Re: Tarantula, no she’s not a plot tool that can be used against Dick. Devin Grayson wrote a plain OOC Dick Grayson and I don’t talk about just the player part. He HAS been morally and mentally challenged before her in his 60 years of existence. just in different ways that actuallly made sense for his character. For example he needs to take anger management class and I would say he’s UNREINVENTED/UNDER developed/UNEXPLOITED in modern years because DC editorial don’t care about him more than isn’t Challenged. It’s not widely acknowledged that his moral challenge is very similar to that of Bruce : integrity , failure, no killing code , people dying and communication and classism, and the difficulty he has looking at a thing outside of his perspective, and last but not least, the carrying on despite having no rewards for the work. Because it’s similar and so codependent on Bruce’s own, they rather use Bruce for those and reduced his story and issues down to looks and romance and teenage angst.
The way rape was used against him, it’s framed as a character flaw, that he’s a player so somebody has to give him a lesson? No his talent and also flaw is he’s an actor. Challenge that actor personality. Make him fail to act , like in the NTT era, but now it’s akso compromising his identity. Expose his insecurities about who he is: deep down he thinks he’s just a charity case abd not some charming Badass. Challenge him so that he realised he’s right. He owes Bruce anything. Or better, expose his identity and the entire Family , and makes it his story rather than Bruce. Hell the Golden age Dick has more thought about those than the modern one.
Or , if it has to be drama, make him travel through the multiverse. Challenge him through his jealousy with every other version of Dicks that had it better than him and treated better and married and happy than him.