“Oh yeah, Babs and Tim are the computer geniuses,” any one of the other Batkids say as they hack into the Pentagon for the third time that week.
“Oh yeah, Dick’s the nice, happy one,” one of the other Batkids say while Nightwing walks off whistling from where he left fourteen assassins unconscious and bleeding in an alley.
“I want you to understand something. I know what they made you do. I know how much it’s hurt you. How much it still hurts you. But you are not what they made you to be. You are something more. You are what you choose to be. And you fought your way across the world so I would know what she’s about to do. So I can stop Mother once and for all. You aren’t a monster, that’s what they tried to make you. But it didn’t work. You are a hero, because that’s the path you took yourself.”
SHUT UP I’M NOT CRYING ABOUT CASS BEING TOLD SHE MADE HERSELF INTO HER OWN HERO
I saw this the other day and couldn’t help thinking about how the batboys first felt when they had to be the comfort/protector or how for they might’ve felt the first time children ran to them for protection.
Dick Grayson was a performer long before he was a protector. Even on his first night as Robin, he kept an eye out on the darkest streets for people in despair. Not even three hours into his first shift as Robin, comes the opportunity.
He knows how to hypnotise people, to make them forget about the world, about reality, even if it was just for a little while. And little did he know just how much he’d use it for the rest of his life.
And there’s the guy in front of him, robbing a store with a knife in one hand, tears streaming down his face. His wife is dying, and he needs the money and Dick falters. He remembers that feeling of helplessness.
But then there’s a child cowering away from him, and runs screaming towards Dick, arms outstretched with a plea. And his hesitation vanishes, before taking down the man in one fell swoop.
He then spent the time with only one goal in mind. Make the kid laugh. He cracked jokes, displayed few acrobatic endeavours and is only satisfied when the kid looks at him with joy, the fear long since burned away. It fills his chest with pride, and a warm flutter that stays with him for the next few months.
Jason never expected anything to happen. He was the new Robin, he was here only to protect, not chit-chat. He’s heard what others thought of him, and he couldn’t care any less. He did his job, made sure they were safe and unhurt, and then left.
And then one late night, finishing up on patrol he sees a glimpse of color out of the corner of his eye. There’s a young woman, hiding three figures behind her. He raises his head, and immediately sees the way they scramble away in fear. So he looks away and waits, muscles tense and ready, pretending not to notice them come closer.
He’s quite taken aback when the woman timidly asks him to walk her back home. It’s a trap. He thinks. But he sees the look on their faces, and decides it’s worth the risk. Along the way he makes a few dry sarcastic quips, and before he knows it the air is filled with laughter and chatter.
It takes a while for him to notice two kids were holding each of his hand, and the third was tugging on his cape. And the mother was smiling softly, eyes crinkling in fondness and vulnerability.
They felt safe, he realises with a start.
They felt safe with him
They trusted him.
And something in him stirs. He feels something similar to what Dick had recalled on his first encounter with children, but instead of a warm flutter it’s like his heart has forgotten its rhythm. It’s banging against his rib cage, warmth and love pouring out. He always had a bleeding heart.
When he comes back from patrol, he absentmindedly runs his fingers across the cape where they’d held it, and sees tiny wrinkles there.
He refuses to iron it, and when Tim first sees his suit, the first thing he sees are the thousands of wrinkles, dozens of smears and dried up trails of tears.
Tim, who didn’t know what the fuck he was doing.
He was good at the crime job. Children.. people? Not so much. Especially when he wasn’t trying to lecture them or take them down. He knew how to make them tick. But not how to make them talk.
Alas, when batman is stuck interviewing a father about a home invasion, Tim finds himself on kid duty.
He looks everywhere, on the ceiling, below the bed, when he finally notices a heat signature coming from behind a desk.
The kid is hugging her knees, cowering and clutching themselves as close as she could, squeeze themselves into the tiny space, and keeping heavy boxes and chairs to block any people or light from entering.
And Tim just sits there. He tries talking, engaging in conversation before realising how awkward it sounded and that he wasn’t helping. So he falls quiet.
He notices posters of marine life on the child’s bed, and after a while of silence he starts to slowly talk again. He talks about the ocean, about its inhabitants and the most peculiar creatures hidden inside. It is a while before he falters again, noticing his rant, but with a quick glance he can see that the child has slightly shifted towards him, hanging onto his every word.
And so he continues, bringing up holographic displays to show the amazing characterisers and traits they acquire. He hears the pitter patter of footsteps after a while, and then the kid pops up beside him, staring at the display. The kid was there, tense as a deer, and ready to sprint at any sudden movement, but there.
