A Better Hell

@sasheneskywalker i love when you enable me to ramble about things because oh my god do i have thoughts.

so recently, i made a post discussing the phenomena of DC x DP and DC x MLB crossovers and why they exist and part of that post was discussing how largely speaking, at least half, if not more of the Batfamily fandom doesn't read the comics. if they interact with canon DC material, it's adaptations that are their own sequestered universes and oftentimes not remotely comic accurate or seeking to be. the most obvious example is the Young Justice cartoon. i'm adding a cut to this post because it just got so long i'm so sorry.

wfa being both the effect and the cause of fanonification of comics is very true. generally, i see this trend of simplifying character dynamics, especially found family dynamics, in a lot of fandoms. i know that sometimes in order to write an alternate universe fic you have to tweak the characterization a bit for it to make sense, but i think most characters have core personality traits and fundamental relationships and if you get rid of them it feels like it's not even the same character anymore. not to mention that the oversimplification isn't limited just to fics, it frequently appears in posts about headcanons that seem to want to be based on canon. and people write fics explicitly based on comics they haven't read which is so baffling to me. how many people writing post-red robin dick & tim & damian fics have actually read red robin and tim's robin solo so they have an accurate picture of these characters' relationships and know the events with full context? how many people writing about tim's childhood actually read comics with janet and jack drake and seen how tim interacts with them and how he feels about them? that's how we end up with "dick wanted to send tim to arkham" and "tim's parents left 3-year-old tim alone for months in the drake mansion next to wayne manor" which are both completely untrue (a lot of it is also people projecting onto tim but that's a topic for another post). i understand why people say "even the comic writers don't keep consistent characterization so why should i bother?" because there are some wildly ooc comics out there, but i disagree with this view. in most cases (at least in post-crisis era) there exist some stable character traits that can be observed across multiple different runs written by multiple different writers.

i'd love to read an in-depth exploration of differences between fanon and canon portrays of batfam members. i know there are some posts like that already but from what i've seen most are short and try to overcompensate for fanon too much (fanon dick is happy, naive, and optimistic? let's emphasize how manipulative, depressed, and competent he really is, to a point where it also feels exaggerated and not canon, just in a different way). and fanon evolves a lot too, it'd be interesting to see how fanon!jason from 2018 differs from fanon!jason in 2024 (for example i've seen a fanon vs canon post saying fanon!jason is often portrayed as a rapist in angst fics and i was so confused because i've never encountered a fic like that, but apparently that was a thing a few years ago. here's an amusing post about batfam fanon from 2014). and if you want to elaborate more on the "justice league meets the batfam" aus, i'd also love to listen. here's a great post about it, btw. (may i also suggest discussing the titans tower aus because i feel they are in a very similar category as the "justice league meets the batfam" aus?)

and i agree that telling people to just read comics in an annoyed tone is not going to help anyone. but on the other hand the fact that telling people to read comics in a polite way is also considered rude feels a bit weird to me too. that's why i avoid talking about fanon vs canon stuff most of the time, because it's a very emotional topic to a lot of people and requires some nuance (and we all know social media is allergic to nuance). i agree that sometimes comics might be hard to get into, even with reading lists and other people willing to help and guide you, but i also think that a lot of people overestimate the difficulty of it. it just takes a bit of looking around and asking people. and getting comics in a digital format is also easy, it took me 10 minutes of googling to find a site where i could download comics for free and read them on my computer (obviously it's piracy, but this is a "be gay do crime" website so i don't think it'd be a problem for most people).

and from what i've noticed, both fanon and canon fans sometimes have a superiority complex and insist that their way is the best way to interact with fandom which contributes to a hostile fandom environment. if i see another post saying "if you like fanon!jason you should read canon!helena :)" i'm going to scream. it ignores so many things about these characters and why people like them to make superficial comparisons and feels very condescending to jason fans. (but also, i'm on a dc fanfic server where people often ask for fanfic recommendations and i frequently have to hold back from saying "this premise you're looking for in a fic is exactly what happened in 'this comic', maybe read that first???" so i kind of get it.)

i'll quote here a post that i find interesting and whose conclusions i agree with:

"All this leads me to conclude that the majority of fanon fans don’t actually like the characters all that much; they’re convenient excuses for them to participate in fandom. Which I also think is, in no small part, a reason why so many of them react so negatively to being told to pick up a comic; they came to this fandom specifically to consume it as a fandom, because they wanted the fandom experience without having to consume a canon. This is not a phenomena unique to the batfam fandom (again, see the Migratory Slash Fandom), but it does fascinate me. While fandom is often said to be an experience focusing on transformative art, I think it’s also safe to say that, especially as fandom has become more mainstream, an increasing amount of people are looking to it less as a way to engage with their favourite pieces of media, and more as a type of media in and of itself. I think the reasons for this are similar to the reasons mass media entertainment like the MCU are so popular; you gain a lot of enjoyment out of it with very little risk involved. By consuming the same fics of the same characters (or the same archetypes) over and over again, you are rarely at risk of being challenged or even disappointed. It’s often very clear right from the start whether or not a fic will appeal to you, and if it isn’t, it’s easy to just look for another one. It requires less emotional investment than most other types of media, even ‘popcorn media’ like the MCU - or, yes, DC Comics. It’s safe, it’s enjoyable, it’s comforting, like McDonalds, but just like McDonalds, it’s ultimately bland and unsubstantial."

there's of course another issue that i don't see people talking about as much and it's the difficulty of reading comics as a medium. it took me a while to get used to the conventions of the medium, to learn where to look first when i open a new page, which speech bubble to read first, how to interpret fight scenes when at first glance they seem very messy. and i still sometimes have to stare at a panel for a while to understand what exactly is going on (i had the same issues with manga). i'll be honest, i vastly prefer movies and books to comics, no matter how many comics i read. but i'll keep reading them because i want to experience the story and there's no alternative (except maybe novelization, but even they're not exactly the same).

i also want to point out that a lot of people get into canon content after reading many fanon fics. and even when they read the comics, they interpret them through fanon lens because it's difficult to get rid of the preconceived notions when you've been reading fics with these characters for months before picking up your first comic. your fanon history will color how you understand these characters and their canon actions.

the batfam being seen as a nuclear family in fanon is an especially interesting thing. many people have written about that so i'll just link their posts here: "if the nature of two characters’ relationship hinges on technicalities like whether they call each other brother/sister in canon, or the batfam wiki, or their adoption papers by the same dude instead of the actual nature of their relationship, which for some of them, does not fit siblings at all, then you could hardly call them siblings, even by the standards of canon itself", "“batfam” content to but to what end", "The Batfamily Shouldn’t Work", "The Wayne family", and the entire fanlore page about batfamily. it feels especially relevant when it comes to shipping and the entire fandom discourse around "batcest", which, again, many people have written about. but another thing i've noticed is how often characters from outside the batfam are written in a very ooc way to fit a ship dynamic. wally, roy, kon, and jon are especially victims of that (and their supporting cast, interesting relationships and backstory details are often entirely erased. for example, where is linda park in wally/dick fics? is superboy's backstory from before he joined the young justice ever mentioned in tim/kon fics?). i sincerely sympathize with fans who can't even go into these characters' tags without being flooded with ooc ship posts. i don't know the solution to this problem. even when a character is part of the ship, i think you should tag your post with this character's name. i guess "don't like don't read" and "block and move on" are golden rules, but i totally get the frustration of non-batfam dc fans when they see batfamily inserted into every single dc thing, both in official comics and in fandom spaces.

it's not limited to shipping either. so many people want the "good dad bruce" but also need a bad parental figure for their fics so they vilify jack drake or oliver queen and now some fans seriously think ollie is a worse father than bruce in canon. or i've heard from a mutual that she was on a deathstroke-centric discord server where they basically claimed every atrocity slade has committed was misinterpreted/never actually happened/shouldn't be discussed because it ruins the mood. i know why people get so defensive when you point out their favorite character has flaws and done some terrible things, especially when it's not relevant to the discussion and the only reason someone does it is to announce how much they hate your fave, but pretending it never happened makes talking even more difficult and prevents you from exploring interesting aspects of the character. not to mention if you ignore some events that present your favorite character in negative light, suddenly a lot of other characters' actions stop making sense. (for example if you ignore that jason was a full-on villain (maybe antivillain?) running around gotham and actively killing people in Batman and Robin, it doesn't make sense for dick to put him in arkham. and then you have people crying "why would meanie dick put his traumatized little brother jason in arkham with the joker?" completely ignoring the context and skipping over relevant information.) a good post about a similar problem when it comes to steph is here.

