The Parallels Between A Death In The Family And A Lonely Place Of Dying With Jason And Bruce Becoming

this is pure evil

(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.

post exam season deep cleans >>>

every time i see a post that only references a character named tim i need to do a massive double take to figure out if it’s tim drake or tim stoker

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

The body of a post is where Hamlet talks to Claudius. The tags is where Hamlet talks to the audience

the day that people stop simplifying jason’s ideologies to the death penalty and punitive justice is the day i find peace

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.”

in a. I don't wanna say better because let's be clear this would suck. but in a different world nightwing brothers in blood ended with the three of them forming the world's most toxic superhero team of nightwings for exactly four days before dick finds out about jason and cheyenne sleeping together and accuses jason of only doing it to piss him off. jason proceeds to talk mad shit about all of dick's former relationships. dick says he wishes bruce's aim was better. cheyenne wants to know what the hell dick meant by "don't worry, I'm not mad at you, it wasn't your fault." the three of them have an all out brawl the likes of which we haven't seen since dick's mob era. jason stabs dick. dick breaks three of jason's ribs. cheyenne electrocutes both of them so hard they pass out. she goes home and starts a toxic lesbian situationship with her assistant. dick and jason wake up and silently agree to go their separate ways and not tell bruce about this. dick goes back to gotham. jason already told bruce about it because he wanted to start drama. bruce makes a comment about picking his teams better because he's worried about dick's safety and dick hears "you are bad at what you do and you need better teams to back you up because you don't know what you're doing. by the way I hate the titans" and dick is like the FUCK did your just say about my friends and then they have a screaming match that escalates into a physical fight the likes of which we haven't seen since that time in fugitive where dick roundhouse kicked bruce in the jaw and punched out the glass of the good soldier case. this happens in the span of three issues maximum.

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”