#wonderbird

now I know that claim may be a bit of a stretch if you haven't read TT03; out of all the one-on-one friendship dynamics YJ98 gave us, Cassie and Tim's friendship (at least over the course of that series) is probably one of the least memorable -- which, to be fair, does make sense, considering we're comparing it to standouts like Cassie&Cissie, Anita&Cissie, Bart&Kon, Tim&Greta, etc

and I also don't want to discredit myself when I say they're not really friends in YJ -- obviously they like each other well enough. both of them respect each other's intelligence and abilities as a hero; Tim canonically thinks incredibly highly of Cassie even at the beginning of the series, and Cassie absolutely thinks quite highly of him

[Young Justice (1998) #18]

but the simple fact is that for most of YJ98, Cassie and Tim just aren't that close. now, this is mainly due to the fact that it's pretty hard to form a close friendship with someone when you know next to no details about that person's (civilian) life or personal struggles, but I also get the sense that this lack of knowledge sort of results in Cassie projecting a "platonic ideal of a teenaged superhero" onto him. in Sins of Youth, we see she holds him up as a counterexample to her mom, citing how he "never doubts himself" and "never worries about what might go wrong" (both things Tim absolutely does, for the record), and even going so far as to imagine he's able to fully devote himself to hero-ing with no care for his civilian life at all because of it

[Sins of Youth Wonder Girls]

and what all this tells me is that, while Cassie absolutely admires Tim and values his opinion, she also absolutely does not know him, and she isn't close enough with him to really get how much she doesn't know. the ironic thing about this, of course, is that Cassie's struggles with balancing her mom's wants with her duties as a hero are something she could've bonded with Tim over all day, as he was at that time going through something very similar with his dad. if you want to be literal about it, he was at that very moment having an incognito heart-to-heart with his dad in a bar. none of this is really relevant to anything, but I do think it's cool how their stories mirror each other, even as Cassie remains absolutely convinced that they don't

but the wildest thing about their early friendship is, I truly don't think Tim registers this lack of closeness on her side -- throughout his solo, it's shown that he's good with people, that he's used to making friends quickly in new places due to switching schools so much in his civilian life, and I get the feeling that in his head, he very much considers Cassie a real friend. I like to hold up this moment -- in which he breaks Cassie out of being mind-controlled -- against the Sins of Youth one as a contrast, even though it does technically happen a little further along in the timeline:

[Wonder Woman (1987) #167]

as seen in the above, as we get closer to the midpoint of the YJ98 series (which I've decided, for simplicity's sake, to identify as Our Worlds at War), Tim knows Cassie pretty well -- or at least, he understands how she ticks well enough to snap her out of a vicious case of divine mind control. he knows her hopes, her dreams, her fears, they've spent time together outside the context of the team (see above mind-control moment) -- in other words, in his mind, everything's peachy. but on Cassie's side, because of Tim's secret identity, because he can't share his own personal stuff with her or the rest of the team, that distance and lack of true friendship remains. and we see this really clearly as we head into Our Worlds At War:

[Young Justice (1998) #38 (top), Young Justice (1998) #35 (bottom)]

I've talked about the YJ98 #35 sequence before, but I do think it really serves to prove that, even this deep into their YJ tenure together, there's still a definite contrast between how Cassie talks to people she has a close friendship with and how she talks to Tim. when it comes to close friends like Kon and Cissie, Cassie is pretty comfortable yelling at them when she's stressed -- as you can see in the top screenshot, she doesn't really have any reservations about showing her frustration to Cissie, and I think part of that is because when you're comfortable with somebody, you kind of relax out of those polite niceties a little and are more willing to be kind of annoying or even a little bit of a dick sometimes -- because you trust that they'll still like you even when you're not at your best

contrast this then with the Tim scene: even after months (potentially even over a year) of fighting on a team together, you can still feel that "new friend" "not sure where we stand" awkwardness after she loses her cool -- as soon as Cassie registers she's yelling, she apologizes immediately and extensively, in a way that almost makes the situation more awkward

but at the same time, I really do think Tim does feel close to Cassie -- enough that during the OWAW VR nightmare sequence, the two people Tim has to watch get executed are Kon (who he will go on to say is his best friend at the beginning of TT03) and, you guessed it, Cassie

[Young Justice (1998) #37]

this is why I think her suspecting him of colluding with Batman to keep files on the rest of them seems to hit him as a final blow. the rest of the team tells Tim their opinions unprompted once the subject gets broached, but he goes out of his way to ask Cassie directly -- presumably because he knows that if he doesn't, she'll keep avoiding the issue in an attempt to keep the peace

