this is the stupidest crossover possible but I want Tim to make House his doctor
yes that House
why? He needs someone who is very good, will not give up or send Tim out to a different specialist just because his medical condition is difficult, will not be overly concerned about the danger Tim puts himself in, and will lie on Tim's medical records AND to Batman/Bruce Wayne/all of the Bats without hesitation or fear.
House is and will do all of those things without hesitation. He has no shame, no boundaries, he WILL get into a public fight with Bruce Wayne if it means keeping that man out of his patient's (and House's) business. He will help Tim lie to and gaslight the rest of his family without hesitation.
in exchange, Tim is his favorite patient. Not because they get along, necessarily, Tim is a know-it-all little shit and they constantly bicker and House hates how practically every facet of Tim's existence is a lie (and Tim thinks House is a smug know-it-all jackass who is needlessly cruel and callous bc he thinks the world owes him and never delivers just bc he's in pain, news flash a lot of people are in pain and manage not to be assholes) BUT, 1, Tim brings him really interesting cases and problems, and 2, Tim NEVER lies to House about his medical conditions or what he was doing when they happened.
He lies about literally almost everything else under the sun TO everyone else, but he is 100% completely upfront and honest about his medical history and what is going on with him with House.
admittedly it takes a while for House to realize Tim ISN'T lying to him because some of the shit he says is completely insane ("the vigilante thing is pretty obvious but what do you MEAN you got the Apocalypse virus TWICE, AND SURVIVED, AS A FOURTEEN-FIFTEEN YEAR OLD")
but once he realizes Tim doesn't ever lie to him, he becomes House's favorite patient because at least TIM gives him all of the data he needs as best he's able the moment he asks. At least House doesn't have to waste his time following up on bogus information or figuring out the truth, he can just get right into the meat of the medical issue at hand.
also it's so fun to lie directly to Batman's face, know the man knows, and know he can't do anything about it
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Red Hood Characterization
This is really long so I'm putting a cut here, I've been thinking about Jason Todd's character motivations and the question of whether or not his actions are based in a Moral Code (I don't think so, not to say he's without any morality) and I talk about that in more depth here.
I saw someone say on here that Titans: Beast World: Gotham City was some of the best Jason Todd internal writing they'd seen in a while, and I've been a Red Hood fan for 8 years or so now? pretty much since I read comics for the first time, so I went and checked out and I thought it was good! The way the person I saw talking about it as if it was rare and unusual made me wonder though, because as well-written as i thought his stances on crime were, there wasn't really anything in it that went against the way I conceptualize Jason?
This kinda plays into a larger question I've been thinking about for a while with Jason though, which is that, do people think that the killing is part of a fundamental worldview that motivates him a la batman, and that worldview is the reason he does the things he does?? Because 8 years ago i was a middle schooler engaging with fiction on the level that a middle schooler does, so I simply did not put much thought into it beyond "poor guy :(" but ever since I actually started trying to understand consistent characterization, I don't really see Jason as someone who's motivated by a moral code in his actions the way batman or superman is!
tbh my personal read is that he's a very socially-motivated guy, his actions from resurrection to his Joker-Batman ultimatum in utrh always seemed to me like every choice made leading up to his identity reveal was either a. to give him the leverage and skill necessary to pull off his identity reveal successfully, or b. to twist the knife that little bit more when he does let Bruce find out who he is. Like iirc there's a Judd Winick tweet like "yeah tldr he chose Red Hood as his identity because it's the lowest blow he could think of." And I think that's awesome, I think character motivations rooted so deeply in character's relationships and emotions are really fun to read! I also think it's where the stagnation/flatness of his character comes from in certain comics, because if his main motivation is one event in one relationship that passes, and he is not particularly attached to anything in his life or the world by the time that comes to pass, it's a little harder to come up with a direction to go with the character after that, because there isn't much of a direction that aligns with something the character would reasonably want? But I do think solving this by saying "all of the morally-off emotionally driven cruelty he did on his way to spite Batman was actually reflective of his own version of Batman's stance that's exactly the same except he thinks it's GOOD to kill people" isn't ideal. To be fully honest, it seems to me like he never particularly cared one way or the other about killing people to "clean Gotham of crime," he just did everything he could to get the power necessary to pull off his personal plans, and took out any particularly heinous people he encountered along the way (like in Lost Days.) Not to say I think the fact he killed people keeps him up at night anymore than everything else in his life events, I just never really thought he was out there wholeheartedly kneecapping some dude selling weed or random guy robbing a tv store for justice.
