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I'm probably not gonna read it all things considered. Though I appreciate you letting me know because that's actually kind of interesting.

I don't know why but I wrote a Stephanie Brown masterpost for some reason, in a high induced hyper-focused state. Where I go through everything about my view of her from creator intention, fan reactions, her various involvements in varying levels of fandom controvesies, all while probably being way more honest than you ever seen anyone be about Stephanie Brown.

Like are you personally sick of people talking about Stephanie Brown like she has a fucking land mind strapped on her back?

Read this post!

It is probably genuinely the only post on this fucking planet, that will actually help you get an understanding of Stephanie Brown on a level that makes you feel like you get her.

Because fuck it.

I'm kind of tired of underplaying how much I actually know about the character of Stephanie Brown just so I don't upset other fans.

So read at your own level of caution, it's basically a novel.

Stephanie's such a weird character, because in full honesty she's just a side character her creator got way too attached too. Like she was never a special character or anything. She was an interesting character, and a great concept. And I feel like even her initial appearances in the Robin ongoing were fine. Was she morally grand? No. But that was her fun. She was reckless, she was an adrenaline junkie, she did good things but there was almost always a cynical underlying to her. You could tell that while she liked to be a hero, that her background in being raised by a master thief and a drug addict had some effect on her moral understanding. And having that constantly come into conflict with the much more innocent minded and well-intentioned although very much not perfect boy in Tim who's black and white view on morality offered a great contrast. I think her fan's either don't realize, or don't know, that she was also just kind of there to be a Catwoman for Tim, that was acceptable to a teen audience. Like she wasn't off here showing skin thank God...Well until FabNic over a decade almost two later. But she would literally be labeled "The Vigilante Vixen".

And I've seen some of her fans deny that, and I think it's crazy, because just fucking accept it.

Tim's first miniseries has a scene where Tim is just in his underpants, and seems terrified Talia is gonna have her way with him. And it's treated like it's comedy.

It's really fucked up in hindsight, and I love that miniseries, but that is a horrible stain of a scene, that I'm shocked isn't talked about more, but also not at the same time.

So I get these things that have aged really bad.

Like is it weird they described a teenage girl as a Vixen, and often enough had artists that would practically draw her to have spandex on so tight it was a bit like she was nude--which was standard by many artist, felt a bit weird on a teenage girl.

But it still shows you the intent of the character. You can't just ignore that.

Stephanie was supposed to be a bit of a bad egg, just not an actual criminal.

Tim Drake is perceived as basically a Boy Scout. I think Ted Kord even assumes Young Justice was called "The Justice Scouts" and the only person he knew about on the team, as he makes it clear as he's the only reason he knows about it, is Tim, and I think that was in an issue of Birds of Prey written by Chuck Dixon.

So that's all it took to get that Batman/Catwoman vibes for an audience that was toned down to something okay for Tim Drake's character.

And I think having Tim not be interested is great. He's always been a bit of a wholesome character, who only really gets put into twisted things when they really want to further the horror of something, by having someone like him in there.

Like that got established pretty early on. Tim Drake is introduced, he climbs into dumpsters, but overall he just comes across like a bit of a Cherub with a boy-purse with good intentions and not enough social understanding.

A little girl asks him for directions, Tim even admits he likes helping old ladies cross the road, and both of those issues, one I think was in Batman, the other in the New Titans, and those were written by Marv Wolfman, his creator. So that shows you exactly how you're supposed to imagine Tim asking.

Which makes Dixon's habit of placing his own temper issues onto all the characters really distracting.

So it's too bad Dixon can't write romance for shit, so Tim's original civilian romance got uninteresting pretty quick, because Ariana, despite having an interesting character introduction basically just got reduced to generic teenage girl love interest. She'd be fussy, and insecure, and cheat on Tim, and they'd make her look bad--even though Dixon would have Tim kiss Stephanie, and I get it, Tim kissed Stephanie to do a bit of a turn around on the princess kissing the knight formula, it's a bit different, but it also makes Tim look hypocritical, and since I don't even think the narrative really seems to make it clear that's what the intention is--It just comes across more to be like Dixon really just doesn't like women.

He may claim to be attracted to him, he may respect them, and he may have grown up surrounded by him or what ever. But the way he writes them often enough makes it always feel apparent eventually, that he has a pretty salty idea of a romantic relationship at the very least.

