Hi! You're very insightful about comics and your fics are really good, so I wanted to ask what you would recommend when writing a canon-accurate Tim Drake? Like, what main aspects about Tim are to be most considered?
I think vital aspects of Tim include the following:-
He’s a Good Kid (TM). Tim generally wants to live up to expectations and do the right thing and look out for others. He’s polite and sends thank you notes and feels guilty when he has to lie to people. He expects and accepts dealing with the consequences of his choices and actions. That’s not to say he doesn’t act out on occasion or think about doing the wrong thing, but he’s the sort of person that gets held up as a good role model for others.
He’s earnest and works incredibly hard. Tim is the 99% perspiration of achievement. He’s certainly brilliant in some areas but what he is more than anything else is incredibly hard working, and somewhat cautious over his skills until he knows he has them down. He’s one of the best bo fighters in the world not from natural talent but from so much practice and training with the best.
“Someone should do it. I’m someone, so I guess I will do it.” This is rhetorical nuance from ALPOD some people overlook. Tim’s involvement with the Mission has a core of ‘someone needs to step up and do this. And nobody else is volunteering. And I tried to find an alternative, but there’s just me.’ It’s not that he puts himself forward; it’s that he’s willing to volunteer for what he sees as a duty and responsibility that everyone else is trying to sidestep. It’s why he flirts with the idea of no longer being needed, and why every time he does end up in that situation where he has to choose whether to be a civilian or step back up because he can help, he is pulling the costume back on and returning.
He’s extremely socially adept and a compulsive networker. Tim is a gregarious social person. He makes friends easily, he can work with people even when he doesn’t like them, and most importantly he can hold a group together even when there are otherwise tensions in it. Two characters might not want to work with each other, but they’re both willing to work with Tim, and that’s what makes the team or teamup function. Tim isn’t necessarily the team leader, but he’s the reason the team functions together.
He is an annoying know-it-all and forgets to think before he speaks. King of sticking his foot in his mouth because he didn’t think through exactly what he said and missed an unfortunate implication. He’s got compulsive pester power in terms of being the exact line of annoying but charming and loveable that meant most older characters wanted to take him under their wing as a little brother immediately after meeting him. He also gets caught up in his own cleverness on occasion and feels the need to announce it to others or overcomplicate a situation. Hubris is usually pretty immediate in how it arrives when this happens, but it’s small scale (see the foot in mouth problem).
