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if they do bring back ives though, it should go like this:

tim: hey ives, it's been a while, how've you been?

ives: well, i survived tuberculosis, so i got that going for me-

#seriously though what is it with poor ives & everytime he gets brought back he has some awful diagnosis #first it was lyme disease. then cancer. #you know they never showed us ives catching the clench but i bet he got that too #it's like. ives and tim attending different schools for a while wasn't a good enough reason for them to have been out of touch for a bit #no the real reason ives hasn't been able to talk with tim over the past few months is he's dying #anyways it's not that ives has been ignoring tim he's just been in a sanitorium okay.

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actually. i was thinking, though. what exactly *is* the metric of a tim civilian friend. as in, what exactly makes a character tim's friend vs a kid he goes to school with who he happens to friendly with (because tim is generally friendly with everyone). what's the distinction?

and i think the answer falls on "does tim's civilian life and robin life intersect in a significant way around this character"

because, listen. we all know that tim is a compartmentalizer who tries to keep the ideas of "tim" & "robin" separate. however, we also know that it's not one or the other with tim--he's both. and the closer you're allowed to that narrative intersection of both tim & robin, the more the civilian in question can then be seen to have importance in *tim's* life and a reciprocation of friendship interest by tim.

because you think of the gotham heights high crew--not only does tim use his skills to investigate what's wrong with ives at one point (he got an embarrassing job), he's also used the W&W crew for unknowing assistance against the joker, hudson leads him to a case at one point, & he runs into a case whole hanging out with them to see a play at the park. despite tim's best effort to seperate parts of himself the close interactions of his other life to his friends is not just tim accepting friendship, but tim narratively showing friendship in return--they are narratively allowed to be a part of his life as robin though they'll never know it.

and the brentwood boys are no different. though they're not allowed the secret, their lives are affected and improved by tim as robin. as they give friendship, tim gives friendship in return. and when tim leaves his friendship and reunion with ives is marked by a case, the one with charaxes.

and even later, with zoanne, her life and relationship with tim is complicated by tim's life as robin, but she is allowed that narrative closeness to his life as robin, closeness to the entirety of his life. she even makes a cameo as having spoken to vicki vale about tim, and vicki's story during that era is finding proof of the hidden life of the batfam.

louis grieve is interesting because darla is the friend of the era who meets this metric--her life as a mob daughter is doomed to return tim to his true life. her resurrection as warlock's daughter is what intersects her with whole of tim's life, not just tim. and bernard surprisingly doesn't have any narrative markers that would indicate these kind of particularly close feelings from tim towards him--tim does not help him on a personal level with his personal life, there's, hm. like bernard does bring him the news of steph being robin, but there's really no personal intersection of *tim as robin* with bernard or because of bernard or for bernard. they do interact during the school shooting but it's no more personal than tim and the rest of the kids. in post-crisis, at least, the lack of tim's as robin having any sort of notable personal connection to bernard narratively indicates a fundamental distance between them where tim is not shown to have any significant personal investment in/towards bernard unlike all the other civilian friends. i would say bernard does make in on account of his presence at the school shooting, however when tim's true self is both robin & tim, for him to not have any significant personal narrative connection to the real tim, it does makes him a notable outlier among the civilian cast.

#okay NOW i'm done. #i do think this is intentional btw there absolutely was room to put him + his trauma post the shooting #in a way that tim would have had a chance to intervene as robin and thereby connect bernard to the true tim #but the notable absence of tim having any sort of personal robin connection to him #does narratively indicate a functional disinterest in him on tim's part

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I’m trying to find a meta post you may or may not have wrote about Tim and how he’s on of the few successors of Batman that actually has his own dedicated rogues gallery along w a list of each villain idk if you’re the one who wrote it or not but if you did could you respond to this with a link to it cause I want to reread it and I would be eternally grateful 🥲 but also if you have no idea what I’m talking about just delete this and I’m sorry for the inconvenience

no inconvenience at all! mmmm it was not mine, unfortunately! it might've been zahri here???

if not, i can't help anymore, sorry :( this was the first post that came to mind (never underestimate my ability to go into a tumblr archive and search with find on page, it's how i find all my old stuff i didn't tag lmao). anyways hope this is it! if not, hope you find it eventually!

