#and look at us now with the current canon being Dick all amnesiac and Bruce all gone!!

[unavenged-robin]

Juxtaposition - 3

Part 1 + Part 2

Tim hadn’t meant anything by it, honestly. He just happened to stumble into the kid while having a camera in his hands, and that was all. It hadn’t been his fault if Damian was too busy drawing and didn't notice him: the brat was supposed to be a baby ninja, after all. Another thing he was not responsible for was Damian being... photogenic. He would never use the word cute, not even to save his own life.

Point is, the kid was sitting there, under a tree, surrounded by his pets - Titus' big head on his leg, Alfred the cat curled up by his feet - his head bent over an old sketchbook, and a look of total focus on his face, and Tim didn’t even think about it, he raised the camera to his eye and took the photo.

Click.

Damian lifted his head, looking annoyed but not surprised. So maybe he had known about Tim being there. Maybe he just hadn’t care enough.

“Taking photos of people without their explicit consent is a felony, Drake”, he said, narrowing his eyes at Tim. “I could report you and have you arrested.”

Tim snorted and plopped down on the grass in front of the kid.

It was such a beautiful day. The sun was warm over the skin and the wind was like a gentle caress on the face. Even the colors looked like they were happy to exist; they were so intense they seemed to vibrate under his stare: the blue was so blue the sky could’ve very well been the ocean, the green was so green the whole garden could’ve been just one, giant new leaf of a young tree.

And Damian, Damian was a spot of red and black in all that green, like a tiny ladybug resting in the grass, and his eyes were also the greenest green Tim had seen for a while. He had smiled at the kid with a contented heart.

“You happen to be a minor, brat”, he reminded him with a bit of teasing in his voice. “And I'm listed as one of your legal guardians. That means that, until you're eighteen, I can pretty much do whatever I want with you.”

Damian looked up from his sketchbook to squint at him. His cheeks were sun-kissed and his nose was getting too red under the warm light of the afternoon, and Tim remembers how in that moment he had the sudden, shattering realization that he felt a not insignificant amount of affection for his brother. And that had not been the only time he’s ever felt that way, but it had perhaps been the first one.

Damian had dismissed him without a second thought.

“You are not my legal guardian.”

“I am too.”

The words stayed there for a moment, lingering between them, then Damian had frowned at him, out of curiosity more than outrage, Tim thought, as he choose to believe him.

“Why?”, he asked.

Tim turned his eyes away, lifting his face to observe the branches of the tree above them swaying slowly in the wind. He didn’t want to ruin the quiet.

“Because this family is a mess and Bruce wants to be sure that, if he decides to go take another stroll in the past again, you won't be left on your own”, he explained anyway. It was both a surreal and a serious affair, and they both knew it.

Damian had considered it for a moment, gnawing pensively at the tip of his pencil.

“I won't be left with you anyway”, he decided with a shrug. “You would have to go through Grayson's body to get me.”

Tim remembers how he had laughed at that.

“Yeah, that's true”, he had said. “Neither of us need to worry about it.”

*

Tim stares at the ceiling of his own bedroom like he expects some kind of answer coming down from there, along with a few friendly spiders he’s never had the time to chase away.

That afternoon used to be a good memory, once upon a time. Now it comes at him at night, haunting him with its bitter taste of unforeseen omen, and Tim wonders if Damian ever thinks about it, if he remembers it as clearly as he does.

He hopes not. He hopes that, at least for the kid, it’s not ruined.

There’s still some good stuff attached to that memory, though. Damian had wanted that photo, marched down to this very apartment to get it. And Tim had developed the film just for him, showed him how to do it and pretended not to notice how invested Damian was. That had been nice too: teaching the kid something new, something harmless they both enjoyed. Damian had let Tim guide his hands through the various proceedings, he had even obeyed every instruction with a minimum amount of huffs and scoffs. That had been another good day.

Fast forward, Tim hadn’t been there for Damian’s eleventh birthday, but he had bought him a camera and asked Alfred to pack it up in the most childish, colourful wrapping paper he could find, and to give it to the brat when he looked less willingly to throw it away without even bothering to unwrap it. And of course he hadn’t expected much in return, but to his surprise Damian had actually texted him a short and very formal thank you. That meant the little gremlin had loved the gift. Tim had been happy about it.

