redd-nocturne
redd-nocturne
#1 Nocturna Fan
23K posts
Red. 25. He/itI amn just......... a little Creacherprofile pic by me
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redd-nocturne · 4 days ago
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#dc
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redd-nocturne · 4 days ago
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Jason Lost Days arc.
He should’ve been studying for his SATS
#dc
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redd-nocturne · 4 days ago
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“one day i am gonna grow wings”
Do you ever think about the fact that jason canonically went to heaven?
#dc
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redd-nocturne · 4 days ago
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only good thing to come out of new 52 was this suit
+blue vers
#dc
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redd-nocturne · 4 days ago
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jaybin was so cute in justice unlimited i had to draw him
#dc
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redd-nocturne · 4 days ago
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ideal jason and talia dynamic to me
#dc
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redd-nocturne · 4 days ago
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Ngl still don't really know how to draw this guy
#dc
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redd-nocturne · 10 days ago
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Jason doodle outside coz im prepping for independence day for the kids in my neighborhood :)
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redd-nocturne · 10 days ago
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Just a playing card…
#dc
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redd-nocturne · 17 days ago
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Can never find merch of my boy...
So I'm just doing it myself
#dc
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redd-nocturne · 20 days ago
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New Jersey Psycho
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redd-nocturne · 20 days ago
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Why were the comics running in the 90s so fucking good???
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redd-nocturne · 1 month ago
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Early days ( feat. Nightwing and Jaybin )
#dc
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redd-nocturne · 1 month ago
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I love aus where Harvey basically adopts Jason after he gets revived and i had to work it into the cowboy au🙏🙏😼
#dc
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redd-nocturne · 1 month ago
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I think there's a possibility that there's more to Joshua Terrill's story than the end of The Ray 1994 is telling us.
There is precedent for this from writer Christopher Priest. At the end of Priest's miniseries Triumph, it is revealed that Will MacIntyre's estranged father is dying of lung cancer. However, in the script for this issue, Priest includes this footnote:
[5]oh, and PS— I don't think Jimmy's dying of anything. I'll bet he had the records fixed. It might be fun to see Triumph's dad— who's way sharper than Triumph— again.
There is absolutely nothing in the text or art to suggest this. If I had not read the script, I would have had no clue that this was what the writer had in mind. So bearing in mind that there is precedent in Priest's work for big reveals at the end that remain unquestioned in the text but might not actually be true, I'd like to examine what the intentions might have been for Joshua Terrill's background. I do not have access to the scripts for this series, so I'll be examining the text and the art for clues that there's more to this story than Joshua's notoriously dishonest father is letting on.
In The Ray 1994 #28, the final issue, Nadine Terrill demands from her ex-husband "the truth. The whole truth. The entire truth. The true truth" about Joshua. This is the story that Happy tells her:
It was 1941. I was just a kid myself. And my life changed forever. I met my son. Oh, he tried to hide it--but eventually I figured out what I'd already suspected. My son--who had inherited fantastic powers from me--had somehow...accidentally...stumbled back through time. He became inadvertently responsible for my heroic career. [...] I met my son--and it gave me hope for my future. Knowing such a noble and heroic boy would someday come from my loins--follow in my footsteps--I knew--long before he was born--that Gayle and I would have a son. We named him Joshua. He was born in February of 1946. I thought he'd outgrow the dark hair--I thought he was the one. I was wrong. Joshua developed powers almost immediately. He adored his father--and his father loved him dearly. His powers were so vast--so beyond his own understanding--Gayle and I could barely control him. If for no other reason than to keep an eye on him, I allowed Joshua to fight by my side as the boy wonder called Spitfire-- [...] You see, Nadine--Gayle and I were never divorced. This...tragedy...the loss of your friend--it wasn't the first time. The powers seemed to overwhelm Joshua. Instead of maturing, he regressed. At age eight he had a four-year-old's mentality and logic skills. He was given to fits of terrible rage--he'd run amok and destroy whatever was in his path. I thought I could handle him. Thought he'd outgrow it--that this was just...just an adjustment period. I was horribly wrong. I returned from a mission late one evening. It was Joshua's birthday. He was eight. He was terribly disappointed when I didn't come home in time to celebrate his birthday. He flew into a rage. He unleashed his power. He destroyed the house...he killed his own mother... [...] Nadine--you've got to hear me out. You're right--it's time you knew--everything. I took Joshua to breakfast. I drugged his food. I locked him in a cryogenic chamber. I went home and hung up the Ray's costume forever. It was February, 1954.
