Why I Will Always Defend DamiJon
That does not mean everybody has to ship them. People can prefer Damian and Jon as friends, like other pairings, or simply not connect with their relationship in the way I do.
But when dislike turns into moral condemnation—when people start throwing around words like predatory, creepy or inappropriate as though imagining two boys eventually falling in love is inherently suspect—I am going to push back.
The age-gap argument is the most obvious example. Damian and Jon originally had a three-year difference, with Damian as the older one. DC then used a science-fiction storyline to age Jon forward while Damian remained younger, artificially reversing their positions and damaging the peer relationship they had established.
People now talk as though Jon had always been an older authority figure preying on a younger child. He was not. They began as two children within the same generation.
There is obviously a difference between sexualising their youngest incarnations and imagining two childhood friends growing up, reconnecting and eventually becoming partners. But critics often deliberately erase that distinction. They choose the most uncomfortable possible configuration and act as though it permanently defines every version of the ship—even when Damian and Jon are adults.
I reject that.
But my attachment to DamiJon is also much more personal than a debate about comic-book continuity.
I genuinely saw myself in Damian. I understood the defensiveness, the anger, the isolation, the difficulty trusting people and the experience of being judged according to the worst assumptions others made about you.
For a long time, Jon represented the person I wanted to find: someone warm, hopeful and willing to keep reaching towards Damian without treating him as a project that needed fixing.
I wanted to find my Jon.
Years later, after meeting my partner Charlie, I realised the dynamic was almost the other way around. As I have grown, I have come to understand Jon much more—not necessarily the flattened version DC eventually turned him into, but the potential he originally had. And in my actual relationship, I often feel closer to Jon, while Charlie can be much more like Damian.
There is something strangely meaningful about discovering that the fictional relationship through which I first imagined being loved did not predict my life exactly. It helped me recognise the kind of connection I wanted, but growing up allowed me to understand both sides of it.
I have also rarely had secure, positive friendships. That undoubtedly shaped why I gravitated towards Damian and Jon romantically. Their bond offered the possibility that rivalry, companionship and recognition could eventually become love. Friendship did not have to remain emotionally contained just because they were boys.
DamiJon was not the only ship that helped me articulate myself, either.
I only watched Voltron: Legendary Defender because the internet effectively tricked me into believing Klance was going to become canon.
Despite the show’s writing, Keith and Lance still produced what I genuinely consider one of the best enemies-to-lovers—or at least rivals-to-lovers—dynamics I had encountered.
It also repeated the archetypes I was already drawn to.
Keith is the outsider, much like Damian: defensive, isolated and uncertain of where he belongs. Lance is the bright, funny character, like Jon, who appears socially effortless but has a much more complicated internal life.
There is an obvious irony in Keith being the half-alien one, which technically connects him to Jon, while emotionally he fills the Damian role.
And, naturally, there is the trauma bonding.
People can call their rivalry toxic if they want, but conflict does not automatically make queer love abusive. Their chemistry came from challenging each other, irritating each other and gradually seeing parts of one another that the rest of the team overlooked.
Then there is Parkner, which found me at exactly the right time in my life.
Aside from Damian, Peter Parker may be the fictional character I relate to most. I recognise the masking, the instinct to protect people by hiding yourself from them, the belief that keeping your distance will somehow keep everyone safer, and the overwhelming autistic subtext surrounding him.
Parkner also differs from the simpler “dark character and sunshine character” structure people often assign to ships like DamiJon or Klance.
In the versions that resonate with me, Peter and Harley are both the dark characters.
On the surface, they can both resemble Jon: funny, clever, charming and capable of making everything into a joke. Underneath, they are much closer to Damian: guarded, traumatised, angry and constantly carrying more than they allow anyone else to see.
They are both extensions of trauma, but they are also smartass dumbasses.
They are intelligent enough to understand each other and stupid enough to create absolute chaos together. That balance is a major part of why they work for me.
The usual Parkner age-gap argument frustrates me for the same reason as the DamiJon one. Peter and Harley were conceived as peers, and then the Blip artificially allowed one to age while the other remained frozen. Fanfiction can remove the Blip, have Harley disappear too, keep them the same age, reunite them later or simply place them in another universe.
There is no single mandatory Parkner timeline.
What I cannot stand is when fandom makes Peter or Harley Tony Stark’s biological child—especially when both are made his children and therefore siblings. That is not an inherent problem with Parkner. That is fandom unnecessarily forcing a biological-family structure onto characters whose connections to Tony are far more interesting as mentorship and chosen family.
Stony and Tony/Stephen family fanon often become obstacles for the same reason. I can find the idea of Steve and Tony raising Peter cute in isolation, but I rarely enjoy the characterisations involved. The same applies to Tony and Doctor Strange family setups.
They are not personally offensive to me in the way certain Damian ships are. They simply muddy Parkner by rearranging everyone into artificial family roles and, far too often, turning Peter and Harley into brothers because people cannot resist interfering with something that already works.
