#jason was being very difficult and was a minor villain for dick and damian at the time

[goatsghost]

i still think it’s insanely funny that bruce comes back from the time stream and decides they’re gonna have a family movie night, while FULLY AWARE that jason is currently in arkham

like bruce i think your favoritism is showing just a lil bit here lmao

(batman and robin 2009)

[silverwhittlingknife]

Ohhh, what's "the Damian one with amnesia?"

Oh, this one is close to my heart but also kind of a mess and I'm not sure I'll ever actually write it; it's pretty much all "story idea" sdfsfsd It's a Damian + Tim bonding story with a bit of a Damian + Heretic subplot. I guess if I had to compare it to something I'd say it's got some loose similarities to "Tim bonds with Pit-mad!Jason" fanfic, except with Damian and crazy!Tim instead?

I've been sort of stalled on this one because ... I mean various reasons but in terms of "personal writing motivation" I think it's mostly a combination of 1) overly complicated plot, and 2) Dick's only a minor character sfdsfds I find Dick's POV fun to write and Tim and Damian's POVs a bit more difficult, and the story is basically all Tim and Damian, so it's kind of a story that I want to read more than I want to write, you know?

But I am nevertheless attached to it, ridiculous monstrosity that it is. There's amnesia!Tim and BAMF!Damian and curses and reluctant bonding and secret friendship and disguises and misunderstandings and temptation and lots and lots and lots of snowballing lies!

If I ever actually write it the rambling summary below the cut will be completely spoilery; you've been warned sfdsfdsf

OKAY SO there's a convoluted backstory of evil villain plots BUT basically there are TWO PARTS.

Here they are:

Part One: Damian + Amnesia!Tim

Due to [complicated backstory], Tim is basically under a curse where he's alternating between having amnesia and forgetting the past few years, and sometimes being triggered into becoming Evil!Tim who's trying to kill Robin

Damian is under strict orders to go nowhere near him while the Bats scramble to try to fix the Evil!Tim problem

... Damian naturally does not listen to these orders!! He is NOT A CHILD!!!! He is NOT AFRAID!!! He decides to go surveil Drake and then confront him because he's not going to cower in fear!!! He will fight and win!!!

Amnesia!Tim has agreed to be confined to his apartment although he doesn't consistently remember why (it's because nobody has figured out what triggers the appearance of Evil!Tim) and Tim is SO BORED

Tim catches an apparent civilian kid spying on him with binoculars and is immediately charmed

This child is Damian

After whacky shenanigans they bond

Damian makes up an impulsive lie about how he's Definitely Not A Superhero Yet and he's just a Very Innocent Naïve Child who aspires to be a superhero and uhhh that's why he was climbing around with binoculars, definitely

Tim likes him and is also so so bored and offers to train him

Damian does not actually need training bc he is actually already a superhero? BUT this would be a great surveillance opportunity because amnesia!Tim will just tell Damian his weaknesses instead of Damian having to deduce them

so he agrees to "be trained"

It ends up being a lot of fun because first of all Tim is super-impressed with how talented he is and thinks maybe Damian could join Young Justice and Tim could vouch for him, especially since in Tim's opinion Damian's already way more responsible than Superboy *eye roll* (Tim has been dialed back to an earlier age when his relationship with Conner is I Guess We're Friends But Also We Sure Do Annoy Each Other), and it's kinda fun and satisfying for Damian to hear all this praise

And second of all Tim's always been super-tight-lipped around Damian, not that Damian CARES, so THERE, and in order to learn anything about him Damian has had to do things like spend hours hacking into Tim's computer files (out of IDLE CURIOSITY and NOT because he cared) or learning to imitate his voice or spying on him, but now suddenly instead of being tight-lipped Tim is basically an open book? And so now Damian can hear all kinds of thinly-veiled stories that are clearly about Father and Grayson and Todd and Cain and Brown and the Teen Titans, and Tim doesn't realize that Damian actually knows all of these people and can decipher whatever nicknames Tim is giving them, so now suddenly Damian's getting to hear all kinds of relatively-uncensored gossip

And third of all, it turns out to be surprisingly fun playacting at being some nobody who isn't The Son Of Batman and doesn't have to live up to that legacy

And fourth and MOST IMPORTANTLY Damian learns partway through from Grayson that once they've fixed the curse Tim will FORGET EVERYTHING that happened while he was cursed

So this means that Damian is TOTALLY SAFE. He can confess vulnerabilities or be bad at things or admit to confusion and it won't matter because it doesn't count because amnesia!Tim won't remember when he goes back to normal and starts being Damian's insufferable nemesis again!!

