Things I Think About Late At Night

My friend claims it’s bc he’s such a huge feminist, has read all of the feminist literature books (he’s 6’4 btw)

So now bc he’s such a huge feminist he experiences periods so that he can t r u l y understand women (he’s 6’4 btw)

And I think that’s beautiful

Headcanon that bludhaven hates heroes with a flaming passion bc theyre just cops in tights but love Nightwing and therefore vehemently deny his hero status to anyone and everyone.

Like there is no official Nightwing merch bc he’s a criminal he’s committing a crime okay vigilante justice is in fact not legal and he’s not TECHNICALLY on the justice league and he’s NOT TECHNICALLY the leader of the titans anymore. But there are about 400 different Etsy stores that make hoodies, crop tops, joggers, sweats, sunglasses, bracelets, t shirts with nightwings logo or some art of him on them.

Like they love this guy and will get into beef with any Gotham national who tries to claim Nightwing is THEIR hero.

1) hes not a hero he’s a criminal fuck you

2) you have a hero and just bc he’s shit at his job and needs our guy (who is NOT a hero) to help him sometimes doesn’t MEAN SHIT

people are walking around with tiny v shaped blue tattoos or embroidered on clothing but again NOT A HERO BLUDHAVEN DOESNT DO HEROS

There are coffee shops with bad nightwing pun names nightbird, beanwing, nightwinging it and so on

Every third piece of graffiti is this man’s logo

Every sandwich place or fast food chain has a ‘secret menu item’ that’s not actually secret bc everyone orders it and it’s just one of their normal items dyed blue (sodas, desserts, burger buns, condiments so on) some places will sell wings fried in blue panko bread crumbs and call them them ‘nightwings’ ofc these are ALL off the menu you can’t see these items and if you try to order them out of the city you get weird looks.

Superman goes on tv and says Nightwing is one of his favorite hero’s and bludhaven riots. wtf nightwing is your favorite hero you fuckin poser

1) nightwing isn’t a hero he’s a criminal so back off

2) he’s ours you and your frou frou fancy city that hasn’t been nuked by a sentient pile of radiation can fuck RIGHT off

Naturally the only person in bludhaven who is unaware of this is Dick Grayson bc tbh this man is too busy to give a fuck about what his city thinks of him. They trust him to get shit done. Good that’s all he needs okay he has 22 reports he needs to log he’s busy.

Tim Drake professional nightwing fanboy however is fucking furious about this because.

A) dick was a GOTHAM hero FIRST and bludhaven can suck it

B) fuck you nightwing isn’t just a a hero he’s THE HERO and the BEST hero and don’t be rude bc you have a complex

C) all of the cool nightwing merch only ships around bludhaven so has to get it ordered there and it’s just a hassle and he’d pay double he swears just let him get it delivered to where he is please Everytime he stops by bludhaven he leaves with 10 new pieces of nightwing merch and bc he has so much. Damian doesn’t think he notices when some of his doubles mysteriously go missing. He does.

D) since they are anti hero they are firmly unhelpful whenever he or Steph show up bc a case has lead them to the city

The one plus side was watching Jason Todd having a mental breakdown bc apparently in bludhaven redhood counts as a hero and is therefore hated.

“Yous worked with the bat yous a hero thems the rules”

“I KILL PEOPLE”

“Yeah so do cops and people always call them heroes”

“Okay but I kill people to protect the general public I put down scum”

“Cops say they do that too”

“I- okay you know what I’m a hero fine okay. Why isn’t nightwing a hero”

“Vigilante justice is a crime”

“I’m documentably worse than a vigilante”

“But you have worked with the bat”

“For money yeah”

“See you even get paid, face it you’re a hero which means you suck”

“You realize Nightwing has worked with the bat right like way more than I have”

“Listen that ain’t his fault okay, the bats incompetent and so are the rest to you idiots. He’s a nice guy and a good neighbor don’t mean he’s a hero”

“I- what the fuck is in this cities water”

“I don’t fuckin know but it’s prolly better than whatever gothams got in its harbor”

“I- yeah you’re probably right”

Dick and Jay: the early days

young! Jason: Dude how do you deal with all the assholes at these fucking events. One dude just asked me how much Bruce pays me a night to 'keep quiet'

Barely 18 Dick Grayson: who asked you that?

y!Jay: I think his name was Mr. Devonfeild

DG: ahh okay *walks away*

Jay: wha? where are going??

