Concerning Bats

Embarrassing Jason Todd stan. Ship agnostic. I follow from @valorsometimes. AO3 is somecaveats. 30+. She/her.

[danishsweethearts]

steph had a thing for cass and maybe cass had a thing for her but this was during a period where neither of them would've gotten much good out of anything happening so nothing happened and it all came to natural conclusions and stephs cool about it now they're both cool about it now. however she cannot help being a little offended at this new blond girl with an evil dad who has come into cass' life who keeps trying to kill her yet who cass is obviously into to the point of senselessness. steph was dreaming of doing naked in manhattan activities with cass getting her to unwind for the first time in her life showing her tenderness she's never experienced before being the one that she turns to for gentleness after a day of bloodying herself running headlong into the world but actually that's not what cass wants. apparently, cass wants to get into fistfights with rose wilson forever. apparently cass wants to get screamed at for "trying to fix me" and then shoved against a wall and frotted on. apparently cass wants rose to break into her house and swap out her perfume that she doesn't even use it was a gift from some rich person trying to buddy up to a wayne kid but cass doesn't like perfume it's overstimulating with her own so they smell the same. Apparently, that's what cassandra is into. Apparently that's what gets her going, tim, can you fucking believe this

tim, who got himself into this situation with his own nosiness so he can't really complain about hearing the lesbian entanglements of his ex-girlfriend his sister and his former teammate but he will anyway: i don't think i should be a part of this conversation

[arcade-confetti]

Does anyone know whats wrong with him. The "kitchen" could also be a second, larger weapon wall. But it appears to have bricks or leaves on one side. Sidenote why does he have frames hanging past his small middle of the room wall. Why does he have the least comfortable minecraft looking bed in the world. Which also overhangs the shelf space under it. For some reason. We know the vent is large enough to hold Damian. And somehow leads to an escape route. How thick is the wall. It feels like he wanted as open floor plan as possible but got stuck with a load bearing one and decided to have his bed right in the middle of a room thats ENTIRELY window walls with no blinds or curtains. Sure theres walls at the very top of the windows but look at that couch- these are TALL windows. This room is so massive VERTICALLY. IT JUST KEEPS GOING. Look at how much more house he has available to him. He doesn't have to be doing this. He chooses to live this way. HE CHOSE THIS. Vast open floor plan giant windows nightmare house. And when hes NOT in a house with giant windows- its because he is underground! With so much empty space! Concrete and metal and pipes! NO CARPET IN THESE VAST EMPTY ROOMs. So they ECHO. because theres not enough furniture to DAMPEN it.

THE CLOSEST TO GET TO A COZY FILLED IN ROOM IS SOMETHING THAT LOOKS LIKE IT CLANGS AND GROANS IN THE NIGHT

THE FLOOR OPTIONS ARE CONCRETE OR POLISHED CONCRETE. YOU WILL GET NOTHING ELSE. GIANT GLASS VIA SCREENS OR WINDOWS. AND WEAPON WALL. "oh he'd have a cozy little reading nook, hed have posters up, he'll have enough bookshelves to be a library and have a rolling ladder" weapon wall and big glass

You will see here that wfa actually tried to stop his batman and robin house. Tried to make it make is less vast. Tried to not have a piece of wall in the middle of the room. Tried to add in his rhato shelf for character. For naught. They still couldnt stop his giant window with no blinds or curtains. That window behind Damian touches the floor by the way. We dont see the end of it. And his greed was so consuming he has a second, smaller window Right Next To It. Me personally i think he added the big window himself i think he put it there

[phonomenons]

How do I articulate that the cruelest thing Batman has done to his children is having them love him

[silvaaart]

"my biggest problem is you"

[yor02]

Pre52 Jason had the cattiness, smooth, calculative nature and razor sharp wit that female characters like Talia (when she was allowed to be morally complex and not a racial caricature dragon lady) and Selina (when she was a 50/50 with the good and the bad and not 90/10) were known for in their best eras.

If DC wasn't so cowardly, they'd return Jason to his manipulative and yet still empathetic ways and we could see a true male vixen infuriate, encapsulate and palpitate the hearts of the JLA and the Titans.

I want to see Dick vexed by his very presence in all the ways his allies can see (professional fury) and in all the ways his closest friends and family desperately want to deny (infatuated fury).

[tomkingisaracistnepobaby]

Batman never argues for the sake of compassion or rehabilitation in UTRH. Batman was especially callous, punitive, and lacking compassion throughout that early 00s era. He was not championing compassion, rehabilitation, redemption, justice system reform, or (HA!) abolitionism in UTRH—he did not have faith in those things for *the kind of people* whom Red Hood murdered, and he did not have faith in those things for Jason himself.

Every single person that Jason hurt is someone that Batman would hurt. Every single person that Jason murdered is someone that Batman would've unhesitatingly thrown away to rot in prison (a prison system explicitly shown and stated to be outrageously inhumane even by the horrifying standards of the USA).

