sashene

okay SO. a couple of people indicated they would be interested in this which was honestly all the encouragement i needed. my credentials are that 1.) i love jason todd 2.) i love literature 3.) i got my bachelors degree in english like a week ago and am now in that awkward space in-between school and employment and am looking to fill my time with inconsequential geeking out. amen.

incomplete list of authors and works (romantic to modern) you could write about jason todd being invested in under the cut!!:

i’ll be honest anon, there is no short explanation i can give better than this image by @cobalt-knave:

…with the caveat that even with jason, bruce’s relationship with him is ‘batman & robin’ before ‘father and son.’ the batman & robin relationship has primacy over whatever familial relationship bruce has with the robins as individuals with maybe the exception of damian (which is also partially why they’re so dysfunctional as a b&r duo). or to quote malihah:

going back to pre-crisis when their dg+bw and jt+bw relationships are allowed to be more fluid, the difference between the two is pretty obvious. dick is bruce’s ward and is consistently referred to as such because that’s what he is, and while they will occasionally break out a father-son or brotherly language in-universe, the narrative stays consistent that bruce is his guardian, friend, partner, mentor, etc.

“big brother image”. not “big brother.” very different!

jason, by contrast, leans towards a father-son relationship with bruce almost immediately; one of my absolute favorite pre-crisis jaybin story arcs centers around jason’s custody as bruce tries to adopt him, and as we know, eventually succeeds. and it should be noted that for a very long time, jason was the only character to have this status with bruce! but even when the story is literally about bruce trying to become jason’s legal father, it’s always very clear that to jason and bruce that that is just legal accessory to their primary relationship of batman & robin. the language used is kind of interesting throughout the arc because while characters are quick to talk about natalia (competing for custody, long story, you should read it!) as jason’s “adoptive mother”, they rarely use the phrase “adoptive father” for bruce; they more consistently say “wanting custody”. this panel was the closest i found in that arc to either jason or bruce being explicit about a father-son dynamic, and as you can see, it doesn’t even hit that mark:

in-universe, bruce has a lot of hang-ups about dead parents for obvious orphan reasons. he never wants to replace john grayson or joseph todd (and later willis todd, jack drake, et cetera) for the same reasons he would be gravely offended if he felt that someone was trying to replace thomas wayne in his memory. bruce has a lot of love in his heart and cares so damn much, but he’s so emotionally distant and he needs that distance to protect both himself and, in his mind, other people from him. having the batman & robin relationship allows him to bond with dick and jason that he actually feels comfortable in without the all-consuming anxiety of am i fucking this up am i a fraud oh god i’m not fit to do this because bruce is the only one who can be batman (for now), which is why even when he becomes jason’s legal father there’s always a bit of a wink about it to the primacy of the b&r relationship. again, this is a reason why his relationship with damian is, frankly, the worst out of his “sons”: there is no distance, no other father that bruce can pass the buck off to, and it freaks him out and is why we get 1000 repeating comic storylines of bruce beating himself up over whether or not he’s capable of raising damian.

out-of-universe, the distinction between why dickbin is a ward (and thus nebulously bruce’s friend-partner-brother-son) and jaybin is adopted comes down to simply the passage of time. dick and jason might only have a seven or so year age gap as characters, but they have forty-three years of real world time in between their creations. in 1940, adoption was a long, bureaucratic, pretty stigmatised slog that had a very heavy focus on erasing the birth family with sealed records and new birth certificates; it was mostly something done for couples adopting very young children to pass off as their biological child. guardianship and wardship was far more common and appropriate for an orphaned pre-teen being raised by a bachelor. adoption became more common and less stigmatised around the 1960s, and guardianship became more of a probate role than a child-rearing one. by jason’s creation in 1983, adoption was now the appropriate measure culturally. wards have largely vanished as individual relationships; i can only think of one wardship circumstance in my life, and literally everyone who knows about it makes batman & robin jokes because bruce & dick are really the only lasting fictional wardship out there (the only other one i can think of is the little orphan annie comic strips of the 20s, but those have been subsumed in cultural memory by the 70s musical adaptation, which ends in adoption!).

there’s also the evolution of comics readership over time. in the 40s, superhero comics were overwhelmingly for children aged 6-11. dickbin (and all other kid sidekicks) was a reader viewpoint character, and part of the power fantasy of robin was that he was super cool and largely unparented. the kids weren’t there for emotional melodrama about custody battles. compare that to the 80s, and the same 10 year olds who were buying tec for a dime on a newsstand were now headed to comic shops to buy tec for $1.25 at age 50. readership skewed older, or at least more all-ages, and they were people who might have had kids of their own by then. they probably learned that their parents were also fellow human beings a while ago, and thus could handle a gothic melodrama about custody battles in their batman comic.

