Like I Love An AU Right So If You Wanna Write About If War Games Never Happened And Gotham Didn’t Try

Same aesthetic as starfire but with the Nightwing color palette

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Sorry to bother you, but I’m trying to get into comics and I was wondering if you had any comic recs? Your takes on the characters seem really interesting so I kinda wanted to know you’re favorite runs/ what you find interesting or important.

Thank you for your time, and have a nice day!

Hi dear! My advice is

Fuck everyone. If something sounds cool you can start there hell the first comic I finished was Grayson? Find your lil guy/girl and go for it!

If you wanna be more linear or if you wanna start reading about a character that you don’t know that much about then genuinely the best piece of advice I’d give you is literally go “Nightwing/arsenal/flash/batgirl/stephanie brown/cassandra Cain/literally pick a hero or civilian name it doesn’t even matter reading order Reddit” that’s literally how i got started

If you want my opinion, I’d avoid the new 52 for one of your first series. Despite all the shit I give the new 52 a lot of it is fun. But the best way I can put it! Is that a lot of the characters only exist in the new 52

Like dick and Jason are entirely different motherfuckers in the new 52. Dick specifically?? Wearing red?? Atrocious

My personally favorite runs right now are a mix of fun new stuff and older classics (and mostly Dick Grayson sue me if you have seen my lil account you know by now I am a dick Grayson Stan first human second call me Tim Drake)

This starts in a certain order and slowly devolves I’m sorry I tried! But… not that hard

-Batman year 1

- Batman and Robin year 1 (2024) - my son is adorable here

-batman the long Halloween

- absolute Batman (honestly all of the absolute verse the Wally stuff is looking really promising so far tho I won’t co-sign it yet)

- Robin year 1

-worlds finest! (Thank you Dan mora we all say in unison)

- Nightwing year 1

- teen titans (yes including Judas contract)

- new teen titans

- Nightwing 1996 (ik Dixon is a lil bitch but I like this run)

-outsiders (2003) - DickRoy divorce arc my beloved

- now technically you need to read rebirth but I fucking hated the himbofication of my son so read at your own risk

- Batman and Robin 2009 (villain Jay Jay my son)

-NIGHTWING ALL IN (the moment they de-lobotomized him I lost my marbles)

- supersons (cute, light hearted, adorable, if Damian doesn’t become a favorite of yours after this I’ll write you an apology note)

- Batman: under the red hood

- Grayson (this comic fucking sucks but I’m a sucker for this genre of super spy also the ART STYLE)

-Batman hush (also the new hush bc I like Jason’s suffering)

YOU DONT NEED TO READ ALL OF THIS!!!! If you want a lazy way to get all the background info! Fandom wikis exist! Literally pick and drop whatever you want. If anyone judges you! They suck!

Also some of these aren’t good!! (Grayson) the fandom doesn’t like em but I LIKE EM! They’re fun! My

My takes on characters changes depending on like the era I’m reading and even the comic I’m reading (for example Jason is currently my son my lil baby boy and a month ago I wanted them to blow him up again) but I might make a post detailing like my actual canon only opinion of certain characters (mainly titans and core batfamily)

Anyway HAVE FUN AND HAPPY READING :D

Sometimes you find a piece of tumblr history and you have no choice but to preserve it

Slutshaming women is not ok Slutshaming Alexander Hamilton is totally ok Tumblr logic

Please Donna doesn’t even make the list she’s so far above literally everyone else in his life.

That’s his platonic soulmate

Bitches be like: Dick's favourite sibling is Damian, Dick's favourite sibling is Tim, Dick's favourite sibling is Cas. Meanwhile we all know that his favourite is Donna Troy

I fear twitter has infected by brain bc my only thought is 'that one friend who is too woke'

just so you know, you have some followers who enjoy/write fanfiction. not saying their urls rn bc i don’t wanna air out dirty laundry in public but if you want them so you can block and report, just say the word and i’ll dm you a list

You need to count your days.

what have I done to deserve this :(

I’ll give you Battinson! Bruce listening to those bands or even absolute Batman

however if we are doing 40yr old man Bruce I fear you’ll only get a mullet rock agreement from me. I’m talking

-Kansas

-Asia

-Van Halen

-Scorpions

-Survivor

As for the R&B (so based on what I like 90s Selina would like)

I’ll give you

-Mary J Blige

-Whitney Houston (my beloved)

- and while I hold that this is more rap than R&B Lauryn Hill

- (if we were to go into 80s or 2000s I’d add The Bee Gees and Amy Winehouse)

As for Jason, hes a bastard (also my beloved) so id say he listens to most music but he has strong favorites. However, Jason’s the type of dude who has cried to Taylor swift drunk and he refuses to admit it to anyone. (Both Dick and Roy were there and they have so many recordings)

And his favorite outside of the rap genre is Celine Dion. No he will not admit it without a gun to his head, actually not even then.

Every single member of the Batfamily lies about their taste in music

Damian will claim that he only listens to classical music and that everything else is beneath him.

