#but boy will bart be ready when the penny does drop

[vinelark]

bart thinks kon is maybe stupid for not realizing tim is robin, but kon just respects robin so much that subconsciously he can't allow himself to make that connection until robin tells him himself

yeah! also kon initially met tim (as a civilian) in a situation that made him perceive tim through a certain lens—tim was one of a few rich kids kidnapped for ransom, and at that point, if asked, kon probably wouldn’t be able to imagine robin getting successfully kidnapped by a non-supervillain. like he knows robin is human/not a meta (and understands what this means for robin specifically more and more as time goes on) but the bats still have this carefully cultivated vibe/reputation that masks their vulnerabilities. so when kon interacts with tim after that initial kidnapping, he’s already framed tim as someone normal/vulnerable in a way that he doesn’t see robin. also, he’s extrapolated his idea of tim as a rich kid who does rich kid things with his time (yacht parties, hiring whole actors, living in a penthouse, getting fostered by a gazillionaire) and not vigilante things with his time. like he thinks tim is weird and funny and intriguing and surprisingly kind but he also imagines tim hanging out in expensive boarding school libraries and fancy galas and stuff. and while he’s vein_guy_meme.jpg trying to respect robin’s privacy, when he does idly imagine robin as a civilian he still pictures rob on, like, a roof or in a cave or napping on top of the tower fridge or something. so it’s not like he’s Seeing It and then rationalizing his way out of realizing, but rather that he’s pre-rationalized both tim and robin in a way that already separates them in his mind.

tl;dr kon's a smart guy and could totally put it together with the right prompting, so the watsonian reason he hasn't is all of the above; the doylist reason is because i as the author am having fun and also want the reveal to drop at a certain moment.

meanwhile bart met tim without any of those preconceived notions, and caught on as soon as tim said names (robin's shorthand for "no names in the field") because bart was like, huh, that's a very robin thing to say, and also this guy is having a weird reaction to fear gas so now i'm thinking about gotham, and also we're on a roof, and also his hair looks kinda windblown and spiky, all of which reminds me of ohhhhh shit omg okay that's why robin wasn't answering his messages got it