But oh, Ariana is boring, Stephanie is interesting, and her interactions with Tim and those issues with her are some of the better ones because of that, and a lot of fan mail wanted Stephanie to date Tim, so that's what happened.

I can probably imagine, and this is just a guess, this is around the time Stephanie went from "I'm pretty proud of this character here, I might as well keep using them if it works" to "I can't believe my character is starting to become so integral!" and that's where things started to go wrong.

Nowadays so much time has past, and she had her own comic as the star at least once. So people's current perception of Stephanie is really colored by that.

They don't see the cynical teenage girl, who was supposed to be a bad girl influence on the good boy--Probably because again Chuck Dixon can't help but write himself into the characters every now and again, so people understanding what you're supposed to get out of it is terribly terribly muddled, which is the worst fucking part of talking about any Dixon comic--

Instead a lot of modern fans, and especially Steph fans, at least in the fandom-sphere sort of interenet spaces seem to view Stephanie Brown as 'one of them'. A young woman or girl, who doesn't navigate social interactions really well, but hopefully gives off a likable or memorable energy, who feels like the world keeps putting her down, but she gets back up, being an inspiration!

And that's really wonderful, and that's appealing in a lot of ways. So I see why people can love Stephanie, as that's what they view her as.

But it's certainly not what she was supposed to be lmao

Her entire character got ruined to me when she actually started dating Tim. You're telling me Tim goes from good boy, hates cheating--and even though he technically does the narrative doesn't seem to realize it for the sake of talking about narrative intention and not literally what happens on the page--has never cheated before...basically cheats...to be with the girl...who's like 2 to three years older than him or something--

Like a weird part of this too, that I don't bring up as much, because I don't even know if I feel like Chuck Dixon remembers he wrote this, but in Stephanie's debut story...she can tell Tim is YOUNGER than her.

And Dixon in an interview, which I think you can still find online, said she was 16-years-old in that story.

Tim was 14-years-old at best in that story, because his age around that time was a little confusing. He was either 13-years-old or 14-years-old. So Stephanie was already able to drive, while Tim was just becoming what would rather be your last year of Middle School or first year of High School depending on your state. And yeah, Tim can drive, but that's looking at what I said too literally. My point is, Stephanie was meant to be more noticeably mature than Tim, while still being a teenager.

So it's really weird she starts treating Tim like he's attractive to her. Someone that to her must look, and this is established canon basically, at best in Tim's case--a middle schooler...and given how small everyone acts Tim is...potentially younger...but I don't think Dixon would've thought that much into Stephanie saying that, as it felt more like a gentle marker to pass information to the audience casually of what age range Stephanie was more specifically in, without being so unnatural and forced she just spurts out her literal age.

And then to have Tim, who's supposed to be this grounded, positive thinking, smart kid, who's been such a Boy Scout since his introduction, and has shown to be ticked off at Stephanie's constant flirtations with him.

Which to me is just sexual harassment. Because I know damn well if that was a male character doing all of that to a female character, it would be called that. And I'm just not about that hypocrisy in our society. Especially when it's established in Steph's first story she can kick Tim's ass pretty easily in a scrap.

Like she even forced Tim down to kiss him, which while the Tim kissing her stuff is pretty damn dated and looks terrible now, I can't even imagine what the cultural excuse was back then, like two times she just pins this boy down, that's established to be younger than her, and just forces him against her will to kiss him. And while the context of one of those kisses, is to repay him for the kiss he gave her--

Because Stephanie is a wild counter culture type of character, it makes sense for her character to do this--I don't care she was written to do this. She would. It's a good scene. I'm just saying it's a terrible sign they should ever be a couple if she can't respect his physical space.

And she is so much more forceful about it. Like she pins Tim to the floor. Tim just jumped out and in the moment just kisses her for a sec just happy he's alive, because he was trapped under cement and was running out of oxygen and was about to fucking die.

The context and physicality of it is so different.

Which makes them somewhat trying to say Tim secretly liked it, is really fucked up. And I'm thinking when Dixon wrote Stephanie to do that, and have Tim react negatively to it, given Tim reacted negatively to it, I gotta assume means Tim genuinely did not like it.

So changing it, is kind of gross.

If that's they're even trying to change specifically that moment I don't know.

And after they date, they do cute stuff, they look like a couple that would be sort of adorable in that teenage young love kind of way to an somewhat older audience, and I'm sure it seemed like wish fullfillment 'Oh I wish that was me in a super hero world with my crush' sort of stuff for the target demo. And in it's own way, that's very sweet.

