In The DC Universe There's A Petition With Over Five Hundred Thousand Signatures Asking Batman To Let

Have I pretty much stopped caring about Bungou Stray Dogs? Yes. Yes I have. Will Soukoku forever be that one ship that I adore and changed the trajectory of my life? Yes. Yes it will. Will I continue consuming Soukoku fanfic, art and edits? Yes. Yes I will.

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 always find it funny when people say that it’s unfair how Bruce let Dick get away with killing the Joker but Jason can’t get away with murder. The difference is Dick snapped, killed the Joker and immediately felt guilty, meanwhile Jason Todd went on a murder spree and collected a duffle bag filled with severed heads, the two aren’t really comparable.

any thoughts on dick haunting the narrative despite being very much alive ?

See my favorite part about this is that Dick doesn’t haunt the entire narrative. Usually when he’s mentioned in other people’s comics (roy,Wally etc) it’s something like “thank god for dick Grayson” or “gee I sure liked working with nightwing” or even “damn I hate the fact I have to do this but nightwing asked and like he doesn’t do that” the same way all the titans reference each other.

You might get a bit more reverence out of like raven? Or Clark? Casually saying Dick Grayson is their favorite or something

But Dick Grayson specifically haunts things that are literally in anyway related to Bruce Wayne (including Bruce) and it’s entirely their fault.

Bc to haunt a narrative one must not be accessible in the narrative imo. And every single one of the bats is too chicken shit to have a normal human conversation.

Bc like Dick does show up in other characters comics, he helps out in the birds of prey, most of the fab 5 have mentioned that he stops by whenever they’re lucky enough to have a solo run -DC GIVE DONNA TROY A SOLO RUN- he helps a lot of the younger teams, he works with the league.

Now GOD FORBID BRUCE CALL HIS SON WHEN HES MENTAL BREAKDOWNING.

Bc yeah he does haunt the Batman narrative. If I had a nickel for every time I turned the page on a Batman solo comic to suddenly get 2 pages of “dick Grayson, my ward the first Robin. My greatest achievement” spat at me I would have enough nickels to buy the comic bookstore

Or in a Robin comic “dick Grayson, the first Robin, he was the blueprint” like if yall wanna act like this pick up the phone and call the man.

Like despite what I and the fandom will tell you. There has never been a time where Dick and the bats weren’t on speaking terms (Jason excluded for reasons of murder and general bitterness) but even when Dick and Bruce hated being near each other -post Jason death- they could still work together.

They just decide to go “ah yes nightwing he’s great and he could probably help wish he was here anyway I’m not gonna call him”

People will bring up Red Robin but him and Tim were solid for like 99% of that so be so fr

Anyway all I’m saying is that Batman and his Russian nesting doll collection of ever shrinking robins need therapy and maybe medication but it’s okay I love them anyway

I feel like dicks favourite sibling is Tim , don't get me wrong her definitely loves evryone else a lot okay but he has a very specific relation with tim and they both siblings more than any of the other siblings sibling , like in front of Damian dick has to be responsible wether thats because Damian is still a pretty young kid or because dick was pushed into some sort of a parental role over him when bruce was in the time stream you can decide , with Jason it's more complicated and he hasn't known duke all that long and cass she's awesome don't get him wrong but fav sibling titile definitely goes to tim because with tim he could do the most dangerous reckless bullshit and Tim would just go "aight bet" and they'd do it together because with the shit tim pulls with yj and how passively suicidal dick is half the time they click amazingly together.

DC’s reasoning for breaking up Dick and Kory is painfully ironic if you stop to think about it. Obviously a big part of Dick is that he desperately wanted to get out of Bruce’s shadow and become his own hero. Basically what happened is they realized they did too good of a job of bringing Dick Grayson out of Batman’s shadow that people were associating him with the titans more than they did with Batman and the Batman writers hated it. So they broke them up and put Dick with Batgirl. This is crazy considering a huge part of Dick’s character is getting out of Batman’s shadow.

They were super popular too. The only comic couple outselling them was Peter and MJ.

can’t believe i sold my soul to the gay not gay firefighter show every thursday from 8 to 9 pm. oh well maybe they will kiss this time

How does DC keep fumbling Jason’s character. Like they have a brilliant character just think about it. Bruce takes in Jason to help steer him on the right path. To help him channel his anger into doing good. He passes on his morals and his values. His core value being as we all know, his no killing rule. Jason’s life is tragically cut short, then he’s revived and becomes the very thing Bruce fights against. Jason is such a beautiful character but DC just ignores his potential. If you want to dig even deeper you can think about how awful crime alley is in Gotham and how a lot of kids there end up criminals or dead and despite Bruce’s best efforts, Jason ended up being both.

Big fan of the Reverse Robins AU because not only does Dick Grayson deserve a break from his eldest daughter syndrome but also imagine Dick Grayson as the baby of the family? He’d have them all wrapped around his finger.