#what does Damian fans not knowing about his backstory have fuck to do with Jason fans

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

“Stop excusing Jason killing just because he died!!1!111!!1”

We don’t excuse his killings, you ignorant fool. We actively encourage it.

[bluebeetle]

honestly since its on my mind here is my rankings of jason ships off the top of my head:

jayt1m, bruj4y, j4ydick,j4ydami, jayt4lia, jaysl4de: theyre bad scoob. inc3st and p3do shit galore; jayt1m woulda been more bearable if tim hadnt been adopted right before jay came back, but still has issues esp re: how jay acted towards tim and tim being a minor while jay is an adult, ableit one very close to his age. tbh i dont trust anyone who likes any of these for obvs reasons. anyways jay has a rly interesting dynamic with all of them except slade tbh and making it romantic ruins it for various reasons, but also bc family is SUCH a driving point for jason!!!! 

jaybabs: i am so tired of DC putting babs with every man they can lol. she deserves better. anyways i dont like it, the few interactions we see with babs and jay prior to him coming back have very older babysitter-like energies, she is supposed to be older than dick (who was already 18 when jay was 12!!) and has known him since he was a child its a weird age gap and they rly dont have a lot in common other than a shared trauma over the joker. its not good and does a disservice to what could be a good platonic relationship that could allow them to heal, esp jay. 

jayroy: i prefer them as friends. they have such good energy with jay as roys’s friend’s little brother who somehow became his friend but as a romance its kinda dull to me, and im not the biggest fan of their age gap 

jaydonna: only ogs will remember when DC tried to push that jay-kyle-donna love triangle on us lol thanks dan didio. honestly its not the worst, i could maybe see it, but donna being around dicks age still makes it a lil weird and the love triangle sucked. donna deserves better, but hey, its better than donnas canon husband tho! 

jaysionis: no comment.

jayanita: yes this exists it appears in 1 issue of the young justice comic during the world without young justice storyline. in this jay is about 18 and alive, with something akin to his pre-crisis backstory. hes shown to have been in a relationship with anita, who i believe is around 16-18 and then he dies lol. would be interesting to see them meet in normal canon but anita hasnt appeared since like 2007 and who knows how old she’d be now with the wonky ages. has potential ig but its in a grey area. 

jayrose: i feel like they have potential BUT it is ruined by the fact that it only ever seems to exist with them already together and interested in each other, with basically no build up or real chemistry as a result. it feels forced and more like out of a necessity to pair people up. they could have a fun dynamic, esp around damian but it feel like its never done right, and often at rose’s expense

jaykyle: their ages are vague due to varous timeline fuckery in DC but i always assumed they were both roughly college age by the time they interact, with kyle being a lil bit older . has a lot of potentiall imo but they havent interacted much in so long. got that sorta bad boy x tortured artist thing going on i like it.

jayconnor: tbh i would love to see them interact more. i feel like this is the superior jay/archer ship tbh tbh. i think it could rly work esp bouncing off each other with their different personalities but they still have a lot in common. they def should interact more now that connor is back in the comics.

jaysteph: speaking of ppl who need to interact more... DC has fucked with their ages a bit since they want to age up jay but not age up steph, so that is an issue, however originally they were only about a year or two apart (since jay is a few months younger than cassandra cain and steph is older than tim by about a year). they have a lot in common with their backstories and their roles in the batfamily so i think it could b cute! much better jay/batgirl ship than babs tbh... would love to see them just TALK. also funny to imagine jay rubbing it in tims face.

jaytemis: i rly like artemis and can see potential in this one so i really do like it! however scott lobdell is NOT the one who shoulda been telling their story and thus they suffer from his writing heavily imo. has a lot of potential and is def my fave bat x amazon ship.

[whumpbby]

1/2 I feel like a bad fan sometimes because I can't bring myself to like Stephanie. Even the tug war between cannon and fandom stuff can endear me to her. Canon wise she comes off as a shitty person, selfish and the way she treats the bats except for Cass sometimes it's some of the worse the only good thing I can say it's that it's realistic. Some people be like that (And I see a lot of my old self in her and I HAD to change so much to be better. Cuz it's not quirky being mean, it's just mean)

2/2 But then fandom has this pedestal to her, she does no wrong or it's always justify, she's perfect! And that makes me dislike her even more (It's movie!Hermione all over again). I read one fic where I liked her portrail, one fic where the author wasn't trying to make her more competent then everyone else (minus Cass I guess). Guess I don't get what is the big deal when batman has so many more interesting and dimensional characters, her and some of the latest Jokers just lack originality to me

***************************

Anon, on one hand I get you. I am a fan of some characters and not others. The issue you have with Stephanie, I have with Cass - can’t like her, see nothing there to interest me, every time I see her described as ‘virtually perfect’ I walk away.

I think that crux of the matter is that canon Steph isn’t a person. No character is a person in DC or Marvel or anything that have been running for so long. No one is a character or a person, there is just a compilation of traits that many different writers invented for their stories. At this point getting to know a character in that fandom is like basing your knowledge of a them on fanfic alone - which is pretty accurate, canon at this point is just fanfic that someone gets paid for. 

So, in that light, there’s no ‘real’ Steph you can like or dislike. There are iterations of her. And when the fans like a character, they pick the best iteration of them and run with it.

On another hand, anon, every character you like is only a perfect version of them that have been chosen and cultivated by you in the same way Steph’s fans cultivate her ‘perfect’ image. So are these perfect Cass’ iterations. So is the whole ‘Duke is flawless’. So are Tim’s stans. So are Dick’s stans. Barb’s stans. So am I, a Jason stan. 

I chose the best version of Jason I could build using the blocks that canon offered me, ignoring the ones that didn’t fit, and this is the version I will stick to. I don’t know all about Jason. I am not 100% critical of his character. I made him to respond to my needs entertainment-wise and I am closing my ears to all and any critique of him coming from people who find it annoying. I don’t care for another opinion, I am not here to have my likes questioned.

Steph, objectively, is not suffering from an unoriginal backstory or a lack of interesting plot potential. She has a splendid origin and more going on in personal life than, say, Tim ever had (calm down Tim stans, I am speaking of plot points to explore, not personal merit). That she’s badly written more often than not is an issue in her characterisation. 

That she is written as being ‘rude’ to the characters you personally may like is a bigger issue in your perception of her, because that’s what it usually comes down to. Personal bias.

For example, it took me personally a LONG time to warm up to Damian, because as much as his story was worth telling, he was written as caustic shit to characters I already liked and I had no patience for him because of that. Had he been a caustic shit to the ones I didn’t care about? He’d be fine. (’s like I only ever find Slade palatable when he’s away from the Batfam, when he deals with characters I have no emotional stock in).

Look, it took me retooling Damian in his entirety to write him with any amount of sympathy. The Damian in my stories? Has almost nothing in common with canon kid. My Jason? Again, a mirage I’ve created to suit my tastes. My Bruce? Barely reflecting his canon self.

And some people are here for these iterations I’ve made up - and I am following certain people for their iterations. And some of them I don’t like and won’t accept, and that’s fine. 

It doesn’t make you a bad fan to not like ALL OF CHARACTERS EQUALLY, it’s a ridiculous and unrealistic demand to be made of a fan of anything, really. You like what you like. It’s like the time I was accused of being anti-feminist because I personally can’t stomach Harley Quinn - a known abuse survivor, so of course my dislike had to be a mark of a bigger issue I had with women in general (I do have an issue with many female characters in general, but that’s another matter entirely lol) because a person can’t just dislike a character others like.  

Rest assured, no moral high-ground here, I am side-eyeing Jason-haters too;] Every time I hear someone praise Joker I have to stop myself from going ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?! and sometime it works, sometimes it doesn’t>> I am working on keeping my dislike to my personal blog. 

You are not a bad fan if you steer clear of a character that’s a firm no to you for whatever reason. A fan is only ever bad when they intentionally get into others’ faces with their issues and cause dissent, because they need to change their minds. 

But the ting to understand here is that rarely ever the fault lays in the character alone. Most of it lays on the shoulders of our personal biases and likes, so the opinion we are expressing should come with that caveat.