But the problem is it's not the character.

They could've introduced a similar character that Tim would've actually dated, and it'd have worked, and it'd have been better for it. But nah. They just forcefully did it with Steph anyway.

And later on, I don't know if Dixon remembered later, just too late, that he established Steph as a very unpredictable, and petty person, given how I'm sure her childhood was fucking awful, I'm sure I'd be a bit emotionally viotile, hell I actually am, so right-o Steph I can relate to you on that, but damn do you take it too far sometimes.

So there's this whole arc where, and Steph hasn't even showed up for a while at this point, which makes the whole thing I'm them dating interesting, because while it's treated as important--that's mostly just in hindsight, because the initial time they dated, it was never that important honestly.

Most of it was dedicated to that pregnancy storyline, which just sort of used Stephanie as a mouth piece on Dixon's view on teen pregnancy.

So, yeah, interesting for a youth aimed book to do.

But not the cutesy, teenage bubblegum romance people have been led to believe existed more times than it did.

Some of the content you think must've been released during that time actually came after the fact.

A few of those cute things were in the issues, but a lot of them no.

But they actually broke up, because Stephanie changed her mind, and just couldn't handle the trust issues not knowing Tim's identity gave her. Something that makes, sense, and with her character, again, makes sense. So from a narrative perspective, I don't care. I don't like that they were dating to begin with.

What happens after though is when things get weird...because Steph is just terrible to Tim. She doesn't even let Tim explain himself. She gives him the silent treatment. He tries to give her some flowers because it's really bothering him that something he didn't do is effecting his relationship with Stephanie and he can't think of a way to get her to trust him without compromising his secret identity. And she just throws a fucking SHOE at him.

Which is already a bit physically abusive, but it's played mostly slapstick, so okay, let's let that off the hook. These are drawn characters, a little slapstick is fine. They're literally animated into cartoon form often enough. So again whatever.

The whole thing though, when Steph impersonates a nurse, and does this in an actual hospital, just so she can stalk a girl Steph only has an assumption Tim is cheating on her with, because this girl isn't, she just taught Tim how to ride a skateboard, but Steph doesn't care. At this point Steph goes from understandably insecure, to just being kind of terrifying, and Dixon never allows the narrative to realize this.

And it's this weird middle ground where, I often let characters off the hook in Dixon issues, because he'll write himself in the characters a lot. With Stephanie, Dixon is her specific creator, so she is held with the genetic material that is his personal writer's touch. She cannot escape from that.

When it comes to Tim, I'm gonna have to go with what Marv Wolfman intended, because even Dixon writes in stuff that comes across like Dixon thinks he is actually writing Tim in the same way, he's just crusty and oblivious.

Not to say Dixon was this nightmare Tim writer. He was very good most of the time. It's just, like with many writers, Dixon has his personal flaw, and that's one of his. So ya just gotta deal with it when you read something with his name on it, because even some of his best stuff has his fungus stuck on it.

Anyways, so Tim and Steph are broke up. Steph is impersinating a nurse for the sole intent of stalking a girl she doesn't really have a good reason to do this with.

Like some people excuse her by saying Bat's do it all the time.

Steph at this point is not a Bat.

Justice League is basically treated like elite level firefighters. There's a level of officiality of that, that passes down through it's members, and who they choose to professional affiliate with.

Stephanie at this point is someone Batman very much does not want to affiliate with, and Robin only does so unwillingly, because he couldn't get her off his back long enough.

So this isn't a hero doing intel to solve a crime.

This is a jealous ex-girlfriend, being very morally messed up.

And yet, I find that fine. Because I don't need Stephanie to be a good person, and that isn't the flaw.

I just wanted to note how morally messed up Stephanie is, because it gets worse, when Stephanie thinks she found out Robin's real identity, and follows this boy, even though--I think this kid is a different ethnicity? Like his name is Tito. And Dixon said he intended Tim to be Jewish at least in his mind, because, I could sort of see if he never felt like he had to make that official, or maybe editorial or the publishers didn't want such a notable character to have an official religious stat like that, especially one aimed at younger readers like Tim. And, maybe I just don't know he origin of the name, but Tito doesn't sound very white, or Jewish, because Tim is clarified to be white, so Jewish or not, Tim is identifiably white.

