Lux

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

Damn bro am I interrupting...

It was only legalized in 8 US states (the 8th only a few months before), and wouldn’t be legalized nation-wide until 2015.

It was only legal in TEN COUNTRIES in 2011. We wouldn’t hit 20 countries until 2017. (Australia was 23rd)

As of today (April 14, 2026), I believe only 38 countries have fully legalized same-sex marriage. Out of somewhere around 200 countries in the world. That’s only ~19% of countries.

here's what i have so far:

Anyway, I know Rebirth and nu52 before it both have tweaked Dick’s origin considerably, so who even knows what the current ‘canon’ take is, not this guy that’s for damn sure. But until he lost his memories, he was still going by Dick, so unless otherwise specified, his reasons for going by Dick should be just as true for ‘Ric’ Grayson….since he’s still supposed to remember up through Bruce taking him in after his family died. It was only everything after that point that became foggy or whatever.

But Dick only goes by Dick instead of another variation of Richard, because Dick is what his dad called him. And the REASON Dick’s dad called him that, is because Dick was named after his Uncle Richard, his dad’s brother. And his uncle’s preferred nicknames were Rick or sometimes Rich.

And although most adaptations like cartoons and movies and one-shot origin issues streamline the events of Dick’s origin, and go with the idea that it was just his parents who died that night….pre-Flashpoint, it was canon that the Flying Graysons act was never just Dick and his parents. It also included his Uncle Rick and his Aunt Karla, and their son, his older cousin Johnny. Dick was the only one not performing in the final act. It was Dick’s parents AND his aunt and cousin who all died that night….and his Uncle Rick fell too, but survived. However, he ended up with brain damage and has been in an assisted living facility ever since, and that’s why Dick had no legal guardian.

But yeah, the real reason Dick goes by Dick, is because as far as he and every one in his family, every one in the circus was concerned, it was his Uncle Richard who was Rick or Rich. Everyone called him Dick so there was no confusion. And that’s why Dick has never been willing to entertain the idea of going by a different version of his name - his only other living blood relative already has claim to the other variations, in Dick’s eyes.

Tangent - the only vaguely interesting about the amnesia plot actually is the one angle they kinda unintentionally laid out, but haven’t done anything with. The difference in personalities between Dick and ‘Ric’, with Ric being angry and abrasive and just taking a job as a taxi driver and not wanting anything to do with being a superhero….given that he supposedly now has no clear memories of anything after his first few months living with Bruce, his personality change actually makes a lot of sense with his pre-Flashpoint origin at least. Again, I don’t know what the ‘official’ canon is these days, but with the pre-Flashpoint origin, the one where Dick ended up in juvie after his parents died and was only taken in by Bruce after he’d already spent a month there….Ric’s new personality fits that perfectly. It was not an easy transition, originally. Like the way its presented in cartoons and one-shots, as though Bruce just instantly decided Dick was going to come live with him because he bonded with him over their shared tragedy…..that’s not how it played out in the comics. 

In origin stories like Robin: Year One Annual and others, yes Bruce was there the night Dick’s family died. Yes, he felt a connection with Dick because of the similarity to his own tragedy. Yes, he comforted Dick that night, because of that. But then he left Dick in the hands of the case worker who showed up to take custody of Dick, and that was that. Bruce had ZERO intention of taking Dick in himself at that point. He did believe Dick about Zucco having sabotaged the trapeze and started looking into it as Batman right away…but THAT was how the ‘connection’ he felt with Dick manifested for him. He did what he felt Dick would want, would help him the most, get closure for him…the same thing as Bruce had wanted himself, after his parents were murdered. And that was as far as it went. 

Even a lot of readers and fic writers who do acknowledge the juvie part of Dick’s origin treat it as though he was stuck there for a few days while Bruce had to navigate through red tape to get custody of him, but again, that’s not how the actual comics detailing that period depicted it. In that annual I mentioned, he was in there for a month, and it was established that he basically had to fight to survive against bigger boys every single day he was in there. His first night, three guys beat him so badly he was convinced he would have died if the guards hadn’t stopped it. And eventually, after a month had gone by, using his acrobat skills, he escaped. (After Devin Grayson retconned Dick as being Romani, the couple times Dick’s talked about this period of his life since then, he mentions that his English was not very good at the time, and it was this combined with his heritage and circus background specifically that led his racist case worker to decide that obvsly, he was destined to wind up in juvie anyway, so no need to waste a bed elsewhere on him. There he mentions being in juvie for closer to three months, but the takeaway that whatever the actual length of time he was in there, it was definitely somewhere between 1-3 months).