[Young Justice (1998) #36]

(side note, but I love how even here, Cassie tries her best to soften the blow with a joke and defuse the tension -- she doesn't want to hurt his feelings, and she's trying her best to keep the team together and out of conflict, and it's a great character beat to contrast her style against Cissie and Kon's)

this sequence of events -- the team not trusting him, and the disaster that follows (getting tortured, Bart's clone dying, etc) -- is what finally makes him quit the team altogether, not to return until he's already inadvertently revealed his identity to everyone in World Without Young Justice (YJ98 #45). and it's only after he tells them his real name that Tim and Cassie are able to finally start to get closer as friends, culminating in the incredibly sweet "do leaders hug" scene after Cassie gets elected team leader

[Young Justice (1998) #50]

honestly, I think this scene in particular really breaks down a lot of that remaining distance between them, because afterwards, once they're on the Titans together, we see that they do feel comfortable being vulnerable with each other, enough that they seek each other out for comfort again and again

[Teen Titans (2003) #25 (left), Teen Titans (2003) #20 (right)]

okay listen. I will never shut up about how when Cassie is hallucinating Ares in every reflective surface and panicking because Kon just got mind-controlled into beating the shit out of everyone, it's Tim that's able to get her to calm down. I will never shut up about the fact that when Tim loses his dad (after spending an entire issue pretending everything's fine and refusing to talk about it with Kon), it's Cassie he hugs when he finally breaks down. now, this might just be because this was the early 2000s, and everyone was very big on the "dudes hugging = gay" thing, but I will choose to interpret it at face value, because both of these moments are things that would've been unthinkable before the "do leaders hug" moment, and they really show just how far their friendship has progressed since Our Worlds at War

but yeah. I've talked a lot about how they start out, and how that distance grows into an actual friendship where they feel comfortable being vulnerable with each other, and I've talked a little bit about how their shared grief over Kon turns that friendship romantic after Infinite Crisis

but I haven't talked about how they go from being pretty good friends (with romantic coping mechanisms) to definitively Being Each Others' Capital P Person. and to do that, I need to talk about a fairly unhealthy cycle that plagues their relationship -- that of Tim leaving, and Cassie being forced to hold everything down by the skin of her teeth in the meantime

by my count, this happens at least three times over their tenure as teammates. the first time was, of course, Tim and Bart quitting YJ after the Our Worlds at War fiasco, during which time Cassie scrambles to draft new teammates in an effort to lure the two of them back. however, the second and third times Tim leaves are the most interesting to me -- those being when Tim goes on a hiatus with Batman during the one-year timeskip after Infinite Crisis, and when he quits the Titans shortly before Battle for the Cowl

[Teen Titans (2003) #34 (One Year Later)]

what's important to note about Tim's hiatus after Infinite Crisis is that his leaving is a major part in the complete and utter annihilation of Cassie's support network. by this point, Cassie's boyfriend (Kon) is dead, her mentor (Diana) is in the wind trying to come to grips with the fallout of killing Maxwell Lord, Themyscira itself has vanished off the face of the Earth as a consequence of getting away from the OMACs, and her two very close friends who might actually understand what she's going through (Tim and Bart) have both dipped to focus on their own mental health

and I'm gonna be real -- it quickly becomes evident that Cassie is not handling this well at all -- in the first few months after Kon's death, she ghosts the Titans, rents an apartment under a fake name, commits at least one act of burglary, and (oh right) joins an entire cult. throughout the entire year that is 52, we see no indication that she's still going to school. likewise, I'm pretty sure we get no mention of whether she's still in contact with her mother, or with non-Titans friends like Anita and Cissie (though Anita does go to the Infinite Crisis memorial service with her in Week 1, which is nice). we know Cassie's actively ghosting Garfield Logan, since we see her screening his calls. but yeah -- by the time Tim finally comes back and tries to get her to rejoin the team, she is fairly justifiably pissed

but as they keep running into each other on this Brotherhood of Evil case, we see that a lot of Cassie's anger isn't just from Tim leaving her to deal with Kon's death by herself -- a significant portion of it is that she's projecting her own anger and guilt with herself onto him and assuming he must blame her for letting Kon die, just like she does

[Teen Titans (2003) #35]

and what really gets Cassie to let go of a lot of that anger she's holding is the realization that (1) he's not coping, and (2) that he doesn't blame her, because he's too busy blaming himself for his inability to bring Kon back

