#barbara and bruces relationship is so important to me you have no idea

[haveihitanerve]

I believe fully, in my heart of hearts, that Barbara Gordon is one of the only people who gets a genuine “thank you.” from both Batman and Bruce Wayne, because with Dick the thank you’s are unspoken, a subtle nod, a little hug, nothing overly major, and as he adopted more and more kids bruce became more emotional constipated (#not at all how character development and growth are supposed to be cough cough dc cough cough but whatever) so they don't really get thank yous they get more grunts of pride/acknowledgement/thanks but with barbara he always says thank you, whether its a soft, relieved little ‘thank you.’ after she gives him life saving info for his kids, or if its a gruff ‘thank you.’ after she proves him wrong but helps more people, or a standard ‘thank you.’ for giving him information and locations on villains. And everytime she responds with either a soft, comforting, “not a problem B. I got your back.” or a cheery, obnoxious, “you are welcome!” or even just a mutter of “you wouldn't be able to tie your shoes without me” that bruce pretends he cant hear. 

[brucewaynehater101]

do you have any gut wrenching ideas about dick and tim, especially with their shared backstory of meeting at the circus?

dick and tim both have their problems but their relationship in the comics is often very close and they mean so much to me. they are the brothers ever and you can pry that out of my cold dead hands.

ahem...anyways, clearly I personally have a lot of feelings about them but id love to hear your thought.

Hmm.... If you want gut-wrenching HCs about Tim and Dick being the brothers ever (with a special flare about their shared past)...

[Imma fuck around with canon]

Tim is stated to have a photographic/eidetic memory (not sure if it's specifically stated as such in canon). I think Dick lost most of his possessions between when his parents died and when Bruce picked him up. For both canon and our own sake, let's pretend there are no taped copies of the Graysons (Tim supposedly was only able to find out since he was there).

Therefore, Tim, with his memory and the photograph, is able to recall more about Dick's parents' faces than Dick is by the time they meet again eight or so years later.

Dick has memories of flying through the air with them, of warm hugs, and of soft melodies in their native tongue, but time has blurred their features.

This is why Tim goes out of his way to provide Dick with photos. Tim dislikes photos of himself being taken, but he never wants Dick to experience that feeling of loss and grief again. Tim takes photos of himself, the Titans, Dick, Alfred, Bruce, Barbara, and anyone else Dick considers important. Tim ensures he captures memories for Dick so that his older brother never has to forget.

Dick, in return, tries to make as many happy memories with Tim im return. He knows Tim is more likely to remember than not. He wants more of those moments to be filled with care, affection, and laughter instead of the downs vigilante life constantly brings. Even if Dick isn't really feeling it, he still tries for Tim

[zeroducks-2]

Zero you mentioned hating on people who get prissy about people shipping characters they dont actively ship and it sparked a LONG burning question of mine concerning bias shipping culture in Batfam fandom. Fans who attack and complain and make a big show of hating on ‘batcest’ ships ARE SO DUCKING HYPOCRITICAL OH MY LORD. I don’t understand why it’s considered okay to ship Dick x Barbara or Barbara x Bruce, or Steph x Tim. But seen as a cardinal sin to ship Jason x Dick, or Jason x Tim or Bruce x Dick??? Especially when the only argument antishippers make is ‘that’s gross their brothers/father and son and that’s incest 😤’. I’m sorry? Did you not just post nsfw Dickbabs content? Did DC not make Steph and Tim romantic love interests? Is that not incest too? Considering the fandom classifies all of them as family, and in a lot of fan spaces and fanfics, are they not interacting and being written as a family unit? I see SO many people blog about Bruce seeing Babs as his first daughter, or being making weird headcanons on Bruce and Steph’s relationship and donning it ‘tired uncle!Bruce and weird niece!steph core’. Like you obviously see them connected to Bruce through familial ties, and yet you’re okay with them dating Dick and Tim who are legally adopted by Bruce and who are also known as his sons? The irony. The hypocrisy. The ducking mockery of it all. Personally, I don’t think the issue that antishipper have is the ‘incest’ part but rather the ‘gay’ part of it all. Game of Thrones taught me that the general public actually don’t care about fictional incest between characters as long as it’s not between two male characters. Because lord forbid the’s a couple of queers in media.

I have been talking about this many times and I have no qualms talking about it some more:

✨ IT'S NOT INCEST, YALL JUST HOMOPHOBIC ✨

The whole idea around "batcest" makes no sense. These are people who did not grow up together, aren't related and never even lived under the same roof. Incest is not a spectrum, incest means sexual intercourse with a relative within the prohibited degree of consanguinity, consanguinity means BLOOD RELATIONSHIP, and these people DO NOT HAVE IT.

But even then, they are a bunch of hypocrites because I have not ever seen anyone batting an eye over Dickbabs or Timsteph (or Jaybabs, or Timbabs - yeah depending on the time period or the media, poor Babs has been passed around a lot). Their relationship is the exact same as the boys' when it comes to shared experiences. Steph has even been a Robin. But nobody cares because 1, DC is not pushing the "family rhetoric" with the girls all that much since they treat them as lower importance characters (when they're there at all), and 2, it's not queer relationships.

And this is ultimately what makes me go insane about queer kids parroting anti bullshit. Censorship is the weapon used by bigots to criminalize, punish and ultimately erase queer people from existence, it takes to study queer history for five minutes to understand this. You can see it happening in every fandom space where every type of queer ship gets put through some sort of moral sieve, and they WILL find reasons why it's unethical to ship it. Did you know that now shipping Dick/Wally is problematic because "Wally has a wife" ? So basically they're turning the very reason why fandom was born (exploring something different from the standardized heteronormative/amatonormative way of doing everything when it comes to narrative) into something pRoBLeMaTiC.

And these little fucking idiots keep spouting queerphobic nonsense while feeling morally righteous, not understanding that they are playing the game of the same people who if they could would shoot them in the street for being anything but straight and cis. And I'm not even taking into consideration the amount of harassment that comes from antis who think bullying and suibaiting someone over the perceived honor of fictional characters is okay.

BTW it's working. Just to name one, tumblr is not even doing its little rainbow capitalism number this year, because it's not a good look to be queer friendly anymore. Antis are helping the people who want us dead get to a spot where being anything but "normal" is illegal. When it happens, and if we keep going the way that we are now it will happen, it's going to be their fault too.

[arsonmurderandjaywalking]

notes for the Jack and Janet get divorced instead of going to Haiti au that I have been ruminating on

We get to avoid the Obeah Man arc (misogynistic and extremely racist. I’m glad to be rid of it)

Ultimately I see Janet getting custody, but I feel like there’s also the question of if she would want to be a single mom, and how she would feel about being one. She’s already doing most of the parenting between the two of them, but there was still some divide of work. She was a working mom in the 90s when she didn’t explicitly need to be. Her career is probably important to her. Suddenly not having the fallback that Jack provided would be pretty daunting

Another question irt custody is how hard Jack would fight it. He’s a typical conservative dad. He thinks that child-rearing is mostly a woman’s job, but also I can see him having issues at the thought of a single-mother household. Additionally, he hasn’t really had any revelations about his parenting yet, so he would be even more insulted than canon Jack about anyone implying that he wouldn’t be able to properly care for Tim, and he’d probably fight it on principle

I have no idea what would happen with the company, actually. I am not a business person. They’d probably still have to work together though, since they’re both described as heads of the company, and I imagine they’d both be reluctant to leave

Google is telling me that divorce proceedings tend to take 3-6 months when there aren’t any significant issues, which is certainly not the case for these two, and potentially upwards of 14 months when there is a lot of arguing. Which. Is so long. That’s such a time sink I don’t want to do that. But they have so much to argue through. And they’re probably both bitter so they’d be trying to undermine each other. But this is very much affecting Tim so maybe they’d want to wrap it up as quickly as possible. But also you know Tim would be hiding that from them as much as he can. Why must I be so concerned with verisimilitude in this specific aspect

FINE it lasts a year but no longer. I don’t care. They can sort out their shit in a year or not at all we have a canon timeline to stick to, however nebulous it may be

Tim is not doing good. Assuming this all starts at the same time the Drakes went to Haiti in canon, Tim hasn't really developed that closeness he has with the others yet. He and Dick only really get close during Knightfall/Prodigal, his relationship with Alfred only really develops after he starts going out as Robin (source: his second? maybe? Robin mini. The one where the Joker breaks out of Arkham while Bruce is out of the country. Where he says he doesn’t know Alfred that well) and he hasn't even met Barbara yet. He doesn’t even have his civilian friends because he's still attending boarding school right now and he’d be home on winter break. The only person he could go to for emotional support with this is Bruce

Tim wouldn't tell Bruce that that's what he's doing, I doubt he'd even tell him about the divorce without prompting, but he does definitely start spending as many hours as he can get away with in the cave. For no reason in particular

I’m beginning to run out of ideas. On further thought, I think Jack and Janet would want Tim to have a say in deciding who he stays with, or they’d at least want his opinion on it even if he doesn’t have the final say in it. 

He could think himself in circles forever trying to find a good answer, or at least one he can make himself say, but none of that would change the fact that what he really wants is to stay with them both. He wants this to not be happening. He wants them to not be getting a divorce. He wants to actually live with them, not just spend 9 months a year in a boarding school and only see them on weekends and holidays

[kbkirtley]

Nightwing - Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo

My favorite stories of 2023 in any format, not just graphic novels. I adore the way Tom Taylor writes both Dick Grayson and Nightwing. The first hero I wanted to read about when I started reading Graphic Novels for the first time last fall was Nightwing. I have loved the character in different formats previously and I knew that’s the character I wanted to start with. I was disappointed with what I found to start. The character didn’t come alive in the comics I was reading in the way I was used to.

Everything changed when I got to Taylor’s run. The fun loving, optimistic, hopeful character I had fallen in love with was there on the pages. Over and over again, Dick puts the target on his back to save others from it. Over and over again, Dick acts as a safety net for those around him, the privileged and vulnerable alike. Over and over again, Dick displays the hope and light that superhero stories should be about.

Dick Grayson/Nightwing is the heart and soul of DC. He’s the best of them all. You can tell that Tom Taylor gets that and really takes it seriously. You can see it in what Dick prioritizes when he sets about revitalizing Bludhaven. You can see it in the relationships Dick has with Clark and Jon Kent, with Bruce and Damian, with Barbara, with Wally, with the Titans, new and old. You can see it everywhere you look, because Taylor is so consistent in writing Dick. In every scenario, Dick Grayson is going to do what’s right and lead with hope. He’s going to leap into the light every chance he gets.

Superhero stories /should/ be about characters who inspire hope. So much of the superhero stories in media right now are trying to flip the idea of superheroes upside down and have them be the villains or at least be dark, edgy, and violent versions of themselves. In that landscape, stories like Nightwing or the excellent My Adventures with Superman are such a breath of fresh air.

I know Tom Taylor is a polarizing person on the internet with both Nightwing and Superman , but his Nightwing run specifically is so important to me because it’s the kind of stories I want to write. I’m writing traditional novels instead of graphic novels, but at the heart of it, this is what I believe superhero stories are about. No character has inspired my view of superheroes as much as Nightwing and I find Taylor’s depiction of him so true to character. I can’t wait for my copy of the fourth volume to show up on release day next week so I can dove back into Dick Grayson’s story.

[yangzhouman]

long post about batman beyond because i have feelings

batman beyond is so damn bleak in the obvious ways and yet it goes all the way thru. like it initially positions itself as a story about how “keeping it in the family” just ends up with dead family members and the only way out of being eaten by generational trauma is to abandon the family structure. what bruce and terry have at the start is loose and resistant to definition even when others try (”your keeper’s here” and “who else could take care of his affairs? he has no wife, no children.” / “me. i could do it.” / ) and when they (meaning terry and bruce) eventually label it as an employer/employee kinda thing it feels fresh. 

when you’re the best man for the job you can call your boss a bitch. and he’s not gonna be in your living room at the end of a stressful day. there’s distance. there’s employee rights. they both care deeply about their job and eventually about each other but there’s no guilt when the job gets in the way, because there’s nothing for it to get in the way of -- their relationship IS batman.

it feels un-familial EVEN WHEN the family metaphor gets pushed onto them. it’s important that bruce isn’t terry’s father; terry has a father that he loves, and bruce needs to come to terms with a more impersonal, wider guilt of being an ageing bat in a city that will never stop needing batman. when others do try to conceptualise whats going on with terry and bruce thru a family lens, it jars because that straight up isn’t the connection they have, and people can tell -- they’re just missing the context of both being batman.

it’s good! it’s really good! it turns batman on its head by looking at it as an ideological gap that people can slip into, rather than something that is handed down, man to boy, with a clear lineage and direction -- now it’s an analytical framework of vigilantism that is open to all who feel brave. widening batman up like this makes barbara’s relationship with bruce & batman a little more complex too, as she is distinctly not a wayne and does not see bruce as her father, but still stepped into a sort of shadow/partner role to the big bat (misogyny... she’s proto-terry in the context of batman beyond but why does terry get to be more? questions i know the answer to.)

imo batman beyond, when at its best, makes batman a possibility: a nebulous idea that centres around gotham and righteousness rather than an individual and his grief. it’s a way out for bruce in particular, who calls himself batman in his own head but has to come to terms with a new bat who has no debt with him in any way -- and he grows in that safe relationship. as an old man! he grows!

and then. and then. oh my god. oh my godddd dc falls to its old ways and terry becomes bruce’s biological son? he gets narutofied*? it is single-handedly the worst thing that has ever happened to me. there is no escape! batman is bruce wayne and can only be bruce wayne. it/he is a trap that absorbs anyone who comes near! batfam is a curse that infects and infects! i am putting up with it because i like batman beyond so much even with this. but god. what a letdown what a needless twist in a universe that already has MANY cloning stories and MANYYYYY biological heir stories

*this refers to uzumaki naruto from NARUTO who starts as a nameless orphan in a hostile world, but then discovers that he is actually the son of two very important people, which stands in opposition to the earlier story beats and makes him special in a way that i find very gross, as it cheapens the work that he has done as a character-in-story to carve out a place for himself in the narrative world, and shows a lack of commitment on the author’s part to challenging storytelling by relying on the tired shonen tropes of bloodline rights and inherited power as proof of character significance

[butwhyduh]

Yo B!

I was just doing my stuff and then a random thought appear:

Just Jason dating Damian's teacher without knowing that she's Damian's teacher. Like the realisation hits when he brings her to the Wayne Manor. It hits everyone: Damian, Jason, the teacher. Only Bruce and Tim are lik lmao I figured it out at the beginning of the relationship (though shut up you two cuz I still remember the Hanukkah headcanon of both of them celebrating because they thought it's important to one another. Happy Hanukkah btw to y'all celebrating!)

Not to mention if she teaches something that Damian doesn't really like or if he has a puppy crush on her (because those things happen).

And the moment of realisation that your older brother is boinking your teacher and maybe that's why she was so happy the other day.

So much drama, so much awkwardness! That I love it!

What's your opinion B?

Btw. I love your characterisation of Batfamily you can portray every character very true to the original.

Aww thanks ☺️ and this idea is hilarious 🤣

Warning: some bad words and a food fight. Also it’s Alfred’s birthday.

Jason met you at a Whole Foods of all places. You don’t normally go there but a sale drew you in. And you were so drawn in that you didn’t notice until you actually hit a guy with your basket.

“Oh god! I’m so sorry!” You gasped feeling yourself flush. He kinda laughed. A tall, very fit, handsome man smiling and laughing. That was new.

“No no. The sale on tomatoes is a big deal. I’ll move so you don’t have to run me down,” he joked.

“I-“ you stammered. “I’d rather not run you over.” You laughed and he nodded.

“Oh hey, your book fell out,” Jason said picking a book up off the floor. “Hamlet, hu?”

“Oh yeah. I’m a teacher,” you explained taking the book from him. Oh boy, he had the prettiest blue eyes too. “Thanks.”

“No problem. If I’m nice to you, you might not run me over again,” he flirted. You laughed.

Across the produce section, Tim Drake came to a stop and backed up slightly to watch Jason flirt with a woman. Bruce came up behind him and Tim stopped him.

“Look,” Tim motioned quietly. Jason hadn’t noticed either of them.

“Oh, oh. Well, that’s nice,” Bruce said awkwardly looking away. Tim snorted.

“Take a closer look.”

“That’s Damian’s English teacher,” Bruce confirmed what Tim already knew. They watched as you put your number in Jason’s phone.

“Should we tell him,” Tim said like a kid with the hottest gossip. “Damian will flip out too.”

“We’re not telling anyone. We don’t even know if they’ll even go on a date and it’s none of Damian’s business. I forbid you from telling anyone. Dick, Barbara, Cass, Stephanie. No one. Jason… deserve a little happiness. Don’t mess it up,” Bruce said strictly.

“Geez, I get it,” Tim said with his arms raised. “I won’t say anything. But imagine them dating. It’ll be hilarious!”

“Go back down that isle. We won’t come back until Jason is done talking to her. I don’t want him to know we know,” Bruce said all business like.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be like a ghost,” Tim replied. “I need siracha anyways.”

7 weeks later

It was Alfred’s birthday and that was traditionally when all the family got together. It also happened to fall during Hanukkah this year. So the family prepared a big dinner meal without Alfred allowed to join. He protested multiple times but Bruce refused. Instead they ordered food from Alfred’s favorite restaurant and a dessert from his favorite bakery. Aunt Kate, the only one who actually knew what to do around Hanukkah, was invited as well. Tim and Bruce had yet to admit that neither were actually practicing.

“I want to meet your mysterious friend,” Alfred told Jason one day a week earlier over tea. “I believe I heard you are dating.”

“Geez, nothing gets past you, hu?” Jason said ruefully. Alfred smiled in his tea. “I’ll invited her. But if the family scares her off…”

“I’ll personally burn their meals for a month,” Alfred replied promptly.

“Remind me not to make you mad,” Jason muttered.

“Indeed,” Alfred said with a grin before taking a sip of his tea.

The night of Alfred’s birthday party was turning disastrous by the minute. They sent the wrong cake and added bacon to four dishes and while that was generally a good addition, maybe not on Hanukkah. Bruce at least knew that. Kate wasn’t coming and Bruce was technically raised by an Anglican Christian British man and knew very little about Hanukkah. But he was going to try for Tim to have a good holiday.

Jason hadn’t told Bruce that he was bringing a date but Bruce knew Barbara was coming with Dick and Tim had Bernard and Damian was bringing Jon and they were definitely dating or something. Steph was coming with Cass but she’s been at every family dinner even before they started dating. But she was also Tim’s ex which was weird. Bruce needed an Advil. Or a beer. Luckily Alfred was at the spa that Bruce insist he visit for the day or he would have certainly taken over and it was his birthday.

But finally they had a bacon free kosher meal with the correct dessert delivered. And Bruce managed to do it without going absolutely insane.

The menorah was brought out and Bruce quickly googled Hanukkah traditions that he hadn’t participated in since he was 8. His mother’s side always had Hanukkah dinners and his father’s side had Christmas morning and dinner. But all of that came to a winding halt when his parents died. He had brought Christmas back when he adopted Roman Catholic Dick and until Tim, none of them had any other holiday. When Bruce learned Tim didn’t celebrate because he was always alone for the holidays, Bruce took the time to add some Jewish holidays to his calendar. But he couldn’t remember pretty much any of the traditions that went with them. Bruce wasn’t going to recite any prayers since he felt it unfair to do as someone non-practicing. Tim or Kate could if they wanted.

Tim didn’t know how to tell Bruce he was non-practicing either. Bruce almost broke down when Tim tried to explain he didn’t celebrate any holidays because his parents were never home when they were alive and Tim couldn’t bring himself to say that didn’t exactly feel the need to start as someone who’s firmly atheist. So when Bruce asked if he wanted to recite the prayer, Tim had almost peed his pants before suggesting a moment of silence so people of all religions can have a moment. Both of them were secretly relieved.

But that put Bruce into a tailspin as he wondered what other religions he needed to accommodate for his kids. He should ask them what they needed. What if he already missed a holiday or religious need??

“Master Bruce, I’m home. I shall avert my eyes if needed,” Alfred called in the hallway. Bruce hopped up to meet him. Alfred looked more refreshed then he had in months and was carrying a few shopping bags.

“You can come out. Nothing to hide,” Bruce said and Alfred nodded with a curt smile.

“I’m simply overjoyed that the kitchen is in one piece,” Alfred commented carrying his bags upstairs.

“We knew better than to cook,” Bruce replied.

“Then my stomach is also overjoyed for food safety,” Alfred said before disappearing from sight.

Dick and Barbara showed up with chocolate coins. Bruce had forgotten those and was filled with cold dread.

“We got them. Don’t worry. I once again save the day,” Dick said with a grin.

“I actually thought of them,” Barbara replied with an eye roll.

“And I thought to invite you.”

“Jon!” Damian called out before running down the stairs to open the main door. Jon stood with a casserole dish in hand and a present bag on his wrist.

“Hey Dami! Hello Mr Wayne, Dick, Barbara,” Jon said politely. Damian grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him in. Damian quickly pulled the stuff from Jon’s hands and placed them on the nearest surface despite Jon’s protest.

“I have the newest Cheese Viking game,” Damian said as they ran upstairs. Steph and Cass walked downstairs just as the boys left and they both started talking to Dick and Barbara.

Tim showed up next looking nervous as can be with Bernard in tow. He politely introduced him to everyone slightly more formally that necessary. Bruce shook Bernards hand and welcomed him to his home and Bruce noted that Tim relaxed minutely.

“Jason is late as usual,” Bruce commented a good 30 minutes later. “Has anyone been able to get ahold of him?”

“I texted but no response,” Dick replied. Bruce sighed.

“Let’s get started and he can join us when he gets here,” Bruce suggested.

They all sat around the table with Bruce at one end and Alfred, guest of honor, at the other, at Bruce’s insistence of course. Right before everyone dug into the first course of the meal, the sound of shoes in the hallway came to their attention. Jason’s date was there.

“Hey sorry we’re late. The highway was shit,” Jason said ushering in his lady guest. You moved to the chair he offered and let Jason push in the seat.

“Your scarf,” Alfred started to stand but Jason waved him off and helped you of your scarf and coat and hung them up himself before sitting down. It was only then that you were able to look at the guests at the table.

Mr Wayne smiled politely as well as Dick. The younger brother Tim had a wide grin and just as Jason sat down, you saw Damian. You blinked quickly.

He called you by your last name the way one would a teacher and everyone turned to him. Tim was practically splitting his face in two with his grin. Jason looked between you and Damian before the thought connected and his eyes widened.

“Are you dating my brother??” Damian asked.

“I-“ you stuttered before looking at Jason. “You didn’t tell me you had a little brother in school.”

“It wasn’t relevant,” he replied. “Is he- do you teach him?”

“Todd,” Damian said grasping a table knife tightly. “Did you go out of your way to date my English teacher??”

“No, you little psycho. I have a pretty hard fast rule about avoiding middle schools for dates,” Jason said puffing up a bit.

“Boys,” Bruce warned knowing they were going to start fighting any second and he actually liked the soup.

“Why are you grinning, Drake,” Damian growled. “Did you know? Did you set them up?”

“No one set us up, Damian,” you replied.

“I had nothing to do with this!” Tim protested.

“You are not that important,” Jason growled.

“Yeah, then why are you dating my teacher, you oaf,” Damian sneered.

“Boys,” Alfred warned but Jason and Damian were too far gone and when Damian slung mashed potatoes at Jason, it desolved into chaos. Some food slapped Dick directly in the face and as he was trying to calm the others down, it made him very mad.

Jason grabbed Damian by the collar and went to haul him over the table but in Damian’s flailling, he kicked an entire saucer of gravy in Bernard’s lap. Tim helped him up and grabbed the saucer to throw but it instead hit Bruce in the head. Bruce was currently separating Damian and Jason. Jon hopped up and helped you out of your seat only to be hit with a paper table decoration coated in whipped cream.

“STOP NOW,” bellowed Alfred and the boys stopped fighting. “Clean all of this up immediately! I am going to bed and I want this room to gleam in the morning.”

Everyone had the decency to look guilty while cleaning. And everyone- even Bruce- cleaned until it was Alfred worthy. It took a full 10 minutes since they didn’t let any of the dates clean, including Jon who could have done it in a second. Bruce bought Bernard an entire new outfit to be delivered to his house.

Jason was awkwardly silent on the ride back to your place. You glanced over to look at him and he glanced at you quickly before looking away. You couldn’t handle it when he pulled in your driveway.

“Okay, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. I’m your kid brother’s English teacher. You already knew I was a teacher and I didn’t know you had a kid brother,” you said. Jason nodded.

“So you’ve got to decide if you want to see me anymore or not. Because I really like you and what I do for a living shouldn’t-“

He cut you off with a kiss. His rough fingers cupped your cheeks and his mouth pressed heavily against yours. Jason kissed you until his lungs burned and he pulled back panting.

“I definitely want to keep seeing you. I’m just- just embarrassed that my family acted that way. God. You sure you don’t want to run screaming into the night?” He asked.

“I’ll try to resist the urge,” you replied playfully nipping at his lips but not enough to count as a kiss. Jason tried to follow you each time until you finally gave him a good kiss. “I teach middle schoolers. Do you think I have a bone of fear in my body?”

“That’s my girl,” Jason added with a grin.

[jostenneil]

something i’ve been thinking about is how people often talk about how dick being brought into the batfam permanently was harmful to him as a character and like i completely agree but i also think we kind of fail to acknowledge or mention how that development also harmed other characters within the batfam. like to me the most obv example is barbara bc it’s interesting that for so many years dick has come to be known as the obv second in command to bruce but realistically he’s never wanted to just stay in gotham and be robin forever, let alone batman, meanwhile barbara has been committed to gotham for nearly her entire stint as a hero and has always been the one who stayed and never thought of going anywhere else. not to mention the fact that she used to be older than dick so if that aspect to her character had persisted then realistically the second in command to bruce would be her. and that’s not to say that she doesn’t have any authority as oracle but i think esp over the last two decades we’ve come to see how bringing her and dick closer to each other in age and prioritizing their romantic relationship has lead to this decentering of her importance as an authority figure within the batpham where it feels like her being dick’s girlfriend is more impt than her being oracle and why she became and chose to stay as oracle. like i don’t think barbara was de-aged purely for the purpose of being put together with dick, but de-aging her has sort of rescinded the initial independence of character that she had bc rather than being her own agent who often operated distinct of batman and robin, her time as a hero was then changed to occur explicitly in tandem with dick’s robin

aside from barbara, i also think there’s the matter of how there are arguments about who should succeed bruce as batman at all when dick has repeatedly had no desire to actually be batman permanently. he’s constantly brought back and put into that role when dc wants his place with the batfam to be emphasized and bc they somehow have no idea how to conceptualize a replacement to bruce who isn’t him (barring knightfall obv, but again, in the end the point was that azrael wasn’t the right choice and if bruce hadn’t been so anxious about contacting dick then the problems would have been avoided all along, thereby kind of implying that dick was always the right choice). and to me that’s kinda lead to an eclipsing of cass as the rightful heir to the mantle despite the fact that she genuinely wants it and intimately understands why adhering to bruce’s code is important, arguably more than anyone else. 

an additional angle you could also look at it from is that of damian’s, and how his relationship with dick has sort of come to overshadow his relationships with bruce and talia in canon. i made a post about this before, but while bruce and talia’s character assassination with regards to the introduction of their son was obv not solely employed in order to build a relationship between dick and damian, that’s nonetheless a major development that it lead to, and we’re generally shown that damian feels most comfortable and open around dick. i don’t mean to say that i dislike dick’s relationship with damian, it’s sweet and it makes sense and i love that damian has a big brother like that in his life, but again, one has to wonder whether damian’s relationships with his own parents might have been prioritized had keeping dick in gotham not been something editorial was so insistent upon, esp since dick’s break from the titans at the time that bruce was dead / missing felt incredibly unrealistic. he suddenly admitted to kory that he didn’t really love her in an eternal, lasting way, despite how potent their history was during the original new teen titans collections of runs 

to me dick is someone who has kind of inadvertently stunted the growth of other characters in the batfam with his permanent presence in gotham, bc he’s made to occupy so many different physical or emotional positions that there’s little room left for other characters to grow into those positions even tho they have all of the potential and reason to. this last extrapolation is a bit of a shaky one but i even wonder if it’s partly possible (in addition to dc’s hatred of legacy characters) that none of the other bat kids are allowed to age into adulthood in main continuity bc after bruce, dick has to be the one portrayed as the relatable adult, and they don’t want other characters to occupy that position 

[arabian-batboy]

Tumblr wouldn’t let me answer this ask, but basically someone asked what would I do if I was in charge of DC (when it comes to Batman’s comics), so here is my answer.

I would have a lot of things established as facts that would be forced on everyone working on any Batfamily’s characters.

First of all, I will establish who exactly is in the Batfamily and what is their relationship to Bruce, I would separate them into two categories; an inner-circle (Bruce, Dick, Jason, Tim, Duke, Damian, Alfred, Barbara, Stephanie and Cassandra) and an outer circle (think characters like, Batwoman, Catwoman, Azrael, Huntress, Harper, Batwing and etc...) Dick, Jason, Tim and Cassandra would be declared as legally adopted by Bruce and all of them would be referred to as son/daughter of Batman/Bruce Wayne by both the narrative and other characters. While Barbara, Duke and Stephanie would be friends to the family (I also would explain the family situation of Duke and Stephanie and who their legal guardian is, since they’re both underage)

All the characters would have their hair color, eye color, skin tone (no more whitewashing here), height and age (unpopular opinion but I would make the Batfamily frozen in time without aging or aging very slowly) stated and regardless of artistic creativity, everyone working on them would have to follow through with these rules.

I would try to bring an expert to establish a unique fighting style for everyone in the family, sorta like how in the Avatar universe each type of bending is based on a specific type of Asian hand-to-hand combat, so something like that. I would also try to give everyone a signature weapon that for the most part, only they use, so Dick and Babs can share a escrima/tonfa, Tim and Stephanie can share a Bo staff, Damian and Cassandra can both use swords/blades, Jason has his guns and Duke would be given his own weapon too (I vote for Nunchucks)

And it may be a small detail, but I would establish where exactly does each member of the family live and how the place they live in looks like. For example, who permanently lives in the Wayne Manor and who only comes for a visit and how does each of their bedroom looks like? Who lives on their own in an apartment and how does it look like from the inside an where is it located?

Also I want more details about their civilian lives, like who still goes to school/college and where is that? Who works a full-time/part time job and what do they do? Just small things like that.

Lastly (not really) I would probably have someone make a giant (as detailed as possible) map of Gotham City, where we would know the name of every area of the city. I would also highlight in the map all the important places like where is the Wayne Manor, the Police Department, Arkham Asylum and other places of interest are located, just so that we can have idea of where the characters in the story are and how far/near are they from their destination or from each others.

When it comes to comics, I would kill the concept of crossovers, from now on comic’s stories would start and end in the same damn comic without any interruption. Each member of the Batfamily would either have a solo book, a team-up book or both and while they can pop up in each other books, the focus of the story would still be on the title character. Each arc would have the same writer/s from start to end and after the arc finishes, new writers would come to start a different arc (writers would only be allowed to do 2 arcs in a row, then they will have to give someone else a turn before they can come back)

Barbara would be the most effected, I would somehow reverse her back to being Oracle. I’m really struggling on an idea to do that without being disrespectful, since disability isn’t really a game where you can just turn it off and on whenever you want. Maybe I will have an arc (that has Cassandra heavily featured in it) where she finds out that the chip that gave her back the ability to walk was actually temporally all along and that using it any longer would harm her or even kill her. So after one final mission, she decides with full content, to step back into the role of Oracle and give the Batgirl role to Cassandra while giving a cute and sappy speech (and Cassandra’s would be wearing her OG Batgirl’s costume with the creepy smiley face) And afterward I would like her to star in either another Birds of Prey book or a comic similar to it.

Dick would still be Nightwing and he would have two comics, one would be a solo Nightwing book while the other would be a team-up comic with him and all the original Teen Titans members who are now adults, they would just be called the Titans and in the Superheroe community they would probably be the in-betweener, in the middle of the Justice League and Young Justice. And while this may be my bias talking, I would also try to bring him and Starfire back together (and I may even make them engaged after a really slow burn)

I love love love early Rebirth Outlaws with Jason, Artemis and Bizarro, so I would definitely have to bring them back and their comic.

I would keep Tim the hell away from anything Robin related, it’s boring and redundant, but at the same time I don’t want him to be either Red Robin or Drake. I would give him a small plot where he would connect with a specific title with a story behind it (and a matching costume that goes with it) similar to how Dick became Nightwing after hearing the story of Nightwing from Superman. After that, he would be leading Young Justice in a comic with all of his friends. 

I would have a comic featuring the duo of Stephanie (still Spoiler) and Cassandra (now Batgirl) called Batgirls or something like that, where they would have a Panty & Stocking type of dynamic and adventure (Barbara would make a lot of cameo in this comic).

Duke would still be The Signal and he would have his own solo book and while he’s not an official member of Young Justice, I would still have him working with them from times to times (basically if they operate at day, YJ would have Duke as their leader, but if they operated at night then they will have Tim as their leader)

Like Dick, Damian would have two comics, one solo book and one team-up book. I would call Patrick Gleason back and allow him to do the 2nd and 3rd part of R:SoB that he wanted to do. I would bring some Arab writers/artists to explore more of Damian’s and Talia’s heritage in the comic. Meanwhile, the team-up book would be a brand new team with other child-characters his age (I wrote more about this here if you want to read more)

Bruce would still have a solo Batman book focused on him (with Damian heavily appearing in it, because I’m sick of DC not giving us good old classic Dynamic duo stories anymore), but Detective Comics on the other hand will no longer be just a 2nd Batman book. It would be a de facto Batfamily book, it would be the book where all the Batfamily would get together to interact with each other or solve crime/go on shared missions, depending on the story, it could be all of them at the same time or it could just be different combination of different characters, basically it wouldn’t belong to one character, it would belong to all of them, while their solo books is the place where all the attention would be on them specifically.

And that’s it, the rest I would leave to the hands of the writers, artists and editors.

[rookiesbookies]

I had an idea a long time ago I want to finalize.

I want like Lex Luthor to get into a PR nightmare and his PR team be like “do what Bruce does in PR nightmares and adopt a kid”.

So Lex adopts a girl, probably 15-16 ish because he didn’t want a kid that was too small or too old, he also wanted a kid that would be able to self govern.

So the girl is 16, probably never knew her parents, has a job, shit like that.

Im thinking when Lex adopts her he’s like “I just need you to appear in public with me a couple times a week. Do some charity work maybe, idk but you get to live in my mansion”

She’s like “ok, I want to major in business anyway”.

At first Lex is like “cool, sweet, awesome” but then he has the “oh shit” moment of

What if Superman tries to kill my kid.

Which makes him feel like an asshole because he may have just subjected his kid to an awful fate.

She’s probably like a chocolate/caramel brunette and about 5’4” ish. She’s pretty but in a dorky-cute way. She’s not super skinny but definitely has weight to her so probably about 140 pounds. Most of it being in her thighs because I have a pretty clear idea of what she looks like. I’d like to believe that she’s from like Georgia or Florida, because the idea of Lex flying down to a state to grab a kid, keeping it a secret for like a month, then randomly showing up with her is awesome to me. Also her accent would stick out in the New Jersey crowds so you’d always know when she was around because of her naturally loud voice.

I’d like to believe Lex gets invited to a Wayne Gala and that’s when she is really introduced.

She’s in some long purple or green dress with like a sweet heart neckline, it’s higher in the front than the back and she’s in some large chunky pumps that makes her stand at about 5’9” or 5’10”.

Now in my cannon, Dick is 5’8” around 24 at this point, Tim is like 5’6” at 15, and Damian is like 12 and 5’2”. Jason is 6’ easy, 6’2” in his boots. (This will all be important later)

So she’s taller than Dick, Tim, and Damian, but has to look up at Bruce (6’) and Jason, but Jason is still ‘dead’.

Jason gets to play guard in the Batman suit at the galas to basically he sits by a window looking in on the whole thing in case something or someone attacks so Bruce can’t be assumed as Batman.

So imagine with me that Clark is at a Wayne Gala, he sees Lex walking in with this younger looking girl on his side. She’s got makeup on she Clark can’t really tell how old she is and Lex walks up to Bruce to be greeted.

Bruce goes “who’s your girlfriend?” Then Lex’s new kid puts her hand on her chest.

“Pardon me, Mr. Wayne, but I am not Mr. Luthor’s ‘girlfriend’. Mr. Luthor adopted me out of the goodness of his heart a month ago and I was interested in attending this Gala because I wholeheartedly support what these charities are about.” She looks distraught, she’s kinda upset, she’s clutching her small purse with white knuckles. “It is very inappropriate for you to make an assumption like that Mr. Wayne.”

Lex is like “Bruce, that’s my daughter, (name to be decided), I adopted her and wanted to keep it on the down low, but she heard about this event and asked to go and I said of course,” after the girl stomps off to the desert table.

Imagine her angrily eating sweets and the whole time Jason is in the comms with Barbara (Dick, Tim, Bruce, Damian, and Cass who are all at the Gala have comms in) just LAUGHING. “Jesus, old man, you really messed up this one! Can’t wait for that public apology!”

So Tim is like “I’m going to go say hi.” Then kinda makes his way over.

“Hello, Im Timothy Drake-Wayne,” he holds out his hand for her to shake but she’s holding a slice of cake on a plate. She kinda shuffles it in her hands and sets it down on a table near her.

“(Name I choose) Luthor. Nice to meet you Mr. Drake-Wayne. I am very pleased to be able to attend a gathering that is striving for the better for animals. I’m very passionate about the topic myself.”

Tim’s like “May I ask your relationship with Lex?” She tells him about how he adopted her and shit. So she probably does this with each of the kids attending but Cass.

Imagine she’s like in the middle of talking to Damian, who is apprehensive toward her in every way, doesn’t even shake her hand, he stands at a distance, stuff like that. She’s talking and goes “I have cats at home, would you like to see a picture?”

Damian nods his head so fast, and she pulls out her phone and holds up a photo of this American Short hair- Siamese mix that is all white with crystal blue eyes. “He’s about 8, I named him Dashing Through the Snow as a kid, but everyone calls him Dash.”

She IMMEDIATELY becomes one of Damian’s favorite people. She also shows him a photo of a little black cat, maybe a year old, which green eyes “his name is Kryptonite, I got him when I moved in with Mr. Luthor.”

Now Clark isn’t listening and he just years “kryptonite” and freaks the fuck out. So he runs to the bathroom and Bruce is like “what happened.” Meanwhile Lex had found a microphone and is like “I have a big announcement to make, everyone!”

Jason is HOWLING with laughter, like “oh this is gonna be good.”

This girl is called to the stage, “every I’d like to introduce you to my daughter, (name), who I adopted last month. I took influence from Bruce’s wonderful job with his kids and couldn’t help myself when I met her.”

Lois Lane turns to where Bruce just was, sees he’s gone. Then she’s already typing the headline, “Bruce Wayne disappears while Lex Luthor introduces newly adopted daughter.”

Im going to make another part to this later, maybe add references and shit.

[northoftheroad]

Alright better Nightwing origin story between these two and why: Judas Contract or Dixon’s Year One? Which elements of each story work better and what are each stories’ flaws Etc?

I don't know what is supposed to make me prefer Dixon's Nightwing Year One (which is an expanded version of what he wrote in Nightwing: Secret Files and Origin, 1999)?

In the stories from 1984, we see very little of Dick's thought process on why he chose his new identity. It's that well-known page in Tales of the Teen Titans # 44 when he puts on the suit. After all, the important story is that Deathstroke has captured the other Titans. It introduces Adeline and Joey Wilson. Dick's new name and outfit is merely a detail.

NYO explores Dick's journey to becoming Nightwing in detail. Why the name; why the costume design; why continue to fight crime; why go back to Gotham (originally, he just went there to give Jason Robin; he was committed to the New Teen Titans, not to helping out in Gotham). That's not a bad idea – too bad about the execution.

Pro (an extended) Judas Contract:

It's Dick's choice that he has outgrown Robin. (Tales of the Teen Titans # 39)

Dick chooses his new identity to honour Bruce and Clark - and also his birth parents and Starfire. Nightwing was a Kryptonian bird; Clark decided to use it as a vigilante name in homage to Batman.

Bruce isn't an asshole who fires and/or kicks Dick out.

Dick has a good relationship with Bruce and Jason.

Bruce scolds Jason when he uses a Robin suit (Batman # 366). Dick gives his blessing for Jason to become Robin (Batman # 368). Dick's history as Robin is respected by everyone involved, even though Robin was not, at this time, a family nickname. (It wasn't even clear that Dick had a saying in how the suit looked.)

Pro Year One.

Uh - I like when Dick goes to Clark for advice and support, which he didn't have to in 1984 because Bruce wasn't an asshole.

We get a reason for the design of Dick's first Nightwing suit - it was inspired by his father's circus outfit. But it's Alfred who finishes the design and adds yellow feathers, mind you.

Points to that Dick goes back to the circus to explore his roots, I guess. But he also did that in the early 1980s, in Robin solo stories, when he had left college. So being kicked out by Bruce isn't necessary for that to happen. (By the way, in 80s, Dick worked with the Hill circus. In NYO, Dixon makes a nod to this because Haly and Hill are in a partnership. Lorna Hill runs the circus in both stories.)

Dick exploring his circus roots in Batman vol 1 # 339 (1981)

Bruce is an asshole in Nightwing Year One, Jason is a brat, the Titans are hardly there and and it gives Barbara more importance for Dick's younger years than I prefer (but then, this is Chuck "co-writer of Robin Year One and Batgirl Year One" Dixon, so what else to expect?). I'm also not a fan of the art...

I think we're meant to read NYO as that the reason Bruce kicked Dick out was that he felt Dick was growing up. This has pretty much been a common denominator in every version. Jim Starlin wrote it in Batman # 416 (1988). Marv Wolfman in Action Comics Weekly # 613 (1988) and the Robin 80th anniversary. And Chuck Dixon in Robin vol 2 # 13 (1995).

Even in NYO, Bruce tries to keep an eye on Dick. He still cares – but he's written as (way, way) worse at handling and expressing feelings.

In Grayson Annual #2, Dick talked as if he had decided to leave Robin himself. But the latest interpretation, in Nightwing vol 4 # 79, is back to that Bruce fired him (but Dick made the choice to leave).

It would have been nice with a version where it was up to Dick to decide he had outgrown Robin. But I can live with the story from Batman # 408. Emotionally inept Bruce gets scared by Dick's latest brush with death; at least partly, he uses this as an excuse to push Dick away because he doesn't want to be the one who is rejected. And Dick chooses to leave.

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

it wasn’t power i coveted; it was acceptance.

Titans 3.06

y’know, i was just thinking the other day that 1.06/1.07 and 2.06/2.07 were the best episodes of their respective seasons, so i have great hopes going in to this one. fingers crossed!

as always, typing this up as i see the episode.

SPOILERS AHEAD

1. oh! um... that was a Cold Open, all right. *nudges* get it? cold? because it’s snowing? and two people got murdered in cold blood? eh?

... oh, i’ve just started.

1.5. i wonder if “i want to be sipping pina coladas on a beach with you” is the new “i’m just one day away from retiring.” i was so on edge after that--i kept expecting that car to explode. even so, the way they died wasn’t an anticlimax: brutal, and quick. 

1.75. so i’m assuming that’s the titular lady vic! this show better bring up why this doll was important or why these two cops needed to be killed, and not leave it to the ether like jericho’s little mindscape jaunt in 2.08 (i’m still dying to know what that was about???)

2.

i love how deliberately unappealing wayne manor is. 

(sorry for the pic quality. i don’t have hbo max! ssshhh.)

2.3. i love the many references to “home” and “our house” when they’ve been here for less than a week and saw one of their friends get blown into pieces. i mean, i unironically love it: home is where family is, after all!

2.5. i’d like to say that kom is playing some sort of long game here, especially given the build-up we had last season and some of the more niggling details this season: why did kom choose now to use her bond to lure kory when she’s been on earth for months? why did justin call kory now, just around the time that she started getting kom’s visions? and what about kom’s ability to exactly imitate other people? hmmm.

2.75. the reason i wrote i’d like to say is that i’ve made the mistake of assuming plot complexity where there is none; i was so invested in the jason todd orchestrated his own death theory for instance, when it turns out that oops! ra’s al ghul just happened to leave a little lazarus puddle in gotham, and oh yeah! scarecrow just happens to have a network of henchmen working for him on the outside and a fully functional laboratory and a weapons cache fit for a new supervillain in the basement of the high security psychiatric unit/prison that he’s in! 

(no i’m not bitter, why do you ask)

2.8. iiiii don’t know what to say about the implications of sex slavery being a thing on tamaran, so i’m not going to say anything at all. for now.

3. gotham, six years ago... wasn’t it five years before s2 that jericho died and the titans disbanded? and when was the flashback from 1.06 where dick let zucco die? i think it was after the events of 2.08: jericho? i can’t seem to find any transcripts or reliable information online, so i’m going to have to rewatch 1.06 at some point. 

(i love the old-fashioned batman music in this heist scene)

3.5. “security is a joke... it’s my way of keeping my dad on his toes”. what you’re an ethical thief now, like an ethical hacker? i don’t think that excuse is going to sell, barbara, on the day you do encounter a decent security system and your father is forced to arrest you.

(then again, gotham’s security is piss-poor. did you know that you could just walk into arkham asylum without any official clearance, ply one of its most dangerous inhabitants with contraband, and said inmate could get away with having an entire laboratory and weapons cache--NO I’M NOT GOING TO LET THIS GO)

3.8 so that flashback between dick and barbara was really cute! and also illuminating:

a) dick sounds so light, so... um. look. i have some apologies to tender to mr thwaites, because while i’ve always thought he does a fine job as dick grayson, i’ve never been terribly fond of his cadence as he delivers dialogue. it’s often monotonous, i thought, but then again, he’s usually delivering exposition or dealing with one soul-crushing crisis or the other. so i was pleasantly surprised to hear dick sound so carefree and alive in his conversation with barbara, laughing frequently, his emotions so bare and bubbling to the surface. it’s really a fantastic contrast to the traumatised and world-weary dick grayson that we see now, even more so than the costume department just bunging a backwards-baseball cap on mr thwaites’ head and hoping that will convince us of his relative youth. 

b) and god, when he wakes up from that memory, all alone in his bed, bleeding from bullet holes in his shoulder (bullet holes that are--in a somewhat convoluted way--barbara’s fault)? yikes. it’s great. you have my apologies, mr thwaites!

c) can you imagine dick just... crawling back to wayne manor, trying not to be seen by anybody, shedding his suit and just... collapsing onto his bed without even tending to his wound? the sheer emotional and physical exhaustion of it? 

d) it’s so interesting to see how barbara and dick approach the idea of legacy--a big theme on the show!--in this flashback. barbara is the one bucking the idea that she should follow in her father’s footsteps, while dick seems pretty content with the batman-and-robin setup, and even tries to get barbara to join their team (robin-girl. pfffft). obviously after this several traumatic things happen wherein dick ends up questioning and then resenting his role as robin, his relationship with batman or even returning as a vigilante at all. and barbara... ends up replacing her father as commissioner. it’s tragic, really. 

e) the dynamic between dick and barbara in the flashback reminds me of how it was between dick and donna in 1.08 and even between kory and dick in early s1. it’s like having an older, strong-willed woman by his side means he gives over the steering wheel for a while and lets himself... unspool, a little bit. it’s kinda endearing.

also:

*pinches his cheeks*

3. you know, we talk about dick and Eldest Daughter Syndrome, and that’s definitely valid, but here gar seems to me the embodiment of it, with all the emotional gardening and firefighting that he’s expected to do. he’s kind of the guy expected to keep his shit together and take care of everyone else while they are falling completely to pieces, unable to carve out time to process his own trauma. he’s also picked up dick’s and kory’s tendencies to bottle up their struggles and shun appearing vulnerable, and he’s struggling in the shadow of both dick and kory undergoing acute crises, his best friend (and frequent confidante) on the other side of the world, and seeing hank die, utterly helpless to stop it. 

i’m glad that he got a chance to tell dick even a smidgeon of what he really feels, and i hope this is at least a semblance of a wake up call for dick to actually sit down and work with the people he repeatedly calls family.

3.5. it’s heartening to see that dick immediately makes it his priority to go talk to gar. but don’t blow off kory in the process, man!

4. i’m really loving this dynamic between kom and conner--i get the idea that both of them consider each other as Unknowns, alien two times over. but conner’s only ever known the titans, who embrace being different, and kom’s only ever known... well. 

anyway, kory is Really Stressed, and honestly? #relatable. 

when you’re forced to bring an estranged family member to hang out with your friends...

4.5. i love that the titans are spending so much time in the kitchen. a real family!

5. jonathan crane is a creep and i absolutely cannot stand him.

5.25. how did he get a whole lab setup (in the basement of a hospital...?) with a bunch of whitecoats to work for him? how did he just waltz into the viewing room of an operation theatre when he’s one of the most wanted men in gotham right now? why is jason wandering around maskless when--presumably--as the adopted son of the most famous person in gotham he’d be a tad more recognisable than your average joe?

why do i expect this show to answer anything anymore?

5.5. that’s not necessarily a criticism, mind; i’ve said since season 1 that titans is very comics-like in this aspect, all about the Aesthetic and the splash-page splendour rather than the niggling unimportant details of how or when the characters got to said location. like. the camera gliding over the operation being set-up, lady vic bursting in and doing her murder dance (imagine the luck of the poor intern who chose this day and this surgery to assist) and jason, shocked and slack-jawed, framed by blood.

5.75. it’s a sobering reminder for jason that, though he chose this path in order to gain control over a world that seemed like it was rapidly spinning out of his grip, he’s only succeeded in handing over even more control to a man with an agenda that is very clearly not aligned with his own. he’s in too far to stop now, though.

5.9. i have a lot more thoughts about jason! saving it up for the end of this recap, though.

6. more kitchen time! i better see dick do some cooking soon...

(”our kitchen”! it still delights me! kitchens are So Important)

6.25. so much of dick’s issues have revolved around his relationship with bruce, so it’s completely understandable that in the wake of a huge crisis where bruce literally asks dick to replace him and be a “better” him, dick would default to all the worst things he learned from the man. and i’m glad kory’s having none of it, but come on, guys. the woman’s literally fetched her fratricidal sister out of a hole in the ground with no idea what said sister is going to do next and experiencing a burgeoning sense of guilt far, far beyond her history with the titans, and dick’s too far into his autocolonoscopy that he can’t see that she needs help.

6.5. “he services your urges”--well, as far as we know, kory is the last person he had sex with...

7. “i hope [gar] isn’t angry with me...” SIR! i thought you’d already spoken to him! smh, as the kids say. kory wouldn’t be needing to reassure you if you just took the effort to build two way emotional relationships with the rest of the team. @superohclair​ was taking about dick’s relatively low emotional intelligence? i agree.

7.5. “i got my own problems [...] you and barbara? fix it.” YOU TELL HIM, KORY

8. man i really like this weird, sad tension between dick and barbara--this sense that both of them are approaching the other based on how they remember them and are ultimately disappointed by the truth. barbara thought she could trust dick to... well, be a better batman, but dick has not only failed at that in her eyes, but repeatedly undermined her while exploiting the authority that she gave him. in dick’s eyes, this is nothing like the barbara that he knew, rebellious and ready to do whatever it takes to find something. 

like. this show sometimes really hits me in the chest about the ways it shows kids grow into adults and into caretakers, and the way it’s stop-start, the ways nothing can happen at all for a long time and then it’s Crisis Central all at once and there’s no space to breathe. the weird sort of sadness that comes with nostalgia. 

8.5. oracle name drop! i agree with barbara, any system that can just randomly tap into gotham phonelines is a monster.

8.7. (i don’t know if it’s my imagination, but is dick holding himself... differently in this episode? like that wound is definitely bothering him, and he’s running on fumes)

9. man, that was a really sweet scene between kom and conner. “feeling alien in your own world”... “not quite here nor there”

honestly this team runs on conner and gar’s faith in their value as a family, and it’s a sign of conner’s generous heart that he extends that opportunity to blackfire. this arc of maturation for him, where he’s now able to consciously choose which parts of himself he can use to do the thing he wants to so--save people--has been so fulfilling to recognise. this baby’s grown with the titans! and what he’s learnt is that people can get fucked up, but the titans is a place where they can be fucked up, and grow.

MY MAN CONNER

10. oh man i’m drinking in the gar-dick interaction in this episode like i’m three days into the desert and it’s the only source of water for miles around!

a) gar is absolutely not dealing with dick’s bullshit this episode and I LOVE IT. it’s such a far cry from the man who was idolising dick/robin back in s1 and expecting him to solve all their problems. dick is fallible, dick is fucked up, but he Tries His Best and that’s ok.

b) dick, huffing and puffing through that vent, unable to put any pressure on his left shoulder, trying to have a heart to heart with gar... fuck i love this asshole. 

c) bruce took in a kid who was suffering... “and made him into a weapon”. well. i absolutely agree with dick that it was bruce who put these kids into these horrible situations with him and they came away with a bucketload of trauma to add to the one that they already had. but we know that bruce was really trying with jason, and at the end of s2, dick was coming to acknowledge that bruce had offered him something that wasn’t just darkness. jason’s death and bruce’s reaction to that shattered that fragile progress.

d) “gotham got to me too.” i feel more sympathetic towards dick running off on his own than most, and it’s not just because i’m an unapologetic stan.  we’ve seen before that dick... devolves when overwhelmed, and he lashes out and makes ill thought out decisions and just Does Not Deal. it happened after hearing the news that deathstroke had returned in s2, and it didn’t help that everyone around him was reeling at the news, either. this time, however, he has his salvation in his family, and despite some stupid decisions like running off and kidnapping supervillains without telling his team, he’s been really on the ball this season. thinking clearly and logically, holding it together and working on a plan, thinking two steps ahead of the villains... yes.

e) gar needing to believe that jason isn’t beyond redemption... there’s a lot of blood on his hands, too, from when he was manipulated by cadmus last season. it makes sense why he’d relate to jason’s predicament, and i hope dick picked up on that.

f) my head just added a plaintive ow after dick jumped feet first into the storage room

i need, crave gifs of this scene!

11. *sits on hands* i’m going to talk more about red hood, i promise!

12. more gar and dick! is it my birthday??!!

(actually, according to the tamil calendar, it is my birthday! my “star” birthday)

12.5. excellent. dick using some implausible training that bruce taught him to solve a mystery? passing some of that knowledge onto gar? that proud smile when he sees gar perfectly execute moves that he taught him? MY HEART IS EXPLODING

13. aw, i love flashback!dick and barbara, they’re so cute <3

13.25. why does it not surprise me that the way he proposes a relationship to barbara is by saying “we make sense”? this guy can deduce exactly who was present where and what weapon they were holding from a garbled audio recording but other times he’s utterly clueless, and that’s a consistent character beat right from s1

13.5. so.... that’s why lady vic has it out for... barbara....? i don’t get it. it’s flimsy. but hey! the fun thing about titans is that i don’t have to get it. the payoff has nothing to do with the plot.

14. i can’t believe that barbara fell for that, but at least that wheelchair fight looked awesome, so.

15. oh yeah, i forgot that red hood bullied the mob into helping him and scarecrow... at least that explains the whitecoats and the elaborate set-up.

15.5. honestly i love how this dynamic between kory and kom is developing, though i wish more of the team would pay attention to it. time to call justin, i think!

16. i wonder what happened after that second flashback where barbara got hurt during that heist. did she give up on doing any more (maybe jim caught her)? was it because dick was called away by bruce and then the titans and got caught up in his own issues? maybe barbara froze him out because she wasn’t looking for the relationship that he was looking for? maybe the idea of doing that with someone turning into batman-lite was just... unappealing? scary?

whatever it is, it doesn’t look like dick ever processed the end of that relationship. it’s very intriguing to see where their dynamic goes next.

17. so.... what, did vic deliver some fear toxin to barbara? i... what?

17.5. and i TOLD YOU that they would never explain that doll or why vic attacked those two cops at the beginning! oh, titans. never change. 

18. did jason just randomly have tim’s restaurant burgled? god, i’m feeling a bit nauseous... are they going to kill tim’s father?

18.25. i feel like the rest of the season is going to wrestle with jason’s culpability in the horrible stuff he’s doing and i’m already seeing that prospect divide fans. on one hand, his story is taking a lot of oxygen away from other equally interesting story arcs, and he’s done some truly awful things, like indiscriminate murder, threatening to kill children, blowing up hank, and potentially killing tim’s parents. 

there’s something to be said for the kind of hold that crane has over him, and the so-called ‘anti-fear’ drug that he keeps plying jason with--he’s alone, drugged almost constantly (to the level of dependence), fresh from the trauma of being bludgeoned to death. he hasn’t conquered fear; he’s ruled by it. on the other hand, given that he’s the one character on the show given an obvious and identifiable ‘mental illness’ arc (maaaaybe dick too), one can argue that it’s irresponsible to show this progress into such violence: jason was vulnerable because he was struggling, and that left him vulnerable, but it took only a push before he became a fucking serial killer.

but that could mean we underestimate the degree of that vulnerability, and the mechanics of this universe where he fell into the clutches of the one supervillain perfectly designed to exploit that vulnerability. that helpless spiral into further and further self-destruction is all too real. it’s valuable to know that someone who has sunk that low can still seek help--actual help--and get it. 

18.5. i don’t know. it’s not a question i’m going to resolve at the end of an overlong recap at 1 in the morning. i don’t believe it’s even a question that titans can resolve. but i am interested in where they’re going next with jason.

19. this episode was genuinely great! i’m pumped for the rest of the season!

[shhhhsh]

About Tim’s New Story….

I just really hope they address Tim’s mental health. Like, DC just been ditching really good plot lines in favor of being “woke” or pandering. Just look at all the live action shows.

Now I’m not saying they can’t make Tim queer/bi/gay, but (as someone pointed out to me) Tim’s previous story writer was bi and he still chose to write Tim as straight & in a healthy romantic relationship with Stephanie Brown. I’ve seen several people who identify as queer/bi say that to have Tim go “ ooooh I’ve fooled myself into thinking I was straight, but now I’m freeeee” sends the message that Tim’s previous relationship failed b/c he was with a woman and not because of Tim’s poor mental and emotional health.

To go back to my previous statement; by him not writing Tim as bi tells me that he didn’t want or care for Tim to be bi, but instead saw Tim as, or preferred him to be, straight. The writer had free control to write Tim how ever he wanted and yet he chose to keep Tim straight. And he actually liked & wanted Tim/Steph. Again, I’m not saying Tim can’t be queer/bi, I’m just saying I find the motivations for this possible change very fishy. Almost as if the new writer is trying to get brownie points for pandering to a portion of the fans.

I think this way b/c in every other media where a character is revealed to be LGBTQ they just did it. They didn’t beat around the bush or do any queer coding/baiting. They either announced it, just made the character that way right out the gate, or just dropped the bomb w/out warning (as seen in Netflix’s Voltron, Amazon Prime’s Invincible, and Nickelodeon’s Legend of Korra respectfully).

DC currently has a bad habit changing things to be “woke” and bragging about it or shoving it in our faces. DC is becoming the “pick me girl” of superhero media. If you want to do it, just do it. Again I just get the “look at me, look at me” & “carrot on the stick” vibes from them now. If you truly feel in your heart to do something you would just do it without the need for recognition or to be so dramatic about it.

Now what I much rather see & think it’s a natural progression for Tim:

I personally believe that if Jason, Dick, & Damian can get a story that attempts to give them character development beyond romantic relationships (romance was more of a B-plot to the character driven A-plot anyway) I think they can give it to Tim as well.

I know that the Bat-Family all struggle with some form of mental health problems (most commonly paranoia and PTSD). However, I would like to point out that trauma is was what brought the others into the vigilante lifestyle, while Tim & Barbara became traumatized because of the vigilante lifestyle. Yet, Barbara was shown overcoming her trauma and using it as motivation to get better. Tim is yet to have this moment.

We all know that Tim struggles with depression, self-esteem, and suicidal tendencies. I mean heck, him becoming Red Robin only happens because of Tim’s degrading mental health. I hate to say it, but Tim is very psychologically broken and has been show to get so depressed that he can’t even get out of bed some times. To my knowledge, Tim is the only one in the Bat-Fam that struggles in his head with the idea of not being needed, useful, or forgotten when in reality that is furthest from the truth (Steph, Jason, & Damian also feel like the black sheep periodically, but that is because they have been presented with real evidence that would lead them to logically believe this. I.e being actually forgotten or dismissed for past mistakes despite great efforts to better themselves).

While yes, Dick did Tim dirty by replacing him without having a proper conversation first, the motivation was because he saw Tim as his equal and not Damian. He thought highly of Tim, but Tim couldn’t see that over his offense. Tim is so beat down by life that he see’s everything with negative lenses. Everyone came to check on Tim’s mental health but Tim took it as an insult instead.

And even though now Tim has reached some form of “peace” in his life, that only happens because the people he lost came back (Bruce, Conner, Bart, Cassie, etc). Tim never fully learned to handle grief, to handle his emotions, instead he represses them. Again in the Red Robin run, the main reason he doesn’t believe in any form of God is because he can’t logically justify the pain he has gone through. He is hurting and doesn’t know how to deal with that. In his original Robin run, when he tried talking someone out of committing suicide……the words and comfort he gave….that wasn’t something that was just inside Tim, this is something that was told to Tim. This is followed by him calling Dick to get the same pep-talk he just regurgitated to someone else.

In short: Tim is hurting. Deeply. And having been someone who’s emotional & mental sanity was pushed to the brink and attempted to jump off several times, I think it’s really sad that DC just ignores it. Now as someone who’s gotten the help they needed & now helps other people who struggle with the same issues as myself & Tim, I think that they’re going to say a lot of Tim’s problems come from him not being “aware” of his own sexuality, which is just sad.

In the story in question, Barbara talks about Tim not having a solid identity. People are more than their sexuality. People are capable of making future decisions for themselves without it hindering on their sexuality. If Tim was real, I would brake down his struggle as so:

Tim refuses to go to college and do something more with his life because he cannot see anything beyond his current circumstance. And the only reason why Tim cannot see anything beyond his circumstance is because he has no internal sense of purpose, identity, and acceptance beyond the cape & cowl. And when Tim finally found that in being Robin, Tim held onto it as a lifeline. There’s a reason why everyone says Tim is basically Bruce 2.0: it’s because he is Robin/Red Robin/Drake & Tim is the mask. At a young age, he did not grow up having these things instilled into him due to his parents neglecting him at a very important age in his development. Tim raised himself, and for a lack of better terms; an idiot cannot teach themselves to be smarter, an idiot becomes smarter by learning from the intelligent. A child can’t teach themselves to be an adult, they have to learn from others to grow & better themselves.

Now a parent doesn’t necessarily have to sit down and give a lesson about how to be an individual, but children learn how to live life by watching their parents. A good example of this is the rest of the Bat-Fam; they all grew up with some form of parental figures that taught them how to behave (for better or worse). Of course children have their own personalities, which is why two kids can go through the same type of trauma but come out differently, but it is a battle of nature vs nurture. Steph, Jason, Cass, & Damian grew up in abusive/unstable homes, while Dick, Barbara, & Bruce grew up in loving homes, but their personalities & character dictated how they responded to trauma. They took what life gave them and decided what to leave or take.

Tim had nothing to work with & is basically playing catch-up with the rest of his peers.

In a weird sense, Tim is like Zuko from The Last Airbender: only living to serve their father’s purpose. Anything outside of that they don’t know what to do. They’ve been trained to be something externally without been given a chance to figure out who they are internally.

Again you are not your sexuality, your sexuality does not determine who you are as a person. When a person struggles through life, it is due to the conditions of thier soul. Everything starts internally and shows it’s self externally.

I want to make that very clear because I am truly scared that in DC’s attempt to claim “clout” they are missing the bigger picture. Tim doesn’t have identity problems simply because he “doesn’t know” he likes boys, but because DC never gave him is own identity to begin with. Robin was never his own identity, Red Robin was never his, & Drake was his first attempt to make his own but he quickly gave it up so that he can be Robin once again. What is Tim going to do once Damian gets back? Is Damian going to get his own identity before Tim? Or is Tim just going to go back to one of his old identities?

I would like for Tim to personally move on from being a vigilante and rejoin civilian society for a while. Go to college, do something for himself and only for himself. Give Tim the self-discovery story, let him heal, and grown to be his own person. Besides you can never have a functional romantic relationship if you are not a functional individual. Self love > romantic love.

[fyeah-anya-corazon]

Ranking every potential love interest for Anya

Happy Valentine's day!

To celebrate the occasion let's look at every single character she has had as potential romantic partners. I'm including here every iteration of Anya so far.

For a teen character with more than 15 years of existence, it's amazing she hasn't had any sort of stable partner. As far as comics go, her main version has only had one romantic partner so far, but calling it a "relationship" is kind of a stretch. MSM did what the comics (embarrassingly) haven't and give her a romantic partner that I think we were all happy for, and even though it's not my favorite, it's probably the most high profile partner she'll have in a while.

Anyway, let's start the countdown!

Peter Parker

NOPE. NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE. Sorry shippers from MSM, but this is a big nope from me due to their student/teacher relationship from the comics and that she's still a minor in them.

Possibilities of becoming canon: I mean.... I don't doubt that at some point some hack writer might pull a Bruce/Barbara with them for some au. Probably one of the blessings of her not being as relevant as Batgirl.

Score: -110000/10 HELLSHIP HELLSHIP

Paul Townsend

Her original potential love interest in comics, he disappeared after Amazing Fantasy. He was still important enough that he even appears in the cover of AF #6 as part of Anya's civilian life.

Possibilities of becoming canon: Zero. It's clear we'll never see him again.

Score: -10/10 dude was very clearly into some shady stuff.

Rocky Flint

Her new best friend (?) they even lived together for a while. Introduced during the Spider-Girl relaunch, she is nice friend, but Rikki was the one who took the spotlight during this period.

Score: 1/10 prefer them as friends.

Black Tarantula

From the MC2 universe, I guess it works within it's "What if?" premise. A series that gives a antagonistic-but-not-too-much role to Anya in it's "what if she stayed longer with the Spider Society?" it does kinda feel natural that two characters with characters with similar origin to be attracted. (Let's not even mention how comfortable she feels with Fabian pursuing Mayday to join their harem).

Possibilities of becoming canon: canon in a reality, doubt in main reality this would happen. It would be interesting if 616 Fabian resurfaces as a enemy to Anya.

Score: 2/10 kinda works in it's reality, but I can't forgive DeFalco for thinking it was a good idea to pair a character who lost her family to narcos with a narco.

Lynn Sakura

Oh, the panel that started it all....

Anya's BFF, is a shame she was dropped after the original Araña series. There's is potential in there, but now it all rests on anyone remembering Heart of the Spider.

Possibilities of becoming canon: I mean, it cooould happen. To say there's no subtext in there would be a understatement....

Score: 4/10 just as Rocky I prefer them as friends.

Reptil

So far her only romantic partner she's had. It didn't start the best way, and ended... we actually have no idea how this ended. Next thing we know Berto was pursuing other relationships with Finnesse and White Tiger. It seemed that only Paul Tobin wanted it to happen.

Possibilities of becoming canon: He is kinda dead. He reappeared for a panel thanks to Bendis not caring about continuity, but God knows if anyone is gonna pick that up. Overall, I think there's a bigger chance for Reptil to pursue any of the previous relationships than going back to Anya.

Score: 5/10 good guy, but who thought it was a good idea making Anya's first kiss against her will?

Julie Taregon

Anya's hockey captain from very early, interviews from the time indicated that she was originally meant to have a much bigger role in Heart of the Spider. Just like Paul she was dropped by the main series, but nothing takes away from the distinction of being the one who activated Anya's powers for the first time after she asked her out.

Possibilities of becoming canon: As much possibilities as Paul or Lynn. Assuming a new Anya solo is greenlighted she would make a interesting addition to the supporting cast.

Score: 7/10 I dig it but wish she would appear more.

Mayday Parker

The newest addition to her potential partners, I've actually been shiping them from before Spider-Girls, the fact that in short 3 issues they generated enough interest that this is probably the second most popular ship at this point (came first in a twitter poll I made). There's a story with them just waiting to be written, they need to be together in a series again!

Possibilities of becoming canon: Um... I think that at this point both have the same level of relevance that if someone pitches a story were they become a couple it wouldn't hold much objection.

Score: 1000000/10 currently my fav ship.

Miles Morales

Marvel comics should be embarrassed that a cartoon made this pairing happen, as meanwhile in the comics they haven't even talked to each other. As you may notice, this list is dominated by women, if there's one guy I would smile from ear to ear if it becomes a thing it would be with Miles. They both have so much in common, it's a match made in heaven.

Possibilities of becoming canon: I actually think this has a good chance of happening. They will probably not be endgame, but I see them having a relationship along the lines of Tim and Steph.

Score: 9/10 If only Miles were a woman 😔

Gwen Stacy

Just like Miles, the cartoon did what the comics haven't and developed them into a lovely friendship (with something more...?). Arguably, the most popular ship involving Anya; on ao3 is the one with the most fics, and there's probably more fan art of this pairing than from anyone else. The main limitation with this is how in the comics writers tend to underwrite Anya while putting the spotlight on Gwen, and never developing their partnership into something more. Hopefully the upcoming Order of the Web series they've been teasing they'll finally have some heartfelt interactions.

Possibilities of becoming canon: you know what, I legit think this has a actual chance. As I said, this is a rather popular ship, at least even Seanan Maguire is aware of it and is fair to say other people at Marvel are aware of the fan art and the like. Gwen in the comics so far has ambiguous sexuality, it wouldn't be too far fetched if someone makes it canon. Just as Miles, I can't see this as endgame, but it can become a recurring relationship like Gambit and Rogue.

Score: 10/10 Marvel don't be cowards challenge.

Rikki Barnes

The og. The one that turned subtext into text. Completely unintentional, yet their relationship did eventually had ramifications on at least one of them. At this point, if anyone wants to reveal Anya as a wlw, they just need to point this relationship to justify it. Anya and Rikki were probably the closest between them than any other superhero they ever interacted with.

Possibilities of becoming canon: Uhm.... Just when I thought that Rikki wouldn't be back, she comes back AND confirmed as bi. The problem? Rikki currently has a girlfriend. Breaking up Julie and Rikki seems very mean spirited, specially for Julie. Hypothetically, if for any reason their relationship ends, Rikki and Anya would definitely become canon at some point.

Score: 1100000/10 @Marvel you owe Anya a girlfriend.

[samiralula01]

Jason Todd is the Anti-Batman

* A pointless rambling of the relationship and parallels between Bruce Wayne and Jason Todd.

Picture this opening scene: There are two boys in a dark alley.

One is dressed in an expensive suit with a tie his dead father helped him with only earlier that evening. His hands are stained red with the same blood now puddled on the grimy cement. His face is in shock.

The second boy is dressed in tattered jeans and hoodie. His hands are stained with tires grease and are clutching a tire iron. His face is in shock.

Decades later, there are two more scenes to consider.

A seriously injured man sits slumped over in his father’s study. Without warning, a bat crashes through the window, and everything falls into place. He now knows what he needs to do.

Elsewhere, an emotionally distraught teenager is curled up into a fetal position on a hotel room floor. Heart wrenching cries can be heard from him. But it is only momentary. He now knows what he needs to do.

These two individuals are Bruce Wayne and Jason Todd. While they are both broken and determined men, Batman is a hero. The Red Hood is not. He is the anti-Batman and this is why.

Two Boys in an Alleyway

Despite similarities in their stories’ early themes and elements, Bruce and Jason came to walk down very different paths. One of justice, and the other vengeance. Batman is determined to protect the innocent and Jason more so on punishing the guilty. Both their ideologies have intrinsic flaws, of course, and will naturally clash often. But this wasn’t always the case.

Before they became a father and son perpetually in mourning for who they once were and what could have been, Bruce and Jason were remarkably similar. The two are cut from the same cloth and Bruce knows this better than anyone else.

In the Dumpster Slasher three-part story line, (Batman #414, #421, #422) Bruce becomes emotional. Violent. He sits in the batcave alone that night and contemplates his emotions.

“Nearly blew it. I let it get too personal. Lost my detachment...nearly lost control. Almost beat Cutter to death. Wouldn’t have been any big loss.”

Only one issue later, at the end of this story arc, Robin is out on the streets and becomes angry when he happens upon a pimp is threatening a prostitute with a knife. Now, I want you to compare his line here to Bruce’s and note what Jim Gordon said to him as well.

Batman: "I think he’s had enough, Robin. What were you trying to do, kill him?" Robin (Jason): “Would it’ve been that big of a loss if I had?”

It is important to note here that Batman is not worried or upset just because Jason roughs up a pimp. That would be hypocritical considering his own earlier actions. If anything, it’s because one of the main reasons Batman even takes in these kids, these ‘robins,’ is because he doesn’t want them to be like him.

And Jason was acting just like him.

Jason can and has screwed up and failed due to his own actions, but it was never the reason Batman became upset with him. His reactions in the comics when Jason does things like running ahead and ‘jumping the gun,’ are more like this:

He either makes a teaching moment out of it or is attempts to understand Jason’s reasons in doing any such thing. When Bruce does become harsh in his discipline, it’s either when he feels as though Jason has endangered his own life or as I said, he acts too much like him.

While there are quite a few more similarities between Bruce and Jason that makes them alike, such as both being introverted and interested in obtaining all sorts of knowledge that they might not even feel is relevant, they are both, at the core of their characters, deeply caring and compassionate people.

The differences only start to show with how they act on it.

The Not-So Dynamic Duo?

“What happened to you as a child, the terror, the pain, the horrors (...) you were broken, and I thought I could put the pieces back together. I thought I could do for you what could never be done for me. Make you whole.”

Hot take. Jason Todd is a villain and is best written as a villain. 

Not in that campy way like he’s written during Dick and Damian’s Batman and Robin run while wearing that stupid pill-headed hood, (although, I grant he has a few lines that are enjoyable to read) but in all his serious, vengeful and downright brutal motives. 

The Red Hood is the perfect Batman villain because he’s so different from what the widely perceived perfect foil to the controlled and disciplined Bat is...the Joker. 

The Red Hood was vengeance at its purest. It is justice without being tempered by mercy. It is the rage of victims who were forgotten to become statistics. While other vigilantes wait for a cure, hope for rehabilitation, and pretend their system works, the Red Hood is a man of no such faith.

And this makes him a villain. And a damn good one.

During the Red Hood’s time as a crime lord in Gotham, he goes around blowing up buildings. He throws grenades into trucks. He mows down his competition with gunfire. Batman comes upon the bloodied hanged corpse of a man he was finished interrogating. 

But what is so compelling about this all is that before all the murder, all the guns and explosions, Jason Todd was a very different little boy. And all the great and memorable villains start that way.

The Joker is not someone you’re meant to sympathize with or even understand. In fact, I find him more terrifying because he’s unknown. He has no backstory (unless you want to believe the one he gave in Killing Joke, but the clown has a new story for every face he meets) and seemingly does what he does for a laugh of all things.

Jason Todd is in pain. He’s traumatized. Betrayed. Buried. Replaced. He is no one’s son because his father abandoned him.

Once upon a time, Jason Todd was a boy who saved himself. One of the biggest lies that Batman himself perpetuates is that he saved Jason from a life of crime. He tells Alfred that Jason was always dangerous. Bruce simply took him off the streets before he could be any worse.

But I don’t believe that’s true.

Jason grew up surrounded by crime, poverty, substance abuse and yet this amazing kid saved himself everyday by making a conscious choice to be kind and care about school, care about keeping his mother alive for over a year when he was just a child himself. That amazing kid was magic. 

Jason Todd as Robin was magic.

“Jason smiles. A bright smile. The kind Robin, the Boy Wonder should have.”

A good portion of his character’s assassination was in order to push the Tim is the perfect Robin idea. It was editorial decisions. The same ‘suits’ who insisted that Tim Drake be the Robin in the New Adventures cartoon despite having Jason’s backstory and personality. But I digress on that. 

Jason Todd was an introverted, studious, and emphatic person. He wanted to make friends with other kids his age even though he was a loner at heart. He joined the school baseball team and was a class officer, even if his training kept him from most social interactions.

He was also very much in tune with non-verbal cues and small changes in the environment around him. He was a thoughtful person who could be found admiring the stars or passing by scenery. When he teams up with the New Teen Titans, we get to see these aspects of his personality:

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful before. We’re actually riding above the clouds.”

“Every so often, I notice you become awfully agitated...like something was going on you didn’t want to be part of. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

It didn’t take Bruce long to fall in love with this boy and ask to legally adopt him. He found him to be smart, thoughtful, quick at learning and funny as hell. Their first meeting opens with Batman laughing in the very same alley his heart was ripped out decades earlier. 

Even in the Rebirth canon, (RHATO #48) we see that Bruce is already set on taking in Jason while he’s still with Ma Gunn’s school. He likes this kid. A lot.

“Butler, actually. You’ll meet him someday, I’m sure.”

Jason Todd was happy. Most of the time. Unfortunately, he still wrestled with depression and would sleep all day on occasion and could be found crying hidden away on his own, withdrawn from the concerned Bruce and Alfred.

In A Death in the Family, Alfred and Bruce sit down and discuss Jason’s worsening mental health, particularly after the Diplomat’s Son where Jason becomes witness to sexual assault, suicide and the failings of both Batman and the GCPD to protect innocent people. Barbara, his tutor, someone he cared about and got along with, is also shot a few months earlier.

Bruce thinks Jason has become suicidal. Alfred does not disagree with this theory and supplements it with things he’s observed himself about the ‘lad.’

“I’ve come upon him, several times, looking at that battered old photograph of his mother and father, crying. When he’s seen me, he’s hidden the picture and left the room, refusing to talk.”

It is then that Jason discovers the truth about his mother at the worst possible time, when he’s not even thinking straight, and thus leads way to the tragedy that will be his murder at the hand’s of the Joker.

The Curse of Jason Todd

“Do you have any idea what you have done?! Do you? You have no inkling of what you’ve created -- what you have unleashed! You have set free a curse upon this world!”

Red Hood: Lost Days, which depicts Jason’s dark post-resurrection origin, opens with Ra’s al Ghul bellowing this line, the steam from the Lazarus Pit still rising off of him. 

I’m not going to analyze this line, I’m just using it to supplement a point of mine I hope I’m getting through well enough. The Red Hood is a compelling, tragic villain. He is similar to Batman in ways that Bruce always knew and may have even feared because of how intimately he knows his own deepest, darkest thoughts. Jason is the perfect foil as an antagonist for him because of what he represents to Bruce.

And it’s not his anger, or his rage, or even his brutality. 

It’s his compassion. His caring. His emotions. And how they can open up the worst parts of themselves. 

Both are motivated by preventing whatever trauma happened to them from ever happening to anyone else. They both trained for years with this motivation. And they’ve both acted out on the very person who inflicted their trauma onto them.

Here’s where their paths start to differ, however, and what separates them with a line of morality.

They both get angry. They both care so damn much. About Gotham, about innocents, about each other. They both get too emotionally invested and deal with consequences related to that. To manage with that, Bruce shuts down. He creates all these choices, rules and symbols. He uses every ounce of his self control to keep them. 

Bruce Wayne is not a good person. He forces himself to be with discipline and will. He chooses to be a good man and constantly pushes himself to live up to that. Because it’d be too damn easy to be just like the Red Hood.

Jason doesn’t understand that. Because no matter what Bruce had done or will do, he doesn’t hate him. He can’t. Despite his denial of the fact to different people, he still thinks of Bruce as his father. This great figure that so many others revere and are even intimidated by.

He’s not the only bat-kid to think of Bruce in this light despite the fact that the man is not. It took Dick years to overcome that perception. Tim only just started to begin understanding this true nature after his own father was murdered. 

But even if he did understand his (once)father, he still became the complete opposite of him despite so many early parallels. He doesn’t hold back his words and emotions, he doesn’t go into a state of controlled dissociation or emotional disengagement.

Jason Todd—the Red Hood—is Batman without all his rules and control. In a way, he’s what the darkest part of Batman himself wants to be. Jason does what Batman can’t do when it’s needed.

Because in Batman’s book, life beats out justice. Even if he could take down abusers and murderers, he won’t. He will choose saving and protecting lives over the apprehension of killers...he always does.

Batman is justice. Red Hood is vengeance.

Jason is a victim’s fantasy. He punishes and kills the guilty. Something Batman won’t do.

He is the anti-Batman for better or for worse.

[stxleslyds]

EVENT LEVIATHAN issues 2 and 3

EVENT LEVIATHAN BUT IT’S ONLY JASON TODD.

Oh, Anon, I am sorry it took me so long to answer your ask, to be honest with you, I had completely forgotten this book ever happened and when I went looking for it, I saw who was the writer for it and my brain disconnected completely.

Michael Brian Bendis, what a polarizing writer. I had forgotten why I didn’t like his work much but this book made me remember that his writing gives me headaches. I swear, every time I read his work I am left wondering if I missed an issue or a page, it’s like I always lack information even though he makes sure to write a lot in those “monologue boxes”.

But I am not here to complain about Bendis, let’s talk about why Jason appears in this book and how is he characterized in it.

If you don’t know what Event Leviathan was about, in the first issue we are told that a terrorist has been attacking places simultaneously. This person, known as Leviathan collected some of the people that survived the attacks (like Batgirl), and others he let escape (like Green Arrow). All of the attacks were on organizations (A.R.G.U.S, Spyral, D.O) that were the pillars of the world intelligence community.

Because the case is big and operating on a big scale, several detectives and heroes (Batman, Robin, The Question, Lois Lane, Plastic Man, and Manhunter) have come together to figure out who is behind Leviathan’s mask.

In the second issue, their main suspect is Jason Todd after Damian suggests that Jason’s “special war on crime” can be related to this worldwide level of terrorist activity.

Well, If you couldn’t tell by the way that I phrased that, I really believe that DC and Bendis had to do some weird changes to the narratives because Jason hadn’t been really at “war with crime” for a very long time, or at the very least, not on that level (against organizations selling/controlling intelligence). So, right of the bat, I am confused as all hell.

Jason at this point in time was working as the Ice Lunge’s owner, so this was after the events of RHatO (2016) #25 and after Roy Harper’s death. But before I get to explaining why Damian and the others thought that Jason was behind Leviathan’s terrorist attacks, let's talk about Jason’s characterization.

How to write about a character based only on “tropes” that the publisher of the book told you. A Guide by Michael Brian Bendis.

We find Red Hood in Seattle, already investigating Leviathan. So, yeah, to me it was kind of obvious that Bendis put Jason there to build up the reason as to why Jason was the main suspect of being Leviathan or working with them.

We are offered some very casual banter with Batman as well as the ever-present subplot of Jason caring for Barbara Gordon. I am not a fan of whatever DC was and is trying to do when it comes to Jason and his crush on a person that he barely knew and has rejected him before. Bendis was probably told to put that there, I really don’t see Jason going out of his way to ask if Barbara is final but oh well.

In that panel we also see Jason say this to Batman, “can we put away the stuff between us so we can work on the case?” to which Batman answers, “of course”.

What the hell was that? First Batman beats the living shit out of Jason (Jason even says that he never saw Bruce hit the Joker as hard as he was hitting him) and rips the bat-symbol of his suit saying that they no longer work together or whatever, then we have Bruce going to Jason to tell him that Roy is dead, he gives him a hug but then proceeds to tell Jason that he is still banned from Gotham.

DC really reduced all that to “stuff between us”, alright, all I am getting from that is that I was right when I said that DC lets Batman get away with his horrible treatment of his kids as if it just were a subplot. Lovely, I hate being right.

But that’s not really what I want to discuss, I want to discuss the level of detective/investigation skills that Jason has got going on for him in this issue. Suddenly Jason has information about what happens with organizations like Spyral, ARGUS, and DEO? And then Bruce asks Jason if he has been in contact with Talia recently?

I am not mad about those last things, don’t get me wrong, Jason being good at investigating and him being (possibly) in contact with Talia are great things BUT they don’t fit in his story anymore.

Where is this Jason coming from, it must not be from the narrative that Lobdell had going on, Jason never showed much interest in keeping up with that side of the world or in doing detective work. And his relationship with Talia was downgraded a lot, basically, all Talia had done was keep an eye on Jason since she first met him before he was robin (yeah, that was a thing that happened as told in RHatO (2011) #25) and that how she found out that he died, after he came back from the dead, she put him in a Lazarus Pit and then sent him to the All-Castle so he could become Ducra’s apprentice. That’s literally it.

Or are we working with a Jason that maintains his Lost Days origins? There isn’t time on the timeline for that to have happened so his involvement in this book and the way that they are writing him is very confusing to me.

Jason doesn’t say anything about Talia except that he pulls an Uno reverse card on Bruce and asks him if he has been in contact with Talia. But just like many things with Bendis as a writer we never really hear any of them say anything about Talia and they continue talking about something else.

Alright, back to sharing what they found it is! Jason has apparently investigated this very closely because he cannot stop bringing up the fact that the attacks leave no bodies behind. Either people escape or vanish from the attack site.

But here is where the so-awaited “Batfamily” mention comes in. After Bruce tells Jason that he is putting a team of Detectives together Jason asks this, “we can’t keep this in the Batfamily?” Gods, was DC on crack when they wrote this? The Batfamily? Honestly? Two of your best detectives are not around to help you and your so-called family left Dick Grayson all alone in Bludhaven!

What Batfamily are you talking about Jason? You, Bruce, and Damian? I can’t with DC pushing and pushing the wildest concept in their universe.

After all that Batman spends a lot of time explaining what has happened or what was supposed to happen, he talks to Jason about how the other detectives were getting closer to retrieve a body that they needed to study. In between what Batman is explaining the scene of Plastic Man talking with Leviathan happens and there Leviathan says that they know each other. So, that’s a clue, whoever is behind the mask is someone that Plastic Man has met before.

We find out that Batman was retelling that story to Jason, so Jason starts putting the pieces together. Batman already has a team, they know that Leviathan has been spearing some heroes’ lives, there is a cause for all the attacks (“a new world order”), and that the attacks leave no bodies. Jason even begins to put together the list of suspects but then Jason asks Batman if they have their number one suspect and Batman says, “Yes”, and it’s Jason!

This is so funny to me, like what? How did they come to that conclusion? Luckily Bendis “explains” the Detectives’ team’s reasoning, I guess? They take turns to ask Jason basic questions that Jason deflects from some reason? It is so dumb.

From this page the most important thing that I gathered is that Damian (the one who initially accused Jason of being Leviathan) says that he doesn’t “think that you (Jason) know you are doing any of this. I think it manifested itself out of grief”.

What? A terrorist that has some sort of technology that makes explosions that leaves no bodies and spares some people’s lives, is being manifested by Jason because Roy Harper died. Did I understand that correctly? That’s their big idea as to why Jason is their number one suspect?

Team of detectives, yeah, I don’t see it.

It makes zero sense! First of all, what “war with crime” was Jason having at the time, and they also say that that war was “a point of controversy for years”. Excuse me? Are they really calling Jason using guns (with rubber bullets) a SPECIAL war with crime? What are they referring to? Are they talking about the events of Under the Red Hood? Because Jason hasn’t been that version of himself in years! We don’t even know if those exact events happened in this continuity!

I am so lost; I actually don’t know why they are relating a terrorist attack to Jason. I don’t know, to me, Jason’s appearance here is unjustified and lacks logic.

Now, we find ourselves in the third issue, where an unnecessary amount of time jumping is done. First, we are in the present after both Batman and Robin let Jason run away. Listen, I know that they tried to paint it as Jason kicking both their asses but I saw those pages, they threw three punches and one of them connect with Jason’s jaw. Batman and Robin just stopped fighting Jason.

I don’t know, why they had to make Damian say that Batman let Jason get away when he was there too and did nothing.

And then they had Damian say this about Jason, “I have never been a member of his fan club but Jason Todd is one of the great master fighters of all time”. Okay, sure, Jason has had a lot of training and he has been immeasurably overpowered over the years but I still find Damian saying this a bit weird, like why would he say that? The fight that is shown after this look into the present is just like any other fight that any Bat-related hero has had. Dick has had more impressive fights than that one after the New 52 and he was immeasurably nerfed.

I love Jason getting recognition for the things that he does right and that he is good at but I need you to represent those moments better. The fight isn’t that grand and they clearly let him run away!

In the fight there all jumped off of a building, (Jason, Batman, Robin, Manhunter, Arrow, and Plastic Man) Jason shoots at everyone and they have a “fight” midair. Then Batman, Robin, and Jason fall through a glass roof and they continue fighting in a pool, this is where I say that they let Jason ran away, they showed us Damian kicking Jason in the face and Bruce punching Jason in the face. But then Jason electrifies both of them while they are in the pool? Listen, this is very nitpicky but Batman and Robin are wearing proper suits for vigilantism, if their suits aren’t prepared to receive some electric shots then wow, but also, the electricity does nothing to Jason even though he is also in the water? Jason’s Red Hood suit at the time was a pair of pants, a shirt, a vest with a hood, and some bandages on his arms… You are telling me that Jason was wearing a suit that protected him from that? Alright, I will believe it, after all, I am very dumb.

Then Jason fights Manhunter, a simple fight apparently, he doesn’t show much fighting skill because she looked like an easy target and then Jason stops fighting and decides to have a nice chat with Lois Lane.

“Why did you run?” I think he ran because a bunch of people accused him of being a terrorist and threw themselves at him at the edge of a building, what kind of question is that?

This page is just, I cannot describe how confusing it is. Lois finally asks that if it isn’t the Red Hood, then why would Leviathan try to set him up? To that Jason answers this, “I was thinking about that on the way down here. Because I am perfect. All this should be me” then he explains “I lose sleep running the numbers in my head, on how measured response to the criminals of the world brings nothing but more chaos. Batman knows this. If this Leviathan is making a big play to change the world, maybe it is the move the “crime-fighters” just don’t, will never have the guts to take. Maybe.”

What. Is. Going. On? Where did this version of Jason come from, this isn’t really in tune with UtRH Jason, RHatO Jason, or RHO Jason. This take on Jason is completely different, Jason doesn’t involve himself with threats on a worldwide scale, he doesn’t care how all heroes around the world operate, and he is not the only one that does things differently from Batman and other heroes that have similar morals.

What is this Jason saying really, is he suggesting that a global terrorist attack can lead to the reconstruction of how heroes work?

Why does Jason think that what Leviathan has going on is similar to things that Jason has done? What did Bendis read that I didn’t? How did Bendis come up with this characterization of Jason?

Because even though RHatO and RHO Jason went beyond Gotham he still fought for things that were directly aligned with his story, Ra’s al Ghul, the Untitled, Essence, all of that wasn’t on a global scale, why is he so suddenly aware of more than that, I just don’t think that his participation in this book is justified.

In these other panels he also comes off as way too aware of what is going on, and I understand that to a certain level all heroes might keep up with what going on a global scale but it seems like Jason knows way too much for someone that hasn’t been connected to those organizations and or people before.

Jason appears a little more after that but nothing of true importance is said anymore in this issue. After, Lois finishes her talk with Jason she reunites with the rest of the team and is like “It wasn’t Red Hood, let’s move on” and that’s that.

That was all Jason did in those two issues. A mix between nothing, knowing too much and him speculating about what a terrorist would want to do next.

Before I give my last thoughts about Jason and these issues, I want to share with you these panels from issue 5 of Event Leviathan.

There, Zatanna and the others confirmed it. Even though Lois listed the Red Hood as a suspect the other detectives told her that not only none of their suspects were Leviathan but that none of them were Leviathan adjacent.

OF COURSE, JASON HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH LEVIATHAN!

Here is what I think, Jason shouldn’t have been in this book, it makes less than zero sense for him to be there. Jason being set up by Leviathan had no logic whatsoever. Jason and Leviathan’s levels of “disruption” are on completely different levels.

I just don’t know why he was there.

Anon, once again I am sorry for taking so long to do this review, I hope you had fun reading this, and I hope that you have an awesome day!