Tim Drake has a weird fucking function
The thing about Tim that I find unique is that his life became SO MUCH WORSE after joining the heroing thing. Everybody else had a mid-to-shit life before becoming a hero/living with Bruce and mostly everybody (except Jason who LITERALLY DIED) had their life improved by being a hero/being Bruce's kid (or at least it is typically portrayed as such.
Tim had the exact opposite trajectory. His life wasn't perfect before he became Robin, but like...multi-millionaire/billionaire (canon is unclear, but he's within Gotham's upper-strata) kid with both natural intelligence + charisma and a bright future ahead of him and parents who were emotionally neglectful but nothing really beyond that (which is also a form of trauma, but all of the info we have indicates that the Drakes were no Arthur Brown or David Cain) and he still had other people he could rely on outside of them. He went to boarding school, which could be something horrible OR something amazing depending on your own thoughts/experiences. I grew up having a commute where we'd drive past a really pretty and rich af boarding school that literally everybody in our area DREAMED of going to, so to me the idea of going to boarding school sounds incredible but mileage may vary. Tim seems like the type of kid who would thrive in that though. Based on what we know in canon atm, his pre-robin life was fucking amazing.
And then he starts being the sidekick and working towards becoming Robin. His parents immediately get kidnapped and poison themselves through drinking tainted water; his mom dies and his dad is in a coma. This is not the fault of Robin, but Tim himself muses about the idea that Robin and dead parents are linked: to become Robin completely, you must lose your parents. And with how fate/destiny/canon events can operate in comics universes, maybe he isn't that far off. Once his dad wakes up, their relationship becomes strained as the man grieves the loss of his wife and realizes that his son has been doing vigilantism as a hobby. It is unclear exactly how good of a parent Jack was before the incident, but the results of Tim's involvement with the Robin mantle has definitely made things worse between father and son. Jack will also die within quick succession of 2 of Tim's best friends, his girlfriend, and his other father. He will also effectively lose like 1/2 his loved ones in the fallout of all of that mess including: his older brother, his other friends (both civilian and superhero), and the stepmother with whom he shared what I would argue is his best parent-child relationship (Dana also may have died, but it's left unclear). He has stopped pursuing higher education (the moment he even applied for college he 'died', and it seems he hasn't made another attempt since) and if he wasn’t a major focus of the media before he sure is now. He tries to quit briefly (in fact he initially was planning on quitting once someone more suited came along) and cannot bring himself to do so. Even when he does manage to get away for a while, his superhero life impacts the pre-robin life he is trying to go back to. Leaving is an impossibility, this is all there is for him now. He also isn’t allowed to make mistakes anymore, not when lives hang in the balance. The one who enforces that impossible standard the most (besides Bruce depending on who's writing) is himself. He’s got TRAUMA now and people want to hurt him constantly. He is constantly questioning his own sanity and morality and place in the world. He almost dies like every month. Tim grows colder and less grounded, he is becoming both a better and a worse version of himself at the same time. He’s saving lives in the same few issues as he’s setting up a Saw movie plot for the man who killed his father. He is haunted by the ghosts of his past and the looming figure of his future. His life becomes SO MUCH FUCKING WORSE after he becomes Robin. Some of it is the fault of others, some is the fault of circumstance, and some of it is due to his own actions. But basically all of Tim's worst traumas and life-changing moments are either tied to or caused by Robin. Dick's parents would still be dead, Jason would still be living on the streets, Stephanie would still have Arthur Brown for a father and a lot of other things that deserve their own posts/IDK if they've been retconned, and Damian would still have been raised in the eco-cult where death is a constant. Those are life circumstances that occur without the involvement of Robin, the only one who even needs Bruce involved at all in their series of events is Damian. But Tim? All of what is considered his 'worst' moments occur after he assumes the role.
This idea is what I find the coolest and most fascinating about Tim as a character. Being a hero is usually portrayed as either an outright awesome thing or a righteous duty that one must fulfill or (maybe in a grimmer and/or more grounded story) a sacrifice to your interpersonal relationships/mental health that is made for the greater good. For Tim, being a superhero actively ruined his life (both because of the general circumstances surrounding being a kid vigilante and the choices he made as part of that role). It's never portrayed that way in canon because we need to come out of issues going 'wow being a superhero is so cool! I'm gonna buy the next issue!', but when you just look at Tim's life literally everything really bad that we know of occurred after he became Robin.
