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I have a slight favor to ask of you, hope you don't mind!

As you know, every character has their own flaws, even our boy Dickie G…

Can you tell me what made you first like him? Which characteristics do you love about him? And what are the ones that make you want to pull your hair out of frustration/dislike?

I just LOVE reading your opinion on anything! You've got a way with words that really touches my heart & soul

Thanks in advance! <333

hello! you're too kind <3

so my first real investment in dick grayson was when i saw him in the tv show titans, which i'm afraid, while not very good, is actually kind of fantastic (derogatory). there are these two episodes in season 2 — bruce wayne and atonement — very aptly titled, i know — that had me going a little bit insane. dick spending an entire episode hallucinating bruce — who serves as his conscience, his jailer, his absolution, his critic — while he's going on a guilt-fuelled bender... that was crazy actually. one god of a man who serves every role in his life. biblical. meanwhile, in atonement, when dick is finally honest and owns up to his mistakes, he's disparaged and abandoned. what does he do to fix this? immediately turn himself in to cops in the hope that someone can punish him the way he thinks he deserves. what a freak. i fell in love with him instantly.

i started actually reading comics with outsiders 2003 because i found out that donna dying in the show was based on actual comic lore and from that point onwards, it was a mixture of reading his solos, new teen titans and misc comics focused on dick & bruce's relationship, before i eventually branched out to other characters.

he's my beautiful princess with so many disorders. cbt would not fix him; it would, in fact, make him worse. he's the most resilient guy in the world. a terrible happened to him and he made it his calling to prevent that from happening to someone else, under the guidance of a man who understood his grief & loss intimately. together, they forged a myth so unparalleled that everybody who came after is still paying for being part of his legacy.

he's known the spotlight since he was a child. his first step was on sawdust. he was never going to be normal. he's innately a performer and his showmanship is so goddamn convincing that he has trouble identifying what's real about him, even to himself. at the same time, his desire to help and his sincerity are so earnest that it almost echoes into being a thing of disbelief; how can he be so merciful and kind despite everything that life has thrown at him? he's so good.

he's hypercompetent and chasing an unachievable ideal of perfection; he can never meet it and he hates himself for it. he's cruel when he feels cornered. he wants someone to affirm his self-hate and nobody is ever willing to do it because everybody is caught in his orbit. he can lie to entire teams of superheroes without batting an eye. he can threaten a mentor with kryptonite and nobody ever doubts that he wasn't bluffing. look, this is only a man.

you think you know devotion? nobody in the world is doing devotion like dick grayson. i'd die for you, bruce. i have more faith in you than anyone. i see it, now. clearly. my greatest fear. not that he would fall, but that i would fail him. he's a bird, aspiring to freedom but he will never walk out of his cage. he can't. he doesn't know how to. just abandon you? sorry, i wasn't raised that way. he feels like the child of an alcoholic. he looks up to bruce almost as if he were a god. he's scared of bruce's judgement in a god-fearing way.

what was it ethel cain said in nettles? to love me is to suffer me. for dick grayson, this is both what he believes about himself and what ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy when you're someone in his life except one mister bruce wayne. this is to say, from dick's pov, it would be... mostly unbearable. famously unable to love something without it hurting him (and the recipients of his affection).

but to get real, i think a lot would depend on the era. like in the outsiders era, his feelings for roy are so wrapped up in the twin mingling of his grief and self-hatred that the only way he can love roy is with a gun to roy's heart. like i said in my latest dickroy fic:

It’s rare when he can’t read Roy with perfect clarity; usually, it’s because Dick doesn’t want to be presumptuous of his own estimation in Roy’s book. Tonight, all he wants is the press of Roy against him, no amnesty or accusations, because he lost all his nerve when they buried her, and he’s not brave enough to ask, How can you still trust me? 

on the contrary, in the early teen titans era, it would be a softer thing. the sweetness of a teenage crush — think thoughtful gestures & affection that don't translate well because roy has poor self-esteem. and because... dick's attention can feel blinding like the sun — but not just in the way that it's bright and warm; it sears and bleaches you down to your bones.

moreover, his relationships with kory & babs have such large places in his life that i truly believe... for the longest time, he wouldn't even recognize that what he feels for roy is so much bigger than the affection & appreciation one can feel for their childhood best friend. as the wise @/bigdvmnhero once seminally characterized dick grayson in their gorgeous spyral fic:

Was this kinship, then? There was no gun, no gauntlet or secret spy gizmo that could rival the intensity of her conviction, Dick knew that now, except for what he always had, inexplicable and ordinary as his own hands. A battle of devotion was a battle Dick was always going to win.

once he does realize, i think it's a coin flip between shying away from acting on it or committing fully... both of which aren't without their pitfalls.

for the former, dick would lie to himself, saying that what he and roy have is enough. vaguely and sometimes deliberately, painfully oblivious to roy's feelings because their dynamic has always been flirty and with true aim. he's terrified that wanting roy so badly is just going to hurt them both; dick isn't supposed to want anything, not like this, not when he'll just ruin it.

for the latter, it would be a lot of adrenaline and single-minded intensity from dick, which is its own kind of warning to roy. roy won't ever doubt dick's heart but he can't bring himself to trust dick's feelings. dick is the most loyal guy you know until he's cutting you down to avoid his neurosis or running away from a bruce-shaped shadow.

either way, it wouldn't be an easy thing. a lot of pushing and pulling away before they reach an equilibrium, but the heart of dick grayson loving roy harper is faith. what was it shara mccallum wrote in madwoman? in you and me resides a history of faith. dick grayson eloquently said this in outsiders #11 himself:

i'm thinking he had recently lost bruce, so i can see him being Mr. Stoic™, as he even said "this is why batman doesn't get close to people, you get hurt again and again and again" to donna while roy was in a coma and lian had just died, but i'm thinking abt leaving roy at virgil house, their fights where dick and donna kept trying to bring roy home when they, as the justice league, fought roy when he was with Slade's "Evil Titans," and such.

just wondering if u have any thoughts, etc!!

hmm, this one's tough but yeah, you're right, it's probably a mix of both for me. more thoughts below the cut: