hey i know your post about your mom was mostly just a personal vent, but i have to say, do you realize that also happens with trans girls and their fathers? literally happened to one of my friends. i’m not trying to downplay your experience or something but i found it strange that you seem to think this is something that only affects transmascs
i have one question for you: so fucking what?
i don’t doubt that trans girls have experienced similar things and yeah, that’s bad too, but what the fuck does that have to do with me and the specific things i’m facing as a result of being a trans man? i never said “look at this thing that happens to ONLY trans men and NO ONE ELSE,” i just said “hey, isn’t this thing that happens to a lot of trans men, including myself, fucked up?”
i would also like to point out that what you’re talking about is in fact a different (albeit similar) thing. the way cis people treat trans people can differ dramatically based on the cis person’s gender because their commitment to gender roles is, like, a major part of problem. the specific way a cis mother reacts to her trans son’s transition is often going to be very distinct, while a cis father will likely respond to his trans daughter in a different but equally distinct way.
what i’m talking about is a very specific kind of ownership and control and self-victimization and total lack of boundaries masquerading as love and care and maternal concern that cis women (i would argue white cis women in particular) project onto their transmasc kids when we do literally anything to our bodies. i’m talking about a phenomenon which is closely related to the way moms often pass eating disorders onto their daughters (or children they view as daughters) because they see a body that looks something like theirs and project all of their insecurities and ideals onto it. i’m talking about a form of parental transphobia and projection that’s specific to the dynamic of a cis mother and her child who was “supposed to” be her daughter.
if you’ve never felt that, you’re not even remotely qualified to tell me shit about how i should be talking about that experience, and if you couldn’t recognize that experience when you read my post, i’m guessing you probably haven’t experienced it because the replies to that post made it very clear to me that anyone who has experienced it firsthand immediately knew exactly what i meant.
like, yeah, cis dads also project onto their trans daughters, but are they likely to have a reaction like running away with actual tears streaming down their face? do you expect them to passive aggressively make comments about how sad their kid’s transition makes them, how it’s such a difficult emotional time, how it’s so tragic because their kid’s body was so beautiful before? do you think their go-to transphobic reaction will be weaponizing their emotions? i’m sure there are some dads out there who are like that, but i think we can agree they’re in the minority because that’s not how cis men are taught to react and parents like this tend to be pretty damn committed to following the gender roles they were taught.
and even if i’m wrong and our experiences are exactly the same, let me reiterate that i never said this was an experience exclusive to trans men. all i said is that it happens to us. that’s just a statement of objective fact.
this started in my life when i got my hair cut short for the first time almost a decade ago and it has not stopped since. i’ve watched my mom cry over me changing my name and respond to being asked if my happiness matters more to her than my name by saying “i care about both”, i’ve watched her melt down in a mall over me getting a suit for prom and give me the silent treatment for days after, i’ve heard her plead with me to stop t because it “looks unnatural” and she’s just so “concerned for my health”, i’ve watched her stare at me post-op and say “my poor baby” over and over like she’s looking at my corpse in a casket. i’ve watched her turn herself into the victim of every single aspect of my transition. i’ve had to live with this for 9 years and spent the early years of the pandemic literally locked in a house with it. this has been my entire adolescent and adult life, and the question of if i’ll have to cut her off someday (and maybe never see my cat or my little cousins who i love more than anything in the world ever again as a result) haunts me every single day.
who the fuck are you to tell me how to talk about that?
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After revisiting your "came back wrong" comic, absolutely wonderful btw, I came to a rather haunting realization.
Because it became true. But instead of Bloodmoon, it's Eclipse. And that's both much worse(for the characters), and much better(for the narrative).
Because both him and Lunar went through the same, and in a way seem to parallel each other, though that's probably me overthinking.
Both of them died. Both of them were blown to smithereens. Both of them came back after several months. Both found themselves in a body not their own. We've seen what they look like in every other universe.
Both of them came back wrong.
Lunar came back numb, quieter than before, with all their energy being a play. He came back running from unknown danger. They died a normal animatronic, and came back being more.
Eclipse is the opposite. He came back louder, erratic, full of madness. Where Lunar is running from unknown danger, he is sprinting towards it, not realizing the consequences until it's to late. Not to forget the star. Eclipse died being somewhat of a god, and came back as nothing more than a plaything, a puppet on a string.
