A long overdue ko-fi for the dear @darlinglissa !! Thank you for being so very patient with me <3 You get: Tim being an annoying little brother to Dick (because I've been reading a lot of 90s/early 2000s comics lately)
well thats confusing
One fanon thing that gets to me, is that okay, if you want to use Photo Kid Tim. Tim who takes photos of superheroes. You want to roll with that fanon.
That's a version of post-Crisis Tim. That's the Tim who was at the circus and saw Dick Grayson and imprinted on him. He didn't encounter Jason until he was 10-11 years old.
He's also the Tim who kicked Jason in the balls. He has a bunch of feelings about Jason, but the Robin he cares most about is Dick.
If you want the Tim that says Jason was his favourite Robin and closest 'brother', that's New 52 Tim. Firstly that's not the Tim Drake you're looking for, secondly this is a Tim Drake who necessarily cannot have the same Photo Kid past, because that Tim doesn't have the circus backstory, and that Tim didn't have a Batman, let alone a Robin, until he was 10-11 years old. Which if you want this Tim tracking Bats, it's more realistic given his older starting age for all events, but also given the time frame is compressed, Jason's probably Robin for less than a year, when Tim is about 12-13, and Jason is 17 at that time.
There's a much bigger age gap. It's only a very short period of time. The history is far far different. It's just got a whole heap of different dynamics.
These are two separate incompatible storylines. Grabbing the set up from one and imposing the character dynamics from the other is sure, a fanon choice you can make, but it's not there in the actual stories.
>:P
(Angry face sticking his tongue out at you.)
I am NOT basing my version on nu52 Tim! How DARE you!
I am basing it on extrapolations from how Tim acted about Jason in his first 2 years of comics, and how he treats legacy, and how he reacts to things Bruce and Dick care about, and how he never seems to shake his first impressions.
Sure, this is all leads to a version that is incompatible with what canon has shown us. Tim’s canon interactions with reanimated Jason make NO SENSE! They do not fit the character! I do not understand them after almost 15 years of trying!
I have read the comics, and written the meta, and examined my prejudices … and just ended up with more prejudices.
Now, do I think that my take is the right or real one? No! There must be SOME way to reconcile what I’ve read. But I am FAILING, Zahri!
It would be so much easier to use non-character nu52 ‘Tim’, Zahri! Jason shows up in 2003 (as Jason disguised as Clayface disguised as Hush disguised as Jason). That is EIGHT YEARS of comics I am having to heavily reinterpret to understand what is going on. Eight years of Tim’s motivations in this one little area not lining up.
Zahri, I am doing something far more difficult and stupid than crossing canons. I am applying characterization 20 years out of date, because I hate Tim thinking Jason is dumb SO MUCH, and I can’t just ignore Jason’s existence, and THE CANON IS BAD, ZAHRI.
It is bad.
Oh, I don't deny that Tim also has feelings about Jason and respected his work as Robin (there's that way of reading the early appearances of Jason's Case as at least partly Tim hallucinating it as a memorial to talk to about how he feels about the role he's stepped into and the loss everyone feels).
It's that, if Timothy Jackson Drake, character from 1989 to 2011, has a special interest, it's in Robin. And if he has a special interest in any particular person in the role as Robin, it is so very clearly Dick Grayson, and suggesting that it's Jason because of things said during new 52 is reading against the text we have.
And Tim spends a good 15 years of comics being carefully trained and warned, by everyone around him, that he lives under the risk of dying in the role. He must not screw up. Even if he's not a natural, he needs to listen and to work longer and harder and do more repetitions to stop himself becoming another statistic. Because the truth is always hovering around everyone: we lost Jason. Something went wrong, and the last thing Bruce did was tell Jason to stay put and take no action, and yet when he got back Jason HAD disobeyed orders and that killed him. That's what Bruce knows: he told Jason to stay, and Jason did not stay. Jason has never taken advantage of any opportunity to explain what happened, and why he did not stay, so what Bruce knows is: he did not stay, even though he was told to.
And so whether Tim remembers Jason as Robin from occasional news reports, or he was a camera stalker child, he spent longer than Jason's entire career as Robin being told that what they know about what killed Jason was that he messed up. He didn't listen and obey orders. He made a mistake and it killed him. And that Tim must not let that happen to him.
And if you look at Tim's stories, even to his very first outing as Robin in Batman Identity Crisis where Tim disobeys orders to come after Bruce, he knows that he may never become Robin because he disobeyed those orders, and Bruce needs a Robin who will listen. And it's a sacrifice he risks to save Bruce. And as we know, it all works out, but he's weighing up the importance of disobeying that far back, because he's been warned.
And then when Jason does come back, Jason's first two interactions with Tim involve injuring him - by using him as a pawn in Jason's argument with Bruce. And then does not bother seriously interacting with Tim again all the way up to the pointy end of Batman RIP (instead he goes off to hang around and annoy Dick).