Anyways, little off topic, she stalks this kid Tito, some criminal thing goes wrong, the details of that I'm blurry on, and eventually she ends up running after this kid, who is terrified of her, she has no idea who this spandex wearing young girl is, Hell given her outfit, he probably can't even tell if it is a girl, he might think it's a full grown woman in that big cape and hood Steph wore back then. This Tito kid thought he was running away from a threat, and Steph tackles him--

And may I note--this entire time--Steph still thinks Tito is Tim, because Steph still doesn't know Robin is Tim Drake, and Steph has her damn fist cocked back, ready to beat Tito up.

Which is messed up for several reasons.

One being, she doesn't even know who this Tito kid actually is, she is mistaken.

And two being, she was this willing to beat the absolute crap out of Tim for something she had the slimmest justification for?

What a terrible person!

Not a villain, but a terrible person.

Man, oh, man, after reading that, I sure am glad Stephanie and Tim broke up. She seemed like some bad news. Oh well, on to bigger and brighter things.

But Dixon, no, he still couldn't help himself.

Behind the scenes Dixon was getting annoyed at DC, for what he perceived to be politically based reasons.

Which might be 1990s, for I think the people around be are woke liberals, and I perceive everything I don't agree with to be a personal attack on me.

And given how he acts nowadays, I might be right on the money with that.

I think Dixon's work load was slimming down, and Dixon I'm sure didn't REALLY want to be here if this was how he was perceiving the environment he was working in. So he felt he was going out the door. So he just grabs Steph by the back of her super hero trunks and starts supergluing her to the carpet, like his life work is represented with her alone.

Dixon's a guest writer for Batgirl, guess who guest stars? Stephanie.

Guess who's hanging out with Birds of Prey now? Stephanie.

Guess who, despite not having a single fucking reason to have changed his opinion on her, also considering how stubborn he is, suddenly trusts Stephanie? Fucking Batman. That's like a Mary Sue moment. "Oh here, Stephanie Brown, teenage girl, I entrust you all this private knowledge.": it's incredibly shoddy writer, which is shocking, because while Dixon has the writer flaw of being unable to see past his own nose when it comes to the world at large, he's normally good at the actual crafting of a story.

Which just adds to the desperate supergluing to the floor feeling.

Tim and Steph are back together, and Tim says he loves her, despite honestly not seeming like it for basically the entirety of their relationship. Besides a few moments written in to show they're official and what not, Tim once refers to himself simply as Stephanie's friend to Stephanie herself, and that's while they were dating. It was hardly a romance filled extravaganza.

So even that honestly reads like an entire bullshit.

Dixon's run of Robin, just the ongoing alone, is 100 issues, not counting annuals.

Let me tell you it is a very strange feeling, when an issue of a comic book feels like absolute fan fiction, and then you find out it's written by the same guy as the rest of the run.

Just what happened?

And then Jon Lewis took over Robin, and he's not offensively bad, but I think he's desperately inadequate. His run has a lot of moments that are perfectly enjoyable, and some of them even my favorite Tim panels. But I think Jon Lewis, as far as I would judge his writing, feels like a guy that was just sort of given the job, not really specifically chosen.

'Cause Tim can go from feeling like "Oh, hey, it's Tim" to Tim suddenly saying some really arrogant sounding shit. Jon Lewis sort of Boy Genius'd up Tim a bit in some ways when it comes to how he handled Tim's personality. Made him a bit stuck up.

Even under Dixon Tim was shown to be an incredibly unjudgmental person--at least when Dixon realized what he was writing. Tim accepted Lagoon Boy pretty damn fast.

So it's just so odd to see Tim be so upfront in his personal narration. Tim could be snarky in that sort of little brother-y sort of way. But Jon Lewis' just has a total different read with his Tim.

And Steph I don't even think Jon Lewis really did much research on, because she just felt like a very generic teenage love interest. Like I could picture the writing of her character being on some teen drama. Jon Lewis even uses Steph for his own soap box moment with Steph being sexually assaulted as a kid.

Which to my understanding Dixon hates. And so personally I just pretend it was never written.

Not that I don't think it's important that little girls learn about this stuff, and have someone they can relate to about it, the idea of it is fine--

But when you look back on Steph's behavior, is that really a detail you want put in her backstory?

It was an addition that I feel like was very underthought, and there's probably a reason it was very quickly ignored.