[hellyeahheroes]

Dylan is a Mary Sue

*look I know that the symbiote has a name and Venom is both it and Eddie. So I hope you don’t get annoyed when I refer to the symbiote as Venom because writing symbiote 100 times gets annoying and I hope you get what I mean when I call it that.

I’ve been trying to write this like nine times because I don’t want to bash this character. When I wrote the post about how I didn’t want Dylan Brock near Miles, I intentionally left out the reason why because I like the character. I hate the purpose and narrative mind behind him. And plus I don’t want to seem like I bash white cis het male characters when the characters I do trash on are bad because writers tend to make them intentionally bratty. I don’t like Spider-kid, Damian Wayne when written without consequence(he is white passing), Jason Todd,or Alpha. Like giving a character a shitty attitude doesn’t make him endearing especially on a male, I’m sorry. Characters like Tim Drake, Alex Power, and Dick Grayson work because there is something genuine in them that they want to be the good of the world.

Anyways, Dylan is fun to me because he has this precocious roguishness that isn’t malevolent nor out of place. His abuse is actually abuse that isn’t made to serve as his training or whatever nor does it warps his views. And his fandom in Eddie/Venom actually makes sense because he is a kid that was abandoned by his mother and left with an emotionally and physically abusive man who would cut him down. A dark passenger like Venom appeals to him because Venom is like the codifier of misguided anger for misguided teens.

But there is a reason why he is written that way: he is a Mary-Sue. Now I don’t care about the gender preconceptions of Mary Sue vs Gary Stu nor do I try to prescribe to reclaiming Mary Sue in some vain attempt at liberal feminism. Mary Sue is bad writing unless everyone gets to play(Mary Sues work in video games). Mary Sue is something writers in most mediums that tell stories should avoid if they want said character to succeed or evoke if you want said character to be disliked. And Dylan Brock is an example that doesn’t work and is largely getting away with it because he is cute.

1. The Immaculate Conception of Dylan Brock

This is when I knew some Sue shit was unleashed on Venom fans. I don’t have to google it but I can guess that Cates has a Catholic background. Whether he is one or raised one, it is apparent in whatever meaningful writing depth he provides outside of meaningless action. And it works because Eddie Brock, being anti-Peter Parker, is Catholic. Hence the brooding and self-loathing and abusive paternity and motifs of redemption and suffering and shit. But this was not only fucked up, but a little too on the nose.

Dylan wasn’t conceived naturally. In fact, Anne Weying was raped by the symbiote and impregnated with Eddie’s DNA. So Dylan is actually the child of the Venom and Eddie Brock. “But Anne is his mother.” Look, Cates didn’t actually consider Anne so I won’t either. Outside of the fact that it doesn’t make sense chronologically since Peter was like in his early 20s when he had the Symbiote and is at most 29 now, Anne is just a vehicle for Cates’ to necessitate the purity of Dylan Brock. Dylan is the pure child of Venom, born from the womb of Eddie’s first girlfriend/fiancé/wife/whatever and the first human woman to wear a symbiote, I think. I mean she didn’t even have sex with Eddie and boom, mini Eddie Brock is wrapped in cloth and left at the meager doorstep at the sacred house of Eddie. Praise Venom, y’all.

Jokes aside, I don’t know how Venom fans just didn’t go, “Iight, Imma head out” after reading this page. Just shows the conviction of fandom.

But I digress. Now let me regale you just how improbable this is which again only serves to ordain Dylan is the truest son of Venom in all the ways possible and also highlight the very unfortunate implications of this fuckery. Symbiotes bond is how they reproduce. When they reproduce with their host, the end result up to this point has always been a symbiote. For Mass Effect fans, it’s the Asari thing except with goo. Before you ask, yes Symbiotes sexually satisfy their hosts unlike the majority of human men*cough*. Point is that Dylan should be biologically impossible but somehow he is a human symbiote hybrid. And the unfortunate implications of such of incident shouldn’t go unnoticed either. Venom and Eddie have several children and prior to this, all of them have been symbiote. Cletus and Red also have children too and again symbiote. In fact, all symbiote bonds produce symbiotes as far as male hosts are concerned...except for the brief bond of Ann Weying and Venom Symbiote. Gee I wonder why she got a different result? Well there are a few female hosts and surprising none of them have spawned a symbiote child. So logically it can be assumed that woman + symbiote = forced impregnation of symbiote. Well this shit got dark. The symbiotes just became the Jeffrey Epstein alien species. But since Cates swears up and down that is not what is happening, he is going for the God/Virgin Mary angle for some reason.

It’s almost like he is the descendent of the Symbiote God. If only there was such a thing.

Welllllll shit.

2. Dylan is incorruptible and all-powerful without knowing why or how

Okay, backstory time because I never properly explained Knull, another of Cates shoddy creations. Knull is the galactic god emperor of the Symbiotes who created the Symbiotes as a weapon to rule the galaxy. Aside of the fact that his existence retconned the previous backstories of the symbiote, he has the ability to domesticate the symbiotes and make them subservient to him.

Guess who else has this ability.

Dylan is symbiote Jesus, hallelujah. This explains the Church of Carnage/Knull/Grendel/who gives a shit. He is the true son of Abraham and Carnage is the false prophet of Venom. It’s what Christianity considers Islam to be or some shit and both Dylan and Sleeper are about to nail the 95 thesis on the door of Carnage in the form of the greatest mixtape you ever heard.

Look, I too am astounded of the sentences my mind comes up with when I so thoroughly hate a writing like I hate Donnie Cates’ Venom.

Dylan goes beyond being just a special snowflake that was forcefully and crudely implemented. He is the pre-ordained established opposite of the nature of corruption that Knull created the symbiotes for. To Knull, the symbiotes are his thralls. To Dylan, the symbiotes are his pets. To Knull, the symbiotes are a tool to become omnipresent. To Dylan, the symbiotes are individuals who need to be liberated if good. To Knull, there is no such thing as a good symbiote. To Dylan, there is and it’s Venom or sleeper or what have you. Dylan is the forgotten son and the New Testament for symbiote kind.

And he doesn’t know yet.

Okay, this is a common Mary Sue trait to absolve culpability of a Mary Sue character. It’s to say that they are not to blame for being special. It’s like the writing form of don’t hate me because I’m beautiful except somehow more obnoxious. Dylan’s obliviousness to this what is essentially an entire alien species religious revelation is like trivialized because their prophet is a 12 year old. It’s like waiting for a savior only to be told he is a carpenter.

Imma let that last one just marinate for a minute.

Look, Cates did a lot of rewriting and retconning just for his self-insert to become his favorite series and hero to be the second coming. He created this lore for Venom only for his avatar to be the prophet. The intentionality of his obliviousness to how important this is just glazed over the fact like it isn’t a big deal. Just like Cates glazed over the whole rape and forced impregnation thing because somehow that doesn’t warrant a follow up.

3. Dylan Brock is fanboy Cates

Okay before I begin, self-inserts aren’t bad nor are they inherently Mary-Sues. Kong from Ultimate Spider-Man is Bendis’ self-insert. Boomerang from Amazing Spider-Man was rewritten to be Spencer’s self-insert. JJJ is a self insert for Stan fucking Lee like...self-inserts are great. To the degree that they aren’t unnatural to the narrative or overbearing.

Dylan Brock’s previously stated precociousness comes from the idea that Donnie is writing the inner teenager that he was as a kid reading Maximum Carnage for the first time. And I get it, man, live your truth and all. Like yeah, force and subjugate other fans of this series to your childlike inquiries like how Symbiotes poop, I mean it’s not like their fandom is important or anything.

First Dylan is a fanboy of Venom just like he is. And while that makes sense meta-wise, in-narrative it doesn’t because...okay Venom fans are about to tear me apart for this but it’s like someone being a fan of Ted Bundy. His heroics usually came with a body count is all I’m saying and I doubt it would be praised but then again Wolverine has an in-universe fandom so what do I know. Back on topic, Dylan’s fandom and praise of Venom to get him out of the dark place that is his father’s abusive household.

And this is why it’s so hard to hate him because of all the fucked up shit Cates put in this book, Dylan feels like the one character that is genuine and pure in that innocent kind of way. No one hates Dylan and how could you? We all get it. And it helps that Dylan has a completely different voice than every other Cates has written from every other character. Like I can hear the excitement in his voice when he pesters his hero for questions and I’m reading his words. The idolization is pure when he meets Normie, the god son of Spider-Man, and it creates this dynamic of Spider-Man fans vs Venom fans. It’s fun in a way.

