i did a rant for Jason, now I’m doing a rant for my favorite superhero and occasionally morally grey person <3
I’m going to put a trigger warning here and now for the majority of this post. Discussing Dick Grayson for me means talking about very sensitive moments for his character, I will be mentioning and talking about some non-consensual events that happened to him in certain comic canons and one underage event. Please if this can/will trigger you, click off or skim over the parts where I mention it. I will highlight the parts where I actively speak about situations like that in red. Thank you.
Titans
I’ve watched to season 3 of Titans so far and I just gotta say, Dick’s character got a downgrade and an upgrade. Let me elaborate.
Firstly, I love what the writers did and how they characterized the boy wonder in season one. He was an authority figure, a protector. Literally the first time we are introduced to Robin and the first time we see Dick in the Robin suit, he’s brutalizing child abusers.
Throughout the entire first season there are multiple instances of Dick being very protective towards children and very aggressive with people he believes to hurt children.
In a later episode of season one, Dick tracks down a man with Kori after Rachel runs away with Gar. Once he realizes that the man has seen Rachel, let alone in the woods, he immediately goes into attack mode. At that point he believed that Rachel was alone, he didnt know about Gar and he didn’t know that she was with anyone. He punches the man and starts asking if he did anything to her, he goes protective and is very close to breaking that guys nose before his daughter runs out of her room and sees what’s going on, making Dick stop.
Personally, I loved that aspect of his character. It’s not only foreshadowing at the fact that he’s going to become an older brother, I personally think it also hints at a very traumatic event that happened to him in the comics.
It made me so sad to see him lose that aspect of himself after season one. I suppose the overprotective violence faded along side his other more regular violence.
I loved his violent characterization throughout the first two seasons, it really helps understand his character and him as a person.
In the first season, whenever he’s wearing the Robin suit he’s physically incapable of stopping himself from getting too violent, no matter how much he may want to without the costume on.
He stabs people, breaks peoples noses, nearly makes people bleed out, stomps peoples faces in, everything under the sun except kill them. That’s the whole reason he left Gotham, that’s the whole reason he held a grudge against Bruce in season one.
The journey we go through with Dick in season two is an amazing depiction of his character.
The literal order of events just screams mental breakdown to me and the episodes following made me think he had a psychological break, then we find out that he’s just like that.
The events go like this. First Dick starts seeing hallucinations of his father figure which he hates and that’s apparently just a normal thing that happens in Dick’s day to day life? Then he goes Robin mode, hurting a man he used to work with because he’s annoyed with the hallucination of his father. Then he goes to a dance club and nearly kills a man that works with Slade because he has a secret he needs to hide?? Then his traumatized nineteen year old brother tries to kill himself and what does Dick do? He trauma dumps all over Jason hoping that it’ll make him feel better and not want to die. (It doesn’t) then everyone he loves leaves him. He then decides to go visit the mother of the kid he thinks he got killed and finds himself talking to Slade. My guy then books a flight across the world because the fucking assassin with one eye who killed his own son said that he needed to repent by being in isolation?? You know what this dude does instead of going to Japan like he’s supposed to? He assaults two police officers to get himself seven years in jail. You know who he doesn’t tell? Gar. The teenager he left in charge of watching Superman’s clone with no other orders than, ‘call Bruce if he wakes up’ when he knows Bruce will not answer.
Then the dude breaks these gang members out of jail so they don’t get deported, that gets him thrown in solitary. You know what he does in solitary? Hallucinates his dad, fights him in his imagination, and then breaks out of jail.
When Dick eventually grows into his own person after all that insanity, when he becomes Nightwing— he forgives Bruce. It’s another aspect about his characterization that I love. Dick is forgiving, in a good and bad way, until he isn’t.
Dick doesn’t care what people do to him, it’s one of his biggest flaws. He lets himself get hurt over and over again and he just takes it. He lets his peers absolutely bash him and openly hate him, but he’s always still there for them. He always still supports them.
He knows Bruce turned him into a weapon, but he still went back. He went back and tried to ignore everything and forget about all the awful things Bruce did to him. He never directly talks to Bruce about it, sure he’s passive aggressive during [redacted’s] funeral dinner in season 2 but he never actually talks about anything.
The only time he snaps at Bruce is after Jason dies.
After his brother, who he didn’t treat like a brother, dies, he’s trying to cope. Everyone is. He knows Bruce copes in a different way and he respects it, what he doesn’t respect is the fact that Bruce is trying to rope in another child to be Robin. He’s trying to replace Jason right after he dies. That’s when Dick loses his temper.
Even after everything, it takes someone else being hurt for Dick to speak his mind. He never really stands up for himself, he stands up for other people and bottles in his emotions.
Comics
In the comics, Dick is much similar. He bottles up his emotions until he physically can’t.
He’s always trying to be happy, even Nightwing isn’t serious. For Bruce, Batman is a way to let out his true self. Batman is the real Bruce, Bruce Wayne is the mask he hides behind.
It’s exactly the opposite for Dick. Dick Grayson is the caring older brother who has no trauma and exists to help, Nightwing is the funny vigilante, he’s the protector of Blüdhaven who cracks jokes and never breaks a smile while fighting. Either way, Dick just trades in one mask for another.
The only times it’s genuinely him, is when he’s at his most vulnerable. When he isn’t around his family, his brothers, Bruce. That’s when the real him can come out, his real genuine emotions.
In a certain comic run that I’m unsure if it’s still canon or not, Dick gets assaulted. It’s before he has his facade, it’s right when it’s starting to develop. He’s sixteen.
Dick gets in a horrible fight with Bruce, it results in him either running away or getting kicked out, either way he isn’t with Bruce. The sixteen year old is left to fend for himself, then a 21 year old woman who’s targeting Wayne enterprises comes along.
She manipulates Dick and takes advantage of him (along with her husband I think) all to get to Bruce.
He never talks about it.
!! I WILL BE REPLYING TO THIS IN A REBLOG CAUSE THIS IS GETTING VERY LONG AND TYPING IS GETTING SLOW !!
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