#let's traumatize jason a lil bit

[dukeofthomas]

On the Robin/Child Sidekick Child Soldier thing. The main argument (Doylist) is that it's a Child power fantasy. And no offense but Batman treats the Robins like shit and is respected by the community and faces little consequences for it. He rarely even properly apologizes. How is that a 'power fantasy for children'? That's a power fantasy for adults harming children. (Ergo why people are often less bothered by other child heroes who either have better treatment from their mentors or more independence)

So many plots about how Child Heroes might be bad. Old Justice, Jericho, ect. And also actually killing Sidekicks like Jason Todd and having them be traumatized by their experiences and unsupported. If Jason Todd was a 'child power fantasy' what the fuck was having him betrayed by his mother, brutally murdered and victim blamed by almost everyone who knew him?

Jason Robin does not work as a power fantasy because a lot of writers who wrote him or about him did not like him and/or child sidekicks. Therefore Jason Todd is not a child power fantasy but a child soldier with an epitaph to prove it. (he works a bit as a revenge power fantasy pre-boot post-resurrection though)

Plenty of child heroes work as power fantasies in comics I've read but not Robin. Not in a lot of comics.

Yesss!

When Robin appears in other media, like lego batman or teen titans or other cartoons and such, i see no issue with it. Because, when i was a child not that long ago, child heroes FUCKED. People my age, who were acknowledge to be smart and strong and independent and could be relied upon to do awesome shit? Hell yeah!! Once you graduate from thinking like that to "omg who let the children take care of everything and be in danger etc etc.", congratulations! You've grown out of that kind of show and should probably go watch something made for adults!

Except uh. Then you do go read something more mature, in this case the comics, and... Robin is still there! And you're like, oh okay this is one of them genre Conventions, i still gotta keep ignoring it, just like many other things in fiction. Except he's being treated horribly by Batman! Straight up abused in many cases, actually! And it's no longer as easy to put on those nice lil suspension of disbelief-coloured glasses here bc yeah; Robin is a power fantasy meant for children, but once you put him in something more mature and also have him being horribly mistreated and abused, it... no longer works.

Anyway. Hope that made sense bc i literally woke up 10 minutes ago 👍

[tenpintsofsundrop]

I’m rewatching Titans season 3 to catch up for season 4 and I really wanna dump about Dick a lil. I’m sorry if this is just garbled info that you don’t get but I really had to put this somewhere :’) feel free to just skim over this ask!

also i’m sorry if this is formatted weird, tumblr is acting up for me </3

i’m a tiny eeny weeny bit of a dc comics nerd and something I’ve loved about Dick’s character is his commitment to his family. In the comics, while Jason still has a strained relationship with his family, his relationship with Dick is stable for the most part. I get that Titans is about The Titans and not so much the ‘bat family’ but again, I would have loved to the family dynamics explored a little if there had been more seasons.

And it just hurts me heart to see Dick be such a bitch to his honorary kid brother. Like dude stop it please.

(also pleaser bear with me, I’m remembering stuff about Dick from earlier seasons just off the top of my head, so if i say smth that’s rlly off about his character, please correct me!)

In the comics, I especially love Dick’s relationship with his youngest brother, Damian. He takes a major paternal role in Damian’s life while Bruce is absent and some terrible, traumatic things go down and Damian just adores his brother for it, even if he’s too stubborn to admit it.

This isn’t me saying Comic!Dick>Titans!Dick at all! it’s mostly me saying I wish we could have had more of him as a whole to see how they adapted his character and his growth.

tldr; I’m sad titans was canceled because I would have loooovveeed to see more of Dick’s growth.

this is so funny omg. you need to talk to @star-mum because we have both decided that Titans!Dick is Public Enemy Number One and it sounds like you're there too

(long winded rant below the cut but thank you for letting me talk about this lmao)

so in general, I don't read a lot of comics, but I know a lot of comic book lore because of youtube videos, tiktoks, etc. (because my general curiosity brings me to watch videos about that stuff) and because Jaycen talks my ear off about that stuff and I love her for it <3. and it's also intensely interesting to me, because I read a lot of DC fanfiction (because it's one of the most diverse and well written fandoms when it comes to fanfiction) and you can always tell when someone is using comic book characterization for characters vs strictly Titans characterization for the characters - which, the ladder is rare. Most people are only fans of the comic version - which is very understandable.

But Comic Dick Grayson vs Titans Dick Grayson are miles apart (especially considering that Comic Bruce is a calm, well rounded father who adopted Dick out of the goodness of his heart and raised a well rounded, polite, charming son, and Titans Bruce is a sociopath who adopted Dick as a coping mechanism, emotionally abused him for years, which resulted in him raising a 'son' with intense anger issues and pent up rage, and then Bruce tried to commit suicide when he realized he made the same mistakes with Jason).