DG who is sleeping off a drinking binge him a Roy had at titans tower and cannot be asked to deal with assholes rn: Oh im gonna fuck his wife

Jay: huh?

i think anyone who’s interested in dick and bruce’s relationship should read batman/nightwing: bloodborne. even if you don’t read comics like that. even if you don’t care about them. it will change your life. it is one single issue and it will fuck you up for the rest of time i PROMISE. if you don’t know how to get the comic literally just ask me i will give you every link that exists to read it i’ve been spreading the gospel on twitter for months. PLEASE…. issue about dick having to save bruce at potentially the cost of his own life on the anniversary of the graysons dying… i’m sick

Can we please stop with the angsty everyone hates me Tim Drake stuff??

Tim is only fun as a dorky loser with the smartest mouth you’ve ever had to hear

Tim ‘damn sucks what happened to that not dick grayson Robin imagine getting blown up that’s so cringe fail lol couldn’t be me im just better ig?’ Drake.

Tim ‘it doesn’t count as cheating if I date one girl as Robin and one as Tim’ Drake?

Tim ‘me and my friends accidentally killed Santa and instead of telling anyone we all just work together to deliver Christmas gifts around the world so that no one notices’ Drake.

Tim ‘my parents love me and are busy Drake which means I must break into Dick Graysons and Kori Anders apartment bc I am a nepo baby who doesn’t need to make money and have nothing better to do that stalk people’ Drake

Tim skater boy Drake

Tim who definitely tells people he listens to indie music and pulls up arctic monkeys while actually listening to indie music he’s just doing this bc it makes purists cringe.

Dick and Tim are brothers and love each other (and yeah even though the Morrison run and Red Robin and spyral happened they still do)

Tim and Damian have a way better relationship now than when Damian was 10

Tim and Jason have the vibe that someone made Jason apologize for titans tower and Tim got so embarrassed cuz like tell me not everyone thinks the loser Robin beat him up that badly?? Like tossed him around sure, won…sure but it wasn’t that uneven? Right?

People would notice if Tim went missing the last time he was left alone unsupervised he lost a spleen and had a weird relationship with Ras al ghul. Also… they’re bats… they track everything??? They track the gram weight to the last digit of their protein powders in their heads.

Brother had one (1) angst arc. Okay

It’s done

Can we go back to slay fun Tim?? Plz

You wrote about murder?? Murder is illegal?? You wrote about this dude killing someone and you didn’t even say ‘murder is bad’ at the start of the book, wht wtf, wtf is wrong with you? I can’t believe you condone murder, I can’t believe you’re pro murber, oh my fucking God don'ttalk to me when ou literally kill people, freak. I’m calling the cops, what the fuck, I’m shaking and crying.

Okay but imagine for a second

You’re Bruce Wayne, Batman

The richest, smartest man in every room you have walked into since you turned 20

Every bit of information is at the tip of your fingertips money, brawn and brains are no object

And then you take in a child

Named Dick Grayson

From the circus, who has the most flimsy proof of his existence you’ve ever seen with a birth certificate that looks too worn to properly make out the parents named without knowing them before.

No passport despite traveling all over the globe

No form of identification

So you give the kid an ID and everything is fine

He becomes Robin

Joins a team

Becomes nightwing

Runs all the teams

Becomes Batman

Runs himself into the ground

And then Dicks in his 20s and he’s sick

Really sick

It’s not viral, fungal, parasitic or bacterial

No one else you know has this

And he’s getting sicker

He can’t walk without help and spends all his days wrapped up in blankets fighting off never ending shivers.

