#cr1mson's thoughts

[cr1mson5returns]

Listen to me. Listen to me. Tim deserves to be 19 and thriving and making it everyone else's problem.

He's not been Robin since he was 17 and maybe the Red Robin series happened here, maybe it didn't, but either way it hardly matters now. He's not angry about it anymore but it's an inside joke between all the kids for reasons that Bruce doesn't understand (and probably won't ask about). He grew his hair out long enough that he can tie it back in a messy bun or a half ponytail, and he's gotten at least one tattoo to cover a more conspicuous scar he couldn't explain away easily to the press. He got his GED and he's taking college classes in an artsy major specifically because it pisses off the stuffy old men at Wayne Enterprises. Paparazzi have snapped at least two dozen photos of him skateboarding through downtown Gotham in a Givenchy sweater over ratty-ass jeans and heavy combat boots. Clips of him being a complete fucking gremlin at a public event have become standard meme templates. He's Lex Luthor's second most important nemesis purely because he's bratty and annoying and clowns on the guy on socials all the time. He's rabid. He's ungovernable. He's so endearing because of it.

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Tim after causing another international incident: While this may at first glance seem like the stupidest thing I've ever done.....it's actually not that high on the list

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Although I enjoy a good "Jack Drake is a physically and mentally abusive asshole and deeply homophobic" fic as much as the next ex-Catholic lesbian, I have to admit that I have a way softer spot in my heart for "clueless blundering ass who makes everything worse" Jack Drake.

Maybe it's because my own parents were deeply homophobic in a very different way to others. If you asked them, they'd tell you they have no problem with queer people. They don't care what anyone does in the privacy of their own home, really! Therefore they're not homophobic! But they just don't think you have to make it your whole personality. You don't have to shove it in everyone's faces. And all these new labels for things, what's up with that? Isn't it enough for people to just be gay or straight?

So because I do be projecting, I have a soft spot in my heart for Tim coming out to Jack as bisexual, and Jack just sort of...short-circuiting, for a hot minute. "Well, I'll always love you, son." And Tim thinks that this went pretty well, actually. But Jack later is maybe telling Tim that there are ground rules for him and his dates. Can't bring boys back to the house, strict curfew, has to let Jack know where he is and with whom at all times. Jack doesn't kick Tim out or anything, or call him names, but it's uncomfortable living there now in a way that it wasn't before. Jack has a weird vibe about him when Tim talks about a boyfriend or a male crush. Shuts down the conversation really quickly and won't entertain it any longer. Jack starts being critical of Tim in ways that he wouldn't if he didn't know about his son's sexuality; he asks why Tim feels the need to have a bi pride flag in his room, or why he has to make this his defining characteristic now. And Jack never actually says the word "bisexual." It's always "this." How they just need to leave "this" alone for a while, they need to not make every conversation about "this."

Because Tim is such a person to let a person's good characteristics speak miles more than their bad ones, if they're close enough to him. He has plans in place if Batman goes rogue, but not for his own protection, never for himself. Always for everyone else's benefit. He can live with what happens to him if he's wrong. So of course he'd never call his dad a homophobe, that's not - his dad didn't kick him out. Doesn't hit him or call him names or say mean things to him. It hurts his feelings sometimes, but he takes worse than that from street thugs every night. It's not like he can't handle his dad being a little weird about things.

Right?

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I have a very soft spot in my heart for Tim being just the loudest little shit on the planet. He was so used to being by himself in the house as a kid, what with how often his parents were out of town. After realizing how cranky he'd get if it was quiet for too long, he started filling the space with noise on his own purely to save his own sanity.

Cue Tim at Wayne Manor being so fucking noisy and Bruce is so tempted to tell him to quiet down but feels kind of bad if he does. And truthfully, it's nice in its own way to have this little weirdo bouncing off the fucking walls and chattering and clicking his pen 80 times a minute and just being his vibrant, noisy self.

