learn to love falling, too

Dear anons,

A quick update: I received your asks and they’re underway.  Progress has been waylaid by ongoing technological problems though, and I’ve had to take my computer in for repair.  I’m unsure when your metas will actually be ready for posting but once the beloved machine returns from the war we’ll get back into it as soon as possible!

Oooh, this is a lovely, meaty question.  There’s a lot more analysis of Bruce than I planned because let’s be real, it’s kinda weirder for a guy to run around with half a dozen personas than for someone else to run around as himself.  I hope you still find it interesting, but if you want to skip straight to the more Dick-centric stuff, head under the readmore.

A simple but significant factor is that Dick thrives on the company of people in a way that Bruce does not.  I suspect if you talk honestly to many introverts, you will find they too have an extroverted ‘mask’ they put on to the larger world, though probably not quite so extreme.

Another factor is that the civilian social circles Dick and Bruce travel in are vastly different.  Though they each have a reason for being in those circles, that difference itself enables Dick to escape much of the scrutiny that Bruce’s public identity undergoes, because he doesn’t frequently associate with the much more media-hounded elite.

An interesting thing here is that the large difference in social circles between their civilian lives is actually caused by their own personal similarities: they are 100% committed work-a-holics.  It’s just that they have differing civilian approaches to their goals.

I want to start with Bruce because as you point out, his use of persona is distinct among the bats and his reasons for using them in part explain why Dick and the other bats do not.

Bruce is a child of privilege, he has always lived a lifestyle of privilege, regardless of the tragedies that have occurred during it, and his default view of the world, through no fault of his own, is natively that of the extreme upper class.  This drastically influences his perspective and approach to change, and changing the world is his perpetual goal, the reason he put on the suit in the first place.

Bruce works a top-down society approach toward systemic change, and he works it all the time.  This is actually my favorite but woefully under-emphasized part of him: he is not just someone who punches people on the street ‘for justice’, he uses his company, his money, and his social position toward substantial systemic change. This post does a wonderful job covering the ways he does this through his corporations and personal wealth, as does this one.  I cannot recommend either enough because I constantly want to push even the most casual Batman fans to understand: Bruce Wayne is not just a violent punchy puncher man.  He is a traumatized person genuinely trying to use all his resources including himself to make the world safer.

Detective Comics #725

Bruce has many personas he maintains, and he uses all of them according to what suits his need--Batman for places the law can’t go, Bruce Wayne the CEO pushing for systemic changes, Matches Malone for street information, and Brucie the society high roller for society information and social influencing.  He is rarely ever not in a persona and simply ‘Bruce’.

His top-down perspective of enacting change are what dictated the usage and necessity of these personas. He has the means and capacity to basically disappear from society if he so chose--he in fact does so to train during his younger years so successfully they don’t even know how long he was actually gone. 

The Batman Files

So he doesn’t need the personas.  Not Bruce Wayne, CEO, or Brucie, or any of them really, to protect his identity.  That tells us that Brucie is a deliberate choice he made at some point.  He could have been a recluse billionaire Batman indefinitely.  Even though he fully has the status and means to not maintain a job or a persona or, let’s be frank, a life outside the mask at all, it’s his own work-a-holicness that led to the creation of his public personas.  He’s an obsessive strategist, so if Brucie is a choice, that leads us to why?

Bruce does many philanthropic things with his money, but he isn’t the only rich person around, especially not in a city as old and corrupt as Gotham.   But he’s one of the very few ones doing good with it.

The comic you mentioned has a very beautiful moment where Bruce touches on that, and in full context you can feel how consumed he is by this goal of creating the Gotham his parents would have wanted.  Batman mentions he never sees himself in that place, and the morbid interpretation is that the city kills him before he reaches it, but the hopeful interpretation is that in that shining city, Bruce Wayne and Batman and Brucie and all his masks will no longer be needed.

Detective Comics #725

Back in the old days they’d call it noblesse oblige: the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged. Thomas and Martha Wayne ingrained this feeling of responsibility into Bruce by example, and as all things related to them, he obsesses over it.  It urges him to fulfill expectations within segments of society he finds onorous for the betterment of society as a whole in order to carry out their unfinished works.

