#right after aditf

[batbaffle]

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

On the subject of gotham county line and batman noel and so on and so forth it’s pretty frustrating (from a watsonian pov) that anytime Bruce hallucinates Jason being loving/ caring/helpful/compassionate towards him it’s always as robin and never as his current self

[boyfridged]

by all means gotham knights 45 is one of the most disturbing batman stories and while i appreciate it for bruce's partial self-awareness, the guilt complex and ugly grief, the way the whole family engages in victim-blaming, their dismissive attitude when it comes to jason's suffering, the fact that they treat the whole thing as nuance or an attack at their egos, truly makes me surprised that some read it as a story about bruce's sensitivity. it's a good batman story if you want jason whump maybe. or if you want to talk of bruce's hypocrisy. but this is not what the intention of the writer probably was. what the writer wanted was for the reader to buy into the "jason-was-doomed-from-the-start" narrative that for the most part absolves bruce of any fault. it wants you to believe that bruce's good intentions erase the blatant classism of both the editorial and in-universe character logic. this is why when bruce reiterates the words from dc #574 about wanting the best for jason but instead killing him, this time it lands flat. "i allowed him to have hope... and it killed him." is what bruce says, suggesting that jay was devoid of it without him, and once again enforcing the idea that his background made him cynical and damned, waiting for a savior. but that's just not true. it undermines the very premise of jason's robin run and aditf itself. and alfred saying that jason had a father but what he needed was a mother, which within the context of the whole narrative the reader is supposed to believe too- what a joke. i just can't help but think that gk #45 was simply written with ill intent and without taking itself seriously. it briefly recognises the questionable nature of the sidekick institution- especially in jay's case, just to sneer at jason's pain the next moment. it's all so bitter and disingenuous.

[laufire]

the thing about dick and jason's dynamic pre-aditf is easy to read into because the writers put little to no effort in it, they interacted once and it set the tone for something interesting, but that's it. there's fanon that goes into one direction, upping the hostility, which canon itself has done here and there, and at least has the Drama factor going for it. then there's the "counter-canon" which is a lot of people I see insisting that this was a neat, nice, uncomplicated brother relationship which. YAWN. have you met them. they aren't uncomplicated people. put in the effort they refused, give them issues, etc. etc.

anyway, this was all to say that at least so far, I'm disappointed with dick & timmy todd's dynamic in tnba because I think it reflects the same lack of effort. they don't have that past connection through harley circus comics!dick and tim drake did (although in a way that was probably trying to eacho that they bring them to a case in harley circus... except timmy has little to do there), but they're also seemingly as unwilling to explore what could have been with a more jason-like kid, right after dick left bruce. and they try to hint at timmy's presence bringing dick back into the fold but that doesn't feel earned either. pity.

[doraambrose]

Hello!

Do you think Jason would have gone after and killed the Joker if Bruce had died in the warehous explosion instead of Jason in aditf like in the movie?

One of Jason's arguments for why Bruce should have killed the Joker for him in utrh was because Jason would have done the same thing for him. And, yeah, not his strongest argument, but is that really accurate?

Before he was killed, he was a sweet kid and even after finding out Two Face killed his bio dad he didn't grow murderous and try to kill him. Jason pitied him. (at least one version before the retcon did that. I don't even know what Jason's hair color is supposed to be at this point, the writer's fucking change it all the time. blond, black, black-with-white-stripe, ginger????) And years later, Two Face is still alive and well. Jason didn't even try to avenge Willis Todd. (Like, I know the writers decide that, but what's the in-universe explanation?)

Thank you for reading my word vomit. Have a good day.

Hello! Thanks for the ask!

I honestly do believe that Jason would've tried to kill the joker or at the very least, considered it. You're completely right about him being a sweet kid, however, he did lash out at two face and batman had to step in (this is in issue 411 of batman 1940-2011)

Also, whether he actually did it or not, be did consider the possibility of murdering Felipe.

So yeah, I do believe that he would've definitely considered it at the very least.

Thanks for the ask!

[benbamboozled]

In case anyone was wondering, the A Death in the Family Deluxe Edition has a few (unfinished) pages from the version of the story where Jason Todd lived.

Of course, Jason was placed into a Convenient Coma so that way Jim Starlin wouldn’t have to be afflicted by his existence anymore.

I have NO IDEA what the timeline here is supposed to be. The last two pages seem to be intended to be pages 13&16 in the issue (judging from the numbers in the top right corner), but the second page mentions Bruce getting Jason checked into the hospital and contacting the authorities…and it seems kind of late in the book for Bruce to be getting that taken care of?

Maybe it’s after the whole “Joker tries to kill the UN” fiasco and Bruce is getting Jason transferred to a hospital in Gotham? That would explain how Dick (or Alfred, since the third page wanted to change the second person to Alfred) could have “rushed over” once they heard what happened.

(Especially since Dick was, you know…in space when ADITF was going down.)

ANYWAY, ignoring all of the timeline and logistics questions, I really like the interaction between Dick and Bruce (and I disagree with whoever thought Dick should be switched with Alfred).

It serves as an interesting counterpoint to the confrontation between Dick and Bruce in NTT #55—

(It’s also an interesting counterpoint to Starlin and Wolfman’s characterization preferences and plot priorities. Whereas Starlin was very much into “Stoic thoughtful logical lone badass Bruce Wayne,” Wolfman’s priorities were very much “*grasps Dick Grayson* I WILL GIVE YOU SO MUCH EMOTIONAL TRAUMA.”)

[romanticizingmurder]

Hello it's time for another "I love how Jason impacts the narrative" post.

Because okay! So Starlin's run with Robin Jason is like. Inordinately focused on victims of sexual violence, right? And also very focused on situations where neither Batman or the police can help them. And this leads us to the Diplomat's Son, the last Jason story before ADITF. Here Felipe, the son of a diplomat, has been caught after abusing and raping a woman, Gloria. Batman and Robin bring him in. And Jim has to tell them they can't detain him. For one thing, Felipe and his bodyguard are saying she's making this all up and for another, Felipe has diplomatic immunity through his father.

