nightwing vol 2 issue 93 has its own tag on ao3 with 149 works total specifically tagged to address or directly reference it, with dick grayson as the main character. the vast majority of those fics are some kind of hurt-comfort addressing SA.
by contrast… i’m a starfire fan. starfire was sold into slavery as a teenager where she was not only raped but slated to be executed for defending herself. there’s no tag for fics about that. not only that, but if you search starfire’s character tag and look for anything discussing sexual assault, implied or otherwise, dick is the main character in everything i’ve seen while looking. many fics actually give dick a backstory more similar to starfire’s, by making his apprenticeship with slade retroactively sexual slavery.
now — i don’t mind that dick gets stories about him. write whatever you’d like, i’ve actually read and enjoyed many of the night wing 93 ones! these works can be good and interesting and more importantly, they’re creative endeavors, and i don’t want to shame people for being interested in writing about this sensitive topic. it’s fine to write about it, no one’s saying it’s not.
but his fans have the nerve to endlessly talk about it and write about it. then also say ‘no one ever talks about this!!!’
my brothers in christ, in every community i’ve been in with dick fans, his SA is mentioned in every other conversation. even in fics that aren’t about it, it’s a 50/50 shot that it’ll be mentioned as a side note.
even that isn’t what bothers me, though it is a little tedious, as he’s a whole character and that event isn’t all he is as a character.
no, what actually bothers me is that LEGITIMATELY no one talks about or makes fics about women’s SA — but on the rare occasion it IS brought up, dick fans shoehorn his trauma into being the center of attention. can you people let us talk about women for 5 minutes without making this about him?