He mixes up his brothers names and sometimes outright forgets some of the kids

He didn’t recognize Kori a few weeks ago and hasn’t remembered her since

So Everytime he blearily asks “who are you again?” They All answer with the knowledge that this might be the him decaying blue eyes don’t spark with recognition

The first time it happened it was horror and tears “an Oh my god! I’m so sorry I love you you’re my brother” over time it’s devolved into an “oh right…hi Jason”

And the doctors ask for his family history

Maybe. Maybe there is something that could save him, bring him back or stop this descent… this fall from happening to the most untouchable man that’s ever lived.

(Tim threw up after he saw Dick burst into tears, head resting on Alfred’s shoulder when he realized he couldn’t walk without help- they need to stop this)

So they dig

And dig

And dig

And nothing

There’s no evidence of the Graysons before John, the Lloyd’s before Mary.

Neither had been to a doctor anytime in the states at least

Bruce had redone all of Dicks vaccines once he acquired guardianship of him.

There was nothing

Nothing on his aunts or the uncle that was his namesake

There’s just nothing

Bruce realizes he doesn’t even know Dicks ethnic background. 1000s of tests he’s ran and he doesn’t even know if Dick has ever been to his parents home countries

They do every test they can come up with to try and fake a comprehensive family history

Mary Grayson was a fake name

So way John

They don’t know the real ones

Bruce finds out the mother of his son is Syrian and Romani and the boys first father is Afghani and Italian.

He finds out Mary’s father fled from Syria during the 60s and settled in Germany

He finds out that John Grayson and his brother were orphans together

He can’t even tell you which one of them gave Dick his blood type.

He knows everything

He’s the smartest man in every room he’s ever walked into

And he won’t be able to save his son

Because the boy who holds Bruce Wayne’s very heart in his hands knows that the best way to stay in the shadows is simply to show so little everyone will fill in blank spots with jarring inaccuracies so seamlessly they won’t even notice they did it.

They’ve called everyone

And Dick just keeps getting sicker

Being trans and working in an office is funny sometimes

there tends to be a kind of under estimation in regards to dick’s attitude towards his parents. they’re more often used as The Reason for his path of heroism, and that’s true enough, but it’s a very focused Reason that often fails to include the actual Loving Parents. i would argue that thomas and martha wayne get more attention in regards to their loving on bruce, and in certain time traveling corners on dick as well, but it’s rare to see that kind of respect paid to john and mary grayson. the parallels we can draw between bruce and dick pretty much end after dick is taken in. we can count: loving parents; stable family structure; only child; bright future; horrific murder of parents; witness to said murder; and plot for vengeance as the core parallels between dick and bruce. where they begin to diverge is the point in which bruce becomes the guiding mentor for dick in how to channel that sense of grief and rage (though bruce had alfred, alfred played no part in diverting bruce from his self destructive path and encouraged it)

to that end, there’s a lot of talk about martha wayne’s pearls and mary grayson’s robin, but even then talk seems to only center around dick’s hero name and never what about the history the name implies. “robin stands for hope”, okay what else? martha’s pearls symbolize the catalyst for bruce’s transformation into batman, but does mary’s robin do the same? i think not, bc going back to the divergence between bruce’s and dick’s origins, though bruce remains the defining fork in the road for dick, if dick were raised in extremely similar circumstances as bruce, bruce would have more or less fulfilled the role that alfred did for bruce- which was mainly distant but caring adult figure that served to simply agree rather than direct. a reasonable conclusion, should bruce have fulfilled such a role for dick, would have been that dick should’ve become bruce #2. obviously, dick didn’t and the reason for that lies in john and mary grayson

this may ruffle some feathers, but there is a point to be made in the difference between the wayne parents and the grayson parents. let’s do some quick if thens: if alfred was left in charge of bruce, then alfred holds some responsibility in how bruce turned out. if bruce grew up to be someone emotionally closed off, then bruce is an emotionally distant, closed off adult. if bruce is an emotionally distant, closed off adult, then it stands to reason alfred reflects the same. so, if bruce and alfred are both emotionally distant, closed off adults, then when they take in dick grayson, dick will grow up to be an emotionally distant, closed off adult. right?