But it’s just that. When Cates writes Eddie, he is not only writing to retell Cates own personal past demons but also in the lens of how he viewed Eddie as this tortured soul who just got the wrong interview from a copycat that costs his job. The second banana of a greater and more prominent hero. Born to the wrong person. That none of what happened to Eddie was his fault or really his doing even when he was at his worst wearing Venom, it was Venom who tempted him.

Dylan is that pre-teen who sees the best in everything Venom is: The dark avenger of the abused and neglected. And I don’t want to speculate whether Cates fits the category or not because that ain’t my business, I can see why Dylan would be a compelling self-insert if it weren’t compounded on top of Cates’ forceful insertion into Venom and subsequently Spider-Man lore.

Like you remember Carly Cooper? Dylan is exactly like Carly Cooper. And this is why I like to think of Cates’ run as the equivalent of One More Day. Cates’ retconned a crucial element of Venom to make Dylan necessary to the core of Venom. He retconned the one thing that made Venom and subsequently Eddie go beyond just being a twisted revenge story.

The erasure of Mary Brock, Eddie’s sister and Eddie’s cancer. One is the motivation and the sole good Eddie has ever known. It’s his motivation to move past is mistakes. And Cates then turns the one bond in the series into something...horrific.

Okay, Dylan replaced his sister and Venom itself. His being becomes Eddie’s motivation to be a better person rather the struggle to see himself as more than his upbringing. It’s like reading Spider-Man and finding out Uncle Ben was on crack. Uncle Ben didn’t die. He faked his death. Yeah, that is what this was. So he could evade taxes or some shit. This is exonerated Eddie in the worst way and turned him into a manipulated pawn of Venom. Let’s completely retcon the marriage of MJ and PeterVenom and Eddie, Cates pitches to editorial.

Dylan becomes more than just some kid who idolizes Eddie. He becomes the sole motivation of Eddie himself now. Eddie’s past is now completely erased or made irrelevant to uplift Dylan’s importance to Eddie. It’s too a point that the Symbiote kids of Venom aren’t Eddie’s kids anymore. It’s like Eddie was in an interracial relationship and the one non-brown baby with blue eyes is his one true kid and others are mulatto chocolate eugenic mishaps or some shit that his ass don’t want to deal with anymore. I mean disowning Carnage I understand but come on?

Cates’ self insert changed the entire nature of the series. And for what purpose? To give Venom a legacy just as Peter has one. And that is the problem with Dylan.

@ubernegro

[bigskydreaming]

The Tragedy of Bruce and Dick and Jason...and Tim...and Damian...and, well, you get it

I maintain that Dick’s history with juvie and the system is actually crucial to understanding his and Jason’s dynamic, not to mention the reasons Bruce took Jason in at all in the first place. 

Its usually described as though Bruce took in all his kids because they reminded him of himself in various ways, but that’s not really true. With Dick, yes, its been clearly canonized this was his motivation. He looked at Dick, who does look a lot like Bruce, especially when they were both younger, and saw a mirror of himself when he was a kid and had just lost his parents. He eventually took Dick in because he wanted to keep Dick from turning out like he had, consumed by his mission, his need to keep bad things from happening to other people, like had happened to him. To make sure Dick had more to his life than just that. He wanted a do-over in a lot of ways. Raising him was a way for Bruce to kinda see how his life would’ve turned out differently, how he would’ve ended up, if he’d taken a different path, if there’d been someone who understood his pain and the intensity of his drive to DO something with all the emotions his parents’ death left him with. 

Yes, of course Bruce had Alfred, but its also been clearly laid out in the comics that Alfred  - for as much as he saw Bruce as a son - just couldn’t relate to him in the same way Bruce could to Dick. He never really understood Bruce’s need to become Batman, he just went with it and supported him anyway, because he’s Alfred and that’s what he does. His kid wants to dress up like a giant bat and go fight crime? Well, okay, lemme get my sewing machine, guess he’s gonna need a costume.

And then with Tim, well, Tim came to Bruce, not the other way around, and they’ve always had an understanding because they come from very similar backgrounds. Same social standing, similar environments....Tim was neglected by his largely absent parents, not actually orphaned (until later), but Bruce definitely saw reminders of his own self-imposed isolation in Tim’s parentally-imposed isolation.  There’s similar links and parallels between Bruce and Damian, Cass and Duke.

Jason was always the outlier.

Bruce never took Jason in because he saw a reminder of himself in Jason, (with the exception of Jason’s anger, which he could relate to on many levels, sure). But Jason’s story really has zero parallels with Bruce. Bruce met him when he was stealing the tires off the Batmobile. Both his parents were still alive, even if they weren’t exactly nurturing influences. He came from a wildly different social background and upbringing, was foul-mouthed, angry, bitter, vindictive, petty. Hell, he didn’t even actually look anything like Bruce, the way we tend to joke about Bruce taking in boys who look just like him. Originally, Jason had red hair. Bruce dyed his hair when he made him Robin. The idea that Bruce took Jason in for the same reason he took in his other kids, because he saw himself reflected in him, saw what he could’ve been if his life had gone a little differently, it just doesn’t work. On any level. There’s no scenario in which Bruce ever could have lived any version of Jason’s life. No scenario in which Jason was only a few degrees removed from Bruce’s own personal experiences.

No, Bruce took Jason in for one reason and one reason only - because he looked at him and saw Dick Grayson. He saw the boy Dick Grayson could have grown up to become if Bruce hadn’t taken him in, if Dick had been left to rot in juvie or elsewhere in Gotham’s corrupt system. If Dick had fallen through the cracks without anyone to catch him, the way Jason clearly had.

Forgetting where Dick came from, ignoring his original backstory, completely obliterates Bruce’s entire motivation for adopting Jason. And it completely erases Bruce’s real role in the trainwreck that became his relationship with both Jason and with Dick, not to mention the original relationship between Jason and Dick.

Because Bruce fucked up, big time, when he took Jason in. Oh, not that he shouldn’t have done it, but in the WHY he did it, and the fact that he never really acknowledged this and nobody ever really called him out for it. With Dick, Bruce was trying to give him a better life. Even if he fumbled and went about it the wrong way, his motivations were still pretty pure. Bruce was aware enough on some level of his own flaws, his own deep-seated dissatisfaction with his own life, to genuinely want to steer someone he saw himself in from going down the same road, making the same mistakes. A huge number of Bruce and Dick’s early conflicts were essentially Bruce frustrated that he didn’t know how to get Dick to stop making the same mistakes Bruce himself regretted making. Not getting that it still had to be up to Dick whether or not he did, that the choices ultimately had to be his. 

But with Jason....Bruce’s motivations were not so selfless, and they were not nearly as self-aware. Bruce took Jason in pretty much in the immediate aftermath of his biggest fight with Dick ever, when he fired Dick as Robin and basically kicked him out...entirely out of an emotionally stunted sense of self-preservation. The idea of Dick being hurt, of losing him if he died, it terrified Bruce so completely that he pushed him away, as though if he lost him on HIS terms, deliberately, that would somehow be better, it’d hurt less. Except it didn’t. He regretted it immediately, but he didn’t know how to fix it without owning that he’d fucked up, without explaining to Dick WHY he’d done what he did, allowing himself to be vulnerable and admitting just how terrified he was of losing him....and Bruce just was not capable of that at the time (as if he is now, even).

And so then he’s out fighting crime one night and returns to the Batmobile, to find some scrawny little kid stealing the tires off it. A kid who wasn’t remotely apologetic, who was defiant, and ballsy, and not about to be intimidated by even the goddamn Batman, who swung his tire iron at this giant dude in a Bat costume, spitting and kicking and screaming as if he had the slightest chance of winning. It didn’t matter to him that he didn’t, couldn’t, Jason Todd was going down swinging. And in that moment, you can not tell me that its himself Bruce Wayne saw. That he looked at Jason and saw any version of himself or the kid he once was or even one he could have ended up as.