I am quoting this in its entirety because the way Happy tells this story is significant. The way he words things repeatedly emphasizes that he wants to make himself look good here, make Nadine pity him, position himself as both hero and victim. We are not meant to consider him a reliable narrator.
There is precedent for this in the series and the miniseries that preceded it. Happy will unload backstories on Ray and leave out important information or just straight up lie.
He has tried to tell Ray that he's from an alien planet. He has claimed that Nadine died after Ray's birth and made a huge deal about how much he suffered losing his wife and then having to give up his son--only for Ray to learn almost immediately afterward that Nadine is alive and well and Happy's told her that their son was stillborn. Given an opportunity to introduce Ray to Nadine, Happy instead tells her that this young man is the pizza delivery guy. There are so many different versions of the circumstances of Ray's birth told throughout both series, because every time Happy changes it up a little.
This man is a chronic liar. What motivation does he have here at the end of the series to suddenly drop this habit and come clean? None, that I can tell. So we have plenty of reason to suspect the truthfulness of this story. The question is what's true and what isn't. We know that Ray time-traveled and was involved in his father's acquiring his powers (that's why Happy mentions thinking Joshua would outgrow his dark hair--the time-traveler son was a redhead). We know that Happy married a woman named Gayle in the 1940s and they had a son called Joshua, who inherited his father's powers. We know that Joshua was frozen by his own father and left like that for over forty years.
But is Joshua really the hopelessly out-of-control, rage-fueled, developmentally-regressed monster that Happy makes him out to be? For the answer to that, we're going to have to rely on what we can observe from Joshua's behavior, thoughts, and memories.
We first meet Joshua when he escapes from the cryogenic chamber after it has been disturbed by looters.
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(The Ray 1994 #17)
He's very hungry, and he looks to specifically his father for sustenence--he's sure his father will feed him, "he always does." No connection of his mother with feeding him, which seems surprising for a child from a typical 1950s household. In fact, his mother doesn't seem to be on his mind at all. Again, surprising. If Happy's account is true, from Joshua's perspective, he would have lost his mother yesterday. He would still be upset about it. Or if he were unaware of her death, surely he would be looking for both parents?
He is very dependent on his father and looks to him for protection and as an example to follow. He feels he has to "deal with" wrongdoers the way his father does. He hates and fears "bad men" and "monsters," which are "evil," and his instictive response is to lash out violently at them. He seems desensitized to this violence. Where did this extreme fear come from?
Shortly afterward, Joshua has a dream (nightmare?) that doubles as a flashback to when he teamed up with his father as Spitfire. This is the only glimpse we get of his past that isn't filtered through Happy's storytelling.
Joshua, who at this point can be no older than seven, has been kidnapped by a supervillain, the very Silver-Age Dr. Spectron, and we learn that his father is "nervous" about him because "He's--a special child. This kind of thing's no good for him." Happy's lashing out at Spectron is comparable to how he responds to perceived dangers to Ray decades later.
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(The Ray 1994 #18)
Joshua seems pretty shaken up as he struggles in Spectron's grip but has enough presence of mind to seize an opportunity to fight back. This obviously isn't his first rodeo. He's even quippy while doing it, like any plucky Silver Age sidekick, and he assures his worried father as they're reunited that he's fine.
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...is he, though? Because his immediate response to seeing Black Condor, his father's old teammate, is to panic about whether this man could be a bad man or a monster. He calms down once his father reassures him that this is a friend, but it's interesting that such was his reaction to an unfamiliar man.
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We also see that there is, at least ostensibly, affection between father and son, and Joshua clearly equates his father with safety and protection.
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This flashback contextualizes Joshua's behavior when he wakes up. He has flown into a farmer's truck, full of corn, and he helps himself to some, using his powers to make it into popcorn, a "trick that his daddy taught him." This would require very deft, deliberate use of his powers, implying that he is capable of a high level of control over them--in this capacity, at least. But a dog startles him, and then police officers start shooting at this unexplained corn thief. Joshua immediately sees nothing but monsters and bad men surrounding him and panics. He is unable to calm down even when the farmer takes pity on him and tries to soothe him. In this fight-or-flight state, he lashes out, possibly killing the farmer and police officers.
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Still on the hunt, Joshua tries asking a cow if it has seen his father. When it knocks him over, he gets angry, bursts into tears, and insists that he wants his father. That's when he runs into Death Masque, the video game villain Ray created who has been masquerading as Happy. Joshua runs to him with absolute trust and gets smacked aside. Death Masque attacks him, triggering Joshua's monster panic, and again the boy lashes out with his full power. As scared as he is, monsters and bad men must always be dealt with.
