#just like tim isn’t arrogant and rude at times but he’s also not a complete pushover

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

spleencanon for alfred and damian please!! hope this isnt too frustrating

Frustrating? I’m not sure what you mean. Thanks for your concern, though.

Spleencanon: I insist that this is the case specifically to spite the author, because, like, fuck you, sir or madam

Look. Alfred Pennyworth is a wonderful man who has had to put up with far too much crap in his life yet manages to be a fantastic father and grandfather. That said, I am convinced that Damian was the one child that he actively disliked in the beginning.

Dick made Alfred nervous, because he (reasonably) doubted whether Bruce was ready for responsibility. Jason made him wary, because he was a whole bushel of issues neither Alfred nor Bruce was fully ready to deal with. Tim just made him feel hecking grateful, while Cass was an enigma that made him feel curious and bemused in equal measure. But Damian.

A small part is definitely Damian’s fault. New-to-Gotham Damian is a brat. He’s arrogant and insecure and covers his insecurity with more arrogance. He’s an emotional wrecking ball whose bullheaded determination to conquer everything hurts everyone around him, including the people Alfred values most. Also, he’s the first person in the family in pretty much ever to treat Alfred like an actual servant. Rude.

Worse, Damian is so much like Bruce, but at first, Alfred can only see the parts of Bruce that he hates. And there are parts. The arrogance, the coldness, the emotional detachment, the stubbornness, that isn’t wholly matrilineal, friends, and Bruce as a kid was a wreck of a human being. (Alfred still isn’t sure how they both made it out of Bruce’s teen years without more blood being spilled. Yes, more.)

But if Alfred is being completely honest, in the beginning it wouldn’t have mattered if Damian had been in the running for sainthood. Alfred would have hated him because he hated the boy’s family. Not because of race or religion or anything so banal and impersonal. (Alfred might be an old white guy, but he is Alfred, don’t you dare, he would never.)

No, Alfred hates the al Ghuls because, even before the mess with Jason and the Pit or Cass and Lady Shiva or Tim and the heir debacle, Talia and Ra’s hurt Bruce. They took Alfred’s boy and molded him into something as close to a killer as Bruce could ever get, then Talia broke his heart (and possibly freaking raped him, depending on which version of canon you look at), and Ra’s has tried to kill the lad. Multiple times. You don’t do that and get to stay off of Alfred Pennyworth’s hit list. (Yes, he has a hit list. He doesn’t plan on doing anything with it, because Bruce, but the man is ex-MI6. Of course he has a hit list.)

So yeah, Alfred hates Damian because the boy is an ill-mannered pompous brat spawned from a she-devil and maniacal scum. And then Bruce dies. And the world falls apart. And Alfred has to live with a little boy who looks so much like the one he lost.

(They’re okay now. Alfred is Alfred and that means he’s a superlative grandfather to all of his grandchildren, even Damian. The kid loosened up a little, Alfred reexamined some of his biases and remembered to look past the prickles, and together they built a solid foundation of mutual respect atop of which they’ve slathered a whole lot of love. Their relationship is unique, just as all of Alfred’s relationships with his family are one of a kind, but it works for them. Also, hurt that boy and Alfred will Sweeney Todd you into meat pies. That means you, Ra’s!)

[thattimdrakeguy]

How do you feel about Tim and Damian's relationship?

I found it very interesting and enjoyable to see it grow.

However, I hate when ever I see the fandom talk about it, because they always make it straight black and white. OH DAMIAN’S THE BAD GUY, BUT OH TIM DID THIS SO HE’S THE BAD GUY.

It’s a relationship that grew, but no one ever acknowledges the growth. 

They constantly never show parts of it, or they just speak about it in a bias way.

I’m gonna try my best to explain there relationship, so sorry if I’m not that good

I’m going to try to do it the best I can, to show both of there point of views, as I’m sick of all the bias posts.

———————————————————————————–

So for background on the two: 

Damian came from a place where to succeed you had to kill, to gain a place you wanted, you have to kill.

Tim at the time had two of his best friends die, his girlfriend die, an adopted sister he thought to have been dead, his parents, and it’s hinted at his step mother even died. So he’s in a very fragile state mentally which makes his hard for him to trust anyone

and I find that important to there relationship, because that’s why they viewed each other as they did. They both had reasons for it, reasons they couldn’t help because it was outside of there control, but still effected them.

Another thing I find to be important, Damian was meant to be written from an antagonistic point of view at first. You can go back to how it’s how he was raised, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was very bad and could even be described as evil.

He was abused, but so are most villains in someway. Damian was to a certain extent portrayed as a villain.

The first thing Damian did with Tim was dis-respect him, lock Alfred in a closet, show Tim a man’s head that he murdered, and then continues to attempt to kill Tim.

The first Tim did, was try to welcome him in the warmest way he was able, try to explain that he should change in the best way he could, even after he showed Tim a man’s severed head.

If it sounds like I’m making Tim the good guy, it’s because in that situation he is. People seem to constantly ignore that Tim did actually try to help Damian at first.

but because Damian did try to kill Tim, and harm Alfred. He lost Tim’s trust, he lost a lot of it, you can even say all of it. Damian completely incapacitated Tim. I see that being as a good reason not to trust someone.

At that point, there relationship is pretty back and white. Damian tried to kill Tim, after he tried to help him. Damian did have an abused past and that’s why he did it, but he still did it.

The next time Damian interacts with Tim is when someone wants to take his body.

Damian is terrified of that (for good reason) and tries to find Bruce in hopes that he can help him.