And also no one else will ever know because amnesia!Tim has promised to keep their training secret!! And Damian has ofc told no one that he's sneaking into the apartment he's not supposed to be in!!

This is kind of intoxicating and great because normally Damian is being Watched All The Time and very very aware that whatever he does other people will remember and suddenly he is FREE because this particular secret little friendship will stay secret FOREVER and only Damian will ever know about it

By this time he's gotten totally distracted from his "surveil evil!Tim" plan and actually he's over at Tim's place often enough that he's figured out how not to trigger the appearance of evil!Tim

(because Damian started out way less emotionally-invested than the rest of the Bats he's been a much more impartial observer of what's going on PLUS Tim thinks he's just a random kid and hasn't been trying to put up much of an I'm Fine front for him)

Meanwhile the Bats are all super-distracted from Damian by their worries about cursed!Tim so Damian is also kinda lonely which is leading to him getting more and more invested in this secret friendship

AND THEN at some point he finds about Heretic and in this AU Damian is the ONLY ONE who knows about Heretic and he's terrified that he's going to have to fight and maybe kill him and then what will the Bats think??? they will hate him!!! They Can Never Know

... but he HAS to do something because right now Heretic has only been aged up somewhat and he's still younger than Damian, so Damian might if he's very lucky be able to beat him and survive, but the League is planning to magically age Heretic up more and if Damian doesn't do something soon Heretic will be aged into an adult and Damian will have no chance at defeating him, so he has to do something soon...

... maybe amnesia!Tim can help?

Plot ensues; Damian takes amnesia!Tim along on a secret quest to kill Heretic; Damian almost kills Heretic and at first amnesia!Tim is difficult and he's gonna intervene but then he BACKS OFF and then Damian can't bring himself to actually go through with his plan and he saves Heretic's life at the last minute; Tim now tells Damian he let him make the choice because he KNEW HE'D MAKE THE RIGHT ONE; this moment actually fixes Tim's curse because uhhhh gobbledegook having to do with the curse and it's connected back with that old emotional memory that Tim had forgotten with Dick and the Lazarus Pits, so no sooner has Tim said this and started comforting Damian then he gets dizzy and passes out.

So then Damian has to rescue both amnesia!Tim and Heretic which of course he does, with the timely help of a certain Batdragon...

... and even though it scares him, Damian's planning on coming clean and confessing everything, and he knows that amnesia!Tim will back him up....

... and then Tim wakes up. And the curse is fixed. And he's back to "normal." And he doesn't remember anything.

... and he hates Damian again.

Part 2: Damian + Normal!Tim (+ Heretic)

So then the second half of the story was going to be joint Damian and Tim POVs. So on Damian's side he's absolutely determined to conceal his deep dark secret of *checks notes* having befriended amnesia!Tim and then overcome temptation and saved Heretic's life and also saved Tim's life and accidentally broken Tim's curse in the process. And he's made up a complicated fake story about being kidnapped by evil!Tim so that No One Will Know. And also secretly he's kind of miserable about having lost his friend, amnesia!Tim, who's now been replaced by the much more familiar normal!Tim who hates Damian and who Damian hates in return.

And meanwhile! Normal!Tim is certain that Damian's lying because he has very blurry memories that do not match up with the story that Damian is now telling plus his instincts are (correctly!) telling him that it's false, because for mysterious reasons he's finding Damian much easier to read than he used to, and he's intensely suspicious of Damian and certain that he must be concealing something Sinister, and he's trying to figure out what.

