You know what I’ve never gotten a satisfactory explanation for? What exactly Bruce and Tim’s public relationship was during the period when Jack Drake was alive.

Cause like…Jack obviously knew that Bruce was something to his kid. Tim would use “going to Bruce’s house” to excuse his otherwise unexplained absences. But like…what exactly was he?

A lot of details got brushed over because early 90s storytelling and teen hero conventions but like. As far as we’re aware, Bruce and the Drakes didn’t know each other at all (otherwise he would’ve known Tim when the kid turned up in his cave) and yet when Haiti happened, Bruce is not only made Tim’s foster parent but Jack’s medical guardian while he was incapacitated.

At the very least, you’d think the Drake Industries board of directors would have some objections.

Consider Transference. Lucius Fox doesn’t blink that Tim’s in Wayne Enterprises with Dick, waiting for Bruce to be free. An entire stockholders meeting walks past the two waiting.

Plus, Dick has the ability to pick Tim up from boarding school for the weekend, and Bruce to drop him off, suggesting that Dick has permission to sign Tim out from Brentwood campus.

Jack just signed off on that? Tim snuck paperwork into the school to let Dick do that? Either way, Brentwood Academy officially considers Dick and almost certainly Bruce to be individuals who have permission to take custody of Tim.

That’s fascinating. And only one example of this in action.

comics i like: nightwing 25

so I've never actually posted about this comic before because it's SO WELL-KNOWN - the comic that invented trainsurfing!! basically the most famous Dick & Tim comic ever!! - so it felt kinda unnecessary sdfdsfsd but look, what is the internet for if we cannot ramble.

one overall thing I love is its structure: it's a low-key "day in the life" comic. there's no big bad!! the whole comic is just "Dick & Tim hang out and chat while patrolling." but it manages to embed a whole lot of characterization and to develop their friendship along the way.

let's BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING:

Saw someone in my post's tags call Tim the rebellious son and I'm like aksnakkdwkdk that's such a funny take to me.

Not to say it's a bad take or inaccurate!! It's just that for Tim to be considered the rebellious son, Bruce would have had to, like...know about it?? Like, in my head, Bruce thinks Tim is the well bahaved one. Tim is the one Bruce never fights with, the one who does everything by the book, the one who gets shit done.

And Tim?? He's a total Daddy's boy. He loves it when Bruce tells him he's doing well. Most of the dangerous, insane things Tim does, he ain't telling Batman about.

Far as Bruce is concerned, his boy is an angel.

One of my favorite subtle things about Tim is how he embodies something that every "good kid" knows: once the adults trust you and have mentally filed you as "the good kid," you can get away with so much. Because they'll stop looking into your business so much, and what they do find out they'll be more willing to let slide.

(And even better, he also exemplifies the negative side effects of this trust -- where you wind up dealing with a lot of shit on your own precisely because authority figures aren't keeping an eye out for you the way they do for the "troubled kids" and you're bad at asking for help because you don't want to shake their trust in you.)

Dick: If I'm Batman, Tim can't be my Robin because this boy could probably go toe to toe with all of Bruce's villains and maybe even Bruce himself and he's a better detective than me. He should be his own hero, we could be equals like I always wanted to be with Bruce, we could go through this together, and Damian can be Robin.

Tim: So you hate me is what I'm hearing. You don't trust me and you don't want me around and you don't even see me as your brother, I really was just a placeholder until someone better came along. Got it. See you never.

All jokes aside, it is actually very interesting how much of the conflict in this particular point of canon (that being the early chapters of Red Robin going into the Batman Reborn era, to be clear) essentially stem from Dick (at the time) and Tim subscribing to the two major different interpretations of what Robin is supposed to be.

Because Dick does very much come at it from the position of both "Tim deserves to be treated as my equal" and "I really need Tim to act as my equal" with both leading to the conclusion of "therefore, it's time for Tim to graduate from being Robin, like I did," and it makes perfect sense that he'd feel that way because at that point he had decades of stories about how he felt like being Robin made him lesser, like it wasn't an equal partnership and it was something he'd needed to move on from. That was the entire justification for making him Nightwing.

But Tim, on the other hand, tended (and still tends) to get more stories where he viewed Robin in the classic Golden/Silver Age sense, as Batman's partner. In his perspective, he didn't need to change to be Batman's equal because they were already equal partners, and that should've been even more true with Dick, whom he'd always had such an easy comradry with, than with Bruce, who is complicated because he's constantly being written by half a dozen different people at the same time. So Dick choosing someone else to be his Robin felt like a betrayal, no matter how he tried to explain it, especially when it happens while Tim is already passively suicidal on a few different emotional vectors and also he's just convinced himself of something that he knows makes him sound completely unhinged.

