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Complete bastardization of what I’ve been saying about Jason’s attitude wrt capes. He does not hate them. In fact his role as “ethical crime lord” is suspiciously compatible with capes. Remember all those times he used Batman as a collection service for dangerous goods in UTH? That’s collaboration. Remember how Ollie was initially intrigued by Red Hood’s methodology, before Bruce lied to him about Jason just wanting money? That’s synergy. Remember when Jason went totally out of his way to prove Black Lightning’s innocence (one of the “boy scouts in spandex”) so the man could not only be freed but have his good name restored? Exactly.

Jason values action. His contempt for the cape business comes from the fact he views them as INSUFFICIENT— a lackluster half measure which is 70% posturing and only 30% effection, the inadequacy of which Jason has witnessed multiple times and personally suffered from… yet heroism does still count as action. It does have a place in Jason’s world. To put it as a metaphor: a story might just be a collection of lies but it still holds value nonetheless. At the same time, Jason will not pretend a story is the same as food in your stomach.

Also I feel the need to point this out very clearly now, and underline it in red:

If there is a sin Jason is “supposed” to be guilty of, the thing that marks him as villain rather than hero or antihero, it’s his cynicism. I’d go as far as to say it’s the major theme of his character arc in post-crisis. The cynicism that the world beat into him vs the inherent faith that took root when he had his One Good Day, his growing extremist utilitarianism vs his idealistic desire to just help and protect people. What he needs to do vs what he wants to do. (Paradoxically, sometimes it’s his cynicism which is his virtue and his faith which is his flaw. E.g. his desire for an answer before killing Joker, allowing Karate Kid to live in Countdown.)

People often point to Winick’s portrayal of Robin Jason in UTH as some kind of argument against holding his writing in high regard for the character. Personally, I don’t care about authorial intent because if I did I never would’ve made it past Starlin however I’m not interested in completely discarding Winick’s Jaybin either. Is it more victim-blamey bullshit? Sure I suppose, but I think there is relevance in the specificity of Winick’s vision.

Winick does not ever allow Jason to be shown as incompetent. Winick’s Jason is skilled, both as Red Hood and Robin.

Jason performs above Bruce’s expectations, his concern apparently unwarranted. This does not paint the picture of a boy in over his head, as previous writers have sometimes tried to frame Jason.

Jason isn’t so arrogant or full of rage that he can’t recognize his mistakes or apologize for it when he makes one either.

Notice it’s when Bruce argues results that Jason immediately folds. To Winick’s Jason, even if he doesn’t give a crap about the guy he pummeled, getting in the way of accomplishing the goal is a legitimate wrongdoing on his part. That is what’s worth apologizing for.

Lastly, an excerpt from Alfred:

Master Jason had a condescending practice of referring to the costumed criminal elements as "dress ups."

He also noted that such individuals did not fear the Batman the way the street toughs and mafioso did. The "dress ups" did not believe that he was a monster.

I explained to Jason that he was correct, but only to a certain degree.

These individuals with their special abilities...these men who could do the unimaginable... these madmen...They have their own myths.

Some believe he is just a man. Others believe he is an army. Some think he can't be injured. Others believe he can't die.

But the boy did say something to me that chilled me to the bone...even then.

"They all know he won't kill them"

I'm not sure what frightened me more. The observation by one as young as Jason...that power could be levied with the threat of murder. Or the fact that he was most likely correct.

What Jason’s disregard for the sanctity of life signifies in this story isn’t just ~rage~. What disturbed Alfred wasn’t just Jason being nebulously evil, but rather how he recognized and was oriented to incentives and leverage in a way Alfred deemed inappropriate for someone Jason’s age. This excerpt comes at a high point in the story right before the finale itself. As far as Winick’s presentation of Jaybin goes, this is his concluding statement. Red Hood wasn’t built on a hand-waved idea of a bad Robin. The problem presented is that Robin is supposed to be innocent, an out-and-out idealist, and yet Jason was not.

It is a central plot point in A Death in the Family, a comic that while I actively believe no one should read because it is cartoonishly racist, some (me) consider pretty important to understanding the circumstances surrounding Jason Todd's death.

