The Body Of A Post Is Where Hamlet Talks To Claudius. The Tags Is Where Hamlet Talks To The Audience

i’m thinking of the ramifications of bruce throwing out all traces of jason’s existence in the manor. do you think he threw away the box of belongings from his parents? what about his adoption certificate? is all that remained of jason peter todd police records of a horrific accidental death overseas, of an overdosed mother and murdered criminal father, school records of a bright yet overlooked boy, and memorials of a dead boy and a dead robin?

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

“Well I’ve walked on water, danced through fire

Can’t seem to take it anymore

It was me, more for me, waiting for me this time

Hoping for something more, hoping for something else

Hoping for something kind, hoping for something more

Waiting for me this time”

the fact that these were changed lyrics of new dawn fades in their last concert haunts me

you said he was *checks notes* rash, impulsive, and has a uhhh “darkness” within him? This guy?

Considering every attempt at bringing Jason Todd back as a villain (Dixon’s AU attempt in ‘96, Loeb’s Hush attempt in ‘03, + Winick’s successful UTH attempt in ‘04-5) was predicated on retconning Jaybin into someone that he wasn’t, I actually don’t think you can remove Red Hood from the discussion of how DC write Jason as a child. You can prefer one over the other if you want, but Red Hood + all his problems only exist because DC needed to villainise Jason Todd somewhere along his character history to prove that Jaybin’s death was a net positive.

The second Robin receiving an embryonic Red Hood-ification in Cheer, Robin Lives + apparently Lemire’s Robin + Batman was the whole point of Jason coming back as a Bad Guy to begin with. And at a stroke, it returns us to Marv Wolfman + Dixon’s classist victim-blaming narrative. And to their intended goal — to blatantly overwrite Jason Todd’s actual character with stereotypes to preserve the Batman + Robin power fantasy.

A Jason Todd Animatic- Work In Progress- I Know It’s Over; Jeff Buckley

i also think people try to equate bruce and jason’s flaws as vigilantes despite the fact that they are representative of two distinct issues. wrt bruce there is a dissonance between his awareness of the law as a tangible, corruptible institution versus his belief in the law as an intangible, incorruptible ideology (hence his relationship with gordon as a “good cop” who uniquely upholds the law as bruce sees it despite the fact that gordon is realistically as much an extension and product of the corruptible institution as much as anyone else is, and the ideology bruce wants to believe in is created by the institution). wrt jason there is a dissonance between his helplessness in the face of the institution and his over-corrective ideology that thereby bleeds into a mimicry of said institution (which you could correctly criticize as character assassination of the socially marginalized, and/or use as a conduit to explore the divide between defensive and offensive vigilantism)

We are in desperate need of Death in the Family rewrite, instead of trotting out a horribly racist and bizarrely paced, thematically confused story like it’s one of the greats just because it’s load bearing. This is what i’d want from it.

Bruce is again the POV character, but he is explicitly a biased and unreliable narrator. We don’t hear Jason’s narration outside of a few key moments, but we are shown what he’s doing in direct contrast with Bruce’s theorising about his spiralling. Bruce never explicitly asks. Him and Alfred make well meaning, overbearing decisions on his behalf.

Jason is struggling with Batman and Robin’s catastrophic mishandling of several sexual assault cases in a row. I haven’t decided if we’re alluding to Jason being a victim of this himself, that might be overselling it. Either way he is deeply affected by these, and he is the only one. There’s a sense of isolation and injustice around him. He thought bruce cared. He thought batman was a solution.

Jason leaves to find his birth mother, leaving only a note and no explanation. Bruce sees the robin suit is missing and is annoyed. He doesn’t investigate, prioritising the hunt for the joker.

The death and build up happens exclusively in Africa, in a country with its own local vigilante, who wants to know what this American is doing here. (I don’t know enough about DC’s African heroes to know who it should be, but it needs to be one who is already established and competent in his own right.) Batman is in a state of awkward overreach with a patronising tilt to the way he hoards knowledge in the pursuit of the joker in someone else’s backyard. They agree to a partnership that in practise is unequal in Batman’s favour. We are externalising the themes here, mirroring Bruce’s personal relationships with his professional ones.

Jason and bruce run into each other by accident once again. Both are surprised the other is there for a different mission. They opt to combine forces anyway, since they’re both here. Bruce is touched and naively optimistic about Jason’s search for his birth mother. He is projecting. For a moment it is blazingly obvious bruce identifies as a fellow orphan to his sons first, and a father second.

There are local victims, arguably of the joker but it’s not definitive. Their deaths aren’t just numbers. They are real people. The local vigilante is very angry. Jason sympathises heavily, but he too is an outsider here. He sits apart from the funerary rites, listening in, uninvited, unable to mourn, unable to move on. Batman calls him to continue working the case.

