WrongBlacksun

Bonus, this is Stray!Jason:

Then Superman flies into Gotham to rescue Bruce and the kids. And everybody is like, "wait a damn minute" because while Dick and Jason are copies of Bruce, they do sort of look like... And Superman is very intimate with them, hugging Dick and crouching down to talk to twelve year old Jason who looks a little wary and then there's Bruce. There's Bruce, who is smiling, not that ghastly social smile or that flirty smile but something real, and he looks so comfortable around Supes and... Did Superman just brush something off Bruce's Wayne face? Immediately rumours start spreading and Gotham has a new reason to loathe Big Blue from Metropolis:

Superman: Don't be afraid, just take my hand and we will get you somewhere safe.

Gothamite, clinging to a lamppost: How about fuck no?

Superman: um, excuse me, sir?

Gothamite: You think I'm letting you fly me out of here? Taking me off to god knows where? So you can what?

Superman: Save you?

Gothamite: Oh, like you "saved" Bruce Wayne? Got him pregnant with two babies you don't pay child support for or even visit? They're beautiful boys but I'm not having no alien baby let alone with some deadbeat baby daddy.

Superman:

Batman, deadpan: I'm mean he's right, Superman. You did me wrong like you did Bruce Wayne. Two babies and no daddy.

Gothamite, angrier now: YOU KNOCKED UP THE BAT TOO?

Batman: He won't even visit us any more. Nightwing and Robin miss him so much.

Superman:

i'd really like to know more about his creative process, since starlin’s jason (after collins’s in batman #408 & #409) felt the most organic to me.

it’s hard to believe that someone who wrote such a nuanced version of jason didn’t have more thoughts about him than just “i hate him, and i hate his bright colors, and batman shouldn’t have a kid sidekick so he should simply die”

I'm gonna hold your hand when I say this- no really. This is a phrase commonly used in a patronising way but I really wish i could be holding your hand through this. It's difficult to process and it took me time, too, but no, Starlin didn't have deep thoughts about Jason and a brilliant creative process. Starlin was a miserable conservative man in the 80s with all the far right ideas you can imagine and he hated Jason with all his guts. He wrote a Jason who cared about women because he treated furious indignation in the face of violence against women as some kind of hysterical overreaction. He wrote Jason killing a rapist because to him that is a morally condemnable offense (well, he left it ambiguous on purpose I'm not saying it's clear, but it was said in an interview that Starlin was of the personal belief that Jason had pushed Felipe). I don't think it even occurred to Starlin, as the kind of man he was in the 80s, that some people would side with the kid killing the rapist over the self-righteous man who was going to let the rapist go free to rape women in his own country because after all, he's being thrown out of the US and that's some kind of punishment at least (and punishing villains is more important than protecting potential victims). He wrote Jason as passively and actively suicidal because #1 he wanted to give Jason reasons to die and #2 he consistently treats suicide and "recklessness" as the morally condemnable consequence of stupidity and/or weakness. He wrote Jason's paradoxical attitude towards his own life because of a complete lack of understanding of the realities behind the concept of recklessness, which accidentally lead to an achingly nuanced and interesting depiction of a traumatized teenager in crisis. Frankly, I'm convinced that he wrote Jason with such abandonment issues and desperation to be loved because he perceived that desire as pathetic. When you look at the way the interpersonal Jason & Bruce versus international joker & bombs conflicts are opposed, it's clear to me that Jason's desire to be a priority for Bruce -even as he keeps prioritising Bruce- is painted as selfish. Surely Jason will understand that there are things that matter more to him right now, and honestly how childish of him to even feel upset that Bruce isn't here for him.

Starlin's Jason is one of the greatest examples of "enemy of my enemy is my friend" I have ever encountered. Starlin's worldview is antithetical to mine. Jason was everything Starlin hated in a character. Therefore Starlin's Jason is one of my favourite Jason characterization.

Also similarly, note that Sheila is very clearly a villain in Starlin's mind, note that Starlin's writing is full of simplified dichotomies because he's a moron, and note that one of the only things we know about Sheila is that she had to leave Gotham because she performed illegal abortions. In Starlin's writing, good guys are super mega cops with guns that respect The Law and care about punishment, and bad guys are bloodthirsty commies out to kill Nixon, evil native americans who bathe in blood to live longer, latino rapists who speak butchered spanish and come from cocaineland, women who perform abortions, and suicidal children who might or might not test positive to HIV and don't listen to patriarchal authority.

That had absolutely never occurred to me before because, ya know, I'm not a racist creep!