Enter Brucie.

Empyre #5

How Dick reacts to people hitting on him in field situations tends to go like this:

Nightwing #34 (Nightwing: A Darker Shade of Justice)

He generally seems put off by it, but occasionally uses it if it’s to his own tactical advantage.  

Because he’s predominantly always focused on the task at hand, I think it perplexes him to interact with people who are not or who try to mix work and play, so to speak. The more of a history he has with the person it’s coming from, the more likely he’ll engage or let it pass instead of seeming uncomfortable, but even then, he keeps things more or less hands-off.  He’ll verbally banter with his teammates or flirt over comms in the field, but rarely in any physical way.  

So flirting with Oracle on the case is a frequent go, but accepting a threesome with two acrobatic criminals he met while wearing the fingerstripes was a definite no-go.  While he has a history with Catwoman through working with Batman, it’s not in any way a sexual or romantic one, and he’s also very aware of her history with Bruce, making that another non-starter.  

Additionally, thanks to those same histories, he knows that sexual manipulation is a signature weapon for her.

There are two ways that this scene made sense to me, and it’s hard to tell which theory is more accurate without having another clarifying panel.  In neither scenario is there any real attraction going on from Dick’s end.

Let’s take a look at the panels leading up to the Catwing kiss in question.  

Nightwing #52

Theory #1

In the top panel, she’s the one wrapped around him and she’s pulling him downward.  In the next one, her arm is directly behind his head and the other is reaching up towards his head as well. The next after that is the kiss.  

She’s put herself in the correct position to be able to exert pressure downward on his head.  As a society, we’re not really taught how to immediately recognize a man being sexually harassed by a woman, but it ought to be said: from both the way it’s drawn and the physics determinable about their positions, Catwoman has significantly more control and leverage over their bodies than Nightwing does in this series of panels.  She could be literally dragging him into a kiss whether he wanted one or not. If that’s the case, his pulling back to say “this is not the right time for this” wouldn’t about attraction or feelings at all, it’s about her playing games while they’re in a hostile situation.  

I’d say this is also backed up by how he breaks all of his limbs out of her hold as soon as the shooting stops, regaining back both physical and visual leverage in the scene, and tries to cover her mouth until they’re safe.  He also physically disengages from her completely while he takes her to task over what happened in the panel a little further down.

Nightwing #52

Theory #2

Catwoman’s already purposely drawn the attention of the mercenaries to their hiding place, and now ignored first a friendly-ish reminder and then a more businesslike command to stay on track.  Since she’s far from an amateur at this, he knows it’s deliberate.

We know Nightwing will use the interest of others to his advantage if he has to.  It’s not his preferred option, but it’s a strategic fallback.

Ever seen one of those Hollywood moments where someone won’t shut up so someone else shuts them up with a kiss?

What we’re seeing here isn’t driven by genuine sexual attraction, he’s getting what he needs from her in the current situation (silence and holding still so they aren’t spotted) by playing her own game.  She’s made it clear she’s going to cause problems otherwise and giving ‘kitty’ a ‘treat’ is the fastest way to circumvent that to protect them both.

When the coast is clear, he drops the cooperative act and it’s straight back to “Batman Junior”, as she calls him.  He doesn’t bring it up again or rise to any of her flirting or innuendo, which are more indicators there was no genuine interest.

Nightwing #52

-- 

It’s also worth noting that in this entire issue, she’s the only one touching him in any flirtatious way.  His only volunteered contact with her is a few grips when they’re fighting, putting his body in front of her around hostiles, covering her mouth, and the fight over the stone.  We’re not looking at someone realizing the possibility of romance, we’re looking at someone who seems like they’d kind of rather be somewhere else and is only interested in doing their job professionally and well.  His body stays literally turned away from her whenever they’re not in action.

In either case, I don’t think there’s ever a point in which Dick thinks she’s genuinely interested in him, or that there is a point where he is genuinely interested in her.  He knows by her own admission that this entire escapade is a game to her, and he knows from their shared history that she’s opportunistic and socially manipulative. 

