I love that Jimmy Olsen is exactly the type of photographer Peter Parker pretends to be. Just bat-shit insane.
Whenever someone asks Peter how he took a picture he's like "Oh! I uh-, climmed a flagpole. Totally"
And very mortal, normal-human Jimmy is like "See, Clark, is not that weird"
I mean, look at this nutjob.
The world could be ending, lava on the streets and Jimmy would be out there photographing away. No powers, no sense of self preservation. Just khakis, a camera and a dream.
I like to imagine Peter meeting Jimmy and immediately being mortified about it.
Jimmy: –and so luckily I was able to take the picture before the building collapsed on me... Superman was super pissed at me but, photographer to photographer, it was totally worth it.
Peter: Right, no– See, this is actually my first time hearing how fucking insane that sounds. No wonder people at work look at me weird.
Justice League identity reveal where they don’t know who Batman is and one day a bunch of them walk in on him just casually eating yogurt in the cafeteria with his cowl off. A bunch of them recognize him, a couple don’t, and they’re all shocked.
Turns out Batman didn’t realize none of them knew who he was, since it had taken him all of ten minutes and three google searches to put everyone’s secret identities together and he just assumed they had all figured it out by this point. Or maybe he had meant to tell them and then just forgotten. Either way, he regularly interacts with half of them outside of hero stuff and hasn’t bothered with the whole separate persona thing with them in years. Shouldn’t they really have figured this out by now? So what if he forgot? This is clearly on them.
I really don't like any version of "Jason learns one tiny fact about how people reacted to his death and immediately is crushed by how unfair he was being and forgives everyone!!!"
However there is one version of this I would allow due to it being very funny, not a complete waste of his character potential, and close to providing real evidence of something that would let him give Bruce a pass:
Superman realizes who the Red Hood is and why he's gunning for Batman and decides to try to straighten things out before the end of Under the Red Hood. He flies over to him and explains that he was the one stopping Bruce from killing the Joker. This gets understood as Supes being the reason Batman still can't kill him. Then Jason immediately pivots his entire life to becoming a Superman villain.
Bruce gets a phonecall: "Hi Dad, I forgive you, and I'm gonna need that 100 pounds of kryptonite back right fucking now."
I LOVE THE DIFFERENT WAYS THESE BOYS INTERACT WITH HIM - Oh I love this and I really wish fans when into this more. To me Dick is the problem solver friend and Jason is the vent/support friend. When Roy is having problems Dick lets him vent and will quickly jump into trying to solve the problem the "correct and healthy" way to the point of almost being a micro manager. Jason lets Roy vent and just supports Roy's emotions and actions without judgement to the point of almost being an enabler.
(cont) Basically Jason is the Id, Dick is the Super-ego, and Roy is the Ego. Jason and Dick both provide something valuable to Roy and he benefits from having both of them in his life. This comparison also easily shows what they all provide each other. As well as where they may clash or disconnect.
DEEP BREATH. disclaimer: Again, this is my opinion and doesn't negate the thoughts, head-canons, and tastes of anyone else. I'm not looking to argue this point because arguing exhausts me and I get enough well, actually folk in my real life I don't need them in my inbox online.
I agree with this at base level, but as always there's so much nuance and history that needs to be taken into account for each of these relationships that it would be impossible for you to convey that in an ask. But, you have unlocked one of those things I think about waaaaay too much: the relationships Roy Harper has with the people he calls friends and how specifically the relationship with Jason Todd is good for him, but not without some major flaws as well.
this got long. have a cut for your sanity and dash.
I need to establish something before I continue: I love all of these characters very deeply. I don't believe in trashing one to make another seem better. I like them flawed and trying. I like them complicated. I do not want to EVER downgrade the importance of the Titans and Dick Grayson in Roy's life just because I also "ship" him with Jason Todd. I love Dick Grayson. I love writing him. I love Roy Harper. I love writing him. I love Jason Todd and yeah, I love writing him, too. Liking a character doesn't automatically mean I hate another. Slap me down in the pile of weird fans that likes the entire Gotham crew while also reading and enjoying other character books and other series that DC offers. I just really like *STORIES*.
Roy Harper in specific hits so many of my personal history notes that I tend to get a little rabid about him. A hero who is also an alcoholic/addict who makes terrible life choices and smears on a smile to patch over problems so no one will leave him? Nah, couldn't be something that skewers me to a wall. Now, it's honestly kind of impossible to talk about Roy without talking about his friends. He's an extrovert and that's a very necessary part of him as a character. He needs his people; isolation has consistently been terrible for him. Somewhere along the way, he internalized the idea that who he is really isn't enough to keep anyone. That pernicious concept of "If you knew the real me, you wouldn't like me." paired with "I'm the one worth leaving." Excuse me, I'm going to go cry in a corner now.