And meanwhile Heretic is in a coma and the Bats are trying to heal him and Damian is committed to doing the right thing and not sorry about saving him but also really worried because what if Heretic wakes up and says that Damian tried to kill him, or what if Normal!Tim figures it out, and what if then the Bats hate him forever

(which like. they would not. because this is actually a story about Damian being a hero! but Damian feels guilty about having even considered the initial plan and is mayyyybe not thinking things through very rationally here)

(and also the various things he's been lying about are kinda snowballing at this point)

Anyway meanwhile Tim is conducting extremely intrusive and potentially threatening investigations which might uncover all the lies and then he FINDS SECRET EVIDENCE in the form of Damian's camera with photos and videos plus a sketchbook and Damian is HORRIFIED and tries to FIGHT HIM TO STOP HIM FROM TAKING THESE THINGS and Tim doesn't know what's on the camera but he's so sure it's PROOF of whatever sinister things Damian has been gaslighting him about and whatever sinister things Damian was up to when Tim had amnesia --

-- and then Tim is victorious and gets hold of the camera and takes off with it and gets back to his apartment where he sits down and discovers the DAMNING EVIDENCE of uhhhh. selfies and things where amnesia!Tim and Damian were hanging out.

So Tim is now very very confused and although he still doesn't really understand what's going on it's sinking in that maybe Damian isn't up to anything sinister, just something that Tim... doesn't understand at all, and also now Tim has successfully seized this collection of stuff that turns out to be fairly personal and thus kind of a privacy violation, although also not a privacy violation because it involves Tim damn it, so Tim is very determinedly NOT feeling guilty about this because he has EVERY RIGHT to know what HE HIMSELF was doing that Damian has been lying about, but also it turns out that mostly what Damian's been lying about has been a lot of very wholesome bonding and also some fairly personal confessions that it's obvious he would not want actual!Tim to know, so Tim is NOT feeling guilty but also, okay, fine, he is feeling a little guilty despite himself, and also it is quickly becoming apparent from the little collection of stuff that Damian is... maybe okay? maybe secretly kind of a sweet vulnerable kid? actually? as opposed to Tim's Personal Infuriating Nemesis Child Sent To Torment Him? which is so weird given Tim's entire remembered experience of Damian up until now, and yet the evidence does seem pretty conclusive because he can't figure out what Damian's endgame could possibly be if it was a trick, which means it's not a trick, which means...

And meanwhile Damian is horrified and very upset because he has been FOUND OUT by normal!Tim who hates him, and who will figure out ALL the lies and figure out that Damian was planning to kill Heretic and then he'll tell it all to Father and frame it all in the worst possible light, so to get out in front of it Damian injures himself and goes to Father and tells him that Evil!Tim came back and attacked him and that Tim's very unstable --

And then Damian's BRACED when normal!Tim shows up and Father confronts him with the accusation of having snapped and attacked Damian, and Damian is DETERMINED to stick to his lie and he's not gonna confess NO MATTER WHAT and he's going to say that clearly Tim's memory is wrong again, and then... normal!Tim doesn't deny it. He admits to attacking Damian. Kinda brusquely, but he does. He says he's sorry.

... Tim admits to the thing that he didn't do?

And Tim kinda nods at Damian - now we're even.

Because on Tim's side... he's still not understanding a lot. But he's got the basic idea now. He's gotten that Damian's scared, and he gets that he went too far trying to get hold of the weird evidence. And so he gets that this lie is Damian's retaliation for the privacy violation, and you know what? Fair enough. Tim can lie to Batman too. And besides, this is very clearly something between Tim and Damian, and Tim doesn't really want Bruce involved either.

Now he wants to get Damian alone and find out... well, basically the same thing he's wanted since the beginning, he wants to know what the hell has been going on with him during the huge blank spot in his memory, and he still has the (correct!) instinct that Damian knows all kinds of things he's not telling...

