There's something supremely funny about how pple characterize Tim and Damian as loners w/ little social interaction when they're also the only Robin's to have named friends out of uniform. Legit all of Jason & Dick's friends are intrinsically entwined with their vigilante work meanwhile Tim was running d&d campaigns & Damian is over here reluctantly joining the gotham equivalent of the scoobydoo gang.
Tim's literal boyfriend is someone who he canonically knew in high school on a purely civilian level.
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been thinking of posting my reactions to reading Red Hood and the Outlaws here... I've been a DC fan for a while now, but I haven't actually read that many comics tbh (and when I got into it I first read a handful of The Flash comics before drifting to the batfamily). so I think it would be fun to register my reading experience here idk
anyways, I'm on issue 7 already but this fugly mask keeps bothering me
why tf is this metal mask or whatever showing his whole face????
another thing, if it isn't a crime to kill an alien, why couldn't kori kill that thing?
Is he like a transformed human or something that I'm forgetting? bc i could swear he was an alien too...
the mask is still pmo btw, but roy is so witty i love him
to me, this means black starfire is canon idc
and if they're normal, the rest of the people jason knows are?? but he's sweet for worrying even after all this
love her already
but jason, can you stop being such a downer? geez, you clearly want her bro AND SHE WANTS YOU TOO
anywaayys these were my thoughts if anyone cares lol
Dick is used to doing everything on the move, so he doesn't even notice that his behavior is not "normal".
When his mom was teaching him history, he was hanging upside down from the trapeze, trying to do a new routine.
When his dad was teaching him math, he was calculating the angles of his jumps and spins in the air.
Language? He practiced a new language on the trapeze with his parents, associating new words with the routines. If he made a mistake (either with routine or with language), they would start over so he could learn correctly.
He likes to read, but not while sitting. He usually reads while hanging upside down or swinging.
When Bruce receives the same message from his teachers for the fifth time in a row, saying that his son ward is "brilliant, a genius, but lazy", Bruce doesn't understand, since Dick always has his schoolwork done. How could he be lazy?
That is until he discovers that nine-year-old Dick is doing his homework while doing six other things at once, including practicing jumping routines, learning a new language and also planning a strategy to contain the Penguin.
Bruce: Chum, you have ADHD.
Dick: Why do you think that? *he says while hanging from the chandelier, with a math book in one hand and a device he just built that only he knows what it does in the other hand, until a second ago singing a song in a language Bruce didn't even know the little boy could speak*
Not for his character or anything, but because I donât think Iâve seen anyone shoot themselves in the foot with a single character half as badly as DC did with Jason.
He was, during Under the Red Hood, one of the biggest gamechangers they could have thrown at Bruce Wayneâs Batman. Here was an intellectual equal to Batman and superior to the Joker and Gothamâs entire criminal underbelly. A tactical nuke primed to devastate Batman both emotionally and ideologically. Physically, ridiculously dangerous. exceptionally well-trained. a match for Batman in every way. Heâs a character that Bruce canât fight properly, and, worse, one that punches holes in Batmanâs modus operandi in ways that instinctively makes sense to the audience.
Bruceâs son, his greatest failure, returned from the grave as an agent of vengeance. Batman, through a mirror darkly.
sounds super interesting, huh.Â
Unfortunately, characters like Jason are also the agents of introspection and change. He would have forced Bruce to reflect and, worse still, readers to start second-guessing Batmanâs morality. How many people walk away from Under the Red Hood thinking âholy shit, they should have killed the Jokerâ? Most, right? Jason would have changed Gothamâs status quo irreversibly and, unfortunately, Gotham canât really change. progress canât be made, villains canât die forever, Batman canât be wrong.Â
Because it sells that way, obviously. The Joker will never die, no matter how heinous he is, not really. Not while heâs selling merch.Â
So once it turned out that Jason was also super popular, what could DC do? He would shake things up too much if allowed to stay on course. Heâs too dangerous, too strong. and so⌠character assassination! Keep the aesthetics of the angry shooty red helmet daddy issues clowns-bad man while changing the internal workings - fans wonât notice, right?Â
Strip away his competence, reduce his skillset, make him an idiot, a lunatic, a brawny shoot-first-donât-think meathead! Heâs not a strategist, heâs stupid, he charges in headfirst. Change his approach to vigilantism. He was always a bad Robin - he was violent and petty and dangerous and he and Bruce never jived in the first place. Keep him out of Gotham as much as possible and when you canât do that, either quietly pretend heâs on good terms with the batclan or have him and Bruce run around in circles.
