#camera tim

[zuzyqq]

Been hoarding these Tims for a while so for his birthday I’ll release them into the wild❤️

Happy birthday Timmy, be free!!

[mzminola]

One reason I’m fond of the canon tidbit that Tim really did live in the city until his parents’ kidnapping is that it makes camera!Tim way more plausible.

Bristol suburb kid bussing or biking into the city to follow & photograph Batman & Robin? Mmm bit of a stretch. City kid who’s already there climbing up onto the townhouse roof or down the apartment’s fire escape and following from there? Yeah I can see that happening.

[zuzyqq]

Tim Drake through the ages❤️

[mzminola]

I’ve said before that one reason I like the canon tidbit that Tim was a city kid while Janet was alive (the Drakes didn’t live in Bristol until after Jack’s coma was over) because it makes Camera!Tim more plausible.

But also? I think it makes Tim’s canon origin motivations more plausible. Tim imprinted pretty damn hard on Dick Grayson, and subsequently Robin, but little kid Tim was just as obsessed with Batman, and with seeing the Dynamic Duo as important symbols for the city.

Why would a kid from out in the suburbs care about that?

Sure, tracking caped vigilantes in the news is an interesting hobby, but the level of attachment Tim had? It’s possible for a tourist, I guess, but it says local to me. It says someone who directly sees the effects.

We get some interesting similarities and differences with other Batkids. Jason and Tim are from disparate economic classes, and Jason is explicitly from the part of town Batman didn’t bother patrolling in. Jason had every reason to see Batman as useless at best and an active threat to himself and his community at worst. It takes Bruce giving Jason the resources to help people himself to change that view. Batman didn’t matter to Jason as a symbol, he mattered as a parent.

Tim is theoretically from a part of town that benefitted from Batman; everywhere in Gotham is dangerous, but there might’ve been a drop in street level crime in Tim’s neighborhood when Bruce patrolled there, an uptick in corporate crimes actually getting the evidence to prosecute, a drop in mafia’s controlling things. That’s speculation though; maybe Batman didn’t make a lick of difference, he was just visible.

Cass is raised outside Gotham as an assassin, but spent an unknown amount of time as a Gotham street kid. We first see her in the city in canon after the earthquake, when everything’s gone to hell and the vigilantes on the ground are making a difference when the government gives up on them. Like Tim, she sees Batman as an important symbol, though this seems to be less about Gotham, and more about the contrast to her assassin upbringing.

Stephanie is from the Manchester suburb outside Gotham, and her view of Batman isn’t based on the city at all, but on his direct effect on her family. By the fact he foils her villain father’s plans. Steph comes to care about his opinion of her, but he’s not a symbol the way he is for Tim & Cass.

There’s probably something to say about city-dwellers Jack & Janet sending Tim to boarding school, but I don’t know enough about that subject to get into it.