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rozaceous · 12 hours ago

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i feel like people forget that sometimes characters in fic are written like that because it's a reflection of real life.

people have sex without setting boundaries. people have unprotected sex without talking about their sexual histories or producing recent sti tests. people play with kink without discussing it ahead of time or establishing a safeword. they have anal without 'enough' prep or lube—they may even prefer it like that.

and none of this is really a fantasy. it's all pretty normal. you can feel that it's inappropriately normalised, and you'd probably be right! but it is normalised: one study found that 58% of female undergraduate students on the campus studied had been choked during sex. 20% of those students said that they'd never been asked if it was ok; another 30% said they'd only sometimes been asked if they consented. fully half! (non-paywalled journal article on choking during sex here, including these numbers.) despite a rise in stis of all sorts, condom use is declining. (pdf link to the full text of this study about declining condom use in the us; aidsmap article about an australian study with similar results.)

even when people do talk about things—sex or anything else—they communicate imperfectly. 'yeah, but don't go too far' is consenting and setting a boundary, and also relying that the person you're talking to has the same metric for 'too far' that you do. for some people, 'the trash needs to go out' is a neutral, factual observation; for others, it's a request that the person they're speaking to take out the trash.

even when people understand each other perfectly, people react unpredictably to things sometimes! we behave irrationally! people laugh uncontrollably at funerals, or get angry at the straw that broke their back rather than the enormous load they were already carrying. they get scared and lash out at people trying to help them. when hurt, most people do not instinctively reach for therapy-approved grounding exercises and 'i feel' statements.

pretty much any bad choice that characters could conceivably make is a choice that people make in real life, on purpose, all the time. people do things that can have catastrophic, life-changing effects because it felt like a good idea at the time, or they're leaning into the vibe, or they just didn't think about it all that much, or an infinite number of other reasons.

fiction isn't intended as a guide on the best, safest, and most responsible ways to live your life, and fanfic isn't any different. it's not a narrative flaw to let characters do things that are messy or harmful or downright stupid—it's a reflection of what people are actually like, and not something that authors should feel they have to apologise for.

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rozaceous · 10 days ago

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in light of the new jaybin mini-series, i do want to say: i'd been doing a deep dive of jason's post-crisis robin run recently and it's crazy how wrong the modern bat editorial is about...pretty much everything. which is a dead horse to beat atp, i know, and most fans are in agreement that bruce did make mistakes with him, but i think it's very illuminating to examine exactly what those mistakes were and how they make for a far more compelling narrative than the modern one.

in batman #410, bruce reveals he's been hiding the news of willis' death from jason for over six months. alfred immediately points out the hypocrisy of bruce wanting to protect jason from the truth when he's already made jason robin (a dangerous gig), to which bruce says jason would've grown up to be a criminal if not for his intervention. bruce repeats this excuse again later, when jason meets jim gordon for the first time.

Batman #410 [the use of double quotes for "child" in that first panel is so foul btw]

more pressingly, alfred notes that bruce mentions dick way too much, which might actually hinder jason's journey towards self-determination and growth. jason cannot forge an identity for himself, because bruce is too busy forging one for him - an identity that's identical to dick's. bruce does not have any justification for this accusation the way he does for the previous one. he doesn't say anything in response to alfred's concern.

later, bruce initially pretends to rebuke jason for recklessly offering himself up as a hostage to protect an innocent woman, only to fake-out and praise him for his actions. what's more, he says this is exactly what dick would've done too.

if jason is indeed reckless, as bruce will later go on to say many, many times throughout batcomics, a part of that blame is on him for praising this behavior. jason swapped places with an innocent woman because it's exactly what robin would've done. he was doing his job! what bruce (and dc) often point out as impulsive, reckless behavior, is jason doing exactly what he was trained and expected to do. and even when bruce had the chance to correct this behavior (if it was that concerning), he did not. rather, he praised it.