But there was no soul to Tim or Stephanie's relationship at this point. Pete Woods stayed on as artist, so he kept the likeness accurate, until Teen Titans (2003) came out, then all of a sudden Tim looked like a totally different person. Like I think they tried to pass it off as, look he's older! But why the fuck did his facial features and size change? People don't Pokémon evolve on their birthday.

Which is probably why other artists totally ignored Tim's design change in his physicality.

The Adam Beechen Freddie Williams III wouldn't be as favored by fans as it is, if they didn't take Tim back to basics, and just reworking it for the status quo given to them to work with in One Year Later.

I couldn't tell you a thing about how Bill Williamson wrote Stephanie. I don't find Bill Williamson a very memorable Robin writer. He was passable, basically. With a few moments, where I could say I have objections to how he wrote the series, but I typically keep them to myself, because I can tell how easily perceived they be as nitpicks.

Like a scene some people like of Tim, is that scene where he's with Bernard, and he shows off how socialable he is compared to how Bernard actually is compared to how Bernard acts he is, and he talks to jocks and popular people, because it's this big misconception that Tim is some shy introvert.

But a quality about Tim I liked, was that Tim never cared or felt like he had to impress the popular people. He was above it, and just prioritized hanging out with his friends, even though they were the nerds, despite the fact popular kids like Tim and saw that he was actually pretty good at socializing.

It set this standard that Tim was a boy of moral fiber, that stuck to his guns about what he thought was right. Wanting to remain grounded and true to himself. Felt very true to the kind of character he was introduced as being. Worked very well.

So to see him just written through the much more simplified lens of "teenage boy", so he's a bit more show-offy, it just feels not quite Tim.

Stephanie's whole Robin run is terrible.

I think people mistake the reaction to her death, ad hearing that the sales went up when she was Robin, as meaning it was a really good, just criminally short run as Batman's official protege.

It wasn't.

It was very inconsistent between series, motivations were fuzzy and left mostly to interpretation while normally fine, has let to fandom fights on their view of what actually caused it to happen. And may incidentally cause Stephanie to seem like a pathological liar to people.

Because what Stephanie tells Cassandra Cain about how she became Robin, is very different to what we're shown happening in Robin.

And how they have Stephanie react to being fired, just does not line up with her character at all, who was always very rebellious towards Batman.

It was all just a bunch of cheap writing, because the writers just wanted to put some blame onto Stephanie for her own death, because to lazy writers that equals being poetic. When really it was just very very gross, especially in the end execution of her actual death.

But at this point, as a reader who looks as comics as fiction first, a world I enjoy second, which I clarify because some people tend to react to fiction like it's real. I try to prevent myself from that, as I've realized from personal growth that it's not healthy, and it's very unhelpful to let yourself get that controlled by fiction, even though I can relate to how easy it is to get sucked up in it when you feel like you don't have a lot left--

I'll be honest--

I don't care Stephanie is dead. At this point she has long outlived her usefulness. And I can imagine the reaction by some "Did you just fucking say that about a Bat-Family member??", but look, less face it, in the reality of the narrative she was hardly a Bat-Family member.

She still primarily operated on her own, though I think she did get some assistance, but it's not like she was a card carrying member of the "I can enter the Batcave at anytime and it wouldn't be extremely odd or alarming" club yet. She only really had that as Robin. Otherwise, she was basically just a guest being invited, or she...probably because she was shown were it was at, just came anyway because she wanted to be Robin to stick it to Tim.

Stephanie Brown in all reality was just a creator's pet that stuck around, because she was just expected to be there as Tim's love interest now, because Dixon superglued her to the book's carpet.

Her characterization was becoming increasingly inconsistent. The point of her character long forgotten. And it feels like almost everything they try to include her with, unless it's just your typical Spoiler guest appearance, seems to have a lot of missteps involved.

To me, in the context of what all has been at that point, it was fine that Stephanie was dead.

And I think that would've been the case for most people too, if it wasn't so disturbing how they had her basically be tortured to death by a misogynistic Black Mask.

She was probably 17 to 18-years-old at this point. She was still a teenager. To most readers either she was the age of someone they would go to school with, or someone they would view through the lens of a kid, an older kid, but a kid nevertheless. It's very morbid, and it didn't add to anything, and what caused it to happen was based on a publicity stunt meant to garner attention before doing something shocking.

Classic Dan Didio era bullshit.

If the character just disappeared, I couldn't tell you in honesty in correlation to what I would actually have my expectations set at, that I would actually expect many people to give a shit.