Nightwing #52

He knows the kiss was a sexual manipulation in either theory, but he thinks it’s about the diamond and the immediate circumstances.  As someone particularly focused on the job and particularly hard to distract with the physical, it likely hadn’t occurred to him that it could be used against someone else like that until she accidentally clues him in by forcing him to think about that angle.  

I'd like to keep it mostly Dick Grayson related, but I don't mind the occasional question about myself.  In my free time, I currently enjoy various methods of flinging pointy objects (archery, knife- and axe-throwing), hiking around in the woods, getting crafty and pretending to be other people (cosplay), playing video games, and hoarding books and pretty, nerdy things.

I'll be honest with you, anon--DC burnt me hard with the Spyral travesty and then putting Tom King on Batman and keeping Seeley on Nightwing, so I don't keep up with current DC comics.  I don’t enjoy them and nearly without exception I don’t find them to be written well or in character. However, you're very sweet and I want to help fill the meta void in your life, so I read through Dick and Shawn's arc together and here's my analysis.

 I’m dividing this into two parts.  The first half will be as objective as possible and analyze your questions on whether Dick seems in character, what he says during the break up, etc.  It’s roughly chronological, starting when we first meet Shawn and continuing through to the break up itself.

The second half I’ll put under a readmore, as it’ll answer your questions about my more subjective opinions about the arc.

 Let’s start by looking at Dick’s previous and most happy relationships to see what good indicators for an in-character relationship would be.

  Getting physically involved with someone -before- having a secure emotional connection with them is not in character for him.  All of Dick's major relationships have been preceded by extended periods of mutual flirtation and bonding before physical overtures.  His most significant and longest lasting romantic connections began by building emotional and romantic attachment before sexual intimacy, frequently paired with a shared history together that precedes even the flirtation.  

There’s significant canon evidence that he’s demi sexual: a comprehensive, though hardly exhaustive, collection of it can be found here and here (the latter half of the second link relates to the Grayson series specifically, but overall it offers a nice long view on his relationship history since character creation and also addresses beyond-canon factors at DC that impacted some relevant canon writings.)  Whether you use the label demi for him or not, it’s canon that he’s not comfortable jumping into bed without a secure emotional connection.

 So let’s look at Shawn’s relationship with Dick through the lens of relationships in which he was the happiest and most comfortable.  Those relationships have these things in common:  

He has a stable, safe emotional connection to the individual.

He is willing and comfortable engaging in banter and flirtation.  

Relationship is based on mutual respect and affection, often paired with shared history together.

Now, let’s look at Shawn’s relationship.

Their ‘history’ together (as Defacer and Robin) is antagonistic, and their interaction in the past leave Dick feeling uneasy. Sure, he seems to think about her situation, but as this panel reads, the kindest that can be said of any emotional connection there seems to be here is one-sided pity.

Nightwing #10 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

Once they meet again, she’s his boss.  Even or perhaps especially in the world of #MeToo, it’s important to address workplace relationships, particularly boss/employee scenarios, with care and sensitivity.  Seeley sidesteps this by just…having her later quit the non-profit she founded and giving Dick her position for a while.  However, even if she’d just worked in HR at an equal level with him when they met instead of being his boss, let’s look at the amount of participation he shows in their first meeting:

Nightwing #10 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

There is a lot of her talking and almost none of him.  He’s not engaged in their interaction here.  Where he tries later as Nightwing to engage more personally, he’s immediately shut down.  The most dialogue we hear from him is in his own head—in their first meeting, the ratio of her dialogue to his is literally 22 sentences to 9.  Of those 9 sentences, one is a lie he gives to avoid establishing an emotional connection with her, another she interrupts, and three of which were less than five words long: “Sorry.” “You can call me Dick” and “Thanks, Ms Chang”.  Even taking the workplace environment into account as best we can, this is not meeting any of the three criteria for Dick to be feeling emotionally attachment or attraction.  No one would look at those 9 almost-sentences and that flashback and say, “Ah yes, this man is deeply infatuated with her.”  

This is made even more jarring by the fact that the internal narration frequently doesn’t match the actual scenes we’ve witnessed.   