In a twist of fate, they can relate best to each other now, and that might be the worst part for both of them.
Because what is there to do? Even though they understand, even though, one day, they might glance at each other and wonder "Do you feel the same?", they will never be able to confide in each other. Their relationship is beyond repair, and for good reason. Eclipse hurt Lunar, used and ab*sed him, and then blew him up.
This also opens up so much emotional baggage. What will Lunar think? Will he wonder "Do you regret what you did now, knowing how it felt?" Will a part of him feel the smallest bit of satisfaction? Will they ever be able to look at him at all, or will they forever hide away?
What about Eclipse? Will he feel guilty? He seems aware of the damage he has caused the celestial twins, even telling Ruin that he deserves what's coming for him, but he still showed no remorse when he talked to them.
I'm sorry this got so long, I am incredibly emotional about this right now, and I can't even begin to describe, how this makes me feel-
ANON OH MY GHOD /POS
DID YOU KNOW YOU HAVE THE BIGGEST FUCJING BRAIN EVER. DID YOU KNOW YOU'VE CONNECTED THE MOST PERFECT DOTS KNOWN TO MAN. HOLY SHIT.
LUNAR CAME BACK AS MORE AND ECLIPSE CAME BACK AS LESS BUT BOTH CAME BACK WRONG AAIAUAUAYAGAGGGHHHHHH
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How do you feel about Jack Drake?? What are your thoughts on him and Tim’s relationship?
Anon, I hope you were interested in a novel, because look, I am fascinated by Jack Drake. He’s key to a whole lot of what I find compelling about Tim as a character, and if I were in charge of DC, I’d bring him back to life. This would make Tim unhappy but would IMO make for good plotlines.
Jack and Tim’s relationship is Complicated (TM)...
Jack and Tim hug in Nightwing 20 / Jack impulsively yanks a TV out of the wall in Robin 45 / Tim grieves in Identity Crisis
“I could tell the truth. But I don’t.” - Robin 66
...and it involves a whole lot of Tim lying, and feeling guilty about lying, and thinking about telling the truth, and choosing again and again to keep lying.
And I think that’s great.
Below the cut:
Shorter version - key points about Jack
Really long version - my gentler take (vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports) vs. my harsher take (Jack has some major flaws)
Final thoughts
Shorter version - key points about Jack:
He’s a bad parent. He’s self-centered, he consistently prioritizes his own comfort and interests over his son’s, and when upset, he does things like order Tim off to boarding school.
But he’s never a bad parent in an actionable way. He’s not like David Cain or Arthur Brown, who are abusive monsters. Jack’s not a monster! He just...kinda sucks.
He genuinely loves Tim. If Jack’s aware that Tim’s disappeared or is in trouble, he’s always worried and upset. He periodically resolves to be a better dad, and IMO he’s always sincere.
And Tim loves him, a lot. Tim’s protective of him and worries about him when he’s kidnapped or in danger, and when they’re reunited, Tim’s really relieved and usually hugs him (and Jack hugs back!).
...But they have very little in common, and that’s a problem. Jack doesn’t value the things that Tim values, or respect the people that Tim admires, or care about the things that Tim’s interested in. Tim lies to him a lot, but that’s partly because he correctly guesses Jack wouldn’t respond well if he knew the truth of what Tim’s up to.
The Batfamily is a surrogate family that Tim’s drawn to because of the ways his real family doesn’t meet his emotional needs…but also he feels guilty about that and disloyal. (And to the extent that his dad recognizes what’s going on, he's jealous and resentful!)
Very long version:
(LISTEN I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS)
Okay! So first: Jack’s a character who IMO is pretty up for interpretation. You can interpret him very charitably, and make excuses for the bad behavior, and fill in the blanks sympathetically when situations are ambiguous; or you can interpret him uncharitably, and emphasize the bad behavior. I don’t think either approach is invalid - it depends on what kind of story you’re interested in! I have enjoyed Bad Dad stories and also stories that redeem Jack.
My personal take on canon is that Jack and Tim’s relationship is in a gray area. Jack's definitely neglectful, and he does prioritize other things over Tim, but he’s never so bad that Tim can easily reject him, and he's never so bad that Bruce could justify taking Tim away. He's just...not great. Tim loves him, and feels loyal to him, but it’s a very mixed-up complicated love.
