The Tim Drake uwu-ification bothers me in the face of the abject horror and trajedy of Jason's trauma so much because it reveals a lot about what kind of victim most people will want and that's why they prefer to see Tim as the poorest little wet meow meow.
The uwu-Timmy is always silent about his pain and bears it to the point of breaking under it and beyond, he never voices his trauma or fear and doesn't inconvenience anyone and he feeds into the narrative of a saviour coming along who sees his pain (Dick most often tbh), the glorious brave saviour of the victim. The helpless victim in need of saving, powerless on his own. The uwu-Timmy is cute and inoffensive, he is a "good" victim. The kind that doesn't bother other people.
Jason Todd on the other hand is the furthest thing from inoffensive and unbothersome, he's a "bad" victim, who demands you to look and see, who demands that you face the reality of him. Jason Todd doesn't need a saviour, there is no saviour of the broken power-fantasy that he enables. He doesn't need permission or support and he can't be controlled. He is the kind of victim people don't want to deal with.
And seeing the uwu-ification of Tim vs the asshole-ization of Jason just makes me realize that all these people in the fandom will hate victims who bother them and who are too loud. All these people who misunderstand Jason to just be too angry and out of control, who'd best just stick him in therapy or have someone teach him a lesson.
Reblogging with @roobylavender's tags because they are excellent. I can delete if you'd prefer though:
#honestly the most interesting thing about it all to me is the fact that tim IS an asshole#well. not an asshole asshole but he’s bratty. he’s well meaning but he can also be self absorbed and inpatient and snappy#he’s far more rebellious as a person than jason is prior to his death#so the fact that he gets so uwufied and diluted is baffling to me bc the whole point of his arc as robin#is that he’s so sheltered it renders him brash and unable to understand the depths of what exactly it is he is stepping into#jason is never afforded that shelter and it’s why we see him as someone more directly empathic as a child#but also so impassioned following his resurrection bc he understands this system and its failures intimately#jason never really gets to be a child in the sense that he’s protected#whereas tim does. and that’s what makes what happens to tim and the people he cares about eventually such a rude awakening#he’s utterly unprepared and has unrealistic expectations of the life he’s entering into as a symbol#and i think you can make really great class commentary with that in juxtaposition with jason#about how tim is in that place of privilege and how it simultaneously damns him to be unprepared for the trauma that follows#whereas jason is never afforded that luxury and must be intimate with trauma always bc to even try to look away from it is incompatible with#his own conscience. and obv his own brutal experience with death#but anyway sorry op for the mess in your tags here ultimately i agree with you lol#but it disappoints me that this is what jason and tim’s dynamic in narrative and analysis has become bc they offer a lot of potential#as foils for class commentary and such. but no writer ever really cares for it
so. percy's arc in boo (learning to step back, allowing leo to sacrifice himself despite his loyalty/fatal flaw) sucks. for many reasons.
for one, percy yielding is such an integral part of pjo. all of pjo. but even if u somehow missed it in the first four books, tlo explicitly spells it out. "sometimes the hardest power to master is the power of yielding" hestia says to percy. "i yield when necessary. can you do this?" and then this is the climax of the story. "you are not the hero...it will affect what you do." percy has spent the last five books being told that he's the super powerful chosen one able to save or destroy the world, and he still chooses to yield to someone that has done nothing but betray him. "the line from the great prophecy echoed in my head...my whole world tipped upside down, and i gave the knife to luke." hoo acting like this is a lesson percy needs to learn is an affront to reading comprehension. percy lives bc he yields. and then he does it (yielding) again when he surrenders godhood, and power, to choose other demigods instead. this is not subtle writing.
for two, percy has rejected power, and his title, for the entirety of his story. percy doesn't even fully recognize how powerful he is until the volcano in botl. and he had to be told directly that it wasn't a fluke. then in son, percy immediately rejects the power and status offered to him. repeatedly. reyna offers him praetorship, he turns it down. frank is abt to let percy climb the wall first in the war games, percy says it was frank's claim. percy doesn't even want to go on the son quest but relents bc frank asked him. in moa, percy never demands that he lead. instead, he includes frank where he probably wasn't necessary, supports hazel, encourages annabeth, follows leo and piper's lead, and strategizes w jason. he isn't acting as a leader, but rather as part of a team. percy didn't need to "step back," the writing for the other characters needed to step up.
for three, percy had to be kidnapped and manipulated to be on this entire quest. he's not there bc he has a hero complex. acting like he has to learn to step back when he was quite literally shoved into place is wild.