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Sort of obsessing over the concept of Tim, having been acknowledged canonically as a talented photographer, using these skills for morally gray reasons. This kid doesn't intend to use his fists to win every battle, or even most battles, actually. He's well-connected, fits into unconventional hiding spaces due to being lean and slender and 5'6", and he has a very nice camera. So really, Senator, it's a shame you thought you'd get away with so much. Think of what the Times could do with this evidence. High-definition doesn't lie. So you'll vote to expand funding for public education and Medicaid in the state, is that correct? Of course, you're an upstanding politician, after all. Couldn't have all this getting in the way of your career.

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Thinking about Tim as the ultimate focal point of group project responsibility, the kid in class who did the whole assignment and still put everyone else's names on it, who complained about group work anyway because "I don't trust anyone else to do it right."

Except it's not school, it's Batman and Nightwing and everything they stand for, and Batman needs a Robin. But if Dick won't do it, and they already know they can't just sit around and wait for someone else to try, then Tim will do whatever it takes to give Batman a Robin because he doesn't trust anyone else to do it right. Somebody else might be softer, more subtle, a little less abrasive and forward and prone to perfectionism - but would they know these people? Would they learn every tell and every move as thoroughly as Tim has, or would it take too long? Would Batman succumb to his grief before that point?

There are some chances Tim won't take.

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I so understand and respect the reasons that the decision was made to have Jason Todd return from the dead as an antihero hellbent on revenge against everyone who wronged him when he got killed as a teenager, etc.

I just think it would be infinitely fucking funnier if Jason had his dunk in the Lazarus Pit, did some training, thought really hard about how he was going to move forward with things, and then decided - okay, sure, we'll kidnap the new guy and scare him shitless. That'll go great. One less person in the way of having a grand showdown with the old man.

Except Tim is fucking rabid and Jason makes it three whole days before he's dragging the kid back to Wayne Manor by the scruff like, "Yes, hello, I'm alive, we'll touch on that in a bit - this kid bit me and I need to know if I have to get a fucking tetanus shot for it now."

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@kartsie is to blame for this but I'm imagining a world where Bart and Tim reunited slightly before the Red Robin storyline started. And Tim is obviously unhappy, probably even severely depressed, has been thinking about leaving Gotham City for a bit but isn't sure he's actually going to do it yet. He gets a hunch one night after staring a little too long at the painting in the hallway and calls Bart up like, "Hey. Come out here real quick. I had an idea and you can't stop me, but I at least have to tell you what it was."

So Bart is there in .5 seconds desperate for the deetz, and Tim spills his split-second, literally-just-dreamt-up-immediately-prior-to-now theory that Bruce is alive. Somehow, he's been yeeted back into Ye Olden Times and Tim has no idea what's going on anymore. But weirder things have happened, and specifically to Tim, and he's going to figure this out if it kills him.

"Well," Bart says, "I'm not letting that happen. And I do actually have ways to explore the timestream, so....I guess it's a group project now."

"You - wait, what?"

Cue Tim and Bart time travel shenanigans and lots of feels both ways. Bart doesn't like watching Tim suffer. Tim is picking fights purely to keep things from happening to Bart. But they're doing this together whether anyone else likes it or not, and also is anyone even going to try to stop them? Half the time nobody actually knows where (or when) they are. And they probably do some crime while they're at it. But they find Bruce!

Eventually.

[cr1mson5returns]

Dick found out he had generalized anxiety disorder and was very affronted by the notion that worrying about everything all the time constantly is unhealthy, because that's what oldest sons are supposed to do.

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Dick probably can't talk if he's sitting on his hands, honestly. He talks with his hands and gestures and gesticulates so much that it's hard to put a thought together and communicate it if he can't also do so with his hands. When Cass came to the family and ASL became a method of communication for everyone, Dick was elated. A whole-ass language using hands and body movement and facial expressions? Sign him the fuck up. Dick and Cass do lots of physically expressive things as sibling bonding, from having movie discourse in ASL with snacks (because you can't get yelled at for talking with your mouth full if you're signing!!!) to dance lessons to acrobatics to tai chi. They make up little bets and challenges that have silly consequences. One time Dick had to wear mismatched eyeshadow and clip-on earrings to McDonald's because he lost a game of charades. Cass got a Polaroid of it (camera provided by Tim) and they still laugh about it.

