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gatorbites-imagines · 1 year ago

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Kinktober day 16

Jason Todd + leather or Latex

I had like, no ideas what to do with this prompt ngl, so I just kinda went with whatever came to me when writing.

Crime lord Red Hood has always had a special place in my heart

Kinktober 2023 masterlist.

Working for The Red Hood wasn’t too bad, especially compared to the other rogues you’d had to work for in the past. With Hood you didn’t have to fear suddenly being shot because Two-face suddenly felt like it, or being eaten by whatever plants Ivy had conjured up, or answering whatever riddles the Riddler came up with that day.

Best part was probably the uniform though. All rogues put their people in specific clothes. For the joker it was clown masks and all that junk, Riddler wanted you in stuff with question mark print, penguin wanted you well dressed in suit and tie, the list went on. For Hood just wearing red seemed to be enough. Most seemed to just resort to wearing a red hoodie under their jacket, and that was enough.

Interestingly enough, working for Hood also came with some benefits, like being allowed to keep stuff from different conflicts as long as it didn’t cause issues for Hood. That was where you found your first leather, some rich guy from Metropolis tried to set up in Gotham and was quickly dealt with. If Gotham hated anyone more than each other, it was outsiders trying to barge in and make a name for themselves.

The guy had been wearing a sturdy but not too flashy leather jacket, so after checking the pockets and for bullet holes and seeing it in one piece, you tucked it over your arm and brought it home. You had to cut the tags out and changed the inner fabric to something cheaper, and most importantly, into something red, but the quality was no lie.

You realized you might have had a thing for Leather one night when you had needed to go out for some small run for Hood, and you’d been too tired and lazy to put on a shirt. You ended up going out in a pair of low waisted denim pants, some well worn boots, and your jacket. No one batted an eye, at all, seeing a shirtless guy was far from the weirdest shit in Gotham, but the feel of leather on your skin seemed to have lit something inside you.

After that you might have subconsciously started looking for the stuff whenever you went on raids or into fights for Hood and his territory. Who cared if you stole some hotshot from star cities leather west and hat, or that guy from Texas whose black leather boots you stole right off his feet. You didn’t touch the pants though, even though you really really wanted too, you just didn’t trust them not to be contaminated by all kinds of junk.

You honestly thought you hid it pretty well, your draw to leather that is. Everyone had their thing, and you always wearing your jacket and boots was just something you did. If you went home to get dressed all the way down to just your jacket and boots though to jerk off was another thing entirely.

But it seemed your draw to the last targets pants hadn’t gone fully unnoticed by your boss. Imagine your surprise when he shoved a package into your arms one night and told you to only check it when you got home, the modulator of his helmet making him seem way more serious than he probably was.

You wouldn’t say you were outright friends with Hood, no one could really be friends with their boss in the criminal world, but you cracked jokes with the guy and even got him to laugh on the regular. You patched him up when he needed it, and he dragged you to Leslie’s clinic when you got knocked around a bit too hard, which happened more than you liked to admit.

When you got home you had almost assumed that the package would hold weapons or maybe even drugs, even though Hood didn’t personally deal the stuff. But instead, you found what you immediately noticed was leather, a card placed on top of the neatly folded leather. The letter was in Hoods writing, and you felt your face heat up a tad at the words on the page.

“Next time just let me buy it for you instead of stealing it off bodies” it said, and when you unfolded the leather, you felt your insides flutter. It was pants, they seemed even better quality than the ones you had been eying the night before. But it wasn’t just pants, there was a newer jacket, it was brown and heavy and was very well worn, and when you held it out in front of you, you could see it was one of Hoods own jackets.

You could feel blood running downwards, leaving you fumbling with your clothes as you got undressed, feeling almost desperate to pull the pants up your legs and hips. They were tight, but not too tight, and there was no question about the quality. Your original jacket fell to the ground with a heavy thud, your fingers quickly grabbing the heavy well-loved leather of the brown jacket and pulling it on, a shaky breath leaving you as the smell that was so clearly Hood filled your senses.

It smelled like leather, gun oil, the cigarettes he smoked when he was annoyed or on edge, and something undeniably Hood, and it had you tenting your new pants. Or tenting as well as one could in leather, which meant it was more a visible bulge running down the inside of your thigh. It had felt so good on your skin that you had found yourself grinding against your hand on your couch like some inexperienced fool. Your back had arched off the couch as you stained the inside of your pants, the leather growing slick against you as you groaned.

It was only later when cleaning the leather that you noticed the writing in the waistband, near the back so it would sit near the bottom of your spine. “Red Hood” it said, like some kind of statement of ownership, and you had shivered and exhaled shakily, rubbing a hand over your face to dispel the thoughts it awoke in your body.

Next time you saw Hood you had worn the pants, but the jacket was left at home. The worn jacket didn’t go well with the newer shinier leather of the pants, so it was your normal jacket and boots, which had some of your friends joke a bit about you being some kind of leather daddy because of your interest in the stuff. You had let the jokes run off your back, joking along every now and then.

You hadn’t even noticed Hood being there until he had appeared behind you, his gloved hand grabbing your ass and giving it a squeeze. Youd almost snapped around and decked him, assuming it was someone else, that was until you heard his modulated voice. “You’re wearing my gift. You like it?” he purred obviously enough that you could hear it even through the voice changer.

You could feel your skin growing clammy as you gave a small nod, not even daring to look at hood as he pressed his crotch against your back, his erection obvious even through all your shared layers. “Good, you look so hot in it” he rumbled, giving your thighs an extra squeeze before he stepped back and wandered off, leaving you unsteady on your feet as you tried to force the obvious hard shape in your pants away, for once cursing how tight they were.

It continued on this way for a while, Hood leaving you presents, and you would wear them around his headquarters. It was never expensive or high quality enough for anyone to target you, but Hood seemed to enjoy it very much. It felt almost like having a sugar daddy or some kind, but he had never demanded much sugar, only grabbing your ass at times, or rubbing his hands up and down your torso that time you’d worn a leather shirt under your jacket.

He was a tease, and you could hear the shit eating grin through his helmet as you ground against his thick thigh one day. You felt so wound up from his lingering touches that you had found yourself in his office one day, or what you guys called his office anyways. Maybe you wanted a fight of some kind, you weren’t sure, but one thing led to another, and you pinned up against the wall, his thigh between your own.

And now you were grinding against his thigh like some kind of pervert, your fingers digging into the worn leather of his jacket as you gasped into his shoulder. You didn’t even notice as he pulled off his gloves or spat on his fingers, it was only when one of his hands was shoved down the back of your leather pants and between your cheeks that you realised. A groan left you as he rubbed the pad of his finger against your pucker, his voice cocky as he asked if this was what you wanted.

You tried to glare at him, but it only seemed to fuel him more as Hood pushed his finger inside, letting you adjust before he started moving to the best of his ability, your tight pants not leaving much room to move his wrist. The stimulation was driving you crazy, the tight leather of your pants doing nothing to lessen the experience as you ground forwards into his thigh, before you pushed back onto his hand.

Running your hands down his torso and up his shirt, you could keep the moan from leaving you as you felt something too smooth and slick to be leather. It was Latex, he was wearing a latex shirt under everything else, maybe it was even a full body thing as it continued as you thumbed at the waistband of his pants.

Your exploring just seemed to fuel him more as Hood added not just a second but a third finger at the same time, letting you just barely adjust to the stretch before he started moving his hand once more, causing you to grind harder against his thigh.

It was impossible to fight back the orgasm that rocked through you, thoroughly slicking up the crotch area of your leather pants as there was no fabric to soak it up, letting it splatter against your thighs and lower body. You could feel yourself twitch a bit as Hood removed his fingers, instead grabbing onto your hips and lifting you up, making your legs wrap around his waist.

You couldn’t find it in yourself to ask what he was up too as he walked backwards, plopping down on his chair with you in his lap, sighing softly as he started rubbing his hands up your torso, flicking your chest through the leather shirt you had chosen to wear. “You alright baby?” he asked, voice warm and caring, leaving you feeling all types of mushy.

You just scoffed and leaned forwards, resting against his broad shoulders and coiling your arms around him. Hood rubbed your back for a while before rolling his chair close to his desk, the taping of keys letting you know he was working on one thing or the other. In the end you found yourself with both your hands up his shirt, rubbing at his latex covered torso as you rocked lazily against his thigh, no hurry in your movements as you knew you had all night, and it would happen soon if the twitching bulge between Hoods thighs meant anything.

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navree · 5 months ago

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this is dc twitter discourse at the moment so i thought i'd ask your thoughts on it do you think red hood jason hurting children is ooc/a bad writing choice???

And this ladies and gents is why I avoid DC Twitter because I don't think I've seen any good takes there ever, no matter where you are. Sometimes people post panel compilations that hurt my heart, that's the like the only good thing to come out of it, I don't even click on the MAWS hashtag if it trends while the show is airing because last time I did it was people bitching that 25 year old Slade did not look or act the same way that current in his forties Slade does (not to mention, how can you complain about MAWS Slade? he's the best part about the show how did anyone not just fall over laughing with delight the second he showed up and proclaimed himself to be literal Slade Wilson?).

With that said, yeah I would consider that to be a bad writing choice. Talking about characterization for comics is hard because, as I've mentioned, comics is an incredibly decentralized creative medium in a way none others are. Movies, TV shows, novels, they all tend to have a main core group of people or even just one solitary person in charge of the creative direction, and for a lot of them, a very finite "this is where we start and this is where we end" mentality that comics do not. These characters have had constantly changing creative heads, with new directions and ideas for characterization attached, since their inception, and they've all been around for a very long time. This is why comics are kind of the only medium where you can, in fact, really pick and choose your canon, because the canon has changed so much depending on who is in charge at a giant company. Like, canonical eighties Batman characterization would be considered super OOC for someone writing canonical modern Batman, and vice versa. So talking about characterization is hard, especially with Jason when nobody has had any idea what to fucking do with him for decades at this point. But, when it comes to Red Hood Jason, there is something I consider gospel canon, which is the Under the Red Hood arc, since that is what nearly all subsequent canon imaginings of Jason take from. That is our gold standard here. And based on UTRH, yeah, Jason harming children is out of character and it is bad writing.

When Jason comes back, he has two very clear goals. Goal one: the Joker's gotta die, preferably Batman kills him so Jason gets concrete proof that he was loved and mourned (Jason is not mentally healthy so his thought process doesn't make sense just roll with it), but Jason is fine killing the man himself, so long as he dies. Goal two: essentially fulfill Batman's mission in a way where it actually accomplishes his goals. Jason outlines this pretty specifically in Batman #641, he tells Bruce "You. I'll be you. The you you're supposed to be." Jason's goal as the Red Hood is to make Gotham better (in his head), safer, and cleaner, but unlike Batman he is willing to take that goal as far as he can and will kill if necessary. What he wants is to just take Batman's mission to its logical extreme. Eradicate the various elements that have caused suffering in Gotham throughout the years, just with more permanence than Batman does, and less of a focus on rehabilitation, because you can't rehabilitate a dead person. And as part of this, Jason does not act unnecessarily. When he kills, it is people who (arguably) deserve it, and it is never innocents. It is always the criminal element, and people he believes are past the point of no return, as well as those who might be trying to stop him in that. His mission statement is literally "Death will come to those who deserve death, and death may come to those who stand in my way of doing what's right." and he means that. This is not a character you've created to then go out and harm children, because kids have not done anything to deserve it, and they are not the cause of the issues that he is trying to eliminate.