Nightwing #11 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

Nothing about the few sentences Dick has managed to finish around Shawn when this narration comes up has said ‘attraction’, physical or otherwise, but the dialogue here reads like Dick was laying the flirtations on thick every time he saw her.  Same with when they talk about the flashback scene later.  There’s a lot of cognitive disconnect between what Seeley wants to tell us happened and what we actually see and hear and have evidence of between the characters.

If you’re wondering why I’m examining these initial interactions with particular depth, it is because frankly, these are the most interactions the two have together for roughly the first five issues of their ‘getting to know each other’ phase...and when they reunite at the end of those issues, we are supposed to believe they are already heavily, life-changingly in love.  So, for all intents and purposes, this scattered handful of conversations is all we have to analyze to examine whether this fits the qualifications for whether Dick would feel comfortable and emotionally attached enough to approach a physical relationship.

We have three chances in their various guises for Dick and Shawn to meet and start developing that all-important rapport.  This is our first initiation to their relationship and it certainly doesn’t read as a positive one.  The next one, she yells at him and kicks him out—again, a whole page of her dialogue to a fragmented sentence of his.  The third one, the flashback panel posted above, they don’t even speak to each other. Two of them are actively red-flags of being unable to establish a closer connection with that person; the third is a neutral connection.  This is not the kind of two-way interaction we see where he’s comfortable and interested in someone, and this is not an emotionally secure connection.  

Shawn disappears for three issues or so, during which they have, obviously, no interactions.

The very next after that, by the end of it, she lunges into him to kiss him.  

The next issue after that, they’re evidently in honeymoon heaven and already shacking up.  

Trust me, we’ll be going over that under the readmore later.

Back in the area of the objective, if you ever need to know the number of days Tim Seeley thinks is needed for two people with self-admitted enormous trust issues to form the ideal Hollywood manic pixie dream girl relationship, we were given a careful timeline.  

68 days—first date

Nightwing #15 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

62 days—first intercourse.

Nightwing #15 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

Six days.  Not even a week.

They’ve met each other, then met each other’s parents and are living together and are one baby scare away from the suburbs in less time than it takes for someone to finish a semester at college.  It took literally longer for the issues of Nightwing where Shawn was an absent character in her own arc to get published in our real lives than it did for their on-panel romance to go from not even knowing each other to Nightwing (not Dick, but Nightwing) kissing Shawn (not Defacer, but Shawn) upside down in the middle of the city.

Trust issues, amirite?

Nightwing #15 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

Meanwhile during that mostly off-panel ‘dating’ period we have these wildly out of character moments. In particular, there are two noteworthy things.

Shawn says she never would have pinned Dick for being a traditionalist.  

That directly contradicts…well…most of the statements people close to him have made of his dating views, and also his own self-stated views of them, whose top tracks include things like “…this might sound unhip, but I feel strange about living with someone I’m not married to”, “I gotta be honest, Roy—I couldn’t make love to someone I didn’t really love”, and “Love should be between two people”.  

We have a direct parallel of an in-character Dick moment walking someone home after an early date to use for comparison.  

Nightwing #31  

Things Dick does in this panel: reassures his date there is no pressure for sex and the night will not be ending that way, plan out just about the most traditional date experience, and engage in light-hearted mutual bantering.  

Additional relevant context around this panel: Dick and Clancy have known each other for months and have a friendly, mutually respectful connection.  Dick’s turned down a sizable number of invitations from her because despite living in the same building, the vigilante life made it difficult for him to make and keep plans.  This is their second date because Dick had to bail in the middle of their first.  It took months both in comics-time and in real-time of developing a mutual interest to lead up to that first real date.  And by then, the reader is invested in the status of that relationship, too.

To contrast the then vs now, we also have in that same moment with Shawn Dick, of all people, ignores a phone call without a second thought in favor of trying for a booty call. On the first date.  Let’s take a look at Dick and Clancy’s first date, 9 issues earlier than the one we just saw.

Nightwing #22  

Dick is a chronic workaholic, with all the associated inability to disconnect from his work while in relationships even during date night or intimate moments. It’s perfectly reasonable, considering that with his lifestyle choice, that phone call could be life or death for someone he loves, a stranger, or many, many someones, and it’s put significant strain on his past relationships when dating those not actively in the superhero lifestyle.  Clancy is, again, a great example of this--despite genuine interest on both sides, he blew her off at least half a dozen times because of vigilante emergencies before they even got to their first date.  And then despite their great rapport and a genuine interest in being there, he still ditched her in the middle of it when his phone rang.