Looping wayyy back to my question, Is this (^) contradictory to the way he's written/the overall average perception of the character? Because like I enjoyed his writing in Beast World i have zero significant issue with anything there, I just didn't believe it would be a hot take, like yeah, that is Jason. It's been a while since I've read utrh and lost days, but I don't think my takeaway directly contradicts either of those too bad iirc. Idk all this to say I think Jason killing and being alright with killing is an obvious and objective fact, but i guess i've always seen it as more of a practical tactic than a moral belief, and I think taking the actions made during the lowest points of a character's life where he is obsessively focused on this ONEEEE thing and trying to apply it as a Motivating Stance to everything he's done after that, doesn't really follow logically for me.
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ok winter...it's my turn now: jaykyle. i am intrigued, and i'd like to know as much as is feasible to tell me. (it's killing me to send something this open-ended but i feel like i don't actually know enough about them to be more specific.)
TEEHEE <3333 SOOOO GLAD YOU ASKED BECAUSE I CARE THEM <33
jaykyle is a ship between two of my favorite dc characters, jason todd and kyle rayner. they're both sooo fascinating on their own AND as a pairing and I just <3333 this is gonna get long because 1) they both have very long and complicated stories that's gonna take a bit to unpack and 2) I love them <33 and I love to talk about them <333 a bit of forewarning, but comics storylines are RIDICULOUSLY complicated and pretty much every single character has more origins, timelines, and personalities than you can shake a stick at. in the comics fandom we take marie kondo's words to heart because if we tried to stick to What Canon Says, we would be running in circles all day because everything contradicts itself. everything is canon and nothing is canon and if it doesn't spark joy, it isn't true <3 I'll explain everything to the best of my ability but it's gonna get Real Complicated Real Fast
tw for death (child and otherwise)
jason todd (playlist) is part of the batfam (group of vigilantes associated with batman) and he's also part of the wayne family (by adoption). I looked everywhere for the panels to show how he was introduced because it's objectively the funniest way to introduce any character but alas, they have eluded me so I'll just tell you: he grew up in the poorer parts of gotham city with his parents, catherine and willis todd. willis got caught up in two-face's gang (because gotham city as a whole has a trend of eating its people alive/forcing them to do crime because they're desperate and have no choice etc etc) and ended up getting killed because of it, and catherine died of an illness, leaving jason to fend for himself on the streets.* he is brought into the story by jacking the tires off the BATMOBILE, and getting caught by batman himself. in response to this he hits batman with a tire iron, calls him a big boob, and runs away (and in the process making bruce laugh out loud in the same place his parents died which makes me SOO OUGHOUGHOUGHOUGH)
*catherine and willis both loved jason very much, but recent comics have portrayed willis as abusive/catherine as neglectful, which doesn't spark joy for me personally so I tend to ignore those ones and stick to the others where they were genuinely loving parents who fell on hard times.
the original robin, dick grayson, recently moved on from the mantle and went to live somewhere else,* so bruce adopted jason and started training him as the new robin. he was a very bright, very loving boy who enthusiastically went to school and read books and loved bruce so so much and bruce loved him because that was his KID.**
*I can't remember if he went to live with the titans or went to gotham's sister city, bludhaven; but in any case he ends up in bludhaven eventually and operates there as nightwing
**In more recent comics, jason's robin days are portrayed as him being brash and violent (new drinking game: take a shot every time a comic describes robin jason as "angry" or "reckless" smfh) and of course while being a vigilante involves violence, and being a well-rounded character, jason did indeed have moments of anger, I strongly dislike this way of thinking because it takes so much away from his character and you'll see what I mean by that in a minute.
however, the happy days weren't gonna last. jason discovered that catherine todd wasn't his biological mother, and he had found some evidence pointing to who his birth mother was. (I think it was a birth certificate that was partially damaged so he couldn't see the whole name but it's been a while since I've read the comic where that happens so don't quote me on that) but regardless of how he found out, jason set out to find his real mother. he'd narrowed down the list of possible mothers to a few different women, so he found them each in turn and ruled them out as he went. he ran away from home to go on his little self-discovery mission, and the only reason bruce didn't go after him was because the joker had a big scheme with a nuclear missile that kinda took precedence. but by pure happenstance, they ran into each other and decided to work together for both their goals (stopping joker AND finding jason's mom). eventually jason and bruce narrowed the list down to one woman: sheila haywood. they travelled to ethiopia to find her, and jason actually did, but moments after meeting her, sheila betrayed him and handed him over to the joker, who proceeded to beat jason within an inch of his life with a crowbar while sheila watched.