There's also the fact that Jason, even in his early Red Hood days where editorial just decided that he's a straight villain now, was never someone who went after kids, but in fact actively tried to help them. He makes it a point to tell his people that they do not sell drugs to kids and that if they do, he'll kill them (along with telling them not to get previously clean people hooked and only sell to repeats, which also paints him as someone who isn't just hurting others willy-nilly). The first person Jason ever kills, as seen in Red Hood: Lost Days, is a man who was involved in child trafficking, and he does it specifically because he wants to save those kids and future victims from him, and considers him scum of the Earth as a result (I think his name was Egan? Egon? idfk I don't reread Lost Days because I find their whole "look at fully adult Talia fucking the mentally ill sixteen year old under her care who is reliant on her for everything, how sexy" shtick abhorrent, and using Talia as their child rapist doubly so). So Jason, even at his most villainous, at his most "this is a bad dude" characterized, is someone who deliberately avoids harming innocents because it's not compatible with his mission or his personal code, and includes children very specifically in that.

It is also out of character and a bad writing choice because of Jason's own childhood. You might think a rebuttal to this is "Jason wants to kill/hurt criminals, what if kids are criminals" well guess what Jason was a kid criminal! It is actually illegal to steal parts off of people's cars, even if that person can afford it because he's Batman (to say nothing of the multiple very heavy handed hints dropped that Jason solicited as a prostitute during his time being homeless, which is also a crime, it is illegal and he would have been picked up by the cops for it if found out). Unless you want to argue that Jason thinks he himself should have been taken out with a Glock at the big of age of eleven for doing illegal things in the name of survival, you can't say that Jason's philosophy would allow him to harm children and remain in character or decently written, you just can't. Like, your other gospel for Jason's characterization should be his original Robin run from the 80s, since that's literally what introduced him to this world in the first fucking place, so duh. And there's nothing in that characterization to suggest that he would harm anyone unnecessarily, especially kids. Like, Robin Jason spares Two-Face's life, after having found out days ago that Two-Face murdered Willis Todd in cold blood; he tries to save Sheila Haywood's life after she straight up helps murder him; this isn't someone whose characterization allows for him to hurt children later in life. Especially once you factor in his struggles as a child, and how that most likely just breeds empathy for other children, especially children who are having a hard time.

Now, I can guess that some of this comes up in discussions of one of my most loathed subjects, the stupid bad stupid dumb stupid attack on fucking Titan's Tower. Now, even beyond the fact that the stupid attack on stupid Titan's Tower is less about Jason wanting to beat up children and more his specific issues with Bruce and the concept of Robin that can't be transplanted to other people, the attack itself is bad writing. It is out of character for Jason. It does not jive at all with his stated characterization and motivations that he himself outlined (also the only other closest thing to that is his fight with Mia Dearden, where he's pretty tame in just warning her to leave vigilantism and straight up beats her twice before letting her go relatively unscathed of his own free will, just saying) and it makes no sense. His issues are that the Joker is alive and Batman didn't do anything about it. Why the fuck would he care about Tim? Tim means nothing to him, he never even met the little dude, he doesn't have an issue with him. He doesn't even have an issue with the idea of Robin being passed down because Jason literally said he was perfectly content to not be Robin and just be Jason, and his problems don't arise from Robin! The issues at the heart of Jason's conflict with Bruce hinge on the Bruce and Jason relationship of father and son, not Batman and Robin! And not fucking Tim! Tim means nothing, he is a nonentity. The only reason this fuckass plot exists is because DC didn't know what to do with Jason and threw shit at the wall to see what would stick, similar to what we saw with that dumb plot with Nightwing from this time that also has similar issues, in that why would Jason care enough to cause problems for Dick, he doesn't have an issue with Dick, he legit interacts with Dick in UTRH and he's fine! (a better writing decision would have been post-UTRH Jason immediately writing the entire Batfam off and treating them as hostiles whenever they wander into Crime Alley and them having to regain his trust back/him agreeing to let down more and more barriers as time goes on and they all reconnect, but I was like seven when all this was being written so DC didn't seek my input) The fucking dumb Titan's Tower thing that people are gonna use to prove that Jason hurting kids isn't bad writing isn't even about Jason, the only reason this shit gets trotted out again and again is because Tim Drake has a lot of fans who are absolutely convinced their poor uwu baby has suffered more than Jesus when the only person in the Batfam who's suffered less than him is, like, Alfred (although I can make the argument that Alfred has still suffered more by having had to put up with Bruce Wayne almost singlehandedly for most of his adult life). It exists in people's minds even tho it is objectively bad writing and out of character for one of the main players because fanon Tim has to be the most special boy ever (and also because these people wanna use it to make Tim interesting which is impossible because nothing can make Tim interesting).

Jason hurting children deliberately is, indeed, bad writing. It is, in fact, incredibly out of character. It does not compute to his explicit motivations and how he was characterized in the stories that have since been used as a jumping off point for his characterization ever since. And ultimately, the thing is this: if Red Hood Jason is just trying to do Batman's job better than Batman, who is he doing it for if not children? Who is he trying to clean up Gotham for, make Gotham a better place for, if not her children? And if that's the case, as it obviously is, why on Earth would him then harming her children be any kind of good character writing or coherent characterization?

TL;DR, yes it is.

#personal #answered #anonymous #jason todd #dc critical #i mean i guess? i don't know if this is being discussed due to something or if it's just fandom being annoying again #but wow this got long surprise surprise #to the shock of no one i have a lot of things to say about a character i feel a lot of emotions about #at least i got a place to talk about my irritation with titan's tower #you don't understand i filter it SO heavily on ao3 at all times no matter what tag i'm in as long as it involves jason #cuz i know i'm about to see the most irritating shit known to man #'i frew up' fandom tim is a goddamn menace just make an oc at this point or use the danny phantom boy it's just as canon #but yeah based on jason's canon information this is my take #i'm gonna go back to using dc twitter only for set leaks of superman legacy

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lazaruspiss · 1 year ago

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Ok I’m gonna shoot my question here while you are in a analysis red hood mode (??): what do you think about his mommy issues (and fandom’s making it a trope)?

ooooo oh ok ok. this ones touchy. while i dont think its that present in canon i do think its there and worth the however many fics there are about it. like obvi theres probably a lot of boring and/or bad takes about it but the concept itself isnt running contradictory to canon or anything. i reread aditf a bit for this and had some tangents ill put in another post, but back to mommy issues.

jason had very little parental presence in his life at all. dads in prison, moms sick, he has no one looking out for him. probably why he and bruce seem to have bonded fairly quickly and jason accepted him as a father figure faster than any of the others. jasons bar for what makes a decent parent was nonexistent bc hed never really had someone dedicated to taking care of him. (even damian was hesitant, bc bruce being his dad would create distance between him and dick bc dick would no longer be his mentor, and hed gotten a bit attached)

jason accepted bruce as a father, but still missed his parents. he loved and grieved for both of them and most likely missed the idea of having normal parents in general in addition to missing his parents themselves. his love for his mom is still there when he realizes shes his step-mom instead, but it's accompanied by the hope that he still has living family out there.

the fact that jason went on a mom hunt in the first place is already enough that im like, yeah, i see where the mommy issues talk comes from. but i think you can go a few different directions with it

so theres catherine todd, who we only really know as being sick and a substance user throughout jasons childhood up until her death. iirc she died while willis was either already dead or in prison and so theres a period of time where jason (10-12ish?) would be taking care of his mother alone. being your mother's caretaker when you're still in elementary school does not make for a normal relationship.

and sheila haywood was uh. an illegal surgeon of sorts who fled the country and started a new life. apparently had an existing connection to the joker when she lived in gotham. he knows who she is and he knows how to blackmail her. while sheila describes it to jason as an operation gone wrong, joker calls it an "illegal surgery that killed a teenage girl" and sheila didnt seem to dispute that. probably watered down a lot of details in her explanation to jason. (the combination of 'illegal' and 'teenage girl' feels like it could imply an abortion? but it's left vague) and THEN it turns out she was stealing money meant to be used to save starving refugees before the joker even showed up. she sure is something. she still tries to help jason after he helps her, but don't skip over the part where she helps him after he helps her. she is still a person, but she is a fundamentally selfish person in every way. her final words include her commenting on how jason was a good kid who loved his mother. ive seen people take her final moments as a show that she still loved him, but i don't see it. one of those "a person doing a fraction of a good thing doesnt absolve them of everything else" kind of deals.

in both cases jasons mother(s) were relying on him. he never had an opportunity to be cared for and treated like a child. i don't think jason would have specific "mommy issues" about either of them, i think that he'd have some heavy feelings about the concept of a mother itself. what's it like to have a mom? does he still have a chance to be cared for and nurtured? his childhood was over before he had even met batman. becoming robin and being murdered is just tripling the issues he would've already had about his childhood regardless.

this is starting to veer off topic but

yes im finding a way to make this about Brothers in Blood. bite me. but even the first time i read this something that really stuck out is how jasons imaginary version of dick refers to him as a kid. dick doesnt really... do that. he did back when jason really was a kid, but this page says a lot about jasons self perception. he still wants to be taken care of, even if its not specifically "mommy issues" he definitely yearns for a chance to be treated like a kid again, after having rarely gotten that kind of care when he was a kid. (this page in particular is the first page of nightwing (1996) #121, which is one that i have a physical copy of <3)

#asks #anon #jason todd

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ectonurites · 2 years ago

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I'm writing a character analysis fic about how Cass and Jason are narrative foils in terms of their attitudes towards killing, and I was wondering if you could recall the best issues that explain why Jason kills and why Cass doesn't? I have a vague recollection of their motives, but my memory is not great and I want to go kind of in depth.

Ohhhh okay okay, so, the general answers I think lay in Under the Red Hood + Red Hood: Lost Days for Jason, and Batgirl Vol. 1 for Cass. But those are hefty stories to throw at you rather than specific issues, so to narrow down a little bit more with a few issues that stand out in my memory:

JASON — Batman #647 with Alfred’s narration combined with the Bruce & Jason sort of team-up I think says something interesting about how Jason sees Batman as too predictable due to his no-kill rule, thinking he’s unable to properly protect Gotham because criminals know he won’t kill them... which can serve as some explanation for why he will. Then Batman #649-650 with the big final confrontation btwn Jason, Bruce & Joker where he monologues at Bruce gives more insight on Jason’s POV as well. Also another separate Jason story tht goes into it a bit—his belief that doing bad things like killing is justified if for a greater good—is his talk with Mia in Green Arrow Vol. 3 #72

CASS — Batgirl Vol. 1 #19 exemplifies her belief that anyone is capable of change and deserves to live and have that chance, the ‘Nobody dies tonight’ quote comes from this issue. Another issue that goes into that belief about change (though less connected to 'killing vs not killing' in the specific scenario, i think is still relevant in terms of how deeply she believes it) is #36. Then #23 & 25 I think dig into the guilt aspect well, how her first kill when she was a child who didn’t know what she was doing has given her such an intense understanding of how precious life is (as well as a deathwish for herself because of what she had done, until facing Shiva helps her to get over that part).

#i dont want this sitting in my inbox/you to be waiting for an answer too long but i also just dont have the brain #capacity to dig through ALL of BOTH their content at the moment so this is just. the stuff that stands out off the top of my head #anyone else can feel free to add on #sam explains

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penny-anna · 3 years ago

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for anyone interested, full explanation on the batfam vampire AU:

- this is completely separate to any existing DC vampire lore!!

- so in this AU, vampires do need human blood to live; however, in recent times a synthetic blood substitute has been invented

- as well as being Food synthetic blood also suppresses some (tho not all) vampire traits; most notably vampires who drink synthetic blood a) can go out in daylight and b) age more or less normally

- downside is, it also largely suppresses additional vampire abilities such as strength & enhanced senses

- Bruce's parents were killed by vampires & he was turned as a child

- when Bruce was turned synthetic blood was available but wasn't as good at suppressing vampire traits. he did age throughout his adolescence but didn't get his ability to go out in daylight back till he was almost an adult

- his vampirism is not publically known!! it was all hushed up.