back to in-universe, as we know bruce does eventually adopt dick, but it’s not until dick has long since stopped being robin and is a grown man. it’s a very sweet little arc of gotham knights… minus the anti-māorism and antiziganism, thanks devin grayson. it should be said that bruce’s decision to do so is haunted by jason’s death, quite literally:

and, importantly, this is only a clear-eyed decision that adult dick and older bruce can have. bruce took in a pre-teen in his twenties or so. imagine being tasked with guardianship over a child about 12-15 years younger than you. smaller parental age gaps have (unfortunately) existed, but it makes sense that bruce would shy away from really thinking of himself as dick’s dad and vice versa. nonetheless, bruce did raise dick for his whole adolescence, which is something dick acknowledges often after he’s done being pissed at bruce. dick needed time away from bruce to reflect on their relationship, which he got during jaybin’s tenure and then after jason’s death. by the time of prodigal, dick is already making tongue-in-cheek references to tim about bruce being their shared dad while neither are adopted:

There's another page I'd want to add on, which I think captures a lot of the Bruce & Jason vs Bruce & Dick stuff. Also, I personally feel that in Moench's run (or pre-crisis depending on how you want to think about it), it is a little more about being Batman & Robin (or Batman & Pterodactyl/Domino/Wonder Boy/& Son/& Co./Guano/etc) for Jason, but it is more about being father and son for Bruce. He's the one who is resistant to having Jason as his crime fighting partner at all, completely in it with the goal of Jason "one day come[ing] to look at [Bruce] as [his] father."

(Detective Comics 533 by Doug Moench with art by Gene Colan & Bob Smith)

"Someday, I hope you'll come to look upon me as your father. And by then I hope I'll speak to you with more patience and wisdom than I've demonstrated so far. / But right now...Well, it's just that Dick Grayson and I have been through wars together. We've saved each other's lives dozens of times."

"And for the first time, it seems true: a son is not always born of his father."

(Batman 385 by Doug Moench with art by Rick Hoberg & Chuck Patton)

Bruce: "If I say no..."

Jason: "I'll take off this costume right now and never say another word about it--perfectly happy to be Jason Todd and proud to call Bruce Wayne my father."

Bruce: "I don't believe that for a minute"

The thing is, Bruce is right here. Throughout Moench's run, especially the first year, we see an indomitable determination for Jason to be a part of Batman's world where he is already accepted in Bruce's. And Bruce can see that. He has eyes! Bruce doesn't want Jason in danger, but it's become pretty clear that Jason isn't staying out of it just because Bruce says. He ran off to the circus and started solving crimes there, for crying out loud. In the issue before the first page I pulled, Bat 366, Jason stole Bruce's money to buy a plane ticket, dyed his hair, stole Dick's Robin outfit, and flew to the country Bruce was in to kick Joker in the face as Robin unofficially. That's Jason. He's amazing.

Bruce wants to say no. But he also sees himself in Jason. There are many ways to interepret the specter of the Bat in that panel, but I see it as him recognizing Jason's like him. To quote from Detective Comics 574...

(Detective Comics 574 by Mike W. Barr with art by Alan Davis and Paul Neary *post-Crisis)

"I didn't choose Jason for my work. He was chosen by it...As I was chosen..."

And then of course, we see them being SO father-son about it when Bruce says yes. Because what's so very interesting about Jason & Bruce is they're Batman & Robin simultaneously with being Father & Son. And Bruce is gonna tear open those stitches by racing Jason around on his shoulders. Beautiful. Wonderful. Showstopping.

And while I have tec 574 open...

(Detective Comics 574 by Mike W. Barr with art by Alan Davis, Paul Neary, and Adrienne Roy's stunning colors *post-crisis)

Again, we see Bruce being very willing to have Jason as just his son and not his Robin/crime-fighting partner. But Jason would never go for that. He's like Bruce. He needs to be Robin. He needs to be out there.

So, all around fantastic post though I don't strictly agree with Batman & Robin coming first for Bruce & Jason, at least in Moench & Barr's runs and from Bruce's perspective specifically. However, on a meta level, Batman & Robin are always going to come first. It's what makes me yearn for Nelvana Batman, an animated Batman TV show that was going to star Bruce & Jason in the 80s but was sadly never made. The writer's bible survived though and included this plan:

(Writer's Bible for Nelvana BATMAN, 1988 by J. Michael Staczinsky)

i like the framing of jason being drawn to batman & robin while bruce is drawn to father & son because i think it makes a lot of sense in the broader conceptualization from bruce i mentioned earlier. jason has had a father pretty recently, but batman&robin is a shiny, exciting new thing for him. and that makes sense for a preteen boy! bruce, on the other hand, has had a robin before very recently, but he’s never really had a straight-up son before. he’s having a full-blown paternal awakening that was seeded by dick on accident for years.