[Teen Titans (2003) #37 -- if you recognize the mood-lighting, it's because this sequence happens about two seconds before they kiss in the clone basement]

don't get me wrong: this era is not the healthiest for them friendship-wise or romance-wise -- @angel-gidget posted a really good analysis a while back about why exactly post-crisis timcassie falls short on both a narrative and interpersonal level, and I definitely recommend reading it if you get the chance -- but the main point I'm getting at here is that through all of this, Tim and Cassie really only have each other to lean on when it comes to their shared sense of grief and survivor's guilt

and we see the result of this shared leaning when Tim quits the Titans again (which, I feel it's important to note, happens quite a bit after they break up, proving that the "pillar of support" thing doesn't end when the romantic relationship does)

[Teen Titans (2003) #66]

not only does he actually talk to her beforehand and confirm that she'll be okay, but Cassie goes out of her way to assure him that she's fully capable of holding down the fort while he's gone. this is partly because they've both had time to heal since Kon's death, of course, but a large part of it is because they both understand the full impact that Tim up and vanishing can have -- I'm going to be fully honest and say that I don't think, up until Cassie quit the Titans during the timeskip, that Tim fully understood that his absence was something that could genuinely hurt her. I think he was still living in this idea that she was closer friends with the YJ-girls than she was with him, and that his going on a year-long trip around the world would have about the same effect as his quitting YJ after Our Worlds At War. so that moment -- when she quit the team and refused to come back -- was the first moment he truly understood that he could potentially lose her as a friend

thus, the effort to communicate. likewise, on Cassie's end, she knows him well enough to recognize that him not just telling her he's leaving as a point of order, but telling her in such a way that it's clear he'll change his mind and stay if she asks him to -- it's no longer treating her as an outsider on his life, but as someone he knows will be affected by the decision. similarly, to her own credit, by this point in the game, Cassie herself feels a lot more secure in her relationships and is no longer actively grieving, so Tim dipping to handle Batman's death isn't the friendship-ending event it was after Infinite Crisis

however, with that being said, even though Cassie is absolutely correct when she says she's fully capable of leading the team on her own, we do see that Tim's absence has a significant effect on her at a personal level. a decent amount of time gets dedicated to how isolated she feels, even amongst her peers on the team

[Teen Titans (2003) #72]

and the reasoning behind this feeling of isolation makes sense. by this point in her career, Cassie is intimately familiar with the potential stakes inherent in their line of work -- she can't let herself put herself first and have fun, because if she does, lives could be lost -- and as the leader of the team, she holds the majority of the responsibility for any potential failure. she puts her personal life and relationships on hold again and again for the sake of the mission, because she can't live with the possibility that her inaction might lead to more death

but whereas before, she and Tim would've shared this responsibility, or at least had each other to lean on, Cassie is at this point very much on her own. combine that with shifting team dynamics, and add on yet another teammate's death that happens on her watch, and she starts to doubt her own ability to handle things on her own -- in much the same way that she began to doubt her leadership after Donna Troy's death. but while Cassie doesn't particularly want to hold everything together by herself, we see during an arc where Gar comes back and attempts to lead the team on a mission to go save Raven that she also isn't willing to relinquish that control

[Teen Titans (2003) #76]

and she's honestly right not to. the fact of the matter is that Cassie is a genuinely good leader in a way that a lot of other heroes -- even older, more experienced ones like Garfield -- just aren't. she has the experience, the know-how, and the respect and trust of her teammates, and because of all that, she's capable to do the job well. and therefore the weight grows heavier -- she literally can't step back and focus on her own happiness because she is the best one for the job, and if she allows someone else to take over, then any failure on their part will also rest on her

this is one of the reasons why I think her decision to relinquish leadership to Tim at the end of TT03 after he rejoins the team bears so much weight. on a Doylist level, of course, this change occurs because the writers at the time were kind of sexist and wanted Tim to be in charge for the pure nostalgia-bait. but on a Watsonian level, we can interpret this as Cassie trusting Tim enough to let go of some of that weight -- she trusts he's up for the task, and because of this, she finally lets herself breathe

by the time Tim gets back, Kon and Bart are long since resurrected. but we see that time and grief and responsibility have made Cassie a fundamentally different person than she was before their deaths. because of this, she really struggles to reconnect with Kon, who due to his own trauma (...and maybe chivalry? sexism? unclear) has started to overprioritize her safety during fights to a dangerous and frankly hampering extent. they fight and bicker quite a lot, and it eventually gets to the point where they actually break up, despite the fact that they both still have feelings for each other

and at the end of all of this, the only person she tells about her decision to step down as leader (that we know of) is Tim:

[Teen Titans (2003) #93]

I'm gonna be real: there will always be a part of me that's incredibly bitter about how hard the Teen Titans writers dropped the ball with Cassie's character arc after Tim came back. the only memorable moments that stick out to me are this exchange, where we learn she didn't tell Kon she was stepping down as leader, and a moment where she's ready to straight up murder the Calculator for what he did to Kid Eternity, only for Tim to talk her out of it. the rest of Cassie's page-time is spent either being kidnapped, being taunted, or being threatened as a means of making Kon mad. which. well. I would've liked to see more of a resolution regarding her guilt and her lack of personal life, but there were only so many issues, so it is what it is

okay, I'm reading through this, and this essay kinda just morphed into me examining Cassie's character arc midway through, but honestly, I'll stand by it, and I'll stand by the fact that her friendship with Tim is a huge part of her (and Tim's, for that matter) development as character. Cassie and Tim may not have had an instant platonic soulmate-level connection like Dick and Donna did. they have to work for their friendship every step of the way, and the romantic feelings that spring out of it are primarily a coping mechanism borne of intense loneliness and grief. so much between them is never spelled out explicitly, and instead just gets spread out over a thousand brief moments you'll miss if you're not paying attention

but at the same time, they're also capable of understanding each other in a way no one else can, even when they're talking at cross-purposes. they were the last ones left, they were the ones responsible for holding things together while everything went to hell, they were the ones who watched each other evolve from bright-eyed kids to jaded, walled-off young adults, and they're the ones who helped each other survive the transition from one to the other. the fundamental truth is that Tim and Cassie trust each other on a deeper level because they know each other, because they've seen each other at their worst and their best, and because they know that even if one of them leaves, they'll always be there if they really need them. and it is for these reasons that I will continue to be insane about Cassie and Tim and their fucked-up little codependency until the sun burns out of the sky

anyway. in conclusion:

Here's some things that had me sitting up and blinking because I just plain hadn't thought about them in so long:

A) At the start of OYL, while Johns is still behind the wheel, Tim is literally begging Cassie to come back. He's like, a pinch short of getting down on his knees and begging.

While I really like Tony Daniel's figures, his facial expressions are kind of limited to "blank wall" and " really angry". And I think that contributed to me forgetting how emotionally open Tim is being about a lot of things at the start of this run. (Not the cloning, obvs, but other things.)

B) Cassie is angry bc she feels like Tim abandoned her when she needed him most. Her walls are UP. She spends a lot of time yelling at Tim. Sometimes Tim yells back. But then back-pedals bc he's desperately trying to get her to stay.

C) Some of that yelling and anger is because Cassie is being judgemental of herself, and then projecting those judgements onto Tim. Delicious.

My fanon brain likes to emphasize that they eventually work things out and become very supportive of each other, but my canon re-read emphasizes that they DO, in fact, fail each other and hurt each other a lot when they are grieving.

But those failures only hurt as much as they do because they want each other's support very badly. They just get the timing wrong.

And that's part of why their back-and-forth of wanting to talk about Le Kiss and NOT wanting to talk about it actually fits even though it can be very, very frustrating.

I feel like there was a lot of UST that was meant to be conveyed over the course of several issues. The set-up is there, but the art is not. Most of the artists working on TT are actually pretty bad at doing a variety of nuanced facial expressions.

We get some decent body-language conveying hurt from time to time, but the only artist who seemed to get the "convey some yearning" assignment was Randy Green:

Honestly, Greene's art really helped give McKeever a decent first issue for his run. (Granted, some of T&C's lines about grieving Bart made ppl wonder if McKeever had done his YJ homework, but I'll show some grace there.)

Unfortunately, that run immediately dipped into mediocre with his revisit of the Titans of Tomorrow storyline. It's got some gripping moments, like this one:

But it also has this:

Which... doesn't work because it is speed-running a romance that is designed to be a slow-burn.

Tim and Cassie haven't even been on a date yet. They haven't talked about jack squat. They've had some individual epiphanies, sure, but not about their feelings for each other. They are still running away from that. So a Crescendo Kiss is gonna ring very hollow as a result.

So several issues later... there's a date. And it illustrates some problems very well.

They are being pretty in-character on page one and two. Neither of them is gonna escape the natural awkwardness of a first date, but they have the ability to power-through on genuine compliments.

And these dorks ARE dumb enough to mix business with pleasure and try to use a date to talk about work and then argue about it.

The argument starts off fairly on-point. Cassie can be reckless, especially when she's grieving. So having an epiphany about Kara, and then firing her without a vote? Something she might do. Would Tim call her to task for it? Absolutely.

