#well Bernard and Tim were a lot more than Danny

[scintillyyy]

tim drake high school friendships, ranked by closeness to tim at the end of post-crisis:

sebastian ives. ives, ives, NOBODY out here is doing it like ives. ives was the FIRST civilian friend ever introduced to tim & the first friend tim made upon entering public school for the very first time. ives has been there since tim's second mini-series. ives as tim's friend is so important he is one of the only high school friends to be brought back into tim's story by others after his creator, dixon, left: he makes an appearance/is referenced as a long term friend with lewis (robin), yost (red robin), & fabnic (red robin). he has at least two major health scares & a fakeout health scare. let's make one thing absolutely clear here: ives *is* tim's best civilian friendship, which has endured as a friendship through *multiple* high school transfers away from him. absolutely no contest.

danny temple. listen. danny & tim don't interact, like at all, post danny leaving brentwood but that's just because the whole kid kobra thing never took off. i'm sure if it did, tim & danny would have interacted a lot more post separation. and listen, danny is the "civilian" friend who *knows* tim is robin. they went on basically two vacations together. they're far closer than your standard high school friend.

zoanne. listen, she may have been a love interest who didn't work out, but that didn't stop them from also being friends. her friendship to tim is also referenced in yost's run in red robin. as far as tim & high school friends, since tim tends to drift apart from people once they're no longer at the same school, zo ekes through with a recency bias for tim. in an end of robin/red robin era she'd be on his current list of civilians he felt close to. she's shown to be extremely worried about him in red robin #10 indicating ongoing friendship.

kevin "hudmeister" hudman, hudson, callie evans: these lovelies were part of tim's core group and have the benefit of length of friendship going for them. hudman & hudson were a core part of tim's W&W group that made several recurring appearances through tim's initial high school years & had a significant part in his miniseries ii. only lower because ostensibly tim did lose contact with them upon going to brentwood, still higher because they played a decently important secondary/tertiary role through many years of tim's publication

darla: darla is the person at louis grieves tim actually likes, okay? he's devastated when she dies and he can't save her and she's brought back to interact with tim again as warlock's daughter & has a small but significant storyline with her friendship with tim as a result.

buzz & kip: when tim is at brentwood, he spends most of his free non-danny time hanging with buzz and kip. they both have a couple issue storylines that tim is involved in & he seems to like them pretty well. once tim leaves brentwood, however, the friendship dies away and is not mentioned again.

ali ben khadir: tim's first roommate, gets a significant storyline and then vanishes, so is below the other brentwood kids. tim likes him though, so that puts him above-

wesley: tim's second brentwood roommate is next, because they spent a significant amount of time together & again had multiple issues to showcase the development of their relationship. wes is under kip & buzz & ali though, because tim doesn't actually like him all that much despite the fact that they're nominally friends. he grows to he okayish with him. i guess.

bernard: listen *if we're talking post-crisis only* (which we are), bernard falls *solidly* at the bottom of the list as tim's least important/significant civilian friend. there's no significant story focused on tim's friendship to bernard specifically, tim is barely tolerating him most of the time & is friends with him basically only because bernard is pushy about being friends with tim & after tim leaves louis grieves he doesn't bother to keep in touch to the point where bernard doesn't even know where tim ended up, only that he's heard *from other people* tim might be in bludhaven (who apparently are in the know as to tim's location). now obviously we can't ignore the trauma that led tim to ghost him, but since bernard after this is never brought up again in post-crisis, he's a pretty solid 'that friendship definitely died once they were no longer in each other's immediate vicinity & were basically only friends with each othet due to circumstances of going to school together only'

[darkspellmaster]

What are your thoughts on the whole Tim Drake story so far?

I'm mixed honestly.

On the one hand, I'm fine with Tim being bi, nothing wrong with that and it can cover a lot of ground if you have the right writer to work with it. However, I feel like, on the other hand, the choice of writer right now for him in regard to YJ and for his Solo series might not be the best.

