#but i know if dc ever makes him queer it will be a bi flag with absolutely no nuance or actual care

[mamawasatesttube]

tbh one reason i never actually want dc to make kon queer is that i really really love the narrative of a gay boy who has no idea what attraction feels like, but just does his best to imitate what he sees on tv and what he knows from everything downloaded into his head. and all of that media talks about how teenage boys should be all about women and how sexy they are, and he goes okay!! i'll do that!! i'm a clone of superman and women love superman so i can make this work!!! and then he gets groomed and abused and groomed and abused and he's traumatized by it without realizing that he's traumatized, so that when one of his friends expresses interest in him he tells her he can't, and when he tries to maybe go on a date with another he explicitly says he just wants someone to understand him. until finally he ends up dating the friend who said she wants to date him because, well, she's wonder girl and he's superboy, and everyone says superman and wonder woman should date, so shouldn't they...? and when they finally break up it's in part because he says he needs to figure out who he is, and...

that boy has never once truly been attracted to a woman and i will die on this hill. however dc would never in a thousand years acknowledge the complexity of the queer experience enough to admit that compulsory heterosexuality and internalized homophobia are real. so in that regard, im glad they aren't going to let him out of the closet anytime soon, because they'd absolutely just slap a bi flag on him and continue to not acknowledge how fucked up his relationship with tana was, or that his relationship with knockout existed at all. it would be the most surface level thing ever just for the sake of getting more rainbow dollars. so tbh i hope they don't touch him until they learn how to write stories with actual depth again.

[incoherentbabblings]

Are…are we allowed to ship TimSteph anymore???! 😭 do you think they are sunk forever?!

You're asking me - a gal who ships DickKory and DickRoy: two ships that we are most definitely never going to get/have be endgame once again - if a ship being sunk stops it from being shipped? Ohohoho my friend. You take what you can get after a certain point. T_T

Just because they're broken up doesn't mean it's the end. Remember they weren't a couple between 2004 and 2016 technically - that was 12 years! Admittedly Steph was dead or literally did not exist for a chunk of that but... You see! Not even death can stop those two. A part of me thinks give it four years and they'll be making out in front of Batman again.

To be more serious, Tim is very likely attracted to more than just women or men. Admittedly we haven't had his sexuality confirmed yet, but he's stated that he broke up with Stephanie despite still loving her, and the concept art for the Wayne Family Adventures webcomic has Tim with a little bi flag sticker on his laptop. You can argue against both of these for shaky canon status, but despite the lack of confirmation, most media outlets are claiming Tim to be bi. It's a pretty big oopsie for DC to let slide if wrong. Or at least I would consider it one.

Steph is Steph and had been written finding both men and women attractive with varying levels of 'how serious am I supposed to take that statement' for several years now.

We don't really know how she feels about being broken up with, especially as Tim won't speak to her. I have to say, that's my biggest bugbear with the whole situation really. I understand what they're going for, that Tim is still figuring it out himself, but I genuinely think Steph could help him. She's already offered help multiple times. It makes me sad for them both. Tim doing the thing where he withdraws emotionally and gets stuck in his head, Steph left wondering what she did wrong and how Tim doesn't trust her. It's not that simple obviously, but it must sting. It's a pattern with those two so it's in character, but frustrating nonetheless.

I really don't know if DC will ever put them back together again. I would very much like to hope so. I wonder if there's a fear of Tim being less valid as a queer character if he - a (assumedly) cisgender male - is dating a (assumedly) cisgender female. I think it's reductive and narrow minded to think of romantic relationships like that: trying to fulfill a criteria and tick certain arbitrary boxes for it to be valid. It crosses into biphobia to say the very least. But I can only speculate. And I try not to speculate because I just spiral and think DC as a headless chicken running around making things up as they go. Which they are a bit.

So long as Tim and Steph are canonically attracted to men and women I will still be that person going ahhhh when they stand next to each other. It is sad we won't be getting canon romantic moments, maybe for a while, maybe forever, but that won't stop me from enjoying their dynamic. I hope you can too!

The good news is now that there's no canon I am not constrained by my obsessive need to make things adhere to canon so I can go a wee bit bonkers with characterisation or plots as and when I write fanfiction. So that's neato.