If the person was lucky, then prison would reform him sufficiently that he could be employed through Wayne Enterprises (Gotham City's biggest employer, seemingly a monopoly on legal employment options for the formerly incarcerated) once he got out after... however long he'd been sentenced. Non-violent felonies can earn years, decades of prison time. Or if he was unlucky he'd be killed by one of the regular prison-breaks staged by Batman's rogues (including Red Hood that one time when a Batman kept him in prison, but more consistently by other repeat rogues).

Red Hood's argument is ''blah blah my crime is not like the other crime‚ my new cycle of violence is totally better than the current 20-year-old cycle of violence.'' Batman's argument is not "we can't throw criminals away‚ they're people just like us :("‚ but instead more like ''ew Jason has succumbed to his inherent criminal nature‚ sucks how he needs to be thrown away with the rest of the susperstitious and cowardly lot.''

[arcade-confetti]

I'm sorry to everyone who wants and wishes for Jason to be a homey warm lights library wooden staircase and wallpaper beautiful old home type of person but the truth of the matter is that he IS a minimalism and open floorplan bitch and he WILL take down that custom ornate wooden spiral staircase for some iron simple look. All his lights are some level of white or blue and the whole house is uncomfortably warm as well. I'm devastated about this too but unfortunately one must acknowledge and accept when their fav has flaws (the type of person behind the before and after restoration images of your nightmares)

[arcade-confetti]

Batman Annual #13

"The general public was not aware that the Robin now working with the Batman was not the original one."

Batman (1940) Issue #436

"Alfred was right... the trophies end with my last case with Bruce. There's nothing of Jason's. Nothing to remind one he fought alongside Batman as Robin."

"Whatever was here was taken away in the past few weeks since Jason's death."

"Even in your bedroom... no sign that you ever loved him... or even that he lived."

Batman (1940) Issue #428

"I remove what little remains of Jason's costume that could have identified him as Robin before calling the authorities"

"The victim's names were Sheila Haywood and Jason Todd. They were mother and son."

Batman: Gotham Knights (2000) Issue #44

Batman: The 12 Cent Adventure (2004)

"Nobody ever really talks about Robin the second, at least not to me..."

Detective Comics (1937) Issue #790

"No one talks about him. All I know is... he was the second Robin. And that the Joker kil--"

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) Issue #50

"When I was made whole again... when I stepped from the Lazarus Pit... I was upset when I realized all my scars were healed over. From the crowbar. From the bomb."

"...Scars are the stories our bodies tell about our lives."

[cologona]

I love fics where crime alley is Red Hood’s territory that the Bats can’t enter, but consider also…Jason is totally fine with them coming to crime alley (practically rolls out the red carpet) but they don’t like going there because he always uses them— either as an easy way to get rid of high-profile weapons shipments, to fight his battles for him, or to hand them civilians in need of specific assistance that he himself as a criminal with no legal identity can’t provide.

Even the basic act of questioning people is a hassle in crime alley because there’s no way of knowing what’s real and what’s being fed to them by Jason. It doesn’t help that Jason is good at manipulating things so that even when Batman is dangling people over the edge of a rooftop, they genuinely believe they’re telling him the truth. It’s hard to fight a crime lord whose network is so unorthodox, but it’s difficult to justify prioritizing him when the Bats pretty much always have bigger, more immediate and malicious fish to fry.

(And if in the meantime, crime alley becomes a little more survivable for those scraping by… well the Bats wouldn’t want to create a power vacuum.)

[birdstump]

Spoiler & Robin – lines by Eric Canete, colours by Dean Trippe

[girlwonderous]

the thing about other characters victim blaming Jason’s memory is that I don’t understand why the major fandom reaction to that is to have to prove that jaybin was a good enough kid to mourn and not to make clear that, for a bunch of so-called heroes, talking shit about a brutally murdered child is disgusting and repulsive and awful in and of itself.

[kittykatninja321]

There needs to be more emphasis on the fact that Jason’s post-pit training arc overlaps with Talia’s lexcorp era and her separation from Ra’s. A summary of their relationship is just “you met me at a very strange time in my life”

[kittykatninja321]

They didn’t necessarily go through an ordeal together but they were in each other’s lives at a time when both of them were separately experiencing a massive shift

[kittykatninja321]

Not them wearing different halves of the same track suit lmao

[spiritsglade]

cass projects onto people in a much subtler way than jason does but i think she's potentially worse about it.

[laufire]

*thinks of seeing red*

*thinks of batgirl #37*

I think she's definitely worse about it actually!

[spiritsglade]

something to be said about how jason will use his words in an attempt to convince others not to make the same mistakes he did while cass is very!! action-oriented. and like almost coercive about it. she decided this course of action is the correct one to have someone else avoid going through the same thing she did. so that is what will happen now. something about autonomy and how much jason values it vs. how much cass i think has not even realized yet how much she has been denied it.

