sometimes while i think about that while a lot of adults did not treat me very well as a kid i also get a lot of 'in hindsight this person was so good to me and i didnt even realize it until now' as an adult. today i was thinking about how the first anime convention i ever went to was when i was 10 and i asked the man working the manga cafe what manga was/what a good place to start was (because the con was very overstimulating for me and i had gotten lost) and he asked how old i was before recommending yotsuba and asking if i wanted any water or something to eat. its really simple but theres a lot of bad things that couldve happened or he could've been careless in his recommendation, but instead yotsuba has remained one of my favorite manga for years, and probably a large portion of why i continue to read manga as an adult... i think adults who try to involve kids in the world safely/kindly even in little ways make so much more of a difference than they ever really know.
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Gray and Graysons
One of the Bats has a secret. Something they never told to the others.
They were so very young but they have memories of a sibling, so small and tiny. They remember the burst of warmth they had in their heart when they held the tiny baby for just a moment.
But they weren’t allowed to keep them, their family couldn’t raise them. Money was tight, just enough for three but not for four, despite their shows always bringing in a crowd it was getting harder and harder for the world to be wowed by them in the new age and their sibling was too small and tiny and needed to be cared in a single place than for them to be on the road. Their lifestyle was not good for his tiny sibling apparently.
They had to watch as their parents gave his sibling away to people in suits, them promising to give his baby brother to a loving family when they find a ‘home’ for him. He watched his parents try to be strong only for his mother to break down once the car left down the road, his father holding her and apologizing, the rest of the circus troupe all silently coming over to give the heartbroken family condolences.
Richard ‘Dick’ Grayson had tears running down his face when he last saw his baby brother.
A brother he got to name before he had to be given away.
Daniel ‘Danny’ Grayson.
-x-x-
Dick never told the others. If anyone dug deep into his past they might find his brother’s birth records maybe, if someone got around to digitizing the paperwork for him but given the fact he was placed in the US childcare systems just a few days after his birth and the fact that Dick was still pretty young they most likely believed he didn’t remember his baby brother now. Not after so many years.
But they were wrong, Dick remembers. And he kept the secret close to his heart and memories.
And the only physical evidence he had was a single picture of him holding his brother, a smile on his tiny face towards their father who had taken the photo of them together. When he had lost his parents, lost most of the things that connected him to them, to his past in the circus that had been his whole life, had been taken from him in Gotham’s ruthless childcare system, he held on tight to the picture in secret. Hid it away from anyone trying to rip it from him, hid it from Bruce when the man took him in days later, hid it from Alfred despite how gentle the butler was towards him. He couldn’t, wouldn’t risk losing his photo at the time, he hadn’t trusted anyone and by the time he did he didn’t have the heart to reveal it.
So yes, the existence of his baby brother Danny was his most guarded and best kept secret.
So that’s why Dick, as Nightwing, nearly died from a heart attack when leaving a Justice League meeting he spotted a familiar face among one of the new engineers working in the Watchtower.
It was like seeing a young version of himself. Only, Dick could see that the young man was more than a copy of him, so much more than a clone. He held many traces of John Grayson but also had a bit more of Mary Grayson than Dick did. Small details that Dick foggely remembers taking note when he had held his baby brother.
“Hey, hurry up with that report Gray!” Shouted the head engineer from down the hall, his hand beckoning the young adult to come over.
“Coming! And boss, I told you Danny is fine!” Danny shouted back before hurriedly leaving a stunned Nightwing.
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New place, same fight
Danny loves his friends, they have been with him since they were little and they have experienced too many things together, things that have helped them grow, things that only strengthen their friendship. Because Sam and Tucker were everything to him, as he was everything to them.
But at the same time, Danny could admit that he hated his friends; not always, but there were times where they wouldn't stop fighting, where they forced him to choose. The halfa could understand, Sam and Tucker had different world views, they saw different things and occasionally Danny thought they only got along because of him.
That was okay, he learned to live with them, to be the center of their arguments. And when they moved from Amity to Gotham, when they decided to rent an apartment together and go to the same college (which miraculously had all their majors), he thought everything would be fine.
