Damian Wayne Nico Di Angelo

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blood son

Tim was jealous of Damian principally for two reasons. One, as a brand new adoptee, he felt incredibly insecure about his place in the Wayne family; Damian's demands to be treated with respect because he's Batman's biological son and his constant insults of Tim because Tim isn't hit Tim hard because of it. Tim feels like he's had to work incredibly hard to earn Bruce's love and respect while Damian gets it by default (which....lots to unpack there, but moving on), and the hurt that this causes combined with Damian's arrogant and cruel dismissal of Tim as a member of the family simply because he's not biologically related influences Tim's continued negative opinion of Damian. The dinosaur incident also doesn't help matters. Thus, he's resentful that Damian was (from his perspective) immediately accepted into the family despite his behavior towards them and hurt because he feels like his own place in the family is being denied by the newcomer.

Two, after losing so much and so many people and finally achieving a tiny bit of equilibrium in his life when Bruce adopts him, Damian shows up and, in his mind, more or less replaces him as the center of everyone's attention. This isn't really Damian's fault (his upbringing, trauma, and learned behaviors make him an incredibly difficult child who needs a lot of time, care, and attention from the adults around him), but Tim is right in that the second Damian shows up, he gets somewhat de-prioritized and trusted to handle himself in a time period where he's emotionally vulnerable and desperately craving positive attention and validation from his "new" family.

These feelings get touched on in multiple issues, particularly Batman & Son and Red Robin #1:

"What about us?" /// "If he is my son-even if he's not-he deserves some love and respect." "So let him earn it, like everyone else." -Batman #657 (Batman and Son)

"How can you let him wear that costume, Dick? What earth are we on that you choose him over me?" /// "Sorry, Drake. You're still part of the team--maybe the Batgirl costume is available." [Tim punches Damian in the face] "My name is Tim Wayne!" -Red Robin #1

Are Bruce and Dick actually choosing Damian over Tim? No, they're not. Dick is actually explicitly trying to express that he loves, respects, and trusts Tim (both as a person and as a competent vigilante) by calling Tim his "equal" and giving Damian the Robin mantle. But Tim is insecure and hurting and grieving throughout this entire period in his life, and he isn't thinking the most rationally about the situation. This is a moment that very reasonably feels like a betrayal to Tim, who sees it as Dick taking away the one stable thing he has left in the aftermath of Bruce dying, and then Damian walks into the room and implicitly denies him a place in the family. He feels replacable and unneeded, and his jealousy and resentment of Damian throughout this period are ultimately less about Damian personally (any personal dislike of Damian he has is largely due to other issues) and more about his own emotional instability and the insecurity he feels as an adoptee.

Meanwhile, Damian was jealous of Tim for the exact same reasons that he's jealous of Cass in Gates of Gotham: Bruce and Dick's easy trust in and respect of Tim, both as a person and as a vigilante, and the fact that Bruce chose Tim to be part of his family and never chose Damian (even though Bruce accepted him anyway). He views Tim as a threat and rival for his father's affections, and to that end his constant insults towards Tim tend to lean in two directions: undermining his place in the family and undermining his competence as a vigilante. Both types of insults are the direct outgrowth of Damian's own insecurities about his place in the family.

Damian has a notable and recurring desire to feel useful, competent, and accepted within the Batfam. It's explicitly what Damian wants most in this era: to be accepted and for his skills to be recognized. Dick even comments on it during the Hit List arc: "he practically bleeds a need to be accepted." In many ways, Damian thinks that if he’s not succeeding at proving his competency and usefulness, he’s failing at proving he’s worthy to stay in Gotham, and his consistent prickliness towards other people is often a front to cover up his insecurities about these things. This crops up pre-reboot literally as early as Batman and Son:

"But she's not there now, is she? Because she wants something from Great Britain in exchange for the life of the Prime Minister's wife and I think I know what it is." "It's Gibraltar! She wants the garrison at Gibraltar! See? I can be useful!" -Batman & Son (2006)

And as late as Gates of Gotham, when he gets angry and snappy at Cass because she pulled him away from disabling the bomb at Elliot Tower (in his mind, undermining his competence as a vigilante) and promptly starts insulting her behind her back:

"Cassandra's not useless." "No. She's spineless, naive, and fragile. And I don't trust her." "You don't trust anyone..." "And your eagerness to trust makes you weak." "Well, deny it all you want...but I think we both know the only real reason you don't like her...is that she's just one more person your father picked over you." -Gates of Gotham #3

It's also explicitly noted during the infamous Red Robin Hit List arc, where Damian talks about how "it isn't fair" that Tim still doesn't trust him despite all of the work he's put in to change his thoughts, behavior, and tactics from how he was taught in the League. He lashes out at Tim during "The Hit List" because he'd finally gained some measure of trust and respect from Dick and some personal equilibrium in his life...and then Tim comes swooping back into Gotham after having gained the respect of Damian's grandfather and proceeds to unearth the surprise revelation that Bruce (the father who rejected Damian) respected Tim enough to hand over (nominal) control of Wayne Enterprises to him, poach on his quality time with Dick, and continue to distrust Damian despite his very real struggles to change.

You feel a lot for Damian during the Reborn era because you can chart a direct path between the hurt he feels at being seemingly rejected by the one person he'd desperately wanted approval from for years–Bruce–and the ways in which he lashes out at Dick, Tim, Alfred, etc when suddenly not too long after that incident Bruce is dead and he's stuck with this group of people who clearly and obviously don't like or trust him. He's constantly trying to prove himself as worthy of being there and, very reasonably, gets frustrated and hurt and angry when his efforts are met with continued distrust and hostility.

Tim's continued lack of trust (which Tim has for good but genuinely misguided reasons!) feeds into Damian's resentment and jealousy of him; this is especially true given that Tim is consistently portrayed as competent, trusted, and deeply loved by basically every other member of the Batfam–particularly by Dick and later Bruce, the two people whose opinions Damian values most–during this time period. So yeah: Damian is jealous of Tim too, and his behavior towards Tim is largely indicative of that plus his frustration at Tim's continued distrust of him. His methods of dealing with that hurt (cutting Tim's line and trying to fight him afterwards) are absolutely unacceptable and are treated as such, but they come from a totally understandable place.

Luckily "The Hit List" is basically THE lowest point for Tim and Damian’s relationship. It starts improving immediately after this; multiple writers showcase a definite shift in Tim and Damian’s dynamic after that point, and by the time we get to Gates of Gotham (the last time they interact pre-reboot), we were getting scenes like this:

Gates of Gotham #3

They were absolutely still prickly and kinda rude towards each other (and I wouldn’t necessarily say they liked each other), but they had very clearly grown, were on much better terms, and were able to trust each other while working and fighting together. They've both individually matured and grown enough to the point where they're able to start moving on from that initial period of distrust and jealousy and move forward into a new era (and then we get the reboot, but that's a different discussion for another day).

- once damian accidentally closed his door with alferd the cat in his room and so he woke up to cat poop right next to his pillow after this he puts a litter box in his room

- tim blasts music in his headphones and just jams out problem is he keeps doing it in the kitchen so he’s been walked in on a lot, the reaction varies depending on the person

jason just wanted a midnight snack, it to late for this shit, he ignores tim gets his snack and leaves

dick either joins the dancing wholeheartedly just jamming in complete silence or is a little shit and films it for blackmail purposes (mostly the latter if tims singing along offkeyly)

steph 100% films that shit and sends it to the gc amd you can just hear her laughing in the background

damian just stares at him until tim notices and lifts one of his headphones off his ear, looks his straight in the eyes says wtf and leaves

duke either didn’t notice at all, he walked in their half-asleep and thirsty or like steph filmed it and sent it to the gc

- tims weird snack is string cheese and peanut butter (i used to eat this all the time in elementary school)

- when dick was taken in by bruce and after he was more himself and was established as robin he enlisted the help of both alfred & bruce to paint his room and it ended in just a paint war, throughout the years he kept changing his room color and everytime got brucee & alfred to help (he finally left it with each wall a different one of the robin colors but not as bright)

jason over here passive aggressively saying fuck you in flower language while bruce is just happy jason thought of him enough to get him a present

and Bruce, clueless bastard when it comes to his family, just shrugs and goes "I doubt he knows what they mean, Alfred"

bruce is a clueless dad who believes in the good of all his children, they can do no harm

alfred is so done with him honestly its a wonder he survived this long

this reminds me about this fanart

Alfred cooks dinner, and he finds Jason has already started on collecting empty dishes before he can take a single step out of the kitchen.

