Fr Though 😂

i don’t think people who don’t read comics/mostly read wfa understand how much of a dweeb tim drake actually is because he was supposed to be a Good Role Model For Tween Boys in the 90s. one time he found out his roommate at boarding school was an alcoholic so he poured all his alcohol down the drain instead of just ignoring it like a normal person. his girlfriend wanted to have sex with him and instead of just saying “i’m not ready” he launched into a monologue about how “making love is like opening a door” and he “isn’t ready to open that door yet” because they “might have adult feelings for each other, but [they’re] still just kids.” 90s tim was the type of kid to remind the teacher to assign homework. he somehow got mad bitches even though everyone highkey thought he was weird. in one panel of one issue he randomly said he had to be “vewwy quiet” and never spoke like that again. he canonically plays dungeons and dragons (or the fictional dc equivalent). the money his dad left him after he died wasn’t even a lot because his dad went bankrupt shortly before his death. like it was a substantial amount but not enough to make him rich. i cannot stress enough that tim was SUCH a Regular Guy TM and constantly worried about not standing out. he purposefully did bad at sports and pretended to be winded in gym class so people wouldn’t suspect anything. like he wouldn’t even try and be average, he would purposefully almost fail. he is not a cool rich skater kid guys he’s such a dork

Adorable

Fated meeting

(I’m sure we’ll meet again)

I got a bee in my bonnet and spent last night crunching these numbers to confirm a long-held suspicion of mine, and now I'm going to do something with them even if it's only interesting to me. So.

I went through and tallied up all of the fics AO3 currently (as of 3/27/24) has under the tags "Trans Tim Drake," "Nonbinary Tim Drake," "Genderfluid Tim Drake" and "Genderqueer Tim Drake," since I figured that cast a wide enough net without committing myself to reading every fic vaguely tagged Trans Character to figure out which character they were talking about.

I then did the same for Dick, Jason, Damian and Bruce and, after comparing those numbers against each other and against the total number of fics each character has under their general tag, followed up with Duke, Babs, Cass, Steph and Kate, and then Kon, Cassie, and Bart for good measure.

The results confirm the suspicions I was going into check and are really interesting, to me at least:

Despite having far fewer stories overall than Jason, Bruce or Dick, Tim has by far the most stories tagging him under the trans umbrella (653 out of 58,395) and is the only member of the Bats for whom at least one full percent of his stories fall under that category (1.12% to be exact.) He actually has more total trans stories than Jason and Damian combined (308 out of 71,120 and 255 out of 42,607, equaling 0.43% and 0.59%, respectively) and outstretches the 2nd place ranker, Dick, by over a hundred (who clocks in at 438 out of 79,057 -- 0.55%). Bruce amusingly has by far the most stories overall (90,305) but the fewest trans stories (185) for the lowest percentage among the boys (0.2%).

The only one who comes anywhere close to matching Tim percentage-wise is Bart, who has far fewer stories to his name but a ratio of 62 out of 5,717 for 1.08%. I was thinking maybe Young Justice might have a higher percentage than the Bats due to their strong queer fandom but that only really proved true for Bart, with both Cassie and Kon coming in at only 0.2% and 0.28% trans umbrella percentage respectively (actual count 6 out of 2,874 and 39 out of 13,746).

Cassie's numbers correspond with the fact that women just, do not get a lot of these stories, at all, even compared to the general lack of attention they're paid by fanfiction spheres in general. Steph and Kate both clocked in at falling 0.17% under the trans umbrella (29 out of 16,638 for Steph, 5 out of 2,897 for Kate); Cass got 0.13% (21 out of 15,769) and Babs only 0.07%, the lowest percentage out of anyone I calculated for (11 out of 15,785). Duke's showing was a respectable 0.55% (34 out of 6,166) which puts him about even with the rest of the boys.

All of which I just went through to confirm a gut instinct I've had for a while: even in light of the noticeable trend in fandom towards increased visibility for trans and other queer-gendered people over the last decade and a half or so, it's a notable Thing for the DC comics fandom to explore with Tim Drake in specific.

And that doesn't even take into account things like the over 200 "Tim Drake is Catlad | Stray" fics, which almost always have some element of queered gender or at least femme'd sexuality to them, far outstripping any of the other Robin boys' spins in that AU (those counts stand at, respectively: Damian - 11, Dick - 33, Jason - 79, Tim - 242). Or the 11 fics logged under the "Tim Drake is Batgirl" tag, a category that doesn't even exist for any of the other male Robins.

