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So, there's a lot of misinformation about Steph's financial status (preboot specifically) on both ends, I wanted to make a specific post to try to clear it up, based on my way too specific knowledge.

No, Steph never lived in Crime Alley. No, she was nowhere near as poor as Jason Todd, boy who was literally homeless. Yes, she did live in the suburbs. No, it wasn't an area that was any more affluent that the working class parts of the city. Dixon describes her neighborhood as "working class" and "blue-collar" in the Titans companion #2. That means the people there do not generally have office jobs, but will work jobs that involve manual labor or skilled trades-- a mechanic, a custodian, a construction worker, stuff that pays hourly.

Yes, the Browns were shown to be financially struggling. Yes, the comics indicated why. Yes, her house was repeatedly depicted as being in disrepair across multiple comics, long before and after the earthquake storyline. Yes, she does mention not being able to afford things.

Steph pretty much states that her neighborhood is lower income and she could be considered "poor" in Robin #35:

"I was poor" "My Daddy didn't love me"...I probably came from his same neighborhood or one just like it! You don't see me busting into appliance stores and my dad's the Cluemaster!"

To break it down, in this rant clearly fueled by her anger at her father/own childhood issues, Steph basically says excuses like "I'm poor" and "Dad didn't love me" could apply to her too, and indicates her neighborhood is a lower-income neighborhood, but she would never use that as an than an excuse to commit crimes.

Steph is likely lower middle class, "poor" in a similar way, say, the Simpsons are poor (and her being a 90s kid, the comparison is apt). Poor in the sense that in the average public school in a middle class neighborhood she might be accused of being a "poor kid." She's not living hand to mouth, but she's not in great shape either. She and her mom have a tight budget and she can't afford certain things a regular middle class person could.

Let's go into why this is:

There are two reasons the Browns could be financially struggling. But the most important one, and the one we know is definitely true, is that Arthur has poor finances and blows their money.

I could have sworn Steph said directly at one point that Arthur would blow a bunch of her mom's 'money whenever he came home, but I must have imagined it because I can't find it anywhere. But we are SHOWN that he will take Crystal's money to fund his schemes, even when Steph was very young (cw domestic abuse):

(Secret Origin 80 page Giant)

So, if Crystal has a steady job as a nurse, why are in the bad shape? Because someone using up all your money isn't a thing you can magically bounce back from, especially as a single mother who needs to pay a mortgage and bills. This likely left Crystal in a huge financial hole it's going to take years for her to dig herself out of.

Also, please note some environmental storytelling above in the last couple panels --the walls of Steph's house are shown to be cracked, and a huge chunk of plaster is even missing and exposing the wall behind Arthur. This house is not in good shape, indicating once again that the Browns aren't doing well. This will be shown repeatedly in future comics too, and I'll be giving a range of examples when we get there.

Arthur's shitty finances are further hinted at when Steph talks about a period where Arthur went legit and made more money than he'd ever had-- in a manufacturing job.

This person was a huge Tim Drake fan and I recall them saying Steph was "a middle class white girl coming down to the inner city to beat people up for kicks" and it's like...so uh. As opposed to Tim, an upper class white boy coming from an incredibly rich neighborhood (Bristol) coming down to beat people up in the city? Like if you have a problem with someone who doesn't currently live in the city doing this and think it makes a character I have bad news for you about Bruce Wayne and all of his kids (while they are living with him specifically, Jason obviously started out poor and usually lives in the poorer parts of the city outside of that time period, Dick lived in a modest apartment in the city in Bludhaven, etc) .

(The "for kicks" thing is probably because Steph described being Spoiler as kind of a thrill in early comics, but it was always clear she was naturally altruistic, and she became Spoiler in the first place to protect her Mom and stop her Dad. Sure, she was a teenager who found being a vigilante exciting, but she went on to develop more complex motives. You don't stay behind after a earthquake to help people after your date abandons you because it's a thrill. You don't deal with Batman constantly tearing down your self-esteem because being a hero is just a fun thing to you. She also expressed early on that she wanted to protect her neighborhood as well as the city, since bad stuff did happen there too ("the city had Batman, but the burbs don't have anyone") with a pastor she was friends with as Spoiler even noting he was truly grateful there was a hero looking after this area. She also stated as Robin that she wanted criminals who would exploit children out of children's lives, and I think wanting to protect people from what she went through was always a factor, even if she didn't realize it at first.

Part of what would have made Steph such a good Robin if they'd given her a shot is she DID take such joy in being Robin in a way Tim often didn't get to. But of course she only got to do that so DC could kill her. Taking joy in being Robin is punished now.

And yeah, the child soldier discourse definitely wasn't helped by the "good soldier" memorial and Bruce repeatedly calling them soldiers after Jason died lmao. (Though since it was a DKR thing, everyone was going to follow suit and start militarizing Batman whether Jason died or not I guess) If there's one thing that's good about current comics, it's that we've had comics where Bruce rejects that rhetoric (There was this whole dramatic thing where he was like "Tim's not my soldier, he's my son") and we've largely moved away from it, as far as I can tell. Yet the discourse rages on.

Because otherwise, what exactly is the line of thinking? "Oh yeah, what kids want more than anything in media is to watch the kid stay home safe while the adults do all the cool stuff."

I view that in the same vein as trying to treat pokemon battles as animal cruelty. Like, you're not clever for pointing out it would be fucked up to do with your real life dog. That's not the kind of story this is.

Bruce of course is all deep in angst and sadness about everything on any given day. He tends to have a pretty bleak view on his own work, so of course he has a bleak view on the kids' work. He's always internally monologuing about how he's a grim soldier in a never-ending crusade or whatever, but somehow the conversation never comes around to how adults shouldn't be allowed to be superheroes because of that. Occasionally a villain will try to get Bruce personally to stop crime, thinking it will make him happy, but then it'll turn out he's too important to ever sit out the fight.

Treating Jason's death as some big condemnation of the sidekick situation also probably made more sense in the eighties when Jason first died, but at this point death is such a frequent and reversible thing in comics it's not really worth worrying about imo. Jason's literally fine. He's menacing villains as we speak. Nobody's forcing his hand either. Sometimes Batman tries to stop him and he just keeps doing his thing.

(Not to mention they made his ressurrection story as angsty as they could. Having to dig yourself out of your grave! Having all the injuries you died with! Being brain damaged and wandering the streets homeless for a year! Getting picked up by the league of Assassins, and clearly not having a good time when you were dunked in the pit, even if it did fix the brain damage...)

And I think maybe treating dying and coming back to life as a fairly traumatic thing for comics characters once in a while could help it seem less meaningless, it shouldn't have no impact on them at all.

It's not like we want to get the shit kicked out of us, but we immensely admire a hero who gets the shit kicked out of him, then gets right back up and keeps on fighting.

A hero being put through the wringer is part of how we venerate them as a true hero.

Jason’s death wasn’t meant to be a power fantasy either. It was a punishment because the writers didn’t like him (or the concept of Robin) and intentionally encouraged fans to hate him. There was definitely not any intention of bringing him back. He was dead for one of the longest times of any comics character— fifteen years.