TABLE OF CONTENTS

CANON (PREBOOT) VS FANON JAYTIM

DC

type: comic analysis

this was originally posted on my tumblr here but has been expanded and revised for inclusion on my site.

so you know that trope in jaytim fan-fiction where jason was tim's like. childhood hero. dick was great and all, but for tim? jason was everything. cue complicated feelings when the guy tim has a libraries worth of stalker photos of repeatedly beats him to a pulp. i love it dearly, it is so much fun, hero worship is a favorite of mine. but! for the people who haven't read many of jason and tim's interactions preboot, you might be interested to learn that their dynamic is completely different, i might even say it's opposite! if i had to simplify how tim sees jason i'd say he generally talks about him like a nuisance, someone annoying who distracts him from the real issues at hand. he refuses to miss a chance to insult him. he's got a serious vendetta against jason LOL! like tim is a bit of a prick most of the time don't get me wrong, but he is so hostile towards jason to the point that it's honestly kind of funny. theres a scene where tim finds himself wondering if jason might even be onto something with his methods, but he makes sure to call him an idiot partway through, just in case anyone was starting to think he might like him! it is so funny to consider fanon tim who treats jason like a hero compared to canon tim who doesn't even see him as an equal, he's constantly mocking jason, even just in his own head. even when he breaks jason out of blackgate (something i am obsessed with btw, many have pointed out that in rr #17 tim breaks lynx out of prison and then they kiss about it and i think we deserve jaytim prison break kiss...), he still makes sure to make it clear he's doing it because bruce would have wanted him to, not because he holds any fondness for jason LOL! and then there's jason who is like. lowkey obsessed with tim? like theres my dearly beloved "we're really in it now" timjay picture. HE HAS A FUCKING TIM DRAKE PHOTO BOARD. be so for real with me... and then after he thoroughly beats tim's ass in teen titans #29 he... compliments him? like he full on wipes the floor with tim and then he's like... he's good... like no he apparently is not?? and this continues! jason almost murders tim in battle for the cowl, and instead of being normal about it he later tells dick that tim, quote "took it like a man"??? WHY DID HE SAY IT LIKE THAT??? and furthermore, what is with this continued respect for a man who has not even come close to beating him once? it's fascinating!! i'm literally never going to recover from this pannel. it is INSANE to me!!! he's also kind of obsessed with gettin tim to team up with him? when he asks him to work with him the first time he actually... forgets to ask LOL, like he goes right into explaining the plan to tim and tim's like... hold up buddy... who said i agreed to this? the "be my robin" line is imo taken out of context typically, jason does say that to tim, but he also says it to dick, and even says that it would be more fitting for dick to be his robin (jason was trying to be batman 2.0) since he was the original model, but i do think it's fun to think about, even if tim immediately shut him down.

none of this is to say i dislike the fanon interpretation of their dynamic where jason is uber jealous of tim and hates his guts and tim is like devestated because his number one childhood hero keeps trying to kill him. i love hero worship forever and always, and there's a lot of interesting stories to tell with this dynamic, but i would definitely love to see the canon dynamic depicted more, i will hopefully write some at a later date. it's just so fun! jason coming back and trying so hard to take tim from bruce, tim being incredibly insistant that he doesn't give a fuck about jason, but then copying him at every moment (i could go on forever about how tim drake as a character can not exist outside of jason, it's like every step of the way tim's story is intertwined with jason. i'm obsessed with it. this man he hates, this man he views as nothing more than a nuisance, constantly finding a way to be massively important to his life...). i also adore the conflicting messaging of jason repeatedly beating tim within an inch of his life, and thinking so highly of him, vs tim not being able to even come close to beating jason but thinking so lowly of him.

anyways thanks for listening to my ted talk. timjay is fun and cool both ways, as long as theres some massive difference in perception between the two of them, while still being fundamentally similar, i am so on board :]