(What makes that last one extra hilarious to me that most people don't know one canonical version of Tim has been a member of the Batgirls.) Part of me wants to use that parenthetic detail as a segway to ramble about the various canon snippets I think probably contributed to this, from Tim being presented as "the pretty one" who most often gets the "looks like his mother" comments to the fact that he is the only male Robin who's ever cross-dressed for an undercover mission and even though it only happened once the Internet will never forget Caroline Hill.

But this post is long enough as it is and I don't really have a point beyond I think this is interesting and cool so I'm going to leave off here for now and put my numbers under a cut so people have the raw data to look at if they'd like to.

TL;DR - Based on the numbers, the internet believes Tim Drake is more likely to be trans than any other member of the Bat-family or Young Justice, and I think that has interesting implications about his character and fandom. It's neat.

Data Taken: 3/27/24

Tim Drake: 58,395 Trans Tim Drake: 513 Nonbinary Tim Drake: 46 Genderfluid Tim Drake: 89 Genderqueer Tim Drake: 5

Dick Grayson: 79,057 Trans Dick Grayson: 399 Nonbinary Dick Grayson: 15 Genderfluid Dick Grayson: 23 Genderqueer Dick Grayson: 1

Jason Todd: 71,120 Trans Jason Todd: 286 Nonbinary Jason Todd: 17 Genderqueer/Genderfluid Jason Todd: 5 (4 have both tags and are the only ones tagged Genderqueer Jason Todd)

Damian Wayne: 42,607 Trans Damian Wayne: 215  Nonbinary Damian Wayne: 37 Genderfluid Damian Wayne: 3 Genderqueer Damian Wayne: 0

Bruce Wayne: 90,305 Trans Bruce Wayne: 180 Nonbinary Bruce Wayne: 5 (2 also tagged Trans Bruce Wayne) Genderfluid Bruce Wayne: 1 Genderqueer Bruce Wayne: 1

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Total Trans Umbrella Tim Drake: 653 Total Trans Umbrella Dick Grayson: 438 Total Trans Umbrella Jason Todd: 308 (313 if you count the GQ tag separately) Total Trans Umbrella Damian Wayne: 255 Total Trans Umbrella Bruce Wayne: 185 (187)

Percentage Trans Umbrella Tim Drake: 1.12% (1.11825) Percentage Trans Umbrella Dick Grayson: 0.55% (0.55403) Percentage Trans Umbrella Jason Todd: 0.43% (0.43307 or 0.44010) Percentage Trans Umbrella Damian Wayne: 0.59% (0.59849) Percentage Trans Umbrella Bruce Wayne: 0.2% (0.20466)

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Duke Thomas: 6,166 Trans Duke Thomas: 20 Nonbinary Duke Thomas: 14 Genderfluid Duke Thomas: 0 Genderqueer Duke Thomas: 0

Barbara Gordon: 15,785 Trans Barbara Gordon: 11 Nonbinary Barbara Gordon: 0 Genderfluid Barbara Gordon: 0 Genderqueer Barbara Gordon: 0

Cassandra Cain: 15,769 Trans Cassandra Cain: 15 Nonbinary Cassandra Cain: 6 Genderfluid Cassandra Cain: 0 Genderqueer Cassandra Cain: 0

Stephanie Brown: 16,638 Trans Stephanie Brown: 27 Nonbinary Stephanie Brown: 2 Genderfluid Stephanie Brown: 0 Genderqueer Stephanie Brown: 0

Kate Kane (DCU): 2,897 Trans Kate Kane: 4 Nonbinary Kate Kane: 0 Genderfluid Kate Kane: 1 Genderqueer Kate Kane: 0

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Total Trans Umbrella Duke Thomas: 34 Total Trans Umbrella Barbara Gordon: 11 Total Trans Umbrella Cassandra Cain: 21 Total Trans Umbrella Stephanie Brown: 29 Total Trans Umbrella Kate Kane: 5

Percentage Trans Umbrella Duke Thomas: 0.55% (0.55141) Percentage Trans Umbrella Barbara Gordon: 0.07% (0.06968) Percentage Trans Umbrella Cassandra Cain: 0.13% (0.13317) Percentage Trans Umbrella Stephanie Brown: 0.17% (0.17429) Percentage Trans Umbrella Kate Kane: 0.17% (0.17259)