I'm sure she had enough fans. She stuck around.

And I'm sure the fact there was a female Robin at all was really exciting for a lot of people.

Even if they did just make a generic girl version of Tim's uniform and called it a day.

Though, and I'll just bring it up because I want to, there's a hardly known canon Stephanie Brown Robin costume, that is so superior in everyway, because it actually looks like it's designed specifically with her in mind, and not just trying to gender swap the classic Tim suit.

I think it was in a story featured in Detective Comics, wish I could say more about the story it was in, but mainly, I remember it for thinking "Okay, so she does have a Robin suit that works. That's neat. Too bad nobody knows about it, it feels like".

Anyways some years past, Stephanie rather intentionally or not is more often than not sort of treated like an after thought, Tim brings up his dad and Conner far more than he ever does Stephanie.

Which just goes to show how much of an impact Stephanie really left on most people, if this was how she was going to be treated going forward. Because Adam Beechen, though he did write the Evil Cass story arc, only wrote Cass like that because he was specifically instructed to, not because he wanted to. And there's nothing else during his run that would suggest Adam Beechen ever once did anything to be petty.

Though who knows, maybe editorial or a publisher, or somebody told him not to reference Steph that much, because her death resulted in a bunch of bad publicity.

Yet if that was the case...why was she referenced in the only issue of a comic Peter Tomasi ever wrote that I think is as good as people claim it is, because I've rarely ever seen a more overrated writer in my entire life, where it's Nightwing inviting Tim to join him. It's where Tim forgets his civilian clothes for a bit, and has to jump back out of the jet to get them.

It's pretty popular in the fandom. It's a really good scene.

Blew me away when I learned Peter Tomasi wrote it. Because that's the guy that wrote a story into New 52 Batman and Robin, where Damian just kicks I think both Tim and Jason's ass, and it is one of the best examples of why I think Damian has had such a rough road in terms of his characterization--

Because despite all the sunny praise Peter Tomasi gets for being this stellar Damian writer. He honestly kind of fucking sucks. He's written some great moments, but that's all I'll give him, they're moments.

If he was a good writer, why would he write Tim being so openly passive aggressive to Damian when at this point Tim kept his opinion to Damian to himself, unless an event happened, like Damian looking like he was trying to fucking murder him again happened. Which was not in the issue.

And if it was just that, I would have just left it alone, trust me, I would have, but when Peter Tomasi then writes this whole scene where Damian is showing Tim footage of himself getting angry, and in defense this is New 52 Tim, but the issue was in development early enough where you can still see alternate pages where Tim was dressed in his Pre-New 52 Red Robin costume, so I don't think that's a good defense, where Tim is angry and almost kills someone.

Damian is trying to manipulate and gaslight Tim into believing he's just like Damian.

But why the fuck is Damian being written like a supervillain?

People give Tomasi all this praise for having developed the character. He didn't develop shit. He's probably the guiltiest of having reset Damian's character arc the most. Hell, he actively has written things that changed people's perception of Damian's character for the worst.

Damian when written by Grant Morrison, was a highly complex character. Damian was a character introduced to be the worst brat from hell imaginable, so when you learn more about his complexities you're taken aback, and learn that you should probably think about what someone may have been through before you judge them.

That's important, and powerful. Though I'll still say sloppily written, because Damian's characterization for his first number of appearances is really inconsistent, and there being other writers does not help.

But getting back on track, so I can then get back to the main point, Tomasi writes Damian like he's a fucking super villain in recovery who keeps going back to his ways of treachery, while writing in all these moments that treat Damian like he's a damn infant, like having Patrick Gleason draw Damian drooling like a baby, or being carried to bed, or riding his dog--That just don't fit Damian's character in the slightest.

Morrison wrote Damian to have the demeanor of a constantly annoyed middle aged man. Damian run a board meeting of a Wayne company. It's so obviously a part of the character.

But oh, Tomasi wasn't good at understanding the character, and he wrote the character for a lot longer, so Damian's character has been misunderstood for years now.

Not to say Damian being a kid isn't important, it's used for moments of vulnerability that help the audience remember the main message of try to think of what someone been through before judging them.

But Tomasi doesn't do it to leave impactful messages...or at least attempt, because again, I think Morrison is a sloppy writer at times. Tomasi just does it to infantilize Damian, because people online think it's great, and Tomasi self-admitted he somewhat projected his son onto Damian.

