They Can Never Have A Civil Agreement

oh look both of my writing styles in one post

On the one hand, I want to write complex, richly crafted characters and explore their psyches and what makes them tick.

On the other hand, I want giant set piece encounters where two people whack at each other with swords five hundred feet in the air, and just when it looks like one of them has won, the other guy pulls out an even bigger sword.

I just saw someone say that Tim was the only member of the batfamily who didn’t suck at math.

With the exception of Dick (acrobatics) and Cass (body language) none of the Batkids are THAT much better than the others at a certain skill

Yes Jason is a better shot

Yes Tim is a better detective

And on a technical level they’re much better

Sure

But that means that if they have a 0.001% chance of cracking a case or making a shot. There will be a noticeable difference between Tim being the character or say Damian.

Otherwise

Not particularly.

Think of each skill like a normally distributed curve okay with the mean being your average hero/olympian/hacker/genius

Right

The Batkids will be at the 96th percentile in the skill

With the exception of 1 of them being at the 99th percentile range

Unless you are writing something you can comfortably say is complex/difficult enough to warrant drawing attention to the 3% difference. It’s annoying to bring it up

I exclude Dick and Cass

Because Dicks introduction is the fact he can do something the rest of the kids can’t to the point where it’s an identifier within his own story. It’s how Tim found him, a signature only he can do.

And Cass because she is genuinely cartoonishly cracked in her own storyline and in batfamily stuff she’s borderline a mind reader

(Could also argue Jason for supernatural stuff and the all blades)

These are exceptions because yeah

If you told me Jason, Dick or Steph cracked a difficult case in a run I wouldn’t treat it as shocking information

If you told me Tim, Dick or Damian managed a tricky shot with a firearm in a dire situation (like what happens in the Grayson run) it would be interesting, surprising but like not? Shocking?

If you told me that Jason did a quadruple summersault off a building and landed on his feet I’d be confused as shit

And even WITH Dick and Cass the other kids are still FREAKISHLY good at D&Cs special skills but they both have unignorable signatures

This is a very long winded way of saying when an author simplifies a character down to

“Oh look nice flippy one”

“Smart one”

“Angry gun one”

“Pet collector”

It’s annoying because you basically ignore all the interesting overlap

Like guess what Dick literally has a habit of collecting strays (see the rabbit and 3 legged dog he lives with in his apartment in the new run)

Tim is fucking badass and is very good at dealing with explosives

Damian is canonically currently thinking of leaving the family business and no longer being a hero to maybe focus on helping people in other ways

Jason occasionally works with magic and demon bullshit

And every single one of them is a genius okay literally every single one of them could get a masters in physics, chem, bio and history in like 2 weeks flat.

Their stats are stacked

All of them know enough info to be able to do 99% of a task and yeah someone might call Tim or Dick in for detective help or Jason for muscle and restraining backup but in 99% of cases THE OTHER CHARACTERS SHOULD BE EQUALLY competent

forever a dickroy truther because I want to watch them fight over who gets Donna as their best man for the wedding (it’s dick)

random fun fact, dick canonically smells good

See I feel like if LITERALLY any other character (save like deathstroke) said this I would be significantly less creeped out.

However I feel like the joker should DROP this info bc I need to know how bro smells good after 6 hours of sweating in spandex

I’d buy whatever the fuck it is lol

Also ofc Dick smells good it feels like in nightwing 1996 a new female character who was inexplicably in love with the man appeared ever other issue ( and the same thing happened in Grayson 2016 with male characters wha? Who said that) that doesn’t happen unless you smell like heaven

Okay I’m gonna drop an unpopular opinion here

I really

Really

Really

Hate the Jason and Damian met in the league and have a close brotherly relationship

I honestly think it detracts from BOTH of their development and makes both the characters a lot more 2D and boring.

And also I think it disrespects my GIRL Stephanie brown. Bc that close personal bickering, anything goes sibling shit? Yeah that’s Damian and Steph all the way.

And yeah I tend to credit Dick Grayson (bc he’s my boy) for a lot of the Growth Damian goes through. But Stephanie brown and him have the funniest sibling relationship in history

And I think to have as interesting of a development as Damian has had you needed characters like Dick and Steph to be his Batman and Batgirl.