And, most importantly, he has to be wrong. He has to be unreasonable. He needs to be the screwup that needs to be sanitised, put in his place, and come crawling back to Bruce so he can be safely assimilated into the family.
Circling around to Urban Legends, Jason and Bruceâs dynamic has completely flipped. Jason is the one that has to change for Bruceâs conditional love, rather than Jason setting the terms Bruce has to meet for Jason to trust him again. Jason is the one that has to learn a Very Important Lesson about the flaws in his morality and align himself with Bruceâs - bearing in mind that Jason developed his worldview after experiencing, firsthand, the flaws in Bruceâs.
Jason is no longer a mirror forcing Bruce to think and develop and grow. Heâs one of two things - a stupid, unreasonable villain or Just Another Graduated Robin that Bruce has to control and keep in line just a touch more than the others. His post-reboot arc is him trying to move past his trauma and grow but losing it all and returning, battered and beaten, to Bruceâs side. Heâs rapidly losing what made him interesting in the first place and fifteen years later Bruce still hasnât learnt a damn thing.
jason could never be jason for an extended period of time. villains would die, gotham would change, batman would evolve, and DC is too scared to try (hell, they canât even let bruce stay dead). a braver industry might have made something amazing out of him but unfortunately DC comics just ainât it
even đing the joker is an oversimplification. the real solution for their problems would put batman's whole character on check, bc it goes against the whole idea that he needs to be a vigilante to change gotham, and that's no fun. bruce is a billionaire. If he invested in good doctors and nurses and a better physical structure for arkham asylum, and made it less of an asylum and more of a mental health facility, and sent the people who are too bad for that to a maximum security prision with mental treatment within that space, and just invested on making gotham less poor, with better education and job oportunities for the non-rich, A LOT could be avoided. but that's not very capitalist and DC couldn't handle it
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Not for his character or anything, but because I donât think Iâve seen anyone shoot themselves in the foot with a single character half as badly as DC did with Jason.
He was, during Under the Red Hood, one of the biggest gamechangers they could have thrown at Bruce Wayneâs Batman. Here was an intellectual equal to Batman and superior to the Joker and Gothamâs entire criminal underbelly. A tactical nuke primed to devastate Batman both emotionally and ideologically. Physically, ridiculously dangerous. exceptionally well-trained. a match for Batman in every way. Heâs a character that Bruce canât fight properly, and, worse, one that punches holes in Batmanâs modus operandi in ways that instinctively makes sense to the audience.
Bruceâs son, his greatest failure, returned from the grave as an agent of vengeance. Batman, through a mirror darkly.
sounds super interesting, huh.Â
Unfortunately, characters like Jason are also the agents of introspection and change. He would have forced Bruce to reflect and, worse still, readers to start second-guessing Batmanâs morality. How many people walk away from Under the Red Hood thinking âholy shit, they should have killed the Jokerâ? Most, right? Jason would have changed Gothamâs status quo irreversibly and, unfortunately, Gotham canât really change. progress canât be made, villains canât die forever, Batman canât be wrong.Â
Because it sells that way, obviously. The Joker will never die, no matter how heinous he is, not really. Not while heâs selling merch.Â
So once it turned out that Jason was also super popular, what could DC do? He would shake things up too much if allowed to stay on course. Heâs too dangerous, too strong. and so⌠character assassination! Keep the aesthetics of the angry shooty red helmet daddy issues clowns-bad man while changing the internal workings - fans wonât notice, right?Â
Strip away his competence, reduce his skillset, make him an idiot, a lunatic, a brawny shoot-first-donât-think meathead! Heâs not a strategist, heâs stupid, he charges in headfirst. Change his approach to vigilantism. He was always a bad Robin - he was violent and petty and dangerous and he and Bruce never jived in the first place. Keep him out of Gotham as much as possible and when you canât do that, either quietly pretend heâs on good terms with the batclan or have him and Bruce run around in circles.
