this is my power

How could Tim the one who’s still alive possibly be the one “true” victim of Jason’s death? Please a lot of y’all use the argument that since nobody knew Jason was going to come back to life (utterly irrelevant by the way unless you genuinely believe that a person’s humanity ends the day they take their last breath) that Jason shouldn’t be viewed as the one “true” victim of his own death. Like hello?? Are you hearing yourselves???

Tim’s superiority complex comes from his inferiority complex, simple as that. It doesn’t matter that the adults around him was grieving and “forcing” (referencing Jason because he literally just died?) him to be better than Jason- because even if they hadn’t Tim would still believe he is better than Jason- his tragedy is not that Jason died his tragedy is that he is terrified of being the “lesser” replacement. That doesn’t make him a victim of Jason’s death.

This reeks of a point I’ve brought up before, you infantilise Tim because he is the ideal victim. He takes his raging inferiority complex and convinces himself essentially that he is better than Jason because he would never die like that. He uses the trauma of Jason’s death to push his own ego. Or in other words be “better.” He is the ideal victim of Jason’s death. Which shouldn’t be a sentence I have to say. But ALOT of you think that. Consciously or not a lot of you translate the tragedy of Jason’s death into a foot note into Tim’s development and it pisses me the fuck off.

Jason on the other hand the one who died came back angry, and to a lot of people that is somehow a fundamental flaw. (Of course that requires actively ignoring the systems that failed him and his justified anger towards them, but that would require viewing Jason as a human and obviously we can’t do that! Not if we want to antagonise him!) that his trauma and in the same vein his anger is “unideal” hence he is an unideal victim of his own demise. And obviously when he is not acting the way you expect a victim of a traumatic event to act you reassign who’s most affected by it to make him seem irrational- even more antagonistic to push your own biased narrative

ty, love your art!

Hey so I figured I should post these here (yes, I had posted them on the clock app first). Anyway!

your problem is thinking i give a damn about morality in a fictional universe that's being reset every thursday because of some nonsensical space-time bullshit and where there are good billionaires who go out beating up common people bc his day went a little sideways and they are still somehow the "good guy" of the story.

(this is his literal first appearance in his new origin story batman #408 and they point blank call him a crimimal btw)

anyway back to my point. jason already was a criminal because of poverty and it wasn’t necessarily that bruce taught him morals but that bruce gave him an environment where he didn’t have to resort to become a criminal

the issue with the debate is that it boils down to the whole “is jason an ontologically evil child” because that’s how people keep pushing it when they say yeah jason needed bruce to save him from being a criminal (but what they really mean is being a ~career criminal~ (for lack of better word)) without understanding the difference in their power dynamics. it glosses over why jason was a criminal.

panels from batman #409, including the last bit because i always found it funny jason pulled the disappearing act on batman HA

it’s interesting because in these 2 chapters jason already shows strong disdain for the cops, rejects being a ‘stoolie’ multiple times and reaffirms his rejection of social workers. but in this panel, jason emphasises that he’s a kid. and that adults aren’t all to be trusted. which given his parental figures, ma gunn as well as batman fucking up and putting him in a ‘kindergarten for crime’… well. you really can’t blame him.

#409 repeatedly point blank shows that jason isn’t a criminal because he wants to be. he leaves ma gunn’s school at the first chance he got. he told batman about the planned heist. he also appeared at the scene because ‘somebody had to stop it’ (and also because he didn’t believe batman trusted him). this isn’t a child who turned to crime for a quick buck. but it was the only avenue he believed was available to him.

so yes, i have an issue because the debate ignores how he outright says he only does it for survival. it is classist because it outright ignores the structural realities that drive people towards being criminal and making it into a moral failing when the absence of these barriers results in very drastic differences in one’s decisions. it ignores the fact that there’s are different types and tiers of crimes (petty theft vs armed robbery, misdemeanours vs felonies) and the harms it poses. it refuses to acknowledge the power differentials and dynamics at play. it quite literally ignores canon (really, two issues is all you need to read! TWO!) in favour of pushing a very classist talking point where the rich needs to enlighten the poor and guide them to the path of goodness. so yes i have an issue with the debate because it frankly is rather disingenuous and generally is because they’re trying to prop a character up in expense of another.

So what do Bruce, Dick, Tim, and Alfred have to say about how Jason died?

Batman (1940) #428, Detective Comics (1937) #725

"You never listen."

Robin (1993) #0

"He took chances. Openly defied Batman's orders. And that's what killed him."

Batman (1940) #456

"I killed myself, Tim, because I couldn't wait. Because I didn't think it through."

Batman: Gotham Knights #44