#muir posts

[fyresfly]

you guys HAVE to start praising the good & interesting choices comic creatives make with the same frequency & intensity as you criticize the ones that are shit. i’m sorry. we’re doomed otherwise

[fyresfly]

rent-lowering gunshots because my memesets and bop posting has welcomed a lot of new friends, but i just want to make sure we’re on the same page:

- i love jason todd.

- you should read jason’s robin stories. especially moench’s work.

- jason todd’s narrative does imply that he is a csa victim (bruce’s will recording in battle for the cowl, jason’s dialogue to mia in “seeing red”). it also explicitly includes him having deeply emotional reactions to sexual violence and violence against women (“dumpster slasher” and “diplomat’s son”).

- jason todd’s overarching narrative arc includes heavy themes of victimization and (institutional and interpersonal) violence. i have also read interesting metas about reader interpretations of jason’s stories as an allegory for an inadequate response to sexual assault.* due to all these factors, it is no wonder that readers who have been impacted by these real world themes identify with him.

- obviously jason todd is not the only character who contains these themes and events. please ask me about dinah lance and my various watsonian and doylist interpretations of the fallout of longbow hunters. but not here, because this is a jason todd post. and multiple characters can explore themes of victimhood. in multiple different ways. and you are doing a disservice to characters like mia and tara by saying “jason fans are making this up about him. read mia/tara instead” BECAUSE THESE ARE VASTLY DIFFERENT CHARACTERS AND STORIES WITH DIFFERENT CONTEXTS, EVEN IF THEY SHARE THEMES.

- you do not have to base your reader interpretation of jason as heavily on these themes as many of his fans do. but that does not mean these reader interpretations are unfounded. neither are yours.

- jason todd has been an antagonist who’s done fucked up shit. (it was really cool he should do it again.) he’s also been a hero and a lover and a major cunt and a sweetie pie. all of these things are true (often all at once) and that’s why i love him.

* here

[fyresfly]

why did chuck write so many characters as so clearly remarkably immensely exceptionally violently queer if he was going to get so mad when people point at the queer characters and say queer. seems like poor planning on his part

[fyresfly]

his fucking. ears are drooping

[fyresfly]

the thing about that poll is that it is so ambiguous and doesn’t necessarily ask the right question. when i think of who “started” victim-blaming jason todd, i don’t think of the first instance of him being textually victim-blamed on panel, i think about what cemented the idea of an ontologically troubled and reckless jason todd as a fact the bat narrative relies on to function.

i don’t wish to be defending starlin, but i do have to argue in his favor that he, himself, did not singularly hate jason todd. he believed child sidekicks as a whole to be a ridiculous form of normalized child endangerment in the narrative. i firmly believe that his writing bruce as saying jason was reckless and took too many risks was an intentional choice on starlin’s part to invite the audience to question why jason was in a position to take so many risks in the first place.

the writers that succeeded starlin, however, had a different intent in saying jason brought his death upon himself. they needed to justify why this new robin, so careful and intelligent, is fit to be robin when jason was not. the point starlin wanted to make with jason’s recklessness was warped by later writers. it became a tool to build tim. as tim’s popularity grew, it became fact to the narrative, instead of a piece of subtle irony to support starlin’s meta-argument against child sidekicks.

this is not an attack on tim’s character or those who are emotionally invested in it. i love my tim-fan mutuals to the moon and back. it has nothing to do with tim’s character. i am just observing how the overarching narrative that victim-blames jason todd was built to save dc’s ass and sell tim drake.

[fyresfly]

i want to be the cool & mysterious mutual so bad. but i’m on this damn site all the time and i’m never nonchalant about anything ever on here

[fyresfly]

i’m not avoiding getting my driver’s license actually i’m connormaxxing. it’s very trendy

[fyresfly]

fic snippet playing in my head where ollie and jason are interacting post gotham war but pre ollie’s whole waller thing in absolute power…(something something canon divergence jason left gotham and went to roy for help but roy is struggling to balance being newly reunited with lian and taking care of fear toxin lobotomy jason so enter ollie)… jason is still under the effects of the fear toxin lobotomy (truly ridiculous to think that can just be wrapped up as it was) jason is forced by the circumstances to be vulnerable.. he says he doesn’t want to live like this… ollie’s memory flashes back to the plane and the bomb and clark… ollie remembering the feeling of balancing on that tipping point, miserable in life but just fighting a few moments more as he bleeds out, how the threat of losing his arm nudged him down into the abyss. ollie still remembers what it feels like to rather die than lose a piece of your autonomy (or rather die than continue at all). even though ollie’s life has never been so full of love and those he would not leave (..that way) as it is now, he is intimately familiar with the feeling. there is only one thing ollie can offer to the kid—what saved him after he returned. family, community, connection :) and before ollie knows it that bastard has weaseled his way into ollie’s heart and their dinner table for chili nights