Day 1
Competent Jason Todd | Warrior – Disturbed
Star Sapphire/Lantern Jason | Kill Your Heroes – AWOLNATION
Promise | The Emptiness Machine – Linkin Park
Day 2
Dimension Travel | Daydreaming – Paramore
Different Mentor AU | Silver Spoon – Erin LeCount
Pre-Crisis Jason Todd | JUMP! – Only The Poets
Day 3
“Do you even like me? Like, as a person?” | Open Wounds – Skillet
Truth Serum/Spell | Winner – Conan Gray
Undercover | Foxholes – Lovejoy
Day 4
Someone Kills Joker for Jason | If I Killed Someone For You – Alec Benjamin
Theater Kid Jason Todd | Ruthlessness – Jorge Rivera-Herrans
Funeral | Funeral Song – Baby Bugs
Day 5
Batarang Scar Reveal | White Winter Hymnal – Fleet Foxes
The All-Blades | The Phoenix – Fall-Out Boy
Jason Todd’s (Many) Parents | Simmer – Hayley Williams
Day 6
Jason Todd is Good with Kids | The Optimist – 10 Years
Jason Lives AU | Sun Bleached Flies – Ethel Cain
Choice | Nobody's Soldier – Hozier
Day 7
Crime Alley Loves Jason/Red Hood | Open Letter (To a Landlord) – Living Color
Fantasy AU | The Red Hood – Aviators
FREE PROMPT | Dana-Dan – Bloodywood
Substitute Prompts
“What, so Batman’s evil now?” / “Has been for a while, thanks for noticing.” | Everybody's Fool – Evanescence
Jason Todd Kills the Joker | Angel With a Shotgun – The Cab
“This Jason Todd is an unknown entity. We do not know what force has returned him from beyond.” | I Only Paint in Red Now – Lydia the Bard
Survival | Bury Me Face Down – grandson
Below the cut are some lyrics that stand out and my reasoning for picking the song. This is basically my annotated 8Tracks playlist. It's only 45 minutes long, so as long as an album.
Edward does plenty of things other than drink and do drugs. But his drinking is supported by canon for me and his drug use is not that far of a leap. He has OCD, that is widely accepted, and addiction is a symptom of OCD or rather an extension of the disorder. So this is a focus on his addiction, which is a compulsion he takes to stop particularly obsessions with the past. It's not that he wants to turn his thoughts "off," he likes the way his thoughts feel when he's fucked up. But addiction is addiction and destroys his life anyway.
The Gimp (Sometimes) by Coil
Sometimes I just help myself
Sometimes I can't help myself
Sometimes I just help myself
The repetitive nature of this song is why I picked it, because it reminded me a lot of self hating narcissistic OCD spirals that Edward finds himself in, plus the sound of it was perfect to put on the opening of this playlist. This song opens the album it's on and since I wanted to replicate a downward spiral related to a heroin high, I thought it was a good place to start.
Lights in My Brain by Ultramarine
I′ve got lights in my brain
We'll have fights in the rain
This song is a repetitive IDM song. I think Edward really likes songs with this sound that he can put on and just think to, with either repetitive lyrics or no lyrics at all. This song in particular is about being high and daydreaming to me, so here he's scheming and plotting, thinking through problems in the warm embrace.
Gyroscope by Boards of Canada
One, two, three, four, five, six
Seven, eight, nine, zero
Zero
More IDM. This song has a really creepy, eery sound to it, where reality is creeping in as he comes down. This song sounds very different from the rest of the album, which is why I picked it. I like it because it has a grinding noise to it, and really gets in your teeth.
Ingenue by Atoms for Peace
Move through the moment
Though it betrays
Transformations
Jackals and flames
This song fits here because of the tone of it, where he's coming down, and feeling really sorry for himself, and wants to blame all of his problems on everyone else but at the same time knows that, because he's an addict, this is all his fault.
In A Dark Place by Gary Numan
Am I a fool in the dark, I don't know
Am I the ghost in my dreams, I don't know
Am I a shadow of life, I don't know
Am I afraid of the truth, I don't know
This song is a little more angry and bargaining, so at a different part of the stages of grief about his addiction. I chose it because it's a sexy industrial song basically! And I think there's a great eroticism to addiction for him. Like many addicts he fetishizes the highs and lows of things. It keeps his life interesting.
Piggy by the Vitamin String Quartet
I chose this song because I already have a Nine Inch Nails song on there. And I also think that Edward grew up playing the violin and listening to mostly classical music, so he has a huge superiority complex about only listening to Vitamin String Quartet versions of certain songs. Though he loves NIN because he's into industrial. Okay.
Drug Song by Dave Bixby
How did I get this way?
It's so unreal
I'm no longer a person
I can't even feel
I don't think that Edward ever feels this sorry for himself, but I definitely think he has moments where, for example, he's been binge drinking for three or four days straight and is just like. What is fucking wrong with me. Why am I like this. And knows he has to stop but stopping is almost as painful as just letting it kill him. So he's like, okay time to bust out the willpower. I have shit to do.