#scintilly ask tag #katekanemybeloved

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also sorry but making bernard's parents basically fanon drakes is very funny in retrospect of. they sent him to private school from his settlement money (which i'm pretty sure is meant to indicate they could afford private school now. and also maybe that they were concerned about sending him to public school in gotham after war games.). maybe they stole bernard's money and that's how they became rich.

#sorry but the rich cold parents thing will never not be funny to me #did fitz actually brush up on bernard either or... #(done being shady lol sorry)

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tim drake high school friendships, ranked by closeness to tim at the end of post-crisis:

sebastian ives. ives, ives, NOBODY out here is doing it like ives. ives was the FIRST civilian friend ever introduced to tim & the first friend tim made upon entering public school for the very first time. ives has been there since tim's second mini-series. ives as tim's friend is so important he is one of the only high school friends to be brought back into tim's story by others after his creator, dixon, left: he makes an appearance/is referenced as a long term friend with lewis (robin), yost (red robin), & fabnic (red robin). he has at least two major health scares & a fakeout health scare. let's make one thing absolutely clear here: ives *is* tim's best civilian friendship, which has endured as a friendship through *multiple* high school transfers away from him. absolutely no contest.

danny temple. listen. danny & tim don't interact, like at all, post danny leaving brentwood but that's just because the whole kid kobra thing never took off. i'm sure if it did, tim & danny would have interacted a lot more post separation. and listen, danny is the "civilian" friend who *knows* tim is robin. they went on basically two vacations together. they're far closer than your standard high school friend.

zoanne. listen, she may have been a love interest who didn't work out, but that didn't stop them from also being friends. her friendship to tim is also referenced in yost's run in red robin. as far as tim & high school friends, since tim tends to drift apart from people once they're no longer at the same school, zo ekes through with a recency bias for tim. in an end of robin/red robin era she'd be on his current list of civilians he felt close to. she's shown to be extremely worried about him in red robin #10 indicating ongoing friendship.

kevin "hudmeister" hudman, hudson, callie evans: these lovelies were part of tim's core group and have the benefit of length of friendship going for them. hudman & hudson were a core part of tim's W&W group that made several recurring appearances through tim's initial high school years & had a significant part in his miniseries ii. only lower because ostensibly tim did lose contact with them upon going to brentwood, still higher because they played a decently important secondary/tertiary role through many years of tim's publication

darla: darla is the person at louis grieves tim actually likes, okay? he's devastated when she dies and he can't save her and she's brought back to interact with tim again as warlock's daughter & has a small but significant storyline with her friendship with tim as a result.

buzz & kip: when tim is at brentwood, he spends most of his free non-danny time hanging with buzz and kip. they both have a couple issue storylines that tim is involved in & he seems to like them pretty well. once tim leaves brentwood, however, the friendship dies away and is not mentioned again.

ali ben khadir: tim's first roommate, gets a significant storyline and then vanishes, so is below the other brentwood kids. tim likes him though, so that puts him above-

wesley: tim's second brentwood roommate is next, because they spent a significant amount of time together & again had multiple issues to showcase the development of their relationship. wes is under kip & buzz & ali though, because tim doesn't actually like him all that much despite the fact that they're nominally friends. he grows to he okayish with him. i guess.

bernard: listen *if we're talking post-crisis only* (which we are), bernard falls *solidly* at the bottom of the list as tim's least important/significant civilian friend. there's no significant story focused on tim's friendship to bernard specifically, tim is barely tolerating him most of the time & is friends with him basically only because bernard is pushy about being friends with tim & after tim leaves louis grieves he doesn't bother to keep in touch to the point where bernard doesn't even know where tim ended up, only that he's heard *from other people* tim might be in bludhaven (who apparently are in the know as to tim's location). now obviously we can't ignore the trauma that led tim to ghost him, but since bernard after this is never brought up again in post-crisis, he's a pretty solid 'that friendship definitely died once they were no longer in each other's immediate vicinity & were basically only friends with each othet due to circumstances of going to school together only'

#listen. listen. #i'm sorry to bernard but. #there was no long lasting friendship there. friends only cause they went to the same school.

