I Know I Take Jason Too Seriously But There Is Just Something About Like. Being The Ultimate Image Of

happy 46 years since the release of Unknown Pleasures!!

Comic characters are both so entertaining and so frustrating to analyse because as someone who usually likes to have all my bases covered before I type something out on the Internet it's like:

Batman is misogynistic.*

*Note 1: I am referring to the late 90s to 2000s version of Batman primarily his treatment of Helena Bertinelli and Stephanie Brown as these are the two women I've read most of however he also treats women terribly on a consistent basis no matter which era I'm reading**.

*Note 2: I am aware that he was written by many different writers over decades and it's hard to pin down the real batman however even his creators wrote him as misogynistic due to how acceptable that misogyny was in USA culture at the time he was created.

**I'm also aware that modern batman tends to no longer be written so plainly misogynistic however I find that instead the misogyny has been transferred over to the narrative, what with the erasure and flattening of some female characters and the flanderising of others all attempting to paper over his past treatment of them so that they can pretend he always treated women normally like he does nowadays, which often downplays their history and what they went through because of him

*Note 3: If batman is your favourite character of all time and the version that lives in your head is actually a champion of women's rights then this is not a personal attack on you and your version of him. This is just me analysing the comics I've read

*Note 4: "But Batman's a hero it doesn't make sense for him to be sexist." Yeah in a perfect world DCs flagship hero would not be a child abuser with a history of bigotry unfortunately Batman is a product of his writers and his company and DC has been pretty shit at this stuff since the beginning. I don't think ignoring and denying it helps either it just minimises what the victims actually go through in canon. They write him badly a lot. It's a problem.

consistently characterised jason todd you will forever exist only in my heart

"I asked Grok" "I asked ChatGPT" I asked the Oracle and it told me you're going to kill your father and marry your mom

so the diomedes server told me to post this... im not sorry

the minimal amount of context below the cut

courtesy of @ithacantrickster and @jewishdainix

oh and this is in context of Jorge mentioning Diomedes in his potential Trojan War musical themes

This is your canon reminder for the day that Dick is a nerdy li’l Shakespeare buff. <3

Scans from Batman #216 (1969), Gotham Knights #42 (2003), Teen Titans #36 (1971), and Batman #682 (2009).

the fact that jason verbalising the idea of bruce killing him over the joker is what finally makes jason break into tears causes me think that this is the moment he understood that it was truly possible for bruce to kill him

lost days jason is just so good. I love him. He tries to be badass and cool and full of revenge and he just can’t. He keeps going on sidequests to help innocent people and kids. He’s like “talia I wanna kill the joker and Batman” and she’s like “of course, here’s a lot of money” and he comes back to have tea with her and bitch about the joker and Batman and also tell her about how he saved London from getting blown up. like obviously he got his stuff together by the time utrh rolls around (sorta), but man, lost days was a hard time for a very compassionate man trying to be ruthless

(batman #422)

as much as this story is deeply flawed, this is an interesting take on batman’s no kill rule. batman is a figure practically leading a one man war against violent crime, and being someone who holds restraint with every fibre of his being he knows he needs a system to hold himself accountable if he loses himself along the way.

despite the system’s extreme flaws maybe, to bruce at least, there is no better way for batman to define his moral limits and judgements. he doesn’t hold good account with jim gordon because otherwise he would be arrested, he could easily evade arrest; but he does it to be under the spotlight of the best representation of a possible uncorrupt legal system. the justification that he is one kill away from being a serial killer shouldn’t be the truth necessarily but it’s the worst case senario that batman must account for- the potential flaws of letting himself define what he does meaning he becomes the extremes of violent crime he is fighting against.

it’s ultimately hypocritical because batman aligning himself with the law means he perpetuates a corrupt system that causes part of the violent crime he despises and when he goes above and beyond to solve a case such as his interrogations it imitates police brutality. however, in fiction, injuries and trauma caused by batman’s methods have less consequences than the inescapable reality of murder and the reliance on corruption lets infamous rogues out of prison yet again leads to more entertainment. this meaning batman’s hypocrisy is much more palatable and justifiable on paper.

so many fanfics- even and especially jason centric ones- revolve around this victim blaming idea that jason is just stupid and needs to see the truth aka bruce is god always right and he is always wrong and he shouldnt trust his own thoughts and intuition

there'll be a fic where jason thought bruce was a pedophile all through his days in the manor and the finale is 'jason just needed to accept that he was stupid to think that and say sorry to bruce' instead of 'an adult couldnt convince a child in his care that he wasnt going to rape him after three whole years and needs to change something in his behavior'

fic says jason comes back to gotham after bruce beat him into a coma and told him never to return and fears retaliation and the thesis is 'jason is stupid for thinking his ~family~ would ever hurt him brucie is so sorry he somehow made jason think hes not welcome here' instead of 'beating anyone near death is a severe crime and the psychological pain of that doesnt just go away when the abuser aggressor says oopsie'

fic has an injured jason not feeling safe in an unsecured home and every one of the batfamily makes him open the doors and windows and walk on a broken leg and prove they can break in without him knowing and this is heartwarming? them ignoring his emotional well being to show they care? making someone scared and hurt is good family behavior and jason is just too stupid to understand that

how does that make sense? why do we do this? what do i have to block out of my ao3 searches to not see it anymore? fics will have straight up cult like emotional manipulation played as heartwarming... this shit is so triggering to me as an abuse survivor

tag your fics victim blaming, horror, mind break, emotional manipulation, anything please i beg