well, we all know that’s not how it turned out, and all reason for such a conclusion reside solely in the short time john and mary grayson raised their son. “but bruce had about the same time with his own parents. why did he and dick turn out so different?” and again i point directly at the implied differences in the wayne’s and grayson’s child rearing! the waynes represented a very nuclear family, one that is generationally upper class and in very prominent leadership positions. tracking the assumed and typical rearing patterns for that kind of family, though it may be a foundationally loving one, it’s also one that is radically different from the type the graysons represented. power and job structure rested solely with thomas and martha; bruce had very very little to worry about or any responsibilities other than making good grades and being a generally good son. comparing such a dynamic to the graysons, the power lines begin to blur a little. john and mary are employees, not leaders or heads of anything. however, they work in an extremely team oriented and cooperative environment- their earnings depend on everyone and themselves. though a prominent act in haly’s circus, they are not a completely solo one, and even then, it is a team, FAMILY act. since his birth, dick has been raised in an environment that focuses heavily on teamwork and perseverance. he took on enormous responsibility in being a part of the flying graysons, which likely wasn’t something he was being forced to do, young as he was. taking on a JOB as young as 9 years old, one that tests his physical, mental, and emotional strength sets him drastically apart from bruce when he was the same age. but let’s go back to john and mary again

no parent on earth would ever want to put their child in such a dangerous position as performing on the trapeze. and yet, john and mary did. why? dick’s initiative and his parents’ trust and strength. if john and mary believed that they lacked in some way that could put dick in harms way, i find it impossible to believe they would have ever let dick join them. dick did not learn his strength and endurance from bruce. dick already possessed those qualities before meeting him, otherwise dick would have never become robin and joined batman so quickly. the graysons set an ENORMOUS example for dick, one that set the tone for the rest of his life. taking into account the “it takes a village” familial structure that dick was raised in while with haly, dick would have learned that the strength of individuals COMBINED is what makes a person strong. even the formation of the flying graysons relies on trust in each other, that they will be caught in the next leap and that they can do these amazing stunts without fear of failure BECAUSE of the Faith they have in each others abilities. in addition to that, an environment that encourages strength and teamwork must also encourage FAILURE. one cannot learn from perfection- only through mistakes does one grow, and dick grew EXPONENTIALLY. dick grew, at the age of 9, to PRODIGY levels of talent and acrobatics. john and mary set an example so strong and so steadfast that it fostered dick’s stone-solid character for the rest of his life, even after they were gone from it

dick would have not survived his parents’ deaths were it not for the way they had raised him. it is why dick can move on and grow from it, whereas, as we’ve seen a dozen dozen times, bruce has failed to ever move on. coddled and adored as he was, bruce never had to face a challenge that his parents wouldn’t have gladly taken care of for him. the waynes did everything for their son because they loved him enormously, and what parent in the world would force their child to do difficult things- especially at 10 years old? of course bruce never had to confront things like failure or hardship before, his circumstances in life simply wouldn’t have allowed for it, and that is why bruce was so incapable of handling his parents’ deaths. thomas and martha did not prepare bruce for difficulties in any department, whereas john and mary introduced problems AND solutions to dick very early on. the SOLUTIONS bit is what set up dick for so much success- that’s the key difference between the two. dick had both parents AND guides, while bruce just had parents

dick would not have become a light in the world while with bruce were it not for john and mary grayson and their love and dedication towards their son. the credit for dick’s achievements as a hero may fall to bruce most of the time, but even bruce recognizes that he had zero part in the formation of dick’s strength of character. dick’s continued success and perseverance has EVERYTHING to do with those first 9 years he was with john and mary, and not a single one of the innumerable tragedies dick has endured has ever been able to disavow that