My issue mostly stems from the same problem I have with the break up of Peter and MJ. Steph and Tim have been connected so long that it's very hard to see him dating others. This holds true for when the two of them broke up before and he ended up engaged to another woman. While I'm okay with them splitting, same with Dick and Babs, I personally am not liking the way it's being handled due to how OOC Steph is. She's kind of jealous, and has shown that in the past with the situation where Tim was with another girl. So why she's excited and shit is beyond me.

I need to see more of what she's going to do to figure out where this is going. Tim has such a long history and connection to so many characters that it feels like DC made a huge goof when they didn't transition the YJ gen into more solid roles before bringing in Damian and co. Don't get me wrong I love my young teams, it's just that it feels like a lot of the issue with Tim's story needs to be expanded.

I'm happy so far with him in Batman and Detective, and the focus there on building back his past to define him more against Jason and Dick. Looks like they're giving Damian Magic to make him different as well, so I'm all for that. I just want Tim to be treated as fairly as Dick is and how Jason is being given a fair shake now.

Part of the issue too is that there were also WAY better male characters to hook Tim up with, and ones that made WAY more sense.

Danny Temple, for example, aka Kid Kobra, was his room mate and Tim went to hell and back to rescue him. There was more chemistry between them than him and Bernard, and Danny had a way more interesting back story that could have played more into Tim learning about himself.

There was also Harper's younger brother, who said he had a crush on Tim. I mean, right there. You can bring in Blue Jay more and Cullen could play a larger role than he is right now. Which is just dating a member of the Royal Flush Gang apparently? Maybe? I'm not sure what they're doing with him.

I would say even Duke, but I don't know if DC would let that happen. So then you look outside of the Batfamily and you have one hell of a list if the Editors will allow the use of them.

Airwave -Aka Hal Jordan Jr. Hal 'Green Lantern' Jordan's nephew who basically admitted to liking guys to his uncle. And Hal told him to go get help learning to be a hero from, of all people, Batman.

Hartley Rathway -Aka the Pied Piper. I'm not sure how old he is in earth Prime, but assuming early 20s, it could be a fun look at how Tim could deal with someone like that, if they let the cross over happen.

Francisco Gracia -Son of Stefano Gracia. He's a classmate of Steph and has ties to Roulette.

Hero Cruz -one of the Dial H for hero characters. He knows Conner and the titans.

Joel Weinberg -aka Huston, a young hero who was trying to keep his family together after his parents died.

Kid Apollo -Hey look it's from Gen 13 and could be a fun ride if someone wanted to take it.

Miguel Montez -current owner of the dial H for Hero device. Also friends with the Titans.

Miguel Barragan -aka Bunker. Of all the characters to not use for this, why not use Bunker! He and Tim already have a friendship, he's not doing anything recently outside of the Teen Titans thing, and if anyone can help Tim navigate all of this it would be Miguel because he's been through a lot.

Raymond Terrill  -aka The Ray. Ray worked with Tim when he was in YJ so I would say old friends could rekindle something.

Rich Foley -You want to bring the Dakotaverse more into DC, you have Tim date Virgil's best friend.

Terrence Berg -Bring back Terry from Green Lantern. He's the same age as Tim, and is blonde too. He's already an established character and again would connect the bats and the Lanterns.

There are so many characters out there. I mean, you really want to throw people for a loop, have him date Jon.

Like I said I feel mixed. I'm happy that Tim's moving forward with stories and that his character is being explored more. But I just wish that some of it would be with a writer that I feel more confident about, and with a partner that was more in line with what we know about Tim as a character.

Again no hate for Bernard, I just don't find him interesting.

[arrowsandbats]

Tim’s Complicated School History

So I’ve noticed there seems to be a fair bit of confusion on where Tim went to high school, whether he dropped out or not, if he went to private or public school, etc., so I thought I’d create a general chronology of (Pre-Flashpoint) Tim’s tumultuous high school career. The confusion about this is deserved, as Tim has literally gone to no less than FIVE high schools and also homeschooled for a bit, so it’s a LOT to keep track of. Tim has attended both private schools and public schools, and has gone to school in Gotham and Bludhaven (and almost Keystone!), ultimately ending his school days when he dropped out of Gotham City High School during his senior year to go search for Bruce after the events of Final Crisis.