Those memories still makes him smile, even if now they leave a bitter aftertaste on his lips. Nice moments like those had been a rare thing, little pearls lost in the sand of the constant fights, the misunderstandings, and the mutual disinterest.

And now the world was all chaos and fragile things, and none of them really know what to do. Not Damian, freshly deprived of the only two father figures he had ever known; not Tim, who had found himself responsible for him; and sure enough not Jason, who had just got himself trapped in the whole mess.

Tim sighs and gets out of bed. The clock radio on the nightstand marks four o'clock in the morning, but there's no way he’s going back to sleep tonight, he's sure of that. Better to make some tea and keep working on tomorrow’s case. At least that’s the plan when he gets into the kitchen.

He goes as far as to put some water on the heat, then the memories of that afternoon comes back to needle him. There must be a box somewhere, filled with the photos from the first film he had developed for Damian, the first photos the kid had ever took in his life, as far as Tim knows. And e hadn't told Damian this - of course he hadn’t - but he'd made copies for himself. At the time he hadn't even ask himself why: he had just wanted to do it, so he had gone and done it.

He finds the box tucked away on the highest shelf of his library, covered by a thin layer of dust. Housekeeping’s never been his strongest suit.

A faint gurgling from the kitchen reminds him of the tea he was making. Tim retrieves it, pushes some jasmine leaves into the hot cup, then goes and sits on the couch. He shoots a quick look at Damian's room, but the door is closed and no light seeps from under it, no noise comes from the other side. The boy should be asleep.

For some reason he can’t explain, Tim feels a pang of guilt as he opens the box.

Damian’s photos are all there and Tim picks them up with a smile. It's funny looking at his family through the kid's eyes: everyone looks a lot taller, everything seems bigger. It's a bit of a déjà-vu, because Tim remembers well enough how the world looks like on a child scale.

The first bunch of photos are reserved to Damian's pet, of course. Here’s Titus, sleeping on the library’s rug or sitting at Damian’s feet, and Alfred the cat curled up on the windowsill. There’s Batcow eating some grass in the back of their courtyard, Goliath with its wings spread out, getting ready to fly. Tim knows Damian misses them. He wish he could at least give them back to him but he has no space for pets in his apartment, and they can’t go home anyway.

He puts those photos aside, and the next one hits him like a fist in the stomach. Here, in front of him, there’s Dick. He's smiling down, his lips upturned, the affection so clear in his eyes. Tim tries to imagine whatever absurd excuse Damian had tried to made up to justify his wish to have a picture of him, and he can’t think of anything, but it’s pretty obvious that Dick had seen right through the kid.

Damian is the subject of the next photo. Even if it hadn't came up right after Dick's one, Tim would've known anyway that Dick was the one who took it. It's the expression on Damian's face to give it away, that little not-really-annoyed-but-pretending-to-be-anyway scowl that holds the same affection of Dick's smile. He can see that moment so clearly in his mind. How Dick would’ve said something like you can take a picture of me only if I can take a picture of you, and Damian would’ve rolled his eyes and then indulge the blackmail with a secret happiness.

He laughs heartily at the following four photos. They are a set of unfocused, very awkward selfies of Damian and Stephanie, with her being the head of the operation, since Damian's arms would be too short to even attempt it. Damian’s glaring in the first photo and openly laughing in the last one, and Stephanie had been quick, albeit a little imprecise, at capturing that moment. The result is a blurry picture with a very strange angle, but it’s still one of Tim’s favorite.

There are a lot of pictures of Bruce. At first they were taken from a distance, and they portray him from behind, or busy doing something else: bending over his desk to write a letter, sitting in the armchair reading a book, standing in the kitchen with Alfred sipping a tea. They all give the idea of stolen moments, even if Bruce had probably known what the kid was doing. Tim could see him playing along, waiting for Damian to decide what worked best for him.

And of course Damian had eventually decided to make Bruce a part of the new hobby. The other shots still have a formal setting, very different from the spontaneity of the photos of Dick and Stephanie, but Bruce smiles in almost all of them and there’s a complicity and a quiet happiness that makes Tim’s heart ache. He misses Bruce. And he can only imagine how much Damian’s missing him too, how all this time apart is affecting him, his memories, his relationship with Bruce.

