#he's allowed to be flawed and kinda the whole point of red robin is that he's a messy ass teenager working thru complicated feelings

[figsandphiltatos]

look i'm not trying to start beef with timmy stans (thus the lack of tags) but damn. reading red robin now and you always hear tim stans be like "damian was sooo evil, he beat up tim and tried to kill him uwu"

and like. kinda? like yes, damian attacks him first, but only after finding out that tim is surveilling him and waiting for a chance to take him down when he shows his 'true colors'

like if you actually read red robin, it's very obviously a 17 year old who should know better bullying a 10 year old who is (in dicks words) "bleeding a need to be accepted"

it's VERY hard to feel bad for tim here. of course damian is lashing out, he doesn't know how else to cope!! literally go read batgirl v3 issue 17 and then come back and tell me that if tim hadn't been the bigger man (which he's seven-fucking-teen you think he'd know better than to torment someone half his age) damian would have still been a little shit. he wouldn't have. we see the way stephs acceptance and compassion toward him softens him, makes them able to get along.

anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk. my point is that i'm reading red robin and feeling nothing but protectiveness and sympathy for poor fucking damian

[bigskydreaming]

IGN’s recent Bat-focused article (Batman: What Does Red Hood Need to Do to Get A Good Story?) praises fanfic writers and also is an amazing critique of how stagnant Jason has become under recent DC management and I’m so surprised at how good it is and how well thought out the solutions were

Hmmm. I just looked it up and I mean, I’m not trying to start anything but I both agree and disagree? Like, it makes some points for sure, I mean, its not like its saying things that I haven’t said a thousand times about Dick, like.....these characters need to be allowed access to a full range of emotions, both good and bad, in order to be fully fleshed out, so I mean yes on that premise alone I absolutely agree this is as true for Jason as it is for Dick or anyone else.

Tbh my only real criticism of the piece is it thinks Jason exists in a particular predicament the other characters aren’t in as well. And that I just don’t agree with, like they kinda lost me a bit with their first paragraph:

His complexities and moral ambiguity make him a compelling and distinct character among his more strait-laced Robin-brothers. Sadly, the character has seen little growth since his rage-filled reintroduction into comics. The ‘former Robin becomes a villain’ idea was enough for DC to coast on for a while but since rejoining the heroes, Red Hood has done little else.

First off, this may just be me being pedantic but I’m ALWAYS going to go fetch a grain of salt before continuing reading anything that pits Jason against his brothers in a war of his moral ambiguity against their strait-lacedness. Because to me, that’s just a fundamentally shallow view of the Batfam that caters to the idea that they each must have their own distinct niche in order to be fully viable individual characters, when a) no, and b) they don’t fit neatly into the niches people keep trying to slot them into and it never ends well for anybody. 

Like Jason is morally ambiguous in a lot of ways too, yes, but umm, even if we assume that the writer is only speaking of Dick, Tim and Damian, we’re talking a guy who beat the Joker to death with his bare hands and has ten assassins and mercenaries on his speed dial and who co-led the Outsiders, a guy who was deeply immersed in weighing the pros and cons of getting revenge for his father by getting Captain Boomerang killed and is forever being DMed by Ra’s because he’s convinced he can get Tim to say He Has Some Points Actually, and the kid who was an assassin with a body count by age ten and who has struggled constantly ever since his debut to define his OWN personal view of morality that is not wholly predicated on what he was taught by any single individual.

And this is a big part of where I part ways with the article, because I think it falls into the same trap that a lot of people do by believing fanfic is inherently better by doing the same thing from just a different angle. Fanfic CAN be better than the canon, I absolutely believe that, I believe it is at times, but to do so, it has to like, BE BETTER. It has to do things differently, and not just paint a slightly different veneer over the same things. Like, pedantic though it might be, I outlined the above issue because its a mode of thinking the canon absolutely falls into again and again, and just like the writer of that article themselves, like....I think fandom as a whole is no different? 

Like, yes there are great stories about Jason out there, some writers have done great and interesting things with him, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a huge trend in fandom of doing the exact same thing I see here.....which is honestly a huge part of the exact same problem the article is decrying canon for......LIMITING Jason (and all the Batfam) by reducing them and their stories to finite niches as a way of spotlighting them as different from their siblings.....except they’re not that different! And that’s okay! They don’t have to be! Families can have lots in common, families DO have lots in common due to like.....shared variables during their formative years. 

I mean Jason was heavily influenced by environmental factors in how and where he grew up before he ever met Batman, but like the article goes into itself, he was no less influenced by Bruce himself as his father figure.....which is something he absolutely has in common with his siblings, thus its not hard at all to see how his siblings could have similar complexities and moral struggles that stem from trying to reconcile Bruce’s influence with the many other things and people that have influenced their childhoods.