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bringing this back bc my thoughts rn are a tangential expansion of this. like the thing is. that a female character is given male traits it is done as a way to narrow the idea of what a strong female character is. but when a male character is given traditionally female-coded traits in fiction, it's used as an expansion of what a man is allowed to be in complexity. and *that's* the difference. male grief, especially male grief for a male comrade/friend/brother, is lauded as a shining example of the deep feelings males have under the surface. female grief is used to villainize, punish for the crime of having strong emotional reactions. you can give a male character all the empathy, kindness, compassion, vulnerability in the world and it doesn't make them female coded, it just means that men are allowed that complexity of emotion and it's acceptable when males feel those things, especially when the target of those emotions is another male character. but you take away those very same traits from female characters to make them more palatable--they become girlbosses, they become cold and logical + need a man to open their hearts, their flaws are sanded away, they are only allowed the extremes of only "female" traits (in which case she is usually disrespected for those) or only "male" traits (to make her a strong, likable character). her presence and complexity is never allowed to matter to the narrative in a way a male character's is. she's not even allowed to have it to begin with.

and that's partially how you end up with this. male characters are allowed to leave marks and be missed forever because they are allowed to be complex and have complex, contradictory feelings about each other and have that matter long-term. a female character has these same traits taken away to make her more palatable, & she is also not allowed to be missed or leave a mark for those very same traits that men are remembered for and given. and the traits she is allowed to have are so narrowed down in acceptability that it's extremely easy to just slot another girl into her missing place. after all, since there's a very narrow definition of how a woman can act, she's just going to be replaced by a carbon copy of herself.

and honestly, the fact of the matter is. that when a male character is killed for another male character's sake, it's almost guaranteed that the death will forever be a weight upon the narrative in the way a female character's death never will be. a male character will be mourned forever, the loss of a brother in arms considered a gaping wound that will never truly heal. meanwhile, the loss of a mother is a small footnote tragedy in the beginning of the story, but she is never truly remembered by her son. the loss of a daughter guarantees that a surrogate one will eventually arrive to replace her empty space. the loss of a wife will usher in a new woman to heal the man. but the loss of a brother or father is a constant cross the man will bear for the rest of his life.

#just having some thoughts about these things again

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like the thing about making janet power hungry and vicious and cold and scary/terrifying and the idea that tim gets all his calculating and terrifying traits from her is that 1) it is the thinnest veiled refrigerator mother trope ever, let us leave that misogynistic nonsense in the 40s and 50s where it didn't belong, but it existed and 2) though it is *so* often used in an outright misogynistic way, even the attempts to frame tim getting his viciousness from her in a positive way leans heavily into misogynistic ideals where the only good woman mother is one whose traits are cold and logical and thereby "manly" (dare i say....male character coded?) in a way that *does* devalue traits like empathy & compassion & caring as strong traits to learn from the source of a female character.

(and let me make it clear! i don't believe these traits are male vs female in real life, of course humans are complex and show a wide range of characteristics and women aren't inherently emotional and men aren't inherently logical. it's just within fiction, it's very telling that the way to make a female character strong is often, lazily, just to give her traits that are usually associated with male characters instead and call that a day. because why make a woman emotional and strong when you could just get rid of all those pesky traditionally feminine coded traits instead #feminism#genderneutralmeansmaleright)

so like, you have janet. and basically before she dies, she is explicitly shown as the more emotional parent before she dies given her two appearances are

she's very visibly the only person in the audience crying at witnessing the tragic death of the flying graysons

she's crying at the terror of being kidnapped

and yea, janet being cast as the more emotional one to jack's firm resolve reeks of good ole 80s sexism (women are hysterical, right?), but when you try to remediate that by making her a cold, vicious, terrifying Strong Woman instead you have just horseshoed around to perform sexism in a different way. why are all her more emotional traits such as caring, compassion, fear removed to make her tim's vicious rol model instead? why aren't those traits seen as good, strong traits for tim to get from her instead? why does his cold viciousness have to his female role models? why is is that when a woman is made to be a strong character positive or negative, the answer is always to make her cold emotionally?

