loup

My favorite DickDami fluff almost always takes the form of Dick being Damian's person.

When he gets into it with Bruce, Dick's the first to know. When he doubts himself, his standing or validity as Robin or as Bruce's son, Dick's the one to reassure him that he kept Damian on as his Robin for a reason, that Bruce isn't the only metric to weigh one's value. When Damian runs, he always makes a stop in Bludhaven before going any further. Dick's the only person to ever make him reconsider leaving, to turn around and go speak to his father instead, because he's also been that person to say it's okay to take that break, just stay in contact with him if nobody else.

Similarly, I like the instances where even though Damian isn't the only person Dick could go to, he knows that Damian will be as blunt and honest and as accidentally, jarringly funny as he needs without spreading that information to anyone else. So Dick doesn't feel uncomfortable venting to him, even if it's in more vague terms.

When they're casually intimate in the ways that only a Batman and Robin could be, because Dick will always have been Damian's Batman before Bruce was.

It showing itself in the way that Damian doesn't seek out such blatant and open affection from Bruce. Sure, he'll initiate a hug, accept a hug from his father, but he's comfortable fully plastering himself to Dick after not seeing him for an extended period of time. He's launching himself into Dick's arms, rubbing his cheek against Dick's face, saying out loud how much he's missed him.

He wants Dick to take him to the arcade and show him up on the games so they can bicker, he wants Dick to be beside him when he's struggling. Dick should be there for any of Damian's achievements, any of his failures. Damian's waking up from any injury, and asking for Dick so he can curl against him and listen to his steady heartbeat.

He's holding on to the most inconsequential things that Dick's given him. A small pile of little scribbled sticky notes that say things like "thought of you" and were pressed onto the cover the next volume of a shoujo manga that Damian was talking to Dick about the last time they spoke. Both of which were just left in his room, and neither of them bring it up type stuff, you know?? Damian's keeping that "Flying Graysons" bar in a position of honor next to his grandfather's sword hilt, and Dick knows it.

We're all aware of the victim-blaming rhetoric we've been fed about Jason, even from before his death (thank you, Starlin): he's reckless, violent, a bad seed that Batman tried and failed to save. He was always destined for a bad end. Most of us are also aware that, 1) This is bullshit, and Jason before Starlin was kind, clever, thoughtful, and fiercely compassionate, and, 2) Even if every word of the slander were true, he still wouldn't have deserved to be killed for it.

The question is why DC feels a need to push this narrative. I've seen it suggested that this is an attempt to deflect criticism of Bruce. After all, Starlin's run doesn't exactly paint Bruce in a flattering light - Jason's death can pretty easily be traced back to the Joker, who killed him, and to Bruce, whose poor parenting led Jason to be in that situation in the first place. But Batman is DC's most popular title, and they don't want people to grow critical of Bruce, because that means Batman doesn't sell as well. If it's Jason's fault, they don't have to deal with criticism of their most popular character. This is a pretty good theory, but I think it goes a bit deeper than that.

Jason's death didn't just damage Bruce's image - it dealt a critical blow to the genre conventions of superhero comics. Child sidekicks are vital to the superhero genre. It does not work without them. There's a reason Jason's death is regarded as one of the most significant in all of comics history: he proved that child sidekicks can die. And if sidekicks are mortal, you have to start contending with the question of whether children should be allowed to fight crime in the first place. Jason's death didn't just invite criticism of Bruce - it destabilized the entire superhero genre, inviting criticism of every hero who's ever had a child sidekick.

But if it was Jason's fault that he died, rather than being the logical result of throwing children onto the front lines of a war, DC could (they believed) continue to appeal to one of their biggest target demographics (that is, children and teens who wanted a character they could relate to) without fear of criticism.

This only got worse when Winick brought Jason back to life, because suddenly he couldn't be swept under the rug. Instead of quietly disappearing into the backstory of other characters, a regrettable but unavoidable tragedy, Jason was right there, demanding a story of his own, refusing to be forgotten. And more than that, he was popular. People liked this new Jason, which meant that he was profitable. Rather than being a one-arc villain who could disappear into the massive corpus of DC canon, Jason was once again an active player in the DC universe. Starlin had already damaged a load-bearing staple of the genre, and then Winick took another swing. The longer Jason Todd remains alive - the longer he keeps screaming for justice - the more criticism DC is going to face for letting children be sidekicks at all.

So they've doubled down on the victim-blaming. It's been more-or-less working so far, after all - even people who consider themselves fans of Jason often buy into the 'angry and reckless' narrative. And with Jason's return marked by his furious quest for vengeance, it's easy to convince new fans that he was always like that, rather than having been changed by the circumstances of his death and resurrection (and even after that change, still nowhere near as reckless or unreasonable as DC would like us to believe). But other fans only grow louder and angrier with every story that tries to paint Jason as being doomed by his own faults, his own nature, rather than the nature of superhero comics as a whole.

Even though I would have liked to have one Allan doll to keep as is, in my heart I knew I wanted him to have articulation so I dug up one of my BMR1959 dolls and body swapped him. Even though I hate the current MTM Ken body since I think the molded underwear is far too high, and the proportions make clothes fit weirdly, I knew that this Allan would just be modelling his default clothes.

I really love how cute the Allan headsculpt is soince it has that sort of button nose and knowing expression but filtered through a morden lens so he can fit into a current well.