Here's the thing about Bridgerton race discourse: people want to treat this show like it's Hamilton when it's actually Ghostbusters (2016) -- the all-women reboot.

Hamilton is a deeply political work of art in which race-conscious casting is the foundation of its thesis: imagining the slave-owning Founding Fathers as relevant/relatable to black and brown US citizens too. That is a very controversial argument, which is why people all across the political spectrum reacted so strongly to it. You can absolutely disagree with Lin-Manuel Miranda's politics, but the liberal patriotism is sincere, deliberate, and wants the audience to engage with his take.

The Melissa McCarthy-Kate McKinnon Ghostbusters said: "Wheeeee! What if we did that fun adventure all over again but with only ladies this time????" It was paper dolls representation at its finest. Despite the hissing of some bottom-feeder misogynists, the plan was clearly: good vibes 4 girls -> box office profit.

The cultural blending on Bridgerton is surface-level because the entire show exists only on the surface. It is a frothy little cotton candy* fantasy that has nothing to do with historical England or colonized India and everything to do with wearing a tiara and a low-cut silk gown while a scowling dark-haired man eats you out to a violin cover of Pitbull.

*I'd say "fairy floss" like the Brits do but this show doesn't care about vocabulary either.

I am not Indian but I am also not white, and as a viewer of color, I firmly believe the inclusion of "accurate" historical attitudes regarding race would be a party foul. Bridgerton's storyworld is incoherent because its writing is inconsistent and its themes are trite, but relegating any touches of India to aesthetic seasoning is at least in keeping with its position as brainless entertainment, not documentary.

Honest exploration of the East India Company's rule in Bombay belongs on the BBC/PBS Masterpiece Theatre alongside Belle (2013) -- it ruins the swoony romance to remind viewers that the Bridgerton family fortune should have been partially earned from enslaved labor, that Kate's homeland was being strip-mined, conscripted, and brutalized in order to fatten Anthony's pockets, that her dead father's caste status should impact her decision to leave Bombay, that as viscountess she would have been treated horribly by the other ladies of the aristocracy, and that Kanthony's mixed-race children would be sneered at despite title and fortune.

specifically pertaining to the sharmas: i think people refine too much on the colonialism angle of this and fail to actually consider the historical record on how colonialism played out in india between the 1600s - 1700s. the views which people ascribe to the english are more attributable to the portuguese at this specific time period. in 1761 (the year charlotte marries george) the english have had longer standing presidencies in bombay and madras, and the presidency established in calcutta is just 4 years old following the battle of plassey in 1757. i can't speak much to the history of madras, but the bombay presidency very much did have some level of racial mingling between rich merchants trading to the company and the EIC within society in the "fort" area of bombay. most of the colonial "occupation" at the time consisted heavily of a) trade and treaties for trade and b) playing off warring local rulers against each other to protect their investments. the relationship was very much one of mutual backscratching and exploitation of lower castes and classes in india, for economic gain.

is it so implausible or impossible to believe that a venal and wealthy indian upper class and caste would jump at the chance to ascend in further wealth and status in society by assimilating into the english aristocracy and buying up land in england as well as at home? they certainly did so when they had the chance in the victorian and edwardian era (wadias, jehangirs & tatas are the ones that come to immediate mind; as also the various kings & other upper caste folks who sent their sons abroad to england to be educated). is it so implausible that the indian upper castes and classes would sign up to colonialism and its plunder, if it gave them a chance to get ahead and further their own wealth? god knows they did and god knows they're the reason india even fell prey to british rule in the first place. is it so implausible to believe that kate's father - a sharma, a brahmin by caste - might participate in that plunder? that mary's family might have participated in that plunder? in that regard, there is very little to choose between a viscount anthony bridgerton, a lady sheffield, and even a clerk in the EIC (which is presumably what kate's father is), except for the degrees of wealth.

i guess, my question is: why do we find it difficult to believe that the elite of a nation might have chosen to plunder and exploit (and racialise!!!) their fellow countrymen and sell them out to a foreign invading power for a quick buck, then choose to assimilate for status?