Comic Dick is the golden boy.

He is very sociable, charming, sweet - he's a playboy because he has intense natural empathy, and in general he's known as the 'golden boy' because he's well rounded in every aspect. He's smart, he's a people person (without pretending), he naturally meshes well with others, he has a good natural compass for justice, he's clever.

Titans Dick is a fucking mess.

Bruce emotionally abused, and it informs so fucking much of his character and his issues - he has attachment issues; he desperately wants a family/a long term attachment but he refuses to form one because he doesn't want to get hurt, so he is constantly pushing people away, he has pent up rage because of how he lost his parents (and because of how Bruce treated that loss, telling him that the world is cold and cruel and no one is ever going to comfort him in that world so he has to make his own justice through violence). He takes every single loss or injustice (however big or small) deeply personally, he doesn't fucking talk about his feelings or communicate properly.

And Jason does get the brunt of the ... wreckage? Of Dick's issues.

It is very clear that because Bruce 'replaced' him with Jason, Dick is consciously or unconsciously taking out his anger toward Bruce on Jason. This is not a problem in the comic books, because Bruce and Dick have a great relationship. But in Titans, Dick and Bruce have a lot of unresolved problems (as much as Dick claims he has forgiven Bruce) so when he sees Jason going down the exact same path he went down - no parents, no proper guidance in the world other than Robin and being Bruce Wayne's little pet - it makes him furious toward Jason because he is furious at a past version of himself.

So because Dick has a lot of unresolved anger and fucked up communication issues, rather than being gentle with Jason and guiding him (and becoming Jason's new mentor, a better mentor than Bruce) he just takes his anger out on Jason because he is unconsciously fighting a past version of himself that let himself believe Bruce Wayne was a good parent.

And when it comes to Season 3 specifically with Red Hood - oooof - I have so much to say about this.

Nightwing and Red Hood are such intense parallels in Titans.

When we first meet Dick, he is at an intense turning point with his violence - he is very brutal, and though it's clear that he thinks killing people is shocking and wrong, he thinks nothing of doling out severe, brutal, possibly life-changing and disabling injuries. And what really gets me is when Dawn is shocked by the level of violence that Dick is displaying, and she is clearly concerned by it.

So when he becomes Nightwing, he reforms himself - he comes back from the edge, he eases up on the violence, and he has a lot of self reflection and realizes that it wasn't about the criminals, it was about him. And he makes an effort not to be as violent.

But it's clear that when he sees Red Hood - someone who kills criminals without a second thought - Dick simply sees a path that he could have gone down. Especially with the themes of that season 'killing vs not killing'. Dick thinks that he's morally superior for easing up on his violence and not killing, but really, when he sees Red Hood, he just sees an alternate version of himself - someone who was fucked up by Bruce and went down a different path, and someone whose ways are maybe a bit more justified than he would like to admit.

So rather than being brotherly toward Jason, rather than acknowledging the legitimate mental illness and trauma that Jason has, Dick talks about Jason (and Red Hood) as though he is a concept. As though Jason is doing this out of spite and pure evil, because Dick wants to extinguish that side of himself that would have embraced Red Hood's ideals if he had gone down the wrong path himself.

Those are my thoughts lmao. Titans Dick doesn't have the capacity to be brotherly toward Jason unfortunately. That's why he's so annoying

[thisbrilliantsky]

area secondhand fan explains: why there are five robins

OK SO: the first robin was dick grayson, romani son of trapeze pair "the flying graysons"- young (newly batman) bruce wayne witnessed dick's parents fall to their deaths as a result of sabotage, and adopted lil eight-year-old dick, who then (a couple years later??) became his protege/sidekick. and they were adorable and everything was dandy until dick was about eighteen and started wanting more Responsibility but bruce was like, nah son. so they had a Falling Out and dick left gotham and went to bludhaven where he became nightwing (after a therapeutic heart-to-heart with his buddy/mentor superman but that's another story). dick grayson is awesome and Good and Pure and loves his family so much ;-;