Dick Grayson is another extrovert. I know I've talked about Dick Grayson and his best friend problem before- I say problem ironically because it's not one and honestly more telling of him as a character than anything else. Dick Grayson is a performer and a people-pleaser and a perfectionist and god he's so freaking fascinating. I 100% believe that he's the kind of guy who CAN have 5 best friends. I think he wouldn't think anything of it. The concept of best being singular doesn't really register. He came from the best circus and the best performers and the best family of aerialists. It's always been a plural for him and I love him for that. He loves his friends with a single-minded candor that is enviable and beautiful. I love that he might not understand why it's a problem. He's been trained to problem solve and would absoLUTELY be the friend who immediately starts listing ideas because that's what they've been trained to do in these situations.
Then we get to Jason fucking Todd. I can play with him for days because he is just a mess and I love mess. Jason is a classically trained caretaker/enabler. Looking at his history (even as it's being actively retconned and changed to support the "angry/bad" robin narrative) we see a young kid who's father was in and out of prison working as a goon. His mother growing up was an addict and he is shown taking care of her. He learns the flavor of care-taking and people reading from a wildly young age. He learns to try and predict what kind of home he's walking into each day by the sounds in the hallway and the way the key turns in the lock. He's been trained to perk up around certain types of people: addicts/alcoholics. This is a phenomenon that is really hard to explain to people who haven't had this sort of upbringing. I have a tendency to tell my friends that you could put me in a room full of perfectly capable people who are good for me and I would naturally immediately gravitate to the alcoholic/addict because there's something *exciting* about them. I have another friend (she's very happily married now to a very nice man) who used to joke that she could close her eyes and point at a man who would hit her.
An enabler and an addict are a volatile combination and absolutely toxic together if they are both actively supporting the other's habits.
So this is where it gets interesting for me: Roy is sober. Now.
Dick was there through the trauma of Roy using. Anyone who believes their alcoholism and addiction isn't hurting anyone but themselves is honestly lying to themselves. (It's the only person we addicts/alcoholics can successfully lie to after all.) It causes shockwaves of wreckage that ripple outward. Dick was there through the blast. He watched, first hand, as one of his best friends legit hurt himself over and over. I have exactly 1 friend that I was able to maintain and keep after my spiral. One.
So when I say that the self immolation of addiction is terrifying, consider this: she tells me it was like watching me hit myself with a hammer while smiling and telling her everything was fine. She was being splashed with the violence of my self destruction and it was horrifying and there I was getting mad at her for trying to take the hammer away. A normal person will walk away because they know that at some point the alcoholic will take the hammer to them too.
And there is a Dick Grayson in my head who watched this. There is a Dick Grayson in my head who still remembers the horror of Roy's bottom. There's a Dick Grayson who Roy took a hammer to. This is the Dick Grayson I write. A boy who loves so fully he can forgive someone who can't forgive himself. That's a hell of a friend and I will NEVER take that from Roy.
I also believe that Roy, in his cups as it were, was a wretched creature who would grasp and pull at anyone around him trying to feel better and then recoil in horror for what he's done and then go deeper into trying to forget. The compound interest of shame and regret: seeking oblivion.
So, there's always going to be a part of Dick that cannot forget what happened. He's a planner and those, by nature, are worriers. I can ABSOLUTELY see him being the character that believes worry is synonymous with love. If he worries about you; it means he loves you. He loves Roy. He worries about Roy. He wants to be helpful. He wants to make sure Roy never goes back down that path again.
As someone who's been on the other side of that cautious kid glove handling, it feels very disconcerting and very much like distrust. It also feels wildly invalidating. Yes, I made bad choices. Yes, I fucked up. Yes, I hurt you and myself. But man, I'm trying to be better and I need you to let me make mistakes without thinking the whole world is going to come tumbling down around me and I'm going to immediately start using again. So, that's what I bring to the characterization of this friendship now.
A Dick Grayson who loves Roy so much he's going to do whatever he can to make sure Roy never goes there again and a Roy who chafes slightly under the idea that no matter what- no matter how long he's been sober and healthy and doing really well and leading teams of his own and raising a daughter that loves him and- he's one bad day from picking up a hammer again.
Jason missed all of that. Jason didn't see that side of Roy in pre52 continuity. I mean, he did see a Roy Harper who was a mess. He was there in Switzerland when Jade brought the truth home. But, you also see in that small interaction they had in that book a couple of things that always stand out to me. Jason is wildly perceptive. He picks up on the fact that Roy is hiding something. He nearly draws the truth out of Roy before Jade shows up. (And man, if you think I don't also love the Jade/Roy relationship and everything there you're wrong. Man, Jade is SUCH a fascinating character augh.) Then Jason goes and dies. Which is a whole other can of worms that at some point I'm going to have to unload my feels about some recent things in the Joker War and why if I was Jason Todd Bruce's choice would have been my villain origin story too lol.
But, back to the point, basically I see that time in Switzerland as Jason perking right up around someone who he's been trained since childhood to take care of. The enabler has met his addict/alcoholic.
Then there's the mess that is New52 which I always just sort of frown at and shake my head before taking a pair of scissors to canon there to start making a new canon that doesn't lose all the work that was done on these characters prior to it all. But, it opened the door that had been sort of outlined in old canon.