(well, we know why)

#janet drake #'what if janet was an absolute shark that terrified men & tim learned how to shame business partners from her-' #'what if her treatment of people was a sharp as her nails and tim admired this-' #what if she could be both competent and immensely kind have u considered. #what if traits such as empathy and compassion were considered strong and admirable in female characters

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anyways i do think analysis of the sexism that steph faced in 90s and early 00s comics and highlighting comparison of her treatment with that of tim's as a result of the sexism inherent in the writing by the writers is important & i've done it myself.

however. however. hm. despite this, i do think it's important to remember that by *limiting* it to a 1:1 comparison of stephanie's chances to tim's, of *course* steph is going to come out on bottom & a lot of that has less to do with sexism than one would think (it does definitely have *some* to do with sexism, i won't deny it). because the problem is that steph is a *side* character. a very important one, mind you. and dixon was doing his damndest post NML to try and elevate her to a main/core character. but she has been, since her very inception, a side character. and it's that, more than anything, that truly stymies her character chances. if the third robin had, by chance, been a female character and steph had been introduced/created to foil off her, steph *still* would have come out on bottom. if the third robin had been lonnie and steph had still been created, steph would have come out on bottom. steph coming out on bottom has suprisingly little to do with tim doing well. tim does well & is given endless chances because he's a main character. steph doesn't because she's a side character in that era. if there were a 'spoiler' title written by dixon that was allowed to make her a main character, he absolutely would have had her do well & become one of the best fighters in the dcu, of course he would have. it's why he wanted to make her robin, and not just that, an absolutely amazing robin. but since dc didn't want to elevate her to main character at the time, a side character she remained. and side characters. hm. i get it. it can be tough to like side character because you want the world for them! but in the end, side character are going to be treated as side characters.

so like. if you really want to interrogate steph as a female character of the 90s it's important to compare her not just to the male main character of the work she's in, but also to the treatment of other female characters *in her position of being a side character* at the time when evaluating whether she was treated fairly as a character. was she treated with more care and thoughtfulness to her characterization than other side female characters in the 90s? was her characterization unique to her and consistent? was she the token girl or are there other girls in the narrative? did it seem like the writer cared about her as a person? was she allowed to have interiority? was she allowed to be *more* than just a love interest? was she allowed to have meaningful and complex relationships outside the love interest? she made a lot of mistakes, but was she ditzy or airheaded or dumb? there's so much sexism surrounding steph's treatment, yes. but for a 90s female side character she makes out like a bandit on so many levels, even if she's never allowed to be as good as everyone else. idk.

#sorry was thinking of this #don't get me wrong i understand the frustration with the sexism i feel it to but #some of the frustration with her treatment is that she's a side character. and sexism does play a role in her #being unable to achieve main character status. but. hm. even comparing her to babs and cass is like #of course babs and cass get to be good and amazing at everything and get all the chances bc they're main characters

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some batkids + author self-insertion

dick

gets a hot red head alien girlfriend based in part on perez's first wife (wolfman and perez)

"one bad apple spoils the bunch" view on cops (dixon)

sees a couple of girls and assumed the redhead is the one with the irish accent, surprised when it's the asian girl (dixon, based on a real story where he heard an irish accent on tv and was surprised when it was an asian girl)

implications of bisexuality that align explicitly with the writer's very own personal experience of bisexuality (greyson)

unable to not flirt with anything that moves (greyson)

let's just go ahead and put greyson's entire run here.

jason

entirety of red hood and the outlaws (lobdell, enough said)

tim

anti-drug (dixon)

can be condescending to his friends and girls (dixon)

honestly i don't think the good moral boy who would never have premarital sex thing is actually self-insertion, that's more dixon wish fulfillment of his ideal 14 year old boy. rules for the characters and not for him!

the weird military circlejerking (willingham)

obsession with bernard (fitzmartin)

steph

pro-life (dixon)

anti-welfare (dixon)

hates bill clinton + the court system (dixon)

personal vengeance over restorative justice framed as the right thing (dixon)

bootstraps mentality (dixon)

damian

child who never met his father because father was too busy saving other people (morrison, morrison has explicitly said that their parents marriage didn't work out due to their father's inability to prioritize his marriage and family over helping other people + the affair)

child who was saved by their father from a life of darkness (morrison explicitly has credited their father with saving their life at their lowest by giving them a typewriter)

child who suffers and pays the price from divorce conflict due to parents being so caught up in their own conflict they refuse to listen to the child's wants and needs (morrison, as racist as the conflict between bruce and talia is damian's entire story is intrisically wrapped up in morrison's working through their own personal feelings of their parents' divorce)

becomes a vegetarian (morrison)

