Latest Posts by psrinklers - Page 3

the parallels between a death in the family and a lonely place of dying with jason and bruce becoming reckless in their vigilantism to the point of being suicidal in their grief. but jason’s hope for overcoming that grief was his downfall and bruce’s hope was rejected by him but saved him nonetheless.

starlin’s batman, the one that died with jason, would have walked away as jason pulled the trigger on the joker

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

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.

things you DO NOT need to be a man

a dick

he/him pronouns

XY chromosomes

things you DO need to be a man

the swiftness of a coursing river

the force of a great typhoon

the strength of a raging fire

the mysteriousness of the dark side of the moon

^this post was brought to you by LGBT^

Let's

Get down to

Business

To defeat the huns

strange niche of characters who would read frankenstein and cry because they related to the creature

jason todd would love lady macbeth

yet another reason why queer romance in media that is very subtle or more queer-coding than actual explicit rep is so much more compelling than the wealth of straight stories that are out there is bc I think a lot of romance writers forget that you have to like. show not tell. and imply things. and if you hustle things along and put two characters together for the sake of it instead of really working to build their relationship and show how well they work with each other it's not really going to be as interesting to people. and for some reason, a staggering amount of people do not know how to write romance properly so you get a very bland forced dynamic that either feels like an afterthought (he's a boy and she's a girl, hey they could be together because that's what happens!) or the only thing that matters about their characters (see her? she's the Love Interest. that is all she's there for)

however if you're being censored and you literally can't make your characters say "I love you" or kiss or maybe even hold hands you're going to have to come up with more creative ways to tell your audience that they're in love and that usually results in the most poetic beautiful stuff you've ever seen that's SO much more interesting than two characters who make eye contact and go into the slow-mo rose petals scene that's basically screaming at you "hey look at these two. they're in love. you're supposed to be invested in their relationship now. do you get it?" eye contact held for slightly too long in an emotional scene is more compelling. a hand very lightly touching their back is WAY more compelling.

and might I add this is not even impossible to achieve with uncensored straight romances at all like Pride & Prejudice is wildly popular for this exact reason. how many times have I seen people going insane over the hand flex scene. they didn't even kiss in that movie unless you count the extended ending. and everyone loves it. because it's done RIGHT.

tldr; romance is hard to write and you have to put in the effort if you want people to care about your ship. now go forth and imply something

QUICK EDIT TO ADD ALSO when things are more subtle that gives people more space to interpret the dynamic as whatever they want. something might be subtle because that's all they're allowed to show, but something might be subtle because that literally what it's supposed to be. as an aroace person I personally see a LOT of queerplatonic vibes from more subtly played relationships and it's so incredibly exciting and heartwarming for me. and that's a whole new realm of relationship that I think should also be given more attention

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

“Jason requires an extreme act of devotion from Bruce because he thinks he’s unloved” WRONG. JASON IS LOVED AND HE KNOWS THAT.

Jason KNOWS Bruce loves him, that’s why he forgave him. You do not pluck a child from destruction and ruin because you don’t love them. You do not foster and nurture and support and raise him when you don’t love him. You do not mourn what you don’t love.

Jason knows he’s loved. He just doesn’t think he’s loved ENOUGH.

And he loves Bruce back. You can feel it reverberate and whisper in every single action, in every pulse of his vein. He loved Bruce so much it took DEATH to separate them.

But you can’t load a gun with love.

“An act of translation is an act of betrayal” (quote by r.f. kuang which is paraphrased from roland barthes) is so interesting when considering mythological retellings.

obviously ancient texts have to be translated which is to be considered in distorting meaning, but also many retellings can be seen as a more liberal translation of the original stories.

probably the two biggest examples i could use for this in homer’s works is miller’s ‘the song of achilles’ and rivera-herrans’ ‘epic the musical.’

tsoa covers a wider range of time from patroclus’ birth to achilles’ death rather than the small period of the 9th year of the trojan war like the iliad which means stretching the iliad and other myths to fit into a cohesive story. also in order to prioritise the clarity of the love story between patroclus and achilles she may have decided to cut out some of achilles’ more irredeemable actions such as the raping of his slave, briseis. it’s a betrayal to the events of the original texts, the complexity of achilles’ moral character interacting with his relationship with patroclus, and of the suffering that briseis should be seen as having gone through. however in order to fit the romanticised idea of patroclus and achilles’ love and stay more faithful to what the story would have been if told in the modern day, the shifting of the truth can be seen to some as necessary.

epic on the other hand changes also in making the story fit over a longer period of time by being chronological rather than odysseus’ tale in phaeasia telling the decade between the war and his homecoming, but more importantly it has to change its form altogether from the remains of epic poetry we have. which is almost a translation from the performances of homer played by lyre, to a written translation into english, and then finally to the adapted story back in the form of music. perhaps it may be a betrayal of homers actual words but it is arguably more faithful to how people in ancient times would have perceived the story. it captures the spirit of the tale, retaining the themes of fantasy, family, heroism, and leadership, all to the background of music. however some of the themes can’t be carried across because cultural values and practices like ‘xenia’ (hospitality) would not be understood by a modern audience. it’s a reduction of all that the odyssey considers but it’s almost impossible for us to understand or truly translate because we don’t live in their society. this can be said on a lesser level about odysseus heroism and fidelity to where his actual actions must be twisted to retain an impression close to original one intended.

translation may be betrayal, but that’s not always a bad thing. the closest way i can consider it is a cruel inevitability.

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.

I know I take Jason too seriously but there is just something about like. Being the ultimate image of a voiceless victim: a murdered child. Being something that everyone in the family was able to project their tragedy and beliefs onto, a glass case mirroring their thoughts.

And then to come back, furious and sharp and nothing like the silent grave. To have a voice again and be screaming.

‘isolation’ by joy division is very martin blackwood

JayRena are so ‘I Will’ by Mitski, it’s upsetting

Heard this song a few days ago and locked tf in and drew this in 2 days

Not Bruce standing in Dick's room because he's lonely

i feel like jason needs to brag to tim about meeting sherlock holmes, i fear tim would never recover

Batman and his robins but it’s ‘I’m Your Man’ by Mitski (other than steph maybe because bruce was just awful to her)

Cass' love language is indeed tactile and touch and it particularly manifests in hugging and embraces - thinking of how touchy Steph is in her death visions, the way Cass touches Bruce after their fight, Bruce's hug when he adopts her, the various Babs-Cass hugs and the way Cass touches her when they reconcile after their fight (which is very similar to the Bruce post-fight touch as well). Even in New 52, Cass sees two people hugging and tries to replicate it. Hugging represents love and connection in every iteration of her character. But at the beginning of it all is a little girl who has just killed for the first time, staring at the person she loves most in the world waiting with open, welcoming arms - and she runs away.

there’s always a focus on jason remembering exactly how he broke out his grave but i think him remembering every step walking 12.5 miles, constantly calling a mixture of ‘bruce’, ‘batman’, and ‘dad’ to the response of nobody before he passes out into a coma and wakes up to no bruce is the more devastating (all with the injuries that killed him). then when reduced to his most instinctive course of action after being batman’s robin and bruce’s son fails him, he goes back to the streets.

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).

spot the difference! (level: impossible)

this especially hurts in aus where jason is found by the bats after he climbs out of his grave and before he’s taken by the league. there is nothing but the suit he died in to remind jason that he’s home and that his past life was truly real.

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?

“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

(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.