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you know, in light of the Great James Somerton Callout Double Feature™ recently, it made me think back to when i used to watch James' videos. i wasn't an avid fan and never watched his streams or anything so i couldn't have any inkling of the plagiarism on my own, but this all now reminded me of one instance where he made a point of something in one of his videos that was so blatantly wrong, it made me wonder "wait...did you even watch the thing you're talking about?"
and that was with his video on the Owl House, because i believe there was a bit near-ish to the end where he's talking about the open queer representation in TOH, and at the time the video came out the show itself hadn't concluded yet, but he mentioned alongside the not only very canon Lumity as representation the show had to offer, he also mentioned...that the show was hinting at there being a potential romantic relation between Hunter and Gus????
and that had grabbed my attention and made me confused, because...no?? did we watch the same show??? cause if you've watched the Owl House not only would you know that Hunter was 16 and Gus was 12, which is really stretching it in terms of acceptable age gaps, but also...their relationship was not like that, and didn't have any sort of romantic subtext to try and grasp at. the way they hung out and interacted was much more of a "dudes being bros" way (silly headbump handshake, comforting each other in their insecurities and what people saw them as "weak" for), and i'm pretty sure even at the time the episode came out where Gus and Hunter officially became friends, Hunter was already showing signs of crushing on Willow???
so, in retrospect, it now occurs to me that the reason James mentioned that was not because he had simply misinterpreted Gus and Hunter's interactions and the shows intentions for them in the future, but it was deliberately James grasping at straws to shoehorn in some kind of MLM representation into the show where there wasn't any. and while, yeah, in an openly queer show, still not seeing yourself represented kinda sucks, but James Somerton is clearly a person who doesn't value anything in the LGBTQ+ community other than the G. he thinks being a gay man (especially a cis white gay man) is the only real way of being queer, or at least the most "oppressed" type of queer, probably because news media only ever gave significant attention to the deaths of cis white gay men during the AIDS crisis, and that is pretty much James' only point of reference in "historical events that happened to queer people" because god knows he didn't care enough to research and write on his own, let alone research and write about queer history involving queer people who weren't cis white gay men like him.
and it's especially shitty that he that he tries to force this idea of Hunter and Gus having romantic subtext right after he talks about Luz and Amity's relationship. i'm personally not the biggest fan of Lumity within the story of the Owl House, but the representation is really great, especially for something in a disney cartoon. so him trying to then detract all the sapphic representation that Lumity provided and even built the show upon with an MLM relationship that not only is weird in context but also never even happened?? the AUDACITY.
and what gets me even more is that, by the end of the show, while Hunter does end up in a relationship with Willow, it's not a straight relationship. it was confirmed by the show's creator Dana Terrace after it concluded that Hunter is bisexual and Willow is pansexual, and while yeah, real shame that there wasn't any actual expression of those facts during the show's runtime, it's still nice to know that they're queer, and thus their relationship is queer. it's also great to have a canon bi/pan couple when there's STILL an immense infighting problem between bi and pan people thinking that one of the sexualities is trying to erase the other due to their similar (but not same) definitions. so having them not only coexist but also be in love is great!
but you just know, you just KNOW, that even if James' video was made after the show's official conclusion, he would probably either:
A: ignore Hunter and Willow's relationship and try to play on plausible deniability that they're just friends since they never had any great romantic gestures like Lumity's confession and many kisses
or
B: make a shitty argument out of it that the Owl House "could have gone leaps and bounds further with their representation, but Disney was so homophobic that Hunter couldn't possibly get to also be gay, so he had to end up with a woman :("
and while i think both are probably just as possible as each other, my money would be on option B, because god damn it this man can't praise a piece of queer media if it doesn't somewhat center around or involve gay men, and leave it to James Somerton to try and project himself onto the white teenage boy and think that if he were gay, that'd somehow make the story better.
this man actively hates women, especially queer women whom he loves to pretend are actually straight women, and if he had the chance would still do everything he can to try and make a queer relationship between a man and a woman into some woeful narrative of "what could have been" if they just made the man gay.
god, from this singular moment alone where i had a very questionable opinion of James, the knowledge i have now completely recontextualizes everything. this guy is a plagiarist, a misogynist, but most of all, an internalized homophobe who replaces the word "gay" in the content he steals from with "LGBTQ+" and "queer" because he actually *would* just like to use the word gay, but if he did it would make it more obvious that he's plagiarizing, so he instead makes "queer" and "LGBTQ+" be synonymous with gay to make it look like he's actually being inclusive.
and i don't really remember much about his video about Korra, i don't know if i even watched it, so the only frame of reference that i have is what Hbomberguy said about it in his video, and i frankly do not want to go and give James anymore views he has not earned and will never deserve, but i think he did a similar thing in trying to grasp at straws with a potential queer relationship between Mako and some guy who i don't remember (i really didn't watch much of Korra sorry) but that also kind of was not the case of their relationship at all either, from what i've heard. at most it was just people shipping them, especially since the footage James Somerton used in his video was from a fucking ship AMV and not even from any of the high resolution episodes. so again it seems like there's an instance of James trying to shove in an MLM relationship that doesn't exist in a show whose lead representation is a WLW couple.
again i could be wrong, and correct me if i am, but unless there's a convenient re-upload of that entire video on another channel or even another video website, i'm not going to give James' channel any more attention than it unrightfully has.
fuck this guy.
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Out of all of Wei Wuxian's traits, one of the ones that fascinates me the most is how incredibly casual and chummy he is with corpses. All the other cultivators are a bit desensitized to the dead by nature of their profession, yes, but Wei Wuxian in particular treats the dead very much the same as he treats living people, and I think it's simultaneously one of his best and most concerning attributes.
