Abusive John and Mary Grayson
You know what? In light of both the most recent Batman and Robin year 1 Batman and Robin Year 1 chapter and December's Batman: The Long Halloween - The Last Halloween chapter?
There are some versions of canon!John and Mary Grayson where they are actually, absolutely, abusive and exploitive parents. Where his parents had Dick training for 10 hours a day since he was three, where he's been performing full-time since he was 5, where enough people in the circus knew he was being groomed for the Court of Owls. Where his parents (or at least, John) cared more about either the thrill of the crowd/earning more money than he did the safety of his own son.
And, I know I say this every month or so, but circuses were terribly exploitive already of child acrobats, and I always felt that the Court of Owls was in part a parallel to the child trafficking that went on there.
Interestingly, John and Mary are held up as the gold standard of parents by others, in a similar way that Dick is held up as the gold standard as Robin. And yet, so many of those damaging personality traits that Dick has can be so easily traced back to his relationship with his parents.
What I love about Halloween is that it doesn't just talk about Dick's experiences pre-Bruce, but dares suggest that it actually wasn't healthy for Dick. I would even go so far as to say that there is almost an edge of fear in how Dick talks about his father.
I want so much for the darker side of the Graysons to be explored, even if just via fandom. Give me a John Grayson who is a punishing, unrelenting father who doesn't tolerate less than 100% commitment and perfectionism. A Mary who gets isolated from her own friends and loses herself in the fantasy of the Flying Grayson family at the expense of her son. A Dick who is 8 and has just lost everything, and who sees his parents through rose-colored glasses and the circus as a family instead of the exploitive business it was because he is a child. Give me the perfect Grayson family as a deliberately crafted marketing strategy, rather than an actuality. And. Give me other people in Dick's life who think, actually? His childhood was really fucked up.
There's a really interesting line in Halloween where Dick says that Bruce didn't just save his life, he gave him one. Most versions of Bruce in canon strive (at least initially) to give Dick a childhood, and it is Dick who always tries to push for more - who doesn't feel comfortable doing less. Bruce puts more importance on Dick being a child than some versions of Mary and John ever did.
... I might have to give a particular fic that is currently sitting in my 'too hard' basket another go.
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