It really is an explosive bit of emotional drama that's so good when it's paid off well (which it actually is in Red Robin, just not in the rest of canon, unfortunately dammit Morrison)

It’s so funny when the Batfam during Tim’s Robin era is depicted as depresso and closed off and harsh/cold/strict towards Tim, and he’s the ignored malnourished Victorian child who has to claw his way into their love because he’s the forgotten middle kid and the Robin nobody chose and Bruce barely acknowledges him and everyone’s too busy being sad about Jason to love Tim and—

When in reality Tim is literally THE THING that brought light back into the household after the prior tragedy. Bruce and Dick were depressed/harsh/cold/strict but Tim came hurtling into their family like an unstoppable meteor of obnoxious charm and blinded them with his whimsy. Therapist and service dog two-for-one special. That kid put meaning into the concept of “healing what you didn’t break.”

Bruce and Dick never stood a chance. Closed off and unloving? Please. They spend half the comics babying the kid. Unrestrained heart eyes going everywhere. Stan behavior.

(…but okay yeah. They’re also sad and depressed. Two things can be true at once.)

Very important addition by @zahri-melitor

(Also worth noting that Tim has a thriving social life and a big civilian friend group. That guy is NOT a sad isolated maiden rotting in his bat tower of middle child neglect.)

core characteristic right there <3

(gotham knights #2)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

Tim is best understood as being a COMPASSIONATE BUSYBODY

He cares. He cares a lot. He cares sincerely. Arguably too much.

He doesn't know the meaning of his own business. He will tell you his opinion. And even if you find him annoying, he probably won't shut up.

And THAT is Tim Drake.

So for funzies, gonna just give correct info on all of these

"He was left home alone for long stretches of time as a small child" There's not really much indication that Tim's parents travelled that much when he was very small. He went to boarding school in the time period before he was Robin, also, so he would have been supervised most of the time except potentially some school breaks. While there *is* an indication he wasn't supervised during those at around 13 when he's introduced, there's no reason to believe he was left on his own before he was perfectly capable, and it wouldn't have been for an extended period.

"He followed the Bats on patrol with a camera from a young age" He followed Batman with his camera after Jason died. There is no indication he did it at any point before that. All his collected Batman & Robin stuff was from newspaper clippings and stuff. He *did* find out or know about multiple addresses for Dick Grayson and both break into his apartment and then follow him, though, so he was still a kind of stalker freak.

"Jason is “his Robin”/favorite Robin" This is 100% Dick Grayson without question. The most canon-compliant way to describe how Tim feels about Robins is that he thinks the best Robin is Dick and the second best Robin is himself.

"Batman was unusually hard on him in training at first / Bruce didn't want him" Bruce's initial negative reaction to him was actually not wanting him involved in order to not endanger another child. He started caring for him pretty quickly and was calling him "son" before Tim was officially approved. Jack Drake was actively jealous of how close they were.

"His parents never hugged him / Janet being an intense cold high expectations mom" Both Tim's parents have been shown being physically affectionate with him. Janet has yelled at Jack in the comics before she died (it seemed they were on the verge of divorce), but we've only seen positive interactions with Tim. She also supports boys being allowed to cry and Tim has talked about her worrying about him when he was small.

"He grew up in Drake Manor as Bruce’s neighbor / He went to Gotham Academy" Tim didn't live at Drake Manor (nor was that a property they owned yet) until he was already Robin. His previous family residence(s) was/were in Gotham City proper, not Bristol. Schools Tim has attended include: an unnamed boarding school, Gotham Heights High School (public), Brentwood Academy (boarding), Louis E Grieve Memorial High School (public), John Wayne High School (public), Gotham City High School (public).

"Jason slit his throat at Titans Tower/the entire fanon TT fight" Jason partially slit his throat in a graveyard during Hush. He was patched up by Selina. At Titans Tower, he was beaten but not near-fatally injured.

"Dick tried or wanted to send him to Arkham/he and Dick never reconciled" Dick recommended he see a therapist. Not only did they reconcile, you could argue it was a little too fast, or at least without hashing out what should have been properly, but that gets more into my onion~.

"Ra’s al Ghul kept his spleen / Ra's was so impressed he made Tim his heir" Tim's spleen was removed due to injury, it wouldn't have even been intact. If I had to describe Ra's feelings to Tim after the RR adventure there, it'd probably be "pissed off" lmao

"High-powered badass CEO Tim Drake" Tim did become majority shareholder, and had to do some things with the company, but it's mostly PR and meeting with Lucius. To be fair, this is also the extent of what Bruce does. Also to be clear, Tim is no longer in this position. Also to be extra, extra clear, Tim only ever got that position BECAUSE he was Bruce's son. People somehow thinking he was separating himself from the family here annoys the fuck out of me.

no thoughts, head empty, just crying over Dick and Tim's fight at the Lazarus Pit in Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul again

Bonus: Dick's unwavering devotion to and love for his younger brother:

okay so I lied to @mollyhats because I do, in fact, have meta to write on this fight. HOWEVER, it's less "deep introspective meta" and mostly just me waxing poetic about how emotional this fight makes me every time I think about it.