There's depths of bigoted thinking that really do feel like alien moon logic to the uninitiated, in large part because the beliefs of these people are just factually wrong - race is not a biological reality, men and women are barely different from each other at all - and so in order to keep believing in the bigotry, they have to keep digging and start believing in more and more not real things that supposedly prop up the first not real thing. That's why all far right roads lead, sooner or later, to nonsensical Satanic Jews controlling the world conspiracy theories. Now lets go back for a hot second and just remember that the first possible non white mother for Jason was Jewish.

Realizing that is what made it click for me that, no, no there was no sympathy for Jason in Starlin, he was just a sack of shit.

It's much the same thing as Dixon being a misogynist homophobic dick weasel and accidentally writing Babs and Dinah as hella gay for each other lol

Because sure, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian were being shamelessly cuddly, but Jin Guangyao—the man who was revealing his supervillain masterplot bit by bit throughout this altercation—spent a portion of that time on his knees in front of Lan Xichen with a tearful, "it's not true baby let me explain," routine—during which you can physically see Lan Xichen yo-yo in real-time between fully buying into jiggy's excuses, then snapping himself out of it with a colorful spectrum of emotions that are definitely in contrast with the Lan family precepts.

What's worse, not only are Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen essentially two of the biggest celebrities of the cultivation world, but most of the cultivators present actively work for Jin Guangyao. That is their boss ugly crying on the floor trying not to fumble the man they are actively holding as their prisoner.

Tim: Shoot

Damian: Father is always in the newspapers and they seem to take interest in the person beside him that isn’t one of us. Why do they spend so much time speaking about a random civilian because they happen to stand inches from our father?

Steph: Let me tell him.

Jason: No fucking way, you can have the next one. And don’t try that shit, there is always a next one.

Tim: Bullshit you both owe me. Breaking my heart *pointing to Steph* and then breaking both my arms *pointing to Jason*. I need this

Dick: What’s going on here?

Cass: Damian wants to why the papers always speculate on random people who stand next to Bruce at events

Duke: Oh come on, please let me tell him.

Damian: Grayson, what is going on?

Dick, taking the biggest calming breath to stop himself from laughing: You see Damian, when two people like each other very much…

Damian, later at the dinner table: Father, I’m concerned

Bruce: What is it, lambchop?

Damian: I was recently informed that you had whorish tendancies in your youth and I’m concerned that has stained our family’s honour in the local media

You know what the last thing Jiang Fengmian, the man who supposedly "loves Wei Wuxian like a son" says to Wei Wuxian ? "A-Ying... look after A-Cheng". That's it. Not a goodbye, not a "take care of yourself", nada. Just instructions. Jiang Cheng gets "A-Cheng. Be well". Wei Wuxian gets told to ensure that

You know who else did pretty much the exact same thing, five pages ago ? Yu Ziyuan, who tells Wei Wuxian that "even in death, you have to keep [Jiang Cheng] safe"

I cannot stress enough that this is fundamentally the same interaction. Sure, Yu Ziyuan is infinitely harsher with her words and more abusive with her actions, but her last actions are an exact replica of her husband's - they comfort Jiang Cheng like parents, because they ARE his parents, and then they order Wei Wuxian to protect their son.

And that's why I'll never buy the idea that Jiang Fengmian loved Wei Wuxian more than he did his own son. He may have LIKED Wei Wuxian more, but that was because he LOVED the man Wei Wuxian reminded him of - his father Wei Changze. And he may not LIKE Jiang Cheng, for being more akin to Madam Yu than Fengmian, but it's undeniable that he loves him

And the real fucked part ? Wei Wuxian KNOWS this. He KNOWS that he's second-best !! He's accepted that !! You know who DOESN'T know that ? Jiang Cheng. Madam Yu. To a certain extent, I believe even Jiang Fengmian himself.

Batman: Have you any leads?

Commissioner Gordon: No, Bats. We wondered, well, the guys wondered whether... It wasn't you was it?

Batman:

Batman: I resent the very idea, the very notion. I spend my waking hours guarding this city and get accused of this? Are you insane, Gordon? Making baseless accusations on the back of what evidence? I'm out of here.

still, i don't mind it, because it is juicy in two aspects:

it shows us his mental state even before he lost his core. for the first and only time in his entire life, he doesn't put his sect above his own desires (because there is no sect! but it still counts, because afterward he makes his whole life's mission to rebirth the Jiang sect for his parents.) by basically giving up, by saying, hey you know what, maybe i should just die. which shows us that he's fucking suicidal already. and also because it clearly demonstrates that he knows (knows...) that wwx is better than him in every way and better capable of protecting jiang yanli. which i think gives him an acceptable excuse to basically allow himself to be killed. (he has miscalculated.)