- in order to be Batman Bruce drinks (ethically sourced) human blood so he can access his full vampire abilities

- the Robins drink human blood sometimes in Moderation; they like being able to use their vampire abilities but Bruce is reluctant to give them too much as it slows their aging & plus also there's a concern that if u drink too much you might end up going off the deep end if u know what I mean

- anyway. Bruce is Around (for whatever reason) when Dick's parents were killed by vampires. events of this post ensue.

- due to never having known his own sire Bruce doesn't realise what the vampire/sire relationship is like till he turns Dick & in particular that they are now in effect Psychically Bound together until one of them dies

- vampires & their sires can't read each other's minds but they can sense each other's locations over a distance and feel each other's emotions (not all the time - they had to consciously tap into the connection). this goes both ways.

- sires also have the ability to take command of vampires that they turned; essentially they can issue verbal commands & the person they turned will be compelled to obey. this ability does not go both ways.

- Bruce Does Not Abuse This (obviously) but the fact that he theoretically could use this ability combined w the psychic connection puts more & more of a strain on his and Dick's relationship as Dick gets older

- it's kind of cool being psychically linked up to your dad when you're a kid!! less so when you're rapidly becoming a grown up and have your own shit going on.

- doesn't help that Dick didn't choose to become a vampire & while he's glad he didn't die there's an element of resentment there

- so anyway Dick eventually quits to become Nightwing

- Jason is Dying when Bruce first meets him (of what? idk. I'm imagining like, something that would have been treatable if he'd got medical attention but he wasn't able to do so & now he's gonna die. oops.)

- however he's lucid enough to (unlike Dick) consent to being turned into a vampire

- Jason is pretty hype about being a vampire!! he's having a blast w his new vampire powers and being Robin & while he didn't fully understand Everything that would happen he did agree to being turned so y'know

- however Jason dies of something Vampire Specific (maybe the Joker exposes him to sunlight? idk) which breeds a certain amount of resentment after he comes back

(how does he come back? idk i'm not going to write this so i don't need to work out the details lol)

- Jason's death & resurrection damages his and Bruce's connection (tho it doesn't break altogether) which means Bruce can no longer control him even if he wants to; he does try it when Jason is newly back from the dead and up to no good, Jason can tell he's trying it, it does not go down well

- Red Hood!Jason absolutely feeds on people he feels deserves to die, he's living his best life, Bruce hates it

- Tim (as he canon) Insinuates his way into Bruce's life some time after Jason dies and becomes Robin; he asks to be turned but Bruce (who is very much of a mindset that vampirism is only for people w 0 alternatives) refuses

- it's generally known that Batman is a vampire & obvious to everyone that he drinks human blood and so understandably not everyone in the vampire hunting community is cool w an obviously blood-drinking vampire roaming the night beating people up

- he's occasionally attacked by vampire hunters & usually is able to deal w it; however, the first time it happens while he's out w Tim, Tim (who is assumed to also be a vampire) is fatally injured

- so Tim is also turned

- unlike Dick & Jason, Tim's spent enough time around other vampires to fully understand what he's getting into so he's very chill about the whole psychic connection bound together forever deal

- Bruce, meanwhile, carries a lot of guilt over what happened to Tim bcos unlike Dick & Jason Tim was only dying bcos of him

- Tim is by far the chillest of the batkids about being a vampire tho, like he's been preparing for it for months and/or years, he's asked Dick & Bruce so many questions, he knows more or less exactly what's going to happen

- Cass is already a vampire when she first meets the rest of the batfamily; she was turned by someone else when she was very young (I'm NOT fluent enough in her backstory to say who would have turned her). possibly raised at least in part to identify & take down other vampires?

- tension to be had from the fact that she's bound to someone outside her new family.

- Steph also asks to be turned when she becomes Robin and is also refused; she remains human for uhh the longest

- however, she is eventually turned (consensually) by Cass when she becomes Batgirl so she's getting used to the whole being a vampire thing & also is bonded to Cass (who is no longer around), she's mostly cool w being a vampire but like it's A Lot

(is Babs a vampire? idk you decide)

- Damian is a half vampire!! (a dhampir lol). dhampirs are rare as it's very difficult for a vampire & a human to conceive a child (depending on your preferred Damian origin story maybe the Al Ghuls had to go to some lengths to make it happen or maybe they just got lucky idk)

- Damian has all the rad vampire superpowers but is able to go out in daylight; he also doesn't have to drink blood (tho if he does, he becomes vulnerable to daylight)

- Damian's been raised to, simultaneously value his vampire heritage but also kind of view vampires as monsters? he's got some hang ups

- Damian who's still getting over his vampire related hang ups + newly turned vampire Steph duo

Damian: vampirism is a curse and I don't understand why you would choose it

Steph: consider tho *crawls up the wall like a spider*

Damian: hm. you make a valid point.

- Steph & Cass are vampire bonded together. gay gay lesbian gay.

- Duke is the only non-vampire in the family!! no interest in being turned. his powers kind of make him a natural enemy of vampires but he's buds w a bunch of vampires anyway bcos fuck you.

- Duke is the only one who can consistently go out in sunlight. Duke helllp i left my jacket in the sun room can you go grab it. Duuuuke help me. ):

- anyway. Bruce is a big drama queen about being a vampire & what a terrible Curse vampirism is. for the most part his many vampire children are just Vibing.

#batfam #batfamily

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jostenneil · 3 years ago

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Do you mind elaborating on what you dislike about Winick’s writing?

it’s a couple of different things, but where i think it stems from is the idea that some jason fans have of jason being turned into “the angry robin” as only a recent development, and that winick returning to the writer’s mantle would fix that issue, as if he didn’t ascribe to this version of jason in his own writing of under the red hood, and that influenced so many of the versions of jason thereafter. as much as i hate starlin and what he ultimately did to jason, i think there’s a distinction that has to be made about his writing. he didn’t think jason was a generally angry kid. in quite a few of his stories, jason is bright, nervous, insightful. he’s still very much a good kid. the central aspect to his writing of jason and how that eventually leads to a death in the family is his depiction of jason as reckless due to emotional involvement or naïveté, sometimes both (as can be seen in the case with sheila). and while that’s a bit annoying given the earlier issues collins wrote, where jason was capable of exercising restraint and patience, the part about him getting too emotionally involved at times is at least not all that far fetched given the issue where he learns two-face is responsible for killing his father. but that’s about as far as the portrayal goes, and even in aditf (which is immediately subsequent to the garzonas issues, the content of which obv deeply upset jason and that he also got emotionally involved in), the concern from bruce is that jason hasn’t had enough time to properly cope with his parents’ death, and that if bruce can help him then maybe he’ll be able to patrol normally. there’s never the idea that jason’s some angry kid with a mean streak, and while the thing about his “mean streak” is only a single throwaway line in under the red hood as a whole, i think it exposes the problem with winick and jason writers in general. they don’t want to acknowledge the fact that his issues pre-death were specific. he wasn’t hurling himself like an infuriated ballistic at every criminal. truly there were only two cases where that happened, and one involved his father’s murderer, obv a sore point, and the other a woman who hanged herself bc she couldn’t escape her rapist. (ig if you wanted you could also count him going overkill on the drug bust at the start of aditf, but that was the kind of temporary mental place starlin was leading jason to with the garzonas issues, rather than something that necessarily spoke on his character as a whole.) ascribing all of that to him having a mean streak and not just. . . the fact that he was a deeply empathetic person who was upset by these things that happened to good people is kind of bizarre to me. and yeah, i know winick writes jason killing people who harm children, but it’s the way he goes about writing jason’s attitude that bothers me bc it feels purely driven by rage as if jason’s feelings about certain criminals didn’t stem from a deep compassion for and personal connection to their victims. when you center so much of jason’s post-resurrection motivation around the joker and little else, you forget what drove jason to get emotionally involved with cases to begin with. more than self righteousness about what criminals deserved, it was compassion, and i think winick really missed the mark on that.

on another end, i also think ignoring the case with his father specifically has spelled a kind of disaster for his character. jason’s father worked as a lackey for one of gotham’s biggest crime bosses, and jason initially thought he’d been abandoned by willis until he learned two-face killed him. i think it’s crazy that his philosophy regarding who deserves to die and who doesn’t wouldn’t account for that deeply personal experience, esp since he loved his father. that’s not to say that every person he’s ever killed is suddenly in possession of a conscience and that every head, lackey, etc. was as sincere of intentions as his father was, but i think what winick’s vision lacks is the idea of jason having to contend with difficult questions. what is the definition of “bad”? how do you get to decide who lives or dies? what marks the point of no return for a criminal? it’s that lack of specificity that to me has harmed the character as a whole, not bc i think drug lords and rapists don’t deserve the absolute worst, but bc i think jason should come across situations where he’s forced to ask himself what gives him the right to play god, esp since a part of his philosophy is that he’s unperturbed with killing people who get in the way of him exacting what he calls justice (also this is not to say i agree with how urban legends handled this; while i enjoyed the premise i think the execution was lacking). people like to say there is a lot of nuance to jason’s introduction as the red hood but i don’t really think there is. the film version of the comic marginally improves on things but it’s still far from a genuine analysis on crime or the question of what criminals deserve what punishment, and how one would actually decide on that or on their right to decide to begin with

ultimately, i just don’t see how people believe subsequent writers are what drove jason to end up as the resident batfam psycho by the end of preboot, or as the angry robin in more recent years, when i very much think it’s a direct consequence of winick’s writing. so long as people hold that writing on a pedestal devoid of any criticism whatsoever, jason’s never going to improve as a character, and i’m still going to be of the belief he hasn’t been written well since before he died

#jason todd #dc #mine:media analysis #anti judd winick #i hope this is coherent sorry there’s probably so much more i could say but it’s already so long

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mas-que-loucura-menina · 3 years ago

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Now that DC brought Bernard back (well not now, now but this was half made in my drafts so ignore me) I would like to present you my TEDtalk about a couple of forgotten amazing characters DC should bring back to add to Jason's storyline (instead of that flight attendant in rhato that I don't even remember her name because she was boring as fuck and is just there to be Jason's sexualized love interest).

Using "Batman: a death in the family" because in my view, this is one of the most important issues that makes mostly of what Jason Todd is today.

1- Mrs. Walker; A sweet Old lady who used to be Catherine Todd's Friend. She was responsible for saving some of Jason family’s possessions after Catherine died and Jason ran away, hoping she would see the boy again to give it back to him someday.

For those who didn't read this comic quick explanation: these possessions were responsible for Jason's discover that Catherine wasn't his birth mother.

So, Mrs. Walker plays an important role in this issue and shows care for Jason, viewing that she kept his belongs for years waiting to see him again. Also she already knew him before for being Catherine's, her friend, son. great Potential grandaunt figure, genuinely cares for Jason and seems to be really kind. Good one to bring back to today's Jason comic run, knowing that bringing back women to be his Lover doesn't add nothing to the story BUT NOW WOMEN MOTHERLY FIGURES these are great. Jason already have like 5 moms figure but he can aways use some more :)

2- Sharmin Rosen; one of the candidates for Jason's birth mother.

Quick explanation again; in the comic Jason finds an old notebook of his father which had her name in it, knowing that his mother's name started with an "S" he thought she might be his biological mom.

Okay but this woman, omg, she seems to be so cool.

She is simply a spy, a fucking SPY. Batman and Robin meet her when she's in the middle of a mission and Jason nearly sacrifices for her

Did I mention she is a badass?

Anyway, in the end Robin asks her if she ever had a baby in Gotham, she says no and that's the end of their interaction.

Did you get the part where she's a secret agent? Which means this woman is smart alright? Must as well be a hell of a detective.

Now, I would literally die to see these two brought back in a Red Hood comic where years later Sharmin gets curious about Robin's question for some reason and decides to dig into it, after all this boy nearly sacrificed himself to save her life just so he could ask that specific question. Being the badass she is, Sharmin quickly discovers Robin died in Ethiopia with Sheila Haywood the same day they met, both killed by the Joker.

