#ALSO if you have come to dc comics via batfandom | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bitimdrake · 1 year

Note

how would you describe arrowfamily in canon? Cause i have seen conflicting things ranging from "Oliver Queen is a terrible horrible person" to "canon arrowfamily is what people think batfam should be like/if you want fanon batfam you want canon arrowfam" and it is confusing

Disclaimer first. A full, proper, arrowfam read-through is next on my list once I finally catch up with the bats, but I haven't gotten there yet. I have still read a whole bunch of comics, and by virtue of how the DC universe works, I've seen a fair bit of the arrows scattered throughout. (In particular, I've read a lot of Roy via Titans and Outsiders.)

So I can give a broad strokes answer here, but I'm not going to try to claim a deep meta analysis of the arrows yet.

I think the quickest way to explain the contradictory information is this:

batfam fans take up most of the space in DC fandom

for whatever reason, it has become highly popular bat fanon to use Oliver Queen as a scapegoat Designated Terrible Dad to show how much better and cooler and nicer Bruce is.

This is not a fair or accurate depiction of Ollie.

(Nor, for that matter, an accurate depiction of Bruce, but that fanon diversion is intentional and less like throwing shrapnel at a guy who isn't even part of this.)

People who actually read comics and like Ollie therefore try to push back on this extreme and ooc demonization of him, and also vaunt the arrows in general.

Said pushback is sometimes an exaggerated overcompensation.

Basically, no, Oliver Queen is not a terrible horrible person, nor even a terrible horrible father.

And I would say the canon arrows are a lot closer to what fans are desperately trying to find (or just make up) in the bats. There are various things that are true of the canon arrows/Ollie and of the fanon bats/Bruce that are not true of the canon bats/Bruce. [All post-crisis disclaimer.] Examples:

Ollie is outspokenly liberal and this is a well accepted piece of his canon characterization. (Meanwhile DC writers try very very hard to make Bruce Totally Apolitical and therefore acceptable to all readers. Not that anything is ever actually apolitical.)

Ollie also hates cops! And rich people! For a significant chunk of comics, he lost his fortune and was better off for it, realizing he could never be truly good if he were still a billionaire.

The common fan argument about how Bruce totally isn't abusive; he's a good dad who's just been written that way once or twice by bad writers is...actually not that far off from describing Ollie? He hit Roy once in a comic about How Not To Respond To Addiction; in another comic he was revealed to have secretly known about and abandoned Conner, despite this not lining up with previous comics showing how he really wanted to be a dad. Both of these things are canon and bad, no doubt! But he is also usually a lot better, and has shown an ability to grow and change. (Meanwhile canon Bruce just has a consistent pattern of abuse.)

Subjective, but Ollie seems to really think of himself as a father and delight in it in a way that Bruce just kinda...doesn't.

All the arrows, from what I can tell, actually like each other.

They don't try to murder each other either.

But, as you surely notice, being closer to batfanon desires doesn't mean the arrows literally are the fanon batfam. Like the bats, they are not a perfect model nuclear family (nor should they be!). They too have had conflict and dysfunction (Roy and Oliver stopped talking for a significant period of time!). And they do indeed exist in a comic book world driven by crime and superheroics and conflict, not a fluffy fanfiction world driven by comfort and interpersonal reassurances. (This is not a dunk on fanfic, which I love, just a reminder).

so tl;dr, the arrows aren't a perfectly fluffy fanon family either...but if you see a batfam fan throwing Ollie/other arrows under the bus to make their fave look better, that is definitely bullshit.

#*#ask #anon #*dc #dc #arrows #ollie queen #canon vs fanon #ALSO if you have come to dc comics via batfandom #and the thing you are MOST interested in is this idea of a big loving superhero/vigilante family #may i recommend to you: anything except batman comics #the superfam is very loving and supportive!#the flashes are perhaps the most functional and i hear are having a great run of comics right now!#wonder woman's cast is full of respect and love and bonds of sisters and warriors!#and yes even the arrows get closer on account of liking each other!#the bats are so goddamn dysfunctional and that's why i love them #and if you are on board with that too then jump on in and have fun #but if you are looking for a giant family that is all love #you are probably not going to have a good time. you are going to be desperately pulling out slivers of what you want #from a piece of fiction that is not actually designed for it. and indeed often designed for the opposite.#and that is not a failure of your tastes. but it is also not a failure of the fiction!!#it's a mismatch #you want to go read about wally west instead i think

130 notes · View notes

fantastic-nonsense · 6 years

Note

Hi i have a comic book question. I read from somewhere that tim drake was a third generation asian american. I tried looking for more info on this but couldn't find sources. Do you know any sources for this and if its true/false? and where this info came from? Thank you for your time!