Because look, literally everything about Dick and Tim in Resurrection makes me super emotional. Dick's general unwavering devotion to and explicitly stated love for Tim throughout the arc...Dick immediately running to the Manor the second he hears Tim might be in trouble without even asking for an explanation...Dick's first words to Tim when he gets there being "are you okay?"...the "for Tim, a thousand ninjas is just the start of what I would do" line...his first priority when Tim and Damian are taken being "I'm coming to save you Tim"...all of those make me go 😭 even on a good day, right?

But Dick and Tim's fight at the Pit really takes the cake.

Tim is grieving. Dick knows Tim is grieving. He knows Tim's lost a frankly ridiculous amount of people in an extremely short time (his school friend Darla, Stephanie, his dad, Conner, and his stepmother Dana, just to name a few). But Dick really thought Tim was doing okay, or at least getting to a place where he could truthfully say he was doing okay. Tim's just been adopted, they've just spent a whole year traveling the world together with Bruce, and they've clearly been keeping in regular contact with each other, as Robin #156 points out:

Except Tim is clearly very much not okay, and it's also pretty clear that he's been hiding that from..........pretty much everyone in his life:

Oof.

So for Dick to show up at Ra's' base to rescue Tim and beat up multiple squads of ninjas while looking for him, not knowing that this is the mindspace Tim's in until he finds Tim at the Pit? No wonder he reacts like this:

And then of course...we get the fight. Putting aside for a moment the fun philosophical discussion they have in-between blows on the revolving door nature of comic book death, it's vitally important to me that Dick never once tries to invalidate Tim's feelings and the grief he feels over the many people that he's lost. His entire focus is on trying to help Tim move forward into a place where he knows the Pit isn't a solution to the pain he feels, but he never tries to deny the pain exists. Again: 😭, every single time.

And to Dick's credit, he tries very hard to figure out where Tim's head and heart are at here. He first tries appealing to Tim's logical nature, thinking if he just makes a solid enough point about how the Pit won't actually give Tim what he wants it'll snap him out of it. When that doesn't work, he brings up his and Bruce's own losses, obviously with the thought that reminding Tim that they've all faced incredible loss and moved forward despite it will help Tim move forward as well. That doesn't work either, and his last-ditch effort is an emotional appeal, trying to tell Tim exactly what Cassie told him when she discovered his attempts to clone Conner: that he wouldn't really be bringing his friend back. But Tim seemingly doesn't care, and so Dick is finally left at a loss about how to help him in this moment.

Then I Ching intervenes, noting that they both have good points that come from valid places and that they must find the balance between those points:

I Ching also reminds Dick that (like his own comment to Tim that "to fight you is only to harden your resolve") he can't make Tim's choices for him, and so Dick decides to make a leap of faith, put his faith and trust in his brother on the line, and give Tim his choices back. He says "I trust you," holds out his hand, and waits...trusting Tim to make the right decision even as he doubts whether that trust is warranted.

And it's only when Dick stops fighting him and stands back, giving him the space and explicit, verbalized trust to make his own choices, that Tim truly wavers. Because Tim knows Dick is right; he knows that the Pit won't give him what he truly wants. But he still wants the people he's lost back so badly that for a moment, he's still willing to risk everything to get it...even the love, trust, and faith of the precious few family members he has left.

He walks all the way up to the pit and gathers the test vials of water....and then he looks back at Dick. And it's that glance back, that long look into his brother's eyes, that finally breaks him. Because Tim loves Dick, and he values Dick's words and love and seemingly unconditional trust in him enough to pour the pit water back out. Tim makes his choice, and he chooses the harder path: to face life in the face of unbelievable levels of death and loss. And it's only then, when Tim has clearly made his choice, that Dick swoops in to reassure Tim (both physically and verbally) that he made the right one.

Sidenote: Dick's soothing words+the hug and the forehead kiss (!!!) get me every time. I think I'll be dead before I stop having emotions over how much love and care is packed into those three panels, tbh.

Anyway, every time I think about the Resurrection arc my mind always comes back to how much love and care Fabian Nicieza put into showcasing Dick and Tim's relationship in Nightwing #139-140 and frankly I owe him my life for doing so, because I'll never be over them as long as I live.

OYL TIm/Cassie: Why It Sucked (& Why It Didn't Have To)

Been re-reading some TT v3 and having Tim & Cassie musings.

Geoff Johns is a better writer than I remembered. He just has a few (particularly painful) lines of dialogue that reveal he didn’t do ALL the homework.

Sean McKeaver is more of a mixed bag than I remembered. He’s doing something p ambitious tho: trying to extrapolate on a love triangle between two living characters and a dead one. The problem is, he's failing at it epically. Mostly bc he doesn't get the weight of the different relationships at play.

Actually bouncing off that last reblog, I think it is absolutely important to understand not only that Jack Drake is new money, but that he is a very specific type of new money parent, (which I happen to think is one that is declining in general existence at least in part to the declining affordability of a lot of these things, although these mentalities are still present, just to a somewhat lesser degree).

