#from nuking half of europe using plans that were originally created by the side of the guy who torture brainwashed me.

[spiritsglade]

May I ask why you love Jason so much? And who's your favourite dc character after Jason and why?

okay. so. this is a very good question. everything under the cut because this got long

there's honestly a decent chance that it's because he's the first dc character whose arc i was exposed to with any level of nuance. i learned his gimmick first so that's what i latched onto. my hyperfixations do tend to do that.

beyond that, i think he's got a lot of tropes that i'm particularly fond of. i have a bit of a trend of enjoying masked characters who have a bit of a complicated relationship with death & betrayal. off the top of my head, we have corvo from dishonored, elektra from dd s2/defenders, bucky barnes from the captain america movies, my own little amnesiac oc. also bell from cod black ops cold war because i somehow managed to latch onto the character that's supposed to be a self insert as their own person. i don't know how i managed it. and no, i'm not proud of my phase of getting way too invested into the story of fucking call of duty but it did happen. anyway.

the trend with all of these characters is that they're working with a faction that don't have their best interest at heart? corvo gets betrayed twice over, elektra had amnesia post-resurrection, bucky got brainwashed, etc. they're working against people that they used to love and/or care about but it's not of their own free will (okay, not applicable in corvo's case, but it's close-ish). it's a nice little backdrop for dramatic, heartaching reveals and reunions and it's literally perfect for fix-it fics.

that was the version of jason i was first introduced to, through fanfiction. lazarus pit madness, doing what he is because of his own misconceptions of what happened after his death/manipulations from the league of assassins, etc. he slotted into the lineup pretty nicely. but then i actually watched the movie and read his comics and wow that sure is not what he's about, is it.

what he means and the kind of character he is to me has been reframed a lot in my mind over the course of those first weeks of getting into comics. i don't really know how to trace the trail back.

the current appeal is (1) his consistent suicidal ideation & how that intersects with the fact that he's already been on the permanent side of dead, (2) the irreconcilable differences between him and people who are his family, the way he hates bruce precisely because he loves him, the way the fact that they do love each other is not enough, (3) that he's a melodramatic asshole who will just say shit to get under your skin, because that part of his characterization is very important to me, (4) how he is always losing the idgaf war because he may insist that he doesn't, but that man cares too much about everything forever, (5) all-caste bullshit because essence burrowed into my brain without paying rent.

on a meta level, the way he's defined in opposition to batman, the most popular dc character forever and ever, is extremely interesting! the way his death changed the landscape of comics, how permanent it was in a medium where death usually isn't that big a deal.

anyway!! for favorite non-jason dc character: (the real answer is essence. just look through the #essence dc tag on my blog tbh. i'm skipping over her though because at this point she's more headcanon than canonical substance to me, and a lot of her appeal is in terms of how i've decided to interpret her relative to jason.)

it might be the recency bias but cassandra cain. first of all her story is tragic and devastating. the way david cain views her?? the way he crafted her from hand?? the entire living weapon concept is very very appealing. i also have to appreciate how straight up op she is & i love that they gave that sort of unchecked power to a teenage girl. yeah let's go cass!! beat the shit out of those guys!! her haterisms are also a bonus i love love love how rude she can be. girl starts her arc knowing ten words are two of them are 'shut up' and i love her for that. and then she turns around and says something like 'i can be mediocre for a lifetime or perfect for a year' and it's like i'm getting repeatedly stabbed a la julius caesar on the ides of march.

i'm only like a third of the way through batgirl 2000 but genuinely it is so good. the way she straight up doesn't care about her lack of civilian identity. bruce projects so hard onto her and he's usually right but there's also that disconnect that he'll never be able to bridge because he simply cannot conceptualize that she's like this because she killed someone. the way barbara wants the best for her so badly but just doesn't get her. those relationship dynamics are just fascinating. she's so cool. i love you cassandra cain. i'm so sorry that fanon turned you into the girl that smiles in the corner and gently deescalates things and goes 'little brother <3' all the time.

(she also looks like me a little bit so i'm having a real normal time with the projection. fun bonus to the whole thing. unfortunately if i tried to fight people up i would get my shit rocked.)

thanks for the ask, anon! sorry for how long this took. took me a little while to think things through + i like rambling forever.