Nope, he saw Dick Grayson, the tiny little acrobat who’d guilt tripped him, HIM, into letting him dress up in bright yellow and green and run across rooftops taking on bad guys twice his size, villains he shouldn’t have had a prayer of defeating but did anyway, because he just refused to accept an alternative as reality. He saw the kid a young, angry Dick Grayson could’ve grown up to be if he’d been left in juvie, if he’d never had anyone else take him in and show him the kindness he thought he’d never see again after his parents died. He saw the Dick Grayson who’d been originally consumed not with Bruce’s desire to pursue justice, but with a desire to pursue REVENGE. I know everyone tends to view it as the other way around, but that doesn’t actually check out. Even in the backstories where Bruce finds the actual killer who murdered his parents, Joe Chill, Bruce’s own views on killing restrict him from every taking revenge rather than just making sure he goes to prison. 

Not so, with Dick. Another element of Dick’s original backstory that everybody largely glosses over, even if they do technically keep it in mind - Dick Grayson wasn’t born this pure, virtuous, glowing saint that so many fans and other characters make him out to be. The exact specifics vary in the different versions of his backstory reboots have resulted in, but in the vast majority of them, this is a kid who ran away and ruthlessly hunted down his parents’ murderer, Tony Zucco, and who usually had every intention of killing him if Bruce hadn’t stopped him. Dick was old enough to know right from wrong, murder is bad, blah blah....he just didn’t care. And Bruce didn’t stop him by making some compelling argument or showing him the error of his ways, he didn’t tell him anything Dick didn’t already know. Essentially, what all those various takes on the Zucco plot boil down to is Dick only really refrained from trying to kill Zucco, settling for bringing him in, because Bruce wanted him to. Because Bruce was the first and only person to show Dick any kindness since his parents died, and THAT is what Dick clung to, that was what he didn’t want to lose. 

(A little off topic, but additionally I’ve always maintained that Dick doesn’t have this obsessive anti-killing stance that most people make him out to, being even more rigid in it than Bruce. This is the guy who has an extremely complex relationship with Deathstroke, who’s mentored Ravager, who is the closest sibling relationship Damian has, not to mention his relationships with Huntress, Midnighter, Tiger, etc - all people who have killed many, many times, and often without remorse. Yes, Dick broke down after his role in Blockbuster’s death, and he had a panic attack immediately after killing the Joker, before Bruce resuscitated him - but if you ask me, this isn’t because his personal morality doesn’t make allowances for killing, its because deep down he’s still insecure about his place in Bruce’s life, and that HIM killing someone, specifically, could cost him his father’s affections. Which is a TOTALLY different thing from being too good or pure to kill, which is how he’s often painted as by writers and in fandom).

Anyway. Point being, the surly, defensive kid Jason Todd was when Bruce met him was absolutely someone Dick Grayson, orphaned circus kid remanded to juvie and likely to have fallen through the cracks and ended up on his own if Bruce hadn’t intervened, could have ended up as. And so while Bruce had looked at Dick that first night at the circus and seen the potential for a do-over for himself, the road not taken, with this cemented on the night he steered Dick away from killing Zucco and instead prioritizing (Bruce’s personal view of) justice.....Bruce looked at Jason that night in Crime Alley and saw the potential for a do-over for his relationship with Dick, with the son he’d driven away, possibly for good.

And herein lies the fuck-up. Because while I do believe Bruce eventually grew to see Jason as his own person and love him on his own merits, for himself, and not just as Dick 2.0, he took too long getting there, and hurt both Dick and Jason way too much along the way. All because he’s too much of a control freak to just accept that it was these tendencies that’d driven Dick away, that HE was the problem. Yeah, Dick contributed, sure, but Dick was the child. Bruce was the parent. It was always his responsibility to suck it up, swallow his pride, and be the one to reach out and repair the damage he’d caused by pushing Dick away. But because Bruce has so much trouble admitting where he’s done harm, he couldn’t do that. He’s this weird dichotomy of self-aware and willfully blind. He has no problem seeing his flaws when they exist in a vacuum. When they’re ones nobody’s getting actively getting hurt by in the moment. But because so much of his personality is centered around his all-consuming desire to protect his loved ones, keep them safe at all costs, ensure that he doesn’t lose them the way he lost his parents.....over and over and over again in the comics, he proves incapable of recognizing when that very same desire is the thing that’s actually harming them. He took in half a dozen kids who all shared a need to fly, to spread their wings, and time and time again kept falling in the same trap of trying to clip those same wings because he was equally terrified of them falling.

But because Bruce was so willfully blind to his own role in hurting his son, couldn’t reconcile his desperate desire to keep Dick safe with the realization that he was the one doing Dick the most harm.....he HAD to convince himself that Dick was the problem. That if he, Bruce, had made mistakes, that they were mistakes that he’d done along the way, places he’d gone wrong in raising Dick, resulting in Dick growing up to be this person Bruce could no longer relate to, no longer see himself in, that he couldn’t be a father to. And so, with Jason, he saw a chance to do it all over again, and do it right this time. Fix the mistakes he’d made the first time around, be a better father, make sure Jason didn’t grow up to be the man Dick had grown up to be, the way he’d once set out to make sure Dick didn’t grow up to be the man Bruce had become.

And so he created this trap that Jason and Dick had no chance to avoid falling into. There was no way around it. Because unintentionally or not, he’d pitted his two sons, two brothers, against each other before they ever even had a chance to meet. He’d made it a competition that both were doomed to be stuck in even as neither could EVER hope to actually win. Dick was screwed because he could never hope to beat the kid that Bruce had essentially replaced him with, not when Bruce had only done that because due to his own fuck-ups, Bruce had decided Dick needed replacing, because their relationship was beyond repair. And Jason could never hope to beat the kid that Bruce had taken him in to replace, because he was from the get-go pitted against Bruce’s IDEALIZED image of his first Robin and son, the person he WANTED Dick to be, and who didn’t actually exist outside of Bruce’s refusal to admit his own fault in his fractured relationship with Dick.

The very things he did that were GOOD for Jason, healthy, helpful, empowering....at the same time, HURT Dick. He adopted as his official son and heir within months of meeting him, even though he didn’t end up adopting Dick, his son of over ten years by that point, until years after Jason died, long after Dick was already a grown adult. And this was a good thing for Jason, at first. Bruce DID love Jason, had already by this point started seeing all the ways Jason was his own person, not a second Dick Grayson, and being officially adopted gave Jason a sense of security and certainty in his place there that he desperately needed. Problem is, Bruce only adopted Jason so quickly and easily because he recognized that this was a mistake he’d made the first time, with Dick. That it’d been a mistake putting off adopting Dick, that he’d always backed out of showing Dick the adoption papers he’d had drawn up for YEARS by that point. All because Bruce was afraid of rejection, that if he tried to insist too hard on being Dick’s father, tried to actually draw comparisons between himself and Dick’s first father, the idolized John Grayson, he’d come up short and get an answer he was afraid to hear. It was easier with Jason, since Jason had never had a good relationship with his own biological father and had zero problem rating Bruce the clear winner in any competition between them.

But of course this hurt Dick at the same time it helped Jason, because he HAD always wanted Bruce to officially adopt him, and it was his own insecurities that kept him from broaching the subject and asking why he hadn’t. The very fact that Bruce knew to do this with Jason, that it’d been a mistake not to push it with Dick, was because on some level, Bruce did know that Dick wanted this, needed this even, and that his own fears of rejection were baseless paranoia.....there’s no way to avoid this compounding his issues with Dick, because it meant that on some level, Bruce had once again denied Dick something he desperately needed and craved from him. A clear indication of their relationship, where Dick stood with Bruce, how Bruce viewed him. Ironically, at the very same time this proved that Bruce’s fear of Dick rejecting him were baseless, it proved that Dick’s insecurities WEREN’T baseless, because his place in Bruce’s eyes WASN’T entirely secure. He COULD be replaced.