I have a gentler take and a harsher one which I switch between as the spirit moves me. xD
My Gentler Take (tl;dr: vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports)
Here’s the core conflict: Jack and Tim are very different people with different values. Tim idolizes Bruce and Dick and vigilantism, and secretly gets involved, knowing his dad will hate it. He gets increasingly wrapped up in his secret world and lies to his dad...because if his dad finds out, he’ll make Tim quit.
This is a great setup for an ongoing comic. It’s practical, because it provides endless potential for plotlines, and it’s nicely thematic, because it maps closely onto relatable real-life situations with extracurricular activities:
Tim the drama nerd whose dad thinks he’s playing football and not in the school play;
Tim the closeted-queer kid secretly getting involved in his school’s politically-active Gay-Straight Alliance;
Tim the choir kid whose dad only values making money and wants him to go into the family business (and Tim keeps promising himself he'll give up choir soon, definitely soon, but maybe he'll stay in just a liiiittle longer, because they need him, you see, the last tenor left town, so...);
Tim the computer geek with the sports-obsessed dad (this one’s just canon);
etc. etc.
The extracurricular metaphor works pretty well for Tim’s relationship to vigilantism. Tim's involved in his "extracurricular" because he genuinely thinks it's important and fulfilling, and he values it and wants to be good at it. He idolizes Bruce and Dick because they're good at it. He's been collecting information about it since he was a little kid, and hiding it from his parents because he knows they wouldn't approve. And mayyyybe there's also an element of low-key rebellion against his dad, and maybe that's secretly part of the appeal. And yet also as Tim gets more and more invested, he starts to daydream: maybe I could tell my dad and he'd be proud of me and supportive. But he doesn't, because actually he knows his dad would be upset and angry and make him quit.
And - again, just like with lonely kids and extracurricular hobbies - one of the things that happens is that Tim starts getting his unfilled emotional needs met ... by people he knows through this secret hobby. And people like Bruce and Dick start turning into a surrogate family. Which Tim feels guilty about. And also as Tim gets more and more wrapped up in their world, he has to lie to his dad even more, which means the distance between Tim and his dad gets bigger and bigger and more and more unfixable.
I love this dilemma. It's simple, it's recognizable, it provides endless sources for conflict, and there's no obvious solution! Tim can't tell Jack: he'll make Tim quit! And Tim doesn't want to quit, because he loves choir / art / theater / whatever. Yeah, it’s difficult, and there are challenges, and sometimes he has doubts...but at the end of the day, he cares about it a lot. And everything he values is there, and all the people he admires and cares about are there, and all he wants in the world is to feel like he's one of them and belongs there. So he has to lie, even though he doesn't want to lie, and he feels guilty about it...
...but also he ends up lying more and more.
(Sidenote: I think it's important that Tim chooses to keep lying - Tim's narration often glosses this as "I have to lie to my dad," and that's certainly how it feels to Tim, but this... isn't quite true. He has to lie to his dad, because if he doesn't, his dad will get mad at him and try to stop him, not because he literally has no choice about it.)
Other Reasons Why I Like The "Secret Extracurricular" Interpretation
(tl;dr it complicates not just Tim's relationship with his dad, but also all his other relationships)
Tim's problems have some obvious parallels to Steph and Cass, who both become vigilantes while rejecting their evil supervillain dads. But Jack isn't evil. And that means the Tim-and-Jack relationship is ambiguous and complicated in ways that I like. Steph and Cass can just leave their Bad Dads in prison, and say good riddance, and feel very righteous and triumphant about it! Tim’s more complicated. Tim gets into vigilantism ostensibly out of duty and altruism, but secretly, he's also involved for straight-up selfish self-fulfillment reasons. He's lonely, and bored, and his life feels pointless, but he thinks that Bruce and Dick are cool and amazing and he wants to be a part of the things that they do. When his dad gets jealous of Tim’s relationship to Bruce, and feels like Tim’s looking for a surrogate family, he’s... not wrong.
