#tim finally talks about it

[necrotic-nephilim]

what's fun about shipping Tim with Dick, Jason, or Damian is he has, at some point, hallucinated all of them to comfort himself. even when he doesn't like them or particularly get along with them, he has to imagine/hallucinate them just so he has the power to go on. Tim's concepts of the Robin mantle and what it should be is so fun, because he respects the others through the Robin mantle. Tim worships Dick because he was the first Robin. he wouldn't be Robin if Jason hadn't died in the mantle. and a lot of his frustration with Damian is he feels Damian isn't honoring the mantle correctly. when you ship Tim with the other Robins you can't divorce their identities as Robin from it because Tim will always see them as a Robin first and that's so fun and fucked up. like.

batman (1940) #456

Tim perceiving Dick as *Robin* cheering him on, not Nightwing, which is the version of Dick that Tim actually knows? that's just. wild of him. he will always view Dick as Robin first, his personal hero but also the original of the legacy. his love for Dick is shaped by that.

and then of course, even when he's hallucinating/imagining Jason cheering him on, it's *still* through the lense of being reminded how Jason failed? subconsciously believing that Jason got himself killed because of his actions, and that being a lesson for Tim to learn from? Jason isn't a person to Tim, he's a moral lesson about how to be Robin. any potential idolization he could have of Jason isn't because he loves Jason, it's because of the lessons Jason's death taught him.

and then, even though him hallucinating TIm is from the New-52, which makes characterization all kinds of questionable, i do think it makes sense for TIm to hallucinate/imagine Damian after Damian's death in an attempt to cope with it.

teen titans (2011) #18

to an extend, he sees Damian's death as in part his own fault. and even hating Damian, Tim needs the comfort from this to cope with Damian being gone. he's angry that Damian even was Robin, and has to learn something from Damian's death and how it impacts the Robin mantle, and teenage heroes as a whole. like, Tim can pretend he hates Damian all he wants, even getting taunted by the image of Damian, but there's still an underlying love to their relationship.

i think that's just the fun of shipping Tim with any of them. you will never divorce Tim's views of them from the Robin mantle and how fucking Unwell he is about anyone else who's been Robin before or after him, to the point he has to hallucinate them comforting him when he's at his lowest. it's always going to be a little unhealthy, a little toxic, and driven by Tim's relationship with being Robin as well. i need more Tim being weird about Robin in these ships.

[saccharineomens]

the succubus chapters: abridged

based off Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant comic, of course.

[msfcatlover]

(Theoretical possible endgame)

“And how, exactly, did you all make it back here?” Bruce asks his children (children, not even all of them according to the Robins—Robins, that’s another thing that Bruce is going to blame his oncoming headache on. What were any of his future selves thinking?)

“A blood ritual,” Dick answers confidently.

“Alien cube,” Jason says at the same time, shrugging.

“Techno-magical chemical reaction,” Timothy says, raising his voice to be heard over the others.

“Iseki bullshit,” Stephanie & Damian say in perfect unison (as though that’s supposed to explain anything,) before turning to stare at eachother—also in perfect unison—with identical looks of shock. 

(Damian’s face splits into a wide smile as he holds out one hand. Stephanie glances at it, her lips pressed into a thin line, before passing Damian a quick low-five. They both flip their hands back up in fists to rap their knuckles against eachother.

“Hell yeah,” Damian whispers, his smile somehow even brighter than before. Stephanie’s mouth twitches and she gives Damian another tap.)

“…Of course,” Bruce says in the flat tone that only Dick should know means Bruce is utterly lost & out of his depth, but which has five mischievous sets of eyes sparkling at him.

[thiziri]

Princess Anne and Sir Tim Laurence visiting Lycee Auffray where Team GB resides, on 28 July 2024.

[maskofredacted]

Dragging myself out of my art slump and back into the batfam fandom like a cat left outside in the rain…

Take a joker jr timmy while I cook up some more gothambound shenanigans ❤️

[thunderjackal]

between gunpowder tim and hozier i am really seeing a pattern in the guys i am madly in love with

anyway the mechanisms brainrot has taken over might draw some of the others in the next few days

did you guys know gunpowder tims icon on google is this. all i can say is yeah yeah it be like that and i agree

[pokeberry5]

Did Tim “kill” King Snake and does Bruce know?

