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From that one panel..

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Another thing that bothers me about the idea that Tim can be removed from the lineup or that just anyone could be in his place, is that how much what Tim repaired and brought to the group (helping Dick and Bruce repair their relationship, bringing more allies to the Bats in general) implicitly is tied to Tim and Tim's personality.

Like, sorry, it could not just be anyone.

You actually need an obsessive, invasive person with next to no boundaries that barely views the idea that it isn't his fucking business as an obstacle, because most people wouldn't touch that shit with a mile-long pole.

The only way you can remove Tim is by giving other people Tim's traits and that's because you actually need Tim.

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Janet, pinching tiny Tim’s cheeks: Tim, baby, I love you but you are a little freak.

Tim, who just showed her a picture of the dead bird he found: Nuh-uh.

Janet: Yuh-huh. I know why too, you've seen too much. Freaky little freak.

Tim: It’s cause I saw those pretty flying people fall really hard and they died?

Janet:

Janet: Yeah, babe.

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There is a lot of mixed feelings on the Tim Drake bag, on one hand, he did admire Jason (in ALPOD he even asks himself if he could ever be like Jason, he has visions of both Dick and Jason's Robins encouraging him to take action), but on the other hand, he thought of Jason as a warning sign at times ("don't act reckless, don't get too emotional, don't be like Jason" basically acting like emotion was the thing that killed him) and after Jason's return, he was pretty much his second biggest hater (the first goes to Dick).

But he was a child when Jason died, I wonder how much he even knew about the events of A Death in The Family. I do think a lot about Tim's relationship with the prior Robins and how Dick was the golden standard he would never live up to and Jason was the big red warning sign that he should avoid.

Just a reminder that

Until the early 2000s, nearly all Jason victim blaming was done by Tim and Dick

Bruce didn't say or think anything overtly negative about Jason until 2002. He had a couple debatable moments in the late 90s, but all of those put the blame on himself for allowing Jason to get involved in the vigilante life rather than on Jason

Tim was the first person to indicate that Jason's death was his own fault, and it was within five years of ADitF (irl years)

Taking into account their pre-death interactions with each other & Marv Wolfman/Chuck Dixon's dislike of Jason as a character, it is easy to make an argument that a lot of Dick's negative statements about Jason are OOC; however he once again is one of the leaders in Jason bashing until Bruce starts in the 2000s, and Dick's interactions with Jason after his return are all very much negative. In a lot of them, Dick is arguably more in the wrong (pre-N52 at least)

Tim idolized Dick as Robin, not Jason, and repeatedly shows a lack of respect towards Jason's memory & Bruce's grief for him

That's all, have a lovely day

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Robin (1991) #4

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Tim & Stephanie recreating The Kiss by Gustav Klimt (Convergence Batgirl #2)

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Follow on to the “out of context panels” thing - sometimes the issue is that those panels still ARE special, if you’ve read the whole story and know the entire context. But you can’t post all that context, and equally you can’t expect anyone else to import all the same meaning when they look at it.

So to the original poster of the moment encapsulates everything they feel about the run/storyline. To someone who hasn’t read all the same things, they can only interpret based on what is presented. And especially when you’re posting the hard-won emotional moment after a long story, people without the context just start riffing off that and reposting it, without the background of how it was achieved.

Let’s take my favourite panels of Red Robin #12.

Now I love these panels, but I know perfectly well the reasons why I personally love them are not the reasons they tend to get shared around fandom. (For one, Ra’s’ kick is rarely/never posted) The focus tends to be on the “I saved the people he loved” text boxes.

That’s not why I love them, however.

To me, it’s the replay of the epilogue of Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul from, where Yost and To explicitly go ‘you got that we reran this exact story, right? Right?’ to their audience, as they’re explicitly referencing THIS page from ‘Tec 840:

Ra’s kicked Tim out a window the exact same way that Bruce kicked Ra’s. Both Ra’s and Tim are fighting with BRUCE - they’re just fighting him by proxy with each other.

If you are unaware this happened, you miss SO MUCH of what’s happening in those two pages of RR 12. They’re even framed similarly.

Also using the context of this, there’s a fascinating parallel that wasn’t anticipated by the creators, but is extremely useful for arguing against fanon.

In ‘Tec 840, the next time we see Ra’s, he’s unconscious in Arkham Asylum.

In RR 12, we get the Dick catch and the “you’re my brother” scene in the Cave.

Given the mirroring, do I really have to spell out the implication that Dick doesn’t think Tim should be in Arkham? No?