I also don't give Tomasi a break about that issue, because Damian's point makes no damn sense. Tim did not kill anybody. So Damian, being that he's not an idiot, would realize that's flimsy logic.

Damian is written like a borderline evil, violent, idiot--

So Tomasi writes a wooby moment with Damian so he doesn't look too bad in the end.

Just terrible writing.

Then during Rebirth, after Tynion IV wrote that whole really played out evil future Batman Tim thing where evil future Batman Tim said Damian did something awful to Jon--

Tomasi went out of his way to write a story where it turns out evil future Tim has to kill Jon, and he uses guns, and he's so evil the future version of his friends have to stop him, and Superman and Batman have to help to.

It is so obsessive, it is no wonder everyone forgets it exists, accept to admire one panel where Bruce is in Batman mode without the costume.

And on top of that, Tomasi would later, and he wrote this after it has been clarified within the narrative that Bruce asked Tim to be Robin again, that Bruce only wants Damian to be his Robin.

I think Tomasi is a petty piece of shit, with obvious favoritism, no one gives proper criticism towards simply because the fandom is obsessed with this infantilized image of Damian where they can treat him like a precious baby, despite the fact Damian was supposed to be written as a character that shows what happens to a child of abuse.

So low-key it just kind of pisses me off as someone, while not to the same extent, also dealt with a level of child abuse, and felt they had to mature, and became highly defensive of themselves as a traumatic response, that they did that to Damian.

And it doesn't get much better, by the clear as day attempts to project the fact so many people do that on to Tim, saying his fans infantilize him.

Like do they? Do they really? That much?

Because while evidentially it's in fan fictions all the time that Tim is written like a frail flower. I hardly ever see anyone actually talk about the character like that.

And they spread all this bullshit about Tim actually being tall, and buff--even though that's contradicted by the canon written proof that Tim just has a very youthful looking physical appearance. Which is great for his underdog character.

Because they want Damian to be that character.

Tim is the character they wish Damian was, and they piss him off.

Well, sort of, obviously Tim was written as a total different character basically ever since Damian's introduction, but in context to trying to talk about the characters as their intended, and not just whatever some random writer wants to mold them into for their own creative purposes, Tim is written, in a literal character bible...GIVEN TO DC writers...that he is basically everyone's little brother.

It was Tim that was introduced with big eyes, and a button nose.

It was Tim that kept having all the characters call him small.

It was Tim who was clarified as being short and not as physically intimidating as the other heroes as an adult, all the way back in the 90s.

It was Tim who had the relationship with a Superboy that went from crude and rivalry based, into being true trusted caring partners.

Though before I get too much farther, because I can imagine someone being red in the face from me saying that, because it doesn't apply to them.

I KNOW, plenty of people innocently just think that's what the character's are actually meant to be like. Why the hell should they know different? When they joined the fandom, Tomasi was writing in short jokes for Damian, even though Damian is portrayed as a fucking towering unit in his future, in a comic written by Damian's creator, and his physical appearance is so specifically intimidating, that I feel like I can't just put it down to being some generic adult appearances.

Because there is that aspect to Sins of Youth, where even though Tim is described, even in the bio that says he's only like 5 foot 5 or whatever as an adult, as being super short as an adult, he's still drawn like a typical hero.

Like Damian's adult design was very specific. There was intention behind it.

Tomasi just didn't care, because he wanted to infantilize Damian.

That's the difference to me between how some fans talk about Tim, and how other fans talk about Tim.

When fans say Tim is short and looks young, it's because they're passionate, they know the original Tim, they understand the way it was intended to be, there's a lot of respect behind saying it.

When Damian fans say it about Damian, it typically just shows that Damian's probably gonna be fucked as a character for potentially the rest of his character existence.

Not that OOOH NOO, HIS WHOLE CHARACTER IS RUINED, PEOPLE THINK DAMIAN IS SHORT WHEN HE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE.

I'm just saying that as an example of how unfortunately easy it is, for shitty comic writers to ruin things long term.

Anyway back to topic, because I'm so unapologetically, hyper-focused, high, and Autistic as fuck right now...going back to Stephanie-- Dixon brought her back. All of a sudden Tim's latest love interest Zoe is written just like Ariana, showing Dixon has a terrible understanding of romance, and Steph despite all reason and logic is treated like Tim's true love.

Then Dixon got kicked again, and yada yada.