this is just me complaining, but the character tags on tumblr are so full of fanon posts and ooc "incorrect quotes" that it's frustrating to look at for someone who enjoys these characters in a completely different way. i don't want to be a killjoy and spoil people's fun or request that everyone caters to my desires but occasionally i just need to vent somewhere (i mostly do it with friends in dms so as not to create a negative atmosphere but sometimes it's just not enough). it's just a bit annoying to me when fanon starts to completely dominate fandom spaces. and you can't even filter it out because both fanon fans and canon fans use the exact same character tags and a lot of people don't tag their fics with a variation of "i don't read comics", which i understand, you're not required to do so, i just think it might be useful.

i enjoy some fanon tropes and fics based on them and i sometimes read fics from fandoms where i’ve never interacted with any of the source material. reading fandom blind can be fun. i do not, however, think that makes me actually knowledgeable on the subject. i also wouldn’t be writing my own fics where i bash characters and critique plot points of the original media when I’ve never actually gotten a firsthand look at it as a source. that just leads to a wack-ass game of fic of theseus where other people who haven’t interacted with the original fandom read my fic of a fic, write their own fic of a fic, and every deviation gets further and further away from canon so it’s not even the same story remotely anymore. and then those people will get into fights on tumblr with people who do know the source material and it’s like bro, you didn’t even pass the introductory course.

again, you can write whatever you want, interact with fandom however you want, but please don't claim your headcanons and interpretations are based on canon when you avoid reading comics. if you want to support your analysis with panels, at least read the comics where they're from first and make sure they're not taken out of context. (there's this post going around with the panel of bruce hugging cass from her batgirl solo which is supposed to prove he's a good dad. it completely misses the point of that scene and how terrible bruce was to her for the entire run.)

and finally we arrive at more controversial stuff, namely fandom racism and misogyny. i'm just going to once again quote this post because i think it's very well put:

"This focus on fandom trends and tropes over actual creativity or care for the characters is also visible in the way bigotry manifests in this fandom; namely, in literally the exact way you’d expect. The female characters and characters of colour are shuffled to the side, non-existent, vilified, and/or reduced to harmful stereotypes. Barbara is probably the one I saw the most often in fanfic, but usually just as ‘Dick’s girlfriend’, and even then, she was often vilified for Dick angst (especially in fics about examining Dick’s trauma from his canon sexual assault; Kori also often gets the short end of the stick in those). After that, probably Stephanie, who fanon fans don’t really seem to know what to do with, so she’s basically just there as comic relief waffle girl, most of the time, though sometimes she can be used to either further Tim angst or further vilify Tim, whatever the fic calls for. Cass has gotten included more in batfam fics as of late, likely in response to critiques of fandom racism for leaving her out, but again, it’s clear people don’t actually know what to do with her. She’s often reduced to a racist stereotype of a quite, stoic therapist for whatever guy du jour needs it. That, or she’s in Hong Kong and just not there. Duke especially gets left in the dust in fandom, usually just being non-existent, but when he’s there, he’s almost always nothing more than the straight man for the actual fun characters to play off of. Talia probably has it the worst, though, and almost universally gets vilified by fanon stans in order to write sadboy Damian. All of this is extremely predictable behaviour and falls entirely in line with general fandom misogyny and racism; ignoring or vilifying women and characters of colour, or using them as very minor characters at best. The only two characters of colour who aren’t regularly left out of fic are Dick and Damian, who are both also conveniently the two characters most often drawn and written in a whitewashed manner. In addition, there’s a real trend of demonizing Damian in fanon fics where he isn’t written as an abused sadboy, which I’d argue is in no small part due to fandom racism, considering Damian’s behaviour is in no way as bad as Jason’s, who doesn’t get anywhere close to the same demonization and gets woobiefied instead. I also find it convenient that Damian is probably the batboy who receives the most vilification in fic, when he’s the most obviously non-white of the batboys they’re willing to acknowledge. Fandom often cries for more diversity in canon, only to ignore the diversity already there and focus on the same generic white guys. The batfam fandom is a brilliant example of this. Which is not to say that fandom racism and misogyny isn’t present in the canon parts of the fandom (and canon itself); it absolutely 100% is. But I’ve found that canon fans are also more likely to like and care about at least one of the characters I’ve listed as ignored/vilified, and are willing to create and consume content for them, whereas fanon fans… aren’t, really. I’ve never seen a fan of fanon Cass the way I’ve seen fans of fanon Dick, for example. Obviously, this could just be by coincidence, or I’ve just surrounded myself with people like that, but it’s been a trend I noticed. Racism and misogyny is present in every part of this fandom and should be addressed as such, but I feel like it manifests the most blatantly in the fanon parts of this fandom."