But if I just posted the catch with the caption “Dick doesn’t think Tim should be in Arkham” nobody would understand what I meant.

Or here’s another example of “import your own context” - this panel from Streets of Gotham #21 is hysterically funny to me, someone who has read all of Dini’s ‘Tec and Streets of Gotham run. It’s the payoff of a whole HOST of Hush stories and several others.

I adore how STUPID it is.

To someone without that context, there’s a good chance they don’t even accurately identify who is Tommy Elliot here.

The panels you see circulating will always be slightly out of context because you can never predict that you’ve read the exact same set of relevant comics as another person. The best you can do is point people to what implication you’re taking from the scene (and hope all the sweet hugs don’t get reposted completely stripped of context as they inevitably will be)

(Also everyone who reads RR should read Resurrection INCLUDING the epilogue, the entire missing conversation of what Dick thinks through all this is right there in Resurrection for you, you don’t have to make stuff up)

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Batgirls is bad not for any of the articulate and complex reasons I’ve mentioned in the past but because there is no Crystal Brown. New rule if you insist on dragging back Arthur Brown for Steph to fight it’s MANDATORY Crystal Brown is there too. Bc Steph fighting Arthur is literally Nothing to me at this point unless you actually maintain in some form the original pathos of her fighting with Arthur: Crystal Brown. Like yes Steph has her own beef with him obviously she does but first becoming a vigilante in the first place was about protecting Crystal, Crystal defines and informs Steph’s character just as much as Arthur does if not more and I GET including Crystal as a focal point is not as easy as just going ‘look!!! Stephanie browns villain dad omg!!!’ But if you’re going to do the latter at the very very least Crystal Brown should be there too. I’m Not even talking about Crystal as like a physical presence anywhere near Arthur (i just really don’t think they should interact at all tbh) really all you need is the presence of Crystal in Steph’s civilian life or even just the idea of Crystal Brown in Steph’s mind. That’s it. It’s not hard and it would improve any modern subpar ‘Steph fights Cluemaster’ story tenfold.

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me (steph) and the bad bitches (tim and lonnie) I pulled by being autistic

((don’t look too hard at the perspective it’s a wip))

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i only threw this party for you or whatever charlie xcx said

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Bludhaven dies a little bit everyday. Like a flower wilting; all the water in the world can’t stop the spread of decay. 

Dick had called it Gotham’s ‘wicked little step sister’ once. She’d wondered what that made her; the fairy godmother? Prince Charming? 

Now she knows. A surgeon, scalpel at the ready, her hands smelling of rot as she tries to excise this city of its atrophy. If that’s to be the case, however, at least she has a house befitting her role. She’s heard the jokes on tv, that doctors make enough a month to swim in cash.

“Like Scrooge McDuck”, one of the anchors had proclaimed during a segment on IRS raids. That had been interesting- not the crime, but the parallel. She didn’t particularly like cartoons, but she’d enjoyed watching the animated duck waddling around, complaining under his breath. 

Her house- they call it a ‘crib’ on MTV- is nowhere as nice as the ones they pull up on screen. That’s fine. She’s lived in worse. At least her house has incredible water pressure.

And a gaming room, one that she’s treating as a storage place. It’s an odd choice of facility, but then again, Bruce and Alfred were always odd. They probably wanted her to maintain a front as a normal teenager. Like that would work. 

Well. Having another teenager sprawled out on the carpeted floor next to her was probably normal, even if he was Robin.

“Ribs?” He asks her as she settles down with a packet of Sunchips, taking a swig from a Zesti can. She doesn’t like the flavor. It’s too sweet and…blue? Was that a flavour? It sticks to the roof of her mouth like toffee, paints her mouth in artificial shades.

“Okay”, she shrugs casually. She’d bandaged herself up as soon as they’d come back to her house, butterfly stitches where the skin had torn. They hurt a little, but that’s only natural. Someone had clobbered her with a steel pipe- a lucky hit she hadn’t been able to deflect. Tim is probably worse off than she is. He’s the one who’d been getting beat on before Cass had spotted him and stepped in.

“Cheese Viking time, then?” Tim suggests, waving a controller in front of her face. They probably shouldn’t get crumbs and grease stains on them but it isn’t like she’s going to use them after tonight.

He’d picked the fight. Cass knows he had. Every line of his body is tense with unspoken anger. The corners of his eyes tighten. If they’d been animals, he’d be bearing his teeth at her, hackles raised. If they’d been other people, she’d have given him a shot at her, would have put him on his back on the mats till it's out of his system.