And there’s the irony of Jason’s nickname for Tim. “The Replacement.” Only it was never actually ironic, so much as it was insightful. Born of Jason’s own insecurities. Because long before Tim came along, in the original family drama that was Bruce and Dick and Jason.....JASON was the original replacement, and they all knew it, only Bruce refused to admit it. Kept trying to act like it was all in Dick and Jason’s heads, even while every choice he made with the two of them just hammered in the reality that it WASN’T. Neither of them was stupid. They were the original sons of the world’s greatest detective. Trained to be observant and insightful. To read between the lines. They knew damn well that everything Bruce did with Jason was only because Bruce had decided (at the time) that his relationship with Dick was beyond repair. Unsalvageable. He’d essentially given up on Dick as a son, written off any possibility of having the father-son relationship he’d always secretly wanted to have with Dick, all because he refused to admit he was the one standing in the way of that and refusing to accept the man Dick had grown up to be, differences of opinion and all....and so had started over with Jason. 

And Dick saw exactly what Bruce was doing, cuz Bruce isn’t exactly subtle when it comes to his personal relationships and his emotional issues. So it pinged every single insecurity Dick had ever had, and HARD. And once Jason saw Bruce and Dick interacting and heard the nature of their arguments, he saw exactly what Bruce was doing, and began second-guessing every good thing about his and Bruce’s relationship, wondering (with validity) how much of it had happened while Bruce was wishing it’d happened with Dick. Which of course pinged every single insecurity Jason had ever had, and HARD. 

So from the moment Dick and Jason met, with a few rare exceptions where they were able to see past the Bruce-sized elephant in the room and view and interact with each other on their own merits, as their own persons, and just be BROTHERS, rather than dysfunctional sons of the world’s most repressed dad....Bruce and Dick and Jason were all locked in this never-ending cycle of Hurt, Rinse and Repeat.

Bruce adopts Jason. Jason is glad. Dick gets mad. Jason realizes why Dick is mad, and now Jason is mad.

Bruce makes Jason his new Robin. Jason is glad. Dick gets mad, because Robin was his mom’s personal nickname for him and not remotely something Bruce was ever the right person to give away. To make Jason his new sidekick, sure. But not with that name, the name Dick chose to honor his relationship with his mother. Jason realizes why Dick is mad, and now Jason is mad.

Bruce is happy when Jason calls him Dad and encourages it. Jason is glad. Dick gets mad, because Dick never felt encouraged or safe in calling Bruce Dad, even when he wanted to, because Bruce never encouraged it or even hinted it was what he wanted because Bruce was insecure and afraid Dick just didn’t view him that way and would never want to call him that. Jason realizes why Dick is mad, and now Jason is mad.

Over and over and over, every single damn thing Bruce did just compounded the harm he caused both his sons in doing it. All because he refused to just admit what he really wanted all along, and actually WORK at making a reality - to be a father to both Dick and Jason, and have both of them view him as such.

And that’s the tragedy of Bruce and Dick and Jason. They all wanted THE EXACT SAME THING ALL ALONG. But only Bruce could make it happen. No matter how much Dick and Jason wanted it, no matter how they raged at each other and blamed each other for not having it, Bruce was always the only one who could actually make them the family they all wanted to be. Because he was the parent. He was their dad.

And if you want your kids to accept you and call you and love you as their dad, you gotta do the goddamn job. Instead of calling do-over every time you fuck it up.

So of course Jason felt threatened by Tim when he came back, and of course he resented Tim, and called Tim “the Replacement.” Even though Bruce hadn’t actually sought Tim out as a replacement for Jason, there was no way for Jason to know that and no reason for him to believe it when told it....because Bruce had done this all before. With him! Every time Jason lashed out at Tim with that name, it was his own insecurities talking, his conviction that he’d been relegated to the same backburner he’d once seen Bruce shove Dick to, that he’d once insecurely expressed smugness about, when he could point to Bruce’s open affections as proof he was loved, but now knew exactly how it felt. But it wasn’t like Jason could take comfort in the fact that Dick was now welcomed back in the manor, that he was at Bruce’s side again. Because Bruce STILL had never acknowledged where he’d fucked up. In the wake of Jason’s death, Bruce and Dick eventually repaired their relationship....but only because DICK did the work. Was the one to reach out and make it happen, with Bruce so grief-stricken over the loss of Jason he didn’t have the obstinacy to KEEP pushing his remaining son away when he came bearing an olive branch.

But even with that, Dick and Jason at least were still painfully aware that should never have been Dick’s job to do that. To step up, be the bigger man, the more mature adult, even though he was the child in that relationship. Dick did so because it wasn’t worth it to him to insist on being in the right, even though he was. He eventually decided he’d rather have Bruce in his life on Bruce’s terms than not at all. But it was never his responsibility to do that, and that means Jason was never in the wrong to refuse to do that. To make it easier for Bruce, and coddle his own father when every child of Bruce Wayne’s has just as much trauma as he ever did, and he has no excuse for not doing the goddamn work of pulling his head out of his ass and giving his children what they need from him. Some actual honest, sincere, and UNSHAKABLE certainty that no matter what, he is their father and always will be.

And without that, the cycle was always doomed to repeat itself. First with Jason and Tim...because Tim might not actually have been a replacement for Jason in Bruce’s eyes, the way he’d unintentionally ended up making Jason a replacement for Dick. But without Bruce ever actually owning up to the mistakes he’d made with his two eldest, there was no way to address the fact that Jason’s insecurities here were NOT baseless, that he had actual reason to worry that this is exactly what had happened. There was precedent.

And then it happened again. Because by the time Damian came into their lives, Tim - who also is not an idiot, and easily the most detective-like of Bruce’s first four sons - had been firmly entrenched in the family drama for some time. The Tragedy of Bruce and Dick and Jason had for a few years now been the Tragedy of Bruce and Dick and Jason and Tim. He, like Jason before him, had had a front row seat to Bruce’s obstinate refusal to admit his role at the center of this tragedy, and so clearly could see Bruce’s patterns and how his selective doling out of favoritism went hand in hand with who Bruce currently viewed as beyond repair, in terms of father-son dynamic at least.  

So just like both his older brothers before him, Tim viewed the newest Wayne son as a threat, and a replacement. And just like both Dick and Jason, he wasn’t wrong to do so. He wasn’t RIGHT, either, but that doesn’t mean he was wrong. That his fears were baseless. And so this time, just like when Tim had been the newcomer, circumstances were different, but the end result was the same. Bruce hadn’t sought Damian out, and Damian hadn’t come to him in the same sense Tim had. But once there, Damian received the lion’s share of Bruce’s attention as Bruce attempted to forge a bond with him, and so this time, it was the transitive property in reverse. Tim saw Bruce behaving in the way Bruce always did when a new son came into his life and occupied his focus, with tunnel vision - because Bruce always defaults to tunnel vision when committing himself to a new endeavor - and Tim reverse-engineered from there the belief that he’d been replaced and thus must have done something wrong, had somehow been lacking. Because that’s the pattern in their family. Without exception. 

(Among the boys at least, Cass always having been exempt from this fucked up little family tradition due to being the sole girl and never a Robin, thus occupying her own little niche that had no direct competition, unlike the boys who always ended up locked in that same competition Bruce had initiated with Dick and Jason so long ago.)

And thus it became the Tragedy of Bruce and Dick and Jason and Tim and Damian. With again, always, the painful irony being every single damn member of this family wants nothing more than the exact same thing - to be a family, and equally secure in that knowledge.

I honestly don’t know how much this pattern has repeated with Duke, as due to not reading DC much since even before the nu52 for the sake of my blood pressure, all of my knowledge of Duke comes from fandom and fanfic. Which is more than enough to make me love him, but means I don’t feel comfortable including him in meta currently, because I don’t actually trust fanfics and issues synopses to have the same interpretation of the characters and dynamics that I’d have if I read them myself. (Seriously, I’m a little ticked off at how it took me like three years to learn that Duke’s a meta, even, which is extremely interesting information and something I was very interested in knowing, and am side-eyeing the hell out of a lot of fandom for how long this bit of NON TRIVIA took to show up on my radar. Like, its not exactly a small detail, if so many ppl leave that out like what the hell else is getting left out of fandom takes on Duke and his character and story? Ugh, I can’t believe I gotta start reading DC again, u guys let me down, why would u do this to me, ur the worst).

Anyway. Thought this was gonna be a little bitty post about how much Dick and Jason actually have in common and it ended up a Bruce Why Are You Like This essay. That actually sounds about right though.

The end! 

(For now.....)   