Damian will unironically listen to trashy Arab pop and the absolute worst Bollywood songs known to man (Dick introduced him to them and he hates the fact that sometimes he gets Sheila Ki Jawani stuck in his head during missions)

Tim will put on the most ear grating hyper pop you've ever heard and claim with full chest that these is the peak of humanities capabilities with music (Damian, Jason and Steph have all tried to kill him for this take) He will also play stuff like the living tombstones and sing it obnoxiously loud when he's working on the computer.

Tim however loves his 90s grunge and it's all that's playing in his headphones. (think nirvana, pearl Jam, Melvins, Alice in Chains etc) He has tracked down so many shirts and concert posters and watched every bit of content from the older shows.

Jason will claim he only listens to east coast rap, biggie, Nas, Jay etc and maybe some older metal. He will fight you on east vs west coast music, there will be weaponry involved.

Jason likes rap music... he unfortunately prefers west coast rap and has listened to no vaseline like 500 times. He will deny this till the day he dies...again. (Dick knows and threatens to tell Steph)

Steph will steal the aux and play Taylor Swifts greatest hits until one of the Boys threatens mutiny. Every single one of the bats has had style stuck in their heads during a stakeout at least twice. She will claim that the only rap song she can tolerate in Eminem and the 7/11 is Beyoncés best song.

Steph is an underground fan, think the dude selling mixtapes on the subway type shit. She also unlike Jason genuinely loves East Coast Rap music more than anything and knows every single wu-tang clan song by heart, same with Biggie. Not only does she love the music she also spends any free time binging those "history of rap and its consequences" videos and has been a firm believer that P.Diddy had a hand in a lot of the Death row records well...deaths.

Cass, well everyone thinks Cass has really good taste bc its Cass and she has zero flaws (don't @ me) she never takes the aux and will usually listen to her music while she's chilling or doing stretches. None of them have heard or seen a single one of her playlists except Duke.

its all 2010s top 40s pop music and like the trashy kind too, Beauty and the Beat, Kesha, Katy Perry. It's her turning of her brain time and she will be straight vibing to Rude! by magic or Boom Clap or Shower. she has shown this to Duke, smirked and told him that even if he tried to tell anyone they wouldn't believe him.

Duke is the only one who doesn't... lie. He just hides a few things. Lies of omission don't count as lies when the bats will lie to you about what they had for breakfast, while they are visibly eating breakfast. Duke says he listens to everything and he does. Literally everything. His patrol Jam is offensive bc it with start with Norwegian death metal and immediately switches to "like a G6" followed by kendrick Lamar and then descendants Disney channel movie music.

Bruce... Bruce is just weird, everyone asks him and gets a different answer. Bc he doesn't... like music. Like at all. It's all noise, his mother played instruments so he learned like 14 and he hates how they all sound. He just like vague batwings fluttering in dead silence.

Dick Grayson will obnoxiously play top 40 and radio music religiously around the bats. He claims it's the best music for rhythmic acrobatics and trapeze work and that true! Jason hates this kind of music the most, it's formulaic and holds no substance and drives him insane.

But Dick only listens to that music when he's moving, flipping doing high energy stuff. When he just wants to chill? This man has the most depressing music taste you've ever seen. You know that sad song from ur favorite artist that you can't listen to without crying. Yeah that's his bread and butter. Every single song is just flat out tear inducing, some of these bands have like 100 listeners and he is one of them and it's just their saddest song that reads like suicide note. The titans have conducted an intervention bc its just... concerning. He just thinks it's neat!

I like to think that dick always hugs or shows physical contact when he's with his friends or family when they come to visit him cuz he doesn't know whether they are real or a hallucination

Me when some of yall post about Dick Grayson and Roy Harper angst unprompted on a regular Tuesday

Tumblr already has a personalization algorithm it's called my beloved mutuals who have great taste and only wish to psychologically damage me sometimes

I am hijacking this post to rant about my fave one sec

AND this is why Batman’s greatest success in his opinion is Nightwing.

Because Dick Grayson is whoever you need him to be at that moment. While Batman can switch from a chemist to a physicist to a professor to a doctor to a billionaire. Fundamentally his character is the same he will not change or accommodate for anyone even his children. He is rigid in character if not skill. And he accidentally raised his oldest son to fill in those grooves, to alter himself perfectly to fit into the position required of him.

It’s why Nightwing as a hero is so revered. Because he is a leader, solo hero, spy, teammate, brother, father figure, son, support. He’ll erase the gaps that are flawed in the dynamic by changing his tone, behavior, skill set etc.

Superman needed to train his son he went to Dick Grayson

They needed to soften the assassin characters (Cass and Damian) dick was either a support or main presence in their initial development.

He’s the de facto leader of any of the second gen teams

It’s why he can still work well with his siblings bc while he won’t accommodate Jason’s killing he’s willing to work with him at a middle ground. Him and Tim have almost always had a phenomenal relationship because Nightwing is trained to cover up the gaps and the in between. The nooks and crannies of character compromises the other characters wouldn’t either bc of stubbornness or bc of simple inability to do so.