disclaimer: i don't think every person who doesn't include cass or duke in their fics is sexist or racist. (for example, if you write fics set only in post-crisis era it's understandable why duke would be absent.) i'm not here to accuse anyone of being a bigot. i simply think it's worth noting why we prefer certain characters to others, why we include certain characters in fics and not others, and why we characterize certain characters in fanon the way they're characterized. finally, i urge everyone to read these two essays: What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Beige Blank Slates and What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Migratory Slash Fandom’s Focus. they really describe a lot of batfam fandom trends and how they manifest in a lot of other fandoms and fandom spaces.

i am *absolutely* with you on the "canon!Helena is fanon!Jason" posts. i'm a huge Helena Bertinelli fan, i'd go so far as to say she might be my favorite character of all time and i care about knowing everything there is to know about her. like i'm a Batfamily fan, but i'm *really* a Huntress fan. and while i think the lighthearted jokes about how women in the Batfamily get ignored for the men, as you said because of the misogyny in Migratory Slash Fandom, and how you can draw similarities to Jason and Helena, i think it's such a *wild* disservice to Helena to call her fanon!Jason. and frankly, what fans like about fanon!Jason (his relationship with Bruce, his trauma, how he reacts to it, his childhood as Robin) are *not* things you'll find in any Huntress comic. besides some surface parallels you can draw about "elder Batfam kid who's got a weird complex about Bruce and is pro-murder", she exists on her own.

then again, as you said, i see people wanting fanfic for things that exist in canon comics. i have seen headcanons where "Jason is Catholic and becomes an English teacher and protects women and children and adopts a kid and totally tells Bruce off while still being close to Tim/Dick/etc" and my impulse thought is. a little pained that these people haven't heard of Huntress, when she canonically is all of the things people headcanon Jason as, particularly the headcanons that make little sense for him. that said, i don't think you're going to convince any fan, Jason stan or not, to read a Huntress comic by dragging him down. it feels sort of reactionary? like people are course-correcting *too much* to fix the racism and misogyny in fandom by boosting up the women and characters of color, but still only doing it through the lense of comparing them to the popular cishet white (or whitewashed, in the case of Damian and Dick) male characters. which, if the only way you feel you can convince people to read about women or poc in comics is by comparing them to men, i don't think you're making the point you think you are about them. because frankly i think creating so much fan content about Helena surround Jason defeats the point of her existing on her own. and it's not like these fans are purposefully stealing traits from Helena to make Jason cooler in their head, most of them don't know she exists. so shoving her in their faces both makes it harder to find genuine content about Helena, and makes Jason fans reactionary toward the mention of her.

which is frustrating, when fanon-only fans start trying to include the women and characters of colors they flat out don't understand, for fear they'll look bigoted if left out. but because they don't understand these characters whatsoever, we end up with popular headcanons that make *no* concept of sense. see specifically: the idea of Duke being "the normal one" because fanon-only fans don't really know what to *do* with him. they know he exists but they don't seem to want to learn about him outside of that, they just want the brownie points for including him. the same extends to Cass, for me the painful fanon is with her using ASL to communicate which makes *zero* sense for her disability and is a headcanon that at best is cute but misguided, and at worst views all Deaf/mute disabilities as interchangeable and easily "fixable" by ASL. (this one may be a tad personal to me as a Deaf fan lol, but this post really gets into the nuances of it) like honestly: i'd far rather fanon-only spaces just flat out go back to leaving these characters out because at least then, they were honest about not knowing or caring about them. whereas now you only get this half-hearted, shallow "the only content for this character is posts that mass tag every single Batfamily member mentioned even once" inclusion for the brownie points.