This is consistent with his appearances in earlier stories, forming a character arc wherein he becomes increasingly violent and reckless due to the trauma of his early childhood in poverty and the increasing exposure to violence inherent in being Robin, filtered through the strictly anti-Robin lens of writer Jim Starlin.

Batman #411, he has what is obviously a violent trauma response after finding out Two-Face single parentified his mother.

Batman #422, Batman needs to pull him off a pimp after said pimp threatened his bottom bitch.

Batman #424. I posted this once and someone told me with their whole chest they actually for real believed this dude slipped and Todd didn't kill him which is how I realized that there's a whole generation of Batman fans who do not recognize 1970s-80s action movie tropes. An extremely humbling moment for me lol.

Anyway, notice the sequential nature of the issue numbers.

Now, I sincerely do not want to be a bitch here, but I don't know how else to say this.

The reason Jason Todd is not a violent loose cannon in his earliest appearances, even post-Crisis, is that characters later in their arc are not the same as characters at the beginning of their arc.

These two dudes, who yes are the same dude, have very different relationships with the concept of violent revenge. One of them even cut his own head off in a spooky metaphor cave that taught him about how violent revenge means destroying a part of yourself. The other dude just saw his parents gettin weenie roasted and is mad about that. To reiterate my point, they are the same dude.

But in fandom we have this weird thing where we flat reject this concept of Jason by insisting that no, this characterization was just later writers like Marv Wolfman being haters and retroactively character assassinating him through Tim Drake or something.

We insist on who he was at the beginning of his arc as if he should not, could not, would not on a boat, could not, would not, should not with a goat, develop into anything but who he was at that moment. I have never seen anything else like it in comics or in other fandom. Character development that is just so flat rejected and avoided, in a medium where we usually celebrate development because characters are usually set more or less in stone until the next big reboot event.

And look, if I'm being absolutely honest with you, the smooth clean safe not a wildcard roundhouse kick freak version of Todd that fandom has created is so fucking boring to me.

He is, to me, by far the worst version of the character.

To me, Jason Todd was this Robin specifically:

Batman: The Cult.

That's not Dick Grayson. That's not TIm Drake. That's not Damian Wayne, Stephanie Brown, Carrie Kelley, or whatever other version of Robin.

But with that said, the response to victim blaming is not to reject the parts of the victim that are being blamed, right?

Inventing a version of Jason Todd who was never hyper-aggressive feels like an acceptance of Marv Wolfman's framing that Jason Todd essentially killed himself by being hyper-aggressive.

The non victim blaming response seems to me to be more, yes he was hyper-aggressive, for pretty understandable reasons (the ongoing trauma of being Robin during the shift to more hyper-realistic crime and violence, such as the women in dumpsters case), but everybody failed him throughout the whole arc that led up to his death.

Y'know, we accept as a rule that no child, mentally ill or otherwise vulnerable person is responsible for their own death, their death is the result of failings on the part of the people entrusted with their care. In this case, that means Bruce and Alfred, who let him run off on his own out of Wayne Manor after being told he's not allowed to be Robin any more. They surely should've been attentive enough to know telling Jason he's not allowed to be Robin, in the middle of a parenthood crisis they both knew was ongoing (see: the Two Face thing and Jason's relationship with Nocturna). Awareness of this is part of what motivates Jason during his brief villain arc upon his resurrection, even.

Additionally, the whole early Red Hood era is Jason responding to trauma with hyper-aggressive violence, right? So... at what point does it become not problematic? Both eras of the character are built around the central theme of

trauma -> aggression -> violence.

It feels weirder and more problematic to me, as someone who has and has worked with a lot of men with C/PTSD, to accept the fanon framing of innocent baby Jason coming back violent. If that were published, we'd be calling it an embrace of the narrative that a sufficiently traumatic experience can make you into a violent freak, which is anti-medical and reflects a very real, very harmful stigma people with PTSD and adjacent traumagenic conditions deal with.

It's also the core of another Batman narrative a lot of people problematize and hate, The Killing Joke. Y'know, one bad day can make you a Red Hood?