#anyways this isn't a judgement or anything or even a comprehensive list #just some examples of writers self inserting into their characters #arguably tim is more of a reader self insert so i think dixon overall put less of his own views into tim to keep his character #more wide reaching #but stephanie is honestly filled to the brim with self-inserted dixon thoughts and feelings as her base character #not a full list of batkids either there's too many

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can i say something. i am kind of scared to say something bc dick ship wars kind of scare me even though i have absolutely no preference and care extremely little about dick ships. but. hm. the thinking about 80s and 90s medias as products of their time got me thinking a bit.

so. the interesting thing to me about dick-kory in the 70s and 80s vs dick-babs in the 90s and early 00s os how much each of those couples was entrenched in the media ideals of the time and what people were looking for in a ship.

so like, if you look at dick-kory, theirs is a larger than life love that is destined from the moment she kissed him to learn human language. and theirs is a dynamic and relationship dripping in the popular soap opera tropes that were very pervasive a the time. you can't actually divorce their tribulations (dick being kind of condescending to kory as the Man of the relationship, she's a princess who has to get married for political reasons and dick gets mad, kory gets mad at him for supposedly cheating when he was raped by mirage, the epic wedding that gets literally blown up by raven to name a few) from the media norms that were very popular. they fight passionately and make up passionately very frequently. this is a very common dynamic in the 80s, where soap operas were topping the charts. everyone was watching general hospital. *30 million* people tuned in to see luke and laura get married and their relationship started with him raping her (which was later turned into "seduction") and they were considered like THE couple ever. everyone was watching dynasty. dallas was hugely popular. falcon crest. knots landing. dick and kory's relationship mirrors a lot of what people were eating up back then in the soap opera type media the new titans was emulating. luke and laura. gary and valene. bo and hope. bobby and pam. dick and kory. can you really talk about dick and kory if you don't know what was going on with "bope" back then? for reference, here's what was going on with bo and hope:

anyways. enter the 90s and the soap opera fervor died down in a massive way. soap operas were no longer prime time material and their popularity died down in a massive way & actually people started more making fun of the overwrought storylines and soaps in general. the ideas of destined, one true love was suddenly far more unappealing to people who thought it was cheesy & tired. what people in the 90s were looking for was not true love that is constantly tested and put through the wringer--what was gaining in popularity was UST and will they won't they dynamics. enter dick-babs. and while i wholly disagree with the idea of diminishing kory's importance in dick's life just to uplift babs, i don't entirely disagree with the notion that kory probably wouldn't have really worked in batbooks, so i understand why batbooks wanted to focus on a loveline for dick for a character they had full control of and could work into the stories. and, hm. moving dick away from the destined one true love at the time that was kory allowed them to put him in the romantic situations that 90s audiences were vibing with instead. because you can't suddenly do a will they won't they with a couple who's been solidly dating for *years*. so with dick and babs you're able to do that. he's interested while she's dating someone else. he flirts with someone else for a bit while she's single. while the entire time they're still good working partners while circling around each other. will they? or won't they? and this was super common in late 90s/early 00s sitcom shows that people loved and were at the top of the charts. the x-files with scully and mulder. friends with rachel and ross. fran and mr. sheffield from the nanny. it's still very much playing to what people wanted to see back then.

anyways as someone who truly has no horse in this race i do think media norms of the time around couplings are interesting to dissect.

#anyways i think you can make similar comparisons to bruce-talia and bruce-selina #in that o'neil had created talia as this grand epic love for bruce #in the 80s but under his editorial directorship in the 90s there was still a move away from bruce-talia to instead focus more #on the more flirty bruce-selina dynamic in accordance with what the viewers at home wanted #anyways. just some thoughts of mine. #i do think there is a push in media once again towards the romanticism of destined lovers

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Just reminding everyone that comics have a constantly moving event horizon for the point where stories feel seriously dated and inaccessible for younger, newer readers (those in their teens and early 20s).

And it’s frequently a date around when they were born.

When I was young we used COIE as the divider, as it was a very strong line in the sand. That held for longer than expected (all the way up to around Flashpoint) given how it functioned as a natural boundary. But Flashpoint was now more than a dozen years ago.

