknowledging super complicated shit, with that usually just being.....avoiding treating it as such.

Which is the part that tends to lead to perpetuation of cycles of bullshit and feeding directly back into a feedback loop of acknowledging fallout of issues without ever acknowledging the instigation of issues and whoops look at that, a pointed point crept up on me after all, myyyyyyy baaaaaaaaaad.

[bigskydreaming]

For the record: I fucking adore pre-Crisis Dick and Bruce and always have. And would have ZERO problems whatsoever with people focusing on the version of events surrounding Dick’s leaving home in that last reblog…if not for how often this is paired with the reactions and attitudes Dick was written as having in direct response to the OTHER version of events in which he was fired. Its literally just the mixing and matching that’s the problem for me. 

(And additionally for the record, this has absolutely nothing to do with that reblog or its OP or anything other than the fact that I’ve been trying to write this particular post for like two months and could never muster the spoons before now. But seriously, not really about that post at all, it just finally got the gears working in the direction I wanted them to go).

Anyway. Like I said, its the mixing and matching of cause and effects that are inherently just not MEANT to match up and go together, because the effect was not referring back to a specific cause, but rather a different one altogether....that’s the issue. That’s always been the issue.

Because when you leave out the key fact that Dick’s hostility in later stories is written with the explicit intention of referring back to stories in which Bruce instigated their estrangement, you make it look like Dick is just a spoiled brat who throws temper tantrums when things aren’t about him, when that is literally not the scenario he was being characterized that way in response to. 

My problem has never been with Dick and Bruce having a good relationship or Bruce being a good father who loves his eldest and expresses that in a myriad of ways. Its with the narratives that twist a specific sequence of cause and effect to shift the focus away from any possible reason Dick could have for being upset with Bruce….to spotlight SOLELY Dick’s upset, with all actual relevant context deliberately stripped away and replaced with the context of “Bruce is a good father who loves his eldest and never fails to express that in a myriad of ways.” 

And with the way this pattern has then been mirrored over the decades since it was initially applied by fandom to avoid dealing with the earliest stories where Bruce was written as abusive….and with the ripple effect consequentially being that it has become a fandom staple for the focus to be put entirely on what Dick’s doing at all times and never on WHY, so that he constantly keeps getting upheld as the problem even in situations where he was clearly the victim. Like with Spyral, like with Ric Grayson, like Mirage and tons of other times throughout this character’s history because once you establish a precedent and uphold it to the degree that we’ve so often seen with “Dick is really the mastermind of his own misery, because none of the things that he’s miserable about really happened to him, look see, Bruce is a fabulous father and always was”.....like, you get a lot of repetition at that point.

Because that, right there, ESPECIALLY when paired with the reality that the stories that this tendency is most commonly used to distract from, like Dick’s firing and NTT #55 and NW #30 and other issues where there were clear and obvious instances of abuse in how Bruce was written......intentionally or not, that replaces these narratives of abuse, but NOT with stories where everything’s all fine and dandy.....but rather, with a narrative of abuse apologism, even if it is largely unintentional.

Because when an abuse victim’s behavior in specific moments is called into question AT THE SAME TIME as the root cause of that specific behavior in those specific moments is shuffled offstage and KEPT out of focus, so that the abuse victim’s specific behavior is upheld as the ONLY issue at hand, leaving the abuser who they’re reacting to free to just keep on walking while no one pays them any attention now.....this is a fundamental cornerstone of abuse apologism in real life as much as in fiction. And it has nothing to do whatsoever if its INTENDED that way, its simply the reality of what results.

And its that last part that usually gets me and a lot of other fans so worked up because just like a lot of people turn to Bruce as their emotional support character because they relate to either his trauma or his coping mechanisms or a million other things about him.....there’s a shit ton of us who turn to Dick Grayson as our emotional support character because we relate to HIS trauma....which, like it or not, for many of us INCLUDES his at-times extremely shitty relationship with his parent.

