Originally Posted by
godisawesome
That's the strategy I perceive here as well - and in general, in both this and in Fitzmartin's Young Justice book, there's a clear, conscious decision to try appealing to readers DC and Fitzmartin see as neglected by previous DC books with those properties. Their supposition with Young Justice is that women feel neglected by books like the old Young Justice one, and thus would be appealed to by calling out conventional comic book sexism repeatedly and coloring everything in her book as a progressive strike back against that sexism and regression; similarly, the supposition with Tim's book is that LGBTQ+ readers are wary and untrusting of DC's commitment to making Tim bi, and that expositing on the alienation and loneliness sometimes experienced by non-straight people will be a key appeal to that demographic.
The debate then becomes whether or not DC and Fitzmartin are picking the right "battles" with these tactics.
I'm a straight dude, so I don't have any authority here... but it does seem like Fitzmartin is plotting a formulaic fanfiction type of "gay angst" into the story when the rest of DC isn't backing her up here; she's trying to use formulas of isolation and estrangement when DC is elsewhere going to show the Bat family accepting Tim and Bernard without any issue... undermining her writing.
At the same time, her seeming preference for putting "fanfiction" formulas into the comics risks further alienating both older but accepting demographics on one side but also some of the demographics she's trying to appeal to; fanfiction is not known for its depth or creative use of continuity after all - if anything, it's infamous for its ability to ignore both. In Young Justice, her seeming disregard for how progressively written Cassie was at the time, or how comparatively inoffensive inclusive the PAD series was "for the time" causes offense to some of the women she's trying to appeal to who know the characters better than her, while in this Tim Drake books she risks alienating fans who were ready for bisexual Tim Drake by taking shortcuts and emphasizing traumas that the character doesn't have to experience and that some LGBTQ+ readers may very well be reading comics to escape...
But again, I'm a straight white guy, so I have no real authority here to speak.
I just think that fanfiction writing tactics are likely a poor substitute for finding a more devoted fan who's progressive or part of the LGBTQ+ community instead.