#Tim Drake Meta

[galaxymagitech]

The fanonization of Tim Drake is completely unsurprising and actually a core function of his character. Fanonization is often facilitated by particularly relatable or flexibly-characterized characters, often termed “blorbos,” who inspire the audience’s sympathy, recognition, and/or imagination. Considered in historical comics context, the character of Tim Drake—including his hobbies, relationships, and personality—was constructed to be perfectly relatable to contemporary audiences. Over the next few decades, Tim Drake was propped up as a vessel for both readers’ and authors’ projection. It is no surprise, then, that Tim Drake’s fandom takes advantage of this built-in “blorbo” and interprets his character in wildly different, often extreme, ways, ranging from “poor wet cat” to “cold blooded killer” to “the most competent neglected seven-year-old in existence.” In this essay, I will—

[peepreadscomics]

Thinking about the nightmare 90s!Tim has in YJ01...

Tim's kneeling on the sidewalk, gawking in horror at his hand. His wrist is wrapped with bandages, and his hand has been replaced with a batarang.

His actual hand, glove, and all have fallen off, swarmed by the killer cockroaches of Gotham's streets.

Young Justice 1998 01

Idk, I can't stop thinking about how part of him is replaced with something Batman made, honed, and curated for efficiency and vigilanteism.

A part of Tim is just laying there... swarmed and consumed by the unkillable vermin of Gotham streets.

Here it is again; Tim's fear of slowly becoming someone that he isn't. Becoming a tool and a weapon, less human and more machine.

And then there's Batman in this nightmare. Standing tall, ready to move on... nonchalantly asking Tim to grow a beard so he can make a personal use of his shiny new appendage.

But it's the,

Don't worry, Robin... No one will notice.

that's just smacking me across the face.

A part of Tim is dead and gone, but dont worry, kid! No one's gonna care enough to notice! (This is not a dig towards Tim's parents btw. Ill talk abt the Drakes in a different post.)

Batman brushes off Tim's horror—when lil bro's literally choking with horror—with an assurance that everything that Tim's afraid of will come true and, hey! it isnt a big deal.

Of course, this is Tim's nightmare view of Batman and not a characterization on Bruce, but it's just another example of how Tim sees Batman as a symbol that has consumed Bruce. (So, also not a dig towards Bruce, btw. He gets his own post later, too)

Since Tim's first few appearances, he's been terrified of becoming consumed by justice (?), vengeance, and vigilanteism.

Between his visceral fear at the comfort/hug from Bruce when his mom died, to a different nightmare featuring nightwing, to this nightmare, to rejecting comfort from Bruce at Steph's funeral, to hating Robin and himself after his father's death, and faking an uncle to get away from Batman??

It just shows how terrified he is of becoming someone he isnt...

And this nightmare in particular adds this: he's afraid no one will notice.

Young Justice 1998 01

It makes sense how his attempts to try and prevent the erasure of who he is would slowly escalate with every death. And with so many other heroes just... coming back... and coming back the same or even "close enough"?

It's easy to reach the point of rejecting death entirely. (am i side eyeing people who compare his reactions to certain people's death as a valid measure to who's more important to him? Maybe. Thats a different post tho)

Anyway. Fast forward like 3ish years later...

Red Robin 2009 01

Haha. I love self fulfilling prophecies.

Bart's Nightmare

Kon's Nightmare

[a-bad-case-of-the-stephs]

Let’s talk about Tim Drake’s failure to assert independence during and in the wake of Bruce Wayne: Murderer, and how it might explain why he lies to Stephanie Brown's face.

For Tim, Bruce Wayne: Murderer seems to mark a departure in how he thinks of himself as Robin.

Primarily, he seems to moves from the idea of Batman needs a Robin to the almost inverse, as he begins to posit the idea that Robin does not need Batman.

This concept starts appearing as a contrast to the way Dick Grayson's adamant belief in Batman manifests.

Gotham Knights #28 (2000)

Dick is unable to reckon with the idea of Batman’s guilt. And more than that, he says he can’t “continue serving a system” he doesn't have faith in. But what “system” is he talking about? They’re talking about a distrust in Batman. For Nightwing, the idea of a distrust in Batman is analogous to a distrust idea of vigilantism as a whole, as a “system”.

The innocence of Batman and the ability to be a vigilante are linked for him completely. He says that cannot and will not reckon with the possibility Bruce is guilty, doing so for him would be the same as doubting his entire life, doubting everything he has done as a vigilante. Dick's faith in Batman and his work as Nightwing, as a vigilante, are tied together completely.

And while Tim begins to oppose this idea via his doubt of Bruce in this issue, Tim's conception of Batman as wholly separate from Robin gets more emphasized through his epiphany moment in Robin #100.

Robin #100 & #101 (1993)

In this issue, Tim has reached a point where he is comfortable with the idea of being Robin without Batman. He is asserting that he has divorced his usage of the Robin mantle from Batman and his actions. If Bruce did kill Vesper, it doesn’t change Tim as Robin or what he does. He is able to continue on.

This is an uplifting sentiment, and it’s expressed in a beautiful way, through Tim’s musings after seeing a literal robin.

But it’s also extremely ironic.

In the very scene where Tim comes to this realization, staring at a real robin, a nearby stray cat not a moment later lunges, sending the robin flying away. In this way, Tim’s metaphor is dispelled. The “day/spring/robin” can be touched after all, can be chased away and changed.

And when Tim begins to assert to the cat, jokingly, that he “is Robin”, Tim is knocked out by Batman before he can even finish his sentence.