i think your point about fanon changing is *fascinating* because it's something i've noticed so heavily. i got into the Batfamily in my early teens, dropped off for a bit when the MCU and Winter Soldier comics became my primary special interest, and then as an adult when i came back into the space i was *baffled* by how things had changed. because i actually *do* remember a time when the fanon Jason Todd was a sexist horndog who was so mean to poor Timmy but also his protector. i remember when you couldn't *escape* where every interaction Jason had with Damian in headcanons, incorrect quotes, or fanfic culminated in a "well I fucked your mom" joke. (which, was so *weird* in the first place but i'm begging people to let go because even Winick, the guy who wrote that comic, agrees it shouldn't have happened and it was weird.) i distinctly remember everyone agreeing Jason was the mean, violent Robin who got himself killed with his own recklessness (which tbf, some canon DC content still agrees with this, Death in the Family was frankly a messy comic in hindsight and if not for its cultural significance, i firmly believe would be regarded as poorly written) and was a big mean asshole as Red Hood. and like, to be honest if you went off of RHATO (2011), yeah, i'd see why Jason being a weird sexist freak sort of became a thing. but now we've done this complete 180 and it feels like people are course correcting too hard. now, it's all "Jason was a sunshine boy as Robin, look at this out of context panel where he says being Robin gave him magic, and as Red Hood he's a sad depressed traumatized boy protecting women and children, who's mistreated by everyone" which feels just as incorrect. Jason's Robin years were a shitshow of inconsistent writing (imo the only good story of Robin!Jason is Batman: the Cult) that's hard to parse anything out of, but to act like Jason was this ball of sunshine ignores his most important arcs as Robin. (how he reacts to believing Two-Face killed his father, how he reacts during the infamous Felipe incident, so on) i recently had a *very* long argument with someone in a TikTok comment section because they refused to believe Jason was a villain and kept insisting he wasn't, even when i was directly quoting the *writers of his comics* at them (comics this person admitted they hadn't read) simply because they were so attached to Jason being this misunderstood antihero.

and the same has happened to Tim too. Tim has always been all over the place in fanon, but like you pointed out, there's this spike in a *ridiculously* cartoonishly evil portrayal of the Drakes for the sake of projection onto Tim. at their worst you could say the Drakes were possibly neglectful out of sheer cluelessness rather than malice. but to act as though they never even hug or look at him and he's a poor boy who had to raise himself is so wild. it's a complicated headcanon for me because there are certainly versions of the "Tim's parents were kind of shitty" headcanon i enjoy (and i'm not ashamed to say that's entirely projection) but it's become so ridiculous you can't find content where his parents genuinely care. or worse, you end up in arguments with people about whether or not his parents were neglectful, and their sources are shaky at best. Tim has suffered the most from the blorbofication of fanon, specifically how fanon likes to take a character and give them an "oh everyone has been mean and awful to you and lookit how terrible they treated you except this One Character who Understands You and yells at everyone for mistreating you and is now your Protector". and, i understand the projection fantasy of that, this idea of someone suddenly noticing how mistreated you are and using Tim as a slate for that. usually it's Jason who's the savior of Tim, or any other character you can slash him with, like Kon. so you have to create fanon like "Dick tried to send Tim to Arkham" or take canon moments like "Damian cut Tim's line as a murder attempt" (nevermind the genuine justification Damian had for his anger, as well as the fact this wasn't even a real murder attempt and Tim wasn't hurt or bothered by it beyond a "what the hell???" moment) just to strip Tim of people who care about him to stick him in that unrealistic scenario.

honestly, not to sidebar too long but as a lover of Red Robin (2009) it's one of my biggest gripes about how people misunderstand that comic. the point of that arc for Tim is not "look at how awful everyone treats him and no one believes him so he has to work alone and be this uber badass who's so isolated and misunderstood bc everyone is just so awful to him". the *point* is "look at Tim who is purposefully self-isolating because of his grief and consistently pushing away his loved ones trying to reach out because Tim's worst fear as a character is becoming like Bruce, hyper-paranoid and driving everyone away and that is what he is actively doing in this arc and his turning point is being willing to accept help and verbatim saying 'i'm not like Batman, i have friends' because he breaks the cycle of self harm that Bruce can't". it's so *frustrating* to me, the recent fascination with taking this comic so out of context for fanon, because the whole *point* is Tim is his worst enemy. not how supposedly awful characters like Dick are for... saying Tim might need therapy or for telling him he's ready to move on from being Robin because he's grown past the role. but instead of delving into Tim's actual arc during this run, people tout around a few panels of it so they can force him into the fanon arc they *want* him to have. which isn't really an arc at all, it's just a stereotype of a character that Tim isn't to begin with.

