#when i finish my jason + dick brothers fic ohohohoho.... then people will see my vision

[mysterycitrus]

Jason is my blorbo, my favorite, wretched, little guy and I love him so much. And I love all your posts about him! SO tired of people watering down his character, especially at the expense of other characters. Namely Dick and Tim. I know you're probably tired of talking about J so no hard feelings if you ignore this but I'd love to hear your thoughts and Dick and Jason's relationship. Past, present and where you'd like to see it go in the future. If anywhere. (Also your art is so, so good!! I especially love how you do faces and your coloring)

i actually really enjoy unpacking their relationship. it makes me think about that quote from diary of a wimpy kid - "you're my brother, but you'll never be my friend." idk how they should be written in the future because i think jason needs to be removed from gotham until he grows his personality back, but here's my thoughts on their brains -

from jason's end, there's so much resentment. a large part of his post-resurrection motivations come from the idea that bruce has dishonoured his memory and failed to grieve him, because bruce won't let him or anyone else kill the joker and therefore bruce doesn't love him. bruce rejects his manifesto for fixing gotham, bruce rejects his violence, bruce rejects his politics. would bruce have rejected dick if dick had done this? in jason's mind - no. dick grayson has shackled himself to bruce and is drowning with him. jason does not see that he has also chained himself to bruce and thrown away the key.

it's also worth mentioning that in outsiders 2003 and batman and robin 2009 (when written by winick), jason still fundamentally respects dick's abilities and experience. he think he's weak because he tries to suppress his anger, but i don't think jason would carry that same heavy, debilitating misery from seeing tim or cass or damian - people he was denied knowing by dying, and thus "replaced" by. jason, in some capacity, values dick as an ally. he trusts that dick, for all his flaws, is not a vengeful person (and i'll get to that).

there's a degree of what if there too - both dick and jason lived through a very specific period of bruce's life, which is the period before jason was killed. no one else (aside from babs and alfred) knows what that was like. no one else understands bruce, in that way. they have seen him before that grief in a way no one else who followed can. they're both poor kids brought into wealth. dick transcended into a legacy, and was then discarded. jason was, unconsciously, a tangible replacement for dick (and for robin), but died before bruce had the chance to leave him behind.

by comparison, we see dick reach out to jason, consistently. i'd say that unlike bruce, dick is a pragmatist. he frequently works with murderers. he ran the outsiders. he has, and will continue to, make calls that will questionably result in someone's death. to be clear, that is not the same thing as being a murderer - i think the guilt of that comes very close to killing him - but while he's an inherently optimistic person, i'd say he has realistic expectations for people's behaviour. it's what makes him so efficient as a tactician.

they're also very similar - they respond differently to anger, but they are both explosive. dick doesn't seek retribution on his own behalf, but he will lose control for the people he loves (which includes jason!). going to bat (haha) for jason, and jason then hurting the people he protects (tim, damian, the titans, etc), that's a line jason's crossed. dick won't ever stop swinging out to grab him, because he'll never let anyone fall, but that does not mean he'll be kind when they reach the ground