... But now it's slowly dawning on him that Damian might be, like, a Person with Emotions and Vulnerabilities (still such a strange thought!!). Which is also what Damian's afraid of, because when your enemies realize you have emotions and vulnerabilities that's very bad!!! And ever since they met and became Nemeses, Damian has done his best to convince Tim that he has NO VULNERABILITIES WHATSOEVER!!! And now because of his weakness and carelessness with amnesia!Tim he's ruined it all!!! This is disastrous!!!

So when Tim confronts him, he does his level best to convince Tim that he has NO feelings and they were NOT friendly and the bonding was all Damian's convoluted Machiavellian plan, which is actually what Tim believed until he found the evidence, but now Tim has Seen Too Much and doesn't believe that it was just a scheme after all because instead it kinda looks like Damian was... lonely? Because he is a kid? Who was lonely? Kind of like Tim was lonely back in the day? And it's really frustrating to realize this because people (Dick and Bruce) have actually been insisting on Damian's various sympathetic qualities to Tim for ages but it never really felt real before because Tim never managed to see past Damian's façade before and now it just feels very thuddingly obvious?

Anyway the rest is mostly vibes but basically even though Tim still has kinda mixed feelings because he has all his more negative memories of Damian back, he's also had this glimpse at the possibility of a more positive relationship, which he's maybe realizing he might like to have? And maybe he could have it, because he apparently managed it somehow even when his memory was Swiss cheese and also he was sometimes randomly going evil? And also he's feeling super-lonely right now because he has a huge memory gap but he knows Evil!Tim did all kinds of awful things which he feels really guilty about so he's avoiding all his actual friends?

So now Tim tentatively proposes to Damian that maybe they could spend some time together again, and Damian's a little wary because it could be a trap - because this is nemesis!Tim not friend!Tim!!! - but he misses amnesia!Tim so he agrees. So now they're hanging out in secret again, except for real this time and now as themselves instead of amnesia!Tim and disguised!Damian, and they're jointly lying to Bruce about it because thanks to that impulsive lie Bruce is worried that Evil!Tim might come back and has Absolutely Banned Damian from spending any time with him again.

And so then they're Bonding and Tim takes Damian to Blüdhaven to train-surf because Tim has exactly (1) model of how older brothers interact with younger brothers, so that's what he's imitating - and it will probably not surprise you that this is the part I'm most personally attached to and the only part I actually managed to write a bit for sdfsdfds. And Damian has never actually done this weird activity before because Dick didn't do it with him because actually Damian has already trained in pitch darkness, so the whole concept of the blindfolds is pointless for him because the purpose was to get Tim to stop relying on his vision so much, and Damian doesn't rely too much on his vision. So this isn't actually a training exercise that makes much sense for Damian. But Tim is trying and Damian is also trying so they try it together and they end up bonding anyway, because you can't really screw up risking your lives on a train together.

Then we move into the part of the fic that is fuzziest but also full of my favorite ~Vibes~ where Tim and Damian are bonding and lying to Bruce but also they have to lie to Dick too, because Dick believes everything that Bruce believes, and so Tim is having various complicated feelings about lying to Dick and also not getting along super-well with Dick because of all the, you know, lying, plus Dick was one of the people who had to fight evil!Tim so Dick's kinda instinctively wary now because having Tim back feels too good to be true, plus Dick feels guilty for the various things he had to do to subdue evil!Tim, and Tim feels guilty for whatever awful things he did when he was evil!Tim, plus even though he knows it's irrational Tim is secretly kinda mad at Dick and Bruce for believing the lie about the attack, even though it is a lie he is participating in, but look, emotions are complicated. So things between Dick and Tim in the present-day are pretty strained, but simultaneously Tim is revisiting all his best memories with Dick when he was younger because he's trying to figure out ways to bond with Damian.