second robin: jason todd, abandoned, gutsy street kid - so bruce was being all broody and I Dont Need A Sidekick Anyway Dick Can Do What He Wants but then one night some punk kid tried to steal the batmobile's tires?? and bruce was like???? and the kid tried to fight him??? with a tire iron?? so bruce was like: Yes. He's Perfect. so he adopted lil 12yo? jason. and it was awesome and everything was dandy until three years later jason was trying to find his mom (his real mom - his abusive dad had abandoned him and his stepmom and they'd ended up on the streets and then she abandoned jason?? or something) and bruce let him bc reasons and he found her?? but she betrayed him?? idk exactly how it happened but the joker kidnapped jason and tortured him and then left him in a warehouse and then blew up it up. :((( and bruce was too late. so jason died at 15 and it was awful and bruce will never forgive himself. (and neither will dick......who had patched things up with bruce by now and was Older Broing it up with jason) BUT THEN (in at least one version of the story) somehow or other the league of shadows got a hold of jason's body?? and threw him in the lazarus pit and resurrected him. (another version has him coming back to life IN HIS COFFIN SIX FEET UNDER bc of some superhero science thing AND HAVING TO CLAW HIS WAY OUT ug h) and eventually jason turns up in gotham again as the red hood; and he's.....angry. and angsty. and just. he's mostly mad bc bruce didn't kill the joker. he captured him and turned him over to the authorities, but then he freaking escaped and that along with the fact of the third robin jason's like??? seriously?? i mattered that little to you?? ;-; im so sad

THIRD ROBIN: tim drake, genius and coffee addict, probably - so bruce was all I Am The Scum of The Earth I Will Never Take A Kid Crimefighting Again and being all broody and sad but then this 13yo kid shows up and is like, "hi, i'm tim, i'm 13 and i'm here to tell u what ur problem is" and bruce is like.....where are ur parents. "at home." what are u talking about. "i know that you're batman" ur delusion son. "no actually i'm not, here's a graph of how i figured out that you, bruce wayne, are batman, and that your adopted son, dick grayson, is nightwing (formerly robin)" ........what do u want. "i want to be robin" yeah that's not happening. "oh gee wouldn't it be A Shame if someone were to get a hold of this info........" are u blackmailing me, kid. "a little" are you kidding me. "no." why do u want to be robin. "bc batman needs a robin." .... "ur just a broody pair of fists otherwise, u know" SO YEAH tim convinces him to let him be robin and tim is actually a brilliant detective and everything is dandy for a while (if a bit tense......bruce kinda keeps tim at arm's length for a while, tho dick warms up to him p quick) and then jason shows up again so Drama happens and then??? tim's parents are murdered??? and idk. sad things happen and bruce ends up adopting tim and admitting that he'd always thought of him as a son AND ALSO tim leads the teen titans and is bros with superboy and a bunch of other teen heroes

OK NOW fourth robin: damian wayne, bruce's only biological child, smol and lethal, kitten thinks of nothing but murder all day - so APPARENTLY ten years before (??? when he was training with the league of shadows to get his Ninja Skills or something??) bruce had a Thing with talia al ghul, the daughter of ra's al ghul (the Big Bad Guy of the league) and unbeknownst to bruce, she got pregnant and had a son. bc they are the League of Shadows and are just Extra about everything, they basically raised damian to be a lil assassin and by the time he's 10 he's killed.......idk how many ppl. and he's a genius and an artist but?? his mom and granddad are super harsh as u might imagine. but he grows up hearing stories about how his father is this mighty warrior and worthy opponent and stuff and he decides he wants to meet him so he just?? turns up in gotham like, "Hello Father, I am the son u never knew u had, and I am here to prove myself to u but it's not like i need ur approval or anything, see I am completely competent on my own, in fact i am better than u, see how i effortlessly kill this thug (please love me)." and bruce is just.......lowkey horrified and highkey ????????? and it kinda goes badly bc bruce has this thing where he never kills ppl (see: not killing the joker even tho he murdered jason) and he's v strict about it and he doesn't have the time or the inclination to deal with a murder child. and he inadvertently crushes lil damian's murder heart. BUT dick is there and he's like??? bruce??? he's ur son??? and when bruce is still an emotionally constipated jerk about it dick takes damian under his wing (pun intended) and trains him in the Batfam Way. for whatever reason (i think bruce faked his death???) dick took on the role of batman for a while and damian became his robin. damian pretended at first that he was Above everyone and Didnt Need any training but he really is just a 10yo who wants to be loved and he actually has a really soft heart and he ends up becoming really close to dick (tho he continues to antagonize tim (now red robin) but NOT bc he feels threatened by him that would be ABSURD) and eventually bruce comes around and he and damian start bonding and so everything is dandy for a while bUT THEN stuff goes down and damian gets killed while protected dick. AND ITS HORRIBLE AND EVERYONE BLAMES THEMSELVES (including tim ;-;) bUT THEN talia and the league of shadows throws damian in the lazarus pit and resurrects him?? or something. he ends up in the pit somehow. and bruce comes to get him and he comes home and is robin again and he's become so into this whole "no killing" thing that he is now a vegetarian. and he loves animals. he adopted a cow. and a dog. and. he pretends to be so tough but he's really just smol and traumatized ;-; he wants to be good so badly and he's tRYING

and that's really all i can tell u about the Robin Legacy™ bc duke is p new and i dont actually know much about him :||

thank u for ur time~