In this moment, the second that Robin asserts his independence from Batman, he is immediately proven wrong. Tim says the metaphorical robin cannot be changed by the night. But then, the cat attacks the robin, and it is no longer a analogous vehicle for his metaphor, it fails.

And then, Batman himself knocks out Tim. The actual Robin who tries to reassert control over his metaphor by scolding the cat and reaffirming his identity is immediately disrupted by Batman, who Tim just claimed had no power over him through his metaphor.

Tim asserts an independence, and then we see that concept immediately fail. Both on the metaphoric level of the actual robin, and on the literal level of Tim as Robin, the idea that Tim proclaims is undermined immediately.

The idea of Tim’s failure to assert independence from Bruce is not singular to Robin #100. The same idea is expressed in Robin #106.

Robin #106 marks the first one-on-one convo between Bruce and Tim once BW:Murderer/Fugitive has been resolved. Bruce’s name has been cleared, but the tension certainly has not.

As they drive together, Tim gets confronted head on with this. He is asked the same question which Tim had answered for himself in Robin #100: what would happen if Batman had killed Vesper?

Robin #106 (1993)

Tim’s answer in Robin #100 is that he would not be affected, that the actions of “the night/Batman” don’t affect his actions as Robin. An answer that we know is undermined moments later. So what does he say now?

He reasserts the conclusion he comes to in Robin #100: Robin can exist without Batman.

Notice how Tim uses “I guess” twice to preface his statements. His language is insecure and padded. He has to be goaded by Bruce to even continue, at first simply stating that he doesn’t know what he would do.

Additionally, alongside this dialogue, Tim’s internal narration is nervous and pleading. He says Robin has his own reasons to exist simultaneously as he frantically hopes his answer lives up to Bruce’s standards.

And as they continue the conversation, Tim’s assertion is further undermined. He gets nervous and frantically asserts that Bruce is “still the Boss!”

Robin #100 (1993)

And then, we learn that Tim was worrying throughout the conversation that he might be kicked off of the team.

Is that inconsistent? Didn’t Tim just say he’d be Robin even if he had to do so “by himself”?

Put simply, Tim Drake expresses a willingness to be Robin on his own, but that’s clearly not his preference.

He cares about staying on the team, he wants to stay on the team, even if he would keep being Robin on his own if he was kicked out.

And then, lastly, Tim himself recognizes that his proclamation had failed: what he was trying to say and what he said didn't line up the way he wanted.

While their conversation purports to show Tim asserting independence, it’s hedged over and over again, weakened conceptually.

By Tim’s hesitance, by his half hearted phrasing, by Tim’s pleading internal dialogue, by Tims frantic reassuring that Bruce is still his Boss, by Tim’s obvious fear he will be kicked off the team: the conversation where the focus is meant to be Tim’s reassertion that Robin is separate from Batman is sabotaged on every level, over and over.

It’s the same exact situation we see in Robin #100, repeated. Tim claims Robin is independent from Batman, only for the claim to be immediately and thoroughly undermined.

But, you may be asking, what does this have to do with Stephanie Brown? When did Tim lie to Steph?

Robin #106 is also the comic where Batman informs Tim that he plans to fire Stephanie as Spoiler.

In fact, Bruce informs Tim of this choice immediately after the conversation we just analyzed.

Something important happens in this moment: Tim is enraged, and importantly, he stays silent.

Robin #106 (1993)

He has to think to himself to not be respond, he has to remind himself not to jump out of the Batmobile. Tim clearly disagrees with Bruce’s choice to fire Steph, and he’s angry at Bruce for it.

But his anger is tied directly to his inaction. In every line of internal dialogue where we learn Tim’s frustration or disagreement, we also are shown Tim Drake’s suppression of that anger.

Tim, for some reason or another, pushes down his anger, and stays silent.

This moment is the key to the question I want to answer here: Why does Tim Drake lie to Steph about her getting fired?

Figuring out why he stays silent in this scene I believe will answer the question of why Tim maintains silence in not warning Steph that Bruce plans to fire her, and why Tim intentionally obfuscates the truth when she comes to him for advice.

Watch how Tim lies here:

Batman Family #2 (2002)

Tim knows that while Bruce certainly was holding everyone at arms length during BW: Murderer/Fugitive, that has since ended. Tim is let into the Batcave, Tim is having regular correspondence with Batman, Tim has gotten a return to normalcy.

Tim also knows that Steph is being singled out. Her radio silence is not the symptom of something affecting him or anyone else on the team at all. Her radio silence is because Batman is planning on firing her. Tim knows that she's going to be fired.

But TIm still reassures her not to worry about it. He tells her not to take it personally. Even though he knows that it is, in fact, personal.

Gotham Knights #37 (2000)

Once Steph finally finds out she has been fired Tim appears again to comfort her.

He hugs her. He sympathizes with her. And he, again, keeps up the pretense that he just found out Steph was going to be fired that day.

It’s a sweet moment, it really is. Tim’s “I know” is clearly genuine to me. I think he means it. I think he loves Steph. But he also let her find out like this. He also lied to her and kept her in the dark. That was a choice he made.

So, why did he do it?

Again, I think his choice to withhold when it comes to Stephanie being fired comes down to how he stays silent in Robin #106.

As we explored, Robin #106 is a continuation of the idea brought up in Robin #100. Both issues have Tim assert that Robin is independent from Batman, a huge departure for him. And then they both undermine and call into question Tim’s claim.

If Robin #106 represents the repeated failure of Tim’s claim to live up to reality, I think that explains why he stays silent here.

A Robin which is “unchanged” by the night, a Robin who made himself, who wasn’t “made by” anyone else, and a Robin who is a separate entity unaffected by the actions of Batman, the Robin that Tim describes in Robin #100, would voice his feelings and anger.

