I've seen a lot of debates on who the best Robin is but a lot of the time it boils down to who you think the most skilled one is (cough cough ur favourite) or Dick bc he's the first one but I'm here to argue that Jason was the best Robin and Damian is the most interesting Robin.

I know I critiqued people choosing their favourite character who used to be Robin as the best one so u may assume I'm being hypocritical but I have more logic to this than just blatant favouritism. Robin from a narrative perspective is supposed to be almost a self insert to allow kids to feel like they could go on adventures with Batman too. Robin above all else is supposed to be relatable to kids. Dick growing up in the circus is cool but not very relatable. Tim grew up wealthy as fuck at boarding school and that isn't a very common experience. I love Damian but being trained from birth isn't exactly relatable. But who is? Jason and Steph! So why only mention Jason? Because of the writers knowing they were going to kill Steph off she wasn't written like a relatable Robin but a future tragedy. I also don't think she got long enough to be the best. Also when she became Robin she was a lot older than the others which is another point against her. (Sorry Steph ily). Whereas Jason has a relatable background and generally comes off as more normal than the others during their Robin days. This all leads to him being easier for kids to see themselves in which is the purpose of Robin. Therefore, I think he's the best one.

I say Damian's the most interesting Robin bc the legacy of Robin was given to him but currently in comics he's rejecting it and wanting to have a life outside of his parents' shadows. Taking a character that began as so desperate to be Robin and then making them start to resent the job bc of how much of their life has been decided bc of his parents' legacies is fascinating and makes for an amazing story. It also guarantees he won't be clinging to the title whilst another Robin comes a long instead of making a new identity and growing up. Damian's a character all about legacy rejecting a legacy identity which I find fascinating.

So all of this is why I think Jason was the best Robin but Damian is the most interesting one.

clint’s day off (tiktok w the audio)

dick grayson fans who shit on tim drake are so baffling 2 me like that's his little guy excuse me

Tim Drake fans who shit on Dick Grayson are just as baffling like that’s his emotional support hyperfixation turned sibling excuse me

Some fans make it really difficult not to like Tim

I managed to sketch this out real quick for you guys!

Have some Vampire Tim

@fancyfade and I talked about DC's habit of publishing stories that make Bruce look like a bad father, but them also not really wanting to commit to it and openly blame him, which often leads to weird victim-blaming, non-apologies and sometimes nonsensical retcons to save Bruce's reputation later on.

And I imagine that it put the writers in a very difficult situation when editorial told them to create this very long storyline that was supposed to end with Damian becoming the main villain for 5G. They started this with Justice League: No Justice and the Adam Glass' Teen Titans run in summer/autumn 2018, but Death Metal would only pave the way for 5G in early 2021.

Meaning this wouldn't be a fast fall from grace, but more like tumbling down a very long staircase for over two years.

Batman being too busy to grasp the gravity of the situation and thus blamelessly fail to intervene might have been plausible for one or two short arcs of Damian becoming evil, but this was way too long. They had to acknowledge the conflict eventually, but they also couldn't have Bruce prevent Damian from seperating from the batfamily to turn into a villain.

So they seemed to have settled on "Bruce is in fact concerned about Damian's estrangement from him, but he's also too busy and emotionally constipated to ever actually get off his ass and properly communicate with his son."

It's probably one of the few things in this mess of a storyline that DC has managed to keep somewhat consistent:

Damian and Bruce had an off-panel fight in Justice League: No Justice #4 that seems to have ended with Damian seperating from Bruce to found a new Teen Titans team. Bruce's words indicate that instead of trying to stop his son he has decided to accept this seperation for now.

Damian briefly returns to Wayne Manor in Teen Titans #26 to hack the batcomputer and runs into Alfred who claims that Bruce is concerned for Damian. But it also voluntarily or involuntarily highlights the discrepancy in Bruce's behaviour. He seems to say that he's worried about Damian, but then never acts on that worry. He's not doing anything to resolve their problems. He only shows up about 20 issues later when it's far too late.

Bruce's reluctance to stop this from escalating becomes even more apparent in Detective Comics #996 when Bruce asks Damian to talk and make up, to which Damian agrees.

Too bad it's only part of a simulation:

and while Damian was in fact present at Wayne Manor Bruce chose not to follow the desire to fix his relationship with Damian that he expressed in the simulation and rather chooses to talk about Gotham's crime rate before meeting up with Leslie Thompson to celebrate his birthday with her and Alfred.

Bruce similarly deflects Damian's accusation of showing more care for strange children than him by proclaiming that the city needs him and then guilt-tripping Damian by reminding him of the teenager Bruce wants Damian to look for because he was already busy fighting a gang and didn't have the time to do it himself in Detective Comics #1017.

