when tim is working as the ceo of WE in public half of the time he’s the perfect figure, looking fancy and being respectful while also being intimidating when he needs to be. the other half he’s so tired he just starts cussing at annoying people and flipping them off.

bitches be like "imagine if that freak (tim) had religious issues" as if we didn’t all see him talking to that memorial case like it was a priest at confessional. Like

stephcass fandom open the door or in gonna throw rocks through your window

watching people insist that dick grayson would post thirst traps and tiktoks and overshare online and accidentally reveal his secret identity because he’s open and honest and would never lie as if he doesn’t hate talking about himself and hides from the people he loves and rarely directly says what he’s thinking

u fool!! u have been tricked by the facade!!! a graysons nature is to perform!!

One of the things that’s fascinating about Superboy to me as a shameless powerscaler is that he’s like. Right on the edge of being too powerful. There’s a line between characters that can be active heroes and beings that are so powerful as to basically be gods, who have to be shuffled off to their own corners of canon and only show up for really big cosmic threats so as to not break the plausibility of the setting. Superman stays out of Gotham, Silver Surfer stays out in space, Jean Gray dies if she goes full Phoenix. Kon should be in that category, but no one at DC pays enough attention to him to realize it.

Can you imagine? A character who is basically Jean Gray and Superman combined, but no one ever thinks about it because he wears silly shades and a leather jacket and his telekinesis has a minor range limitation that he’s outgrowing. If you seriously introduced a character like that, the idea of them being an oft-ignored minor character would be laughable.

And yet, somehow Kon sneaks in under the radar! At least part of it is the Kryptonian powerset, obviously. Between the various members of the Superfam and the many copies and parodies across different settings, we get used to treating all those very powerful abilities as one thing, so it doesn’t feel like as big a deal to add all of them onto one other power, especially when Tactile Telekinesis is often forgotten or underused by writers who can’t manage inventive power use.

But what it all adds up to is one of the most powerful characters in DC canon, with a huge amount of room to grow, being consistently treated as a minor sidekick. It’s truly wild.

THIS HAS ABSOLUTELY MADE MY FUCKING DAY

BRO WHY DOES HE LOOK LIKE HES ABOUT TO BURST INTO TEARS 😭😭😭

I still think it’s hilarious that the reason nobody ever figures out Superman’s secret identity or where he lives or what he does when he’s not saving the planet, is because he already told them all the Kryptonian stuff that can’t be tied to any of his human friends or family. I guarantee you the in-universe wikipedia article on Superman lists his name as Kal-El and the “personal life” section says that he lives full-time at his private fortress of solitude at the north pole. Nobody in the world looks at Clark Kent and thinks “oh my god, maybe he’s superman!” for the same reason nobody ever starts to suspect that their coworker who looks KINDA like Barack Obama is actually secretly Barack Obama – They know who Barack Obama is and know what he does and they know their coworker Greg is Greg and not Barack Obama. They have no reason to assume Barack Obama secretly moonlights as Greg The IT Guy at their workplace even though they’ve never seen Greg and Obama in the same place. At best, “Greg is secretly Obama” would be a running joke at the office, and the same is true at the Daily Planet. “Kal-El of Krypton, who lives in a CRYSTAL PALACE at the NORTH POLE and whose dayjob is SUPERMAN, sometimes puts on a suit and pretends to be a clumsy reporter and lives in a one-bedroom walkup in Metropolis” is a ridiculous concept to anyone who doesn’t already know it’s true

How small must the world be for both Bruce and Tim to witness John and Mary Grayson's deaths

Or for 10-year-old Duke to crack the Riddler's puzzle before Batman swoops in and saves the day, long before his powers came into play

Or for Sheila Haywood to leave her son only to end up assisting his killer a decade and a half later

Not to mention the popular fanon concept of Jason knowing baby Damian in the League of Assassins

Now imagine how many other invisible strings could've tied them together

Like what if Tim and Jason went to the same school when Jason was Robin but all they shared was the occasional bump and "excuse me" in the busy halls

Or what if Babs was a tutor and helped an elementary-aged Steph finally understand her homework only for the Browns to cancel after a couple sessions because they couldn't afford it

What if the first person to buy Cass a hot meal was Kate on one of her travels

What if Alfred witnessed young Selina shoplifting groceries but chose to turn a blind eye

What if Jason lived on the same streets as the Row siblings and gave little Harper tips on how to use tools and defend her brother

What if Steph and Duke shared the same school bus, only he sat in the front while she was toward the back

What if the first person to teach Tim how to tie his shoes was Bruce at a gala because Jack and Janet were busy talking to someone important

What if Bette did a DNA test for fun and found a connection in Nanda Parbat but just assumed the results was faulty because she knew her whole family, right?

What if 8-year-old Dick, the day before his parents died, stayed at a cheap hotel near Crime Alley and found 4-year-old Jason wandering alone and said, "I'll be your big brother for tonight"

What if the universe knew they were made for each other and wouldn't rest until they realized it too

instead of wanting to kill Tim for replacing him, Jason just wants to piss him off a little to keep him on his toes. he does this by changing his name and getting a degree in teaching, and then becoming Tim's English teacher at Gotham prep.

Tim is losing his mind because he swears on his life that his predecessor is literally his english teacher and is literally failing him- and nobody fucking believes him.