for four, an integral part of percy's character is freedom, autonomy, and he extends this to the ppl he's loyal to. this is pretty explicitly established in tlt: "you're enough like me to understand," sally says. "if my life is going to mean anything, i have to live it myself." percy respects ppl's decisions. this is one of the first lessons he learns when he becomes a hero and an integral part of pjo: percy has to let sally save herself. percy has to let tyson go to the boiler. percy has to let bianca defeat talos. percy has to let nico walk away. percy has to let annabeth fight. if he loves them, he's going to let their lives mean something. even in hoo, percy still lets annabeth go on her quest alone, despite hating it, despite disagreeing w it, bc it's not his place to tell her what she can and can't do. this is her life. she has to live it. so this plotline doesn't even work it we ignore all of pjo and focus solely on hoo.
this theme of autonomy is especially important bc pjo is abt disability. one of the first things ppl try to take away from u when ur disabled is ur autonomy. the fact that percy vehemently defends it not just for himself but for others is essential to the narrative. percy advocates for other demigods, other disabled kids, and tyson, and he does so while maintaining their autonomy. it's why he's the leader, it's why he's the protagonist, it's why there is a callback to it in every pjo book. trying to act like he wouldn't respect someone's autonomy is a bastardization of this entire theme. which is actually fitting for hoo considering it bastardizes the rest of pjo anyway.
I’ve said before that post-crisis Jason Todd writing is interesting because it’s a live conversation about who he is. Here is how I visualize that. Black arrows are a continuation of the previous characterization and red arrows indicate a rebuttal or reframing.
Batman & Robin 23-25 is in a weird spot because it’s a rebuttal to Batman & Robin 1-6 but isn’t a continuation of any other line.
Sometimes I really overestimate my ability to keep my answers short when it comes to Percy Jackson.
I’ve uploaded a few of my longer Tumblr posts onto AO3, and in one of them I mentioned that I personally read Percy as a person of color. That headcanon shifts a bit depending on the fanart and interpretations I see in the fandom (sometimes I picture him as Filipino, sometimes Hispanic, sometimes black American, etc) but my main headcanon is that Percy is Syrian.
A couple hours ago, I saw someone ask me why I read him that way, and I thought, “Oh, I can answer this quickly in the comment section.”
Well, that “quick answer” has so far turned into a 5,000-word analysis that now includes me reading (among other things):
The Roles of Suspensions for Minor Infractions and School Climate in Predicting Academic Performance Among Adolescents
Innocent Until Proven Guilty? A look at media coverage of criminal defendants in the U.S.
The Adultification of Black Children (Center for Policing Equity)
An educator brief from the Harvard Graduate School of Education on “Understanding & Supporting MENA & Muslim Students”
Various publications from the Arab American Institute
The Ethical Journalism Handbook published by the New York times
And I’m not even halfway through:’)
I wish I would put this much effort into my actual university assignments.
the fact that the creator of the dcblackout was essentially bullied out of the boycott just because other people are getting books is disgusting. people said “i don’t care that black characters/writers aren’t getting books because there are gay people getting books” and we’re supposed to act like that’s not insanely racist
I had been to the Chornobyl museum once, on a school trip. I wanted to go again as an adult, especially after visiting actual Prypyat and Chornobyl and seeing the Chornobyl nuclear power plant myself.
Earlier this year the museum underwent some big repairs and updates and expansions in its display, and I was already making plans to go there within weeks.
And then russia destroyed it. The entire historical building it was in. Part of the building turned into ruins.
First they destroy things. And then they destroy even the memory if the things they destroyed earlier.
And you all aestheticize and praise them for it. And often help them do it.
U know, that's my fave pic, more people should know about it
being gay is not your choice, it's mine
you're gay now
[Image ID: The Ukrainian text "Being gay is not your choice, it's mine. You're gay now", is placed on top of the photo of the fifth president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko examines you with a smug and knowing expression. He just decided your fate. /End ID]
I see already see post about russian trans man in moscow army 💀
Reminder russian deeply homophobic and transpobic country, queer ukrainians on ocupated territory SYSTEMATICALLY REPRESSED AND TORTURED (on top of all others not-human ocupation politics)
i don't think that framing "not all citizens of a country evil due to said country's government!" is helpful. I think it's even harmful, for all that it seems like humanitarian or some shit. 'cause see, people list all those quote unquote evil countries like russia israel iran north korea and palestine (which. a choice.). but first of all, the degree of prejudice against said citizens, much less diaspora, is vastly different. North Koreans in Australia are in general in not in danger of being shot at a beach for celebrating their religious holiday.
Tbc bc there's a lot of aspects I want to cover
Okay so addition 1
There's a different level of prejudice and actual harm committed against citizens, diaspora or even just. Ethnic/religious/linguistic or racial community common with the citizens of the said country. I.e. someone who is prejudiced against Israel may very well hate all Jews, regardless if they are citizens or not. Someone who is prejudiced against China - as we saw during COVID - or against Iraq - as we saw during invasion and occupation of Iraq - is likely to be prejudiced or act with prejudice against all Asians in the first case, and all Muslims or all Arabs or simply all brown people in the second case.
