Just Imagining Telemachus Growing Up Only Remembering His Father As An Idea Of A Man Who Is Fighting

under the hood is not a conflict formed out of violent miscommunication; it’s a tragedy born out of irreconcilable differences between father and son, catalysed by the most traumatic event conceivable.

whilst, yes, batman initially believes jason was fighting him because he failed to save him then later on believes that jason is asking him to kill joker in that moment instead of making him watch the joker to be killed, the resolved miscommunication fixes nothing. you can even say it gets worse because now it’s not something that can be understood as an unavoidable hurt of the past or an easier justification of his moral line, it’s the one thing that is somewhat reasonable to ask but that batman is unable to provide- killing the joker himself or allowing jason to take the joker’s life without trying to prevent it.

jason knowing that batman attempted to kill the joker in his grief or that nightwing did succeed temporarily changes nothing because nothing changed. the joker is not dead and the fact remains that if batman and nightwing wanted him truly dead, he would be and the deaths of so many would have been prevented.

jason knows he was loved, in fact he actively mocks it because that love was not enough to save him or avenge him like he points out the same for nightwing when bludhaven explodes. but he doesn’t need just love, he needs to be prioritised by his father and batman can never let go of his morals to do so. in batman #425, batman implies that the death of so many as a result of garzonas’ fathers vengeance is jason’s fault, showing that it’s only a natural consequence for a father to avenge his son, with the only one at fault for the blood feud being the son’s murderer. jason has every right to have expected batman to kill based off this and batman just can’t do it. therefore batman hides behind his mission to rationalise his guilt to his son, causing jason to replicate his language of vigilantism and costumed conflict, using his own goal to appeal to him.

both jason and bruce are simultaneously correct on their moral stances on murder (not taking into consideration the extremes and perhaps diversion from the core of their moral philosophies), it’s been a subject debated and questioned for an inconceivably long period of human history and will continue to be done be done because there is no definitive ‘right’ in ethics. they’re both highly intelligent, motivated, and thoughtful characters who definitely considered all possibilities and landed on their moral code.

moreover, even if one of them was more ‘correct’ than the other and should move towards the other moral view, they can’t; both have made their stances on the issue as a foundational to their lives. batman can’t let go of his belief in hope and the sanctity of human life and jason can’t let go of needing vengeance to be able to continue on in his second chance at life and the question of how many more lives is he willing to risk for sustaining an individuals right to life.

also, on a meta level, their conflict is that of conventions of the superhero genre combatting criticism of it. batman does as any hero is expected to and treats jason as the antagonist he is with his murder spree whilst also responding to the final trolley dilemma by trying to find a ‘third option’ of keeping both jason and the joker alive. but jason mocks and criticises batman’s approach to vigilantism and the given tropes he embodies and we are somewhat encouraged to root for him in part of his calling out of batman’s extremes such as when he cries out for the death of captain nazi. jason pushes batman into a moral corner and he is killed by him because of it, shutting down jason’s genre awareness and serving as a final, damning critique of batman. both batman and jason todd’s defiance can not co exist because to do so would erase the valid criticism jason makes without meriting it or would cause batman to betray his own respectable mythos.

it’s a tragedy of father and son torn apart by their conflicting and extreme opposing moral principles that cannot be altered without work being put in that dc is unwilling to do. they both need to fight because they love each other and feel the need to bring the other to their side, but in their futile efforts “everybody still loses.”

there’s a certain number of “bad writers” after which you just have to accept that yeahh that character is just like that now, it doesn’t mean you can’t disregard recent works but it’s canon that sucks, not a certain work or two

having anti punitive justice morals sucks because you want to say "man that guy sucks he should get hit with hammers until he dies" but you also want to make it clear you don't think anyone should be put in charge of the 'hit people with hammers until they die" machine.

“not all men” you’re right, Horatio would never

I have used dog metaphors to describe Jason in his relationships with others on multiple occasions but Alfred straight up telling Bruce that maybe he needs to take his new puppy back to the shelter is not something even I could’ve come up with

being doomed by the narrative is cool and all but i like when a character is doomed just by being a fucking idiot. sorry that happened to you but it is entirely your own fault and you could have just chosen to not do all that

ophelia represents who hamlet truly is whereas laertes represents who he desperately aspires to be.

at the beginning of the play, laertes is able to return to normal life after the funeral/wedding with the approval of both a loving father and claudius, an obvious contrast to the mourning, trapped, and isolated hamlet. ophelia is then shown to be similarly trapped but due to patriarchal forces, with hamlet contributing to her conflict of family, freedom, and love.

when it comes to love caused madness and duty driven vengeance as responses to grief, hamlet chooses the former whilst desperately searching the will to commit the latter. and ophelia and laertes act as personifications of this conflict with the way they naturally embody these ideas respectively. madness is therefore the feminine weakness and vengeance the masculine triumph, right? but no, things only go downhill once hamlet’s desires for revenge cause him to become impulsive in the killing of polonius, and the play’s end can be seen as laertes’ fatal error in letting his rage cloud his judgement on claudius’ scheming. because at the end of the day, whilst ophelia may die before laertes, they all succumb to their ailments of grief.

hamlet was always doomed, not because he was foolish, but because he was trapped between two false representations of mourning, the madness of remembering and the indiscriminately destructive force of revenge. and thus he infects ophelia, laertes, and, in a very shakespearean manner, makes the whole of denmark “rotten”

making it so that tim is in jason’s shadow in any major way is a disservice to both of their characters