The Team Up Ever

tim drake's rules brain

I did promise I'd use this account for long form analysis of Batman characters' psychological problems. Something I was talking about on twitter the other day was that to me, one of Tim's primary drivers is his sense of duty -- his need to figure out the correct action and take it. This comes out either in family/social obligations ("I have to quit Robin because my dad said so and he's my dad") or in broader obligations he takes on ("I have to become Robin because Batman needs someone, and nobody else is doing it").

This trait of his is super compelling to me because it's both a strength and something that backfires on Tim constantly -- it's a big source of crunch. On twitter I called him the world's worst utilitarian: he will identify a need and then do pretty much anything short of murder to fill it, even if it tramples over things like his happiness or other people's boundaries.

It's pretty popular in fandom right now to frame his origins like: Tim figures out Batman's identity young, then spends years running around Gotham at night taking photos of Batman and Robin. This is fine!! This is a fine story! Have fun!!

But to me the compelling thing about his intro in A Lonely Place of Dying is that it goes more like: Tim figures out Batman's identity young, and doesn't do anything with this other than keep up with Batman news. While at boarding school he see Batman go apeshit when Jason dies, decides he has to fix this, and during his next week off from school he goes to Gotham and stalks Batman, Nightwing, and Starfire to figure out what's up, makes a plea to Nightwing to come home (without ever telling Nightwing his name because that's not relevant to the task!), and then finally takes on Robin because someone has to do it and he's the closest candidate (while firmly believing he's just a temp substitute!).

The compelling thing is how fast he goes from nondescript eighth-grader to stalker to Robin as soon as he convinces himself he has to do it.

And he does this constantly. My boy sees the world through the lens of rules/obligations/correct actions.

Like I said above, he quits Robin when his dad tells him to, because he needs to respect his dad.

He learns to skateboard (and builds a rocket-powered skateboard) because his dad sells his car and he needs to find a way to get around. Is he a 1990s teenager who just wants to skateboard? Yes. But he has to find a way to make it an obligation.

His conflict in Young Justice 98 is a conflict of obligations! Batman told him he isn't allowed to tell anyone his identity, while his YJ teammates can't trust him because he won't share his identity. Tim repeatedly asks Batman for permission and is bitter about getting a negative response, but won't go behind his back: he needs to respect his duty. (He's super relieved and gleeful when a villain reveals his identity to the team -- it's out of his hands! oh no! what a pity!!)

When Bruce tells Stephanie his identity he's furious at Bruce for the breach of trust and giving Steph more info than he wants her to have, but also specifically for breaking their contract -- they have an agreement and they need to follow it. Tim follows it! Why isn't Bruce??

Throughout the 90s, Bruce's failures to Tim are framed by Tim basically as breaches of contract. It isn't "this isn't a just or kind way to behave to someone in your life," it's "we had a deal and you need to follow it." Batman's 16th birthday present to Tim is two weeks of psychological torture in the form of a fake time-travel mystery; when Tim figures out it was a test, he's furious Bruce for the breach of trust and quits, but he returns within a week because 1) all his friends are capes and he'll never see them again as a civilian and 2) someone needs to protect Gotham. (His loneliness/desire for companionship is another Big Tim Trait imo. but that's another over-long tumblr post.)

Battle for the Cowl is not a good arc but I do think it's significant that in it Tim is the one who lets Jason out of prison, because in a way they're family, and you need to give family a second chance. That's the deal with families.

There's a point in 90s Robin where Tim builds himself a mobile computer system and teaches himself to type on a one-handed keyboard because he needs to find a way to look stuff up in the field without Oracle. Like the skateboard thing... he doesn't actually talk about just wanting to be a keyboard guy. Lots of people have fun building keyboards as a hobby, Tim. No. He has to invent an obligation about it.

[Tim Drake Fake Uncle Scam Arc Goes Here]

Red Robin is entirely about Tim deciding he needs to achieve a series of increasingly ridiculous goals. He needs to prove Bruce is alive. He needs to keep Wayne Enterprises solvent. He needs to take out the League of Assassins. If this ends with him as 1) the boy-king CEO of Wayne Enterprises 2) missing a spleen 3) obliged to pretend to have two broken legs for a year 4) the target of multiple real and fake assassination attempts 5) out of contact and on the outs with his family for months he'll do it. because he needs to.