Hey! Simply put: no, Tim is not a “third generation Asian-American,“ and while I have no idea where this information came from, I have a good idea of why it’s being circulated.

So a “third generation Asian-American” would be someone whose grandparents were Asian immigrants to the United States. Tim Drake’s parents are Jack and Janet Drake; All we know about Jack Drake’s parents is that his father was named Charles (Robin #125), and we really don’t know much about Janet Drake at all (much less who her parents were), because she was poisoned and murdered fairly early on after Tim’s introduction as a character.

What we do know is that Tim’s full name is “Timothy Jackson Drake,” his father’s name is “Jackson Drake,” his mother’s name is Janet, and that they all come from the same social class as Bruce Wayne (ie, the Gotham socialite class, though they’re “new money” via Drake Industries being extremely profitable rather than “old money” like the Waynes). We also know that they look like this:

Basically, they look like stereotypical middle-aged white rich people. I will note that an additional problem is that Janet Drake is clearly a shape-shifter; she’s had blonde, red, and black hair throughout her (rare) appearances in comics, and depending on the art style, Jack Drake can actually somewhat look like he’s Asian (he switches between having black hair and red hair, by the way). However, that doesn’t mean they are Asian or that, by extension, Tim is Asian.

At some point in Tim’s original Robin run (I’m not sure when, it’s been awhile since I’ve read it), Tim mentions that he has at least some amount of Irish heritage, and religion-wise writers can’t seem to decide whether he’s a lapsed Catholic, a lapsed (religious) Jew, or an atheist. As of his Red Robin solo series, he’s a confirmed atheist, but as I haven’t been keeping up with his stories in the reboot, I can’t say one way or the other whether or not that’s carried over.

Tim was never conceived of as being anything but white; he was actually deliberately introduced as a wonky parallel to Bruce himself, because while Tim was also a “lonely rich white boy,” he still had two living parents and no real pressing personal reason to become a vigilante when he was introduced. Tim’s story was originally conceived of as showing how someone can just “want to and choose to do the right thing” and not need a bunch of tragedy and personal drama bogging down their past in order to become a superhero. In the words of Marv Wolfman, his creator:

“Also, because his parents and family were all still alive, that he was not fueled by rage or revenge. He was doing what he did because it was right. … I worked to make him a character readers could understand and sympathize with. He was no a victim; he was doing what was right.” [x]

Of course, DC would later kill both of his parents, his best friend, and his girlfriend, soooooooo…….idk what happened there, but it wasn’t good.

Anyway, I think this rumor came from two principal sources: one, the desire to see a more diverse Batfam conflicting with the stark reality that Tim is white. The Batfandom is frankly terrible with mixing headcanons and hopeful AUs with actual canon, and it shows with stuff like this. Tim is canonically white. However, several people in the Bat fandom headcanon him as Asian-American because it a) brings more diversity and representation to the Batfam lineup and b) they specifically like the idea of Asian!Tim for whatever reason. Of course, these same fans tend to blatantly ignore the existence of Cassandra Cain, an actual canonically Asian Batfam character, but what can you do, you know?

The second reason I suspect this rumor is running around is because of Ryan Potter. About a year ago, Ryan (himself an Asian-American) put out an “audition” video of himself as Tim Drake and basically told DC/WB to hire him as Tim for the DCEU. This led to an outpouring of support for Ryan as Tim and a lot of fandom justification for why Tim would be a good Tim Drake when he wasn’t the same race as the character and was also seven years older than Tim would need to be (Ryan was 21 at the time and any age-appropriate actor playing Tim would be in the 14-16 age range). Part of the justification spun out as an effort to racebend Tim within the context of the comics, even when there simply just wasn’t anything there to support it.

#tim drake #dc comics #batfam #robin #comics history #replies #asks #dc meta #batman meta #tim drake meta

27 notes · View notes