In Tim’s first solo min, he goes to Paris to learn martial arts and get that “edge” he thinks he needs to properly assume his role as Robin. He ends up on the tail of British Lord, Hong Kong-based heroine kingpin, leader of the Ghost Dragon gang, Sir Edmund Dorrance AKA King Snake (who is blind, which will be important later). Tim’s only companions on this world tour are Lady Shiva, who wants to defeat Dorrance to prove herself stronger, and ex-DEA agent Clyde Rawlins, who wants revenge against Dorrance for Dorrance’s reprisal killing of his family.

Robin I #4 --  the dream team, I love them

The trio catch up to Dorrance in Hong Kong, where he’s waiting for them in what seems to be the top suite of his skyscraper, 50 stories up.

In this final confrontation with Dorrance, Tim takes full advantage of a crucial moment of distraction to kick Dorrance out of the window. Dorrance ends up clinging to a ledge, hanging on for dear life.

Shiva then appears to order Tim to kill Dorrance, presumably by kicking him off the ledge. (It becomes clear then that this is how Shiva intends to prove herself stronger than Dorrance: she trained Tim and therefore Tim is her weapon and an extension of herself. If Tim defeats Snake, she defeats him by proxy).

Tim refuses and walks away. All we see is him listen  as Dorrance falls to what Tim explicitly assumes is his death, 50 stories down.

Robin I #5

So, while Tim isn't directly responsible for Dorrance's death, he was the one to put him in that position and then left him there to fall.

It’s unclear how Tim conceives of his actions here and how we are supposed to interpret them, especially in light of Tim’s refusal to kill in earlier chapters in this arc (and after).

Robin I #2

Robin I #4 -- I love Shiva

He stopped Rawlins from shooting and killing gang members, but then points to the danger Rawlins might have put them in by accidentally shooting crates containing plague (please read this arc it’s really fun despite suffering from uh. severe written in the 90s syndrome) and then explicitly restates his vow not to kill.

AND THEN, the plot thickens!!!

Dorrance did not actually fall to his death; he caught himself on a ledge below, where he believes Tim came down to taunt him. He came away from his fall with a fear of Tim and an obsession with killing him to purge himself of that fear. (anyway Sir Edmund Dorrance walked so Ra’s could run)

Batman (1940) #468

Batman (1940) #469

Dorrance moves to Gotham with the Ghost Dragons and takes over Chinatown (which. Who decided to put, a British lord, what boils down to an allegory of British colonialism in Hong Kong as the head of Chinatown? I have questions – anyway crimelord Lynx ftw)

In the course of his pursuit of Robin, it is revealed that Bruce believes “it was Lady Shiva that caused Dorrance to plunge to his death”—that Tim told him this.

Batman (1940) #469

This is clarified a bit more later, when Bruce confronts Dorrance.

#469

Dorrance explicitly accuses Tim of murder. He outlines the incident leading up to his fall—that Tim tricked him and attacked him from behind (he did, we saw this), that Dorrance was left dangling, and that Tim then caused him to fall.

Bruce refutes this accusation by claiming that it “wasn’t Robin who left you for dead. … Robin spared you. It was Lady Shiva who threw you to your death.”

From this, we can assume that in the moments after Tim refused Shiva and walked away, Shiva threw Dorrance down, which he didn’t realize because, as Bruce claims, he is blind and was likely traumatized by the incident. We can’t know this for sure, however—that Shiva threw him down—for exactly those reasons. Bruce is working off what Tim apparently told him, but we—and Tim—did not see this happen.

Bruce’s explanation of what actually happened also calls into question what exactly Tim told him about what happened.

It’s unclear what exactly he is refuting by: “It wasn’t Robin who left you for dead.” Does he not count Tim leaving Dorrance hanging as “leaving him for dead” or is the implication that Bruce thinks Shiva was the one who both threw Dorrance out the window and off the ledge? We never actually see what Tim told Bruce.

This leaves us with some possibilities:

that what Tim did by leaving Dorrance to dangle, by leaving him to Shiva, does not count against Batman’s no-killing rule.