She quickly links Sheila with Gotham then Sheila with Willis Todd, Willis Todd to Jason Todd which suspiciously died the same day that Robin Died. Sharmin decides that she will take revenge for Jason's death going after Joker in a secret mission to kill him. If her name was in Willis' notebook it means that she met him at some point in her life.

So she goes to Willis' old apartment to get information, but when she gets there she ends meeting mrs. Walker. Sharmin tells her what happened to Jason and Mrs. Walker decides to go after Joker with her because just like Sharmin, she also deeply cares about Jason.

They start to work on a plan to kill the Joker but at the same time Jason is also working on a plan to stop Joker for doing something evil or whatever. Then the two badass women thirsty for blood meet with red hood in the same place.

Red Hood: what the fuck are an old lady and a... I guess a not-that-old lady doing in Joker's hideout??

Sharmin: Step aside, this is a secret mission and you will end up spoiling it Red Hood

Mrs. Walker: Who are you calling old, young man?

Red Hood: OMG okay look, I'm trying to stop this mad clown from burning the entire city down okay? So if you could just go away and do your secret mission or whatever somewhere else me along with ALL GOTHAM would thank you enormously.

Sharmin: Well, me and the “Old lady” here are going to kill that crazy clown so whatever you were going to do, we can do it quicker and efficiently.

RH: ...what do you mean “kill”?

Mrs. Walker: (cocks her gun) she means putting a bullet in the clown's head.

RH: ...Two random ladies are more willing to kill the fucking clown than my own dad who watched me and my mother die because of him in a FUCKING WAREHOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF AFRICA?!? (Keeps shouting)

Sharmim: Wait a minute- JASON TODD?!

Mrs. Walker: Who now?

Jason: (stops shouting suddenly)... what did you just call me?

Sharmin: (starts smiling towards Jason) So, answering your question or two now I can say I've been in Gotham city, but I still haven't ever had a baby there, Robin.

Jason: (realizes) No fucking way...

Mrs. Walker: Oh for the love of God I should never have given you that box.

Jason: AND MRS. WALKER?!?

They start a mission to kill the joker together but Batman Finds out about it and tries to stop the two women from killing the joker but he gets beaten by an old lady with a purse

Mrs. Walker: (beating batman with her knit purse) HOW DARE YOU LET THAT PSYCHOPATH KILL MY SWEET BOY

Batman: Ma'am if you could just listen- MA'AM I can't cross that line!

Mrs. Walker: That's what my husband said in the war and you know what happened? (Gets closer to Bruce's ear) He crossed the fucking line and beat the shit out of a bunch of nazis while his friends died in the other side of the line.

Jason from distance: Holly shit.

Anyways, this is just an idea that I found fun and genuinely think DC should go on and explore. Bruce seeing people trying to give his son the only thing he ever asked for but he himself can’t give it, the potential emotional scenes are just too good. Plus, everyone knows that Jason and badass Mother figures are the best combination ever.

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rmbunnie · 8 months ago

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I don't really have anything to add to this because it doesn't seem to me like we're having the same discussion past the first two sentences of the first paragraph under the cut, (you certainly aren't responding to anything i've said from what i can tell!) but this reblog seems like a good place to clarify that I do think Jason has morals and stances, i just don't think a Moral Code is the motivating force behind all of his actions, specifically killing! It would have been really super ultra convenient if I said that in the first sentence or something lmao.

I'm not going in depth in this (^) post about what I think his morals are because that wasn't the topic I was writing about, but in response to this, I don't agree that his actions are about taking his issues out on everyone else, I don't even think they're about taking his issues out on Bruce! I think that in utrh he's motivated by a combination of love that he's unwilling to acknowledge that kinda manifests as this obsessive desire to affirm his existence to Bruce, and grief/rage/all those loss feelings. I guess this could count as "issues" but I don't think he wanted to take them out on Bruce, I think he was going to Bruce, deep down, to plead for a sense of security and affirmation that his life wasn't void and his death had consequences, tangibly represented by the death of the Joker, and he's being a dick, but he's not showing up just to be a dick, or "lash out" he can be an asshole without that intricacy if that was the goal. Of course, you say any opinion he has about Batman's actions holds zero merit, so that probably would read as "lashing out" to you! And I certainly don't think he was thinking intentionally about anyone else until post utrh at all, I think his takeover was a tactic to get Bruce's attention more that a belief system. (It's almost like i said that too!) He's harmed people through actions driven by his emotions, obviously, but I don't think that's necessarily lashing out for the sake of making people hurt, rather the collateral of his pursuit of that final gun-to-jokers-head convo with Bruce. I don't think a character with no strong beliefs is inherently worthless in a narrative, but I also don't think that description applies to Jason! I don't really think anything you said was applicable honestly, to Red Hood or to my post, and you didn't give anything (e.g. events from the comic, issues, literally anything) that would help me understand your view better. From my pov, you're kind of just saying things completely unrelated to my post (e.g. "none of his opinions on batman hold merit) without any reasoning or visible consideration behind them! I'd really like to keep my reblogs of this discussion down to 1, just for blog spam purposes, so if you really want to discuss further feel free to dm, but it sounds like you just don't like the character irrelevant to anything mentioned in my post, and nothing about any of your claims makes me believe they're rooted in any comic content in particular, or gives me hope for a meaningful discussion, so feel VERY free to not respond, and maybe evaluate if you're saying anything worthwhile next time :)

Red Hood Characterization

This is really long so I'm putting a cut here, I've been thinking about Jason Todd's character motivations and the question of whether or not his actions are based in a Moral Code (I don't think so, not to say he's without any morality) and I talk about that in more depth here.

I saw someone say on here that Titans: Beast World: Gotham City was some of the best Jason Todd internal writing they'd seen in a while, and I've been a Red Hood fan for 8 years or so now? pretty much since I read comics for the first time, so I went and checked out and I thought it was good! The way the person I saw talking about it as if it was rare and unusual made me wonder though, because as well-written as it was, there wasn't really anything in it that went against the way I conceptualize Jason?

This kinda plays into a larger question I've been thinking about for a while with Jason though, which is that, do people think that the killing is part of a fundamental worldview that motivates him a la batman, and that worldview is the reason he does the things he does?? Because 8 years ago i was a middle schooler engaging with fiction on the level that a middle schooler does, so I simply did not put much thought into it beyond "poor guy :(" but ever since I actually started trying to understand consistent characterization, I don't really see Jason as someone who's motivated by a moral code in his actions the way batman or superman is!

tbh my personal read is that he's a very socially-motivated guy, his actions from resurrection to his Joker-Batman ultimatum in utrh always seemed to me like every choice made leading up to his identity reveal was either a. to give him the leverage and skill necessary to pull off his identity reveal successfully, or b. to twist the knife that little bit more when he does let Bruce find out who he is. Like iirc there's a Judd Winick tweet like "yeah tldr he chose Red Hood as his identity because it's the lowest blow he could think of." And I think that's awesome, I think character motivations rooted so deeply in character's relationships and emotions are really fun to read! I also think it's where the stagnation/flatness of his character comes from in certain comics, because if his main motivation is one event in one relationship that passes, and he is not particularly attached to anything in his life or the world by the time that comes to pass, it's a little harder to come up with a direction to go with the character after that, because there isn't much of a direction that aligns with something the character would reasonably want? But I do think solving this by saying "all of the morally-off emotionally driven cruelty he did on his way to spite Batman was actually reflective of his own version of Batman's stance that's exactly the same except he thinks it's GOOD to kill people" isn't ideal. To be fully honest, it seems to me like he never particularly cared one way or the other about killing people to "clean Gotham of crime," he just did everything he could to get the power necessary to pull off his personal plans, and took out any particularly heinous people he encountered along the way (like in Lost Days.) Not to say I think the fact he killed people keeps him up at night anymore than everything else in his life events, I just never really thought he was out there wholeheartedly kneecapping some dude selling weed or random guy robbing a tv store for justice.

Looping wayyy back to my question, Is this (^) contradictory to the way he's written/the overall average perception of the character? Because like I enjoyed his writing in Beast World i have zero issue with anything there, I just didn't believe it would be a hot take, like yeah, that is Jason. It's been a while since I've read utrh and lost days, but I don't think my takeaway directly contradicts either of those too bad iirc. Idk all this to say I think Jason killing and being alright with killing is an obvious and objective fact, but i guess i've always seen it as more of a practical tactic than a moral belief, and I think taking the actions made during the lowest points of a character's life where he is obsessively focused on this ONEEEE thing and trying to apply it as a Motivating Stance to everything he's done after that, doesn't really follow logically for me.

#reply #edit to add a cut lmao #i think any emotionally driven conflict can be framed as “lashing out” if you don't see the emotions the conflict stems from as valid #and clearly you don't #but i also think you saw an opportunity for discussion supported by canon and took it as unrelated rant hours for naruto stan blogs #so i'm not taking your reply as a good faith response #make your own post next time please! because when i said i was open to discussion i meant good discussion lmao

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messeduphood · 2 years ago

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Headcanon

Mental issues

Correctly diagnosing Jason has been difficult, even for the most skilled mental professional. On the one hand, for Jason lowering his defenses and letting people know how he feels is challenging because trust issues or fear send people away. On the other, Bruce requested him to study those methods since he was a kid to know quite well what kind of criminals he was facing. Bruce taught him first to use his mind rather than his fists.

It's tough to point out one specific conduct pattern because Jason's conduct varies from writer to writer. There are some common elements, such as psychotic episodes, that have taken place when he endured stressful situations or when he was too angry. Let's take, for example, this clip from Batman: a death in the family.

Until he realized the man he was talking to, Jason was having a normal conversation with the man. It was not only until he realized that man was the Joker that he snapped and killed him in cold blood. In that clip, we learned through flashbacks that his Red Hood persona committed all those crimes against the mafia to subdue it.

Another example of how Jason loses it when things get personal can be found in this clip. The movie is Batman: the return of the Red Hood. Jason was more than willing to take the risk Bruce killed him to save the Joker. Jason knew that it could happen or all of them could die in the explosion he had prepared.

His sociopathic and cold ways of killing criminals come from the years he spent training in the league of Shadows. There, Bruce's methods were not the norm. To be effective and brutal was the norm, and he was rewarded for developing those skills.

I believe Jason's mental issues are two: the first one is a given: it's PTSD. If he is stressed and deprived of his medication, his intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, distress, and pain come back. The second one, it's anxiety. He becomes restless and irritable when people try to confront him with the past or challenge him. The wisest thing to do is to proceed with caution whenever he is like that.

To wrap this up, Jason is not the kind of person who breaks down quickly. It takes specific stimuli, a lack of a support network, and medication to produce a psychotic episode in him. He can be a functional and loving person with those he feel comfortable, but his dark side is always latent.

#Headcanon #jesus! this took me a lot!

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scorpionyx9621 · 3 years ago

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Do you think Jason Todd fandom is kinda toxic? Because it seems like NO MATTER what DC do, there'll always be complains. Forget the bad adaptation like Titans. Even Judd Winick cannot escape the criticism with how he potrayed Robin!Jason. They just never satisfied.

SORRY, IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO RESPOND TO THIS. I just moved from Washington D.C. to Seattle, which, for my non-American friends, that's 4442km away. And I DROVE THERE ALL BY MYSELF. And now I'm trying to find new work in a new city and trying to stay mentally healthy and positive. Life is exciting but hard and scary.

*sighs*

As someone who was a fandom elder with V*ltr*n. I've seen some of the worst when it comes to fandom behavior. I'm talking people baking food with shaving razors and trying to give them to the showrunners. I'm talking leaking major plot details and refusing to take it down unless they make their ship canon (I am looking at you, Kl*nce stans) For the most part, DC Comics has had a decades-long reputation of treating their fans like trash and not caring what they think so from what I've seen, we all just grumble and complain in our corners of the internet about how we don't like how X comic portrays Jason Todd.

