Tim Drake had more girlfriends in 25 years than Dick Grayson did in 70, but sure, Dick's the womanizing playboy that takes after Bruce
#and tim cheated pretty much everyone of them too#and now hes canonically bi nothing offensive or stereotypical about that 🙃
Alright no. One, that's not what this post was about; this was not a "Tim's a cheater/playboy" post, this was a "fandom, stop making Dick a womanizer" post. Two, that's false.
There is one instance in which Tim consciously cheated on a girl, and it's this one:
Tim was dating Ariana Dzerchenko at the time and kissed Stephanie after several issues of her...well, to put it bluntly, openly flirting and coming on to him while he repeatedly rebuffed her because he had a girlfriend (Ariana). This is one of two kisses Tim and Steph shared before he broke up with Ariana (or rather...she broke up with him).
Yes, it was a shitty and stupid thing to do; yes, Tim should be roundly criticized for how he handled the whole thing. However, three things should be noted: one, Ariana kind-of cheated on him first. Their relationship was pretty unstable from the beginning; she was upset that Tim was never around and went on a date with another guy to Prove a Point™ (also, don't say Steph wouldn't have started dating Tim if she knew he was dating someone else. She knew he had a girlfriend; he'd told her on multiple occasions...the first time notably after the aforementioned cheating issue and Steph 'surprise kissed' him for the first time):
Two, the situation is way more complicated than people like to make it out to be. Tim and Ari were on a break and had agreed to be "just friends" when things truly started heating up between Tim and Steph (or rather, they'd been forcibly broken up by Ariana's family when she was sent off to a girl's school).
The tl;dr convoluted chain of events is this: Tim and Ariana break up, Ariana gets sent off to another school->stuff starts heating up with Steph, but they don't actually get together-> Tim and Ari get back together for like...three weeks??? in the aftermath of Cataclysm->Tim kisses Steph->Tim immediately goes home and tries to write a break-up letter to Ari (which was a dick move), only for Ariana to promptly break up with him the next day because she's "not ready to be serious"->Tim gets together properly with Steph. It's a big, messy, complicated event that's way more nuanced than "Tim knowingly cheated on his girlfriend just because."
Three, Tim cheating on Ari was portrayed as shitty and Tim knew it, hence why he broke up with Ariana pretty much immediately afterwards. It's also never happened since.
To my knowledge, Tim has never cheated on anyone else. Every other time that "cheating" has happened, it's been "Tim is forcibly kissed or sexually assaulted by someone while the narrative either ignores what's actually happening or treats it as somewhat consensual and 'cool' because 'hey...men always want sex, right?'"
Darla? Tim didn't want that:
That kiss put Tim and Steph on the rocks until Steph's death in War Games because Steph saw it, but like...the comic is very clear that Tim didn't knowingly cheat on Steph, and he pushed Darla away pretty much immediately:
Bette Kane/Flamebird? Also a forced kiss:
Tim and Cissie's kiss when Cissie left the team? Tim didn't know it was going to happen and it was more because Cissie wanted to make a Statement™ than anything:
I can pull up more examples.
And as for the disaster that was the New 52 Teen Titans run....we ARE going to acknowledge that Tim was being controlled by Trigon, right? Like....the Tim-Cassie-Solstice drama happened when Tim was under mind control.
Yes, Tim's had several love interests (yes, more than Dick). No, he's not a womanizing playboy who cheats on his girlfriends either (would you like to talk about Nightwing Annual #2? No one really does, because it's the epitome of a shitty OOC comic, but if you want to talk about cheating, we can certainly talk about cheating). So no, he's not a "cheating bi" stereotype nor is Tim coming out as bisexual offensive. Thanks and goodnight.