Addition 2:
You know, the intent might not have been to equate; indeed, such an obvious reminder like prejudice against anyone who might have looked even vaguely Middle Eastern after 9/11 - wasn't even listed. So it's not even about how being prejudiced against some group of people is bad, period. It's about separating, nay, absolving citizens from the crimes of their government. (which, still bothers me when we specify citizens, as opposed to say nationals etc. 'Cause yeah, maybe you can't call a random Israeli citizen an evil person bc of their government, but people do call not only them (which, arguably...) but random Jewish people. Even non Jewish people, if you are not performing the Jew hatred - sorry, antisionism - in a visible and socially approvable way. In a way they don't with North Koreans or Iranians, for example).
Okay, I'm calm enough now that I can actually formulate a coherent response to all of this.
I understand now that by writing a meta about why Tim sometimes victim-blamed Jason early on I have been too hasty, because apparently we first need to clarify what victim-blaming is. That's on me. Thankfully, someone made a post listing a bunch of arguments that highlight some of the issues underpinning that mechanism. It made me very mad in the moment because I think this was a harmful post and on top of that it was condescending in a way that implies authority. However, ultimately it's a good opportunity to talk about that, both because learning to recognize victim-blaming is a vital skill to have in order to support one's community, and because I don't think it's a good idea at all to let this kind of harmful misinformation spread in our spaces unchecked.
Victim-blaming meta take 2
So here we see OP claiming that we can't refer to "Jason's whole situation" (aka the treatment of his murder in and out of comics) as victim blaming because according to OP, that's not what that means. First, I can't resist pointing out that OP, intentionally or not, is using a rather dishonest technique in so that they're saying the same thing twice. It's very well done but let's untangle that sentence a little bit:
"that's not what that term means and it's ALSO not what's happening either inside or out of the comics." Note the ALSO in higher case meant to emphasize that there are two arguments here giving more weight to OP's position.
> "that's not what that term means" okay but what is what that term means? What does "that" means here? What is being compared to the definition of victim-blaming? The answer, by syntactic inference, seems to be "jason's whole situation", which again, is how OP refers to the treatment of Jason's murder in and out of canon, what they're arguing here with the fandom. Compare that that to the other part of the sentence:
> "'it's ALSO not what's happening in and out of comics"
Do you get what I'm saying? The "it" pronoun here is what we call a referent, meaning that its function is to serve as a replacement for a word of group of words that has been used before -though sometimes there can be ambiguity as it could refer to different previously mentioned elements. Here, we have two possibilities, but only one makes sense logically. Either this person is saying that "Jason's whole situation isn't what's happening in or outside of comics" which is some kind of tautological paradox: according to this person, Jason's situation wouldn't be... Jason's situation. The other option, a bit more awkward syntactically but way more logical, is that "it" actually refers to "victim-blaming", meaning that they're saying victim blaming isn't what's being said in and out of canon. Ultimaly, this person is saying twice that Jason's treatment isn't victim-blaming, and wording it differently with an ALSO added for emphasis to make their claim seem more potent than it is.
Honestly, that's a detail. Accidentally saying the same shit twice is something we all do sometimes, and it's not what we're focused on here, but since they added that infuriating "also" as though their logical mistake was some kind of grand speech, I wanted to be petty and point out that manipulative phrasing. It also can't hurt to clarify why I'm only answering one claim even though OP makes it look like they're saying two things.
But in any case, OP is telling us that there are no occurrences of people speaking about Jason in and out of canon that fits the definition of victim-blaming. Fortunately, I happen to have access to a formidable website called wikipedia, which allows me to find common definitions for concepts and double-check the sources for these definitions.
Victim-blaming, then, can be defined as : a devaluing act that occurs when the victim(s) of a crime or an accident is held responsible — in whole or in part — for the crimes that have been committed against them.1 This blame can appear in the form of negative social responses from legal, medical, and mental health professionals, as well as from the media and immediate family members and other acquaintances. Some victims of crime receive more sympathy from society than others. Often, the responses toward crime victims are based on the misunderstanding of others. This misunderstanding may lead them to believe that the victim deserved what happened to them, or that they are individuals with low self-esteem who seek out violence. As a result, it can be very difficult for victims to cope when they are blamed for what has happened to them.
(pay attention to the parts in blue, they're going to help us later).
