I feel like I’m reading Robin 1993 wrong it genuinely feels like a horror story about a boy slowly sabotaging his own life, isolating from loved ones, putting himself through psychological torture to constantly live up to an impossible standard, all to earn the approval of a man who is cold, critical, and distant most of the time.
When he finally snapped and decided to quit while he was sitting on the porch steps with Steph in the middle of the day thinking about reclaiming his life, I was like omg yes this feels so good and fulfilling as a reader I’m so happy to see the protagonist finally get a break from the constant gloom of living in Dick’s shadow… And then he goes back to Bruce and it’s genuinely so depressing, which is why I feel like I’m reading this wrong. Like was that page of Batman and Robin reuniting supposed to feel good?? My god. Literally just bums me out. Like ok he’s going back to the dominating abusive presence in his life that makes him miserable. Yay. Complete with Bruce explicitly refusing to believe he did anything wrong.
And the worst part is when he was deciding to go back to him, it wasnt bc he wanted to keep being a hero/helping people. That didn’t gross his mind at all. It was 100% because he was going to miss Bruce and he knew he would be iced out completely if he defied him by quitting Robin. My stomach hurts