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(The Ray 1994 #19)
By Christmas, Joshua ends up out in the snow in Colorado, trying to get Santa's attention with elaborate snow sculptures that he has created (with his powers? once again he is capable of fine control over them) and concluding that he must have been bad if Santa isn't bringing him his dad.
A couple, Brett and Leslie, find him freezing beneath a makeshift shelter and are concerned about him. Joshua doesn't see them as a threat. He is specifically uncomfortable with bad men, and, 1950s child that he is, he assumes, because of Brett's long hair, that he must be a woman. So he feels comfortable enough to go with them.
When asked where he lives, he says he lives with his dad. When asked about his mom, he matter-of-factly states that she's dead and in heaven. This doesn't seem likely to be the behavior of a child who lost his mom shortly before being put to sleep for decades. It sounds more like her death occurred long enough ago for him to get used to the idea and for him to think of himself as living with just his dad.
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(The Ray 1994 #20)
Brett and Leslie track down Nadine, who sends them to look for Ray, who might be able to tell them where Joshua's father is, and Joshua uses his powers to fly the couple's van to Philadelphia. Once in Ray's apartment, he confides to Leslie his fears about monsters being there. She reassures him, and after that, he seems to be fine. He's not on high alert around this couple, and as they wait at Ray's condo for his return, Joshua seems stable and relatively happy and content to amuse himself by floating around upside down. He's even in enough control of his faculties to know how to answer the phone. He knows his full name, he knows his father's name, he speaks in clear, full sentences--is he really as age-regressed as Happy claims he is?
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(The Ray 1994 #21)
Joshua's response to meeting a powered-up Ray is to classify him as a "bad man. Very bad man" and blast him. When Ray flies off with him, he lashes out when Ray tries to argue that he can't really be Joshua, and the force of his blast sends Ray flying far. But once Ray introduces himself, Joshua abandons any fear of him as a "very bad man" and latches on to this young man who must know where his father is. As soon as Ray is associated with Joshua's father, he is "safe." Joshua readily helps him fight a supervillain, just as he used to do alongside his father.
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(The Ray 1994 #22)
...that is, until he gets startled and turns to Nadine's friend Sarah for support (women are safe). His monster panic gets triggered and he powers up.
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During the ensuing fight, he is terrified--scared for himself, for Ray--but even from the backseat of Sarah's car as the women try to get him to safety, he's trying to help Ray out with blasts of his powers. Being the sidekick, even when afraid, is apparently deeply ingrained into him. But his attempts to help go wrong, and an increasingly stressed and emotional Joshua ends up inadvertently destroying Nadine's house trying to get Death Masque to surrender Ray.
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(The Ray 1994 #23)
In an incident reminscent of the fight with Dr. Spectron, Death Masque gets Joshua in a chokehold, and he has to be rescued by Ray. Joshua appears none the worse, attack-hugging Ray and asking to see his father.
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He still seems fine as the police question Nadine, as Ray gives him ice cream, as he goes to sleep in Sarah's car and gets put to bed at her house, worn out over his incredibly exhausting day.
But once asleep, he is tormented with nightmares of monsters, brought on the fight with Death Masque that probably also dredged up the Spectron kidnapping and whatever other array of traumas that have contributed to Joshua's fears.
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(The Ray 1994 #27)
And when he wakes up in a strange room (remember, he was put to bed while already asleep), unable to distinguish reality from nightmare, he loses control of his powers and sets the room on fire.
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His father, whom Ray has finally tracked down, comes to intervene, but Joshua in his panic believes that it's Death Masque again. He's not so much angry as he is terrified and alone and heartbroken. He's just eight, and it seems like the whole world is out to get him.
He inadvertently destroys this house too, injuring Nadine and killing Sarah.
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(The Ray 1994 #28)
So he flies off in a blind panic. Ray flies after him, observing that when it comes to his powers, Joshua has "got no inhibitions. No gauge for how much power he's using. No thought about the consequences. He just turns it on."
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And while this is happening, Happy gives Nadine his account of Joshua's history.
We have indeed seen that Joshua is capable of losing control of his powers to the point of inadvertently destroying and killing. But we've also seen that Joshua is not constantly in a state of uncontrollable rage, that he is capable of a high level of control over his powers under certain conditions, and that the loss of his mother does not seem to be a recent event for him. Something about Happy's story isn't adding up.
