#(bruce is fully capable of delegating when necessary)

[liketolaugh-writes]

Bruce- throws the Boo-merang

Boo-merang- flies straight up

Everyone watching it- ...fuck

[kiragecko]

This post is almost perfect. You've described their situations, and how they differ from their predecessors' exactly right. I'm not sure I fully agree with your conclusion, but that might just be the story connecting to different needs in us.

I want their coming of age stories to be about finally getting enough space and support to be INCAPABLE for a bit. Maybe moving in together and being disasters. Maybe staying home with their finally-stable families. But they need a break.

Tim shows major signs of burn out throughout Red Robin. Kon is dealing with major identity issues. Cassie has a huge amount of unresolved grief and trauma. (Tim's is at least ACKNOWLEDGED. Do you know how many teens Cassie lead to their death? Because I DON'T! I had to quit reading it was so many!) Bart is still playing catch up with his whole life - his emotional and social skills were delayed due to ADHD, sped up aging, and neglect (necessary neglect, but he was still unparented in an AI simulation for his whole childhood).

They are capable, and it hasn't been acknowledged enough. But also, they gave up a LOT to be that capable. They need a chance to get some of it back.

I want a story where Alfred's ghost, Red Tornado, Dubbilex, Agent Maad, and Max Mercury semi-force original Young Justice (and Rose. Maybe M'gann if she wants) back together. (All the ladies DO need breaks from their parents. Except Anita. Agent Maad isn't getting off that easily!) We get dorm comedy, and low stakes missions. The adulty adults are forced to work together to support their young adult charges, and all together manage to make 1 (One) functional support figure!

(Maybe Alfred can't actually manipulate the real world, and the speedforce keeps dragging Max away. So they have to delegate. Red Tornado and Dubbilex have learned from previous experience, but are still aware they don't fully understand human needs. And Agent Maad remains the ultimate fun uncle forced out of his comfort zone. He's just here for the preschoolers! Don't get him involved! (He is involved.))

They had to set up in Gotham, because Tim wouldn't leave. Bruce tried to intimidate them ONCE, and then ran away when he saw ghost!Alfred. Bart, Cassie, Cissie, and M'gann are actually going to university. I'd like Tim to be doing Wayne Ent. stuff, but anything is good as long as it's NOT school. Anita has a mentorship with a magical practitioner. Rose and Kon are trying to figure themselves out.

Actually, ALL of them are trying to figure themselves out. But they're doing it together. That reduces the pressure.

-

I agree that having them move away from home doesn't showcase anything new. But, I have severe doubts about several of their home environments!

Bart and Kon could do well at home. (As well as Anita.) But ... it takes a lot of fanon to imagine the Bats helping Tim slow down and let go of the weight of the world. And Cassie and her mom have a LOT of friction, and could use a bit of distance while Cassie finds herself. (And the other three should not be near their families, at all.)

This way, they don't have to be independent. They have been independent enough.

They get to learn cooking from Alfred, who is desperately trying to simplify meals to their skill level. He is bad at it! Roues are hard!

They get taught how to slow down by Max. He is VERY good at it. None of them like this! (But it is good for them.)

Agent Maad absentmindedly gave Traya cornrows this morning. Now, M'gann is trying out a new form, and has asked for some as well. No one has mentioned that she could just shift her hair. It's been a very long time since she's been touched for this long. (Agent Maad couldn't even grumble about it, because she looked so unsure about asking! He is going to complain SO MUCH once she's out of hearing!)

In terms of trying to transplant how Dick’s generation grew up to independent adult heroes onto Tim’s generation, one of the significant issues is that the two groups have very different backstories.

The Fab Five and their generation were largely cared for children with present guardians during their teen years. Their ‘growing up’ rebellion moments were about wanting to establish their own identities separate to their parent/guardian. Then once NTT occurred and new young adult characters were added to it, you had a bunch who were escaping overbearing guardians with expectations the young adult didn’t want to fulfil, and leaving trauma behind.