Jason thinks it's the funniest shit he's ever managed to pull off. it gets funnier when while on patrol, Red Hood runs into the bats, and instead of helping the others fight him, Red Robin throws down his bo staff down and screeches at the top of his lungs 'STOP GIVING ME FUCKING DETENTION'

Fear Gas hc: Tim edition

Tim has a ton of fears and horrific memories that the fear gas can craft into nauseating tales of terror. He's seen them all: his parents dying, his friends dying, Tim becoming what he's fought against, Ra's being creepy, falling from the dinosaur, that godsdamned desert, etc.

What's the one fear that absolutely grips Tim until he's screaming, crying, and throwing up?

Jason dying again.

When the family found out about how Jason's second death petrifies Tim, they asked why Jason specifically. Tim shakily smiled and told them that Jason's first death was horrific and he never wants that to happen again. The family takes that answer. They ensure Jason is always available for Tim when he gets hit with the toxin. The only way for Tim to calm down, even after receiving the antidote, is for him to feel Jason's heartbeat.

Tim lied, though. Yes, seeing any of his siblings dying is horrific and one of his fears. Jason, though? That fear is born out of selfish necessity.

When Jason died the first time, Tim was the only one who was able to get through to Bruce. The teen loved his Robin run, but it was also extremely traumatic.

If Jason dies again and Bruce needs to be put back together, Tim would do it. Of course he would. He loves Bruce, his father. He would assist his dad and family without hesitation.

The process would kill him.

Tim fears Jason dying because he knows it would destroy his family and kill Tim as well.

It blows my mind the parallels that aren’t fully utilized in Tim angst fanfic

When Jason died Bruce became careless. He didn’t care about his own life. He was passively suicidal and it was because Tim forced his way in that Bruce improved at all.

But Tim wasn’t chosen by Bruce. Tim was a partner not a son, but goddamn was Tim going to pretend for as long as he could. And people hated on Tim. Tim was the perfect Robin after all. Apparently he could do not wrong, and they’re right.

Tim couldn’t do wrong because he was Batman’s partner not his son. All the other Robin’s got more leniency because they were Bruce’s son. Tim didn’t get that luxury. Tim was perfect out of necessity.

Tim was as close to being a Batman replica as could be and that’s not a good thing.

Because after Bruce “dies” Tim becomes reckless. He doesn’t care much for his life outside of finding Bruce. He’s been fired from Robin and kicked out of the family and after he brings Bruce back he doesn’t have much else to live for. Dick may have saved him from hitting the ground after he was thrown off a building, but Tim wouldn’t have cared either way.

The roles have been reversed, but who’s going to play the Robin to Tim’s Batman? Who’s going to save Tim from himself if anyone who should have noticed hasn’t?

jason in titans tower staring at bruce: how’d you know i was alive old man?

bruce: robin - tim - is an avid follower of your tumblr blog that has mysteriously updated after years of you being deceased

tim: mhm, at mrsbennetluvr88 started quoting hamlet and titus andronicus after years of radio silence, it was the only rational conclusion

jason: … at least you know your shakespeare…

What if Jason did the whole shtick of "wow another Robin huh? You'd think the old bats would think better of it after the last one kicked it" and then Tim is dead faced pissed and punches him in the face and goes "Don't ever talk about my dead girlfriend like that again" and Jason's just bluescreens cause wat

nobody understands my "given the political climate of the late 80s & early 90s & the whole bruce is off in moscow fighting an apprentice of the kgbeast right as questions are starting to be asked about tim's parents by alfred and bruce with regards to their general shadiness and tim is notoriously unable to answer what exactly they do because his dad is shown to be fairly tightlipped about his job in a story specifically written by wolfman (who helped create tim) i think that the drakes were possibly initially set up for a potential spy storyline" theory like i do.

Reverse Robin's so Tim can get Jason's trauma: boring, overdone, lazy work, disservice to both Tim and Jason as characters

Reverse Robin's so preadolescent Jason can terrorize kid Dick with photoshopped pictures of Slenderman: innovative, never done before, talented, show stopping

one of those tiktok gotham university reporters approaching bernard on the way to one of his bio classes: thoughts on red robin?

bernard, mildly sleep deprived, and knowing full well what tim’s night life is like: smash [proceeds to walk away like nothing happened]

There is a sort of trope that I've noticed in DC media where Batman is infinitely stranger from anyone else's perspective than his own. In his own comics and movies and such his motives are explained to you, you have his inner monologue, but the moment you put him in someone else's story, you're met with a general vibe of 'what the fuck is wrong with that man? is that a man? might be a demon.'

And this 100% extends to the batkids.

Dick? The man has no bones. From an outside perspective, he leaps before he looks, grinning and laughing as be backflips off buildings with seemingly no plan, only to catch himself with a grapple at the last minute. He's charming and warm until he can't be, and then he's terrifying, with a glare and temper that rivals the Bat's.

Jason? He has deadly aim and a steady hand. He's hulking and strong, but he's also silent. He still moves like a bat, like he was taught to in his Robin days, despite the fact that he's taller and broader than Bruce now. The Red Hood could appear out of the shadows behind you, no matter how safe you are, and you wouldn't be able to do anything to stop it.

Tim? He's smart. They're all smart, but he's smart smart. And his ethics and intelligence don't always mesh. He could tear down any security system with frightening efficiency, then rebuild it better. Logically, he's always five steps ahead.

Damian? He's the most obviously terrifying. He's small, and angry, and he has a sword that he knows how to use with frightening efficiency. He's as viscous as his father can be, but with a temper that more unchecked. He learned how to kill before he learned how to protect.

Duke, Cass, and Steph also fall under this, but I don't know enough about them to make accurate judgements.

Anyway, what I'm saying is the rogues and the Justice League alike fear the Bats, and for good reason.