#also i do like brudick but i VASTLY prefer jaytim if we're talking batcest in general

[vivi-scera]

hi hi! so i just found your answer to an ask about johndean, and i got immensely surprised when you mentioned about batman and robin, which i assume bruce and dick, not the other batman and robin combination, and im curious about what do you think about them! i quite recently got into comics, and im so fascinated by their mutual codependency and dick's devotion towards bruce, and how bruce sees dick as his peer/partner despite their age differences before growing into a more parental role, and i wanna hear your opinions abt them :D

hey so. come off anon so we can make out.

dick grayson, the first robin and batman's lacanian phallus. ugh many things to say and think about. i wasn't necessarily referring to just bruce and dick— i think all of the subsequent robins have their own neat fucked-up relationships with bruce, in each their own ways. more fucked-up in that they see him as more their father than dick does, like you mentioned. i like thinking about jason-robin's relationship with bruce the most but i like tim as robin best. i think i was mostly thinking bruce/jason since i was talking about johndean but since you asked about bruce/dick i'll expand on them the most.

some may think brudick is the least problematic of all the possible bruce/son pairings since dick doesn't necessarily think of bruce as his father. which is true, he already had a good relationship with his father and didn't need/want a replacement in bruce like the other robins do. but a huge part of his characterization (during his robin years at least) is his insistence on being bruce's equal. you'll see tons of canon material— tv shows, comics, games, etc.— wherein dick insists that he's batman's partner, not his sidekick. many such connotations about the word "partner" as we all know. and there are popular interpretations about the queer subtext in batman comics. guy who cannot be his true self in the public sphere and thus parades around in fetishistic costumery in secrecy. you know how it is. but not only in batman's character— there was a huge outcry about the homoerotic imagery/subtext between batman and dick-robin in the 40's and 50's (see The Seduction of the Innocent), so I'm not pulling this shit out of my ass. not that i'm saying there's canon truth/weight to these interpretations. they are just that. interpretations.

anyway. not only is dick batman's partner, he's also bruce's partner. his lighter, brighter counterpart. bruce sees himself in dick, and also wants to prevent dick from becoming him (see young justice season 1 episode 22 for THE BEST interpretation of batman/dick's relationship. or just young justice in general). no one else is bruce's partner/equal quite like dick is (jason, tim, etc. are more his sons as mentioned. and they also, unlike dick, possess the fault of actually wanting to become batman, or some version of him). just as batman is responsible for robin's creation, so does robin-dick, in turn, shape batman's character. bruce didn't make dick his/a son as much as dick-robin made bruce-batman a dad. just maybe not his own father. fucked-up of dick to be jealous of jason getting bruce's fatherly-attention but not necessarily even wanting it himself. but it's okay, he made him a father! dick himself, in being the first to create robin, might even be the father-mother of bruce's other children and therefore has a higher role as batman's literal partner. one of my favorite developments in comics EVER is dick becoming damian's pseudo-father/batman. the first quasi-son becoming a father figure to his mentor-father's biological son. canonically, dick even wanted to adopt damian. but none of this can/does make dick bruce's true equal (bruce's true equal is batman, and vice-versa). i'm going to be actively problematic and say that bruce sees dick as something less than his partner and something more than his son. i'd LOVE to see a fic that explores dick's drive to become batman's equal/partner and the proverbial wires crossing because of that drive. i think at this point i'm just gonna have to write it myself 😔.

speaking in a meta-narrative sense, dick was introduced as batman's foil. robin (not necessarily dick, just the role) must project an idealized image of that which must be protected. he is representative of the hope that batman has in not only gotham's future, but his own. there is no point in batman if he doesn't believe he can save the future. in batman managing to save robin, he succeeds in saving gotham. but i mean, does that ever really happen? does batman ever really "save" robin/gotham? if the nature of robin is that which must be protected, robin is also a representative role that must be preserved in order to allow batman to save (and fail in order to save) gotham over and over and over again. robin exists/represents a future gotham that doesn't need batman and stands as a reminder to batman what he chooses to fight for, but robin cannot occupy that future himself (since robin is a condition created by batman and can't exist without him. a perfect gotham would neither need robin or batman. the existence of robin implies that there is a gotham that needs saving and that there is a batman that needs to save gotham). so herein lies the paradoxical tragedy of dick grayson. he needs to grow up in order to be batman's equal (and/or to be his partner in the romantic sense), but batman needs robin to justify his existence. robin, the role, by definition cannot grow up in order to meet his own condition for existence— he cannot exist in the future. when the boy behind the mask is killed/grows up, he ceases to be robin and someone else fills in the role. even when dick grayson grows up and becomes batman himself, he still cannot meet bruce-batman as his equal.

there's a great btas episode "the trial" that explores the idea that batman's existence is the condition that creates the very villains he's meant to stop. whether i agree with that statement is another topic. but it's an interesting and valid idea nonetheless. if robin symbolizes all that is at risk of and must be protected from "perversity" (both in the connotative and literal meaning of the word) what does it mean when the birth of batman is representative of gotham's perversion? you can see why i have issues with the statement that batman is the real cause of all evil in gotham. while i think that it's true that batman is a perversion he is just as much a persona created to do good and does succeed in doing good. he is, very much, the john winchester of comics if you'd like to think about it that way.

anyway this totally got too meta-y, sorry. i do think each robin's relationship with bruce brings up some more interesting questions i'd love to explore (and be asked to explore!!!). can batman ever save robin/jason? can robin/tim ever save batman? as damian, son of bruce, what does it mean to be robin, son of batman? thx for the ask <3

#batman #dc comics #dick grayson #brudick #what watching every batman tv show/movie playing every batman game and reading/about every batman comic does to a mf #also i do like brudick but i VASTLY prefer jaytim if we're talking batcest in general #they are the unnamed narrator and rebecca with the maxim de winter standing between them #lolita4lolita etc. #even anakin-luke and obi-wan according to my mutuals #vivi.asks