[foxydivaxx]

TOP 10 DC YOUNG HEROES THAT DESERVE BETTER

I have noticed something and that is that the younger heroes do not get as much love as the older generation and are often stuck in their shadow and often times, do not get their own stories. I personally think it is unfair hence why I titled this post the way I did.

This young kids are as awesome as the older generation yet I feel that there is this conspiracy against them. These are the ones that suffered the most. (Note: All the young kid heroes have suffered enough at the hands of DC’s writers tbh)

10 Donna Troy

This lady is very underrated and part of the frustration regarding her has to do wit her confusing backstories. Like seriously DC, make up your damn minds?! Who is Donna Tory?! In case most of you aren’t aware, she is the second Wonder Girl after Diana (that is if you follow the Silver age mentality) But if you ignore the Silver age, that would make her the first Wonder Girl. Let’s not talk about New 52 that turned her into a bloodthirsty Amazon, a similar mistake they made with all the Amazons during that era. 

9 Blue Beetle

This guy has a very interesting backstory and powers but for some reason DC sometimes does not know what to do with him. He was ok in Teen Titans but he lost all the steam he got come New 52 just like the other kids.

8 Cassie Sandsmark

A victim of bad writing alongside her fellow Wonder Girl Donna Troy. DC almost always make this one the bitch whereas in Young Justice which was responsible for fleshing her out, she was portrayed as a much nicer levelheaded person. Her run with Teen Titans (her earlier one by the way) was actually good and decent until they butchered her character with unnecessary angst following Superboy’s death and turned her into a bitch not just Post-crisis but also throughout most of New 52. 

7 Static

One of my favourite black superheroes. Got introduced to him via that cartoon of his years ago and also I read some of the comics. Seriously he is underrated and needs to be pushed more.

6 Roy Harper

There is nothing more insulting than DC recently killing Roy off and in a very brutal way. Like come on DC, you can do better than that? What is the propaganda against the younger generation? Plus Roy was actually getting better for crying out loud. 

5 Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain

I put this two together for one good reason; why did DC decide that it will be good to undo the character development they got and then shaft those two aside and then reinstate Barbara as Batgirl plus de-age Barbara? Could their shipping agenda have something to do with this? If that is the case, then that is fucked up. I have nothing against Barbara but she was much better as Oracle. Stephanie and Cass are awesome Batgirls and valuable members of the Batfamily in their own right but DC almost always forgets about them especially Cassandra.

4 Starfire

Speaking of Barbara, there is one other female that could do with some more exposure and character development and that is Dick Grayson’s other ex Starfire. She has spent enough time on Earth so why keep on writing like a fish out of water? By now, she should understand Earth’s customs well enough plus she can be a badass lady in her own right. Why drag her down and try to make her dumb bimbo when she is a very intelligent lady?

3 Wally West

Don’t get me started on this guy. He is an awesome guy for crying out loud and this is how DC treats him?! Like seriously they are dumb asses!! Wally is such a fan awesome character and I love reading stories with him not just for the humour but because I enjoy the bond he shares with the other heroes.

2 The Robins

All of them (gonna add Stephanie here folks) have been through hell. There is Dick whom DC are trying to force us to rename Ric after he got shot and lost his memories (Fuck you DC!!) There is Jason who is currently mentoring Damian and the two doing some not so nice things (Where did all that character development go?!) And there is Tim who is stuck in a limbo at the moment because they do not know what to do with him. Oh let us not get started with Stephanie and the injustice that she suffered. The quality of comic book writing has declined sharply and it is really frustrating and annoying. 

1 In short every former and present Titan/Teen Titan/Young Justice member

Every single kid that has been a part of these teams have all suffered some sort of decay at the hands of the writers. That is why most fanfiction stories are often times better than the trash DC shoves down our throats. 

[lacrimosathedark]

I actually think of Jason and Tim as more switch-y, but they all have some level of Bottom Energy because of their canon and presumed love interests. Like, think about it.

Bruce: Selina Kyle, constant tease, always gets away, uses a whip, and did you know one of her backstories is as a sex worker? Tell me she’s not a dominatrix, I dare you Talia al Ghul, basically a warrior princess who takes none of his bullshit Clark Kent, obviously physically much stronger and genuinely sweet enough to slip past Bruce’s defenses Minhkhoa Khan, his rival in most ways

Dick Grayson: Barbara Gordon, who really needs no explanation but is integral to the Bats functioning and could still kick Dick’s ass in a wheelchair Koriand’r, literal alien warrior princess who could easily lift him with one hand and also clearly taller than him Helena Bertinelli, former mafia princess current badass Wally West, probably THE most powerful character in the DC Universe, terrifying when he’s mad/protective, also able to easily coerce Dick into doing some Really Dumb Shit

Jason Todd: Rose Wilson, daughter of Deathstroke and trained by him, extremely capable Roy Harper, which...I mean, his type is also people who can kick his ass (Donna Troy and Jade Nguyen are great examples) and Jason can definitely do that so that’s different Artemis Grace of Bana Mighdall, Amazonian warrior who literally yeeted him into a flying vehicle (can’t remember if it was a plane or copter) when they first met and proceeded to rag on him forever

Tim Drake: Stephanie Brown, loud, abrasive, stubborn, determined, knows what she wants, and the “obnoxious” fun-loving bisexual to Tim’s disaster bisexual (one of them needs to be mildly functional and fuck if that’s ever gonna be Tim) Kon Kent...feels like another person who likes someone who can kick his ass, but is definitely physically much stronger than Tim and is very capable in the instances he is in possession of the single brain cell shared amongst Young Justice (as admittedly rare as that is) Tamara Fox, does not take his shit and can clearly handle herself despite not being a hero, I think Tim was probably scared of her a little bit Bernard Dowd just Exists. There hasn’t been much about him and Tim that show who Bernard is now, but he used to be kind of a fuckboi

Damian Wayne: Jon Kent, much stronger than him and seemingly the only person who can get Damian to remove the figurative stick from his ass Nika aka Flatline, literally ripped his physical heart out of his chest, and she could totally do it again, has a kind of intimidating aura that Damian seems to cow to in general

You know who doesn’t fit this mold?

Cassadra Cain.

She doesn’t have many love interests, and most of them are in passing or end up being good friends. That said, she is widely considered, by fandom and canon, to be the most intimidating member of the Bat Family.

So yeah, boy Bats seem to consistently be attracted to people who could, and in some cases would, literally kill them. They all like strength and competency, and all of them besides Dick and Tim seem attracted to questionable morality too (which is reason #506 for Bruce to shut up about Jason if your wives and boyfriend can get away with it, so can your son).

Therefor, they are Bottoms.

There is also the element of they are all some level of control freak and getting them to let loose and be loved is cathartic, hence fans further gravitation towards that portrayal.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

why does everyone make all the robins bottoms except for steph, like at least one of them can top right?

does it run in their "blood"? maybe thats why bruce has a thing for powerful babes hm? (you know who i'm talking about)

[m00nslippers]

Okay, I just need to rant right now, and it’s probably a really unpopular opinion, and if you disagree that’s fine I guess, feel free to message me about it with FACTS, okay? Not just feelings, okay? FACTS.

*Takes a deep breath*

Tim Drake is not an underrated Robin.

He’s not an underdog. The whole fandom isn’t against him. Jason stans don’t universally hate him. No one is out to get him. No one has forgotten him. He’s a valued Robin who has contributed as much or more to the mythos as Dick himself. I honestly don’t understand where this constant whining that no one likes Tim Drake and he deserves more attention is coming from. I really fucking don’t.

He’s been in as many or more comics than Dick Grayson. I think he even had his own solo run first if I recall? That’s how popular he was. For a while there he had a writer that loved him so fucking much that he actually made Tim unlikable by making everyone else look like an out of character idiot standing next to him (the Batman Eternal and Batman and Robin Eternal series.)

And his backstory? His backstory sets him up as a genius. A little kid who found out Batman’s identity when no one else could, saw Batman destroying himself over the loss of his former partner and decided to step up to help how he could? That’s insane, that’s a grade A backstory. It’s not somehow ‘not as good’ as the other Robins and therefore people forget about him. It informs his entire character as a genius who puts himself out there because he cares. You can’t give this bullshit like, “his origin isn’t as flashy as other Robins so people don’t like him”. No, that’s a flashy as fuck backstory. It’s right up there with all the other Robins, okay? I have never in my life, heard anyone say that Tim has a boring backstory except Tim fans themselves. If anything Dick’s backstory is the one that suffers compared to his. And Jason’s barely makes any sense half the time. Tim really has the best backstory of all the Robins, IMO. Even against Damian.