(batman: a death in the family)
he then tied up sheila and left them both to die in the warehouse because he rigged it with a bomb. jason, despite being betrayed by her literally minutes before, stopped to untie her to get her out instead of saving himself. but the bomb went off with them both inside, just in time for batman (who had been frantically rushing to the warehouse as soon as he heard that jason had been captured) to see the explosion <3
(batman: a death in the family)
and the thing that REALLY fucks me up is that even after everything she did to him, jason still used himself as a human shield to try and protect sheila. these two panels have literally caused me lasting damage
(batman: a death in the family)
this is also why the narrative of jason being reckless makes me so angry. he didn't die because he was a reckless idiot who rushed into danger without a thought, he died because he tried to save a woman who nearly got him killed. he died shielding her with his own body even though she betrayed him literally a few minutes earlier. some comic writers have rewritten the scene to take out sheila entirely, but that takes away a huge part of the story!!!! jason didn't die because he was reckless!! he died because he was trying to save someone!!!! I will literally fight people on that to my grave smh
bruce brought jason's body back to gotham and buried him, and was never really the same after that (but that's a topic for another ramble because this is about THE BOY <3)
this is where things get a little trippy <3 first thing you gotta know about comic books is that death is RARELY permanent. the exact details are lost on me since I tend to avoid the big crisis events (and the headache they give me) but basically superboy-prime punches the fabric of the universe and kinda .. breaks some things. and jason wakes up in his coffin (slightly zombified), six feet underground. after clawing his way out of his own fucking grave, jason gets hit by a fucking CAR and is then taken in by talia al ghul (one of bruce's past lovers, daughter of ra's al ghul [leader of the league of assassins]). talia put jason in something called a lazarus pit, which is basically a pool of green bubbly goo that can resurrect someone (ra's al ghul is hundreds of years old and keeps himself alive with the pits). jason came fully back to life and stayed with talia for a time, during which he travelled the world to be trained by some of the best/most notorious fighters and assassins all over the globe. at this point, he'd been dead for quite a while (a year AT LEAST) and so when he finds out that the joker is still fucking ALIVE, it's .... a shock, to say the least. it's a very complicated issue because batman's deepest-rooted rule is to Never Kill, and there were a lot of underlying circumstances preventing him from killing the joker right after jason's death (despite really, really wanting to) but the thing is. the joker just keeps killing and hurting people, and he gets put in arkham asylum, and escapes and kills more people, then gets put in arkham again, and it's just a vicious cycle where the joker just keeps hurting more and more people. and like. jason got murdered by the joker and the guy is still fucking alive and murdering more people. so he heads off to gotham with a huge plan to confront bruce and make him choose once and for all: kill the joker, or let jason die. this whole arc is my very favorite comic book of all time, batman: under the red hood <333 basically jason becomes a crime boss called red hood (which was the joker's old alias before he became...well, the joker) and plots CIRCLES around bruce, joker, and the other crime bosses. they're literally his pawns the entire time <3 but this all comes to a head when jason traps batman, the joker, and himself in a room where he finally reveals his identity to batman and gives him an ultimatum: kill the joker, or kill him. he had the whole place rigged with explosives so that no matter what bruce chose, they would still blow up (as a form of insurance? as a form of suicide? who knows!)
I'd like to point out the obvious and say that jason was NOT in a great state of mind during this whole thing. like. this post highlights it very well imo, but tl:dr jason didn't really...make a plan for after the showdown. it was clear that he had a single goal in mind, which was facing off with bruce and the joker once and for all, and it was also clear how it would end because he knew deep down that bruce would never kill the joker. so he knew he would die going into it but he didn't really care. he did in fact die at the end of under the red hood, since he was originally meant to be a one-off character, but he was so popular that dc sorta erased his death at the end of utrh and established him as a main batfam player.
