Brandon Vietti.
Ok, um….
No.
I normally try to avoid adding commentary to Quote posts, but… This is just something I’ve been wanting to comment on for a while, anyway.
Let me say one thing that keeps bothering me about Young Justice canon. The statement, “But our Robin is an acrobat!” doesn’t really fly. Okay, so yes, he is to some extent. He’s clearly athletic, and more agile than Tim would be. And they even gave him a circus episode, because what’s Dick without the circus theme? Right, gotcha. But let’s think about when he behaves like an acrobat. 1. When he’s training and 2. When he’s fighting. One thing that continues to surprise and annoy me, is that in every single minute of downtime, or even when he’s standing still, YJ!Dick does absolutely nothing that suggests he is an acrobat. He walks and acts and behaves like any other ‘grounded’ kid. There’s no quirkiness, there’s no clever outside-the-box thinking, and he doesn’t take advantage of his physical abilities. Maybe it’s a crutch brought about by his “hacking” talent in YJ canon, but he barely uses his physical talents at all, unless he needs to suddenly make a jump, or kick someone. Otherwise he’ll jog up to the computer, hack into it, punch a few buttons and keep moving. Wow, such an acrobat. Look at him… doing exactly what any other Robin could’ve done, in that situation. Oh. Okay.
And to get this out of the way right now, his “personality” is not a superficial change. I am personally sick and tired of show creators conflating Dick and Tim’s personalities and then using excuses like these. “But we made him an acrobat!” Okay, so he possess the talent to land a few jump-kicks, and he likes to do flips during his training. Do you honestly think that excuses your other creative decisions? You made him a sarcastic, overly intellectual, down to earth, street-wise ‘cool’ kid. How that channels “Dick” is beyond me, because last I checked, Dick is a borderline hyperactive, fun, and almost obnoxiously cheerful dork. He’s kind of silly and quirky and truth be told, Dick is not the cool cat street-wise kid. He has his moments of what I deem ‘accidental coolness,’ but Dick is a dork who tells lame jokes and doesn’t care if others roll their eyes at him or not. He’s kind and he’s compassionate and he’s emotional and he’s dramatic and he’s up and then down and then laughing and then talking back when you wish he wouldn’t say anything. He’s in your face and he’s assertive and kind of loud and unpredictable and especially as a kid, he’s going to channel a lot of instinctive joy and impulsiveness. He gets a genuine thrill out of being Robin, and he’s not ever afraid to show it. He’s not going to act “cool” to save face, he’s going to reach out to his friends as often as he can, he’s going to talk and engage with them often and he’s going to occasionally say the wrong thing, and he’s going to occasionally put his foot in his mouth. He’s not going to stand there and sit quietly and politely like whoever the hell YJ’s Robin is. OH RIGHT, like how Tim always tries to remember his place, sits quietly and thoughtfully and speaks when he feels a need to, and cracks an occasional joke before using his intelligence to silence everyone in the room, because whoa damn, Tim is pretty gosh darned smart and he tends to surprise people with his insight. Tim’s your answers guy, Tim’s your guy who’ll figure it out and get shit done, Tim’s the kid you go to when you need a hacker and someone who knows how to look at a mission ten different ways and to illustrate out the possible solutions, because Tim thinks analytically and he’s conservative when it comes to blurting out a wrong idea. BUT THIS TOTALLY ISN’T TIM, right?
And lemme talk about this hacking business. Dick is not an expert hacker. He doesn’t want to be. He doesn’t feel a need to be. Even as an adult, Dick chooses to rely on Tim and Barbara to give him intel, because he confidently acknowledges that they are more skilled at electronics than he is, and he is totally cool with that. He is happy to ask for their help, and appreciative of their talent. So can we kill this “Dick would be a hacker!” logic right now, because A: Where did that even come from? and B: He’s old enough, by now, to have mastered computers if he wanted to. The simple fact is that He. Doesn’t. See. A. Need. To. Master. Technology. So no, he wouldn’t see a need to be a hacker, whether it’s now or ten years ago. I’m not saying Dick isn’t smart enough to get computers. Sure he is. But there’s a big difference between “ooh, that’s cool, lemme try that,” and “alright, let me analyze this code and crosscheck it with my existing data.” It comes down to an actual difference in the way their brains work.
Tim loves computers because he is analytical, rational, he likes to see multiple answers to the same question, and he thinks fast on his feet. He’s very Bruce-like in the sense that he can stare at a screen for hours, read code and program languages and decipher pages of data that would have Dick yawning and nodding off to sleep. Dick likes computers, but he prefers to let Tim handle that stuff, because instead of calling up the damn floorplan and architectural plans of a building, Dick is more the type to make sure the coast is clear, run in, send Wally to run and check out the other side, and to forge ahead and sneak past any obstacle in his way.
Let me illustrate this point: Do you know how Tim solves problems? Speak to everyone, call up the plans, check the data, build a plan, overcompensate for the weak links and coordinate everyone to do their part. Do you know how Dick, an overconfident acrobat (since these guys insist their YJ kid is an acrobat), solves problems? Speak to everyone, check the data, build a plan that’ll probably work, coordinate the others to do their part, and he intentionally leaves his own role up to chance, because fuck you I’m an acrobat, and if I run into any enemies, whoa guess what, I can just fight them straight-up, fly past them and keep going because whoa, who knew, I’m an acrobat and this is really not a challenge for me. That’s Dick. Dick, who happens to accidentally get himself cornered or trapped often, oops, Dick, who wears a grin whenever something goes wrong because I will figure this out, think, think, Dick, who cracks a joke when he gets nervous, and who relies on his friends to pick up the slack and help him if he gets into a bind. He likes to be in control, just as much as Tim does; but Dick is more of a leave it to me, I’ve got this, you take care of your thing, and he’s unpredictable and spry and almost impossible to pin down and cocky and hyper and brave and almost reckless in that this kid will jump off a freaking rooftop, scale the side of a building, jumpkick the enemy in the face, jump off the back of another, scale back up the building and continue to move and fly until he reaches his destination. That doesn’t mean Tim wouldn’t do the same thing. But Tim really hates having to exert himself unnecessarily, when he sees a better, more efficient plan. Tim’s prone to thinking, Well gee we could’ve just hopped on the train to get over there. And Dick’s gonna shrug it off and be like, nah, I know a shortcut and scale rooftops for the next half-hour. Oops, is there an enemy there? No big, lemme just get past these guys and it’ll be A-OK.
Tim doesn’t dislike being athletic, and moving. He’s fit and he’s skilled, and he knows it. He likes being able to beat up the bad guy, just as much as Dick does. But Dick loves moving. He loves being athletic. His passion in life is to move, and keep moving. He’s almost never on his feet for too long, and if you make him sit still, he gets restless and he starts to fidget and before you know it, he’s doing handstands on the desk and stretching over the kitchen counter and generally doing three things at once, because this is a fucking acrobat Dick Grayson, and more than most, this kid loves to move.
But, you know. YJ!Dick has a circus past, so clearly it’s Dick anyway, regardless of how he behaves or thinks differently. Okay. GUESS I’M TOTALLY OFF-BASE.
(via aeedee)
Ok, I know very little about the Robins in general. I “meet” the DC universe last year, before that I just saw a few tv series so maybe my opinion dosen’t count but I THINK YOU ARE RIGHT IN EVERY WORD! Yeah, since the first time I saw YJ I thougth “that guy MUST be Tim!” but then he wasn’t so I thought “OK, rookie mistake by me XD” I’m happy to see I’m not nuts…now, I wonder, what are they going to do with Tim? ‘cause they already used his personality.