So I dunno. It feels like there's no unproblematic way around this character, imo. And that's fine because fiction and drama, especially crime, horror and superhero fiction, kinda rely on problematic themes in order for the stories to happen. It just feels like something being "problematic" is a facile criticism.

And I mean, it's fine to just not like a story.

It'd be insane of me to sit here bitching about a specific version of a story I personally don't like only to tell people they have to like what I prefer instead lol.

I'm just saying that the specific fandom version of this narrative personally is not for me, and the way people construct their arguments about it frustrates me.

Jason beating the Pimp follows Bruce doing the same thing to a different criminal Frank 'Cutters' (drug dealer, I think) where Gordon has to tell Bruce to stop. (Batman 414)

Gazonas parallels the ambiguous fate of KGBeast (and Bruce later causing the death of Garzonas' father).

Bruce is also depicted as taking his anger out on criminals, there is a scene where it depicts Bruce stating he wasn't in the mood and then the next shot is the purse snatcher being taken in an ambulance. Paralleled, I believe, to Jason taking out aggression on the child pornographers.

The issue with Jason's violence is not that it exists, it is that it is presented as more extreme than the violence of others, when it isn't.

Mostly agree with what OP is saying here. Jason wasn't an innocent baby angel‚ and a kid doesn't need to be one just to deserve to live. There is continuity between Jason the killer kid and Jason the murderous adult-ish guy; Batman recognizes him before he ever takes off that Red Hood helmet. He's got that kick to him, and the fandom often makes him bland by overcorrecting the unfair double-standards. Agreed‚ agreed.

I guess I'd say. It feels the fandom has been in a heated debate between one side arguing that this character just is a certain way as if he's in a vacuum, and another side arguing it's unfair to define the character by anything outside of a vacuum.

It's even worth pointing out that in the better parts of The Cult, before the stupid goddamn Batman tank shows up and the two decide to use potentially lethal methods, ignore someone being horrifically victimized in the street, blah blah blah, that Jason Todd takes on the calm, responsible care provider role in their dynamic.

Sort of.

In a really silly 1980s "men caring is men slapping sense into each other" way lol.

I 100% agree that Jason existed at a hyperviolent time in comics and was written accordingly.

I don't grasp the whole "hyperviolent" discourse, genuinely not something I'd seen before this, but I'm not characterizing Jason as hyperviolent or disproportionately violent next to Batman or even the other Robins necessarily. Again,

Both characters were written in this smelly 1980s dark and edgy way that had them committing actions I think we can all collectively look at and say, "that's not Batman." Any time Batman is in a tank killing people with "less than lethal" missiles, we all collectively seem to know something has gone wrong on the writer's desk lol.

And yeah, Jason was The Robin during that era, and so he inherits a lot of that dark age of comics baggage and evaluating him as distinctly violent next to Dick Grayson instead of evaluating his violence within the context of tropes of his era would be dumb, I totally agree.

Besidess, he may be shooting the machine gun, but Batman is driving the tank and launching the missiles.

He's not more violent than Batman.

Violence is relative to the times.

I mean, Batman used to lynch disabled people.

I agree with the vilification of Jason's reaction to Two-Face and his dad being disproportionate and off mark.

To be honest, I wasn't aware of that flavour of discourse, and took it as sort of for granted that people would remember that similar stories have happened with both Dick and Tim. Batman not cutting Tim into the investigation of his own parents to Tim's detriment was core to Tim's earliest stories, even. These stories are usually written in ways that do not vilify Dick or Tim, but do contextualize them as having increasingly less stable reactions to their situations. In Dick's case, that often means rushing off to deal with it himself. In early Tim's case that means hallucinating and stuff because Denny O'Neil is a menace to the writing of mentally ill characters lol.

Anyway,

In the DCAU, this exact kind of narrative is Dick's motivation for becoming Nightwing.

Actually, a lot of the DCAU feels like it's reacting to Jason Todd in "fix it fic" ways, from giving this narrative to Dick as his motive for leaving the Robin role, to combining Jason and Tim's personality traits to create a new version of Tim.

Things like Batman withholding information or ignoring things important to the others because he's focused on some distorted idea of a "bigger picture" happens pretty much all the time, both in the DCAU and in the comics.

