(So i just saw an insightful post from a different site and had to share it here.)
How DickBabs Contributed to the Playboy/Cheater Reputation of Nightwing.
a study on how Dick's character suffers whenever Dickbabs is being pushed by BlackCat-01.
Post:
I want to be very clear, this isn’t hate toward Barbara Gordon. I just have to speak out because there’s a very obvious pattern of Nightwing being written problematically whenever this ship is pushed. It’s heartbreaking to see Dick turned into a playboy or a cheater in the comic community, and it’s hard to support the ship when so many stories portray him this way.
People often point to Nightwing Annual #2 (2007) as the "cheating Nightwing" moment, but that one story alone doesn’t tell the whole picture, and it’s been retconned. There are countless other examples where Dick behaves questionably in his relationships while pining for Barbara. Whenever writers try to frame Barbara as his "true love," it often comes at the cost of other women in his life, like Starfire, Helena, Shawn, Bea, and others who get dismissed, insulted, or treated as placeholders until Barbara appears.
This isn’t just framing or shipping drama, it’s a clear pattern that has hurt Nightwing’s character over the years. And it’s why I just can’t support DickBabs, because the writing consistently makes him seem disrespectful, unfaithful, or manipulative, even when that wasn’t who he used to be.
Nightwing (2007) Annual #2
Dick confesses his undying love for Barbara, cheats on Kory the night before their wedding, and then hands Babs the wedding invitation the next morning like it’s no big deal. This wasn’t an accident, it was a deliberate move to erase Kory’s importance and turn her into a disposable fling.
Nightwing (2005) #104 and Nightwing: Year One
Dick is actively dating Kory but is still flirting with Barbara. He nearly even kisses her until she pulls away, and she insults Kory with the infamous "Spice Girl" comment. Dick comes off as a disrespectful cheating boyfriend, and Kory is reduced to a punchline.
Nightwing (2013) Annual #1
Dick asks Barbara to run away with him to Chicago while she has a boyfriend in a coma. Manipulative, insensitive, and boundary-crossing, clearly prioritizing Barbara over decency.
Batgirl (2015) #45
Dick tries to kiss Barbara while she’s dating Luke Fox. Barbara stops him before he can kiss her. She tells him he can’t waltz back into her life.
Batgirl (2020) #50
Barbara is in a relationship with Jason Bard. Dick continues to pursue her, while her boyfriend is irrelevant. It adds nothing to the story except making Dick look selfish. Dick is literally willing to homewreck for Barbara.
Batgirl and the Birds of Prey (2017) #8
Dick is dating Shawn Tsang at the time. Helena and Barbara are patching him up. Barbara flirts with him while he’s shirtless, puts her hand on his cheek, and remarks that his abs are "very distracting to her." Meanwhile, Dick’s relationship with Shawn is completely ignored, yet he’s still shown to be with her. Barbara is treated as the only one who matters romantically.
Nightwing (2000) #43
Dick was seeing Bridget Clancy during that period. She finds a huge framed photo of him and Barbara next to another photo of the two of them and leaves in tears. His insensitivity isn’t addressed, again being used solely to tease the inevitability of DickBabs. The worst part of the picture is that it’s a photo of him and Barbara on the beach hugging, being touchy, Dick shirtless, and Barbara in her bikini. No, this is not a normal picture you just happen to have lying around your apartment…and then having the audacity to hang it right beside the photo of you and your current "flame."
Nightwing (2016) #22
Dick is about to have sex with Shawn Tsang (aka Defacer), but he’s shown thinking about a conversation he had with Barbara during the act. Literally, he is obsessed with her and hasn’t moved on, even during intimacy with his actual girlfriend.
Batman: The Widening Gyre (2009) #1
Dick says to Bruce: "Tell Babs it was always her above any of them!"
This line essentially erases every meaningful relationship Dick has had before Barbara, reducing his past partners to placeholders in his story. It frames Barbara as the "one true love" at the expense of his other relationships, making Dick look like he views everyone else as disposable, it actively rewrite his history, implying that the emotional bonds he had with Starfire, and others never mattered. It’s dismissive not just of his past relationships, but of his growth as a character, like all the women who shaped him are irrelevant until Barbara appears. It makes it look like Nightwing’s moral compass and loyalty only exist when Barbara is involved, which is completely out of character.
Grayson (2016) #20
Otto Netz, a villain, is attempting to take over Dick’s body and mind. During this, he tells Helena Bertinelli that the only woman Dick ever loved was Barbara, and adds that she is far prettier than Helena.
I was completely speechless. This line implies that Dick’s past relationships meant nothing.
On top of that, saying Helena is "less pretty" than Barbara is unnecessarily cruel and dismissive. It frames Barbara as the flawless ideal, reducing every other woman in Dick’s life to a secondary, lesser role.
