#vampire king
I know this is old hat by now but I’m still pretty mad about the decision to just have Dick unapologetically crunch Tim’s head into the ground with him giving Tim absolutely no chance to join him?
ESPECIALLY since the DC vs Vampires: Hunters one shot came out because it did show how much control Dick has over his anger or vampireness in general because HE LET DAMIAN GO!!! I know Damian was already a vampire by that point but like jfc it was his sentimentality that caused him to allow Damian and Alfred to go. And he explained that Bruce had been too dangerous to be left alive but nothing about Tim and why Dick killed him without even giving him a chance. Did he mean nothing to Dick?
Like sure, they can kill Tim off in this AU (I’d still rather they not but whatever) but at least do it in a way that it doesn’t feel like an afterthought yknow. Don’t do it in a way where it feels like Tim never mattered to Dick.
Also I’m not asking for them to have had like…a 3 page heart to heart before Dick killed Tim or anything. Literally just a couple of text bubbles. Something like:
Dick: I’ll give you one chance. Join me. I’ll give you a taste of the immortality I have been blessed with.
Tim: *spits out blood* Never.
Dick: A shame. Suit yourself *cronches Tim’s head*
Like would that have been so hard??? Would’ve shown that Dick at least cared enough to give Tim the chance ffs
i saw someone suggest this may have been related to him coming out. dick wanted to turn his brothers… except for tim? its honestly kinda spiteful
like yeah, tim can be killed off in a story. but like, the proximity between that and his coming out issue, the plain cruelty (towards the audience/tim fans, not narrative-wise) and like, OOCness of it (if he wants to turn his brothers, why did he kill one without trying?) leaves a bad taste in my mouth. it’s like they just wanted him out of the story ASAP but had to acknowledge him at least
I honestly think that’s not really the case? DC has been shitting on Tim and killing him off in AUs for years, this is nothing new so it hasn’t really been a change since Tim came out or anything.
Like DC killed him off immediately in DCeased which was released before Tim came out. They also killed him like 2 pages into him being introduced in the Injustice universe, again, before he came out as bi.
It’s really just another symptom of DC not knowing what the fuck to do with Tim since Damian started existing. They never really gave him a proper chance to develop independently outside of the Robin role and so they have no idea how to handle him in any sort of situation now that Damian is also Robin. It has created a Schrodinger’s Robin sort of scenario where Tim both is and isn’t Robin until he is mentioned by name in each comic run.
I’ve said this for probably about 7 years now but what they need to do is give him a chance to develop a role outside of Robin. And not as “Red Robin” because that also insinuates that he’s just a back up Robin, waiting in the wings for the current Robin to drop so he can take back over. He needs his own thing, his own schtick, like Nightwing was for Dick. But with all of the reboots that have happened in the past decade, he’s never really gotten the chance tbh.
I think with his coming out and everything, it gives DC a really good opportunity to take this and let him develop a new hero identity outside of Robin but they just haven’t done so yet. They haven’t given Tim the page space to do so either.
Tim is still a wildly popular character and I think in a lot of regards his popularity could grow further with the recent coming out story but DC has to take advantage of it and they just aren’t.
So yeah, tl;dr, I don’t think this is for any sort of homophobic reason, either by DC or in canon by Dick, I think this is just another symptom of DC not knowing how to handle Tim since Damian took over as Robin.
Okay this has NOTHING to do with Tim being bi and anyone suggesting so is silly.
I look at it like how he did Bruce- Dick knew Bruce could never be trusted so he took him out. Dick knows Tim would almost always be loyal to Bruce over him (as we see in RR) and thus assumed the only option was to kill him. Dick has emotional ties with Damian and Jason in a deeper why where they may not choose Bruce over him.
Ultimately, Dick didn’t have to kill anyone, but that doesn’t make for a compelling story. We have seen how he had Hal take Barry, his best friend, and the care and remorse was there, but it had to be done. Why can the same not be true for Tim and Dick. He can care for Tim deeply and still understand that to fulfill his mission he has to kill Tim.
I wish some fandoms would think about stories and why an event happened in relation to an entire story and not just why the event happened as an isolated event.
Tim’s death was not quick or meaningless. Like we understand why Dick would kill Bruce, but showing Dick kill Tim was a fantastic moment that showed juat how far Dick was from how we know him. Killing Bruce seemed necessary, but unnecessarily killing Tim shows the evilness and depravity. It was demonstrative of the characterization we need to see to understand the character’s motives and values.