It can also be defined as: an attitude which consists in holding the victims of an aggression or an injustice responsible for what they experienced. The culpabilisation of the victims allows us to avoid condemning the aggressor, who is granted attenuating circumstances. (translated from french, sorry if the syntax is a bit awkward i tried to stick to the original wording as closely as possible).
Or, again: the procedure (actions/approach) of attributing the perpetrator's blame for an act of violence to the victim (translated from german, sorry if the syntax is a bit awkward i tried to stick to the original wording as closely as possible).
The Spanish page from wikipedia is way too close to the English one to give us any new insight in the definition itself but it has the merit of reminding us that victim-blaming is the social tool of fascism, which is an important reminder in case anybody here is wondering why I'm mad.
Point being, OP didn't deign support her claim with a definition, but we have more than enough definitions to go around, and despite differences in phrasing they all more or less say the same thing: "victim-blaming is when part of the responsibility for an act of violence is attributed to the victim of that act."
So let's compare this to some of the things being said in and about canon.
In A Death in the Family, Jason is struggling mentally. He does behave recklessly as Robin, at that moment in time, which is treated as out of character for him and attributed not to a light-hearted daredevil attitude but to psychological struggle and potential suicidality. However, even recklessness that hadn't been a factor, Jason would still have gotten killed. As a consequence of his struggles, Jason travels in order to find his biological mother. There, he is reunited with Batman, and together they end up finding his mother, Sheila Haywood. He did not go there for vengeance (against who? Joker hadn't done anything to him) thrill (he seems more miserable than anything at this point in time) or to prove himself, he went there to find his mother. There, he finds out that Sheila's in trouble because of the Joker. He reveals to her that he is Robin in an effort to get her to trust that he and Batman can help her. Meanwhile, Bruce goes to stop Joker from killing a bunch of people, and tells Jason to stay put. But Jason doesn't, because Sheila tells him to follow her. That's the point that people love to remember, the cornerstone of the victim-blaming- Jason was "disobedient", he didn't listen to Batman. But they forget that in disobeying Batman, he was obeying Sheila. This decision wasn't made because Jason was disobedient, it was made because he had to make a choice which command to obey and he made that choice based on his trust in Sheila and his desire to help. And Jason wasn't reckless in going to the warehouse that the Joker was in, simply because he couldn't have known that there was danger there -he trusted Sheila who lied to him and told him the warehouse was empty. He didn't think himself strong enough to solo Joker and his goons, he just didn't know that he would have to.
If you're looking for factors in Jason's motivations and character that lead to his death, there are three: his yearning for a parent, his eagerness to trust people, and his heroism. Anything else said about Jason's motivation in that story is a lie. And what narrative would lying about Jason's character and motivation serve?
What is said in the comics themselves :
Tim hallucinating Jason's ghost, aka Tim's perception of Jason, telling him that Jason died because he "thought that he could be better than Batman" and that he "killed himself, because he couldn't wait, because he didn't think it through".
"I'm not like Jason. But what if I have some other flaw? Sometimes I think I go too far the other way. Too cautious." Here, Tim is implying that Jason had a flaw, his recklessness, and though it's not explicity stated I don't think you could argue in good faith that this scene isn't about Jason's death -and that Tim isn't attributing Jason's death to that flaw.
I didn't highlight anything because all of Alfred's dialogue and monologue counts. First he characterizes Jason through a motivation of vengeance, then claims that Jason's death was foreseeable because of Jason's character, and then says "It's not your fault, the lad was determined to disobey you."
"But Jason was reckless. The role of Robin turned him into a daredevil... He took chances. Openly defied Batman's orders. And that's what killed him. He went solo against the Joker."
"Jason saw being Robin as a game. It's probably what got him killed."
Compare all these examples to what happened in aditf: these characters are lying about Jason's character and motivations in order to create links between this character and motivation on one hand, and then relying on these causality links to attribute some or even all the blame of Jason's murder on Jason. Let me be very clear: Jason's murder has one person who bears entire blame and responsibility (Joker) and other people who bear partial blame and responsibility (Joker's accomplices, including Sheila). And yet, these panels that all address the causes of Jason's death don't even treat Joker as the main cause! They're talking like Jason drove a car without a license and Joker is the wall that Jason drove into. The agency is completely taken from Joker and attributed to Jason. Tim's inner Jason says "I killed myself." Batman's inner monologue says "he took chances. Openly defied Batman's orders. And that's what killed him." "Jason saw being Robin as a game. It's probably what got him killed."
In those examples Jason is held, in whole or in part, responsible for the crime that has been committed against him. And that happens to be the actual definition of victim blaming.
Linebreak because this post is way too long already, sorry guys
What was said by the writers
Honestly I don't hate myself enough to push through several Jim Starlin interviews, so here are just a couple quick examples.