Nothing really interesting happened with Steph for a bit until she was Batgirl, which is the most note worthy thing to happen to Steph, because even though Dixon had just wrote a special one off issue called Robin/Spoiler, where Steph is a main star for the first time, equal alongside Tim, and she is written to be a rule breaking, bad girl, that corrupts the pure idealistic Boy Scout known as Tim Drake--though not in some crazy way. It's pretty innocent, she just wanted Tim to have some fun. It's actually probably one of the only well written issues to focus on Steph and Tim's relationship after they started dating--

In Batgirl Steph is written to be more of your typical relatable young woman. She has embarrassing social moments. She doubts herself. Everyone puts her down.

And I can get how someone can love the series.

But I am under no obligation to sugar coat anything, it is a fucking terrible series--

Like there are so many moments where the Bat-Family will act out of character just so Stephanie can look better.

People that act like they love the series clearly don't even read it. People act like Stephanie and Damian are so great.

Damian stares at Stephanie's tits.

Do you think most people that talk about their relationship knows that? Because I doubt it.

It's not a relationship written to be a character study into the mind and soul of Damian Wayne--

It was just something written to make Stephanie look good.

It's written with the integrity of an above average fan fiction, where the writer couldn't help themselves.

The character of Steph is so different, but that's what people think she is now! And it sucks.

Then New 52 ruined the fucking point of her, so making it so BOTH of her parents are super villains, and Steph had no fucking idea.

Taking all of her self-motivated determination that fueled the character away, because no matter how much James Tynion IV acts like he's a big Tim fan, he kept writing things that really made it look otherwise.

They turned Steph, who has one of the appealing traits of being insanely proactive for a side character, reactive.

And since then, honestly, who cares. Like I could describe what happens in Rebirth, but it's just acting like her relationship with Tim was way different from what it was.

And ultimately that has been the problem with the character for so long now. Writers just not caring to treat her like anything about her is important on it's own.

The only thing that matters about her is her relationship to Tim Drake. Anything else is hardly ever relevant unless they wanna bring up Cluemaster.

Since they've made Tim queer they changed some of that to her friendship with Cass, but even that relationship was super overexaggerated. They were friends, don't get me wrong, but you would've thought Steph showed up in Batgirl as much as she did Robin, and to memory that was not the case.

It kinda sucks, because I think Brian Michael Bendis was actually really good in writing Stephanie Brown in a lot of ways, but the biggest flaw, and I don't know the guy personally of course, so please don't take my word here like this is something I read, but Stephanie Brown's involvement with Bendis' Young Justice series came across like it was written by a guy who had a good memory of Stephanie, but probably didn't specifically care, given she's not even referenced until issue 5, which was made by the time the main artist left the series, so presumably Bendis was at this point able to see fan reactions--I'm rambling.

The point I'm tryna get at is that it felt like Bendis, noticing how rabid some Steph fans are, just thought "Oh shit, I must've really didn't realize something" and just wrote her to be wayyy to important.

Like somehow she's the only good person on Earth 3--which unintentionally implies normal Earth Stephanie is evil, which--I can't imagine was intended.

And they make Tim so obsessed with her, it's unreal. And Tim was never like that. They made Tim a love sick puppy for her. That was not their dynamic.

And then Fitzmartin wrote Steph to just be adorably supportive of Tim's coming out and boyfriend--As if Steph in a million years given what we know about her would actually react like that.

It was just done to be cute, and possibly because Steph's image has been softened so much, because her characterization has basically been a mix of hardly any fucks given and a game of telephone with very unenthusiastic players.

So yeah, anyways, maybe I'm a Stephanie Brown expert too, I'm not sure. I know a few things though.

And I'm not saying any of this to be mean or petty, like I just want to make people mad, I'm just being honest.

I'm under no obligation to pretend like that many people sent in waffle mix to DC offices when Steph wasn't in the New 52 initially, because as far as I've known, it wasn't that much.

And I'm also not gonna pretend like anyone actually talks about the controversy of Steph's death besides Steph fans and people who wanna go more in depth about why Dan Didio's reign of terror was a nightmare.

Stephanie Brown is just a side-character, who got to be a star a few times. And while I'm happy she has her fans, and people found joy in her, because that's good, and positive--I'm not gonna like--talk about her like she's anything more than what she is lmao

Can't wait to hit 'Reblog' on this massive bastard of a post.

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