The ‘dated and inaccessible’ line has swallowed all of the 90s and is currently quietly biting off large chunks of the 2000s. I’d say a solid estimate of where it’s hovering is now around 2006 or so.

Now that doesn’t mean people don’t read comics before the invisible moving dated line. But they’re more likely to bounce off them, find them hard to read due to the background circumstances, and dislike or miss a lot of context.

Now stories do emerge from the other side of this line - where they’re appreciated and can be read as classic period pieces. 70s comics get this and it’s clear some 80s comics are also entering that realm too now.

But I think a lot of my mutuals aren’t ready for fans to start finding mid to late 00s stuff ‘dated and weird’ and let me tell you; it’s coming.

2006 was 18 years ago, and a BUNCH of big social and cultural changes happened in the mid 2000s, or at least were going mainstream around then.

Also to horrify you all but the Dated Line is 100% going to cling to Flashpoint for a while, given the reset.

#mmmm you're already seeing a lot of post on reddit where it's like #'what's wrong with new52? i liked new52 a lot' and tbh that sentiment is going to continue to get louder #but hard agree a lot of 00s stuff *is* starting to be dated in a totally neutral term #it's. hm. i think there's like a 20-30 year turnaround where the social issues present in past media kind of peak as far as bothering peopl #and past that as younger fans enter and the media becomes far older than them it becomes more of an acceptable Media of its Time #and the flaws are treated with *much* more leeway #my two examples are basically ntt/the 80s and steph's treatment #like in the 90s bat editorial got dick back for a reason and it's that the soap opera esque supremacy of the titans #was very much on its way out. those type of stories didn't resonate with ppl bc they were starting to feel dated #however nowadays its so old that a Lot of the issues that were present in it aren't seen as so acutely bad #because it's now old enough to be a product of its time #however steph's treatment in comics is felt very acutely and there's a backlash towards the flaws in 90s and 00s comics because those flaws #are still felt acutely. never mind that there's no magical world where steph would have been treated much better as the girl character #by ANY writer including female ones in the 90s #but because it's recent enough that the issues are felt more acutely #i do wonder how things will look in 10-15 years genuinely lmao #but anyways digression YEA 00s-10s works are absolutely products of their time.

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While I'm still going a little insane over Detective Comics Annual #4, take some panels:

Bruce: No, keep back! Keep your hands off me, Alfred. I have to know...! I-- Alfred: Sir...?

Alfred: It's putting a terrible strain on your heart. Sir... you'll kill yourself. Bruce: I don't care, Alfred, as long as I take the man who killed Tim with me.

Bruce (Thought): Tim couldn't breathe either... they came for him... shot him... and where was I? In the Batcave... cowering... hiding from what I'd become, and Tim was out there, taking my place... ...in life and then in death. Talia killed him. But it was me she was after. She called me beloved... doesn't make sense...

Waverider (narration): I am now convinced that in peace or anger, Batman will not become the monarch. But he could have been, or worse, had he so chosen.

#bruce and tim #!!!!! #this annual my beloved

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well, it seems tim is interested in greek theater now. i'm taking this random fact from new harley's issue and raising it, this is janet's old hobby.

#how could he not after all his run ins with maxie zeus #+ his girl cassie sandsmark #but yes jack and janet definitely took tim to see old greek plays it was ~enrichment~ #remembering tim watching macbeth in the beach with his friends thinking about how the production is awful no matter how they staged it #and being judgemental of the performers in the lewis run and it's like #tim doesn't hate watching performances he just has Standards okay. champagne tastes. #tuesday spoilers

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an incomplete list of potential tim futures based on things i vaguely remember (poorly cited bc i cba to spend time actually looking for the sources)

still heroic and robin in the our worlds at war event in the future where they don't stave off the bad guys

good, comes out of retirement to become batman beyond for a bit in futures end

there's one where bruce gets injured and tim comes back to take over at batman (really wish i could remember the source for this)

there's one where he becomes batman and takes a different bruce son as his robin isn't there? (also wish i could remember the source for this. i do think i remember seeing panels and this wasn't just a fever dream. i don't think this is the same as prev)

good but retired in nightwing the new order

solo 'the batt' imagines a future where he becomes a good batman. he also is trying to confess his feelings for cass, but this was in 2006 so. before people saw tim and cass as siblings. that is not the point tho, the point is an envisioned good batman future for tim.

