#core texts

[gothamyth]

reading batman and shaking my head the whole time so the people on the bus know i disagree with copaganda

[crypticean]

they're dissapearing, one by one. hell, even my friend's missing. (extra notes under cut)

FOR CLARIFICATION: this will not be a continuing comic. its likely i'll post more minicomics but the rest of the lore will be communicated through other kinds of art (and some you will have to find yourself! theres hidden messages in this minicomic)

my friend also works on this story and has helped me out a ton in making this!!!!! everybody say thank you eclipse

more to come soon... keep your eyes peeled

[thepoisonroom]

all you need to know is that in college i made my then-girlfriend and my housemates and one of my exes watch strictly ballroom because i grew up with it and they were all like 'this actually explains almost everything about you'

[gothamyth]

leslie does not appear in the post-crisis crime alley intro. in her stead, there's another older woman whose work is thought to be altruistic, one with potential to transform the lives of the desperate and condemned (from such a young age, too) -- ma gunn. of course, soon we learn that her charity is but a ruse, and she uses her reputation and position to exploit those most vulnerable. here it is -- the cynical 'subversion' that will become the staple of the post-crisis batman for years to come.

but arguably, despite the appearances, it is not ma gunn who truly takes leslie's place in the narrative. that place being, of course, both the symbol of the hope of the crime alley and a counterpoint to batman's philosophy. it is, instead, the main character of second chances -- jason. jason, whom bruce meets in the same alley his parents died, but who makes bruce laugh upon their first encounter. jason, who has a strong sense of justice, despite it not quite aligning with bruce's -- jason who does not care about what bruce thinks of him being a thief, jason who insists it does not make him a crook; jason who has no care for the label of 'criminality' in itself (just as leslie, who insists that talking of 'criminals' in the alley is non-productive and that in targeting them, bruce would just prey on those unfortunate). jason who is to become gotham's light as robin, but who also is tied to its darkest place.

there is, of course, a problem here -- jason is a child. and so, what was seen as a genuine challenge to batman before -- the lack of care for the 'criminal' label, is now seen as a corruption of the youth that can be "treated" like all disease that crime is (and can be also used as an excuse for the child endangerment - by collins and so, by bruce whom he writes too). and surely, soon enough, without much commentary from the narrative itself, after a timeskip, we are introduced to jason whose background is of very little relevance. as a child, and as robin, he is (for a time) malleable. he believes in batman just as dick grayson did. until starlin takes the run over, and jason is to become a 'challenge' again -- but this time there is no authentic consideration for the politics and societal reality behind it. the conflict that leads to aditf is first and foremost one around bruce's role as a parent, and less so about his strategy. and even in the garzonas' case, there's this confusion -- jason's complaints are not about the system, but about their efficiency. it's all back to batman's theoretical framework. and when jason comes back from the dead, year after -- that is what happens with the red hood modus operandi too. all of this a direct reference to competence of batman, jason's background becoming a stereotype it was supposed to go against.

thankfully, before all that happens, and quite hurriedly post-crisis, someone (barr) realises leslie needs a comeback -- and it is the best she was ever written, her voice clear and strong. my beginning... and my probable end is, to me, the batman thesis. here we have bruce wayne, loving -- and here we have all of bruce's flaws exposed. leslie's first ever complaint post-crisis is about jason's role as robin, and so she becomes a cassandra, but it's so important to pay attention to their relationships. "you're doing it for yourself" is what leslie says, and she is right in believing it is not jason who needs robin. and jason, there, on a hospital bed, between them -- this is what his role in the narrative becomes. a consequence of a grand idea of batman that leslie was always against; but also someone who's life stretches in between these two beliefs, someone who came all the way from being so like leslie, only for him to become so entangled in vigilantism that there's hardly any reference to any of it left. and leslie was there, to see.

how both of their stances get stereotyped; how their initial roles get delegated into villainy or (in case of leslie) pettiness, is in a way a litmus paper for the condition of batman's comics. and it's just absurd how we never get to see them together after jason's resurrection; how the two most important characters of the crime alley cannot be afforded to share narrative space. that is, of course, because it would mean a confrontation of what jason was, and what he became.

[gothamyth]

it's been a while since i posted about it but i do have a whole tag #the worst thing about love dedicated to that theme and i will always treasure the idea (supported by canon) of jason being cursed with accurate memory over the jason-with-varying-forms-of-amnesia fanon. rhato (2011) #3 might be the only good thing written by lobdell in how it aligns with it... jason's fond memory of bruce staying with him instead of going to patrol is a curse to him because it singles him out in a world that has forgotten. in aditf, bruce chooses following the joker instead of going after jay -- and we now know that jay's bitterness irt that matter originated from his expectations built by bruce himself, who was earlier ready to forgo vigilante responsibilities to take care of him... and as i said before, for jay post-res, aditf lasts forever: he's still daring his father to choose him, even if he does not realise it, even if his own identity is too melted into the mask, even if what he wants is bruce sitting on the couch next to him still in costume and not in civvies. he cannot explain it even to himself. and the world in which that was an option- in which there were no repercussions for bruce choosing jason, is long gone. bruce had his part in it. the narrative was already reshaping itself to expel jason early post-crisis, and his death only cemented it-- more than that, bruce's grief did it, it reshaped his own memories of jason as angry, of his expectations as illogical and even petty. jason comes back to a world that others him. and in order to come back to it, he strikes a miltonian pose-- playing the role of a villain since there is nothing else left, no other way to reintegrate himself into this new fabric of universe. but the dissonance between that pose and his memory will only isolate him further, making him hope. hope is a hostile thing for jason todd. so in rhato (2011) #3 he chooses to forget. forgetting does not stick. it never does. the memory will be back and incline him to reach out again, uselessly. the worst thing about love is that he remembers it.

[crypticean]

oh hey. its the writer of this article!

[crypticean]

carcass imitations

[gothamyth]

there is also another interesting injustice there. why did the waynes have the luxury of dying in jason’s home and making a cemetery of it for decades to come, but he is refused a spot in that graveyard? jay meets bruce there. and for the remaining years of his robin career, we do not see him in the alley at all, because bruce effectively erases it from the map of gotham for all days in year but one. dying elsewhere only further removes him from the narrative; he’s a victim of the cycle, but only a collateral one, with the ends loose, spread outside. jason says: there’s the right place for the ouroboros to take a bite, and that tail is the crime alley. the repetition has to take the right shape. if the sacrifice is to occur, make it right.