This, well, let's call it a refusal to face their problems continues in Pennyworth RIP when Damian leaves the wake in tears and Barbara explicitly demands from Bruce to go after Damian. Which he doesn't do and Tim is apparently more interested in telling his Alfred story than in convincing Bruce to get off his ass to comfort a crying child that blames himself thinking he got their beloved grandfather killed.

Bruce's problems with opening his mouth to talk things out with Damian before it's too late might have turned out less catastrophic if Damian wasn't equally emotionally constipated. But Bruce is supposed to be the adult in this relationship and with Alfred dead and Dick calling himself Ric there was nobody to talk with Damian for him anymore.

It took Damian killing Brother Blood (and planning to kill even more) and thus DC completing their destruction of Damian as a hero for DC to allow Bruce to step in since now the worst had already happened:

Of course DC had to make it clear that our world's greatest detective Batman had somehow no clue what brought Damian to do all of this.

Then, still not willing to open his mouth to calm Damian down, Bruce seemed to think that hugging it out with Damian while he went through an episode of murderous rage was somehow a good idea.

Which it wasn't. Who would have thought. But it's enough effort so DC can claim Bruce tried, right?

Bruce even proclaims his love for his son and admits he failed him! Which would have been more believable had this desaster lead to a change in behaviour.

Instead the arc ends with Damian quitting and walking away into a dark alley and Bruce also having already vanished.

DC could have shown us that Bruce learned from his mistakes, but chose not to because they didn't actually want Damian to come back home.

Seriously, Jon:

and even Jason (!) went out to look for Damian:

Bruce...did nothing and waited. Again. I really don't understand why DC thought it was a good idea to make that a recurring trait for Bruce in recent years. Yes, neglect also counts as child abuse, not getting involved doesn't absolve Bruce of blame, DC🤦‍♀️

Like, he canonically sat on ass, probably for several weeks after Damian killed a villain and all the other stuff, thinking Damian would return home and ask for his job back on his own. As if Damian's pride and insecurity would allow him to do that. Of course he chose a more roundabout way to get in contact again🥴

Bruce didn't really seem that eager to see Damian again though and chose to repeatedly postpone looking for him to deal with other things. Again.

Anyway, at the end of the arc Bruce it finally seemed to come to Bruce's attention that it's actually possible to follow someone after they walk away from you:

But of course DC can't end this storyline nobody liked here, so Bruce forgets that lesson two pages later.

Instead Bruce decided to wait until Damian was gone again to...finally make an effort to search for him?

And it only took us almost three years to reach this point!

Anyway, we don't see them meet until one year later in our time, when they ran into each other again in Shadow War Alpha:

But when Ra's was killed Bruce at first couldn't open his mouth to talk:

...and when he did he put his foot in his mouth:

How many times has Bruce let Damian walk away from him at this point? You could make a drinking game out of this.

As I've talked about before, this apology scene could have been good...if they didn't feel the need to retcon the events of City of Bane to make it sound like it was Damian's fault even while Bruce puts the blame on himself.

But we could have moved on. We could have had them back as Batman and Robin!

Damn, I hit tumblr's picture limit. Anyway, we could have moved on! No more Bruce doing nothing while Damian's character gets written badly on purpose! No more Damian walking away while Bruce just stands there! No more punching each other!

But no! They needed to annouce a book called Batman vs Robin! With 100+ variant covers showing them punching each other! Bruce insulting Damian! Damian as one of the antagonists! Potentially partially to blame for a global crisis if Waid doesn't give us a twist! Amazing!

Fucking shoot me, I can't do this anymore.

Bruce and Damian Wayne

Damian’s conception in the new 52/current comics canon according to Secret Origins #4, Batman Inc #2, Batman and Robin #2, Robin Rises Omega. One could interpret the art to say he was drugged, but that would require ignoring forty years of canon characterization where Bruce struggles to keep his hands off of Talia. Bonus: morning after cuddles where Bruce is pretty thrilled by their sex up until Talia mentions a son, which prompts his transformation back into Douche Bro. Which is canon as well, it’s approaching eighty years of canon Douche Bro Bruce. :/

In other words, Talia was only written as a rapist once and by one author who later tried to recant it. The editors kept it in, and worse, allowed it in the animated universe. Which isn’t surprising, considering what they did to Babs in The Killing Joke. :(

for the past day i have not been able to stop thinking about jason steph & rose as dennis charlie & mac from sunny

anyways i was thinking about the fanon dynamic of dick no longer loving tim and while it's definitely incorrect on all levels, i am thinking about how if there is one thing that i am even a little bit intrigued by, it's the idea that dick waking up one day and no longer loving tim is actually a scenario that is probably one of the most emotionally devastating things that you could do to tim and i think there could be a potential for, like, a good and devastating type of angst in a scenario like this if you were really, really careful about it and don't just turn tim into a wet noodle who is oppressed by a made up scenario where no one loves or appreciates him.

i guess these are my two examples of how this could potentially work in my head that doesn't villify anyone:

anyways, important notes from either of these scenarios: tim spends an inordinate amount of time complaining to huntress and/or oracle about the state of things.