As a counterpoint to the above, if he doesn't feel an obligation he'll do absolutely whatever. He lies to Batman constantly if it isn't something he feels Batman needs to know.

I could keep going. I'm forcing myself to stop here. This is too long.

Tim isn't "the smart Robin." Tim is the Robin who has weaponized the feeling of I Just Gotta so hard that he can use it to take down Ra's al Ghul. And watching himself either get trapped in an obligation or make one up so he can do what he wanted in the first place is part of what makes him so interesting to me!! ok thanks.

My girlssss

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH 💙💖🤍💖💙

reactions to Batman coming up to the Watchtower for a JL meeting without his cowl just wearing a domino mask, in order of hilarity:

oh no he’s hot (Clark)

he’s older than I thought he was (Diana)

he’s younger than I thought he was (Hal)

he has hair??? (Barry)

why do I recognize that scar above his left eyebrow? (both Dinah and Ollie, simultaneously)

good lord how is he so hot (still Clark)

after patrolling, unwinding in a diner somewhere ...

throw the man a bone batman geez

so ive been reading the kyle rayner run

Midpollo week 2018 Day 6: Soulmate au

Apollo

The first thing he saw was white. The white of the walls, white of the coats around him, white of the bed he laid on and the sheets that covered him. Chatter filled the air around him, slowly coming into focus like breaking through water. He wondered where that thought came from, he can't remember ever being in the water.

They told him that his code name was Apollo, that he had chosen to leave his life behind to fight for a better future. He had abilities now, he could fly, punch through walls, shoot lasers from his eyes. He didn't feel any stronger, but he supposed that he didn't really have anything else to compare it to.

Flying was amazing, feeling the wind through his hair, the sun on his skin. It was indescribable. The longer he stayed out there the stronger he felt and the more he could do. He knew that his past self had made the right choice, though he longed for the knowledge of who that man had been.

Midnighter

There was a voice inside his head. A voice that analysed the sounds the people surrounding him made as he regained consciousness, perhaps for the first time. He couldn't remember any other time.

The voice urged him to move, to strike while they thought he was still helpless, even whilst his sight was not fully restored. The man he grabbed screamed, high-pitched and annoying. His head is so full of overlapping knowledge. The room in front of him played out in different scenes, then reset and repeated. Over and over again in the fraction of a second. His head throbbed, and the scream reverberated through the room. The voice told him to snap his neck, to stop the sound, and he nearly did, but another, outside voice interrupts him.

The man called himself Bendix and told him his name was Midnighter. Then he touched his shoulder and where his hand lay, an ugly bruised green print unfurled across Midnighter's skin. He tells him that it was a soulmark. That anytime someone who has an impact on their lives touches them for the first time it leaves a mark, and that the vibrancy of that mark indicates how powerful their effect will be.

The mark Bendix left was unmistakably vivid.

Midnighter wonders if this is a good thing.

Apollo

He met the rest of his team nearly a month after he woke up. It seemed that none of the others had ever met each other before either. All of them had the same story though, no memories but they were assured that they had known what they were signing up for. It was also the first time he put on his uniform, white and gold with a red triangle and eye in the centre. The Stormwatch symbol.

Later on, he remembers feeling proud and shudders.

He watched as they took turns sparring, just to get to know each other's abilities and how they interacted with their own. He watched as a man all in black except for the matching red triangle and eye blazoned on his chest fought against a woman possibly stronger than he was. And won.

Apollo fought his own matches, waiting patiently for the time to come that he could verse the seemingly unbeatable man. Midnighter.

Midnighter

The first time he saw him, he could think of little else. The rest of their team faded away into the background as he regarded the man in front of him, the man who was to lead him. The voice in his head, the computer that had been put there, didn't know what to do with the man, with Apollo. The Sun God. Throughout his other fights the man was a distraction, one that the computer yearned to destroy.

He grinned as he took his position across from Apollo, who returned it with a matching one of his own. Still undecided on his strategy, they circled each other. Neither of them wanting to make the first move.

Then Midnighter struck.

Apollo

He could feel the blood surging through his veins. He was so light on his feet, he was surprised that he wasn't floating. He dodged the first punch thrown his way, feeling the force of it rush past his cheek. He attempted to counter it with his own, but Midnighter had already danced out of reach.