Parksborn was different again.
There is less complicated personal mythology around it. At first, it simply exposed me to the possibility that same-sex relationships could exist and be healthy—or at least that the version I encountered could be imagined that way.
Later, discovering Peter and Harry across the original films, the cartoons, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man and the 2017 Marvel’s Spider-Man series made me appreciate the relationship much more.
Across adaptations, Peter and Harry’s friendship is almost guaranteed to be more emotionally dynamic than whichever girlfriend the plot is currently forcing Peter towards.
That does not mean every version of Harry is healthy for Peter. Some are tragic, unstable or outright destructive. But recognising queer longing within that intensity is not the same as approving of every harmful action.
What frustrates me is the automatic assumption that Peter must be straight, while the far richer male relationship beside him is dismissed as “just friendship” regardless of how much emotional weight the story gives it.
That pattern appears repeatedly: queer interpretations are expected to justify themselves, while heterosexual relationships are accepted simply because a girlfriend has been inserted into the plot.
My feelings about Damian’s canonical alternatives are much harsher because Damian is the character I am most protective of.
DamiRae, particularly through the DC animated movie universe, represents almost everything I dislike about how Damian and Raven have been adapted. Both characters have long, complicated cultural histories, and both are frequently flattened or whitewashed. Forcing those reduced versions into a romance only compounded the damage.
Damian is not a straight white murder baby.
He is a mixed Chinese and Arab boy whose childhood, trauma, cultural background and relationship with violence are constantly stripped of their complexity. Any interpretation that reduces him to an aggressive little assassin who needs the correct girl to soften him fundamentally misunderstands him.
Flatline does not work for me either. Their relationship begins with grotesque violence, including her literally ripping out his heart, and DC then tries to sell them through a second-hand BatCat dynamic.
But Damian is not Bruce, Flatline is not Selina, and copying “dangerous flirtation between adversaries” does not reproduce the history or chemistry that makes Batman and Catwoman compelling.
I find the entire pairing forced and repulsive, and I am not interested in being persuaded otherwise.
Then there is Jay Nakamura.
For a brief period, Jay actually made me like Jon less. I eventually realised that was unfair. Jon did not make those decisions. DC did.
Jon and Damian were both victims of the direction DC chose.
There is nothing inherently wrong with Jon being bisexual, and my frustration has never been that bisexual white characters should not exist. It is that DC took what could have been an organic development rooted in years of emotional history and replaced it with something that felt manufactured for publicity.
Jon was aged up, turned into Superman, announced as bisexual and given a new boyfriend whom readers were expected to immediately accept as deeply important to him.
Meanwhile, Damian—the mixed Chinese and Arab boy whom huge portions of the fandom had already read as queer—was left behind and pushed towards heterosexual relationships that, to me, feel far less honest to his character.
Damian coming out would have carried a kind of representation that remains painfully rare. His entire story is about resisting identities imposed upon him, trying to define himself outside inherited expectations and being punished whenever he fails to perform the version of masculinity others demand from him.
That does not mean only Damian could have been queer. Both of them could be.
The failure was not making Jon bisexual. The failure was treating queerness like a publicity decision while ignoring the relationship and character development that had already helped so many people see queer potential in both boys.
Jay became a symbol of that missed opportunity. But I eventually understood that blaming Jon only repeated what DC had already done: separating him from Damian and flattening him into a role rather than allowing him to remain a full character.
The Jon I cared about is still there in the potential he once had.
The Damian I recognised is still there beneath every attempt to simplify or heterosexualise him.
And the relationship I found between them still matters to me.
The same is true of Klance, Parkner and Parksborn. None of these ships had to be canonically perfect, morally uncomplicated or officially confirmed to help me understand myself.
They gave me outsiders being chosen.
They gave me friendship becoming love.
They gave me boys who used humour to hide pain, boys who fought because they did not know how to communicate, and boys who recognised each other beneath the identities everyone else imposed upon them.
They did not make me queer. They helped me articulate something that was already there.
That is why I defend them.
Not because I need fandom to agree with me.
Not because every interpretation is flawless.
Not because criticism of fiction should be forbidden.
I defend them because queer readings are constantly treated as though they are uniquely dangerous, while heterosexual pairings are allowed to be forced, unhealthy, underdeveloped or outright bizarre without the same moral panic.
I defend them because these relationships gave me language when I did not yet have it.
I defend DamiJon because I once saw myself in Damian and dreamed of finding my Jon—and because growing up taught me that I carried more of Jon within me than I realised.
Other people’s opinions cannot undo that.
DC’s decisions cannot undo that.
Canon cannot reach backwards and erase what these characters gave me.
Their meaning is already part of my history.
That is exactly why I will always defend them.
All credit to artists, many apologies, I could not name them all.
Sorry for the image quality :(
The images are more to highlight the meaning of the post :)
