#tim deserved better

[flwrkid14]

You Don't Get to Call Yourself Family (Tim Drake is a Fenton)

part 1 , part 2

It starts with another of Dick’s attempts to be Tim’s Big Brother™.

It’s well-meaning, of course. They’re mid-patrol, crouched on a rooftop, when Dick gently brings it up.

“You know, Tim, we could be family if you’d just let us.”

Tim freezes for a moment, his grip tightening on his grappling gun. But then he exhales, forces himself to focus, and mutters: “I told you. You’re coworkers. That’s it.”

But Dick doesn’t drop it. And when they return to the Cave, the rest of the Batfamily piles on—each in their own way.

Jason: “C’mon, Replacement. Admit it. We’re at least kinda family.”

Damian, sneering: “He’s too much of a coward to acknowledge it.”

Bruce, quiet but insistent: “Tim, this is your home. We are your family.”

And Tim—who’s been holding this in for years—finally snaps.

“Family?!” Tim’s voice echoes through the Cave, sharp and brittle like glass about to shatter. “You think you’re my family?!”

Everyone goes still.

Tim takes a step forward, fury radiating off him in waves. “Let me ask you something—what kind of family depends on a thirteen-year-old to pull their grieving father out of the abyss because no one else could be bothered? What kind of family calls him Replacement and then beats him bloody because he’s not good enough?!”

Jason flinches, but Tim doesn’t stop.

“What kind of family tries to kill him multiple times and laughs it off like it’s a fucking joke?” His eyes land on Damian, who looks like he wants to argue but doesn’t. “And what kind of family stands by and watches it happen and does nothing?!”

The silence is deafening.

Tim’s breath hitches, and he rakes a hand through his hair. “If you’re family, then why—why the hell did you all hurt me so much?”

No one can look him in the eye. Not even Bruce.

Tim’s voice drops, tired and cracked. “I can’t call you family. Because if I did, I’d have to accept that my family treated me like shit. And I already have one family, that loves me—I don’t need another one that makes me feel like I’m nothing.”

He turns on his heel, heading for the exit. “You’re my coworkers. That’s all you’ll ever be, and honestly? It's more than you deserve.”

And then he’s gone.

————

Later, Jazz calls him.

“You okay, Timmers?” she asks gently, voice soft in that way only Jazz can manage.

Tim sighs, rubbing his eyes. “Yeah. I just… lost it at them. Finally told them off.”

Jazz hums thoughtfully. “Good. They needed to hear it.”

Tim doesn’t respond right away, staring at the faint glow of the Batcomputer across the Cave. “Do you think I was too harsh?”

Jazz doesn’t hesitate. “No. You set a boundary. They’ve been pushing it for years. Let them sit with it for a while.”

Tim doesn’t know if he believes her, but he nods anyway. “Thanks, Jazz.”

“Always,” she replies. “Now come home for dinner. Mom’s trying a new ectoplasm casserole recipe, and Danny is threatening to ‘accidentally’ destroy the kitchen again.”

He laughs, already grabbing his things. “Be there in ten.”

[zombflesh]

(spoilers for suicide squad kills the justice league)

I saw the leaks for the new Suicide Squad game and I'm gonna be so disappointed if they gave AK!Jason a offscreen death.

[themaidenofwords]

The ultimate power of saying "I won't survive this, but I'll make sure you don't either."

i don't forgive you. but thank you for this

[cardinalcheerio]

Half the time I'm like, "can we have jason todd media not all about his death"?

Then I realize. If I died I would never shut up about it.

"Can you get up and grab that for me?"- absolutely not. My legs are tired from death.

"Will you go to the store with me?"- leaving the house?!? What if I die AGAIN.

So yeah, anyone who thinks jason talks about his death too much. Be honest. We'd all do the exact same thing.

[gingerzauce]

“your body my choice”. they are scared. they are scared because they are seeing the reaction of women, they are seeing the 4b movement, and they are scared. keep. going. women. you are so powerful right now, no man will ever change that. no matter how powerful he thinks he is.

[fanaticalthings]

[Jason and Steph hanging out at Jay's apartment]

Jason: So you and Tim are like, done, right?

Steph: Oh yeah, it's definitely over. It was pretty mutual, too.