The way people condescend about this in particular, acting like the ONLY POSSIBLE REASON anyone ever has for writing Bruce as abusive or writing fixes or codas or transformative response-takes on actual literal canon stories where he was written as abusive.....like, treating the situation as though people ONLY do this for the sake of angst porn or to smear Bruce’s character, like, they’re just in it for the drama and there’s absolutely no other possible reason to engage with those particular stories.....its aggravating as hell. 

Especially when this is paired with stuff like “oh, sorry I’m not addicted to making Bruce an abusive shithead, I have taste and am above click-bait angst lolol” like.....people really think they’re saying something there, but its probably not what they think they’re saying when you hold it up against the fact that most people saying this have ZERO problem with excessive angst and misery in literally any other context EXCEPT for ones where Bruce is to blame.

I like to refer back to the fact that people disparage any focus on Dick being fired as being ‘just a retcon’....because of how that coincides with the fact that Jason’s pre-Crisis stories were largely (though not completely) retconned as well. Because its not just the fact that Jason’s origin as an acrobat was retconned to him being a street kid that’s significant here....but rather, the fact that HOW he became Robin was retconned as well. Since originally, pre-Crisis, just like it was Dick who chose to move on from Robin himself, it was Dick who chose to make Robin the name Jason used as Batman’s partner as well. 

So I’d be fine with people being like “oh I don’t engage with the retcon of Dick being fired because it was just a retcon” except for the fact that they DO engage with a huge part of that retcon still. They engage with the part where Dick is bitter and resentful of not being Robin anymore, just not the REASONS for it, because they’ve supplanted all the history for the version of events where Dick is resentful with the history from when Bruce was nothing but supportive. And then ADDITIONALLY, they still engage with the part where it was Bruce who made Jason Robin, not Dick, as this is then linked in fanon to WHY Dick is allegedly so resentful of Jason as Robin.....even though that too is a retcon, and if they just went with the original story where Dick gave Jason his name and costume before Jason ever debuted as Robin for the very first time.....voila, no resentment or bitterness from Dick towards Jason would ever exist.

See what I’m saying? Its frustrating hearing over and over that people don’t like the firing retcon just because it was a retcon and they like the original....AT THE EXACT SAME TIME as they continue to interact with and engage with literally every part of the retcon EXCEPT for where Bruce did stuff that Dick understandably could be upset about.

And that people claim this is to avoid the more negative aspects of things between Bruce and Dick and make for a more positive family dynamic....except then they still KEEP Dick being estranged and not coming home and sniping at Bruce as WELL as keep Dick being resentful and bitter about Jason so its like.....Error 404, More Positive Family Dynamic Not Found, its almost like you’re totally fine with Dick being the fly in the family togetherness soup, just so long as Bruce comes across fine.

And this is the pattern we see over and over, and that’s why the frustration Dick Grayson’s fans have with a lot of the rest of fandom are not directly interchangeable with the frustrations fans of any character have when its their favorite character in the hotseat. Because its not the simple fact of other fans not liking his character or stories about his character, its the HOW and WHY of the reasoning, and how often that’s telling people who relate to parts of Dick’s narrative that include the uglier bits with Bruce, that like....the stories we’re upset about don’t matter, or aren’t relevant, or didn’t happen, lmfao.

Because here’s the thing: nobody has to engage with parts of canon they don’t like. We all come to these stories and characters for different reasons and if Bruce written abusively is totally counter to everything you love about the character, OF COURSE you don’t want to engage with those takes! Of course you find that out of character and view it as shitty writing that should never have happened. And that’s FINE!

But its not about whether or not you just choose not to engage with these stories or ones based on them.....its about how often people then TALK OVER the people who DO choose to engage with these stories or ones based on them.....and belittle their validity in existing at all, try and paper over the stuff that people are directly trying to address by way of fic by arguing points that aren’t in contention.....because we’re not disputing that there’s a version of events where Dick left home happily, we’re literally just saying THAT’S NOT THE STORY WE’RE TALKING ABOUT.

