#this got kind of long. but explaining why i don't like tim/ber/kon necessitates explaining why i don't like tim/ber and. well.

[mamawasatesttube]

Kon-El questions 3, 7 and 16

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

hmmm. how do i put this. it's like... the way karl kesel treated him as a self-insert for his own teenage fantasy self or whatever sometimes. obviously this comes out in the way he gets preyed on by adult women and this is played off as cool and chill, but it also comes out in the way a) kesel writes his flirting. sometimes it's very endearing and cringefail, and other times he's kissing women without consent, and that's played off as chill and fine because kesel thinks it should be and the women in question almost always are fine with that, but also b) he writes off concerns about indigenous hawaiians in kon's narrative (like silver sword or ...man i'm forgetting that kid who gets jealous of him and has powers about it for a minute, but that narrative). and like. yeah. white man in the 90s wrote this for SURE. i don't think it's like, written in the absolute poorest taste imaginable, because there's a lot of ways where it seems almost like they were trying to be respectful of native hawaiian culture, but then there's shit that's so far off the mark it's like. dude. and it's very evident that it just reflects karl kesel's own views much more than any character in-narrative.

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

lmaooo that's a toughie!!!! fanon kon at large is just. straight up not my boy. however there's a subset of fandom who leans into him being genderqueer/gnc/trans a lot more than canon ever has and i looove that. trans kon truthers lets go ♥

16. What's your least favorite ship for this character?

LORD. tim/ber/kon is the one that makes me roll my eyes hardest, alongside the rarer but no less irksome ber/kon. it's like... this is 100% not about kon as a character. this is about tim. ber/kon is almost funny in that it's entirely about tim but with tim himself cut out of the picture. but tim/ber/kon is just "let's take tim's most popular two fanon love interests and just shove all of them together!" and i have yet to see Anything even remotely try to convince me why kon and bernard should give a shit about each other. like, MAYBE you could sell it as a loooong slow burn, but i just. i don't see it man. putting the rest under a cut bc i AM gonna ramble about why i dislike it, so if you like tim/ber/kon or tim/ber and don't wanna see that, keep scrolling here👍!!

this is also partly bc i just... man i really wanted to like bernard and tim/ber but there's nothing there. i knew i didn't like rebirth tim characterization going in when i read tdr but i was hoping i'd at least find some crumbs. it's all just ... like there's no substance to it. there's no conflict, no character flaws, no "why do they even like each other???", no particular way they seem to help each other grow. it's just tropey "told, not shown" fluff where megfitz insists they are SO in love and perfect for each other, over and over, without backing that up really at all, and it just holds absolutely no appeal to me. and when it's just tim/ber i'm like yeah ok sure it's not my thing but whatever. but when people start trying to shove kon into there i'm like NO!!!!!! sdjkfhkd like im just SO unconvinced and it feels like such a great steaming heap of Nothing.

the main reason that is is that to me a relationship needs to have an arc. it can't just be stagnant. if there's no conflict, if there's no room for growth, if there's no development, it falls apart in my eyes. it doesn't feel like a real story about actual people. and as far as the tim/ber dynamic established in tdr, there's just. nothing. even the fact that bernard apparently somehow knows that tim is robin, which should be a HUGE source of conflict, is completely glossed over. it never comes up in any way.

like, we know that tim wants to tell people, but holds back out of a sense of duty. in robin '93, he agonizes about this with steph. but when bruce tells her his identity without his consent - which steph tells him bruce did immediately - he flips the fuck out!!!! he panics and runs away and he's furious with them both!!! so you'd ostensibly think that bernard knowing, and then not telling him he knows, would be sowing the seeds for an explosive conflict later down the line. especially because bernard now knows that tim is just. lying to him. all the time. shamelessly and blatantly lying through his teeth. and sure, it's for a good cause. right? but you'd think that in a relationship that's only just been established, just for a few months, that would also be offputting!! you'd think he'd start getting more and more unhappy that tim is just constantly lying to him and he knows it!! because he knows it about the robin secret, but what else might tim be lying to him about??? he knows now that tim has no qualms just lying to his face all the goddamn time, and he's... FINE with that???? there's this giant secret they're both dancing around and it's set up that there's just. N O T H I N G done with that. it drives me up the wall. i found this absolutely infuriating to read. both of them just being so one-dimensionally "oh we're in looooove so nothing else matters" that it erodes not only tim's specific characterization but bernard's ability to react like . idk. a human being? it just feels like running into dead end after dead end.

so yeah adding kon into that mix makes me want to tear my hair out bc it just feels SO surface-level. it's like... how much of him are you gonna shave off to fit him into this soulless, conflictless mold? it's like how i get annoyed when tim/kon fics ignore kon being genuinely really upset tim didn't share his identity with the team in yj98, but worse. because identity shit REALLY matters to kon. kon has never dated anyone who didn't know he was superboy. all of his civilian friends in sb11 know he's superboy. like, he does Not get close to people if he can't share that. it would be!!! a source!!! of conflict!!! but i've never seen Any ship content for tim/ber/kon that isn't just either completely declawed fluff that's just oh hehe tim has two boyfriends, or "kon angsting over tim dating someone else uwu" bullshit, which occasionally leads into completely declawed "tim has two boyfriends" fluff. it just does such a disservice to every character involved imo.

#answers #astranova13 #this got kind of long. but explaining why i don't like tim/ber/kon necessitates explaining why i don't like tim/ber and. well. #that gets into the pandora's box of ''why tdr is the top of my 'shittiest comics ive ever read' list'' skdjfhjkds #sorry for being a hater but also like Tis My Opinion