Tim Drake, sitting in the Batmobile, worrying he will be kicked off the team, still internally vying for Bruce’s approval and silencing his concerns, is not that Robin.

Whether he likes it or not, Tim is still (to a degree) reliant on Batman and his approval.

Tim is able to doubt Bruce and disagree with Bruce, but Tim cannot separate himself, or Robin, fully from Batman, despite his claims otherwise.

And with their relationship with one another so clearly still rocky in the wake of the distrust and anger they both experienced during BW:Murderer? It’s not surprising to me that Tim stays silent. Why risk jeopardizing the relationship he almost lost? Why risk potentially getting kicked off the team? Things are just finally returning to normal.

He can say he is independent from Batman, but his actions prove otherwise.

That’s why he stays silent in the car ride when Batman tells him he’s going to fire Steph, and that’s why he lies to Steph later.

It’s a trade: normalcy gets to be reestablished between Batman and Robin, and all Tim has to do is stay silent.

So, Tim stays silent. And when Steph comes to him, he lies to her. And when Steph falls apart, he comforts her because he loves her, but Tim’s relationship with Bruce is just going to have to take priority right now. Too bad. Sorry Steph.

[glitter-stained]

Tim Drake, the ghost of Jason Todd, and the function of victim-blaming in Terror Management Theory

Ever hear someone victim blaming and wonder to yourself, why are you doing this? Why is it more comfortable to assume it was their fault? What does that say about your view of the world, and what percentage of reality are you willing to sacrifice to lean into that comfort?

1. A couple of disclaimers

2. The belief in a fair world

3. Agentivity: what power do I have to impact the world around me?

4. Road safety infomercials lied to you and also fuck the government

5. Strangely enough, your dead son's suit being hung up in a glass case in your secret hero cave is not a good idea for anyone involved

6. In conclusion: fuck cautionary tales

[fantastic-nonsense]

Tim "Power of Friendship" Drake. Is that why every Everytime I come across his “future” selves in comics (Teen Titans 2003, and lonely place of living) he is brooding angry loner who uses a gun for some reason? Why do they write him rejecting his friends?

Basically every Batman!Tim we’ve ever seen is evil, which I think is less indicative that Tim has inherent supervillain tendencies and more indicative of the fact that a Tim who is Batman is, traditionally, a Tim that is either alone or has lost people so fundamental to his sense of self that it sent him at least a bit over the edge. It’s a Tim without a support base, a Tim without the family and community he so deliberately and carefully cultivates, and a Tim without others to reign his darker impulses in and hold him accountable.

The thing about Tim is that he's a social person and a support character by nature. He gravitates towards talking to people and creating connections and identifying gaps and solving problems that keep people from working effectively together. As he's noted on multiple occasions, he has friends and treasures having them deeply. This is largely why when his social support structure breaks down, he goes off the deep end and starts getting angry and depressed.

Additionally, Tim has never wanted to be Batman. The concept of becoming Batman or being anything like Bruce canonically scares him. He rejects the idea outright on several different occasions, and he hates that he's finally being able to "understand" Bruce after suffering the immense personal losses he went through in the mid-2000s. Tim is stunningly realistic and critical of Bruce as a person for someone who is incredibly idealistic about the ideals of Batman; it's always been a very fascinating source of tension for his personal interactions with Bruce and to a lesser extent Dick and Cass.

Which is a larger point that people dance around but rarely actually talk about in these conversations: to get Canon!Tim to a place where he either wants to become Batman or actually becomes Batman, you have to remove at least 5-6 cornerstone people in his life that keep him happy, sane, and a nominally normal, functional human being. Wearing the cowl certainly doesn't help matters, but Tim's mentality and sanity would start sliding regardless of whether he was wearing the cowl or not in any situation where he loses that foundational sense of community and accountability. Thus, the proliferation of Evil Loner Batman!Tims that we see.

So imo it's less about Tim actively rejecting his friends and more "well what it proves is that Tim goes insane when he loses everyone he loves, which checks out."

[homosexual-work-account]

Jason Todd’s “Replacement” nickname for Tim Drake, Origins and Popularisation

So, making a 2500-word essay on how a fanon nickname that only me and like two other people care about is not how I expected to spend my time in between exams.

A lot of Batfam fans are very, very much aware of the fanon “Replacement” nickname Jason has for Tim, and a lot of us very, very much hate it due to the connotations of fanon characterisation that it has. I don’t personally, I think it’s an alright enough one that fits into the established canon ones – but to be fair, I haven’t read the comics in a hot minute, so my memory could be screwy.

I got curious one day on where the nickname came from when a user on TikTok mentioned that it might’ve originated from a Batfam incest fic (They weren’t too sure and told me to take it with a grain of salt) – so shout out to them for starting me down this rabbit hole! I looked over on here and saw that notion repeated, though no one could pinpoint me to a specific fic beyond “It was popularised from a Batfam incest fic.”. I also saw a few people say that it was derived from canon, which piqued my interest further so I decided to go down a rabbit hole of fandom history purely for some fun.

The aim of this essay is just to clear up some misconceptions around the origin of the name, all fun and no harm. Don’t send harassment to people referenced in this either over a silly nickname, it's been well over a decade since they wrote the works used here.

Preface

Alright, first things first – all sources are going to be ones that were published after August 2005, the official date the first issue of Batman: Under the Red Hood was published, where Jason was established to be alive again.