in other words, i don't actually find a contradiction between bridgerton and historical accuracy as far as its indian cast, colonialism, race and assimilationist dynamics go. its pretty par for the course; and as a piece of historical fiction, i think it admirably does the job of saying something as much about the present as it does about this hypothetical past, bc lbr, what i am describing above is really just the state of india post "independence". its just that instead of needing to revolt in order to achieve equality for me but not for thee, the wealthy upper castes of india get to buy in and cash in fully nearly 200 years earlier; they get to have and eat their cake too. you get macaulay's doctrine of "indian in blood and colour, but english in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect" style devolved & delegated colonialism on steroids. a lot of the indians who have the largest platforms and are most visibly vocal about insisting on the colonialism piece sans caste are largely blinded by this fact because of their own positionality - inevitably their own caste and class lmao.

anyway, i agree that it would not make good fodder for romcom material, because who really wants to hear a dark comedy story about two souls finding love and joining fortunes and investment portfolios so they can continue making mint off the plunder of a continent? no one wants to know the story behind the wealth; whether that wealth is held by a white person, or a non-white person.

where bridgerton's premise begins to falter for me is in two places: a) the sheer primacy and power the british monarchy holds in the year 1761 and the total absence of parliament (or parliament's willingness to follow the queen mother's guidance, in this case - is this a whig parliament? a tory parliament? were the jacobites crushed so thoroughly that we only have a reformer's parliament?); and b) the question of slavery and the black members of the aristocracy when the slave trade was abolished only in 1807 and slavery only in 1833, and therefore, there already was a very strong and ugly ideology of racialisation underpinning the trade (and the ownership of slaves: which most of the aristocracy owned, whether as workers on plantations, or else as pages or servants), though i suppose it doesn't take much for the wealthy to rationalise people of their own shared class being fundamentally different to those of a different class, especially when their social betters have taken the lead in insisting on this.

-Cannoot, Pieter and Ariël Decoster, (2020). "The Abolition of Sex/Gender Registration in the Age of Gender SelfDetermination: An Interdisciplinary, Queer, Feminist and Human Rights Analysis" International Journal of Gender Sexuality and Law, pages 48-49.

i just finished compiling a list of dozens of books (and a few journals/articles) about:

youth liberation

family abolition

social reproductive theory

sexgender theory

education

transformative justice

eugenics

the history of childhood

and more!

from radical, traditional, indie, and university presses, spanning 1884-2024. (most are from the 1960s onward.) i'll be updating it periodically, but for now, my wrist hurts. 😅 someday i'll publish my entire zotero library and then it'll really be over for everyone.

let me know if y'all have any recommendations!

hot

like, this is pretty obvious with mpreg centered on cis men, which is often just the application of common pregnancy-related romance tropes to cis m/m couples (note: im excluding depictions of trans masc pregnancy from my discussion here because i just think its a separate convo with its own nuances, and because i think much of the fic im describing here generally draws from ideas about cis men & women without much consideration for transness). however its ESPECIALLY apparent if you look at common a/b/o tropes in m/m fic. namely, the fact that an a/b/o universe is generally a world in which irl gender essentialism and the resulting sexual power dynamics between (cis) men and (cis) women are able to be applied to relationships exclusively between cis men-- with one partner being dominant, often physically stronger and aggressive, and socially privileged for this (perceived or real) biological superiority, and the other partner (who is generally the one able to bear children) being sexually submissive, weaker, and thus socially disadvantaged or oppressed as a consequence.

furthermore, something EXTRA interesting to me is that in this type of fic these power dynamics are very frequently not just social constructs (the way they are in real life-- pls dont misunderstand me and think im saying women are inherently biologically submissive to men irl or something), but rather almost always depicted as a biological reality within the world of the story. this type of au (at least in m/m dominated circles) offers a way of exploring and depicting what are basically misogynistic tropes without ever naming it as misogyny or involving women at any point. and i'm not trying to make a moral judgement here--i just genuinely find it very interesting that one of the main ways that misogynistic sexual dynamics (and, frequently, the violence resulting from such dynamics) gets explored in fandom spaces is through the development of an alternate biological and social reality in which cis men experience a mirror of those power dynamics, often turned up to 11 via in-universe biological essentialism. it strikes me as a way to engage with irl misogyny and its role within relationships with a certain amount of emotional distance, for better or worse. on one hand, it might be used to explore this imbalance of power without ever needing to depict misogynistic violence happening to female characters, but on the other hand also often offers a way to engage with romantic tropes steeped in irl gender essentialism in a way that is justified within the fiction of the universe and therefore do not need to be considered as critically

a multipart series in the name of methodology.

my aim for these posts is to explain my approach and the general concepts i use when analyzing a romance novel, by ali hazelwood or otherwise. this work is informed by marianne noble, hayden white, and the anthology work dangerous men and adventurous women, edited by jayne ann krentz, among countless other sources. links generally lead to my own posts where i discuss an idea in greater detail.

this is part 1. part 2 and following will be linked when posted.