And Tim quite reasonably could be seen to have looked up to Jason in the early days! He was measuring himself against a yardstick of Dick and of Jason and was trying to keep up with both of them. But I think it's fair to say that between Dick and Jason, if Tim was asked to pick a Robin between the two of them, it's Dick. Dick is the person he imprinted on, age toddler, at the circus. Tim worked out Batman's identity because Dick Grayson, aerialist, was one of his special interests. Dick is the character who spent years training him, who first called him a brother as far back as Prodigal, who Tim spent years trying to copy and keep up with and learn from, whose door Tim showed up at before he was even Robin, saying that Dick was the only person who could teach Tim how to be Batman's partner.
Dick was a person and a brother and an idol to Tim. Jason was a cautionary tale.
Just a disclaimer: the ONLY thing I disagree with is the idea of Tim being awed by Jason is due to the nu52. Because I got into fandom before the nu52 started, skimming the JayTim fic for Cass, and Dick&Tim brotherly stuff. I remember scoffing about how they were making the fanon into canon, and weren’t even doing it RIGHT.
So, as long as we aren’t blaming the reboot for people ignoring what canon gave us, and are recognizing that we’ve been ignoring it for way longer than that, I agree with absolutely everything you’re saying!
-
Fandom’s current habit of gutting Tim and Dick’s relationship is TRAGIC. The idea that no one could POSSIBLY handle more than one brother, and Dick chose Damian so Tim gets Jason as a consolation prize … is not my favourite.
Tim isn’t a superhero without Dick. Dick is the only person older than him who has ever chosen him, and he means everything to Tim. Jason isn’t even close.
And the forces that you’re describing for Tim - be infallible, be obedient, but also stop me from killing myself - I agree that they’re the spectre of Jason, and that could lead to a lot of what we see.
-
And canon DOES support Bruce doing a smear campaign against his own son, and Tim absorbing it like a good sponge.
But I am personally offended that canon does this. And want it on record that my ignoring of this canon never required the nu52.
-
I WILL accept you assigning half the blame for ‘Tim and Dick aren’t close’ onto the nu52, though. (Red Robin gets the other half.)
Eh, we have different memories of the level of support for Tim ever looking up to Jason around the fandom in the late 2000s (my portion of it was very focused on the kick, and considering that as the dynamic between the two of them for the foreseeable future. Made it VERY weird to return to the fandom after a decade away to see how radically the position had shifted). I don’t disagree some people played around with the concept, but it wasn’t a dominant one.
My issue with most of the characterisation of ‘Jason was MY Robin (what’s a Dick Grayson)’ is that the vast majority of textual support for Tim having an attitude in that direction that I’ve read is mostly written between 2011-2016. Most of it for before then is at least equally weighted with Dick, or Dick predominating.
I will push back on the idea Bruce ran a smear campaign, however.
I’ve never actually read Bruce’s feelings about Jason while he was dead as a smear campaign. I read it as something far more tragic: time altering memories.
Because as Bruce replayed his memories, he became caught up looking for what went wrong. He got caught on little memories of times when Jason took risks, when Jason was reckless, when Jason moved before being told to, when Jason made a different call to the one that Bruce would have made. And he obsessed - is this the reason everything went wrong? Is this something he should have recognised sooner? Could he have prevented this?
And when you play a memory over and over you can alter that memory, especially if you’re focusing on certain details. The significance of every little occasion grew in his mind. To the point that Bruce could find himself concluding, that yes, Jason HAD been reckless - weren’t there all these events he could remember? Maybe he had been right in his suspicions about Garzonas?
And also, conveniently, ‘memories altering over time’ is also how retcons work, retelling a story to yourself until you can make sense of it. Bruce trying to find a reason in what happened entwined with editorial retcons and at the end of it, what Bruce (and what Alfred, Barbara and Dick) remember of Jason is the brash boy who was reckless. They remember the tragedy, as they had to live with the consequences. (And honestly, the Gotham Knights 43-45 story is pretty good support for the idea of everyone’s focus being on trying to work out how it went wrong)
Even if you don’t read the Jason on page in 1987-8 that way. Even if that’s not how Jason remembers events. It’s how the people who mourned his death now remember him.
And honestly I find it fascinating, that you can have someone read for Jason, and jump straight from 1988 to 2005, and come away with one read on ‘what happened’ and have another person read for Bruce and all those years of intervening events, of chances to change events including turning down an offer to resurrect Jason, of the layers of hurt and regrets and memories, and come to a very different view.
Hug Day!!
Pierre Ribera (Spanish, 1867-1932) Bozzetto for a ceiling fresco of the casino of Monte Carlo, n.d.