Bruce isn’t blind, Jason is struggling. He makes a plan to reach out to him if they don’t find his mom, which will of course negate the need for action.

They find Sheila.

It all falls apart in the same way as the original. Jason does not try to take on the joker, although that is how it’s interpreted after he’s dead. He is trying to rescue his mom. She gets clobbered over the head by a joker goon on the way out and bleeds out while the bomb’s timer is still ticking down. Jason dies, alone, trying to shield the body of his dead mom.

None of the post-death UN stuff. Stupid.

Bruce disguises the death for publicity’s sake. He changes Jason out of robins clothes and hides the joker’s presence there to protect batman’s identity.

Time skip. The African vigilante knows he has been lied to. His country’s legal system paid off, and justice perverted. He comes to Gotham in pursuit of both the Joker and Batman, looking for justice.

At this point Bruce is in deep grief, swinging wildly between rage and self hatred. He is shutting out everyone. He loses track of a human trafficking case in crime alley to focus on the joker and the other vigilante.

The ending is an echo and inverse of the climax of Under the Red Hood, but nobody has set it up, it’s just the way a messy fight between the three remaining players works out. Bruce must choose between inaction and saving the joker. He doesn’t choose. He is frozen, and we do not know if it’s a choice or if he shut down too much to act. He is not in control. Joker appears to have died.

Joker is found, injured but alive, and gets locked in Arkham. The vigilante goes home, disgusted, having gotten what little justice Gotham offers.

The human traffickers escaped in the background of the fight. It isn’t called out, just a detail in the artwork.

Batman goes back to work in an empty house haunted by the dead. Jason’s grave stands alone. Everything has changed. Nothing has changed. Batman won, and everybody loses.

HUGE shoutout to the WORLDS most DOOMED mentor mentee duo ever to live. Just two extremely emotional, lonely, jealous, closed-off, insanely determined vigilantes against the world and also against each other routinely.

Imagine you are Batman, and you are immensely similar to this teen girl, and because it increases the emotional vulnerability that you can be comfortable with when she doesn’t know anything about you, or because it’s convenient to have a team member who is isolated and can be easily fired and completely cut out when she gets too close or hurts you or when you don’t need her anymore, or maybe just because you’re lonely and you just got hurt emotionally by the people who know you the best and you like the idea of getting the benefits of company without that vulnerability again, you don’t tell her your name and you don’t let her see your face.

Imagine your primary team is finally back, imagine Alfred has come home, imagine you aren’t alone anymore, so you ghost her Completley, cut her off until she tracks you down to demand an explanation, where you then fire her with the excuse of her ‘lacking the skills and talent’, and are fine to leave it at that forever. Imagine you think about it some more and it’s the anniversary of your son’s death and you feel comfortable enough admitting aloud that that must’ve been part of why you fired her. She was reckless and wanted to prove herself too much, and all that other stuff that got your son killed as Robin. Steph is just too like him, too wrong and too much to be a vigilante.

But then Robin has to quit, and he’s leaving you behind and he’s going to go away, so you, maybe half consciously come up with a plan, and when Stephanie Brown turns up in your Batcave with a homemade costume and a frenzied look in her eyes you solidify that plan, maybe still unconsciously. Imagine using the same excuse, the same exact phrasing, of Steph’s apparent lack of ‘skills and talent’ that you used to fire her, in order to justify hiring her as Robin.

Imagine pushing away that graveyard conversation, imagine ignoring the very same comparison that you drew. Imagine, for the very first time, having to keep the cowl on when it’s just you and Robin in the Batcave. Imagine the gnawing sense of wrongness. Imagine keeping it on anyway. Because if you took it off, she would have something. Because if you took it off, it would count. Because if you took it off, you’d have to look her in the eyes, and she could look into yours, and you don’t know if you could do that and also convince yourself what you’re doing to her is okay. If it’s just Batman, it’s fine. It’s manageable. It’s business.

You get that cozy, comfortable distance once again. You get to pretend you didn’t stand at your sons grave and told someone you didn’t want Steph to die like he did, and then turned around and gave her the same costume he died in the second it was more useful to you. And that unease grows and grows and grows. And that yawning uncomfortableness expands and expands. And eventually you can’t ignore how wrong it all is, how gross this all is, so you start looking, and you start hoping, and sure enough, she makes a mistake. And you immediately feel this Huge sense of relief. Thank god.

And you fire her and it feels legitimate enough and you get to walk away, justified and rational and reasonable and fair. You get to do it again, you get to wash your hands clean of it all, and you know then, it was the right choice to keep the mask on, because now you can change the lock to the side entrance you showed her and now you can tell the computer to stop accepting the password you gave her and now she is gone. Just out of your sight. Just gone.