Quote Originally Posted by josai21 View Post
I'd personally argue that it's because Tim -doesn't- succeed at being healthy batman, but is instead more of a fascist batman that makes him best for the role.

Tim takes Batman to its logical conclusion. Doesn't make it right. Doesn't make him a hero...but I'd argue that Tim, because of his methodologies and similarities to bruce, is a better batman narratively. If you want a happy ending go for Dick. If you want a gary stu ending, go for damian. But Tim, as batman, represents the tragedy that is inherent in the Batman character.

That's just my interpretation of who batman is though so ymmv.
One of the points of the Kingdom Come universe, Gotham City Garage, and the Old Lady Harley series was that Bruce's many descents into becoming a fascist were his ultimate failures and the failure of Batman. Becoming a fascist is always the worst case scenario, even Damian's many failed Batmans were vehemently opposed to that as embracing fascism is the equivalent of embracing the anti-life equation; it is choosing to become as evil as Darkseid. However, you have just answered what the whole point of this thread was: why would Dick consider Tim the dark one. He's the only Robin who would fully cross the line into becoming evil and embrace fascism.

You also seem to be using Gary Stu in the incorrect "I hate this character so I will call him a Gary Stu/Mary Sue" way as opposed tom what an actual Mary Stu/Gary Stu is. Damian's a Scrappy, yes, but he's definitely not a Sue as he never gets magically forgiven for being ass and people hold him to higher standards in various universes than they do others.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

Beyond that, you also seem to have missed that Dick being Batman is bad because Dick doesn't want to be Batman though he's good at it, better than Bruce. Damian being Batman is bad because one of the underlying themes of various writers, which Snyder and Morrison went into depth exploring is Gotham only challenges Batman with what he could potentially handle and Damian has already killed gods and fought planets. Jason being Batman is bad because...you know, I don't know exactly. He's the most like pre-Death in the Family Bruce when he's trying not to kill people, except he's better at not alienating people than Bruce was. He's not Miller Batman, but he's a bit like Loeb Batman, and he's definitely similar to every preCrisis Batman sans the killing part. And given that murder has the lowest recidivism rates of any crime, with most people struggling to commit the crime after 27, it's very likely that he, just like Damian, would find it harder and harder to kill or even contemplate killing people as he ages. The argument that he is the best choice, especially the current canon Jason who Talia picked out for potentially adopting and training because he's got a pure soul, would in time make the best Batman due to his background and growing belief that people can and will change and choose good if given a choice.

The belief that people can be redeemed is what makes most versions of Terry the most successfully Batman, along with his quest for redemption, the same is what made Damian in Multiversity a successful (mostly, he does have his parents bad taste in romantic partners) Batman, and would make Jason successful.

Batman and Robin, until Tim became Robin, weren't about tragedy. It was about rising above the tragedies to bring hope to others, and a promise that there was something in the dark that cared. Until Jason died, Batman wasn't that dark or paranoid. He wasn't defined by his parents deaths or fear of bats, he was defined by his ability to help others despite his limitations, and the effort to heal other damaged children.

Or to quote the great prophet Margaret Atwood, who admittedly hasn't read comics since the silver age and it would be interesting to have her sit down and analyze the current Batman:

In addition to his disguising "normal" alter-ego, the superhero of the 1940s was required to have a powerful enemy or two. Carl Jung made no secret of the fact that he based much of his mapping of the psyche on literature and art. A comic-book character leading a split life and engaged in a battle between Good and Evil might well be expected to show Jungian characteristics, and in fact Batman is an almost perfect case study.

Batman has three main enemies, who to a Jungian would obviously be projections of Bruce Wayne that Wayne himself has not come to terms with. (In Blakean terms, the two male enemies would be called his Spectres and the female one might be his Emanation.) For Bruce, the female element is conflicted - he's a confirmed bachelor, and has no nice-girl Lois Lane sentimental figure in his life. But the sinuous and desirable Catwoman with whom he frequently skirmishes the must be his Jungian "dark anima" figure: even a child could recognize that there was a lot of unresolved electricity going on between those two.