Damian comes inside from checking on batcow to find his colored pencils sharpened to a fine, razor-perfect point so he can go right back to what he was doing.

Bruce can't find his favorite mug, but when he comes down to the batcave, it's full of hot coffee and sitting on a coaster in its usual spot, except Alfred is still upstairs and has long given up trying to make him use a coaster.

Stephanie finds her phone on the charger beside her favorite spot on the couch because it died while she was talking to Cass.

Cass, for that matter, can't find her old headphones. However, she does find a new pair of noise-canceling ones in their spot. She doesn't remember buying these. She likes them.

Duke finds the book he was reading before having to rush out on morning patrol on the table, his place marked with a sticky note. Duke already knows who left it, but the sentiment is nice, so he doesn't say a word.

Tim wakes up on more than one occasion after falling asleep in the batcave post-patrol and finds a blanket around his shoulders. Not tucked too tight, less it trigger his claustrophobia, but just enough that it won't fall off. He doesn't know who keeps doing this. He thought it was Bruce at first, but even Bruce isn't that sneaky to get that close without Tim waking up. Not since Tim became extra flighty, at least.

Dick knows exactly why he gets random food delivered to his house sometimes. He knows Jason worries, and as much as Dick hates that he took after Bruce in that regard, he's glad Jason guilts him into remembering to eat from time to time. Dick, like Duke, doesn't say a word. If there's one thing he knows, its that there are some things you just don't talk about, for fear of upsetting the natural balance.

Of course you can convince me to poke at Nico&Apollo’s relationship because it’s interesting and completely underrated so it deserves it’s own post rather than being crammed into the footnotes of a Solangelo post!

The first thing to note about these two, which I don’t see discussed anywhere near enough, is that Apollo is the first person to be nice to Nico in canon.

Yup. The first. When Nico’s introduced, we’ve got the whirlwind of Thalia and Percy bickering and posturing like the terrible big three kids they are, we’ve got a manticore trying to kidnap Bianca (and Nico as collateral), we’ve got the Hunters who are all pretty heavily dismissive of anything male, we’ve got Annabeth being taken hostage and Percy then losing any hope of rationality he possibly had before that, and we’ve got Artemis snatching his sister away for what Nico clearly feels is for good. Grover’s the only one who isn’t outright hostile to him, and we don’t know exactly how he treated the di Angelos at school but Nico doesn’t seem particularly attached to him so while Grover might have been nice enough, Nico clearly doesn’t see him as a potential support after Bianca’s abandonment of him.

With your permission, I’d like to pick up where you left and ramble a bit more about their interactions in TON.

Will offered me a seat next to him, then passed me a goblet of orange juice.

‘Thank you,’ I managed. ‘But where’s, uh …?’

I scanned the crowd for Nico di Angelo, remembering how he normally sat at Will’s table, regardless of cabin rules.

‘Up there,’ Will said, apparently guessing my thoughts.

Apollo may have been a bit caught off guard by Nico sitting at cabin 7’s table at first (though it’s worth noting he never actually protested it, just asked) but the next time they are all there at camp he immediately wonders where Nico is. And Will immediately knows that Apollo is looking for Nico too. There’s no doubt in his mind that Nico has been unofficially adopted, and he is absolutely correct.

imagine travis coming home from college for the summer and finding his little brother being buddy buddy with the little nerd he knew when he was like 14/15 years old. he asks nico if he's still into mythomagic, nico says no, and the stolls take it as a challenge to get him back into the card game.

connor does it pretty easily by saying "i bet you couldn't beat me in a match"

nico obviously knows he's baiting him into playing again, but takes the challenge anyways because he's stubborn like that