You know, I may have been making this same point for over 30 years, but it's always nice to see others say it, too.
animals
Batman: Prodigal
Gotham City is studied in the whole world for its strange sociology :
- Two of the richest guy in the world, Brucie and Timmy come from here but didn't even graduate high school, but they are doing lord's work in this city
- People with PHD/MD are unusually overly represented in the carceral population, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, Mr Freeze, Two Face, Riddler, Bane (don't have a diploma but one the smartest guy in town)
- Crime lord Red Hood gives free courses on litterature and law "Batman isn't assermented, he can't arrest you."
- Even children are suprising, when a surgeon took in charge Jim Gordon after he has been shot, 5 apple tall Robin said "Tt ! Where did you have your degree, my cow operate better than you. Step back." And proceed to remove the bullets with his mother on the phone.
When Harper Row, 22, applied to be electrician and said 10 years of experience, it wasn't a lie.
Duke Thomas cracked the new LexCorp encryption program on live broadcasting when Luthor said he will give 1 billion dollars to whomever could do it. That was 5 profitable minutes. Barbara did in 2.
What a city
Tim Drake /Robin Time Travel Suit by Mr. Terrific
“…Jason isn’t invited since he thinks he’s apparently TOO COOL to have a bird theme now…”
the thing is that knightfall (where bane masterminded an arkham breakout to specifically wear down and exhaust bruce culminating in bane breaking into his home and breaking his back there), contagion (where an ebolavirus is killing the citizens of gotham and bruce is unable to fight it), cataclysm (where an earthquake destroys gotham), no man's land (where the government voted gotham out of the united states despite bruce wayne's best efforts to stop them), and murderer/fugitive (where a woman gets shot to death in bruce's home and he is framed for her murder) are all extremely vital parts of bruce's descent into being more closed off and unable to trust or open up to others as compared to his former self and you can't just extrapotale his assholeness after all that to the beginning of tim's career because you need the context of all that happening to explain his behavior.
if anything tim had a front row seat to bruce changing over time because he was there for it all.
ok so we know that during dick and jason time bruce was a reasonable good dad (from what i can tell) and when jason died bruce lost it and was spiraling to a self destructive and suicidal path (that's why tim was involved in the first place) and is cold and calculating and rarely shows that he cares for them, while in dick and jason's time they got his openly caring about them. dick and jason got the bruce that plays with them, that they can freely joke around with, that freely show that he cares for them. while tim, Steph, damian, duke, and all the rest that came after jason's death got the serious bruce, the bruce that is overly paranoid, the violent bruce, the bruce that wont hesitate to punch or put them in place, while dick and jason's bruce wont try to hit them and rather sacrifice himself than hurt dick and jason (or anyone in that matter) and both dick and jason knows that jason's death changed bruce to the point that they cant see their bruce when they look at him, all they see is a cold and closed off man who appears uncaring and not the man that raised them, the man that cared for them and love them. (at least that's what i observed when people mentioned the comics, bruce still kinda cares about the others just to clarify)
Assigning each Bat Family Members a TMA Fear entity cuz multiverse shit (we love crossovers)
Dick Grayson: The Vast
Jason Todd: The Desolation AND The Buried
Tim Drake (he's fucking complicated archivist material for real) : The Eye / The Lonely / The Stranger
Damian Wayne: The Slaughter
Duke Thomas: The Dark
Bruce Wayne: The Hunt
Stephanie Brown: The Spiral
Cassandra Cain: The Web
Barbara Gordon: The Eye
Reasons Why Bruce Wayne Refuses to Take a Break:
1. Why should he?
2. Because fuck you, that's why.
3. He's scared that if he ever actually stops to take a break, completely relax, and fully drop his guard, something horrible will happen to Gotham and/or the people he cares about and he won't be able to stop it because he wasn't prepared OR the years and years of burn out and physical/emotional pain will finally catch up to him (because he stopped running from it) and it'll hit him so hard that he'll finally have to face the trauma he endured as a child when he saw his parents die (which he is not physically capable of coping with, because the event fractured his identity into Batman, a man with childish morals and an inability to make exceptions [such as not killing a petty crook OR a mass murderer and thinking they should be dealt with the same way] and a childish sense of justice that cannot exist without him blocking out his trauma [so if he had to face that trauma his very identity would cease to exist]) therefore his mental health would be destroyed to such an extent that he'd be unable to even pretend he was alright, which in turn will make the people he cares about worry about him, and because he hates when people worry about him it'll cause him to lash out which will further isolate him from the world and from any form of human connection, leaving him sitting broken at an empty table in an empty mansion on an empty island just like he did when he was a mere, insignificant, hurt, orphaned eight year old who hadn't yet made his mark on the world-
4. He doesn't wanna >:[
18 is decently long life for a dog. RIP Kabosu! You will live forever in our hearts