Here’s the breakdown:

Pre-High School: Tim attended private boarding schools until he was about 13-14 years old. To my knowledge these schools are never specifically named, but 13-yr-old Tim mentions in Batman #441 that he attends a boarding school just outside Gotham. In Robin III #4 Tim angrily tells his dad that him and Janet “shipped [Tim] from one boarding school to another and nobody paid any attention as long as [his] grades stayed high.” This seems to imply that Tim attended a number of different boarding schools, when there’s really no reason for him to have attended more than two (an elementary and middle school), and even then a number of private boarding schools are actually K-8 (if not K-12) so I don’t know why he attended so many schools?? Nevertheless, from K-8 Tim attended private boarding schools, primarily in the Gotham area presumably.

Tim was probably still in middle school in his earliest appearances (Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying, Batman: Rite of Passage, etc), but he starts high school right around the time he finishes his Robin training (around the time of the first  Robin miniseries).

High School #1---Gotham Heights High School: The first reference to Tim being in high school comes from the 1991 Robin II miniseries. Tim has recently started at Gotham Heights High School as a ninth grader. This comic takes place after Tim’s parents were kidnapped and poisoned, and so while Jack is in the hospital Bruce is acting as a guardian of sorts for Tim. It’s at Gotham Heights that Tim befriends Sebastian Ives, as well as his friends Hudson and Callie Evans. When Ives asks Tim about the fact that he seems too rich for public school, Tim explains that he used to go to private school but that Bruce had him transferred into public school because he thought it would be “more broadening.” Even after Jack gets out of the hospital he allows Tim to stay at Gotham Heights HS, although Jack clearly has a low opinion of public schools. Tim presumably started at Gotham Heights HS at the beginning of the ninth grade and attended for about a year and a half.

Interlude---Keystone: After the events of Cataclysm, Tim’s family moves to Keystone to avoid the chaos going on in Gotham. (They only end up staying a few weeks at the most, but they moved with the intention of living there permanently, meaning that Tim was transferred out of Gotham Heights HS.) In Robin #63 Jack mentions trying to get Tim into Keystone Academy, but that it’s tough in the middle of the school year and that he was working on getting him a tutor in the interim. Tim was supposed to meet his new tutor the same day that he went back to Gotham to be with Steph while she had her baby. He left without telling his dad, and so Jack and Dana come back to Gotham to get him and they all decide to stay in Gotham after all. It’s unclear if Tim returns to Gotham Heights HS briefly or if he just doesn’t return to school until he’s enrolled at Brentwood.

High School #2---Brentwood Academy: After the events of No Man’s Land, Tim is enrolled in Brentwood Academy, a boarding school in Bristol Township (a wealthy suburb directly to the north of Gotham, where the Drakes and the Waynes both live). After missing so much school, Jack forces Tim to go to a boarding school so that his grades will hopefully come up. (I think the reasoning here is that if Tim lives at school then he’ll have no good excuse for missing class?) In Robin #75 Tim refers to himself as a “new sophomore,” and he transferred to the school some time after sophomore year started (almost definitely after winter break, but I can’t find an issue that confirms this?) but before spring break. Tim’s main friends at Brentwood are his first roommate Ali, his second roommate Wesley, and his classmates Buzz, Kip, and Danny. Tim isn’t at Brentwood for very long though. After only a few months (maybe even less) of Tim being at Brentwood, Jack finds out he’s lost a good portion of the Drake family fortune in bad investments. He’s forced to withdraw Tim from school as he can’t afford the tuition anymore, and the Drakes sell their home in Bristol Township and move into their townhouse in inner-city Gotham.

Interlude---Rest of Sophomore Year: When Tim left Brentwood it was rather late in the year, and it was apparently too late to re-enroll him in public school, so he took the rest of the school year off. That summer he has to take a placement test that will keep him from having to repeat the 10th grade. He passes, so when he re-enters public school he does so as a junior.