While there could be a chance that the nickname was derived from a website/fanfiction before 2005, it’s highly unlikely due to the fact it was only popularised in the early 2010’s, and well, because Jason was dead and no one gave a shit about him. Also good to remember that most websites that ran before 2005 are defunct and purged from the internet now, particularly fanfiction websites (such as Quidzillia) due to various issues (taboo, copyright, costs to run ect).

Small note to make again – the Batfam fandom was fairly small at the time, the more fandom-y part of the DC community usually sticking to their own websites like Quotev, Quidzilla (again, defunct now), AO3, Fanfiction.net, LiveJournal and independent websites (again, defunct) while the rest stuck to discussion sites, so the entire fandom functioned more as a insular community from what I could tell. I will be working with the assumption that the nickname was created on one of the larger platforms, as any other platform didn’t have large enough influence to popularise the nickname.

The nicknames that I specifically looked for was simply Jason calling Tim Replacement in place of his actual name. Something like “Replacement Robin” was on very thin ice, but still counted as an offshoot. Anything else was off bets.

This whole thing will be split into a few sections to make some things for myself easier. Preface, Sources, Pre-cursor Fanfiction, Fandom Opinion and Language, First usage, Popularisation, Conclusion, Questions, Final Notes.

Sources

Fanfic.net – Created 1998, was and remains one of the larger fanfiction sites. Note; Fanfiction.net had various periods of time where there were large scale purges of fanfictions that held more mature content. Most notable instances were in 2002 and 2012.

Archive Of Our Own – The holy grail for my research. Created in 2008. For the information I got from there I used the search filter Date Updated, tagged Jason’s and Tim’s individual tags and followed from there.

Live Journal – Created 1999 and was used as one of the larger sites for fandom and fanfiction. Was used by DC fandom goers regularly so I used it to get an idea of the fandom at the time.

Tumblr – Created 2007. Theres various people on here who have compilations on DC timelines and comic sourcing that helped me correlate fandom growth with specific comic releases (Shout out to @ectonurites for their meta posts and timeline posts, they were a major source for this!). Dogshit filtering system, so I couldn’t find posts pre 2012 about DC.

Note; Quotev and Wattpad weren’t used in this as their filtering systems don’t account for searching for older fanfictions, so sadly had to be discarded as most fanfictions between 2006-2010 on those websites are now very difficult to find.

Pre-Cursor FanFiction

So, before we get to the actual first proper use I could find of “Replacement”, I first want to mention a fanfiction that had something very similar that I think would be important purely for archiving reasons around how the nickname came to be. And also because it fits the nickname criteria I mentioned earlier.

Published on the 29th of November 2006, last updated on the 28th of November 2007, was the fanfiction My-Enemy-My-Brother on Fanfiction.net by user theunknownvoice – featuring the first use of Jason referring to Tim with a nickname including replacement, Replacement Robin. Kudos to theunknownvoice, they created the very first nickname that would kickstart the rest.

While Jason doesn’t explicitly refer to Tim as Replacement – the main subject of this essay, it comes very damn close, so I wanted to include it. There is a part where Jason repeats replacement in his head multiple times, and I think he’s supposed to be referring to Tim, but the sentence isn’t very clear on that part, so I won’t count it, but it is important to acknowledge.

Though this isn’t the fanfiction that influenced the development of Replacement. This fic had barely enough reach to influence any future works years later. I couldn’t find any connection with this work and later works that officially did just have Jason call Tim “Replacement”

Fandom Opinion and Language at the time

I promise this is important and that I’m not a pretentious linguistic, English isn’t even my first language.

I like to think we all know how fandom discussion just seeps into fanfiction (See; the nickname green bean for Deku from MHA leaking into fanfiction) so I just want to quickly point this out.

Discussion around the two blew up after Jasons return in late 2005, people going “What does this mean” and “What does that mean for Tim”. Through the few posts I could dig up from this time and up to 2011, it seems people came to the conclusion that Tim was Jason’s replacement, and that their dynamic was Jason dealing with the fact that he had one. You can definitely see that in some of the posts and fanfiction written at the time that usually had Jason dealing with Tim being his replacement.

(Just a few examples from LiveJournal but more like this are still floating around, if they aren’t deleted anyway)

It’s very likely that the authors themselves engaged in similar discussions/had independent thoughts that ended in the same conclusions, seeping into the fanfiction itself later. In the comics pre-New 52 I couldn’t find any major instance of Jason explicitly referring to Tim as his replacement (only implied through speech), so this was mostly contained in fandom discussions from what I can tell. (Note, this was probably similar on comic discussion websites, but I couldn’t find any that still exist pre-2007, so I’m going to assume literacy skills are not any better on those sites. See; Batman dick riders)

The fact that Tim is explicitly described as having replaced Jason, and sometimes as “Being the Replacement” on posts/fanfiction definitely had a hand in the creation and popularisation of the nickname, influencing the fan content made around the two.

First usage of Replacement

Cain! Cain! Is the first use of the nickname Replacement really from a Batfam incest fanfiction?

Nope, thank God.

After filtering their character tags together on AO3, going to the oldest page and clicking through over 10 pages, reading every single fanfiction on each one (yes, even the weird ones, I was dedicated) I found the first instance where Jason explicitly refers to Tim as Replacement, that still exists today anyway.

Published on the 24th of January, 2009 by user shiny_glor_chan, is the fanfiction Four Calling Birds, a fanfiction detailing Stephenie Brown returning from faking her death (a whole headache from the comics that I can't be arsed to explain) and getting to meet Jason and Dick for the first time. Genuinely sweet, and a corner stone of fandom history, officially. Hip hip Hooray! Congratulations shiny_glor_chan.