Which is parents that are very wealthy but very anti- old money scion behavior of just getting whatever you want. (The beef between old and new money being something that can be absolutely enormous and informs Jack's hatred of Bruce.)

These type of parents would have enough money to get their kids basically anything, but would go "no, I'm not getting you a car, you have to work and earn money and pay for it yourself". With the idea being to teach the kids that they actually need to work for everything they receive, and to be fiscally responsible. Nothing is handed to you on a silver platter.

And then, for instance, Bruce gets Tim a car.

Which not only gives the impression of kind of "buying" his son, but also explicitly undermines his parenting style.

Like, you really really cannot fully understand the absolute massive beef Jack has with Bruce without the knowledge that it involves fear that Tim will learn to start acting like an old money scion.

What makes it kind of extra delicious is that Tim actually does work his ass off. Bruce gives him a car, yes, but that's after all of Tim's hard work and training, after relying on Bruce and Alfred for rides as Robin, after working his ass off as Robin. Tim didn't work to earn the money to buy a car, but he absolutely put in the work to earn it - Jack just didn't see any of it.

It's even better then when Jack sells Tim's car to pay off his debt, because he took something someone else had worked for to fix his mistakes. In his head, he was paying off his debt AND getting rid of something Bruce had "just" bought for Tim on a whim, but from Tim's perspective Jack took something Tim earned and cared about to cover his own ass (that Bruce had to then fix by buying the Redbird and holding it for Tim).

And I get that this isn't technically Jack's fault because he didn't know about Tim being Robin (at the time), but a good chunk of Jack and Tim's problems could have been solved by sitting down and having a conversation about it, or Jack having a conversation with Bruce or with Bruce and Tim, but I genuinely think Jack would rather eat glass than do any of those.

Yep! @chiyana You're right!

100% the thing about this whole gripe is that what Jack sees isn't even true - Tim worked his ass off in regard to everything to do with Bruce, but it's all tied up with Robin stuff, so he doesn't know.

And then when he does find out, he forces him to quit, which yes, is an additional irony even if it sounds reasonable to a lot of people on the face of it, because he's been glorifying the story of a literal child soldier in their family Tim's entire life. (Not to mention that his finding out is tied up in a gross invasion of privacy and his reaction involving threatening Bruce with a gun are both unreasonable stances, I have a full breakdown of Robin: Unmasked as a Jack hate post on my blog. This post isn't about that.)

Which is why the closest he comes to forming an actual, genuine relationship with Tim is in the short time period he has between Tim going back to Robin / him accepting that and his death. Which is where the argument about whether he could have been decent from that point forward comes into play. Because he died, so we don't know.

Basically I think from the perspective of a reader in regard to canon Jack, having a positive or negative opinion of him at the end of the day is very tied up in if you think, had he lived, if he'd have been able to maintain his acceptance long-term now that he knew Tim was fully being raised with this kind of work ethic from both ends, or if he could just not have helped himself but fall back to being bitchy about Tim's relationship with Bruce to the point of his own relationship degrading once again. (Well besides people that might have a positive opinion of him because they agree with a parent being able to treat their child like property, which is a stance I'm fully not going to engage in.)

I have a hard time really believing that Jack would have improved all that much if he had lived, tbh. A lot of what we see from Jack Drake is that he prioritizes himself and what he wants first, and he sees Tim as his property and an extension of himself before he sees Tim as an independent human being - even while loving Tim. Jack waffles a lot and sometimes does a complete about-face in his opinions/behaviors as different writers try to figure out what to do with him, but at his core, he is (or at least very much wants to be) the traditional conservative 'head of the household' patriarch: he wants a nice house in a nice neighborhood, he wants an attractive and doting wife, an obedient son who respects and looks up to him, and he wants to be respected by his peers and seen as a 'real man'.

And from what we see, he has those things for the most part, but there are a few glaring asterisks: his debt problems, the mishandling and loss of Drake Industries, the way Dana challenges him on some things, the way he's older and not in his prime, but all of that can be smoothed over.

Except then there's Tim.

#jack out here having the messiest nastiest divorce slash custody battle with Bruce#a man he has never been married to#nor been in the same room with for a consecutive hour#meanwhile the one he should really be worroed about is Dick#Jack and Bruce arguing about who Tim loves and respects more#meanwhile Tim is staring at Dick with stars in his eyes kicking his heels

Partly just bringing this out of the tags. Although also important to note that said argument about who Tim loves in respects more isn't either of them thinking it's themselves, but thinking it is the guy they are arguing with, while thinking that said guy doesn't deserve it. Bruce looses some rank in the Bruce Wayne Haters Club (of which he's normally high-level) purely from Jack annoying him too much. Meanwhile, Dick is absolutely 100% the person Tim loves and respects the most.