So Tim is kinda low-key grappling with the problem of I Guess I'm An Older Brother Now, I Don't Feel Old Enough Or Qualified For This And It Alarms Me, much like Dick had to grapple with it back in the day, and simultaneously Damian is also trying to figure out how Older Brother-ing works because Heretic is? maybe? kind of like Damian's younger brother? So Tim is low-key ending up in Dick's position of the Dick-and-Tim relationship, where you're at an exceptional personal low point and estranged from everyone you care about and this very irritating thirteen-year-old keeps hanging around being all up in your business and then somehow you end up hanging out with him and sorta kinda mentoring him a little even though the prospect of being any kind of mentor is deeply alarming because obviously you can't be a mentor, you are not a mentor, you're not even a real adult and your own personal life is a total mess and nobody should listen to you ever, and meanwhile Damian is low-key ending up in Tim's position of the Tim-and-Damian relationship, or rather he's worried he will, because he's got this horrifying younger brother Heretic who will surely try to kill or undermine him as soon as he gets out of the coma, because that's what he's been trained to do, and what if the Bats like Heretic better??? Or what if they decide that Heretic needs Robin more and they won't let Damian be Robin anymore??? And what will happen to Damian then??? And Dick and Bruce are both very worried about Heretic, who's apparently Bruce's second biological son and even younger than Damian and in a coma (and as far as Damian's concerned that's all they know because he hasn't told them anything else, although Dick and Bruce have actually guessed a bit more than Damian realizes), and Damian knows he shouldn't be jealous or paranoid or threatened but actually he is feeling all of those emotions and dreading what might happen when Heretic wakes up and he doesn't want to share his family with Heretic and he doesn't actually want Heretic to be here at all.

BUT ANYWAY it all works out and they gradually all figure out each other's various secrets and Various Emotional Confessions ensue and ultimately Tim and Damian bond, and Dick and Tim get past the strains and get close again, and Tim is able to listen to Damian's anxieties about Heretic and offer some hard-won insights from the older-and-wiser position of Younger Brothers Who Were Trained To Kill You: Admittedly It's Unpleasant At First But At Least One Of Them Is Really Worth It Actually, and then eventually the HAPPY ENDING was going to be Heretic waking up from the coma braced for battle and Damian offering him the Robin costume.

Anyway. I think that's how it would go if I ever actually wrote it. Any and all of the plot ideas are free to a good home if anyone else wants them sdfsfdsfds

[whetstonefires]

Do you think the DC fandom maybe, Infantilizes Tim a little too much? Like for a rich kid character who's main trauma for a long time was a getting left home alone too much there's an oddly amount of meta abt how much how much his parents hurt him~ compared to, y'know the two poor characters who grew up with physically abusive dad's+druggie mom's, or the two that were raised assassin cult's, etc

…well, yeah, I do kind of think that? His whole schtick for so long was being too old for his age in ways that didn’t sacrifice his jokey, relatable teenager energies. It’s weird how little of that we see anymore, sometimes.

And then DC broke him and discarded him and he’s sort of awkwardly hanging around getting reimagined as more woobie with every fan generation. It is weird!

But tbh I do get it. And I think the reason his parents’ failure of him and his vulnerability get played up so much, and Jason and Steph’s sufferings (while used a lot for things like motivation and context) not dwelt on quite so much in the same lugubrious style, are kind of the same reason.

Which is that canon didn’t commit to it. Jason and Steph’s experiences with bad parenting were foregrounded and retconned more dramatically awful several times. (There’s some definite classism in how that was approached imo, and I’m never budging on being mad about DC retconning out Catherine being sick and then ignoring her forever in all Jason characterization because a drug death invalidates a person ig, great message during the opioid crisis guys.)

They engaged and coped with it–Steph (and Cass, our #1 canon batfam parental abuse victim) pretty directly, Jason a little less so because of the dubious and fluctuating canon status of most of the content more specific than ‘poverty, homelessness, theft, parental drugs and crime in there somewhere,’ so most of his parent issues have been focused on Bruce. He sure has dug into them tho. 😂 Rarely well or productively, thanks DC, but it’s explicitly part of his character, is my point.

Whereas upper-middle-class Tim was always treated by the narrative as fortunate and unharmed by his experiences with his parents. Even though they were clearly behaving badly in several ways, and Tim showed signs of being harmed by it.

