The Fact That I Can Write An 1800 Word Oneshot In Under Three Hours Really Makes Me Wonder Why It Was

The thing about Jason Todd is I like to call him cathartic and he *is* but he's also...a sort of fantasy fulfillment, but not the one I think people assume.

Jason cannot be a Punisher type fantasy because his own victimization undercuts it. This isn't a tale about a hero avenging his family. This is the singing bones.

Because fundamentally, the fantasy in utrh is this: the victimized dead can rise again, screaming. Can cut a bloody path through the world and make the powerful listen. It doesn't matter if what he does is just or right, anymore, just that it exposes the wound.

In real life the dead stay dead and their abusers write their obituaries and get sympathy cards from their families and you bite your tongue and let the wounds rot and -

And then there's Jason, who comes back wrong because the world is wrong. Who comes back sharp and cruel, who makes himself a knife where there was once only grave dirt. Who tells Bruce, and by extension the audience itself, that *yes* you were grieving wrong. Yes you did allow this. You preserved peace over justice. You offered platitudes to a silent headstone while you ignored the screams of the living victims.

The fantasy of Jason Todd is this:

You have to look the corpse in the eyes, this time.

That's fucking hilarious

so originally Jason was buried in Gotham Cemetery, which i think makes his whole ‘disorientatedly breaking out of his own grave’ thing so much funnier. because like. that’s a public graveyard. there’s probably walkways going through it that people take to get to work or school every day. and i know a lot of people retcon that with the excuse of the loa cleaning up the broken grave so that they can keep Jason away from Bruce, but what if they just. didn’t?

Gotham is a fucked up place, and the people that live there are so used to it by now. they don’t bat an eye at the vigilantes, the fear gas, the clowns-, they have been desensitised to the weird and unexplainable. so i imagine with the fact that Bruce Wayne’s dead son’s gravesite suddenly becoming the CLEAR location of a broken out corpse, with the scratch marks on the inside of a burrowed out coffin, mud and dirt bursting up in the way that could only happen if something was emerging from below, the probably muddy footsteps leading away, not to, away from, the grave…

what i’m saying is the general public of Gotham are probably well fucking aware that there’s a zombie Jason Todd walking around somewhere, and they’ve all just collectively decided to mind their own fucking business.

there’s no new zombie-rogues, no people being eaten, and after a week or so the caretaker of the cemetery sighed and filled in the mess anyway, so nobody really thinks to mention it. of course, the Waynes are too overwhelmed by grief to ever go to Jason’s grave, and people are too scared to bring up such a sensitive subject with them, so it gets to the point where literally everyone in Gotham knows that Jason is probably alive…. but his family.

Jason comes back to Gotham as Red Hood and he doesn’t even try to have a secret identity as a civilian. nobody fucking cares. he just gets an apartment and starts walking around during the day and everyone who recognises him as Jason is just like ‘heyy! glad to see you back man, we were wondering where you’d popped off to!’. literally nobody gives a shit.

(Tim knows. he used to walk through that graveyard to get home from school, he’s known from the beginning. he knows that whatever Jason’s staying away for is his own business, and to be honest he really didn’t want to be the messenger for that particular shitstorm of information. politely, he will not be touching that with a ten foot pole.)

(Damian knew before he even came to Gotham. quite frankly, his opinion on his father dropped astronomically when he found out his English teacher knew of his brother’s residence in Crime Alley and Bruce didn’t. it’s more entertaining for him to just sit back and watch anyway. he too, refuses to say shit.)

Eventually the news reaches the upper side of Gotham, who all immediately assume that if Jason’s walking around again then the Wayne’s must of course be aware of it, so they never think to bring it up then, either. but Jason Todd-Wayne is back, and there’s always been a special fondness for that cute little street kid who nervously started getting brought along to galas and tried his absolute best to fit in and be polite, even if half the time he ended up fucking around with Dick or that Drake kid in the corner to pass the time. so if he’s back, then the elites all immediately assume that he is once again going to be a part of higher Gotham society.

so Jason Todd, secretly the Red Hood Jason Todd, hiding from his family Jason Todd, living in a shitty apartment safe house with two pieces of furniture and a lot of swords Jason Todd, starts getting invites to high-end events from all the city elites. he doesn’t even know how they got his address.

but well, he was free that evening… and he couldn’t deny that it might be a little bit funny…

his identity reveal ends up being much less explosive than originally planned, but it sure is entertaining. at least for him. Damian and Tim looked positively suicidal the whole night.