jason's post-resurrection characterization is REALLY inconsistent, but really at his core, he's deeply traumatized and angry, and his driving motivation is to save gotham in what he deems is the "right" way: killing criminals so that they're no longer a problem. which, considering how many times supervillains break out of arkham and wreak havoc, isn't really that far of a stretch. but because of batman's firm moral stance on killing, the two have a very .... complicated relationship. but regardless jason has one of the coolest designs in the entire batfam in my opinion <3
(batman: three jokers)
(red hood and the outlaws) (I hate this comic for what it did to the other characters but the art was pretty at least)
sometimes he's drawn with a white streak in his hair (a side effect of the lazarus pit) which is one of my FAVORITE looks for him <33 and he's a regular contender for my icon because he's my blorbo bingus blob boy <3333
BUT ANYWAY <333 ON TO KYLE <333
disclaimer: I haven't been reading kyle's comics as long as I have jason's (jason was my gateway character who first got me into comics in the first place so I had a lot more time to really dig into his comics and characterization) and there's a lot of info about each character that's kind of...absorbed over time. because there's so many different stories and comics about each character, it's hard to find everything they appear in, and since I haven't been reading kyle for as long, I don't consider myself an expert on him in any way but I'll do my best to talk about him because he's my favorite green lantern <3
(playlist) in order to explain kyle, first I need to explain hal jordan. he's the Original green lantern (meaning when you think of the dc superhero green lantern, he's probably the one who comes to mind despite there being more lanterns than I can count. he's the most well-known by FAR) but basically, the green lanterns are an intergalactic military/police force led by the guardians (a bunch of really tiny blue guys). they use green power rings that are fueled by willpower, and so only someone with a lot of willpower (specifically, the will to "overcome great fear") can be a green lantern. (there's a ring for every color on the spectrum, but that's another ramble for another day). hal jordan had been losing faith in the lantern corps for a long time, but the last straw was when his hometown, coast city, was destroyed. hal basically went into a massive grief spiral and tried to bring back the entire city and didn't have enough power to do that, so he took on the name parallax and murdered pretty much the entire corps, and most of the guardians to absorb the main green power source to get enough power to Resurrect The City. but one guardian managed to escape to earth, where he found kyle rayner and gave him the last green power ring.
being practically the only green lantern left, kyle had to defeat parallax and restore the corps practically by himself. and the thing about kyle is that he's the GOOFIEST guy on the planet (affectionate). upon finding out that he's now a superhero he proceeds to immediately go tell his ex-girlfriend about it (alex <333) and they have a photoshoot of him in his suit. I fucking love them <333
but alas!!! happy days don't last <3 kyle leaves alex alone for literally only a few minutes to go be a hero, and while he's gone, one of green lantern's biggest enemies breaks into her apartment and murders her. kyle comes back to find her dead body stuffed inside the fridge (fun fact: that's actually where the term "fridging" came from <3) and he proceeds to. torture and almost kill the guy who did it. we love an unhinged icon <3
(green lantern #55)
it's been a while since I've read his origin comic, but kyle eventually defeats parallax. further down the line, he becomes a white lantern (mega-powerful because it has the powers of all the colors in the spectrum, not just green) and in my personal favorite comic, also becomes ion (basically the living embodiment of green lantern power. also basically a god) and tbh it's his BEST look of all time
(ion: guardian of the universe)
like I said, I don't really have as clear of an idea of kyle's timeline since there's a few gaps in my reading, but the essentials is that he literally can't keep a girlfriend because they keep dying, and he continuously gets the power of a literal god and is so humble and heroic about it that it never goes to his head. but he also consistently tortures and kills without really showing any remorse whatsoever <33 he has the range <33
BUT. AT LAST. WE GET TO JAYKYLE. THE THING YOU ASKED ABOUT IN THE FIRST PLACE. there's only ONE comic that I know of where they actually interact on-panel, and that's countdown presents: the search for ray palmer. it's tied in with countdown to final crisis, which is one of the biggest dc events of all time, and I haven't read it and probably never will because the big crises always give me SUCH a headache to try and understand </3 but I HAVE read search for ray palmer because <3 of them <3
essentially it's a story where the atom (ray palmer) gets lost in the multiverse and so 3 people who are already kind of...Outside the Mainstream Timeline embark on a multiverse journey to find him. those 3 people? jason todd, kyle rayner, and donna troy. jason is only alive because the timeline shattered, kyle was literally a time-and-reality-altering god not just once, but multiple times, and donna troy has also died and come back and like. is the only comics character with Self Awareness (remember when I said every comic book character has a gazillion different origins and reboots? donna remembers ALL of them <3) and so all three of them are affectionately referred to as "cosmic mistakes" because. they're literally irregularities in the cosmic timestream. and I love them for it <3
the reason I'm a jaykyle truther is because. they're so fucking funny in that comic. they argue in pretty much every single panel they share, but their internal monologues are....very, very homoeretic.
(kyle, about jason) (countdown: search for ray palmer: wildstorm)
(jason, about kyle) (countdown to final crisis #33)
and honestly, it's about how fucked up they would be together. they would tear each other apart and also tear apart everyone else and it would be a horrible time for everyone involved <3 there are ships for cute cuddles and then there are ships for fucking killing each other and jaykyle is the second one <3333
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