A thing that really frustrates me about people labeling later Robins like Jason "the angry Robin" and Tim "the smart Robin" is not only do I think this pigeon-holes ALL of them in two dimensional boxes that is to the detriment of their characters, it glosses over the fact that Dick isn't so easily labeled specifically BECAUSE he's the original. He's the blueprint, and that's relevant not because it makes him better than the others but because it means that for his entire tenure as Robin, there was no need for a labeling system or taxonomy for him BECAUSE THERE WAS NO OTHER ROBIN YET TO COMPARE HIM TO.
And this is relevant to discussions about how Dick's equally a "smart Robin" and an "angry Robin" because when you have a character who exists as a sole entity without comparison and then LATER you introduce other characters who you know from Day One are going to be compared to this character because they are quite literally legacy characters of his, then yeah, inevitably a lot of people to write these later characters are going to pick a specific angle of access to begin trying to differentiate this later character.
So yeah, a lot of Dick Grayson fans get annoyed when he's pigeon-holed as the happy Robin in specific, especially WITH the implication being that this is his wheelhouse, his "shtick" and he doesn't overlap with Tim and Jason's smart and angry shticks, etc...because HERE you are retroactively trying to apply an arbitrary taxonomy that not only was created after Dick was even Robin in the first place, but was never meant to apply to him because like.....his character predated even the need for it.
Which means that even though again, I think the labeling of Robins is detrimental to all of them, its particularly grating with him because the detriments to HIS character in specific is not necessarily worse, but more VISIBLE, more readily apparent. Because the very awareness of him predating any kind of hierarchy or comparison of Robins means that there's an intrinsic awareness that a character that existed on his own completely individualized character spectrum is now being condensed to try and fit into the same size box as the characters who were literally made from his blueprint, with points of comparison TO HIM deliberately built into their designs as INTENDING to be things they had in common with him, because that's what you do when building a legacy....YOU LINK THEM TO THE ORIGINAL. You show your work as to how and in what ways there's common ground with the original because this is a validation, an affirmation for these legacy characters with the intent being to show "see, this is WHY this character makes a good legacy for this character, they're like him in this and this and this respect...."
And yes, of course then from that point ideally they grow further into their own distinct characterizations, but when overlap to the original was built into the designs and then retroactively later readers try to divorce the original from these points of commonalities that were MEANT to be attributed to him, and say no, just like the later Robins, he had his distinct niche....
The conflict there (for me) specifically arises from the fact that by treating them all as though they all sprung into existence in their own specific niches and he's no different from them in this respect....this is HOW people keep glossing over and ignoring or treating as irrelevant the fact that they are not lesser for being legacy characters of him, but it is RELEVANT that they are legacy characters of his, because the process of creation and characterization is inherently different when it comes to legacy characters and originators of legacy mantles.