#Tim being the President and Founding Member of the Gotham Dick Grayson Fanclub #Bruce thought it could be him for a while but Tim beat him by several minutes and graciously allows Bruce to be Vice-President

#I think an important thing to note about Jack from a meta perspective #is that he was originally intended to be killed not long after Janet #but was kept around because it would be “more interesting” #so he 100% only ever lived for the Drama#and in the end he died as he lived in that way #just wanted to add that I found the actual reblog and the tags and it's 100% valid to love that whole situation BECAUSE it's messy #it's basically another post I reblogged where it's like “that character is problematic” “yeah they're SUPPOSED to be” that's Jack (via @katanahime)

#DC killed Janet before she could divorce Jack so Bruce gets the post divorce child custody battle mess instead #Jack does not know how to parent as a verb #he never needed to when Janet was alive and after her death he does not learn (via @mizminola)

and also some tags on the original post bc they made me lol:

#One of my fav Jack drake moments (I think this in batgirl?) #Tim says they should get a dishwasher #Jack says that they have a dishwasher and his name is Tim (via @aliteralchicken)

Okay so I know I've blogged and reblogged about this page before, but it usually concentrates on the "And you're not in charge of me. I don't even wear a bat." bit that ends it and I want to back up from that and talk about how the initial response relates to Tim's development since he was a kid that I think gets overlooked:

In particular the power behind saying "You're mad about a different thing." in this specific context.

Because Bruce just blatantly criticized Tim's ability to do his job, his handling of the situation. And since this comic has been from Bruce's pov, the reader does know that's a cover. For his real-world fear of losing his son. And Tim is right, he was thinking about Jason, comparing that situation on the way to the hospital.

But anyone who is a long-time Tim reader would know that Tim as a kid? Would have taken the criticism to heart. Would have worried about it, questioned his abilities. Young Tim had a lot of fear and worry about not being good enough, not making the right decisions, etc.

So while the final "you don't control me" declaration is kind of more universally Tim, I love this "I didn't start yesterday", acknowledgement that Tim isn't the same insecure kid constantly worried about being fired.

You're mad about a different thing. You aren't actually mad at me. And I know you're not actually mad at me.

That particular type of confidence? Is so much newer, and so long-term hard-earned.

Yelling at Batman? Not new. Drawing a connection to something else Bruce would be upset about? Also not particularly new. Being confident Batman isn't actually mad at him? Damn, okay, Tim, I see you.

*chef's kiss*

(Also Bruce is definitely actually mad at himself. I know the slightly later Harley Quinn comic with Tim I've also blogged about mentioned Tim is apparently seeing a therapist now, and I don't know how long he has been, but it's enough of a fair assumption that he was already here, so I think someone properly learned what "projecting" is. Good for him.)

Tim DID want to be adopted, actually

Sometimes people take canon facts out of context and use them to build a narrative that's not true to the full context of those facts, and while there's a certain degree to which that's fine (I firmly believe people in fanfiction and stuff can alter details however they want to build a narrative that pleases them), where it annoys me is where these beliefs extend into people thinking this altered narrative is true beyond the scope of an alternate fandom exploration, and in particular it hits me hard when it comes to topics related to found family and adoption because I'm just so tired of blood tie narratives.

So

Facts: Tim Drake invented wholesale a fake uncle "Eddie Drake" and hired an actor to play him rather than accept Bruce's (first) offer to adopt him following Jack Drake's death.

And out of context, wow, he sure went pretty far to avoid getting adopted by Bruce. I get why people who didn't read the source comics think he didn't want it, I get it.

But here's Tim's actual thoughts in Robin #134 on the page following Bruce's offer:

(Also look at Tim immediately calling the idea of this making him Bruce's son "real", thank you, Tim, for having more sense than so many words more recently that I've had to read with my own eyes.)

So if you haven't personally read this before, you must be asking the question, well, why didn't he accept? Why did he go to such lengths to avoid something he apparently had some degree of excitement about?

Well

Or, in other words, he knew if he lived with Bruce he couldn't keep himself from asking about what happened with Steph. And he felt like the answer would ruin their relationship forever. (Tim often has problems with catastrophizing and fatalism of this nature.) Something Tim desperately did not want to happen.

So he temporarily separates himself so he can get distance from the emotions that revolve around that question. However, he only had a week and he kind of panicked into something that he didn't necessarily think was the best decision.

By the way, once he DOES get adopted later, after Bruce's SECOND offer to do so, we get his thoughts again (Robin #159):

Tim not only affirming that he likes having been adopted, but also reconfirming that Bruce was basically another dad to him long before that was even legally viable.

Which is honestly also just stating out loud what was already very painfully obvious for an extremely long time.

The uniqueness of Tim's situation in the 90's and early 00's was not that he wasn't Bruce's family, but that Tim had more than one. And the push and pull with an odd situation wherein Tim had two dads but in a way that you don't think about when you usually hear that someone has two dads. Especially here on tumblr dot com.