Jason: Oh, thank God. I didn't wanna say it, but it was a bit annoying whenever I invited you over, and you dragged Tim with you.

Steph: yeahhh sorry about that

Jason: It's just nice spending quality time without the rest of the bats butting in. I already have enough to deal with whenever I visit the manor.

Steph: Well, you don't have to worry about that anymore. I'm gonna be 100% batboy/Robin-free from now on!

---

Steph showing up to Jason's apartment 1 month later with Cass in tow: So here's the thing-

[thedevilundercover]

Yk what dc definitely needs? An ao3 cameo bc have you seen your fan base, there is definitely some rando writing Batman/Brucie fics in Gotham because Batman Is Not beating the sugar baby allegations.

And have you seen the fucking batfam, Jason writes BatBruce fanfics whenever he feels Chaotic and Tim edits them whenever he get pissed at Bruce

Now I really want to see like fandom wars in the DCU but it's just the Batkids fighting for their ship bc they want [blank superhero] as their step parent

Imagine going on Tumblr and it's just like the same 10 blogs threatening each other because they don't agree with who's fucking batman? It'd be hilarious

Twitter fic this Twitter fic that, what about tumblr fics, huh?

[casscainmainly]

Excluding Jason because he's been through enough <3.

[punkeropercyjackson]

Word of mouth really kept me away from Tim Drake comics at first.I joined the DC fandom due to becoming a Jason Todd stan from watching Utrh so naturally i heard all the usual anti Tim points-He's a spoiled ungrateful brat,he thinks he's better than everyone else and rubs it in their face at the most purposefully insensitive moments,he gets everything handed to him instead of earning it,he's a raging misogynist and white privilege on legs in a domino mask.But then i got around to reading his Robin run for Stephanie Brown,followed by 90s Young Justice and Red Robin,plus some misc main Batman stuff with him as a major player and it was like.This is Tim Drake,he sucks at everything but it works for him.He has no manners but he's not malicious,just oblivious and a control freak for what he believes is the best for everyone at the sacrifice of his own safety and health because he considers others worth more than him.He's genuinely hilarious and he's a legit skapunk and not a poser.Most of his important relathionships are with women and the only sexist things he says are very tame and rare compared to normie male teenagers and a product of their time rather than Tim's actual character.Almost all the adults in his life failed him so he has no good coping mechanisms and dosen't know what they look like on other people either so he can't properly socialize as a cause of it.He openly shows affection to all his loved ones in extremely cheesy ways sometimes with no shame and is so earnest and passionate about everything it gives secondhand embarrasment.All his fumbles were made with good intentions and the cast rarely properly communicates with him enough to help him fix that problem on him.The 'mistreatment of Damian' was acting like a petty teenager to his little brother and his 'superiority complex over Jason' is trumped by Jason beating him to a pulp as a grown ass man out of self-motivated 'vengeance' on someone he'd never met and who owed him nothing.Like damn,this that 'greasy white incel' y'all were talking about?

[deadtiredghost]

the only reason Tim Drake and Damian Wayne don't get along is because if they did the writers wouldn't be able to come up with a plot contrived enough for them to struggle with.

they would be the ultimate team if they could just work smoothly together.

but they cant so balance is restored to the world i guess.

[erinwantstowrite]

i think im not a fan of what dc keeps doing with jason because they keep having him, the abused, become an abuser in some way shape or form. and the classism they don't want to talk about (i am being so for real there is a genuine problem of both writers and readers who do not understand jason's background and it pissed me off so bad because it always shapes their opinion of him in the wrong way and they don't care to even try to listen). and how if they were going to have him come back they should have had delved into his identity crisis and the inherent horror of coming back but not knowing how or why or what to do about it and not knowing what you were doing while dead and having to deal with time jumping forward on you and the fact that you will never get the time back and no one will he the same as they were before you died and how isolating and lonely that would be. and they also definitely weren't prepared for the fact that jason was grieving his life and his death and his hopes for his mother and his dad who didn't get there in time and the dc writers are fucking cowards. which brings me to my next point: why do we keep listening to them about shit because they are quite literally always fighting with each other and projecting their own personal biases into characters (i.e. making them worse than they are/2 dimensional/trying to make them iredeemable so their favorite character gets to shine) and also they are all freaks of nature with a consistent problem of being God Awful People who why would we trust them with these characters. jason todd they don't get you like i do

[flwrkid14]

Buried Beneath The Laughter They Ignored

Tim is totally fine. Ridiculously fine, actually.