I tried tracing to see if this person had any other accounts that I could find to see where they got the nickname from, but it seems it’s mostly a nickname they thought up out of the fact that they had consistently wrote Jason explicitly stating that Tim was his replacement

And reading through several more pages of fanfiction again, feeling like I want to bleach my eyes out, I found the second instance of the nickname being used. Published on the 26th of May, 2010 by user axiel-neesan, is the fanfiction The Only Piece You Get, where Jason basically acts as Tim’s cabbie and bonds with him. Another corner stone of fandom history, hooray.

These two authors are completely unrelated and have no connections to each other besides both frequenting LiveJournal, having taken prompts and having friends from that website, despite having no accounts I could find. I personally think they had a similar train of thought of “Huh, that would be a sick ass nickname.”. Chances are that axiel-neesan saw shiny_glor_chans fic and got inspired as the fandom was dead small on AO3 at the time – around 20 pages worth of fanfiction from 2008-2010 (And thats being generous if we’re counting now deleted ones)

These two fanfictions are immensely important because it’s the only early instances I could find of the nickname being used, and for about two years after the nickname pops up occasionally – but by no means was it popular, or even regularly used, I had to look for the fanfictions that used it.

Props to shiny_glor_chan and axiel-neesan! I pray that you two don’t see what the fandom thinks of that nickname now.

Popularisation

Early 2012 saw the proper explosion of fandom for the Batfam, and by extension the nickname.

By this point there were so many fanfictions that I couldn’t read them all, so I started picking random ones that tagged Jason and Tims relationship, platonic or not. Pre-April-ish of 2012 the nickname popped up every other page or so, but sometime after mid-2012 the nickname was in almost every fanfiction that I skimmed through – so that’s its official growth period.

Why though? Several factors probably.

The New-52 was in full swing by this time, DC massively promoting the reboot to get new fans interested, so people picked up comics from there. Young Justice – the more mainstream exposure of DC to surface level fans aired its second season in April of 2012, introducing people to Tim Drake and his story and getting them interested. Fanfiction and fandom as a whole was becoming less taboo and more accepted in fan spaces, so encouragement to write it was much better than it was in the early years of the internet (Example; Teen Wolf’s production team)

As for a specific catalyst for the growth of popularity for the nickname? There might be something worth pointing to.

Kudos for @ectonurites for helping me on this (Hi Sam! I was anon!) and giving me a publishing date on Tim’s and Jason’s first New 52 interaction – Red Hood and the Outlaws #8, published on the 18th of April, 2012. It features an instance of Jason and Tim interacting in a very friendly and familial way, Jason explicitly calling Bruce their Dad. Compared to their last major previous interaction of Jason leaving Tim for dead, fans of the two who enjoyed the more familial potential (and tragically, romantic potential) took it and ran with it.

All of these combined in some way to contribute to the popularity of the nickname in mid to late 2012, and lead to it’s infamy in DC fanfiction.

Conclusion

In conclusion, how do I think the nickname came to be?

I think it’s a combination of factors that led to it’s creation. As already established people very much did see Tim as Jasons replacement at the time, and the language could have shortened down from “Tim replaced Jason” to “Tim is Jason’s replacement” to “Tim is the replacement” which I think could be the train of thought the 2006 author went down to create the nickname Replacement Robin.

This definitely influenced the AO3 writers as shiny_glor_chan was present on LiveJournal at the time (where this language was very prominent), so they were already down the line of thinking this and probably went “Huh, replacement is kinda a funny nickname” and added it. As already stated, I think axiel-neesan probably had a very similar train of thought or may have seen shiny_glor_chan’s fic and was inspired.

And from there people saw it, used it in their own works, getting leaked over onto LiveJournal, which was the main website for prompt sharing, getting used a decent amount there before the explosion of fandom in mid-2012 that lead to it’s regular usage in fan works.

Questions

So, is the nickname from a Batcest fic?

Nope! The nickname mostly makes an appearance in platonic fics between Jason and Tim, it’s actually a chore to find it in their romantic ones, as in I think I found one instance of it being used somewhere in late 2010 but I can't think of it in a fanfiction that predates that. All early uses of the nickname were in platonic fics between the two.

I think this rumour is based around three fanfictions specifically on Ao3 that people are pointing to, I think, no one seems to be wanting to name names. They’re the ones that pop up when you search Replacement in the word search after tagging Tim Drake and Jason Todd together.

Wings to Fly. Published October of 2012. Jason Refers to Tim as Replacement. Jason/Tim

Replacement. Published 2009. The title implies it’s referring to Tim, but Jason never explicitly nicknames Tim replacement, the narrator only calling Tim “His replacement”, him being Jason. Jason/Tim. Non-con

The Replacement. Published 2011. Can't figure out if the title is supposed to refer to Tim or is simply just titled that for the sake of it. Jason talks a few times about Tim being his replacement, but the nickname never makes an appearance. Jason/Tim

Does the nickname have any bases in Canon?

From what I can tell, no. I haven’t read all the Batfamily comics Pre-New 52, or from after Batman: Under The Red Hood, I mostly stray towards Hal Jordans comics lol. I don’t think theres any major instance where Jason talks about Tim replacing him by specifically using replacement or replacing (It can be inferred from his speech sometimes, but Jason’s relationship with Tim was much more complex than that. I’d recommend reading @ectonurites metas about the two to get a better idea) Theres a few instances in 2015 post-New 52 reboot where Jason says explicitly that Tim replaced him, but that was way after the nickname was popularised.

