#and they bring forth a lot of complicated emotions for her surrounding her childhood and her own parents and all that

[multishipper-baby]

More adult Goldami thoughts... Specifically about when they're preparing to have kids. Because I feel like they would have a lot of discussions about it and make sure they're both ready for that commitment before going through with it, but Cami would still have absolute dread as her first emotion when she does end up pregnant. She just has a lot of shit to deal with still, you know?

[bigskydreaming]

How old was jason when he died? And when he was resurrected?? And that time he spent dead make him crazier than Ra's when he is under the pit's effect?

The general consensus as far as I’m aware is that Jason was fifteen when he died, and he came back to Gotham in Under the Red Hood about five years later. There’s a couple different versions of the in between time, but most common I believe is that he was resurrected due to multiverse bullshit (like, the official explanation is that an evil teenage version of Clark Kent punched the dimensional walls of the place he was trapped outside of normal time/space so hard that the ripple effects of him breaking through like, caused ‘hiccups’ or anomalies across various universes - one of these being Jason’s resurrection. Yeah. I’m not making this up. LOL).

ANYWAY. The go-to version of the timeline I believe is that this happened about six months after Jason died, which was right around the time Tim started trying to convince Dick to come back and be Robin again and ultimately ended up becoming Robin himself. When Jason dug himself out of his grave, he was largely catatonic and unresponsive, and here’s where it tends to be most vague. After some period of time, which could have been anything from days to weeks to months, depending on who you ask, Talia was in Gotham for supervillain shenanigans or whatnot, came across him and realized who he was, and took him back to the League with her. 

Where again it depends on who you ask, after some period of time, ultimately Talia convinced Ra’s to put Jason in the Pit to see if it would restore him to full consciousness and heal the remaining physical after-effects of his death. And also, her reasons for doing this tend to be subject to your own personal interpretation of Talia. Some view this as her doing it for Bruce’s sake, some view it as her just wanting to use Jason as her pawn against Bruce, etc.

Personally, I view it as somewhat in between, though again this is just my take. I ignore ‘Talia the rapist’ characterizations in both regards to her actions with Bruce and Jason, so I mean, I’m just not here for Morrison or Winick’s take on her in that regard. BUT I also kinda....highly object to the ‘soft’ characterizations of Talia that kind of make her the ideal parent that highlights how crappy Bruce is in comparison? Like, its no secret that I’m hugely critical of Bruce’s parenting, but I just....personally am not a fan of acting like Talia is amazing at it and noble and selfless either. I don’t like the outright vilification of Talia - especially when she ends up coming across as worse than Ra’s, which, no thank you - BUT I don’t like...blunting all her edges either, for lack of a better phrasing. 

I tend to view her as someone who is extremely ambitious, ruthless and uncompromising in her own ways. I think a huge part of her dynamic with Bruce is that they mirror each other in so many ways, even if they’re not always on the same page. She’s often used as a narrative foil to Bruce, but I disagree - I think Selina and Bruce are the ‘opposites attract’ whereas Talia and Bruce are the ‘like calls to like/their bond in large part stems from how well they understand each other, even though they have different goals and aims most of the time’. 

But point being, like......I don’t like shallow, two-dimensional interpretations of Talia where she’s just evil and has no shades of gray to her, but I also don’t like the flip side of that and her being viewed as the lesser of two evils compared to Bruce. Like, sorry not sorry, I think both of them need to take some parenting classes. Unless you drastically change Damian’s entire backstory and characterization by the time he arrives in Gotham, and/or insist that Damian’s upbringing was all entirely due to Ra’s control and Talia at no point in ten years had the option of arranging for her son to end up with Bruce or somewhere else where he didn’t spend his childhood being taught that affection was a sign of weakness and how to murder his nanny in six hundred different ways and show his work plz, like......I have trouble with the super!mom Talia takes.

All of which is just to say....I don’t believe Talia brought Jason back with her and put him in the Pit out of the goodness of her heart, but I don’t think it was entirely absent of positive intentions either? If that makes sense? I just mean...she’s a SUPER complicated woman in my take, and that’s what makes her so much more interesting than she’s usually reduced to being in a lot of stories. Talia is not as stone cold as she often comes across as a defense mechanism - I think she is someone who feels things deeply, but she shuts that down even harder than Bruce. She’s a very pragmatic individual, and I think she tends to justify a lot of even her most emotional-driven choices by finding an advantageous spin she can put forth as her ‘real reason’ for doing things.