and then the fanon shift has also badly clocked Bruce- we went from at least managing to agree he was sort of the worst as a dad to now if Bruce is a bad dad in the comics that's OOC and terrible and awful and why do you want Bruce to be mean to his kids. the meme you shared from 2014 feels so funny in hindsight a decade later with how Bruce is the one fanon has flipped the hardest on. and my personal theory on why that change has been so vicious is because initially, Batfanon was a victim of Migratory Slash Fandom, people moving in on these characters because they were pretty boys who you could ship together, to it now being a victim of... i guess for lack of any other name, Migratory Found Family Fandom. there's this real want in fandom nowadays for found family to come first and to be highlighted on. it's becoming a marketing term at this point, and i regularly see people say they got into the Batfamily because they wanted a cutesy found family. (i also blame this for the rise in antis in the Batfamily fandom as of recent- if people are here for the found family and these sibling bonds they've constructed in their heads, they react with hostility to headcanons/ships that disagree with that, like batcest) so if you want a cute found family, you have to convince yourself Bruce is a good dad all the time and actively push against any content that says otherwise, even canon content.

and oh my *god*, the Titans Tower Incident and all its AUs. dare i say, my most controversial opinion in the Batfamily fandom is this: i don't think that comic is actually that OOC for Jason. he's over the top and garish about it, but really, when *isn't* Jason being dramatic during this era. if you compare it to Jason's actions during this era, specifically how he reacts to other teen sidekicks (see the whole kidnapping Mia Dearden and blowing up her school in a Green Arrow arc) it really isn't out of form for him. the only part of it that feels cringey is him well, wearing that ridiculous Robin suit. but i think that existed for meta reasons of reminding readers who Jason Todd was. (if you're only a Teen Titans reader and not keeping up with the Batman run, Jason's revival is still fresh enough that you may need to be reminded who the hell he even *is*. we all forget that during that era of comics Jason wasn't known how he is now. i was speaking to a relative who used to read comics decades ago about the Batfamily and passingly mentioned Jason and he was blown away Jason was revived and didn't know at all Jason was alive. i had that conversation only a year ago. putting Jason in the Robin suit wasn't because he's a dramatic rat, it was to show readers who he was in the first place so i defend the choice, personally.) when you actually look at Jason's actions, he's *not* trying to kill Tim. he's testing Tim and making a point about how easy it is for anyone to just break into Titans Tower and target a defenseless teen sidekick- because one of Jason's main beliefs at this point was there shouldn't *be* teen sidekicks. his death should've been a wake up call to the hero community. and by the end of it, he has an honest respect for Tim, there's no real hatred on Jason's side for Tim as a person, he just hates the idea the Robin mantle didn't end with his death. and as for Tim. Tim is really... nonplussed by the whole thing. he's mocking Jason the whole time, even as he's getting beaten and it clearly holds no lasting effects on him other than giving him a distaste for someone he didn't like in the first place. but all these AUs from fanon-only fans who only understand the incident as "omg Jason went to Titans Tower and beat Tim up for no reason" make just... painful fanfiction out of it. which sucks because i'd love exploration of that moment that *actually* considers Jason's canon motivations and feelings, as well as Tim's canon reactions and feelings in fanfiction, shipping or not. but instead everything is about how Tim was so battered and defenseless and Jason was a horrible person. or, if the fanon is trying to be transgressive, it's Jason for some reason deciding to take Tim in after this moment and deciding to be Tim's savior. because once again, that seems to be the only way Tim and Jason can exist in fanon. Jason is big and mean to Tim until he Sees The Light and saves Tim from the cruel world because he's the only one who sees Tim for how he is.