(The start of OYL emphasizes he's been scraping from the absolute bottom of the barrel trying to give the team a roster--any roster--and Cassie tossing someone out on a whim should have him absolutely grinding his gears.) Would Cassie get defensive? Probably. Would they try to de-escalate right after? Possibly. They don't LIKE fighting each other.

Page 3 is where it all comes apart.

"[My evil older self] told me to let you go… because when I was finally able to bring Conner back, you left me for him. He said it was torture."

Ok. So?

Like, I am looking at canon here. This is practically a decade before DC made Tim officially bi. But even if Tim is 100% straight, even if Tim is realizing he has romantic feelings for Cassie, we still have all of the rest of TTv3 telling us Tim's priorities and mental state.

Tim's friendships have consistently been as or more important to him than his romantic entanglements. He has been canonically grieving for his best friend to an unhealthy extreme. While Cassie is also one of his closest friends, their romantic feelings are at beginning stages.

Tim also canonically has utter disdain for his Evil Future Self and that guy's life choices.

He would not give a shit about what tortures that guy emotionally. (Tim is normally pretty compassionate with a lot of villains, but this is HIMSELF. He ain't gonna give that guy the same amount of grace.)

There are two very effective solutions that are very obvious.

A) Clone-resurrect your bff BEFORE you catch feelings for his gf, and then everybody can be (theoretically, unethically) happy.

B) Stop trying to clone-resurrect your bff, move on, and date whoever you want. Then everybody can be (eventually) happy.

And Cassie?

Cassie's opinion of her evil future self isn't much better. Cassie's level of freak about grieving Conner matches Tim's to a T. They are both struggling to move on, and Cassie is also kind a furious with Tim for taking time off to be with his family when she needed his emotional support.

He's her closest friend rn, because Bart is off having an existential miniseries crisis, and her hyper-focus on her hero life has distanced her from her Cissie, Anita, and Greta who are all busy with civilian life. (And she might have JUST fired her kryptonian bff from the team.)

So yeah, Tim is her closest friend rn and half the time she reeeaally wants to strangle him. And it does NOT help that he looks really kissable when he's crying in a pool of clone juice. Or that his hotness level goes up when he puts on a sports coat. That's only adding to the confusion most days. But she could ignore all of that. If it was important that she ignore it.

Tim and Cassie have the potential to date. Their shared history and interests make it possible, but they don't have to date. In fact, the moment it causes more problems than it solves, they are both likely to simply... stop. With not hard feelings at all, because of those shared priorities/histories/etc.

So the fact that McKeever is pretending that their romance, in it's infant stages, can hold a similar weight to their feelings for Superboy... it ain't load-bearing. The structure just crumbles.

If you wanna give these two a romance, and have Kon haunt the narrative, there were plenty of options, even with the restrictions of canon-style storytelling.

Give them a mini-series. If you don't have the proper space the develop a relationship amid a group title, just sequester them for a lil' in story of their own.

Give them a mission pertaining to Kon's legacy. Have them investigate Cadmus. Make them deal with Knockout or a Hawaii incident, something they know Kon would care about, something he'd be proud of them for resolving. T&C spend plenty of time after his death feeling like they let him down, so give 'em a chance to feel they've done something right by him.

Make them verbalize their admiration for each other to each other. It can be a quiet moment. Or it can be in a villain's lair involving some truth serum. Whatever. McKeever got so caught up with the SB thing, he kept forgetting to show that Tim and Cassie actually like each other. As people.

Show them learning about each other. Tim does not know everything about Cassie. And Cassie definitely doesn't know everything about Tim. Have Tim meet Helena Sandsmark. Show Cassie visiting Gotham. This is the natural progression of any relationship.

Again, you want Kon haunting that narrative? Make them wrestle with the imperfect memories. Kon was Cassie's first boyfriend. He was also an imperfect one. Tim has the opportunity to be more present, so how will Cassie wrestle with the comparison? Kon was Tim's closest confidant, so how much will it mess with Tim that Cassie slips into that role, and then performs it differently?

And fer the luvva Grife, give 'em better art. Please. Somebody who can convey fraggin' emotions on a face. Multiple emotions. In a way that is pretty. Bc they deserve it.

All of that could have built up their relationship enough that a returned-from-the-dead SB provided some complications instead of 100% joy.

But without T&C actually establishing a relationship that has changed into something vitally important to them... they have nothing stopping them from returning to the Kon/Cassie, Tim&Kon bffs status quo.

Which is why that's exactly what happened.