2danesand1cat

[2danesand1cat]

My dears , when will you get the chance to be happy

[2danesand1cat]

I had it under control. Robin & Batman (2021)

[2danesand1cat]

Not the animals defending Damian

[2danesand1cat]

Man I think there are two Great Tragedies of Tim Drake, and the second is how hard fandom refuses to engage with the first in favor of their own made-up fanon version of angst. There's plenty of angst in the actual text!

Like the thing about Tim -- actual, pre-Robin, training-to-be-Robin, start-of-his-Robin-run Tim -- is that he sets out on his vigilante journey with two things literally no other batfam member has had before. Tim is normal, and he is happy.

Early Tim, you'll hear a lot in some circles, is meant to be a bland self-insert: look at this kid, he's a Batman fan, just like you! Only he's got more money AND more freedom than you, which means that he gets to have the coolest hobby ever, and when Batman gets in trouble this kid can actually help him out. So cool!

Dick, Jason, Cass, Damian -- they all come to vigilantehood after backgrounds that're various levels of implausible, tragic, and traumatizing. Batman, and their ability to don a cape beside him, rescues them. Their lives get better when they put the uniform on.

Tim's doesn't. Through coincidence or fate or force of plot, Tim agrees to be Robin and his life immediately gets worse. Tim's mom (who canonically loves him and he loves dearly, who's gone more than maybe she should be but a good mom when she's there) dies. Tim's dad's in a coma. Tim's life is upended.

Tim gets strangled by Azbats. Tim almost dies of the Clench. Tim gets all the typical vigilante/sidekick suffering stuff. Tim gets fucked with and fucked over by an increasingly paranoid Bruce.

Tim tries to leave to go back to his normal civilian life but he can't any more, because he is the Normal One, he's been the Normal One for so long that he's missed how much he's changed until he has to fit all of himself inside one single box of normalcy. He tries to leave and it follows him. It haunts him. It stalks him. It kills his friend. It kills his girlfriend. It kills his dad.

(That's the Tim that Jason runs into in Titan's Tower, for fucksake. The orphan living alone in Bludhaven, who's been Robin for years, who left it and then came back because nobody else could live up to him, who's been taking care of himself for ages. The one with half his life and identity pinned not on being granted the opportunity to playact as impostor-syndrome Robin -- that's Tim of two or three or four years ago, just starting out, before he started accumulating loss -- but on being Robin, and being damn fucking good at it. Jason thinks Tim stole his job. Tim thinks he's been doing this goddamn job for four years and if one more person tells him that it's not his, he's going to show them why he doesn't need to turn into Gun Batman to be scary.)

His best friend dies. His other best friend dies. 16- to 17-year-old Tim McFucking Loses It, even before Bruce also dies and pushes him right over the edge, but the tragedy of the Red Robin run isn't just Tim's general sense of self-worth and belief in his ability to be loved. It's stepping back, looking at it in context, and realizing that this was all preventable.

Dick Grayson was never going to be normal, before or after his parents died. Jason was never going to be fine. Cass was doomed long before Bruce ever got to her. But Tim chose this shit. Twelve years old, looking at Batman, too smart for his own damn good but in a way that never once stopped him from making friends and fitting in just fine before -- Tim chose. And he kept choosing, until long after it stopped actually being a choice, until it became all he had, all he had left. Tim made himself into the sort of creature of power and grief that most of his teammates and family had no choice but to be.

What a cool story. (What a very Barbara Gordon story, but that's a conversation for another day.) What a goddamn shame fandom would rather give him the UwU Tragic Backstory and comically terrible parents than tell it.

[2danesand1cat]

[2danesand1cat]

[2danesand1cat]

Baby Damian plsss. (Love your art.)🫶🏻

[2danesand1cat]

[2danesand1cat]

Potentially silly idea...But could we get Jason knitting Tim his beanie?

Love your work. It always makes me smile

[2danesand1cat]

Ok back to regularly scheduled antagonism

[2danesand1cat]

Nightwing (2016-): Fear State

[2danesand1cat]

[2danesand1cat]

POV: You're a gothamite and interrupted their little batfamily chit-chat session.

Art by Dylan Burnett (Instagram: @dylrburnett)

[2danesand1cat]

something so poetic about maysilee saying if she escapes the Capitol she’ll give her mockingjay pin another chance. Little did she know, Capitol and Snow would get what they deserved and she and her pin would be part of it all. Goodbye, Maysilee Donner. You were part of the fire that melted the snow.

[2danesand1cat]

Just finished reading the Hunger games trilogy.

I wanted to capture the book versions, but the film adaptations still have an iron grip on me, so you might see some similarities

[2danesand1cat]

okay, yes, Haymitch did choose Katniss in that first arena, whether it was because he thought she had a better chance, or because Peeta oozed martyrdom, or because of personal loyalties to Burdock, or all of the above — but as soon as it becomes possible to save both of them, let’s not forget that Haymitch is doing his damndest to save Peeta too; he is getting the money for drugs and food and expensive medicine; he was prioritizing Katniss initially, but the line “he loves Peeta too” isn’t in there for no reason; Haymitch didn’t have to save them both; he could have communicated “cut your losses; he’s too wounded and too much of a liability” to Katniss, (who, again did not need Peeta or the romance to survive at that point in the Games) but no! he wanted to save them both, and he did

[2danesand1cat]

rereading catching fire and it's insane how i never fully understood before the bigger picture of snow needing to be "convinced" of katniss and peeta's love for each other and how they were doomed from the very start of that.

it's not that they were bad at performing it. she says it herself, they're "borderline delirious in their love for each other" in public constantly. and not to mention, they really do enjoy each other's company and are around each other 24/7 during this time, never apart. they got publicly engaged. what more could they have even done??? started having sex on the stage???

literally nothing they would have done would have been enough. whatever katniss and peeta did couldn't satisfy snow because he is undyingly determined to project his own past onto this. no matter what, katniss will be equated to lucy gray in his eyes so she can never truly convince him that she loves peeta - because he is delusional.

reading the books growing up as a kid with autism, i just took everything katniss said and thought literally and was completely unable to read between the lines- and we all know that her perception of things is pretty unreliable. katniss, who is unaware that she actually is for real in love with peeta at this point, is convinced that SHE has somehow failed because she hasn't put on a good enough show. the irony is to the rest of the world, you're doing a perfectly good job babe because you both are LITERALLY IN LOVE, but snow will just never believe that because of a personal vendetta.