justice

Now I can subscribe to wasian Tim because you can still be heavily white passing and asian and Janet Drake is a severely underdeveloped part of his backstory especially notable since she died in his early teens so he still has memory of her.

Janet herself could be half asian or asian.

The final concern I have is stereotypes.

Ahem… tim is the smart robin in fandom and to DC editorial.

I‘m fine if it does become canon but as a fully black person I think It’s fine to be a fan of a mostly white family representation comes from writing characters with the intent of exploring all of their identity and not necessarily retroactively rewriting them which can ruin what made the original aspects of their character effective in the first place.

For the longest time Tim Drake been in my head as the privileged white robin that had a choice to cover his ears and live comfortably without interacting with the suffering around him. He saw someone with a similar privilege position as him (Bruce Wayne) spiralling.

A man who choose to try and fix the city in his own way for it the continuing to destroy what he loves for his efforts, and ultimately came to the decision that he can just stand idle anymore, even if it meant fighting the worst of the worst himself.

Either way I think it’s all interesting and fandom and comic writers will write characters as they see fit.

as someone who sees tim as wasian, i agree with what you’re saying. race swapping already canon characters has proven to not work out amongst the fans (example: tim drake in the tv show ‘titans’). i myself have a large hatred for unnecessary race swaps for diversity points.

i, however, don’t hate wasian tim. i understand that the stereotype is off putting, and sometimes distasteful, but i started in this fandom fully believing tim was asian. i found a tumblr post on asian tim, saw a few people give him asian face clams, saw a comic excerpt where i simply assumed he was asian, and saw someone hating on the live action tim drake for not being asian. obviously, you can understand my confusion. even when i started reading comics i just assumed he was wasian. imagine my surprise when i find out that man was white.

anyway, that’s why i love it. not because he fits asian stereotypes, but because when i first began in this fandom as a little baby many years ago, i fully believed he was asian and now its hard to seem him as anything else.

i will admit, race swapping in the batfamily is insanely unnecessary. they have their POC characters and if people want more than simply make more, as hypocritical as i sound, don’t change an already developed character to scratch an itch.

all in all, yeah, wasian tim is a ‘eh’ talking point. about as much as hispanic jason todd (don’t get me started on how distasteful that is) and lady shivas son jason todd (wow, anything but white, huh jay?). i obviously feel less strongly for tim since i knew him as asian for about as long as i’ve been a fan. yes it can be distasteful. it’s one of those things you just smile and nod at and tell your kid ‘don’t look over there sweetie.’

lots of doctors end up taking up things like boxing or running as a way to relive stress. why’s it so absurd damian would be a vigilante AND a doctor? he helps legally how he can as doctor wayne and then he helps were the law and medicine fail at night as a vigilante.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/75227976

You cut the thread once the last stitch is complete, leaning back to view your work. It looked clean. Slightly puffy but holding well. “Okay.” You pull your hands off. “You’re done.”

It takes a moment before he says anything. You think that maybe he too is admiring your work but when you drag your eyes up to his he is watching you. “I appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“No.” He says, dismissing your attempt to brush this off. “Don’t brush it off. I appreciate this. I know I…” He trails off. You wish he didn’t. You wonder where he was going with that. He clears his throat quietly. “This isn’t a regular occurrence.”

—

overall, he’s honestly a good dad. he’s there when he’s not busy with the league and batman, which is rare but he tries to make breakfast every morning and at least one family dinner. he spars with his family but he holds back and only dishes out what he knows they can handle (he’s gotten yelled at by all his kids for going easy on them, mainly from tim and damian). he tries to stay present in his kids lives but to tell the truth he can barely keep up. he just knows that they’re alive and healthy, that’s all that matters.

i know, this seems like a good dad. so where’s the bad dad?

he’s manipulative as fuck.

bruce wayne is insanely charismatic. he puts on the bruce wayne persona without blinking, he manipulates people everyday in every way possible, he can make a right wing pro choice in a matter of minutes, he could make a heavy leftist senator vote for pro guns (not saying he would or wouldn’t do either, these are just examples) and manipulating people is far too natural for him.

and it’s an easy way out. he doesn’t want to do something? well… he doesn’t have to. tim wants to quit red robin but bruce knows how much he is needed for their team? let’s just say tim signed his life away the day he put on that suit—plus, bruce knows he loves the wind against his skin, he just needs a reminder.

intentionally or unintentionally bruce manipulates the fuck out of his kids on a daily basis. it took everyone a while to notice it, sometimes they still don’t—and, honestly, duke and damian are in denial.