Fans don't vilify that version of Dick or any version of Helena Bertinelli, so I was operating on the assumption of a different deck of cards. It's actually kind of surprising and surreal to see that Jason has apparently been dealt from a different deck in fandom lore lol.

I think there's a bit of a Helena Bertinelli situation going on where the characters keep insisting she's more violent and she's going to catch all of these bodies, but she never does, and for fans of Helena Bertinelli that leaves this really unsatisfying sense that she's been maligned by the text unfairly. I'm here reading this as every character being incorrect and Helena being maligned as an outsider in a sort of Watsonian sense, without really engaging with the Doylist take that the writers just suck and mishandled a theme.

Birth to 6 Years Old

7 to 18 Years Old

Adulthood

Don't rely on Internet Archive either, download these as PDFs (you can do that from the "print" link on the archived page).

If you're a parent, tell your doctor that you want these vaccines on this schedule for your child, even if/when the CDC changes their recommendations.

UBlock Origin - Adblocking

Chameleon - IP and random agent spoofing

TrackMeNot - Floods web search engines with false queries at a settable interval

Location Guard - Obfuscates precise location

Privacy Possum - Blocks and falsifies information collected by tracking

ClearURLs - Removes tracking elements from URLs

LocalCDN - Prevents third party requests

CanvassBlocker - Prevents fingerprinting

UnPaywall - Circumvents paywalls for research papers

Sci-Hub - Adds a Sci-Hub link to academic papers

ChromeMask - Disguises Firefox as Chrome for Chrome-only websites

Great get online and go to a job board. Indeed, Linkedin whatever. Now you're gonna search for a role that's in your city, fits your qualifications, and doesn't seem like a bad time.

See that easy apply button? Don't hit it they just throw those in the trash. Now you're gonna want to go to the company's website and check their careers page.

Oh? That job doesn't exist anymore. Cool go back to the job board and find another one.

Great you found another job, you're on the company's career page and the job exists!! So you're going to need to make an account on the career page website. They're using Workday, the same site as the last job you applied for? Who cares? You need to make another account for THIS job's workday page.

Now you're going to upload your resume. That'll autopopulate about 15 boxes with everything on your resume, except formatted wrong and with tons of errors. So just go through and painstakingly check the dates on all of that and rewrite everything you already laid out in an aesthetically pleasing format on your resume.

Ok time for the cover letter, explain why this specific job and company are deeply important to you. You love their mission statement and wouldn't even laugh if their ceo was gunned down in the street. You'll really want to reiterate the things you just spent the last 20 minutes filling out on the resume section

(Remember to include language from the job description, people who work in HR are lower than dogs and they need patterns or they get confused.) Write about a page, but hey don't sound too desperate or robotic this is where they judge your character!

Maybe add your portfolio site at the end here, who knows if that helps no one has ever clicked mine haha.

Anywayyy time to hit apply! Congrats! You'll see that confirmation email come in and you should be getting the rejection letter in about 2 weeks. Unfortunately your resume didn't have the right buzzwords and the AI auto rejected you :(

Listen very closely

The above is exactly why half of my friends come to me, and cry they're suffering, and I get to bestow my job hunting knowledge on them. I love this shit, it's a game.

For credentials my fastest job hunting time has been 1 week. I searched for 1 week, got an interview, and was hired within a week. My slowest was 1 month, while out of work, while telling ALL my interviewers that I quit my work without notice (I was testing my interviewers to see how shocked they'd get when I'd tell them why, anyone who wasn't shocked I would tell them at the end that I will keep them in mind (not)). My entire average is 2-3 weeks.

Firstly, what you're gunna do is pick a job sector. You're gunna pick a few of these by the end, but for now pick one. Maybe you wanna do bookkeeping, maybe you wanna do something in doggy daycare. Maybe you're a sous chef. Idk! Figure out what abouts you want first. Do not apply to anything yet. You're gunna look at the job description, I've picked out a few for bookkeepers below.

Now what you're gunna do is you're gunna look for "buzz words", or rather words that are gunna appear commonly and indicate the tone for that job. I've highlighted some, but not all in my examples below

Just look at that snout at how similar those descriptions are!