authors jason todd can talk about who are NOT jane austen or mary shelley

okay SO. a couple of people indicated they would be interested in this which was honestly all the encouragement i needed. my credentials are that 1.) i love jason todd 2.) i love literature 3.) i got my bachelors degree in english like a week ago and am now in that awkward space in-between school and employment and am looking to fill my time with inconsequential geeking out. amen.

incomplete list of authors and works (romantic to modern) you could write about jason todd being invested in under the cut!!:

SOME DISCLAIMERS:

this list is not even a little bit exhaustive and there are authors big and small i elected not to include because i either felt like i didn’t know enough about their work to comment or i felt their work didn’t relate to jason todd, who is ostensibly the subject of this post

there’s also not a whole lot of detail on the history and context behind these authors and their works, because again, this is a silly tumblr post about the hypothetical reading preferences of a comic book character

while i do have a brand spanking new bachelor's degree in english i cannot claim expert knowledge, especially because most of my education was broad strokes in literature survey classes. i just have access to a lot of overpriced lit anthologies and a dream

also i need to say i LOVE jane austen and mary shelley. i’ve written jason referencing them before and will do it again but come on. there’s a whole world of english lit out there and most of this post is a transparent excuse to get people–including myself–to read more cool poems and stories 

NOW LETS FUCKING GOOOOO

william blake: (1757-1827) blake was a weird fucking guy. he was an artist and poet and he was very preoccupied with religious and esoteric imagery. check out his paintings; they’re all bleak and occasionally grotesque but deeply evocative and honestly?? rad as hell. i think jason would really get a kick out of them. blake’s most famous poem is probably "the tyger", but "london" and "holy thursday" from songs of experience do a great job of invoking a really grimy urban feel that would slide right into gotham. 

lord byron: (1788-1824) a guy described as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know;” which he certainly was. this guy got up to so much dark and broody bullshit that they named a whole character type out of him–byronic hero, anyone? he’s mostly on this list because jason could certainly be called byronic and the connection is too good to pass up, but i do think jason would really vibe with the apocalyptic imagery in "darkness."

okay FINE this doesn’t really have anything to do with jason but "ozymandias" is one of my favorite poems ever and well worth reading

john keats (1795-1821) possibly one of the most romantic out of all the romantic poets, right down to dying tragically young of consumption. i mean, just look at "bright star." i am personally of the opinion that jason is secretly a HUGE romantic, so he’d probably dig keats quite a bit. i would also be remiss if i didn’t nod to “ode on a grecian urn.” 

note the biographical links for the victorian authors direct to victorianweb.org, which is kind of an old reference but it is one i got directed to in one of my first lit classes, so i feel comfortable linking it as a jumping-off point. 

elizabeth barrett browning: (1806-1861) i actually already wrote a fic where jason referenced barrett browning but i’ll reiterate here. barrett browning was HUGELY influential within the victorian time period, probably best known for her verse novel, aurora leigh, about a brilliant young woman working to become an artist against the strictures society has placed on her. lots of really fascinating stuff about womanhood, art, and the intersections thereof within the victorian era. sonnets for the portuguese is another big work of hers, written for her future husband robert browning (a very talented and influential poet in his own right) during their courtship. sonnet 43 is probably the most well-known out of these, but i’m personally a big fan of sonnets 14 and 24. sonnets are great for if you need to write about jason being a weird sappy romantic or just if you want to read cool love poetry. 

alfred, lord tennyson: (1809-1892) there’s a LOT i could say about tennyson’s influence and impact on the victorian era and on poetry at whole that can’t fit into a tumblr post about the reading preferences of a semi-niche comic book character. for jason specifically, "in memoriam", written over the course of about three years after the sudden death of tennyson’s close friend, is a deeply moving meditation on grief, loss, and recovery that jason would likely find really impactful. cantos 54 and 56 are particularly impactful. how am i not supposed to resonate with a banger like “nature, red in tooth and claw”??? huh???

charlotte brontë: (1816-1854) charlotte brontë is best known for her 1847 novel jane eyre which, as a personal aside, is one of my absolute favorite books of all time. jane eyre is the one about the governess and the madwoman in the attic. (obviously, it’s more complex but i’m not getting into that in a tumblr post). jane eyre and brontë’s other two novels, shirley and villette deal with emotionality and strong feeling in ways jason would find very compelling, even if he probably spends most of jane wanting to (rightfully) punt edward rochester and st. john into the sun. jane is the most famous out of the three, but i think shirley is very underrated–i’m still thinking about shirley keeldar saying, and i quote, “bon voyage” after she rejects a proposal. shirley keeldar queen of my heart <3<3. i can’t mention charlotte without also mentioning her sisters emily and anne, but i’m less familiar with their work and can’t comment on it (but probably jason would be a big fan of the gothic leanings of wuthering heights). 