I think what a lot of people don’t get about that fanon dynamic is that bridging the Red Robin 2009 / New 52 timeline gap was always the point.

All this interesting emotional tension was built up between Tim and Dick, but then instead of that being really properly resolved the universe was rebooted and we had a version of Tim that wasn’t really part of the family.

So for people who loved the old Tim but now only had storylines where no one seemed to care about him, it was easy to amalgamate the timelines into a story about Red Robin 2009 Tim suddenly being treated like New 52 Tim by his family. There wasn’t a lot of concern for the way that grafting New 52 Dick’s attitude toward Tim onto Pre New 52 Dick would be insulting to the character, because at the time fans didn’t expect to ever see the version of Dick that loved Tim in canon again. If anything, Dick neglecting his relationship with Tim, but still loving him deep down (which was almost always the eventual conclusion of fics like that), felt like an improvement.

This is also why you don’t really see this fanon dynamic in recent fics anymore, because Tim Drake: Robin gave the fans a new anchor point between Pre New 52 and Post New 52 storylines. You can jump from the emotional tension built up in Red Robin 2009, straight to the catharsis of Tim feeling loved and accepted in Tim Drake: Robin, and treat all the New 52′s coldness like a bad dream.

But now that Tim’s continuity is actually in a good place (for now, crossing fingers), a fic exploring the deeply painful shift in dynamic between the two timelines, that treats them as two distinct timelines instead of trying to smush them together, would be amazing! 

Because in the New 52 timeline, basically everything our Tim is afraid of is true:

New 52 Tim was never really in a position to understand what he lost, but for our Tim the New 52 universe would be about as miserable as it could get without crossing the line into Dark Alternate Timeline TM.

In short, it’s a terrible knife twist, you’re a genius, and I desperately want someone to write it.

@Spectacular- Sunbird. You are kidding right? There has never been a point where it felt like Dick didn't care for Tim. That has and still is fanon. New 52 Dick was in Spyral so they were both missing from Gotham a lot. In the new 52 due to Damian being exiled from the Bat editorial office, Tim was the only little bro Dick had and the brother he spent the most time with. Dick occasionally had interactions with Dick but Tim was the brother Dick was closer to and spent more time with. DC trying to force a relationship between Jay and Tim might have made it seem that Tim was closer to Jay but it never like Dick and Tim had any tension. The duo also ended Red Robin on good terms since once Tim returned to his senses he admitted that Dick made the right decision. The big issue with the bat dynamic in the new 52 was that everyone was separated. Snyder's Batman was a batfam free zone and interactions were only coming together for cross overs or events. Even in those characters like Damian wasn't allowed to show up and the girls were limboed.

I have to question if you are actually reading comics cos everything you posted is incorrect. Taylor's Nightwing was the title that gave fans the pre crisis dynamic back not TDR. In TDR, Tim Literally moves out and keeps worrying that his family doesn't care even though other titles published the same day had him bonding or teaming up with most of the family. TDR also ignored the conversation that Tim and Dick had Urban Legends despite the fact that both were written by the same person and the series setup Tim ' series.

anyways i was thinking about the fanon dynamic of dick no longer loving tim and while it's definitely incorrect on all levels, i am thinking about how if there is one thing that i am even a little bit intrigued by, it's the idea that dick waking up one day and no longer loving tim is actually a scenario that is probably one of the most emotionally devastating things that you could do to tim and i think there could be a potential for, like, a good and devastating type of angst in a scenario like this if you were really, really careful about it and don't just turn tim into a wet noodle who is oppressed by a made up scenario where no one loves or appreciates him.

i guess these are my two examples of how this could potentially work in my head that doesn't villify anyone:

anyways, important notes from either of these scenarios: tim spends an inordinate amount of time complaining to huntress and/or oracle about the state of things.

You should read the Ric arc from Rebirth Nightwing. The issue when the family visit him in the hospital. Something similar happens and it's devastating to read.