Tim brushes a cold fingertip over the pictures and wishes he could fix, if not everything, at least some of it. They can’t have Dick back, but Bruce is still there, still alive, and breathing, and living a life that doesn’t include them anymore, and if anything, it hurts almost as much as believing him to be dead.

He takes a quick look at all the photos again and he wonders how it is possible that none of them ever realized how important those moments were, how much they would have missed them once they were gone. For all the unspoken things and the cruel past, for all the miscommunications and the fights and the bickering, the truth of what there used to be between them as a family it’s just there in his hands: it was love, love and nothing else.

He hopes that Damian can see it too.

He flips through the pictures one last time, and this time he’s forced to notice how there are no photos of himself, or of Jason, for that matter. It shouldn't have been unexpected, but it stings anyway, even if only a little bit.

Tim’s considering what to do with the photos, if put them in their box and hide it again, or leave everything here on the coffee table for Damian to find, when he hears soft footsteps behind his back and the decision is taken out of his hands.

“Hey”, he says when the kid circumnavigates the couch to come standing in front of him.

“Want some tea?”, Tim offers, lifting his own cup.

Damian shakes his head no and curls up next to Tim, tucking his bare feet under him. He looks still half asleep, which is kind of a blessing right now. Tim has a good feeling about how Damian will take the news of the existence of those illegitimate copies of his pictures, but you never know.

“Mine are still in my room back at home, I believe”, Damian whispers, as he reaches out for the box. Tim lets him have it, and watches him closely as the boy collects all the pictures in his hands.

“Alfred would never let anyone touch your room while you’re away”, he reassures him, and since Damian’s just got to the picture of Dick, he slings an arm around the boy’s shoulders and pulls him closer.

“We’re going to need an album for them”, he says gently. “Like one of those Alfred has back home. We can make a new family album or something. Show it to him once everything goes back to normal, you know?”

Damian nods as he leans against Tim’s chest. He’s still warm from the bed, and his hair is a mess, but also soft under Tim’s chin. He’s wearing one of Jason’s old shirt because for the second week in a row Tim forgot to do the laundry, and he smells like Dick’s aftershave because that’s what Jason’s using now.

Tim holds Damian a bit closer. They are all trying to pick up the pieces as best as they can. It’s not easy.

“We could go to the park tomorrow”, he adds, because why not. “Bring Jason with us. Take some new photos for your album. What do you say?”

Damian moves closer to him, eyes still transfixed on Dick’s face.

“Yes”, he answers softly. “I would like that.”

[stxleslyds]

You always seem down on the idea of the Batfam. I mean, it is hard to take seriously when writers make Bruce hostile or downright abusive towards his kids, or when Batfam members never interact. But do you think the concept itself is good, and it's just been the victim of bad writing? Or do you think the Batfam is a bad idea that can never work?

Hi there Anon! Thank you for the ask!

Hmm, this is a difficult question. Maybe I can answer this better if I do it in parts because the concept of “Batfamily” is used in different ways currently. A way to separate them can be, DC’s Batfamily, Fandom’s Batfamily and Fandom’s Batfamily lore being introduced in comics’ canon.

DC’s Batfamily:

My rejection of this version of Batfamily comes from all angles, it is not a good concept within comics lore anymore, it’s badly written and used to hide and move on from truly horrendous actions done by Bruce towards the rest of the family, and DC uses the concept of “Batfamily” that fandom has become so attached to, so they can profit off of it without writing anything of real essence with it.

Why did I say that the Batfamily isn’t a good concept anymore? Well, because the Batfamily that I first came across in comics included, Bruce, Dick, Alfred, Barbara, Tim and Cassandra. It was rather small and their books interconnected and had pretty solid relationships with one another. Dick and Tim got along and spent time together, Barbara mentored Cass so she could become Batgirl and so on and so forth. The family was smaller and more connected. But they still had problems and bad habits then. So, I liked them as a group of people that worked together and the name they received was “Batfamily” as a way for DC to profit from it.

Right now, the Batfamily is huge, I don’t know if you have seen those splash pages with all the members of it for Rebirth and Infinite Frontier, but those promotional pages were crazy big, characters like Harley and Clownhunter are now considered part of the “Batfamily” and all that. Then there is the kind of characters like Cass, Steph and Kate who are all connected to Batman but that haven’t been appearing in books for very long, so putting them on that page really feels like DC is trying to prove that their “Batfamily” actually has women on it, but it’s just for show.