Now eventually they do manage to get Felipe for drug charges, but even then all they can get is a guarantee he'll have to leave the country. And before he leaves, he calls Gloria and tells her he's going to see her again. Gloria kills herself in the terror. Jason finds her body. Jason runs after Felipe and this is the famous "did he fall or was he pushed" moment. Either way? Felipe is dead, and his father wants revenge. A kidnapping plot later and four more men are dead in the ensuing shoot out and Jim is injured and we get this:

So! This wraps it up, right? The moral here, uneasy as it is, is that whether or not some people might deserve to die doesn't change the way violence begets violence and bodies have a way of piling up when you start down that path.

Except.

Except.

Jason is murdered. Directly after this is a death in the family and suddenly there are no right answers.

It's really important to note three things here, in my opinion:

A Death in the Family takes place after the Killing Joke and Barbara being shot is referenced in it.

The Joker kills 8 people at the start of aditf alone.

Jason has stopped Bruce killing the Joker before (I double checked and this was post-crisis)

Now I don't care about whether or not anyone should kill the Joker! That's not the point! The point is: as long as the Joker is alive he leaves a trail of victims and bodies behind him.

So! Here's our set up. Jason has just learned in a deeply sad and grim way that violence only leads to more violence. Jason is attacked by a rogue he himself saved from a vengeful murder at Batman's hands.

And what happens, to the boy who's learned the right lessons and did the right things?

He's murdered.

It doesn't matter.

The horrible and so so delicious to my classics major Greek tragedy obsessed self end to Jason's robin run is this:

You can kill a man who undeniably deserves it and it will still only lead to more death and pain. And you can let a man live who certainly didn't deserve it and....it will still end in death and pain.

There was never a way for Jason to win, and even in life, once again, he's still haunting the narrative with that that knowledge.

[nightwings-robin]

On the Jason coming back late front, I’ve recently read The Dark Knight Returns for the first time (don’t judge me) and it’s wild as fuck because in that timeline, Jason just straight up never came back and Damien never existed so that Bruce just had three? Robins and one of them was just straight up dead dead. Wild to read. Unless it was retconned and Jason did come back but just didn’t wanna face Bruce

omg you're so right. I've always found the timeline of The Dark Knight Returns fascinating because Jason being dead in that comic actually predates him dying in the main comics. like The Dark Knight Returns came out in 1986 while A Death in the Family came out in 1988.

I think a lot of people, myself included, thought Jason being dead in TDKR was because he had already been killed off in ADITF but that's not the case. TDKR happened first. (which is kind of ironic because Frank Miller once said he hated that Jason was killed off. he said it was the ugliest and most cynical thing he'd seen in comics. but like... my guy... you were the first one to kill off Jason so you don't have room to talk.)

and yeah Carrie Kelley is the third Robin in that universe, Tim doesn't exist. a lot of the current Batfam members don't exist (like Damian, Cass, Steph, Duke, etc) because many of them were created after 1986. I really like Carrie but I don't really enjoy when modern comics try to introduce her into the main universe (like they did in the new52) because it just doesn't feel right. so much of the family dynamic, especially between the Robins, hinges on the order in which they became Robin. having Carrie be the Robin between Jason and Tim, or her being the Robin after Damian, or not having her be Robin at all is just weird.

anyway I love learning about the timeline of comics, it's so interesting!

[bigskydreaming]

So, how far do you think Jasons booktastes goes? Is he like a hard-core classic fan or does it variate between his moods?

Absolutely the latter, IMO. I know there’s a tendency to lean hard into the idea that Jason’s just all about the classics, but I think overall we have a rather finite and white European and American skewed 'definition’ of what constitutes a classic in the first place, and you know me and my classist rantings.....unless you don’t but whatever, now you do, I’m personally leery of over-emphasizing Jason’s sophisticated reading palette or whatever as like, some kind of pushback against his otherwise lower-class origin because I don’t think its necessary. I mean who knows if that’s how its intended in any given specific situation, but I definitely feel like there’s a general undercurrent of that threaded through a lot of Jason’s depictions overall that I’m like ‘no thanks’ to.

I think Jason’s all over the place as a reader. His only defining characteristic as a reader IMO is that he’s a voracious one, and he reads anything and everything he can get his hands on, and finds something appealing and in new and different ways in every genre. I think as his skills develop as Robin and a detective, he hungrily reads mystery novels to see how quickly he can figure out who did it. I think he reads true crime to try and solve it ahead of the book’s conclusions the same way we’ve seen Dick solve cases watching America’s Most Wanted. 

I think before traveling was an option for Jason, living with Bruce, he enjoyed travel guides/pieces and nonfiction, to get a sense of places far away from Gotham. I think once he was living with Bruce and encountering colleagues of his dad’s who were literally from other planets and had advanced technology and magic, he had a growing personal collection of fantasy and sci-fi books just so when he did get a chance to join Bruce when he was around other heroes he could be like “okay I read in this one book where they did this spell are there any real spells like that huh huh?” or “so in this one series they had a spaceship that could do this do you know of any spaceships that are like that like could that be real?” I think he loves mythology because a) he’s gay duh and b) Diana is an actual Amazon, like why wouldn’t you love mythology when you could fact-check Edith Hamilton against an actual Amazon it just makes sense.

I think he’s got shelves full of old-school dimestore pulp fiction novels, the long-running series kinds, because he doesn’t think cheap equals bad and also they’re just fun. And also also, he loves the serialized nature of a lot of works because one of the biggest evidences of stability in his young life, before ADITF, like, one of the things that finally got him thinking like wow this is like how I live now huh, was the realization that when before, the unpredictable nature of his life meant he kinda just had to read things in one go and not count on ever being able to follow up on them, like......when living with Bruce, he suddenly just realized one day that like, all those series that have so many more books in them than I could ever read in one go, the kind of things you’re meant to RETURN to, to follow along over periods of months and years.....I can do that now, here. 

And even after his return as the Red Hood, once he slowly started settling into his new life and put his focus not just towards reacting to his trauma but trying to build beyond that again and have actual hobbies, interests, etc.....one of the biggest evidences to him that he could do that, be more than JUST the Red Hood, was literally no different from when he first had that epiphany living with Bruce. When he looked into all those series that he perhaps never got to finish, or that were still ongoing when he was killed, and found an unexpected continuity in the reminder and awareness that they were still out there, waiting for him to finish them, that they were still being published, available for him to catch up......that his life had ended, but then he came back so maybe it was more just interrupted. That so many things are different now from how they were before, but some things are still the same, that he’s so different now but in some ways he IS still the same.

Like yeah, sure, I do think he’s got plenty of Jane Austen on his shelves, but he’s also got Octavia Butler and Ursula K. LeGuin and Mary Shelley not once but twice....nah let’s go wild and make it five times....cuz I think he’s got very specific SYSTEMS for how his books are arranged, one of those particular things that arose from the awareness that he actually COULD be particular about his books, that it was entirely up to him......and once he found out that Frankenstein’s Monster existed he was like okay but is the book based on that or was that based on the book, did art imitate life or did life imitate art I HAVE TO KNOW IF IT GOES IN FICTION OR NON-FICTION! And so Alfred and Bruce and Dick and Barbara all had the same idea of like, why not both, both is good, and gave him an extra copy and so he ended up with like five copies of Frankenstein.

Also, literally every time he ends up with a case or aware of a case where vampires or werewolves or aliens or gods are involved, you can find a whole new section of fiction and nonfiction on the related subject in his room, and he’s scribbled all throughout the margins like LOL WELL THIS ISNT RIGHT and NOPE GOT THIS WRONG and IF THIS AUTHOR WAS ALIVE TODAY I WOULD TELL THEM RIGHT TO THEIR STUPID FACE ABOUT HOW NOT ACCURATE THEIR SAFETY PROTOCOLS FOR DEALING WITH VAMPIRES ARE LIKE THATS THE LAST TIME I BRING GARLIC TO A VAMPIRE FIGHT AND THINK IM DOING ANYTHING BUT SMELLING LIKE A TASTY PASTA FLAVORED TREAT, LIKE THANKS FOR NOTHING YOU ABSOLUTE HACK.

(Also I think Jason thinks Poe’s a pretentious boor, mostly because I find it funny to script scenes in my head where Jason just goes OFF about various authors and his Opinions on them, but he still likes his stuff for the mood and is like DONT @ ME, IM COMPLICATED, but this is entirely because of an old personal headcanon of mine where like, the frequent references to the gothic nature of Gotham tied to Jason’s very Gothammite nature resulted in my brain doing a What If where Jason either post-Robin-where-he-didn’t-die or even post-Red Hood picks a raven themed ensemble and calls himself something like Nevermore, and is like, Caw Caw, Im Gotham, Bitch).

In summation, I think Jason is eclectic as hell, and like, if its a book, and he’s got the time, he’s gotta read it because duh, that’s just the law of the jungle, he’s like lololol what there’s a book and I’m just what, just not going to read it? That’s what you think? LMAO that makes no sense you sound so dumb right now.

[do-do-dodo-do-dodo-dodo]

Me, before the new Titans trailer: They won't do a Death in the Family arc until at least season 3. It's too early and Jason's only had like one proper episode.

My thoughts after the newest trailer:

Dick and Jay are arguing and it looked like Jay was about to storm off. Oh no.

Yeah, but he's in his suit when he's in the warehouse, and they've been pretty comic accurate with his character so far.

Yeah, but maybe he'll meet Sheila when he leaves the Tower or something.

But they haven't cast the Joker or Sheila.

Most fans know what happens, they'd probably keep casting for those characters a secret, especially The Joker.

Oh shit, you're right.

But, how would they show some of the plot in the trailer if we can't know the Joker's gonna be a villain in that season.

Does that mean we'll probably have a warning for when THAT comic arc is coming? Cause you can't not have the Joker and not tell the fans about it. (Unless you're Gotham and don't have the rights to his name.)

(But Titans does, they say it in 1x01.)

Basically, I've came to the conclusion (granted I figured this out whilst typing this) that we'd probably have some warning and hints of the Joker in the trailer for the season with ADITF, because it'd be a major plot point, and it's the Joker.

I hope that if they do, his reveal is gonna be like the Emperor's in the Star Wars trailer and all you hear is his laugh (maybe some metal scrapping against concrete to be cruel).

(I mean, you gotta be cruel to be kind.)

Also, how cool would it be if we got to have as little look at the other characters' inner darkness in the first episode, and like, Jay's is foreshadowing of the Red Hood, because the more violent aspect of the character could be related to that.

Like, that'd be cool.

[whetstonefires]

how do you think the batfam mightve progressed if jason never died?

Whaa, 4 asks at once? I’m sorry I still haven’t gotten back on the last one, I thought I was unstuck but guess what, I wrote myself into a pretty little corner by being all ‘I don’t care about what’s canon! i’m just gonna have fun!’ which is the correct approach except then you find out the thing you made up is incorrect and idk how to deal with that. being wrong. it’s a life skill i’m still working on.

So like, if the vote had gone the other way...it depends so much on the writing and editing teams, and so little on real causality, it’s hard to frame a picture?

Jason was created as an alternative to aging Dick down and taking him out of the Titans; his new character origin after the Crisis on Infinite Earths barely got out of its shakedown tour before they killed him off. We know who he was enough to spot the major character derailments, but who he might have been? It’s hard to say.

If he’d made it through the vote, the noisy fans would still have hated him, and so would the man writing his comics. I doubt Starlin would ever have convinced DC to do the HIV plotline with Robin like he reportedly tried, but I feel like Something Bad remained likely.

The 90s are known for their grimdarkness for a reason, and Jason just missed living through them. I feel like his odds of going villain were pretty high anyway, not because of him but because of the constant need for drama fuel. I mean, Alfred had a villain phase, in the 60s.

Babs became Oracle almost simultaneous with the Robin trade-off, debuted the same month Jason died (January ‘89), so that still would have happened. Tim’s influence on her was very slight.

Without Tim, there would have been no need for Steph, since she was created partly as a love interest but more importantly as a foil, and a way of getting more of that high-energy feeling traditionally associated with Robin back into the story even though so many of the fans loathed it and refused to have it in their lead.

(Not that Tim didn’t have a lot of it anyway, but it wasn’t his core feel the way it had been for Dick and Jason. Possibly of note, the ‘87 Killing Joke and ‘89 Batman movie also marked a rise in the use of Joker as Batman’s main dramatic foil rather than Robin, which coupled with the Bronze Age in general really shaped Tim’s character direction. It’s hard to say what caused what, with these trends.)

They might have introduced a girl anyway, to replace Babs. Maybe even a version of Cass. Shiva stated under interrogation during ADitF that she had no child, but in comics terms that half-guaranteed she’d get one eventually, because the concept was now out there.

I doubt Jason would have gotten his own series in the 90s, considering his screaming hatedom and the fact that it took three extremely successful mini-series to get Tim a regular title, but if DC had managed to repackage his character into something that the 90s liked and he had made a go of it, he’d probably have acquired a completely different supporting cast. He might well have continued his pattern of acquiring moms. Maybe even Talia. The whole Sheila thing would have been a half-forgotten backstory subplot by like ‘94 probably.

It occurs to me after typing all of this that you might want to hear my ideas about what in-universe causality might logically have led to, lmao. Let’s see.

Jason’s adolescence was hitting a rocky stage that I doubt this betrayal and near-death experience and technical bereavement would have ended, though it would probably have hit harder than his last few near-death experiences even assuming another improbable complete recovery.

If we up the realism dial a little, he might be forced into retirement by the severity of his wounds. He’d still have to hash out his trust issues with Bruce, probably more than ever. Being a shit communicator was not yet a key part of Bruce’s personality; they might have sorted things out.

Jason would not have dropped out of college. If he’s retired, he goes into a prestigious but helping-centered field with an understanding that he is now the son Bruce trusts to step up to keep WE on the straight and narrow after he dies; inheritance of voting shares may be structured around this expectation.

(Dick experiences that really complicated hypocritical jealousy where you specifically rejected a thing, but it spent so long being marked yours that you feel robbed anyway when someone else gets it. Not a lot of it in the disability scenario, because there’s a distinct vibe of consolation prize there, but otherwise.)

Babs would still have been Oracle. It would have been a less fraught launch, though.

Dick might not have heard about the Ethiopia thing at all, if Jason made a full recovery, considering how little communication was passing between him and Bruce at that point. Dick’s level of Batcomputer access only stated Jason as ‘location unknown’ when he was dead, so.

He and Jason got along fine, regardless of retcons since then, but he was under a lot of stress from a lot of sources, and the feeling that he couldn’t go home even when he really needed to, because he’d been replaced, was very present. That might well have blown up at some point.

I tend to think of Bruce as having changed pretty dramatically as a result of Jason’s death, disregarding a lot of retcons, but I mean, 1987 Bruce already failed to notice Dick having a mental breakdown right in front of him and put him off in favor of hero work with Jason on Dick’s birthday, he just did it cheerfully and with fairly courteous wording. There was a trend in the faildad direction starting already.

There was a lot of relationship stuff in need of fixing and in some ways Jason’s presence made that as hard for Dick with Bruce as Damian’s later did for Tim, even though there was a lot less drama and intentional emotional violence and attempted murder involved. So. That could have gone a lot of ways. Realistically, even without Tim trying to play peacemaker, Dick always gets dragged back into Bruce’s orbit, though. That’s narrative causality at work, but also psychology.

In-universe, Tim can be assumed to have already existed before Wolfman invented him. He’s mostly away at boarding school, but he’s nosy and well-intentioned and he Knows. If Jason ran away more comprehensively than the Great Mom Tour, he might approach him with an argument for why Batman needed Robin and he should go home. Or there would eventually have been a case where he knew something they didn’t and attempted to subtly pass information and got noticed.

Or Oracle’s expanding field of awareness would have eventually noticed him and his zoom-lens one summer evening while his parents were in Haiti getting dead. Idk.

He’d probably have gotten mixed up in Bat-things eventually, and if it wasn’t before the Haiti thing there’s no way Batman would have been invested enough in this random disappearance to be there in time to help, so he’d have been completely orphaned at 13. Bruce taking him in is reasonably likely, since he wasn’t exactly in a position to create himself a fake uncle at the time. On the other hand, he might have gone into foster care. His parent’s company still would have crashed without them, so he wouldn’t have inherited much, but he’d have been better off than most kids in the system because he’d have some assets.

Steph is even more guaranteed to hit the vigilante scene. Bruce would be a lot friendlier to her without Jason death issues for her to trigger, though that doesn’t mean he’d actually be friendly, and Jason would like her, and possibly communicate more effectively than Tim did about how she could not die, or possibly they’d have egged each other on into steadily more unwise behavior.

On the other hand, depending on where Jason’s character development went after surviving Ethiopia, he might at 17 find 15-year-old Steph indescribably annoying precisely because they have so much in common, and lash out at her as a proxy for his younger self, and be kind of awful.

Cataclysm breaks causality to even acknowledge anymore because they rushed on from it like massive chumps, but Jason would have been a good Robin to have for it. He’d have been pretty tall by then, and he’s got the mental tools for surviving in an unfriendly urban environment where money is useless. I think he and Cass would have gotten on well, they have compatible personalities. The only major issue I can see is if Bruce or Babs got really positive about her and triggered some kind of jealousy or possessiveness issue.

We don’t really have any specific data at all from before Jason died about how he would cope with a rival for something he felt entitled to but insecure about--he deferred very nicely to Dick as his elder, but Dick wasn’t actually a threat to anything Jason valued. Assuming later canon is applicable, jealousy would be a definite issue with any additional family members, though I assume without the risk of homicide.

Okay here is an after-midnight hour of my half-baked opinions. You asked for it! ;DDD

[boyfridged]

I think an really interesting thing about when they have the character's say that Bruce was saving Jason a life of crime or teaching Jason to be good is that it not only isn't true, it directly contradicts other canon.

We have at least two separate alternate time lines (caused specifically by time travel events where the consequences included no Bruce adoption) both of which were Jason was still a moral person. In Flashpoint he is a priest who believes in helping people not matter if they are church goers or not. A world without young justice has AU Jason die trying to do the right thing.

On top of that Jason is at the very least strongly implied to have taken care of his sick mother and the more recent portrayals of him meeting people from his pre-Bruce life also portray him as a caring person.

This adds up to although the writer means for the character to be right, and that Bruce is so noble for helping (failing) this poor child. They are actually being canonically classist towards Jason as what they are saying is an untrue assumption based on his background.

Selina in Gotham War saying he taught Jason to be good is her being classist. Alfred treating Jason like he was just a bad seed Bruce couldn't save is classist. Bruce and his whole reasoning that it is okay for Jason specifically to be endangered because of his background is classist.

Obviously that isn't the intent but when writers who are less classist about Jason write him these classist things aren't be true. It doesn't matter if Zdarsky retcons Jason being such a 'bad kid' when there are a bunch of other writers who didn't do that.

(Zdarsky: Look at this 'bad kid' before Bruce taught him morals. Ignore all the times he was portrayed as a good kid, those aren't canon anymore. Bruce is the source of all his morality. Bruce is actually less classist than Jason. This is definitely not classist writing.)

you summarized it excellently. i think it is also related to bruce projecting both his own trauma and his own worldview on jay and his background. i have written a very long post about this exactly, with receipts too. you can find it here. oh and another one, in which i explain why it would be more interesting to allow bruce to be wrong too.

and as i cited it in the above post – bruce is wrong and that fact is quite evident in-text, at least in the early versions of the story. this is also what i love so much about barr’s detective comics run – because barr calls bullshit and gets leslie to tell bruce his reasoning behind putting jason in field are unbecoming and that he is “doing it for himself.”

of course, post jay’s death that awareness has evaporated and instead we got revised versions of the story that were more than ever deadset on proving that jason did possess some fatal flaw, a violent seed that bruce did not manage to eradicate (like the issues of gotham knights, which again, i have no idea as to why they are so popular, given how malicious they are in the evaluation of jason’s fate). the latest retcons such as zdarsky’s work also fall into the trap of attempting to justify bruce’s decisions irt jason & his role as robin by diminishing jay and rewriting his story to be tainted with inevitability. even a death in the family (2020, the animated movie) provides the audience with plenty alternative endings, all of which are to make a murderer or a villain out of jason.

that is not to say that i think there should not be a sense of inevitability of jay’s tragedy at all – but its source is stubbornly misplaced for bruce’s benefit despite even the actual aditf storyline and barr’s run before placing the responsibility for it in bruce’s inability to compartmentalise his parental and vigilante duties (the chapter of aditf titled choices relates to bruce’s decision to go after the joker instead of jason; it does turn out it did not matter as jason has long been tied up in that family-vs-heroics conflict.)

bringing up the alternative versions of jay is a good way to illustrate it; in the world in which he does not meet bruce, he is not damned to participate in the cycle of abuse forever. i’m not gonna lie, i also wish countdown went in that direction and has given us more glances at realities like that. because i do believe that jason’s resolve to stop at nothing when faced by crime, the sense of obligation to do so that leaves his hands bloody, is something that was cultivated in him primarily by the robin training.

[boyfridged]

in your fic “paint it over” is that how you imagine jason making it out of the explosion at the end of utrh? not exactly the events that follow, but the preferable characterization of bruce digging jay out of the rubble and carrying him to help. and how do you think jason made it out canonically (without the help of bruce) also!!! what are your thoughts on the specifics of jason’s scar and how he’d behave toward it. i liked the part of your fic where jason was temporarily unable to speak due to the trauma his neck received. i think the scar is something that rests on the junction of his shoulder/neck, and that can be hidden with whatever clothes he wears -> no one knows he has it (or how he got it) either. i like to imagine while bruce knows his batarang made contact with jason’s throat it’s never fully registered to him that it scarred until he sees it for himself (and while i believe bruce would turn the moment in head over and over again until it’s engraved in his brain, his delayed realization—to me—is due to his repression of the occurrence)

oh i adore this whole ask. some of it i explained in my notes, but this fanfic is quite dear to me, so i will elaborate.

short answer to whether this is how i imagine jay making it out of the explosion: not exactly?

the premise that i wanted to explore with paint it over is almost the opposite of a fix-it, and definitely not what i believe it should be in canon.

what i wished to explore there is, however, the part of utrh that is perhaps the most shocking to many readers: that bruce leaves jason to die.

in-universe, i think the answer why it happens is surprisingly simple enough: bruce does not come because he is just... not there. my understanding is, that in a way, the events of under the red hood did not happen. there is nothing to follow. that purple mist in the finale of the utrh, that is often read as a force resurrecting jason (not technically wrong, either)- i believe that is the timeline already rewriting itself, making the whole story into something that was not.

and the reason for the above is the infinite crisis. if i'm not wrong, it's also the inifinite crisis miniseries where bruce meets dick right after the explosions in (or of) bludhaven-- that in batman clearly happens in the background of his confrontation with jay. however, in infinite crisis (#4, just checked it now), bruce tells dick: "i wanted to make sure...you're alright... i was in new york when it hit. got here as soon as i could." which could be a lie or a matter of the editorial not being synced enough- but i'm willing to give them a benefit of the doubt given how it ties with that sudden, stunted ending of utrh.

this makes sense for canon for several reasons. in the animated movie, since it spares us the infinite crisis tie-in, bruce says of the whole incident: this changes nothing. it changes nothing because although aditf isn't, utrh is a tragedy; it changes nothing because since his death, jason is necessarily always pushed at the peripheries of the narrative, no matter how much the fate itself tries to fix it, becoming a tragic footnote. the dead have one right and it's the right to remain silent. and that is ironically ensured on a cosmic level, with his violent attempt at being seen hidden in the folds of the timeline. you can also see it clearly in canon -- i believe it was not until the infinite frontier that the events of utrh got just tangentially mentioned (before that, even lobdell barely touched upon it). other than that, they have no consequences; they are barely ever spoken of; they seem to slip out even from jay's solo comics.

this move was necessary for batman, as a character and as a title: let's say bruce does hold red hood as he does in the alt cover of annual 25 (and the cover of the deluxe edition of utrh.) that would implore a reckoning with his failure and his (suddenly non-productive) grief that would either reconstruct the whole myth or lead to some terrifying implications. these terrifying implications are, essentially, what paint it over is about. it's about the worst happening and about there being no way back from it. and jason, in receiving what he wanted (his father's love and care) wants to deny that reality. they both want to. yet even jay cannot ignore it completely -- and i chose to use the batarang injury to emphasize it.

and about the scar: i mentioned it briefly before, but in the au jason aggravates the wounds on purpose, hence it will scar worse and cause long-term issues for his voice. it's a theme i also keep in some of my other stories (to come...) and i very much think this is what would happen in canon if he had to take care of that injury. yet as it healed, i believe he'd take to hiding it, mostly. still, as it stands, my primary take might be that in canon (if it was to follow the interference into the timeline from the crisis at least) jason would simply end up with no scar at all, and only memories for evidence of what happened, which is perhaps worse for him too (but of course better for bruce. and as it happens, this is bruce wayne's story and everyone else is just living in it- or dies in it- for better or worse. and if we're ignoring that metaphysical timeline bullshit, as you said, i believe bruce would repress it all anyway.)

[boyfridged]

i love your meta commentary so much, so when i saw that you posted 'paint it over' i RAN to it and ajgwoeiawog it's so gooddddd T.T

i was just wondering what ur favorite draft of paint it over that didn't make it to the final cut is? also, what do you think will happen to the characters in the future?

this is a glowing review, thank you so much for your kind words!

one scene that i had a rough draft of & decided to scrap pretty much last moment was a conversation between dick & alfred after dick watched the cowl recording. dick asks alfred how he can allow this situation to go on and alfred replies "and what is there to do? anything that could be done should have been done years ago." these words were to refer to bruce & jay's overly codependent relationship in jay's robin days – which lead to jay lacking any support system besides batman. in my mind that isolation is one of the main reasons for which both aditf & jason's return goes the way it does, as his only point of reference and safety in life was bruce, who he now lost. and in paint it over they are simulating that sort of parent-child relationship again, except if it was an issue when jay was 11-15, it's straight-up horror after all that happened later on.

i got rid of this scene mainly because i realised alfred's words could be misinterpreted in a thousand ways and it's a difficult piece to read as it is. i also felt like it would be too much and i love me some silence and empty spaces in my writing. so i briefly replaced it with alfred simply passing next to dick & jason as they were leaving and letting them go in silence – but it did not fit in the scene well, so in the end alfred barely appears at all.

as for the continuation... actually, the first snippet i wrote for this work didn't make the final cut since it would take place right after what i decided to be the ending! jay starts asking questions which leads them to argue as jason obviously does not want to leave home for "no reason" (dick insists bruce hurting him is very much a reason. "it was an accident," jason says. "damn it, jay! you may trip or slip, that's what an accident is. not slitting your son's throat!"). the whole drive is very fun as jay also tests the door handles, because dick is "unreasonable" and jason is "going back."

i think the aftermath of it all would very much be a "it gets worse before it gets better" fix-it... dick gets to see what bruce meant when he said that the first week was difficult, because jason reverts to trying to rip his injury anew. he also attempts to blackmail dick with self-harm to be able to speak to bruce ("yeah buddy this is exactly why we're not doing it," is dick's general response.) dick also does not have a guilt complex that prevents him from forcing jason into doctor's appointments like bruce did, so jason slowly gets better. and when i say slowly, i mean it. there's a lot to it, like road trips, and going back to the crime alley, and jason talking to people outside of his immediate circle, and unexpected team ups, and dick going through like twenty breakdowns on his own in that time.

bruce doesn't argue with dick's decision much, because, again: he is aware of his fault. he also agrees to work on himself meanwhile. he does want updates on jay though, which dick begrudgingly agrees to do (although in a limited capacity.)

there's at least one person who tells dick that maybe he should just let his brother go back to the manor and that whatever is wrong with his family is not his responsibility. this, of course, does not happen.

at some point jay & bruce do get to start talking again. but first, they need to properly grieve what they lost on both sides and grow as people independently from each other. and when they meet again, they are not the same people they were, and they never will, but there's peace in that.

or at least this is how i imagine it would go-- but things usually change as i write, so who knows, maybe if i was to actually try to follow up with a sequel, it would go in a different direction altogether... and i did intentionally leave it with an open ending, so whatever your idea as a reader is about the future – it's right too! (and i would love to hear about it)

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

Some of the metas you reblogged made me want a "careful what you wish for'ish story with Jason. Jason or Bruce missing the old version of the other and accidentally wishing for them back. Or another idea of someone complaining Jason doesn't listen to them cursing Jason to not be able to disobey them.

I apologize that it took so long to finish this (and sorry if it’s full of lukewarm takes). I ended up redoing this like 7 times because I suck at analyzing and writing in general.

Anyway I began with a comparison of how both Jason and Bruce were during Jason’s time as robin, which is dubbed the era of “good dad Bruce Wayne”, and how they’ve evolved after aditf and who they are now. The full thing is super long so I’ll leave it under the cut.

Despite respecting Jason and trusting him as a sidekick, even in the early days there’s evidence of Bruce’s inability to trust other people and his need to control the situation by withholding information. I’m referring to him neglecting to tell Jason that Two Face killed Willis in Batman #411. It’s the same logic he applies to his interactions with Jason now; the “who knows how far he would’ve taken it had he known the truth.” To be fair he also says “I was wrong” but then it’s immediately followed by the classic “I was just trying to protecting you.”

Essentially, he can’t run the risk of trusting Jason because he doesn’t believe Jason could demonstrate self control. His reasoning being because Jason is a child, which isn’t really fair even then. However, he still continues to treat Jason this way when he’s an adult.

He never does finish off with an apology and say “I’m sorry, Jay. I shouldn’t have kept that from you. You had a right to know and you wouldn’t have gotten so angry if I’d told you from the start.” The conversation ends with Jason feeling guilty for losing control of the situation, and Bruce essentially being like “it’s fine chum ☺️”. So while he was a kind to Jason and they had their wholesome moments, you could still see the early signs of his problematic behaviors that are still present to this day.

Bruce views it as a necessary evil to betray people he claims to trust (and who trust him) for the sake of the mission, and even for his personal agenda. Current day Bruce Wayne is a caricature of the more brutal qualities he demonstrated (though less frequently) in his earlier comics. His “I’m doing this for your good, you need this” logic is unwavering, even when he’s physically abusing Jason to the point he can’t move. The way Jason sees Bruce is “well he’s my father and he’s a reasonable person. I can trust him.” Despite Bruce repeatedly betraying his trust.

Young Jason is aware of the destructive path he’s been put on, but because he has faith in Bruce both as his father and Batman, he’s quick to forgive him and dismiss this. Ultimately Bruce still makes an effort to comfort and reassure Jason. The difference between earlier comics Bruce and current Bruce is that in the same way Batman is much more brutal with his opponents, he became much colder and neglectful as a parent too.

The difference between “old Jason” and current day Jason is his firm belief that Batman’s methods are flawed. He was already starting to disagree with him in aditf; however his death was the catalyst for him fully losing faith in Batman. Becoming a teenager and seeing reality through your own eyes, growing out of the (often) flawed and/or outdated logic parents try to impart onto you, that’s just part of maturing. He’s at an age where he is suddenly bombarded by a lot of intense anger and frustration at the unfairness and injustice he sees, and wrestling with past traumas that are now resurfacing (this does not define his entire personality, it’s just a natural outcome given the position he’s been put in and the trajectory of his life thus far, but I digress). Bruce says Jason can’t be trusted but he fails to actually listen to his son or provide much-needed guidance. If he’d communicated with Jason face to face, things would have gone a lot differently. Maybe it wouldn’t have ended in an explosion, Jason would have lived, and he wouldn’t have lost faith in Batman. He could have still become disillusioned with Batman though, because again, Jason sees the deeper underlying issues that Batman cannot adequately address or solve. Had things gone differently (i.e., had he not died), maybe he could have potentially put down the mantle of Robin, healed himself his own way, and built a career helping victims.

I’m guessing what you mean by "if the old Jason were back" is if nothing changed about his backstory (he still died), but his current self suddenly agrees with Batman and his no-kill code. I think the evidence points to Batman being content with this outcome, and I say this because really the only times Bruce treats Jason with respect is when Jason obeys Bruce against his better judgement with little to no objection. I think he’d be relieved Jason finally “stopped being so difficult” and take satisfaction in his compliance. If Jason one day apologized, Bruce would confirm his suspicions about Jason (i.e., he’s unpredictable and violent, needed “tough love”, etc). Then we’d have Jason become just another batkid who doesn’t kill but beats the shit out of villains, which is what Bruce believes is the only right path for all of his kids, Jason included. This would virtually extinguish the decades long conflict they had going, but it’d be underwhelming, unsatisfying, and it would be at the expense of Jason’s true character.

If the “old Bruce” came back, he’d still disagree with and distrust Jason, but he’d probably be less physically abusive about it? He still wouldn’t have done it himself, but maybe he would have let Jason kill joker. I want to give him some credit and say he could have done that, because he was contemplating killing joker after Jason’s death in Batman #429, and basically left joker to die in a helicopter crash (though he never found his body or made sure he finished the job). Maybe in the same way, he could have turned a blind eye and let Jason blow his deranged brains out, because (and this is Batman’s own words) “that’s the law. Not Justice”. If he retained this emotional state at the time of utrh. Following this though, I think they’d stop communicating and Jason would leave to do his own thing. Jason would be relieved, though I don’t believe it’s enough for him to want to stick around just yet, because joker being dead was important yes, but there’s also the matter of “you weren’t willing to do that for me, dad”. Maybe they could eventually get to a WFA-esque situation where Jason continues to kill with the exception of the few times he works with the batfam. Bruce learns to be indifferent to the killing, and he actually tries to rebuild their relationship. Idk, but one can dream.

Alternatively, if everything went the same way but at the very least the old Bruce didn’t re-traumatize and abuse Jason, constantly destroying any chance he has at healing, that’s more than he would ever wish for imo.

In summary, I don’t think either of them reverting to their old selves would cause issues sm as it would resolve their long-standing conflict. If Jason just straight up agreed with and obeyed Batman, Bruce wouldn’t have much reason to be angry at him and fight him all the time. If Bruce became more flexible and adopted a more nuanced stance on justice, he’d have more understanding and leniency towards Jason which would again, cause them to fight less.

**Edit: mobile keeps removing the last bit of texts on my posts:

[bigskydreaming]

Big Jason stans on twitter have been talking about a character named Eddie Bloomberg being Jason's friend, and since you know more about older comics than most I was wondering if you had any thoughts about it.

Eddie Bloomberg is a character known as Kid Devil, the sidekick of relatively low-profile mystical/supernatural hero known as Blue Devil. Though ironically, for a large part of both characters’ existence, their personas were only thematic and they had no actual mystical/supernatural powers or connection - those were added to both characters in later years. Originally, Blue Devil was a stuntman who just designed his own devil-themed costume to fight crime because like, why not, basically. LOL. And Eddie was basically a fanboy who snuck into his workshop and designed his own Red Devil/Kid Devil costume/armor along similar lines. Years later, long after Jason’s death and return and completely unrelated to it, Eddie made a literal deal with a devil, aka Neron, to get actual powers. And this resulted in him gaining a demonic appearance and related powers.....though later on it was also revealed that his powers weren’t actually given to him by Neron, rather he’d had a dormant metahuman gene all along that Neron just activated and kinda tweaked to make the resulting powers seem supernatural/occult related.

Eddie’s a fun character and there is actual canon basis for him and Jason being friends, going way back, and so I vastly prefer people going with him as Jason’s BFF over say, Roy......like, back in the day, Jason and Eddie were literal pen pals. And I do mean literal. Like we’re talking pre-email days, old school letter writing back and forth pen pals. We saw very little of their actual friendship, but like I’m always talking about with the relative lack of interactions between Dick and Jason back then....this isn’t truly indicative of anything other than a lack of places to SHOW these relationships. 

There were waaaaay fewer titles back then, there was no solo Robin title to show what Jason was up to when he wasn’t with Bruce, and thus the only instance I can ever think of when we actually saw Jason and Eddie teaming up together, actually happened in one issue of the Blue Devil comic book from way back when. But again - purely logistical. Doesn’t mean they weren’t actually good friends, and there’s really nothing standing in the way of assuming they had a ton more interactions just like that but offscreen, as it were.

Also, this limited interaction took place BEFORE Jason was retconned to have his street kid origin, but that doesn’t actually mean Jason and Eddie’s friendship was ever retconned at all. 

See, it was actually pretty confusing, but while post Crisis on Infinite Earths, Jason’s origin was definitively the one where he was jacking the Batmobile’s tires, and then after this point only spanned less than twenty issues before his death in ADITF......this doesn’t mean that Jason’s tenure as Robin was ever limited to JUST the events of those twenty or so issues. When they retconned his origin, they did it in such a way as to allow for pretty much every single story Jason had already been in PRIOR to that....to still have happened. Literally the only stories of his that were ever ACTUALLY retconned were the ones that pertained directly to his pre-Crisis origin as another circus kid like Dick.

Basically, the way they pulled this off was via the usage of one single caption box. At the start of the issue where Dick and Jason ‘meet for the first time,’ post-Crime Alley retcon. That issue, which is basically right at the start of Jason’s ‘new’ run as a street kid turned Robin, opens with the caption box “One year ago.” By doing this, they basically just inserted that new origin for Jason as one book-end to his time as Robin....with ADITF twenty or so issues later being the other book-end to his time as Robin obviously.