Red Hood and Arsenal #7 (2015)

Final Notes

That’s about it! That’s the result of my month long dive into almost twenty years worth of DC fandom history as a fun side project. Please don’t harass anyone linked here, this was just project to pass the time and not a call out post for anyone that did contribute to the popularisation of the nickname.

Feel free to ask me anything else about this or any other DC fandom history and I’ll try to research it!! This was genuinely a fun thing to do to pass the time and work out my research muscles.

[sweettsubaki]

Y a know it's been almost 15 years since I first thought about it and I still think that if they wanted to give Tim a non Robin Identity that bad, they really should have used Flamebird. I know they have since given it back to Bette Kane but she barely exists in costume (also I liked her arcs where she's a civilian more than the ones where they force her back into costume so I admit I am 10000% biased). Especially since it's a kryptonian hero and aside from her relationship with Nightwing, she doesn't particularly has any contact with them.

Meanwhile, with both Tim's relationship to Dick and Kon (and even his friendship with Kara in 1YL if we wanna go there), he's got enough connection and

To want to honor them and for it to work very well thematically. And the color scheme is a good mix of Tim's Robin colors pré and post Kon's death.

[ichor-emia]

thinking about how tim's early days as robins is an omen for the events in the red robin run (2009-2011)

like he's trying to drag bruce out of his depression in the face of jason's death and lead him back to the ideals he knows that bruce cared about. bruce in his right mind wouldnt be as brutal as he was in that time, and tim knew bruce didn't want to be that way. bruce is being violent, isolating himself, and isn't thinking things through, which is exactly what happens in tim's first expedition as red robin.

he's distraught over the deaths of his parents, his friends, and is dealing with his gf back stabbing him, dick not believing him, damian vying for his downfall, and losing the familiarity that came with the robin mantle. on his quest, he's not thinking things through

anyways. parallels symbolism aaaaa

[leblogreblog]

Proposal: In DC Universe, character has to live trough their birth day, the exact day they were born on, to age.

Idea: Tim was born on a leap day during leap year

Reasoning: His age is weirdly inconsistient with others because he literally ages slower than them

[umbrellajam]

Anyway, as I'm going back and reading a period during which the Teen Titans and other heroes were highly visible and active with the public, including Batman to a certain extent, and with camera!Tim and the idea of reconciling incompatible timelines on my mind -

I feel like the camera!Tim fanon where Tim follows Batman and Robin around in person for years could be (among other things, such as wanting him to interact with/admire Jason and encounter/join the Batfam early, etc.) partially a result of the retcon that B&R are shadowy, unconfirmed urban legends, and not public figures. Even for people who haven't read this retcon in the comics themselves, the "B&R as urban legends" world-state is still very popular, well-known, and often used in fic and fandom.

So during the 1994 Zero Hour event, there were a bunch of time anomalies and various adjustments to the canon, including (re-)establishing Batman (and Robin) as a hushed, menacing ~rumor~, more phantom and myth than man, as a matter of Bat policy. No public appearances. No clear photos, no hard facts.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #0

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #0

We even have Dick relaying a slightly tweaked version of his origin, implying that Batman did not swoop down and publicly comfort Dick Grayson in the circus ring after his parents' murder (as was shown to have happened in Batman: Year Three and A Lonely Place of Dying back in 1989 - and which served as the initial reason Tim started admiring Batman!), and in fact Dick "...didn't believe the stories about the Batman" until months after he moved into the Manor, when Bruce told him the truth and showed him the Cave:

Robin (1993) #0

And of course the many subsequent instances afterwards of the existence of Batman, Robin, Nightwing, etc. all being kept on the down-low:

Young Justice (1998) #52-53 - Tim creating his Mr. Sarcastic guise to avoid being on-camera as Robin.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1) #727 - Bullock and Montoya being true Gothamite bros to the Bats.

And many more, etc.

All of this is obviously incompatible with the prior era and many events where Batman and Robin were very well documented as heroes, including Tim's origin in Batman: Year Three and ALPoD, as mentioned above.

As Tim related, he followed them mainly in various news media, and it was in fact on TV that he fatefully saw Robin's quadruple flip, years later:

Batman (Vol. 1) #441

By contrast, the 2016 recap of Tim's origin in A Lonely Place of Living, which restored his pre-Flashpoint backstory, does have Batman appearing at the circus again, and even taking Dick with him, but it doesn't include anything about Tim following Batman and Robin in the news, clipping articles, etc. It doesn't even mention when or how Tim saw Robin performing Dick Grayson's quadruple somersault in order to piece things together:

Detective Comics (2016) #965

But okay, if Batman and Robin were subsequently retconned into shadowy urban legends that didn't regularly appear in newspapers or on TV, how do we reconcile that with Tim's backstory as a fan who stalked followed them super closely?? His creepy cute scrapbook of newspaper clippings and Moment of Revelation from watching them on TV can't exist in the same form anymore, it's incompatible.

We can fudge an in-universe explanation covering most of the retcon, like it was a policy change that Batman instituted early in Tim's Robin tenure, and say Oracle went back and scrubbed photos, videos, records etc. from existence. We'd probably have to lean into the sliding timescale of comics and pretend all of this happened in a more digital era, though, because otherwise there are all of those pesky physical records...

We can cover the gaps by handwaving that the 'shadowy urban legends' cloak of secrecy was never foolproof, and hard evidence of B&R's existence did exist here and there, but was limited and hard to find. This jives fairly well with the actual 'urban legend' era post-Zero Hour; they couldn't avoid being witnessed or interacting with people all the time. Kid Tim would just have to do more involved digging than snipping articles out of the daily paper. Maybe the hidden security camera footage of Robin's flip that was shown on the evening news was much more shadowy and ambiguous than in canon, and it's because of Tim's special interest that he was even able to recognize B&R, and what was going on? I like this one, personally.