Apollo settled into defence, willing to watch the graceful movement of Midnighter as he whirls around him. And in a moment of distraction, too focused on the bunching of muscles visible even under the black coat, Midnighter lands the first fit.

Apollo swore that the area he touched, his upper arm, tingled. He knew by now of the soulmarks, his body littered with pale, multicoloured fingerprints left by the scientists that worked with him. No doubt they had more effect on his life than others, but not enough to make a hard mark.

In the showers afterwards, he searches the whole area and is bitterly disappointed when no mark has appeared on his skin.

Midnighter

It didn't take them long to realise that the mission had gone to hell. The first sign they had of it was the poor bastard Amaze killed, with his deformed face. Crow Jane had raged that something was wrong but Apollo, in his calm way of his that drove Midnighter insane, determined that they needed to go on. After all Bendix had said that this was a 'proving' mission that was supposed to test them in the worst-case scenario.

The computer wasn't happy.

Still he stuck to Apollo's side, the unofficial second in command that he had appointed himself.

Amaze died first, a bullet to her brain.

Apollo shouted commands, but Stalker quickly followed her in hail fire. Midnighter pulled Apollo out of the way just in time to avoid the blast that killed Lamplight and Impetus. The thing they had seen in that room was monstrous and it was then that Midnighter realised that Bendix hadn't intended for any of them to make it back from that mission alive.

He and Apollo made it out, just barely, with him clinging onto Apollo's back as they flew. But Crow Jane didn't.

Apollo

He scrubbed at the mark on his arm, the skin around it turned pink from the force. Earlier he had tried branding it away, with the last of his reserves of sunlight for the day, but when the skin cleared, the hand-print remained. A yellowish-green reminiscent of a bruise, ironic really that Bendix would be such a colour. Admitting defeat, he leaves the river he was washing in.

For the past few days, he and Midnighter had been on the run, dodging Bendix's attempts to hunt them down and kill them. They decided it would be best for the time being to stay away from civilization, from the technology it brought and the civilians they would be putting in danger. They hadn't eaten or barely slept in that time either, but it barely bothered him, neither of them needed to really.

But he had missed being clean and so convinced Midnighter that near the stream was where they should camp for the night.

Midnighter

He didn't dare make a fire. It would be like a beacon daring Bendix to find them and while Midnighter couldn't wait to but a fist through the fucker's face, he knew that it wouldn't be Bendix that he and Apollo would be facing.

Apollo joins him in the small clearing, uniform stripped to the waist with the arms tied around his torso to keep it from dangling. Midnighter had eschewed his coat and gloves to give them time to air a little.

He didn't need the computer to tell him that something was wrong. He approached Apollo, a question in his eyes.

"They're going to find us." Apollo said hollowly. He looks at the mark on Midnighter's shoulder, "We can't escape him."

"We can."

Apollo shook his head.

"We're going to hide and we're going to plan and then we're going to kill that bastard."  Midnighter cupped Apollo's cheek with his hand. "Do you trust me?"

"Yes." Came the reply, barely louder than a whisper but they both heard it perfectly.

He gave into the urge, pulling Apollo into a kiss.

Apollo

It was anything but gentle and all Apollo had wanted it to be. He poured his desperation and longing through it and into Midnighter, feeling the same pushed back at him. He reached up to grab Midnighter's neck, drawing him closer still.

Midnighter responded in kind, pushing himself up to cover the small distance between their heights.

Midnighter

Finally, Midnighter pulled back. His hand slipped from Apollo's cheek. A deep blue imprint left in its place. Apollo laughed, breathy and delighted.

Apollo

There was a hand print wrapped around the side of Midnighter's neck, a bright, brazen yellow.

barry’s adventures in mapping the multiverse

Dick and Jason: Why couldn’t he be an understanding father for me 💔

Bruce to Cass in the other room: 3 people died during you 10 minute power nap what are you going to do about it

HSKSJDDHH the worst part is Cass is 100% like "No you're right. This is on me. Ugh I love how much you understand me ❤️" She and Bruce come back into the other room bonding over the shared guilt of not being able to stay awake to fight crime 24 hours a day while Dick and Jason sulk in the corner because look at how he pats her shoulder, he was never that understanding when we messed up 😔.