#yes this is me pushing my Latino Jason Todd agenda

[azol-otl]

So while I know that asking dc to make decent Jason Todd content is futile at best and a monkey paw’s curse at worst, there are some ideas I wish that they’d explore.

Imagine, a story that shows us more of pre-homeless Jason’s life and contrasting that with current Jason’s isolation. No overt tragedy. No focusing on Catherine’s addiction or Willis’ abuse/crimes. Just a normal ass day where the angst is created by the juxtaposition of happy baby Jason and current depressed Jason. Like I love angst and tragedy, but sometimes instead of showing us how fucked up his life is, why not just show us some good days and make the reader sad via fluff.

This is going to be kinda long and rambly so I’m putting the rest under a cut.

Have the story follow Jason on a day off. Just straight up no vigilante work. No costumes, no planning, no crime. 

When he wakes up, have him already be kind of melancholic (and for a free fanservice shot because it’s a Bat comic and those are a requirement now I guess) and make sure to show the date as May 10th *.  There is a message from Stephanie on his phone telling him, “Thanks for agreeing to cover me on Sunday.”

Have us follow him to a corner store that he used to go to when he was a kid. Have him be known as Cathy’s Boy instead of Willis’ kid. Fuck Willis we’ve had enough of him, show us Catherine’s relationship with Park Row. Have the shop owners call Jason “Flaquito”, because we’ve seen the Harlowe’s call him “Skinny Jason Todd” and nicknames never die. As George Lopez once put it, “You shit in your pants one time, you’re Caca for the rest of your life. It could be a grown man, fucking Caca. “Guess who’s getting married.” “Who?” “Caca.”  

Have it so that not everyone knows what happened to the Todd family (even in tight knit communities you have to remember that people are self-centered and sometimes someone just disappears and you hope that it was because they moved. Plus would you think that the kid you once knew got adopted by a billionaire? Also, despite everyone making the Waynes celebrities, I can assure you that most people don’t know shit about them.) and they’re happy to see Jason again. 

Have Jason pick up ingredients for a recipe he remembers Catherine making when they had money (because I don’t know how to tell you guys this, but when you’re poor you still splurge on some things. Money is always tight and money is never a guarantee so you need to enjoy things when you’re able to). Maybe she learned it from some old neighbors. Maybe Jason knew these old neighbors who moved away from Gotham. (Give the boy some fucking bonds that didn’t end in tragedy dc!)

 Have Jason go to a family selling flowers by the road. It’s a different family then the one he remembers, but over a decade later and there’s still people here selling flowers. He specifically buys some pink carnations with a flashback showing Jason ask Catherine for her favorite colors so she could get the prettiest flowers. She says favorite colors are pink and yellow but she doesn’t like yellow flowers because, “Yellow is too depressing a color for flowers, Jay.” **

On his way back home Jason passes by a group of people having a party in a small plaza near the apartments. There’s a bunch of people dancing but it seems to mostly be middle-aged women having a blast with one another. Have a flashback to the exact same women but younger dancing with Catherine who encourages Jason to dance with them because “Women love a man who takes them dancing.” 

Have Willis be someone who used to take Catherine dancing because my god do authors try to fit Jason into this toxic-masculine role (which they can I guess) but if Latinos, a group of people who are entrenched in a toxic-masculine mindset, still have some non-violent or oppressive ways of expressing themselves physically (dancing) then so can Jason. Please let me give my son some sort of physical way to destress that isn’t tied to cape-life (I know Dana called Jason a shit dancer but here’s the thing, you can be good at dancing some good things and horrible at others. The amount of people I know who can fucking slay at rumba, samba, bachata, cumbia, etc. but are lost as hell when it comes to American music is staggering. Even more when they only know how to dance with a partner). Plus there needs to be a reason why Catherine stayed with Willis pre-Jason, might as well make him be a bomb-ass dancer. 

Jason gets roped into dancing with the group of aunties because you can’t say No to aunties it's against the law.  Have him be a little clumsy before getting back into the hang of it (again flashbacks of a happy Jason dancing with the same tias because if there’s anything a tia loves, it is a polite (which we’ve already had confirmation that Jason was a polite boy from the Harlowes) boy who listens to them and can dance) and have the exact woman he danced with as a kid be the one he’s dancing with now but years older.

Just keep going through his day and have him try and connect with his old neighborhood in memory of his mom. Let him bring his walls down for one day.

The story would end with simultaneous panels of child and adult Jason putting on music (with child Jason putting on a CD while adult Jason is using his phone) before cooking dinner with the words of Juan Gabriel’s Amor Eterno playing in the background as we slowly zoom out.***

Some info for things I didn’t really explain:

* May 10th is Mother’s Day for Mexico and Guatemala but I’ve seen other Latinos adopt it. My own personal experiences with this day are that several working class Latina moms would take this day off to celebrate and then pick up extra shifts on American Mother’s Day so they can make more money by working all day while other moms try to get the day off. I believe Catherine would do the same so she could spend the day with Jason and not lose money.

** This quote is straight from my mom’s mouth. Yellow flowers aren’t generally seen as depressing, but cempasúchil (Mexican Marigolds) are famously used for Día de los Muertos so some people associate yellow flowers with funerals.

Catherine’s favorite color being pink is also a little nod to fandom’s take on Talia being like a mother figure to Jason. Since her main outfit for a good while was a pink jumpsuit I made it Catherine’s favorite color so Jason can honor them both in one action.

*** Amor Eterno is a famous song created in 1984 by Juan Gabriel about his mother after her passing. It is an incredibly famous song and one that is played both at funerals and Mother’s Day.