It didn’t matter that he woke up feeling this bubbling, manic laughter in his chest, like everything was suddenly so fucking funny. It didn’t matter that he’d woken up from another nightmare last night, crying, calling for his mama—not the mother he lost, but the mother he gained, Harley Quinn. And it didn’t matter that most days, he felt more like Joker Junior than he did Tim Drake.

It didn’t matter that no one else seemed to fucking care.

He shoved down every bit of laughter clawing up his throat, because he knew if he let even one chuckle slip, they’d all give him that look. The one they always did. Disapproval masked as concern. They didn’t like Junior. They didn’t want to believe Junior was still in there, clawing his way up every time Tim breathed.

It didn’t matter that no one ever asked him how he was doing. They didn’t want to talk about it. Because talking about it would make it real, and they preferred pretending it wasn’t. They expected him to be fine, to push it down, to carry on like nothing happened. If he tried to bring it up, they’d say he was being insensitive—insensitive to Jason's trauma. What fucking irony, he thought bitterly. As if it wasn’t insensitive to be stepping all over his by not letting him speak.

It didn’t matter that he caught them glancing at him sometimes, like they were waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for him to snap, waiting for Junior to come out again. But they never asked. No one asked what was going on in his head. No one fucking asked.

It didn’t matter that when he finally snapped, when he finally screamed at them, sick and tired of pretending, they had the nerve to act clueless. As if they didn’t know.

It didn’t matter that Dick, of all people, screamed back. Yelling like he was being unreasonable. Like he was the problem. He screamed at Tim, demanding answers, to ask what the hell he meant by Joker Junior, as if—

As if they didn’t know.

They didn’t fucking know.

This whole time, they hadn’t known.

They didn’t know Tim had been taken. They didn’t know Tim had been missing. They didn’t know Tim had been held prisoner at the hand of the Joker for months, tearing him apart, piece by piece, until Junior was the only thing left of him. They didn’t know he had screamed for them, begged for someone to find him, but no one ever did.

They didn’t know how much he had suffered. Alone. They didn’t know how much he had changed. They didn’t know that every time he woke up now, it felt like he was still Joker Junior, just wearing Tim’s skin.

And they didn’t know how much it hurt—how much it broke him—to realize that they had never known.

Tim wasn’t fucking okay. And it mattered—oh, it mattered—that they didn’t fucking know.

Because if they didn’t know, it meant no one ever bothered to look. It meant no one ever cared enough to notice.

[xmultifandomsx]

the understanding robin

Tim completely understanding that his training was different from Jason's and Dick's because Bruce was at a low point but still not really trusting him to train Damian. As much as he hated the pompous brat, a small part of him was relieved when Dick took over his Robin training. Logically, Tim knew Bruce was better now. He knew that Bruce would pull his punches when weapons sparring, he knew Bruce was picky about the missions he allowed Damian on (even now when Damian had been Robin for years). The care Bruce shows Damian painfully relieving. He lets out a breath every time he finds Damian unbruised after a sparring session, ignoring the phantom aches of a younger him. Still, there was that dark wriggling mass inside him that made him keep an eye on the mats whenever he caught them training. One time he barely restrains himself from jumping up from the batcomputer and rushing over when Bruce flips Damian onto the mats a bit too roughly. Of course, Bruce is immediately muttering apologies, which Damian shrugs off easily, and cancels the rest of training so he can look him over. As the father and son duo leave, neither older man can look at the other. One day Bruce will apologize, will explain everything Tim already knows. Then Tim will do what he's always done, and ease his guilt with understanding.

[insonniacaotica]

what is your favorite ao3 tag in the batman fandom and why is it "No Batcest | No Batfamily Incest (DCU)"

[kazbrekkeriselite]

Damian: I am darkness. I am an power. I am your worst nightmare. I could kill a man in more ways than you can imagine. I am the night. I am fury, I am a weapon, I am-  Dick : A doll.  Tim: A cinnamon roll.  Jason: A sweetheart.  Damian: Damian: ...stop it.

[cardinalcheerio]

Jason: I'm just gonna dive into angst like a majestic swan into a pond

Tim: ima just bellyflop