Perhaps that Bruce does not feel that he could have expected or wanted Tim to step between Shiva and her target, Dorrance

that Bruce does not actually know what really happened—that Tim kicked Dorrance out the window, which in turn implies that either Tim may have stretched the truth or Bruce misinterpreted (purposefully?) what Tim told him

These all seem inconsistent, however, with incidents further down the line, with Cluemaster for example, and then when Tim rebukes Azbats for leaving Abattoir to die. A core tenet of Tim’s characterization is his sometimes frustrated but dedicated adherence to the no-kill rule (im beating anyone who cites the league bases at me away with a stick). So I don’t know what to do with this. Maybe it’s just comic inconsistency. Chuck Dixon, what are you doing?

If anyone has any thoughts about how to reconcile all this!! Please grant me peace

ADDENDA

i.e. stuff that I can’t possibly expect to be addressed in comics, but that I think about anyway

Related to this arc—a point is made a few issues later that Tim at this time doesn’t really have anyone to confide in. He can't really talk to Batman, isn’t close to Dick at this point, and while he is willing to work with Alfred and ask for help with Bat-related things, they’re not yet emotionally close. This isolation is poignantly demonstrated by him confessing his troubles to his still-comatose father.

Robin II #2

WHOM then would he have talked to about all that happened on his little “world tour”? No one? Besides whatever happened with Dorrance and brutal training and isolation, he also had to deal with the fact that Clyde Rawlins—whom he presumably developed some sort of camaraderie with (it’s tim ;-; he forms connections) was killed by Dorrance while working this mission with him.

We know that he had no one to talk to about all that. Did Tim linger on Rawlins????? On the fact that Shiva called him her weapon?? My boy is 13 ;-;

I also love that the whole buildup to Tim’s debut as Robin is Bruce agonizing about whether he should allow another boy to assume the position that cost him his son, and is then followed by plenty of moments after of Batman being overprotective.

Batman (1940) #468

And yet, when Tim is like “I need an edge to be Robin” presumably Bruce?? although this is never explicit connects him with a martial artist in Paris and sends him off on his own. It’s also possible that Tim is the one who comes up with this given that he agonizes a bit over whether he’s doing right by choosing his own path

Robin I #1

Either way, Tim goes to Paris Alone and essentially Unsupervised.

This lack of supervision is further emphasized by the fact that he goes to hunt down a king pin all the way to Hong Kong with Lady fucking Shiva and an ex DEA agent and no other back up. And Bruce presumably doesn’t find out until Tim runs into the hitman Henri Ducard in Hong Kong, who is apparently Batman’s acquaintance. (#5)

I have so many questions. I know that the actual reasoning is probably “oh we want to give this new character a little mini adventure arc on his own!!! To showcase how cool and independent the new robin is” but STILL

(also tim immediately getting himself a little team :’) I lub him)

[blorbodiaz]

christopher diaz get the hell out of texas RIGHT NOW-

[vanmarkus]

Oliver: gonna make it a little gayer this year

Tim: how about a lot gayer?

[introspectivememories]

i hope i am not just your average dc enjoyer to you but also your favorite timbern poster

[icarrymany]

ok so my thoughts on when this takes place is like. after the operator is killed. if that can be done. im a firm believer in the idea that skully has control over all of their thoughts and actions but can absolutely listen to and agree with the many. i think the consensus was that this guy deserves to know what happened, but by doing so they disrupt Tim's repressing of the events. it was supposed to be temporary as he got back on his feet but he ended up not actually coping with anything. so its very very stressful to have the illusion of everything being ok broken, even if the news is good.

[ocymoron]

A Tim Drake AU where crime alley loves him.

On the days he isn’t stalking the bats he’s out familiarizing himself with crime alley because it’s where Jason is from.

He badly tries to hide his wealth but it’s kinda hard to change mannerisms you didn’t even know belonged to a certain class and eventually just stops trying.

He doesn’t get a friendly reception at first. A rich kid in crime alley is either obvious bait or a pretentious asshole flaunting his higher status. But Tim starts bringing supply bags of good shit they can’t afford and keeps “losing” small bills and eventually the community thaws. They know who he actually is (public appearances suck) and still tentatively accept his presence.