It was idiotic of him. Because at the time he could only see a repeat of what had happened in high school; Sam was having a protest about the cafeteria menu and Tucker had organized the meat lovers (again), and the halfa knew how it was all going to end.
The point is, Danny was tired of repeating the same cycle, a cycle that apparently included Waylon and Poison Ivy fighting in the cafeteria at his new college (and how the hell did his friends manage to get the Rogues of Gotham into their fights?), so when he saw the people in bat suits he exploded.
When Sam and Tucker turned to ask his opinion he shook his head, pointed at Lunch Lady, who had her arms crossed and decided it wasn't his problem before disappear. Literally, no matter if half of Gotham was calling him meta, he was tired.
Red Robin gawked at him before turning his attention to Lunch Lady, who was gathering all the meat around her to form a giant meat monster. And Danny decided it wasn't his problem.
Apparently, Sam and Tucker decided that the bats could take care of it before they looked worried and started looking for Danny. It became obvious that the bats needed help when Danny looked at a giant meat monster two hours later, the halfa arched an eyebrow in dismay, weren't they supposed to be professional heroes? Lunch wasn't even trying...
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i’ve seen a few people claim Philip stripped caleb’s jacket off his body after his death as some morbid memento, but we already have his memories on the matter and he had caleb’s jacket pre-fight and was wearing it when he first arrived.
even in his shadow form you can make out he’s wearing the coat.
Not to mention caleb is never seen wearing it in any of the memories on the isles
Nah, as much as i know people love finding new ways to make philip even more morbid, if the story holds any weight, and it probably does, it seems far more likely caleb left it back on earth with philip. There’s no evidence to suggest philip stole it or rid him of it, but that caleb ditched it when he left.
and when philip assumed a witch kidnapped his brother, he put it on, probably as a form of comfort and keeping his brother close at a time where he assumed the worst could have happened to him. Kinda in the same vein of how luz was wearing eda’s jacket to keep her close during their separation.
It seems to be quite an important object to him, being what looks like his only link left to caleb as he was on earth. With the thought he also grew his hair out to have a ponytail like his older brother it appears to be less like “Stealing” and way more like a sign of what was originally his admiration and love for his brother.
A strong desire to be close to him and be like him through his appearance, tho only the version of him that he remembers best, which was the one back on earth...not the one that left him for the isles,
(Which def fuels even more why he didn’t appreciate luz insulting it, because it was basically also insulting the brother he’s trying so hard to recreate, the one that didn’t leave him)
This isn’t even out of character that philip likes to keep mementos of his brother, he even seems to have taken his old childhood mask his brother made him to the isles judging by his memories. Tho i’m sure the jacket holds more significance because it was caleb’s first specifically.
I think it’s definitely easy now to accuse Philip of every bad thing ever, and his obsession with his brother screams serious attachment issues. But it doesn’t appear he had that jacket on originally for anything but genuine love and care for him, at first at least.
There’s no evidence to suggest caleb told philip he was leaving, or any evidence that he even tried to talk to his brother about what was going on with him. As far as we know, he left, and philip, from his pov, went out to save the person he considers his entire world from what he believes might kill and/or hurt him.
And if philip wasn’t the villian of the show, i think a lot more people would be willing to sympathize with that part of his character.
His relationship with his brother has both a lot of resentment for leaving him behind and alone, but also a lot of the original love and admiration for him he held for years.
But with the knowledge he only became a hunter because he felt he needed to fit in with society for survival purposes, combined with the fact caleb was his only family and caretaker...while only being a few years older then him at the very least....you can see how this probably fueled so many of his issues.
Wanted to make a post about this cause while he deserves the crap for the bad stuff he actually does, it’s at least worth mentioning at one point he was just a naïve child raised in a bad community who originally just wanted to keep the one person he loved the most....safe.
and at one point, that jacket was not some morbid prize he got for what he did, or something he seemingly stole, or him trying to steal his brother’s look, it was originally just something he wore....because he did love him.
And to this day, he still kept it.
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