shadesofredhood

[shadesofredhood]

the "would jason have been better off without bruce?" discussions always go "no he was always doomed" "he would've become a criminal like his dad" "bruce gave him a few good years and that's the best an utterly doomed homeless kid in a bad neighbourhood should ever ask for". even the bruce wayne haters take a break to agree that jason would've died a miserable criminal because that's the only possible end for kids like him

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Jason Todd moodboard

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The thing is, I actually think it's a super interesting angle to look at the intersection of trauma and mental illness and vigilantism and coping mechanisms with Jason's character.

But, for me, if you want to seriously ask at what point does Jason need therapy more than he needs the vigilante lifestyle it's not Red Hood Jason you should be looking at. Red Hood Jason was literally murdered and the mysteriously resurrected. That's not something you can therapy your way out of! That's something that no amount of talking will ever help you understand, because it's a completely incomprehensible event!

No, if anyone needs therapy it's 12 year old Jason.

It's 12 year old Jason, who has poverty trauma and homelessness trauma and prison system trauma and parentification trauma and drug related trauma and, depending on your reading, potentially sexual trauma.

It's 12 year old Jason, who is taken in by Bruce - a man who is *also* severely traumatised (in extremely different ways) and chooses to dress up as a Bat and punch people about it instead of seeking healthy coping strategies.

It's 12 year old Jason, who Bruce decides - without psychiatric training or so much as a second opinion - needs the same outlet that "helped" Bruce and "helped" Dick.

And by the time aditf rolls around, Bruce is maybe just realising that he's made a mistake. But it's too late, because for two years he's told this child - a child who arguably feels indebted to him, a child who is extremely isolated and had very few if any other trusted adults to talk to - that violence and avoidance is how you deal with emotions.

I think that's fascinating to think about!

That Bruce's own failure to process his trauma left him blind to what Jason might actually have benefited from! That if Bruce had noticed Jason struggling earlier, if he'd reacted differently or explained himself better in aditf, Jason might not have felt the need to travel around the world alone looking for a woman he'd never met and only just learned about!

That if *Bruce* had been healthier, had been to therapy instead of throwing all his energy into vigilantism, none of this might have happened!

Reframe Red Hood Jason as a tragedy of Bruce's own making, not because of the classist bullshit that Jason was always going to end up a criminal and Bruce failed to stop that, but because Bruce's terrible coping mechanisms became *Jason's* terrible coping mechanisms and nobody likes to see the worst parts of themselves in the mirror.

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I think it's a fundamental thing to understand Jason's character, to realize that he, in fact, had no place to go back.

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every time I see a “kill JT again” post i mentally kill the posters fav. This accomplishes nothing because magic is not real and also sometimes that persons fav IS JT so he’s just been killed twice

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I'm an advocate for Jason Todd who still kills people just because I think it's fun to hear about. Yes I know murder is bad but have you seen the debates people get up to when their fav kills someone? Let me be entertained. Let it happen.

[shadesofredhood]

There's a lot you can do with the memory of a dead child. You can sanctify him, build a shrine to that boy in your heart. Ditch the flaws and edges that made him who he was, those are not needed anymore. He's no longer a person, just the idea of one, why not make it a perfect one? It'd be nicer to him, to only speak about the good stuff and forget the bad and grey.

You can also exonerate yourself through him, he's not going to mind. It's always a tragedy for one to be lost so young, the living are grieving enough as they are. Why turn this tragedy into a blame game? You can just push it onto him, he won't feel bad about it. He won't feel anything at all, not anymore.

Before you judge this, think about it. The grieving father is inconsolable, a pain so indescribable nothing can make it right. Would you point out his shortcomings at this trying time? Of course not! It's best to alleviate his guilt. If the kid was alive, well then it'd be different. The awful victim blaming of a kid trying to do good. But there's no victim here, just a corpse. You can share the responsibility with him.

A dead kid is an awful, unholy thing, but it is also a convenient one. Certainly, much more convenient than a living man, with human flaws and desperate for justice. Graves are perfect for burying things, but ghosts are a wrathful force. They'll haunt the narrative, they'll haunt your dreams and if you'd be so unlucky to offend them, they'll hunt you for sport.

[shadesofredhood]

Prompt: meta fic that follows Jason's ao3 where we see the summaries word counts dates and tags on his fic as well as the first and last author note. It spans all the way from jaybin to rebirth red hood with gaps when he dies. You can see the style grow better and the themes darker, especially after he comes back with angry themes, that slowly shift to sad, depressing stuff, going from "batman's a+ parenting" revenge stories to shorter hurt no comfort stuff where red hood dies in the end. That found family fic about a street orphan being adopted by batman stops updating abruptly before being marked discontinued years later. Jason's author notes, no matter the periode, are the classic incredible ao3 lore.

I also like to believe there's a time period where he sends Bruce the nastiest batjoke porn he finds under the pretense of case files

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What's something you wish fandom discussed more often?

Nobody talks about how Bruce hid Willis Todd's death from Jason. Imo, that's up there with bringing him back to Ethiopia. I need more fics where Jason's relationship with Bruce fractures after that, instead of it being a catalyst.

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fake idgafer. i saw tht haunted look in ur eyes

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ACHIEVEMENT: new Tim Drake descriptor unlocked

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[Jason: "Dick's going to be so mad when they all get shot. Got to find a way to blame it on Tim somehow..."]

okay yeah maybe he's a little funny

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FRIENDS.

Today.

I have righted a great wrong.

And.

In doing so.

I have uncovered…

A GREAT LIE.

To explain.

Whilst I was working on a personal project, I noticed something…INTERESTING about Teen Titans #29.

Aka, Titans Tower.

AKA, That One Time Jason Todd Did This:

SO.

There was a panel with a…PECULIAR coloring “mistake.”

As you can see, IT SEEMS AS THOUGH Jason’s extended leg is colored in a FLESH TONE vs the MUSTARD YELLOW of his tights.

CURIOUS.

Curious indeed.

BUT! I let it go. Perhaps it was just my monitor. Or a simple coloring error.

AND THEN…

WHY, WHAT’S THAT RIGHT THERE???

IN THAT TINY PATCH OF EASILY MISSABLE LEG???

A TINY PATCH OF FLESH TONED LEG.

So small as to be easily missable if one were to, say, RECOLOR JASON’S LEGS SO THAT HE WERE WEARING TIGHTS.

GUYS.

GUYS.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS??????

JASON TODD ORIGINALLY CONFRONTED TIM DRAKE AT TITANS TOWER IN THE PANTIES!

It was only AFTER THEY HAD COLORED THE ISSUE that the tights were added in.

DC Comics…you were good.

You ALMOST got away with it.

But I was BETTER.

(If you’d like to see the fruits of my labor, feel free to visit this post.)

[shadesofredhood]

let me just make something super clear:

for all you, "jason has to pay for his crimes" truthers out there, i would just like to say.....more like yell

HE HAS!!!

he has paid several times:

between the beating within an inch of his life from his father

the weird rapey lobotomy also from his father

being thrown in arkham by his brother after their father was supposedly dead

the supposedly dead father still somehow airing out to a room full of people about what is most likely sexual abuse during his childhood

his father meeting him at a random bar to tell him his best friend is dead and no, he cant come back home

his father slitting his throat and leaving him to bleed out and/or be exploded while said father helps the guy that beat him to death and blew him up escape

like sir... he has paid for those 8 heads in a duffle bag tenfold by now, can he like take a nap instead, get a cat, a codependent hubby to spend his days with, a baby -- a chance to be a real mommy....yknow, normal things for a man his age to want

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thinking more about the "jason has self-care days" anon

i do think it would be really funny if he was the most well-adjusted of the bats. like just. the bragging rights that would afford him

bruce going "you were off the grid all day and we needed you for a case"

and jason being like "you know studies show people are more productive when they separate their home life from work and taking time away is essential for proper work performance. so yeah i was unavailable. i was at the spa getting all the knots massaged out of my back"

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[shadesofredhood]

I'm having thoughts about Magic All-Caste Jason, and what could have been if he was invented with that destination in mind (and it wasn't written by scott lobdell).

Say he has the same backstory but we cut out the batman and robin interlude. At twelve he falls in with a group of magical warrior monks who are sworn to fight ontological Evil.

The thing is, the all-caste are a caste. What does that actually mean here? They don't interact with the rest of society (or the DC universe) in any meaningful way. Are they a caste above the rest? Below? Enveloping all others? Outside of all others? Why invoke the idea of caste systems at all in a Jason Todd story if you don't have something to say about social class (something Jason's entire character is in conversation with)?

So here's the pitch: the all-caste position themselves as outside of society to better serve their function in defending it. Jason, the previously homeless gotham orphan with a strong sense of justice joins up. He takes vows of poverty and abstinence, which seems redundant to him, he was doing that anyway. He gets the magic and combat training, and is the only human to survive the process in a thousand years etc etc. Upon reaching adulthood they send him out to work.

His mission is to a great hub of Evil, where the fight is most dire and the challenge great, but so too is the need. It's Gotham, obviously.

After a years of training in isolation, he's thrust back into the real world where there is no such thing as 'outside of society', evil looks a lot like the mundane, and people don't fall into discrete good and bad categories, regardless of supernatural influence. He knew all these things but now he has a new ideology and responsibilities and also magic powers. This is his old neighborhood and it is struggling. Some of it is demons. Most of it isn't. What part is The Evil? Jason's not interested in crime but in justice, legal or otherwise. This city is guarded by a warrior who claims to fight from the shadows but in reality fights from a place of power. Jason does the opposite, and he could take or leave the shadows. They are only nominally on the same side. To be outside of the system is to be counter to the system. There is no such thing as a moral billionaire. How do you fight Evil?

It's a story of struggle against the systems he is enmeshed in, idealism, utilitarianism, the desire to do right, the luxury to do right, and the luxury to do wrong. Also he has magic swords and fights a bunch of demons.