Jason and Dick’s relationship actually was good enough that, once we account for Jason’s time as Robin being so short in real time and not fleshed out, we can assume they were very close. it actually makes more sense than them not being close, definitely more sense than them being “okay at best”. What bothers me about “okay at best” is that it implies that them having a good relationship was only the outcome we can see if we look at things positively. There’s no option but for them to have been good brothers. That’s not fanon. There is no “worst” in this scenario, because Dick and Jason were always reaching out to each other (well. Dick was always reaching out to Jason. Duck on that “Dick avoided Jason while he was Robin” believers). Jason’s not close to anyone of his other siblings (besides Duke) in canon, but Dick has never been up for debate. Brothers in Blood is…a mess. But it clearly shows that Dick is one person Jason would never want to cut off (with Jason reaching out to Dick this time…in his own fucked up way). That doesn’t come from them having been distant as Robin and Nightwing.
Jason being 11 years old to 15 was squished into a very short run irl. It was almost the same amount of years as in-universe. Compare that to Dick or Tim’s decades as Robin. A lot of stuff with Jason was never given screen time because he was killed off before that could happen. Post-crisis Jason was Robin while Barbara retired and Dick was trying to be someone separate from Batman. It was just Bruce, Jason, and Alfred because that’s what made sense with the story, not because Dick wasn’t close to Jason. If Jason hadn’t been killed, we would’ve seen more of those stories. But we saw enough to know that they weren’t two people who happened to share a guardian. I’d like to remind everyone that Jason’s time on the Titans as Robin is explicitly still canon. That should explain enough. Even post-crisis, when Dick isn’t even told about Robin, he still gives Jason his own costume and number so that they could talk whenever Jason felt like it. “But he never called” We have no clue if he called or not. Jason was barely Robin in real time. There was no time to fit any of that in there while accounting for Dick’s own ongoing stories, and then Starlin just not wanting to write Jason in general. Everything else points to the conclusion that they were close, they were brothers in every sense of the word. You have to be willing to put the pieces together when it comes to Jason’s time as Robin because we have so little of it, even though it’s supposed to span almost 5 years. We are missing a lot. But look at how Dick is personally haunted by Jason’s death. Not like Danny or any other kid’s, but Jason’s specifically. He hallucinates him in his own solo, he’s so shaken that Raven immediately offers to help him with her powers, he brings it up in TLL. All decades before Jason’s resurrected. If you want to believe they didn’t have a close relationship, then you can choose to be wrong, I guess.
Point is: people aren’t compensating for fanon “Dick was a bad brother” bs when they say Dick and Jason had a close relationship as brothers before Jason died; it is literally the best interpretation. “They wish they had been closer” is still the fanon interpretation, actually.