(Personally I loathe Jack Drake, as he's very clearly emotionally abusive [I think the moments he is "better" with Tim are intended to humanize him and tell you that he's not so bad, but it's literally an abusive cycle, because he always goes back to being shitty. Until he couldn't anymore because he died], but I also respect the fact that Tim loved him and still wanted him to be his dad, because people and family are complicated like that. And I could see this thought turning into another essay so I'll leave it at that for now. And I still haven't really discussed Tim and Bruce's actual relationship, either, which I hinted at doing in my other post. I'll get to it...another day.)

The moment that made Bruce the man he is today was the moment his parents were murdered in the alley. He thinks that that moment for Tim had or will have to do with the deaths of his parents as well, like it was for him, for Dick, for Jason, all children whose lives were changed forever by tragedy. He doesn't realize that that moment for Tim was a decade ago at Haly's Circus.

Bruce thinks that he and his mission are the poison, that prolonged exposure will eventually drag Tim down into the darkness he resides in (or worse, like it did to Jason). He thinks of the child he once was, remembers that he became the Bat so that no other child might be suffer that same loss, that same transformation that he has. He doesn't realize that Tim's path was set from the very first day he can remember.

Tim doesn't know how to be any different. How to be anything other than a boy who deduced Batman's secret identity by accident. A boy whose heroes inspired him to become a detective, to pick up computer skills, to learn to fight. A boy who cared enough about two strangers at the circus to risk his life for them a decade later.

Becoming Robin was just the culmination. Becoming Robin is when everything that made Tim Tim started to make sense. The night in the alley was the night Bruce’s life changed, but that night at the circus was the night Tim’s life began.

Tim language compilation, please add on:

Latin:

French and Spanish:

Navajo:

German:

Dutch:

Russian:

American sign:

the thing is that. look whatever you think about extrapolating from "tim stalks and takes pictures of the bats during alpod and in many aspects is weirdly good at it" to "tim was habitually stalking the bats even before/around the time of alpod" -- and i have seriously mixed feelings on it myself; it's cute especially in small doses but this particular headcanon has SUCH a stranglehold on analysis of tim's character for something that . . . actually has no positive evidence . . . that it becomes frustrating

there's. a pretty sizeable difference between "tim was sneaking around stalking and taking pictures of the bats at thirteen" (around the time of alpod) and "tim was sneaking around stalking and taking pictures of the bats at nine"

(a thing for which there is definitely no evidence -- in all of tim's origin stories he recognizes the flip from news footage or other media, not from going out at night himself)

and that unacknowledged gap is, imo, responsible for so much fanon tim flanderization.

Glad to see that Tim being a giant Dick Grayson fanboy is finally being highlighted again, and sparking more discussion especially on their early relationship! (Please gimme more!!! I love them so much, augh!)

Probably as a result of that surge, there seems to be reciprocal chatter on the topic of how young Tim actually felt towards Jason, too. It's honestly pretty interesting, because it's more nuanced than it appears at first glance.

Which means it's very fun to dissect! ✨

There's a degree of subjectivity to keep in mind, because readers are going to have different interpretations of the same scenes, or will pull from entirely different scenes than one another to form their individual view on this topic. That's just how it is in comic book fandom, for many things! Regardless, in this case... if the scale ranges from the extreme of "Jason was Tim's Robin" to the other extreme of "Tim actually hated Jason [as Robin] or thought he was a loser that got himself killed" — the actual truth is closer to the middle, as is often the case.

At least, in my opinion.

Mainly I want to focus on those relatively early days with this post, to highlight Tim's initial(-ish) feelings towards his heroes, and touch on the point at which they really begin to change. This turned into a very long post, though. Brevity is beyond my skill, so grab snacks and water lol. Transcripts for each image will be posted at the very end under the cut.

So, the two storylines I want to cover are "Rite of Passage," which is rolls into "Identity Crisis." (NOT to be confused with the major crossover event "Identity Crisis™" which came years later, and is where Jack Drake dies.... But it sure is an interesting coincidence that Tim deals with the loss of each parent in two similarly named stories!) These take place before Tim is even Robin, and I'll be considering them as one arc for this post.

"When Gotham needed him, he was there. When the Batman needed him, he was there. He was a hero."

"One day, I'll be as good as Jason. One day I'll wear the suit."

To start off, we have this opening from "Rite of Passage." Tim is still in training here, mainly helping Bruce with minor stuff from the cave. His parents are off traveling, alive and well as of these next few pages. He's still bright-eyed and full of wonder. An extraordinarily weird but ultimately innocent kid.

So his view on Jason is positive and fairly simple: a hero, and someone to look up to as Robin. Clearly, Tim here doesn't think Jason was deficient in his role, either as a protector of Gotham or as Batman's trusted partner.

Moreover, Tim already held Dick in very high regard because he was amazingly skilled before he became Robin. To Tim, that's not something he'll ever be able to achieve. Meanwhile, Jason wasn't like that. He was a regular kid without crazy acrobatic training since practically birth. Yet he still went on to be a hero—which is obviously motivational for Tim who finds himself in similar shoes.