and of course, the "Justice League meets the Batfamily" thing. besides what i already said -how it uproots characters of important relationships for silly crack- i think the weirdest part to me is it forces every character to be a Batman clone. they must be this weird cryptid crawling around Gotham who never leaves the city and never makes friends. and worse, it gives Bruce a *freakish* level of control over them. like i always read these fics (bc i swear, i've given them the college try.) and my lingering thought is "this is supposed to be silly fluff/crack but somehow it's created a deeply insidious implication about the Batfamily) because you're telling me every single member of the Batfamily, with their own agency, their own views on what being a hero should be, their own goals, has whole-heartedly nodded and agreed to Bruce's loner ideologies? they're fine with Bruce playing ball in the big Leagues while they all sit and only exist at his beck and call in Gotham? that's so fucking *weird* to me. (and granted: the only way i think i could get behind this AU is if you went just balls to the walls with how fucked up that is and making it weird and dark and abusive. now if someone wrote that. that i would fucking devour.) at that point they're not characters with agency, they're just Bruce's little minions. which is *weird*, given the fact half of them don't like Bruce on any given day, and the other half definitely are *not* listening to his orders or wanting him to father them. like, if i can pretend for just a second that the League doesn't ever read the Gotham Gazette or look at the news in Gotham to notice there's definitely other heroes crawling around. if I can pretend for a moment Nightwing can totally exist without Superman knowing him even though Clark *gave him the name*. if i can suspend that disbelief. i *can't* suspend the disbelief that every one of these characters can remain in character, expressing their own agency, and yet never leave Gotham/never interact with the League. Bruce has to be holding a power over them to be forcing them to stay in Gotham which is both no fun and weird. which i think fanon consistently misunderstands about all of these characters. there's this belief everyone in the Batfamily has a loyalty to Bruce and will always defact to following his orders. as if most of them are not actively doing the opposite. because Bruce isn't really the patriarch of this "family". there is no patriarch. they just co-exist and build relationships and then fight about it.

of course, the point of that concept is that you're not supposed to think about it too hard. it exists because there's this fun to the fantasy of "omg the League has no idea the totally cool and badass Batfamily exists and could totally school them" in that projection sort of way. which is why i think it exists. it's the projection and the comedy potential of cardboard cut outs with the names of canon characters doing slapstick routines. which is what a lot of the Batfamily fanon is. no deep thoughts about the canon, just whatever silly ideas you can plaster onto it. this isn't unique to the Batfamily, it's really just a thing of how fandom works and always will work, but it feels particularly worse in a fandom driven by fanon. because like you said, comics can be difficult to read on just a simple craft level. i also don't actually love the medium as an art form, i regularly cannot tell what order shit is being said in. and some older comics are just. hard to read. they flat out are difficult to even understand. i love Huntress (1989) and Batman: the Cult on like. a story level. but as for actually enjoying how the comic read? ngl i was not having fun. but that's just the medium, take it or leave it. and some fans are going to leave it, hence voraciously consuming adaptation content, but not the comics.

funnily enough, i once actually saw a fan go on and on about how much they loved Jason and how they were an expert because they'd... memorized his fandom wiki. like that goes to show the lengths people will go to, to not read the medium. and i'm not saying that's a bad thing or you're not a real fan, but to say you're an expert from a wiki feels... presumptuous, is the kindest way i'll put it. but it exemplifies what is important to fanon. knowing the events that happened, but not their contexts and their emotional impacts. you can react about something in a wiki and decide to run with it, insisting your headcanon/fanfic is based on canon. canon moments don't exist to genuinely be interacted with, just used as malleable concepts you can shape into whatever best fits your fanon opinion.

and like you brought up, some fanon only fans will start to pick up comics and shape their interaction with canon through the lense of fanon. sure, if you stretch it hard enough, you can say the Drakes neglect Tim in canon. but that's clearly not the intent, and that interpretation exists on the predication of the fanon you already believed. and you can do that with any Batfamily character, all you have to do is sweep under the rug comics that don't fit your purview with the "well it's OOC" argument, or "that writer sucks though" argument. which just isn't how comics as a medium work, but even if that is true, an OOC comic can still be very important canon that you need to be willing to interact with at least a little bit to understand the character. (see: Battle for the Cowl) and i get why that can be so frustrating, to beginners. it feels easier and safer to fall back onto the simplicities of fanon where you don't have to critically think about it all. that's not a dig, there are times i don't want to critically think about my blorbos, i just want them to kiss. but if that was the only way i interacted with fandom, i personally don't think i'd be having a lot of fun. and like you said, it's weird we get interpreted as rude for politely suggesting people read comics. or worse, politely correcting people on misinformation about comics. the arguments i have had about comics simply because i wanted to politely correct someone and i was seen as a buzzkill fun hater. when the issue isn't with the fanon, it's with saying the fanon is canon. (not DC related, but i got into a heated argument because someone repeatedly claimed that Peter Parker was "only recently" an adult in comics and when they were corrected on no, he's been an adult since the 60s you just clearly don't read comics and that's okay just don't talk about what you don't know, they backtracked and claimed their issue was with fans portraying him as a minor in a specific ship. which, is a different conversation and not the one they started and made them point fingers at the people correcting them. it's exhausting and i've had the debate constantly.)