The challenge with Jason Todd is that he's your clinical anti-hero, the batfamily's Draco in Leather Pants, he's a jerkass woobie, and on top of all of that, he's a Tumblr sexyman. It's a perfect storm for a very fun but frustrating character to be a fan of. It doesn't help that every writer decides to re-invent the wheel every time Jason comes up so his canon lore is confusing at best and inconsistent as a standard.

I guess starting with a general brief on who Jason is and what is uniform about him with every instance he's appeared in comics/media.

Grew up in a poor family in Gotham with a dad who was a petty-mid-level criminal, and a mother who dies of a drug overdose.

Survives on the street on his own by committing petty crimes and potentially even engaging in sexual acts to keep himself alive.

Is cornered by Batman and taken in after Dick Grayson quits/is fired

Becomes the second Robin, but is known for being the harsher, more brutal Robin.

Is killed by Joker after being tortured, but somehow comes back to life and regains senses through the Lazarus Pit

Resolves himself to be better than Batman by basically being Batman but kills people.

Where there has been a lot of conflict in the fandom is the fact that Jason Todd is not a character that is written consistently. DC Comics loves to go with the narrative that Jason was "bad from the start" and was the "bad robin" when, yes, he has trouble controlling his anger, but he also still is just as invested in seeing the best of Gotham City and trying to be a positive change for the world as any other DC Comics hero.

Where I get frustrated with the fandom is its ability to knit-pick every detail of a comic they don't like while completely disregarding everything that makes the comics great and worth it to read. My example being Urban Legends. To which most people had pretty mixed reactions to. I was critical of the comic at first but as it went along I ended up really liking it. I have a feeling DC Comics went to Chip Zdarsky and told him he had 6 issues to bring Jason back into the Bat Family, and honestly he didn't do a bad job. Did it feel rushed? Absolutely. I wish there was more development of Jason and Bruce's characters and their dynamic as a whole. However, where I see a lot of people being angry and upset with Urban Legends is that they feel Zdarsky needlessly wrote Jason as an incompetent fool who needs Bruce to save him.

Whether or not that was the intention of Zdarsky is up to debate. However, and this may be controversial, but I don't think he wrote Jason Todd out of character at all. For as fearsome, intimidating, and awesome as Red Hood is. Jason is a character who is absolutely driven by his emotions. Why do you think he donned the role of Red Hood? As a response to his anger towards The Joker for killing him, and towards Bruce for not taking action against The Joker and for seemingly replacing him so quickly after he died. Jason didn't care about being the murderous Robin Hood or for being the bloody hammer of justice against N*zi's and P*d*ph*les. He only cared originally about making The Joker and Bruce pay. It wasn't until he trained under the best assassins in the world and realized most of them were horrific criminals who trafficked children and were p*dos that Talia began to realize that the teachers that she sent Jason to train under started dying horrific and painful deaths.

The entire story of the Cheer story in Batman Urban Legends was started because it finally forced some consequences upon Jason. Tyler, aka Blue Hood's father was a drug dealer who gave his supply to his wife and kids. And when Tyler's father admitted he gave the drugs to Tyler, it immediately made him fall within the self-imposed philosophical kill-list of Jason Todd. And Jason, well, he proceeds to kill Tyler's father. When this happens, Jason is in shock. Tyler's dad fit the bill to easily and justifiably be killed by Jason. We've never seen Jason having to deal with the consequences of being a murderous vigilante on a micro-level. When Jason realizes what he's done in that he's murdered Tyler's dad, he's shocked. He tells Babs the truth. He does a rational thing because he's in shock. He doesn't know what to do, he never has had to face the consequences of his actions as Red Hood and now the gravity of befriending a child as a vigilante hero who kills people just set in when he killed the father of the same child he was just introduced to.

(Oh here's a little aside because it had to be said, Jason would not have been a good father or a good mentor to Tyler and absolutely should not have been his new Robin. Jason is a man who is in his early 20's (not saying men in their early 20's can't be good fathers at all) who is a brutal serial killer using the guise of a vigilante anti-hero to let him escape most of the law. the complications of having the man who murdered your father adopt you and make you his sidekick are way too numerous for me to explain in a long-winded already heavy Tumblr essay post. There's a reason why we don't advocate for a story where Joe Chill adopted Bruce Wayne or one where Tony Zucco took in Dick Grayson.)

The next biggest argument is that they feel that Jason is giving up his guns as a means to just be invited back into the Bat-Family. To which I will tell anyone who has that argument to go actually read Urban Legends. Already have and still have that argument? Please re-read it. Don't want to? That's okay, I will paste the images from the comic where Jason specifically says that he doesn't want to give up his weapons for Bruce and his real reasoning down below since the comic isn't exactly readily accessible.

Jason gave up the guns because he felt the gravity of what he had done and knows how it'll effect Tyler. Thankfully his mom is alive and in recovery. But Tyler doesn't have a father anymore. And Jason killed Tyler's father. It may have been in accordance to Jason's philosophy, but it was a case where it blurred the lines. Jason Todd isn't a black and white character, just very dark gray. He doesn't kill aimlessly like the Joker. If you are on Jason's list you probably have done something pretty horrific, and also just in general, being in his way or being a threat to him. Mind you, in early days of Red Hood and the Outlaws (Image below) Jason almost killed 10 innocent civilians in a town in Colorado all because they saw him kill a monster. That being said, Jason isn't aimless in his kills.

(Also can we just take a moment to appreciate Kenneth Rocafort's art? DC Comics said we need to rehabilitate Jason Todd's image and Kenneth Rocafort said hold my beer: It's so SO GOOD)

That being said, the key emphasis in the story of Cheer asides from trying to introduce Jason Todd back into the Bat Family and give an actual purpose for him being there, other than him just kind of being there ala Bowser every time he shows up for Go Kart racing, Tennis, Golf, Soccer, and the Olympic games when Mario invites him, is that Jason and Bruce ultimately both want the same thing. Jason wants to be welcomed back into the family and to be loved and appreciated. Bruce want's Jason back as his son and wants to love and protect Jason. Both of these visions are shown in the last chapter of Cheer while under the effect of the Cheer Gas. It's ultimately this love and appreciation they both have for each other that helps them overcome their challenge and win.

Jason Todd is a character who, just like Bruce, has been through so much pain and so much hate in his life. The two are meant to parallel each other. While Bruce chose to see the best in everyone, giving every rogue in his gallery the option to be helped and give them a second chance, hence why he never kills, Jason has a similar view on wanting to protect the public, but he understands that some crimes are so heinous they cannot be forgiven, or that some habitual criminals are due to stay habitual criminals, and need to be put down. But at the end of the day, the two of them both try to protect people in their own ways.

I am aware that through the writings of various DC Comics authors such as Scott Lobdell and Judd Winick, the two have had a very tumultuous relationship. And rightfully so, I am by no means saying that Scott Lobdell writing an arc where Bruce literally beats Jason to within an inch of his life in Red Hood and the Outlaws, nor Judd Winick's interpretation of Under the Red Hood where Bruce throws the Batarang at Jason's neck, slicing his throat and leaving him ambiguously for dead at the end of the comic is appropriate considering DC Comics seems to be trying everything they can to integrate Jason back into the family. That being said, a lot of these writings have shaped the narrative of Jason and Bruce's relationship and have an integral effect on the way the fandom views the two. It doesn't help that Zdarsky acknowledged Lobdell's life-beating of Jason by Bruce at the very end of Cheer by having Bruce give Jason his old outfit back as a means of mending the fence between the two of them. That does complicate a lot of things in terms of how they are viewed by the fandom and helps to cause an even greater divide between the two.

Regardless, I want to emphasize the fact that Jason Todd is a part of the family of his own accord. Yes, he's quite snarky and deadpan in almost every encounter. However, Jason is absolutely a part of the family and has been for a while of his own will. There's a great moment in Detective Comics that emphasizes this. Jason cares about his family because it is his found family. Yes, they may be warry about him and use him as a punching back and/or heckle him. At the end of the day, we're debating the family dynamics of a fictional playboy billionaire vigilante whose kleptomania took the form of adopting troubled children and turning them into vigilante heroes. Jason Todd wants a family that will love and support him. This is a key definition of his character at its most basic. This was proven during the events of Cheer and is being reenforced by DC Comics every time they get the opportunity to do so.

Now, none of this is to say that I hate Judd Winick. I do not, I don't like the fact that in all of his writings of Jason, he just writes him as a dangerous psychopath, and Winick himself admits to seeing Jason as nothing much more than a psychopath. Yet Winick is the one who the majority of the fandom clings to as the one true good writer of Jason Todd because 'Jason was competent, dangerous, smart' Listen, friends, Jason is all of that and I will never deny it. However, what I love about Jason isn't that he's dangerously smart of that writers either write him as angsty angry Tumblr sexyman bait or that they write him as an infantile man child with a gun. There's a large contention of this fandom that has an obsession with Jason Todd being this vigilante gunman who is hot and sexy and while I definitely get the appeal. It is very creepy and downright disturbing that all of you hyperfixate on his use of guns and ability to be a murderer. It is creepy and I'm not necessarily here for it.

What I love about Jason Todd is that despite all of the pain, all of the heartache, all of the betrayal, and bullying, and death, and anguish. Jason Todd is one of the most loving and supportive characters in all of DC Comics. Jason has been through so much in his life, but he still chooses to love. He still chooses to see the bright side in people. Yes, he takes a utilitarian approach and chooses to kill certain villains, but at the end of the day he wants to see a better world, and he wants to be loved. It takes so much courage and so much heart to learn to love again after one has been abused or traumatized. I would not blame Jason at all if he said fuck it and just went full solo and vigilante evil. He has every right to, but he still chooses to be with the Bat Family of his own accord. That's something that I see a lot of in myself. I have been through a lot of trauma and yet I try to be a better person myself in any way that I can. It is extremely admirable of Jason to allow love back into his heart when he really doesn't need to. He kills and he protects because he has this love of society. It may have been shaped by anger and hatred, but Jason has found his place amongst people who love him and value him. I think Ducra, from Red Hood and the Outlaws put it best in the image given below.

To end this tangent, I love Jason Todd and all of his sexy dangerousness, but it's far more than that. As much as Jason may be dangerous and snarky, he loves his family without a shadow of a doubt. I look up to Jason Todd because despite all of his pain and all of his trauma, he still choses to love. Jason Todd is a character who is someone I love because despite all of his flaws and having a very toxic fandom, he still serves as a character filled with so much heart and so much passion. I wish more writers would understand that. But for now I will live with what I have. Even though the fandom may be vocal about it's hatred for his characterization, I choose to love Jason regardless because he is a character who chooses love and acceptance regardless of his pain. Jason Todd is by no means a good person in any sense of the word. He has easily killed upwards of 100 people by now. He is a character who is flawed and complex but ultimately is one who powers forwards and finds love and heart in a place from so much pain and anguish. That is what I love about Jason Todd. After all, to quote a famous undead robot superhero, "What is grief, if not love persevering?" Jason Todd chooses to love despite all of the trauma and pain and grief. Yes, he is hardened in his exterior, but inside there is a man with a lot of love to give and someone who deserves the world in my eyes.

#Long post GOD #Jason Todd #Red Hood #Bat Family #Batman #red hood and the outlaws #RHATO #RH:O #Batman Urban Legends #Red Hood Lost Days #TW Voltron #TW Death #tw murder #TW Klance #Gotta love how i am pouring my heart out onto jason AND calling out the Voltron fandom #Regardless love Jason Todd people

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stxleslyds · 3 years ago

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Red Hood and the lost art of telling Joker to shup up.

Okay, I know that I talked about Jason and Joker in a recent post but this is something different, I promise.

I really want to talk about how different Jason has been written since UtRH when it comes to him confronting Joker. Jason hasn’t been put in that position a lot but the times that he has, he lets Joker talk for far too long and actually pays attention to whatever he has to say.