And, most importantly, he has to be wrong. He has to be unreasonable. He needs to be the screwup that needs to be sanitised, put in his place, and come crawling back to Bruce so he can be safely assimilated into the family.
Circling around to Urban Legends, Jason and Bruceâs dynamic has completely flipped. Jason is the one that has to change for Bruceâs conditional love, rather than Jason setting the terms Bruce has to meet for Jason to trust him again. Jason is the one that has to learn a Very Important Lesson about the flaws in his morality and align himself with Bruceâs - bearing in mind that Jason developed his worldview after experiencing, firsthand, the flaws in Bruceâs.
Jason is no longer a mirror forcing Bruce to think and develop and grow. Heâs one of two things - a stupid, unreasonable villain or Just Another Graduated Robin that Bruce has to control and keep in line just a touch more than the others. His post-reboot arc is him trying to move past his trauma and grow but losing it all and returning, battered and beaten, to Bruceâs side. Heâs rapidly losing what made him interesting in the first place and fifteen years later Bruce still hasnât learnt a damn thing.
jason could never be jason for an extended period of time. villains would die, gotham would change, batman would evolve, and DC is too scared to try (hell, they canât even let bruce stay dead). a braver industry might have made something amazing out of him but unfortunately DC comics just ainât it
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dc might not like to address how they've unofficially retconned a lot of jasons original robin run to end up being absolutely classist, but i most certainly will bring it up whenever i can. while this is definitely narrative criticism, it is more of a study, as i am not expecting anyone, readers or dc, to really change how they view the todds.
jason goes from being a rather reserved, kind and genuinely friendly child to an angry and cruel boy who was contemplating murder at some point (batman: urban legends). not to mention willis going from an absent but well meaning man who turned to crime to support his family to now being an abusive father and husband. catherine todd was originally stated to have died from overdose, but was later confirmed in death in the family to pass away from cancer, so while the 'poor addict mother' stereotype still applies, it is more complicated in her case.
it is no surprise that in modern tellings, all three of them represent very realistic forms of poverty. willis the abusive criminal, catherine the addict (her battle with cancer is always noticeably left out) and jason the violent child left to repeat the cycle.
dc simply couldn't allow the todd family to remain poor but an all in all good family (though i am careful to say they were perfect, past or present, since depending how you read him, willis can still be seen as a bad father and horrible husband), and instead had to dramatise negative stereotypes of poor people in order to really perpetuate the existence of jason being the "angry" robin. this mostly comes down to dc perhaps wanting to bury older comics featuring the original characterisation (since the only way to read them is through piracy), and there is no better way to do that than make his current characterisation nothing like his old one, at all.
after all, how else can we ensure readers are aware of how angry, evil and emotionally unstable jason todd is, if not making his life the pinnacle of why poor people are terrible and should not have kids? dc is not trying to hide it at all, it's almost laughable.
while the blatant classism is very clearly the biggest issue, from a storytelling perspective it is also really disappointing. deconstructing catherine and willis todd to their morally reprehensible, abusive and neglectful 2d personalities in modern telling leaves a massive gap is what made jason so personable as robin. personally, i also think it takes away how homelessness and his own poverty seperate from his family might have affected jason's morals and opinions on certain topics â another aspect of his character that is very important but often undeveloped.
especially with jason; making him having always been this quick to rage and violent child/robin takes away the true devastation of his death and subsequent revival. he died an innocent, damaged and complicated but caring boy, and came back vengeful and spiteful. he is a boy who has suffered a lot in life, with a sick mother he had to provide for due to his absent father, who also died due to a life of crime â and yet jason broke free from the cycle and became something more.
he loved to learn, to go to school, to play sports and to help people. he loved being a hero, even when it got tough, and though sometimes it was hard to remember, he always tried to stay on the bright side of things.
it's one of the main reasons bruce is so unable to process and accept his son's return, because to him, the person who came back is not the son he lost. though, that is another conversation entirely.
on the one hand however, i can see why jason's current life story might be more appealing to certain readers (and depending on the work, fanon or canon, it can makes more sense). since now that he's broken out of the cycle of abuse, he can use his strength to protect other vulnerable people. the true 'people's hero' in a way batman and other adjacent vigilantes can not be.
it is just a little regrettable that to fulfill this, he and his family must adhere to classist stereotypes to make it more believable. after all, jason was very much the 'people's robin' even without all the retcons to his character. he has always stood up for people who couldn't do it themselves.