so yeah. that’s my take on bad dad bruce. he’s good. he cares. it’s just he cares too much and he’s super controlling and needs things to go his way in his city, for better or for worse. of course, i also LOVE to write good dad bruce where everything he does for his family is just misunderstood bc his wordings as shit as his comprehension of emotions.

he always has a comment. on occasion, he has been the ‘um, actually’ kid except his ‘um actually’ is ‘incorrect. according to (some old ass book), this and this happened. and this is why you’re fucking stupid.’

he makes people want to bang their heads in the wall. teachers never call on him when his hands raised, so much so he’s grown used to just speaking out of turn. it gets so bad bruce is called to the office.

bruce: ‘damian just raise your hand next time’

damian: ‘i rather speak out of turn then listen to these imbeciles incorrectly answer questions referring to newtons law. newtons law. where were they throughout middle school?! father, i believe you should rescind your donations to this school, it is clearly—‘

he doesn’t like talking but he can’t help it. everyone is just so fucking stupid. he can’t wait to graduate. or to go to med school and attend a school with actual intelligent people and not those who get thomas jefferson and benjamin franklin confused.

in all his classes he’s insufferable. but in history? of god he’s the worst. he knows an uncanny amount of knowledge about the medieval era and, for some strange reason, even more than than the person who wrote the goddamn text book once they get to the age of superheroes.

it pisses everyone off, rightfully so. the only time he was greeted with sighs of relief and a round of applause was when a test was handed out in one of his classes and damian pointed out several questions with no correct answers on display, making the teacher move the day of the test.

disclaimer: this is based off my opinions. obviously, if i don’t like it i don’t read it. i’m also a really picky reader so, yeah. if you rage easily, proceed with caution

when tim describes stephanie as a sister. gross.

when jason or dick is bruce’s bio kid

jasons glowing green eyes (sit the fuck down)

tim and damian only hate each other and if the other dies they’d actually be perfectly okay

duke thomas erasure

when harper row pops up for a single sentence in a fic and then is never mentioned again (i don’t even care for her character but come on)

damian/flatline (i hate everything that came out of robin 2021)

when the fandom worships the most poorly written fics and the absolute masterpieces get ignored (cdelphik’s fics needs more attention—i know they have A LOT but like i still think no one talks about their fics as much as they should)

even subtle insinuation about potential attraction between the batkids

steph x jason

slut batman (“he’s slept with everyone in the JL!” no…he hasn’t. he really truly hasn’t).

batman kills

nightwing kills and it doesn’t effect him mentally at all, just an ‘oh yeah, that happened.’

slut jason todd

social anxiety/awkward tim drake (that man owns the galas. he’s a networking god.)

timberkon. or berkon. it just doesn’t add up. (if you’re gonna do a throuple, do timbartkon pls. i love timbart. i just love bart.)

no turmoil or too much turmoil between tim and damian (im really picky abt them)

jason calls damian ‘my prince’

damian suffered no culture shock upon his arrival to NJ

gotham is anywhere besides NJ

other heroes are just ALWAYS in gotham for literally no reason

the no meta rule (genuine question: is this canon? like i can get behind it sometimes but other times, why?)

when the world is literally collapsing in itself and bruce won’t phone in a friend (like ik he’s stubborn but his kid is in immediate danger—he’d call someone. his ‘no meta rule’ isn’t that important.)

when bruce just doesn’t care about his kids

gothams literally about to get fucking annihilated and cass is still in hong kong

mentioning self harm so subtly and then never bringing it up again though it’s clearly something the character struggles with???

damian gets bullied and he lowkey just lets it happen. (be so fr.)

completely disregarding damian’s race.

when duke, steph, and tim all have always gone to the same school. (duke lived in the narrows, tim lived in bristol, and steph lived somewhere between there. short rant below)

disclaimer: opinion ahead!!!! you’re allowed to disagree just please don’t anonymously send me hate messages (yes this is targeted, if you’re going to call me a slur don’t be a pussy and do it anonymously, use your username). like genuinely i’m fine with hate just don’t do it anonymously dude. own up to it and shit.

dick grayson

romani. this isn’t a ‘headcanon’ more of a ‘this is quite literally canon’ when i first joined this fandom i didn’t know this was even a thing (forgive me, my introduction was through shows at first and i didn’t touch comics for a long time…) and then when i googled it, i read that it only happened bc of a writers weird fetish so..yeah. at first i thought it was soooo freaking weird, but like, what can you do?