The Jason vs Joker thing is basic in on itself and letting Joker talk isn’t exactly the problem here, the real problem is Jason letting Joker’s thoughts shape his future thoughts and decisions, I do understand that that’s exactly what writers want though, they want to build the problematic of: “Jason is just like Joker and the fact that he uses the name Red Hood only proves that Joker made who Jason is now”.

But the thing is that THAT problem is overdone at this point and the only time it worked was the first time it was brought up and it worked because Jason shut the Joker down.

Let’s see all the times (that I remember) the Joker and Jason have had a little chat and/or the times Joker’s words actually influence Jason’s thinking and decision making.

Under the Red Hood – Batman (1940) #649

This is the first real confrontation we get to see between Jason and Joker after Jason’s death and it is beautiful. It's absolutely amazingly written, Joker goes on and on forever about how he killed Jason about how Jason is just as bad as him but that he is also just like Batman because he hasn’t killed him yet.

“You let me live after everything I did, you couldn’t pop my balloon. You just couldn’t. The apple doesn’t tumble too far from the paterfamilias. You are just like daddy-kins”

Jason lets him talk, yes. But he absolutely destroys Joker with what he tells him next.

“You couldn’t be more wrong about me. If right were a country on earth you’d be circling on the edge of the milky way. Yeah, I let you live but like always, every damned minute of your addled, posturing, psychopathic life, you think this is about you. You’re a worm. I’ve pitched you on a hook and dropped you into the brine. And I will beat the hell out of you Pagliacci because it was too much fun not to.”

“Listen to me Joker, I’m not you. I´m nothing like you. I know what I do and I know why I do it. You, you are, clinically speaking, a whack-job. But I know a secret, a good one.”

“You are not nearly as crazy as you would like us all to believe or even as crazy as you would like to believe. It just makes it easier to justify every sick monstrous thing you’ve ever done when you play the part of the mad clown. You are crazy, bubba, but you ain’t that crazy. Look at that. I wiped a smile off of Joker’s face. I have been waiting a long time for that.”

Everything about this is perfect, Jason gives Joker no room to mess with him. Whatever the Joker had planned on saying he had to eat because Jason wasn’t playing games and he was ready for any kind of lie the Joker had ready to tell. This is Jason Todd. He won’t let the Joker get under his skin because he knows the Joker and he, also, knows better.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011) #15

Here Jason comes across Joker during the “Death of the Family” event. In this issue the Joker has information about all of the members of the “Batfamily” and he uses that to mess around with each one of them, in Jason’s case he insinuates that he was present in very specific moments of his life when Jason’s father got shot, when his mother overdosed and when he was on his own before joining Batman.

Jason doesn’t quite believe that Joker was there but as the reader, we can see this sort of sense of doubt in Jason. He hesitates a few times before resolving that the Joker is playing with him.

But as far as this issue goes let’s just say that what the Joker says doesn’t get to Jason, this changes though in the issue that follows up this story.

Teen Titans (2011) #16

This is where that story continues and where Jason starts to buy the story that Joker is selling.

Joker convinces Jason that he has his father and Tim’s father and that the only way for Jason (or Tim) to save their dads is by killing the other (Jason or Tim). Tim doesn’t believe it but Jason is ready to shoot Tim almost immediately.

However, Jason changes his mind about killing Tim just as Tim comes up with a plan for them to not actually have to kill each other. Here is where Lobdell’s writing shows all of its flaws, Lobdell is so desperate to show that Jason and Tim are besties that he forgets that Jason had no reason to stop trying to kill Tim to save his shit father because it is later revealed that Jason truly believed that Joker had found his father and had him captive. It wasn’t until Tim explained his thought process as to why those men weren’t their dads that Jason just goes “you realize, of course, the only reason I didn’t kill you right off is that I knew your big brain will figure out some way out of this” HA, nice save Lobdell but I see right through your bullshit.

Jason bought what the Joker was selling and that is the beginning of Jason’s downgrade when it comes to not playing Joker’s games.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011) #17

Well, in this issue Lobdell goes back to Jason kinda not believing what Joker told him, and Jason asks Bruce of all people if he thinks the Joker truly “made him or not”. Bruce says that he doesn’t believe that and that he didn’t have anything to do with the man that Jason has become either. For some reason, Jason is actually happy with what Bruce said and for a couple of moments, Jason goes back to being sure that the Joker knows nothing and that he is his own man.

It doesn’t last long though. At the very end of the issue, the trap that Joker had set up in Jason’s helmet triggers and Jason gets his face fucked up with acid or something.

But that’s not all because a hologram of Joker has something to say: “you were supposed to be my masterpiece from start to finish. But you were too stubborn to stay dead. So here is what we are going to do… You’re so determined to be your own man? Fine, let’s start with a clean slate”.

Basically, the Joker insinuates once more that he had something to do with who Jason was supposed to become and that Jason isn’t truly “his own man”, This is all a setup for a very dense storyline that will be continued in this run later.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011) #18

In this issue, Jason is in a coma after he is dosed with that gas in the previous issue. The Joker isn’t really present in this issue but he does make an appearance as part of Jason’s “nightmare” while he is unconscious.

That’s not all though, Jason has an illusion of Ducra (someone that he appreciates a lot), telling him that “after you left the All-Castle after you went back to the world you continued to let your life be defined by the actions of that man. You became a killer, lashing out at people who may or may not have deserved it. Eventually, you will hurt all those you have cared for. In that way, how are you any different from the Joker?”.

In this statement, there is a lot of wrongs that can come from two places, either bad writing on Lobdell’s part or just Ducra telling lies as a plot point.

“Let your life be defined by the actions of that man” is a sentence that horribly simplifies Jason’s thinking during the events of UtRH, because while he did resent the Joker, his real problem was with Bruce who had not avenged his death by killing the Joker himself. Also, Jason was doing other things back then, like being a pain in the ass for Black Mask and disrupting the drug trade in Gotham as well as trying to control the drug dealing to children. So that little sentence is just a gross misinterpretation of the true events which means that Ducra was wrong, and “she” continues to be wrong when she says that there might be no difference between Jason and Joker.

Luckily Jason thinks the same because he tells “Ducra”: “…don’t you dare compare me to that monster Ducra. I am nothing like the Joker! Nothing!”

Once again please don’t be fooled by Jason’s thinking because in the next issue it turns around really fast and really bad.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011) #19

Just a heads up this issue has a change of writer, Lobdell isn’t writing this arc, the writer that gives us this hellish story arc is James Tynion IV.

All that talk about Jason not being affected or not believing what the Joker told him is yeeted out of the window and it’s not a fun ride.

In this issue, Roy and Kory find a Jason that doesn’t know who they are or who he, himself, is. This is because S’aru that little floaty little shit took his memories away after Jason asked him to do so, well Jason asked S’aru to erase every memory that darkness has touched (Joker) and he does that. But him doing that is apparently erasing everything which, holy shit, how messed up is that?

But let’s take a look at what Jason says before he gets his memories taken away: “Not only did the Joker almost take my face, but he tells me he might have manipulated my entire life from the beginning! Even the good is tainted by him now. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t have that kind of doubt. If you take it away, I can go on living. I can keep fighting”. So, yeah that was a pretty emo speech. But the thing here is that if Jason is asking this dude to erase every memory that has been tainted by the Joker and he erases all of them then we might be facing one of two situations, either Joker has been messing up with Jason’s life from the beginning or S’aru is just a little bitch.

We will later find out in #20 that S’aru and Ducra planned the whole thing, meaning that they took all of his memories for ulterior motives not because the Joker had actually tainted all of them.

For many issues Jason has no memories and now that I am revisiting these issues, I now remember the twisted and completely insane plot they came up with for the “League of Assassins” and Jason being the “Chosen One”, everything was happening in this run, my god, it's like they wanted Jason to be the center of every single trope in writing history.

It’s in issue #26 that Jason asks for his memories back but the Joker having tainted his memories or not isn’t important anymore to anyone, including the writer (because he is too focused on telling this messy story), Jason (because he has enough problems at the moment) and the reader (because this book makes zero sense and it changes the story and motivations every single issue).

But there is another truth to be revealed in the next issue.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011) #27

Jason has planned along Ducra and S’aru to give up all of his memories to be cleansed so he could defeat Ra’s Al Ghul. But (there is always a but) Ducra says this: “Your greatest enemy returned and nearly took your face away from you. And in the process, shook your sense of identity to the core” “The final battle here will take place in the Well of Sins, and with all the doubt and fear clouding your mind, it would eat you whole”.

So yeah, now we have confirmation from Ducra that Jason had indeed let what the Joker told him cloud his sense of self and made him doubt who he was and if he really was in control.

All that back and forth for these many issues just to say, yes, Jason let Joker’s words affect him.

So here it is, let Joker get in Jason’s head to build the plot of a story, fantastic, the story was a mess because it had so much information, the mischaracterizations of Roy and Kory were at their maximum potential, and in this particular story arc not only are the events of Red Hood: The Lost Days officially erased from Jason’s canon but something quite out there is added to Jason’s canon from before he was even Robin (that’s a whole different story that I won’t be talking about here).

What an insane ride this arc was. Definitely not the kind of story I enjoy in a Red Hood book but that’s just my preference.

*This whole arc was written by James Tynion IV.

Red Hood/Arsenal #11

Joker is dead during the events of this run but the person who has something to say to Jason about how the Joker made the person that he is now is Duela Dent (“Joker’s daughter”, she isn’t his daughter she just found Joker’s face somewhere and she puts it on and “becomes” crazy, she is an incredibly weird character).

She says this, “You’re a lot like dad in that way” to which Jason says “He is not my father. He’s not even your father” but Duela continues by saying. “You’re kidding yourself if you genuinely believe that. Yeah, he took your life but look what you got in its place, you ingrate. You got your freedom. You were reborn.”

Jason doesn’t fall for it or anything of the sort but once again writers are bringing up the Joker as the maker of the Red Hood and “suggesting” that what Jason has been doing and who he has become is all thanks to Joker. The idea of Jason having no free will is still present in this narrative, even when Jason doesn’t believe it.

Red Hood/Arsenal #12

I talked too soon because in this issue Jason is having some weird thoughts.

“Funny, isn’t it, so easy to call Duela “crazy” because she wears a dead man’s face. Because isn’t that what I’m doing? Before he was the Joker, he was the Red Hood. So maybe the line between men and the Joker’s daughter is a lot thinner than I’d like to admit.”

Here he is comparing himself to Duela and to the Joker to an extent, writers often bring up the fact that Jason uses the code name that his killer once had and they have people or Jason himself questioning why he uses that name.

Personally, I don’t think there is much to build from it (at least not from the perspective of Lost Days and UtRH), it was just a joke, a morbid one if you will. He wears the mantle of the person that destroys Gotham and fills its people with fear while he is trying to control the city’s drug trade and trying to keep the people safe in his own way. And the way he wanted to do it is almost the complete opposite of the way that Batman does things.

I just think that he is being ironic and acidic about the whole thing. He has obviously moved on from the fact that Joker killed him but he has issues with the fact that Batman has yet another child working with him while the Joker is still alive. And Jason really wanted to make Bruce suffer, so him taking the name and a similar appearance to how the joker used to look is also done to get a reaction from Bruce.

I really don’t think there is any sort of connection to make between Jason and Joker beyond that, much like there is no connection between the name Nightwing and the Court of Owls. Even though Lincoln March tried to convince Dick Grayson that he chose the name Nightwing because Owls fly at night and that meant that he was supposed to become a Talon and all that Dick still didn’t believe it because he knew why he chose that name and no one can twist his reason.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #10

Finally, I can stop re-reading New 52 books, I don’t enjoy it but I have to do it if I want to talk/complain about stuff.

This one is a little different because while Jason does talk with the Joker, the Joker isn’t really there he is just part of Jason’s imagination just like the Robin Jason that he is also seeing.