But that’s not who they are. Who he is, at least. He wants to pretend that everything is okay. That he isn’t an eruption waiting to happen, all of him quiet but absolutely screaming with feelings that need to be let out. It’s almost deafening to sit next to him.

She was mine, too, Cass thinks, the thought more potent than any bullet, she was more mine than most.

If anyone could understand what he was going through, it was her. If anyone could understand what she was feeling, put it into words, it was him. 

But that’s definitely not who they are.

“Cheese Viking time”, she confirms, snatching the controller from his loose grasp. The movement makes her torso twinge, but it’s bearable.

Hmm . She can use this to her advantage, she knows she can. She just needs to wait for the right moment.

The screen lights up. Tim directs it to the game. There’s a split on the television, two avatars bobbing in place as the customization options load. 

“I’m blue”, Tim claims before she can say a word. Fine. It’s not going to keep her from winning this thing.

“Red”, Cass decides, scrolling through the hairdos, “Superman look?”

“Blegh”, Tim fakes a gag, “Nightwing all the way, obviously”

The Zesti has turned his mouth and tongue plum coloured, but he doesn’t seem to care. He scrolls through the menu intently, slapping a domino mask on his avatar, then a mullet. Cass turns her focus onto her own character, switching between two pairs of sunglasses, unable to choose.

“That’s your HP bar”, Tim nods at a line of red that hovers above her head, “once it goes down completely, you’re out”

Cass squints at the power up options. Speed? Super strength? She doesn’t need any of them.

“Do this to move”, he instructs her, holding up his own console to demonstrate, “press these two buttons to punch, this one to block, and that one to-”

“Jump”, she finishes for him, slamming into his character and starting up the game. He has no idea what he’s in for.

“You’re going to regret not changing out of combat mode”, he tells her, like she hasn’t burnt her eyes out on gameplays every other night, scrolling through video after video as she lay between sleep and wakefulness. It was fun, watching random people screaming with their friends, loud and unrestrained. She likes watching them fail miserably at coordinating, dropping things all over the place, getting in each others’ way. 

Tim curses as she dodges, chasing her in a small circle around the arena. The more she runs, the more zoomed out the camera gets. Cass wants to know how much she can make it pan out, but she can tell that Tim is starting to get impatient. She needs to push her advantage.

She waits, watches the way Tim twitches next to her.

Wait, wait, wait.

On screen, his character leaps into the air, spins.

Wait, wait, wait.

Cass mashes the buttons on her controller with only half a mind, her own avatar throwing its hands up to block the kick.

"Cassie, you absolute-", Tim doesn't finish the sentence, aiming a friendly blow at her shoulder.

Now.

She twists; the hit connects with her injured ribs, digging straight into aching flesh. The yelp of pain she lets out is completely involuntary.

Tim lets out a string of expletives, some of which she's never even heard of before. She carefully shelves them away for future use.

"Oh shit", Tim looks horrified, the Zesti stains on his cheeks and mouth glistening under the light from the screen, "Cassie, I didn't mean to. I-"

His grip on his controller slackens. Now, now, now.

Cass' fingers fly over the buttons. Her avatar falls back into the offensive, punches Tim's avatar in the face enough times for little star graphics to appear around its head, the blue bar rapidly dwindling, and watches triumphantly as she’s declared the winner.

Tim watches her, slack-jawed and betrayed.

"That's going to scar", he says when he finally regains his voice, nodding at where her stitches have torn. Oops.

She bares her teeth at him in an approximation of a smile, "That's okay. I'll think of my victory everytime I see them"

This time, he aims his punch much more carefully, making sure it lands on her shoulder. 

“One more round?” He offers, something in him finally going quiet. Was that the solution then? Junk food and friendly competition?

It doesn’t make her feel that much better. Not really. There are things she wants to tell him, yell at him if he won’t listen. And he clearly has things to say to her. They’d never really gotten around to it, having a proper conversation about what it meant for them to be on the streets of this city together but not working as partners.

But for what it is, this isn’t all that bad. She may yet use this room as it’s meant to be used.

“You’ll owe me a pizza this time”

“More like you’ll owe me”

“We’ll see about that”

Cross-posted on AO3

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ANARKY IS GONNA BE IN THE NEW BATMAN SERIES!!! I REPEAT!! HE'S GONNA BE IN THE NEW BATMAN SERIESSSSS!!

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ANARKY IS GONNA BE IN THE NEW BATMAN SERIES!!! I REPEAT!! HE'S GONNA BE IN THE NEW BATMAN SERIESSSSS!!