besides that, i think dick has a lot of things he picked up from traveling with the circus and i think it surprises everyone everytime at how culturally diverse this white boy is

because face it, he looks white. it’s canonically accurate that he is white passing, he didn’t even know he was a romani until long after he left bruce’s house. (also im pretty sure his mom was half romani so he’s like a quarter)

he doesn’t really have an accent when he speaks other languages. he’s aced practically all middle east languages and is actually currently working on swahili.

damian still laughs whenever he speaks arabic unprompted

jason todd

white.

hes literally the definition of ‘white trash’ (poor white people of low social status regarded as uneducated or uncultured)

he has the THICKEST gotham accent (basically a jersey accent)

i know, i know ‘jason todd is hispanic!’ but no he’s not. jason’s spanish? that shit is atrocious. or was, until talia fixed that shit in the league because it was fucking embarrassing. along with his terrible accent when speaking arabic. god, he’s as white as they come.

he speaks arabic (but rlly formally, like google translate taught him bc he js picked things up at the league and whatever the accent mastermind teacher talks got him corrected), spanish (rlly broken til, again, talia), japanese, french, and mandarin.

tim drake

asian

im not rlly sure if this is popular, ik it was a few years back.

i remember when the titans actor got casted as tim there was a lot of backlash (rlly just because they changed his entire background along with his race for some reason: from wealthy to lower middle class) and everyone was saying ‘plus he’s asian!’ so the whole time i was like ‘you can’t just race swap a POC character and not expect backlash!’ and then in the comic panels, forgive me, but i thought he was fucking asian

and all the fanart makes him wasian, his moms asian and his dads white, i believe. so, yeah. tim drake is wasian in my mind. but like 30-50%.

but i want it noted 8/10 times his accents are PEAK. he just hasn’t perfected his middle east accent yet (and damian never lets him forget it)

also he speaks a lot of languages

cassandra cain

asian

this is also quite literally canon. i’m pretty sure it’s east asian specifically.

she can understand arabic and persian, because of her time with her father, who was in the league. but she doesn’t speak it and doesn’t really want to learn it.

she doesn’t really speak other languages but bruce has been teaching her.

she has the worst american accent though, it’s super noticeable. bruce is tryna train it out of her.

stephanie brown

not a ‘batkid’ but shes white.

like white white.

her spanish is lowkey good though. like, she barely has an accent.

she can speak mandarin but not fluently and often stumbles over words. and she speaks french pretty good and italian as well, that’s it though.

shes trying to learn greek but tim’s a bitch and won’t teach her. damian won’t either. dick tried but he isn’t too good at it himself

duke thomas

black

uhm this is canon

he’s from the narrows i believe so heavy gotham accent as well.

honestly, i think PR would try like hell to train the accent out of him once he moved in as bruce’s foster kid but he lowkey wouldn’t allow it (he indulged for a bit but the accent wouldn’t budge and the accent, at times, felt like all he had). PR just doesn’t want the public to butcher him—and it’s an honest concern, there’ll already be racist people yk.

he learned spanish in school but his accent is shitty. damian, tim, and bruce are teaching him how to prefect it. one time, jason made a comment in passing and dick laughed him out of the room, repeating ‘tequila! tequilla!’ (how jason used to pronounce ‘tranquilla’ in spanish)

he knows german but not fluently, just barely enough to get by in a conversation. and his french is ass but he can tell how old he is and where he’s from, which is all that matters in french 1

damian wayne

arab. i believe there’s also some chinese ancestry. and then 50% white.

he has a heavy arabic accent that, upon arriving to gotham, he rid himself of it over night once he realized it made him stand out. talia visited him and was extremely disappointed that he had done so, though she didn’t state it.

damian clued in on the disappointment and now his accent isn’t very thick but it’s there

when he’s robin it’s not present at all

when he’s pissed off, not only is the accent thick as fuck but he’s also screaming in arabic. yeah, have fun deciphering whatever the fuck he’s yelling at you.

he speaks basically every language there is and makes it a point to let everyone know it.

with his ability to perfect mimic voices, he is so fucking annoying because the way he speaks literally any language it sounds like it’s his fucking native tongue.

also refuses to teach stephanie greek. didn’t even let her ask. he wasn’t planning on teaching her in the first place ‘your shortcomings are not my issue, brown’ but then tim offered him a trip to the museum, a fresh sketchbook, and a nice new set of paint he couldn’t refuse. and that just sealed the deal.