In this story, Jason is helping Artemis discover who she is but he gets captured in Qurac, yup that place, and worst of all from where he is being held, he can see the place where he died. All of that is helping Jason have some very vivid memories/illusions. He does actively hold a conversation with the imaginary Joker and Robin Jason though, and he is also having a lot of thoughts that let us know how the Joker affects Jason.

“This is why it was stupid of me to come back to Qurac. Even to help Artemis, even if I thought I could handle it. Physically, I am alone, but in my head? I’m drowning in memories of the worst day of what was my very short life. The day I was murdered.”

That’s what Jason is thinking but what I write next is what Jason’s saying as he talks to the imaginary Joker.

“Not interested in replaying this over again, like I have every night of my life since it happened Joker”

So, we are told that Jason thinks about that day very often, the Joker might not be involved much in Jason’s books but he definitely has a bigger role inside of Jason’s head. They chat for a bit up until Jason decides to “kill” the Joker, he knows, of course, that it is not real but it does give him satisfaction. (If only they would have let Jason actually kill the clown for real, or at the very least chase him just to show the reader that Jason does actually want to finish the job since the Bat won’t do it himself).

Having said all that, Joker’s imaginary death doesn’t last long because Jason is trapped in his mind and the Joker is basically functioning on a loop inside of it.

That is where the problem lies in this issue because Jason is letting us know that he is still heavily influenced by what happened that day and that he hasn’t been able to walk away from it. But once more that’s not the worst thing, because all of these thoughts have led Jason to think that he (in the present and as a fifteen-year-old) is the one to blame for having ended up dead. Yeah, it is messed up.

This is what Jason says to imaginary Robin Jason, “He is never going to die, Jason. Not here. Not in my mind, not if at some point I don’t stand up and walk away from my memories. From you.”

This is a major downgrade, from the Jason that we had in UtRH because that Jason had moved on from the fact that he had been killed what he was looking for was for Batman to avenge his death. He had other things in mind as well, like I said before in this post Jason had a lot of things going on, killing Joker wasn’t his only plan.

And this situation (written by Lobdell) is also very different from what was going on in New 52 where Jason being influenced by the Joker was used to build a plot. This is just a writer letting us know that this “new version” of Jason hasn’t worked out his problems when it comes to his death and his killer. That means that we are going backward.

After he realizes that he was unconscious all that time and that he was being tortured he does get his shit together in order to get out of captivity and go help Artemis.

The Joker and that whole thing that happened in his mind aren’t mentioned again, it was just for the reader to know that Rebirth Jason has unsolved issues with his death.

Batman: Three Jokers #1

Oh yes, here we are, we have arrived to that dreaded book, awful writing gorgeous art. In this book, the “Joker made Jason as he is now” trope is at its full potential; Johns drives this hellish truck of a book at full speed into our homes and then ends it by giving us one of the worst takes on Jason Todd’s characterization ever.

But first, let’s talk about the Joker and Jason interaction in the first issue. As Jason and Barbara are left alone with the Joker that they came across moments ago the Joker begins talking because that’s what he does.

He says this, “I’m the loop-de-loop, the hamster-wheel-of-doom. The cycle of pain each one of you is trapped in. Take “Red Hood” here, for example. Have you ever wondered why he uses my former moniker? Who in their right mind would take on the identity of their killer? Am I right?”

He is obviously being a little shit on purpose and is waiting to see if somebody will take the bait. Jason is the first to talk and he says this: “I took it because I’m owning what you did to me. You made me into this. I will be your destruction”.

Congratulations Jason, you took the bait, and now Barbara will fight with you over it.

Jason raises his gun to “break the cycle” and Barbara is like “please don’t do it” and boy is Joker having the time of his life! Both of these idiots are playing his game, Johns really did both Jason and Barbara dirty with this.

Here is where THE problem with letting the Joker talk is. This Joker got under Jason’s skin in seconds and Barbara did nothing while it happened.

This is what the Joker had to say. “Let’s look at the facts here bat-people. I bashed this boy’s skull in. I killed this Robin” to which Jason says “You didn’t kill me, you only made me stronger” which is weird because the Joker did kill him so I don’t know what kinda comeback that was supposed to be but Joker wasn’t done because he continues by saying “Yes, you crawled from the shallow grave I left you in. You lived on to fight another day. Hurrah! You survived because of your tenacity! Or maybe… maybe I beat you to a bloody mess… I took you right to the edge… because I wanted to leave you alive.”

Great that’s where the clown is going, just fantastic, more of the “I made you” but that’s not all because the Joker tells Jason that him having hurt Jason wasn’t because he didn’t like Jason, it was all about Batman, Jason doesn’t matter.

But that’s not the worse thing that was written in this awful book, Geoff Johns seems to have felt that the trauma that Jason went through in the original “Death in the Family” story wasn’t enough because he decided to add something new.

That’s why the Joker says this next, “Do you recall what you said to me while I was breaking your head in with that crowbar? As your blood streamed into your eyes and your skull cracked? Because I cherish those words. I’ll always cherish them. ‘Please stop! Please! If you let me live, I’ll do anything you say. I’ll be your Robin’” “And look at you now my little “Red Hood” shooting up people and making Batman’s life miserable! You are my Robin!”

What a nightmare Johns decided to put Jason and Jason Nation through huh? I hate this, this is the worst thing that has ever been written in a Jason Todd story (although I can say that about many things that were written in this three-issue book).

Jason kills the Joker after he says all that, Barbara does (for some reason) try to stop him from doing it but luckily, she can’t stop Jason.

But here is the thing, Jason killing the Joker doesn’t make me feel as satisfied as I would have liked, and it doesn’t feel that way because Jason let Joker talk for far too long and what Joker said ended up getting in Jason’s head and messing with him.

Batman: Three Jokers #2

Yeah, there is no rest for us, Jason Nation, in this issue Jason goes looking for another Joker to kill and he finds one but he gets captured. Johns really had to get Jason naked for Joker to torture him mentally and physically? Johns is, himself, a major red flag but that’s not what I am here to talk about.

In this issue the Joker that captures Jason has the same things to say as the other one, DC writers really have no imagination when it comes to building conflict between Joker and Jason, huh?

Anyway, Joker says this, “tell me something. Why would you put on that helmet and call yourself Red Hood after what we did?” Jason of course replies “Come on, is every one of you copycats gonna ask me the same thing? It’s a joke” the answer isn’t enough for Joker (the two of them that are here with Jason) so he continues talking. “A joke? We left you with brain damage and permanent nerve pain. Physical and emotional trauma so severe that the only relief you ever find is when you inflict pain on others. You and me, boy, we’re more alike than you’d care to admit. But you know that already. You nearly died and you blame the Batman. You hate him for it. Me too. You hate him most of all don’t you?”

Now, here is the thing, that whole thing is bullshit, none of it makes sense. From Jason having permanent nerve pain to Jason hating Batman the most, everything is a lie. And my confusion here is that I don’t know if I have to feel like Joker is doing it on purpose to be a little bitch or if Geoff Johns was on crack when he wrote this and he had actually never heard of Jason Todd in his life before.

The whole thing is a mess, it feels like he is writing Jason from an origin and story that we never read. I don’t know how to explain it, but the whole thing feels cheap, it’s a cheap trope and it’s a cheap take on who Jason Todd is, was, and will be.

The nightmare doesn’t end Jason Nation because these two Jokers have something else in mind, you see, if they said that they made the Red Hood when they killed Jason the first time, maybe if they kill him this time then he could possibly come back as the Joker. Yeah, this book did nothing for Jason.

Let’s make something clear, Jason does NOT hate Batman/Bruce for not being able to save him, he hates the fact that Batman/Bruce didn’t kill the Joker to avenge him. That simple thing doesn’t exist in Three Jokers and that’s why things like the ones that happen next are allowed to happen in this story.

Bruce and Barbara find Jason and when Bruce asks if he is okay Jason just goes berserk, he says: “Am I all right? What do you think Bruce?! You did this to me. You put me on this path. And I do hate you for it. For leaving me in the dirt. Replacing me one Robin after another without a thought.”

This, everybody is what you get when you mix bad writing with Jason being mentally manipulated by the Joker.

It's a shame that Jason is being treated this way at this point in time, in a book that came out in 2020 when Jason was able to shut the clown up with a knife and a couple of words back in 2005. What a downgrade.

At the end of this issue, Jason is safe and recovering but he still is in the same mindset, he says, “What the Joker said about how I’ve been on the path to being like them for years… they are not wrong. I don’t want to be like them though. I really don’t.”

It’s like a never-ending wheel of pain with this book. Jason is talking to Barbara when he says that and he is trying to look for comfort in her. And here is where the Jason/Barbara subplot begins and I only bring this up because something that happens in the next issue is based on the kiss that Barbara gave Jason but then was like “that doesn’t mean anything, I was just trying to comfort you”. Johns shouldn’t be allowed to write Barbara and Jason ever again.

Batman: Three Jokers #3

It’s in this issue that we find out the big subplot that Johns has prepared for Jason, are you ready for it? Yup, Jason should stop being the Red Hood because if he keeps it up, he will eventually become the Joker.

I know, I know! Jason would never stop being Red Hood, he is not on a path to become the Joker, that’s crazy! Jason’s Red Hood is a character on its own and he is amazing and just because he has different morals from Batman doesn’t mean that he is a bad guy! Right?...

“I’ll give up being Red Hood for us. I can be something else. Or I can be just Jason.”

To this day I cannot believe that those words supposedly were written by Jason Todd to Barbara Gordon after Barbara rejected him three times. The level of “what the fuck is this” is incredibly high with this one…

This whole book was a mess and I am so glad that it didn’t last longer.

Anyway, that’s it. In conclusion, Jason didn’t let the Joker get under his skin the first time they interacted after he came back from the dead but later when DC decided that UtRH was just too good of a book they came up with stories where Joker does get under Jason’s skin and Jason becomes convinced that he has no free will (or at the very least he doubts his free will) when it comes to him becoming his own man.

As I have said before, that for Jason Todd is a major downgrade. And it's one of the many things that hurts Jason’s characterization in current comics.

#jason todd #Jason Todd #red hood #Red Hood #red hood and the outlaws #red hood outlaw #three jokers #batman under the red hood #dc comics

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forestlingincorporated · 4 years ago

Text

Teen Titans #29

So, one of my favorite types of fics to read is Different First Meeting fics between Jason and Tim. I looooove reading Enemies To Caretaker, of which I fed handsomely on fairly recently. Big Brother Jason fics give me warm fuzzies, and Tim Drake needs a hug, and I feel like if these two actually got to know each other and worked past their preconceptions, they’d get along surprisingly well. And Still A Jason!Robin Fanboy Tim Drake is just a fun concept.

Also, it just FEELS right for the middle siblings to band together after Damian comes along, lets get those abandonment issues in the party.

So, for mysterious and very secret TimKon Week 2021 reasons, I was rereading some Teen Titans, and I stumbled over the Original Tim+Jason First Meeting, and I just sort of wanted to talk about some interesting things I found in there rereading it after several years.

First thing right off the bat, when reading fics, normally it’s either the Core Four at the tower that Jason puts to sleep, or it’s Tim alone for the night. In the comic, none of Tim’s close friends are even at the tower, Jason waits for Bart and Cassie to leave, and Conner actually hasn’t come around for an in-universe month, because this is after the Superboy’s Birthright arc where Lex mind controls Conner.

The people Jason knocks out were his own teammates when he was a Titan. He specifically says he never got to work with Beast Boy or Cyborg directly, so he doesn’t feel bad electrocuting them, but he feels bad putting Raven under much more gently because she used to worry for him.

Tim has just gotten off the phone with Bruce when Jason shows up. It seems like Bruce might’ve been picking Tim up, but something’s come up with Martian Manhunter going missing, so Tim tells him he’ll catch a ride with Cyborg.

This is actually really interesting to me, because it’s a small moment of Bruce letting Tim down. It’s a conversation he’s probably had with his biological father many times when Jack’s canceled on him.