Hurt by Nine Inch Nails
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything
It feels really melodramatic to have Drug Song and then Hurt but it is actually the perfect song to end the playlist with. This song ends the album it's off of, it was in Rick and Morty, it's iconic. To me it feels like, this time, he gives up and passes out, thinking he'll deal with this later. And just succumbs to sleepiness and suicidality. Yeah. night night.
Since people encouraged me to analyze my playlists...here you go.
I'll start with the Icon for Hire songs I have for Bruce and combine them into a single post, because there are...many of them. (Icon for Hire has an...interesting view on mental health that I don't fully agree with, but it very much fits Bruce's personality.)
I'm not sure if I'll do it by a theme for a character (such as Bruce's self-loathing) or by artist from now on.
Think I'm Sick
Overall, this is a song about mental illness (already so promising!) and knowing that something is wrong with yourself but having no way to fix it. Basically, mental illness as a chronic, progressive condition. This song reminds me of Bruce gradually falling further and further into his Mission—knowing he's losing himself, but being unable to stop—which is a narrative I find very interesting for the more recent Batman comics.
Batman/The Mission
The night knows me by name / Its shadow trained to dull the pain. These lines are basically Batman as a coping mechanism to me. Bruce thinks of himself as Batman as "becoming one with the night". It's an ally and a cloak, hiding him from his enemies, but also from himself.
Life's a war, you pick your fight / I think mine picks me first most nights. Bruce thinks of the Mission (and thus life) as a constant struggle, a war. But it's not one he "chose." Like, yeah, he's the one who put on the costume, but he views it as an inevitability. He couldn't have been anything else. The moment Joe Chill's first bullet was fired in Crime Alley (or perhaps the moment Martha's pearls hit the street), Bruce's war was picked for him. He cannot quit Batman.
Can't undo a word I said / Years of struggle still ahead / All the trouble in my head / I wish I were good instead. Bruce is well aware of the damage he's doing to his life. He knows that he will never be able to stop being Batman. And he knows he's hurting the others around him. He doesn't think he's a good person. Part of him wishes that he could be someone else, a better man. But he's not. He's himself. And he is going to fight for this cause.
Resist at first and then reverse/immerse. Bruce tried so hard to prevent himself from losing sight of his reasons for becoming Batman. He had all the trappings of darkness in order to fight Gotham's evil, but at his core, he was light. But eventually, he became what he pretended to be.
In the quiet, in the dark / All my ideals fall apart. This, I think, is the current Batman. He wages war on crime. And he has rules. But...I think he's lost sight of his original reasons for being Batman. His compassion, love, and empathy. That's not my Batman. But I think that's the Batman we keep seeing in Rebirth and New52, except for the random "yaaaaaaay happy family!! :) uwu" moments. Bruce is He Who Fights With Monsters, and he has become one of them.
Fix Me
This song is, to me, very much Bruce begging his family/loved ones to help him stay himself. The idea is that he needs the people around him to be his lights, because fighting Gotham's darkness eats away at him otherwise. I could see this song as him addressing his family...or even
The refrain, I'll be the mess, you play the medicine / Why don't you fix me? / I can't help myself / Why don't you fix me? / You know I'm fading still: You could see it as pathological, Bruce using his children as a crutch to keep himself together/play therapist. Or you could see it as endearing—Bruce trusts his loved ones to hold him together when he can't. Or you could see it as sad—Bruce thinks he's broken and needs to be fixed. Or, like me, you could see it as all three.
And also...Bruce trying so hard to keep himself together: And you know how I try, fight to survive / My hands are bloody from holding myself too tight
Get Well II
I see this as Bruce acknowledging that doesn't want to move on from his parents deaths. He can never let himself heal. His pain is what makes him Batman, and he can't stop being Batman. (It is literally canon that Bruce can't be happy...)
Oh I need my pain / Don't take it away / My sad makes me special is basically the thesis statement.
Can't undo the scars / All up and down our hearts / Can't forget how it felt when it all fell apart. It all comes back to that night in the alleyway.
And we talk a big game / Like we wanna get well / In our prison made of pain / Only fooling ourselves. And this is, I think, why Dick and Bruce's paths diverge. Dick genuinely wants to move on and heal. Bruce genuinely doesn't. Bruce does not want to lose hold of his grief. He will spend his entire life trapped in the alleyway.
Curse or Cure
Not much I can say about the specific lyrics here, but this is, to me, Bruce contemplating whether Batman is actually a net benefit for Gotham. Is Batman the only one holding back the Rogues? Or is he the one who brought them out? Does Batman invite challenge, or does he just step up to meet it?
And...well, Batman needs a Robin: I'm afraid I can't trust myself, myself / Don't leave me alone. It's the only way he can know he's doing good—he needs someone else there, someone good, by his side.
I’m in the middle of making a gotham centric playlist atm and there’s nothing more annoying than finding a song which lyrically fits the vibe you’re going for perfectly but instrumentally doesn’t fit whatsoever ✋😭