Tim outside of immediate moments of frustration always was of the opinion he was Fine, and Very Fortunate Actually.

Therefore a huge chunk of the numerous everyone who’s got parent-related mental and emotional harm, but has struggled to have that validated and hasn’t responded with a lot of anger toward the parent, identifies with Tim. The only one who’s never really lashed out at his parents for fucking up with him. The one who still needs it explored, because canon ultimately didn’t.

[editing post to put in a readmore because lol it’s long, post otherwise unchanged]

(Dick obviously didn’t ever have any Issues with the Graysons, but he Angry Teenagered at Bruce so hard it changed Bruce’s characterization permanently, rip.)

The things Jason, Steph, and Cass have been through are dramatic, obvious, and fit stereotypes because that’s what they’re based on.

That’s important content to have, but because it’s right out there in your face even people who identify with it quite a lot are less likely to feel the need to work all the way through it again in fanworks. That part’s there. It’s text.

(Well actually Jason having been physically abused kind of wasn’t? I think? It was mostly assumed on the basis of stereotyping and Jason’s not caring about the man much even as he felt possessive of information about his death, which is valid. I don’t actually know what’s up with Willis now, Lobdell did some weird shit that lacked emotional resonance or staying power because he’s Lobdell and has no soul.

Cass’ wandering years are also ludicrously underdeveloped. But very very few comics fans or writers can personally relate to being amazing child warriors with no grasp of language living feral under bridges. That part of her life is consistently represented in terms of absences, in terms of its deviation from the norm and the deficits of normality it left her with, which is typical but unfortunate.) 

-

The interesting things to do with these characters are often informed by the bad stuff in their childhoods, but there’s relatively rarely that much more to say about the fact that those things were bad. They know they’re bad. They’ve had a lot of on-panel rage about it, as discussed above. Steph and Cass both beat the shit out of their dads.

Jason is, in fandom especially, a sort of Platonic ideal of a kid who’s mad about his bad childhood and really bad at figuring out where to point that rage.

(Damian is a whole other kettle of fish, because he’s been lumbered by so many detailed retcons coming so fast no two people can seem to construct compatible models of what his early childhood was like, and even more because he’s still ‘a child’ enough that he’s necessarily in a different stage of processing than someone who’s officially only a few years older than him at this point, but still functionally 8 and also 20 years older, and whose parents are no longer in the picture to continue screwing up.

Also there’s no question that if he brings up an abusive thing the League did, he will be validated by his current environment about his realization that it was in fact bad. There’s a lot of fic on that theme! But it doesn’t have the same tone precisely because it is usually understood that that support will be there if he wants it. Realizing that his previous context contained things that were wrong keeps being made the focus of his arc.)

The badness of Tim’s childhood, on the other hand, was mainly in subtext. Even when we were clearly meant to understand Jack was fucking up, like when he canceled plans with Tim at the last minute to go on a date with Tim’s stepmother, or that infamous time he came to apologize for not being a great parent and got mad Tim was distracted by a crisis on TV so he flew into a rage and took the TV and smashed it and was like ‘that’ll teach you,’ it wasn’t leaned into.

The story didn’t treat Jack as a minor villain to be overcome but like a sort of environmental hazard of childhood, like homework, to be endured and coped with. Tim said things like ‘it’s fine’ and ‘at least he left the computer.’

(And like. It’s not about having a TV and computer in his room. It’s about not letting a child have boundaries, pointedly not respecting a child’s possessions, creating an emotionally insecure environment, punishing minor infractions in proportion to their momentary impact on your own ego, physically lashing out at a proxy for the child…)

Rather like Tom King later didn’t understand about the punching from Bruce, whoever did that story (probably Dixon? I don’t care enough to check) did not understand how serious a case of bad parenting that scene was. That is most definitely textbook abusive behavior. (It’s a hell of a lot more common abusive behavior than being a lame supervillain or shooting you when you screw up, and a lot more specific than ‘was a thug, might have hit me, dead now.’)

And Tim was never allowed to be mad at his parents about it. It was fine. He needed to be ignored so he had the freedom to be Robin. He deserved his dad being mad at him because he was keeping secrets. He complained too much, although objectively he did not.