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Kon-El | Conner Kent: 13,746 Trans Kon-El | Conner Kent: 19 Nonbinary Kon-El | Conner Kent: 19 Genderfluid Kon-El | Conner Kent: 1 Genderqueer Kon-El | Conner Kent: 0

Bart Allen: 5,717 Trans Bart Allen: 40 Nonbinary Bart Allen: 20 Genderfluid Bart Allen: 1 Genderqueer Bart Allen: 1

Cassie Sandsmark: 2,874 Trans Cassie Sandsmark: 4 Nonbinary Cassie Sandsmark: 2 Genderfluid Cassie Sandsmark: 0 Genderqueer Cassie Sandsmark: 0

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Total Trans Umbrella Kon-El: 39 Total Trans Umbrella Bart Allen: 62 Total Trans Umbrella Cassie Sandsmark: 6

Percentage Trans Umbrella Kon-El: 0.28% (0.28371)  Percentage Trans Umbrella Bart Allen: 1.08% (1.08448) Percentage Trans Umbrella Cassie Sandsmark: 0.2% (0.20876)

I adore stray au’s

[stray! au] the cat and the bat but they're gay

When I catch you Suzanne Collin’s when I catch you

here’s a little meme I made

[1/3]

figure skater Toga x wrestler Ochako

Beautiful :)

Average day at LOV headquarters

To be aware you might be trans but unwilling to do anything about it is to create endlessly bigger boxes within which to contain yourself. When you are a child, that box might encompass only yourself and your parents. By the time you are a gainfully employed adult, that box will contain multitudes, and the thought of disrupting it will grow ever more unthinkable. So you cease to think of yourself as a person on some level; you think not of what you want but what everybody expects from you. You do your best not to make waves, and you apologize, if only implicitly, for existing. You stop being real and start being a construct, and eventually, you decide the construct is just who you are, and you swaddle yourself up in it, and maybe you die there. There is still time until there isn’t.

This reading of TV Glow’s deliberately anticlimactic, noncathartic ending cuts against the transition narrative you typically see in movies and TV, in which a trans person self-accepts, transitions, and lives a happier life. Owen gets trapped in a space where he knows what he must do to live an authentic life but simply refuses to take those steps because, well, burying yourself alive is a terrifying thing to do. The transition narrative posits a trans existence as, effectively, a binary switch between “man” and “woman” that gets flipped one way or another, but to make our lives so binary is to miss how trans existences possess an inherent liminality.

Humans’ lives unfold in a constant state of becoming until death, but trans people are uniquely keyed in to what this means thanks to the simple fact of our identities. You can get lost in that liminality, too, forever trapped in a midnight realm of your own making, stuck between what you believe is true (I am a nice man with a good family and a good job, and I love my life) and what you know, deep in your most terrified heart of hearts, is real (I am a girl suffocating in a box).

And yet if you want to read the film as being about the dangerous allure of nostalgia, you’re not wrong. I Saw the TV Glow totally supports that interpretation, too! But in tempting you with that reading, the film creates a trap for cis viewers that will be all too familiar to trans viewers. Somewhere in the middle of Maddy’s story about The Pink Opaque being real, you will make a choice between “This kid has lost it!” and “No. Go with her, Owen,” and in asking you to make that choice, TV Glow is simulating the act of self-accepting a trans identity.

See, the grimmer read of the film’s ending truly is a nihilistic one. It leaves no hope, no potential for growth, no exit. Yet you must actively choose to read that ending as nihilistic. If you are cis and the end of I Saw the TV Glow left you with a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction, a weird but hard-to-pin-down feeling that something had broken, and a melancholy bordering on horror — congratulations, this movie gave you contact-high gender dysphoria.

In an infinite number of possible universes, there is at least one where I am still living “as a man,” embracing my fictionality, avoiding looking at how much more raw and real I feel when I “pretend” to be a woman. I think about that guy sometimes. I hope he’s okay.

Consider, then, my cis reader, that TV Glow is for both you and me, but it is maybe most of all for him. I hope he sees it. I hope he breaks down crying in the bathroom afterward. I hope he, after so many years locked inside himself, hears the promise of more life through the hiss of TV static.

Emily St. James, “I Saw the TV Glow’s Ending Is Full of Hope, If You Want It to Be,” Vulture. June 4, 2024.