But after that, he had enough of getting the shit beaten out of him every day and was convinced the promises of a new family and getting out of there at some point were all just lies, so he parkoured his way out of the yard and over the fence at night.

And ran into Batman on the rooftops.  

Yeah. Batman was just out doing Batman stuff, and he ran into Dick Grayson running around Gotham’s rooftops with no shoes and detention center-issued clothes. He told Dick he believed him about Tony Zucco and was looking into the case, and then told him Dick couldn’t be of any help to him as a fugitive, and convinced him to go back to the JDC and he’d make sure he got out another way. (Dick btw, cynically thought ‘yeah right, why should I trust a guy who doesn’t even show his face’, and pretty much only goes back to the JDC because he’s sure Batman would just drag him back there anyway if he didn’t.) The very next day, Dick’s case worker showed up for the first time since she’d left him there and led him outside, saying someone had volunteered to take him in, and basically just handed him over to Alfred who was waiting with a car. 

So…yup. Bruce had felt a connection with Dick that night and empathized with him….but that hadn’t led him to just decide ‘hey I’m gonna take in this traumatized kid, I’m obviously the best candidate for that.’

Bruce took Dick in himself because he felt GUILTY.

Because he hadn’t even known Dick was in juvie. Hadn’t thought twice about checking up on the kid after that night, focused totally on just building a case against Zucco, as well as his other cases. I think there was a reference in an issue where Dick said something about how Bruce had made sure his family’s funeral arrangements were paid for, but that same issue Dick said he hadn’t even been allowed to GO to the funeral, so its not like Bruce was there with him like a lot of headcanons and fics depict it. DICK wasn’t even there.

Nope, it was good old fashioned guilt that motivated Bruce to take a personal hand in Dick’s well-being. Because he just happened to run across Dick on a roof randomly one night. THAT’S the pre-Flashpoint origin of the Batfamily. Random coincidence and a guilty conscience.

And it goes a long way towards explaining a lot of Bruce’s later actions in canon. He met Jason when the latter was stealing his tires, when Bruce missed Dick and quite probably felt guilty about driving Dick away. And he runs into this homeless kid who reminds him of Dick that SECOND night he met him, and who is actively engaging in criminal activities and thus could easily end up in juvie, the very place that had traumatized Dick so much because Bruce had just trusted the system with him back then. Its not surprising in that context that Bruce made the leap to thinking he was a better option than leaving Jason in CPS’s hands or with someone who might’ve been less patient with him, less motivated to make sure he stayed out of the JDC, no matter what that took.

I’ve always felt it explains everything about Dick’s choice to make Robin his persona. In one issue, when Dick’s sketching out possible costume ideas, Alfred asks him why not something like Batboy, or some variation of his mentor’s name. Dick said that he wanted something that was completely his, that Bruce didn’t give him. That’s why he picked Robin, his mother’s nickname for him, and why his costume was just a version of what he’d worn in the circus, a reminder of when he was happiest. 

But IMO its also why he’s always insisted on being referred to as Batman’s partner rather than his sidekick. Because Robin was never meant to be an extension of Batman, a part of HIS mission. Robin was Dick’s own mission. Because for all that he and Bruce had the murder of their parents as a shared tragedy, a connection…..it didn’t motivate him in the same way it motivated Bruce, because for Dick, that was only PART of the tragedy. Everything that came after that traumatized him, shaped him just as much. His trauma didn’t start and finish with their murder, and bringing in Zucco could never bring closure for everything he’d been through because he fell through the cracks of a flawed system. So Robin was never meant to be an extension of Batman, something to help Bruce fulfill his personal crusade. Robin was more about using Batman to fulfill his own crusade.

Bruce created Batman for the criminals who caused tragedies like the one he’d been shaped by. Dick created Robin for the people left behind after those tragedies, like he’d been. Just as everything about Batman was meant to frighten and intimidate the people he focused on, everything about Robin was meant to cheer up and comfort the people HE focused on. Bright, happy colors to help soothe a shaken victim while Batman dealt with the perpetrator. Light-hearted jokes and laughter to remind people that even after something terrible happened, there were still good things in the world. 

Dick designed Robin to be everything Batman WASN’T. To do everything Batman didn’t do for him.

So, just saying….as much as I hate the Ric Grayson storyline and still think it was a mistake….it COULD have been an interesting examination of nature vs nurture. How much of Dick Grayson is just innate, and how much would he be different if his experiences were different, like he never remembered being Robin.

Because a Ric Grayson who had no clear personal memories after his first few months with Bruce would absolutely be as bitter and angry as Ric was first shown being at the start of the amnesia plot. Because in those first months with Bruce, Dick had been very, very angry indeed.