Dick who I think we can all agree is objectively the least violent of the bats at a baseline (Richard crash out Grayson moments notwithstanding) as well as Steph. Both have angry moments of doling out justice but BOTH prefer rehabilitation methods and tend to be more mouthy and loud about their thoughts during a battle

Steph CLAWED her way up into her position, she fought for that and held on with an iron grip that left indents. She wasn’t as good as, Dick born acrobat Grayson, Barbara prodigy Gordon and Tim genius Drake. So she worked her ass off and FORCED people to pay attention to her and got good enough that she matches the rest of the bats on the field.

Dick HAS the experience of working with difficult cases. He’s lead teams his age filled with drama, infighting and death successfully, he’s trained kids younger than him successfully on panel.

He’s canonically a very adaptable teacher, who has strength in meeting you where you’re at and getting you to move to where you want to be.

Both these things helped Damian exponentially

Now let me be so clear.

Damian did the work.

Damian put in the blood, sweat and tears into changing his beliefs and perceptions of the world. But that would not have been possible if these two didn’t at least make it known that “hey you can be the kind of person who cares and still have value and not be weak and pathetic”

Damian going vegetarian/vegan bc of his morals, Damian choosing not to kill, Damian choosing to leave Robin, Damian making choices unrelated to mantles, regrets and vengeance. Is due to the fact that he had Dick Grayson and Stephanie brown as examples (now ofc Alfred was also very very very imp but I feel like no one ignores his significance so I don’t feel the need to add him here)

And Jason?

It also imo, FUCK UP JAYS DEVELOPMENT.

Bc if Jason could be this kind, empathic older sibling to Damian? WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK WAS HE DOING WHEN HE FIRST CAME TO GOTHAM? the way he treated the bats and the rogues gallery? Slaughtering all of blackgate to end up in Arkham, making dick watch him fall to his ‘death’.

No absolutely not

This is the ‘pit madness’ nonsense all over again

Jason had to see the world outside of Gotham and work with other people who were anti-heroes who fall into the category.

Bc Jason didn’t start out as an antihero

Jason was a full on villain with a grudge against other villains, he worked for the place he’s in. It’s bc of characters he interacted with, it’s bc of realizations he’s dealt with. It’s because he’s been a little too trigger happy in the wrong place and ended up looking at the grief he caused others and realizing he didn’t want to do that.

It gets rid of Jason realizing HE CAN work with his family.

It gets rid of Jason BECOMING a solid older brother to Tim and erases the Jason who WANTS to have a relationship with his family.

It erases all of the times he’s tried and failed and still got up and tried again

Both of them have grown bc of the people around them and I think if they had each other at that time it would’ve gone 1 of 2 ways

1) a toxic loop re-establishing bad beliefs and practices that damage both of them and leave them more resentful and stuck in their ways

2) they would’ve hated each other and tried to kill each other

In summary

-both these characters didn’t show up nice, they worked for it, don’t erase that

- don’t erase the characters that helped them grow (my girl Steph Brown being left out of conversations she started will kill me)

- Jason can have close relationships with the family im not saying he shouldn’t. I’m just saying that Jay is the cool older brother who very obviously loves you but was at college when you were a kid and now doesn’t really know how to interact with you and it’s awkward but you know you can go to him even if he isn’t your first call in most situations

- Damian was not a good person, he CHOSE to be that’s important to his growth. And with that growth came the ability to form the close connections he now has in canon. Without the growth he undergoes he wouldn’t be able to form the protective loving group of family and friends he has around him

- STOP IGNORING STEPH, I AM LITERALLY A DICK GRAYSON STAN ACCOUNT AND I AM OVERHERE TRYING TO GET CRUMBS OF MY GIRL OHMYGOD

- I would highkey love a short miniseries of Jason and Damian working together and developing a nice relationship both in and out of the masks but until we get that. I’m sticking to awkward brother that loves you but doesn’t get you at all

Also if you disagree/ have more nuanced takes on the Jay Damian sibling arc please leave in the reblogs and comments, I like hearing more nuanced takes and discussing just please don’t be a dick (hehe) about it

i think the reason we haven’t gotten a proper adult fab5 titans comic since the early aughts is because it would simply be too powerful. roy and wally arguing about parenting pre-teens while garth looks his google calendar to check his kid’s birthday. donna and dick get into a shouting match and the universe explodes. everyone (but donna) is privately very mean about terry. wally thinks about fatherhood for a single second and vibrates through the earths crust. dick has decided to passively kill himself again and everyone gets upset at him. garth just wants to relax for one gd second. roy is actually pretty well adjusted, all things considered. any meaningful portrayal of that hyper-dependent traumatically bonded boundryless ouroboros of a friend group would melt the pages it’s printed on. there is something sincerely wrong with them

Dick and Jay

Dick: yeah I had a great night! Full eight hours

Jason: bullshit I saw you go to bed at 6 a.m

Dick: yep!

Jason: it’s 8 in the morning

Dick: yepp!! ❤️

Jason: wtf did you just talk out an emoji in real life

Dick: :D

Jason: …. Are you okay

Dick (got dosed with fear toxin and poisoned but is fine guys he checked the magic 8ball) Grayson: yep!!

Jason: *slowly backs out of the room*

Dick and the bats most recent chats (it’s canon dc told me) (pt1)

Dick & Jay

Unknown number: what did you do

Jason: no clue what youre talking about

Unknown number: Jason

Jason: yesssss

Unknown number: What Did you do

Jason: nothing you need to worry about

Unknown number: oh so the 40 missed calls from Roy and the 30 text messages from Kori are just to check in then

Jason: okay fine worry a little and meet me at the coord’s I sent you

Dickhead (how do you keep finding my number): Jason

Jason: what

Dickhead: why are you in Mongolia

Dick & Babs

Barbie girl: I hate everyone

Barbie girl: you’re all idiots

Hunk wonder: I’ll bring wine and takeout if you tell me what Bruce did

Barbie girl: why do you think it’s Bruce this time???

Hunk wonder: if it was Tim you’d call me, Jason pisses you off enough they’d be curse words, Cass isn’t doing something reckless against your advice so you’re not mad at her, Steph is with Cass today, and if it was the birds of prey you’d call Dinah

Barbie girl: …

Hunk wonder : I am a detective you know

Barbie girl: I’m blocking you

Hunk wonder: so no pho?

Barbie girl: fuck you and come over

Dick & Tim

Tim buck 2: asdfgjjklahahwkdbsbekskahajak

Big bird: honestly 10/10 keyboard smash

Tim buck 2: help

Tim buck 2: I’m metaphorically dying right now

Big bird: metaphorically dying?

Tim buck 2: don’t judge me

Big bird: what happened

Tim buck 2: I’m not saying this where prying ears may be present

Big bird: this is an encrypted line

Big bird: I don’t even know why I bother actually

Big bird: want to come over or should I

Tim buck 2: I’ll send you the location on your laptop

Big bird: this is a cypher in ancient Aramaic

Tim buck 2: get here quick

Tim buck 2 is offline

Big bird: Tim?

Big bird: of course

Listen do I believe that Dick Grayson is borderline demisexual and needs a close personal connection to feel any kind of sexual or romantic feelings for someone. Yes 100%.

Do I also believe that Dick Grayson uses the “I will fuck your mom so she can finally have a son that she can love” threat

or the

“yeah keep talking shit and I’ll fuck you wife” threat while 100% meaning them…

Yeah 1000%

This is a very spiteful man

He thrives off of being a petty motherfucker

How else is he supposed to get his kicks? He has like 5 billion things to do this week.

Tim ruins them financially

Dick sleeps with their wives or mothers okay

This was 100% derived from that one fic I read where Dick got with Tim’s step mom and has almost no canon correlation.

Do I still think this deeply fits with the canon characterization of 17-23yr old Dick Grayson

Yeah

So now it’s canon

Hello this a long shot call,I Taheerah Mohammed Abdallah am a citizen of Palestine. I am here to request for your support to help get my insulin, I was diagnosised with type 1 diabetes and due to current situation in Gaza I'm unable to get my insulin injection as a result I'm here begging for little financial support to help me purchase insulin for this week

My donation link is available on my pinned post

Hi I have very little money this month but I should be able to donate next month. Best of luck.

Also do I have permission to send your link around to a few people off this site who might be able to donate?