"Robin died for a number of reasons. He didn't listen to Batman when Batman told him to wait." Here, in this list, we see the responsibility for Jason's death being partially attributed to Jason. You might argue that what is listed here is an objective truth, and it is, but it's said as a justification for the writers to skirt responsibility because Jenna is upset with them for killing Jason (which one of the societal purposes of victim-blaming btw). Listing the chain of events that led to the death in the story is off-topic here- this person is highlighting them specifically so that the blame is pushed on all the fictional characters here, including Jason, and the voters, rather than dc themselves -as though they weren't the ones writing the story in the first place. Additionally, note the very punitive framework: Jason's death is a logical consequence of his disobedience. Remember to always listen to your father, Jenna. Or else you will get brutally murdered and it will be your fault.
This one I wanted to use here because it's so shameless it's impressive that they believed it would work. The chain of logic is as follows: Jason died because the public voted for his death - the public voted for his death because he was disliked- Jason was unpopular not because of any writing choice but because Jason broke through the fourth wall magically and earned himself real world agency. Jason is blamed for his own death through the intermediary of the voters (fucked up to put all that on literal kids btw) and in order to skirt responsibility on writing a child murder they weren't all too proud of, they invited Jason some kind of magical agency that made Jason seize control of the narrative from them. Honestly, I could have made that whole point without using that example, but I think it matters, it says something about this fandom that we can look at something so ridiculously, egregiously exaggerate, and still be able to say "victim blaming, what victim blaming? I don't see it." The elephant! In the middle of the room! It's right there!!!
What the fandom is saying
To clarify, I'm talking about the comics, dc themselves and the fandom even though the rest of the post discusses only the comics because OP said "that's not what happens in and out of canon" and I want to disprove it completely. There is victim-blaming rhetoric happening inside of fandom, and it's important that we are able to identify it amongst ourselves.
Now. Honestly this is a little malicious. I could have gone with a compilation of screenshots earned by painstakingly getting through the anti jason todd tag or asking some of my friends to provide me screenshots. But this is one of my favourite fallacies, so I kind of can't resist.
Do you know what an autophagic argument is? It's an argument that eats itself, in the sense that it disproves himself. Sort of like saying "Jason isn't victim-blamed in the fandom" while victim-blaming Jason in a fandom post.
Kinda like this:
"Jason did do something stupid and reckless, and the joker took advantage of that and killed him".
To be clear, this isn't me attacking OP's rhetorical skills by saying they made such a basic mistake. From OP's perspective, this isn't an autophagic argument, because they don't see what they're saying here as victim-blaming for interesting reasons we'll get to later. But here, they are making up a reckless and stupid behaviour to serve as a cause (which as stated isn't what happens in this story) and use that to attribute partial responsibility (and as you'll remember, blame shift only needs to be partial to fit the above-mentioned definitions) to Jason in the causality leading to their death.
Victim-blaming doesn't necessarily absolve the culprit of the crime- instead, when it's partial like here, it dilutes the amount of attributed responsibility to the culprits. Here, as you'll notice, the phrasing of the link between Jason's mysterious actions and his murder doesn't erase Joker's responsibility, but it erases Sheila's. It's the weight of Sheila's lie and manipulation that is attributed on Jason by erasing her agency and replacing it with Jason's vague "stupid reckless action". It's victim-blaming. In fandom. Ergo, there is in fact victim-blaming about Jason's murder in fandom.
Honestly, the beauty of autophagic arguments is that they save you a lot of work in your objections. I don't have to do the work of compiling all the annoying posts I have seen, because I just have to point out the contradiction and it takes away the whole credibility of the argument. So I'm genuinely thankful, because that saves me a lot of work.
Two more things I find noteworthy to mention:
-blaming Jason's death of recklessness is not only untrue, it omits that the recklessness evoked earlier in the story (that again, does not end up playing a role in his death) is born from mental health struggles and potential suicidality. Why is that systematically erased when people talk about Jason's recklessness as a cause of death? Probably because people know that blaming a suicidal teenager for his death is a bad look. Even when a kid kills themselves without using anyone as a proxy, societally we tend to consider that suicide is, in most cases, a "non-choice", something people do when they see no possible alternative due to a variety of factors that made carrying on with their life impossible to them. Even if Jason had indeed died because of recklessness, blaming him for it would still be a slap in the face of suicidal people and the reality of their struggles.
-I've mentioned it before: while it's sneakier than some of dc's more blatant bigotry, the idea that Jason died because he was disobedient is sexist and in particular, very patriarchal.
Now. So far what I've done is provide examples of what I think is a good methodology for identifying victim-blaming when in doubt: find a definition to refer yourself to, focus on the content and analyse what is being said (like "jason killed himself"), in what context (like answering someone who is upset at the writers for killing him) and how is it framed (like making up motivations that didn't exist to paint his actions in a negative light), confront what the combination of these elements is saying explicitly or implicitly depending on the panels, and compare that with your definition of victim-blaming.
I don't think it's a useless contribution at all, it's an interesting challenge to try and go beyond my immediate frustration of "how do you not see that this is very obviously victim-blaming??!!", but if that was all the original post had to say, it would be a dime a dozen. The original post is interesting because OP then goes on to list arguments that are supposed to disprove the fact that these occurrences are victim-blaming in spite of the fact that they fit the definition, and I find those arguments very interesting to discuss.
I did this a while ago but I have more concrete ideas now. I have a whole saga planned out. DC should give me jason I'll take good care of him I promise
Red Hood: Shades of Gray: the start of the run. starts off with jason in his rebirth personally, so basically hes a little depressed and subdued and wants to be part of the family. He has some very black and white thinking (truely unfortunate for someone as morally gray as jason), especially towards himself (thinks hes entirely good or entirely bad and his self esteem is just as unstable). This arc is about what being a hero means to him and his thoughts on all the individual bats. He teams up with duke during this one. Fun banter. It ends with jason coming to the conclusion that the world needs heroes like duke in the light to inspire people, but it also needs people like him to do what others cant (kinda like new 52 bruces thoughts on jason)
World's Foulest: its primehood time. Superboy prime figures that since superbat team ups sell, he needs to go on an adventure with Jason. They get along surprisingly well and get up to some bullshit. Prime tells him that he was the one to bring him back, and gets mad when jasons like "you couldnt have revived me above ground???" instead of thanking him. There's a part where prime saves jason and theyre both crouched down taking cover and prime is still holding him and jason spur of the moment leans in to kiss him. This starts up a relationship that is not particularly good for either of them, but very entertaining to witness. They get a little codependent very quickly.
Red Hood/Speedy: Reload + Drawback: (Split into two parts, first one is called reload and second is drawback. Get it? Im very proud of myself for coming up with that) either a 12 part mini or a crossover between my hypothetical red hood run and a hypothetical speedy run. Jason has been following some crime boss to star city when he runs into mia. Him and mia have to team up to bust his whole operation. Along the way they become friends and work very well together. They have a heart to heart and jason opens up about his csa trauma. I also want brick to show up at some point because he was a delight
Batman/Red Hood: The Cult 2: a crossover with the ongoing batman book. Basically the cult but minus the racism and batman and red hood team up. Bruce and jason are independently investigating blackfire's return to gotham. Plenty of flashbacks to jaybin (hes drawn extra adorable) There's a part where jason saves Bruce while hes unconscious in the sewers again like the welcome to hell scene and bruce wakes up in one of jasons safehouses and realizes it was jason who saved him. He snoops around a little and realizes ve doesnt actually know his son all that well. Jason was taking care of him the whole time with direct parallels to how he took care of Catherine as a kid. They team up and there's this big emotional argument where jason unloads all his feelings about bruce. Jason also brings up the gotham war fear trigger and how hurt and violated it made him feel and explicitly refers to it as mind rape. Jasons says something like "i hate you and I love you and sometimes I want you dead and sometimes I never want you to leave" while physically clinging to bruce. Im characterizing jason as having bpd/cptsd and that heavily affects his relationship with bruce, especially here. Bruce then genuinly apologizes, although he is not fully forgiven, jason gives him another chance. They continue on, beat blackfire, hes dead again, and have another, more civil talk, and jason, remembering what mia said and getting the courage to open up from her, tells bruce about what happened to him as a kid. The story ends with things looking cautiously optimistic for bruce and jasons relationship
Red Hood: Old Friends: jason reunites with Eddie. Eddie brings up the victim blaming and how it pisses him off but jasons so used to it he started to believ it himself. Eddie assures him that is not the case and that he died a hero. Rose also appears and the three of them team up while jason gets to be the third wheel to rose and eddie.
Red Hood and the Outlaws: coming off of old friends jason starts up another outlaws team. This time with rose, eddie, mia, and steph. This would be several story arcs and go on for a while (like 40-50 issues). During the run jason begins to get elements of his robin and post-crisis rh personality back, mostly the wit and dramatics. He's having fun with it again. Hes happier now
Wonder Woman/Red Hood: Hellbound: another mini series where jason gets attacked by demons that keep calling him a fallen angel and is saved last minute by diana. Diana and jason investigate and it turns out that they were after him because he came back from the dead, and in order to stop them they have to travel to the underworld and find an artifact or something. While investigating diana takes jason with her to the home of Julia kapatelis because she has some useful information, and diana introduces him to vanessa (post crisis), who has recovered from being silver swan and is living with her mom. At some point jason makes a joke about having been to hell before and dianas like no green arrow saw you in heaven and jasons like "wait what" and calls prime yelling at him for taking him out of heaven. Also diana is carrying this team up. She kicks ass jasons just along for the ride
Red Hood: Judge, Jury, Executioner: another team up, this time with two-face. Jason and Harvey work together to take out penguin because hes been bothering Harvey and jason just wants to piss him off more like in prince of gotham. The fact that people thought tim and jason were the same robin is also part of this, because Harvey was one of the few people to notice the change. He brings up how the new kid acted way different than the kid with the guts to insult his car and calls jason his favorite robin. At one point jason kinda snaps at Harvey a little and is like "you killed my dad" and Harvey says he didn't so jason investigates (hacks into batcomputer) and finds out that not only was Willis not killed by Harvey or in prison, but he was part of batman Inc and died then and bruce just didnt tell him. It ends with penguin losing a significant amount of power and the cops closing in on harvey and jason (like in task force z) and harvey takes the fall for him and is sent to arkham
Red Hood: I Will Cause Fear pt 2: jason screams at bruce for not telling him about his dad and disappears after a brief scuffle when bruce trys to arrest him for black masks murder. He stops at his willis' grave to pay his respects before going on the run. Jason reveals through narration that he had been holding back the whole time, biding his time and playing nice. He lures bruce to the other side of gotham, breaks into arkham, shoots joker dead before he gets a word in, plants explosives, and breaks harvey out. Then, very publicly, he blows up arkham in an explosion that also takes out zsasz, pyg, and mad hatter among others. Hes racking up the body count. One by one the bats try to capture him and fail. I havent thought of one for everyone but with cass she almost gets him, and in thought bubbles he reveals that talia sent him to train with david cain during lost days so he does a move that he only could have learned from him (reference to Cass and Bruce's first meeting in no mans land?) And the suprise gives him a split second to rip off his helmet, drop kick it off the roof, and set off the explosion, forcing Cass to choose between making sure there were no injuries (there weren't. No one was there) or pursuing jason. Also for duke i mainly have the idea of jason shutting off the lenses of his mask (the helmet was previously blown up) and fighting blind, remarking that hes blind as a bat to himself, because of dukes light abilities. The whole time hes talking up duke because even if they're fighting jason does really respect him (contrasted with how he talked shit about tim his whole, much shorter, fight earlier) he says how bruce is holding him back and that he could take on superman if he wanted (really mirror what shiva said to him in outsiders). Jason gets away from the bats, but bruce called in the justice league for backup. Jason, knowing there's no way he can take on the entire league, surrenders, but hes smirking the whole time
Red Hood: If I Cannot Inspire Love pt 1: Jason's darkest moment. Hes more like his utrh characterization here. still reeling from the realization that bruce hid info about willis twice, jason kinda goes off the deep end. He tries to take his mind off things by going after black mask, who was trying to swoop in to take the territory harvey and jason took from penguin in the last arc. While digging jason discovers that black mask has been heavily involved in human trafficking into gotham and jason, furious, tracks him down and after a mostly one sided fight, threatens him saying "I should kill you for this" and roman mocks him saying hes not gonna do it because batman will be mad. Jason contemplates for a second then decides that he really doesnt care what bruce thinks. Batman bursts in a few seconds to late to see jason in the macbeth pose holding up black masks severed head, his first non-supernatural kill of the whole run
Red Hood: A Death In The Family: a rewrite of aditf and the first in a trilogy of flashback story arcs with jason reminiscing in blackgate as a framing device. Basically its just aditf from jasons perspective but minus the racism and bad writing. There's heavy emphasis put on jasons grief over gloria and his own unprocessed trauma after the events of diplomats son. Jaybin is drawn the most adorable he has ever been. That'll make it hurt more
Red Hood: Year One: im basing this on a post I reblogged the other day about a rh year one about what he was up to during the one year time skip. Jason, post batarang incident and failed confrontation (explicitly framed as a suicide attempt) is regaining his footing in gotham. He is not doing well mentally in the slightest. There's also hardly any dialog from jason, most of his quips are in thought bubbles, because his throat is kinda out of commission for a while. He also helps talia steal intel from lex luthor to stop him from doing something stupid. Jason slowly regains his ability to speak over the run but his mental health is progressively getting worse
Nightwing/Red Hood: Brothers in Blood: rewrite of bib heavily based on black widow breakdown because that comic has not left my head since i read it. Jasons worsening mental health comes into play here. Jason shows up in new york as nightwing, and dick slowly realizes that jason thinks hes him and is genuinely having a crisis. Dick is infinitely nicer about this than he was in bib, although he is still a little upset about the murders. Dick, still feeling guilty over blockbuster and everyone who died when bludhaven was bombed, decides he has to take care of jason, both to make sure he doesn't hurt himself and to make sure he isn't killing anyone while dressed like him. It goes about as well as you expect, although for a little bit things are looking up and dick is cautiously optimistic. Then dick sees the batarang scar and asks jason about it, jason shuts down and runs off and disappears for a while again
Red Hood: Lost Souls: back to present, harvey breaks jason out of prison to repay him for breaking him out of arkham. Jason is not doing that great mentally. Him and Harvey bond over how trauma shaped their lives (because if no one will do Harvey's DID correctly I will) a little while later jason runs into an older teen girl (like 16/17) running around as robin. She introduces herself (gan from the white knight universe in main continuity. im not the biggest fan of white knight but I liked her) and she was part of we are robin and wants jason to train her. Jason's less enthusiastic about the idea, so he tracks down duke and asks him to help. Duke is hesitant about helping jason after their last interaction, but since she was one if his robins he talks to her. Unfortunately for Jason he just encourages her, and also unfortunate for jason he gets attached and she's a fast learner. He ends up getting attacked by some rogue with a vendetta (pick literally anyone he blew up arkham thats bound to hurt/piss off a few people. Ill just say scarecrow for now) and she saves him. He agrees to let her stick around and sees her as a younger sister. Idk if she should get a new hero name or remain red hood's robin yet
Red Hood: Night Eternal: Very gothic artstyle and aesthetic. Jason catches wind of some suspicious robberies and investigates. He tracks the thief and sees her from a distance, her face seems vaguely familiar, as if the memories came from another life, then once he catches up to her she introduces herself. Noctura is back. Precrisis nocturna, no vampires here. Jason stops in shock as memories come rushing back. He falls to his knees and rips his helmet off in shock and barely stammers out a "mom." Natalia recognizes him and hugs him as tightly as she can, vowing that she'll never loose him again. Later prime explains what the crisis events are while awkwardly skirting past his involvement in them
Red Hood: Dead Man Walking: the grand finale of the run. Jason runs into batman for the first time since he escaped blackgate. They're about to fight but have to team up for the greater good. They part ways and agree that even though they care about each other, they usually just end up hurting each other in the end. Jason distances himself from the bats, hes friendly with them and doesnt think hed ever fully cut off contact, but hes not trying to be as close with them as he was before, and hes found a new family in gan, nocturna, harvey, prime, and the outlaws, who he still hangs out with and does missions with sometimes.
a little embarassing for everyone who talks abt jason ruining stories/characters as if that isnt the writer's problem? like me personally im capable of writing a good jason, a good barbara, a good bruce, a good cass, a good dickie, a good tim, a good duke, a good helena, a good steph, a good damian, a good titus, fuck that old british man idc enough abt him, a good EVERYTHING basically with plot if my heart desires & if i have the time. but youre telling me the person being paid to do that shit cannot do it & its a fictional guy's problem?
like i cannot stress this enough. i can promise you i can do every single character justice with their histories, flaws, journeys, good qualities all kept in mind & give you an engaging story & i do it for free. but the dc writer who refuses to write women well, or at all, & is homphobic/racist/ableist/bigoted in any capacity is not the one to blame? nor dc who reward such writers but went after a trans woman for one statement in a way they didnt go after literal predators? its somehow JASONS fault? ok.
i think dc needs to treat crime alley like how bruce has called it its own micro biome of gotham with its own games and rules so that jason doesnt have to be removed from where he literally grew up and came back too but so there doesnt have to be constant fighting between the bats and jason
I feel like people who say Jason needs to leave Gotham for his development forget that Gotham is supposed to be an analogue for NYC.
Do you (general) know how big NYC is?!
Its boroughs function like they're their own cities. It operates like it is its own city state, separate from New York.
Hell, each of the boroughs have their own names neighborhoods with distinct cultural identities.
That is what Gotham should be. Park Row/Crime Alley *is* its own microbiome that has its own rules.
A microbiome that Bruce, historically, does not patrol v often because of his trauma.
But sure, Jason is the only one who needs to get over himself 🙄
No, Jason and Bruce absolutely can coexist in Gotham. What they can't coexist in is the same book.
And frankly, I absolutely think that Gotham should have several titles all its own that follows key figures within the city. It doesn't make sense to only have Batman and Detective Comics for the Gotham gang. These books should overlap and have crossovers where characters from each story team up or clash or whatever the fuck.
Is that something DC.is ever gonna do?! Absolutely the.fuck not.
But is it something they absolutely could do?! Yes, if absolutely is. Y'all (general) need to expect more of these corporations.
