On why Batman took in the Robins
There is not much that I hate more than the “Bruce Wayne needs light to balance the darkness of Batman” justification on why each of the robins took up the job. It makes the already a little bit militaristic relationship between Bruce and his actual children just that much worse.
I’ve always thought that the reason why all of the Robins were made into Robins was because they literally could not be stopped.
Like imagine, Batman goes out one night to see a tiny child beating the fuck out of gangsters demanding the location of Tony Zucco. This pint sized kid apparently broke out of his orphanage and has spend the last several nights with no martial art training terrorising the Gotham nightlife and there is so much rage contained in him that any attempt to stop him is just going to make him more furious and that much more unstoppable. So Bruce takes him in and tries to curb the anger and it kind of works but now the kid fucking refuses to stop fighting crime and Bruce is just horribly equipped to handle this conversation so he just allows it and vows to protect Dick at all costs.
Later, Dick has left and Batman is equalising and figuring out his now solitude, Batman finds an actual child prying off the hubcaps of the fucking bat mobile in crime alley on the day of his parents murder and holy shit this kid has some fucking guts to try this. And then the kid lies to Batman’s face, hits him with a tire iron, yells an insult at him and runs away and holy shit this kid has no fear. Jason later proves to be as cunning as he is brave and when Jason insists on becoming Robin, Bruce knows that if he said no, Jason would find a way to make it happen regardless.
Tim is a special case, tracking down Starfire and Dick and then talking to Bruce, this kid is smart as hell and stubborn to the bone. Bruce says no because how could he say yes and Tim doesn’t fucking listen, following him around and stealing Jason’s suit to fight with Bruce and this kid who went by himself from New Jersey to San Francisco and tracked down three superhero’s won’t fucking stop. So Bruce trains him with every intention of making this training as unnecessarily gruelling and miserable as possible in the hopes of scaring this kid off but he doesn’t and now Batman has a Robin again.
And if Damian wasn’t Robin he literally would have just gone out and beheaded the Gotham night life or gone back to Talia so fuck it, Welcome to the club.
Like I understand that Bruce got emotional stability from having family around him but that as the only explanation sounds so predatory to me.
