#Willis and Catherine are about the ages they die

[jaso7]

Todds

[sasheneskywalker]

jason todd meta list

Jason Todd's canon ages, with sources

by InDarknessOftFindI

Jason Todd and Comic Book Morality

by clinicalmiddlechildsyndrome

Jason Todd, The Hysteric & Bruce Wayne, The Batman

by aresianrepose

Jason's point isn't about whether or not villains can be redeemed, it's about the people they continue to kill

by its-not-lookin-good, de-vespertiliones

Who's to blame? How Jason Todd is blamed for his own demise (Part II)

by fuckyeahjasontodd

unjust world

by lemontongues

a son asking his dad to prove that he loves him by avenging him

by blueteehood

jason todd as a meta character

by brionysea

jason values “the good guys”

by cleromancy

Why Jason and Cass wouldn’t get along

by aingeal98, tumblingxelian

Jason and Cass: Murder Victim and Murderer

by casscainmainly

Cassandra Cain and Jason Todd Are Foils to One Another.

by celestialdevils

The Pit’s influence on Jason has nothing to do with anger and is more about blunting his compassion

by bitimdrake

the debate between Jason and Bruce’s killing/no-killing rule is so fucking exhausting because they’re both right and that’s the damn point

by wanderintofics

Willis and Catherine

by firefrightfic

The Jason Todd Book Club

by pluckyredhead

Jason and his reaction to sexual assault

by pluckyredhead

the issue posed in “The Diplomat’s Son” is that Bruce questioned whether Garzonas fell or was pushed and doubted Jason’s word when Jason said he fell

by fantastic-nonsense

Post-Crisis!Jason had exactly two life goals as Red Hood: make Batman’s life a living hell by creating chaos and prove he’s “better” at crimefighting than Bruce

by fantastic-nonsense

how long was jason dead for / how long before came back to gotham

by sohotthateveryonedied

timeline of Jason coming back to Gotham

by sohotthateveryonedied

Jason being good with kids

by sohotthateveryonedied

Too Dangerous for Kids

by redhoodinternaldialectical

Jason and Bruce’s conflict is not a misunderstanding

by redhoodinternaldialectical

outward expressions of emotions

by aalghul

Jason and guns

by aalghul

Jason Todd’s Childhood Friends

by aalghul

Jason Todd- DC's Pandora's box

by mintacle

"utilitarian killing vs. no kill rule" dilemma

by mintacle

Bruce-as-Batman Vs Bruce-as-parent, Batman is the abuser and Bruce is the enabler

by mintacle

Jason’s final monologue in Under the Red Hood is so impactful and important because he’s being honest

by littledead-ridinghood

Bruce, Jason, upbringing and ethics

by cainware, littledead-ridinghood

Bruce, Jason and Robin retcons

by littledead-ridinghood

Jason grew up alone

by littledead-ridinghood

in the New52 the reason why Bruce doesn’t take Jason down personally has either changed or expanded

by comic-commentary

do you think jason pushed felipe?

by comic-commentary

What does Jason want to do with his life?

by comic-commentary

does jason carefully select/thoroughly research the criminals he kills, or is it just on sight?

by comic-commentary

Jason Todd and the Ladies: Pre-Resurrection

by comic-commentary

Jason Todd and the Ladies: Post-Resurrection

by comic-commentary

Jason and Tim in Pre52

by comic-commentary

Dick and Jason were never close in canon

by comic-commentary

Gray Areas Exist *throws glitter*

by comic-commentary

Jason consistently positions himself with the other victims of the Joker

by arkhamnyanight

canon shows Jason being remarkably, and I would say to some degree irrationally, eager to be on good terms with Bruce again

by arkhamnyanight

Jason’s motivations and plan in UTRH

by arkhamnyanight

why Jason chooses to confront Bruce rather than directly kill the Joker

by arkhamnyanight

call Jason a murder victim you cowards

by romanticizingmurder

the sanctity of life

by romanticizingmurder

What Jason says and what Jason does aren't always the same

by romanticizingmurder

how many people will die waiting for a villain to reform?

by romanticizingmurder

Countdown and Jason’s characterization

by yvtro

the brilliance of jay's progression in countdown

by boyfridged

bruce is projecting on jason and it profoundly affected jay

by boyfridged

Jason, Willis, and retcons

by boyfridged

Jason and reaching out

by boyfridged

Jason Todd trusts Dick Grayson, and so Dick is a glowing, ticking timebomb

by thecruellestmonth

Does the mass-murdering criminal Jason "Red Hood" Todd canonically support the death penalty?

by thecruellestmonth

Jason Todd + cops

by thecruellestmonth

Jason Todd + literature

by thecruellestmonth

Jason Todd vs. security

by thecruellestmonth

quick and dirty guide to Jason Todd in the masterpiece Batman: Battle for the Cowl—canon and fanon

by thecruellestmonth

Jason Todd’s knife skills

by wonderwondered

Jason Todd’s less known skills appreciation

by wonderwondered

Jason Todd’s fighting skills

by wonderwondered

Jason is a victim, not a survivor

by greylittlebird, vintagerobin. thecruellestmoth

[I will be updating the list every time I find a new meta post.]

[glitter-stained]

Okay so I got a wonderful ask that I started to respond to and I saved it in the drafts to look up the English translation of a word and now the ask is gone because tumblr hates me, hope you see this anyway anon. Here are the bullet points from the essay I just lost :

> being a HS dropout doesn't make you ignorant! I didn't know of the study you mentioned it sounds super interesting

> I'm not a bio/medicine student, what I do know about malnutrition I know from anorexia in children, there are probably nuances between the two I don't have access to

> size, like most stuff, is determined by the interaction between your genes and your environment.

> malnutrition absolutely stunts growth, basically the body goes into battery saving mode to preserve what resources it has and goes "well i'm not gonna grow up/develop until you start feeding me again". (This is why BMI is a fucking stupid tool to diagnose anorexia especially in children, it's so dumb.)

> can you play catch-up with growth ? Yes and no. There's something called "chronotopic constraints" which means that there are things in a person's development that need to happen at a specific given time for other stuff to happen later, like a chain reaction. This is true for embryo development, for cognitive abilities (that's why ADHD symptoms change over time) and for physical development like growth. So basically, whether or not a child who has been starved can catch up on growth depends, amongst other stuff, on their base metabolism, the amount of food they were eating, for how long they were starving and at what time window they were starving. And because of the domino effect I mentioned, you can catch up "partially": picture a child who, upon getting food, starts growing again, goes through late puberty, and ends up much tinier as an adult than both his parents were but still bigger than he was as a teenager.

> So how can we know that stuff ? You're very right that we can't separate twin babies, starve one and feed the other, it's not very ethical. But we can run stuff like correlational studies where we take a group of a whole lot of kids who have suffered from malnutrition measure their height at 6, at 8, at 10, at 15, 18 and 20 (this is called a longitudinal study) and say "hey, children who were starved tend to, on average, be way smaller than the average child their age, and they don't all fully catch up on their growth, and this catch-up depends on specific time windows" etc. As I said, a lot of my knowledge comes from the study of anorexia in children, so there are also a lot of case studies of children who didn't eat at specific time periods and had their growth stunted potentially forever (as well as a lot of other stuff).

> so if it depends/catch up is possible, why do you think the Pit is what "cured" Jason's malnutrition:

Well, the issue with Jason is we don't have access to for how long he was in a situation of food scarcity for. We know his parents were poor, but how about before Willis went to jail: if I understood correctly the man was in and out, so there probably was an uneven source of revenue in that side. And how about when Catherine got sick? Medical care costs a lot of money, not to mention heroin; he was probably in food scarcity at least once Willis got caught and sent to jail and he had to take care of his mom himself, before he even ended up in the streets. In the streets, Jason calls himself his own man and steals to survive, so he doesn't have like zero access to food, but no, seeing where Jason lives and that his income source at some point is "stealing from batman" i'd bet on pretty severe food scarcity. Not starving enough to die and not starving/not suffering from malnutrition are pretty different goals after all. Then Jason ends up with Batman and hey! Regular food intake. Though looking at his workout in the six months following his adoption is a little concerning, it's comic book science, let's just assume he's getting enough food and robin gives him enough magic that it's not a problem for his growth. Yippee, Jay can start growing again! Except when he dies, he's still tiny. Not as small as when he got adopted, but like, tiny (4"6 I believe? At 15.) This, along with how big Willis was and if we consider Jason's height in UTH, suggests that his growth is still stunted after three years of consistent adequate nutrition.

Obviously he doesn't grow when he's dead, but there's no reason he wouldn't grow in his coma, he's being fed and basically sleeping so no scarcity at that moment (though some level of muscle atrophy is to be expected). And then he's back to the streets, deeply dissociated, suffering from mysterious (as in hare to evaluate) brain damage and with muscle atrophy, for around a year -he's seen finding food, but again, he's most definitely not eating enough at that time. And then, he's in the league, where he definitely gets enough food, Talia isn't gonna starve that kid. So, through his childhood and teenagehood,Jason goes through several periods of long starvation. Though I don't know the intricacies of critical periods and chronotopic constraints in physical growth, the probability of him not receiving food during some of these periods is very high imo. And then of course there's the fact that not only does he go through intense stress/trauma/adverse childhood experiences for most of his childhood and teenagehood, which as you pointed out also stunts growth, but since he's still a teenager/growing in Lost Days and UTH and considering his mental state in these stories, this could also effect his growth. And also, even if Jason would have caught up eventually, catching up on growth takes time!

So those are all the arguments that lead me to conclude: while it's technically possible for Jason to have been this big in UTH without the Pit influence, I don't find it very probable. And also of course a question of taste: they could have made Jason tiny in UTH, and they didn't. Cowards.

[happysyn]

Thinking about a reverse robins au where...

Talia leaves Damian, age 8, with Bruce due to infighting in the League of Assassins. Damian is Batman's Shadow until he and Bruce have a falling out over Bruce refusing to admit the Teen Titans to the League. Damian, age 18, takes on the name Nightwing and moves to New York to lead the Titans with Jon.

When Arthur Brown is killed, Crystal overdoses and Stephanie, age 12,  becomes Spoiler to avenge her parents. Tim, age 11, sees her while stalking Batman and provides her with pictures and intel under the alias Shutter. Bruce catches them one night, and Tim blackmails him into mentoring them.

When Bruce realizes Stephanie is living on the street, he decides to adopt her. Jack and Janet are their typical absentee selves, so Tim's adoption remains unofficial. Damian, age 19, resents Tim and Stephanie so much that he refuses to let them train with the Titans.

The Joker kidnaps Tim, age 14, while he's on patrol and turns him into Joker Jr. Steph, age 15, goes solo to save him and Joker makes Tim beat her with a crowbar, then locks them in the warehouse with a bomb. Stephanie dies trying to save Tim, then is resurrected and taken by Talia al Ghul, who wants to use her as leverage to win Bruce and Damian back.

Tim, now paralyzed, becomes the Oracle, saying that there's no Shutter without Spoiler. Unbeknownst to anyone, he gets to work trying to clone Stephanie.

Damian, age 23, blames himself for Stephanie's death and moves back to Gotham. While hunting the Joker, Nightwing runs into Jason, age 13, who's working for Two Face. He finds out that Jason is trying to support his family - Catherine is still battling her drug addiction and Willis was left wheelchair-bound after working for Two-Face. When Damian looks at Jason, he sees another desperate teenager that he failed, and he's determined not to make the same mistakes again. He takes Jason under his wing, training (and paying) him to fight against crime rather than for it. Jason takes on the mantle of Michael (he is going to be the guardian angel of Crime Alley. He's going to defend them from every threat.)

Tim, age 15, finds out about Jason and comes as close to a villain origin story as he gets. He thinks that Damian is trying to replace Steph, and accuses him of grooming another martyr to die for Gotham. When Damian won't back down, Tim insists on being included in Jason's training and swears to pull the plug the *second* he thinks Damian is putting Jason in undue danger. Training Jason together gives Damian and Tim the common goal they need to build a functional relationship for the first time.

Stephanie, age 19, comes back to Gotham as the Red Hood to kill the Joker, only to find that he's been missing for years. Still, she's plenty annoyed with the new street kid who's stolen her place. (Damian wouldn't even LOOK at her, but he'll take this stupid kid to a baseball game? With Tim?)

She and Batman dance their dance for a few months, then she finds out that Jason isn't an orphan. That Bruce paid for rehab so his mom could get clean, then found his dad a job so they could move somewhere safe. And it's just... Where was Bruce before? Where was he when her mom overdosed? When her dad was killed? Where was he when Tim was taken and twisted, when he was beating her to death for that fucking clown, when she tried to shield him from the blast even as he was strangling her? Where was Bruce then?

Red Hood kidnaps Catherine and lures Jason, age 16, to the warehouse where the Joker killed her. She reveals his secret identity to Catherine, then beats the brakes off of him.(In another world, Sheila Haywood smoked a cigarette while Jason was beaten. In this one, Catherine Todd begs for his life.) There's a bomb because there always is. Because there has to be.

Batman isn't too late. He saves Jason and Catherine, but Hood gets away. Catherine begs Jason to hang up his suit, but Willis stops her. He tells Jason that he's proud of him, and glad that he's chosen a better path than Willis had.

Nightwing, age 26, hunts down the Red Hood while Oracle, age 18, puts together the pieces of her identity. Nightwing catches up to Hood her in one of her safe houses and has a very dramatic monologue, as a treat. ("The last person who left my siblings trapped with a bomb thought it was funny, too. But he wasn't laughing when I was done with him. I wonder if you'll have that same look on your face when I kill you.") He nearly kills her, but is stopped by Oracle.

Tim drags Stephanie back home kicking and screaming. After months of therapy, healing, and screaming at Bruce, she allows herself to be brought back into the fold. She and Jason will never be friends, but they've made amends enough to coexist. Stephanie takes up the Spoiler mantle again.

To celebrate, the family goes to Haly's Circus. The Grayson's die, and Bruce takes in Dick, age 9. Dick discovers their secret identities and dubs himself Robin. He's an angry little gremlin determined to murder Zucco, and Bruce feels like he's been here before a few times already.

Later, there's a rumor of another Spoiler running around. Stephanie, age 22, is not prepared to find tiny Barbara Gordon, age 10, running around by herself, trying to catch bad guys. She starts chasing Barbara around, trying to talk her out of heroics. ("Is this how Bruce felt? Oh, hell, I'm too young to be a mother.") She finally relents and starts training Barbara herself. ("But you can't steal my name, kid. Gotta come up with your own."  "Fine. I'll be Batgirl, then."  "Batgirl, huh? Alright, let's see if you can live up to it.")

I'm just so 😩 about them

[bluejaysandblackbats]

Sea Glass

Fandom: DC Comics, Batfam

Summary: Cassandra Cain and Jason Todd bio siblings AU.

Chapters: 2/?

Characters: Jason Todd, Willis Todd, Catherine Todd, Lady Shiva, Cassandra Cain, David Cain Mention

Additional Tags: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Willis Todd Lives, Major Character Death, Secret Language Between Siblings, Lady Shiva is Jason Todd's Mother

Chapter Two: Catherine

Willis was still asleep when Jason opened his eyes. He curled inward, hiding his face in Willis’ chest, and Willis awakened with a soft groan. The rain poured heavier in the background but the lightning and thunder let up. “I almost forgot… What am I gonna do with you today?” Willis asked. Jason sat up on his knees and placed his hands on Willis’ chest. “Any news on your sister’s whereabouts?”

Jason climbed out of bed and searched the room for something. He didn’t like to talk with Willis about her. Jason only knew three things about his sister: Her last name, age, and what she looked like. Shiva wanted to know which of the two would be stronger when the time came. “Jason,” Willis whispered apologetically, “Jason, come on. I—.”

“I’m not stronger than her… I don’t wanna be,” Jason whispered, “When we’re older, they’ll make us fight… And I’ll probably die.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Willis interrupted, “Maybe you’re the other half of her.” Jason didn’t understand. He never understood those sorts of things. So, he continued on his search. “It’s in the box under the bed.”

Jason crawled under the bed and opened the box without crawling out where Willis could see him. He pulled out his teddy bear and closed his eyes. “When you feel safe enough… I want you to brush your teeth. I’ll make breakfast. Okay?” Willis asked. He sat up, planting his feet on the ground as he leaned forward with his face in his hands. Tired. A little defeated. Jason used that space and that bear to shut down. Willis was the person he went to for comfort, but his bear was his escape from reality itself. Willis spent a fair share of his free time reading books on childhood trauma but nothing could explain Jason’s experience. It was too unique. 

The doorbell rang, and Willis kneeled down to look under the bed. “Stay under here, okay? I don’t know who that is yet,” Willis whispered. 

Jason didn’t answer, but Willis knew he understood. He unlocked the latch on the door and the three deadlocks before coming face-to-face with Catherine. “Hi, Willis,” Catherine smiled as she stood awkwardly. Her hair and dress were soaked, and she shook violently in the cold.

“Catherine,” Willis whispered, “What’s the matter?”

“Can I come in and talk to you for a second?” Catherine asked. 

Willis nodded and let her in. “Let me grab you a sweatshirt before you catch a cold. Why didn’t you just call me? Half the streets are flooded. Are the buses even running?” Willis asked as he headed into his room to grab a thick sweater and a pair of shorts. He shut the bedroom door on his way out and helped Catherine out of her dress. “Jeez, Catherine. Getting here could’ve killed you.”

“I had to talk to you,” Catherine explained as Willis slipped his sweatshirt over her. “Put these on.” He gave her his shorts. 

Catherine chuckled and shivered as Willis rubbed her arms. “Tell me what’s on your mind, Sugar,” Willis replied as he plopped down on the couch and pulled her onto his lap. 

“Willis, I need you to promise not to get mad,” Catherine whispered. 

Willis lifted her chin. “I’m cool as a cucumber,” Willis replied. 

“I’m pregnant,” Catherine confessed. Willis froze, and he made a soft noise between a grunt and a sigh. “You’re mad.”

“I’m not mad. I’m just—. What do you want to do? Do you want a baby?” Willis asked. 

“Well, sure, I’d—. But do you want one? Do you even like kids?” Catherine questioned in reply.

“I love kids. I—.” Willis thought about Jason in the other room. He could probably hear everything. “One of my favorite people in the whole world is a kid…” 

“So, we can—. You want kids?” Catherine asked. 

Willis nodded. “I’d like to have a big family. Lots of kids… But if things don’t work out that way, I’m satisfied,” Willis answered. He kissed her cheek and patted her leg. “I think maybe I should let you in on a little secret… Hold on. Let me go to the bedroom and grab something really quick.”

Catherine slid off his lap, watching Willis slip into the bedroom and shut the door. “Jason? Jason, I want you to meet my friend,” Willis whispered. No answer. Willis looked under the bed, and Jason was gone. 

“I guess it isn't here… Maybe next time,” Willis frowned. 

Willis didn’t see Jason until almost a year later. Jason wore a baggy jersey and basketball shorts as he wandered the hospital looking for Willis and Catherine until he found their room. Catherine was on her way out of the bathroom when she saw him, and Jason froze. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she wore sweatpants. Jason could tell by the baggy fit that they were Willis’ clothes. “Are you—?” Catherine let out a sob. “I’m so sorry… Are you lost, sweetie?” 

Jason took her hand and walked her to the vending machine. He bought pomegranate juice and orange juice. “Here you go,” Jason whispered as he gave her the pomegranate juice. 

Catherine sniffed and smiled with wet eyes as she took a sip. “I’m so sorry… Today’s been very hard,” Catherine sighed as she fought back tears. 

“Why?” Jason asked. 

“I was supposed to have a baby… But the baby didn’t—.” Catherine forced a smile as she shut her eyes to hold the tears back. “She didn’t make it.”

Jason held her hand. “I was supposed to have two sisters… I have an older sister, but my little sister didn’t make it,” Jason whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Catherine frowned. 

“It’s okay… I think it’s nice to spend my little sister’s birthday with someone feeling the same thing,” Jason replied. He crossed his ankles, knocking his left heel on the ground to watch his shoe light up. Catherine covered her smile with her free hand. “What was her name?” 

“Kayla Marie Todd,” Catherine answered, “Can I take you back to your parents?”

Jason shook his head. “I’ll be okay… They’re waiting for me. You should stay here and finish your juice,” Jason replied with tears in his eyes. Catherine looked into his eyes and leaned close. Jason stood up and slipped away before she could figure things out. 

A few hours later, Willis stopped at home to grab something else to wear, and Jason was there. “I’m sorry,” Jason whispered. Willis dropped everything and picked Jason up. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” Willis cried. 

“She’s nice… I like her,” Jason whispered, “I hope she can have a baby someday.” Willis set him down and messed up his hair.

“I hope so, too… Did you run away, Peanut?” Willis asked. Jason shook his head. “Shiva knows you’re here?” Jason nodded.

“When is she coming back?” Jason asked as he finished warming food up in the microwave. “You should eat.” 

“I’m not hungry, Jason—.”

Jason threw the napkin in the trash and dug into the pasta with his fork. He blew on the food and held it up to Willis’ mouth. Willis chuckled and took a bite. “Mmm. Okay, I changed my mind,” Willis replied.

“Makes you wanna curse, huh?” Jason teased. Willis laughed. He grabbed a second fork and ate with Willis for a little while.

“When do you have to go?” Willis asked. 

“Tonight… I won’t see you for a long time. I didn’t know the baby—. I wanted to see her just once,” Jason whispered, “I think she looks pretty… And she is very nice. Her hands—. She would be a good mom.”

[analviel]

Is there a fic where younger Bruce suddenly recalls future Bruce's memories and realizes how horrible he treated his kids and decides that he'll be better?

My prompt is like this. This happens, say, sometime when Dick just lost his parents and is in juvie so of course first thing Bruce did the next morning is file for guardianship. Exactly the night after, he catches him sneaking out to kill Tony Zucco and yadda, yadda, yadda. But since it'd be wildly out of character for him to let the parents die, he catches Willis and pays for Catherine's recovery, taking care of Jason in the meantime, and Tim's parents love him and he loves them but they don't care for him enough and Bruce worries and conveniently enough, he has a kid around his age and Jason and Tim are suddenly childhood/neigbourhood/bestriends, and Bruce does the same thing for Stephanie as he did for Jason, keeping an eye all the while for Duke, and then he has Alfred and a Leaguer babysitting his kids as he fly to recover Cass, because Cain was one of his teachers and he actually knows where he is and its easier to find him -he's also thinking all the while about his kids' parents compared to himself, if he can be a better parent maybe they can be too and he doesn't want to withhold that chance from the kids. He comes back to the kids fussing over a baby left on the doorstep, with only 'Damian' written in a piece of paper. Bruce doesn't tell Damian about his mother's side of the family, even when he grows up, only mentions his mother and that she's, ehem, lost in the, er, sea -desert? Damian would eventually start questioning, being the blood son was never really emphasized to him and his treatment is the same as the others so it's easy enough to doubt the validity, he thinks that just because he's the only kid who doesn't have memory of other parents, Bruce just decided to claim him as his, so really, he's also adopted and now he wants to know about his real parents, why they abandoned him on a billionaire's doorstep or if they ever loved him etc. etc.

Anyways, this is the only conflict that exists outside of whatever complicated emotions Bruce will struggle through when Dick and Cass eventually decides to be full-time vigilantes. Jason inherits Wayne Enterprises, as I believe he always should've Mr. Straight A+ Student, heading the Charity Foundations and sometimes presenting lectures, while putting his friend -or brother, depending where you want to take it later on- Tim as head of R&D, who is also the detective protege of Batman, so he can also maybe be a licensed detective who spends weekends photographing on his skateboard. Stephanie is either a cop or a nurse or a public volunteer and social media influencer. Babs is either a vigilante or a librarian-vigilante or a cop or the next Gotham Mayor. Duke -I don't really think he'd want to be a cop, or maybe he does, so people would have more clean cops to depend on. But then he's meta, depending on how he activates them, maybe he'd still be Signal.

I don't know. If there's a fic like this, please recommend. If you want to write it, please tell me, I'd really want to read it.

[allegxry]

Jason Todd

Age: 25-30 Height: 6'0 Gender: Male Sexuality: Bi/demisexual - female leaning Ailments: PTSD. Manipulation. Anger.

Jason Todd was the son of Willis Todd and Catherine Eliabeth, neither ready to bring a child into this world. By the age of four or five Jason was looking after his depressed and drug addicted mother the best he could. Making sure she didn’t choke on her vomit or kill herself. His father was a bit more abusive but Jason still helped his drunk off his ass father to bed every night. When Jason was about 10 his dad had him working the corner and selling with him, one of the only times he felt his dad was ever proud of him. He saw his dad as nothing but a coward and a low life despite that fleeting feeling of him being proud of Jason, it wasn’t long after that his dad was sent to prison and died there. Jason took it upon himself to keep his mother safe from anyone and everyone - except he couldn’t save her from herself. 

Jason took to the streets to survive after that, petty theft and a few times things got desperate. He rarely got physical, he was still a kid after all but that didn’t mean the favor was returned. Batman came across Jason as he was stealing prescriptions from the hospital - he put up a fight but it didn’t last long and if the nurse that was taking care of him hadn’t stepped in he would have ended up in Arkham, he was sure of it. Bruce took him in, revealed the truth and offered him the Robin position… The second Robin position. 

After six months of training and hell, Jason was ready to go into action as the new Boy Wonder. In his early adventures, Robin assisted Batman against notable criminals and picked it up easily. Jason started to become more aggressive and driven quickly though, his father, his dead father, was a criminal and every one they came across Jason was seeing his face and wanting to beat the life out of it. Unlike Batman's first protegee Dick Grayson, Jason was impulsive, reckless, and full of rage. Jason's violent methods against crooks eventually caused the accidental death of a criminal. Jason's attitude got him and Batman in trouble, but he showed no sign of slowing down. Instead, Jason became more reckless until he was forbidden from going out as Robin. 

Being grounded from patrol left him a lot of time alone and eventually Jason discovered that his mother, who he had thought was dead for years, was alive. Someone, despite how his childhood went, he loved and cared about and knew she tried her best. Without telling Batman, Jason left Gotham to track his lead. Arriving in the Middle East and reconnecting with Catherine, though the mother and son were happy to be reunited, Jason discovered the truth about her - Catherine had a secret criminal record, which the Joker was using to blackmail her to commit crimes in Ethiopia.

Jason ended up following the Joker and his mother to a warehouse, not that he had a choice, Batman wasn’t stupid and was on his way but never made it in time. Joker took the opportunity to beat Jason senseless with a crowbar in front of Catherine, he was nearly dead but Joker wasn’t done. He then planted a bomb in the warehouse, leaving the mother and son to die together. 

Six months later Jason was alive again, Talia took Jason in and, for several months, tried to restore him to full health. After several months of no progress, in a last ditch effort to save him, Talia restored Jason's health and memory by immersing him in a Lazarus Pit. Due to the magic of the pit, and possibly due to Ra's presence in it, Jason was restored, albeit with a darker personality. Jason remembered everything, including his death at the hands of the Joker. On Talia's advice, Jason was convinced his death was never avenged and prepared to confront Batman - the pit did drive him absolutely insane for a few months though. The rush of life and memories coming back in one dip. 

Jason went to be trained by assassins around the world in skills that include firearms, poisons and anti-toxins, martial arts, and bomb-making. He returned to Gotham after that and came back as Red Hood. He isn’t one to just stop a villain, he is one to kill them and end their entire existence, plan, scheme. Having taken out sex traffickers, drug lords, crime bosses, etc. Killing the head of the best but blowing up their bases and meet up spots just to make sure his message is clear. 

Jason has bouts of intense rage, abandonment issues and his mental illness can trickle into a depression at times. He is set on his revenge but he is also set on taking out the kind of people that left him an orphan, so, his revenge is more than just Batman leaving him for dead and the Joker beating him to death. Having a stable relationship with him will be incredibly difficult but he is all for something to let some steam off. Pushing him to open up or anything like that is a sure way to get a sarcastic remark and him to get up and leave but it’s not impossible to break down those walls of his.  

Jason doesn’t agree with Bruce and his ways and he never will, he doesn’t agree with a lot of things the Bat Fam does and it’s why he keeps his distance once he outs himself as alive, and has tried to kill a few of them - granted it was in his fits of anger and hurt. Like trying to kill Tim once he found out that was his replacement. Despite the differences and the fall outs - if any of them called, Jason would show up with a helping hand. He would still do things his way but he is still going to answer when they call - most of the time. The point being - he’s loyal. He can’t kill Batman no matter how large the hurt and anger is because that’s someone he considers family. 

He’s very traumatized between sexual and physical abuse as a kid and always being beaten down and told he was worthless… He doesn’t have many friends, he’s blunt and comes off as rude and an ass but he truly can be soft underneath it all and takes everything to heart. 

[noblehcart]

so its probably about time that i put something down about my CAT.HER.INE TO.DD as i don't have her listed or her bio up yet.

cath was born into a middle class family with aspirations to be a teacher. she has two older sisters who resent their youngest for getting away with everything and for becoming the center of the family's attention with the sharp 10 year age difference from the second eldest. they did not miss her when she broke away from the family.

it was in college when she met wi.ll.is to.dd. far from clean cut herself, always looking for a little adventure. she thought he was a challenge. he thought she'd be fun. it was series of flirtations before a fully intended one night stand on both parts. but crying woke up cathrine as willis slept passed out like the dead which brought her to explore the apartment to find the source. a baby in a cheap bassinet in back apartment room all alone. stumbling in, hungover as hell herself, she scooped up the child attempting to soothe its pitiful cries till he fell asleep. it was willis' voice that startled her concentration on the baby. 'that's my kid, jason.' (NOTE: i do alter the beginnings based on each JT i interact with to better fit their lore/bg if they prefer jason to be older...ect )

she tries to forget about wilis and jason for a few weeks before finding herself back in willis' orbit. finding herself gravitating to the crying child in the corner or pulling him from his father's arms to better soothe him herself. before she knows it her studies slip as she spends more and more time with jason. a proposal. an engagement. her family disowns her for choosing a bum. a bum with a child. a rushed civic wedding and an interrupted wedding night. but she didn't mind. she loved him too.

it was only a few years later that the migraines set in. willis couldn't hold a steady job or a job that included health insurance. he found other means of getting money. means that gave her access to morphine. unbeknownst to either party that morphine was laced and began the snowball downward.

the addiction was manageable while willis was around. but after a slip up with two-face things progressively got worse for catherine and jason. she tried to hold down a job. manage the bills. get clean. but the migraines and the desire drove her straight back. she tried. she tried. she slipped. she failed.

Revived AU: there was a lot of chaos the day catherine todd died. and she did die. for ten minutes she was brain dead in the ambulance before being brought back to life. before the paramedics mixed her up with another jane doe who looked vaguely similar on a chaotic day. she woke up a week later. severe memory loss and needing rehabilitation to function again. things slowly came back as she re-entered the world again. it was six months later that she remembered who she was. remembered her son. discovered bruce wayne had adopted him. she made it to wayne manor, but stopped at the gates realizing the billionaire could give her son everything. protect him. teach him. all she had ever been was an addict with no prospects. no future and no means to care for the growing boy. so she walked away. she was sure he was in better hands than her own and she loved him. she wanted every opportunity for him. things she could never give him. she was now clean, holding a steady job, going back to school and getting her teaching degree when she heard the news. jason todd was dead. and she loathed bruce wayne for failing her son like she had. over the course of the next few years she works to get involved with helping other addicts like herself, teaching kindergarten and volunteering at shelters. every week she has a date with AA and NA meetings. catherine todd had finally gotten her life somewhat straight. the only thing missing is her son-

[kiitsume]

a few thoughts on six the musical because nobody asked for them

(also excuse any historical inaccuracies, i've done only cursory reading thank you)

let's start light. the costumes are pretty but they completely take away any sense of historical context, unintentionally minimizing the degree of awareness the audience has of the culture surrounding the women at the time, which is actually pretty important to the message the writers are trying to construct.

the music is good. like, it's catchy and generally well written, and of course well performed. but the writers giveth and the writers taketh away. mostly they take away. all of the songs are reductive and collapse six people-- who they claim to attempt to honor the memory of-- down into platitudes and general notions of people, caricaturizing them into something that's barely recognizable.

the set up the musical to be a "competition between these six women to get the respect the deserve for the amount they suffered" and then they turn around at the end and shame the audience for doing that-- for picking favorites along the way and actually considering which ones they empathize most with.

the opening song, "ex-wives" uses modern lingo and whatnot, but it's not any more jarring that the costumes, so it's not until "don't lose your head" that the text speak really throws you off. it was honestly uncomfortable to watch in context of the musical, at least upon my viewing.

do i know they went chronologically? yes. will i ever forgive them for putting the most jarring joke of a song, "haus of holbein" right after arguably the most heartfelt song of the musical, jane seymour's "heart of stone"? absolutely fucking not.

haus of holbein has it's merits. i won't lie. it addresses the beauty standards of the time and the way that women were expected to destroy their bodies and give up their lives in order to appeal to men, which contributes to the larger narrative the writers were trying to build in saying that all these women would've led remarkable lives if they hadn't been forced to give themselves up to a life that made them miserable. but all of that is erased by the fact that it has air horns in it, i'm sorry, that can't be overlooked. literally die.

katherine (we're going with the musical's spelling okay) howard's song? a fucking bop. "all you wanna do" is iconic. but it has been brought to my attention by my girlfriend, who is much more knowledgeable on the six's actual history and writings, that pretty much the entire song is a complete disregard for who she was in life and her actual feelings, and that's especially irritating because they did it specifically for the purpose of constructing a much more simple narrative and, in the process, did the exact thing they claim to condemn: writing over her, and all the others, with what they think they know and bending them and their lives to fit their ideal message. how so? my girl k howard actually did have feelings for thomas. you know, the one person in the song she's like, "just mates, no chemistry/ i get him and he gets me/ and there's nothing more to it." they just throw that out to make thomas look like a nice guy and like people were just constantly taking advantage of her, which to some extent was true. but it also strips all the agency out of her life, and ignores the fact that "serious, stern and slow/ gets what he wants and he won't take no," francis dereham was the one who got jealous of her and thomas' relationship and snitched to the king and got her executed. there's literally no acknowledgement that he was anything other than just another fling or something. and, by omission, it implies that her music teacher, henry mannox, was the one and only one who groomed her (and molested her at 13). in reality, dereham's relationship with her started when she was 15 and he was 32. oh, and she was 17 when she married the 49 year old king. if the musical is supposed to form a cohesive narrative around how these girls were taken advantage of and thrown out by history as a joke, her story is literally ideal for that purpose. but instead we got naive girl uses sex to get ahead and then it backfires and she's killed for it.

not that thomas is innocent in all of this-- when the affair was brought to public light he blamed everything on howard and continued to deny ever sleeping with her, though he eventually admitted to intending to. there's some debate over whether their private meetings were actually an affair, but howard's writings on it make it seem as if she did have feelings for him, so. we may never know. but again, this is just to show the disservice the musical did to her.

i don't know as much about the other queens i'll admit, but here's just a few things that would be useful for the narrative the musical tries and fails to build: catherine parr was 15 when she was married to henry's brother arthur, who she couldn't speak to because they'd corresponded in latin but had different pronunciations-- this marriage was to give arthur greater legitimacy, because she was considered more strongly royal by blood; anne boleyn resisted henry's attempts to make her a mistress-- she was extremely smart, which was desirable in a mistress but not a wife!-- as her sister mary had been, and her daughter, unlike parr's is never acknowledged by the musical, the subjects called her "the king's whore" and blamed her for his tyranny, and-- oh, did i mention? historians debate whether there were any actual grounds for the charges brought against her that led to her execution, and most scholars regard it just something the king did so he could move on to seymour; jane seymour was married to henry the day after anne boleyn's execution, and she was never publically coronated in part because of a plague (woo!) but some also theorize that henry didn't want her to be coronated until she'd done her "duty as queen" and bore him a male heir; anne of cleves was described as extremely beautiful, so when the king met her and described her as "plain" he was incredibly let down, and immediately decided that he wanted to avoid the marriage altogether-- she was not considered ugly, as the musical makes it sound, just not good enough for the kings "selective" tastes (you know, the same henry who had a festering, ulcerated wound on his leg from a jousting accident); catherine parr is done the most justice, actually acknowledging the work she did in education and writing, the role she played in the establishment of the Third Succession Act which allowed her daughters access to the throne, and her two previous marriages (one of which was to someone twice her age) but it fails to acknowledge that her protestant sympathies got her targeted by arrest warrants before she reconciled with the king, and she was able to marry her lost love thomas seymour (different thomas, different seymour) in secret four months after the king's death, only to die a year and four months later.

also this: catherine of aragon was the only wife older than henry when they married, with her being 24 when and henry being 18; boleyn was 32 while henry was 42; seymour was 28, married to a 45 year old henry; anne of cleves was 25 and henry was 49; i repeat, howard was 17 when she was married to the 49 year old king; and parr was 31 and henry was 52.

and they were all flawed individuals, too, don't take my defenses of them to mean otherwise. in fact, as historical figures, i don't necessarily like all of them. but despite their flaws, they didn't deserve what happened to them, which is something the musical fails to portray in every way. it glosses over everything so quickly, which i understand is to be expected to a degree when you give each queen a six minute song to tell the story of their entire life, but the writing distorts them so badly they're hardly recognizable, and their stories are changed willy-nilly to fit the lazy empowerment theme rather than addressing them as they were.

the final song, "six." boy do i have thoughts. it's meant to seem empowering, and to an extent it is, because the characters they've given us get to talk about having a happy ending and making something of their lives that made them happy to have a legacy. but none of it's true, and it feels incredibly forced, especially because they take the concept of these women and pay no attention to them historically or what the figures they're based on would've actually wanted, and instead just says, "they all sing and dance and have a great time! question nothing!" and it just feels so hollow. it honestly made me feel even worse about the historical figures themselves and the suffering they endured, because it felt minimizing and shallow, like a platitude to make you stop thinking about how horribly they were treated. it was genuinely upsetting from that point of view, and despite how uplifting it's meant to be in the context of the show, it acknowledges that it's only a dream by giving a time limit to their happiness-- five minutes. and after that point you're supposed to go on continuing to be happy, having connected with these people and been empowered by their stories, when you are given very little of their actual stories and are shamed for analyzing things through the lens they gave you at the opening of the show. not to mention how horribly they trample over their message of how restrictive and repressive their lives were by nature of their station and says that, "well, if they could've just made different choices they would've been happy!" ignoring how the culture gave them no other choice and there's a pretty good chance that, even if they had made the choices they wanted to, they would've still been held back by virtue of their gender and station. the story behind six is not empowering, and it feels horrible to have it twisted around that was to make it seem empowering. i understand not wanting to beat down your audience and make them miserable, but rather than reducing these women down to such simplified caricatures and then having them all bond and have a girl power moment, it would've been much more impactful to have their actual concerns be what they bonded over-- being forgotten, talked over, held back, so on-- and talking about the people they actually were. having them write their own stories is fun and all, but having them actually tell their stories and feel heard, even if it's in a time they'll never see, is a much less reductive sentiment.

tl;dr: so basically i thought the musical was badly written for the message they were trying to send, and no amount of good music or talented performance can save a boring or badly written musical, and the six queens still deserve better.

[rctribvtn]

Have you ever noticed that ( JASON TODD ) from the ( DC UNIVERSE ) looks a lot like ( CURRAN WALTERS )? But ( HE ) also go/goes by ( RED HOOD ). Having the ability to/of ( EXPERT MARKSMAN/TACTICIAN, SKILLED MARTIAL ARTIST & HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT,  ENHANCED WEAPONS TECH, AND ENHANCED STRENGTH / SPEED / DURABILITY DUE TO LAZARUS PIT EXPOSURE. )  sure makes them a force to be reckoned with. Rumour has it they are ( 21 ) and is working as ( MORALLY GREY VIGILANTE ). 

𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖇𝖊𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌.

willis  and  catherine  todd  didn’t  have  the  perfect  marriage.  in  fact,  it  was  barely  a  happy  one.  willis  would  later  serve  time  in  prison,  a  career  criminal  by  day  and  a  shitty  husband  by  night,  and  when  his  time  was  up  ?  he’d  leave  his  family  behind.  their  only  child,  jason,  was  forced  to  raise  himself  as  his  mother  turned  to  drugs.  petty  crime  was  how  he  kept  a  roof  over  their  heads,  and  food  in  their  bellies.  there  was  no  one  to  look  after  him  so  he  looked�� after  himself.  after  his  mother  died  of  an  accidental  overdose,  he  avoided  the  eyes  of  the  system  and  continued  a  life  of  petty  crime,  of  ripping  parts  off  cars  to  sell  for  cash,  and  did  so  until  he  was  caught  trying  to  jack  the  tires  off  the  bat-mobile.  he’d  managed  to  get  one  taken  off  but  got  caught  going  in  for  the  other  three.  

a  brief  stint  in  boarding  school,  which  failed  epically,  led  to  him  eventually  being  brought  on  as  the  new  robin.  batman  figured  channelling  his  anger  into  catching  criminals  might  prevent  him  from  becoming  one.  jason,  however,  was  a  problem.  he  didn’t  listen,  was  incredibly  impulsive,  and  was  more  violent  than  he  needed  to  be.  he  was  frequently  breaking  batman’s  cardinal  rules,  even  going  so  far  as  to  presumably  murdering  someone.  this  was  the  #1  rule.  bad  jason.   all  the  same,  bruce  kept  trying  to  beat  positive  ideologies  into  him.  he  tried  to  teach  him  right  from  wrong,  allow  him  to  see  things  from  a  less  grey  perspective,  but  growing  up  on  the  streets  had  already  twisted  his  sense  of  right  and  wrong.   it  was  too  late.

𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝖈𝖆𝖒𝖊 𝖙𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖊.

from  there,  most  of  what  happens  to  jason  in  titans  is  canon  for  him.  he’s  robin,  albeit  an  impulsive  one,  and  ends  up  joining  up  with  dick  and  the  titans  to  get  some  space.  shortly  after  where  the  show  ends  in  season  two,  when  jason’s  peaced  out  to  go  out  on  his  own,  he  finds  out  that  his  biological  mother  wasn’t  the  woman  who  gave  birth  to  him.  after  tracking  her  down,  he  finds  out  that  she  was  being  blackmailed  by  the  joker  to  lure  him  into  a  trap.  the  who’s  and  why’s  aren’t  important  but  in  the  end,  she  turns  him  over  to  the  joker  where  he’s  beaten  bloody  and  left  to  die  with  a  bomb  counting  down.   batman  doesn’t  make  it  in  time  and  he  dies.    or  does  he?

turns  out,  he  wasn’t  dead.  for  argument’s  sake,  given  that  bruce  isn’t  a  dumbie,  i’ll  say  maybe  joker  dosed  him  with  a  paralytic  or  something.  it  stopped  his  heart  long  enough  to  pass  for  him  being  dead.   so  when  he  claws  his  way  out  of  the  grave  shortly  after,  injured  beyond  comprehension  with  no  sense  of  himself,  it’s  simply  sheer  luck  that  sees  someone  find  him.  a  doctor  named  august  takes  him  in  and  nurses  him  back  to  health  as  best  he  can.  yet  over  the  months  that  his  body  recovers,  his  mind  never  does.   he  has  no  recollection  of  who  he  is,  or  where  he  belongs,  so  when  a  petty  criminal  recognizes  him  and  tips  off  talia  al-ghul,  he  sees  no  reason  to  be  distrustful  of  her  when  she  comes  for  him.   she  uses  the  lazarus  pit  to  heal  his  body  and  his  memory,  twisting  his  beliefs  and  convincing  him  that  bruce  didn’t  properly  avenge  his  death.   that  his  death  meant  nothing.   that  he  was  nothing.  

𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖈𝖔𝖒𝖊𝖘 𝖓𝖊𝖝𝖙?

after  determining  that  batman  showed  no  remorse  for  sparing  the  joker’s  life,  jason  decided  to  take  matters  into  his  own  hands.   he  attacked  the  joker,  beating  him  in  a  similar  fashion  to  how  he’d  been  beaten,  and  took  the  red  hood  from  him.   he  took  on  the  mantle  for  himself,  inserting  himself  into  gotham’s  criminal  underground.  as  the  red  hood,  he  assumes  control  over  several  gangs  in  gotham  and  starts  a  one-man  war  against  the  black  mask.  overall,  his  goal  is  to  cleanse  the  city  of  its  corruption,  such  as  drug  dealing  and  gang  violence.  he  also  aims  to  kill  the  joker  but  hey,  who  doesn’t.

presently,  jason’s  moving  on  up  in  the  world  to  new  york.  he  still  has  his  roots  in  gotham,  keeping  an  eye  on  the  criminal  populace  and  busting  in  when  need  be,  but  with  the  people  he  used  to  know  and  care  about  in  the  city  ...  he’s  on  high  alert,  slinking  in  the  shadows.  watching.  waiting.   he  intends  on  making  his  presence  known  at  some  point,  wants  to  know  why  the  people  that  claimed  to  care  about  him  did  nothing  to  avenge  his  death,  but  there’s  something  holding  him  back.   maybe  he’s  afraid  of  the  truth,  or  maybe  he’s  afraid  of  feeling  something  other  than  the  rage  that’s  been  poisoning  him  

tldr:  jason’s  a  loud-mouth,  impulsive,  kind  of  a  dick,  former  vigilante ( robin )  turned  anti-hero  (  red  hood  ).  he  died  roughly  two  years  ago  and  is  back  now,  but  the  only  people  that  likely  know  are  august  and  talia.  

𝖆𝖇𝖎𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖊𝖘.

there’s  a  lot  of  abilities  listed  on  the  wiki,  but  i’ll  give  you  a  few  as  examples.  the  rest  can  be  found  here  if  you’re  curious!

lazarus-enhanced  capabilities:   he  no  longer  ages,  or  if  he  does  it’s  at  a  degraded  rate,  and  he  regenerates  from  injuries  at  a  fast  rate.  his  strength,  speed,  stamina,  agility,  reflexes,  metabolism,  etc,  have  also  been  enhanced.  

peak  human  conditioning:  between  talia  and  bruce,  he’s  had  extreme  physical  training  and  meditation  techniques  drilled  into  his  head.  he’s  also  proficient  in  martial  arts  and  is  a  master  marksman.  

he’s  multilingual,  a  skilled  swordsman,  expert  acrobat,  blah,  blah,  blah.  basically  the  batfam  are  crazy  talented  and  geniuses.  

with  his  red  hood  costume,  i’m  going  with  version  3  babey.  the  brown  biker  jacket,  form  fitting  black  costume  underneath  with  the  red  bat  signal  on  the  chest.  everything’s  breathable  and  probably  made  of  something  similar  to  kevlar  even  if  he  is  almost  impossible  to  kill  at  this  point.  he  still  wears  the  red  helmet,  as  he’s  been  keeping  his  return  a  semi-secret  from  the  important  people  in  his  life.   his  weapons  of  choice  vary  but  are  normally  jericho  941′s,  shurikens,  a  flame  dagger.  depends  on  how  spicy  he’s  feeling  that  day.  

[whatisthiswitchcraft]

books I read in 2019 (not including rereads, favorites are bolded!)

Come Close - Sappho

Shanghai Baby - Wei Hui

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair - Pablo Neruda

Bad Feminist: Essays - Roxane Gay

The Mother of Black Hollywood: A Memoir - Jenifer Lewis

Sula - Toni Morrison

Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writings of North America - ed. Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel - Alexander Chee

Night Sky With Exit Wounds - Ocean Vuong

If They Come For Us - Fatimah Asghar

Heart Berries: A Memoir - Terese Marie Mailhot

Less - Andrew Sean Greer

The Astonishing Color of After - Emily X.R. Pan

Goodbye, Vitamin - Rachel Khong

Darius the Great is Not Okay - Adib Khorram

Exit West - Mohsin Hamid

Homegirls and Handgrenades - Sonia Sanchez

Heavy: An American Memoir - Keise Laymon

All You Can Ever Know - Nicole Chung

Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri

The Wife Between Us - Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

The Way You Make Me Feel - Maureen Goo

A Very Large Expanse of Sea - Tahereh Mafi

Water By the Spoonful - Quiara Alegría Hudes

I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put My Faith in Beyoncé - Michael Arceneaux

Bury It - Sam Sax

White Dancing Elephants - Chaya Bhuvaneswar

Pulp - Robin Talley

Shit is Real - Aisha Franz

Silencer - Marcus Wicker

Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale - Belle Yang

Bestiary: Poems - Donika Kelly

Monster Portraits - Sofia Samatar

No Matter the Wreckage - Sarah Kay

Violet Energy Ingots - Hoa Nguyen

Olio - Tyehimba Jess

The Kane Chronicles: The Serpent’s Shadow - Rick Riordan

There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé - Morgan Parker

Nylon Road: A Graphic Memoir of Coming of Age in Iran - Parsua Bashi

The Wedding Date - Jasmine Guillory

Fruit of the Drunken Tree - Ingrid Rojas Contreras

An American Marriage - Tayari Jones

Family Trust - Kathy Wang

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture - ed. Roxane Gay

Little & Lion - Brandy Colbert

A Girl Like That - Tanaz Bhathena

Suicide Club: A Novel About Living - Rachel Heng

The Disturbed Girl’s Dictionary - NoNieqa Ramos

My Old Faithful: Stories - Yang Huang

Crazy Rich Asians - Kevin Kwan

Girls Burn Brighter - Shobha Rao

Moon of the Crusted Snow - Waubgeshig Rice

Kingdom Animalia - Aracelis Girmay

Happiness - Aminatta Forna

Devotions - Mary Oliver

The Proposal - Jasmine Guillory

The Kiss Quotient - Helen Hoang

When Katie Met Cassidy - Camille Perri

Heads of the Colored People - Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Friday Black: Stories - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

The Word is Murder - Anthony Horowitz

Miles from Nowhere - Nami Mun

The Lost Ones - Sheena Kamal

All the Names They Used for God - Anjali Sachdeva

Confessions of the Fox - Jordy Rosenberg

Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir - Padma Lakshmi

On the Come Up - Angie Thomas

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali - Sabina Khan

See What I Have Done - Sarah Schmitt

Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter - Erika Sánchez

For Today I Am A Boy - Kim Fu

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings - Joy Harjo

They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us - Hanif Abdurraqib

Mongrels - Stephen Graham Jones

If Beale Street Could Talk - James Baldwin

Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America - Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson

The Gilded Wolves - Roshani Chokshi

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before - Jenny Han

The Perfect Nanny - Leila Slimani, translated by Sam Taylor

The Travelling Cat Chronicles - Hiro Arikawa, translated by Philip Gabriel

Things We Lost in the Fire - Mariana Enríquez, translated by Megan McDowell

Sunburn - Laura Lippman

The House of Impossible Beauties - Joseph Cassara

Freshwater - Akwaeke Emezi

A Private Life - Chen Ran, translated by John Howard-Gibbon

Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster - Stephen L. Carter

Undead Girl Gang - Lily Anderson

They Both Die at the End - Adam Silvera

The Friend - Sigrid Nunez

Severance - Ling Ma

Tiny Crimes: Very Short Tales of Mystery & Murder - ed. Licoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto

Mapping the Interior - Stephen Graham Jones

Give Me Some Truth - Eric Gansworth

How to Love a Jamaican - Alexia Arthurs

All of This is True - Lygia Day Peñaflor

Swimmer Among the Stars - Kanishk Tharoor

The Wicked + the Divine, Vol. 7: Mothering Invention - Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

This is Kind of an Epic Love Story - Kheryn Callender

Gingerbread - Helen Oyeyemi

Where the Dead Sit Talking - Brandon Hobson

The Ensemble - Aja Gabel

My Education - Susan Choi

More Happy than Not - Adam Silvera

Nobody Cares: Essays - Anne T. Donahue

Kiss and Tell: A Romantic Résumé, Ages 0 to 22 - Marinaomi

Oculus: Poems - Sally Wen Mao

Let’s Talk About Love - Claire Kann

History is All You Left Me - Adam Silvera

Opposite of Always - Justin A. Reynolds

The Crown Ain’t Worth Much - Hanif Abdurraqib

The Weight of Our Sky - Hanna Alkaf

If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi - Neel Patel

Girls of Paper and Fire - Natasha Ngan

What if It’s Us - Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera

The Map of Salt and Stars - Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard - Lesléa Newman

The Big Smoke - Adrian Matejka

Dissolve - Sherwin Bitsui

The Woman Next Door - Yewande Omotoso

The Refugees - Viet Thanh Nguyen

White Tears - Hari Kunzru

Electric Arches - Eve Ewing

The Black Maria - Aracelis Girmay

Bloodchild and Other Stories - Octavia Butler

Soft Science - Franny Choi

The White Card - Claudia Rankine

Mad Honey Symposium - Sally Wen Mao

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls - Anissa Gray

Next: New Poems - Lucille Clifton

The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance: Poems 1987-1992 - Audre Lorde

Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems - Nikki Giovanni

The Arab of the Future - Riad Sattouf

Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side - Eve L. Ewing

Gruel - Bunkong Tuon

Marriage of a Thousand Lies - SJ Sindu

Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler

Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning - Alice Walker

That Kind of Mother - Rumaan Alam

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows - Balli Kaur Jaswal

Hera Lindsay Bird - Hera Lindsay Bird

Queenie - Candice Carty-Williams

And Still I Rise - Maya Angelou

The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead - Chanelle Benz

Everyone Knows You Go Home - Natalia Sylvester

Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems - June Jordan

The 100* Best African American Poems (*But I Cheated) - ed. Nikki Giovanni

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 - P. Djèlí Clark

Bury My Clothes - Roger Bonair-Agard

Selected Poems - Langston Hughes

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

Sonata Mulattica - Rita Dove

Winnie - Gwendolyn Brooks

Bicycles: Love Poems - Nikki Giovanni

The Black God’s Drums -  P. Djèlí Clark

Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos - Lucy Knisley

Annie Allen - Gwendolyn Brooks

Parable of the Talents  - Octavia Butler

After Disasters - Viet Dinh

Passing for Human: A Graphic Memoir - Liana Finck

Teeth - Aracelis Girmay

A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun: The Life & Legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks - Angela Jackson

Peluda - Melissa Lozada-Oliva

A Map to the Next World - Joy Harjo

Magical Negro - Morgan Parker

Corpse Whale - dg nanouk okpik

Hawkeye: Volume 1 - Matt Fraction

Cenzontle - Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric - Claudia Rankine

Selected Poems - Gwendolyn Brooks

She Had Some Horses - Joy Harjo

The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hope - ed. Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, and Nate Marshall

Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories - Nichelle Nichols

The Past and Other Things that Should Stay Buried - Shaun David Hutchinson

Difficult Women - Roxane Gay

The Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Joy Harjo

The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays - Esmé Weijun Wang

Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest - Hanif Abdurraqib

The Frolic of the Beasts - Yukio Mishima

Hawkeye Omnibus - Matt Fraction

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations - Mira Jacob

Karamo: My Story of Embracing Purpose, Healing, and Hope - Karamo Brown

Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Waters

When My Brother Was an Aztec - Natalie Diaz

Toxic Flora: Poems - Kimiko Hahn

Virgin - Analicia Sotelo

Easy Prey - Catherine Lo

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me - Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell

Saints and Misfits - S.K. Ali

Intercepted - Alexa Martin

Love from A to Z - S.K. Ali

Gemini - Sonya Mukherjee

The Atlas of Reds and Blues - Devi S. Laskar

My Brother’s Husband Vol. II - Gengoroh Tagame

Black Queer Hoe - Britteney Black Rose Kapri

Internment - Samira Ahmed

Dothead: Poems - Amit Majmudar

With the Fire On High - Elizabeth Acevedo

Sabrina & Corina: Stories - Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Milk and Filth - Carmen Giménez Smith

The Key to Happily Ever After - Tif Marcelo

If You’re Out There - Katy Loutzenhiser

Farewell to Manzanar - Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

New Poets of Native Nations - ed. Heid E. Erdrich

Bodymap: Poems - Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Wolf by Wolf - Ryan Graudin

Tell Me How It Ends - Valeria Luiselli

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood - Trevor Noah

Down and Across - Arvin Ahmadi

The Tradition - Jericho Brown

About Betty’s Boob - Vero Cazot and Julie Rocheleau

Fake It Till You Break It - Jenn P. Nguyen

Storm of Locusts - Rebecca Roanhorse

Silver Sparrow - Tayari Jones

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors - Sonali Dev

Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes, Pranks - Justin Chin

When I Grow Up I Want To Be a List of Further Possibilities - Chen Chen

The New Testament - Jericho Brown

Fumbled - Alexa Martin

If It Makes You Happy - Claire Kann

Brave Face - Shaun David Hutchinson

Words in Deep Blue - Cath Crowley

Lost Children Archive - Valeria Luiselli

Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice - Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Anger is a Gift - Mark Oshiro

The Bride Test - Helen Hoang

Not Your Backup - C.B. Lee

Prelude to Bruise - Saeed Jones

The Night Wanderer: A Graphic Novel - Drew Hayden Taylor and Michael Wyatt

Naturally Tan - Tan France

Bloom - Kevin Panetta and Savanna Ganucheau

Like a Love Story - Abdi Nazemian

I’m Afraid of Men - Vivek Shraya

Juliet Takes a Breath - Gabby Rivera

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong

Let Me Hear a Rhyme - Tiffany D. Jackson

I Wanna Be Where You Are - Kristina Forest

Hurricane Season - Nicole Melleby

Split Tooth - Tanya Tagaq

Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Love and Food - ed. Elsie Chapman and Caroline Tung Richmond

The Night Tiger - Yangsze Choo

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls - T Kira Madden

Miracle Creek - Angie Kim

Ayesha at Last - Uzma Jalaluddin

Shout - Laurie Halse Anderson

The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal if You Hear Me - ed. Fatimah Asghar and Safia Elhillo

The Tenth Muse - Catherine Chung

This Place: 150 Years Retold - various authors

Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens - Tanya Boteju

Midnight Chicken (& Other Recipes Worth Living For) - Ella Risbridger

Library of Small Catastrophes - Alison C. Rollins

Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune - Roselle Lim

No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America - Darnell L. Moore

The Book of Delights - Ross Gay

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton

Speak No Evil - Uzodinma Iweala

How We Fight White Supremacy - Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend - Emily Horner

Here and Now and Then - Mike Chen 

The Ghost Bride - Yangsze Choo

Red White and Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston

Becoming - Michelle Obama

The Wedding Party - Jasmine Guillory

Magic for Liars - Sarah Gailey

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer - Michelle McNamara

Brain Fever - Kimiko Hahn

Life on Mars - Tracy K. Smith

Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler - Juan Felipe Herrera

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude - Ross Gay

Tentacle - Rita Indiana

Hapa Tales and Other Lies: A Memoir About the Mixed Race Hawai’i That I Never Knew - Sharon Chang

Loose Woman - Sandra Cisneros

Duende - Tracy K. Smith

Mostly Dead Things - Kristen Arnett

1919 - Eve L. Ewing

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge

Negroland - Margo Jefferson

For Black Girls Like Me - Mariama J. Lockington

Super Extra Grande - Yoss

Home Remedies - Xuan Juliana Wang

You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain - Phoebe Robinson

An Anonymous Girl - Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

The Abundance - Amit Majmudar

I Shall Not Be Moved - Maya Angelou

Helium - Rudy Francisco

Teaching My Mother to Give Birth - Warsan Shire

Tomie - Junji Ito

Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay - Phoebe Robinson

This Time Will Be Different - Misa Sugiura

Junji Ito’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu - Junji Ito

Stag’s Leap - Sharon Olds

Black Card - Chris L. Terry

It’s Not Like It’s A Secret - Misa Sugiura

Washington Black - Esi Edugyan

From Here To Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death - Caitlin Doughty

I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying: Essays - Bassey Ikpi

A House of My Own: Stories from my Life - Sandra Cisneros

The Terrible - Yrsa Daley-Ward

The Black Tides of Heaven - JY Yang

The Red Threads of Fortune - JY Yang

Little Fish - Casey Plett

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion - Jia Tolentino

The Black Condition ft. Narcissus - Jayy Dodd

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

Dealing in Dreams - Lilliam Rivera

The Tiger Flu - Larissa Lai

The Island of Sea Women - Lisa See

America is Not the Heart - Elaine Castillo

Feel Free - Zadie Smith

Walking on the Ceiling - Aysegul Savas

My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education - Jennine Capo Crucet

The Unpassing - Chia-Chia Lin

Maurice - E.M. Forster

Permanent Record - Mary H.K. Choi

The Downstairs Girl - Stacey Lee

Red Dust Road: An Autobiographical Journey - Jackie Kay

The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You - Dina Nayeri

I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up - Naoko Kodama

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI - David Grann

Ordinary Light - Tracy K. Smith

Cantoras - Carolina De Robertis

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness - Susannah Cahalan

How to Be Remy Cameron - Julian Winters

The Marriage Clock - Zara Raheem

Moon: Letters, Maps, Poems - Jennifer S. Cheng

Where Reasons End - Yiyun Li

Pet - Akwaeke Emezi

Meddling Kids - Edgar Cantero

A Lucky Man - Jamel Brinkley

Maiden, Mother, Crone: Fantastical Trans Femmes - ed. Gwen Benaway

What is Obscenity? The Story of a Good for Nothing Artist and her Pussy - Rokudenashiko

The Umbrella Academy Vol. III: Hotel Oblivion - Gerard Way

Who Put This Song On? - Morgan Parker

The Souls of Yellow Folk: Essays - Wesley Yang

Wave - Sonali Deraniyagala

Love War Stories - Ivelisse Rodriguez

Baby Teeth - Zoje Stage

A Fortune for Your Disaster - Hanif Abdurraqib

Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers - Jake Skeets

Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen - Jose Antonio Vargas

The Marrow Thieves - Cherie Dimaline

Polite Society - Mahesh Rao

Patron Saints of Nothing - Randy Ribay

The Body Papers: A Memoir - Grace Talusan

A Woman is No Man - Etaf Rum

Travelers - Helon Habila

Trust Exercise - Susan Choi

The Silent Patient - Alex Michaelides

The Intuitionist - Colson Whitehead

A People’s History of Heaven - Mathangi Subramanian

The Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Kureishi

This is Paradise: Stories - Kristiana Kahakauwila

Brood - Kimiko Hahn

Don’t Look Now - Daphne du Maurier

How We Fight for Our Lives - Saeed Jones

I Hope You Get This Message - Farah Naz Rishi

Unmarriageable - Soniah Kamal

Bad Endings - Carleigh Baker

The Water Dancer - Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick - Mallory O’Meara

Shapes of Native Nonficton: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers - ed. Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton

Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass - Mariko Tamaki

Even the Saints Audition - Rachel Jackson

Slay - Britney Morris

#NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women - ed. Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth Leatherdale

The Starlet and the Spy - Ji-min Lee

North of Dawn - Nuruddin Farah

Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid

The Drowning Boy’s Guide to Water - Cameron Barnett

They Called Us Enemy - George Takei

Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, and Advice for Living Your Best Life - Ali Wong

The Right Swipe - Alisha Rai

Full Disclosure - Camryn Garrett

Searching for Sylvie Lee - Jean Kwok

Gideon the Ninth - Tasmyn Muir

Stubborn Archivist - Yara Rodrigues Fowler

The Wicked + the Divine, Vol. 8: Old is the New New - Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

Never Grow Up - Jackie Chan

“All the Real Indians Died Off”: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans - Roxanna Dunbar-Ortiz

In the Dream House - Carmen Maria Machado

Blame This on the Boogie - Rina Ayuyang

It - Stephen King

Sea Monsters - Chloe Aridjis

My Fate According to the Butterfly - Gail D. Villanueva

The Wicked + the Divine, Vol. 9: “Okay” - Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

The Deep - Rivers Solomon

I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World - Kai Cheng Thom

Mooncakes - Suzanne Walker

BTTM FDRS - Ezra Claytan Daniels and Ben Passmore

Hot Comb - Ebony Flowers

Notes from a Young Black Chef - Kwame Onwuachi

Bunny - Mona Awad

The Twisted Ones - T. Kingfisher

Shuri, Vol. 1: The Search for Black Panther - Nnedi Okorafor

I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir - Malaka Gharib

Thick: And Other Essays - Tressie McMillan Cottom

Royal Holiday - Jasmine Guillory

Boxers - Gene Luen Yang

Saints - Gene Luen Yang

Fox 8 - George Saunders

The Memory Police - Yoko Ogawa

Last Day - Domenica Ruta

Wakanda Forever - Nnedi Okorafor

The Revisioners - Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

The Future of Another Timeline - Annalee Newitz

We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir - Samra Habib

Somewhere in the Middle: A Journey to the Phillipines in Search of Roots, Belonging, and Identity - Deborah Francisco Douglas

Crier’s War - Nina Varela

Something in Between - Melissa de la Cruz

The Secrets We Kept - Lara Prescott

The Tao of Raven: An Alaska Native Memoir - Ernestine Hayes

One of Us is Lying - Karen M. McManus

Piecing Me Together - Renee Watson

Binti - Nnedi Okorafor

The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead

Recursion - Blake Crouch

Supper Club - Lara Williams

[luthienluinwe]

Black Roses and Hail Marys

Inspired by artwork @xbullet-01​

Jason Peter Todd, age 15, died on Saturday, December 22 while on an overseas trip with adoptive father, Bruce Wayne. He is preceded in death by parents Catherine and Willis Todd. He is succeeded in life by adoptive father Bruce Wayne and adoptive brother Richard Grayson. A closed-casket visitation will take place at Newcomer Funeral Home from 10 AM until 7 PM on Thursday, December 27. The funeral will take place on Friday, December 28, at 9 AM at the Gotham Cathedral with graveside service to follow. In lieu of flowers, expressions of sympathy may be made to the Hudson County Department of Child Services.

He crumpled the two-week old paper in his hands and threw it onto the floor, not caring where it had landed. It couldn’t be true. Jason wasn’t dead. Just a month ago, they’d been laughing together at the manor, Dick finally having warmed up to his replacement. Just two weeks ago they’d gone on patrol together and talked about all of the things Dick would be doing off-planet.

And now he was cold and stiff and pale and dead.

And Bruce hadn’t even bothered to give him a damned phone call.

He hadn’t even been able to go to the funeral.

His heart was pounding in his chest, and it wasn’t fair. He was able to stand there, complaining about something Jason would never be able to experience again.

He started to reach for the phone, teeth clenched. He rehearsed everything he wanted to say to Bruce in his head three times over. But his hand wouldn’t wrap around the receiver. He swore and punched the wall next to where the phone sat hanging, the pain in his knuckles not registering for several moments.

 ********

Dick had gone home to visit the family after a rough case with the Titans. He’d found out about the new kid from the papers and from some tense phone calls with Bruce and Alfred, but knowing and experiencing were two completely different things. “Hey,” he greeted Bruce and threw his bag onto his bed.

“You could’ve at least said hello to him,” Bruce crossed his arms and Dick rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, well you could’ve at least told me about him,” he snapped.

He didn’t even regret it when he saw the younger boy’s head quickly duck out of view of the doorframe, when he heard the footsteps all but running down the hall.

*********

 The rain was pouring down, but the water was hard to see against the black night sky. His suit clung to his skin, and he didn’t even care about how hard it was going to be to take off that much wet spandex once he got home. He had debated the outfit for hours. A suit was more appropriate, more formal, more traditional. But Jason had never done anything the traditional way.

Enough people would have worn suits to mourn him, people that sent flowers and Hallmark cards and pretended to care until the next big tragedy popped up. Jason’s name would fade away. Dick could see the future galas clearly in his head. “Oh, and remember that one boy? The one from Crime Alley? Such a shame what happened to him,” some woman with a diamond ring on her finger and diamond studs in her ears would say. “Ah, yes, a shame to die so young. What was his name? John? James?”

He wandered through the cemetery, long deserted by that hour, looking for the stone he least wanted to see. He passed the smaller graves with the tiny headstones. He passed the monuments for people that history had already forgotten.

And he saw it, gray and cold and unfeeling. Jason P. Todd. August 16, 1994 – December 22, 2009. May You Forever Soar the Skies.

Dick shook his head and stared at the stone. It wasn’t right. Jason had been fire. And now he was surrounded by ice.

 *********

 “Oh my God, we’re going to die,” Dick muttered and shut his eyes tightly, leaning his head against the back window of the car. On the list of bad ideas Bruce had come up with that week, Jason driving them to the gala was definitely near the top. By his count, they’d run two redlights (it was different when they were civilians) and nearly rammed into an elderly lady.

 Bruce turned and shot him a glare. “At least he didn’t wreck the car two minutes after getting onto the freeway and use the goddamn brake!”

 “Sorry,” Jason squeaked out, and Dick couldn’t help but smirk. At least Bruce was consistent with being tough on them.  

 He got out of the car, hanging behind Bruce, and waited for Jason to step out of the driver’s seat. “You did… okay,” he managed. “Just, I don’t know, relax or something, okay?”

 “Hard to do when you’re being screamed at,” Jason muttered and crossed his arms. For a moment, Dick wondered what the kid’s deal was. All Bruce had told Dick was that Jason’s parents were dead and that he came from the bad part of town.

 “Yeah, well, he does that,” Dick shrugged. “It’s how he shows he cares. Now let’s get inside. The sooner we make appearances the sooner we can disappear with Roy.”

 He thought he saw a glimmer of a smile on the younger boy’s face. And just for a moment, he thought maybe having someone on his side wouldn’t be so bad.

 **********

 He clutched a single, long-stemmed rose in his hand. The thorns had torn through his glove and made his hand bleed, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t been sure of what to bring. A bouquet seemed too impersonal.

 His chest was tight and his mouth was dry. Jason was just a kid. He’d just gotten his learner’s permit. He was going to ask the kid from his class out on a date. Now he was never going to get his license and he was never going to go on that date. He’d never get married. Never have kids. Never be the person Dick knew he could have been.

 And it was so damn unfair. Jason was starting to get better. Bruce was getting through to him. The anger and aggression and impulsivity were all getting better.

 Death was something that happened to other people, not to them. Not when enough had been taken from them already.

 He threw the rose onto the grave and sat on the cold, wet ground, staring at it. “I’m so sorry, Jay,” he heard his voice crack and he hated himself for it. He felt like the air had been knocked out of him, like someone had ripped his chest open and grabbed him by the heart.

 And he could feel the rage that Bruce always warned him about boiling in his veins because Jason had died and Bruce hadn’t done a goddamned thing about it.

 ******

 “If you flick your wrist they’ll fly better,” Dick leaned against the wall and watched as Jason practiced throwing his Birdarangs. Bruce had a Wayne Enterprises event. Alfred had been given the night off. And Dick had been less than thrilled at Bruce’s attempt to force him to bond with Jason.

 “Can you go five minutes without criticizing me?” Jason snapped, green eyes full of fight and fire.

 Dick blinked and crossed his arms, impressed that he’d finally stood up to him.  “Will you just trust me?” he asked.

 Jason sighed and let out a resigned “Fine.” Dick smiled and stood behind him, guiding his arms and his right wrist. He felt Jason’s breath catch when he saw the weapon fly and land, sticking into the wall. Alfred would be upset that they’d damaged the new paint, but Dick didn’t care.

 He stepped back and watched Jason turn to face him. “Did you see that?” the younger boy asked, eyes full of wonder.

 “You know,” Dick laughed. “Sometimes I do know what I’m talking about.”

 *******

 He shouldn’t have driven to the manor. Rationally, he knew that. He was angry and upset and not in his right mind. But he needed to have that conversation in person. “Dick?” Bruce frowned and glanced over at him from his desk. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“When were you planning on telling me?” Dick slammed his helmet onto the desk in front of him.

“How did you…”

“The damn paper, Bruce!” he snapped and shook his head furiously. “Not to mention it’s all over the damn media. Did you think I wouldn’t find out? He’s dead and you couldn’t even come to tell me yourself…”

“I didn’t know what to say,” Bruce sighed and rested his head in the palm of his hand. And for a second, Dick felt sorry for him. He’d lost a brother, but Bruce had lost a son. “It was quick,” he said, but wouldn’t look back up at Dick. “He wasn’t in pain.”

“And I’m sure that’s exactly what you told all your stupid fake friends,” Dick said, trying to keep his temper in check. “What really happened?”

“Why do you need to know the details?”

“Because he’s my brother, and he’s dead, and you don’t even care enough to tell the damned truth about it!”

He’d crossed a line. He knew it as soon as he saw Bruce’s eyes flash, something dangerous in them. Bruce Wayne, caring father and public figure had left the room. Cold, terrifying Batman had replaced him. “You want to know what happened?” the older man demanded. Dick wondered if Alfred would pop his head in to make sure they were both okay. “He went off on his own. He was kidnapped by the Joker. He was beaten within an inch of his life, and he was blown up. Are you happy now?”

 And Dick wanted to scream, to demand how Bruce could keep himself so far away from the situation. But fighting wouldn’t solve anything. It wouldn’t bring Jason back.

He grabbed his helmet and he left.

 ******

They had fought just before Jason had died. Dick had told himself he’d cool down while he was off-planet. That they could work it out and go back to their regular, twisted lives. You could have killed him, he could still hear his voice shouting at Jason, dressed as Robin.

Yeah, well I didn’t. Even if he deserved it.

The rain was falling harder. It was late and he needed to get back home. But he didn’t want to leave Jason there alone. He should have been nicer. Maybe then Jason wouldn’t have gone off on his own. Maybe then he’d still be alive.

Dick never hugged him. Dick Grayson, the most touchy-feely person on the planet, had never hugged his little brother, the person he was supposed to protect and love and care for no matter what.

His arms were wrapped around the headstone before he knew what he was doing. His breaths were shuddering and ragged, and he knew that the rain wasn’t the only thing making his face wet.

He rested his head against the cold, hard concrete. “I’m sorry, Jay,” he spoke, voice barely above a broken whisper.

Jason was gone.

And it was all his fault.

“Dick?” he jumped when he heard Bruce’s voice behind him. He pulled himself away from the headstone, trying to act as though nothing had ever happened. He started to stand, but Bruce pushed him back down. He watched as his adoptive father sat on the ground beside him. What a sight it must have been, Nightwing and Batman staring at the grave of a boy time would forget. “I’m sorry.”

He wanted to fight. He wanted to scream for Bruce to leave him the hell alone, to never talk to him again. But all the fight had been drained out of him. And when Bruce pulled him into a tight hug, he did nothing to push him away. “I’m so, so sorry.”

[booksaremyoxygenn]

Ready Player One: Book Review & Discussion

“We’d been born into an ugly world, and the OASIS was our one happy refuge.”

If you love video games and the 80s, you MUST read this book. USA Today’s comparison of Ready Player One to Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory couldn't have been more spot on, but instead of the inheritance of a man who owns a chocolate factory he is playing for the inheritance of a video game creator.

Overall Rating: 4.5 / 5 Stars

My biggest argument is that because there was so much info and teaching about the 80s and video game references it felt choppy and it was hard to get lost in the book. However I absolutely loved learning all of those fascinating pieces of information. There were surprisingly many great life lessons in this book and I feel like I am walking away more knowledgeable. 

Age Recommendation: Well.... it depends on the child. It does curse a few times (but let’s be honest the kids already know the words, the aim isn’t for them not to learn it but to know not to use it.) However there is a bit of a lengthy section on things I would not even want my 13 year old sister reading on 193-194 so I recommend you take their book, rip that page out and then they are all ready to go. They will never even miss it. I think there are great life lessons in this book though for a young teen age group like the importance of logging off and living offline and not getting wrapped up in trying to constantly escape the real world. It talks about how people should be judged by their personality not their appearance. If we could simply choose out skin color, gender, and appearance like an avatar, life would be easier but life doesn’t work that way so accept people the way they are. You may surprise yourself with who your closest friends up being. 

Spoiler- Free Review: 

Wade just really doesn’t like his lot in life, whether that be in the real world when he’d rather be in a video game or that he is in the 2040s when he’d rather be born in the the 80s, or at the least before the Global Energy Crisis. Though he doesn’t mind living in OASIS soaking up the endless knowledge. The vast source of all books, movies, art, history, videogames, and, most importantly, information on James Halliday. OASIS is like the internet but with VR glasses only 10x more detailed, advanced, and infinite. Wade doesn’t even go to a real school he goes through the virtual reality of OASIS. “In OASIS, you could become whomever and whatever you wanted to be, without ever revealing your true identity, because your anonymity was guaranteed.” (pg 57) When James Halliday, inventor of OASIS, dies and leaves his fortune (240 billion dollars) to the first player to find the three keys hidden within his own video game, the world goes crazy in pursuit. Though after numerous years no one had found a single key, until Wade. That’s how the story begins. 

I loved that Cline’s writing encourages readers who know nothing about the 80s or video games to read this book. That has been a massive concern for people before they pick up this book, that they won’t understand the references. To be honest, there were many hidden “eggs” in the text that I saw that I knew were references that I just didn’t understand. (Which was still cool and I enjoyed looking them up and learning more.) However, all of the big, important references he explains in the book and he doesn’t make you feel stupid for not knowing but explains it clearly for those of us who aren’t experts. I genuinely feel more intelligent by reading this book and now know a lot more about pop culture in the 80s. Who knows this all may come in handy on Trivia Night? I highly recommend this book for a fun, nostalgic read. 

SPOILER Review / Book Discussion: 

Isn’t it scary how possible this all could be? With virtual reality continually advancing (in real life) how much longer will it take until people go to school in virtual reality like Wade or before the internet takes on this new form?

Though obviously in Wade’s world as technology has advanced his real world has been given up on. The stacks, while a great concept and super cool looking on the front cover, are atrocious living conditions. Though I must give Wade kutos on his battery powered heater and computer but really just his van in general. It makes me want to make my own Bat Cave inside a van. This was when I knew what his advantage would be in this game, he was a self-teacher, self-motivator, and dedicated his whole life to the hunt. 

One of my favorite parts about Cline’s writing was how it was constantly breaking stereotypes and speaking about important topics. I really appreciated the backstory that he gave Halliday. Especially how even though he wasn’t good at school he became a multi-billionaire. I am so tired of the assumption that being good at school has a direct correlation with future success. So many people who have changed the world never went to college, dropped out, or did poorly in high school. Another thing that I loved was the fact that this whole story wouldn’t have happened if Ogden Marrow (Og) wouldn’t have walked over to Halliday when he was sitting alone and invited him to play Dungeons and Dragons. It reminds me how much can change by a simple act of kindness and stepping out of your comfort zone to talk to new people. This whole story wouldn’t have happened, their world may have been drastically different if it wasn’t for Og’s invite. My favorite part though was how he had Asperger’s autism because my older brother has it as well and I could see the connections. Halliday’s lack of desire to express social skills, inability to step into other people’s shoes, and his few unhealthy obsessions were the most common traits. However I wish he wouldn’t have made the connections between Halliday’s crazy side and his Aspergers because that gives a bad name to this type of autism. (I mean you can’t win every battle right?)

One thing that really bothered my is how indifferent Wade was to risking everyone’s lives in the Stacks during his meeting with IOI. Once he realized he wasn’t actually gambling his own life because he wasn’t at home then it didn’t bother him anymore. He was willing to risk that. I understand that his aunt was cruel to him and that there were thieves and rapists roaming around the stacks but that’s not a good enough excuse as to why his conscious was clear about all those people he played a part in murdering. He said that there were no survivors. I understand that his other option was be enslaved to IOI but he is very smart, he could have figured out an alternative where hundreds of uninvolved people don’t die. (pg 146)

I personally love when authors put deep meaning into characters, places, animals and other things’ names. I loved that Art3mis was the greek god of the hunt and that Wade was Parzival. “On the day the Hunt began, the day I’d decided to become a gunter, I’d renamed my avatar Parzival, after the knight of Arthurian legend who had found the Holy Grail.” (pg 28) I love when author’s twist different stories together like that and give character’s deeply meaningful names. Like Alaska in John Green’s Looking for Alaska, or Katniss from The Hunger Games whose name is from a plant that is latin for archer. I prefer a bit more meaning than when Rainbow Rowell named the twins in Fangirl Cath and Wren because the mother didn’t know she was going to have twins so she split up the name Catherine. Though I do apprecaite it more than when authors just randomly name thier characters. (Also, Darth Vader’s name is literally Dark Father in Dutch so his name is a spoiler in itself.) I applaud Cline for his good choice in names. 

The first task was where players went into the Tomb of Horrors from Dungeons & Dragons to play Joust against Acereak. It was amusing to me but as someone who doesn’t know the first thing about Dungeons and Dragons the references were lost on me. However this line really stuck me as funny..... “It suddenly occurred to me just how absurd this scene was: a guy wearing a suit of armor, standing next to an undead king, both hunched over controls of a classic arcade game.” (pg 82) The whole time after he met Acererak I just imagined him going from his scary, glowing eyes to his best friend playing a video game and them fist bumping each other. Like I genuinely wanted them to become friends. Haha.

The first gate was where players played Dungeons of Daggorath to open the gate where they had to say and act all the lines of the character David Lightman in the film WarGames. This was my favorite task / gate he had to do and I wish I had my own version for The Hunger Games where I could be Katniss. Anyone else agree? They called them “Fliksyncs” (112) and I genuinely think if they make something like it in real life, it could be my favorite invention of all time. You would get to walk, talk, and live the life of your favorite character, your heroes, or be 1/2 of your favorite OTPs. ( I would gladly be Clary to play besides Jace from The Mortal Instruments... just putting it out there.)

A really important message that spread throughout the span of the book was that the internet (OASIS in RPO’s case) can take over our lives. ”It had become a self-imposed prison for humanity,” he wrote, “A pleasant place for the world to hide from its problems while human civilization slowly collapses, primarily due to neglect.” (pg 120) How much truer does that get?? Than once Wade won the egg even Halliday admitted that that was one of his biggest regrets, not logging off and living life the way it was meant to be, truly using your senses and awakening your body instead of constantly trying to mute it and hide yourself.  “I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn’t know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all all of my life. Right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be. it is also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real. Do you understand?” (pg 364) I think that is something people across the globe can relate to. We could all use a lesson in learning when to turn off our screens and fully engage in the world around us. 

Another really important message was during that OH MY GOSH! AECH REVEAL!.... which at first I felt like it changed everything but that’s the whole point, it didn’t change anything. She was still the same person she had always been. We see what we want to see in a person when we make assumptions about them from what they look like. It’s just a genuine reminder of how the lines between gender are so fluid and it doesn’t matter what you are born but how you act. I’m not even referencing transgender specifically but just boys being free to like pink and girls feeling free to be obsessed with Star Wars and video games. Though there was another lesson in this which was how she chose to be a white, male avatar, because her mother told her it would help her get treated better, even in the virtual world.  “In Marie’s opinion, the OASIS was the best thing that had ever happened to both women and people of color. From the very start, Marie has used a white male avatar to conduct all of her online business, because of the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given.” (pg 320) Why is this so painfully true?? I really loved what Wade said after he found out,  “We’d connected on a purely mental level. I understood her, trusted her, and loved her as a friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation.” (pg 321) Though I will admit I am glad that Cline made Ache a lesbian because I was worried she was going to confess her love to him and then Wade would have to choose.... and there just wasn’t enough pages left in the book for all that drama. Plus I really love when books allow guys and girls to just be friends without every liking each other romantically. 

The final thing, that I wouldn’t dream of ending this review/discussion without talking about is... Art3mis. Can we talk about how she started out such a strong character who was a fighter, independent blogger and full time badass who knows exactly how she plans on saving the world with the prize money from the egg. But then as time goes on she transforms more into a love interest than a fierce competitor. I think she sees this as well which is why she leaves him to focus on the competition. Though at the very end when she finally meets Wade in person she does that thing that Reese Witherspoon talks about in her Woman of the Year speech. Where Art3mis, the female,  turns to Wade, the male, and pretty much says, what do we do now? This is a phrase Reese says she hates reading the most and is usually written by scripts with no female involved in the writing.  She says “Now you do you know any woman in any crisis situation.. who has absolutely no idea what to do?” Reese made a good point in saying that it’s top woman stop playing the damsel in distress because we so rarely are. Art3mis went from this total badass who could carry her own to a self conscious, love interest. However, I am so glad that Art3mis gave up Wade for the hunt in some ways because if she would have given up her passions and her life long goal for a boy, I would have been more insulted. Personally, I just really like strong, female leads and am getting tired of women being accessories to males. I’m also tired of the never ending line of self conscious characters (both female and male) who find their self worth and beauty once their romantic interests informs them that it exists. So thank you to characters like Celaena Sardothien, Alaska Young, and Margo Roth Spiegelman for showing the world that it’s cool to love yourself and know you are amazing. Though I was still rooting for Art3metis because of her strong will and good intentions for the prize. 

In the end everything seemed to fall perfectly in place which made me so happy. No loose threads and a beautiful, sappy, happy ever after. The character development for Wade was so great and I felt happy walking away from this book knowing that things were going well for him. 

Favorite Quotes: 

1.) How the protagonist, Wade, feels about video games is how I feel about books...

"Playing old video games never failed to clear my mind and set me at ease. If I was feeling depressed or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game's two-dimensional universe, life was simple" (pg 14)

2.) Me when I get into a good book series....

“I was obsessed. I wouldn’t quit. My grades suffered. I didn’t care.”  (pg 63)

3.)  “Spending time with her was intoxicating. We seemed to have everything in common. We shared the same interests. We were driven by the same goal. She got all my jokes. She made me laugh. She made me think. She changed the way I saw the world. I’d never had such a powerful, immediate connection with another human being before. Not even with Aech.” (pg 174) 

4.) “I was watching a collection of vintage ‘80′s commercials when I paused to wonder why cereal manufacturers no longer included toy prizes inside every box. It was a tragedy, in my opinion. Another sign that civilization was going straight down the tubes.” (pg 176)

5.)  “And then one night, like a complete idiot, I told her how I felt.” (pg 179)

6.) “No one in the world ever gets what they want and that’s beautiful.” (pg 199)  

7.) “I stood outside her palace gates for two solid hours, with a boombox over my head, blasting “In Your Eyes” by Peter gabriel at full volume.” (pg 203)

8.) “Art3mis had led me to believe that she was somehow hideous but now I saw that nothing could have been further from the truth. To my eyes, the birthmark did absolutely nothing to diminish her beauty. If anything, the face I saw in the photo seemed even more beautiful to me than that of her avatar, because I knew it was this one was real.” (pg 292)

9.)  “In Marie’s opinion, the OASIS was the best thing that had ever happened to both women and people of color. From the very start, Marie has used a white male avatar to conduct all of her online business, because of the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given.” (pg 320)

10.)  “We’d connected on a purely mental level. I understood her, trusted her, and loved her as a friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation. (pg 321)

Discussion Questions: 

1.) Would you apply for the virtual OASIS education like Wade?

When Wade talks about his classes and how he is able to travel through a human heart, visit the Louvre, Jupiter’s moons and more it makes me think that our education system could be so much better with this technology. For one, he discusses how discipline isn’t a problem, how Wade can mute out bullies, and how even the teachers liked the system so much more. It gives students the ability to do things like Wade did and go to chat rooms with his friends in his free time and hang out with people he likes and avoid / mute the ones he doesn’t. I think there are major problems like affordability and the fact that you miss out on real human interaction that scientists have proven is needed for a healthy mind, body, and soul. 

2.) If you were a gunter, would you join a clan or stay solo? 

In the end I think that part of the lesson Holliday was trying to teach is that you need other people to succeed. You need help and can’t do everything on your own. Why else would he have made the door only open with three keys?

3.) If you were Wade would you sell out to sponsors, movie and book people, and the Suxors? or would you risk it all on the chance of being the first to find the egg?

4.)  What movie would you want to enter into like Wade did for the first gate for a “Syncflik”? Could you complete the dialogue for a whole movie?

5.) Did they fake drink at the bar at Og’s party because they hadn’t ever been able to eat or drink inside the OASIS before? 

6.) Has social media become obsolete in their world or is the avatar practically their form of social media? Or instead of trying to impress people with how they went to the beach or the expensive Louis Vuittons they just bought, do they put their energy into impressing through their OASIS accounts?

7.) Doesn’t IOI trying to capitalize on OASIS sound a lot like the government trying to end net neutrality? I think this whole story is a lot more realistic than most of us would like to admit to ourselves. (pg 33)

Movie Trailer: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSp1dM2Vj48 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Scj3wiIcSu0&t=115s

I really hope they keep the Rocky Horror Show scene (pg 179) in the movie because I want to see them have fun and be laid back together. Plus it would be really funny. It was super entertaining in Perks of Being A Wallflower when Charlie has to be in the show. Also, I saw the zero gravity dance floor and the revamped Delorean in the movie trailer and can’t wait to see more of that. (pg 182)

The only thing that would make me immediately hate this movie is if they don’t give Art3mis her birthmark and so far in the trailer I noticed that they have only distinctly shown one side of her face but in the clip where she is sitting in a chair across from Wade you can see most of her face and I didn’t see any scar. What a missed opportunity? Unless they are having her cover it in the first half of the movie with makeup or something. The greatest parts of this book were the lessons learned and I think him meaning that he would love her no matter what she looked like in person because he loved who she was is a crucial part of the story and the birthmark plays a large role in that. It was an opportunity to give people who had similar situations like birthmarks have someone that looked like them in a movie to relate to. I think it really could have been something special. 

The other thing that is a bit of a turn off is the body form they gave Ache in the movie because it means that she won’t be able to have that moment talking about how she chose a white, male avatar because of how she felt at a disadvantage as a African American woman and wanted her avatar to be able to escape that. Also the actress they cast is thin so it is another missed opportunity. 

Also the choice of the song from Willy Wonka “Pure Imagination” was genius for the trailer. It was beyond perfect!

Side Note:

Also, if you would like to watch part 2 of this book... it’s called WALL-E. There are different characters but it is definitely what Wade’s planet earth is going to look like very soon. They were all absorbed in the internet and forgot about real life and how to make connections, just like this book. I mean Wade even notices his weight gain from being overly absorbed into the game. (pg 196)

[headquartersforlievmuses]

► Jason Todd

Jason Todd is a vigilante anti-hero who has been a member of and antagonist to the Batman Family. Batman originally trained him to be the second Robin, his new side-kick after Dick Grayson became Nightwing. Jason was murdered by the Joker, although he was later resurrected and returned as the second Red Hood.

Jason Todd was the son of Willis Todd and Sheila Haywood, although his mother was forced to relinquish his custody when Willis married Catherine Todd. Catherine was a drug addict and died from an overdose, while his father had once worked for Two-Face and was murdered by the criminal. Legally an orphan, Jason lived in his father's apartment in a derelict building in Crime Alley, where he turned to crime out of necessity. Jason became highly skilled in stealing tires from vehicles and during one of his usual thefts, he met Batman as he stole the Batmobile's wheels.

Jason was taken by Batman to a school run by Ma Gunn, hoping to reform the young man. However, Jason soon realized Gunn conducted illegal activities with the youngsters at her “school” and he escaped. When Batman located him, Jason informed him about Gunn's crimes and even assisted Batman in capturing her gang, after which Jason was taken in by Batman as the new Robin at the age of 12.

After six months of training, Jason was ready to go into action as the new Boy Wonder. In his early adventures, Robin assisted Batman against notable criminals like Two-Face, Magpie, Mime,[8] the Crime Doctor, The KGBeast, Deacon Blackfire and the Dumpster Slasher. While working on this last case, Jason became more aggressive and driven against criminals.

Unlike Batman's first protegee Dick Grayson, Jason was impulsive, reckless, and full of rage. After a first meeting with his predecesor, Jason struck a good enough friendship with Nightwing and during a troubled time for the Titans, Jason is recruited by Donna Troy to help on a mission. Jason becomes frustrated by the situation when Donna expects him to figure out plans and save everyone, like Dick would.

Jason's violent methods against crooks eventually caused the death of a criminal. Jason's attitude got him and Batman in troubles, but he showed no sign of slowing down. Instead, Jason became more reckless until he was forbidden from going out as Robin. During those moments, Jason learned the truth about his real mother and doing more investigation, he tracked down the possible persons to the Middle East. Going alone at first, Jason was soon joined by Batman, who was following the trail of the Joker, who had recently escaped from Arkham.

Jason and Bruce managed to foil Joker's plans to deal with terrorists, but they failed to capture the madman. With the crisis averted, Jason and Bruce resumed their quest to find Jason's real mother and eventually, they located her in Ethiopia. Shelia Haywood was working as part of the relief efforts for the refugees and once she was reunited with Jason, she told him the truth about their past. Unfortunately, Sheila had a criminal record which Joker used to blackmail her and use her for his own profits. Shelia tried to keep this from Jason, but he soon spotted Joker in the place and he followed the madman and his mother to a warehouse. After learning Joker's plan, Jason alerted Batman, who set out to stop a truck filled with Joker Venom. Meanwhile, Robin went to save his mother from Joker, but he was lured into a trap by her, who was also crooked and couldn't risk being exposed. In the warehouse, Robin was beaten to a bloody pulp by the Joker, using a crowbar. Joker then tied Sheila to a post and planted a bomb in the warehouse, leaving mother and son to die. Jason recovered and untied his mother, but they were unable to escape and the bomb exploded, killing them both.

Batman arrived too late to save them and all he could do was fix the crime scene to protect Jason's identity and later, he made the arrangements to have their bodies returned to Gotham and properly buried. For years, Jason's death haunted Batman, as he considered this his greatest failure: not properly training Jason in his role as Robin and failing to protect him from the Joker. Nonetheless, he used this experience to not make the same mistakes with the third Robin, Tim Drake.

It is later revealed that Jason indeed had died at the hands of the Joker, but when Superboy-Prime alters reality from the paradise dimension in which he is trapped (six months after his death), Jason is restored to life and breaks out of his coffin, but collapses thereafter and is hospitalized. After spending a year in a coma and subsequently as an amnesiac vagrant, he is recognized by Talia al Ghul. She spends several years trying to help restore Jason to full health, but the mental damage appears too extensive. Jason's is still able to fight, due to muscle reflex, but he appears to have no awareness of the situation. Talia's father, Ra's al Ghul sees Jason as a lost cause and orders him to be eliminated. In a last ditch effort to save him, Talia restores Jason's health and memory by immersing him in a Lazarus Pit in which her father is also bathing. It is suggested at that exposure to the Pit's energies together with Ra's might have affected Jason's personality. On Talia's advice, Jason determines his death was never avenged, and prepares to confront Batman by traveling across the globe in the same path of training as his mentor.

Using the money from Talia and infuriated by her statement that he "remains un-avenged," Jason paid a group of mercenaries to help him return to Gotham. Once Jason arrives (during the aftermath of the event of No Man's Land), he enacts a plan to get revenge on Batman. He created a false arms trafficking of advance military arsenal, knowing that Batman would respond. This provided Jason an opportunity to plant a bomb beneath the Batmobile while Batman is on a stakeout for the arms deal. Batman enters the car and is at the boy's mercy, detonator in hand. However, Todd realizes that his former mentor would never know about his return nor that he would be Bruce's killer. Jason then decides to confront and kill Batman directly by traveling across the globe in search of a similar, yet more deadly type of training as Bruce received to prepare for that day. Todd learned the murderous arts from various masters around the globe. Such training includes firearms, poisons and anti-toxins, martial arts, and bomb-making.

Jason was pitted against the man teaching him assassination, a German named Egon, who is also engaged in a child sex slave ring. Jason, upon learning of this, frees a shipment of children and battles his new mentor. Though he is not able to physically best Egon, he does defeat him by poisoning an energy drink Egon was consuming before the fight ever started. Jason then burns Egon's compound to the ground. He later remarks to Talia that he did not see this as murder, but rather putting "...down a reptile."

After a period of time, Jason is discovered and approached by Hush to participate in a game against Batman. While Batman attempts to uncover the mystery of Hush, Robin (Tim Drake) is kidnapped and taken to the cemetery where Jason was buried. When he confronts the kidnapper he discovers, much to his surprise, that the kidnapper is apparently Jason Todd. During the fight, Jason trades places with Clayface, who impersonates Jason for the end of the fight. Following the battle with Hush, Batman begins seeing visions of Jason. They appear to be the result of Scarecrow's fear gas, but Alfred finds Jason's mask in the batmobile, following one of the visions.

Shortly after Black Mask became the undisputed crime lord of Gotham, Jason Todd reappeared in Gotham City as the Red Hood, taking control of the drug dealing racket. A few days later, Red Hood led Batman and Nightwing to a warehouse where they had to fight Amazo. After this, Red Hood called Black Mask and informed him that he stole the Kryptonite shipment form him. Black Mask sent Mr. Freeze to eliminate Red Hood and during the battle, Batman and Nightwing arrived and all of them started fighting. In the midst of the battle, Red Hood escaped leaving the Kryptonite behind and told them he has gotten what he truly wanted: a "lay of the land." Shortly afterward, the Red Hood found the Joker and beat him with a crowbar just as the Joker had beaten Jason.

The Red Hood assumed control over several gangs in Gotham City and started a one-man-war against Black Mask's criminal empire. Red Hood met Onyx and after teaming up with her and crashing a drug dealer meeting, he stabbed her when she turned against him. Batman arrived in time to stop Red Hood from hurting her more and they fought each other. By the end of the fight, Red Hood unmasked Bruce and he revealed his identity to Bruce, who was utterly in shock to learn that Jason was alive.

Later, Jason broke into Titans Tower to confront Tim Drake, the new Robin. Wearing an altered version of his own Robin costume, Jason immobilized the other Titans and struck Tim down in the Tower's Hall of Fallen Titans and after a furious battle, Jason finally defeated Tim. Jason left the place and tore the 'R' emblem from Tim's chest.

Some time later, Jason used a decoy to trick Black Mask and Batman. Meanwhile, he held the Joker hostage and lured Batman to Crime Alley, the site of their first meeting. Jason and Batman fought for a while until Jason led Batman to the place where he was holding Joker. Jason asked Batman why he has not avenged his death by killing Joker, and Batman told Jason that he will never cross that line. Jason tried to force Batman to kill Joker or Jason, but at the last moment, Batman threw a batarang that ricocheted back to Jason's shoulder. The Joker took advantage of the situation and detonated some explosives that destroyed the entire building.

Jason resurfaces one year after the Infinite Crisis patrolling the streets of New York City as a murderous version of Nightwing. Jason shows no intention of giving up the Nightwing persona, and continues to taunt Dick Grayson by wearing the costume and suggesting that the two become a crime-fighting team. Grayson refuses to join his side and methods of crime-fighting. Not long after the two Nightwings meet up, Jason is captured and imprisoned by unknown mobsters. Rescued by a reluctant Grayson, the two join forces to defeat the Pierce brothers. Jason leaves New York City and the Nightwing mantle to Grayson, along with a telegram telling Grayson he has returned to normal and still considers them family.

Jason resumed his Red Hood persona and worked alongside Brick as part of a gun-running organization in Star City, which brought the attention of Batman. Jason's true motives are shown as he kidnaps Mia Dearden (Speedy) in an effort to convert her to his side, feeling that they are kindred spirits, cast down by society and at odds with their mentors. The two fight while conversing but when Jason is unsuccessful in his bid to turn Mia, he settles for blowing up her High School. Mia is deeply troubled by what transpired between her and Jason, but ultimately decides to stick with Green Arrow.

After the apparent death of Batman, Gotham fell into turmoil without its champion. Jason was summoned to the Batcave by Tim Drake, who told him that Bruce had left something similar to a last will for all of them, including Jason. After listening to Bruce's last message for him, Jason left the cave telling Drake that they will see each other soon.

Later, Jason donned his own version of the Batsuit, heavily armed and using the cowl previously owned by Bat-Devil. He fought the expanding crime wave but with extreme brutality and he pinned a note to his victims with the words "I Am Batman". Jason's exploits started to be noticed by the Batman Family and he revealed himself for the first time to Nightwing and Damian, saving them from several Black Mask enforcers. Nightwing tried to bring Jason down, but the fight stopped when Jason shot Damian and he managed to escape. Jason kept killing and torturing Black Mask enforcers until his secret base was discovered by Tim Drake and Catwoman. Jason knocked Catwoman unconscious and after a long fight with Tim, he finally stabbed him in the chest and left him to die. Jason went out on a killing spree until Catwoman found him and they fought for a short time. Jason won the fight by kicking Catwoman off an overpass, causing her to lose consciousness.

Following his battle with Dick, Jason gave up his claim to Batman's mantle, which has befallen to Dick. As a result, Jason set out to become Dick's direct competition. He reworked his Red Hood identity to be more dramatic and attention-grabbing by creating a costume for it, being very similar to the original Red Hood outfit the Joker had used. Also, he stopped dying his hair black and allowed it to grow red again with a small gray streak left by his previous exposure to a Lazarus Pit. To complete his transformation, he even found himself a sidekick, Scarlet, the daughter of a criminal and the victim of Professor Pyg's practice of mutilation. His intent was for them to become Gotham City's new dynamic duo, supplanting the old one.

Powers 

Acrobatics: In his training as Robin he has been taught acrobatics. He further practices his abilities as the Red Hood even going so far as to chase the Batman Family around just to test his speed.

Driving: Jason has driven a variety of vehicles from cars and boats, to being trained in the Middle East by an ace pilot to fly helicopters.

Firearms: Having been trained by Batman, Jason has perfect aim when using batarangs and later, firearms. To increase his skill with firearms he went a step further than Batman on his journey around the world to learn from the masters how to kill a target with different types of guns.

Genius Level Intellect: Jason has received excellent education and tutoring from Batman, and thus has extensive knowledge of various subjects, which include Science, Mathematics, Forensic Medicine, Geography, History, and Leadership. He has also proven to be a highly efficient criminal strategist and organise as the Red Hood.

Criminology

Demolitions: Taught by a world renowned bomb expert in Russia, Jason is able to assemble and defuse a wide variety of conventional explosive devices, from improvised to military grade designs.

Multilingualism: Taught by Batman, Jason is fluent in several languages having spoken English, French, German, Italian and various others with Russian being his weakest.

Investigation: Jason has shown some skill as a detective.

Martial Arts: Jason Todd is a highly skilled combatant, showing his skill in fighting Nightwing and even Batman. He has overpowered Tim Drake at Titans Tower. Jason's fighting style focuses on brutality, strength, and speed; he is shown to have studied over half-a dozen fighting styles and has proven to be a master of Aikido, Capoeira, Karate, Ninjutsu, Savate, Krav Maga, Kickboxing, and Tae Kwon Do. He has received extensive training from Batman, and after his resurrection, had traveled the world, learning every form of martial arts he could, just as Batman did.

Surveillance: Although contradictory to his once childish nature, Jason's learned to survey his targets before attacking and killing them. He spends long hours scouting targets and assuring that they deserve his brand of justice.

Swordsmanship: Jason has shown to be skilled enough to hold his own against the Green Arrow in a sword fight until he ultimately lost.

Throwing: Jason is an expert marksman and highly skilled with throwing weapons, such as batarangs and knives.

Weaponry: Jason is highly skilled in the use of many weapons, including firearms and knives.

Rage: Jason's most notable weakness is his rage. Batman and numerous others have told him that his rage blinds him in battle to the point of leaving physical and mental weak points open for attacks. Recently, Jason has made steps to putting the past behind him and has become a more disciplined and controlled fighter as a result of recalling his time with the All-Caste.

Verses

tba

[diversegaminglists]

Games where you can be evil

Games with morality/reputation systems:

The Adventures of Robin Hood - Yep you can be evil in this very old game, but you will probably die.

The Adventures of Willy Beamish - You get a gave over if you max out the bad side though.

Age of Decadence

Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura

Avernum Franchise

Baldur’s Gate Franchise

BioShock 1 & 2 - Sparing Little Sisters is your morality system tracker, which also affects the endings.

Black and White Franchise

Catherine

Choice of Games (Too many to list individually)

Demon Heart

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Barely noticeable.

Dominions Franchise

Epic Mickey

Elona

Fable Franchise

Fallen London

Fallout Franchise

Dark Watch

Dishonored Franchise

Diversity

Divine Divinity (Reputation affects shop prices and a few quest lines)

Guardian Heroes

Iji

inFamous Franchise

Jade Empire

Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II - Kill too many innocents and you automatically fall to the dark side when you get to a certain mission.

King’s Quest (2015)

Mass Effect Franchise

Metro 2033 & Metro Last Light

Might & Magic VII

NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup - Yes, for real. You can be an evil NASCAR driver.

Nethergate

Never Winter Nights Franchise

Oddworld Franchise

Pathologic

Pillars of Eternity

Planescape: Torment

Romancing SaGa

Shadow the Hedgehog - Probably holds the world record for most needlessly complicated story-affecting morality system.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows                                                                      

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Franchise

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

The Temple of Elemental Evil

Ultima Franchise

Undertale

Uplink

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines

Games with horrible choices but no morality/reputation system:

Alpha Protocol

Bound by Flame

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Deus Ex

Dragon Age Franchise (There are affection metres for party members but no overall reputation)

Dragon’s Dogma

The Elder Scrolls Franchise

Far Cry 3

Grand Theft Auto Franchise

Hitman Franchise

Lionheart - Legacy of the Crusader

Red Dead Redemption

Saints Row Franchise

Soul Nomad & the World Eaters (The Demon Path)

Tropico Franchise

This War of Mine

The Witcher Franchise

Games where you are evil by default:

Carmageddon

Cursed Treasure Franchise

Tecmo’s Deception Franchise

Destroy All Humans!

Disgaea Franchise

Dungeon Keeper Franchise

Dungeons 2

Evil Genius

Hatred

Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This?

KeeperRL - Early Access Game

Lucius Franchise

Manhunt Franchise

Nefarious

Overlord Franchise - though note this game also has a morality system, but it’s to do with what kind of evil you are.

Party Hard

Postal Franchise

Qasir al-Wasat

Tomb of Tyrants

Tyranny

War for the Overworld

Special Mentions:

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - Has a morality metre but it’s about helping characters out with their scenarios rather than a player doing evil things.

Star Wars: Jedi Academy - You can buy all the evil dark side powers you want with upgrades, but whether or not your turn to the dark side and get the evil ending all depends on one choice you make that has nothing to do with your skill build.

[outlawintheredhood]

Post-Flashpoint Bio: Jason Todd

Faceclaim: Sam Witwer Age: 28 Codename: Red Hood Occupation: Vigilante (formerly assassin) Sexuality: Heterosexual Status: Anti-Hero

BIOGRAPHY:

Past: Jason Todd was not born into the best of circumstances. His parents were dirt poor, his father an abusive alcoholic who spent his time trying to make it big with the local gangs in Gotham’s slums. His mother, Catherine, became dependent on drugs as one of the few escapes she had from Willis’ Todd’s abuse. Even with both of them in his life, Jason quickly had to learn to grow up, and look out for himself.

It didn’t take long for Willis to get in over his head, drawing the ire of an employer who made sure he was never seen again. Jason thought perhaps his life might turn around then - but Catherine had been too long downtrodden by the world and died of an overdose shortly after. Forced out onto the streets to fend for himself, Jason had resigned himself to an early grave or following the same path as his father.

Things changed one fateful night when Jason was trying to strip parts from a car that had been parked in the aptly renamed Crime Alley. What he had assumed was an easy steal, had in fact been the Batmobile, and Jason was caught in the act of trying to take its tyres by none other than the Batman himself. Instead of punishment, however, the Batman seemed amused by Jason’s attempts at stealing from him, and took him under his wing.

The Batman revealed himself to be Bruce Wayne, and took Jason in as a ward, giving him a roof over his head and access to so many things he had been deprived of before. During this time, he also trained Jason to be the young vigilante known as Robin, taking the place of Dick Grayson who had moved onto a new moniker and city to escape Bruce’s shadow. However, Jason tended to be more hot-headed than his predecessor - growing up surrounded by criminals, he was sensitive to the strife so many in Gotham faced because of the various kingpins and supervillains that called it home, and felt a need for vengeance.

Eventually, Jason found out that the woman he had been raised by was not in fact his biological mother - she had left him with Willis shortly after his birth and moved away long ago. Feeling lost between his shortcomings as Robin, and still mourning his mother’s death, he was desperate to connect with this woman he might be able to call family and tracked her down on his own. He had hoped he was gaining a family, that he might heal from the loss of Catherine Todd.

But it was a trap. The Joker had used his mother as a lure, blackmailing the woman to bring Jason close before capturing and torturing him. The Clown Prince played one last cruel joke on them both, tying them up together with a ticking time bomb and a cryptic message to Bruce to attempt to save them. Unfortunately, even Batman was unable to reach them in time - they both died in the explosion, Jason being only fifteen at the time of his death.

That, however, was not the end of Jason Todd’s story. Learning of his death, Talia al Ghul along with her father Ra’s al Ghul exhumed Jason’s corpse and set about an experiment. The Lazarus Pit that Ra’s had access to had long been used to advance his healing, give him strength, and extend his life beyond normal means. But the legends of it being able to revive the dead had never been tested under the reign of the the current Demon’s Head.

Jason was exposed to the Lazarus Pit - but he did not quite come out the same as before. While his body reanimated, his mind was initially lost to him, his actions feral and uncontrolled, killing a few of Ra’s assassins in his animalistic state. Ra’s was ready to deem the boy a failure and put him down, but Talia was able to somewhat tame Jason even in his wildest of moments, and refused to give up. She never revealed to Jason how she healed the trauma the Pit had caused his mind, but she insisted on training Jason on her own, spiriting him away from Nanda Parbat and providing him with all the tools and knowledge he needed to forge himself into a weapon, so that he might never fall again.

The years he spent under Talia’s tutelage made him stronger, but they also instilled in him a deep rage and unquenchable desire for revenge. He was not merely content with killing the Joker, however. He convinced himself that he would not know peace until he had reaped revenge on all that he deemed responsible for what had happened to him, and who had forgotten the tragedy of his death - including Bruce Wayne, and Tim Drake, the boy he had chosen to take Jason’s place as Robin.

Donning Talia’s final gift, the Red Hood, he waged a war on Gotham, taking on some of the city’s most high profile criminals with lethal methods. The war had the desired effect, drawing the attention of Batman. Jason revealed himself to his former guardian, laying the blame for his death and the Joker’s continued existence at the older man’s feet, and gave Bruce an ultimatum - to take Jason’s life, or to finally kill the Joker. In the end, Bruce refused to make such a choice, incapacitating Jason before he could kill the Joker without taking his life. Bitter over Bruce’s indecision, and what he perceived as Bruce valuing the Joker’s life over his, Jason fled Gotham back into the arms of a place he had sworn never to return - The League of Assassins. He pledged his fealty to Ra’s al Ghul, in exchange for leniency against Talia for having aided his escape from Nanda Parbat, and to allow his own life to continue. He was given the name of Al Hayim - Wanderer - and resigned himself to spending the rest of his life with The League, sure that he would die at the hands of one of his fellow assassins.

When Oliver Queen upset the balance of the League, slaying Ra’s al Ghul and handing the title of Demon’s Head to the traitor Malcolm Merlyn, Jason saw an opportunity to escape the Purgatory of Nanda Parbat and took it. With Talia gone, he felt he had little reason to remain, and decided to set out once again into the world outside of The League and perhaps find a new purpose since his failed attempt at revenge.

Before Flashpoint: Jason settled in Central City, deciding the surge in metahumans and crime within the city, and its sister city Star City, would give him a good start in figuring out what he wanted to do after the League. He was content to remain alone throughout his tenure in Central City, devoting his life to being the vigilante that the shining heroes of the modern day could not be and resorting to the methods they refused to. But he did not count on a number of different factors.

Many of the Batfamily found themselves migrating to Central, and despite himself, Jason gravitated back towards two in particular - Dick Grayson, the boy he had once idolised and wanted to emulate, and Barbara Gordon, the closest thing he had to friend growing up, and who he had harboured a crush on. Over time, they slowly broke down his walls and he grew close to them again, welcoming them as friends and then eventually family. They were his siblings, and while he struggled greatly with Bruce and Tim returning to his life, slowly he began to overcome the hurt and feelings of abandonment that had plagued him since he first awoke from the Lazarus Pit.

There were others who came into his life and affected him in ways he did not expect. Leonard Snart, despite being a known criminal in Central, became one of his closest friends through various hard times that found them saving each other again and again. Their friendship was not without flaws, but still they found themselves stuck together. Then there was Aurora Jett, a younger woman Jason could not help feel protective of due to obvious signs that she had suffered abuse from a former partner, and who Jason became fond of. He came to view her like a sister, wishing to keep her by his side and protect her whenever necessary.

But one of the greatest changes in him was because of one woman: Sara Lance. What had started as a simple one night stand slowly began to grow into something more, something Jason tried to deny. But in the end he was forced to admit to himself that he had grown to care for Sara - more than that, he had fallen in love, something he had thought himself incapable of. Jason continued to struggle with his own sense of worth, battling a belief that he was unworthy of the people slowly worming their ways into his heart, including Sara, but he could not resist forever. Eventually, Jason and Sara had a son together, Aden. The existence of his son made Jason insistent upon trying to change himself, to better himself and resist the bloodlust that kept him killing and resorting to lethal methods. He was not always successful, but trying as best he could for his son.

After Flashpoint (Present): Jason was slowly coming to terms with the fact that he had developed feelings for Sara, but admitting them to anyone, let alone her, was another story. In the end, he spoiled any chance he had of doing so. When Sara told him that she was pregnant, Jason ran scared. He couldn’t imagine himself ever being a father, not with the amount of blood on his hands, and the prospect of becoming one terrified him. Those doubts inevitably destroyed what was slowly growing between them. Sara walked away, and Jason being the fool that he was let her. She never told him what happened to the child they might have had, and he never asked. Even over a year later, they are still barely able to speak to each other.

Distraught over losing the first chance he had at a real relationship, and the knowledge that he was entirely responsible for the pain it caused both of them, he gravitated to the few people he had left. He could not erase the memories of hurt between him and Bruce, or the things he had done to the other man because of it, but he attempted to reconcile, not wanting to spend any more time tearing open wounds if there was a chance they could let them heal. He also attempted the same with Tim Drake, realising that the way he had treated the younger Robin was cruel at the best of times and trying to atone for it. He still needed some independence from the family though, choosing to move in with Aurora Jett and becoming her roommate while they both figured out what paths they were meant to be on.

He continues to act as the Red Hood in both Central City and Star City. While he does not always resort to the most lethal method for every criminal, he still continues to kill those he deems deserving of it or too dangerous to be left alive. It is a fact that sets him apart from the other Batfamily members - and perhaps always will.

Positive Traits: Loyal (to a select few), principled, determined Negative Traits: Impulsive, pessimistic, quick-tempered

Major Connections: Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne - Adopted Family Sara Lance - Ex lover Aurora Jett - Best friend, current roommate Leonard Snart - Friend Harley Quinn - Enemy

@centralcitysfinest-rp @whitecanary-lance @auroraxjett @i-am-batdad