My Unhinged Fandom Based Ramblings

Baby Stalker Tim Drake: the whole “Tim followed the bats around taking pictures of them at night as a child” thing is fanon, however, it’s fanon that kind of fits in with canon, because Tim is 100% a stalker, or at least has stalker tendencies. It’s kind of a key aspect of his character. The first time we meet Tim, he’s following Bruce around gathering evidence that he’s having some kind of mental spiral, and then tracking dick down, breaking into his house, etc. Tim is a busybody who WILL involve himself in things that aren’t his business/don’t need to involve him, and he has an extremely poor concept of boundaries. He breaks into both Dick and Steph’s houses more than once, and probably other people I don’t know off the top of my head. He’s not trying to be malicious, but definitely is way too up in people’s business. (Editing this later to make myself more clear because there IS an important distinction I forgot to make. Tim isn’t a *stalker* stalker, like with the negative connotation, because usually no one he’s doing it to is bothered/offended by it. Because let’s be real, it’s usually Dick, and Dick is just as crazy about tim as tim is about him.)

Coffee addict Tim Drake: I’m honestly not entirely sure where this one comes from. I think it’s probably just a “he’s out all night, so he doesn’t get a lot of sleep, therefore caffeine” thing, but Tim isn’t shown on panel drinking coffee that often. Like….i can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve seen it verbally mentioned, although he might occasionally have a mug of what is probably coffee/tea. He DOES drink canned soda type beverages, usually a dc invention called zesti, on panel fairly often. Barbara, however, IS a coffee addict. Everything people projected on Tim in that regard is canonically much more aligned to Barbara. As for the sleeplessness, I’m hesitant to say this, because I’ve seen people going too far the other way and taking the “borderline narcoleptic” joke and pushing it as canon that he gets an over abundance of sleep, but Tim actually often falls asleep in weird places/situations. It’s more due to being out patrolling at night than any kind of sleep disorder, but he’s been shown falling asleep in class, when his girlfriend was trying to tell him she cheated on him, on multiple rooftops, on a stakeout, on a roller coaster…etc. He’s getting sleep even if he’s not getting it at night, is what I’m saying lol.

Tim’s parents being cartoonishly evil, often physically abusive OR the opposite and being amazing and perfect-Tim’s biological parents are not ideal, but they’re not EVIL either. They don’t hate him, they’ve never laid hands on him, he was not left home alone fully to fend for himself at a ridiculously young age, etc. However they are also not amazing parents that did no wrong, either. While they were emotionally neglectful when he was young (you’ll see people argue about this, but the 90s batbible explicitly states them to be so) all of his physical needs were met. He was never hungry, he attended boarding school instead of staying home alone (and likely had nannies before that, although it isn’t explicitly stated in canon), they called and wrote occasionally, etc. after Janet dies and Jack wakes up from his coma, he still doesn’t have much of a real interest in Tim (also in the batbible), but they do love each other. I personally consider some of the stuff Jack does and says to be emotionally abusive, but others have different opinions.

Morally gray Tim Drake- this doesn’t really have any basis in canon, unless you’re drawing from very specific, often OOC, comics. Tim actually has a VERY strong,kind of rigid, moral code. He’s a Good Kid™️ and also really believes in Bruce’s no killing rule/ the way Bruce handles things. He’s not constantly on the edge of becoming a supervillain at every minor inconvenience.

Titans tower incident- fanon has REALLY latched on to this and made it so much bigger than it was. Tim and Jason did have a confrontation at titans tower, but it was not near as big of a deal as fanon will have you believing lol. Jason surprise attacked Tim, trying to prove something. They fought, and Jason won, but Jason didn’t totally and completely dominate Tim imo. Tim was bleeding from the nose at the end of their fight, but he wasn’t totally decimated. Jason did ask if Tim still thought he was a better Robin, and Tim said yes, little shit that he is lol. The throat slitting incident that gets brought up in these fics a lot is actually from a completely different comic, and was originally hush pretending to be Jason but was retconned into Jason pretending to be hush pretending to be Jason, lol. At the end of the fight, Tim isn’t afraid of Jason or triggered by him or anything like that. He really doesn’t take the incident that seriously. Jason actually walks away from the fight with a deeper respect for Tim, and wondering how he would’ve turned out if he had Tim’s support system.

Dick wanted to send Tim to Arkham- didn’t happen. He suggested Tim see a therapist. If I’m remembering correctly, it was literally a therapist in metropolis, so completely unrelated to Arkham. This one doesn’t even make sense, as Arkham is an asylum for the CRIMINALLY insane. Tim’s not a criminal, lol.

Tim grew up next door to Wayne manor/Tim isn’t a Gotham kid- After Jack wakes up from his coma, Tim does convince him to buy the house next door. I can’t remember if it’s ever actually canonically called Drake manor. Before living there in Bristol, though, Tim grew up in Gotham.