And then there is Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian, the most recognizable faces of the Batfamily aside from Bruce and Alfred (but Alfred is dead now so he doesn’t really count), all of them have had issues with Bruce or are indifferent to the existence of one another. Yes, Tom Taylor has included Tim in Dick’s book but here is the thing, it feels like he put him there just to make fans shut up about the lack of content with both of them acting as they used to do. But its false and lazy, Taylor just brought Tim to the book but we don’t get to see Tim and Dick interact in ways that can explain why they drifted off, it kinda seems like all those years where Dick and Tim were pulled apart never happened to DC and that makes me think “cash grab”. I would have loved to see them interact again if it meant that we would have some solid story for them to develop their relationship once more.

At the end of Rebirth, Damian was pissed off at Bruce and they had a fight and Damian left the manor completely. Bruce beat up Jason, then gave him a hug but still told him that he was banned from Gotham and all that abuse and manipulation was swept under the rug when DC came out with Urban Legends: Cheer, all they did with that story is lie and made-up stories about Jason wanting Bruce to go on a killing spree so Gotham can finally be the home to his beloved family (lies, lies, lies).

On top of all that we have the neglect, abuse and manipulation that Bruce had going on with Dick, ever since Bruce manipulated Dick into joining Spyral his actions haven’t faced any consequences (the family still believes that Dick was the one who lied about dying). And as recently as the end of Rebirth, Dick suffered from a head injury that left him amnesiac and Bruce absolutely didn’t care enough to look after him when he was so vulnerable and alone. DC had the audacity of having Bruce say that he was looking after Dick while Dick went from one villain manipulating and hurting him to another, and if we look at Batman’s run, we can see that he spent some of that time in a weird pit or playing catch the pussy with Selina in a tropical island.

So, taking all those things into account, I honestly believe that the Batfamily is a concept that absolutely does not belong in comics. If it were to be taken seriously then DC should come up with (organic, not forced) stories that make these characters connect once again, but they have to be careful, just because they can connect it doesn’t mean that everyone gets along and they have group chats and eat dinner together of Fridays, that would be a blatant lie and just too out there for their kind of dynamic, so, they should take things slow, start re-building what once was an make it better (if they want to make it work and feel like less of a cash grab).

I heard that there is a book with Cass and Steph being mentored as Batgirls by Barbara coming out in December, that to me is a good thing, what was done in Robin #5 was awful, Jason didn’t have or want to be there, Tim, what the hell was Tim doing there? The only ones that have gotten along with Damian and have had a solid relationship with him were Dick and Steph. Dick had a very nice moment with Damian in that issue, but Steph didn’t, they preferred to have Jason wanting to hug Damian instead (what the actual hell was that?).

Fandom’s Batfamily:

Fandom is a place where people can take any concept from anywhere and transform it into whatever they please. This fandom is just like any other in that matter, but I have noticed that sometimes the Batfamily Fandom tends to blur the lines between what’s fanon and canon. Their lore is so deep and established among people that they sometimes (willingly or not) make new readers or other people believe that how things and perceived in fandom is how things actually are in comics, and that is a huge problem.

Things like “Dick sent Jason to Arkham when the Joker was just a cell away”, “Jason has pit madness and when he gets mad his eyes turn glowy green”, “Dick was a horrendous brother to Jason before Jason died”, “Jason would be good friends with Tim and Cass”, “Jason is the only one that sees the world differently from Bruce and the other robins because he is the only one that comes from a life with no luxury” and so on and on and on…

All of those things are sometimes treated as the absolute truth by fandom and no matter how many times people have debunked and explained that those things aren’t part of comics’ canon because they are simply not true, fandom stills treats those things as the basis of their Batfamily lore.

That lore would be actually fascinating if people didn’t lose sight so easily of the fact that at the end of the day none of that lore can be applied to comics’ canon.

When you enter this fandom things can be extremely confusing and the way some of the characters are characterized are completely different to their canon characterizations, I knew that the Dick fandom was writing about was not real, but I had no idea that Tim being a coffee addict that hasn’t slept in five months and is an absolute genius in everything and anything that he does was completely out of character for him, I just thought that was true to his character in comics too. Something like that happened to me when I took a peek at Jason’s side of fandom, by that time I had read Red Hood/Arsenal, UtRH and New 52 RHatO (yeah in that order, Red Hood/Arsenal wasn’t finished yet though), with the already conflicting characterizations of those books, the first look that I had at fandom’s Jason confused me even more. After considering all those I decided that the Jason that I wanted to see and actually looked appealing to me was UtRH Jason.