And so at the end of the night, that’s how Bruce finds Tim sitting on the floor, kid fast asleep and sprawled across his lap, using the cape as a blanket.
Tim was a grounding presence. He wasn’t there to judge, wasn’t there to speak. He was just.. there. And that mattered a lot more to children then he realises.
He remembers coming home in almost a daze, seeing the wrinkles on his cape before remembering Jason. His breath hitches, fingers running over the wrinkles, truly realising why Jason’s suit still stubbornly portrayed its wrinkles. It’s stories.
Jason was better at this. Jason cared. And tonight, he’d taken the first step towards truly honouring him. And he had no intentions of letting the second Robin’s legacy die.
Dick had described it as warmth that left you giddy. But this, this was terror.
Tim was scared.
Dick had always been an empath, Jason arguably more, and it was their legacy that he’d have to carry on. The children were counting on him. Batman was counting on him. But the most terrifying realisation was that Jason was also counting on him. And so was Dick.
So he lets the wrinkles stay on, subtly highlighting them in the cape to remind himself of his purpose, a feeling of protectiveness burdening him- not only towards the citizens, but also towards his brothers. He was NOT going to let them down.
Each of them made kids feel safe with them, in their own special ways. Because there was a broken kid in each of them too, that craved to make sure no one else was hurt the way they were.
Dick didn’t set out to murder Zucco with the intent of being a killer. He viewed it as an unfortunate byproduct of his actions.
His real goal was to “purge the world of criminals” because “darkness needs light.”
Do you realize how unhinged that sounds?It means Robin wasn’t created from anger. It was created from the messed up psyche of a child who realized at 8 years old that the entire world needs something better than what it was given and so he went out and became it.
I cant properly explain how insane that is. It’s like putting the logic of the Joker inside the mind of child but turning it for good. Everything is falling into place now. That is why the Joker hates Dick-he is the one Robin the man couldn’t break. Literally COULDN’T because when he’s facing Dick, he’s facing the version of himself that would have existed if he had put himself to good. That was would break HIM.
Imagine spending the better part of your life doing your utmost worst to show Batman that people and the system are inherently evil only to have him fall head over cowl for a version of yourself to completely invalidate your reason for existing. How psychotic would you turn when you realize you have nothing to prove?
This also explains why Dick is so well adjusted and sociable in a way that Bruce and the others aren’t.
Bruce loses it when he loses his children, he thinks it’s a failure of his abilities and doubts his life’s work.
Jason loses it when he thinks he’s been replaced because his reason for being is having someone care for him.
Tim loses it when he comes to a dead-end. He feels helpless and lost when he doesn’t know the next move because his reason for being is being able to solve what’s wrong.
Damian loses it when he feels abandoned. He feels hurt and broken because he’s a child who wants to be loved.
The reason Dick was the perfect choice for Dark Crisis and to become the dawn of DCU is because his sole reason for being is to be the light.
That is why Bruce refused to destroy a planet when Superman asked him too. That is why Dick was the only person in the universe who could control the Darkness infecting him when even Deathstroke lost his mind to it. That is why the evil Justice League chose Dick of every one to kill-to make a point.
This is why he’s looked up to by major heroes such as Superman, Wonderwoman, the Titans, the children, the villains, and the civilians.
This is why Harvey Dent called Robin Dick “Batman’s secret weapon.”
Although anger was the baseline emotion, Dick doesn’t have anger issues because:
Robin wasn’t created for revenge. It was created with the intention of building a world so unrealistically good, that the level of the vision Richard Grayson was aiming for and set the standards for- is so terrifyingly inconceivable.
hits head against the table jason didn’t want bruce to kill the joker he wanted bruce to let him kill the joker the ultimatum wasn’t “kill the joker or kill me” it was “kill me or i kill the joker”
The hate comes from the shame. Conservatives have so much shame for their lives, their choices, their absence of love, that rather than keeping tabs on their own lives and processing the shame, they all jump to denial and switch the shame to hate.
The hate keeps them from atoning, maturing, asking for forgiveness, and taking responsibility.
i hate seeing people now making fun of those who care about privacy online. i’ve seen people saying things like “well they already have your data. what are companies going to do with it” and it’s like, that’s not the point. it’s that companies /shouldn’t/ be able to have my data and sell it. am i aware they probably already have my data? yes, absolutely. but i’m still going to try and keep them from monetizing it any further, why are we defending companies selling data they shouldn’t have to begin with though?
adding this to the post because, 100%, just there’s a fire doesn’t mean you should pour gasoline on it
I have like ten different ad and/or tracking blockers on my PC and phone… just out of pure spite
Is there any benefit to using multiple ad blockers at once? I honestly don’t know, but I haven’t seen a single ad on the internet in ages and I get to use this image:
