#Jason todd meta

[scarlethood]

hey everyone knows that canonically jason did not ask bruce to kill the joker right? we all know that 'jason asks bruce to kill joker for him' is fanon right? we all know that jason said 'i am going to kill the joker, batman will have to kill me to stop me' right? we all understand that vengeance against the joker is something that jason is ready to do himself but he needs bruce 'a father's righteous vengeance is to kill his child's murderer' wayne to stand witness to his failure but not necessarily participate in breaking his one rule right? we all get that when talking about utrh and saying batman had to choose it's about action- killing jason or inaction- not saving joker right? we know batman killing joker wasn't a presented option even though he interpreted it that way right?

[goodoldfashionedengineer]

I really don't like the narrative of "Bruce thinks if he hadn't made Jason Robin, Jason would have ended up as a criminal."

I much, much prefer the narrative Robins (2021-) gave us. Jason knows he did illegal stuff to survive. He did what he had to do. But has been called a crook, a criminal, a kingpin and similar stuff so many times and yeah, he is one, that he believes this narrative of "oh, I so would have ended up as a criminal." Jason does not have a high opinion of himself. He knows his skills, he knows what he is, but his self worth isn't big.

And then you have Bruce. Who doesn't think that at all. He expects Dick and Stephanie to still be heroes if they hadn't been Robin. But Jason? No. Jason would be successful. He would use his skills, combine it with a passion and help others that way. In #5, they were all in a simulation based on Bruce's idea of what their lives would've been if they hadn't been Robins. And Jason? Jason is a famous race car driver. So good that he wins and wins and wins. He has his own charity dedicated to his mother. Every single penny he wins goes to that charity.

[jasonsthighholsters]

praying for the day DC realizes the way to navigate the clusterfuck they’ve caused with jason todd’s moral code is to have him start facing (and killing) magical threats. red hood is not red hood if he doesn’t kill. jason todd can’t keep coming back to gotham and hanging out with the batfamily (and making DC money by attracting the new burst of fans from WFA and Arkham Knight) if he does kill. the obvious solution is to throw him (permanently) into the magical world, where the ethics of killing otherworldly threats is, at least to the narrative, less cut-and-dry, and more removed from batman’s sphere of control.

and then they can bring back the goddamn all-blades!! and i would do unholy things for a Red Hood and Constantine comic, and i know many of my mutuals agree. hell, DC can even bring back his friendship with eddie bloomberg (because the other obvious way to fix The Jason Todd Problem is to expand his lore from when he was Robin, to expand his characterization and further entrench him in the wider superhero world) and they can team up against some evil monster demon or something. if DC was really brave they’d explore the concept of immortality with him..

of course, all of these things require a good jason writer… of which remains to be seen

[dceasesd]

why juni ba’s the boy wonder has my favorite jason characterization of any contemporary comic run: a needlessly in-depth analysis (pt.1)

oh boy oh boy am i excited for this one buckle up boys it’s gonna be a long one. analysis under the cut (WITH PICTURES!!)

i, like many others, have many thoughts and opinions about juni ba's the boy wonder that i'd like to express. i was having trouble formatting my rant, though, so i decided that it was easiest to just address some of the common complaints i've seen about the comic and jason's characterization and insert my ramblings throughout it. so far i've seen three main complaints:

the typical boiling down of jason's character to "the angry one"

his lack of strategy going into the fight with the demon is out-of-character

the neighbor's kid interaction

to start with the first one-- when introducing jason's character, in both the second and first issue, ba uses the descriptors "coarse", "bitter", "hardened", "brash" and, of course, "rageful".

so, yes-- i understand where people are having issues with this characterization. however, even if it's overplayed, it's still important to remember that jason is angry, and is driven, in part, by his anger at bruce and the joker. and, as ba highlights, he deserved to be! completely erasing jason's anger is just as bad as defining him with it.

i also don't think it's wholly accurate to say that ba is boiling jason down to just his anger. it might seem like that when only considering the dialogue and narration, but jason's behavior in the comic doesn't perfectly align with how the narrator describes him. while the narration describes him as "rageful" and could be an instance of generalization, jason's actions throughout the comic are more aligned with two other emotions/motivators: fear and despair. we never see jason get actually, properly angry; the closest we get is when he's seemingly annoyed by damian (which i believe could be performative) and when he becomes violent, accidentally hurting damian.

even in this instance, though, he is not driven to this violence by rage, but rather fear. so, while ba states in the narration that jason is driven by his anger, he contradicts himself by highlighting how jason's sadness and terror motivates his character. this could be interpreted as lousy writing on ba's part, but i'm not going to attribute the paradox to that inference. to me, it actually represents a critque of the "jason is the angry robin" generalization, because it calls to attention the discrepancies between how one is described versus reality, an issue that jason both faces in the comics (bruce using him as a cautionary tale when dying WASN'T HIS FAULT) and outside of the comics, as mentioned previously.

furthermore, this highlights the difference between what jason believes about bruce's perspective and bruce's actual perspective (according to damian). jason believes himself to be a "failure", but damian refutes this by describing his conversation with bruce concerning jason, a conversation that does not align with jason's belief. if you couldn't tell by now, perception versus reality is a BIG theme in this comic (and for jason's character in general!)

i was really fascinated by ba's take on jason, because it veered pretty far from a lot of contemporary comics, most of which do, unfortunately, play with the angry robin jason generalization. they've been doing a bit with his fear, too, which has either been pretty fun or the most awful thing ever (i'm looking at you zdarsky. gotham war was fucked up), but what makes ba's jason stand out to me is how he grapples with his grief.

this boy is so sad. ba's jason might actually be the saddest rendition of him i've seen in canon content. we've seen jason grapple a little bit with the despair rooted in his death and resurrection, mainly in lost days, where he cries 3 (?) times, fresh out of the pit and very traumatized.

even in this comic, though, he reacts to his grief with anger more prominently than sadness. that obviously doesn't mean the despair isn't there, though-- anger is just an easier outlet for it (which i could really get into the masculinity aspects of that, but then this would be wayyyyyy too long).

ba's jason, though? that motherfucker is so. sad.

christ he's depressing. AND THAT'S SUCH A FRESH PERSPECTIVE!!!!!!! THANK YOU JUNI BA!!!!!!

now i'm pretty sure some people would argue that this rendition in out of character because he's so sad. to me, though, he's still the same jason; he covers up his sadness with anger and pettiness, redirecting his own insecurities onto those around him to mask his true feelings.

ba quite literally illustrates this in the comic. whenever he is being his snide, normal self, he has his red hood mask on; but when he actually opens up to damian and expresses himself truthfully, the mask is off. ba is highlighting how the classic jason anger and bitterness is, in part, a performance and coping mechanism.

this post is already too long, so i'll go over the two other critques in a different post, which i will link below (eventually). if you guys have any thoughts you'd like to share or discuss, my dms and asks are completely open! if you made it this far, i hope you enjoyed my ranting. look out for another post soon! :))

part 2 / part 3

[fandommothfreak]

Jason Todd's ACTUAL Music Taste

(Someone has probably already done this but I am in desperate need of a reference sheet tailored to me specifically.)

Poison Idea Jason is introduced in Batman #408 (released 1987) wearing a red shirt with POISON IDEA written on the front. Poison Idea is a punk rock + hardcore punk band from Portland, Oregon. We also see a poster of the same band hanging in his apartment, so I think this is a favorite of his.

Pick Your King (released 1983)

Kings of Punk (released 1986) WARNING FOR SUICIDE + SELF-HARM TOPICS

- The Modernettes We see another poster with REBEL KIND written beneath the silhouette of four people. In the first image shown above, we can also see "rebel kind" spraypainted by Jason's apartment door. The closest match I could find for this is a song called "The Rebel Kind" by punk band The Modernettes.

This band sounds more pop punk to me (although I'm not the best at differentiating between musical subgenres), and Jason only shows interest in one of their songs. That, paired with the sound we hear from Poison Idea, makes me think Jason isn't as into pop punk as he is hardcore. This might be one of those songs where the message in the lyrics really resonates. "I know one day we're going to leave this far behind, and we'll be free to run with the rebel kind," as just one example. I think he identifies with the term "rebel kind," especially if he's the one who painted that on the wall. (I'm assuming he did.)

Here's a link to the full album, View From the Bottom (released 1982).

- Eric Peters I have no fucking idea who this is, but he's hanging on Jason's wall. He's got a hat and a guitar and a fuckass goatee (pictured in the second image, next to the Poison Idea poster). I can find one guy who only started releasing music in the 90s and another guy affiliated with DC Comics who doesn't look old enough to be referenced this way.

The hat and the guitar + straight hair combo reminds me a little of Slash + Izzy from Guns n' Roses. They released their first album like a month after Batman #408 was released, but if one of the authors saw their US tour in 1985, it could still make sense. Or they just based it off the 80s rock star aesthetic in general. Point is, I don't know. So. Eric Peters can be whatever fanon wants, I suppose. - Blister Twister (DC's KISS) + Simon & Garfunkel We see a heavy metal band, Blister Twister, perform a heavy metal cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" in Batman #412. Jason thinks it's cool.

- (UPDATE) Slipknot & Lacuna Coil Jason has posters of what looks like 1999 Slipknot (heavy metal) and Shallow Life by Lacuna Coil (goth/alternative metal) hung up in his room in Nightwing Annual 2021, which is part of the Rebirth relaunch.

Slipknot (released 1999)

Shallow Life (released 2009)

- Some concluding thoughts! (Edited to suit Jason's Rebirth music taste.) Based on what little we get, I think, as a kid, Jason leans more towards harsher music and has a preference for hardcore punk. Punk rock and garage punk are up there as well. He likes music that sounds raw and real. He'll jam to softer punk subgenres, like pop punk and post-punk, but that's more so when he really feels for the lyrics/messaging. Maybe he starts getting into the latter more as he grows up, but hardcore is still his favorite.

Metal music doesn't show up until after the Blister Twister performance, so maybe that's his introduction to the genre? It starts off as more of a superficial appreciation ("Cool!"), but then he gravitates from hardcore to nu metal (which is inspired by hardcore). A lot of people would consider Slipknot a nu metal band, and their 1999 album sounds like a mix of a few different subgenres, so maybe Jason is introduced to more of those subgenres through them. And then Lacuna Coil. I'm not familiar with them, but reddit says it's goth metal. I listened to some of their songs from Shallow Life, and I can absolutely see angsty teenager Jason resonating with those lyrics.

tl;dr I think Jason prefers the harsher subgenres of punk and metal, but still enjoys a variety of subgenres in both. Punk was his childhood; metal was his teenhood; and I'm assuming he still likes both in young adulthood. He likes the more raw, more real-sounding stuff and songs with messages that he resonates with.

Moving even more into headcanon territory: street rap, East Coast rap, lots of underground artists, that's all music Jason likes and listens to. I honestly don't think Jason would feel much of anything for mainstream pop music since it doesn't sound very raw or real and a lot of it isn't very relatable to him, but I do still think he'd jam to it occasionally for the laughs (and there might be the one-off song that does say something that resonates).

And if we're taking Jason's love for classic literature into account, then yes, I will subscribe to the headcanon that he enjoys musicals. I don't think he'd be a fanatic, but he appreciates the story and he might jam to songs that resonate with him like "The Rebel Kind" does. (I still think that's his favorite song, as a young adult.)

If anyone who sees this can find more canon hints of Jason's music taste, please, please show me! I love these little Easter eggs.

[glitter-stained]

I always feel like a little sad seeing posts about how Jason's character is inherently tragic and that's what makes it good, how him being unloved, a tragic consequence of his own actions, is inevitable, and how that shouldn't change because any change on that regard is a fundamental misunderstanding of his character. Yes, Under the Hood is a tragedy. Yes, Jason survived and for a long time people have been pretty confused at what to do with the character that survives the tragic ending. That doesn't mean he should continue to be trapped in the tragedy, that there's only value in him as long as he's unloved. And maybe that's me preaching and being a party pooper again but the idea that the teenage-to-young adult character with a mental illness that has damaged all his relationships is doomed to be lonely and have bad/upended relationships forever, that he's only good as a character as long as he's hurting others and/or himself (and usually both) and isolated because of this... It's sad, at the very least. I refuse the presumption that tragedies are the only stories wise and worth telling.

Also I personally really dislike the idea that Jason isn't and shouldn't be anyone's favourite, because he made himself nobody's favourite on purpose. Did he make himself a villain on purpose? Fuck yeah. Does any of his early attempts at reaching out to people hurt them? Indubitably. I maintain that this is because he wants to be someone's favourite as he is, at his worst, with his hands covered in blood. And I think he should be. (Without contradicting or damaging, by comparison, the relationships between other characters, that's the tightrope we need to be weary of when making such things, of course.)

It's like this: love, in most relationships, is conditional: you don't owe your friend or your partner to continue to love them if the relationship changes, if you change, if you become violent etc. If my girlfriend started murdering puppies, I would stop loving her. Ideally, however a parent's love for their child is unconditional. That's very often unfortunately not the case, but ideally it'd be, it's really not great for a kid to have zero parents that love them unconditionally. And most importantly, it's not just about actual unconditional love, it's about it being perceived. So it doesn't matter in the debate if Bruce actually loves Jason in spite of the murder, it matters that Jason asks for confirmation of it at the end of UTH and receives a negative answer. (similar arguments to be made about Catherine loving Jason and dying of drug overdose and Willis going to jail and dying - it's the potential perceived abandonment of it that would matter, not their agency and actual love. And it's not a question of whether he would be angry at it so much as that he'd yearn and hurt for it. And of course Sheila didn't love him at all.) That's why he, upon learning about Mia and reaching previously unknown to man levels of projection*, tries to rally her with the hope that, because she's "so similar to him" she would understand him. That's why upon learning about Dick "killing" Blockbuster Jason, again projecting more violently than a bullet, Jason makes Dick into his new favourite person (god, the concept behind BiB has so much potential why did it have to suck so bad...) Anyway, Jason to me is a character with a very intense, very overwhelming conception of love both in who he loves and how, who struggles to understand that other people love and show it differently, and it makes so much sense for him to keep looking for a person who will love him unconditionally (something that's both very rare and not necessarily healthy since, again, most relationships aside from parent-child relationships do not and probably should not include unconditional love). This is particularly interesting in the context of him having bpd (again, using bpd because i'm focusing on the interpersonal dimension that's been mostly studied within that frame) because BPD often functions around a vicious circle of "is afraid of rejection/abandonment -> does maladaptive behaviour in attempt to prevent rejection/abandonment OR protect oneself by being the one to leave first" which is what leads to the instability in relationships. It's a doomed prophecy: i have maladaptive patterns that make me think my girlfriend is gonna leave me at any time, I keep demanding to see her phone, assuming she's cheating everytime she leaves and thus demonizing her even though I was glorifying her five minutes earlier" then she's going to leave me, which is gonna reinforce my thought pattern that everyone always leaves me. But that also means that in rare instances in which the other person in the interact, for whichever reason, sticks around through that, then these incorrect thought patterns begin to change through the sheet logic of extinction: if i think that people always leave me because of something fundamentally wrong with me and people don't leave then eventually the idea that people are doomed to abandon/reject me is going to lose its power. That's, btw, an important part of why therapy works.

(*that one's a joke, btw. He's not projecting onto mia and dick to levels impossible to mankind, just pretty intensely. Very human levels of projection, might I add'. Just to clarify.)

Now, be mindful: I'm not saying make Jason an abusive boyfriend. I'm not saying put him in a relationship where the other stays because they're afraid of him, that's not unconditional love or acceptance that's just fear. Of course, the ideal version of it would be Jason goes to therapy but because dc hates me specifically this is never gonna happen, but imagine him being in a relationship, romantic or otherwise, with someone who is as intense and "unwell" about him as he is about them. I'm not saying it would fix him (again, get him so goddamn therapy jfc) but it would change him. And just as it doesn't have to be healthy it doesn't have to be tragic.

I was asked a while ago my thoughts on Jason's current stagnancy as a character and if I thought he could become interesting again, and I said yes and talked about the directions I dream would be explored with his character and their potential. My answer hasn't changed, and it's completely compatible with this, but I will add: I think Jason as a character has largely and for long enough been defined through his yearning to be somebody's favourite, and that if you want his mode of interacting with others and dynamic with different characters to change then this is a very logical way to do it. And it would make a lot of sense for it to be the catalyst for other changes in his character (ie in his name or philosophy).

Get that boy into a super intense long-term codependent situationship, is what I'm saying. Please.

[disco-troy]

Today on the “dc accidentally parallels Bruce’s relationship with his kids with Actual Supervillains” we have Bruce and Joker with Jason.

Jason calmly looking into the eyes of the men who just rewired his brain to fit their ideals asking “why?”

Jason panel 1: ..Batman? You did something to me… what did you do?

Jason panel 2 (to the joker): what did you do to me? Joker: I gave you the tiniest tiny est dose of joker toxin. So small. Just enough to bring back that psychotic alter ego of yours in your head.

It’s the last thing he can do after all the self determination was taken for him. The closest he can get to a rebellion after rendered powerless by his own brain. It’s asking why and never getting a response. Once from his father and once from his murderer. But the result is still the same.

Joker goes even farther with this metaphor, likening himself to Jason’s mother.

Joker: doesn’t mommy gets a say?

This has the idea of further drawing a parellel between what Joker and Bruce are to Jason in this arc. They are forces that shape him and make him what they want. It doesn’t matter what Jason wants or even needs, because “parents know best”. The truth is, for both of Jason’s “parents” Jason’s well-being is just an excuse for them to change him for their own benefit. Bruce wants Jason to stop fighting crime in Gotham like ��a bull in a china shop” and wants to assuage his guilt about what Jason has gone through. Joker wants to fuck with Batman. In this way Jason just becomes a causality in his own life.

What makes the comparison between Bruce and Joker even more tragic is that it’s because of Bruce’s machinations that Jason was vulnerable enough to be taken by the joker in the first place…

Still skittish I see, my poor little vigilante. What did he do to you? Jason: please just let me go Joker: I can’t stand to see you like this. Mean old Batman mucked around in your little head and made you so scared of everything. But don’t worry. I came to text out my new project and fix you at the same time.

Something which the Joker explicitly acknowledges!

And the way that Jason was left alone and vulnerable after Jason literally saved Gotham by driving a plane into a fucking meteor AND immediately went to comfort Bruce?! Like this implies AFTER Jason acted as an emotional crutch, Bruce didn’t even go let’s put you in contact with Babs so you are not running around with fear in your veins and no one to support you?

To reiterate: dc why are you having Batman do the same things to his kids that supervillains do

[wortsandall]

jason isnt even angry at bruce for the way that he died, hes mad at bruce for everything after his death. so saying that jason's anger at bruce is misdirected anger at sheila is just wrong on so many fronts. because first of all-jason was never mad at sheila. yes she sold him out to the joker and got him and herself killed and jason knows that and tried to save her anyway. i think hes aware of where the blame falls but that again leads into the second thing wrong with saying that. jason is not mad about the circumstances of his death-hes mad at the lack of change his death caused. because if bruce had died, jason would've done whatever he could to avenge that. that's a part of jason's love language. so to have bruce basically do nothing and let joker continue to hurt others grates on jason. im not even mentioning the massive victim blaming that bruce does as well. but its the aftermath that jason has a problem with not the before.

so no, jason's anger towards bruce is NOT misdirected anger at sheila. again because jason's anger has nothing to do with the circumstances around his death but everything following it. which sheila had no part in due to y'know. also being dead.

[varpusvaras]

Winnick will come this close to writing a good, rightfullly angry character with BPD/CPTSD and ruin it by making him his conception of "a dangerous psychopath" because dc's understanding of mental illness begins and ends with the joker.

I like that Jason was angry i'm not gonna lie I enjoy the "bad victim who doesn't accept that they were a necessary sacrifice, who doesn't think what happened to them is something they should be expected to tolerate, like fuck your greater good, you weren't there, it isn't worth this." I think even looking at Jason's past before getting adopted he has reason to be angry, like he is poor af and starving and he had to take care of his mom and his dad is in jail because he couldn't see another way to provide and he gets trafficked -he has so many reasons to be angry. And he's not, and I love jaybin, but I think there are so many ways and things he can be angry about without it feeling classist. And I love that he can't emotionally regulate, that he has so clearly BPD/CPTSD because why the fuck would he not, have you seen his life (and that's not even counting the csa hc, which i am because willfully and consistently implying csa and then not addressing it/denying it feels like feeding into a culture of taboo that ruins lives and getting away with covert victim-blaming at the same time). The issue is that they lack finesse or any kind of understanding of anger. The think anger is a personality trait. They think angry = evil. They think being angry means you're violent at and about everything, that you shoot indiscriminately even though you've known better since you were a kid, that you're suddenly treating women like shit (which, wtf seriously) which okay maybe THEY treat women shitty for no reason when they're angry, but that'd be more of a them problem I'd say. Their portrayal of anger is classist because their conception of emotions hasn't evolved since fucking Descartes. Think anger = bad = poor and not only doesn't it occur to them that this is classist, they so instinctively assign moral value to the concepts of poor and angry that they don't realise it and just conceptualise poor=angry and end up with incredibly classist portrayals of anger. You can write characters that are mentally ill and violent without being ableist, you can write characters that are poor and angry without being classist, but that requires a level of respect for people, introspection, humility willingness to learn about the sensitive topics you are exploring that is simply not accessible to Winnick and so many other dc writers.

And here comes my very hot take that I'm too cowardly to say off anon: the pit shouldn't have healed Jason's malnutrition. Like, outside of canon I love big jay, I love big men who are emotionally vulnerable and need comfort etc. but in canon? It just comes off as another way to adultify Jason, and make the horrible things that happen to him acceptable. Jason "sleeping with Talia because he is fucked up about Bruce" because they both look like adults until you realise this is actually just rape and you can't put any responsibility of Talia taking advantage of the kid under her care (very ooc of course) on the child himself. Jason fighting Mia looking like a 40 years old beating up a teenage girl when they're the same damn age. Fucking Ethiopia 2.0. And Jason's murders as well, for the matter. Like don't get me wrong the duffle bag of doom is an iconic villain move, but it's just that: a massive shock effect and a "psychopathic" move. We shouldn't need Jason beheading anyone to be horrified, because just one murder, if written correctly, should be enough. A child killing someone is a terrible thing. A child being put in a position where they think killing someone is the only solution to ending suffering (thinking about the Garzonas case) is a terrible thing. A kid trying to kill his murderer (because fuck his death has to matter it has to) and only begging to be allowed it should be horrifying. Jason, with his unhealed malnutrition making him look a couple of years smaller and younger than his physical age, should look his mental age. It should be impossible to look away from the reality of what he is: a traumatized teenager who wasn't allowed to grow up. And he has a gun. This is already a horror story.

Make utrh!Jason a villain if you must, but have the guts to sit with it. Don't shove the fact that he was a hero and a victim under the rug because it's uncomfortable. Sit with the unease that sometimes someone is doing something bad and is suffering a lot, and maybe they're doing the bad thing because they don't know how to survive the suffering, and suddenly it's not easy separating hero from villain from victim. Your imaginary lines in the sand will not protect you from the crude reality of the complicated and shitty situations you have chosen to depict; you open the can of worms now you can't look away and let the worms roam free just because you're squeamish.

How does it feel to be psychic and be in my head and write part of my essay on Jason for me? Fuck, I have so much to say about this but I need a good night of sleep to formulate it correctly. Look for a longer answer tomorrow, but in the meantime, everyone sit down and look at this and look at it hard. Thank you.

[perseus-jackass]

On the Jason is being just dramatic (in regards to being traumatized by his own death), it's genuinely so weird, because Bruce canonically spent 6 months lashing out at criminals and being reckless and overly violent to the point that it was being reported that he was on the 'rampage'. And both him and Dick had hallucinations of Jason regarding his death. His mistreatment of Steph (that led to her death - even if later retconned she was still tortured) was canonically a response to Jason's death. Bruce hit Dick and Dick lashed out violently at Danny Chase (I know Danny said Jason's death was no big deal due to understandable character reasons, but Bruce victim blamed Jason to his face in Hush which was before UTRH and everything).

But both Dick and Bruce's stans (as well as stans of other characters like Tim) seem to think that Jason should be immediately over his death while simultaneously understanding that they couldn't have expected Dick or Bruce to get over such a tragic event. Jason didn't just get an immediate resurrection like a lot of characters, he lost years, everyone moved on from him while he was gone. (I've seen characters who just got sent forward in time have their trauma respected more). Bruce didn't even get over Jason's death when Jason came back to life, but somehow Jason should?

Jason didn't even have a support network like they did but it somehow supposed to get over his trauma just so he can't lash out at other people's faves? Either death is no big deal, in which case everyone is being over dramatic (including Dick and Bruce), or death is a big deal, hence no one is being over dramatic (including Jason).

!!!! YES ITS ABOUT THE DOUBLE STANDARD

Why are Bruce and Dick’s reactions justified by the narrative while Jason’s is an over reaction?

Also the Jason was dead for YEARS thing. EXACTLY. People who hate Jason are always bringing up everyone else’s deaths (specifically Ollie and Hal usually which I just think is ironic bc THEY SEE JASON IN HEAVEN) but Jason’s was DIFFERENT. I suppose MAYBE a comparison could be made to Ollie narratively but that’s a stretch tbh.

And I specifically mean NARRATIVELY. Irl Jason was dead for almost TWENTY YEARS. I’m not exaggerating when I say Jason’s death is one of the most important things DC has ever done. It is absolutely different from anything else they ever did and to act like it wasn’t is just ignorance

But yeah, if you’re going to justify the outside characters reactions to Jason’s death you can’t turn around and say the character IT HAPPENS TO was in the wrong or being over dramatic

[heavysighing-dreamyeyes]

Okay, so, about Jason Todd's eyes. (I know I polled this a while ago but hear me out)

I think my favorite color for his eyes is blue. There's something tragic in the way he looks exactly like Bruce. No matter how far he runs, how much he changes, Jason looks like the man who never avenged him. (The father who isn't even his blood)

He looks like the brothers he tries to distance himself from, tries not to get attached to. He looks like the family that can't really accept how he's trying to save people, the ones who are always trying to 'fix' him.

I also like the idea that his eyes kind of pale after dying, though, not so much that they're unrecognizable. But in the way, he doesn't quite think they're his when he sees them in a mirror. The pit, dying, irrevocably altered him in a tangible way. (But it's in a way that no one ever seems to notice except for him)

[homosexualworkaccount]

Jason Todd’s “Replacement” nickname for Tim Drake, Origins and Popularisation

So, making a 2500-word essay on how a fanon nickname that only me and like two other people care about is not how I expected to spend my time in between exams.

A lot of Batfam fans are very, very much aware of the fanon “Replacement” nickname Jason has for Tim, and a lot of us very, very much hate it due to the connotations of fanon characterisation that it has. I don’t personally, I think it’s an alright enough one that fits into the established canon ones – but to be fair, I haven’t read the comics in a hot minute, so my memory could be screwy.

I got curious one day on where the nickname came from when a user on TikTok mentioned that it might’ve originated from a Batfam incest fic (They weren’t too sure and told me to take it with a grain of salt) – so shout out to them for starting me down this rabbit hole! I looked over on here and saw that notion repeated, though no one could pinpoint me to a specific fic beyond “It was popularised from a Batfam incest fic.”. I also saw a few people say that it was derived from canon, which piqued my interest further so I decided to go down a rabbit hole of fandom history purely for some fun.

The aim of this essay is just to clear up some misconceptions around the origin of the name, all fun and no harm. Don’t send harassment to people referenced in this either over a silly nickname, it's been well over a decade since they wrote the works used here.

Preface

Alright, first things first – all sources are going to be ones that were published after August 2005, the official date the first issue of Batman: Under the Red Hood was published, where Jason was established to be alive again.

While there could be a chance that the nickname was derived from a website/fanfiction before 2005, it’s highly unlikely due to the fact it was only popularised in the early 2010’s, and well, because Jason was dead and no one gave a shit about him. Also good to remember that most websites that ran before 2005 are defunct and purged from the internet now, particularly fanfiction websites (such as Quidzillia) due to various issues (taboo, copyright, costs to run ect).

Small note to make again – the Batfam fandom was fairly small at the time, the more fandom-y part of the DC community usually sticking to their own websites like Quotev, Quidzilla (again, defunct now), AO3, Fanfiction.net, LiveJournal and independent websites (again, defunct) while the rest stuck to discussion sites, so the entire fandom functioned more as a insular community from what I could tell. I will be working with the assumption that the nickname was created on one of the larger platforms, as any other platform didn’t have large enough influence to popularise the nickname.

The nicknames that I specifically looked for was simply Jason calling Tim Replacement in place of his actual name. Something like “Replacement Robin” was on very thin ice, but still counted as an offshoot. Anything else was off bets.

This whole thing will be split into a few sections to make some things for myself easier. Preface, Sources, Pre-cursor Fanfiction, Fandom Opinion and Language, First usage, Popularisation, Conclusion, Questions, Final Notes.

Sources

Fanfic.net – Created 1998, was and remains one of the larger fanfiction sites. Note; Fanfiction.net had various periods of time where there were large scale purges of fanfictions that held more mature content. Most notable instances were in 2002 and 2012.

Archive Of Our Own – The holy grail for my research. Created in 2008. For the information I got from there I used the search filter Date Updated, tagged Jason’s and Tim’s individual tags and followed from there.

Live Journal – Created 1999 and was used as one of the larger sites for fandom and fanfiction. Was used by DC fandom goers regularly so I used it to get an idea of the fandom at the time.

Tumblr – Created 2007. Theres various people on here who have compilations on DC timelines and comic sourcing that helped me correlate fandom growth with specific comic releases (Shout out to @ectonurites for their meta posts and timeline posts, they were a major source for this!). Dogshit filtering system, so I couldn’t find posts pre 2012 about DC.

Note; Quotev and Wattpad weren’t used in this as their filtering systems don’t account for searching for older fanfictions, so sadly had to be discarded as most fanfictions between 2006-2010 on those websites are now very difficult to find.

Pre-Cursor FanFiction

So, before we get to the actual first proper use I could find of “Replacement”, I first want to mention a fanfiction that had something very similar that I think would be important purely for archiving reasons around how the nickname came to be. And also because it fits the nickname criteria I mentioned earlier.

Published on the 29th of November 2006, last updated on the 28th of November 2007, was the fanfiction My-Enemy-My-Brother on Fanfiction.net by user theunknownvoice – featuring the first use of Jason referring to Tim with a nickname including replacement, Replacement Robin. Kudos to theunknownvoice, they created the very first nickname that would kickstart the rest.

While Jason doesn’t explicitly refer to Tim as Replacement – the main subject of this essay, it comes very damn close, so I wanted to include it. There is a part where Jason repeats replacement in his head multiple times, and I think he’s supposed to be referring to Tim, but the sentence isn’t very clear on that part, so I won’t count it, but it is important to acknowledge.

Though this isn’t the fanfiction that influenced the development of Replacement. This fic had barely enough reach to influence any future works years later. I couldn’t find any connection with this work and later works that officially did just have Jason call Tim “Replacement”

Fandom Opinion and Language at the time

I promise this is important and that I’m not a pretentious linguistic, English isn’t even my first language.

I like to think we all know how fandom discussion just seeps into fanfiction (See; the nickname green bean for Deku from MHA leaking into fanfiction) so I just want to quickly point this out.

Discussion around the two blew up after Jasons return in late 2005, people going “What does this mean” and “What does that mean for Tim”. Through the few posts I could dig up from this time and up to 2011, it seems people came to the conclusion that Tim was Jason’s replacement, and that their dynamic was Jason dealing with the fact that he had one. You can definitely see that in some of the posts and fanfiction written at the time that usually had Jason dealing with Tim being his replacement.

(Just a few examples from LiveJournal but more like this are still floating around, if they aren’t deleted anyway)

It’s very likely that the authors themselves engaged in similar discussions/had independent thoughts that ended in the same conclusions, seeping into the fanfiction itself later. In the comics pre-New 52 I couldn’t find any major instance of Jason explicitly referring to Tim as his replacement (only implied through speech), so this was mostly contained in fandom discussions from what I can tell. (Note, this was probably similar on comic discussion websites, but I couldn’t find any that still exist pre-2007, so I’m going to assume literacy skills are not any better on those sites. See; Batman dick riders)

The fact that Tim is explicitly described as having replaced Jason, and sometimes as “Being the Replacement” on posts/fanfiction definitely had a hand in the creation and popularisation of the nickname, influencing the fan content made around the two.

First usage of Replacement

Cain! Cain! Is the first use of the nickname Replacement really from a Batfam incest fanfiction?

Nope, thank God.

After filtering their character tags together on AO3, going to the oldest page and clicking through over 10 pages, reading every single fanfiction on each one (yes, even the weird ones, I was dedicated) I found the first instance where Jason explicitly refers to Tim as Replacement, that still exists today anyway.

Published on the 24th of January, 2009 by user shiny_glor_chan, is the fanfiction Four Calling Birds, a fanfiction detailing Stephenie Brown returning from faking her death (a whole headache from the comics that I can't be arsed to explain) and getting to meet Jason and Dick for the first time. Genuinely sweet, and a corner stone of fandom history, officially. Hip hip Hooray! Congratulations shiny_glor_chan.

I tried tracing to see if this person had any other accounts that I could find to see where they got the nickname from, but it seems it’s mostly a nickname they thought up out of the fact that they had consistently wrote Jason explicitly stating that Tim was his replacement

And reading through several more pages of fanfiction again, feeling like I want to bleach my eyes out, I found the second instance of the nickname being used. Published on the 26th of May, 2010 by user axiel-neesan, is the fanfiction The Only Piece You Get, where Jason basically acts as Tim’s cabbie and bonds with him. Another corner stone of fandom history, hooray.

These two authors are completely unrelated and have no connections to each other besides both frequenting LiveJournal, having taken prompts and having friends from that website, despite having no accounts I could find. I personally think they had a similar train of thought of “Huh, that would be a sick ass nickname.”. Chances are that axiel-neesan saw shiny_glor_chans fic and got inspired as the fandom was dead small on AO3 at the time – around 20 pages worth of fanfiction from 2008-2010 (And thats being generous if we’re counting now deleted ones)

These two fanfictions are immensely important because it’s the only early instances I could find of the nickname being used, and for about two years after the nickname pops up occasionally – but by no means was it popular, or even regularly used, I had to look for the fanfictions that used it.

Props to shiny_glor_chan and axiel-neesan! I pray that you two don’t see what the fandom thinks of that nickname now.

Popularisation

Early 2012 saw the proper explosion of fandom for the Batfam, and by extension the nickname.

By this point there were so many fanfictions that I couldn’t read them all, so I started picking random ones that tagged Jason and Tims relationship, platonic or not. Pre-April-ish of 2012 the nickname popped up every other page or so, but sometime after mid-2012 the nickname was in almost every fanfiction that I skimmed through – so that’s its official growth period.

Why though? Several factors probably.

The New-52 was in full swing by this time, DC massively promoting the reboot to get new fans interested, so people picked up comics from there. Young Justice – the more mainstream exposure of DC to surface level fans aired its second season in April of 2012, introducing people to Tim Drake and his story and getting them interested. Fanfiction and fandom as a whole was becoming less taboo and more accepted in fan spaces, so encouragement to write it was much better than it was in the early years of the internet (Example; Teen Wolf’s production team)

As for a specific catalyst for the growth of popularity for the nickname? There might be something worth pointing to.

Kudos for @ectonurites for helping me on this (Hi Sam! I was anon!) and giving me a publishing date on Tim’s and Jason’s first New 52 interaction – Red Hood and the Outlaws #8, published on the 18th of April, 2012. It features an instance of Jason and Tim interacting in a very friendly and familial way, Jason explicitly calling Bruce their Dad. Compared to their last major previous interaction of Jason leaving Tim for dead, fans of the two who enjoyed the more familial potential (and tragically, romantic potential) took it and ran with it.

All of these combined in some way to contribute to the popularity of the nickname in mid to late 2012, and lead to it’s infamy in DC fanfiction.

Conclusion

In conclusion, how do I think the nickname came to be?

I think it’s a combination of factors that led to it’s creation. As already established people very much did see Tim as Jasons replacement at the time, and the language could have shortened down from “Tim replaced Jason” to “Tim is Jason’s replacement” to “Tim is the replacement” which I think could be the train of thought the 2006 author went down to create the nickname Replacement Robin.

This definitely influenced the AO3 writers as shiny_glor_chan was present on LiveJournal at the time (where this language was very prominent), so they were already down the line of thinking this and probably went “Huh, replacement is kinda a funny nickname” and added it. As already stated, I think axiel-neesan probably had a very similar train of thought or may have seen shiny_glor_chan’s fic and was inspired.

And from there people saw it, used it in their own works, getting leaked over onto LiveJournal, which was the main website for prompt sharing, getting used a decent amount there before the explosion of fandom in mid-2012 that lead to it’s regular usage in fan works.

Questions

So, is the nickname from a Batcest fic?

Nope! The nickname mostly makes an appearance in platonic fics between Jason and Tim, it’s actually a chore to find it in their romantic ones, as in I think I found one instance of it being used somewhere in late 2010 but I can't think of it in a fanfiction that predates that. All early uses of the nickname were in platonic fics between the two.

I think this rumour is based around three fanfictions specifically on Ao3 that people are pointing to, I think, no one seems to be wanting to name names. They’re the ones that pop up when you search Replacement in the word search after tagging Tim Drake and Jason Todd together.

Wings to Fly. Published October of 2012. Jason Refers to Tim as Replacement. Jason/Tim

Replacement. Published 2009. The title implies it’s referring to Tim, but Jason never explicitly nicknames Tim replacement, the narrator only calling Tim “His replacement”, him being Jason. Jason/Tim. Non-con

The Replacement. Published 2011. Can't figure out if the title is supposed to refer to Tim or is simply just titled that for the sake of it. Jason talks a few times about Tim being his replacement, but the nickname never makes an appearance. Jason/Tim

Does the nickname have any bases in Canon?

From what I can tell, no. I haven’t read all the Batfamily comics Pre-New 52, or from after Batman: Under The Red Hood, I mostly stray towards Hal Jordans comics lol. I don’t think theres any major instance where Jason talks about Tim replacing him by specifically using replacement or replacing (It can be inferred from his speech sometimes, but Jason’s relationship with Tim was much more complex than that. I’d recommend reading @ectonurites metas about the two to get a better idea) Theres a few instances in 2015 post-New 52 reboot where Jason says explicitly that Tim replaced him, but that was way after the nickname was popularised.

Red Hood and Arsenal #7 (2015)

Final Notes

That’s about it! That’s the result of my month long dive into almost twenty years worth of DC fandom history as a fun side project. Please don’t harass anyone linked here, this was just project to pass the time and not a call out post for anyone that did contribute to the popularisation of the nickname.

Feel free to ask me anything else about this or any other DC fandom history and I’ll try to research it!! This was genuinely a fun thing to do to pass the time and work out my research muscles.

[beautyconsumer]

Jason should get to kill.

We, as an audience we should get to see Jason's character developed outside the black sheep that he is, unloved and repressed. Labeled as incompetent and/or impulsive.

A lot of the fandom and WFA deals with involving Jason into the batfamily by making him guilty about his actions, the thing is that the way they do it never feels satisfactory, because it doesn't feel like Jason or like it's his decision, it feels like he's giving up a part of himself to be included in his so called family.

New 52 was a mess, but it also had Jason being quickly forgiven and folded into the family which was nice, then again, with the condition of no killing.

Vigilantes who kill are typical on media, but Jason doesn't get the same treatment because he has the shadow of his father, the Bat; looming over him.

I believe Jason killing is a flaw to him as a person, not as a character, at the same time I believe that Bruce being Batman is a flaw, it's how they cope with their unresolved trauma, Is it healthy? No. Do I want them to stop being vigilantes? Also no, it would not be who they are.

I'm also a sucker for BatFam dynamics but reading scenarios where Jason has to change or having his boundaries disrespected over and over is... just wrong.

The perfect scenario for me would be for the batfam to accept Jason entirely even if he kills, even if just in his turf. It's not reasonable or fitting into the batfam morals but oh well...

That's what fan content is for.

[shadesofredhood]

You know Jason should be the class conscious robin, but then dc would need to pull its head out of the rich's collective asshole and face up to their own classism so it will never be acknowledged in Canon.

[dceasesd]

why juni ba’s the boy wonder has my favorite jason characterization of any contemporary comic run: a needlessly in-depth analysis (pt.3)

go check out part 1 and part 2 if you'd like! this is a long one, sorry guys.

if you haven't already i'd recommend you check out pt. 1 & pt. 2 (linked above), but if you haven't checked them out i've been going over some of the main things people have been criticizing ba's characterization for: 1. the typical boiling down of jason's character to "the angry one" 2. his lack of strategy going into the fight with the demon is out-of-character 3. the neighbor's kid interaction

alright, so this last point is purely based off of one page of the entire comic: the one where the child of one of jason's neighbors is dragged inside his home when his mother see's jason coming.

first off, i love this page. it might be my favorite page in the entire issue. everything about it is great. just thought i needed to say that.

anyway, there's some people who are seeing this page and reading it as "jason protects kids! that's one of his big things! why are they scared of him?"

here's the thing, though: the kid isn't scared of jason, the mom is. the kid is literally playing dress up as the red hood-- he's not scared of jason, if anything he's trying to replicate him. little kids dress up as their heroes all the time; why is this kid any different? it doesn't really make sense for the kid to dress up of something he's scared of (not everyone is as weird bruce wayne), especially a real person that could be a real threat rather than a concept. i doubt you see many kids in gotham dressing up as the joker or something, because that's just asking for trouble.

the dress-up honestly seems like a ploy for attention to me. the kid clearly knows that red hood lives in his building (which is honestly so funny. take off the mask jason you're giving you're position away (actually this is a really good instance for analysis but i'm determined to not go on a tangent)). if the kid knows red hood lives in his building, what better way to get his attention that dressing up as him and playing pretend? if the kid was scared of him, he wouldn't want to draw that sort of attention to himself. if he had a sort of hero-worshippy thing going on like i suspect, then he would want to get jason's attention. to sum it up,

it's the mom who pulls him away when jason nears, because she either a) perceives him as a threat, b) doesn't want her kid to try and replicate him even more, or, the most likely option, both! the kid isn't scared of him, but the mother believes they should be.

once again, we come back to the whole perception vs. reality theme i talked about in part one! we've come full circle, everyone!

when looking at the neighborhood's perspective of the red hood, ba gives us a few contradictory examples. there's the kid and the mother, obviously, but there's also a slew of other citizens who interact with him at the beginning of the issue, both in fear and camaraderie.

the unhoused man and the people outside of his building clearly have a familiarity and are comfortable with him, while the shopkeeper is terrified and literally has a banned poster on his wall featuring jason (i am so curious what he did to deserve that, if he even did anything at all). from this, it appears that jason's reputation teeters between fearful and familiar-- a sentiment that also colors jason's relationship with his family.

furthermore, this concept underscores just how lonely jason is-- one of the only good relationships he had in his current life was his fucking landlord, for gods sake, and he's dead.

i think it's important to note that jason doesn't respond to the friendly greetings from the men-- he could attempt to build camaraderie, the roots are there, but he chooses not to. he could work to try and show the mother that her son is safe with him, but he chooses not to. why? jason is obviously lonely (as ba states in the panel below) and he caves pretty easily when damian asks him for help (both of them are so desperate for human interaction its tragic). so why does he distant himself from the community?

obviously it is in part due to the vigilante lifestyle, but it is also jason's perception of himself and how he believes others perceive him, especially in regards to his family (ba is literally hitting readers in the head with that theme baseball bat).

he doesn't see that the kid with the mask looks up to him, all he sees is the mother pulling him away. he sees the banned poster in the store. and, as ba narrates, "he was sure he'd been forgotten about" by his family. utrh is jason's twisted way of attempting to reach out and connect with bruce, and obviously that doesn't work-- so he chooses loneliness over rejection.

like in part one, though, damian refutes this idea by describing bruce's perspective, showing how what jason believes differs from actuality. bruce hasn't forgotten about him and doesn't hate him, as he suspected, but instead harbors guilt over the situation and desires to make it better, which jason must come to understand to be able to open the locked door and begin to move past his trauma.

so, that's what the little kid in the red hood outfit looks like to me. i actually have a lot more i'd like to say about the boy wonder, especially in regards to the whole "door to my past life" thing and what ba does with lighting and blocking in his artwork, so i may do a little post on that as well! i was gonna try and shove it into this one, but i've run out of room! i hope you guys liked my analysis, if you'd like to chat about the boy wonder or any other comics, my dms, asks, and reblogs are happily open! thanks for reading! :)) <3

pt. 1 / pt. 2

[galaxymagitech]

When Jason was Robin, he believed in people’s potential for good. Killing is bad because any death is sad. Maybe he’s less broken up about some, but he tries to care, and he manages it. It isn’t that he wasn’t willing to kill—he’d still trade one life for another, or many more—but he’s averse to it, and hesitant to do the actual killing himself. Following Batman’s code is a lot easier when you value life for the sake of life.

But whatever idealistic child survived Jason’s early childhood is now being exposed to all kinds of horrific stories and cases on the streets of Gotham. Anything Batman investigates, Robin investigates. He learns about how evil people are a lot more viscerally, and slowly, he realizes that he can’t save everyone if he is just a good enough Robin. I think the Garzonas case pushed him over the edge. His willingness to kill becomes a belief that killing is sometimes the only way. A bad result to prevent a worse result. He thinks he doesn’t care about scum like Garzonas, but he still does, just a bit. He’s human.

And after his death and the Pit (which Talia and Ra’s canonically suspected took something from him), he lost the ability to care about life itself. He’s borderline sociopathic, at least at first, run by a code rather than actual empathy. He’s a revenant, driven only by his sense of right and wrong. Talia discovers this, and is grateful that there’s at least something left to give Jason direction.

Over time, that empathy returns, and he does find it in himself to care about those he protects, instead of just protecting them because he feels it’s right. But I don’t think he ever regains the capacity to care about those he seems evil. Their lives don’t have value to him anymore.

I, personally, believe that every life has inherent value. But I think Jason has been through so much that he just…doesn’t, anymore.