batman annual vol 3 #2 tim is good and shows up at bruce's deathbed

he did become joker junior in batman beyond, but hush beyond showed that after he was cured of that he stayed a good guy and is going to extensive lengths to make sure joker is gone

gun batman from tt03, which i count as once instance because it's the same gun batman who keeps trying to come back

gun batman from rebirth/a lonely place of living and beyond

in conclusion: tim does have some bad futures, yes. those are *far* outpaced by good futures and aren't at a necessarily higher rate than anyone else in the batfamily, let alone the superhero community as a whole. tim having canons where he becomes corrupted and decides to start killing is not some unique phenomenon to him. exploring the dark mirror/bad future is something that literally almost everyone goes through. quite frequently. honestly tim might go bad at a less frequent rate than superman does.

#TO BE CLEAR i hate the superman goes evil stuff #but tim having a canon bad future again is not some unique experience he is NOT alone there #sorry my trap card has been activated (bitching about gun batman and the double standards ppl use for him)

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also the way that gun batman is inexorably intertwined with and a direct cause of the luthor retcon for kon is something that actually can't and shouldn't be ignored. the only reason that gun batman is even a thing to begin with is wholly because of johns' desire to explore the genetic determinism of good vs evil with kon. you do not get gun batman without lex luthor being around trying to manipulate kon's future. you do not get gun batman or the idea of evil future titans to begin with without kon as the linchpin of good vs. evil. you do not get gun batman without lex manipulating tim through his losses. gun batman is the bad future none of them are going to ever let happen. the titans of tomorrow may return like cockroaches bc dc is uninspired, but the point of the titans of tomorrow is not that they are an inevitably, it's that they will always always be consciously rejected for good.

#if you accept tim must be evil at heart you also have to accept that kon cassie m'gann the rest of the titans of tomorrow #are also inherently primed to turn evil #(not counting bart because bart was a double agent) #(and personally i hate it! for all of them esp kon) #(but the fact of the matter is that tim even having a potential for an evil future is not about him. like at all.) #(it's entirely about johns' desire for kon's story and exploring the implications from that story) #sorry it's gun batman hating hours

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Which of these fanon misconceptions or tropes irritate you more?

#oh god sophie's choice here jfc #both are awful to me. um. um. #in the end tim because that's a little more ubiquitous and more likely to be treated as Fact when it's not #but gah both my boys and the fundamental misunderstanding of their characters.

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also i think there's a tendency to cherrypick tim's moments of morally grey thought musings as a gotcha for the idea that tim is totally cool with murder and just one bad day away from shanking someone only kept in line by the "rules", when in reality. tim's thoughts of moral greyness, the ruminations on what they're doing and why they're doing it the way they do and why they can't cross the line they set. he's not. alone in that. like. at ALL. dick has reckoned with wanting to kill someone (sigh. the joker). dick lowkey didn't want to give someone a chance at redemption simply because he hurt bruce (bane). bruce has thought about killing (and almost killed) both the joker & black mask. bruce is very frequently ruminating on his role and why he can't kill even if he wants to. barbara has very seriously considered killing and has wanted to kill. cassandra has killed and used that as the basis of her staunch belief that nobody dies tonight, but she's also still in frequent conversation with what that means ethically and morally. tim having doubts or trying to remind himself why they do what they do or debating their rules to himself is not some grand outlying abnormality here, it's par for the fucking course.

#barbara almost headshotted black mask but tim made a joke about using guns he's clearly barely refraining from killing someone /s #sorry. just. it's like tim always gets called out for this in particular and he's not even the worst offender #this is fucking gun batman's fault isn't it. he's my worst enemy for a reason and the worst mistake ever #was bringing him back after the one stupid story like he's some kind of inevitability when the point #is that tim would genuinely rather die than become him. #don't talk to me about that guy (gun batman) i hate him #anyways the point is that they're all in conversation with themselves about why they do what they do #it's actually super important that they are! because it's very human to want to go against your morals if it seems easier #and the point is that it takes strength of character to make a conscious choice to do what you think is right #even when it's hard and it's the last thing you want to do