High School #3---Louis E. Grieve Memorial High School: Tim starts his junior year at Louis E. Grieve Memorial HS, where he quickly befriends Bernard Dowd and Darla Aquista. He doesn’t attend school here very long, probably for about 3-4 months (he’s only been at Grieve Memorial HS for a few weeks when he’s forced to quit being Robin, Steph takes over for about 2 months, and then it’s only another couple weeks until the events of War Games). During War Games, Tim’s friend Darla is targeted by several mobs (because her father is an Italian mob boss) and mobsters take over his school and end up killing several students, Darla included. Darla’s funeral is one of three that Tim has to attend in as many days, his dad being killed during Identity Crisis and Steph “dying” at the end of War Games.

High School #4---John Wayne High School, Bludhaven: After War Games and Identity Crisis, Tim moves to Bludhaven to try for a fresh start. He picked Bludhaven specifically for an in-patient facility that will help his stepmom, Dana, process her grief over Jack’s death. Tim moves to be close to her and starts attending John Wayne High School. He probably only attends for about two weeks though, before he has his (fake) Uncle Eddie withdraw him from the school to start homeschooling. Tim withdraws with the intention of homeschooling until he can test out of school early. But it isn’t long (maybe another month or so) until Infinite Crisis, and then Tim and Dick go on a nearly year-long training journey with Bruce.

Interlude---OYL: During the missing year* between Infinite Crisis and One Year Later, Tim isn’t in school at all, as he and Dick and Bruce are travelling the world and training. 

(*Also, with the nightmare that is comics continuity and the passage of time, Tim really couldn’t have been gone for more than like,,,,6-8 months, as it was late winter/early spring when Infinite Crisis happened---at least according to the Robin series---and it’s summer when he returns to Gotham. He’s still 17 early in the Red Robin series so it couldn’t have been a year and a half that he was gone, therefore he could only have been gone for like half a year.)

High School #5---Gotham City High School: After the OYL time jump, Tim starts attending Gotham City High School. He starts during the “summer session” (presumably to make up for the semester he missed during OYL?) before his senior year. His main friends here are Zoanne Wilkins (who he starts dating), Jared Walton, Craig Pulaski, and then both Ives and Steph transfer to GCHS during Tim’s senior year (altho Steph is usually a year older than Tim in Pre-52 canon, so it really makes no sense for her to be there??). This is the high school Tim is attending when he drops out of school in his senior year to travel the world looking for Bruce. In Red Robin #17, Tim and Ives meet for lunch (after Bruce has returned and Tim has moved back to Gotham) and Ives mentions Tim not finishing senior year. Tim asks Ives how senior year is going---implying that the events of the first arc of Red Robin only take a few months---and catches up on how Ives and Zoanne are doing.

Some general Tim school stuff: Tim is a very smart kid, but not a very good student. In the Robin III miniseries both Jack and Tim’s school counselor make reference to the fact that before high school Tim had always been a straight A student, but that his grades and attendance have slipped considerably. He is routinely too tired to pay attention in class, he’s constantly missing weeks of school, he fails to complete homework assignments bc of Robin missions, etc. Several times he even references in his inner monologue that he thinks he might fail a specific class. And honestly, Tim just doesn’t care about school. He often makes irritable inner-monologue comments about preferring practical application over learning things in a school setting, he tries to get himself out of school permanently when he lives in Bludhaven, etc. That being said, he’s never been noted to actually fail a class and even with all the school he’s missed he’s never had to be held back, so presumably he’s still earning like Cs in most classes.

[dirty-pretty-jackal-s]

Carl Barat@carlbaratmusic

Mick said if this album turned out great, we would be here dissecting it in 15 years, and if so we could be very proud. Cheers everyone x Cheers @Tim_Burgess

I hope we all have many more to come...

What a time, thank you all so much for being a part of this journey, thank you Mick Jones, Bill Price (RIP) and Bill Bones.

I wouldn’t have though I’d still be getting along after all this time, but for the best of it I am, and so are the band. ...Ahhhh.

I Get Along... So proud of how this one came out. Mick Jones nailed it (and so did Bernard Butler). You can hear my whisky bottle (Famous Grouse) being chucked in the metal ashtray at the end of the take. Job well done.