Not all people in fandom read comics and that is ABSOLUTELY VALID, I have zero problems with people not liking the comic characterizations of the “Batfamily” characters, but that in itself also creates a rift between fans themselves.

Fandom’s Batfamily lore being introduced in comics’ canon:

This is obviously the intersection of the other two points and this is the biggest problem that I have with the Batfamily concept. The fandom lore has been leaking into comic’s canon for a while now but right now we are kinda drowning in it. Decisions that have been made recently in DC like, Jason giving up his guns, the group chats in Nightwing issues, the family dinners that were hinted at in Cheer #6, and Bruce having had at the ready a Red Hood suit for Jason with a Batman logo in its chest, have been proof enough that DC is planning on skipping any kind of solid writing for these characters to actually get along. We are never going to see these people sit down and talk about their differences and respect each other’s work ethics.

We are never going to get stories of actual essence that prove that these characters understand and care for each other, we are just going to be told that “all is good” and now everyone loves one another and they will build from there.

That is a problem for me.

-

And it also takes away duality from Gotham’s vigilantes, I know I say this too much but it’s the truth, putting all these characters under the ruling of Batman makes them all bland. Jason shouldn’t be part of any sort of group that involves Bruce! My god, I don’t want to see them interact anymore! Bruce has been absolute trash to Jason ever since he came back from the dead and I am tired of DC trying to make them be on good terms!

Jason and Bruce not getting along can co-exist with the fact that Jason isn’t a villain to Batman’s legendary hero. Jason is his own character, with his own morals and he doesn’t need a bat symbol on his chest or book logo to be relevant. Same with Dick, Tim and Barbara, let them be characters that can stand on their own because they have already done that!

Barbara as Oracle worked WITH Batman if she wanted, she had her own logo and had passed on the mantle of Batgirl because he had grown out of it.

Dick is Nightwing and has become an even better hero than Batman could even aspire to become, he has contacts with everyone in the DC universe, has led countless teams, he doesn’t NEED a batman logo on his book or to be constantly dragged back to him just to make the Bat more compelling.

Jason, my sweet Jason, he had his own logo! It was gorgeous and then Lobdell had the audacity to stamp a Batman logo in the middle of the book name and in Jason’s chest! Have we gone absolutely mad? Why did they do that? Lobdell’s constant back and forth with Jason and his feelings for Bruce, he respects him and he doesn’t, he kills and he doesn’t… each issue felt like a new take on the character! It was crazy!

And that has happened with everyone in the “family”. I will end this by saying that Bruce/Batman being at the centre of this “Batfamily” dynamic is the most laughable thing in the DC Universe. Batman isn’t family to any of the people that they constantly surround him with, he is a piece of shit.

Anyway Anon, I hope this answer doesn’t ruin your day and that you understand that even though I really don’t like the “Batfamily” concept, you and everyone else are allowed and encouraged to think differently!

Hope you have a marvellous day Anon!

[jaybirbmoved]

Jason Todd’s Age

So, as of DC Rebirth, Jason is supposedly twenty years old. 

Of course on my blog I like to dismiss most of the finer canon details while keeping the story lines, filling them in with my own shit, because I can. I know their ages keep getting changed and the timeline is made shorter and shorter because they want to keep Bruce like, 40 years old forever, but that’s stupid too (if you want him to be spry and young you could just point to all the mystical bullshit he’s been involved in as a reason why he’s not age while his kids are, but whatever). 

On my blog, there are the ages I generally use: Dick is 25-ish, Jason is between 20-22, Tim is 17-19, and Damian who has actually been shown celebrating birthdays is between 10-13 depending on the comic. As blog default I make Jason chronologically 23, and I periodically update his ‘birth year’ to keep up with that, which... should probably remove that altogether because the comics are so all over the place there’s no point in giving any of them a year of birth.