Generally when i am looking at a romance novel or other romantic fantasy, my main analytic tool is identifying and focusing on what that “fantasy” is. Not the plot, but what the plot is built to explore. It might be a rape fantasy, a redemption fantasy, an eroticization of a specific dynamic, anything. I look at that fantasy through three lenses: stakes, power dynamics, and framing devices. in practice, this could be applied to any work, and i have especially found it fruitful as well for serialized tv drama of the cw classic sort (buffy, gilmore girls, riverdale, etc). i find it most useful for anything with a propulsive sense of drama, reliance on tropes, and genre conventions.

Stakes in a romance novel, communicated early and often, set up what the two(+) main romantic interests want out of each other and in general. What is the reason they can't just start dating, and what is the reason why they want to anyway? This is often where tropes come in; many different combinations of tropes can be employed to create an interesting scenario. IE fake dating can create stakes; why do they need to fake date? What happens if someone finds out it's fake? What's the appeal of smashing them together this way (friends expecting PDA, forced proximity, usually an “only one bed” scenario, etc)? OR best friend’s brother: what would the friend say? Would it ruin the friendship/sibling relationship? An enormous amount of romance novel stakes rely on women worrying about the expectations/feelings of others, and the release of finding that they can actually chase their own pleasure, it can be worth it, and their partner will support/encourage them. This is an especially common emotional thread for Alibooks. the most important part of the analysis for me here is the level of remove in identifying the stakes. a romance author creates a specific situation in order to act out a fantasy. there is some crucial tension they are trying to evoke in putting the characters together in this format. this becomes most interesting, imo, when the the shape of stakes change but that central tension does not. this is where we move to the next phase, the power dynamic between the characters.

Power dynamics are essential to the contemporary romance novel because they create stakes and inform/justify framing devices and most importantly, they are a tension engine. A romance novel’s existence, as explained above, is based on the stakes: why can’t they just be together? Power dynamics are more often than not part of that equation. If he wasn’t her boss- if she wasn’t older- if she wasn’t recently dumped and afraid of getting hurt again - etc. or, the dynamic could be about information: he knows they are online pen pals and she doesn’t. He’s out and his secret boyfriend isnt. She cant communicate enough to be a stable polyamourous partner. Etc. basically, anything that is going to have two characters entering a scene with differing aims, views, understandings of a situation, or each other is going to have more interesting things going on than two characters who agree on everything/communicate well. And in those disagreements are plenty of opportunities for one or the other to have “the upper hand” however temporarily or permanently. IE, in some romances these dynamics shift constantly/along different lines, like jack and rose in titanic. She is rich but bound down and inexperienced; he is poor but skilled and opportunistic. So much tension in their dynamic!!!!! Or, in ali books, there is generally a one-way power dynamic, in which our romantic interest man slowly but carefully stalks his quarry, pins her down, and keeps her. That is a fantasy too. As I have often discussed before, it is the eroticization of real-world power dynamics that makes the most compelling romance novel fodder to me. What does the described predatory mode have to do with real world stalking? What about his behavior makes it erotic instead of creepy? How are women finding ways to cope and process through this reclamation of real experiences? analysis of power dynamics thus must be informed both by the world of the novel (including any worldbuilt social structures) and by the "real world" power dynamics the novel as an object exists within. my best examples of this are my omegaverse and men love orphans posts, describing two crucial alitropes and their applications.

Framing devices, like my interest in frames in general, are the Everything Else. what world, reality, circumstances do these characters live in that makes the stakes and the power dynamics possible? Where are the general balances of power and accepted truths of that world? Is it something recognizable like a hospital or a bookstore? Or an elven world with mediocre worldbuilding? Or a historical period that contains a level of misogyny that makes a buying and selling a wife fantasy more believable? These things are crucial to reaching the romantic fantasy. For a generation built on fanfiction, the shape of the surrounding world is crucial. It makes everything more immersive. But even before that: when harry met sally is good because we know the long arc of their falling in love, and that can only happen if we zoom out. Emma is good because we understand the intricate social world knightley and emma exist within. And of course, the choice of these frames are not Neutral. When an author is building a fey world, what are the common worldbuilding elements they use, and where do those come from? What’s the significance of ali choosing science academia for her romances when science academia is so frequently the site of sexual harassment for young women? similar to power dynamics, framing devices must be considered both in the context of the novel and in the context in which it was published. often this has a lot to do with trends in publishing, as with ali's college sports setting in deep end, which came after hannah grace's college hockey series became superpopular.