What we see in Seeley’s Nightwing #15 not only runs directly contrary to significant chunks of his history and personality, it also tells a deeply upsetting story of a world where exists a horndog Dick Grayson who would risk other people’s lives to get laid with a chick he’s known less than a week.

They handle vigilante interruptions more in character in later issues once the relationship is established, but...yikes. 

Not in character.

We’re going to take a little jump here to move from discussing whether their relationship is in character for Dick to whether their breakup was in character.  

In general, it actually is pretty in character for Dick to panic himself into commitment in a romantic relationship even if he’s not really sure about it.  Dick is very interesting that way: he runs away from platonic relationships under tension, either by throwing himself into casework or by literally setting up in a new location.  If his romantic relationship is undergoing trauma, however, he's very capable of reacting the opposite, like in this example with Kory.

Team Titans #2

There’s even an awkward Devin Grayson incident where he thinks a woman is serial-murdering her husbands, fake-marries her to solve the case, uncovers the real killer who wasn’t her, and feels bad enough afterward that he offers to date her for real. (An interesting side-note: this makes Devin Grayson responsible for not one but two of Dick’s emotionally compromised almost-marriages. This one, at least, came before she jumped the shark with the dreaded Catalina Flores arc.)

Nightwing Annual #1

So let’s take a look at where Shawn’s exact circumstance falls in against those.

  To me, the lines that sound the most like Dick are actually the lines he says that cause their break-up.  

Nightwing #23 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

Dick has a lot of darkness and anger in him. He’s a lot like Bruce and he’s a lot scared of how much he’s like Bruce.  We’ve seen several timelines where Dick’s had biological children and we’ve also seen how he tempered Damian’s darkness when Bruce was lost in the timestream.  Though this arc and timeline does not show it well (and that’s a whole different meta), we have the advantage of having known how Dick behaves as a father in a way this particular Dick has never had to experience.  And we know that when kids are in the picture he does work hard at repressing or concealing his anger and darkness to be a good role model, often in a way he isn’t sure he has the capacity to do when there are no children involved.  Despite some of the specific phrasings being iffy, the general sentiments here do feel like legitimate concerns Dick would have.

With this knowledge, that moment felt significantly more honest to Dick Grayson’s character than most of the rest of their relationship.  

Nightwing #25 (Nightwing: Back to Bludhaven)

The actual break-up dialogue itself is…well, it’s not out of character, exactly, because as shown, Dick has been known to clutch onto potential romances hardest when he feels they’re about to slip away. But the delivery of it isn’t in character.  Yes, in general, Dick has a temper and he lashes out. However, he’s clearly aggressive and angry in this panel, where previous experience has showed us he should be at his most emotionally vulnerable and pleading.  Dick, who is a generally emotionally closed-off person despite his extroverted demeanor, reacts to these kind of romance scares by showing emotional vulnerability in ways he frequently is unable to do during the relationship itself.  And the panel that he’s apologizing for as being a crappy thing to have said, is…as mentioned, the panel that comes closest to a consistent Dick Grayson.

And the thing they’re fighting about is that Dick missed a job interview because he was doing Nightwing things.  Shawn fell in love with Dick knowing he was Nightwing (somehow), he’s been Nightwing the whole time they dated, constant interruptions and all, but she breaks up with him because somehow 'the thing I always loved most…you.’ apparently wasn’t one that included the Nightwing schedule.  She also seems to be both blaming him for wanting the baby and also accusing him of not wanting it.  At the risk of getting off-topic and subjective, I’ll be honest and say Shawn’s dialogue here makes no sense to me at all.

Dick’s tried not being Nightwing, in both pre-52 and new-52.  Dick spends a fair amount of pre-52 time either bouncing from job to job or lacking a day job entirely.  In both pre-52 and new-52, the Dick she’s claiming is the one she’s always loved the most…doesn’t exist anywhere I can think of. Certainly not anywhere during their on-panel relationship.