It’s why his undercover runs are so interesting

Bc he’s a chameleon character

Bc he needed to accommodate for Batman his entire life (ahh parentification our old friend)

The thing about “Good Dad Bruce Wayne” and “Bat-Dad” is….that’s the dream. I love any and all depictions of Bruce Wayne that prioritize him DOING THE WORK to be a good father to his kids.

I never look for reasons to criticize Bruce or his parenting. My frequent bitching and moaning about him and how he’s written comes from one place and one place only:

IMO a lot of the time, instead of writing Bruce putting in the WORK to be the PARENT, people just write him being 70% of the problem and only 30% of the solution and call that ‘good enough.’ Because hey, at least he’s trying to be part of the solution and fix his mistakes and be better for his kids, and isn’t that the most anyone can ask for?

Well, no. Its not. Especially since with the exception of Damian, Bruce chose each and every one of his kids with full knowledge of what he was doing. He doesn’t GET to do the bare minimum, even when his kids require more effort than the norm, like the situations with Jason sometimes are beyond the ordinary. There’s no quota to parenting. 

The thing about Bruce Wayne is he is pretty much the most competent individual in the DC universe. He has more resources available at his disposal than any other parent can dream of. He has excelled at every thing he’s ever put his mind to….

Except, often times….being a parent.

And parenting is not somehow inherently more impossible than saving the world every other week. Its just not. It literally is just: put your kids first. 

And that is what Bruce is written as failing to do, time and time again. That is almost unilaterally where every single one of his conflicts with his children come from.

When he puts his own fear of rejection over Dick’s fear of abandonment, and refuses to reach out to Dick, beg him to come home, ask him to stay.

When he puts his own moral choices over Jason’s need to be understood, to have a father who can coexist with him and his choices when that very same father has at many times reconciled working with heroes with vastly different moral codes and even body counts of their own.

When he puts his own discomfort with emotional conversations and expressions of affection over Tim’s need for concrete gestures and reassurances that his parent needs and wants him in his life.

And so on.

These things are all actionable. They are all based on choices Bruce can make, and at many times just chooses not to. They all demand one thing and one thing only, the one thing that is expected of parents who take on the responsibility of a child that they and they alone are responsible for the wellbeing of:

Put. Them. First.

And falling short of that, when there’s every opportunity to do the work…is Bruce’s failure. It just is. Its not on his kids. He is the parent. Always and forever, with each and every one of them. That is what he signed up for. THEY did not. Kids don’t have the same power and choices about where they end up as the parents do when deciding that where they end up should be with them. And that can’t be disregarded. Bruce’s kids, as much as they love and appreciate him, are not ultimately the ones who arranged to be tied to Bruce for the rest of their lives, even if they all accepted that and wanted that in their own ways. He was the one with the actual power to make those choices, and to quote DC’s competition:

With great power comes great responsibility.

Bruce’s kids will always have less power than him purely in the context of their relationships with him, because the yearning for a parent’s approval exists on a wholly different level than anything a parent can need or get from their child - especially when they have multiple children but those multiple children each only have the one parent they’re all desperately hoping for the approval of. As well as when each of those multiple children arrive in Bruce’s life already burdened with issues born of abandonment and abuse and neglect that aren’t Bruce’s fault….but from the second Bruce stepped up and volunteered to be their parent, still very much became his responsibility all the same.

Bruce’s kids will always, always, always have more to lose, when there’s any conflict between them and their father.

And the thing that frustrates me so much about how Bruce is written in both canon AND fanfics….

Is how often the narratives cut corners and emphasize the blame and responsibility of his children and make them settle….for just ‘good enough’ from him. For ‘well at least he’s trying.’ For ‘he’s not perfect.’ 

He doesn’t need to be perfect.

But he needs to be the parent.

And personally, I will never be satisfied by narratives that feel like they make more attempt to coddle him and say its okay to just do the bare minimum, as long as he’s making an effort…than they do to make him step up and do the work, put his kids before his own issues.

He’s not the child. So stop treating him like one. Stop writing his kids being more mature than him. Stop saying his children are ‘equally at fault’ for him refusing to make them a priority and any issues of insecurity and abandonment and hurt they feel because of this. Stop expecting his oldest children to act as buffers for his younger children and do the parenting he refuses to do at times, and stop only treating them like his equal when it allows for them to victimize him in some way, with the story treating them like the aggressors and him the misunderstood recipient of their emotional harm and neglect.

Bruce Wayne has more social power and resources and skills and intelligence than just about any other human in the DC universe….his children included. Please can we just start holding him to the standards that kind of power should entail? Instead of looking to his children to always make up the difference for the times he refuses to be accountable, or a narrative refuses to hold him responsible for his own behavior and poor choices?

I WANT Good Dad Bruce Wayne.

I’m just tired of seeing ‘emotionally stunted surly teenager who makes his family’s lives far more difficult than they need to be and then awkwardly hugs them and grunts out an apology in the last paragraph to make up for it’….and being told: that’s Good Dad Bruce Wayne too.

No. Its not. I know what actual Good Dad Bruce looks like, and that ain’t it. Do better. Make him do better.