honorable mentions:

barbara gordon is white with european ancestry. speaks a handful of languages but reads them even more. example: she can read japanese but cannot for the life of her properly say any word out loud.

alfred is white british. i’d also like to mention that he lowkey can’t cook for shit, that’s totally relevant. he can speak a bunch of languages though. nobody rlly knows where he learned them from

bruce is fully white. he speaks a bunch of languages tho, it’s actually rlly impressive because he rarely ever has an accent and if he does it’s ever so slight

talia used to correct him on his accents. she loved playing that game, mainly because it annoyed bruce.

disclaimer: this is based off my opinions. obviously, if i don’t like it i don’t read it. i’m also a really picky reader so, yeah. if you rage easily, proceed with caution.

when fics make superbat a thing and then also make timkon a thing

brucie wayne when it’s not in the specific way i picture it.

bad dad bruce wayne with great faux dad alfred pennyworth. like, no, that’s not how that works

when the bat kids are all in relationships and tim’s the only relationship that isn’t fucked up

timber (fuck that ship. i’m sorry)

stephanie’s only personality traits: purple, ally, waffles. fuck outta here with that

jason being rlly close w kory. like closer than dick is.

when people actually acknowledge the fact that talia slept with jason. like can we just pretend it never happened.

bad mom talia la ghul who doesn’t care for damian at all (bro she cares in her own way)

tagging the whole bat family and then there’s no duke thomas

cass is in hong kon (ong she’s done everything there is in hong kong w how often she be there)

cass doesn’t speak (i love asl cass but not giving her even an attempted speaking line is crazy when learning to talk is like a big part of her character)

straight stephanie brown (i know you’re lying…)

damijon (i love their friendship but idk i can’t get behind the ship, pre age up he was like three/four years younger than damian, and then post age up its reverse)

batcest

when timkon is a thing and they hint at damijon (ultra specific)

no personality dick grayson/sunshine dick grayson

duke thomas has no personality

tim drake and jason todd being the closest siblings (they fight as much as damian and tim do, it just rarely gets physical)

damian feeling a bunch of guilt for trying to kill tim (the most you’ll get out of him is a wince and a ‘oh yeah… my bad bro’)

ALSO tim being ultra traumatized from damian trying to kill him. like WHAT. bro does not gaf i promise 🙏🏽

alfred can do no wrong (yes tf he can go away)

good dad bruce who has never even mistakenly done a wrong (get out bro. no one’s perfect. he’s FLAWED. it’s what makes him human)

when they completely ruin roy to make jayroy a thing

jayroy and dickroy exist in the same universe (NO. i refuse. no.)

jayroy and no loan even mentioned (why? just, why)

when every bat kid has a team except damian (this is canon bc of damian’s shitty titans run but let’s use our imagination. jon exists, tai pham exists, lian exists, irey and jay exists, animal man’s daughter exists)

when jon is put as anyone else’s friend in the bat family except for damian. like js cuz he aged up doesn’t mean he wants to be friends with damian’s older brothers

when they give damian a pet in their fic but never actually show anyone taking care of said pet. like not even a mention of someone walking him. or it existing outside of the single conviene sentence they were needed for.

when duke is practically an outsider.

danny phantom crossovers

lowkey jason being in a relationship at all if it doesn’t have the foundation of like five million years of friendship.

barbara being in a relationship with tim (gross. once i saw kory and tim, that was gross)

batgirl barbara post jokers attack (I HATE YOU COMICS FOR MAKING HER BATGIRL AGAIN, SHE THRIVED AS ORACLE)

batcest (said it again for good measure).

when they steal tim’s friends for damian, damian’s friends for tim, jason’s for dick, dicks for jason. like you have a plethora of heroes in your arsenal, chose one of them.

lazarus rage (but like heavily overused. like come on now, you’re NOT raging over a little tumble between brothers).

when jason doesn’t have the white streak (BRING IT BACK PLEASEEE, you’re like my percy jackson, i need it).

when they baby tim cuz he’s gay and everyone’s self insert. like bruh.

when they baby jason.

reverse robins and they don’t include duke in the robins (i get he’s not technically a robin but come on dude)

peter parker crossovers where dick is an alternate version of richard parker (I WANT REDSPIDER OR SPIDERHOOD, not fucking nightdad.)

hispanic jason todd (i think this one might get people heated but i genuinely don’t get this. like why, he’s white. i genuinely think ppl only do this bc he grew up in a poor neighborhood so they throw some color on him, which is just wrong on so many levels. (feel the need to clarify i am full hispanic)).