But IN BETWEEN those book-ends was contained not JUST the twenty issues between them.....but ALSO, every Jason-as-Robin story from pre-Crisis, except for his actual pre-Crisis origin story. The proof of this lies in the fact that even long after ADITF, hell, even after Jason’s return as the Red Hood.....canon kept citing specific stories of Jason’s from pre-Crisis. Like when he fought Tim at Titans’ Tower and he mentioned having briefly been a Titan...that was a definitive reference to the pre-Crisis stories where he teamed up with the Titans, once with the Fab Five in Dick’s place, and then again not longer after, to help the Titans rescue Dick and Raven from the Church of Blood. Those are the literal only two stories where Jason was ever a Titan or associated with them, and they’re squarely smack in the pre-Crisis era......but they remained canon even after Jason’s origin was retconned, because THEY weren’t retconned with that origin....they were just kinda...shuffled around a bit.

Same thing with Jason and Eddie. Even after Crisis and the Crime Alley retcon for Jason, they still were definitely friends during his time as Robin, though this never actually came up in any of the issues between Jason’s new origin and ADITF. But it was referenced once or twice since then, by Eddie I believe, so again, like the missions Jason made with the Titans and the times Dick and Jason did hang out and get along, etc, etc....these things were always definitively part of canon and were never once actually retconned before the New 52 Reboot as a whole.

So yeah, its true, Eddie was Jason’s friend and there’s canon basis for that. I’m gonna be totally honest here, my main gripe with the Jason and Eddie BFF connection is purely petty - it bugs me slightly, Jason stans’ awareness of it at all, because although it was there, we’re talking a time literally concurrent with the stories where, y’know, Dick fluffed Jason’s hair and told him if Bruce gives him any grief about sneaking out to go help the Titans rescue him, just ‘let the old man know it took you and all the Titans to pull my butt out of the fire,” and was happy to take the fall to keep Jason out of trouble. So the fact that people could remember all along something as obscure as a friendship with a character as low-profile as Kid Devil, that only appeared in all of four pages in all of comic-dom, but still loudly insisted not that they just preferred writing takes where Dick didn’t like Jason back then but rather that these were the only takes that existed in the comics.....it makes me go mmmm, shenanigans! And sadly sours me a little on the Jason - Eddie friendship just by extension. *Shrugs* Hey I’m not proud of it, lol, but ngl, that’s basically the big reason I don’t engage with it much.

I mean, the other reasons are simply that Eddie’s not super in my wheelhouse, y’know? The original Blue Devil comic was just never one I was really all that familiar with, I think I just read the one issue that Jason showed up in BECAUSE he showed up in it, lol, and although fun, Eddie never really grabbed me outside of that connection with Jason. Nothing wrong with him, just so many characters, so little time, kinda thing. And then he was in comic book Limbo unused for a loooong time, until brought back to prominence by Geoff Johns, who I’m just not really a big fan of. So he’s mostly just never really been present in the books I actually read and know really well, and so although I’m ALL for giving Jason his own friends and not just shoehorning him into his older brother’s dynamics with other characters more commonly associated with Dick.....I tend to default to doing that with characters who I’m already a fan of in their own right. 

Like, my personal preferred BFF for Jason is Grant Emerson aka Damage. Because for a period in the nineties, Roy really took him under his wing and was a surrogate big brother and even guardian figure for Grant, and they had suuuuuch a great relationship, and in a lot of ways it mirrored the relationship I remembered seeing hints of between Dick and Jason and wanting more of for them, so it just makes a natural parallel. Roy and Dick as BFFs and then Grant and Jason as BFFs and with somewhat similar relationships with the older two. Plus, Grant has a lot in common with Jason, such as an abusive childhood and surprise revelations/upheavals regarding his parents that have massively affected his life. Grant is a big old softie, and not nearly as abrasive as Jason often is written as, but when paired with how much else they have in common, to me this creates a natural dynamic wherein Jason likely WOULDN’T be that abrasive with Grant, especially not when its just the two of them, because so much of that behavior for Jason is a defense mechanism and shield against being seen/viewed in ways Jason is not down with, but would never be an issue with Grant, because like....they’d both know where the other stood there and where they were coming from, and thus if Jason were going to just completely let his walls down with someone in just a totally casual way, IMO it’d be with someone like Grant. And Grant in turn I think could really benefit from having a friend he can relate to like Jason, who happens to be very confident about like....validating a lot of his own personal struggles which mirror a lot of Grant’s personal struggles where he really COULD use more validation, particularly of the external kind.

Course, I mean plus, Jason’s still Jason so also there’s the factor that Grant’s meta power is literally to blow things up with his brain, and I refuse to accept any characterization of Jason wherein he learns hey there’s this dude who can blow shit up with his brain and DOESN’T immediately follow that thought with “I must hunt him down and make him my best friend AT ONCE for clearly we are soulmates and this is DESTINY.”

(On a similar note, the other third of my preferred trio for Jason is Courtney Mason aka Anima. Like, if I were creating a Red Hood and the Outlaws style team/book from the ground up, I would hands down go with Jason, Grant and Courtney. A brief summation of Courtney from wikipedia: 

“Rebellious teenage runaway Courtney Mason acquired her miraculous powers following an attack by parasitic aliens: one of many New Blood superbeings created in this way, as part of the Bloodlines crossover. Seven extraterrestrial predators had come to Earth and slaughtered thousands of humans by feeding on their spinal fluids. On the run in New Orleans, Courtney was kidnapped by a cult that sacrificed her to two of these insatiable parasites, knows as Pritor and Lissik. But Courtney did not die. Instead, the parasites' bites unleashed the Animus, a sentient-energy creature that can absorb the spirit essences of the living and the dead, which was now able to enter the world through Courtney. She became the embodiment of mankind's rage and masculine drive, and quickly developed awesome physical powers of her own. As Anima, Courtney sought revenge against the cult. She also met the Teen Titans and battled a variety of supernatural menaces. Anima remains a wanderer, traveling from place to place and helping those in need by calling upon the fearsome primal force inside her.”

Like, I’m just saying. The Jason and Courtney BFF show basically writes itself. Also, Courtney’s got her own share of sibling issues given that her little brother Jeremy eventually ends up becoming the host for the Animus entity’s ‘little sister’ Eris, the spirit of strife, so.....dot dot dot.)

But yeah, anyway, Eddie is still very much a fun character worth looking into, and his friendship with Jason pre-New 52, at least back during Jason’s Robin days, is very much a thing, even if we never got to see all that much of it.