i take it back this is so much worse

im so glad tom taylor found out a way to let me down one last time

just out of curiosity, why are you writing a tim fic when youve also said you dont actually like him? :o (im SO sorry if this comes off sounding paggro bc i swear its not meant to be 😭)

i dislike tim for the same reason i dislike jason — their writing since 2011 and (most significantly) their existence in fanon. tim drake, the character who existed pre-flashpoint, is an complex character with a lot of flaws. his relationships with dick and bruce and babs and helena and cass are all really interesting! his specific, unique understanding of robin is important to the mythos! there’s a lot that can be done with him narrative wise!

where i lose patience is the tim drake that tends to appear in online spaces (waifish, martyr, only one who can use an internet router). new52 also exacerbated this by changing crucial parts of his backstory and characterisation, so that just kind of transforms him into a whole different dude that i personally find pretty distasteful and disinteresting

that fic in particular is a what-if flashpoint didn’t happen — what would tim drake do in a world after bruces return, after he’d successfully severed off so much of his life in looking for him? how would his relationship with dick (and others) change? how does bart and kon and cassie realistically communicate with someone who’s been living in survival mode for so long? etc. idk i just enjoy narrative stakes

sorry im indecisive and annoying but

and still, it persists

talking shit with your brother <3

babs and tim working in education 🤝 steph and dick working in healthcare

tim drake should retire from heroic work so he can achieve his ultimate form — becoming the cool teacher who does ollies in the school parking lot to impress the kids at pickup

tim drake should retire from heroic work so he can achieve his ultimate form — becoming the cool teacher who does ollies in the school parking lot to impress the kids at pickup

the thing is. you are dick grayson and eight years old, and your parents’ deaths are a spectacle. then, you are dick grayson, with many more years behind you, and the unveiling of your identity is a spectacle. you are a flying grayson, the last of the flying graysons, and so your own death, too, is made a spectacle.

“the truth behind his parents’ deaths” he’s clocking in to write a worse inciting incident than the sewer cult bird posse

im so glad tom taylor found out a way to let me down one last time

im so glad tom taylor found out a way to let me down one last time

for anyone still tuning in i’ll also say that the confrontation at the end of persephone was specifically written to mirror bruce and dick’s argument in ntt #55, when dick confronts bruce after jasons death

like. it’s an inverse. dick was blamed unfairly for his part in jasons death, but both he and bruce knew the truth. now, dick blames himself for getting fired, but bruce knows the truth. bruce is the only person in the scene who was there for both conversations, and can now reflect on what’s changed. the only one who understands how things have shifted. that’s what makes him so scared

bc i can finally talk about it there were two plot threads i wish i could’ve been able to actually pick on — stephanie brown and duke thomas (+ we are robins in absentia). steph’s absence worked thematically — she’s the “traditionally appointed” robin without that connection or approval from dick, and her being absent from the story worked thematically cause it only proved the point that robin had transformed into something that hurt the kids who took the role. her place in the story was made more impactful by bruces inaction towards her. i also think that if dick was explicitly told what happened to her he would’ve ****** *****

by comparison, i think we are robin as a concept is like…. kind of a platonic ideal of what dick originally envisioned robin could be. ignoring the alfred connection, the idea that these kids would take action on their own for the better good of gotham would have been really important to him. the signal, someone who is unequivocally a partner to batman, not a sidekick. duke thomas who loves his mother and would do anything to protect her. finding out that robin was reclaimed not as bruce’s partner but as a unique role in the city……. man. like little baby robin in the crocheted onesie, mary grayson is honoured

when persephone is finally finished i can’t wait to peel back all the layers of plot analysis like the worlds weirdest metatexual onion

missing them !!

also i could write a lot about why tim and damian — two people dick grayson has always had a very clear adult-child relationship with — would struggle to connect with him as a traumatised teenager who doesn’t owe them anything and already assumes the worst. like…. obviously everything is up for interpretation but their intentions weren’t selfish. they simply weren’t prepared to talk to someone who had experienced that kind of profound hurt and wasn’t going to be accomodating to what they said. im in my 20s and how i talk to kids is very different to how i talk to my peers. u have some responsibility of accomodation when ur talking to someone younger than u — esp if they’re struggling to communicate their points. u do the heavy lifting in the convo. dick grayson as a seventeen year old — a seventeen year old who’s in mourning, and has been hurt by someone he trusts, mind — is not going to be doing that labour. he isn’t going to be giving them a chance, because why would he? it’s not a coincidence that the person who was able to regulate dick and stabilise him was the guy who’s raising a kid. so yeah i think it was kinda inevitable that they’d fuck up a bit and say something kinda shitty. idk

im considering branching out and actually putting some comfort in the next hurt/comfort fic

also i do try to be funny in fic for some tonal diversity but to me this is the funniest thing ive ever written

like sure. missus barbara gordon would never break the law

helena im so sorry u were a victim of the cutting room floor

kicking jason outta the story solely to put in helena.... miss ognyny has left the building