when jason actually finds out about willis, he spends the whole day in bed, sulking. later, on patrol, jason lashes out at two face for killing his father, and bruce and jason have their first real fight. note what bruce says, specifically the part about taking jason into his world, because that'll be important later.

anyway, jason rightfully confronts bruce about this whole "trust" thing, because he's hurt that bruce would hide the truth about willis from him. nevertheless, jason immediately regrets his behavior, even though, again, we are very much talking about the guy who killed his dad. jason's behavior (both the uncontrollable rage and the remorse i guess) are identical to how bruce and dick themselves were with joe chill and the zuccos. being mad at the people who orphaned you is a time-honored batman and robin tradition and not a trait exclusive to jason.

[jason does not display any of this supposed rage in batman #412, #413 and #415. he wasn't in #414, because this is when starlin starts to take over, and starlin does not like robin.]

in #415, jason accidentally overdoses scarecrow with his own feargas and brings him back to the cave for a cure. not the smartest move, admittedly, but jason doesn't do it out of rage, just....impulsively. he even notes that he feels bad for scarecrow, which is a far cry from anger and rage. but when it comes to discussing jason's impulsiveness, look at what bruce says:

more than jason's safety, bruce seems concerned about jason leaving him and not needing him. of course, he does note that he doesn't want jason taking unnecessary risks, but alfred and bruce are mostly in awe of jason's skills here. also, bringing scarecrow and his papers back so alfred could fix him was a smart thing to do. so, again, if this was a behavior that needed to be fixed, bruce doesn't exactly correct it. his main concern during this incident seems to be over jason outgrowing him. in the next issue, bruce once again notes that jason is reckless, swinging in to stop a drug bust without having enough evidence, but not only does he not rebuke jason, he reveals the real reason why he took jason in. it's not flattering.

the central hypocrisy of jason's robin run seems to be that bruce fired dick but took on another kid. starlin answers this by revealing that bruce took jason on due to his own selfishness and longing to fill the absence left by dick. it was NOT jason's anger, or his situation or even his trauma, but bruce's empty nest syndrome that led to jason becoming robin! and when jason displayed minor behavioral issues, bruce thought it would sort itself out because dick always sorted himself out. dick was able to function as a partner, and a partner is fundamentally what bruce needed.

i get that this is all starting to sound a little harsh towards bruce, so let's pivot to mike w barr's run on TEC for a second. my beginning and my probably end (detective comics #574) deals with bruce's panic over jason, who is hospitalized after mad hatter shoots him four times. a majority of the action in this issue takes place in leslie's clinic, where leslie confronts bruce about endangering jason, and bruce once again talks about giving jason an outlet for his rage.

leslie challenges him on this, but not nearly hard enough imo. she accuses him of doing it for himself, but bruce says he doesn't want jason to grow up lonely and angry (as he was) and that batman is a calling, which leslie begrudgingly accepts. i agree with leslie's initial assessment (that bruce was doing it for himself), because at this point, we are still in february of 1987, which means the garzonas case hasn't happened yet. which means that, canonically, jason has lost his temper only once until now. i don't trust bruce's excuses at all here, and i feel validated in my theory, because six months later, son of the demon drops, and barr explores bruce's selfishness a lot better there.

SOTD is famously the storyline where bruce and talia get married, and their union results in talia's pregnancy. bruce is very, very happy about this baby, and for a while, everything is blissful, but bruce begins acting out, paranoid and desperate about losing the one thing he's always wanted -- a family.

in the end, talia recognizes that there's no way to balance being bruce with being batman, and, in recognition that the world needs batman more, lies about losing the baby. barr posits that batman is so desperate for a family that he becomes reckless, delirious, overprotective, more risk-averse.