He claims that he and Gayle "could barely control him" so he had Joshua become his sidekick in order to keep an eye on him. But we see in the flashback that Joshua works well with his father, looks to him for what to do, and can use his powers to do things like pop popcorn, create intricate snow sculptures, and lift an entire van and fly with it from Colorado to Philadelphia.
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Happy claims that Joshua mentally regressed from the age of eight to four and "was given to fits of terrible rage."
But although Joshua's behavior is quite childish and he certainly isn't an unusually mature eight-year-old, it's less clear that his behavior comes from actual mental regression rather than the effects of trauma. We've seen Joshua lash out, but it always comes from a place of extreme fear rather than extreme anger. This fear has consistently characterized this child since we meet him, but Happy doesn't acknowledge it at all.
Look at Joshua's face in this panel. That's not rage. That's fear.
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And note Joshua's face in the panels accompanying Happy's claim that Joshua, enraged by his father's absence on his birthday, destroyed the house and killed his mother. Does this look like a child who just had a fit of rage? Is that meant to be an unsettling smile suggesting that something is very off about this kid, or is there more to this story than we're being told? I think it's significant that we don't see Happy's face when he tells Nadine that Joshua killed his own mother. Because there's a possibility that that's not the truth, or not the whole truth.
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How did that house get destroyed? What really happened to Gayle? I would say that we don't really know. But I do get the impression that Gayle, whatever became of her, hadn't been in Joshua's life for a while by the time he went into that cryogenic chamber. And I doubt that Joshua is the uncontrollable rage monster that Happy paints him as.
I've seen it suggested around here that Joshua could be neurodivergent. I do think that that is very possible. But I don't think that we can definitively reach that conclusion based on the limited amount of information that we have. Joshua may or may not be neurodivergent in some way, but what does seem more definite in his behaviors is a likelihood of PTSD.
Joshua has experienced trauma. He was his father's sidekick from a very young age. He was taught and encouraged to fight with "bad men" and "monsters," who could and did seek to harm him. He was kidnapped at least once. And the person who allowed him to be put in these dangerous positions was his own father, whom he trusted and looked to for protection. Even by the standards of a genre of story in which it's accepted that teenagers regularly function as basically child-soldiers, Joshua's being Spitfire when he was younger than eight is excessively young and more than he could be expected to handle.
Signs of PTSD in children can include the following:
intense anxiety when separated from family members or around strangers
disturbances in sleep (unable to fall or stay asleep)
feeling jittery, “on edge” or “on guard”
easily startled, especially by sounds or sudden movements
excessive or illogical irritability
aggressive (or even violent) attacks on others
“flashbacks” (feeling like the traumatic experience is happening again; may include seeing or hearing parts of the event that are not really occurring)
inability to distinguish reality from thoughts or dreams
regressive behaviors (acting younger than their age)
These signs seem to be consistent with behaviors that Joshua displays, especially his nightmares, struggles to distinguish reality from dreams, lashing out when he feels threatened, and separation anxiety.
My guess would be that what actually happened with Joshua was that Happy, eager to train the son he believed would become a great hero to follow in his footsteps, took on Joshua as a sidekick very early in life. This was too much for a child of that age, and Joshua developed PTSD. Happy interpreted this as something being wrong with his child developmentally and, instead of seeking help for him, chose to discard Joshua as a failed effort. Perhaps he really did feel out of his depth handling his son and made an extremely questionable choice out of desperation. Perhaps it was a coldly practical decision. Perhaps some of both. And it's unclear what exactly happened surrounding Gayle. But whatever the case, Joshua is a severely traumatized child who needed help and failed to receive it from the one person who should have been looking out for him the most.
The last glimpse we get of Joshua is him sleeping peacefully in Ray's bed at the condo after Gaelon rescues him from drowning. He is presumably still depowered after expending all that energy. And he's in a place where he has previously felt safe, in the care of his brother, whom he also is comfortable around. We don't find out what happens to him, but since the note we leave him on is one of peace and rest, there's hope that he can eventually find healing.
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And maybe some answers about what really happened the night of his eighth birthday.
Maybe, like Ray, he might abruptly discover someday that his mom has been alive this whole time.
We have no way of knowing for sure. Short of interviewing Priest and asking point-blank.
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redd-nocturne · 2 months ago
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just start running.. ok this advice won't help
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saw this in pinterest & asked myself “why not?”
drew this in 30 min
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redd-nocturne · 2 months ago
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#dc
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