He's kind of an Asshole, and very Demisexual

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So I realize I haven’t really posted anything over here for a while now and I feel like I should probably explain why.

While Dick Grayson will ALWAYS be my favorite superhero, his fandom has just become so overwhelmingly toxic that I mostly stopped participating in it. And that goes for other Batfamily members as well. On top of that I haven’t been reading “Nightwing: Rebirth” due to the creative team so I’m kinda out of the loop at the moment.

This doesn’t mean I’ll never post here again or anything, and I’m still heavily involved with the DC fandom. In fact I still write metas and analyses over on @aqua-bam. At the moment however, I’m just separated from the Batfamily aspects of the DC fandom.

One day I’ll write a proper post explaining my grievances with romani Dick Grayson but as of right now I just want to remind the Gadje fandom of something:

Dick Grayson being rromani was introduced and written about by a racist.

Everytime this heritage is brought up Dc insult romani people in some way.

Rebirths handling of the rromani side of things was racist and it actually makes me sick that people (the Gadje) are saying this writing was somehow good.

Dick Grayson is not good rromani rep and most people within the community dislike/despise his inclusion.

So y'all keep making your edits with brown skinned Dick saying your fixing the problem[which is another issue entirely with Gadje fandom saying all rromani look the same] when you’re actually peptuating a racist stereotype of my people by supporting rromani Dick.

I’m so frustrated with the DC fandom and the complete lack of self awareness oozing from its depths.

I keep seeing people going “Grayson is trying to sexualize Dick and make him into a sex symbol” at the same time they’re basically foaming at the mouth at Marcus To because they want him to be Nightwing (but only with the fingerstripes because he’s not himself without them).

Like… Marcus To was celebrated in fandom for his sexy Nightwing art??? Also Nightwing has basically always been sexy/held up as a sex symbol on top of being an actual badass like… it’s been like twenty years and he’s been a sex symbol in comics far longer than Grayson existed.

It’s not just the artwork that upsets us, it’s the fact that Grayson is presenting a rape survivor as a malleable doll for the women in the story to oggle over. It’s the fact that all character development he had previously has been diminished down to “super sexy secret spy” who’s only sorta good at what he’s doing. It’s the fact that they have continued the trend of removing him from all of his associates when this is a man who thrives on his connections to friends and family.

i don’t like dick’s characterization or the plot or the insinuation that i’m too stupid to “get” the plot, but i understand that it’s a comic book, and things change, and i won’t always like every writer’s run. 

what i don’t understand is how it’s revolutionary to up the ante on non-consensual sexualization simply because it’s a male character. let’s be honest, all those scenes in which female characters would comment on dick’s ass in pre52? not…really…any different than what’s happening in new52, except in much higher frequency and degree of invasiveness. this isn’t a new angle. this isn’t a male writer being progressive. this is still depicting female sexual interest as predatory when it can be welcomed instead.

I didn’t actually know about it until I got this ask because I didn’t watch the Rebirth panel. [It’s here if anyone wants it.]

I mean, now that I know about it I’m just rubbing my temples because it confirms what I’ve been telling everyone for years: that Dick is being written below his skill level.

The primary reason the New 52 annoyed me in respect to the Batfamily is the lack of relationships between the Robins and their mentor. The fact that they were shuffled in so quickly and their relationships were predominantly erased. Dick spent one year with Bruce at the age of 16 in the New 52. That’s pathetic for a character who appeared in 1940, one year after Batman’s creation, and then went on to spend every year thereafter with Bruce in one capacity or another as his partner regardless of whether he’s Robin or Nightwing because they are the DYNAMIC DUO. They’re the original mentor and sidekick team. Dick Grayson practically invented the child partner shtick. He’s a historical character.

And DC erased their relationship, which is the biggest travesty in my eyes because as far as I’m concerned, it’s the longest relationship in comic history and it deserves all the respect it earned from that.

So Dick being given another mentor annoys the hell out of me because Bruce Wayne is barely his mentor now. I don’t want to give credit to another mentor for Dick’s growth, and I also have no clue why Dick is going to get this new mentor when he’s in his early 20′s. If Dick was still a teenager, I would get; it would make sense. As a young adult, it just drops him several pegs and makes him look inexperienced.

Especially when Seeley wouldn’t shut up in his writing about Dick being an idiot and a shitty detective. I really don’t need to see some other mentor teaching him how to be a detective because Dick is an adult who already has Batman as his mentor, he’s a 75 year old character whose been earning his title from day one and he should damn well know how to be a detective already.

I’m pissed off over the implied direction of Seeley’s Nightwing because I already spent the last 4 decades watching Dick’s character growth into someone who is quite capable of standing on Bruce’s level. You want to make Dick Grayson better than Batman? HE WAS ALREADY THERE.

Dick Grayson’s Batman was preferred by Gotham City over Bruce Wayne’s Batman!! How much better can you get?! 

If you want Dick Grayson to surpass Batman, you don’t need to remove Batman’s influence as a mentor and give Dick some other mentor instead to teach him skills he should already know as an adult hero. You don’t need to take away his detective skills and make him less skilled. You don’t need to make Dick subpar. You just need to write Dick Grayson as the competent, skilled, intelligent and bad ass leader that he already is and everything else will follow