light as a cherry petal

2. in spite of his less-than-kind beginnings, jason was a sweetheart. he had a passion for heroism and encapsulated everything that robin is supposed to stand for. while he had his dark moments, he mimicked dick grayson in the sense that above all, he was light and happy at his core. 

3. that’s kind of why there are so many different depictions of jason’s years as robin because, as cute and eager as he was, he still had a dark side and people tend to write him as being either “sweet sunshine boy” or “grim dark bastard child” even though it’s actually both. even before the red hood, jason had a tendency to get violent went provoked.

(not to mention the time he may or may not have killed a rapist, just saying)

(and it’s worth bringing up jason’s possible past with sexual assault, which depends more on personal opinion since it’s only been hinted at in later comics. in the original robin!jason comics, he was pretty innocent overall despite living on the streets, but later comics are a bit more realistic about it. it’s up to you to decide what happened, really.)

4. jason and dick got along!! this tends to be scrubbed out as “dick and jason barely knew each other before jay died” but originally, they got to know each other pretty well and grew pretty dang fond of each other. dick’s beef with bruce might have made him a little absent, but he did try his best to be a good big brother to jason.

5. and the titans liked jason too!

6. jason and barbara were close!! and he was pen pals with kid devil!! jason had way more friends than people think. later comics try to push the mindset that jason was shunned by the rest of the hero community, but that’s just plain not true. he was a great kid and plenty of people liked him.

7. jason was a smoker! (he never did drugs, though. i like to headcanon that jason despises drugs overall because they took his mom away from him.)

8. he was a nerd!!! jason loved school and books and the theatre (at least in the titans show he was a theatre nerd. i remember seeing a reference to jason liking theatre in comics but couldn’t find it). he loved learning because he never had access to education growing up on the streets!!!

9. jason really loved bruce. i know that we all pretty much know this one already, but it needs to be said. jason considered bruce his father for a while before his death and didn’t doubt that he was loved right back, despite what newer comics will try and tell you. i mean, the fact that jason was adopted as bruce’s son right off the bat says a lot about their relationship and willingness to be family.

1. Duke Thomas is the sane, rational, "normal" one.

Have you ever read the We Are Robin arc? Duke is fucking unhinged, his introduction was him jumping off a bridge to escape cops. This is a kid whose father is immortal and is the first metahuman in the batfam. He lost his parents in the modt horrendous way possible (joker venom. They're still alive, but it's horrifying) and organised a whole gang as a child. He threw down with a green lantern and 2 hit his ass. Hopefully, this headcanon is just a product of people not reakly knowing the charactee and goes away soon once people find out more about him, when he isn't just the token black guy in a fic or a background character in batfam drama.

2. Stephanie Brown is quirky and sassy, and ONLY quirky and sassy. She's over her trauma with Black Mask and Cluemaster!!

Stephanie Brown is a very interesting character, with an origin story that is very similar to jason todd. She's been through hell, yet she constantly gets infantalised by the fandom, which gets kind of ignored in favour of talking shit about how people infantilse tim (super valid and I'll come back to it later on in this post). You most commonly see this in timsteph stories where they show her as the immature first love, and how as tim grows up, he needs to date more "serious" people, as if tim wasn't the main reason their relationship never worked. This is also common in stephcass fics, although on a smaller level. Writers tend to make stephanie the bubbly outgoing girl that balances out all of cass' angst (some of those fics are really good, but they mould steph in a specific shape so she can be a prop for cass to heal). On an even smaller scale, I've seen both romantic and platonic jaysteph stories where stephanie appears as the "good" victim who let go of her animosity to black mask and cluemaster, and so now, she can help jason let go of what happened with the joker, and bruce's abuse. Obviously, this is a disservice to both of these characters, but people tend to focus on how it's more of a disservice to jason instead of steph. Let my girl express her trauma and heal, and stop using her as a prop for other characters! She wasn't just cutesy as robin, she threw the fuck down. Her introduction included hitting tim in the head with a brick!

3. Slut/himbo Dick Grayson is reductive of his abilities as a leader, and is not only offensive to real survivors of SA, but incredibly racist towards Romani people.

Do I really need to explain this one? Dick Grayson is a symbol of hope that bruce wishes batman could be. This man is a natural born leader and has stepped up to the plate multiple times, both during his time with the titans and as batman. He's charismatic and lovable and a genuinely intelligent man, but for some reason, he gets depicted as a dumbass who has to deffer to bruce or tim or babs any time he has an issue with detective work. Yes, you can delegate. Of course, you can delegate, but going straight to tim and rattling off the case you JUST accepted doesn't make sense, ESPECIALLY if you're on seperate cases and tim or bruce have to postpone their work just to solve it for you. As for the other part, Dick has been heavily implied to be demisexual, given that he only has sex with people he has genuine feelings for. He wouldn't just sleep with any random woman who compliments his ass enough. Also, having an SA victim be characterised as a slut is both reductive of their trauma and a weird way that some authors justify how he's "over it." Really doesn't help that he was slut shamed (canonically!! why is this canon??) by the rest of the titans after sleeping with mirage, who pretended to be kori. Additionally, it's really weird if the first thing you think of when you see an attractive romani man just sleeps around. People don't say that about other conventionally attractive characters, even ones who HAVE slept around. The only character i can think of that gets characterised like this is bruce, but that's an image that he cultivated to keep batman hidden.