[laufire]

#i could make this about bruce and babs and talia and parenting too i think. if i tried. #“i know what you need better than you do” is a trait i generally ascribe to dick but it really applies to all the bats. rubbed off on cass #vs. talia letting jason do what he wanted even when she tried to guide/manipulate him in a certain direction. there's a connection here #i'm too sleepy for this

no, no, I think you're getting somewhere. I'd also add that for Talia this could be interpreted as her deciding NOT to follow in Ra's footsteps, especially if you pair it with the timing (lexcorp era). Ra's is decisively on Bruce's side of the spectrum, with both of them maybe not starting as that extremely controlling (Talia did get to leave for med school) but progressively growing in that direction when things didn't go their way and they felt things (people) slipped out of their control.

[laufire]

#rotating them in my mind…………. #idk about better/worse given they can both lead to disastrous ends. however #yeah i definitely think there’s Something To It #and the autonomy thing with jason… it goes back farther than that i think? like really the time he spend out on his own #after his mom’s death is so formative. and even before that….. there is no Adult Who Can Be Consistently Relied On #so he designates himself with that role and so help him god he will be the person he can rely on. #and as much as bruce not saving him isn’t the major letdown of their relationship it also doesn’t do anything to undermine that way #of thinking #ultimately YOU have to look out for YOU. you’re going to make your own choices and be responsible for them. and so on #the david cain of it all for cass though………. i need to squint at some panels……………. hmmmmm

Definitely. Jason (as I think I mentioned in a post about the "I am a weapon" nonsense of the recent jaybin run) actually sees himself as someone with More Agency that he has as a child -doesn't see himself as a child, really, between being the one person reliable to take care of himself for a sizeable amount of time and how young he became a child carer. And Bruce, with his "this kid is older than both of us because he's Seen Some Shit, Gordon" bullshit, certainly did little to convince him otherwise. You're on your own is something he believes in from the start; ADITF would just cement it, both due to Sheila and due to Bruce.

And as a result, he actually grew into someone who has a visible amount of trust on younger people (slightly younger, such as Mia or Tim) to take care of themselves. He'll come and present his case (and his example) as to What Can Go Wrong with child vigilantism but doesn't go further, and in fact talks about them and their abilities (Mia especially, there are other issues at play with Tim lol) with respect and admiration.

[heleizition]

i think the reason we fit so well together is because we’ve both been thrown on the ground and left for dead enough to know how to pick ourselves up alone

[laufire]

it's hard out there as a jason fan who doesn't give a rat's wank about willis todd, but i tolerate the simping far more easily when it doesn't come with a side of wilful ignorance about the very basics of domestic violence. there is next to nothing to his character, which means he's free real state for nearly any and all headcanons you want to project onto him, but 1.) stop insisting YOUR interpretation about how he was A Good Dad Trying To Provide is the only one that doesn't contradict canon; it's plainly not true, and 2.) saying "jason loved and mourned willis, he couldn't possibly have hurt him or catherine!!" or attempting to imply that because he was non-violent as a henchman (in a context which would've meant risking his own skin) means he couldn't POSSIBLY be violent at home makes you sound clueless about the topic at best.

[laufire]

and when I say at best, I mean that at worst it makes you sound like the last person I'd ever want to disclose an abusive situation to. oh look, willis took jason to the circus! and hey, that self-pitying letter he wrote to jason while he was imprisoned makes his relationship with catherine sound ~mutually toxic! again, headcanon whatever the fuck you want, but do you realise how excuses like that make you sound?

[warrior-of-storms]

Who do you personally consider to be Jason's birth mom?

Catherine Todd (could've changed her name, could just follow n52 canon)

Sheila Haywood (implied post-Crisis canon but is there any real proof?)

Lady Shiva/Sandra Wu-San (would be cutting it close but the timing does work)

Sharmin Rosen (she's technically a possibility!)

Someone else (please specify in replies or tags 🙏)

Multiple/whoever best fits the specific post/fic/art (specify?)

Voting ended onSep 21, 2025

If you want to include your reasoning (even if it's just headcanons) please feel free to, I'd love to see it <3

[vfx-batman]

the main difference I’ve noticed between Tim + Dick’s approaches to the law/heroism in pre-2011 comics is that Tim will canonically be grateful that people working for the American state kill (e.g. Police + Soldiers) whilst also thinking costumed heroes must never kill or they’ll ruin their own virtue (e.g. Batman, himself, Spoiler, etc). meanwhile Dick struggles to believe that law enforcers working for the American state are (in fact) systemically enfranchised + often encouraged to kill people. + if it happens in front of him, he puts it down to that one killer being a bad apple/too weak to defuse a situation non-lethally.