Entry 502

The death of Jason changed my outlook towards fighting. There was a time where I wondered whether my morals were worth letting the criminals walk away. Again, it was dick who served as an example for me to hold on to them.

As the death of Jason spread through to the rest of the superheroes, there was a new debate on whether bringing teenage kids into this world is ideal.

But I couldn't concentrate on any of that. The idea of robin was dead. In that moment, I never considered for a second that anybody could even take on Jason's role. But as another young boy told me later, I was losing fights that I should have easily won, being reckless and more brutal.

Tim Drake was always something special, he was a person who had a good life with his parents outside of the superhero world. A normal life. Despite all the red herrings that I threw into the world to make sure batman can never be traced to Bruce Wayne. This boy still figured it out sticking to his beliefs.

Lying in that pit after the battle with two-face, I was beaten and come to terms with the fact that Jason dying had changed me. Then for a moment, I thought the young boy who was after me was Jason Todd. But that was Tim drake, that was my first meeting with the boy who will be the greatest detective one day.

Tim was different in the way that he wanted to be robin of his own volition and it was more about my decision rather than his. The other robins were people who I chose, and it was their decision about whether they had to become robin.

At that moment, I was aghast at the fact that some boy that I had never met had the audacity to put on the robin costume and try to replace Jason even though that was never his intention. But at the end, the same feeling that I had about dick and Jason made me give Tim a chance.

For a while, as I had him on comms, I wished that somehow, he would get discouraged and change his mind on ever wanting to be robin. I repeatedly brought up the fact that he was nowhere skilled to be a robin which was true.

But every step that I hoped would dissuade him wound up making him even more determined to step into the role. Eventually I conceded, and he became robin. To my understanding, being robin was something that Tim very easily got used to. Dick took robin as a game whereas Jason took it as a thrill, but this boy put it on a pedestal feeling he was never worth something like that. Over my years of observation of all the robins, I would say that the one person who made the most impact as robin was Tim Drake.

I will never understand how he took care of the teen titans, being a high school student, being a son, being a good friend and partner all the while having solo adventures of his own. My personal highlight of Tim remains how he defeated lady Shiva by drugging her before, making sure the effects would take place during the fight.

Clark remarked that the duration where Tim was robin was the best he had ever seen me. I don't necessarily agree but I would say that Tim had a large positive impact on me comparable to Dick.

Tim being robin led to some painful losses for him. He lost his mother before even becoming robin. Then his girlfriend, father, best friend all died within a few months gap. My initial assessment and worry over whether this might have a negative influence were justified. Tim did have a quite dark period where he tried to make sense of the losses, but I am proud he never gave up and kept being the person he always was. To be completely sincere, it made him even better, He used those losses to make a better version of himself.

The end of Tim's tenure as robin was one that was easily overlooked by two major shocks that affected all of us.