And similarly, while the article is dead-on about Jason’s stagnancy....this is something that applies in equal measure to the rest of his family, because they’re all facing the same issues in terms of how DC views and utilizes them, and fandom as much as it likes to condemn DC for doing just that....frequently does the same thing. Like, Jason’s stuck in canon, absolutely......but Dick keeps being popped out into his own microcosm to experience a couple years of stories that essentially turn him into completely different characters isolated from every communal part of his character’s history, and then ERASE everything that’s happened at the end of each of these stories and reset him to square one.....and that’s just a different kind of stagnancy that again, still never allows for actual character progression or development. Tim has LITERALLY been regressed back to Robin, like a hard reset that’s its own kind of stagnancy and Damian has had years of character development upended just to kick him back to where he started, effectively strip away all the connections he’s developed at least in any meaningful way, etc.....and the same holds true for Babs and Cass and Steph and even Bruce himself IMO, in a lot of ways.

Its absolutely a problem, but its a problem that extends far beyond just Jason even if he is a great example of it. And its also a problem that extends into fic itself, and that’s why I don’t agree with a lot of the conclusions that article draws beyond just the fundamental “these characters need to be allowed access to a full range of emotions.”

Yes. That. That right there, THAT I think is crucial, but I think that writer needed to widen the scope a little to take in the full impact of what that actually MEANS for the characters....so as to not accidentally repeat the same problem they’re being critical of by essentially arguing for a full range of emotions for Jason....while still defining or viewing Jason through a finite lens of “the more morally ambiguous Bat character, at least as compared to his brothers.”

Because its that last part that’s so detrimental, because it seems like such a little thing at first, until you realize that essentially its just putting a ceiling, a cap on how far those full ranges of emotions can be expressed. Like the problem with Dick Grayson in canon and fanon is NOT that he can’t be written with a full range of emotions.....its that his character absolutely can encompass a wide range of opinions and viewpoints and emotional stances from “I don’t believe in killing as a first option” to “I absolutely can, will, and have beaten a damn clown to death for joking about murdering my brother”.....and he can still walk away as Dick Grayson after expressing both those things, because his character is big enough to include them both. HE’S not limited as a character, its canon writers and fandom writers that both heap artificial limitations of their OWN on him, say that his character is so defined in such a specific way that there’s no way for the latter expression of his character to actually be IN character.....and the fatal flaw here is fully fleshed out characters are never just one thing. They don’t fit in niches anymore than people do, and notice the problems we all run into when we try and pigeon hole people as being just one thing, like humans can’t be contradictory or act against their own self-interest or be hypocritical or evolve or even regress past prior viewpoints....basically, any time you try and sum up a human being in one line, no matter how accurate that description is, there’s still SOME things that are going to be left out of that picture. 

Now, these things don’t always have to matter that much, like if I look at a serial killer and say that’s a serial killer, like, I might be leaving out of the picture that once he helped an old lady across the street and didn’t kill her and he doesn’t even know why, and I for one, simply do not care that I leave that out of the picture. Its irrelevant to the big picture for me. I can acknowledge that it adds a smidgen of nuance to that particular picture and then go yeah but also I don’t care, nuance denied.

But in terms of fictional characters, these things that get left in the discard pile when we try and sum up characters as just one thing, like, they can be hugely significant, because characters unlike real people, are simply WHAT WE MAKE OF THEM. That stuff that’s been left out of the big picture look at that character because its stuff most people to DEFINE what that character looks like have deemed irrelevant....its still there, and still perfectly relevant for anyone who wants to pick that stuff up and make something of it, use it to change the overall picture or even just point to ways and places that picture can absolutely encompass and include these other elements and STILL fundamentally be that same picture, that same character.

And this isn’t to say that characters can never be written out of character, its to say that usually IMO what ACTUALLY makes the difference between something being out of character and something just being an unexpected but still valid character choice is just.....how these things are executed. The latter is when writers make the effort to JUSTIFY their character choice, to sell audiences on why and how this is absolutely something this character would do, to take them on a journey of what led the character to making this choice and let them see how those steps actually line up, that’s an actual journey that character might take. The former is when writers just don’t bother and are just like, well here’s a thing that character did, and you know it was in character because well that’s the character and that’s what I wrote them doing lol, what more do you want. No. Yawn. Next.