But alternatively. We do know that he followed Batman in person and took pictures at least in Batman #440. We're pretty sure that he had to have followed Dick/the Titans around in New York before, given that he'd memorized the Titans' schedules and knew the locations of both Kory's and Dick's apartments (also Batman #440; Tim, pls...).

It seems like extending these instances into a more regular pattern of Tim following the Bats around, and gathering photo evidence for his scrapbook by taking pictures himself, and witnessing Robin!Dick's flip in person, is one possible way to reconcile the inconsistency. And one even more likely to be used by people with only more general fandom knowledge, who are used to the 'urban legend' world-state but want to have Tim stalking the Bats at length anyway. (Which, along with New 52 Tim, is part of how we get baby super-hacker and electronic stalker extraordinaire Tim fanon, as well, I'm sure.)

[galaxymagitech]

I find it interesting that Tim is the one represented as the color black on the Cursed Wheel. We spent this story learning that black represents the ability to see your opponent’s motivations, to understand evil.

“The first section is black. It’s about evil, Duke. It’s the most challenging one, too. It’ll test whether you have what it takes once and for all. It’s about looking at evil—staring at the blackest of the black—and seeing past it to motivation. Human causality. It’s about asking one question…[Why you?]” (Honestly this kind of sounds racist out-of-context. Maybe even in context.)

Now…I’ll admit that Tim is good at picking apart people’s motivation and understanding people…when they’re not his girlfriend. But I don’t really think of him as one of the Bats who is closest to being evil. He helps because someone needs help. He just acts because someone needs to do it, and it’s the right thing to do. And he’s motivated by his deep need to help people and make things as they should be.

But. But. Tim is also the character who contemplated killing Cluemaster to save oxygen. Who, in Rebirth, masterminded a paramilitary force of Bats. Who may have, in desperation, caused deaths in the League of Assassins. Who plotted out Captain Boomerang’s death, but saved him at the last minute.

So Tim is bright. He’s Batman’s light—sometimes literally:

And yet, he can understand the darkness.

Because Tim Drake doesn’t choose to be good—although I’m sure he views it as choosing to be good, I think his goodness is what leads him to make his choices—but he does choose not to do bad.

He is a caring person, who wants to help to a fault. But he considers every option, including the bad ones. So yes, he understands people who take different paths. Because every one of those paths, he is actively choosing not to take.

[thatshadowgastwhore]

There’s so much potential for a meta!tim au where his meta ability is akin to Cassandra (the prophet from the Iliad, not Cain) and he’s desperately trying to find a way to break his curse; and a la that one tumblr post, if you don’t want it to be complete angst, one person (Odysseus is “nobody” so he can believe Cassandra) who believes him.

Heavy angst if he had a vision of the Grayson’s dying and no one beloved. Heavy angst if he had a vision of Jason dying and no one believed. Heavy angst on lots of things.

Not sure who it should be (the person who can believe him) but my gut says it can’t be Bruce, Alfred or dick. (Bruce bc he doesn’t listen to Tim that he needs to not be so violent, Alfred bc reasons, and dick bc Bruce being lost in time) I think it’s Jason, although you could run into the same issue as dick. My first idea is it’s Janet, and when she dies, it passes to Jason. Idk what the plot would be, it’s just an idea

[a-bad-case-of-the-stephs]

Stephanie Browns time as Robin serves as a direct foil to multiple aspects of Tim Drake’s introduction as Robin and what that accomplishes narratively:

1. Alfred vs Bruce Reactions

When Tim first arrives, Alfred is right there trying to convince an extremely reluctant Bruce to allow Tim to become Robin.

Batman #442

In contrast with Steph, where Alfred is giving his best effort trying to convince a resolved Bruce not to allow Steph to become Robin

Robin #126

Tim and Stephs introductions as Robin have Bruce and Alfred directly switch roles in their relation to Robin: the reluctant becomes the advocate, and the advocate becomes the reluctant.

2. Breaking Explicit Orders to Save Batman

Let’s look at the story which ends with Tim donning his own Robin costume for the first time and being referred to as “Robin” for the first time by Bruce, the story where Tim officially becomes Robin.

Tim is told not to go into the field or put on the Robin costume, but Tim chooses to fight the Scarecrow himself and enter a situation he was told explicitly to stay out of by Batman to save Bruce’s life (and also Vicki Vale’s).

Batman #456 & #457

Bruce tells him sometimes rules are meant to be broken, and immediately afterwards, he is recognized as Robin.

Stephanie’s firing as Robin occurs when she is told explicitly to stay out of a fight, but which she still enters, as she believes Batman was in danger.

Robin #128

Tim’s entrance into being Robin is tied directly to his disregarding orders to save Batman.

In contrast, Stephanie’s exit as Robin occurs once she disregards orders and attempts to save Batman.

3. Secret Identity Knowledge

Tim enters the manor already knowing everyone’s secret identities. He knows “The Secret” from literally before day one.

Batman #441

In stark contrast, not only does Stephanie enter her time as Robin without knowing Batman’s real identity, she leaves her time as Robin none the wiser as to Bruce’s secret.

Despite working as a sanctioned member of the team for a substantial amount of time beforehand as Spoiler, she doesn’t know Batman’s identity when she is Robin and she still doesn’t know when she “dies” in war games.

Tim represents a totality of knowledge in his introduction, he knows everyone’s identity and relationships far before he becomes Robin.

And Stephanie represents a total lack of that same knowledge: she enters and exits the Robin role with no knowledge of “The Secret”.