This is when Damian is first viewed as a more sympathetic character and shows that he is just a child. A child with a big ego problem, and is definitely pretentious, but all that can chip away at the first big sign of fear he has.

but the first person he meets is in the cave is Tim. Who at this point, does not trust Damian, after all he did try to kill him, but this is the first time Tim is shown to be closer to the aggressor, despite not really having the intent to fight him, just to stop him, although he does show that he will fight him if he has too, as he does not trust what he says.

Damian, being that he was raised too, again attempts to harm Tim, hoping he can find someone who can help him.

Tim is the bad guy here, but people always forget to see it from his point of view. This is someone that tried to kill him, he doesn’t trust him. That’s black and white, but that’s all Tim has actually seen from him.

However Damian is being shown from a sympathetic point of view, which makes Tim seem more like the bad guy from the reader point of view.

Damian finds Alfred and tries to gain his help, but ends up looking like he was trying to hurt him from Tim. He was not trying to hurt him, but from the angle Tim saw, he tried to hurt him.

So Tim tried to stop him, triggering another fight.

I keep seeing posts about how Damian’s misunderstood, which he is, but they keep making things black and white by ignoring Tim’s POV.

Damian doesn’t show any reason why he should trust him, he just tries to harm him, if I remember correctly he did try to talk to Tim but quickly went into fight mode within 2 seconds. Which did not help Tim want to trust him. It just makes Tim’s suspicion seem even more true.

All Tim knows about him is that he constantly harms and even kills people, and that he’s an Al Ghul. So Tim believes that he’s just sent as a mole. Which is reasonable to believe given what all Tim actually knows about him.

So basically so far all Tim has seen of Damian is his bad side, or what keeps coming off as his bad side. He has given no reason to make Tim trust him.

They do not have to many note worthy interactions for a while

So at this point it is clear that Damian does have a sympathetic side, he has a bad past, and was raised in a bad way. While Tim does not trust him one bit. Damian did try to kill him.

Neither one are the clear bad guy if you look at it from a big picture way, but both can be sympathetic, or the bad guy depending on the way you view it.

They do have interactions during Battle for the cowl, but that books a mess and a lot of characters are done out of characters, no one’s motives are very clear, so it’s hard for me to explain that the way I want, but Damian did try to help Tim during that time, but I can’t recall a reason why, and if my memory serves me right he did do it in a very arrogant “OH SO YOU NEED HELP YOU LOSER” type of way. But I may be wrong as my memory on that book is very light.

So there next big interaction is when Damian became Robin. Tim a kid who had just had almost everything taken away from him, had just gotten everything taken away from him.

Damian brags about it, is entirely rude, so Tim punches him in the face.

I have seen posts about how Tim did punch a kid, but this a kid Tim knows had dealt with plenty of worse punches and hardly cared or even felt it, and did manage to nearly kill him in a fight. He is hardly a typical innocent defenseless kid to him, he is a kid raised from a young age to deal with pain, and fight back from pain. Damian’s pain tolerance is a lot higher then a normal kids, his intelligence is above an average kids. Damian just isn’t an average kid.

It isn’t right to punch Damian who is just a kid, but he is not a typical kid and Tim is aware of that. It’s not entirely black and white as people make it out to be.

Damian did make fun of someone who had almost everyone important to him die, or at least made him think they died, and just took a way the most important thing to him..

Neither one of them are right in the situation, but it’s easily arguable with the fact that it was a physical aggressive move, that Tim is the aggressor in the situation.

However Damian was the one that made him become hostile by mocking him as he hit his breaking point, so it’s easily arguable that Damian was the aggressor at the same time.

So neither of them interact for a decent chunk of time.

Till Tim put’s Damian on his hit list. A list with the intent of putting whose ever on it a way.

Damian who had made progress in the time is furious and takes out on Tim coming so far as to attempt to kill him

which is actually arguable in my opinion, because Damian could’ve seen that Tim was going to land it, when he cut his grabbling line, but at the same time Damian’s abilities differ from writer to writer. Some making Damian a hot head who just does stuff, while other’s make him a more cold calculated knowledgeable fighter. So it’s hard to tell to me if Damian did or did not try to kill Tim, but he did start the physical fight.

Something I’d also like to point out is Tim was never around for Damian’s time as Robin, he never saw him learn why he shouldn’t kill or learn respect for others finally. The last Damian, Tim saw, was the one that made fun of a man while he was down.

Tim never started the fight, it never even showed Tim try to put him away.

For all anybody knew, he just put him on there as a thought, and was going to wait to see if he should even keep him on there.

Regardless Damian has the right to be frustrated against Tim as he is going to be angry about how he still gets disrespect from him, despite learning.

but he never saw said learning. So it’s a complete gray area in the situation. Both have good reasons for why they did what they did. I see plenty of people try to make Tim the bad guy in the situation, but they either forget or ignore the fact Tim was never there.

It’s not a black and white situation, I wish people would stop talking about it as such.

Afterwards Tim even eventually see’s Damian’s progress. Telling Bruce that “Dick’s done great work with him.” 

He does make it clear he doesn’t like him, which I personally can’t blame. Damian is mean spirited, it’s how he was raised. It’s going to take longer then three years for something that implanted in him to escape.

I see it as being easy to see them both having a mutual respect for each other when they both realize each others situations.

but the reboot started and we never really managed to see the progress again. Instead deciding to undo all of Damian’s progress, and turn Tim into a completely different character at his core. So I’m not going to put in any interactions they have after the reboot, as it’s an entirely different context.

So personally there whole relationship is gray, nothing black and white about it. To see someone take stuff out of context, or ignore stuff because someone doesn’t like one of the characters is dis-heartening for me.

I hope people actually try to think of there relationship in a less bias way.