But the trick is if you’re going to try and make a character a SPECTRUM of emotions and choices rather than just a same datapoint recurring over and over again endlessly, a literal sticking point that never advances, never progresses, never changes......you have to actually give that character free range to utilize that spectrum of emotions and choices.....not just confine them to accessing all those possibilities but ONLY within a narrowly defined niche that is its own kind of limitation.

A character can START from a logline, absolutely. Can BEGIN in a narrative niche as a way to INTRODUCE them as seemingly different from their surroundings or their peers when they do not yet have the backstory, the evidence of past stories and character choices readers can use to interpret their actions or guess their choices.....but narrative niches, IMO, are meant to have a shelf life, an expiration date. They’re a seed for characters to grow FROM, to grow PAST, not return to over and over again.....because that’s when a niche just becomes another house that stagnancy built.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughts and the article mention.....it was an interesting exploration of thoughts for me even if I didn’t ultimately agree with a lot of what was already said....still a worthwhile read though I think and I mean hey, its cool if you still agree with it more even if I don’t, lol. This is just my take.

[bat-lings]

i'm reading teen titans (2003) and tim seems really arrogant?? in some issues? do you think tim is arrogant or am i just reading it wrong

He can be a bit presumptuous and even judgmental at times, yes.

[Robin (1993) #52]

[Robin (1993) #56]

Hi she’s poor you’re not, if you truly see this as a moral slippery slope & it bothers you which I can understand maybe pay for the cans yourself instead of lecturing her?

[Robin (1993) #119]

I don’t know where you’re at in TT so just in case, spoilers for issue #11:

[Teen Titans (2003) #11]

Ahem well yes maybe you could’ve suspected that if you gave the veteran who’s been a Titan ever since before you wear tights a little bit of credit?

I like how Kory’s line reminds her experience with the New Teen Titans which emphasizes that Tim was out of place here. Rather than wondering if maybe there was more to Kory’s behavior than what he thinks, he overtly second-guessed her in front of the enemy and gave the actual adult & Titan veteran a whole psychoanalysis about how she shouldn’t let herself be manipulated.

[Robin (1993) #174]

[Red Robin #5]

That one actually makes me smile ‘cause rich kids calling out other rich kids for being sheltered lmao

So yes Tim can be arrogant. In his defense he also has no problem putting himself into question when something or someone makes him realize he’s overstepped or misjudged a situation.

[Robin (1993) #52]

[Robin (1993) #119]

+ Young Justice (1998) #55 that’s totally unrelated to arrogance but that has Tim overtly recognizing he mishandled a situation. I think if he was called out or put in front of his inadequacies more often, he’d never miss to recognize them & apologize for any of them.

By my reading:

Tim takes vigilanting extremely seriously and puts himself to high standards, moral or otherwise. He was also really insecure in his early Robin days but has come to gain confidence & now trusts his own skills. As a rule he’s also earnest about what he thinks.

All of which is mostly a good thing, but it can make him act holier-than-thou when another character’s actions doesn’t immediately makes sense for him. In that case, rather than spontaneously wondering if he’s maybe not seeing the full picture, he tends to assume the worst. Not only that, but he puts himself on a higher ground where he allows himself to judge everything and anything whether it’s his place or not, or he tries to force people into his own personal vision of morality. He lectures others a lot even when he really has no right to.

But once something or someone indicates he’s talking out of place or assuming what he shouldn’t be, he immediately switches to “oh yeah I hadn’t considered that / I was wrong, let’s see how I can fix my mindset or behavior”.

I often say that Tim is self-aware, but in this case the formulation is a shortcut. He needs a push, he rarely realizes he’s overstepped all by himself. But once he got that input, he takes the criticism pretty well and immediately rethinks his behavior:

[Young Justice (1998) #18]

Again he wasn’t being arrogant here (kinda lecturing but mostly the fault is using double-standards) but my point is his reaction when Kon tells him off: "oh wait now that I think about it you’re right" and he immediately alters his approach. Just like when Ava put him in his place or when Cass inadvertently made him realize he was being full of shit in Robin #52 & #119 respectively. Later in TT he recognizes being wrong about Kory too: he can be biased, he can jump to conclusions, but he never lets it keep him from growing out of his bias when evidence tells him he’s in the wrong.

I don’t remember ever reading him looking for excuses or trying to justify himself when he’s been put in front of his own inadequacies. It’s something I really like about him because we’re all flawed, but recognizing our faults and actively working to better them without a fuss takes maturity. As a rule I think a character’s/person’s reaction when they’re put in front of their own faults tells just as much if not more about them as the fault itself.

Tl;dr: yeah Tim can be wildly arrogant, but if that can reassure you he’s not so presumptuous that he’s unable to re-evaluate himself and that’s cool.