even though SOTD is an elseworlds story, i find it to be a fascinating insight into mainline bruce's motivations for taking on robin, specifically jason. robin is bruce's way of having it both ways -- being batman and having a family, a child. with robin, he can have both. a partner on the field, someone who is capable of looking out for themselves and yet: someone who is still a child, who can be cared for and nurtured the way bruce wants to. batman, for all his attempts to push people away, wants a family. wants allies. wants a child, even if he knows how dangerous it is -- perhaps because of his own lost childhood. even in UTH (the book that deals with jason's "inevitable" fate re: becoming red hood the most), the omniscient narrator acknowledges that bruce didn't just take jason in to keep him from going down the wrong path; he did it because he liked jason. time and time again, bruce wants to take a child in, if only to fulfill his own desire to have a family, but ultimately, he's punished for it, because, like barr established, maybe it isn't possible to have both. maybe it's a huge risk.

[new teen titans #55 - sorry for the shitty quality, idk why tumblr is acting up].

note the rhetoric bruce uses here, saying partners slow you down, make you worry about them rather than doing your job. the way bruce talks about himself here is exactly how bruce behaved in son of the demon, where he was about to have a child of his own. robin was supposed to be his way of having both. if he could do it with dick, surely he could do it with jason. maybe this time he could actually succeed! (succeed = jason not leaving like dick did? we've already established in canon that the temper thing is something bruce exaggerated, so what was his end goal here? he clearly thinks dick is perfect, so he can't have wanted jason to be the newer, improved version of dick. the only interpretation i arrive at is that he doesn't want to be alone, and jason is supposed to help with that for as long as he possibly can).

either way, he obviously fails here too, maybe even more than he did with dick. where dick got to grow out of robin, find the titans and establish meaningful relationships with people outside of batman, batman is pretty much all jason has. it's established across two separate series, batman annual #12 and the new teen titans, that jason is a pretty sheltered kid with like,,,,no friends.

what's more, bruce is actively displeased when jason isn't in gotham for,,,,reasons i can't even fathom, like girl what could you possibly need this 13-year-old in town for that you can't even let him hang out with his older brothers' friends for a weekend? he was hanging out with his older brothers' friends, and even then, he had to sneak out to do it the second time. why?

my #theory is, again, that he didn't want jason to leave so "soon" like dick did. but in trying to prevent the incident with dick from happening all over again, he creates A Bigger Incident with jason. jason is overly attached to him now, and we all see how that plays out in under the red hood, where jason tearfully admits that he thought him getting hurt would be bruce's last straw. why would he think that? well. his behavior only makes sense if we go with the interpretation that he gave away his whole life to be with bruce, and it was his assumption that he and bruce were devoted to each other completely because they had nothing else other than the life they shared together. they had nothing else except each other. even with the occasional dick mentions/appearances, it was just bruce and jason for the longest time ever (dick's shadow lingers over their relationship, though, [princess diana voice] there were three of us in that relationship). bruce didn't even date all that much like he did in pre-crisis! this attachment would also tie in very well to jason's panic-induced search for his birth mother. since evidence indicates that jason believed robin to be the only thing he had, he was pissed/panicked when bruce "took" it away.

additionally, i don't think i have to even mention this, but jason's robin run takes a rapid plunge into darkness. he went from fighting mimes who defaced church bells to fighting serial killers and rapists who targeted vulnerable women (and this is excluding barr's run, which was even more lighthearted in tone). i think jason's run is the first time we EVER see a robin come across a suicide victim's body. robin was the lighthearted, goofy sidekick. what's he doing on a rape case?

if i were writing jason's robin run, i'd be so fascinated to see how the "world" these characters lived in turned darker in real time, starting bright and ending bleak. jason is hope snuffed out. jason was the robin who SAW a rapist threaten his victim on the phone....and get away with it! if robin was meant to represent hope, the more interesting conclusion i draw from jason's robin run is that this is a world where there's no place for hope anymore. this is a world that rejected hope, that voted for hope to die. it's the perfect way to connect his life as robin to his rebirth as red hood too. hope killed him; vengeance is all he thinks he has left (and for good reason!). it's the only thing that his world seems to respond to anymore.

#really interesting #dc meta #bbygirl

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