Like, if I go on a post where people are just having a good time with good wholesome father and son interactions between Bruce and Dick and say something like “wow wish this was real and that Bruce wasn’t actually an abusive shithead”....I’M THE ASSHOLE THERE. Lol, make no mistake. But the flip side of that is when people go on posts where people are talking about times and places and ways the dynamic between Bruce and Dick is shittier, and say stuff like “wow good thing this isn’t real and everyone with taste knows that this is just angst bait and Bruce is actually the Best Father”.....uh....what exactly is the difference here?

(Especially, and I CAN NOT stress the hilarious irony of this enough....when they then just go back to making another Whumptober entry. LOL that’s fine! The part that’s hilarious though is condescending to people who write abusive Bruce Wayne takes as just being in it for the misery business when like......umm. Like I have a point here, but I’ll let people reach it on their own. The dots though. They’re extremely connectable).

Also also, I would just like to point out that Batfandom in particular has always leaned heavily on the “sometimes people write things to cope” in regards to rape and incest fic, etc........so as long as certain corners of fandom are willing to lean heavily into that argument to defend any and all kinds of sexual content in fic, they might consider extending that very same logic to “sometimes people write things to cope” in regards to abuse survivors writing about abusive dynamics within the Batfam to work through their own shit with abuse.

But I’m just extremely tired with the “but its a retcon/its bad writing” arguments rearing their heads anywhere people are like “here is a canon story I would like to engage with because hey I thought fanfic was supposed to be about us being able to fix shitty canon or address shitty canon or just lampshade that shitty canon is shitty”.....particularly when that awareness of things being a retcon seem to be devoid of any awareness of how retcons WORK.

Because the thing is, we all know and get how retcons work. We understand that retcons act as an insertion point for a second version of events that later stories can refer back to or act upon INSTEAD of the original version of events.

This is why literally nobody in fandom writes stories about Jason as the Red Hood and tries to like....use them to make points about Jason’s childhood as a circus acrobat. Because everyone gets that the issue there isn’t whether or not Jason’s early childhood was retconned, and there only being ONE TRUE VERSION of that you can go with......no, people get that it doesn’t matter IF they for whatever reason prefer Jason’s original story.....literally no canon story about the Red Hood has been written with the intention of referring back to THAT origin instead of the street kid Jason origin. No story about the Red Hood is attempting to SAY anything about or DO anything with Jason the child acrobat instead of Jason the street kid.

So why does that awareness vanish the second that stories about how Dick RESPONDS to the retcon of being fired come under scrutiny....with people acting like they just don’t get how retcons work all of a sudden, and its fine to argue the point about how that second inserted sequence of events isn’t relevant and everyone knows this so clearly there’s no problem treating Dick’s reactions to those events as though they’re just reactions to Bruce and Dick fighting over college?

Every character has at least two versions of themselves, tbh. A canon version and a fanon version. And obviously with a shared universe as old and having passed through as many hands as DC has....you could argue that there are many canon versions of Dick’s character. 

I would argue however that there are two distinct fanon versions of Dick’s character as well. And to be clear, each of these fanon versions encompass a spectrum unto themselves, there’s a wide range of varying DEGREES of these two fanon takes.....but there’s two specific fanon Dick Grayson STARTING points.

One of these of course is the happy-go-lucky, air-headed, never worried about anything in his life, cereal-munching, fashion disaster, sails through everything without a care in the world other than his care for everyone but himself Dick Grayson. 

I mean, I don’t particularly care for that one, but it is what it is, and like I said, every character has that fanon take that has a lot of their fans going Lol wut a mess, like plz just no.

The fanon starting point I’m usually more concerned about is this one: the Dick Grayson who grew up in the lap of luxury but never really appreciated it or what he had, who is territorial and possessive, prone to fits of anger with very little provocation prompting people to walk on eggshells around him, who cares about other people but is often oblivious of his effect on them because he’s just so reckless, so impulsive, that frequently he jumps into situations without thinking about how other people will be impacted by what he says or does, and then is too proud to take it back.

The reason I’m bothered so much by THIS fanon Dick Grayson is because I flat out don’t believe we get to him by looking at canon....but rather by extremely selectively AVOIDING looking at canon, but only specific PARTS of canon.