The universe punished him for ‘complaining,’ more than once. We cut straight from him shunting aside his disappointment that his postcard from his parents was just to say they weren’t coming home yet after all with ‘if it will stop all the fights they’ve been having lately it’s more than fine’ to them getting kidnapped.

He agreed not to come on the rescue mission. His mom never made it home, and his dad was in a coma for a while. And then ultimately Jack died as a result of Tim’s decision to be Robin, immediately after finally deciding to accept it.

So Tim walks around feeling a huge burden of responsibility for his parents’ deaths, and completely unable to process any hurt they did him as real or valid, especially in comparison with the far more blatant awfulness other people have been through, and canon is clearly never going to address it. Or even acknowledge it properly.

Let me repeat that because it’s kind of my main point:

People are fixated on getting Tim’s emotional abuse validated because that’s an incredibly important step in recovering from emotional abuse, and it’s one canon consistently denied him.

How ‘bad’ things are ‘in comparison to’ problems other people have is a bad and unhealthy way to engage with trauma. Okay? That’s just a really harmful framework to apply to pain.

It’s also a way that both Tim and people with experiences similar to Tim’s are encouraged to engage with their own experiences, compounding the existing problems.

So. Not a form of relatable DC was ever actually aiming for when they tried so hard (and pretty effectively) to make him a relatable character as Robin, but an enduring one for a lot of fans.

-

So Tim’s childhood is a natural target for fanworks in a different way than the traumas that have been made explicit and taken seriously by the text. And then a lot of that got compounded by the way the introduction of Damian as Robin was handled, and the lack of resolution that got. And his current status as not quite having a place in the family anymore.

So between the level of projection encouraged by that context and how relatively difficult to access Tim’s Robin run has become ten years after the fact, this has led to a lot of fanworks on these themes that are based mostly on other fanworks, and stray further and further from the original content.

So at this point there’s an entire wing of Tim’s fandom wherein this side of him has expanded enormously, and he primarily exists to suffer, frequently in ways that 1) escalate to a point that is inarguably ‘valid’ and hard to dismiss and 2) set him up to rebound from it in whatever way the writer finds emotionally satisfying or useful–being ultimately cared for and reassured by people who value him (the most infantilizing option but like, popular for obvious reasons), or unveiling his brilliant scheme that was causing him to pretend to be passive in the face of mistreatment, or turning around and using his genius ninja skills to wrest power back from his abusers, or just laying down some sick burns about being treated fairly.

But not that many of the last one, because that’s mostly done with other batfam members.

Tim’s become a vehicle for a lot of vicarious coping that Steph and Jason just aren’t appropriate for, because they get angry and they get even. And those are stories that exist already, so there’s less scope for telling your own.

And because Jason’s reaction pattern is ultimately so masculine (i’ll make them all sorry! with my guns! blam blam!) while Tim’s is pretty gender-neutral, the demographics of fanfic mean that the bulk of the people using Tim vicariously in this manner are female-aligned, which has over time feminized this archetype of him a lot. Sometimes in ways I find really uncomfortable, like there’s a lot of forced pregnancy stuff which activates my panic buttons. x.x

But, ultimately, it’s fandom. People are going to do what they’re going to do, DC in their perpetual fail has hung Tim out to dry in narrative terms, and I’d rather the people who are using Tim for victimization narratives over the people who can’t dismiss or discredit him fast enough now that his position has been filled. 🤷‍♀️ What we gonna do? Fave’s in an awkward spot. DC hates us. This is the life in this comic book pit. XD

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Also if you’re the same anon who left me a callout about op of that weird Steph post in my inbox, or if you aren’t @ that person, 1) I refuse to get involved so I’m not answering that ask 2) those aren’t even particularly dramatic fandom crimes? That’s pretty normal? That’s just…Caring Too Much About Ships And Disagreeing With Me.

Do I also feel those opinions are kinda bad? Yeah. But I disagree with everyone about something. Chill.