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Dunno if this has been asked before but what was your first impression of Damian? How did your feelings for the character evolve?

I don’t usually get asked for my opinions on things so this was a joy to find in my inbox! You asked for an explanation on my feelings evolving, so prepare for one of the lengthiest responses you will ever get to anything:

Honestly, my first impression of Damian was that he was kind of a jerk, before I even knew just how much of a jerk he truly used to be (spoiler alert: as we all know, a lot). But this is before I ventured from comics that weren’t Nightwing, back when I was mini and flying by the seat of my pants when it came to DC (AKA picking up random books I saw on the shelves in the library and conveniently finding Jeph Loeb instead of the mess of current continuity that may have turned me off comic books forever). I saw him first at a convention when I found the Batman and Robin series and thought it was Dick. I turned to the back and saw something about some assassin kid and stared for a bit, put it down, and went, “Oookay, new Robin doesn’t know if he wants to be a murderer or not, that’s… fun.”

Then I read the New 52 Nightwing run, before I realized that I don’t really like the New 52 and don’t want to do that again (Nightwing was one of the few runs that didn’t suck, at least, but I wasn’t a fan of how dumb he was written). Damian appeared in there a few times, and it was honestly the sweetest thing. I remember falling in love with their relationship at that moment, right then and there, no going back. The videogame scene did it for me, when Dick talked about getting a videogame that Damian really wants to play and playing it with him, and then next thing you know the game is abandoned in his living room and he’s standing next to Damian’s grave giving a frankly amazing inner monologue about what it’s like to constantly move forward. Considering I wasn’t ‘in’ with DC yet, I was heartbroken – I had no idea Damian had died, and wouldn’t find out why for at least another year (and it broke my heart even more).

There was an offhand comment from my cosplayer friend some time later about how I should cosplay Damian. I was short, I was “brown”, I would make an accurate cosplay. I was a little iffy about being told to cosplay a character just because I was I appeared brown, but I was desperately trying to find a cosplay where I wouldn’t have to hide my eyebrows. I have yet to cosplay him, but it did make me look into him a bit more. I fell in love with his costume design, which is the first thing I look for in my cosplays – recognizable as Robin, distinguishable by fans as which Robin. And then time went on and I became more and more conscious of the fact that no other character I like resembles anything near my ethnic identity. Except, of course, one.

This all conveniently falls into the period of my life when I struggled with being stuck expressing a conglomeration of three different cultural identities. I needed something in media, some character to project myself onto to remind me that the way I do things isn’t crazy or imaginary. That my identity is real and it doesn’t have to conform to anyone else’s, because my situation is weird but it’s still mine.

I latched onto Damian. Reading the Son of Batman books cemented it for me, too. I’ve given a lengthy response as to why the Al Ghul’s aren’t stellar representation and I don’t believe Damian is either. He isn’t a representation of a Middle Eastern or Asian person. I’ve thought for hours and hours about what his cultural identity might be. I won’t get into it here, but it was fascinating, and while I couldn’t relate in every way, the fact that it was up in the air, the fact that he’s been raised so uniquely and it makes you wonder what he really identifies with, if he identifies with anything at all and doesn’t just think “This is the way I do things, fuck you”, was so familiar.

I read fanfiction with him and became disgusted about how there seems to be only be two ways to write him: Don’t acknowledge the Middle Eastern part of his ethnicity or fetishize it. I was pissed. Still am. I’ve experienced Middle Eastern fetishization in literature, but not with something I had made so personal to me. So I resolved to write him more, in the way I wish he was written. Most of what I’ve written about him is tucked away into my files. In fact, what I have on my AO3 profile really doesn’t do justice to the variety of things that I write just for myself.

(I’m going to divide the post right here because the rest can probably be considered more of a tangent. It does, however, go more in depth as to the personal reasons why I love Damian).

This may seem unrelated, but if you want an analysis of how much I love Damian, this is some background you need to know: Roughly three to four years ago now, I met my little cousin for the first time in Armenia. Well, maybe I should say second time, but the first time was when he was just a little baby, ten years ago at that point. Let me tell you, my little cousin was the most interesting little shit. He pissed me off most of the time, yes. The sexism of Iran and Armenia was punched into him hard. He had a hard time comprehending why I, as a woman, would dare carry my own suitcase up the stairs. But the more time I spent with him, the more I started to analyze.

He and his older brother lost their mother to cancer two years before and it created an interesting dynamic. In our culture there are very clear gender divides, roles for the woman and the man, and now there was no woman in their house. Their father succumbed to drowning his grief in alcohol and my older cousin was the one helping the women now set the table, helping make coffee and tea, all things that women do. But my little cousin, Vedi, refused to. He insisted he was the man. He was a grown up (he was almost 11) and we should treat him as such. He spoke with a very mature voice, held himself up straight and proper, and got angry when I spoke in English with his brother because he wanted to participate in our grown up discussions too. But he was still a child. One of the things I remember very clearly is when I found a way to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender while visiting him. Turns out, he loves that show. But I couldn’t find subtitles. He didn’t care. He loved the show even if he couldn’t understand it, and found it funny when I tried to explain things. He made me promise not to watch it without him.

We would take naps in the middle of the day, right before tea, and one of these times I couldn’t sleep so I watched some more episodes. When Vedi woke up he looked absolutely heartbroken. And I realized that he wanted to watch the show because he wanted to spend time with me, but he just couldn’t… say it. Didn’t know how to say it. He acted so grown up but he wasn’t. And that’s when things clicked into place a little more.

Ervin, his brother, became the “woman” of the house, as much as he would kill me if he heard me say that, and Vedi became the “man”. He was constantly trying to man up, getting offended when someone thought he was cute because men aren’t cute. He did everything his dad told him to do, like a little toy soldier, but his dad didn’t tell him to do much. He wasn’t much of a father. And Vedi’s forced maturity only became more apparent as time went on. By the time he was 12 (he had come to America for some time, and this is when all his rapid development happened) he was speaking English fluently and his overt sexism was gone. He smiled more. He respected me more. And I realized after a while… Christ. He reminds me of Damian.

Not only that, I’ve been substituting Damian with him, every time I read or write him. I’ve been thinking about Vedi. And I suppose I’ve been substituting Dick with myself, and I know myself enough to know that this must be one of the reasons why I love Dick and Damian’s relationship so much.

I love Damian to the bottom of my heart and soul. I love Vedi to the bottom of my heart and soul. They’re two separate people, and yet somehow along the way they melded with each other. No, my little cousin was never an assassin. But he did move to US before he was a teen and he did experience tremendous growth as a person because of it. He did have a childhood with a stark lack of parental figures that he won’t come to realize the repercussions of until he’s older. He has a father who can’t be relied on, stuck in a haze of his own emotional grief, not seeing what it’s done to his kids. He tries to win said father’s approval, but it’s never going to happen. He pressures himself constantly to be grown up, but he’s not, and his mannerisms are so conveniently aligned with that of the character we all know (and hopefully love). I still write Damian as his own character, separate from my baby cousin. But sometimes, when I need to capture a look, or the way he might say something, I think of Vedi.

I haven’t seen Vedi in a while now, since he moved back to Iran (because of his father – he doesn’t make good decisions, and Vedi is nothing but the obedient toy soldier). I miss him like another limb, and I worry constantly for him. I can’t talk to him often if at all, what with an almost 12 hour time difference. So I project those feelings of worry, concern, resentment towards his father, everything, into Dick, and how I perceive his relationship with Damian.

So, in length, that’s how and why my feelings evolved from “This kid is kind of a jerk” to “I would probably die for him.”

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