Now that you've got your buzzwords, you're gunna slap those babies into your resume! You see, since your resume is usually read by a computer first, you're gunna trick the computer into giving it to a person. Really what the computer is scanning for is how similar your resume is to the job description. Remember your bullet points, and to keep it short, try to only have 3 to 5 bullet points per job:

- Processed over 500 invoices a day in an efficient and accurate manner

- Curated reports for management review by utilizing available data

- Monitored and recorded over 100 submissions each day increasing accuracy by 50%

These are some great, made up examples I pulled from those buzz words. You might notice I added some numbers into there. That's something you'll wanna try and note for yourself, how much of something you can do, how accurate, how much efficiency you increased, these look GREAT when your resume gets past the computer and is moved in front of a real person.

Now you have your sector-based resume with lots of buzzwords. This is great! Now for the easy part. You're gunna channel your inner "IDGAF" And you're gunna send that to every listing you like on indeed. Filter for "Apply on Indeed" and spam that shit. Sometimes you gotta answer a few extra questions, but if they give me more than 5 quick questions I trash the submission and move on.

Don't waste your time jumping through hoops, streamline it for yourself and use the same methods companies are using. Push MASSIVE amounts of average quality resumes out. The more opportunities taken = the greater the chance of success. For every opportunity taken you've now pitched a chance of success, for every resume you cannot submit because you're piddling around on their stupid website or answering 50 interview questions online, you send out a 0% chance of success.

So go, try this, and see how it works for you.

Some additional things to consider:

- Add random shit in your resume, I added my "Board Game Club" (BDSM group) into my resume for hobbies and discussed how I got my start using sparklines there

- Never underestimate the flair of a little Clipart fleur-de-lis or something on your resume. Never put colored Clipart, but a little floral or swirl design located somewhere nice makes it stand out

- if you don't have a degree that doesn't mean they won't pick you, twice now I've come to a job without a bachelors and being honest that I was only getting an associates before I think of my next steps

- Embellish, do not lie. Jargoning your job description to make it sound cool and professional is GREAT. Do not give me a resume saying you can use CNC machinery when you've only used a 3D printer. Just tell me you know how to program and manage a 3d printer and want to learn CNC machinery.

- Keep. Your. Resume. To. Two. Or. Less. Pages. You don't need EVERY job, only the relevant ones, if your interviewer asks about the gap, tell them what job you had during that time (or if you wanna lie say you were taking college courses and were on a break, you dont need a degree to say you took courses) and that you only wanted to showcase the most relevant ones

second off...do you have any tips for backgrounds?

hghjkfdjg tysm!! it was really fun to draw! glad you like it!!!

had to think a bit about the tips. i think what i say might depends on how comfortable you are with bgs

if you are starting out, my biggest tip is the incredibly unfun one of learning perspective. perspective is to bgs like anatomy is to characters and knowing even a little bit helps a lot.

if you use procreate, it figures out most of the perspective for everyone and all i need to do is set the vanishing points to where i want. example, the grid for the bbb piece i did

just need to place a line and 3 dots. I use 3 point perspective on everything so for me it's always 3 dots. the vanishing points (VPs) on the horizon line (blue line) defines the planes stuff is on, the point top or bottom defines the angle of the viewer. for this case you are looking slightly down on dick and jason.

most of the time my vps aren't in the image so this is rare for me! but it's best to put the vps far away from each other or else you risk drawing outside of the 'cone of vision' (cov).

an example of how that would look

everything in the green is in your cov and looks normal. everything outside has this uncanny funhouse effect aka outside of your cov. which might be the effect you are going for! but it also might not be. anyways your choice now

after the perspective is figured out, it's an exercise in placing boxes within the grids.

things below the horizon line you will see the tops of. things above you will see the bottoms of.

if the boxes look correct, you can fill it in with whatever you want to build your bg. outside of ig stuff from dick's safehouse, you can fill them with chairs! shoes! more boxes!

Links for everything can be found here

charcoal (free)

borupenp (free)

enpitsup (12 USD)

ph math grid (free)

ph dot grid (free)

7 paper textures (free)

45 real paper textures (free)

safir pen (used in the first image) (10 clippy)

drew brush (free)