It's true that Tim only ever knew or thought of Jason as Robin, and idolized him in that regard. But that's kind of all that mattered to him at that point, because he was this kid who was utterly star-struck by his heroes. Even if he's technically aware of their shortcomings as people, it's overshadowed by the hero-worship.

It was kind of the same with Bruce as Batman at first. (Which was still enough for Tim to risk life and limb to help his beloved hero, before Bruce even knew his name.) Dick was the only one Tim had any sort of "personal" relationship with beforehand, so there is an extra level of attachment—and hence why it was the nidus for his obsession with Batman. Yet even then, it wasn't like he actually knew anything about Dick as a person until later. Until then, Tim's ideas of him were all he had, too. With Jason, Tim just didn't get to know him at any point before his return (oof), apart from what he heard over the years secondhand (also oof).

Ultimately, it's the loss of innocence—along with the ricocheting bullet that is the unresolved guilt of those around him—that begins to change Tim's perception. Not just of Jason, but of things in general.

"I know why they do it now. Why they put on the suits, and the masks, and go out into the night. They're angry, they're full of rage. They want to hit back."

Losing his mother was a major shift for Tim, obviously. This is right after the previous storyline, and Tim's had the worst week or two of his life (so far). His monologue here is a reference to what happened to both Dick and Jason. The unbearable pain of loss, the rage masking the grief underneath. And importantly, that he feels both of them were justified in their anger. (And Bruce too, indirectly.)

The major theme of the aptly named "Identity Crisis" is to mirror aspects of Dick and Jason and Tim's lives—to show how they converged onto the same tragic road. It's something that Tim notices early in the story, and was frightened by. Now, horrifically, it's become a part of him as well. His parents are gone, and he was entirely helpless to do anything about it. Dick was the same way, Jason was the same way. The cycle is repeated.

In particular, the part about him wanting to go to Haiti for revenge—for his mother—sort of struck me as being an intentional parallel to Jason and Ethiopia. It's a bit of a stretch, especially in isolation, so others may see it differently (e.g. the angry ramblings of a grieving child that does sound like something anyone might say). But it always stuck out to me because of how much Tim is compared directly to Jason in this arc. More on that below.

It's not something I can really give an accurate feel of because it's a lot of subtle things that begin to add up, so I'd encourage folks to read this arc themselves to see what I mean. (Or maybe you'll still disagree which is fine too lol.) Again, many things are in reference to both Dick and Jason in relation to Tim, but it's weighted more on Jason's side.

"You think my anger will boil over, the way Jason's did. I can assure you, it won't!"

Tim's grief has begun to pull away the veil of idealism that enshrouded his heroes in his mind. It doesn't apply only to Jason, but to the rest of them. Plus add the fact that Tim's keenly aware that he's being managed, even if the adults around him are careful to not outright say certain things. He still knows.

Bruce, Dick, and Alfred are all worried about Tim potentially turning into "another Jason." They (and mainly Bruce) caution Tim to not ignore his emotions, but they're still concerned that he may be overly eager to prove himself in order to cope, and could get hurt or killed as a result. While they aren't wrong for their caution—especially at how unsettlingly similar all the circumstances are—they aren't very subtle about the elephant in the room.

Imagine how that would affect Tim's perception of his predecessor, especially when he's in the midst of a traumatic event he hasn't had time to fully process. The negative association is pretty much inevitable.

Tim's known from day one that he's walking in Jason's shadow, and now it's become inescapable. Tim went from seeing Jason as a goal to reach, to feeling that unless he surpasses him, he wasn't going to be taken seriously by anyone. However, as of this arc, Tim doesn't even fully come to that point yet.

"Drop-outs don't make it. And dead heroes are no use to anyone!"

It's really easy to take away "Tim totally thought Jason got himself killed" as the main thing here, but I think that's missing the forest for the trees.

First some context: Bruce has gone out on a mission to get Scarecrow, and expressly forbade Tim from doing any shenanigans. Meanwhile, Tim is grappling with wanting to prove himself and trying to help Bruce from the cave, all while trying to deal with his emotions. At some point, he falls asleep and ends up having like... exhaustion-grief hallucinations of Dick!Robin and Jason!Robin who confusingly caution yet encourage him. The main theme of this part is facing your fears.

Depending on how you want to interpret the intent of Jason's dialogue here, you could go several ways with it. Ranging from "writer's feelings towards Jason" to "a peek into Tim's mind as his fears manifest as visions of his heroes" or some mixture thereof.

Though Tim argues with Bruce that Batman needs a Robin, we're shown that Tim is understandably scared of joining Batman's "war." He's still not willing to let Bruce go it alone, though, and that's something he feels more strongly than his fear.

Meanwhile, hallucination!Jason's warnings are a lamentation of what happened to him in a way, but it actually exactly describes Tim's current situation even more so. Unlike Jason, Tim is under-trained, under-experienced, doesn't even have a suit of his own yet. But like Jason, he can't sit by and do nothing while someone he cares about is in danger. Tim knows that if he goes out there, he will probably get himself killed, and it will be his own fault. So he's about to disobey Batman's orders, and fly right into danger. If that got Jason killed, then Tim—who is in a way worse position experience-wise—has every chance of ending up the same.