And the ways in which Jack is not Actionably Bad complicate things from Bruce's POV. If Jack was a straight-up villain, it’d be an easy call to keep in touch when Jack finds out and makes Tim quit...but he’s not a villain, not really. So what do you do? Do you try to surreptitiously stay in touch with Tim even though you’re ignoring his dad’s express wishes and thus forcing Tim to sneak around? Do you respect his dad’s wishes and stay away from Tim even though you have a years-long relationship at this point?
Again: a bit similar to the extracurricular analogy. Say you’re the choir director and you’ve built this whole relationship with a kid in the choir, and you’re an important mentor to him and you care about him etc. etc. etc.... and then right before a big performance, his dad finds out he’s been secretly involved, and yanks him out. How would you react? Well, maybe kind of in some of the ways Bruce reacts. You replace him. You’re annoyed with him. You miss him. You want him to come back. You’re also worried about him. You’re upset with his dad. But also... what should you do, exactly?
Bruce and Alfred and Dick care about Tim as if he were part of their family, but he’s not part of their family, and there’s a lot of interesting tension there.
My Harsher Take
Jack never hits his son. But his temper is a big deal.
In his worst moments, he takes out his anger on Tim’s stuff - wrecking his room, or ripping his TV out of the wall and confiscating it. When he’s worried about Tim, he usually expresses that fear by yelling at him / punishing him / sending him away - threatening to send him to boarding school in Metropolis in Robin III, or threatening to send him to military school abroad in Robin 92, or actually forcing him to go to an all-boys' boarding school post-NML.
This is bad behavior! It is Not Good!
And you can easily connect the dots to a bunch of Tim’s terrible coping mechanisms, like the constant lying and or the fact that Tim’s go-to methods for dealing with interpersonal conflict are 1) repress it and pretend it never happened (most of his fights with Bruce), 2) withdraw from the relationship until he can pretend the conflict doesn’t exist (when his friends get mad at him in YJ, he quits the team for a while), or 3) literally run away from home.
Also, Jack is a Manly Man with firm opinions about how men behave vs. how women behave, and he thinks boys shouldn’t be scared and thinks Tim should date hot girls and pushes Tim to work out and wants him to play football and expresses period-typical sexism, etc. etc. etc. ... and though obviously this wasn’t what the writers had in mind at the time, all of that is certainly interesting to read backwards in the light of Tim as a queer character.
More Disorganized Thoughts on Jack Drake
Tim’s our hero, so we’re naturally more sympathetic to him, but it’s also true that relationships are a two-way street, and Tim doesn’t value any of the things his dad values, either. Jack at various points is shown to care about grades, business, money, boarding schools, archeology, football, a kind of macho bragging-about-dating-hot-women ethos, and a very public and performative kind of caring. Tim tends to respond with discomfort or disinterest or even disgust. When Jack gets on TV to try to rally the government to save his son from No Man’s Land, Tim isn’t touched—he’s mortified. When Jack makes some bad investments and loses money, Jack’s deeply upset and his self-image is majorly impacted, and far from being sympathetic, Tim’s annoyed and kind of contemptuous of the idea that this is a problem. Jack thinks fishing in the early morning and going to tennis matches is a fun father-son activity; Tim finds it exhausting and tedious. And so on.
This means that Tim often longs to be closer to his dad in theory, but this longing is more tied to fantasy than to reality. He rarely seems to enjoy spending time with His-Dad-The-Actual-Person. So for example, when Tim’s deadly ill with the Clench, he has an extremely poignant fever dream about telling his dad the truth and getting hugged…even as he insists in real-life to Alfred and Dick that he does not want them to tell his dad what’s going on.
The same is true of Jack, who IMO genuinely wants to be closer to his son and is continually declaring that he’s going to turn over a new leaf and get closer to his son…and just as continually backs out of activities or loses his temper when faced with spending time with his actual son.
Tim and his dad sadly get along best—by far—in Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder situations. When Jack gets kidnapped or is in danger, Tim worries for him (and Tim grieves him deeply when he dies). When Tim disappears or runs away, Jack’s genuinely worried about him. So e.g. they have a really moving emotional reunion and hug when the earthquake hits Gotham, and Tim panics about his dad’s safety and comes running home (and meanwhile Jack’s been panicked about Tim’s safety!). It’s the day-to-day, regular life stuff where they don’t connect.