The sadistic card-playing Joker, with his sinister-clown appearance, is Batman's Jungian Shadow - his own interest in dress-up and jokes turned malicious. There's another Shadow villain - the Penguin - who wears an outfit reminiscent of period cartoons of capitalists, with spats, cigarette holder, and top hat. His civilian alias even has a three-barrelled, pretentious, old-plutocrat faux-English name: Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot. The Penguin is the "rich" side of playboy Bruce Wayne gone rancid.

Then there's Robin, the Boy Wonder, who is Bruce's ward. Is Bruce gay? Don't even think about it. From the point of view of we mythosophists, Robin as an elemental spirit, like Shakespeare's Puck and Ariel - note the bird name, which links him to the air. His function in the plot is to aid the benevolent master trickster, Batman, with his plans. From the point of view of we Jungians, however, Robin is a Peter Pan figure - he never grows up - and he represents the repressed child within Bruce Wayne, whose parents you'll recall, were murdered when he was very young, thus stunting Bruce's emotional growth.

This is the kind of hay, or perhaps hash, that can be made of such comic-book superheroes once you really get going. Both they and Jung himself can be viewed through Hoffmanesque* magic spectacles and seen to be part of the same mythology.

But from the point of view of we kids - the primary readers - Robin was simply ourselves - what we would be like if we, too, had masks and capes and could go running around in them under the delusion that nobody would know who we were, and - better still - stay up long after our bedtimes, allowed to participate in the doings of what we fondly hoped was the adult world.

(In Other Worlds, 2012, Random House)

From the Silver Ages, when Atwood is drawing all of her opinions, Robin has been allowed to grow up and go free in a nod to Shakespeare's Puck and Ariel. If you have read or seen The Tempest and/or A Midsummer Night's Dream, you would realize that Dick, Jason, Stephanie, Duke, Carrie, and Damian all fulfill the roles of Puck and Ariel. They are not the light to Batman's darkness, they are the children that he rescues and attempts to bring into the light. This is the role of Batman to Robin, and it fits neatly with what many cultures view view as the role of bats: the guides of spirits through the darkness of death and the underworld into being reborn as something new and better, a hero. Tim is the only Robin who mixed up the roles of Batman and Robin, he's the only one who thinks he is meant to be Batman's light. The rest needed him to save them in one way or another and bring them out of the darkness and into the light. Due to Tim's not understanding the role, he is the one Robin who keeps descending into the dark under the influence of Batman, into death, unlike the rest who we see actively growing and stepping into the roles of guides for other people lost in the dark.

This is why it's during Tim's tenure as Robin that we see Bruce going from someone who is abusive in the whole child endangerment way but not particularly emotionally, mentally, of physically with just a an occasional smattering of neglect thrown in when Catwoman shows up, to the man who has beaten both Dick and Jason until they needed hospitalization, regularly manipulates, emotionally abuses and neglects Tim, Damian, Stephanie, and Cassandra, and has shoved Duke away as soon as he realized Duke's the only one who can recognize that the way Bruce treats people is wrong and needs to stop.

Tim is the one Batkid who doesn't have anyone saying (besides Stephanie) that the way Bruce treats him and is training him to treat others is wrong. That allowing Bruce to embrace his darkness by embracing the erasure of free will and fascism is wrong, it's the opposite of what the character should be. Hence, Tim becoming the darkest Robin, and the darkest Batman to the point that in Super Sons of Tomorrow we have Conner admitting that his Jon's (and probably Damian's) death was due to his failure to save him. His Tim was allowed to continue down the wrong path, to think that Robin's job is to bring Batman out of the darkness and therefore Robin should be dark. He corrupted the role.

So, your milage will vary, but should you choose to do serious lit criticism of Batman and Robin, you too might find that it's obvious by Tim's embracing evil (fascism) in almost every future seen shows that not only is he the dark Robin, he's the worst choice for becoming Batman.