Tim Burgess@Tim_Burgess

The Good Old Days: I recorded a version of this for a covermount

@NME

CD. I’ll tweet it after this. Hoping I did it justice : /

Peter Doherty@petedoherty

The Good Old Days: We also recorded a never used version of Wolfman; where Wolfman recorded inimitably 'you're from the estate - you've got enough on yer plate' and Mick said 'he's not a nice boy like you is he Pete!!'

Carl Barat@carlbaratmusic

The Good Old Days... Still as true as the day she was penned. These are the good old days. It’s a fucker they changed Bodecia’s name to Boudica though. Really fucks the song up if you sing it like that.

#TheGoodOldDays

Apparently she’s buried under platform 9 of Kings Cross Station.  That may explain a thing or 2 with the place. Also, they say Merlin is buried under Filthy McNasty’s.

Begging... These little kids on a Kings Cross estates used to take the piss out of us as we sauntered by in our charity shop finery en-route to rehearsals shouting “You lot are begging mate.” And so it became rather a thing amongst. And

@gdogg27

gets a (very fine) moment to showcase his unrivalled drum solo prowess...

This one does cut deep though about one of the bands sister’s time on the unmentionable drug. Used to bring a tear to my eye to sing. This middle 8 used to have the lyrics ‘Mozart’s off his face, stumbling round in cyberspace’.  So we cut them out and just had the music.

Tim Burgess@Tim_Burgess

Those two voices together

#timstwitterlisteningparty

Carl Barat@carlbaratmusic

The Boy Looked at Johnny... Rotten, not Borrel. I remember one of the technitians at the rehearsal room sneered “Don’t you know who I think I am” at me. He was right.

Love the li-de-di moment. Actually quite pertinent if a Londoner happens to find themselves homesick in the Big Apple. Tell The King... This one starts with a creepy Jarvis Cocker impersonation, “Got a little secret for ya” which wasn’t meant to be left in. You can’t get more fairy tales and romance than this with an acerbic nod to the tabloids of the time. Legend has it that there is a version out there with Jai Stanley doing the vocals, which frankly knocks the spots off the album version. Peter Doherty@petedoherty·The song 'Up The Bracket' - Written in Dalston Lane at Maraid's gaff was about standing up to muggers and has a secret coded bar chord historical theme... Carl Barat@carlbaratmusic serious tuning at the end there Radio America... Such a sweet and innocent ditty and a nod to the @Libertines’ skiffly beginnings, taken with a massive dose of drugs ‘n liquor and subsequently mangled. I fell asleep and banged my head on the mic and Danny Goffey of @SupergrassHQ came running in unannounced in a pair of green tights if my hazy memory serves. Love the line about President Clinton and the Queen. Works now with “Orange faced President” instead. Boys in the Band... This one takes me back to the time when we were working behind the bar at Filthy McNasty’s and the vodka and cokes (@thestrokes) had hit it big and we felt a little left out. I never thought it would have inspired as much nudity as it ‘as done over the years. Peter can often be seen forgetting his lines onstage to this one whilst surveying the crowd. ...And someone sold one of their girlfriends some acid or something or nothing… Hard to explain really. Time For Heroes... This one does what it says on the tin, brings back too many memories to possibly do justice here, riots and dreams etc… #UpTheBracket #TimeForHeroes I remember when I met @grahamcoxon and he told me he’d seen me on Top of the Pops and had loved my ‘anti guitar solo’. I’ve no idea what he meant but I was fucking happy. I still fuck up the anti solo pretty regularly as it goes. Horror Show. Still too much of a horror to play, this one sometimes. Fucking fast. We filmed an amazingly bad video in the 90’s of this in St Pancras Graveyard and an abandoned mental hospital in Dalston with Pete’s then girlfriend. It looked like a student re-make of Nosferatu. I remember the three of us played it sans bass player for reasons I shan’t go into, at our Rough Trade showcase where we got signed.  Pete and I were swapping bass and guitar. It’s a wonder we did get signed looking back… Death on the Stairs... This has always been my favourite song of ours.