Like... it's about Jason, but it's also about Tim. It's Tim's worst fears made manifest, via the representation of why he is even here in the first place (Jason's death).

That's my theory anyway, but perhaps this is an overly charitable reading of this scene on my end. (Not that I think that makes me wrong lol.) However given that Grant wrote both parts of this arc, and the beginning of which is especially favorable towards Jason, it certainly is something to ponder. I have a lot of thoughts on it I can't expand on here tbh but perhaps that'll be another post.

Anyway, returning to the point of the similarities vs differences between Tim and Jason: since this is the arc that solidified Tim as the next Robin in comic continuity, it makes sense that the writers really pushed the comparisons between the two of them, specifically. (Even though Dick was pretty similar, as going against Batman's orders is the Robin thing to do, it's not his shoes Tim is directly filling.) So making Tim's "debut" story arc mirror Jason's "swansong" is an obvious narrative choice.

To drive home the parallels, I wanted to include this panel from just a few pages prior to the "daydream":

"The suit is magic."

That so distressingly close to Jason's famous "being Robin gives me magic" line (Batman #385, page 6). Given all the previous context, it's hard for me to just dismiss it as pure coincidence. Even if it is, the point still stands. Tim is shown having the some of the same heartbreakingly naive views as Jason once did, right in front of Jason's memorial, just as he's about to go and run off into the night against orders.

I think that speaks for itself. There's a lot to take away from it, if you so choose. Especially given the context of that specific Jason arc.

Alright, back to the main course:

So in the end, Tim actually goes out in civvies and a ski mask because if he fails, then at least he wouldn't bring shame to Robin's legacy™. When he gets fear gassed saving Batman, it's once again both Dick and Jason that he hallucinates encouraging him to push past his fear. (Shout out to the fact that he's literally more afraid of tarnishing the legacy of Batman & Robin than he is of dying.... I'm sure this will not be a recurring thing for him in the future.)

Tim's ideology is shown to be similar to Jason's, and the actions Tim ultimately takes are similar to Jason's... but the outcome is different. And it really isn't just "Tim succeeded where Jason failed." At least, that's not what I took away from this. Rather, Tim had no reason to succeed any more than he had to fail, just that he did. Luck combined with caution because he knew what happened to his predecessor, and the fact that Batman was there to finish the job all made the difference.

You could say (and I know some will) that it's just classic Jason character assassination and the writers trying to implore readers that this new kid is different we promise pls don't hate us look how much better he is! But in this case, that feels like it undermines the whole point of this story. It doesn't fit with what the characters actually say.

Thus, we return to the question of how Tim felt towards his predecessor. And the answer is different from where we started, because Tim is different. Not that different though. Because even though at this point Tim—like all the adults around him—has probably attributed Jason "going off on his own" being what led to his death, Tim still thought of him as a hero to look up to. It's about Robin, first and foremost, yes. But Tim is fully aware of the people who made that suit mean what it does, because it's all intertwined.

"I mean--Dick made it into a symbol the whole world knows. Jason gave his life for it."

Even further, Tim thinks of it in terms of Jason having given his life for what he believed in, for the legacy that now falls to Tim. There's a sense of gravitas there. He's afraid of failing both the Robins who came before him.

Ultimately do I think Tim adored and loved Jason on the same level as Dick or something? No. It's not comparable. (Dick was like part of some of Tim's earliest memories and everything! They have a really unique bond ok.) Yet Tim was also far from thinking poorly of Jason so early on. Frankly, it seems that Tim thought of Jason as a noble hero and a cautionary tale. Yes he took risks and sometimes went too far, generally stuff that Tim doesn't want to repeat and all that. At the same time, Tim still saw him as someone whose legacy and memory was worth honoring.

It's complicated, which is why I like it so much—because it feels real. Having conflicting feelings towards someone is... so human. Especially someone you never got to know, yet who plays such an integral role in your life via the shadow of their death. How can you feel anything but complicated towards them?

It has to be said that, yes, Tim's views—even before Jason's return—change over the years. He becomes more jaded as a person and is surrounded by people who are even more jaded than him... and who often mention Jason as the "failed Robin." It's something that's hung over Tim's head all the damn time. The curse of the Robin mantle.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Tim's idea of him becomes more akin to "sounds like a skill issue" as the years go by. All bets are off after Jason's return, and the Titans Tower Incident™. At that point it's firmly "I am better than you, loser" lmao.

And... that's all without getting too into things like authorial intent and general "moods" of different DC writers towards Jason at a given point. Or retcons that played a role in his characterization and how other characters talk about him, depending on what "era" you're reading. That's way beyond the scope of this post though!

TLDR; even though young Tim Drake was obsessed with Dick Grayson as Robin, he still looked up to Jason Todd as well. He didn't think of Jason as a cringefail loser until later. :)

(image dialogue transcripts under cut ↓)