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Unfortunately writing the War Games AU fic required some rereading of War Games and aftermath, please honor my sacrifice, and either I somehow never read the part where Bruce went over how he broke the news to Tim and I'd forgotten that he WAS WITH TIM when he got the news Steph might be dying and chose to just. not tell him. tell him to go home and be with his family instead. Like it's framed as him spiraling and just wanting Tim to be happy and safe for a little while longer but. you know who probably would have loved to see Tim before she died. Who explicity asked where he was during her deathbed scene. But as always, fuck her, I guess. (And fuck Tim, ultimately, since the two hours of not having your life completely destroyed don't make up for not getting to say goodbye to someone you loved) (she was meant to permanently die here remember, the retcon came after relentless campaigning)

And then later Tim comes to BREAK INTO THE CLINIC and see Steph because he's obviously very worried and is like "Bruce what's going on was she transferred????" and Bruce has to break it to him! no!!!

And everyone was making jokes about Tim making up a fake uncle and all that but you know, in the context of knowing that happened, I would also say 'no' to getting adopted by Bruce, choose to move to another city (Tim even tells him he's doing this at Steph's funeral which makes that this is why he's doing it extremely clear), and make up a fake uncle so I didn't have to deal with him. 100% understand this now. Everything makes sense. I would never talk to Bruce again but I can say it about a lot of incidents between him and Robins and Batgirls.

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Hey guys something fucking bad happened

KOSA/the kids online safety act has been reintroduced into legislature after it passed Senate last year and then got snubbed. It is not unlike the bill that just passed in the UK a few weeks ago. If you don't want what happened in the UK to happen here, now would be a good time to vocally oppose it.

Here is a petition that can be signed by Americans. Attached to the petition is an easy tool that allows you to call and leave messages for your representatives. I have already done so. You can also email your representatives by searching for their name, most have message submission boards as well. This thing died once, it can die again.

Please sign/share the petition and contact your representatives.

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My general frustration with Reborn era for the Bats and the leadup to it (actually starting from Batman RIP), is that none of the characters are written like they are characters in situations, all of them are written like tools for an idea of where the plot is supposed to be going.

There is an end goal, and we are getting there, the characters and how they would actually act and react be damned.

Cassandra Cain being given the actual er example of her shitty fanfiction treatment - she doesn't work for our plot and we don't want to deal with her, so she goes away for shallowly given reasons that don't actually make in-character sense if you examine it for more than a moment's thought.

Tim Drake is given a bit better of a treatment in that he's actually given his own focus series still in being shoved away, but he isn't casted as himself. Even with a good writer, he isn't able to do anything more than remind of who he is supposed to be and that he is acting otherwise for Reasons, and then when those goals are accomplished, every moral of the story is ignored in favor of giving him back to a shittier writer to continue keeping him more roped off from where he should be and where the logical conclusion of the previous storyline would have actual lead him.

Dick Grayson is not allowed to make decisions that have any real respect for his established relationships and loyalties, nor his level of intelligence. My urge to write an entire essay itself on dozens of actions that would have made more sense for him is biting at me and I just don't have the energy because I'm so Tired. And I'm tired of the shallow explanations of him being stressed and sad like he's never been stressed and sad before, like that's some kind of catch-all explanation for being ooc.

And that's just my three favorite characters. I could talk about Damian. I could talk about Steph. And how both of them are used as particular kinds of tools in wherein the narrative has to *tell you* it's supporting them, because if you thought about it for a minute, you'd realize it actually isn't. I could talk about the other characters that are sidelined or shat on.

I loathe it and the entire era drove me away from dc comics 2 years before N52 had a chance to make things even more deplorable and KEEP me away another decade.

So if you see me, having come back to comics a few years ago, being kind of forgiving toward some less-than-perfect stuff written between 2019 and earlier this year?

At least there ARE things I can like, at least not every single title is tied up in something that doesn't care about who the characters are. (And yes I'm SO wary of certain writers being given jobs that clearly do not care, but that's a whole other conversation and involves my lack of trust in future decisions.)

Absolutely Tired with the fandom Obsession with how things were in 2009-2010 and fighting over things as if that was the situation and as if how characters acted then is how they should be represented.

That era SUCKED. That's my opinion. If you have a different opinion, I'm happy for you, don't argue with me, I'm not going to respond to any defense of it, I hope you have fun with literally the only era half of all people have pretended was current for the last decade and a half. Thanks, I hate it.

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I've been working on a long (50p+) moshang doujin for a while now, and today I finally managed to wrap it up and post it for my patrons. So as celebration, I'm finally taking out of the vault this one! It's the art that sprouted the idea for the comic and kept me going strong at it until now!