And even DC hasn’t forgotten about him or anything. He’s been a main character in at least one, usually two comics since the reboot and before that he was in everything, man. He was in those Eternal series, he was the main in Batman Beyond, just stole it right out from under Terry McGinnis, he was in Gotham Knights, he showed up in Detective comics a lot, except for that brief moment when he was ‘dead’ but people still mentioned him all the time. And now he’s got his own team again in Young Justice. Damian might have had more exposure at the time, but he’s the main Robin now, what do you expect? He’s gotta show up in all the batman stuff, whereas Tim has moved on from that so he’s in other things. Like the most that could be said of Tim is that he had a moment there were he wasn’t in every Batman related comic, but even if you say something like he was the least used Robin for a year or two that doesn’t 1) mean he was unpopular and people didn’t like him, or 2) that it means anything at all, since he’s still probably one of the top ten most loved DC characters of all time, like there are so many characters that actually are underused and never had solo runs and probably never will, Tim not being in the spotlight for once just doesn’t even compare to that. I could rant about other Robins or bat-family characters who are unappreciated in comparison to Tim but I’m just not going to.

The most that could be said is maybe that the DC writers have been shitty to Tim lately and writing him really out of character but the same could literally be said for almost every Robin, including Dick, Jason and Damian. Like, Dick doesn’t have friends anymore, Jason is an incompetent idiot all of a sudden, and Damian lost every bit of character development he ever had, Tim is being written as a stuck up jerk but does he even have it the worst of the Robins? Maybe, but that isn’t a reflection of the fans feelings about him.

And this bullshit that Jason fans don’t like Tim. Okay, I’m sure there are some that don’t, mostly owing to the fact that Tim was a complete asshole to Jason in the Eternal comics for no reason, but then so was everyone in that comic, like really the whole thing was just the writer being a complete jerk to Jason and putting him down at every opportunity. Maybe some people hold Tim to that, but I think most acknowledge that was just poor writing. Like Jason’s most popular ship is with Tim. Jason fans LOVE Tim. They love that Tim is such a sweet boy that he idolized Jason and stalked him taking pictures of him as Robin, that he wanted to be friends with him even after he came back angry and murdery. They love to ship those boys. And not just in romantic ways, even most of the gen redemption fics involve Tim being the one to get him back with the family.

And I don’t know what to tell you about Tim and fan art. I feel like there’s a similar amount as other Robins, but if there isn’t that’s a reflection of Tim fans not making it and nothing else, right? You guys need to get on that.

So, sure, say “I Love Tim Drake and I wish he was in more things! Let’s just chuck him in everything, in fact!” That’s a valid thing to say and want. I respect that desire.

But people bitching, “Tim Drake is the most underappreciated Robin, like why do people like stupid Jason and Dick and Damian when they can love this boy. I hate Jason and Damian fans, always making fan stuff for those characters instead of Tim who should be everyone’s favorite because he is the best and the smartest and everyone should like him instead, because everyone puts him down and doesn’t like him for ignorant reasons,” that is objectively wrong and pisses me right the hell off.

Just...just stop. Please.

*Insert Ted Talk joke here.*

[bigskydreaming]

dick's backstory gets so frequently gets brushed under the rug and sterilized into "parents died, adopted by a rich dude" and subsequently ignored because then it's assumed his life is then perfect. this is a boy who watched his family die gruesomely. who was then removed from the only home he'd ever known and put in juvenile detention. who then became a vigilante before he ever turned 10. who was never adopted. who was fired and kicked out and hurt by bruce. no trauma there! perfectly happy!

Preaching to the choir my friend!

One of my greatest frustrations in DC comics fandom for yeeeeears was always how often Dick and Jason get pitted against each other in trauma olympics, and other assorted wtf-ery. Because just like Bruce ended up pitting them against each other like I described in that post, the comics did too, at least in the beginning. Not AS much since Jason came back with his own clearly defined niche, more…holdovers from that original time. And so there’s this tendency with a lot of Dick fans and a lot of Jason fans to act like its gotta be one or the other, that its impossible to stan for both. And I’m just sitting over here like NOPE, I stan them both and always will, every single one of their problems and any and all canon shitty things they’ve done to each other were really the result of dumbass writers and dumbass characters forcing them into situations where like….they did what they did. I very much reject the idea that they HAVE to always be at odds, and that one HAS to be better than the other (Dick) or have had it harder than the other (Jason). Its just like…..why tho?

So for me, that tends to manifest a lot as in, when focusing on Dick, I really push back against the myth of him as the ‘pure/too light/too good to kill’ golden boy of the Batfamily, because….no. He’s not. He is who he is because of circumstance and as a result of growing up in an emotional minefield of a house where he felt pushed to perfection. With perfection having clearly defined parameters, as established by Bruce and his expectations. Not because he’s innately incapable of killing or just on some core level ‘too good to lower himself to that’, which is unfortunately something that’s also put forth a lot. But the thing is, putting Dick on that kind of pedestal unintentionally says some pretty shitty things about Jason, as well as Damian and even Cass, and I don’t think people fully realize they’re doing that when they talk about Dick “Too Good to Kill” Grayson. Implying that he is such a thing, that there IS such a thing, at the same time implicitly states that his brothers and sister who HAVE killed, even when they were children and it wasn’t their fault, they were coerced…..this basically suggests that there HAS to be something innately….’worse’ about Jason, and Damian, and Cass, or else they never would’ve been able to do that at all.

Like, I read a fic awhile back where a big theme was the rest of the family talking about this idea that like….Dick couldn’t handle it if he did end up killing someone, that it would break him, tarnish him in some irrevocable way. Like they were saying it in a way meant to be complimentary to Dick and his character, even as Jason and the others were the ones putting forth this idea, the impression was meant to be they wanted to protect Dick from this, preserve that ‘goodness’ about him, but I was just like….No. God no. Hard pass. Because the idea that Dick would lose something fundamental to him, like he’d be forever lessened as a character and a person if for whatever reason he ended up killing…..like, there’s really no way to look at that without reading into it the implication that Jason and the others are damaged goods, forever tainted. And like…no thank you. I really really have issues with that line of thought, especially when it includes Cass and Damian who were forced into being child assassins. Like, whether you mean to or not, when you apply that logic you end up writing them off before they were even like, ten. Beyond saving, even then. I find that very troubling and insidious, even. And thus I push back heavily against this take on Dick, but really, its more in defense of Jason, Damian and Cass.

Like, of course he’d be forever affected by something that huge, just like they are and always will be, but to clarify I mean - its this idea that Dick could never be HAPPY again, even if he was forced to kill someone, or put in a position where he made that choice…that’s what I really objected to. Because that’s the part that suggests that Damian and Cass will never TRULY know happiness as a result of their childhoods, and that’s very destructive thinking, to my mind. The reality of someone forced to grow up too fast, having their innocence stolen, being pushed into doing something no one should have to live with….these are harsh, stark realities, they have merit, they have weight - but they do not mean, and should never be assumed to mean, that a child, or even that a character, who fits these circumstances is somehow beyond repair, or salvaging, or just being happy someday.

And then the flipside of that is I equally push back on takes that crown Jason the King of Trauma, not because he hasn’t endured a ridiculous amount, but because in defense of Dick, Tim and the others, I object to playing into the idea of ranking the Batkids’ traumas at all. The stuff Jason’s been through is horrific, but its not negated, or watered down or lessened by acknowledging that Dick and the others have been through extremely fucked up stuff too. And similarly, I’m very bothered by pointing to how much rougher and more aggressive and ‘darker’ Jason is as a character than Dick, as a way to kinda backdoor prove that Jason’s been through more shit than him, because that again leads to a very troubling implicit line of thought that like, there’s only ONE right way to respond to trauma. That if you aren’t visibly hardened by it, darkened by it, the way Jason has been by his, then whatever you’ve been through obviously couldn’t have been THAT bad, or as bad as someone like Jason has had it. And again, I gotta just give a big HARD PASS to that, because that’s just not how it works.