The entirety of Stephs time as Robin is overshadowed by the unavoidable fact that the normally intensely trust based partnership that is the Batman and Robin dynamic is being subverted and used as a blunt tool. A tool to leverage Tim back into the role of Robin.

Is it any wonder then that Stephs time as Robin foils Tims introduction as Robin?

The contrast serves as a way to explain to the reader why Stephanie cannot be Robin: Steph is the “bad” Robin who portrays an opposite to the “good” Tim Drake Robin introduction. She is in opposition to the “norm”.

Stephanie serves as a reversal, a perversion of how Tim Drake became Robin, allowing Tim to return to the role.

The core tenets of the Tim Drake Robin Introduction Myth must be reversed, deconstructed and undone, so that there is room and opportunity for Tim Drake to rebecome Robin afterwards. So that he can reestablish himself and the norms that Stephanie’s time as Robin has upset and undone.

[glitter-stained]

Personal hc for Tim's relationship wrt Jason at least at the beginning is he should be super obsessed with him and alternate between avoidant af and seeking him out on purpose and I don't mean that in a positive way I mean that as in Tim's relationship to Jason (the idea of Jason) being a dark mirror of Tim's relationship to Dick (the idea of Dick) and the key role they both play in his identity issues and relationship to Bruce, which works on both character and meta analysis and his confrontation to the humanity of both, in the context of putting those relationships in conversation with eachother, would make for such an interesting development provided it's not written by a coward.

[fantastic-nonsense]

im soso curious, i need to know... why is tim a child of apollo? bless u for not going with fanon<3

[referencing how I decided who the Batfam's godly parents were in my PJO AU WIP]

People like to sort him into Athena because DC has spent the last few years emphasizing how smart he is and how he's better at the more “cerebral” and detective aspects of the job. But Tim’s most prominent pre-reboot traits are not actually his detective or tech skills: they’re his reckless, impulsive bravery, his ability to analyze and think very quickly on his feet in dangerous situations, and his "power of friendship" idealism.

He's a people person; it's one of his greatest strengths. Tim is like...physically incapable of going somewhere and not making at least one friend while he's there. Hell, when he ran off to travel the world on his "fuck you, I'll find Bruce on my own" trip he still managed to pick up his own little crew of assassin friends along the way. Making connections and talking to people and relying on others for help is how he successfully navigates being a hero, as he himself notes on multiple occasions:

"Did you think I was going to run all around the city, desperately trying to save everyone all by myself? I'm not Batman. I have friends." -Red Robin #12

Tim loves his family and friends, and losing so many people he's close to within such a small timespan sends him off the deep end in multiple ways (trying to clone Kon, fighting Dick to get the Lazarus water, isolating himself from everyone, fighting with Dick and running off to find proof that Bruce was alive on his own, etc).

At his core, Tim is an idealist who becomes a hero for no other reason than a) a broken man needs help and a broken family needs mending and b) if Dick won't go back to being Robin he might as well do it, because someone has to be Robin. He sees what will happen if Bruce stays on the path he's on and says "no. I'm not going to let that happen." He's a hero because someone has to help, and he's able and available to do so. He doesn't work on cold hard logic and facts. He works off of gut instinct and then uses his big brain to go find facts and logical conclusions that support those instincts.

Tim was never going to be an Athena child.

So I started thinking. At first, I wanted him to be a Hermes child; it seemed right to frame his parentage around being the child of the messenger of the gods given how he became Robin. But that's not really him, either. Apollo, within the scope of both classical mythology and the PJO-verse's depiction of him and his children, fits him better.

While modern culture tends to zero in a lot on Apollo's status as the god of music, poetry, and the arts (for good reason), Apollo in classical Greek mythology was first and foremost known as the god who (for lack of a better term) helps his people. He's the god of the sun, of light, of medicine and healing, of prophecy, of truth.

Tim comes into Bruce's life at a time when Bruce is at his absolute lowest point. Jason is dead. He's estranged from Dick. He's failing in his mission to save Gotham. He's highkey passively suicidal. And Tim takes it upon himself to fix that. And he does it by being a solid, bright, stable presence in Bruce's life and an extremely blunt, truthful messenger of the future he sees: Batman needs a Robin, and if Bruce doesn't have one he's going to die.

And I didn't abandon his intelligence in the calculations: Apollo is also the god of rational thinking, order, and knowledge, contrasting and working in harmony with Dionysus (the god of irrationality, chaos, and passion). He was also known to be the god whose job it was to interpret the will of Zeus to humankind, which I thought was appropriate for a boy who spends quite a lot of his time being the living communication translator between Bruce and everyone around him.

So. Apollo child.

............also I thought it was funny to make the god of youth the father of the boy DC refuses to allow to age.

[kinkforwings]

Having thoughts about Red Robin and Dick & Tim. How Dick says that he thinks of Tim as a partner, an equal and that's why he doesn't want him to be Robin to his Batman because Dick felt like he was just a sidekick when he was Robin, which arguably is and isn't true, and is projecting on Tim. How Tim doesn't understand that and hence is angry about Robin being taken from him because to him Batman and him were partners, and is feeling betrayed and insecure.

And then Tim runs away from Gotham because he is mentally suffering from continuous losses since he turned 16 and is desperate to lose himself in searching for proof that Bruce is alive just so that he could bury the grieving part of him because he is totally fine really. And Dick is left in Gotham with the burden of a legacy he didn't want, abandoned by one of people he unconditionally trusts, not being able to properly grieve while taking of a child who grew up as an assassin and also handling the weight of a city on his shoulders, and he is also totally fine.