gerard manley hopkins: (1844-1889) hopkins does some REALLY fucking fascinating things with language in his poems. he plays around with sound and meter in ways that dip into modernity. "god’s grandeur" and "as kingfishers catch fire" are particularly good examples of this. "carrion comfort" is the kind of poem everybody should read at least once, and it’s also the kind of poem that jason todd would read and then lay down for a really long time about. 

william butler yeats (1865-1939) an extremely influential modernist poet, deeply associated with the modern irish independence movement and identity (for example, see “an irish airman” or “easter 1916”) which i just think is neat. yeats also wrote a lot about cycles of time and history and idk. i think that would really resonate with the guy who died that one time. i especially recommend checking out “the second coming” and  “sailing to byzantium.” 

t.s. eliot (1888-1965) pretty easily one of the defining modernist authors and critics of the era. “the love song of j. alfred prufrock” is another one of those poems everyone should read at least once and another one of those poems that jason todd would read and then lay down for a really long time about. “the waste land” is long but also really worth reading; but if you’re reading for jason todd specifically, you should take a look at sections i and v. 

there are so SO many more but this post is ah. long enough as is!! if you have any comments or thoughts or questions please feel free to reach out to me!! i’m not ever going to claim to be an expert on the subject, but i do love talking about this stuff :))

Robin #67

Peak brotherism

Okay everyone, help me pick an idea to fixate on. I have too many drafts and no self control.

Failed Experiment Kon: the learning modules being uploaded to Kon while he’s being grown fail to work properly. He wakes up early with almost no knowledge of the outside world. Luthor decides to scrap him for parts; enter young justice who vehemently disagree.

Broken Belfry: tensions are high after Bruce returns from the timestream. Tim is sick of being discredited and treated poorly so he leaves to make a new life for himself. Probably Tim/Kon

Black Sheep: All of the Wayne children have reasons to feel they don't belong. A series of vignettes exploring their relationships with their family.

Anything for you: Dick kills the joker and Bruce doesn’t stop him. Jason’s headstone bears the correct name. Bruce refuses to allow the memorial in the cave to remain. The Wayne’s publicly mourn and Tim never wears a dead boys colours. This changes things when Jason returns.

no thoughts only batfam

What if I died of happiness then rose from the grave to write 20 more chapters just for you? Wouldn’t be the first time comments have spurred a fic on in my brain

but what if i read one of your fanfics and then went to your ao3 account and read all of your fanfics and left a comment on every single chapter of every single one and you got spam emails from all of my kudos and comments and it made you smile, what then? what if i brighten your day with my words like you did mine, what then???

Oh no my heart 💔💔💔

Magic is a fickle thing, so when the things go down the hill for the Batfamily, and they accidentally (temporarily) regain a copy of little Jason in his Robin era, they both delighted and confused.

Naturally, no one really minds getting Jaybin for a day - Bruce, Alfred, Dick and Barbara all circle around the lost child, talking, offering anything and everything, hugging and kissing his freckled cheeks. Those family members who didn't know him before are no less enamoured. He is polite, nothing like a brash boy they always imagined him to be. He listens to Tim curiously, legs tucked under his chin, happily calls Cass and Steph his big sisters, helps Damian with taking care of animals, and endlessly giggles at Duke's jokes.

Everything is so... nice. What they are worried about, is their Jason's reaction. For the most of it, they expect him to be mad. Offended. Maybe frustrated.

When Jason stumbles inside the Batcave, freezing on the doorstep at the sight of himself, much younger and bubblier, everyone is silent. Dick coughs awkwardly, almost imagining what could happen, and tries to soften a blow:

"Little Wing--"

But there is no need for that. Not really.

Because their Jason stares at little Robin with delight. In awe, even. His whole face softens, and he slowly steps closer, reaching out for a kid.

"Hey, kiddo."

The sheer vulnerability in his voice, confuses others even more.

Jason stares at a kid as if he sees something so dear and lost, and it is strangely baffling. His smiles grow wider when the Second Robin shyly waves at him.

"Come here," Jason encourages him. Once the kid climbs in his arms, he whispers in the crown of his head: "Welcome home, little hero."

And suddenly, it all makes sense.

Because, of course, Jason loves and loved this child.

After all, it is the same one, who he spent protecting from the evil tongues of his own family for years.

I love this panel from BATMAN/SUPERMAN: WORLD'S FINEST ISSUE #35.

Dick's friends with Arthur and Clark. They casually hang out. They watch games together.

Dick's 17 here. Arthur and Clark are presumably in their early 30's. This is just so brilliant, so Dick Grayson. Love it.