’jason would listen to taylor swift!!!!!’ stfu. no, he wouldn’t. this also goes for damian and tim. if you think damian’s listening to anything besides fucking beethoven, you’re mistaken.

when damian quits in like HS to pursue robin. if you think that bitch wouldn’t multitask until medical school beat his ass then you’re wrong.

when somehow all of oliver’s offspring are mentioned and he’s not???

You were trained for this. You scream at yourself in your head, shed the cape, angle your body. But you can’t even get past the first step. Your broken arm is deadweight, dragging you further down.

Water floods your nose, your throat. You gag, but the coughing only drags more inside. Every instinct screams at you to breathe, but there’s no air—only black, filthy water forcing its way down, burning.

Don’t breathe. You think to yourself. Don’t waste air. Bruce had trained that into you when you had first donned the suit, had told you to read every protocol in a large book (nearly a thousand pages worth) until you knew all of them like the back of your hand. Burning, building collapsing, drowning. The issue wasn’t that you forgot it. No, you knew exactly what you had to do.

The issue was that you couldn’t.

OR

After breaking Bruces wishes and a promise you had made to Damian, you find yourself drowning in the Gotham River.

(VERY loosely inspired by a single lyric, you can guess which, from taylor swifts song titled This Love.)

in my mind, the bat-fam (main members only) have a specific age gap that almost never changes throughout fics that i write. so, in an attempt to reignite my love for batfam (which will probably happen when i run out of marauders fics to read. yes, i’ve reverted back to my 2020 ways), here are the age gaps i tend to keep for the main batfam members along with some general timeline stuff i maintain regularly. some will be more specific then others because i have obvious preferences.

broad/vague

alfred dies in his mid to late 70s, possibly early 80s.

dick has a minimum of five years as robin. preferably, it lasts almost ten years (starting when he’s eight/nine and ending when he’s about eighteen/nineteen)

barbara is older than dick by at the very least, a year.

bruce has at least one year patrolling alone as batman, preferably two, and definitely not more than three

bruce was eight when his parents died.

bruce and dick have a fifteen year age gap so when dick becomes his ward, he is (somewhat) a child raiding a child.

similarly, dick and damian have a 15 year age gap to parallel this.

jason dies at 15

semi-specific

jason and dick have about a 5-7 year age gap.

dick always is born in 19… (ex: in my marvel/dc crossover fic he is born in 1989). this just helps to the headcanon i have of everyone of dicks siblings calling him prehistoric.

jason has max three years as robin, but normally i do about two or two and a half.

cass is born ABOUT six to seven months before jason.

duke and damian go to high school at the same time for a year or two

tim and jason have a 3-5 year age gap

no matter WHAT damian has to be born fifteen years after dick, meaning he had to have been conceived while dick was robin, meaning potential for a talia/bruce fic that includes robin!dick grayson arguing with talia.

stephanie is a year older than tim and born in august, which can make them in the same school year but in most fics by me she would be a year older out of preference.

specific

cassandra’s birthday is january 26th and jason’s is august 16th. it pisses him off to no extent that cass is older. i like the idea that cass’ bday is in jan rather than feb, no clue if this is canon or not lol. :) (edit: LMAO her birthday is quite literally jan 26th, idk y i thought otherwise..)

damian’s birthday is january 9. i don’t like how crowded august is birthday wise so i moved him. they still have too much ppl IMO but wtv.

canonically i think dukes birthday is august, but i would place him anywhere between late august to mid september (specifically august 13th or september 19th. but october 16th-20th could be argued for him)

dick is a march 20th birthday king i love the start of spring b-day thing better than the december b-day thing

the ages i put in a majority of my fics

dick is thirty.

jason and cass are 25

tim is early 20s, no younger than 20 and no older than 23. COMPLETELY reliant on if cass and jason are main characters.

stephanies age is reliant on tim’s age, typically 23-24.

duke is almost always 18, i will never make him younger than 18 unless the fic is about him TURNING 18. i never make him older than 19 either.

damian is 14-16. IMO, perfect age to make him. i like when he’s no longer that assassin 10 year old, having half a decade with his fathers side can really change him and leaves for some great character exploration. also, canonically he’s around this age in comics rn. since he’s in high school he’s at the very least 14, given in the comics his birthday is in august. i always say he’s 15 in my fics because i like to do the whole turning 16 thing, but yk, to each their own.