manymanytimesb4 replied to your post:
[[MOR] I hate that almost all Batfam centric…

Oh! I had no idea they were your nOTP! They’re my non-negotiableTP, as in, I will probably not read/watch if they aren’t together in some way (even if just flirting). I did watch BTAS+Sub0 when very young, must have been tipping point for me. Won’t bug you about it now that I know 🙂

They’re not my ‘non-negotiable’ notp (perfect adjective), in that as long as their romance is not the main focus I can read it with no problem, but if I had the choice between nearly identical fics and in one Dick and Barbara are good friends, can work together and hang out, and maybe a teasing reference to how teenage Dick had this precocious crush that has cooled into platonic or familial love – and the other fic they are romantically linked, actually flirting and dating, I’m picking the first fic and being very grateful for its existence. The second that they start seriously flirting, I start pulling away.

Part of it is how little media with Babs!Batgirl I have exposure to, and how her age fluctuated from much older than Dick to what she is now which is coded as younger than him. Neither choice appeals. And that older Babs it really does look like from the outside at least like Gravity Falls with Dipper Pines’ crush on Wendy. I can like the idea of the Robins having crushes on Batgirl, and Barbara admitting that Dick grew up to be an attractive young man, but Anakin/Padmé is I think the only OTP of mine with ‘younger boy entering puberty has crush on older girl and when he grows up she honestly returns his feelings’. Because usually that has me screaming for the hills. 

I just don’t see their personalities meshing for me, or having them together as a couple give anything extra. Oracle Babs, at least, reads too close to Bruce’s personality type and flaws, which severely limits my suspension of disbelief of DickBabs as a long-term romantic couple, plus this uncomfortable gut feeling that Dick -or at least the authors through Dick- would be always comparing Babs to how she was pre-injury. Sure, bubbly personality!Dick bringing some light into Babs’ life as a plot thread, but I still can’t see why she would want him as a long-term romantic life parent. Sadly, fandom has yet to tell me what the good alternative ship for Babs is (aside from Dinah), but I’d prefer someone who met Babs as adults. The baggage of DickBabs’ history together is what makes me not ship them.

My first ‘ship for Robin was Starfire, and I loved that it stressed Dick as idk, the Batman-lite and learning how to be comfortable in opening up and expressing his emotions and that he was the steady stabilizing safety for Kori and that plot and setting-wise it meant he was strongly connected to the Titans and wider DC superhero universe and community. When he’s paired with Babs, that always signaled to me that his character was going to stay in Gotham and Bludhaven if lucky, narrowed him. Which, it is odd because not like Babs as Oracle doesn’t also have wider ties via BoP. 

It’s been a long time since I watched any B:TAS and that series wasn’t a big part of my childhood – I actually haven’t watched many episodes. Batman media at that time for me was the movies, especially the second two, and I watched way more of the Superman Animated series and then Justice League cartoons and Teen Titans, (and much later Young Justice). So I have almost no exposure, nostalgia, or attachment to Barbara – as Batgirl or not. It does mean that I can take the Arkham games universe with its Tim/Babs without automatically disliking it, unlike I think the majority of fans. (It helps that Tim in those games really isn’t at all like comic canon Tim or look like him, even more so than B:TAS’s “Timmy Todd”. There’s a good case to be made that Arkham Tim Drake is at least a few years older than Arkham’verse Jason, for one thing).