The fact that Dick is for the most part a far more light-hearted character than Jason isn’t proof he’s had it easier or hasn’t been through as much or seen as much bad stuff - that last bit is especially laughable. You can’t entertain the idea of a guy who’s been fighting the worst kinds of criminals since he was ten, in the most notoriously corrupt and crime-ridden city in the DC universe, and honestly believe that there’s anything he hasn’t seen or been exposed to. It just doesn’t track. BUT, that kind of awareness of the darkness Gotham is mired in isn’t as easily reconciled with the bright, cheerful personality Dick usually sports…unless you acknowledge that Dick WORKS at being that person. This is his reaction to the trauma he’s lived and been surrounded by, not because its just innately who he is, but its because its who he CHOOSES to be, its the response he’s DECIDED on. 

Jason copes with stuff with anger and outbursts. Dick copes with stuff with laughter and mockery. Neither is better or worse, more right or wrong than the other, they’re just DIFFERENT. Different coping mechanisms, trauma responses, for different people. Like I’ve always said, I see Dick and Jason as very similar people at their core. Their differences are largely superficial. But both of them respond to trauma with defiance. By refusing to be beaten down by it. The only difference, is with Jason, that defiance looks like swearing and spitting and cursing, even when faced with an opponent much bigger or tougher than him, a situation that should be too much to survive. Whereas with Dick, that defiance looks like laughing and smiling and joking, even when faced with an opponent or a situation about which there’s nothing actually funny, nothing naturally bright or cheerful. Dick has to conjure that appearance of brightness as an act of defiance, just like Jason has to conjure that appearance of strength.

And once you stop trying to compare Jason and Dick’s traumas, stop trying to rank one as more or less than the others, and just acknowledge and accept hey, they’ve both been through fucked up shit, they’ve both been traumatized - then you can look just at the stuff Dick’s been through, isolated and independent from everything else, and then you can see just how shitty it actually is, and thus what an act of defiance, what a testament of strength it is, that he is able to go through life acting as cheerfully and bubbly as he often does. And yeah, like you said, its his parents being murdered when he was eight, its being thrown in juvie because of a corrupt system when he’d done nothing wrong, its being beaten nearly to death and shot by Two-Face and Joker and dozens of other villains throughout Dick’s childhood, its the time he was tortured by Brother Blood trying to break him in every way possible and its the shit with Mirage and with Tarantula….and a ton of other stuff that never really gets acknowledged for how bad it actually was, because comics are notoriously bad at actually LOOKING at the trauma they heap on superheroes, and what it actually MEANS and what the realistic fallout would be from it, the emotional toll actually taken.

One of the biggest instances of this IMO is with Blockbuster. Like lots of people know the basics about Blockbuster’s death in the comics, and how it ties into what happened with Tarantula….and because that’s so ‘visibly’ traumatic, because that’s an event that’s easy to associate with a trauma that most people have a ready made image and RANKING in mind already when they think of it - like they think of what happened with Tarantula and they’re like oh yeah, okay, that’s a type of trauma I recognize as TRAUMA, thus I get just from the mention of it that was definitely bad and traumatic and had an impact on Dick….so that becomes the go-to when people talk about the stuff with Blockbuster. That’s what people hone in on….so focused on what pings their radar as Obviously Traumatic, they forget to look around at everything else involved and look at the possible impact and potential fallout.

And thus people forget that what happened with Tarantula happened when Dick was ALREADY at the lowest point in his life, and WHY that was so. Like, they acknowledge it, but in a cursory way, like okay yeah, that’s the buildup, now let’s get to the actual trauma and talk about that. Which ignores like….the trauma that was the REASON he was already in such a state to begin with. Like, Blockbuster systematically hunted down every connection he could find to Dick Grayson’s civilian life, and murdered them and burned all traces of them to the ground…JUST because they knew him. Just as a way to hurt HIM, Dick Grayson.

And because that doesn’t ping on our Preconceived Trauma Scales as immediately as something like Jason’s death or Dick’s parents’ murder or similar iconic traumas….we tend to gloss over that, but like….think about it. Think about what something like that would mean for a character that’s known for both his sense of responsibility, and for being one of the most openly empathetic superheroes out there, an emotional caretaker whose entire reputation is built on how much he FEELS for other people and how deeply.

Imagine the kid who was orphaned at age eight, watching his parents fall to their deaths and in the immediate aftermath taken away from everything else he’d ever known or found comfort in - the circus…..and now imagine that same kid fifteen years later watching that same circus burn to the ground, the last memory of his treasured childhood, when things were GOOD, when he was unconditionally happy, the last connection he had to his parents and all the extended circus family he’d grown up happy among…..all of them now dead too, all of those memories physically burned to the ground until nothing was left. All of it gone, for good. And with this villain saying - that happened because of you. I didn’t care about them, I only killed them, only did all of that, because I KNEW how much it would hurt you. And then that same guy did it AGAIN - blowing up Dick’s apartment building and everyone in it….just because he lived there. Having a sniper kill a reporter he was talking to, while he was sitting across the table from her…JUST because she was talking to him.

Like, that’s trauma on top of trauma, that’s trauma on an unimaginable scale. There’s a reason in that infamous scene with Tarantula, Dick was mumbling about being poison….because he honestly, truly believed it at that point, because it was TRUE. Because Blockbuster had made it his personal mission to make that true, to make it a reality that anyone close to Dick Grayson would die. Because of him. Dick was entirely right in feeling that way, he was simply acknowledging what Blockbuster had very deliberately set out to do..it wasn’t Dick’s FAULT that everyone around him was dying, because of their connection to him….but that didn’t mean it wasn’t TRUE.

And that’s just….mind boggling to contemplate, to picture the toll that has to take, but the thing is - it barely ever gets contemplated! Purely because there’s not a simple, neat, easy way to sum it up and label what Trauma specifically it is. The way we can with his parents’ murder, or his rape, or various things that have happened to Jason or their other brothers and sister. And so it gets swept under the rug because we’re in a hurry to get back to the traumas we DO have an easy vocabulary for, with ready-made pictures all queued up in our heads. And then on top of all these traumas (because there’s more too, like think about the impact of realizing that the circus owner you regarded as a grandfather was someday planning on handing you over to people who were going to turn you into an assassin, make you everything you hate, like imagine the BETRAYAL of that discovery and how it would shake your entire view of reality and everything you knew and believed in about your childhood and the time you spent around that man). But yeah, like, on top of these traumas that don’t have a neat and easy logline to describe them, or that don’t quite look like we expect a REALLY traumatic trauma to look like….then add on top of that a trauma response that doesn’t look like our preconceived notions of what trauma response looks like, a guy laughing and joking and SMILING in the aftermath, rather than growling and shooting and drinking.

And you wind up with the idea that nothing THAT bad has ever happened to this character, not like the stuff that’s happened to this other character who ACTS the way we expect someone to act after they’ve been Through Some Real Shit. Even though nothing could be further than the truth. But that’s what happens when we try and boil things down to easy and simple and quick ways of thinking and processing stories and events and traumas. We end up skipping right over the evidence of trauma that falls outside our initial assumptions, and drawing the conclusion that means no trauma was actually ever there…..instead of the proper conclusion which is just we weren’t looking in the right places. Or were just in too much of a rush or too busy looking elsewhere or for something more obvious, and thus missed acknowledging what was actually there.

Anyway, lol. Lots to unpack there, obviously, but yeah, my point being, this tendency we all tend to have in society, this need to artificially impose ranks and hierarchies and award gold, silver and bronze medals even to something as arbitrary as the kinds of traumas we’ve endured - its fucked up, and self-defeating, and does nobody any good. Because its like trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Trying to FORCE comparisons that aren’t possible, because no two traumas are alike, no two traumas are interchangeable, and thus they inherently CAN’T be measured against each other, ranked, because….there’s no actual measurement system for trauma! There’s no way to actually JUDGE ‘this event was worse, this had more of an impact’, and yet we always try anyway, instead of just accepting….an impact was had. Instead of just worrying about the RESULT, focusing on THAT - which in this case is the person left behind in the aftermath of the trauma, the one actually traumatized….instead of spending so much time and energy focusing on the TRAUMA itself, as though that’s what matters and is important.