Random question because I’m bored lol:
Do you have any favorite Batman fanon? Any least favorite? For example I really like the fanon that Tim has a passion for photography because I think it’s a neat hobby but I really dislike the pit madness fanon because it demonizes mental illness and is used as a way to gloss over Jason’s wrongdoings
I'm with you on the pit madness fanon. I find it much more interesting for Jason to simply grow as a character and realize, "Oh fuck, I was lashing out and using my trauma to justify traumatizing other people wasn't I? Fuck that was shitty, I need to do better." Makes him a much more relatable character.
As for a favorite, I have a soft spot for the idea of Tim following Bruce and Dick/Jay around with his camera even though it's not strictly canon. I honestly think that one's an understandable thing for fandom to fill in for a few different reasons. Tim's introduction in A Lonely Place of Dying is one of them -- he had some decent photography and development skills for a 13 year old working with a film camera and presumably developing the pictures on his own given that he wouldn't have wanted to risk a photo lab seeing what he was up to. There's also the fact that the "Batman and Robin are urban legends" cover introduced by Zero Hour would've eliminated a lot of the newspaper clippings and such that made up Tim's scrap book originally so filling that in with his own work makes sense. The DCAU version was also established as having watched Bruce and Dick fight crime from afar using binoculars while he was living in the city -- and, given that Tim's father at the very least had an inner-city penthouse before moving into Drake Manor, that's not too far off for canon!Tim either.
And finally, as technology had evolved and cameras become more ubiquitous, it makes a lot of sense to me for there to be an entire Gotham based subculture of "Batwatching." Like you could totally streamline a modern adaptation of Tim's story by saying he was active in an online Batwatching community and happened to see Dick perform his quadruple somersault in either a vid posted on one of their sites or while collecting footage on his own. Maybe he even meets Bernard at Batwatchers meet up, that'd make a lot of sense.
So yeah, that's my preference: Timmy the Batwatcher. It just makes sense!