4. Jason Todd was always doomed by the narrative. He would have died if bruce hadn't intervened. Also, pit rage.

The tragedy of jason todd was, and always has been, that he was doomed by the AUDIENCE. He wasn't just an angry, reckless child, and calling him the angry robin is stupid and reductive. Was he angry? of course he was, but so was dick, and so was damian. Using a single word to describe a person is never going to be enough. Jason was notoriously compassionate to victims, especially women and children, and sexually abused people. He got pissed when the system he was asked to believe in was shown to be ineffective, to the point where bruce believed he killed a man over it. The kid had a bright future ahead and loved school, modt of robin!jason's shitty qualities came from bruce and alfred compartmentaling his image and shitting on him to ease their guilt over his death. Pit rage is also a cheap way to take away his autonomy, an easy pass to explain the shitty things he's done. I like it when the pit has side effects like glowing eyes or increased healing or something, but pit rage is stupid. It's either used to force characters to forgive jason since he wasn't himself or as an angst prompt for jason, another testament to how he came back wrong, or a way to have him hurt a character to further up THEIR angst (*cough* titans tower AU fics*cough*). Yes, he did shitty things. Let him do shitty things without giving him an easy out. Otherwise, your story isn't compelling at all.

5. Feral Damian Wayne is just straight-up racist, no?

I love damian. I think that, for the most part, he's been written pretty well. However, damian suffers from the fact that he's an arab character in a post 9/11 comic, and thus there is bound to be some casual racism, both in comics (like when tim assumed he was too uncivilised to know what a handshake is) and fandom. Has damian wayne done a lot of shitty things, especially to tim? Yes, absolutely. But that doesn't make him feral. He was raised by assassins as the heir to the throne and to the greatest hero in the world, raised to think that blood relations are the only ones that matter, so of course he's dismissive of tim. He's also a prince who was raised in luxury, who was born as royalty and has experienced more opulence during his birth thsn most peoole do in a lifetime, although this opulence is extremely conditional, with horrifying requirements (the story with damian having a metal spine as a child is insane). Does it make what he did to tim right? Definitely not. Does it excuse his actions? Also no. But it does explain them, it tells us where it came from. Being traumatised and having extremely high expectations of both sides of your family doesn't make you feral.

6. Tim Drake is just a small little baby who can't function without his coffee.

Let me preface this by saying that i don't like tim drake. At all. As a huge fan of the al ghuls it was a real kick in the balls having Ra's be reduced to a creepy pedophile who wanted tim as an heir, and sent a woman to rape tim in order to carry his child. Also, I hate how DC decided to prop him up by shitting on jason todd. However, this doesn't mean that I don't enjoy his YJ run and that I don't enjoy some of his comics/fics. That being said, nothing on this earth pisses me off more than tim stans. You know the ones, the people who want damian hanged, who want dick and jason and bruce to fall to their knees and beg for forgiveness. Tim has been through an insane amount of trauma, and that's understandable, but please, for the love of god, don't create more whump for tim at the cost of other characters. You can hate damian, I wouldn't blame you, but remember that he's like 10 and tim put him on a hit list. Dick never wanted to put tim in arkham, and he didn't have time to support tim when it came to an honestly insane (although ultimately correct) conclusion. Also damian as robin was alfred's idea, and damian was the one that put on the costume preemptively, dick got pissed at damian for that. When it comes to jason, I'd say it's complicated. While titans tower was fucked up, it wasn't as bad as people made it out to be. My first introduction to the fandom was through jason todd since he was my favourite robin, and then i learned they brought him back to life when i played injustice. The number of fics and posts that mention that jason went to the tower specifically to kill tim is insane. When i got into comics, it was like whiplash; it wasn't a one-sided beatdown, tim was conscious until the end, the goofy ass robin suit jason had on, jason never slitting tim's throat (that happens in hush, and even then i don't think he really slit his throat, since the art shows that the skin was kinda nicked), all of that was wild to me. BftC is one of the shittiest comjc book runs when it comes to characterisation in general, and I've already discussed dick and tim, so it's only fair to talk about jason and tim. There's no justification here, honestly, other than shitty writing i guess. The other side of the coin is enemies to caretaker jason and tim, which is so fucking wild?? they're like 2 years apart, and tim is extremely competent, he wouldn't pass out mid patrol because he forgot his coffee.

7. Bruce Wayne doesn't believe people can change and doesn't care about Crime Alley.

For the first one, please fucking read a single comic book. Just one. Better yet, maybe research why batman doesn't kill. You know, the most popular thing about him? As for the second, it's mostly just a way to show how jason is better than bruce and how he's right to take over the alley since no one cares about it. Now I LOVE jason todd. He's my favourite comic book character of all time tied with gambit and Dr. Strange. But I hate it when you create angst or comeuppance by blatantly ignoring the chatacter and their motives. Bruce became batman so that what happened to his parents can never happen again, and this includes helping the poor people in crime alley either through patrolling there or by setting up countless charities to improve life there. You can make the case that batman avoided crime alley after jason died. It's not canon, but it would make sense. However, I dont see him ever giving up on the alley, both to prevent what happened to his parents, and to help people like his dead son. I fucking hate bruce, he's done a lot of shitty things, but making shit up just to make him worse is getting old.

8. Misc