And thus we get a Dick Grayson who never really appreciated his childhood or what he had.....as evidenced by the Dick Grayson who at times takes shots at Bruce for how he raised Dick......but without ANY examination of or awareness that the way those shots are written in canon, are with the intention of referring back to specific stories in which Bruce DID fuck up in certain ways while raising Dick....rather than a Bruce who was nothing but supportive and nurturing and did no wrong ever.

And thus we get a Dick Grayson who is territorial and possessive....as evidenced by the way he’s been less than graceful about ‘sharing’ Robin with certain of his siblings, or even Bruce himself......but without ANY examination of or awareness that the reason he’s written as ungracious about these things in these specific moments is because they were written with the intention of referring back to specific stories where something he built from the ground up - Robin - was stripped from him and given away without consulting him, or when he had to watch others enjoy a specific aspect of their relationship with Bruce that he was never (or at least not yet) ever offered himself......rather than just because Dick’s spoiled and selfish and never learned to share because he has only child syndrome.

And thus we get a Dick Grayson who is prone to fits of anger with very little provocation prompting people to walk on eggshells around him.....as evidenced by the way he blows up at certain people at certain times....but without ANY examination of what they said or did to him just BEFORE he blew up at them, or awareness that the reason he said awful things or displayed such anger is because he was specifically being written as reacting to things that very understandably PROMPT such anger, or he was written standing up for himself in the face of people saying or doing shitty things as well, or even outright attacking him......rather than just because Dick has a hair-trigger temper and anger management issues, and nobody’s ever said or done anything that justifies him getting angry at them ever.

And thus we get a Dick Grayson who is oblivious to his effect on other people because he’s just so reckless and impulsive that he jumps into situations without thinking about how they’ll be impacted....as evidenced by the way he does things like fake his death without thinking through what this will do to others......but without ANY examination of the fact that the stories in which he’s originally written MAKING the decisions to do these things, he DOES think through how others will be impacted, like how in NW #30 he did nothing BUT argue how it would affect his siblings and Barbara, or awareness of the fact that the reasons these arguments don’t change the outcome of events is because they’re deliberately written as not being ALLOWED to change the outcome, as Dick’s objections and concerns for other people are actively overriden and over-ruled.....rather than because he doesn’t make these objections in the first place or think through how other people will be impacted by things.

And thus we get a Dick Grayson who is just too proud to take things back when he fucks up.....as evidenced by the way that he either doesn’t apologize for certain things, or his apology seems hollow or insincere, or his apology doesn’t preclude him from doing something similar again later down the line....but without ANY examination of the fact that the reasons for all of these more often have to do with the fact that the crimes aren’t his to apologize for in the first place, its often him that’s owed the actual apology, and he simply won’t be ALLOWED to not get into the same situation in the future because the entire reason this pattern persists so frequently is because there’s zero sincere examination of what the pattern actually consists OF and just WHY it is that Dick in specific is so frequently stuck in this particular pattern....rather than just because Dick’s simply too proud to ever acknowledge when he fucks up.

Does that specific fanon interpretation of Dick Grayson sound at ALL familiar to anyone else?

And can you understand how the frustration with it could stem from not simply the fact that it exists, or that its not canon based....but rather the fact that it in order to exist at all, it REQUIRES building upon a foundational cornerstone of abuse apologism and outright ignoring and disregarding stories where he is the one victimized in order to prioritize that no blowback for the canon instances of abuse impact or reflect badly upon the actual victimizing characters in fandom conversations about these things?

Because speaking solely for myself now....this is and ALWAYS HAS BEEN, the ONLY issue I have in this matter. I have zero problems with good dad Bruce Wayne content, with prioritizing takes where Dick wasn’t actually fired, with simply not wanting to engage with canon or fan content where Bruce is abusive....none of these things have EVER been my problem or ever will be....as long as they like....don’t go hand in hand with making an abuse victim his own victimizer and everyone else his hapless victim whenever the specific instances of when he’s been a victim of other characters in canon comes up either in fic, headcanons, meta or just casual conversation.