man, batman #409 is such a trip. ma gun trains an entire school of boys for a museum heist, boys who are all arguably around the same age and same social demographic/circumstances as jason, and jason repeatedly emphasizes how bad the cops and social services are for kids, only for bruce to adopt.....just him.....because he acted like a vigilante and stopped the heist (ideal robin candidate). there isn't even a mention of "bruce wayne" doing something for those other kids, but batman picks jason to ride off into the sunset with him, because jason acted in a way that set him apart from those other boys. even though jason is just like the other boys (poor), he acted like a vigilante would, which allows bruce to instantly project onto him and bring him into the vigilante life. bruce had already started projecting onto jason after learning about catherine and willis, but somehow, the ma gunn heist ends up being an audition for the role, an audition jason didn't know he was even giving. there's this intriguing review by @/cybernex on leagueofcomicgeeks about how lowkey tragic it is that the only way jason can escape his unfortunate circumstances is by turning into a crimefighter, and although i do think bruce & robin!jason's relationship is often so very sweet, it is also a story of how a young boy is ultimately shaped by the destiny his father wrote for him.
but what's interesting to me is how #409 is in conversation with #408. i've seen very few people mention this, but bruce doesn't instantly adopt jason after the tire meet-cute for a few reasons, the biggest reason of all being that he's in a phase where he's really questioning his impact as batman. dick's "death" in the media leads to a public outcry against batman, an outcry that vicki vale supports ("who better than bruce wayne to understand -- and take a stand against -- the violence of a batman? violence which can only lead to more violence.") bruce himself begins to wonder why he returns to crime alley as batman on his parents' anniversary, only to never visit again for the rest of the year. this is why he entrusts ma gun with jason. he outright says she's doing more for crime alley than he is (lol). bruce does not actually have any hubris in #408 and acknowledges that robin might be a dangerous job for little kids (heck, he even thought it was dangerous for dick, who was in his twenties atp).
but #409 undoes all of the developments in #408 through the reveal that ma gunn was secretly a villain this whole time. and this ends up accidentally becoming a sort of,,,,,fate thing for bruce. there's a world's finest issue (#7, i think?) where bruce says he was destined to meet dick and jason, and i think that mentality applies here as well. bruce thought he was going about things the wrong way, but when ma gunn is proven to be a villain and jason once again stumbles into his life at around the same time, it can't be anything else but fate that brought them together. bruce tried to hand jason off to someone else, to do things the non-batman way, but in the end, TO HIM, it feels like a sign that jason is back in batman's life. that they took ma gun down together. combine this with his empty nest syndrome post-dick and the craving he has as an orphan to create bonds and families, it must have all connected in bruce's mind like a puzzle. jason was meant for this life.
BUT THEN. the garzonas case happens, and ethiopia happens, and now bruce....once again begins questioning destiny, questioning himself, wondering if he fated jason to his death or if jason was doomed from the beginning. and then UTRH happens, and the "fate" aspect of it amplifies even more. now the question is - was jason always destined to become the red hood? which is just,,,,,so exemplative of how pattern-brained bruce is. everything has to fit a narrative; if something happens, there must always have been clues that led up to it. everything has got to be a part of a larger puzzle that he doesn't have the pieces to, because he doesn't know how to make sense of his own world without all of it having meaning. he can't fathom chance or acts of randomness. it's all about manifestation and destiny. there has to be a reason for everything, a clue he just hasn't found yet, because even at his grown age, bruce still hasn't made peace with the unknown and that things can just,,,,happen, even to the people we thought it would never happen to.
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