Jason Todd, out of so many others, would be one of those people who sees what Roy has done in a very different light. He was the son of an addict who never made it out of their addiction alive. He was the son of a woman who loved him very much, but not enough to change and that kind of thing haunts a person. So, when presented with a Roy Harper who not only fought his way out of addiction and is sober but is the kind of father he could only dream of? Jesus y'all. Is it really so hard to see the way Jason would set up camp as a Roy Harper fan and do whatever was necessary to keep someone like that in his life? Is it really?
I will maintain until my dying breath that the love of Roy Harper's life isn't Jade or Dick or Jason or Donna or any of these romantic relationships. It's Lian.
And here lies the thing that makes me love the jayroy ship so much. And this is probably the exact opinion that gets me in trouble with people who have other ships for Roy and that's fine. This is what I ship and is no way me saying that other people HAVE to ship this. These are my takes.
Dick deserves someone who loves him like the sun. He needs the spotlight and the surety of a continuous sort of love that comes without any constraints. He needs to fly. He needs and deserves to be loved as is.
Roy can't give him that. He's already given it to Lian. But, he can be Dick's best friend. He can be the guy who will take a punch until he's worn Dick down enough to fucking talk. He will be the one to show up, no questions asked, if Dick needs help. And despite that, he will be the one to question Dick Grayson. Dick NEEDS that. He NEEDS someone to argue with him and question him and be the voice of dissent.
Jason Todd and Roy Harper fascinate me because it's one of those relationships where Roy loving Lian like that only makes it easier for Jason to love him? And Jason loves like a feral cat, skittishly, sideways, and deeply greedy.
God, this boy has so much love inside him that it curdles into rage and grief. He's a tragedy, of course its love and rage and grief.
I love the idea of Jason's "lazarus rage" as a metaphor for addiction. Rage feels good. It's easier to feel than sorrow and grief.
We have a saying in AA, where if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every solution becomes a nail.
Jason and Roy exist in the space between the hammer and the nail. It's about the potential. It's about the thing that they could build together. It's about forgiveness and fear and the horror of taking ownership of your part of the wreckage. It's about forgiveness and fierce devotion that doesn't require ownership or perfection. It's about the space between a promise and proof.
UGH. I'm in my feels now. Thanks anon. Sorry I got rambly.
climbing out of my cave again to serve some jayroy art based on the whopping 53k word fic my shattered soul dances around you written by the lovely @darknesswillfall <3
Go read and shower every chapter with comments and love! It’s so heart wrenchingly good I seriously can’t stop screaming into my pillow!!!!
These pieces are a part of the @batbigbang event! Go check out and follow their blog!!! Fic and companion art pieces are still being released every day!!! There is SO much to feat your eyes on you won’t regret taking a peek <3
“If he dies, you never have to see me again. But if you don’t let me kill him, right now, I swear to god you’ll lose me forever.”
— From Too Much Fucking Salt written by @red-bat-arse
This story makes me NEVER look at a Jason Todd coming home fic the same ever again, because every single words in this one is crafted so beautifully, achingly (succinctly what all Jason enjoyers think too) that I genuinely believe Jason should never be around Bruce again. Believe me when I tell you this is the most underrated take on his story ever. Every lines will hurt you by scraping out your heart all the while building up to the confrontation of a lifetime. And no matter how much you want Jason to come home again, this story will no doubt convince you that this probably is the best for him, since everything up until this point is borrowed time anyways.
Featuring Roy and Jason friendship (could be read as pre-slash too), the Rouges being in the background but shine through anyways, a lot of angst and in the end, a hollowed out heart brimming with the determination to live free of all that hurt from the past and your family.
@red-bat-arse you need to understand that I was messing around learning to draw landscape but your writing had me in such a chokehold for a WHOLE WEEK that I NEEDED to draw it
“If he dies, you never have to see me again. But if you don’t let me kill him, right now, I swear to god you’ll lose me forever.”
— From Too Much Fucking Salt written by @red-bat-arse
This story makes me NEVER look at a Jason Todd coming home fic the same ever again, because every single words in this one is crafted so beautifully, achingly (succinctly what all Jason enjoyers think too) that I genuinely believe Jason should never be around Bruce again. Believe me when I tell you this is the most underrated take on his story ever. Every lines will hurt you by scraping out your heart all the while building up to the confrontation of a lifetime. And no matter how much you want Jason to come home again, this story will no doubt convince you that this probably is the best for him, since everything up until this point is borrowed time anyways.
Featuring Roy and Jason friendship (could be read as pre-slash too), the Rouges being in the background but shine through anyways, a lot of angst and in the end, a hollowed out heart brimming with the determination to live free of all that hurt from the past and your family.
jason todd has killed the joker and all it cost him was his city and his family. he's never going back to gotham -not even to arkham. maybe someday he'll be okay with that.
-too much fucking salt on AO3
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