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soleminisanction · 3 years ago

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Hi, hope you’re having a good day! I was wondering, if you are in the right mood for it, if you might talk about your feelings about Damian. I have such mixed feelings about him (and Stephanie tbh) and you’ve done some really cool meta. Thank you either way. Oh and I loved your little Tim snippets you put out a while ago

Thank you! Kind of you to say.

Damian... oh, Damian. I'm very much in the same boat regarding mixed feelings towards him. There are some aspects of him I really enjoy. He takes the lead in some of my favorite fanfics, especially the ones that really dig into his relationship with Tim and explore how working through that conflict (rather than avoiding it, like most people do, including canon) could really help Damian grow as a person and mature into a true hero.

And I think he's got a lot of potential for fun stories. I enjoy him as a character whose whole concept could not exist anywhere but superhero comics. When played right, his unique balance of absurd hypercompetence, Troubling Unchildlike Behavior, archaic chivalry, snobbish brattiness and rare-but-achingly-sincere vulnerability can be a lot of fun.

It's just a shame that so much of his content is anything but that.

At this point, canon Damian is, more often than not, little more than a misplaced chuunibyou light novel protagonist, complete with no less than three Big Titty Goth Girlfriends and the overall narrative aesthetic of an angsty 13-year-old's DeviantArt gallery. I cannot take any of his stories seriously because he's trying so damn hard to be edgy and important and he just looks like a dumbass kid. Lighten up, small child. Goddamn.

The most interesting thing about him lately is that all his male friends keep coming out of the closet. I doubt this will actually lead to a future where Damian is acknowledged as asexual but hey, an enby can dream.

But my big Damian hot take?

I want to know when he's finally going to grow up and admit that he doesn't want to be Robin.

It makes no goddamn sense that his current book is called Robin. He doesn't look like a Robin, he doesn't act like a Robin, and he's not telling Robin stories. Literally the only things in that stupid book that have anything to do with Robin are Connor Hawke (who was Tim's friend first) and that one stupid issue that was clearly inserted in by editorial mandate where the other Robins showed up purely so Damian could beat three of them up and get his ego stroked by Dick, yet again.

It wouldn't have been a huge major change or anything, but I think the story would've made just a little more sense if, instead of insisting on the Robin branding after his big dramatic storm-off, Damian went off to wear the exact same costume and tell the exact same story, but did it under the title Son of Batman or In the Shadow of the Bat and registered for that tournament under the "fake name" of Ibn al'Xuffasch. That would be a clever continuity shout-out, deepen the themes of him reconnecting with the al'Ghul side of his lineage and struggling against Bruce's expectations, and as a bonus, make way more sense, given that Tim is clearly in Gotham being Robin while Damian is doing nothing of the sort.

But somebody coughStephaniecoughJasonStanscough turned Robin from "a job" into "a participation trophy" to coddle widdle baby egos and so it's now considered some horrible offense to not acknowledge Da Holy Blood Son as the One Twue Robin even when he clearly has no interest in actually being Robin, he just feels entitled to it and to the respect that comes with it. So we're stuck with it, for now, I guess.

So those are my rambling thoughts on Damian. I hope he gets better writers someday. I hear he's good in the animated movies.

#rambling #dc character opinions #robin #damian wayne #mix of positive and negative thoughts

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