Prompts for DickTim Week 2025 are now out! If you have any questions, check out our FAQ or send us a message!

Batman: DOA (1999) Bruce: Look, Dick, do your best. You take the car. I'm in no shape to drive. Tim: I'll find him, Bruce. Don't worry. Bruce (narrating): Dick Grayson. The first Robin. The legend. Hard enough for Tim Drake to live in his shadow without me calling him 'Dick'. Bruce (narrating): Of course I had other things to worry about right then. Like whether a dying man could scale the side of a fifty-story building.

ohohoho as soon as I saw this quote I had to look this comic up and read it. I don't think I'd ever seen these panels before?

potentially relevant to the "Bruce calling Tim Dick" discussion, but given that they just found out Bruce is dying and has 24 hours to live - and Tim has been forbidden to tell Dick or anyone else about it - and he also just watched Bruce puke his guts up - idk how much we can really glean about Tim's emotional reaction here lol

Dick and relationships. It’s a topic I’ve written a lot about on this blog. (With embarrassing obsessiveness, some might say.) And I’ve been accused multiple times of being biased with which parts of his history I give the most weight in terms of how I see Dick.

To which I say… yeah, obviously.

I try to be as fair in my analysis as I can, but I’ll readily admit that I give more weight to some parts of canon than others. I think the way I see Dick is based on the way he’s been most consistently written, but that doesn’t mean every single part of canon is in line with that. The guy’s been around for over 70 years, after all. He’s been written a lot of different ways.

So with that in mind, I’ve compiled a photo-history showing how Dick’s attitude towards relationships has changed over the years. No commentary from me. No analysis. No attempting to fit it all into some larger context. I love some of these scenes, loathe others, am ambivalent towards still others. But they’re all presented here equally, as close to bias-free as I can get.

And let everybody draw their own conclusions - if, in fact, you draw any at all. There isn’t really a point to this post, beyond looking at all the twists and turns in Dick’s character evolution.

One thing is for sure - it’s been one hell of a journey getting to where we are today.

1961: “If Batman can make that kind of sacrifice, I guess I’m man enough to do it, too!”

 1963: “It sure would, Betty!”

1967: “She’s ruining all our plans! Besides– she makes terrible puns!”

1976: “Kinda gets you ready for some real action, yes—?”

1977: “Especially not while Lori is here in town with me!”

1977: “I guess I do come on strong sometimes— and I really don’t have any right to!”

1980: “Y-you had to kiss me to do that?”

1981: “Starfire, please… we’ve got work to do.”

1982: “I really need time to sort out my emotions.”

 1985: “Lilith was threatening to tell Kory all about my dark, sordid past.”

1987: “You’re still married to Karras. To me, that matters.”

1988: “Love should be between two people.”

1988: “I couldn’t make love to someone I didn’t really love.”

1988: “Though this might sound unhip, I feel strange about living with someone I’m not married to.”

1992: “Dick, you slut!”*

*I’m breaking my “no commentary” rule just this once to point out that Pantha said this in reference to Dick being raped. I felt that needed to be said.

1993: “My morality makes me a one-woman man.”

1997: How do I explain that I just married my work?“

1998: “Every time someone’s even nice to you, you feel this almost pathological need to—”

1998: “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

1998: “You know, I just sort of fell into all those situations.”

1999: “On the couch.”

1999: “Drop the deflector shields, lady. It’s a figure of speech.”

 1999: “Can you give me time?”

2001: “Let’s get dangerous together.”

2001: “I’m just happy and I wanted to share it.”

2001: “If the world’s going to end, I want us to be together.”

2004: “I’d do anything to protect that, anything to protect that connection, to protect you…”

2005: “I know I failed you.”

2005: “I guess I just wanted to feel a little more…. alive.”

2006: “I wasn’t ready. I’m ready now.”

2006: “Work hard, play hard.”

2006: “What can I say? I’ve got a thing for redheads.”

2007: “Is she the reason I’ve never been able to commit?”

2008: “Do you love me?”

2009: “Busting. Relax.”

2012: “Let’s not pretend this is something more than it really is, Dick.”

2012: “Let’s stop over-thinking this and just do what you said.”

2013: “You understand why I can’t think of being close again with… anyone?”

For tim's birthday 2024

Prompts for DickTim Week 2024 are now out! If you have any questions, please see the week's FAQ or send us a message!

from YJ #1 (1998)