Oooh, interesting!  I think of the batfam, I’d be the most useful with Dick and Alfred. Though I can lead when necessary, I prefer the role of second in command and do well at managing people efficiently without making them feel managed.  Alfred is the uncontested champion of both those traits, and Dick’s no short hand at them himself, but even they must need or want help sometimes.  I think I’d slot in easily in that kind of capacity.  

Dick has a lot of people that look up to him in one way or another, and not many that know all of him but have no expectations for him, no matter what mask he’s wearing.  I think he’d benefit from the grounding of someone who knows him and doesn’t directly need anything from him.  It would also be pretty easy for me to get caught up in his workaholic mentality, being already inclined towards it.  He’s not particularly open to accepting help for himself, but since my bottom line is always what will effect the greatest good, I think that would make it not really about him in a way that he’d understand.

He’s prone to lashing out, but often because of internal tension rather than a direct quarrel with the person he’s lashing out at. That kind of anger, to me, is much easier to manage or not take personally.  Either see the stress coming and redirect it before it gets to a breaking point, or afterwards, give some space and then come back with a clean slate.  So long as I felt I was able to help more people by being there with him than by not, I’d stick around despite temper flare-ups.

I would probably get into spats with Bruce here and there because I don’t blindly follow other people’s orders and he isn’t much for explaining himself when he gives them.  But our goals would probably align more often than not, so I’d probably try to make myself useful to him.  I generally err more toward admiration or jealousy of people’s qualities than intimidation from them, but I tend to treat people like people regardless of their capabilities.  Most of the time, that’s a good thing that’s appreciated by people usually put up on pedestals.  Other times, it potentially gets you kicked out of the ‘cave for telling Batman to not be an emotionally constipated mushroom and show his children he loves them. Alfred might be too British to interfere, but I’m not.  

I think if I were going to be intimidated by any member of the batfamily, it would be Barbara, because I’m not sure what I would have to offer her.  I’m good at picking apart what people need and once you know that, it’s a good starting place to find a connection to them for either working or personal relationships. Babs already has a fairly well balanced life, however, so while I’d gladly make myself available for her, what kind of dynamic that would end up as would almost entirely depend on how well or how little she took to me.  I’d enjoy being friends with her but she’s a busy lady with a full social circle and being only another willing associate to her is a very possible outcome.

I have mixed feelings about a dynamic with Jason, for the simple reason that he can be volatile and I don’t enjoy being around people with whom I don’t know where I stand.  Despite that, and despite some moral differences, I think in terms of organization and recreational taste, we’d get along. 

If he were my neighbor rather than a vigilante I had to sometimes work with, sometimes work against, we could probably hang out.  Friends, but the kind you’d catch lunch or a movie with but have to be very careful not to talk politics around.

Out of the newer sibs, Cass would probably be my favorite.  I’d be tremendously interested in learning from her, and I’d look for peaceful things she hasn’t experienced before to introduce her to.  She’d probably be the most relaxing member of the batfamily to spend time with.  Kind of the reverse of the dynamic with Dick: it’s calming to be around people who don’t really need anything from you.  Everything you do for them is solely because you want to.

As for Tim, I actually had a friend for many years who reminded me of Tim, so I’d imagine our dynamic would be pretty similar to that.  He was like a little brother to me, very smart but also prone to isolating and with a lot of internal struggles.  Light-hearted grounding worked wonders for us and it’s similar to Dick’s own behavior with Tim.  I think given time to build up trust, it would be good for Tim, too.

I’m not sure how much I would have in common with Stephanie outside of the batfamily nightlife. We’d probably be friendly and banter, and I could see hanging out in group situations, but I don’t foresee us having much one on one interaction or a very personal relationship.

Damian is probably the member I would get along with the least.  We do both have a soft spot for animals, but Dick, despite that infamous temper, displays a patience with Damian’s habitual abrasiveness that I’m not sure I could emulate.  I tolerate occasional lashing out from people who respect me (see Dick and Bruce), but not habitually from people who expect to receive respect without offering respect.  We would get to an understanding with each other but there would be friction first.

Dear anon,