I’ve seen a lot of people talk about jump b4 looking Grayson vs meticulously planning everything Grayson
And my final conclusion is
If dick is reeling from a loss (Donna, Bruce) he becomes callous and scarifies shit to the mission
If Dick is the main one in charge he is meticulously planning everything to make sure everyone is okay
If hes alone (not solo like alone, there is no one who gives enough of a fuck to catch him) he’s gonna rely on the spontaneity
.. Approved? Disapproved?
Discuss
Baby
This is actually peak omg
the first ever ric grayson x roy harper fic <3 i'm a trendsetter.
Sometimes I feel like us as the bat family fandom forget how starry eyed people get about Nightwing canonically.
Because with the exception of early era Tim most of the Batkids are like. lol that’s my loser older brother or some variation of yeah…he’s some guy I guess? He helps me with homework?
And Nightwing is the canonically a center of multiversal light.
When Heroes meet Nightwing they do the vigorous handshake and the “it’s an honor to meet you sir, I have heard so much about you oh my god”
There are so many character where they are literally shown giggling and kicking their feet whenever Nightwing talks to them.
Even the people who don’t have the celebrity level worship of him respect the hell out of him and call him as soon as they need help.
From raven to Starfire to Superman to Superboy to all or the flashes there is so much respect and awe given to this one dude.
And it is deserved
But imagine you are Damian Wayne and you’ve been working with what 90% of the people you’ve met (all bats) have been calling an embarrassment to your father’s legacy.
Your mother hates him and your Grandfather doesn’t feel that strongly about him.
The red hood calls him an embarrassment and a coward and he couldn’t even keep Red Robin from running away.
Your father tells him that he never should have been Batman
And you’ve worked with him and you know what you think everyone is full of shit about him and you and him the new Batman and Robin are the best no matter what anyone says.
And fuck it the fact he keeps going in a suit that everyone tells him he’s not good enough for is scratching something in your brain that you’re refusing to acknowledge because why would you feel that way? You are the circus freak have nothing in common (shut up)
And then you meet the justice league and all the extended teams.
And people are falling over themselves to listen to a word out of your brothers, your Batman’s mouth. They wait for a nod or headshake and dictate decades worth of planning on it.
Both Drake and Todd’s hero teams ask him for advice with or without their designated bats presence.
The man of steel asks for child rearing advice and wonder woman cracks a joke about a spar
Newer heroes whisper about him in the halls
He’s literally your favorite hero’s favorite hero
And it’s breaking Damian’s Brain
Because well… he kinda gets slapped around in Gotham. He’s the butt of half the jokes the other Batkids make and Dick just smiles and takes it.
The rogues have a bounty on nightwings ass and he gets leered at by goons, rogues, civilians and anti-hero’s alike and he doesn’t say anything.
He lets oracle crack jokes about a pretty face and having to do everything herself
Let’s Jason run the alley despite the fact that apparently he knows how to take it back
Apparently he’s had 12 people tailing Drake since Paris and despite being the man Ra’s Al Ghul calls detective has yet to notice. (Because you can’t tell me Dick was just magically at the right place to catch Tim falling to his death on coincidence)
And necessary to peace talks because he’s the best they have at deescalation
Like imagine you are a child who was raised to believe power is this obvious, all consuming thing. That the ones who control the board are visibly larger than life figures who fought their way to the top and cling to power by even the thinnest hangnail if they had to.
People who ignore simpler morals or an overall greater goal or good
And then you’re taken in by the man who whispers the correct answers into the larger than life figures ear.
Like I feel like that would have such an impact because Dick didn’t take power from anyone to reach his goals, it’s why his siblings don’t really defer to him unless in crisis.
Dick didn’t take power, no people just looked at him and decided he was the best option to give it to.
Everyone basically looked at this kid and went, yeah you’re the future of all heroism.
And if that dude can’t even get Bruce Wayne’s respect what chance does Damian Wayne have
Broke; the robins are better at the skill their predecessor struggle with
Woke: the robins pretend to suck at an unimportant civilian thing their predecessor was good at bc fuck you it’s boring
Dicks one will be Bruce for this thought experiment
Dick dropped out of business school Grayson
Jason can’t do a square root Todd
Tim last time i touched a book it physically burned me like it was garlic and I was a vampire Drake
Stephanie pretends she doesn’t know who the safari thingymagij works Brown
Damian knows slang and refuses to use it around he family give him mid 18th century terminology or give him death Wayne
just imagining tim sitting pretty at an anti cyber bullying rally knowing damn well he told someone to kill themselves cause they called nightwing’s flips “sloppy”
Tim: BULLYING IS WRONg
Tim on the Nightwing Snark Reddit page: What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little shit? Ill have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and Ive been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and Im the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. Youre fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and thats just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little clever comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldnt, you didnt, and now youre paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. Youre fucking dead, kiddo.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/27572416
hii here is another fic rec <333
I don’t think you have ever missed
Thank you for the kind donations . I am reading this on a 12 hour bus and trying not to be violently car sick….