Anyways, back to the main point of this.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that there’s no way in hell that Jason would/could look his actual age. DC insists on trying to cram ten years worth of storyline into a three year period, but since Jason was brought back into the main comic continuity in 2010, a lot has happened. I call bullshit on him having been Robin, died, come back, taken over Gotham’s criminal underground, formed two separate teams and had half a dozen clashes with the family before getting on good terms with them again, been part of Batman Inc, all in less than six years, that’s just fucking dumb. 

Even ignoring the fact that my personal canon for him a mash up of Post-Crisis origins and the current New-52/Rebirth continuity, it wouldn’t make sense for Jason to be 20. For starters, Post-Crisis Jason Todd died when he was 15, this is undisputed due to it being mentioned a few times. It says he 

According to his death certificate, it was April during Death In The Family (assuming Bruce didn’t take a while to forge a cover story for his death and he actually was killed earlier than that). Jason’s birthday is in August, meaning he died roughly four months before his sixteenth birthday. According to the end of Under The Hood, Superboy’s punch altered reality and Jason woke up in his coffin six months after his death. For the sake of argument, we’ll say it was exactly six months.

This means he woke up on October 26th, roughly 2.10 months after he was supposed to turn sixteen. During that time, he obviously couldn’t mentally or physically age while dead. He spends about a year comatose, a little under a year as a homeless amnesiac after waking up from the coma, and then another year with Talia as she tries to get him to recover from his brain injury. Chronologically he would have been around 18 when Talia shoved him into the Lazarus Pit, which seems about right. So minus the six months he spent dead, that means he’s about seventeen and a half physically speaking, and still 15 mentally/emotionally due to his development being stunted by trauma.

Now, we know the Lazarus Pit can cure diseases, heal injuries, and also resurrect the dead. However, it was mainly used by Ra’s Al Ghul, before learning of it’s full abilities, to de-age him, hence being considered the origins of the ‘fountain of youth’ in the DC universe. Apparently, the longer you stay in the younger you get (also if a young and healthy person went into the Pit they would die and/or be driven insane).

Given Talia literally shoved him in because she was pressed for time and needed to heal him and get out before Ra’s flipped his shit (and BOY did he ever), I would say Jason was submerged for 30 seconds to 1 minute. This is just guessing on my part. But if less than five minutes can make Ra’s go from being in his seventies to his mid-twenties, I’d say it’s fairly plausible for Jason to have gone into the Pit as a 17/18 year old and come out looking fifteen or sixteen.

Which, if you look at flashbacks of New 52 Jason after Talia has healed him (or restored from the dead in that continuity) he looks far too young to be 19 as he supposedly was then. Here’s some images of him from RHATO, when he was training with the mystical cult the All-Caste, whom Talia left him with.

He looks like he’s a goddamn fourteen year old on steroids.

For simplicity sake, although he is chronologically 18 years old at this point, the Lazarus Pit + not age while dead has left him physically at 15-16, with his mental age around the same because, again, he had brain damage and no opportunity to mature while dead/comatose/catatonic.

He spends a couple years mimicking Batman’s world tour to learn martial arts and disciplines, eventually returning to Gotham as the Red Hood when he’s… 19? 20? They never actually say since comic books like foggy timelines. Yet despite being a grown man now, he’s still physically in his late teens. Here’s Jason when confronting Batman in UtH, holding Joker hostage and ready to kill him.

Flash forward a couple years later in real time (unknown amount of time in-universe) where he’s now more or less on amicable terms with the Bat family, even if they aren’t all lovey-dovey and Sunday night dinners together. If Damian is at least 12-13 (he’s had a birthday recently in the comics) and Tim is 18-19. that puts Jason at about 22-23.

But he looks like he could be a college sophomore.

^ Set recently, during Red Hood and the Outlaws Rebirth.

But yeah, while Jason’s mind has more or less recovered from all the trauma he’s been through - mostly thanks to working through pretty much every single moment of his past that he can remember with his therapist​, Jason no longer has that emotionally stunted/underdeveloped mind that he did after waking from the dead.

However, he still spent 6 months dead during the time most boys typically have their final growth spurt, and was then submerged in a youth-restoring chemical bath.

I’d say though he’s chronologically in his mid-twenties at this point, to other people Jason would have the physical appearance of a 20 year old. So he is physically the age that DC claims, but in terms of how many years it’s been since he was born, he’s 23, for anyone confused about why there’s different ages in his bio.