The working girls hold conversations with him and the scattered gangs comprised of homeless teens/kids teach him all kinds of vulgarities because his reactions never get old. He gets familiar and comfortable and close and then Jason dies.

Jason dies and Tim has to stop visiting all together to try and keep a grieving man alive. He can’t find the time between school and training and patrolling to visit and it’s already been half a year before he can finally take a break and grieve.

His return is met with equal parts scorn and concern and he admits that the whole reason he got to know crime alley was because of Jason Todd, who he went to school with and who he might’ve had a crush on. He grieves with them over a boy he barely knew.

He visits more and creates fully funded programs with a separate identity and unsubtly vouches that they aren’t a scam. And maybe Robin visits sometimes too, when the Bat isn’t looking, and also vouchers for the programs and they all mistakenly assume Tim somehow knows Robin.

When Jason returns as The Red Hood he has to stop again. He texts Marissa, stripper name ‘Blossom’, that he doesn’t think the Red Hood would be too happy with a Bristol kid like him encroaching on his territory. People talk and word gets round and Hood gets thanks just as often as he gets dirty looks.

[just-an-enby-lemon]

I think a lot about how badly the "I lied on my CV" scene would go with Archivist Sasha. A LOT. Now this is based on some things:

a) The paranoia

• A lot of Archivist Sasha AUs act as if she would be imune to the paranoia arc and here is why I disagree:

1. By being the Archivist and feeding the eye you are automatically dealing with an extended feeling of being watched all the time. Not to mention the Eye is literally a paranoia entity (between it's other areas).

2. While Sasha doesn't appear to have Jon's trust issues she has a need to know at least equal to him and a tendency of theorizing. She was of course right when assuming Gertrude kept the archieves messy on purpose but that also shows that between being very smart she is very doubtifull of any behavior outside the person's normal.

3. In that same conversation ahe mentions how everyone has a mask and says to Tim, likely her best friend, that he is as honest to her as he is to Jon it is just different masks. She is fine with this. She is okay with the masks. But that is before things go wrong.

4. She KNEW Gertrude. That means solving her murder is more personal.

b) Sasha knows her shit way to well

• This one is the real fascinsting thing: Sasha is a master in figuring out people's secrets and keeping them for herself. She knew from the start Jon lied about his age and that Martin lied on his CV. To the point that for her this knowledge about Martin is a fun fact and irrelevant, a thing she keeps from because she knows he would be anxious if he knew she knows. The thing is that translating to the "I lied in my CV confession" we have:

• Paranoid Sasha found Martin's letter to his mother (likely writen as a diary with no intencion to actually send it) and thinks that Martin lied about Trevor being dead.

• She knows Martin lied on his CV and it's meaningless to her to the point she might suspect he knows she knows.

• She knows Martin has a complicated relationship with his mother and that means she would assume it to be very unlikely he would ever write this personal of a letter to her.

Conclusion:

Sasha would probably think Martin is using the fsct he lied on his CV as a diversion and truly has an awfull secret. She would also likely tell to his face she knows it isn't it because Martin's mum would never read or care about his feelings or letters and Martin should know this enough to not even bother to write "so this is likely a codename".

[welcometogrouchland]

I support the "Batman was unfairly biased to Stephanie for XYZ reasons" crowd so strongly bc DC claims that Bruce is a master planner who is able to understand anyone's psychology but he didn't realize that literally every single one of Steph's problems as a teenager would've been solved by her joining a shitty punk band. If he couldn't figure that much out then he didn't understand her for a minute

[deepwoundsandfadedscars]

The Person of Interest, previously known as "The Guy" before finding out they are also genderqueer and uses they/them exclusively, just sent me a voice message and the nerves are nerving, why am i nervous to open a voice message 🙃

[crimzoncrow]

🌹

I can’t pick just one for this wip, so have two!

If this spell messes with Kon's memories, if it makes him think that there's always been something where there was nothing—Tim can never in good conscience get into a relationship with him.

I love you, Tim is going to loop in his brain until he dies and every single time it'll just remind him of this and how none of it is real.