On the good side, the way Wei Wuxian treats the dead is absolutely an extension of his overall goodness and empathy. He stands on the side of those that are looked down on, and nobody faces more discrimination that the dead. He treats the dead like people because they are people, and they deserve to have their voices heard. That's what Empathy's for, and that's why he revives Wen Ning to stand as witness to his own murder. Wen Ning is not a thing! And even when Wei Wuxian is raising armies of dead Wens to fight on his behalf, we get illustrations of him giving a helping hand to a weak old corpse that can't stand on its own.
Wei Wuxian is painted in very deliberate contrast to Xue Yang, who treats the dead as tools and deprives them of agency. His closeness with them is a symbol of his kindness.
However, beyond treating the dead decently and like people, there is a point where his chumminess with them starts to get unsettling, and that's the point where it becomes a reflection of his loneliness and trauma. In particular, I'm thinking of his cuddliness with the ghosts he uses to torture Wen Chao and the corpse girls he's hanging out with when he invites Lan Zhan to drink with him. Because treating the dead with respect is a very different thing from having a corpse lay in your lap as you stroke its hair. And fierce corpses by definition do not have personalities (with Wen Ning as the exception that proves the rule), so treating them as companions to socialize with is rather concerning behavior.
So why is he like this? Isolation and trauma!
It's easy to understate the trauma of Wei Wuxian's three months in the Burial Mound, especially given that we don't see them play out but do get details about so many other horrible moments. But those three months? They Fucked Him Up. In particular, beyond the trauma of the near death experience (or presumably many many near death experiences in a row), he spent the better part of three months without seeing a single other living human. People are not meant to do that.
So what is a person gonna do when he spends three months in Worse Solitary Confinement? And when that solitude is spent on Fierce Corpse Mountain? He's gonna get really weird about corpses. He's gonna turn into the kind of man that would let a murderous ghost he's controlling lay in his lap as he strokes her hair, because for an extended period of time, that is the closest thing to human contact he's had access to.
And later, post-sunshot-campaign, Wei Wuxian does regain access to living humans and society, but he's still incredibly isolated. Just about everyone besides his siblings and Lan Zhan hates and/or is scared of him by the time we hit the scene of him and the fierce corpse girls throwing flowers, so it's no wonder he's hanging out with dead people. He already picked up the habit of replacing company with corpses once, so of course he doesn't see anything wrong with it. Maybe they're there as bodyguards, maybe he's just extremely lonely and doesn't have any human companions to drink with him, or maybe (probably) it's a mix of both. But in any case, it's a pretty clear expression of a horrifying degree of both past and present isolation.
That's why, though he doesn't lose his respect for the dead or his desensitization to touching corpses, we never see him just Hanging Out With Mindless Ghosts in his second life. It's a substitute for real companionship, not a healthy behavior, but lack of company is no longer an issue he has after being resurrected.
He doesn't need an entourage of corpse girls, because this time, when he wants company, he's always got Lan Zhan.
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that last post reminds me of how, similarly, it drives me up the wall whenever fandom (esp with regards to timkon) portrays kon as completely and utterly spineless and intimidated when it comes to bruce. (i mean, i'm not surprised, bc this comes from the same place as the content where tim is a fainting victorian maiden who needs to be protected by her strong stoic owner i mean father, which is definitely not a homophobic trope rooted in misogyny at all, but. that's a complaint for a different post.)
like, bruce's relationship with kon has admittedly been done differently by different writers and all, but at no point has kon ever backed down to him. during hypertime arc, bruce is cordial and even warm, in his way, as they send kon off:
later, towards the end of superboy '94, when kon and cass get into trouble and nearly get themselves killed, kon sees bruce being harsh on cass about it and inserts himself to demand he get half the blame and half the punishment, because it wasn't all on her. (i personally think the way bruce talks here is extremely cringefail and shitty, like... let's not make batman parrot racist rhetoric thanks, but. i blame that on writers moreso than the character.)
like, sure, he's a little hesitant (the "s-sir..." gets me.) but not enough to hold back an ounce in telling batman he's being unfair and an ass. he's not a shrinking violet just bc batman is ooo scary.
also coming to mind are:
a) the panels from batgirl (2000) where bruce is being an extremely overprotective and controlling figure over the idea of cass and kon being friends and clark tells him off for this (it's not directly kon interacting with bruce, but feels... relevant, lol, to the topic of bruce threatening kon and trying to scare him off in that possessive, steeped-in-misogyny way), as well as
b) the ones from tt03 where kon goes to gotham looking for tim, runs into bruce and steph-as-robin, and flips out like WHERE is tim, and bruce is just like. use your superhearing and figure it out. (note that he doesn't try to kick him out of gotham just for being there, either.)
i didn't include those last two bc i don't have them saved and frankly this post is long enough as is, but. you get the idea. kon isn't scared of batman. batman even likes him sometimes. and batman trying to intimidate him on purpose is something clark gets mad about.
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