Although Nightwing Annual #2 (2007) in which he cheated on Kory the night before their wedding, was retconned, numerous other questionable moments in his relationships are still canon.
Since Nightwing is a property of the Batman office, most of his writers are clearly pro-Dickbabs. In order to make the relationship convincing, they’ll do anything, even write Dick as someone who oversteps boundaries, treats other women poorly, or cheats, all to frame this pairing as his "OTP."
It doesn’t feel right to say this, but I don’t think Dick and Barbara deserve to be a happy couple. Like they are right now. This ship was essentially built by rewriting Dick into someone unfaithful or manipulative and by sidelining or erasing every other woman who mattered to him. That’s why, to me, this pairing never feels earned.
(I definitely agree with OP here.. this is exactly one of the reasons why i don't like Dickbabs, their relationship cannot stand on it's own without tearing down and undermining the other important women in Dick's life. It's an Insecure spiteful ship full of bitterness and hate for other women. It's rooted in racism and misogyny yet their fans act like it's a healthy ship you can't criticize.)
I just want to add more examples to OP's points.
Bea Bennett was another victim of the misogynistic Dickbabs writers.
She was a Black woman Dick dated, a Black Rights Activist and they met during his amnesia arc. Even after Dick got his memories back, he admitted he was still in love with Bea and even told Alfred he wanted to build a life with her. But then the Bat-editorial came up with an excuse to break them up so Tom Taylor could start pushing DickBabs again.
They had Dick end things with Bea for apparently "her safety,” in Nightwing #76 and Bruce even encouraged him to break up with her by talking about “heroes can’t be happy.” but literally two issues later, Taylor starts setting up a romantic plot between Dick and Barbara... and suddenly Dick is allowed to be happy now that he’s paired with Barbara.
It completely contradicts the reason they just used to break him and Bea up. And they made Bruce look like a pure hypocrite with him shipping Dickbabs.
and it was also disrespectful to Bea’s character. They had Dick move on from her ridiculously fast just two issues after the breakup, he’s already having lovey dovey moments with Barbara like he just completely forgot that he just recently broke up with Bea.
and few years after Tom Taylor kept pushing Dickbabs, they decided to retcon Bea’s past history In Nightwing Annual 2024.
They started inventing a story claiming Bea only dated Dick because she was being paid to watch him, basically retconning her into some villain/spy in his life. They completely rewrote her character and diminished her importance to Dick so Barbara can be framed as the “better,” more innocent option.
It’s the same thing as what they did to Kory. They invented that scenario in Nightwing Annual #2 where they claimed Dick cheated on Kory with Barbara the night before the wedding even though that originally never happened. Dick and Kory’s wedding was in 1993, and that cheating plot was only written in 2007. Dick was originally loyal to Kory back when they were together before the Dickbabs writers character assasinated him.
Just like how Kory got retconned into a Meaningless Sexual Fling, Bea got retconned into a Villain so they can prop up Barbara as his One True Love.
Another example of them treating other women like Garbage is in Young Justice, where Dick basically got rewritten into a different person once they started setting up the Dickbabs plot.
Before that plot existed, he wasn’t portrayed as a playboy at all. In Season 1, he only had eyes for Zatanna. They broke up off-screen in Season 2 on good terms, and their history wasn’t downplayed.
But after Season 2 ended, they released a comic tie-in that introduced the Dickbabs storyline and suddenly Dick was rewritten as this “playboy” who was labeled a “dog,” someone who supposedly hooked up with different women until he was “ready” for his true love Barbara, they always say he needs to be ready for Babs first before Babs enters into a relationship with him, acting as if Barbara is some sort of SPECIAL Woman that he needs to change himself for her. They pushed this idea that Dick was a mess who slept around while waiting for Barbara, and that she was the one who finally “fixed” him.
Calling him a Mature Man when he's with Barbara while describing him as a “dog" when he’s with other women basically disrespects Zatanna and the others, it reduces them to nothing more than distractions and sexual entertainments he was just trying to keep busy with while waiting for the Special Barbara Gordon to be with him.
What makes it even worse is how Barbara fans and Dickbabs shippers celebrate these panels. They put them in their edits, use them as “proof,” and act like it confirms Dickbabs as some destined one true love pairing.
They’re perfectly fine with writers slut-shaming and putting down any woman who isn’t Barbara as long as it benefits their ship. But the moment someone says even the slightest critical thing about Barbara or their ship, they are quick to personally insult and label that person as a "misogynist" and publicly shame them for having an opinion.
They're the definition of Hypocritical Moralists and Selective Feminists. They pick and choose when “feminism” matters. They don’t stand up for Kory, Helena, Shawn, Bea or the entire women as a whole, just their Favorite Barbara.