Gonna acknowledge this abomination real quick. This is So Stupid, and I’m glad as a fandom we just all agreed Jason didn’t do this. It makes me ask so many questions. Where did he get that oversized Robin costume? Why’d he tear off his perfectly good clothes? Why did he do this? Why the yellow tights? WHY?

A lot of things are actually happening here that are actually Really Interesting if you just look past the stupid fucking outfit. Because this comic actually flew really close to greatness, they just ended up dropping the ball by not continuing to do more with it.

First off, Jason doesn’t beat around the bush. He’s immediately like “yeah, yeah, yeah, Red Hood, whatever, I’m Jason Todd, bitch! Fight me.”

Secondly, Jason’s done his homework. He knows A LOT about Tim. He knows his name, he knows he has a dad, he knows he went to prep school, and he knows the story of how Tim became Robin. How he GOT that last bit of information, I’d honestly like to know. But even HAVING the information isn’t enough; he’s still letting his preconceived ideas get in the way. The surface level information about Tim’s life only served to fuel his jealousy and anger (thanks, Lazerus Pitt!). He’s so focused on Tim’s privilege that he’s looked past evidence of hardship; if he’s done this much research on Tim, he’s no doubt seen records of multiple boarding schools, lengthy travel records, news reports, a death certificate.... He can’t even bring himself to BELIEVE parts of Tim’s story that aren’t lining up with his world view, like HOW he became Robin.

Jason has convinced himself that what he’s discovered about Tim and the period of time when Jason was dead - the fact that Bruce was spiraling after his death, that his family mourned him, that Tim had to step up to the plate at a weird suicide prevention buddy system - is all a lie. Despite the fact that he’s beating Tim’s ass, he speaks to him with the assumption that Tim’s a child who’s been manipulated and lied to.

Meanwhile, it must be SO PAINFUL for Tim to hear Jason say these things: I bet he said the same thing to you he said to me, didn’t he? That you have the talent to make a difference in Gotham. That he needed someone he could trust in his war on crime. That you were one of a kind. The light in his darkness.

Bruce never said any of that to Tim. Bruce rejected Tim, he didn’t want Tim, and begrudgingly accepted Tim.

Going back to Jason waiting for Tim’s other young teen friends to leave the tower before going in, only drugging his own former teammates, is much of his anger seems directed at THEM, not just Bruce. To Jason, it looks like they didn’t mourn him either, he has no statue. I find it interesting that he smashes Donna Troy’s statue, who died after him, and I believe she came back before he did.

Unless he was keeping track of the news from the League of Assassins, to Jason, Donna never died.

And most importantly? Tim shuts Jason down. Tim “Bitch, Please” Drake out here like: you’re a fucking idiot, he loved you to death, he barely let me audition for the role.

Tim shows some deep resentment towards Jason in this scene. I mean... earned, Jason literally came into his house and starting hitting him, but Tim’s relationship towards the Idea Of Jason has gone through a few changes. At first Jason was ROBIN! THE BOY WONDER! And if maybe Tim thought Bruce wasn’t AS happy with Jason as he was with Dick, there was still SOME hero worship early on. But it only takes Bruce and Alfred and Dick using Jason’s death as a cautionary tale a few times to get Tim to see Jason AS a cautionary tale - the kind of Robin NOT to be. But the more Tim craved Bruce’s paternal attention and approval, and the more Bruce withheld it or made Tim work for it, knowing that Bruce did that, in part, because of his love and grief for his dead son (Tim having an actual living breathing father plays a part, too), and those feelings towards Jason have started to fester.

Jason can’t let it go, though, he thinks the concept of Robin was a mistake and had always been a mistake, and if he can hurt Tim, so can Scarecrow, Penguin, The Joker.

This is a good time to bring up that one thing I think Jason probably doesn’t know is Tim is injured. It is a little over a month since since Conner shattered Tim’s right arm. Tim is still healing from a comminuted fracture in his forearm. And looking at this picture that is - ah, yes, that is the injured arm Jason is swinging Tim by. Tim is probably healed by now, the cast IS off and he’s a child, but bones don’t fully return to full strength for 3-6 months.

Jason is conflicted. This is clearly, in part, a fucked up way of “protecting” what he sees as a manipulated child, to convince him to leave Bruce. But there’s also clearly some deep, deep jealousy thrown into the mix to complicate matters and cloud his judgement. Ultimately, Jason isn’t there to kill Tim. Tim would be dead if he was. He’s there to “beat some sense into him,” and he ultimately fails, and fails badly.

Tim is found by the older Titans, awake by now, though it seems Jason knocked him out to, uh, fuck with the memorial chamber, and Tim... does not beat around the bush. No secret identities here just “yeah, Jason Todd beat the shit out of me.”

And their reactions are HILARIOUS.

One more little sidebar, in the comic, Jason gets in with a D.N.A. check that never removed him from its permissions. Usually in fic this is a unique pass code. I’m not sure which version I like better, honestly. There’s something about Jason physically inputting a code that accepts him even though he’s supposedly dead that I really like, and just feels better than a dna scan. A dna scan sounds SAFER, sure, but there’s something about the Titans leaving in an honest SECURITY RISK out of sentiment that I like.

Lastly, I really like how it ends. Jason honestly thinks Tim IS a good Robin, and it seems like Jason’s done some research on the core four, mentioning Tim’s “real friends” again while the “camera” is on Conner and Cassie, suggesting that Jason KNOWS about them and possibly that targeting the tower while they were gone maybe wasn’t an accident or out of convenience, but fully intentional. And again, Jason’s real problem is highlighted: he feels alone, forgotten, unmemorable, no family, no friends.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

#Jason Todd #Tim Drake #Teen Titans #Teen Titans (2003-2011)

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nightwingmyboi · 5 years ago

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Hello! I was just wondering if you had knew the proper order to read Dick as Bats but with Damian as his robin? Thanks!

Sure! I couldn’t tell if you were asking for all the comics that have Dick as Batman or comics specifically where Dick and Damian are both present, so I just did a list for both. The ones in bold have both Dick and Damian present. This list is in my best attempt at an in-universe chronological order...it was hard but I tried (cries). Here we go:

BATMAN DICK GRAYSON COMIC LIST

Nightwing (1996) #138: Dick and Damian first meet. This is part two of seven in “The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul” arc. You can read the whole thing for context, but this one is the only one with significant interaction between Dick and Damian.

Nightwing (1996) #152-153: Dick tries to reconcile with the fact that Bruce is gone, and that he will have to continue his legacy. These comics have Dick going head to head with Ra’s al Ghul, and also show him moving back to Gotham.

Battle for the Cowl #1-3: Gotham City is in trouble, and Dick is forced to take on the mantle of Batman.

Batman (1940) #687-688: A lot of this is about Dick learning to be Batman, but you also see a lot of him talking about how he is planning to approach Damian. You also see some of the beginning of Dick training Damian as well. Technically an epilogue to Battle for the Cowl.

Batman (1940) #689-692: Dick continues to adjust to his role as Batman. Two-Face manages to sneak into the Batcave, and tests Dick’s conviction.

Batman and Robin (2009) #1-3: Dick and Damian’s first time working together as Batman and Robin.

Batman (1940) #693-696: While Batman takes to the streets, Damian is mostly delegated to training, in order to improve his detective work. Unfortunately, Damian doesn’t take the work seriously, leaving Dick vulnerable to Black Mask’s and Penguin’s plots…

Batman (1940) #697-699: Batman finishes dealing with Black Mask, and goes on to face the Riddler.

Batman: Streets of Gotham #1-16: A collection of stories showing how Robin and Batman are adjusting to their new roles; the duo doesn’t have a lot of trust yet. Interestingly, these comics show more of how Hush was handled. They are also where Damian’s friend Colin is introduced for the first time.

Batman and Robin (2009) #4-6: Batman and Robin versus a (somewhat out of character) Red Hood.

Batman and Robin (2009) #7-9: Dick tries to resurrect Batman. Warning: this arc is extremely out of character for Dick and I hate everything about it. But this isn’t a comic rec list so I’ll include it, ugh. Here’s where you’d read this monstrosity. If you want to skip it, here’s all you’d need to know: 1) Damian went to his mother to heal his spine after Red Hood shot him, and 2) Dick and Damian now have reason to believe Bruce is alive. Bam, now you don’t even have to read it.

Batman and Robin (2009) #10-12: Damian and Dick uncover clues that reveal that Bruce is alive. Meanwhile, Talia attempts to kill Dick...using her own son to do it.

Batman (1940) #700: A special event that has sections where Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, and a future Damian Wayne are Batman. A weird comic overall, but the parts with Damian and Dick are really pretty good.

Batman (1940) #703: Dick and Damian have developed a solid partnership, though Damian is continuing to learn more about being Robin and about his father. The comic acts as a prelude to Bruce Wayne: The Road Home.

Bruce Wayne: The Road Home: Bruce evaluates how things have been going in his absence, and gives his thoughts on the new dynamic duo.

Batman and Robin (2009) #13-16: Dick and Damian struggle to deal with Professor Pyg, Joker, and Dr. Hurt. Bruce returns!

Batman (1940) #704-712: Batman leaves Gotham to Dick while he puts Batman Incorporated into place. Damian, Tim, Azrael, and Selina all make appearances in this stretch of comics.

Batman and Robin (2009) #17-22: Dick and Damian work together as Batman and Robin to stop Una Nemo, and then White Knight in the following arc.

Batman and Robin (2009) #23-25: Dick and Damian team up with Jason to save his former sidekick, Scarlet. (Jason’s still acting a bit more extreme than you’d typically expect.)

Batman: Black Mirror: This is a collection of Detective Comics #871-881. I’d say these are my favorite Dick!Batman stories ever. All the cases are very good (really chilling), and the characterizations are top notch stuff. Lots of Gordon, Barbara, and some Tim also.

Batman (1940) #713: Damian tells the story of Batman and Robin. Very heartwarming.

Batman: Gates of Gotham #1-5: A good story, it’s interesting to see how Dick interacts with his siblings (ie Cass, Tim, and Damian) as Batman.

There’s definitely a bit of hopping back and forth required if you’re going to read it this way lmao. Also, here are some more comics with Dick as Batman that I was too lazy to try to put into the timeline here:

Superman/Batman #76: Superman’s reaction to Dick taking up the Batman mantle following Bruce’s death. Happens towards the beginning of Dick’s time as Batman.

Blackest Night: Batman #1-3: Dick, Tim, and Damian deal with an army of Black Lanterns, composed of once-dead friends and enemies. Bruce’s body is stolen, and Dick and Tim have to face their parents’ reanimated corpses.

Red Robin (2009): Mostly focused on Tim Drake. Dick and Damian appear in minor cameos throughout as well though. It’s interesting to look at Dick and Damian as they are in issue #1, with Damian being really rude and not listening to Dick at all, and then jumping to issue #12 and seeing just how much Damian now follows Dick’s lead and has changed while Tim was away. Idk, it’s just kind of cool. Issues #13-14 also have Tim working with the new dynamic duo as well.

Batgirl (2009): This one is mostly focused on Stephanie Brown taking up the Batgirl mantle in the wake of Bruce’s death. Dick and Damian first meet Stephanie in issue #5...and they get off to a very rough start with her lmao. The team features heavily in #6-7 also.

Titans (2008): This series starts off with Dick as Nightwing, but then he leaves the team to become Batman at the end of #10. He appears as Batman in: #15 with Garth, #21 with Starfire (really thought this one was interesting), #23 with Wally and Donna, and #28-30 with Slade.

Justice League of America (2006) #41-60: Dick’s time on the Justice League with Donna. Likely takes place towards the middle and end of Dick’s time as Batman.

Hope this is helpful to you!

#dick grayson #DC comics #comic recs #nightwing #damian wayne #robin #batman #batman and robin #Dick!Batman #dick grayson as batman #justice league #teen titans

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