So....I think her feelings for Bruce DID have a lot to do with her taking Jason with her. She does love Bruce in her own way, she always keeps an eye on him so she absolutely had to have been aware just how badly Jason’s death was affecting him, and so I think when she first saw Jason and realized who he was....I do think on a gut level, her motivations were like, she felt a need or want to take him with her and see that he was well cared for, for Bruce’s sake if nothing else.

BUT....I think the complication is she has trouble justifying that to herself, even, let alone to her father or subordinates or any of the others who constantly seek an edge over her within the League’s inner power structures and hierarchies. So I think that’s where the pragmatic side of her took over, and once she DID see to Jason at least nominally being taken care of....that’s when she started to look at it in terms of how she could play this to her advantage as well.....and whether that ultimately was in pursuit of convincing Bruce to join her side, and using Jason as leverage there, or just hurting Bruce for rejecting and hurting her and her chosen path, and using Jason to accomplish that.....tbh, like I said, I see Talia as an extremely complicated person and IMO the most likely take is that even SHE probably couldn’t say which she truly wanted or intended.....or perhaps it just changed at various points, and more than once.

My point with this tangent is I think there tends to be a very narrow focus on Jason’s return and Talia’s role in it as opposed to just the Pit in general. As much as Talia did help Jason, I think it doesn’t get acknowledged enough that as long as her own motivations and agenda were AT ANY LEVEL behind her choice not to reveal he was alive to Bruce....that’s something that I think could use more scrutiny in fandom, because that is a selfish choice, even if she did nominally spin it as being in Jason’s best interests. I just mean....it was a complicated situation, she’s a complicated person, you can’t add that up and still walk away with the simple narrative “Talia helped Jason after he came back to life and everything she did was to his benefit and in his best interests’ you know?

The thing is, the Pit’s influence aside, we have NO idea how things might have gone if Bruce, Dick and Alfred had ever gotten the CHANCE to get to Jason immediately after his submersion in the Pit and try and help him through it.....because Talia and Ra’s didn’t allow for them to ever have that chance. And that is a hugely critical plot point I think, that’s gone largely unexplored. There’s a lot of attention paid to how Jason felt upon learning that the Joker was alive, that there was a new Robin....but not a ton of attention paid to the HOW of Jason finding out all these things, and just how exactly this information was delivered to him and in what framing and context.

Because again, Pit influence aside....just sheerly in terms of the massive trauma and disorientation Jason had to have been going through upon having his full cognitive faculties restored by the Pit.....like....Jason came back to Gotham as an adult, ultimately. But at THAT stage of things....he was still likely only sixteen or so. VERY young. VERY traumatized. COMPLETELY isolated from all previous existing support networks.....and all of that adds up to being VERY. VERY. Impressionable.

And this is the part I wish got more focus. Just how much influence Talia, Ra’s and the League in general had over Jason’s thought processes, morality and ethics during that period he lived and trained with them....in the wake of a massive traumatic ordeal and with zero effort paid towards helping him cope and recover in any way other than what they laid out for him there. See, whatever Talia’s actual motivations for bringing him back and putting him in the Pit were....there’s not really any denying IMO that once that was done, she still took advantage of the opportunity Jason’s impressionability and gratitude for what she’d done (and just the interest and care she’d demonstrated in his eyes merely by doing it)....like, she still took advantage of the...influence this gave her over him.

Like.....Under the Red Hood? Eight heads in a duffle bag as Jason brutally slaughtered some of the key members of various crime organizations in Gotham and used that to gain the attention and fear and/or respect of various crime lords and organizations?

That didn’t come out of nowhere. And personally I think there’s too much focus paid to Jason’s potential for violence before his death, the murkiness surrounding Felipe Garzona’s death, and the effect the Pit still had on his mind when he returned to Gotham.......and not enough focus paid on WHERE AND WHO HE SPENT ALL HIS TIME WITH IN BETWEEN THESE THINGS.  

Because as brutal as Jason could be at times as Robin......eight heads in a duffel bag is still a LONG way away from that. What its NOT a long way away from, however....is League of Assassins training, methodology and worldview.

Like, literally everything Jason did in Under the Red Hood came right smack out of the League’s playbook, so I’ve always just been like....forget the Pit for a second, guys! What about just....examining what effect being surrounded and trained by League assassins for three or four straight years in the wake of massive, life-altering trauma and circumstances that make you feel both INDEBTED to said League and BETRAYED BY all your previous loved ones who weren’t there for you....because they never had the opportunity TO be there, given that they weren’t the ones that ran into Jason while he was on the streets after digging himself up and like, even in the DC universe AT THAT TIME ‘hey wonder if he might end up resurrected somehow’ was not like, something that was at the forefront of anyone’s mind as a likely possibility?

LOL. Anyway. So that’s my hot take on Jason’s return.....yes, the Pit undoubtedly played a role, but I would love love love to see more of a role given just to looking at the sheer INFLUENCE the League and their teachings had over an isolated, traumatized and impressionable teenager.

As for the Pit itself.....that’s a topic for another day, probably, lol, but like...I have a LOT of thoughts about the Pit and how its used in various narratives, canon and otherwise. Because the thing is....its effects STARTED out as being brought into stories about Ra’s as kind of a moral fable. Like, essentially, the effects of the Pit in early stories were like....IMO more intended as a cautionary type narrative about the dangers of greed and being power-hungry, seeking to control even life and death, etc? I just mean like.....it originally came off as more of the idea “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” or in essence...everything has a price, and with something like immortality, the price is steep. There was a lot of focus initially on the idea that Ra’s was the man he’d become...only after centuries of using the Pit’s power to remain young, vital and alive. Power corrupts, essentially.

However, the problem I have...is that narrative becomes a wholly different thing when the Pit affects someone who DIDN’T seek to use its power, who wasn’t using it for selfish gain....nor like in Jason’s case...did they even have a choice about using it at all! This is the same issue I have with keeping Dick as a Talon in Court of Owls stories, and certain ways Cassandra’s story is told and her body language skills are used and discussed: I have a deep dissatisfaction with the idea of abuse inflicted by others, being like...the origin story or source of someone’s powers....when its paired at the same time with consequences that the person never asked for, would never have asked for......but the powers themselves tend to be the only thing focused on, rather than the drawbacks, with the overall takeaway ending up being that like.....the person should be grateful that the abuse happened in the first place because now they have these powers see, and isn’t that the most important thing?

So to correct myself, it isn’t quite the same thing, but I mean....the issue I have with Jason and the Pit here, in comparison, is that....Jason had no agency in choosing to go into the Pit. So to me.....its a big, BIG problem to have him ‘benefit’ from that in the form of look, he’s alive and well again, he has a second chance.....IF equal scrutiny isn’t being paid to the price he is stuck paying for the ‘gifts’ of the Pit, that second chance.....when he never asked to pay it in the first place. 

And I don’t actually think I’m the only one who has that problem, I think most people just don’t spell it out to that degree....because what I mean there is......the Pit’s effects ever since Jason’s return like....aren’t viewed in the context of being a morality narrative anymore. At least not in regards to him. People rarely write the Pit as ‘corrupting’ Jason the way it was once suggested to have corrupted Ra’s, because like....Jason was a victim, not a person motivated by selfish desires for immortality. And people want him to be a hero (or at least an antihero) rather than the villain that DC has at times tried to make him instead....and I think even unconsciously, we’re all aware that it doesn’t really work to have a character like that ‘forced’ into a villainous role because of exposure to a mystical corrupting agent they never asked to be exposed to.

SO. The end result of THAT is that.....the way people write about the Pit has shifted, both in canon and fandom. And now the Pit’s effects are viewed less as a cautionary morality fable and more as like...a heightened form of PTSD, a metaphor for the extreme and beyond-imagining trauma of being brutally killed and brought back to life again.

And that is where things get murky for me again, because you end up with an unintentionally confused/skewed narrative where writers and readers often aren’t even sure themselves if they’re writing this mystical McGuffin as being an external force of corruption that makes people ‘worse versions of themselves’ OR whether its a PTSD/trauma metaphor that highlights the hurt/confusion/paranoia/intensity of tangled emotions that survivors of great traumas experience. And the problem there is, without actually intending to....I think you inevitably end up dipping into a lot of really problematic ableist ideas that reinforce some pretty negative impressions of mental illness, bad survivors and recovery in general.

Oops. Tangents happened again, huh. Oh well. Hope your answers are in there along with everything else I stuffed that response full of, lol!