Dick "physical expressions of love in most capacities are my favorite" Grayson and Cass "I can read your body and know your mind more intimately than if you'd thought about it for six years" Cain.

[cr1mson5returns]

Jason helps around the house because "Alfred doesn't deserve to do all this shit by himself and especially not since there's not a soul in this godforsaken clown household who knows how to properly remove a stain--"

Bruce asked him to grumble a little quieter but all he got was a glare.

[cr1mson5returns]

Look, I'm not saying that Tim deserves to sucker-punch Lex Luthor every day. I'm just saying he deserves to sucker-punch that bastard on occasion, but never consistently enough to be predictable. Keep him on his toes and all that.

[cr1mson5returns]

I'm begging licensed professionals on my knees to please stop asserting that selfishness and manipulation are symptoms of BPD when they don't feature at all in the diagnostic criteria and research hasn't even reliably established that people with BPD engage in these behaviors more than anyone else. You're contributing to the stigma that causes us not to seek treatment when we need it.

[cr1mson5returns]

Concept: Dick Grayson is the type of big brother to say "Beep beep!" when he wants you to move and if you're not fast enough you get hip-checked.

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@kartsie knows this already but I had this mental image of Jason on patrol on Christmas Eve, and he decides to swing by the parish he used to go to as a kid for midnight Mass. Except he's in full Red Hood gear so the parishioners and the priest get to have a heavily-armed crime lord in their midst during midnight Mass. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that service.

[cr1mson5returns]

I fell down a sudden and spiky rabbit hole wondering where exactly in my home state of Kansas the fictional town of Smallville is supposed to be. I checked the DC Wiki for comic book information and got nothing. Kinda pissed me off, because I didn't want to have to randomly assign a plot of land to Smallville. But when I checked the Smallville Wiki (TV series Smallville, that is), I found out that the show gave it the zip code which corresponds to Chase, KS. Chase is in Rice County, which is a few hours west of Wichita on the highways, putting it pretty solidly in South Central Kansas.

And guys.....as a bitch who was born and raised in South Central Kansas, you have to know that we're some characters out here. I can't speak for Rice County, never lived there, but there's this hilarious smattering of accents scattered about the south central part of the state. Some people have that flat Midwestern/Wichita way of speaking, where you can almost pretend they're not Midwestern if they didn't unironically say "lemme just squeeze by ya" so much. But other people have that Rural Kansas drawl that isn't quite as Southern as you can hear the closer you get to the Ozarks, and despite that you'd still be able to pick them out in a crowded room because they sound a touch out of place amongst everybody else. They say "color" like "collar" and talk about "y'all down on Green Street" and they warsh their clothes while they're drawling some pictures. And that's just the way we talk, don't even get me started on the very rigidly Baptist morality and the tense feelings about whether we should even root for the Kansas City Chiefs since they're Missouri's team, anyway.

Armed with this knowledge and context, I present to all of you: Clark Kent who hauled hay in severe thunderstorm warnings as a teenager because fuck, it had to get done somehow and half the time the National Weather Service was just being cautious. Clark who learned to drive at age 12 on the farm and the county sheriff saw fit not to ticket him when he was 14 and took Pa's truck into town to pick up some last-minute ingredients for a birthday cake at the store. Clark who went to Wichita State for a journalism degree and thought Wichita was a big city and complained about the stupid ass layout of the streets between clearly historic districts and newer developments. Clark who got on a domestic flight at Eisenhower Intercontinental Airport and took off for Metropolis intent on getting out of Bumfuck Nowhere. Clark who comes back to Smallville when it's all too much because the city's great, and Lois and Jimmy and everyone else are just as great, but Kansas has the most beautiful full moon nights and not as much light pollution on the horizon, and he can fly through the Flint Hills and pretend he's a kid again and things aren't so noisy and weird and terrifying.