Bruce asks dick (and only dick because his children arenât allowed to be there at the same time) to go shopping but he ends up bringing
Cass who nobody can say no to. dick thinks itâs fine, itâs only one other person
Steph because cass insists theyâre a package deal. Itâs only two extra people, after all
Jason because âyou never pick the right brand of olive oilâ. The number of people is getting iffy, but dick lets it go
They find Damian already sitting shotgun. Dick tries to get him to leave, but apparently he needs ingredients for a science project. dick knows heâs in trouble with Bruce now, but at least itâs not everyone.
threyre halfway there when duke, at the end of his patrol, spots them. dick just sighs. what Bruce doesnât know wonât hurt him, right? at least tim isnât coming.
they arrive at the grocery store and dick goes to unload shopping bags from the trunk. Tim is sleeping there. dick doesnât even want to know.
they end up racing the shopping carts down the aisles. Cass drives Steph, dick drives Damian, Jason drives a snoring tim straight into a tomato sauce display.
Bruce Wayne has to make a âgenerous donationâ to the store. dick is grounded.
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I am so flipping salty about American politics and the state of the world, so please appreciate my salt-filled angst drabble that I wrote in 15 minutes and edited nothing of.
Salt
Weâre raised with pride in our veins. Land of the free, home of the brave. Where everyone is given equal opportunities, equal rights.
But thatâs not true, is it? Itâs a lie, ainât it?
Weâre raised with our hands over our hearts as the flag flies high above us. A golden melting pot of opportunity.
Weâre raised with broken dreams, our eyes widening as the world rots around us. As it festers and blisters.
This isnât the land we were told. This pride belongs to an ideal, not a reality, and when we discover that? When we find out the difference? That pride shrivels and dies, reduced to a cold husk as we look around screaming Why?
Why did they lie to us? Why isnât it what they told us?
Why a world where girls are raised being told theyâre weak. A world where they have to fight to be given the same regards men tell them they already have.
Why a world where people with different colored skin are inherently intimidating? Are treated as lesser because theyâre darker?
They lie to our faces. Tell us we deserve to be proud even when there are children dying, people dying. When there are children we donât know who have to learn this lesson before others, before they should have to.
Why donât we fix it? The people, blinded by hate and spite as they look down on others.
Those people, who âarenât bad peopleâ. Whose beliefs and ideals support the oppression of others. The murder of others and the inequality we grew up being told didnât exist.
What pride do we deserve? The pride of being good people?
We do everything we can to fight back against those supporting the oppression, but itâs never enough, is it?
That pride running golden through our veins. The pride we tried, desperately, to hold on to even as things fell around us in silent crashes and invisible smoke and fires. That pride that, eventually, slipped through our hands as though it never existed.
The vanished pride leaving our chests a sad, angry pit, even as we rage with broken cries filling the air. As we strive to just find a glimpse of that pride again.
But we canât, can we? That pride is gone forever.
The one we find in its place is broken. Itâs cracked and bruised but itâs hard won.
Itâs won from fighting for what we believe in, for that search of that innocent pride we once had.
Itâs broken and bruised, the pride that hesitantly nestled in our chest black and blue, but itâs there.
We did something.
We fought for that pride, for the innocent, for the ideal that the original pride was for. The ideal becomes more and more real with every fight, even if we get set back with hateful, red words that paint the air.
We may not be innocent. We may never, have been innocent. People lost that pride in different times of their lives. The innocent pride born of the thought that we and our country could do no wrong.
People lose sense of that at different points in their lives, but what they find in its place? The pride of hard won battles for peopleâs lives, for that single ideal and many more?
That is so. Much. Better.
Itâs weak, in the beginning, but it grows, and grows. âTil thatâs broken pride has been glued back together and found its place in your chest. In your heart.
Ignorance is bliss but knowledge is power, and that power is hard fought and hard won, but well-deserved. And itâll be hard for them to take it from us.