Anyway big fan thank you
So Arizona launched an “education hotline” that allows “concerned parents” to report “””critical race theory””” and other things like ~gender identity~ being taught in the classroom
It would be a shame if the number and email were spread to bad actors looking to prank call the AZ Department of Education
602-771-3500 or empower @ azed .gov 🤡
Like I love an AU right so if you wanna write about if war games never happened and Gotham didn’t try to ruin itself once a week cool fine slay (keep Dick self destructing for years it’s good content idm)
But for the whole tarantula thing to HAVE an impact I feel like you have to acknowledge that he it never would have happed to a character as weathered as Dick (even at the time when a solo nightwing was supposedly more new to the scene)
But like no it only works when you see how many people died bc of blockbuster and how that weighed down on him as a person.
Blockbuster didn’t just ‘discover his identity’ Maxine Micheal’s was a big reason it happened and when Nightwing confronted her she got shot in the head in front of him
Dick figures out that they know his identity Like 4 issues before the blockbuster confrontation
When Firefly makes his first reappearance since no mans land to burn his circus down
This was after Babs, Tim and Cass had all been targeted
And then 1 issue later
Dick leaves earlier (and makes a bad daywing pun no im serious i love him) for patrol and then watches his apartment blow up. Which would be angsty by itself if you ignore the fact that
1) the dude (yoska- and they have like a weird relationship bc of ras al ghul and like he firmly believed he was dicks grandfather biologically and even when that was proven false he moved to bludhaven and admits he still considered them family) teaching dick his own language was in there
2) dick found his dead body in the rubble
3) dick actually bought the apartment building to keep it from being demolished and indirectly kept all those people in the building
Anyway you don’t NEED to read the comics imo as long as you engage with the other content like yeah you’re a dc fan if you like any of the animated properties but like why write about a plot point without knowing the surrounding moments doesn’t that take away from the premium angst content?
+ I didn’t really like or finish war games or his whole like let’s join the mob thing featuring the unironic name “crutches” after but come on the deathstroke and rose shit was so interesting!
Today in challenges for Nightwing fanfic writers - writing fic that makes it obvious the person has:
Actually read Nightwing #92-95 (1996)
Knows the context in which this story happens (what events precede this and which immediately follows it?)
Is aware what Batman characters have met Tarantula
Can outline the occasions when Dick and Catalina are in contact AFTER Nightwing #95
Heck can name literally any appearance for Tarantula after Nightwing #93 (1996)
Can explain the discussion Bruce and Dick have in Nightwing #117 (1996) and how that discussion relates to everything above, and what is not mentioned in that discussion
It shouldn’t be this hard.
My favorite thing about reading Dicks thought process vs literally how everyone else views him.
This is the least exaggerated version of this I will willing produce.
-older gen JL: thinks wing is dependable, charming, intelligent and a great leader, impressed how much he’s grown and how well he’s done in the hero world
Heroes his age: the golden standard that everyone tries to match up to and fails at one point in their sidekick-hood before accepting yeah I’m not Dick Grayson and having him lead them in a hero team. The defacto person to look towards in a crisis situation, manages tasks efficiently and doesn’t let personal details affect him. He’s cool, calm and collected while still being the most empathetic man on the planet.
Heroes younger than him: straight up awe. if the heroes who saw his awkward teenage phase, discowing and are privy to his love life info. How do you think people who just saw ‘Mr perfect’ without any of the painful growth to get there and since about 9 billion things have happened since Dick was Robin people have too much to talk about to ever bring it up. I see their thought processes going something like this
-oh my god is that nightwing like THE nightwing like Robins big brother nightwing like the leader of the titans nightwing is he looking at me oh my god he smiled at me wtf wtf wtf until they hyperventilate
(Source how Kow talks about dick Grayson like 99% of the time- ignore all Dan Dido works )
Batkids: awe with a side of insecurity bc that’s the gold standard and how tf are you supposed to get there. Even if you’re an amazing fighter like Cass, the leadership skills, ability to talk people down, make more allies than enemies, infiltrate, lie, cheat, steal, put on a million different masks and come out whole.
How does he know what he’s doing? How does he look so calm and collected when the worlds ending
Batman and Superman (remember when they co-parented in the 60s yeah me neither): like uncomfortable amounts of pride like the type of pride that feels too big for your chest as well as implicit trust.
For B specifically Dick is his crowing achievement as Batman
VS
Dick Grayson at any given moment pre Tom Taylor run: everything is my fault, I suck at everything, I’m never good enough to stop bad things from happening to the people I love it’s all my fault and I will never be able to stop it. My life is an accidental trolly problem except I didn’t know it when I started, I didn’t mean to press any levers I didn’t know what I was doing I am a burden who must make himself useful as an apology.
Like Dick is in a constant spiral of how much he hates his limits and how he just isn’t ever going to be strong,fast,smart or good enough while everyone is staring at him with heart eyes like omg it’s nightwing <3
I write bad Dick Grayson and TMA fanfiction on ao3 follow me @imtired_likerllytiredI literally keep creating and deleting accounts on this hellsite lurker since age 8
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