The Core Four and other 90s heroes, in contrast, were mostly latchkey kids. They had loving but absent parents and parental figures. They were largely expected to grow up and show they were independent in their early teens. The arcs of their stories were not about growing up and finding themselves and ‘be your own person’, but about learning to trust others and interdependency and working together.

Like the shape of a Fab Five story is ‘in my preteens or earlier a Disaster Happened and I was taken in by a hero who cared for me and taught me the business as their sidekick. Then around 18-20 I moved out to live in a sharehouse with my friends as I wanted to find who I was outside of the shadow of being a sidekick’.

While…Tim’s generation largely aren’t sidekicks in the same sense. The shape of THEIR stories are of ‘teenager with largely absent adults is expected to grow up and show emotional maturity too early’. It’s actually notable that Tim, Kon and Bart all have long term story arcs that involve gaining a stable household right near the end.

Kon’s entire solo is the story of how he is neglected and exploited by every adult around him. He doesn’t have parents. He’s Peter Pan, the little boy who cannot grow up, who lives without parental expectation. He’s a celebrity kid exploited by Rex Leech and by CADMUS, who’s expected by those around him to act in an adult manner and held to that standard while simultaneously specifically being underage and not having the right to make his own decisions. His final arc in Superboy is about being so abandoned he doesn’t even have CADMUS to depend on anymore so he has to find an apartment and a job (the building superintendent) and is expected to act and function like an adult in that position. Superboy #59 (FIFTY NINE) is when Kon finally gets his own name. Superboy #100 is ABOUT Kon moving in with Jonathan and Martha Kent and finally having a stable home environment where he can be a child. Heck Kon’s already had a story where he’s ‘married’ and responsible for a kid. He’s had solo space adventures.

Bart’s solo is about Bart and Max learning to be a family together, but also: Bart’s childhood didn’t contain parents. Meloni turns up occasionally through his solo and loves him but also has to disappear away back to the 30th century at the end of each appearance. The final arc of Bart’s solo is about him moving in with Jay and Joan Garrick for more stability, because Max has disappeared (and stays disappeared). And then, post his solo, Bart even already has HAD an arc where he had to grow up and assume the Flash mantle (which went horribly wrong and led to his death).

Tim? Tim’s entire solo is about upheaval and change. The first time he’s expected to behave as an independent hero, not a sidekick, is literally Robin #1 when Azbats kicks him out of the Cave. Jack threatens to send him away to boarding school on multiple occasions and DOES for the Brentwood arc. He loses Jack, he loses Dana, he moves out to be a hero caring for his own city at 16, in Bludhaven post War Games. Bruce’s adoption of Tim was all about giving him back that sense of stability and support so that Tim had people backing him up again in his personal life and not only as a hero. And then he does the ‘leave and get a new identity’ thing during Red Robin.

And Cassie? Cassie starts with a loving mother and her story arc over becoming a hero is about periods of operating on her own. She moves away from her mum to go to Elias School. Due to operating as a hero under her own name she eventually has to come up with the alias of Drusilla Priam to give herself a non-public identity to retreat to (and isn’t living with Helena Sandsmark but renting on her own during this period to protect Helena).

This is a set of characters for whom it makes no narrative sense to tell a story of them growing up by ‘moving out and finding their own identity as separate heroes’ because their entire PAST is about being alone and looking for connections and people to rely upon. They haven’t been looking for their mentors to accept them as independent adults, they’ve been looking to their mentors to be present and work with them.

They have already all BEEN through the steps of moving out (while underage) and learning to look after themselves as nobody else was there to support them. Growing up for them is about learning to trust and be respected for the skills they already have and trusted to know what they’re doing, rather than leaving to show they can operate independently.

And that’s a harder narrative to show, because it’s a less common growth story in our culture. But in the Core Four’s case, I’d argue a lot of the traditional signifiers of adulthood (moving out; moving away for education; taking responsibility for a city on their own; travelling for quests) are things they were already expected to do while still significantly underage, and so sending them through that plot again isn’t showing anything new to allow them growth. What they need is the adults around them to treat them as adults for the things they already can and do do.