Find your tribe in a Sea of Creativity
i love this addition so fucking much. because yeah. tim knows, objectively, that the batfam must hold some affection for him. he knows, objectively, that they are kind enough to tell him if he was ever unwanted. but he can’t understand it. he thinks that they “love” him and want him because he makes himself useful. he has to be useful, because if he isn’t useful, what is he? who is he? not tim drake, the boy he got everything he ever had by performing a function. the boy who made himself as useful as possible, as efficient as possible, so that he has a worth. so that he has value.
tim drake got everything he ever had by sinking his teeth into it and never letting go. he got everything he had by latching on tight, like a parasite, and pretending it was a symbiotic relationship until he made it become one.
hey. hi. so.
might be a little obsessed with Tim Drake. this is not new. what is new, however, is the idea of timothy jackson drake being raised as a shield.
you know how some children are raised as weapons? that sucks. but weapons have a use. they're sharp, they're dangerous. sometimes they're respected in some capacity. some people have emotional attachments to their weapons. a weapon is valued for the threat that it is simply by being. a weapon is valued for the damage it can do. and that sucks. but a weapon is valued, pretty much automatically, because a weapon has a purpose.
but shields? their entire purpose is someone else. a shield is worthless without someone to shield. a shield is used until it breaks, and then it's immediately replaced. a shield is valued as long as it's stable, as long as it takes the hits meant for someone else. a shield is valued until it takes too many hits and it breaks. no one will repair that broken shield. it's never going to be as stable as it used to be. better to just get a new one.
anyways. tim drake is a shield, not a sword. at first he was shielding his parents reputation. then he was shielding Batman, both his reputation and his health- mental and physical. and he never stopped. he spent a year with the league of assassins to protect batman. to rescue him.
and when he gets back from that year? he's shielding Bruce by taking the brunt of work at WE.
to conclude: tim was raised as a shield instead of a child and i can't stop thinking about it.