#red hood’s goons

[cant-have-shit-in-gotham]

@trigger-happy-in-red

Wil walks through the park until he comes to a large oak tree with a thick overhanging canopy. Jason is waiting for him.

“Sorry I’m so late. Yer Nuthatch waz bein’ annoyin’.”

[trigger-happy-in-red]

@number1-red-robin-stan

Every month, The Red Hood meets with his top five henchmen—minus JT, who is exempt from these meetings “so that in the event someone blows up the building and everyone in the meeting dies there will still be someone to run things”—as well as the heads of the outsourced departments, to discuss how well things are going, deal with any arguments, and several other terms for “listen to a dozen and a half grown adults argue with each other for several hours.”

So obviously, he’s having the time of his second life.

“Rodríguez, how many times do I have to say it; your boys deal from Chinatown to the East Side, and Marks deals from Diamond to the the West Side. We’ve been over this.”

[glitter-stained]

Random goon: Hey boss, were you the one to pick that name as an alias? And why this one?

Red Hood : I used to have another name, before... A long time ago. But that person is dead now. I get to choose for myself now, they can't take that from me. I won't let them.

Goon: Huh.

***

Random Goon: Say boss, why do you never take off your shirt in front of us?

Red Hood: Well uh, I actually have that really fucked scar on my chest and I'm not comfortable with...

Random Goon: Don't worry boss, we get it, you don't have to explain yourself to us.

***

Red Hood, high on some toxin: God, I wish my family...

Random Goon (on boss-sitting duty): why not try reaching out to them?

Red Hood: They would never accept me as I am now... They wouldn't agree with my so-called "life choices". Besides, they don't miss me, they miss the person they think I used to be... I wasn't even a man when I last saw them.

Random Goon: Damn boss, that sucks.

***

And then the goons throw the Red Hood a party on trans visibility day and Jason is so confused he straight up cries.

[fanaticalthings]

Jason Todd with his goons:

[danidoodels]

tim needed a disguise quick and it was the only viable option unfortunately

[violent138]

While I'm sure bad guys in Gotham have learned over time that the Bats don't kill, that even after bashing your teeth in they'll flag down an ambulance or dump you unceremoniously at the ER, it's still a shaky trust.

One that is easily shaken seeing a child wielding a sword in the dead of night; nobody wants to learn how that is handled nonlethally. Or bad guys just surrendering one late night after running into an alley and Nightwing's standing over their unconscious buddy, holding the gun he wrestled away. They watch Red Hood break into the place they're robbing with a crowbar in hand and just decide they'd rather not chance it. They see a shadow that could be Black Bat and-- you get it.

[allthegothihopgirls]

old ladies love red hood NOT because he helps them cross roads and seems like a charming young man. they love him because at the end of the night, when he's crouched over catching his breath, head in hands in what he thinks is an empty street, or hobbling down roads trying to get home quickly despite sustaining large injuries, he reminds them of their grandsons.

he gets invited into their homes, and knows better than to decline. he'll sit down and wait to be berated by the old lady at the other side of the kitchen who's putting together a quick meal for him. he'll take off the helmet, and that's when she starts, not telling him to stop what he does, but to take better damn care of himself. he'll apologise and promise, as he's fixing himself up with her first aid kit.

as he leaves she'll still be making firm, although loving remarks at him, but he smiles underneath the helmet because he's being treated like a man, not a hero, a villain, or any of the other inhuman titles he's picked up over the years.

[excalisi]

it's a fun hc of mine that during dick's robin days, he went through the "omg i wish i had a cool secret language so i can have secret conversations with my friends" phase all kids go through. but one of his closest friends at the time also happened to be the batman, a guy with possibly the most bizarrely diverse arsenal of skills in the world. bruce sees the merit in the entire idea of a coded language to communicate rudimentary information when they can hear but not see each other. so why not make a code built on bird vocalizations? it's pretty much incomprehensible to anyone without a trained ear or comprehensive knowledge of birding and impossible to even passably mimic without proper training, so while the chances of interception are high, the chances of someone understanding it enough to interrupt during the middle of a bird-convo and feed false information are not.

it also, batman and robin come to realize, feeds into the "holy fuck our vigilantes are cryptids" idea. bird sounds that come from seemingly no determinable location (ventriloquism) come to mean batman and robin are nearby. to the goons of gotham, bird song becomes inextricably connected to getting your ass kicked by the dynamic duo. the real reason why criminals don't operate during the day is because they get skittish and jumpy about if the sounds of birds chirping are real birds or some masked vigilantes lying in wait to rock your shit, and it's just easier to commit crimes during the night when all the birds are asleep so you know for sure.

ornithologists have boards on their bedrooms dedicated to the bird-bats of gotham. they've written dissertations.

the bird language becomes a bit of a batfamily bonding connection. teaching each other how to do different clicks and whistles, making up slang so bruce and barbara can't complain of clogging up comms with non-mission relevant talk, searching up birds to associate them with different people, psychologically terrorizing the criminal populace of gotham by chirping at them...

how the bird code works is that there's a bird assigned to each one of gotham's major heavy hitter criminals and vigilantes, and a few assigned to heroes out of the city (by which i mean the ones the bats associate with often enough to have a sign to address by). the only birds i've got so far are the robin (for robin. self-explanatory) and the glistening-green tanager (for the joker). i only have one for the joker bc i wanted to reference this hc in one of my fics and so searched up green birds to find the most eye-searingly annoying-to-look-at green bird i could find, and the glistening-green tanager was the closest one to fit the bill.

[bodyfrmabalcony]

jason's autopsy scars cause some confusion at the red hood annual pool party

[dragonpyre]

It's canon (to me) that Jason Todd has a baby face

Commission info ko-fi

[cant-have-shit-in-gotham]

@one-flying-grayson

Wil knocks on the door to Hood’s safehouse with the gift basket. Tucked into the basket is a bright red carnation.

[trigger-happy-in-red]

@stitches-stitches-stitches

Hood jumps from rooftop to rooftop, looking for the person that Riddler said was out here somewhere.

He finds Stitches curled up against the wall of an alley, holding his stomach. His face is bruised to hell and back, and both sides of his bloody nose are bleeding all over his sweater.

“You’re supposed to leave the other guy broken and bloody, Stitches. Not yourself.”

[glitter-stained]

Prompt:

After Red Hood stopped killing and someone leaked footage hinting that he's the second Robin, he expected to fight for every morsel of territory, for everybody to desert him and the murder attempts to triple.

And, well. It's not like he doesn't find himself in a rigged warehouse on Monday, walking off that one explosion with singes on his back. It's not like on Wednesday, a bullet pierces through a hole in his armour and he's losing half his blood in an alley. And sure, someone takes advantage of him throwing his helmet away on Friday (he was out of grenades and needed a bigger bomb) to fear gass him, but it's fine, he can function normally under fear gass nowadays.

Except. Except nobody deserts him. By Monday, the attempts have completely stopped. He walks into a meeting with his men and sees his goons' hands won't stop shaking, and even his lieutenant won't look him in the eyes.

Jason is confused, and so are the other bats, but soon the rumours reach their ears: you can't go after the Red Hood, because no matter what you do, once you've targeted him it's over, like a dog with a bone, he'll get you eventually- no matter how you shoot or how many explosives you use. It doesn't matter that the Red Hood doesn't kill, because the Red Hood doesn't die.

[fanaticalthings]

While I do find it funny that henchmen in Gotham probably warn each other about the Red Hood because he's a bat who will actually kill you. I think it would be better if Jason was actually seen as some sort of savior or idol to like 90% of the goons scattered around Gotham. Doesn't matter who they work for, they all know Jason, former crime-lord that took over majority of Gotham's underground in one night.

---

Jason, years after the events of UTRH, now fighting crime alongside the batfam, except every goon he runs into immediately recognizes him, stops fighting, and starts begging.

the first time it happens, Jason assumes they're begging for their lives only to hear them begging for him to return to the crime lord business so they can work for him and not Gotham's current money-stingy, abusive rogues (Black Mask lol)

---

Jason showing up to patrol as backup for Dick in an overrun warehouse full of Two-Face's henchmen and as Jason's about to interfere, one of the men stops dead in their tracks and stares really hard at Jason until:

Goon: Oh my God, boss, is that you?

Jason, pulling out his guns, about to shoot:

Goon: Mr. Hood, sir???

Jason, halfway about to pull the trigger: Wait a min–Jeremy? Oh wow, it's been ages! How's the wife?

Goon (Jeremy): Oh my God it IS you, holy shit where have you BEEN? Me and the guys miss you, man!

Dick, with a knife at his throat: What is happening right now

Jason: Ahh, well, crime-lording just wasn't fitting in on the daily schedule. Tryna turn over a new leaf and all that

Goon (Jeremy): Aw, that's disappointing. We really liked working for you, right guys?

[Chorus of enthusiastic "YEAHS" from the rest of the henchmen (even the one holding Dick at knifepoint)]

Goon (Jeremy): Well, anyways, I can't beat you up knowing you're my old boss! You gave us the best health benefits! We'll just let you take the evidence and leave.

Jason: Aw, thanks guys :)

---

And that's why 95% percent of Jason's missions in Gotham end in success. Not because he's willing to kill people or because rogues are terrified of him, but because 90% of the rogues' henchmen once worked for Jason and fuckin love him lol.

[wivelya]

Y'all know that tiktok audio about kidnapping that goes "shit got weird! I was with my hand on her throat and she looked me straight in the eyes and said 'harder'" or something like that?

Give me something like that!

The batboys fighting some goons in a warehouse. One got a lucky opening and got his hands on Tim's neck (why Tim? I don't know, but it's him), Tim opens his mouth to trash talk the dude, but his brain-to-mouth filter decides to not work that day.

Everyone freezes, because wtf?! Heroes and goons are shocked!

Certainly, they heard wrong. Nightwing, Red Hood and Robin have their comms and heard it clearly, but of course they're hallucinating!

Except that Red Robin is blushing and the goon he was fighting seems to be having a stroke.

"What the fuck did you say, Replacement?" Jason is the first to react.

He's blushing harder.

"I didn't mean to. It was automatic."

You can see a lot of bad guys mouthing "automatic?" with incredulity.

If you look closer, you can see Nightwing's soul leaving his body, because not only his baby brother has a sexual life with his boyfriend (you choose the boyfriend, be it Kon or Bernard. I don't care), but he probably just discovered one of his baby brother's kinks. That was something that he never wanted in his life.

And hey, remember that the comms were on? All of them had to hear Spoiler contribute her two cents with "damn Red, you weren't like that when we were dating".

You can hear Damian groan somewhere and regret his life because his family are a bunch of morons.

[violent138]

Gotham based goons definitely blame all their mishaps on the Bats.

Lost a shipment? "Yeah boss, Red Robin came outta nowhere, confiscated all of it."

Someone's cigarette caused a warehouse fire? "Batgirl dropped by and torched the joint."

Fell asleep while on guard duty? "Batman punched the daylights out of me."

Accidentally went to the wrong location and the buyer got arrested? "Bats were chasing the car boss, I figured I'd prioritize the product."

Killed a partner in crime? "Red Hood got him, sorry."