Jack's written quite differently by different writers. Mostly, Tim's parents are at their least likable in his early appearances and early miniseries (this is where you get, for example, Jack and Janet being nasty at each other while a pained employee looks on, and Tim disappointed to once again get news of where his parents are via postcard - "I guess that sums them up! Never know where they’re going to be–or when–or even how long!” - and Tim alone on school break, and Bruce and Alfred thinking there's something weird going on with Tim's parents, etc. etc.). Jack's more sympathetic but still often unlikable in most of Tim's Robin solo, and he's almost invisible (but positively treated if he does show up) in Tim's team books.
For obvious reasons, Jack's remembered way more sympathetically after his death. Tim's completely devastated by Jack's murder, which he arrives moments too late to prevent, and he basically never gets over it. We see him grieving Jack again and again in Robin, and also in Teen Titans, and also in Resurrection, and again in the Halloween Special, and again in Batman: Blackest Night, and all the way up to the end of Red Robin. Tim also grieves for an extended time over Janet - he hallucinates a happy reunion with her when he's feverish in Contagion, and hallucinates her in the final issue of Robin, and the reveal-your-buried-emotions song in Robin 102 brings up his grief for her too (meanwhile, other characters dance or laugh or otherwise get giddy). Tim’s grief over his parents’ deaths is intense and long-lasting.
I'm not going to clip comic panels because this is long enough, but if you're curious, here's a nice and fairly lengthy compilation of comic panels with Tim and Jack.
If you're interested in a Jack-centric story with a softer-but-still-recognizably-canon take on Jack, I really like the way Jack’s narration is written in the one-shots Heart Humble (set shortly before Jack dies) and Never a Hero (Ra's resurrects him during Brucequest, and Jack's archeology skills turn out to be unexpectedly useful).
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just asking, what if an iterator possibly gets too hot or cold? What happens if they can’t get to safer temps with out outside forces? What if they can’t get to safer temps at all?
Do you mean superstructures or puppet-bound iterators? I'm sure superstructures have a lot of failsafes to deal with temperature fluctuations, mostly via processing water intake. They're living saunas! They probably have an incredible resistance to both hot and cold, as evidence shows.
I'll talk about puppets here, but if you meant superstructures, well... a lot of what I'll say here could apply to superstructures too.
(For puppet-bound iterators, I am referring to my AU CDSS)
For heat: Puppet-bound iterators, like their former superstructure bodies, run hot and need to stay hydrated. They rely on liquid coolant that runs throughout their bodies. Ruptures in the coolant system are one of their many common problems, but with medical aid, they're not too serious. Many cases are self-healing, or the rupture will seal itself off and reroute around the blockage - like with collateral circulation. Leaks into essential systems are more of a concern than the actual loss of coolant. As long as they stay cool and drink water while waiting to get fixed, they tend to be fine.
If they are stuck in a hot region and can't escape, they'll suffer from dehydration, heat stroke, fried components, damage to organic tissue, seizures... pretty much what you'd expect. As a superstructure, Moon probably suffered from all this leading up to her collapse.
For cold: They're fairly resistant for a few reasons. One is the antifreeze in coolant. Another is the heat that they naturally produce. I'm thinking they have silicone-based skin, which is very cold resistant. They have hemocyanin, which tends to function better in extreme cold than hemoglobin. (Hemocyanin can also work at hotter temperatures. I have like a whole essay about this that I still intend to post lol.) However, the puppets have been modified to have more flexible and sensitive skin - dexterity in exchange for some durability. They're more susceptible to the perception of cold than they would be if they were a still a superstructure. Many of them also dislike snowscapes on principle, because they've been freezing their decaying metal butts off for centuries by the time CDSS happens.
Iterators in both forms are very moist, so if it's cold past their limits, their mechanical components will freeze. And like with hypothermia in fully organic beings, prolonged time in extreme cold will lead to tissue death and organ failure. Superstructures with fractured exteriors (direct exposure of internal parts to the cold air) are especially susceptible to this.
Misc theory about superstructures: Moon's superstructure was able to stay intact into Saint's era because she collapsed straight down into the water, preserving most of her shape. The canyon water could have provided the pressure and circulation she needed in the absence of gravity cores, as well as protection against land pests and insulation against the cold. Remnant slag could have her generate excess heat as well, which would keep the water surrounding her unfrozen. In a way, dying like that could have helped her live longer?!
Thanks for the question anon, this was very fun :P
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